A charming, gentle take on the Wild West and stealth genres aimed at all ages, but with occasional spikes in difficulty which may trouble younger players. The art design and narrative are both captivating, so providing you have the patience for stealth and puzzles, it's highly recommended.
A unique and highly original survival adventure inhabited by a host of outlandish creatures in which you constantly struggle to guide your hapless Trebhums to safety and away from The Cylinder. While the design and concept can't be faulted, the lack of direction and excessive busywork bog down the gameplay and detract from the experience to the point of patience testing. If you can handle a fiddly challenge which rewards a great deal of patience with some outstanding originality, it's recommended.
Faultless presentation, an absolute raft of superb vehicles across 9 categories, 130 brilliantly rendered circuits in 22 international locations and a 6 hour story mode alongside a huge career and promising online play. But there's nothing here that hasn't been done before and there's a soulless tedium involved as a result which begs the question - why?
An old-school turn-based rpg with a charming visual style, plenty of deadpan ironic humour and many hours of content awaiting discovery. Unfortunately, despite the humour, there's a strange xenophobia to the representations of 'natives' and colonial plundering which makes the whole experience feel a bit grubby. If you can get over this, there's a satisfying and deep experience to be had.
An enjoyably sedate outing around the suburbs, marred by the antiquated and dull visuals, Bus Simulator nonetheless provides a good chunk of all too real simulation of public transport.
Never quite impressing on any level, MotoGP 20 offers up an enthusiastic licensed release, which will please fans of the sport and motorcycle lovers but may fail to inspire everyone else. A less sterile approach to simulating the sport with a more impressive feeling of speed would be enough to crown Milestone as kings and queens of MotoGP.
An authentic recreation of the best of the Sega arcade racing classics from yesteryear, but sadly lacking in depth due to the simplistic circuits and repetitive gameplay mechanic. Split-screen or online multiplayer is the way to get the best from the game.
Twin stick mayhem which pits your kick-ass scientists against hordes of beasts in a dreary procedurally generated underworld. Long stints reveal the repetitive nature of the maps and challenges, but grab a copy if you're up for some shallow bullet spraying for up to four buddies.
Utterly brilliant lo-fi psychedelics fail to make up for the simplistic and repetitive gameplay which very quickly becomes too difficult and frustrating to hold most players' attention. It's worth dipping into for some wigged out hilarity though, for as you long as you can hold off throwing the controller at the screen...
Codemasters have dutifully updated their F1 template with the new car designs and the up to date roster of circuits whilst ditching the Story Mode for an entirely unrelated and pointless avatar clothes shop featuring microtransactions. While the racing itself remains superb, there's an increasingly hollow corporate veneer which undermines the core of the well-crafted game engine. I'd be inclined to stick with F1 2021 until the nouveau riche supercars and furnishings are jettisoned for 2023.
A shallow but stylish and challenging single-player space blaster, which despite the forgettable storyline, offers a good few hours of alien ass-kicking at a budget price.
An excellent premise, a compelling narrative, and an effective atmosphere of dread are scuppered by muddy visuals, an antiquated save system, and stilted gameplay mechanics lacking in new ideas. Multiple endings reward those who persevere though, so fans of folk-horror should sample the wares within Sker Hotel, but for most the game will feel stuck in the past.
A wasted opportunity to make a brilliantly crafted anti-grav racer remotely playable, with a difficulty level that has no learning curve and is thoroughly unrewarding. The visuals and innovative track design cannot be faulted and there's an enormous amount of content awaiting anyone with the patience of a saint and a metabolism of a teenager full of sugar. Otherwise, the aging but perfectly judged WipEout Omega Collection should still be your go-to anti-grav racer.
Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged is a fairly decent approximation of toy car racing, with the added bonus of being able to customise your car collection and design your own tracks. However the karting / arcade gameplay doesn't quite click in either direction, and the failure to make the game accessible for younger children adds to the feeling of mild disappointment which pervades the whole game.
An unnecessary release which cobbles together pieces from other, better racing games into a competent but dull experience. Save your cash and grab a copy of Burnout Paradise Remastered instead.
Fancy working as a game developer, learning on the job? In VR, Probe just about succeeds as an educational experience which may slowly grind you down with its frustrating and time-wasting controls. Non-VR players should give it a wide berth as those control problems kill it stone dead.
On the face of it, Peppa Pig: World Adventures looks the part, immersing your little one in their beloved world from the TV show with loads of countries to visit. But then the black screens appear. And the aural scrapings. Oh the scrapings. And the inexplicable loading times. And the curious audio mix which buries the dialogue. And the strange appearing and disappearing characters. So on the flip-side of the face of it, it's time to bring home the bacon and NOT Peppa Pig: World Adventures.
An admirably niche racing game which gets the look and feel of truck racing just right, but manages to get the single player career experience all wrong.
A highly unsatisfying and directionless tennis game, with an abysmal character creator and career mode. Steer well clear and buy AO Tennis 2, bizarrely made by the exact same team responsible for this monstrosity.
A promising adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's novella is squandered with illogical solutions, childish humour and too many unsatisfying endings. Completists may enjoy finding all the content, but old school 'choose your own adventure' fans should look elsewhere for their fix of interactive fiction.