Battleborn isn't a bad game in the sense that it lacks work or effort – the team has clearly put in the hours – it's just that, for me, it's an uninspiring result which can't justify its hefty price tag.
Abzû is a beautiful game. It's a game stuffed with fish and colour and movement and music. I love those things. Sometimes you feel like you're actually inside an episode of Blue Planet (I recorded the video above during one such moment). But I don't love wrestling for control of an experience which feels expansive one moment and restrictive or unpredictable the next.
Ultimately, it’s competent, but without the systems or story being on the same level as the aesthetic Seasons After Fall will soon fade from memory.
It’s a gentle seafaring tale I’m looking forward to playing through with a child when I next see my smaller family members but which I’m more than happy to play for my own enjoyment as well. I think I’m on my sixth distinct playthrough at the moment and still discovering new things.
It’s definitely got a place in my games library, and it’s a really good way to play a version of the board game my friends and I enjoy even though we’re rarely in the same city at the moment.
It is lovely, though, and one of the friendliest, warmest logic puzzlers I’ve played.
A House of Many Doors has so much lovely writing and is so ambitious. It’s also so entirely in the shadow of its spiritual sibling. As a result it can’t hope to escape constant comparisons even if it proves preferable to the narrative tastes of some players. It’s the Dannii to Failbetter’s Kylie.
Cosmic Express is just as delightful to look at, and has a really solid core of puzzling to get your brain around!
I'm not sure how to sum this up for a review, truth be told. I have notes written from early on when I was brimming over with excitement and wonder and I'm pulling them together having lost that sense of connection with the game in its later stages. I think I would have felt differently if I'd played as a non-reviewer and walked away when I felt that interest wane instead of ploughing onward.
I'm far less sure of how someone without that attachment to the originals will perceive the mix of flaws and strengths. For me the chance to revisit one of my first game infatuations did reduce the annoyances, or at least they became part and parcel of going back – you take the irritants with the joys because without it it wouldn't be the same.
It comes so close to being something I love and then it has a hollow core.
Old Man's Journey is a game with all of these prickles of delight but where the interstitial matter often feels humdrum. It's short enough that you can still pick those delights out even if you're not satisfied with the rest of the interactions, but you can't help but wonder, what if it had found a way to make the whole thing shine?
Slime Rancher is a delightful, irrepressible thing with a manageable space to venture out into. A bouncy rainbow in a sludge of sprawling, mud-coloured shooters. I am so glad it exists.
As with Fullbright's previous game, Gone Home, Tacoma won't be for everyone, but it's a masterclass in environmental and gradual storytelling. It weaves an intriguing story against the backdrop of a believable near-future culture.
In terms of where this opening salvo of game leaves me, I'm interested to see how some of the characters progress and wary of others.
It struggles with characterisation and motivation at times, BUT it also made me laugh out loud and furnished me with an unexpected weepy moment.
Rogue Islands won't be for everyone, but I thought it would be useful to explain why it's for me!
An approachable and thought-provoking meditation on life's only certainty.
An ambitious game but one which exposes and compounds the weaknesses of solitaire.
A fantastic feat of interlocking storytelling and design.