Digital Spy
HomepageDigital Spy's Reviews
It's not perfect and won't change the gaming landscape, but you'll certainly have a blast ripping and tearing your way through sun-drenched Hell-A with more than a few surprises along the way.
While the gameplay develops at a satisfying pace, some fans of the mainline series might find it lacking in some complexity. But with a chance to delve deeper into the Bayonetta world and follow along this coming-of-age tale, it’s hard not to recommend this game to fans of the series and newcomers alike.
Disturbing, thrilling, and absorbing at the same time, Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is much more than your average horror game. Square Enix has delivered a fantastic tale that deserves to be getting more attention than it currently has.
But Growing Together addresses some of the past criticisms of the game. The Sims 4 has worked hard over the last few years to give players more options than ever to customise their Sims, and this pack is a continuation of that direction — with its focus on evolving large parts of the gameplay a refreshing attempt at making a Sim's lifetime more colourful and rounded.
What Capcom has done is less of a re-imagining and more a celebratory culmination of all the series' ideas. Resident Evil 4 is an absolute blast, retaining all its bombastic and over-the-top ideas while injecting some more modern horror and quality-of-life changes. It's a must for any Resident Evil fan, and if you’re new to the series, what a great place to start!
It's just a shame really that, in its efforts to be a solid action-adventure, none of its ideas were explored any deeper as we'd have loved to have seen the team swing for the fences in one area or another to produce something truly standout.
It's a solid Fire Emblem, but lacks the lasting impact to rank as a classic.
If you're new to the series, it's an absolute must to experience this wholly unique game, and thankfully there's more than enough excuse for older fans to step foot once more onto the USG Ishimura.
All sorts of fun tensions arise from these groups interacting, all supported by some really strong writing. The only thing that lets it down is the sometimes janky production values, and we often felt like particular lines or moments would have been better delivered in a single comic panel with a distinct facial expression, rather than Midnight Suns’ middling character models. If you can look past this, though, then you get some really funny moments with a cast of characters that genuinely feels like it’s been assembled with care – a feeling which extends throughout the entire game and which is a welcome surprise for this big-budget IP-driven title.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are big and ambitious and bold, but it's hard not to imagine what they could have been if they’d just been given a little more time to cook.
It's a shame that, despite looking great and having a good concept at its core, some poorly-executed ideas lead to a frustrating experience overall. For a new studio to produce a brand new IP is obviously a mammoth task and commendable, so here’s hoping the team get another chance to get a grip on this universe and tighten up the experience.
Balancing a heartfelt story with over-the-top excessive video game action, Ragnarök is completely self-aware. It improves upon the previous title in all the ways we could have hoped for and delivers a huge experience with stunning visuals, beautiful storytelling and buckets of fun
Saints Row is ultimately an underwhelming missed opportunity. It's a shame, as this was a chance to do something big, bold and different – showing us where the franchise could be heading in the years to come. But instead, the end product is a basic and fairly tedious experience that is stuck in an era of gaming long past. There are a handful of fun moments, but these are fleeting and it's difficult to suggest anyone picking the game up.
Teen Sims have become a whole lot more engaging and satisfying to control here, in large part thanks to a variety of features and moving parts that help to capture the teen experience. With an impressive range of clothing and furniture targeted towards teens included as well, the expansion succeeds in turning this previously-overlooked life stage into one that feels unique and worthwhile to play.
The overall game may fail to hit the same (perhaps unrealistically) lofty highs of one of the best titles on the Switch, but it's impressive how much it manages to feel like a Fire Emblem game and not just a Warriors title with familiar characters thrown in. That is its greatest strength, and the result is an experience where it's easy to warm to and invest in your favourite Fódlan characters all over again.
Flush with a gorgeous and uplifting soundtrack, Forgotten Land is a heart-warming and no-stress experience while providing some fun challenges and deeper upgrades should you want them. Either way, this is a must-have game and yet another instant Nintendo classic that's not only warmly familiar, but also subtly inventive in a way that'll keep you hooked until the end.
But that doesn't change the fact that this is an entertaining and very worthwhile ride, and one that players might want to experience more than once from the beginning to see all of the different ways in which the deadly events at Hackett's Quarry can unfold (including all of the gruesome deaths).
Whether it's the best occult or not is another matter. As a package, Werewolves is a shade above Vampires by 2022 standards – with supporting content like the world and accompanying lore fleshing out the occult beyond the core gameplay. But we'd also argue that a vampire Sim, by itself, has more engaging interactions with other Sims and weaknesses that have greater impact on everyday moments.
That's not to say it's impossible to develop well-made packs for The Sims 4 several years on. In fact, some of the packs mentioned above were received well, we really liked Snowy Escape, and there are positives in My Wedding Stories that can be appreciated. But this pack raises major questions about how much longer The Sims 4 can realistically hold out.
If you loved Zero Dawn and simply wanted more, warts and all, this is easy to recommend. But if you were looking for something groundbreaking with a lot more polish, then Horizon Forbidden West is really a mixed bag.