Simon Parkin
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Eurogamer Latest Reviews
Despite the game's dipped-nose poise, its obsession with speed and clocks, it rewards those who take their time, who perfect their technique on each stage, and who savour an arcade game that's been lovingly embellished and expanded to its full and likely final potential.
A brisk and challenging chapter, Crown of the Old Iron King's strength is in its unique setting and the difference in tone and ambiance this brings. Compared to its predecessor, it's somewhat brief, but it's arguably more memorable in terms of both its foes and vistas. There is, however, a certain melancholy to its conclusion: once Brume Tower is conquered, only one offshoot to the kingdom of Drangleic remains, the final link in a glorious chain.
It's a strong start for this series of add-on chapters for Dark Souls 2, then. There are no standout battles - save, perhaps, for the grim final encounter - but the cumulative effect of its fights, puzzles and secrets is memorable: Sanctum City and its offshoot areas lodge in the mind like so many of this series' locales. It's exciting to see the team return to the ingenious, interlocking layout of Demon's Souls and the first Dark Souls and there are enough novel ideas to be found in this shantytown of pillars, temples and chipped blocks to reassure you that this is a team that has run out of neither inspiration nor vigour.
Had this game been released a decade or two ago, it might have been seen as a classic of its type, alongside Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. But today, at the tail end of a wave of Metroidvania-style games, Strider fails to stand out. It's a competent, workable game that draws inspiration from the right places, but which is rarely anything more than a cover version of the greats.
Nevertheless, despite its unevenness and occasional cruelty, Teslagrad is a bold and captivating proposition. The unusual and elegant aesthetic is persistently attractive, and the lightness of touch with the storytelling brings the world-building to the fore. Its Nordic development team are fledgling (this is only their second game) and there's fidgety keenness to the game's ideas and creative execution. Teslagrad would have benefited from a more experienced publisher to help round off the sharp edges and better balance the challenge. But in the meantime, this is a rough yet worthwhile jewel.
There is, however, occasional frustration derived from Max's mildly imprecise controls. He floats through the air in lazy, Sackboy arcs, and struggles to hoist himself up some of the more convoluted branch shapes that you scrawl with your pen. Sometimes you'll be forced to throw Max to his death in order to restart a puzzle. But there is no denying the sense of accomplishment when you solve a puzzle, arranging the branches, vines and spouts of water in the correct way and then successfully manoeuvring Max across them and safely into the next screen. It's a game that makes you feel smart and, unlike Limbo, never surprises you with unforeseeable traps: there is always an opportunity to stand back, assess and, finally, execute. It's a somewhat short, enjoyable and inoffensive game that delivers on the potential of its mechanical promise, if not its narrative premise.
Viewed abstractly, Dual Destinies is a straightforward sequence of locked narrative corridors. Your task is simply to find the right clue with which to unlock each subsequent door. There is almost no capacity for player expression: each puzzle has a solitary solution and the only way to excel at the game is to find these as quickly as possible. And yet the smart writing and interlocking narratives elevate the straightforward play, drawing you in with a crime novelist's techniques, then challenging and delighting you with those of a crossword-writer. Few will object to such a potent concoction.
Nevertheless, as it stands, One Finger Death Punch is an enormously generous and exhilarating combat game - one whose capacity for expression and mastery is far broader than its simplistic appearance suggests.
State of Decay is a scrappy, somewhat coarse game on its surface level. Its systems are poorly explained, its textures lacking in detail, its gunplay entirely functional. But its systems have a clockwork-like beauty, interlocking with rare grace to create a vivid, meaningful world in which player-driven stories arise with delightful frequency. Its dialogue is passable, its pre-scripted missions workmanlike and its interface fussy. But look past the ragged façade and you'll discover one of the finest open world games yet made, an experience that trades cinematic sheen for a different sort of impact, one that leaves you grieving over unscripted deaths and celebrating the little victories. State of Decay is unrefined but never anything less than interesting. And in video games, interesting has never been at such a premium.
In context, however, he is a cipher for every monster a human imagines might harm them in the dark - a role he excels at, by virtue of being able to disregard this world's rules and teleport behind the player, or alongside her, just out of sight. Slender, like all horror entertainment, is principally a game of (repeating) tricks. These include the mounting jeopardy that comes with completing the objectives one by one in each chapter (find the eight pages, activate the eight generators, close the eight windows), or in Slender Man's ability to apparate through the magic of video game code. But it masterfully uses these tricks to tap into honest truths: a fear of the dark that lurks somewhere in every person, the terror of being pursued and the horror of being caught.