Simon Parkin
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EurogamerLatest 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Local and online multiplayer facilitates co-operative as well as competitive play (where you can use any of the 40-odd enemy characters you've encountered in the storyline, in another nod to Guardian Heroes), but even this soon after the UK launch, I was unable to find any other players. A mild...
Xenoblade Chronicles 2
When the Colony is attacked by a swarm of Mechon at the start of the game - killing some of the friendly faces you have just become acquainted with and burning the shops whose shelves you've emptied - Shulk sets out with some of his friends to find a way...