Nathan Birch

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Latest Reviews

Mario Kart World
8.5/10

It’s been a while since Mario upgraded his wheels. To be fair, Mario Kart 8 is a pretty tough act to follow, selling over 75 million copies between its Wii U and Switch iterations, but with the long-awaited launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, the Mushroom Kingdom crew are once again hitting the asphalt in Mario Kart World.

While not a smash hit, the 2021 EA Originals release Lost in Random has earned a modest yet dedicated fanbase thanks to its memorable Tim-Burton-meets-Double-Fine setting and unique combat system that incorporates cards, dice rolls, and other board-gamey elements. In the years since its release, the main creative minds behind Lost in Random went their own way, recently releasing a rather charming little horror game called The Midnight Walk, while original Lost in Random developer Zoink (now merged with another studio and rebranded as Stormteller Games) have opted to take the series in a new direction.

There can be something strangely unsettling about stop-motion animation, particularly the old-school stuff made before the likes of Wallace & Gromit gave the medium a softer edge. A few games over the years have tapped into that stop-motion aesthetic (last year's Harold Halibut being a good example) but the new handcrafted horror game The Midnight Walk really leans into the creepiness that sometimes accompanies the art form. The makers of The Midnight Walk, veterans of games like Fe and Lost in Random, went the extra mile, constructing actual physical models of all their characters and key props, which were then 3D scanned into the game to give everything that proper tactile look.