Paul Dean
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Writing For
Eurogamer
Rock Paper ShotgunLatest Reviews
So, do you want to try a game that is “strange and confounding”? If it was up to me, everyone would play this. Then they would tell me not just what they thought of it, but what a certain item, location or actor signified, because an important part of Virginia may well be what you bring to it. I know many won’t like the idea of traipsing through its scenes or passively watching its unfoldings and, sure, if you think you won’t enjoy any of that, you’re right on the money. But if you’re a little bit curious, or if you enjoyed any of the games with which it shares its DNA, Virginia may be one of the oddest and most fascinating things you’ve played in a long, long time. Vivid Virginia is a hell of a lot more than plain old “walking.”
Emerging from Early Access lean and focused, Prison Architect is one of the best management games in a long time.
The Sims 4 is both fresh and yet also predictable, pleasant, comfortable and rarely overstimulating. It's wobbly, and you can still see some of its joins, or hear the creaks as new parts settle into place. It's not likely to win over any new players, but it will satisfy a lot of its old ones. For many of its fans, it will feel like moving into a new home. They'll settle.
I liked playing Banished. It was complex, but never fiddly, difficult, but rarely cruel, though it would benefit from a little more transparency. But as soon as I had a handle on it, as soon as I'd started to see through some of the fog of its complexity, I wanted to grasp for something bigger, something greater. Banished is satisfying, but never spectacular. That's not quite enough for me.
It's hard, it's obtuse. It's big, it's beautiful. It's cruel, it's arbitrary. It's an adventure.