Robert Zak
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Microsoft attempts to grab some territory from Sid Meier's empire.
I do think that while the skill tree is a bit thinner in a single-player context than Arkane fans are used to, it’s designed to shine in co-op play. The translocator, for instance, isn’t just something you use once, but effectively creates a portal between where you threw it from and to, meaning that while it’s there your allies can use it too. Dev’s electric pulse spear, meanwhile, which zaps enemies in an area around it, can double up as a healing beacon with the right abilities. Once you start synergising those skills with other players, I imagine Redfall will create some unique tactical teamwork opportunities, and we’ll start seeing some pretty snazzy Redfall co-op gameplays videos cropping up soon.There’s no question that Redfall dilutes that immersive sim purity from Arkane’s earlier games to accommodate the more marketable fantasy of hunting down vampires with a group of pals. More than any of the studio’s previous games, Redfall leans towards being an out-and-out shooter, but to its credit still manages to still hold onto those auteurial Arkane touches like mechanical playfulness, inventive worldbuilding, and the joy of exploring an original and super-stylish game world. It pains me to fall back on...
Despite a few missed opportunities to really build on the great games it’s inspired by, Atomic Heart surprised me, with a remarkably inventive world that brings to life (the tears apart) the weirdest, wildest visions of Soviet propaganda. This is a game that’s been through over half a decade of development hell, and come out the other side as one of the best first-person shooters this generation.
It’s a little disappointing, and really quite surprising, that River City Girls 2 shows very little impetus to improve on its promising predecessor. The girls have still definitely ‘got it,’ and still make this colourful and characterful journey worth it through some rough patches, but there’s a little too much reliance on the assets of the original to make it feel worth the rather steep asking price. The original game made a fan of me, while the sequel just about manages to sustain my loyalty, though that will definitely be affected by how WayForward deal with its woeful frame rate issue in the coming weeks.
It was a bold move for the devs to try and move this traditionally 2D style of game into this hybrid 3D space, but I can’t help but feel that Jumpship would have been better off leaving it in 2D, because that extra dimension ends up just weighing the game down. It’s weirdly apt that right at the end of the game, when I’d got two different endings but was trying to unlock what I’d imagine was the ‘good’ ending, I experienced a massive bug that for a moment seemed like a creative decision, as I fell through the world, was reunited with my family on a grey platform in some empty void, then jumped off again to go into an infinite fall. In the end, Somerville’s admirable artistic vision and technical issues merged into one, poignantly showing that these two aspects of a game can’t ultimately be separated.
A grim yet unforgettable journey through an unthinkably hostile world.
There’s horror Alien and there’s action Alien(s), and Fireteam leaps all in on the latter.
Chernobylite is a rare game that makes you feel the weight of your decisions.