Brendan Caldwell
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Writing For
Rock Paper Shotgun
EurogamerLatest Reviews
Europa Universalis V
Part of me yearned to finish this playthrough before giving my final verdict, but considering it took Naples a full century just to discover there is a "south" of the globe (omg), I'll just tell you now: it's confusing as heck and I like it. Even though I'm playing at...
But later, particularly in some of those bosses, the time requirements for practice spike, and you're forced to run the rigamarole of repetition expected of an arcade machine. This I have less desire to indulge, even if it does result in a game that feels like a perfect challenge for...
Wheel World
It's a far cry from Messhof's previous works - the incomparable Nidhogg remains one of the best fighting games of all time. And I'll admit it feels a bit weird to set Wheel World's sweet and ultimately harmless roamaround racing next to the snarling energy and electro fury of the...
Mecha Break
In some sense judging Mecha Break for these free-to-play foibles is a pity. Because buried beneath the weedlike mass of microtransactions, the noise of lootboxes opening, the lecherous lingering over chests and butts, and the legion of screens popping up to flummox you with unintelligible currencies, there is a slight...
Rematch
It's telling that the missing feature I desire most is not an emote or a graphics setting or a - pffft - "mandatory pass". But just some way to auto-rematch, so I don't have to tap Y at the end of every game within a 10-second countdown to re-enter the...
To a T
I've been thinking about this idea a lot as I finished To A T (it clocks in at about 4-5 hours). It is full of moments when the controls change, and you must move them in some new way to brush your teeth, eat food, or whirl like a...
Dune: Awakening
As survival games go, however, I cannot call it "bad". Fair warning: there are weird glitches and choppiness (one bug saw me backdashing every time I exited the inventory screen). And I had to abandon playing on a controller because of the obnoxious virtual cursor in menus. But this wasn't...
Japanese Drift Master
There are some potholes, sure. That story is borderline insufferable, tutorials don't do a great job of explaining things, and there's some bugginess. I only got a fraction of the cash I was supposed to earn from some missions, for example, which made it difficult to progress up that ladder...
RoadCraft
If I had lots of free time, I would probably enjoy it a lot more. But I don't, so tipping over with a cargo bay full of steel beams makes me frown, where it might have otherwise made me laugh. This, I think, is another issue. RoadCraft is a podcast...
The Precinct
So as far as cop 'em ups go, it fits somewhere between the grey dispatch tales of This Is The Police and the boots-on-the-ground patrolling of Police Simulator: Patrol Officers. As much as the comparison isn't fair, I also find myself thinking of it alongside Shadows Of Doubt, the recent...
Drop Duchy
Except in this case, too much is gained. Tetris is a game of removal, of emptying a space - not filling it. The explicit goal is to have as empty a field as possible. Some deckbuilders do mimic this philosophy. Think of the way Slay The Spire encourages removing cards...
Skin Deep
Even outside of those giggling japes, there are endless smile-raisers. The inventive playfulness of Blendo is on full display. There's a James Bond styled opening song that you walk through as the credits roll. Exposition chats are accompanied by an old-fashioned projector that lights up the room with figures and...