Checkpoint Gaming
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Latest Reviews
For going on eighteen years now, Like a Dragon (formally Yakuza) protagonist Kazuma Kiryu has been gracing our screens in one way or another. Though they’re an outstanding hero from SEGA and personally my favourite video game protagonist of all time, their history is a little bit complicated. Largely because developer RGG...
While I love a good puzzle game, The Talos Principle (2014) was one huge gauntlet of puzzle after puzzle with only minimal story in between, which almost made me bounce off it completely (I bounced off The Witness for the same reasons). The Talos Principle 2 massively expands the narrative...
How often have you watched a football game and gotten upset because you didn’t agree with the club’s strategy? Do you find yourself disagreeing with a club’s decision to loan or sell a player? With Football Manager 2024, you get to make the managerial decisions that you believe will lead...
In 2021, I criticised WarioWare: Get it Together for its needlessly complicated control scheme, and wistfully remembered the intuitive and easy controls of the WarioWare Smooth Moves for the Nintendo Wii. Well, somebody at Nintendo must have been paying attention, because WarioWare: Move it! is the perfect successor to the...
Glancing at a screenshot of Thirsty Suitors, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s some kind of Jet Set Radio spiritual successor: colourful characters, grinding on skateboards, teen punks. Stylistically, this narrative-focused title borrows some of the visual language of other titles in the “rebellious skaters” genre.
It’s been almost a year and a half since Pathea’s My Time At Sandrock was released into Early Access. Sandrock is a cosy mismatch of a game, combining mechanics and gameplay styles from the farming/life/building sims many know and love. Set in the desert oasis town of Sandrock, you play...
Jusant
I’ve always been terribly afraid of heights. Rollercoasters, cliffsides, even Ferris wheels… you’ll struggle to get me near the things, with the fear largely stemming from loss of control. Consider my surprise then when the rock climbing game Jusant, which has players hundreds of meters in the air scaling a...
Star Ocean has always been a more underappreciated franchise in Square Enix’s repertoire. Never reaching the highs and fandom of their hallmark series in Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, it’s sort of the weirdo RPG pick one might get into and surprisingly find themselves having a damn good time. I know this...
Alan Wake
In a horror story, there are only victims and monsters. In the topsy-turvy surrealist narrative of Alan Wake 2, it certainly doesn’t seem so black and white. In fact, this horror story lives somewhere in the middle, where heroes and villains are interchangeable and not everything is as it seems.
Sonic Team has done it again! And by done it again, I mean created a truly mixed bag: a game that’s great in some areas, so good that it almost makes you think Sonic is “back again”, only to sabotage itself with poorly implemented new mechanics and some baffling design...
Ghostrunner II
One year after the fall of the tyrannical Keymaster, a new chapter unfolds in the hardcore first-person slasher, Ghostrunner II. Developer One More Level offers an exhilarating cyberpunk experience, but not without a few sharp edges.
If you asked me to describe Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged in one word it would be fast. Coming off the back of the 2021 game Hot Wheels Unleased, there is obviously a reason developer Milestone added “turbo” to this sequel’s title! The competitive arcade-style racing game taps right into...
