Latest Reviews
World of Warplanes won’t turn you into the next Chuck Yeager, but it will give you an insight into the real draw of flight sims: outmaneuvering and shooting down enemy planes is enormously satisfying. And when live human opponents are piloting those planes, the satisfaction doubles. With its appealing graphics,...
The nautical elements of AC III and Black Flag are arguably the strongest facets of those games, and those themes are rife for exploration in a standalone title. While Assassin's Creed Pirates manages to capture a bit of that sea-faring magic, it never quite delivers the pirate experience I wanted....
Doki-Doki Universe’s heart is in a great place, and its charm and startlingly accurate personality analysis provide a completely novel experience the likes of which I’ve never seen before. Its slant on side quests and completionism did, at first, scratch an itch for me, but Doki soon suffers from its...
The Novelist
As a game about family relationships The Novelist is interesting and relatable up to a point, but it doesn’t have a great deal of emotional depth, and the further you get into it the more you notice the flaws in its characterisation. Despite that, though, it’s worth a few hours...
I’ve already lost a lot of sleep to Peggle 2. Its Siren song of “just one more board” is difficult to ignore even late at night, and during the day anyone who walks by and sees it wants me to pass the controller to take a crack at besting my...
It’s unfortunate for Explore the Dungeon that we are living through an amazing period for dungeon crawlers and roguelikes, but even if we weren’t, it would stand out as depressingly uninventive and simplistic. Unlike the show it’s based on, it’s both deeply boring and devoid of imagination. For a real...
Gran Turismo 6’s problems are baggage the series has been carrying since 1997; the second you thunk into a wall at 200 kilometres per hour and drive off scot-free, or hop into a belching V8 that sounds more like a wheezing milkshake maker, the glass shatters and the illusion breaks...
The Guided Fate Paradox suffers from uneven difficulty and customization that could charitably be called "byzantine," but it manages to overcome many of these flaws with its over-the-top sense of humor and rewarding strategy. Though it's often unforgiving, it's a good RPG, and a fine addition to the PlayStation 3...
Tiny Brains
There’s a great idea at the core of Tiny Brains. When it works, having four people sitting on a single sofa and working together to solve a tricky puzzle provides a great moment of local comradely that’s sorely lacking from modern gaming. Sadly, those moments are way too few and...
FIFA 14
FIFA 14 isn’t a leap into the future of the series; it has a lot in common with the version of FIFA 14 that's already out. There are real flashes of potential, though, and hints at where it may go in the future – the sheer variety of animation, cognisant...
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger and Far Cry 3 immediately spring to mind as adventurous shooters you should play long before resorting to the desperate measure of playing Deadfall Adventures. It's an uninspired retread of good concepts, and an unfortunate visitor into a genre with some genuine giants. It might take...
Fighter Within
Aside from the very basics of punching and kicking, nothing in The Fighter Within works well, and very little works at all. It's gesture recognition is abysmal, its fighting is shallow, and it wastes too much time trying to clumsily tell a silly, unnecessary story. In short, it's everything Microsoft...
