
1341 Published Reviews
The Quarry
PS54.00
As for the ending, there isn’t one—just a montage of postscripts, detailing the fates of the various characters. Only, we already know their fates, having been at least partially responsible for them. As the credits rolled, the sweetness of the humour had grown stale, and I felt distinctly unsated, though hardly hungry for more. I hate to say it, but Supermassive has made a Butterpop.
Trek to Yomi
PS57.00
Trek to Yomi has no official forebears, but it isn’t wholly unattached. Just as Salt and Sanctuary crunched FromSoftware’s unsavoury Dark Souls into two granular dimensions, and was sprinkled with spiritual nods, Menchiari looks glancingly at those works, too, opting for a stamina meter and moments that call on your patience.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Xbox Series X|S6.00
There just isn’t enough juice in the combat, the cover shooting, or the endless hoovering of collectibles.
NORCO
PC8.00
What saves Norco is that the visions on offer belong as much to the imagined as the troublingly real.
Weird West
PS48.00
You can sense, in Weird West, a developer both returning to his obsessions and toiling on a fresh frontier.
TUNIC
Xbox Series X|S8.00
And yet, despite its obvious muses, Tunic manages to rise above mere flattery, by paying deeper homage to the medium itself.
GhostWire: Tokyo
PS57.00
Most potent of all, there is a strain of urban fear running through its design—not of monsters but of the city itself as an isolating entity, rendering you unreachable.
Gran Turismo 7
PS510.0
Polyphony has delivered an airtight flight from the everyday, rich in escape yet rooted in anything but fantasy.
Martha is Dead
Xbox Series X|S6.00
If only Dalcò, rather than honouring his heroine by smothering her search for truth in confounding gloom, had abided by her love of illumination.
Elden Ring
PS59.00
There are no other dynamics quite like it in games; they acquaint us with an array of miseries and charge us money for the privilege.
Horizon Forbidden West
PS58.00
With Horizon Forbidden West, Guerilla is armed with the grunt of the PlayStation 5, and we get not just a catalogue of alluring tones but a richer palette of ideas.
Sifu
PS58.00
The coup of Sifu is that this process mirrors that of the hero; I was continually tempted to ditch my progress and start afresh, furnished with new knowledge at the expense of a little more life.
OlliOlli World
PS57.00
Whether OlliOlli World charms you or chafes at your patience will depend on your appetite for such whimsy.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human
PS57.00
Indeed, if, like me, you have a weakness for the zombie-hued, and for the sway and flail of first-person platforming, then Dying Light 2 is easy to recommend.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction
Xbox Series X|S5.00
More than any other studio, Ubisoft is willing to mutate its existing IPs until they scarcely resemble what they once were.
Solar Ash
PS58.00
Where Solar Ash goes from an intriguing ambient platformer to one of the year’s most fascinating releases is in its fixation on living as an act of being stuck.
HALO Infinite
Xbox Series X|S8.00
With Halo Infinite, 343 Industries seems to want to break the cycle and start afresh. The irony is that it has done so by drawing closer to the past.
There remains about Pokémon Brilliant Diamond the glint of something far gone, and there is something warmly reassuring about the place.
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition
PS56.00
If these games shaped or changed you, you might find the notion of their being shaped and changed, in turn, an unwelcome one.
Call of Duty: Vanguard
PS57.00
Its narrative is fractious and slight, compared to Sledgehammer’s previous work, but the chance for a chaotic, target-rich experience with friends exerts a stronger pull than usual.
Forza Horizon 5
Xbox Series X|S8.00
It may well be more of the same, but Mexico beckons, ravishing the eye and devouring up the miles.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
PS57.00
Where Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy proves most winsome, however, is in its twining of the intergalactic and the terrestrial.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
PS54.00
If only House of Ashes were possessed with something malevolent enough to actually scare us; sadly, it commits a litany of sins, none of them original.
Back 4 Blood
Xbox Series X|S7.00
In Back 4 Blood, we have been given a finely tooled zombie shooter, but it lacks the power of the original.
Metroid Dread
Switch8.00
Where the studio succeeds—and where Metroid Dread elevates from noble and flawed effort to inspired riff—is in its embrace of the unreachable.