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I can’t remember the last time I played a game where the developer absolutely nailed the most crucial and challenging aspect while managing to completely shit the bed everywhere else. Anthem has an incredibly fun combat and movement system which should be the foundation for a great game or at least a decent one. However,…
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The original Resident Evil 2, released back in 1998, was my first Resident Evil game. I was only fifteen at the time and it was rare for me to buy a game for full price, however, I read a couple of glowing reviews in my magazines of choice and loved what I saw in the…
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**Review copy provided by the publisher** while True: Learn()—yes, that’s its full name, not a typo in the title—has an excellent premise, combining the desire many of us have to understand machine learning and AI before the robots kill us all, and wanting to understand all the noises our pets make. While True Learn doesn’t…
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**Free review copy provided by the publisher** Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden adds looting and stealth options to the strategy game staples, while also removing a lot of the RNG you come to expect from the genre, with the end result being a combat experience more akin to a puzzle game like Into the…
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You might already know the saying “shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” The phrase is usually attributed to American author Norman Vincent Peale, although there are other versions dating back to the 1600s. To be fair, his version is a little catchier than “who aimeth at the sky,…
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**Review copy provided by publisher** GRIS is one of the best looking games I’ve ever played. It’s a watercolor painting come to life. We no longer need to debate whether a video game can be art; GRIS shows us that art can be a video game. Whether it’s at the start when the world is black…
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**Review copy provided by the publisher** Guacamelee 2 is a game I didn’t know I wanted until a year ago when I saw the reveal trailer and it’s a game I didn’t know I needed until I played it. Guacamelee 2 doubles down on everything that made the first game great and improves on a…
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With Hitman 2, IO Interactive has delivered more of the same. With the exception of a few minor gameplay tweaks, Hitman 2 (2018) is a lot like an expansion to Hitman (2016) instead of a fully fledged sequel. Familiarity can breed contempt, but it’s going to take a few more of these excellent Hitman games…
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Back in February 2001, I went down the local pub with some friends to watch my football team, Saints, play in the fifth round of the FA Cup. We were away to Tranmere Rovers, a team struggling in the division below us, in what should have been a relatively comfortable game, although as a Saints…
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With Battlefield V, DICE has made small but important changes to the multiplayer from Battlefield 1, and overall the online experience is stronger. However, the single player content is now clearly an afterthought and the lack of content on release strongly suggests that Battlefield V is not finished. https://youtu.be/s2oEBVd2Gi4 The timing of a review is…
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**Review copy provided by publisher** GRIP: Combat Racing is the spiritual successor to Rollcage, a racing game for the PlayStation One that targeted the WipeOut fanbase, although never quite achieved the same level of success. I loved Rollcage. The explosions, futuristic vehicles, and pounding Fatboy Slim soundtrack were exactly what I was after at the…
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**Review copy provided by the publisher** When CD Projekt Red released Gwent: The Witcher Card Game—based on the popular card game gwent that debuted in The Witcher 3—it promised that a full campaign mode was on its way. Most developers would throw together a short tournament against AI opponents with little in the way of…
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Assassin's Creed Odyssey is the video game equivalent of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy. There's a good story in there somewhere and a decent editor could trim the material and create a cohesive product. However, both experiences are stretched thin over unnecessary padding and diversions and by the time you're two-thirds of the way through…
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**Review copy provided by the publisher** Return of the Obra Dinn is the new game from Lucas Pope, the developer of the excellent Papers, Please. Both games have you solving puzzles to identify people, but the similarities mostly end there. Papers, Please had you solving simple puzzles as quickly as possible. Return of the Obra…
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Lara Croft has officially become the Tomb Raider. For the third time in five years. You'll have to excuse my fatigue, but I can't help but feel like I've played Shadow of the Tomb Raider before. Twice. Shadow's predecessor, Rise of the Tomb Raider, wasn't a bad game by any stretch, but it wasn't a particularly…
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Marvel's Spider-Man has a trophy for using the fast travel system five times. In any other game with an open world map as large as this one, I'd be popping that trophy in the first few hours. Therefore, it's a huge credit to Insomniac Games that I had to go out of my way to…
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During my three hours with Donut County, I used more emojis than I have previously used in my thirty-five years on this Earth. The mere inclusion of emojis would usually stop me from playing a game, let alone enjoying it, but I had a lovely time with Donut County, both in the main levels and…
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Quarantine Circular is another short text adventure from Bithell Games. Like its predecessor, Subsurface Circular, Quarantine Circular was released with little fanfare and for the low price of $6. Both games share the same DNA, but they aren't connected and you don't need to play Subsurface first. That said, you probably should, because Subsurface is…
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*Review copy provided by publisher* There's no way I'll make it through this review without comparing Not Tonight to Papers, Please, so let's get it out of the way early. Yes, Not Tonight is a hell of a lot like Papers, Please. Instead of working at a border, you're a doorman for local pubs and…
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Dead Living Zombies completes Far Cry 5's phenomenally disappointing season pass which never even made it to the mediocre highs of the base game. This expansion has some great writing and a premise that could have set it apart from all the other zombie games out there. Instead, Ubisoft settled for spawning in hoards of zombies…
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**Review copy provided by the publisher** Rogue-lites can be a tough sell. Many gamers—and I am sometimes one of them—are put off by the idea of losing all their progress on death and starting from the beginning. It's not everyone's idea of a good time and understandably so. Perhaps that's why developer Motion Twin touts…
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Tacoma feels instantly familiar to those who played Fullbright's debut, the excellent Gone Home. The lonely protagonist is in outer space this time, but otherwise, things are much the same. There's another empty location to explore as you slowly uncover what happened to the previous inhabitants before a twist reveals itself right at the end. Since Gone…
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**Free review copy provided by developer** While it might not look like it at first glance, Cultist Simulator reminds me of grand strategy games such as Civilisation or Crusader Kings. In addition to that addictive "just one more turn" mentality, you focus on creating your own path and making your own stories in a world…
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OnRush emphasizes driving fast. In addition to the regular boost, there's a special boost that has you going so fast you can barely see what's in front of you. And yet, despite this focus on speed, OnRush is not a racing game. Your precise goal depends on what mode you're playing but in most of…
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At the beginning of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, an anthropomorphic wolf voiced by Sting tells you to travel around the depression-era United States collecting stories and telling some of your own. With a premise like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Where the Water Tastes Like Wine would live and die by…
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Far Cry 5 didn't know whether it wanted to tell a serious story or a silly one and, in the end, it settled for barely telling a story at all. Lost on Mars—the second piece of DLC in Far Cry 5's season pass—knows it's silly and milks it at every opportunity. It's hilarious at times,…
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I've never been a huge fan of the western genre. Firefly and Westworld are quasi-westerns, I guess, and that's about as close as I get to enjoying it. If the genre had more aliens, ghosts, and goblins, I might have developed more of a taste for it. West of Loathing has all that and it's…
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Cyberpunk stories often assume that body upgrades are commonplace in the future, albeit they are typically reserved for the rich, further widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. The Red Strings Club goes one step further and proposes a future where humans can upgrade their minds to remove negativity and emotional pain. One generous…
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I have a strange obsession with games that immerse me in post-apocalyptic nuclear wastelands. It's a weird fetish, but an undeniable truth about me nonetheless, dating back to my fascination with the first Fallout game. Immersion might be a bit of a buzzword, but in the case of Metro Redux, it's a well-earned label and…
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It's been fifteen years since the last mainline F-Zero game and I can only play the same old Wipeout games so many times. Fast RMX doesn't quite fill the futuristic-racer void left behind by those classic franchises, but it's a decent snack that'll keep me going until the main course eventually arrives. If Fast RMX…
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The history of Kickstarter-funded video games isn't exactly full of success stories. For every Shovel Knight, there's a Mighty No. 9. Much like movie tie-ins, you do occasionally get good games from Kickstarter, but for the most part, you should exercise caution and keep the hype to a minimum. We still don't know whether Koji…
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N++ fully earns the "Ultimate Edition" subtitle attached to its marketing. The original N was a Flash game from 2004 and was followed up by N+ for the Xbox 360, DS, and PSP. In 2015, Metanet Software released N++ for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and as of May 2018, the definitive version of this addictive momentum-based platformer…
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I thoroughly enjoyed Life is Strange, but given how it ended, I wasn't exactly screaming out for a sequel. The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is a free prologue tasked with getting us interested in whatever the hell is going to happen in Life is Strange 2. Well, mission accomplished. Captain Spirit wastes no time…
Continue reading ➞ The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (PC)
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Much like the sport it's based on, Golf Story is initially relaxing and enjoyable enough: a pleasant way to spend a lazy afternoon. However, after a few hours, Golf Story begins to get boring and the mind starts to think about all the more interesting things you could be doing instead. Both the game and the…
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In House Flipper, you renovate run-down houses and sell them for a profit. Your first purchase will probably be a bug-infested one-bedroom house but before long you'll be buying mansions with garages bigger than a San Francisco apartment. There's an inherent satisfaction in turning a property from something you need a hazmat suit to enter into…
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*Free review copy provided by the publisher* Genre mashups are a tricky thing. When they work, they can be some of the most memorable games ever made, taking players by surprise and making you wonder why no-one thought of doing it before. Portal is a good example, melding first-person shooting with puzzles in a way…
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Subsurface Circular is a visual novel about talking to strangers on a train. Basically, a British person's worst nightmare. It ends up being a relaxing and thought-provoking experience where you talk to androids and solve a mystery without ever moving from your seat. At ninety minutes long, Subsurface Circular doesn't overstay its welcome and if…
I've spent more time than I'd like to acknowledge thinking about the games that might be revealed at E3 2018. There's no point keeping these predictions in my head because then I can't be smug and annoying if I get any of them correct. Anyway, here are my predictions. Most of them are a bit…
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Far Cry 5's first piece of DLC—Hours of Darkness—shifts the focus to stealth with a reworked perked system that's an ideal fit for a short piece of DLC. Unfortunately, not much else has changed. Hours of Darkness feels like a fan-made mod for Far Cry 5. There's barely any story to speak of, no interesting…
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Detroit: Become Human offers a fascinating glimpse into a possible future where the US is rife with prejudice and discrimination. A future where people are angry about the loss of job opportunities and direct that anger towards those they feel took their jobs. A future where politicians are in the pockets of large corporations, putting the…
Chris Davis 