Planet Coaster 2 is good. But then Planet Coaster was good, and this is really just an iteration of that. Frontier Developments has found its niche and is now focused on driving that nail home over and over again. With Planet Coaster 2 you get lots of new toys to play around with and… well, that’s it. Whether you feel…
Final Fantasy XVI is a spectacular blockbuster that is also so much more than a simple “AAA-game”. Where most blockbusters aim to manipulate the player’s emotions but have little ambition beyond that, Final Fantasy XVI dares to challenge players with a narrative of depth and poignancy. It is the rarest…
Read MoreEver since I first laid eyes on Bullfrog’s classic Theme Park, I’ve been equally smitten by theme park simulators and also terrified of what they make me do. Don’t get me wrong; the classic blend of management simulation – like it or not, you’re more or less balancing an Excel…
Read MoreSo in a game titled “Company of Heroes 3” you get to play as the Germans (the, uh, World War 2 Germans) in one of the game’s campaigns. That is… certainly a brave decision. If the story was in any way effective, this would have been an enormously controversial game.…
Read MoreGollum offends me. It’s not the bugs, and thankfully the launch version of the game is less buggy than the review build that vexed other critics (though it still has bugs). It’s also not because of the less-than-AAA presentation that some have been complaining about. It looks good for a…
Read MoreIt’s unclear to me what audience LEGO 2K Drive is intended for. It’s very capable at what it does, but it also seems to be an effort to shove a whole lot of best practice big game stuff into a package, and in doing so comes across as a little…
Read MoreAs a baseball simulator, MLB The Show 23 is barely different to last year’s iteration. Even by the standards of annual sporting franchises, this one comes across as having the lightest of touches to improve the experience. The commentary cut in with the same comments at the same moments that…
Read MoreAnnual sports game refreshes all tend to get a little stale over time, but few have had such a fall from grace as we saw out of 2K Games’ WWE line of games back with WWE2K20. The shift from Japanese developer, Yukes, to US Studio, Visual Concepts, led to one…
Read MoreIf you haven’t played Resident Evil 4 before, the game follows Raccoon City disaster survivor turned government agent, Leon S. Kennedy, on his mission to [undisclosed Spanish-speaking European country] to rescue Ashley Graham, the daughter of the US President, who has been kidnapped. Leon explores a village, a castle, and…
Read MoreWe don’t hear as much about the Eastern Front during World War 2. This is, of course, largely because the heroes of the piece were Soviets. Anything that could be perceived as lionising the heroics of Soviets doesn’t play well with the West’s official propaganda line on what happened during…
Read MoreCatan’s trajectory has been incredible, given that it’s only 28 years old. Initially, it was something of a disruptor, helping the “Eurogame” become a dominant approach to board games. From there it became a Monopoly-like thing – a game that absolutely everyone owns a copy of and is aware of…
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