This was written back in 2016 for a GOTY piece...

Approached from the mentality of someone who actually enjoyed his time with Watch Dogs 1, this follow-up really dropped the ball big time in areas that the first game excelled at. Scoping out an enemy location with your hacks, infiltrating with stealth and then resorting to guns when shit hits the fan felt so good. I've said it time and time again, but Watch Dogs has the best gunplay and stealth I've ever encountered in a GTA-esque game. In Watch Dogs 2, everything feels like it controls worse. The same dynamic of infiltrating a hideout and gradually wiping it out just isn't there. In Watch Dogs 2, if I'm caught by somebody, I'm essentially doomed. Reinforcements are called, I get surrounded because suddenly everyone knows where I am and that's it... game over.

And that's not even mentioning the severe dissonance there is between your ragtag crew of kooky hactivists who want to make the world a better place and the way you can play Marcus as your typical GTA protagonist. He's a lot more likeable than Aiden for sure, but say what you will about the guy, at least when Aiden went on the rampage and started killing people in waves, it actually felt tonally consistent with the rest of the game. All I do with Marcus is rely on his stun gun and drones. Anything else feels wildly out of character, which doesn't make combat sections much fun at all. Even seeing him hold a gun just looks wrong.

Watch Dogs 2 is fun, but for very different reasons to the first. I like that the tone is more chilled and light-hearted and humorous (even if it isn't actually funny), a lot of the side-missions are of a surprisingly high calibre and there's been some clear effort put in to make this rendition of San Francisco feel alive and populated. But I would happily sacrifice all of those differences for the tone of the first game if it meant I could get back those same gameplay mechanics.

This was written back in 2016 for a GOTY list...

After a host of gimmicky spin-offs and budget titles revolving around co-op and RTS elements, this return to a more traditional style R&C game is a welcome one, and sees the intergalactic duo back on form, if not exactly troubling high-water mark of the series A Crack in Time for the top spot. The focus is back on third-person shooting, and using a wide array of outlandish weapons to fend off numerous baddies in amusingly inventive ways is a constant form of entertainment. Throw in some dazzling graphics for good measure and I look forward to a sequel that next time around doesn't have its story tethered to an awful movie tie-in.

I've never played an old school Mega Man game before, so I can't use Capcom's classic series as any kind of reference point, but ignoring that supposed heavy influence, I will say that Gravity Circuit stands tall and deserves to be revered as its own thing. This is an impeccably designed video game, with clearly a lot of love poured into it. Everything (apart from arguably the hookshot mechanic) feels great to control. The levels are intricate and always keep you on your toes without overwhelming you. Purely in terms of gameplay, this may well be 2D platforming at its finest.

Be warned though, the final boss is a huge difficulty spike. The final FINAL boss. There was a point where I thought I was done, but was taken aback at the lack of ceremony when I returned to the hub. Turns out there was more to do after the bruiser of a (boss rush) fight I had just encountered, and the only reason I knew was because I didn't see the end credits. This game gets FUCKING brutal by the end.

Points subtracted for the hookshot, which doesn't feel as snappy as it should when swinging from ceiling to ceiling, and a completely uninteresting story that has more emphasis placed on it than is necessary. Nitpicking aside though, this is a serious GOTY contender.

8.75 outta 10.

Much like its predecessor, Lost Judgment's main plotline is excellent, and bar some expected Yakuza-esque schlock that doesn't exactly gel with the grittier scenes, is fairly difficult to fault. The core mystery is a compelling one, there are some hard-hitting themes of bullying, suicide and ill-conceived retribution that the writers aren't afraid to shy away from, and the cast comprises of many fleshed-out, impeccably-acted individuals. The two main antagonists in particular are pitch perfect; one of which is your typical heinous evildoer who sticks in the mind purely because of how despicable he is, while the other is a complex fellow of tangled intentions who can't help but elicit empathy from the player, even if his methods are dubious at best. It's a story on par with the very best that the Yakuza series has to offer.

What detracts from the overall experience are the lacklustre mini-games and an enormous glut of side content of varying quality. Chase sequences, of which there are many, aren't fun. Climbing sequences are not fun. Tailing sequences, which thankfully have been dialled down compared to the first game, still aren't fun! The school stories portion of the game, entirely optional it may be, represents almost half of the content LJ has to offer. Scope-wise, it could be a standalone game in its own right. But much of it just fails to grip on a fundamental level, and there are so many side activities that the game often gets bogged down in overwhelming bloat. You can't help but feel that a more focused and streamlined approach would've paid dividends in the end.

If there is ever a third game, I would like to see a focus on quality over quantity. Hone in more on the strengths, cast out the filler content, and rework the minigames so that they require more player agency. The third entry could be the undisputed masterpiece that this spin-off deserves.

I played the fan-translated Japanese version of this game. It is vastly superior to what we got in the west. The story segments have been kept in rather than omitted entirely, and the difficulty level hasn't been adjusted in order to make things crushingly hard for the player. It's definitely the way to go.

A very imaginative platformer. Bursting at the seams with ideas and various little details that give it the essence of a demented Japanese kids cartoon. It doesn't always work and sometimes the difficulty, even in the Japanese version, is just too unfair for its own good. But Dynamite Headdy is dangerously close to hidden gem territory. Well worth checking out for any platforming enthusiast.

7.75 outta 10

Before Hideo Kojima started huffing his own farts and grew an ego the size of Nicki Minaj's silicone-riddled arse, there was this absolute gem of a game that, back in 1998, I didn't even think was possible on PS1 hardware. Working within the confines of the console's limited specs was probably the best thing for MGS, because it meant Kojima had to restrain himself. It's still a short game that takes up two discs, but still it meant that he couldn't 'beguile' us with 40 minute exposition dumps and unintentionally funny scenes where a character goes on a random tangent about the time they had an affair with their own stepmom. MGS1 is tightly-paced, revolutionary, and has the least amount of its creator's trademark self-indulgent horseshit.

He'll never make a game this good again.

I've been meaning to play this damned game close to the time it came out, but there was always a reason that prohibited me from doing so. As a kid in 1999, I didn't have a PC close to running it, and I knew nothing about PC gaming back then anyway. And then for a great many years, the game was practically lost to time; non-compatible with Windows after 2000 and thus excruciatingly difficult to run. And then lo and behold, Blade Runner was made available to purchase and play in 2019, thanks to a fan project that strived for years to reverse-engineer the game's complex engine. I made a digital purchase sharpish and then... never played it. Why? I don't rightly know. Maybe it was the weight of expectations. I had waited for the opportunity to experience something I had desired to play for so long, and now that I had the chance, I was too daunted to do so. And so it went into my backlog. And then a remaster was announced. And not just for PC, but all the major consoles no less! I'm much more comfortable playing games on console than PC, and so I waited a few extra months for what I thought would be the definitive version. I bought the Enhanced Edition literally hours after it dropped on the PlayStation Store, with the full intention of playing it in the foreseeable future. That was until reports started coming in about how poor the remaster itself was. Nightdive had apparently done a subpar job of bringing Blade Runner to modern audiences, with butchered updated visuals, rampant bugs and limited overall options provided to the player.

So why did I play it now? Well, Nightdive eventually got around to fixing their remaster. They released a major patch for the PC version and then recently did the same for the console ports. They worked on the remaster to the extent that it is now the best way to play Westwood's Blade Runner, as far as I know anyway. And so I did it! I finally fucking did it. I played through Blade Runner the video game. I reached the end credits. Hell, I even got the platinum. And like a weight off my shoulders, I can now check it off the backlog list.

So was it worth the wait? For the most part... oh yes! As someone who relishes games heavy on atmosphere, Blade Runner has it in spades and then some. It is an incredibly immersive experience that does an impeccable job of replicating the mood of the movie, even better than the sequel did. Way better in fact. Protagonist Ray McCoy's investigation takes place alongside the events of the first film, and Westwood didn't miss a beat in convincing me that this is the same dirty, dystopian Los Angeles that Ridley Scott presented to the world in 1982. The blurry voxel character models aside, it's a game that holds up visually, even on a big 4K television screen. Every location, pre-rendered, deliberately framed and packed with details authentic to the source material, is a pleasure to merely gawp at, let alone interact with. It truly is a wet dream for any aficionado of the first movie, and I imagine playing this in 1997 was mind-blowing.

Gameplay wise, Blade Runner fares less well. As a point-and-click adventure game with emphasis placed on story, dialogue and presentation, systems and mechanics of immense complexity were never going to be its forte. I barely engaged in the gunplay during my playthrough, which is fine because it's as strategically braindead as you can get. Taking down an enemy consists of little more than awkwardly pointing a cursory at someone and hoping you get lucky. There's also very little in the way of actual puzzle solving. The game has an element of randomisation in terms of which characters are replicants and when/where characters will appear, with one of 12 endings to stumble upon by the end. But whatever denouement you get is largely dictated by the amount of clues you pick up along the way rather than using items from your inventory with the environment like a conventional game of the genre. I'm not entirely sure this plays fully to the strengths of inhabit the role of a detective. There's a lot of picking things up, but not much figuring things out.

Still, while the randomization sometimes gets in the way of having a sturdier narrative, the story largely delivers on the neo-noir front. McCoy makes for an engaging main character, one who's actually more likeable and understanding than his movie counterpart (depending on what decisions you make I suppose), and seeing him exchange barbs with the colourful cast or muse on the time he once had a real egg that tasted like "liquid sunshine" does a lot to endear the player to him. The tension scales up nicely in the last couple of chapters, and despite an unfortunately rushed last act, I was engaged from beginning to end.

So yeah, worth the wait. It's unfortunate that Westwood never got the opportunity to make a sequel, and doubly unfortunate that they folded under the ownership of EA. There's a lot of adventure games out there, but not one quite like this. If you have even the slightest bit of fandom for the Blade Runner IP, then I strongly recommend you try this game out if you haven't yet. What the hell are you waiting for?!

(More of an 8.75 than a 9)

This was one of the very first HD games I ever played. I was ready to be bedazzled by it after the absolute avalanche of attention and adulation it received upon release. Was that praise warranted? Eh.

The combat is essentially brainless, the number of differing enemy types is slim at best, and the game peaks with the reveal of its twist. It's all massively downhill after that, which is unfortunate as the game goes on for another laborious three hours. Suffice to say, I never got the acclaim for this one. There are some compelling ideas and story moments, and Rapture itself can be an intriguing place to trawl through (although it would've been a whole lot more interesting to explore back when it was a functioning society), but poor pacing and shallow gameplay holds it back for me. Also, I'm pretty sure this was the game that cemented my hate for audio logs.