A JRPG that gets almost everything right. It's very light on story but the setting is a decent enough backdrop for the action RPG combat, clever 'Guardian' system that lets you prioritise aspects of your character build, weapon abilities and spells that you can permenantly learn and then apply to anything in your arsenal and - crucially - an occasional grind that feels relaxing rather than repetitive.

The combat is very basic but the little wrinkle in that you can dodge enemy attacks and do more damage from the rear, combined with some properly satisfying impact sound and visual effects feels good to use and fun to master.

There's a sprinkle of Ys, a touch of a dungeon crawler and a drop of Zelda in the mix here - a strong concoction and well worth ten hours of your time.

A showcase title for the Xbox One just became a showcase title for my new Steam Deck. Once you've gotten over the fact that this still looks remarkable and the spectacular set pieces are all blurring into one, the limitations of the combat and painfully linear structure start to rear their heads but then... it just ends. It's about six hours top to bottom and just as it was about to massively outstay its welcome it had the good grace to just fuck off and leave me with some warm memories of the brutal and meaty impact sensation from the kills and some surprisingly good performances from the voice cast.

I'll definitely end up remembering this one as better than it actually is.

A good if utterly uninspiring action horror that has a few problems. It's painfully linear and it feels somewhat rushed - a few ideas just feel a bit half-baked and could've done with a little more time in the oven. Or, at least, an oven that wasn't cooking during a global pandemic.

It's one of the best looking games I've played to date and has a genuinely excellent atmosphere, while the combat, which has irritated a few people, for me was simply a ballhair away from being brilliant. It's brutal and (groan) visceral and makes you feel really up close and personal with the grim horror of the enemies. It forces you to think in every encounter, never get greedy and be just as aware of your defensive options as you are offensive ones, but a few things like the ability to change weapons or cure in a pinch make some of the encounters with many enemies or the handful of boss fights feel a bit messy. Not that good, scrambling for survival against the odds messy either. Just like the tools you have aren't quite up to the challenge that has been put in front of you.

Saying all that, if I was in the business of shitting on survival horror games for having crap boss fights and control issues I'd have done nothing but shit since like 1996, so I have to say that I enjoyed my run through The Callisto Protocol a fair bit, could see the issues it had even if they didn't really bother me to much due to my pretty high tolerance for some of the ropey stuff that comes with survival horror titles and I would love to see a sequel that is a bit more expansive, less linear and fleshes out some of the genuinely good ideas found here.

A borderline masterpiece in using simple controller interactions and mechanics to make you feel like you're performing great things, with a lovely visual style, brilliant soundtrack and a story that ramps up the stakes, as you go from tricking some drunkards out of a few coins to literally putting your life on the line. When you pull off a complicated series of deceptions to win a hand of cards and get yourself out of a particularly sticky situation, its absolutely thrilling. When you're in the middle of shuffling the deck, knowing you're up to no good, you can FEEL the eyes of the other players on you.

This is the kind of thing only videogames can do and it should be rightly celebrated.

I was always going to enjoy a game that mashes Blood and Resident Evil 4 together, although after playing it I am pleasantly surprised of how much it leans into the more survival horror/action vibe than just being a Blood tribute, as all of the dynamite lobbing footage would suggest.

Cultic has satisfying, crunchy weapons, varied levels that have decent setpieces to spice things up from time to time and a crucial understanding of how much movement and momentum the game needs to be exciting but not make you completely OP. Most importantly, however, is that it seems to have pissed in the cornflakes of a few boomershooter die-hards and that's fucking hilarious.

The parts I love about Scorn, the atmosphere, aesthetic and puzzles that remind me of an old FMV adventure game, like its some long lost 3DO game, were enough to keep me going to the end. The intentionally oblique puzzles required a lot of exploring the environments, hitting interactables and piecing together what did what in order to solve a bigger, overarching puzzle were really satisfying and personally, I liked its less is more attitude to narrative, world-building and even explanation on what everything did. There's a consistent in-world logic to a lot of the fucked up machinery you need to use and once you're on the wavelength, the puzzles aren't too difficult but crucially just challenging enough to make you feel smart as fuck for solving them.

Unfortunately, the abysmal combat is a total exercise in frustration - slow, inaccurate, clumsy and deeply unsatisfying and there's plenty of opportunity to take a cheap death because you got caught on some gland sticking out of the floor or some shit and get dumped back a good 10-15 minutes of progress, which in a game where all you really do is press some buttons and look around a bit, isn't ideal. I've seen a few places go "well, there's only about an hour of combat in the whole game" but when you can punt through it in about four hours, that's quarter of the game that is dog eggs.

No one felt the need to stick a shotgun in Myst to spice things up a bit and the Scorn devs could've done well to have kept that in mind.

Bit of a weird one because the glacial pace of movement between screens and some a particularly dull 'random' element to one of the puzzles that means you spend a lot of time pulling a switch and hoping for the best rather than actually using your brain make this a game I find hard to recommend to anyone but at the same time, if you have the patience for a slow burn, super atmospheric, odd and off-kilter FMV point and click adventure that manages to squeeze a healthy dose of cannibalism into its short, two hour-ish length, then honestly I can't recommend it enough.

There's no middle ground on this one, I'm afraid - you're either into it and you'll accept its flaws and enjoy the ride or you'll absolutely detest it.