It’s been 15 years since one of the most intriguing games of the sixth generation of consoles rolled in, and this remaster proves that the concept behind Katamari hasn’t aged a bit, same as the soundtrack and art direction. [02/2019, p.63]

It’s not just a great fighting game and a perfect party title, uncommonly enjoyable and absurdly rich in content that should suffice for literally years of fun. It’s also an amazing homage to the history of video games. [02/2019, p.60]

An outstanding debut and one of the weirdest games I laid my hands on. [02/2019, p.59]

It’s a pity that this magical, beautiful journey inspired by Contrast comes to an end after merely two, three hours tops, and gives no incentive to relive it. [02/2019, p.58]

Almost universal admiration for Gris says a lot about the condition of video games industry. It’s just a 2D platformer devoid of any challenge, and instead of evoking true feeling it makes a good first impression (“wow, it’s beautiful!”) and then just glides for a couple of hours using that momentum. It doesn’t actually have anything important to say, it’s just pretty. [02/2019, p.56]

It might be merely a return of a game that did not advance the series, but it was – and still is – the genre’s peak achievement. Sure, I could argue that boss encounters could’ve been more polished and the game could’ve looked better since Switch is more powerful than Wii U. A new world would have been a nice touch too. But what can I do when the game’s core is so good and it is complemented by content so great that such complaints become irrelevant? [02/2019, p.54]

The vision behind Bendy and the Ink Machine is so absurdly coherent that soaking in the game’s atmosphere is pure pleasure. It’s a shame that the overall impression suffers from repetitive gameplay and – from time to time – boredom. [02/2019, p.52]

If Battlefield is too arcadey for your taste and you’ve already heard everything about every player’s mum’s morals in CS:GO, Insurgency is an interesting alternative. It does have some minor technical problems, but once the developers sort them out, every tactical combat fan needs to check it out. [02/2019, p.51]

Holy Fury is not only a perfect DLC, which improves the game’s balance greatly, but also the best expansion Paradox has ever created. [02/2019, p.50]

It’s a shame that Get Famous doesn’t introduce anything that would definitely set it apart from Get to Work, but it still is an expansion worth playing, and not just purely out of sentiment for The Sims. [02/2019, p.48]

It took Chris Hunt and his small team 12 years to develop Kenshi and that unfortunately shows. The game utilizes an archaic engine, is poorly optimised and hideous most of the time. It also does next to nothing to help the player get a grasp of its mechanics, and, as it happens, their complexity are Kenshi’s most important aspect. I would be happy to love this game, because I understand and applaud Hunt’s idea of completely open gameplay, but loving Kenshi is extremely hard. [02/2019, p.47]

This relaxing arcade game with some light micromanagement gave me the joy of figuring out its mechanics by myself and kept me blissfully stuck in the “one more race syndrome”. [02/2019, p.46]

With its simple but very stylish visuals and enjoyable combat mechanics Bladed Fury is a surprisingly enjoyable indie game you will finish in one evening. [02/2019, p.45]

In terms of new content this is arguably the most impressive ETS2 expansion to date, richer than Italia we enjoyed a year ago. It might just be a game about delivering cargo from point A to point B, but along the way it shows how stunningly diverse The Old Continent is in terms of both landscapes and architecture – and over 30 completely new cities introduced in Beyond the Baltic Sea are delightfully Eastern European. [02/2019, p.44]

Dusk does a decent job at recreating elements that were fun in Doom, Quake or Wolfenstein 3D, but as a whole it lacks a direction other than being a love letter to classic FPS games, a homage assembled out of components that do not always fit together well. [02/2019, p.42]

Beautiful pixel art. Infectious, atmospheric soundtrack. Two-player co-op both online and locally, on split-screen. However if you need a strategy game to be first and foremost a good strategy game, you should look elsewhere. [02/2019, p.38]

A highly addictive hack’n’slash with great art direction and many small but really good gameplay ideas. The developers wear their inspirations on their sleeve, so you can almost hear the game shout “Yes, this is Diablo! Yup, it’s Tristram! Don’t pretend you don’t remember!”. [02/2019, p.36]

The PS4 edition of the brilliant survival game has some performance problems (framerate dropping, environment popping up really badly if you travel fast) and navigating in three dimensions is much less intuitive with a controller than with a mouse, which did cost me my life sometimes. These flaws do not disqualify the console port though, so if you can’t enjoy Subnautica on PC, consider giving it a shot on PS4, as there are very few such games nowadays. [02/2019, p.35]

The game’s most notable problem is that its gameplay lacks narrative context. Over the course of the two-hour-long campaign you just complete some enjoyable minigames at the gym, fight nine times in the ring, listen to Stallone impersonator mumble some nonsense and wonder what was the only retrospection about. [02/2019, p.34]

Regardless of the platform (PC or PS4) Beat Saber is one of the best VR games ever created. I know that slashing flying cubes with lightsabers might not sound like much fun, but believe me that it is, in no small part thanks to the fact that your movements are recreated in the virtual world perfectly. [02/2019, p.33]

The only link between this and previous FromSoftware’s games is pain. Deracine is not painfully hard though – it’s painfully boring. It does tell a good enough story, looks fine and does VR well, but interactions it offers are very limited and it is simply not much of a game. [02/2019, p.32]

There’s a new Tetris in town and this one you need to see, even if you don’t own a PS VR headset. It does not try to revolutionize the gameplay foundations, but the idea to marry timeless mechanics with breathtaking visuals reminiscent of Rez was brilliant and makes Effect the best thing that happened to Tetris in a long, long time. [02/2019, p.31]

First I struggled to even launch the game, as it did a lot to discourage me (Blue Screens of Death included). Later I wished I had taken a hint and just walked away, because Tyler: Model 005 was not worth the effort. It’s not worth any effort, actually, as it does pretty much everything wrong – it is ugly, platforming mechanics are botched, combat is primitive, there’s hardly any narrative but bugs are aplenty. [12/2018, p.91]

My evening with My Brother Rabbit was enjoyable, even though the game fails at being a touching fable it wants to be and backtracking was too annoying for my taste. [12/2018, p.90]

It’s a pity that this bundle does not include more prominent games, because the ones we get are probably completely obscure to many players. On the other hand though it’s a chance to travel to possibly unknown regions of the past and see how the genre evolved. Oh, and Armored Warriors is really cool. [12/2018, p.89]

No crucial changes, no revolution – that’s new Mega Man’s primary problem. It’s a really good platformer, but it lacks a spark, so I won’t try to make everyone I meet play it, like I did with Mega Man X. If you’re not passionate about the little blue robot, you can sit this one out. [12/2018, p.88]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker offers an interesting world to explore along with satisfying combat, and the first half of the adventure is top-notch old school fun. Unfortunately later the game loses its momentum and becomes boring. Anyhow, it’s a solid RPG that should keep Baldur’s Gate’s fans happy for many hours. [12/2018, p.86]

It might be a good enough VR tech demo, but as far as interactive thrillers go (including those low budget), Transference is merely an exercise which falls short of what Observer or excellent Soma achieved artistically, technically and story-wise. [12/2018, p.85]