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For 3,522 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 11% same as the average critic
  • 37% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Game review score: 73
Lowest review score: 0 Hentai Uni
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,788 out of 3522
  2. Mixed: 1,410 out of 3522
  3. Negative: 324 out of 3522
3524 game reviews
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gothic II Complete Classic
    As long as you’re patient, there’s a lot to enjoy in Gothic 2, from the quest structure, to the scope of the world, and detailed plot, the world is filled with secrets and discoveries to make. It is clear to this day that were Gothic 1 provided the vision, Gothic 2 is when Piranha Bytes really converted. To this day you could argue that this is the team’s finest work, and the closest it has ever come to climbing out of the “Eurojank” space to simply sit next to Bethesda, BioWare and Obsidian in the upper echelons of the genre (historically, at least).
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Barton Lynch Pro Surfing
    There will be a very small audience for Barton Lynch Pro Surfing. People who want an effort to build an accurate and serious simulation of the sport will likely find something admirable about the attempt. As limited as it is, there has been a real and genuine effort to create something authentic. However, as the first effort at a proper surfing game in quite some time, I would hazard a guess that even the hardcore surfers would have just liked something fun to play, even if the developers dialled back the attempt at realism just a tad.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Persona 5 Tactica
    Persona 5 Tactica is an excellent addition to the overall Persona 5 property. What at first looks like a cheerfully whimsical bonus spinoff ends up being something that adds to the core themes of the base game, and is impressive in the way it does that. It also backs up with some of the sharpest “fast tactics” play we’ve seen in the genre. I just wish the concept and theme were written better, and I honestly never thought I would say that of a Persona title.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    My Time at Sandrock
    My Time at Sandrock’s issues are due to its ambition and sheer density of what you can do. I would expect a Yakuza title to have similar issues on Switch. But then the developers aren’t putting Yakuza games on the console. I am quite sure that this game is a fine experience on other platforms. However, the developer decided to release it on Switch, and therefore this version needs to be assessed in isolation. In short, it is just not a good game on this specific platform, and the developers should have made a judgment call to pull this version when it was clear that it wasn’t going to work. That way we wouldn’t have been subjected to it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Train Sim World 4
    Dovetail Games has carved itself out a neat niche with Train Sim World, and it’s very good at making train driving an experience. With a bit of training (which takes nowhere near as long as in the real world), the feeling of mastering a train and train route is indescribably appealing. However, four iterations in, it’s also time for the Dovetail team to try pushing themselves again. They should be taking that exceptional engine and letting us discover the joys of driving a train through deep Africa, across iconic routes in Asia, or giving us the spellbinding views of Bolivia’s salt flats, as a particularly noteworthy train ride in South America does.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Howl
    Howl is an earnest effort with a strong aesthetic and creative vision. It’s easy to imagine that it’s going to find an audience among people who pick it up on a whim – because in screenshots and video, it does stand out – and then find themselves absorbed in the puzzles. Unfortunately, while it does get challenging, Howl outlives its welcome, and the strange decision to deliberately add repetition into something that should have focused on forward momentum really hurts it in the end. If it was half the game it would have been twice as impressive.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Concealed
    Concealed is visually impressive and borrows intelligently from the aesthetic of manga books. I also know from piecing the narrative together that in its native language, the story is both chilling and effective horror. This game therefore could have been great in English too, and it’s such a tragedy that the single most important quality of a visual novel was overlooked in the way that it has been.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Super Mario RPG
    We could argue back-and forth about whether Nintendo should have simply released the original Super Mario RPG on the SNES app that online subscribers already have access to. The visual update is delightful, but outside of that Nintendo has changed so little that you could play the two games side-by-side and barely notice the difference in the experience. And yet, it’s also one of the all-time great games from the SNES era, and so whimsical and playful that, ultimately, Super Mario RPG is a worthwhile for no other reason than it’s an excuse to play it again.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Virche Evermore - ErroR: Salvation -
    It is the one game like this that reminds us that games are an art form. The only question is whether you’re looking to experience a true work of art, or have a bit of fun. If you fall into the latter camp, stay well away.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Liberation
    Does Liberation reinvent Elite in new and startling ways that will drive forward the space trading/combat genre? No, not really. But not every game has to be some big new innovative masterwork either. Liberation is shamelessly retro; while Miller claims inspiration from original Elite the visuals evoke (at least in me) more of a feel of the way that Elite II: Frontier had me badly hooked in its Amiga 500 incarnation back in my university days. Sometimes, being fun is enough, and Liberation manages that well enough as long as you’re already a fan of stripped-back space warfare.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fashion Dreamer
    Sadly, apart from being really, really ridiculously good-looking, Fashion Dreamer just hasn’t got much going for it. With no real reward mechanism to encourage you to think about fashion, and nothing stopping you from building up an extensive wardrobe of clothes simply by jumping online for a couple of minutes here and there, there’s so small of an incentive to actually play. Especially once you’ve found an outfit for your character that’s so cute that you don’t feel the need to mess around with it any further.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
    Thankfully we only have to wait three months for the next “proper” title in the series to land. While Like a Dragon Gaiden might have been disappointing against the astronomically high standards of this series, I have no doubt whatsoever that January 2024 will deliver another bold step forward for SEGA’s gritty urban epic.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Football Manager 2024
    There’s not much else to say in this review. The big feature in Football Manager 2024 is the inclusion of Japanese football. That alone makes this version of the game the definitive edition. Putting that aside the rest of the game is another decent refinement to the best sporting management game of all time, and while it sometimes feels like Sports Interactive rests on its laurels, as no one else is ever going to have the engine or data to compete in this particular niche, the reality is that when the base game is this good, tweaks from one year to the next are enough.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    WarioWare: Move It!
    Nintendo’s had a bumper year, so I’ll forgive it for some filler (especially when there’s also the Super Mario RPG remake on the way yet). WarioWare: Move It! achieves what it sets out to by providing players with a bunch of microgames that use the Joy-Cons and motion control in an inventive and silly manner. You’ll enjoy the boundless creativity in coming up with so many microgame ideas. In addition, you’ll enjoy the colour and humour at first. And then, about an hour later, you’ll be done with it for good.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Star Ocean: The Second Story R
    As I said at the start of the review, Star Ocean 2 is the masterpiece of this series. As a hardened, die-hard Star Ocean fan, I can even excuse the fifth entry in the series in my head, and almost no one likes that one. However, the second occupies a particularly special spot in the upper echelons of the genre. With this remake, Star Ocean The Second Story R, the original has been modernised in the most clever and appropriate way, maintaining all the great qualities that people remember from the PlayStation 1, while giving the aesthetics a luxurious overhaul that makes the game comparable as an artistic endeavour to the finest of the genre today. This is, simply, not something that someone with even a passing interest in JRPGs should overlook.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hello Kitty and Friends: Happiness Parade
    Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade is bright, bubbly, and whimsical. It’s also reasonably challenging, since it’s actually not easy to be as mechanical as a metronome, especially when there are as many visual distractions as this game throws at you. Consequently, between this and that also good quality Animal Crossing clone on Apple Arcade, Hello Kitty is having quite a good year in video games.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Marvel's Spider-Man 2
    Spider-Man 2 is as dumb as a bag of bricks, but that’s the norm for blockbusters. What it gets right is emotionally manipulating players to become invested in it, backing that up with one of the slickest combat systems we’ve ever seen… and then giving us two entirely different characters to enjoy that with. It is a true spectacle and while I wish that we, as a community, demanded better from narratives in video games, I couldn’t help but have fun with this one once I shut my brain off and just embraced it for the silly thing that it is.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Archetype Arcadia
    The real question with Archetype Acadia is whether it justifies its length. With 1.6 million words in it, it’s three times the length of The Lord of the Rings. Or to mention another post-apocalyptic, dark tale filled with moral conflict, Archetype Acadia is roughly 26 times longer than Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. While it’s an imperfect comparison to make between visual novels and novels (by their nature, VNs do need to be longer), there’s just no reason that Archetype Acadia needed to be that long. It’s good, and at times even great, but slimming it down and focusing on delivering greater intensity through the art and story beats could have elevated this game to the highs of the genre.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Inescapable: No Rules, No Rescue
    There’s so much to like about Inescapable. The concept is solid and the developers seem to have had the right intentions. The vision is there. It’s also horny as anything and why the heck not? We don’t really have a Danganronpa-like that made the obvious observation that a bunch of super-hot young adults, trapped in a kind of “paradise,” are almost certainly going to get it on. It’s just unfortunate that this is a 15-hour game that takes about 10 hours to start getting to the point, and from start to finish it’s simply not written well enough to demand the player sit through that.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1
    Konami could have done more, for sure. There are several titles that really could have been included in this collection for the sake of completion – Metal Gear Solid 4 remains locked to the PlayStation 3, while MGS Acid and Twin Snakes look pretty set to be lost to time at this point. Sure, MGS V remains a viable product in its own right, but Konami really could have filled us in on the rest...With that being said, the original Metal Gear Solid trilogy isn’t just a trio of great games that people have strong nostalgia for. They’re genuine masterpieces and deserve to be preserved into perpetuity. This collection is a perfectly adequate way of preserving them for this hardware cycle.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    CRYMACHINA
    Crymachina asks probing questions about the nature of humanity through the lens of machines, and its conclusions are evocative, emotive and ultimately quite uplifting. It does sit in the shadow of a giant of a game that already canvassed exactly the same subject through exactly the same lens. However, there’s a greater warmth to Crymachina that makes it more relatable than the relatively academic NieR: Automata. Throw in some vividly memorable art direction and what we have here is a JRPG that might surprise people with just how memorable it proves to be.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Jackbox Party Pack 10
    I’d kill for a Jackbox Party Pack launcher, from which I could launch whichever games in packs I already owned during gaming sessions, rather than having to both remember which pack they were in and then launch that pack’s interface. In fact, I’d pay for just that alone, Jackbox Games. How about it?
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hellboy: Web of Wyrd
    Hellboy: Web of Wyrd looks the part. It’s a gorgeous game and I was really hoping that it would deliver the vision for the character and comic in the same way that it captured the aesthetics. Sadly, instead, we got a stodgy roguelike that largely misses the point of what either Hellboy or the roguelike should offer. Equally sadly, we continue to wait for a truly great Hellboy game.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Dementium: The Ward
    Dementium is not even slightly entertaining and all the developer has achieved with this re-re-release is broadcast that their original game wasn’t ever anything more than a gimmicky novelty. What an incredible own goal when Dementium did actually have something of a legacy from people nostalgic for the DS.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lords of the Fallen
    I am quite sure that some people will absolutely love the intensity of the horror and dark fantasy that infuses Lords of the Fallen. As cartoonishly silly as it comes across by trying so hard, it is technically impressive. Similarly, the game is perfectly solid mechanically, and while it does have some issues with pacing and the design of some boss battles, it is, for the most part, very playable. I had more fun with this than I think it deserved, and while I’m not sure whether I was laughing with it or at it most of the time, I was definitely laughing and having fun with it. Who knows? Perhaps satirising the self-seriousness of dark fantasy was the entire creative point and if so, bravo developers, you nailed it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Assassin's Creed Mirage
    Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is a return to form for the series. What had become a formula so bloated that it lost sight of what actually made the series good has been simplified to make it more engaging. What you get here is an efficient and clean historical action game. One that gives you the chance to explore a less-travelled part of history from a part of the world that people are usually too busy demonising to explore as a setting. Ubisoft would benefit from writers who understood how to convey narrative efficiently, but in every other way the more focused and streamlined experience that Mirage offers makes it the most cohesive entry in this series for a very long time.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Asterix & Obelix: Heroes
    I realise that Asterix & Obelix isn’t as commercially valuable as, say, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or the Fate anime property. It’s never going to attract a major project from a top-flight developer. Nonetheless, there are small developers who have taken the iconic French comic and done something that shows respect; at least they have done their best. There is nothing like that in Asterix & Obelix: Heroes. It’s a cheap and tacky cash-in, and everyone involved in it over the years (the 40th book in the series comes out this year!) deserves better than this.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cricket 24
    The next step for Big Ant would be to start capturing the nuances of the sport and convert excellent ball-to-ball action to give us the full match experience, when events that happened in the 10th over can impact on how bowlers, batters, and the crowd itself behave in the 40th. If Big Ant can get there, make it feel like tactics matter and results are less pre-determined and arbitrary, and then they will produce a cricket game that will finally move from the cusp to sit alongside EA, Sony and 2K’s sporting titles in offering something that truly understands and captures the spirit of the sport.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gothic Classic
    Gothic is getting a full remake, which will release in 2024. I actually expect that to be good, because the developers can use the modern tools they have to modernise and restore the original vision of the game. Unfortunately, though, that’s the final nail in the coffin for the original. Unless you have a very academic reason for wanting to play an artefact of B-tier game design from the early turn of the century, there’s just no reason to play this port.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Infinity Strash: Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai
    I generally like the “filler” titles in the Dragon Quest franchise. Dragon Quest Treasures was a delight, as was Builders, as was the VR game that I played in an arcade in Japan. This is a versatile property and most of the developers that work on it clearly enjoy what they’re doing. But Strash is different. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth as it comes across as cynical, and derivative to everything but Dragon Quest. Most egregious of all is that somehow, despite being based on a well-regarded Dragon Quest anime, it genuinely seems like the developers failed to understand what makes Dragon Quest a uniquely special property. If they did understand it, they comprehensively failed to articulate it. I’m genuinely disappointed, but, on the plus side, I fully expect that the upcoming Dragon Quest Monsters game will completely right the ship. The great thing about this series is that even in its lowest moments, it never takes long to bounce back.
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