It's a bold first effort from the studio - the first spark of something great, perhaps. [Issue#338, p.122]

Early on, we wondered why they don't make games like this more often. Within a few short hours, we were grateful they don't. [Issue#338, p.120]

This is not, then, the kind of game you pick up and play between train stops, but one to sit down with when you've got an afternoon stretching out in front of you. [Issue#338, p.118]

A hypnagogic summertime escape to a place that lingers in the mind - prepare for some weird dreams. [Issue#338, p.116]

From a game entitled Assemble With Care, we had really expected something with a bit more heart. [Issue#338, p.115]

Once again we leave a Nintendo mobile game feeling a little underwhelmed. [Issue#338, p.114]

A genre piece with rare ambition, a mobile game that feels at once tailored to the format yet unusually expansive in its scope. [Issue#338, p.112]

As Ellis crushes his umpteenth fistful of twigs, you're merely reminded of a far superior, far more disturbing journey through the woods near Burkittsville. [Issue#338, p.110]

Overland sadly feels much like out late friend Vernon: stuck in the rear-view mirror, lost in the fumes. [Issue#338, p.108]

A freeplay mode and breezy multiplayer component let Hexagroove's bare essentials shine through. [Issue#338, p.106]

What a laugh. [Issue#338, p.104]

Throughout there is a sense of a studio that, after its arduous struggles with "Below", has remembered how to have fun again. The feeling is mutual. [Issue#338, p.102]

It might not have much to say, but Borderlands 3 gives you a lot to talk about. [Issue#338, p.100]

In a catalogue festooned with gems, this wild heart glitters brightest of all. [Issue#338, p.96]

There's a lot going on here, much of it captivating, some of it just for appearances and some of it annoying. [Issue#338, p.92]

It is about delighting in the journey. [Issue#337, p.122]

His masterstroke is Eliza itself. [Issue#337, p.120]

Like so many of its class of 2019 contemporaries, The Blackout Club attempts to turn a traditionally solitary genre into a shared world of sorts. Also, like so many contemporaries, it doesn't find a compelling reason for doing so. [Issue#337, p.118]

Despite its problems, and they're not insignificant, Ancestors has an unusual magnetism. [Issue#337, p.116]

Rad is another great Lee Petty idea, then - though in its current form, it's a few mutations away from reaching its full potential. [Issue#337, p.114]

It's strangely fitting that there should be moments of boredom: if the world occasionally seems too big and your destination too distant, well, isn't that what being a kid's all about? [Issue#337, p.112]

There's always something new to prod at, to see exactly how the game's rules have been twisted this time. [Issue#337, p.110]

After the peerless Bayonettas, this is the best game Platinum has yet made - and better yet, it reflects a developer growing in talent and ambition. [Issue#337, p.108]

The variety of ways for a player to interact with a single narrative is breathtaking, and the way Barlow has paralleled how we shape our own view of a story in the digital era - clicking back and forth across an exploded timeline - truly incisive. [Issue#337, p.104]

Most of all, though, there's consistently something new to experience. The thrill of spectacle, and of the weird, both fade fast - too much of the same thing and it begins to feel mundane. [Issue#337, p.100]

What we've got here is one of the most thoughtfully constructed fighters we've ever played, but Fantasy Strike initially presents as off-puttingly amateurish, and we fear few are likely to give it the second chance it deserves. [Issue#336, p.122]

You'll be more irritated than scared. [Issue#336, p.121]

Nintendo's most boring smartphone outing so far. [Issue#336, p.120]

In Sky, knowledge can be a powerful thing, an asset that makes you more useful to those who seem lost, as you lead them toward the light. [Issue#336, p.116]

The essence of the classic JRPG distilled into an unlikely form. [Issue#336, p.114]

The Terror Twins don't get the platform they deserve, but they put on quite a show with what they're given. [Issue#336, p.106]

As Bernadetta's heartwarming lethality proves, the payoff is well worth the investment. [Issue#336, p.110]

Defeat in Nowhere Prophet can be creeping, as your resources drain away, or sudden, as you fall victim to an unexpected combination of cards. Either way, it feels like playing against an opponent who overturns the table when they win, leaving you to gather up the spilled cards. It'll be another couple of hours before you have a deck that feels unique, before you escape the mire of enemies and text events you've seen a dozen times. It's enough to make you a sore loser. [Issue#336, p.118]

Bonkers, yes. But Muse Dash soon becomes baffling in less endearing ways. [Issue#335, p.122]

There's an involving, and sinister story to pursue on that front, but as with the City the Kid yearns for, 198X never gets there. [Issue#335, p.120]

Take it slow, keep an eye on those health bars, and you'll find a fighting game that offers a thrill that few others can - with nary a 20-hit combo in sight. [Issue#335, p.118]

There's definitely a kind of magic to discover here, but Sea of Solitude too often breaks its own spell. [Issue#335, p.116]

Oakmont is a convincing Lovecraftian town - but the point of those stories is that these are places you'd never want to find yourself. [Issue#335, p.114]

This charming, eccentric mash-up is well worth a spin. [Issue#335, p.112]

It's a testament to the strength of Pedro's core premise that you'll likely persevere through design fumbles, odd pacing and wonky writing in search of more bonkers ultraviolent combos and leaderboard glory [Issue#335, p.108]

Hamstrung slightly by its hardware, this is a wonderful and educational creative tool; better, if less lovable, than its predecessor. A compromise, then, but a damn-near essential one. [Issue#335, p.104]

A sandbox where waypoint distances are measured in pixels, and journeys are over in seconds, is surely one worth celebrating. [Issue#334, p.122]

For all the gags, Astrologaster is a romp with no little substance. [Issue#334, p.120]

Despite the big budget, SIE London Studio has approached Blood & Truth with a modest ambition: to make you feel special, and strong, and more than a little silly, in a love letter to the city it calls home. It has done so with a flourish. [Issue#334, p.118]

Rare is the game that comes along, one that believes in its hero - in you - so earnestly, and shows us the real value of being brave. [Issue#334, p.116]

A slightly muddled gimmick and dilute sense of identity mean Sonic is unlikely to outpace the competition. [Issue#334, p.114]

The joy of Void Bastards, once it reveals itself, is that no action, no decision, is standalone. [Issue#334, p.112]

The relentless thrill of one half of it dragged down by the barren, boring needless sprawl of the other. [Issue#334, p.110]

Kubrick would surely approve. [Issue#334, p.106]

It is still a little deflating. While some detective work is engaging, too much of it is throwaway, repetitive and, worse, overused. Tailing missions are the worst offender, simplistic, overlong, tightly scripted and seemingly everywhere. In its cutscenes, its combat and its tales of the lives of struggling, troubled, randy everyday people - in all the tings that make it a Yakua game, in other words - Judgment excels. In the things that seek to make it stand apart, it disappoints. Whether this is a one-off experiment, or simply the first of many, remains to be seen; if it's to be the latter, much remains to be done. [Issue#335, p.102]

Sensibly expanded and gently refined, this is textbook sequel-making. [Issue#333, p.123]

The killing is enjoyable, but we'd have happily done much more of it. [Issue#333, p.122]

Modest and ingenious and smartly priced, Islanders is as engaging to tinker with as a palate cleanser between bigger games as to take seriously in pursuit of a high score - wonky mansions and all. [Issue#333, p.120]

It's a delightful time. [Issue#333, p.118]

With better class implementation, carrying through into PvP, it might have been able to assert its own identity. [Issue#333, p.116]

Finally, here's an RPG that, in every sense, leaves you wanting more. [Issue#333, p.114]

Like the grisly cutscenes, Mortal Kombat 11 is fun as long as you don't think too hard or look too closely at it - but that's exactly where the real joy is found in a fighting game. If Mortal Kombat wants to elevate itself, it's time to start overhauling the skeleton underneath all that flesh. [Issue#333, p.110]

What a shame. Days Gone is ripe with potential, but it's always in those moments before something actually happens: when you hear the rumbling of thunder heralding an impending downpour, or a distant engine letting you know tourble's on the way. But when it all kicks off, the spell is broken. This is "State of Decay" without the stakes, "The Last of Us" without Naughty Dog's storytelling chops, and the most generic, overlong open-world game around. [Issue#333, p.106]

Yet this game lingers somehow when you're not playing. [Issue#332, p.123]

One of the most distinctive, exciting and fully realised puzzle games we've played in years. [Issue#332, p.122]

It lacks the infectiousness of 80 Days, but as a story and a reckoning with history, it leaves most videogame fantasies in the shade. [Issue#332, p.120]

Dangerous Driving simply isn't suited to a mode that won't let you crash. Patched out, or left optional, these wouldn't be enough to stop most from happily reliving Burnout's heyday; currently, however, it would be reckless to recommend. [Issue#332, p.118]

Heaven knows we've played thousands of forgettable videogame stories over the years, so perhaps the best tribute we can pay to the departed developer is this: EDGE will remember it. [Issue#332, p.116]

So sparse is the experience that it takes about four or five bewildered hours for the reality to sink in that yes, this is all there is. [Issue#332, p.114]

A series that has spent too long paying bashful tribute has, at long last, emerged from the shadow of its classic debut. [Issue#332, p.112]

This is a case study in how to get it right the first time - and, finally, students of this genre will discover what happens when devs don't have to spend the first 12 months of a loot game's life knocking it into shape. For one, the future looks bright. [Issue#332, p.108]

Dozens of hours later, we're still not sure how we feel about it. It's a game of contradictions, open and flexible in its level design, yet resolutely strict in its combat... It is a brilliant game, that is certain. but it is often a difficult one to truly love. Naturally, we can't put it down. [Issue#332, p.104]

We may have no experience of 1980s Taiwan, but Devotion carries the tang of authenticity in both the sharply observed detail of its setting and its more imaginative flourishes, including a gorgeous interactive storybook episode. [Issue#331, p.122]

This clever, funny, hallucinatory head trip may leave you frazzled, but Tholen's wonderfully singular vision will be burned into your brain for a long time. [Issue#331, p.120]

What used to be a decent fighting game with comical breast physics is now a pervier DOA Xtreme with punches instead of presents. Honestly, we're getting a bit old for it, and so is the industry around it. [Issue#331, p.116]

New Dawn is a clearing of the air after Far Cry 5, but calling it a "new dawn" is preposterous. What we have here is a sideways hop, a purgatory of a sequel in a series that has no idea what to do with itself, beyond giving you another mapful of nodes to flip. [Issue#331, p.116]

Never has a physics-based vehicular puzzle game bestowed such a vivid sense so generously before. [Issue#331, p.114]

The Occupation's design could take a few cues from its world when it comes to balancing the analogue and the digital. [Issue#331, p.112]

We'd be lying if we pretended we didn't have some fun with it. But it only works in the same way a McDonald's occasionally hits the spot: this is cheap, junk-food gaming that comes with a side-order of regret. [Issue#331, p.110]

A classic reborn in wonderful style. Capcom's hot streak continues apace. [Issue#331, p.106]

The lasting impression is of a game that, for all its charms and potential, simply wasn't quite ready for takeoff - and that what might have been won't arrive for a couple of years yet. [Issue#331, p.102]

Eastshade may not be the game it could be, but it paints a picture many others could learn from. [Issue#330, p.122]

It may not give Supercell sleepless nights, but if you've ever thought Clash Royale could be improved by adding Cinderella on a motorbike, well, fill your boots. [Issue#330, p.120]

This is a game that prizes style above all else, and emerges a mess because of it. [Issue#331, p.118]

Sweetest of all, the satisfying thrum of a finely tuned engine. [Issue#330, p.116]

It's a game that follows the steps of another while changing the rhythm - and in doing so, never settles into its own groove. [Issue#330, p.114]

The pacing ensure playing Kingdom Hearts III is a bit like being dragged through a theme park while hungover. [Issue#330, p.112]

When this enthralling hybrid is delivering blood by the bucketload and thrills by the dozen, you won't exactly be thinking about what it isn't. [Issue#330, p.110]

Metro Exodus is a mood piece, and it hits the mark brilliantly by building detailed environments and laying set-pieces within them for you to find, as if by chance. However, in its efforts to emphasize that it's a long-form experience, its storytelling comes across as plodding, and every time a glitch or framedrop appears you're pulled out of a 4A's rare, and beautiful, post-apocalyptic vision. [Issue#330, p.106]

Apex Legends arrives fully formed, feature complete, free and quite, quite brilliant, a game that pushes its host genre forward, refining and redefining its template in the process. [Issue#330, p.102]

Pikuniku's got legs, even if it lacks the stamina to fully get over the finish line. [March 2019, p.122]

This is a game about stories that has a knack of producing really good ones - when you're doing well, and especially when you're doing badly. [March 2019, p.120]

Without a clear motivating engine to drive your actions, it can feel like you're constantly playing just the top layer - that strategy wrapper of base-building, resource management and upgrade trees you might expect in an XCOM or Total War - without ever getting to play the actual game bit buried underneath. [March 2019, p.118]

This is one hybrid genre piece that's ever so difficult to put down. [March 2019, p.116]

Suda has a punk attitude to amking games, so at this point we decide to adopt a punk attitude to playing them. We put down the controller, and walk away. [March 2019, p.114]

Its magic can feel frustratingly elusive, but the thrill of chasing it down just about makes it worthwhile. [March 2019, p.112]

Vane is unfinished, its few ideas undermined by its shoddy foundations. If it really were a painting, you'd get Banksy to frame it. [March 2019, p.108]

If Below is a game about the single-minded pursuit of a shape, about making your descent at all cots, it is also a test of your ability to find time for appreciation or understanding along the way. [March 2019, p.104]

This endearingly scrappy effort could teach bigger games a thing or two about the value of good writing. [Issue#328, p.122]

Beat Saber never reaches the same transcendental moments of synaesthesia as Tetris Effect, but it does make you feel like a genuine participant in the music. [Issue#328, p.120]

A game that, while dripping in style, is miserably lacking in substance. [Issue#328, p.118]

While it lasts, Mutant Year Zero presents a fresh and involving take on the genre, but its linearity isn't quite such an ideal fit. [Issue#328, p.116]

Yes, perhaps Gris is a little big in love with itself. Maybe we should take the hint. [Issue#328, p.114]