Indeed, perhaps Pokopia's finest accomplishment is that it caters equally to all kinds of player: those who love to build freely, and those who crave more direction. If you're the kind of Pokemon obsessive who plays every entry and spinoff, you'll find plenty here to delight. And if you're an older or lapsed fan, or Pokemon has passed you by completely? Well, ditto. [Issue#423, p.118]

People of Note is a gratifying, if ultimately ephemeral, hodgepodge of ideas - a pleasant distraction but hardly an instant classic. [Issue#423, p.116]

Screamer becomes repetitive, overly simplistic and needlessly verbose, a hybrid vehicle for narrative and racing where the only thing less engaging than the off-track drama is the driving itself. [Issue#423, p.114]

It's not just that it's frustrating to fail but, knowing there's no satisfaction in overcoming that frustration. It says a lot that after stepping away from this game we reinstall the original Super Meat Boy to blow off steam. The real Bob-Omb Battlefield is surely next. [Issue#423, p.112]

Konami has backed a game here, then, that's far from designed just to make a quick buck. Though, tentacles crossed, we hope it does that too. [Issue#423, p.110]

Like a conversation made entirely out of pleasantries, it ultimately rings false. [Issue#423, p.108]

True, the early response to Reunion seems to suggest plenty of players are content with seeing Arcadia Bay's finest together again. The rest of us might wish we too had a rewind. Or, failing that, a particularly potent case of storm amnesia. [Issue#423, p.106]

It's one of the freshest and most imaginative shooters we've played in a long time. [Issue#423, p.102]

For players to get more out of this world, Crimson Desert requires a greater sense of purpose - a reason to remain invested in persevering through its most testing moments, to press on for hours in the faith that it will attain some kind of shape. [Issue#423, p.98]

Control is also stodgy and unreliable. [Issue#422, p.123]

The Kratos we know would most likely growl in disdain. [Issue#422, p.122]

It's a process as intuitive and satisfying as any merge-based puzzler... [Issue#422, p.121]

The final riddle's convolutions are forgiven by its payoff... [Issue#422, p.119]

Until these closing stages, though, Relooted doesn't match its cast's bold determination and flexibility. Despite well-laid plans, the execution isn't as slick as it might be. [Issue#422, p.116]

As it stands, High On Life 2 makes a good case for throwing the baby out with the bathwater, then bleaching the tub. [Issue#422, p.114]

The problem is that, in the areas where Esoteric Ebb differs most from its clearest inspiration, it's imitating something else. [Issue#422, p.112]

Like the wings of your Rathalos in the opening, there's a majesty to this sequel, even if it doesn't really soar. [Issue#422, p.110]

This is certainly the MOST tennis Camelot has served up, if not the smartest or slickest. [Issue#422, p.108]

While it's diverting, Planet Lana II never feels essential as a sequel, mechanically or narratively. [Issue#422, p.106]

There are some good laughs here, along with sporadic moments of showstopping spectacle. [Issue#422, p.102]

So perhaps, we conclude, it's the right balance of the two styles that pays the biggest dividends, tagging each other in at intervals, oscillating between tension and release - after all, it's only when one character goes absent for too long that the game strains. [Issue#422, p.98]

With just those three levels, though, Rage feels a little slight - more a toy than a full game, even if there's plenty of room to perfect your scores.

Whether or not it warrants that DX suffix, Ratcheteer feels just as much at home away from home. [Issue#421, p.123]

Every element of I Hate This Place is perfectly functional but nothing stands out, and it ends up feeling like a slasher with no blood, a haunted house with no ghosts, a zombie with no teeth. [Issue#421, p.122]

It occasionally uses those worn tools to achieve something profound. [Issue#421, p.120]

There are pleasures in these moments, and plenty of charm (see: 'A Human Touch'), but the adventure itself never quite satisfies out wanderlust. [Issue#421, p.118]

As we play, we realise that Pathologic 3 is rich in a large variety of relatively shallow systems. [Issue#421, p.116]

If you can forgive the over-reliance on certain tropes and endure some short spells of tedium, this is a genuinely grisly, surprisingly deep hybrid of survival horror and FPS. [Issue#421, p.114]

Embellished with delightfully grotesque aesthetics and accompanied by some wonderful tunes... [Issue #421, p.112]

For all its simplified inputs and friendly onboarding, 2XKO may fail to convert those who already harbour skepticism toward fighting games, or indeed toward League of Legends itself. [Issue#421, p.108]

While born from the stuff of Little Nightmares, Reanimal transcends the confines of another sequel, leaving a uniquely devilish stain behind. [Issue#421, p.106]

Conversely, the game's reliable constant, its combat mechanics, begins to petrify through repetition. [Issue#421, p.104]

Cairn, then, is an awe-inspiring journey and a careful character study that captures the thrill and torment of climbing. Yet its flaws are central to that core act. While assist modes and optional visual aids help, the complexities behind the intuitive surface can grind together with unpredictable results. In creating such intricate systems, the developers gave themselves a mountain to climb, and almost reach the peak. [Issue#421, p.100]

Nioh 3 is ultimately less of a leap from its predecessor than Elden Ring was from Dark Souls 3, but that's to be expected from a direct sequel versus the introductory act of a new franchise. [Issue#421, p.96]

If there's surprising strategic depth alongside the amusement of the premise, though, the package itself is on the miniature side. [Issue#420, p.107]

If not quite a giant leap for the 3D platformer, Big Hops is an accurate title after all. [Issue#420, p.106]

This is a story about finding your voice, but it also grapples with an uncertain time, when some outcomes are beyond our control or experience. [Issue#420, p.104]

TR-49 is may things simultaneously, to the extent that it can be overwhelming, causing the brain and heart to race - a remarkable feat for something so apparently simple. [Issue#420, p.103]

There are bold ideas floating around Unbeatable's ether, but for the most part it feels like an underpowered B-side. [Issue#420, p.102]

At first glance, this appears to be a game with a clear and confident vision, but playing it for a period of time reveals how much it's split between underdeveloped mechanics. [Issue#420, p.100]

The short levels, played to a time limit that rarely exceeds five minutes, may be ideal for speed runners, but this lightweight arcadey romp lacks the substance that many might need to keep returning to it. [Issue#420, p.98]

All these transgressions against convention add up to the most engrossing deck-builder of the past couple of years. [Issue#420, p.96]

If you can push through the lukewarm welcome and remain patient, though, you'll find something vivid and exciting here. [Issue#420, p.94]

Like Borderlands, the promise of fresh guns, equipment and powered-up skills offers an incentive to press on. But unlike its parent series, the combat in Legends means it's not worth doing so.

Despite the game's lofty sky-mindedness, this is all about mastery rather than freedom. Thankfully, mastery brings with it plenty of its own rewards.

The controls are excellent and the visuals might be a touch more rakish, but what really matters is that Radiangames has found a hectic pace that lends the blasting a kind of cumulative drama. In doing so, this until now polite series has picked up a bit of an attitude.

If the nostalgic, arcade sensibilities of Cosmic Heroes may not hold us as long as Absolum's Roguelike depth, then, mastering our favoured dynamic duo - to borrow a phrase from a rival universe - just might. [Issue#419, p.122]

Horses is a fascinating work, capable of moments that lodge in the memory, such as the late-game sequence when the projector's whirring finally stops and the tired clomp of footsteps registers to our ears like the sound of freedom. [Issue#419, p.122]

The town-building arc new to 0 resonates because you're renovating an idyllic town you see being reduced to ash and rubble in the game's opening hour. [Issue#419, p.121]

The story, meanwhile, is weighed down by needless convolution and stilted dialogue, even if its meditations on breaking the boundaries of human consciousness are admirably ambitious - and novel given that Huxleyian mysticism is well suited to the intimate and changeable perspective of a firstperson videogame. [Issue#419, p.120]

So why, despite jokes about this not being the golden age of comics any more, does Dispatch feel like a retrograde step? [Issue#419, p.118]

At its best, to play Hotel Infinity is to draw out a magic circle (or square) in the middle of familiar space, and the last thing you want is for external reality to intrude on that, whether it's the fear of ridicule or the sharp corner of a sofa you didn't move quite far enough. [Issue#419, p.116]

The island and its minigames, side conversations and beautiful backdrops hold their charm, and part of us earns to remain in Demonschool's world. Unlike Faye, though, we begin to resent that demons keep tearing us out of it. [Issue#419, p.114]

If we're at a point where one way to make COD feel "new" is to revive ideas from more than a decade ago, that is perhaps a sign that the series needs a break, or at least a hard reset. [Issue#419, p.112]

To put it in gastronomic terms surely familiar to Air Riders' star, we're left with the feeling of having visited an all-you-can-eat buffet. There's an array of options available, but tucking in to any one of them is unlikely to satisfy, because at the game's core is a soggy souffle that collapses almost before we can get the fork in. After two decades in the kitchen, was it too much to hope that this otherwise talented chef might have come up with something a little less...lightweight? [Issue#419, p.110]

The game feels somewhat tormented by its turgid dialogue and a one-note plot, both given preference over the raw thrills of doing kickflips in hell. [Issue#419, p.108]

For most of its runtime, Routine is an extremely well-constructed horror game where even the tiniest detail has a big impact. Even if you've been following it since 2012, it has been worth the wait. [Issue#419, p.104]

With that, a largely flat Metroid is further degraded, from disappointing to a little bit embarrassing. Nintendo games have tested our patience before, but rarely in so many ways at once, and not without a core brilliance that makes such transgressions forgivable. Whatever ideas swirled in your mind back in 2017, you can't have been dreaming of this. [Issue#419, p.100]

The enthusiastic shouts that greet immaculate performances may be too generous a reception for Symphonica, but this disarmingly good-natured game is certainly worthy of appreciative applause.

While Once Upon A Katamari is too similar to its predecessors, then, a lot of the new ideas simultaneously also work against the classic sensations of fun and flow. [Issue#418, p.123]

Too often in Forestrike, you lose because you do what the game invites you to do. [Issue#418, p.122]

We can only guess that Possessor(s) needed more time than Heart Machine had left to give. Hopefully it hasn't run out altogether. [Issue#418, p.120]

This stylishly rendered open world displays little sense of fun or character. It's a series of beautifully drawn cardboard boxes populated by unthinking automata, one that commits its genre's gravest crime: inviting no curiosity to explore it. [Issue#418, p.118]

And as it brings the melancholic undercurrent that has defined its parent series to the surface, Age of Imprisonment succeeds on two fronts: as a classy Warriors spinoff and a surprisingly vital piece of Zelda history. [Issue#418, p.116]

This is the fundamental flaw in Bloodlines 2. Troika's original game was not only about being a vampire but living as one, it's balmy LA nights riddled with chances to fulfill that fantasy. Bloodlines 2, in comparison, has no inner life. [Issue#418, p.114]

There's little variety in the 400-square-kilometre American midwestern locale where everything takes place, and roads rarely feel optimised to test your handling skills. [Issue#418, p.112]

Arise has embedded itself deep in our skull. [Issue#418, p.110]

We can't help wondering if a narrowing of scope, instead of crowbarred-in construction mechanics or a baffling option to interact with NPCs that function like in-world AI chatbots, may have given this fiction real room to breathe. For now, there are too many winds blowing in different directions. [Issue#418, p.108]

Had a few more risks been taken, this too might eventually have been considered a classic. [Issue#418, p.104]

More than once we extract on our knees, the dregs of life draining out as we hit the button. [Issue#418, p.100]

To The Sky also emphasises that this is a game to be enjoyed in groups, with co-op for up to four people, and it's true that it is more enjoyable alongside others. [Issue#417, p.123]

Upgrades are disappointingly basic... [Issue#417, p.121]

Whether you're a mere mortal or a puzzle demon, then, you're all but guaranteed to enjoy the ride. [Issue#417, p.119]

Playing Ball X Pit is a long ramp of rapturous discovery, a mad scientist's laboratory where the goal is to make the screen as blissfully incoherent as can be. [Issue#417, p.118]

There is a design challenge here. [Issue#417, p.116]

But far too often in Keeper, rather than anything that has any greater meaning, what you're in conflict with is just muddled, unemotive puzzle design. [Issue#417, p.114]

On the strength of Stray Children's eccentric charm and hopeful outlook for younger generations, whether or not we see another RPG from the studio after this, it feels certain that Onion Games will reveal still more strange and succulent layers yet. [Issue#417, p.112]

In remaining more traditional, it fails to provide the kind of innovation that might have made it essential - something that, invariably, Nintendoes. [Issue#417, p.110]

Little Nightmares III is partially redeemed by its final third, as it picks up considerably both in terms of imagination and construction. [Issue#417, p.108]

In a word, unbeatable. [Issue#417, p.106]

Above all, this is what few pretenders manage to imitate, and ensures that even when your stated mission is to 'kill time', you feel like you're doing much more. [Issue#417, p.104]

An exercise in turning the volume up to maximum and keeping it there. The sound it emits is powerful, but with its constant presence can become mere noise. PlatinumGames has mastered the way of the ninja as a furious mass-death machine, yet somehow Ninja Gaiden 4 isn't a true killer. [Issue#417, p.100]

The campaign prevents Battlefield 6 from hitting all of its marks. [Issue#417, p.96]

More broadly, Consume Me succeeds because it makes fun of Jenny without judging her; the narrative and its interactive delivery mechanisms are direct and unpatronising, criticising diet culture while demonstrating why someone could be ensnared by it. We aren't made to feel that we're being lectured or tricked into a cheap emotional response. Rather, Consume Me transcends the expected commentary on dieting and becomes a critique of self-improvement culture in general, without losing the sense of humour that makes its message digestible. [Issue#416, p.123]

If the progress loop is largely untouched, though, Strange Antiquities gradually reveals greater depth and detail, easing you in before piling up possible angles of research. From the start, when you examine an object you can now do so according to different senses - what does it look like, feel like, smell and sound like, and does it inexplicably send shivers down your spine? And if early customer requests only ask you to consider an object's form or constituent materials, later you'll need to pay attention to inscribed symbols, gems and more. Cross-referencing a burgeoning stack of books, notes and maps, you begin to absorb ancient words and ideas. It's fascinating. At times, Bad Viking gives itself an impossible needle to thread with so many nuanced elements in play. A few descriptions feel like misdirection, sending us to the hint system. More often, though, the game maintains its spell. The instinct to organise and label every last item is as compelling as the elegant interface and the story drawing towards a fateful conclusion. It would be strange to refuse the invitation. [Issue#416, p.122]

Attempts to bring the fun back into Henry's life make for a more engaging third act, even as they inadvertently underline that they (and we) are largely going through the motions. By the treacly finale, we're more saddened by the unfulfilled promise of the start. Lululu's insistence on Saying Something over exploring the potential of its central mechanic proves, well, unbecoming; Henry Halfhead is at its best when possession is nine-tenths of the lore. [Issue#416, p.121]

When it comes to paper, Tearaway has the aesthetic edge and Paper Trail boasts smarter puzzles, while for inventive transformations, Mario remains the origami king. Next to those three, Hirogami feels flimsy and flyaway. [Issue#416, p.120]

Annoyances aside, there's a sense of pluck to Titanic Scion which may well power you through its most threadbare moments and its nagging UI quirks. [Issue#416, p.118]

Hotel Barcelona's horror-film pastiche amounts to little more than references, and without the unifying sensibility that defines Swery's best work, the game is a series of mismatched parts, idea in want of a whole. [Issue#416, p.116]

Like so many recent releases, Borderlands 4 has a magnetic, engrossing experience at its core that's been built on a hundred smart design decisions, but its performance on PC keeps you at arm's length. [Issue#416, p.114]

There are dozens of puzzles, with a Resident Evil-like fetishism for clicking locks and mechanisms. [Issue#416, p.112]

Like an electrified baseball bat, The Beast is silly and perhaps disposable, but you can still have a great time swinging it. [Issue#416, p.110]

Like the flesh-merging virus, which exponentially heaps meat onto meat onto meat, Bloober's better ideas can get lost in the pile. That it still feels worth playing to its conclusion is proof of the fundamental strengths at Cronos' core. [Issue#416, p.108]

After a lengthy hiatus, the series has returned with a sense of forceful creativity it's lacked for some time. [Issue#416, p.106]

Yotei is another breathtaking vision of Japan, then, which treads open-world paths familiar to Tsushima but explores a more captivating story, with characters you want to spend time with. [Issue#416, p.102]

We're not sure it's entirely wise to save a game's best material for its back half, when the climb to reach it is so steep. It's hard to judge, even, whether it was all worth it - from the top of the mountain, those struggles at its base tend to seem so small and far away. But as we approach that third act, a game that at times we were struggling to find the motivation to pick back up has become one we cannot put down. As a payoff to dozens of hours of struggle - not to mention eight years of waiting before that - it's undeniable. [Issue#416, p.98]

In trying to please us all, it leaves a deeper puzzle unsolved. [Issue#415, p.107]

As diverting as it can be, this is a slim offering, a paucity of customisation options, game modes and progress markers providing no higher-level hook. [Issue#415, p.106]