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]