Guardian's Scores

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For 1,012 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 40% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Game review score: 75
Highest review score: 100 The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
Lowest review score: 20 Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 684 out of 1012
  2. Mixed: 250 out of 1012
  3. Negative: 78 out of 1012
1021 game reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
    Simplistic, repetitive interactions drag on an otherwise engaging story based on the Marvel franchise.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    State of Decay 2
    State of Decay 2 is brainless, ramshackle fun. Most of its action resembles Benny Hill more closely than The Walking Dead. It doesn’t really deliver what it promises, and in many obvious ways, it’s a mess. Yet lots of messy games are fun, and this is too – especially on those forays when you slaughter zombies by the dozen and rock up home loaded with loot. In scattered moments, there are glimpses of the game State of Decay 2 could have been. Sadly, they are the only times it pulls at your heartstrings.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jurassic World Evolution
    In spite of a smattering of minor missteps, Evolution is engrossing and clearly created with a deep affection for the source material. Any fan of the films (or the books) who has ever imagined opening a disaster-prone theme park will have a good time with it, despite the repetition.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Trek to Yomi
    Despite its repetition and frustrations, I warmed to this grainy, gore-soaked journey after the tedious early hours. Thanks to a smattering of player choices, the game offers just enough of a hint at player agency to make you feel involved in the narrative, too, giving Trek to Yomi’s surrealist slaughter a sense of purpose. There’s a strong argument that a Japanese-made attempt at this genre would come closer to doing the samurai fantasy justice, but as with the many Japanese takes on virtual America, there’s a schlocky charm to Yomi’s tropey inauthenticity nonetheless.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dead Island: Riptide
    Riptide isn't especially good, but I can't help but feel that it might well be the most accurate depiction of what trying to survive a zombie apocalypse would be like in reality.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Outer Worlds 2
    Even if The Outer Worlds 2 rarely blows my mind, and suffers from direct comparisons to Avowed, the smaller scope of which resulted in a tighter experience overall, there is inherent value in a role-playing game that so effectively sucks you in for hours upon hours. It’s not breaking the mould, but improving its structure: offering you something satisfying and solid that rarely surprises, but still manages to regularly delight.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Roki
    It is the striking cel-shaded design, though, that elevates Röki just above games such as Year Walk, which is similarly inspired by Scandinavian folklore. The design enhances minor artistic details – whether it’s snow glistening on a treetop or a hostile character’s imposing shadow – to create a more involving experience. Röki’s pleasing aesthetics are well-matched by an absorbing story that always keeps you on your guard.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dead Island 2
    Dead Island 2 will amuse you for days with its stylish vision of a zombified LA, but it’s also limited in scope, and with skill systems that feel shallow and impersonal it won’t hang around long enough to achieve superstardom. The fact is, Dead Island 2 is one of 2014’s best zombie beat-’em-ups – it’s just a pity we’re in 2023.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between
    I’m glad this game exists, but I wish there were more to it. There wasn’t enough variety in the virtual landscapes or in the characters’ conversations to make the long night drives or train journeys appealing beyond the second or third go-around. It is a game that wants us to think about the contradictions and complexities of being alive on this Earth, but also, it doesn’t seem to come from a place of great life experience. I would be fascinated to see what these developers would make in another 20 (or 50) years.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    RAGE 2
    Rage 2 suffers the same fate as many other open-world games. It tries to lure the player in with the size of its world, then needs to conjure an abundance of content to fill it. But, when you mix up every colour, you always end up with brown, and the impact of Rage 2’s scintillating shooter action is dulled as a result.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hitman: Absolution
    The best thing one can say about Absolution is that it's impossible to feel ambivalent about it; players will love and loathe aspects of this game in equal measure. In Absolution, terrible ideas rub up against great ones almost on a moment-to-moment basis, and the end result is a title which is impossible to consider with the same clinical detachment that it's protagonist is known for.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kingdom Hearts III
    Perhaps it was inevitable that after such a long time, the conclusion to this story would ring slightly hollow, even rather facile, after all the prior build-up. I’ve been through 13 years of life, but it turns out that Sora got to skip all of that. Kingdom Hearts III plays it extremely safe, ultimately banking on nostalgia and delivering more of the same. Its charm is only skin-deep.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    NUTS
    On iPhone, there are some frustrating control issues, and often, the text in your journal and the icons on your GPS are too small to make out. On top of this, the game provides scant information on your objectives, which can be trying. Nuts is, however, a warm, stylish and contemplative little game, which makes clever use of photography and nature watching in order to craft a modest, meaningful ecological fable.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Donut County
    No other game this year will make you an accomplice in a dastardly raccoon plot to take over a town.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Prey
    Nearly everything good about Prey is pulled from a game released in the decade before it. Well, four other games to be exact...The new Prey takes the highlights of these games, but merely allows them to coexist in a single habitat, never doing anything new with the foundational building blocks it has borrowed.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tokyo 42
    The single player campaign remains immensely enjoyable but it’s a shame it can’t sustain early success. Refined controls and a focus on more crafted stealth missions, rather than turning everything up to 11, would have meant fewer rage-quits and a higher score.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Get Up and Dance
    Given that each four-song session probably burns less than 100 calories, this isn't going to see anyone shimmying their way into svelteness, but it's OK if you're after some cheery cardio. And that's the best you can say for Get Up and Dance: it's OK. Not broken, not bad, and not doing anything you can't find better elsewhere.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sea of Thieves
    It is no wonder Sea of Thieves has drawn comparisons with No Man’s Sky – at its best, when it’s firing on all cylinders and you let yourself sink into its peculiar vision, it is majestic. The glint of the sun on the choppy waters, the friend who always gets lost in the caves, saving a hold full of chickens from drowning, standing on an island after a battle and watching your ship sink beneath the foam. These moments are the treasure. But are they enough? The problem is not only that there’s too little to do; it’s that you want so much more.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe
    Before he had a face, Kirby’s unassuming spherical design was intended to be a graphical placeholder – but then its creators fell in love with his squishy simplicity. Return to Dream Land feels like a playable placeholder, ticking the right boxes without ever being truly exciting. In multiplayer it’s much more fun, but after the charmingly inventive Super Mario odyssey-inspired escapades of Forgotten Land, revisiting the safe, side-scrolling Kirby era holds little appeal.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lake
    This peaceful circuit is perfect for the kind of person who tries to observe traffic laws when playing Grand Theft Auto.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unravel Two
    In introducing cooperative multiplayer, it has opened up an entirely new way to experience the adorable conceit of yarn characters making their way through a gigantic human world – but in freeing up movement and removing some of the friction, it has lost a little of the original’s focus and heart.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Super Mario Bros. U
    It's frenetic and anarchic, but hardly the stuff that will convince you to buy a Wii U. Come on, Mr Miyamoto: let's have a proper Mario game for the Wii U. And a Zelda, and a Metroid, and a Pikmin, and a Donkey Kong and so on.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Under The Waves
    It is imperfect but affecting, and hopefully after a few patches and updates, players will be able to enjoy it with fewer caveats. It’s peaceful under the waves. I can see why Stan, desperate to escape a measureless grief, would be drawn to it. But in the end, this turns out to be a game about what it takes to avoid being dragged under.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gotham Knights
    Stealth, however, is the biggest disappointment in Gotham Knights. Where Batman infested the city’s crevices, his underlings merely invade them: you can work together to set up terrain traps or create distractions, but it’s a world away from the older series’ puzzlebox intricacy and it’s always more fun to barge in swinging.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Call of Juarez: The Cartel
    A perfectly decent game (although in no way spectacular), with a three-player drop-in co-op mode and the characters' different secret agendas adding some replay value. But all the way through, the abandonment of the Western theme nags at you.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sunset Overdrive
    Despite these creative flourishes, Sunset Overdrive never quite surpasses the chaotic physics of Just Cause, the coherent style of Blood Dragon or the assured sense of place of GTAV – nor does it manage to draw its story and systems toward a coherent, impactful point. In the end its hero escapes the purgatory of a boring job and successfully wreaks revenge on the judgmental consumers he once served. But the game itself does little to undermine the increasingly over-familiar, open-world establishment, instead quietly celebrating the status quo.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Avowed
    Avowed started out as Obsidian’s answer to Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series, and it did remind me a lot of Oblivion and Skyrim in the exciting moments where I stumbled across something unexpected in the wilds. But it also shares those games’ tendency towards repetition, and the weightless feel of their fighting. My first 15 or so hours in The Lands Between felt rich with potential, but I got fed up with it long before the end.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    WWE All Stars
    All Stars will put a smile on the face of any lapsed wrestling fan pining for the simple, undemanding action of the WWF games of yore. Still, it's hard to justify paying the full RRP for a game that seems to go out of its way to have as little depth as possible.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wasteland 3
    Wasteland 3 is treading creatively irradiated ground. The nuclear post-apocalypse has been explored to exhaustion, in video games and elsewhere, and no amount of weird factions or sex jokes can prevent it from feeling like an aged rock band on a comeback tour: the tunes are still decent, but there’s no youthful vigour.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mortal Kombat 1
    Mortal Kombat 1 is also home to an esoteric, slightly underbaked “Invasions” mode, which injects a dash of RPG-ish grinding – complete with random encounters and variating elemental damage types – to its bread-and-butter brawling mechanics. I found this to be less compelling than either the campaign or the standard multiplayer ladder, but it’s good to see that NetherRealm is, at the very least, considering how they might reinvent the wheel in the future. After all, this is supposed to be a total reimagining of Mortal Kombat oeuvre; a new beginning for all of our twisted, bloodsoaked combatants. I’m happy to have them back in my life, but it’s a shame they didn’t learn a few more tricks during their time away.
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