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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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    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Tactical Breach Wizards
    It’s a game in near-perfect balance, a lean and distinctly not mean ode to turn-based tactics that embraces the genre’s creative puzzling while repudiating its worst excesses. Tactical Breach Wizards lets you see the future, raise the dead, and burst through windows on a witch’s broom. Yet amid all that, its most powerful spell is empathy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
    Right now, it’s my main contender for game of the year, simply because, in its lack of pretension, its attention to detail and its understanding that video games first and foremost should be fun, it puts everything else I’ve played recently in its long shadow.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    XCOM 2
    XCOM 2 is a perfect example of how iteration should work for games: it takes a great original, fixes and streamlines the problems, and doubles-down in unexpected areas. Among its greatest achievements is adding a sense of pace to the overall campaign and the moment-to-moment combat. This is an about-turn from the principles of the original that could have gone wrong but instead is the making of the experience.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
    Skyrim is one of the most gargantuan undertakings gamers will experience all year. The sheer size of the adventure, both in terms of its environment and in the amount of activities available to the player, is mind-blowing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Robo Recall
    Robo Recall is an almost perfect VR arcade experience. The only downside is that the cost of entry for Oculus Rift and Touch – even with a new lower price of £598 – is still too high for many, when you include the cost of the PC needed to run it. But that’s not the game’s fault.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Telling Lies
    Telling Lies requires a deliberateness from its players that turns us from viewers to active plot participants. It’s a game that doesn’t hold your hand, and ultimately it’s down to you to decide the truth – another secret of a good mystery done well.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bayonetta 3
    Where many western games yearn to be seen as the height of sophistication, craving the critical kudos of an HBO drama, Bayonetta 3 stands defiant in its absurdity. Like its predecessors, this is destined to go down as a cult classic – a dizzying dance of demon-dicing delight. Its crude, whiplash-inducing narrative means it certainly won’t be for everyone, but the best things in life rarely are.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    INSIDE
    Inside is constantly surprising, introducing new elements without ever overwhelming, maintaining an excellent pace over the course of about four hours.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Animal Crossing: New Leaf
    New Leaf is a world on a cartridge slightly bigger than a stamp, one full of beautiful, wise and hopelessly optimistic observation of humans as social animals. It is a magical creation.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Crypt of the NecroDancer
    Crypt of the Necrodancer may not be for everyone, but if the idea of a steamy love-in between two seemingly incompatible genres turns you on, you’re gonna love it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Untitled Goose Game
    Only two or three hours long, Goose Game doesn’t overstay its welcome, though there is an expanded list of small mischiefs to accomplish post-credits, if you still wish to continue terrorising the innocent. Certainly not fowl, most definitely worth a gander, it’s a whimsical little game full of charm and joy and a wonderful experience for just about anyone.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Batman: Arkham Knight
    Arkham Knight triumphs as a richly empowering comic book fantasy that sees its hero fail almost as much as he succeeds, making him the most believable, the most occasionally unlikeable, and ultimately the most heroic he’s ever been.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blue Prince
    And then there’s the fact that Blue Prince has the best titular homophone in video games (sorry Fortnite). It’s a game about the blueprints of the Mount Holly Estate, and naturally a magical mansion like this has a story; it’s this, the family behind it, and the fantastical wider world in which they live, that will draw you to the 46th room and far, far beyond.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Her Story
    You could look over videogame history and pick out antecedents for some of what Her Story does but, even so, I’ve never played anything quite like it.
    • Guardian
      • Posted Jun 25, 2015
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
    While some players will spend hours perfecting time trials and improving their standing online, that’s not really what these games are for. Mario Kart is a vehicle for fun with all your friends and family, no matter their individual skill, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best, most versatile version of that yet.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
    A game that marries the best bits of the franchise’s long history with the best bits of the rest of the gaming world, and produces something even greater than the sum of its parts.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Forbidden Solitaire
    It is wonderful to see such a difficult and unwieldy idea executed so brilliantly. It has been a pleasure to go on this weird trip back to the crucible of PC gaming culture. You don’t have to be nostalgic for the period of fuzzy FMV and splatterhouse gore to appreciate Forbidden Solitaire – it works as a brain-teasing card-battler in its own right. But if you were playing games 30 years ago, when interactive horror meant bad acting, looming purple skies, pixelated images of decapitated heads and stories inspired by pulp fantasy fiction, Forbidden Solitaire is a wildly self-aware, multi-textured treat. Enter if you dare.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Immortality
    I have never seen – or played – anything like it. It’s not a game that everyone will love, but I do think it’s one that everyone should play.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
    Hot Pursuit, like the high-end vehicles it fetishises, has been crafted with genuine care, with great insight, with technical brilliance. Gran Turismo 5 will grab the headlines and the purist vote, but it surely won't live like this game does; it will be an austere cathedral to Criterion's joyous modernist structure.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Battlefield 1
    Those subtle changes and little overhauls make all the difference, and they’re wrapped up in perhaps the most beautiful first-person shooter ever made – one that captures the sludge of the trenches, the cacophony of destruction of a battlefield, and the intensity of desert standoffs and mountainside raids. Dice has taken a risk visiting a time period not seen in major multiplayer shooters before, and Battlefield aces it. This is a lavish package that capitalises on a stagnancy in the genre, offering something new, exciting and, most importantly, solid.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mass Effect 3
    More than ever, the Mass effect universe pulls off the masterful trick of feeling huge and yet believable – the game's production values are through the roof, and its third-person shooter controls incredibly precise, responsive and accurate given Mass Effect's immense scope. It really does feel like a TV sci-fi series in which you play the central character.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Half-Life: Alyx
    The results of this suffusion are nothing short of spectacular, delivering an expertly crafted Half-Life tale inside a knockout VR experience.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Forza Horizon 3
    That, really, is the fundamental value in Forza Horizon 3. It wants you to have fun. It will challenge you, it will ask you to improve as a driver and it will reward you for doing so. But first and foremost, it wants you to spend time in this ridiculous playground, with some of the best (and strangest) cars in the world, having an absolute blast.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rayman Legends
    It's a game that's been meticulously crafted to keep you moving. Every jump leads precisely onto the next water-drenched slope which slides down to zip-line before the checkpoint. At times it moves with the agility of a slickly produced Sunday morning cartoon, when in actuality it's a video game. A video game that leaves others looking like dead sharks.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Resident Evil 7: biohazard
    A masterclass: breezily new, yet quintessentially in character with its illustrious forbearers.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Far Cry 3
    Every so often, a game comes along which is so irresistible that it leaves you wondering whether sequelitis might actually be a good thing. Far Cry 3 being a classic example.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bloodborne
    Its elegance, precision, humour, and challenge make Bloodborne irresistible. Ultimately, the horror is secondary; wonder is the true transfusion on offer here.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Into the Breach
    Perhaps the biggest surprise, at least for anyone who played its brilliant but cruel predecessor FTL: Faster Than Light, is how overwhelmingly fair Into the Breach is. There are no random events that unexpectedly handicap you. Instead, every situation is winnable from the outset (though poor first-turn decisions will change that), and you are shown the consequences of any action before you commit to it.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    DAVE THE DIVER
    This is demanding work, but the game’s distinct but complementary loops of playful labour are highly compelling. The satisfaction of completing a challenging dive without needing to be rescued, then watching the rave reviews on “Cooksta” pour in, is profound. Stylish, witty and exquisitely designed, Dave the Diver uses several hooks to achieve its goal, while establishing the relationship between the food we eat and the world from which its harvested with useful urgency.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Last of Us: Left Behind
    Left Behind does nothing new with The Last of Us' tense and exhilarating gameplay rhythm; you're always either in intense danger, or fearfully anticipating the next moment of intense danger. But it tells a different story, one that's more compact and more affecting for it, and it shows that Naughty Dog has serious emotional range. Rarely have I played anything as powerful.
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These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation.

In Progress & Unscored

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    • 74 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    PowerWash Simulator
    PowerWash Simulator is currently in early access (you pay a reduced premium to play a game not yet finished), but even now this is an irresistible example of so-called “playbour”, and further evidence that a shit job often makes for a sublime game. [Early Access review]
    • 90 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Animal Crossing: New Horizons
    Animal Crossing is everything I have been craving: it is gentle, soothing, social and creative, and my group chats are already buzzing with hype about beetles and villager fashions. If there was ever a perfect time for a game such as this, that time is now.
    • 72 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Miitomo
    If you’re old enough, if you love Nintendo enough and if you have enough friends who fall into both categories, Miitomo is an inventive and fun, first mobile app for the company. Everyone else? The wait will continue for Nintendo to make some more ambitious mobile games based on its most-loved brands.
    • 80 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Tom Clancy's The Division
    Of more importance is how this world will evolve once enough players have completed all the current missions and find themselves in an end-game that is effectively a treasure hunt in an anarchic moral wasteland. Even at this early stage though, The Division is an experience that’s worth having if you’re at all interested in mainstream action games, or role-playing adventures, or co-operative online play. You will not be bored as you blast your way through.
    • 77 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Hitman - Intro Pack
    There has never been a better way to confront, or indulge, your inner assassin.
    • 80 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Dorfromantik
    Part town-planning exercise, part board game, this thoughtful debut gives plenty of scope for strategy and idealism. [Early Access Score = 80]
    • 77 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    No Man's Sky
    The ability to explore space with a party of up to three friends makes it feel much less lonely than before. And where it once was difficult to return to a previously visited planet, establishing bases allows you to make some small corner of the universe feel like home.
    • tbd Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Museum of Mechanics: Lockpicking
    The museum itself is pretty rudimentary: a dark hall, with signposted identical locks pointing the way towards Nordhagen’s recreations of lock-picking mini-games. It looks and sounds basic, but the amount of effort, knowledge and understanding of the topic (and of game design and history more generally) that has gone into this mini museum is abundantly evident, from both the exhibits and the text that accompanies them. Like listening to someone talk about the PhD research they’re doing on a niche topic, it might sound boring at the outset, but by the end of an hour, you’ll come away with something you definitely didn’t know before.
    • 77 Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Street Fighter V
    Like throwing a punch in the dark, buying Street Fighter V today is a speculative gamble.

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