Josh Wise
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EurogamerLatest Reviews
Where it succeeds isn’t in how close it scrapes to the level of prestige TV, or to films. Its coup is not, “Look how closely we can make games resemble highbrow art.” It’s more, “Look what previously fenced-off realms we can get interactivity into.”
If you’re willing to devote a weekend to its mood of windbitten despondency (it’s only fifteen or so hours long), you will not emerge from Mortal Shell unrewarded.
It was clearly forged from a love of Solitaire, and even its failures feel like restless, riffled expressions of that love.
What I didn’t expect from the new Call of Duty was downtime, and the suggestion, at least in the first half, that guns, while great for going in blazing, can provide just as potent a thrill when holstered.
The chief pleasures on offer are those of the power fantasy and of the newly burgeoning subgenre that we might call the zoological misadventure.
You could argue that Squadrons breaks no fresh ground, that it is merely the latest in a prized patch of genre; but the ground, fresh or otherwise, was left behind long ago, and being the latest is no bad thing.
The fun of playing these games, especially these days, lies in the director, Ryuchi Nishizawa, whose approach to genre was one of precise and genial disregard.
As with the rest of the game, outside of the more focussed platform sequences, I was boosted through by the breezy mood more than anything else. Skelattack is a masterpiece in the art of the pleasant.
Night call is thick with moody atmosphere and noir style; its writing is hit and miss, but it's tough not to be entranced by the central concept.
Taro’s approach is of a restless rarity; he swaps genres as though trying to scratch an itch.
In that image lies the appeal—and for some the off-putting twinge—of Oddworld: a bleak and black-hearted concoction, laced with snickering humour and shot through with hope.
The best time I had with the game was a ten-minute stretch that contained (a) no crashes or bugs, (b) the right level and world tier—essentially, a measure of enemy toughness—and (c) a harmony of tactics, sorcery, and gunfire.
