Latest Reviews
Abzu
Abzu takes the graceful feel of movement and subtle push toward discovery that I’ve enjoyed in similar exploration games like Journey and Flower and builds a refreshing-yet-simple underwater adventure around it. The colorful settings, beautiful soundtrack, and basic controls made it a great experience that constantly piqued my interest, even...
Human: Fall Flat’s slapstick controls and ridiculous animation do a great job of making repeated, frustrating, and unfair failure at physics puzzles seem fun for a while. And when that fun runs out, you can extend it by bringing in a friend and drawing silly things on your goofball character....
Quadrilateral Cowboy’s puzzles are mostly a joy to play. Its command line hacking is surprisingly accessible and pleasingly tactile, and when combined with its many interesting gadgets it allows for plenty of creative problem-solving and freedom in tackling all manner of whimsical cybercrime. While not all of its levels shine...
Starbound
Starbound excels as a crafting and exploration game, as a 2D platformer with varied and engaging combat, and as a Zelda-esque story RPG with a detailed world and memorable alien cultures to interact with. The sheer volume of different kinds of locations to discover, items to craft and build great...
Headlander
Headlander is an unexpectedly great take on Metroidviania-style action. Some of the objective design renders its flashier, body-endangering powers moot, but the quick and complex moment-to-moment gameplay carries it splendidly. It’s difficult but fair, and fast-paced but satisfying through to the end. And with a story so dangerously loaded with...
I Am Setsuna
A lack of balance robs the combat of much of its fun and renders many of the more interesting gameplay systems moot, but it didn’t dampen the emotional impact of I Am Setsuna’s heartfelt message for me. Few story-driven RPGs are so thematically focused or so gleefully disinterested with being...
The Solus Project is a satisfyingly creepy exploration game that uses a brilliant understanding of setcrafting and circumstance to capture the experience of being alone on an alien planet. Ambience and mood are kings here, and the experience deals eeriness and beauty in equal measure. Sadly, its puzzles are seldom...
Ghostbusters
This is the sort of game that great uncles and grandmas are going to buy for the young people in their lives because they heard Ghostbusters was popular, or that littler kids will point out in the mall just after seeing the movie. But no informed gamer should fall for...
Necropolis
Necropolis pulls many ideas together to ultimately deliver a satisfactory, short dungeon-diving experience that’s best enjoyed with friends. Some of its ideas conflict with each other (such as permadeath and teammate revival), its procedural generation doesn’t offer much in the way of replayability, and its intentional vagueness can be frustrating,...
7 Days to Die
There's a hint of a good game in 7 Days to Die's mix of zombie attack preparedness and crafting and cooperative stands against zombies, and it has valuable ideas to contribute to the genre. In fact, you can almost hear them screaming to escape from beneath terrible graphics, barely useable...
Carmageddon: Max Damage feels like it was designed in and for the year 1999, which on paper is a noble goal when trying to revive a franchise. Unfortunately, in practice it just doesn’t work, instead reminding us that time moves on. Max Damage is a collection of ideas that looked...
Furi
There’s definitely fun to be had in Furi’s fast and frenzied battles against a colorful cast of quirky boss characters. While it finds its strongest moments in its rewardingly rhythmic, precision-based one-on-one duels, an unwelcome level of tedium and occasionally cheap sequences — made even more frustrating by janky mechanics...
