There is something immediately familiar about Duskfade, and that is both its greatest strength and its biggest hurdle. Weird Beluga clearly grew up with the same 3D platformers that shaped an entire generation, and its adventure wears those influences proudly, from the colorful worlds and cheeky companion to the combination of platforming, exploration and combat. Anyone with fond memories of Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank or Kingdom Hearts will probably feel at home within minutes. The problem is that familiarity can occasionally become predictability, particularly during the opening half of the adventure, when Duskfade sometimes feels more like an exceptionally polished tribute than a game determined to establish its own identity. Fortunately, there is considerably more substance here than simple nostalgia, and the further we progress, the more convincing that distinction becomes. Continue reading “Duskfade review (PS5)”
Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand review (PC)
Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand takes one of the defining real-time strategy series and strips away much of its traditional structure to concentrate on a simple question: how long can we keep our headquarters standing? There is no campaign to push through, no territory to capture and no elaborate base-building phase to worry about. Instead, we are dropped onto one of five battlefields, given a handful of tools and asked to survive twelve increasingly dangerous waves. It is a surprisingly natural fit for Company of Heroes, because while the format is different, the fundamentals remain intact. Positioning, cover, combined arms and knowing when to reinforce or reposition are still what separate a successful defence from a spectacularly expensive defeat. What is missing is a stronger sense of narrative, although the individual battles often compensate by creating their own little war stories through desperate last stands and unexpected reversals. Continue reading “Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand review (PC)”
LIFTED review (PC)
Lifted is the kind of game that wears its influences proudly, but never seems particularly interested in pretending that it is doing something radically new. From the moment Ari gets dragged into Professor Raventhorpe’s increasingly ridiculous scheme, we are essentially stepping into a playable Saturday-morning adventure movie, complete with time travel, ancient treasure, eccentric characters and plenty of peril. The premise is deliberately silly: Ari is looking for some extra credit, while his physics professor wants to travel through history and retrieve a valuable tiara in the hope of winning the affection of another teacher. Throw in a remarkably capable chinchilla and a succession of historical locations, and we get a story that is far more concerned with keeping us entertained than with making much sense. That approach works surprisingly well, largely because the chemistry between Ari and Raventhorpe gives the journey its personality. Their constant banter and the professor’s tendency to leave the dangerous work to his student provide a steady stream of jokes, while the obvious echoes of Back to the Future and classic adventure cinema give the whole thing a pleasantly nostalgic flavor. Continue reading “LIFTED review (PC)”
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition review (Switch 2)
There is something fitting about returning to Alrest on Nintendo Switch 2. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was always an ambitious RPG, but its original hardware often struggled to show just how ambitious it really was. This time around, Rex, Pyra and the enormous Titans get the technical breathing room they deserve, while Monolith Soft and Logicalbeat have added enough new material to make this more than a simple resolution and framerate upgrade. The result is still very much the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 we remember, with all of its strengths and idiosyncrasies intact, but it is now considerably easier to appreciate what made the 2017 adventure so memorable in the first place. Continue reading “Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition review (Switch 2)”
Port roundup: CloverPit, Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel & Mate’Morphosis
As games continue to find new audiences on other hardware, publishers are increasingly giving players fresh ways to experience everything from inventive indies to more established genre fare. In this roundup, we take a look at three recent ports that each bring something quite different to the table, from the addictive slot-machine roguelite of CloverPit to the Norse-inspired hordes of Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel and the chess-inspired puzzle experimentation of Mate’Morphosis. Continue reading “Port roundup: CloverPit, Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel & Mate’Morphosis”