Author: Caelyn Ellis

After a brutal start, No Rest For the Wicked’s early access build settles into a compelling gameplay loop, but a lack of standout moments tempers expectations. No Rest for the Wicked feels like a bit of a missing link. In the same way that Salt and Sanctuary bridged a gap between Metroidvanias and the Souls…

Describing games as “X meets Y” is often considered a little gauche. At its worst, it’s a lazy and reductive habit – and one that can result in some truly awful headlines, in which two popular games with tenuous connections to the one actually being written about are unceremoniously smashed together. Rise of the Ronin…

Rogue Trader nails the 40k setting and provides an appropriately massive narrative filled with meaty tactical combat, though some bugs and poor performance hold it back. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is a game that I have been waiting a long time for. It’s not quite the first 40k video game that I dreamed of…

A solid core could provide some great competitive match-ups, but the dreary, generic campaign will fail to impress solo gamers. In the fabled beforetimes of the early 2010s, Games Workshop made the decision to end the world. Not our world, though it may feel like it at times, but the Old World of Warhammer…

Moonring adds modern convenience to a classic Ultima-style RPG to create an approachable and appealing adventure with a huge amount of depth and discovery. The last few months have been bloody brilliant for RPGs, a period stuffed with massive, triple-A titans, gorged on inflated budgets and turgid with years of work from dozens or…

[ad_1] Minecraft’s blocky charm is present and correct, but the rest of Minecraft Legends is only as deep as the skins it wants to sell you. I like the piglins. They’ve got that anarchic goblin underdog vibe that makes me think that they’d be pretty cool if it wasn’t for the mean big boss…

[ad_1] Mixing Into the Breach with Frozen Synapse makes for an inevitably strong core of mech combat, but the rest of Phantom Brigade is underwhelming. When I first played the demo for Phantom Brigade, I realised it did something I’d been wanting from games for years. It’s a turn-based game that uses the magic…

[ad_1] This piece contains spoilers for the end of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Somewhat appropriately, I begin this discussion of a Star Wars game with a Luke-warm take: game endings are quite frequently a bit rubbish. The usual structure is an extra-tough last level, a final boss fight, a cutscene to wrap it…

[ad_1] Surprising literally no-one, my Game of the Year is Elden Ring. It exceeded my Erdtree-sized expectations and, despite some absolute corkers being released this year, nothing else came close. The games that made me happiest, on the other hand, are games I’ve hardly played, if at all. Pokémon Legends Arceus and Scarlet brought…

[ad_1] Playing a video game is a deeply personal experience. Unlike other mediums, you’re in control of what happens. I’m not just talking about making choices in an RPG, but the way every single press of a button or tilt of a stick adds up to make your playthrough different from mine. While we…