Author: Christian Donlan
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Shovel Knight Dig review – a great series safe in the hands of the very best
[ad_1] Compact and terrifying, this score-attack shooter feels like it’s come from the future. In the Secret Fountain levels, I fell in love with the water. I didn’t notice it at first. I was just digging downwards, flattening baddies with my shovel, enjoying the regular knockabout fun of a 2D platformer. But then I…
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Hyper Demon review – a playable migraine, in a good way
[ad_1] Compact and terrifying, this score-attack shooter feels like it’s come from the future. Isaac Newton was once moved to put a bodkin, or large, blunt sewing needle, behind his eye. Where exactly? (I feel you would want to be exact about this.) “Betwixt my eye and bone as neare to [the] backside of…
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Off Topic: Reading City of Glass in comic form
[ad_1] I first read Paul Auster when I was at university. A tutor recommended The Music of Chance, I think, and I ended up reading all of his stuff in one of those bursts of love you sometimes get for writers. Then, I sort of dropped out of the Auster business. At the…
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Return to Monkey Island review – buried treasure
[ad_1] A deft and heartfelt journey through nostalgia. My favourite Monkey Island story isn’t about a puzzle or a character or a joke. It’s not Stan and his hand-talking, or the severed head that can lead you through mazes. It’s not actually a story from the game itself. It’s to do with a friend…
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City Wars: Tokyo Reign review – my new favourite card battler
[ad_1] Last night I got through two whole districts with almost no health, and no prospects. An early boss had whittled me down to almost nothing, so I lurched into the eternal night thinking – four health? This won’t last long. For comparison, I start with 300 health, and that’s rarely enough. But something happened.…
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Plasma is an engineering sandbox with dizzying potential
[ad_1] I had an interview with the team behind Plasma. Sadly, I listened back to the transcript and it’s fifteen minutes of me laughing with delight, while heavy aircraft are clearly going through maneuvers overhead. No matter. Plasma is dizzyingly complex, but very easy to explain. It’s an engineering sandbox game. You make stuff…
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Steelrising keeps the vital, generous spirit of the great Double-A games alive
[ad_1] Around these parts there is no higher praise than “double-A”. It may sometimes be a reflection on the budget, but never on the skill and craft and imagination of the developers. A great double-A game is often a quirky affair built around immediate pleasures and often delivered with a twist. Steelrising Developer:…
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The Gwent Impulse – the pleasure of finding a great game inside a great game
[ad_1] Halfway through playing Cult of the Lamb I found myself engaged in a neat little dice-battling game. It was a mini-game, I guess, but it was so nicely handled, so rich in strategy and the suggestion of depth, that it felt like it could well have been spun off as a game in…
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State of the Game: Minecraft – a new generation discovers the Forever Game
[ad_1] Every time my daughter tells me about Minecraft’s 1.19 update, she describes it in completely different terms. Thrilled: “One thing 1.19 introduced is these little animals, Allays, and if you give them an item they’ll go and find more of them!” Frantic: “There’s a new new boss called the Warden and it’s the…
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Gloomwood is stealthy Victoriana incarnate – and it’s already super good
[ad_1] Gloomwood came alive for me when I got outside. This is immersive-sim-ish territory, everything tilted towards horror and stealth. Navigating the lovingly rendered PS1 era visuals, which do help a great deal to make ordinary objects singular and creepy, I awake at the bottom of a pit with nothing but a mysterious ally,…