DeVuego ES_COR

While The Mageseeker can feel a little bit didactic at times, its willingness to stake a clear ideological claim when so many of its contemporaries shrink like violets at the mention of politics is refreshing. It backs this up with compelling gameplay, an excellent soundtrack and vibrant pixel graphics. If you like media that combines high-octane action and bombastic political intrigue, The Mageseeker is well worth the time. 

While I would have appreciated a few more in-game reference pieces (like a hotkey to bring up the dizzying damage-type matrix), Temtem puts most of the key info in sight, although players that commit everything to heart will have the advantage. If you want to be the very best, you'll have to learn them all. Even falling a little short in terms of charm, and with the battle pass feeling slightly out-of-place, Temtem is easy to recommend to fans of Pokémon wanting something a little tougher and meatier while still feeling familiar. 

Narita Boy's digital twist on a classic fantasy tale is engrossing if a bit disorientating.

Unaware of its absurdity, Blacksad: Under The Skin fails at much of what it attempts

So Gris is beautiful. It really is. But for me that beauty means it’s only really capable of touching on some of the facets of loss. It offers some of the wordlessness, the colourless strangeness of the world immediately after a loss and the seeping in of colour as you open back up. It also manages some of the sense of being at the mercy of the outside world. The way it plays with scale shifts your focus from the girl to the world and back again, depending on how far the camera has zoomed out; a handy tool for simulating numbness or distance. 

f you fall in love with its art style and you fancy a giant dollop of nostalgia, then it throws enough variety at you to keep you going to the end. But if you're looking for an original story to sink your teeth into, then a muddled plot and dull writing will leave you disappointed.

And it helps that the whole thing looks and sounds beautiful too, with a gorgeously moody neo-noir soundtrack, detailed, expressive pixel art, and an atmospheric setting to drink in. While it occasionally slips into cyberpunk cliche, and can be a little too earnest for its own good sometimes, The Red Strings Club is a distinctive take on a well-worn genre.

A fun take on a classic format, great to play with friends—hectic and unique, but easy to understand and play.

Rime is a middling puzzle platformer with some genuine narrative depth, but the latter doesn't quite justify the former.

As I said, I'm mixed on Dead Synchronicity. I'd love to see more games take this sort of "adult" approach to point-and-clicks. The '90s had quite a few, a la I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and it's amazing how dark you can make what's typically seen as a family-friendly genre these days.

But those puzzles. But that ending. Those are the phrases that keep running through my brain, even as I mull over the positives. Knowing my own frustration, it makes it hard to recommend that experience to anyone else (let alone tack a score on the game).

My only hope is if you do pick up the game, you're suitably warned about its pitfalls. Maybe that will help you better appreciate what's there, without being blindsided by its failings.

It's a common misconception that in a comedy game, anything goes. No. Look at Day of the Tentacle and you'll see how the logic and goals have to be clear, even if the solution is from Toon Town. Randal's Monday gets it painfully wrong, mistaking convoluted and crazy for funny and logical to the point of being tedious and infuriating to play even with an in-game walkthrough for when you've had enough. Just reading some of the solutions is tiring.

Gods Will Be Watching is a very clever idea well executed; one that opts to avoid the branching and overt morality of most similar games in favour of simply asking you to judge yourself as you see fit. The original Flash game offers an excellent taster of how it plays out, with this version upping the production quality and raising the stakes dramatically—a very clever, very different kind of adventure that will make you feel and make you feel bad, but for—hopefully—most of the right reasons.

Unluckily, it costs 20 quid, which is significantly more than it's worth.

The appealing characters and occasionally entertaining puzzles can only take it so far.6

The end result is just to routine to be scary. 

Occasionally amusing and sometimes bewildering, the latest "Runaway" is an odd mixture of flaws and fun

Too much is lost in the translation between third-person strategy and first-person shooter, with insufficient respect paid overall to the FPS point of view. 

Truly epic historical strategy. It's a good pick for RTS fans. 

Tries to be two games in one, and ends up doing neither terribly well. 

It's unfortunate that the same level of fun didn't make it into the single-player campaign.

Some of the puzzle solutions...are frustratingly hint-free and unintuitive. 

Those 12 missions might not sound like a lot, but their sprawling scope and elaborate challenges will keep you busy for dozens of hours. 

Overly simplistic gameplay, repetitive jumping puzzles, and all-in-all monotony. 

Ultimately, the developer of "Commandos" has created an amalgam of the two styles, the result of which I will dub a stroke of near-brilliance. But not near enough.

Successfully mixes numerous gameplay styles in one compelling package.

All in all, Extreme Wintersports isn't terrible, but the skimpy game content, limited number of tracks, and bad design choices kick it back to the bottom of the barrel (which, I've got to admit, is still a few inches above the rest of the HeadGames fodder). We've seen worse, but there's still much better out there. Try again, dudes.