A note from Dylan on his ‘unconventional’ review of Olija.
I just wanted to try and convey how cool this game manages to make the player feel uncomfortable. Like, it’s a horror game but without proper scares, just menacing and uneasy throughout.
Therefore, I decided to have a bit of fun and play with the reader, make it uncomfortable for them to read and – hopefully – make it engaging and something different to the rest of the online echo chamber.
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Hitman III offers so much that is familiar but also tweaks things so that expectations are both wonderfully met and subverted. Crowbar, rat poison, wrench and screwdriver – the tools are the same. Although the levels in which they are expertly positioned are filled with so much character, beauty and depth that I know I’ll be peeling back the layers for years to come.
By now, IO gets what makes Hitman games fun. As a result the gameplay leans with the player, providing easement in all processes, making this the most player-friendly entry yet.
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Fenyx Rising initially presents as a light take on Greek Mythology. It has a colourful art style, cartoonish characters and a banter-heavy story presentation. After spending days with it, I can say it is as broad, deep and work-like as any major Ubisoft product out there.
The sheer volume of tasks awaiting you stands in the dozens of hours. It is not a Breath of the Wild wannabe, although the similarities are many. Fenyx Rising is an adventure heavily reliant on simple physics puzzles combined with the sting of some very tough combat. It is also very customisable. Combat too much? Change the difficulty to easy. Just want to do puzzles? Seek them out from high ground and place stones on weight plates to your heart’s content.
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Crash Bandicoot 4 is a difficult game. Negotiating this platform-hopping, crate jumping, dimension-swapping, time-slowing, enemy-infested gauntlet feels like you are learning a blistering guitar solo one note at a time, until you can almost play through it without stumbling. Almost.
It’s a journey conquered inch by inch, checkpoint by checkpoint, until you stand at the end, panting, spent.
Every level takes the form of attempt, die, repeat, die, repeat again. Usually, this is enough to make me bounce right off a game, but there’s something about Crash Bandicoot 4.
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The best choice Crystal Dynamics made with Marvel’s Avengers was to have the story told from an outside perspective. The Avengers of this universe are already established heroes, legends amid a festival of fanfare and merchandise. The subjects of enthusiastic fan fiction, which is how the main protagonist of this game, Kamala Khan, is introduced.
Her and her adorable dad are on an Avengers Quinjet, alongside fellow writing competition winners. Given the opportunity to rub shoulders with the desultory heroes themselves on their impressive Helicarrier. Kamala encounters several of the Avengers as a young fangirl, geeking out at collecting comic books to gain entry to the VIP area, after which all hell breaks loose and the Avengers are swiftly dealt a master blow that sees their reputation in tatters, their assets seized by the government and the team itself thrown to the wind.
Marvel’s Avengers is a perfectly enjoyable, if not particularly well assembled, superhero action title with looter-shooter influences. A well written main story will give you ten hours of enjoyment.
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Guest contributor, Dylan Burns makes a welcome entrance:
One might see Tell Me Why (Chapter One) as DONTNOD’s distillation of everything they have learnt.
Sure, there’s DONTNOD’s distinctive sense of place and domestic design, as well as their ability to create the illusion of small town America, but when distilled down to what you actually do in this first chapter, the handful of location changes and flashbacks cannot hide the fact that this is quite a bare-bones offering.
I was impressed by the first Life is Strange and a big fan of the deliberate mundanity of Life is Strange 2, but in Tell Me Why I found myself struggling to get through the languid pacing, boring dialogue and questionable characterisation. Rather than being intrigued, I just wanted the story to hurry up and happen, for the characters to do something other than wander about each location looking at things and remembering the past.
Due to the episodic nature of Tell Me Why, we’ve added Dylan’s review of the following chapters here.
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