Well Played

• PS5
• 8 / 10
• Australie

The Alters is an ambitious survive-‘em-up that takes what 11 bit Studios knows and reaches for the stars. It’s largely a successful expansion of the studio’s previously conceived ideas and mechanics, with an enjoyable narrative shaped by your choices and an overall sense of desperation punctuated with quirky humour and oddball characters. Getting to know your Alters and the other characters and corporations at the heart of this disastrous space mission is a profound and engaging experience that is easily recommended to anyone who enjoys a little bit of stressful resource management. Some frustrations in the pace and navigation and lack of polish in the dialogue only slightly mar what is otherwise a stellar journey into the unknown, and while it probably won’t sit with me as long as TWOM, my time with Jan Dolski’s multitudes did make me ponder the nature of choice and consequence. Also, if you’re listening, I’m sorry Jan Technician. You were my first Alter and I did you wrong, hopefully I did enough to earn your forgiveness.

• PS5
• 8 / 10
• Australie

Taken as intended, Elden Ring Nightreign is a thrilling slice of contemporary multiplayer action. It’s not entirely bereft of fresh juice, and gives me immense hope for The Duskbloods as a more fully realised push into genre experiment. But it’s also the first time I’ve witnessed FromSoftware craft something so blatantly uninterested in its own artistic merits or potential. A studio that has reached such heights through its unyielding commitment to weaving together narrative and systems, theme and formalism, now bent to breaking point for the sake of another of these games on the market. Gameplay is king here, artists made toymakers in its court.

• SWITCH
• 7 / 10
• Australie

Despite the game’s issues, many of which I haven’t the space to detail, I could not help but keep playing. Although it feels like Guardians of Azuma would have benefited from a bit more development time, there was enough satisfaction and enjoyment in the steady cadence of explore-build-socialise-rinse-repeat that I simply didn’t want it to end. In good news for anyone sharing these sentiments, to a certain extent it doesn’t end; you can continue to explore, expand your villages, and develop your relationships in the post-game. The main gameplay components fit together like jigsaw pieces, and, if you can look past the issues, on the whole it’s a bit of an unpolished gem – multifaceted, perhaps a little scratched up, but ultimately with some value under those surface imperfections.

• PS5
• 8 / 10
• Australie

This world that MoonHood has crafted captures the way those darkly comic stop-motion pieces invite us to a curious and frankly frightening place beyond reckoning, and ask us to simply accept what we’re seeing with little context or history. It’s art that has negative space, and it’s in that negative space that the imagination plays. We’re invited to observe strange rituals and customs, to break bread with the grotesque and the macabre, and to live by the light out of respect for the dark.

• PC
• 9.5 / 10
• Australie

DOOM: The Dark Ages feels almost entirely made from my dreams. A slightly more grounded shooting experience, with an emphasis on well executed timing and shooting massive demons with your even more massive guns – it’s a hit. My only real point of concern is the stark truth that the game is banking heavily on people engaging with it from a completionist perspective, given the lack of any co-op or multiplayer option. It almost feels like DOOM: The Dark Ages has slid a little too far into the past, emerging as a 16 hour story experience and nothing more. I know when I finished my initial playthrough, I marvelled at how I had managed to scrape by with 90-100% completion on most chapters – so there are still some secrets left for me to explore, but man, what if I had achieved 100%? It would feel like a punch in the gut. I know there is some DLC coming, described as a ‘campaign’ DLC which is neat – but man, if ever there was a DOOM for co-op, it was this one.

• PC
• 6.5 / 10
• Australie

Racing after an armed robber, crashing through road signs and dodging civilians, only to jump out of your patrol car, take cover behind your vehicle and engage in a firefight with the crazed assailant is as fun in The Precinct as it sounds. Unfortunately, once they’re in cuffs, the monotony of processing the soon-to-be prisoner drags the experience down. Combined with a shallow story told in an uneven way, the repetitive gameplay loop tarnishes the badge and gives the boys in blue a bad wrap.

• PS5
• 8 / 10
• Australie

Revenge of the Savage Planet already looked to end on a pitch-perfect note, rewarding the time and effort I’d put into erecting an entire outpost – inclusive of my own customised living quarters and several small zoos – with utter abandonment. But then it managed an even greater late-game twist. One that’s inward-looking, AI-critical and ends on a credits song about shitting and pissing on company time. It’s exactly as dumb and brilliant as that sounds.

• PC
• 9.5 / 10
• Australie

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the kind of game that, if you can go in as blind as possible, you’ll be truly rewarded. Every moment feels meticulously designed, more so than just the intricate combat systems. Every cut scene has meaning, building blocks that form complex character relationships without the need to state the obvious. The world building of Clair Obscur is second to none, the journey never failing to capture the imagination as the hours tick by. And once the mysterious threads begin to take shape, it feels fresh and rewarding, the little moments holding greater significance across the journey once the origins are laid bare. It’s a journey I will long remember, and one that the rest of the industry should learn from; do not be afraid to take chances.

• PC
• 5 / 10
• Australie

The ramshackle world that Zoe is trying to save feels a great deal like a metaphor for the game itself. What we have here is a game that, despite glimpses of interesting ideas, ultimately feels visually over-polished and underdeveloped. I see the concept of what Steel Seed aspired to be, and I desperately wish it had hit that mark –the experience on offer is uniquely impressive from a conceptual standpoint, but the execution of it all just asks too much of my patience to vibe with it properly.

• PC
• PS5
• 10 / 10
• Australie

This is a game that hands you a hammer in the first thirty seconds, then introduces new and exciting nails for the next ten hours. A simple analogy, sure, but it works as beautifully as the game itself. Bionic Bay is one of those rare experiences that has such confidence in itself that it doesn’t need to muddy the water with bloat and uncertainty – it is precisely what it is, and what it is is excellent. Take a mystifying workplace accident, a rock solid visual identity and a hefty industrial soundscape, throw them together and serve on a bed of platforming mechanics that just refuses to quit.

• XSX/S
• 8.5 / 10
• Australie

To call South of Midnight a ‘perfect’ Game Pass title would be disrespectful because the reality is that our industry has become obsessed with bloated experiences, and it’s led us to believe that anything less isn’t worth paying for – at least at full price. The truth though, is that we need more creatives being just that, and South of Midnight is part of Xbox’s supposed plans to let its developers cook. We just have to hope that the kitchen doesn’t close when service is over, because we need developers like Compulsion Games to make games like South of Midnight – shorter experiences that tell new and exciting stories set in immersive worlds, even if the gameplay feels familiar, because nothing beats a good story.

• SWITCH
• 9 / 10
• Australie

• PS5
• 8.5 / 10
• Australie

After the refreshingly smaller and more focused Assassin’s Creed Mirage, I’m hoping fans of the franchise are as ready as I was to get back into an unnecessarily big, action-packed RPG (is this technically a JRPG??) entry, because Shadows is easily the best so far. The cost of a slightly erratic throughline to the fiction is a small price to pay for a world that’s so rich, explorable, dripping in history and a reverence for the subject matter, and one that offers two distinct gameplay experiences within the AC paradigm. It does need to be said that this kitchen-sink approach is exactly the kind of unsustainable game design that’s destroying AAA space from the inside, as evidenced by this game’s tumultuous development and release cycle, so hopefully the next game is another smaller-scoped project. But this one’s come out pretty damned good in the end.

• PS5
• 5.5 / 10
• Australie

There’s a possibility that Tape 2 will swing much harder than 1, but it’s hard to imagine a satisfying continuation based on the established story so far. A languid character drama without characters, Don’t Nod can’t articulate or realise a take on its new world and systems. Despite moving its release date to avoid an uncomfortable collision with the latest Life is Strange, both Bloom & Rage and Double Exposure have ended up occupying the same space. Fumbling efforts to return to a time that perhaps never existed by capitulating to inelegant nostalgia and the numbing comfort of the known. Two games stuck on the wrong side of the camera lens.

• PS5
• 8.5 / 10
• Australie

I feel like I’m repeating myself each year at this point, but the moment-to-moment gameplay in 2K25 is the best the series has ever seen. A packed roster of gorgeously animated wrestlers can be used across a suite of varied and enjoyable match types and modes that give new and returning players a range of options. The changes made to returning modes like Showcase and MyGM mostly improve the package, and the existing systems continue to shine. However, despite The Island being an addition to the product that can (and should) be ignored, it’s an invasive shift towards monetisation that this series has largely managed to avoid up until now, and it’s a move that fans of the series should keep a wary eye on.

• PS5
• 6 / 10
• Australie

Toward the end of Wanderstop, a rather brash character returns to the grove and asks Alta for a uniquely annoying cup of tea. This moment follows several narrative revelations, Alta and Boro having reached a point where they at least understand not everything can be fixed with a cup of tea but it might be worth still trying anyway. Alta, barely coping with this new way of life, asks Boro what she should do in these final days at the Wanderstop, to which he characteristically replies whatever she feels like; the point of this moment in time being that there is often no should do, simply what you wish to do for yourself. Looking over the extensive ingredients required for that last cup of tea, I finally took Boro’s words to heart. Wanderstop had achieved its lofty goals in perhaps the most abstracted way possible as I simply put the controller down and called my partner to listen to inane details about his day while the game uninstalled and I moved on with my life. I’d tell you I made a cuppa too, but that would be a lie.

• PS5
• 7.5 / 10
• Australie

Much of Carmen Sandiego feels like the past reborn, and in a good way. Kids will find an important learning tool at their fingertips, and the more hours played helps to fill out their globe of important information across every location visited. I won’t pretend I found it as engaging, but there’s value and importance here that cannot be understated. Especially for an audience that only has cheap IP party games, Sonic or Nintendo to choose from. We need more edutainment, in a world where the internet is full of baloney, and Carmen Sandiego is a good place to start.

• PS5
• 8 / 10
• Australie

I feel like we’re at a point now where “that’s just how the series goes” is wearing thin as an excuse for the more disappointing parts of a Like a Dragon release. And yet, I can’t help but lap it up every time. Slapping a pirate hat on the Best Boy, dropping him in the waters of the last game and calling it a day might not be moving the needle forward in any meaningful way, but god damn does it work. I think that if there’s a future in LaD, the next entry is going to have to really turn a corner, but for now, you can peg my leg and call me cap’n because I’m headed back out to sea.