I bought this the same day Crimson Desert came out. I played CD for 7.8 hours and played this for 8.5. This game is that bloody good!

I really enjoyed the first 5 hours exploring the first town and the surrounding area, but after that, the cracks started to show and the game quickly became a real chore to play. While some of my initial complaints were addressed in the first patch, having now played this patch, this update was not enough for me to say that this game is now fun.

What was supposed to be this game's saving grace in the combat, turned out to be a poorly designed jankfest. I was hoping it would be much more similar to Dragon's Dogma, but sadly turned out more like The Witcher, which while not particularly difficult, is made artificially difficult due to the jank. The movement, jumping and platforming are all quite similar to the Witcher games, and if you've ever played GTA or RDR2, you'll be familiar with the feeling. With those games, I can at least endure any jank due to how great the stories in those games are, which Crimson Desert is also lacking in anything substantial, with writing and voice acting leaving much to be desired. Although, by the marketing team's own admission, this was never meant to be a story heavy RPG so don't go in expecting that.

The UI and inventory system is still a mess, and the option to manually save is still buried behind a slew of menus. The controls similarly, and across the board, are so out of whack, you can easily load your save accidentally, instead of overwriting it, if you're not paying attention.

One thing I can praise is the performance. I played on the max Cinematic preset in 1440p. Fps was high and stable wherever I was, and the draw distance was insane. The game looks incredible and performs as well as it looks, which is rare in this day and age. Loading times on this preset are ridiculous however, and it takes me almost 3 minutes to load into my save after the initial launch. So you may want to consider whether this preset is worth it for you, even if you have the specs.

I don't recommend Crimson Desert as it's lacking in substance and seems to be designed to just look pretty, whether it be the world or the admittedly cool-looking combat abilities. If you like the mundane tasks in MMOs without the pressure of playing an MMO, this game could be for you.

I got this for £17 from Loaded back in December and I now I feel like I robbed Spiders. Especially given that I was surprised with free DLC as well! My first 8 and a half hours have been nothing short of mind blowing. Fantastic voice acting, interesting companions and combat all harkening back to the golden age of BioWare.

There are multiple ways missions can be resolved and I even accidentally skipped a step in one mission, by being too thorough in my exploration, before I had talked to an NPC. I was still able to talk to them afterwards and get extra dialogue relating to me having already found the item I needed, which I thought was cool.

The start may be a bit slow for some as it’s dialogue heavy, much of which is in the native tongue of Teer Fradee, so reading subtitles is a must. I for one found this to be some fantastic world building. The changes in combat may also put some people off, but even as a fan of the first game, I’m not mad at the new tactical real-time with pause system. I’m playing on the hardest difficulty and found the first area to be a little easy, so if you’re used to tactical RPGs, I recommend jumping right in on the hardest setting.

Despite the noticeable lack of beards, I really love the character creator. It was very easy to make a character that looks great on the CC menu as well as in cutscenes, and I’ve already grabbed some great screenshots!

This game will go under the radar for some, much like the first game did, but if you loved games like Dragon Age, Baldur’s Gate or Star Wars: KOTOR, this game is for you.

Edit: The game is not without it's issues though. As I've played more, I've discovered more and more bugs. Quests that cannot be finished, items disappearing from my inventory, and the worst of all, not being able to talk with any of the companions individually for the first 15 hours of the game. At first I thought that was intentional, albeit poor design, but turns out this is a common bug people are experiencing and I may have missed out on a ton of dialogue. In addition, the majority of fights are pointless, and can, and should be run away from, since the returns are minimal and fights are time-consuming.

DLC was actually good value for money for £10. Really great level design and interesting story. Not enough boss fights for me personally, but I think my build was too broken so few of the fights ended up being fun or challenging, and the loot was pants! This was clearly intended to be played during Act 2, not played with an end game build and weapons, But a great DLC nonetheless.

The elephant in the room that has to be addressed is the soundtrack. While some tracks are similar to the originals with small changes, others have been completely replaced with new ones that don’t quite hit the same.

These original tracks are ingrained into my memory, so hearing something different feels a little strange. But even with these changes, this is not a dealbreaker for me and here’s why:


Rayman, along with Crash Bandicoot, was the first game I ever owned. I received these, and the PS1, as gifts for my 6th birthday. Rayman was a game that was instrumental in forming my love for gaming. I can confidently say it is one of the greatest 2D platformers of all time and it has such a timeless art style that still holds up 30 years later.

The gameplay is just as I remember it. In my short time with it so far, all the muscle memory already kicked in. I remembered where to jump, where to duck, where the prisoners were; I even remembered the notes of every Ting, which thankfully didn’t change with the soundtrack.

After my first session I looked in an old photo album and found the picture of me playing it on my 6th birthday. And yes, I cried a little, before sharing the pic with my mates.

I like the new addition of CRT filters both flat and curved, as well as the borders for a more authentic feel, though I opted to go for the wide screen which also looks great. The new save functions in addition to the original to save options, so no more forgetting to save!

Aside from the soundtrack issue, I have two minor issues, and the first one goes without saying. The slow ass Ubisoft launcher.

My other issue is with the achievements. If you’re not an achievement hunter this won’t apply to you. In order to get 100% you have to complete all 5 versions of the game. I chose the PlayStation version as that’s the one I played as a kid, and I had no intention of touching the others. The game’s hard enough to even complete once let alone 5 times, so I sadly have to pass on hunting achievements for this one.

If you loved the original and can look past the soundtrack, I highly recommend this game, and I usually don’t do that for any Ubisoft game. If you’ve never played it, or maybe were introduced to Rayman with the later games, and love platformers, I still recommend it. It’s still as great as it was 30 years ago and I’m looking forward to grinding this game over the next few weeks!

A hilarious game, of what felt like parody of Murder on the Orient Express, that often had me laughing out loud. Excellently voice-acted and well-written, with beautiful pixel art and a visually pleasing colour palette. There’s also an optional black and white filter for a more noir feel.

You play as three characters throughout, and while I found the first two entertaining, I felt that the 3rd character, was slightly rushed and had less comedic dialogue than the first two and definitely could have been fleshed out a little more. But the first two characters were absolutely brilliant.

My one major gripe, and I get the game is meant to be comical, but some of the item combinations are so ridiculous, that I sometimes wondered how any player would logically come to that conclusion without either randomly trying combinations of everything in their inventory, or looking at a guide.

I had a couple of minor bugs where one NPC became invisible and another sat on a their chair facing the wrong direction.

Overall, I recommend Loco Motive if you want to laugh your socks off while playing a fun, wacky point and click mystery with a memorable cast of both playable characters and NPCs.

Awful. Just really awful. I wanted to replay this gem since it was one of my favourites on PS3, but as the other reviews suggest, the Rockstar launcher ruins the PC experience.

When you launch, you're forced to log in to Rockstar, which, surprisingly, I had no problem with. You receive a pop up about changing resolution before the game starts, only all of the options are greyed out and un-selectable. So I started the game anyways and, as you can guess, resolution was way off.

The game then wouldn't register my mouse cursor or clicks, nor could I use a controller to go to Options as the menus were automatically being scrolled through without inputs. One of the worst ports on PC I've seen, and I've seen some pretty bad ones. Avoid and play on PS3 or an emulator instead if possible.

I avoided The Last of Us II when it originally released on PlayStation due to the controversy that surrounded it, and I continued to avoid it when a Vice article detailing the games supposed problematic politics regarding real world conflicts further put me off. But having been such a big fan of the first game, I finally decided that if the game's narrative themes made me uncomfortable, it was okay because games are art, and art isn't always supposed to make us comfortable. It's supposed to tell us something about the human psyche and I wanted to experience this game at least once.

After finishing the game, The Last of Us II delivered. I feel like that Vice article was clutching at straws with some of its assertions, and while I understand some of the controversy that surrounded the game at launch, much of it was unwarranted or turned out to be outright untrue, and I wonder if some of those people actually played the game. This was truly a brilliantly told story and I'm glad I finally got to play this masterpiece. I now feel incredibly stupid for giving any of the outside noise credence and not playing it sooner.


This was however an experience I still almost never got to have. After the game crashed twice within the first 2 hours, I strongly considered getting a refund, given Nixxes' reputation for awful PC ports, and how poorly the port of the first game performed. Against my better judgement I pushed on and, fortunately, the game only crashed one other time during my 47+ hour playthrough and the game performed ridiculously smooth. For the record, I played this on a 4080, Ryzen 9 5950x, with 64GB of RAM, so I can't comment on how it performs on different systems.

The game does a great job of making you empathise with Ellie and hating Abby who is initially the game's antagonist. I was hesitant to continue playing the game when it transition to Abby's perspective, and I put down the game for a few days. But, when I jumped back in, to my surprise, the game did an equally great job of helping you to empathise with Abby to the point of almost hating even Ellie! You grow to love so many of the characters, some of whom die by the other's hand, and I sobbed like a baby all throughout the final showdown, not knowing who to root for. It was such a rollercoaster of emotions as I was yelling for Ellie "kill her!", but reeling as I came to the realisation that Abby might actually die as I held her head beneath the water. I felt everything Ellie felt in that moment. The crying didn't stop until some time after the credits had finished rolling, which I sat through in its entirety as I processed what I had just experienced. 10/10

This was tough to get through in the best and worst of ways. As a veteran of grounded mode who Platinumed the first game, I thought I was ready to jump straight into the deep end with this one. I was not. I'm not sure if it's that much harder than the first game, or if my age as a gamer is catching up to me, but Grounded can be extremely punishing and genuinely stressful at the best of times. Being too stubborn to turn down the difficulty, I had to take breaks that sometimes lasted weeks to avoid the stress of another session in Grounded Mode, but always found myself coming back. I had to constantly restart from the last checkpoint, as I would always be caught by the first or second enemy on any given encounter. This padded my playtime significantly, and checkpoints being unreliable, and seemingly random, was a cause for much frustration. All that being said, I wouldn't have played it any other way. This feels like the definitive way this game should be played as it adds so much tension to the experience. Conservation of resources is king and stealth is the only viable option. It's incredibly rewarding when you finally beat that boss using every last bit of your resources, or escape an encounter by the skin of your teeth.

One thing this game does great is how it breaks up the up the action and takes you away from the stressful encounters to give you a moment to catch your breath. This gives you a chance to get to know the characters more deeply and understand what motivates them during the action-packed combat/stealth sequences. These moments always gave me a sense of relief and often put a smile on my face, how even in the face of such adversity, these characters could still have a laugh. Though, even through some of these sequences I was on edge, oftentimes for no reason... I guess another thing this game does great is making you expect danger when you least expect it!

They went full Hollywood on this one. You never go full Hollywood when it comes to audio. Balancing is neither speaker or headset friendly, with gunshots, explosions and music cranked up to the max, and dialogue turned down so low, it's barely a whisper. There are volume sliders in the settings, including a "dialogue" slider, but this only affects dialogue during gameplay. Dialogue in cutscenes is handled by a separate "cinematics" slider, but this is an all-encompassing slider that also handles the volume for gunshots, explosions and music in these cutscenes, so there's no way to rebalance cutscenes so dialogue is audible. Subtitles are a must unless you're happy to blow either your speakers or eardrums, or wake up the neighbours during your late night sessions. If not subtitles, at the very least thick walls.

My verdict is that Naughty Dog doesn't miss. As the game is currently on sale, I can't recommend enough. Play the game, enjoy, and thank me later.

Genuinely one of the worst FIFA games I've ever played, and not even worth the 50% off price I waited to pay for it.

The game is shockingly bogged down by even more menus than the previous game and it's a real struggle to find my manager mode save file and load into it since its hidden behind a slew of menus that make little sense due to only having pictures and no description. Then, despite turning off a lot of the optional stuff at the start of my career mode, I still get an ungodly amount of pop ups.

In my first press conference I was asked 3 questions about my previous pre-season game. They were as follows.
1. "Enzo Fernandez completed 15 passes at 96%. Do you think he can do better?"
2. "Cole Palmer completed 15 passes at 94%. Do you think he can do better?"
3. "Enzo Fernandez completed 5 passes at 56%. Do you think he can do better?"

I'm sorry, what? You asked me 3 of the same question, with the last question contradicting the first.

While the gameplay is (mostly) more realistic and much less arcadey, they failed to strike a fun balance between too ridiculous and outright boring. The game just isn't fun and I can only play 2 matches before I get too bored to continue.

I say "mostly realistic" since the biggest disgrace is the removal of the offside rule. I can score goals while being miles offside and the linesman will never raise his flag. I don't see the point in rendering a whole linesman to not have him do his job. In addition, Crossing has been nerfed again, so much so, that every cross will go straight to the opposing GK.

Here's some other issues.
1. Goal replays are terrible. Instead of showing the goal, you get a beautiful top down view of the half way line! Nice.
2. The match intros are marred by an extremely blurry and non-colour graded Google maps image of whatever stadium you're playing in, complete with the Google logo to let you know where they got it from and how little effort they put in to rendering their own intro.
3. And the most disgusting offense, an ACHIEVEMENT FOR BUYING A MICROTRANSACTION!!! which, thank God, only 0.2% of players have. My faith in humanity has been restored.

I haven't even gotten to the point where I even want to play Clubs because I know that's going to have it's own issues, but the single player, as it is, is unacceptable for a £30 50% off price from a billion dollar company. Too late for me to refund but do yourself a favour and just don't buy. Better games out there for £30 and less.

Bethesda was once a darling of the industry. Now they’re up there with EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo and Capcom as one of the shadiest video game companies. Perhaps even worse.

Fallout 4 has been broken for over 18 months since the last update. It’s clear the most recent update wasn’t pushed out to fix what they broke, but rather to break free mods so that they can market their paid mods. At a ridiculous price at that.

What’s even more insane is that Bethesda can’t even get that right, since the creations tab doesn’t even work! If you adamant about throwing away money, you’re better off buying some loot boxes in some EA game because at least there you’ll actually receive the worthless crap that you paid for.