Reviews

Venus: Improbable Dream is not the first visual novel that you’d recommend to a newbie. It doesn’t meet the reader halfway by giving them things to do, like choices or branching endings. It doesn’t even get out of first gear. But we suspect that Venus: Improbable Dream will work as a deep cut, a visual novel for lovers of the genre, who want a wholesome, heartwarming tale with characters they can believe in.

If you’re after a zen, chillout game of Carmageddon then maybe Zombie Hill Racing will work for you. For us, it was a bit of an uphill slog.

In the end, our sweeping generalisation of 79p games was correct. Monster Blocks: Get 9 Puzzle doesn’t come with achievements, and it’s colourful but with no substance, like a Smartie with the chocolate sucked out.

If you can find four friends, all willing to purchase Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition, who would rather not pop round to play it in person, then we encourage you to sink your fangs in. For anyone else, it’s one to avoid, or one to buy as the board game instead.

Mr. Driller DrillLand on Xbox is an enormous release, one which revamps a true classic that is worth playing even today. The core Mr. Driller gameplay is at its very best here, and is situated in an experience which offers a ton of gameplay variety and extra content. To top it off, the presentation alone will win you over with its charm and fabulous soundtrack.  

Crazy Gravity on Xbox has a neat feature in flipping gravity around, but even with this, it doesn’t necessarily rewrite the 2D platformer book. It is fun for the hour or so it will take you to complete the levels, and whilst some are more interesting than others, you won’t be rushing back to play them again.

Okinawa Rush on Xbox is a welcome retro style romp, one which features an enthralling fighting system set within a challenging action platformer adventure. Some of its many ideas may occasionally clash with each other, but the experience as a whole is far greater than the sum of its various moving parts. 

The Last Stand: Aftermath is a fantastic roguelike zombie shooter. It’ll make you think, in detail, about every decision, if only as planning is such a key part of the experience. Aesthetically it’s a little rough around the edges, the music is sub par and it’s not scary, but everything else is such a joy that you’ll genuinely forget about the bits that don’t work. 

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is powered by a brilliant story and the chance to take in some superb cases. The ability to get accusations wrong and to choose whether to save or condemn is a solid touch that allows the game to deliver a great dynamic. There are a ton of hours included here too, with a huge main story and loads of side quests to take in. 

Despite some grand promises of strategic and challenging gameplay, Immortus Temporus instead offers an inconsistent experience which isn’t all that puzzling after all.

Unpacking is a very original title, and one that is a lot more than virtually unpacking boxes. The ebbs and flows of the story will make you want to see it through to the end, even when the lines between unpacking items and Unpacking (the game) start to blur.

Play it once without the cheats, then flick a few on and go on a tour of Gynoug’s hellish spaces.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a better-looking or more visually original roguelike than Tunche. It would be all too easy to find one that’s more enjoyable, though.

We were a little caught out by how smurfing playable The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf is. So, get out the blue make-up and white gloves and play this one cooperatively. You won’t smurfing regret it.

The Riftbreaker does enough in a new and interesting way to be worth your time. With four biomes to go at, and a survival mode to try out (although you’ll probably want to stay away from the ultra hard difficulty!), there’s a lot of content to go at. The campaign is a decent length too. All in all, if you want something a bit different to the norm, The Riftbreaker might just be it.