The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is an effective point-and-click adventure game that excels in creating an ominous atmosphere that carries most of the cosmic horror narrative. With a focus on characters and setting, the game only falters in the abruptness of its ending, whose anticlimax avoids some important confrontations.
We play as Thomasina Bateman, a young archeologist who receives a letter from one Leonard Shoulder telling her of a historical site in the rural town of Bewlay, named Hob’s Barrow. However, when she arrives in the isolated village, her contact is nowhere to be found, people avoid talking about the barrow, and some residents even urge her to leave at [...]
“But can it run Crysis” was a humorous question back in 2007, as the game was infamous for testing the power of any PC when it was originally released. The 2021 remaster of Crysis aims to make it a demanding game for current hardware as well, but the more important question should have always been “should it run Crysis” instead: is this game just a piece of demanding software, a glorified tech demo, or is there something more to it that makes it worth our time?
The game opens with a distress message from a female scientist, who claims to have found something strange on an island right before the North Koreans took over her operation. We hear this message while looking at what [...]
A Plague Tale: Requiem is an effective sequel that builds on the foundation of its predecessor to offer a bigger experience, with more elaborate set pieces. Despite the increase in scale, however, the game’s strength still relies on its oppressive atmosphere, which is now successfully linked to the protagonist’s internal journey.
Amicia and her little brother, Hugo, are in the county of Provence, researching his sickness, the so-called “Macula” that connects him with the rat plague. The first minutes are light-hearted, as the siblings play hide-and-seek with their friend Lucas, and Hugo pretends to be a king protecting his kingdom. They want to restart their lives [...]
Bramble: The Mountain King is a great cinematic platformer that presents a dark fairy tale punctuated by some striking imagery. Telling some macabre stories based on Nordic folklore, the game only falters when it makes these tales a bit disconnected from the protagonist’s journey.
The story begins when a boy named Olle wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night to find his older sister, Lillemor, gone. Olle decides to venture into the woods in search of her, but they both end up falling down a hill right into a world of fantasy full of wonderful creatures and terrifying monsters, which kidnap Lillemor.
The narrative is framed as a fairy tale, told by a female [...]
Marvel’s Spider-Man is a competent if uninspired take on the famous superhero: borrowing its overall structure from the modern open-world design, Insomniac’s game excels when it comes to traversal and movement but offers a by-the-books story, some questionable stealth sections, and a combat system that heavily impresses at first, but may eventually overstay its welcome.
The game’s first right decision is to present Peter Parker as an already experienced Spider-Man, as there’s no need to cover tiresome ground and show his origin story yet again. So, when the game opens, Peter has already made a friend in the police, Yuri Watanabe, shares a troubled history with Mary Jane, and [...]
Originally released on the Gamecube, Pikmin is an inventive real-time strategy game that exudes charm and purpose in its design: it’s a meticulously crafted experience that boasts great art direction and offers a unique take on the genre.
We play as Olimar, a space explorer who crash-lands on a strange planet after colliding with a meteor. The air is toxic and his life-support system has only 30 days of energy left, which gives him a narrow timeframe to rebuild his ship, called the Dolphin, and leave. Luckily, he soon finds some strange plant-like creatures that start to follow him around and obey his commands – with the help of these pikmin, Olimar must find the missing parts [...]