Football Manager can often be a difficult series to get a handle on. Most years, you’re looking at having to get 100 hours deep before really understanding the minute changes gently thrumming under the hood that make the game tick. Not so with Football Manager 2019. The differences are apparent …
Read More »FIFA 19 review: “Champions League stylings mean casuals will love it while cynics go studs-in on its kneecaps”
The age-old FIFA vs PES argument has become a touch outmoded. It may serve some purpose for social media confirmation bias: the diehard Konami fan insisting PES’s player faces are better, the 20-year FIFA veteran evangelising Luton Town’s away strip (which, admittedly, is lovely). But the entire landscape has become …
Read More »Westworld season 2 episode 8 review: “An hour of beautiful, painful storytelling”
After a couple of fairly lacklustre episodes, Westworld season 2 (opens in new tab) returns to first season form with a beautifully-told story about a character – and a people – which have been woefully underused so far. Kiksuya mostly ignores the central cast and the main storyline to focus …
Read More »Detroit: Become Human review: “An interactive story capable of provoking genuine, honest, and varied emotions from its players”
Detroit: Become Human made me cry a little. Pretty sure that’s a first for a video game. This alone makes it a unique experience, and one I’d enthusiastically recommend to anyone with a PS4 and an interest in single-player games. Ok, it’s unlikely every plot line in the game will …
Read More »On Chesil Beach review: “A decent adaptation of McEwans excellent novella”
How to adapt Ian McEwan’s 2007 novella, an intimate, claustrophobic work detailing a young couple’s awkward attempt to consummate their marriage in a small hotel on the Dorset seashore? Is it even possible to make a film from a setting so contained, from prose so forensic in its chronicling of …
Read More »Avengers: Infinity War spoiler-free review: “Bold, ballsy, satisfying, and dramatic”
“So, this is it?” says Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in the trailer for Avengers: Infinity War. “It’s all been building to this.” He’s talking about the approaching menace of Titan warlord Thanos, a threat so great it’ll take the might of all the assembled Avengers (and then some) to …
Read More »Game of Thrones S7.02 review: “Stormborn represents GoT at its brilliant best – its showmanship is second to none”
Like you, I was drifting pleasantly towards the end of Game of Thrones season 7 (opens in new tab), episode 2. Stormborn was, as it was with GoT episode 1 (opens in new tab), a lovely example of a powerful show flexing its muscles a little; building towards the epic …
Read More »Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age review: “The black sheep of the Final Fantasy franchise gets the second chance it deserves”
Everyone deserves a second chance, and there’s no game more worthy of another go in the court of public opinion than Final Fantasy 12. The late PS2 game found itself caught between two audiences: one that embraced the wild departures in combat and storytelling, and the other that couldn’t stand …
Read More »Little Nightmares review: “Studio Ghiblis Spirited Away, if Spirited Away was grotesque and horrifying”
You are what you eat. If there is a theme running throughout Tarsier Studios’ Little Nightmares, this is it. The stealth-heavy horror game takes the familiar adage and spins something new, something monstrous, something ugly out of it. And if you’re the type to lean forward to hear a ghost …
Read More »Mass Effect: Andromeda review: “Not a disaster, but definitely not the fresh start this series needed”
Andromeda should have been a smart new chapter for the Mass Effect series. As far as the story goes, it is. 634 years since setting off into deep space, a colony of ships from the Milky Way – representing most of the major species from our galaxy – arrives in …
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