Welcome To Elk review - laughter, tears, and lots of beer

The first thing protagonist Frigg does upon arriving on the small Danish island of Elk is attend a party in a pub, a celebration for a long dead member of the community who ironically no one in attendance liked. Death has a way of sneaking its way into the game like that, an ever-present force Elk's inhabitants navigate around, mostly by drinking lots...

11h

Hades review - Of myth and mayhem

I love what Hades is made of. It's made of mythology, of course - Zeus and Nyx and all that other spontaneous, terrifying, pitiable lot who have been lurking in their own form of Early Access for millenia. And it's made of everything the developer Supergiant has learned from making dashing, finely poised action games like Bastion and Transistor - and...

4d

Super Mario 3D All-Stars review - three great games in one lacklustre compilation

I just don't get Nintendo sometimes. If you want a microcosm of the head-scratching conundrum you'll often find at the heart of the company it's here in this, Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Here are two of the greatest games ever made - and Super Mario Sunshine - in a compilation that's in so many ways lacklustre.That moniker Nintendo has gone for with this...

5d

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 review: welcome to the next level

A new generation of Nvidia GeForce graphics cards has finally arrived. The new Ampere line includes three confirmed cards and should eventually swell to a lineup of at least a half-dozen, if past series are anything to go by, but in the here and now we have just one: the RTX 3080. Thankfully, it's a cracker - we already shared some preliminary data...

5d

PES 2021 review: Pro Evo ends the current generation in mid-table

PES 2021 is a funny old game. Not a proper, brand new PES, but a season update, essentially the same game as last year's effort but with up to date lineups and a cheaper launch price of £25. Developer Konami had signalled as much, wisely managing fans' expectations in the same breath it promised to hit the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X hard with a...

5d

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim review - a heady mix of sci-fi, passion and big ideas

Here's an incomplete list of things you will encounter in 13 Sentinels: a talking cat. Time travel. Time travel, but also not really. Androids. Clones. Android clones. Memory-wiping drugs. A robot that looks like Wall-E. An underground UFO. Oh, and of course it's the story of 13 highschoolers getting into giant mechs to fight monsters. To find out...

6d

Spelunky 2 review - the depths beckon

A friend of mine recently told me what it's like to fall off a skateboard in your forties. Listen: it's an event. You remember it. Oof! And you remember what follows. Woe so thick and painful it is almost mineral. Woe that casts a shadow when you breathe it all out. The fall is quick but the recovery takes time. You ease up off the gritty floor, collect...

1w

A Monster's Expedition review - true charm through puzzle perfection

I'm a few hours into A Monster's Expedition now, and I am stuck. I've been stuck lots of times already, of course, because that's the nature of puzzle games - but not this stuck. This one's a killer: I've ended up on an island which looks much simpler than most of the scores of others I've been through, but I'm stuck in a sort of micro one-way system...

2w

Paradise Killer review - dreamy open-world investigation meets cosmic horror

Paradise Killer's breezily cheerful trailer is only telling half the truth. It most certainly is a colourful, sometimes goofy investigatory adventure in the vein of Phoenix Wright, but it's also weird, a dizzyingly high-concept descent into the menace of the unknown, where balmy afternoons and beach-side cocktails co-exist with genuinely disquieting...

2w

Hotshot Racing review - knockabout arcade racing fun

If you've ever enjoyed an arcade racer, I can pretty much guarantee you'll find something to enjoy in Hotshot Racing. Apologies for opening on such a banality, but honestly it's true - and that's partly because there's a little bit of every arcade racer of note in Lucky Mountain Games and Sumo Digital's enjoyable, knockabout medley of all that's great...

2w