Very well put together Metroidvania with exceptional quality of life features making it very smooth to play. Ubisoft have clearly taken inspiration from gems of the genre such as Hollow Knight and Ori (particuarly Will of the Wisps).

First impressions aren't great, with basic movement abilities, dull character work and a nothing-burger of a storyline. The title soon picks up speed though, with each new unlock offering interesting usage in both traversal and combat.

The map is large and full of optional platforming challenges and simple puzzles. Except for one late game area featuring a naval battle frozen in time, there is not much originality to the locations you'll be jumping around. The expected temples and forests give way to sewers and mountains respectively. Each area would have benefitted from a few more traversal or combat tweaks specific to the locale.

It is refreshing seeing AAA studios tackling a genre that has been predominantly served by the indie scene in recent years. I hope both Ubisoft, with Lost Crown, and Nintendo, with Metroid Dread, see enough success to greenlight sequels.

A nature documentary visual novel with beautiful art and music that evokes a keen sense of place, firmly submerging you in its aquatic alien world. Following a new-born whale over the course of it's childhood years, the narrative is both touching and informative. The world building here is excellent, offering just enough intricacies and tangential information without overwhelming or distracting from the core tale.

The entire run-time is about an hour, and crazily it's also free, so I would strongly recommend anyone gives it a try. One of the most engrossing pieces of video game world-building I've experienced, and certainly the most I've connected with a visual novel. I can't wait to see our whale calf mature into adulthood in Part 2.

A lost platformer from the original Gameboy with a focus on collectables and secrets. Initially I found this to be great, playing somewhere between Donkey Kong Country and Wario Land - however as time went on I found myself souring to both the weirdly incoherent world design and the core platforming. A large part of this was due to the literal framing of the action - the game feels far too zoomed-in for the type of game this is - meaning complex jumps are harder than they need to be and collectables are obscured just because you can't see that at the bottom of a hole there is a ledge.

I finished the main set of levels, and a large chunk of the secret content, but the bulk of this game is hidden behind layers that the majority of players, myself included, wont ever experience. This is a bit of a shame, as I suspect the more interesting levels are obscured in this way, but ultimately the core gameplay was not strong enough for me to put in the required effort to find out.

FFXVI is a bizarre game. Never has my opinion of a title so erratically fluctuated throughout its runtime.

The plot is generic FF fare, with magic users rebelling against God, given a very clear Game Of Thrones spin. After the opening act, I lost all interest in the key players of Clive, Joshua and Jill who are quite lacking in personality. Cid has a bit more intention, but overall the characterisation fundamentally fails.

Combat is action-heavy and plays like a simplified Devil May Cry rather than the usual turn based fare. Battling remains fun throughout, if even by the end you realise its mostly just dodging while waiting on cooldowns.

The key boss battles are the epic highlights of this game, each taking upwards of two hours to play through, showcasing all the best parts of the game. The sheer spectacle of these sequences is best-in-class and are some of my favourite boss battles in the genre. There are a few gameplay changes during these fights, but mostly they stick to the standard combat system. The aesthetics here step up, with the visuals and soundtrack coming together in a phenomenal way. The epic orchestral versions of FF themes in addition to unexpected music genre changes make for some wonderful moments.

For every insane, bombastic, over the top, anime-inspired boss fight there are ten dull, pointless fetch quests. For every epic cutscene there are ten repetitive, slow paced, monotonous conversations with lifeless NPCs. This game may have the worst pacing of any AAA title I've played. Yet despite this all, I enjoyed my time with Clive and crew. However, If the game had just been a boss rush without all the pretend-RPG-trappings, I would have enjoyed it a fair bit more.