Crimson Desert is big. So big, it turns out, that this open world game requires not one but three loading screens. The first is a simple bar loading shaders and the like; the second whisks you away to a blocky realm with a twinkling star sitting on its horizon, a strange and tantalising lead-up for a game that bills itself primarily as a high-fantasy action romp. The third sees the gruff, Scottish-accented hero Kliff walking along a kind of geometric gangwalk towards a door of celestial white light. Kliff’s destination is ostensibly the game world, Pywel, yet his entry into it is framed as something more profound – like stepping into heaven. Read more

At the risk of skipping to the conclusion, John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is fine with a capital F. If you’re looking for a cooperative shooter to fill a weekend for yourself and up to three mates, Saber Interactive’s latest zombie blaster provides this capably and at a sensible price for a game of its scope. It’s silly, messy, disposable fun that won’t challenge or inspire you in any great way, but likely won’t do much to offend you either. Read more

Pokémon has always excelled at the strange spin-off. This isn’t to say they’re always good (looking at you PokéPark games), but they’re always guaranteed to make you think, ‘What? Really?’ From watching TV with Pikachu, a Nobunaga’s Ambition crossover, and Pokémon Project Studio (which I’m sure we all hold dear to our hearts), I do feel like I should be immune to Pokémon spin-off bizarreness by now. And yet, the announcement of Pokémon Pokopia still caught me off guard. Read more

Here’s a question: what is Resident Evil? For some, weaned on the series’ earliest entries, it’s campy survival horror – staccato gunplay punctuating smothering scares; for others, who joined the series with Resident Evil 4 and beyond, it’s perhaps closer to action. And there’s still a third group, who, since Resident Evil 7 redefined the series yet again, might be expecting something like horror in its purest form. 30 years on, Resident Evil is a series with so many identities, so many histories, that trying to resolve them all is a problem Capcom has struggled with time and again. But with Resident Evil Requiem, it feels like it’s finally found a way to address that tension: don’t fight it, embrace it all. Read more

Boy am I glad to see Styx again. Not because I felt any great yearning to return to the murky, Temu-Warhammer dark fantasy setting of long-forgotten RPG Of Orcs and Men, you understand. But because Blades of Greed represents an ever dwindling chunk of ore from that once rich seam of B-tier games that are just bloody good at what they do. The zenith of the “shorter games with worse graphics” category that people on Bluesky claim to want (and rarely seem to actively seek out, alas). Read more