Smug Owls Review

The Persona series has been molded from RPG into many, many other genres, especially Persona 5. Dungeon crawling, dancing, though sadly no brawling; and now, with Persona 5 Tactica, it’s time for some turn-based tactics.

Making a good puzzle game is hard. After all, solving a puzzle is an incredibly subjective pursuit; for every person who might find a specific brain-tickler a doddle, there could be a dozen others who end up bashing their bonce against the monitor trying to solve it. Bearing that developmental challenge in mind, it’s quite the feat indeed that Croteam has been able to craft one of the most satisfying, challenging, accessible, and ultimately doable puzzle games Ive had the pleasure to play. I’m no puzzling expert – heck, Sudoku remains a mystery to me – but Talos Principle 2 gripped me and held my attention from beginning to end.

The concept for Dredge sells the game in just one line, “Fishing, but by H.P. Lovecraft”, an intriguing mash up that turned out to be just as good as it sounds and scored 8/10 in my review. The new DLC pack The Pale Reach is a bite-sized morsel of more of the same, not adding anything new to the game but giving you further opportunity to explore the unsettling world of demonic eyes and fishing nets.

After a little over two months, many have developed a love-hate relationship with one of the biggest titles for 2023. And, as with many blockbuster games, much praise and criticism has been levelled at Bethesda’s Starfield video game. Before its release and reviews, the hype and eagerness of fans to get their hands on the game was palpable.

The Like a Dragon series loves its comforts. Set in between Yakuza 6 and the impending 2024 game Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name doesn’t come out of the gates and uppercut the player with an all-out original experience. Instead, it tides everyone over until the next release with familiarity. Where it does shine, though, is in the same department as always: The story.

Who had a Robin Hood action-adventure video game on their 2023 bingo card? Well, Gangs of Sherwood brings the infamous outlaw and his band of merry allies to the medium, promising a barrel of action-packed combat and co-op good times. Unfortunately, the results are mixed to say the least, showcasing how the original delay in the game’s release wasn’t enough time to turn this from meh to magic.

I wasn't expecting to hook me like it did, but Hibernian Workshop has combined nearly all the most entertaining aspects of games like ,, and in such a way that it has done something unthinkable in 2023 — it's gotten me interested in roguelikes again. It's not a perfect game, but with an undeniably addictive gameplay loop, great characters, and the addition of local 2-player co-op, it's impossible to call anything less than a great time.

I’m not terribly familiar with the Steamworld games, including SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Heist. I tried a bit of Dig, and it didn’t click with me. However, I am very familiar with city builders, so the latest game, SteamWorld Build, still got me excited.

Gangs of Sherwood is a game that must have been made 20 years ago, but then somehow got released in 2023 using some kind of magic that transformed it with current graphical technology. It’s important to note that I mean this as a compliment, not a derision of the game. It just has me feeling nostalgic for the Xbox 360 era of co-op games when I had a wealth of friends who also had too much spare time to play with.

We review St Patrick, a trick taking game published by Matagot. In St Patrick, players are trying not to take damage from snakes as they collect tricks.

I play a lot of roguelikes – some would say an unhealthy amount of them – thanks to the ability to jump in for a 20 minute run helping to cut into the small gaps in my chaotic life. Because of this, it’s not very often I play a roguelike that actually feels fresh. That’s exactly what Backpack Hero is though, and it’s delightful.

The words impossible port, punching above its weight, and even black magic are thrown around often when it comes to games on diminutive hardware. With Hogwarts Legacy, now launching on the Nintendo’s Switch, it could be another time to wheel out those tropes… but not quite. Hogwarts Legacy is not a miracle port, despite squeezing onto the Switch (quite literally, with a 7.4GB install size compared to 22.1GB on the Xbox One version). It manages to be better than feared, yet in places still rough as expected.