Reviews
We publish when the game is finished, not when the embargo lifts. Every score lists hours played and the platform we played on. Here is what each number means.
Ashfall Protocol
A survival sim about maintenance, where every repair spends oxygen somebody else was breathing. The systems are legible enough to plan around and mean enough to punish a bad plan, and the writing never reaches for a twist it hasn't earned.
Neon Sepulchre
A hand-drawn descent through a flooded arcology with the best lighting work of the year. The combat peaks early, and the middle third repeats three encounters until the ending finally remembers what the game was about.
Drift Kings: Meridian
Arcade racing that treats grip as a conversation rather than a stat. The career mode is thin, but the handling model is the most confident thing we've driven since the Ridge era.
Hollow Signal
An extraction shooter with a genuinely eerie map and a progression system that cancels it out. Every run funnels into the same three loadouts, and the servers desynced in four of our nine sessions.
Vault of Nine Kings
A tactics game that gives you fewer units than you want and more time than you expect. Losing a captain rewrites the campaign instead of ending it, which makes defeat something you read rather than reload.