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Games of the week


By Features Reporter

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We. The Revolution. Picture: Handout/PA
We. The Revolution. Picture: Handout/PA

We. The Revolution

Platform: PC, Switch

Genre: Strategy

Price: £17.99

Lose your head in a beguiling courtroom adventure

You may be an alcoholic gambler with a gavel, but in We. The Revolution no judge should make hasty decisions. As Alexis Fidele, you are part of the French Revolutionary Tribunal, tasked with delivering 18th-century justice to a Paris in turmoil. Through a series of cases you'll condemn or acquit after weighing up evidence, testimony (unlocked through a slightly awkward mini-game) and the consequences to your reputation with Parisian classes and factions, including your own family. The lack of touchscreen is disappointing, as it would improve the cluttered interface, and the pace is intentionally slow and solemn. But the scope of your adventure beyond the courtroom, from political intrigue to commanding battles, makes We. The Revolution a stirring drama.

Skip to the end: A complex and engaging tale that demands patience.

Score: 8/10

Radiation City. Picture: Handout/PA
Radiation City. Picture: Handout/PA

Radiation City

Platform: Switch

Genre: Shooter

Price: £17.99

Nuclear waste

As a mobile game, Radiation City was passable – an open world zombie-hunt around the Chernobyl exclusion zone with a small amount of throwaway appeal. It was also cheap. But on Switch, Radiation City is an expensive mess, full of disorientating scenery pop-up, bland copy-and-paste environments, terrifically awful animation and a bucket load of bugs. There's not much effort invested in laying out the plot, with your blank canvas character surviving a plane crash close to the abandoned city of Pripyat and left to follow a series of atmosphere-breaking instructions ("Find water source", "Find can opener"), only learning more about why you ended up there through a mediocre series of notes you discover. Radiation City should be given a wide berth.

Skip to the end: A flat, charmless outing into a joyless wasteland.

Score: 2/10

The Sinking City. Picture: Handout/PA
The Sinking City. Picture: Handout/PA

The Sinking City

Platform: PC, Xbox One, PS4

Genre: Adventure

Price: £29.99

Waterlogged

The Sinking City creates an enticingly flood-bound urban sprawl, full of suitably moody environments. But something is missing. In this Lovecraft-inspired 1920s yarn of sanity-breaking darkness, there's an awful lot of fight but not very much in the way of heart. And while The Sinking City might spin its sinister story in a larger, more open and free-roaming location, it remains inferior to a more linear game drawing from the same lore, last year's Call of Cthulhu. There's none of that game's rich atmosphere, as wooden animation and your character's crude connection with his surroundings spoil any sense of immersion. This is a soggy disappointment.

Skip to the end: A damp squib compared to Call of Cthulhu's atmospheric quality.

Score: 6/10

Killing Floor: Double Feature. Picture: Handout/PA
Killing Floor: Double Feature. Picture: Handout/PA

Killing Floor: Double Feature

Platform: PS4

Genre: Shooter

Price: £34.99

Double whammy

More a repackage than a new release, Killing Floor: Double Feature provides an explosive point of entry to the none-more-gruesome shooter series. It combines Killing Floor 2 with an enhanced version of the PSVR instalment, Killing Floor: Incursion, with a new "Control Theatre" mechanic that's supposed to allow freer movement within VR space without the fallout of motion sickness. It's only partially successful, and more sensitive gamers will still get woozy, but usefully it is possible to switch quickly back to the safer teleport moving method without exiting the game – so it might be possible to ease yourself onto the free movement option. If you can stomach the gore and the VR, then Killing Floor is worth a blast.

Skip to the end: Two updated, action-packed games for the price of one.

Score: 7/10


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