Recent reviews by Arconic

Tense, atmospheric, unsettling and gorgeous to look at. Every inch of the oil rig evokes a real time and place. The effort that has gone into making the rig feel real and the crew a real group of individuals is felt throughout.

Would recommend this to fans of Alien: Isolation, The Thing, Underwater, or Eldritch Horror.

As someone who nope's out of a lot of horror, this game, thankfully, fell on the right side for me, putting storytelling and atmosphere above jump-scares or tests of skill to overcome the threats throughout. The story setting makes it accessible for everyone who wants to experience the adventure and I would gladly recommend it to my less game-literate friends as well.

A short and compelling thriller for anyone who enjoys getting immersed in narrative-heavy titles. While limited on player choices, it make up for it with tight voice acting and incredible visuals. Definitely one for players who enjoy this genre of game, a masterclass in setting and building tone, with genuinely powerful and tense moments throughout.

Tight, fast, and endlessly replayable. For such a simple game, there is a lot of depth and experimentation to be had. The monetisation isn't prohibitive, and the onboarding is nice for new players. If you're looking to try out a fun card-battling game with a welcoming difficulty curve, Marvel Snap is definitely worth your time.

Great fun, and my first real forray into management games before. The production quality is through the roof and captures the tone of the sport very well.
There's enough to feel like you're managing all aspects of the team, from which facility to build, to designing the parts needed, up to telling drivers to push in the next stint to get into clear air.

The more I play, the longer my feature wish-list is becoming though, and hopefully this is the first of a successful series of titles, because this is a great foundation to build on and a really enjoyable experience. I think you could burnout on it playing it all the time, so if you're a hardcore fan, I might recommend playing it in small bursts rather than trying to do the whole championship in one go, as the experience starts to bleed into each other race after race.

Full of nice little touches and enough control over events to feel like you're really living your Christian Horner or Toto Wolff life while the comentary and flair of the presentation feels like you're watching on race-day too.

A riot of an adventure from start to finish, this game really takes the core essence of the dysfunctional space superteam and delivers a fantastic cinematic experience. Full of great dialogue, compelling combat and an impressive playtime, it's well worth checking out and marks iteself alongside Spider-Man as one of the high watermark Marvel game adaptations.

Only played the tutorial and put my skills to the test in a couple of locks but I'm already charmed. It's a great concept and simply presented in a straightforward and logical way. I can see myself returning again and again to this game, testing my skills and perfecting them. I hope there are more locks added, only because I just want to keep learning and noodling. Once you understand what is happening, it's strangely addictive to keep playing and fall into the world of safecracking.

The Aliens: Colonial Marines of the Terminator franchise. Absolutely nails the aesthetic of the first two Terminator films, but is missing their soul and voice. This is a straight up shooter that wants to recapture "those moments" from the flash-forwards but doesn't really have much to do once it has achieved that.

The gameplay is largely run and gun, despite attempts at stealth mechanics you are spotted too easily, or you are able to handle every fight anyway that you always just revert back to shooting your way through every problem anyway without much drama. The RPG-lite skill upgrades are just a simple content gating system, rather than allowing you any differing strategies or 'character builds'. Likewise the looting system is largely superficial. You end up gathering items and salvage so much that 'crafting' anything you are missing is pointless. I don't think I used, let alone crafted, any bombs, tripwires or grenades because they were either never needed (guns were always powerful enough to get the job done head-on) or the throw arc was too terrible to be reliably used. Either way, you end up filling your inventory with trash and just make ammo and health packs out of it, for the most part.

By mid-way through the game you are cutting your way through waves of Terminators that they lose any kind of threat, much like how Cameron's 'Aliens' made the Xenomorph into a swarm to be cut down in the hundreds, rather than a single, relentless pursuer.

I don't know what I expected going in; the fan feedback was positive so I was interested in giving it a go, but on the whole it felt like it was mostly concerned with being "the game of the flashback sections" than actually feeling like a worthy holder of the IP. There are some Metro-style survivor storylines you can engage with as a dialogue-tree between missions that were largely heartfealt and often struck up a surprisingly humanising side to the game, that echoed the contemplative scenes with Sarah Connor in the first two films. They are often well written, but since more than one leads to an awkward-as-hell sex scene, it feels like the design team had maybe too many ideas and the project lacked a focus to know when to stop adding and start stripping back.

Overall, this is definitely a game for Terminator fans, but unfortunately its probably only a game for Terminator fans.

Programming meets puzzle game in this great cyberpunk hacking world of tiny robots carrying out assembly code and passing data between registers to subvert the many computer systems the game has to offer. Presented in a great 'hacker os' that took me right back to the fun I had with winamp skins in the 90s, and leveraging zine culture as the tutorial and reference manual for the game is another great touch. Full of charm and super rewarding if your brain works that way. Would definitely recommend.

Hitman has seen many different implementations over the years with various levels of success. This itteration of the storied franchise throws everything out and rebuilds the game from the ground up, taking the finest ingredients from previous games and works them into a forward-thinking and modern title that stands on the shoulders of giants.

Its 'Opportunities' system for every hit make sure the player is always aware of how to proceed and never gets stuck, while dozens of 'Challenges' layer on top to provide hints at other ways they can complete their mission. Released episodically, the game is a triumph, allowing players the time to go back and attempt each level from hundreds of different angles, playing each map's mechanics to their advantage.

With a system of unlocks to reward exploration and experimentation, and a host of community-made contracts and time-limited ellusive targets released every few weeks, the first season is astonishing value for money and is a standout game of the year for me. Well Recommended for fans of the series as one of the strongest, if not THE strongest installment to date.

Firewatch captures wonderfully the feeling of spending the summer just getting away from the problems you don't want to deal with, the great outdoors, the emptyness, the isolation of leaving your problems behind and not having to face them for a little while.

Except you do. You always have to. You can't run away forever and as much as you want to get lost in long grass fields or weave through beech tree groves, summer will end and reality will come knocking.

Firewatch is one such summer, one such escape, one such story of reality catching up to you.

Set in a beautifully realised national park that marries the eye of Olly Moss with the talent of Jane Ng, and showing off the design and writing abilities of some of the best narrative designers in games right now, Firewatch sends you on a compelling journey that will stay with you for a long time to come.