How this trust score was computed
This reviewer publishes verdicts, not numbers, so trust comes from their recommend/pan calls: call accuracy (50%): when they say buy, do players end up satisfied, and when they say skip, do players agree; alignment (25%): do their recommendations sort games the way players do; and player-side (25%): on games where press and players sharply disagreed, whose side were they on. The blend is shrunk toward a neutral prior (60) so small histories can't peg the scale, and recent verdicts weigh more (2-year half-life).
Controversy record: on 20 games where press consensus and players sharply disagreed, this reviewer sided with players 20 times.
Computed 6m ago · full methodology →
Outlet vs. players
Each dot is a game both this outlet and players scored. The dashed line is perfect agreement: dots above it mean the outlet was more generous than players, below it more harsh.
Biggest disagreements with players
The receipts: games where this outlet's verdict landed furthest from player sentiment.
Recent reviews (84 tracked)
- PanTetris® Effect: ConnectedApr 22, 2021 · Nate Kiernan
“Tetris Effect exists as an inevitability. There must be a new Tetris game because Tetris Holding – current owners of the Tetris brand – have spent decades rewriting copyright law to prevent anyone else from so much as sneezing in the shape of a Tetrimino. The brand must continue, licenses must be dispersed, artists must be contracted to legitimize these DMCA takedowns.”
read full review ↗ - RecEven the OceanMar 4, 2021 · Nate Kiernan
“Even the Ocean sits unfortunately between an early indie hit and a decade defining classic. It is the studio’s most technically accomplished game to date but lacks the emotional heft of its siblings; a delight in itself that falls shy of the incredibly high bar Analgesic have set for themselves. But as a transitional piece it is one of the best modern examples we have of thematic development across games, made more interesting through Anodyne 2's parallels.”
read full review ↗ - RecLucah: Born of a DreamJan 14, 2021 · Nate Kiernan
“Video games about violence so often fail because they do not actually understand what they are doing. They can copy others, depict violence in shocking fidelity, and endlessly trawl the waters of individuals doing individually bad things, but they are culpable of so much violence themselves the shots will always miss. Lucah understands form is the message, that violence is messy and contradictory, and that games cannot simply adopt the language of film and literature and achieve the same ends. It is a game of relentless despair, and yet underneath it all its tenderness cannot but shine through.”
read full review ↗ - PanGhostrunnerNov 22, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“Ghostrunner may as well have fallen backwards into cyberpunk for want of a theme. It can wrench nothing from this stone that has not already been ground up by other derivative works, and squanders its movement on inconsistent combat and weightless platforming.”
read full review ↗ - PanABZUAug 23, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“I’m not asking Abzu to just be Journey, but if it is already working from that point of reference it’s strange how little Abzu understands why Journey worked at all. If Journey was a ballet Abzu is a SeaWorld show. Flashy, controlled, at times inspiring, its artifice fully on display.”
read full review ↗ - RecMutazioneAug 2, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“Mutazione imagines a beautiful and complex life founded on small, self-sustaining community and a respect for the natural world. It is charming and warm but also plain about the challenges of sustaining a community like this. It reckons with the contradictions of colonialist greed and asks if things couldn’t be rebuilt without hierarchies and violence.”
read full review ↗ - RecHyper Light DrifterJul 23, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“It was difficult to play Hyper Light Drifter and not feel a deep empathy for the drifter, also alone, also dying from an invisible disease. It’s an easy connection, but when the world is on fire all you can see are embers. Hyper Light Drifter doesn’t prescribe specifics so it’s easy to imprint meaning onto it. But it also resists glorifying those readings.”
read full review ↗ - PanCrossing SoulsJul 5, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“You could sketch Crossing Souls on a napkin, and it would probably be a smarter, more inclusive game. But I won’t ask you too. I’m off to cut down Young Sheldon and bury Crossing Souls next to him where the soil is dead.”
read full review ↗ - RecAnodyne 2: Return to DustJun 22, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“Games can often feel like some kind of sorcery, impossibly complex and created by people with inhuman ability. But they’re just people. Highly talented people, but still. Anodyne 2 is not sorcery, but it is a kind of magic, an ordinary magic that is all the more exceptional because of it.”
read full review ↗ - RecEvan's RemainsJun 11, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“I am not sure if Evan’s Remains entirely earns its thematic heft when so much of it is inscrutable, but that it is willing to end its plot in a moment of intense duress is daring enough to elevate its weaker moments. It's untidy, its themes barely cohesive. But if Evan's Remains was not so unusual, if it had simply doubled-down on puzzles and pretty screens, I do not think it would have left half the impression it did.”
read full review ↗ - 75Signs of the SojournerMay 13, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“Had Signs of the Sojourner allowed the player to fail without having the door slammed in their face, it would be easier to forgive some of the flatness present in its card system or the brevity of its script. But by framing conversations as games to be won without anticipating how often they’d be lost, huge chunks of the game become sequences of frustrating nonsequiturs.”
read full review ↗ - PanCORRUPTION 2029Mar 15, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“Corruption 2029 feels like a straight to VHS sequel. Zoomed out it looks like what you’d expect the studio to do next, albeit with a different theme and fewer talking ducks. But there is no soul, no justification for the game’s existence, and numerous moments where it feels actively inferior to a game that came out two years ago.”
read full review ↗ - 75Mutant Year Zero: Road to EdenMar 10, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“I like so much of what Mutant is attempting to do. Dux and Bormin are delightful, adding stealth gameplay onto a tactics game is clever and works well before becoming played out, and there are so few tactics games to speak of that even one which is otherwise derivative provided a welcome excursion for a few hours. It's so frustrating that everything begins to fall apart right as the game comes into its own.”
read full review ↗ - 100WandersongMar 4, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“Wandersong is a game of cosmic circumstances on a humble scale. It deals with questions of archetypes, destiny, an understanding of the self, and how our actions shape the world around us. It is a game that begs to be read as analogous to the hopeless pessimism that permeates modern life as well as a commentary on the tropes games so consistently employ, using our familiarity with both these elements to subvert the traditional hero’s journey.”
read full review ↗ - 100Pathologic 2Jan 18, 2020 · Nate Kiernan
“Pathologic 2 deconstructs the player/game dichotomy even as it celebrates how affecting that relationship can be. It is rich and dense and uncompromising. That it exists at all is an anomaly, but one I can only hope doesn’t stay that way.”
read full review ↗