Y
ouknowwhatit’slikewhen
you go into your favourite
bar, everyone cheers, and
the landlord has poured your usual
tipple by the time you’ve reached
your stool? No, me neither. But I
imagine it’s a lot like going back to
Unavowed. There’s something
about the pacing of Dave Gilbert’s
supernatural mystery that’s deeply
comforting. I can meander through
a case in a single evening, meet
some new people and spend time
with characters who feel like they
existed before I started playing.
Compared to the noise and bluster
of other games, Unavowed feels
dark, real, and oddly relaxing.
That doesn’t mean it’s nice. Each
story feels like a cautionary fairytale.
I solve a case that begins with a man
burning himself alive for the sake of
creativity and ends with me sticking a
scimitar through an elderly art
teacher,likeelegant,delayedrevenge
for high school batik classes.
But that’s a reductive way of
talking about Unavowed, a game all
about small details. It does a magical
job of rendering the hidden spaces
underneath New York’s glittering
towers, making everything feel
intimate and important. And it even
sounds lovely. The compression on
the VO is like listening to old vinyl,
and a soft jazzy soundtrack plays over
perpetual, pattering rain.
Perhaps my favourite thing about
Unavowed is how it takes cliched
elements and makes them feel
engaging again. My amnesiac hero
feels relatable and I love that I can
solve problems with my actor
powers. Unavowed might be the only
game that manages to makeaman
wearing a fedora tolerable.
A smart, understated,
thoroughly modern
adventure game.Fedoras,flames,andfacetiousnessinUNAvowed
EXPECttOPaY
£11DEvElOPEr
Wadjet Eye GamesPublishEr
In-houseNeedtoKNowAnd with that, I found
my new Tinder bio.All Mandana’s anecdotes about the
Revolutionary War end this way.rEviEW
ReinvestigatiOn
84
W
ithanewRespawn gameon
the horizon, now feelslikea
fine time to revisit not only oneofthe
best Star Wars games, but alsothe
best game about forgetting you’re
actually evil. I last played KOTOR
after watching the first Force
Awakens trailer, so my hero looks
slightly like John Boyega, andIfeel
like an idiot for ignoring that Reywas
obviously the Jedi. It’s a faff tomake
KOTOR run properly on a modern
PC, but it’s worth it. It still hassome
of Bioware’s best characterisation,an
incredible, moving score and oneof
the best twists in all of
gaming. Which I’ve slightly
ruined in the intro. Soz.
KNightsofthe
oldrepUblic
88
C
ontinuingwiththe amnesia
theme (you spotted it, right?),
we’ve got Alan Wake, a game about a
man who forgets the book he wrote.
I’ve tried to do that with reviews
(60% for Spec Ops: The Line? Idiot)
but never a whole novel. It plays like
a ’90s TV show that was slightly too
scary to watch, and I adore it. I love
that the hero is called Alan, that his
books are probably shit, and that he
looks like a member of Semisonic
who’s been kicked through FatFace.
It’s exceedingly silly – axes and
gunfights and shadow monsters in
log cabins – but it’s made with
palpable adoration for its influences,
from King to Lynch to
Hitchcock. Enjoyable enough
Fortean nonsense.AlANwAKe
76
I
tshouldbeenoughtotellyou that
CaveStoryisaboutanamnesiac
boyrescuingrabbitpeoplefrom an
evildoctor.Butifyouneedmore
reasonstoplayit,knowthatit’s one
ofthebestindieplatformersever
made,especiallyifyoulove
Metroidvanias.It’sahuge,weird,
engaginggame–onemoment I’m
fightingagiantbarofsoap,the next,
arabid,mutatedversionofthe very
bunniesI’mapparentlyheretosave.
Thisversiongivesanextra
levelofsheenanda
remasteredsoundtrack.cAvestory+
82
Never talk behind the back
of an assassin droid.How many layers does
one man need?In the beta, all enemies were
shaped like bars of soap.