Recent reviews by Alexander Vagrant

It's too simplistic and clumsy to be a great game, but it's still fun to play, and the art style is gorgeous.

A wonderful game. A point-and-click adventure about an old house and several generations of its inhabitants. The central gimmick is that you play as an old fat cat, which means your range of possible interactions is quite limited. On the other hand, people tend to ignore cats, and cats themselves can notice things others miss.

But the game’s greatest strength is its story. It tells the tale of the Mason family, full of secrets and tragedies that shaped multiple generations. The narrative plays with your expectations and, for a while, deliberately misleads you. The ending, however, is touching, tearful, and bittersweet. Very few games have given me emotions like this.

Essentially, Dispatch looks like This Is the Police set in a superhero world, with a strong dose of Telltale Games-style storytelling.

The core gameplay revolves around dispatcher shifts, where you assign your team of superheroes to calls. You have to match their abilities to the specific situations and make decisions with limited time and resources. Information is always incomplete: mission descriptions only give you a rough idea of what skills will actually be needed. This system is brilliantly engaging. It creates constant tension and turns each call into a small story about life in the city.

Between shifts, the game switches to an beautifully animated interactive movie focused on the team and its development. Your crew is not just a group of underdog heroes, but a squad of barely reformed supervillains. It’s up to you to turn this dysfunctional bunch into a real hero team.

The protagonist, Robert Robertson III, also deserves special mention. A former superhero without any actual powers, he could easily have faded into the background next to such colourful characters. Instead, he’s a pleasure to play. He stands his ground, doesn’t defer to "real" heroes, and always has something sharp to say. Who would have thought that a corporate dispatcher with depression could be this compelling?

Unfortunately, the game is far from perfect. One of the weakest aspects of Dispatch is its romances. There are only two options, both awkwardly written and largely irrelevant to story themes. The narrative feels much stronger if you friendzone both love interests.

The most serious flaw, however, is the ending. The final confrontation feels rushed, and your choices turn out to be largely disconnected from the game’s central ideas. A carefully crafted story about self-discovery, second chances, and new beginnings fails to reach a satisfying conclusion.

In the end, Dispatch is no masterpiece, and it has plenty of frustrating shortcomings. Still, I enjoyed the game, and it gave me many moments of surprise, laughter, and genuine warmth. I can’t say the same about most games.

I hate to write a negative review, but the game doesn't deserve a positive one. I love the Expanse universe, I love the show’s characters, and I enjoy Telltale’s narrative style. Yet every one of these aspects collapses here.

The story has no depth and once again revolves around a magical MacGuffin aka Protomolecule, as if the Expanse universe had nothing more worthy of attention. Rich factions, political tension, interlocking conflicts at every scale — all discarded so the plot can orbit a very special artefact. And of course no one could ever names it, because that would contradict the show’s timeline. It feels as if the writers decided that one vague reference was enough to build an entire game around it. The result is shallow, dull, and pointless.

As for the characters, I just can't believe in this interpretation of them. Anderson Dawes is many things, but a megalomaniac messiah figure is not one of them. The game's Chrisjen Avasarala doesn't have a fraction of the charisma of her show prototype, despite being voiced by the same actress. And Drummer… I didn’t think it was possible to make this character boring, yet that’s exactly what happens here.

By the end of the year, it felt like everyone was talking about this game, and the developers’ awards shelf has probably long outgrown its original space. No surprise there: Expedition is an outstanding game, one of very few of its kind. What impressed me most, however, was how confidently and boldly it handles its narrative.

The developers take on difficult themes, put the player through harsh and morally challenging story turns, and aren’t afraid of being misunderstood. I see this as a rare level of trust and respect towards the player. The game assumes you’re mature and smart enough to face these ideas without being guided every step of the way — and I’m grateful for that.

RoboCop was my personal discovery of the year and delivered far more enjoyment than I expected.

First, from a gameplay perspective, it perfectly captures what it feels like to be a slow, unwieldy, yet unstoppable machine enforcing order on the streets of Detroit.

Second, the game nails the tone of the original franchise so precisely that you almost expect Paul Verhoeven’s name to appear in the credits.

Third, it features plenty of simple but engaging quests with meaningful choices, some of which genuinely made me pause and think.

Probably the biggest problem with Rue Valley is how it was marketed as “a game in the spirit of Disco Elysium”. In reality, the two have little in common. Rue Valley doesn’t have the same depth, the same defiantly strange setting, or the same humour. It isn’t even an RPG. Does that make Rue Valley a bad game? Not at all. It’s a solid adventure with a peculiar plot, likeable characters, and well-executed psychotherapy sessions.

The game treats therapy and psychological hang-ups with striking seriousness. More than once, reading those dialogues, I felt a painful sense of recognition. Because of that, Rue Valley is a rare example of a game that can be more than a vehicle for escapism (nothing wrong with that) and actually become a push towards real change.

It’s not perfect: in the final third, many tasks become tedious, the local “check system” is laughable, and the game desperately needs an epilogue. I hope at least some of these issues get fixed in patches — it seems entirely achievable. But I don’t regret a single hour spent in Rue Valley.

Unlike Void Shadows, which drew its strength from the storyline, this DLC stands out primarily for its mechanics and the extra character-creation options.

Arbitrator is an exceptionally engaging Origins with its own tactical deep. And the three additional variants of it open up plenty of room for experimentation.

The Overseer archetype and the familiars change the game completely. A Psyker with a psyber raven simply turns into a death machine. An Officer with a servo-skulls swarm literally changes the approach to the allied buff.

As for the story, it’s nowhere near as weak as some reviews claim. It’s not as atmospheric as Void Shadows, but it’s still compelling. Visiting a feudal world, taking part in Lex Imperialis tribunals, and uncovering another of Theodora von Valancius’s dark secrets — all of it is woven cleanly into the main narrative.

The base game is by no means empty or unfinished, but this DLC is essential if you want the full experience. It deepens the game precisely where Rogue Trader needs it most.

First, the DLC reveals much more of your voidship. You can now descend to its lowest decks and see how the most downtrodden members of your crew actually live.

Second, the DLC adds several conspiracies that are genuinely engaging to investigate. Intrigue, scheming, and betrayal form its core.

Third, Kibellah, the new companion, is exceptionally well written. Her storyline stands on its own and also reveal more of the WH40k lore, offering a look at a cult whose interpretation of the Emperor’s will and image borders on heresy.

Jokes aside, it’s actually a decent early-game weapon.