Campbell Bird

The easiest way to sum up POOLS is to say that the less I played of it, the better it was. While it never devolved into something I would necessarily call a "bad" game, this first-person experience about navigating surreal and eerie environments has a hard time varying its payoffs and progressing its premise to create much meaning. As a result, the game ends up feeling kind of repetitive and empty, despite the fact that there's some clear--though inscrutable--tale being told.

I am glad there are developers that have a keen focus of how to bring big console and PC releases to mobile without them feeling really clunky. This is to say that Hitman: Absolution is the second Hitman game released on iOS by Feral Interactive, and it is probably the experience I'd recommend most people opt for out of the mobile options available.

In the hands of other mobile developers, a game like Neo Cab might turn out to be an all-too-familiar management game where you juggle fares, routes, car charge, and energy to try and optimize and upgrade your way into the ultimate taxi driver. Chance Agency took a different approach, and used these trappings as mere set-dressing to upend and push back against this approach to hustle culture and min/maxing everything while telling a compelling story to boot.