There is gold in these old genres, and Shovel Knight is a successful dig.
Nevertheless, despite its unevenness and occasional cruelty, Teslagrad is a bold and captivating proposition. The unusual and elegant aesthetic is persistently attractive, and the lightness of touch with the storytelling brings the world-building to the fore. Its Nordic development team are fledgling (this is only their second game) and there's fidgety keenness to the game's ideas and creative execution. Teslagrad would have benefited from a more experienced publisher to help round off the sharp edges and better balance the challenge. But in the meantime, this is a rough yet worthwhile jewel.
Nevertheless, Spencer Mansion ultimately fails as a locale because of its implausibility. It is a place that has been designed in service to the designer's puzzles, rather than vice-versa and, for this reason, feels fake and contrived, characteristics that undermine the horror rather than heighten it. As a product of a unique moment in the medium's technological evolution, Resident Evil HD is a fascinating place to revisit. But for many contemporary visitors it will be an unpleasant stay, not because the game's inhabitants are unusually hostile, or because its idiosyncrasies are unfashionable, but because its formative designs have simply been bettered.
Nevertheless, Citizens of Earth succeeds in rediscovering something of the ingenuity of 1990s JRPGs in its playful twists on genre cliches. And as a kooky and inventive contemporary re-imagining of the Super Nintendo-era role-player, this, like its protagonist's campaign, is but a near miss.
These reservations aside, Road Not Taken is fresh, interesting, beautifully presented and demonstrates an intricacy of design that will obsess a certain type of player. It's an acquired taste, though, despite its popular ingredients.
Daylight has neither the creeping sense of psychological dread of Fatal Frame nor the poster man antagonist of Slender, and its reliance on cliche lacks distinction. But if the game's straightforward purpose was simply to panic and upset its player then it is an indisputable success, no matter how cheap the tricks employed.
Had this game been released a decade or two ago, it might have been seen as a classic of its type, alongside Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. But today, at the tail end of a wave of Metroidvania-style games, Strider fails to stand out. It's a competent, workable game that draws inspiration from the right places, but which is rarely anything more than a cover version of the greats.
Elegy for a Dead World makes good on its title: it offers us dead worlds, filled with the debris of imagined and vanished civilizations. Through the game's scenes you walk alone, under the dread emptiness of outer space, all that harrowing solitude. And yet, as you write and send that writing out into the ether in search of a reader, you may well find contact and connection. If others read your work, your observations, your story, your sense and if they find truth or solace in your words, here is a framework designed to let you know, in turn, that you are not alone. In this sense, it is truly a game about humans' desire to write.
But there is no denying the sense of accomplishment when you solve a puzzle, arranging the branches, vines and spouts of water in the correct way and then successfully manoeuvring Max across them and safely into the next screen. It's a game that makes you feel smart and, unlike Limbo, never surprises you with unforeseeable traps: there is always an opportunity to stand back, assess and, finally, execute. It's a somewhat short, enjoyable and inoffensive game that delivers on the potential of its mechanical promise, if not its narrative premise.
Despite the range of games on offer (everything from motocross to pinball) there is an inevitable sense of repetition, perhaps because the original games themselves were, behind the artwork, less distinct than they first appeared. As with many reconstituted products, NES Remix is immediately delicious, but inspires an obsession that it can't sustain for long.
Unmechanical Extended meets its ambition: the designers fully explore the potential of the template and do so with elegance. But perhaps, in the new context of the newer consoles, that ambition wasn't quite enough. This is a slight, simple, often delightful game that displays moment-to-moment ingenuity but which now obviously lacks a broader conceit to bring its ideas together.
At times the game suffers from a lack of ambition, placing far too much importance on the tiresome looting of endless cupboards and dressers in the vain hope that this will be enough to propel you forwards. In other places, Thief suffers from too much ambition, unable to draw its systems into a cohesive whole. Whether the game simply needed more time or entirely different foundations is never quite clear. Either way, it's a game that adds up to less than the sum of its parts.
Kinect Sports Rivals is a well-constructed game with an enjoyable structure and smartly integrated multiplayer. But it's already looking dated as it continues to struggle against the limitations of its chosen interface. For all the extra power of Kinect 2.0, and the surrounding artifice of online competition, at its best the game only equals the highs of older, more familiar games - games whose players and makers have moved on.
Despite these creative flourishes, Sunset Overdrive never quite surpasses the chaotic physics of Just Cause, the coherent style of Blood Dragon or the assured sense of place of GTAV – nor does it manage to draw its story and systems toward a coherent, impactful point.
Dead Rising 3 is still one of the strongest titles in the PS4/ Xbox One launch line-up, but that's more down to a lack of sharp competition than any peculiar brilliance. A more forgiving proposition than its forebears, this is an enjoyable zombie romp that's lost some of its character in the lurch onto the next generation hardware.
Lara Croft trades original ideas for popular ones in an action blockbuster that will please the crowds but leave some nostalgic for the days she actually raided tombs
While the game’s style is like a Homeric epic seen through the panel of a comic book, the soundtrack of melancholic twanging guitar complicates the theme to something new and unexpected, a kind of undead western. It’s slickly compelling stuff, if repetitive after a few hours and, invariably, punitive.
Cédric Babouche's exquisite landscapes evoke the lost land of childhood as a woman in her 30s explores her late grandmother's home
This stylish if undemanding instalment has some nice touches, but its saccharine dialogue will appeal to only the most committed Persona fans
There is some value in The Legend of Korra, both as a game and as a tribute to the cartoon on which it's based, but it falls far short of its potential on both counts. Perhaps the third-person combat theatrics for which the studio is known are not replicable on a small budget. You can't blame the IP, which offers a rich vein of material. Regardless, this is the first major blemish on the studio's reputation; a misfire that means Platinum's name no longer guarantees quality.