Happily, Death’s Door, the new action adventure game about a hard-working, soul-reaping crow is very much a love letter to the old Zelda games. Its mechanics are satisfying in a chip-off-the-old block way, its visuals are a delight and its story line is touched with assured, easygoing humor.
While the lessons might not be very deep, the liveliness of the game leads me, ultimately, to the conclusion that “Mythic Ocean” is a neat game to turn kids on to philosophical reasoning.
In truth, I wish Mario Golf: Super Rush was a bit zanier. The dash mechanic and the Super Shots are fine, but I can’t help thinking that the courses could have been a bit more whimsical than, say, the arid landscape of Balmy Dunes.
“Subnautica: Below Zero’s” conventional sci-fi story line, which revolves around a greedy corporation looking to get ahead in the weapons business, never raised my interest. But the painstaking effort it takes to get Robin from one minor narrative point of interest to another made me appreciate its small, very human scale of success.
For those looking for a blockbuster, family-friendly experience, “Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart” checks the boxes. It is hyperkinetic and full of cutesy-looking characters that wear their emotions on their sleeves. If you’ve seen one of the trailers then you basically know what you’re in for: something totally familiar but with next-gen graphics. In other words, from a marketing perspective, it’s a safe bet.
But as someone who went out and got a PlayStation 3 just to play “Demon's Souls” (2009), and, moreover, loved Housemarque’s last two games, Returnal makes me rue the influence that Souls games have exerted on the industry. In my view, Returnal’s severe difficulty level does a disservice to its entertainment value.
Alas, what should be a runaway creative success for the game’s director, Josef Fares, is marred by a tone-deaf narrative element which shows that asinine ethnic caricatures unfortunately still exist in video games.
Although “The Medium” is billed as a psychological horror game, I found it to be consistently unsettling rather than scary. There is a vengeful monster that Marianne must deal with intermittently, but except for one breathtaking scene where he chases her through different realities — resulting in shifts in perspective that strike like tidal waves — I didn’t think much of him. Nothing robs a creepy game of its power as forcing a player to confront the same monster too many times so, thankfully, the monster encounters are nicely spread out. “The Medium” might not have the most nightmarish adversary but its blanketing, foreboding atmosphere and uncompromising ending amply makes up for it.
And as painful as the end of a run can be, “Dead Cells’” steady introduction of new mechanics made it easy for me to pine for one more go. In my view, that’s the hallmark of a successful arcade experience.
I’d wager that Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales will be remembered as the year’s most ingratiating family-friendly video game. It is a feel-good, unabashed spectacle that controls well, looks great and has a hyper-efficient story line that never tries to overdeliver.