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.
With a running time a little short of an hour, Promesa is meant to be played in a single sitting. For those intrigued by the more artistic side of gaming, it is a dream worth having.
Can you be enamored with a game and downright horrible at it? I’m talking about being so bad that it’s a struggle to get past its opening set of levels? If “Spelunky 2” has convinced me of anything, it's that the answer is a perverse “yes.”
By cleverly leaning on the conventions of YA fiction — supernatural elements, family conflicts and the like — the studio has hit emotional peaks rarely, if ever, seen before in gaming (both the first and the second Life is Strange games left me misty-eyed).
Ghost of Tsushima is a vast game. I have poured at least a couple dozen hours into it but have much left to see. I suspect it will keep me enjoyably busy until the leaves fall from their trees and the next console cycle begins.
If the idea of zoning out and basking in the serenity of being an unstoppable predator sounds appealing, then consider this an inviting summertime snack.
“The Last of Us Part II” is one of the best video games I’ve ever played; I hope the cost to the developers was worth it.
It is a beautiful-looking game with a juvenile mind-set that’s fun to pass through but hard to be riveted by.
“Half-Life’s” ties to survival-horror shine in “Alyx.” One enemy that most who have played “Half-Life” will remember are the Barnacles — monstrosities that attach themselves to the ceiling and dangle their long, thin, dark tongues close to the ground. VR makes their presence more unnerving. A random moment I loved happened when I pulled an object toward me that a Barnacle caught then with its tongue and devoured. I moved into place underneath it while carefully avoiding its grotesque appendage and fired a few shots, killing it and causing it to spit up my item. In that moment, and several others, I felt noticeably transported to one of the most vivid science fiction worlds I’ve experienced.
Twee as it is, it’s an achievement that shows how a familiar video game form can be made into something more quiet and unhurried than one might be used to; personally, I’m all for that.
Over the length of this very long game you’ll travel back and forth across the streets of Revachol, repeatedly interviewing and following up with people. If you’re not averse to reading loads of text that is often funny and given to riffing on different ideologies, it can be an easy rhythm to get into. Don’t dawdle. Go ahead, run toward the wild side.
This is old-school Zelda the way you’d like to remember it.
If only more big-league developers dared to be this bonkers, the industry would be that much more untamed.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood provides a decent co-op experience for friends to indulge in. It’s like going to a place where you know the service is fine and you wouldn’t look for anything unusual.
For all the little ways I can nitpick Fire Emblem: The Three Houses, there is no denying the elegance with which so many of the gameplay systems are intertwined. I enjoyed micromanaging the progression of my students on and off the battlefield. I just wish I was able to think of them as more than colorful pawns.