Aaron Riccio's Reviews
The player has full control of each character, but not their fate, and so the senselessness of war always sticks out.
Watch Dogs 2 not only represents a massive upgrade over its predecessor, but over similar open-world titles.
Almost every element ties into the game's overarching theme, which calls into question rules and tradition.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice‘s strongest sequences mirror specific physical symptoms or psychological fears.
What separates Celeste from masochistic games like The End Is Nigh is that it's not bleak or unyielding.
Motion Twin's Dead Cells is a game designed for those who don't particularly like roguelikes.
While a lot of care has gone into refining the game's combat, there's no shortage of things to do outside of battles.
It Takes Two uses a smorgasbord of gameplay techniques to set us adrift in the field of couples therapy.
The more you learn about Selene across the game’s gripping campaign, the easier it is to relate to or, at least, agree with her observation that “I deserve to be here.” That line is also more than a little apt, as it perfectly sums up just how simultaneously rewarding and punishing it is to live in the world of Returnal. Each time you make a perfect jump and air-dash to avoid a cluster of bullets, you earn your way forward, and each time you awkwardly fall off a cliff or gawk as an explosive squid flies at you, you earn the right to try it all over again. The terse thrill of all that fragility makes this a timeless adventure well worth returning to.
That these abilities are purchased with the “kudos” earned from an efficiently fought battle shows yet again how Triangle Strategy always follows through on consequences—even good ones. In the world of this game, even something as casual as a thank you becomes a test of your character, and in the player’s hands, the fruits of such gratitude can become yet another weapon with which to win an exceedingly bloody war by any means.
Sparks of Hope’s flaws are more accurately described as missed opportunities. The wardens of each realm are vibrant, funny characters who deserve better than having their backgrounds conveyed through static and lifeless murals. And given his thunderous personality, you’d think Bowser would speak up at least as often as newcomer rabbids Edge and Rosalina; it’s too easy to forget that he’s even in your party. But these things don’t matter in the heat of combat—does Bowser’s Bowzooka cannon really need a backstory?—nor do they apply to exploration (which is better off not explaining the physics of the Wiggler Express and its floral tracks, actually), but in a game overflowing with sparks of joy, it doesn’t seem unfair to hope for even more.
A Space for the Unbound triumphs in capturing what’s between the lines of the story: the life-and-death emotions of Raya. The game’s not afraid to peer at her faults right alongside everyone else’s, and if, as one character puts it, “The most perfect world is one with imperfection,” then, emotionally speaking, this is a pretty perfect game.
Octopath Traveler II’s ultimate triumph may be the tightness of its design and how it wards off repetition. It presents itself with the confidence and experience of a deluxe guided tour, marking all the key spots for you to visit but also encouraging you to wander off the beaten path. It’s utterly engrossing without ever feeling overwhelming—the bite-sized narrative chunks help in that regard—and every system feels fine-tuned for maximal enjoyment. And with so many different experiences in one package, it’s a great game to get lost in eight times over.
The background music that plays in each of the hub worlds is jazz, and it’s just as intentional as any of the photographs. Jazz is filled with spontaneous moments of harmony, which turns out to be the main ingredient and lure of Viewfinder. This is a game that, as you retrace the steps of four disparate people who did their best to save humanity, lets you riff along the way.
It’s fascinating to see all the ways in which time flows (or doesn’t) throughout the game’s varied regions, as in the frozen Raging Seas, a series of eternally fixed waves and ships locked in battle, some mid-explosion. These places not only serve narrative purposes, but also thematic ones, in that the astral clockwork calendars of the Upper City demonstrate the terrifying effects of broken time as much as the encounters that Sargon may have with alternate versions of himself, some of whom would stop at nothing—including “self”-harm—to break the city’s curse. Put simply, time isn’t merely an effect in The Lost Crown—it’s the consequential core of the game.
Ultros respects its players enough to make them work hard for the best ending. Accordingly, it never feels like a waste of time to manually connect your save points to the overall network (so that you can fast travel between them) or to gather the right seeds, spray them into the proper orientation, and occasionally splice together parts into hybrid platforms. If anything, these deliberate actions serve to sow a deeper sense of purpose and understanding of conservation in players. In doing so, Hadoque’s marvelous creation stands leafs and branches above not only other puzzle platformers, but most other socially conscious games as well.
Checkpoints are frequent and the Game Over message keeps comically cycling between nostalgic pleas to “Insert Coin” or puns based on your method of death (“Kentucky Fried Pilot” if blown up, “What the Hell?” upon burning alive). These grim jokes serve to reassure players that Rive knows exactly what it's emulating (“Cool, a rising lava level” and “That AI activated my auto-scroller somehow!”), and that each scenario, no matter how ludicrous, is beatable.
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The game is as punishing and uncompromising as the continental war that it chronicles, and it will school you.
The class-based rewards, compendium of achievements, and the adrenaline of capturing and killing a trophy monster makes for a compelling game.