Aaron Riccio's Reviews
The latest from Insomniac Games is particularly polished when it comes to the variety of its puzzles.
Ghost Town Games avoids the flavorless death known as repetition, and doesn't overcook the game's premise.
The game isn’t interested in coasting on nostalgia, but in establishing brand-new memories for the next generation.
Much like an actual modern-day factory, Splash Team's Splasher abides by an assembly-line philosophy.
This port of the 2015 Wii U title Yoshi's Wooly World doesn't try to break the mold, though it's certainly cuter.
Apart from the fact that combat is resolved by placing cards into rows as opposed to moving units across a map, there's little difference between Thronebreaker and similarly hand-drawn, resource-gathering, unit-upgrading games like Heroes of Might and Magic and The Banner Saga. If anything, Thronebreaker offers a deeper strategic experience, given the distinct feel of these custom-crafted battles, with their special victory conditions and unique cards.
At its best, the game leaves you by your lonesome to get to know the “deep blue” sky as intimately as possible.
With their latest, Dan Marshall and Ben Ward successfully extend their lovingly parodic style to a much broader range of genres.
The game improves upon its predecessor, and finds new ways to demonstrate their shared eco-friendly themes.
Moving Out is a fast-paced, arcade-style co-op that leans into carefree, chaotic, over-the-top gameplay.
While the plot and characters in Desperados III may be familiar, each scenario feels distinct.
The game feels like the brainchild of students who were into debate club as much as programming.
The choices you make throughout The Outer Zone's engrossing cyberpunk therapy adventure may just keep you up at night.
It’s true that the game’s card-based randomness may allow some players to stumble through boss encounters without properly solving them. But what is the proper way to come at most things is a social construct. Allowing players to find their own, occasionally lucky, way through the game is a brilliant way to demonstrate Inscryption’s cards-as-life theme. There’s no one right way to live, and despite all your preparation, sometimes you may draw an unlucky hand.
The randomness of WarioWare: Get It Together! is a clear demonstration of the old adage that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. You never know what game or character you’ll see next, only that whether you’re temporarily playing as a hover-cab driver who can only shoot to the left or an overgrown kid who can only move by grappling between objects, you can make it something sweet, either in against-the-odds triumph or comic failure. Managing such chaos has always been a core tenet of the WarioWare experience, and in doubling down on the randomness of its microgames, the series has at last gotten its shtick together.
That misstep is surprising considering how perfectly calibrated the rest of the game is. Though Neon White’s heavenly setting encourages perfection and players are required to earn a certain number of Gold medals to advance the plot, those are attainable even with the occasional mid-run mistake. (Ace medals, and a spot atop the global leaderboard, are reserved for pros.) It takes a bit of time to get used to playing at the game’s frenetic pace, but once you understand that each enemy and obstacle has been deliberately placed, it gets easier to read how the game wants you to move between them, and that’s a blissful experience.
The game’s eeriest moment is attuned to the politics of denial and unresolved emotions. The final boss, a manifestation of the existential crisis that faces the planet, is extremely hard. It’s far easier to accept The Knight Witch’s offer for Rayne to just walk away from this battle and enjoy the next few years, hoping that maybe one of her allies can stop the world from ending. But that leads to an unsatisfying ending, with Rayne haunted by the question: “Was there more that I could have done?” This narrative beat is a bleak and brutal reminder that if we all keep blithely enjoying our lives instead of fighting the toughest of battles, we may come to regret it.
So far as the library of songs goes, it’s perfect for novices willing to play anything, but probably less so for experts who may be disappointed that the specific song they want to learn isn’t there. New songs are added regularly, as part of the base subscription fee, and there are enough genres there that you shouldn’t ever feel pressured to play a track from, say, the Wiggles or NSYNC (unless you want to), but you don’t need to be a math expert to know that even with over 5,000-plus tracks, there are bound to be some major omissions. Still, the game’s adaptive method ensures that on every track, whether it’s the Circle Jerks’s “Beverly Hills” or Boston’s “More Than a Feeling,” it’s still possible to learn something new and have a good time in the process.
Midnight Suns’s biggest payoff comes in its final mission, which ties together all of your efforts at The Abbey and in previous combats. Forcing players to utilize their least played characters is particularly telling of the game’s design philosophy, for the success of your multipart battle proves that Midnight Suns is only as strong as its weakest links—and, consequently, so long as you’ve been paying attention, there are no weak links when it comes to the game’s combat.
At the end of the day, players truly are Stanley, deriving pleasure and purpose from pressing buttons as prompted by the Narrator. This is a game that borrows a scene from Firewatch just to mock the concept of an open world and which sends up Steam user reviews—er, “Pressurized Gas” comments—and the idea of expectations and entitlement. Funny, right? But even if you’re not laughing with this exceedingly well-written game, it’s definitely laughing at you, and that’s as it should be for taking your entertainment so seriously.