It's a game of MacGuffins, so to speak—what you're doing and why you're doing it is inessential to the joys and the juice on offer.
The mood wafts above it all, overpowering any laughable suggestions of plot or character—neither of which fuels Zombie Army 4.
Does it succeed? Well, I don't know—I'm not an astronaut—but I can report that it has a pleasing gravity.
The chief pleasures on offer are those of the power fantasy and of the newly burgeoning subgenre that we might call the zoological misadventure.
As with the rest of the game, outside of the more focussed platform sequences, I was boosted through by the breezy mood more than anything else. Skelattack is a masterpiece in the art of the pleasant.
I would recommend the remake to anyone with a nostalgic thirst for the original, but so, too, to those that like their laughs with a dark bite.
What's on offer here is a version of what would only have been available, back then, from a top-flight studio; a haven for those who crave a hit of Tartakovsky; and a hack-and-slash hardly ahead of the curve but happy to polish the past.
The more I played the less the goings-on of the narrative bothered me, and the more I relished the wavelike rhythm of the action: the roll and crash of sailing and breaking to alight for supplies.
There may well be the feeling of a missed opportunity here, but no matter. Almost worthy is still pretty good.
If you're hoping for a sombre tale of lives brought low by the touch of darkness, my advice would be to go for a ride and take in the sights instead.
You could argue that Squadrons breaks no fresh ground, that it is merely the latest in a prized patch of genre; but the ground, fresh or otherwise, was left behind long ago, and being the latest is no bad thing.
The core racing model is a fluid rush, and a thrill to control through an intriguing, if undercooked world. It’s to 34BigThings’ credit that they make known where their crosshairs are trained, but the bite is that much harsher when they miss their mark.
Rebellion has wrought a breezy shooter, angled it towards multiplayer, and burnished it with wit, but its minute-to-minute action is repetitive and feels imprecise.
Just Cause 4's thrills give way to repetition and a dull mission structure, but it's a ridiculous roller coaster while in full swing.
A seductive art style, hazy synth sounds, and some well-designed puzzles give The Gardens Between a pleasant mood, but it doesn't stay in the mind long after the credits.
The Sojourn is a well-made puzzle game with a firm challenge and fresh mechanics layered in throughout, but the symbolism draped over it all is vague and boring.
It isn't that we miss the mists of Arcadia Bay specifically, or that we long to retread old ground; it's the slow etching of stories, scattered with care.
Mother Russia Bleeds is a rose-tinted callback to the genre's giants. Playing the game, you will be reminded of the time spent in youth playing Final Fight, and Streets of Rage.
This had ‘perfectly fine’ written all over from when I first booted it up, but then it muddied the waters with a forgettable plot and tried to drag me away from the eye-reddening, ‘I should probably stop playing this now’ core of the game. Should you get it? If you like match 3 games then it’s a decent one, but then, if you like match 3 games you can get lots of them for free on your phone – which is surely a better home for them anyway.
These additions have been layered on top of a very old chassis, and while they do stave off boredom for a little while, it feels like chugging cheap energy drinks to prolong the inevitable crash. When there are games out there like Rez and Geometry Wars that reinvent that chassis, it’s difficult to play something like Xenoraid and feel… well, much at all.