By the game's end, I found I didn't care about any of the characters. Instead, I was fed up, hunting down the rest of the prismatic cores in order to reach the end. The game had done a full 180. It's a major disappointment, given the promise ReCore shows at its beginning, when it's just Joule and Mack.
Lego DC Super-Villains does little with the DC canon, its story never reaching beyond, "these baddies aren't so bad after all."
For me, the story worked best when it wasn’t so loud and so blunt.
I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger-Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator is messy, and kinda gross
We Met in May is a warm, romantic look at the weirdness of dating
After seven years in development, Manifold Garden is a surreal masterpiece
The surprise in Sword and Shield is that I’m still finding things that surprise me, even after putting in so many hours. It’s in how Game Freak has made a linear game feel so much less linear.
It’s refreshing and meaningful to see a complex story in which all pieces of the characters’ lives are considered, each part of a much larger story of a life, and the fantasy that such a life might also produce. There are painful, real moments in If Found…, but the game also revels in the support of friendship and family, too.
Spiritfarer works because the entire game is built around creating these connections to the characters, all of which are complex people with tangled stories. And none of the spirits are purely good or bad; some are people leaving a mess behind for others to grapple with.
The ease of the interactions made me miss the real-world dog park even more, where there’s always someone new to meet or a cute pup to pet. It’s definitely not a replacement for it, but in a pinch, it’ll do.
Valhalla’s most intriguing story is one about faith, honor, and family, but it’s buried inside this massive, massive world stuffed with combat and side quests. That balance is not always ideal, but I’m glad, at least, that it forces me to spend more time seeking out interesting things in the game’s world.
It reminds me of a relationship I had, one that I thought I would never see myself out of. It's these memories of mine that give Maquette's narrative that emotional weight, even when the writing is clumsy or stilted. When I look back at that relationship, it's only just a speck in my 32 years of life, something that hardly gets a thought. It's hard to imagine that there was a time when it was so much bigger, where I lived in a fantasy world of my own creation - but I did. And Maquette has the right beats, and recursions, to bring up that feeling in me, that conflicting sense of scale.
Anyone that's played New Horizons will be familiar with the sorts of errands necessary to complete the spirits' tasks. Much of the time, the spirits have lost things that the player needs to find around the island. There's a lot of fishing, harvesting resources, and collecting items. These tasks can be finished within a half an hour or so most of the time, especially if I just have to do something like find a recipe book that's been stashed in a pile of leaves, but sometimes a task can require me to log in across multiple days. Say, for instance, I need to bring salt to the spirit baker on the island. That can only be purchased through Cozy Grove's shopkeeper, and I'll have to wait if it's not there on the day I need it.
It's Mo's grandmother who urges Mo to go to a place she has always feared. The place, it turns out, is not anywhere near as repulsive as the intricate musculature of the underground caves, or the harsh reality of the island being killed by fungus. Instead, it's beautiful; the full scope of Minute of Islands' colors are on full display, with intricate, marvelous mushrooms growing out of what was once flesh and spore. But this is also a place Mo can only enter without the comfort of her Omni Switch. Her fear, it seems, is not tied to the monstrous, but instead, to vulnerability.
Instead, Chicory asks, "What if there's a better way?" A person's worth is inherent, and it's not chosen for us. If we tear down those systems and rebuild something new, we can shift legacies and choose them for ourselves - it's no longer a gift bestowed upon us by some unfair, undated structure. With a little practice, maybe anyone can wield a paintbrush.
It worked for me because of the earnestness and care with which Kitfox tells this empowered queer story. It's not always pleasant to experience, but it's a story that left me feeling satisfied with the outcome.
John and Sam's abilities are also key in some of Eastward's more challenging boss fights, in moments where slapping enemies with the frying pan (later, John will also acquire a gun, flamethrower, and cog weapon, alongside different bombs) is simply not enough. These boss fights are often simple in theory: dodging hits, stunning enemies, and taking a swing, for instance. But, like the puzzles, they require a precision that can be hard to master; the sheer simplicity is clever and deceiving.
The slow pace and gentle yet solemn storytelling — with lots of bright, joyous moments, too — is delightful, and I’m eager to learn more about Moonglow Bay and its people, in a town shaped as much by fishing as it is by grief.
What makes Animal Crossing an appealing franchise is that I’m able to meet it on my own terms — even if those terms are the polar opposite of the ones I brought to the game in 2020. New Horizons is no longer my “global living room,” as Bijan Stephen described Fortnite in 2018. It’s more like my secret clubhouse, a space that’s mostly just for me, and maybe the kind of friends that feel comfortable sitting in silence. Coming back to the game this time — alongside all of its new content — means doing things differently, but it’s still just as satisfying.
Halo Infinite swaps out the loadouts and armor abilities of earlier games for a few new pickups, including the grappling hook, which is by far the most useful of these tools. After relying on it so much in Halo Infinite's campaign, it feels criminal to pass it by in multiplayer.