Virginia is, at its best, a gaming mechanism that provides slightly more immersion than watching a movie -- and at its worst, a failed walking simulator with a convoluted ending. Because it is a scripted experience light on interaction and choice, I'm not entirely sure I can recommend it as a game. There may be an inkling of promise in its budding story, but for many I imagine it will be hard to read between the lines and even harder to consider it a worthy experience.
I now know why people fell in love with Bastion. It's a perfectly proportioned, well packaged, beautiful escape into a foreign world with compelling music, art, and narration. There's no real added benefits to playing it on the Xbox One besides a few more achievements, but then again, it doesn't really need any upgrades. It's fairly perfect as it stands.
As much as I love PaRappa and his quest to find love with Sunny Funny, the experience was significantly marred with the visible lag and the lack of calibration options. For a remastered rhythm game, this is practically a must-have given calibration difficulties with modern televisions. I still enjoyed my time with the updated, clean-looking PaRappa, but I might just go back to playing the PSP version if I got the funky flow...
There aren't many games that can offer a camaraderie aspect to the survival horror genre, and Friday the 13th delivers in that regard. It could certainly use a lot more fine tuning and adjustments, but for now, it delivers on a solidly campy experience.
Although I wasn't quite as attached to the characters as I had hoped, I did appreciate the medley of personalities and felt the world and its customs were admirably orchestrated within everyone's backstory. It might not be for everyone, but Pyre delivers on its fun gameplay in a way that beautifully illustrates the struggles of redemption and what it means to gain true freedom.
At the end of the day, it takes more than fun mini games to make a good Mario Party game. It's also about carefully crafting a meaningful game experience that allows you to screw over your friends in the most skilled, fair way possible (with a dash of luck, obvs). Hopefully Nintendo can keep the series alive and perfect the spirit of Mario Party for the Switch, but for now I think Mario Party games are officially dead for the 3DS.
Alas, main characters sometimes receiving a single line of dialogue to describe their end, if anything at all, is what makes The Banner Saga so unique. Life is fleeting, as it is for the hundreds of clansmen I lost throughout the past four years, as it is for my characters who wandered off and never returned, and as it is for the ultimate conclusion to The Banner Saga.
Despite there not being many engaging elements, I find that Gone Home is still a superb example of a narrative journey. We'll have to see in another five or fifty years just how Gone Home has set the stage for future immersive simulators.
For those who haven't yet given Katamari Damacy a shot, if you long for the unexpected and uncomplicated, Katamari Damacy REROLL offers respite from the norm of today's games. If you've always had a soft spot for the series, this is your chance to relive the joys of proving yourself through a brighter, more clearly defined lens.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with Treachery in Beatdown City, and despite a lack of overall polish, it does a good job of emulating beloved 8-bit fighters while maintaining its own ground as a modern brawler.
Overall, I thought this was a pretty solid Jackbox pack, if not one of my favorites. There were some issues with the Switch edition that I hope will be cleared up soon -- not just with Champ'd Up, but it also took quite a while for some of the other games to connect. Otherwise this was a really solid mix of games, with much more thought put into the "personality" of each game (always love a good theme song).
However, we longer need to hoard our 360s/PS3s for fear of never being able to play Scott Pilgrim again, so it's a win across the board for gamers and humanity alike.