Trek to Yomi’s gameplay woes — as well as the stunning lack of a chapter select feature — drag the experience down and mean that its swordplay is not nearly as sharp as its presentation.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a more than passable first attempt for a studio that has newly transitioned to video games. It’s a visually stunning world that is occasionally calming to poke around in. However, it’s still very evident that it is from a team that’s new to the medium, given all of its gameplay inadequacies and narrative missteps. There are glimmers of a truly great experience in here, but it’s hard to see underneath the spots of rot at the core. And unlike the little Rot wisps in the game, it’s not cute as it robs the game of its potential.
While it marvelously blows up during the final moments of its descent, Fort Solis is a mostly successful voyage. Puzzling together what happened at the station is an engaging exercise that incentivizes players to inspect every computer and voice recorder in order to shine light on its dark mysteries. Its narrative doesn’t seem to branch much or push forward in any new directions, yet it achieves its modest goals rather well. Fort Solis was misused as a facility by its staff, but Fallen Leaf and Black Drakkar have utilized it well to tell one effective sci-fi thriller.
Ghostrunner 2 goes against its programming by repeatedly slowing down, but it’s still made up of enough of its classic parts. Sprinting and dashing around the neon-lit city while cutting down its many cybernetic forces can be an empowering trip that’s only bolstered by its thumping electronic soundtrack. A strong core like this deserves to be expanded upon more robustly through its new and existing mechanics, which just isn’t the case here. Ghostrunner 2 has taken a few steps forward and a few steps back, but even though it is running in place, it’s still faster than most of its competition.
High on Knife generally stands out in the context of High on Life because it has some of the game’s best overall moments. It hasn’t completely shaken all of the eye-rolling humor that powered the original, but its conciseness and ability to spotlight more deserving characters makes it significantly less grating. Its unique gunplay similarly benefits from a shorter runtime and has also only gotten better with its new pinball-operated weapon. While High on Life showed how Squanch Games has grown over the years, High on Knife demonstrates that there’s still value in brevity.
Blasphemous 2 is more ambitious than its predecessor with its fleshed-out swordplay and cleaner dedication to the search action genre. And while these additions give Blasphemous 2 more of an identity, they also give it more room to stumble. Said deeper combat is sticky and held back by its dedication to being adjacent to the soulslike genre. Its narrative tries to broaden the game’s world but suffers because of its lack of a solid recap and overreliance on cryptic storytelling. It’s an artistically sublime world but seemingly pays penitence with its uneven gameplay.
All of the delicacies in Venba look filling, so it’s a bit of a shame that the experience as a whole isn’t quite as hearty.
Wrath of the Druids has a lot of the same shortcomings as the main game. The story is too concerned with political intrigue that isn’t that intriguing, the landscape is mostly barren greenery that’s unexciting to traverse, and the overall game hardly hovers above the average baseline it rests upon, just to name a few of the overlapping problems. But Wrath of the Druids does leapfrog the base experience because of its relative focus that organically slices off the astounding amount of bloat inherent to a game that large. It doesn’t magically make Assassin’s Creed Valhalla a better game, but it does show that sometimes, a smaller serving can make a huge difference.
Oddworld: Soulstorm took Oddworld Inhabitants over two decades to fully realize so it’s disappointing that it came out in the state that it did. Numerous bugs are just one part of the problem as its lack of a quicksave and unwieldy controls cause a lot of easily avoidable irritation. Solving its one-of-a-kind sneaky puzzles can be fairly gratifying at times and its impeccably animated cutscenes are nothing short of amazing, but this is a mixed batch of Soulstorm brew that deserved more time in the production factory.
Failing to hit previously established highs encapsulates a lot of Super Meat Boy Forever. Although the game oddly hides its interesting seeding system, its levels are designed well and repeatedly introduce new tweaks that allow for an even difficulty curve that always tries to spice things up. Fluid controls even make that difficulty curve a welcome challenge. But the light detachment intrinsic to the auto-running genre is more of a shackle than the key to a better game. Going meatless for an entire decade inevitably raises the steaks stakes for the next Meat Boy game, and even though Forever doesn’t fully meet those expectations set upon it, it does narrowly avoid meaty-ocrity through its tight controls and level structure.
The dated DNA is still there in some respects, but the genetic engineers at Black Forest have done some intelligent gene editing to ensure that it is still a subject worth harvesting, which is what any true Furon would want anyway.
Superhot left players wanting MORE and Mind Control Delete demonstrates that that might have been a good idea.
The first half’s semi-aimless and methodical pacing drags in its latter half as it bites off more story than it can comfortably chew and then spends too many hours trying to flesh out each one of its many beats.
Moving Out is mostly a seamless move, even considering these bumps in the road, because of its cooperative gameplay.
Much like a real hunt, Predator: Hunting Grounds rewards patience. Wading through the questionable technical performance and perplexing design gives persistent Predators a multiplayer experience that flourishes as its cat-and-mouse gameplay reveals itself like a newly uncloaked Yautja.
The Journey to the Savage Planet Hot Garbage DLC doesn’t introduce anything particularly spectacular. Instead, it serves as a helpful reminder of why the game as a whole is so special in the first place.
Like a hero with an arm tied behind their back, Overwatch on the Switch still puts up a good fight. But this scaled-down port makes it a little easier to question whether or not the world needs more hamstrung heroes like this or not.
Stela is similarly brief but also a fleeting experience that doesn’t make much of an impact while you’re playing or linger once you complete it mostly due to its hollow world.
Nothing is particularly extraordinary nor is any one aspect less than solid but there’s a commitment to the vision here that had modest and realistic goals. Concrete Genie paints within its humble parameters and still makes a lovely piece of art even if it isn’t The Starry Night.
Apart from its nuanced storytelling, Indivisible is a brilliant vertical slice of a more fully featured game that doesn’t exist. Almost all of its ideas seem like prototypes stuck in their early phases that are waiting to be fleshed out.