It's a more curated open-world experience than, say, Assassin's Creed Shadows, but it isn't nearly as different from that kind of mainstream triple-A open-world game as its roots would lead you to expect.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage’s second and final episode is a mostly satisfying conclusion. I just wish it could have had space to do more than just wrap things up.
But the game's utter sincerity is a major point in its favor, and these kinds of missteps are a side effect. If I have to put up with some deeply goofy choices in order to get a character as heartbreakingly earnest as Swann Holloway, I'll accept the trade-off.
As modest as it is, it still accomplishes what it set out to do. It's a good, fun Life is Strange game, and there isn't much else like that. It maintains the delicate balance between campy and comforting throughout, but you just can't help but notice that the tightrope is only a few feet off the ground.
But that's a minor gripe that stems more from my love of fictional grimy cities than anything Anger Foot is actually doing wrong. The FPS is well-paced, smartly designed, and looks like a cartoon you would joyously gulp down with a Capri-Sun after school. It can occasionally frustrate, but it gives you all the tools you need to tailor the experience to your taste. It does many things well, and it accomplishes them elegantly. That a game this focused on feet pulled all that off has got to be the gaming surprise of 2024.
Ultimately, if you like Braid, it’s hard to imagine a better, more thorough, more lovingly crafted reissue of the original game. Though I completed the main game fairly quickly, I’ll be uncovering the secrets of the commentary levels for many more hours to come, and learning a ton more about the medium I love in the process.
Alone in the Dark is, interestingly, a more communal game than I tend to expect from survival horror. You're frequently running into the other inhabitants of Derceto. I enjoyed talking to them, though the writing isn't especially good, but the game never really delivers on its title and all that company prevents it from ever really getting scary. This is a solid enough retread if you've played through Dead Space and the Resident Evil remakes and want more. But it won't bring many converts to the genre. We'll have to settle for being alone, together, in the dark. Which sorta defeats the entire point when you think about it.
Ultros is a fascinating new Metroidvania where bombs and missiles are replaced with gardening tools.
That's crucial, because with the 2.0 Update, the game does a lot well. It still isn't an all-time great RPG, but there are fewer hiccups keeping you from enjoying the many things it succeeds at. Phantom Liberty is good, but 2.0 is the rising tide that lifts all boats. It makes Cyberpunk 2077, unambiguously, worth the trip.
What I find most remarkable about Sea of Stars is that, despite not caring all that much about its characters, the gameplay was good enough that I was invested throughout. Managing the meters of each battle, and exploring the colorful landscapes and dungeons that connect them, is so entertaining that my quibbles about other aspects couldn't bring the experience down. The story isn't especially compelling, but it perfectly serves the purpose it needs to: getting you from the fun of A to the fun of B without any real hiccups in between. Howard Hawks once said that a movie needs "three good scenes and no bad ones" to be great. That's what Sea of Stars has going for it. Nothing that'll bother you too much, and plenty of good.
Despite its flaws, Scars Above's engaging combat and expansive toolkit keep it interesting for its entire 10-hour campaign. Though its world is gray and the story leading you through its levels is a let down, the moment-to-moment gameplay makes the journey worth taking. This space adventure isn't the final frontier of third-person action games, but it manages to offer roughly the same thrills as a pretty good SyFy Original movie. It isn't the cutting edge, but it's sharp in its own right.
Once you do find the paths you need to take, the story is over before it ever got going. The game's opening makes it feel like your character is embarking on a quest, but that journey ends after one stop. In that way, Season is structured like spring. You barely realize it's here before it's already gone.
It's a shame that The Callisto Protocol is so uninteresting at its core. Though it looks gorgeous on the surface, a dozen hours of nothing special can have a clarifying effect.
Immortality feels like a logical endpoint for the last seven years of Barlow's work. Though his cast has expanded to include a full Smash Bros. roster's worth of characters, and the script has expanded to include three full movies with contributions from several writers, it feels like he has ended up, basically, where he started. Like Her Story, Immortality is really about one woman. As in Her Story, she may not be who you think she is.
Though this is the weakest map in the Hitman 3 lineup — excluding, maybe, the experimental train level, Carpathian Mountains — it’s still a Hitman level, i.e. pretty good. It doesn’t hit the standard IO Interactive has set for itself (and it will be a shame if this is the last map Hitman 3 gets), but that still makes it more interesting and worthy of exploration than the vast majority of video game levels I've played this year. IO is playing with interesting ideas, but this iteration just isn't there yet.
Still, Who Pressed Mute On Uncle Marcus? is an enjoyable and sometimes funny yarn, with a strong script, solid performances, and an intriguing central mystery. It doesn't push the FMV genre forward in any meaningful ways like Sam Barlow's Her Story and Telling Lies did, and it could use a better log to keep track of which lines of questioning you've already pursued. But, it's an enjoyable genre exercise that takes a dull experience we're all familiar with after two years of a pandemic, and somehow makes it fun again.
This is a small project, but it packs in its share of indelible images. Aperture Desk Job confirms that, even when working on a limited scale, Valve is still the best in the biz at plopping you down in the middle of a well-realized sci-fi world and conjuring up a host of imaginative sights before your wide, unblinking eyes.
Solar Ash is an exhilarating action-adventure game with strong puzzles and flashy boss fights.
Rock opera and space opera meet for some artful escapism.
The Big Con is a unique take on video game nostalgia that takes players to the '90s, but not the video game '90s.