As it stands, though, The Thaumaturge remains quite special overall. Hanging out with Rasputin, shmoozing with turn-of-the-century elites, and exploring some unexpected golem developments with beset Rabbis make for compelling content, even when a few lines in the script fail to land. Anyone taken in by this setting will genuinely want to play The Thaumaturge, and it joins several other recent experimental Slavic fantasy adventures that prove the countless avenues video games have yet to fully explore.
It's everything surrounding those battles and skirmishes that makes Skull and Bones a harder sell. The simulation aspects are limited and under-baked, the questing is almost always tedious, and there are only a few main ship models to work with. Lacking the ability to dock and explore, ocean exploration feels perfunctory and artificially hampered. Better ship customization options open up eventually, and it’s initially interesting to tinker with armaments, but it’s hard not to want even more of the best boat blueprints, more gear, more detailed inclusions that would make these vessels feel authored and unique, something to elevate the vacant core routines. Skull and Bones could have been a welcoming and rare new beacon for pirate game fans but, even with seasons of promised premium content yet to come, this boat is visibly sinking.
With its unlockable deck types, tricky economy, advanced joker concepts, challenge runs, and ascension-like “stake” system, Balatro offers countless hours to engage its treacherous machine of diversion. If this was preinstalled with Windows in lieu of Microsoft’s mandatory, productivity-wrecking Solitaire back in the 90s, modern civilization as we know it could have very well ground to a halt. For fans of deckbuilders, Balatro is an addictively delicious, menacing creation which devours hours without mercy. It should be handled with great care.
Further and further in, Ultros’ world seems one of creative, chaotic malleability instead of precision, opening up to sequence-breaking and weird shortcuts through experimentation. It’s a game about amassing the tools and time to carve a connective path with nature, learning the layout of the land, and collaborating with it to continue on. Ultros takes the common ingredients of the modern metroidvania, then transplants them into an utterly original DMT-infused Metroid fever dream, in the very best way.
Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior is a curious combat-puzzle game, but solid aesthetics and worldbuilding can't rescue its stifling gameplay design.
But perhaps Blood West’s strongest component is its exploration, and the pull to devour every inch of its creepy map design can be reason enough to turn the game into a 30-hour experience or more. The amount of that time spent dying and backtracking are all part of the hellish journey, but the difficulty is balanced such that gamers of all stripes should find enough equipment and upgrades to power their way through. For a combat-heavy horror game, Blood West focuses on the most important details and leaves the rest to rot, and their full release version delivers one of the year's best surprises.
Additional achievements, challenges, unlocks, and secrets bring enduring value to Risk of Rain Returns, and the new graphics do just enough to contemporize the look of the game without sacrificing its creepy pixelated presentation. This all manifests into a project that feels like a true gift for fans and a premium prospect for roguelite veterans who may have missed its original launch. Risk of Rain Returns takes an all-timer which might have been overshadowed by its sequel and gives it much, much more than a fresh coat of paint.
Sanabi is a stylish grappling hook platformer, but its cumbersome story and interrupting pace risks sacrificing the parts of the game that work.
At the end of the day, Super Mario RPG has not received much love, outside of a surprising appearance on the SNES Classic and some Geno ephemera in the Smash series. To describe it as a purely niche oddity would be wrong, as it was a massive seller back in its day and has popped up on best-of lists ever since, but it still comes off as an oddball first-party Nintendo game. Super Mario RPG Switch fulfills most expected obligations and even surprises with a few new features, making it a predictable crowd-pleaser for those in the know who should welcome it with open arms while left wanting for even more content. The House of Mario doesn’t bless us with many full-spectrum remakes like this, and maybe this will be enough to spark interest in a real sequel some day.
It's a matter of taking that memorable original score, the over-the-top firefights, the thoughtful questlines, and the raw retro/pseudo-90s shtick that ultimately leaves less residual concern over a clumsy facial animation or a tedious boss here and there. Every chapter of RoboCop: Rogue City gives players something interesting to do, an unexpected encounter to resolve, or a sly reference to decipher. The result is a great game that accomplishes everything an adaptation could wish for, breathing new life into its source material and setting a new high bar for the franchise.
And still, there’s the bones of something great here. A mystical underworld to explore, secrets to unearth, terrors lying in wait in the darkness. A heretofore-unseen, fully realized original Hellboy adventure is screaming to be properly told, to be freed from the trappings of this torment. Hellboy Web of Wyrd is a tragically beautiful blunder.
Pixel Ripped 1995 hits the PSVR2, a nostalgic and brief all-ages adventure through classic gaming that leverages 3D interactivity in inventive ways.
Still, Endless Dungeon’s strong presentation, characterful sci-fi culture, and unique cooperative approach remains intact. It’s a game of on-the-fly decisions and intimidating combat encounters, with success often separated from failure by a hair. Those qualities should draw in the more patient and masochistic roguelite aficionados, and better still if they have a like-minded, agreeable team in tow, the players committed to see the treacherous paths to the reactor all the way through and come back for more. Ultimately, Endless Dungeon offers a smart and strategic co-op challenge with minimal hand-holding, but its structure feels all a little too delicate to deliver up the next real roguelite obsession.
There are a series of hidden packages to find and slice open, some funny new forums content in the pause menu and, again, that terrific Cheers bit. For fans of the original, High on Knife will hardly disappoint, but granting this short DLC an extended credits gag feels like a bit much. Preceding it is a few good hours of jokes, meta silliness, and gore, prodded along with more excellently odd voice acting, the equivalent of some extra surprise buds discovered at the bottom of the bag. Still, if High on Knife is a taste of more sizable High on Life DLC bounties to come, all the better.
It’s at a good point for the price, and its singleplayer-or-co-op structure means that there’s no issue of threatened server shutdowns to fret over, but it definitely hits its stride as a multiplayer adventure. Unlike a few other nostalgia-bait projects in recent years, MythForce isn’t just a pretty face, but a well-tuned first-person fantasy brawler for people who love the grind.
AK-xolotl presents a cute run'n'gun roguelite concept, but an overall simplicity and lack of post-credits gameplay leaves it ultimately underexplored.
Broken Edge is elegantly well-balanced with a considerable skill ceiling to reach for, systemically built on finely tuned fighter fundamentals. This would be a terrific game for a group of friends to play together as a fight club and, while not on the level of something like BoxVR, it definitely serves up a workout during extended play sessions. It would be no surprise if it successfully broke through as a viable esport, and its cross-platform functionality with other VR headsets should keep lobbies busy on its new platform launch. Broken Edge is fairly priced for its content – and Trebuchet will hopefully widen its roster with even more additional characters – but solo players should just be fully aware of its multiplayer leanings on entry. En garde!
Eternights is commendable but contentious, an intimate apocalyptic action-adventure that reaches for greatness with limited resources. For every unsophisticated story beat or half-baked mechanic, a pleasant surprise or diversion appears to take its place, a dynamic which should motivate almost anyone intrigued by the premise to see the story through. It all makes Eternights a fine first date, but it might not be marriage material.
Then again, this is exactly how isolation works. The world continues on outside the window at breakneck pace, leaving only stories and memories to cling to in the aftermath. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is about the forgotten, punished, and lost finding their footing once again, reclaiming authority and placement in their world. Do they feel vengeful towards their captors or betrayed by the lost connections who now casually darken their door with a smile? Do they punish themselves for their actions, or blame it on the broken system they now seek to change? Don’t allow the colorful outfits and smiling faces to fool you, as The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood can form a rather insidious narrative dependent on player input, to make for an entirely original and rewardingly rich adventure.
There’s no need to bury the lede; Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition never truly feels definitive, but it’s still a refreshing, one-of-a-kind puzzler hybrid with a knockout campaign. While its admirers have already purchased it multiple times by now, this version ensures that it remains in the public eye for discovery by newcomers, and hopefully inspires a proper sequel in the coming years. That’s more than enough to recommend it, especially to anyone who’s missed out on the game thus far, but longtime fans may feel shorted by this lightweight reissue.