Sadly the lonely experience of Spirit of the North is only a transparent, albeit beautiful, imitation.
The chillest rocket in the galaxy is a fun mascot, even if he’s a little shallow, but he’s not really the star of the show. Instead, it’s that oscillating vector, the new wave sinusoid that you actually control. The wave that is both your new favourite toy and in so many courses your cruel mistress. It’s the creation of a whole new sub-genre, which I am dubbing, the Waveformer. When we talk about game physics in future, I hope Wavey is name-checked along with the likes of Portal.
With a few technical restrictions and its demands on your gaming rig, Cloudpunk isn’t perfect. It’s a quite simple in structure and though it promises a lot of freedom, it’s a freedom within certain boundaries and confines of the tech, and within the heavily limited actions available. This is not Grand Theft Auto in a futuristic metropolis. It does however feature the most wonderfully realised sci-fi city I’ve ever had the pleasure to fly around, and goddamn, it’s the first flying car game I’ve ever played, and I can’t believe the stunning lack of flying car games in the gaming market.
WarriOrb is a painful experience, and your enjoyment levels will depend on how masochistic you are. I found no impetus, no driving force to get the wisecracking Orb from A to B through any more sorry-looking levels. Very quickly I had had enough of retrying broken platforming sections two or three dozen times, for what is essentially no reward, except more of the same relentless, slow, monotonic boredom.
Little things have been lost along the way, but what we have gained far outweighs the losses. What matters is still intact, and that’s the heart and soul of one of the greatest stories in video game history. It’s a return to form that has felt a long time in coming, and what’s even better is that there’s still at least two more games of this quality to come.
As a single-player experience, there is little to keep you playing past the first few rounds, but as a party game with some mates, there’s fun to be had. It’s not the epic that Rocket League is, it’s not the clever and skilled party game that Over-Cooked is, nor is it as memorable as many classic party games, like the Crash Bash, Mario Parties and Pokemon Stadium mini-games of old. But it does what it sets out to do, just with absolutely no embellishments or flair. There’s just very little to it and that lack of content is the main story here.
This is a simple game with a simple mission with only the bare minimum of content to keep you playing. Usually, even the simplest games are at least polished in one particular way or another with either beautiful graphics, or some interesting gameplay gimmick to keep you coming back. Galactic Warfighter has no unique selling point. It is as generic as its name suggests.
It’s not quite perfect, but its closer than any JRPG has come in the last decade or more and breathes new life into a lagging genre. If you like RPGs, anime, engrossing narratives, or just a second life to live, and you are anything like me and have lamented the dearth of real quality JRPGs in the last decade, you owe it to yourself not to miss this.
HyperParasite is an enjoyable twin-stick shooter with loads of character, sorry, characters. It’s humorous and fun. But it’s also painfully unforgiving.
The Complex offers a fun and engaging personalised movie experience, and demands the attention and immersion of the player in its decision-making interactive elements. Its budget is small, so set your expectations accordingly, but if you’re in withdrawal after Bandersnatch and need another hit of choose-your-own-adventure, you can’t go too wrong with this, while we wait for the film and games industries to catch up.
Pathologic 2 is an experience, I’ll give it that. But not one I wish to spend any further time in. It’s just far too dull and painful. The most telling thing of all? I fell asleep playing. Pathologic 2 is out now for most systems, and just this month on PS4. If you are absolutely desperate for some contagion related entertainment, you can do a lot better than this.
Ori 2 is a triumph of the Metroidvania genre and takes its place alongside Hollow Knight as the absolute pinnacle available on any system.