Despite its outerworldly setting, Haven’s message & writing highlights the pros and cons of a relationship that many couples, and even ex-couples, can relate to. Except for maybe the bit where you feed a marble cake to attract a giant alien manta ray to serve as your makeshift taxi cab.
Immortals: Fenyx Rising is not going to win any awards for originality. But it is charming most of the time, features a lush Greek god island to explore that’s filled with secrets and discoverables, and contains a ton of brain-teasers mixed in with some light-yet-hearty combat.
Just like past games, Yakuza: Like A Dragon still retains the magic of balancing the serious and the absurd side-by-side with deft precision and skill. You won't regret this trip down Isezaki Ijincho and getting enamoured by its 40-hours plus journey.
[The Pathless'] presentation, its challenges and puzzles, and its unique one-two archer-and-falcon punch are noteworthy enough to pick it up as either a PC indie darling or a lovely launch title for your newly-acquired PS5. In other words, take flight.
Xuan-Yuan Sword VII has promise, but it fails in delivering a consistent and manageable experience. In meshing hack and slash games like Dark Souls, Bayonetta, and any mid-2000 mid-card action game out there, this action RPG feels like a hybrid that doesn’t know what to excel & focus on.
Even if you're burned out by simulations like Project CARS 3 (a pretty inferior sequel, to be frank), you should give DIRT 5 a chance if you aim for a simple arcade racing game with great-looking frills, noteworthy challenges, and a straightforward path.
You haven’t experienced a story of this magnitude and quality not just in a video game, but in the sci-fi genre as a whole. 13 Sentinels, and Vanillaware as a whole, are video game cultural treasures, no buts about it.
If you want a surprise entry in the action genre, look no further than the fast and frenetic Ghostrunner. Granted, its difficulty curve will frustrate you not unlike a Souls-like game, but once you get to the rhythm and groove of it, you'll ace it and aim for a better run.
And that's all that matters in Foregone: the core loop gameplay. It's just fun. Sure, it needs a bit more meat with its narrative, a slightly higher difficulty curve, and a bit more weapon variation, but the overall package is slick and entertaining.
Pumpkin Jack is a good first effort from a one-man game-designing army. It’s fun for its short length, it offers a bit of variety with its puzzles and challenges, and the platforming & design is solid.
I look forward to seeing more great things from Glass Heart Games, because Vigil: The Longest Night is a lovely first effort from the studio.
Crash Bandicoot 4 is a true return to form. It's essentially the modern version of a 90s 3D platforming genre that still retains its challenge & freshness.
As entertaining timesinks go, Genshin Impact has it made. The game has a ton of potential to grow to become stellar and eye-opening; perhaps even better than its aesthetic sources of inspiration and contemporaries. As of now though, it's settling just fine with a bronze medal as online RPG comfort food.
The Mafia remake makes the original 2002 title obsolete by improving and upgrading everything, which is the whole point. Archaic gameplay, tropes, and controls are refurbished to make the new game and its cast all the better while preserving the core of Tommy’s rise and subsequent fall in the game’s thrilling narrative.
Hades is jam-packed with action, has a cool take on Greek mythology, and features a ton of replayability. I urge you not to sleep on this escapade; it's a helluva good time.
The DLC's expansion on Borderlands' lore and storytelling is arguably noteworthy and shouldn't be dismissed. I'd say it's a chief reason to fork over money for this new addition.
For the rest of you looking for a challenging 2020 game right off the bat and don’t mind investing 20 to 30 hours getting good, dig into BPM: Bullets Per Minute. You won’t regret it.
While Peril on Gorgon isn’t as revelatory & as grand as Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas DLC offerings it's still pretty darn good. With just about 6 hours or so worth of quests and stories to unravel and be entertained by, alongside welcome additions to stats and arsenals, this should hopefully inspire the devs to go for broke.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a 30-to-60 hour RPG with a lot of meat & teeth in its gameplay & story for just US$40.
There are shades and traces of a simple yet heartfelt action game buried underneath Marvel's Avengers' corporate-driven money-grubbing muck that clearly needed a few more months of QA and technical fixing. Until its updates and content elevates the base experience and assuming the Day One/Week One patch fixes a LOT of these game's grievances, you'll have to settle for Earth's Mediocre Heroes.