The developer, SIE Japan Studio, has forged a platformer from the same blend of delirium and precision that blows through Super Mario, and then filled it with fossils.
Far more than the combat-whose charm ebbs away on a tide of repetition after the first few hours-the draw of The Falconeer is its suggestion that, while we may be shaped by our stories, they don't pin us down, that the mere act of living is to take flight from the past.
Sadly, that string of hours, spent clambering up towers and defogging the map, bounding across the fields in a hopeful, happy loop, was the last of the fun on offer.
The developer, Insomniac Games, has a similar storytelling confidence to that of Naughty Dog-a natural cinematic ease, bolstered by money and technology, which gives equal weight to ground-level struggles as to those beyond the rooftops.
This is the crux of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. It is fascinated by the way that games lurk at the soft verges of life, vesting our days with dreams.
Where the action comes alive is in the leaving behind of bodies altogether. Most missions involve breaking and entering, and the thrill lies in the absence of any breaking.
In the earlier, sandy hours, that restlessness is a boon-the work of a developer surveying the drier sweeps of a genre and divining a bright pool of ideas.
It was clearly forged from a love of Solitaire, and even its failures feel like restless, riffled expressions of that love.
Faced with a declaration as longing and impatient as "It's About Time," I can't help but think, Is it?