There remains about Pokémon Brilliant Diamond the glint of something far gone, and there is something warmly reassuring about the place.
If these games shaped or changed you, you might find the notion of their being shaped and changed, in turn, an unwelcome one.
Its narrative is fractious and slight, compared to Sledgehammer’s previous work, but the chance for a chaotic, target-rich experience with friends exerts a stronger pull than usual.
It may well be more of the same, but Mexico beckons, ravishing the eye and devouring up the miles.
Where Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy proves most winsome, however, is in its twining of the intergalactic and the terrestrial.
If only House of Ashes were possessed with something malevolent enough to actually scare us; sadly, it commits a litany of sins, none of them original.
In Back 4 Blood, we have been given a finely tooled zombie shooter, but it lacks the power of the original.
Where the studio succeeds—and where Metroid Dread elevates from noble and flawed effort to inspired riff—is in its embrace of the unreachable.
As it happens, though I played for much longer, I had had more than my fill after the first four hours, with no desire to venture back in.
Whether you demand more than comfort from your games will inform the way you see Kena: Bridge of Spirits; is it merely a graphically sumptuous example of design that you wish we would leave behind, or is it a vivifying tribute to a rich precursor legacy?
It offers an otherworldly break from the busyness of life, and, when you do return to Earth, you will do so with a smooth landing, and without stress.
In an odd way, then, Glass Bottom Games has captured the truth of the situation; contrary to its mission of cuteness, it has made a game that feels hollow-boned, caged by unflattering mechanics.
More than felling each Visionary, however, and piecing together the history of Blackreef, I relished uncovering more about Colt.
At the end of The Artful Escape, all I could think of were the words he fired back at a heckler, angered by the electricity in the air: I don’t believe you.
True Colors is the best game in the series since Before the Storm, and it will satisfy your narrative craving for a time.
No More Heroes III should be played, if for no other reason than it could have been made by nobody else.
There are, of course, multiple endings, and the minutes leading up to each resolution can be flavoured with violence and revelation, or laced with deceit. The question is: Do we care?
The sequel, by definition, cannot pack the same shock, but it arrives bearing new gifts.
If you squint, you could be playing Outriders—with less satisfying shooting, granted, but with a superior world grafted onto the action.
Art of Rally is that rarest of things: the video game as essay.