Gnog distills the joy of fiddling with switches, dials, and knobs into a potent liquid and then uses that fluorescent elixir to invigorate a monster's brain. The result is a collection of orderly puzzles eager to illustrate logic while soaked in giddying medley of spaceships, electricity, and mother birds. If you were ever allowed to peer inside of a candy monster's skull, Gnog is precisely what you would find.
Life isn't often what we imagine and death isn't usually what we expect. What Remains of Edith Finch responds by capturing death's despair and tragedy through life's lenses of whimsy and fantasy. Every emotion and detail is left in frame, exposing profoundly anguishing themes that nevertheless develop into endearing pictures of hope and determination. Edith Finch creates a portrait of a family that, even in their doomed eccentricity, feels not only sanguine, but also deeply human.
Oninaki is an abundance of compelling ideas enveloped in a fog of stammering expression. An extensive progression system, myriad combat options, and a sincere and original premise aren't enough to overcome the rote execution of its world, characters, and basic combat. Oninaki's only viable curiosity is what kind of game it may have been with more time, budget, and expertise.
Final Fantasy spent a decade constructing idols and Final Fantasy VIII demolished every one of them. Its elaborate, extravagant, and chaotic parade of ideas marched toward an evolutionary dead end and ensured there would never be another game like Final Fantasy VIII. Even by Remastered's distressing modernization, Final Fantasy VIII's paradigm shifting idiosyncrasies still showcase one of the most fearless and contemplative models of its medium. Final Fantasy VIII is a classic for people immune to the charms of classics.
While Team Sonic Racing makes a statement with its collaborative squads of racers, its identity is lost in the amorphous complexion of a conventional kart racer. Worse, its gorgeous locales and myriad customization options aren't quite enough to support a despairing imbalance between luck and skill. Silver the Hedgehog's presence is one of many indications Team Sonic Racing is burdened with deadweight and light on inspiration.
With Virtua Racing, M2 proves the Switch is a capable showcase for Sega Model 1's divine austerity. As a three-course arcade racer with one car, Virtua Racing only goes as far as its $8 price tag. Through the lens of arcade and Sega enthusiasts, however, this port of Virtua Racing looks like it should be preserved under glass. How lucky we are to be able to pick it up and enjoy it.
Bright colors, breezy enthusiasm, googly eyes and collectibles — Yooka-Laylee nails Banjo Kazooie's aesthetic and embraces every last trope from Rare's 3D platformers. It's also firmly disinterested in twenty years of forward progress, doubling as a paean to Banjo's banal challenges, mushy control, and distressing tedium. It's tough to feel bitter—Playtonic delivered what was promised—it's just awfully easy to feel chafed and bored, too.
The Ringed City conscripts volatile opposition and capacious geography into Dark Souls III's formidable maturation. FromSoftware's blueprint—maintaining infrastructure with careful distortion and clever addition—is now a familiar process, but the quality of their output remains uncompromised. As a tidy finale or a signal marking a hiatus, The Ringed City is pure Dark Souls.
Dark Souls is one of the most important and powerful games ever made. Switch is the least pleasant place to play it. It works—this is still Dark Souls and Dark Souls is still very good—but sacrifices in presentation and control scream inferiority next to original and Remastered editions of the same game.
Effective (probably) if not completely unorthodox, and it only works as intended, whatever that intention is, a few times.
Wipeout persists as a utopian phantom consumed with aesthetic elegance and driven to exhibit a vivid sensation of speed. The nature of this package's identity—Wipeout Omega Collection is three different but very similar experiences—may nudge against a wall of homogeneity, but it's easy to overlook when you're going too fast to focus on anything in the periphery.
While shoot 'em ups are conspicuously underrepresented on modern hardware, Ghost Blade HD's presence amounts to little more than a fleeting cameo. Just because it's the only port in the storm doesn't mean that anyone will stick around after the raging winds subside.
Nier: Automata is the videogame twin of those tabletop games that demand players disfigure and destroy its pieces. In Automata's case, PlatinumGames' house-brand of action sustains engagement and empowers director Yoko Taro's disarming unorthodoxy, positioning Automata as cordial agreement between boundary-obliterating determination and boisterous violence. As a videogame designed to experience the paradox of poignant optimism, Automata isn't the most efficient mechanism, but it's easily the most effective.
Nier: Automata did not succeed because of its combat, and yet the preposterously named 3C3C1D119440927 is pure combat served with gimmicky restrictions. In remains, however, fabulously weird, and while player's takeaway won't reach Automata's profundity, it's still without a conscious equal in its medium.
Nier presented as an action role-playing game. Nier was actually a controlled demolition of genre conventions driven by a taste for subversion and a desire to explore emotional boundaries between mild sorrow and hysterical despair. Replicant ver. 1.22474487139… keeps Nier intact with distinct improvements to its operation and accessibility. It remains an eccentric, effective, and occasionally inhospitable member of its medium.
Built from pieces thought too inscrutable to survive 2019, Daemon X Machina is sincere in its appreciation for a bygone era of mech action games. It understands the charm of assembling giant robots, the appeal of blasting exotic weapons, and the fantasy of combining both together in dozens of pleasing arrangements. Daemon X Machina revels in its esoteric reverie.
Rhombus of Ruin accommodates Psychonauts with a comfortable home in virtual reality. Few aspects of its composition feel conditional, granting Psychonauts' beloved motif ample room to work through PlayStation VR's intrinsic weaknesses. Interquels, typically a model disposability, don't seem so strained or contrived inside of this peculiar parallelogram.
The Ghost Survivors uses Resident Evil 2's capacity for combat and escape as the starting line from which it fires its perpetually short-of-ammunition gun. Each of its frantic what-if scenarios favor acute strategy more than improvisation, each neatly transitioning from basic survival to a pursuit of perfection. Four run-based one-offs with transitory actors, somehow, is just what Resident Evil 2 needed.
Arizona Sunshine splits its time between posturing as an inarticulate calamity and performing as capable virtual reality shooting gallery. Simple luck appears to be the dividing line, leaving the player to decide if a lengthy campaign, vivid environments, and zealous gunplay are worth putting up with fussy controls, hostile conduct, and anemic hardware.
Banned Footage Vol. 2 is a more conservative approach to Resident Evil 7's post-release program. It plays in the same space as Vol. 1—both are insistent and diverse recasts of Resident Evil 7's components—but it exchanges chaos for stability. Eccentric blackjack, exacting resource management, and a condensed, comfortable reprise of the proper game are suitable, if not safe, slices of content.