The best way to play Resident Evil 4 requires taking a time machine back to its time and place in 2005. A myriad of ports, especially on the Switch, continue to provide a more practical method. From a historical standpoint or modern approach, Resident Evil 4 remains one of the finest ways to survive horror.
Not A Hero absorbs Resident Evil 7's discordant third act and recasts it in the mold of a conventional action shooter. While a sharp focus (and a welcomed protagonist swap) aid Not A Hero's general coherence, it's a vision of a life the seventh Resident Evil chose to leave behind. A safe move isn't often the strongest.
Even after a dozen years and seven (or eleven) games, Yakuza 0 is an impressive and easy invitation to its namesake’s adrenalized world.
Yakuza 6 applies themes of fatherhood and masculinity as coping mechanisms for intense interpersonal drama. While it surrenders the sweeping ambition that defined Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 5, it feels sharper, more focused, and more honest about its intentions. At age 48, it's impolite to define Kazuma Kiryu as an old man, but it's clear that he—and Yakuza 6 as a whole—are devoted to passing their experience on to the next generation.
Judgment swerves Yakuza's circuitous criminal conspiracies a few degrees off course before turning up at familiar intersections of violence, eccentricity, and drama. Novelties surrounding its private detective facade, however, breakdown into tests of patience instead of pragmatism. Judgment may be an honest amendment to Yakuza's doctrine but its most refined and exciting practices are also its most routine.
Final Fantasy XV's decade-long maelstrom of doubt, chaos, and suspense has somehow wrought an effective tale from the bonds of brotherhood and an engaging game from coordinated monster obliteration. The embroiled project is not sacrosanct; an incongruous plot, mechanical quest lines, and a haphazard world constitute a jet impacting the ground at dangerous speed. Pieces are everywhere, but Final Fantasy XV ultimately survives its crash landing through an impressive force of will.
The Last Guardian is a meditation of trust and patience. The eight year wait after its 2009 unveiling is a conspicuous illustration of this thesis, but a clearer picture develops by persisting through its meticulous operation. A lingering touch of melancholy and deep suspicions of malevolence—both synonymous with ICO and Shadow of the Colossus—are now complimented by enduring senses of companionship and devotion. In these moments, and The Last Guardian has many, it's hard not to feel captured and taken by its ability.
VR's viability hinges on making sensible objectives integral to the wonder implicit in its format. Robinson: The Journey understands this and makes visible strides to balance astonishment and curiosity. Too often, however, it gets tripped up by contrasting wandering ambition against capricious behavior. Ideas fight, rather than support, one another, ensuring Robinson's first steps are also its last.
Dead Rising 4 calmed the series' manic instability by dropping its exacting timer and relaxing into its madcap open world. A year later, its contentious effect on Dead Rising's identity is pacified by the enormous size of Frank's Big Package. It's not an assembly of distractions, but rather an indulgence of Dead Rising's (and Capcom's) eccentric history — and its giddying intensity is an opportune support structure.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 feels like the hardest Sega has tried at coming up with a broadly appealing track and field collection since DecAthelete. The wide range of events and alternative control options create open accessibility while a handful of retro throwbacks and madcap minigames function as impressive novelties. Mario & Sonic's limitations are still recognizable, but Tokyo 2020 feels like the farthest anyone can drag an Olympic videogame into the present.
Every pixel of Owlboy's composition imparts a soaring level of care. Its impression upon 2D platforming parallels the comfort of a handmade blanket or the pleasure of devouring made-from-scratch cookies. Owlboy's sympathetic characters and gorgeous construction devours any suspected immunities to the charms of handcrafted artistry. It's a one-off rarity that somehow escaped the assembly line.
Weeping Doll is a brief presentation of experiments that do not work in virtual reality. Its theme is neither frightening nor coherent, its puzzles are mundane and straightforward, player movement is disorienting and inelegant, and its visual aesthetic imitates the vision of a person with a dangerous blood alcohol concentration. Weeping Doll blunders its format worse than Digital Pictures' full-motion video projects miscalculated the Sega CD.
Windlands' swinging and soaring facilitates a manic relationship between serenity and stress. It's either a holiday bounding across lush vistas or a white-knuckled, vertigo-inducing parkour utopia. Windlands isn't terribly inventive, however, its considerable accessibility options and presence inside virtual reality's honeymoon do well to suppress effective objections.
With Dark Souls' formidable reputation undisputed, other characteristics slip into transparency. Humor, long rumbling under the surface, receives a more stable focus in Ashes of Ariandel. Expectations are bent, defied, and destroyed in ways that are designed to simultaneously humiliate and impress series veterans. After five games and six pieces of downloadable content, it's hard to imagine a more suitable approach.
PlayStation VR Worlds is intended to raise belief in its accompanying hardware. And it does; once for each of its five technical showpieces. Afterward that high is only reached through a vicarious transfer from newcomers, positioning VR Worlds' potential as a dramatic flash instead of an imposing statement.
Pixel Gear seeks enrichment from the path of least resistance. Its virtual shooting gallery is adequate enough to qualify as a game, but its vacant ambition prohibits sustained engagement or durability. The bare minimum is a discouraging target. Pixel Gear's gunplay is not capable of aiming any higher.
Ace Banana demonstrates that virtual reality experiences can be as creatively bankrupt and technically destitute as the most cynically conceived mobile games. It's an untended facsimile of wave-based survival that specializes in unreliable control, dubious assembly, and the induction of nausea. If critics are concerned that virtual reality may be a fleeting gimmick then Ace Banana is their core example.
Competent virtual reality creates a profound shift in the way games immerse players. Past the novelty, however, comes the demand to have a material effect on the virtual world. Being a witness is fine, but becoming a participant is better. Job Simulator, perhaps more than any other PlayStation VR launch title, neither dwells in abstracts nor resides in stasis. Its cartoony confines are genuine, and player agency, however modest, feels authentic.
Virtual reality is an apt home for Battlezone's class of tank busting pandemonium. Appropriating its arcade doctrine, filtering it through 36 years, and then projecting it as a full-priced product may have been a reach. As an experience, Battlezone VR is neatly matched to its hardware. As a game, however, it doesn't (yet) have quite enough firepower to oppose any presumed opposition.
When Arkham VR works, I am Batman breathing in the ambience of Gotham City. When it fails, I am a human being in my basement struggling to convince suspicious technology to behave correctly. This creates a curious dichotomy, one that actively embraces virtual reality's capability to magically transform the world while also bearing the burden of hardware in its infancy. Whether or not Arkham VR can find balance may come down to a set of personal preferences and, to a certain extent, luck.