Reinvention can just as easily be a prompt for a bold new swing, and while Saints Row feigns one or two, it could stand to commit more fully to them. This retooling/reboot/reenvisioning doubles down on the past in an intentional, if short-lived, nostalgia play, but there has to be more there, right? If we should see more of these Saints-and I earnestly do want to-I would hope it would be with something fresh to say or show. Until then, Saints Row still has some growing to do.
It drops all pretenses and weaves conquest and violence of various forms (spiritual, physical, and systemic) into its systems and simple story very satisfyingly. At the end of the day, your cult leader is little but an avatar for destruction masquerading as a hero. How much more of a videogame could you be at that point? And for that frankness alone, Cult of the Lamb is more than deserving of high marks.
I want to invest in a good TMNT show again, and I even tried to navigate the absolute nightmare that is the now Amazon-run Comixology app to get in on the latest comic series based on my favorite turtles. I've come away from this experience with a rekindled love for my half-shelled heroes and I never want to give them up again. Cowabunga forever, my dudes.
A lack of a compelling story hurt the time I spent with the game's cast, even though I adore the game's art and how much every scene leaves me wanting more. More time with the mechanics and a greater emphasis on the place and people of 1700s France could've helped Card Shark a great deal in my eyes, but I still admire it for what it is. I just think that much like the game's countless tricks, the best possible execution of its ideas needed a bit more confidence.
But it didn't and despite my efforts, Sifu constantly met me with a passing disinterest in its subjects and a reckless deployment of imagery it didn't seem to entirely understand, all the while passing itself off as admiration. Its weak writing and poor characterization strips the game's characters and settings of tension and texture and the lens of the game's creators seems to forget the people and culture at the heart of the movies they love to invoke. I don't think I can square that away and I'm not sure anyone should have to.
Nobody is ambitious but not too in over its head, funny to boot and grounded in an idea that understands the joy of defining conventions. It may miss a bit of the formula that's made its influences as strong as they were, but it's got style and confidence and those are swings I'm glad connected. Most of all, it reminds me of the fun I used to have playing pretend, and even though I've stopped, games like this one help keep that sense of adventure alive.
With multiple endings to earn and only a few under my belt, I don't really want to come up either. Instead, I want to go back to the market, snipe an organ out from under WOOHOO CHARLIE, and work through Trading Simulator's absurd sense of humor, banger of a soundtrack, and mechanical twists on my journey to become the greatest organ-trading warlord in space.
I don't think there's a situation so bleak they wouldn't try to render in service of people-pleasing and making sales climb higher. Battlefield 2042 represents the pinnacle of a feedback loop that told its creators that bigger is always better. Now that we're here, I'm sure we were never right to think that and I don't think we're stepping back from it anytime soon.
While I can nitpick about Deathloop's shortcomings, I'd rather just point you to a game that's a joy to play, confident in itself, touts two wonderful Black leads, looks wonderful, and rewards you for thinking outside the box. While it doesn' quite feel like an evolution of the formula, it's almost assuredly Arkane's most feature-complete and refined take on it. Like I said at the top of this review, Deathloop is countless things, and most of them are great.
It's all cozy but rote, which is a shame because the series has been bolder in the past. Walking away from it, I'm impressed at how much I cared for the cast, for example, and am also keenly aware of the fact that while I liked them, I will largely forget who they are because I've done this before and will likely do it again somewhere else in a few years. Life is Strange may sell itself on comfort, and True Colors may be the one most emblematic of this, but I wonder if the series itself has become too comfortable for its own good.
It's inexpensive to boot and simple to keep up with, making it markedly less of a chore to log into, have fun with for an hour or two, and hop back out of unlike most service games. It's got a fun style and look to it that makes it all the more inviting, and solid enough mechanics to master that I feel satisfied coming back to practice. Straight up, it's also just fun as hell to play something that isn't so grim or serious, making Knockout City a success in my eyes.
While it may seem unengaging because it effectively plays itself, it really is just prompting the player to look at gameplay from another angle, namely a more systems-driven one. For a person like me, who doesn't really craft "builds" in RPGs, it's made me realize why that is actually a rewarding aspect of those games. Now I spend half my time in Loop Hero making numbers go up and making optimizations I never would have, before embarking on another loop.
In a way, Bowser's Fury's restraint in world design and simplicity actually puts it more directly in line with 3D World than Odyssey, feeling like its true successor, but settling for this halfway step between them due to how it was released. Regardless of how both titles were delivered, I'm absolutely delighted with 3D World and fascinated at what a fuller title in the vein of Bowser's Fury might look like. Here's hoping we see more like both of these standout Mario titles sooner rather than later.