13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim tells an ambitious and compelling story that takes an anaconda's worth of twists and turns, but it's careful to never overwhelm you to the point of exhaustion, while remaining grounded enough in its characters and concept to deliver everything with a bang. While the other half of the experience is pretty unremarkable in comparison, it doesn't prevent 13 Sentinels from standing high as an example of video game and science fiction storytelling.
Eternal Threads is a solid attempt from first-time developer Cosmonaut Games, presenting a sci-fi, time travelling mystery where you'll need to monitor how cause and effect influences the events around you. Its clear and engaging time manipulation mechanics make the meat of the game satisfying to engage with, and focusing it on the personal issues of everyday people grounds the experience. Despite the uneven presentation and lack of a major challenge, it makes for a worthwhile light puzzling experience.
"While New Tales From The Borderlands doesn't quite reach franchise heights, it succeeds at providing an entertaining and whacky Borderlands experience."
Despite being an uneven experience, Midnight Suns is ultimately still a good game that's worth a try for tactics and Marvel fans.
Total War: PHARAOH presents an interesting window into the time and place of a tumultuous historical period while handing you the reigns to make your own story out of it. While learning the ropes takes some work to get into due to poor use of tutorials and the overwhelming amount of extra mechanics in the campaign layer, buried underneath is an excellent gameplay formula that continues to stand the test of time.
Classified: France '44 is a strong debut from Absolutely Games that's worth a go if you're looking for hours of well-designed turn-based combat, varied missions and encounters, and a highly replayable campaign. However, it doesn't quite hit the potato masher on the head when it comes to exploring its WWII setting and creating a narrative about the human cost of war.
Black Myth: Wukong infuses the cultural heritage of China, its rich mythology, and one of its most important pieces of literature with an action RPG structure that's as deep as it is grand in scale. However, this same scope leads to some inconsistency across the board that is a detriment to the overall quality.
Echo Generation honestly feels like it could have been one of this year’s great indie games, but the developer's inspiration from 90s adventure games ended up being both a boon and a curse. It has a brilliantly refined style and atmosphere that provides a sense of nostalgia. It’s eclecticism in its music, art style, and enemy variety also worked to keep it fresh and engaging, but the frustrating balancing and dated puzzle implementation sullied its more immersive aspects, and can’t be overlooked.
In Sound Mind is an ambitious project that seeks to depict dark subject matter and does so successfully with a narrative about overcoming our mental fears. The experience is dragged down by a frustrating inclusion of combat, and an approximately 12-hour length that isn’t justified, at a detriment to the story. It’s not conventionally scary - though it has its hair-raising moments - but it’s disturbing and at times uncomfortable due to a sometimes grounded and sometimes surreal delve into the effects of mental illness on the mind. On the plus side, there is an uncanny valley companion cat - that you can pet - which is instantly a redeeming factor.
In the end, The Gunk sits in the middle of the pile. The core of sucking up the Gunk is satisfying for the roughly four hours of playtime, but the lack of a difficulty curve for the puzzles or combat lets it down. Its story makes an honest attempt at character drama that works for the most part, but the short playtime doesn't leave us quite enough time with the characters or world. It's by no means bad and there's not much poorly implemented content here, but it's a plainly inoffensive experience that settles when it could have punched slightly higher.
It’s fair to say New World hasn’t been a total failure so far for Amazon. The servers are constantly full and nearly one million concurrent Steam players is a mark of success for any game. However, on a mechanical level there are many things lacking, that detract from the whole experience. A lack of any meaningful quest content, combat that isn’t fun for over half the game and an apparent drought of endgame content make it a game that might be worth skipping over until a few content updates or expansions. Plus when the most fun aspect of your game is picking flowers as opposed to slaying beasts or completing quests, maybe some of the game needs a rework.
Steelrising had all the potential to be a strong entry into the souls-like canon, but it never manages to exit mediocrity.
I'd be hard-pressed to say Atomic Heart is an outright bad game, and despite featuring some awful elements, there's clear quality in its gameplay mechanics, art direction, and encounters that highlight Mundfish's talent. Stories from before release painted the development as largely directionless, causing them to have to fashion it into something playable and structured near the end, and this seems evident in the final product. Mundfish bit off more than it could chew, leading to a lot of half-baked ideas that should have been scrapped and reigned in. It makes the game's greatest moments ultimately bittersweet, as deep down there is potential for something excellent.
Dead Island 2 could have been the Return of the Living Dead of zombie video games, making for an irreverent, B-movie romp through an undead-filled LA, but it just ends up marginally better than the original game without ever approaching its full potential. The improved combat is the game's main saving grace, but it isn't enough to redeem the shallow progression mechanics, inconsistent tone, and unfocused story.
The game certainly gets better as time goes on, and the story is well-told enough that it's worth experiencing for survival horror fans. However, it comes with the caveats that the overall gameplay leaves a lot to be desired, and its survival horror contemporaries just do a better job on nearly every front.