Slicing through mobs to trade up my weapons is fun, and sometimes an amusing line of dialogue makes everything seem great again. Gearbox could’ve done a lot more with the next installment in the Borderlands' series than this. It all got old, too quickly, and it made me just want to boot up Borderlands 2 with my friends again, instead.
I still would recommend The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me on release if you can handle the technical issues at present. If Supermassive Games manages to implement some updates and fix the performance issues, then I’d perhaps even recommend it – highly! – to seasoned horror fans. In spite of its flaws, The Devil in Me tells a riveting tale of a horrific killer in a thoughtful manner, opens up important discussions about human obsession with sanctifying spectacles, and it shows great potential for the future of the series. It’s just a shame about… everything else.
Layers of Fear (2023) starts out strong with the story of The Artist, and loses itself amidst its own ambition during the story of The Actor. Bloober Team’s once meaningful exploration of a character’s descent into madness quickly becomes redundant amidst a sea of film references and blurred storytelling. Layers of Fear is certainly a cohesive remake that brings the original games together, and there’s no denying that it looks great, but its second act feels incredibly lost when contrasted against such a strong start. Layers of Fear (2023) is one major case of whiplash, that’s for sure, but it does showcase Bloober Team's potential to do good if it can nail down the focal points of the stories it tells.
A huge part of me believes that The Outlast Trials - with a little more seamlessness between trials and objectives that aren’t rehashed and repeated - could’ve made an amazing single-player game, with multiplayer as an option. Though even with my qualms, The Outlast Trials is ultimately a game I’ve had a lot of fun with where there’s absolutely no compromise on quality, and Red Barrels should be applauded for that. It has been packed, shipped, and delivered with the utmost attentiveness from its developer. It’s just a shame that when it comes to the replayability of the game, it’s something I’ll likely revisit on occasion with friends as I would Phasmophobia or Lethal Company, and not much more than that.
This title is certainly a promising stepping-stone for the future of Pokémon, and I feel a lot of excitement for what comes next for the franchise. If Game Freak can work on its mistakes, create more interesting environments, and keep the changes to battling and catching Pokémon, I think the next Pokémon game we see could be one of the best yet. Finally, regardless of what Pokémon Legends: Arceus didn’t quite master, it was still a fun experience to play Pokémon in this new and evolved way, and experience a game that truly felt different for the first time in years.
On the whole, Kirby’s Dream Buffet is a neat idea on the surface. When brought to life, it could’ve genuinely been a contender for one of the Switch’s top party games had it featured a little more variation, and some better multiplayer support. That said, the future of Kirby is now very much cemented in 3D, and I still look forward to where the pink puff ball ends up once they’ve decided that they can’t stomach another strawberry.
Ultimately, Palworld is good fun. I’m looking forward to seeing how multiplayer works out with my friends. It’s easy to argue that much of Palworld’s best bits feel like they’ve been lifted from somewhere else, somewhere that has not been intentionally disavowed as an inspiration. Palworld definitely has some features worth admiring, and is finally letting keen monster-collectors dabble in the whole ‘what if Pokemon, but dark and violent’ query that many of us have often had, but I’m quite disappointed in how unoriginal it often feels.