It’s a game about cartography – as you hopefully guessed from the name – that dresses itself up in all the usual cozy accoutrements and that is always trying to remind you of how much fun you’re having, even if you’re not.
It’s got its world-building down pat, but the developers forgot to make the world fun to play in at the same time.
I don’t know if we’re likely to see another Arkham game any time soon, but as long as we get something as inventive and as fun as LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, I’m perfectly prepared to wait a lot longer.
Even if Rune Dice isn’t quite at the very top of the genre, it’s definitely in the upper tier. For me, the key measure of success for a roguelike deckbuilder is how often you reach the end of a run and say to yourself, “Okay, just one more, but that’s it!” – and there have been several nights where I’ve found myself getting to bed a little too late because I was sure I had one good run of dice just around the corner. If that’s not success, I don’t know what is.
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is, more than anything else, a weird, somewhat experimental game. There’s a plot, of course, and some familiar faces that pop up here and there, but if you’re expecting your standard Nintendo 2D platformer (as reductionist as that phrase is), this definitely isn’t that.
If you’re a fan of classic 3D platformers, Dracamar evokes those in all the right ways. It may feel like a lost oddity from another continent and generation, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s all part of its charm.
MOUSE: P.I. For Hire is, indeed, a fantastic game. The world is well-imagined and the aesthetics are perfection, but the fact they’re all built around an absurdly fun first-person shooter makes this a game you absolutely need to play.
Beyond Words feels like Scrabble remade by someone who’s never really played it.
It’s got some interesting new features, but nothing that makes the game even better. Though seeing as Super Mario Bros. Wonder is one of the best 2D Mario games ever, the phrase “gilding the lily” seems fairly appropriate.
I wouldn’t call it a great game or a hidden gem, but it’s decent enough that it lives in that same so-so range that so many other GameMill games sit in.
There’s one major drawback that prevents Fear the Timeloop from being a great game: for some reason, the developers cheaped out when it came to voice actors.
That’s kind of what this year’s version of The Show feels like: that it rolled off an assembly line without any attempt to make it new or interesting or different from last year’s version…which itself felt like a clone of the year before that. It’s really hard to say that, unless you’re coming to the franchise brand new, that there’s any reason to pick it up over any other version in the last few years.
While I’m not about to pretend that MindsEye is secretly a masterpiece, I think saying that it’s one of the worst games ever made is stretching it a little far. I know we’re in an age where everything has to be either one extreme or another, but there’s a massive range in between those two poles, and MindsEye fits somewhere along that spectrum.
Does it ever come close to matching Portal? Obviously not. But it doesn’t need to, either. Chromagun 2 may not do a whole lot new, but the fact that so many other games are out there now that are also copying Portal makes that easier to forgive.
There’s a sense of wonder and silliness that not many other games share, and it’s enough to suck you in and keep you entertained right up to the end of the closing credits.
If you go in expecting a terrible game – say, one of the worst games of the year – then you may be pleasantly surprised. For all its flaws, it’s actually kind of fun.
As someone who misses the old Sony and the way they’d try weird things (and not just go for big and cinematic with every one of their games), it feels weird to criticize them for a game where they try something different. But the problem is that God of War: Sons of Sparta isn’t particularly fun. It’s a perfectly adequate metroidvania at a time when there are plenty of very good metroidvanias that are more worth your time, so unless you desperately want a Kratos: The Very Early Years game you can safely skip this one.
As a single-player game, it’s solid enough, but add in some friends and multiplayer, and you’ve got the makings of a party classic.
Of Ash and Steel brings to mind games like Risen or Gothic – you know, janky RPGs that were objectively kind of terrible but that sort of had their own charm, even if you had to look hard to see it.
If I managed to enjoy Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator despite the stressfulness, that means everyone else should absolutely love it. It’s completely nuts, but it’s got enough imagination that if you like betting it all on the role of a die, you’re guaranteed to get addicted to it.