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The remade “Resident Evil 4” feels more vibrant and present than just another rerelease of a technical product. It’s like reliving a fond memory. It’s like coming back to your childhood bedroom after all these years. Fittingly, the original series started as a remake, of the 1989 role-playing game “Sweet Home.” And even if some of the pieces are moved around, the new version still feels like home, sweet home.
Ultimately, the lore isn’t the main attraction, and isn’t the reason the Zelda series has endured for almost half a century. What’s more compelling is the game’s nod to the collective story of how human imagination pushes us through our toughest challenges, and sometimes sends us soaring to heights unseen.
The technology may fail, but the human experience as a messy, impetuous thing remains. Because of that, “Starfield” makes the right sacrifices.
In a sea of exemplar video games released in 2023, “Alan Wake 2” is the work most interested in pushing the boundaries of its franchise, its genre and even its medium.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is so good, it nearly wrecked my life.
Final Fantasy XVI remains an eloquent, sturdy work that achieves almost everything its creators hoped. It is not the most innovative Final Fantasy ever made. It’s just one of the best.
The problem arises when you may realize what I did: I’ve felt all this before.
Mortal Kombat doesn’t need to and probably shouldn’t “grow up.” Eternal adolescence is the point. But to stay young, it just needs to shed the old.
Here is “Stellar Blade,” an authentic slice of Korean cyberpunk, like Eve, beautiful in its own absurd way.
Studio MDHR’s “Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course” provides players with a five-star meal. As I picked my teeth, let out a final sigh of relief and felt full from my experience, I can only hope that the DLC’s name was just a play on words — and that there’s still room left for dessert.
For a dystopian narrative, “Stray” isn’t interested in preaching to the player. It doesn’t try to make grand statements about mankind’s hubris or shortsighted innovation. Instead, it walks you through a living, breathing city where robots have molded their own society from the ashes of another, and lets players make of humanity’s self-destruction what they will. And that impression will stick with you long after the game ends.
After playing for more than 40 hours, I’m still mesmerized by the core gameplay loop of building up my tool kit and adjusting my approach to take on new, more powerful machines. More than that, though, I’m mesmerized by the world.
This pairing of humans and the natural world up against a common antagonist, not necessarily as allies but as common victims, makes it clear how intimately Norco is tied to the swamps, valleys and fields that surround it. This interconnection between individuals with little in common on the surface but a shared place and history is where “Norco” locates the possibility for hope, a provocation that might offer those of us playing a model for our own local responses to corporate encroachment and environmental devastation. Through these mutually affecting connections between humans, nature and technology, “Norco” creates its own robotic story, disturbing, personal and fresh, an experience that should not be missed.
“Eternal Threads” almost seems aware that it’s not building a strong case for your emotional investment in whether these six people live or die. Throughout the game, mission control chimes in to remind you that these people’s lives definitely matter, that the average person has such and such number of descendants, so the fate of these six people and, more importantly, whoever comes after them could ultimately decide the fate of the world. And while that’s all technically true, I suppose, I can’t help but feel that “Eternal Threads” would have found infinitely more success laying the foundation for players to care about its existing characters instead of hinging your investment on theoretical stakes.
Available on Xbox Game Pass, “Trek to Yomi” is a no-brainer download for anyone wanting a simple yet cinematic action game that harks back to classic PC adventures and 2D blade-action titles. At a $20 asking price, it’s a more debatable purchase, especially considering the short clear time. But at the end of the trek, I didn’t regret a minute of it, once I got over the fact that the combat was never going to be the real hook. It’s a gorgeous visual feast, and once I started it, I found it hard to look away.
Perhaps, ultimately, you have to accept with “The Centennial Case” that you’re not so much Sherlock Holmes as Dr. Watson, offering up ideas that might be taken on board by the real star, or given short shrift. If you don’t mind playing second fiddle to its fine cast and weaving plotlines, there’s plenty here to keep you gripped. As with any good TV murder mystery, the intent is to keep audiences guessing. “The Centennial Case” should keep you guessing throughout.
For what the game is — a sequel to “Three Houses” with real-time Musou combat — it delivers what it promised. There’s a mystery to “Three Hopes” that can only be unraveled with dozens of hours of combat and cutscenes, and the game assumes substantial preexisting knowledge of “Three Houses.” Fans will enjoy reuniting with their favorite characters, but the derivative plot and built-in grind make it a tougher sell to anyone else.
“Shredder’s Revenge” achieves everything it set out to do, and will go down as an instant classic for its genre. No matter what era, whether it’s 1987, 1989 or 2022, it would be one of the finest, most exciting video game experiences of the year, honing an arcade formula as ageless as Turtles in time.
Right now, “Battlefield 2042” is better than it has ever been, though that remains faint praise. And given all that’s come before, the best decision for its future, and that of the Battlefield franchise, may be, in some measure, to simply let it go.
Puzzle games have to manage a delicate balancing act: If solutions are too simple, players lose interest; too difficult, and they feel cheated, like the answer was never decipherable to begin with. “Escape Academy” was opaque at times, but the answer always felt like it was within my grasp, if I just tried out this one idea, or thought about the puzzle from this other angle. Giving players that sense of empowerment is hard, and games don’t always get it right. But “Escape Academy” walks that tightrope with finesse, joining the pantheon of frantic-but-fun co-op greats.