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It’s cozy without becoming boring.
For a game to break through it has to be not just good, but unique. It has to marry smart, proficient design with a legitimately interesting and distinctive story and aesthetic. It’s a high bar and MIO: Memories In Orbit sails right over it. There are no humans in its sci-fi, but sci-fi is rarely this human—the hands of its designers rarely this evident in a game.
Kirby Air Riders is set to be a perennial title for solo or multiplayer play for me. If you’re on the fence about getting a Switch 2 or are looking for a new title to pick up, this is the best the system has to offer so far.
Incredible visual presentation, an arresting atmosphere, and a charming travel partner make it worth taking a trip down The Midnight Walk.
Then there are the long walks where silence slowly builds, as the lack of UI and thoughtfully envisioned setting come together to create an alarmingly thin separation between the player and their beleaguered avatar. It’s in these too fleeting moments where the unease of isolation gives way to a particularly terrifying thought: what if we’re not alone?
Melinoë and her travails are narratively rich, and the basic combat (whose debt to Supergiant’s first game Bastion remains unmistakable) is still strong enough, to ensure that Hades II is an excellent game that nails a precarious equity between story and action—and that should be enough to convince anybody to play it.
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With its one-of-a-kind charm and narrative chops, The Séance of Blake Manor is a master class in the detective genre and a delicious supernatural treat for the exact kind of freak I am.
While Possessor(s) doesn’t fully break from a crowded field of search-action games, its compelling characters and pointed commentary give it some personality of its own. If you’re eager to explore man-made horrors, this flaming wreck of a company town will provide.
If I had to describe Ninja Gaiden 4, it’s like a metal song: loud, boisterous, hard as hell, and simultaneously brutish and complex. It’s hard to expect that much more from a Ninja Gaiden title, even in a new generation. If 4 is the base for future games, the Year of the Ninja may wind up needing a few pages in the calendar.
Absolum was developed by Dotemu, Guard Crush Games, Supamonks, and published by Dotemu and Gamirror Games. Our review is based on the PC version. It is also available for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
Consume Me was developed by Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, and Ken “coda” Snyder, and was published by Hexecutable. It is available on Steam.
Through its unsettling atmosphere and total commitment to digital misery, this is an effective experiment that taps into how many of us are feeling about our increasingly tech-company-driven future: that is, very badly.
But when the experience tries to be a copy of everything but itself, and not one of its limbs seems designed to stand out and leave a lasting impression, does any of this matter?
Who wants to go through all of that in hopes of maybe getting some weird sci-fi reference to Mappy? There needs to be something more than an Easter egg at the end of that labyrinth—especially when there’s a regular stream of Easter eggs on the way there.
So yeah, I think I’ll go to that rage room. Maybe I’ll blast Bloom and Rage’s “See You In Hell” (as played by Nora Kelly Band in real life) while I cause some destruction. The world doesn’t hold back with the destruction it delivers unto women, so fuck it. Fuck the fear and the harassment and the harm. Thank you especially to all the women who made this game what it is—see you in hell not alongside our enemies, but as the queens Bloom and Rage sang that we are.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector fleshes out its predecessor’s RPG systems, develops a convincing cast of characters, and gives you the tools to be the space captain of your dreams, but its greatest accomplishment is how it makes you feel the full force of that quote in each fleeting moment.