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Upfront, Alien: Rogue Incursion delivers exactly what you’d want from an Aliens-inspired VR game: the horror of being chased by these iconic movie monsters and the thrill of blasting them into green goo with your Pulse Rifle. But while this mission starts strong, it eventually spins its wheels, stretching out the experience for too long before ending on a disappointing cliffhanger—while it isn’t specified in the title, this is actually only Alien: Rogue Incursion Part One, with Part Two still on the way. Add in lots of technical issues and a huge accessibility shortcoming in not having teleportation movement options for people prone to motion sickness, and you have a much rockier ride than it initially appeared. With its high highs and low lows, Rogue Incursion is a little too accurate a microcosm of the Alien experience.
I’m as tired as anybody of the “movies becoming games becoming movies” ouroboros that has dominated the last two decades or more of game development, but The Great Circle pulls it off in a way that hits several of my buttons. Whatever cynicism or skepticism I brought into this one wilted somewhere early on, perhaps the first time Vatican librarian Enrico Colantoni cut a rug to a swing 78.
We go out, we come back. We hope. Sometimes, someone turns on a radio. Sometimes, someone tells a joke. Sometimes, someone dies. This is life in The Zone. Happiness is when a friend plays a song on a guitar. Enjoy every campfire. Enjoy every energy drink.
Don’t let these criticisms or that number at the top of this page dissuade you. They come from a place of experience with and deep love for Digital Eclipse’s work; this particular installment might not be our favorite, but it’s still excellent. If this is your first Gold Master Series, you’ll be really impressed at the reliably great work Digital Eclipse does here. If you’ve somehow never played Tetris, or at least not enough to fall in love with a specific version, and have never heard the story of how it was created and introduced to the world, you might hang on Rogers’ and Pajitnov’s every word. If you’ve read Ackerman’s or Brown’s books, or seen the movie, you’re just going to hear the same history but in the words of the men who lived it. And if you were hoping to play the same exact game you became obsessed with on the Game Boy or NES at the dawn of the ‘90s, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
What it does share, though, is a similar idiosyncratic streak. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything else that plays quite like Bokeh Game Studio’s freshman work; it’s all about darting between hosts as you chip away at unsightly creatures through even more unsightly acts of manipulation. In a time where it’s increasingly easy to rag on AAA releases for playing it safe (something they mostly do to offset rising development costs), this game feels like a throwback to the creatively risky mid-budget titles of yesteryear that the industry has largely left behind. Slitterhead may have a lot of obvious shortcomings, but I’d generally rather play a messy splatter fest than an overly sterile bore, and this game is more than happy to paint everything red.
Still, even with these notable accessibility issues and other flaws, I can’t help but be extremely impressed with Rivals of Aether II for catching lightning in a bottle. It not only mimics but also builds on one of the best competitive games ever made, emulating its expressive battles so fast they make eyeballs bleed and finger joints explode. The cast is varied, the combos are dynamic, and the core movement is electric. Like with any fighting game, I’m sure there will be some competitive hiccups (some are already unhappy with how strong crouch canceling is), but what we have here is a rewarding platform fighter that controls like a dream—I wish that it did more to on-board new players, and was less limited outside of multiplayer, but for genre veterans, this core feel is the most important piece. While it’s way too early to tell if the game will fully capture Melee’s magic, it’s come closer than I thought possible, and that’s no small feat.
It’s been a long time since Inquisition’s release in 2014, less than one year after the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard is definitely worth that wait. It offers the fun and deep character interactions that BioWare is known for, while packaging the best aspects of previous Dragon Age games into a brand new adventure. Despite a few flaws, it’s an engrossing RPG that’ll leave an impression on fans for years to come.
As Metaphor: ReFantazio constantly reminds us, both micro and macro problems are intertwined. What’s the perspective of somebody looking for an abortion in a red state, a family separated by the border, a kid in Gaza? The examples are everywhere, and they’re visibly blunt, too. They’re there while we scroll down on the timeline or in three-second-long attention span cycles while we swipe reels. If only more people made the effort to see things through somebody else’s eyes, perhaps we could regain some semblance of hope that change might stop being a fantasy.
The more I sit with my feelings about Clans, the more I think Piranha is on to something. Perhaps this actually is what BattleTech always wants to be. Somewhere between a bad live action TV show and a bad children’s cartoon about war crimes is the fundamental joy of stomping around inside of big robots that tear through buildings like tissue paper and no one can be right, because everyone is wrong. I wish they’d honestly leaned more into the strengths of this game. The absurd vibes of BattleTech. Because when Clans actually does that, Piranha reminds me exactly of why BattleTech is so fucking cool.
While Mouthwashing certainly won’t be for everyone, its unsettling sights and slow-burn narrative are difficult to scrub from memory. It builds toward brutal reveals with style and purpose as its fragmented storytelling forces us to fill in the gaps—its suggestions of violence are often worse than the real thing. It has plenty of terrifying sights, but perhaps its scariest element is how it puts us in the headspace of someone committing increasingly awful acts, all conveyed via distressing moments of interactivity that make you feel complicit in the butchery. Through its portrayal of desperation and crushing guilt, Mouthwashing is as cold as the vacuum of space.
In many ways, The Plucky Squire gave me exactly what I wanted from its core premise. It lets you seamlessly hop between a delightfully presented fairy tale and the world outside these pages, making great use of meta elements through reality-bending puzzles and genre-switching detours. The art style is cute, and everything is presented with charm. However, while it makes for a pleasant experience upfront, it ultimately wears out its welcome due to overly simplistic battles and storytelling that lacks depth. This game may take place in a picture book, but I wish it were a tad less paper-thin.
Those constant references to other PlayStation hits—and even third-party games like Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, and Persona—are often cool and eye-opening. After the last game’s focus on hardware, this navel-gazing is also potentially turning into a crutch, though. The three Astro Bot games, collectively, are better than almost every other series that they make reference to. If at some point Sony thought a new mascot platformer—a genre not especially in fashion when the first standalone game starring Astro Bot came out in 2018—needed easter eggs to PlayStation systems and games to appeal to a modern audience, the ecstatic response to those platformers should have proven they can stand on their own by now. It’s not like this game is any less enjoyable just because there are little robot versions of Aloy and Gravity Rush’s Kat bopping around, but ultimately Astro Bot is as much about celebrating all these other games as it is celebrating itself. And that’s unnecessary: this adorable little nugget is more than lovable enough to support its own adventure. The spectacular Astro Bot is yet more proof.
While I wish it was a tad more punishing, I still had a blast orchestrating complicated turns that involved teleporting allies across the map, utilizing diverse powers, and, of course, knocking hapless cronies out windows. But, perhaps its greatest accomplishment is how it escapes the inertia of countless other modern war games that feel like the product of the military-industrial complex. I guess all it took to avoid these tropes was not being in the back pocket of the US armed forces, a bit of empathy, and a guy who looks like Gandalf with a magic-infused M16. Who knew?.
Again, though, humor is subjective. It’s entirely possible you won’t jive with what this game is doing, as basically every traditional marker of a game here is subservient to humor. If you don’t find Thank Goodness You’re Here funny, you’ll probably get very little out of it. And I’m sorry, but that’s your loss. For those who do share its sense of humor, and who appreciate its cartoon style and absurd parody of village life, Thank Goodness You’re Here is bound to impress. It’s one of the most purely enjoyable games I’ve ever played, and I’m thinking it will be as fun to revisit again and again as the great comedies it echoes.
If you’re somebody who was never able to attend any of the in-person tournaments Nintendo has held over the decades, you might’ve been excited for this home version. Sadly it just doesn’t add up, due to the same reluctance over online play that Nintendo has shown for three console generations now. The lack of leaderboards and a true online system makes Nintendo World Championships a uniquely pointless game, and something that can’t keep my interest past the length of a pop song. If Nintendo ever gets serious about what they’re seemingly trying to do here, perhaps there can be a future for Nintendo World Championships, whether it’s an update of NES Edition or one based on another of Nintendo’s classic consoles. Until then, it’s one of the most misguided games I’ve ever played.
If Dungeons of Hinterberg had several more months in the oven and a few cuts, it may have been an excellent game instead of just a good one. Still, I don’t hesitate to recommend it, because the heart of the experience is so inventive and the less interesting parts can mostly be ignored. When it comes down to it I’d rather have its enjoyable stretches and mediocrity separated into different parts of a game so that I can struggle through what I don’t like while looking forward to what I do. Hinterberg ends up being a lot like a hike: sometimes beautiful, sometimes tedious. But its dungeons do approach greatness, and it’s worth trekking through the less-than-perfect aspects to see them.
If it wasn’t for these pain points, Bō would be a game I wholeheartedly recommend to any fan of Metroid and its ilk, but they currently stand as severe detriments to the overall experience. I hope they’re things that can be ironed out with patches, because Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus is positively dripping with love for the genre and deserves to be acknowledged for what it brings forth—not the concessions I must make regarding it. It took me roughly 16 hours to reach 100% completion, and I enjoyed 15 of those hours greatly. A brief conversation I had with someone on the marketing and community side of Squid Shock Studios vaguely pointed towards even more secrets to uncover or future content planned for the game, and I will likely jump back into Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus to experience those myself when and if they happen: but only because I know the worst is behind me.
Even with these notable problems, SCHiM still makes for a breezy time. While its level design and storytelling lack depth, its core movement feels so good you’ll be able to forgive this for much of its runtime as you dart through well-rendered street corners. There is a coherent vibe found in the sharp art design, idyllic vistas, and low-key score, which creates a soothing ambiance that makes it easy to unwind. Although I wish it ultimately gave more to chew on, cruising through SCHiM is a decent way to spend a lazy summer afternoon.
Still, like its legion of dancers, Kunitsu-Gami has a good rhythm. The day and night cycles are paced smartly; there’s enough time to get your plan sorted out during the daytime, while still having to make tough decisions about what roles to assign to your villagers and what structures to have your carpenter fix up before the fight, and the battles themselves don’t overstay their welcome or feel punishingly long. The village building phase feels like an afterthought, unfortunately; it’s like doing busywork for musubi and other unlockables. Anybody interested in this game because of the village portions will most likely feel underwhelmed. If you’re looking for a stylish, challenging strategy game steeped in Japanese culture and tradition, though, Kunitsu-Gami is a dance you’ll want to learn.
In the end, Zenless Zone Zero gives you a chance to bring down your foes in the most stylish ways imaginable, all thanks to a dynamic and exhilarating combat system. Regrettably, this is the lone highlight in a game that’s marred by questionable design choices and limited exploration. As someone who’s put in countless hours into F2P games, including Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, this youngest child in the family is unlikely to step out of the shadows of its older and more successful siblings. Indeed, if you still enjoy other F2P or live-service games out there, it’s hard to recommend investing your time into Zenless Zone Zero at this current stage.