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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.
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.
I enjoyed replaying Riven in remade form, and while I do not think this game replaces the original, it certainly supplements it and makes it more attractive for someone curious about this game and franchise. The puzzles are still good, the alterations are sensible, and the Age of Riven itself remains an enchanting place to piece together.
It’s large enough to create moments of surprise but has a more hand-crafted scope that moves you through novel locales and largely engaging boss fights at an impressive clip, finding a middle ground between the scale of FromSoft’s past work and Elden Ring. Here, there is a sense of falling down rabbit holes, as one obscure discovery leads to another until you’re deep beneath the surface or in the middle of a strange ritual ground you can’t comprehend. This studio deeply understands how to wring the divine out of this world where deities and mortals mingle, resulting in the same type of awe-inspiring ambiance and unforgettable backdrops that put Elden Ring in a league of its own. While I wish it solved more of the base game’s issues so there weren’t such steep valleys here, particularly around some of its slash-happy big bads, overall, Shadow of the Erdtree not only reaches the peaks of the of its predecessor but, in many ways, surpasses them.
Perhaps these attempts distorted reality enough that Alan could build on them and eventually escape, and perhaps these attempts reflect Remedy’s own struggle in crafting what would become Alan Wake II. I wrote that “North Star” could have been a Control prototype— and maybe it was. It still exists as a part of the story, and Remedy showing that to us feels special. It feels incredibly novel that a game’s DLC exists to thematically bolster itself, rather than solely provide additional entertainment. Night Springs does both, and furthers the metanarrative spiral of the base game. In the end, I shut up and trusted Remedy, and I’m ready to do it all over again whenever the second expansion, The Lake House, arrives.
For most of its duration, Senua’s Saga is undone by its own admirable precepts. It’s too enamored with its central conceit of letting us hear the voices in Senua’s head, too concerned with being serious and sober, too in love with the barbaric world it’s trying to create and the relentlessly grim story it’s trying to tell to work as a worthwhile piece of entertainment. I really hate to say that, because Ninja Theory’s dedication to their vision is laudable, especially in an industry full of cookie cutter sequels and generic retreads focused on hitting the broadest possible audience. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II deserves respect, but it doesn’t necessarily deserve to be played.
Altogether though, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a game with vision. It wraps intriguing puzzles in a digital gothic framic. It makes the most of its chosen medium as it forces us to navigate the tenuous details of this backdrop. Just about every layer of the experience is creatively risky, from its fragmented narrative to its uncompromising barrage of challenges, but these gambles largely pay off to deliver something with purpose and direction. Crafting this kind of maze isn’t easy; it takes a combination of subtle guidance and faith in your audience. But despite these challenges, Simogo never loses sight of how to stoke curiosity about what’s lurking around the next corner, whether it’s a treasure you’ve been seeking or, conversely, something horrible lurking in the dark.
At its very worst, 1000xRESIST manages to be “fine.” Its “worst” lasts about three minutes, and it is still ridiculously compelling all the while. At all other times, 1000xRESIST relentlessly operates at its best. It’s one of the best stories in the medium, one of the best games this year, and one of the best games I’ve ever played. It’s no coincidence that it was nominated for three IGF awards this year, with one of them being the grand prize—it’s an achievement, and every inch of it deserves to be celebrated. If this world is just, it will get the incredible fanfare that it spends every minute earning. It’s simply an astonishing debut from Sunset Visitor; I can’t wait to see what other stories they will grace us with in the future, what other experiences of theirs I will be this desperate to hold onto.
As a whole, Children of the Sun’s explosions of violence pull us into The Girl’s quest for revenge, combining dome-blasting fun with action-puzzles that invite creativity. Equally important, the game’s aesthetic rips — its offputting art style, color choices, and unsavory elements, like the bliss The Girl takes from drilling holes in cultist skulls, driving home all the visceral details. While I wish this attention-grabbing EP had a few more tracks, what’s here lands with the impact of a hollow-point round.
South Park: Snow Day is a step backwards for the show’s library of games. It could be worth a good laugh or two, especially with friends, but you’ll get a lot more of them from the show itself. There must not have been a lot of faith in this one considering its very small price tag of $30 compared to the new standard of $70. But honestly, you’re better off taking that $30 and putting it towards Ubisoft’s older South Park games, The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole. Those will offer more enjoyment than Snow Day ever could.
Rise of the Ronin shows exactly what that money buys. From the awkward horse animation to the silent protagonist, in every cutscene fading out to a loading screen instead of dynamically swinging back behind the protagonist, in the constant tooltip tutorials and the entirely unmotivated progression systems with no contextualisation in the world.
Classic game anthologies followed a pretty basic pattern ever since companies first realized they could make some money by bundling their old games together and tossing them back out to the public with minimal care or effort. They’d have some old games, maybe a single text screen of historical information, perhaps a small gallery of behind the scenes photos, and that’s it. Digital Eclipse showed how utterly insufficient that kind of collection is with Atari 50 and The Making of Karateka, and they continue their peerless work with Llamatron: The Jeff Minter Story. It’s a godsend for Minter fans, a crucial piece of history for an often disrespected medium, and mind-expanding, technicolor, llama-loving proof that, yes, games can be art.
When a game’s story and gameplay aren’t on the same level, there’s a tendency to frame it as an unbalanced tradeoff: style with no substance, or lore with no impact. Unicorn Overlord proves the unsettling—to me, anyway—truth that sometimes story doesn’t really matter, even in a political epic. Sometimes you don’t need much of an excuse to send your army to fight another battalion of red-clad soldiers with a complicated name. Other times, the absence of a really good story makes the rest of the game feel hollow. But equally it proves that little touches in style, organization, and even background writing can go a long way to make up for what it lacks.