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These days it's way too easy to get down in the dumps, doom scroll, and instantly complain about anything online; this game distracted me from that. It made me laugh, transporting my mind into a world where evil sentient emojis run a corrupt dating app, skeletons are motivational speakers, and goblins drink coffee from a pot. It gave me hope, and made me more optimistic at the prospect of real change, which can only happen when people respect each other, work together and rip it out of clutches of a CEO after slaying them with a giant sword.
If Yakuza is to truly grow, we need to be the one to call it in.
It sells a London where you shoot rockets from a drone into the London Eye and then unlock the "Lambeth Defiant" rewards. A London where you can recruit and control everyone on the street, but can't reach out and touch them, or talk, or interact in any way that isn't knocking them out or shooting them in the head. A London where the city fades to background noise as you drive from waypoint to waypoint, and then stealth, and fight, and shoot, because there's nothing else to do.
Star Wars Squadrons is a solid Star Wars starfighter game that struggles under the limitations of trying to make a game that can be played both in and out of VR. The game's visuals are striking, but don't do much to makeup for its repetitive gameplay. As a VR experience, Star Wars Squadrons ranks among the best, but as a videogame it leaves much to be desired.
Maybe in a few months there'll be patches, course corrections, and I'll get an update and try it again. I came to Mordheim late and I have no idea what the base game was like. XCOM 2 needed War of the Chosen to really become the game I wanted to play. Maybe Rogue Factor just needs time to make Necromunda become the badass squad-skirmish game that I wanted it to be.
The genius of Spelunky 2 is that it somehow adds new possibilities to a game that already had endless possibilities. That's legitimately impressive. And that's why I'm sure I'll be playing this for as long as I've played the original, both games coexisting blissfully together as one of the absolute best parent-child pairs in gaming.
Four generations in, I felt it was time to retire and did so with a smile on my face. Crusader Kings III forces you to play as a human capable of only human feats, and constantly reminds you of that fact. But it is this limitation that gives every action you take a real sense of weight, and makes even the most mundane of decisions feel like life and death.
The burning rage that creeps from the embers of the oceanic volcano. Each of these spaces left me emotionally entranced and affected. That isn't something games evoke in a visceral manner for me anymore and I am not sure it's something I will experience again in the near future.
It endears itself to the player and just asks us to have fun. If you fall over and mess up a line, it is okay. Just give it another shot! Vicarious Visions has done something special and I am so happy to say that The (virtual) Birdman is back and better than ever.
It's not a terribly long game, but neither should it be. Kill It With Fire's short gameplay matches its light tone, and keeps the premise from wearing out its welcome. Despite its low stakes, it is high spirited, and about as complicated and deep as it needs to be. If you've ever wanted to upend furniture and mow down a hedge maze just to get a spider, you'll feel personally targeted by this one. It's revenge fantasy chicken soup for the arachnophobic soul.
Every choice you make, from dialogue options to money management, gives the feeling that you really are in a wasteland, just trying to get by.
While on the surface the core gameplay loop may seem repetitive, it manages to be anything but. With each new technology unlocked, the level of complexity and resources required in creating new items increases, demanding the player create larger and larger factories to keep up with their own self-imposed demand.
Skateboarding in the time of COVID has been easier than ever due to so many public places being devoid of people, but having a digital analog to an artform that is often best experienced with others has made this time all the more easier. Skater XL is one of the rare "find your own fun" games that trusts players to do just that. So, hop on your board and see where the wheels take you.
For all the game’s self-references to its own B-movie filter, at times the tropes are presented with such eagerness that it becomes difficult to take York’s observations in good faith.
With Carrion, I wondered how Phobia Game Studio would be able to keep me interested without that dynamic. They managed it through the careful balance of giving you enough agency to feel powerful, while still requiring you to plan and act with precision to use that power effectively. The result is a razor-sharp campaign that fully put me in the amorphous shoes of its terrifying beast.
A lot of the little puzzles and vignettes are also fun as well. However, it's hard to look past the masculinist colonialist ideals it holds onto and consider coming back again. I'm not sure I'll be able to forget the fun and laughter of Origami King, but I also won't forget its problems.
Ghost of Tsushima just wants you to play a game you’ve basically already played many times, while also telling you about that cool old samurai movie it watched the other day. Which one sounds more interesting to you?
If you're completely, absolutely sure that you'd enjoy Battle for Bikini Bottom as much today as you did as a kid if not for the outdated platform and visuals, Rehydrated serves the same experience in a cleaner package. However, if you, like me, have fond memories of the game as a kid, muddied by the passage of time, be warned that this remaster might take your rose-tinted glasses and break them in two.
I wish I could say something more eloquent than that I have an already immeasurable amount of love for The Last of Us Part II.
For those who can look past these faults, there's a good amount of varied missions that can offer a real sense of catharsis. But its good ideas are too often marred by outdated sensibilities, both in terms of game design and in how it caters almost exclusively to the fantasies of the stereotypical straight white male.