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Monolith has come a long way since Xenogears and Squaresoft, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is evidence they're still going to have places to go without needing to find a new developmental process or bosses, too. Whether it's the "best" Xenoblade or not doesn't matter as much as the fact that it fits in wonderfully with what already existed, and ensures that we should be looking forward to whatever those next steps for the series end up being, too.
It's fitting, then, that the championship's final subverts the expectation of the long, silent stroll through the hall by kicking the music in as soon as you start moving forward. This time the nerves are left in the dressing room. She's revisited her footsteps time and time again until she's ready for the grand finale. After tonight, everyone in the crowd is going to remember Kara Hassan's name.
The game itself is also incredibly fun. It presents a tight gameplay loop that's enthralling and welcoming for newcomers and refreshing for fans of the genre. Compare it to Smash all you want, but Multiversus seeks to innovate rather than imitate, and it does so with aplomb.
It drops all pretenses and weaves conquest and violence of various forms (spiritual, physical, and systemic) into its systems and simple story very satisfyingly. At the end of the day, your cult leader is little but an avatar for destruction masquerading as a hero. How much more of a videogame could you be at that point? And for that frankness alone, Cult of the Lamb is more than deserving of high marks.
How much you enjoy South of the Circle will be determined by how much you like to engage with games on an intellectual and emotional level. It's a tricky balance to strike, but once it's beyond the first scene, South of the Circle has a lot more substance than its first impression lets on. It might be light on traditional gameplay, but it knows what it wants to say, and stays focused on that throughout.
Live A Live still has it. Takashi Tokita led a young team of fans at Historia, Inc. to create a version of a classic as vibrant and exciting and crucially unique in Square’s catalog today as it was in 1994. Released between Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger and passed over for translation due to its technically less impressive sprite work compared to its flagship siblings, it shines today as the celebration of a cult classic, with a worldwide legacy and influence as an important milestone in an entire alternate history of RPGs. Live A Live is the exact opposite of the unique masterpiece that’s so good it ruins other games: it is a heartfelt tribute to everything there is to love about the RPG format, and will leave you invigorated and excited not just to play more RPGs, but to watch more Kung Fu movies, more Westerns, more classic Sci-Fi. If you’ve even a passing interest in the genre, it is simply a must play.
From start to end, As Dusk Falls is all about moments-small interactions full of humanity that ground the flawed ambition of the experience and make the sum of the parts almost greater than the whole. The cliffhanger that the first half ends on-the narrative is charmingly divided into two books, Collision and Expansion-will be burned into my memory for a long time, both for its sheer audacity and how it pushes everything into new directions. It's not a perfect package, but it's one that will engross you for its entire seven hour playtime while dangling its many loose threads to entice you into yet another playthrough.
Bear and Breakfast is the most fun I've had with a management sim in a long time. As I write this, I can't wait to finish up the checklist of tasks on my last hotel and round out my recipe list. It's a crafting experience with a lot of depth that never becomes too repetitive, and even when it gives you too much to do, it also encourages you to step back and take a breath.
It avoids feeling like a simple educational game while also hitting emotional highs that underscore humanity's impact on animal populations. A story that becomes overly simplistic in its back half and some frustrating stealth sections aren't enough to stop the game from being an engaging survival experience, or to dilute its brutally honest message about the challenges that await us as we hurtle towards warming without adequate regulations. Endling's greatest skill is in making us empathize with the animals we live among, and in making it clear that though they bear the effects of climate change before we do, our fates are ultimately entwined.
B-12's memories are a kind of collectible you'll have to search for, and a few optional side-quests require scrounging up assorted bric-a-brac, but Stray doesn't make you wander about examining every nook and cranny for something you may or may not actually need. That's a good thing for a videogame, but if you were hoping to really just play as a cat doing cat-like things, "pointlessly searching for stuff you don't need" would be exactly what you wanted. The cat game might be less about the cat and more about the existential crises facing mankind and the artificial intelligences that will be left behind, but at least there's a dedicated meow button.
Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course is aptly named for a variety of reasons, each more on-the-nose than the last. Yes, the player is tasked with gathering ingredients for a special treat at the end, but more importantly, it lays out a smorgasbord of delightfully diverse boss fights that all (mostly) prove the quality that MDHR delivered in Cuphead five years ago was no fluke. Most importantly, each and every inch of this DLC is rich with stunning visuals that add layers upon layers of eye candy onto Cuphead’s already sumptuous art. Miss Chalice is icing on this layered, dense, satisfying cake, giving players a whole new way to approach the beloved boss-rush game. Bon appétit!
Rather than the triumphant return of a fan-favorite franchise, Battle League claims its slow season spot in Nintendo's calendar as just another sports game. If Mario Strikers saw a new release every year, there'd be a problem, but it's been well over a decade since the last entry in the series. Yes, it's more of the same, but when "the same" is so fun-and so hard to put down after just one match-more of the same is more than welcome, even if the game isn't as creative or ambitious as one might hope.
I want to invest in a good TMNT show again, and I even tried to navigate the absolute nightmare that is the now Amazon-run Comixology app to get in on the latest comic series based on my favorite turtles. I've come away from this experience with a rekindled love for my half-shelled heroes and I never want to give them up again. Cowabunga forever, my dudes.
As I've written before, I'm on the autism spectrum, which for me means that I can be overly sensitive to lights and sounds that neurotypical people tend to be able to tolerate. A lot of games like DOOM and Call of Duty fall into this camp, overloading my senses to the point where my eyes start to water and my ears recoil in fear. The Last Clockwinder is an excellent example of the opposite of that, offering a gentle, kind tour through a broken-down clock in a giant tree.
We may not have been enjoying it the way Supermassive intended, but that made the experience that much better. I'm thankful that summer camp is over, but I will hold a piece of Hackett's Quarry in my heart for at least a week. It's the slogan of the camp, after all: "What doesn't kill you will make you stronger.
A lack of a compelling story hurt the time I spent with the game's cast, even though I adore the game's art and how much every scene leaves me wanting more. More time with the mechanics and a greater emphasis on the place and people of 1700s France could've helped Card Shark a great deal in my eyes, but I still admire it for what it is. I just think that much like the game's countless tricks, the best possible execution of its ideas needed a bit more confidence.
Overall, I think Streets of New Capenna hits the sweet spot for what a Magic set can be. It is weirdly experimental on the creative side and tries to afford a huge amount of possible play experiences due to some new mechanical design on the game side.
Just like every other kid that spent the early 2000s watching Ruroni Kenshin, Samurai Champloo, and Gundam, I think samurai are very cool. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized they, like knights, they were probably mostly bad on a person-to-person and institutional basis as executors of a feudal order. Nonetheless, their fictional depictions, especially in the films made between the 1930s and 1970s in conversation with the cowboy westerns and swashbuckler films being made at the same time, led to captivating art whose influences extend through today, and Trek to Yomi is an admirable attempt to bring that to gaming audiences. Hopefully it gets more of us to engage with the source material.
The Wii games felt so revolutionary because they did something deeply innovative with the medium. Switch Sports effectively does the opposite. It's still incredibly fun, especially if you're feeling nostalgic for the halcyon days of motion controls, but in trading content out for accuracy and immersion, it feels empty-even compared to games from 16 years ago.
The story does hint at further DLC to come — you can unlock something called “The Triplicate area” that answers a few questions left from the game’s cryptic ending while setting up more buglore. But, if this DLC is anything to go by, that adventure too might not be as filling as we’d like.