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What stumbles there are, though, do little to loosen The Drifter’s sturdy grasp of the genre. With a steady stream of plot twists and storytelling intrigue, the game is a propulsive and polished example of the form, every bit the satisfying pulp adventure it sets out to be.
Much like all the products you assemble, the disparate components of Kaizen all come together into one elegant whole.
Even with all of Kojima’s peculiarities and deficiencies as a storyteller on full display, the energy, heart, and soul of Death Stranding 2 are undeniable.
It just isn’t quite the kind of inspired invention that marks Nintendo’s greatest achievements, and it certainly isn’t the kind that would justify shelling out for a shiny new console all on its own.
The more Hiss there are on screen at one time, the less terrifying they feel, and the game becomes generic, less of a cooperative shooter and more like one of those idle mobile games where you just stand your ground, hope your equipment is upgraded enough, and fire into a horde of charging monsters.
The compellingly unresolved ending caps a run that, like even a half-decent crack at Nightreign’s challenges, is a story unique to itself: a journey of close calls and triumphs too fortuitous to be replicated.
But To a T remains a life sim, lavishing idiosyncratic detail on its ground-level view of the world. Flight is just one stop along a broader, sillier journey that depicts Teen’s growing comfort in their own skin.
Folks, Gordon Gekko had it wrong. It’s not greed that’s good, but the yoyo, which “clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” And if those words sound as hyperbolic as they do in Wall Street, just wait until you get your hands on Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo and see how gloriously right this weird, wonderful yoyo-centric adventure is.
Despite these technical hiccups and the sense of artificiality that creeps into the open world on a macro scale, The Fall of Avalon’s intimate moments remain resonant—and, at their most evocative, enthralling.
As it stands, what might have been a return to form is instead merely a competent shooter with occasional highs and frustrating lows.
Ultimately, there’s too much work involved for not nearly enough reward from the world or the narrative, despite the occasional interesting twist and turn.
With, according to the game’s makers, the possibility of post-release content apparently on the table, it’s enough to make you wonder how much more meat is left on this conceptual bone. Probably quite a bit.
It’s a constraint of the ambitious graphical approach that makes the game a sumptuous but brief shot of bedtime-story vibes.
It can be as funny as any game in the genre, but as far as how much you’ll want to keep playing after the same jokes grow old, that may depend on how much effort you want to put into concocting new ones yourself.
You’re presumably capable of kicking the ball and hitting a bottle perched on a fence post, but it feels apt that you miss time and time again, until one of the other, better kids steps in to take the shot and does what you can’t. At which point, you keep at it, because the world goes on.
Even in the Dadaist dreamscape that they find themselves in, this crew of survivors still create new bonds, indulge their curiosities, and give voice to their pains. This is what it means for them to continue—that life, and this game by proxy, will continue to present the unexpected, and that it very much is worth enduring to experience it.
In the end, the only relevant log in the game is the one that recognizes its own worthlessness, a system of recording that “only values information deemed beneficial to the mission,” with no regard for emotions. Why? Because when Bionic Bay stops trying to explain the science at its center and lets its environments speak for themselves, in everything from the monochromic backgrounds to the starkly foregrounded contraptions, you may just be filled with awe.
Most evocative are the stunning vistas that serve as the backdrop of your journey. Wind shakes the trees of haunted forests; rows of houses stand humbly in warm, fuzzy light; a swollen sun plunges into the distant horizon. These deeply textured images seem to extend endlessly beyond the frame, suggesting the vastness of the land they depict—and in doing so hint at not just the untold horrors that Faelduum has witnessed but its infinite capacity for further calamity.
But the greatest shortcoming ends up being the game’s fuzzy grasp of its own mythology and how the story should resolve. Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a wonder of slice-of-life storytelling, but that’s in spite of its supernatural elements rather than because of them.
And while Monaco 2 sometimes stacks the deck too heavily against solo players (it seems better with a full house), striving to straighten out each new wrinkle in the plan makes for addictive, cheek-flushing fun.