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Despite some issues with the audio and the slowness of the third act, Pentiment is a wonderfully unique storytelling experience overflowing with respect for the historical era it strives to recreate. Much like the game’s themes of stories persisting over time, I’ll be thinking about Andreas Maler and the town of Tassing for years to come.
Somerville is held back by technical shortcomings, but is full of impressive moments worth experiencing with the lights turned low and and your headphones up high. The father’s adventure lingers in my mind as I reflect on what happened, and those memories do ultimately outweigh the technical shortcomings. I hope time will provide improvements to bring the game to where it deserves to be, which is high in the sky alongside the ships of the invading forces.
A pleasant and, at times, playful soundtrack, fun visual effects, and the occasional light interference of a mischievous cat add to an overall charming package. A Little to the Left may have left me scratching my head in confusion at times, but more often, it left me pleased and content with the neatly arranged spaces I created.
Though it’s rough around the edges, Sonic Frontiers is the best 3D Sonic game in years.
God of War Ragnarök feels a lot like God of War (2018), which is a compliment considering how fantastic that game is. Sony Santa Monica was right to not break what wasn’t broken and it has expertly continued the story threads that were left hanging from the previous game.
To dive deeper would reveal important story beats, none of which stand out as being a major highlight, but I enjoyed learning more about Rose, revisiting locations from Village with a new perspective (both literally and figuratively), and getting more context on her role in the universe. Considering her potential importance in the future, I assume Shadows of Rose will be an experience worth having played, but I wouldn’t go quite as far as calling it required reading. For something more abstract and focused on horror within the world of Resident Evil, Shadows of Rose is worth exploring.
With The Entropy Centre behind me, I’m fascinated by what Stubby Games accomplished with its debut. It’s full of excellent puzzles, but the stuff around them, like bugs and narrative pacing, stop the entire package from coming together in an equally impressive way.
Whether any of this is enough to put off an audience inured to Call of Duty’s detached depiction of brutal warfare is anyone’s guess. Plenty of people can put up with a bit of ugliness if there’s still a pretty good time to be had overall. For Modern Warfare II, the good time offered by its multiplayer and in glimpses within its campaign may be enough.
It's bombastic, over-the-top, and extravagant for the sake of extravagance, leaving ruins, literally, in its wake.
The ideal way to experience Spirits Unleashed is to round up your buddies, rotate through maps, take turns playing as the ghost, and proceed to hoot and holler. If that’s not an option, matchmaking with random players is smooth and quick, and in-game markers make teamwork possible even if everyone’s playing off-mic. The thrill of Ghostbusting eventually starts to wane, but it takes a while to get to that point, and updates down the road could help to keep those Proton Packs humming.
Ultimately, New Tales From The Borderlands feels like more of the same and fans of the first are likely to enjoy this, but given it’s been nearly eight years since that first one, I wanted more of an evolution.
Even if they’re not quite up to snuff, Gotham has enough baddies to punch to make for a good time, whoever you are.
A charming though uneventful narrative about stopping a cosmic darkness from consuming the galaxy rounds out this delightful package. Like the best sequels, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope builds upon Kingdom Battle’s foundation with smart tweaks and fun additions to emerge as a better game in every way.
At times, it feels too long and oddly sadistic in its focus on inflicting fakeouts, pain, and suffering on the de Runes. Other times, I admired Asobo’s command of this series, its rat-infested stealth mechanics, and its grandiose storytelling. Fortunately, the latter edges out the former, and Requiem feels like much more than just a follow-up.
Overwatch 2 doesn’t flip the formula the way you might expect a long-awaited, numbered sequel would. But through various clever tweaks, it’s a well-rounded evolution of the experience into which I’ve poured more than a thousand hours since 2016. I may never recreate the magic of those first few years in Overwatch, but Overwatch 2 is a big step towards restoring the faith in the franchise and has me thinking it’s time to pour a few more hundred hours into my favorite team-based shooter.
Dorfromantik balances its strategic and cozy elements well, and it's easy to fall into a serene trance of dropping tiles. Pulling the camera back to reveal the full scope of my landscape always feels like a satisfying reward for my subtle, hard work, much like stepping back to admire a finished painting. While it's not the sort of puzzle game I feel compelled to play more than a session or two a day, I always appreciate the improved mood with which it leaves me.
There’s a famous saying from former footballer Gary Lineker that “football is a simple game – 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes – and at the end, the Germans always win.” I want to make a similar assessment of EA’s yearly soccer game: FIFA 23 is a good game – it’s flashy, fun to play, and has a lot of modes – but in the end, you realize it’s mostly the same game you’ve been playing for years.
Still though, because most of my eight hours with Dig were spent spelunking through stages leading down, I rarely had to think about the game’s roguelite efforts. I spent most of my time playing through beautiful stages to the tune of chippy synth tunes, fascinated with how far Nitrome and Yacht Club were able to stretch the “dig” aspect of this game. Perhaps the roguelite nature of Dig will play a bigger role in my post-game excavations because I’m rearing to jump back in to discover all of its secrets. Even if it doesn’t, though, I know I still have at least a few more hours of great Shovel Knight gameplay ahead of me and in the world of platforming, that’s a treasure worth digging up.
Return to Monkey Island is profoundly nostalgic and relentlessly funny, and I'm once again a kid, laughing at Guybrush's umpteenth last-ditch efforts to distract his opponents with, "Look behind you, a three-headed monkey!"
Tinykin feels comforting in an old-school sense. Its challenges never become convoluted, nor does its design reinvent the wheel, and that’s okay. Tinykin executes its handful of ideas exceptionally well, making it a thoroughly enjoyable and laid-back journey that only requires six to eight hours of your time. Don’t let this delightful adventure sneak under your radar.