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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.
Temtem may look like a copycat on its surface, but its deviations from the Pokémon formula pay off considerably. With unique battling elements and an engaging MMO structure, Temtem evolves as its own experience and offers a vast, challenging adventure that even those without a Nintendo console can enjoy.
Overall, NBA 2K23 is a fitting tribute to the historical legends and iconic moments that made this sport what it is today. Though the game has its fair share of issues with its poor narrative choices and omnipresent microtransactions, it’s still a solid improvement over the previous game. This year’s release isn’t quite the flashy free-throw line dunk that lands a perfect score, but it is a worthy, all-around effort that would earn M.J.’s shrug of approval.
I likely won’t remember my minute frustrations with the game a few months from now, but I will remember “Dissolution,” a Two Feathers track with cathartic vocals from Bjorn “Speed” Strid of Soilwork, the realm of Hell known as Nihil, and the way my shotgun obliterated waves of enemies there. I’m so glad Metal: Hellsinger ends with the promise of more to come because I already want more from this series.
Ooblets offers solid fun, and I enjoy its cheerful tone. I only wish playing it didn’t feel so much like work. Despite the pride I had in my farm, clearing checklists eventually felt more laborious than satisfying. There’s fun to be had as long as you’re willing to work for it.
Splatoon 3 doesn’t reinvent the wheel, nor does it need to. Instead, it improves nearly every franchise element in sometimes small but meaningful ways. With an already-robust set of content available at launch and at least two years of free and premium content on the horizon, Splatoon 3 is simultaneously the series’ best entry to date and its most promising.
Blossom Tales II is a better game than its predecessor, and I hope we continue to get more adventures from Lily, Chrys, and their grandpa in the future.