EGM's Reviews
Cult of the Lamb is two games in one. Part roguelike, part management sim, neither of the halves feel totally fleshed out on their own, and provide little challenge. Still, the synergy between the two halves is undeniably compelling, and the art style is infectiously adorable, giving you enough reason to play through one more in-game day, and then one more, until you've been awake for an entire out-of-game day, feeling totally brainwashed.
As Dusk Falls is exciting, beautiful, and heavy-handed. Its more streamlined approach to narrative gameplay and its less traditional art style create an immersive experience that engages with the player's imagination. That it can work both as a morally challenging single-player story and a party game for multiple players speaks to the confidence that its developers have. But its second half of the story undercuts some of the tension that its excellent first half builds, and a terrible cliffhanger might leave you feeling betrayed.
Stray does a great job at letting you act like a cat, turning a wide range of true-to-life feline behaviors into clever gameplay mechanics. But it's much less successful at making you truly feel like a cat, as the game's more conventional approach to its gameplay and story routinely shatters your immersion in odd ways. If you can suspend your disbelief and look past the missed opportunity of a more cohesive experience, however, there's a lot to like in its moody cyberpunk world and varied challenges.
Escape Academy is an exceptionally well designed puzzle game, if not a flawlessly executed one. Developer Coin Crew Games has replicated the creativity and fine-tuned challenge of the best real-world escape rooms while amping up the fantasy and stakes in a way only video games can. But the studio's inexperience rears its head when it comes to polish, with stiff console controls being the most obvious knock on an otherwise great experience.
With this third of Tengo Project's revivals of classic 16-bit Natsume releases, the team has certainly saved the best for last. Pocky & Rocky Reshrined takes what was already a fantastic run 'n gun experience, and expands, enhances, and improves pretty much all of the original Pocky & Rocky's components to masterful degrees. From its stunning graphics, to its rich gameplay, to its fleshed out cast of interesting characters, Reshrined makes its predecessor proud while also introducing an all new generation of players to a core game that's still just as worth playing today as it was 30 years ago.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge looks to bring back the glory days of Konami's side-scrolling arcade beat 'em ups and home hits based on everyone's favorite young green ninjas. In its visuals and gameplay, Dotemu and Tribute Games have not only matched those retro classics that they're paying homage to here, but perhaps even surpassed them. Sadly, this trip through time is somewhat marred by inconsistent audio and an Arcade mode that feels more like a slog than a thrill.
Sniper Elite 5 is the best game in the series so far. Its intricately designed levels, deep weapon customization system, and satisfying gameplay offer hours upon hours of entertaining ways to kill Nazis. After five games, the game's story and character development still feel too underdeveloped, making every mission blend together in an unending series of contextless kill cams and gravelly voiced one-liners, but if you don't care about any of that then you will still find a lot to enjoy.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong can be a compelling experience, especially for those who are already familiar with the World of Darkness. Its RPG mechanics lend depth to an otherwise standard narrative adventure, as long as you can grasp their meaning. But wonky gameplay balance and even wonkier facial animations, not to mention some of the more overwritten and under-earned emotional beats, can make falling in love with its vampires harder to swallow than a mouthful of blood.
Trek to Yomi is one of the most visually striking games to launch in a while, delivering on the promise that a samurai game can truly capture the look and feel of classic Japanese cinema. Unfortunately, good looks can only get you so far, as the gameplay and story don't quite live up to the standards set by its art direction. But if you are in the mood for a samurai game, you could do worse than Trek to Yomi.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is an ambitious game that brings all nine numbered Star Wars movies together for the first time. Filled with story and side missions, large open hubs, minigames, and literally hundreds of characters to unlock, Skywalker Saga hits nearly every beat while maintaining the brick-smashing, object-building, puzzle-solving action the Lego games are known for. Filled with irreverent humor and little Easter eggs around every corner, this game is the perfect way to revisit everyone's favorite sci-fi family saga.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land does pretty much everything it needs to as the pink puffball's first 3D adventure. Clever level design and the appropriately named Mouthful Mode show that Kirby's floating, sucking ways can work in a 3D space. Forgotten Land might not reach the highest heights of Nintendo's other first-party adventures, but it definitely shows that Kirby can hold his own in a three-dimensional arena.
The best and worst thing about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is that it feels like another Borderlands game. The shooter gameplay is as tight and responsive as ever, the weapons are fun to use, and the writing is a marked improvement over Borderlands 3. The characters are once again at the center of the game's comedy, and the performances are great (when the actors are actually committing to their roles). But, because this is more Borderlands, a lot of the same annoyances with the series persist, especially when it comes to inventory management and the sheer amount of meaningless loot. Really, Wonderlands' worst offense is that it can't get over the series' legacy of looting and shooting, and misses the opportunity to take real inspiration from the tabletop worlds that it parodies.
Ghostwire: Tokyo offered Japanese developer Tango Gameworks a chance to mix things up after the first two The Evil Within games, and the result is an open-world action adventure that definitely has its moments. Unfortunately, those moments come together with some missed potential and a lack of truly fleshing out all of the ideas presented. In the end, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a good game-but one that could have been something more.
Martha is Dead starts off strong, with an intriguing story amid a tumultuous backdrop, and a main gameplay mechanic with a ton of room to evolve. Unfortunately, the game squanders every opportunity it has to develop its story or gameplay in interesting ways, instead relying on overplayed tropes and unnecessary mechanics. While Martha is Dead's disturbing imagery might not deserve censorship, its creators betray the trust that it asks of its players, ultimately delivering a shallow experience that does more harm than good.
From its humble beginnings as a weird, brutally difficult new project that even its publisher had little faith in, the Souls series has grown into a vessel through which FromSoftware has helped change how we look at, and play, video games. And now, Elden Ring does the same for the Souls series itself. Years of gameplay refinements and revisions blend together with major franchise shifts such as the move to an open world and giving players far more freedom in how they set about saving said world. The result is a title that goes beyond anything Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team have given us before, both as a game and as an experience.
Horizon Forbidden West builds upon the formula of the first game in smart (if not always revolutionary) ways to craft an even stronger open-world experience. The stunning visuals make for a great showpiece of what Sony's first-party studios can accomplish on PlayStation 5, with gameplay that holds up its end of the bargain. Unfortunately, storytelling missteps and a lack of polish keep Aloy's latest adventure just shy of joining the all-time greats.
The true test for The King of Fighters XV is going to come in the days ahead, as the game gets into the hands of the general public and we see how everything fares both online and in far larger pools of player-vs.-player matches. For now, I’m excited for KOF XV. Its gameplay feels solid, its roster is satisfying, and its overall visual design once again does the series justice. I just hope all of those things hold up once the real fight begins.
Atari's Recharged series has produced some fantastic remakes of classic arcade hits, but that series' latest entry, Breakout Recharged, is definitely its weakest so far. That's less the fault of the dev teams or the work they've put into these releases, and more the core game itself, as the original Breakout could only receive so much modernization before becoming a totally different game. The result is that Breakout Recharged will satisfy a specific segment of players who can enjoy its more simplistic gameplay, while leaving most everyone else wishing there'd be more to see and break here.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human’s enhanced parkour and intricate level design make for some of the most fun you can have moving through a video game world, and the hand-to-hand combat is simple but effective. Most impressive is the sense of scale and gravity that makes leaping between rooftops feel so death-defying. Unfortunately, its story wallows in post-apocalyptic clichés and misanthropy, and its choice-based narrative often drops its most interesting plot threads.
About An Elf is a game about an elf who wants to bring about the elftopia. It's about Princess Dam, who may or may not be a psychopath, and it's about a cat who wants to have half-cat, half-elf babies, and about another elf who pays Dam gummy bears to tell her stupid stories. It's about going on an adventure to fantastical places and facing off against monstrous foes, and it's about figuring out at times overly obscure video puzzles in order to beat those foes. It's a story about love, and loss, and hope. And, in the end, About An Elf is about five to six hours long.