Killa Penguin
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The original Psychonauts hasn’t held up extraordinarily well, but time will likely prove to be far kinder to Psychonauts 2. This is the kind of rare, memorable game that’s as polished and well-paced as it is unapologetically weird.
Feeling jerked around by a quest chain? Sidestep the entire thing by stealing the quest item you need from the character who won’t hand it over. Not enjoying the combat anymore? Create a stealthy build and sneak your way through the entire story without fighting a single enemy. Want to destabilize a faction? Craft or buy explosives, activate the bomb timer, then use your pickpocketing skills to plant the explosives on their leader. That was one of my favorite things to do in Fallout, and it’s arguably even more fun to do here.
This is a game that’s half a brilliant homage to the old-school Wonder Boy games—particularly Wonder Boy in Monster Land and Wonder Boy in Monster World—and half a game seeking to artificially inflate its length with gimmicks and mandatory busywork. I wholeheartedly recommend one of those halves while having nothing but disdain for the other.
Thea: The Awakening is one of many games that ended up slipping through the cracks around here for one reason or another, meaning the Nintendo Switch release is my first real experience with it, but all of the talk I’d heard about how it incorporates a number of totally different genres without becoming defined by any of its disparate elements was 100% accurate. Chatter about Thea: The Awakening‘s PC version being superior to its console counterparts also ended up having some substance behind it.
Originally released in mid-2017 and now making its way to the Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, and Xbox One, OVIVO is a platformer centered around a mind-melting mechanic: you can swap between the positive and negative space in each level and use their opposing gravitational pulls to build up momentum and avoid hazards such as spikes and pits.
All of these elements coalesce into something unexpectedly coherent and interesting, and while there are some minor performance issues to contend with on the Switch, Airheart‘s gameplay loop and general oddness make it a good fit for the platform.
Developed by Brazilian developer SpaceGiraff3 and possessing many of the dialogue quirks that tend to pop up when Brazilian Portuguese is translated into English, TRAGO is a flawed gem that has one foot firmly planted in reality while the rest of the body is drunk in some parallel reality lacking any of the same rules of causality and chronology. It’s a magically psychotic game with a tone unlike anything I’ve ever played, and while it’s relatively short (even with a ton of experimentation, it lasted me a little over three hours), it’s an inexpensive slice of madness perfect for when you’re burned out on more “normal” games.
Shadows: Awakening inherits Vikings‘ repetitive and gimmicky boss fights, while its shifting rules and general inability to explain how certain things work can turn its frequent puzzles into a slog. Add a slow movement speed and too few teleport points on top of that, and you have a game that, while enjoyable overall, fails to live up to its potential.
That’s not to insinuate that Override: Mech City Brawl is perfect or anything, as the general combat is kind of floaty while the unwieldy camera makes responding quickly to your opponent more difficult than it probably should be, but that’s ultimately forgivable given its clear party-game aspirations. Put simply, this isn’t a game that’s trying to be an immaculately balanced fighting game experience for die-hards so much as it’s the kind of game that you end up playing after getting drunk with friends, only stopping once someone passes out or gets frustrated and throws a controller across the room.
Degrees of Separation is a charming puzzle-platformer, though that charm occasionally gives way to devilishly challenging puzzles designed to prey on your expectations and force you to think outside the box. It’s easy to respect the amount of effort that went into the constantly varying puzzles and puzzle mechanics on display here, even if one or two gameplay twists end up being more trouble than they’re worth.
Undead Horde is an action RPG blended into an Overlord/Pikmin-style management game where your horde of resurrected enemies deal the bulk of your damage and have to be continually replaced with freshly-fallen foes as they suffer a final death. The gameplay difficulty, then, arises from poor party configurations that lead to your numbers being overrun faster than they can finish off enemies, ensuring that your numbers continually thin until you’re all alone against a group of enemies.
Characters can be possessed, frozen/shattered, and even bribed. If you're not able to accomplish something on your own, you can always just hire or trick someone. This underlying complexity is a double-edged sword, however, and it's not uncommon to lose an hour-long playthrough to someone who turned against you for reasons that aren't immediately obvious, at which point your run's progress is deleted.
All of these elements are familiar enough on their own, but coalesce into something that feels entirely new, and there’s a kind of underlying artistry intrinsic to the design that becomes increasingly evident the further you play. That having been said, I feel nothing but contempt for the underlying gameplay.
I’ve yet to play any of the Momodora games, but may just go out of my way and find time to play through them if Minoria is any indication of their quality; while my initial feelings about this game were mixed due to a pretty severe difficulty spike that renders the second boss fight an exercise in frustration, that difficulty later tapers off due to a combination of increasing player skill and a leveling system that sees you continually growing more dangerous.
This remake of the classic 1993 adventure isn’t as polished as I expected, sporting a new physics system and camera angle that introduce entirely new problems. It’s wonderful to think that Link’s Awakening on the Switch will introduce one of Link’s most intriguing adventures to a new generation, but it’s obvious that the goal was to replicate the aesthetics rather than the feel.
When the Argonauts’ ship, the Argo, is wrecked after an encounter with sirens, Argonus is saved by Athena and tasked with opposing a mysterious threat that’s turned his shipmates to stone. In the process, he encounters numerous gods and goddesses who require something of him and are often willing to grant something in return. This makes Argonus and the Gods of Stone a fantastic stroll through Greek mythology. However, the pacing becomes questionable toward the end, and the ending is so deeply unsatisfying that it feels like a large chunk of the story at the end is simply missing.
Indivisible doesn’t have a great first couple of hours, oscillating between its serious and playful tones so quickly that both are meaningless. The game’s early boss fights are also horribly gimmicky thanks to a tendency to shoehorn awkward real-time sequences into the turn-based combat. Still, Indivisible finds its footing 5+ hours in and maintains a solid stride all the way to the final boss fight, which is one of the worst final encounters I can recall seeing in a game.
It’s difficult to put into words just how much profanity I’ve lobbed in this game’s direction while playing, and some of the criticisms my rage-addled past self brought up are real examples of Driven Out playing unfairly. At the same time, it occupies that enjoyably bizarre realm of “so difficult that it doesn’t seem difficult in hindsight.” Many of Driven Out‘s fights are downright fantastic and don’t suffer from any problems, and it’s during these that it shines. Low points are also common, however, thanks to some awkward animations that disable your ability to block for uncomfortable spans and a bevy of minor frustrations that create some very strange difficulty spikes.
The fact that I chose to finish it anyway says a lot. For one thing, it proves that Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is more than just a spiritual successor to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. After all, I’ve never played that game (nor any other Castlevania in any meaningful amount). It also speaks to how excellent the mechanics are when the pacing holds up, because there are hourlong sections where you have no idea where to go or what to do but wander in search of something you missed.
The randomization is a blessing and a curse. Early on, the ever-changing world map allows for a real sense of discovery as you relearn where everything is, but it doesn’t take long before you begin to recognize how empty and featureless areas tend to be as a result.