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Celebrating the series 20th anniversary, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania is a hugely challenging trip through the greatest hits of the series, showing off classic courses rendered beautifully for the new systems. The Party Games remains the jewel in the Monkey Ball crown, but there’s more than enough to get your brain working whilst you’re balancing out a monkey in a ball on perilously thin ledges. It’s good to have Monkey Ball back.
It might not match up to the genre’s modern day visionaries but Ender Lilies: Quietus Of The Knights is still a beautiful and engrossing Metroidvania title. A convoluted plot and some sections of uninspired combat are offset by fantastic boss battles and a beautiful soundtrack. A worthy stopgap while we wait for Hollow Knight: Silksong.
What it lacks in narrative, Severed Steel makes up for it in the gameplay department. It’s fast, it’s frenetic, it’s vibrant and by golly, is it fun. There’s no greater pleasure in somersaulting over goons to air out their brain cases in glorious voxel violence. Switch off the lateral thinking and engage those cat-like reflexes.
Insurgency: Sandstorm offers a brutal, satisfying and bleak FPS experience for those willing to immerse themselves in its tactical, punishing offering. Despite some glitches and slightly repetitive design, it stands tall as an inspiring shooter that will improve not only your skills as a player, but will also have you thinking like a soldier. The desert may be a Hellish place to be, but damn is it a rewarding and satisfying experience too. If you enjoy multiplayer shooters, there are firefights here you need to engage in for yourself.
A sugar glider nature documentary as a video game, AWAY The Survival Series is an interesting idea for an hour. At that point its otherwise buoyant glide is dragged down by erratic camera, game-breaking glitches, poorly implemented combat and awful gliding controls. This one is better left in the wild.
An ancient Chinese character tale rather than an epic, Xuan Yuan 7 is a linear RPG that takes inspiration liberally from the best games around, but has no idea how to implement anything it’s stolen. Combat is farcically easy, systems are barely explained, puzzles feel decades out of date and there’s that stamina bar that does nothing. Sometimes there’s a reason you haven’t heard of a series.
With solid gameplay, excellent style and some of the funniest writing I’ve ever encountered in a game, this pastiche to a classic is one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve experienced this year. It would be impressive enough as is, but when you then consider that this is largely the work of just one person, it becomes an almost unbelievable achievement. If you want an old-school adventure with some new-school panache, you’re not going to get much better in 2021 than UnMetal.
A Juggler’s Tale is a short but very sweet atmospheric 3D puzzle side scroller. With a unique dynamic of controlling a marionette, puzzles become more thoughtful. The game is visually stunning and has a wonderful gaming experience. Intense at times with a wicked twist, the only downside is it’s short run time. Easily recommended to fans of Little Nightmares, or Puzzle side scrollers in general.
A few niggles aside, Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan is a well structured and engrossing family friendly adventure. Revolving around the themes of diversity, inclusivity and, most importantly, empathy, it’s a wholesome game that carries a powerful message that it deftly delivers via almost every facet of its game play and narrative. If you like your games to be relatively threat free while including the best aspects of combative games, Rainbow Billy will likely be right up your alley.
Hot Wheels Unleashed is how you make a toys-to-life video game. Milestone have taken some of the finest collectables and made them photo-realistic, unleashing them on racetracks that will blow your mind with the level of detail and craziness in equal measure. Exemplifying the “kart racer” genre, it is the natural progression of why we fall in love with this type of racing game over and over. This is a love letter to both Hot Wheels and arcade racing fans.
As a movie, In Sound Mind may have been an interesting and quirky, if slightly derivative, story of introspection and psychological understanding. As a game though, it simply doesn’t have the depth of mechanics to hold you through its 5-6 hour runtime. Sporting awful combat and stealth sequences, boring level design and inconsistent presentation, In Sound Mind activates too few of the adrenaline-controlling brain areas. Instead, it peaked some interest which slowly faded out the longer I played. You wouldn’t be out of your mind to play it if you’re a psychological horror fan, but you’ll potentially be in two minds of whether it was actually fun to play.
It’s not the game it was five years ago, but Super Arcade Football is all the better for it. You can do much worse than use a classic as the basis for your title, and it successfully marries the still solid gameplay aspects of Sensible Soccer with some modern graphical enhancements and general quality-of-life improvements to deliver a football game that offers a cheap viable alternative to the juggernauts of the genre. Well worth a shot (pun only slightly intended).
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a fantastic achievement, one that celebrates the wonder of adventure games with a story to fall into, characters to root for and a ton of collectibles to uncover. The ‘Now That’s What I Call An Adventure Game’ nature of the mechanics offers little in the way of huge originality, but presents them in a world so full of beauty and wonder you’ll soon forget all about it. The future is bright for Ember Lab.
Embr isn’t going to change your life, but if you’ve ever dreamed of running out of your office job through a window to save innocent civilians caught in a blazing inferno with nothing but a hose, an axe and water bombs, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t sign up to be an Embr Respondr immediately.
Staxel provides a fun, zen farming and life simulator that replicates the visuals of Minecraft, and the premise of Stardew Valley. There is much to uncover and it could be everyone’s new favourite farm to milk cows, grow crops and build abodes, whilst making friends along the way.
Hopefully fixes are on the way for its technical issues because otherwise, I Am Fish is a fun and charming physics puzzle title. This game feels like the next evolution of the comedy sim genre that’s replacing the wonky, janky nodding goats and intentionally poor control schemes for a more deliberate style of comedy that’s much more accessible, interesting and polished.
GRIME brings nothing new to the Metroidvania tag, but it doesn’t have to. Challenging enough combat, with some RPG-like loadout elements make for engaging gameplay. That it’s gross and its bosses skin-crawling also work in its favour. If you enjoy your challenging platformers, you’ll enjoy this.
With a beautiful new style, a more adult narrative, wonderful characters, and a modernised tone and feel, Tales of Arise brings the franchise smashing into the current era. It’s still got the tried-and-true Tales flavour, both good and bad, yet innovates with fluid combat that feels fresh. The best and most essential Tales game in well over a decade.
An exhilarating 2D soulslike set in a remarkably charming world, Tails of Iron is a surprise GOTY candidate. You’ll croak and die often due to the formidable combat but the narrative and systems will keep you coming back for more, like a rat does to cheese.
FIST is a by-the-numbers Metroidvania, elevated by its cast of anthro characters and its deep and interesting dieselpunk world. However, this doesn’t distract enough to forgive its unbalanced combat, very standard level design and a lot of back-tracking.