Polygon's Reviews
Some might end up thinking that this game gets repetitive after a while — because, well, it does. But in my view, that’s the point. It’s a predictable, comforting game that’s kept interesting by the silly overarching storyline involving Postwoman Sam and her oversharing with Wilmot, and the puzzles do seem to get more challenging as the game progresses. If you like A Little to the Left, Wilmot Works it Out is a must-play that’ll keep you busy until it doesn’t. And at that point, take a break and return when you’re ready for a nice solved-puzzle dopamine hit once again.
Phoenix Springs is playable art, and I could see it fitting beautifully into a museum exhibit, especially because you could really start the game at any given point and still find it fulfilling. But unlike many other art-forward games, this one has a compelling narrative that kept me coming back each day until I reached an ending — just one version of the ending, of which I’m certain there are many. It excels at iterating on the point-and-click mystery genre, and it’s designed for ultimate replayability.
Games like XCOM and Into the Breach offer plenty of emergent narrative moments, with clutch plays and the chance to claim victory against impossible odds. However, the deliberate narrative beats in Tactical Breach Wizards, bound together with its outstanding sense of humor and punctuated by its satisfying gameplay, make it a spellbinding experience for any fan of the genre.
Not to quote a meme, but to quote a meme: Isles of Sea and Sky is here to say "Just Walk Out. You Can Leave!!!" What began for me as a frustration with the game turned into a bit of self-reflection when I stopped to consider why, exactly, I felt the need to stay frustrated, when, at any point, I could simply leave, or, to quote our generation's preeminent philosopher dasharez0ne, "hit da bricks!!!" Sure, there are some areas you cannot access before completing at least a certain number of puzzles, but in general, you can well and truly leave behind most anything that's too frustrating in Isles and find something you'd rather be doing. The challenge, at least in my case, was in allowing myself to do so.
Running the ball has also changed. The AI around blocking schemes has improved, and new animations and physics make it easier to fight through arm tackles or poor pursuit angles. The option system has also been revamped. The good news is that players now have multiple types of pitches they can throw, which can open up the playbook beyond the commonly used Read Option. The bad news is that the button scheme to hand the ball off or keep it has flipped from the last few years, meaning that I spent hours handing off the ball when I meant to hold on to it.
If you’re a Riven fan, you simply must play this version. If you’ve never played Riven, there’s no better opportunity. Escaping into another world is not just the external promise of the Myst games, but the actual premise, and Riven’s update brings those two things closer than ever before.
Indeed, I started Still Wakes the Deep hating Caz, but by the end of the game, he had won me over. The finale was a complete gut punch, and for the first time in a while, I sobbed over the conclusion of a story. It’s not necessarily a bummer ending — I’ll spare you the details — but it is an emotional one. Each individual element of Still Wakes the Deep has been done before, but they’re brought together marvelously here, and the end result is a horror classic.
Even 40-plus hours in, I’m still figuring out how to tackle a particularly nasty dragon. And despite cursing all the bosses I’ve felled so far, as they’ve beaten me into submission dozens of times, I’m looking forward to going back and starting it all over at some point, ready to take on the challenge again.
I, like many others, used to describe the Megami Tensei series as “Pokémon for adults,” but I no longer believe that shorthand is entirely accurate. Megami Tensei is Pokémon for the ruthless, those able to exchange compassion and attachment for the cold reality of spiritual warfare. Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance’s “save anywhere” feature, overworld shortcuts, and shallow storyline, however, result in a too-frictionless and therefore flat experience. The moment-to-moment gameplay may still be as fulfilling as any previous Megami Tensei game when it strikes a delicate balance between new and old mechanics, but Vengeance’s overall lack of texture fails to live up to the important narrative themes of struggle, loss, sacrifice, and rebirth established by the franchise over the last 40 years.
Where the first game felt like a journey of self-discovery, both for Senua and for the player, Hellblade 2 feels more invested in creating the myth of Senua: Senua as legendary giant slayer, as mystical seer touched by the underworld.
It's the sort of game that needs a notebook and pen at hand; Simogo will actually provide you with this directive in a Lorelei and the Laser Eyes instruction manual found early on in the game. Twenty-five hours into Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, I've got dozens of pages of madman scribbles, notes that would look like nonsense to anyone but me. Some of the puzzles I worked on for hours without even opening the game itself. On one particularly hard (and optional) puzzle that required no knowledge of the game itself, I asked my sister for help. Days later, she sent me a photo of the answer, scrawled out on a work-branded Post-It note. When we got the answer, it seemed so, so obvious. Simogo has really found the recipe for making you feel so dumb, and just as quickly, the most brilliant woman on Earth.
You’ll have to take that however you want. If you are reading this and thinking Wow, how have I never heard of this franchise? It sounds awesome! you are in luck. You have found your new calling. I am personally now interested in going back to the Homeworld Remastered Collection to get some more of this gameplay attached to a pretty good plot. And if you’re with me, congrats. We’re Homeworlders now.
Find a friend or two, and make a blood oath to solve as much of Animal Well as possible among only yourselves, without getting help online. The true magic of this game is sharing discoveries and theories with friends; having a faceless internet person tell you the mystery of the eggs without working it out on your own is to deny yourself a feeling of satisfaction that few games can offer. It harks back to the early days of Zelda, when the oldest among us tried to figure out what the hell “Dodongo dislikes smoke” meant. Consider it a trial, a badge of honor that you can wear when you’re 30 hours in and you’re smashing your head against this random mural of a rabbit. When that happens, know that you are truly one of us.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the best video game adventure I’ve experienced since Elden Ring, a far more approachable open-world game that has no doubt colored how players perceive this year’s big fantasy RPG. (It certainly did for me.) But like another FromSoftware game, the original Demon’s Souls, I found that once I had accepted Dragon’s Dogma 2’s peculiarities and deciphered what it was asking of me, I fell deeply in love. Dragon’s Dogma 2 awakens those old feelings of learning to overcome my expectations of what a game should be, then discovering new types of experiences along the way. That’s the best kind of journey.
You'll have a lot of stuff to pick up at each of these locations, but the most important items will often provide a "Hey mom!" option, which lets Tess call Opal over. Opal's role in these situations is to provide context about her childhood, how she experienced the past, and what these items (and the secrets that come with them) do to color those memories. They're all essential conversations related to the big, overarching mystery, but they sometimes feel stilted; the "Hey mom!" button gets repetitive, making all the potential sincerity feel cheapened.
It’s unclear whether there’ll be a massive 1.7 update in the future. Barone has been developing a different game, Haunted Chocolatier, since 2020, and while that’s currently on pause to get 1.6 bug-free and available across platforms, surely at some point Stardew Valley will be left to its own devices. But even if it doesn’t get any more major updates, its unshakeable core, long tail, and rooted community mean that it’s bound to stay at the center of the ecosystem that grew up around it for a long while to come.
To an extent it’s understandable: Many of Minter’s best games from the last 30 years, including the likes of Space Giraffe and Polybius, remain commercially available on Steam and elsewhere, and presumably neither Minter nor Digital Eclipse wants to cannibalize Llamasoft’s meager sales. But it means this otherwise illuminating, funny, and exhaustively detailed portrait of a unique video game artist cuts him off in his prime.
That said, The Thaumaturge manages to do a deft job weaving between its supernatural story and the context of its historical setting. Wiktor is an outsider, and his detachment from society means that he can pick a side. I chose to have him back the unions and be a real comrade, but the game has tons of branches — including some where he falls to pride or commits sins that he cannot erase. These are the choices that make The Thaumaturge worth it, even when I’m annoyed by its technical shortcomings. Wiktor’s powers, detective skills, pride, and values are all things that can change the decisions at hand, and when I make a choice, it feels weighty. Since this is an RPG that lasts about 25 hours, I’m already getting amped up to see how a second run changes things. I have the feeling, though, that no matter how hard I try, something is going to go terribly wrong for someone.
Rebirth is worth your time, but I’m not sure if it’s worth as much of your time as it asks for. It’s a game that does many things right and does right by its weighty legacy — but it also makes it clear that for the future final installment, Square Enix should reconsider how necessary it is for these games to be so big.
Bandle Tale is one of the biggest departures in the League of Legends franchise yet, but it’s a hugely welcome respite from the more serious games in my backlog. It does take a bit of a time investment — somewhere between 40 and 60 hours — but it’s enjoyable to amble from objective to objective, taking breaks to host epic parties. It’s a shame that with the end of Riot Forge, we won’t be seeing these experimental titles anymore. While League can be an intimidating prospect, I found myself wholly welcomed by the comfy, silly nature of Bandle Tale.