Polygon's Reviews
Kena: Bridge of Spirits promises magic, but can’t deliver much of it
Cruis’n Blast borrows a lot from films like the Fast and Furious franchise. But as those films get higher budgets and more polished visual effects, their creators could learn from a game like Cruis’n Blast: Too much polish can conceal all the fun.
There is just so much to do in Lost Judgment, both to its benefit and detriment. The story felt so bloated by the time it hit its climax that I was relieved to see it end. Ultimately, this is another case of one step forward, two steps back for Ryu ga Gotoku Studio, just like Yakuza: Like a Dragon and its presentation of topical issues in Japan. Even though Lost Judgment tries to open a conversation about bullying and sexual harassment, those themes end up taking a back seat in favor of bombastic drama. Lost Judgment succeeds in its emulation of a Japanese legal drama, but it's a mediocre one that would have benefited from a smaller scope, or at least, a better grasp on what it's trying to comment on.
John and Sam's abilities are also key in some of Eastward's more challenging boss fights, in moments where slapping enemies with the frying pan (later, John will also acquire a gun, flamethrower, and cog weapon, alongside different bombs) is simply not enough. These boss fights are often simple in theory: dodging hits, stunning enemies, and taking a swing, for instance. But, like the puzzles, they require a precision that can be hard to master; the sheer simplicity is clever and deceiving.
Deathloop is a strange but wondrous beast. It's a time-management game where I built a precision murder machine to effect a carefully plotted rampage. It's also a story about a man finding out who he is and why he's being hunted by a young woman who knows everything about him. Time is Colt's prison, yet also the source of his power.
All of WarioWare: Get It Together!'s characters can compete in every single one of its microgames. And while some characters have clear strengths and weaknesses, it's impressive to see how co-developers Nintendo and Intelligent Systems made tweaks to each microgame to ensure that characters like 9-Volt or 18-Volt can still stand a chance against their more mobile co-workers.
Nightslink is a bite-sized experience, but it has successfully used its short run time to lodge itself into the back of my brain.
The care present in Ghost of Tsushima’s design makes its undercooked take on its own ideas harder to forgive. Take its themes seriously, and it becomes a story about a feudal landlord learning that maybe life isn’t about him, but centering on him anyway. The Jin Sakai that players engage with through play — the Jin Sakai that composes haikus, loves animals enough to play them little tunes on his flute, who never met a row of bamboo he did not want to cut for fun — seems to have the interiority that the Jin Sakai of Ghost’s narrative does not. One is a thoughtful guy you might want to hang around. The other is not. He’s kind of embarrassing.
You don’t play a No More Heroes game for its story. You play it for its style, and No More Heroes 3 has style in spades. The best thing I can say about No More Heroes 3 is that its combat and open-world design stay out of the way, letting its style take center stage, occasionally facilitating some truly great one-off moments.
This is all bolstered by strong art direction and technical design. Although the soundtrack and some instances of stiff character animation remind me that this was once a Skyrim mod, environments are nicely detailed, strikingly lit, and filled with era-appropriate pieces of clutter. If you want, you can even discuss the intricacies of Roman architecture with one of the NPCs and then observe those same intricacies throughout the city. The attention to historical accuracy is enthralling. I learned several things about real-life history during my playthrough, and not all were Roman-centric.
Normally, the first entry in a video game series acts as a rough draft for refined sequels. That’s not the case with Spelunky. It stands on its own as one of the most important games of the past decade.
Fights are long and involved, and even though the game is fast-paced, actually getting a kill (or dying) takes a lot of bullets to accomplish. This gives players plenty of time to outplay an enemy who got the drop on them. Splitgate's long-range fights are all about strafing and accuracy, while its up-close duels are most often decided by a quick peppering of assault rifle fire and swift use of melee attacks. Both types of fights are a fairly simple loop, but one that never gets boring, no matter how many times you do it.
In a recent session, I had a rival pair, and one of them was slain by the final boss in the last turns of the entire game. I was presented with an option to either allow them to slink off the battlefield with a career-altering wound or have them strike out with their dying strength, dealing massive damage and sealing the victory. I weighed my options and had them take out the boss. What better way to end a rivalry than by saving the world?
Psychonaut 2's levels are some of the most inventive in the platforming genre. There's an over-the-top cooking game show where you carry food stuff through a giant platforming gauntlet. There's also a humongous mailroom sorting office where you jump from flying envelope to flying envelope, all the while avoiding the vortex of letters below. You'll visit highly imaginative, gravity-bending dreamscape after dreamscape.
The game presents a solid foundation that manages to surprise in a few respects, but doesn’t quite take the plunge in full. I was hoping this iteration on the Aliens universe would finally be the one unafraid to take risks. But I’ll have to wait for the next attempt to find out if it’s not just a hopeless wish.
Sucker Punch Productions later explained that the lack of a target lock, and the awareness that goes along with it, more suited the Mongols' presence as a swarming, constantly deadly threat. Players would have to make affirmative inputs and precise choices rather than spam the buttons. But the absence of a lock-on was off-putting enough that Sucker Punch created one for Director's Cut - as well as in a patch to the original game - highlighting it as a fan request fulfilled.
It worked for me because of the earnestness and care with which Kitfox tells this empowered queer story. It's not always pleasant to experience, but it's a story that left me feeling satisfied with the outcome.
Twelve Minutes is an uncomfortable journey — maybe too uncomfortable
But Axiom Verge 2 doesn't let you forget that there's more to Metroid than backtracking. One of the most enduring things about that series is how isolating it can feel. And that's where Axiom Verge 2 finds its most powerful moments. After acquiring the aforementioned drone, I learned there's a second world I can explore called the Breach. It's uninhabitable by humans, but my little robot friend had no issue exploring it. At one point, though, I got stuck in the Breach, cut off from most of my bodily upgrades and vulnerable as a result.
One particular mission ended in a robot boss that was resistant to the types of weapons I had spent all of my upgrade materials on thus far. OK, I told myself, that's on me. I should have been prepared. The problem then became finding the requisite components to upgrade an energy weapon I had neglected. In order to do so, I had to slog back through previous environments and take on side quests that ran the gamut of quality: One sent me on a prolonged fetch quest in search of a suitcase, while another tasked me with gathering testicles from slain enemies. One hour and countless frustrations later, I was ready to once again take on that robot boss.