Polygon's Reviews
At its core, this is a game that's funny and good-hearted, presenting a world where a single queer dad's ability to be a good father is never called into question. It's a pretty cool accomplishment for a silly game birthed from a meme.
Asymmetric Then there's the lore. West of Loathing takes place after a major magical disaster: the Day the Cows Came Home. Portals to hell turned the cows demonic, and great darkness spread across the West. West of Loathing elicits this powerful emotional connection with stick figures. It bonds you to its world with nothing more than doodling and dialogue. There's a pretty good turn-based adventure game there, under the hood, but West of Loathing's many strengths are all personal: connections made between developer and player when you both laugh at the same time. Absurdism aside, there's something fundamentally human and direct baked into the game's whole design from aesthetic to script. On top of it, you can dunk your hand into a spittoon of caustic toxins to pull out an enchanted sword. That's the kind of player choice I didn't even know I wanted in a Western RPG.
I continue to think of Tacoma as a story first, but it's more than that, clearly: It's an interactive experience, and that plays for and against it. The story is built out of the playback mechanic, which gives birth to the subtler suggestions of what's really going on with this station. But the playback system means there's a lot of talking to listen to, and a lot of wireframes to stare at. For a game about an abandoned space station, Tacoma gave me plenty of company. But the moments where I had to reckon with being alone in space were the ones that stuck with me.
This RPG won't revolutionize the genre in any sense, but as a breezy riff on a familiar formula, Miitopia is a pure delight.
Hey! Pikmin did exactly what it needed to do, without extending itself any further. It gave me a series of interesting places, a series of clever puzzles, a series of cute vignettes and soft storybook scenery. The worst thing to say about Hey! Pikmin is, simultaneously, a recommendation — it's perfectly pleasant, well-rounded, and didn't leave me dying for more.
I spent the equivalent of a working week playing Aven Colony and it was hard labor. This is a game of relentless concentration and chore-work, with only the briefest flashes of magic and relief, offering almost nothing new to the city building, or resource management genres.
Much of the pull of this world is delivered through Pyre's narrative, which drives the game forward in spite of the repetition of its sports game-style core. Sharply written dialogue is interspersed between rites, illuminating a story that branches in dozens of different ways. That plot is carried on the shoulders of a wonderful cast of characters – party members such as the gruff demon Jodariel, the bitter bog witch Bertrude and my personal favorite, Sir Gilman, a snake with a single large eye who wears a clunky metal helmet and wants nothing more than to be an honorable knight.
Like all successful pieces of nostalgia, Kingsway knows the adventure on the screen is less important than the adventure in your mind. Kingsway took me far down those winding paths, deeper and deeper with each hesitant chitter of nonexistent hardware.
In some ways, Gigantic is a jack of all trades, pulling influences from half a dozen different disparate games and genres. That mixture might sound messy on paper, but in practice developer Motiga pulls it all together to create matches that feel tense, challenging and hugely rewarding.
What the first Splatoon did well is still built into the sequel's barnacle-encrusted DNA, and now it's on a system that you can stuff in your bag or play on the couch. It's baffling that Splatoon 2's best feature is held back by a frustrating lack of proper online support, and in many ways, it's the same game with some new tricks. But there are still enough imaginative additions for anyone who played the first game to death, especially via its strange, captivating supporting cast. It may be much more of the same, but the same is still pretty fresh.
In the end, Yonder isn't inventive, exactly, as the multitude of ideas and cross-media inspirations converge somehow into something infinitely familiar. Missions are cut down to absolute basics to fulfill an open world quota, but it's possible to forgive this when traipsing through this aesthetically pleasing land and helping these delighted folk. And as importantly, there's bravery in eliminating things like combat and leveling, allowing Yonder a rare, distinctive brevity.
And I am going to keep doing things in The Zodiac Age. It's taken the game I already loved so much and given me more. The Zodiac Age doesn't add things for the sake of adding them. I can see myself putting 300 more hours into this version of Final Fantasy 12, trying different combinations of job classes and testing out new tactics on the optional bosses I could never quite conquer in the original game. The Zodiac Age takes a game I could play in my sleep and makes me wake up and appreciate it again.
There's a golden glow around memories that gets brighter with age, but it also tends to distract from old frustrations. If you're ready for a quick trip — and I mean quick — down memory lane, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy doesn't disappoint. Vicarious Visions' faithfulness to the series satisfies some nostalgic cravings, but once the novelty wears off, the cracks can't help but show.
Yet with little actual challenge to speak of, Ever Oasis doesn't have much going for it. There aren't any tricky enemies to ward off, and the town-building simulation is shallow. It's the combination of several other genres whose best games are far, far, far more worth playing than this one. In its attempt to crib from the best, Ever Oasis never establishes its own identity.
The true misery of Valkyria Revolution is how much of the series' roots show through, and how much Revolution itself doesn't know what to do with them.
Tekken 7 is a sweet reward for anyone who's been following along for more than two decades, but it could do a lot more to onboard new fans — especially considering the uneven story and lack of a strong tutorial. Still, if you want to spend the time (and look for help on YouTube), Tekken 7's unforgettable characters and fluid fights are worth the work.
I've never been more charmed by a racing video game and I could not recommend any other more than Dirt 4, to anyone of any ability. Dirt 4 is a joy.
With a stylish, memorable cast of characters, inventive gameplay mechanics and smart use of the Switch hardware, Arms already feels like Nintendo's next great new franchise.
Conarium could have pushed deeper, but it stays true to the spirit of Lovecraft's work
Encounters between Jason and counselors should be the high point, but they're often just dull and repetitive