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Astro Bot is a flawless 3D Platformer that stands among the industry's finest and is an instant classic. Its incredible level of design, boss battles, and mechanics build upon the best platformers that came before, making this title more than just a celebration of PlayStation's past; it is a surefire staple for its future.
Tomba! Special Edition is a painstaking tribute to an enduring PlayStation oddity. Hopefully this is an opening salvo for rereleases of older, odder games.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! delivers adult comedy with real bite, even if the latter half feels long in the tooth. Gleefully disassembling a Northern England town is its own reward. Unapologetically rowdy humor and eccentric townsfolk never wear out their stay. But retreading areas instead of tighter editing certainly scuffs the welcome mat. Your silly salesperson strays from the path a bit, but Thank Goodness You’re Here! ultimately puts the funny in “funny business.”
The Land Beneath Us is as sleek and sharp as a blood sword. The game’s systems favor careful consideration over needless fuss, paring back layers of potential boondoggles to the bare essentials: your weapon, your enemies’ movements, and the terrain. Every mechanic layered on top relies on those fundamentals instead of superseding them Despite its generosity of information, The Land Beneath Us doesn’t compromise its difficulty. You may know what’s coming, but that just means your failures are your own. A few structural blemishes affect the game’s flow, but it is still very much worth fighting for. I send Sven through the warp point one more time, determined to see it through.
Please Leave Me Alone, I Need To Poop pulls off a royal flush: the swirl of surface humor reveals the foul infrastructure underneath. This team has stared into the cubicle abyss. The indignity of needing to poop but being unable to is more than a comedy pratfall, it’s a smaller fracture in a widening human rights chasm.
Riven 2024 is a true labor of love, a direct result of fan efforts to render the game in a modern style. Character models, puzzles, and other touches have been dramatically streamlined, and barring a few hard knowledge checks, my time in Riven sped by. Graphics hiccups and captioning omissions are tiny blemishes on Riven’s triumphant return. I’ll be thinking of it, pun intended, for ages.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip succeeds because of its manageable scale. Sprankelwater feels gloriously off-center, with a limited toolset that hits the perfect balance of freedom and constraint. The game’s open-ended nature and surreal worldbuilding won’t be for everyone, but the humor lands with oddballs like me. Alternately deadpan, tender, and zany, Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip should be held in the same high regard as A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game. Sometimes it’s worth it to push past pure “cozy.”
Like that test demo, FLATHEAD falters when it adds too much detail too soon, undercutting its own tense atmosphere. The game has taken noticeable (and welcome) steps back since its early days, but can’t quite overcome the urge to overexplain. I chalk it up to a developer finding their voice and their footing. I’m confident that with time, they will make something that can truly rattle me. They got perilously close this time.
Despite some technical bugs, Athenian Rhapsody can still shine thanks to its many strengths: its colorful, eye-catching visuals, hilarious and heartwarming story, and challenging yet fun combat system. For those in need of a quirky RPG or a nice pick-me-up after a stressful week, Athenian Rhapsody is the game that’ll do the job, all the while making you smile like an absolute cornball.
Sunset Visitor’s debut stretches the clean lines of video game metacommentary into a concentrated ludonarrative taffy. There is no gotcha moment, to 1000xRESIST’s credit. The struggle for meaning is long but not fruitless. Characters slowly learn to survive in—and maybe even love—the fractured world they’ve been given. 1000xRESIST will leave you with questions, but ultimately the resolution is yours alone. The game is infinitely better for it.
Let’s! Revolution! is a satisfying fusion of systematic deduction and no-holds-barred risk. Player abilities give you enough power to take powerful swings or lethal risks. If you’re looking for a puzzle game that’s all logic, you won’t find it here. But those willing to play inside the game’s initial constraints will find that with great risk comes great reward. Let’s! Revolution!‘s commitment to character and choice are what make it a rare treat. You can’t have a revolution without getting a little messy.
Here’s what it felt like at Tekken 8’s best: relatively smooth online play dissolved the bicoastal time difference and immersed me in a flashy and silly fighting sandbox. Boxers and martial artists clashed in fast-paced, bombastic matchups. My collected knowledge and frantic improvisation sent me into a flow state, laughing at each win or loss. Ultimately that feeling, not shareholder-induced rot, keeps me coming back. Tekken 8 can be tough to love, but for better or worse, I do anyway.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a cookie-cutter live service that feels like a chore to play thanks to bloated and repetitive missions, half-baked objectives, and an uninspired story that stops trying halfway through. Outside of solid animations and voice acting, there’s little to enjoy in this forgettable title from WB. It’s a bland experience that’s mediocre at best and a grueling slog at its worst. With so little soul here, I doubt people will remember it well enough to put it on their ‘Worst Games of 2024’ lists.
Tamarak Trail‘s compelling art style and battle system are ultimately weighed down by poor design choices. If you can push past the thicket of mild annoyances, the well-honed dice-rolling mechanics shine through. Despite my hesitations, I kept rolling through tough bosses, mystifying character traits, and other less-polished moments. Hopefully, a little additional work bring Tamarak Trail a devoted audience. While frustrating, the journey through the woods is worth saving.
Fight Crab 2 is a mix of deliberately cumbersome and cutting-edge, lobbing control schemes, art styles, and weapons with relentless abandon. It may not aim for graphical prowess, but the game’s charm and option to upload VRoid models as your avatar give it legs within an admittedly niche audience. Performance and frame rate issues are the only thing that had me in a pinch. Fight Crab 2 will delight B-movie mavens and frustrate those expecting more traditional controls or game structure. It won’t be for everyone, but that’s largely by design.
While Home Safety Hotline does fumble with its gameplay somewhat, the journey from beginning to end is intriguing and fun. This accessible analog horror has an addicting gameplay loop that never gets tedious, excellent worldbuilding and writing, and a great atmosphere. Fans who love analog or supernatural horror should definitely pick up this game.
Born of Bread’s narrative and mechanics soar despite some perplexing quality-of-life choices—and a slew of minor bugs that will hopefully be fixed soon. Although I’m always happy to see a tag-team turn-based RPG, the game sometimes hews too closely to structural and mechanical tropes better left in the distant past. Born of Bread overcomes these setbacks through sheer force of will. The game isn’t afraid to take some wild swings, either. It’s more than a simple Mario and Luigi homage and absolutely the funniest game I’ve played all year. Consider this a weighted Taylor-based average; I’m scoring Born of Bread based on how highly I recommend it, warts and all.
SUPER 56 invokes the best and worst of its microgame lineage with short, bizarre snippets, a narrative framework as joyful as it is inessential, and a central control gimmick that occasionally outstays its welcome. Small accessibility issues aside, Onion Soup Interactive avoids the major pitfalls of its contemporaries by limiting the experience entirely to single-player with online leaderboards, tapering what could have been an overwhelming sprawl into a smart, snappy collection.
Jusant's reach never exceeds its grasp. Smart use of player tools, generous checkpointing options, and a full spectrum of sound take a simple premise to its absolute peak. The deceptively simple climbing and exploration constantly reminds you that you are a single point in a larger ecosystem.
Slay the Princess is a prime example of why visual novels are one of the most powerful and hard-hitting offerings in gaming today. It’s an astounding tale where nearly every aspect elevates its narrative to new heights. If you’re looking for a horror game that’ll stay with you or need a title to nudge you into visual novels, look no further than Slay the Princess.