Digital Chumps
HomepagePapa's Quiz is a game that tries different ways to spruce up the party game/quiz game genre, and it does a good job in most of its execution. It stumbles in the quiz question balance but excels in its creativity to personalize the experience for its players.
Fatum Betula finds virtue in the 32-bit generation. It is impossible to return to the ethos that powered games from a quarter century ago, but Fatum Betula captures their spirit and respects their integrity. The wild sense of experimentation, the natural invitation to curiosity, and the harsh beauty imposed by technical limitations shine through every austere texture and restrained polygon.
Genesis Noir is genre fiction that slow burns from a hard-boiled detective mystery to a cosmic exploration of potential and possibility. It showcases a form of storytelling exclusive to an interactive medium, not only immersing the player in rhapsodic visual landscapes, but expecting them to find tactile interpretations from its collection of curiosities. Genesis Noir doesn't position chaos as a subject for control, only an objective to be experienced and appreciated.
I’d like to give a tip of the hat to publisher Playstack and Cold Symmetry for making the Enhanced Edition a free update to owners of the PS4 version, and, for newcomers, making the MSRP of the game only $30, less than half of the going rate for some other next-gen games. Certainly at that price point you can’t hardly find a PS5 tailored experience that’s as good as Mortal Shell. In sum, if you’re like me and like the Souls games for their lore and gameplay, but don’t want to spend hours in frustration with asinine difficulty, give Mortal Shell a sincere chance. Like any game in this genre, it can take several hours to get really comfortable with and in the groove, but when you do, it will hold on tight and you won’t want to put it down.
Fairly priced, designed, and realized. This game is a really solid experience, and one I imagine will be elevated for anyone who looks back on this game with any nostalgia.
Haven presents a lush alien world, one rife with resource gathering and loaded with turn-based combat, as a suitable venue for its forbidden love story. Such an unorthodox collection of disparate elements may have had trouble connecting if not held together by widely relatable and sharply written interpersonal dialogue. It's an assembly that allows its pair protagonists to thrive inside moments of tedium, suggesting a story worth telling takes precedent over action not always worth doing.
In sum, The Medium is a great game with a few quirks, and it’s the best from Bloober Team to date. Available on Game Pass, it’s well-worth playing through as it makes for a nice early next-gen experience.
What is fortunate though is that The Sinking City is available again, and this freshly enhanced version for the PS5 is by far the best way to play the game. The changes that Frogwares made are impactful and make this a significantly better experience than it was at original release. It still has its quirks, but the positives far outweigh the negatives and it’s easy to recommend this game to anyone who has yet to check it out.
Issues aside, though, Call of the Sea is pretty good. It was nice to play through a new story with new characters, even if the story design was somewhat familiar and the outcome (essentially the same despite which ending you choose) was fairly predictable. Solid voice-acting, good writing, and pretty graphics (nothing show-stopping, but they’re good) make for a nice presentation package on top of an alright game. If you’re looking for a more casual, story and character driven game to play this holiday, Call of the Sea is worth considering.
Though the characters, locales, and general lore of Warhammer were lost on me not having ever played any Warhammer before (tabletop or otherwise), this didn’t stop me from getting into the game and enjoying it. The story, characters, quest and dungeon design, and general gameplay are all pretty straight-forward and familiar, and I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. This is a good case of ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’ If you’re looking for an expansive and fun co-op loot-gathering, combat-heavy dungeon crawler, this is a good choice, and your only choice right now for the new consoles.