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.
Mario vs. Donkey Kong was directly inspired by Donkey Kong ’94 and features many of its mechanics, including the lock-and-key system and the Super Mario Bros. 2-style treatment of enemies. It’s a very solid puzzler, but it’s just not as inspired in its design as the older game. Until Nintendo decides to give its actual puzzle-platforming masterpiece an equally considered remake, though — or at least deigns to add it to the Game Boy collection on Switch Online — Mario vs. Donkey Kong will have to do.
Forza Motorsport is serious business. Put the time in, Turn 10 is saying; do your laps, shave off the seconds, make that one small tweak, grind out that win. I respect its focus, and its refusal to pander to fun-addled Horizon players, instead offering them a clearly articulated invitation to join its more austere church. This is a game about going round in circles, a little bit faster every time, and it’s quite unapologetic about it.
There’s genius and sincerity at work here. Get deep enough into Tactics Ogre and the entreaty of its subtitle, Let Us Cling Together, starts to sound a lot less goofy and a lot more urgent and sad. How deep you will get into the game depends on your appetite for micromanagement and your patience with gameplay systems that, 27 years later, are starting to creak, despite all the judicious tinkering that’s been done to them. Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a welcome, polished, and thoughtful update to a game that defined a genre — a genre that has now left it behind.
This is all welcome, and it makes Dorfromantik a more complete and rewarding experience. But really, this is one of those games for which early-access status was a bit of a misnomer, not because it had no room to improve or features to add, but because its premise was so fully, perfectly realized from the start. Add too much to it, or do anything that might disturb its delicate balance between friction and flow, between logic and naturalism, and it would have been ruined. But the Toukana team knows better than that. They are at peace, strolling through the countryside of the mind.
Aging gracefully, Polyphony’s racing series has never seemed more like itself
Playground Games delivers yet another gorgeous and enveloping pocket holiday, smartly restructured but reassuringly unchanged.
You can't fault the craft of this painstaking remaster, and the game itself still has an ornery magnetism - but Diablo 2 is showing its age.
A far-out new expansion and major levelling revamp see Blizzard's veteran online world riding a new wave of popularity.
Can a slick, mainstream action game really reckon with the violence that drives it? The answer is yes - messily, but powerfully.
Cardboard Computer's elusive adventure game gets a final episode and a console edition, but don't wolf it all down at once.
Hideo Kojma's first post-Metal Gear game is a messy, indulgent vanity project - but also a true original.
Telling Lies, by contrast, is but a second baby step into uncharted territory: a little wobbly, a little naive. But definitely courageous and exciting.
Beautiful, broken, with flashes of brilliance, Anthem is a disorganised mess in search of a reason to be.
The worst of pretentious story games and brainless beat-em-ups combined - with an insulting gimmick that's all its own.
The 'spiritual successor' industry reaches deep into the 90s game cupboard with this futuristic racer. Should we start asking why?
Another sumptuous, endlessly entertaining automotive playground, but its shift into 'shared-world' online gaming is only a partial success.
Despite the flashy boats and planes, this sequel to the ambitious open-world racing game is underdeveloped where it counts.
Its big themes are glibly handled, though this is still Quantic Dream's most credible and satisfying interactive yarn by far.
Fresh presentation and admirable dedication to its big idea can't save this two-player adventure from mediocrity.