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I hope they're things that can be ironed out with patches, because Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus is positively dripping with love for the genre and deserves to be acknowledged for what it brings forth-not the concessions I must make regarding it. It took me roughly 16 hours to reach 100% completion, and I enjoyed 15 of those hours greatly. A brief conversation I had with someone on the marketing and community side of Squid Shock Studios vaguely pointed towards even more secrets to uncover or future content planned for the game, and I will likely jump back into Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus to experience those myself when and if they happen: but only because I know the worst is behind me.
While its level design and storytelling lack depth, its core movement feels so good you'll be able to forgive this for much of its runtime as you dart through well-rendered street corners. There is a coherent vibe found in the sharp art design, idyllic vistas, and low-key score, which creates a soothing ambiance that makes it easy to unwind. Although I wish it ultimately gave more to chew on, cruising through SCHiM is a decent way to spend a lazy summer afternoon.
In the end, Zenless Zone Zero gives you a chance to bring down your foes in the most stylish ways imaginable, all thanks to a dynamic and exhilarating combat system. Regrettably, this is the lone highlight in a game that’s marred by questionable design choices and limited exploration. As someone who’s put in countless hours into F2P games, including Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, this youngest child in the family is unlikely to step out of the shadows of its older and more successful siblings. Indeed, if you still enjoy other F2P or live-service games out there, it’s hard to recommend investing your time into Zenless Zone Zero at this current stage.
Perhaps these attempts distorted reality enough that Alan could build on them and eventually escape, and perhaps these attempts reflect Remedy’s own struggle in crafting what would become Alan Wake II. I wrote that “North Star” could have been a Control prototype— and maybe it was. It still exists as a part of the story, and Remedy showing that to us feels special. It feels incredibly novel that a game’s DLC exists to thematically bolster itself, rather than solely provide additional entertainment. Night Springs does both, and furthers the metanarrative spiral of the base game. In the end, I shut up and trusted Remedy, and I’m ready to do it all over again whenever the second expansion, The Lake House, arrives.
Altogether though, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a game with vision. It wraps intriguing puzzles in a digital gothic framic. It makes the most of its chosen medium as it forces us to navigate the tenuous details of this backdrop. Just about every layer of the experience is creatively risky, from its fragmented narrative to its uncompromising barrage of challenges, but these gambles largely pay off to deliver something with purpose and direction. Crafting this kind of maze isn’t easy; it takes a combination of subtle guidance and faith in your audience. But despite these challenges, Simogo never loses sight of how to stoke curiosity about what’s lurking around the next corner, whether it’s a treasure you’ve been seeking or, conversely, something horrible lurking in the dark.
At its very worst, 1000xRESIST manages to be “fine.” Its “worst” lasts about three minutes, and it is still ridiculously compelling all the while. At all other times, 1000xRESIST relentlessly operates at its best. It’s one of the best stories in the medium, one of the best games this year, and one of the best games I’ve ever played. It’s no coincidence that it was nominated for three IGF awards this year, with one of them being the grand prize—it’s an achievement, and every inch of it deserves to be celebrated. If this world is just, it will get the incredible fanfare that it spends every minute earning. It’s simply an astonishing debut from Sunset Visitor; I can’t wait to see what other stories they will grace us with in the future, what other experiences of theirs I will be this desperate to hold onto.
As a whole, Children of the Sun’s explosions of violence pull us into The Girl’s quest for revenge, combining dome-blasting fun with action-puzzles that invite creativity. Equally important, the game’s aesthetic rips — its offputting art style, color choices, and unsavory elements, like the bliss The Girl takes from drilling holes in cultist skulls, driving home all the visceral details. While I wish this attention-grabbing EP had a few more tracks, what’s here lands with the impact of a hollow-point round.
South Park: Snow Day is a step backwards for the show’s library of games. It could be worth a good laugh or two, especially with friends, but you’ll get a lot more of them from the show itself. There must not have been a lot of faith in this one considering its very small price tag of $30 compared to the new standard of $70. But honestly, you’re better off taking that $30 and putting it towards Ubisoft’s older South Park games, The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole. Those will offer more enjoyment than Snow Day ever could.
Rise of the Ronin shows exactly what that money buys. From the awkward horse animation to the silent protagonist, in every cutscene fading out to a loading screen instead of dynamically swinging back behind the protagonist, in the constant tooltip tutorials and the entirely unmotivated progression systems with no contextualisation in the world.
Classic game anthologies followed a pretty basic pattern ever since companies first realized they could make some money by bundling their old games together and tossing them back out to the public with minimal care or effort. They’d have some old games, maybe a single text screen of historical information, perhaps a small gallery of behind the scenes photos, and that’s it. Digital Eclipse showed how utterly insufficient that kind of collection is with Atari 50 and The Making of Karateka, and they continue their peerless work with Llamatron: The Jeff Minter Story. It’s a godsend for Minter fans, a crucial piece of history for an often disrespected medium, and mind-expanding, technicolor, llama-loving proof that, yes, games can be art.
When a game’s story and gameplay aren’t on the same level, there’s a tendency to frame it as an unbalanced tradeoff: style with no substance, or lore with no impact. Unicorn Overlord proves the unsettling—to me, anyway—truth that sometimes story doesn’t really matter, even in a political epic. Sometimes you don’t need much of an excuse to send your army to fight another battalion of red-clad soldiers with a complicated name. Other times, the absence of a really good story makes the rest of the game feel hollow. But equally it proves that little touches in style, organization, and even background writing can go a long way to make up for what it lacks.
It’s already been a busy year for game releases, but I’m so glad I took time off from the high-stakes, melodramatic adventures of ecoterrorists or the comically action-packed exploits of galactic fascist pawns for Penny’s good-ol’-fashioned sense of fun. Here’s a game that’s not just worth playing, but replaying and finding every little secret. Even if its retro vibes and dated designs can be frustrating, they account for pennies out of each successful dollar that Penny’s Big Breakaway cashes in thanks to its sense of speed, charming art direction, and clever innovations.
Rebirth‘s world is gorgeous and fun and quirky, even if the delivery of its stories can feel a bit stilted and rote, and it turns the finale of Remake into the impetus to re envision a phenomenal cast in ways I adore. Along the way, it becomes big, perhaps even bigger than Final Fantasy VII ever needed to be, but that excess provides quite a bit to love.
Helldivers 2 is the rare game that honestly benefits from being live-service. Just within a week we’ve already seen new missions being added with new objectives for the community to work towards that will allow all players to reap the benefits. Arrowhead’s dedication and constant communication to enhance the experience for players deserves to be commended. Alongside those rewards, there’s also compensation for players who didn’t get proper rewards for their missions and XP bonuses to make up for time lost under server maintenance. Under the right conditions (working servers and your misfit group of friends), Helldivers 2 is simply one of the greatest co-op games to come out in recent memory. The feeling of fighting for my life waiting for extraction while the orchestra is blaring away is the greatest movie I’ve ever had the pleasure of taking part in. Unfortunately, it’s not always going to be available due to factors outside the game. Yet when it all comes together, democracy has never felt so good.
Singular and confident, Ultros is a startling piece of work that knows exactly what it wants to be, and hones in on that goal with laser beam focus. It depends on time-tested videogame actions and concepts not just for their comfort and retro appeal, but as a familiar foundation that can be gradually fucked with as part of the game’s greater themes. And although those themes and their presentation are intentionally confusing and obtuse, Ultros never devolves into chaos for the sake of it; there’s always a clear point of view and thought process driving the game’s design. Ultros brings mystery back to gaming in brilliant fashion, delivering us the first genuinely great game of 2024.
Even if you don’t think you’re into big RPGs with a lot of social business attached, it’s worth taking a look into Persona 3 Reload, especially if you’re subscribed to Game Pass; still, though, you should prepare yourself for the long journey ahead. And remember, you will die. Now it’s time for me to play this dancing game I’ve heard so much about.
But in the end, Granblue Fantasy is still tucked away in my phone. Perhaps they thought that a console game like Relink was merely the best way to onboard new players. You can’t hit them with the toxic, cannibalistic lesbians (this is a thing that happened, and was fantastic) or the Lowain Brothers Hostess Club out of nowhere. Most recently in Granblue Fantasy, my Captain got canonically married in a parallel timeline to Catura. Catura is a big-titty cow girl who is the Divine Ox of the 12 Divine Generals. She loves milk, her sentient motorcycle named Milky, her parents, a little cow named Moomoo, and me. And now my big-titty cowgirl is one of the hardest hitting attackers I have on my Wind element team. When she does her ougi, we divebomb the enemies on her motorcycle in our wedding dresses. It’s amazing. And while I admit that this is definitely the energy missing from Relink, it did take Granblue some time to get here.
Like I said, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is positively bursting with just about everything you could think to ask for in a game. It’s a more confident RPG, even adopting the kinds of stories fitting of the genre, but that transformation isn’t as seamless as it could be. Sure, it’s a long adventure with plenty of fun to be had and a lovely party of characters, but there’s also a disjointed feel to its disparate narratives and how they ultimately come together. Along the way, it even loses sight of some of its themes, threads,and characters. But that doesn’t mean Infinite Wealth doesn’t coalesce in some truly outstanding moments every now and then that make the journey worth the highs and the lows. I only wish it better understood that some restraint, as opposed to unlimited growth, can go a long way towards making a better game.
Tekken 8 may not be a sea-change sequel, but it hones what came before, reducing pain points for newcomers without reducing the complexity that makes this series special.
All that said, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising largely achieves its central tasks. It lowers the barrier to entry for newcomers while also offering a well-designed roster with enough complexities to keep things exciting for seasoned hands. I found myself pulled into matches that balanced flashy techniques with the more deliberate pacing of old-school genre entries, creating compelling duels I’m eager to return to. Perhaps most notably, it addresses the core issue with the last game, adding rollback netcode that makes online play dramatically more stable. Although there are a few whiffs, such as the inability to filter opponents by connection speed and regressions in its story mode, it generally hits as hard as its colorful cast of combatants.