I can't get Fish Sticks out of my head. Not the food, but the stray cat with a squished face and stubby legs that I wrangled into my shack in Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel’s new roguelite strategy game, Mewgenics. The shop, the pub, the dentist; no matter where I go, I…
I was, like so many of my 1990s-born peers, a huge Sims girlie. I spent hundreds of hours as a teen and young adult making people I knew, characters from shows I was obsessing over, or original characters I wanted to experiment with, and diligently following their life paths and…
Origins handles its creative inheritance more elegantly than some open worlders, not least because unlike, say, the first game's Altair, its protagonist actually feels like he is of this realm rather than merely in it. And if the levelling and to-do list grate, the series has never offered a society and a landscape so worthy of close attention.
Engare is definitely too short – more levels would have been very welcome. And it's definitely very simple. It's testament to what a smart and interesting game it is that neither of these things put me off. In fact, it's a game that just kept putting a smile on my face as I solved each level.
Overgrowth feels like a mod created for a wacky physics sandbox where all the openness and experimentation has been pushed to the side, and everything else has been twisted around a forgettable, barely present story and a series of brief and ugly levels. I'm just glad that, at around two to three hours long, it's incredibly short.
This is a game that, despite its derivative nature, manages to delight in the details enough to make me remember why I loved the games that inspired it to begin with.
With the combat system and the way it's actually trying to make a point with its exploration of social issues, The Fractured But Whole does improve on its predecessor in some ways, but it quickly starts to coast, relying too much on familiarity to get by.
Gosh it's fyn. It's ytterly ridicyloys, bombarding yoy with new items like nothing else, jyst constantly asking yoy to go have some fyn. "How aboyt trying that level with this?!" Okay! "Now this!" Syre thing! And that's enoygh.
As frustrating as that can be, it was why I found myself punching the air in jubilation after difficult bosses. And they're all bloody difficult – but I wouldn't have it any other way. If that sounds enticing rather than off-putting to you, then I can unreservedly recommend Cuphead.
It's a shorter tale full of high-points, and wraps up lingering storylines while also leaving the door open for further adventures in the world of Dunwall, Karnaca and beyond.