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…
Most of the inhabitants of Mutazione are engaging and lovely, especially the ones who aren’t. You will have favourites, and you will know where to find people, running around to talk to everyone like you would in the hub area in a BioWare game.
For me to enjoy turn-based sneakery, I need more information. Naughty Police is a game where simply moving from A to B is riddled with uncertainty, and the cost of being spotted too often boils down to repetitive busywork. It’s not a price I’m willing to pay.
If you’re at all intrigued by Ni No Kuni, I’d strongly advise you to just go and play Revenant Kingdom instead. It’s a far more enjoyable JRPG than Wrath of the White Witch, and it won’t make you feel like snapping your keyboard in two out of a white-hot fury of your own
In contrast, Session feels back-to-front: so unblinkingly focused on the technical side of riding a skateboard that it's overlooked everything that makes rolling around on a board actually fun. There’s plenty of room for skateboarding games less arcadey than anything with a Tony Hawk face on it, but this early version of Session is a bleak, sterile thing, and one that only serves as a painful reminder of my own lack of talent in most physical activities.
While the game itself isn’t the most stellar company, there’s no denying why it, like its predecessors, will be incredibly successful – because it provides a superb environment for hanging out with your pals.
It’s not my favourite play of all time by any means, and I may never come back to it after my fascination fades. Even so, if I’m asked to come up with an example of a genuinely unique experience that shows what games are capable of in 2019, this is the block my internal Wilmot will bring forward from the tangled stacks of my memory.
Indivisible may lack the number-crunching aspects of Disgaea, but it embodies the same sense of earnest cheer. It won’t change your life, but it’s a pleasant romp, extremely pretty, and clearly made with a lot of love. All good stuff.