Aside from unseen crowd cheers, Showtime lacks developer Good Feel’s handmade charm, mastered in Yoshi’s Woolly World and Yoshi’s Crafted World. The sense of stage theatrics is there (a curtain opens/closes as levels begin/end), but in execution, it’s less an aesthetic than a tightly restricted variety platformer. Some stages are fun (ice skating) others less… Continue reading Princess Peach: Showtime (Switch)
There was a charm to Final Fantasy VII in its original form, where angular characters that looked like (out of technological necessity) angular papercraft wandered worlds that from above, looked almost delightfully miniature. There was style, aesthetics, and handmade texture spilling an obvious teen-focused climate/capitalist allegory from, appropriately, videogaming’s late teenage console era. This remake… Continue reading Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PS5)
I find the funniest complaint in modern gaming to be against quick-time events. It’s not interactive enough to just press a button at a prompt, so goes the purported flaw, ignoring the reality of games like Suicide Squad. To use a jetpack – or rather, a function OF a jetpack – requires multiple trigger buttons,… Continue reading Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (PS5)
It’s not difficult to explain the appeal of Powerwash Simulator, a chore game, the likes of which the Simpsons parodied during one of their early VR spoofs. The gist? Powerwash Simulator isn’t dissimilar to Space Invaders. Neither is Call of Duty or any other shooter. You move a target, shoot something, said something disappears. Dopamine.… Continue reading Powerwash Simulator (Xbox One)
A genre whose popularity swarmed around the 1980s New York crime wave, Final Vendetta is less interested in those origins than the games themselves. From swiping Streets of Rage’s sound effects to Final Fight’s hidden foreground objects, Final Vendetta isn’t shy about its lack of ideas, but proud of its homage. There’s nothing original to… Continue reading Final Vendetta (Switch)
Armed with a mallet equal to the size of his head, Kirby marches through the “forgotten” land wailing on wolves and circus seals, the brand’s distinctive, morbidly hilarious lullaby horror intact. Kirby can suck up whole cars though – that’s new – running over the non-threatening enemies at full speed. Or, commandeering a vending machine,… Continue reading Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
It’s difficult to take Horizon seriously – this is dopey sci-fi fiction, filled with robot dinosaurs, flying people, and an allegory that’s insufferably on point. Even its heroine Aloy represents a confluence of the modern liberally-inclined generation, accepting other cultures, if arrogantly rolling her eyes at their conservative religious beliefs, all while saving Earth from… Continue reading Horizon: Forbidden West (PS5)
Ignore the loose, campy dressing that brings this distinctly Japanese brawler Stateside. Connections to River City Girls, characters aside, are tenuous. Instead, the clumsy and awkward, anime-amplified core story finds root in social rebellion, a fantasy amid a country dominated by obedience. High school student protagonist Kunio is out to do right, clear his name… Continue reading River City Girls Zero (Switch)
It’s just a toothbrush – but it’s one of two now. That’s the first sign of Unpacking’s brilliantly gentle storytelling, which begins in a young girl’s bedroom, emptying boxes full of toys. Flash forward a few years, and it’s the same situation, only in an apartment, and fewer toys. The toys disappear to make room… Continue reading Unpacking (Xbox Series X)
A notable Roger Ebert quote states it’s not what a movie is about, but how it is about it. Pscychonauts 2 summarizes that statement by distilling mental health down to a young adult, Tim Burton-esque world that, in execution, betters Pixar’s Inside Out, which attempted a similar concept. Psychonauts 2 deals in multiple personality orders,… Continue reading Psychonauts 2 (Xbox Series X)
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