Steven Scaife

“Mewgenics has so much that its sluggish meta-progression feels designed to get you to see as much of it as possible, albeit at the cost of satisfying pacing. Even when you’re technically earning something new on each new run, the goal remains nowhere in sight.”

“Clearly the game is taking aim at the Disney Princess archetype, but the shots fired are all so clunky and obvious: One girl accidentally drops her manifesto for women’s liberation in front of the teacher, and later she reads from a book that just lists the names of accomplished women throughout history. If horror is meant to elicit strong emotions, the most that Bye Sweet Carole can manage is cringe.”

“What stumbles there are, though, do little to loosen The Drifter’s sturdy grasp of the genre. With a steady stream of plot twists and storytelling intrigue, the game is a propulsive and polished example of the form, every bit the satisfying pulp adventure it sets out to be.”

“Much like all the products you assemble, the disparate components of Kaizen all come together into one elegant whole.”

“But To a T remains a life sim, lavishing idiosyncratic detail on its ground-level view of the world. Flight is just one stop along a broader, sillier journey that depicts Teen’s growing comfort in their own skin.”

“But the greatest shortcoming ends up being the game’s fuzzy grasp of its own mythology and how the story should resolve. Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a wonder of slice-of-life storytelling, but that’s in spite of its supernatural elements rather than because of them.”

“For as big and ambitious as its levels may be, the most reliable way to progress in Commandos: Origins is a tedious process of luring each guard to his doom, one at a time.”

“In an impressive feat of adapting an established format for a unique setting, The Stone of Madness is cleverly attuned to perseverance through incremental progress.”

“Beyond familiar echoes to Silent Hill, Killer 7 is the most obvious touchstone for the combat system and generally flamboyant aesthetic. But Sorry We’re Closed defies the purely imitative qualities of so much indie horror. For whatever mechanical shortcomings it may have, the game exhibits the most confident grasp of its own artistic sensibility this side of Paradise Killer.”

“Perhaps by its very nature as a sequel, Rise of the Golden Idol was never going to be the revelation that the original was. But by playing to the strengths of the first game’s concept through even more intricate puzzle design, it offers a worthy follow-up in a spirited new setting.”

“The sharp, imperfect edges of that art become vital, rejecting the seamlessness of higher-budgeted works that obscures the effort that went into their creation. As stop-motion is a jerky and imperfect approximation of motion that’s nevertheless bursting with character, everything about Judero’s construction is nothing short of evidence of its humanity.”

“Luckily, though, you’ll spend much of Tactical Breach Wizards in the heat of battle, and that’s where it functions best. Few of the scenarios are difficult, and intentionally so; the game is less about raw challenge than having you experiment in pursuit of efficiency and style. Many of the optional, more difficult objectives encourage you to squeeze 15 actions into a single turn or complete a map without letting the enemy ever fire a shot, which means constantly refreshing your actions and movements several times per turn. Even when the characters are patiently waiting their turn, there’s always a remarkable sense of speed to Tactical Breach Wizards.”

“Yet even these rough edges work in concert toward something singular and idiosyncratic. Indeed, the story becomes hard to pin down in the lead-up to a truly audacious ending, and the occasional abandonment of combat fortifies the horror undertones far more effectively than simply killing everything in your way. Skald may be easy to distill to its overt influences, but its best moments use those touchstones to build something new.”

“Solium Infernum already has its fans, but more so than the original, it feels as if this remake, given its extremely specific brand of prolonged negotiations and conniving, will live and die by whether it grows that dedicated audience. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay Solium Infernum is that I very much hope it finds one so I can play more of it.”

“Perhaps the greatest compliment that one can pay to A Highland Song is that—unlike any number of games that mark traversable areas in, say, white splotches or yellow paint—it doesn’t feel obviously designed. There are areas in the game that you’ll never reach on a single run, forcing you to make decisions if you want to make it to Uncle Hamish’s lighthouse on time. A Highland Song’s rendition of the Scottish Highlands scans more as a natural space than as a bespoke puzzle, a world instead of a playground. Here, the hills are alive.”

“That’s how so much of Thirsty Suitors feels to play: stylish to look at and perhaps pleasurable in the moment yet ultimately quite shallow. As a whole, it’s a bundle of middling mechanics carried by strong writing. The story may be about Jala coming to terms with her past while she figures herself out, but the game itself never settles on a cohesive vision of what it should be.”

“Once we stop sharing in Yasna’s discoveries, the storytelling never quite clicks. Apart from a few stiff flashbacks, players simply don’t get to know enough about Yasna’s fellow researchers to get invested in how their fate drives her search for answers. Yasna’s quest feels detached rather than desperate, with all the game’s themes coldly laid out in dialogue choices. The Invincible does remain reasonably engrossing through to the end, but it never recaptures the interactive vigor of its first half, eventually becoming a bout of scientific calculus on autopilot.”

“That El Paso, Elsewhere works at all as a drama is a huge achievement. It tackles weighty topics with a maturity that’s rare in gaming, and which is all the more impressive given that it does so within the framework of a shooter that suggests a Halloween attraction as curated by John Woo. It’s emblematic of the game as a whole—a bizarre amalgamation of parts that shouldn’t work yet manages to form something cohesive, soulful, weird, and deeply personal.”

“Trepang2’s default control scheme even neglects to map the crucial slide maneuver to any button, only triggering when you crouch while sprinting. This can be changed in the options menu, but the oversight speaks to how the game, which launched on PC back in June, hasn’t been rebalanced particularly well for its console release. As frustrations mount with the final level’s poor autosave and maddening boss fight, it becomes clearer than ever that a console is far from the ideal venue to experience this flawed yet inspired shooter.”

“But the non-linear nature of The Cursed Crew does have its virtues. There are some magnificent moments of discovery where you feel as though you’ve circumvented the level design by maneuvering the right character into the right position to bypass certain guard setups or parts of the terrain. Simply by spending so much time with the characters, you’ll hit upon certain combinations of abilities independently, fine-tuning new strategies all the way up to the end. It’s in these moments that you see what the developers are aiming for, and they suggest that The Cursed Crew could be a tentative step in an exciting new direction for the studio, even if those elements are more notable for how they might be refined in a subsequent release.”