I started playing one afternoon and didn’t stop for nine hours. The interlocking systems, the pleasing pace, the ebb and flow between Olympus and the mortal realm are almost hypnotic. Every time you reach the end of a day cycle you think “just one day more”, and then it’s two in the morning and you’re still trying to grow a pumpkin for the upcoming festival of Demeter, or setting a trap for a monster in the forest. Expertly and lovingly crafted, Mythmatch is a lyrical poem about beautiful and rewarding game design.
While the music and gameplay have evolved with the times, in terms of narrative, Scott Pilgrim EX plays it way too safe. Though written by series creator Bryan Lee O’Malley, there’s none of the edge that secured Scott Pilgrim its original cult following. Our cast have, for the most part, worked out their differences. There’s no David v Goliath here, no antagonist that forces Scott and his pals to grow amid the messiness of bad relationships. Scott’s other friends appear in fun cameos and cat-meos, but the story is a silly, shallow adventure that feels like a side quest, the kind of game Scott would stay up all night playing before missing his shift at work.
Pokopia turns out to be huge, and unexpectedly complex. As new zones opened up beyond that first wasteland, I realised that this game was probably going to occupy me for as long as I wanted. (With 300 Pokémon to catalogue, the conclusion of the story need not be the conclusion of the game.) This is not a child-friendly Poké-painted simplification of the life-simulation genre, but instead an accomplished celebration of it, borrowing the best of all its many influences.
Requiem has had so many clever set-pieces, tense chases, and joyfully gruesome encounters by that point that it’s easy to forgive it simply running out of ideas. Capcom has been on a hot streak for a while now, so it’s no shock that Requiem delivers. But it’s a very pleasant surprise that Resident Evil still feels this vital.
From Life Is Strange to Undertale to Knights and Bikes, independent games have proved a rich and evocative medium through which to explore the theme of friendship. Pieced Together is another example, a careful, beautiful little game that, in more ways than one, turns nostalgia into art. After finishing it, I was inspired to contact an old pal I haven’t spoken to in ages and wasn’t sure I ever would again. Good games can be like good friendships: they encourage us to see things anew.
The most fun you’ll have is playing with a bunch of friends in the same room, but there’s also an online mode which offers ranked or friendly games. However you choose to play, the game exudes childlike charm while hiding layers of depth beneath its chaotic exterior. You can spend hours practising perfectly timed drop shots, mastering spin and getting your positioning just right, and figuring out which fever rackets best suit your style of play is an involving process. It is, in short, exactly what you want and expect from a Nintendo sports title – something for everyone, and then something more for those who decide to go pro.
And, yes, the handful of marquee moments spent running from or tussling with gargantuan creatures are spectacular. I will never turn my back on a pelican again as long as I live. Throughout, Reanimal drip-feeds clues to compelling mysteries surrounding the nature of its world and the children’s place within it. A shame, then, that it whiffs its apparent swing at recapturing the gut-punch of Little Nightmares II’s ending.
Romeo Is a Dead Man is certainly not predictable. It’s capable of getting a baffled smile out of you, and its anti-gaming-establishment attitude will have diehard fans searching for an irony-drenched reason to celebrate it. But where No More Heroes’ simplistic yarn kept the fights flowing and the jokes rolling, Romeo Is a Dead Man’s sprawl feels disappointingly directionless. Instead of coming together as a kitschy universe-spanning epic, this sci-fi story is sadly told with all the mastery of a rambling drunk in Wetherspoons.
