Quarter to Three

I'm guessing the average shmup fan is going to gladly part with the full four dollars.

Eufloria is as unique, languidly haunting, and eminently playable as any of Introversion's brilliant Darwinia games. And now it's also a perfect fit for the iPad.

At last, the single-player Netrunner videogame I've been waiting for someone to make!

There was a kind of magic in the early Ratchet & Clank games, and then a competence in the later lesser games. The frenetic onscreen chaos of wacky cartoon monsters, smashed crates, imaginative gunplay, and a swarm of bouncing coins was a true joy as we all discovered it twenty years ago. These days, it’s all on offer in a hundred different games. But without the magic or at least the competence, it’s just a flurry of sloppy colors and shapes, a whirlwind of ineffectual nostalgia, absent any innovation, creativity, confidence, or finesse. It took many years, but now that it’s being used to prop up a piece of hardware, Ratchet & Clank finally feels like the soulless corporate property it’s become.

Painkiller's nutso violence meets Titanfall's nutso nimbleness meets Doom's nutso pacing, all in a grimfuture Warhammer world cobbled together by a nutso French studio.

Biomutant is what happens when someone makes an Ubisoft game, but without Ubisoft’s resources, experience, talent, or even willingness to take risks. With the exception of the art design, everything about Biomutant feels safe and familiar, but without the confidence or polish needed to make it effective. Safe, familiar, and hopelessly lost in the detritus-littered wasteland between design document and actual game.

A grand rogue's gallery stuck in a small world and a disappointingly familiar game design.

At last a racing game carefully and entirely built around drive well instead of just driving fast.

It might not have all the detail a gearhead expects, but that doesn’t mean it’s superficial. The cars might look like toys, but the driving model is no joke. It might not have a first-person view, or upgradable cars, or a career mode RPG, or demanding graphics, or product placement, or a shouting co-driver, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less of a rally racing game. Instead, it’s an adoring and adorable idyll about taking a relaxing drive through a lovely countryside, and doing it as fast as you can.

I’ve played a handful of card games I think about when I’m not playing. They’re good enough to roll around in my head even when I’m not at the table. Apocrypha, Netrunner, and Arkham Horror come to mind. But they’re all physical tabletop games, and none of them is the usual head-to-head card battle. Yet Mythgard, an online free-to-play game squarely in the tradition of the 1958 Richard Garfield classic that started it all, has found a place alongside them.