All of Genshin Impact’s influences conspire to make the player feel very good, with or without microtransactions. Breath of the Waifu or a free, serotonin-packed RPG, Genshin Impact hits all the right buttons if you can get over the guilt. [Impressions]
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order looks and often feels like a generic Star Wars adventure, but Respawn elevates it nearly every step of the way. One doesn't necessarily expect a story about space wizards and evil empires to feel resonant, but this does, and it does so in a way that not many pieces of big-budget media do. Fallen Order is a game about confronting your past and fighting for the future when you don't know if that future is ever going to get better. That feels timely, and wrapped around that idea, the rest of the game just sings. If Fallen Order was connected to the Force, it would radiate power.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is certainly not for everyone. For a certain type of player, it will undoubtedly feel like the most difficult game From Software has ever produced. But it's also enthrallingly atmospheric, its combat and setting contributing to a palpable, engaging sense of mood. It's a game of powerful imagery, of swords crossed in the morning mist. The challenge of Sekiro exists to create that mood and to answer a design problem in From's earlier games. That's not the point, exactly. But to enjoy Sekiro, you have to accept it anyway.
If you or your kid loves to play open-ended games like Minecraft or create inspired Lego creations without instructions, the Variety Kit is a great way to go.
Magikarp Jump, as a result, takes what could be a mean joke about one of Pokémon Company’s sillier creations and turns it into a pleasant, engaging little game about companionship and raising a school of beautiful baby fish. When your first Magikarp reaches maturity, you gain experience as a trainer and can catch another Magikarp that grows even larger and jumpier. Let them swim around your pond, feed them, and train them with a variety of exercises to help them reach their full (albeit limited) potential. As with most mobile games, you can pay for bonuses that help your Magikarp grow up faster, but they’re unobtrusive and don’t break the game.
As a fighting game, it’s responsive, easy to learn with thick layers of complexity buried underneath. It’s a brilliant exercise in taking out your action figures and ramming them into each other until one of them breaks.
Prey doesn’t understand itself, and it obliviously gets in its own way. It’s ultimately too broad and too undefined to achieve its own grand ambitions. Instead of proudly stating its own identity, Prey feels adrift, the way I was during that one sublime moment in space. Unmoored of itself, it asks questions that are worth pondering but doesn’t have any answers. Absent of those rejoinders, it loses its own shape, getting stuck in patterns it can’t break out of, drifting further and further away from land until the credits roll.
If you’re willing to devote some of your leisure energy into Tumbleseed, I imagine you’ll be rewarded. But I can’t guarantee it. I might just be the world’s worst Tumbleseed player.
