Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is hard to explain. The best way to understand is to see it in action; a screenshot of Handsome Squidward and Bob Belcher falling in love over their shared appreciation of cannibalism makes it clear that, while it’s a life sim, the game is really a joke-generating machine. Living the […]
Over the last few years, Capcom has done an exceptional job of solidifying its lineup of big, long-running franchises. The likes of Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, and Street Fighter have all been on strong and consistent runs, an impressive thing given the current strain of uncertainty that runs through the games industry. And now the […]
There’s one very specific reason I keep a Wii U handy, and that’s so that I have an easy way to play the classic pinball game Devil’s Crush. Over the years, it has become a comfort game for me. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but there’s something about the combination of familiar pinball […]
The original Super Meat Boy is one of the best-known indie games of all time. Released in 2010, it’s a brutally difficult 2D platformer, but so fun to play: The short levels almost feel like speedrunning puzzles, and even though they’re filled with traps and buzzsaws, dying isn’t so bad because you revive nearly instantly. […]
The Legend of Zelda games are grand adventures, but they can also be very comforting, with quaint villages to explore and warm landscapes to take in. Under The Island takes that idea a step further. It still offers the sense of exploration and puzzle-solving that makes Zelda games so satisfying, but it also takes place […]
The best Super Mario games are ones I find myself coming back to again and again. I’m not sure I want to count how many copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World I own across various Nintendo platforms, but it’s worth it because of just how satisfying it is to replay those […]
The funny shape of eggs is the curious lifeblood of Oeuf, the new physics platformer by prolific developer Increpare Games. In a gaming landscape saturated with complex systems dropped into simple games, that grapples with metaphor within straightforward narratives, and that is desperate to bring cinematic sensibilities into gaming, Oeuf only asks that you briefly […]
There are a lot of games that try to emulate The Legend of Zelda, but few that manage to capture that spirit in such a small, concise package as Ratcheteer DX. The postapocalyptic game only takes a few hours to complete, but over that span it nails the classic Zelda vibe almost perfectly, offering a […]
Nintendo has a history of fleshing out the larger Pokémon world through spinoffs. What games from the Pokémon Snap and Detective Pikachu series lacked in terms of action, they made up for in the way they made pokémon feel like creatures with rich lives outside of their relationships with trainers. And as the mainline series […]
I’ve always wanted to go skydiving. Aerial_Knight’s DropShot, from indie developer Aerial_Knight, lets me live out that dream – at least in a safe, virtual kind of way. It also lets me shoot bullets from finger guns, wield laser skulls, and wear cool sunglasses while I’m falling through the air. So maybe it’s better than […]