Paradise Killer (PlayStation 5)
Paradise Killer has the confidence to bet its entire hand on Paradise Killer. It’s an astonishing gamble that a player will indulge in a contained open-world that combines (1) a pocket dimension full of dead gods and mischievous demons, (2) class warfare pitting stolen members of humanity against conniving immortals, (3) picturesque vistas showcasing idyllic tranquility, (4) suspects with names l...[Read More]
Eric Layman’s Top Ten Games for 2021
Hi, these are ten of the best video games that released in 2021. All screenshots captured in-game. BOWSER’S FURY Nintendo EPD Open World Mario seemed like an idea too radical for Nintendo to take seriously. In three dimensional space, Mario has either been coupled to meticulously designed courses or, when allowed some level agency and exploration, confined to themed levels masquerading as larger ...[Read More]
Sable
An hour in, Sable presented as an aspirational synthesis of art and interactivity. I had just left home for the first time in the early hours of the morning. I was cruising through the desert on my hover bike, right as the sun was coming up and bathing every surface in a lavish spectrum of light and color. Japanese Breakfast’s Glider reached its peak, and before me was the wide open world of...[Read More]
Hades (PlayStation 5)
Supergiant Games thrives through character and action. Bastion’s ubiquitous narrator transformed a fierce hack-and-slash into a comforting storybook. Transistor split the difference between action and strategy and infused the product with a melancholic narrative (featuring a talking sword). Pyre was half visual novel and half NBA Jam, both parts of which benefited from the finest and only mu...[Read More]
DariusBurst Another Chronicle EX+
Taito’s Darius was founded on the belief that the aquatic life of the ocean abyss would be even more terrifying if it were mechanized and then taken to space. The player would control a modestly equipped spaceship and, with sufficient warning, obliterate scores of small, large, and extremely large successions of menacing biomechanical creatures. Darius Gaiden’s appearance on Saturn and...[Read More]
NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139…
Nier came out the month after Final Fantasy XIII. Fifty days after the holy emissary of Japanese role-playing games would finally rescue the Square-Enix from its awkward transition to the HD era and mark the path for the next generation. Final Fantasy XIII didn’t do that. Nier didn’t either, but its contempt for genre norms and defiance of expectations won over a niche audience and did the heavy l...[Read More]
Fatum Betula
Fatum Betula has all the markings of a game from the generation that birthed the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64. Low resolution textures are stretched across collections of severely limited polygons. Objectives are vague but not inscrutable. Turbulent geography is used to conceal hidden pathways and obscure fine detail. The menu and save systems are also archaic and cumbersome, although...[Read More]
Genesis Noir
Sometimes reality is too complex for visual perception. This is the first sentence of the preamble that opens Genesis Noir and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I finished the game. In bad faith, it could be read as an excuse to bury the player in aesthetic and expect them to subsist through spectacle. Charitably, it could be a deluge of incomprehensible or ambiguous...[Read More]
Persona 5 Strikers
Persona’s contemporary operation as a rigid series of turn-based role-playing games hasn’t prevented it from twisting and contorting its identity into the guise of disparate genres. Arc System Works combined sequels to Persona 3 and Persona 4 into pair of 2D fighting games. Atlus itself leveraged Etrian Odyssey’s labyrinthine dungeon descents into a couple of competent side stori...[Read More]
Haven
Haven showcases the story of Kay and Yu and all of the optimism, idealism, and interpersonal euphoria of a budding romantic partnership. The never-ending focus of their relationship seems to oppose Haven’s adjacent challenges, a rote but earnest assembly of securing provisions via exploration and defeating monsters through turn-based combat. Haven’s general organization and its emphasi...[Read More]
Eric Layman’s Top Ten Games for 2020
Hello. Here are the best videogames from 2020 MOON Love-de-Lic, Onion Games Moon’s commentary on the nature of its hero, expressed not only through its narrative but also its entire suite of mechanics, is its toolbox for deconstructing the template of the JRPG. Learning it’s a long-lost game from 1997, operating with the inescapable sentimentality and eccentricity of the modern indie scene, unders...[Read More]
Katamari Damacy REROLL
Sixteen years ago, the defiant will and blissed presentation of Katamari Damacy redrafted the thesis of an effective console game. In a fall outlined with generation-defining games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Halo 2, and Metal Gear Solid 3, Keita Takahashi’s absurdist opus snuck in at $20 and, in the intervening decade, slotted itself among the most respected and influential works of...[Read More]