Last year's instalment in the never-ending Call of Duty franchise, the Modern Warfare reboot, didn't really gel with me. As beautifully appointed as that game's multiplayer was, it seemed solely designed around seeking out head-glitches to shoot incoming traffic. All other playstyles, particularly rushing, felt not so much neutered but actively detrimental. While I'm not opposed to vanquishing unthinking invaders - as the above clip demonstrates - I prefer it when multiplayer stages aren't designed to cater specifically to that trepidatious style of interaction. I want to roam around the outside of the map, avoiding the meat-grinder middles to stage a series of base-pushes. Never quite enough so the safe areas flip, but certainly hoping to catch the newly spawned unaware. A few maps aside, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War caters to this seeking, hewing closer to the pre-jump pack era of the early Modern Warfare and Black Ops series.
A special mention too for Call of Duty: Warzone, the free-to-play battle royale with an elegant armour-up solution that kept Infinity Ward's latest firmly installed, even though the newer game jettisoned Blackout's brilliant weapon accessory gathering loop. Warzone's comparatively massive play area and juiced-up health settings also helped to butt Modern Warfare's weapon meta in a few interesting directions; while the seasonal game mode additions were often superb - particularly the Zombie Royale rules added for Halloween.
A few one-note redesigns aside, Bluepoint's biggest contribution to FromSoftware's Demon's Souls was technical stability. The 60Hz performance mode tightened the game's drum, lending character movement a darting, anchored, sense of weight rather than haphazard clash experienced on the game's ancient, bloomed-out PS3 version. This rock-solid refresh rate (only really dipping for this player when jostling ogres in fossil-filled spider tunnels) unifies the game's otherwise disparate aesthetics, delivering rolling encounters carried along by superb tank combat and load times that are practically nil. PS5 Demon's Souls is in many ways a dream game, a big budget pass for a series (and, in FromSoft, a game development studio) that excels in every other area but visual stability. For someone who collected a stack of White Dwarf magazines as a child, Bluepoint's authoritative remake is exactly the adventure I was after when tip-toeing through Fighting Fantasy game books like Ian Livingstone's Deathtrap Dungeon or Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson's Sword of the Samurai.
Demon's Tier+ curses players to wander pixelated ruins, seeking out keys and blasting incoming hordes. A twin-stick shooter with a roguelike underpinning, Demon's Tier+ welcomes adventurers into a series of procedurally generated dungeons, each requiring the completion of a basic task before you are forced to make a swift exit - completionism is proposed by a slowly unfolding map and treasures crammed into every nook-and-cranny but, dawdle too long, and an angel of death appears, drifting through walls and other obstacles to lay its invulnerable finger on you. Tier+ excels thanks to a 'one more go' difficulty tuning that recalls the great arcade coin gobblers. Opportunities for success, and failure, are innumerable and ever-changing, meaning there's always a reason to take yet another plunge.
An interactive foam rubber gameshow, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout sees dozens of networked players cramming themselves into a series of obstacle courses, hoping to escape an end of stage cull. Fall Guys has the faint whiff of social experiment about it, especially since each of the unfolding levels contains multiple chances for progress resetting calamity. Since it's not always wise to race ahead, contestants often bunch up, moving as one massive, cowardly, blob. Vulnerable parties are prodded - or outright pushed - forward, to test the cracking ice.
A stealth action game that massages players towards outright savagery, The Last of Us Part II - especially in its first-half and concluding chapter - delivers an experience less obviously regimented than its predecessor. Part II opens up its combat areas, trapping lead characters Ellie and Abby in expansive, multi-layered dungeons. Threat in this sequel feels more prolonged and less like you're disturbing an otherwise passive arena. In that sense Naughty Dog have successfully modelled enemy encounters much closer to the free-flowing multiplayer of the first game, tasking its audience to be quick-witted and reactive rather than simply dominant.
A twitchy twin-stick shooter with an extremely basic two colour aesthetic, Null Drifter begins easily enough with a shimmering ship nudging around a one-screen alien invasion. Eventually the trip-hop beats agitate, signalling a head-first plummet into a dithering screen-seizure. Demands on the player become constant, requiring much quicker thinking and reactions than I betray in the above vid. Panda Indie Studio's game reminds me of the ancient Apple Macintosh port of Asteroids, a black and white rock battler that popped up occasionally in the 80s end of my childhood but with a speed and feedback loop now fine-tuned for hyper fighting.
First time through Resident Evil 3 is a rolling disappointment, a truncated half-game that plays more like additional content for the recent Resident Evil 2 remake than a full-blooded bash at recreating 1999's Last Escape. Resident Evil 3 2020 improves tremendously on a New Game+ file, when expectations have been completely curtailed and the player is tackling the game as a series of closed loops - hunting keys and burning rubber with the in-game Shop in the back of their mind. The post-completion store offers a variety of new weapons and items that upset the finely tuned (but not necessarily super fun) survival horror balance. In truth this 3 is a piecemeal experience, encounters that barely track on an unsullied playthrough are able to shine when attacked in the singular; mercenary rushes disconnected from a half-baked narrative that only pollutes Capcom's dynamic third-person action model.
Initially wonderful simply because it breaths new life into a long-neglected (but no less beloved) Sega franchise, Lizardcube, Guard Crush Games and DotEmu's Streets of Rage 4 gradually reveals the chasmic depth working beneath the obviously stunning, hand-drawn, artwork. The game rewards a long-term commitment beyond simply thumping the colourful aggressors, building into a thesis-level appraisal of belt action gameplay mechanics. Rage 4's diverse enemy spawns can be directed, pummelled and rearranged into level-long strings with players physically positioning their rager in ways that ensure a straining combo continuity.
Get a couple of playthroughs under your belt and the game allows players to select classic, sprite-based, characters hailing from the three 16-bit Mega Drive instalments. During their initial reveal I, wrongly, assumed these late additions would be placeholder dumps, covering for this belated sequel's unfinished, not-quite-extended, cast. As it happens these unlock fighters are closer to museum pieces, lovingly transplanted relics with move-sets that both compliment and defy Streets of Rage 4's push-and-pull between jeopardy and empowerment. Rage 4 is an instant classic; gameplay as arcade academia that recalls Capcom's equally wonderful victory lap brawler, Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition.
It definitely helps that I have very little exposure to the Dragon Quest series or SNES classic Secret of Mana. It ensures that the idea of a game dressed up in Akira Toriyama's finest livery remains almost completely novel. With that in mind Trials of Mana is an interactive treat, a bright and colourful landscape full of wonderfully designed monsters to whack. Toriyama is an incredible talent, a genius level cartoonist with a genuinely magical touch when it comes to imbuing knockabout nonsense with a distinct sense of, not just character, but mischief. That's Trials of Mana, an extremely traditional sense of progression massaged with endless encounters with jerks straight off the pages of Toriyama's beautiful The World artbook.
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