Andro Dunos II is a scrolling shooter steeped in the pastel aesthetic of SNES-era cartridges, less the crippling slowdown. Players are tasked with nudging a chubby yellow space craft around a series of futuristic backdrops on the way to meet the customary great big boss with a flashing weak point. Picorinne Soft's game doesn't set out to redefine its host genre but it is an immediately and consistently fun game. Controls are crisp and responsive, while the weapon system and in-game currency are centred around a suite of beam types instantly selectable during gameplay. One might fire at enemies creeping in on horizontals, while another blasts out of the ship's exhaust system, shredding the ships that are attempting to ambush from behind.
A throbbing twin-stick shooter, packed full of shrieking pinks and calming blues. Devastator is a locked-60, neon everything, update of ancient Atari cabs. Amber coloured virus vectors spill into the cramped, one-screen stages; their successive, escalating detonations tapping out a chorus of percussive pops. In their self-replicating midst are bolder coloured infections that chase down the player ship, crowding them until their think-fast reactions fail them. Radiangames' release is anything but tranquil, demanding players arc their craft in harried circles and issue split-second responses to their constantly evolving cage.
Open world games follow a very specific formula, one that sees massive sections of the map consigned to the semi-useless state of travel scenery. There might be the odd roaming beast or item-packed cave hidden away somewhere in the scrub but, for the most part, these spaces present like physically playable loading screens; inflicted on the user as a way to stall forward-momentum between a world's more detailed gameplay destinations. FromSoftware's Elden Ring succeeds a series of games designed around a (reasonably) linear in-world progression. Players may be able to travel against the currents, so to speak, when exploring but any serious intrusion into late-game realms is prevented by the sheer weakness of the player's under-levelled character.
So how do Hidetaka Miyazaki and his development teams approach their own open world game? While there are summits, scattered about the stained world map, that do offer the familiar experience of creeping through a dungeon-cum-barracks, for the most part Elden Ring provides players with a genuinely curious sense of exploration, one so multi-layered and rewarding that, in truth, the act of snooping around in this world is a closer experience to that of an archaeologist excavating a series of beautiful-but-fallen kingdoms. Elden Ring is actually kind of staggering in its ability to constantly, and meaningfully, reward the desire to ignore the obvious path forward. For the truly inquisitive, Elden Ring is a curated paradise of ever-expanding grottos and underworlds: bone dusted oubliettes conceal black chapels attended by praying secret bosses, while the death mask of a rotting, deposed, God lies calcified beneath a rioting castle. Elden Ring is an astonishing achievement, the kind of game that offers loops so purely captivating that it's struggle to work up much enthusiasm for anything else.
Deconstructive in terms of its character-driven intent, God of War: Ragnarök actually does an excellent job of describing to the player why Kratos was always bubbling with rage back in those PS2-era games. Tag along sidekicks and secondary characters will not leave you alone. They're constantly in your ear, immediately describing how to accomplish any task placed in-front of you. You know, the checkpoint push you're currently and conspicuously ignoring because the game is laid out with dark corners that conceal the game's stingy power-ups. Still, when combat is joined, at least you can order your chatty little pals to riddle your enemies with arrows.
The King of Fighters XV is the latest sequel to SNK's (used to be) annually released Street Fighter alternative, a series that I've slept on since the first few 2000s releases trickled out to the Dreamcast grey import scene. Although it very much does look like the game is happy to walk new and returning players through the more recent mechanical updates (in a dedicated training mode), I'm satisfied just navigating straight to Arcade mode, selecting the Garou team and letting Terry Bogard's burn knuckles do the talking.
A decade and a half since the first game, No More Heroes III entertains thanks to a structural model that is, similarly, completely out of time. Grasshopper Manufacture's sequel is a PS2-era open world adventure by way of a neutron bombing - there are things to do in Santa Destroy but they are blips and outposts in a vast expanse of rubble. When set against modern waypoint chasers, No More Heroes III is simplistic and gimmicky; constructed around a combat system that feels puny until several special actions have been unlocked. By the end of the game though, every input and action is being juggled and exploited. Battles are transformed from inching attrition into an interactive checklist of ways to sap or undermine the massive health bars in play. If that doesn't do it for you, end-of-stage cutscenes dispense with cataloguing your effect on this invaded world, preferring that the player sit opposite two de-tuned movie maniacs as they discuss the filmography of Takashi Miike instead.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, aside from being a fun and surprisingly detailed scrolling beat 'em up, prickles strange nostalgic affections for characters that have long since dropped off anyone's internal radar. I'm not talking about the Ninja Turtles themselves or their feature pals like Splinter, April or Casey Jones. Rather it's your Irmas or your Punk Frogs or even your Vernon fucking Fenwicks. Characters created specifically for the 1987 children's TV series that have enjoyed no purchase or presence on pretty much anything Turtle-flavoured that has followed. These spectres appear throughout Tribute Games' pixelated fairyland, instantly transporting unsuspecting credit depositors back several decades to their local video shops, browsing the shelves to see if they have any tapes to rent that don't revolve around those dreadful Pizza Monsters.
Remarkable in the sense that developers Witch Beam have taken an incredibly mundane (even frustrating) daily task, in this case de-cluttering, and managed to wring out an experience that is acutely heart-breaking. Yeah, Unpacking is little more than a series of screens and objects to organise, but the passage of time these scene shifts imply is alarming in terms of how quickly they are speeding through a young person's life. Box rooms in family homes give way to student accommodation then tentative steps towards co-habitation. Totems and trinkets stick around for a few successive levels then drift away, lost to the void invoked by regular transit. You feel like you're wishing someone's life away.
Even when played on a clapped-out old iOS phone, Vampire Survivors' merits are completely obvious. Players take control of a tiny collection of pixels, striding about a flat field while inundated with increasingly macabre enemies. Upgrades come thick and fast: sometimes crucial, equally as often they are useless. Before long the whole of playing area is alive and seething with bubbling necromantic threat; an entire fantasy bestiary tracking in on your kiting, vulnerable little figure. Luca Galante's self-published marvel is as compulsive as games get.
A vertical scrolling shooter built around the idea of a replenishing smart bomb. Typically, in games of this type, screen clearing power-ups are strictly rationed out, usually only available to players when they've just pumped another coin into the greedy housing cab. Z-Warp traps players inside the intestinal tract of some enormous cosmic beast, battling bosses named for gastro-oesophageal disorders and collecting spinning, toxic waste coloured skulls. The aforementioned explosive is on a timer, counting up as the player dodges distress; nervy deployments will inch out an immediate path through the onslaught but a fully charged detonation will clear a significant portion of the screen.
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