20. Sound Shapes (PS4, via PS Now)
A fun music based platformer. The game comes with a bunch of levels inside “albums” from artists like Beck, DeadmouFive and I Am Robot and Proud, with some great visuals to go with it. You play as a sticky ball who can travel up light coloured walls (but not darker ones), or can lose its stickiness and become a smooth ball that can travel faster. It’s simple mechanics, but utilised well and controls feel extremely tight. The levels are quite a spectacle.
There is a level creator, but unfortunately the sharing servers are no longer available, I would love to have seen what other people could have made with it.
19. Red Faction Guerilla (PS4, via PS Now)
The building destruction in this is still good fun. Everything else feels extremely standard. One big annoyance with weapons is that you have your sledgehammer, and three other slots. The Remote Bombs are pretty much a requirement, and you need a gun for dealing with goons, so there’s little room to have fun with other objects. I would have also preferred more missions focused on the destruction, there’s a lot of driving from A-to-B on the surface of Mars, which isn’t the most interesting thing.
Another big problem is that people around you will join your fight and help you. This makes destroying stuff harder, unless you ignore the “morale” (which just grants you extra scrap) and ignore them. They just really get in the way. One hilarious moment was one mission with a really stupidly long drive to pick up a squad, and they all jumped out the vehicle before I got to the destination anyway. Also, the main character is really dull.
18. Sonic Jump (Android, Digital Copy)
I was pleasantly surprised by this, it’s a nice mobile game – and a remake of a much older Java mobile game. Sonic automatically jumps up, and you have to reach the goal high up in the sky using tilt controls, which are actually very responsive. The levels are properly designed (although a random endless mode is also available), and utilise different kinds of platforms.
Some platforms will collapse after one jump, others won’t bounce you up (although you gain your double jump back – activated by tapping the screen – so it’s not instant death), some move, some spin, some fade out in a pattern. The game doesn’t tell you what these are the first time you encounter them, but they’re self explanatory.
Sonic Jump is a very solid mobile Sonic games, with some lovely backgrounds that remind me of Rayman Origins.
Sonic Jump has an item store, where you can spend rings (or real money). But these are essentially just cheats, and the game can be completed without any at all.
17. Call of the Sea
Another mystery game, this one with more focus on puzzles. Each area has puzzles to solve, with clues given via notes you can find. They did a good job making the puzzles feel like part of the environment rather than just being puzzles for the sake of puzzles.
The majority of the puzzles had “a-ha” moments and are quite good at using logic instead of just trying to guess (although you may start out by guessing, looking around more and finding something helpful). One puzzle was dreadful, though, a Simon-says that relies on very slightly different musical notes (I couldn’t tell two of them apart at all). It’s split into stages (one note, two notes, three notes, four notes, six notes) however for some unknown it resets the entire thing if you make a single mistake. It’s not a thoughtful puzzle in any way, brings the game to a halt and is an accessibility issue.
The story behind it is intriguing, although the main twist is pretty obvious long, long before the main character realises it. It’s a pretty interesting game with some puzzles that are fun to solve.
16. Rain (PS4, via PS Now)
Short but sweet. The idea is quite unique: you play as someone who is invisible, but can be seen out in the rain – the same is true with the enemies. You have no attacks, so you have to figure out how to get past (or run away) from the creatures you encounter. It has some interesting areas and some intriguing set pieces, it uses the fairly simple mechanics well in different ways.
15. Going Under (Xbox Series S, via Game Pass)
I’m not a fan of roguelikes or dungeon crawler games, but I ended up really enjoying this (admittedly with accessibility settings on as I’m awful at games like this). The style and humour makes it a very enjoyable experience.
It’s a future where not-Amazon practically rules the world, and are constantly buying startup companies. You join one of these start up companies and are sent to clean out monsters from other floors – only it turns out the monsters are other failed startup companies.
Each start-up company consists of four floors, three with random rooms and the final with a boss. You gather upgrades (you start off fresh each time), although after you use one enough you can select it as a permanent one (but only one selected at a time). Side quests can be done for other permanent bonuses (such as stealing a random item from a shop).
Pretty much everything is a weapon – the computers, keyboards, pencils, staplers, along with more traditional weapons like crossbows and swords. They all feel satisfying to use and the more mundane items (pencils, styluses) are comically oversized.
The dialogue is also a lot of fun, and even the style of the text boxes (bubbles from a phone messaging service) adds to the wonderful style of the game.
14. Marvel’s Avengers (PS4, via PS Now)
I was very surprised by this. I was expecting something similar to other “live service” games with little focus on story and more focus on levels that can be repeated, so to find out that there’s actually a lot of effort put into the single player elements was a surprise. The main story follows Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, which I think is an interesting choice (even if the publisher wasn’t brave enough to make her a focus on the box). The Avengers have disbanded due to an event with their helicarrier that killed many people, but AIM is experimenting and killing Inhumans (mutants but with alien DNA, powers are triggered through a crystal), so the story is about finding The Avengers in order to stop AIM and save the Inhumans.
The combat is quite satisfying, although Hulk in particular feels a bit weak (there’s no great way around that, though, and I suppose you just take it as he was knocked out and captured rather than killed), as while you’ll be mainly playing as Ms. Marvel, you play some missions as the other Avengers. The main single-player missions are great, while you do have to play a couple of the “online focused” levels. That said, they can be played with AI teammates just fine – and rest mode, pausing, photo mode and offline all work fine with these levels.
There are lots of costumes that are either locked behind payment (you can earn enough credits for 8 costumes), many through competing challenges and quests. Most of the difficult/paid ones are more unique and odd costumes, while the other ones are the “main” costumes, and personally I think the best ones.
13. Maneater (Xbox Series S, via Game Pass)
An open world Shark game. Gameplay is simple but quite good fun, and the documentary style narration helps to keep things entertaining. I had a lot of fun with Maneater.
Sadly, despite the unique differences due to being an underwater game (well, except for when you jump along beaches, across golf courses or over bridges munching on many, many humans), the structure of the game is a fairly generic “open world”: head to location, kill lots of things, repeat. I feel like it could have done with some exciting chase scenes – open world games still need some set piece missions. Maneater is entirely in the open world, you can swim away from any mission and continue it later.
One thing that the game does great (particularly at the start) is a sense of growth. You start off as a newborn bull shark and are quite small. The starting area has massive crocodiles which you have no hope against, so will have to flee. By the time you’re finished with the starting area, crocodiles are still a challenge, but one that can be overcome. When you visit the area later on, you can just see the crocodiles whole.
The mutations aspect, however, is not that well done. You have a very limited selection unless you do a colossal amount of grinding or spend ages looking for collectibles. There’s only a few different sets. There could have been a lot more variety and creativity here. The final “evolution” to mega shark also feels fairly underwhelming.
But overall, it was a fun experience and the crazy world they built for the game is rather entertaining, as it goes out of its way to explain that you’re eating elite rich people, that pollution is the cause for mutations and stuff like that, so you can feel good about eating all the nasty humans.
12. Halo Anniversary (Xbox Series S, via Game Pass)
I’ve only played 3, ODST and Reach before, so this is the first time playing the first one (Anniversary edition). I played it in the only way Halo should be played: splitscreen. It was a lot of fun, and I understand more why people like Cortana (in Halo 3 she’s just utterly annoying). Will be going through all of them (except Halo 5, which we can’t play together).
11. Good Job (Switch, Digital Copy)
While reading views about other co-op games, this one popped up. It’s a Switch exclusive and published by Nintendo, but I had never heard of it. While there’s not a massive amount of levels, the physical-based chaos is a joy to unleash, especially when playing with someone else. You’re the son of a large business owner and have to climb the ranks of the company. The first task is to move a projector into a meeting room. How you do it doesn’t matter, you can carefully open doors and manoeuvre it around, or create a slingshot with an electrical cable and launch it through the walls.
