10. ABZU (PS4, via Play at Home)
An absolutely beautiful underwater swimming game. There’s no danger in the game, it’s just a wonderful journey throughout some amazing underwater landscapes. It’s a very calm and chilling experience. There’s no speech, no text other than controls and the names of fish, but everything you do is intuitive. It’s not challenging or long, but it’s just an amazing spectacle from start to finish.
9. What Remains of Edith Finch? (Xbox Series S, via Game Pass)
A wonderful “walking simulator” type game. It presents a great mystery with multiple interpretations (but not massively open ended). I personally have my take on the story.
You’re exploring the wonderfully strange (but still somewhat realistic) Finch house, a family that preserves the bedrooms of the family members who die. Due to a curse, the Finch family suffer a lot of tragic deaths.
As you explore and find your way into each room (they’ve all been sealed shut by a paranoid family member), you learn the stories of each. Most of these are played out in short gameplay segments, with some unique styles and some creative ideas. The dialogue text showing up in the game world is something I love seeing in games.
8. Untitled Goose Game (Switch, Physical Copy)
A very fun game, especially in co-op. It’s quite short (although not as short as first appearances as there’s plenty of new tasks after the credits), but quite charming. Working out how to complete each task is fun and having two Geese opens up more opportunities (there’s no specific co-op stuff, though). Lovely art style and just really cute.
7. The Saboteur (Xbox 360, Physical Copy)
An open world city “crime and drive” game set in Paris during World War 2. It feels a lot like what a WW2 Assassin’s Creed game would be like. You play as a foul-mouthed Irish racing car driver who, after getting caught up in some Nazi scheeme, flees to Paris and ends up joining the Resistance. Your main tool is dynamite, which you set, run away and watch the chaos. You can also steal uniforms, scale buildings or use gunfire to cause distractions.
Some missions force you to play in a specific way, while others give you a bit more freedom. The main story is fun, but I do wish there were more side quests and activities. There are an immense amounts of Nazi equipment to blow up across the city (and surrounding areas) but it’s doing the same thing over and over.
One thing that is really nice is the black and white style (with a few choice colour highlights) that the game starts out with. As you spread hope, the colour comes back, and the contrast between grey/colour areas is really nice to see.
6. Sonic Mania (PS4, Digital Copy)
After creating ports of Sonic CD, Sonic 1 and 2 on Android, Christian Whitehead got a chance to work on a new Sonic game. While it looks very similar to the Mega Drive Sonic games, Sonic Mania doesn’t limit itself to what the Mega Drive can do, and lots of small improvements can be noticed such as extra frames of animation on rings and background objects. In a way, Sonic Mania feels like this could have been what Sonic on the Sega Saturn could have been if they didn’t feel the need to go the 3D route.
My biggest issue with Sonic Mania is that it tries to rely on nostalgia when it doesn’t need to. Sonic Mania has 12 main levels, but 8 of them are remixed versions of levels from 1, 2, CD, 3 & Knuckles – including the often revisited Green Hill Zone and Chemical Plant Zone. New levels include Studiopolis, Press Garden, Mirage Saloon and Titanic Monarch. All of these levels are brilliant, capturing the feel of classic Sonic levels while including their own twists on the formula. They all have a great style and brilliant music. I just wish the whole game could have been new levels.
Not that the remixed levels are bad. All of the Zones are two acts. The first act of each remxied level is exactly that: it feels like the original level, but different. Green Hill Zone Act 1 is pretty much the first two acts from the original combined,, while other levels have similar but different parts.
The second act of each returning zone, however, is essentially brand new, with new level gimmicks to focus on, some of them even look very different. These are all brilliant levels. Essentially, my main complaint with Sonic Mania is that I wish there was more: two separate games (one focusing on remix levels, one on new levels) would have been amazing to have.
5. Rain on your Parade (Xbox Series S, via Game Pass)
A game where you’re a cloud and want to ruin people’s fun by raining on them. I didn’t think a lot could be done with this concept, but the game really surprised me. Instead of trying to be a deep or difficult game, it just goes for pure fun.
Gameplay is relatively simple: move around and press A to rain on people. Other powers are unlocked throughout the game to change things up. Each level has some mandatory objectives, some optional ones and sometimes some hidden objectives. One thing that really surprised me is that there’s no time limit. You’re free to mess around until you decide to finish (for a few levels you have a limited amount of rain, but most have ways to refill).
The great thing about the game are all the wonderful scenarios that they’ve come up with, lots of fun silly ideas, with parodies of games and films, and filled with (mostly) great humour.
Rain On Your Parade is just pure fun, it has the spark that some might call “Nintendo magic” and is just a joy all the way through.
4. Outer Wilds (Xbox Series S, via Game Pass)
Absolutely phenomenal. I don’t want to say much about this because discovering everything for yourself is the jot of the game. There’s a wonderful puzzle you solve by figuring out what is happening piece by piece, using a mechanic from some of my favourite sci-fi show episodes. It’s a fascinating game that doesn’t tell you where to go, and different parts can be discovered in different orders, and some depend on you learning how the game works and trying different ideas.
3. Gravity Rush (PS4, Physical Copy)
A fantastic game all about falling with style. You can manipulate gravity for yourself in order to “fall” in any direction. The gyro assisted aiming helps massively with getting the right angle you need and pinpointing landing spots. The city in the game is lovingly made, and feels extremely unique with how up in the sky it is (it’s attached to a giant tree, but you never see the ground), while most people will just “fly” everywhere, I like trying to walk around sometimes and it’s quite surprising that the city is connected.
Most fighting will be against an enemy called the Nevi, black creatures with glowing orbs that you have to attack, they come in many shapes and forms with different attacks. Most attacking will be your homing kick, but it’s really satisfying to use. Gravity Rush is an extremely fun game.
2. Gravity Rush 2 (PS4, Physical Copy)
A sequel done wonderfully. Gravity Rush 2 doesn’t “depower” Kat (well, outside of a brief introduction) and she still feels very powerful. This adds new falling/fighting styles based on low and high gravity.
The world is even bigger, but not needlessly so, and is a lot of fun to explore. The simple city structure and the divide between the poor and rich elite is a great backdrop, and an excuse for some gravity action.
The game introduces new areas and story, before then entwining itself with the plot from Gravity Rush 1, so there’s a lot to do here.
1. Mass Effect Legendary Edition (PS4, Physical Copy)
The first Mass Effect was a wonderful experience. Absolutely love photo mode. I did encounter a few crashes and bugs, but for the vast majority it was all really smooth. Combat felt a lot more fun in this compared to the original. Also, bosses not spamming really annoying moves made me actually enjoy the encounters – one fight in the original had you constantly flopping on the floor with a really long animation while a later one constantly overloaded your weapons.
The lack of weapon limits on this also makes it not horrible to play as anything other than a soldier. You still can’t rank up weapon skills for all weapons, but being able to actually aim with a sniper rifle makes it actually usable. Some limits were really bad in the original (like vanguard has shotgun and pistol only).
It’s still the original game, just better to play and look at. This edition made me appreciate the first game so much more.
Mass Effect 2 and 3 are also as great as ever, but are mainly the same games with DLC included – although the N7 hoodie is added into Mass Effect 2.
