There is no gameplay incentive to push the number of enemies up and play this gloriously unfair exercise in managing swarms and randomness. When I can get past a level by playing the display settings instead of the actual game, 10tons hasn’t done their job. I love the game I thought Tesla vs Lovecraft was, but I don’t love how the graphics dictate the gameplay.

The first hour or so are intentionally insufferable. Some of the best horror takes its time establishing what’s normal, because it has to show you what it’s going to break. Without normal, you wouldn’t know what’s weird. Without real, you wouldn’t know what’s surreal. Without victims, you wouldn’t know what’s monstrous. Without the anime dating sim, you wouldn’t know Doki Doki Literature Club.

When it comes to free-to-play games from Russia about fishing, you could do a lot worse.

Suffice to say, A Hat in Time won’t waste your time. It has put you in the paint program for the same reason it does everything else: because whereas most games are content to occupy your time, A Hat in Time has something it wants to show you. Now get busy with the virtual crayons. It’ll be worth it.

Really, it feels like shovelware.

This is what pinball should be, but unlike most pinball tables that have to fit the subject matter to the gonzo mechanical gravity-powered contrivances of pinball, Adventure Land is already there. Who cares about Star Wars or Skyrim or Spider-Man when you have tables like this!

The problem is the way the game is balanced. Instead of being a cool rogueishlike clicker with interesting busywork and a coherent, connected storyline, it’s balanced like a level-based arcade game where you need to learn the tricks to beat a particular level, with the concomitant arcade mechanism of arbitrary punishment to make the highs more high.

Oh, and my sweet Lord, this game does wonders in the space battles department. You’ll fly around Star Destroyers and through Death Star debris, zipping between laser blasts and missiles. Eventually, just as in Galactic Assault, in Starfighter Assault games, you’ll spawn in hero ships like the Millenium Falcon and Slave I. Or that one green ship that looks like a bathtub turned upside down. Is it Bossk’s ship? Regardless, you can fly in it, if the cool ships are taken.

Many of its elements never quite come together, so there’s no payoff. The clumsy human stories, the botched difficulty curve, the dangling gameplay threads, the pointless decisions, the cool 3D printer scavenging economy, the coral, the hunters, the various survivors who need saving. If I never had fewer than a dozen mana potions, what did it matter whether I did the quest to put mana healing into the water supply?

Why not think of Assassin’s Creed: Origins as a lovely and chill sightseer sim? It only took about forty hours of game tax to get here, but you’ve earned it.

Thaumistry is exactly what you want if you’re an Infocom fanboy like me. It has that thoughtful, funny writing Infocom spoiled us with, dozens of just-hard-enough puzzles, a cast of characters with enough personality to be interesting, an over-the-top set-piece climax, and all the refinements you expect from a modern adventure game. You can’t break it and make it unwinnable. You can’t die, with one obvious exception, blatantly telegraphed several turns before it happens. But this isn’t posturing, hipstery “art house” interactive fiction — it’s a hardcore, puzzles-first design. The heart of a 1980s text adventure throbs beneath all the 21st-century niceties.

What a horrible thing to do to pinball to make it relevant, compelling, and gratifying.

Not quite beer n' pretzels. More like suds n' crumbs. With its hand out for more of your money.

Agents of Mayhem stands mightily on its own. This is not just an open-world Overwatch. This is not just Saints Row with superheroes. This is a masterpiece that’s been waiting for 30 years to bust out from the collection of talent at Volition. For a number of reasons, it demands a place among the best of the best.

Rapture: World Conquest demonstrates what every other game with a globe-shaped map has demonstrated for as long as they’ve been around. Namely, that a globe is never a good idea for a strategy game. Never. Information is a critical component in a strategy game, especially a real-time strategy game. But a globe hides exactly half the information at all times. That’s a misguided attempt at immersion at best, a dick move at worst.

It’s all very cheerful, friendly, cute. Fat pharaohs and stubby boars and hopping sarcophagi spitting out midget mummies and some sort of weird Cirque du Soleil gymnasts hanging from ceiling poles shooting fire and dog-headed archers and hordes of hopping toads. Dopey, but self-aware dopey. Polished. Slick. Smart. In other words, not what you’d expect from something with the word “redneck” in the title.

Hover isn’t just free-form faffing about. There’s a movement here and if you want to join it, well…I’ll let you discover that stuff. Even anarchists’ playgrounds can have structured activities.

What’s most remarkable about Stars in Shadow is that it holds it own among arguably better games like Endless Space 2, Galactic Civilizations III, Star Ruler 2, and Stellaris. Those games all embrace the epic sweep of science fiction with detail and breadth. They must do everything and they must do it epicly. After all, if it’s out in space, it has to be as vast and formidable as space itself. But Stars in Shadow, by contrast, knows how to do something too few games do. It knows how to focus.

Domina is so indolent that some might describe as a bad game. I don’t necessarily disagree. You might as well watch Spartacus on Starz. The graphics are probably better. The thrills of occasional action are probably more elaborate. But when it comes to RPing a lazy Roman noble who can barely be arsed to lift his arm high enough to give the wrist enough play for a dismissive flick, there’s nothing better than lolling around in the shade with Domina.

The fundamental fact about Desync is a paradox. Its difficulty level is an obstacle and a draw. When I’m playing Desync, it takes me about thirty minutes to decide “this is too hard, f.ck it”. And when I’m not playing Desync, it takes me about a week to decide “hmm, I should give Desync another try”.

Ponder the lushly informative and sexily Sumerian visuals as you bake bread and make beer for a cooing fertility goddess who peers in from above like someone’s mom asking who’s winning. It’s going to be close.

One of the smartest things about Age of Rivals is how strikes a balance among separate but interrelated systems for armies, economies, art, religion, espionage. I especially like how it handles military strategies. Armies are important, but they’re not dominant. Your opponent can go all-out aggressive on your ass, but you can still win a cultural victory. Try that in a 4X.

Dynasty Feud is a game that demands local friends, who must furthermore be willing to learn how to play a set of characters with unique abilities. But if you’ve got any such friends — Dynasty Feud will support four players at a time for maximal intricate insanity — this is the Starcraft of people running around punching each other.

The gameplay appeal of Caladrius Blaze is its variety and progression within each match.

It’s delivering a quick sharp jolt of gore, profanity, and arcade-induced dexterity. It will last maybe two minutes if you’re good. Three or even four if you’re really good or lucky. At which point it doesn’t even ask you if you want to restart. It knows you do. So it just does.

Danger Zone is good for a couple of fancy crashes, and not much else, before an uninstall. It’s like a mild hit-and-run where it was never really worth taking the other driver’s insurance information anyway.

The unfortunate fact of Horizon is that most of what it does well, other games have done better, and they did it with a compelling who and where. This is the game you play after you’ve finished The Witcher 3, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, and Far Cry: Primal. It is the greatest hits compilation of open-world games. Yeah, sure, you might want to own it, but the real connoisseur has the original albums.

A remarkable essay about history and game design. Also a damn fine game.