Chime Sharp requires an incredible amount of planning and restraint. The basic objective is to cover 100% of the board with what the game calls “Quads”, which are simply rectangles of any size with at least three units on one end. What makes this objective challenging are the timer and the manner in which blocks fit together, or not, as it can often be. The clock can be managed through Quad formation and time bonuses, but the understanding of how each piece interacts with one another is a constant learning process, one that will separate mere success from real mastery.

The economy of block placement is an essential facet. Junk blocks are left behind when any non-perfect Quad is eliminated – a perfect Quad is a set Quad that has no extraneous pieces jutting out of the rectangle. These junk pieces may not seem like a big deal initially, since they can be subsequently eliminated, but it’s Chime’s signature element, and the primary source of stress in both Original and the brand new Sharp game modes.

“Sharp mode is where the title truly excels”As in the original Chime, junk blocks must be removed from the board in a timely manner to maintain your score multiplier. This is obviously important to score chasers, however the stakes are much higher in Sharp mode, which is where the title truly excels and differentiates itself from its predecessor. In Sharp mode there is no timer, period. Players are given 10 health points and one health point is removed for each and every junk block that isn’t removed from the board within the required number of phases. The wrinkle to this setup is the player’s ability to restore health via Perfect Quads.

“Sharp mode is simple, elegant, and instructional”Sharp mode is simple, elegant, and instructional. Without a timer players are given as much time as they need to consider block placement, at least initially, before junk pieces begin to infest the board. Stress begins to manifest itself as players spread further and further across the board, leaving isolated patches of junk blocks here and there. The junk pieces degrade over time, changing color to indicate the number of phases they can remain safely on the board. The balancing act of smart, economical brick placement, cleaning up junk blocks and expanding coverage is very stressful. Players must consider every move, and quickly, as their health continues to deplete and the board becomes increasingly cluttered, or, risk making moves that will eventually kill them.

Some of the stress of playing Chime Sharp is offset by the relaxing, subdued electronic music that backs each of the game’s 15 stages. The music provides context and ambiance, setting a mood rather than being a component of gameplay, unlike many other modern puzzle games. Each track may receive momentary punctuation when Quads are eliminated, but for the most part the soundtrack bleeds into the title’s audiovisual language.

Speaking of that language, Chime Sharp can be hard to process at first. Some of the mechanics aren’t explained all that well, such as Perfect Quads, which I mistakenly thought had to be squares, rather than junk-free rectangles. The other aspect is the graphics and how information is conveyed to the player, largely via colors, which are not consistent from one stage to the next. Each stage has its own color scheme, meaning the blocks, the grid and the covered board all look slightly different. On top of that, degrading blocks are all colored a different shade of the same color, meaning players must identify what each new level’s color scheme is telling them.

Chime Sharp is a challenging, thoughtful sequel to an immensely enjoyable, if overlooked puzzler. Many puzzle game sequels seem bloated with poorly thought out modes and features that don’t support the initial thesis of their experiences, but Sharp mode is the rare reimagined rule set that reinforces what the game did well in the first place; it’s just plenty stressful.

There’s been numerous videogame iterations of Games Workshop’s classic tabletop game Space Hulk, but none have managed to create an atmosphere quite like this latest version from Streum on studio. The essence of the game, essentially the hive firefight from Aliens but with walking tanks instead of Colonial Marines, has often played out relatively slowly (or even turn-based) but here it’s given the frantic -real-time pace of squad-based shooters like Left4Dead.

The nine mission long campaign revolves around exploring the titular hulks looking for lost relics, cleansing them of their alien infestations whilst performing arbitrary tasks such as overloading power networks and salvaging information from data points. As the squad’s leader, a powerful Librarian class Space Marine, you’re naturally obliged to issue on-the-fly orders to your team (consisting of a heavy weapons chap and a medic) with the most pressing request likely for you or your squad to be healed in the heat of battle. These orders are selected using a wheel-type menu and can be easily botched once the havoc erupts.

The apex of Deathwing’s gameplay is facing the innumerable hordes of Genestealers, trying to hold the line before the timer for some forgetful task has expired. This may appear to be a case of point and shoot, but the cruel addition of mid-fight gun-jamming will invariably turn the tide against you – a punishing mechanic lifted straight from the source material. Further to this, a melee based loadout will skip this issue but certainly has its own pitfalls.

True to the lore, the Genestealer enemies are ferocious foes. They move like you’d expect a multi-limbed biomechanoid killing machine to – leaping through the air and slashing from all angles, bursting from the shadows. It’s a shock the first time you seemingly put one down only to realise, all too late, that it’s merely switched to a ground-hugging crawl, ducking underneath your bolter blasts to pounce from underfoot. As you progress, your squad faces deadlier Genestealer strains, from the humanoid firearm wielding hybrids, to enhanced versions able to cloak themselves or use psychic attacks, to boss-like mammoths such as the lethal broodlord.

The AI suffers from standard problems such as friendlies stepping into your line of fire and becoming snagged on scenery, but you’re able to pass through them when necessary which either helps your gameplay or hinders the experience depending on your perspective. I mainly found the squad to be worthy allies, especially once an effective squad loadout is implemented.

Co-op multiplayer is a slightly different and more engaging affair, with a four-man squad going over the campaign’s missions with new loadout options compared to the single player campaign’s Librarian, and variety offered by the player taking on different roles such as medic or heavy weapon support. This also leads to a natural inclination toward the higher difficulties – which is how Deathwing is best experienced.

The hulks’ Gothic architecture, imposing statues and mechanical apparatus present you with both confined and open spaces over which to do battle – they feel suitably ancient and haunted. The art direction and sound design combine to create an eerie and overbearing atmosphere that, when experienced properly (headphones in the dark), offers an immersive experience indeed. With regards to stability, it’s worth mentioning that Streum On Studio has been duly patching reported bugs as fast as possible, with stability increasing steadily since the initial release.

Besides the action and some exploration, Deathwing offers plenty for those with a deep knowledge of the 40k universe, from references to the Dark Angel Space Marine chapter’s history, the attention to detail in the arsenal to the many mutations (biomorphs) present in the Genestealer foes. As someone who’s grown up with more than a passing interest in 40k, most of the dialogue and events made sense to me, but I imagine the terminology and background being rather baffling to players coming in fresh. It’s therefore likely that only longtime fans will get the most out of Deathwing – and hopefully improved stability and future content will ensure they stick around.

The story of Severed is simple: the protagonist, Sasha, must track down her brother, mother and father. We don’t know what’s happened to them or why, just that they’ve been taken to three corners of Severed‘s nightmarish world. A few NPCs will lend some context and flavor to Sasha’s journey, but, the story and world are largely open to interpretation.

“Sasha’s determination is conveyed through great character design”Sasha is both memorable and relatable. Her motives are clear and her task unenviable, but the determination she has to reunite her family is conveyed through great character design. We spend the entire game looking through Sasha’s eyes, catching glimpses of her in mirrors and on the skills’ screen. Initially all we see is a battered, one-armed girl. Later, we see a woman who’ll stop at nothing to see her family together once again: the arc is as much the player’s as it is Sasha’s.

Severed‘s harsh world is backed up by challenging touch-based combat. Sword swipes and magic are triggered via stylus swipes and taps on the 3DS’ touchscreen. Each unique enemy has its own routines and weak points that players must learn to exploit. Generally combat is limited to a maximum of four enemies per encounter, placing one in each of the four cardinal directions. The duality of the setup is clever, as it causes the stress of being surrounded, yet also affords the affinity of one-on-one dueling.

“Severed asks its players to play with their food before eating”The defining aspects of combat are the ‘Focus’ meter and the titular “severed” mechanic. Consecutive successful slashes against a single foe without being blocked builds focus. Once the meter is maxed out, each enemy can be dismembered after their health is depleted. The amputated parts can then be collected and used to strengthen Sasha’s various skills, but the interesting part of building focus is that Severed asks its players to play with their food before eating.

Most enemies can be dispatched of in a matter of seconds. However, killing Severed‘s monsters in the most efficient manner often yields too little focus to fill the meter. What ensues is an elegant implementation of risk versus reward, deciding to kill enemies quickly and thus be safer, or to prioritize enemies, deal damage and continue to build focus without delivering killing blows. The result is a mechanic that encourages thoughtful combat throughout, while spontaneously allowing players to dictate how difficult they want the current encounter to be.

Severed is at its weakest when that agency is stripped from the player. There are three ways that the game undermines its delicate, rewarding systems. First, there are a few isolated difficulty spikes, which ruin the otherwise great balance of combat and exploration. Second is the game’s allocation of body parts at the endgame. Immediately before the final boss there’s a room that will continually spawn enemies and vases (Severed‘s requisite destructable container), which somewhat weakens the idea that smart play is the only path to maxed-out skill trees. The third, and ultimately the one that bothered me the most, is a hidden item that gives you max focus at all times. Admittedly, this object is well-hidden and most players will likely miss it, but it causes combat to be a lot more mindless, as the primary goal (to attain focus) has already been achieved.

Balance issues aside, Severed is undoubtedly DrinkBox’s finest work to date. It’s an excellent title that beautifully illustrates the developers’ willingness to grow and experiment as game makers. Both stark and somber, Sasha’s story provides a striking juxtaposition to the studio’s previous work. It is an essential 3DS offering.

Stoic, as a noun, refers to “a person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining” and there’s no better word to describe the long-suffered hardships inhabitants face in the bleak feudal world of The Banner Saga. The game opens and we’re introduced to the frozen hellscape of divided kingdoms they occupy. Their gods are dead. The sun has stopped moving in the sky, the land bathed in pale, perpetual daylight. Marauders raid the countryside villages and war seems imminent as the Dredge, the eternal enemies of the varl and humans, begin to march.

The varl, a race of horned giants, are fading from the world and the humans are fractured and divided when players take the role of Rook. Along with his daughter, Alette, and a varl named Iver, Rook decides to flee to the human capital when his home is swarmed by Dredge. Most of Rook’s fellow villagers have the same idea and he suddenly finds himself reluctantly leading a vast caravan across the frigid landscape. Rook’s carts, fighters and clansmen march across the screen automatically, giving players time to appreciate the beautiful hand-drawn landscapes the clan moves through.

You have little agency over the movement of your caravan save for choosing when to rest. Instead, most of your time during the side-scrolling travel segments is spent making decisions. Sometimes, the decisions you’re forced to make are light, like solving personal dramas among your clansmen. Other times, the decisions are more serious. You’ll encounter other refugees along the way – do you rob them and use their supplies to feed the people you have, or do you bring them aboard, knowing that you’re now responsible for them?

If you let the refugees in, how will you respond if you catch one betraying you? Will you be merciful, or will you set an example for others? The decisions you choose shape the story you’re told along the way. Almost every choice has a consequence, and the game does a good job of subverting your expectations with enough twists to get you to think seriously about almost any decision you make. My Rook was a generous hero who took everyone in, even though I was burned on more than one occasion, but the game is flexible enough to be played ruthlessly and everywhere in between.

You’ll also be doing a lot of Dredge killing over the course of the game. The Dredge are relentless and stalk the player throughout. Fights are fought through a turn-based, tactical battle system. Players choose 6 heroes from an overall roster of about 24 potential companions you can encounter and recruit along the journey and strategically position them on the battlefield. Each hero has a particular ability that makes them useful, and balancing abilities is necessary to be successful.

Enemies have two stats the player has to be primarily concerned with: strength and armor. Hero characters have their own strength and armor stats, too, and how much damage they can inflict on a foe depends on how they compare. Strength determines how hard you can hit, armor determines how much of the hit you can block (a simple “strength – armor = damage inflicted” equation). You can either attack an enemy’s armor or attack their strength, forcing you to decide if it’s better to line them up to take increased damage next turn by attacking their armor or to reduce their strength so the next blow they inflict on your team isn’t so painful.

It usually isn’t too difficult to choose a strategy and I found myself defaulting to armor first, strength second. The simplified combat system probably won’t throw genre fans too many challenges or curveballs, but it gets the job done. Perhaps most intriguing about it is that your decisions – either those relating to caravan management or the ones that you make on the battlefield – stick. There are no quick saves to bail you out. If you botch a battle and injure several of your heroes, they won’t be back to full strength for a few days, forcing you to either rest and consume supplies until they’re healed or risk encountering the Dredge with a weak team.

All that said, this isn’t a game about a clan or the end of the world or fights with the Dredge. It’s about a handful of flawed people trying to survive and hold out hope in an increasingly inhospitable world. I felt so connected with many of the characters in the game, but in particular, the story of Rook and his daughter, Alette, resonated with me. Rook is a protective father, but Alette is also strong and capable, and he doesn’t presume to stand in her way. The bond they form over their adventure and the experience they share is memorable and poignant and had me in tears by the end of the game.

But as much as I appreciated the depth of this relationship, there are too many characters, and some plot points that were expected to be impactful were lessened because I didn’t exactly remember who the character even was. While you won’t necessarily meet every hero over the course of the game and explore their full stories, you’ll encounter enough of them that a few will get lost in the shuffle. Fortunately, the game is good enough to recommend for a second playthrough, which will give you an opportunity to explore the ancillary characters further.

If you do play through it a second time, you’ll likely notice some of The Banner Saga’s opportunity areas. I was surprised to see that terrain played no role in the combat system – I would have liked to see elevation come into play to add some additional depth and strategy. Hills that gives archers a bit of an advantage could have added points of contestation and encourage more unit movement. And though there are a lot of characters, combat-wise they’re not very distinct beyond their unique abilities. The bulk of them serve pretty similar combat roles and team composition will look pretty similar regardless of your choices. And maybe I’m getting old, but the font in the game was a little small and tough to read at times.

These are small complaints, though. The ten hours of my first playthrough of The Banner Saga were some of my favorite spent with games this year. Every day I rushed home to play more of it and have thoroughly recommended it to almost all my friends (all one of them). Let’s put it another way: I haven’t felt the urge to actually sit down and write a review in four years, and I thought this game was worth taking the time to tell you about. So go play The Banner Saga. With an expansive storyline, some memorable characters and beautiful hand-drawn graphics, this is a unique experience that you don’t want to miss out on.

Each level in Overcooked is composed of a grid-based board that features a number of important stations. Each station serves an essential purpose, ranging from ingredient cupboards to cutting boards to stove tops to dish washing sinks and so on. When a level begins each of these stations needs to be identified, and then a route (hopefully an efficient one) is planned. Initially, kitchens are designed in a simplistic, even logical manner, allowing the chain of ingredient, prep, cook, plate, deliver to be completed easily. As the campaign wears on, each and every kitchen becomes increasingly complex and often deadly.

Overcooked keeps players on their toes with a wide variety of environments, hazards and other inconveniences. Kitchens range from truly inexplicable (moving trucks on a highway!), to downright dangerous (open magma pit), and all the way to the merely mundane and gross (serious rat infestation). Each kitchen requires players to reexamine their approach. If the rats continually steal food, maybe it’s unwise to leave food unattended; if the kitchen is surrounded by deadly lava, maybe a no running policy is needed; if the kitchen is divided into three and each section is traveling 60mph independently, well, maybe throwing food on the floor of an adjacent semi is a necessary step to ensure that food is where it needs to be when it needs to be there – you’ll see what I mean.

“Overcooked’s level design necessitates coordination”The beauty of Overcooked is how the level design necessitates coordination. Players must work together if they want to succeed. It’s interesting to watch groups of friends play together, seeing how certain players gravitate toward certain tasks. I left calling out orders to my friends because I don’t generally like to speak in groups – also, I tend to mumble. But I was happy to wash dishes and line clean plates with buns for burgers, or tortillas for burritos. Some players work best with a dedicated role and others work best when they’re left to identify the tasks that need immediate doing, like pulling burning pots off stoves seconds before the kitchen catches on fire.

Although Overcooked has an actual story, involving the handsome (and dare I say regal) Onion King, it’s the kind of game that generates stories on the fly. There’s the time your friend dropped off the last order with seconds to spare or the time you accidentally put the fire extinguisher on a conveyer belt to clear counter space, only to watch half your kitchen ignited. It’s the moments like these that make Overcooked all the more memorable.

“Without friends Overcooked is an interesting, yet unsatisfying exercise”Without friends, specifically local ones, Overcooked is an interesting, albeit not exactly satisfying, exercise. A single player can choose to control two chefs simultaneously via one chef per one side of the controller (think Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons) or via a more traditional chef swapping setup. For true masochists there is an undeniable allure to the split controller arrangement, as it requires a ridiculous amount of patience and hand-eye coordination. However, for most players, both layouts fail to show Overcooked at its best, and that’s fine, because singleplayer isn’t what it was made for.

Overcooked was made for friends and, maybe even potential enemies. It is multiplayer gaming done just right. Ghost Town Games’ debut exhibits refreshing confidence in their design. Local multiplayer hasn’t tasted this good in a long time: grab a partner, or three, and get cooking.

Staying true to its tabletop heritage, Mordheim is a city in the Warhammer universe that’s plunged into chaos after being struck by a twin-tailed comet. This corruption is manifest in congealed flesh fused to decaying townhouses, toxic miasmas hidden in compact streets and singular eyeballs glaring from the shadows. It’s into this fraught locale you must venture and either assert dominace or perish.

After selecting a faction, you start with enough gold to recruit a fledgling warband and purchase some supplies. Initially comprised of a leader, champion and henchmen – the warband’s ranks can be bolstered if you survive, progress and gain XP. Unless you’re familiar with the Games Workshop generic unit stats, the range of information pertaining to your customisable units can be overwhelming (menu navigation on the controller is also taxing) – but their functions are gradually revealed like layers of a noteworthy onion.

Besides online skirmishes against fellow players, you’ve access to campaign missions that are either generic or story based. The generics are outlined with a basic scenario (one warband is split up whilst the other isn’t etc.), difficulty and the quality of the map’s loots – allowing a glimpse into what lies ahead.

Real variation is unfortunately minimal. In 20+ hours grinding against the AI, the missions largely played out identically – after the briefest window for scavenging Wrydstone whilst trying to avoid the city’s traps (see fused flesh and miasmas), the warbands fought until enough units were put out of action to force one side to take a ‘route’ test, determining whether they’d the mental fortitude to fight on or scamper away into the shadows. Given the limited number of combatants, implementing a cautious strategy is key.

The action-point based turns allows your warband to move around the map and partake in offensive or defensive manoeuvres such as charging opponents or lying in wait for an ambush. Once two or more units are engaged in combat, stats are factored in and virtual dice are thrown to determine if blows are landed, parried or dodged. Lines of sight matter but don’t seem too accurate – I had characters hit by arrows whilst under cover and enemies able to preternaturally sense my units’ whereabouts. Units can become easily obstructed by the terrain, sometimes completely blocking off sections of the map in the process.

Herein lies an effective tactic – surround an opponent whilst they’re cut off from help and they’re imperilled. Despite early tactical play determining who engages first – once the clanging of steel breaks out, the combat favours the side who can overwhelm the other with greater numbers. And on that previous note, the sound design is outstanding; a cinematic score underpins the onscreen action and the thud of a mace swung into an embattled unit provides a pleasing sonic boom.

Post-mission, you assess damage incurred, spend XP on unit upgrades and determine the value of your spoils. Any of your warband who were put out of action or took excessive harm may make a full recovery, suffer an injury or three, or die outright. It’s at this point that you may realise you’ve become somewhat attached to your brigands, and the brief moment before their fate is deciced can be intense. Injuries may take a unit out of play for days or result in effects such as stat-diminishment and XP loss. Some injuries can be healed at a cost of gold/time but others may force you into ending the unit’s employ or simply leaving their wounds untreated, hoping they expire as punishment for their combative cretinitude.

Your warband requires payment after every mission, and whilst meagre coinage can be looted – the lion’s share comes from fulfilling Wrydstone shipment requests sent by your faraway superiors and allies. Requests of high import require a specific weight of Wrydstones and come in around once a fortnight, with unfulfilled requests meaning the end of your exploits.

Early wins are crucial to progress as losses can be irrecoverably crippling. As such, after a few false starts, I had a string of successes and, with an upgraded and expanded warband, attempted the Skaven story mission. Midgame, the inventory system became troublesome; I couldn’t swap out or even drop an unrequired item for one vital to the mission. I looked this up and found others had similar experiences whilst the game was in early access in 2015. The developers had chimed in with a workaround but, as this hasn’t been resolved at the time of writing, one must assume the user interface won’t allow this basic action to take place. In a slightly more legitimate level of difficulty, the mission requires you assassinate an enemy special unit whilst preserving the life of your own special unit. Your special is the only one who can put a dent in theirs, but theirs can kill yours in a single turn.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Mordheim’s deep systems and intricacies – most of which are only grasped and appreciated over hours of slog. Rogue Factor has achieved a feat in adapting the cult tabletop experience into a videogame, but its grinding gameplay and functionality can make it feel like a work in progress.

Rive is a hybrid concept, a twin-stick shooter/sidescrolling platformer that demands everything. Players without split-second timing, immaculate object recognition and instantaneous reflexes will get nowhere on Rive‘s default difficulty, hard – seriously, ‘Hard Mode’ is the only option to play the game from the get go, though a ‘Soft Mode’ is offered after numerous back-to-back deaths during any single sequence. However, even with the requisite skills, players should expect to die repeatedly, splitting their time between modest moments of success (read: relief) and soul crushing frustration.

What makes Rive so challenging is its fusion of genres. A hallmark of the twin-stick shooting genre is arena combat. Rive takes this concept and pushes it well beyond the extreme, using anti-gravity, moving platforms and underwater arenas to exhausting effect. In a standard twin-stick shooter your avatar is locked into a top-down view, where movement in any direction is definitive. In Rive you control a traditional sidescrolling avatar, meaning you can jump, and thus, fall back to earth after that jump. This seemingly minor detail makes Rive wildly different than other genre offerings.

In addition to standard platforming, Rive introduces arena after arena of preposterous platforming objectives. For example, there’s a sequence in the game where half of the arena is filled with water and the other half is open air. The Spidertank players control can swim underwater, however it cannot fire while submerged. The player must leap into the air to actually fire upon the legions of heat-seeking drones (standard enemy type) and large wall-mounted enemies that serve as the gatekeepers for the current area. If all that isn’t enough, there’s also a vertical field of lasers that moves horizontally above the water, from end-to-end, while an enormous buzz-saw does the same underwater, at a slightly different rate; both of these devices are essentially instant deaths. The player must swim back and forth underneath the laser array, yet in front of the buzz-saw, simultaneously leaping out of the water to avoid the buzz-saw when it catches up and fire on the drones and gatekeepers.

Fortunately, Rive is not explicitly a one hit death kind of shoot ’em up, thanks to a sizable health meter. However, given the way a single hit will often lead to countless others, it often doesn’t feel that way. Nearly every enemy, projectile and environmental hazard in the game exerts force on the Spidertank, in addition to damage. What this effectively means is anything, and everything, will push players into other hazards, creating a rage-inducing pinball effect of carnage. Near victories are routinely ruined by a rogue missile or drone that approaches from the opposite side of the Spidertank’s main cannon fire, leading to quick, unforeseen deaths.

When Rive is working it provides the sort of “ballet of destruction” it bills itself as. To see someone else play the game effectively is a work of art, as they must duck, dodge and weave their way through the onslaught of increasingly complex and sadistic arenas/platforming sequences. Health, hacked robots and secondary ammo must be managed, crucial enemies must be eliminated and the next wrinkle must be anticipated. But even when players are running on all cylinders, death is inevitable, which leads to Rive‘s generous but broken checkpoint system.

Borrowing a page from Super Meat Boy’s playbook, Rive respawns players almost instantaneously upon death. This mechanic is essential to keep players invested in smashing their head through the brick wall that Two Tribes has erected in front of them, however, there’s a fundamental, infuriating flaw in the system. It’s not uncommon for checkpoints to be registered at inopportune moments, like right before an enemy clips the Spidertank, meaning each and every subsequent restart from that point will incur the same damage, unless the player can quicly escape at first opportunity. This quirk is especially egregious since Rive doesn’t refill the Spidertank’s health gauge much on death and your only other alternative is restart the entire mission, potentially wasting tens of minutes.

Rive has many issues, although it seems some of them are intentional. Its blend of disparate genres is at times exhilarating, and at most others, truly maddening. Players looking to walk that tightrope will find a game that pushes their skills to the very limit. For many others, the relief of simply quitting Rive altogether may be just as satisfying as surviving its next convoluted death trap; choose accordingly.

Following on the heels of the very-similar-yet-less-successful Hitman Go, Square Enix Montreal has taken the bare essentials of Tomb Raider and erected an imaginative turn-based framework for Lara’s micro adventure. Each level is laid out as a grid where players swipe in the direction they’d like Lara to travel. Once Lara has moved one space the rest of the characters and contraptions on the board move one space in response, based on their own predetermined paths or routines – behaviors you’ll quickly need to adapt to.

The best bits of Lara Croft Go are the beginnings of new areas where new enemies or mechanics are introduced. There is essentially no tutorial in the game: you descend into the initial tomb after a pretty basic, elegant cinematic sequence and the game leaves you to it. As you direct Lara from space to space there is a remarkably organic way that mechanics reveal themselves to you. You’ll learn the hard way that stepping one space in front of a tarantula is an immediate death, but you’ll also see how a cracked tile you just left now looks like it’s about to cave in. These are obvious clues in hindsight, however Lara Croft Go has a knack for making you feel clever throughout. Solutions unravel before you in a natural manner, just as long as you make informed decisions about your next move. Although these solutions are predetermined you still feel like an archaeological badass.

The only major issue with Square Enix’s work is the few times when it becomes obvious just how little wiggle room Lara Croft Go‘s puzzles afford you. When puzzles are solved in a few attempts with minimal trial and error it’s easy to overlook how calculated each stage is. The problem is when a solution isn’t initially clear it’s very easy to just slide Lara back and forth from two adjacent tiles just to see how the world around you reacts, hoping to see the exact sequence of moves it’ll take to progress. This is the unfortunate side effect of Lara Croft Go‘s immaculate presentation. If you don’t see the correct path the illusion of choice breaks.

The level design, both in terms of puzzles and actual scenery, is gorgeous. Square Enix Montreal have clearly studied up on the early titles in Core Design’s venerable franchise and found interesting ways to incorporate the majestic scenery of Tomb Raider’s past in a stark, isometric portrayal. Dark shadows are used as highly effective foreground framing devices, creating a wonderful impression of depth and centering the player on Lara and the immediate dangers that surround her. Familiar cultures and locales are mined for new adventures, creating a series of stages that feel as fresh as ever due to their portrayal, despite being steeped in nostalgia.

Lara Croft Go is a thoroughly successful reimagining of Tomb Raider for mobile devices. It is an experience that is imperfect, resulting from its inflexible puzzle design, but it’s that same design’s execution that mostly hides those imperfections (except in the post-campaign tomb). For what it is and what it sets out to do, Lara Croft Go is easily the most fun I’ve had with the IP since Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which itself was an excellent reappropriation of Tomb Raider’s unique qualities. So, I guess, here’s a vote for more non-traditional Tomb Raider games in the British spelunker’s future.

Surely most players will have already gone through the first season and have a solid idea of who Clem is and formed an attachment to the character, making the transition to her as protagonist a smooth one. Anyone crazy enough not to have played the first, or otherwise missing a save file, can start up a game with randomized choices selected to fill in the gaps. It may be obvious to point out, but this isn’t the ideal way to experience the story.

All That Remains has many aspects that should be familiar to players and fans of the series: bickering among group members on what should be done, distrust, scavenging and, of course, navigating around flesh-hungry walkers. Despite following a similar pattern, events manage to feel new through Clementine’s eyes. She is a curious mix of vulnerable and competent, a character learning to become more adept in the ways of survival in a world gone mad, but ultimately dependent on the adult characters (both good and bad) around her.

There’s a new group of survivors that make themselves hard to trust, especially during the tense, initial encounter. In season one, the surrounding cast had traits that, even if they were unlikable, gave them a reason to be emphasized with. In this opening episode the group doesn’t have those identifiably human traits and veer off well in the direction of totally unlikable human beings.

Maybe it’s an unfair comparison to make, but the lack of any immediate, tangible connection between the characters like Lee and Clementine makes it hard to care about the interactions taking place or the curiosity to see where the relationships will go in the following episodes. Without spoiling too much, during the episode’s finale—in which players are expected to make a choice of who lives and who’s walker chow—it was a clear-cut case of choosing the likable person over someone that was painfully obnoxious and distrusting of Clementine.

Episodes from the previous season went out of their way to make it feel like an agonizing choice that would leave the player with a sense of loss regardless of what they decided. Here, the choices feel a bit rote, and there’s one in particular that had me crying foul and seriously questioning the believability of what had just happened. It involved a dog, and it feels like an emotional cheap shot in a series known for some memorable, truly gut-wrenching drama. Granted, some of that feels necessary as the premise for this season is navigating a child through a world of constant danger; other times it feels like Clementine is put in harm’s way just for the sake of it.

As the first episode of a new season, All That Remains gets some slack and there are moments where the writing and characters click, but the unevenness is hard to ignore—especially when looking back at A New Day and how it stood tall on its own. Here, it’s strictly a set-up for the next batch of episodes with too little payoff.

So what exactly is Penguin Kun Wars? I’m sad to say that it is not zero-g animal dodgeball. Gravity is definitely involved. Also, though the game features animals throwing balls, the goal is not to hit the opponent, but, rather, to get ten balls to the other side of the playing field (and by playing field, I mean oddly oversized ping pong table). Both combatants  start with five balls evenly spaced out across their end of the table. After the match bell sounds, they have 60 seconds to furiously toss balls to the other side. The first to win two out of three rounds takes the game.

It sounds simple, and it is, but there are some subtleties to consider. First, the balls can collide with each other and bounce about wildly, which makes them hard to dodge. Avoiding these balls as they come across the table is critical, as being struck by one puts you out of commision for a few seconds – precious time that your opponent has to send more balls your way. Additionally, in the waning moments of a match, a flashing boomerang-like object appears and moves back and forth across the table, causing even more crazy bounces and occasionally sending balls right back in your face. The hectic flurry of ricocheting balls can get intense in the final seconds, which adds to the fun and fuels the desire to play just one more game.

Playing against a friend is the best way to enjoy Penguin Kun Wars, but doing so is hampered by an odd design choice. You are forced to play in a sixteen combatant tournament set-up, no matter how many human players are partaking. If you select two players, the game always puts you at the opposite sides of the tournament bracket, so the only way to face each other is by beating all CPU-controlled opponents and then meeting in the finals. Thankfully, you may select up to eight human controlled players, which means you only have to play through the first round against the CPU before moving on to player-vs-player matches for the rest of the event. The fact that you are forced to adhere to this tournament set-up is the main black mark against the game, and it’s a big one.

Another minor issue is the lack of, well, any character selection options for the player. When playing against the CPU, you will face off against a cat, panda, koala and beaver, but players will always be in control of the titular Penguin Kun (this was remedied in the Game Boy iteration and MSX sequel). Stage selection is also limited, consisting of only a standard stadium setting (think Wimbledon with fuzzy spectators) and an arena set in the middle of a green valley, surrounded by mountains. Thankfully, these environments, as well as the furry (and feathered) combatants, are all cleanly animated, colorful and generally easy on the eyes.

Penguin Kun Wars is a tough game for me to assess. On one hand, I have unbridled affection for its quirky premise, cute characters and entertaining multiplayer hijinks, due to having played the game copiously during my youth. On the other hand, it features a few glaring design flaws that hinder enjoyment at a very fundamental level – failings that I recognized, even back in the mid-eighties. If you are looking for a unique 8-bit multiplayer experience, you could do a lot worse than Penguin Kun Wars; just be prepared to deal with the foibles related to its tournament only restriction. Retro enthusiasts looking to complete their Famicom collections will be glad to know that the game is neither rare or in high demand, so copies can usually be found for five dollars or less.