Destructoid

Dungeon Encounters is one of the best games I’ve played this year. I get that may be kind of hard to believe given its stripped-down presentation. After all, this isn’t exactly the type of game we expect to come from Square Enix, a developer that is no stranger to extravagant graphics and battle systems.

It’s a dismal, oppressive horror game that sinks you into the hell it has constructed. It presents a thick, sticky mystery to wade through and presents it with panache. It’s maybe not the most essential remaster of a game, but the same spooky tale of hopelessness is still present. I just wish it would keep its obvious fascination with human excrement to itself.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy coasts by quite a bit on personality, and that’s definitely going to make it divisive. Playing through it myself, I was constantly torn. When it gets going and it’s firing on all cylinders, it’s fun. But it’s also exceedingly linear (in a negative sense in some aspects of the game) and many of the choices it offers are surface-level at best. Treat it like an arcadey weekend romp and you’ll be fine: bonus points if you already adore these lovable little bandits.

The framing of Riders Republic is much simpler than I was expecting, in a good way — after a ramp-up, you can just go do your thing with your favorite piece of extreme sports gear in this sandbox, and that’s “the game.” There are more carrots on more sticks, and there are going to be more live-service distractions trying to tempt you long-term, but that’s it if you want it to be. You can focus on downhill bike races or snowboard trick events and not worry about what other players are doing. I’m kind of relieved. It’s not every day that we get an extreme sports game, particularly one on this scale. The developers have kinks to work out, but Riders Republic is already in a pretty good place.

Voice of Cards can easily eat up a weekend or two. It’s sweet and doesn’t overstay its welcome, even when I wished it would. While those factors aren’t enough for it to match up against the best-in-class competitors, there are many worse ways to spend a cozy fall evening than curled up with Voice of Cards.

I did enjoy Inscryption. Part of me is tempted to dive back in to see if I can scrape any more secrets out of its cracks. Really, that’s where it excels: not the misdirection, but the hidden crawlspaces where it hides all the bodies. At its best, it feels like you’re actually uncovering a deeper plot. At its worst, it feels like you’re watching a magician pull handkerchiefs out of their sleeve. It’s cool, I guess, but you know they’re just screwing with you.

As much as I feel like this series is stuck in the shadow of Until Dawn for a large part of the audience, collectively, The Dark Pictures Anthology is becoming something memorable in its own right. I’ll keep enjoying these games as long as I can, House of Ashes included.

I loved Toy Soldiers, I think it’s a fantastic game. I’m happy that they took the time to make the battlefields look a little more modern, but if I hadn’t gone back to check the original game, I might not have realized that anything had been done at all.

Resident Evil 4 has fantastic side modes, and evolved mercenaries into a fully-fledged game and mode for future iterations beyond what the series had done with it in the past. With all of the side content intact, I would have given this VR port a 10. Of note, the merchant shooting range minigame, both in-world and via menus, is still intact.

Back 4 Blood has the right formula for a good few weekends of co-op fun. If it gets even more support and updates down the line, I could see this taking up a spot as a go-to social game for quite a while to come. Really, it just feels good to have this sort of game back again.