Superhot's novel premise is an emphatic transition to its promise; playing Superhot actually feels as awesome and energizing as it looks. Plenty of shooters (and plenty of games) have played with bullet time, stopping time, or some otherworldly manipulation of time, but none have married its passage to movement quite like Superhot. It not only adopts and plays with this idea; it pushes and refines it to its logical extremes by discarding anything that might get in the way.
The death of the Dreamcast. The birth of PlayStation VR. Rez's singular orbit stays outside of a mercurial industry and remains as powerful and as relevant as it was fifteen years ago. By its architecture and through its nature, there isn't a time when Rez won't be beautiful. PlayStation VR, as it happens now, is the best way to experience it in 2016.
Dead Cells is a cultured, clever, and collected fusion of roguelike canon and metroidvania doctrine. Discovering its wealth of secrets drives the player's curiosity while a proficient performance, derived from countless combinations of weapons and options, rewards their personal dexterity. Dead Cells, from any imaginable approach, thrives in a powerful cycle of surprise and satisfaction.
Kentucky Route Zero is lost in the illusive premise of the American Dream but found in the elusive dream logic of its weird, wild, and wonderful prose. Through it all are characters who conceal pain and loss with whimsical musings of hope and escape and locations engulfed in a meditative haze where brutal reality is indistinguishable from isolated reverie. At the end lies a paradox that suggests a circuitous path was the shortest course to an inevitable destination, and the assurance that Kentucky Route Zero's seven-year voyage knew its direction all along.
Nier: Automata is the videogame twin of those tabletop games that demand players disfigure and destroy its pieces. In Automata's case, PlatinumGames' house-brand of action sustains engagement and empowers director Yoko Taro's disarming unorthodoxy, positioning Automata as cordial agreement between boundary-obliterating determination and boisterous violence. As a videogame designed to experience the paradox of poignant optimism, Automata isn't the most efficient mechanism, but it's easily the most effective.
Life isn't often what we imagine and death isn't usually what we expect. What Remains of Edith Finch responds by capturing death's despair and tragedy through life's lenses of whimsy and fantasy. Every emotion and detail is left in frame, exposing profoundly anguishing themes that nevertheless develop into endearing pictures of hope and determination. Edith Finch creates a portrait of a family that, even in their doomed eccentricity, feels not only sanguine, but also deeply human.
There is no satisfaction in immortality. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice proves its thesis by matching the resolve of its protagonist with the potential of its player in a performance choreographed by agonizing lessons and industrious rehearsals. When it's showtime presentation seems instinctive and proficiency feels powerful. Sekiro demands immense competence, but, once its needs are met, the payoff is irresistible.
Resident Evil 2 survives the horror of summiting a twenty-one year old apex. Time-worn mechanics, either left abandoned or considered obsolete, are accountably refashioned through an agile interface and a relentless commitment to creating tension. Resident Evil 2's pervasive sense of dread, the handshake between past and present, remains delightfully, gruesomely in place.
Tetris Effect is a euphoric balance of intensity and serenity. Rarely do games manage either with stability, let alone perform both in concert. Tetris Effect's audio and visual assault is as powerful as its score-chasing quest for order and perfection, leaving the player overwhelmed with raw optimism and kaleidoscopic emotion. Tetris never required a sequel, but it now feels inseparable from Tetris Effect's compliment.
Outer Wilds' compact clockwork universe does more with twenty-two minutes than its spacefaring peers can imagine in a lifetime. It treats curiosity as a Möbius strip and trusts its network of divine secrets will drive the player toward a reasoned conclusion. By turning away from the zeitgeist, Outer Wilds' sublime presence can only be defined as otherworldly.
Umurangi Generation's vibrant ambience validates the rebellion of its doomed youth culture. It also renders the player a transient witness to a surging tragedy. Umurangi Generation's key is its camera, as it allows its protagonist and its player the agency to access and capture a world beyond their control. It creates a vantage point untended since Jet Set Radio, and Umurangi Generation didn't even need skates or spray paint to get there.
With aggression as its invitation, Bloodborne invokes a calculated shift in Souls parlance. Its aim isn't necessarily a course correction, but rather a Y-axis slant into an alternative series of objectives. Sacrificed are a few degrees of personal customization, only to be replaced by a renewed sense of distress and wonder. Bloodborne's demanding novelty, even with its unrepentant focus, feels built to last.
Genuine art is meant to evoke a response from its audience, and Hohokum's diverse assortment of imaginative endeavors makes it easy to get lost inside its world. It's effective union of art, activity and music, managing a progression of open personal responses without the weight of a direct narrative or dissonant mechanics. If you're out there looking for the holy grail of emotive game design, Hohokum's declarative statement to the power of amusement is worthy of consideration.
Transistor's nuanced world-building and clever storytelling render its narrative original and intriguing. Its combat system presents a myriad of viable choices but remains indifferent toward how the player chooses to engage them. Its painterly visuals and pitch-perfect use of musical themes call to mind the greatest moments of 90's-era Japanese role-playing games. Its attention is focused on the first time through the game, but not lost on the second or third. Completing any one of these objectives would have been enough to satisfy those with a particular affinity toward a specific style, but watching them succeed as parts of a larger game widens its appeal and makes a declarative statement; Transistor is how games should be made.
Finding yourself is difficult. Finding someone else is complicated. Cibele bears both burdens in a candid and empathetic glimpse of burgeoning love in the 21st century. So many games either waste or misunderstand their medium as a storytelling device while Cibele thrives inside of its own technology. By no coincidence, it's one of the most human and relatable games, too.
Firewatch distinguishes itself through integrity of its structure and preservation of its characters. Allowing control over Henry and Delilah's perilous connection provides a sense of ownership over the narrative and creates an important bond between action and place. Other story-focused games suffer from a damaging disconnect between agency and intention, almost as if they don't trust the player to act reasonably in accountable situations. Firewatch proves this dynamic not only to be valuable, but necessary to go forward.
Tearaway is a unicorn the Vita has ached to capture. It's an original concept from a world class team created specifically and exclusively for the Vita. It's beautifully rendered in a papercraft art style all its own, and its theme and disposition are unique in its field. Best of all, it interprets the hardware's peculiar control options not as a dutiful obligation but rather as leverage for original ideas; there isn't a single part of the machine that feels wasted. Tearaway comes together by showing its player a good time, and it's intimately focused on driving that final point home.
Inside's quiet confidence is a maneuver invented to not only disarm the player, but also destabilize assumptions that seem inseparable from an entire class of games. Plenty of games have pulled the curtain away to thunderous applause. Only Inside has room for shock, panic, and the inconceivable notion that the nightmare isn't yet over.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an exhibition of lessons learned not only from CD Projeckt RED's past work, but also from a spectrum of open-world and role-playing contemporaries. It's expected for games of this nature to excel at taking your time away. What's most impressive about The Witcher 3 is that rarely seems to waste it.
Peers in seemingly disparate genres have assumed mastery over impulsive tests of skill, the strategic obliteration of unreliable architecture, and a judicious regard for practical engineering, but none have been arranged together as uniform and effective as ScreamRide. For a game so persistently engrossed in outlandish destruction, its accompanying structure is surprisingly sound.