But despite an influx of entries in recent years, few have exhibited as much mastery as Blasphemous 2. ![]() Long gone are the days when the Metroidvania genre languished untouched for years on end. Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X But it wasn’t a mistake or luck that made Lies of P, and it wasn’t FromSoftware, either it was a talented group of developers at Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio that took a tired genre, paired it with a bizarre IP, and knocked it out of the park. But the best compliment I can give Lies of P is that it feels like the genuine article, a FromSoftware game developed in an alternate dimension and somehow released in this one by mistake. It’s very rare for a Soulslike to ever feel like anything more than a knockoff - even when they’re decent fun, like The Surge. And you’ll start telling your partner things like “I have to go back to Geppetto to upgrade my puppet body” like it’s a perfectly normal task to assign yourself on a Tuesday afternoon. But once you’re in the game, eliminating bosses left and right with your sweet parry moves, you’ll quickly find yourself entirely unbothered by how strange Lies of P initially seemed. In the years leading up to Lies of P, “Pinocchiosouls” was more of a running joke than anything - this profane idea that you can take any world and slap some Dark Souls into it to get people mildly interested. Yes, Lies of P is a Dark Souls mixed with Pinocchio, and that’s a questionable elevator pitch from the outset. ![]() Where to play: Mac, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X It’s fast, frenetic fun, and especially enjoyable to share with friends in co-op. In between fights, you expand your base, where you manage a staff of brainwashed blob-people. While on a mission, anything from a desk lamp to daggers is fair game for a weapon. Part Metal Gear Solid 5, part Spelunky, you undertake missions where you blast away enemies and kidnap them for your own operation, all while slapstick action unfolds. Despite the client’s apathy toward a single missing hat, the delivery company, named Amazin, proceeds to set up an entire subterranean paramilitary operation beneath the poor customer’s home.Īs its premise suggests, this pixelated 2D roguelite leans into the absurd. At the beginning of the game, a customer’s package gets stolen and whisked away to a nearby towering castle. Sun’s Hatbox is about a hat delivery person (or maybe it’s just a blob with legs?) that takes their job way too seriously. Where to play: Nintendo Switch and Windows PC They’re nowhere near the bottom of that particular expanse, of course - and that’s a heartening thought. More on this below.Īs the year comes to a close, it’s intoxicating to see developers of all sizes, in every genre, with every tier of budget, mining the depths of interactive design, branching this way and that as they follow their respective veins of gold. ![]() The real surprise? It finally let go, and let players toy with the digital molecules of its most revered series. And Nintendo? Well, Nintendo had another banner year. Remedy Entertainment - let’s be honest, this group has always been strange - made a sequel that’s equal parts horrifying, hilarious, fun, and fabulous. Larian Studios, fresh off two years of early-access development and riding the reputation it had garnered from Divinity: Original Sin 2, saw fit to release a role-playing game in which you can kill off nearly every main character the moment you meet them. ![]() This amorphousness (I’m begging our copy editor to let this one slide, because what other “word” could adequately summarize the video games of 2023?) wasn’t consigned to the newcomers, though. Whether you booted up your Steam Deck for a cross-country flight or hid your Switch off screen during that boring Zoom meeting, the game you returned to was rarely the one you left behind. Dave the Diver, similarly, is not so much about being a diver as it is about running a sushi restaurant, or hunting for alien artifacts, or conversing with said aliens, or - you get the point. Sure, some of the more “focused” games threw us for a pleasant loop: Dredge begins as a lonely fishing sim before transforming into something otherworldly, and Humanity morphed from a pensive art project into an all-out war. In 2023, nothing was sacred in video games, and so they felt more vibrant than ever. For the first year in recent memory, scale did not necessitate tradition, and scope did not preclude getting weird.
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