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You might be relieved to learn Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion isn’t really about avoiding your financial responsibility to society. There’s no book-keeping, no audits, no lurking threat of a visit from the IRS. Instead, the act of tax evasion is a mere prelude, an unlikely catalyst for a rollicking and increasingly silly pastiche of the action/adventure genre. Less concerned with ripping off fellow citizens and more with pilfering tropes from the Legend of Zelda, Turnip Boy is shameless about the source of its obvious inspiration. Within minutes from the start of the game, the village elder has dispatched you on a quest and you’ve retrieved a mystical sword from a sun-dappled forest grove. But it borrows and parodies familiar elements with an affection and exuberance that sweeps you along in a giddy rush for the entirety of its short but sweet duration. Gallery With Turnip Boy’s fiscal failure exposed in the opening scene, the town mayor channels Tom Nook by setting a q...

Returnal is a hard game to pin down. On the one hand, it is very much a pastiche of existing game genres: Play one run and you will see how it very clearly draws elements from roguelikes, Souls-likes, metroidvanias, action-platformers, bullet hell shooters, and horror games. But while it borrows from all those genres, its unique flow ensures that its chaotic shooting galleries and creepy storytelling feel decidedly new. A shifting, but not jarring pace, an unpredictable narrative, tough-as-nails gameplay, and a constant sense of ambient terror--Returnal's many moving parts coalesce into a rare shooter that grabs you with its mechanics and its story and never lets go, seducing you with its challenges and a foreboding sense of dread every step of the way. When you start Returnal, interstellar scout Selene Vassos crash-lands on an alien planet, Atropos, which is broadcasting a mysterious signal. Stranded, Selene makes some startling discoveries on the planet, including the game'...

The Nintendo 64's Pokemon Snap has held a special place in my heart for over 20 years, partially because there's nothing else quite like it in the Pokemon franchise. Pokemon Snap has nothing to do with catching or battling with Pokemon, and humans aren't at the heart of its story. Instead, Snap has always been about the joy of discovery and uncovering the secrets of the Pokemon world without interfering with it. Its long-lasting charm has stemmed in part from emulating one of the greatest joys of photography: witnessing and capturing moments it felt like you weren't supposed to see, like a group of Charmander performing a synchronized dance inside a volcano. 20 years later, that same charm and mystique is present in New Pokemon Snap on Nintendo Switch. With even more courses and Pokemon to discover, New Pokemon Snap is a brand-new adventure that's absolutely delightful to embark on, incorporating newer generations of Pokemon and stunning environments that feel trul...

If Nier: Automata was about discovering your humanity in a world devoid of life, Nier Replicant is about a world desperately fighting to preserve what humanity it has left, and often failing to do so. Those you fight for, fight with, and fight against--and you, the protagonist--all have a stake and responsibility in the plight. There's an ever-present melancholy that hangs over the violent world of Nier, and the more you fight on, the more you understand just how tragic human life can be. It's tempting to wallow in sorrow, but once you've seen Nier Replicant's conclusions in their entirety, you'll come to cherish its moments of warmth as well. For better or worse, Nier Replicant preserves much of the original experience from its 2010 release (based on the Japanese version with the brother protagonist as opposed to the Western release's father lead). The story, characters, scenarios, and structure remain intact, and this remaster includes some significant game...

Plenty of games ask you to tweak the brightness or take a moment to scale the resolution to fit your screen before you begin playing. But Before Your Eyes is the only game I’ve played that asks that, before you start, you take a moment to do pretty much the same thing for your eyes. It’s strange, sure, but it helps set the tone for the wonderfully weird and moving adventure that you will help unfold across its impactful 90-minute runtime using nothing but a mouse, your webcam and voluntary and involuntary blinks. That initial calibration is crucial for gameplay reasons, too. In this first-person narrative game, time moves forward each time your webcam sees you blink, so it’s imperative that the game can accurately detect when you’re actually blinking. To that end, Before Your Eyes presents you with a series of empty circles that fill in white as you blink. If it misses some, you can up the sensitivity and if it records blinks when your eyes are actually open, you can tell it to ease ...

MLB The Show 21 has made headlines this year for what it's done off the field of play. In an unprecedented move, the Sony-developed title is now available on Microsoft consoles, signalling the end of 15 years of PlayStation exclusivity. It's a monumental shift for a series that's also making its debut on next-gen consoles, and MLB The Show 21 maintains the series' high bar of excellence once the ball's in play. Away from the diamond, however, there are a number of missing features and questionable decisions that take some of the shine off an otherwise fantastic game of baseball. The card collecting mode, Diamond Dynasty, is the basis for most of these dubious decisions, particularly in regards to Road to the Show (RttS). MLB The Show 21's career mode still revolves around the core idea of creating a player and taking them from the minor leagues through to the majors, but the structure of the mode has been significantly reworked. Your created Ballplayer is now ...

This review has been updated to include the experience of playing DIsco Elysium: The Final Cut. The additional review text that addresses the new version of the game is included at the bottom of the review as its own section. Memories can be painful. Recalling them can result in feelings of regret, anger, shame, embarrassment, and worse. Much, much worse. In Disco Elysium , a mesmerising, hilarious and at times harrowing narrative-heavy RPG, recollecting a memory can prove fatal. For an amnesiac, alcoholic cop struggling with a new murder case with elusive details, and the world's worst hangover, remembering the person he was offers a path to redemption for the person he might become. After all, memories that don't kill you make you stronger. Disco Elysium presents as an RPG in the mold of Baldur's Gate or Divinity: Original Sin . Indeed, it opens with a nod to Planescape Torment with a semi-naked figure lying on a cold, hard slab before slowly rising to his feet--only...

Oddworld: Soulstorm has been a long time coming. A direct sequel to Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty , Soulstorm is a loosely drawn reimagining of the second Oddworld game, Abe's Exoddus . Soulstorm looks shiny and PS5-new, with beautifully detailed characters and vast sweeping landscapes in its backgrounds, but it has an old soul. Soulstorm's stealthy platforming feels like a throwback: It's unlike any game I've played in a long time, and that's refreshing. But with old-school gameplay, Soulstorm retains some archaic design choices that feel outdated in 2021. The pain from those choices is accentuated by the game's many serious technical issues, which can blow even the most carefully played sequences at the drop of a hat. Soulstorm has a lot of heart, but its poor tuning makes it a bit of a slog. Like its predecessors, Soulstorm puts you in control of Abe, a now free slave with the ability to take control of his former captors using a special chant. Each level...

First released in 2005, Star Wars: Republic Commando acted as many a young Star Wars fan's initial introduction to the concept that the clone troopers of the prequel trilogy are human beings--creating unique identities for the seemingly identical soldiers. Republic Commando has a strong legacy among Star Wars fans--despite the game's removal from the official canon, it remains a key part of the Star Wars universe, especially when it comes to video game entries. Handled by Aspyr Media, Star Wars: Republic Commando Remastered brings the original 2005 Xbox and PC game to PS4 and Switch with enhanced HD graphics and modernized controls, though the multiplayer is absent. Otherwise, it's the same game. And though the flaws in its gameplay are only more noticeable now 16 years later, this remaster manages to still deliver a compelling story of four specialized commandos engaging in a variety of combat missions across the Clone Wars. Squad Up In Republic Commando, you play as R...

In the center of Balan Wonderworld's hub area lies the construction site of a clock tower. Complete the 12 worlds--the entry points to which are arranged at random around the tower like dial markings on a jumbled clock face--and the clock tower rises further into the sky; an elaborate contraption that stands as a monument to your hours played. Despite a thematic preoccupation with telling the time, Balan Wonderworld feels like something of an anachronism, a throwback 3D platformer whose occasional charms arrive too late. Balan Wonderworld makes a terrible first impression. It's a 3D platformer where the primary act of running around the levels feels sloppy. Swapping character costumes to employ new abilities is the key novelty, but the initial batch of costumes fail to inspire, and instead add the sorts of abilities you'd take for granted in any other platformer. Completing the early game doldrums, you're dropped into levels without context nor any attempt to explain y...

Outriders is a game that isn't defined by big new ideas, but rather a variety of familiar elements mixed together in experimental ways. It's a role-playing game with loot-shooter elements; it's a serious, dark sci-fi outing with a big dose of goofiness and humor; it's a cover shooter that demands you rush out and smash enemies with your ludicrously lethal magic powers. Whether this mixture works for you will determine how much you'll enjoy exploring the war-torn planet of Enoch and the last desperate vestige of humanity clinging to life there. Outriders blends well-known video game elements into something new and challenging, and while it takes itself seriously, it isn't self-serious. The world of Enoch seems huge and strange, and while the game is literally about the last gasp of the human race that has ripped itself apart, its heavy themes are always lightened up by a general blockbuster goofiness and characters defined by their gallows humor. Your place wit...