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Everything the light touches in Teardown is primed for you to destroy. Whether it's heavily plastered brick walls or fragile wooden sheds, Teardown gives you a variety of tools to make blowing up each little pixel a delight as you tear your way through its handful of carefully crafted playgrounds. It's a game filled with inventive ideas and a satisfyingly simple premise--even if it is hampered down by a campaign that suffers from poor pacing. Its premise, thankfully has enough depth to it that makes Teardown a destructive sandbox toy that is enticing to return to frequently. Acting as a highly sought-after demolitions expert, your journey through Teardown's campaign takes you across the game's nine maps and peppers them with a variety of objects that drive its mayhem. You're mostly going to carry out intricate heists, although the criteria for success does change from mission to mission. One might challenge you to steal several computers that are all hooked up to a...

If you were to draw up a blueprint of the ideal video game sequel, it would be a schematic of Rogue Legacy 2. The latest roguelite dungeon crawler from developer Cellar Door Games retains everything that was captivating about the 2015 original while improving upon it with some fantastic new additions. If you played the first game, you'll notice there's an immediate familiarity to Rogue Legacy 2's crunchy combat and satisfying gameplay loop, yet it doesn't take long for new wrinkles to appear that significantly alter each run through its ever-shifting world. The basic premise of Rogue Legacy 2 is identical to that of the first game. You play as a valiant adventurer who's sent to explore the ruins of a mysterious castle. Your ultimate goal is to find and defeat six unique bosses in order to unlock an imposing door that leads to the final area. As you gallivant across Rogue Legacy 2's six varied and increasingly treacherous biomes, you'll accrue golden coins b...

I find it interesting how much The Isle of Bigsnax mimics the entirety of Bugsnax itself. On the surface, it's just another area of Snaktooth Island, the game's original setting, to explore--even if this one is technically not on Snaktooth itself. When I'd finished exploring and completed all of the new missions, my initial thought was "that's it?" However, much like Snaktooth itself there is more than meets the eye in this update, What seems like fast food quickly becomes a multi-course return trip to the world of Bugsnax, including a brief taste of future additions to the menu. The longer you eat, the better this meal gets, but you will need to have patience in order to get to the good parts. The Isle of Bigsnax itself is called Broken Tooth, though calling it "the isle of big snax" is a perfect descriptor. The inhabitants of Broken Tooth are all massive Bugsnax, grown to mammoth proportions, and you're again trying to capture them all, althou...

It's incredibly bold to hide away a sequel to a game in an expanded re-release of the original experience. But when it comes to something as enjoyably strange and hilariously obtuse as The Stanley Parable , it makes sense--in fact, my belief that The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe would be anything else seems fundamentally foolish in hindsight. Ultra Deluxe is as intriguing to play as the original game, perhaps even more so today given that its message is directed toward the modern-day gaming landscape. Some of the nuances will be a bit lost on you if you weren't playing games or at least paying attention to the space back in 2013, as it relies on having a grasp of how the conversation surrounding games has evolved in the past decade. But, it's an entertaining experience regardless of if you have that context or not. Though it's presented as a kind of director's cut of the original, Ultra Deluxe feels more like a sequel that exists within The Stanley Parable. You...

For the past five years, there's been a Wii Sports-sized hole in the Nintendo Switch's library. A lot has changed since that game's monumental success 16 years ago, including the acute existential dread I felt of being 15 years old. Not only has my teenage angst fizzled out, but so has the trend of motion control in games. Some things should stay in the past, and one could make the case that motion-controlled sports games are among them. Thankfully, that isn't the case and, if anything, Nintendo Switch Sports makes a strong case for why. Not because its motion controls are as revelatory as the original, but because the same sense of brazen fun that came from playing Wii Sports with a good group of friends or family is as potent as ever in its successor. On the court of modern day video games, Switch Sports definitely makes some perplexing missteps along the way, but ultimately puts on a worthy performance. Nintendo Switch Sports is, at its core, the same as Wii Sports...

Petria, the fictional country at the center of Road 96, is in rough shape. Throughout 1996, the country is gripped by political turmoil--now, a moderate-leaning candidate is threatening the long-standing regime of a totalitarian dictator while a growing resistance threatens to send the country's youth boiling over and into a full-on revolution. Add to that a growing number of teenagers seeking life outside of the country's walled borders and you've got a recipe for potential disaster on election day. This is what each of Road 96's procedural journeys delicately build towards with some strong character writing and entertaining gameplay vignettes, even if the central conflict is too reductive with its overall messaging. Each episode of Road 96 puts you in control of a faceless and nameless teenager--one of many looking to escape Petria by making the dangerous journey to its border and attempting to get over its oppressive wall. You're given the choice between three t...

Since Back 4 Blood debuted in October 2021, it's been players' best-looking and perhaps most extravagant Left 4 Dead successor since the original sequel in 2009, but it's also been a frustratingly inconsistent game to play. In one level, you may excitedly limp to the saferoom as a swarm scratches at your heels, the way any horde shooter should often feel, only for the next level to be a mess of enemy spam and poor objective design. Six months later, pacing and design issues still hinder the experience in the game's first expansion, Tunnels of Terror, but the moments of frustration are finally showing signs of waning alongside some fun additions to the game's core campaign. The Tunnels of Terror expansion adds two characters, a slew of weapons, and seven new levels to Back 4 Blood in the form of Ridden Hives. Rather than offer up another underplayed side attraction to the main campaign, these Ridden Hives are smartly built right into the game's original, alread...

The Steam page for open-world first-person shooter Postal 4: No Regerts markets it as, "The long-awaited true sequel to what's been fondly dubbed as 'The Worst Game Ever,' Postal 2!" If developer Running With Scissors' goal was to live up to this legacy and maybe even outdo itself, then it succeeded with aplomb. Postal 4 is an abysmal video game. It's mind-numbingly dull, its combat is unenjoyable and lifeless, its humor is unfunny, and it's plagued by myriad technical issues, glitches, and crashes. This is a series that gained traction by courting controversy at a time when pearl-clutching over video game violence was world news. Postal 4 can't even claim to be problematic, as its bloodshed is notably tame by today's standards, and any jokes that might be considered offensive are too focused on lazy stereotypes to be considered noteworthy. Postal 4's basic setup sees the Postal Dude return along with his loyal canine companion, Champ. Aft...

Few games are as informative in name as Cat Cafe Manager . Just reading it, you likely have a good idea as to whether or not it's something you'd enjoy. The combination of a cat adoption game and a restaurant sim is enough to make coziness-seeking gamers jump in without inspecting any further. And while Cat Cafe Manager is definitely a cozy experience, it also has its faults, and the hands-off direction of it all can lend itself to both fun and frustration at different times. The setup is a familiar one. You're new to town and have been given a plot of land. Naturally, you do what any sensible landowner would do: begin to build a small business that combines two of humanity's greatest idols: brunch and cats. Immediately upon setting off to build the cafe of your dreams, the bubbly music and adorable 2D art direction provide the lax vibes you might expect from a game like this. But just as soon, Cat Cafe inundates you with messy, text-only tutorials. It's a heap of...

I had never heard of the eponymous town of Norco until playing the debut point-and-click adventure game from indie developer Geography of Robot. Now I feel like I know it intimately, owing much to the game's evocative and honest portrayal of a community intertwined with the petrochemical industry. Norco confronts societal issues other games only want to distract us from, weaving them into an utterly compelling tale that had me eager to reach the next scene, line of dialogue, or delightful piece of prose. The real-life Norco is a small town in Louisiana that sits on the banks of the Mississippi River. Its unusual name is derived from the New Orleans Refining Company (NORCO,) which was established in the area after the land was purchased by Shell Oil in 1911. For over a century, the town has lived in the shadow of a major Shell petroleum refinery that dominates the skyline, coating the air in plumes of smoke that bellow from the plant's monolithic flare stacks. It provides a fa...

It's surreal to think that the first Lego Star Wars is inching closer to two decades old, but even more so to see a brand-new version of some of those same stories in Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga . Time has allowed for significant reinvention--developer Traveller's Tales' latest marks the biggest departure from the familiar formula that has permeated its library of Lego games. These gameplay changes enhance the familiar Lego action-adventure gameplay to make the moment-to-moment combat, platforming, and puzzle-solving more engaging. However, the breadth of content on offer does not live up to the potential of this new direction. Core to The Skywalker Saga's gameplay changes is a new perspective. Gone is the overhead camera, replaced by an over-the-shoulder third-person view that draws you closer into effects-laden lightsaber duels and chaotic cantina shootouts. You're offered far more control over the action than in earlier Lego titles, with cover-based shoot...

Like its cover star, Shohei Ohtani, MLB The Show 22 excels on the field of play, whether competing on the pitcher's mound or in the batter's box. In The Show's case, this has been the way for a number of years, and improving on this consistent level of excellence is a tough ask. But while Ohtani has ambitions to build on last season's historic MVP campaign, MLB The Show 22 lacks that same drive and has generally stood pat. The on-field action is largely unchanged from last year's game aside from a few incremental improvements to aspects like fielding and ball physics. New additions to some of the series' long-running modes are more significant, but they don't move the needle far enough, and, as a result, The Show's year-to-year progress since moving to next-gen consoles is still glacially slow. It's hard to have too many complaints once you step onto the diamond, however. Hitting is still immensely satisfying, and tweaks to the game's ball phys...

I love games where I get to play detective, finding thematic or narrative connections in seemingly unrelated item descriptions or the testimonies of NPCs. Chinatown Detective Agency doesn't quite manage to fulfill that fantasy--surprising, given its title--but it still delivers an engrossing experience with investigations that require real-world sleuthing. I remain a bit bewildered about the implied importance of a few of the game's mechanics, but its cases are thrilling for how each tests you on your research skills and problem-solving. Chinatown Detective Agency sees you step into the gumshoes of Amira Darma, a former INTERPOL agent striving to break free from the bureaucratic nonsense and go freelance as a private investigator. The game takes place in 2037--10 years after a global economic collapse. Automated drones have displaced most of the jobs for the low and middle class, and corporations have commodified previously government-controlled services (what could possibly ...