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River City Saga: Three Kingdoms takes the familiar characters and art style from the Kunio series--best known for River City Ransom and Super Dodgeball in the West--and applies it to a unique new setting: the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history. It's an unexpected mash-up, with familiar characters like Kunio, Riki, and Misako playing dress-up as historical figures, and blending the classical story of warring kingdoms with modern-day smack-talk. Similarly, the gameplay is a mixture of eras, blending some modern-day brawler conventions into a game that is decidedly old-school. The visual style reflects this mixture, with chunky 8-bit-style sprites set against 3D backgrounds and shading techniques. The setting itself makes a very endearing mixture, albeit not the ideal way to learn Chinese history. I went into the game with only a passing familiarity with the Three Kingdoms saga, and while I'm sure I picked up a few broad strokes and overall ideas, it was sometimes hard to disc...

You're getting pretty much exactly what you sign up for with Bear and Breakfast: You're playing as a bear named Hank who opens up several bed and breakfasts to host humans looking for a place to stay. Developer Gummy Cat does sprinkle in a bit of an adventure game in this management sim to act as a narrative backdrop, but Bear and Breakfast's story is simple window dressing for the far more wonderful cycle of building up a lodge, hosting some guests, and then using your hard-earned cash to afford grander renovations. The loop has a satisfying rhythm to it and a challenging complexity as the days roll on and your responsibilities grow, and Bear and Breakfast rewards creative solutions with fulfilling results. Despite that complexity, you don't need to jump into this game with a degree in design. Bear and Breakfast eases you in, with Hank and his friends simply trying to make a quick buck by transforming a rundown shed into a vacation spot. Making a room to house a guest...

At one point while playing PowerWash Simulator, I referred to it as "time-consuming." I meant this in the context of planning my time to write this review, but it occurred to me that in this case it's also a statement of identity. PowerWash Simulator consumes time--that's just what it does, and what it's meant to do. Like many chore-core games, it exists to be a satisfying activity, not a challenge. That can make it feel tedious and repetitive at times, but taken in small doses, it's a pleasant, low-impact, and very satisfying approximation of cleaning. As the name suggests, PowerWash Simulator puts you into the rubber galoshes of a burgeoning power-washing business owner in the absolutely disgusting town of Muckingham. Just about everything is covered with a thick layer of grime, and you're just the person to clean up this town. You start with some basic equipment and a dirt-caked business van--your very first job and then a prop at every job site therea...

The premise of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a bit unusual, but it sets the stage for a 100-hour epic through a fascinating world with strong characters and rewarding combat. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 may stumble from time to time, particularly in its dialogue, but its ambitious premise pays off with a heartfelt conclusion. It takes place in the world of Aionios, where two warring nations--Keves and Agnus--are locked in an endless struggle for resources. These resources are quite literally a matter of life and death. When a soldier is killed on the battlefield, their life force powers the opposing faction's Ferronis, a giant mech that doubles as a base of operations. The life force of fallen soldiers is imperative for one side to succeed over the other. The population of Aionios is bred to fight, and that's it. From an early age, they are subjected to rigorous combat training and expected to fight for a 10-year term. If they survive their life term, they are whisked away by the all-p...

The Forza Horizon series has already crossed over with numerous franchises, from the building blocks of Lego to the family in Fast and The Furious, but it's the one with Hot Wheels and Forza Horizon 3 that sticks out the most when looking back. The combination of Horizon's blisteringly fast cars and the creativity of Hot Wheels twisty tracks was an unsurprising hit, making its return in Forza Horizon 5 an anticipated one. It's an expansion that manages to deliver the same thrill as before, with new track types and a much larger map, but also a structure to progression hampers the pacing. The orange highways of this new expansion are strewn across the sky over Mexico, creating a racing paradise nestled in the clouds just waiting to be torn through. The map is larger than the one previously offered in Forza Horizon 3, featuring three biomes that introduce different weather conditions depending on where you are. They're also a big reason why this new playground is immedia...

One of the most recognizable characteristics of a JRPG is the party: a ragtag group of adventurers from different walks of life who unite their strengths for a common cause, almost always under the leadership of a designated main character. While the rest of the cast may wind up getting sidequests and story arcs, the majority of the game revolves around a specific character. It's a trope that's as common as they come. But all the way back in 1994, Square (now Square-Enix) released Live A Live in Japan, turning the genre on its head by asking "What if a JRPG had several main characters? And they all had a fully realized plotline, different worlds, and distinct gameplay gimmicks?" Live A Live was a unique game, well ahead of its time, but sadly one confined to Japan for decades, with no official English release. That changes with this modern remake and, amazingly, Live A Live not only holds up well, but manages to feel unique, compelling, and excitingly original even...

Yu Suzuki has been making games longer than most of us have been playing them. Today he is best known as the creator of Shenmue, but he has a long history of innovating in arcades with titles like 1985's Space Harrier and the Virtua Fighter series. Air Twister on Apple Arcade represents a return to his arcade origins while also taking some lore and story lessons learned from Shenmue. But overall, the experience ends up feeling repetitive without being particularly rewarding. Air Twister begins strong with playable protagonist Princess Arch responding to an alien invasion threat on her home planet. She soars through the air alongside gigantic swans flying past massive mushrooms to a soundtrack from dutch composer Valensia that truly sounds like nothing I've heard in a video game. The visuals and music are a joy to take in, but the repetition stagnates the experience quickly as every playthrough (and there are a lot of playthroughs) is identical. Combating the alien invasion ta...

It's rare for a game to offer a new perspective to experience a familiar setting, and rarer still for one to so confidently have all of its mechanics designed around this. Stray, an adventure puzzle game where you play as a cat, manages not only to delight in its presentation but also in the many ways it eschews common puzzle mechanics to focus on the abilities and limitations of its protagonist. It's a consistently satisfying adventure with a charming story about companionship that rarely misses a beat across its well-paced runtime. You play as a stray cat that is quickly thrust into an entirely new world underneath your own after a mishap that occurs in the opening minutes of the story. Alone in a new, neon-soaked city underneath a giant, unmoving dome, you quickly befriend a small drone that becomes a trusted companion throughout your adventure, and vital translator for all the other sentient robots that inhabit the handful of regions you'll visit. This drone, called B-...

A dusty motel in the middle of nowhere doesn't sound like a typical video game setting, but debut studio Interior Night, composed of industry veterans, uses this peculiar place to create a game unlike anything else you'll play this year. As Dusk Falls deftly explores themes of inherited hardship through the lens of two families who cross paths on one pivotal night. By way of incredible voice acting, a compelling and expertly written script, and a bounty of pause-worthy choices along the game's elaborate branching paths, it establishes itself as an instant classic in the narrative adventure genre. Playing As Dusk Falls reminded me of something I think about a lot: how each of us is just the end result of every moment we've experienced before today. We often like to make up reasons for why we do something--drive recklessly, win the spelling bee, get a divorce, give an unhoused person some money--but ultimately, our behavior is more determined by our pasts than what feel...

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak sees your intrepid hunter leave Kamura Village behind to venture across the sea to the outpost of Elgado. It functions almost like a brand new game, introducing a new HUB and cast of characters, locales to explore, monsters to fight, and weapons and armor to craft from their parts. Yet there's very little about Sunbreak that feels truly new or surprising. More Monster Hunter is never a bad thing, and Sunbreak is an excellent expansion with some smart additions that reinforce just how good Rise already is, but it's difficult not to feel a little disappointed by its formulaic nature. For starters, the story is typically boilerplate, revolving around a brand-new threat that's making all of the monsters overly aggressive. It's as predictable and easy to ignore as any previous Monster Hunter tale, although the new cast of characters are at least more defined and interesting than those found in Rise, partly because you spend a lot more time with...

I love escape rooms, so the idea of a video game designed by escape room creators is right up my alley. To its credit, Escape Academy does a damn good job of capturing the feeling of completing an escape room, with the added spice of dangerous consequences that a fictional story set in a virtual space allows. Escape Academy is, however, oftentimes too accurate to the experience of an escape room for its own good. Still, there's a delightful puzzle game here that makes for a rewarding afternoon with a friend nonetheless. Escape Academy sees you step into the shoes of the newest student to attend a school that trains would-be spies, hackers, and thieves. To prove you're the best in your class you must earn 10 badges throughout the year, which are awarded for proving your worth in a series of planned tests, pop quizzes, unforeseen traps, and faculty assignments--all of which are constructed as escape rooms. Gallery These escape rooms are structured much like real-world ...

OlliOlli World is a delightful skateboarding game, an excellent culmination of what developer Roll7 established across two previous games of its super-fast, trick-infused side-scrolling platforming series. With its first DLC expansion, Void Riders , Roll7 provides what is mostly more of the same--more cleverly built tracks, more high-level challenges, and more goofy characters. Void Riders offers a few new elements to the overall formula, but it doesn't break the OlliOlli World mold. While it would have been exciting to see how Roll7 could push its own envelope, Void Riders provides more OlliOlli World to play through and master, and that's great, too. The base OlliOlli World has players traveling the world of Radlandia, skating through cities, forests, industrial sites, and theme parks, hoping to reach a state of skateboard zen that will allow them to become a "skate wizard." Void Riders is something of a side story to that endeavor, dropped into the middle of the ...

Arcadegeddon is a fusion of several different genres. Rather than play quite like any other game you may be familiar with, it's more like an amalgamation of some of the trendiest mechanics, meta-games, and genres currently dominating the video game world. It's part co-op loot-shooter, part roguelite, and part fashion show treadmill, borrowing from games such as Destiny, Fortnite, and even Hades in different but individually self-evident ways. Like a Netflix algorithm that spits out actor and genre pairings based on market research, Arcadegeddon is a bland mish-mash of several games you'd enjoy better separately. It's not that they don't work as a whole; it's that Arcadegeddon feels so focus-tested on what worked before it that it forgets to add its own unique hook. Immediately, the game's grating sci-fi world gives off strong Steve-Buscemi-with-a-skateboard vibes . Characters named Plug, Label, Juicy, and others exist in a world nearly vibrating from the ...

With one of the biggest changes to Formula 1 racing in over a decade taking place this season, it's unsurprising that its recreation in Codemaster's F1 22 refocuses on the fundamentals. It's easy to look at this year's entry in the F1 series and see only incremental improvements, with a clear focus on how the rapid cars handle around tight corners and translating the authenticity of the new regulations to players in a tangible way. The focus on small but important adjustments means that, as a whole package, F1 22 feels slightly trimmer than last year's version, but it's still a worthwhile successor because of how well it makes each corner feel in this new era of F1 racing. If you're unfamiliar with just how broad the changes in real-life Formula 1 racing this season have been, there are just a few points that cover the broad picture. The cars are heavier this year, with the minimum allowable weight being raised to accommodate a slew of aerodynamic changes a...

Every time I return to Outriders , I'm reminded of how intense and fast-paced its core gameplay is . You play a superpowered killing machine who can create small-scale earthquakes, set enemies on fire, or teleport behind troops hiding in cover and tear them apart with your mind. Worldslayer , the game's first major story expansion, mostly just offers more opportunities to use ridiculous powers and guns to blast more enemies. Though it adds more story, the really meaningful changes are of a smaller scale, adding more loot to chase and endgame content that improves the game overall. It's not the most thrilling of expansions, but it does leave Outriders in a better place, with more to do and more reasons to tectonically shift enemies into oblivion over the long term. Those endgame improvements were some that Outriders needed. Where the game stumbled to some degree at its release was with extensive loot mechanics in what is otherwise an RPG shooter. Outriders encourages you to...