Kyle Hilliard
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Writing For
IGN
Game InformerLatest Reviews
Kunitsu-Gami is the kind of wonderful, left-field Capcom release we don’t see often these days. Bound to be a cult classic in the future, Path of the Goddess is original and does not lean on any of Capcom’s established properties. Instead, it relies on an admittedly difficult-to-explain but well-executed gameplay loop that I found hard to put down with an art style that is equally challenging to look away from.
Despite kicking off Nintendo’s fourth-generation console with a starring role in Luigi’s Mansion on GameCube, Luigi's sequel always felt a little relegated. He was downgraded to the handheld platform, but it wasn’t because he delivered a bad game. The video game formerly known as Dark Moon has always maintained a positive reputation, but after the success of Luigi’s Mansion 3 on Switch, it felt like part two missed its time to shine. Thankfully, Nintendo and Next Level Games have brought it to console, and while it’s not without its formerly-a-3DS-game quirks, there’s no reason to skip this entry in the trilogy.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes’ setup is bland compared to the others in the puzzle genre. You are a bespectacled woman carrying a clutch who walks with incredible poise into a mansion with little understanding of why you are there or what you are doing. The lack of context doesn’t matter, though, because the game immediately showers you with an incredible sense of mood. You may not know why you are petting the dog in the courtyard, checking every door, or reading every scrap of paper you come across initially, but you want to be there and see everything the game has to offer. And if you’re like me, it morphs from a want to a need that keeps you up entirely too late, pointing your phone’s flashlight at a piece of scrap paper already overflowing with notes incomprehensible to any outside observer.
The Mario brand of RPG represents some of my favorite adventures in the genre. The comedic tone, inviting art, and active battle systems have always been highlights for me, but Thousand-Year Door was a personal blind spot. I played prior and subsequent Mario RPGs, but I skipped it when the original was released in 2004, and notably was not yet employed at Game Informer at the time. With Nintendo remastering the acclaimed RPG for Switch, I welcomed the excuse to finally play it. I am impressed by how improved the visuals and music are two decades later, and found that, for the most part, the comedy holds up. I now fully appreciate and understand Thousand-Year Door’s reputation as a classic, but it is not without its 20-year-old headaches. It arguably presents the first signs that the series would be less interested in being an RPG in the coming years and would ultimately suffer as a result.
Sand Land is experiencing an oddly timed resurgence. Its creator, Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball), recently passed away unexpectedly, effectively pointing a spotlight on his 24-year-old creation just as it was being adapted to film, anime, and video game. The video game has been my entry point into this world with characters, vehicles, and architecture that all resemble Dragon Ball beyond even just an art style, and I enjoyed the opportunity to live in a brand new Toriyama world and story. Other elements of the game, like its animation and performances, vacillate between high and low quality, but ultimately, Sand Land is the kind of experience I want from adaptation – the opportunity to spend time in a big, realized world with a story that pulls you all the way through.
We’ve played as Peach in plenty of Mario-starring games through the years, but not since 2005’s Super Princess Peach has the artist formerly known as Princess Toadstool been the exclusive protagonist of her own journey. Princess Peach: Showtime is a wholly original adventure with an impressive amount of unique mechanics, but it fails to reach the platforming heights Nintendo has attained with its other characters in the past.
The abstract environmental puzzle game has become its own genre in recent years, with some telling stories that are strange but easy to parse and others being so opaque that the player can ascribe almost any meaning to what is transpiring on screen. On this difficult-to-define spectrum, Cocoon lands on the latter half of the scale. I basically never had any idea why I was doing what I was doing or what the larger goal was, but I didn’t mind for a moment because the puzzles scratch your brain so effectively that I was always eager to complete whatever strange task it put in front of me.
Sea of Stars is like a great genre film by a skilled director. It looks and feels familiar; you basically know what to expect and can probably even predict the major beats, but it doesn’t hinder the experience. The intention is so well-executed that I was eager to soak it all in and, in this case, swim in the stars. I dreaded Sea of Stars’ conclusion not because I feared the worst but because I didn’t want to leave the world and stop playing.
The original Remnant: From the Ashes was a surprise success thanks to its Souls-inspired action combined with third-person shooting and randomized environments. The sequel is a refinement with new environments and expanded lore. I enjoyed my time with the game and its final boss and the shooting mechanics feel great, but Remnant II ultimately doesn’t do enough to separate itself from the genres and games that inspired it.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is battling impossible expectations. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild represented a radical and successful reinvention of The Legend of Zelda – a series considered by many to be the apex of game design. Despite its numerous changes to Zelda’s formula, Breath of the Wild was a massive success and its legacy only grows stronger with time.