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The Verge
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
I skipped every Death Stranding cutscene and I'll do it again
I beat the original Death Stranding, but please don't ask me what happened in it. There was a cataclysm — not quite a Gommage — that made the US more divided than ever, and you play as a babysitter-meets-delivery-guy who has special awareness of invisible, hostile creatures called BTs that are 'beached,' which isn't as relaxing as it sounds. There are grenades filled with pee, poop, and blood, and everyone who's anyone was motion-captured to be in the game. There are whales, Guillermo del Toro (in appearance but not in voice), huge pools of tar, and Geoff Keighley is there, too. Sounds like a silly game, right? It is, especially if you skip all of the cutscenes in the game, like I did. And I plan on doing the exact same thing now that the sequel is here. Death Stranding's long cutscenes repelled me from playing through it, and I say that as a longtime fan of the Metal Gear Solid games. After five or so failed attempts at getting past the first episode since the game's 2019 launch on the PS4, due to trying to play it 'right' — which I thought required close examination of every word and frame of this bizarrely written story — I just said 'screw it.' I finally beat the game on my Steam Deck (runs great!) just a couple months ago. It's not that the cutscenes are bad, but their plodding, cinematic pacing feels at odds with the game's overarching design, which is a glorified physics sandbox stuffed with just as much humor as there is desolation. Plus, the gameplay is so good that I didn't want to wait for my reward of just getting to run around again and deliver stuff. Anything that helps me more quickly get to the ridiculous mid-to-late-game Sam-versus-Higgs boxing match is worth it. Death Stranding, even when played as an exposition-light adventure, still holds up because the game is good at doling out meaningful upgrades to how you traverse the fractured land. Aside from missions that require speed (such as pizza delivery) or the utmost care (such as nuke delivery), its design embraces open-ended exploration. Similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, some early environmental obstacles might prove overwhelming enough to put you on a staid, critical path from time to time, but it rarely forces you to choose one method over another. Put a ladder here, a rope or bridge there, or drift down a mountain on a floating carrier. It's fun enough just getting to tough-to-reach markings strewn about the world where fellow Porters have… peed. Experimentation breathes levity into a game world that really needs more of it. Skipping cutscenes allowed me to fully sink my teeth into a game that I would have otherwise missed out on. And you'd better believe that I'll be playing Death Stranding 2: On the Beach the same way. Despite the allure of some seriously quirky characters and the potential of this being the last game in the series for a while (perhaps Physint will be next from Kojima Productions), I'm holding fast to my playstyle. I'm most interested to see how the sequel evolves traversal, and the interplay of the environment and player choice. Cutscenes are just another obstacle.
The Verge
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
The whiplash of covering Summer Game Fest 2025 in LA
I love going to Summer Game Fest. It's a rare opportunity to connect with my colleagues and friends in person, as well as listen to developers talk about why they make their games. In some ways, this year's SGF gave me everything I love about the event. But while I was comfortably ensconced in a happy bubble, the escalating conflict between demonstrators protesting against immigration raids and the Los Angeles Police Department cast a dark and soul-shaking pall that could not be ignored. Everything started on June 6th, when it was reported that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had conducted a raid in LA's fashion district, the same area where most of SGF was being held. I wasn't around to experience that because I was at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California, watching Geoff Keighley announce a Game of Thrones RTS and a Wu-Tang game. But when Ian Proulx, Splitgate 2 creator and CEO of 1047 Games, came out with his now-infamous 'Make FPS Great Again' hat, it punctured the illusion of distance in time, space, and tone. In the months since President Donald Trump took office, ICE has ramped up its activities, sending agents to snatch parents from their children and children from their schools, enabled under the auspices that removing immigrants will be what makes America great again. Proulx's hat became the story of the day, if not the whole event. It was the main topic of conversation at the lobby bar of the JW Marriott hotel, where each night of SGF is capped off with a mixer. How could someone choose to reference such a statement, even in jest or irony, as the very people that slogan has been used to target are being snatched up mere blocks away? Saturday was business as usual. Proulx's hat was forgotten as I settled in to work, flitting between wall-to-wall appointments checking out Escape Academy 2, the new Lego Party game, and Deadpool VR with no time to chat or even eat. I didn't check my phone for hours, and every TV was playing a video game. I had no idea what was happening both in Los Angeles and in the White House. But when there was finally a lull, I popped online, where I was greeted with a deluge of messages from people who were watching the news, telling me that something (a nebulous, undefined, but nevertheless urgent something) was happening and that I needed to get back to the safety of my hotel. Thankfully, my worst fears about martial law declarations and curfews didn't come to pass while I was there, but they did after I was back home. People had taken to the streets of LA in protest of ICE action and began moving through parts of the city, demonstrating and occasionally clashing with the police (and autonomous vehicles). But at that moment, when I was hearing that insurrection acts were going to be invoked and that the National Guard was being mobilized to sweep the city, I became legitimately scared — particularly for attendees who weren't citizens and those with immigrant families. How could someone choose to reference such a statement, even in jest or irony? One such colleague, Janet Garcia, wrote an incredible account of what it was like working SGF and being the child of a Mexican immigrant. Her words right now are more important than mine. SGF also coincided with the BET Awards, and honoree Doechii also had a powerful message for the moment. There had already been several stories of international travelers being detained in the US for weeks, and I was scared that if something was happening, my journalist friends from Canada, the UK, and elsewhere could get caught in the mix. Word began spreading that something (again, what that was, nobody could say, and that uncertainty compounded the fear) was happening, and my friends and I all began to start asking aloud: do we need to leave? Some said yes, and I was ready to do just that, but something stopped me. I will never be able to adequately express how weird my job is in situations like this. It's really hard to write about the colorful pixels on a TV when it feels like the world is seconds away from catching fire. And yet I do it every day. Right when I was about to make the decision to leave early, a Capcom PR rep tapped me on the shoulder. I was late to my Resident Evil Requiem appointment. And I went, because in that scary moment I still thought, 'I have a job to do.' I did my best with Requiem, plodding along the abandoned hospital, being suitably impressed by how the sound of Grace's footsteps changed when she walked on the wooden floor vs. the floor covered in bits of broken drywall. But my phone kept buzzing with notifications throughout it all. Midway through the demo, my stress was so high from the ambient spookiness of the game and all the happenings outside the SGF bubble that I couldn't take it anymore. I made my profuse apologies to my PR contact (who was exceedingly gracious and understanding) and left. The mood that night at the hotel was less exuberant. It wasn't just everything going on in LA: the mood of the event itself was the lowest I'd ever seen it in the handful of years that SGF has served as E3's smaller, vibe-ier replacement. There were games there, good ones, but nothing big enough to anchor the show. As the industry faces its third straight year of rampant layoffs, cancellations, delays, and studio closures we're finally starting to see the pipeline of blockbuster games dry up. This was a stark contrast to last year when Sega had Metaphor: ReFantanzio and Shadow Generations, Bandai Namco showed off Shadow of the Erdtree, PlayStation was there with Astro Bot, and Xbox had just announced Gears of War: E-Day. I'm home now. And despite this year's strangeness, I look forward to going back to Summer Game Fest. Because if video games have taught me anything over the years, it's that in the face of overwhelming odds, the best thing one can do is stick together with your friends.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
11 Promising Games I Played At Summer Game Fest 2025
This year's Summer Game Fest was a weird one. On a show-wide scale, Geoff Keighley's Not-E3 was lacking the the big, juggernaut announcements we usually expect from a June video game showcase. That understated showing extended to the actual 'Play Days' show floor in Los Angeles, where developers gave press and content creators a chance to try out new games. What made the show so odd on a smaller scale was that I was the only person on-site covering the show for Kotaku. I've been to Play Days the past three years, and for reasons outside of our control, fewer Kotaku writers have been sent to the biggest American games event with each trip around the sun. As just one person, I was only able to see a handful of games during the event. This means Kotaku unfortunately missed out on a ton of really cool projects, games that I was only able to look at longingly as I passed by them at the show. I hope things are different in 2026, but for now, here are the games I played and saw at Summer Game Fest 2025. This article will be updated periodically as embargoes lift. I know Mario Kart World is the kart racer to beat right now, and while I can't say definitively if Sega's latest Sonic Racing game clears that high bar, I can say what I've played of Crossworlds is a blast. The big headliners from the show were the crossover characters announced at the showcase, but I didn't play as Hatsune Miku, Joker, or Ichiban; I was focused squarely on getting behind the wheel as my guy Shadow the Hedgehog. Crossworlds definitely feels a bit lighter and floatier than other kart racers, but what it lacks in weight, it makes up for in a surprisingly deep customization system that lets you create builds for your vehicles tailored to your playstyle. I was able to add perks like starting races with a specific item to give me an edge at the beginning of a lap, reducing damage when I was on the wrong end of an incoming attack, or even using aggressive gameplay to my advantage by granting myself a boost if I collided with an enemy racer. I'm interested to see what the meta turns out to be when Sonic Racing: Crossworlds launches on Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One on September 25. Guacamelee developer Drinkbox Studios' latest game, Blighted, is unlike anything the studio's done before. In the brief time I spent with the action RPG, I was most captivated by its world, in which people can gain memories of the dead by eating their brains. This desecrated land is overrun by horrifying creatures that stand between you and a monster who has begun feasting on the brains of the living and blighted the rest of this world. The game feels reminiscent of Hades' frantic but strategic combat with an isometric view. Its enemy design is its greatest strength, with several of the monsters I faced requiring me to change up my play style and adapt to the moment. Blighted is launching in 2026. Dosa Divas is the next game from Outerloop Studios, the team behind Thirsty Suitors, one of 2023's most delightful surprises. Though I only got to play about 30 minutes of the turn-based RPG, I was already drawn in by its cheeky, timely satire. The game follows siblings Samara and Amani as they face a third sister, who has created a fast food empire so pervasive that it has essentially turned the culture of cooking into a bygone era. The people in Dosa Divas have become so accustomed to convenience that good food created with love and intention is dying out in favor of meaningless slop. That sure does sound like, well, every creative medium right now in the wake of AI-generated garbage and America's attempts to eject entire cultures from its borders. A quick and easy approximation of something is no replacement for the potential of the original when it's made with heart and soul. This cathartic premise is enough to grab my interest, but its simple yet engaging turn-based combat is also a fun vehicle to ride as I watch this sibling rivalry play out. Snap & Grab is one of the more interesting takes on a heist game that I've seen. Rather than executing the crime of a lifetime on your own, the game has you scope out a location to plan a course of action for someone else to take in your stead. As world-renowned photographer Nifty Nevada, I was able to freely take photos at a fancy rich people party, yet instead of merely capturing the festivities, I was actually taking photos of the penthouse to chart out a plan for one of my goons to come in and steal a priceless artifact for me. I had access to most places in the home, so I was able to take photos of where guards would be posted and note potential distractions or weaknesses in the security system. If I could account for all those pitfalls, it'd be a quick grab and dash for my accomplices. As I walked through the penthouse, I noted several other potential setups that I missed in previous runs, so Snap & Grab seems to give you a lot of freedom to chart your own course. I hope it has more surprises in store when it launches next year. Leading up to my appointment, Mixtape was far and away one of the most talked-about games at Summer Game Fest, and I wasn't disappointed. Beethoven and Dinosaur's adventure game stars a group of teenagers in the '90s creating a playlist for their final night together. Each song on the mixtape is accompanied by what is essentially a playable music video animated in a distinct, Spider-Verse-like, stop-motion-esque art style. Every segment is as unique and memorable as the song that accompanies it. The songs are attached to flashbacks of the group's high school antics, and in just the short time I played, each segment was a rolicking good time full of that kind of 'us-against-the-world' hope you feel when you're a teen who hasn't had that optimism beaten out of you yet. I want it now, but I'll have to wait until the full game is released later this year. Absolum was probably my biggest surprise of the show. I went in with no real knowledge, and was kinda disappointed when I had to stop playing it for another appointment. Developed by the team behind Streets of Rage 4, Absolum marries those same pitch-perfect beat-em-up stylings with roguelite runs. It's frenetic, stylish, challenging, and has a gorgeous 2D animation style that's lovely to look at. I played as an agile character whose base kit prioritized quick, vicious combos, and a grappling hook that let me close distance and tear through enemies with reckless abandon. But Absolum has multiple playable characters with different playstyles that you customize throughout each roguelite run. What I played felt deep, demanding, and rewarding, and I can't wait to play more when the game launches on PC, PS4, PS5, and Switch. The old-school Ninja Gaiden games were a blind spot for me for a long time. I played a little of the 3D action titles on the original Xbox and my fair share of Dead or Alive, but as far as the tough-as-nails sidescrollers that started it all, I never saw Ryu Hayabusa's origins. Ryu isn't the main character in Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, but his apprentice Kenji is taking the lessons he's learned from the OG out into the field with him. Ragebound is a pretty tough and unforgiving sidescroller that can lay you out in a second if you're not careful. Its combat is one pillar of that challenge. But its platforming, in which you scale walls, hang from ceilings, and overall use every surface to your advantage in one way or another, tests your spacial awareness while half a dozen enemies are pestering you (or just one enemy you can't even damage under normal circumstance is menacingly charging up an attack, preparing to take you out in an instant). It feels like a faithful throwback, and your mileage may vary on whether you're up for the task. If you've ever played something from Supermassive Games, you probably have some idea what you're getting into with Directive 8020. The narrative horror team is delving into sci-fi for the latest entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology, and while I spent probably the least amount of time with it of all the games I checked out (roughly 15 minutes), I did see enough to know Supermassive is still doing what it does best: riffing on different horror genres with difficult choices and consequences for your actions. Directive 8020 shows a space station crew turning against each other in paranoia as an alien force that can transform into anyone infiltrates their group, sowing distrust between them as they try to survive. My time with the game was short but sweet. Vermila Studios' horror shooter Crisol: Theater of Idols wears its OG Bioshock influence on its sleeve. But rather than a sunken city, it takes place in a worn-down version of Spain haunted by twisted puppets and mannequins that can only be destroyed by bullets powered by your own blood. It's unnerving and atmospheric, and its use of your health bar as your blood-fueled ammo means you have to make every shot count, lest you die while fighting for your life. The farming sim genre can feel a bit oversaturated these days, as everyone chases Stardew Valley's success. To stand out in 2025, you've gotta have some kind of twist that keeps things fresh. Grave Seasons illustrated that to me in just 30 minutes. The moment that made it click for me was when I was pulling crops out of my garden and found a severed human hand buried in the dirt alongside them. Farming sims are often viewed as a cozy getaway, so Grave Seasons using it as a stage to explore a supernatural murder mystery is the kind of subversive take that carves out space in a crowded market. Relooted was another interesting spin on a heist game that I played in LA, with its bite-sized robberies feeling like brain-teasing puzzles about meticulously planning one swift run from entrance to exit. The game follows an African crew reclaiming stolen artifacts from Western museums, with each member having a skill that makes them crucial to getting these items back where they belong. Your job as the field agent is to assign your team to different stations, so when you grab an item, you've cleared a path for yourself to book it once the alarms start blaring. Arranging a perfect getaway feels satisfying, and it helps that Relooted's sidescrolling parkour is smooth as hell. I played a few early heists, so I can only imagine how much more elaborate later heists can get, and how crafty I'll have to be to see them through. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The Guardian
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Everything that happened at Summer Game Fest 2025, from marathon game sessions to military helicopters
As protests exploded in Los Angeles last weekend, elsewhere in the city, a coterie of games journalists and developers were gathered together to play new games at the industry's annual summer showcase. This week's issue is a dispatch from our correspondent Alyssa Mercante. Summer Game Fest (SGF), the annual Los Angeles-based gaming festival/marketing marathon, was set up to compete with the once-massive E3. It's taken a few years, but now it has replaced it. 2025's event felt like a cogent reminder that the games industry has dramatically changed since the pandemic. Whereas E3 used to commandeer the city's convention centre smack in the middle of downtown LA, SGF is off the beaten path, nestled among the reams of fabric in the Fashion District, adjacent to Skid Row. There are fewer game companies present, it's not open to the public and there's no cosplay, unless it's for marketing purposes. Its centrepiece is a live show held at the YouTube theatre near the airport, hosted by ever-present games industry hype-man Geoff Keighley and streamed to millions – and you can buy tickets for that. Some video game enthusiasts and smaller content creators told me that the in-person showcase wasn't worth their money: just a very lengthy show that they could have watched online, culminating in a massive traffic jam to get out of Inglewood. This year's event had some hiccups, including an attempted gatecrasher, but felt the most put-together yet. Attending SGF is a privilege, but it is also an ungodly hybrid of a marathon and a sprint: back-to-back-to-back appointments with publishers and developers with no downtime in-between, speed walking between cabanas and moving swiftly in and out of over air-conditioned rooms to ensure you don't upset a PR person or accidentally spurn an indie developer. During brief breaks, if you even get one, you'll shovel a canape into your gullet, wash it down with a Red Bull, have a quick bite of some (surprisingly good) PC Gamer-branded ice-cream, and attempt to get a few of your thoughts down on paper. I saw a lot of games this weekend, some of which I can't talk about, but once again it was the indie games that were the most memorable. Not just because they're unexpected or unique or silly, but because there are usually far fewer restrictions while you play, devs are more open to questions and there aren't eight PR people standing over your shoulder to ensure you don't open up an unfinished menu or wander some place you shouldn't. On night one, I stuck my head in at the Media Indie Exchange (MIX) party downtown, and was immediately enraptured with Urban Jungle, a plant based game that speaks to my newfound love of horticulture. Placing plants around a cutesy little room afforded me a brief moment of zen in a crowded space full of people trying out dozens of indie games. Then there's Petal Runner, a pixel art RPG that looks and feels like a Game Boy-era Pokémon title. Published by iam8bit and developed by two people who met in the Instagram comments under some cyberpunk artwork, it's a beautiful, adorable, 'no violence' RPG. Rather than engage in the questionable practice of capturing cute creatures and forcing them to fight each other, you simply help deliver them to their new owners and 'calibrate' or calm them down through a series of old-school minigames. Then you hop on your motorcycle (Petal Runner's programmer was inspired to get a bike after watching Tron: Legacy) to deliver another pet. After just 15 minutes, its modern chip-tune soundtrack, cool-toned palette, and cute creatures had me sold. Thick As Thieves, meanwhile, is a multiplayer stealth game. A representative for the developer told me that the team wanted to make a multiplayer game that avoided the three 'black holes', or oversaturated genres: shooters, PvP combat, and pure action gameplay. The result is something that feels like Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood mixed with Dishonored: you'll sneak through maps set in a dark early 1900s world cut through with slices of rich colour, while you try to pull off difficult heists to impress a thieves' guild. But other players are trying to do the exact same thing, and guards and civilians will get in your way. I also got a chance to try out the new season of Monster Hunter Now from Niantic, the studio behind Pokémon Go. This augmented reality game drops you into a version of the real world filled with monsters from Capcom's iconic action game, condensing the series' epic fights into bite-size battles that are barely a minute long (they can be close to an hour in the mainline games). And I played the new, four-person party game Lego Party with two other journalists, screaming as our Lego characters fell over each other during minigames or stole gold bricks in an attempt to get to first place. It was fun and freeing; people gathered around us as we yelled and guffawed and talked smack with gusto, as if we needed this game to help cleanse our tired palates. Every game I spent even a few minutes with this weekend was imbued with passion and creativity, no matter the size of the team or the scope of the project. It was a testament to the drive that fuels so many in this space, and the technological advancements that let smaller teams (sometimes just one or two people) make beautifully complex games. Seeing tons of fellow journalists and developers bright-eyed and excited, even with so many of us struggling to find work, recently laid off, or otherwise worried about the future, was a shot of adrenaline. But it was also impossible to ignore that something larger was taking place in LA, acting as a sombre backdrop to this comparatively low-stakes weekend of video games. On Saturday, protests broke out in Los Angeles, with citizens pushing back against the militant and cruel anti-immigration raids taking place across the city. The constant whir of helicopters was a bizarre soundtrack to the weekend; many people who had come from out of state or even out of the country were noticeably concerned about the escalating events. We furtively shared updates with each other at hands-on appointments, whispering about the national guard, warning each other to travel together and safely. On Sunday night, dozens of journalists and devs were told they couldn't leave a downtown LA bar where they had gathered; the LAPD had shut down the area, determined to quell the protests. On the last day of SGF, we chatted about how weird it was to preview video games during such an acute political moment. One person told me they were playing a demo that kicked off with tanks and military men and, as he played, he heard the sounds of a helicopter circling overhead, and wondered where the game ended and the real world began. Alyssa Mercante From the makers of Frostpunk and This War of Mine, The Alters is a strange sci-fi strategy experiment that sees stranded space-worker Jan cloning himself several times over in order to assemble a team big enough to make it off an exoplanet before the sun rises and burns everything to cinders. The thing is that the clones don't exactly get on. Each one represents a different alternate-universe version of Jan: imagine being stuck on a remote base with nothing but your squabbling selves. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion I thought The Alters was going to be a comedy game, but though it is sometimes fleetingly funny, it's also a surprisingly involving base-building survival affair, more tense and urgent-feeling than I was expecting and full of consequential choices that encourage a second or third run-through. I will certainly be playing more of it. Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, XboxApproximate playtime: 20-30 hours While Alyssa was on the ground at Summer Game Fest, Keith and I were watching an endless stream of showcases and trailers from the UK– we've picked out the most interesting games from the show. The biggest announcement was probably a new Xbox handheld – though, confusingly, it's not quite what it seems. The ROG Xbox Ally X (why can nobody at Microsoft name something properly?) is an Xbox branded version of an existing line of portable PCs. Still, Alyssa was impressed with how well it worked in her brief demo. We've also been extremely busy playing an inordinate amount of Nintendo's Switch 2. Keith's review of the console is here, and here's my review of its flagship game, Mario Kart World. Harassment by Ubisoft executives left female staff terrified, French court hears How Nintendo dodged Trump's tariffs and saved the Switch 2 release The Nintendo Switch 2 is out – here's everything you need to know No question for this week's guest issue but, as ever, if you've got something you'd like to ask, or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@
Digital Trends
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
The best games we played at Summer Game Fest 2025
The summer has truly begun. Last week, Geoff Keighley christened June with his annual Summer Game Fest stream. While a bit less exciting than previous years, the two-hour stream unveiled plenty of new games from Code Vein 2 to Resident Evil Requiem. Following the event, Digital Trends attended the show's three day long Play Days event. The show featured playable demos of several games revealed during the show, as well as Sony's State of Play, Day of the Devs, and more. Over those three days, we played tons of upcoming games and walked away excited for what's coming in the back half of 2025 and beyond. While we can't talk about everything we got to play yet (stay tuned to Digital Trends over the next week for more coverage), we have plenty of games that we can tell you about. From the psychedelic puzzling of Lumines Arise to Shinobi: Art of Vengeance's fast-paced 2D action, these were the games that impressed us most at this year's show. And trust us: it's only the tip of the iceberg. Recommended Videos Game of the Show: Lumines Arise I've been waiting a very long time for a proper sequel to Lumines. The cult classic PSP rhythm game has always been one of my all-time favorites, to the point that its remaster was one of the first games I played on my Nintendo Switch 2. So, my expectations were very high when Tetris Effect developer Enhance announced Lumines Arise. Thankfully, the team did not disappoint. During my demo, I played a quick run that featured three different songs. It completely blew me away. The color matching rules of the original are the same, but that hook has been buffed up by some dazzling visuals. The levels I played were spectacular, full of thumping music and neon iguanas. there's also one new trick in the form of bursts. When I have enough energy built up, I can activate a special effect that lets me build up one giant color block as big as it can go. It's a genius addition to the formula that rewards players who can match blocks fast. It doesn't have a release date yet, but I'll be clawing at the gates of Enhance's offices until I can play more. Sword of the Sea There may not be a game released in 2025 that feels as good as Sword of the Sea. The latest game from Giant Squid plays like a mix between Journey and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The minimalistic game has players surfing through biomes on a sword, solving puzzles in the environment and doing a bit of platforming. What makes it all special is how incredible the movement feels. Surfing feels remarkably smooth and Giant Squid takes advantage of that with levels that are built like skateparks. In my demo, I rode up half pipes and grinded down enormous chains. I was able to nail every trick I attempted thanks to how forgiving movement is. You can feel it for yourself on August 19, and I suggest you do. Mixtape If there was one game on everyone's tongue during Summer Game Fest, it was Mixtape — and not just because it features the sloppiest French kissing minigame ever put into a video game. The narrative adventure from the creators of The Artful Escape is 90s teen slacker comedy in video game form. During my demo, I'd follow the tale of three small town teens yearning to break free. The bit I played told the story through interactive vignettes chronicling their escapades, all soundtracked by an excellent selection of songs. I skateboarded along to Devo, tapped buttons in time with music to headbang through a car ride, and escape a busted house party with a daring shopping cart chase sequence as the cops tailed me. Every sequence was hilarious, sincere, and full of jams that placed me directly into its 90s setting. Shinobi: Art of Vengeance I wasn't expecting too much from Shinobi: Art of Vengeance when I stepped into my first demo of it. After all, you've played one retro-inspired 2D action game, you've played them all, right? Wrong. Sega's surprising revival is much faster than your average side scroller, full of lightning quick combat encounters that let me clear out an entire room full of ninjas in no time flat. Developer Lizardcube has done a bang-up job here, keeping the series in line with its roots while crafting a highly stylized 2D action game dressed up with lovely hand-painted art. It's one heck of a return for Shinobi. Blighted When I first saw Drinkbox's latest game, Blighted, I thought it was a total departure for the studio. Now that I've played it, I now see it as a perfect culmination of everything it has done. It's a top-down action RPG, not unlike Nobody Saves the World. It's a Metroidvania too, just like its Guacamelee series. The art style even calls back to Severed, my personal favorite of its catalogue. All of that comes together in a tough action experience that's inspired by Soulslikes, but still very much a Drinkbox game. My favorite innovation here comes in the form of its blight system, which will gradually buff players' strength while making enemies a little tougher. It's a dynamic approach to difficulty that happens at an in-game level rather than in menus. Plus, it's a game that involves fighting horse-spiders and eating their brains to get powers. That part seems worth mentioning too. Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School A few years back, a group of escape room designers decided to form a video game studio and put their talents to good use. The result was Escape Academy, a great set of co-op puzzle boxes that felt just a little too brief. Now, Coin Crew Games is returning with a much bigger sequel in Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School. In my demo, I solved a great introductory escape room with a friend that had us decoding clues together by using split screen to our advantage. What's new this time, though, is that we also got to explore the actual academy, which is full of little side-missions and objectives that almost turn it into a puzzle Metroidvania. It's a great expansion of what was already a solid game, making the sequel feel like a more fully realized version of Escape Academy. Toem 2 It didn't take long in my Toem 2 demo to remind me why I loved its predecessor so much. The first Toem was a charming little photography game full of critters to snap and puzzles to solve. The sequel delivers more of its black and white joy, and even a few new tricks along the way. This time, I'm not just taking pictures and giving them to villagers to solve their requests. I'm also doing more platforming, using a hammer function in my camera to break blocks, solving riddles, going on a mission to make sure a guy turned his stove off, and more. My demo doled out constant surprises through the end, which made it hard to wrench myself away from the controller when my time was up. Dosa Divas After finding success with Thirsty Suitors, Outerloop Games is back with its most creative game to date. Dosa Divas is a turn-based RPG in which two sisters take on a nefarious corporation, ride giant mechs, and occasionally stop to cook a meal or two. It's a genre hybrid in the same way that Thirsty Suitors was, but all of its disparate parts feel much more connected now. There's too much to break down in a quick blurb, but I'll call out its great battle system, which plays like a combination of Bravely Default and Paper Mario. I can both stack up turns to perform more powerful attacks and add extra power to my attacks by pressing a button at the right moment. If you love Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, this is another mechanically creative, narrative-driven RPG that should be on your radar. Snap & Grab I've played a lot of heist games, but never one quite like Snap & Grab. This one is all about casing the joint, as I play the role of a woman whose job it is to stake out a loot location and snap photos of every potential obstacle standing in the way of stealing it. The goal of each level is to create a perfect scenario that will allow your accomplice to perform the theft, all by stringing together snapshots in a logical sequence. One heist had me trying to steal a key stuck in an ice statue's hand. By taking photos, I pieced together that I could keep guards occupied while turning up the heat in the mansion to melt the statue. Doing so would give my pal a clear path to get the job done. It's an incredibly clever idea full of heist scenarios that have some immersive sim charm to them, as there isn't just one solution to every problem.
