Andrew Wight

Inscryption is a run-based card battler that’s set in this eerie, escape room-like cabin setting. The card game is simple: various animal-based cards can be drawn from a deck, and higher tiered cards can only be played by sacrificing other animals already in play. Your strategy will balance around which type of cards you have access to because squirrels, who don't need a sacrifice to play, have to be drawn from a separate deck. Runs can change depending on which spaces your character lands on—cards can be sacrificed to make others better, totems can change behaviours of different animal types, and items can be utilized to give you a slight edge. The card battling is engrossing on its own, but the game goes deeper than its surface level presentation. I desperately want to just say screw it and write out every little detail and secret that makes Inscryption such a cool game, but doing so would spoil its most fascinating parts. Yes, it's a run-based card battler at its core, but its hidden secrets can potentially reveal a deeper game. Not every moment hits as well as others—the middle section hinders the game's momentum, and its best parts could easily be missed—but Inscryption is absolutely worth seeing.

Sable is a cool game that’s hampered by countless technical issues. The game features this uniquely beautiful, colourful visual aesthetic that looks like a carton come to life, but it’s really hard to admire when textures constantly flicker, or when the frame rate hitches so hard that it gives me a headache. They did patch the game after release to make it a little better, but the game definitely needed some more time in the oven. Menu navigation is super buggy, and ambient background music would overlap so often that I had to restart the game at least once every session. It sucks that the game is so rough because the rest of it is actually pretty fun. Your main objective is to explore this desolate, post-apocalyptic world and complete various errands in order to discover your true calling. It’s a fairly decent, stress-free experience with no enemies or combat, and is mostly about discovering new things and solving the occasional puzzle—it’s a nice change of pace from your typical action game. It’s legitimately pretty fun and would be an easy recommendation if not its various presentational issues. It’s just unfortunate.

I enjoyed my time with Sword and Shield even though they’re kind of a bummer when you think about it. We’re back to the “defeat all 8 gym leaders and take on the elite four” formula after a slight detour with Sun/Moon, but the story is largely forgettable. Some of the new Pokémon are interesting, but they left out a ton of old fan favourites making the Pokédex a lot smaller than normal. After being on Nintendo’s handhelds for so long I hoped the transition to a home console would result in a more expansive game, but it’s really not. It just feels like a prettied-up version of the Pokémon games we’ve played for years. It’s still fun and features some cool new mechanics like the open Wild Areas and Dynamaxing Pokémon during battles, but it’s just incredibly safe. It’s a decent enough game, I just wish it would have been a little more grandiose.

Metroid Dread is a fantastic, near-perfect realization of the classic, 2D Metroid formula. It’s tight, intense, challenging, and really damn fun. Abilities and weapons are unlocked at a brisk pace which makes the game hard to put down, and it’s much more streamlined than previous games in the series. I loved the upgraded map screen that gives you a ton of useful information, or the pulsing radar that shows you which parts of the map can be destroyed to reveal hidden upgrades. The new impervious E.M.M.I. baddies are a cool new addition that makes the game feel like a horror games in spots, and I really like the surprisingly challenging boss fights. I was disappointed by the sometimes-spotty performance and disappointing soundtrack, and it’s hard to believe that it took almost 20 years for Nintendo to finally make a follow-up to Metroid Fusion, but I can definitely say that Dread is a worthy successor. If you own a Switch you should buy Metroid Dread, no question. It's fantastic.

Snipperclips is a really great, cute co-op game to play with a friend or significant other. You play as a couple of slices of paper and you have to use each other to complete an assortment of puzzles. Sometimes the puzzles will be getting an item from one section to another but most revolve around cutting each other into various shapes. Completing these puzzles take cooperation and had me and girlfriend working together in tandem to complete them all. The controls are pretty simple which allowed us to pick and up and play almost immediately, and the presentation is adorable and very colourful. It’s quite a fun game that feels cleverly designed for the Switch.

For people who never played the original Link's Awakening on the Gameboy, this remake is essentially a brand new Zelda game. It's a faithful remake—the over world has the same layout, dungeons have essentially the same puzzles, and you fight the same bosses. Some of the more obscure ways to progress the story are back too and these could potentially frustrate new players, but Grezzo wanted to stay true to the original game and they definitely succeeded. There are other improvements, like how you can now hold two items at a time in addition to the sword, minimizing the time spent in menus. The new tilt-shift, Fisher Price-looking art style is absolutely adorable, and suits the game perfectly. However, the updated HD visuals comes some weird frame rate issues. The game will often vary from 30 to 60 frames per second, especially in the over world, which is a little disappointing. But it's ultimately a fantastic remake of a classic Zelda game. Because I had never actually finished the original Game Boy game, which could be the case for a lot of other people, this felt like a new Zelda game in 2019, which is pretty rad.

This is a really great update to one of my favourite Resident Evil games. There's a new over-the-shoulder control scheme that feels much more like a modern video game, and it keeps the same tense exploration and puzzle solving that made me fall in love with the original in the late 90s. Zombies feel much more menacing and can sometimes take a handful of bullets to take down, only to get back up 20 seconds later. The way enemies react to your bullets is shockingly brutal—zombies will even crawl around without arms or legs until you eliminate them for good. Other iconic enemies like Lickers and Mr. X make their return, and I really like new, terrifying ways they’ve implemented them into the remake. Classic locations like the Police Station and Umbrella Lab are updated with new passages and doorways that lead to other familiar sections, and I really enjoy the new altered layouts to make more logical sense. I do wish that some extended sections, like the Sewers, were a little less tedious though. But this is a great remake that Resident Evil fans are going to love playing through again, and it’s a game that newcomers will ultimately enjoy as well.

There really isn't much to say about Untitled Goose Game other than the fact that you should absolutely play it. You're aptly put in control of a goose, however the game isn't strictly designed around causing absolute chaos like something akin to Goat Simulator. You still can wreak havoc if you want, but the game is split into a collection of small environments with a checklist of things to complete. The starting section for example, the garden, has you dodging a groundskeeper while you do things like start the radio or turn on the sprinkler. Sometimes the objectives are silly like stealing a little boy's glasses or dressing up a stone bust in someone's backyard. There are some solutions that may take some tinkering to finally figure out, but every section is more clever than the last and I found myself completing almost the entire game in one sitting. The game is visually appealing with a really nice minimal style and the game is really easy to get the hang of. You literally only need to worry about moving, picking up various items with your beak, occasionally consulting your checklist, and honking. I came into the game thinking it was going to be a little too simple, but I ended up really enjoying it. It's also quite funny—even my girlfriend's 3-year-old nephew loves it. And that's really all there is to say—play Untitled Goose Game. Even if you don't want to complete the collection of objectives, just running around and causing havoc is a fun time. It's a game that basically exceeded all of my expectations.