Showing 1-10 of 100 items
01/01. Ninth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. Nothing like power washing the previous year's collected grime away and starting over fresh. PowerWash Simulator is the acme of "why is all this busywork so compelling?" game design, as you take a high-powered hose and clean the heck out of some mucky buildings and vehicles. A genial sense of humor, an escalating story happening in the background, and a simple and pleasant interface all contribute too, of course, but the pure fun gameplay strikes me as the realization of a dream that Super Mario Sunshine didn't quite manage to fulfil. (5 Stars.)
02/01. Eleventh game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. A narrative-heavy adventure game with an RPG affectation, I guess is what I'd reduce it to, where you can spend dice rolls on actions to progress various questlines as well as keep your android body nourished and maintained as you attempt to survive on a ring-like space station hub while staying one step ahead of your former corporate owners. Not quite as stressful as it sounds if you're the FOMO type who usually dislikes the "hard decision" approach to branching video game narratives. I found the writing and the dice roll system to be equally compelling features and I'm thankful there's still games like this pushing the boundaries for the type of stories only video games can tell (or at least tell in this specific way). (5 Stars.)
07/01. The three-hundred-and-first Indie Game of the Week. It was great to revisit this universe and its appealing characters, even if most of the new cast introduced here are kinda dicks, and the game still has a knack for exciting and inventive platforming levels set inside the minds of its more troubled characters. In many ways it's a little too beholden to the 2005 original, especially with how hoary the combat and platforming gameplay can feel, but I'll instantly fall in love with any 3D platformer that has this many collectibles to find and the imaginative and amusing story around it is icing on the cake. (4 Stars.)
10/01. Twelfth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. An action-RPG that does away with loot and complex skill trees and has you jumping from one form to another while also jumping through hoops to complete some very specific and demanding goals for each in order to unlock their true potential. DrinkBox's inimitable style is also on full display here, as grossly cute as anything from their previous Severed, and though it could get repetitive and annoying at times (getting kicked out of one of its 20-minute long procgen dungeons near the end, for example) I admire the ingenuity of its novel approach to character development and its dark sense of humor. (4 Stars.)
14/01. The three-hundred-and-second Indie Game of the Week. Another emotional adventure game from Sigono's Opus series, Echo of Starsong is a bit more like an animated movie than the relatively static previous two and has you follow a ragtag crew of explorers and scavengers as they make a name for themselves in a region of space still trying to recover from a long and drawn-out conflict over resources. Interactive elements boil down to making hard decisions that may help or hinder your dwindling supplies along with some mild exploration and mini-games. The point isn't so much the gameplay as it is being immersed in this world, its lore, and the love triangle romance between its principal cast members. Striking and beautiful. (4 Stars.)
16/01. Thirteenth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. A cheap and cheerful escape room game that puts the screws on you with its timers, though you're never really in danger of running out of time given how easy the game can be. A great introduction to escape rooms for anyone unsure about them before they plop money down for the real thing and embarrass themselves in front of a date or their friends. This is, after all, a learning academy. (4 Stars.)
20/01. The three-hundred-and-third Indie Game of the Week. Image and Form take a moment away from their SteamWorld setting of sapient robots making their fortunes in a hostile universe to focus on Rani and Becks, two salvagers who chance upon the find of a lifetime with an alien world filled with valuables (including a potentially lucrative power supply) that's also being beset by a strange organic menace they refer to as the titular "Gunk". It's a short, compact action-adventure game with some brief (and uninteresting) combat to break up a lot of otherwise fine platforming and exploration. If you wished more games had something similar to Metroid Prime's scanning, The Gunk has what you're looking for. (4 Stars.)
21/01. Fourteenth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. An absurdly addictive "reduced" dual-stick shooter that took the internet by storm ever since the early access version released late in 2021. Since all your weapons are automatically firing at set intervals, your only task is to weave around the hordes of vaguely Castlevania beasties collecting their XP drops while making good judgements on the level-up perks. The game has its deeper waters to explore, including weapon evolutions and secret unlocks, and there's content to keep you occupied for many hours; however, the game's true appeal is in how much it makes you feel invincible during a good run. A hard game to put down. (5 Stars.)
25/01. Fifteenth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. A Louisianan-bound adventure game set in the near future, where enhanced technology isn't necessarily making life any easier for its titular region's residents as they continue to struggle against adverse weather and corporate greed. Throwing the player into a shaggy dog story that escalates to something beyond ridiculous, the game occasionally grounds itself with its family drama and bleak outlook creating an intriguing dichotomy that might not be to everyone's tastes but was to mine. Remarkably accessible for an old-school point-and-click adventure game too, so don't get scared off if you weren't raised on Sierra and LucasFilm classics. (5 Stars.)
27/01. The three-hundred-and-fourth Indie Game of the Week. A rare 3D explormer set inside the computer mind of an enormous machine superintelligence, working on fixing its critical systems one at a time while collecting decades-old chat logs between the AI and a small group of scientists working on a means for humanity to colonize outer space before the planet they're on becomes completely unlivable due to an ongoing war. It can be a little bit saturnine at times but Recompile keeps you busy with its third-person shooter combat and a whole lot of platforming: trouble is, neither side of this equation is all that interesting (until you get the OP final power-ups that mostly render them moot regardless), the bosses often too tough, and the level geometry too sterile and dark. (3 Stars.)
