I love a good first-person speedboat. I don’t need to shoot, but sometimes it’s nice to get a sword or a big whip. As long as I immerse myself in the adventure. I think that’s the big theme of my selection box: being rooted in my player character. I wanted to feel what it was like to hike through a canyon with too much loot to sell. I wanted to park my soul in the mind of a scared Scotsman, far beyond his depths and hundreds of miles from the coast. The more comfortable I can be in a character’s shoes, the more I seem to fit into the world they inhabit. Even if the world continues to shine with brilliant scarlet.

Delusions of fear

We have no shortage of PS1-style horror games. The second half of the year saw Threshold, Gargling, Hollow and Sorry We’re Closing. But one game has escaped the shackles of Early Access and applied the aesthetics of that era to another nostalgic genre: open-world fantasy role-playing games. Paranoia is immediately and intentionally reminiscent of the Elder Scrolls games of old (especially when you start in a prison cell), but one of its great strengths is that it confidently builds its own weird and wonderful world without the classic of goblins, orcs and elves. Here, the gods are ugly beasts with ulterior motives, and the king is a clockwork lunatic. It all looks strange, filled with trembling culminations of another realm; hostile creatures wear masks for their lack of humanity, steam-powered agricultural machinery walks on spider legs, and is often insane. If you’re itching to explore a strange new world on foot (or by airship, as in the second half of the game), then definitely consider stepping into this hell of a handcrafted marvel.

Indiana Jones and the Circle

In preparation for our review of this pretty good first-person exploration game, I watched Indiana Jones and Dial of Destiny. After the LaBeouf disaster of Crystal Skull , I didn’t have high expectations, but came away strangely satisfied. very good! They went to cooler country, jumped on some wet rocks, got soaked to the bone, and connected everything with weird gibberish that couldn’t be explained by science or logic. It doesn’t replace Crusades as my favorite in the series (and probably never will), but it’s definitely good enough for a quiet night of mindless thinking.

Indiana Jones and The Circle do pretty much the same thing, but spread out over many days. It’s an expensive blockbuster with all the skill and ability (and fascist punches) you’d expect from the men in Wolfenstein. It has huge levels, tons of secret areas, and photogenic cats. While my heart is with the scrappy underdogs of the gaming industry, sometimes I just want perfect lighting and Hollywood-level acting between open-ended missions that allow me to defeat Nazis behind the scenes of my game. collision. What I like most is that you rarely need to use a gun – every fight is best handled with your own fists, but it helps that you use the shatterable debris around you. At one particular moment, I fired Indy’s revolver as a sword-wielding enemy charged toward me. What could be more exciting than Indiana Jones?

Dragon’s Dogma 2

This is the first reason I listed: it neatly limits your use of fast travel. To me, a game that allows you to instantly switch between any old cave or mine with no meaningful restrictions would struggle to simulate a realistic journey. This is especially important in fantasy role-playing games, which often claim to take players on a grand adventure. I won’t repeat my reasoning, I’ve already written about this, and I won’t be the first nor the last person to harp on this. Suffice to say, when playing Dragon’s Dogma 2, I often felt like I was on a real mission. Getting from one place to another feels very demanding of coins or energy. If you want to go from town to town, there are always bullock carts. Enterprising players will be able to build their own travel “network” using smart crystals. But overall, you’re messing around. It gives everything more weight. Often, you literally have to watch your inventory carefully now, not to mention be careful when day turns to night.

The second reason it’s on my list is this: You can piggyback anyone and wall them off.

Steam World Heist 2

Well, this is not an immersive game. This is bullet snooker on the high seas. But it’s still an adventure. If you haven’t played the previous Steamheist, it’s basically a cartoon XCOM from the side. It’s a better little strategy game, and in this sequel, everything has been polished and made even better. In the overworld map, you sail around, scavenging delicacies from the wreckage of the tropical (and sometimes frozen) ocean while sinking enemy ships. But in close quarters combat, you’ll enter hideouts and warehouses, bounce bullets off walls, and hurl bouncy grenades and other gadgets to clear the map or escape the room with your new friendly crew. Your enemies are diesel robots, implying that they’re dirty pollutants, but whether your steam robots are powered by coal doesn’t seem to be addressed. This is just one of the quirks of this ongoing fictional realm that spans a surprising number of genres. I still consider SteamWorld Dig 2 to be my favorite game in the series, a one-and-done game that’s thoroughly enjoyable, but this ripoff comes very, very close.

Still awakening the abyss

Still Waking Abyss has incredibly good voice acting. Scottish accents in video games are often forced on dwarves, or bundled with an Irish accent to make up for the lack of Viking islanders. But here we see a group of Scottish oil drillers battling a physical terror of a magnitude that none of them can comprehend. As a game, it’s a highly polished, cinematic first-person corridor dash with some classic monster dodging and environmental puzzles that don’t weigh too much on you. But atmospherically, this is a well-crafted piece. Rain and other weather effects make every trip to the deck an uneasy, wet, grim experience. Each monster is a twisted version of a crew member you’ve talked to and known (if only briefly) before. The terrifying glittery substance that permeates the entire outfit will leave you in a constant, low-burning state of unease. Mechanically, there’s nothing super new in any of this. But it takes you through an unfamiliar environment with such attention to detail and has such great voice work that I really don’t mind.