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Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash tries to clean up the series but just makes a mess

“The original Chibi-Robo! featured a recurring trope from Japanese comedy—a washpan falling on the lead character’s head for no particular reason. While this superfluous little gag has disappeared from the series’ later entries, it would’ve been a perfect fit for Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash, a new entry that sees the developers throwing everything but the kitchen sink at our tiny robot friend. Were this done with a sense of ambition, an attempt to get as much mileage out of the tiny swashbuckling robot as possible, that cavalier design sense might have been admirable. Instead, it’s a game that feels like it never decides what it wants to be and suffers for that indecision.”

Mushroom 11’s clever goo-based puzzles triumph over its stiff challenges

“For all the comparisons to older games like Portal or Braid or even the similarly slime-based World Of Goo, Mushroom 11 is never anything less than its own game, with a unique approach to physics and a clear understanding of all the fun things players can accomplish with it. Its real triumph, though, is in how it coaxes players to discover all of its little tricks and quirks via level and puzzle design that never dips below being consistently, delightfully intelligent. Considering that it’s only the second game from a relatively untested team, it’s a fantastic PC debut, and one that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as other members of that aforementioned physics puzzler hall of fame.”

The Taken King is Destiny at its addictive best—and worst

“And to keep up with the virtual Joneses, here I am in the Dreadnaught dutifully gambling for new gear. This cold, sinister ship feels more like a palace imagined by Slayer than Caesar’s Palace, but then again—both are dark, windowless places full of elaborately constructed Skinner boxes. At some point, it dawns on me that my new friends-in-loot and I have become the sad souls playing the dollar slots in Vegas at 2 a.m.—sitting alone with watered-down drinks in hand, blank faces peering into a screen, moving only to insert another token and pull the lever. But so what. They can’t stop, and I can’t stop, and none of us can stop and oh god, will I hit it big tonight?”

The Beginner’s Guide wants intimacy, but then again, we’re all so alone

“The feeling of connection might be an illusion, though, and that tension is what gives The Beginner’s Guide its strongest moments. Even as it reaches out from within its prisons, it won’t let you forget the bars. If it is a desperate desire to be known and understood, then its intentions come fraught with the same doubts as any authentic relationship. How do we even know that Wreden is telling the truth? Perhaps there is no other developer, and it’s all just an elaborate morality play—one more preachy indie game designed to get under the player’s skin.”

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer won’t judge your decorating quirks

“The local yokels’ lobotomized satisfaction with whatever passes before their eyes is unnerving at first. In order to test whether it was even possible to produce something one of them would reject, I began putting toilets right next to clients’ beds, but they were never less than deliriously happy with my work. Bedroom toilets became something of a design signature. At first this seemed vaguely patronizing, as if the game was giving me a pat on the head and saying ‘Great job with that toilet placement, buddy!’ Eventually, though, I realized I was being met half way, that Animal Crossing respected my avant-garde vision of indoor plumbing. There’s no wrong way to play with Happy Home Designer, and that cheery everybody-gets-a-prize attitude is infectious.”

The Mad Max video game has a lot to say, but it’s best when silent

“Max’s monastic negation of self is thwarted at every step by a near-identical series of missions all dutifully performed for the promise of new and better gear. Because man, that upgraded bumper sure does look sweet and might be just the thing you need to finally reach The Plains Of Silence and leave the ghosts of your loved ones behind. Wisely, the game’s Max is not modeled after Tom Hardy’s or Mel Gibson’s visage. If Avalanche had imbued Max with a distinct personality as well, a Max who is a little hungrier for companionship or a little less desperate for escape, the game world would make much more sense. ”

Panoramical puts you in control of gorgeous, living musical landscapes

“Panoramical invites players to dive into the core elements of a song and fiddle with them. Every adjustment to the song alters the environment accordingly and vice-versa. Mountains rise and form peaks as you adjust the bass. Clouds part as you tweak the synth. Lightning crashes with the snare drum. There are no princesses to save or treasures to collect—just a landscape and music. What makes this a game more than an instrument, though, is that it all funnels into a sense of play, of trying different things until you find what’s right for you.”

N++ proves you can have too much of a good thing

“Maybe N++ needs to be consumed in short jaunts—pop in for a quick platforming fix and hop out when your eyes start to bleed. The core of it, after all, is trimmed to near perfection. Its sprawl, though, invites long play sessions and the short individual stages fuel a dangerous “just one more, just one more” fervor. A quick jaunt can easily turn into twitchy marathon, and before you know it, you’re anxious and grimy and feeling like you woke up somewhere disconcerting after a long bender. Looking at the progress page after a session, that silly 3,000 percent completion number feels less like a friendly joke and more like a snarky challenge: “How much can you handle?” N++ seems to be asking. It might not be a challenge you want to meet.”

The new King’s Quest has its charms, but it begs, borrows, and steals most of them

“A Knight To Remember is not—and was not built to be—a blockbuster. Instead, it’s designed to stoke the nostalgia centers of fans’ brainstems, immediately doubling down on the appeal of the good old days. It takes place in a frame story: The aging King Graham cannot leave his bed, and so summons his granddaughter Gwendolyn to listen to the tale of how he defeated four other hopefuls to become a knight to the kingdom of Daventry. That’s right—the storyline of this throwback game is literally about an old man being nostalgic.”

Batman: Arkham Knight is another journey out in the cowl—oh, and there’s a car now

“Batman: Arkham Knight works as a piece of summer blockbuster entertainment, even if it’s not always pulling its weight as a game about being Batman. Its blend of “things that have been done” and “things that aren’t worth doing” is safe, just another turn in the wheel of the World’s Greatest Detective. There will be a comfort in that for some. Others, who would find it tiring, have probably already moved on. I expect some will do as I did and bounce from one opinion to the other as the game’s joys ebb and flow, end up somewhere in the middle, and start fantasizing about the next inevitable reboot. And so the cycle continues.”

What’s your favorite game of 2015 so far?

The year is half over, so you know what that means! It’s time for the Gameological staff to check in and deliver their favorite games of the year so far. What’s yours?

A 300-year war drags on in Double Fine’s Massive Chalice

“A hero’s death in combat is permanent, but considering how often they die of natural causes, it’s hard to get attached in the same way you might to soldiers in similar tactics games like XCOM or Fire Emblem. I wish Massive Chalice had done more to make me feel those deaths. The game’s stylized art only leaves room for some vague similarities in looks to remind me that I’ve got a family fighting together. Considering that many of my teammates were related, perhaps heroes could have mourned for a fallen sister or child. There’s bound to be some disconnect with the mortal world when you live forever, but I could have used a reminder why this war is worth spending 300 years to win.”

A dedication to hostility keeps The Witcher 3 cohesive despite its sprawl

“Wild Hunt is viciously hostile. Hostility infects every element like a poison and unites them with a common sickness. Most characters you meet, except for Geralt’s small cabal of friends, despise you. Villagers will insult you to your face or spit at you as you pass, even as they plead with you to save them from the horrors that torment them. The villages you see on your map are as likely to be charred ruins as bustling trade hubs where displaced refugees sob uncontrollably. Even the environments are informed by that same inescapable brutality, being mostly wind-blasted heaths and inhospitable swamps that stretch out eternally like Egon Schiele landscapes freed from their canvases. Wild Hunt’s world is often beautiful to behold, but only because it beautifully frames its own ferocious ugliness.”

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood backs away fromThe New Order’s strengths and into the past

“But potato-masher garnish aside, there isn’t really too much here that you can’t already get in The New Order. One other problem might be that The Old Blood tries a little too hard to bridge the gap between the original Wolfenstein games and the new. With touches like the grindhouse-flavored title screen, The Old Blood feels like it wants to take a step back from the things that made The New Order a success and instead opt for an homage to the drop-ceiling hell of Wolfenstein 3D. I loved Tim Burton’s version of Batman too, but it would be a mistake to give him the keys to Gotham in 2015. Sometimes it’s okay to leave the past in the past.”

Not A Hero wants you to embrace its hyperactive hyper-violence

“In most games, the belief that you can solve all your problems with violence is only implicit. Here, it’s the central and oft-shouted conceit. Not A Hero isn’t trying to denounce that attitude, though. There’s not much bite to its criticism, and it seems to love the things it’s making fun of as much as anyone. To its more serious cousin, Hotline Miami, it would have mostly kind words. Not A Herowould tell it to stop fronting. To that end, the title, Not A Hero, isn’t a condemnation. It’s permission to stop pretending this is anything other than what it is. You want to fuck shit up? Okay, let’s do this.”

Boss fights are the only fights in the refreshingly restrained Titan Souls

A long lost Nintendo music game resurfaces for anyone to play

In 1993, Nintendo and Toshio Iwai, the artist who would later design Electroplankton and Yamaha’s Tenori-on, came together to make a game called Sound Fantasy. The innovative music game was close to release, and would have been packaged with a Super NES mouse. For whatever reason, Nintendo pulled the plug, and the unfinished project has eluded historians and fans—until now.