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If you are looking for a personality soaked nostalgia piece, that is as charming as it is challenging, then 8Days should fit the bill quite nicely. Though far from perfect, its charm helps cut through the frustrating quirks and lackluster checkpoint system. For some reason, even war crimes are more fun in 8-bit. So channel your inner Rambo, and stock up on ammo. You’ve got lots of cursing to do.

Anima: Gate of Memories is a crushing disappointment. There are plenty of places where the love Anima Project’s team has for its world is evident, but they’re buried under an avalanche of stunningly poor design choices. Being forced to listen to the terrible voice acting and relentlessly unfunny humor of protagonist Ergo made me wish for his quick and agonizing death — but even he’s not as painful as the game’s punishingly poor level design. Maybe there’s a way to make the world of this tabletop RPG fun and interesting when translated to the video game medium, but the developers sure didn’t find it this time around.

Aragami is an interesting mix of genres. The experience is unfortunately dragged down a few notches by performance issues, though those will hopefully go away in the form of patches. With a campaign hovering around the dozen hour mark, and one which includes online Co-op, stealth fans will find their next fix in Aragami, for a reasonable asking price of $19.99/£19.99/€14.99. It’s a solid, stealth action game which should provide for an entertaining weekend full of quiet kills and stalking in the shadows.

In some ways, Arise: A Simple Story is perfectly named because it forgoes traditional dialogue or text-based narration for visual storytelling. However, through the inventive environmental game design that pushes the narrative forward to its well-realized and emotional conclusion, there is a complexity to Arise that left me misty-eyed by its affecting story of love and loss.

Don’t let Baboon!’s welcoming guise fool you, there’s a steep difficulty curve lurking beneath the game’s cartoon aesthetic. In fact, we’d even go so far as to say that it isn’t a title you’ll fall in love with immediately; rather, Relevo Videogames’ puzzle platformer demands your perseverance. With time and just the right amount of patience, you’ll discover that the studio’s effort is one of Vita’s more pleasant surprises rather than simply existing as a bright, breezy and forgettable comic strip

Blasphemous 2 is more ambitious than its predecessor with its fleshed-out swordplay and cleaner dedication to the search action genre. And while these additions give Blasphemous 2 more of an identity, they also give it more room to stumble. Said deeper combat is sticky and held back by its dedication to being adjacent to the soulslike genre. Its narrative tries to broaden the game’s world but suffers because of its lack of a solid recap and overreliance on cryptic storytelling. It’s an artistically sublime world but seemingly pays penitence with its uneven gameplay.

Clid the Snail is a lot of really interesting ideas executed in a way that feels really rough around the edges. It’s almost there in many ways, but some quality of life issues and design choices hold back the unique concept. Its brilliant art and character design is masked by some hazy aesthetic choices. Its “methodical” combat often ends up more cumbersome and overwhelming than tactical. An interesting story, world, and mystery, however, helped to keep my interest despite these issues. If you love taking a chance on weird ideas—and that key art of Clid with his gun caught your attention—it’s worth experiencing Clid’s world, but be prepared for a number of speedbumps along the way.

Crossing Souls has a bunch of elements that should be right up my alley, but some flat writing and uninspired design really keeps it from hitting the desired marks. There’s a good idea here, and I have no doubt that a teen adventure starring ghosts and Egyptian Gods could be really dope, but a cool concept doesn’t make a great game. Instead, it just makes the end result all the more disappointing.

Evil Dead: The Game has a ton of appeal to fans of the horror franchise, while also offering up a good deal of gameplay for players who may not be so familiar with it. The resource management aspect to playing as a demon is intriguing, and for those who aren’t so good at strategizing, playing against AI is always an option to hone your skills. Occasional glitches take some of the shine off, and no checkpoints in the single player missions is a baffling decision. Can such a game grow long enough legs with the ever-popular games as a service model? Only time will tell. But for an asking price of $39.99, there is enough content at launch to appease most fans.

While I understand it’s trying to emulate the movie, this ultimately makes Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son not any fun to play. Having to repeat the same tedious, overly lengthy, and often difficult, minigames over and over is just not fun. While I can say I was impressed with the storytelling and voice acting, and it really did feel a lot of effort went into making the game feel just like the movie. I just wish it was actually fun to play.

From an accessibility standpoint, however, HIVE: Altenum Wars does little to make the player feel welcome, and even less still to reward their perseverance in staying. It feels very much like an alpha gameplay demo for a game years down the pipeline. HIVE is a shooter that misses the mark almost entirely, but does, at the very least, provide a very solid foundation upon which Catness Games could build something truly special with more time spent iterating and refining the process.

Immortal Redneck is ultimately a simple, fun game that is hard to master. Constantly replaying the same pyramid in order to progress sounds repetitive on the surface, but randomizing various key aspects changes things up enough to ensure the trip stays varied. Tongue-in-cheek humor with some of the weapons, but especially on literal objects such as the skill tree, help to dial down some of the frustrations of grabbing the occasional bad random scroll. All of this is packaged up in a sleek, cheap ($19.99) download and buttery-smooth, consistent frame rate that keeps the action going. Immortal Redneck is a good buy for those looking for a challenging arcade shooter that keeps things fresh.

Infernium attempts to pay homage to older games, and mostly leaves the player alone to discover the world on their own. Problem is, many of the connections between levels only make sense to the developer, and while the game’s scares may cause a good jump or two, they are easy to see coming after the first few times. Permadeath is a mechanic few games use these days, but when dying in a game is this agonizing involving multiple loading screens, the player may almost welcome obtaining a game over since it’s the last time they’ll see that purgatory.

Moonlighter is going to be a game you’ll pick up, play, and instantly want to tell your friends all about. It encourages discussion – how much a certain item costs, how to navigate the metagame of the increasingly tricky Resident Evil 4-style inventory system with its cursed items requiring a shuffle of your bag – and feels like, honestly, the endgame of all roguelikes. After that, there isn’t much more the genre can hope to accomplish. It’s all here in one gloriously gratifying package that will have you coming back for more, more, and more again. An incredible dungeon crawler with a cutesy consumerist twist that’ll provide you with some of 2018’s best moments – and capital fun it is, too.

Solo: Islands of the Heart is perhaps the most introspective game to release this year. The gameplay may not have much to do with the story, but the puzzles are decent roadblocks on the journey. The whole adventure will only take most gamers 4-6 hours to complete, and while that may feel like enough for the price ($19.99) for some, just as the puzzles start to get more challenging, the game is over. Fans of puzzle games may want to check out Solo: Islands of the Heart, but those who are expecting a major challenge will probably want to look elsewhere.

When it comes to love letters to an era of gaming long since passed, you would be hard pressed to find something more heartfelt than The Sexy Brutale. It offers up a modern take on an extremely dated design, all made palatable with the help of time-travel. While this affectionate note may have a few typos, mainly in the form of puzzles with obtuse leaps in logic, it’s hardly enough to detract from the deep-seeded sincerity sprinkled throughout the experience. This is one sexy experience, indeed.

That said, there’s really something here to enjoy in They Are Billions. Taken as a whole, it is an entirely new and interesting take on genres that are as old as gaming. Billions has such great moments at times that it’s rather surprising that these genres hadn’t been smashed together already. Billions leaves plenty to be desired everywhere else though—in visual fidelity, art direction, sound design, and even game balance. Clearly, this is a first step on a new and mysterious frontier. Hopefully, not the last.

Still, for only $15, Ziggurat is a pretty amazing game. It looks beautiful, offers a great deal of replay value, and features wizards in a badass way. There are a large number of spells and upgrades to choose from, and each playthrough literally brings new and exciting features into the game. If you haven’t already downloaded Ziggurat, you probably should think about doing so.