Critical Round-Up Volume I

I’ve sat on some opinions about a handful of games, most of which released in the hell year that was 2020, for a while now. This is owed largely to having being previously occupied by other concerns – professional and personal – as well as not feeling inclined to dedicate whole articles to them (at the very least, not while the pay for such work is... limited, let’s say).

However, that ends now. I’ve decided to compile these together as a kind of loose round-up of sorts, a highlight reel of the highs and lows of a year in gaming where so much went wrong... but sometimes a few things turned out alright. 

Before we go any further: if you enjoy this piece and want to support the creation of more work like it, please consider checking out (and potentially signal-boosting) the Kurt of Cambridge Ko-Fi and Paypal pages. With that out of the way, LET'S BEGIN.

Carrion

So this is easily the best thing Devolver Digital has published since Hotline Miami.

The remarkable simplicity of the game's core conceit - "What if YOU got to control the eldritch creature running rampant in a sci-fi horror flick?" - masks a far more involved variant on the Metroidvania subgenre. In Carrion the aim isn't simply to run amok and consume the poor helpless humans, but rather to grow in strength by finding and absorbing new upgrades from containment tanks. And then use those upgrades to more efficiently consume the poor helpless humans.

Though the central creature's increasing size and maw-adorned mass do grow a bit cumbersome to guide through some of the more compact subterranean passages, it's worth it to witness just how truly ruthless and messy the Carrion beast dispatches its prey. There's something grotesque yet undeniably satisfying about the spray of pixelated blood and viscera across industrial corridors and devastated laboratories.

 

Panzer Dragoon Remake

Knowing the realities of the business, such as the value placed on brand recognition over innovation or experimentation, sometimes means recognizing that a project's inevitably a victim of the "rock and a hard place" dilemma. That's my primary theory as to why the remake of Panzer Dragoon, more akin to a decently-budgeted remaster, exists in the form that it does.

Strictly speaking, it doesn't do anything entirely wrong. The narrative is arch and thinly drawn but it at least stays out of the action's way, the rail-shooter gameplay itself moves at a good pace while keeping enemy encounters varied and the hodge-podge that is Panzer Dragoon's aesthetic choices are fascinating if nothing else. Except that was the case in the original game, and this alleged remake hits every beat and every note with no deviation from its predecessor.

The greater detail to level backgrounds can't distract from how lacking in quality-of-life improvements the familiar Dragoon gameplay is here. Similarly, the sheer fidelity to the first instalment - for good or ill - feels like a poor substitute for bolder, more outside-the-box directorial choices that might have made the whole endeavour worthwhile. Then again, rock and a hard place - perhaps the safe bet was also the reliably profitable one.

Star Wars Squadrons

Even though it still feels as though we're in 'Good Enough Star Wars' territory where the games are concerned, this marks the strongest effort Electronic Arts has made to date.

Evocative specifically of the mission-by-mission progression and military-centric focus of the X-Wing titles, Squadrons makes solid use of familiar design cues to deliver space combat thrills. The variety in mission objectives and options in starship selection keep the short campaign compelling, and the choice to integrate the more technical side of space flight into the combat ends up granting gameplay a distinctly engrossing feel.

Squadrons' polished variation on old ideas also extends to the narrative, where the most interesting material lays on the margins of the otherwise adequate-but-unexceptional main plot. I like the rapport of the Republic squad and appreciate the nuances afforded to their Imperial counterparts, but much of this is pre- and post-mission fluff that has little in-story bearing or payoff. The action and banter is quite enthralling, yet it feels as though Squadrons is running in place while the rest of the franchise decides on its path forward.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

As someone who walked away from The Witcher 2 basically satisfied but mildly underwhelmed, my experience diving into Wild Hunt was akin to a light switch suddenly flipping on. "Oh, so THAT'S what an all-the-way good one of these plays like!"

Perhaps it's the liberation of a wide-open fantasy land, ripe with monster hunting contracts and packed to the brim with collectable loot galore. Perhaps it's the interplay between the mostly (though thankfully not always) stoic Geralt of Rivia and his friends, acquaintances, rivals, foes and assorted passers-by. Perhaps it's the quite intricate systems dedicated to weapon, armour, potion, bomb and magical oil crafting.

Or maybe it's on account of how any given player of sufficiently enterprising nature can run off to slay a cyclops, ride back into town to coerce the local merchant into a round of the far-too-compulsively-playable Gwent card game, and then charge off to go deal with the surprisingly heartrending main plot concerning the coming-of-age (and final fate) of a vital character.