Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Ubisoft Montpellier)
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is an abundance of riches: tight and responsive platforming action, engaging exploration, and gorgeous environments. This meticulously designed game is Ubisoft’s most accessible yet challenging. Ubisoft Montpellier achieved remarkable things with this game.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown shows what big studios can make when their resources and expertise are applied to make a game that takes its inspirations – ancient Persian and Mesopotamian myths – seriously. Play this game in Farsi. – Luis Aguasvivas
See also “Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Represents”.
Princess Peach: Showtime! (Good-Feel, Nintendo)
Princess Peach: Showtime! is the first game to feature the Mushroom Kingdom’s beloved princess as its protagonist since Super Princess Peach in 2005. Princess Peach attends the Sparkle Theater alongside two of her Toads in Showtime!. After the wicked sorceress Grape and her Sour Bunch trap visitors inside the theater, Peach agrees to help the Sparkle Theater’s guardian, Stella, and rescue the stars of all the theater’s plays.
Peach has various transformations and abilities to help with each stage, including Detective Peach, Ninja Peach, and Patisserie Peach. These transformations add variability to the game and make the stages vary to add interest for the player. Notably, Showtime! released the same year as The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, another game that highlights an overlooked heroine in a Nintendo franchise. – Samantha Trzinski
Slitterhead (Bokeh Game Studio)
Slitterhead is a very strange and old-fashioned horror game. The first impression most players will likely get is that they’re playing a low-budget, somewhat buggy title from the PlayStation 2 era. It all makes more sense, though, when you learn this is the latest project from Keiichiro Toyama, the creator of the Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush series. Slitterhead draws inspiration from all of them. “This game is, in a way, a compilation of all of my past experiences,” Toyama explains.
We play as an Enter the Void-like disembodied spirit, capable of possessing nearly any citizen or animal in Kowlong, a fictionalized, Wong Kar-Wai-ish version of Hong Kong overrun by monsters called Slitterheads. These creatures inhabit people in a manner reminiscent of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers franchise, gradually transforming society through their pawns. At the beginning, our primary goal is, of course, to exterminate these grotesque entities, which bear a striking resemblance to the Plaga Guadana from Resident Evil 4.
Toyama has never been afraid to experiment with game mechanics, and Slitterhead is the most daring attempt at “bringing risk and creativity back to triple-A games”. The ability to possess different people’s bodies is a “wow” moment. Later, you’ll encounter a host of Rarities—strong characters with unique weapons and abilities—which introduce a touch of party-based RPG elements to the game. You will need to accept Slitterhead’s clunkiness and technically outdated design to enjoy everything it has to offer fully. The further you progress in Slitterhead‘s story, the more complex the plot becomes, revealing thrilling conspiracies and zeitgeist topics in the vein of Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 body horror film, The Substance. – – Igor Bannikov
Songs of Silence (Chimera Entertainment)
Songs of Silence is a hidden gem. This is surprising since its presentation is so loud and bold, considering that it’s a strategy game, which is typically a reserved and austere style of play. Art Nouveau inspires its gorgeous presentation. Character portraits look like Miksa Róth or Alphonse Mucha drew them; the art is that good. The music by Hitoshi Sakimoto is on par with some of the best Hollywood epics. The game’s mix of real-time and turn-based strategy gives you the freedom to build your armies and expand your domain. You do so to vanquish your foes throughout Songs of Silence’s two worlds.
Despite its flaws (the inconsistent writing and voice acting), Songs of Silence’s glitz and captivating gameplay sing magnificently. Don’t pass this up if you’re looking to test your stratagems. – Luis Aguasvivas
Squirrel With a Gun (DeeDee Creations)
What do you get when you mix a rodent, a secret government facility, and various firearms? DeeDee Creations’ Squirrel with a Gun has a strange but simple premise. The player assumes the role of a squirrel who gets a hold of a gun while infiltrating a secret underground facility. This game shares qualities with other unhinged animal-themed games, especially Goat Simulator, and its nonsensicality makes it an enjoyable and light-hearted game.
Squirrel with a Gun is mainly about solving puzzles and fighting secret agents. To find all the golden acorns hidden throughout the game and the various collectable accessories, the player must solve puzzles and interact with the environment. The player must also defeat various agents that roam the open environment and fight the final bosses, lovingly named Daddy and Mother. Though these bosses can be a bit difficult, the ability to roam around a neighborhood as an armed squirrel helps the player decompress after such trying fights. – Samantha Trzinski
Stellar Blade (Shift Up)
When Shift Up announced Stellar Blade, many gamers perceived it as a clone of Yoko Taro’s NieR: Automata and a pinnacle of objectification and the male gaze in games. The discussion around the latter stemmed from the appearance of the protagonist, a soldier named Eve, raised to fight against creatures called Naytiba that have overrun Earth. However, most concerns about her sex appeal faded when players saw just how good the game was… and remembered the video game character Bayonetta.
Game director Kim Hyung-tae and his team at Shift Up have crafted a game that captures the pure essence of Taro’s vision, with slight additions from the Soulslike and Metroidvania genres. Stellar Blade looks almost like NieR, plays similarly to NieR, and even includes an official NieR: Automata downloadable content, allowing players to dress up as its main characters—2B, 9S, and A2. While the original masterpiece remains unsurpassed, the absence of new NieR installments and the sudden shutdowns of NieR Reincarnation and 404 Game Re:set make Stellar Blade the best chance for Yoko Taro’s fans to stay entertained. – Igor Bannikov
Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (Snoozy Kazoo)
Snoozy Kazoo is back at it with Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, the sequel to the beloved 2020 cult classic Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. This game also centers around the titular Turnip Boy and takes place in the aftermath of the previous game. However, Turnip Boy has grown more rotten, and works with the Pickled Gang to rob the bank. Though the game can stand on its own, it is heavily referential, so a revisit to the first game in the series would greatly benefit the player.
In Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, the player infiltrates the local bank and tries to grab as much cash as possible in the few minutes before the police arrive. Although the overall layout of the bank stays the same with each run, various rooms in it change, leading to different experiences and playthroughs. This roguelike game differs from its predecessor. Whereas Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion was essentially a plot-driven RPG, this game is a dungeon crawler. – Samantha Trzinski
Zenless Zone Zero (HoYoverse)
If you want to scare any gamer away from a new video game, tell them it’s a Gacha game or has Gacha mechanics. However, this is the fastest-growing genre right now. In the last few years, we’ve seen plenty of solid projects in this niche: Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Tower of Fantasy, Wuthering Waves—you name it. Gacha systems are also incorporated into several popular single-player games, from Fire Emblem Heroes and Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent to Tears of the Kingdom and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. With potential blockbusters like Infinity Nikki, which was recently released, and Grand Theft Auto/Marvel’s Spider-Man-inspired Project Mugen on its way, it’s only a matter of time before we all move into the Gacha world.
Zenless Zone Zero is the latest and one of the most successful iterations of this type of game released recently. This action RPG comes from the champions of this genre, the creators of Genshin Impact—miHoYo, also known as Hoyoverse. Set in the last post-apocalyptic city, New Eridu, which exists on the edge of corrupting zones called Hollows, flooded with monsters known as Ethereals, it tells the story of two siblings, Belle and Wise. They work as Proxies, illegally helping various Agents armed with big guns and sharp blades as they navigate the Hollows using cute robopets called Bangboos.
By its gameplay, Zenless Zone Zero consists of two parts: in the first, you are free to navigate different districts of the city, chatting with its very talkative citizens, playing mini-games, and picking up various quests; the second focuses on fast-paced battles in different Hollow zones, where you control three Agents at a time. This is where the Gacha magic kicks in. You can play the game without worrying about what that term means, but the most exciting and challenging part of the gameplay comes when you try to get new characters that are more powerful, gorgeously designed, and animated. This can be done only through the genre’s common mechanic of randomized pulls. The problem is that you need unique in-game resources to pull a new character, which you can either buy or grind by playing Zenless Zone Zero for most of your free time. – Igor Bannikov