The Devil in Me

The Devil in Me is the grand finale to “season one” of The Dark Pictures Anthology. While it’s larger in scope than the previous games and unquestionably boasts the greatest technical leap in the series, it feels like that came at the expense of the story. That doesn’t mean it was bad, because it wasn’t. There’s very little in the game that I would call bad, but also very little I’d call great. It’s a decent entry in the series, but the high point of season one remains House of Ashes.

House of Ashes

House of Ashes is the third game in the The Dark Pictures Anthology, after Medan of Medan and Little Hope. The first two games were fun but flawed, and the premise of House of Ashes seemed a bit lackluster… but it ended up being the strongest game so far, showing that Supermassive is not content to rest on its laurels and is aiming to improve with each iteration of the series.

The game takes place in Iraq in 2003, near the beginning of the US occupation shortly after Saddam Hussein was deposed. We (mostly) play as a group of US military operatives searching for WMDs. However, during a skirmish with some Iraqi soldiers in a small village, a chasm in the ground opens up, causing members from both sides to fall into the ruins of a long-forgotten Sumerian temple. The former enemies will need to learn to work together to overcome the horrors of the ruins if they want to have any hope of returning to the surface....

Little Hope

Four college students and their professor are involved in a bus crash on a field trip, dumping them outside the small town of Little Hope in the middle of the night. Thankfully there are no serious injuries, but things become strange when a mysterious fog prevents them from heading away from town. With no other options, they venture into Little Hope—where they see mysterious visions of the past and are chased by monsters. As a result, the group must investigate their strange connection to the town while staying alive long enough to find help.

Man of Medan

The elevator pitch for Man of Medan (and The Dark Pictures Anthology) as a whole is that it’s a horror B-movie you can play. If you’ve played Until Dawn or The Quarry, you should already have a pretty good idea of what Man of Medan is like (they’re all made by the same company, Supermassive), although Man of Medan is a bit shorter and more focused on co-op. Man of Medan isn’t an amazing game, but does what it sets out to do, and beggars can’t be choosers within the realm of branching co-op horror narrative adventure games.

Man of Medan begins with four friends who have chartered a small boat for a vacation going diving in the South Pacific. However, things quickly go south (Pacific) when the group is attacked by pirates, and then brought to a ghost ship known as the Ourang Medan that allegedly houses “Manchurian Gold.” The group must contend with both the pirates and something far more sinister if they wish to escape the ship with their lives… (As a side note, “Ourang Medan” roughly translates to “Man of Medan,” so the title doesn’t refer to an actual person.)

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is a isometric action-adventure puzzle game. The story involves Lara finding an ancient Mayan artifact, the Mirror of Smoke, which releases Xolotl, an evil spirit bent on destroying the world, as well as Totec, the titular Guardian of Light. Lara and Totec team up to track down Xolotl and save the world. The plot is pretty basic because the focus is on gameplay, where the game delivers on its promise of a fun co-op adventure.

Overcooked! 2

I’ve taken down zombie hordes with nothing but some guns and parkour, faced down mad gods in decrepit, abandoned space stations, and battled otherworldly horrors in the darkest recesses of humanity’s subconscious, and yet… And yet, the most intense co-op experience I’ve overcome is cooking in a silly kitchen.

Hellpoint

At its most basic level, Hellpoint can be summed up with four words: Dark Souls… in space! Obviously that’s reductionist, but that’s what you get for four words. Of course, at this point Souls-like is a subgenre onto its own, meaning there are games that take only the most basic trappings of the “source” and then do something completely different and original.

Hellpoint is not one of those games. Everything in Hellpoint feels like it was either directly lifted from Dark Souls or is a direct response to Dark Souls. Sometimes the developers couldn’t quite compete with FromSoft, but sometimes they knocked it out of the park.

Remnant: From the Ashes

Should this game have been called "Phoenix," or would that have been a bit too on-the-nose? Maybe, maybe not, since it wasn't clear what remnants or ashes had to do with anything in the game.

If Remnant: From the Ashes needed to be condensed down to one phrase, it'd be "procedurally generated shooter Souls-like," which I think does a pretty good job of covering the game's essential and unique features. I see it as a combination of two twists on the traditional Souls-like formula: the first is making it a shooter and the second is making it semi-random. These are neat ideas with decent execution, but also a few issues.

Degrees of Separation

A boy and a girl. They're from worlds as different as can be—

No, really, they're from actual different worlds. Rime lives in a world of frigid winter, while Ember hails from a land of fiery summer, and they're separated by a magical, transparent barrier. But when they fall down the chasm separating their homes, they need to work together to figure out how to return.

Trine 2

Trine 2 is a puzzle-platforming game about the wizard Amadeus, the knight Pontius, and the thief entrepreneur Zoya, whose souls have been bound together by the Trine, a mysterious artifact. Each of the three characters has their own unique skillset, and you're free to switch characters at any point during the level.

We Were Here

How would you react if you were going on an arctic expedition with a friend only to come across a mysterious structure, get knocked out, and wake up alone trapped within an unfamiliar room? Realistically, you’d probably break down and panic. But if you’re playing We Were Here, this is nothing more than your cue to buckle down and start solving puzzles. We Were Here is a short but competent co-op puzzle game available at a price that can’t be beat: free.

Monster Hunter World

If you somehow haven't heard about the series, Monster Hunter is, shockingly, a franchise about hunting monsters, and Monster Hunter World is the newest entry in the series. Although Monster Hunter hasn't gained the same traction in the West as it has in Japan (although that may change with Monster Hunter World...?), it's a well-established franchise that follows the same format each game. You grab one of a variety of gigantic weapons, put on some crazy armor, fight a huge monster in an epic battle, and use the spoils of your victory to craft deadlier weapons and crazier armor. It's great, heart-pounding fun that provides nearly infinite hours of replayability.

Monster Hunter World was a major release from a well-established franchise, so if you wanted to know what it's like, you'd probably read one of the dozens of reviews online, or watch some of the hundreds (thousands?) of hours of Monster Hunter World-related videos on YouTube, or just play one of the earlier games, rather than relying on this post. So rather than doing one of my usual full reviews, I'm instead going to list my top and bottom 3 things about Monster Hunter World. Let's go!