The video game industry spent much of April talking about Blue Prince, a manor mystery that will be in game-of-the-year conversations because of its layers of interlocking puzzles.
Also released was South of Midnight, an action-adventure game set among the haints and rougarous of American folklore; our critic called it “a sorrowful adventure embellished by magical realism and strands of hope.”
Here are three other games you may have missed this month:
Promise Mascot Agency
Reviewed on the PC. Also available on PlayStation 5, Switch and Xbox Series X|S.
Promise Mascot Agency is a peculiar little gem. It’s about a disgraced former yakuza who takes over an agency that handles mascots.
Yes, mascots, those large furry creatures that hype up crowds at American sporting events and promote small businesses in Japan. Instead of running gambling dens or shaking down store owners for protection money, your character, Michi, must take the straight-and-narrow path, ingratiating himself with these same store owners so they will hire his stable of people-size puppets.
This contrast reflects the way management sims are often received. Most players expect to be handed a big gun, or some other lethal power, and get sent out on missions to knock around bad guys and cause some property destruction. Here you’re running around a small seaside town, herding parakeets and anthropomorphic blocks of tofu to mall gigs.
Yet playing Promise Mascot Agency is a joy. There’s endless pleasurable distraction to be found driving your tiny truck around the low-stakes setting of Kaso-Machi, particularly in its colorful characters: a sweet old yakuza widow with a heart of gold, a mysterious mascot who builds scarecrows in rice fields, a bartender who trades gossip and serves drinks while dressed in a gimp suit.
This town may be full of weirdos and freaks, but they’re also where the heart is. Sharp, observant and shockingly funny writing brings their two-dimensional portraits to life.
— Yussef Cole
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves
Reviewed on the Xbox Series X|S and PC. Also available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Most of the digital bruises I earned playing fighting games came courtesy of developers like Capcom (Street Fighter), Bandai Namco (Tekken, Soul Calibur) and NetherRealm Studios (Mortal Kombat). But even their games can’t avoid the influence of SNK’s sprawling catalog of mean street-brawlers.
After 26 years without a Fatal Fury game, Mark of the Wolves finally has a follow-up.
The visual face-lift of City of the Wolves preserves its predecessor’s 2.5-D environments, and I found myself deep-diving into the game’s turbulent story line. That’s expected from a studio that included branching subplots in the dozen King of Fighters titles it has released since the 1990s.
Mark of the Wolves featured a first-of-its-kind citywide tournament following the death of a crime lord who had terrorized the fictional metropolis South Town, and whose son had been raised by Terry Bogard, the series protagonist. In true Shakespearean fashion, City of the Wolves includes a shocking familial revelation, magical scrolls and a “dead” sibling making a surprise reappearance.
City of the Wolves is refreshingly complex, although the barrier to entry might be lower for those familiar with move cancels and well-timed blocks. The franchise’s two-lane system makes a return, albeit for one stage, and there is an R.P.G.-style single-player mode with missions strewn across the city’s map. It is a robust re-entry into the Fatal Fury saga.
— Jamal Michel
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion III
Reviewed on the PC.
There is so much going on in Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion III that it’s hard to absorb it all. On the surface, it’s a Match 3 symbols game, somewhat like the addicting time-waster Candy Crush Saga. But this is actually a major deconstruction of the genre.
The story, featuring the hapless investigator J.J. Hardwell inside a maze-filled, dinosaur-ridden house, is reminiscent of old Sierra On-Line adventure games. It branches forward with diverse revelations, including of a creepy cult and a self-centered wizard. The trenchant humor, so bad it’s good (mostly), recalls The Secret of Monkey Island. The story can be moving at times, too. Awful, a blob with three mouths, is portrayed as lonely and shunned.
Its meta nature, a game about the travails of making a game, offers insight into a creation process that’s often seen as mysterious. But thoughtful experimentation is what Xalavier Nelson Jr. and his studio, Strange Scaffold, do best. If they are not pushing the boundaries of traditional game making, they seem to want no part of it.
Here, matching three swords to defeat a rogue computer in a dank basement required enduring 88 grueling rounds. I encountered a puff-chested, swearing bully who thought he was superior to everyone else. He was easy to defeat. And, of course, I threw pies to bring down a clown version of a pterodactyl.
Yes, the tales of game-making can veer into the obscure and esoteric. But the wild ride in this lo-fi sci-fi experience leaves the player with a feeling of exhilaration.
— Harold Goldberg
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