The frenzy around the Nintendo Switch 2 included the release of Mario Kart World, which our critic said was an elegant experience but one without any oil drips or skid marks. Another critic called The Alters, a sci-fi adventure about a stranded space miner who can select alternative life paths, an extraordinary survival game.
Here are three other games you may have missed this month:
Date Everything!
Reviewed on the Nintendo Switch 2. Also available on the PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Date Everything! stands out as a bright, welcoming dating simulation with an unusually comely twist. You meet and consider the attributes of everyday objects that come alive as humans. It’s surprising to witness how magnetically sexy they are.
After being replaced by A.I. at a megacorporation, you head home to the cold solace of a desktop computer. A drone delivers special glasses that bear a red heart above the bridge. Once you don the spectacles, the magic of anthropomorphism occurs.
In Date Everything!, there is no requirement to leave home for nervous flirtation at a bar. One hundred potential mates emerge from a light switch, a fireplace, a refrigerator, a dust bunny, or even a piano. Phoenicia, a woman of color with a bald head who was created from a smartphone, was my early favorite. Joyful and positive, she emanated strength and empathy.
But I was unable to ask someone (thing?) out on a date immediately. The process is to get to know the potential object of your desire through face-to-face conversation. This isn’t Tinder or Pure.
There’s charmingly crude or clever humor to every encounter. Even though the puns can be grating, the developers are hyperaware of cultural touchstones. Freddy Yeti, the human refrigerator form, likes cake and riffs on Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” when he tells you, “I like big bundts and I cannot lie.” A TV that becomes a reimagining of the boxing impresario Don King drops quotes from “The Simpsons,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and “Diff’rent Strokes” in a rhythmic monologue.
It’s Betty, the bed, who knows you better than anyone. She’s slept with you for years. But while she has encountered many, she wants to be truly seen. The goal is not a quick, sweaty meeting. As you distribute points for empathy, poise, sass, smarts or charm, the game leads you toward the slower, more deliberate process of learning enough to understand someone.
— Harold Goldberg
FBC: Firebreak
Reviewed on the PlayStation 5. Also available on the PC and Xbox Series X|S.
When it comes to multiplayer games, I’ve always preferred working with my friends to complete a common goal rather than competing against them. So it was with a sunny outlook that I organized a gaming night to try out FBC: Firebreak, a three-person co-op shooter developed by Remedy, the studio behind Control and Alan Wake.
Firebreak casts players in the role of first responders for the Federal Bureau of Control, an agency responsible for the investigation and suppression of paranatural phenomena. Alas, the game made a disastrous first impression. My friends found it ridiculous that I had to generate a custom code for them to join my private party.
Once in the game, we were underwhelmed with, well, everything: the bland visuals, the boring mobs of zombielike enemies, the uninspired gunplay, the lame sendup of corporate culture. After our session, my friends let me know they had no interest in playing further. I, marching on, played through the other four missions. (Remedy has said it plans to add more.) What most stood out was taking down a hulking boss made up of sticky notes but, really, I’m reaching.
Frankly, the greatest pleasure were the texts my friends sent me after we’d logged off. “I got trapped by a whirling fan blade and got frustrated it didn’t kill me outright,” one of them, Jon, said. “That would have ended the suffering.”
— Christopher Byrd
Rooftops & Alleys
Reviewed on the PlayStation 5. Also available on the PC, Switch and Xbox Series X|S.
Parkour is much more fun from the safety of a couch, and Rooftops & Alleys: The Parkour Game offers just enough to hold its own among extreme sports games.
This isn’t the first attempt at making running around appealing. Early installments of Prince of Persia featured parkour-like mechanics, and Mirror’s Edge (2008) flipped first-person games on their heads.
Rooftops & Alleys pays homage to its predecessors with an array of flashy tricks. Momentum is the name of the game, and it’s easy to get lost in the catalog of stunts like the vortex flip, lose gainer and, my favorite, backflip Jesus. Playing online makes for entertaining interactions, like ragdolling into a friend who is trying to back handspring off a shipping container.
Rooftops & Alleys shines most through its fluid animations and intricate combo system. The challenge of choosing which path to take before a wall run or ledge vault adds considerable depth to the game’s six stages. And it’s a pleasure to 360 reverse vault off pallets and stick the landing without rolling my actual ankles.
— Jamal Michel
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