DEVIL MAY CRY 5
Capcom rolled straight from one win to another this year. After making me a fan of Resident Evil, I then found myself falling in love with Devil May Cry 5 only a month later. This one, I expected even less. Another series I missed out on in its heyday, until now the only game in the series I held in high esteem was Ninja Theory’s controversial DmC.
I still think the level design in DmC is more interesting—Devil May Cry 5 gets a little rote near the end, overusing its H.R. Giger-esque hellscape for a few too many levels. It’s so damn entertaining, though—from its stylish slow-motion intro credits to its charmingly cheesy dialogue to its flashy combat. Every single piece feels like a series at its peak, which is incredible for a series that hadn’t received a proper sequel in over a decade. I’m sure Devil May Cry 5 is a treat for longtime fans, but it’s just as apt to hook a newcomer. Take it from me.
HYPNOSPACE OUTLAW
There was a magical period in the early days of the Internet where it felt like anyone could make a website, and everyone did. Hypnospace Outlaw is an homage to that era, to GeoCities and AOL and all the weirdness that came with it.
It’s wrapped in a wild story about HypnOS, an operating system that only functions while the user is asleep. You’re a “Hypnospace Enforcer” tasked with stopping illicit activity, be it file sharing or harassment or malware distribution. It’s silly fun, in a Hackers sort of way.
But the real hook is nostalgia. Your in-fiction job mostly requires trawling through a vast collection of faux-‘90s webpages, laden with ugly gifs and dad-rock jingles and eye-searing colors. It’s a meticulously detailed recreation of what that period felt like, everyone exploring this new medium before self-expression consolidated around the handful of universal sites we have today.
TOTAL WAR: THREE KINGDOMS
After two excellent and creative Total War: Warhammer games, I didn’t know what a Total War based in human history could do to refresh the formula. Turns out the answer was in historical fiction, drawing on elements of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms saga for a Total War that embellishes history with larger-than-life characters and grandiose battles. Did it all happen this way? Doubtful, but Three Kingdoms is full of personality and lends itself to the dramatic player-driven storytelling you want from a strategy game, old rivals dueling on the battlefield and trusted advisers stabbing you in the back at a crucial moment.
And for those who don’t want any of that? The “Records” mode gives you the old Total War experience, albeit with a far deeper diplomacy system than any in recent memory. It’s a best-of-both-worlds situation, and easily the best historical Total War since 2011’s Shogun 2.
OBSERVATION
“Observation is kind of 2001: A Space Odyssey—but you’re HAL.” I maintain you only need that single-sentence description from No Code’s lead writer Jon McKellan to know whether Observation might be up your alley.
You are Systems Administration & Maintenance, or SAM for short—the artificial intelligence aboard a space station that ends up far from home, with no record of how it happened. Building on the work it did with Stories Untold, No Code’s made another love letter to analog and early-digital technology, tasking you with unraveling the mystery of the space station’s mysterious journey from the confines of the ship’s security cameras and computer systems. And while it’s a novel mechanic, Observation’s New Weird-story (with hints of Annihilation) is really what keeps you hooked. It goes places.
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