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Static Spotlight

The Best Game I Played this Month

CONTROL Resonant

Good

• Fantastic writing, great characters, and stellar performances
• Fun cosmetic items to unlock
• Great side quests. It reminded me a lot of the Batman Arkham games where they really went all in on making side quests as fun and interesting as possible, sometimes even dwarfing the main objectives.
• Combat was fun the entire way through. Every time zones reset after defeating a Resonant, I would go back and clear all of the world events for every area every single time simply because I wanted to get into a bunch of fights. Whenever I started getting bored of one particular build, I would just swap everything out for a refresh and get right back into the action.
• Killer traversal mechanics that not only make getting around a total blast, but also help elevate combat encounters when you’re able to weave everything together seemlessly
• Upgrades on the skill trees actually felt impactful
• Fun open world environments that looked stunning and were all pretty diverse from one another

Mixed

• Being able to have more than 3 abilities mapped at a time is great, but I wish they could have figured out a way make them all available without having to hit the d-pad to swap between pages. It’s doesn’t feel great when you’re in the middle of a big battle and you’re constantly swapping back and forth to pull off the combos you want
• Most of the repeatable side quests are great the first time you do them, but get pretty tiresome by the 5th or 6th time you do them. I’m specifically referring to the Taxi Cab and Shutting Down the Science Experiments in each area of the game.
• Dylan is kind of a dud as a protagonist, but I did end up warming up to him a bit by the end of the game
• While getting around was mostly a lot of fun, there are a few areas that make getting around a bit of a pain. The Unknown is probably the biggest offender in this regard, but even some sections of The Park and Central can feel like a bit of a chore to navigate when you have to run all the way around a massive wall instead of going right over or through it
• Boss fights felt totally serviceable, but I really wish they did a bit more to make them more interesting and memorable

Bad

• Lots of bugs and performance issues on the PS5 Pro
• The FBC Task Board missions are dull at best and super annoying at worst

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Completed

The Blood of Dawnwalker

Good

• VO performances throughout are very quality
• Dialogue is written well (for the most part)
• A few satisfying instances of, “oh, I did one thing in a random side mission and now it’s affecting how this other mission is playing out”

Mixed

• Pretty lack luster skill tree, but there are some neat abilities and skills hidden in there
• Despite the time system really not living up to its full potential, it is a neat framework for a game of this scale
• The epilogue cutscene sets up a neat premise for a sequel, but the devs completely ruined the surprise by featuring the entire sequence months ago as promotional material. Baffling stuff.

Bad

• Combat starts to feel stale very quickly. Even when you start adding more abilities to your arsenal, you’re really only peppering them into encounters as soon as they’re off of cooldown. 90% of the time you’ll just be mashing R1 to hit and L1 to parry and that’s about the sum of it
• So. So much jank. jank. From hilarity to aggravating and every type in between, this game feels like a total mess in so many ways.
• The tutorial section is great and it writes a check that the rest of the game simply can’t cash. In the first hour or so of the game, you’re given about 8 different side quests and you really only have time to do 2-3 before the rest are locked out. I ended up wasting time on trivial tasks and skipping most of the notes I picked up and it bit me in the ass in a major way. I came out of that sequence ready to manage my time wisely and pay closer attention to tasks, but the game never pushed me to do so outside of that starting area. You can do everything in the game and still have days left before the deadline hits.
• Dated visuals. This doesn’t look like a game that was released in 2026
• The missions centered are taking down the vampire generals were all pretty disappointing. It kicked off with me just randomly finding Xanthe one night in a church and killing her after a pretty straight forward fight. I was sure that they were going to end the fight early and have her run away, but it just straight up kills her off right there. I didn’t do a single one of her quests at that point and I didn’t bother touching them at all after she was dead. There are also zero upsides if you decide to kill them outright. All that happens is that you miss out on new vampiric powers and an additional option to “invite them in”.
• Some of the most useless quick time sequences of all time

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TCG Card Shop Simulator

It’s ugly, it’s janky, and it has some frustrating mechanics, but I’d be lying if I said that this game didn’t hook me in a major way. There’s just something about the restocking and upgrading loop that sapped hours out of my day whenever I booted it up. While I wish there was a proper end game and a few more goals to strive for,

I called it quits when I reached shop level 50 because all the unlocks after that seemed not worth the extra time investment, but I might hop back in every once in a while just to play through a day or two to relive the thrill of putting boxes on shelves.

I didn’t dive into the playable card game at all, but the fact that it exists shows how much effort this dev put into the final product and I think that’s really commendable for a game of this scale.

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Hypogea

Really impressive showing for a solo dev’s first release. Platforming is fun thanks to the unique and fluid move set, the puzzles are clever, and the environments are enjoyable to explore. Outside of gameplay, I also thought they did great work with the general camera direction in the cutscenes and created a lovable cast of characters without using any dialogue.

Coming in at just under two hours to beat, this is an easy recommendation that people can knock out in one sitting. Looking forward to playing Charlie’s next game.

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Silver Pines

Good

• Exploration feels rewarding, especially when you unlock a new tool and you go out of your way to return to areas that were previously locked off to you
• The town of Silver Pines is super well designed and every area feels unique while maintaining consistent themes
• Visuals and animations look great all around
• Great character portraits that perfectly convey how sinister and creepy the townspeople are
• Solid voice acting throughout
• 3 unique endings that are all well constructed and provide satisfying conclusions to the narrative
• Fun post game unlocks for future runs that seem like they would make playthroughs feel like satisfying victory laps
• They really nail the feeling of classic Silent Hill puzzles and making everything feel like it ties into a bigger metaphor

Mixed

• Platforming can be pretty janky, but it’s kind of fitting as a game that’s inspired by the old school survivor horror classics
• Combat could be a bit frustrating with how cycling through quick use items and weapons were set up by default, but again this feels pretty on brand for the genre
• Boss fights are pretty lackluster, but totally serviceable and often serve up a stressful challenge
• Right off the rip, you can pretty much piece together the protagonist’s real identity and mission. It’s still executed very well, but I was kind of hoping for a bigger twist that shook everything up unexpectedly

Bad

• Crappy bugs lead to deaths and a lot of lost progress. I got hit while crawling through a hole and it wouldn’t let me leave the screen so I just got beat to death when I went in with full health
• I ran into many instances where, mid-fight, my cursor would move to my second monitor, causing a pause when I clicked. None of the display settings I tried fixed this issue, which led to many frustrating moments that killed the fight’s momentum

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SILENT HILL: Townfall

Good

• St. Amelia looks great and feels great to explore
• Fun and challenging trophies to chase after
• There’s really only one boss fight in the entire game, but I thought it was a pretty solid one
• Having 3 playable characters pop up during the playthrough was a nice surprise and it was neat to see them all have their own unique equipment and items
• They did a really great job of making some of the areas truly terrifying to play through. I was especially stressed out during Richard’s sections and the Refinery
• Multiple endings with some whacky ones thrown on in there in typical Silent Hill fashion
• Fun puzzles to work through

Mixed

• Using your CRTV to mark and track enemies through stealth is a cool idea and it looks great, but in practice these sections can be a pretty big pain. Even in the first hour or two you’ll get into situations where you’re just waiting around for these guys to run their very static path and find safe spots where you can duck into until the coast is clear. This was a game where I didn’t feel bad dropping it down to the easiest difficulty. It let me enjoy the best parts of the game without dealing with the most annoying ones.
• I’m pretty mixed on the story. On the one hand I think it offers a solid framework for the interesting locations and situations you find yourself in through the game. On the other hand, I feel like it’s a bit too melodramatic even for I Silent Hill games and some parts just come off as pretentious

Bad

• The big, unkillable boss character (AKA The Weight) had a really lame design. I thought he was just another type of enemy until I tried to put a couple of shots into him and it wasn’t clear that it was the Pyramid Head stand in until the very last confrontation
• Simon was a pretty boring protagonist the whole way through and Zoe wasn’t much better
• The rationale for everyone ending up in Silent Hill was pretty weak.

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Gears of War: E-Day

Good

• The new movement and traversal mechanics really do wonders to evolve the typical Gears of War experience
• The weapon and ability modifiers are a nice addition that let me customize my loadout to better suit my playstyle. It’s especially cool finding synergies between different parts of your loadout. I had “Gain Perfect reload on kills” equipped with the sniper rifle, so I could headshot about 10 enemies in a row without ever having to manually reload.
• By far the best looking and performing game in the series thus far
• It was cool returning to the city throughout the campaign to see how ravaged it was getting from the Locust invasion

Mixed

• The open area zones help break up the action a bit, but ultimately still feel far too linear
• Boss fights are very meh
• Adding turret sections to you 2026 AAA game is a choice and most of them are pretty bland, but they are a bit nostalgic and I liked that one shot of all the reavers during the lightning strike in the last sequence
• The ending fell super flat

Bad

• Way to many instances of standing in front of doors or interactable waiting for dialogue to finish so you can actually progress through the level
• Far too many encounters begin with enemies spawning in way too late, leading to instances where you’re absolutely boned because of poor positioning
• Lucas, Mags, and the rest of the supporting cast are pretty unremarkable and forgettable additions
• Bland, straightforward, and forgettable story

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Big Dig

It took some unexpected turns that were cool to see play out and I liked their unique take on the prestige system. However, at its core Big Dig is just a simple incremental clicker that becomes tiresome in the latter half of the third act.

Shoutout to the devs for including Omelet You Cook characters and references; that game rules.

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Cucina Stellata

Weird

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End of Abyss

Good

• I love the design of the main character
• Cool biomes to explore that each have their own interesting aesthetic
• The overall atmosphere and tone is top notch
• Enemy and boss designs are pretty solid across the board

Mixed

• Lots of optional areas to explore and bosses to fight to get the true ending if you can stomach the backtracking and often frustrating navigation
• It’s nice that you can put down a custom marker on the map, but it would have been much nicer to have a few different symbols to choose from.
• It’s cool that there’s a secret ending, but it’s really not worth all of the castle that goes into getting it

Bad

• Contents of the notes that you find are very bland and do a pretty poor job of adding to the narrative
• Having the rad suit take up suit power was a real dick move
• Some truly obnoxious enemy design on display. Some of these guys are zero fun to fight. Enemies can still hit you if you’re being grabbed by another, so you just automatically die if you get locked down in a room with multiple bad guys
• It’s very easy to get stuck and not know where you’re supposed to go
• Bland boss fights
• Sometimes the map just won’t mark an entrance way as impassible (blocked by rubble, slime, etc.)
• The map bugs out and sometimes marks doors as open when they’re locked along with clearing some interactable objects that haven’t been cleared
• A variety of bugs ranging from cosmetic to progression-halting

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Terrible Lizards

Terrible Lizards is an okay time, but really not what I was expecting. 90% of this game is just platforming puzzles with the other 10% composed of chase sequences (where you’re mainly just doing more platforming).

The parkour mechanics themselves are surprisingly good, but there just isn’t enough variety to make this recommendable. By the time I finished up the 3rd chapter, I was ready for the game to end, but instead it dragged on for another hour or so without adding anything new to the formula. Coupled with encountering the most bugs during these sections and the anticlimactic ending overall, the game concluded on a really low note for me personally.

The most disappointing aspect of this entire game was that you blitz through the Dinosaur Museum in about an hour, while the back 80% consisted only of running through caves that all felt the same after a while. The museum itself was really cool to explore and it was a huge bummer that what had originally sold me on checking this game out was barely featured.

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Dropped

MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls

This game is great, I’m just really bad at it and fighting games in general and I’ve never had the urge to sit down and throw myself at the genre to get better.

I’m never satisfied with the baby mode mashing mechanics and always want to go for the more complex and satisfying moves, but I just don’t have it in me to recall all of the different button combinations in the middle of a fight, which unfortunately leads to a lot of flailing.

It looks great, feels great, the move sets for all of the heroes are fun and flashy, the stages are cool, and the little personalized quips between teammates and opponents as an extra dimension of polish.

I do think that some of the music tracks feel very generic MCU, but that’s ultimately a very small gripe with an otherwise great product.

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Thank You Bus Driver

A solid time, but it feels unpolished overall. I love how the music gets more frenzied as you work through a shift and that items you pick up are physically present in your bus, but even with the modifiers you unlock from leveling up, the game starts to feel stale pretty quickly.

It sucks that Double Fine lost their Microsoft funding, but it’s nice to see them putting out these smaller, niche titles. Hopefully this $5 goes towards them developing something really worthwhile.

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Galaxy Burger

A pretty zen cooking game sim to play while you’re watching videos or listening to music. The later levels just became a bit too much of a pain to work through, but might be more fun if I had given co-op a shot.

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Dodo Duckie

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Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault

The pacing is good at first while you’re still unlocking areas and struggling against bosses, but it loses so much steam by the time you get to the 5th Endless Vault goal. By that point I had beaten all of the bosses, done all of the available side missions, upgraded my favorite weapons to max, and pick up all of the upgrades I thought were the most useful. From that point forward, the game just feels like such a slog. You bang your head against runs that you just tear through with little effort and get really sick of the inventory mangement it takes to leave dungeons with the most valuable loot possible.

Boss fights are pretty good for the most part, but nearly all of them have at least one phase where you just need to wait around for them to become vulnerable. This becomes more annoying when you’re facing the same boss for the 10th time and just want to finish it quickly to get back to the shop.

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