Most Lego games feel like repeats of the previous entry with a different theme. LEGO City Undercover is not only the first original game in the series, but it's the first game to actually feel like a new game. That being said, it's still lacking in comparison to other AAA open world titles. Some of this game's errors can be excused due to its toy-like nature such as the floaty driving, but it has many faults in the main campaign. This game's idea of variety is the same shallow mechanics again and again. The disguise system is a cool feature, allowing players to swap between any character in the game, but the game relies too heavily on it. It isn't a good foundation, and as a result the gameplay suffers. The usual monotony is broken up by driving sections and cutscenes, which pushed me to finish to the end. Speaking of cutscenes, the real winner of this game is surprisingly the story and soundtrack. The characters are uniquely interesting, and Chase McCain serves as a great protagonist. It has wit, charm, and is frequently funny even with a few jokes deliberately aimed at children. The story follows Chase trying to get his redemption at policework after a mishap a few years ago. He then must go undercover as he infiltrates mobs in order to get intel about the supposed villain, Rex Fury. What's cool is how the story takes its time to set the pieces and introduce new plot points before knocking it down. The soundtrack really shocked me with its various songs that mesh well into what's happening on screen. It has this song for the final part that I'm not gonna spoil, but god damn. LEGO City is pretty dense with a variety of scenery all while still feeling like the same game due to great graphical consistency. The same strategy from the main story is applied here, but this time with much better execution. There are 450 collectables not counting characters, vehicles, and extras. The things you can do aren't very wild, but it's the way the game cycles through them that makes it entertaining. You won't walk 10 steps without bumping into a new minigame or unlockable for you to do. It is worth mentioning that the open world can be pretty restrictive at times, especially in helicopters. LEGO City is probably TT's finest work period. It isn't the most in depth, showstopping game, but if you're looking for an experimental open world game, you can't go wrong with this shockingly good title.

I’m a real fairweather Star Wars fan in the sense that I was deeply obsessed with it as a kid who was the prime age for prequel era stuff to be hitting real hard but how I interact with media and my relationship to concepts like fandom have radically changed over the years so that I’m not really the kind of person that big Disney franchise stuff appeals to. That said, I’m not like, anti-Star Wars; I had a great time with Andor and I’m the world’s only Cal Kestis liker (he’s nice! His ponchos are cool shut the fuck up!!). Something that’s really Activated the latent Star Wars fan in me like the world’s most annoying Manchurian Cnadidate, though, is that last year I started a podcast with a friend, a monthly book club where we read through all of the books by Matthew Stover, who has a lot of very good original work but is best known for the handful of Star Wars books he wrote, most famously the well-liked novelization of Revenge of the Sith.

So in the last three months I’ve read and talked about three really good books with my cohost who is a much bigger Star Wars person than me and they’re all occupying the old no-longer-canon extended universe stuff and man that shit really just scratches your brain. In particular was New Jedi Order: Traitor, the thirteenth book in its series set long after the original movies, occupying a similar narrative space that the current films and tv shows do but instead of interminable Disney franchise pipeline stuff they are trashy 90s sci fi schlock novels. Which is still generally very stupid, and very bad, but the WAY that they’re stupid is so much more unique, so much more propulsive and compelling as dumb art than anything anyone has made in the last decade for a franchise this big. It puts you in a mood.

Kyle Katarn.

This guy is that vibe personified. Kind of edgy but not really fake ass han solo luke skywalker in one dude ass guy in a doom game fighting What If Stormtroopers Had Black Armor And Were Big?? Fuck yeah dude this is the gamer’s star wars guy. His name’s fucking Kyle. But he does have a lot of character to him, even if it’s articulated mostly through voice lines during missions and the rare cutscene where he appears prominently. A lot of the story of this game happens around Kyle rather than to him or because of him.

But the fact that Kyle is such a distinct entity here is really noteworthy in and of itself. Dark Forces is a deceptively innovative game for something that looks like any other Doom II or Duke Nukem 3D like. A big part of that is how story driven it is. There aren’t actually that many cutscenes, maybe one every three levels or so, but they contextualize the missions well, and each individual mission has an extensive briefing beforehand that outlines everything in a lot more detail, written in character from your handler’s perspective (except for one mission where she’s captured by the empire and your goal is to rescue her – your briefing is absent because she’s gone it’s a great detail!). Missions have unique objectives and usually multiple per level that are all thematically appropriate to whatever you’re doing whether that’s stealing shit or looking for a guy to take hostage or planting bombs or finding evidence of a secret project or killing someone. This gives the game a different feel from levels that are purely Get To The End affairs, and the end NOT being get to the goal a lot of the time changes the way levels lay themselves out. Lucasarts was first and foremost an adventure game studio at this time and you definiteely feel that in the approach to puzzle design; you get a little bit of red key on the red door but there’s a lot of more esoteric navigational shit here too. Feels way more to me like Doom 64 than Doom II.

This game was actually in development BEFORE the original doom and coming out a year ahead of Duke Nukem, Dark Forces brings a lot to the mid-90s FPS table. It seems likely that Doom coming out would play heavy influence on this bad boy mid-development, but there’s a heavy emphasis on verticality in the level design here that’s explored really thoroughly through the 14 missions. Elevator puzzles, caverns, shafts, loops and cliffs, lots of different ways to explore this whole other axis of space. Platforming is a core part of this experience too and it works well. You can even like, point your gun up and down it’s wild.

The last way Dark Forces I think REALLY separates itself in this category of games (which I’m NOT an expert in and I know some of you reading are – please forgive me for not being a huge 90s shooter know stuff-er) is how aesthetically distinct it is. Levels very rarely reuse assets, and along with their distinct themes and objectives they all have distinct locations and visuals. More importantly than that though, they all try very hard to approximate real environments and the work pays off. These levels are abstract industrial spaces, they’re factories and mines and sewers and ships. Nothing like mind-blowingly innovative but it’s impressive how much these levels work as both 90s PC shooter levels and visibly true Places in a way that’s just not the case for most games like this.

It IS all in service of fighting guys called Darktroopers who are big stupid robots but that’s fine, really, that stupid shmooziness is a charm point, really. That’s the part that I WANTED from this game. The fact that on TOP of that it’s an extremely ambitious and completely successful shooter was a wholly unexpected surprise.

Next Time - STAR WARS: JEDI KNIGHT - DARK FORCES II