Stop me if you’ve heard this before — a 2D platformer borrowing from Metroid and Castlevania which also has roguelike elements just hit Steam Early Access. This time, though, the game already feels finished, and has been nearly impossible to put down for the past week. Dead Cells manages to go beyond genre pastiche and freshens up one of the most crowded spaces in gaming. It’s well worth checking out even in its “unfinished” state.
HIGH Fleeting moments of taking part in a grand Warhammer battle.
LOW A horde of mechanical and technical issues keep it from greatness.
WTF Seriously, the melee button in a shooter should not be this good.
![Event[0]](http://gamecriticsdotcom.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Event0.jpeg)
HIGH The most rewarding, believable interactions with a digital character to date.
LOW Finishing the game and realizing I’d played it “wrong”.
WTF Horrendous starting loadtimes and repeated crashes to desktop.
HIGH Reliving my childhood arcade memories.
LOW Getting bored every 30 minutes or so.
WTF Watching my AI partner wander aimlessly while I needed to be revived.
Thanks to RimWorld, I will never look at squirrels in the same way again.
Six hours into my most well-developed colony, a wave of a few dozen man-eating squirrels took to my camp and slaughtered every inhabitant. With no turrets or defenses beyond a few semi-automatic weapons, my poor colonists never had a chance.
HIGH The best traditional PC RPG in recent years, now accessible on console.
LOW A PC-centric UI means console owners will spend more time in menus than they'd like.
WTF A "quick" save that takes upwards of 20 seconds to complete.
HIGH The turn-based combat delivers satisfying thrills and suspense.
LOW Combines a weak Shadowrun experience with an even weaker MMO experience.
WTF Let's just stop trying Boston accents for a while.
HIGH One of the most unique settings in gaming makes a comeback.
LOW Adventure game logic can slow the otherwise-tight narrative.
WTF Surely an on-screen map would be better than a talking crow cowboy?
HIGH One of the best trilogies in handheld history preserved in a new, definitive edition
LOW Old translation errors and typos persist through two remasters
WTF Seriously, we haven't spellchecked the script through two remasters?
HIGH Still one of the best adventure games ever made.
LOW Janky animations destroy what looks beautiful in a screenshot.
WTF How does Gabriel's 1993 phone not have a "redial" button?
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