Page 22 - INSIDE ACCESS

MY TOP 5 PICKS
Best Video Games
of 2020...so far
Unlike the movie or live performance or nearly every other business, the video game industry has made it through the first few months of 2020 with its output only mildly impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic. That’s partly due to coincidence - there’s a new generation of PlayStation and Xbox consoles scheduled to launch this holiday season, and that typically means a fallow first half of the year. But while it’s anyone’s guess what happens over the next few months, the last few have already brought plenty to enjoy. Here are some of the most interesting games to arrive in this highly unusual time. Hopefully they bring you some pleasure during a bad season.
Final Fantasy VII Remake (PlayStation 4):
A game that begins as a faithful recreation before slowly becoming something more ostentatious, Final Fantasy VII Remake takes a seminal role-playing game from 1997 and turns it into rumination on fandom. Re-telling a story about eco-terrorist thrust into a conflict larger than they imagined while introducing a new mystery, Final Fantasy VII Remake is at times confounding but always provocative. It rounds this out with wonderfully complex combat, brainy but action-packed, a dense way of fighting for a dense story full of twists. Final Fantasy VII Remake could have just played the hits, and instead tried to do something stranger.
Streets of Rage 4 (Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One):
Beat-em-up arcade games are mostly a relic of the past, a reminder of an era when games were designed to be fun, but also to separate you from your quarters. Outside of nostalgia, there’s little reason to revisit the genre, but Streets of Rage 4 is a pretty good argument against abandoning it altogether. Impressive in its purist approach - you will find few of the trappings of modern video games here - Streets of Rage 4 is just a finely tuned game about being a rad cartoon character that hits a lot of other cartoon characters. Its action feels great, and a simple-but-versatile arsenal of moves gives you a perfect idea of how you can navigate and control the space around your character. In keeping with the arcade experience, Streets of Rage 4 is best experienced with a friend, online or right next to you.
PAGE 22 INSIDE ACCESS | JULY 2020 5TH EDITION