There's no denying the glaring flaws of Sonic the Hedgehog 4--the wonky physics, the blatant remixing (or one might even say "rehashing") of classic levels and bosses from the first two Sonic games, and the soundtrack's questionable and often derided soundfont being chief among them. But despite its problems, even 15 years later, I still find myself occasionally coming back to replay both episodes.
The just-announced House of Golf VR is officially the world's first mixed reality mini-golf game. But while it sounds like a quirky sports title, it's really a powerful playground for creativity, a tool that lets you design and share 3D courses in the real world. Created by Liverpool-based Starlight Games, the project uses advanced passthrough mixed reality to turn everyday rooms into imaginative, interactive spaces.
For many triple-A video games, appealing to a wide audience often means ensuring players can see a game to its conclusion. That sometimes translates to sanding down combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving to make it approachable as possible. But this can sometimes veer into making games too guided for their own good. Hell is Us tosses all of these conventions out of the window. Goodbye quest logs, maps, and objective arrows telling you where to go. By trusting players to figure things out, Hell is Us' smart level and puzzle design shine to create compelling and rewarding discoveries, despite middling combat and uneven storytelling.