Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

Launch issues, Career Mode bugs, performance problems (more so on PC than console) – even with all that in mind, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is a worthwhile new addition to the Xbox library. The sheer range of new aircraft combined with new activities in Career Mode, World Photographer – including walking outside your plane in multiple rich biomes – and additional aircraft systems offer a rich experience. And when it works, there’s nothing quite like soaring the skies and peering down all creation.

Arizona Sunshine Remake

The original Arizona Sunshine from 2016 caused a bit of a stir regarding some of its content being locked behind Intel Core i7 CPUs. Now in 2024, you can play all of that content, including two large DLCs and numerous updates with a ground-up remake to match Arizona Sunshine 2’s visuals. You’re mostly shooting zombies with your two VR hands throughout the linear narrated campaign, but there’s also a lot of quirky environmental interactions that make this a classic VR experience; and best of all, it has three-player co-op to triple the shenanigans. If you own a VR set, Arizona Sunshine Remake is a clear no-brainer.

Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2

Space Marine 2’s multiplayer offerings are tremendous fun, but it’s the solo campaign where the core meat and potatoes of the game are found. The story kicks off where Space Marine 1 left off, with Captain Titus returning to command his squad against the Tyranid swarms after a mortal wound. With a runtime around 10 hours long, Space Marine 2’s campaign is a riotous time filled with spectacular vistas and visceral combat. This is a hack and slash in a lot of ways, but Space Marine 2 emphasizes precise countering more than its predecessor, adding a bit of extra skill to the mix. Grabbing a partner to run through the separate co-op missions is a treat as well, but the AI companions aren’t bad either with their consistent healing and tanky defense. Space Marine 2 feels like a blast from the past with its fast-paced campaign density.

Silent Hill 2 Remake

Remaking a horror masterpiece like Silent Hill 2 is no easy feat, yet Bloober somehow pulled it off with great success. A key ingredient in that success is the expanded environments. The atmospheric hallways and foggy outdoor areas greatly encourage exploration, leading the player to a host of new items and collectables that can be viewed from any angle. Helping you navigate the expanded areas is the new over-the-shoulder camera perspective, which gives further context to environments. The original Silent Hill 2 clocked in at around 12 or so hours, but the remake can easily take double that time from all the added exploration. Still, the remake maintains the dense pacing of the original in spite of this, making it one of the more impressive and scary linear games on this list.

Black Myth Wukong

Black Myth Wukong takes a rather unorthodox approach to level design, seesawing back and forth between corridor-like linearity to wide open environments. Most puzzling of all, there’s no map or navigation tools to assist your exploration in the game. Despite this, we couldn’t help but marvel at the variety of biomes and beauty of environments within the Journey To the West-inspired tale. But it isn’t just some of the environments that proceed linearly, your weapons and armor automatically upgrade as you progress too. Black Myth Wukong is a masterclass in focus; it doesn’t meander and bloat the player’s time with frivolous stuff, instead honing in on what makes it great.

Stellar Blade

If you’re familiar with the way Nier Automata handles level design, you’ll feel at home within Stellar Blade. One area that Stellar Blade expands upon its level design is the engaging collectibles scattered across its environments. You have everything from soda cans to posters and boxes of loot to collect, rewarding you with new costumes for Eve and her companions to wear. The wide-linear nature of the environments hits a sweat spot that always manages to make you feel like you’re progressing forward while giving satisfying room for exploration as you do so. Parts of the story have you strictly going from A to B with collectibles nestled within secret routes off the beaten path, while others are open zones meant for questing and exploration. Stellar Blade excels in the way it mixes urgency and exploration with its wide-linear level design.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2

Hellblade 2 takes quite a different approach to linear level design. Due to the zoomed-in focus on very specific locations, Ninja Theory managed to go all-out decorating each hand-crafted environment and presenting it all with an unmatched cinematic flair. It’s no exaggeration to say that Hellblade 2 is among the most graphically impressive games to date. This combination of chiseled graphical fidelity with cinematic flair help cement Hellblade 2’s Norse-inspired locations into the player’s memory. It may be a straightforward game in all aspects of its gameplay, but Hellblade 2’s psychologically rich narrative and impressive visual presentation punctuate its linear design with a bold exclamation point.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership

Despite introducing a sailing ship into the Mario & Luigi series, Brothership still follows a more or less traditional critical path. The brothers’ overarching goal this time around is lighting the four Great Lighthouses throughout Concordia’s oceans. The developers made sure each of the four Great Lighthouse dungeons were top-tier, earning the top spot on my list of Mario RPG dungeons. When they’re not puzzling their way through the Great Lighthouse dungeons, Mario & Luigi are busy linking together the distinctly themed islands with the ship. Brothership threads its themes of connections brilliantly through the narrative and humorous writing, forming a cohesive story that impresses despite its basic appearance.

The Plucky Squire

The Plucky Squire mashes together a bunch of different genres onto the framework of a top-down adventure game. A majority of your time is spent swinging around a sword defeating enemies, but the sheer amount of odd little minigames ranging from Punch-Out sequences, to Duck Hunt shootouts, and even some turn-based RPG fun, is chaotically enduring. And then there’s the puzzles that ask you to rearrange sentences for new props to appear inside the picture book you inhabit. And yes, you even get to pop out of the book and into ‘the real world’ several times. The pop-up book aesthetic puts a bow on the whole package, making The Plucky Squire one of the most enduring linear games of the year.

Neva

Like the studio’s previous game Gris, Neva does more than just offer up a compelling platforming game; it’s an emotional audio/visual art piece. The bond between Alba and her wolf pup Neva grows as the seasons change throughout the adventure, manifested in turn by more advanced platforming challenges. Neva differentiates itself from Gris with its emphasis on combo-based combat and precision platforming sequences, providing a punchy and satisfying linear adventure full of heart.

Akimbot

If you’re looking for an old-school action/adventure game that’s as straightforward as it is fun, look no further than Akimbot. Like its Ratchet and Clank inspiration, you have a range of gun types to unload on enemies with through a linear story. The pacing of the action is non-stop, supplying a constant stream of action-platforming fun. And the best thing is its gameplay doesn’t overstay its welcome thanks to a variety of activities and sequences breaking up the usual run-and-gunning (such as the bullet hell sections). Akimbot is one of the those games that’s effortless to just drop in and play without too much thought or prep-work, and I still often get the urge to start up another playthrough many months after completing it.

Lego Horizon Adventures

Despite its open world source material, the Lego-fied version of Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the most linear and straightforward Lego games to date. You play through the basic storyline of Horizon Zero Dawn through linear mission-based levels, returning to the Mother’s Heart hub area in between your excursions. There’s not a ton of exploration in this game except for some smaller open areas and branching paths in the levels, but the hub does allow for some satisfying customization and personalization. Whether you’re a Horizon fan or a Lego connoisseur, you owe it to yourself to play this unique take on the PlayStation IP solo or with two other friends.

Princess Peach Showtime

If you’re looking for a fun mish-mash of different gameplay ideas and themes presented in true Nintendo fashion, Princess Peach Showtime will satisfy. Each stage has a unique theme that completely alters the gameplay and aesthetics, as well as, of course, Peach’s outfit. From lassoing up bandits on a horse to swordfighting through hack and slash dungeons, the creative levels give you reasons to come back and replay them. Like previous Good Feel games, stages are absolutely filled with collectables and secrets, providing solid replay value.

Astro Bot

Unlike Princess Peach or Akimbot, Astro Bot takes a more open approach to some of its levels, taking a cue from something like Super Mario Galaxy. Still, Astro Bot’s levels comprise mostly linear challenges, and oh how fun they are. 3D platforming never felt better than with Astro Bot’s high tech Dual Sense functionality – it goes beyond a mere gimmick, being a primary function of gameplay. Every action in the game is accompanied by a signature rumble from the controller. Each stage is tailored specifically to the PS5 and its controller, providing a unique kind of console experience. Likewise, stages take full advantage of Astro’s abilities in creative and imaginative ways, proving that linearity can be an enormous strength in platforming games.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak

I know, I know, an ongoing JPRG series with a dozen connected games is a hard sell for most folks. But you owe it to yourself to give Trails Through Daybreak the light of day. For one, it forms the beginning of a new arc with a fresh cast of characters set in a different province from previous games. It’s also just a phenomenal turn-based RPG through and through. If you enjoy dialogue-heavy RPG stories with a linear structure that lets you explore its towns at your own pace, Trails Through Daybreak may be the surprise hit that gets you invested into the wider series.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Not only is this the first Indy game in 15 years, it’s also a return for MachineGames after their run of successful Wolfenstein reboot titles. As previews have observed, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle features a lot of stealth. Its core gameplay revolves less around – well, revolvers – than you’d come to expect, supplying an experience more in line with the Thief series. You’re often hiding  behind baddies to knock them out before finding that ever elusive key to the locked door down the hallway. What we’ve seen of the trailers has us reassured that MachineGames knows what makes Indiana Jones stories so fun charming. Hopefully, the stealth mechanics and story manage to reach the highs that the IP has been lacking in recent years when Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launches December 9^th.

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered

Sony’s “Remastered” trend hasn’t received the warmest reception over the years, but Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered more than earns its flowers. It revamps and improves its environments with more foliage, better lighting and shadows, and over 10 hours of new motion capture animation. Character models are pretty much carried over from Forbidden West and look fantastic. For just $50 ($10 if you own the original), it’s a pretty good deal.

In a press release, the studio and publisher Devolver Digital have announced that they’ve pushed out a new free update for the action-adventure title’s PC version that adds a new Streamlined Mode, which is described as “a new abridged mode for anyone who’d prefer a less hand-holdy experience.” Streamlined Mode cuts down on camera hints, tutorial dialogue, and other sequences where “control of the game is taken away from you”.

Alongside Streamlined Mode, the update also adds new dialog portraits for major characters and some bug fixes. As mentioned, the patch is available right now on PC, and will be rolling out on consoles “very soon.”

The Plucky Squire is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Read our review of the game through here.

The Plucky Squire is the tale of Jot in a metaphysical sense. As the hero of the titular book, he goes on adventures with his friends, Violet and Thrash. However, when the villain, Humgrump, becomes aware of the world’s true nature, he violently ejects Jot into the real world. By shifting between 2D and 3D realms, Jot must overcome the evil sorcerer’s plans.

The Plucky Squire is a concise adventure with about eight to ten hours of playtime. Check out our review – we awarded it a nine out of ten for the presentation, gameplay, and compelling mechanics. Head here for more details on its accessibility features, which include Jump Assist and turning off falling platforms.

However, perhaps the most distinct similarity is they’re both meant for a wide range of audiences, from kids to adults who have grown up with these kinds of experiences. In a sense, The Plucky Squire isn’t just about calling back to the classics in new and intriguing ways but also channeling one’s childhood. Where storybooks and characters were larger than life, going beyond two dimensions and having a distinct impact on our upbringing. It’s comfortable and nostalgic, manifesting the atmosphere of simpler days while presenting a compelling gameplay journey.

"The realization that maybe the story isn’t predetermined manifests in heart-warming ways."

The Plucky Squire is about Jot, a renowned hero in the Land of Mojo. His life is pretty simple: When he’s not saving the day against the villainous sorcerer Humgrump, he’s writing stories that the populace is enraptured by. However, upon setting out one day to foil another scheme by Humgrump, the latter reveals the shocking truth – that their world is nothing more than a story. Using his powers, he ejects Jot from the book and closes it.

Of course, this does little to deter Jot, who ventures across the desk of Sam, the book’s owner. By meeting up with a mysterious, omnipotent bookworm, he eventually gains the power to reopen the book and turn its pages to return to Mojo and stop Humgrump’s schemes.

Though players primarily control Jot, other characters assist in his journey, like Violet, a trainee witch who also dabbles in art; Thrash, a mountain troll and drummer; and Moonbeard, an overtly chill wizard who also drops some sick beats when things are all too peaceful. While their personalities can initially prove a little two-dimensional – which fits within the story’s context and overall set-up, though their dialogue is passable – they eventually expand in interesting directions.

There’s a running theme of Violet and Thrash leaving Jot to handle everything. So when he disappears, however briefly, panic sets in and eventually morphs into both characters slowly emerging as heroes in their own right. The realization that maybe the story isn’t predetermined manifests in heart-warming ways.

"While the 2D sections can feature side-scrolling platforming, it’s when Jot ventures off the page and into the real world where things get interesting."

While the premise of Jot having to stop Humgrump because it could adversely affect Sam’s chances of being a writer when he grows up sounds contrived, it fits the overall theme of deciding one’s destiny. It’s impressive how the narrative works on so many different levels, even though it’s presented in such an approachable fashion, further aided by narrator Philip Bretherton, who lends an air of elegance to the proceedings.

On a gameplay level, The Plucky Squire is an action-adventure title that brings The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past to mind. The top-down movement and slashing bushes to discover Hearts and currency are very similar – Jot even has a charged slash that can be unlocked, and his sword serves as a boomerang to retrieve items from a distance when thrown. However, the combat adds several contemporary touches as well, from three-hit combos and jumping attacks to dodge-rolls. The result is a comfy mix of old and new, with decent enemy variety to keep you on your toes (though it’s not difficult, even in Adventure Mode).

While the 2D sections can feature side-scrolling platforming, it’s when Jot ventures off the page and into the real world where things get interesting. Not only does the combat change significantly, like more forward momentum with strikes, but so does the exploration. One section involves sneaking past some less-than-friendly beetles, and while it may seem straightforward enough, things quickly ramp up in complexity. There’s extensive traversal between the 2D and 3D worlds, not unlike A Link Between Worlds.

The page-turning mechanic is also well executed. When first starting, Jot encounters puzzles that involve rearranging sentences to produce different outcomes, whether you’re changing the layout of a forest or emptying a moat of water. However, by exiting through special portals and moving towards the book’s edges, you can turn the page to a previous section in the story. Perhaps there’s a word that doesn’t fit your current predicament. Return to an earlier page, and you might find a word that serves as the solution.

"Rounding out The Plucky Squire’s solid gameplay and story-telling are the visuals and music. The former is just a joy to behold – the 2D artwork while exploring the Land of Mojo is brightly colored and clean, animating beautifully."

For example, one puzzle involved singing creatures that blocked pathways during the day. After returning to a previous page and retrieving a word, I changed it to nighttime, causing them to sleep and open up new paths while blocking others. Trying to juggle these two aspects while finding the best way to progress made for a fun puzzle experience. Of course, I also liked experimenting with words to create unorthodox outcomes, like giant gates and deflated insects.

Those mysterious portals also play a part during side-scrolling sections, as you’ll navigate through the dark, avoiding hazards and enemies to progress. The overall approach to the puzzles and platforming is quite robust, growing even more so as you progress further.

Of course, sometimes, Jot needs to venture outside of his story to find items that could help in specific situations. This leads to other sections, like a turn-based mini-game against a dignified elven archer who thinks you’re allied with Humgrump and won’t give up her bow. It leads to another sequence where Jot goes Rambo mode and wields the bow to take down flying bugs. Several other sections await, whether it’s a shoot ’em up sequence or a Punch-Out!!-style boxing mini-game, and they keep the gameplay fresh, even if they’re not too mechanically deep.

Rounding out The Plucky Squire’s solid gameplay and story-telling are the visuals and music. The former is just a joy to behold – the 2D artwork while exploring the Land of Mojo is brightly colored and clean, animating beautifully. When venturing into the 3D realm, the contours, shading, and lighting are immediately apparent, granting a more lifelike and realistic feel to the surroundings (and even to enemies who venture off the page).

"Overall, The Plucky Squire is a magical experience. Its story-telling and action may not initially overwhelm you, but it quickly unfolds into a unique adventure with plenty of heart."

The two styles work excellently in tandem, capturing their respective environments very well. While the music didn’t immediately strike me as amazing, it offers catchy, easy-breezy beats tunes. Moonbeard shouldn’t quit his day job to become a DJ by any means, but at least his beats added a nice comedic air.

When looking at The Plucky Squire as a whole, it’s easy to compare it to other titles that have come before. Some sections are similar to this SHMUP or action title and so on. What makes the experience stand out is how it leverages these different tropes and genres uniquely while keeping to its tone and overall world-building. If there’s any particular knock against the title, it can sometimes feel a little too easy. I know that’s supposed to be a given with Jot’s role and whatnot, but still.

Overall, The Plucky Squire is a magical experience. Its story-telling and action may not initially overwhelm you, but it quickly unfolds into a unique adventure with plenty of heart.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Said moments include Jot fighting against what seems to be a honey badger, shooting down flying bugs with a bow (head here for details on how he got it), and more. Aside from Humgrump, there are potential new bosses, like a giant flying bird. A wide shot of the Land of Mojo closes the trailer, with Humgrump menacingly hovering near Artia, where the queen resides.

The Plucky Squire will be available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch (while launching day one on PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium). It’s verified to run on the Steam Deck; unfortunately, it won’t reach 60 frames per second on the Switch.

The latter has now also confirmed that on the Nintendo Switch, The Plucky Squire will run at 30 FPS. When asked on Twitter if the game will run at 60 FPS on Nintendo’s console, Devolver Digital confirmed that it won’t, stating that the Switch “can’t maintain that, unfortunately”. 

The game’s performance targets haven’t previously been confirmed for any system, but presumably, it will target 60 FPS on PlayStation and Xbox, as opposed to the Switch. 

Previously, developer All Possible Futures revealed that The Plucky Squire’s main story will be roughly 8-10 hours long, before confirming that the game will be Steam Deck Verified. A recent trailer also showcased its accessibility options. 

The Plucky Squire launches on September 17 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. On PS5, it will also release for PlayStation Game Catalog day one. 

The features include a Jump Assist and converting falling platforms into stationary ones for easier platforming. You can also enable hidden portals, which is great for darker locations. Invincibility prevents any damage taken, and a one-hit kill results in a single sword slice slaying enemies.

Of course, there are also two difficulties – Adventure and Story. The former is more challenging, while the latter is more laid-back and meant for those who want to experience the plot.

The Plucky Squire launches on September 17th for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch. It will be available for PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscribers at launch. Head here for more details on the playtime.

Taking to Twitter, All Possible Futures has officially confirmed that The Plucky Squire is going to be Steam Deck Verified. That means the game will be fully optimized for Valve’s portable device, and should run on the platform without any issues, or without any tweaking required by players. Of course, most would have guessed that the game would launch with full Steam Deck support, but it’s good to get confirmation nonetheless.

Recently, All Possible Futures also confirmed that The Plucky Squire will be about 8-10 hours long for players looking to go through its main story. Read more on that through here.

The Plucky Squire launches on September 17 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. On PS5, it will also be available via PlayStation Plus Game Catalog at launch.