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LAPIS X LABYRINTH
A FLASHY AND DISORIENTING SIDESCROLLING
DUNGEON CRAWLER.
Nintendo Switch, PS4 | $40 | http://www.nisamerica.com/
games/lapislabyrinth
NIPPON ICHI SOFTWARE has clearly
received the memo that loot is cool, because
Lapis X Labyrinth is the most loot abundant
game you’ll likely play this year – and yes,
we know Borderlands 3 is just around the
corner. A 2D platformer and dungeon
crawler, it boasts a handful of varied
character classes with some nice contrasts in
weaponry and attacks. But even these
crucial features seem unimportant in light
of the game’s real appeal: the blissful
gratification of acquiring stuff. Not only is
loot abundant, but in some cases gathering it
causes great torrential storms of pixelated
colour to rampage across the screen. It’s so
weirdly satisfying that it barely matters that
the gameplay itself, and the level design, is
very rote and forgettable. It’s a shame the
game has no cooperative features, because
sharing this experience with a friend might
even make it brilliant.
[SHAUN PRESCOTT]DISCOVERGAME REVIEWSAmid Evil
THERE’S A LOT OF EVIL AROUND, BUT IT’S NOT TOO BIG OF A DEAL WHEN YOU’RE ARMED WITH ENTIRE PLANETS.
Nintenso Switch, PC | US$20 | https://newblood.games/Amid Evil’s worst weapon is a staff that
shoots blue homing blobs – pathetic water
balloons that splash against low-poly
demons, many of whom look like what
you’d get if you coated a bunch of triangles
with super glue and threw them in a dryer.
It’s worth using during the most annoying
encounters, when a projectile-lobbing
enemy is perched high above and is hard to
hit with anything else. I don’t like it or the
moments when I resort to it, but I can also
use the entire earth as a grenade, which
more than evens things out. Amid Evil
is good.
It’s a throwback FPS like Dusk, but rather
than hitscan pistol headshots, Amid Evil
recalls Heretic and Hexen’s ma g ic a l
weapons. The staff sucks, but there’s also a
magic sword, a grenade launcher that
shrinks and fires random planets (like the
earth), a spike-firing morningstar, a
lightning trident, plus your default axe and
a geometrically-unreasonable purple thing
that clears rooms like Doom’s BFG.
Most of the weapons are fun, but the Star
of Torment, which pins enemies to walls
like FEAR’s stake gun, or can be used tothrow them out of the level entirely like
they’ve been slapped by a god, is Amid
Evil’s pièce de résistance – I can never tire
of it.
There are quiet moments in Amid Evil,
too, and not just when I get lost looking for
a button. As I took a breather from the
carnage in one of the final levels, a faint,
bumbling trumpet unexpectedly cut
through the ominous vocal ‘ahhs’ and
synthy moans, as if one of the orchestra
members was bleeding out in the astral
plane somewhere outside the level. I was
moved by a game about slaughtering
low-poly demons, it’s true.
Despite barely telling a story, Amid Evil
made me wonder if the gods might be the
real assholes – they were the ones who put
buttons everywhere, after all – and when it
was over I lingered for a long time before
letting it end. I want more.
[TYLER WILDE](^34)
WINNER
APPROVED
AWA RD