Reviewed on: Switch
Platform: Switch
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Grezzo, Nintendo
Release: September 26, 2024

For the first time since The Legend of Zelda’s inception in 1986, the series’ namesake is finally the playable protagonist. Echoes of Wisdom is not a spin-off or a non-canon entry in the ongoing legend but rather a proper Zelda game filled with dungeons and puzzles. Getting to explore a version of Hyrule as Zelda is overdue, and efforts have been made to make sure it retains the feeling of a Zelda game, while undeniably trying something new. Echoes lacks the scale and grandeur of previous Zeldas and its primary mechanic loses steam near the end of the adventure. It is, however, successful on enough other fronts that it absolutely earns a spot in the legacy of one of video games’ most undeniable franchises.

Echoes’ big hook is Zelda’s ability to clone and use just about every enemy and object in the game to complete her goals. This stands in for the typical Zelda item and even extends to swinging a sword, which Zelda herself doesn’t technically do. Zelda uses clones to solve her problems, and they are exciting to use in many ways. Finding new items to clone is exciting and becomes a fun collection sub-game; figuring out ways to use certain enemies (like grabbing onto a bat to fly over a gap) is rewarding.

I did find, however, as I made my way beyond the halfway point, that I had a handful of clones I used to bypass just about every task. I was still excited to find new enemies and items to clone, but I relied heavily on the old faithfuls. The dungeon design also suffers from the cloned-item-enemy approach as I experienced fewer and fewer revelatory moments. I wasn’t solving new puzzles in unique ways so much as I was figuring out how to use the same giant yellow platform with an eyeball to progress.

The combat generally underwhelmed me. Spawning my own enemies to watch them fight isn’t particularly thrilling. Zelda does have the ability to channel Link and use his sword (and other items) temporarily, but that also wasn’t particularly satisfying as it became a ripcord I often pulled when I was getting bored with watching my clones battle it out. Boss fights, thankfully, afforded a bit more creativity and I was always eager to take them on.

Where Echoes’ primary mechanic lost steam over the course of the adventure, the overall presentation never lost its charm. Borrowing the style of Grezzo’s last Zelda game (the 2019 Link’s Awakening remake), the character designs and world are incredibly charming. The music is fantastic, and, as is often the case with Zelda, the themes are familiar but approached from a new wonderful direction. Echoes has one of my all-time favorite Zelda overworld themes. The narrative also presents some fun surprises and, thankfully, doesn’t linger too long on its opening twist, which I was grateful for as I am sure it would have been exhausting for it to be the game’s full throughline.

 

Exploring that overworld (with the excellent soundtrack) is a strength. The dungeons’ open-ended nature sometimes made them feel superfluous and without challenge, but being able to go anywhere outside fairly early in the experience was welcome. The 2D Zelda games tend to suffer the most in the open world as that is where they feel the most constricted where they shouldn’t, but that is not the case in Echoes. Not only is exploration fun and open but there are often rewards for ending up in places you previously thought were inaccessible.

Echoes of Wisdom’s presumed goal was to find a happy medium between the rigid linearity of classic 2D Zelda and the experimental openness of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. A middle ground between the two does exist here, but I ultimately felt pulled in both directions without ever feeling fully satisfied with either. Sometimes I wanted to be able to experiment more, and sometimes I wanted to experience the joy of solving a defined puzzle with a specific item. But in the end, I finally got to experience a full, proper, no-asterisk Zelda adventure without having to explain, “Actually, you play as Link,” and I am grateful for the experience.

This 2025 review reflects our thoughts on the game’s current state at publishing. As such, post-launch updates were factored into the final score.

Score: 8

About Game Informer's review system

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC
Publisher: Critical Reflex
Developer: Wrong Organ
Release: September 26, 2024 (PC), 2025 (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch)

In the opening minutes of Mouthwashing, the pilot of a spaceship crashes head-on into an asteroid, stranding the crew in the far reaches of space and brutally maiming the captain within an inch of his life. What follows is an existential horror show with unique visual effects, brutal dialogue, and surreal consequences that kept my eyes locked to the screen for the entire three-hour playtime. I am not typically a horror fan, but chose to brave the expanse of outer space in search of a good story, and Mouthwashing absolutely delivers.

You experience Mouthwashing's events through the eyes of Curly, the captain before the crash, and Jimmy, who takes over afterwards. For maximum suspense, the two timelines are interwoven in an easy-to-follow nonlinear structure. Its first-person adventure gameplay has you traverse the window-less, claustrophobic spaceship known as the Tulpar, where you'll mainly talk to your crew and solve basic puzzles, usually by bringing items from one area to another or memorizing number sequences to unlock doors or safes. It's a perfectly serviceable gameplay loop, but it's nothing special – just a way to get from one story event to another.

Between the main chapters, Mouthwashing is not afraid to get surreal and dreamlike, dipping into frightening nightmare scenarios based on the protagonist's guilt and fears. From a liminal labyrinth of the ship's hallways to grotesque, abstract body horror, developer Wrong Organ refuses to let the player get comfortable; I was always as uneasy as the rest of my coworkers. While some later sequences lasted too long for my liking (especially when I was eager to get back to the climactic events of the main story), these sections are a huge part of Mouthwashing's identity, filling me with fearful delight whenever a new section started.

The crew is another massive highlight of the game, each uniquely tragic in ways the plot holds back on until the moment is right. Before anyone was trapped in outer space, they were trapped in the cold vacuum of capitalism by an uncaring company – they aren't risking their lives for something they believe in, but a paycheck. And while death is not certain, the looming fear of a meaningless demise is infectious, raising tensions until the crew prevails or loses all hope. These moments of intense pressure bring out the best and worst of each person on the Tulpar, and the team at Wrong Organ crafts some top-notch dialogue to express that. A late-game monologue from Swansea is the peak of that writing achievement, and has stuck with me since beating the game.

While many video game stories are clear and to the point, Mouthwashing relies on subtext and implication to great success, with one particular character's backstory only clicking into place as you realize the truths they were afraid to admit. The dual protagonist structure conceals information in a similar way, and I greatly enjoyed the feeling of the game's ending when everyone's motivations became clear. Each character's fate and actions are foreshadowed just enough to feel inevitable without also feeling predictable. Players who take a second playthrough will likely pick up on details they missed the first time.

Visuals are another of Mouthwashing's strengths. It's far from the only low-poly horror game to launch in 2024, but the aesthetic direction is popular for a good reason. It's the intersection of nostalgia and dread, summoning a familiar vibe for an otherwise unsettling narrative. It also makes creative use of "data moshing," a trippy visual effect that imprints the pixels of an image onto the movement of a video, to subtly transition the player between areas. Much like the creative, surrealist horror sections, these transitions keep the player from getting comfortable, and the art style makes them particularly effective.

At multiple points in the game, text flashes on the screen saying, "I hope this hurts," an ambiguous message from one character to another. We never learn who says it to who, but it's a particularly dark line: an explicit desire for suffering in a story where everyone is suffering in their own ways already. Quotes like these along with Mouthwashing's final moments left me rattled and introspective, reckoning with the lengths people can be pushed to when pressured by crisis, ego, or capitalism. As intended, it left me feeling disturbed. In other words, it hurts, Wrong Organ. Your wish came true.

This 2025 review reflects our thoughts on the game’s current state at publishing. As such, post-launch updates were factored into the final score.

Score: 8.75

About Game Informer's review system

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: All Possible Futures
Release: September 17, 2024

Watching protagonist Jot leap from the 2D illustrated pages of his storybook into a beautifully rendered 3D world immediately sells players on The Plucky Squire’s hook. This transition between gameplay styles is an awesome mechanic that truly feels magical, making me hopeful the adventure designed around it would be equally as enchanting. Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case. The Plucky Squire has oodles of charm and imagination, but the gameplay isn’t always as engaging or inspired. 

This classic Zelda-esque adventure puts you in the shoes of a cheerful swordsman joined by his two friends, a timid witch-in-training and a metalhead mountain troll, to rescue their storybook world from peril. In some humorous meta writing, the book’s villain becomes self-aware of his fictional reality and discovers how to turn his predestined cycle of endless defeats in his favor. A pleasantly sassy narrator guides players through a lighthearted tale. But despite the intriguing setup, the story winds up being more saccharine than memorable. 

Within the storybook, The Plucky Squire largely unfolds like a top-down Zelda game (with occasional side-scrolling segments harkening back to Zelda II). Traveling through eye-popping, colorful overworlds and cutting down foes feels and looks good, but combat lacks challenge, making battles feel like rote exercises even after obtaining upgrades like a sword throw and spin attack. Fortunately, combat is secondary to The Plucky Squire’s main draw of letting players manipulate their pagebound world.  

Exiting the book and using a magic glove to flip between pages not only serves as a clever form of backtracking, but engenders neat ideas like grabbing an object from a previous page and bringing it into the current one. I also like tilting the book to cause certain objects to slide wherever you need them to be. Changing entire scenes by swapping certain words from descriptive sentences (e.g. replacing “Forest” with “Ruins” in a sentence to transform the surroundings accordingly) is another fun idea that adds a playful, interactive take on an unreliable narrator. Overall, the puzzles built around these tricks are clever in concept, but tend to be disappointingly simple in execution. I often solve riddles at first glance, and they rarely feel as substantial as I’d like even late-game.  

Leaping off the page into the fully rendered 3D bedroom of the child who owns your story is the biggest treat. Not only does the bedroom look awesome and feels believably lived in, but the transition is largely smooth from a technical standpoint. Traversing the 3D sections consists of simple, and, frankly, unremarkable, platforming segments, but it’s the way they’re dressed up that make them feel more interesting than they are. Jumping into certain illustrations pinned on objects is a cool-looking way to scale vertical surfaces, as is sliding down a rope and seeing Jot cruise down inside the multiple flags hanging on it. Unfortunately, the presentation can’t prop up the barebones stealth sections tasking you to sneak around bugs, and being spotted results in immediate death. These sequences lack the creativity of the rest of the package and feel present for the sake of it. 

The Plucky Squire also sprinkles bespoke minigames that appear once and offer brief snippets of variety that I usually welcome. I appreciate the cuteness of a simplified take on a Punch-Out-style battle against an angry badger and a turn-based RPG battle against a character from a Magic: The Gathering-inspired trading card. These segments are far from robust departures and more like breezy genre change-ups to add little spice without overstaying their welcome. 

Though I admire everything about The Plucky Squire’s art direction, the lax difficulty robs it of stimulating engagement. The Plucky Squire is an easy game to a fault, made more so by the annoying number of tooltips and forced tutorials plaguing the adventure. In addition to seizing control away from players too often, it holds their hand for too long. The Plucky Squire may be trying to appeal to kids, but I’d wager all but the youngest children would grow weary of these aggressive training wheels. 

Thankfully, The Plucky Squire has received an optional streamlined mode shaving away the glut of these forced tutorials. It makes a noticeable difference, allowing me to enjoy the game a little more with less interruption and more room to think. Streamlined mode doesn’t make The Plucky Squire any more difficult, but consider it the new default gameplay setting and reserve the game’s original incarnation, which is still available, for only the least experienced players.

Although The Plucky Squire has become better at trusting players to figure things out, it remains a disappointingly simple trek wrapped in a killer presentational wrapper. It’s one of the coolest-looking games of 2024 and has inventive ideas I wish were more substantially fleshed out. Jot’s big adventure is presented as a children’s story, and it’s hard not to feel like a kid playing it in the best and worst ways.

This 2025 review reflects our thoughts on the game’s current state at publishing. As such, post-launch updates were factored into the final score.

Score: 7.25

About Game Informer's review system

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Developer: Saber Interactive
Release: September 9, 2024
Rating: Mature

Warhammer 40,000 is a sprawling franchise that’s been on this Earth longer than I have. As such, there are countless rulebooks, tabletop games, figurines, and video games to consume. I had never even so much as dipped a toe into the galactic water of this series before booting up Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, a sequel to its 13-year-old predecessor, back in September. Though its PvP offering doesn’t aim for anything beyond satisfactory, its 10-hour campaign and PvE Operations are well worth the price of entry, ultra fan or not. With climactic setpiece moments dosed heavily throughout each mission, endlessly enjoyable third-person gunplay, and impressive swarm tech that pits you against hundreds of enemies at once, little time is wasted on anything that isn’t fun in Space Marine 2. 

After Deathwatch leader Titus and his team crash land on a planet, I’m tasked with surviving against a few insect-like Tyranids with just a space sword and a gun. Not long after that, I’m mowing down hordes of these creatures, of all shapes and sizes, in an attempt to escape alive. This introduction to developer Saber Interactive’s swarm tech is claustrophobic, awe-inspiring, and downright awesome. Before finishing the first mission, the fear I had about jumping into this series with this game, with its decades of lore and context, had already dissipated. 

Space Marine 2 requires little of the player, instead throwing you right into the action and asking you to do one thing: shoot everything in sight. Later, the campaign devotes a pre-mission and post-mission cutscene to explain Titus’ plight, which revolves around a super weapon and a big bad trying to use it to do something evil. There are a lot of proper nouns thrown around that I’m sure fans of Warhammer 40,000 understand, but I didn’t, but that affected my enjoyment of the campaign very little. 

Mission after mission, I was treated to swarm invasions by insects to tear through with swords, grenades, various firearms, and more. It rarely got old, save for the occasional moments where the game pointed to the idea that Space Marine 2 is best played with other real players rather than the decent-at-best A.I. teammates I trucked along with. The game’s scale continued to escalate too, with beautiful and chaotic vistas, fun boss fights, and additional options for my loadout. All this extends to the game’s Operations, which smartly uses a PvE multiplayer format to show what other marines do during the campaign outside of Titus’ efforts. 

While I preferred the campaign, Operations are still worth playing through in the Space Marine 2 package. It offers even more customization, more exciting objectives to complete, and a more chaotic feel to the action seen in the main story. I can’t say the same for the PvP Eternal War slice of the game, however. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s bog standard multiplayer at best, like the pack-in modes from games of yesteryear. Still, if you’re craving more Space Marine 2 action, Eternal Wars’ multiple modes will deliver some of that. 

Space Marine 2 is a simple, succinct, and well-paced package. It’s not asking you to stick around for dozens of hours, grind for the next meta weapon (although there are certainly things to spend time chasing, like Armory data, if you’d like), and reach a temporary level cap until it’s raised. It consists of a fun, action-packed campaign, equally fun Operations to give you a second helping of what Space Marine 2 does best, and, if that’s not enough, a decent PvP experience to kill time in. It’s an admirable shooter in a genre often tied down by live-service elements, and unlike its contemporaries, it asks one simple question: Can you please mow down hordes of enemies with big guns?

This 2025 review reflects our thoughts on the game’s current state at publishing. As such, post-launch updates were factored into the final score.

Score: 8

About Game Informer's review system

Reviewed on: Xbox Series X/S
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Visual Concepts
Release: September 6, 2024

Every great sports team has its downsides. Jordan’s Bulls were missing a dominant big man. Steph’s Warriors sometimes struggled on the defensive side of the court. And though they were always electric and dominant, Kobe and Shaq’s personality clashes sometimes felt like a powder keg poised to explode. Despite those flaws, each team was able to put an incredible product on the court and bring home multiple championship rings. Similarly, NBA 2K25 delivers when you’re playing the game of basketball, but once you step off the hardwood, bigger problems emerge that have the potential to derail much of that goodwill.

The on-the-court product of NBA 2K has always been the best representation of any sport in a video game. The biggest stars largely look like their real-life counterparts, and you’d be excused for thinking a real game of hoops was on the TV after just a glance. The well-produced halftime studio show and the dynamic commentary booth are authentic. Playing feels just as great; the NBA has evolved as much as any other pro sport over the last decade, and the gameplay improvements of NBA 2K25 keep up with the times thanks to improved defense and a ton of new animations that impact ballhandlers and off-the-ball players alike.

The modern NBA largely downplays the traditional big man role in favor of those who can shoot from beyond the arc, and NBA 2K25 has admirably kept pace with this evolution. You can still find success driving to the hoop for a layup, but you had better learn how to time your shots with the in-game meter if you want to find success in the league’s current META. Few things feel as good as using strong ball movement until the defense breaks down and you can drain an open three. Realistic defensive schemes can be challenging to crack, particularly on higher difficulty levels, and there were times when I wondered how I could possibly stop a momentum-fueled run from a stacked team like the Luka/LeBron Lakers. In these moments, NBA 2K25’s fantasy of playing for or running a pro basketball team sings.

 

The NBA fantasy permeates through most parts of 2K25, but it is particularly potent in MyNBA, which casts you in the role of GM for the team of your choosing. I love having the option to play a fully featured version of the mode, complete with all its in-the-weeds intricacies, or opting for the thoughtfully streamlined “Lite” version of the series’ Franchise mode. Negotiating trades, signing free agents, scouting draft picks, and following your team year after year is endlessly rewarding and myriad customization options let you make your experience in the league your own. All this praise also applies to MyWNBA, the season-based mode that shines a spotlight on the women’s game.

By far the coolest option available in MyNBA is the “Eras” feature, which transports you back in time to iconic stretches in the NBA. Whether you want to experience the Magic vs. Bird rivalry in the ‘80s, the rise of Jordan’s Bulls in the ‘90s, the emergence of Kobe’s dynasty with the Lakers in the 2000s, or the newly added Steph Curry era of the 2010s, MyNBA Eras gives you more era-appropriate presentation, gameplay, rulesets, draft classes, and mostly complete rosters from the time. Even if some players are missing, like Charles Barkley from the ‘90s Era, you can download community-created rosters to fill the gaps. MyNBA Eras is one of the best features available in sports games today, and I wish it held a more prominent place in the genre.

In the single-player-focused MyCareer, you create your digital likeness and control that player’s time in the league. I appreciate being able to sim to key games in the season and only control my character when he steps onto the court for his team. The steady stream of optional objectives gives me additional pursuits beyond simply raising my teammate score or winning the game, and having the option to relive moments from my character’s earlier days or take him online through streetball is a great side dish. However, once you enter the online City hub, the mode bloats to drag down the overall experience.

The moment I stepped outside, two other players on go-karts drove straight through me, and a drone whirred above my head while a character dressed like the Grinch ran into a store selling State Farm insurance merchandise. Rather than menu navigation, I’m forced to traverse an actual 3D city full of other online players, keeping me out of the core gameplay and breaking the immersion. I vastly prefer the minimalist interface of The W, the WNBA version of MyCareer that offers a more traditional single-player career mode and less monetization.

Player-lock career modes like MyNBA have long been my favorites in most sports series, but NBA 2K’s integration of various free-to-play-adjacent elements like ads and microtransactions has long soured me on MyCareer. The ever-alluring thrill of taking a low-level rookie and building him into an all-star is tainted by the constant pressure to boost your character by spending real money on VC, the game’s main currency. You earn a decent amount of VC through regular play, but with higher attributes breaking the bank and customization items using the same currency, not to mention other modes pulling from the shared VC pool, NBA 2K25 frustrates in hopes you’ll opt to ease the grind by opening your wallet.

I wouldn’t be so sour on the monetization scheme if it was isolated to MyTeam, 2K’s card-collection mode. Here, you crack open packs to build the best team possible, which, as any TCG collector can attest to, can be exhilarating. Putting together a trio of my favorite players from different eras for a special-rules game is fun, as is completing objectives to earn packs, but with a core design built to monetize, I vastly prefer the more traditional longform sports modes.

The series’ emphasis on microtransactions is perhaps best exemplified by the main menu. Each time you start the game or switch modes, you must bounce back to the menu, which autoplays 2KTV, video content to inform you of the new game content. However, each time I go to the main menu, the autoplay is interrupted twice by in-game pop-ups for the season pass – two ads interrupting another ad when all I want to do is go from one single-player mode to another. It’s a minor frustration, but it almost perfectly typifies how it feels to play certain modes. It’s annoying when free-to-play games pull this tactic, but it's downright unacceptable for a $70 premium product.

Despite the persistent pressure to spend on microtransactions, NBA 2K25 shows the long-reigning dynasty might still have some gas left in the tank. Each mode delivers a different experience, truly delivering a targeted mode for nearly every basketball fan. Though some modes are bogged down and bloated, once the team steps on the court, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that does it better.

Score: 7.75

About Game Informer's review system