2020 has seen its fair share of innovative experiences. The Last of Us Part II raised new bars in interactive storytelling. Half-Life: Alyx set a standard for story-driven VR campaigns. Watch Dogs: Legion ditched NPCs for a city filled with recruitable allies. Even Final Fantasy VII Remake reinvented itself into an amazing new experience that, from a design standpoint, barely resembles its original RPG form. That’s all well and good, but I’d like to redirect some of that spotlight to a pair of games that didn’t need a dump truck of fancy bells and whistles to be barrels of fun: Streets of Rage 4 and Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.

READ MORE »