A staggering achievement and, for my cash, the 12 months’s most shocking, charming, and unimaginable recreation, UFO 50 is definitely a set of fifty video games, all launched within the Nineteen Eighties by developer UFOSoft. The factor is, nonetheless, that UFOSoft by no means truly existed. As a substitute, these are new video games, a beautiful smorgasbord of video games in numerous genres—role-playing video games, platformers, side-scrolling motion video games, video games wherein you discover fascinating worlds and discover nifty upgrades, and extra.
Diving into UFO 50 is a splendidly stimulating and typically bracing expertise: you come throughout each the intimately acquainted and the unfamiliar, video games that require you to take a step again and grapple with their numerous parts as you come to grips with them. Some gamers have discovered this irritating, and even known as it proof of dangerous recreation design. I couldn’t disagree extra. Maybe it’s that I’m sufficiently old to recollect the video games of the Nineteen Eighties vividly myself, and to recall how, in that period, operating up towards mechanics or programs you didn’t instantly perceive was commonplace. For me, this course of is usually a part of the enjoyable; it looks like an actual means of discovery, tinkering with a recreation till simply the way it works and what it’s asking of you turns into clear. It’s a form of discovery that’s grow to be fairly uncommon in video games at this time, however UFO 50 embraces it.
After all, that wouldn’t matter a lot if the video games in UFO 50 weren’t ok to make all that experimentation value it, however they’re. Explicit favorites of mine embody Grimstone, a JRPG with an Previous West-themed setting; Valbrace, a first-person dungeon-crawling RPG that switches to third-person motion for fight; and Barbuta, UFOSoft’s “first” recreation, a slow-paced, mysterious journey ostensibly from the early 80s. Every new discovery in Barbuta was a beautiful revelation, and finally finishing it (with out trying up hints on the web) was my most rewarding gaming achievement of the 12 months. Alongside these, I additionally adored a few of UFO 50’s breeziest and most accessible motion video games: Cyber Owls fuses the thematic zaniness of video games like Battletoads to an assortment of gameplay sorts, from top-down, Metallic Gear-esque infiltration to Unhealthy Dudes-style side-scrolling punch’ em up; and Seaside Drive bathes you in superb, summery vibes as you shoot down the whole lot from assault helicopters to massive, flying wizard-sharks whereas rushing down a coastal street in a pink sports activities automobile. UFO 50 is an exhilarating reminder of how various and inventive video video games may be, and it’s the one recreation this 12 months that, greater than some other, jogged my memory why I like this medium a lot. — Carolyn Petit