Bytes ‘n’ Blurts: Neva, Interactive Tetris Documentaries, and a Lackluster Lego Game

By Garrett Martin and Elijah Gonzalez  |  November 15, 2024 | 12:05pm
Video Games Features new games
Bytes ‘n’ Blurts: Neva, Interactive Tetris Documentaries, and a Lackluster Lego Game

Wondering what the Paste Games team has been playing lately? Don’t have time to read new game reviews, and prefer something quick and direct? Just looking for 1000 words to eat up a couple of minutes of your wait at the doctor’s office or airport lobby? Bytes ‘n’ Blurts offers a quick look at what games editor Garrett Martin and assistant games editor Elijah Gonzalez have been playing over the last week—from the latest releases to whatever classic or forgotten obscurity is taking up our free time. This time around, we muse on Neva‘s visual excellence and narrative shortcomings, Digital Eclipse’s latest interactive documentary, and the new Lego game, which doesn’t quite stack up.

Neva

Fall Games Preview

Year: 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo Switch

It’s pretty hard to overstate just how dang pretty Neva is. The latest from Nomada Studios (Gris) begins by taking you through impossibly verdant backdrops under a pink-blue sky, and each scene is so stuffed with lush foliage that it all feels ripped from the pages of an idyllic fairytale. But as you journey through the seasons, these vistas begin to wither from encroaching darkness, eventually leading to surreal hellscapes full of shadowy beings and impossible architecture. As these backgrounds shift and become more complicated, so does the gameplay, slowly layering additional mechanics that take this 2D platformer from its overly simplistic beginnings to a satisfying endpoint where you’re simultaneously controlling the swordswoman Alba and her wolf companion Neva against dramaturgical mask-wearing bad guys.

However, while its look and gameplay evolve enough to keep this shortish adventure largely engaging, the same can’t quite be said for its story, which starts off building towards a predictable conclusion, then zigs into some interesting ruminations on seasonal cycles of birth and death, before zagging back towards maudlin cliché. Some of its imagery and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons-styled ludonarrative hooks almost move it past the point of coming across as broad and weepy, but it doesn’t quite get there. Still, while Neva may mostly be style over substance, thankfully it happens to be very good at the style bit. —Elijah Gonzalez

Tetris: Forever

Year: 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo Switch, Atari VCS

I’ve already written at length about Tetris Forever in a review that wound up being slightly more critical—and way longer—than I expected. Despite its problems, though, the latest entry in Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series of interactive documentaries is absolutely worth playing if you’re a fan of Tetris (i.e., a living and breathing human being). The Gold Master Series tracks the history of a game or game designer through easy-to-follow timelines that include a wealth of information, including video interviews with designers, photos, design docs, promotional materials for the original releases, and, of course, playable versions of the games themselves. Tetris Forever might not be as illuminating as the previous Gold Master entries, and its selection of Tetris versions lacks the most popular and successful versions of the game (along with some of the weirder and more obscure riffs on it), but it still gives insight into how Alexey Pajitnov’s game evolved, both from early changes to how the scoring worked, to seemingly minor but ultimately significant tweaks to how the game plays. It’s startling to play Pajitnov’s original, designed for the Soviet computer the Electronika 60 in 1984, and see how deep and fully-formed this visually primitive game already was, despite using ASCII characters for its images. It underscores the simplicity and purity at the heart of Tetris, and why this game conquered the world and has endured for 40 years. Don’t expect the specific versions of Tetris you might’ve played on the Game Boy or NES back in the day, but do expect a good sampling of Tetris variations from the ‘80s and ‘90s, as well as a fun new game that jumbles all these eras—and their slightly different rulesets and mechanics—into a time-hopping trip through Tetris history. —Garrett Martin

Lego Horizon Adventures

Year: 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 5, PC, Nintendo Switch

Lego games have been milling pop culture favorites for brick-based madcap action for a couple of decades now, but Lego Horizon Adventures is an oddity. It’s based on Sony’s Horizon games, a fine (if not particularly exceptional or even notable) open world adventure series set in a world so far after its apocalypse that it’s basically back in prehistoric times. It’s a weird choice for a Lego game, and maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel that much like a typical Lego game. It’s not quite as comical or light-hearted as those games usually are, but also isn’t as sullen or serious as Horizon Zero Dawn, the specific game that it adapts. It’s a family-friendlier take on that material, and with a simpler, shallower play style that strips away most of what little makes Horizon playable. It’s hard to see who this game is for; it’s not quite Lego enough, definitely not Horizon enough, and it’s not like Horizon is some really popular series to begin with. It’s a curiosity, for sure, but about as inessential as games get. —Garrett Martin

 
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