Zipping up my boots

They say you can never go back – but it’s almost mandatory where videogames are concerned. This month’s Play crop yields a series of explorations of what happens when old values are brought, whether willingly or kicking and screaming, into the modern age.

The most literal expression of that idea is Sonic Mania (p118), a game made with such slavish adherence to its progenitors’ classic formula that it frequently feels more like a fan game than an official one. Blending remixed versions of old stages with all-new creations, it is the purest Sonic game in years; whether that’s a good thing is a questionques of taste, but as homages go it is beyond reproach.

That works for 2D games, whose chunky pixels have a classic, enduring appeal. But 3D is another matter, meaningmea Sega had to treat its other trip down memory lane this month a little differently.diffe Yakuza Kiwami (p110), a remake of the first game in the series, is no mere up-res: it’s been necessarily rebu rebuilt in a different engine, its forebear’s static cameras replace replaced, its story and systems updated.

Elsewhere, d dredging up the classics is a matter of ideological prin principle. Lawbreakers (p104) is built on the belief that t the lightning-paced arena shooter is long overdue anothe another runout; that elite online FPS players are currently unders underserved by a generation of games that prize accessibility and ease of use over a high skill ceiling played out at breaknec breakneck pace. The results can be intoxicating.

Bringing one old idea back is tricky, then – and so you’d think combining two together would be madness. Mario +

Rabbids: KingdomKingd Battle (p100) is certainly bonkers, but somehow resultsresul in a riff on XCOM that is one of the nicest surprises of the year. When the past gives us stuff like this, who needs the future?