Let’s push things forward?

Two entries in long-running series head up this month’s Play section, and once again we’re invited to consider the value of innovation versus the appeal of the familiar. The expectation is usually a bit of both. A series doesn’t become beloved without first offering something new – but if innovation attracts an audience, the anticipation for a sequel is partly fuelled by the promise of what you enjoyed about the earlier game (or games) all over again.

Creators thus have a balance to strike: diverge too much from the original recipe, and you risk alienating those fans. Play it too safe, however, and you’ll leave them wanting. It’s fair to say one of the two games manages to fulfil its brief more thoroughly than the other. In some ways, Metroid Dread seems to have been developed in a bubble: it largely ignores developments in the wider genre since we previously got a brand-new 2D entry, but it delivers on both exploration and action, while introducing a terrifyingly persistent new threat that lends extra tension to Samus’s search for answers (and health and missile upgrades, of course).

Far Cry 6, on the other hand, arrives with a promise of revolution on which it singularly fails to deliver. That sandbox template is looking wonkier than ever, and while there are new features and a fresh setting, the additions (such as the powerful ‘supremo’ backpacks) do little to paper over the cracks. By the time the credits have rolled, the prospect of a seventh is not an appealing one.

Beyond Dread, the best games of this month have one thing in common, though you wouldn’t necessarily notice by looking at them. Lemnis Gate, ElecHead and Unpacking all explore a single idea so completely that sequels would appear to be surplus to requirements. Then again, could we honestly say we’d turn down the offer of more?