[Review] The best current and upcoming games on the Epic Games Store

[Rayan™]

Metro Exodus

You’ll probably know this one is on the Epic Games Store – it was pulled slightly unceremoniously from Steam after pre-orders had begun, and became a lightning rod for discussion about the two platforms. It’s absolutely worth installing a new launcher for, though – the bravest single-player shooter since Titanfall 2, and one that treats the form as a place to push first-person storytelling forward, not just gunfeel.

Ironically it’s Valve’s legacy that Metro Exodus calls to mind most, shunting through several gears as its train ploughs through a devastated Eastern Europe. Expect a mix of horror, survivalism, action, and exquisite worldbuilding.

Super Meat Boy

Traditionally, tough platformers punished you with a huge loss of progress – the stakes were derived from the knowledge that you could be plonked back to the beginning of the level, if not the entire game, after a wrong move. But Super Meat Boy – alongside its peers N+ and VVVVVV – operated on a new principle of micro-challenge, resetting you only to the beginning of the screen. Its challenges are gnarly networks of circular saws and spike pits, but through those hundreds of fast failures, you reach mastery quicker than in any other game – soon marvelling at your own feats of navigation.

It’s often talked about, but the best bit is still the moment you complete each stage, and get to watch all of your attempts replay at once – each Meat Boy gradually whittled down by obstacles to leave the sole eventual victor.

What Remains of Edith Finch

An advancement on the subtle household storytelling of Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch has you explore the huge Finch house. As in Fullbright’s game, you’re entirely alone, but here you’re acutely aware that’s because nobody else is left alive.

Although you play as Edith, every story you uncover in the house has you swap perspectives to view the final day of a relative, discovering something about their life in the process. Where most games stick to a couple of central mechanics, in these scenes you’ll always be doing something different – winding up a music box, working an old camera, or flying a kite.

The Finches seem cursed, most not making it beyond childhood, which makes it all the more impressive that this story is more wondrous than it is morbid.

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