The 5 Best Games of April 2018
This year has officially spiraled away from us. Somehow April is already over, even though my brain is 100% positive it just started like two or three days ago. Normally this sense of complete helplessness in the wake of time’s unceasing flow doesn’t hit me until maybe June, or late May at the earliest. (It’s as much a part of Memorial Day as crushing a case of High Life on my own and riding in the bed of a pickup truck.) But April 2018 is done, forever and ever, and like the rest of the world I’m just gonna have to make my peace with that.
While I’m grappling with the accelerating dissolution of my brief time on this here planet, we might as well talk about videogames. After all, that’s probably how I spent most of my free time in April—not trying to better myself, or the world around me, or spending time with my friends and loved ones. I had gods to war with, and a single minute to relive over and over, and so much pinball to play. (And lots of TurboGrafx-16 shoot-’em-ups. I go through that phase a few times a year.) This April saw a surprisingly deep roster of new games to explore, and we pretty much explored them all here at good ol’ Paste Games. Here are the best of ‘em.
Honorable Mentions: Monster Prom; Rogue Aces; the Nintendo Labo; The Swords of Ditto.
5. Dead in Vinland
Platforms: PC, Mac
Read our full review
Dead In Vinland is difficult to describe. It’s a game about managing a family, and eventually a small band, of refugees displaced by vikings, storms, shipwrecks and other nightmares of the pseudo-medieval era. It’s a game about managing resources like water, food, lumber, and ore to keep your small colony operational. There are jobs, skills and emotional levels of colonists who have to be managed. And, on top of that, it’s a game that tells a story about a group of people brought together by tragedy and violence. Somehow it all coheres into something wonderful. Dead In Vinland is one of the most interesting games I’ve ever played.—Cameron Kunzelman
4. God of War
Platform: PlayStation 4
Read our full review
More than most action games, combat in God of War has the pacing of a rhythm game. You have to tap various buttons in the right sequence to strike and block at the right times, unleashing your extra-powerful attacks when needed. When you’re surrounded by enemies and dancing over the various attack buttons, calling in arrows from Atreus while blocking at the exact right moment to stun your enemy, you might find yourself entering a kind of trance where you’re locked so tightly into the rhythms of that combat that everything else momentarily fades away. From the pulse of that violence, to the feeling of that axe chopping through a monster as it flies back to you after a perfectly aimed strike, to the sweeping range of the weapon that’s unlocked later, the combat in God of War is about as satisfying as action games get.—Garrett Martin
3. Battletech
Platform: PC
Read our full review
Battletech presents combat as a cascading series of desperate choices. It is nearly impossible to escape a mission without taking damage in some form, and Battletech knows this, and plays on the cruel randomness of ‘Mech-on-‘Mech strategy. At its most gratifying, it is a struggle against impossible odds, with brave pilots constantly fighting for the slightest edge on one another. At its lowest, it feels like your squad is outmatched and outgunned at every turn.
