Games of the week
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Super Mario Maker 2
Platform: Switch
Genre: Platformer
Price: £39.99
Build your own adventure in this Super Mario smash
If you dream of creating your own 2D Super Mario level, this is the game for you. If you don't, this is still the game for you. Mario is such a household name that almost everyone will have an idea of what a Super Mario level should look like, so you're simply using a brilliantly powerful tool to mess around with what you already know. But what makes Super Mario Maker 2 work is the superb interface, an intuitive access to all the Mario gubbins you ever need, combined with a series of imaginative Story levels, a riotous co-op mode and a Minecraft-esque level of online user-created content to be inspired by. Super Mario Maker 2 is for all of us.
Skip to the end: Hilarious, fun and full of Mario's creative brilliance.
Score: 9/10
Heavy Rain
Platform: PC
Genre: Adventure
Price: £15.99
Soggy story
In Heavy Rain, a father who couldn't save one son from an accident must now save the other from a serial killer, while juggling blackouts and inconvenient FBI attention. But flawed execution shatters the atmosphere. For instance, combing a crime scene is enthralling, except when wrestling with unhelpful camera angles. The tension of a Quick Time Event fight scene instantly deflates when the woman you save barely changes expression. And wait, isn't that the same dreadful box-like house where Alice lives in Detroit: Become Human? Heavy Rain's origins as a PS3 game excuse some technical issues but not the ungainly storytelling, mock-interactivity or awkward control scheme.
Skip to the end: A convincing plot is undermined by poor execution.
Score: 6/10
Tour de France: Season 2019
Platform: Xbox One, PS4
Genre: Sports
Price: £44.99
King of the mountain
There's a podium after every gruelling race in Tour de France: Season 2019, but it never tells the full story. Veteran spectators of cycle racing know that a single stage contains many races – from formally designated sprints and climbs to the spontaneous battles between riders, teams and even whole crowds of Lycra-clad bodies. There are dozens of winners and hundreds of losers, all in their own individual struggles, and Tour de France: Season 2019 does very well to conjure this combination of small-scale challenges and wider competitive strategy that makes the sport so thrilling. Fortunately, the terrible animation, sporadic visual judder and dull commentary doesn't spoil the achievement. Be prepared to forgive the flaws and you'll quickly become hooked.
Skip to the end: An unsightly but undeniably addictive cycling simulation.
Score: 8/10
Cessabit: The Calming Game
Platform: iPad/iPhone
Genre: Puzzle
Price: £1.99
Brain freeze
Cessabit's 24 levels are each nothing more than simple line drawings with occasional splashes of colour, frissons of movement or points of interaction. You poke around, count the number of trees here, remember the way that cat moves or commit the background hue to memory, then progress to a series of questions about what you've just been gawping at for five minutes. At which point you are, of course, quizzed about the one element you had overlooked. Naturally, you should take your time rather than rush into an attempt at photographic memory, yet sadly each level's questions are always the same, meaning trial and error is just as effective as mindful exploration. You can't deny how calming it is, though.
Skip to the end: A soothing puzzler but with a short-lived challenge.
Score: 7/10
