Two heavy-hitter console exclusives make their debuts this week. The biggest of the big involves Mario, who branches off into the level-creation genre popularized by LittleBigPlanet and Minecraft with Super Mario Maker. Racing fans are revved up for Forza Motorsport 6, which harnesses the Xbox One’s computing power and unleashes it on the track to craft a blissful gearhead paradise. There’s also a smaller-scale Xbox One exclusive in the form of the Prohibition-themed adventure game Blues and Bullets.
Reviews by Phil Villarreal. Phil is an author, blogger and Twitterer. Publishers provided review copies.
Blues and Bullets – Episode 1: The End of Peace
(Xbox One, $5, Mature)
The film noir-style detective thriller brings back echoes of L.A. Noire as it lures you in with stylized visuals, a 1940s-style soundtrack and hard-boiled dialogue. After a methodical start, which eases you into an alternate universe in which Eliot Ness and Al Capone lock horns, maneuvering their forces in a deadly dance of cops and robbers. Slow-moving storylines take their time to get rolling, but pay off in satisfying twists.
Enjoying the story takes some tolerance for tedium. Clumsy menus and controls make for a rough plod through some scenes, particularly the early ones. But overall, the game’s charms manage to overcome the setbacks. If you’re into the scene set up by the game — of dark back alleys, shady speakeasies and distressed dames — you’ll have no problem overlooking the rough patches to enjoy the good stuff.
Forza Motorsport 6
(Xbox One, $60, Everyone)
Buy Forza Motorsport 6 on Amazon
Microsoft’s signature driving franchise has hit its stride on the Xbox One, with the third spectacular entry since the console came out two years ago. The new game not only continues the momentum of Forza Motorsport 5 and Forza Horizon 2, with dozens of intricately detailed cars and breakneck, fast-paced tracks to give you a seemingly limitless amount of racing combinations. Making a return is the “Drivatar” concept, which mimics the style and mannerisms of you and your friends, making it so A.I.-controlled drivers behave more like humans than automatons.
A gripping career mode, complete with leveling and unlocks, keeps you coming back to the grind again and again, sharpening your skills for the main stage, which is online play. You can grab a race at any time in an instant, ranging from sprint-races to multi-lap sagas to the endurance test of Le Mans. Couch co-op, which is so often neglected in modern racers, is there and just as full-featured as online play. As usual with the series, there’s a whole other side of the game for tinkerers and artists, letting you design, tweak and sell your own rides, taking control of every detail down to the paint job and logos. Forza 6 not only ranks among the best of the series, but lifts the Xbox One to the only current choice for serious racing fans.
Super Mario Maker
(Wii U, $60, Everyone)
Buy Super Mario Maker on Amazon
By far the highest profile release for a Nintendo system the rest of the year, Super Mario Maker takes the keys to its tentpole franchise and hands them over to fans, giving them user-friendly versions of all the tools developers have access to. An excellent game for aspiring developers, the simple, side-scrolling nature of the Mario games makes for an apt starting point to flex your creative muscles. There’s nearly no limit to the modifications and adjustments you can make to standard Mario tropes, with control available down to custom sound effects.
Even if level design isn’t your thing, buying the game is an easy choice for any Wii U owner. There’s a limitless supply of some of the most creative Mario levels you’ve ever seen — as well as plenty of bizarre oddities — but you’ll never have to see the awful stuff thanks to painstaking curation by Nintendo staffers and community voters. Super Mario Maker makes one of the most effective uses of Nintendo’s cloud server, creating hopes of similar treatments for the Metroid, Zelda and Donkey Kong franchises.
