10 Best Video Games Of 2018 You're Not Playing

6. The Messenger

I'm going to make you care about The Messenger. Ready?

You can time-travel, and doing so means the game shifts its graphical and soundtrack style from 8-bit to 16-bit. You literally go between an NES feeling and a SNES feeling by shifting through a zone on the map.

Done.

In terms of a plot, you're playing as the titular Messenger, sent to retrieve a mystical scroll, but naturally everything blows out from there. Brilliantly, developers Sabotage Studio clearly grew up playing all manner of NES and SNES classics, not to mention they're pretty great at poking fun at the games industry through a loveable fourth wall-breaking merchant, too.

The result is a side-scrolling platformer that revels in the old school, whilst also providing a supremely tight and hilarious script, and an enjoyable array of powers and attacks to bust out.

Lastly, past the halfway mark, this turns from platformer into a Metroidvania. It's almost two games in one, and I imagine was done to reflect the favoured genres of those two console cycles. Either way, The Messenger feels damn special.

Oh, and the soundtrack - in both its timely forms - completely bangs.