10 Most Criminally Overlooked Video Games Of 2018

4. The Messenger

Second only to Celeste when it comes to the best side-scrollers of the year, The Messenger has a killer soundtrack and tight mechanics connoting the halcyon days of the early 90s platformer, but its real sell is shifting between 8 and 16-bit graphics on the fly.

Treated as "leaping through time" in-game, meta-textually we're shifting between two identifiably awesome console "feels" - that of the NES and the SNES.

This then affects the layout of levels and the paths through them, alongside your character's aesthetic and how you'll need to deploy specific abilities to get by. It's a phenomenal idea, and though the final quarter of the game devolves into basic item-fetching over and over, everything else is so on-point, it's hard not to recommend this anyway.

Also, make a point of talking to the merchant at every opportunity. That guy has a LOT to say, and it's the player's perfect window into conversing with the developers themselves.