Summary
For many gaming enthusiasts, Tango Gameworks was a big studio to look out for. Established in 2010 by Shinji Mikami after he had left PlatinumGames, the studio started off on a rocky road but eventually flourished big time with new creative leads like John Johanas and Ikumi Nakamura.
The studio’s latest games have kicked a ton of ass, and witnessing Tango close seemed like an out-of-season April Fools' joke. Their 2023 title had real multimedia franchise potential, being the best new IP in nearly a decade, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
All of Tango’s games, besides the short-lived Hero Dice, will be included, as well as all paid DLC content.
Updated on June 03, 2025:We’ve added our video to this page, so you may take a closer look at some of the fantastic games from former studio Tango Gameworks.
6The Evil Within: The Assignment And Consequence
Kidman’s Side Story Breaks The Game
These two DLCs are being lumped into one, as it’s essentially a two-part story. In The Assignment and Consequence, you play as Juli Kidman during the first game’s events, and right off the bat, it loses you. What Sebastian sees in his world is heavily based on the villain, while Kidman’s world is largely based on herself.
The devs try to explain this with a quote at the beginning, but it still doesn’t make sense why the villain has little to no influence on Kidman’s world. Most of the campaign is filled with annoying as-all-hell stealth sequences that aren’t fun in the slightest, and by the time you do get a gun about three-fourths of the way through, it doesn’t make up for the rest of the DLC. At least there’ssome cool Easter eggs you can find.
5The Evil Within: The Executioner
Fun For What It Is
The final DLC to the original Evil Within was The Executioner, allowing you to play as The Keeper. With the Victoriano Estate as the hub world, you’ll go to many areas of the campaign and absolutely wreck house.
The Keeper’s actually really fun to play with, and the new first-person perspective was a nice way to freshen up the gameplay. Itfeels a bit like Dead by Daylight, but this DLC oddly came out before. Unfortunately, The Executioner does outstay its welcome and goes on a little too long, but it’s still the best of the DLC content.
The Evil Within 1 is a mess, but like with most messy games, there’s tons of positives to go with the bad. One, the Kafkaesque atmosphere is stellar, and it perfectly captures that dreamlike, nightmarish reality. It actually looks like a horror game, which you may’t say about Evil Within 2. The campaign’s also quite varied and mixes things up a lot, akin to Resident Evil 4.
Unfortunately, the gameplay and campaign quality aren’t in the same league. Despite Evil Within being hyped up as a true return to survival horror, it’s just Resident Evil 4 again, and not anywhere near as good. In fact, you could argue that RE5’s better because the low points in that game don’t come anywhere close to the lows in Evil Within.
With the modern state of triple-A games, some think it’s better to wait a year for a title to really flourish and be all patched up. Ghostwire: Tokyo would be one of those games, as by the time it was released on Xbox, the title went through a massive overhaul.
The combat was improved so much from the heavily restrictive feel of the PS5 launch version, and it also matches great with the more combat-focused new game mode Spider’s Thread. Tango even put in new secrets, including a Silent Hill-style joke ending, for crying out loud. On its own, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a fantastic open-world game with many things to discover, and while there’s some issues, like theoverabundance of collectibles, it’s still a blast to play.
After Evil Within 1 was a bit of a disappointment; not everyone was excited for the second game. Helmed by John Johanas instead of Mikami, Evil Within 2 blew the first game out of the water. Unlike the original, the sequel actually tries something new for a third-person horror game: open-world elements.
Two chapters, in particular, have a lot to uncover, including side quests and random events that add significantly to the gameplay and story. Evil Within 2 is a rare sequel that enhances the first game’s narrative while wrapping up the story in a pretty satisfying manner. There’s definitely plot threads that could continue in an Evil Within 3, but since that game probably won’t ever happen, it’s nice to see a resolution for our heroes, unlike poor Isaac Clarke.
Despite Starfield being the most hyped-up Xbox exclusive of 2023, the most critically acclaimed Xbox game of the year ended up being Hi-Fi Rush. The title felt incredibly fresh, being a rhythm-focused action game with varied enemy types, good level design, and a loveable cast of characters.
It even does cool down timers well, which is normally a big no-no, especially for Japanese action game fans, but the timer’s so short you won’t complain. With a great cast of characters and a solid rhythm-focused foundation, Hi-Fi Rush had the potential to be a multimedia franchise with sequels, a movie, an anime — everything really. It’s probably the best new IP since Five Nights at Freddy’s back in 2014, and it’s a damn shame the series is dead already.
