Getting motivated is hard. As we collectively hurtle toward yet another round of New Year’s Resolutions and “this time I’m serious” promises, the space in our lives for the next thing to keep us in line begins to open up. The cold, infinitely less sexy reality is that that thing doesn’t really exist and consistent hard work and self-care is the only real road to long-term succe- Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer is Nintendo’s latest attempt to fill that space with a Switch exercise game. 

The third entry in the (now) long-running Fitness Boxing series which first took a swing at this back in 2018, developer Imagineer has spent most of the Switch’s lifespan refining the edges of its boxing simulator. Where Ring Fit Adventure bundled in additional hardware to expand the range of exercises, Fitness Boxing, as you might imagine based on the name, focuses solely on the one-two punch of boxing, grading your entire performance via the Joy-Con motion controls.

It’s something of an honour system, with your stance, posture, exertion, and form all left to your own efforts, the game itself all too happy to doll out “great punch!” feedback whether you put your body into it or not. 

Despite its relative lack of accurate measurements, Fitness Boxing 3 plays the part of being a casual, ostensibly data-based fitness experience. Booting up the game you’ll be prompted to fill in a questionnaire, ranging from weight to age to fitness goals (weight loss, strength training, relaxed etc), and run through the basics of boxing by the game’s default, and worst, trainer. Once you’ve been onboarded, you’ll need to run through your first full session and a more casual mode before the game’s features fully unlock, but with those done, you’ve got access to the suite of modes Fitness Boxing 3 has to offer. 

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From daily workouts to free play to stretches to multiplayer, you can engage with the game in a decent variety of modes, but the core mechanics remain largely unchanged. In a solid stance with your core engaged, you’ll perform a series of punch types in time and rhythm with the game’s escalating challenge levels. Your digital instructor (you can choose from a small roster of perky, beautiful people who can in turn be customised to a granular level from outfits to eye colour and even mood) will perform the motions for you a few times before encouraging you to begin your own set of them. 

For basic movements like jabs and straights, this is fine, but as the game begins to fold in hooks and the like, its inability to discern how your movements fair is both unengaging mechanically and at a baseline health level, not entirely good for you. While the game does warn that its calories burnt count has essentially no basis in reality (at which point you might wonder if it’s only included for the veneer of a real fitness experience), higher-intensity workouts are often conducted under professional guidance because the human body is a temperamental thing and repeated, incorrect use of it can be rough in the long-term. There’s a degree of fun to be found in doing some basic swings and seeing the score pop and the screen light up but Fitness Boxing 3 is a toy first and foremost. 

Completing a full workout gives you a star rating, scores to chase higher next time, and some form of currency you can spend on outfits for your trainer and songs to work out to. While it might be initially thrilling to see the likes of Billie Eilish and…KISS in the playlist, you’ll soon tire of hearing these lo-fi, kid’s-bop covers of popular songs as a routine will often run you 10-minutes minimum and the musical offerings are sparse. Still, when the game told me my fitness age was 26 and had me punch at the screen to officiate a stamp at the end of the workout, I smiled. 

A cursory glance at the previous Fitness Boxing games tells me that they’ve also somewhat stepped up the overall visual presentation of the game. While UI and menus remain new-age fitness sterile for better legibility, the animations and flare found in the workout sections are at least vibrant and sharp. Likewise, the game now incorporates a seated mode for players with less mobility, an excellent accessibility option. Difficulty elsewhere is a bit looser, usually just extending the time or intensity of a workout session but stopping short of customisation as far as I could tell. 

As with any exercise program, you’re likely to see some results from Fitness Boxing 3 over time but outside of the initial fun of numbers-go-up punching, the experience is too thin and too imprecise to warrant that degree of investment. The new accessibility options are a genuine win and the series commitment to improving its presentation and mode options is admirable, but with such a limited means of engagement, it’s difficult to recommend. If you’re chasing a thing to help you stick to your goals, it might be worth checking out Ring Fit Adventure, but I’d still bet that the 70 bucks you could spend on Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer would be better used to get a nice pair of shoes and going for a walk.  

The post Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer Review – Joy Con appeared first on Press Start.

Square-Enix’s 2D-HD system has been a godsend for traditionally styled Japanese RPGs. After struggling through years of questionable visual updates and smoothing filters, we finally have a visual style that feels respectful to the genre’s forebearers while looking eye-poppingly pretty on modern machines. It all began with Octopath Traveler and it’s fantastic sequel, but since then many games have employed the style, both new and old.

The latest series to get the HD-2D treatment also happens to be a massive blind spot in my personal game experience. Dragon Quest 3 2D-HD Remake, aside from being an absolute mouthful of a title, is a stellar example of how to bring an almost forty-year-old game to the current day. With a gorgeous visual overhaul, a moving orchestral soundtrack and thoughtful quality-of-life features, this 2D-HD remake respectfully allows the original source material to shine.

Our story begins with our protagonist waking up in their single-parent home. We learn that their father left on an adventure some time ago to save the world and never returned. Despite this, our character feels like having a coming-of-age moment and leaving on a similar adventure. Their poor mum must barely make it through the day because of the worry.

You learn of a big bad guy you must defeat and head to the local tavern to assemble an adventuring party to save the world. This is the first moment where you’ll see how free you are to build a party just as you like. You can recruit up to three other party members at a time. You decide their name, appearance, and, most importantly, their vocation. From warrior and priest to more oddball options like gadabout and monster wrangler, you have immense freedom in building out your party.

Here lies one of the aspects of Dragon Quest 3 that impressed me the most. Its job system is incredibly flexible, and with a little thought, it’s easy to build a wildly versatile team with which to take on the world. At a certain point in the game, you’ll get the option to change the classes of your party mates. When you do this, they go back to Level 1, but they keep all the spells and abilities they’ve learned so far, as well as half of their currently built-up stats. Building them back up to level with the rest of the party is pretty painless, and when they get there, they have stats above what they could have had at the same level without re-classing. They also gain all the new abilities of their new class as they grow.

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Normally multi-classing systems put me off a little, I’m afraid I’ll absolutely goose it and end up with a totally useless party member. The way it’s done here means that almost no matter what you do, you’ll end up with better stats than you started with. It made me much more willing to play with the system. In doing so, I went from a pretty standard mage, priest and warrior combo to a party with immensely useful thief and monster-wrangling skills. Each party member became more well-rounded with buffs and heals as well, so if one party member fainted, it was rarely game over. The job system in Dragon Quest 3 is great fun to play with.

The battle system is pretty straightforward and will be familiar to anyone who’s played a turn-based RPG. You’ll take turns to fight with weapons, items, magic spells and special abilities – attacking, defending and manipulating the stats of your party and your enemies to your advantage. Things can be quite difficult to begin with while you’re building out your party’s abilities but I found that if I did a little extra exploring and made judicious use of buffs and debuffs I was usually able to prevail against tough early bosses without too much trouble.

I touched on the 2D-HD overhaul earlier, but it’s worth going into a little more detail. I’m sure it will become old hat at some point, maybe verge on overuse eventually, but for now, I’m still utterly enthralled by the visual style and how it brings NES/SNES-era RPGs to life. Characters and monsters maintain a flat pixel-art look, while the environment around them is rendered in loving 3D detail. A shallow depth of field sells the look even further – it’s like looking into a diorama of little miniatures going about their adventure.

Similarly, the audio has had a respectful revamp that maintains its classic sensibilities while taking advantage of modern hardware. The entire soundtrack is luxuriously orchestrated and feels like a realisation of what was being composed in the NES/SNES era without the shackles of the sound hardware of the time. I’ve enjoyed the soundtrack so much that I’ve gone back to listen to the originals to compare them, and you can hear the distinct flavour of the originals in the new orchestral recordings. Some sound effects have remained from the original, tastefully melding the old and new.

While great effort has been made to keep things traditional, several new quality-of-life additions have made things more palatable to a broader audience. Objective markers can point you to the next major story location to ensure you’re never aimlessly wandering, though wandering is still worthwhile to find little events and items that add flavour to your adventure.

Three difficulty levels are available to tailor your experience to your preference. Dracky stops anyone in your party ever getting below 1HP, and Draconian ramps up the difficulty while reducing EXP gained per battle. Auto-battle options aren’t entirely new to the series, but are an incredibly useful tool when grinding levels or dealing with easier fights that don’t need particular strategies. All of these features are entirely optional, and I didn’t feel they got in the way of playing the game ‘as intended’. Mostly, they just prevented me from looking up a guide when I couldn’t quite recall where to go next.

The post Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Review – Gaming Comfort Food appeared first on Press Start.

I had hoped LEGO Horizon Adventures would be a reimagining of the now-classic Horizon Zero Dawn with universal appeal. Having grown up with Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO games, I couldn’t be more excited to relive Aloy’s origin story with the charm and whimsy of a LEGO recreation. While Pixar films or Bluey do a great job of entertaining the kids while conscious of the parent in the room, LEGO Horizon Adventures struggles to find the depth that would keep even the uninitiated interested.

No doubt, much of what would have made LEGO Horizon Adventures special rests on the LEGO brick presentation style. The game looks exceptional. Even playing in Performance Mode, the rebuilt post-apocalyptic environment looks incredible in LEGO form. Environmental artists have had a field day adding extra details that don’t go unappreciated; little LEGO skeletons dotted amongst rusted ruined buildings brought a smile to my face. The lighting is also gorgeous, contributing greatly to an impressive presentation that feels more reminiscent of LEGO Builder’s Journey than LEGO Star Wars.

Poking about the nooks and crannies of each level, however, I was left disappointed by a lack of interactivity. It’s hard not to compare LEGO Horizon Adventures to the other PlayStation-exclusive platforming title released this year, ASTRO BOT, which rewarded you for hitting almost everything. Thinking back to past LEGO-based games, I’m accustomed to whacking and breaking almost every little thing. Bar identifiable barrels, there was little to break to collect those studs, the in-game currency.

With no hidden collectibles or easter eggs to be found, it feels like a missed opportunity. Chests containing studs and powerups are never far from the beaten path. Nor are little LEGO builds, which often feel like the same object repeated, with no indication there’s a certain amount to be discovered in the level. Occasionally, some straightforward environmental puzzle-solving is required, mostly with fire or explosive barrels to break through a wall.

The creative creature design, adapting Horizon Zero Dawn’s many memorable robotic dinosaurs into LEGO form is another strength. They have all been given the same quality, LEGO treatment as the Tallneck set that adorns the shelving in my gaming room. Each new enemy encounter comes with the thrill of seeing how they’ve been recreated in LEGO.

The enemy design also emulates the approach taken by the source material. Like the two Horizon games in the series thus far, combat revolves around hitting weak spots on the machine. Each has its weak spots, with enemies like the Shell-Walker proving more of a challenge with a shield to navigate and two clasps keeping a large weak point at bay.

It’s a combat system that worked well in the original games, darting your way about the level to work an angle on the machine. However, its simplified translation into isometric LEGO form requires the player just point the stick in the general direction with your arrow or spear automatically targeting it.

Playing as Aloy or Varl, you get the option of these two ranged attacks, with the other characters Erend and Teersa having a hammer and bombs respectively. The latter two proved effective if less precise and I gravitated towards Aloy and Erend the most.

Adding more variety are the rare weapons and gadgets you can collect throughout levels. Pickups add elemental damage to your chosen weapon, and in the case of Aloy add scattershot or multiple notched arrows for extra damage. Gadgets get a bit more creative, my favourite being a deployable hotdog truck where the vendor tosses explosives in the general direction of enemies. These pickups have limited uses, but bring some welcome variety to the otherwise monotonous combat.

Sadly, the game’s combat never amounts to much. Granted, LEGO games have never been known for their complex combat mechanics, but still, I was left wanting more. Aloy’s spear never appears for close-quarter combat, whereas past LEGO games have dynamically altered the basic attack based on your proximity to an opponent. That and limiting a dodge/dash mechanic to a consumable pickup seems a misstep, particularly when some of the larger bosses have large area-of-effect attacks that ask more of the player.

Stealth is present somewhat. As you do in the core Horizon games, hiding in long grass makes you invisible to enemies, although there are no stealth takedowns or overrides; an upgrade available later in the game rewards some extra damage from a hiding spot but that’s it.

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To make it more approachable to the youngest gamers, I fear Guerilla Games and Studio Gobo have gone too far and lost much of what makes Horizon’s gameplay enjoyable.

That said, the story is decently executed. Elements of what is admittedly a complicated narrative get glossed over as you would perhaps expect given the target audience, but they have done a commendable job distilling it down to its basics whilst doing the original plot justice. Clearly, emphasis was placed on the character arcs of Aloy — and to a lesser extent the supporting characters — making sure to highlight the key themes most important to young newcomers.

The humour synonymous with the LEGO brand is on full display too, with Rost adopting the role of the narrator with a bunch of self-referential jokes that just about bow out before just becoming overdone. Ashly Burch also pivots to a more family-friendly tone commendably, with fun quips injected throughout.

LEGO’s sense of humour translates into the customisation central to the game. Of course, you can change Aloy’s attire (and that of the other characters too) into any number of daft outfits including spacesuits, chicken costumes and Ninjago gis. Customisation extends to different buildings you add to Mother’s Heart, the Nora Village which serves as the overworld where you upgrade your abilities and start challenges.

Upgrades don’t feel terribly consequential. There are two options: upgrades that increase the powers of all characters, and those tied to each character that can be progressed up to level 20. Each new character level increases their damage or health, whilst the overall upgrades increase the amount of XP earned from various takedowns, the damage done whilst hiding or the duration of elemental effects, for example.

Besides levelling up all the characters, completionists ought to seek out all the Gold and Red bricks they can to unlock all the customisations. Gold Bricks are earned by completing Story Mission and Community Challenges — which range from elemental takedowns to exploring a Cauldron in a spacesuit — and Red Bricks are rewarded for completing the Alpha Machine Hunts.

Story Missions blur together but are divided into different subsections within four chapters, each set in a unique biome. Tallnecks and Claudrons are to be found on alternate paths within these levels, which make for a welcome break in pace. The Story wraps up in several hours, with the Alpha Machine Hunts rounding the game out to what I believe is around a 10-12-hour game.

Alpha Machine Hunts become available after completing a chapter, with more unlocked for that region after progressing the story further. Here the challenge steps up, even on the middle difficulty of the five available. Should you want a serious challenge, there is one should you want to make the grind for all the costumes more arduous. Beyond that, the Platinum seems achievable, but little else would entice me to keep playing.

As expected, playing the game co-operatively online or locally makes it more engaging. The co-op play works well; an online friend can join your story back at Mother’s Heart. Locally, another player can drop in any time you like. Your companion will assume the role of one of the remaining three other characters, at whichever level you have progressed them so far, with all progress tied to your save.

The post LEGO Horizon Adventures Review — The Pieces Don’t Quite Connect appeared first on Press Start.

While we’ve already had two Mario-centric RPGs in the last year on the Switch, it’s been over a decade since Nintendo released an original Mario & Luigi game. While Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario were remakes, Mario & Luigi: Brothership is an entirely new adventure. A new storyline, no nostalgia to carry it and, more interestingly, a (moderately) new developer. That being said, while Brothership is easily the most interesting in the series so far, there are many hurdles you’ll have to jump before it reveals its brilliance to you.

During the game’s opening moments, Mario and Luigi are whisked away to the now-divided continent of Concordia by a mysterious vortex. Here, they meet Connie, a local of the area, who explains to the brothers that Concordia has broken apart. Mario and Luigi, as they always do, set off on an adventure to reconnect all of the disparate islands, restoring the continent to its former glory. It’s a straightforward premise that, while plodding, eventually evolves into something more intriguing and unique than I’ve ever experienced in any Mario-themed RPG.

But in terms of how it plays, Mario & Luigi: Brothership feels incredibly similar to previous games. The general structure of the game has you moving from island to island, solving a slew of puzzles, battling enemies and reconnecting islands to rebuild Concordia. It’s a simple premise saved by the variety of dungeons you’ll explore. But it really, really takes a lot to get going. Pacing is perhaps the biggest issue I have with Brothership, which starts with the method of transport that you’ll use to get from island to island.

Your main hub, an island shaped like a ship, called Shipshape Island, can move from area to area by riding currents on the ocean. While riding, if you’re near an island, you can use a cannon on Shipshape to shoot yourself there. It’s simple, but where it really falters, mainly in the opening hours, is how it simultaneously encourages completionists and frustrates them.

The way it works is simple. Your ship will reach its destination in real-time after selecting the current you want to ride. Brothership encourages you to complete optional content during this time, which takes minutes. Things like completing side quests, some of which are time sensitive or exploring areas on already visited islands that have opened up since you’ve connected them. I often found myself going off to do side quests, being notified that we were approaching the island, but then missing the island before I even got back to the cannon. With nothing else to do, I had to wait more minutes for the ship to make its way around the current again.

To be completely transparent, this issue became less of a problem after upgrades were given to the ship to make things a bit more manageable. But it took over ten hours to get to that point where my concerns melted away, and I’m not sure other players might be that patient. This problem might sound minor, but if a player doesn’t put up with it, potentially even if it never reaches the game’s incredible second half because of it, that’s an issue that’s worth highlighting.

It speaks to my most significant problem with Brothership – it’s poorly paced. While the tutorials are quick and easy to digest and get through, Brothership’s characters constantly stop the game to talk to you every few minutes, reminding you of where you are or what you need to do. If these scenes were presented with the same charm and humour I’d seen in, say, Paper Mario earlier this year, I’d be okay with it. But Brothership is so afraid to let players go that it becomes tedious. I’m not going as far as to say it’s anything as mind-numbingly frustrating as Fi’s constant interruptions from Skyward Sword’s original release, but it is regular and detrimental to the pacing enough that I’d be remiss to mention it.

It’s a colossal relief that it’s incredibly strong when the game gets going. If you’ve played any RPGs Nintendo has been putting out on the Switch recently, you’ll know what to expect. Mario and Luigi have similar move sets (think jumping and hammers) but differing stats. The combat is turn-based, with battles having you hit rhythmically timed button presses to improve your damage or reduce incoming damage. This simple system is more engaging by the active element that happens as your turn plays out, and every enemy behaves differently to be avoided too.

Where Mario & Luigi games have always differed is in the Bros. Attacks, where Mario or Luigi can initiate an attack that the other brother will participate in to do massive damage to a single enemy or heaps of enemies in the arena. These are a joy to pull off – the simplest of one has the brothers kicking a shell to each other, building up flames on it before power kicking it into a group of enemies. They’re incredibly interactive and always fun to use, and they look better than previous games, thanks to Brothership’s vibrant art style. There’s a nice mix of new and old, some even featuring cameos from other characters, and I’ll never get tired of doing them.

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The other significant addition to the combat is the plug system, similar to the badges from Paper Mario. Once unlocked and crafted, these can be slotted into your team to add different effects to your attacks. Plugs grant effects like doing guaranteed critical damage against certain enemies or automatically using an item when inflicted with a status ailment. Mixing the right plugs together can even have unique effects too. The catch is that plugs eventually run out and will recharge once swapped out for others. It’s a clever but simple system that forces you to experiment with different loadouts of the various plugs rather than just relying on the same ones, something I admittedly did plenty of in Paper Mario earlier this year.

But it’s not all about the battles either – the other major new addition is Luigi Logic. It’s a clever way to get Luigi to participate more than in previous Mario & Luigi games. Tapping the L button essentially sends Luigi to help you with a task. Sometimes, it’s as simple as helping you to smash a bunch of blocks. Other times, he’ll jump in to help with a puzzle, removing some of the tedium that controlling just one character would typically bring. It’s a glorified partner Al system, for sure, but it’s incredibly intuitive, and there was never a point where Luigi wouldn’t do what I needed him to. Luigi Logic is similarly used in battle, taking advantage of environmental structures to help both him and Mario do massive damage to enemies during more intense boss battles.

When you’re not in battle, you’ll still be exploring the islands. Many of them have simple objectives, requiring you to solve local issues to reconnect to the mainland or traverse them to get to the lighthouse. Some are longer and more involved, serving similar functions as the typical dungeons you’d expect to find in an RPG. While I found the larger ones to go on for a bit too long, contributing to Brothership’s pacing issues that I’ve already talked about, the variety on offer here is to be commended.

Of course, there are side quests to complete if you so wish, but most of these feel like the typical ones you’d find in an RPG from decades ago. You’ll often just have to go speak to someone after receiving them from someone else and then be rewarded something trivial like a consumable or a piece of equipment you’ve already superseded with something else. There are smaller islands to explore, called islets filled with puzzles, and reefs to find in a more involving side quest, but otherwise, this is fairly typical optional content you’d expect to see in an RPG like this. Some special quests continue the side characters’ storyline, but they’re few and far between.

Visually, Brothership is as slick as ever. The game employs a heavily stylised look that makes the game look like the concept art for all previous games, except in real-time. It’s bright, colourful and incredibly expressive. I can’t tell you how often I smiled, seeing Mario or Luigi scream in terror as the other brother fell in battle or even just fussed over the other brother whenever I missed an attack. It’s a bright and colourful world filled with even more charming enemy designs that I couldn’t get enough of. And while the lack of a 60fps mode is disappointing, the game still runs at a very steady and stable 30fps.

So, as my time came to a close with Brothership, I felt awfully conflicted. It’s easily the most interesting Mario & Luigi game, especially narratively speaking, once it gets going in its utterly stellar second half. But the pacing issues, including the need to constantly throw you into repetitive conversations, really bring the whole experience down. It’s just as well the game flips the script the way it does, though, as such a pivot combined with a strong, classic battle system makes Brothership the traditional Mario & Luigi game fans have been clamouring for so long.

The post Mario & Luigi: Brothership Review – A Rocky But Incredible Journey appeared first on Press Start.

Last year, Skull Island: Rise of Kong released to a Gollum-like reception, ultimately being deemed a buggy, half-baked mess. The Monsterverse, which has lurched tepidly through a number of films and TV adaptations so far, has turned around and declared that it’s trying again, unconvincingly, with Kong: Survival Instinct. Set shortly after Godzilla vs. Kong, the game deals with the destructive left behind after the titanic battle, similar to how the Monarch series tail ends Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, told through a boots on the ground Metroidvania-inspired platformer.

Unlike Rise of Kong, which cast you as the greatest ape of all as he battles all kinds of bugs, native to Skull Island and otherwise, Kong: Survival Instinct shelves the titular titan for virtually the entirety of the game’s runtime. Instead, as the stodgy hero, David Martin, you explore the ruins of a decimated city in search of your daughter. 

Due to my eyes glazing over repeatedly while playing, I cannot speak at all to the story’s place within the larger canon of the Monsterverse. I can’t expect it’s going to really excite fans of the series, especially as the oft-spectacular kaiju battles are relegated to set dressing in the background. Although we’d been burned before, I can’t help but feel all of the action happening in between what remains of the city’s skyline would have made for a more spectacular King Kong title. 

Kong: Survival Instinct plays like a bog standard action-platformer that incorporates several elements of Metroidvania-like exploration. Sifting through the wreckage of the razed metropolis gradually grants you more extreme means of digging deeper into the ruins. Whether it’s a sledgehammer to open a passage to lower floors, or a grappling line that can be used as an improvised rope swing or winch cable to pull far-off items nearer, I did find the game’s progression through its stages to be one of its few strengths. 

The map design, however, feels extremely confused. It’s uninspired, largely repetitive, and what’s there feels like a developer’s attempt to slap together map elements, like drop ladders, that are fun without caring whether it’s believable. The game is rife with strange, distracting choices like this that constantly took me out. 

The combat in Survival Instinct is similarly miserable, especially if you’re stuck in encounters with relatively large patrol groups. Defending yourself hand-to-hand feels like a manageable task, it’s when guns enter the question that things can get a bit frustrating. Once you’re surrounded, which can happen quickly as enemies grapple and switch places with you, you open yourself up to a quick death. You can parry and dash to avoid knife jabs and bullets respectively, however the controls are too sluggish and inconsistent to ever feel in total control. You pick up a pistol yourself which can be a difference maker in desperate times, however I do think the game manages to make bullets feel scarce—yet, when you’re in need, it’s always made available in crates nearby to the locked doors and generators that need a well-placed bullet to proceed. 

This, I feel, negates the need to be frugal as the game tends to bail you out, and I feel the same is true of the mechanical parts needed to repair things throughout the world. It’s never really essential to stray far from the critical path, which kind of feels antithetical to the genre. In Survival Instinct, the Metroidvania of it all really only necessitates backtracking rather than genuine exploration. 

As you move from area to area by splicing together compiled audio files to lure titans like Kong and Abaddon, an enormous source of nightmares for arachnophobes everywhere, to the scene for a relatively exciting chase sequence. In a game with slicker controls, I’d remember these encounters for the right reasons. Sadly, they’re often marred by cheap deaths caused by getting snagged on geometry and awful checkpointing.  

As perplexing as the map design choices can be, the environments in Survival Instinct aren’t the worst. By setting up and sticking to everything it sets up early, like the shining glint on items of interest like padlocks and anchor points, there’s a readability to the environment design that’s pretty admirable. I also like how, depending on which titan has dominion over the district you’re in, buildings might be covered in spiderwebs or a viscous, purple sludge which, in turn, feeds into the problem-solving. Survival Instinct mightn’t have the irredeemably bad, wide-eyed, unblinking Kong of last year’s Skull Island, but ugly is as ugly does. It isn’t all bad, of course, the kaiju designs themselves, as sparingly as they appear, are a clear highlight, while the remainder of this world and inhabitants scream ‘generic’.

When you consider Godzilla, who is name dropped in this game several times and never appears, has one of the most iconic, instantly recognisable war cries in cinema, the fact this game’s sound design is so dull is a crying shame. Chatter on either side of battle is repetitive and delivered so wooden, it makes Henry Cavill look like a true Thespian. The primary frustration of dying mid-fight came not from having to start over but from having to hear the dialogue again. 

When I stop to consider why this game exists, it’s hard to land on a single good reason. Monarch proved a good kaiju story can focus on the aftermath, however the story chops here can’t carry what, otherwise, is a listless, uninspired Metroidvania game that inexplicably shelves its key attraction in favour of world-building nobody could say, hand-to-heart, they prefer over two big monsters beating the suitcase out of each other.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This has been republished with the game finally launching physically in Australia this week. It releases on October 25th and the cheapest copy is at Target for $45. 

Time is relentless and unyielding – it’s– crazy to think that twenty-eight years ago we first witnessed Lara Croft and her adventures in the Tomb Raider series. Nobody could have predicted the critical acclaim that would come afterward, nor the discourse around her status as a cultural icon and her appeal to certain audiences. Even further to that is the expansive and muddled legacy that it created – multiple sequels, several reboots, and film adaptations as well.

When Tomb Raider launched in 1996, it was the first time in a long time that gaming had a strong female protagonist, skyrocketing Lara Croft to the same heights as Mario and Sonic, and putting her head-to-head with Sony’s own Crash Bandicoot. While most people were hooked on the wise-cracking Duke Nukem or ultraviolence of Quake and Doom, Tomb Raider made 3D platforming exciting by blending puzzle solving and action with freedom of movement and exploration. With a slew of sequels and expansions, the Tomb Raider franchise quickly became stale – too much of a good thing led to a lack of innovation, and despite continuing to sell games, the series never really moved past its origins (at least before the modern and grittier trilogy).

Having said that, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered helps you slip on the rose-tinted glasses to enjoy exactly what made Lara the icon she was, and to recapture a bit of that atmosphere when the games were first released. These are games that don’t hold your hand or guide you through with hints and suggestions; you’re dropped into an environment and forced to figure things out on your own, with the tools at your disposal. This is both refreshing and jarring – you could be spending hours wandering a level to try and find your next objective, while simultaneously uncovering the level’s secrets to get a perfect score before moving on to the next.

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The biggest thing I think this trilogy has going for it is that it is exactly as advertised, with a few quality-of-life improvements over the originals. You have all three Tomb Raider games in their upscaled glory, with an enhanced modern control scheme, and even a photo mode thrown in for good measure. The three games come with their PC-only expansions as well, available for the first time on consoles, so you truly are getting the full versions of each game with more modern graphics. On starting the game for the first time you’re also greeted with an opening card that states:

“The games in this collection contain offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices. These stereotypes are deeply harmful, inexcusable, and do not align with our values at Crystal Dynamics.

“Rather than removing this content, we have chosen to present it here in its original form, unaltered, in the hopes that we may acknowledge its harmful impact and learn from it.”

There’re going to be people who want to take that the wrong way, but personally I think it’s a great addition considering some of the story content of the games. There’s no overt censorship, no cut content, heck even the games’ cheat codes are active (but I couldn’t get them to work.)

One of the major changes here is the addition of “Modern Controls,” allowing you to play Lara in a more free-moving style as opposed to her classic “tank” controls. This comes with its own caveats – the levels were built around Lara’s strafing jumps, shimmying across ledges and shuffling to get a better angle on things, and more often than not she’d be hurtling into walls or off edges leading to a frustrating level restart.

To realise just how much time we spent with tank controls back in the day, perfecting a safety drop just to tap the wrong button and have Lara swan-dive into the ground below ending in a sickening neck snap is really jarring. To be able to do that in a lot less button presses with Modern controls is just annoying. I found myself constantly switching back and forward between Modern and Tank to get through levels, lest I hurl the controller through the screen. I even experimented with plugging in a DualShock for control, and found that Modern controls feel more comfortable with a controller, but Tank controls work better for keyboards.

Switching between control systems wasn’t the only thing to amaze me – the most impressive part of the Remastered trilogy is the work that’s been put into upscaling the graphics. At the press of a button you can instantly switch between classic graphics and modern graphics, and I’m not gonna lie – the modern graphics are identical to what I would have imagined the classic graphics being when I first played Tomb Raider years ago. Aspyr has made great strides in adding little quirks to the modern graphics, allowing proper light sources to shine in from above, or making certain consumables stand out just that little bit more from their classic counterparts, but sometimes this has flaws in itself as well.

The first level of Tomb Raider III is set in a jungle, which has a swamp you can drown in if you’re not careful. Switching between classic and modern graphics, I discovered that the classic graphics’ mud has waves like water, whereas the modern texture is solid and looks like the ground. Another level restart for me on that one after unsuccessfully trying to pull Lara out of the swamp. It’s small changes like this that make you err on the side of caution; whether this was a stylistic choice for Aspyr in developing the games or not remains to be seen. The game’s photo mode allows you to have a bit of fun while playing, and really puts you back in awe at the graphical changes between old and new, though I was a little uncomfortable with the ability to put Lara in a dressing gown in the middle of China.

The audio work goes largely unchanged from the originals, so Lara’s voice is the same as day one, grunts and all. The pre-rendered cutscenes are also unchanged but do get the benefit of upscaling – credit to Aspyr for not trying to reinvent the wheel with that one, The in-game cutscenes have additional facial animation to match the voices which was a nice touch. Nathan McCree’s iconic title theme brings a tear to my eye every time I boot up the Remastered trilogy, and the soundtrack for all three games with its classical influences is still some great atmospheric work.

The post Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Review – A Love Letter To Lara’s Origins appeared first on Press Start.

When Sonic Generations dropped in 2011, it was almost like a reinvigoration of the franchise; taking classic and modern Sonic and pairing them together, experiencing the best of 2D and 3D worlds, and paying homage to the history of the series in a neat little package. Thirteen years on, we finally get an updated version for modern consoles; but with it comes Sega’s push for their edgy, darker counterpart to take the spotlight – putting Shadow the Hedgehog front and centre by re-releasing Sonic Generations as Sonic X Shadow Generations.

The game is split into two components – the first being Sonic Generations, a remaster and update of the 2011 release with sharper graphics, reworked cutscenes and a few gameplay tweaks. At Sonic’s birthday party, a mysterious being known as the Time Eater warps Sonic and his friends into White Space – where past and future collide. Sonic meets himself from the past, and together they travel through their history to save their friends and stop Dr Eggman from teaming up with himself as he tries to erase his failures of the past and rewrite history.

But the Time Eater doesn’t just affect Sonic and his friends; Shadow Generations sees Shadow the Hedgehog also dragged into White Space by the Time Eater, where he is confronted by the imminent return of his greatest foe, Black Doom. The being that helped create Shadow, Black Doom seeks to return from the past and take over the world – so it falls upon Shadow to travel through his history to set things right, while obtaining new dark powers and being reunited with old friends.

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The problem with Sonic X Shadow Generations is that it doesn’t seem to know what game it wants to be. Is it a remaster? Is it a sequel? Is it a wholly new experience? Effectively it is two games in one – a remaster of Sonic Generations, while attempting to do Shadow the Hedgehog justice by tagging Shadow Generations alongside it. Sega are really making a focus on the “Year of Shadow” this year by releasing this game as well as having Shadow star in the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film, set for release later this year. But in order to do both games their due diligence, you almost have to forget that Sonic’s game was released thirteen years ago, and view it as if it was just released – otherwise Shadow’s game seems like an afterthought.

To that extent, it’s probably better that Sonic Generations is paired up with Shadow Generations, so that you can understand the story behind both titles. Credit where credit is due, SEGA did a great job on remastering Sonic Generations for a new audience who may have missed it the first time around.

With two acts per level, you get the opportunity to play as both Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic through a variety of historic Sonic stages; with Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant Zone and Sky Sanctuary Zone to name a few. The flip side to this, and something that makes the game that much more enjoyable, is the ability to play as Classic Sonic on levels released well beyond the years of the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis for you international friends) such as Crisis City and Planet Wisp from more recent instalments where 3D gameplay is king.

As you bring colour back to White Space by finishing the levels and saving Sonic’s friends, you’ll come up against bosses from Sonic’s history, as well as unlocking collectibles and beating challenges such as time trials. This all leads up to the climactic battle against past and future Dr Eggman and the Time Eater, to save the world and restore time and space to normal.

When I say that Sonic Generations does its history justice, it isn’t just looking at things through rose-tinted glasses – Classic Sonic plays exactly like it should, and Modern Sonic is fun and fast. There’s nothing overly complicated about how each Sonic plays, and aside from maybe going a little too fast in certain sections, plenty of care has been taken to make each character play with a degree of familiarity.

Modern Sonic took a while for me to get used to as not only was it a jump from 2D to 3D (or 2.5D in some situations) but you also get lock-on and boost mechanics that extend your jumps and attacks – there is some fun to be had in bouncing from one enemy to another before boosting away to grind on a rail. In true Sonic fashion, going fast is the aim of the game regardless of whether you play as Classic or Modern Sonic, and it almost feels punishing if you aren’t going fast.

If SEGA weren’t pushing the “Year of Shadow” content, then we could end the review there, say that Sonic Generations is a great remaster of a decent Sonic game, and we’d be done with it. But Shadow needs time in the spotlight, and this is where things diverge just a little bit. If you’re not familiar with Shadow the Hedgehog, you’re given a narrative backstory which tells us about how he was engineered to be the Ultimate Life Form, being infused with DNA from the evil alien Black Doom. Created by Gerald Robotnik on the Space Colony ARK, Shadow befriends Robotnik’s daughter Maria, who is plagued with a terminal illness that Gerald seeks to cure through Project Shadow.

When the government becomes concerned about Project Shadow, they send forces from Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N) to shut the project down; but Maria is killed in the process, and Shadow seeks to enact revenge for losing his friend. Shadow is captured and placed into stasis for over 50 years, and on his release he sought to ruin the world. Remembering Maria’s last words to him, he forced himself to stop – and became the anti-hero we now know today.

We open with Shadow on Space Colony ARK, tracking a strange signal. Rouge the Bat calls him reminding him of Sonic’s birthday party – and at this time the events of Sonic Generations take place, as everyone is dragged into rifts created by the Time Eater. Shadow fights off a being known as Doom’s Eye, later discovered to be Black Doom’s third eye set out to monitor Shadow in an attempt to revive Black Doom. In scenes reminiscent of the mirror dimension from Doctor Strange, the fights with Doom’s Eye are pretty crazy, and usually culminate in Shadow earning a new power if you manage to land a hit.

Shadow then finds himself in a similar White Space to Sonic, being forced to relive elements of his past in order to save the day. Where Sonic Generations’ White Space keeps to a 2D plane, Shadow Generations opens up the White Space to three dimensions, allowing you to practice and test out the Doom powers that Shadow will acquire on his journey. As you encounter Doom’s Eye, Shadow unlocks more dark powers to use on his journey – with the ability to surf across water or unleash devastating attacks on enemies unlocking through progression.

Shadow Generations’ White Space feels very awkward compared to Sonic Generations, and it isn’t just the jump from 2D to 3D in the hub space. In fact I found this was a flaw with the game as a whole – the controls for Shadow feel extremely clunky even though they have clearly taken example from Sonic’s 3D gameplay.

Some moments are too sensitive, others are extremely floaty, and there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground when it comes to controlling Shadow. The game allows you to keep the quick time event controls on screen when they happen, but even then it doesn’t seem to feel natural when attempting to perform it. Just like Sonic Generations, the game wants you to go fast – but sometimes it feels like it’s also a curse, as one wrong button press or slight adjustment to the direction and you’ve sent yourself flying off the side of the course and into the abyss.

Shadow’s Doom powers add an extra layer to playing the character that at times feels very fluid and inventive, and other times just feels like another button sequence to remember without being practical. In moments that feel very ‘blink and you’ll miss it’, you’ll be able to target multiple enemies with Doom Spears – but you may have already rocketed past them by boosting consistently, so it doesn’t really change things.

Filling the Chaos Control gauge makes for strategic moments where you need to pause time to get through a difficult obstacle (like falling or breaking platforms) and the game conveniently hands you everything you need to do that at the right places, but everything feels very on-rails when you’re in a level and so not as necessary to plan ahead. Overall, rather than feeling like a new or a different character, Shadow just plays like Sonic but with extra steps and bonus powers.

The post Sonic X Shadow Generations Review – Classic Sonic And Modern Sonic Together appeared first on Press Start.

Mario Party is back, again, but this time in a big way. You’d argue it never left – we’ve already had both Super Mario Party and Mario Party Superstars on the Switch. But Super Mario Party Jamboree feels different. Not only is it the first wholly original Mario Party game since 2018, but it’s also a best-of-both-worlds situation. Jamboree is an enjoyable romp for all the right reasons – bringing together the briskness of Superstars with the devotion to original content that Super Mario Party provided. The result is a party that’s fun for hours and, more importantly, one well worth attending.

The beauty of Mario Party has always been in how simple it is, and Jamboree is no different. You and three other characters are placed on a board, moving around to purchase as many stars as possible as they rotate throughout the board. At the end of each turn, everyone is thrown into a minigame, with the winner gaining some advantage in the next round. It’s an incredibly simplistic premise that has stayed the same for over two decades. But it’s easy to see why – Mario Party is easy for anyone and everyone to pick up and enjoy. It’s immaculately paced in Jamboree too.

There’s a heap to do in Jamboree, but the crux of your experience will be spent in Mario Party mode. This is the traditional mode – allowing up to four players to jump into one of seven boards and battle it out for the most stars. As mentioned above, the flow of Jamboree feels like the best that Mario Party has felt for some time, but a few additions to the proceedings change things quite considerably. The most major being the Jamboree abilities.

Jamboree’s abilities feel like a natural evolution of the Ally system from Super Mario Party. During any game, a character will appear on the board. If you reach them, a unique minigame is initiated, with the person who reaches them receiving a handicap. Whoever wins the minigame recruits that character to their side, opening up a variety of buffs. For one, every character has a unique ability – Wario gives you coins before each turn, for example. But also, anything that happens to you in the game while your buddy is with you is doubled. You earn twice as many coins, lose twice as many coins, and can buy two stars when you land on a star space.

The Jamboree ability system is a clever idea, though I wish there was some way to adjust their frequency or even the length of time they stay with players once they are gained. They only pop up a little in short games, often appearing right at the end, where it’s never worth it to divert your attention to them, given how many turns are left. It’s also disappointing that only ten of the game’s twenty-two characters can be recruited. It’s by no means a dealbreaker, but it does sometimes feel like they’re not worth the diversion if you’re already close to a star or have your eyes on something else.

Where I’m more confident that Jamboree gets it right is the boards themselves. Five of the seven boards included here are brand new, with the other two returning from the first two Mario Party games. The new boards are fantastic. Much has been said about Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party already. But other boards, like Goomba Lagoon, have a shifting tide mechanic which leaves people either stranded on an island, doomed to run in circles or wash them away entirely.

But my favourite is easily King Bowser’s Keep. On this brutal and punishing board, Bowser is constantly turning each space into a Bowser Space and stealing stars and coins from players for a vault. The vault itself can be unlocked by any player, who can unlock it if they reach it and guess the code to open it. It’s a fun and exhausting board for all the right reasons. Overall, all of the boards are nothing short of incredible – mixing some novel designs with even more novel gimmicks to ensure everyone has a chance at any given point.

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Praise also has to be given to Jamboree’s new Pro rules options. This is a set of rules you can apply before each game where all the random elements and chance-based minigames are either eliminated or tweaked. It’s a good idea for those looking for a more serious game, but a lot of these options are individually tweakable before you enter a game if you want to fine-tune your options. Our group, for example, really liked the idea of voting for minigames but didn’t like the idea of Pro rules, so we chose to do so for our sessions.

The package is rounded out with some great new modes, too. Much has been said about the Koopathlon and Bowser Kaboom Squad in Brodie’s preview last month, which are two modes that up the player count and the chaos. I recognise that they might not be technically achievable locally, but I hope that one day, Mario Party will expand to include more than four players in a fashion similar to these. The single player mode, Party-Trek Planner, is similarly something I enjoyed when I played the game earlier this month. It’s a nice alternative way to play Mario Party, especially if you want to unlock stuff, and it gives solo players something to do.

When you’re not keen on something as involved as a full round on the board, the Experience Party mode offers up something slightly different to Mario Party and the Minigame Bay. There are three separate games to play – Paratroopa Flight School, Toad’s Item Factory and Rhythm Kitchen. Rhythm Kitchen is the most straightforward – you essentially participate in a series of motion-based minigames to create (oddly realistic-looking) foodstuffs for a judging panel of Yoshis. It’s the simplest of the three modes but a nice little diversion, too.

Paratroopa Flight School has your character outfitted with Paratroopa wings, flapping your arms to move around a semi-open level. You can either co-operate here to transport a character from one point of the map to another or play head-to-head as you float around the map to collect biddybuds. Toad’s Item Factory is my favourite, allowing up to four players to work together to move a ball through a factory by controlling various stages of a production line with the Joy-Con. It feels the most detailed and most involving of the Experience Party area.

But Experience Party highlights one of my only true major issues with Jamboree. The motion controls could be better. Especially during some of the minigames you encounter in the Mario Party mode, there were a few times when our controllers wouldn’t behave like they should during the minigames. Another minor gripe is that three boards have to be unlocked through earning achievements. If you’re grabbing this game for a party night, only some things will be available from the get-go. Given the minigames are short and the unlockables aren’t too grindy, they’re minor issues, but ones I think bear mentioning.

Perhaps this is cynical of me, but it’s refreshing to speak about a Nintendo Switch game in a positive light when it comes to presentation. Unlike recent releases on the Switch, Jamboree runs at a very delectable sixty frames per second. Combine this with the bright and colourful artistic direction that we’ve come to know and expect from the world of Mario, and Jamboree is easily the best-looking Mario Party so far. It doesn’t do anything too outlandish or outrageous when it comes to artistic direction, though the performance is especially appreciated, especially in a game that can be so competitive.

Such a strong sense of presentation is just icing on the cake – Super Mario Party Jamboree seemingly does the impossible. It has expanded the idea of what a Mario Party game can be well beyond anything the series has done so far without skimping on the most crucial factor – quality. Everything that it offers, whether it be a traditional Mario Party experience or some of the newer, more novel motion-controlled games, Jamboree more than lives up to its name, and that’s worth celebrating. Get your RSVPs in; this party is well worth attending.

The post Super Mario Party Jamboree Review – An RSVP Worth Responding To appeared first on Press Start.

There is a schism in the Zelda community between the new and the old. People who enjoy the older style of games are frustrated at the mechanical freedom that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom afford players. But some people like that same thing about them, harkening back to the core fundamentals of the original Zelda game. And then there’s me. Squarely in the middle. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a game squarely for me. It bridges these two ideologies almost perfectly, and while there are some minor issues, it’s a scintillating experience. As it stands, Echoes of Wisdom is a stellar debut to finally see Zelda as a playable main character.

Echoes of Wisdom cheekily opens in a way you’d expect any Zelda game to. You might even feel like you’ve booted the wrong game at first. But there’s a twist here – as you begin the journey, you play the princess herself. Rifts open up throughout this version of Hyrule and swallow everything within. Through some story events I won’t elaborate on, Zelda meets Tri, is given a magical staff that can summon Echoes and sets off on an adventure to free Hyrule and discover the mystery behind these rifts and who’s creating them.

It’s a simple story, doing its own thing but adhering to a very typical Zelda formula. While there are few surprises here, I would’ve loved for the villainous presence to be more present. I adored Ganon in Tears of the Kingdom, so to see that aspect of the story be given a backseat feels like a step back. Regardless, the story is interesting enough that I was engaged from beginning to end, so I’d argue it’s about the journey rather than the destination. And no, you Zelda lore nuts, there’s not much here for you either. Echoes of Wisdom is solely in its own lane.

Tears of the Kingdom was a revelation for me. I loved how it took everything that made Breath of the Wild so unique but still incorporated aspects I was missing from traditional Zelda games. Echoes of Wisdom continues that trend. It does strong work in bringing together the classic aspects of Zelda – think dungeons, specific items and great boss battles – with the lateral thinking approach that the abilities in the more recent Zelda games had. As Zelda continues to evolve, it becomes the best situation for both worlds. Echoes of Wisdom feels like the best version of that design philosophy.

Echoes of Wisdom is similarly structured to previous Zelda games – sending Zelda to different corners of the map to close the rifts causing such a commotion. It’s a tried-and-true formula, and Echoes of Wisdom offers similar freedom in deciding when you’ll complete each part of the story. However, clever design means that the idea of “items” has been changed. You’ll still find useful things during each story beat, but they’re often tied to the new Echoes system.

As you’d expect, Echoes really separate Echoes of Wisdom from other games. Zelda’s staff can create them, and they can take the form of any object, enemy or certain elements that Zelda has encountered. Each item has a cost; if you exceed that limit, the first item you created will disappear. Levelling up Tri through main or side quests can grant Tri more energy OR reduce the cost of certain Echoes to summon. It’s an elegantly designed system that doles out abilities to the player at an appropriate pace, and, more importantly, you won’t feel too overpowered too early.

That being said, the game does frontload you with many Echoes. Before my second dungeon, I had around fifty or so, and you very quickly became acquainted with the ones that best suit my preferences or playstyle. Each area you explore after, as part of the story, will often net you ten or so more Echoes, usually with a specific use in that dungeon or against that boss. Depending on when you discover other Echoes, the difficulty of each dungeon may fluctuate, as the Echoes reward player creativity and lateral thinking similarly to Tears of the Kingdom.

Like Tears, if you think of doing it in Echoes of Wisdom, you probably can. However, there are some moments where Echoes feels a bit limited compared to Tears. For example, hanging a platform over a torch so you can light it in rainy weather won’t work. But most other ways you can think about using your Echoes will. That being said, there are over a hundred Echoes, and it can be tedious sifting through them all to find the one you want early on. But as you play the game more and the game learns which ones you use, it becomes less of an issue. Still, hiding your Echoes from the quick select (or maybe even mark favourites) would’ve worked wonders here.

Zelda has other powers that round out her already robust selection of Echoes. She can use Tri to bind herself to an object so that it mirrors her movement or reverse that bind so she mirrors the object’s movement. If she binds to a bird and then mirrors her movement, Zelda will fly in the same way the bird does. It’s a simpler version of Ultrahand than the previous game, but it provides another tool for players to think outside the box when solving the puzzles thrown at them.

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And finally, Zelda also has access to a Swordfighter form. Essentially tied to what would be a magic meter in any other game, it allows Zelda to transform into a Link lookalike and use his sword to do better damage against enemies. It’s a form that’s expanded on early on in the adventure, especially to progress through some of the dungeons, but during combat, it does feel like a bit of a crutch. I used it less and less as time went by, as I felt it was too easy, but it is a pretty clever optional way to remove some challenge from the game’s harder battles without forcing a player to play on an easier mode.

But the Echoes more than give Zelda enough combat ability if you want to use something other than Swordfighter as a crutch. Early on, I would summon a basic sea urchin to spike an enemy to death instead of a sword. As I learned more, I could summon a ReDead to stun them. I could do the same as Tri became more powerful, but summon an additional Wolfos or Lizalfos to do the damage while the ReDead stunned. There’s an immense variety of enemies in Echoes of Wisdom, which means there’s an immense variety of ways for Zelda to fight, too. And, much like using Echoes to solve puzzles, there’s bound to be a combination that suits your playstyle.

Dungeons return, and while the theming leaves something to be desired, they are intricate and well-designed. Many of them took me at least forty minutes to complete, though the order in which you complete them may shorten or even extend that time if you go into them with fewer Echoes. Some Echoes are only found in dungeons and while they’ll usually be the key to clearing that dungeon or its boss, you can still emerge victorious if you’re creative enough with your Echoes. The system is just that robust.

The variety of dungeons is complemented by an even wider variety of bosses. Some are new and old, but all are a joy to battle with. There are many bosses, some familiar, some brand new, but all a joy to battle. They feel good in all the ways a classic Zelda boss should be. They feel big and bombastic and require more than just hitting them with your weapon to defeat them. The added layer of complexity that the Echoes bring to the table only seeks to improve these encounters, too. Overall the difficulty feels just right – even playing on standard mode, I died a few times on each as I was starting. There was even a boss I died on for almost an hour, but I acknowledge I was getting a bit too greedy with my hits.

Besides the main quest, Echoes of Wisdom has over fifty optional side quests. Given to you in a similar log manner to the previous two games, most of them are well worth your time. A majority of them will take Zelda to smaller rifts to close. This feels like Echoes’ closest thing to a shrine – requiring you to use all your Echoes in a savvy way to collect Tri’s friends and power him up. Others are mini-dungeons with their own (often unique) boss battles. The majority of the optional content is substantial, though some quests are easier to finish, sometimes even the moment you get them, too.

The more straightforward side quests usually have you moving an object from one place to another using Zelda’s power or an NPC asking you to see something and then summoning it as an Echo. Others are tried-and-true Zelda staples – minigames including races, time-based collection trials, and combat trials. They’re all fun little distractions and often reward upgrade materials for Swordfighter form or smoothie ingredients to craft potions and buffs with. Regardless of whether the quests are big or small, there’s no mistaking that Echoes of Wisdom is easily the largest 2D Zelda ever, with heaps to do at any given moment.

While Echoes of Wisdom borrows its art style from the 2019 remake of Link’s Awakening, there is so much new in Echoes of Wisdom that it’s hard to complain. The game is brimming with charm and whimsy, with the same plastic miniature toybox look to all the characters. It’s a cute art style that’s only complemented by the fantastically realised dungeons and environments, which all look great owing to some solid lighting and particle effects. But that, of course, comes with a cost.

As is the case with many late-generation Switch games, Echoes of Wisdom has a few performance issues that should be highlighted while they don’t bring the experience down. Whenever Zelda gets to a town filled with people or an area with a lot of grass blowing in the wind, the framerate drops significantly. The game spends most of its time running at 30fps, jumping into 60fps when indoors, but otherwise, it can be inconsistent. An option to lock the framerate would be less jarring. I am not affected by issues like these, but some people are, and it’s a shame, as Echoes of Wisdom is a very nice-looking game for the most part.

The original score is borrowed from older games, essentially, but made new. Each of the tracks that play when you’re exploring sounds great, and it’s adorable to see Zelda’s Lullaby epically transformed into a field exploration theme. Some of the original tracks, especially the ones that play while exploring Hebra and the dungeons, are especially nice and some of my favourites in the series.

All in all, Echoes of Wisdom feels like the best of both worlds. It’s got everything I adored about Zelda before the Renaissance it enjoyed with Breath of the Wild – some great dungeons to trawl, puzzles to solve and a familiar cast of friendly and not-so-friendly characters to interact with. But it blends all of that with all the freedom of creativity afforded to players in the most recent Zeldas in a way that hasn’t been done before.

The post The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Review – Clever & Creative appeared first on Press Start.

There’s no better way to indicate the rarified air that Epic Mickey finds itself in than there truly being nothing else like it from Disney since its sequel released. While Disney have maintained a relatively strong presence in the console market, few projects have managed to capture the same originality and flavour of the Epic Mickey duology outside of Kingdom Hearts. Combine this with Epic Mickey’s limited availability due to Wii exclusivity, and there couldn’t be a better time to return to Mickey’s platforming adventures in the form of Epic Mickey: Rebrushed.

After entering Yen Sid’s workshop through a magic mirror, Mickey’s curiosity is piqued by a model resembling Disneyland. A well-intentioned expression of art quickly turns into an accident that results in the creation of a monster called the Shadow Blot. Mickey panics as the Shadow Blot attacks, prompting him to hurl paint and paint thinner at the beast in a desperate attempt to clean up the mess he’s made. Having survived Mickey’s onslaught of ink, the Shadow Blot descends into the model world, sowing its own chaos there instead.

Decades later, an unsuspecting Mickey is ambushed by the same monster, abducting and bringing him into to the very world the Shadow Blot was initially banished to, now known as Wasteland. A place where forgotten characters and ideas from Disney’s expansive works reside. Mickey’s previous tangle with the Shadow Blot has resulted in some real damage to the people and places found within Wasteland, encouraging Mickey to help all those he can while he searches for a way to return to his own world.

It’s this setup that gives way to Epic Mickey’s genius setting. It’s a true homage to Disney properties both past and present that thoughtfully characterises Mickey and his adventure, one that places its commentary on IP abandonment right at the forefront of its unsettling atmosphere. This is most intricately explored through Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character who originally starred in some of Disney’s earliest theatrical shorts before the studio lost rights to Oswald in a contract dispute with Universal Studios.

As the first inhabitant of the Wasteland, Oswald became its ruler in order to help those who’ve been rejected or forgotten by Disney as the wheels of industry continue to turn. He’s seen as something of a hero to those who’ve found new lives in the Wasteland, but he isn’t without faults. He’s short tempered and resents Mickey for taking his spot as Disney’s flagship character. The damage that the Shadow Blot has done to the Wasteland has also left it in a state of disrepair, further complicating the unseen ties between Mickey and Oswald.

Deeper themes and ideas aside, Epic Mickey tells a fundamentally engrossing story. It’s a carefully balanced mix of weaponised nostalgia, trademark Disney hope, and a dash of poignant melancholy. It’s a joy to see Mickey and Oswald grow over the course of the 10-15 hour story, and the way that new personality and character is infused into the world and characters through side quests makes the world feel like real care and attention was put into bringing it to life. Even if you aren’t crazy about Disney history and the titular Mickey Mouse, there’s a lot of value to be found in the story and characters of Epic Mickey.

Playing Epic Mickey in 2024 is a stark reminder of how few 3D platformers there are nowadays in comparison to the 2010s (excluding Astro Bot, of course). It takes inspiration most heavily from classic collectathon platformers like Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64. Large non-linear levels are populated with NPCs who offer sidequests, Gremlins to free, and of course, collectibles to snatch up. Where it differentiates itself the most, is in its painting and thinning mechanics.

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Equipped with the same magic brush from Yen Sid’s workshop, Mickey can use paint and thinner to interact with different elements of Wasteland. Aside from it being Mickey’s main form of defence against the Shadow Blot’s forces, paint and thinner can be used to create and dissolve different parts of the environment. It’s a straightforward idea, but one that is used in so many different ways throughout the adventure. Unsuspecting walls can be thinned to reveal hidden areas with treasure, puzzles often require apt use of both to reach solutions, and the destruction left in the wake of the Shadow Blot can be painted back into existence.

The best aspect of this mechanic is undoubtedly the way it informs a simple morality system directly tied to how you choose to deal with problems. All boss fights and enemy encounters can be resolved in different ways. Where paint will liberate those under the corrupting influence of the Shadow Blot, thinner will dissolve them into nothing. The people around Mickey react differently according to your decisions and it makes you feel like you have a tangible impact on Wasteland and its inhabitants. It adds an element of roleplay you don’t often see in 3D platformers, and works well to reinforce Epic Mickey’s core themes.

The other aspect that helps to build this feeling of reactivity is Epic Mickey’s aforementioned side quests. The game’s hub levels are absolutely packed with familiar characters who need help with odd jobs and requests that only Mickey is fit to deal with. In a way, Mickey is responsible for the plights of these people due to his creation of the Shadow Blot. It’s worth mentioning that some of these quests aren’t always available, and they’ll eventually expire or be entirely inaccessible if you move on to another area. Leaving these quests as incomplete also changes the way these characters interact with Mickey, and can often make your journey more difficult in certain ways.

As a 3D platformer, Epic Mickey is mostly serviceable. It’s less interested in creating difficult platforming challenges, instead investing in finding ways to weave in painting and thinning the environment to progress forward. It’s largely satisfying, but some aspects of Mickey’s control aren’t quite up to snuff. Jumping brings his momentum to a grinding halt, and it often feels like finding ways to get through areas through smart use of Mickey’s movement set is discouraged and inflexible.

The game also has a slew of 2D platforming sections that serve as stop gaps between Epic Mickey’s major areas. Inspired by some of Disney’s earliest animated shorts, they’re a nice way to break up the pace between all the 3D platforming and combat. They do feel a little on the simple side, though, and often end before they truly get started. One nice change in Rebrush, is the ability to skip these levels if you’ve already completed them, cutting down on time spent backtracking. The camera is also much improved across all aspects of the game thanks to dual stick controls, making the whole experience much more enjoyable.

Rebrushed’s most immediate updates come in the form of its visuals. Now free from the constraints of the Nintendo Wii, Epic Mickey looks fantastic on modern hardware. The game looks great at these higher resolutions, but perhaps most importantly, is that the aesthetic and atmosphere of the original is carefully kept intact here. Wasteland’s painterly visuals are dripping with mood and artistry, with flawless performance to boot on PlayStation 5.

The raw visual upgrade wouldn’t be enough on its own if Wasteland wasn’t already a unique setting. It really sells the idea of abandonment and found family in the characters and places that have fallen to the wayside in light of Disney’s other successes. It’s a side of Disney we simply haven’t seen anywhere else, and is sobering in its presentation and handling of IP abandonment. It’s all in service of building a world that seems antithetical to everything Disney stands for, but peeling back its gnarled surface reveals the same kind of eager happiness and hope that they’re always associated with.

Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is perhaps most valuable in the way that it makes Epic Mickey more accessible to those who’ve yet to experience one of Mickey’s best gaming experiences. It’s setting, narrative, and ideas are just as inspired as they were in 2010, and its paint and thinner mechanic is stretched to a satisfying logical extreme. It isn’t without some issues, but Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is the definitive way to play Epic Mickey today, and is well worth experiencing if you missed out on it more than a decade ago.

The post Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed Review – An Artful Return appeared first on Press Start.

Some brief history – as this review is long – I’ve always been a fan of Grasshopper games. They’ve never been massive-budget blockbusters, but they’ve had some incredible ideas and interesting worlds that I’ve adored visiting in their games. Lollipop Chainsaw is where I’ve always been a bit torn. On one hand, the action is simplistic. On the other hand, the way the story is told is incredible, and the characters themselves are all just so charming. So when a remaster was announced two years ago, I was excited. And now, having played RePOP, I’ve got a greater appreciation for what Lollipop Chainsaw was trying to do all those years ago. But I’m not sure RePOP is currently the right way to experience it.

Lollipop Chainsaw follows Juliet Starling, a cheerleader at San Romero High School who is excited to introduce her boyfriend Nick to her eclectic family on her eighteenth birthday. Unfortunately, as the day begins, a zombie outbreak has occurred. But not just that – an evil goth kid named Swan has summoned five intelligent zombies, called the Dark Purveyors, to take over the world. It’s just as well that Juliet is descended from a long line of zombie hunters, thankfully, and sets off with her trust chainsaw to cut up some rock music-worshipping lords of rock.

At the time, Lollipop Chainsaw was an exciting prospect as it brought together No More Heroes’ Suda51 and James Gunn to create something truly bizarre and out there. Revisiting Lollipop Chainsaw today, the charm is still there. You can see the influences that James Gunn would eventually implement in his tentpole films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad. But Lollipop Chainsaw feels like so much more than the exploitative adventure it initially presents as. It’s a genuinely fun and subversive romp that had the perfect vibes if I could anachronistically use those words back then.

RePOP is a remaster of sorts that brings the game to modern platforms. The original game has been stuck on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 for almost twelve years, so RePOP feels needed. This remaster tweaks the gameplay to be much more accessible, especially to newcomers, and adjusts things so the game puts its best foot forward early. Much effort has been made to ensure players can access many more upgrades and combos earlier, which helps with the flow of combat.

The other enhancements are what you’d come to expect from a modern remaster – a higher framerate in particular – but the newly added RePOP mode doesn’t serve much of a purpose. It replaces the blood effects, which were already pretty cartoonish in the first place, with purplish flourishes instead. I suppose it’s an attempt to get newer players to try the game out, but it feels like a pointless addition and a glorified visual filter. What colour of fluid comes out of a person when you chainsaw them in half isn’t going to convince them to play a game where they otherwise wouldn’t. But that’s just my opinion.

At its core, Lollipop Chainsaw is a hack-and-slash adventure that sees you, as Juliet, mowing through enemies with a combination of attacks from your pom-poms, chainsaw, or both. The game does a pretty good job of introducing new abilities across its modest eight-hour runtime, and using a combination of these abilities is the best way to kill zombies efficiently. In terms of mechanical complexity, as a fan of the genre, I’d say it’s closer to something like Dynasty Warriors or No More Heroes rather than Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. It’s a simplistic combat system that is easy enough to grasp, though RePOP makes it easier to master.

RePOP has been tweaked to run much faster than the original game. Juliet moves quicker, and I could swear that her attacks come out quicker, too. Couple this with adjustments to the in-game shop, which goes as far as halving the cost of some of the better special moves. It’s clear RePOP puts great effort into giving you all the toys to play with early. Later on, you’ll even get a projectile weapon that needed to be cocked after a few shots in the original. Now, in RePOP, it can shoot continuously. It’s a much easier experience, which I’d normally lament, but I welcome it given how Lollipop Chainsaw is structured.

This is something I rarely would praise in a remaster. But despite the vivacious nature of the world and the incredibly tongue-in-cheek humour the game hangs its story on, Lollipop Chainsaw is straightforward. Encounters with enemies, while sometimes erring into the creative, feel they carry on for a smidge too long. It’s made especially worse if you die, as checkpoints are oddly uneven, and you’ll have to repeat a lot of it again. The game is fun in short bursts, and given how simple the combat is, there is just not a whole lot here beyond what you unlock in the first third of the game.

These moments are broken up briefly by sections where you can use your boyfriend Nick to control a zombie and make a path for Juliet. But they’re too few and far between and don’t do anything creatively interesting, though I appreciate the way Nick is used in the story to subvert the typical expectations you’d have for someone like him in a story like this. I can’t say much more without spoiling, so I won’t.

The highlight, like many Suda51 games, is the boss battles. Each of the Dark Purveyors is modelled after a type of rock music – a, once again, incredibly Suda51-like decision. The cast of bosses you’ll battle are all fantastic, taking inspiration from punk rock, Viking metal, psychedelic rock, funk and good old-fashioned rock and roll. They’re great little battles that carry themselves with such a huge visual flair that you almost forget about the key element of Lollipop Chainsaw that RePOP is missing.

And that’s the music. Almost all licensed music that appeared in the original Lollipop Chainsaw has been scrapped for RePOP, replaced with original pieces that quite frankly don’t suit the mood or feel of the original. We’ve all had that moment when we watch an older series on Netflix we love, only to see the music from key scenes changed to generic tracks that fail to capture the feel of the original. That’s RePOP’s problem, and while The Chordette’s iconic Lollipop plays as you shop for upgrades, all of the original music is gone. It’s a huge shame, given how integral these tracks were to the original vibe.

Thankfully, the voicework of the cast is still pretty fantastic, especially the star-studded ones. Michael Rosenbaum does a great job playing Nick, while Linda Cardellini, Michael Rooker and Shawnee Smith round out a great voice cast playing some of the Dark Purveyors. But you can’t discount the incredible work that Tara Strong does in bringing Juliet to life. She nails every line and makes me happy that they didn’t go the recast route like so many remasters sometimes do. Unfortunately, for some reason, all of the audio recordings are incredibly low quality, so this remaster feels especially lo-fi.

However, the missing licensed tracks are only one prong of a larger issue that RePOP carries – the presentation. There was real potential here to revive the original game with a more colourful and vibrant visual style to complement the hyper-sweet Lolita style the original developer was going for. Instead, while the game runs at a much better framerate than the original, many odd visual glitches bring down the experience. Lighting is all over the place, sometimes just filling the screen with a white glow to the point where you can’t see anything. Sometimes zombies disappear, and other times, students disappear but still speak their lines to Juliet after being saved. Heck, sometimes characters don’t speak their lines. I hope these issues will be fixed with patches, but it means RePOP is currently not the best way to play Lollipop Chainsaw.

Outside of the game itself, odd issues persist, too. Menus and load screens are blurry and compressed, looking like low-quality images your weird aunty downloads off Google and then uploads to her Facebook as her profile photo. The menus that let you scroll through your achievements and abilities are also barebones, with some even disappearing after selecting an item on them. It’s, once again, something I’m sure will be fixed with future updates, but it’s a strange choice to have such average-looking assets in a project that’s about bringing the best version of the original game forward.

This is a massive shame because RePOP is only a passable revision of the original game, which is arguably the worst way to play right now. The faster combat system is appreciated, as is the speedier framerate, but the myriad of glitches and missing effects that have reared themselves in place of them are not worth the trade-off. And that’s before we even consider what has been lost due to presumable licensing issues. If the worldview weren’t so damn charming, I’d be reticent to recommend RePOP at all. But there’s something here, and I hope it’ll eventually bloom into the remaster that Lollipop Chainsaw deserves.

The post Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP Review – A Sour Aftertaste appeared first on Press Start.

I have to confess. I am a long-reformed Funko Pop! Vinyl addict. Back when you could buy them for a mere $18 a pop (heh) in Australia, I would buy anything and everything. It’s an admission I’m not entirely proud of, but I’ve since done great work in culling my collection. But now, it seems, Pops are back in videogame form with Funko Fusion. And while it’s great fun and a real throwback to the times when LEGO games weren’t bloated and distended, Funko Fusion isn’t without its faults. It’s one hell of a guilty pleasure, albeit rough around the edges.

Funko Fusion opens with an extravagant battle between Freddy Funko, the manager of the Funko Factory, and Eddy Funko, his sludgy evil twin. Eddy is desperate to be recognized, so he steals Freddy’s crown, breaking it into seven pieces and hiding them across the universe. It’s up to you, the player, to retrieve these crown pieces and restore Freddy to his plastic glory. It’s a simple premise that works pretty well, and it’s fun to see how Eddy uses his powers to distort the stories that Funko Fusion immerses you in.

The stories within Funko Fusion are a diverse and quirky mix. With seven worlds, each based on a major film or TV series, the game offers a unique retelling of these narratives in a humorous, LEGO-like fashion. The worlds, inspired by Hot Fuzz, The Thing, Jurassic World, Battlestar Galactica, Umbrella Academy, Masters of the Universe, and Scott Pilgrim, each bring their own distinct flavor to the game. Smaller properties like M3GAN and Jaws also make cameo appearances, adding to the game’s eclectic charm.

The general structure of Funko Fusion is familiar to those who’ve played the early LEGO games. You begin in the Funko factory, each floor themed by one of the previously mentioned seven worlds. You can unlock each floor with crowns collected at the end of each level, with each floor having between five to seven levels to pay through. You can unlock future floors, too, given you’ve got enough crowns, so if you grow tired of one, you can jump between them all.

When you unlock a world, you can play four base characters from that world. Some might move quicker, others have different weapons, and some might even have special abilities for use in exploration and puzzle-solving. There’s a nice mix of abilities here, though each world is clearly designed to be revisited as each area requires abilities from others. You can’t unlock a level in the Hot Fuzz world without bringing a Flamethrower from The Thing, for example. Completing a world unlocks extra characters from that world but also allows you to take those characters to other worlds.

Each world is split into levels that retell major setpieces from whatever it’s based on. Think Hot Fuzz’s final showdown in a village of miniatures or the moment all hell breaks loose in the opening of Jurassic World. Each world has you performing different objectives on a larger map, with each level having a different objective. It’s not as gracefully done as it was in Super Mario 64, but it’s closest to that in terms of how objectives work. Every level has a degree of openness to it, too, with optional missions and collectibles to find within each. And plenty of vinyl to find.

Vinyl is this games version of studs. Everything you hit in the game drops vinyl, and it can be used for a few different things. Each world has ideas that you can “research” by bringing fragments of them back to 3D printer-like stations. Once you’ve fully researched an item, you can mould your vinyl to create said item at these stations. Every item you can make has some use in combat and exploration, and the ones you unlock can be taken back to other worlds to open up optional areas.

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The crux of the optional content comes in the form of Cameo Levels and Cameo Quests. The former is usually unlocked by retrieving a keycard hidden behind an ability or item to unlock portals in certain levels. They centre around another film or brand – like Jaws, NOPE or Back To The Future – and are more minor levels that cleverly capture the most iconic moment from whatever they’re based on. Cameo Quests are a bit different; you activate them in a certain level and then must follow up with that character in other levels to unlock them. For example, in the Hot Fuzz world, you can find Chucky and play a game of hide and seek with him to activate his quest. He then hides in other levels and can be found six times to finish the quest.

On the one hand, the Cameo Levels are a great idea. It would be tough to extend the story of a film like Jaws into a full, five-level world, so focusing on a key memorable set piece is an excellent idea without ruining the story’s pacing. The Cameo Quests are a good idea, too, but their execution doesn’t feel as well thought out – it is quite frankly tedious to seek out these characters multiple times and even when you’re done doing so, you’ll probably be done with most of the game.

That said, Funko Fusion feels like an old-school LEGO game in many ways. For one, the levels are replayable, with many things to find within each. Some collectibles unlock new weapons that any of your characters can equip with enough vinyl, while others grant buffs like one that improves the speed of your Pop. The more you complete, the more characters you unlock, though some of them are gated behind 40+ collectibles, including the iconic Colonel Sanders, which does feel like a bit much. People who loved collecting in the LEGO games will be at home here, but by the time I play as the Colonel, I’ll be done with the game.

But while I might sound down on Funko Fusion, there is a delightful game with great potential here. The objective variety is strong, with each level really slotting into the world it’s inspired by pretty well. Combat is a satisfying mix of shooting and melee, and boss battles are clever. There wasn’t a moment where I felt the game dragged or any of the worlds overstayed their welcome, as each employs unique mechanics that make sense for that particular world.

But at the time of writing, the game is incredibly buggy. I’ve had cutscenes skip, my controller stop working, side quests refuse to progress, and even boss AI glitch out. It’s disappointing, making Funko Fusion hard to recommend right now. I have confidence that most of these problems can be solved with a few title updates. But now, Funko Fusion can be a battle to get through.

And that’s not to forget that the game is lacking in the multiplayer department despite feeling like the perfect game for it. Online co-op is coming, which is a cool idea, but it’s being rolled out on a world-by-world basis, which seems a bit odd. The lack of offline co-op is also disappointing, as this game feels almost made for it.

But it’s hard to deny that Funko Fusion is dripping with passion and charisma. There is a huge amount of content in here to get through, especially for a team so new and so small that it harkens back to the days when LEGO games were at their peak. Even better, the worlds have been crafted in a way that pays great homage to the films and shows that have inspired them, but with a distinct sense of humour and charm that isn’t afraid to poke fun at itself. It’s a humourous and engaging journey that I’m convinced will improve over time.

The post Funko Fusion Review – A Promising Pop Culture Potpourri appeared first on Press Start.

You can’t take two steps without stepping on a Capcom collection of some kind, it seems, and Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is yet another example of Capcom’s strong willingness to honour their history and ensure that the games that made them famous are playable even today. But this one feels especially treasured, as, through the fault of licensing and other mishaps, Marvel vs. Capcom games have been notoriously inconsistent with how regularly accessible they are. So here we are, yet again, with another re-release of the revered fighting game. And thankfully, this is the best way to play all of them so far.

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is another collection combining seven titles that Capcom developed and released in arcades between 1993 and 2000. What’s offered here is similar to the last Capcom Fighting Collection – arcade-perfect ports with the addition of other features associated with modern fighting games like spectator modes, exhaustive practice modes and rollback style online support. While the last Capcom Fighting Collection had a lot of games debuting outside of Japan, the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection is a slightly less dramatic debut. Most of these games have been available previously, some recently as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but have since faded from digital storefronts thanks to the ever-pervasive threat of licensing expirations and renewals.

Others are appearing in a format for the first time since they debuted on home consoles or arcades in the late 90s. Those games are X-Men: Children of the Atom, X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel Superheroes vs. Street Fighter. While all these games (and most others) are versus fighting games similar to Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, an arcade-perfect port of The Punisher, a beat-em-up, is also included. But more on that later. The package is rounded out by Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel vs. Capcom and Marvel vs. Capcom 2, the latter of which is arguably the cornerstone of this ambitious collection.

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The collection is typical of what you’d expect from a Capcom collection. The modern game additions include save states and a simplified Smash Bros-esque control scheme for easy hyper combos or special attacks. Beyond that, a museum mode includes a heap of concept art and design documents from each game. They’re interesting if you’re interested in developing games like these, and like I said for every Capcom collection before it, it’s always fascinating to see how these games come together from simple drawings on a page.

But what of the games themselves? There are not many duds here. While drawing from both Capcom and Marvel’s storied history, each game does its own thing to stand out from its contemporaries. For example, you use Infinity Stones to power yourself up in Marvel Super Heroes. There is something utterly appealing about the earlier games, especially X-Men vs. Street Fighter, where the concern wasn’t about balance and just allowing players to come up with the most batshit insane combos they could. Children of the Atom, a 1v1 X-Men fighting game, is charming in its own right for how simple it is and how it looks and plays just as well as it did in 1993.

Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes is where you can see it all start to come together, though, with Capcom expanding their side of the roster with characters beyond those that appeared in Street Fighter. It’s an interesting game because while you pick two characters, every match allows you to pick a third support character from a separate roster of oddball choices. Think Jubilee from X-Men or Arthur from Ghosts’ n Goblins. It’s an novel mechanic that has never entirely made a return to the series since.

But as I mentioned earlier, the cornerstone is Marvel vs. Capcom 2. It is arguably one of the best fighting games ever made – and while the jump to 3D visuals for many backgrounds loses some of the charm of the games that came before it, there is just no other fighting game (besides Smash) with a roster like it. The roster for Marvel vs. Capcom 2 features 56 playable characters from all stages of both Marvel and Capcom’s history at that time. We’re talking about Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Darkstalkers, and even out-of-pocket picks like Cyberbots and Star Gladiator. And, of course, timeless Marvel characters like Storm, Gambit, Wolverine, Captain America and Iron Man. It’s an amazingly well-rounded roster that I cannot get enough of and will never grow tired of.

Besides the other games, which are all still fantastic, the inclusion of The Punisher game is fascinating. I’ve never played it before, but it’s a beat-em-up similar to games like Street of Rage, Final Fight and Double Dragon. In it, you can play as either Punisher or Nick Fury as they try to take down Kingpin and his criminal enterprise. The game is considered to be one of the better in the genre. I can see why – it’s just as strong as Capcom’s other beat-em-ups but incorporates the trademark violence that you’d expect from a Punisher game in a way that I don’t think was being done back then (besides Mortal Kombat, of course). It’s tough as hell, mind you, but it’s still a great inclusion, and the arcade port included here is much better than the previous home console release on the Sega Genesis. You can play it co-op locally, too, though not online.

Speaking of online, the lobby system works like the previous Capcom Fighting Collection. You can search for ranked or unranked matches through matchmaking or create private lobbies, too. You can even choose whether to play a game offline, enter practice mode or browse the museum mode while waiting for a match to be found, which is appreciated given it’s a key feature Mortal Kombat 1 still doesn’t have. Even better, you can select which of the six fighting games you want to queue for, so your pool of players is always as deep and wide as you pick. I only got to sample a handful of matches online, but like the previous collection, the rollback netcode works like a dream.

From a presentation standpoint, Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classic is slick. Each game utilises sprite work, which still stands the test of time today, though some of the 3D effects seen in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 are getting a bit long in the tooth. The collection has many options to adjust the display – filters that mimic the CRT screens you would’ve played these on back in arcades, options to adjust the aspect ratio and artwork for borders to help fill the screen without ruining the aspect ratio. There are plenty of options and choices here, so I doubt many would be unable to find their own sweet spot with how these games are presented.

But regardless of your taste in presentation, one thing is certain—Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics represents the best way to experience these games and, even more importantly, understand why they were revered as classics in the first place.

The post Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics Review – An Incredible Showcase appeared first on Press Start.

It’s been over a year since Hogwarts Legacy, and despite that game doing such a good job of capturing the essence of being a student at Hogwarts, there was a glaring omission. Despite spending many hours in the castle and its surrounding grounds, you never get to play a game of Quidditch. Quite the phenomenon, apparently in both real life and the world of Harry Potter, it always felt odd that Quidditch wasn’t in Legacy. And while it’s been a hot minute – since 2003 – since we had a new Quidditch experience, Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions has the basics down pat. But while it gets so much of the core experience right, it still feels undercooked.

The game occurs around the same time as the Harry Potter stories. You’ll run into many series stalwarts like the Weasleys, Hermione and most students who make a sizeable appearance in the series. The game’s very loose structure has you building a fully customisable team that must work through the various tourneys to win the Quidditch World Cup. There’s not much of a story here, honestly, and it feels very small scale.

There are multiple ways to play Quidditch Champions, whether with your friends or against them. But you’ll be disappointed if you’re looking for a wealth of single-player content. There is a “campaign” of sorts, which sees you competing in three different cups – a school, interschool and international – but that’s really it. The “story” is a cutscene before each cup, explaining what the cup is and narrated by a low-rent soundalike of your favourite Harry Potter characters. The Seeker of each team, such as Cho Chang or Cedric Diggory, might pop up beforehand to say a sentence or two, but that’s really it.

The campaign really serves as a loose tutorial to teach you the basics of each role and how Quidditch works, especially as a video game. The beginning of the game wastes no time teaching you how to fly your broom, selecting which camera controls you want to use and even showing you how to drift. Each role is also explained to you and has unique controls and mechanics, but that’s really it. It feels more like an extensive prep course to prepare you for multiplayer, though I appreciate that no matter which mode you play in Quidditch Champions, there’s still online functionality with full crossplay available, too.

In this version of Quidditch, two teams of six battle it out until one side reaches a hundred points. A goal is worth ten points. The roles are simple – there are three Chasers, a Keeper, A Beater and a Seeker. Chasers play the leading role in the game, chasing after a ball called a Quaffle, scoring points by throwing it into the opposing team’s goals. Keepers are goalkeepers, but they can lay down rings that other players can fly through to buff or debuff their speed. Beaters are the most interesting, armed with bats and controlling a magical iron ball called a Bludger to knock other players off their brooms, while the single Seeker must look for the Golden Snitch, a fast-moving object on the field.

The most significant change with Quidditch Champions is how the Golden Snitch works. It appears roughly twice in each game’s seven minutes, and the Seeker must boost through rings left behind it to stay close to the Snitch to fill a meter. Once the meter is filled, the Snitch can be caught. Rather than ending the game, however, it gives the team thirty of the required hundred points towards their win. It’s a nerf, but it has a remarkably positive effect on the flow of the game and keeps things fair right up until the very end, as sometimes grabbing the Snitch can be the difference between winning and losing.

The other roles, barring the Keeper, are all just as fun. Something is satisfying (if not slightly macabre) about beating people off their brooms as a Beater or sending your bludger after the opposing Seeker to give your team member a better chance at catching the Snitch. If you want good old-fashioned sports, the Chaser is more of a role for you, coming with the typical functions you’d expect for a player in any sports game – sprinting, tackling and the like. There’s something for everyone here, even if you’re not typically into sports games (like myself).

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And while the AI is pretty average sometimes, most of the magic happens when you’re playing online. The online modes are fairly robust for a game of this scale, offering role-specific queuing or any role queueing to reduce wait times. For the most part, I wouldn’t be waiting for more than two minutes to find a match, so the population seems healthy right now, but it’ll be interesting to see how long it will stay like this. Online performance is great, too – everything works, which is excellent but rare in today’s gaming climate.

Online games work differently from offline. Three players control two roles each, and they can switch between them on the fly as needed. Your roles are assigned to you as you’re put into a game, though you can choose your preference before matchmaking. It’s a great system that keeps things interesting, though, much like any multiplayer game, it can get frustrating when your Seeker doesn’t actually go for the Snitch.

It’s an absolute dream when a team of humans plays their roles correctly in Quidditch Champions. A fast-paced game that has all of the twists and turns to keep things tense and chaotic. But beyond that, Quidditch Champions doesn’t have much more going for it. The primary sense of progression is a Battle Pass-esque system where you unlock cosmetics as you complete matches and earn XP. It’s a tried-and-true system, but it feels empty at this stage and fills pretty slowly.

At first, I assumed this was because the game wanted to sell you all the trimmings that often come with games structured like these – skips, experience boosters and the like. But remarkably, Quidditch Champions doesn’t have any microtransactions. All progression is earned in-game and can’t be purchased with real currency. This is a relief, but at the same time, it also masks something far more telling – there’s just not a lot to earn or do in Quidditch Champions.

Which is a shame, because the core gameplay is solid. Quidditch Champions plays incredibly well. But the other elements surrounding the game, that compelling reason to stick with it and keep playing, just doesn’t exist yet. The game is structured as if it will set up new content drops as future seasons come, but it feels rather barebones for now.

From a visual standpoint, Quidditch Champions looks decent enough. It employs a stylised artistic direction, allowing it to be visually distinct from Hogwarts Legacy and whatever other Wizarding World games are coming. It runs well, too, with no performance hiccups to note in my time with it. Novelly, the game also is the first time we’ve seen both the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons schools realised in a video game (or perhaps ever), which is a nice touch for those deep into the Wizarding World.

However, there is a real gap in the presentation regarding the original score. Harry Potter films have some incredible music that could be used significantly in Quidditch Champions, especially while you’re playing the Seeker. Instead, what’s here is a pale imitation of what came before. It all feels incredibly flat and wooden, especially during the final moments of each match. I thought we’d hear some of John Williams’ soaring music here, but what’s here instead is just unremarkable.

While the actors are soundalikes, which I can handwave away given how expensive the talent would be to get back for recording, the commentary is seriously lacking. Even worse for what is ostensibly a sports game, it’s arduously repetitive, too. There are about one or two lines for each event that might occur in the game, and when you’re playing across seven minutes, it can get incredibly grating to hear “HOGWARTS GAINS POSSESSION” more than ten times in the span of a few minutes.

So, while Quidditch Champions has the potential to grow into something more, right now, it’s too barebones to hold your attention for long. Hopefully, with time, there’ll be a more compelling reason to jump back on the broom, but it needs a little more time to capture the magic it’s missing.

The post Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions Review – A Strong Take-Off With An Iffy Landing appeared first on Press Start.

It hasn’t been a year yet, but Capcom still seems fit to grace us with yet another Ace Attorney collection. But this is an exciting time for Ace Attorney. It marks the first time that all the games are available on modern platforms, and with Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, the first time that the second game in the very good spin-off series has been available outside of Japan. But while we’ve been arguably bombarded with regular Ace Attorney releases, the quality has yet to falter. The same can be said with Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, which continues Capcom’s trends of honouring the past while hopefully laying the groundwork for the future.

The Investigations games are different to the other Ace Attorney titles. In Investigations, you play Miles Edgeworth, a rival to Phoenix Wright and one of the best prosecutors in the country. While he’s had a more villainous appearance in the earlier games, the Investigations games do a better of fleshing out his character with more depth than previously seen. They’re also set between the large time gap between the third and fourth Ace Attorney games, leaving a lot of opportunity to bring back characters and see how they interact with Edgeworth. However, the major difference is much more significant – the Investigations games rarely enter the court.

While both games in this collection have unique features, they share a similar structure comprised almost entirely of investigating. However, it’s more involved and interactive than the other Ace Attorney games. You directly control Edgeworth, moving him around crime scenes, gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses and potential suspects. It feels more “playable” than just tapping through menus as you would in an Ace Attorney game, though it is a much more linear experience. There’s nothing wrong with that, to be clear, but there is a different flow of progression compared to other Ace Attorney games.

The more involved investigations are complemented by new mechanics, which only improve the experience. Edgeworth’s assistant, Kay Faraday, can use her gadget, Little Thief, to create crime scenes in real life. In the second game, she can view the same crime scene at different points, adding more depth to the investigations. It’s nonsense technology, of course, but you have to go with it. Including Little Thief is a good way to break up the investigation segments, though, like some other aspects of the second game, I wish it was used more throughout.

But besides investigations, the crux of the drama will come from arguments that you’ll have with the people involved in each case. These segments stand in for the courtroom segments, as you’ll use evidence to point out any contradictions in what people tell you. I have always had concerns about whether these moments might be less exciting, given that there are fewer objections flying around, but thankfully, they’re still just as good. Some of the revelations in both the Investigations games, especially in the final case of each, are some of the most shocking in the series.

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But it wouldn’t be a game about Edgeworth without an extra layer of deduction, and that’s where the Logic system comes in.  Designed to perfectly represent Edgeworth’s calm and cool sense of deduction, it lets players piece together information to form conclusions. Said conclusions can then be used as defacto evidence in arguments to make opponents buckle. The Logic system is an excellent addition for a few reasons. For one, it allows Edgeworth (and the player) to keep track of any lingering mysteries discovered. But it also adds an almost endlessly satisfying gameplay loop of connecting information.

The Logic system is built upon in the second game, Prosecutor’s Gambit, with the addition of Mind Chess. When Edgeworth is in a significant argument during a case, the argument is visualised as a game of chess. Similar to cross-examinations from the previous game, you, as a player, must determine the right “move” to make when verbally speaking with an opponent. Sometimes, not making a move (ie. Staying silent) is the better option, too. The timer in these moments makes things especially tense, which might put off some players, but the heightened tension makes them incredibly exciting. Though, like I mentioned before with Little Thief, I’d love to see more of Mind Chess. It can also be too obvious which answers are right.

But while these changes to the formula are obvious, the less obvious question is how these games play. Resoundingly, they are well worth your time. Both games are built around strong stories that grab you from the beginning, standing beside the mainline games with no issue. I adored the first game when it was released for the DS, but replaying it, I can’t deny there are some pacing issues with some of the cases, especially in the final case where the final contraction (while shocking) feels incredibly protracted.

The second game is often talked about as one of the greatest in the series, and, having finally played it, I can see why. The villain is great, the twists are shocking, and the pacing is a considerable step above the original game. Even more so, the overarching narrative is incredibly engaging and easily a step above some mainline games. I’ll obviously not explain much more for the sake of spoilers, but it’s quite frankly criminal that Prosecutor’s Gambit wasn’t officially available to the wide audience until now. It is well worth your time.

Besides the obvious, the collection also includes the typical fare you’d expect from an Ace Attorney collection. A new set of achievements or trophies, a music player, a character viewer, and an art gallery round out an already complete package. The art gallery is particularly cool, allowing you to examine art from the episodes in greater detail. The character viewer feels like a step back from Apollo Justice, lacking the “create your own” mechanics that the collection had. But it’s a nice inclusion that, as always, makes this compilation feel all-encompassing.

Though, easily, the most significant overhaul the games have received is visual. The original game featured a cute pixel-based sprite style, zooming into the better-detailed portraits whenever characters spoke to each other. Ace Attorney Investigations Collection features a new high-definition art style that closely mimics the style of the portraits when in conversations instead. The completely redrawn visuals are great, making the animations look much more lively and consistent with the other Ace Attorney games. That being said, such a dramatic change is bound to upset purists, so the original art style is selectable, too, so both camps are catered for here.

And it’s just as well, too, as, like previous collections, Ace Attorney: Investigations Collections follows in similar footsteps to the previous collections Capcom has been putting out. It’s far and away the best way to experience these games; no deductions needed.

The post Ace Attorney Investigations Collection Review – A Deductive Delight appeared first on Press Start.

When Nintendo announced remakes of Famicom Detective Club, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that both games stood the test of time in terms of narrative but also looked great. It was a fun experiment, but I thought Nintendo was done, and we’d never see them again. Thankfully, they weren’t done, and they were actually preparing us. The newest game in the series, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, is easily the best and not like anything you’d expect, especially from Nintendo.

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is the first game in over three decades, but takes place a short time after the events of The Missing Heir. You play as a pair of detectives investigating the murder of a high schooler, found dead with a paper bag over his head with a smile drawn on it. Curiously, the murder bears some similarities to a string of murders that occurred eighteen years ago, which themselves formed the basis of a local urban legend. The detectives must investigate the murders and discover if or how the crimes are linked.

While I enjoyed The Missing Heir’s more straightforward whodunit approach, Emio feels much closer in tone to The Girl Who Stands Behind. The plot follows similar threads – a mysterious and potentially supernatural crime of the past influences a crime in the modern day. But as Emio progresses, it’s obvious how this instalment differs from the previous two games. For one, it’s easily the darkest of the Famicom Detective Club games, but I can’t say much more without ruining things, so I’ll leave it there.

But while the presentation is undeniably slicker, Emio is still largely the same as the games that came before it. A pure visual novel, its core gameplay loop is similar to the investigation sequences of games like Ace Attorney, albeit much more simplified. You’ll travel to different areas, speak to people to gather intel and investigate crime scenes for clues.  It’s very typical adventure game fare, which is by no means a bad thing.

That said, being a modern game of the series unshackled by the baggage that a remake naturally brings, I hoped that Emio would do more than tell another story. It doesn’t help that Emio inherited the quirks of navigating the original two games. The game splits how you interact with the world into a menu comprising options like “Call/Engage”, “Speak/Listen”, “Think”, and “Look/Examine”. And while they all are ostensibly different actions, the way conversations flow can sometimes feel particularly off.

As said before, I had a similar issue with the older Famicom Detective Club games here. How much that issue was an issue for you will really inform how you feel about Emio. It definitely happens less here, though, which is nice, but it still happens. Once, I had to move a conversation forward by selecting “Think”. Thinking is a way to hear your character’s inner monologue, and there is often an (optional) highlighted word that will suggest what you do next. But even if you know what to do next, Emio won’t progress the conversation once you select Think. It can be annoying, especially if you’re several steps ahead of the characters in the story.

One time, I had to select “Think” to continue a conversation where no actual “thinking” took place—the second I selected it, the character in front of me would continue the conversation. No thinking occurred, and there was no indication of whether I had to do it. It can be a tad frustrating, but it is by no means deal-breaking.

Eventually, if you don’t choose to use the word highlighting system, you’ll still eventually “adapt” to the sense of logic that the writers employ. Thankfully, Emio is a very linear story, so it takes a lot of work to get stuck at any point, as you might in the Ace Attorney games. However, the fact that there is no formal punishment for making a wrong deduction removes some of the tension from the whole affair.

But these issues are drops in the ocean that I’m willing to forego, given how strong and engaging the story is in Emio. It knows exactly when to introduce the right amount of doubt and red herrings to keep you guessing from beginning to end. While the first third feels a bit slower than the rest, the story picks up quickly and hits the ground running after that point. You’ll most likely discover the final reveal before the characters do. Still, the game has one final surprise that has yet to be done before in a Famicom Detective Club game that makes it well worth playing until the end.

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But even if you work things out quickly, so much of Emio’s appeal is rooted in the drama more than the mystery itself. Both of these aspects of the story come together as everything comes to a satisfying close, resulting in what I can only describe as a great payoff.

And even more surprising, there were times when I found Emio to be unnerving. I consider myself a seasoned horror veteran, so it was a welcome surprise when I found myself getting notably tense in the story. There are several sequences, too, where the game dials down the soundtrack and lets the text do the heavy lifting in establishing the horror, and these are easily my favourites from the story. The game, as a whole, does a great job of establishing Emio’s presence as the titular urban legend without seeing him much. So, when you eventually encounter him, it feels mythical and terrifying.

While I wish there was more to Emio regarding gameplay, it has kept the underlying mechanics that make it flow so well, no matter how you play it. Recaps are available to players whenever they load up their game, and almost every chapter has a “Review” system in which you recount your findings to your partner. It works as a great way to catch the player up, and even if you get something wrong, the game corrects you and progresses anyway. The notebook returns, too, allowing you to catch up or double-check any facts you might have forgotten at almost any point.

While a new font goes a long way in making Emio feel a lot more modern, the presentation remains just as slick as the remakes do. Employing a similar art direction, the game looks super crisp when things aren’t moving. When things move, it’s almost startling as these 2D images come to life in subtle but believable 3D animations. It does great work in bringing tension and livelihood to the dark and grittier scenes involving Emio himself. Still, it simultaneously brings so much character to yourself and Tachibana as they interact with each other, too.

The soundtrack is similarly filled with personality – while I’d have loved a wider variety of tracks to break up some of the conversations better, the music in Emio is well put together. Each track does a great job of adding atmospheric depth and sometimes even drama to key events, and as discussed earlier, sometimes horror. The voice work is entirely in Japanese, and while I’m not a native speaker, the acting feels natural and well-realised, too.

So while Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club doesn’t add much newness to the formula three decades on, it’s still well worth a look. It’s a testament to the team’s strong writing that after so long, they can craft a story rich with drama and intrigue that sits firmly beside (or even slightly above) the other games. And perhaps that’s just enough for now, but I can’t wait. I hope we’ll eventually see more of the Famicom Detective Club, hopefully, less than three decades later.

The post Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club Review – A Thrilling But Tragic Mystery appeared first on Press Start.

I’m certain no good would come from typing this game’s title into Urban Dictionary, though that doesn’t change the fact that Pepper Grinder is already one of the year’s most slick, outstanding, high seas-adjacent platforming experiences. 

Pepper’s grinder, otherwise known as the big fuck off drill that rests on her arm, is, at first, a catch-all tool used for mashing and dashing alike. Bashing narwhal pirates into a pulp is certainly fun, but using the rotary implement to burrow into the sand, mud, and snow is the game’s absolute selling point. So good is the traversal via drill that it makes any moment you’re exercising traditional platform-hopping a little whelming.

Although it perhaps mirrors Ori’s burrow ability more than anything, it reminded me a lot of controlling the porpoise with purpose Ecco the Dolphin, whose head-first careening through infested waters is bound to be a core memory in the hearts and minds of SEGA kids. It feels as though the drill has a mind of its own as it bores a hole through the earth, pulling Pepper through its wake like a ragdoll. It feels tremendous, and the way the ideal path through is signposted by the buried gems you collect is a stroke of design genius. 

In fact, the level design in general sets a high bar. Although you don’t have vines to swing from like in Donkey Kong Country, bursting skyward with a well-timed rev from the drill provides a similar verticality that lets the team hide secrets and clever nooks just out of view of the screen. It’s reminiscent of the big ape’s adventure right down to the inexplicable floating cannons that fire you off, far beyond the periphery of the screen, to explore unseen wonders. 

Similar to the game’s surface-level Super Mario-like approach to its bare bones story, which is propelled forward by character grunts and enemy attire that suggests they’re overly protective pirates safeguarding their plunder from Pepper, the overworld feels reminiscent of just about any platformer from the nineties. In any other setting Pepper Grinder has a lush, colourful pixel art style that stands out despite the game’s breakneck speed, however its map is paletted with a chalkish charm and is quite crudely scrawled by hand. It’s a striking separation that’s struck between the action and the moments between that prevents Pepper Grinder’s first impression from growing stale. 

There wouldn’t be more than around twenty levels in all, spread evenly enough between a handful of clichéd biomes. Outside of the many mechanics they do introduce, I’m glad the team worked in some clever ways to make each world feel a little different. Dousing magma, found in one of the few volcanic stages, with water to see it become a crust that’s safe for stepping felt particularly inspired. 

There’s a reasonable challenge to be found with the game’s platforming, even if it doesn’t hit the punishing levels found in contemporary titles like Celeste. The boss encounters, however, are not for the faint-hearted, and the nutty escalation of their theatrics is undeniably bloody rad. And though there aren’t a huge number of levels, the pursuit for full completion of the irresistible and often out of reach treasure couples nicely with asserting dominance in the time trials to make Pepper Grinder quite moreish. It only took a few hours to complete the story and hit roughly 60% completion, it’ll be the remaining 40% that’ll really put hairs on the chest. 

And while there are no skills to unlock per se, Pepper does pick up a trick or two throughout her crusade. By the end, you’ll have swapped your drill bit out for a blunderbuss to end piracy like the Copyright Act of 1968 never could, as well as a literal rocket launcher for clearing your path of debris. Pepper Grinder does an exceptional job of doling out new things to tinker with up until its very last stage. In fact, the game presents a few particularly wild scenes that, without spoiling them, caused a few frame rate plummets that I’d not seen until that point in my ASUS ROG Ally playthrough. 

Although there isn’t a photo mode per se, Pepper Grinder gifts players with a ‘sticker book’ which functions as an arts and crafts mode where you’re able to adhere stickers of any and all things, from Pepper to the plain old wooden crates that litter the scenes. Even if it’s relatively pointless, it can be fun to slap together a few unlikely scenarios. Though it’s the unlocking of the stickers that seems naff. Thumbing thousands of coins into each stage’s Curiosity Shop pachinko machine to pursue a full set of stickers through random chance is a dumb, albeit cute, distraction. Without said machines though, the shop’s only stock would be health bumps and coloured wigs and shawls to make your Pepper your own.

If there’s one thing Pepper Grinder puts at the forefront, it’s the energy conveyed through its attitude, score, and action. There’s a crisp pace that keeps things moving along at a steady clip, and proves again and again through its retro-modern level design that a worthwhile playground goes a long way.

PS5 IMPRESSIONS (Kieron)

Having finally had the chance to play through Pepper Grinder thanks to its newfound PlayStation and Xbox release, there’s really not a lot I can say that Brodie hasn’t so eloquently put to page already.

If you, like me, have been holding off on drilling down while the folks at Ahr Ech put the final garnishes on these next couple of platforms, the great news is it’s every bit the compelling experience it was on PC and Switch. Even better for the PlayStation Players is that your adventure is augmented by the usual DualSense haptic feedback shenanigans and there’s a bevy of trophies to unlock. I was lightly surprised by how brief the experience is, but I thoroughly enjoyed every moment and, in my eyes, wanting more of a game is only ever a good thing.

The post Pepper Grinder Review – Crack The Pepper appeared first on Press Start.

I’ve played a lot of games in my life where my feelings could be summed up with “this is a good idea, but the execution is lacking.” Games that, on paper, sound great, but which can’t quite realise their ambitions. Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure, the first game by indie developer Furniture & Mattress, is kind of the exact opposite. The notion of a game that’s based entirely around sliding tiles initially repelled me – sliding block puzzles are always my least-favourite variety in any games they appear in. Whether it’s pushing boxes around a limited space or one of those especially bad ones where you need to slide tiles around to form a picture, these sorts of puzzles often bring games to a grinding halt. When I got a Rubik’s Cube as a kid, I did the same thing most kids do – I picked the stickers off and re-attached them so that it was “solved.”

But actually, Arranger executes on its central premise, a game where the entire world is a sliding tile puzzle, extremely well. It’s a bit of a flex, building a whole game out of the worst part of several other games but making it quite good, and that’s exactly what this team has done with their debut.

You play as Jemma, the only person in the little village she grew up in who can “arrange” a room just by moving through it. Every area in the game is represented as a series of tiles on a grid, and if you move up, down, left or right, you’ll bring all the tiles in that column or row with you, including any items or other characters sitting on them. Rows loop infinitely, so if Jemma pushes off-screen to the left, she’ll reappear on the right, just like Pac-Man. Your movements through an area are inherently disruptive, and the game is built around solving puzzle rooms to progress.

Arranger, then, is a whole game about sliding block puzzles, figuring out how to move around obstacles and maneuver through situations. The developers have wrung this mechanic for all that it’s worth, finding new ways to invigorate Jemma’s journey across the game. In some rooms, you might need to slide swords into monsters to clear a path forward, or figure out an optimum path to make it through in the fewest moves possible, or handle one of the game’s many contraptions, figuring out how to manipulate them with tile sliding.

You might get an object to cover a button to open a path – although, of course, if you move along the same track, the object will slide right back off the button. Or you might need to line up multiple swords against several monsters at once, only to realise, once you’ve done it, that your next move will inevitably misalign it. Or you might figure out a perfect path through a level, only to remember that an immovable rock is covering the opposite wall of the row you’re on, meaning that you can’t loop through it, and need to reset everything. In fact, throughout the whole game I found the central premise of how Jemma moves often slipping from my mind, leading to many moments of frustration where my seemingly perfect plans wouldn’t work, or where the solution to move forward was extremely fiddly.

There were moments in Arranger where the mechanics clicked well for me, and I found sliding around and figuring out the best way forward enjoyable. In fact, I was having a good time with the game far more often than not. There were a few instances, though, where the inherent frustration of sliding the whole environment around with me did not seem worth the satisfaction of completing the puzzles. I never quite resorted to the (very welcome) option in the menu that would have allowed me to skip puzzles, but there were certainly moments where I got irritated enough at the fundamental nature of the game that I had to put my controller down and walk away for a bit.

But Arranger’s puzzles won me over, more or less. The controls have a pleasant snappiness to them, and even though there were a few puzzles I ended up brute forcing – sliding every which way until I stumbled into the right solution, sometimes not fully comprehending how I did it – most of the time I was able to reason my way through the game. It was always interesting entering into a new “dungeon” area (basically a bunch of puzzle rooms stuck together) and seeing what new mechanic the game would cook up this time. Some are more compelling than others, for sure, but it’s still exciting to see the concept squeezed so hard. There are even boss battles, which more-or-less work! There is a part of me that suspects that there are people out there whose brains work differently, and who won’t have as many moments of frustration as I did. If you have an affinity for sliding block puzzles, you’re in for a treat.

There’s a heartening plot through running through Arranger. Jemma, the odd-one-out in a village full of people who move in a more regular fashion, leaves her hometown at the game’s opening to see more of the world and learn more about herself. You get to meet a cast of colourful characters along the way who ultimately help you in your emerging quest, although I found the overarching plot a little too unfocused to serve as a major draw (you’re trying to clear the world of the “Static”, a threat that never really feels like much of a threat). There’s some resonance, when the game is at its most annoying, to the idea that this is something that Jemma can’t turn off, although the game doesn’t necessarily capitalise on this connection as much as it could.

More exciting are the gorgeous art and soundtrack. Arranger’s artist previously worked on Braid, and the style here is similar. While there’s some limitations on what the game can do with its grid-based levels, the painted backgrounds are frequently gorgeous, revealing extra details of the world through comic panels and neat artistic details. Exploring the world of Arranger meant getting to see lots of lovely new art, which was always a treat.

I played the game on Switch, and it’s worth noting that it has some of the best HD rumble I’ve experienced on the system in some time. It’s a feature that has gone a little underused in many recent titles, but the harsh buzz you feel when you try to make an impossible move is a suitably evocative metaphor for the frustration you might feel as Jemma literally bangs her head against a wall. On top of the aforementioned option to skip puzzles, Arranger also features a few other fun modifiers – a touchscreen mode, a “buddy” mode where another player can float across the screen as a fairy, pointing details out (or annoying the main player), and a hard mode, which reverses controls and turns your movement speed way up. There are even on-screen step counters and timers for speedrunners and challenge-seekers.

Arranger is, I think, just about the best-case scenario for this kind of game, built as it is on a mechanic that is unavoidably frustrating. It’s more enjoyable than it is annoying, and the reward for persevering during its worst moments is usually more smart puzzles and good vibes. I might not be sold on sliding block puzzles as a good idea for most games, but Arranger proves, at least, that there’s more scope to do interesting things with them than I realised.

The post Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure Review – The Good Kind Of Sliding Block Puzzle appeared first on Press Start.

I’ve always looked at video game speedrunners with equal levels of awe and confoundment. The skills on display when watching a pro blitz through a game at an unfathomable pace are nothing short of impressive, but it’s the amount of time, dedication and heartbreak that really separates the Mario Bros. from the Mario Boys. For many, myself included, entering the world of speedrunning in any serious capacity just isn’t feasible or attainable. Enter Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition.

This new package from Nintendo has been produced with two clear goals. The first is to play on the nostalgia folks feel for the company’s output in the 80s and early 90s, and in particular pay reverence to the real Nintendo World Championships first held in 1990. The other is to offer players a taste of the highs of speedrunning and competition in a way that’s more accessible, approachable and digestible. With those ideas in mind, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is almost a complete success with a bit of room for improvement.

The experience here is pretty straightforward. In the default single player option, Speedrun Mode, you’ll take on a series of over 150 speedrunning challenges based on excerpts of 13 different NES classics. Things start off relatively simple – you might be asked to grab the first Super Mushroom in the original Super Mario Bros. as quickly as possible, or defeat all of the enemies in a room in The Legend of Zelda in record time, while layer challenges can feature entire levels or even the full experience of a game. You’re graded on your performance and, based on said grade, doled out coins to spend on further challenges.

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The mix of games and challenges here is mostly pretty good. Each game’s ladder feels like a steady escalation that serves both to highlight the different mechanics and quirks of a game that the speedrunning community would need to master in the real world, as well as set you up for the more difficult stages ahead. There are definitely a couple of games that feel underserved or just aren’t as fun in the context, like Excitebike and Balloon Fight, and almost a third of the line-up is Super Mario Bros. titles, but the specific moments across each are usually pretty fun to tackle. The Legendary Challenges are the highlights, and not worth spoiling, but the fact that they also come with “Classified Information” formatted like an old-school guide book is a wonderful touch.

In fact the whole presentational package, though perhaps not packed with the typical Nintendo “charm,” is sharp and well-considered. When tackling any of the games in Speedrun Mode you can either have a single-screen view or watch a side-by-side of you previous attempts for a look at where you’ve done well or poorly, challenges all start with a look at the CPU executing a near-perfect attempt (you’ll have to figure out the hidden, hacky paths to the fabled S ranks on your own), and you’ll occasionally get added help from overlays on the game screen guiding you through some of those esoteric, winding paths emblematic of classic game design.

Once you’ve honed your skills in the solo Speedrun Mode, there are also a few different options to compete against others. A dedicated Party Mode mixes things up by allowing up to eight players on one console to tackle challenges in tandem, either individually or as part of curated packages that have themes based on one or more games. With a big enough group (and telly) it can be pretty entertaining to watch eight simultaneous attempts at the bite-sized runs and makes for a surprisingly good party game, especially when the points even out and the final, electric nail-biter is a 10-second snippet of Kirby’s Adventure.

Taking things online, there are two more modes. The first is World Championships, which offers a weekly rotation of five challenges of varying difficulties, which you can play as many times as you like within that week to record your best times in the hopes of posting a top spot when the results are finally revealed. The second is Survival Mode, which pits you against seven other players’ online ghost data in an asynchronous elimination bracket, over the course of three challenges. Both of these modes are fun in their own ways, if only in short bursts before the inevitable wait for the next week’s rotation, but Survival is definitely where the competitive spirit shines even if you’re not actually playing against others in real time. The added touch of a cheering crowd audio in the backgrounds of online modes is also a nice touch.

And of course with online play comes the need for added personalisation and a way to show off your achievements, so NWC: NES Edition features player profiles with things like unlockable player icons and a catalogue of pins recognising your achievements in the various modes. The pin designs are quite neat, and the player icons feature sprites from across the included games, so unlocking and buying everything is a decent incentive to keep playing, but some more “museum” style content, especially around the actual Nintendo World Championships, would have been a welcome way to spend the multitude of coins you’ll earn across the various modes. There’s a lot of history here, and speedrunning in itself is a really interesting category that this game seemingly wants to introduce to a wider audience, so it feels like a lot of missed opportunity.

And that’s really this game’s biggest stumble – there’s just not enough to keep players invested past engaging in the two online modes for a few minutes a week or occasionally breaking it out in a group setting, and even then the appeal can wear thin quickly. It’s especially true when we’ve kind of already been here before with the NES Remix packages on Wii U and 3DS, the second of which even had its own take on the NWC, and all of which featured more games, more challenges and more than just speedrunning. As an on-shelf, $50 title I’d have hoped for just a smidge more substance.

The post Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Review – Running In The 80s appeared first on Press Start.

When the original Luigi’s Mansion hit stores, I was excited to play it on my weirdly shaped purple console. It was something different. I didn’t think games could ever look better. It was a different time. So when Nintendo announced over a decade ago that they would be making a new one, imagine my disappointment to discover that it was on the 3DS and arguably looked worse. And it was mission-based, too.

A far cry from what I loved about the original, I put it down halfway through and never finished it. Now, Nintendo is bringing back Luigi’s Mansion 2, as the imaginatively named Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. Is it as bad as I thought? Absolutely not. But it’s easy to see why it’s considered the weakest in the trilogy.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 follows the first game’s events, though you don’t need to have played it to appreciate it. Sometime after the events of the first game, King Boo escapes the painting he was sealed in and shatters the Dark Moon, a large crystal object that was pacifying the ghosts living in the Evershade Valley. The ghosts run rampant, forcing Professor E. Gadd to take shelter in his bunker. In dire need of help, he contacts Luigi to help him out, outfitting him with a new Poltergust vacuum cleaner and sending him into the valley to collect the pieces of the Dark Moon. It’s a simple but effective story.

If you’ve previously played Luigi’s Mansion 3, you’d have a cursory understanding of how Luigi’s Mansion 2 works. Luigi is thrust into a decrepit location, forced to track down some ghosts, and eventually beat the big bad. It’s a simple premise – requiring Luigi to restore order to the Evershade Valley by collecting the parts of the Dark Moon. But what is different about Luigi’s Mansion 2, and separates it from the games that came before and after, is the way it’s structured.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 is in itself a misleading title. The game doesn’t occur in a mansion but in five different locations throughout the Evershade Valley. Each area has at least five missions to complete, and each taking between ten and twenty minutes.  They’re also all playfully inspired by a different style of horror, offering up a wide variety of locales for Luigi to scour for ghosts, treasure and whatever objects he’s looking for at that moment.

However, the mission-based gameplay of Luigi’s Mansion 2 has positive and negative impacts on the overall experience. The positive is that it really lends itself well to the portability of the Switch. Being able to knock out a few missions on your lunch break or commute will undoubtedly be appreciated by busy players. It also means that Luigi’s Mansion 2 feels more arcade-like compared to other games in the series. Missions are repeatable, with ranks assigned based on what you collect, how many ghosts you capture and your completion time.

But while that’s a great twist for the series, it means a lot of what makes the other two games compelling is ultimately lost. The five smaller locations pale in comparison to the mansion of the original game or the hotel from the third game. There is no sense of place, and you only get a little time to learn the layout of these locales before being whisked off to the next one. It also means exploration feels less rewarding than in the other two games, as you’re often taken out of the action each time you uncover a new area to explore.

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I criticized this in my preview, and unfortunately, it never gets better throughout the entirety of the game. Each time I’d find a new key item, rather than being allowed to go and use that item in a place I know it belongs, I’m taken out of the “mission” by Professor E. Gadd for a briefing of things I already knew before being thrown into the next mission to do things I was already going to do anyway. It feels unnecessarily disjointed, and given how much E. Gadd interrupts you during gameplay to offer tips or updates; the game never gives you room to breathe. It’s also disappointing to discover that there are no changes to the checkpoint system, so if you die towards the end of a mission, you’ll lose that progress.

That being said, when you do get the opportunity to explore uninterrupted, Luigi’s Mansion 2 makes excellent use of the physics and mechanics of the Poltergust to provide some puzzles that are a joy to solve. They are the best kinds of puzzles, too, ones that make you feel wiser for solving them and continually require you to make use of Luigi’s tools. You might use the vacuum to grab a balloon and then suck or blow accordingly to inflate it to cross a large gap, for example. It makes no sense – the vacuum isn’t full of helium – but it’s so charming that it’s hard to care.

But the implementation of ghosts is spotty. I sincerely miss the designs of the ghosts from the first and third games, especially the first. Each felt like they had a personality and served a purpose in the mansion. In Luigi’s Mansion 2, they’re just coloured ghosts of varying sizes with predictable move sets. But despite this lack of unique design, the developers found interesting ways to keep the encounters engaging. For example, a plain ghost might start wearing sunglasses to shield himself from Luigi’s flashlight.

The same design quirks carry over to the game’s bosses. While the first, a spider, is quite interesting. Others aren’t anywhere near as charming or memorable. I was excited to see a ghost possess a giant clock, purely to see how it played out. It was, disappointingly, just a gauntlet of enemies, with a few spawning at each hour point on the clock. Others are more frustrating than fun, like the Icey mouth monster fought in the fourth area. Some are over so quickly that they feel underdeveloped, like the boss of the fifth area. I appreciated that the bosses have a puzzle element to them, but barring the first and last boss, most come up short.

As mentioned, the game’s arcade-like structure lends itself well to replayability. Each level has a Boo to find, which is usually hidden off the critical path and requires a combination of tools to capture. Finding each of the boos in each mansion will unlock an optional bonus level for that area. These bonus levels are a nice touch, throwing Luigi into a mansion and requiring him to capture a certain amount of ghosts within a time limit. You can also replay levels, if you wish, to raise extra cash to upgrade the Poltergust, but it’s by no means a requirement, given how relaxed the game’s difficulty is.

Similarly, Luigi’s Mansion 2 initially introduced multiplayer to the series, and I’m pleased to see it included here. Called The ScareScraper, it allows you and up to three other players climb a tower, completing challenges on each floor within a certain time limit. It’s a fast-paced and frenetic mode that perfectly plays to the strengths of Luigi’s Mansion 2’s arcade-like predilection. While I appreciate that local wireless and online play was included in this HD reissue, I’d have loved for them to go for some kind of local, same-console option.

But I can’t believe I’ve talked about a game with HD in the title for this long without touching on the presentation. Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is more than a simple bump in resolution – practically every major asset has been replaced to bring it more in line with Luigi’s Mansion 3. It’s not quite there in terms of looking as good as its sequel, but so much of the restoration efforts help bring the locales that Luigi visits to life. Little details, like the seam on Luigi’s overalls, weather lighting, and ghosts’ glow, help bring the game to life and ultimately make you forget that this was originally a 3DS game from over a decade ago.

The original score is similarly excellent. While not as quiet or unnerving as the original game, the tracks are so cartoonishly over the top that they’re catchy more than anything else. Think of something you’d hear in an episode of Scooby Doo or any other cartoon from the 90s. It’s got a tone and feeling like no other. The catchiness is obvious, too, given that Luigi nervously hums many of the game’s music to himself as he explores the mansion. It’s incredibly charming and one of the many stern reminders of why Luigi’s Mansion as a series stands amongst some of Nintendo’s best.

The post Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD Review – A Goofy And Spooky Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

Discounting any HD ports or remakes, it’s been well over a decade since the last original, mainline Super Monkey Ball game. With that in mind, and even knowing the folks at Ryu ga Gotoku were behind the operation, I wasn’t entirely sure if there’d be anything left in this series’ core concept to justify another original title. Thankfully, it only took 15 minutes and my stage-tilting muscle memory coming back to recall why these games have endured this long. This one might be lacking some innovation, but Banana Rumble is some of the most fun you can have with a bunch of balls.

Like the other “traditional” Monkey Ball games, the meat and potatoes of Banana Rumble’s gameplay experience comes with its Adventure Mode, which sees AiAi, MeeMee, Baby, Gongon and more friends old and new go on world-hopping adventure in pursuit of some precious artifacts called the OOPArts – the ultimate goal being the fabled Legendary Banana. It’s certainly a basic premise, but not only is this the first time since 2002’s Super Monkey Ball 2 that we’ve had proper, animated cutscenes in the campaign but the story scenes here are well-put-together, decently written and with some entertaining new characters.

You’ll see all of this play out over an initial helping of 10 distinct worlds with 10 stages apiece, each world representing a new theme not only aesthetically but in level design – the ancient Japan-flavoured world features appropriate music and visuals, but its challenges are also designed to feel like the feats of strength and acrobatics you’d associate with ninja training. Meanwhile, a neon-soaked, futuristic world features plenty of switch puzzles, disappearing platforms and other moving parts. The level design in Banana Rumble is easily some of the best I’ve experienced in one of these games, consistently throwing up fun, fresh and challenging situations to best.

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It keeps things mostly simple on the gameplay side as well, with the sole twist on the usual “tilt the level to roll the little monkey trapped in a capsule” formula being a charged boost that all of the monkeys can use to get a little extra speed. This is used for tougher challenges and section skips more than required to achieve the basics of getting to the goal in each stage, which is a nice way to give seasoned players a new trick while not asking too much of those who just want the basics. Each monkey also has their own advantages and disadvantages in play, including the power of their boost, so picking the right primate for the job can really help. You’ll meet new faces over the course of the main Adventure Mode levels who’ll eventually become playable, too.

It’s not over once the story is. either, with each world revisited through 100 additional and even more devious stages, giving Adventure Mode a huge 200 to play through. Add in optional objectives in each that task players with beating a certain time, collecting a certain number of bananas and nabbing a particularly-tricky golden banana, and what could have been over in a handful of hours turns into nights upon nights of obsessive rolling – at least in my case. Every stage is perfectly laid out to make fulfilling these bonus objectives feel unique and rewarding, and it can get devilishly tricky in the late and post-game worlds, especially the moments where beating a time goal means finding the most cracked skips possible.

If you’re not into the idea of restarting the same levels dozens of times to nail that perfect run, there are also some handy accommodations made to keep things approachable at all skill levels. Failing a level multiple times gives you the option of enabling some “Helper Mode” settings, which include things like route guides, checkpoints and a handy rewind – you can even spend points earned from completing levels and objectives to mark your current level as cleared and move on. There are also a heap of settings to play with in general to make sure things feel right, whether it’s tweaking the sensitivity and visual feedback of your level controls, or the camera, including being able to change things like joystick deadzone. It makes a huge difference for the experience to be as flexible as it is, and I’m sure will make an even bigger one for anyone who wants or needs the extra help.

When you’re ready to start taking on some of the more challenging stuff though, you’ll quickly accrue tens of thousands of points to spend on things like new outfits and balls for your monkeys, new decorations for “Juicy Island” where your crew of apes resides between missions, cute decorations and functions for the basic in-game photo mode or even new characters to play as. There’s a fair amount to spend your hard-earned points on, and even if you run out of things you care to buy you can also drop points into a special tree in the post-game that gets uploaded and compared to your friends and other players, which I can already see myself wanting to compete in. It’s not often I get to say I have the biggest banana… tree.

And the fun doesn’t stop there. Or, it doesn’t have to, depending on your penchant for throwaway multiplayer inclusions. This is probably where Banana Rumble’s package feels a bit underripe, serving up some competitive Battle modes that wouldn’t feel out of place as a Fall Guys round. These are inventive and fun enough for a couple bashes, and clearly a big part of the package as far as the game’s marketing goes, but none are really something I’d break out at a gathering in place of a Mario Party or play with any real conviction once I was done with the main part of the game. The ability to go through Adventure Mode with up to three friends locally or online is great, though.

The Battle modes also make for the worst-looking moments in Banana Rumble, dropping the otherwise-performant, 60FPS visuals to glaringly low resolutions and a 30FPS target when playing multiplayer modes – even against CPU opponents with no split-screen. Cutbacks like that are par for the course on Switch, I guess, but this is an exceedingly simple game, visually and otherwise, so it’s a struggle to see why there’s such a drastic dip in multiplayer. The soundtrack maintains the series’ bop-filled standards, at least.

The post Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble Review – Keep On Rollin’ Baby appeared first on Press Start.

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is about a down-on-his-luck duck hitting rock bottom as noir gumshoes often do. He receives a mysterious note from an anonymous client – someone’s lunch has gone missing from the work fridge and they want the services of Eugene McQuacklin to crack the case. But what starts as a simple missing lunch launches into a spiral of wonderfully written office-themed intrigue that lets you truly feel like you’re deducing your way to the bottom of things. Developers Happy Broccoli Games have produced a quick, self contained detective story that makes for a wonderful afternoon mystery.

Duck Detective takes place in a reasonably small area, spanning the rooms of a local bus transport head office. You’ll meet several characters and begin using your skills of de-duck-tion to understand their motivations, vices and relationships amongst one another. To begin your investigation you’ll be given a statement with actions, actors and motives blanked out. Investigation involves paying attention to your surroundings, looking in detail at objects of interest and talking to each character about their thoughts on the current goings on. Once you think you have a handle on what’s going on you can fill in the blanks and have your “Eureka!“ moment. This pushes the story along and gets you just that little bit closer to solving the mystery.

That mystery is wonderfully well-written and intriguing to the very end. Each character you meet has some involvement with the story, lousy with connections or motives you wouldn’t guess at first glance. Nothing is quite as it seems and the way Duck Detective is structured from a game mechanic and writing standpoint makes it thrilling to slowly unravel your way to the ultimate truth of the matter. The world itself is superbly realised too. Things like postings on noticeboards or messages on unlocked computer screens are used to add humour and flavour to the world, working in concert to subtly push you in the right direction and have you feeling like a top-tier PI. Humour is subjective of course, but Duck Detective had me regularly grinning to myself while I was unraveling the threads of intrigue laid before me.

Duck Detective’s visuals are cartoonish first glance, but like the mystery Eugene is sent to unravel hides detail upon closer inspection. Viewed from an almost isometric camera, characters appear like flat cardboard cut outs, waddling around the office as though it were a giant tabletop game board. This childish exterior belies the complexity of the world which is brimming with detail to investigate. The whole things plays wonderfully on Switch where I noticed nary a chug.

Every line for every character is voice acted, which is much appreciated in a game where someone’s manner of speaking could be an indicator of their intentions. Each is voiced in a way that compliments their character. The music is of particular note as well, consisting of wonderfully written pieces that give that perfect noir detective mood. I couldn’t say conclusively, but I feel that the luxurious noir jazz increased my detectiving skills.

While I enjoyed Duck Detective for the most part, there were some moments I felt marred an otherwise fantastic little experience. Despite a welcome and generally well implemented hint system where Eugene will ponder clues and vaguely gesture at what might be useful to find out, I found one or two situations where I felt like a sap despite having found every clue and having had every conversation. Especially toward the end when the fill-in-the-blanks got longer and more complex, even if I had a good idea of what was going on, I couldn’t quite work out precisely the phrase the game wanted me to complete. Falling back to trial and error at times felt like I was fighting to prove to the game that I had worked things out. I’d have loved a little more nudging with the deduction sections to save resorting to trial and error.

The post Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Review – Hard-boiled Deductions appeared first on Press Start.

There’s a sobering reminder at the end of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door that all good things must end. Upon receiving my final power-up, Toadette excitedly appears and runs me through how to use it, as she has throughout the entire adventure. Then, before she leaves, her expression drops, and she tells me this would be the last time I see her. It wasn’t meant to be a moment that broke the fourth wall, as Paper Mario games often do, but it did. Without a doubt, Nintendo’s remake of The Thousand-Year Door is nothing short of a masterpiece and one of the most incredible adventures you can undertake on your Switch. And that’s coming from someone who has never played it before and has no nostalgic reverence for it.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door follows Mario as he travels to Rogueport, searching for an ancient treasure. Scoped out there by Peach, who has since been kidnapped, the treasure is rumoured to be hidden behind the titular Thousand-Year Door, which can only be unlocked by collecting seven Star Crystals. At first glance, it’s a typical story, but some nice twists and turns help keep things engaging. Bowser and Peach play supporting roles, too, often poking fun at the roles they typically play in a story like this.

But more importantly, the plot carries a sharp and acerbic sense of wit that I’ve not seen to this degree in other games published by Nintendo. While the overarching story is excellent, individual stories are told within each of the game’s chapters that are more self-contained but still entertaining. The humour is on point, the writing is especially subversive, and it’s an all-around great tale to be told.

If you’ve played the original Paper Mario, you know what to expect with The Thousand-Year Door. As with any typical RPG, gameplay is split between exploration and a turn-based battle system. Exploration is rewarding, for the most part, and makes clever and humorous use of the fact that the characters and the world are made from paper. Mario can eventually fold himself into a paper plane to reach distant platforms or even a paper boat to cross water. Combined with Mario’s jump and Hammer, these skills offer an almost Metroid-esque sense of progression, slowly opening the map up to the player as they progress through the story.

It’s not just about Mario, however. He’s joined by seven other companions throughout his journey, each with abilities that will help Mario solve puzzles. For example, Madame Flurrie can blow a gust of wind to lift paper off the stage that might be covering an exit. The puzzles themselves aren’t incredibly tough, but there is a new hint system in place, accessible with a single button press, which gives a subtle indication of what to do or which character to use to progress. It’s an entirely optional assist system but given how obtuse some of the solutions are, less experienced players will no doubt appreciate it.

Mario and his companions can take their abilities into battle, too, and it’s here where Thousand-Year Door’s simple but engaging battle system makes itself known to the player. You’re always using Mario, but one of the other companions can be switched out on the fly. Mario can Jump, use his Hammer or use the powers of his collected Crystal Stars to do damage. Each of the companions has their own abilities, too. The aforementioned Madame Flurrey can use her wind abilities to blow enemies off the battlefield, for example. Attacks require the player to input an additional string of buttons or time a specific input to maximise damage, keeping things more interesting than just watching you trade blows with enemies.

While it’s a simple battle system, the little intricacies give The Thousand-Year Door a greater sense of strategy. Koop’s shell attacks, for example, can’t hit flying enemies. Mario will take damage if he tries to jump on an enemy made of fire. Some spikey enemies will hurt any characters who try to attack them from the side. There’s a wealth of things to consider when approaching your turn in battle, and it keeps things interesting.

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The other more unique aspect of battle is that it’s presented like a stage show. The better you perform in battle, the greater your audience grows, which means your star power will recover faster. That brings with it other obvious caveats, though – hecklers may try to throw items at you from the audience and require you to make a swift counterattack. Or it might be a Toad trying to throw you a healing item, which you smash with your Hammer anyway out of quick reflexes. Sometimes, if you don’t finish a battle in time, a Bob-Omb in the audience might explode and wipe out your entire audience. It’s a unique aspect of the battles in Thousand Year-Door that, while a random element, toes the line gracefully between being fair and unfair.

The progression of your characters is handled as you’d expect – levelling up in each battle will allow you to increase your health, magic (called flower points here) or badge points. Companion characters can learn more abilities by finding shines in the game world. But what are badge points? They’re undoubtedly the coolest aspect of Thousand-Year Door, as the more badge points you have, the more badges you can equip, allowing you the flexibility to build your Mario the way you want.

Throughout the game, you’ll find badges that will grant specific attributes to Mario and can be switched on or off through the game’s menus. Some are simple; they might increase your partner’s or Mario’s health points. Others might increase the likelihood of an enemy missing their attacks. Some even increase damage dealt but increase damage received. Some even allow Mario to jump on a spikey or firey enemy without damage. Each badge takes up a certain amount of your badge points, so you’ve got to get a mix that fits within your maximum badge points or increase your badge points entirely by levelling up to build a Mario you want to take into battle. It’s an easy and flexible system that perfectly complements the typical levelling system.

Some small but notable changes to The Thousand-Year Door make it flow better than previously. Companions can now be switched out by holding a shoulder button and selecting them rather than sifting through a menu. It’s a minor change that improves the game flow significantly. Similarly, while there is some pretty gnarly backtracking in the game, it’s alleviated by a new fast-travel system. It’s not quite as modern as you’d expect, but a new room connects all of the visited locales through pipes, which is a godsend in the closing hours of the game.

But while these improvements are significant, it’s disappointing to discover that the Troubles system hasn’t had a similar makeover. “Troubles” serve as the game’s side quests, and while they do a great job at padding The Thousand-Year Door’s already reasonable runtime, they’re never quite more than running from one area, grabbing an item, and bringing it back to someone else. I would be okay with this kind of lax side quest design if the game lets you accept more than one at a time and complete it at your leisure. But it doesn’t. You have to complete one before you can pick up another. The game even charges you a fee (in-game, obviously) to cancel, which seems unnecessarily harsh.

But we can’t talk about a remake without talking about the presentation. The Thousand-Year Door pulls out all the stops to make the game look bigger and better than ever. The framerate is less than the original, but the depth and detail gained more than makeup for it. For example, an area that was a set of green plains in the original game has been given depth and life with denser foliage, dynamic lighting and other little visual touches to make it look so much more alive. They’re significant changes to the game visually, which is bound to be controversial, but they’re such drastic improvements that they make the original game look unfinished by comparison.

A similar approach has been taken to the game’s audio, too. The Thousand-Year Door addresses one of the major criticisms about the original—the repetitive soundtrack. Almost tripling the number of tracks on the soundtrack, there’s a piece of music for every area, every major battle, and every major boss battle. Add to this a Banjo-Kazooie-esque mumble track for every speaking character, and you’ve got a game that you’d almost forget came out in 2004.

And that’s really what a good remake should do. Make you forget and remember, all at the same time. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door delivers on that premise in droves.

The post Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Review – Anything But Flat appeared first on Press Start.

If you read the instruction book for Lorelei and the Laser Eyes – an in-game object that can be acquired very early on, but which you might also miss until much later – it advises you to play the game with a pen and paper nearby, in a dark room. I’ve played games before that have made similar suggestions, and often find that I make a few markings before eventually deciding that I don’t really need the book, and that the notes app on my phone will do.

This time, the game was right. If someone unfamiliar with this game got their hands on the fresh notebook I opened for this game, they might think it belonged to a serial killer. It’s page after page of arcane symbols, rough sketches, strange cyphers, repeating numbers and names and symbols in different permutations throughout. I am not sure that you could finish Lorelei and the Laser Eyes without a pen and paper.

The marketing around Lorelei and the Laser Eyes from developer Simogo (Sayonara Wild Hearts, Year Walk) and publisher Annapurna has been suitably mysterious, enough so that I went into the game not totally knowing what to expect. Truthfully, the concept is pretty straightforward – this is, essentially, a very weird single-player escape room. One big difference is that escape rooms usually take about an hour, whereas Lorelei will take most players over 20 hours to complete. It’s a big, challenging, scary, complicated and absolutely brilliant game.

Simogo is, for my money, one of the most exciting and vital game development teams in the world, a view that Lorelei and the Laser Eyes only further cements. Each game they’ve made has been distinctly different from every other game. While Lorelei and the Laser Eyes shares some similarities with their 2013 masterpiece Device 6, it’s a much larger, and in some ways more traditional, game. The spark of creativity and originality that makes Simogo’s games so special shines as brightly here – as do the eponymous laser eyes. You’ll see.

Your enigmatic protagonist – a woman in cool shades – has arrived at the Hotel Letztes Jahr, a mysterious, empty hotel in central Europe, at the invitation of a mysterious man. Armed with a photographic memory that allows her to keep a log of every item and document she finds, the woman sets out to learn more about why she’s there, and to solve the various mysteries housed within the hotel, which is full of locked doors and mysterious objects. Giving away much more than the bare bones of the plot would spoil the experience – and perhaps incorrectly suggest that I have everything straight in my own head – but the deeper you go into the hotel, the more the story reveals itself.

The hotel is chock-full of puzzles, and your goal, ultimately, is to solve all (or nearly all) of them. The game is arranged non-linearly, meaning that you will be pulling at multiple threads at once, flitting between different areas within the hotel to see if some new information you’ve gleaned, some new thread you’ve pulled at, some new item you acquired, will help you with any of the puzzles you have not solved yet. Sometimes you’ll put a pin in something and return many hours later with confidence; some mysteries may fade from your memory until a moment, much later, when you find the first key to their solution.

The only moments I found even slightly frustrating in a way that did not feel intentional were when I realised that I had missed an innocuous, easy-to-miss object in a room I’d been through dozens of times, because it wasn’t clear that something could be interacted with until I walked right up to it. But those moments are few and far between, and they gave me hope in the moments when I felt stuck, knowing that I might be able to stumble into another path forward by accident.

The puzzles range from the straightforward to the arcane. There are some light randomisation elements in the game to ensure that even if you’re using a guide to get through Lorelei, you’ll still need to understand the mechanics of how everything fits together – but using a guide would be robbing yourself of the “ah-ha” moments, and, perhaps more crucially, of getting a feeling for the patterns and vibes that guide so much of the experience. This is a game of immersion, where solutions start to present themselves not just when you find documents outlining certain information, but as you start to notice certain details about the plot come together, certain repetitions that begin to feel meaningful.

I’m being intentionally vague here, but this isn’t something that feels typical to me for this style of game, and I loved it. The whole game is played with movement controls on a single stick and just one button – a cool design flex considering how complicated the game is, but I never quite got out of the habit of trying to press “B” to exit out of menus.

This is also, by at least some definitions of the term, a horror game. The clearest video game inspiration for Lorelei is the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil, another large building full of puzzles. And like that game, there are potential “game over” death screens in Lorelei, moments where you’re quizzed on your ability to take in details or your ability to comb through collected materials looking for information. It’s not a game of jump-scares, but I felt a constant unease as I explored. The hotel is presented through a glorious black, white and red visual aesthetic, a style that sits at multiple points on the retro/modern scale at once, and which feels extremely cool. Environments are rendered with images projected over them, giving everything a haunting, weird, and very distinctive feeling.

I played the game on Switch, and I dare say it’s one of the best-looking 3D games on the system – and one where the aesthetic feels so deliberate that an upscaled 4K version might have actually diminished it.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes repeatedly wowed me, and there are moments and ideas that feel extremely audacious for a puzzle game. There are tributes to past Simogo games, and to the company’s own history, that give the game an interesting metatextual feeling. There are sequences that veer into homage in interesting ways. There were things that happened that I did not expect, that changed the way I played and understood the game. It’s exciting, and a little scary, feeling like just about anything might be around the next corner, what’s behind every locked door, what secrets are hidden behind the obtuse puzzle that has been bugging you for days.

The more I write about Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, the more I realise that I want to tell you nothing about it, aside from this one core thought: this is a brilliant game, and you should absolutely play it. It’s intimidating and overwhelming at first, but you need to give yourself over to it, let it wash over you. It will reward all of your patience and frustration.

The post Lorelei And The Laser Eyes Review – Simogo Does It Again appeared first on Press Start.

Even as someone with a near-debilitating fear of large bodies of water (I’m one of those that can’t swim), the ocean – and in particular the real weird, deep parts of it – has always fascinated me. For that reason, some of my most memorable gaming experiences have been titles like ABZÜ, Seaman (maybe memorable for different reasons) and of course the Endless Ocean games on the Nintendo Wii. It’s a franchise I’d always quietly hoped would return, so to see a sequel drop in at the tail end of the Switch’s life cycle with Endless Ocean Luminous feels like a win.

And I’ll be upfront, reviewing a game like Endless Ocean feels kinda tough. If you’re unfamiliar with Luminous’ predecessors, they’re about the most laid-back and carefree gaming experiences you can have. There were loose goals, sure, but the real draw was the vibe, just meandering around the ocean depths as a scuba diver out to expand their catalogue of aquatic discoveries. For that reason, these are games that don’t necessarily appeal to the sensibilities of players looking for direction and porpoise purpose, but they’re wonderful ways to just zen out and kill some time.

That said, there is a Story Mode here, though it’s not really what I’d expected based on the prior games. Where the originals made progressing through their campaigns a core part of the game, here it feels like an off-shoot of everything. Told across a smattering of chapters, you’ll follow the adventures of your personalised diver and a colleague named Daniel as they attempt to unravel the mystery of the dying World Coral in the centre of the fictional Veiled Sea and restore it – and thus the sea – to its former health. 

It’s an interesting, fantasy-tinged way to tell a deep-sea story, but the way it’s doled out is frustrating. Each of the handful of chapters is split into small sections that regularly last just a few minutes at most and are occasionally even entirely hands-off, and to unlock each one you’ve got to scan a certain number of fish – in the hundreds or thousands at a time – in the game’s actual core modes, the Dives. What this amounts to is that while I was initially intrigued by the whole “World Coral” premise, and naturally already prepared to spend a bunch of time cataloguing sea creatures in the other modes, being forced to do so and not knowing if I was even going to be hands-on in the next unlocked chapter had me entirely uninterested in the Story Mode by the end.

Thankfully, story isn’t the crux of Endless Ocean and the main draw of going on chill dives to look at pretty corals and a staggering variety of fish is exactly what you’re getting here. There’s almost no “gameplay” to speak of that isn’t just swimming around for an infinite amount of time, pressing a button to scan nearby creatures and collect their “light” as a currency of progression, snapping some photos and occasionally finding bits of junk or small mysteries, but it’s somehow strangely compelling. I sat on the couch in silence for almost six hours on a Saturday, completely fixated on Solo Dives, while my partner played games on the TV. When my Switch OLED’s battery finally died and they asked me what I had been doing for that entire time, I almost didn’t have an answer.

The tricky part is, comparing this to the older Endless Ocean titles on the Wii there’s just a whole lot missing. There’s no interacting with fish or other creatures outside of scanning them, swimming alongside them or snapping photos, there’s no air to manage, no globe to trot and no characters to meet outside of your diving buddy, Daniel, and an AI assistant in the story. In fact, your dives don’t even take place in a consistent location or set of locations, instead you get these randomly-assigned seeds that give you a square patch of ocean to explore that may or may not contain fish or environmental features you’re keen to see, and that awkwardly drop off to nothingness at the outer bounds. It’s all a lot less about the moment-to-moment of the dives themselves and more about the grind of exploration and repetitive scanning with the promise of seeing some rare, mythical creatures once you’ve done enough.

The underwater areas in the original games felt authored to offer wonderful sights and surprises, but these seeded ones don’t feel crafted in a way that makes exploration engaging. You can literally see the edges of each square of environment that’s been placed in the dive spot at random and match them up to the segments of the 10×10 map you’re in. There’s also no way to go to a specific version of The Veiled Sea with a purpose outside of awkwardly jotting down a 16-digit Dive-Site ID to bring back one you’ve explored previously (minus any progression you made there). I’ll be happy once more players join in and start sharing the neat seeds they’ve found after launch, at least. It’s doubly annoying when the story bits put you in these intentionally-crafted spaces that could be more interesting were the missions interactive for more than a few minutes at a time.

I do enjoy that you can add fish to your diving posse and swim around with them if you’d like, although you have to put quite a few hours into the progression system to earn the right to go for a dip with a shark or whale, and most fish don’t tend to stick around all that long. This also gets used for some very light “bring the right fish to this spot” puzzles, but there’s not much reward for that outside of ranking up your diver and unlocking achievements.

With over 500 aquatic creatures to find, filling up your veritable Pokedex of fish and learning fun facts about them is still very entertaining at least, and I actually had a great time getting to know the ins and outs of different species. After a dozen or so hours I was able to start identifying different families of fish and even specific species just from eyeballing them. Did you know that some fish are horrifying and fucked-up looking? It’s true! It’s disappointing though that you’re not even allowed to see any of the fish properly until you scan them and get rid of the shiny, blue texture they’re initially made out of. I would’ve at least liked a feature that un-hides any species you’ve scanned in other dives so I could just jump into a spot, swim around and look at stuff without having to spam the L button over and over just to uncensor the wildlife.

Of course one massive evolution that this game does have over its Wii predecessors is in the presentation. The Veiled Sea is stunning to explore, even on the meagre Switch. Rich lighting and atmospheric effects with dynamic time-of-day, beautiful environmental features and, of course, hundreds of convincing-looking underwater creatures (at least after you’ve scanned them) all offer a wonderful moment-to-moment experience that manages to make the whole thing compelling even when the seams are showing. It looks and runs great either handheld or on TV, too. Matching the wonderful sights is a soundscape that nicely bobs and weaves between gorgeous musical accompaniments as you drift through sun-drenched reefs and crushing silence, save for your own breathing and the hum of your apparatus, as you nervously creep through dank caves and the pitch-black ocean floor.

Weirdly enough, the one bit about Endless Ocean Luminous that I wasn’t sure would work, the 30-person online multiplayer Shared Dives, are a bit of fun. These essentially just plop everyone into one of those randomly-seeded dive spots to all contribute to fully exploring and scanning the area. The sense of discovery in solo dives is genuinely multiplied with other people involved, and really makes it feel as though you’re a part of a dive team trying to mine the secrets of this alternate underwater world together. Even the repetitive mid-dive missions, where you’re rewarded with a particularly rare sight in exchange for going around looking for randomly-chosen individual fish to scan, are a lot more fun when everyone helps out with the menial work and then you all rock up to see the new and exciting bit at the same time, throwing up emotes and tags in celebration.

The promise of community-driven Event Dives is also alluring. It’s just unfortunate that so much of the meat of this game seems to have been focused on that social experience, as good as it is, causing the gameplay loop to revolve more around unlocking new diving suit colours, emotes and stickers, rather than the chance to make meaningful discoveries or just vibe on your own – which are things that people gravitate to these games for.

The post Endless Ocean Luminous Review – A Swim In The Shallow End appeared first on Press Start.

Puzzle games. Love ’em. Gardens and gorgeous flowers? Those too. So Botany Manor was destined to be 100% my jam from the very beginning. This succinct and succulent little first-person puzzler puts a botanical twist on the formula by tasking players with figuring out how to coax a bloom out of 12 different plants spread across a gradually-unfurling Somerset manor, piecing together findings about each in a Herbarium with the ultimate goal of getting it published.

As Lady Arabella Greene, having returned to the manor after a long research trip, you’ll quickly start to understand how vital a task this is. This is a 19th century woman who’s spent most of her 50+ years attempting to be taken seriously in the world of botanical science, one that – as with any academic field at the time – was completely dominated by men. While Botany Manor is very much a chill, low-stakes jaunt that isn’t trying to be cerebral or overly commentarial with its setting, every time I came across a rejection letter or note “politely” reminding Lady Greene that she was better suited to a hobby garden I became more determined to see this endeavour through.

Luckily, said endeavour is a thoroughly enjoyable one. As you wander the manor’s many halls, rooms and gardens, you’ll discover the seeds of exotic flowers that Arabella hopes to grow and bloom to then record in her herbarium. Doing so routinely involves more than just potting and watering though, with each of the (fictional) plants requiring increasingly-complex sets of conditions in order to blossom. It might be something as simple as the right temperature or wind conditions, or you might find yourself mixing photography chemicals to create a lightning-like flash or arranging very specific displays of light to unfurl each bud. There’s an air of the fantastical around Botany Manor, so the solutions aren’t bound by real-world physics or logic and are often quite playful.

They also aren’t spelled out for you, and so exploring the manor and looking for clues is vital. Notes, letters, scientific material, posters, catalogues, even paintings and fairy tale books, anything could be of use and any could contain that one nugget of info that creates a “eureka” moment. Despite none of them being overly difficult, all of these puzzles are incredibly satisfying to solve and reward being observant and able to pick up on context clues. If you get stuck, you can also assign clues you’ve found to a flower within the work-in-progress herbarium and the game will confirm that you’ve got all the information you need to come to a conclusion, though I managed to roll credits without using this at all.

The beauty of these puzzles isn’t in being obtuse or complex though, it’s in encouraging thorough exploration of this “historically accurate” homestead and proper study of the materials you find within it. It’s incredibly well-designed in this way to ensure that you’re simultaneously digesting the storytelling embedded in the environments, objects and texts you’re poring over, because to miss a detail could stop your plant-puzzle-progress. At less than three hours runtime, it’s just concise enough too that I knocked it over in one sitting and didn’t feel fatigued from traipsing around and pondering papers and diagrams.

It helps that it’s also a very handsome little game, with the natural beauty of gardens both manicured and overgrown surrounding a once-lively and lived-in riverside manor helped along by a wonderful, almost painterly visual style full of colour and life. With just the ambience of flora, fauna and your sauntering footsteps to pepper the soundscape, the backing of a wonderfully-calm score is also crucial to setting the relaxed mood. It’s truly the perfect game to chuck on for a lazy Sunday afternoon, and a great fit for Xbox Game Pass.

Playing on Xbox Series X, I did come across some small issues, though. There were minor visual bugs with bits of scenery flickering in and out of view as I moved around, though these were localised to specific areas and didn’t crop up much across my playtime. A little more annoying were a handful of Xbox Achievements that seem glitched currently, preventing me from nabbing that sweet 1000 Gamerscore. These are things that have little impact on the actual game though and are hopefully smoothed over in due course.

The post Botany Manor Review – Garden Up appeared first on Press Start.

The last few years have provided a veritable feast for tactical RPG fans. Between Fire Emblem Engage, Tactics Ogre Reborn, Triangle Strategy, Marvel’s Midnight Suns and more, there’s a smorgasbord of high quality options when it comes to this timeless genre. It’s in this landscape that acclaimed developer Vanillaware brings their own vision of what tactical RPGs can be in Unicorn Overlord.

Anyone familiar with Vanillaware’s catalogue knows that this is a far cry from the studio’s bread and butter, but that doesn’t change the fact that Unicorn Overlord is overflowing with Vanillaware flair. It’s wildly ambitious in its scope and core ideas, building upon genre tropes and expectations in engaging fashion. While all of these things showcase what’s possible in the genre, Vanillaware never loses site of what makes tactical RPGs so appealing to begin with.

Unicorn Overlord takes place in the land of Fevrith, years after a rebellion that led to the establishment of the Zenoiran Empire that now has a suffocating stranglehold over Fevrith’s lands. In the midst of this tyrannical rule is Alain, son of the former Queen Ilenia who was smuggled away from the Cornian Kingdom as his mother fell at the rebellion’s instigation. Raised by the late queen’s personal guard, Josef, Alain takes on the mantle of being leader of the Liberation Army, and sets out to bring an end to Zenoira’s subjugation.

It’s not like this is a setup we haven’t seen before – even with tactical RPGs, but it’s the way in which Unicorn Overlord explores the impact that Zenoira has on Fevrith and its citizens that makes it so captivating. Instead of focusing on the large scale impact of oppression and tyrannical rule, Unicorn Overlord takes a much more intimate approach that puts individual characters, towns, and settlements under the magnifying glass.

Zenoira’s impact on Fevrith is tangible, overbearing, and targeted. Each village, stronghold, and outpost under Zenoiran control is exploited in different ways. Between manufactured plagues and famines, to the blackmailing of former leadership figures and mind control, Zenoira’s depravity knows no bounds. Each new situation presented to the Liberation Army feels believable and urgent, and the way in which they’re explored and resolved through new characters adds an inherent investment into seeing things made better for the local population.

It all helps to make liberating different parts of Fevrith feel worthwhile outside of gameplay rewards and general progression. Many of these conflicts are entirely optional, presented to you on the golden path as you move through the overworld to your next big objective. Still, though, there’s an undeniable sense that these people need help, and after years of oppression, the Liberation Army are the only ones who can provide it. Perhaps most impressive is the way Unicorn Overlord juggles so many characters and arcs related to the core conflict. Not all characters are made equal in complexity, but there’s a surprising level of depth given the sheer number of them.

The state of Fevrith under Zenoiran rule goes hand-in-hand with the kind of gameplay loop that Vanillaware envisions for Unicorn Overlord. Tactical RPGs have often struggled to establish strong pacing. Although attempts have been made with more modern titles like Fire Emblem Engage, the time spent between battles often feels laborious and unfocused. This is undoubtedly the area that Unicorn Overlord seeks to strengthen and cement as a core part of the experience.

Instead of having a home base of operations or a menu where you can configure your army between conflicts, Unicorn Overlord presents an overworld for the Liberation Army to explore and interact with. It allows you to uncover Fevrith with flexibility and independence, you pick and choose the paths that you tread and the people you liberate. The world is full of overworld puzzles, combat challenges, and hidden goodies to uncover that’ll give you the edge in future battles.

These rewards make for a steady flow of progression in Unicorn Overlord regardless of how you choose to spend your time. Nothing here feels superfluous or tacked on, it all contributes to the growth of your army and individual units. The beauty of it is that you can pick and choose what you interact with. There’s no doubt you’ll get more out of Unicorn Overlord the more you put into it, but it never feels excessively complex or incohesive in the totality of its systems.

The depth of this progression and the way elements of it are slowly introduced over its 40 hour runtime means that combat evolves in complexity alongside it. Unicorn Overlord’s real time skirmishes are deceptively simple at first. You’ll maneuver units made up of multiple characters through maps as you combat enemies in an attempt to reach a battle’s victory condition. The outcome of conflict between units is calculated via the Tactics systems, where you can assign skills to characters to be performed in combat. Active and Passive skills will be performed based on AP and PP respectively, limiting the amount of actions a character gets in any given skirmish.

The real complexities of combat are unearthed when you start playing with the conditions built into the Tactics system. The best point of comparison is the Gambit system from Final Fantasy XII. Setting these conditions changes the behaviour of these skills, allowing you to target certain enemy types to exploit weaknesses, set priority on which skills should be used first, if they should be skipped entirely with the absence of a certain unit type, and so much more. The combination of the Tactics system with how you gear your characters makes for immensely satisfying strategy and pseudo-puzzle solving.

You’re constantly configuring the tactics of characters and general units as you get new gear, face new threats, and recruit new members to the Liberation Army. The system itself is fluid and ever-growing, introducing added layers of strategy as characters gain access to new skills and higher AP and PP counts. This is all without even considering class synergy, expanding the total number of characters you can include in a unit, and how the composition of enemy units evolve as the difficulty ramps up.

The only real issue that this sheer amount of flexibility in strategy presents in the amount of organisation that comes with it. As you inevitably expand your collection of accessories, weapons, and the Liberation Army itself, the amount of time you spend in menus as you build out your units grows exponentially. While managing all of this is part of the appeal of a game like Unicorn Overlord, it does get quite excessive in the second half of the game, especially as the enemy units you face become more nuanced and demanding.

Even though the organizational aspects of Unicorn Overlord become unruly with time, battle itself remains a constant thrill. The real time manipulation of units on maps under a time limit means that every decision you make needs to be considered and thoughtful. Thankfully, you can pause the game at any moment to assess the situation, but the flow of time is always passing as units engage in combat and traverse the map. Each unit is also limited by Stamina, which means they can only engage in combat a certain number of times before needing to rest.

Even more layers of complexity are added via terrain, garrisons, outposts, weapons, and Valor Skills. Most of these aren’t foreign to the genre, but the way in which they intertwine with Unicorn Overlord’s unique mechanics are what makes them so interesting. Stationing a unit at a garrison not only provides bonuses in battle, but also prevents the depletion of stamina, for example. Valor Skills are another highlight that let you use skills outside of unit to unit combat. They’re powerful in their myriad applications, from healing and general damage to destroying structures. These all cost valuable SP, though, which is also the resource you use to deploy units to the field.

Winning battles almost always leads to the liberation of towns and forts. These towns have all fallen into disrepair under Zenoiran rule, and only through providing the necessary materials can they be fixed. Restoring a town to its former glory allows you to station a guard there, who will automatically harvest nearby resources to be used in future preparations. It also grants you access to new services in some instances, like town taverns to build up bonds between units as they share Vanillaware’s mouthwateringly-designed food.

All of this stuff also earns the Liberation Army renown, which steadily grows as you journey across Fevrith. Each new renown rank lends you access to meaningful jumps in the way you can customise your army. From expanding the total size of units, your total unit count, the ability to promote classes into advanced classes and more. These feel like real milestones in progression and mark a significant increase in the power of the Liberation Army as their presence grows in Fevrith.

While there are countless HD-2D titles on the market now, there’s still no studio that has a grasp on this style quite like Vanillaware does. Unicorn Overlord is categorically the best showcase of this art style thus far, combining intricate 2D character sprites and gorgeous backgrounds with 3D elements to create a lovingly realized and visually rich world. Everything here is a complete joy to witness in its entirety. Between the pixel art-like 2D overworld sprites to the flashy skill animations in battle, Unicorn Overlord never ceases to be a visual delight.

You can always count on Vanillaware to deliver, but Unicorn Overlord is truly something special. The way that its countless systems coalesce into a thematically cohesive and immensely satisfying strategic experience is endlessly rewarding. The seamless fashion in which it all fits together makes it seem as though Vanillaware are veterans of the genre establishing a new gold standard for tactical RPGs. It’s an absolute triumph in its totality, and one of the best games of the year thus far.

The post Unicorn Overlord Review – A Tactical Triumph appeared first on Press Start.

Super Princess Peach was one of my favourite games on the Nintendo DS, giving the titular royal a well-deserved go at playing the hero and, much like the Wario Land games, offering up an alternative take on the traditional Nintendo platformer formula. Fast forward almost two decades and that game finally has something of a successor in Princess Peach: Showtime!, an entry that might not be directly related to the DS classic but once again gives Peach the opportunity to show that she can carry an adventure on her two puffed shoulders.

Showtime sees Peach mysteriously invited to the great Sparkle Theatre, a multi-level, multi-stage mansion that’s populated by the bulb-nosed Theets and seemingly shows numerous different plays at any one time. It’s not long before an evil sorceress named Madame Grape makes her presence known though, swiping Peach’s crown and taking over the theatre with her minions. It’s a setup as flimsy as any other Nintendo platformer and one that’s mostly an excuse to send Peach – along with a newfound friend in a “Sparkle Sprite” named Stella – across to all of the distinct stage shows to free them from Grape’s purple grip and, of course, participate in the theatrics herself.

This is all introduced in fairly typical Mario platformer fashion, with snappy cinematics starring mostly-voiceless characters setting the scene, although here it’s somewhat more jarring than usual to be without spoken dialogue. Maybe the Super Mario Bros. Movie effect is somewhat to blame, but there’s also a fair amount of on-screen text to read during these spots as characters mime their conversations that makes it feel more like they should be vocalised. Usually Nintendo’s teams do a pretty good job of getting a point across panto-style but the necessary reading feels like a weird middle ground.

It could also be that it feels more egregious as just one missing bit of polish in a list of very un-Nintendo issues that the game has, the bigger problems being technical ones. Running on Unreal Engine, Princess Peach: Showtime! seemingly targets 30FPS but consistently misses even that mark. Cutscenes, transformation sequences, loading screens, numerous gameplay sections, all suffer from massive drops in frame rate that, while not always impactful on play, are noticeable enough to detract from the otherwise-charming visual suite. 

Peach is the best she’s ever looked here and there are a number of more “modern” graphical niceties on display than I’m used to from a Switch title, but whether it’s a lack of optimisation, ageing hardware, a once-planned cross-generational release or some combination of all three there’s just no getting around how uneven this experience can be. The good news is that I imagine most in this title’s “target” demographic won’t actually care, but criticisms will be drawn regardless and I’d hate to see Peach finally have her turn in the spotlight once again only to be dragged for how rough her performance is out of the gate.

Thankfully, all of Peach’s charm is reserved for her numerous and disparate roles across the game, from swashbuckling Swordfighter to rootin’ tootin’ cowgirl, accomplished patisserie, sci-fi superhero and beyond. Each of these transformations gets the chance to shine across a number of “plays,” with the first act of each role seeing regular Peach and her cosplay counterpart getting equal stage time, while the second is a costumed affair from beginning to end, and a third and final ups the ante when it comes to challenge. It’s all rather well-paced, with each floor of the theatre rotating the themes across four plays and capping off with a major boss fight.

While the core of Showtime is a 2.5D platformer, Peach’s various transformations offer up unique types of gameplay in their respective levels that keep things feeling fresh. You might find yourself sneaking around armed guards as Ninja Peach, lassoing baddies on horseback as Cowgirl Peach or even solving fun riddles as Detective Peach. It’s all far more relaxed and easygoing than a traditional Mario platformer and more about interacting with the intricately-designed theatre stages and puzzling out hidden collectibles than honing your reflexes. Having to replay entire levels for any missed Sparkle Gems or other bits can seem annoying at first, but most are brief enough that it’s not that big of a deal.

It’s a fairly short game in all, taking me around six hours to fully complete every play, though there are some added post-game offerings to keep the fun going for just a little longer. In that time I rarely felt challenged, but I was consistently charmed, and it’s clear that’s what the folks at Good-Feel were going for. I’d love to see Peach taken seriously enough as a lead for a more “hardcore” game than this, but it’s also hard not to be enchanted by it all, and for every minute spent trying on new dresses in the theatre’s store there’s an equal opportunity for Peach to smash folks in the face with her kung fu skills, go kaiju-mode against invading aliens or save a town from a bomb threat (yeah).

It’s the variety that keeps Showtime going, and even with repeated visits to costumes each play feels distinct and memorable for different reasons. There’s a bit of action and brawling with the counter-focused Swordfighter Peach or Kung Fu Peach, for example, while Patisserie Peach’s sections mostly revolve around baking mini-games, and Mermaid Peach gets to control schools of fish with her voice to manipulate the environment on a separate plane. Despite their simplicity, there’s a lot of fun to be found even for a seasoned and jaded player like myself, though an appreciation for our fair Princess comes in handy.

Even the transformations that I’d consider a “skip” like Figure Skater Peach eventually come into their own in the final stages. And still in the moments where it stumbles, the idea of distilling a number of different genre concepts into these digestible vignettes dressed up as stage plays is a genuinely enjoyable formula. Boss fights are when Showtime feels most like a “typical” Mario platformer and are a good mix of fun and a very light increase in challenge, and usually quite cool visually and thematically (especially the final one).

The post Princess Peach: Showtime! Review – A Charming Performance appeared first on Press Start.

The newest entry in a series with a spotty past, WayForward is once again taking the lead with the latest Contra game – Contra: Operation Galuga. A thorough re-imagining of the original NES and Arcade Contra game, Galuga keeps the core gameplay and setting of its namesake while modernising the presentation and gameplay systems, adding new characters and throwing in a storyline to tie it all together.

There are a few modes to play with in Galuga, but in all you’ll be running, jumping and shooting your way through eight levels, each with legions of bad dudes and boss encounters to deal with. Story Mode is pretty standard fare, allowing you to run through the game’s levels and continuing from checkpoints when you get a Game Over, eventually seeing through the whole story. Arcade mode is similar, but challenges you to complete as much of the game as possible without hitting a game over. You can still continue, however your score will be higher if you complete more levels without failing.

There’s also a challenge mode which sets you specific parameters to meet in levels as a fun way to eke some more gameplay from the core experience. The action is chaotic with shots from enemies and from your own weaponry routinely all over the screen. Being able to track your own position and move your character around the chaos is a skill you’ll absolutely need to develop for success here.

Thankfully as chaotic as things get, the game controls with fantastic responsiveness so once you have the hang of things you can mostly command your character precisely where you want them to be. You’ve got a fairly straightforward repertoire of jumps, double jumps and a character specific move like Bill’s dash, but keeping it relatively uncomplicated means controls rarely get overwhelming. Given how much else you need to keep track of, it’s good that controls are simple and reliable.

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There’s a small but focused supply of special weapons you can collect during missions, all classics from Contra heritage. There’s of course the well-loved Spread Shot which fires multiple projectiles in an arc in front of your character. There’s a flamethrower which has limited range but does high damage, a Homing weapon which launches volleys of missiles around the screen which all home in on whatever target is closest and a few others. Each weapon can be upgraded by picking up a second icon of the same kind, boosting firepower or changing its behaviour slightly. In this Contra you can pick up two special weapons at a time and switch between them at will, a welcome addition compared to the one-weapon-at-a-time limitation in the original game. It adds a welcome layer of strategy and choice without overcomplicating things.

One of the other gameplay additions in this new entry is the addition of special weapon overloads. At any point while you have a special weapon equipped, you can choose to destroy it in exchange for a special attack. The spread shot fills the screen with shots which are fantastic for clearing a busy area, the homing weapon creates a couple of little flying drones that help out with firing at enemies for a while, others give you temporary shields, and so on. The game reminds you regularly to use these, which is good because I often forgot they existed. When I did remember though they came in super handy. You never have to worry too much about losing a special weapon either as they’re generally in regular supply during stages and bosses.

Contra is well known as a series with a high level of challenge, however this new entry has made some changes so that more players might have a good time. You can choose to have multiple hit points per life rather than the old one hit kill, and if you do this you can purchase perks as you play which give you more hits per life. You can play with a boosted amount of lives, purchase other perks to selectively boost characters or weapons according to your preferences, and adjust the overall difficulty. There are also characters you can unlock as you play who will have their own unique moves and even adjusted weapon behaviour. There is still an immense challenge to be found here, but if you’d rather a more casual, fun experience you’ll find something to like here too.

I found I had mixed reactions when considering the game’s presentation. The characters read to me almost like moving action figures, which looks decent enough but I didn’t find them particularly inspired personally. I loved the level designs though. It was always exciting to get to a new level to see the fresh environments I’d be barreling through. Particular highlights for me were later stages, a full bio-mechanical H.R. Giger-style Alien homage full of off-brand face huggers, xenomorphs and other horrifying creatures that look right at home in an alien invasion.

The bosses too are a highlight. It’s awesome to see designs from various Contra classics re-imagined for this new visual style, and they were great fun to learn and overcome. Music to my ears takes a bit of a back seat, given my attention while playing was focused on the chaos of what was going on, but if you find a chance to listen you’ll find some fun renditions of classic tunes. The electric guitar menu intro for example sets the tone brilliantly.

Multiplayer is a massive pull in Contra games, and the same is true here. Up to two players can play the game locally and co-operatively in Story mode, while Arcade mode allows for up to four people to join the fray. Enemy layouts change depending on the amount of players, and it seemed like boss endurance scaled up as well to keep the challenge reasonable against increased firepower. If you’ve got a mate and an afternoon to spare, Operation Galuga would make for an awesome way to spend it.

The post Contra: Operation Galuga Review – Runnin’ And Gunnin’ appeared first on Press Start.

As someone whose first ever video game console was a hand-me-down SEGA Master System with a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog, I pretty regularly find myself in search of the sweet nectar of nostalgia for those old-school experiences. Usually though, when I happen to sit down to some form of retro collection, classic port or even a loving homage like Sonic Mania, I’m pretty quickly humbled by the unforgiving nature of an early 90s platformer no many how many dimensions it’s in.

Penny’s Big Breakaway, a brand-new 3D platformer from the folks behind Mania (under the new banner of Evening Star), swings freely between modern design and concessions, and those same razor-thin margins for success that cause adult me to wonder how child me ever finished a video game. It’s a noble pursuit, and one that this game very nearly nails with some soaring highs, but it’s held back by frustrating lows.

A bit of context first, though. Penny’s Big Breakaway stars the titular Penny, a spinster yo-yo artist attempting to pull herself up from the busking life by auditioning for the Emperor himself. Before the show though, Penny’s yo-yo becomes powered-up by a “cosmic string” and given sentience, going on to make a mess of things and painting her a wanted fugitive by the Emperor and his army of penguins. This kicks off her adventure through 11 distinct worlds full of obstacles and angry penguins, armed with her toothy new toy.

It mightn’t come as a surprise, but said yo-yo forms the basis of this game’s unique core mechanics and design, giving Penny an acrobatic moveset and a sense of momentum that really manages to capture the feeling of those early 2D and 3D Sonic games, albeit at a more measured pace. Levels are designed specifically to keep Penny moving along, and the game’s somewhat-unorthodox controls exist to service that same goal, encouraging players to hit Tony Hawk-esque lines and keep a combo going as they navigate the 40-odd stages on offer. The penguins who’ll accost and capture you if you let too many of them get near are a neat way to add encouragement to hoof it as well as you can.

Technical mastery of the game is also supported by the tracking of both your time and your skills in each level, with a score at the end as proof of how fast, thorough and cool you were throughout. The team at Evening Star has done a pretty commendable job of making sure that levels still feel fun if you’re taking them at your own pace, but the desire to perform eventually takes hold and that’s when a lot of the design really comes into its own. There’s a heap of replayability that comes with it, as well, with better performance in levels leading to more tokens to spend on bite-sized bonus stages as well as a gallery of unlockable goodies.

Unfortunately there are factors holding back all of that fun. Some, like the consistent bugs where Penny will clip through environments and get stuck or fall to her death, or the player’s controls will lock up unexpectedly, are hopefully part of an update plan. Others, like often-unfair checkpointing and controls that aren’t always up to the task, are more inherent frustrations that definitely dull the experience.

Penny’s controls are nicely set up to allow for some pretty novel traversal mechanics, like hopping aboard her yo-yo and riding it down slopes and across environment hazards or spinning it in mid-air as an anchor to swing from. The trouble starts though, when these interact or the player needs to go from one to another in quick succession. Even after completing the game in its entirety and coming close to nabbing its platinum trophy on PS5, I haven’t gotten the hang of throwing the yo-yo to smack a barrel or enemy without accidentally doing a dash move that sends me flying into the abyss, nor can I get my head around having to press the “ride” button to stop riding my yo-yo before I can use it for any other move.

Yes, some of that could be considered a skill issue and there’s definitely a particular rhythm to it that’s rewarding to master, but some minor tweaks would have made the whole thing flow the way it should with far more grace. Boss encounters, much like those of early-era 3D platformers, veer wildly between excellence and travesty, but that could certainly be written off as homage at a stretch.

Despite all that, there’s something so intoxicating about Penny’s Big Breakaway that keeps me coming back for more. Perhaps it’s the remarkable soundtrack that’s as bop-worthy as some of the 90s’ best, or the visuals which similarly evoke a time forgotten while offering the kind of rock-solid performance on consoles that its platforming requires – developed on the bespoke Star Engine, no less. Whatever it is, it’s nostalgia-fuelled heaven when it works, and only slightly infuriating when it doesn’t.

The post Penny’s Big Breakaway Review – It’s Got Ups And Downs appeared first on Press Start.

Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion surprised many when it released in 2018. A deliciously challenging collection of bite-sized levels that echoed much of the design philosophy and novel ideas of Splatoon 2’s base campaign. While Splatoon 3’s Return of the Mammalians took the successes of Octo Expansion even further, it felt more like a honing of a proven formula as opposed to another reinvention.

Splatoon 3’s second wave of downloadable content in Side Order feels much more revolutionary, taking the game’s core pillars and fitting them into a roguelite framework. The end result is a relentlessly creative and impossibly moreish expansion to Splatoon 3’s suite of content that proves this franchise still has plenty of untapped potential.

Player’s once again step into the shoes of Octo Expansion’s Agent 8, who has been unexpectedly transported into the Order Sector. The Order Sector is a world built around its own rules, drained of the colour and vibrancy that typically punctuates Splatoon’s environments. Lying at the centre of a monochrome Inkopolis is the Spire of Order, an ever-changing mega-structure in place of the Deca Tower.

Also lost in the Order Sector is Off the Hook’s Pearl, who’s been transformed into a drone, and Acht, a newcomer also known as Dedf1sh whose knowledge of the spire is key to surmounting it. After picking up a signal from the other half of Off the Hook, Marina, the group sets out to climb the spire and uncover the truth behind the Order Sector.

While it’s a fairly standard narrative setup, it’s great to be back with the Off the Hook gang again as Agent 8, and Acht also provides some light comedy as she comments on the dynamics between Pearl and Marina. While the core story here provides enough of a mystery worth seeing through, the highlight of Side Order’s narrative content come in the form of its supplemental worldbuilding.

Primarily found through Marina’s dev diary entries, Side Order’s world and characters are vastly expanded through the unlocking and reading of these sequential expansions to the story. They’re by no means necessary to get the full picture of Side Order’s core narrative, but they go a long way to fleshing out the characters and exploring how things came to be the way they are. It’s always been these fun expansions to the lore that add to Splatoon’s world, and Side Order doesn’t disappoint in this regard.

As far as roguelite experiences go, Side Order doesn’t entirely reinvent the wheel, but it does a fantastic job of capitalising on the possibilities that come with this kind of gameplay format in a franchise like Splatoon. The gist of it will be familiar if you’ve played any roguelite; you’ll attempt to ascend the Spire of Order’s 30 levels without losing all lives in any given run. Failing will almost always net you some currency to spend on permanent upgrades, so you’re constantly getting to higher floors with each attempt.

Each run starts off with you choosing a Palette. Palettes are effectively loadouts, preset with a main weapon, sub weapon, and special weapon. Each is based off of a character from the franchise for narrative reasons I won’t spoil here. After choosing your Palette, you’ll enter the tower, and move through the floors. Each time you enter a new floor, you’re given a choice of three Chips to slot into your Palette, which function as upgrades that last for the rest of that run. A successful run usually goes for 30-40 minutes, making them a great fit for pick up and play gaming on the Switch.

These Chips have some really fun bonuses. Things like poison ink that gives inked turf a damage over time effect to any enemies who tread it, or increased swim speed when submerged. There’s a few basic bonuses amongst these also, but the vast majority of them allow you to experiment and create fun builds within the preset Palettes. You can also stack Chips of the same type to bolster the strength of that bonus, but these will also take up slots in your Palette. Chips are also divided by Tone, which attribute what kind of buffs they’ll give you. Where Chips of the Power Tone generally increase your damage output, Chips of the Luck Tone revolve around increasing drop rates for items.

Each Palette has two Tone types that they’re more likely to get than others, and while that sounds restrictive at first, there’s so many Chips within each Tone, that you hardly feel strapped for choice. Some weapons also just don’t synergize as well with certain Tone or Chips, and each have game plans associated with them from the outset. Understanding where a Palette’s strengths lie is important because Side Order can be quite difficult at times.

Octo Expansion was no stranger to introducing hard challenges thanks to its non-linear nature. Anything that was too difficult could be skipped past for later, or even entirely ignored. Difficulty in Side Order is usually informed by the Chip you choose for any given level. The stronger the Chip, the harder the challenge, with the general difficulty scaling up as you climb the spire. Part of how hard any given floor is, usually comes from the amount of enemies thrown at you at once.

Side Order is most comparable to Salmon Run in this regard. The enemies you face in the spire – known as the Jelletons – are mindless vertebrates made up of gelatinous black goop and white bones. They come at you hard, fast, and in large numbers. They also vary greatly in design, from the fodder type enemies like the Marching Andantes to the imposing turret-like Towering Nobilmentes. There are so many with unique mechanics, and the way they rush at you makes for exhilarating on-the-fly decision making as you scramble to make it out alive.

What makes Side Order even more difficult, is having to contend with the Jelletons while you complete objectives. These are tied to the Chip you choose when entering a new floor, but each is different in what they entail and how you approach them. They vary from destroying all the enemy portals to capturing a zone and holding it for a certain amount of time. The only issue with these is that there’s only five of them in total, so some of them eventually wear out their welcome despite having a few different level layouts. There are boss encounters on the 10th, 20th, and 30th floors to break up the pacing, but these also eventually grow tired as you rack up runs.

There are some other variables that can be introduced to levels as you climb through the tower, though. From having the floor covered in enemy ink or darkening the room, to offering you the prospect of extra Membux if you limit your toolset. There’s also floors that buff you through Colour Saturation, which replaces your entire Palette with a particular Tone type for that floor. Engaging with these harder floors and optional objectives always rewards you with extra Membux, which can be spent at vending machines for replacement sub weapons, special weapons, extra lives, and even Chips.

You don’t have to brave it all alone, though, as Pearl accompanies your every run in drone form. The Pearl Drone functions as a support buddy similar to Smallfry from Splatoon 3’s campaign, though more passive in application. You can get Chips that increase her capabilities also, allowing her to drop bombs, plant mines, and ink turf while you’re engaging the Jelletons. You can use the Pearl Drone to glide in midair as well, which is a particularly useful tool when you need to reposition. Additionally, some of the Chips you can get to bolster the Pearl Drone make for some very strong builds that unleash utter chaos on any unfortunate Jelleton in the area.

When you do get booted from the Spire of Order – and you will – you’re sent back to the base of the tower where you can spend Prlz on Hacks with Marina. Hacks function as permanent upgrades for your runs, increasing your damage output, total life count, damage reduction, and much, much more. These are drip fed to you across runs as to never feel overwhelming, but there’s more than enough in totality for long term engagement, which works well with the way Side Order promotes replay value. Prlz can also be spent to resume a failed run from the floor it ended at, which can take the sting out of losing a really good build, though it does get more expensive based on which floor you’re resuming from.

Subsequent runs after your first clear will always leave you with more story details regarding the Order Sector and its ruler. Additionally, clearing the 10th, 20th, and 30th floor for the first time with a Palette will net you keys you can use to open lockers. These award you the aforementioned dev diary entries from Marina, but also new Palettes and therefore builds to experiment and play around with in the Spire. What you get out of Side Order ultimately comes down to what you put into it, so it’s nice to always have something to work towards as you clear the Spire with new Palettes.

Splatoon 3 continues to be a showcase of the Switch’s power and how Nintendo is able to squeeze every ounce of fidelity out of the hardware. If you’ve played Salmon Run, you know how hectic things can get in Splatoon without the Switch missing a beat. Side Order is much the same – later floors can be absolutely swamped with Jelletons, exploding ink, special attack effects, and so much more, all without any impact to the overall performance. It’s impressive how stable Side Order is when you consider how crazy it gets sometimes.

The game also continues to look like a treat, and the monochromatic environments of the Spire are a great playground to ink for obvious reasons. One really neat attention to detail is the way Agent 8’s ink and hair colour changes with the Tone type that occupies the majority of your Palette slots. It provides a fun visual evolution of your power as you progress through runs.

Like Octo Expansion before it, Splatoon 3: Side Order brings more fantastic single player content that uses Splatoon’s core gameplay mechanics in fresh and inventive ways. It’s incredibly satisfying to put together a build that has Jelletons exploding in showers of ink across the battlefield, and the way in which it tells its story is always interesting. It might not have as much longevity as other roguelike experiences, but I have no doubt I’ll be taking every Palette to the top of the Spire of Order thanks to Side Order’s addicting gameplay loop.

The post Splatoon 3: Side Order Review – An Exquisite Side Dish appeared first on Press Start.

I often need to remember that Mario and Donkey Kong aren’t best friends. Though it can be hard to keep track, depending which games you play. But it all began as a rivalry – when Donkey Kong ’81 pitted Mario against DK to save the ever-endangered Pauline. Mario vs. Donkey Kong always felt like a natural evolution of that game and Donkey Kong ’94. However, given its origins on the Game Boy Advance, it’s arguably aged poorly.

Now, Nintendo has given their famed remake treatment to the original game. While it’s an impressive redux, it wasn’t the most decisive game to begin with.

The plot of Mario vs. Donkey Kong is simple but effective. Donkey Kong eyes off the mini-Mario toys he sees on television, heads to the shops to buy one, and is disgruntled when he discovers that they’re sold out. Angry, he steals many of them from a factory across the road, and Mario feels compelled to help. He chases Donkey Kong along several worlds, rekindling a rivalry as old as time. It does a good enough job of providing context to Mario’s shenanigans, even if I’m not totally sure what Mario’s motivations are.

But being a puzzle platformer, I don’t think the story matters all that much to a game like this.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a remake of the Game Boy Advance game initially released in 2004. Serving as a spiritual successor to the original Donkey Kong game, the game’s general premise has you playing as Mario as he unlocks doors and rescues the stolen mini-Marios. Most levels are smaller than a typical Mario course, and many usually only take up the screen with minimal scrolling. But each requires a mix of careful platforming and puzzle-solving to complete. It’s a slightly slower-paced experience than your typical Mario game, but much more thought goes into how you move through each level.

The remake brings two new worlds that are slipped between the original six. Each world is subsequently split into six standard stages, with a mini-Mario stage and a Donkey Kong stage finishing off each world. The worlds are varied enough, with new elements introduced in almost every stage. The new worlds haven’t just been tacked on either – they’re slotted in at a point where they feel appropriate, at least from a difficulty perspective.

Most levels are split into two zones. The first requires Mario to collect a key and take it to a door to unlock the next zone. The second zone in each level is more straightforward, requiring you to make your way to the mini-Mario and collect it, ready for your showdown with Donkey Kong at the end of the world. I previously called Mario vs. Donkey Kong a puzzle platformer, and that’s because a lot of challenges come from discerning the best route through each level. Pressing one switch might open one route but close another, for example, so you’ve got to work out the correct order to get through properly.

The other two level types are the mini-Mario and Donkey Kong levels. One of each of these level types appears in each world. The mini-Mario level has you leading a group of mini-Marios through a level, ensuring they get to a toybox without taking damage or falling off the course. The mini-Marios can’t be controlled directly, so these levels can be especially tense if you’re going for the perfect rank. They’re fun diversions from the typical level structure, but I would’ve loved to see more of them in the game overall.

Donkey Kong levels are just what they sound like – levels where you confront Donkey Kong himself. Most of them usually require dodging Donkey Kong’s attacks before finding an opening to attack. Attacking three times ends the match and opens up the next world. In my preview last month, I’d hoped that these encounters would become more involved, and I wasn’t disappointed by the battles that played out in the rest of the game. They’re not particularly difficult, mind you, but they feel like great expansions on the classic battles fought in the original Donkey Kong all those years ago. The new battles are a nice inclusion and a highlight for me.

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While it can be easier to get through the earlier stages, later stages in the game really ramp up the tension. Every level is timed, at least in Classic Style mode, and a lot of the higher-level play comes from perfecting and mastering the tight platforming options. This is one of the first games to popularise the movement mechanics that would later become staples in Mario games, including backflips and the triple jump, so it makes sense that they would feel almost perfectly implemented here. It’ll be interesting to see the kinds of tricks players come up with to clear some of the tougher levels in record times.

When you’re seemingly done with the game and finished with the first eight worlds, the game flips the script and introduces “Plus” variations of those worlds. Each of these is similar to the ones prior, but the objective between the original stage and the mini-Mario stage is merged. In each stage, Mario must escort a mini-Mario holding a key to a locked door. They’re a clever way to combine the objective types of the previous worlds, but the fact that they’re a visual retread of previous worlds feels disappointing. Expert Levels are included too, and there’s a new Time Attack mode as well which rounds out the already robust content offering.

This remake also brings a newly added co-op mode, allowing a second player to take on each stage as Toad alongside Mario. Toad moves slightly faster, but his presence enables a degree of multitasking not possible in the original game – presuming you can communicate with whoever you’re playing with. Being able to save time is a godsend in some of the more complex levels, and even though co-op adds a second objective to each stage, it perhaps still doesn’t feel like as significant a concession to the utility you gain by adding a second player.

What I enjoyed about the co-op, however, is that it adds a great degree of manoeuvrability to the already tight platforming. Toad and Mario can collide, meaning that you can jump off of one another to reach heights you couldn’t reach just playing solo. Once again, it breaks the game somewhat, but the fact that two players can quickly burn through the same pool of lives together balances everything out.

The original game utilised a scruffy, crunchy-looking rotoscoped, pixelated look that served the smaller screen of the Game Boy Advance well. While I’ve had many an argument with friends about whether the original visual style had “charm” or “character”, the new style of Mario vs. Donkey Kong is much better. It looks like classic Mario, and seeing all these enemies that only appear in this game but in the typical Mario-looking art style keeps things fresh.

Surprising to me is that the soundtrack has been overhauled similarly. The original music in the game felt loud and tinny, once again, perhaps owing to the console it appeared on, but the new music is a vast improvement and he remake has smooth, jazzy music that fits the mood of the levels better. They’re fantastic updates that, while not faithful at all, fit the overall presentation much more.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a strong remake of a game that would only appeal to some. But the visual improvements, difficulty options and addition of co-op make it much more accessible to a broader range of people without compromising on what made the original so popular.

The post Mario Vs. Donkey Kong Review – A Much Needed Update appeared first on Press Start.

Time is relentless and unyielding – it’s– crazy to think that twenty-eight years ago we first witnessed Lara Croft and her adventures in the Tomb Raider series. Nobody could have predicted the critical acclaim that would come afterward, nor the discourse around her status as a cultural icon and her appeal to certain audiences. Even further to that is the expansive and muddled legacy that it created – multiple sequels, several reboots, and film adaptations as well.

When Tomb Raider launched in 1996, it was the first time in a long time that gaming had a strong female protagonist, skyrocketing Lara Croft to the same heights as Mario and Sonic, and putting her head-to-head with Sony’s own Crash Bandicoot. While most people were hooked on the wise-cracking Duke Nukem or ultraviolence of Quake and Doom, Tomb Raider made 3D platforming exciting by blending puzzle solving and action with freedom of movement and exploration. With a slew of sequels and expansions, the Tomb Raider franchise quickly became stale – too much of a good thing led to a lack of innovation, and despite continuing to sell games, the series never really moved past its origins (at least before the modern and grittier trilogy).

Having said that, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered helps you slip on the rose-tinted glasses to enjoy exactly what made Lara the icon she was, and to recapture a bit of that atmosphere when the games were first released. These are games that don’t hold your hand or guide you through with hints and suggestions; you’re dropped into an environment and forced to figure things out on your own, with the tools at your disposal. This is both refreshing and jarring – you could be spending hours wandering a level to try and find your next objective, while simultaneously uncovering the level’s secrets to get a perfect score before moving on to the next.

The biggest thing I think this trilogy has going for it is that it is exactly as advertised, with a few quality-of-life improvements over the originals. You have all three Tomb Raider games in their upscaled glory, with an enhanced modern control scheme, and even a photo mode thrown in for good measure. The three games come with their PC-only expansions as well, available for the first time on consoles, so you truly are getting the full versions of each game with more modern graphics. On starting the game for the first time you’re also greeted with an opening card that states:

“The games in this collection contain offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices. These stereotypes are deeply harmful, inexcusable, and do not align with our values at Crystal Dynamics.

“Rather than removing this content, we have chosen to present it here in its original form, unaltered, in the hopes that we may acknowledge its harmful impact and learn from it.”

There’re going to be people who want to take that the wrong way, but personally I think it’s a great addition considering some of the story content of the games. There’s no overt censorship, no cut content, heck even the games’ cheat codes are active (but I couldn’t get them to work.)

One of the major changes here is the addition of “Modern Controls,” allowing you to play Lara in a more free-moving style as opposed to her classic “tank” controls. This comes with its own caveats – the levels were built around Lara’s strafing jumps, shimmying across ledges and shuffling to get a better angle on things, and more often than not she’d be hurtling into walls or off edges leading to a frustrating level restart.

To realise just how much time we spent with tank controls back in the day, perfecting a safety drop just to tap the wrong button and have Lara swan-dive into the ground below ending in a sickening neck snap is really jarring. To be able to do that in a lot less button presses with Modern controls is just annoying. I found myself constantly switching back and forward between Modern and Tank to get through levels, lest I hurl the controller through the screen. I even experimented with plugging in a DualShock for control, and found that Modern controls feel more comfortable with a controller, but Tank controls work better for keyboards.

Switching between control systems wasn’t the only thing to amaze me – the most impressive part of the Remastered trilogy is the work that’s been put into upscaling the graphics. At the press of a button you can instantly switch between classic graphics and modern graphics, and I’m not gonna lie – the modern graphics are identical to what I would have imagined the classic graphics being when I first played Tomb Raider years ago. Aspyr has made great strides in adding little quirks to the modern graphics, allowing proper light sources to shine in from above, or making certain consumables stand out just that little bit more from their classic counterparts, but sometimes this has flaws in itself as well.

The first level of Tomb Raider III is set in a jungle, which has a swamp you can drown in if you’re not careful. Switching between classic and modern graphics, I discovered that the classic graphics’ mud has waves like water, whereas the modern texture is solid and looks like the ground. Another level restart for me on that one after unsuccessfully trying to pull Lara out of the swamp. It’s small changes like this that make you err on the side of caution; whether this was a stylistic choice for Aspyr in developing the games or not remains to be seen. The game’s photo mode allows you to have a bit of fun while playing, and really puts you back in awe at the graphical changes between old and new, though I was a little uncomfortable with the ability to put Lara in a dressing gown in the middle of China.

The audio work goes largely unchanged from the originals, so Lara’s voice is the same as day one, grunts and all. The pre-rendered cutscenes are also unchanged but do get the benefit of upscaling – credit to Aspyr for not trying to reinvent the wheel with that one, The in-game cutscenes have additional facial animation to match the voices which was a nice touch. Nathan McCree’s iconic title theme brings a tear to my eye every time I boot up the Remastered trilogy, and the soundtrack for all three games with its classical influences is still some great atmospheric work.

The post Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Review – A Love Letter To Lara’s Origins appeared first on Press Start.

I will continue saying it. Ace Attorney games are some of my favourites in Capcom’s repertoire. They take what is typically a mundane event from real life and turn the drama up to eleven to create something engaging that draws you in. They are some of the best games in the genre, with a degree of interactivity that adventure games typically eschew. However, three games have yet to receive the remaster treatment that the rest of the series has. That all changes now – and while these aren’t quite the most popular of the series, they’ve received the most care and attention in the jump to newer platforms.

Capcom has previously remastered many Ace Attorney games, including the original Ace Attorney trilogy and the pseudo-spin-off series The Great Ace Attorney. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy brings the first Apollo Justice game, Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, to modern platforms. But don’t be fooled – while the first game in this collection is all about series newcomer Apollo Justice, the other games focus on Phoenix and his friends, too.

For the unassuming, the Ace Attorney games have followed the same format for a long time. The general gameplay loop in each game has you split between investigating crimes and fighting for your clients in court. The games are linear affairs, with the story playing out regardless of how well you fight the cases for your clients. I often wonder whether the games would be more compelling if they were more open-ended, but so much of the storytelling is so tight that I can’t fault it for being so linear.

When you’re investigating, you’ll move from area to area, speaking to people and collecting evidence to help build a case for your client. These are pretty typical adventure game fare – you’ll select locations to move between, pose questions to ask and present items to characters to see if you can pick up any leads. They’re essential to establishing the stakes in the stories and highlighting the main conflicts between the characters, often setting up a whodunit situation that’s a joy to follow with the characters, too. These moments are arguably the “slower” part of the experience, but that’s only because the courtroom sections are incredibly compelling.

When you’re in court, witnesses will be called to the stand to testify. Their testimony is broken into smaller chunks of dialogue. Each piece of dialogue can then be “pressed” for further clarification, or you can present evidence that seemingly contradicts what they’ve said. Doing so often unveils further details about the case, leading to an acquittal for your client. It sounds simple on paper, but it’s presented in such a garishly overdramatic way that it’s hard not to build yourself up with hype as you take down a dishonest witness.

The games each introduced a new gimmick that also made the courtroom more enjoyable. Apollo Justice featured a “Perceive” mechanic, which had Apollo study body language in people to pick up nervous tics and establish when someone was lying. Dual Destinies delves more into the psychological side of the witness testimonies, requiring you to pinpoint which emotions are being faked in the “Mood Matrix” mechanic. Finally, Spirit of Justice has you performing seances, showing the final moments of a victim before their death, and picking contradictions in the insights that come from them. It’s a mix of gameplay mechanics that are admittedly a bit gimmicky but add variety to the proceedings.

The question remains whether these games still stand the test of time, especially when compared to those created by the series creator Shu Takumi. These games are worth your time, even if others worked on them. They each have their issues, and there’s ostensibly a case that feels like filler in each of them, but the same can be said for the original games, too.

Each game has been brought over and scrubbed up to feel part of the same era. Visual improvements are apparent, though I’ll touch on those later. But fonts, menus and user interfaces have all been reworked to be consistent across every game. You can even jump straight into a case if it’s your favourite (and skip any that might not be).

Other accessibility options, both new and old, have been implemented too. Autoplay makes a return, allowing the action to play out automatically, pausing only when you have to make a choice or present some evidence. Those who speed read or are slower at reading can adjust how quickly Autoplay spits the text in each case.

The other significant new mode is Story Mode. You’ll automatically progress through the game without pressing anything when playing in this mode. All answers and evidence are automatically presented for you. I mentioned in my preview that I’m sure this will upset some series purists, but if it means more players can experience these clever and humorous stories, then it’s honestly a good thing. It is worth noting that achievements and trophies are disabled in this mode.

The collection also includes a whole bunch of extras that many series fans will appreciate. The Orchestra Hall is a menu containing over 150 tracks from all three games. The Art Library is a collection of artwork from all the games that were almost lost to time. Animation Studio is the most interesting addition here – allowing you to choose characters, their poses and animations to create custom scenes. It’s a great idea on paper, but the lack of flexibility and inability to export your creations feels limited.

This is the first trilogy where the games included were released across multiple generations. As such, the first game in this collection utilizes the sprite-based 2D artwork, as featured in the first three games, while the other two feature the 3D models as seen in The Great Ace Attorney. The difference will always be contentious amongst fans, but the jump to these newer platforms is incredibly crisp, especially for Apollo Justice. Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice look great, too, but the lower-quality texture work on some characters feels at odds with the game’s otherwise crisp presentation. 

The post Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy Review – A Superbly Polished Finale appeared first on Press Start.

This may be controversial, but I feel like Another Code seems a strange series for Nintendo to resurrect. Not only did it fail to reach the critical success of other franchises that Nintendo has published, but so much that made these games unique was the hardware they appeared on. Fifteen years since the last game, both games have been brought together and remade as Another Code: Recollection. Recollection is a great way to experience these stories, but they’re not as you remember them.

Another Code: Recollection brings together both games into a singular story. You won’t select which game you want to jump into, Recollection instead makes you play through both games as though they were acts of a big story. In both games, you’ll play as Ashley, a young girl looking for her father in the first game and trying to solve a mystery in the second. This approach makes sense given how integral each game is to understanding the other. However, a lot has changed from the original games and this remake is anything but faithful.

Remakes are always contentious because they often dare to change things that so many fans adored about the originals. In Another Code: Recollection, both games have had touch-ups and changes to scenes that affect how the plot flows. Some changes are significant enough that sometimes Recollection feels like a brand-new Another Code game disguised as remakes. The plots of both games hit similar beats, but the way they get there has changed notably. I prefer most of these story changes, as many help the game flow better and remain less predictable.

Recollection reimagines both games into third-person, over-the-shoulder adventure games similar to Life Is Strange or even the more modern Resident Evil games. Other accessibility options have been added, including an optional hint system and a waypoint system for those who might get easily lost. Both games have been (mostly) voiced now, though I’ll touch on the quality of the performances later. Other changes are bound to be divisive.

I say this because so many puzzles have been either reworked or, more often, wholly removed in Another Code: Recollection. To be blunt once more – these remakes aren’t faithful – but they do remove puzzles that wouldn’t be interesting today and, as a result, make the games flow better. Basic puzzles like dragging a rock out of the way with a stylus no longer exist, though removing so many puzzles, especially from the first game, only highlights how integral the novelty of said puzzles were to the entire experience.

The first game, Another Code: Two Memories, was initially released for the Nintendo DS in 2005. It’s always served as a glorified tech demo for the unique abilities of the DS hardware – you’d use the microphone to blow away dust, close the system to solve a particular puzzle and drag things out of the way with your stylus. It was novel. But now, almost two decades later, the novelty is gone. Instead, the first game has been remade into an adventure game with light puzzles. The puzzles are still simple and engaging but never take advantage of the uniqueness of the Switch.

Such a choice to rework Another Code: Two Memories into a story-first adventure game would be admirable if said game had a solid story to hang itself on, but unfortunately, it doesn’t. Stripping away the unique mechanics that made the original game so memorable has only highlighted how basic the whole affair is. It’s an important game because it sets so much context to the events of the sequel, but I’d be lying if I said I found it compelling.

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It’s a relief that Another Code: R – A Journey Into Lost Memories makes the jump to Recollection so much more gracefully. This Wii game utilised a lot of the functionality of the Wii Remote when it was initially released, but it is no longer in Recollection. But while many of the motion controls have been removed from this interpretation of the game, it’s done for better pacing overall.

I was astonished to discover how much more interesting Another Code R is compared to the game that came before it. The mystery surrounding Lake Juliet and the tragedy that befell it is much more compelling. It has that charming small-town feel, taking the time to develop all the characters in a fashion similar to games like Life Is Strange or even television like Twin Peaks. Unfortunately, while the plot veers into some incomprehensible sci-fi territory as it concludes, it’s still a much better-structured adventure than the original game.

The crux of the game has you running from character to character, learning more about them and their stories before completing simple puzzles to move things along. Most of the puzzles are incredibly contrived to fit into the “game” of it all, much like any good Resident Evil game strives to be, but they’re all rather cruisy. Barring a bizarre difficulty spike towards the end of the game (which can be alleviated with the hint system I mentioned before), the Another Code games are never too challenging. They are incredibly well suited to gamers just wanting a relaxed experience.

But what does feel like a misstep is the motion-based puzzles. While they’re scarce, some puzzles require you to manipulate the environment with the gyroscope in the controller. These kinds of puzzles weren’t fun in Breath of the Wild and are not fun here either. Some of them are frustrating to pull off when the console is docked while others are nearly impossible when trying to do them with detached joy-cons. I recognise that everyone plays their Switch differently. It might be hard to cater to every player, but there are better ways to include these or remove them altogether.

Putting some of these issues aside, I still enjoyed Another Code: Recollection. It just took me a lot of time to warm it. The game picks up as the second half begins, and the new artistic direction is an admittedly safe but welcome change that helps make both games stand out against their contemporaries. But it’s again bizarre to see so much changed about the plot and yet see so many of the threads left hanging in the original games not be tied up by Recollection. If you’re already taking these creative liberties, why not take things one step further?

One thing that these games always got right is the original music, and that is carried over to Recollection, too. The soundtrack is a very cruisy and relaxed collection of lo-fi electronic music that suits itself perfectly to unwinding as you explore the mansion from the first game or Lake Juliet in the second. The new voice work does a great job at bringing these characters to life, too, well beyond their text-based original presentations all those years ago. Still, the exposition-heavy script does mean some scenes come off as cornier and could’ve done with a rework, given they’re now voiced.

The post Another Code: Recollection Review – A Spotty Flashback appeared first on Press Start.

It takes a lot to get me interested in an exploration-focused platform game (or Metroidvania, if you prefer). I’ve grown weary of games billing themselves as Metroid-likes that just don’t really get what made the progenitors of the genre great. What a pleasant surprise it was then to have Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown come across my desk.

Not only does it have the considered world design and structure that a game of this genre needs to succeed, it adds fluid movement and combat, well-considered accessibility options and some genuine innovation to the mix, resulting in one of my favourite entries to the genre in a long time.

The Lost Crown has you play as Persian warrior Sargon. After a plot to disrupt the kingdom results in a kidnapping, Sargon follows the perpetrator to the mysterious Mount Qaf, a once-beautiful place that has been taken over by a curse. Alongside a squad of immortal warriors, you’re set on a quest to recover the kidnapped prince and ensure the betrayer comes to justice, with plenty of compelling twists and turns along the way.

Traversing the world in The Lost Crown feels fantastic. Returning to Prince’s side scrolling roots, The Lost Crown presents a fairly huge world to explore filled with some pretty devious puzzles and secret passages. Sargon is an effortless and agile character able to move his way around the world with ease and grace.

Your repertoire of traversal abilities grows gradually over the course of the game, but even early on just the act of running and jumping makes moving around the world as Sargon compelling. When you add in air dashes, double jumps and the like you feel like you can get just about anywhere with smart use of his abilities.

You’ll absolutely need to be smart with those abilities to get past some of the fiendish platforming challenges you’ll be presented with, as well. I was reminded of 2010’s Super Meat Boy at points – demanding platforming situations, lots of sliding, wall jumping and air manoeuvring, one hit deaths if you touch the wrong surface, and near-instant respawns if you biff it.

Between the design of the challenges and the sublime way Sargon moves about the environment, I loved pitting myself against these sections and getting a little closer to success each time. The most demanding of these challenges are for extra collectibles, though there are still some tricky segments along the main story path of the game that will test players.

While I found the challenges utterly rewarding, The Lost Crown has some features up its sleeve to make sure you won’t have to miss out if they’re not your cup of tea. One of the game’s suite of accessibility and difficulty options allows you to skip these sections entirely – turn on the relevant setting and portals will appear at the start and end of challenging platforming sections that are essential to progress in the story. Activate and enter one of these portals and you’ll be whisked straight to the end without penalty.

If you’re like me and enjoy the challenge for its own sake then these portals won’t get in your way, but they’re a fantastic option if you want to engage with everything else great about the game. I also found them super convenient while doing some post-game exploring.

Continuing in this theme, The Lost Crown has several other options to tailor the experience to your preference. There are normal and ‘Guided’ modes for the map screen. Normal just shows areas you’ve seen, while guided adds icons to indicate story-progression related pathways that you’ve come across and shows whether they are open or closed based on the abilities you have.

I started on Normal mode, but when I gave Guided mode a try I kept it on for the rest of the game. For the times you remember coming across an impassable section but can’t quite remember where it was it’s a lifesaver and in a way that I feel didn’t stop me feeling like I was exploring on my own terms.

There’s one exploration-related innovation in The Lost Crown that I immediately wish every other game of its type had – the Memory Shard feature. When you come across something in the world that seems curious but you can’t deal with yet, you can press down on the d-pad to instantly take a screenshot. The game then marks your location on your map and pins the image to it. This way when you come into new abilities later on you can scan your own map and the screenshots you’ve taken and know exactly where it was you saw that breakable wall or strange grapple point. It’s a simple but brilliant feature that I’ll miss in any game without it.

As someone who enjoys character action games with engaging combat, I was surprised to see The Lost Crown incorporate some elements of that genre into its own combat. While it’s no Devil May Cry, you’re encouraged to knock enemies off balance, to launch them into the air and follow up with a flurry of air attacks and to use all of your movement options to get the upper hand in battle.

This makes regular enemies enjoyable to fight, and really comes into its own with bosses. Bosses, at least on the standard difficulty mode I played on, were delightfully challenging. They demand split second reactions and a good understanding of your movement options to avoid damage and deal it back in return. Like a good boss in Metroid Dread they would take me a few attempts, but the challenge usually felt fair and engaging in a way that kept me coming back after each defeat.

Not everyone wants this kind of gameplay though, so The Lost Crown’s myriad difficulty options again let you tailor the game to your liking. There are several built in presets with good explanations of how they affect the game, as well as a fully custom difficulty option that lets you set sliders to precisely adjust aspects of the game.

Exploring Mount Qaf no matter what difficulty options you choose is compelling. As well as the aforementioned platforming challenges you’ll find plenty of puzzles that will test your grey matter and secret entrances you can uncover with subtle environmental cues.

I really missed having an on-screen map, though. It would have been so much easier to confirm I’d taken the right passage, or confirm I’m exploring a new area if I could see a little portion of the map somewhere on screen, Metroid style. As it is, I had to flip to the map screen often to make sure I hadn’t gone off course. It’s a minor annoyance, but one that did bother me somewhat through most of my play time.

The Lost Crown’s visual style has ups and downs. It has a kind of stylised, simple, not-quite-cartoon, not quite clay sort of look that didn’t particularly light my fire – though there are some awesome animations and visual flairs during boss battles that I loved. Performance on PS5 where I played was close to flawless, though. I don’t have the means to test but Ubisoft claims the game runs at 2160p and 120 frames per second, and as someone pretty sensitive to frame rate drops I noticed nothing but buttery smoothness.

The post Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown Review – A Fantastic New Take On A Classic appeared first on Press Start.

Despite perhaps being the most well-known Dragon Quest spin-off series, the Monsters games have been noticeably absent since the divisive release of Joker 3 in 2016. Since then, we’ve seen Square try their hand at new gameplay frameworks within this legendary franchise to varying degrees of success. While Builders has had rampant success on critical and commercial fronts, other projects have struggled to make the same impact despite offering something entirely unique.

With this in mind, it’s high time that Monsters makes a comeback while fans wait for the highly anticipated twelfth mainline entry. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is an incredibly safe entry entry into this spin-off series that’s regularly at war with itself. While it might be worth the time of most die-hard Dragon Quest fans, it’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend The Dark Prince to newcomers with no skin in the game.

The Dark Prince follows follows the half-human, half-monster prince Psaro in his journey to find revenge against his father; Randolfo the Tyrant. A cocky display of arrogance from Psaro early in the story results in his father cursing him, rendering him unable to cause harm to any monster before exiling him from the realm of demons. Still hellbent on the idea of retribution, Psaro learns to become a monster master in the hopes they’ll do his bidding for him, lifting the curse, and eventually usurping his father.

It’s a narrative setup that squarely plants our protagonist between the blurred lines of good and evil right from the get-go. The human and monster sides of Psaro are constantly at war with one another, and it’s through helping the denizens of The Dark Prince’s world that he learns to become better. It’s a largely interesting story with some neat ties into the mainline series and his role in Dragon Quest IV, and it does take some genuinely interesting turns along the way, but is held back by a few baffling design choices.

While silent protagonists are commonplace in Dragon Quest, Psaro’s mute nature in The Dark Prince stands out given the context of events that he finds himself in. Furthermore, it’s jarring to watch Psaro silently mouth his responses to fellow party members when they’ve got some stellar voicework. It makes it difficult to connect with Psaro and the struggle he faces through The Dark Prince’s roughly 20 hour runtime. This is usually alleviated in past games through party members, but The Dark Prince lacks a supporting cast interesting enough to carry the weight.

In terms of wrangling monsters, this is where The Dark Prince unequivocally succeeds the most. This game is utterly packed with iconic Dragon Quest beasties to scout, Synthesize, and tailor to your hearts content. Once its core systems are introduced, it’s so easy to get lost in the process of constantly adding to your arsenal, building up skillsets, and finding synergistic accessory combinations to get the most out of your party.

Each monster has a distinct set of talent trees to invest in and follow as they level up and gain Talent Points. Each one specializes in different aspects of battle or bolsters stat spreads and HP/MP values. Not only does this mean that there’s a healthy amount of flexibility in the way you build out your monsters as they level up, but it also feeds directly into The Dark Prince’s big new system –- Synthesis.

For all intents and purposes, Synthesis functions as a fusion mechanic within Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. Monsters at level 10 or above can be fused into more powerful monsters that can inherit talent trees from parent monsters while cultivating their own. It makes mixing and matching monsters for different fusion results with unique talent tree combinations a process that’s always worth engaging with. Shortcomings of one monster can be nullified by the talent tree of another through fusion. It’s consistently engaging and is built to reward curiosity and frequent experimentation.

It’s a shame then that it isn’t often you get to flex the muscles of party compositions you put together, because The Dark Prince’s difficulty is all over the place. Where standard encounters can be breezed through without a second thought, boss battles require much more consideration in regards to tactics and approach, and will often wipe your party out if you’re underprepared. It makes for jarring spikes if you become too lax in the process of engaging in so many overworld conflicts and makes the whole experience feel uneven.

Most of what you’ll be doing in The Dark Prince revolves around combat as Psaro seeks to increase his notoriety among human and demon kind alike. You’ll explore the different circles of Nadiria as you compete in monster tournaments and help out locals with their issues. While each circle offers a distinct visual motif and new monsters to collect, the main objectives of each boil down to the same process of talking to an NPC, going to a small dungeon, and fighting a boss. It doesn’t take long for the loop to become repetitious as you move through each circle.

Completing objectives in these areas opens up further reason to explore them, as completing them often results in increased scouting chances for monsters of that circle. Seasons also play a big part in exploration in The Dark Prince, where each map is affected by different weather as they move through each of the four seasons. While winter might freeze over bodies of water, summer and spring will sprout plants that help you to traverse over impassable gaps. Exploring new pathways as they open up throughout the seasons leads to worthwhile rewards, meaning time spent scouting monsters for your collection always feels well-spent in terms of overall progression.

The Dark Prince’s Switch exclusivity has also proved to hold the experience back from being the best it can be. Much like last year’s Dragon Quest Treasures, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is plagued with performance issues and inconsistent framerates across its entire runtime without the visual fidelity to make up for it. The aforementioned variety in level motifs keeps things looking visually fresh and the game is by no means ugly, but its confusing to see the experience hitch and chug as often as it does.

I really wanted to enjoy Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince more than I did, but the best word to describe the whole experience is uneven. For every element the game nails, there’s another that it completely fumbles, and these issues come up far too frequently to go unnoticed. The Dark Prince is far from terrible, but when held to the standards of recent Dragon Quest entries, it’s hard not to feel like it falls a bit short.

The post Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince Review – A Not So Royal Treatment appeared first on Press Start.

Super Mario RPG was always a game that eluded me. I’d had many fond memories of playing the opening hours before quickly dropping it in favour of something else. I’ve got no nostalgia for it despite its reverence amongst Nintendo fans, but I’ve always appreciated its unique tone and sense of humor. While many concerns I had in my preview last month still ring true, it’s evident that Super Mario RPG on the Nintendo Switch is the definitive way to play one of the oddest games in Nintendo’s illustrious history.

Super Mario RPG follows Mario and his friends in a tale different from a typical Mario game. A giant sentient sword has plunged itself into Bowser’s castle, shattering the star road in the process and spreading pieces of it throughout the world. Shortly after, the Smithy Gang, a troupe of sentient weapons, invades and more or less challenges Mario to find the pieces. It’s a simplistic plot with minimal surprise, though it’s fun to see Bowser being forced to work with Mario to confront a bigger threat than them.

Super Mario RPG feels like a perfect time capsule of its era. It’s a microcosm of gameplay conventions that you’d expect from a typical RPG. The writing is quirky and witty, sharpened with an acerbic edge. The cadence of conversations between characters and the way jokes are built feel like classic Final Fantasy or even Earthbound at times. It’s a refreshing approach to storytelling within this world. It helps elevate the otherwise typical story you’d expect in a game like this.

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But that’s really where the similarities end. Super Mario RPG does its own thing. You won’t explore a wide-open world but instead, jump between levels on a world map similar to older Mario games. Each level combines isometric platforming identical to previous Mario games with turn-based battles similar to RPGs like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. It’s a simple approach, but that’s almost certainly the point here – this is an RPG for newcomers to the genre.

Being a bit more linear than a typical RPG, there’s no massive emphasis on exploration in Super Mario RPG. There’s rarely a moment where you’ll have to go off the main path, and, if you do, you’re often rewarded with a power-up and rarely anything major. It’s an approach bound to be divisive, but the simplicity of the experience is refreshing and bound to appeal to audiences that would otherwise find these bigger open worlds of other RPGS overwhelming.

The turn-based system follows the same mantra – that simple is best – but is the best execution in the game. Serving as an obvious predecessor to Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi, the menu-based battle system is so simple that it rarely feels like move selections slow the flow of battle. On top of that, everything moves at a snappy pace, too, much faster than any of the turn-based games from that era.

But simple additions to this battle help the otherwise simplistic system stay engaging for the game’s runtime. Each ability used by your party members can be powered up with an additional action – be it a button tap or a joystick spinning – that might do more damage or impart other effects. They’re simple inputs that do great work ensuring the battles stay engaging without disrupting the flow of battles.

There’s a nice mix of abilities available, too, with many being borrowed from the typical RPG archetypes you’re used to seeing. Mario is an all-rounder. Mallow is an offensive mage. Bowser is a tank-like heavy hitter. Peach is a white mage. Geno is a powerful wildcard. The five potential party members are all simple enough that you can get away with playing with any combination you prefer, and the lenient difficulty means that any pitfalls in your party lineup won’t be a make-or-break situation. Even better, the remake allows you to switch members mid-battle, so nobody is ever left on the bench.

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The big new addition with the remake is the Triple Move system. As you successfully perform actions in battle, a meter will fill and give the party access to a Triple Move. Much like a Limit Break or Triple Tech in other RPGs, they’re big and bombastic moves that deal massive damage or impart huge buffs. Your Triple Move varies depending on who’s in your party. Having Mario, Mallow and Bowser in your party will perform an aerial assault from Bowser’s clown car using Mario’s Fire Flower and Mallow’s magic. Others might see Peach using her parasol on the party to protect them from attacks. They’re immaculately presented and an excellent standout from the remake treatment.

Other aspects of the game have also been tweaked in favour of the player experience. Items are automatically picked up when out in the field, autosaves prevent you from losing hours of progress, and visual indicators appear during battle to help land critical hits. They’re minor changes that aid the flow of the game in a big way, remedying many of the complaints about ‘slower’ gameplay that many games of this era commonly face.

Much of the new content in the remake rears its head in the post-game. There’s still some optional content in the original game, too. However, the remake introduces the opportunity to again battle some bosses in the game. Each of these rematches offers a higher sense of difficulty and even features new abilities. They’re a fun distraction that leads to something even more remarkable that I’d not even expected and would, quite frankly, be rude to spoil. But these post-game challenges are a lot more complex than what was in the original game and its main storyline.

From a visual standpoint, the jump from 2D sprites to 3D models will always be controversial, but Super Mario RPG does a pretty earnest job of maintaining the spirit of the original. The new cinematics that introduce each character and boss are super slick and do a great job of bringing certain scenes that were previously just text boxes to life. The game looks amazingly bright, vibrant and crisp with the new change in art direction. Even more encouragingly, everything runs at an excellent framerate, too.

Similar care has been paid to bringing the game’s already strong soundtrack up to scratch with modern expectations. Yoko Shimomura, who composed music for the original game, Kingdom Hearts and Xenoblade Chronicles, has returned to remaster these tracks. Each of the new compositions adds a lot more depth and, dare I say it, soul to the tracks and easily eclipses the original. If you prefer the originals, you can switch to them at any point. There is no voice work, unfortunately, which feels a bit strange, especially in the context of the new cinematics, but otherwise, this is as entirely text-based as it was all those years ago.

At the end of the day, Super Mario RPG represents a unique point in Nintendo’s history that will never happen again. Its quirky and oddball sense of humour and charm easily sets it apart from the rest, and even if it is a simple affair at the end of the day, it’s still endlessly endearing.

The post Super Mario RPG Review – A Big Remake Of A Simple Classic appeared first on Press Start.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the rampant success of Persona 5 has resulted in countless spin-offs. It didn’t feel that long ago that a bunch of Phantom Thieves-adjacent projects were leaked as fans wildly speculated as to what they could be. After the utterly sublime Persona 5 Royal, the catharsis of the Musou spin-off in Persona 5 Strikers, and an inevitable dancing game, Persona 5 Tactica is the next entry into the gilded halls of Persona 5.

Much like Strikers, Tactica marks a first for Persona. While Shin Megami Tensei has ventured into turn-based tactics before, we’ve yet to see the immensely popular spin-off series dip its toes into the same waters until now. The end result is an enjoyable Persona-flavoured tactics game that echoes the identity of Persona 5 despite a few stumbles and inconsistent pacing. Furthermore, it boasts another heartfelt story centered around new and returning characters that explores themes linked to those found in Persona 5 and its other spin-offs.

Instead of further muddying up the post-Persona 5 timeline, Tactica takes place during the events of the original game, where the Phantom Thieves are suddenly whisked away from Café LeBlanc into the Metaverse. Instead of finding themselves in a Palace, they quickly discover that they’re in a different Metaverse construct called a Kingdom. After making contact with a freedom fighter group called the Rebel Corps and its leader Erina, the Phantom Thieves promise to help her stage a coup and free the Kingdom from the authoritarian rule of an enemy faction called the Legionnaires and their leader, Marie.

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The Phantom Thieves aren’t the only ones pulled into this alternate world, as young National Diet member Toshiro Kasukabe is found kidnapped and imprisoned within Marie’s castle. Toshiro, Erina, and the Kingdom everyone finds themselves in lie at the core of Tactica’s story. While the early hours struggle to get you to buy into the premise and stakes of what’s going on here, the narrative really picks up steam at about the one third mark. It eventuates in powerful emotional moments and strong character development that feels right in line with Persona 5’s core ideas without feeling like its retreading familiar ground.

Even though you could argue that god-slaying is ubiquitous in Persona, the need to tie Tactica’s broader narrative into a greater threat feels off in the context of the story. Without spoiling too much, Tactica’s strengths lie in the exploration of its characters and their mental states. What it means to rebel, stand up for what’s right, and the cost of fighting against the injustices that plague our world. These poignant and contemporary themes that Persona always has an understanding of feel a bit undermined by the ham-fisted inclusion of divine entities.

In terms of gameplay, Persona 5 Tactica mostly delivers on a turn-based tactics experience with a Persona-style framework. You’ll engage in battles with a party of three Phantom Thieves, each one bringing different strengths and weaknesses to the fight. While someone like Haru has short movement range in comparison to the rest of the party, she more than makes up for it with her area-of-effect grenade launcher and the ability to lure enemies in with her psychic skills. Ann on the other hand is capable of dealing big single-target damage while lacking the same oomph in her gun attacks.

The different applications of skills, map design, and enemy arrangement all encourage you to think about who you bring with you on any given mission. Party-wide progression always means that no one gets left behind, which is nice when you want to change up your strategy if something isn’t working for you.

There are a couple options afforded to you in combat that make for quite a degree of player choice and expression on the whole. Aside from standard melee and ranged attacks, you also have Skills, where you can spend a chunk of SP on an elemental or support skill to inflict ailments or buff your party. You can even choose not to use a combat action, causing your units to enter a charged state for the next turn, netting you worthwhile buffs that put you in a more advantageous position. All of your decisions are made in an effort to knock down enemies, which is right on-brand for Persona.

Knockdowns are what Persona 5 Tactica’s battle system is almost entirely structured around. When an enemy isn’t in cover, or is knocked out of it by a Skill, the next attack they take will knock them down. Knocking down is two-fold in Tactica, not only does it incapacitate the enemy for the rest of your turn, it also grants you a One More, allowing you to act with that character again. It’s through the smart use of the One More system and understanding how you can chain turns together that you’ll find success in Tactica’s battles.

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These knockdowns can also lead to All-Out Attacks, where you create a triangular area-of-effect based on the positioning of your units. If you get familiar with this system and its intricacies, Persona 5 Tactica can be made quite easy on its baseline difficulty level. Smart party positioning can lead to All-Out Attacks that almost wipe the map clean of enemies, and keeping your own units in cover mitigates much more damage than it probably should. Coupled with the powerful and practical unique skills each party member brings to the table, Tactica rarely challenged me outside of its last few missions.

A lot of the way Tactica keeps you engaged in its combat system is through its enemy types. Each one has something consider when making a move on them. Teleporter type enemies, for example, will swap places with any unit that attacks them while not knocked down, which can lead to potentially disadvantageous situations if you deal with them haphazardly. Revenger type enemies will counter the first attack made against them in a turn, encouraging you to make use of your ranged tools before moving in to down them with another character.

Boss fights on the other hand are a bit of a mixed bag. The first sets a high bar going forward that none of the subsequent ones ever live up to. None of them are particularly bad, but the later ones feel somewhat under-designed, especially given their narrative significance.

The variety and ideas presented here leave Tactica’s battles feeling more puzzle-based than anything else – which absolutely isn’t a bad thing. A vast majority of missions also include optional objectives, incentivising you to optimise the amount of turns you take to complete them while minimising loss of units in exchange for big experience gains. The battle system in its totality is best shown off in Tactica’s optional quests, which are bite-sized challenge missions that encourage you to think outside the box and make the most of the tools available to you.

Outside of battle, Persona 5 Tactica keeps things relatively slim but still meaningful in the things you engage with. Aside from levelling up as you gain experience, you’ll also gain GP that can be spent to upgrade skill trees. Each member has a couple of distinct trees to move down, each focusing on a different aspect of their kit. While there’s a good amount of room for experimentation, there’s some clear winners for each character to make them really efficient.

GP is gathered by general progression and character utilization, but you’ll also gain GP for participating in optional conversations at the hideout. These short character exchanges serve to flesh out the world, characters, and current happenings. Better yet, these conversations can be viewed at any point if you feel like you need catching up on particular details or narrative threads as you move through the roughly 20-hour story.

The other big component outside of battles is the Velvet Room. It simply wouldn’t be a Persona title without it, and the way it’s implemented in Tactica feels fitting. You’ll most often use it for Persona fusion, resulting in more powerful Persona that can then be equipped to your units to bolster their health and provide additional skills. You can also purchase new weapons, and even fuse Persona into weapons to imbue them with elements that add extra utility to your ranged attacks.

It all makes for a healthy degree of player customisation and expression between your units, and allows you to mix and match abilities and elements to further expand your options in combat. Persona can also be swapped between units at will, so you never feel locked-in when choosing where to use your most powerful fusion results. A limit of two abilities per Persona also means that you can’t create a busted build through strategic fusion, and serves as a great compromise between maintaining difficulty and giving you access to series mainstays.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t apprehensive about Persona 5 Tactica’s art style. While it maintains the slick and stylish UI of other Persona 5 projects (albeit on a smaller scale), I initially wasn’t onboard with the Chibi-esque nature of its character designs. I did come around relatively quickly, though, and found it charming and fitting for the type of game Tactica is trying to be. Its bold use of red runs deeper than just its links to Persona 5, tying into its deeper themes and aesthetic. The cutscenes and 2D visual novel-style exchanges are also presented in excellent fashion.

Its environments are also gorgeous, moody, and varied. Marie’s medieval-style Kingdom stands in stark contrast with later environments which explore other kinds of architecture. Perhaps more interesting is that these locations aren’t entirely new to what we’ve seen in the series before – even in Persona 5. Despite this, Tactica still manages to find new ways to bring these motifs to life in a fresh manner. While I can’t speak to other platforms, the Switch version runs remarkably well and serves as a fantastic way to play this kind of experience.

The post Persona 5 Tactica Review – A Tactical Return to the Metaverse appeared first on Press Start.

I have no doubt that for as long as we’ve had stories and characters, humanity has sat around and argued about which of their favourites would beat the others in a fight. Thankfully, we live in an age where such discussions can be put to the test, not only by pitting our beloved heroes against each other on the battlefield but by actually taking control of them to settle our personal pugilistic pursuits. The crossover fighting genre is nothing new, with Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. franchise being a household name and more recently Warner Bros. MultiVersus garnering a solid cult following (despite the current hiatus).

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is the animation giant’s latest bite at the cherry, promising new game modes, new game mechanics and, of course, a stacked roster of new and returning fighters, each with upgraded abilities, visuals and voice overs at launch.

Fans of the previous All-Star Brawl game (and indeed brawlers in general) will know what to expect, but for the uninitiated, here are the brass tacks. Up to four players pick their favourite characters and then battle each other, or CPU-controlled opponents on a variety of different, platform-based levels. The objective is to beat up your opponent to decrease their resistance and eventually kick, punch or throw them outside the bounds of the arena, depleting their ’stock’ (lives). 

Each fighter has a unique arsenal of quick light attacks, harder hitting but slower charged attacks and diverse special attacks to exchange with their foes, building up their vulnerability number. The higher the number, the easier they are to fling from the arena. While you duke it out, items can randomly spawn to assist you or your enemies, ranging from restorative bowls of noodles to light pistols that you can use to blast others from afar. Each level has different kinds of platforming layouts, so you’ll need to stay on your toes during the match, lest you fall down an unseen hole or stray too close to the edge, making for an easy knock-out.

That’s all pretty standard fare for this kind of game, but All-Star Brawl 2 isn’t just a shiny new coat of paint, with plenty of new additions to excite returning fans. The first big ticket item is the inclusion of a new single player campaign, which will challenge you to fight your way through the Nickelodeon multiverse in order to stop Danny Phantom villain Vlad Plasmius from conquering all. You’ll begin your quest with Spongebob Squarepants, but as you progress you’ll be freeing other classic heroes, anti-heroes and villains, allowing them to join the fight and save their realms from tyranny.

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As you fight your way through a series of branching nodes, each with its own challenges and rule sets, any damage you take persists, and running out of stock will send you back to the starting hub world to try again. Surprisingly, there’s something of a roguelite twist to the campaign, to make things a bit fairer when fighting an interdimensional despot. You’ll be able to collect resources and purchase upgrades that carry across each run, such as additional stock and the ability to heal between nodes. That’s not all though, as certain nodes will also grant you temporary power-ups for your current attempt, ranging from classic damage buffs to sacrificing resistance for your attacks to inflict poison damage on each hit. All of this makes for a simple, fun and replayable adventure for solo players.

That’s not all though, because if the campaign doesn’t sound like your kind of thing, the arcade mode gives you the same kind of experience without all the faffing about of unlocking and upgrading things, just straight up brawling against the CPU. If you feel like a break from the biffo, you can also try the mini-game mode where you can compete against the clock in the non-fighting challenges from the campaign. For the truly brave there is also a boss rush mode, where it’s just you versus the titans of All-Star Brawl 2.

From the get-go, there are 25 toons for you to tussle with, drawn from all across the Nickelodeon pantheon. Old favourites like Patrick Star and Nigel Thornberry are joined by newcomers like Jimmy Neutron and Azula (my favourite) from The Last Airbender, all of them with upgraded visuals, upgraded animations and fairly accurate voice acting. Whether you’re returning to All-Star Brawl from the first game or entering the ring as a fresh-faced fighter, there are some new mechanics that you’ll need to learn to reach your full potential, like a new dodge-roll or aerial dodge ability, which can even give you that last little boost to catch the edge of a stage before plummeting to your death. 

There’s also the new ‘Slime’ mechanic, which is a special meter that fills up during combat and allows you to power up attacks, cancel enemy attacks and even unleash a character-specific cinematic super attack.

This is of course a multiplayer game and All-Star Brawl 2, supporting up to four players in local and online play, including cross-platform. You’ll be able to quickly play free-for-all matches, 1v1 matches and 2v2 matches or search for specific lobbies. If you’re feeling extra competitive, there are also ranked matches available, where you can progress through various tiers. Sadly, the lobbies weren’t live during my review period, but having played other brawlers online, I can tell you that it will likely be a lot of fun. Spare me your judgement if you see me soon rise to the highest ranked Azula player, she’s just the best.

While All-Star Brawl 2 is quite a fun fighting game to sink some time into with friends, it’s not without its flaws. If I had to sum it up in a single word, I would say that it’s inconsistent. Some of the characters feel dynamic and quick, while others just feel needlessly slow and heavy, with no noticeable difference in damage output. Some attacks can take you a fair distance across the map, allowing for a fast-paced movement-based playstyle, but you can’t change the direction of a charged attack once the animation starts, you just need to stand there for crucial seconds while your opponent has a free shot at your back. 

Some stages are perfectly balanced in terms of layout and others just feel unfair or riddled with cheap pits. Speaking of the levels, they all look great with some genuinely exciting animation in the background, but the nodes screen during the campaign is a generic space scene with cards up the top to denote “Wilderness” or “Metropolis” with absolutely no other noticeable difference. 

Even the CPU difficulty seems all over the place, with some fights lasting mere seconds as the enemy walks itself off the stage and others having me fighting fruitlessly for my life, all on the same ‘medium’ difficulty. Although the new additions are likely a welcome sight for returning players, I do feel that many of the modes could have used a bit more time in the oven, the boss fights and bonus stages especially can get repetitive in the context of the roguelite approach. 

The load times when installed on an HDD are also pretty atrocious, hilariously leading to several instances where I’d wait over a minute for the next fight to start, only to have it completed in 15 seconds. I eventually re-installed it on my SSD and it cut load times down drastically, but it sticks in my craw that my SSD is now host only to Starfield and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2.

The post Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 Review – A Flawed But Fun Platform Fighter appeared first on Press Start.

The Jackbox games have long been a consistent source of social fun since the very first home console versions of You Don’t Know Jack appeared and through the boom that came about with is recurring series of “Party Packs” featuring unique party games designed both for couch play and streaming. Now, in its tenth iteration, there’s no signs of the Jackbox Party Pack train slowing down as the team has delivered yet another excellent collection of games – probably one of its most consistent to date.

Like with every Jackbox release, Party Pack 10 definitely has clear winners and comparatively one-and-done curiosities among its five games, and the pride pick of the bunch this time around is Tee K.O. 2. While it’s a bit of a cop-out as a revisit of a game from The Jackbox Party Pack 3, it’s been long enough that it’ll likely be fresh to most players. The gist is simple with each player anonymously submitting a handful of drawings and slogans which are then randomly distributed to the other players, who must choose which ones to put together into a final design. The designs are then pitted against each other until a winner is declared.

Improvements in the Tee K.O. sequel come via much more robust drawing tools and a better voting system, which is now bracketed. The second round is always a lot of fun with the previously-unused designs redistributed along with the ability to submit fresh designs or edit other players’ drawings. The final round sees two designs face off in a fighting game-esque battle where players repeatedly tap on the shirt (or tank, or hoodie!) they want to see win. And, like before, if you’re particularly attached to your design you can order an actual, IRL print of it. It might not be the most innovative game in the bunch, but in the current climate of crappy AI art and “need this on a shirt” bot bait it’s nice to just sit around with friends and proudly churn out the worst clothing designs you’ve ever seen.

I was initially very apprehensive of Dodo Re Mi, a music game that plays like a “proper” video game with real-time prompts for players to follow along with, which is something that Jackbox has never really offered successfully and instead calls to mind those phone-based PlayLink games that PlayStation tried to push during the last console generation. Thankfully, this one’s actually a lot of fun and I can see it being a crowd favourite just for the Guitar Hero-esque vibes.

Dodo Re Mi is pretty much what you’d expect with players picking a song to collectively tap notes along to like most other rhythm games and competing for scores. The fun in this comes from the selection of wacky instruments on offer from traditional instruments to things like “Constant Screaming” or “Cannon” which makes playing alongside someone else IRL a potentially very distracting experience. You’ll also get to listen to the complete performance at the end of each track featuring everyone and their instruments, which is often profusely awful to listen to in the best way. The game does a good job of making sure everyone’s audio and inputs are syncing up nicely, which is great as a rhythm game in this format could have easily been a disaster.

FixyText is probably my personal favourite among the bunch, not least because it somewhat recalls my obsession with Mad Verse City in Party Pack 5. In this one, players are split into teams and asked to collaborate in responding to a text message provided by the game – only you’ve got a limited time, limited characters and no backspace capabilities when crafting your reply message. Once you’re done, the game will then read out your text message in a classically robotic text-to-speech voice, which is usually deeply hilarious in a very stupid way.

Players score points in FixyText by having the other team vote on their favourite words that appeared in the text reply, with points going to whoever wrote those words. You’re even recognised for the assist if multiple players contributed to a particular word (or garbled jumble of typos). If you’ve ever engaged in a bit of light-hearted buffoonery in a work document being collaborated on in real time, you’ll understand why this game offers up some incredible laughs. Although it’s threadbare in terms of actual “game,” the potential for chaos – especially playing in large, online groups – coupled with some genuinely excellent presentation, makes this one a stand-out in the group.

No Jackbox Party Pack would be complete without a trivia game of some kind, and this time around that’s Timejinx. This one’s all about guessing the year that various things took place, be it major historical events, movie premieres or world-changing innovations. The edge is taken off of proceedings slightly by asking contestants to get as close to the actual answer as possible rather than expecting everyone to be able to rattle off exact dates, and the rounds start off with only a 15-year possible range before increasing as the game goes on. The game then takes whatever the gap was in your guesses versus the actual answer, and adds them together to produce your score, meaning the lower your overall points are the better.

There are some neat wrinkles in Timejinx, with unique special rounds and some welcome ways for lagging players to catch up, but overall it’s really just regular trivia dressed up in a “time travel” theme that doesn’t really offer much to match that concept. The saving grace in this game is the way it offers plenty of opportunities to reduce their score from the main rounds which keeps things interesting right up to the end, but otherwise it’s probably the most forgettable game here.

The last inclusion, Hypnotorious, is a kind of social deduction/hidden identity game where players are assigned a character to play that they must keep secret from everyone else. Each players’ character fits into one of three categories, but nobody is told what the categories are and so must try and figure out, based on how everyone else is playing, which other players they share a category with. Meanwhile, one unlucky player will find themselves The Outlier, the only person assigned to their category, and points are scored by figuring out who The Outlier is as not even they’re told this.

If that all sounds confusing, it’s not just you (or my terrible explanation), as it took my group a few rounds to actually figure out how to play effectively. If anything, it all works best when you forget about trying to “play the game” and just do your best to embody your assigned character and then go with the flow. Once you figure that out, and provided the people you’re playing with aren’t afraid to do a bit of acting it’s actually a lot of fun and a good introduction to the kind of skill set needed to play games like Werewolf or Secret Hitler.

The post The Jackbox Party Pack 10 Review – Another Great Jackbox Offering appeared first on Press Start.

Thirsty Suitors is interminably likeable. The pitch alone is enough to make you smile; a celebratory South Asian riff on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World that sees a millennial queer woman return to her hometown to make amends for a rather dramatic split from family, friends, and lovers back in her early twenties. In her absence, Jala (Farah Merani) has developed something of a complex, manifesting her older sister as her internal monologue, and the player’s third wall breaking guide, as well as a string of romantic insecurities and avoidance tactics. Typical burnout millennial shit, basically.

Only in Thirsty Suitors, everything is dialled up to eleven, every trauma point, conversation, and action translated through the game’s hyper-stylised energy. Practically speaking this means getting around town is handled by a skating mini-game, cooking with your mum by quick-time events, and confrontations with your cabal of exes as turn-based RPG clashes.

It’s ambitious, sharply drawn in both art direction and character, clumsy in execution, but always deeply, deeply likeable. You’re thrown into the game’s vibe immediately, Jala avoiding thinking about her collision course with home by completing a Dolly magazine-adjacent dating profile quiz. As you become accustomed to the skating, a fairly basic system that allows for some jumps and light trick work, you’ll be grilled by your mind sister about the kind of person you are inside a relationship, your choices here allocating points into one of the three “classes” Jala can play as. Thankfully Thirsty Suitors approach to this RPG staple is as fluid as its understanding of sexuality and gender, meaning you’re always free to change up how you play, distributing points between stats like health, focus points, and attack and defence.

This personality-driven class system spills over into Thirsty Suitors’ two primary forms of combat; emotionally charged conversations and literal turn-based battles, often at the same time. Turns out leaving a thoroughly burnt bridge on your way out of town makes coming home a rough river crossing, every corner of your once-comfortable quaint Americana home a possible battleground. The game presents you with a small map that allows you to warp between major locations, each one an explorable open environment that usually makes use of Jala’s skateboard and plays host to several potential conflicts. The plot features a handful of large-scale battles, complete with extravagant set dressing and specialised boss moves, while your lovingly meddling grandmother has dispatched an army of potential suitors who can also engage Jala in combat.

Both of Thirsty Suitors primary systems are thematically rich but equally lacking in some way. Turn-based combat is breezy to a fault, deploying several quality-of-life changes and always making impeccable use of the world (summoning your mum to smack someone giving you lip is a delight), but the baseline systems rarely register above fine. Jala can taunt opponents with emotion-specific options that in turn open up vulnerabilities, like running into a particularly needy ex and flirting to lower defences, but beyond this fights quickly become basic attack looping, punctuated by the game’s odd quick-time events. Likewise, skating feels strangely akin to The Simpsons: Hit & Run, or a similar PS2-era control experience, arcadey in the right ways but unwieldy in others.  

Nothing in Thirsty Suitor’s toolbox is ever overtly problematic to the experience holistically but a coalition of “fine” does begin to weigh down a game that otherwise soars. Jala’s active attempts to better herself and make amends for the damage she caused in her youth is genuinely one of the most compelling and entertaining video game narratives I’ve played all year. It’s a layered approach that blends fantastic character writing, overt representation of a typically unseen culture in games, proud queerness and just outright fun. I laughed out loud more times than I can count, the game’s understanding of internet humour and culturally specific but universally human emotional truths lending it a contemporary edge and an earnest heart.

Homebase for Jala’s conquest is, well, home. Crashing back in her childhood bedroom, Jala begins and ends each in-game day with her parents, two standout performances and characters who veer archetypal but connect all the same. Jala’s South Asian culture permeates the game, informing its social politics and aesthetics, best exemplified by spending time in the kitchen with her folks. Meals are a language unto themselves in Thirsty Suitors, cooked as favours for friends, bonding exercises with family, and of course, mechanical benefit during combat. These segments rely heavily on quick-time events that feel slightly off thanks to some input timing confusion, but are elevated by expressive animation work and sincere character moments. As an explosion of colourful, delicious meals I’ve quickly added to my recipe tab play out, Jala and her parents reconnect, the familial art of cooking finally repairing that bridge.

Likewise, combat is almost always a smokescreen (and largely successful metaphor) for the real meat of Thirsty Suitors – people finally talking to each other. Jala is a flawed person, someone who spent years inadvertently hurting those around her through a perfect storm of youthful ignorance, cultural pressures, and outright selfishness. In her wake is a town filled with pain, and while the Scott Pilgrim framing of exes is initially fun, it quickly gives way to a far better story about coming to terms with the pain you’ve caused others and the kinder tomorrow you might be able to reach together. I can’t overstate how much I adored this turn, several times I wished combat could just fall away and allow me to simply choose dialogue options and watch as this charming and diverse cast of characters came to terms with each other as adults.

There are a handful of other systems at play in Thirsty Suitors, ranging from cute (you can get cool new jackets and shoes to wear) to vaguely complimentary (defeating an ex will give you a phone keychain that offers combat bonuses) to superfluous (there’s a quest log of sorts). Like much of the core gameplay, these are all resoundingly fine but stop short of engaging, small pit stops along the way to the next emotionally resonate story beat or considered character exchange. There’s evident ambition in this medley and the thematic connection these systems have to the story is well-reasoned, but I don’t come away from Thirsty Suitors fondly recalling its moment-to-moment.

Instead, I’m completely smitten by Jala’s journey to adulthood, the joyful and studious expressions of culture, purpose, sexuality and gender, the hyper-stylised and saturated art direction. The list goes on, Thirsty Suitors has heart, it has soul and maturity that is sorely lacking in this space and is a stellar example of why diversity on and behind the screen matters so much to the forward momentum of the medium. All things considered, Outerloop Games is still relatively fresh-faced and with time, its mechanical leanings and goals will be better realised. But that gawky eagerness only serves to highlight that Thirsty Suitors best moments feel like finally growing up.

The post Thirsty Suitors Review – Grind Home appeared first on Press Start.

Regardless of whether or not you engage with Riot’s monolithic MOBA, League of Legends has proven to be fruitful soil for other videogame adaptations. Between the fantastic Ruined King, some isometric fun in Mageseeker, and the time-based shenanigans of CONVERGENCE, there’s a wide array of new experiences that explore different parts of the world of Runeterra. Each one comfortably planting itself into tried-and-true genres and diving into different characters and areas of the lore.

Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story is the next entry into this collection of games, helmed by Tequila Works. A narrative-heavy experience following the titular Nunu and his bestfriend Willump sounds like a home-run, especially for fans of the setting of the Freljord and the characters that inhabit it. While it doesn’t put its best foot forward at first, Song of Nunu blossoms into an impeccably-paced adventure game that brings new ideas into the fold and bows out before overstaying its welcome.

Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story takes place in the frosty reaches of the Freljord, where Nunu and Willump rely on each other for company and survival. For the unfamiliar, Nunu and Willump have common ground in that they’ve both lost their families. The concept of a young Notai boy looking for his mother and the only yeti left in the Freljord with the ability to wield the power of True Ice lays the groundwork for an endearing relationship that serves as the beating heart of this experience. It’s clear that the two have been friends for a while right from the get-go, circumventing any need for origin stories.

The pair sets out on an adventure across the Freljord in search of Nunu’s mother, with their only clue pointing them in the direction of a magical artifact called The Heart of the Blue. It’s a fairly safe and relatively predictable narrative (especially if you know League lore), but its strengths absolutely lie in its characters. Nunu and Willump are a joy to play, and their happy-go-lucky attitudes are infectious in the best way. The story also isn’t afraid to explore the trauma these two characters share and how they overcome it together.

The inclusions of other champions like Braum and Lissandra also add nuance and complexity to it all in engaging ways. Braum’s unwavering dedication to protecting others and the Freljord itself fits right in with Nunu and Willump’s dynamic. Lissandra, on the other hand, is explored through the sacrifices she makes for the greater good of Runeterra, standing in stark contrast with the optimism of the core cast. Tequila Works really understands what makes Lissandra tick here, and she’s made all the more complex in her motivations and morals as a result.

While most of it wraps quite nicely by the time credits roll, there’s a few key plot threads left dangling, which felt a bit off amongst the well-handled conclusions of other story elements. The resolution to the MacGuffin hunt a big chunk of the game is dedicated to feels hasty, and while it was cool to see some other champions that I won’t name here, it feels like they were meant to have relevance in later story beats that don’t quite eventuate here. It’s clear that this is setting up for a sequel of some sort, but it’s hard not to notice the disparity between the handling of certain narrative threads.

If you’ve played Tequila Works’ other adventure games, you’ll feel right at home in Song of Nunu. It does get off to a bit of a slow start, with straightforward puzzle solving and platforming that doesn’t do much to hook in you in the opening chapter. The overall pace really picks up by the time hour two rolls around, as Song of Nunu slings new ideas at you and builds on them in creative ways. It does a great job of keeping the solution to a puzzle or platforming segment in clear sight, while forcing you to think a little deeper about how to get there.

You’ll regularly swap between playing as Nunu and Willump. Nunu’s gameplay is generally more exploratory and puzzle-based as he lacks an affinity for combat like his partner does. Nunu’s most interesting tool comes in the form of his flute – Svellsongur. You can play different notes through key combinations to interact with the world and its inhabitants. While it initially seems confusing and overbearing to learn so many symbols, their intuitive visual designs had me catch onto it much quicker than I expected.

Solving these puzzles and traversing these environments is just a relaxing and wholesome time in the way a Nunu and Willump story should be. Always engaging enough to keep you playing, but not too complex as to bring your progression to a grinding halt. Even climbing can be made faster through Climb Boosting, which lets you pick up speed by hitting the jump button as you move to the next handhold. Each string of events almost always results in worthwhile payoff, like awakening a monolithic deer made of True Ice called the Kellurel.

When you aren’t jumping about or climbing up cliff faces, you’ll engage in combat as Willump, with Nunu nestled comfortably on the gentle giant’s head. It’s a very simple combat system with light, heavy, and ranged attacks with pretty limited enemy variety, but is sparingly employed to keep it from getting repetitive. Not once did I sigh at the thought of a combat encounter, and it’s always a blast to see the creative finisher animations when dispatching a foe. It certainly won’t knock your socks off, but it does a lot to break up the regular loop of traversal and puzzle solving.

While each chapter is quite linear, each one brings new ideas into the fold, such as a Nunu stealth section in the late-game. Each one also offers room and reason for exploration. Murals are scattered throughout the Freljord, inscribed with the rich history of its conflicts and prominent figures like Anivia and the Three Sisters. Notai stanzas are tucked away waiting to be uncovered and connected to form a lost song, and ever-adorable Poros wait for help to get them through their numerous plights. Each adds to the experience and keeps the Freljord feeling authentic to its identity in the lore.

Despite the Freljord being an icy region of tundra and snowy mountains, Tequila Works does a great job of keeping things varied. From cave systems that support the growth of unique flora and a forgotten city locked away from invaders, to a roaring forge and the ominous Howling Abyss, each chapter feels visually distinct from the rest. Snowball fights with Willump are also found throughout the game, offering a short and sweet distraction from the regular gameplay loop that entertains and endears on the few occasions you can engage with them.

One thing all of the A League of Legends Story titles have nailed are their visual presentation and production values. From the grungy underbelly of Ruined King’s Bilgewater to Mageseeker’s 2D take on the gilded land of Demacia, these games have brought iconic locations to life in brilliant fashion. Song of Nunu is no different, fully realizing the grandeur of the Freljord and its place in Runeterra. It has an ethereal and whimsical quality to it that’s exacerbated through the eyes of Nunu and Willump, which feels remarkably fitting for this kind of experience.

Particle effects are another highlight worth mentioning. League of Legends’ visual effects have evolved a lot over the years, influencing the way Riot has developed their other titles. Song of Nunu captures the very same 2D pastel effects in a way that really brings these characters and this world to life. Performance is also excellent on PC, and the whole experience oozes polish outside of the occasional geometry issue.

The post Song Of Nunu: A League Of Legends Story Review – A Boy And His Yeti appeared first on Press Start.

I’d never really meshed with the WarioWare games until I’d played Smooth Moves on the Wii back in 2004. It was a fun game that made fantastic use of the Wii Remote’s unique capabilities. Since then, WarioWare games have really done great work in utilising the uniqueness of the platform they appear on, but none have really matched Smooth Moves for both ingenuity and fun. Game & Mario felt like it should’ve been a pack-in for the Wii U. WarioWare: Get It Together was fun for a while but kind of missed the point. Now, with WarioWare: Move It!, we’ve finally got the follow-up to Smooth Moves that I’ve always wanted, and it’s an absolute joy to play.

There is of course a wacky premise in this game too. Wario and his group wins tickets to Caresaway Island after ordering a gargantuan number of garlic burgers in Diamond City. They travel to the island, are welcomed by the locals and are offered Form Stones. They look just like Joy-Cons, and Wario isn’t really interested in them until he discovers they can bring good luck. Each of the group then embarks on their own little journey on the island to use the Form Stones to bring themselves good luck. I recognise that a WarioWare game doesn’t need a story but can absolutely still respect the hustle from Intelligent Systems on display here.

If you’re new to the series, WarioWare games are collections of minigames that often encourage players to act frantically. The big difference with WarioWare against other compilations is that the minigames themselves are often extremely short, lasting a few seconds at best. The genius with these microgames is two-pronged. Their erratic nature creates funny situations in the room, and their brevity means people don’t have time to let inhibition set in. It’s really just a stupid simulator, but you’re the one who’s playing the lead role.

The result is what many people considered so endearing about the Wii era. It’s simple to play and fun to see a room full of people waving around peripherals. Playing Move It! Really reminded me of the fun I had playing WarioWare: Smooth Moves on the Wii, and it’s great to see this style of gameplay return after Get It Together eschewed it a few years ago. Move It! really is magical – there were so many people in my room playing who I would never have expected to physically behave like a chicken. But after playing Move It!, those same people were clucking and pecking at imaginary worms better than anyone else.

Move It! is split into two modes. Story Mode is the first, and tasks Wario and his friends with completing microgames while assuming various forms. Each of the microgames presents the form you should take before it begins. Each chapter culminates in a boss battle that takes a few minutes rather than a few seconds. Story Mode is compatible with one or two players, and each player holds a Joy-Con in each hand. Having dual Joy-Cons for each player means that most of the motion sensing is accurate, which is a smart choice.

While the microgames are all fun, the boss battles in Story Mode are easily the highlight here. The first one has you using hammers to defeat a Wario-looking octopus by bashing its tentacles or hitting projectiles back at it. Another boss has you holding your arms to the sky, equipped with imaginary matches trying to light a cannon while the boss tries to throw water at your flames. They’re very zany situations that really make great use of the Joy-Cons’ motion controls, something that not a lot of games do on the Switch as well as on previous Nintendo systems.

Party Mode is a lot more straightforward but still just as fun. It supports up to four players and features various modes with differing objectives. In Party Mode, each player holds a single Joy-Con and can engage in a variety of activities. These minigames are a little bit more curated, as single Joy-Cons don’t provide as accurate a motion as a pair does in the story mode, but they’re still fun. I just wish the option were provided to kit out each player with two Joy-Cons, but I recognise it might be tough to get eight Joy-Cons in a room in a party situation.

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Each of the Party Modes has a unique twist put on it. The first, Galactic Conquest, is like a warped version of Mario Party where each player takes a turn, plays a microgame, and then moves a certain number of spaces depending on how well they did. The second, Listen To The Doctor!, has players taking turns but has a doctor giving actions for the players to perform while they complete their microgame. I had to howl like wolf while I was pretending to be a chicken to peck a worm out of a hole, for example. The room then votes on how well you followed the doctors ordered before moving on to the next player. The player voted to follow the doctor most wins.

Another has a group of four people running on the spot to sneak up on a crudely-drawn Medusa, requiring them to freeze whenever she looks at them to make sure they don’t become petrified. The twist here is that each player is given obstacles to overcome by playing microgames, and each microgame can be interrupted anytime by Medusa to make players freeze. The first player to reach Medusa and slay her wins.

The fourth mode simply pits four players against each other in an endurance round. The last one standing wins. The fifth is bizarrely engaging – the group splits into teams of two and must complete a series of microgames. At the beginning of each round, one of the team members’ controllers will vibrate to indicate that player is in control while the other player in the team has to imitate them to trick the other players into thinking they’re in control. It’s up to the opposing team to work out which team member is actually controlling the action. It’s a hilarious game because you’ll be watching your teammate to try and imitate their actions and, obviously, it can be tough given how fast and erratic the microgames are.

The microgames themselves are good value too. They’re all, once again, very zany and out there with the things you’re asked to do. You might be tasked to pluck nose hairs with the longest one winning. Others have you waving a massive fan to blow the wool off a sheep. Others take small segments from other Nintendo games, too. You might play as a chicken and try to steer yourself away from Link in a segment lifted from Ocarina of Time 3D. Or have to stop and crouch at the right spot as Samus in Metroid Dread to pull off a shinespark. These are always my favourite aspects of WarioWare, the sheer randomness of it all, and Move It! does not disappoint in that department. You can even go back and play your favourites in other modes or even play microgames that only use a particular pose, if you happen to have a favourite.

Visually, Move It! looks about as good as it needs to. The fully-voiced cutscenes that play in the Story Mode are bright, vibrant and full of character. It’s a well-presented game that has had a whole lot more time and effort put into it than I’d ever expected. On the topic of Wario himself, this is the first WarioWare game to not feature Charles Martinet in the role. Wario’s voice sounds just as it did before, so the change doesn’t feel jarring whatsoever, especially given how much Wario speaks in the game’s story mode.

While WarioWare: Move It! isn’t going to blow as many minds as Nintendo’s other releases have this year, it should still not be discounted for the fact that it’s some of the most fun you can have in a room of people with your Switch. It’s a real return to form (pun intended) for the game and the follow-up to Smooth Moves that I’ve been longing for over fifteen years. While I’m nowhere near as fit as I was then, I am still having just as much fun with it.

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Star Ocean has always lived in the shadow of Final Fantasy. Perhaps you’d argue that’s because it’s a wildly inconsistent franchise. You wouldn’t be wrong. Of the six mainline titles, I’d argue only half of those are sure-fire hits with the RPG crowd. But no game has ever come close to Star Ocean: The Second Story. The first game on PlayStation and the one that arguably blew the franchise up for many people, it’s one of my favourite RPGs. I was hesitant that a remake could do the game justice, given the treatment by a previous remaster in 2009, but Star Ocean: The Second Story R is easily the best way to play.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R sees Claude Kenny transported to the foreign planet of Expel. There, through unfortunate circumstances, he meets Rena Langford, a young girl who grew up on the planet. During a battle, Rena sees Claude using his phaser and mistakes it for “The Sword of Light,” which a prophesied hero would wield. Elsewhere, a mysterious structure called the Sorcery Globe crash-lands on Expel, and people start behaving strangely. Claude doesn’t believe he’s the hero but agrees to help Rena investigate the globe, hoping it will lead to a way home for him.

When you begin the game, you can select whether to follow the story from Claude or Rena’s perspective. The character you choose will affect which side of certain events you’ll see and also affects which characters will join your party. The main path you travel is essentially the same, with slight divergence in the story. Regardless of who you pick, the plot is still much more intriguing than your typical RPG, especially the villains themselves. There’s some plodding through some very typical RPG schtick to get there, of course, but it’s still a great narrative to experience.

As mentioned before, The Second Story has been remastered twice before for both PSP and PS4. Neither of those treatments has come close to the experience that The Second Story R provides. Built from the ground up, the game has essentially been reworked with a modern design sensibility without sacrificing any of the spirit of the original. Many of the design choices are bound to be divisive with more purist fans, but it’s undoubtedly the best way to play Star Ocean 2.

As far as RPGs go, it’s fairly typical in its structure. You take your party around a vast and sprawling world, completing quests for people and progressing the story to uncover the mystery of the Sorcery Globe. The structure and quality of the game is typical for a game coming from the golden age of RPGs. But what Star Ocean does different is what separates it from it’s peers. It’s also the way that The Second Story R streamlines these mechanics that makes it such a more more intuitive and enjoyable experience.

One example of this streamlining is how Star Ocean handles its almost-proprietary Private Action system. Private Actions are essentially 1-on-1 interactions between your main character and the rest of the party. In the original game, you’d experience them by entering a town in Private Action Mode, splitting up your party and letting them all go do their own thing. You can then go and track them down in the city and participate in certain activities to build your relationships. Each of the relationships affects how the endings play out, and, with the remake, you can even see visual indications of how you’re standing with each of your party members.

With the improvements included in The Second Story R, you can switch to Private Action mode at any point with the press of a button. On top of this, all available Private Actions appear on your map and those which are available for a limited time are marked as such. The original game is notorious for having so much hidden from the player and so many interactions missable – a carryover of the design philosophy from this era – but having it visible makes it so much more manageable.

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This design philosophy around making the experience better for the player continues with how exploration flows. There’s still a world map to explore with many towns to visit. You can even veer off the main path to more dangerous areas to level up quickly. But with The Second Story R, you can now pull up a map at any time and fast-travel to locations you’ve previously visited. Even better, you can even travel to specific shops you’ve visited before. It sounds like a small addition, but it alleviates a great degree of tedium from travelling endlessly like you normally would in games like these.

But no other system has been as dramatically reinvented as the battle system. The original game featured a real-time combat system akin to the Tales games, but through random encounters ala old-school Final Fantasy. It was and continues to be a solid battle system, but I’d argue it’s aged a little. Casting spells would constantly pause the action to show them play out, and physically-minded characters rarely offered anything more than mashing a single button to attack. There just wasn’t a lot of depth or nuance there.

The Second Story R expands combat with a new “Break” system. Borrowing from many RPGs of this era, it hides an enemy’s health bar behind armour that needs to be broken with certain moves. Breaking an enemy stuns them, leaving them susceptible to big damage. All characters can also now dodge parry moves to recover MP and break enemies faster too. There are even some battles where an enemy might be designated a leader, and they buff their party but also break their party if you break them. The idea of breaking is done to death in modern RPGs these days, but that’s exactly the point. The Second Story R’s battle system now, arguably, feels a lot more modern and has a lot more depth to it than when it was originally presented.

One aspect of the new battle system that I loved was also the Assault Action system. Essentially, you can nominate an ability for each of your party members and then call in that party member to perform that ability as a one-off assist move. It’s a great way to involve party members you might not use all the time who have the skills you want.  As an even cooler touch, protagonists from previous Star Ocean games have been converted to sprite form and can also be summoned as assist-only party members too.

These are all major improvements that are bolstered by minor adjustments that help The Second Story R escape the typical pitfalls of RPGs from this era. Enemies now physically appear on the map and can be avoided if need be. Cutscenes can be sped up or even skipped if you’re familiar with the story and just want to get into things quickly. There’s even an autosave now, so if you accidently step into a battle that’s too tough, you can reload to an autosave or reload to just before the battle to adjust your party. They’re little adjustments that have a significantly positive effect on how the game flows.

But I can’t really talk about Star Ocean without mentioning the skills systems and crafting. Easily one of the things that Star Ocean does best, the skills system in Star Ocean allows you to better specialise your party into the roles you want them to play. Some skills can also give you specialties, which can be used to craft items that buff you in battle. Specific skills you improve affect how your character behaves in combat but can also feed into the proficiency of these specialties. A crude example would be that increasing your skills with knives will improve your melee damage, but also improve your cooking skills. It’s an incredibly robust and in-depth system that many RPGs still have not matched, though it’s always been a strong point for the Star Ocean series.

I’ve never really wanted to replay an RPG after finishing it, but Second Story R makes an excellent case for why you should, more so than any RPGs of that era. While a typical playthrough might take around forty hours through the content that was in the original, there’s some new content added, too. A brand-new fishing minigame has been included with rewards for catching all fish. Recruiting certain party members will prevent others from joining, giving you more reason to play it again and try every one. But a newly added New Game Plus mode makes those replays more enticing than it was. It makes the need to get more of the eighty possible endings more palatable (if you so wish).

But of course, the presentation is where a crux of the improvements have been made. The original game had pre-rendered backgrounds, similar to older Final Fantasy games. The Second Story R scraps those and rebuilds all environments in full 3D with modern lighting. The sprites from the original game have been kept, adding a bit of an HD-2D look similar to games like Octopath Traveler. This shift in presentation does a great job of improving so many pivotal moments. Where once a scene was just described through text, the dynamic camerawork and improved visuals help to sell the sense of drama and wonder that these scenes were meant to inspire. It’s a fantastic-looking game and one of the most unique implementations of the HD-2D style. Even better is that it runs at 60FPS on Switch, too.

The audio overhaul is less of a sure-fire improvement. It’s a remarkable effort to include options to select the voicework from the original game, the 2009 remaster, and a brand-new dub. But neither English dub matches their characters, so having the option to choose the Japanese audio is appreciated, given how big this game is. The soundtrack, however, is still as impressive as ever. The new re-arranged music has much more depth and richness than the original. However, both are selectable if you want to experience the game as it was from an audio perspective.

When all is said and done, the changes will no doubt upset some purists, but there’s no mistaking that all of the improvements that Star Ocean: The Second Story R makes to the original make it a better game. It’s incredibly modernised and is honestly the treatment that Star Ocean has been worthy of for so long.

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I’ve waited an excruciatingly long time to finally play the Frog Detective games. The first entry in Aussie studio Worm Club’s investigative amphibian trilogy launched back in 2018, but as someone that doesn’t often game on PC I’ve become accustomed to just waiting for console ports of everything – even things my decrepit rig could feasibly handle. Thankfully, that day has finally come with Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery packaging up all three games plus a fun little bonus for PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.

In case you’ve been living under a lily pad, Frog Detective is a series of short and sweet detective mysteries from the mind of Grace Bruxner that sees the titular Frog Detective take on a trio of gently-escalating mysteries from a “haunted” island, to the vandalism of a wizardly welcoming party and finally a mass hat theft in a Wild West town. Each game is loosely connected by Frog Detective’s desire to make a name for himself amongst the investigator community and his rival, Lobster Cop, but offers its own standalone adventure within a new location and with a fresh cast of oddball characters to interact with.

To get to the bottom of the mysteries in each game, players must navigate their respective locations and use the tried-and-true adventure game method of chatting with the folks around them, probing them for information and trading random junk they find for different random junk and so on. It’s all a very unabashed parody of the ridiculous leaps of logic you’d find in the DOS-based adventures of old, swapping the drab trappings of an old Agatha Christie game for a bold and cartoony world where it just makes total sense for a koala swimming in the ocean to need a magnet, or for a cow named Craig to be carrying around a pickaxe just in case they need to trade it for a photo of a ghost.

That is to say, Frog Detective is a silly game. It’s silly and goofy and just very un-serious. This comes across not just in the situations ol’ FD is put in but the consistently-endearing dialogue throughout that serves as a stark reminder that video games can be very funny when they’re made by people who are very funny. There’s a Wes Anderson-like charm to the writing as well as the camera work and soundtrack from Dan Golding and Bruxner lending her pipes for the astonishingly catchy Slippery Pond (more like Earworm Club, right?), so if that sounds like your vibe, you’re going to have a great time here.

Each entry in the trilogy should only take most folks around an hour or so to complete, which makes them great little one-and-done experiences to spread over a few days or a nice little lazy afternoon playthrough to binge the whole thing at once.

As a special treat for those who’ve waited for these console ports or are picking them up again though, there’s also a bonus scooter minigame that plays off of the scooter-riding mechanic introduced in Frog Detective 3: Corruption at Cowboy Country. It’s essentially a little Tony Hawk-esque map to scoot around on while performing tricks and collecting items to chase high scores. An incredibly unnecessary but somehow simultaneously essential addition to round off the experience.

This succinct and sweet little bundle of short-form adventures is just irresistibly charming and wholesome and pleasant in a way that few games are, making it a refreshing and terribly timely bit of reprieve from the onslaught of very good but very intense releases in 2023, and just this year’s whole deal in general. That each game is capped off by a dance party inclusive of everyone Frog Detective meets is an inspiring glimpse into the incredible communities we could be nourishing with just a few more folks as decent as he.

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When Metal Gear Solid was released twenty-five years ago, it was obviously something special. It’s often referred to as one of the most significant video games ever made, popularizing both stealth mechanics and longer in-engine cinematics in games.

But for all that prestige and reverence, the entire series has been bizarrely hard to jump into if you weren’t around when it was first released. There’s no single platform to buy the series’ first four games, with the fourth being incredibly elusive. Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 is the first step in remedying that. And while it’s a step in the right direction on paper, the execution is mixed.

The first volume of Master Collection brings together all of the games that essentially began the Metal Gear canon. Canon and non-canon games are included and, if you buy the Master Collection, with some extras. Many games are included – the original Metal Gear as it appeared on both the MSX and the NES. The official sequel, Metal Gear 2, is also included, but so is the non-canon Metal Gear 2: Snake’s Revenge. The main attractions here, however, are Metal Gear Solid 1 through 3. There are some additional extras, too, but I’ll touch on those later.

Arguably, the centrepiece of Volume 1 of the Master Collection is that it represents the first time that the original Metal Gear Solid has been available outside of the PlayStation ecosystem on other consoles. As such, this game has received the most attention in this collection. Besides the original PlayStation version, the VR Missions and Special Missions expansion packs are also included. The expanded version of the original game, Metal Gear Solid: Integral, is also included, marking the first time it’s been available outside of Japan. It’s an incredibly comprehensive package and easily exceeds the expectation of what would be included with a typical remaster.

That being said, these are essentially the PlayStation version of the game running in a fancy bespoke emulator with minimal improvements. Where the PC version, already available elsewhere, offers higher resolutions, smoother textures and framerates, this version has all the warts that the original PlayStation release had. Rough, wobbly textures and a framerate of 30fps that somehow still manages to drop. Yes, this is the most authentic version of the game that Konami could present, but not giving players the option to also try the PC version seems like a misstep here.

But the intention wasn’t even to include the games as they originally appeared, as the ports included in Master Collection of Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 are the improved ports from Bluepoints 2011 remasters. These games run at a maximum of 1080p resolution and a buttery smooth 60 frames per second (half that on Switch). While it’s disappointing not to see many substantial changes made to these ports to restore missing content from the original releases, these are still great ways to experience the games. Similarly, while Master Collection includes multiple versions of Metal Gear Solid, only the HD Collection versions of 2 and 3 are included here.

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That’s not to say that the HD Collection ports were terrible. They were the best ways to play Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 on modern platforms. But their inclusion in Master Collection Vol. 1 feels barebones compared to the treatment the original Metal Gear Solid has received. It’s mainly a bit of a letdown that these games haven’t been tweaked with a bump in resolution, given the power of the consoles we’re playing with now. As it stands, if these were the two games you were interested in within the Master Collection, but you already own HD Collection, this might not be worth the double dip for you.

Besides the games, each comes with a Master Book and Screenplay Book, which any keen Metal Gear Solid fan will appreciate. Each book spans over eighty pages; summarising events, detailing characters and providing tips and tricks that you might’ve read about in magazines if you were growing up when these games came out. They’re all great additions that do a great job of walking the player through each game narratively and showing how each one connects to the overarching mythos. The Master Books are comprehensive, but given their breadth, I can’t help but feel they’d better serve as a physical printed compendium rather than a digital add-on to pore over on a screen.

Despite some questionable remastering choices, it’s a massive boon to Konami that these games are still so strong, regardless of their treatment. While some areas of Metal Gear Solid can be a bit tougher to play today, Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 are still an absolute joy to play. Metal Gear Solid 3 is, in particular, still one of the greatest stealth games ever. Metal Gear Solid 2 has a story that only gets better and more relevant to the zeitgeist as time progresses. They’re all fantastic games with remarkable polish and strong stories to tell. The original games that appeared on the MSX and NES are a little bit more of an acquired taste, but to be blunt, they’ve aged poorly compared to the trilogy of Metal Gear Solid games included here.

There are some other bonuses, too – namely, the digital graphic novels previously available for the PlayStation Portable and included with specific collections. These interactive novels were fun ways to experience the story of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, though they’re not included in the base package and must be downloaded separately to work. For those who love preservation, this isn’t the best way to go about things – even the instruction manuals link to websites that’ll inevitably disappear after decades have passed – but it’s, once again, still nice of Konami to bother to include these. Especially if you struggle to get through Metal Gear Solid as a newer player.

Of course, the question must be asked. Is this worth it? It really depends. When you boil it down to what’s included here, Master Collection is good value for money. If you did the bare minimum in all of the games included here, you’ve got more than forty hours of play to get through. And it’s a good forty hours plus, too. The additional materials, like the Master Books, are fantastic and comprehensive additions that the most hardcore fans will enjoy immersing themselves in. But these consoles that the collection is launching on are capable of so much more – and if you own any previous copies of Metal Gear Solid – it makes the lack of substantial improvements to the games themselves a key deciding factor on whether you’d need to purchase this again.

Still, having the first three games of one of gaming’s most prolific franchises is hardly bad. And given how good these games are, playing Master Collection is just a reminder of how vital preservation is and how many people need to play these games if they haven’t already. And that’s worth celebrating.

The post Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 Review – Nowhere To Hide appeared first on Press Start.

If you took the time to look up the definition for “wonder,” you’ll find that it’s a word used to describe a feeling of amazement and admiration caused by something beautiful, remarkable and unfamiliar. It only makes sense, then, that Super Mario Bros. Wonder nails the brief wholeheartedly. It’s the first new traditional side-scrolling Mario game in over a decade and as such it’s airtight evidence that good things come to those who wait. Super Mario Bros. Wonder is an achievement in practically every way you could fathom.

Our adventure begins with Mario and his friends travelling to the Flower Kingdom. It’s a new location that neighbours the Mushroom Kingdom, ruled by Prince Florian and powered by energy from the Wonder Flower. Of course, upon arriving, Bowser appears and steals the source of the power, using its energy to merge himself with the castle and become a flying fortress. The denizens of the Flower Kingdom are trapped inside their homes and Mario must subsequently rescue them. It’s a tried-and-true tale with few surprises.

The game follows the typical formula you’d expect from a Mario game of this ilk. Players select their character, jump into a world and clear courses to defeat Bowser. The structure of Mario games has remained unchanged for many years, and I’d argue that’s because it still works just fine. Similarly, the controls are tight and the platforming is equal parts challenging and satisfying. Which is a relief, since so much of Wonder’s success is dependent on these core aspects being adequately achieved.

The most obvious thing about Super Mario Bros. Wonder is that it feels like the start of a new era for Mario. The game is filled to the brim with new enemies and locales that we haven’t seen explored before in a Mario game. While some of the creatures and characters we’ve come to know from Mario’s rich three decades of history still make appearances, the bulk of Wonder is brand new. And it’s this dedication to newness that’s just one of the many reasons why Wonder feels like such a confident and charming reinvention of 2D Mario.

The other side of this reinvention is the Wonder Flowers. They’re a collectible that appears in each level that, when collected, warps the stage or twists the rules of the game to amp up the action. They start off in a rather lowkey manner – some might summon a stampede of enemies to run from. Others are more abstract – changing your perspective of the level or beginning a musical number that your character must participate in with specifically timed jumps.

I’d shown concern in my preview that the Wonder Flowers would get old. That throwing these crazy effects at the player would grow tiresome and tedious as more and more of them stacked up. But, rather impressively, they don’t. The Wonder Flowers are all unique and, while some are reused towards the end of the adventure, the circumstances in which they are reused more than makes up for it. I’d love to be able to talk about more of them, but there’s honestly some genuinely fantastic and creatively rich surprises from beginning to end that it would be remiss of me to spoil them.

The courses are similarly well thought out, with many of them introducing a new enemy or mechanic that hasn’t appeared in previous levels. It’s remarkable how Wonder manages to keep things fresh, gradually revealing itself to the player course by course in a way that remains interesting and engaging. It’s genuinely impressive achievement, and one that I found refreshing given how quickly I’ve felt compelled by other 2D Mario games to put the controller down and take a break. If it weren’t for basic human needs like sleep and work, I’d have easily been engrossed enough in Wonder to have finished it in a single sitting. It’s just that good.

Such a strong sense of pacing is owed to the fact that there are other level types included in the game too. Besides the main courses, of which there are numerous, other smaller missions with specific objectives are peppered throughout the map. “Break Time” missions are shorter stints with a specific objective. “Search Party” missions have the party exploring a semi-open level for collectibles. “Wiggler Race” is self-explanatory and has the party racing against an eager Wiggler to the end of a course. These are all uniquely created courses too, and do a great job of breaking things up, especially during longer sessions.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder also introduces three new power-ups to the fold, providing some great quirks that complement the platforming superbly. The Elephant is the simplest, allowing your character to attack sideways with their trunk or transport water from one area to another. The Bubble Flower allows you to blow bubbles to encapsulate enemies but can be used by savvier players to create bounceable platforms to jump off of. Finally, the Drill Mushroom turns your head into a hitbox, enhances their ground pounds and allows you to burrow and traverse across ground or ceiling like the spider ball from Metroid.

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These power-ups join the Fire Flower to offer up a set of abilities that often have a multi-faceted benefit to the player. They’re all good at defeating enemies, obviously, but so many of the new power-ups create opportunities for players to traverse courses without the need for flashy acrobatics or stage-specific mechanics. They’re incredibly clever additions to the line-up and do great work in giving players freedom in how they approach the courses in the game.

And that’s before I even talk about badges. They’re awarded to players largely by completing badge trials, which are another mission type strewn throughout the map. They buff the party in both active and passive ways, selectable before a course starts or between deaths. Some increase the height of your jump, while others might allow you to wall jump on the same wall twice to reach greater heights. One might increase the drop rate for coins, while another gives you a grappling hook-like ability. They’re simple additions that, once again, allows players to engage with the platforming in Wonder the way they want to without compromising the overall design.

Mario games have historically been fairly easy. Wonder does good work in remedying this complaint, but in a way that doesn’t exclude anyone. For the most part, the courses are fun and challenging with a naturally progressing difficulty curve that never feels unfair. But if you stray from the main path, mainly through hidden exits, you’ll come face to face with optional courses that have been tuned to be pretty difficult.

And I mean difficult. Two of them easily took around half an hour each to complete properly and one of those would’ve taken even longer if it weren’t for me playing with a friend and having the revives that multiplayer provides. It’s kind of refreshing to see something so challenging in a Mario game, even if it only makes up a small percentage of the total courses and is completely optional. If you’re somebody who enjoyed watching those challenging and gruelling courses made by players in Super Mario Maker 2, you’re going to love finding the right sense of flow to get through these tougher courses in Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Unfortunately, my other major gripe with the 2D Mario games remains – there’s not a lot of variety to the boss encounters and many of them are simply too easy. I acknowledge this is a game targeting a wide audience, but these do feel like they’re over a bit too quickly. Still, they make good use of the Wonder Power concept to offer memorable battles, and they’re only a minor blemish on an otherwise stellar package.

While local multiplayer is supported, the way Wonder handles online multiplayer is also quite novel. When you’re connected, you’ll see the silhouettes of other players playing on the same course. In courses where you might be stuck or looking for something, these ghostly hints can often help point you in the right direction. It feels like Dark Souls, to a certain extent, and really helps make the world feel so much bigger than it is and was helpful in finding a hidden object I was unable to find previously.

You can also erect standees of your character wherever you want, creating checkpoints that other players can use online during more difficult challenges. Is Super Mario Bros. Wonder a strand game, then? Not quite. But the standees can be used to great effect to provide hints to other players. A tub of unassuming goo was in one level and somebody planted their Luigi standee in a post of him diving. Of course, there was something good in there, which was a nice touch. I would’ve done it anyway, but it’s a cool system that, once again, mimics Dark Souls’ notes system and works oddly well with a 2D Mario game.

As the credits rolled on Super Mario Bros. Wonder, it was fun to reflect on just how much it has to offer. While everyone’s playthrough will inevitably be different, it’s easily the biggest 2D Mario game that Nintendo has ever created. Even better, it’s the most compelling. It’s filled to the brim with delightfully realised ideas from beginning to end. And it’s more than likely not over when you’re done either – so many secrets are hidden off the main path that you’ll no doubt want to go back and uncover.

From a presentation standpoint, it goes without saying that Wonder looks phenomenal. It’s vibrant, the colours pop and everything that appears on screen just oozes personality and expression. It’s really one of the best-looking Mario games, and a huge step above the very flat and generic looking art direction seen in the New Super Mario games. All in all, it’s a visually stunning game and while it’s best to keep some of the best-looking courses a surprise, it’s easily up there for one of the best looking and performing Switch titles.

The post Super Mario Bros. Wonder Review – A World Of Ideas In Full Bloom appeared first on Press Start.

With the benefit of a few years of early access behind it, and being an entry-level reader of horror manga myself, World of Horror is undoubtedly the year’s most fascinating prospect. It takes the sharp, blood-curdling prose and art of someone like Junji Ito and throws it into a roguelike crockpot full of supernatural mysteries with a surprisingly deep mash-up of adventure and role-playing mechanics.

A looming apocalypse threatens the quaint Japanese coastal town of Shiokawa, while a cast of Old Gods of Eldritch lore wreaks havoc about the place. Your task is to scour different parts of the town in an attempt to find clues and unravel a series of horrific, macabre mysteries while fending off otherworldly horrors that lurk around every turn. To say it’s unsettling would be an understatement, World of Horror leans its whole damn self into the body horror, folklore, and urban legend that has made Japanese horror so prolific throughout the years. 

The systems at play in World of Horror are surprisingly in-depth, putting a scary, tactical spin on turn-based bludgeoning. Making each second count in conflict is the key to success and you can queue up a combination of offensive, defensive, or support actions on a timeline on a per-turn basis. There’s a frantic energy to combat in World of Horror, whether you’re scrambling for a weapon or having an ally run a distraction play, it all culminates in an increasingly tense play-by-play. This is once it all clicks into place, I will say that World of Horror can feel a bit overwhelming from the jump, given the sheer amount of information the game displays across its many screens. 

All of the traditional role-playing concepts like inventory, status effects, and even the ways in which your run’s Old God is plaguing the town are given their own tab to check in on. With so much to track, I’d argue that onboarding isn’t what it should be. There is a tutorial case about a scissor-wielding mad woman that helps get the basic premise across before plunging into the larger mystery, but it doesn’t cover everything. Some cases unfold entirely in one place, while others require exploration of the town to gather clues.

Both failure and death will darken your door repeatedly in World of Horror, whether your character is exhausted of their stamina and reason or whether your actions draw the ultimate ire of the Old God and serve as a catalyst for the end of days. Fortunately, the brevity of a run means there’s little risk in playing fast and loose, however haphazard play doesn’t come at the expense of the game’s rising tension and atmosphere. 

Tailored for short burst play, each “run” of World of Horror is meant to last, at most, an hour. Mileage will vary depending on how quickly the player meets their ultimate demise, though I was averaging runs of thirty minutes once I found my groove. Though you can dabble with the game’s prepopulated runs, there are plenty of means to customise a play through right down to difficulty, the Old God tormenting the town, and a starting character from a cast with varying starting stats, curses, and items. It’s this roguelike foundation that has made World of Horror a constant source of riveting, dreadful entertainment. 

With multiple endings available for each case, you’ll spend a lot of time sifting through for threads to tug on in hopes they’ll lead you to an alternate end. The same goes for the random events, and enemies, that you might happen upon. Filling out each codex and collecting everything fast becomes the chase as you continue to put to rest and close each absorbing case file. 

Similar to the cursed tape from Ringu, World of Horror feels like a forbidden relic of paranormal power. It feels evident from the classic boot-up screen that the game exists in a place out of time, preparing to prey on unsuspecting players. And it does. It’ll disturb you when you are playing and eat at you when you aren’t. It combines its grotesque one-bit art, which was dreamt up and brought to life using Microsoft Paint of all things, with a seriously unnerving soundscape. It’s eerie, and strange, and manifests an unease in the pit of your belly. 

World of Horror is a captivating choose-your-own adventure-like that time and time again disarms through sharp writing and hair-curling imagery that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the works of Junji Ito. It’s a never-ending source of entertainment and its truncated cases, with their boundless replayability, are interactive short stories torn from the manga pages that clearly inspired them. 

The post World Of Horror Review – A Descent Into Madness appeared first on Press Start.

Some of my most treasured multiplayer gaming moments have come from games about racing little cars around ridiculous tracks with friends. From Micro Machines to Mashed, the miniaturised car racing category is always reliable for a quick burst of fun. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged from Milestone continues this tradition of scale-model mayhem by building on the features of it–s predecessor with new modes, driving abilities and a story-led campaign, but doesn’t quite hold up when played outside those quick bursts.

What caught my eye immediately upon jumping into a race in Unleashed 2 was the sheer attention to detail in the cars themselves. Tiny details like the moulding lines from their manufacturing process and realistic-looking materials for painted plastic and metallic surfaces make it look Milestone just ripped a toy car from its packaging and threw it onto my screen.

They even damage realistically – cars at the end of a race have little chips and paint wear that looks exactly like most of my little toy cars did when I was a kid, after they’d been smashed together a bunch. There’s a great variety of vehicles on offer too from iconic original Hot Wheels designs to models of real life cars, including everything from sedans to tanks.

The environments and track on offer are also worthy of note. Tracks can be set in one of five environments and each lends a particular personality to the race. Racing out in the backyard might be the most nostalgic setting for me, as someone who whiled away countless hours flinging little die cast cars along the patio. Other settings like a dinosaur museum and 80s style pizzeria/arcade are great fun too. Full of appropriate hazards and landmarks, the racing environments in Unleashed 2 are a treat.

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Unfortunately, the positive presentation party ends when it comes to what’s being pumped from your speakers. While engines sound wonderful, varied and appropriate to the car being driven, I found the choice of music for the game pretty grating. Uninspired and repetitive, the music in Unleashed 2 had me reaching for the Spotify app on my PlayStation. Using the turbo boost while driving emits a high pitched whine that is unpleasant too, unfortunate given how essential boosting is to victory here.

Boosting is just one of the useful abilities you’ll have at your disposal to deal with the competition in Unleashed 2. New to this game are the jump and strafe abilities which can be used to reach new paths in races as well as to smash your opponents around a bit. The strafe can be especially fun – similar to the side swipe attack in F-Zero, your car suddenly shunts to the left or right and knocks anyone next to you aside. It can be particularly fun to use a larger, heavier vehicle to absolutely slam a small bike into the oblivion of the backyard garden. Each of these abilities uses your boost meter, which can be built up by drifting around corners, slipstreaming behind other cars and doing general Cool Stuff.

These abilities combined with the design of the tracks available give some great freedom in how you approach a race. As long as you pass through certain checkpoints in order, it doesn’t matter the precise path you take between them – and Unleashed 2 gives you plenty of opportunities to leave the beaten track. Whether you enjoy this will be down to personal preference, but I found this level of freedom mostly frustrating rather than rewarding. Not noticing a gap in the track ahead and falling off rather than jumping to the next section is annoying, even if respawning is reasonably quick. For a game designed with kids in mind, it gives a lot of opportunity to irreparably ruin your place in a race by missing a jump or drifting off-course.

Your solo experience of these races will likely begin in the campaign mode. Here, you traverse a top-down map view to select from available events. Each has a minimum requirement to pass, and an extra requirement for further rewards. There’s also a story happening throughout, though outside of the motion-comic style character scenes you’d be hard pressed to notice. Aside from boss levels, events have very little relation to the animated storyline. Boss battles were my least favourite events in the campaign, simply involving racing around a track solo trying to hit a series of targets. Miss one, and you basically have to start again.

Despite the story being barely relevant, the campaign is at least a decent way to explore the different race types available and earn currency to buy and customise your cars. A store is available with a constantly rotating selection of cars to purchase – with rarer ones appearing for sale less regularly. It’s definitely a friendlier way to build up a collection than the loot boxes of the previous game, but it’s a bit boring. I’d much prefer a more classic style of unlocking vehicles with challenges or milestones rather than just checking a store every 40 minutes to see if a rare car is available. Thankfully none of the currencies in the game require real money. Everything can be unlocked simply by playing the game a whole lot.

Multiplayer is the other major portion of Turbocharged, and there’s plenty to play with here. Heaps of quick race modes give plenty of different ways to play with friends as well as work your way through the global leaderboard ranks. Cross-platform play should make finding a match way easier, though it’s an (understandable) shame that Switch is left out of the cross-platform party here. I struggled to find many matches during my review time with the game, though given not many people have the game yet that’s probably to be expected. Local play is limited to two player split screen which is a bit of a shame given how much fun racers like this can be with a group.

I’d be remiss not to mention the in-depth track and livery editors. I found both tools a bit intimidating at first, but the sheer variety of pieces and customisations available is impressive. You’ll even unlock more as you play the game. Liveries and tracks can be shared with the online community too. It’ll be very cool to see some no doubt impressive user-created stuff emerge in the coming months.

The post Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged Review – Die Cast Thrills appeared first on Press Start.

Between a pair of decent live-action movies, a fantastic celebration of the series in Sonic Mania, and the divisive reinvention that was Sonic Frontiers, the blue blur has had a strange couple of years. Despite this, Sonic has been able to prove that his staying power is immense. Swathes of free downloadable content for Frontiers, a Knuckles TV series, and a third movie in the works all but confirm SEGA’s spiny mascot will always be here to stay.

Where Sonic Mania came to us in a time of uncertainty for Sonic, Sonic Superstars feels like a more confident showing of what 2D Sonic was all about. A true sequel to the seminal original trilogy that had fans clamouring for more. If you can look past the rough edges and a questionable value proposition, Superstars’ core experience delivers on the promise that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 couldn’t, proving that 2D Sonic still has a place in modern gaming.

Much like the originals and Mania before it, Sonic Superstars is light on narrative, but what’s here is more than enough to set the scene and get things going. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Dr. Eggman is back at it again – this time looking to execute his plans of world domination from the Northstar Islands with the help of Fang the Hunter and series newcomer, Trip.

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It’s mostly told through short vignettes and animated cutscenes that bring Sonic’s sense of playful adventure to fruition. With a core cast of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, it truly feels like a continuation of those older games. It’s always a treat to see the gang bounce off of each other as they try to thwart Eggman’s plans and it’s neat seeing a character like Fang in a mainline title like this one.

The old school sensibilities of Sonic Superstars don’t stop there. As soon as you pick up the controller, it’s clear that much like Sonic Mania, Superstars is a modernised take on traditional 2D Sonic. Everything from the physics to platforming challenges and bursts of blistering speed is lovingly iterated upon in a stylish 2.5D perspective. Each Zone offers unique themes, level gimmicks, and pathways to discover in a bid to get the fastest time possible, making for an all-round well paced adventure.

Sonic’s repertoire has also seen a few new key additions that shake up the core gameplay loop. Aside from the brilliant Drop Dash returning from Mania, Sonic and friends have access to a suite of new Chaos Emerald Powers that substantially change how you approach each new obstacle. These slowly unlock over the course of the game’s story mode, with each of the seven emeralds being tucked away in hard-to-reach Special Stages.

Each one brings something entirely new to the table. The Blue Emerald, for example, allows you to use the Avatar power, flooding the screen with clones that’ll clear the screen of any Badniks while also dealing some good damage to bosses. The Green Emerald, on the other hand, sprouts ivy that allows for rapid vertical movement, meaning you can get to high areas with ease. Liberal use of these powers is encouraged as they refresh every time you hit a new checkpoint post, so you’ll often be able to use them two or three times per Act.

The Chaos Emerald Powers also add a ton of replay value in the same vein as Wisps from Sonic Colours. It’s rewarding to revisit previously cleared Acts to see how and where you can use the powers to improve times, find new routes, and uncover hidden collectibles or Bonus Stages. I have no doubt the community will come up with some diabolical tech for these that keeps time trials alive for some time to come.

It should also be mentioned that the aforementioned Special Stages that unlock the Emeralds are challenging, inventive and fun to play. You’ll swing from grapple points as you use momentum to carry yourself towards a fleeing Emerald, collecting Rings along the way to make sure you don’t time out. They’re relatively straightforward, but are always enjoyable, which simply can’t be said for Special Stages in prior games.

Sonic Superstars’ assortment of Zones are also excellent. While most explore motifs previously seen in the series, there are a few unique standouts like Speed Jungle Zone and Cyber Station Zone. The former sees Sonic and the gang slingshot off of fauna, grind on vines, and make ample use of harpoon launchers to get to higher paths. Cyber Station Zone is a personal favourite, with a digitised environment that transforms Sonic and co into voxel renditions of themselves while also taking on other cyber forms to progress.

Zones aren’t made completely equal, though. Some only have one Act, and others have a bonus character specific Act making for a total of three. These bonus Acts are a nice way to get to grips with a character’s kit and how they might play in a regular level. Where Sonic has his trusty Drop Dash, Knuckles can climb, Tails can fly, and Amy can wallop anything in her way through liberal use of her hammer. It means each Act feels fresh when tackled with a new character, especially in tandem with the Chaos Emerald Powers.

Each level also houses a plethora of Medals that can be traded in for cosmetics at Eggman’s shop, allowing you to create your very own metal competitor for Battle Mode. There’s some neat stuff here, like the ability to create a metal NiGHTS, but it’s disappointing that these creations are strictly limited to the Battle Mode. There’s also a collection of Bonus Stages in each Act that award even more medals, but I became apathetic towards collecting them as the game went on given their limited applications.

The bosses that punctuate each zone are also a bit of a mixed bag. Some are your typical 2D Sonic boss fights, while others are frustratingly difficult and occasionally obtuse in design. It doesn’t help that Superstars is plagued by some wonky hit detection and collision issues that rear their heads often enough to become an infrequent annoyance.

Outside of the core story mode, Sonic Superstars has offerings of mixed quality. The Mario Party-like Battle Mode feels like something of an afterthought, with simple minigame designs that finish before they can properly get going. The mode that unlocks after rolling credits fairs a little bit better with remixed stages, but doesn’t add as much as you might initially think. A sweet inclusion is the ability to play the story mode in four player local coop, which is a bit of chaotic fun despite some of the level design struggling to keep up with the speed of it all.

If these extra modes don’t do much for you on paper, then it’s hard to recommend Sonic Superstars at its current price tag. I’m all for a short and sweet experience, but the value proposition here isn’t great for those looking to do one or two playthroughs of the story mode while avoiding the extra stuff. Old-school fans will no doubt get a kick out of the classic feel that Superstars embraces, but the current asking price is steep given its fleeting four or five hour runtime.

The biggest departure from the original games is undoubtedly Sonic Superstars’ visual style, dropping the true 2D found in the glorious pixels of the originals for a 2.5D style that’s reminiscent of the Classic Sonic levels found in Sonic Generations. Despite this, the trademark visual style of the Genesis games still feels alive and well here. The combination of an eye-popping colour palette, incredibly expressive animations, and careful use of character quirks present Superstars as a truly modern adaptation of that original visual style.

There’s nothing quite like Sonic tapping his foot in anticipation as he idles or watching him transition into a Super Peel Out as he reaches top speed. Each character and Zone is brought to life by Superstars’ consistently vivid presentation, and it does wonders for the larger experience. It should hardly surprise anyone that the original soundtrack is another home run for Sonic with talent like the incredible Tee Lopes and Hidenori Shoji of Super Monkey Ball fame penning an energetic and upbeat score that continues the trend of consistently fantastic music in the franchise.

The post Sonic Superstars Review – A Gorgeous Return To Sonic’s Roots appeared first on Press Start.

God, I love video games.

Looking back on all of the notes I took while playing through Die Gute Fabrik’s latest joint, it was a running theme and a recurring notion throughout. God I love video games. This medium, a beautiful merging of an entire history of human art, can do so much to elevate itself beyond strictly the image, the sound or the word when it comes to telling stories. Stories that are exciting and grandiose, or quiet and haunting, warm or romantic. Saltsea Chronicles is all of these things and more, another fantastic example of how storytelling has so much to gain from video games, and vice versa.

It all starts with a ship, and a crew, at the end of the world. Or in a world after the end, after a Flood of biblical proportions has all but hit a reset on humanity, and especially the relentless march of progress, leaving a new world to flourish with brand-new ideas and a collective trauma turned quasi-religious aversion to “old world’ technology. In a unique idea among relentlessly unique ideas, you play not just as one member of the crew of the De Kelpie but as the entire group, steering the course of their journey through conversation and action as they navigate the disparate islands of the Saltsea archipelago in search of their missing captain and a steadily-unravelling conspiracy.

While there are plenty of other examples of games that let players shape the course of a story through interaction and choice-making, I’ve seen very few that come close to being as malleable and intricately-networked as in Saltsea Chronicles. Across a single playthrough of its 12 chapters, you’ll frequently have the opportunity to not only choose your next destination – often at the expense of never setting foot on the alternate – but also which members of the crew of the De Kelpie to take ashore. This means that not only are there multiple possible ways to experience the major narrative beats, but everything from where you go, to what you do, and who is present at the time can have long-running ramifications and significantly alter how you experience each moment.

Saltsea manages to make its island-hopping adventure starring a playable party of up to eight incredibly diverse folks work by emphasising dialogue and narration over “gameplay,” trading out direct player control with a simple map-like interface of landscapes and interior cross-sections where each possible action is denoted by an appropriately-located icon. The beauty of deciding what to do next is that each of these icons very clearly signals what effect it’ll have on progress – be it a quick observation, a critical conversation or an action set to move the story forward.

With so many potential narrative threads weaving in and out of each other, the game’s Issues mechanic proves to be a particular masterstroke. As things progress you’ll occasionally see critical character conflicts recorded as Issues, which instead of implicit “gameplay” challenges are more guiding stars to cut through the murk of evolving relationships. It might be that your crew is struggling to trust a new shipmate, or that two have unresolved feelings for one another, but how or even if you decide to address these is up to you. Issues can be resolved with enough work, left open and active, or entirely scuppered, and the answers – as with real world issues – are never as obvious as facing things head on. They also work as a neat added device in communicating the state of each crew member coming out of major conflicts or triumphs, and of course they work to affect the many outcomes of the tale being told.

I’m profoundly fond of Die Gute Fabrik’s approach to the world its created in Saltsea Chronicles. There’s an innate and immediately obvious understanding of the human condition on show that’s informed the way in which the Archipelago’s history, cultures, people and potential have developed and it manifests in some very real-feeling social situations. Where it would traditionally be easy and obvious to take the high ground in games where branching dialogue allows and rewards it, it’s rarely the case in our own lives, and in Saltsea you’ll reach a deep enough level of empathy with these wonderfully-written characters that you’ll learn the real right things to say in the moment to get where you need to be.

All this is to say that while Saltsea is laid out in a gorgeous, printerly aesthetic that echoes the charm of the studio’s previous masterpiece, Mutazione, there’s a lot of reading here. If that doesn’t sound like your bag, this probably won’t be. Initially I was intimidated by the sheer volume of text in Saltsea Chronicles, but that apprehension faded fast when I realised how magnificently laid-out everything is. Dynamic formatting and generous use of negative space makes it a friendly read with an approachable tempo that shows the studio had everyone in mind when deciding how folks would read their game. It’s a constant reminder that the diversity in the game’s characters, relationships and ideas isn’t a fluke – its a product of a forward-thinking collective.

Putting aside the wanky critique for a moment, I almost didn’t get this review of Saltsea Chronicles written up in time for the arbitrary embargo deadline that us all video game critics feverishly crunch to adhere to. Not because there wasn’t enough time to get it done, or for lack of enthusiasm for writing it. Rather, it was wholly and entirely because of Spoils.

Not since Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad has a game-within-a-game so entirely captured me, to the point that what should have been a roughly 10-hour experience could easily have ballooned out to double in just my first playthrough. Die Gute Fabrik has crafted an original and stupidly compelling card 2v2 game that, like Triple Triad, has evolved geographically to keep things interesting as you travel and continue to play. The studio supposedly used machine learning to teach CPU-controlled characters how to play effectively and it shows in how to-the-wire most of my wins have been. It’s intoxicating.

If I can eventually pull myself away from Spoils (conveniently playable at any time from the main menu), I’m going to continue to poke and prod at the seemingly-limitless possibilities in its story. Thankfully, I’m able to jump straight back into the beginning or end of any chapter and split it off into a new save to see where and how it branches based on where I steer my ship – or even who I take on board. Hopefully before I’m entirely done, Die Gute Fabrik will have tackled the fairly nasty screen tearing on PS5 along with some awkward UI bits and the occasional typo. Small issues in the face of what is a superb achievement but a noticeable mark on the experience nonetheless.

Coming from Mutazione, which has a soundtrack that I still listen to regularly, it’s also quite noticeable how much less ambitious the sound design is this time with little in the way of ambient soundscapes and an inoffensive but not overly memorable soundtack.

There are genuinely thousands more words I could write about what makes Saltsea Chronicles great though, perhaps even eclipsing Mutazione as an all-time favourite. The crew themselves, from the motherly Stew to the delightfully-awkward Kittick, are folks I’ll be sad to eventually leave behind. The jazzy little intro to each new chapter that spins the whole thing as an episodic drama gets under my skin every time. There’s a whole bloody island of cats. It’s all so brilliant and unapologetically different from anything else.

The post Saltsea Chronicles Review – Cruise Your Own Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

Detective Pikachu Returns is an intensely strange game. It stars a deep-voiced Pikachu with a penchant for solving mysteries and a fondness for black coffee, and has a storyline which heads to some unexpected places. Returns is definitely a game designed with children in mind, but it’s well-made and can definitely be enjoyed by Pokémon fans of all ages.

Detective Pikachu Returns follows Tim Goodman and the aforementioned coffee-enthused Pikachu two years after the events of the previous game. Tim and Pikachu have become local celebrities after their exploits solving the ‘R’ case where Pokémon were going berserk and causing all kinds of commotion.

The story of Returns plays out over six episodes, each with their own core mystery to solve which also serves to propel the overall story along. Our characters put back on their sleuthing hats when a jewel heist occurs, with someone breaking into a mansion and stealing a precious jewel – the Aurora Drop. Pokémon seem to be acting strangely again as well, and it’s up to Tim and Pikachu to get to the bottom of what’s going on.

In each episode, you’ll explore the area, talk to people, look closely to find clues, and use all that you’ve learned to deduce the answers to little mysteries that add up to the truth of what’s really going on.

For reasons still unknown, Tim can understand what Pikachu is saying. This comes in useful since Pikachu can talk to Pokémon to get their view on events, in addition to Tim talking to people for the same reason. The whole thing plays out a little like a point and click adventure game in how you explore an area and chat with people to gradually uncover the story.

Tim and Pikachu can also engage the assistance of certain other Pokémon to help during their investigations. The sensitive nose of a Growlithe comes in handy to track the location of people and objects of interest, while Luxray’s ability to see through walls is incredibly useful while trying to evade capture by enemies in stealth moments. These abilities add some welcome variety to the proceedings.

While investigating in each episode you’ll also come across characters with odd jobs for you to do. These tasks don’t add to the mystery you’re trying to solve, but bring a little extra colour to proceedings. It’s generally stuff like ‘find my friends who are playing hide and seek’ or finding specific Pokémon in the area for a newspaper reporter. These tasks don’t seem to serve much purpose beyond padding the game and adding to the newspaper you can read at the beginning of each episode, so they felt a little like a waste of my time.

I mentioned earlier that the game was made with children in mind, and this is most obvious when it comes to the logical problem solving elements of Returns. While investigating you will note specific pieces of information that pertain to the case in your notebook, and later use these to come to a conclusion. I found the process of solving mysteries interesting in that they created moments of drama during the story, but found the revelations were obvious from a mile away.

Returns hammers home anything it wants you to work out to make sure that even a child’s logical reasoning ability will come to the right conclusion. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, just be aware that if you’re older it likely won’t exercise your problem solving ability.

I enjoyed the soundtrack of Detective Pikachu Returns a lot. It’s got some great jazzy detective tunes in some acts and some unexpected dance pop style beats in others which I really enjoyed. The visuals though, I found pretty average.

The Pokémon themselves look fantastic – I loved the attention to detail in Pikachu’s animations in particular which leads to some great comedic moments. However, the humans have all the visual style of something you might see in a Cocomelon video. Pokémon games in the past have had some truly inspired and visually interesting character designs so it’s a shame the characters here look a bit naff by comparison.

The post Detective Pikachu Returns Review – A Simple And Charming Detective Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

Despite some growing pains and countless technical woes, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet felt like a much needed reinvention of the Pokémon formula when they launched late last year. A renewed focus on the wonderous aspect that Pokémon’s world so effortlessly flourishes made for an experience I’ve not had with the franchise since the early 3DS games. The mystifying nature of Area Zero, the Teralstalization anomalies, and Paradox Pokémon are big parts of the reason I enjoyed my journey through Paldea.

As the first part of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s expansion pass, The Teal Mask does an excellent job of honing in on this lore and worldbuilding. It simultaneously expands the scope and sense of adventure of the base game while presenting a bloat-free experience that stands remarkably well on its own.

The Teal Mask takes place in Kitakami – a mountainous region inspired by traditional Japanese countryside. It stands in stark contrast to the bustling and busy nature of Paldea, trading out towns and fuel stations for rice farms and apple orchards. While Kitakami is dwarfed by Paldea’s total size, its more condensed nature means you’re always discovering new Pokémon in a more tranquil setting.

The gist of the narrative is that you’re selected to be part of a school trip to the land of Kitakami in collaboration with Blueberry Academy. The main objective is to visit three signboards across Kitakami to uncover a local folktale revolving around Ogerpon and the Loyal Three. Ogerpon is said to have tormented Kitakami and its residents, while the Loyal Three serve as protectors who ultimately pushed Ogerpon into hiding.

Of course, not all is at it seems, and you’ll unravel the true nature of Ogerpon and the Loyal Three across the Teal Mask’s short and sweet main story. Accompanying you on your journeys are Kieran and Carmine – two students from the battle-focused Blueberry Academy. Both born and raised in Kitakami, each helps to show you around the region while providing their own perspectives on the legendary folktale.

Where Kieran’s quiet demeanour and enthusiastic obsession with Ogerpon paints him as a subdued and shy individual, his older sister Carmine is much more energetic and quick to anger. Her love for Kitakami and its cultural traditions makes her apprehensive towards outsiders and protective of her younger brother. Both of these characters go through satisfying arcs in The Teal Mask, and I’m genuinely looking forward to spending more time with both of them in the second half of the expansion.

Overall, The Teal Mask does a fantastic job of balancing being the first part of a larger narrative while also telling a worthwhile standalone story. It builds up to a satisfying conclusion for its characters and broader plot while also teasing you with what’s to come in The Indigo Disc. It also ties back to the base games nicely in its exploration of themes like bullying, exclusion, and the spreading of rumours.

The gameplay front is where the least has changed. Aside from a few fun inclusions in the form of Ogre Oustin’ and a new photography minigame, much of what you’ll be doing in The Teal Mask is the same as the base game. Plenty of Pokémon catching, trainer battles, and exploring the overworld. Tera Raid Battles also litter Kitakami’s landscape featuring returning Pokémon that are new to Scarlet and Violet.

On that front, there’s a lot to love with The Teal Mask. While short in supply, the brand new Pokémon continue Scarlet and Violet’s trend of excellent new designs. Ogerpon is an adorable little legendary who’s appearance betrays its public perception. Sinistcha is a similarly great matcha-based take on Sinistea with some inventive moves and abilities. Other returning Pokémon are super varied with some real fan favourites back in the mix. The Kitakami Pokédex is nothing to shirk off either, with 200 total entries to fill out.

There’s a bit of post-game content to engage with here in the form of catching the Loyal Three as well as filling out all the Pokédex entries. It provides a bit of an excuse to explore Kitakami further but there are some worthwhile rewards for doing so. Level scaling also made for a nice difficulty curve for my level 70~ team to tackle as I progressed through Kitakami.

The aforementioned Ogre Oustin’ is also a good bit of fun, if a bit shallow after a couple plays. It essentially boils down to collecting items and depositing them for points as fast as you can while keeping rogue Pokémon away from your collection. The photography minigame is sure to please Pokémon Snap veterans, and newcomer Perrin’s enthusiasm for landing great shots of these charismatic critters is infectious.

Unfortunately, much of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s technical woes have returned to rear their ugly heads at you far too often. Aside from regular slowdown and frame rate issues, Kitakami’s visuals are generally muddied despite attempts at variety in its environments. While character and Pokémon models continue to be some of the series’ best, the disparity in detail between them and general textures only end up exacerbating the poorer visuals.

The post Pokémon Scarlet And Violet: The Teal Mask Review – A Strong Start appeared first on Press Start.

Few franchises can enjoy a thirty-year tenure like Mortal Kombat can. But it’s just a testament to how much the series is willing to reinvent itself, for better or worse. Mortal Kombat has been subject to many successes and failures throughout those three decades. The franchise even survived the bankruptcy of its original publisher. Now, Mortal Kombat 1 is reinventing everything yet again. In light of those successes and failures, it’s obvious that Mortal Kombat 1 is the former and another win for Netherrealm. Quite frankly, I’ve not played a fighting game like it.

The series has dabbled in rebooting and the mixing of timelines already, but none has been as dramatic as with Mortal Kombat 1. Following the events of the last game, Liu Kang is given the power of an elder god and can reset the timeline to a new era. He does this but obviously can’t control what happens in the new timeline, so naturally, there’s a new threat to battle once more. It’s a hammy but a much-needed refresh after the convoluted Mortal Kombat 11.

Being the start of a new era, everything has changed. Some characters play a more significant role in the story. Others might still be as treacherous as in previous games but for different, more noble reasons. It’s a cool shakeup, but I’d argue that where things end up, it’s not quite the dramatic reinvention we’d have thought. But, regardless, Mortal Kombat 1 does feel like a perfect point for a newcomer to jump in while still winking at those who know the already-established lore. Even better, despite being such unadulterated schlock, the production value holding it all up helps bring the engaging story to life.

But this is still a fighting game. You choose your character and arena before attacking each other with special moves and combos. The core concept is mainly unchanged, and combat flows much faster than Mortal Kombat 11 but still slower than Mortal Kombat X. The combo system has also been reworked, allowing you to take your kombos to the air. But no other change is as significant as the Kameo system, which is baked into the design of Mortal Kombat 1.

The Kameo system represents the biggest shakeup to the Mortal Kombat formula. After choosing your main character, you’ll also select a character to call upon to assist you. This is your Kameo character, and while you never control them directly, you can call them in with a button press. Each Kameo has multiple moves, and depending on how you hold the button or what direction you press it will influence which attack they’ll do. They’re tied to their separate meter underneath the health bar, so they’re not easily abusable. But they’re a different roster that pulls from every dark corner of Mortal Kombat’s three decades of history.

The Kameo system is particularly clever because it can compensate for any shortcomings your favourite character might have. Characters with fewer options, when their opponent is up close, could pick a Kameo with abilities that keep your opponent away, for example. Many of them can also be called in mid-combo, depending on the move, and allow you to extend your combo where you usually couldn’t. It’s a great addition that encourages player expression and flexibility built into a game where the roster is already very well-varied.

And as far as the roster goes, this is easily one of the series’ best. Where previous games focused on a mix of newcomers and mainly fighters from the first three games, Mortal Kombat 1 does things differently. Characters from over two decades ago return in a new light, and it’s especially a joy to see the entire series’ history represented here. There’s a good mix of characters from each of the distinct eras of the franchise, and while one or two fan favourites are missing, I’d argue that over ninety percent of everyone’s favourites are here.

While the roster has zero newcomers, there is a case to be made for just how many of these returning characters are genuine reinventions. So many are returning for so long, some even from games operating in entirely 3D space, that they’ve been reworked to play like new characters. Even series stalwarts like Scorpion, Johnny Cage and Kitana play dramatically differently from what came before, with new additions to their kits to change their flow. So, while there are no new characters, the context in which they appear more than makes up for it.

With the advent of the Kameo system, the variations system in the last two games is now gone. While I enjoyed having three different versions of each character, it would almost always be unbalanced. Some variations were better than others, and others would never get used. The removal of variations in Mortal Kombat 1 is welcomed – it means the team has to focus on a single set of moves for each character, and, honestly, the roster is stronger for it. Everyone is a joy to play.

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The game is still violent, though Mortal Kombat 1 often errs more on goofy than bleak or realistic. Fatalities and fatal blows are also tuned to be much quicker, getting you back into your game faster. I appreciate this change, though I think people wanting more complicated fatalities will be disappointed. It’s so ridiculous and over the top that it’s almost comical, perhaps indicative of why Mortal Kombat has such broad appeal despite being an outwardly violent game.

Besides the genre-best story mode, a new mode called Invasions is also included here. It’s essentially a tabletop RPG, assigning elemental affinities and stats to manage for your characters as they progress through board games of locations from the story. It’s an intelligent culmination of everything Netherrealm has done previously to appeal to solo players – the living towers are still here refreshing hourly, daily, weekly and monthly – and really is the new version of the Krypt. As such, you’ll do a lot of unlocking of skins and weapons here, with each node of the board allowing you to fight enemies with all kinds of modifiers or effects. You’ll even find items that will open up paths in previous boards, too, kind of like Metroid.

My initial reaction to Invasions is that it’s a pretty massive undertaking. There are at least six boards to explore, comprising hundreds of fights. Some nodes will have you taking on multiple enemies simultaneously; others have mini-towers to conquer. Some even have you just avoiding projectiles without fighting anybody. There’s a nice mix of activities on offer here, and it’s something I can see growing into something even better than what it already is as time goes by. I hope there’s a way in the future to speed up your character’s movement speed on the board, but it’s a minor nitpick, admittedly.

The idea is that each season will bring new boards with new storylines to explore and uncover. I love the idea; though the story is admittedly pretty minimalist, it’s cool to explore some “what-if” scenarios in the world of Mortal Kombat. The first season is already available and concerns the man who was the original Scorpion. If every season is as big as this one, there will be a lot of great solo content for players to get through in Mortal Kombat 1. Time will tell, but Netherrealm has proven before that they’re up to the challenge, so we can only hope that will continue here.

One issue with Mortal Kombat 1 is that it’s yet another fighting game with locked characters. While I recognise it harkens back to when these games first found popularity, it’d be a bit of a bummer to boot the game on a Saturday night with friends and see you can’t play as everyone. One character is tied to finishing the story. At the same time, five of the game’s fifteen Kameos can’t be used until you reach a certain level on your profile. It’s not as egregious as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, mind you, but it is frustrating if you want to jump in and play with a group with everyone available.

Customisation was a big part of Mortal Kombat 11, but Mortal Kombat 1’s approach is bound to divide. The system has been simplified so that every character has one aspect of their design that can be customised. Examples of this are Scorpion’s Mask, Li Mei’s Gauntlets and Kitana’s Fans. There are still several skins to unlock, each with numerous palettes to change their colour, but the inability to change so much about each character is bound to divide. Once again, I never engaged with the customisation much in Mortal Kombat 11 beyond finding the skins I liked, but those who want to change the most particular aspect of their favourite characters design might be disappointed. And while it’s simplified, the skins on offer here are all good, which makes up for it.

More surprisingly, at the time of writing, the monetisation mechanics aren’t anywhere near as rapacious as you might expect. There are still three currencies, however. Plain coins are earned by playing mainly offline modes. Season coins are made through Invasions Mode and can be used to buy seasonal content. In three hours of play, I’d earn enough to buy five to seven skins I wanted, though you can still earn them in Invasion, too. Finally, there are Dragon Crystals. These are the “real money” currency in the game and can be used in a premium store that refreshes regularly.

While there are in-game purchases here, Mortal Kombat 1 gives out more than enough playing naturally without incessant grinding that I’d expected. It’s a refreshing change that is in stark opposition to how I felt about Mortal Kombat 11, which forced you to grind regularly against battles that were tuned to be way too difficult.

The online modes remain unchanged from Mortal Kombat 11. Public and private rooms can be setup, and there’s still a king of the hill option to emulate that classic arcade experience. Kombat League is also here from the get-go, serving as a ranked mode that rewards gear set around the league theme every few months. Of course, while the net code is strong as ever, it’s a huge disappointment to see that cross-play isn’t here, at least at launch. Especially since it was in Mortal Kombat 11 and worked so well. We have confirmation that it’s coming in the future, but given it’s such the standard now, it’s an odd omission for a game of this calibre.

From a presentation standpoint, Mortal Kombat 1 is the first time the team has moved to a new engine, and it shows. The game has never looked better. Even more encouraging, the levels are all beautifully rendered and wildly colourful. Ever since Injustice 2, it’s been obvious that Netherrealm’s facial animations were something else, and this is especially obvious in Mortal Kombat 1, especially during its lengthy story mode cutscenes. It’s the best-looking fighter available to players so far and it looks so incredibly fluid in motion.

Even more encouraging, the game’s music has been dramatically improved, too. Where music often faded to the background in the previous two games, the new music harkens back to the old eras while still feeling fresh and exciting. Voice work is pretty good. Sure, there is yet another celebrity casting choice that’s clearly out of place, but besides them, everyone else turns in some great performances to bring this epic story to life.

The post Mortal Kombat 1 Review – A Relentless Reinvention appeared first on Press Start.

When I previewed Gunbrella a couple of months ago, I did note that it could be yet another surprise packet in a calendar year that has delivered so many to date. It has proven to be a slick, stylish action-shooter that, like so many Devolver Digital published titles before it, marries combat with pacy, balletic movement to establish a hypnotic flow state of spent shells, Mary Poppins-esque soaring, and bleak rainfall which might warrant a brolly.

The main hook of Gunbrella is its titular blunderbuss, arguably one of the medium’s most bloody cool multi-tools. It presents savagery behind a mask of unrelenting flair, as reducing foot soldiers to a pile of muck before flying away in an updraught will likely go down as one of the year’s most satisfying gameplay loops and it never gets old throughout the game’s near-ten hour runtime. Although there are plenty of ammo types to pick from, I do think granting players an infinite pool of regular shotgun shells to pull from was an inspired choice. Dragged along by your magical umbrella, you practically dance from screen-to-screen, and I do believe the swiftness of it all might have been lost had the team decided to bog things down with scavenging lean amounts of ammo or crafting which, in context, could have made a lot of sense.

The one downside to the game’s combat, as delightfully gruesome as it can be, is that it leans a little to the easier side of things. The base blunderbuss is so powerful, you’re never really forced to throw a Hail Mary hand grenade, or plant strategic sticky bombs. It ends up feeling one-note, even if it is note perfect. You might work up a sweat exorcising a couple of the gnarled abominations that present as big boss encounters, but even they are ultimately pretty susceptible to cheese tactics most of the time.

After a quiet, gruff gunman finds his wife slain and his daughter missing, he finds the Gunbrella, a half gun-half umbrella implement, at the scene of the grisly murder and takes it along with him to exact his especially violent vengeance. What unfurls is a conspiracy of several moving parts, like the Parasol Gunmen, a haven called Avalon, and science gone haywire in the form of harsh, supernatural abominations that plague the townships. I admire the team’s willingness to not only pour every insane idea they had into Gunbrella, but to make them coherent. It’s an insanely wild ride, but I adore the lore and world-building packed into the game’s many backwater towns, from Orwell to Avalon.

Much like the rail system that pulls Murray from town-to-town in a straight line, the story is relatively linear. And although it arrives at the same endpoint, there is a lot of opportunity for the player to add flavour at certain forks in the road along the way through some cool side quests. There were choices I did wrestle with, which I think is worth commendation to the team for building out the world, its characters, and lore to the point where I’m made to care. The whole subplot that revolves around the character Goldenrod, for example, is just terrific from start to finish.

Given there’s no real map or waypoint system, keeping the objectives straight across the span of five settlements can be a bit of a trial. Murray’s stained journal serves as a neat in-game means of cataloguing goals and inventory, however it’s limited in the information it presents meaning missing the occasional once-off exposition from a quest-giver can mean wandering aimlessly searching for the point of interest.

As I mentioned earlier in the piece, Gunbrella’s world is so believably disparate, I could imagine a build of the game where scrapping and scavenging for parts and resources fed into a crafting mechanic. Fortunately, for the sake of action it’s all streamlined through a couple of straight-forward currencies and the wares-peddlers who are all very willing to trade you for them. Gold is used to buy bandages and all manner of ammo you’re unlikely to want, while spare parts can be used to upgrade the Gunbrella at the Tinkerer’s underground workshop that’s fit for a hermit. They’re simplistic systems, but I appreciate that they keep out of fun’s way and let the game lean more on its strengths.

Describing the game’s world as miserable would be an understatement. Its brand of cartoonish violence is housed within a world of industry, so it’s definitely heavy on the brown and grey tones. Despite this, the game is devastatingly good looking and is further proof that pixel art can be gritty, creepy, and unsettling. It certainly helps that the game’s animation and map design, with its tunnels as tangled as the cords behind my television, sell the slick manoeuvrability of the titular shotty. 

While there are a couple of things I might have changed about it, Gunbrella is a slick action-shooter that has a few very key things working in its favour. Its world is one you’d happily spend hours peeling back the curtain on, upending the supernatural cabal threatening the town’s fabric. Its key feature, the Gunbrella, is a badass device so baked into the game’s core experience, which they’ve nailed the feel of. 

It turns out that gliding, swinging, and dashing through browntown with a bulletproof brolly in hand really is the coolest thing. 

The post Gunbrella Review – Gunder My Umbrella appeared first on Press Start.

Although the genre’s had its longstanding franchises and enjoyed a healthy audience dating as far back as the 90s, it feels like the farming/life sim video game market has been particularly prevalent since games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing New Horizons exploded in popularity. It’s at a point now where we can’t have a Nintendo Direct showcase without at least a triple threat of farming and crafting sims showing up, a fact that’ll either delight or enrage depending on your tastes. With so many time-sink experiences vying for your attention, new players on the scene really need to offer something unique or top-notch to pull folks away from the usual heavy hitters, and Fae Farm makes a genuine attempt to stand out from the crowd.

It all starts about as stock-standard as you could expect. Your character, whose look and name are yours to tailor, finds themselves as a new resident on the mysterious island of Azoria in an (honestly ill-advised) attempt at a sea change. Although sporting a tremendously friendly populace and seemingly idyllic surrounds, it turns out that Azoria isn’t without its issues and quirks. For one, natural disasters like whirlpools, blizzards, toxic miasma and volcanoes prevent any new outside visitors or resources reaching the community and block safe access to huge sections of the island. Less disastrous but still unexpected is the prevalence of magic throughout Azoria which manifests itself in a number of ways.

That’s predominantly where Fae Farm makes its boldest attempts at being more than just your average farming/life sim, imbuing a magical spin on most of the things you’ll spend your time doing on Azoria whether it’s farming, crafting, exploring or even venturing into mysterious new realms. There’s almost nothing that doesn’t have some kind of magically-powered mechanic or twist on the formula. Your crafting stations whirr to life and toil away autonomously, you can make place special seals in particular spots to teleport around, you’ll quickly gain a set of actual wings to help you reach new heights and there are even otherworldly animals to rear in your farms. None of it radically changes the fundamentals of the genre, but it makes for a nice point of difference and helps keep things interesting all the way through.

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Aside from the usual activities like cultivating crops, mining minerals and selling your wares in the town market, a big chunk of your time will be spent restoring peace to Azoria by following along a main quest line and satisfying the demands of some of Azoria’s more mysterious and ethereal inhabitants. Most of these bigger tasks lie in wait at the end of lengthy “dungeon” type mining areas that you’ll need to traverse floor-by-floor with your stamina bar, the looming hour of midnight in the game’s daily cycle, and Jumbles – everyday objects animated by antagonistic spirits – all conspiring to cut your spelunking short. The trick in each one is to gather up their resources, return home to craft dungeon-specific teleportation seals, and place them on each floor to give you a deeper starting point on your next run.

These dungeons are a novel way to make resource-gathering a little more interesting and gives you a clear goal to work toward if the sheer number of more everyday things to do as an Azorian resident give you paralysis of choice. Failing those, there are also plenty of side quests, seasonal tasks, romantic objectives and more to keep you striving for something and touching every aspect of gameplay that’s on offer. The game also does a commendable job of encouraging players to decorate and beautify their space, because placing certain decor inside your home grants bonuses to your health, stamina and mana making it easier to get further into the dungeons and collect even more resources each run.

As many neat ideas as Fae Farm brings to the table though, there are some fairly prominent issues that hold it back from being truly great. For starters, performance on the Switch is an absolute mess. There are frequent stutters and hitches throughout, often occurring at the worst possible moments like when you’re set upon by enemies in a dungeon, and I’ve had the game completely lock up on me multiple times – at one point ruining an in-game day’s worth of meticulous and luck-driven mining. The game has a colourful and lush look that’s super charming the majority of the time, but the vibe is consistently harshed by frustrating frame drops and freezes.

While I’m under the assumption that the above issues won’t be as crucial a point in the PC version of the game, that same air of ambition over execution is also baked into the game’s less surface-level qualities. There’s a breadth of systems at play here that consistently expand and multiple over time – to an impressive degree, to be fair – but by the time you’re dozens of hours in it’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s just too much here and yet somehow it’s all spread far too thin, perhaps for the sake of trying to satisfy sim and RPG fans in the same strokes.

As much as I gel with the idea of supplementing the life sim side of things, for example, the dungeons just aren’t that exciting and fighting the Jumbles gets old a handful of floors in, never mind multiple 25-floor gauntlets. The idea is sound but every floor is so similar and each dungeon so long that it gets tedious far too quickly. The same can be said of a lot of the game – there’s heaps to do and find but not a lot of nuance to any one aspect aside from very consistently having your progress and aspirations gated by the need for new (see: differently-coloured) iterations of your tools and resources.

At the risk of sounding overly down on the whole thing though, I did quite enjoy my time with Fae Farm on the whole. If you have the patience to stick with it, and spend the time slowly churning through the core objectives until you’re truly free to work at settling into your life on Azoria, there’s a genuinely decent time to be had here. Aside from getting itself bogged down in stuff it’s got plenty of charm and enough unique ideas to make it stand out from the Harvest Moons and Stardew Valleys and earn a place in any budding magical agriculturalist’s library.

Regrettably, I haven’t been able to test out the game’s multiplayer functionality, but it seems fairly robust with cross-play enabled at launch and the folks at Phoenix Labs promising post-launch updates to make everything more permeable across different save states. There are also bold-sounding plans for post-launch content and quality-of-life updates as well, which hopefully will include some better systems to keep track of everything it has going on.

The post Fae Farm Review – A Fairy-ly Decent Farming Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

Cast your mind back to the late 2000s when party games were all the rage. Buzz had us smashing buzzers in a quiz show, Singstar had people doing karaoke in their houses and Rock Band had everyone wailing on plastic guitar controllers in front of their TVs. Playing Samba de Amigo: Party Central took me right back to this era of party-charged social gaming.

At its best with a crowd, Samba can be a riot to play with a group of friends competing and having a great time along with great music and silly motion gameplay. It’s a game built for the party atmosphere – with zany characters, silly mini-games and demanding moves that will inevitably make anyone playing look a little goofy (in a fun way).

Taking a step back for a moment, Samba de Amigo is a game about being a monkey shaking maracas in time with music. Little bubbles will float from the centre of the screen out to one of six circles around your character, and you need to shake the Switch Joy Cons as though they were a pair of maracas in the direction of that circle around your character. Depending on the song and difficulty you choose this can be fairly easy to keep up with, or deviously difficult. Between these note shakes you’ll also be sometimes asked to hit particular dance poses or more complex moves. Your combination of shake accuracy, poses and dance moves combine to end up at your overall score at the end of the song.

Things are spiced up some more with the Roulettes, a spinning wheel that can appear during songs to completely change your objective for a short while. Instead of shaking to hit notes you might suddenly be flailing your arms to give a series of high-fives to characters flying at you or smashing a baseball with just the right timing to hit the scoreboard. No two sessions of Party Central are quite the same.

You can play along with any of the 40 included songs in the standard rhythm game mode however there are some other modes that really shine with friends. Love Checker is a fun novelty that decides how compatible two players are by examining how in sync their movements are. Showdown is particularly silly, it plays like a regular rhythm stage until the winner is decided. The loser then has to choose a task from a roulette like ‘clap for the winner until your hands hurt’ or ‘bark like a dog’. The winner decides when they are satisfied with the loser’s performance. It’s all very silly and helps the game shine in a casual environment.

The soundtrack is core to the enjoyment of any rhythm game. Whether you like this soundtrack will be down to personal taste, but there’s a good amount of variety. There’s a bit of Latin music like the ever popular La Bamba, a good amount of contemporary pop from the likes of Carly Rae Jepsen and Icona Pop, dance classics like Macarena and some Sega tunes like Escape From The City. The variety means hopefully there will be something here for most anybody to enjoy music-wise.

There is again a wealth of single player modes here for lone players to keep things interesting. There’s the StreamiGo! mode where you complete a series of challenges (think ‘get a note combo of 100’ or ‘hit 40 quick shakes’) and are rewarded followers when you do well – with the ultimate goal being to become a social media star. There’s also the online World Party mode, where they’ve somehow turned a monkey shaking maracas game into a battle royale. Forty enter, each round the worst performers are eliminated to a black hole (of immense pain if the anguished screams of the fallen are anything to go by) and one emerges victorious. However, despite all the variety, some fundamental issues become apparent when you’re playing with a less casual mindset.

When I was trying to hit high scores rather than have a silly fun time, I noticed the motion controls’ clumsiness became an impediment to playing well. The game is quite generous with timing but even so I found hitting the left and right facing notes unreliable. It’s sort of par for the course with motion controls I suppose, but its a shame to be knocked out of a World Party when it feels like the controls let you down.

Even with all the different single player game modes, I found myself getting a bit tired of it all quicker than I hoped. All the extra modes like World Party and StreamiGo are essentially contextual variations on the same core rhythm gameplay – and while that rhythm gameplay shines in friendly settings it got repetitive fast when playing alone.

Party Central can be played with regular controller buttons instead of motion controls, which is a nice option. In this mode it plays quite similarly to the Persona rhythm games – but I found the note layouts in Samba more suited to motion controls. I got in my own way more often trying to use buttons and sticks to match the motions the game wanted. Regardless, it’s good to have the option.

I guess the name of the game says it all. Samba de Amigo: Party Central shines brightest in a casual party environment. The wealth of novelty silliness anchored around a fun core rhythm game creates silly situations for revellers to have fun with. It is a shame that playing alone made me more aware of the motion accuracy shortcomings that are easier to forgive in a casual get-together setting, but I suppose that’s why it’s not called “Loner Central.”

The post Samba De Amigo: Party Central Review – Shake, Shake, Shake! appeared first on Press Start.

I don’t know how it happened, but I played Red Dead Redemption on Xbox 360 back in the day, got about 90 minutes in and dropped it entirely. I wish I could explain why, but I just don’t know. When the Switch port came along though, I thought it might be an opportunity to give this game another try – I like the Wild West as a setting, it’s got action, politics, human stories and some real depth to explore that I might appreciate more now than I did a decade ago.

After finally playing through Red Dead Redemption in its new Switch version, what I’ve found is a technically-strong port of a game from 2010, with all the baggage that comes from a game that’s now thirteen years old. It’s one I’m glad I finally got around to playing, but that wasn’t without its issues.

Red Dead Redemption drops you right into the declining American frontier of 1911. The Wild West idea is still alive, but is threatened by a looming ‘federal government’ and industrialisation. The feds have asked our protagonist and ex criminal gang member, John Marston, to hunt and kill the gang mates of his past life in exchange for the safety of his wife and child. As John, you’re unleashed onto the expansive open world of America amidst a time of great change, where cars and factories are changing the world.

While the game’s Grand Theft Auto DNA is immediately apparent in the way characters move and the mission-centric structure to its open world – Red Dead’s setting lends it quite a different feel to its modern forebears. The overall play area is fairly vast, being set near what is now the USA-Mexico border and allowing you to explore a pretty sizeable (especially for the time) area full of towns, cities and other locations of interest.

The feel of actually playing Redemption though is the first hint that this ground-breaking game from 2010 is beginning to show its age. Moving John feels rather clunky, he has a certain heft to him that makes small movements feel overly heavy. His animations (and those of pretty much every human in the game) look positively wooden by modern standards. Movement on a horse feels a bit more natural, but when combat is mixed in can become a bit messy. Combat generally is fairly imprecise, though this is helped out massively by the generous auto-aim which is on by default. It’s nothing bad enough to kill my enjoyment of the game, just something to get used to.

Redemption’s story was a little all over the place for me. I quite liked John Marston as a character. He’s ineffably cool in any situation and willing to do what must be done to complete his mission and ensure the safety of his family. The open nature of the story can introduce some real strange dissonance in his character, however. A major part of the story involves two warring factions in Mexico, a group of revolutionaries and a military force they oppose. RDR has John helping them both out – it’s a little bizarre to go from one mission helping the revolutionaries fight their oppressors and build relationships with important people in the revolution, but then the very next mission start murdering the very revolutionaries you were helping a moment ago without the slightest acknowledgement by the game of how utterly strange this is.

The overall arc of the game’s core characters is damned compelling though. The main antagonists especially get a chance to shine as people who made a name for themselves in a world that is rapidly disappearing. Seeing giants of the old west manage their identity through the death throes of the way of life that defined them is a highlight.

I found myself getting pleasantly lost in Redemption’s rendition of the American frontier. It’s an intriguing setting that allows larger-than-life characters to shine and show how they either adapted to a changing world or were left behind by it. Riding across vast deserts, helping people in distress, assaulting gang compounds and just taking in the beautiful environments of America and Mexico was great fun.

Even with this vast environment to explore, I found the Switch port never missed a beat performance-wise. It’s a 30-frames-per-second presentation, but that 30FPS felt solid and consistent throughout, making gameplay pleasantly smooth and responsive as a result. I did encounter occasional bugs that forced me to close and re-open the game to progress, which is disappointing, but a generous auto save meant I never lost too much time.

The post Red Dead Redemption (Switch) Review – Once Upon A Time in the West appeared first on Press Start.

Along with their ability to earnestly tackle grave subject matter, one thing that has always grabbed me about the catalogue from Deconstructeam is how concise, to-the-point, and economical they are in telling their stories. Although they might dance about to fill in the periphery of the main conflict, the way they’re effectively one-act stage plays grabs my attention. The Red Strings Clubs had its eponymous bar, the thrilling Gods Will Be Watching served a number of one-scene scenarios, and their latest title, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is set almost entirely upon an asteroid in the lonesome void of space. 

This isn’t a sisterhood of the travelling pants variety, what we’re presented in The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a witches’ coven on the verge of a leadership spill. You play as Fortuna, who has been relieved of her Tarot deck and condemned to the outer reaches of space for millennia. Early in the piece, and restless from serving a couple of centuries of her sentence, Fortuna breaks Magical Law to summon Abramar, an all-powerful Behemoth, to her beck and call. And like a spoiled brat, inconsiderate of the cost, she signs a pact with the Behemoth and is granted the faculties to craft a deck of her own and peer behind fate’s curtain once more. 

It wouldn’t be a Deconstructeam game if it didn’t have something to say, and Cosmic Wheel’s big themes include identity, living with a community, and, of course, the destructive results that trail in the wake of those irresponsible with their power. Framing all of that within the context of a witches’ coven makes for an ingenious premise that I couldn’t get enough of. Further to that, as witches are inherently women the cast is refreshingly made up almost entirely of strong, literally powerful, women even if a few take unconventional, mythical forms like the deer folk and the coven’s eldest who is an actual tree.

I always love how hands-on and personal the game mechanics feel in a Deconstructeam title. They never for a second feel at odds with the often-deeply private conversations that serve as the foundation for the game’s narrative and core loop. In fact, it’s often specifically entwined.

This time, instead of mixing drinks and hand-moulding implants out of genetic clay, you’re crafting, card-by-card, a new divination deck. By combining a number of pre-designed elements like backgrounds and arcana, you can create some truly unique designs that can bring on feelings of confrontation, confoundment, and all things in between. The game will spit out a charming title for your card along with a vague horoscope that stitches together the elements used to create something that feels forbidden and yours. Each of the pieces has a cost attached that, when placed, will draw from the four elements of magic held close in your grimoire: air, water, fire, and earth.

Although time becomes another “currency” you spend in the game’s last act, think of your grimoire as your magical bank balance. You can withdraw from the power source to devise new cards, and make deposits through readings with the many visitors that darken your door. Eventually, as you grow more powerful and are gifted more ominous arcana, you’ll be able to dispel old cards at your cauldron. Think of this function as a respec that returns all spent points back to your kitty, which I think is great because you’re never stifled by a lack of resources to hop in and create a new card. 

Creating a deck is just one part of the puzzle, it’s ultimately worthless without susceptible folk to give hope to. Fortunately, Abramar’s pact grants visitor privileges to Fortuna to soften the remaining cycles of exile she faces and, as such, serves her with a lot of opportunities to practice her art. Old friends, arbiters, and familiar faces from Fortuna’s pre-ascension years, all witches alike, interchangeably cross the cosmos to visit your little pit stop to talk shop and get a glimpse at the future that awaits them.

Like is so often the case, the conversations feel like the centerpiece of the experience. They’re really esoteric exchanges that lean full-weighted on philosophical ponderings about big concepts like defining the self, power abuse, Spider-Man’s great ethos about responsibility that’s even referenced tongue-in-cheek in-game, and, in the last act especially, communal politics. 

It was hard not to adore the insightful dialogue and writing in Cosmic Wheel, it’s brilliant and clever and never misses its mark with the message it’s hammering home. During the last act, as the pre-election campaigning to replace the coven’s figurehead rages on, all of the chatter is framed with the limits of a ticking clock that corners the player into a brief bout of time management that feels like an odd departure compared to the rest of the game’s chill pace.

For a narrative reason I won’t spoil, the implied stress of managing these resources is kind of artificial which does undercut the intended tension. It feels like a cut scene from Gods Will Be Watching, which does all of the things the last act tries to do but better. 

Of all the interpretations we’ve had of witches in popular culture, I do wholeheartedly think The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood’s take is the most quirky and special I’ve perhaps ever seen. They don’t entirely do away with the pointy hats and bubbling cauldron, but having the story be a centuries-spanning tale told largely aboard an asteroid roving against a star-speckled backdrop felt note-perfect and grand in a way most supernatural stories don’t.

I’m certainly glad the team didn’t do away with their signature art style for this game. In fact, keen-eyed players will notice several nods to the team’s back catalogue whether it’s the Red Strings Club itself or the elderly gardener from Essays on Empathy. While the cards we’re able to make in-game feel like they’re limitless in terms of creative potential, it’s impressive that the game’s established universe can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with just about anything I could conjure up. 

More than any of Deconstructeam’s other titles, I feel as though lore is packed into, and realised through beautiful pixel art, every inch of space here and it’s a story simply bursting with originality. 

The post The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood Review – Fresh From The Coven appeared first on Press Start.

The original Moving Out was not only one of the more successful and charming runs at the “chaotic co-op sim” crown worn at the time by the likes of Overcooked, but it was a neat little Aussie success story with the folks at SMG Studio behind the wheel of the world’s hardest-working removalist truck. Fast forward three years and the team is back with a full-on sequel, revisiting the concept with an itemised list of new ideas and an already-solid foundation to build on and around.

As someone who’s just done the end-of-lease moving dance, a journey I had the distinct privilege of paying what might have been the world’s worst professional movers to accompany me on, I was excited to jump back into Moving Out to prove that I could have done an infinitely better job at it myself. Forgetting, of course, that the poor folks at Smooth Moves Inc. have a lot more to deal with than millennials with too many overpriced gaming collectibles to fret over.

Moving Out 2 opens with an excellent animated intro that perfectly captures the vibe of its 80s setting, before launching into its sizeable campaign. The team at Smooth Moves has run into a spot of bother after their boss, a sentient cardboard-box-person, accidentally rips open the fabric of time and space during an attempt to boost company efficiency by 90% with 90% less employees – a classic workplace caper. With the town of Packmore sporting some fresh new gaping portals into alternate universes, it’s up to you and the Smooth Moves crew to put everything back in its rightful place and restore order to the moververse, one truckload at a time.

The game’s campaign follows a pretty similar structure to before with a handful of “worlds” containing multiple levels (over 50 in total this time around) to play through, gradually unlocked as you complete objectives and raise your F.A.R.T. (Furniture Arrangement and Relocation Technician) ranking.

Each level presents its own spin on the task of loading up your truck with the correct bits of furniture, appliance and decor within a time limit. Like last time, what starts out as a mad dash to get everything in the truck as fast as possible while fighting intentionally-wobbly physics and physical conundrums in early stages quickly becomes so much more with out-of-this-world levels adding new opportunities and challenges outside of the realm of good customer service.

One level might see you and your team attempt to sort magical baubles onto their corresponding freight trains, or use drones to carve out new paths or cross chasms, there are even levels designed around moving in which challenge players to put items from the truck into their correct places within a building. Without spoiling too much, the situations in Moving Out 2 get a lot more wacky a lot faster than in the original, almost to a fault. There were times when I’d be flinging giant candies into basketball hoops with a slingshot or jumping through magical portals and wished I was just hilariously trying to drag an L-shaped couch through a narrow hallway or flex my Tetris skills to fix the horrendous packing job my partner had done on the truck.

It’s ultimately a good problem to have though, as the majority of Moving Out 2’s gimmicks make for a perfect blend of problem solving, teamwork and laugh-out-loud catastrophe when playing with others – which remains the undisputed best way to play this game. Whether you’re playing in couch co-op or (for the first time in this sequel) cross-platform online with up to three others, the game does a great job of scaling the challenge of its frankly loopy concepts for all team sizes and skills. I did find that a few levels veer wildly into overly punishing or absurdly easy territory seemingly at random, but with so many on offer a couple of duds doesn’t hurt too much.

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There are also some great assist options on-hand to help smooth things out if the team isn’t gelling or on even ground in terms of capabilities, like extended time limits, lighter items or even the ability to have objects disappear into the ether once they’re on the truck to make packing easier. I can’t speak so much to the actual accessibility of the experience but the settings there are fairly basic. With increased gameplay and visual complexity in the sequel it might still present some insurmountable hurdles, but the assists are definitely a welcome feature. The game manages to get a pass on some frustratingly inconsistent control and collision stuff as well, purely by virtue of frustrating inconsistency being its whole schtick, but it does wear a bit for anyone genuinely trying to achieve those Pro times and extra challenges.

SMG has absolutely nailed the presentation though, building on the visual blueprint set out by its predecessor and polishing it up to a sheen to be much more lush, vibrant and dynamic. It feels much stronger in its identity too, coming across as an overall more high-quality production. It looks nicer, but also more cohesive, and far richer. There’s plenty to unlock again as a reward for completing a litany of optional objectives in levels as well as discovering hidden secrets, including challenging new Arcade levels and over 30 characters to play as once you’ve unlocked them all.

Massive props has to go to Moving Out 2’s writers, who’ve really out-punned themselves in this effort. In fact, I reckon this game probably has the highest per-page saturation of puns in a video game to date, and the dialogue as a whole is thoroughly entertaining at every step of the way.

The post Moving Out 2 Review – Boxed Office Smash appeared first on Press Start.

Once known as Chorus, Stray Gods is the ambitious debut title from Summerfall Studios, a new independent studio spearheaded by David Gaider, who cut his teeth in the industry taking the lead writing a number of BioWare games. The fashion in which it tells a fantastical story within a regular, urban setting reminded me a bit of Fables—the graphic novel on which The Wolf Among Us is based. However, it remains a novel experience by delivering much of its story through song. 

We’ve seen television veer into musical theatre from time to time, as shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scrubs have produced big, lavish episodes brimming with catchy songs and dance numbers. The results often speak for themselves, but they’re a creative, light-hearted departure from the main story arcs. I’ve not played every game ever so I won’t confidently declare Stray Gods to be a trailblazing first. However, given the team at the helm, it’s undoubtedly the highest-profile title to make the jump from game to musical. 

After the idol Calliope is unceremoniously killed under mysterious circumstances, her eidolon, the essence of an idol’s godlike powers, passes to Grace following a chance encounter the pair share during the latter’s band auditions. Calliope’s death becomes the subject of Grace’s trial at the hands of Athena and you’re tasked with proving your innocence before your trial and likely execution. I think the story is clever, especially the way it presents these gods within the context of a mortal world, and how the fatigue of their constant transmigration weighs heavily on them. 

Though it’s a big cast, with the likes of Laura Bailey and Troy Baker in the lead roles of Grace and Apollo respectively, you’d be forgiven for thinking Stray Gods is top-heavy in terms of talent. I’d argue that the game has a deep bench in terms of voice talent, even if they’re not as capable on the microphone as the leads—Rahul Kohli, who plays a bashful and bumbling Minotaur, remains a baffling choice as his singing chops are non-existent, leaving his comedic timing as his singular attribute in this particular performance. Similar deficiencies can be heard during harmonies, or in any of the many call-and-response phrasings involving more than one singer. There’s a lack of confidence that is audible from certain performers, whether it’s the material itself or their own hesitance; it does stick out like a sore thumb.

It’s evident that representation was a focus when pulling the ensemble together, the team even went as far as to reflect their actor in their god, where appropriate. For example, voiced by Erika Ishii, Hermes is presented as a gentle, genderfluid emissary, while Apollo is a shirtless surfer bro—so perhaps they’re not all one-for-one. It feels like an ensemble of angsty millennials, except the dialogue isn’t remotely as exhausting as that makes it sound. 

Though it is billed as a roleplaying musical, Stray Gods delivers more on the latter than the former. While you shouldn’t expect skill trees and stat distribution, your choices, and how you attempt to curry favour with the gods, can branch the narrative off in some significant ways which should come as no surprise for anyone familiar with Gaider’s work on Dragon Age and Knights of the Old Republic. Rather than accruing stats or having your choices ultimately unlock dialogue options, you’ll choose from a few proficiencies to carry with you throughout. I opted for charm and, later on when the option presented itself, I went for a more abrasive, ‘kick ass’ attitude adjustment. Like a lot of other narrative-driven, choose-your-own adventure-likes, these choices will open up dialogue options that, without providing much story craft, fill out the narrative’s flavour.

Stray Gods is also a very horny game. In fact, my biggest takeaway was that these idols have likely spent their era-spanning existence on the mount and the invitation is definitely extended in bulk, and accepted by, in my instance, Grace throughout her investigation. That said, pursuing these romantic interests didn’t really feel earned during my play through and felt like something of an afterthought and a means to fog the windows up a bit.

Another area where choices can create a bit of flavour is within the songs themselves. During a bunch of the numbers, Grace is able to interject or steer the arrangement in a particular direction, whether that’s an aggressive or passive path is up to the player. Not only does this provide a replay value, but it’s also a neat feature to offer a bit of agency over how a song pans out. I can’t help but feel that the songwriters might have been spread a bit thin considering every permutation, however. Except for a select few, the songs in Stray Gods don’t get their hooks in and are fast forgotten as you advance the plot. I do think the songs they choose to reprise and use as motifs throughout are well-picked, particularly Grace’s first solo which features prominently throughout. 

The game’s story unfolds similarly to a visual novel, serving the player with beautiful, hand-drawn frames that have small flourishes of expression to help make the cast feel alive. Excluding the few that don’t reside among mortals, the design of these idols remains pretty grounded throughout, though I would say their appearance reflects their personalities. One touch I loved was how the aspect ratio shifts to letterboxed for any of the musical numbers, it gives it a cinematic quality that flouts its low-cost presentation.

I also feel like Stray Gods aimed to present itself as a non-linear game all about choice but fails to deliver a compelling way to get from place to place. Picking whether to visit Apollo or Persephone from an over world map, for example, isn’t exactly an exciting transition. In fact, this game’s strengths from a visual design perspective definitely do not extend to the UI and UX, which is rather drab and had me wishing the team managed to implement a more appealing means to present the player with choice. 

The most damning thing I can say about Stray Gods is that it’s a musical with very few memorable tracks. Otherwise, it’s well-written and offers up a novel way to experience the gods among us trope. 

The post Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical Review – A Pitchy Performance appeared first on Press Start.

Venba, from a structural sense, reminds me a lot of Florence, a melancholic little mobile experience out of Melbourne’s own studio Mountains. It’s a fleeting, at times mournful, slice of life depiction of ordinary people living out relatively ordinary experiences. In a story that touches on cultural assimilation, identity in the face of harrowing bigotry, and relational memory through something as simple as cooking, it does an exceptional job blending these themes into a seventy minute vignette that cuts through to the core like a warm knife through butter. 

After immigrating to Canada with her beau, the eponymous Venba falls pregnant leaving the pair weighing up a shift back home to their native India rather than resign themselves to an unfulfilling life, full of failed ambition and struggle, in what would be a land of opportunity for their child. With hopeful naivety they opt to stick it out, struggling for steady work in their fields of expertise while raising a young son who immerses himself less and less in their family’s culture. As a parent, to have an unbridgeable rift form sounds like a nightmare and it’s a devastating scenario that Venba posits, but it does so through a lens that’s foreign to me and I think there’s valuable learning in that.

While it definitely speaks to interpersonal challenges, it makes them right through the commonalities that do come with heritage. It’s a solemn reminder that, whoever you are, life is just one-take. It’s their relationship with Kavin, their son, that reminded me of a sad fact I’d heard recently that suggests a majority of the time a parent will ever spend with their children is, for obvious reasons, in their first eighteen years of living. You imprint yourself on them, impart all you can, and then they’re gone. For the most part, at least. 

And in an hour and change, I feel like Venba serves as a lesson to make the most of those moments and memories and it does this, to great effect, through its singular gameplay mechanic of cooking. Just as Coffee Talk had its exchange of thoughts and ideas revolve around a hot pour, Venba expresses plenty through food—how it reflects culture, provides comfort, and how it can form and remain the basis of core memories so that all you’d need is a hint of cardamom to have a life lived come flooding back to you.

The act of cooking in Venba is pretty uncomplicated, it’s a simple and relaxing exercise of combination, just as soon as the method is pulled from memory. During the early chapters, Venba relies on her mother’s recipes which you’ll find etched in Tamil, although readable to us players in English, within a small, red journal. Oftentimes, steps will be obscured by a spill or a torn page so it’ll take a bit of experimentation to uncover the order of things. I do like how the game handles the exploratory side of cooking and how it doesn’t punish missteps. A ruined meal might go down the disposal at home, whereas Venba returns you to step one. 

There’s a saying that suggests food for the body isn’t enough, and that food must nourish the soul, as well. As someone who’s learned this first-hand, dabbling with the slow cooker in these winter months, Venba also hammers home the generational, inheritable qualities of the cooked meal which, while not so much in ours, is a massive part of South Asian cultures.

To say there’s a lot to Venba would be disingenuous. It’s stripped back and minimalistic in its approach to gameplay, but it’s clear from the offset that the mechanics serve their narrative purpose, creating a tangible link between mother and son that culminates by the game’s close. As I’ve mentioned, the game is short, totalling just seventy-five minutes. For a game like Florence, that runtime matched the gold-coin asking price, whereas Venba is a hair steeper, therefore making it a harder sell. 

Venba, as an era-spanning narrative game, does a great job of depicting the character’s lives throughout what is, by the end, a life shared for three decades. There’s a warmth in the game’s colour palette that calls to mind a curry on a cold day, and I adore the noticeable ageing of the characters, the technology of the eighties—which is where Venba’s journey begins—gradually informing their modern contemporaries, it’s so full of little touches that help Venba’s small world feel real. There’s also an authenticity that emanates from both the cuisine and score, which made me hungry and merry respectively.

Although I found Venba to be a moving and frankly educational vignette that sheds light on a culture and a people I know staggeringly little about, it is a tough sell at its price point given its length. But even though it doesn’t stick around nearly long enough to break the skin, we all know from the fruit and veg we eat each day that the skin is where the good stuff is.

The post Venba Review – Food For The Soul appeared first on Press Start.

I’m genuinely not sure why Mickey Mouse hasn’t been the star of more video games of late, given Disney’s ongoing love of a bit o’ cash and the world’s most recognisable rodent being a massive draw, but the list of titles he has starred in over the years actually has some certified bangers. The Epic Mickey games wound up being a highlight in the Nintendo Wii’s catalogue, for example, and if we’re counting Kingdom Hearts, well, there’s no argument there.

If you’re old enough (like I am) though, it’s the “Illusion” brand of Disney/Mickey games that are the most memorable with some entries considered among the best platformers of the 8/16-bit generation. Dlala Studios’ Switch-exclusive Disney Illusion Island isn’t strictly a part of the loose series of Illusion titles but it’s definitely a de facto spiritual successor and instantly brings to mind memories of playing those games (for me, it was often at one of those combination cafe/indoor playground places where the controllers regularly had bite marks and the screens were smeared with buttered 100s & 1000s).

This new adventure sees Mickey Mouse, along with Minnie, Donald and Goofy, travel to the mysterious island of Monoth for the purpose of what’s meant to be a relaxing picnic. The gang quickly realises they’ve been called to Monoth for a purpose though, with its adorable residents requesting their help in locating three stolen, magical tomes from the three distinct biomes of Monoth in order to restore some semblance of peace. It’s a simple enough setup with some (incredibly predictable) twists but it’s entertaining enough thanks to great dialogue and attractive cutscenes moving the action along.

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In a move I maybe wouldn’t have expected from a family-friendly Disney mascot platformer, Illusion Island is essentially a metroidvania. That’s to say it’s set in a single, open map marked by distinct biomes that has players explore further and deeper as they gain new abilities with which to overcome once-insurmountable obstacles. It’s probably a bit closer to a My First Metroidvania though, as it’s completely free of combat and remains rather simple throughout its brisk, six-to-eight hour runtime. It definitely gets a little tougher in the later areas and you can set your own difficulty in a way by choosing how many “hearts” you start with as a base, but it’s pretty easy-going overall.

There are enemies dotted across the map, but they serve more as mobile obstacles and can’t be directly contended with (can I coin the term “avoidvania” or is that cringe?). Even the handful of boss-type encounters you’ll wind up in are more about flexing newfound traversal abilities than dealing direct damage, a choice that I can respect but that makes them rather toothless and unexciting. It’s a good thing then that moving about this 2D world is a heap of fun and gets progressively more so as you gain new skills like gliding, swinging and wall jumping, as is seeking out and collecting all the different bits and baubles tucked in every nook.

Co-op is where the game really shines though, especially if you’re someone more experienced playing with young children or infrequent gamers. Rather than just let players bounce around the world in unison and call it a day, Dlala has implemented a number of added features that make co-op play for up to four players on a single screen feel more constructive and collaborative. New abilities are opened up when more players join in, like being able to hug another player for a health boost or drop a rope from any platform to give them a leg up, which instantly makes for a great way to help younger kids play through the game or introduce less seasoned gamers to the genre.

Although the game can be knocked over in just shy of half a dozen hours, there’s enough reason to stick around and explore more of the secrets the sizeable map has to offer thanks to a bunch of different collectibles and “Accomplishments” to unlock, many of which dive into Mickey and Friends history to give players a veritable museum of neat throwbacks and curios to pore over.

Something that Disney Illusion Island has in spades is style, perfectly capturing the essence of Mickey and Friends history while also giving Dlala the chance to put their own stamp on things. Character designs are very reminiscent of the modern Mickey shorts, with exaggerated lines and simple colours given life through incredibly energetic animation. I adore the way that each character gets their own bespoke ability designs and animations to make them look unique from each other even if they’re mechanically identical. It also makes for some amusing story moments when Donald typically gets the worst-looking equipment among the crew.

My only gripe, which is really only because of how otherwise superb the game’s animation work is, is that player characters often look quite tiny on screen. It’s likely a necessary evil when it comes to accommodating four players across every area but it makes it harder to appreciate how fantastic a job the studio has done. I hadn’t realised before doing some quick Googling about Dlala that they were behind the recent Battletoads reboot but it makes perfect sense – they’ve clearly mastered the art of translating the quintessential Saturday morning cartoon animation into a playable format.

The game’s various biomes echo that idea with a noticeably flat and bold look to platforming elements against understated but rich backgrounds. Each major section of the map is distinct and abstract in a way that makes them enjoyable to look at and has each stand out nicely with its own palette and motifs.

The animated cutscenes sprinkled throughout the adventure are a definite highlight as well, and shockingly they’ve been crafted by the studio itself in-house – I’d absolutely watch a Dlala-led Mickey series if it existed. The proper voice cast is along for the ride too, which is great, although it’s a touch disappointing they’re not utilised outside of cutscenes. Instead we get regular ol’ text boxes peppered by the occasional cry or quip.

The post Disney Illusion Island Review – A Moderately Magical Mickeyvania appeared first on Press Start.

It doesn’t feel good to mention this, but it’s been almost a decade since Pikmin 3 was released. I can’t believe it. But while Pikmin’s releases have been sporadic, each game has scratched a different itch for fans. Now, with Pikmin 4, Nintendo has put its best foot forward in practically every aspect to offer one of the best Pikmin experiences ever. No, it’s not as challenging or unforgiving as the first game was, but it’s still just as engaging and charming twenty years on.

Not too keen to deviate from the tried and true narrative, Pikmin 4 once again opens with Captain Olimar crash-landing on an unknown planet and activating a distress signal to be rescued. You play as the newest recruit of the Rescue Corps, but in a continuing comedy of errors, your crew finds themselves also shipwrecked on the planet they need to rescue Olimar from. Your team is scattered across the planet, and it’s up to you to collect them and find Olimar. Again. Of course, there’s a little bit more to it, and while it’s hardly the most gripping of stories, it is one of the better Pikmin tales we’ve heard so far.

Pikmin 4 is hard to categorise. At its core, the franchise is Nintendo’s take on a real-time strategy game, but with puzzles thrown in to keep things interesting. The focus is on your horde of Pikmin that you can control. They’re plant-like creatures who can be directed to collect items, destroy obstacles and fight the hostile creatures you’ll encounter. Commanding your Pikmin is satisfying but harrowing – losing them is especially sad. This might sound a bit absurd, but Pikmin is one of the most potent games I’ve played about war that isn’t explicitly about war.

Bizarrely, every Pikmin game thus far has had a different focus, so opinions are diverse as to which one is the best. Pikmin 4 is different from other Pikmin games – it attempts to leverage the best bits of the last three games to offer the most complete Pikmin experience yet. Diehard fans will no doubt find disappointment in the statement that, yes, Pikmin 4 isn’t as challenging as the original Pikmin was. But the tension and difficulty escalate in a way that feels fair and appropriate and, as a result, much more forgiving without being insultingly easy.

Enter Oatchi. He’s a space dog found by the player when they first land on the planet and, without a doubt, the star of Pikmin 4. Oatchi can do it all – behave like a second squad leader or act like a supercharged Pikmin. He’s incredibly powerful, able to carry Pikmin over certain bodies of water or inflict massive damage against the hostile creatures you’ll encounter. His immense strength means he can hold items like a Pikmin can, and with certain upgrades, he can even resist the elements. He’s absolutely adorable and one of my favourite things about the game, though he does trivialize a lot of the difficulty in the opening areas of the game.

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Thankfully, as you progress through the story, the tendency to lean on Oatchi as a crutch becomes less tempting. Enemies will learn new tricks that will render Oatchi useless in certain situations or areas and will purposefully split you and your Pikmin away from him to get you to work harder for your wins. Make no mistake – Pikmin 4 can still be a challenging game; I had essentially halved my total Pikmin population as the credits rolled following some of the more intense battles the game offers.

Pikmin 4 is structured similarly to previous games. You have a hub area where you can upgrade Oatchi and decide where to explore for the day. The levels you’ll explore are more open-ended than in other Pikmin games – there’s rarely a linear path through them like in Pikmin 3. Pikmin 4 instead throws you onto a map and asks you to collect treasure, complete activities, and explore caves to earn enough resources to explore other areas of the planet. Each level is the biggest in series history, so there’s much to do in each. More encouragingly, they’re not just typical locales plucked from nature either; there are some new ideas explored here too.

This translates to a more open-ended experience. Pikmin 4 doesn’t have you separated from your crew and using days to catch up with them. Instead, you’re given free rein to explore each of these levels and bring back as much treasure to the ship as possible. The game splits them into four categories – Surface Exploration, Dandori Battles, Dandori Challenges and Caves.

Caves have made a long-awaited return from Pikmin 2 and a triumphant one. Easily the highlight of Pikmin 4, these caves are handmade content with a theme and puzzles and bosses to match them. Gone are the randomly generated caves from Pikmin 2. Instead, we have mini dungeons split into sub-levels that are a joy to explore. In each one, you’ll have to leverage the different Pikmin types to solve puzzles and harvest as much treasure from the dungeons as you can.

Other activities are a blast too. Dandori Challenges are designed to test how efficient you can be with a pre-determined party of Pikmin. Dandori Battles are even more hectic – pitting you against another character as you compete to collect the most treasure in an area. These battles work similarly to the Bingo Battles from Pikmin 3 and can be played with another player locally when not playing in the Story mode. They’re a fun and intense distraction with which I had more fun than I’d ever anticipated.

Sadly, the strength of the multiplayer offerings ends there. Besides these battles, Pikmin 4 does allow a second player to pick up a joy-con and throw pebbles at the screen. It’s a weird inclusion – but throwing pebbles at Pikmin will speed them up, while throwing them at enemies will whittle down their health. It breaks the balance of an already easy game and honestly feels like an afterthought. I recognize that the story doesn’t suit itself well to the robust co-op we’ve seen in Pikmin 3. However, even having a second player control Oatchi might’ve been more fun than what we got here. It just feels like a missed opportunity.

The other significant new addition is the nighttime expeditions, where the now classic feeling of tension you get from Pikmin games is found. There are ten to fifteen of them, and each has you defending mounds of glow sap from waves of aggressive enemies. As these challenges become more and more intense, you’ll have to assign Oatchi to protect specific points while you harvest Glow Pikmin (a special type of Pikmin unique to these expeditions) to build up your forces to defend yourself. They get very tense and are some of the more significant challenges in the game.

I mentioned before that Pikmin 4 feels like the most complete Pikmin experience thus far, owing to how much this game is packed. There are hundreds of enemies to encounter, over twenty caves to explore and even some other surprises that I won’t talk about. But more importantly – it’s all engaging. It’s a joy to complete and the first time in series history that I’ve 100%ed a Pikmin game on my first run without returning to it later. You’d think that making Pikmin more open-world and less story-driven would make the pacing suffer, but it doesn’t. Pikmin 4’s thirty-hour odyssey is engaging from beginning to end.

And, of course, we can’t ignore the game’s stellar presentation. Without a doubt, this is the best-looking game in the series. Not only from a technical standpoint but an artistic one too. I went back to all the Pikmin games before finishing Pikmin 4, and yes, Pikmin 4 is just a much better-executed visual feast than the games that came before it. It’s a more colourful and brighter world that’s a joy to explore. It’s also one of the best-performing games on the Switch I’ve played in recent years, which is always a pleasant surprise this late into a generation.

The post Pikmin 4 Review – The Cream Of The Crop appeared first on Press Start.

Everybody 1-2 Switch has a bit of a weird history. Its predecessor was one of the Switch’s earliest first-party titles that, while doing a great job of showcasing the capabilities of the Joy-Con controllers, was relegated to Expensive Tech Demo Hell pretty quickly. Then in 2022, Fanbyte reported that a sequel to 1-2 Switch was secretly tucked away inside Nintendo’s vaults, having performed so poorly in player testing that the company wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it.

Fast forward almost exactly a year, and Everybody 1-2 Switch has finally materialised and, somewhat surprisingly, it seems to be more or less exactly the game that Fanbyte’s report described and originally had playtesters less than enthused. After getting to spend some time with the game at a Nintendo-held event with a couple other dozen journalists and content creators, and then playing a bunch more in the comfort (and privacy) of my own home, I can say that while I absolutely wish there was more content and variety here, Everybody 1-2 Switch is a half-decent follow-up to a game that I’m still prone to whipping out at gatherings to this day.

Booting up the game, you’re presented with a choice of either playing with Joy-Con controllers or smart devices – one of the big distinctions between this new title and the last one. From there you’re given the option of playing one of three different lengths of contests, either 20, 40 or 60 minutes with each a points-scoring competition set across a semi-random selection of mini-games. You’ll need to play the game this way initially, as playing each mini-game at least once is the only way to unlock them for on-demand play later on. Led by Horace, a man in a rubber horse mask acting as the game’s mascot and presenter, it’s all nicely presented but immediately quite barebones.

The important thing though, is the selection of games to play, and Everybody 1-2 Switch has 17 of them to choose from with just 13 being playable using a single Joy-Con for each player (up to a total of 8). Splitting however many players there are into two teams, the Joy-Con based games are simple, mostly quite physical affairs that ring true of what was in the last collection, things like Jump Rope, Hip Bump, Squats and Musical Chairs that are sure to get a giggle out of those participating and watching.

Some of the quirkier ones, like Kitchen Timer or UFOs, feel almost like the highlights of the original 1-2 Switch and its selection of games designed to sell what the Joy-Cons were being touted for at the time, but across the board there’s a bit of a lack of the truly special features like HD Rumble and the IR sensors being used – it’s pretty much all just basic motion-control stuff that most of the time doesn’t even demand a great deal of accuracy.

Nintendo was clearly inspired by Jackbox with some of the other gameplay concepts it’s brought to the table here, with a selection of games that can be optionally – or mandatorily – played with smart devices instead of Joy-Con controllers. The huge advantage is that, either in-person or via online servers you’ll be able to play some of the games with up to 100 players. Then, there are also a handful of games strictly playable with a smart device, and while some of these work and could actually be a ton of fun to see played out over web streams or on Discord hang-outs they’re definitely not all created equal.

Colour Shoot for instance, is a genius idea and a blast to play. It tasks two teams of players to match a colour displayed on-screen with something in the real world by taking a photo of it with their smart device camera, which in both the group session I attended and at home led to some great moments of discovery and more than a few giggles. It might be a bit wanky to say but having a game force me to properly break away and observe my surroundings, paying attention to something I’d normally take for granted like colour, felt genuinely fresh and inventive in a very Nintendo way. I also had a heap of fun with Ice Cream Parlour, flexing my mental muscles, listening skills and teamwork to record scoop orders at an ice cream store.

But for every Colour Shoot or Ice Cream Parlour, you get Bingo. Which is… bingo. Or Quiz Show, which is a very simple true or false competition where teams attempt to buzz in answers to basic trivia questions as fast as possible. It really doesn’t exemplify the kind creativity or chaos I’d expect from a Nintendo party, but the saving grace in Quiz Show is a custom question mode that would really suit tightly-knit social gatherings like weddings or showers with a more personal touch.

Similarly straddling the fence between creative and banal is Auction, which initially was a ton of fun with two opposing teams battling to outbid each other on different items worth specific point values. The rub lies in the fact that the items are worth different point values to either team, and those values are kept secret between teams, so strategy comes in feigning interest or disinterest in each article in order to trick your opponents into bidding high and burning through their pool of funds. With an on-device interface that lets you secretly chat amongst your fellow auction attendees and celebrate devious plays it’s very well thought-out, but the length of time it takes to figure out how to best work as a team and win is exactly how long it takes for the gimmick to get old.

I’ll avoid going into detail on absolutely every game that’s included here, for fear of spending more time writing about Everybody 1-2 Switch than it took for the game to go from official reveal to release, but what I’ve described so far should be taken as an indication of the overall quality of the package here – it’s a bit of a mixed bag. For every riotously fun party game, there’s one that doesn’t work, or one that does but gets old far too quickly. When the collection consists of 17 games in total (with some extra variations on most, to be fair) that doesn’t work out to great odds.

Something worth calling out is how easy that the smart device stuff is to set up for quick play in groups, taking the Jackbox philosophy of just handing out players a server-based room code (via a QR code or URL) to join in a game without having to deal with any sign-in rigmarole. It’s super painless, and each player gets to assign themselves a profile name, photo and send little chat messages and emotes during downtime which is cute. Plus, it really is a blast with large groups of people in a way that I’ve not yet experience when it comes to mini-game compilations.

Much like the original 1-2 Switch, at the end of the day Everybody 1-2 Switch is a decent little Switch title to have tucked away in a cupboard for your next drunken or family-oriented gathering. It’s a great way to get people moving, laughing and – in probably the biggest green tick for the sequel – playing and bonding as a team. I’d argue it actually offers a little more value than your average Jackbox Party Pack at $49.95 AUD, but it’s still missing the kind of creative spark I’d want from Nintendo. Presentation-wise it’s another combination of clean, high-res videos of actors doing the motions on-screen and VFX with stylised cut-outs and the like. It’s definitely got a bit more pizazz and seemingly higher production values than the previous game though, which is a plus.

At the end of the day, Everybody 1-2 Switch attempts to shake up the formula of its predecessor by introducing second-screen games and upping the potential player count considerably, and it does a decent enough job of it. Even at a cheaper price of entry than the last game was at launch though, the issue of longevity comes with the mixed quality of its 17 included mini-games and threatens to limit the potential fun.

The post Everybody 1-2 Switch Is A Slim But Genuinely Amusing Package appeared first on Press Start.

Being a detective is hard work. I would know, I’ve played so much Ace Attorney, Batman and LA Noire. Surely that counts for something. But despite all this experience with all these different kinds of detective games, I’ve never seen something like Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. It’s a zany and kooky take on a formula that I’m very familiar with, but it does things differently enough that it enthralled me from beginning to end.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code takes place in the Kanai Ward, a city overtaken by the ominous and authoritarian Amaterasu Corporation. The population is more or less dominated by the weight of the corporation’s power, with people not being allowed to leave the city. They’re everywhere, too – almost all goods and services are provided by Amaterasu, but rumours suggest they’re responsible for the rain that never stops pouring in Kanai. It’s an almost perfect setting for a dark but kooky detective drama, and that’s capitalised on pretty well with the story in Rain Code.

You play as Yuma Kokohead, a detective who awakens onboard an Amaterasu-owned train with no memory of who he was or is now. All he knows is that he’s bonded with Shinigami, a cheerful death god with a twisted sense of humour who haunts him as part of a pact made before Yuma lost his memory. To make matters worse, he’s been accused of murdering everyone on the train. To clear his name, he must prove his innocence to the Amaterasu Corp’s ironically named Peacemakers unit.

Of course, there’s more to it. As you begin to work with other detectives in the area to solve crimes, you’ll not only find mysteries to uncover but that Amaterasu is perhaps more of a presence in the city than they’re letting on. It’s an engaging story from beginning to end, and while there’s nothing too outlandish about the individual cases of each chapter, the overarching story can get pretty wild and goes in some unexpected places. Regardless, the most important thing with a game of this ilk is getting the story and pay-off right, and Master Detective Archive absolutely nails it. 

You’d expect nothing less from the minds that brought us games like Danganronpa and Zero Escape. Master Detective Archive feels like a natural progression of those games – a visual novel with more interactivity that lends the experience a more interesting and engaging style. Imagine if Ace Attorney and Danganronpa (somehow) had a child, and the Persona team dressed it. That’s what Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is. It’s equal parts mystery and adventure dripping in a style that, while liberally borrowing from Persona, is a joy to play. You’ll move from area to area to collect clues and eventually solve crimes and mysteries, but it’s the way Rain Code carries itself that separates it from the rest.

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In each chapter, Yuma and Shinigami are paired up with a detective from the agency and given a case to investigate. As you progress, Shinigami will file all of your evidence as “solution keys”, which will be helpful later. You’ll speak to people involved in the case, investigate the crime scene and chat with your assistant to work out theories about what happened. While these sequences are the most typical of the whole experience, they’re never too tiring and feel appropriate in length.

The city itself is explorable from the get-go, though it’s not quite as open or sprawling as other open worlds players are probably accustomed to. At first, I wasn’t even sure it was necessary, but I realised something after time. Just physically controlling Yuma as he explores the city and uncovers clues is much more engaging than running through dialogue, menus and static background images like other games do. Hearing Shinigami or Yuma speak about their own thoughts on the case while they do so is also a nice touch.

Your investigations are often aided by a partner with a “Forte” that they’ve honed since becoming a master detective. These are all kinds of whacky abilities – someone can summon the soul of a dead person, but only if they’re wearing that person’s clothes. Others can see how the scene of the crime looked when it was first discovered by the first witness. One can even turn back time, but only once. Not all these powers get equal amounts of screen time (and you’ll see why once you play), but they add a nice twist to the investigations.

See, these powers aren’t used actively, per se. Instead, each of the powers provides a twisted sense of logic you’ll have to learn and accept to make deductions about each case. For example, Halara Nightmare’s ability only allows you to return the crime scene to how it looked when first discovered. You don’t actively use this ability, but you incorporate your knowledge of how it works into making your deductions and working out who actually saw the crime scene first based on interviews and such. It’s an abstract way to keep things interesting – as each case is underpinned by logic determined by the powers your assistant has access to – and it never gets old.

Even more unexpectedly, you do most of your deductions in the mystery labyrinth. At key points throughout the story, you’ll be able to enter the mystery labyrinth for your case and finally unravel the mystery posed to you. It’s like a metaphysical world where the investigation process is turned into a dungeon of sorts – each line of questioning is represented by a different corridor to travel down in the labyrinth. You’ll also run into phantom versions of people in the real world hindering your case and engage in Reasoning Death Match with them. You’ll have to load your weapon with the solution keys discussed earlier to strike down their arguments as they literally spit them at you to defeat them in battle.

It’s a whacky way to present what would typically be a courtroom or trial situation in this type of game, but it pays off. While similar in visual style, every labyrinth has a mix of minigames and objectives thrown into each one to keep things interesting. Some are as simple as QTEs; others require you to choose an option out of three, with only one leading to the next room. There’s a lot done in the labyrinths to keep the unravelling of the mysteries fascinating, and every one of them even plays with the expectations set by them before, offering up the variety that would otherwise stagnate this format.

Being a story-based game, there’s not much to do once the credits roll. But that doesn’t matter – Master Detective Archive’s thirty-hour-plus runtime is more than satisfying to experience and doesn’t leave you feeling shortchanged. There are optional collectibles to find through clues given to you in the Kanai Ward that unlocks conversation scenes between Yuma and the other detectives, further fleshing out the game world. But beyond that, it’s a one-and-done affair.

Of course, we can’t talk about a Switch game without speaking about performance. Unfortunately, Master Detective Archive does not buck the trend. Running on Unreal Engine, you probably know what to expect from any game that looks this good running on the Switch. Lots of shimmering and lots of framerate drops are apparent here. It’s a bit fortunate that Master Detective Archive is so immaculately presented. The art direction, affectionately coined “psychopop” by its creator, is equally horrifying and colourful. It’s a really good looking game constrained by the aging hardware of the Switch, but such strong and distinctive art direction gets it over the finish line for me.

Similarly, the game’s audio presentation is also stellar. For one, I’d estimate over 90% of the dialogue is voiced and voiced well. Some dramatic scenes towards the end of the game are just perfectly played out. To have a game of the scope and scale of something like Danganronpa or Ace Attorney, but fully voiced, is honestly so impressive. But to have the entire cast turn in great performances with such a large cast with individual quirks and idiosyncrasies is even more so. Shinigami is easily the standout here. She’s equal parts horny and aggressive and I adore the way she brings so much levity to some of the darker scenes. She’s the gem in this already shining crown of voice actors.

The score matches the eclectic nature of the game’s presentation, making a melding of rock, techno and jazz that perfectly complements the drama of the game’s lengthy cutscenes. My only gripe here is that I feel like too many tracks are used too repetitiously, but otherwise, it’s a strong soundtrack and one that absolutely gets the heart beating during the more intense moments of the story.

The post Master Detective Archives: Rain Code Review – A Cheeky Engaging Mystery appeared first on Press Start.

As someone who primarily watches the McMahon-Helmsley federation, because who could resist that Bloodline story arc, my familiarity with All Elite Wrestling is limited to an all-too arrogant-champion whose dedication to kayfabe knows no bounds, buckets of blood, and a little bit of the bubbly. When I heard that the upstart wanted to create a video game to recapture the feel of Nintendo 64-era games like WWF No Mercy, rather than compete with their 2K contemporaries, my ears pricked up. And then when I heard they managed to jag Hideyuki Iwashita to direct, I began to believe.

Almost immediately, AEW: Fight Forever captures the spirit of those AKI games I used to adore. It features the same arcade framework, and feels like No Mercy’s classic engine made new again. However, emulating a quarter-century old game can tend to expose a few gaps in budget and feature-suite, no matter how good the game’s feel is.

The wrestling itself feels very much like No Mercy or Wrestlemania 2000, mixing both regular or strong strikes and grapples to wear your opponent down. In a system that mirrors even modern wrestling games, the aim is to wear opponents down, causing limbic damage, while building enough momentum to perform your signature and finisher moves. In an effort to modernise its aged systems, action and passive skills can be assigned similarly to stat points, giving a variety of buffs that can help turn the tide of a match—desperation kick outs, kip ups, and first-strike buffs all add a strategic layer to the classic No Mercy formula. 

I also feel as though the way momentum is handled can lead to unbalanced experiences, from time to time. Unlike finishers, signature moves don’t seem to drain momentum which led to me giving out Stunners as though they were charitable donations. Similarly, I feel like frustration when playing is set to stem less from the difficulty itself and more from all-too-common cheap losses in the game’s bigger four-way matches. 

Although there are a good amount of match types, Road to Elite will be the main draw for people wanting some form of structure and story, a term I use loosely. It’s digestible and crafted with replay value in mind, and I’d sooner liken it to Mortal Kombat’s Tower than its story mode. With either a created or rostered superstar, you’ll progress through one year of AEW programming broken up into four blocks full of weekly shows leading up to the brand’s quarterly marquee events.

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Even if it’s largely forgettable to play, it’s the moments of history peppered throughout Road to Elite that make it feel special. It’s not exactly their rival’s seventy-some years of history they’re drawing from, but it’s nice to see all of the company’s defining moments across four years touched on, from the brand’s formation, to Jericho’s inaugural reign as champion, to CM Punk’s debut. It’s all framed within this weird, jet-setting adventure that highlights all of the lesser-thought of parts of the business—meet and greets, enjoying local cuisines, and even lifting weights. It all ties into the mode’s management busy work which lurks on the periphery of the fun stuff.

Though there are other superstars on the way courtesy of a season pass, Fight Forever’s roster of around fifty is pretty comprehensive. There’s one or two omissions I am a tad curious about, but it’s hard to fault the selection. It’s definitely big of those making the call to keep Cody Rhodes in the game in spite of his defection back to WWE to “finish the story”. His place in the startup’s history is assured, so it was nice to see. Similarly, the match types that are on offer cover off on everything the brand is known for, the most extreme being the Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch which is as nuts as it sounds—I can’t believe it’s a real match type. 

In one of the more unexpected twists, Fight Forever has a small selection of Pokémon Stadium-like mini-games to really hammer home that absurd, arcade feel the game has. Although the list of challenges alludes to more being added post-launch, the three we’ve got so far are a bit of fun. As a sucker for trivia, my favourite of the bunch is certainly the pop quiz full of deep cuts only fans could appreciate.

In addition to its season pass, Fight Forever has some other “live service” features like challenges, including both dailies and weeklies, that’ll line your pockets with credits to buy things like superstars, arena decor, and taunts from the shop. Some moves and taunts walk the line of trademark infringement, with Brock Lesnar’s devastating F5 featuring under the tongue-in-cheek name “Diverticulitis” while Roman Reigns’ lock and load taunt serves as acknowledgement of The Tribal Chief. As I’ve already unlocked a decent portion of what’s available, I look forward to seeing how often the shop’s stock is refreshed, if at all.

Because it’s a first effort, I didn’t want to be too critical of the game’s creation suites. I mean, you’re not going to see big communities emerge for created superstars in Fight Forever, and stitching together entrances using other star’s music and moves feels appropriately dated, given it’s something I recall doing back in No Mercy. Though I couldn’t manage to find anyone else playing pre-launch, I expect the game’s classic and largely accessible systems will breed a pretty fun and competitive space for people to enjoy wrestling without all of the deck-building nonsense its contemporaries have forced into the mainstream.

Through cartoonish, chonky character models, Fight Forever carves out a fun niche right beside the realistic presentation of the WWE titles. Chris Jericho’s keg-chest and CM Punk’s “most punchable face in wrestling” are both realised with comical accuracy, with all the roster looking the part aside from a couple of so-so renders. I wish I could say the presentation was spectacular throughout, though when you’re chasing the past’s glory as Fight Forever does, graphics ends up being an area where corners can be cut. Long, flashy entrances make way for truncated strolls, and blood spatter—as cool as it is to have a serial-bleeder like Moxley leaking claret like he was born to do—looks like a stamp that appears on the canvas, without any semblance of dynamic at all.

There are a lot of known graphical hitches that I’m sure will be ironed out by launch, including a lot of clipping and render issues. Though, that same cheapness extends to the voiceover efforts which are basically reserved for owner Tony Khan. Beyond that, the written word does the heavy lifting of the oddball drivel that comes out of other superstar’s mouths. A few gimmicks land within the scope of Road to Elite’s script, though it’s a bit of a mess considering I saw Kenny Omega referring to others as Kenny when cutting promos. 

It’s that kind of oddity that sums up the Fight Forever experience. For every bloody perfect thing it delivers from the vintage No Mercy experience, it serves up something you wish was left in the 64-bit age.

The post AEW: Fight Forever Review – Old, Elite Wrestling appeared first on Press Start.

I’m a sucker for a good arcade racer, and even more of a sucker for anything LEGO, so when LEGO 2K Drive was announced I knew I was all in from the get-go, even if I’ve never been a huge fan of developer Visual Concepts usual output – largely the NBA 2K and WWE 2K franchises. Still, I was pinning a lot of my hopes for a worthy successor to the classic LEGO Racers games, and thankfully this has delivered in ways I hadn’t even expected.

Accompanied by the legendary Clutch Racington and his robotic assistant, S.T.U.D., you play LEGO 2K Drive as a voiceless driver of your choosing, on a path to winning the coveted Sky Cup Grand Prix Trophy. The core of the game’s single-player offering is a hefty adventure through four distinct, open zones in pursuit entry into this ultimate race where you’ll find yourself completing quests, earning experience and taking on a series of entertainingly unique rivals across 24 main races – each with their own quirks to contend with on the track. It’s a bold mix of ideas plucked from open-world racers and LEGO platformers where your avatar is less the minifigure behind the wheel and more the brick-built vehicle surrounding it.

Whether it’s burning miniature rubber on the two dozen well-designed tracks or roaming free across the four maps that they exist within, the simple act of driving in LEGO 2K Drive is an absolute joy at all times. No other open-world driving game can boast the kind of freedom that exists here thanks to the combination of transforming vehicles and highly-destructible environments. The roads here are barely more than suggestions, with every point-of-interest a completely straight shot away if you’re creative enough. When you’re not screaming across the map you can just as easily move with the precision of a platformer using the dedicated jump and quick turn buttons, making navigation feel super approachable even for those less familiar with driving games.

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The real feat is that, despite possessing the traversal chops of an open-world action game when the situation calls, the actual act of racing feels as tight and skilled as the best arcade racers out there. Vehicles handle superbly no matter what form they take, with the nuances coming from a combination of how they’re built, the stats they possess and any added perks. Even before factoring in the ability to build new rides from scratch using hundreds of different LEGO pieces, there’s a heap of variety on offer to unlock and custom loadouts let you preset different trios of street, off-road and water vehicles for different situations.

You’ll race across these three different surface types in LEGO 2K Drive, with the game automatically switching you between your three preset vehicles for each situation. It took a hot minute to get used to seeing my ride rebuild itself into another form each time the ground beneath me changed, but it’s genuinely impressive to witness and makes the racing and action feel impressively dynamic. It’s not an understatement to say that the folks at Visual Concepts have nailed how this game feels to play in just about every moment. Even when you’re driving around in a giant hamburger, or some ridiculous creation of your own design that you spent hours building brick-by-brick to look utterly hilarious, it always works and always feels fantastic.

If you want to, you can really hone in on the brick-building aspect as well and carefully craft an arsenal of different builds for every need. Whether it’s gearing your vehicles to be more offensive or defensive in races, or specifically suited to certain types of open-world challenges, LEGO 2K Drive throws up a huge amount of different gameplay scenarios and you can tackle them with as much or as little engineering as you’d like. It’s a perfect match to the fun of LEGO itself, especially so when combined with the fact that your vehicles fall to their individual pieces with damage – and driving through all of the destructible LEGO bits throughout the world adds pieces back on.

It quickly becomes something more akin to an open-world adventure/RPG than a pure driving game, throwing new and more challenging obstacles your way through its series of quests that can be overcome with pure skill or navigated with thoughtful vehicle building. The world itself can even change in ways that affect races, like being rewarded a lawn mower in an optional side quest that can clear out patches of weeds across each map so they’re not in the way during races. There are a handful of “minigame” type main quests that are nowhere near as fun as the regular races and so feel a bit overused by the third time you’ve been forced to do each, but it’s a minor mark on an otherwise excellent 8-10-hour main run of missions.

Completing just the primary stuff still leaves about 80% of the game incomplete though, with LEGO 2K Drive stuffed to the gills with challenges, optional missions and a plethora of collectibles all offering up experience and cash to get even more out of the customisability of your LEGO rides. The primary way to get new drivers, LEGO pieces and vehicle perks is to complete more of the game, but there’s also the ever-present “Unkie’s Emporium” premium store beckoning at every garage stop. Being a 2K title it’s perhaps not surprising, but 2K Drive features an enormous catalogue of drivers, vehicles, LEGO pieces and decorations that can only be purchased using an in-game currency that’s drip-fed for free but buyable in bulk with real cash.

So far, so expected for just about any modern game, and it’s ultimately not all that intrusive on the fun of the game as a whole. This is a full-priced title though, one that’s already being supported by a paid season pass model, and yet a huge chunk of the coolest stuff is locked behind in-game purchases. By the time I’d completed every main and side quest in the game I’d earned enough currency to buy maybe three or four of the roughly 200 items on offer. Some younger players with enough time and patience might be able to grind out the bucks they need to get a good portion of it, but the rest are very likely to succumb to Unkie Monkey’s in-your-face salesmanship, which feels grubby.

[Note: The 2K team has reached out to inform us since this review was published to say that they’ve made some adjustments post-release, significantly increasing the payout of in-game currency from story progression and races. I’d already completed the vast majority of everything in the game by the time these came into effect so it’s difficult to test out how impactful this change is, but it’s worth highlighting that a change has been made.]

Putting the 2K-ness of it all aside, this is still a game built for pure joy, and that never lets up. It’s all superbly put together as well, with a well-realised aesthetic combining the plastic and organic worlds to great effect alongside flawless and fluid performance – at least as far as the PS5 version that I played. It’s easily the best-looking LEGO game that I’ve encountered, and by far one of the best-looking arcade racers around, with huge and detailed environments and massive amounts of LEGO-based destruction. Particularly impressive are the real-time cutscenes that use the same stop-motion style character animations as the excellent LEGO Movie, making me wish that TT Games had adopted something similar for its recent entries.

Oddly, the audio side of things in LEGO 2K Drive is a bit of a mess. I don’t know enough to know if it’s a low bitrate thing – the game’s paltry 8GB download on PS5 might suggest it is – but all of the voice work in the game sounds tinny and awful. It’s not just the sound quality either but the mix itself with volume issues in abundance that ruin the otherwise-great sound effects and mostly-good music. The trademark LEGO humour still manages to shine through though, with gloriously bad puns, visual gags and slapstick comedy in a relentless abundance that kept a stupid grin on my face the entire time.

So there’s a whole lot to love in LEGO 2K Drive, and I’ve not even touched on all of the multiplayer potential with the entire campaign playable in online co-op and all 24 superb races available to play locally or online in single race and cup configurations. It’s a fully-fledged adventure game and a top-notch multiplayer kart racer combined that easily trumps the likes of Mario Kart a run for its money as far as its content offering and variety goes, while also being shockingly competitive when it comes to the quality of the racing itself. This could’ve been a half-bricked grab at the LEGO crowd and still somewhat landed, but instead it’s thoroughly impressed me in just about every way.

The post LEGO 2K Drive Review – A Brickin’ Great Car-PG appeared first on Press Start.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an adventure that’s best experienced blind and organically. This review contains zero story spoilers beyond anything revealed in officially released trailers.

I didn’t like Breath of the Wild as much as most others seemed to. That much was obvious to anyone who knows me. I still think it’s a great game for what it is, but it missed the mark for me as a Zelda title, eschewing so much of what made the previous entries memorable for me. It was a sad time – I’d thought my interest in a series that played such a strong role in my formative years had long dwindled – until now. Six years later, everything has changed. And I hate being wrong.

The truth is that I can’t remember the last time that I played my Switch or even a video game with as much fervent intensity as I have with Tears of the Kingdom. It’s the potential I saw in Breath of the Wild but almost perfectly realised, balancing the new and the old to fill the void of what I was missing about Zelda.

Tears of the Kingdom is a sequel to Breath of the Wild in many ways. You’ll play as Link once more as he sees himself in conflict with a new threat to Hyrule. As mentioned above, I won’t talk about the plot as it’s best experienced as it unfolds through the game, but it’s certainly engaging. The structure is similar to Breath of the Wild, told through non-linear flashbacks that you can easily piece together as you find them.

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Despite being structured similarly to Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom’s plot is much more engrossing this time around. It rights so many wrongs of Breath of the Wild – one of which includes incorporating a villain with presence. Some opportunity has been left on the table, I feel. Zelda’s characterisation definitely feels like a step back from her appearance in Breath of the Wild, for example. Despite this, I found the overarching storyline and the beats connecting it captivating and enjoyable.

Tears of the Kingdom looks and plays like Breath of the Wild at first glance. So many characters and locations from the original are here. But what the game does differently from its predecessor makes it stand apart. Whether it be the dramatic inclusion of two new maps in the Sky and Depths or the improvements to the systems underpinning their exploration, it’s deceptively different to the widely adored game that came before it.

While a highlight in the game’s marketing, the Sky plays a surprisingly more minor role than expected. A selection of islands hovering above the main map, these can be hard to reach but almost always reward players with something special. So many of them invite exploration and discovery, often daring players to solve the simple goal of reaching them. Some serve as locations with hidden treasures, while others as perfect jumping-off points to access the areas below. This means you can line up a jump that takes you from the Sky, through Hyrule and into its Depths if you wish with no load times, which can be an astounding feat to pull off.

The biggest surprise for me has come from the Depths. It’s almost as big as the main Hyrule map and is a dark and sprawling location underneath it. It’s unlike anything Zelda has done before – a dark, lonely, isolated place that’s equally frightening and inviting. As you descend, you can illuminate your pitch-black path with equipment while activating checkpoint-like Lightroots that provide greater illumination. Breath of the Wild was about that authentic sense of discovery – and Tears of the Kingdom doubles down on this with just how much is hidden under Hyrule in the Depths.

The Depths are my favourite new inclusion, but they almost certainly feel like a de-facto hard mode. You don’t know where you’re going, getting hit by enemies down there reduces your maximum health (temporarily), and longer journeys are fruitful but challenging. The gear you discover in the Depths is almost always more helpful than on the surface and the resources are integral in fuelling some of the new powers that Link has at his disposal.

At first, I’d thought it was brave for the team to throw away the powers from Breath of the Wild in favour of these new ones, but they serve similar functions and, in some cases, more function than the runes. There are five powers that Link has access to, and while simple at first glance, their versatility fundamentally changes the way you approach and think about both combat and puzzles. Each of the powers is also used in exploration and combat, so you’ll utilise them all fairly regularly.

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The most significant new inclusion is Ultrahand, along with Autobuild. They’re intuitive powers that favour creativity but don’t necessarily require it. With Ultrahand, you can make the most haphazardly put-together structure or vehicle, and it will probably work to do what you need. Autobuild is even more essential – it allows you to save your favourite creations to create later using parts lying around or out of thin air (for a cost). Both are great tools, though Autobuild has prebuilt schematics to pull from if you can’t be bothered creating your own vehicles and structures to mess around with.

Link’s new powers and the well-designed puzzles come together to support the one concept that makes Tears of the Kingdom so special. If you can think to do it, it’ll probably work. This approach to design means that the Sky is the limit when it comes to the puzzles you encounter or the situations you’re challenged by across the game’s lengthy runtime. This complexity means that how well you do in Tears of the Kingdom depends on your problem-solving skills, which is arguably less accessible than what was presented in Breath of the Wild. But the options are so limitless that I struggle to fathom a situation where somebody would be genuinely stuck. It’s a robust game held together by such intuitive systems.

Once again, Tears of the Kingdom builds on Breath of the Wild to offer greater variety to the player. It builds on a solid foundation – offering a tweaked map that makes Hyrule feel fresh despite being so familiar. Similarly, there’s a great breadth of enemies to battle with, too – and without ruining things, anybody who had issues with the lack of enemy variety in the previous game will be happy with what’s on offer in Tears of the Kingdom.

Such variety in the enemy types dovetails beautifully with the combat system, which is supplemented well with the new Fuse ability. Allowing you to attach two items together and wield them as a weapon, Fuse allows you to increase a weapon’s power, reach or elemental properties at the press of a button. I was one of those naysayers regarding weapon degradation in Breath of the Wild, and while it’s still here in Tears of the Kingdom, the new Fuse system is an ingenious and elegant solution to that problem. Previously, in Breath of the Wild, I’d finish an encounter and have whittled through most of my weapon stocks. Now, in Tears of the Kingdom, I’d have done the same, but all the enemy parts I’d have gathered would allow me to craft newer and probably better weapons.

Even better, Divine Beasts are now replaced with thematic dungeons. They’re not traditional lock-and-key structures like in previous Zelda games, but instead, more openly designed areas that have you exploring to unlock a central structure that leads to a boss. It’s a more simplified format, leveraging an intelligent compromise between the openness of the new era of Zelda with the situational theming of classic dungeons. They’re all most certainly better than the Divine Beasts, but they’re not as complex as “traditional” dungeons of past games. Still, having unique aesthetics tied around a unique boss battle will be enough for most fans, which is what Tears of the Kingdom offers.

And yes, they’re proper bosses again. Each boss is tangentially attached to the story of the area you’re playing through and often requires you to utilise specific mechanics to take them down. They’re admittedly uneven in their design – some are better than others – but they’re once again better than the Blights in the previous game. There are even more fun optional bosses to encounter in the overworld too, but I won’t spoil them for the sake of preserving surprises.

There’s still much to engage in when you’re not completing the main story. There are over 150 shrines to complete, which feel more involved this time. There are also more than 200 side quests, over half of which have intriguing stories and even more worthwhile rewards. There’s a nice variety of activities on offer here. Even after seventy hours in this world, I wasn’t getting bored. Open-world fatigue is a genuine phenomenon at this point in the generation, so for Tears of the Kingdom to somehow sidestep that is nothing short of a testament to the strength of its design.

Of course, with a game this vast and ambitious on a system like the Switch, it’s important to mention performance. Tears of the Kingdom invariably performs better than Breath of the Wild. It also looks better than most games on the system, owing to a fantastically-realised sense of artistic direction. But it’s still a Nintendo Switch game at the end of the day, and strong artistic direction can only carry you so far. Luckily, I was fortunate not to notice much slowdown beyond the occasional moments where I’d be moving through a heavily populated group of enemies. It’s not the most solidly-performing of games, but it certainly fares a whole lot better than most of the games I’ve played on Switch over the last twelve months.

So much sets Tears of the Kingdom apart from other Zelda games. It’s a rare chance for the series to play with a direct sequel – embracing its changes, building upon them and offering something newer while continuing what worked. It’s a genuinely enthralling open world, an inviting playground that encourages exploration with a genuine sense of discovery that you don’t find in other contemporary games with much, much larger budgets. I struggle to find little wrong with its approach. It’s distracting in all the best ways and rewards that distraction consistently. It’s just a joy to lose yourself in.

The post The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Review – A Sequel That Defies Expectation appeared first on Press Start.

Strayed Lights is a game that came out of nowhere to land on my radar, but it landed hard. I’m a massive sucker for a simple, stylish indie adventure that can be blown over in an afternoon and straight out of the gate I can tell you that this game has all that and then some.

French studio Embers’ first outing casts players as a being born of light, taking them on a journey from birth to ascendance in a dreamlike world where they’ll need to battle their inner demons to bring about peace and a balance of energy. It’s a wordless and esoteric narrative that, at least as far as my own experience goes, serves primarily to offer up a cool-looking world and contextualise some inventive and exciting combat mechanics.

As you make your way through this mysterious world, split into two hubs of interconnected biomes, you’ll happen across its less-than-friendly denizens. Rather than a traditional blow-by-blow combat system, Strayed Lights’ is one of an exchanging of energies. You can certainly take swipes at them, but the true tactic is to carefully party every blow they send your way until you’ve successfully absorbed all of their energy meter into your own, at which point you can end things at the touch of a button.

The added complexity in all this is a colour-based system that rewards you for switching the ethereal glow of your body between orange or blue to match that of your enemy at the moment of parry. Parrying as the correct colour is how you’ll successfully absorb energy (and regain health) while getting the timing right but the colour wrong will still negate any damage but without the other benefits. It’s simple enough but deceptively engaging, as you’re not only learning each enemy type’s attack patterns but memorising which colour they’ll be at key points in their combos, including a third, purple colour signifying an unblockable attack that you’ll need to dodge instead.

This comes together wonderfully during the game’s marquee boss battles, which up the scale of your foes significantly while giving them unique extra mechanics to contend with. These are unanimously great fights that feel increasingly satisfying as you hone your partying and dodging skills against the regular enemies in the lead-up. There aren’t all that many encounters across the game’s four-hour runtime, maybe a dozen for each of the major areas, making them all feel like crucial steps in your journey.

The one concern I do have with Strayed Lights’ otherwise-commendable take on enemy encounters is that there’s a bit of built-in exclusion that comes from the colour aspect. With no settings to tweak how these are displayed or alternative method of delivering the information needed, those who struggle with colour vision could find themselves at a huge disadvantage, doubly so given there are no difficulty settings to speak of either.

Outside of combat, Strayed Lights’ loose exploration serves well enough as a stroll through its oneiric landscapes. There are some collectibles to be found off the beaten path that add towards character progression, and a smattering of abilities to upgrade as you go, but it’s otherwise fairly basic stuff. The positive there is it makes this an easy game to slip into and vibe with minimal interruption, and it keeps things nice and succinct. Upon finishing the game I was a little stung to find that it’s not possible to go back to the pre-climax state and search out anything I missed along the way – the game simply throws players back to the main menu with only “New Game” as an option to dive back in.

I’d happily take the plunge again though, not least because Strayed Lights is a beautiful experience. From the breathtaking environments and their abstract-but-endearing inhabitants to the awe inspiring boss designs and anime-as-hell set pieces tussles you’ll have with them, this is a very handsome title indeed. The music, dreamt up by Austin Wintory (Journey, ABZÛ), is equally gorgeous even if the games overall audio mix is a bit dull throughout.

It’s not out to shake up the indie video game space, but thanks to a uniquely engaging combat system and a consistent stream of wonderous sights and sounds, Strayed Lights is a worthwhile little journey that makes for a great lazy afternoon play. It’s unfortunate that the user experience has suffered an oversight or two, especially in areas of accessibility, but mainly because it’s a quiet gem of a game that absolutely deserves to be played.

The post Strayed Lights Mini Review – Colour Me Impressed appeared first on Press Start.

After an unexpected two-year delay, Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is finally here. The collection was long looked forward to by fans who fell in love with the Advance Wars series when it launched over two decades ago. Now, while Fire Emblem has arguably overtaken its spot in the cultural zeitgeist, Advance War makes a return and in a big way too. But while Re-Boot Camp is an earnest attempt at a modern update, there are a few things left on the table that could help the package reach its full potential.

Re-Boot Camp includes brand new from-the-ground-up remakes of the original Advance Wars and its sequel. Initially released for the Game Boy Advance, these two games are narratively two sides of the same coin, so it makes sense to include them together. It makes even more sense given that, from a gameplay perspective, both games play pretty similarly, with little difference between them. Both titles have had a visual makeover and sport other gameplay-related improvements that make them more approachable and streamlined.

From a narrative perspective, things are pretty simple but take a surprising turn. Advance Wars sees you playing as leaders of the state’s military on a fictional continent. You are the Orange Star and the game opens with you being at war with the Blue Moon. These two nations have been in conflict for years, but when another two countries enter the fray – the Yellow Comet and the Green Earth – and accuse the Orange Star of starting a war between the other nations, things get a bit dicey. I won’t spoil how it plays out, but it’s an intriguing, simple, engaging story.

Fans of Fire Emblem have a lot to owe to Advance Wars. Developed by the same team, these games are turn-based strategy affairs. You and an opponent take turns defeating each other in war. A selection of different units are available to you with differing roles in battle. Some are better for simply scouting out the battlefield, and others can attack from afar. Some can transport other units greater distances than they could themselves. Your goal is to destroy all enemy units or capture the enemy HQ.

It’s a simple premise, but it requires some thinking. While released over two decades ago, Advance Wars still packs a punch with difficulty. You must think through every turn to come out on top, and the enemy AI can be relentless. I’m keen on this strong challenge, even if it took some getting used to, but I acknowledge other players might not be, and it might be a bit off-putting or overwhelming.

Re-Boot Camp thusly includes a new casual mode, but it feels like a poorly thought-out inclusion. This is the only issue I have with Re-Boot Camp. Both the original difficulty and the casual difficulty lack that Goldilocks principle. They’re tuned to occupy both ends of the difficulty curve with nothing in the middle to cater to the average player. I’d have loved to have seen a middle difficulty introduced, as both the provided options will alienate some players.

That’s my only major complaint about Re-Boot Camp which might seem a little controversial. Everything has been improved for the better. Bringing together both games under the same banner, the quality-of-life changes implemented here are integral. So many of these additions feel simple enough but impact the game’s flow dramatically. You can now fast-forward enemy turns and battle animations. You can reset your turn if you make a mistake, so long as you don’t end that turn. You can even attack an enemy outright by selecting them – which might sound like a small change – but any design choice that removes button presses to achieve the same result is a UX win.

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There are other aspects that are similarly fantastic – tutorials are now streamlined into the campaign, introduced to you more gradually rather than forcing you through some simpler uninteresting missions like the original game did. Even better, though these tutorials are embedded in the main missions now, they’re skippable for people who know what they’re doing. I appreciate good onboarding more than anyone, but also respecting returning players by allowing them to skip these elements that would otherwise bore them is, once again, a win for the player.

But putting all of those opening moments aside, both Advance Wars games still play as well as they did back then. The campaigns each gradually introduce the key concepts until you’re eventually faced with challenging gauntlets and a story that’s simple but intriguing enough to keep you going. It can be demotivating to spend fifteen to twenty minutes on a battle only to lose and start again, but that’s the nature of the beast with a game like this. However, the quality-of-life improvements mentioned earlier carry a lot of weight in alleviating this pain.

It boggles my mind to think that Fire Emblem fans who began their journey with that franchise on the 3DS might never have played an Advance Wars game. But given the shared DNA between the two, there’s most certainly some crossover in appeal, though it depends on what you enjoy Fire Emblem for. Today, Fire Emblem is just as much about taking your prospective waifu to a euphemistic tea party as it is about the solid strategic battle elements. Advance Wars feels ironically and oddly refreshing in that the gameplay takes centre stage first behind the characters and story. Your mileage will almost certainly vary, but I enjoyed playing a strategy game solely grounded in the strategy.

Of course, bundling together two games represents tremendous value for money. Both of the adventures included within will take most players upwards of forty hours to complete, and that’s before you might even try to attempt the high-difficulty campaigns on offer. There are also other modes to jump into as well. A level designer allows players to make their own missions while War Room pits the player against tough odds in even more brutal battles. Both are nice touches that add more value to Re-Boot Camps overall package, but I’m not so sure about the implementation of multiplayer.

Multiplayer was always contentious when it comes to Re-Boot Camp. I won’t beat around the bush – it’s a somewhat limited offering. I can appreciate that there is still support for a local four-player versus mode, but offering only a two-player online mode feels like a missed opportunity. Similarly, given games like Wargroove have popularised the notion of an asynchronous multiplayer mode – where you and others can play your turn at your own leisure rather than be stuck in a live game – to not see something like that implemented here also feels like a bit of a letdown. Of course, having online in a game that is ostensibly twenty years old is still a great addition, but given the current climate of these games, it still feels a bit simplistic in its offerings.

Perhaps even more controversial is the art style, however. Everything to do with Re-Boot Camp’s artistic direction is purely up to your personal tastes. On one hand, I miss the sprite-based look of the original game and could love to see what an art style like HD-2D could do for a game like this. On the other, while the fully rendered style does admittedly look cheaper and more generic, it does look more like plastic toys battling each other on the battlefield. I’m still determining which look I prefer overall, but the action that played out while units exchanged fire was definitely more interesting to look at than whatever is served up here.

On the other hand, the remake brings voice work that does a good job of breathing life into characters we’d previously never heard from. The cast does a great job at turning in some hammy performances that perfectly suit the tone of both games. The music, on the other hand, while good at first, can get grating during more extended missions. The developers were aware of this, I’m sure, as there is an option to turn it off, but it is most definitely worth mentioning.

While Re-Boot Camp doesn’t capitalise on its potential, it’s by far a much more accessible version of the original game it is based on. Your gripes with it will no doubt be purely based on personal factors. Still, there’s no denying that underneath it is a solid selection of strategy games that are well worth a look.

The post Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp Review – An All-Round Improvement appeared first on Press Start.

With the inherent success of Minecraft, we were always going to get plenty of spin-offs of all kinds that explore a diverse array of genres and experiences within the IP. 2015’s Minecraft: Story Mode and 2020’s Minecraft Dungeons have marked the beginning of this with varying levels of success, but there’s no denying their originality in comparison with vanilla Minecraft. The next title in this slew of spin-offs is Minecraft Legends, a self-described action strategy game that’s most comparable to the Dragon Quest Builders series, with a unique Minecraft flavor.

After my brief hands-on preview with the game in Tokyo, I mentioned that I’d had a good time with Legends, despite being worried about game length and how it would keep things fresh throughout its runtime, and that my brief hands-on with the multiplayer mode was a blast. After spending much more time with both of these modes, it’s clear that the preview I played had barely scratched the surface of what Legends has to offer. The end result is the best Minecraft spin-off yet that, despite some niggling issues, offers a satisfying and moreish gameplay loop and an intensely engaging versus mode.

The narrative here is about as deep as you’d expect from a Minecraft experience, but it is positively bursting at the seams with the charm the IP is known for. A dangerous threat from the Nether known as the Piglins have been spilling over into the overworld with plans of conquest and domination. Their bases poison the natural landscape with noxious gasses and Netherrack creeps further out as more Piglins pour in from protected Nether Portals found within each bastion. It falls to you to expunge the Piglin threat and send the three distinct factions back to the Nether.

Overall, it’s a feel-good narrative that employs plenty of slapstick humor and Minecraft trademarks to get you onboard. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t chuckle at a few of the visual gags, and the cutscenes on offer here have incredibly high production values that expand the sense of scope within Legends and mythos of Minecraft. It’s ultimately a good time, one that kids will likely get more of a kick out of, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing here for older fans.

Gameplay is where Minecraft Legends differs the most from its source material, offering the same core tenets of mining and crafting, in an entirely different format. Everything you do in Minecraft Legends comes back to the Allays, which are your main tool for gathering materials and building structures. A quick button combination can send these little guys out to harvest resources like wood, stone, coal, and more. Gathered materials can then be used by Builder Allays to form structures, mechanisms, and much more.

It’s a more passive way to engage with what’s effectively the core loop of Minecraft, but this is only to make room for all the extra stuff Legends brings with it. It’s through the gathering and utilization of these resources that you can push back the Piglin threat. From setting up defences around liberated villages to constructing a Redstone Launcher to blow open the gates of a Piglin base, everything eventually comes back to mining and building.

This core loop of gathering resources in order to bolster your own defensive and offensive capabilities is incredibly moreish. Where flexibility isn’t afforded in the structures you create, it is in the way you place them, the way they interact with each other, and in the way you pick and choose how best to use certain materials when trying to overthrow a particularly difficult Piglin base. It helps greatly that there’s an immense variety of things to build here that steadily unlock over the course of the campaign, constantly offering up new strategies and game plans to employ against the Piglins.

Your main method of siege comes in the form of Golems. These little guys can be amassed from crafted spawners, and brought along with you to tackle Piglin outposts. Each one specializes in different abilities, from healing and de-buff cleansing to stunning enemies or bringing down structures. You have to consider what kinds of Golems you want to bring with you on a siege given the obstacles, and that’s without talking about the ability to employ hallmark mobs.

Creepers, Skeletons, and Zombies are here in full force, united against the Piglin threat. You can also spawn these mobs alongside Golems, each one costing a little bit more in terms of resources in trade-off for extra power. The Skeletons, for example, excel at ranged combat and taking out enemy units, where Creepers make incredibly short work of enemy structures, making them useful in a pinch if you need a last ditch assault to bring down a Piglin base. While your army is initially limited to a total of 20 units, you can expand that number further, and simple commands can be issued in combat to have them focus on particular enemies or structures.

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Clearing Piglin outposts and liberating villages rewards you with Prismarine, a resource that’s key to upgrading your capabilities, resource capacity, and total army count. Prismarine is doled out often enough that there’s always something new to invest in upon returning to the Well of Fate, which almost always leads to meaningful player progression. It’ll have you constantly eyeing your Prismarine count so you know when you can get your next upgrade.

The general flow and progression of the campaign is also something I really enjoyed. After a brief tutorial and some opening objectives to get you to grips with the many systems of Minecraft Legends, you’re let loose to tackle the Piglin threat as you see fit. Three unique factions have setup three bases throughout the overworld, each one varying in difficulty and rewards. You’re encouraged to tackle the easy ones first, but there’s nothing stopping you from knocking on the doors of the most fortified of forts if you really want the challenge.

It’s this non-linear structure in combination with some extra-curricular open world activities that makes Legends so easy to play. You’ll stumble across mob outposts that have been taken over by Piglins, abandoned towers that can be deconstructed and tucked away for later use, and huge golems that’ll join you in your fight should they be resurrected. There’s always incentive and reward to explore outside of just gathering resources.

It comes to a head when all three of a faction’s bastions have been felled, and one final outpost makes itself known. These provide some of the best strategy Minecraft Legends has to offer, and are punctuated with explosive boss fights that test every skill you’ve learned during the campaign. It makes for a solid difficulty curve if you tackle bases in the right order, though I’m sure you can circumvent that order with some cheeky tactics and ample use of the game’s more powerful structures and minions.

Another thing to consider is the way that Piglins will launch attacks on allied villages when night falls, incentivizing you to build up defences around each one once liberated. You’re always warned in advance which village is going to be attacked, and it’s rewarding to see all your efforts pay off when a village successfully pushes back the Piglins without your help. One irk I had with this, though, is that if a village does fall, you have to retake it from the Piglins, which got tiresome in the second half of the game, especially when it means rebuilding defences.

While the campaign mode is able to be played in co-op, where I think Minecraft Legends is really going to take off, is in its versus mode. It’s a simple 4 versus 4 affair with either team trying to siege the other’s base and destroy their Fountain. All of the systems from the campaign are intact here, from Prismarine progression and Piglin outposts to resource harvesting – it’s all here in full force, and is of great importance.

While you could absolutely band together and launch an all out assault on the enemy base, there’s just as much value in spending time gathering resources and Prismarine to gain access to more structures. I can’t begin to fathom the kinds of long-winded matches that will come out of this mode once players jump into it. It has a MOBA-esque quality to it that instils an inherent tension in the experience, and it’s easily some of the most fun I’ve had with Minecraft Legends so far. While it’s a great time with friends, the mode does struggle with the inherent limited communication brought by matchmade games, as a lot of the enjoyment comes from planning and collaborating with allies.

As mentioned in my hands-on preview, everyone knows what they’re getting into when it comes to the visual presentation of anything related to Minecraft. Legends doesn’t shock or surprise in this regard, offering a tried-and-true art style that’s bolstered by a diverse range of biomes and some snazzy particle effects that tie the whole experience together. There’s plenty of new stuff to see here in the broad scope of Minecraft and the game always looks great, but don’t expect Legends to reinvent the wheel in this regard.

Performance on PC is similarly reliable, and I experienced very few technical issues aside from one notable audio bug. I’m not sure if it was something to do with the mixing, but some sound effects and dialogue lines were extremely quiet during my time with the game. This made it hard to get properly invested in cutscenes and did create a bit of a disconnect in battle as my sword swipes didn’t yield much feedback. It wasn’t enough to rip me out of the experience entirely, but the absence is notable enough to mention it here.

I’ve come away from my time with Minecraft Legends pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The campaign is a tightly paced jaunt through a new Minecraft experience that doesn’t outstay its welcome and offers a fresh spin on the strategy genre with a distinct Minecraft flavour. Despite having my fill of the campaign, I have no doubt I’ll be returning to Legends over the coming months to play its outrageously fun versus mode with friends, and I can’t recommend enough that you check it out to do the same.

The post Minecraft Legends Review – Building A New Kind of Strategy appeared first on Press Start.

I’ve long considered Tron to basically be The Wizard of Oz for software nerds, as its ‘stranger in a strange land’ trope depicts a mouthwatering battle of light and dark bits that’d have the interest of most sci-fi aficionados piqued. There have been several attempts to make Tron radical again throughout the decades, and it’s only now through Mike Bithell’s lens that I’m paying attention.

As Bithell’s games have always been, Tron Identity is rather simple conceptually. Where one might expect a light-cycle Road Rash clone, Bithell delivers a visual novel rich with mystery, tension, and corporate intrigue that, above all else, delivers a tantalising glimpse into Tron’s expanded universe. Like Bithell’s John Wick Hex before this, Tron Identity is a franchise tie-in that does make sense within its established world, it’s merely a shame that despite its broad concepts and themes, the lone and basic game loop at the heart of Identity, both in terms of gameplay and theme, is middling and forgettable.

Set within its own little Grid, forgotten by its creator and not dictated by user intervention, Tron: Identity justifies its narrative existence not by leaning heavily on the film’s lore, but rather expanding upon it. Once you press through the thickets of proper nouns that make the pacy story a bit of a whirlwind to navigate, what exists is a pretty sound thriller. It’s very layered and, as with most visual novels, it has a number of endings to seek out. For a game about following one’s programming, to have any sense of agency at all, which is something often missing from these quasi-choose-your-own adventure games, feels nice. 

The cast of programs you’ll encounter is certainly concentrated, with only a handful you’ll encounter at the Repository—a live-in FireCuda that serves as storage for the Grid’s most valuable data, and the scene of an expected breach which serves as the catalyst of your investigation. Regardless of any given character’s role within the network, they feel right in line with what one might expect from Tron. Bithell’s writing hits on all of the expected existential technobabble and musings, and the dilemmas you’ll face and where you place your trust and allegiances carry considerable weight.

A standard “run” of the game’s story is likely to last just a couple of hours, but if you’re the type to explore every outcome there’s enough replay value to justify the twenty-dollar price tag. 

Outside of the agonising choices you’ll be forced to make, Tron: Identity’s lone hand lies in defragging other programs’ identity discs. Unfortunately, and somewhat antithetical to how cool Tron is, this isn’t as fun as it sounds on paper. They take the form of a fairly basic card-matching puzzle where the aim is to rid of as many cards as possible by pairing them with either an equal suit or value. I’d hardly consider the varying conditions the game hurls at you drip fed, as the game is so fleeting, though they don’t do a lot to make it harder either. 

Making this singular gameplay beat available through superfluous endless mode outside of the story might be the single-most unappealing thing this game offers up. The player-character Query himself even begrudges the game’s hook, declaring that even he’d had enough for one night. 

Though not necessarily verified for it at this point, I did enjoy this game on the Steam Deck. As you’d expect, its brevity truly suits a handheld setting and the game did perform marvellously well on it. That said, it’s likely due in part to Tron being the draw it once was, therefore Bithell’s take on the franchise screams shoestring budget throughout its presentation.

It does capture the style and essence of Tron as blue and orange hues warm the game’s world, though it is depicted effectively through seemingly breathing concept art slides. 

Although it’s suggested there are more of these on the way, I can’t help but feel like a visual novel is an interesting choice for Tron. It is held tenuously together by Mike Bithell’s note-perfect script, character work, and creative vision in terms of what it achieves narratively, it’s unfortunate that it all unravels at the first sign of the arguably unnecessary gamification that continually distracts and detracts from the game’s clear strength. 

The post TRON: Identity Review – Derezzed appeared first on Press Start.

Citizen Sleeper was, and still remains, one of my favourite releases of last year. It had one glaring problem though, at least on a personal level – it wasn’t available on PlayStation. My patience in waiting for all three of its free DLC episodes to launch before diving back into the game has paid off though, with the release of the final episode, Purge, coinciding with the game’s debut on PS5 and PS4.

I’m going to abstain from re-explaining what Citizen Sleeper is – you can read my full review of the game’s original release right underneath this write-up – and speak strictly to the new stuff, namely the PlayStation release and the full run of story DLC.

The long and short of it all is this; If you’re a PlayStation player and haven’t played Citizen Sleeper yet, please do. It’s an intoxicating mix of sci-fi flavoured capitalism critique aboard a diverse and characterful space station, tabletop mechanics, time management and branching narrative that’s deceptively simple with a powerful mechanical underbelly. There’s not much to say about the game’s port to PS5 and PS4 specifically, it’s by and large the same game available on other platforms, but it’s (hopefully) a whole new community of players given the chance to experience this indie masterpiece.

Returning as someone who’d played the game on another platform, I did find Citizen Sleeper a lot less daunting this time around, and felt a lot more confident in my ability to establish myself on the Eye and game its systems to pull myself out of poverty. I’m not sure that’s the right angle of attack for this game, but I kind of appreciated it.

The other side of the coin here, of course, is the availability of the three episodes making up Citizen Sleeper’s DLC sequence, which sees players navigate a spot of turmoil as a flotilla of interstellar refugees arrives at Erlin’s Eye, the station’s proprietors at Havenage unwilling to take a few thousand new souls into the already-struggling ecosystem. This trio of chapters arrives toward Citizen Sleeper’s “late game” with a simple item exchange requiring some degree of progress acting as a gate to entry, and definitely brought me back down to Earth (heh) when it came to my confidence as a veteran Sleeper.

The first episode, titled Flux, introduces players to Eshe and Peake, two new arrivals along with the refugee ships that act as a catalyst of sorts for the player, as the titular Sleeper, to understand that the plights of these people mirror much of your own. It’s an interesting shift in perspective after having worked and scraped and sacrificed everything to make a place for yourself on the Eye, only for thousands more to arrive looking to you to help them do the same. This 1-2 hour first chapter is a stressful one too, giving players a tight window of time to achieve quite a few tasks to make sneaking the refugee ships through quarantine and onto the Eye possible.

The next episode, Refuge, turns the attention to the flotilla itself and the three subgroups of people aboard its ships. Hailing from three different moons of a larger, inhabited planet, these groups have come from a three-way political tension to wind up displaced in unison. Thus, most of this episode focuses on getting to know each of the groups’ leaders and the individual needs of their crews to establish some degree of understanding. It’s a far more relaxed and text-heavy chapter, with plenty of new and well-written characters to get to know.

The final of these DLC episodes, Purge, is a special one and it’d be remiss of me to spoil just about any of it, suffice to say the tension and time critical panic of Flux returns here, and culminates in a hell of an ending, using all of the groundwork and character building established in the previous two episodes to great effect and tying up a bundle of threads from the base game in the process. I came away feeling the best I’ve felt about any of Citizen Sleeper’s prior possible resolutions, and I would absolutely urge anyone that’s played the main story portion to come back and play through all three new episodes.

Read my full review of the game’s original release below:

It was right around the point that I made the choice to go foraging for rare mushrooms over helping a stranded father and daughter get their one shot at a fresh start, that I realised Citizen Sleeper had made an arsehole out of me. I don’t know what it is about tabletop or tabletop-like games that does it, perhaps it’s the combination of high stakes and low odds that triggers a certain response, but I wind up looking out for me and myself alone. The dozens of names and faces aboard the doomed company-town-on-a-space-station-turned-intergalactic-refuge, Erlin’s Eye, became little more than stepping stones on my path to freedom but now that I’m on the outside I can’t say I care to look back in.

How did we get here, though? That’s the blank chapter in Citizen Sleeper’s slice-of-life narrative that you’ll be filling in. This bold new title from In Other Waters developer Jump Over The Age (Gareth Damien Martin) casts you as a ‘Sleeper’, a digital copy of a human consciousness in an artificial body, that has escaped the clutches of corporate ownership and found themselves aboard the Eye without so much as a plan to hang onto life let alone start a new one. Thanks to a built-in planned obsolescence, time is ticking before your physical form falls apart and so every moment and every decision counts as you explore the station, make allies and enemies and do what you must to survive, thrive or leave alive.

To say I fell in love with the world this game presents would be an understatement – I’m obsessed. Here’s a genuine sci-fi adventure game packed with intrigue, drama and challenge, but one that eschews putting a stick in your hand in favour of putting the world in your mind. Or is it your mind in the world? Citizen Sleeper tackles the heady subject matter of the coalescence of biological and synthetic life and the blurring of the lines between nature and data. Then it imagines how we might fuck even that up in the name of greed, putting your synthetic arse to work for scraps in the shell of a corporate space station like the data-digging equivalent of a hard-rock miner in a company town.

All of this is put together through the lens of a tabletop RPG, the world around you barely more than a top-down map of Erlin’s Eye adorned with icons representing places, people and tasks. The game plays out in Cycles that represent the passage of time – within a Cycle, you’re able to explore the Eye and take various actions, most of which require a roll of a dice to perform and determine their level of success. The number of dice you have at your disposal each Cycle depends on the current condition of your physical form, which degrades as your progress time and also as a result of work done. You’ll be able to take measures to ensure your energy levels stay high and your condition gets better before it gets worse, but it’s a careful balancing act between keeping yourself alive and using your time constructively.

The actions you’ll take aboard the Eye, things like undertaking work in a scrapyard, extracting data from terminals or navigating tricky social interactions, are all means to fulfil your Drives. Drives are your goals, they unlock as you meet new people and uncover new mysteries and they’re what will eventually see your story through to some kind of conclusion. Some can be treated with a certain degree of leisure, but others are at the mercy of Clocks – meters that count up as you perform certain actions or simply as Cycles pass. Between trying to achieve your Drives and manage the various Clocks around Erline’s Eye it almost feels like juggling pins and spinning plates at the same time. The juggling part is fine on its own, but those plates are a constant, looming threat to your ability to keep the pins up in the air. Also some of the plates will cause intergalactic bounty hunters to come and shoot you in the face if they stop spinning.

The result though is a game that hinges on two things – hard choices and bold risks. Not only will you need to gripe with your own time management, forethought and conscience when deciding what to focus your limited efforts on each Cycle, but even once you’ve formulated a plan there’s an element of chance that can completely undo everything. Actions that work on a dice roll can have positive, neutral or negative outcomes that are dictated by both the value of the dice you choose to play for it and your character’s own affinities. At the beginning of the game you’ll be asked to choose one of three classes with their own stats and unique buffs that can then be augmented with upgrade points earned from completing Drives.

The way that all of these different systems interweave and feed into the vast many narrative possibilities is an incredibly slick feat of design, especially once you get over the initial sense of being overwhelmed by them and start to understand how to focus on the outcomes you genuinely want to see. After that it’s just a matter of praying things work out – if you’re anything like me trying to leverage my Interface skill to score a job on a colony ship as a Junior Tech you’ll learn that part the hard way. It can all be quite stressful initially, but also just forgiving enough in the early hours that your failings feel more like new forks on your road to success than genuine disasters.

Citizen Sleeper is also a game that feels genuinely replayable. It can easily be finished in around five hours or less if you can stomach leaving friends, enemies and answers behind for a quick getaway. Or you can push yourself, play the long game, explore deeper and deeper into the Eye and seek out everything the game has to offer. Luckily, finishing the game creates a return point right beforehand so you can easily go back and forge an alternate path ahead should you want to, but it’s just as rewarding to start completely fresh and see how differently it can all go.

Life aboard Erlin’s Eye is presented with a clean and stylish aesthetic that works far harder than its combination of mostly static environments and text-based narrative would imply. For starters, the character portraits from acclaimed comic book artist Guillaume Singelin that accompany story beats are gorgeous and add incredible dimension to the game’s already-fantastic writing. When it kicks in, the game’s soundtrack from returning composer Amos Roddy swings deftly between ‘illicit underground fetish club in the year 2090’ and ‘metaphysical contemplations on a Korg MS20’ and it honestly slaps fucking ass. For a game where the most important bits are delivered mostly in text and numbers, Citizen Sleeper is an absolute vibe

The post Citizen Sleeper (Complete) Review – A Sleeper Hit Made Even Better appeared first on Press Start.

If a game offers a fishing mini-game, I tend to seek it out. Ever since Ocarina of Time introduced me to the concept of the trophy catch, games have been a convenient avenue to take part in a pastime I’ve never gravitated towards despite my late-grandad’s wishes. The exception is Dredge. It’s all fishing and dragging the waters in search of secrets that lurk in the undercurrent. And quite frankly, it’s a bloody riveting video game. 

Something that’s inevitable every calendar year is the handful of independent games that come as if from nowhere and ultimately feature heavily during end-year commendations. Celeste, Hades, Disco Elysium, and even last year’s Cult of the Lamb. All of these went on to transform the teams behind them into household names overnight.

I feel that Dredge has that special something that might see it cause ripples for the team at Black Salt Games across the pond in New Zealand.

Dredge is a pretty simple sell in terms of its darkly spun story, as you’re cast ashore by a fierce storm and come to capsize in the quaint, seaside village of Greater Marrow, the nucleus in this particular archipelago. You trade favours for a replacement vessel to get your sea legs back under you, only to discover the islands—as well as those who dwell there mostly in isolation—harbour some twisted, nasty surprises.

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One way you pick yourself up by your bootstraps is to ply your trade as a fisherman, collecting all manner of ocean life and selling it back to the town fishmonger for the right price, throughout your travels you’ll be able to dredge the sea floor for both trinkets and salvageable materials that, in turn, can be used to refine your boat like the Ship of Theseus—until its every part, from the lantern to trawl net, is better than before. There are several little systems at play that all interlink to make Dredge a surprisingly complete, and fun, fishing game. 

Rather than struggling against a tense line by mashing buttons, fishing in Dredge is a mostly peaceful test of timing. Depending on the magnitude of the catch, you’ll either deal with up to a couple of spinning rings with broken paths that you’ll hop between or a singular ring peppered with prompts to speed up the angling. Time is of the essence after all, as the clock ticks over quicker when you’re luring a shoal and you don’t want to get caught out at night—at least at first. 

Another of the game’s mild challenges come with its Resident Evil-like inventory management. Everything consumes space, from your boat’s components—although they become more compact the more you spend on refinements—to the fish you haul in. It’s a game within a game as each catch has a peculiar shape, it almost becomes a game of Tetris trying to wedge that last cod onboard. 

Whether it’s recovering mysterious artefacts for an enigmatic “collector” or assembling a mortar to help a marooned pilot, you’re given a lot of varied objectives to keep you occupied throughout the game’s ten hour story. Dredge’s showpiece, however, is absolutely the fishing. Mastering the day and night conditions and acquiring the perfect equipment depending on where you’re dropping a line are two key pieces of the puzzle when it comes to filling out your journal like it’s a National Geographic guide for the cruellest of seas. 

I’m delighted at just how much Dredge feels like a Pokémon game at times, and how much joy I felt trying to catch them all.

Aside from the regular cod, mackerel, eels, and sharks, nightfall brings a particularly macabre twist as aberrations of these fish are pulled up from the briny depths. I kind of see this as the Dredge equivalent of shiny Pokémon, even if they’re eye-catching in a different way. Slick with grime rather than a glittering sheen, the distorted monstrosities are the prize catches that’ll net you both renown and a handsome payday.

Nighttime fishing is a perilous endeavour however, as the untameable beasts of the deep tend to wreak havoc if you stay out after sundown. This is wonderfully juxtaposed by how peaceful fishing can be under the safeguard of the sun’s rays, although the tension and danger is ultimately undercut by the game’s end as you’re granted protection spells from the aforementioned “collector” that’ll let you temporarily ward off any danger, overload the boat’s engines with a burst of speed, or even simply instantly transmit yourself back to the safety of his manor-side dock.

In certain areas of the archipelago, these spells are a must. Frustratingly, and perhaps it’s an effort to not directly gate progress, if you find yourself in the Twisted Strand early on, you’ll quickly find it was a journey wasted—and it is a good day’s trip with an undercooked vessel. It’s commendable that the entire map is open from the jump, but discovering through sheer trial and error that the road through lies elsewhere can be a drag.

Dredge’s presentation is absolutely lovely, from its simple and readable UI to the game’s positively eldritch art direction that truly encapsulates the sinister scariness of the unknown that comes with a vast, open ocean. While it is a strong direction, certain things are clearly hampered by a shoestring budget—although none ultimately hamper the fun.

Character’s avatars are voiceless drawn stills and the comical animation of the truck-sized angler fish that can wreck your boat undercuts the terror to a degree, but it matters not when you’re teetering on sanity’s edge after a dangerous, sleepless night at sea and your mind plays spectacular tricks on you. Beautiful waves of light dance atop the still water, stunningly destructive whirlwinds blow through, and woes of fog cover cause jagged rocks to appear out of nowhere.

Dredge is a fresh take on the collect ‘em all trope and I particularly adore its eldritch dressing. I’m one who’s particularly petrified of the unknown, with the ocean and outer space being specific triggers of this in different ways. While not as infinitely vast as space, a fine case for the crushing scariness of the ocean is made by Dredge and you’ll long for the warm-glowing lantern, dangling like a beacon for safety on the dock in the distance.

Dredge will be a contender this year. And that’s not limited to the indie scene either, as I expect it’ll make waves and be Game of the Year bait in its own right.

Dredge is out on March 30th for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch and PC.

The post Dredge Review – A Trophy Catch appeared first on Press Start.

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a pleasant surprise. Released mere months after Bayonetta 3, the game offers a pseudo origin story for the coquettish witch. It does so differently but similarly to the games that came before it. I wrote at length about how the game’s opening chapters felt simplistic but held high hope that it would turn around as the game progressed. Now, having finished the entirety of the experience, I’m pleasantly surprised. Yes, Cereza and the Lost Demon is a different experience from the Bayonetta games as we know them, but it’s a direction that I wouldn’t mind seeing more games borrow from in the future.

Definitively, Cereza and the Lost Demon takes place before the events of the original Bayonetta. You play as Cereza, an Umbran Witch in training, who sees her mother locked up by the coven for cavorting with a Lumen Sage. Cereza is thus raised by Morgana, a strict teacher who only wants the best for her pupil. Following visions coming to her in a dream, Cereza heads into the mysterious Avalon Forest, looking for power to save her mother. Simultaneously, she summons a demon named Cheshire, who needs something in the forest to find his way home. The two head off into the woods and form an unlikely alliance.

While this is a prequel to the trio of games that came before it, Bayonetta Origins does a great job of adding much-needed context to the events of Bayonetta 3. There are many references to the other games and characters directly referenced between the two. Putting that aside, the game exists as a standalone experience too. Regardless of what you know about Bayonetta, in Cereza and the Lost Demon, it’s a joy to see Cereza start off lacking confidence and eventually become the Bayonetta we know today. Cheshire is similarly a fun foil to Cereza’s inexperienced nature. I was surprised to find myself caring so much about both of them towards the end of the game’s story.

As you’d probably know by now, Cereza and the Lost Demon isn’t a typical Bayonetta game. Instead, it plays most like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. A third-person game presented from an overlooking camera, each of the thumbsticks controls Cereza and Cheshire independently. Cereza can use her entry-level magic to interact with elements of the forest and temporarily debuff enemies. Cheshire is the primary damage dealer and can utilise a wealth of abilities to protect himself and Cereza from damage. It doesn’t sound straightforward, but it comes together relatively intuitively.

When you’re not exploring the many areas of the Avalon Forest, you’ll be in combat. During combat, Cereza can use her magic to bind enemies – slowing them down or bringing them to a halt entirely. On the other hand, Cheshire can attack with melee attacks and even perform flashy combos if he’s attacking enemies already bound by Cereza. It can get a bit intense, but it’s a serviceable combat system that perfectly complements the simplistic nature of the adventure. I spent most of the time in combat watching Cheshire, so you won’t always feel overwhelmed having to control both characters in battle.

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But as you progress through the game, more abilities are doled out to the duo that keeps things interesting. Without ruining anything, Cheshire gains abilities associated with the elements such as projectiles or heavy hitting slam attacks. Cereza also gets more abilities, which I won’t ruin here, but the brunt of the combat focus is on Cheshire. He has a nice range of abilities to unlock, and a surprisingly large and detailed skill tree helps unlock more abilities for both Cereza and Cheshire.

What surprised me even more about Cereza and the Lost Demon was the breadth of enemy types you encounter and even the boss battles. While they’re not as numerous as Bayonetta or as bombastic, they come close. Some of the set pieces feel closer to the first three games than anything else in terms of their action and intensity. It’s almost intentional that as Cereza progresses through the story and starts to resemble Bayonetta from a skill perspective, the game she’s in begins to resemble the games she will be in.

But outside of combat, Cereza and Cheshire can use their abilities, often together, to navigate the forest. A semi-open world, the forest is filled with collectibles that enhance abilities or health and many of them can be found after unlocking a new upgrade for the pair. Cereza can throw Cheshire to others areas as a miniature doll to open up new areas. Cheshire can use his water form to move around bodies of water while his fire form melts ice. There’s more, too, and the puzzles you encounter are by no means complex. However, it’s still satisfying to backtrack and find a new area to explore after obtaining something new.

If you’re connecting the dots, then you’ll probably think that Cereza and the Lost Demon borrows a bit from Metroid. And it does. The Avalon Forest and its surrounding areas can all be freely roamed to find collectibles and eventually unlock costumes for the duo after completing the game. “Sanctuaries” act as little spots for Cereza to rest but also as save and fast travel points. It’s a semi-open world that invites you to explore it if you wish, mainly to improve abilities and stats, but you can be engaged with as much or as little as you want to.

However, things get a bit more involved with the Tír na nÓg areas. These are otherworldly locales that are peppered throughout the map. Some are essential to continue, and others are optional. They’re essentially puzzle trials that Cereza and Cheshire must complete to “purify” the area and highlight other activities near the Tír na nÓg. Sometimes they’re combat trials, similar to the Alfheims from the original Bayonetta. Overall, they’re a great break from exploration and combat to offer a more honed puzzle experience.

Putting this all together, Cereza and the Lost Demon is a comprehensive action-adventure title. There’s a wealth of accessibility options if you’re struggling, but I’d estimate most players could get at least twelve to fifteen hours out of the adventure. Upon finishing, there’s still more to find in the forest and even a secondary story to unlock and play through. My only real complaint, and even then it’s not a huge one, is that this could’ve benefitted from some co-op functionality in some way, though it’s by no means a deal breaker. My first impression of this game was that it might be one-and-done, but with so much to unlock and see, Cereza and the Lost Demon is anything but phoned-in.

This notion can especially be applied to the game’s presentation. Most of the story is told through a mix of lore-filled collectibles and storybook-style cutscenes that, while static in their approach, are meticulously voiced by a strong cast of actors. Combine this with an artistic style that looks like a hand-painted watercolour painting, and you have something distinct and special. Performance-wise, the game runs close to sixty frames while docked and closer to thirty frames while portable. It’s by no means the worst running game on the Switch, but it’s not the best, either. It sits firmly in the middle.

The post Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon Review – A Bewitching Tale appeared first on Press Start.

Having not indulged in the first Figment game, to which this is a sequel, Creed Valley feels very much like another relapse within a disturbed mind. It tells its own contained story, complete with teaching moments. It does feel more like Dreamworks than Disney in its ability to deliver characters and dialogue to help stitch the gorgeous, hand painted world together, but it’s ultimately tough to fault this little indie that could.

You play as an elvish lad named Dusty, the embodiment of courage itself within the mind palace that Figment’s story takes place in. With Piper, his avian aid, he’s tasked with achieving peace inside of a headspace still plagued by nightmares. A day inside the mind is realised creatively, not only do you rhythmically dispatch nightmares but you wade between open-minded and closed-mindedness to converse with anthropomorphic, and quite frankly shaggy to an adorable degree, Opinions—which range from some profoundly important things like self-help to inane topics such as how to leave the toilet seat. 

Which is down, by the way.

There’s a meta story that exists beyond Dusty’s perception, as the nightmares he wrestles with serve as manifestations of external stresses that concern our hero’s owner. It’s not exactly Inside Out in terms of delivery, and it’s kind of just there—it’s doled out in between major story beats and in conjunction with the game’s sole collectible. 

Figment plays kind of like a game jam version of Bastion had it been mashed together with the concepts behind Psychonauts. It’s ultimately an isometric action game that incorporates environmental problem-solving, a small amount of detective work, and some humour to break up the action. 

That’s where the game does experience a few hang-ups. While it’s apt for what it is, Figment’s combat is rather one note. Where a game like Bastion has many weapons on top of many systems to give the gameplay a bit of heft, Figment arms you with a lone wooden sword that can attack lightly, slightly less lightly following a roll, or deflect comically drawn rockets that fire from the periphery of the mind’s defences.

It is simple, which will suit its intended audience, which I’m guessing is younger teens. But if you’re hoping for a rollicking action game with meat on the bone, this one is certainly style being favoured over substance. 

Figment’s marketing certainly promised a musical adventure and I feel like the game does ace this in a few key areas. Music is simply present everywhere in different forms, whether it’s a bridge made of piano ivories or boss fights dressed up as full blown musical numbers. Figment is certainly a theatrical game, and I couldn’t wipe the grin off of my face during any of the handful of original compositions. 

As far as ads go, the enemy variety is rather sparse too. Reflecting now, I can recall perhaps three or four enemies that’ll aim to cause you grief. While this’d spell trouble in a twelve hour game, Figment’s brevity serves it well here, ensuring that neither its limited mechanics and cast of villains overstay their welcome. If nothing else, Figment delivers a brief adventure fitting of its budget price.

The game’s art direction is one of its strongest points, without doubt. While mindset, which as I established there’s two to hop between, can guarantee varying moods, there’s a lovely assortment of colours this game leans on to deliver its oil paint on canvas aesthetic. I actually adored the imperfections too, especially the unevenly dried globs of paint. I feel like it has an almost rushed look that, in tandem with a particular scenic vista near the endgame, speaks to the inability of Dusty’s surrogate to slow down enough to smell the roses and ultimately embrace joy. 

I encountered only one game-halting bug in my handful of hours, but fortunately due to the rather short chapters, I was simply able to restart and quickly catch up. The game performed well otherwise, save for a few moments of slow down when one of the bigger skirmishes took place.

Figment 2: Creed Valley is a quaint game that’ll warm a lot of hearts. There’s nothing it does particularly wrong, in fact it’s quite capable in all facets of what a game can be. It’s simply a case of where less isn’t more, it’s just less. The combat is fun, but one-note and there aren’t enough enemy types to warrant strategic thought. Fortunately, the moxie of Dusty, the gleeful exuberance of the world itself, and the big showman-like show tunes from the roided-out baddies would make our Hugh blush.

It’s a fun romp, you’ve just gotta put your mind to it.

The post Figment 2: Creed Valley Review – In One Ear And Out The Other appeared first on Press Start.

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land marked a turning point for Kirby when it released on the Wii in 2011. Previous entries had mostly deviated from the traditional formula fans had come to expect, and tended to vary in quality from title to title. Return to Dream Land brought the series back to its fundamentals, eventually paving the way to the fantastic Kirby: Triple Deluxe, and its spiritual sequel Kirby: Planet Robobot.

Kirby’s come a long way since, with its first fully 3D entry in the form of Kirby and the Forgotten Land launching last year on the Switch. With a successful transition to the third dimension, and a relatively underwhelming 2D entry in Star Allies, it feels all too right for Return to Dream Land to receive the deluxe treatment. While the value proposition is questionable for those looking to double-dip, the end result is a content-packed experience that’s as timeless as it is charming, and one worth jumping into for any new fans of the franchise.

After watching an interdimensional ship known as the Lor Starcutter crash on planet Popstar, Kirby, Meta Knight, King Dedede, and Bandana Dee go to investigate. The pilot of the ship, Magalor, reveals to the gang that parts of the ship have been scattered across Popstar, and he can’t return home until the Starcutter is repaired. Selfless as ever, Kirby and co. set off to find the missing pieces in exchange for a trip to Magalor’s home world of Halcandra.

It’s a standard Kirby plot that any fan of the series can predict from the outset, but that doesn’t stop it from being a heartwarming little adventure across Popstar. It largely serves as the backdrop for the gameplay, but it’s cool to see Kirby’s mainstay villains set aside their differences to help Magalor. Throw in some revamped cutscenes and a few late-game story beats to keep things moving, and you end up with a cute little adventure about friendship and camaraderie that feels right at home in a Kirby game.

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe is largely the same experience as the original when it comes to the main story, with a few new bells and whistles to boot. It’s a very traditional 2D Kirby game, with a heap of Copy Abilities, collectibles to hunt down, bosses to battle, and platforming challenges to overcome. It’s a bit of mindless fun when playing solo that never overstays its welcome, but the game really excels in cooperative play, where all manner of chaos unfolds as you move through levels that introduce new mechanics and ideas that keeps you on your toes.

The Copy Abilities are where Return to Dream Land really shines. There’s a truckload of them to play with here, some of them new to the Deluxe version, but each one feels unique and fleshed out. It keeps the level to level progression varied, and it feels like there’s always something new to learn with each new ability you encounter. It all comes to a head with Super Abilities, where swallowing Super enemies grants Kirby temporary Copy Abilities that are vastly stronger than usual, allowing you to completely decimate enemies with attacks that fill the screen in glorious fashion.

While Kirby has never been about difficulty, Return to Dream Land has a noticeably flat difficulty curve throughout the main story, that only picks up a little bit towards the end. Part of this is due to the Super Abilities, but Return to Dream Land doesn’t go out of its way to challenge you in general, even when it comes down to hunting the Energy Spheres hiding in each level. There is decent incentive for collecting these, though, as they unlock doors on the Lor Starcutter that grant access to Copy Ability rooms and most notably – Copy Ability Challenges.

These are short and sweet platforming challenges that really test your aptitude with individual Copy Abilities. The idea is to make it to the goal with as many points as possible, through defeating enemies, collecting coins, and avoiding damage. It’s easy enough to get bronze and silver rankings for these, but the real chase comes from hunting down the gold ranks. The need for efficient use of Copy Abilities and precise platforming kept me coming back attempt after attempt so I could reach the ever-tantalising gold ranks for each challenge.

The two biggest inclusions in this package, come in the form of Helper Magalor and the Magalor Epilogue. The former serves as a helper mode where Magalor can double Kirby’s health, prevent him from falling into bottomless pits, as well as providing Copy Abilities during boss fights. Helper Magalor is an entirely optional inclusion, but one that’s much appreciated, and will no doubt help those who make use of it. The Magalor Epilogue is where a bulk of the new content lies, and unlocks upon completion of the main story.

The Magalor Epilogue is a thoroughly enjoyable 2-3 hours that Kirby fans are bound to love. Set after the events of the main story, Magalor wakes up in a realm between dimensions without his powers. You’ll traverse bite-sized levels and collect Magic Points that can be used to further upgrade Magalor’s abilities. Similar to the Copy Ability Challenges, each level in the Magalor Epilogue is ranked based on the amount of Magic Points you accrue in each level. You’ll find hitting higher ranks quite difficult early on, but as you progress through the worlds and unlock new abilities for Magalor, you can return to these stages to go after even higher scores.

There’s quite a bit to upgrade here, and the wide selection of abilities you can improve lends some player choice to the experience. Running through to the credits is fun enough as is, but it can’t be understated how satisfying it is to return to prior stages to get better rankings. You’ll rack up high combo counts that yield more Magic Points, gain access to powerful new abilities, and wipe the floor with bosses who initially proved more difficult the first time around due to Magalor’s limited skill-set. It’s a great inclusion with a decent chunk of playtime if you look to get the highest ranks on each stage, and also ties up the narrative quite nicely by the end of it all.

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A Kirby game isn’t a Kirby game without all the extra modes and subgames to play around with as well. Return to Dream Land Deluxe does not disappoint in this regard, with the series staple Arena Mode, Extra Mode, and a collection of simple yet entertaining Subgames to play with friends. Arena is the same as ever, giving players the opportunity to go up against a gauntlet of all the bosses in the game with any Copy Ability at your disposal. Extra Mode also adds some value for completionists, offering a more difficult version of the main story that unlocks the True Arena upon completion.

The Subgames are a particular standout in Return to Dream Land Deluxe. A lot of them are returning, with only two new ones accounted for in this package, but the quality standard here is quite high. They’re all small in scope and only take a few minutes to see through, but each offer a fun little distraction to play with friends aside from the main story. All of these are set within Merry Magoland which touts countless challenges to complete for cosmetic goodies, serving as a whimsical backdrop to the carnival-like nature of the Subgames.

While most of the Deluxe treatments typically upscale visuals to the Switch’s HD resolutions, Return to Dreamland Deluxe seems to have received some extra TLC. This game is gorgeous, and fits right at home on the Switch. All of the worlds feel distinct and varied with bright, energetic colour palettes and a striking art style that is always easy on the eyes. Special mention should go to the reworked backgrounds, which are so packed with detail and sense of place, it’s hard not to gawk at them each time you see a new one. This is coupled with rock-solid performance in both handheld and docked modes, making for an all-round smooth and fluid experience.

While Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe is a no brainer recommendation to those who’ve yet to jump in, it’s a bit more complex for those who’ve experienced it before. The new stuff here is fantastic, there just isn’t all that much of it, so whether or not the enhanced visuals and the Magalor Epilogue can justify the price is up to you. If you do take the plunge, you’ll be greeted with one of Kirby’s best 2D adventures, made even better.

The post Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe Review – A Quintessential Kirby Package appeared first on Press Start.

The first Octopath Traveler was a great game, but I felt it was often misunderstood. It’s deliciously old school presentation set the scene for the game players wanted it to be – a fresh modern take on the RPG that still managed to look like it came from the golden years of the genre. Underneath it’s shiny veneer was some fantastic gameplay bolstered by a flexible job and party system. Now, Octopath Traveler II attempts to address the criticisms levelled at its predecessor to offer a more intertwined story. And while it’s not necessarily the direction I think the series needed to head in, it offers up more of what players loved five years ago.

The new game takes place in a new continent called Solistia. It’s different to Osterra from the previous game, sporting a much more modern setting. Solistia is in the midst of an industrial and trade revolution, so it feels like a time of great prosperity in the world. The story follows eight characters, each with their own stories and motivations. Some want to be the best in their field, others want to capitalise on the boom in trade. The story eventually converges, but like the original game, it really is all about the individual stories.

I adored Octopath Traveler but I feel like the concept is already starting to wear a little thin. So much of Octopath Traveler II feels lifted directly from the predecessor to the point that it can feel like  a retread at times. Where the original game lacked meaningful interactions between the party, Octopath Traveler II attempts to remedy this by incorporating new stories that usually intertwine two characters, complete with sub-chapters. While I feel like this is the right direction to move in, there were still moments overall where my main character would just stand there in silence while cutscenes centering on other characters played out.

It would be a logistical nightmare to accurately predict the order players obtain their party members and adjust dialogue and interactions accordingly. But I can’t help but feel that, with a little bit more linearity, a party with synergy at both a story and gameplay level could easily be developed. I admire the attempts to bring things closer together, even if that wasn’t the intention of the original game, but overall it feels like more of a half step towards that goal more than anything else.

But underneath the plot, there’s a fantastic game here too. Like the original, it’s a turn-based RPG that feels fast paced but still has enough depth to it that makes it fun to master. As mentioned previously, you’ll explore Solistia while following the individual stories of eight characters. The world itself is beautiful – presented in a unique 2D-HD style that the original game pioneered. But is Octopath Traveler II just a typical RPG with a nostalgic look art direction? It’s honestly so much more.

The battle system is just as strong as in the original game. A typical turn-based system with the Break and Boost mechanics returning. Each turn, each character gains a BP, which can then be used to increase your attacks or power in the same turn. Using this system to target an enemy’s weakness can “break” them, stunning them and, if planned correctly, prevent them from attacking and open them up to more damage. It’s hard to explain – and I implore you to try the demo – but it’s a satisfying combat system that rewards those who think about each turn and how they’ll flow into one another.

Octopath Traveler II does introduce a few new aspects to the combat. Latent powers are the most obvious. These are available to each character and are usable after filling a gauge that fills from either taking damage or breaking an enemy. Each power has a different effect, allowing you to focus a group-targeting spell onto a single enemy for extra damage or even buffing your party depending on the time of day. They’re a nice touch that adds an extra layer of strategizing to battle, but they’re also not essential enough that I found myself using them a whole lot.

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A little bit more essential is the robust jobs system that underpins the combat. Each of the playable characters has a primary job that denotes what abilities and weapons they can wield. Secondary jobs can be assigned to fill gaps in that character’s loadout. I’m a huge fan of a good job system in RPGs, and Octopath Traveler II has what I consider to be some genre-best execution of the concept. It’s so much fun to experiment with different combinations to build your perfect party, and almost mandatory to overcome the games later trickier chapters.

Outside of battles, the changes are more obvious. Path actions return, which allow you to interact with NPCs in different ways. You can rob them, convince them to follow you into battle or even bribe them for secrets. It’s always been a cool idea. Octopath Traveler II gives each character two path actions, dependent on the time of day. But in the original game, these actions often came in pairs, with one being superior to the other. One character can steal, for example, while another can still steal but only after battling the person. It felt a bit padded out in the original game, and by almost doubling the path actions in this game, it feels especially so.

I’ve talked a lot about who time of day affects so much in Octopath Traveler II, and that’s one of the cooler new aspects of the game. With the press of a button, the setting you’re in will change from day to night. Some path actions only work depending on the time of day and stronger enemies come out at night to do battle. You’ll even encounter different NPCs at night. It’s a bit gimmicky, but visually impressive to see the world change instantly in front of you. The music changes too – from flourishing orchestral tracks during the day to more subdued and relaxed pieces of the same music at night.

Other aspects are introduced that weren’t in the original, though aren’t as game changing as I’d have hoped. The party eventually gains access to a ship that allows them to travel between the two halves of Solistia. The “open sea” aspect of Octopath Traveler II is really just like a glorified world map. I appreciate the variety on offer here, but it feels like it’s being touted as a feature when it’s really something most older RPGs have had in the past.

But speaking of the past, there are times where I felt that Octopath Traveler II was perhaps living too far into it. With the advent of so many other RPGs incorporating time saving measures, there were too manty times where I’d spend so much time in Octopath Traveler II just grinding. Not even grinding to gain levels, mind you, just running between areas to heal at an inn so I could make progress in the story. So much of Octopath Traveler II feels old school your characters who are benched are still needed to be levelled up, especially if you want to tackle the optional final chapters.

It might sound asinine to complain about an RPG having a long runtime. But given how many other games in the genre have included time saving elements like quick battles or fast forward it feels especially egregious. Octopath Traveler II does let you double the battle speed and advance its cutscenes quickly, but these are surface level. The design fundamentals underpinning it, like the aforementioned levelling of benched characters and constant need to heal do not respect the players time.

Without a doubt, though, Octopath Traveler II is the best-looking rendition of 2D-HD yet. Not only does the game leverage the unique style to create a world much more modern than the previous game, but stunning camera work and frame composition leads to some pretty epic moments throughout the story. It all feels a lot higher budget than previously. Other small touches, like adding animations for attacking enemies, makes a great case for 2D-HD as an art direction not losing any of its lustre.

And the music. Oh, the music! Yasunori Nishiki returns to compose for Octopath Traveler II and it’s one of the most beautiful soundtracks I’ve ever borne witness (or listened) to. The soundtrack does not disappoint in any aspect. The voice work is similarly pretty strong, with both English and Japanese voice tracks being selectable. Some of the deliveries are still a little bit melodramatic, but otherwise the whole experience feels well produced and presented.

The post Octopath Traveler II Review – An Iterative Improvement appeared first on Press Start.

For as long as I’ve been a devout fan of the Final Fantasy franchise (and it’s been a while) I’ve been in love with the soundtracks – as I’m sure just about every other fan is. So when Theatrhythm Final Fantasy was first introduced to the world via the 3DS in 2012, I was in heaven. One of my fondest memories is rocking up way too early to one of the Distant Worlds Final Fantasy symphony orchestra productions with a group of my friends and all sitting around in a circle with our 3DSes jamming out to song after song.

Now, nearly a decade after the last entry, Theatrhythm Final Bar Line is bringing the music back in a big way in both handheld and home console form via the Nintendo Switch and PS4.

For a series that has no shame in flirting with excess, it’s no surprise that the third major entry in its rhythm spin-off series blows the wheels off what the previous games had to offer in terms of content. Curtain Call was already impressive with over 200 tracks to play in the base game, but Final Bar Line ups that number to a ridiculous 385 songs – and again that’s before including any of its already-exhaustive list of DLC tracks.

Oddly enough, to accommodate this swelling setlist Final Bar Line actually trims some of the fat of the previous titles by keeping things somewhat simple in the mode selection. You get the Series Quest mode, a free play Music Stage mode, online Multi Battles and that’s it. 

The first, Series Quest, does away with any kind of story or overworld map stuff in lieu of just letting you pick the Final Fantasy game of your choice and playing through its included songs in a general order. It’s the meat and potatoes of the game, being the main driver of progression and also the core way to unlock songs to play at your leisure in Music Stages. That detail did rub me the wrong way a little, not just for the inconvenience of having to play through 385 songs to unlock them all but because you’re initially locked out of the majority of the Final Fantasy titles and have to play far enough through others to earn “keys” to open the rest. I can appreciate that a sense of progressing through something is important, but not being able to dive straight into the Final Fantasy VIII soundtrack from the get-go was a frustration.

Luckily, the Theatrhythm series has the distinct advantage of being packed to the rafters with fantastic music, so even when you’re engaging with a game in the series that ranks low on a personal level it’s almost never a bad time. If a rhythm game lives or dies by its soundtrack then Final Bar Line is immortal. Not only has the team curated some iconic bangers from the mainling games I through XV, but there’s stuff here from spin-off games, remix and special event albums and other neat, deep cuts. If you’ve ever enjoyed a Final Fantasy game or soundtrack, you’ll absolutely find some gold here among the stacked playlist.

Bargain Guide – Theatrhythm Final Bar Line

There’s also a ton of DLC in the pipeline, from another 27 bonus tracks in the game’s Digital Deluxe Edition (which can be upgraded to from the standard digital or physical copy, thankfully) to a planned calendar of added tracks from other notable Square Enix franchises. Normally I’d scoff at the thought of a litany of paid DLC being laid out so emphatically at a game’s launch but given the sheer volume of content already included and the fact that the extra stuff will be coming from franchises like NieR, LIVE A LIVE, Chrono Trigger, Octopath Traveler, The World Ends With You and more I’m completely on board with the idea.

One of the big questions hanging over this new Theatrhythm game has been that of the controls. After all, the previous two titles have existed solely on platforms with some form of touchscreen and took full advantage of that by having players tap and swipe along to their music. On the PS4 where I played the game for review, there isn’t that facility, so everything has been moved to button presses and analog stick pushes. I wasn’t sure at first if it was going to work as well this way, but I’ve happily been proven wrong. 

Whichever specific “mode” of song gameplay you’re in, be it battle, field or event, the idea is still to follow along with rhythm prompts scrolling across the screen and hit them at the correct time. Instead of tapping or swiping, your standard “notes” can be activated with just about any button on the controller and the directional ones require a quick flick of either of the analogue sticks at the correct angle. Variations come in the form of button holds and double-ups that task you to use both sticks or press (again, basically any) two buttons, but that’s about as deep as it goes. That doesn’t mean you won’t be challenged, with varying difficulty levels offering up some absolutely cursed charts at the high end that I don’t think I could ever hope of nailing, but the barrier of entry even for non-rhythm savvy fans is nice and low.

Square Enix and indieszero clearly understand that their audience is comprised largely of JRPG nerds, so there are a ton of systems built-in to make this feel like a bit of a genre crossover. Anyone who’s played these games in the past will know generally what to expect – you’ll build your party of characters as you unlock them from across the many games, level them up by playing to unlock new abilities and give yourself an edge in stages, and collect “Rhythmia” and CollectaCards among other things.

Like Curtain Call before it, the RPG/character progression systems are fun but largely superfluous. It certainly helps to have some extra HP or saving grace abilities to fall back on if you’re doing particularly badly in a music stage, but as long as you’re doing the rhythm game thing of pressing the right buttons at the right time then you don’t really need to worry about your character builds or party make-up.

Still, there’s a giddy compulsion to boosting your party, calling on familiar summons, picking up collectible tat and movies/music to enjoy in the game’s Museum, and watching a bunch of different numbers continuously tick over as you play. I’ve already pumped decent hours into Final Bar Line in the short time I’ve had it and I can imagine I’ll spend so many more in the months to come. Sure, the formula is maybe starting to wear thin at this point but things were so bright to begin with that even a little lost shine can’t bring the experience down.

On the visual front, what you’re getting here isn’t all that different from the 3DS entries with your party of cute, chibi-fied Final Fantasy protagonists squaring off against equally adorable monsters and villains from the games. It all suits the big screen surprisingly well with bright, sharp art and plenty of real estate to work with. The only real issue I have here is that, more than likely just due to the massive number of tracks included, the stage backgrounds and enemies that you’ll encounter in a lot of songs don’t match their source material. It’s by no means a deal-breaker but playing along to the Balamb Garden theme song while walking through a high fantasy castle interior, for example, can feel like a bit of a let-down.

The only thing I haven’t been able to try out yet, but one that I doubt will have affected my enjoyment of the game in either direction, is the Multi Battle mode which pits you against up to three other players online in a point-scoring competition that features no fail state but awards each competitor an increasing shot at rewards as they score above their opponents. Head-to-head rhythm gaming can be a great time and I appreciate that everyone will technically walk away a winner, but I have doubts about the longevity or even initial popularity of the mode.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line releases on February 16th for PS4 and Switch. Amazon currently has the cheapest price at $74 with free shipping.

The post Theatrhythm Final Bar Line Review – A Big Score appeared first on Press Start.

With the success of Nintendo Switch and the pulling in of many lapsed gamers, so many classic instalments in classic franchises have had their moments and made returns to Nintendo’s gargantuanly successful platform. Everything you’ve loved before – including Pokemon Snap, Link’s Awakening or even classics that most of the buying public skipped on Wii U – made a reappearance on the Nintendo Switch. But one franchise has been left in the dark.

It’s been a long time since Metroid and Samus were heard from in any capacity. Metroid Prime 4 was first announced for the Switch in 2017. Six years ago. It’s since changed developers and rebooted development. We’ve even had a new Metroid game, Metroid Dread, the fifth game in the mainline series; and in that time, we’ve still had to wait to see what Metroid Prime 4 could look like.

But now, Nintendo has shifted focus to arguably one of the most critically well-received games in their lineup from one of the most commercially underappreciated series they hold. Metroid Prime Remastered feels like a triumph for both Nintendo and fans. For Nintendo, it’s a triumph in bringing back a classic game that not enough people have experienced. For fans, it’s the beginning of a long overdue acknowledgement that, finally, Metroid Prime is being given the treatment it deserves.

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As expected, the plot of Metroid Prime remains untouched in this remaster. The Prime series takes place between the events of the second and third games. Samus has crash-landed on Tallon IV while investigating an energy disturbance that she’s traced back to the Space Pirates. While trying to escape the planet, she uncovers yet another plot involving them and the titular Metroids. She attempts to eradicate them once more while escaping from Tallon IV.

I’ll get the obvious out of the way here, then. Metroid Prime Remastered is, without a doubt, the best way to experience Metroid Prime. It feels like one of the better examples of a remaster in games – artistically similar to the game it’s based on but with multiple new touches that help it feel modern, perhaps even feel just like you remembered it. But a lot has changed visually. On top of this, the controls have been reworked to offer modem dual-stick options too, though if you prefer the original control scheme, that’s here too, along with a slew of sensitivity options.

Those who have yet to play Metroid Prime would be left to wonder what’s so special about it. At the time, and even today, Metroid Prime was always an innovative take on the first-person shooter genre. It combines strong elements of action, exploration and puzzle solving to offer an authentic Metroid experience, but in 3D.

But what does that mean, exactly? Until Prime hit, the Metroid games were completely two-dimensional. Metroid Prime expanded that concept monstrously, offering a large interconnected world to explore with multiple paths through it. It’s a fun world to explore and incredibly satisfying to discover new pathways through. Every time you get a new power-up, you can explore new areas and start thinking about areas you’ve passed that were previously locked that you can now explore.

It’s a gameplay loop rooted deeply in backtracking, but that’s the charm of Metroid, and for the most part of Prime, it’s mostly satisfying.

Perfectly leveraging the jump to first person when it first debuted, Samus also gains access to visors for her helmet that can change how she interacts with the world. The scan visor is the main one you’ll be using, worldbuilding by giving you tidbits of info while also providing assistance to players who might be stuck. The thermal and x-ray visors she finds also provide her with different ways to interact with puzzles and track enemies. It’s a great system, though some players may still find an issue with how much stopping and scanning you might have to do.

Though it’s not all about exploration either. Samus is armed with various arm cannons to help her deal with the hostile fauna of Tallon IV and the Space Pirates overrunning it. The combat in Metroid Prime still feels snappy, owing greatly to a functional lock-on system. The enemy variety on offer here is similarly fantastic; the boss battles are especially sights to behold. So many of them are memorable setpieces that really test your mettle and are some of the most epic moments of Metroid Prime.

While the word “remaster” might insinuate a simple up-res, Metroid Prime Remastered is anything but and so much more. Practically every visual element has been remodelled or recreated in higher resolution with more detail than the original as playable on the Gamecube and Wii. It’s an incredible, high-effort remaster that absolutely nails the tone and atmosphere that the game is going for.

And the atmosphere is really where Metroid Prime shines. The game’s atmosphere is absolutely dripping; Tallon IV is a beautifully realised alien world filled with diverse biomes decorated with otherworldly landscapes. Though, Metroid Prime Remastered goes beyond just improving the world’s visuals. The lighting has been completely reworked to offer a greater ambience than in the original release.

I can’t overstate how these lighting improvements work to create a superior experience. They’re simple adjustments that make a huge difference. Just switching on a hologram system, only to see the glow of that hologram fill the room with light, is a level of attention to detail and fidelity that we don’t see on the Switch. It all comes together to make the world feel alive and real.

The stellar atmosphere is similarly amplified by a fantastic soundtrack. The original score by series composer Kenji Yamamoto does a great job of creating a unique sense of isolation and tension. New players will be able to look forward to hearing the epic and cinematic soundtrack the first time they visit locations like Magmoor Caverns and Phendrana Drifts. At the same time, returning fans will be reminded of the strength of the soundtrack.

I’ve played Metroid Prime multiple times, sometimes even with enhancements that only the modding community and dedicated fans could bring to it. But even though the Switch is objectively less powerful than a PC, Metroid Prime Remastered’s visual improvements more than makeup for it. Make no mistakes; this is undoubtedly one of the best-looking and smoothest-running games I’ve ever played on the Switch.

But despite how much Metroid Prime gets right, a few aspects still don’t sit right with me. While I’ve alluded that backtracking is a core design element of the series, Prime throws a quest at you towards the end of the game that requires you to do so in large amounts. It’s done in such a way that, while more straightforward on repeat playthroughs, it brings the story’s pacing to a halt towards the end.

All in all, though, this is a minor blemish on an otherwise lustrous package.

The post Metroid Prime Remastered Review – A Remasterpiece appeared first on Press Start.

Nostalgia sells. And in few places is that more true than the video game market. Whether it’s remakes, remasters, cheap ports or new ideas spun from old IP, nostalgia remains a potent force that’s often wielded with reckless abandon. 

When THQ Nordic first teamed up with Purple Lamp Studio to capitalise on their hold of the rights to the beloved PS2 platformer, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, it resulted in a surprisingly good trip down memory lane – one that no doubt resulted in the kind of easy money that would make Mr. Krabs swell in his shell. Purple Lamp clearly proved itself too, because it wasn’t long before it was handed the reins to develop an original 3D platformer based on the franchise – albeit one still largely powered by nostalgia. Enter, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake.

If there’s one thing modern popular media, especially in things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s that the quickest and easiest way to tap into nostalgia and fandom is with a multiverse storyline. How better to squeeze a metric ton of references and cameos in than whisking our heroes through a bunch of mashed up and barely-connected realms? That’s where The Cosmic Shake comes in, sending SpongeBob and Patrick on a world-hopping journey through several “WishWorlds” based on iconic locales and events from the Hillenburg-led first couple of seasons of the show.

That’s this game’s biggest drawcard too – if you were a fan of the yellow sponge in his earliest outings, you’ll instantly recognise the vast majority of the gags and situations here, and no doubt appreciate that they’re all wrapped up in a fresh story about a deceptive mermaid witch named Cassandra tricking SpongeBob and Patrick into tearing apart the fabric of Bikini Bottom and all delivered by the entire original voice cast.

It’s important that you enjoy that stuff going into The Cosmic Shake, too, because everything around it is about as bog-standard as it comes. As a 3D platformer it feels less like an iteration on what was delivered in Battle for Bikini Bottom and more like a direct continuation of that 2003 release. That’s not necessarily a bad thing on all fronts, but it’s an expectation that begs setting because it’s definitely a far cry from what one would expect from most modern platformers. 

As a licensed tie-in game based on a Nickelodeon property, it’s honestly still a cut above, though. For the budget price of entry, you’re getting an 8-10 hour adventure set across seven worlds and a sizable hub with tons of collectibles to find and easter eggs to do the Leo DiCaprio pointing gif at. Each world sees SpongeBob don a throwback costume and endeavour to rescue one of his friends from their own twisted wishes with Patrick in tow as a helpful, airborne balloon (there’s a reason for that) on hand to point him in the right direction or drop a fresh pair of health undies in a pinch.

Clocking in at anywhere up to an hour in length, each of these worlds represents a decent jaunt with a good amount of gameplay variety switching between precision platforming, light combat, minigames and the obligatory SpongeBob sliding sections. I can’t say I found the actual level design anything close to inspired, but if you enjoyed what BFBB had to offer, Purple Lamp has clearly set out to replicate the same simple, no-frills vibe that would definitely go down well with younger audiences who are less likely to baulk at its flaws. There are some interesting enough new wrinkles, like SpongeBob’s bubble attack that traps enemies in place or his karate kick, which is routinely combined with jumping and gliding to make for some pretty engaging platforming sections. 

There’s a lot that feels rehashed from the last game, for better or worse, but I feel it’s important to stress that I absolutely did have fun playing through this new adventure as a fan of collectathon 3D platformers. It’s not going to have an moustachioed Italians lining up to renew their plumber’s certification but it’s a far sight better than most of the licenced junk aimed at kids and parents out there.

It’s really the joy of the SpongeBob property and its cast of characters that carries The Cosmic Shake, a fact that I’m sure doesn’t come as a surprise. It’s here that Purple Lamp has really nailed the assignment, giving fans an enjoyable new story that’s positively stuffed with nostalgia for the earliest era of the cartoon. Only now it’s all presented through some genuinely attractive cutscenes backed up by brand-new voice work from the show’s cast. Despite being relatively simple, the in-game visuals build on what worked for Battle for Bikini Bottom and look perfectly pleasant, plus the 30+ unlockable costumes are a riot.

It’s tough to complain about a game like this with the context of its place in the landscape, but there are definitely some gripes I had that felt warranted. Enemy variety is just okay, with less than 10 different jelly-based bad guy types, but SpongeBob’s limited combat prowess makes them feel even more repetitive to fight. And you’ll do it a lot as you return to each world looking for collectibles with nearly no method of tracking beyond a number total, making constant backtracking a reality.

The post SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake Review – A Decent Bit Of F.U.N. appeared first on Press Start.

It feels like yesterday that 2019’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses took the world by storm, quickly becoming the franchise’s best selling entry by a large margin, and propelling the series to new heights and popularity. It’s an entirely different style of Fire Emblem, bucking many of the trends and trappings that the series has heralded for so many years. It’s with this context that the pivot back to more traditional Fire Emblem in Fire Emblem Engage is a relatively strange one, omitting many of the changes and ideas brought to the table by Three Houses.

In a lot of ways, though, Fire Emblem Engage is exactly what series veterans have wanted more of since 2012’s incredible Fire Emblem Awakening. With a linear narrative, an amalgamation of new and old mechanics, and a premise that celebrates the franchise’s rich history, Engage is another addictively satisfying entry into this legendary series despite some glaring flaws.

Fire Emblem Engage sees players stepping into the shoes of Alear, a male or female protagonist who also happens to be a Divine Dragon. Destined to thwart the opposing Fell Dragon’s plans of conquest and war, Alear must set out across the land of Elyos to gather the all-powerful Emblem Rings, and build up an army strong enough to take on Sombron and his army of corrupted foes.

I mentioned in my hands-on preview that the first third of the narrative wasn’t doing much for me, both in regards to its characters and plot beats. Unfortunately, this trend continued well into the second half of the game, with predictable twists, underdeveloped characters, and a cast of villains that felt somewhat forced and uninteresting. In spite of all this, though, the middle stretch of Engage eventually gives way to a third act that’s filled with unexpected revelations, meaningful character development, and heightened stakes that reinforce the core themes and ideas at the heart of Engage’s story.

Villains who I’d initially found underwhelming presented more layers of depth to their characterisations and motives, Alear and their relationships with the Emblems and supporting cast became more profound, and there were moments of tension and emotion that had me hanging on every word. While it absolutely takes far too long to get going, I have no doubt that it’ll be Engage’s mostly excellent third act I remember its narrative by, not all the middling stuff that led up to it.

The inconsistent writing of the core narrative also extends to the support conversations between characters. For every eye-opening discussion between royalty of rivalling kingdoms, there’s another that lacks the same depth and thematic messaging. It often leaves the cast feeling uneven in terms of development and quality, making it easy to pick favourites as opposed to umming and ahhing over who to deepen your bond with next.

This is felt most sorely in the bond conversations with Emblem Rings, which are simple, two to three line exchanges that add nothing of substance to either character. It’s a shame given the legacy of these figures, and seeing them have at least one meaningful support relationship to develop between one of Engage’s new characters would’ve gone a long way to providing new perspectives and growth to established characterisations.

The turn-based tactics of Fire Emblem is where Engage excels the most, combining the franchise’s staple gameplay systems with new mechanics that further expand strategic depth and customisation. It feels most comparable to Awakening and some of the older titles as opposed to Fates or Three Houses, but I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing. Most of this is thanks to the return of the Weapon Triangle, a focus on individual units, and efforts to make each class viable in the grand schemes of battle.

The Weapon Triangle’s return isn’t a tit-for-tat recreation, though. Fire Emblem Engage places a premium on exploiting enemy weaknesses through the Break system, where winning a matchup in the Weapon Triangle can Break an enemy’s stance. This prevents any further counter-attacks when engaged in battle, and makes the enemy unit more susceptible to damage. You can also inflict Break through smashing enemies into other units or terrain through heavy Smash attacks, which hit hard, but always act last.

These two systems alone add incentive to spend time planning before battles, deliberating over what units to bring with you into a fight, and where to place them on the map. Similarly, the Break and Smash systems incentivise smart play to get the most out of their inherent bonuses, forcing you to think about positioning, and turn order in a way that hasn’t been this present since Awakening. It echoes old-school Fire Emblem with some modern trimmings that feel like a natural progression of ideas synonymous with Fire Emblem’s strategy.

Where Fire Emblem Engage separates itself most, is with the titular Engage system. As you collect the Emblem Rings throughout the story, you can sync them with units in your army. Each Emblem Ring is tied to a legendary hero from Fire Emblem’s past, including fan favourites like Marth, Ike, and Corrin, as well as lesser known characters like Micaiah, Leif, and Eirika. Every mainline FE game is accounted for here, making for a game that feels like a true celebration of the franchise’s storied history.

Pairing Emblem Rings with units is no small decision, as these units gain access to passive skills, abilities, and increased stats that can all turn the tide of a battle if used properly. Ike, for example, is a defensive powerhouse, making him an ideal choice for any unit that specialises in defense. Likewise, Micaiah excels at healing and holy magic, making her perfectly suited for a healer/mage class hybrid. Each Emblem has a unique identity in the broad scope of Engage, and fits in well with the context of their roles in their original games.

Each unit paired with an Emblem Ring can Engage in battle, assuming a more powerful fusion form between the unit and the Emblem. Not only does this boost stats, but also grants access to a skill that can be used once per Engage. These skills vary greatly from Emblem to Emblem, and have unique applications within combat. Micaiah’s Engage Skill allows you to perform a team-wide heal at the cost of her health, where Roy’s unleashes a mighty attack that sets nearby terrain on fire. While you can refill the Engage meter in battle, you’ll often only ever Engage once or twice in any given encounter, making these skills incredibly valuable.

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As characters deepen their bonds with paired Emblem Rings, you’ll gain SP to spend on inheriting the skills they provide. While these skills are always active when paired, spending SP to inherit them means that units can gain the passive benefits without being paired to that specific Emblem Ring. This incentivises moving Emblem Rings between units regularly to get the most out of your army, giving strong passive skills to units that otherwise wouldn’t have access to them.

The other form of progression tied to Emblem Rings is through Bond Rings. As you complete achievements, progress through the narrative, and generally play the game, you’ll earn Bond Fragments. You can spend 100 Bond Fragments to create one random Bond Ring, or 1000 for 10 Bond Rings, each one boosting the stats of that Emblem Ring. Each Bond Ring is related to a character from that Emblem’s Fire Emblem title, and different rarities of rings grant greater stat increases. It works as a sort of gacha system that never feels so necessary as to make the RNG frustrating, but not totally useless to the point where it takes away from the thrill of creating new rings. Duplicate Bond Rings can also be melded to create higher rarity rings, so there’s a little bad luck protection in that regard.

Class progression for your units is similarly in-depth and customisable as you progress through Engage’s narrative. Unlike Three Houses, you won’t be moving through a class tree to reach the highest level of class. Once you reach level 20 on a base class, you can spend a Master Seal to move onto an advanced class, and a Secondary Seal to make any changes to another class down the track. The depth comes from the ability to expand a unit’s weapon proficiencies through Emblem Rings, allowing them to move into any class tied to those weapon types.

General use of Emblem Rings and the Engage system will lead to paired units gaining weapon proficiencies for that Emblem’s available weapon types, providing more incentive to regularly switch up your Emblem Ring setup. Gaining these proficiencies is what allows units to move into classes they otherwise wouldn’t be able to, which means while every unit has an inherent class path to follow by default, you can also branch out, mixing and matching intrinsic abilities to create combinations you usually wouldn’t see. It makes for class progression that seems less non-linear than what’s present in Three Houses, but eventually opens up to a similar level of customisation.

If that all sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. Fire Emblem Engage throws the kitchen sink at you in terms of systems and mechanics to interact with, and that’s without talking about the Somniel. While Engage is a return to old-school Fire Emblem in a lot of ways, the trend of social aspects in RPGs set by Persona is in full-force here. While I’m usually partial to these systems or enjoy them as much as the core strategy, Engage’s implementation of them were exhausting more than they were addictive – especially coming from Three Houses.

The problem is the sheer number of things you can do, and how often you can do them. While you don’t have to engage with all of them at every opportunity, I felt obligated to in order to make the most out of progression. While there’s a traditional Fire Emblem world map, the Somniel serves as a hub between skirmishes for almost everything you could possibly need in terms of progression.

You can participate in training mini-games for temporary stat boosts, partake in fishing, train units in arena battles, share meals with allies, and pick up numerous shiny items to use in cooking and crafting. While most of this stuff is fine at first, it very quickly wears out its welcome as you realise rewards for these activities refresh after every single battle, not just chapter concluding fights, but also the side skirmishes you’ll engage with for extra resources and EXP. It’s a perpetually tiring cycle that only ever lets up on one or two occasions, and I grew to dread returning to the Somniel as a result.

One part of the Somniel that I am quite fond of, is the Tower of Trials. The Tower of Trials is a completely optional set of trials that you can participate in to gain resources that strengthen Engage weapons. While that probably sounds entirely necessary – it really isn’t, and a lot of the Trials feel designed to be post-game content. There’s three unique Trial types to play with, though, each one bringing something different to the table.

Tempest Trials are offline only, consecutive battles where you gain rewards and EXP after clearing a set number of maps. Relay Trials serve as a sort of asynchronous multiplayer mode, where players take turns ala a relay race in order to try and clear a map. Lastly, and most interesting, are the Outrealm Trials, where you can create a map, place units, and upload that configuration for other players to challenge online. Each one has provided fun and challenging ways to engage with the Fire Emblem formula outside of the traditional single player format, and I suspect that series veterans will find a lot of value in these modes after the credits roll.

Needless to say, there’s a heap of progression systems and mechanics to interact with here across the many chapters of Fire Emblem Engage, and this unfortunately led to a relatively stress-free experience on the normal difficulty. A base level understanding of the Weapon Triangle and smart use of Engage Skills can make short work of these battles, and some units can get so overpowered towards the late game that they could probably carry your entire team to victory alone. It’s disappointing given Fire Emblem’s reputation for difficulty, and long-time fans looking for a challenge should undoubtedly play the game on hard.

When you aren’t spending time in the Somniel or progressing through the narrative, you’ll spend time on the world map, taking part in optional battles for resources and completing Paralogues, which are effectively small side stories expanding on characters. A vast majority of the Paralogues in Engage focus on the Emblems, and reliving pivotal battles from their pasts. It’s a fun way to revisit these moments or experience them for the first time, and the extra bond levels they unlock are a nice incentive to tackle each and every one of them. These are also noticeably harder than the main story, and provide a nice challenge in contrast to regular battles.

One area where Fire Emblem Engage is an undisputed improvement over Three Houses, is in its presentation. There’s a clear effort made here for deeper visual fidelity despite the Switch’s aging hardware. The pixel-ridden edges of the models in Three Houses are nowhere to be found here, with much improved battle animations and a fantastic soundtrack to boot. Performance is similarly sharp, and those glorious CG anime cutscenes return in all of their beauty.

While I don’t think Three Houses looks inherently bad, it opts for a much more gritty and muted color palette, one that runs in tandem with the narrative themes and plot beats quite nicely. Engage is similarly aligned with its own overall tone, positively bursting at the seams with color and expressive character designs that while outlandish and eye-catching, rarely reach the point of absurdity. It’s a far cry from the Fire Emblem designs of old, but I think that Engage retains all the more identity as a result. There’s also a clear effort for more inclusivity here, with characters from all walks of life, with Timerra, Fogado, and Rosado as standout examples.

I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion over whether or not Fire Emblem Engage surpasses the lofty bar set by its predecessor, but I don’t know if that’s an entirely fair comparison. While it does pull from a number of its successes, Engage is a fundamentally different experience that’s clearly more inspired by classic Fire Emblem. It certainly doesn’t all land, but I think it does where it counts, with enticingly addictive strategy and in-depth customisation that makes for a celebration worth partaking in for fans both new, and old.

The post Fire Emblem Engage Review – An Imperfect But Worthy Celebration appeared first on Press Start.

With 11 mainline entries, countless spin-offs, and worldwide success, there are few franchises with a legacy similar to that of Dragon Quest’s. More than 35 years after the original’s release in Japan, Dragon Quest Treasures is more proof that the series is far from dead, presenting an experience that while far less complex than its predecessors,  echoes the inherent comfort and tantalizing allure of a Dragon Quest game. It’s a markedly different experience in comparison to anything that’s come before, with a stark focus on treasure hunting and spending time with your monster buddies in what can only be described as fantasy bliss.

Serving as a prequel to Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, Dragon Quest Treasures follows fan favorite character Erik, and his younger sister Mia as they seek to satiate their thirsts for adventure after running from the Vikings that took them in as their own. Their escapades see the pair encountering a pair of magical creatures, and are shortly whisked away to a mythical land known as Draconia. Much to their surprise, Draconia is positively stuffed with legendary treasure to find, so the two decide to partake in the adventure they so desperately crave while trying to find a way back home.

After being bestowed with a pair of magical Dragon Daggers, you set out across Draconia to hunt down the seven legendary Dragon Stones while building up your own faction of treasure hunters. It’s a remarkably simple yet heartwarming premise that never jumps the shark in ambition or stakes. It makes for a straightforward plot that despite lacking tons of depth, more than makes up for it in providing a cozy adventure that’s reminiscent of fantasies you’d make up in your head as a child. This is perhaps intentional given some of the narrative implications surrounding the true nature of Draconia, but to spoil that here would be a shame for those who love Erik as a character.

The gameplay loop is similarly straightforward, lacking the depth and complexity typically found underneath the surface of a mainline game, poising itself as less of an RPG and more of an exploration game. After a relatively slow opening few hours of tutorials, you’re let loose on the five islands of Draconia with the main objective of hunting for the seven Dragon Stones. You’re given a hint for each one at the outset, but these are cryptic and confusing by nature, and you’ll quickly find out that you’ll collect them over the course of the game as you learn more about their locations.

This means that for those who really want the thrill of hunting treasure with only the slightest hint of direction, you can comb through every nook and cranny of Draconia, looking for similarities between the landscape and clues you’re given. Otherwise, growing your base, collecting more treasure, and expanding your gang will lead to new levels of the Snarl being unearthed. The Snarl is a dungeon within your base of operations that give you a more specific idea as to the location of the Dragon Stones upon clearing combat challenges on each of its floors. It’s a genius way to go about the main treasure hunt at large, and ensures that the player is always in control.

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While everything built around the hunt for the Dragon Stones seems tangential at first, its slowly revealed that every system at play in Dragon Quest Treasures loops back into that core objective. Things like finding treasure in the wild, befriending monsters to bring with you on expeditions, or restoring the Trans-Draconic Railway Company to its former glory all contribute to the larger goal of expanding your faction’s reach. It means that whenever you set out on an expedition, there’s always something for you to do that has a meaningful impact on core objectives, making for an addictive “just one more thing” style of gameplay loop that makes Treasures very hard to put down.

A large part of this also comes down to how easy it is to engage in treasure hunting. When you set out on an expedition from home base, the Treasure Forecast gives you an idea on the likelihood of finding treasure on any given island. The party of monsters you bring with you will detect hidden treasure when you’re close to it, pointing you in the right direction via the compass. Once in the immediate area, you can scan again to get a snapshot of the treasure’s location from each of your monsters, and it’s down to you to find and unearth it. Each monster can only carry a certain amount of treasure, so each expedition is limited by carry capacities.

The longer you spend in the field, though, the more you put yourself at risk both inside and outside of combat. Higher level enemies will not hesitate to make quick work of your team, and Erik falling in battle results in a total loss of all collected treasure. You’ll also eventually be introduced to Rival Gangs, who attack your team and attempt to steal your treasure. There’s plenty of tools you can use to avoid both of these things, but proper party management, and understanding when to head back to base is of paramount importance, and makes for an exciting degree of risk versus reward. The reward? Watching the value of your vault go up as a multi-million dollar treasure gets appraised in complete euphoria.

Curating a party to take with you on an expedition isn’t such a straightforward process either, as each one offers unique stats, elemental affinities, and most importantly – Fortes. Fortes are traversal abilities that make exploring the islands of Draconia much more manageable, from things like springing off of a Slime to hanging off of the bottom of a Dracky. There are more Fortes than there are party slots, though, so thinking about what types of traversal you’ll need to effectively get around is a fun bit of strategy and organization to think about before you depart.

Recruiting new monsters then becomes an equally important part of the game outside of expeditions. As you fight monsters in combat, there’s a chance they’ll be impressed by your abilities and head to your base of operations for recruitment. Providing the necessary materials will have that monster join your barracks as an option to include in your party going forward.

One disappointing aspect of this system is that there’s a decidedly slim roster of monsters to choose from here. While all in all there’s a large number of “unique” monsters, a vast majority of these are recolored variants, with a grand total that amounts to only 16 truly unique monster types. Given the short length of the game, this isn’t a problem that devolves into repetition or monotony, but given Dragon Quest’s expansive roster of creatures, it’s hard not to feel like there should be more here.

Combat itself is also another pain-point due to its overly simplistic and repetitive nature. You only ever have direct control over Mia and Erik, with limited commands to issue to your actual party, that for the most part, fight autonomously and will often get hit by area-of-effect attacks despite your best efforts to pull them away. As Erik or Mia, you have access to a simple dagger combo, the slingshot-like catapult, and Dragon Attacks, meaning there isn’t much flexibility in terms of approaching combat encounters.

You’ll often just hack away at enemies, throw out the occasional screen-wiping Dragon Attack, and fire off some pellets for good measure. There is a bit of choice in the way you can use different pellets to exploit elemental weaknesses, but that’s the full extent of it. Combat is at its best in the few boss encounters Dragon Quest Treasures throws at you, where you also have to consider environmental hazards and more overbearing attacks as you dodge and weave through strikes to find an opening. While these encounters serve up a nice break from general combat, they make up a very small portion of the experience overall.

Between expeditions, you’ll spend time at your home base where you can swap between Erik and Mia as playable characters, explore the Snarl, and engage with numerous facilities. Aside from monster recruiting, you can also buy and craft catapult pellets, create food to use in the field for buffs, and send out parties of unused monsters to search for resources and treasure while you’re out on your own. Perhaps most important, is the vault room, where you can display your most valuable treasure on plinths, showing off the riches you’ve amassed from Draconia. It’s a space that feels lived in and real, and it’s always a joy to return to the quirky monsters that inhabit it.

As a Switch exclusive, Dragon Quest Treasures doesn’t have the same visual allure of Dragon Quest XI, or even Builders for that matter. It’s by no means bad, a lot of the monsters and character models are nicely detailed and brought to life with personality-fuelled animation, but a lot of the environmental design is held back by muddied texture work. Fortunately, performance was incredibly consistent across my roughly 9 hour playthrough, but it certainly would’ve been nice to get further lost in this world with more defined and immersive visual fidelity, especially with how varied each island of Draconia is.

While Dragon Quest Treasures might not reach the same heights as the Builders series, there’s a distinct identity and unique experience on offer here that any fan of Dragon Quest should look into. It retains the same comfort and nostalgia of a mainline entry with an adventure that’s as wholesome as it is simple in premise. It’s a shame that the franchise’s legacy with combat and monster variety isn’t translated here, but Dragon Quest Treasures offers a relaxing and enticing adventure in its own way.

THE NINTENDO SWITCH VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

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After playing through the already-excellent Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for a third time in its newly-refreshed and revitalised form in Crisis Core –Final Fantasy VII– Reunion, one fact rang true throughout – this is a proper remaster. More than just a simple upscale or even a new coat of paint, it’s a carefully reconstructed and retooled product that wonderfully modernises a 14-year-old handheld game without any sacrifices to the core of the original. In short, it’s both the best way to play Crisis Core and a great new release in its own right.

Some context for those who’ve not played Crisis Core before, though: In this prequel set seven years before the events of the original Final Fantasy VII, players take on the role of Zack Fair, a Shinra SOLDIER operative that becomes embroiled in the fallout after his mentor, Angeal, and another SOLDIER 1st Class named Genesis seemingly turn on Shinra for reasons later explained. Set to the backdrop of a war with Wutai and the rapid takeover of Shinra and its clamour for the world’s precious resources, the game’s narrative ultimate leads players to a deeper look into the origins of Final Fantasy VII’s star players from Cloud and Sephiroth to Tifa, Aerith, Yuffie and many more.

Over the course of the 15-30 hour experience on offer, Crisis Core was an occasionally messy but ultimately clever prequel that quickly became the highlight of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII media blowout of the 2000s that also gave us the likes of the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children film. Back then, it was an exclusive to Sony’s PlayStation Portable handheld console, where it impressed with production values beyond what anyone was used to in such a small format and a compelling gameplay loop that included a unique, real-time combat system.

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Fast forward to today, and Final Fantasy VII is seeing something of a renaissance thanks to 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake kicking off a trilogy set to explore the original’s story and setting anew. Where that game was a wholly new take on the early portion of the main Final Fantasy VII game, Crisis Core Reunion is closer to a “remaster” of the PSP prequel, updating the presentation and crucial gameplay elements but leaving the core of the game largely intact. It makes a lot of sense too, where the PS1 original’s old-school JRPG sensibilities were due for an update in the remake, Crisis Core’s action-oriented gameplay and snappy pacing still hold up fairly well.

The biggest and most immediate changes in Crisis Core’s move to modern platforms nearly all stem from the vast gulf in functionality between the PSP’s restrictive button layouts and the controllers available to players on home consoles and PC. The simple addition of camera control with a right stick has a transformative impact on how the game is presented and how Zack handles in the moment, but the team at Square Enix has risen to this new challenge admirably by both ensuring players have stuff to look at outside of the confines of the original perspective and also taking the bulk of its combat gameplay back to the drawing board to rethink how it should work in the new format.

I mentioned a lot of what’s changed in my earlier preview impressions of the game, but the crux of it is that combat in Reunion feels vastly more fast-paced and reactive than in the PSP version of Crisis Core. Gone is the clunky, scrolling menu that bound all of your actions including basic attacks and magic, and now everything is mapped to the multitude of face and shoulder buttons available instead. With full, immediate control of Zack’s actions and a freely-adjustable camera, fights feel much closer to something like Final Fantasy VII Remake or even Kingdom Hearts.

All of the neat little wrinkles and ideas that made combat in Crisis Core unique and interesting the first time are still here, mind, like the compelling and unpredictable DMW system, the way Materia is incorporated into the flow of the action and the need to think hard about your equipment layout when facing down the game’s toughest foes, it’s all just a lot more manageable in the moment. Some new tweaks have been implemented to take advantage of Zack’s enhanced playability as well, such as the ability to cancel powerful foes’ ultimate attacks by pummelling them with strong abilities. In its new form, I’d almost be bold enough to suggest it’s one of my favourite takes on real-time combat that the Final Fantasy franchise has dabbled in thus far, despite a noticeable lack of challenge even on the Hard difficulty setting.

Outside of combat, the general gameplay and structure of Crisis Core is a lot more recognisable and true to the handheld original, although again the addition of full camera control does give everything a different feel. There are times where it’s more noticeable, in fact some of the late-game set pieces and minigames seemingly had to be modified to fit, but for the most part it’s the same game. That means what’s here is a mostly-linear jaunt through 10 distinct chapters where you’ll trek through a few key locales while occasionally being afforded the opportunity to wander sections of Midgar and other places of your own accord and pick up side content. Funnily enough, anyone coming to this game from Final Fantasy VII Remake will feel right at home with how everything is laid out, albeit of a much smaller scope here.

The one quirk of Crisis Core’s that might come out as a bit of a rub with new players is its reliance on bite-sized, self-contained “Missions” to pad out its gameplay offering. There are 300 of the bloody things, and while they were a fantastic way to offer PSP players short bursts of gameplay that they could knock out on a commute or during a bathroom break, they make less sense here. Each one is a barely minutes-long endeavour where you’re dropped into one of only a small selection of environments to navigate, picking up treasures and engaging in combat encounters on the way to take down a predetermined foe. 

These missions aren’t not fun, largely thanks to how good Reunion’s revamped combat is, but they get grindy real quick and they’re unfortunately quite essential to obtaining the game’s most useful items and abilities and keeping Zack levelled up to meet the challenge of the main content. At the end of the day there’s no getting around the fact that they’re a core component of the game and something returning fans will have already accepted, but new players might question what they’ve gotten themselves into after around the 150th mission.

Elsewhere, some very welcome quality-of-life improvements do go a long way to alleviating any frustration or tedium that might arise from the original’s design. All fights can be instantly restarted upon dying, for example, also offering players the opportunity to tweak their character build before going back for a second beating. Throw in auto-saves, increased checkpointing amongst multi-stage encounters and a vastly improved UI that pretty closely resembles Final Fantasy VII Remake’s menus and there’s much to appreciate about how Square Enix has considered where it presents Crisis Core warts-and-all and where it smooths off any rough edges.

Of course another huge selling point for Crisis Core Reunion is the massive upgrade to its visual and audio treatment. Built from the ground-up in Unreal Engine 4, it’s pretty well night-and-day compared to the PSP version, with model, texture and effect work that feels on par with the gorgeous Final Fantasy VII Remake. There are definitely some obvious holdovers from its origins, environments for example are packed with tons more detail but they’re still built on the same compact, basic layouts. Likewise character models are gorgeously-rendered with sharp texture work and new geometry but they’re placed on the existing rigs which means they animate like it’s still 2008, which can be awkward at times.

It’s still an enormous glow-up overall though, all of the new assets and effects combined with the razor-sharp resolutions and fluid performance afforded by new platforms make it an impressively new-feeling iteration that goes well beyond what’s expected from a modern remaster. It doesn’t stop at in-game visuals either, with Square Enix using a combination of AI-upscaled and edited original CG animations and some completely new content (gorgeous new summon sequences being a great example) to tie everything together.

There’s also the small matter of the game’s voice work which, shockingly, has been completely redone with the voice cast updated to match the Remake more closely and voice acting added to all of the previously text-only dialogue. It’s a pretty big deal and another stark example of just how much work has gone into updating Crisis Core beyond the expected new bells and whistles. It’s seriously impressive stuff, and the new cast does a great job overall, especially when it comes to characters who had zero voiced lines the first time around. What’s more, Crisis Core’s original composer, Takeharu Ishimoto, is back with brand-new arrangements, making Reunion just as much an updated aural experience as a visual and mechanical one.

To be frank, assessing this “remaster” as a whole is a difficult task, as anyone’s enjoyment of it will largely come down to what Crisis Core means to them. Devout fans who played it on PSP are going to see an old favourite in an entirely new light through well-considered updates designed to delight returning players, but those coming into it having missed the game in 2008 or entering fresh off of Final Fantasy VII Remake may find it a jarring transition. That said, critiquing it purely on the merits of the work done to enhance the base game it’s a stellar effort and a commendable commitment to producing something worthy of Final Fantasy VII fans’ love for this world and its characters.

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Although they’re not short of wins with the terrific Spider-Man games, after the underwhelming response to ensemble-led misfire that was Marvel’s Avengers, it feels as though Marvel Games would be hungry for a win in the guise of a big, exciting team-up. On paper, Firaxis is the studio you’d put in charge of bringing a turn-based strategy flavour to one of the comic giant’s many properties. However, as fascinating a brood as the Midnight Suns are, this game’s strongest features are totally eclipsed by plenty of jank, a lot of cringy and uninteresting hangouts at home base, and presentation that doesn’t feel even remotely current.

The game’s most interesting ideas posited revolve around the turbulent peace treaty between the sides of might and magic in the Avengers and the Midnight Suns as they band together under one roof to put a stop to Lilith. As her reanimated progeny, “Hunter”—an imaginative name and occupation double—you’ll be recruited by the group to unlock the dormant memories that helped you fall mother dearest the first time around. I think it’s the attempt to do so much that sees Midnight Suns come up short in telling a focused, engaging story front-to-back. The relationships between the game’s several characters tie it all together, but there’s no belief behind any of them. The game might be crammed full of wall-to-wall heroes and villains and yet a meaningful arc never really emerges.

Midnight Suns is a toxic marriage between two ideas that, in theory, should work. Firaxis’ ability to iterate on their distinguished brand of turn-based strategy, through the implementation of free movement and a deck system, is undeniable and clearly is this particular game’s strength. But as with their last game, XCOM: Chimera Squad, their want to place the interpersonal ties on equal footing comes up short as pretty much any second spent on the Abbey grounds—which serves as both Hunter’s once resting place and the base of operations for the mission to take down Lilith—feels like a waste of time.

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Although the combat bonuses granted can be handy, building these relationships up through inane hangouts and jaw sessions is painfully lifeless. With dialogue and line delivery fit for a ham sandwich, I dreaded any moments of forced conversation.

Just as I think there are simply too many awkward pleasantries shared in the Abbey’s halls, I feel like Midnight Suns lobs a few too many ideas into the mix as far as upgrading your heroes goes. A few of the ideas, including rolling two identical cards into a souped up “+” variant and visiting Tony’s forge, work for me, though I fast gave up on sending heroes out on solo ops and other seemingly inconsequential things. 

Thankfully, the meat and bones of Midnight Suns’ squad-based strategic combat feels like Firaxis firing on all cylinders. Although I miss the easily quantifiable rules of grid-based movement, there’s certainly a cinematic feel to having the likes of Captain America, Captain Marvel, or Blade freely moving around the play space. Managing your heroism level, which can tick up or down based on cards played, is certainly the most strategic part of the fray, even it feels a bit random given the unpredictable nature of the draw. Of course, on the middling difficulty I played on, Midnight Suns is rather forgiving—when a character is downed in combat, you’re likely to be dealt a revive card, so the fall of the cards can fit the circumstance you’re in. 

Despite there not being a heap of variety within Hydra’s ranks, there’s enough going on per fight that you’ll need to keep your wits about you. After a while, already toppled bosses can pop up to mix things up and turn fairly standard battles into pressure cookers. The boss fights themselves have a big feel and are this game at its most “Marvel”. 

I feel like Midnight Suns’ presentation is several rungs below what should have been expected, and it’s even well below Marvel’s Avengers which, despite its undoubtedly larger budget, is still years older now. To say Midnight Suns is hamstrung graphically by its support of older tech is an understatement, which is a shame because its art direction isn’t bad. There are unfortunate masked loads like passing through a portal in Limbo which is every time backed up with a literal loading screen, it stutters, and on Steam Deck—which in fairness isn’t an optimised platform yet—it crashes after nearly every operation. The transitions between Hunter’s sleeping and waking existence are cumbersome and clunky, it feels as though the entire game is at times a stitched together Frankenstein’s monster. 

Outside of the aforementioned cringe line delivery pretty much across the board, Midnight Suns has pretty great sound design and an original score that’s suitably epic. 

Marvel’s Midnight Suns feels like proof that, at some point, Firaxis will perfect this formula they’re going for. Their handle for turn-based combat is top notch, it’s just all of the role-playing lite elements that ultimately hampers the experience. It has its share of issues but Midnight Suns is an easy enough recommendation for both strategy enthusiasts and those swept up by the Marvel machine. 

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While playing Pokémon games as a kid was pure and unadulterated bliss, there was always a part of me that longed for a Pokémon game that conveyed the same sense of scale and adventure as the anime. More than 10 years on from the days of sinking hours into Pokémon Pearl after school, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet look to break the mold of a traditional mainline Pokémon title.

While other recent entries such as Sun and Moon have sought to rework the long-established framework of the gym challenge, Scarlet and Violet make much more substantial changes to the broader foundations of Pokémon. Despite some stumbles on the path to a more modern and refined Pokémon formula, Scarlet and Violet offer a tantalizing look into the future of Pokémon, and how this series can go so much further when letting go of its legacy.

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Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are set in the Paldea Region, primarily inspired by the Iberian Peninsula, specifically countries like Spain and Portugal. In a twist on the typical world setup, you play as a student freshly enrolled at Naranja (Scarlet) or Uva (Violet) Academy, coincidentally around the time that the Academy’s annual Treasure Hunt takes place. After a brief introductory segment, you’re thrust into the open world of Paldea with one goal in mind – to find your treasure. What entails is a somewhat non-linear romp through three unique narratives; Victory Road, Starfall Street, and Path of Legends.

It goes without saying that this is a structure that’s in stark contrast with its predecessors. Where previous entries had carefully curated linear paths to follow, Scarlet and Violet let you loose on all that Paldea has to offer, making for an unprecedented freedom not found in other Pokémon games. Each of the three narratives have their own cast of characters, ideas, and themes at play, and the ability to – mostly – bounce between them as you see fit does wonders for pacing and variation in gameplay.

While Victory Road is a standard fare gym challenge, Starfall Street and Path of Legends are what stuck with me the most after the credits rolled. Without getting into spoiler territory, these narratives explore aspects of the Pokémon world not previously tapped into by other games, with Starfall Street focusing on the impact bullying has on educational communities, while Path of Legends leans into the idea of mortality in Pokémon, and how they’re ultimately just as vulnerable as any other living creature. Although I wouldn’t say either of these stories are profoundly deep or head scratching in their messages and meanings, I did find myself invested enough in their characters and narrative developments to progress them whenever the opportunity arose.

The way you move between each of these narratives is through Koraidon or Miraidon, depending on your game version. The new flagship legendary Pokémon are mountable, similar to the rideable Pokémon found in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. As you progress through the game, new traversal abilities are unlocked, allowing you to more seamlessly access hard to reach areas of Paldea and streamlining traversal further. It’s a fun idea that fits the theme of adventure and slots into the shift to open-world quite nicely.

Despite fundamentally reworked foundations in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the core appeal of catching cute critters to build out your team as you venture through unknown lands is here in full-force. The roster of new monsters is a wildly varied bag of interesting type combinations and striking new designs, both good and bad. The good far outweighs the bad, though, and some of the highs are exceptionally high, with the likes of Armarouge and Ceruledge standing out in particular. One weird omission is that the ability to catch these critters like you could in Pokémon Legends: Arceus is nowhere to be found, returning to the comparatively archaic and sluggish ways of battling a Pokémon in order to catch it.

Once you pick your starter Pokémon from the new trio of Quaxly, Sprigatito, and Fuecoco, you’ll set off into the Paldea Region in search of your very own treasure. Victory Road primarily functions as a typical gym challenge from previous games, though the offering feels bare-bones in comparison. Each gym requires you to complete a gym test before challenging the gym leader, and while they’re inoffensive and simple in nature, they pale in comparison to the gym challenges of old. Actual fights with gym leaders are appropriately atmospheric, though, with crowds gathering around to watch your match unfold as the music swells up to grand heights.

Path of Legends on the other hand sees you helping fellow student Arven hunt down Herba Mystica and the abnormally sized Titan Pokémon that guard them. These encounters boil down to tracking down a Titan Pokémon within any given area, and battling it with Arven to force it to retreat. Instead of typical wild encounters, these battles are closer to the likes of a boss fight, as each Titan Pokémon has buffed up stats and health pools, and while they’re simple in nature, they offer a bit of spectacle and variation in comparison to typical encounters.

Starfall Street is by far the most unique storyline in the context of gameplay, as you attempt to dismantle a rebellious group of students known as Team Star. You’ll storm different Team Star bases across Paldea and send out your Pokémon to auto battle Team Stars own. Each one culminates in a battle with the base leader that’s most comparable to battling a gym leader. Again, these bases are straightforward but serve as a great way to break up pacing and open-world exploration.

Although you can technically battle any of the 5 Titans, 8 Gyms, and 5 Starfall bases in any order, fixed levels for each encounter means that there is a degree of linearity and structure to the order in which you complete them. This wouldn’t be such an issue if the difficulty curve didn’t feel so uneven as a result. There were multiple occasions where I encountered gyms and Titan Pokémon that I wanted to engage with, but couldn’t because of level differences. Getting on the right track is as simple as heading to the Pokémon Center and asking for advice on where to go next, but true non-linearity isn’t here as expected, and that’s disappointing.

One new inclusion that somewhat remedies this issue is the aforementioned auto-battle feature, where you can send out Pokémon to battle autonomously while you explore your surroundings. While I initially shrugged this mechanic off outside of mandatory use, it quickly became my main method to grind experience points and level up my Pokémon. It’s a simple addition that takes out a lot of the mundanity and grinding that you’d otherwise have to go through to meet certain challenges.

It also feeds into the excellent new TM Crafting system where you can create TMs using materials obtained from the overworld. The ability to create new TMs if you use one is a safety net that allows you to experiment with moves on Pokémon you typically wouldn’t without having to worry about wasting the TM. You also have the ability to remember any move your Pokémon has previously learnt, taking uncertainty out of the equation when it comes to building out your team.

If there’s one aspect of Pokémon games that have remained almost entirely unaltered, it’s the core battle system, and much the same can be said for Scarlet and Violet. More iterative than it is innovative, Scarlet and Violet opt to play it safe by adding a bevy of new moves that feel suitably useful in the broader scope of Pokémon moves, as well as the ability to Terastallize Pokémon in battle. Terastallization is a phenomenon only found in Paldea where Pokémon are crystalized in a gem-like casing, shifting their type to whatever their Tera type is, and boosting the power of that types respective moves.

While I was initially led to believe that Terastallization is a one-stop shop for a quick power boost, I quickly realized otherwise. Having Pokémon with Tera types that differ to their base types provides a level of strategy and thought that hasn’t been present in these kind of mechanics since X and Y’s Mega Evolution. The visual designs leave a lot to be desired, and the room for strategic use of Terastallizing within the main story is pretty slim, it’s clear that this is a mechanic that’s going to fundamentally shift how Pokémon is played at a competitive level.

Between dealing with Gyms, Titan Pokémon, and Team Star, you can also partake in trainer battles, and Tera Raids within the open-world. One key difference with trainer battles is that they have to be triggered by the player, making for more flexible and risk-free exploration especially if you’re running low on healing items as you race towards the next Pokémon Centre. Tera Raids are effectively Max Raid Battles from Sword and Shield, with the promise of Pokémon with unique Tera types that you typically wouldn’t find in the wild. These are quite the visual spectacle and I suspect undertaking high level Tera Raids will be very alluring for some in the post-game. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to try this or cooperative play during the review window, as online services were disabled.

Exploring Paldea itself is enticing in the sense you never know what Pokémon might be waiting for you around the corner, and there are a few mysteries to be solved during your journeys. Aside from this, though, it feels like something of an afterthought, lacking in any sort meaningful content to make you wonder about what might come next. The majority of the towns of Paldea are similarly underwhelming, as only a few have palpable identities and a sense of place within the world. It’s by no means bad, but these towns didn’t invoke any emotional response outside of a select few.

One area Pokémon has consistently underdelivered in since Sword and Shield (bar remakes), is in their presentation, visual fidelity, and performance. Unfortunately, Scarlet and Violet don’t entirely buck the trend, despite some small improvements. For starters, interior environments are vastly improved, and character models in general are more detailed and eye-catching. Environments are only marginally better than what was offered in previous entries, and the performance simply isn’t consistent enough to justify it, with regular slow-down and frame drops interrupting the experience. While there’s no doubt that the Switch is aging hardware, it’s painful to see Pokémon struggle with this yet again, while other titles manage to achieve much more with the same specs.

The post Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Review – A Tantalising Lens Into The Future appeared first on Press Start.

How do you even begin to talk about a game like Goat Simulator 3? I could sit here and write all the crazy things that happened to my Goat and me during my time with it, but that would spoil so much. Despite having finished it and seeing the credits roll, I can’t tell you what the game is about. But while the concept undoubtedly baffles my old man brain, there is one thing I do know about Goat Simulator 3. It’s really stupid but really fun. And isn’t that enough?

Despite the title, Goat Simulator 3 is the second mainline Goat Simulator game. Setting the tone for the game’s humour, creative director Santiago Ferrero reckons it was named that because “God of War: Ragnarok was already taken”. Putting that unfortunate situation aside, Goat Simulator 3 does a fantastic job of building upon the foundations of the first game. As you’d expect, you play as a goat. As you might not expect, you’re thrown into the world on the back of a trailer in a sequence that mimics the opening to Skyrim. So yeah, Goat Simulator 3 is trying to be funny.

This time, your playground is San Angora, which is a bit different from the previous game. It’s bigger, though not as big as the open worlds most players would be accustomed to today. Goat Simulator 3 makes up for this with the sheer density of the map. It’s a real playground and a joy to mess around in. The general goal of the game is to wreak havoc to see how it plays out. After all, a lot of the original game’s notoriety came from the virality of the moments. Goat Simulator 3 is bound to see the same type of attention.

But there’s an admirable effort here to try and make Goat Simulator 3 more of a game with some structure. The open world is still there to play around in, but San Angora is peppered with activities called “Events” to complete. Each of them is usually a joke – help a Swedish person build some flatpacked furniture, kick some tree-hugging hippies off trees to help them grow, play the imperial march on church bells. There’s a nice variety of activities to do here that, more often than not, have funny punchlines.

But there are, of course, some moments where it can get a little bit cringe, though I’d be lying if I didn’t say that Goat Simulator 3 made me laugh on more than one occasion. To tell you everything I enjoyed about this game would be neglectful and irresponsible – the absurdity of these situations is in and of itself funny. But just know that no matter what type of gamer you are, whether you played Wolfenstein to Counter-Strike to Fortnite, Goat Simulator 3 no doubt does a good job at playing to a wide audience.

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Besides events, there are hundreds of “Instincts” to complete, too, though these aren’t mandatory to unlock anything or finish the story. Instead, completing them unlocks currency that can be exchanged for gear. Many of these Instincts feel closer to what was on offer in the first game – hit ten people with a specific item or drive a certain distance in a particular vehicle. They’re menial tasks and busy work. But they help make Goat Simulator 3 feel more fleshed out as a game.

Continuing this theme, Goat Simulator 3 rewards completion of Events with rankings that determine how high up in the Illuminati you are. Each rank you’re in expands your home base, similar to the castle from the first game. Finishing all the grades leads to the game’s final “boss” battle. I really appreciate the intention to better flesh out Goat Simulator 3 and give it more structure, but it doesn’t quite do as much with the concept as it could.

For one, I can’t help but feel that Goat Simulator 3 has become the thing that it’s satirising at points. The structure is like any open-world game of the last decade. Climb some towers, reveal some activities, complete some checklists and fill some progress meters to do it all again. Thankfully, Goat Simulator 3’s ridiculous physics and gameplay keep the game fun even if it doesn’t do everything it sets out to.

So much of Goat Simulator 3 is centered around unlocking gear, and for a good reason. So much of the gear can make your Goat fabulous and change form completely. Eventually, you can play as a giraffe, human, or shark. So much of the gear also comes with unique abilities designed to facilitate your goal of wreaking havoc and causing chaos. Rocket boots, laser beams, pizza launchers, magic beanstalk seeds; you name it, it’s probably in Goat Simulator 3 as a wearable. While I loved the huge slew of equipment and abilities, I often wished they were utilised more in the puzzles during the events.

Besides Events and Instincts, Goat Simulator 3 also features many minigames to jump into with friends. Accessible from the map, each of them allows up to four goats to battle it out in all kinds of precarious situations. Soccer, king of the hill, racing, demolition derbies. There’s a lot to do here, and the physics and gameplay upon which Goat Simulator 3 is built only make each of them funnier than it has any right to be.

More impressively, Goat Simulator 3 also supports both online and split-screen multiplayer. Online is missing the oft-included crossplay options, but including split-screen is a fantastic touch. While doing so drops the framerate down to an (apparently controversial) thirty frames per second, it was pretty impressive to see how much crazy shit I and three friends could conjure up without the game crashing. Splitscreen is oft forgotten as games have grown more complex, but for Goat Simulator 3 to both have a mode and one that works is to be commended.

So while you’ll be done with Goat Simulator 3’s simplistic story mode in about six or so hours, everything that remains after the credits have finished rolling make it stand out. A dense and fun open playground to mess around in with hundreds of items. With friends, either online or off, the sheer stupidity and chaotic nature of everything is bound to make you smile. And isn’t that what games should be about?

THE XBOX SERIES X VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

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I can’t help but feel for Sonic Frontiers. At a glance, it’s almost too easily categorised as Sonic Team’s attempt at Breath of the Wild, a comparison point the team has been quite doggedly avoiding during preview coverage of the game. This is, partly, kind of absurd given how obvious the comparison point is. Sonic Frontiers plops the titular blue blur into large, open-zone environments in which ancient technology has broken down and nature has largely returned to claim its land. Mysteries abound, friends must be rescued and existential questions answered. But Sonic Frontiers is so much more than its surface. It’s deeply strange, often throwing conflicting ideas at the player at breakneck speed, and ultimately not entirely successful. But it makes a bold and earnest attempt at the genre and despite losing a few rings along the way, still clears a comfortable A grade.

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Sonic Frontiers sees Sonic and friends thrust into one of the series’ more touching tales. Eggman has meddled with forces far greater than even his genius and inadvertently trapped himself, and Sonic’s best mates, in a digital realm known as Cyber Space. Here, memories are warped by Godly AI processing power and rendered into explorable manifestations (in this case old Sonic levels and subtext-packed cutscenes). With the Chaos Emeralds and his loveable roster of friends and foes trapped on Starfall Islands, Sonic must venture forth into the unknown and explore a series of loosely connected open-zones, solving puzzles, completing levels and generally being a snarky little hero.

These islands arguably serve as Sonic Frontiers’ biggest formula shift since the series’ jump to 3D back in the late 90s. Massive in scale and crammed full of small activities to complete, these spaces are borderline seamless playgrounds designed to push Sonic’s speed and your platforming skills to new limits. Equipped with the divisive Boost mechanic on the right trigger, Sonic is effectively encouraged to tear arse through the five available islands, utilising a simple but engaging loop of momentum, combat and exploration geared toward constantly rewarding the player. To complement the speed of the Boost, Sonic is also able to create whimsical trails of light with the new Cyloop ability that has you hold down a button and draw a loop in any shape you can muster. This is often used to activate puzzles, lower enemy defences or uncover rings and other useful items.

The five islands are an amalgamation of gameplay ideas that individually function quite well but collectively can wear a little thin. There is great fun to be had in simple exploration with approachable momentum-based platforming and rail building for convenient traversal ala Death Stranding. The overworld is littered with springs, platforms and rails to bounce between, offering some form of collectable as a reward for the thirty or so seconds it might take you to complete them. It all works, managing to blend fixed and free camera work in a split second and realising the best of Sonic’s movement. Those collectable rewards are also directly impactful of your progression, as Sonic will need to gather up a surprising number of resources to move the story forward and unlock new things to do.

Cyber Space levels, the game’s small but gorgeously rendered line-up of classic Sonic platforming levels, need to be unlocked using gears that you can nab from harder combat encounters. These levels are all themed around old-school Sonic aesthetics and while not the biggest roster of influences has been drawn from, what’s here is some of the most fun you can have in Sonic Frontiers. Depending on how well you complete each level you’ll be rewarded with keys (one for finishing, S rank time, red coin collection and ring numbers) which are in turn used to unlock Chaos Emerald vaults.

There are also friendship tokens that are given liberally and used to unlock cutscenes with your mates, and some fishing coins you should absolutely keep an eye out for. The game’s fishing economy is wonderfully broken, allowing you to effectively buy your way through an island if you wish, all while chilling with Big and catching random junk as a goof. Along with the skill points to earn, attack and defence tokens to uncover, and the admittedly wonderful Kocos to collect, Sonic Frontiers can often feel a bit much. The tone of the open-zone is so deliberately serene and begs a flowstate from the player but the game’s overarching systems can harsh the vibe as it were, even if they’re relatively harmless individually.

As Sonic Frontiers begins to expand its adventure and you push from five to ten to the roughly twenty or so hours it takes for a first pass, these systems lose some shine. The back end of the game increasingly wrestles camera control away from you in unforgiving platforming sections while the level design itself begins to constrict your speed potential, effectively snuffing out a lot of the fun. There is also the game’s severe pop-in problem that can sometimes snap a new rail into existence mere meters away from you. The speed at which Sonic moves through these environments means I can empathise with the difficulty of rendering it all at once but when you need to be making split-second directional choices, it can be immensely frustrating to not know what might pop in next.

Given the shift to freestyle adventuring, Sonic is also forced to engage in combat more directly than ever before. Sonic Frontiers certainly understands the need for style and flair, often making you feel like a badarse with its flurry of hyper-speed, vibrant animations as Sonic lobs energy balls and booms at foes. Better still that all of this can be achieved in a remarkably approachable way, whether actively through basic button combinations or passively through the auto-skill ability you can toggle on and off once unlocked. Like exploration, combat just feels good to use, and just like exploration, it can wear thin over the game’s run.   

You’ll be unlocking high-level skills quite late in the game, though these are just additional button combinations to add to your roster, combat itself only fundamentally evolves based on what you’re fighting. Sonic Frontiers’ roster of robotic foes is largely a delight, a hobbled-together assortment of vaguely humanoid/animal creatures that require slightly different approaches to defeat without incident. The islands are also home to several larger-scale fights that utilise platforming and tighter timing to take down, often serving as a nice precursor to the game’s exceptionally cool major boss fights, the Titans.

Sonic Frontier’s Titan bosses are a standout of the game and are best experienced firsthand for a multitude of reasons. The first of these fights, Giganto, has been featured in marketing so I’m at least comfortable enough to talk about this walking anime cutscene of a monster. The Titans tower over the islands, using that scale to implement platforming segments before and sometimes during moment-to-moment, intensely cinematic combat sequences. All of this towering scale kicks off with unique, pop-rock tracks that bellow earnest lyrics about hope and new horizons while you effectively fight mecha-God. It rules so incredibly hard and I’m glad we have creators in the AAA space willing to be this dorky.

It’s a sense of style the rest of the game largely carries too, with a vibrant, if sensible, art direction and a general understanding of the power of going really fast through well lit-environments. The islands themselves aren’t anywhere near as varied as I would have liked though, with the initial greenery of Kronos dominating the palette for much. Ares was my favourite play space, with its harsh topography and small oasis pockets to discover in the arid deserts, but Chaos’ volcanic slopes and fragmented land mass left me a little cold. The final two islands, one of which is more of a gimmick, do lean back into forestation but the last one is a wonderful spot that made me wistful to be wrapping up.

Sonic Frontiers presents its story in a rather odd way though, which is especially sad given that the narrative beats and character interactions are all fairly compelling and fun. In an attempt to harness the power of the Chaos Emeralds, Eggman has made himself a daughter in the form of an AI project named Sage. As Sonic races against time to save his trapped friends, Sage will frequently show up to observe or interact with the gang and their impact on her is not inconsiderable. It’s a simple tale but ends with surprising weight, made all the more impactful by the game’s background narrative that doesn’t shy away from some pretty heavy stuff.

The game’s final moments had me cheering a little, and the cut to credits is shockingly poignant (even with the mid and post-credits scenes evening out the tone a little). The moment-to-moment writing is clumsily pronounced but again in an endearing way—Sage’s ruminations on what a “real” family is, Knuckles lamenting his life of service, Amy pondering love and Tails fighting imposter syndrome. The only one without a clear arc is Sonic but he works as a mirror to the cast in many ways and is more of an observer to the game’s true story. Which is all wonderful and good, but pacing issues and obfuscation dull its best qualities. There are some great Sonic lore elements at play here but you wouldn’t know it from what the main story gives you alone, instead, you’ll need to dive into menus and memos to find out.  

All of these disparate systems and uneven feelings can’t fully derail this ride though and despite my many small grievances, I still look back fondly on my time with Sonic Frontiers. Its open-world adolescence is awkward, yes, but endearingly so— you can feel how badly this game wants to impress and that carries it far further than I imagined it could. Its moment to moment gameplay remains fun from start to finish and while the middle section slumps somewhat, it pulls up just in time to deliver a gorgeous and absurd final act. At some point in the story Sage observes Sonic trying to help his friends and shakes her head, “He never stops. Clarification, he never gives up”. And yeah, Sonic Frontiers stumbles often, but just like its titular hero, it never gives up.

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It was a bit touch and go for Bayonetta, wasn’t it? Not only was there a considerable wait between announcement and release, but Platinum had a slate of games that weren’t up to their usual standard in that time. Then, the first trailers hit, and I wasn’t feeling it. Something was off. But now, five years since its reveal, and in the time that Babylon’s Fall both was revealed and announced to be shut down, Bayonetta 3 is finally here. And while many argue PlatinumGames are a shell of their former self, Bayonetta 3 firmly cements itself as one of Platinum’s best.

Bayonetta 3 follows the titular witch once more as she battles a new threat. Where you fought angels and demons in the previous two games, the danger in Bayonetta 3 is human-made. Calling themselves the Homunculi, they’re bioweapons led by a shadowy figure who only calls himself Singularity. Even worse, Singularity doesn’t just want to destroy the world that Bayonetta inhabits but the other worlds that exist at the same time. That’s right, Bayonetta 3 is doing the multiverse schtick. But it’s done so well that I can’t be mad at how cliché it is.

I’ve never been one for the story of the Bayonetta games, but Bayonetta 3 has the most engaging story of the three so far. Both the origin of the new enemies and newcomer Viola are endearing, while the sheer excitement of which multiverse Bayonetta you’ll see next keeps the game engaging. It’s all still nonsense, mind you. The reveals that are presented as ground-breaking revelations are often seen coming from a mile away. However, having an exciting and engaging story in a game like this is still lovely.

 Of course, Bayonetta 3 is an action game through and through, and it delivers in spades. It continues to carry the design philosophy of the previous games – namely having both a high skill ceiling with a low skill floor – but makes a few changes to the formula to up the action factor even more. After Devil May Cry 5, I wasn’t sure a game could ever top that in terms of pure and ridiculous action. But Bayonetta 3 does a pretty good job, even if it’s an entirely different beast of a game.

For one, the way Bayonetta uses weapons has changed. No longer can you equip weapons to her legs or arms independently. Instead, you’ll be equipping weapons to fight with in addition to demons to summon. More on the demons later – but each weapon is imbued with the spirit of said demon. This allows Bayonetta to transform into said demon to pull off flashy attacks and finishers. This is what the game calls the Demon Masquerade abilities. Their flashiness and bombastic nature perfectly matches the vibe of the other Bayonetta staples you’ve come to know and love – like Wicked Weaves, Torture Attacks and of course, the almighty Climax.

But the more considerable change with Bayonetta 3 is using infernal demons during combat rather than as flashy finishers. For most of the game, a shoulder button can be held that summons a demon which can then be commanded to carry out attacks. While these demons don’t have the same breadth of abilities as Bayonetta herself, they all have unique movesets that can serve different purposes in battle. Some are harder hitting and can shatter armour, while others can buff or debuff enemies too. The catch is that, for most of the game, Bayonetta can’t move while she commands these demons. So you can either hold the summon button and input commands or tap the button at specific points of a combo to summon the demon in for a quick attack.

This is a great new system, and one that I was worried would be a little bit gimmicky when I first saw it detailed. But it works genuinely well, and the game’s wide range of very different demons to summon (there are at least nine, possibly more) means that almost anybody can fill out their equipped set of three to suit their style. The only drawback to this approach is that Bayonetta 3 takes place in many wide-open areas with larger enemies, so those who enjoyed battling Jeanne in the first game or other human-like characters in the second might be disappointed. Still, it does make the battles with smaller characters more impactful.

Similarly, Viola is a new playable character who lands much better than Loki from the previous game. She fights solely with a katana, which can be thrown to summon her own demon named Cheshire. Unlike Bayonetta, her demon will fight independently of her when called too. Viola is only playable for about three or so chapters in the entire game, so she’s not too intrusive on the pacing of things, but everytime she rolled around I wasn’t dreading it – but rather appreciated her different, parry-focused gameplay style when compared to Bayonetta.

Of course, the move to more open environments means that there’s still a lot to find in each level. Besides the obvious magic and health upgrades, there are also crystals that, when found, allow you to replay an area of that level with remixed abilities and characters. There are still portals to Niflheim to find too, which offer set challenges that reward upgrades upon completion. But now there are even portals to the worlds of the first two games, summoning those enemies and even music from the original games to provide a quick hit of nostalgia. When you’re done with the game’s fifteen-hour story, there’s still a lot to do and see.

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But Bayonetta 3 does feel like it’s been created to be incredibly replayable. The game offers over eighteen different weapons and demons to play around with – so replaying other difficulties never gets as old as you’d expect. Similarly, getting a better score on individual battles on an otherwise terrible run will also update those battles in your ranking for the score-chasing crowd. It sounds like a small thing, but it makes Bayonetta 3 less of a slog to replay, especially if you’re trying to get the best ranking.

Some other missions to play aren’t the standard action game variety, though; these can be of variable quality. The Jeanne side missions are fantastic and never overstay their welcome – they are side-scrolling, stealthy adventures that see Jeanne infiltrating facilities to help out Bayonetta. They’re short and inoffensive. However, some of the other boss battles see you playing as a massive kaiju-like demon against another larger enemy. They’re a fantastic example of how Bayonetta 3 wants to up the stakes, action-wise, but they control so slowly that they’re rarely enjoyable and can be tedius. I understand what they were going for here, but they were never as fun as they could be every time I was subjected to one.

That being said, Bayonetta 3 is immaculately presented on the Switch. It’s arduous to even get games looking this good on hardware that is undoubtedly aging. But Platinum has done its best to get the most out of the Switch both on a technical and artistic level. The presentation, on the whole, scraps the garish Tim Burton-esque user interface for something much more refined and modern. Believe me when I say that scene transitions in Bayonetta 3 are easily the slickest on the Switch. Of course, there are some moments where things slow down, but they’re such batshit insane sequences that I’m sure neither Platinum nor I certainly didn’t care.

The worlds you’ll be exploring are, on a whole, pretty standard, however. Bayonetta 3 takes place in the real world this time around, so many locations are modelled after real-life ones. While I appreciate the necessity to do this from a story perspective, nothing is ever as visually enthralling or exotic as Paradiso or Inferno from the first two games.

The phenomenal soundtrack adds to the game’s very high feel of polish, which once again feels like a step above the previous games. Using the classic swing ballad Moonlight Serenade as the base for most of its music, it’s a fun and upbeat soundtrack to fight to. The boss themes, in particular, really stand out, employing a full orchestra and operatic chanting similar to the music of games like Nier. All in all, it’s a fantastic score.

As we all know, this time, Jennifer Hale replaces Hellena Taylor as Bayonetta’s voice. While it’s slightly different, it’s still just as charming – and her range does wonders for introducing the different Bayonettas found throughout the story.

THE NINTENDO SWITCH VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

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It’s no secret that for a long stretch of the last console generation, Telltale Games and their brand of point-and-click adventure was a real mainstay in the zeitgeist. Of course, their fall is also well documented, but there’s no denying that, at the height of their powers, they told some tremendous stories that put player choice—or at least the illusion of it—at the heart of the experience. Tales from the Borderlands, through it all, reigned supreme as my favourite IP they tackled, and now Gearbox Quebec has resurrected the brand with a spiritual successor of their own making. 

New Tales from the Borderlands certainly recaptures the essence of what made the original enjoyable, and while it does circumvent some of the pitfalls that ultimately saw Telltale fail, it does careen headfirst into others.

As has always been the case, New Tales from the Borderlands is delivered across five roughly two-hour long episodes. Fortunately, all of the episodes are launching simultaneously, so there will be no poorly-cadenced release schedule for the season. The pacing felt a bit disjointed and for a Borderlands title, the game’s events felt less bombastic than I had expected. The finale, for example, for all of its reflective, existential ruminating, is a drag for much of its runtime. It has considerable heart and does manage to close out some character arcs in a satisfying manner, but it ultimately fell a bit short of the heights the original hit. 

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The lure of these ‘choose your own adventure’ games is the lure to return and explore the many narrative permutations but that lure simply isn’t there for me with New Tales. 

The three leads—Anu, her brother Octavio, and ‘fro yo’ slinger Fran—build up a fun camaraderie throughout the season, although I found their in-jokes to be very hit or miss. Louie, Octavio’s assassination bot of choice, is very much a tangential character and gets sidelined far too often. He’s absolutely the funniest part of New Tales, and never has a running gag about learning people’s full names dished up repeated yucks.

One thing New Tales does well is tie itself back to the franchise at large. Showing a small slice of life on Promethea, a slumly planet introduced in the series’ third mainline instalment, it really ramps up the conflict between Atlas and Tediore. Somehow, it feels like the most grounded Borderlands game of the lot, but it certainly has its moments of absurdity. 

Obviously, New Tales serves as Gearbox Quebec’s first venture into the genre Telltale lived and died by. Despite the opportunity to analyse where it stopped working for them and really carve out a unique interpretation on the well exhausted ideas we’re so used to, New Tales feels far too familiar and doesn’t manage to innovate at all on the genre’s tired concepts.

As you’d expect, the gameplay loop in New Tales is a balance of dialogue-heavy conversational pieces and free-roam areas where you’re able to explore, take in the environmental storytelling before arriving at the objective to push things along. I can’t fault the game’s ability to manufacture tension through the dialogue trees, throwing in a mix of scarily brief opportunities to respond and quick-time events, but the free-roam portions felt a bit like filler. They’re not exactly dense for lore to uncover, there’s a shit load of inexplicably ‘hidden’ cash money haphazardly stored in crates throughout the world, and the collectible Vaultlander figurines—despite being another very enjoyable recurring joke—weren’t exactly off the beaten path and felt like cheap busywork. Where settlements in Telltale’s The Walking Dead felt lived in and had lore in most corners, it doesn’t feel as though the same consideration went into the open areas of New Tales. 

I did truly admire the team’s commitment to accessibility, which should be a standard and not something that requires lauding but until that’s the case I’ll continue to pay credit where it’s due. They’ve provided a wealth of options to make things more enjoyable for those who might struggle with quick-time events and quick-reflex inputs. 

New Tales absolutely nails the Borderlands aesthetic with the cel-shaded world, and the characters that inhabit it, standing out as one of the game’s real highlights. The presentation, as a whole, is pretty great. Each episode opens with an opening credits montage set to a playlist of banger rock tunes. It felt like a bit of a spiritual extension of that infamous first Borderlands trailer set to Cage the Elephant. One thing I’m thankful for is how well it runs. Obviously, it isn’t being funnelled through the Telltale engine—which got flogged to within an inch of its life for a generation without much iteration—but for it to hold a solid frame rate, render properly, and have swift loading times is a refreshing marvel in its own right.

Although New Tales does some things right, I can’t help but see it as a missed opportunity to really take the bull by the horns and create something that feels unique in this space. Instead, New Tales feels dated and of a time that’s now far gone. 

I expect fans will still glean a few belly laughs from it and ultimately rally around Louie, who absolutely needs his own spin-off.

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When we talk about sequels in games, there’s often an expectation to do more of the same, but better and with a decent amount of innovation or improvements. Players want to play what they loved to begin with, expanded with new ideas, mechanics, and system that broaden the overall scope of the original appeal. From this perspective, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope had its work cut out for it after Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle surprised everyone when it released in 2017 with remarkably robust turn-based combat, enthralling strategy, and a seemingly weird fusion of two worlds that was ultimately endearing and charming.

After around 25 hours with Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, it’s clear to me that Ubisoft Milan and Ubisoft Paris didn’t want to just make a sequel, they wanted to create a game that leaves an indelible mark on the genre, one that inspires others to follow in its footsteps. This is a markedly different game from its predecessor, but still retains that core appeal, where instead of following in the footsteps of something like XCOM, it forges its own path to deliver something wholly original and endlessly captivating.

Sometime after the events of Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, a peaceful day in the Mushroom Kingdom is suddenly interrupted by a malevolent entity known as Cursa. Cursa’s galactic conquest is fueled by the desire to consume the energy of what are known as Sparks, an unexpected fusion between Lumas and Rabbids, and she plans to destroy all who dare to stand in her way. To save the galaxy from Cursa’s influence, the heroes of the Mushroom Kingdom team up with the Rabbids once again and set out on a journey to free those within Cursa’s grasp.

If Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle tells a story similar to that of a standard Mario game, Sparks of Hope is most comparable to the galaxy games. As you progress through the story, you’ll visit five unique planets that have all been twisted by Cursa’s power, and solving each of their plights is key to moving closer to Cursa, and saving the Sparks.

While it’s another charming adventure that’s sold by expressive and entertaining cutscenes, it falls a little short of its predecessor because of the strange decision to have Rabbids talk. It’s a change that I couldn’t warm up to after all these years, one that’s in direct contrast with the core appeal of the Rabbids. What’s even more jarring is that they still act like Rabbids, that is to say crazy and unhinged, making it even harder to get around this change. It by no means ruins the experience, and is still an enjoyable narrative to watch unfold, it just loses a little bit of the appeal in the process.

Where Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope is most different, though is in its gameplay systems, stepping into more of a turn-based/real-time hybrid combat system with an emphasis on movement and build-crafting. Each turn is comprised of Movement, Free Actions, and Action Point Abilities, and making the most of all these things in any given combat encounter is pivotal to victory.

Movement boils down to moving within your character’s movement range, making use of dash attacks, and using Team Jumps to reach advantageous positions against the enemy. Gone is the restrictive grid based system of old, allowing for more free-flowing mobility to get into position for other abilities. Action Point Abilities refer to the abilities like weapon attacks, use Hero/Spark Powers and consume items, with each one consuming one of two action points.

The stuff that makes its return from Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is relatively unchanged here, and that’s because its Hero Powers and Spark Powers that change up the way you engage the enemy. Hero Powers are character-specific abilities that inform their playstyle and how you might build them. Mario’s, for example, is called Hero Sight, effectively functioning as an Overwatch ability, where he’ll shoot any enemy who moves within his line of sight, whereas Peach’s Hero Power shields nearby allies from all damage for a number of hits on the next turn. There’s a whopping nine playable heroes to choose from in your battle line-up of three, so there’s plenty of options to mix and match here.

Sparks, on the other hand, behave similarly but can be equipped and moved between heroes as you see fit. Some of them might enhance weapon attacks with an elemental effect, while others might provide some sort of passive benefit like damage reduction or life-steal. Sparks play a pivotal role in triggering Super Effects, which are essentially status ailments that are inflicted on an enemy when you exploit their weakness. Each hero can eventually have two Sparks equipped during battle, so there’s no shortage of options during each turn. You can also spend Star Bits to level up Sparks, increasing the potency of their active and passive skills.

On top of that, each character can invest in skill trees as they level up, enhancing movement capabilities, Hero Powers, weapon damage, and more. These skill trees also lend more to character identity, with each character having a clear role and game plan that compliments other Heroes and certain Sparks. Newcomer Edge, for example, is all about high-movement and hitting multiple targets hard and fast, where Rabbid Luigi focuses on weakening enemies and chaining elemental attacks through his weapon attack that bounces between targets. Every character feels valuable in the grand-scheme of things, and understanding who is suited to deal with particular enemy types/encounter designs keeps things fresh and engaging.

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It isn’t an overstatement to say that Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope gives you a near-endless toybox of options to play around with inside of battle, maybe a little too many. Take combining Mario’s upgraded Hero Sight ability, which resets it on kill, and combine that with the Glitter Spark on either Edge, or Rabbid Mario, which draws all enemies in range to that Hero’s location. For anything that isn’t annihilated by Mario as they move, Dash attacks also knock enemies up and trigger Hero Sight. Throw an elemental Spark on Mario for good measure, and you’re clearing swathes of enemies out in one fell swoop.

It’s a bit of a double-edged sword in the sense that it’s ridiculously fun to build out characters and experiment with different archetypes, but there’s way more Hero/Spark combinations than the one mentioned above that are downright broken and can trivialize certain encounters. It’s nice to be rewarded for thinking outside of the box and finding unique synergies between certain Heroes and Sparks, but they can often mitigate some of the strategy, even in certain boss fights and major encounters. This is still an extremely flexible and customizable combat system, though, and I think the game is ultimately better for it.

Speaking of which, a lot of the difficulty in any given battle is informed by the type of encounter you’re engaged in. Each battle is preceded by a pre-battle screen, where you can spend any unused Skill Prisms, fine tune loadouts, and tweak the difficulty if you’re finding anything too easy or hard. You can see the general layout of the arena and what enemies you’ll be fighting, as well as any environmental objects you can use to gain an advantage. It’s a great way to get an idea of which heroes are going to work best against that group of enemies, and is a handy tool for those who get wrapped up in exploration and forget to invest resources to improve Heroes or Sparks.

There’s three main types of encounters, overworld, Darkmess Puddles, and boss fights. Overworld encounters are as you’d expect, enemies roaming the overworld that you can choose to avoid or fight. These arenas and enemy combinations are randomly generated, and can usually be dealt with very quickly, which leaves them feeling more like filler as opposed to engaging and thought-out battles. Darkmess Puddles, left behind by Cursa and her minions, are much more in-depth. Designed to take multiple turns and with unique objectives, each one brings something new to the table and make up a bulk of the battles here. Boss fights on the other hand are few and far between, but much like the first game, offer even more unique objectives and nail-biting skirmishes. Even the ones that are made easier by overpowered builds still require you to be aware of your surroundings and their unique abilities.

While battling takes up a solid chunk of the game time here, there’s also a lot to do outside of it. Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope shifts to a more free-form style of exploration and level design, with optional enemy encounters, hidden secrets, collectibles, side quests and so much more. Each planet is jam-packed with worthwhile content, not only because the rewards are great, but also because they’re genuinely fun to engage with.

Some of the side quests are quite entertaining in nature, for example, a quest on the third planet, Palette Prime, where a woodsman Rabbid’s precious axe has been stolen and employs the team’s help to track down the culprit. They’re sent on a wild goose chase across Palette Prime to catch the suspect, and while the culprit is glaringly obvious for the player, it’s fun to watch the cast try to unravel it for themselves.

Completing side quests, optional activities, and puzzles will award you with Planet Medals, which can be spent on cosmetic weapon skins, Memories which serve as data entries, and the key to that planet’s Secret Zone. Each Secret Zone is a self-contained puzzle box that will award you with a Spark upon first completion, and a weapon skin on second completion if you can finish it within the allotted time.

Each planet also has a secret boss, which requires a certain amount of Sparks to be unlocked before you challenge them. More often than not, these secret bosses are more difficult than the story bosses, but award you with Gold Prisms, that can unlock a powerful 4th skill tree for each Hero, that focuses on boosting the overall efficacy and power of Sparks, which makes them well-worth the challenge. It’s the inclusion of all these overworld activities that keeps Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope’s pacing tight, affording players enough breathing room between mandatory battles so as to not inundate and exhaust you with endless combat.

While the Nintendo Switch’s aging hardware seems to hold back other titles, there are some developers besides Nintendo that manage to squeeze out every ounce of power that the machine has, and Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope is one such title. This is a gorgeous game both in and outside of battle, with some great spectacle fights that really deliver on a sense of scale and grandeur. A lot of this can be contributed to the stellar art direction and animation design on show here, it simply oozes the kind of polish and sheen that you’d expect from a first-party Nintendo title.

Unfortunately, the Switch can struggle at times with Sparks of Hope, often buckling under the weight of hectic fights where large explosions and multiple Super Effects are being triggered at once. While it didn’t drastically effect my overall experience, especially given the turn-based nature of combat, it reared its head often enough to warrant mentioning. I did also run into a few bugs such as where characters would lock up for 10 or so seconds after selecting an ability, and I had one hard crash back the Switch home screen. While these technical hiccups were few and far between, I suspect many players will suffer similar issues until a patch can be rolled out.

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope is another resounding success in this whacky collaboration of two long-standing IP, one that feels much more defining and original than its predecessor. That isn’t to say Kingdom Battle fell short of expectations, but more so that Sparks of Hope is a clear and confident showcase that there’s so much untapped potential within this genre, and a lot of it has been capitalized on here. This game is a definitive labor of love from Ubisoft Milan and Ubisoft Paris, one that you owe it to yourself to play if you own a Switch, or are a fan of strategy games.

THE SWITCH VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

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When I first reviewed NieR Automata, I opened my review with surprise that the game even existed. Now that the series has a global audience, I get to be surprised about something else. Yes, six years on, I relive that feeling as the series finally makes its debut on the Nintendo Switch with NieR Automata. But while the surprise of this project existing is what you’d expect, what really has surprised me with NieR Automata is just how competent of a port it is. Sure, it has some caveats, the usual that come with any Switch port, but it’s almost just as good a way to experience Automata.

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While Automata is the second NieR game, you don’t need to have played the previous game to understand what’s going on. Taking place years after the original, in a future where machines have forced humanity to flee to the moon, the world is in a dark place. Desperate to reclaim the planet, humankind devises a plan to send androids to do the task for them. It sounds batshit and even a bit simple, but the places it goes will successfully demonstrate why the games in the NieR series leave such a lasting impression.

As with the previous games, the story is told in a very non-traditional way. Fully taking advantage of its video game form, repeat playthroughs will result in different endings and give greater context to the world’s events. I like the NieR games because you can get just enough from the plot to be satiated from a single playthrough. But multiple playthroughs are rewarded in droves, adding many layers to a world as complex and deep as ever.

Like the original game, Automata takes place in a semi-open world, not unlike games such as Darksiders and Zelda. You start your journey as 2B, one of the androids who can be equipped with an arsenal of weapons to defend herself. Also, like the original game, Automata employs a range of gameplay styles to offer a unique experience. You’ll get the best bits of an action game primarily, but there are elements of sidescrolling platformers and shoot-em-ups peppered throughout. Throw in some side quest design that feels plucked straight from an open-world game like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, and you’ve got a rather eclectic mix of genres on display here.

While the original game was slightly dated to play, though later improved with a fantastic remake, Automata plays just as it did six years ago on the Switch. This is hardly a bad thing – PlatinumGames was tapped for this sequel for their action expertise, and they most certainly brought their A-game here. Your character fights with a main weapon and a projectile-based pod and can alternate between one another to create some killer combos. It’s just as smooth as before, with great variety to take down enemies.

New to the Nintendo Switch edition is motion controls. These map your two types of attacks to motion on the joy-con and……work just how you’d expect them to. In a game as fast-paced as Automata, they simply feel like an afterthought rather than a genuine implementation of a new way to play. I swiftly disabled them after trying it out for about an hour.

I’d previously thought that Automata was too easy of an action game, especially coming from a team like PlatinumGames, and that thought still stands. A much more lenient action game, on the whole, it’s an excellent game for people to jump into if they’ve previously been intimidated by the likes of Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. It’s still a bit of a challenge, but the skill floor is much lower than its contemporaries without sacrificing the satisfaction you feel from clearing an intense battle.

Besides weapons and your pods, your android can be customised with chipsets. Each chip will take up a certain number of slots – so a HP Increase Chip might take up 2 slots while one that improves attack power might take up 5. Such a system allows you to build your android the way you want to – making them a powerhouse that prioritises attack power over health (perfect for those who rarely get hit). Others might build their android to have high defense and HP, dedicating slots that could otherwise be used to improve attack power.

It sounds cliché, but chips are a fantastic way to curb the difficulty for players who might struggle with NieR: Automata and feel like a great way to eschew the traditional level-up system. There is still a level-up system, but the chip system means you don’t necessarily have to grind to improve your stats. Weapons and pods can also be upgraded using salvage from enemies and funds – giving players a wealth of customisation options for their character.

The Nintendo Switch version, called the End of YoRHa Edition, combines everything from the original game and all released downloadable content. The main game will see most players taking around twenty or so hours to complete, but finishing off every ending plus the wave-based survival DLC will easily catapult that to sixty hours. I rarely talk about price in reviews, but given the precedence set for late ports coming to Nintendo Switch, NieR: Automata offers all of this content at a very modest price point, which is to be commended.

When it was announced earlier this year, I was sceptical about whether Automata, a PlayStation 4 game, could look good and play well enough on the Switch. It does, though it’s not without compromise. In my original review, I lamented that the open world was vast but bare, but this has played to great advantage for the Switch version. The port runs at thirty frames per second (half the original) and still slows down in some late-game areas, but overall looks and runs pretty well, even if artistically, it is a bit sparse. Still, it’s hard to notice or even care when everything is moving fast in the heat of battle.

The atmosphere is foreboding and melancholy, too, achieved through a potent mix of great art direction and a unique yet haunting score. Fans of the original will be surprised to find that, despite such a futuristic setting, the industrial vibe of the original game is still intact and more effective in Automata.

THE NINTENDO SWITCH VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

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Monkey Island, and its clumsy conquest by Guybrush Threepwood, has a storied history that’s as old as me, give or take a year. It’s rooted in an era when adventuring was a point-and-click soirée, although its genetics have endured through Ron Gilbert’s Terrible Toybox, who until now are best known for Thimbleweed Park. Although it’s a series that has seen a handful of entries to this point, Return to Monkey Island—the sixth instalment ushering in the return of series creator Ron Gilbert—seeks to resolve the controversial ending of LeChuck’s Revenge while serving up a swashbuckling caper that manages to be both nostalgic and industry-leading in all areas of concern for point-and-click adventuring.

Return to Monkey Island picks up right where LeChuck’s Revenge leaves off, with a tiny Guybrush and “Chuckie” being ejected from the inner-workings of a fairground attraction. It was a twist that, at the time, pulled back the veil of Guybrush piracy pursuit and cast it into an odd uncertainty. Where other sequels refused to address the cliffhanger, Gilbert deftly resolves it in ingenious fashion, clearing the slate for another glorious Caribbean campaign for Guybrush, his bride Elaine, and a whole host of familiar faces from the series’ glory days. And that’s kind of what Return to Monkey Island is all about.

Bruce Springsteen sang about them, but Guybrush’s glory days are something he fondly clings to and Monkey Island’s long-sought ‘secret’ fuels his foolish gambits. Return to Monkey Island sees him boast of his age-old triumphs to piracy’s indifferent new wave, burn bridges quicker than he can build them, all in the pursuit for the island’s secret which, to him, means relevance. As charming as Guybrush is throughout—and it is terrific to hear Dominic Armato back in the role—there’s a certain melancholy to his return. It’s nostalgic and tackles the same notions of ‘greatness versus simplicity’ that Nathan Drake’s last chapter did.

It’d serve nobody to delve into the game’s story beats or puzzles, but I do believe Return to Monkey Island, as a direct result of Gilbert’s wit and creativity, is absolutely a worthy successor to LeChuck’s Revenge. With that said, Return to Monkey Island—as its predecessor did—ends rather abruptly and dramatically. It, too, is oddly open to interpretation, I can see it creating a gulf in the fan base although I quite liked the contemplative nature of the closing moments.

Return to Monkey Island very much follows the blueprint of past games, it’s a charming point-and-click puzzler that’ll do plenty to challenge even the most lateral of thinkers. I don’t believe there’s anything quite as obscure as the infamous “monkey wrench” quandary, but it can demand a bit of out of the box thinking. One thing in Return to Monkey Island that really impressed me was how accessible they sought to make it.

There’s a casual mode that delivers simpler puzzle paths, as well as a slightly harder option that’ll add an extra step to most tasks. On top of this, Terrible Toybox introduced an elegant hint system unlike anything I’ve seen in the genre. Presented through a magical tome whose pages hold all of the answers, it’s sure to negate the need of seeking out Neoseeker. There’s no limit to its use, so you could spam it breeze through the game’s brain teasers comfortably. I feel as though Return to Monkey Island’s casual difficulty still feels rewarding while respecting your time, so opt for that if the regular game seems taxing.

Although I’d be curious to know how the handheld version of Return to Monkey Island plays, for the purpose of this critique I made my way through the adventure on PC. It’s in the name, point-and-click games are at home on keyboard and mouse and this legacy sequel is no different. Navigating inventories is quick and efficient, as is moving Threepwood from scene to scene, there’s something quaint about how simple and uncomplicated these games can feel for the player, even if there’s a lot going on with the back end.

There’s so much fan service packed into Return to Monkey Island. As soon as the merry and all-too-familiar theme accompanies the title card, I felt a merriment that had me floating buoyantly like a cloud. And although the new faces of Melee Island and the surrounding high seas serve their purpose, much of the game’s nostalgia is built on the back of the plentiful cameos from the likes of eccentric salesman Stan S. Stanman and Murray, the disembodied skull. The game’s open world is littered with trivia cards that, once collected, grant the player a chance at a question that plumbs the depths of Monkey Island lore—a fun distraction, to say the least.

The main source of negativity I expect to hear surrounding Return to Monkey Island is the grand departure in terms of its art direction. While it’s far from conventional and a far cry from the game’s iconic pixel art beginnings, I found that the colourful palette and charming animation quickly endeared itself to me. It won’t be for everybody, but I think a cartoonish front is apt for a game full of such hijinx and buffoonery.

Return to Monkey Island is a refreshing return for one of the medium’s most storied franchises. It’s a rich adventure, steeped in nostalgic whimsy that’s matched by a cute art direction that’s silly and charming and all things in between. I particularly loved how Gilbert and the team innovated on genre norms, introducing something as novel as an integrated hint system.

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I don’t think I’m alone in being more conscious of time these days. These past couple of years haven’t been our collective best, a daily reminder that very little can be taken for granted. Likewise, we have witnessed our national healthcare system pushed to the limit and then some, another unavoidable example of who we are and what we stand to lose. What this nationwide freefall has left me with is a keen awareness of time and the indispensable nature of human kindness. Wayward Strand is a game that fundamentally understands this too. The ways we use and waste time, the passage of it, the warmth of memory and the pain of an old wound. It achieves this vision while being earnestly Australian too, with a familiar vibe that encompasses this simple but effective narrative experience.  

Wayward Strand sees you fill the shoes of Casey Beaumaris, a young teenager trying to make the most of her school holidays in the summer of 1978, Australia. Bored and restless, Casey has thrown herself into her writing and is looking to pen the ultimate expose for the school paper. Her subject is the magnificent airborne hospital that floats gently above the red earth, filling the blue skies with its lavish and omnipresent design. Joining her mother for the long weekend aboard the ship, Casey must use the three days to both investigate the ship and try to help the elderly patients who occupy its aesthetically rich halls.

Melbourne based developers Ghost Pattern have been open about the intentional limitations of Wayward Strand’s narrative design. Aboard the ship are over a dozen folks to interact with, but as Casey’s three days march forward, she won’t have time to discover everyone’s stories. The game wants you to make choices and make your peace with what you may miss, a built-in hook for replayability and a nice mechanical riff on the game’s thesis on time itself. To help you keep track of all these threads, Casey comes equipped with a journal for noting routine times, locations and points of interest. You can also be quickly directed toward a resident by clicking on their portrait in the journal and following an arrow.

Guiding Casey through the ship is a smooth experience, requiring no more than basic inputs to move about and interact with the game’s many friendly faces. Using simple arrows at the bottom of the screen, Casey will either walk or jog left or right, stopping to allow contextual options like going up or down stairs, entering a patient’s room or talking to a passerby. Casey can also be a bit of a snoop, hiding behind walls to eavesdrop on conversations and overhear clues or hints as to where to go next. It’s all very open, a freeform experience that allows the player to dictate their own path and pace.

Once you’ve chosen who you’d like to spend some precious time with, Casey enters into a charming conversation wheel system with them. Baseline options usually allow you to start a chat with branching dialogue, have a bit of a nosey around their belongings, leave or simply sit a while and allow the air to settle. Which of these you lean toward will vary based on the person you’re trying to talk with. Some patients prefer a slower-paced conversation, the silence you leave allowing them to bring up topics of their own choosing. Others will gleefully answer your questions, even if it’s with polite bemusement. Others still will tell you to bugger off if they’re too tired.

Wayward Strand does a terrific job of situating you in Casey’s reality thanks to its writing. Every single one of the people you can meet on the good ship feels unique and fully realised. By the end of my first day onboard I had already fallen in love with the kindly, slow talking Mr. Pruess, and promptly decided to walk the other way when Esther Fitzgerald would be moseying down the hall. You’ll undoubtedly find your own favourites, your own stories and worlds that appeal to you and make you compelled to spend your time in your own manner. The collision of the game’s Australian nature and its gorgeous writing results in a feeling not too dissimilar to visiting your grandparents when you were a child. A luxury so few of us have these days.

The writing is in turn elevated by Wayward Strand’s amazing cast of voice actors who bring their respective quirky characters to life. Nancy Curtis plays Casey with pitch-perfect youthful earnestness, a layered portrait of a young woman confused, intrigued and frustrated by the world around her. Elsewhere a litany of Australian stars grace the halls, including familiar faces from iconic shows such as Neighbours, Blue Heelers and more. All of these performances go a long way to realising Wayward Strand’s unique Aussie world, a place that manages to capture the light, and grit, of people just trying their best.

Wayward Strand is also obviously a game with things on its mind. The heightened reality of its airborne hospital is something of a cosy trap. A warm and vaguely familiar glow obscures some deeply meditative words on medicine as a system, the power of people, war, and of course, death. Ghost Pattern’s public decrying of crunch culture in game development feels of a piece with the commentary in the game. A definitive and gently amusing riff on how certain systems can steamroll good people and the damage caused in turn. It never shies away from the harsher truths of the human condition but is always ready to offer a shoulder when it all feels a bit overwhelming.  

While the game is a visual delight and a moving meditation on emotional subjects, it can sometimes waver in its ability to grasp the player. Wayward Strand is a strikingly slow experience in ways I often adored but its pacing being player-driven can lead to some slumps. The inability to save is the real killer here, as the game only autosaves after the completion of a full day at the hospital, approximately an hour and a half in real time. I can appreciate that this is done to avoid save scumming the narrative but in practice, it can lead to some tiring pushes or even lost progress.  

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2017’s Splatoon 2 was a pivotal moment for one of Nintendo’s newest IP. Where the first game was a strong proof-of-concept with a dedicated player base, the hit sequel doubled down on everything that made the first game so great, with an excellent campaign and wave-based survival mode to boot.

If Splatoon 2 was the franchise finding its footing and evolving the core concept, Splatoon 3 is a more iterative and focused entry into the series. Opting to refine and hone the elements introduced in 2 to a fine polish. The end result is a game that isn’t the same radical step forward as its predecessor, yet delivers the most addictive and refined splatting experience thus far.

Splatoon 2’s campaign was arguably the best new inclusion in comparison to the first game, with laser-focused level design that introduces new mechanics and ideas and tossing them away before they get boring. The trend was continued and further bolstered by the Octo Expansion, so it only makes sense that Splatoon 3 would set out to reach similar heights with its own single-player experience – Return of the Mammalians.

Return of the Mammalians is an engaging hybrid of Splatoon 2’s campaign, and the Octo Expansion. Short and sweet levels that push the core idea of Splatoon to its limits, and it does so with resounding success. After creating your Inkling or Octoling who’s brand new to the Splatlands, you’ll find yourself lost in a world called Alterna, as you seek out Splatsville’s kidnapped Great Zapfish.

Things aren’t as they should be, though, the Octarians have returned, mutated with brown fur and purple eyes. Fuzzy Ooze coats the landscape of Alterna, and it falls to you, Agent 3, to find out the truth behind Alterna and the rampant fuzz. The truth is slowly revealed as you progress through the six zones of Alterna, unlocking logs that slowly peel back the layers that shroud the truth.

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It’s a relatively straightforward and simple narrative with an endearing cast of new and old characters. What was most surprising to me came in the form of the Alterna Logs, which are deciphered as you complete levels in each zone. Without spoiling too much, I suspect that hardcore Splatoon fans will get a real kick out of what’s explored in these, and clearing each zone was made more exciting by the prospect of new information.

In gameplay, Alterna serves as a sort of hub world for the numerous levels you’ll play across the 5-6 hour campaign. Much like the Octo Expansion, a vast majority of these levels can be completed in any order, and are optional, meaning if a level is proving to be too difficult, you can move forward onto something else. This coupled with the ability to pick from different weapon types at the beginning of each level, means that there’s a degree of flexibility and player choice present within Return of the Mammalians only found in Octo Expansion.

To make up for the non-linear nature of Return of the Mammalians, progression is gated by Fuzzy Ooze that can only be cleared by using a required amount of Power Eggs gained from clearing levels and defeated enemies. This means you’ll have to make smart decisions on what patches of Fuzzy Ooze you want to clear if you want to streamline progression, or look for secrets hidden throughout Alterna. These secrets range from collectibles to items you can use to unlock new skills and abilities to bolster your arsenal in future levels. Things like increasing your ink capacity, movement speed, and more. It adds an extra wrinkle and element of exploration to the hub world that would otherwise simply serve as a place to be as you move between levels.

Much like previous entries there’s a strong focus on levels that are unique and distinct from one another, each one focusing on an idea that’s pushed to its extreme and tossed away before it can get boring. It makes for a tightly paced and constantly creative experience that’s punctuated by engaging puzzle-like boss fights.

With the Splatlands being so separated from the rest of squid-kind, all kinds of tools and weapons have been developed. From the brand new melee weapon, the Splatana Wiper that excels at close range, to the Tri-Stringer which effectively functions as a bow with explosive arrows filled with paint. This doesn’t even scratch the service as there’s also a slew of new Specials including the mobile Crab Tank, and the ink-slinging Zipcaster.

You’re also accompanied by Smallfry, a small salmonid that helps you on your adventures in Alterna. Smallfry can be used to deal damage to enemies, solve puzzles, clear Fuzzy Ooze, and more. It’s a novel concept that feels underutilized for a vast majority of the levels, and only reveals its true potential in the last hour or so. There’s also the Squid Surge and Squid Roll, two movement abilities that encourage you to stay mobile both in multiplayer and throughout Alterna.

Those who’ve played previous entries will feel right at home with Splatoon 3’s suite of multiplayer offerings. Turf War makes a triumphant return with fantastic new and old maps that are ripe for opportunities to use the new movement mechanics, and all other game modes from Splatoon 2 are also reprised here. Although this is a relatively feature complete, and content-rich multiplayer mode, it’s a bit strange that there’s no new game modes present at release, aside from the inclusion of a reworked ranked mode in the form of Anarchy Battles.

Splatfests also make a return, but come with a rework that freshens up their overall pace and how they function. Splatfests are now split into three teams to choose from, with each battle consisting of 2 halves. The first of which is a 4v4 Turf War, and the second half is a tri-color Turf War, where the 2 losing teams are put up against the winning team as they desperately try to defend their previous victory. It’s a truly hectic and well-rounded experience that stands out even further from the core playlist of game modes, even if it’s sometimes tricky to keep track of.

As always, you can customize the look of your Inkling/Octoling with clothes you can buy and unlock as you play the game. Each one has a small set of skills that enhance certain abilities, incentivizing smart build crafting to suit your playstyle. One new inclusion is the ability to create loadouts for your clothing, making way for an easy method to swap between different kits. You can even visit the returning Murch, to configure abilities even further, making sure that you look stylish first and foremost with abilities that still work for you in combat.

Weapon loadouts are unfortunately no different from previous games, where you’re locked into a certain Special Weapon and Sub Weapon depending on your primary weapon of choice. It’s frustrating to be forced to use a particular Sub Weapon or Special Weapon because you gravitate towards a particular gun. There are multiple variations of core weapon types, meaning there is some flexibility, but the ability to build it all out from scratch is still sorely lacking here.

Salmon Run returns in the form of Salmon Run Next Wave, and is now a permanent part of Splatoon 3, meaning players can jump into the wave-based survival mode at any time. It still invokes the same sense of chaos with 4 players frantically scrambling to deliver enough golden eggs before your shift is up. With the same core gameplay loop and some great new inclusions that really improve the experience, Salmon Run Next Wave is a standout game mode in Splatoon 3.

For starters there’s a bunch of new boss Salmonids to contend with, all of which require unique strategies to take down. The Flipper-Flopper, for example, is a dolphin that’ll dive in and out of ink, leaving a small circle of ink on the ground for each new diving spot. Inking the circle will  leave the Flipper-Flopper smashing head first into the floor, exposing it to damage. The amount of boss Salmonids thrown at you ensure that you work with your teammates, and stay ever-flexible on the job.

Another small improvement is the ability to throw the all important Golden Eggs, streamlining the experience that little bit further in a great way. You’ll also occasionally come across an extra wave of work where King Salmonid Cohozuna will take to the battlefield, serving as a thrilling final boss fight of sorts before returning to Splatsville. It’s also been announced that there’s going to be Big Run events, where Salmonids overrun Splatsville and need to be fought back. While these are set to happen every few months, we didn’t get to experience it during the review window, but I have no doubt that they’ll be looked forward to in the way Splatfests are.

Between game modes, you can spend time exploring Splatsville, messing around with guns in the lobby/Grizzco Break Room, or play Table Turf Battle, an all new card game introduced in Splatoon 3. While not super in-depth, Table Turf Battle is a fun little distraction to play when you need a break from all the splatting.  It plays like a table top version of Turf War, where you use cards to take squares on a board. Whoever has the most turf and the end of the game, wins. You’ll collect card packs as you play that’ll expand your deck further, making for a nice extra layer of progression on top of all the multiplayer stuff.

I’m always shocked out how Nintendo are able to wring out every drop of power from the Switch to create a game that both looks and runs beautifully. Splatoon 3 is a real showcase for the OLED, with all the bright neon paint splattered over the terrain and high quality particle effects on show here. That isn’t to say that the game struggles when docked, because it’s similarly remarkable with rock solid performance across all modes. It’s a slick and smooth experience from start to finish, and one so visually appealing that it’s simply too hard to take your eyes off of.

The post Splatoon 3 Review – A Splattin’ Good Time appeared first on Press Start.

It’s been a long time since mascot platformers dominated the gaming landscape. 20 years ago when the original Pac-Man World was released platform games were king of home consoles, and the king of arcades wanted in on that action. For better and for worse, playing Pac-Man World RePac took me right back to my weekends playing random platformers I rented from the video shop on my PlayStation back then. I

t feels dated in level design and general gameplay but as someone who enjoyed games like these growing up I definitely developed a soft spot for the way it so faithfully recreated a style of game that isn’t much in fashion anymore.

RePac opens with Pac Man returning home to a party in his honour, only to find that his entire cast of family and friends have gone missing. So begins our spherical hero’s quest across a bunch of themed platforming worlds to collect letters, waka-waka some pellets and defeat the forces of Toc-Man to save his friends. It’s not exactly an inventive story, but it only really ever intends to be set dressing for the main focus of the kid-friendly platforming so I won’t hold it to too high a standard.

The platform gameplay on offer feels pretty ancient, which makes perfect sense when you consider the original game that forms the mechanical basis for this one is over 20 years old. The platform game was on top of the world, but was still very much designed the way it had been in the 2D age – just with some extra depth to play with.

Pac-Man World RePac faithfully recreates these old worlds with a layer of modern paint, without changing the way it plays in any significant way. You’ll need to play through a series of mostly side scrolling levels, maneuvering your way to the end of the level using Pac-Man’s jumps, butt bounces and charge moves, dodging or dispatching of enemies to progress. A range of optional collectibles add a fun and necessary twist to the otherwise pretty dull A to B.

Collecting fruit adds to your score and can unlock some doors, finding floating letters to spell P-A-C-M-A-N unlocks a bonus round after the level, and you can even find special classic style Pac-Man mazes which give some extra variety to play. Collecting all of these things will require some back tracking to doors that are now unlocked. None of it feels particularly interesting, but I will admit that it tickled the collector in me. Knowing there’s an A sitting somewhere in the level that I’ve missed was enough to make me want to explore every crevice of the levels to find it even if it felt like a cheap way to extend your time in a level sometimes.

Boss levels add some welcome variety to proceedings, as well. It’s a relic of the past where games seemed to pack in seemingly random gameplay one-offs but much appreciated here. Cute touches like a Galaxian-esque shooter boss and a grand prix kart race against a line-up of circus clowns are surprisingly fun. Fleshed out just enough to be fun for their quick one-time levels, they make for a nice break from the regular platforming levels.

While the game plays very much like the PlayStation original did, the presentational overhaul makes a huge difference for the game and brings it much closer to modern expectations. Everything is presented in lovely high resolution graphics, environment and character models completely overhauled while staying mostly faithful to the original game. Visual design stays pretty similar as well and as a result looks really nice at times (the beach area comes to mind) but can be horribly garish at others like the Funhouse area. I found the funhouse maze levels particularly bad, the garish colours and unclear design made it difficult to see what was a maze wall and what wasn’t.

Music too has been fully re-created and for better and worse is fully based on the original compositions. Expect some very short repetitive loops that will, if you’re anything like me, slowly drive you batty.

The PS5 version if this game was played for the purpose of this review.

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How interactive does a video game need to be, to be considered a video game? That’s a loaded and probably completely unnecessary question, with an answer that probably lies somewhere between “who cares?” and “anything can be a video game” but it’s one that found itself curled up in the noodles of my brain during the entirety of We Are OFK. Helmed by Teddy Dief of Hyper Light Drifter fame, We Are OFK is an episodic narrative that shines as a cross-media, interactive animated series and pop EP but might be a touch too passive for those looking for the traditional notion of a game.

We Are OFK is a largely an origin story, one that chronicles the coming-together of four friends, old and new, amongst the cutthroat Los Angeles scene to produce the EP of their dreams. It’s essentially a music biopic that simultaneously launches the virtual musicians that it depicts, while also acting as a self-contained slice-of-life story of friendships, relationships, grief, love and trauma in a modern setting. Releasing episodically over four weeks, it’s a roughly five-hour narrative experience presented through gorgeous, stylised visuals and choice-driven dialogue.

If it reads like I’m skirting around a lot of what actually happens in We Are OFK, I am. Not least because the game is releasing on an episodic schedule with only the first two episodes available this week, so there’s a lot I’d be loath to spoil. More than that though, it’s less the broad strokes of the game’s slow burn of a narrative that are noteworthy and more how it’s all put together. The core beats of OFK’s band origin story aren’t new or surprising by any stretch, but they’re presented through some incredibly snappy and natural-feeling dialogue and convincing character writing. Itsumi and co. come across perfectly as young creatives navigating their goals and relationships in LA, whether it’s in-person or through the game’s frequent text message conversations (finally, a game that accurately portrays the overwhelmingly large percentage of my interactions being in text form). 

We Are OFK’s writers have also done a bang-up job of portraying the same creative industries that birthed the game itself and how they fit within the societal and cultural positions of its characters, whether it’s Itsu’s run-ins with burnout and discrimination at the Riot-esque Leviathan or Jey’s inner conflicts between her parents approval and her creative freedom. It’s also unflinchingly queer in a way that feels genuine and a product of a diverse team. After rolling the credits on the fifth and final episode I came away unsurprised with its conclusion but absolutely hungry for more of OFK themselves. All throughout I couldn’t help thinking that this could very well work as an ongoing project, a Gorillaz moment for the video game world, where musical output is buoyed by visual art and thematic context in a way that wouldn’t otherwise exist. I don’t think it’ll happen, but I’d love to see it.

Of course, given its musical stylings it’s no surprise that the audio experience in We Are OFK is fantastic. For starters, the voice cast do a fantastic job across the board at delivering the already-well written dialogue, and LA musician omniboi kills it with the game’s broad musical score. Most importantly though, the five-track EP from the titular OFK that the game serves as a basis for absolutely slaps. Even if you’ve no desire to play or watch someone play the game itself, there’s no reason you shouldn’t jump on your favourite music streaming service and give these tracks a listen. Follow/Unfollow has been doing the rounds for a while now, but I’ve been (impatiently) waiting since finishing all five episodes for the releases of Fool’s Gold and Infuriata – those are both going straight into regular rotation.

As much as We Are OFK excels in its storytelling and presentation though, I’m not entirely convinced of how it interacts with its players. Or rather, how much interaction it gives players. The game asks that you keep your controller in hand throughout but gives you little more to do with it than occasionally press a button to advance a scene or make semi-frequent dialogue choices. The latter definitely adds to the experience thanks to the strong writing, but also rarely has any major bearing on how everything plays out. 

I’ve no business trying to define how much or how little direct engagement a video game should have with its players, especially in something that is billed front-and-centre as an “interactive EP” before it’s a game, but I couldn’t shake the feeling during my time with it that I’d have much preferred the option to simply watch it play out. It feels as though the interactive aspects don’t add enough to the overall experience to justify its method of delivery. It’s exactly the kind of gorgeous, contemplative slice-of-life story and audiovisual aesthetic that I’d love to lay back and zone out to, but I can’t, because I have to make sure I’m ready to press X whenever Itsumi gets a text message.

There are some more “game-y” bits, to be fair. A couple of neat interactive portions that riff heavily on classic text adventures and JRPGs are a particular highlight, and then there are the music videos for OFK’s five-track EP that feature across each episode. These playable sequences don’t really ask a lot and feel more like digital toys than any sort of gameplay challenge, but that idea fits nicely with the overall vibe of the game and makes the best case for We Are OFK’s blending of mediums. Interactive music videos are a neat idea in general, as is launching a virtual band through a tactile platform, even if this particular go of it feels at odds with the environment it’s positioned in. It feels simultaneously bigger and smaller than the home video game console ecosystem, especially as a musical project that could genuinely stand on its own.

The post We Are OFK Review – A Band In Hope appeared first on Press Start.

Massive Monster’s Cult of the Lamb has all the makings to emerge as the Death’s Door of this year. It has an anthropomorphic animal lead and dynamite combat that, in a lot of ways, feels like an homage of sorts to a title of old. But Cult of the Lamb also feels like a game of two very distinct halves, and they’re halves that are exceptional individually but never seemed to complement each other throughout twelve wholly enjoyable hours of preaching and plying my trade as a false idol to an impressionable flock.

Cult of the Lamb casts you as the titular lamb, sacrificed by bishops of an old, ancient faith in an effort to thwart a tired prophecy that told of a woollen warrior that might overturn the status quo and free the grim spectre known as “The One Who Waits” from his exile. In exchange for a second chance at life, you must build a cult in his name and crusade against countless eldritch nightmares and rival cults. Cult of the Lamb divides your time pretty much straight down the middle between crawling through dank dungeons and tending to your twisted settlement, which really is like a cute Animal Crossing village plagued by shit, sickness, and ritual sacrifice.

I’m not one to gravitate toward the micromanagement of erecting a settlement and pandering to the every need of your devoted followers, but Cult of the Lamb keeps things engaging and chugging forward by tying everything under together under the guise of a Midsommar-like murder cult full of woodland critters. With the flock at your disposal, often monotonous busywork, like gardening and custodial services, can be streamlined through delegation, leaving you to focus on the more enjoyable things on offer.

Whether you’re putting the finishing touches on your temple, or declaring doctrines to help you further exploit the cult’s devotees, Cult of the Lamb’s upgrade paths and economies are all accessible and straightforward—though they’re all driven by maintaining the faith of your flock. If their belief in you wavers, it could be a bit of a slog to see all of the game’s more imaginative rituals—which range from Pagan bonfires and group psychedelic trips to marriage and a barbaric bloodsport that sees followers battle to the death—unless you’re a merciful idol.

Your gathered resources aside, managing your flock and the moral decisions made don’t ever really seem to have an impact on your holy crusade. It really does, at times, feel like two separate games.

Not only does Cult of the Lamb borrow its cutesy juxtaposition of sweet and savagery from The Binding of Isaac, much of its roguelike combat feels inspired by it too. While Binding of Isaac is for all intents and purposes a shooter, Cult of the Lamb feels more like Death’s Door or Hollow Knight, opting for an up close and personal brand of combat that emphasises timing and dodging. It’s tight and well-crafted, it’s hard to fault the game’s grittier portion. Similar to Inscryption, you carve out a path through four or five levels, opting for either physical challenges or levels that might offer a cache of resources or even a would-be follower in need of rescuing.

Each crusade begins with a random weapon and curse—a supernatural secondary fire that often deals area of effect damage. Throughout a run you’ll pick up tarot cards that buff your lamb’s powers, which further emphasises the game’s roguelike prowess and keeps each crusade feeling relatively fresh. Cult of the Lamb has four distinct areas, each with its own theme, safeguarded by a pious bishop. Before you meet them, you’ll need to run any given area four times and leave all heretics in your wake.

The side content is ultimately limited by the game’s indie sensibilities. With only a couple of worthwhile extracurricular activities in fishing and Knucklebones—a surprisingly riveting game of chance—it doesn’t always seem worthwhile veering from the main path to venture out and spelunk Midas’ golden caves or trudge through the mushroom grotto. With plenty to unlock, including gaudy decorations for your village and wearable fleeces that toggle modifiers, the game does a fine job to encourage replayability. My village is full of flower arches, all that’s missing is Florence Pugh’s triumphant grin in the face of death.

Cult of the Lamb’s art direction is certainly one of its great triumphs. It’s so bright and exuberant, delivering the same blinding brand of daylight horror as seen in Ari Aster’s subversive film. Of course, it’s even more disarming to see a cute bunny sacrificed to the gods, but that’s what is so clever and memorable about Cult of the Lamb. The game’s world is presented almost like a pop-up book, it really is a sickly sweet diorama of hand-crafted critters. While it can be ethereal and moody when required, River Boy’s score can be a bit of a bop.

The theme for “Knucklebones” is an earworm. Despite there only being four adversaries, I couldn’t help returning from time to time to toss them bones and jam along to a tune that’s Darren Korb-like—which I feel is decent praise given his body of work.

Ultimately, I think Cult of the Lamb is a great example of flipping the power fantasy concept on its head, framing that thrilling pursuit of all-conquering omnipotence through the eyes of a once-hapless lamb is a stroke of genius. The dissonance I felt between its colony simulation and dungeon-crawling halves is unfortunate, though it doesn’t keep said halves from being brilliant in their own right. You’re getting an exceptional roguelike hack-and-slasher and an adorably dark and dramatic settlement-builder that will test your moral compass more than once.

THE PC VERSION OF THIS GAME WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW

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Two Point Studios made a name for itself when it came careening into the emergency ward with 2018’s Two Point Hospital. That game did incredibly well by recapturing sim fans’ love for the Theme Hospitals of old while injecting its own prescription dosage of charm with tongue-in-cheek humour and making things super-accessible for curious newcomers. Now comes Two Point Campus, a follow-up effort with an entirely new hook that puts players in the virtual shoes of an omnipotent university administrator with a goal of offering the finest and highest education that money can buy. And hopefully that’s a lot of money.

If you’ve played a management sim game in the vein of Theme Park or Planet Zoo or certainly Two Point Hospital, you’ll pretty much know the score here. It’s your job to take the bare bones of a functioning campus and grow it into something spectacular via careful management of your space, your staff, your incoming and outgoing funds and most importantly your students. Where this game differs from a lot of what’s out there is that last bit – the students. Rather than paying customers frequenting your park/zoo/hospital, these people are here for a good time and a long time. Retaining them, catering to their base needs and ensuring they have the support to score high marks is key to getting the best financial return and increasing the prestige of your school to attract even more new students.

It’s this new twist on the management sim formula that’s the most interesting and compelling part of Two Point Campus. On a surface level it’s all relatively simple and accessible but, as you’ll grow to learn throughout its dozen or so campaign levels that throw in all manner of unique twists, spinning the right plates at the right time takes a particularly humanistic approach. Yes, your campus needs to look good and you need to be turning a regular profit, but if you’re not properly taking care of your student body and campus faculty you’re going to wind up fighting an incredibly uphill battle. Creating spaces for people to live, to relax, to seek support and to socialise is just as important as creating ones to learn but as we all know full well there’s little money to be made in looking after people. So what you end up with is a very tight balance between your reputation, your results and your coffers, and it’s an intoxicating challenge if there ever was one.

The best place to start in Two Point Campus is in its campaign, which takes you across a spread of bespoke scenarios in which you’ll take over established or semi-established campuses with their own hurdles or idiosyncrasies to navigate. The first few are basic enough and mostly there to show you the ropes, but eventually you’ll be doing things like helping rebuild a copyright-skirting wizard school after it’s been attacked by an angry witch, trying to strike rich at an archaeological campus built amongst ancient ruins or selling your students’ souls to a creepy orb-obsessed cult at an arts school that otherwise doesn’t charge tuition fees. It’s a great mix that’ll see you spend at least 10-12 hours just bringing your campuses up to a one-star rating with plenty to do and improve beyond that.

Once you’re done with being gently told what to do in the campaign, you can also delve into the game’s Sandbox mode which comes complete with multiple ways to play. You’re able to fire up a standard-difficulty game on any map of your choosing, challenge yourself to a harder mode with fewer starting resources, customise your own difficulty or just go for broke in a creative mode with everything open and free for the taking. Thankfully there doesn’t seem to be any ties to your campaign progress in terms of which maps you have access to, you’ll just need to re-unlock any in-game items or research per map. As fun as the campaign is, Sandbox is a great way to give yourself room to really sink your teeth into the nitty-gritty of campus management without being semi-directed by level goals. There’s a lot to get into and tweak beneath the surface level so hardcore sim fans should get a lot out of the game in the long term.

If it wasn’t already obvious, part of Two Point Campus’ appeal is its tongue-in-cheek approach to its subject matter and general air of silliness. With course offerings like Knighthood, Virtual Normality and something called “Money Wangling” this is far from serious stuff, and the background noise of Two Point Radio serving up nonsense talkback and irreverent advertising further drives the point home. Best of all, the flippancy of its attitude towards any degree of success means that even the most dire situations you’ll find yourself in are routinely hilarious. Case in point, the time that I blew all of my reserve funds on decorating my campus before the school year (and thus, tuition income) had even started. That resulted in me falling so far behind that I wound up selling my school’s fancy fountain to pay for a start-of-the-year student party, which I used to keep everyone occupied while I quickly spent their fees on my unfinished lecture halls.

For all the good that Two Point Campus does I do have some reservations. For a wacky game about the joys of higher education there are relatively few antics to witness. Students from rival schools will occasionally “invade” your campus until your staff run them out, and your own flock are prone to the odd sweeping craze, but it’s all pretty tame. There’s also a notable lack of fanfare for anyone’s individual achievements bar a basic slideshow that plays after each school year.

More genuinely frustrating were a bunch of issues that plagued my time with the game on a PlayStation 5. The control layout itself is mostly okay, an achievement in itself given the very controller-unfriendly genre, but there are a few specific menus and situations where things become finicky or too easy to mess up – especially when building rooms. Worse than that were a host of bugs that brought the experience down, things like inputs not responding or menus getting stuck to the screen, and an especially annoying issue where items I placed would report their positions as invalid until I picked them up and set them down again in the exact same spot. Hopefully these things are ironed out either at launch or shortly after, though.

The post Two Point Campus Review – A New Twist On Management Sims appeared first on Press Start.

Xenoblade Chronicles has been on a bit of a roll on Switch. The Wii and Wii U somewhat limited the audience for the series in the past, but Switch being the sales behemoth it is has helped propel Xenoblade to a much wider audience. I enjoyed Chronicles 2, but truly fell in love with the series with Xenoblade Chronicles Remastered. It’s expansive worlds, light-hearted characters and engaging combat mechanics hooked me for the long haul. While I don’t think it quite hits the highs of XC Remastered for me, Monolith Soft’s third game on Switch, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (XC3) is another fantastic action RPG romp.

First things first – the story in XC3 is way darker in tone than I expected. While the series has never shied from conflict, XC3 shows us a world locked in a never-ending war. People are born to fight as young adults, and either die in battle or reach ten years of life and expire. The two sides of the conflict are each split up into various colonies, each fighting to kill as many of the other side as possible to fill their Flame Clock. This in turn determines their rank among other colonies and the kinds of support, resources and food they’ll recieve from higher-ups. Something seems off about this situation immediately, and the story really begins with our characters questioning this status quo. It’s a compelling premise, and one that kept me wanting to play to find out where the story will go next.

For me at least, the characters in a Xenoblade Chronicles game are a huge factor in whether I enjoy the game overall. Given the more serious tone of the story then, it maybe makes sense that the characters you’ll accompany on your journey are themselves a little less easy-going than you might be used to from other entries. I found myself missing the happy-go-lucky mindset of Shulk and pals, but Noah, Mio and the rest of your crew in XC3 do develop interesting relationships over time. It’s just a bit more of a slow burn.

Much like the story and characters, the visuals of XC3 are probably a bit gloomier than you might expect from the series. There are patches of light and colour to be found but a huge amount of your time will be spent in grey battlefields and brown deserts. It’s missing a certain liveliness that I missed from previous entries. Technically though, XC3 still looks fantastic. Character models are sharp and detailed, well animated (including lip sync for the English voice track which is nice!) and battles are as flashy as ever. Resolution takes a noticeable hit in handheld mode with everything becoming visibly blurry, especially as things move further from the camera. It’s not a huge hassle and in fact I played most of the game handheld – but it’s an issue the series has had all along on Switch and still a bit of a shame the system can’t keep up with the scale of world XC3 wants to present without lowered detail.

You’ll mostly be spending your time in XC3’s world doing two main things – exploring and fighting. The world to explore is suitably massive, and exploration is rewarded with items, special enemy encounters and side quests. The game gives you a line to follow if you want to go straight to the next story objective, but I always found myself exploring to find cool new items and enemies to fight – a sign of an engaging world in my opinion. The combat system will be familiar to anyone who has played a Xenoblade Chronicles game before, but has it’s own flavour to differentiate itself from the rest of the series.

You have six core party members to assign classes and equip with accessories, skills and special moves. On top of those you will often have a seventh party member that can be dictated by the story situation or sometimes freely changeable. Classes are split into Attackers, Defenders and Healers which broadly decides their role in battle – however there are so many different classes within each of these roles that you’ll find countless ways to customise your team to fit your preference, playstyle or situation. During battle you directly control one party member, while the rest are competently controlled by the game’s AI. Depending on the role you control you might need to focus on positioning for maximum damage, drawing attention away from your attackers or healing your team when they need it. The scope for building your team is immense, and being able to play any of these roles means you get heaps of variety if you want it in battles. Big damage comes from using certain attack types in order (for example Break, Topple then Daze) and the AI companions are smart enough to participate in these combos when the time is right.

Combat gets even more interesting the further you progress in the game. Giving away as little story as I’m able, characters are able to fuse together temporarily into strange, Evangelion-looking forms to use more powerful moves without a cooldown timer. This form has it’s own skill tree which can be customised as you progress. There are also Chain Attacks which are crucial to doing massive damage to bosses. In this attack your characters take turns to perform actions which build up a tactics meter, do this smartly and you can keep attacking over and over to rack up huge damage and even further special attacks. It’s a combat system with a lot of complex moving parts, but the game is good at explaining it’s systems and giving you opportunities to confirm your understanding through training drills. It’s a great combat system that looks super slick and is great fun to play with.

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Simply put, you haven’t played a game like Live A Live, though you might have played some games that have inspired it. Initially released for the Super Nintendo in 1994, almost thirty years ago, the game never made it outside Japan. To make matters worse, it was met with poor commercial performance upon its original release. Now, Square Enix has committed to bringing the game to a more expansive and modern audience. While it plays almost exactly as it did nearly three decades ago, Live A Live is still just as an inventive RPG as it was.

Acting as a sort of spiritual predecessor to Octopath Traveler, Live A Live has you taking on the role of eight different characters throughout key time periods. Each narrative has the same underlying mechanics – including a turn-based battle system and an equipment system you’d find in any other RPG. It’s where the scenarios differ that makes Live A Live truly special. Octopath more or less had you playing the same game from eight different perspectives. On the other hand, Live A Live has such variation in each of its scenarios that sometimes each feels like a different game.

These differences can be pretty stark. The present-day chapter is relatively short and consists entirely of battles as a fighter embarks on a quest to become the best fighter in the world. The prehistory chapter has you playing as a caveman who saves a girl from ritual sacrifice – but is told entirely through animations and emoticons as there was no speech during those times. The far future has you playing a support bot with no battles while channeling games like Alien Isolation. These aren’t all the scenarios you’ll encounter in Live A Live, but it gives an idea of the breadth of experiences you’ll be treated to when you play it and even better, none of them outstay their welcome.

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The battle system is shared between them all. It’s a turn-based system that’s fought on a 7×7 grid. Characters can move freely and attack with unique abilities without worrying about MP. To balance this, certain moves take longer to charge. Even moving a square will let your opponents grow closer to attacking, so while there is a degree of freedom in how you move, some thought must be put into how you approach each battle. The usual bells and whistles of an RPG are here, too – new abilities are (mostly) learned by levelling up, and items can be equipped to buff yourself or to heal. I’d have loved to have some kind of fast-forward function to assist grinders in speeding up the animations of attacks, but otherwise, it’s a unique battle system that carves out its own niche against its contemporaries.

The difference with Live A Live, compared to other RPGs, is that it feels like a game where the story comes first. The entire game being an RPG feels like a bit of an afterthought – and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean that in Live A Live, most battles matter. They are integral to telling the story the game wants to tell, and when you have to grind (which isn’t very often, if ever), these moments are well justified with the story. It’s a weird thing to appreciate, but it does mean that Live A Live doesn’t bog you down with unnecessary filler that many RPGs do. It’s keen to be short if the narrative justifies it, and it’s why I think it’s one of the most unique RPGs to come out of Square Enix in a long time.

Of course, much like with Octopath Traveler, you might be disappointed to hear that there’s not a lot of interactions between the leaders of each chapter in Live A Live. This time around, it makes sense – these characters are all playing in their own respective timelines – but the way it all comes together makes Live A Live really special. Throughout each chapter, the game feeds you a trail of breadcrumbs to hint at how these things come together later. I won’t ruin it here (though you could quickly look it up, given this game is from so long ago), but it is incredibly satisfying.

As a remake, Live A Live does its best to stay true to the original game, for better or worse. A lot of the game remains the same – though a new minimap directs you where to go next if you’re completely lost. The internal logic and flow of the game feel lifted straight out of games from the 90s – where you’d have to interact with a random NPC before being able to move the story on. Previously, the game wouldn’t indicate what you would have to do next, so modern players would need to play the game with a guide open. The remake adding waypoints, though optional, is a nice touch that alleviates some of this “old” feeling of game design.

I mentioned it previously, but many of the RPG mechanics feel there for the sake of being there. It’s almost as if Square were too scared to put their name on a game that didn’t have basic RPG mechanics after their success with Final Fantasy. I say this because Live A Live isn’t a challenging game – there was never a time when I had to go back and level up or improve my equipment, leading me to wonder why it’s even included. This is a clear side effect of a game designed from a narrative perspective first – but one that might put off those who love to level up their character to crazy heights. Given the length of the chapters and the difficulty of the combat, it just feels unnecessary to in Live A Live.

I mentioned the brevity of the chapters before, but that doesn’t mean that Live A Live is a super short game. It’s bizarrely paced – some chapters take less than an hour while others take three. The final one feels as long as half the game that came before it. You can expect to get about twenty-five hours out of Live A Live. I appreciated the length of the game as it serves the story well, though those looking for an epic as long as Octopath or Xenoblade may be disappointed. There’s a whole bunch of hidden, optional super bosses to uncover in each chapter, too, though you’ll almost certainly need a guide to find some of them.

Of course, the most significant improvement here is the visuals. Bringing depth and life to the flatter visuals of the original SNES game, Live A Live utilises the HD-2D visuals previously seen in Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy to great effect. It’s even more impressive here because each of the timelines you travel through is exceptionally varied – from the lush bamboo forests of China to the quiet and isolated hallways of a spaceship. It’s genuinely one of the best showcases for HD-2D on the Switch.

Similarly, the soundtrack is absolutely fantastic. The sheer variety here is fantastic, as with the rest of the game. Each of the unique tracks, composed by Yoko Shimomura, who would later compose tracks for Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XV, brings a great atmosphere to the world. Megalomania, in particular, is one of, if not the best boss battle track I’ve ever heard in an RPG. But not all is great, as while Live A Live goes the extra mile by voicing dialogue that was previously unheard, it’s a rather low-quality dub. It all feels rather cliché, forced, and overacted almost all the time.

Live A Live is an interesting game. You can see why Square wouldn’t have bothered to localise it so many years ago, given its much smaller scale than their flagship franchises. But it’s a testament to how good it is that, despite an immense visual polish being the only major upgrade, it still offers fantastically inventive storytelling almost three decades on with no changes to the script.

THE NINTENDO SWITCH VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

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Capcom Fighting Collection brings together ten titles from the arcades between 1994 and 2003. Each game is brought together with arcade-perfect parity and other features of modern fighting games like training modes, spectator modes, and rollback style online play. It’s a collection of firsts for the Japanese publisher. The first time Capcom has touched Darkstalkers in almost ten years, the first time that the RPG-tinged Red Earth has been released on home consoles, and the first time the entirety of the Darkstalkers games have been made available outside of Japan.

Much like the Street Fighter collection before it, Capcom has made an effort to ensure this is a collection that fans will appreciate. These games have all been modernised to be playable today – including with the aforementioned online play – and a slew of extras are included as well. Every game has save state support, which is nice, but also a heap of concept art and design documents to pore over. It’s interesting stuff, especially if you’re into game development, with some of these materials having never seen the light of day. It’s always interesting to see how a game begins and how it comes out at the end of development.

The games are all largely fantastic – though this is arguably a Darkstalkers collection with five extra games thrown in. Besides the five Darkstalkers games, you also get Red Earth, Cyberbots, Hyper Street Fighter II, Super Puzzle Fighter II and Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix. Besides Puzzle Fighter, all the other games are fighting games with distinctly different styles.

The crux of the package is dedicated to Darkstalkers, and for a fantastic reason. The series has always been in the shadow of Street Fighter despite offering a faster and more fluid flow to combat and a, by comparison, even zanier cast. I’d often thought that these games were just Street Fighter but gothic. The latter might be accurate, but these games feel more like precursors to the more fast and frenetic games like Marvel vs. Capcom. They still play as smooth as ever today, and I’m kicking myself for not having dived into them sooner.

Besides the Darkstalkers games, the other arguable standout here is Red Earth. First released over two decades ago in arcades, it has you picking one of four heroes to battle a gauntlet of eight bosses. The twist here is that your character gains experience with each hit to level up and discover new moves. A password system saves your progress (much like it did in the arcade), and each character has multiple endings. It’s a simpler game than others – especially with such a small playable roster – but it’s one of the stronger single-player offerings from this era of fighting games, and the sprite work is just gorgeous.

The other three games are great but not ones I rush to play. Hyper Street Fighter II is a souped-up port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, but easily the best-looking Street Fighter II version that wasn’t included in the anniversary collection from 2018. Cyberbots is interesting – it has you choosing a pilot and a mech and then doing battle – but lacks the personality or the thrill of the other games in the collection. Puzzle Fighter feels like Capcom’s take on Puyo-Puyo, similar to Tetris and games like Columns. Super Gem Fighter is great fun, if a little ridiculous, and sees chibi versions of Street Fighter and Darkstalkers characters battling it out.

Online modes are included and are fantastically implemented. Each game has casual and ranked matches available to players, but you can also switch which games you want to find while matchmaking rather than just matchmaking for a single game. It’s more minor touches like these that help contribute to the online health of a game. However, other more significant missteps like the lack of crossplay seem like a major missed opportunity here. Thankfully, the online works fantastically despite all of this, though I still hope there’s some way to make things crossplay in the future.

There’s also a bit of an issue with the Darkstalkers games. There isn’t a single game that features all eighteen characters playable. Instead, the full roster is scattered across the three later games in the collection that players will have to jump between. It seems like something unreasonable to complain about but a definitive version of the latest Darkstalkers game with all characters already exists. The home port of Darkstalkers 3 for the original PlayStation was originally released in 1998 with the full roster, so the choice to exclude this more “definitive” port over dedication to arcade perfect emulation irks me a little. Still, the menus are snappy, and it’s quick to get around the collection, which somewhat makes up for this.

Besides the slick menus, an excellent level of production value holds this collection together. You can adjust the size of the screen and the background surrounding the screen and apply filters that alter the game to look like the screens you might have played these games on back at the arcade. Viewability aside, the sprite work on many of these games is still fantastic. Red Earth is easily the standout here – though the character that each of the Darkstalkers characters has with their expressive and over-the-top animations is genuinely something to behold. These games don’t look photorealistic, but they’ve aged fantastically over two decades.

Capcom Fighters Collection brings together some great games you couldn’t play until now – the cornerstone of a good collection. They play fantastically, the online functionality is more than welcome, and they all still hold up visually. Despite there being no crossplay and no singular definitive Darkstalkers game, it’s still a well-rounded package that any self-respecting fighting game fan should try.

THE XBOX ONE VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

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While Monster Hunter has been on a different trajectory since World’s release in 2018, you can always count on CAPCOM to deliver quality hunting no matter what platform you play on. After the success of World’s enormous expansion, Iceborne, Sunbreak feels like an inevitable addition to an already meaty game, but never one that feels out of place. It’s not perfect, a few of Rise’s core issues are still present here, new ones rear their heads, and others have been fixed, but what Sunbreak does have to offer is bound to please anyone who enjoyed the base game, and especially series veterans.

Set after the tumultuous events of Monster Hunter Rise, Sunbreak sees our hunters called to Elgado Outpost after the unexpected appearance of a foreign monster in the Shrine Ruins. You’ll quickly find out that Kamura isn’t the only territory being invaded by violent monsters from the Kingdom, and you team up with new character Fiorayne and the Knights of the Royal Order to uncover what’s happening.

What Sunbreak lacks in narrative unpredictability, it makes up for in its characters and setting. Elgado Outpost and by extension, the Kingdom are locales unlike any other in the series, more regal and medieval in design. There’s also a stronger focus on characters, and while it’s far from revolutionary for typical Monster Hunter standards, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little fond of the likes of Fiorayne and Admiral Galleus. It’s a story with a tried and true formula that’s saved from stagnation thanks to its characters and fresh setting, giving Sunbreak its own distinct identity within the series.

Everyone knows that narrative isn’t the draw for Monster Hunter, though, its the thrill of the hunt, experiencing a roster of brand new monsters, deadly variants, and returning favorites. In this regard, Sunbreak is a true home-run. While monster preferences will always be subjective, I believe that Sunbreak has one of the best rosters of any mainline Monster Hunter game.

From the return of Gore Magala to the chilling introduction of Lunagaron and the vampiric Malzeno, every monster here feels like it has purpose, in some cases topping the fights from their original games. A special shoutout should go to Frontier fan-favorite Espinas, who’s unrelenting aggression and ability to inflict two status effects make for a fight that’s thrilling regardless of how many you’ve bested in your hunts.

Much like Iceborne did for World, Sunbreak brings along Master Rank for Rise, the highest difficulty of hunts that are meant to test any hunter’s mettle. While there’s a definite step up here from the relative ease of Rise’s High Rank hunts, it doesn’t quite reach the caliber of past games. That might be great news for some, but I constantly found myself craving the heightened challenge present in older titles, which lends more ferocity and intimidation to each monster you go up against.

With increased difficulty and new monsters, comes new tools, and Sunbreak brings plenty of new toys to play with. For starters, each weapon type has a plethora of new Switch Skills, allowing hunters to further customize and deepen their playstyle. The addition of Switch Skill Swapping, allows you to bring in two sets of Switch Skills into any given hunt, letting you swap them at will with a simple button combination. This can lead to some nasty combos that are as satisfying to execute as they are flashy to look at, and also creates room for further build crafting and loadout-tailoring for each hunt.

There’s also new Endemic Life found in both the new and old areas, and while they seem simple and surface level at first, it quickly becomes apparent that they’re much more than that. The Marionette Spider, for example, allows you to attach a Silkbind Strand to a monster and yank it in a particular direction, causing it to collide with a wall or even another monster as they get knocked to the ground. Wall-mounted wildlife changes the way you engage with Wyvern-Riding, as smashing into walls with these critters present can earn you extra damage or even a status effect.

Arguably the best aspect of these new Endemic Life is that they feel completely seamless within gameplay, never interrupting the flow of the hunt, while still introducing new ways you can engage with monsters and the environments you hunt them in. There’s a constant incentive to look for these critters as you move through an area towards a monster or as you give chase, further lending to that feeling of being in a living, breathing world that was established in the base game.

As we’ve moved on from the struggles of Kamura, Sunbreak doesn’t bring with it any new Rampages or Apex Monsters to hunt, and instead introduces Follower Quests and Support Surveys. Follower Quests are hunts you’ll go on with the supporting cast, as you work towards deepening their bonds so you can bring them along with you on Support Surveys. This includes characters from Kamura, as well, so you’ll be able to accompany the likes of Elder Fugen and Master Utsushi.

While they no doubt makes hunts easier as they split the aggression of the monster, they offer a sense of spectacle and camaraderie with the supporting characters that hasn’t been seen before in Monster Hunter. Nothing will match the rush I experienced when Fiorayne disappeared from the fight, only to return mounted on a Barioth to deliver unsuspected punishment to the unfortunate Lunagaron we had in our sights. You can even choose from a selection of weapons for followers to use on Support Surveys, allowing you to have them use something that compliments your own loadout.

To keep things spoiler free, there’s more monsters for you to experience once the credits roll, and a post-game progression system that is good in theory, but falls a bit flat in execution. Without getting into specifics, certain post-game hunts take far too long to complete, to the point of mundanity. I’m unsure how these play with more than one person, but I can only suspect the difficulty scales up. Thankfully, this isn’t the only form of post-game, but is absolutely something players will want to engage with if they’re into build crafting and maximizing stats, and it’s a shame they don’t deliver on their core concept.

Sunbreak’s brand new locale is the Citadel, and brings with it a more vertically designed return of the Jungle from past games. It’s nice to have new areas that are smaller in scale than those from the base game, yet still maintaining unique color palettes and design set pieces that help them to stand out amongst the rest. Rise is now a true melding pot of all the best areas a Monster Hunter game needs, with a bit of its own flourish for good measure.

The new hub, Elgado Outpost, is a refreshingly small and dense hub area that drops Kamura’s peace and quiet for a steampunk-style hustle and bustle. It’s tonally unique and a joy to explore for the first time when you eventually reach the Kingdom, and it’s nice to able to move between the NPCs you visit regularly for your pre-hunt rituals without having to sit through loading screens.

While we didn’t review the PC port of Monster Hunter Rise, Sunbreak was played via the PC version, and it goes without saying that much like the base game, Sunbreak performs incredibly well from a technical standpoint. In the roughly 30 or so hours I’ve spent with it, I’ve encountered zero technical issues, and only ever had the pleasure of buttery smooth framerates, which is especially remarkable with the context that base Rise was built for the Switch.

All of it is really brought to life by stellar monster designs, and continuing the trend of introducing slick new weapons and armor. While it might not be quite the looker in the same way World is in terms of sheer detail, I still think that Rise is the best middle ground of old and new in terms of environment design and color palette, retaining that classic feel of the old games with some of the modern sheen brought with World.

The post Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Review – Shining Bright appeared first on Press Start.

Few video game franchises have endured as long as Sonic the Hedgehog, but those that have typically haven’t had as rocky an existence as our spiky, blue friend. Where his rivals have gone from strength to strength, Sonic’s catalogue of releases has become more and more mixed over time. It makes sense then, that SEGA is keen to continue reviving and re-selling Sonic’s earliest outings. Sonic Origins is the latest example of those efforts, and it’s a surprisingly decent package overall.

Sonic Origins serves up the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis versions of the original three Sonic the Hedgehog games as well as Sonic CD, all recreated in the same “Retro Engine” used to power 2017’s Sonic Mania. On top of the games themselves, there are a handful of extra modes and a museum of unlockables spanning the blue blur’s most historic years. It’s not quite the all-encompassing collection that we’ve seen in the past, omitting games like Sonic Spinball and Sonic 3D Blast, but the trade-off is these are faithful and pristine ports. Each game also has its own animated intro and ending sequences, which look fantastic.

There are also multiple new ways to play the four included games, with everything tied into a central ecosystem of collectible coins. You can play the games in their original, 4:3 forms in Classic Mode if you like, but the new Anniversary/Story modes are where it’s at. Playing any of the titles in Anniversary Mode gets you essentially the same game, but with widescreen support and the ability to choose Sonic, Tails or Knuckles as the playable character (no Lock-On technology needed!) as well as the removal of lives. Yep, no game over screens here – with unlimited lives everything instantly becomes a lot more accessible than before. 

Story Mode, on the other hand, puts all four games and the new animated sequences in chronological order (Sonic 1, Sonic CD, 2 and then 3) in one long run with Sonic as the only playable character. Then there’s also a Boss Rush option available for each game as well as a Mission Mode that offers up a series of objective-based versions of levels where you’ll need to meet goals in order to unlock harder missions and earn plenty of the all-important coins.

Those coins, which you earn across the extra modes as well as Anniversary/Story in place of life pick-ups and are carried across every game, are useful for two things. Firstly they’re used to unlock everything in the Museum, which is stacked full of a bunch of pretty cool memorabilia from covers to manuals, never-before-seen art and documents and of course a ton of music. More useful though is the ability to cash them in to restart any of the bonus stages across the games, which have always been a bit of a pain point given they’re incredibly easy to fail and crucial to seeing the true endings of each game. If you’re keen to finish all of the titles in Sonic Origins you’ll definitely want to hang onto your coins for that purpose.

All said, this is a decent little package with a few neat wrinkles to make playing these games more enjoyable than ever, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thoroughly impressed with the way it’s all presented. The games themselves look razor sharp and run impeccably, though it’s a bit disappointing that there aren’t any extra visual options or filters made available given these have been rebuilt from scratch. I also really wish a “rewind” feature not unlike those included with previous emulated Sonic collections was available in at least the Classic mode to further mitigate frustration. The front end menu, which presents each game as a gorgeously-rendered 3D island, is totally unnecessary but looks great, and you can even zoom into and inspect each one – provided you paid for the privilege.

Yep, the one real blight on this whole collection is that SEGA has seen fit to nickel-and-dime fans out of a bizarre selection of extras that are locked to its “Digital Deluxe Edition”. While only $7 or so more expensive than the base version, the fact that the more expensive version contains stuff like camera controls and animations in Sonic Origins’ menus feels a bit gross. It’s also a touch jarring to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles with what’s seemingly a very early iteration of its soundtrack, included here in place of what’s long been suggested was a soundtrack composed in collaboration with Michael Jackson, but that likely couldn’t have been helped if there’s any truth to those rumours.

We’ve had plenty of retro Sonic compilations before, and the cynic in me wants so badly to see this as just another in a long line of nostalgia grabs amid the continued futile attempts at modern franchise entries. The thing is, for the first time in ages this feels like a genuine celebration of the blue blur’s beginnings, made with care and a reverence for the source material. Weird Deluxe Edition choices aside, anyway.

The post Sonic Origins Review – A Blast (Process) From The Past appeared first on Press Start.

There’s a lot of expectation associated with Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes in a few ways. For starters, Fire Emblem: Three Houses – the very game it’s based on – is one of the strongest Fire Emblem games in the franchise, beloved by many as a return to form for the series while also including all the best elements of the 3DS entries. There’s also the weight brought along by the success of 2019’s excellent Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which set a new standard for what Musou spin-offs could achieve.

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While Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes mostly succeeds on delivering an alternate take on Three Houses, it’s hard not to feel like some of the ideas here just don’t fit into the kind of formula Musou games are rooted in. That’s not to say it’s bad – there’s plenty here for fans of Three Houses, even more so for those who get deeply invested into the content these Warriors games offer, but there are elements of the overall experience that suffer once the repetition sets in.

Serving as an alternate take on Three Houses, Three Hopes has a narrative that is mostly similar in structure and narrative beats to what is found in Three Houses. After completing a short tutorial battle, the player character, Shez, falls into an unexpected situation at Garrag Mach Monastery. With Shez looking to pickup the pieces and uncover the truth behind a being only they can communicate with known as Arval, you’ll pick one of the three houses to enroll into at Garrag Mach.

One of the best elements Three Houses brought to Fire Emblem was the ability to grow your relationship with the students at Garrag Mach, and Three Hopes is no different. While most of these characters initially come across as surface level or stereotypical, it’s these deeper dives into their personalities and who they are that fleshes them out and makes them such a fantastic cast to engage with.

It’s clear that they all have different lineages and come from all walks of life, and even though I’d spent countless hours with them already in Three Houses, the new stuff brought along in Three Hopes was just as alluring, and always had me looking forward to the next support threshold. It’s a true treat to be back with this cast of characters again, and is easily one of the best aspects of Three Hopes.

I mentioned in my preview for Three Hopes that the overall narrative wasn’t doing a whole lot for me, but that I’d suspected it would quickly improve as the pace picked up towards the second half of the game. While there definitely was some improvement, there are a myriad of questions left unanswered after rolling credits on the Black Eagles route relating to Arval, Shez, and Byleth in particular.

There’s no doubt that the player is incentivized to replay Three Hopes multiple times in order to uncover all the answers, and to also view the conflict from a different perspective. The problem, is that Musou games don’t lend themselves particularly well to subsequent play-throughs, especially at the length of 20 or so hours long.

Because the bulk of the narrative is one that treads ground similar to that of which is found in Three Houses, I was ultimately left feeling underwhelmed in regards to the actual plot. While I’m sure it picks up if you’re willing to commit the time, Three Hopes simply isn’t designed for it when it feels like the first playthrough already overstays its welcome.

Much like Age of Calamity, Three Hopes looks to translate a lot of the mechanics and gameplay systems from Three Houses into a Musou framework, to varying degrees of success. The class system, for example, sees units progress down a non-linear tree of potential classes they unlock as they participate in class certification exams. This means the player is afforded a lot of flexibility into what each unit can do, but also means there’s less individuality between units. Move sets and the way characters play are defined by their class, not the character themselves.

This system is a joy to experiment with on a first playthrough, because it essentially means you can customize your army exactly how you want to. Specializing into particular classes with particular units, watching them grow in power, expanding their move sets as they progress further down the tree.

Where it suffers, though, is in the fact it effectively means all three routes play almost identically from a move set perspective, in a game where a lot of the core appeal comes from the power fantasy of playing suped-up versions of these characters. While not a bad system on its own, it painfully highlights the potential repetition towards the end of the game, which killed a lot of my motivation to dive right back in for another run.

That isn’t to say that your first play through is a bad one, though. While it gets off to a bit of a slow start, it eventually evolves into a more fully-realized Musou/strategy hybrid in-comparison to 2017’s Fire Emblem Warriors. It’s satisfying to appropriately pair up units via the Adjutant system and issue commands to them as you take to the fight with another character, as you switch and swap between your chosen units to accomplish objectives.

Battle itself is standard Warriors stuff, but where it really gets interesting is once you start delving into deeper classes, and look to synergize unit abilities and Adjutants together. The hack n’ slash stuff here is all well and good, but battle is at its most engaging when you’re thinking about which units need to go where in order to take advantage of weaknesses and enemy formations. Three Hopes gives you more control over AI units than ever, and even though they’re relatively useless when they aren’t given something to do, it accentuates the idea you’re commanding a small army.

Weaknesses are something I was also a big fan of in Three Hopes. Enemies are weak to particular weapon types depending on which class they are similar to Three Houses, as opposed to the typical Fire Emblem weapons triangle. It forces you to not only bring a wide array of units to cover all of your bases, but to also think outside the box when challenged by a tough enemy with multiple weaknesses.  Do you want to commit your whole team to bring it down as fast as you can? Or is it maybe better to cycle units in and out to retain focus on other parts of the battlefield. This is all stuff I never got tired of, and it was a refreshing break from the endless hack n’ slashing.

Each chapter takes place within a smaller region of Fódlan, broken up into even smaller battlefields. Every one has a main conflict you’ll work towards to reach the next chapter, but these can only be undertaken when surrounding land is seized via the Side Missions they offer, battles that are smaller in-scale, but often net rewards.

The number of Side Missions in each chapter steadily goes up as the game progresses, but there’s a nice degree of flexibility here for those who want it. Do you forge a path straight to the main conflict and do only the necessary Side Missions, or do you spend the time to complete all of them to earn extra rewards, bolstering your army and progression further? You can even unlock special bonuses to aid you in that chapter’s main conflict, or weapons that you normally wouldn’t come across, making them almost always worthwhile, but never forced thanks to the other tools Three Hopes has in regards to character progression.

One thing Three Houses was almost universally praised for was the social sim elements and the way that they directly impact gameplay. Three Hopes converts much of the same efforts, where between battles you can spend time with other students to improve support levels with Shez or other students, increasing their support capabilities when paired up as an Adjutant. The catch, though, is that there’s a limited number of actions per chapter, and you’ll always have to pick and choose between who you want to see grow.

It provides a little more decision making between battles, and by no means makes other units arbitrary or useless. In-fact, you also gain a certain number of training actions that can be used to improve class proficiency on units you don’t use as much. You can also spend gold to gain levels up to where Shez is currently at, meaning you can constantly try out new units and class setups as long as you have the resources. My only real gripe with these systems is that they function almost identically to how they do in Three Houses, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it rings true here.

Unfortunately, one area where Three Hopes really struggles is in its production values. Aside from having an excellent soundtrack, killer CG cutscenes, and some nice character models, it doesn’t have much else going for it. The environments for the most part are bland and lacking in detail, with muddy textures and overly sharp edges drawing your attention away from the action.

Performance is similarly frustrating, where handheld mode tends to hold around 30 frames per second, with docked trying to target a higher 60, but hardly ever reaching it. It goes without saying that playing in coop only worsens these conditions, which is a shame, because none of these Warriors games have taken advantage of such a strong idea.

The post Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Review – A Mostly Worthy Spin-Off appeared first on Press Start.

The God of Citywide Beatings and Bin Chicken Dinners smiled upon me recently. He arranged it so that I might smash through the entirety of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge in its intended form—with a party, dudes. Crowded around one TV as a six-some, my turtle powered posse and I kicked things up to Gnarly difficulty. Then, we gave the titular Tin Grin absolute shell.

What followed was basically one of the best side-scrolling brawlers I’ve ever experienced. This is high praise coming from an ’80s kid who’s more or less beaten ’em all (up).

Anyone familiar with Dotemu’s pedigree won’t be too shell-shocked to hear that the bar of quality has been reset to Turtle Blimp heights in Shredder’s Revenge. This small publisher is known for championing a number of exemplary 2D game remakes. One pertinent example being the studio’s stellar efforts on Streets of Rage 4 (2020) and its dream of a DLC, Mr. X’s Nightmare.

Within Dotemu’s small stable of studios, the collective understanding of the beat ’em up genre is second to none. Their ability to capture the essence of a classic formula— while also tastefully ‘roiding it up with clever twists and modern creature comforts— is a special technique that few others possess.

Speaking of authenticity, it’s also worth noting this game bears the full endorsement of Nickelodeon, holder of the TV series rights. Any OG who grew up with the first batch of late ’80s Turtles (plus the ’90s films) will recognise the telltale OCD detailings of a bunch of super fans let loose. One gets the unmistakable impression Shredder’s Revenge was a dream project for the team at Tribute Games.

There’s no secret to the ooze that’s been smeared all over this. It’s love.

And do you know what represents the extra jellybeans on this pepperoni pizza? All of the original voice actors have returned to quip up a storm as Leo, Raph, Mikey and Don. The other playable characters—Splinter, April and the unlockable Casey Jones—don’t sound too far off what your crusty old ears remember, too.

In terms of plot and purpose, this is an original adventure which smartly cherry picks and mutates the best moments and mechanics from Konami’s watershed TMNT arcade cabinets. Via a top-down overworld reminiscent of the (vastly inferior) Ultra Games turtle titles, you’ll hop around a super deformed NYC and Dimension X. The basic gist: stop Krang, Shred-head and more or less every major antagonist in the show, from taking a bite out of the Big Apple.

To thwart them, you must once again hew through mobs of enemies in an ever rightward push to an end boss, followed by a modest pattern memorisation test. There is of course the odd palate cleanse here and there— environmental dangers to dash or leap over, radical hoverboard sections, etc. That said, for the most part you’re here to ruin more Foot than a work experience podiatrist.

On the lowest difficulty in Story Mode, these fisticuffs can be pedestrian enough to let anybody reach the final cutscene within 2 and a half hours. Credits are endless in Story, and your stock of individual lives are generous (and will even reset to “full” for every level attempt). Honestly, smashing through this way is a decent training montage to (mostly) grind your fave characters up for a serious run on Gnarly difficulty. It’s also the best way to tick off the trickier mini-cheevos in each level, which typically ask you to kill a set amount of foes with certain techniques.

Be that as it may, the Finish The Level Without Getting [Hit/Knocked Over By Obstacle X] challenges are clearly aimed at very skillful soloists. Because if you’re playing as a group, one turtle’s screw up is applied to all. I appreciate that the loners have something difficult to shoot for that will require many a restart and likely gobble up additional hours like a Mouser does rodents.

When it comes to kicking shell, Shredder’s Revenge clearly has way more depth than the mashy arcade titles that inspired it. However, it’s not quite as layered as the likes of the almost “side-scrolling Street Fighter” complexity of Streets of Rage 4.

The first thing that becomes apparent is the effort Tribute put into making each turtles look and feel unique. With a simple rating system on the character select screen you can quickly gauge who excels in Power, Speed or Range, not to mention who’s a good all-rounder.

Hit the mean streets and you’ll quickly spot a bunch of other nuances for these amphibians. Subtle differences bubble up in their various basic moves—like a flashier jump attack, a swifter evade animation, a faster charging ‘heavy’ attack, or a dash slide that goes farther or trips Foot…uh, feet harder.

This individuality bleeds across into the Special attack maneuvers. These Y button techniques grant you momentary invincibility and crowd control benefits, providing you’ve punched your way into earning a full ‘Special Bar’ for their use. Depending on the character selected, some of these might flare out with a greater diameter, last slightly longer or allow you to pivot yourself about, like some sort of roaming sai tornado.

Better yet, a few new special techniques (and more health/lives) can be earned through diligent play. The game tracks each character’s kills across multiple playthroughs, with a modest supply of perks and new mechanics unlocking every 200 murders or so. Max out at 2000, and you’ll be a fully fledged ninja master with 5 lives, a larger HP bar, a trebled Super bar and access to these frankly OP slam dunk and dash Specials.

Oh, and you can earn a Radical state which gives you a bodacious afterglow effect and the ability to deal shellacious damage for a time. It’s very much as advertised.

Marry the above with the ability to grab enemies—then either smash them into the pavement, hurl them at their mates or “out of the screen” entirely as a one-hit KO – and yeah, Shredder’s Revenge is reasonably complex and tons of fun.

While I certainly enjoyed my run through as “no bros” Leonardo, the game shines brightest as a multi affair. In my 4-player and 6-player playthroughs, communication and collaboration were imperative. In the roiling madness of limbs and technicolour explosions you will often need to ask an ally to run interference as you spam Taunt to replenishing your Special bar faster. As you’d imagine, talking smack for two seconds draws serious AI aggro.

The Foot also love to stomp anybody holding LB to revive a fully downed mate. They also interfere when you tap LB to high-five two points of your own life across to a weakened bro. Cool, camaraderie-enhancing mechanics both.

These moments of goodwill and skill elevate Shredder’s Revenge from a good beat ’em up to a great all for one, one for all hoedown. However, that’s purely the local expectation you should have, where everybody is within physical punching distance. Your experience may vary in an online setting where you’re forced to lobby in two distant friends or *shudder* two Internet randos. I predict the needless pizza theft is going to be off the scale.

Beyond those infuriating moments, I’m confident Shredder’s Revenge will attract a new generation of fans while also delivering the classic sights and sounds expected of sore eyes. As with all Tribute titles, you’re getting apex level pixel art and animations teeming with references to the wackiest TV ep plots. It’s clear that they’ve mined the toy line figures/vehicles for gold, too.

Soundwise, this is an aural injection of sheer, unadulterated Nineties. We’re talking bodaciously boisterous rock anthems and even the odd ninja rap for good measure (quick props to Wu Tang). That’s all complemented by some satisfying thwack effects, authentic Turtle boy bantz and those triumphant special move shrieks which used to dominate arcade halls and lure in lunch money like a Siren’s song.

Even today, Konami’s Ninja Turtles beat ’em ups are revered, replayed and resold in ridiculous numbers as 1UP branded cabinets. With Shredder’s Revenge, Tribute has studied the blueprints of the best titles this genre produced and expanded and improved upon them in every conceivable metric.

Not to turtle wax lyrical, but I reckon you owe it to yourself to have this turtle celebration waiting in your collection for when friends (of any age group) drop by. This has the universal appeal of pizza and can be partially consumed in sixteen ten-minute slices at a time. More likely, you’ll scarf it all in one binge, multiple times. Possibly as you seek all seven endings. Maybe to get your amhibian arses kicked as you chase the Arcade clear on Gnarly that’s harder than a Rock Soldier’s abs.

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