Treyarch has proven, once again, that they know what makes a Call of Duty multiplayer experience really tick. The return of the classic prestige system, a tight TTK, excellent map variety and the introduction of omnimovement build on the excellent foundations of recent Call of Duty games, making Black Ops 6’s multiplayer experience an absolute delight. It isn’t always perfect, but it’s the best it’s been in many, many years. 

Headlining Black Ops 6’s new additions is the introduction of omnimovement, which completely changes the way you can move in-game. You’re now able to sprint, slide and dive in any direction you want, giving you an endless amount of new opportunities for traversal. Whether you’re dodging and diving away from enemy fire, sprint-sliding into a capture point or simply throwing yourself off a roof into the pool below, omnimovement feels slick, fast and fluid.

While the game’s only been out for around a week, I’ve already seen players making use of the omnimovement system in ways I didn’t even think possible. It’s such a breath of fresh air for the franchise. That said, I can’t help but think it’s a sink or swim moment for some players, as the learning curve is definitely steeper than usual. However, it’s an excellent change to the traditional movement options available in Call of Duty and compliments the chaotic nature of the series.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $89 FROM AMAZON

To compliment the omnimovement system, Treyarch’s also done a great job at creating a more seamless movement experience for those that want it. Intelligent Movement, as they’ve called it, allows you to toggle a range of options to remove the amount of button presses you need to make to get around a map. This includes four options: Sprint Assist, Mantle Assist, Crouch Assist and Corner Slice. Toggling any of these on will essentially tell the game to perform these actions for you when you go up to a relevant obstacle – the game will detect what you’re intending to do and perform the appropriate action. While I only played around with it a couple of times, it’s a great little accessibility feature that does a great job at allowing you to focus primarily on the action rather than getting stuck and losing momentum. 

Another major highlight in Black Ops 6’s multiplayer suite is the new game mode, Kill Order. A 6v6 teamwork-oriented mode, Kill Order has players on either side attempting to defend their high value target (HVT) while trying to kill the enemy team’s HVT, racking up points in the process. The trick here is that HVT’s earn more points than regular operators when getting kills, and earn the most points when killing the other team’s HVT, so there’s a certain element of risk versus reward. HVTs can also be revived, are a bit stronger than regular operators and can see enemies on their minimap. When an HVT is killed another player on the team becomes the HVT, with the mode continuously rotating until the score limit or time limit is reached. 

Unsurprisingly, strong communication plays an important role in winning games of Kill Order, and I’ve had an absolute blast with it. Wrapped up amongst the other beloved modes that Black Ops 6 ships with, Kill Order is easily one of my personal favourites. It feels like one of the strongest new mode additions in some time, and that’s likely due to how easy it is to understand and how it differs from most of the other modes on offer. 

Map variety is strong in this year’s entry, as well. Treyarch’s focused on maps that are generally a bit smaller than what’s been available in recent Call of Duty titles, leaning in on tighter angles and more vertical variety. Most of the maps are small to medium in size, with a couple of larger outliers. My personal standouts so far are Subsonic, a small map nestled within a bomber team’s training facility, and Skyline, a medium-sized map based on a luxury resort rooftop. Of the 16 maps at launch, I’ve only felt aggrieved when a couple make their way into the rotation, those being Red Card and Lowtown. Both maps are just a bit too big and are prime real estate for snipers to camp up the back and make everyone’s life a bit of a misery. Hilariously, a lot of the time these maps appear in the rotation most players will vote to skip so it can’t be just me who isn’t very stoked on either of them. 

The biggest gripe I have with the game so far – and it’ll likely come as no surprise – is the abhorrent spawns. In almost every game I’ll find myself on the wrong side of an enemy’s reset spawn location or I’ll spawn right in the middle of a gunfight, which makes getting back into the momentum of the game difficult. I do wish Treyarch and the team would look into this issue, as it’s been such a prevalent problem for so many years. 

In better news, Treyarch’s brought some of the most requested features from previous entries into Black Ops 6, headlined by the return of the classic prestige system. Once you hit Level 55 you’ll be given the option to prestige, taking you back to level 1 and forcing you to unlock all of your equipment again. There are incentives for doing this, of course, with many customisation options – from calling cards to operator skins – on offer. It’s great to finally have this system return as I found the other prestige relatively boring without any clear incentive. It also feels nostalgic in its own way, which for this veteran Black Ops player is always a good thing. 

There are a variety of other returning and new features, too, like customisable reticles for your optical attachments, the return of theater mode, a fully customisable HUD and the post-match winner’s circle. It feels like Treyarch has really listened to fans since Cold War’s launch in 2020 and have made it a priority to ensure Black Ops 6 looks both forward and backward, celebrating the previous entries while ensuring the game feels fresh, new and exciting in its own way. 

All of these new additions come together to compliment the ever-excellent Call of Duty gunplay to a tee. The game feels brilliant to play, and is made all the better thanks to the well-balanced TTK and a solid array of guns and equipment to experiment with. Streamlining the gunsmith was also an excellent move by Treyarch, as navigating through menus and looking through new attachments and weapon options seems a lot easier this year. 

While perks themselves haven’t seen a reinvention, the addition of the combat speciality perk certainly changes the game a bit. If you match the specialty of your three perks, you’ll be granted a combat speciality. Combat specialities give you a solid advantage in the battlefield, whether it’s being able to see enemies through walls for a brief period of time when you respawn or earning a score bonus for completing an objective or destroying enemy equipment. Playing around with your class and experimenting with what works for your perk specialities is important in this year’s game, and while it’s a small change to the flow of general gameplay I’ve enjoyed figuring out what works best for me and my team. 

Call of Duty Black Ops 6’s multiplayer suite is nothing short of excellent. I’ve had so much fun getting to grips with the new omnimovement system, figuring out the best way to get around the new maps and diving head-first into Kill Order. Returning features like the classic prestige system ensures that I’ll no doubt spend many hours in the game over the course of the year, and while it has some niggling issues that continue to plague the series, it’s the best multiplayer suite in a Call of Duty game in many, many years. 

You can find out more about our thoughts on the game’s campaign here.

The post Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Multiplayer Review – The Best It’s Been appeared first on Press Start.

Given its penchant for science-fiction, the Black Ops canon was always a little tough to follow. Double crosses, government secrets, topped off with divergent story paths led to some of the Call of Duty series’ most enjoyable, if not batshit nonsensical, stories ever told. Black Ops Cold War reintroduced series regulars, CIA operatives Alex Mason and Frank Woods, alongside the debonair Russell Adler, as they pursued Perseus, a Soviet atomic spy, during the turbulent, early 80s. 

In terms of history, Black Ops 6 is placed nearer to the Gulf War and follows a now maimed, wheelchair-bound Woods, alongside his mentee and agency upstart Troy Marshall. When the latter is deployed on a mission to Kuwait to apprehend an Iraqi minister, the operation is turned on its ear by the emergence of Pantheon, a rogue paramilitary force that has access to a terrible bioweapon as well as apparent ties within the CIA.

Although you’ll drift between the perspectives of many over the course of this globetrotting adventure, you play a substantial chunk of Black Ops 6 as William “Case” Calderon, a handpicked member of Woods’ Black Ops faction. The goal, obviously, becomes to save the world for the umpteenth time while rooting out the mole and getting to the bottom of yet another warped, psychological conspiracy worthy of a geopolitical thriller like this.

The story is a lot of fun and dips to some expectedly bonkers places. The government’s research into mind control, MK-Ultra, has long been a lynchpin for the Black Ops narrative, and this sixth iteration is no different. Heavy artillery is, clearly, still an enormous factor in Black Ops 6, however you could make the argument the real war is psychochemical. Legacy players like Woods and Adler are given good stuff to chew on that respects where their weary characters have been, while newcomers like Marshall attack the game’s events with all the hallmarks of a conflicted leader, searching for truth in a world where the truth lies. 

And I won’t lie, seeing Lou Diamond Phillips, star of La Bamba, cameo as the agency’s figurehead got a pop out of me. He isn’t in more than a couple of integral scenes, though his gravitas is undeniable. 

As for the campaign itself, I do think Treyarch deserves a lot of credit for always trying to do new things you might not regularly associate with corridor-shooter Call of Duty. The original Black Ops felt like a revitalisation for what a story could look like within the franchise, while Cold War wasn’t afraid to holster the hardware in favour of tense, slow burn bouts of espionage that really sell the Mission: Impossible-like feel, the mission’s stakes, and the importance of the team. While I felt at points Black Ops 6 had a crisis of identity, with how radically it’d leap between mission structures and concepts, I was never bored. 

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $84 WITH FREE SHIPPING ON AMAZON

Whether I was breaking into a government blacksite beneath a cocktail event held by governor Bill Clinton, or grifting my way into the high rollers lounge at a decadent Italian casino, I felt just as formidable in these moments as I did with gun in hand. Of course, when I did have a gun in hand, I was treated to the industry-leading gunplay the series has built its empire on. It’s as tight as ever, and made only more dynamic thanks to omnidirectional movement, the big new game changing feature of this iteration. Granted, its impact is likely to be felt more across its multiplayer suite, though I certainly felt snappy and fresh during the campaign even though, for reasons I can’t ascertain, the feature received no onboarding at all. 

All of the quiet moments in between took place at The Rook, Adler’s off-grid safehouse in Bulgaria that he cryptically leads the team towards early on. A stunning, picturesque mansion stradling an oceanside cliff, The Rook affords the player with momentary reprieves to chat with the team, solve black light riddles, and upgrade gear and perks in a very multiplayer-coded fashion. In fact, in any other campaign, Treyarch’s ability to pepper in core tenets from both multiplayer and Zombies would have fallen flat. In a game so driven by science-fiction, it manages to fit like a glove while serving as subconscious onboarding for the game’s long-life, evergreen modes.

With nearly countless studios devoting resources to it, it’s never surprising when the Call of Duty games look as good as they do. The cinematics, in particular, are rendered with lifelike fidelity, and although the in-engine action doesn’t necessarily quite measure up, it’s still one of the better looking games on the market every single year. Once again, the environment artists have gone to work creating some of the most detailed play spaces, kicking off the adventure with the stirring image of smoke plumes climbing into the clouds as Iraqi oil wells burn into the night. I can never quite expect the places these Black Ops campaigns will take us, and while photographing Clinton on-stage with bought-off senators or storming Saddam’s palace should be the peak of how buck wild it gets, I do think Black Ops fans will love a few nods to the older games. With a few instances of stuttering and muddied textures in the busier cutscenes, it perhaps isn’t as optimised as it usually is, however I’d say the frame rate held firm in the moments that mattered.  

After the misery that was Modern Warfare III’s launch last year, this campaign felt like a particularly confident foot forward for a franchise under new rule. Not only does it function as the best five-hour onboarding for Call of Duty’s multiplayer ever, it delivers the bonkers twists you’d expect from a Black Ops, a fun cast to rally behind, and it’s rooted in just enough real-world politics to serve as a compelling “what if?”

The post Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Campaign Review – A Mind-Bending Ride appeared first on Press Start.

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.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $45 FROM TARGET

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.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $69 WITH FREE SHIPPING

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.

Metaphor: ReFantazio has come a long way to get where it is today. Initially announced as Project Re:Fantasy, Metaphor was conceived by Katsura Hashino shortly after he departed the Persona team over at ATLUS. Citing a need to explore new ideas untethered from Persona 5’s runaway success, Hashino established his own internal studio within ATLUS named Studio Zero. That all happened almost 10 years ago in 2016. That’s a long time for any game to be in development, but the anticipation for Hashino’s next big creative swing is palpable.

ATLUS is also now in a position where they don’t need to be entertaining creative ideas for new IP. Persona is a worldwide phenomenon that practically prints money, and Shin Megami Tensei is becoming more mainstream as a result. That aspect of Metaphor makes its existence even more impressive, especially when some of ATLUS’ strongest talent is involved in the project. There’s a clear belief in Hashino’s vision to bring something new to ATLUS’ expansive swathe of JRPGs. Though it might not be the gameplay evolution some are looking for, Metaphor is yet another win for ATLUS.

In the dead of night, the United Kingdom of Euchronia’s idealistic and benevolent king is assassinated in his sleep, instigating widespread chaos throughout the land. With his son rendered unconscious by a curse, the throne’s successor has never been more unclear. In his death, the king invokes royal magic, setting the stage for a tournament of kings to to decide who’s fit to take the throne.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $98 WITH FREE SHIPPING 

You play as a young boy of the Elda tribe, a group of people that’ve been ostracised due to their connections to the old world. The Elda are few and far between in Euchronia for a few reasons, but what’s important is that you’re entering the tournament on behalf of the prince, while also searching for a means to lift the curse placed on him so he can take his place as king. It’s a fantastically unique premise that’s ripe with potential and thematic musings.

While ATLUS games always have more going on under the surface narratively – especially in Hashino’s works – Metaphor feels restrained. It maintains a square focus on the tournament, its many players, the core cast, and how it’s all impacting Euchronia. There’s still plenty of great narrative surprises and the way in which it hones in on that central conflict means that it’s always the same themes, ideas, and characters being explored and developed.

Euchronia is not a nice place. It purposefully mirrors our own world, with its people romanticising their own works of fiction and the idealistic worlds found within them. These seemingly perfect worlds also have these problems, tough. It’s these ideas of fiction and imagination that Metaphor is most fascinated with. Hoping for a better world when the status quo seems so deep-rooted in Euchronia’s history that most people live in complete ignorance of the discrimination around them.

In no way is this better explored than through Metaphor’s core cast of characters. Citizens whisper about the presence of an Elda in the capital of Grand Trad, propaganda and misinformation from bodies of authority result in warped perceptions of people and tribes they’ve never even met, and foreign cultures are often considered lesser or under-developed because of their differences. Even the problems faced by the higher classes are explored to some degree through the likes of Strohl, a noble who joins the army after his hometown is razed by monsters known as Humans.

It does feel like Metaphor doesn’t go far enough in its commentary of these themes and ideas in its main plot, though. They’re often only addressed in a manner that’s surface level, claiming that these things are bad and need to be uprooted, but not the deeper effects it has on the people impacted the most. I think this is likely because Metaphor is largely concerned with touching on the many downfalls of our own world, instead of exploring a select few in more intimate detail. It lends the game an ethereal and, for lack of a better word, meta feel to its central ideas and explorations.

It’s also just too long. ATLUS’ tentpole JRPGs often have this problem and it rears its ugly head once again in Metaphor. It isn’t as offensive as the tail-end of Persona 5, but Metaphor feels one dungeon too long. The final sequence in particular has a drawn-out preparation phase that’s great for wrapping up unfinished side content, but the main narrative comes to a screeching halt as a result. It’s made more obvious by how tightly paced the rest of Metaphor is, with a structure that echoes traditional Shonen anime to remarkable effect.

On the spectrum of Shin Megami Tensei and Persona, Metaphor: ReFantazio falls somewhere in the middle when it comes to gameplay. It leans a little heavy of the Persona side (with a dash of Digital Devil Saga), but combines elements of both to differentiate itself from ATLUS’ titanic franchises. If you’re wanting something that’s different from ATLUS’ traditional offerings, Metaphor isn’t quite that. It does bring some new ideas into the fold, but calling it wholly original in how it plays would be overstepping.

That isn’t to say Metaphor is uninspired or overly iterative. ATLUS continue to show they have a fundamental grasp on the systems and gameplay elements that make modern Persona and SMT so engaging. Once the game gets going proper, it operates on a calendar system with deadlines for each major dungeon as you progress the main story. You can spend your time making progress in said dungeons, deepening your bonds with the people of Euchronia, growing your kingly virtues, and more.

The biggest change in the calendar system comes with the Gauntlet Runner. A bipedal vehicle commonly used to traverse the dangerous no man’s lands between Euchronia’s towns, dungeons, and key points of interest. The catch, is that it takes time to make a trip in the Gauntlet Runner. Maybe you get a side quest that requires you to visit a nearby town or deal with a monster lurking in a small dungeon. Not only does it consume a day to explore said dungeon, but also to actually travel there in the Gauntlet Runner.

There are still things to do to fill the time while travelling, but any trip away from whatever town your party is setup at needs to be considered based on your progress in the main dungeon and its impending deadline. It adds another layer to decision making in this tried and true gameplay loop, imploring you to make the most of your time and optimise your dungeon diving. The Gauntlet Runner itself also just adds so much personality to the game and the whole setup of the tournament. Nowhere is this seen more than in the way you can stop at Euchronia’s many natural wonders on the road, all of which are accompanied by reflective conversation from the party. It lends a real sense of journey and exploration, echoing a grand feeling that isn’t often felt in modern RPGs.

Metaphor: ReFantazio also brings with it some of the best Social Links ATLUS has ever penned. Known as Bonds within Metaphor, these smaller side stories that follow people from different walks of life within Euchronia benefit greatly from the dark fantasy setting and themes of this world. It’d be a shame to spoil any of them here, but these stories often have the deeper explorations of Metaphor’s core themes and ideas that are lacking in the main story. They aren’t afraid to dig into the grungy underbelly of this world and the positions its people are forced into, but also highlight how perspective and understanding of someone who’s different from you can make all the difference.

Bonds also tie nicely into the game’s job system, called Archetypes. Each Archetype pertains to a different class, with advanced and elite Archetypes evolving from the base ones to create a Lineage. Each Lineage is directly linked to one of your Bonds, and levelling that Bond up directly benefits its related Archetype. Whether it be unlocking the aforementioned Advanced and Elite Archetypes, increasing the total number of Skill Inheritance slots, or decreasing costs associated with unlocking Archetypes within that lineage, these rewards always feel meaningful and worthwhile.

Part of the reason this all works so well is because the Archetype system is so, so good. It’s a fairly traditional job system where party members can seamlessly switch between Archetypes to fill different roles as needed. Levelling up these Archetypes unlocks new skills that you can inherit onto other Archetypes, granting you access to skill combinations you usually wouldn’t have. You can also use these slots to combat elemental weaknesses or fill holes in an Archetype’s kit. There’re so many different combinations and Archetypes to experiment with here, and it all fits so well into Metaphor’s combat framework.

It should come as no surprise that this battle system is very similar to Shin Megami Tensei’s. It’s closest to the Press Turn system from those games, where striking weaknesses grants you an extra turn, but the same is also true for your enemies. It’s always been strategically rewarding, and remains so in Metaphor, but there’s a few new ideas thrown into the mix that set Metaphor apart.

The most obvious change is Metaphor’s approach to first strikes, or the preamble that happens before turn-based combat actually starts. It’s become commonplace in RPGs today, but Metaphor goes a few steps further in its own interpretation of this modern staple. You can lock-on to roaming overworld enemies and engage them in a simple yet robust third-person action combat system. You’ll jump on enemies with simple combos while dodging their own attacks to stagger them, giving you a significant advantage on the first turn of combat if successful. The same is true for enemies, though, and starting battle with disadvantage feels like an uphill battle.

Weaker enemies can be immediately dispatched with this combat without transitioning into the turn-based mode, and weaknesses even play a part in how fast you stagger enemies. It’s a fun system that helps with combat pacing and cuts down on a lot of unnecessary battling. It’s very reminiscent of Trails Through Daybreak, and that’s a very good thing.

There’s a couple of things inside of the turn-based combat that give Metaphor it’s own flavour as well. There’s a formation system where you can place party members in the front or back line of the party, trading physical offence for defence and can sometimes be used to avoid entire attacks if you read your enemy properly. There’s also Synergy skills, which use two turn icons for suped up skills that often deal more damage or provide more efficient support to the party. The coolest part of these skills is how they also work with the Press Turn system, netting you two extra turns if you strike a weakness with one of these skills.

All of these inclusions are welcome because Metaphor does offer some challenge if you go looking for it. It’s not an overly difficult game on its base difficulty if you’re familiar with ATLUS’ other titles, but some of the optional bosses are real strategic gauntlets that force you to use every element of the combat system to come out on top. It’s a nice shift given ATLUS’ recent RPGs have lost some of their edge due to excessive player power and over tuned mechanics like Persona 3 Reload’s Theurgy.

Another area where Metaphor yields mixed results is in its dungeons. The main ones are almost all great, offering some really unique locales to explore that employ labyrinthine design that’re satisfying to unravel. The optional side dungeons are less impressive, often recycling the same visual motifs and design spaces that leave them feeling largely indistinguishable from one another, and forgettable as a result. You’ll spend a lot of time in these spaces as well, which only serves to hammer in the monotony. They’re better than the likes of Mementos or Tartarus, but still don’t come close to the quality of the main dungeons.

Now to surprise absolutely no one as I gush about Metaphor’s production values for the rest of this review. It’ll surprise no one that ATLUS have done it again, Metaphor is effortlessly stylish in all aspects of its presentation. It’s also done in a way that’s entirely different from recent Persona entries, fully embracing its dark fantasy setting and lofty musings on philosophy to deliver some incredibly striking user interfaces, imagery, character designs, and architecture.

A special shout out should go out to Shigenori Soejima’s excellent character designs. Each one is instantly charismatic, identifiable, and unique amongst a pantheon of other countless designs Soejima has authored over the years. It would’ve been easy enough for him to replicate his work in Persona with a medieval twist, but Soejima goes above and behind to reinforce the difference in these races and tribes with remarkable effect. It’s some of his most varied and high quality work yet, and that’s no small statement.

Shoji Meguro also makes a fantastic impression with Metaphor’s original soundtrack. An ATLUS game isn’t an ATLUS game without their irreplaceable music, and Meguro delivers a score so different from his previous works that still maintains his signature touches. Battle tracks slowly ramp up towards thunderous choruses, overworld tunes are less subdued than what you’d find in Persona, really selling the idea of this larger than life tournament of kings. It’s no surprise that Meguro delivers here, but that doesn’t undermine how fantastic the whole thing is.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is another home run for a seemingly unstoppable ATLUS. It isn’t without some issues, and ATLUS have yet to escape their third-act woes, but it’s refreshing to see a new IP with a setting that’s such a hard pivot from what’s become so successful for the studio. It might not depart as drastically when it comes to overall gameplay, but that isn’t such a bad thing when what’s been established is of such high quality.

The post Metaphor ReFantazio Review – Peak Fiction appeared first on Press Start.

Diablo IV felt like something of a much needed course correction – not just for Diablo, but also for Blizzard. While Diablo III has plenty of its own successes, IV’s pivot back to the gothic grunge that underpinned the first two games just felt right. It’s narrative was another lauded high-point, offering up an engrossing tale that left the door open for inevitable follow-ups.

Almost a year and a half later, the first of which is finally here in Vessel of Hatred. For all intents and purposes, Vessel of Hatred is more Diablo IV – but that isn’t a bad thing. It’s an addition to the base game that sports many of the same strengths and even amends some of its weaknesses. It sometimes feels like it plays it a little too safe as a result, but Vessel of Hatred is a worthy expansion to the devilishly enjoyable base game.

Vessel of Hatred picks up right where Diablo IV left off. The Horadrim are no longer the group they used to be, fragmented by innate differences and perceptions on how the threat of hell should be combatted. The ever-optimistic Neyrelle has set off on her own journey in hopes of finding a way to destroy Mephisto once and for all. The choice she made to imprison the Lord of Hatred forces her to endure unbearable suffering and torment. Mephisto taunts and goads Neyrelle within her own mind, planting seeds of self doubt and uncertainty in the process.

It’s in the search for Neyrelle that we journey into the new region of Nahantu. A humid jungle dense with verdant foliage that contrasts to the relatively muted colour palettes of the base game. It’s a peaceful place left untouched by Lilith’s machinations, but one that’s quickly corrupted by Mephisto as he toys with Neyrelle, and also by the Cathedral of Light who hunt her in an indiscriminate frenzy without Inarius to keep them in check.

It can’t be understated how much Vessel of Hatred is benefitted by opting to revisit characters and factions from the base game. There’re still some interesting newcomers like Eru and Maka, but much of the focus is placed on Nayrelle’s internal struggles with Mephisto. This conflict doesn’t just manifest in his attempts to control her, but also through her survivor’s guilt after everything that’s happened to her. It feels like a natural progression of the horrendous experience Nayrelle was put through when trying to save Sanctuary, giving you an immediate reason to buy in to the plot being told here.

Its shorter runtime also means that its overall pacing is much tighter than that of the base game. There is no bloated middle act to pad out runtime or slow down momentum. Vessel of Hatred always feels like it’s squeezing every narrative drop out of its more constrained runtime, and is all the more engrossing for it. It all concludes in a thematically resonant and cathartic conclusion for the party – especially in regards to Nayrelle – and paints a clear picture of what’s to come next in Diablo IV’s second expansion.

Vessel of Hatred’s biggest gameplay addition is the all new Spiritborn class. These are warriors in-tune with Nahantu’s ties to the Spirit Realm, weaponizing animal spirits to push back the forces of hell. It’s very druid-like in concept, but Spiritborn offers a core fantasy that none of Diablo’s prior classes have before.

All of the Spiritborn’s skills channel a different Spirit Guardians with unique elemental affinities and their own kind of gameplay styles. While the Jaguar Guardian focuses on ramping up your attack speed for high action-per-minute play, the Gorilla Guardian opts for slower area of effect skills with a more defensive toolkit. There’s also the Eagle Guardian and Centipede Guardian, the former of which combines the Jaguar’s speed and fury with plenty of skills that can apply Vulnerable to enemies, with the latter focusing more on crowd control and debilitating status effects.

You can definitely slot into one of these archetypes and focus on their strengths, but the best way to play Spiritborn is by combining different skills pertaining to different Guardian Spirits to mix and match their strengths. It enables you to cover areas a particular Guardian Spirit is weak in, or combine abilities that result in lethal combos to get the most bang for your buck. Combining centipede and gorilla skills, for example, results in a kind of crowd control bruiser that dishes out poison and fears enemies to set them up for the gorilla’s less mobile attacks.

There are so many different ways you can take Spiritborn in Vessel of Hatred, and it really feels like a fresh experience amongst a pantheon of already fantastic classes in Diablo IV. No two Spiritborn builds or playstyles are going to be the same, affording a level of flexibility and adaptability that feels unique in Diablo IV’s sandbox. I was constantly shifting between different archetypes thanks the ability to re-spec for free at any time, and I can’t wait to see what kind of deadly combinations the community comes up with when the class is fully explored.

Nahantu is also a great inclusion here. It’s refreshing to explore a more lively and vibrant environment. It still has the same kind of gothic undertones that come through in its colour palettes and overall design, but it stands out against the variety of backdrops found in the base game. You can tell when you transition from Sanctuary into Nahantu, from the clear environmental shift to its Mesoamerican inspired designs in its iconography and structures. It also feels distinct in the broader scope of the franchise, tapping into a more spiritual side of the world and lore.

From a design standpoint, Nahantu isn’t too much different from the regions of Sanctuary. Its flush with side quests, world quests, optional activities, reputation-boosting collectibles, and more. If you enjoyed the loop of exploring the base game’s environments, very little has changed here in Vessel of Hatred. In some ways, this is a bit of a double-edged sword in the sense that it offers the same constant progression, but it really doesn’t feel all that different from the base game. Even the Altars of Lilith have their own parallel within Nahantu, and much of the Renown grind also makes a return here – for better and for worse.

One new feature with Vessel of Hatred that is really neat, is the inclusion of Mercenaries. Initially making their debut in Diablo II, Mercenaries are just as they sound – hireable NPC characters that will accompany you on your adventures through Nahantu and Sanctuary. There’s four launching with Vessel of Hatred, each of which brings their own skill tree and behaviours to complement that of your own class.

It’s a fun system that adds some nice secondary progression that runs alongside your own, and also provides solo players with a method to bulk out their party if the going gets tough. Each mercenary having their own skill tree is a great way to customise them to fit into roles your class typically wouldn’t. Raheir, for example, can act as an aggro drawing tank or a versatile bruiser that gets into the thick of things and inflicts vulnerable on unsuspecting targets. It’s also thematically resonant with Vessel of Hatred’s overall explorations of coming together in times of hardship and finding support in loved ones.

Vessel of Hatred also brings new activities and endgame content, the most enjoyable of which are the new dungeons. There’s a slew on offer here, but the best are undoubtedly The Dark Citadel and Kurast Undercity. These are dungeons specifically curated for Diablo IV’s endgame, with The Dark Citadel bringing challenging new encounters with mechanics that are a bit more involved than what’s found in the base game. It also has a really great loot chase in an earnable currency that can be used to purchase some incredible looking cosmetics – fashion is always the real endgame.

Kurast Undercity is similarly brilliant. It’s a timed dungeon with multiple stages and tweakable challenges that increase the quality of loot rewarded. It feels very similar to Hades in the way you can make runs harder for larger payouts, providing a scaling challenge as you increase your power with new gear. They’re both fantastic additions to Diablo IV’s swathe of endgame content, and will no doubt keep hardcore players busy for some time.

Even if you play Diablo casually, Vessel of Hatred is also introducing a new in-game party finder so you can group up for these endgame activities. It’s a nice way to get solo players or smaller groups into more challenging content where Mercenaries simply won’t do the job. It really streamlines the whole multiplayer process and has loads of filters so you can find like-minded players at difficulties appropriate to your skill level and power.

It feels a bit redundant to mention Nahantu’s beauty yet again, but it can’t be understated how much Diablo IV’s art style and overall aesthetic excels in this kind of setting. The jungles of Nahantu dense mazes of trees and vines, with the forces of hell lurking in the shadows and the Cathedral of Light occupying its winding paths. Despite its alluring and natural appearance, the unsettling feelings you get exploring Sanctuary also permeate throughout Nahantu’s environments.

It isn’t all jungle either, with arid desert regions skirting the natural surroundings so that it seamlessly transitions to and from Diablo IV’s base map. Vessel of Hatred also has its fair share of hellscapes to explore, all of which are as densely detailed and rich with distinct iconography. It continues to be one of Diablo IV’s strongest aspects, and reconfirms that this franchise is at its best when revelling in the dark fantasy undertones of its gothic world.

Vessel of Hatred is an undeniably fantastic addition to Diablo IV. It might play it safe with how it handles world exploration and its open world activities, but it’s hard to complain when the bones of it are already so competent. If you’re looking for an expansion that shakes up Diablo IV at a fundamental level, Vessel of Hatred won’t deliver. But if you’re just looking for more of the excellence that is Diablo IV, Vessel of Hatred is well worth your attention.

The post Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred Review – A Spiritual Success 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.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $69 FROM AMAZON

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.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $74 WITH FREE SHIPPING FROM AMAZON

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.

I’d be tempted to call Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland nostalgia bait if it didn’t go ahead and nail exactly what it set out to achieve. Developed and framed from the get go as a throwback to classic, licensed platformers from the nineties, Adventures in Gameland is unequivocally a “made for Gameboy” title through and through. And that right there carries with it a bit of good, and plenty of bad as the game’s beautiful presentation struggles to bear the burden of frustrating, clunky, and dated platforming—not that the game sticks around long enough for it to grate at you.

With just six levels, carefully crafted with an understanding of Tommy, Chuckie, and the twins’ creativity in mind, as well as a keen understanding of Rugrats deep cuts, Adventures in Gameland truly encapsulates a “classic” experience with its truncated runtime of just a couple of hours.

Although I do love how each stage is framed as an episode of the series, complete with the hallmark “ba-baaaa” title treatment, each level is rather formulaic in its construct as you, playing as any of the four babies on offer, carefully crawl and jump through imaginative twists on otherwise mundane settings around the Pickles residence, recover Tommy’s trusty screwdriver, and unlock the baby gate safeguarding the level’s boss. 

There’s nothing that really sets each baby apart aside from their unique jump, and how much lift they get. Based on this, I feel like they do fit into the Super Mario Bros. roles to a degree with Tommy being reliably compact and sturdy as a squat plumber, while Chuckie and all of his trademark trepidation fits into the Luigi archetype. Phil and Lil feel similar, save for the fact that Lil has a floating glide at the tail end of her leap that makes her feel like Peach. 

And it’s not that the babies control badly, although I do feel like the input gets confused if you’re trying to do too much, it’s everything else in Adventures in Gameland that is far more frustrating. The player hit box is the size of California, checkpointing can be pretty punishing in the game’s final stage, and I don’t recall the game explaining anything. For a game where you’re able to butt slam with the crushing force of a night’s full diapie, pick up and stack blocks to climb onto, and crawl, the game really does just let you work it out for yourself.

Fortunately, for as frustrating as the finicky platforming can be, the game does at least offer a few difficulty options, which is a nice modern addition for a game that tries so hard to recreate the Gameboy’s classic sensibilities. After a few cheap deaths, I was glad to be coddled by the simplest newborn mode. 

From a presentation perspective, I don’t think Adventures in Gameland could be much better. As I’ve already touched on, the levels themselves dive deep into the enormity a child’s perspective can grant to pretty humdrum settings—for example, how a relaxing day at a backyard cookout can suddenly become an adventure throughout a tree hollow battling wind-up toys. It’s wildly imaginative and I think pays wonderful homage to some of the situations the babies found themselves in during the show’s run. 

It might not include voiceover performance, and I admit I do miss E. G. Daily’s trademark Tommy Pickles voice cracks, but the game’s scripted dialogue is extremely on point nevertheless. The game’s soundtrack more than makes up for it, not only does it open with the expected, absolutely iconic Rugrats theme tune, we get so many great renditions of the same theme throughout including an aggressive metal one that does slap. 

For those wanting an even more authentic Rugrats on Gameboy experience, you’re able to toggle between a pretty, almost true-to-animation high-definition setting and a classic 8-bit that’s more in line with how the game might have looked a few decades ago. You’re also able to switch between a full screen and bordered view, which restricts the action to a smaller share of the screen, more in keeping with the Gameboy’s original 10:9 aspect ratio. 

As a nineties kid, who absorbed more cartoons than I’d care to admit, likely while white-knuckling a Gameboy, Adventures in Gameland is an extremely nostalgic regression to a simpler time for game design. It bears the warts of the era it’s attempting to emulate, by being a bit clunky and frustrating, however as a Rugrats property it’s as authentic as it gets. In fact, to borrow a bit of the gang’s babble talk, it’s been a worthwhile ‘speriment. 

The post Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland Review – What A Baby’s Gotta Do 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).

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $49 FROM AMAZON

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.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $59 FROM AMAZON

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.

Influencing many games that came after it, including the now-legendary BioShock, it’s hard to argue against just how influential System Shock was. Despite this, I’ve always found it inaccessible. Not physically – there were always ways, both legal and not, to play the game. But even if I did, the game was riddled with game design choices that were only acceptable in the era it was first released. Now, Nightdive has above and beyond their usual remaster efforts with a full-blown remake. 

While the remake made its debut last year on PC, its console release has now been a year old, and while there are some improvements, it’s still an authentic-as-hell remake—for better or for worse.

The game’s story remains essentially the same. You play as a hacker whisked away to a space station called The Citadel. It’s a rich sci-fi tapestry that is the perfect backdrop for an adventure like this. While onboard, some story-related beats transpire, and you awaken on the space station six months later. But something has changed – the robotics are all reprogrammed to kill, and the remaining humans have been mutated by an unknown virus being researched at the station. To make matters worse, a megalomaniac AI called SHODAN has spearheaded the whole operation and will do everything in its power to stop you from escaping.

The story’s plot is tried and true, no doubt similar to something you’ve played, watched or read before. But how it’s presented feels unique and, at the time especially, was something you could only experience in a video game. The crux of the story is told through audio logs strewn throughout the station, as well as radio chatter from survivors, and some of it is optional and can be missed if you don’t explore enough. It makes exploration rewarding, finding another piece of the puzzle to slot into place, but it’s a less direct approach to storytelling that not all will appreciate.

In fact, that’s a resounding theme throughout System Shock today. It’s not quite a game that everyone will be able to appreciate, even if its influences are far and wide. The remake is similar to the original formula in that regard, happy with throwing you into The Citadel to solve most problems and let you uncover the mystery on your own. It’s a far cry from today’s waypoint-laden design style, but it also gives players great space to explore The Citadel at a pace that works for them.

For those who want a more modern experience, there are a slew of difficulty modifiers that will change up the experience to better suit your style. Waypoints can be optionally toggled on or off. The number of enemies and how much damage they do can be adjusted either way to your liking. There are even options to independently adjust the difficulty of puzzles if you so wish.

They’re small changes that will significantly impact how the game flows and will no doubt assist many players in experiencing everything that makes System Shock special without the friction of thirty-year-old game design getting in the way. If it means more people get into the series, I’m all for it. Of course, the original experience is still there if you choose the right combination of difficulty modifiers. It’s a win for all, really.

The console update brings with it a few changes, both minor and major. A minor but appreciated change is to switch up the gender of the hacker you play as. It’s a welcome addition, given how little their identity plays into the plot. The significant changes are broader reaching and ironically borrow one aspect BioShock games have always struggled with – the final boss and ending were incredibly anticlimactic. With the console update, that’s been fixed here in System Shock, though I’m not sure the final result will please everyone. But I personally found it to be a step in the right direction.

But if this is your first time playing this remake, this is the best way to do it, even if some of the issues persist. Coincidentally, many of my problems with the remake correspond directly with Brodie’s (always) scintillating and penetrative insights, so I recommend reading his review from last year. And while I adore System Shock for its influence on some of my favourite games, the age of the game is starting to show in some areas, especially the combat and the tedious death animations that play out for a little too long between lives.

I’ve mentioned previously that System Shock is less inclined to hold players’ hands, and that’s especially obvious with the progression. Progression isn’t tied to abilities like other Metroid-esque games but rather with items like keycards and activities you pull off in cyberspace. A psychedelic and deliciously cyberpunk-laden touch, breaking new ground in a physical representation of cyberspace is a joy. At least in the original game, these cyberspace sections were obtuse and unruly, so it’s appreciated that they’ve been touched up in the remake with a distinctly psychedelic and cyberpunk feel.

But of course, System Shock is a remake, so it goes without saying that the visual overhaul the game has received is nothing short of immaculate. It’s seriously impressive how much of a step up from the original game it is, but at the same time, it pays such a strong tribute to the style of the pixelated original. While more modern trimmings like atmospheric lighting and moody fog effects are used to bring The Citadel to life, the texture work here makes System Shock look unique. At a distance, the game looks modern, but up close, it is pixelated, almost like voxels, to create this new-but-old look. It’s a clever way to simultaneously make a game look old and new, and the extent to which it’s used here is unlike anything I’ve seen before.

On the same note, the music and voice work are top-notch. While the original music is painful to listen to, the new soundtrack is eerie, oppressive and ominous. It perfectly encapsulates what the System Shock experience should be. On a similar note, Terri Brosius, who has voiced SHODAN in all games so far, returned to record new lines for the menacing AI and is as sinister as ever. It’s easy to see why she’s so revered as an antagonist with such a powerhouse voice artist behind her.

And that’s the thing about System Shock. It’s everything a remake should be – true to the spirit of the original especially. But despite some earnest improvements in some areas, there’s no changing some of the unavoidable friction that comes with bringing a thirty-year-old game back.

The post System Shock (Console) Review – New Tricks, Old Habits appeared first on Press Start.

Sure, the discourse may have been eventually been clouded by arguments over whether or not it could be considered an “indie” game (something the creators have since cleared up), but there’s no denying Dave the Diver made quite the splash last year when it launched for PCs and then eventually the Nintendo Switch. Now, carrying on the inexplicable tradition of well-loved smaller efforts rocking up much later on PlayStation devices, the game is ready to set sail for PS5 and PS4. And unsurprisingly, it’s still very good.

If you’re one of those who’ve been holding out for this release and have not already had the pleasure of the dive (or the Dave), what’s here is a deceptively simple concept. As the titular Dave, you’re called on by the enigmatic but talented Chef Bancho for an important job – help his new waterfront sushi restaurant flourish by diving for fresh marine protein by day and managing the eatery by night. These two distinct types of gameplay form the core loop, with money from the restaurant funding better diving equipment to catch more exotic fish, in turn creating new and increasingly gourmet dishes to raise the profile and income of the restaurant and create new business opportunities like interior renovations and a bigger staff.

The thing that makes Dave the Diver truly special though, is that this, admittedly already-addictive, initial loop is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The deeper you go, literally and figuratively, the more layers you begin to uncover and the weirder things get. There’s more in these seas than just fish, after all, and more to the people you’ll meet above the surface than just hungry patrons looking for the next plate of delicious sushi. I’d hate to give too much away for anyone that’s managed to come in completely fresh, but there’s a reason Dave the Diver can sustain itself for a good 20-30 hour runtime and continue to surprise and delight the entire way through.

This game’s been out a while though, and there are countless other in-depth reviews you can read if you’re looking for more than a surface-level report on just how wacky this game can be, especially in the absurd things that characters say and the sheer detail packed into some of its playable gags. What you’re more likely here for is a few words on how Dave the Diver fares on PlayStation consoles, and after staying up many nights way longer than I should’ve recently, I think I can help with that.

The good, obvious news is, the game still slaps like a wet fish in the face. The experience is intact, and naturally looks and performs wonderfully on the PS5 where I spent my time playing it. Dave’s endearing combination of pixel art character models, simple 3D environments and lots of lovely effects goes down a treat in razor-sharp detail on a big telly, as do all of the incredible one-off retro-animated sequences you’ll discover as you do new things. In any other hands the weird grab bag of different visual elements here could have gone belly-up but it’s all just off-kilter enough to make it wonderfully compelling. The same goes for the soundtrack full of earworms and the Animal Crossing-esque dialogue.

And of course, there are some neat PS5-exclusive embellishments to be found here. At first I wasn’t entirely sure if a game that prides itself on lo-fi visuals and simple moment-to-moment gameplay really needs “immersive” DualSense features, but over time I’ve really grown to appreciate that extra little bit of tactility. Feeling the tug of a harpooned fish adds a bit of a thrill to the catch, and after a few hours you’ll start to notice the subtle difference in feel between different bits of gear that gives it a nice bit of extra (sorry) depth. Phone calls and camera snaps also come through the controller’s speaker, and pouring green tea or beer even offers some weirdly-calming feedback. The loading times between some areas also seem to have been brought under control here, at least on PS5.

It’s also a great fit for the PlayStation Portal, where the tiniest touch of latency and some occasionally tiny fish aren’t total dealbreakers. I’ve spent countless hours sitting in bed or rugged up on the couch on a cold morning just diving for fish and treasures on my Portal and it’s been bloody lovely. It’s no small wonder this game was so popular on Switch and the good ol’, Steam Deck.

The post Dave The Diver PS5 Review – A Worthy Tuna-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.

Editor’s Note: While the bulk of this review speaks to the writer’s experience and enjoyment of the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection’s offline content, and remains indicative of that experience, some readers might be interested in this collection for its online multiplayer component.

For that reason, it’s important to highlight that the game’s online multiplayer has been plagued with issues since launch and, while developer Aspyr is working hard to fix it, is yet to be at an acceptable state. We would advise holding off of a purchase until these issues are rectified if online multiplayer is of importance.

I can deny it all I like, but the fact remains that the original Star Wars: Battlefront was released 20 long years ago. Putting the existential dread aside, I’ve long proclaimed that the 2004 original and its far greater sequel are among the best shooters of all time, exceeding the pair of DICE-developed games that share the same name. It’s an easy claim to make when they’re stuck on old hardware, but the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection has brought the two titles to the current generation in one tidy package, making it the perfect time to see if the force is still strong with my childhood favourites.

The main selling point for most remasters, collections, and ports is playing beloved older games on current consoles, avoiding that heartbreaking moment when you try to play something on your dusty PS2, only for it to look blown out and awful on your modern TV. The Battlefront Classic Collection does precisely that while also sneaking in a few extras to surprise returning players.

From a technical standpoint, Battlefront I and II look and feel exactly as they did in the mid-2000s. Textures, character models and animations are all largely what they once were and have held up surprisingly well in the two decades that have passed. Importantly, even amidst the most chaotic moments on the largest map, I didn’t encounter any dropped frames, with the action always remaining smooth. Unfortunately, the live-action scenes cut from the films and scattered throughout the campaigns didn’t fare quite as well, with the low-resolution footage stuttering whenever they appeared. Thankfully, they’re short, and you’ve likely seen them countless times by this point.

Both titles are content complete, featuring a full suite of single and multiplayer modes, with online, offline and split-screen options available for the latter. While the Battlefront I campaign is little more than a series of Conquest matches that act only as a fun time capsule, the excellent Rise of the Empire story content from II has aged exceptionally well. Following the Clone’s betrayal of the Jedi and subsequent transition into the Empire’s army, the missions feature varied objectives, different play styles and frequent opportunities to play as Heroes and Villains. Even when I took my rose-tinted training visor off, this campaign still comes close to today’s standards.

Introduced in the original and expanded upon in the sequel, Galactic Conquest is still, to this day, a mode that can’t be beaten. Two players, or one player and an AI opponent, strategise and maneuverer around a map, managing resources, claiming planets and engaging in ground and space battles (in BFII) to conquer the galaxy. Potentially spanning hours of real-time, these mammoth games can be saved and loaded as you wish, and I suspect many will do just that as there’s nothing quite like it on the modern market.

My fondest memories with these games come from the multiplayer, which has returned with the Classic Collection in grand fashion. 64-player online multiplayer is supported, doubling what was possible in the original release. Servers were understandably empty during pre-release, but I played multiple hours with one other player, with our teams filled in with bots. Online performance was strong, and I didn’t run into any technical errors or crashes, but this could change with another 62 players in the mix.

Whether I was capturing control points in Conquest, stealing from the enemy’s base in Capture the Flag, or causing carnage as the various force-wielders in Hero Assault, I was having a blast. With four armies (Clones, CIS, Rebels and Empire), each with an assortment of playable classes, an array of vehicles to pilot and a wealth of well-designed maps to fight across, there’s no shortage of content, with none of it being locked behind microtransactions or slow-moving profile progression.

Some old sensibilities are refreshing, and some are frustrating. Including dedicated online multiplayer is terrific, but navigating your way to a match is tedious. Quick play will get you into the action immediately, but if you’re looking to play with friends, you’ll need to create a private room, add your maps and match types, load in, and then have your mates manually search for the room name. It’s admirable to keep the experience as untouched as possible, but preservation doesn’t need to ignore innovation. The inclusion of a party system, or even an invite option, would be a vast improvement. It’s also worth noting that there’s no option for cross-play, so be sure you’re all on the same system before making a purchase.

In most ways, the Collection has left the two games untouched, for better and worse, but there’s a smattering of new content to be found. Five new maps have been added across the two games, including the claustrophobic Jabba’s Palace and wide-open Bespin: Cloud City. Kit Fisto has been added as a new Hero, with Asajj Ventress joining him as the new Villain. Both sport new abilities not found among the rest of the Hero/Villain roster and are very capable in the chaos that is Hero Assault.

Speaking of which, the mode previously locked to the Mos Eisley map has been set free to all other locations, making it possible to recreate the tear-jerking confrontation between Obi-Wan and Anakin on Mustafar… for those who would want to. While the new content isn’t overly vast, the small changes are positive ones and will be greatly appreciated by returning players.

The post Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection Review – Games For A More Civilised Age 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.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $69 ON AMAZON

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 who’d harass my Civic Video clerk on a weekly basis for new wrestling tapes, I grew up entrenched in both the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression eras of professional wrestling. Similar to many others, my interest did wane somewhere in the mid-noughties, after the Invasion angle, and I’ve never really thought I’d look to recapture that formative part of my youth. Though somewhere between the Bloodline’s combustion and Cody’s near-miss in “finishing the story”, which has led to a captivating, year-long crusade to end Roman’s reigns over both his family tree and the WWE Universal Heavyweight Championship once and for all, I found plenty that pulled me back in.

During the lead-up to Wrestlemania 39 last year I did dabble with 2K23, which featured a showcase mode built around John Cena, whose near untouchable career is enjoying its twilight years. As with all sports franchises, this video game is iterative when measured against last year’s. However, with it celebrating forty years of Wrestlemania, which is considered to be the grandest stage of them all, and the countless moments it has given fans, this one does feel special.

Of the few modes in WWE 2K24, none deserve your time more than the Showcase mode that combs through four decades of showstopping bouts to put together a who’s who in a roster of immortals. Of course, due to licensing, the never-ending and seismic shifts in talent, and only having some twenty spaces to fill, there are a few curious omissions but there’s no question that every match showcased here is a banger, to borrow a Sheamus-ism. Each match gives a checklist of objectives to hit that recreate key moments within the bout, using its incredible Slingshot tech to seamlessly blend real footage with gameplay.

It’s an astounding trip down memory lane for people who’ve followed wrestling forever and a valuable history lesson for those who haven’t. The whole thing is presented by a relatively new kid on the commentary block, Corey Graves, and features a lot of behind the curtain stories from the legends themselves, including Hulk Hogan and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, so it’s quite a compelling package for marks and fans alike.

Other modes that people will likely gravitate to are MyFACTION and MyRISE, which won’t feel out of place for people who play other 2K franchises. For those that don’t, they’re analogous to FIFA’s Ultimate Team and ‘The Journey’, which speaks to the breadth of experiences one can have in this game.

MyRISE is a two-pronged story mode where you take a created superstar through a couple of hypothetical futures in the company’s programming. The men’s path, for example, posits a timeline where “The Tribal Chief” Roman Reigns vacates his Universal strap and makes off for Hollywood to follow in the footsteps of his cousin. After being plucked from the Performance Center, you shock the world by overcoming a one-night tournament and being crowned the new champion after Reigns, once again, prolongs the last chapter of Cody’s so-called story. It’s then up to you to navigate locker room life, shield yourself from the barbs of social media, and emerge from Roman’s shadow as a fighting champion. It all sounds rather cool, and it can be, however, it’s scuppered in part by cheesy dialogue, second-rate performances, and eye-watering lip-syncing.

What I cannot get enough of is MyFACTION. So often I’d pass over these often predatory quasi-live-service modes, but this one gets plenty right. Although I am early doors, I get the sense that the game doesn’t actively wall players out and force them down the path of microtransactions. I received enough cards to supplement my faction, as well as plenty of currency, by merely exploring the weekly challenge towers and proving grounds. I expect that once I become a force in the Faction Wars, a more competitive online arm of the mode, my collection of cards will grow even stronger. If history is any indicator, there’ll be great support around premium live events, so it should give us all more than enough reason to log in regularly.

Another small touch that serves as a bridge between all of these modes is the fact some of the rewards you unlock, like the ones you get for finishing the Showcase for example, serve your goals in other modes, like MyFACTION. It makes the whole package feel like the greater whole, rather than something slapped together piecemeal. 

The spectacular implosion after the release of 2K20, which saw the series take a two-year hiatus before returning bigger and better, will surely go down as a stroke of good fortune because it’s arguable that these games have never felt better. As is ever the case, your vitality and momentum are represented by a few hard-to-miss bars at the bottom of the screen alongside a silhouette that signifies any limbic damage received. Finishing moves are earned over time and can be banked, while signature moves are intrinsically tied to the roll you’re on. With this basic concept being perhaps the one constant throughout the decades of wrestling games, it leaves a lot of room to focus on the wrestling itself. 

The core mechanics remain largely unchanged from last year’s outing, which is a choice worthy of the Wise Man himself considering the goodwill 2K23 earned its developer. Of course, being an iterative experience, there have been a few small features tacked on in an attempt to build out a more cinematic experience in-ring. Ending exhaustive bouts with a “super finisher” can lead to wild finishes, even if the visual flair is nauseating, while the trading blows mini-game doesn’t prove to be as frenetic as promised, often grinding the bout’s pace to a halt. And unlike the other timing-focused quicktime events, Trading Blows is a tad unreadable with its elements shaking and moving across the screen like they’re in a Ric Flair promo. With that said, while the iterative changes aren’t groundbreaking or even good a lot of the time, the mat work and wrestling in general feel terrific and it speaks volumes of the work that has gone into reinventing this franchise. 

In terms of letting loose your creative juice, 2K24 features just about the most robust creation suite I’ve ever seen in a wrestling video game. 

From superstars to signs, entrances to match types, championship belts to the moves themselves, this game lets a willing player deep dive through a seemingly endless stream of options to hand-craft just about every facet of their experience. I spent far too long poring over my star’s move set, and even longer knocking together a worthy entrance for the man who’d fast become a megastar. 

This kind of freedom of creativity extends into the game’s Universe mode, which serves as a sort of sandbox for people to book matches, spots, and rivalries at their leisure. As much as we hear about “finishing the story” it turns out that creating your own can be more fun. If there exists a story in your mind, you can practically bring it to life in this mode. It’s big, it’s overwhelming, and it feels kind of like playing God (of sports entertainment). Universe is an unshackled version of the game’s MyGM mode, which thrusts you into the thick of a ratings war against rival brands as you manage talent relations, programming, and a dastardly shoestring budget. As someone whose day job is operations-based, MyGM very much tickled the logistics centre of my brain. 

Post Malone is, unquestionably, a strange cat. If he were any more relaxed he’d be dead, and that shines through in his song choices for the soundtrack he had a hand in curating for this game. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more eclectic assortment of tunes and, somehow, Colter Wall’s soulful country song “Motorcycle” which seems to wax lyrical about rural hardship feels in step with Turnstile’s hardcore-punk stylings. The original soundtrack is one part of the presentation I do love, even as the visual fidelity feels like a mixed bag. 

I feel like there’s never been a bigger night-and-day departure in graphics within a single game before. It’s almost as if all of the budget has been poured into entrances and ensuring the spectacle itself is lifelike, leaving the in-ring work to look somewhat lesser than. It isn’t a bad-looking game, but painted-on expressions, stiff hair, and some likenesses that don’t get close to the mark should, in this day and age, be a thing of the past.

Though I’m sure not everything on offer in WWE 2K24 is going to please everybody, I’d expect there’s at least something for everyone. As far as grand stages go Wrestlemania is the industry’s summit, and revisiting so many defining junctures felt momentous and I do think a certain level of reverence was achieved. And wrestling, so beautifully, casts such a wide net that it’s easy to offer a breadth of experience like this, even if the polish level ebbs and flows.

The post WWE 2K24 Review – Showcase Of The Immortals 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.

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.

While often overshadowed by its beloved sequels, Persona 3’s impact on modern RPGs is still tangible today. It laid the groundwork for a formula that elegantly blurs the line between gameplay and narrative, entangling seemingly disparate gameplay systems and elements into an elaborate web of enticing feedback loops that keep you coming back for just one more in-game day.

Despite this, to say that Persona 3 is hard to approach for fans of the modern games would be an understatement. Between numerous versions and countless content differences, there is no definitive way to play Persona 3 – until now, that is.

Persona 3 Reload aims to deliver the quintessential way to experience this all-important title. Rebuilt from the ground up with new assets, gameplay elements, expanded dialogue, and a presentation that even Persona 5 would be envious of. While it hasn’t fully escaped some of its archaic trappings, and some new elements don’t feel as carefully thought out as others, Reload is undoubtedly the best way to play this seminal RPG.

Persona 3 Reload stays incredibly faithful to the source material. After transferring into Gekkoukan High, our protagonist finds himself pulled into a mysterious 25th hour in the day known as the Dark Hour. Coffins fill the streets in place of people who can’t freely roam the Dark Hour, the night sky is tinged an eerie green, and Gekkoukan High is transformed into a colossal monument to death known as Tartarus. After being attacked by monstrous beings known as Shadows, the protagonist awakens to the power of their Persona, and the ability to fight back against the Dark Hour by extension.

After being recruited into the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad – otherwise known as SEES – it falls to you and the other members of SEES to explore Tartarus, destroy Shadows, and uncover the grim truth behind the Dark Hour. It’s a simple premise bolstered by its cast of loveable characters and exploration of death, what it means to exist, and the human condition. Persona games have always dealt with heavy subject matter, and 3 can feel particularly weighty at points – but much of it is to its benefit.

Persona 3 Reload has a tangible atmosphere at times, particularly towards the end of the game. It comes through in every aspect of its design from its utterly sublime soundtrack, its contemplative and sombre user interface, and varied Social Links. Reload encompasses a wide gamut of emotional output across its 50-hour runtime.

In true Persona fashion, much of this comes through the game’s many optional Social Links, but that isn’t to say Persona 3 Reload’s main narrative is a snooze. The mystery at the heart of this story is an intriguing one, complete with twists and turns that keeps things fresh as you slowly uncover the truth. It’s all brought together by the way it entwines each member of SEES in a seamless manner, something that Reload really set out to improve in a lot of aspects.

While a lot of the early SEES members haven’t seen many changes in Reload thanks to their deft handling in prior versions of Persona 3, some of the later characters like Ken Amada, Shinjiro Aragaki, and resident best boy Koromaru have been vastly expanded in their backgrounds and motivations for joining SEES. I won’t get into it too much here, but the added character depth implored me to include these characters more often in my party setup, and deepened my appreciation for them to a point that previous iterations of Persona 3 were unable to.

A large part of this is thanks to excellent voice work across the board from a new slew of actors in Reload. Each one brings the same energy as their original iterations with their own twist, paying respect to the original voice actors while making it their own. A special shoutout should go to Aleks Le for his part as the protagonist, Pharos, and Ryoji, whose performance feels dynamic for each of his roles, shifting in subtlety and tone of delivery where needed to help each of these characters land. The original cast of Persona 3 also appear in minor roles peppered throughout the story, which is a nice nod for longtime fans.

It all comes together really nicely in the way that each character’s plight is inextricably linked to the themes Persona 3 Reload embraces so wholly. From Yukari’s determination to uncover the truth behind her father’s death to Aigis trying to work out what her purpose is in life outside of being an anti-Shadow weapon. Everyone’s arc feels purposeful here despite the size of the main cast, and while they aren’t all made equal, each has something unique to offer.

If there’s one part of this that I had to knock, it’s that the game still suffers from pacing issues at different points in the narrative. There’s often long stretches of time with little to no story progression, and the ability to knock out a block of Tartarus in a single night with smart use of resources can make for long stretches of dungeon crawling if you want to optimize how you spend your time. The worst offender is undoubtedly the month of December, where the whole game slams on the brakes right after some big story revelations.

The core gameplay loop of deciding how to spend your time during the day and dungeon crawling at night is here in full force. It’s the kind of “just one more day” decision making that keeps you locked in for hours on end. Picking and choosing who you want to spend time with, which stats you want to increase and how you can most effectively use your time when exploring Tartarus is forever engaging.

Persona 3’s Social Links also remain largely untouched in Reload, apart from the new wrinkle of all of the major ones being fully voiced, and the Aigis Social Link is also present despite its absence in the original game. While some Social Links are undoubtedly better than others, each feels worth experiencing in their totalities. There’s some real highlights here, like Akinari Kamiki who’s coming to terms with the fact that he doesn’t have much time to live due to a genetic disease. Or Maiko Oohashi who finds solace from her argumentative parents in the time she spends playing with you at the local playground.

Even if you’ve seen all that these Social Links have to offer in past iterations, being entirely voiced in Reload adds a lot of emotional depth to each level of each Social Link. It becomes all too easy to find yourself emotionally attached to these characters all over again, and brings a level of freshness to it all that makes it feel brand-new.

There are also new events to partake in with party members separate to their Social Links, where you can cook, garden, or watch movies to improve your stats and gain consumables to use in battle. Hanging out with party members like this also unlocks Characteristics, which are powerful passive abilities that bolster their kits. Things like reducing the SP cost of recovery skills for Yukari or increasing Junpei’s critical hit rate and damage which are always helpful.

You can otherwise choose to spend your time working for a bit of extra cash, eating in at restaurants for stat boosts, or simply studying. There’s also a communal dorm computer you can use to access websites to boost your stats and gain new skills across various facets of the game, from improving your attacks in combat to growing your yield when harvesting the vegetables you grow from gardening.

When you aren’t spending time with friends or improving your own skill sets, you’ll be exploring Tartarus. A monolithic, 200+ floor omen to death at the center of the Dark Hour’s existence. If you aren’t familiar with Tartarus, it’s essentially a mega dungeon split into blocks, with procedurally generated floors and boss encounters peppered throughout. It’s perhaps the most infamous part of Persona 3 due to its mundanity, and is where Reload gets the most liberal with its changes.

It’s still a collection of procedurally generated floors that you’ll ascend as you explore it, but there are countless new inclusions and quality of life changes that make it much more digestible. For starters you can now dash as you move through Tartarus, which sounds like a small thing, but does a lot to cut down on time spent moving through each floor. You’ll also gain access to an ambush attack similar to the one found in Persona 5, letting you get the jump on enemies to gain the upper hand at the start of battle.

Tartarus is also home to Monad Doors and Monad Passages, which offer extra challenging Shadow encounters in exchange for rare rewards. These offer some real difficult battles – especially the Passages – some of which err on the side of true challenge encounters that function more as a puzzle and encourage creative thinking to get past them. The rewards are always worthwhile, which leaves them as a welcome opportunity to test your battle skills and knowledge.

BIG W HAS THE CHEAPEST SHIPPED COPY AT $89

There’s also the Twilight Fragment system, where you can spend Twilight Fragments you find in Tartarus on opening locked chests, or to recover your HP and SP. Greedy Shadows also inhabit Tartarus, which are essentially large-sized rare Shadows that drop a bucket load of experience, cash, and items if you manage to hunt them down. There’s even an experience catch-up mechanic which can help to keep your under-levelled party members up to snuff for battle when you need them most. It all comes together to make Tartarus a more varied experience overall, while also baking in more decision making for you to consider as you explore.

Outside of Tartarus, there’s the monthly Full Moon Operation to engage with where the gang takes on a major boss Shadow during that month’s full moon. These are challenging and visually refreshing encounters that often include unique mechanics that require you engage with combat a bit more cerebrally when you otherwise would. There are very few changes to these encounters in Reload, but offer a welcome break from Tartarus nonetheless.

Speaking of battle, the basis of hitting weaknesses to knock down enemies and gain extra turns is still the name of the game here. You’ll make use of physical and elemental attacks to exploit enemy affinities to gain the upper hand, but there’s some notable improvements to combat that bring it up to modern standards. The new Shift mechanic functions the same as Persona 5’s Baton Pass, letting you tag in another party member upon knocking an enemy down to further exploit weaknesses in the hopes of unleashing an all-out attack.

There’s also the all-new Theurgy skills, which are powerful abilities that need to be charged up before they can be used. Each party member has their own unique Theurgy skills, and the conditions for charging them depends on the party member. Where Yukari fills up her theurgy gauge by healing, the protagonist fills his up by swapping between different Persona in battle.

While these attacks are flashy, and there’s some strategy to using them at the right time when you first unlock them, they can quickly trivialise certain encounters once you understand how to efficiently charge your Theurgy Gauges. All of them ignore resistances, some inflict ailments, provide full healing for your entire party, or even have a decent chance at knocking down enemies. They’re fun to look at and add a new layer of strategy to combat, but feel a little too powerful overall.

Despite all of these improvements and changes to combat, you’ll still being doing a ton of it as you explore Tartarus, which is part of the reason the mega dungeon became such a drag in other iterations of Persona 3. Thankfully, combat has a new level of style and flash to it similar to what you’d see in Persona 5, which helps combat feel fresh, fluid, and responsive all throughout Reload’s runtime.

Gorgeous new UI elements ebb and flow on the screen as unleash Persona across the battlefield in an element haze. Character cut-ins are flashier then ever, shattering in the background as you knock down enemies. Attack animations are needlessly pretty, shifting to another party member has a kinetic energy to it that can only be described as infectious, and all-out attacks culminate in wildly expressive and unique character graphics that hammer home personalities and combat styles. It’s the same kind of next-level presentation that Persona 5 was praised for, but it feels even more elevated in Persona 3 Reload.

Shuffle Time is also slightly changed in Reload, feeling more embedded within your overall progress through Tartarus and the broader narrative. You still pick between a slew of rewards after battle, but you can grow the levels of these rewards by collecting Major Arcana cards in Shuffle Time whenever you visit Tartarus. As you clear Full Moon Operations, you’ll gain more Major Arcana cards, which means it takes more time to get a full deck to boost the level further. It adds another layer to the decision making of Shuffle Time and puts more control in the hands of the player when it comes to levelling up Shuffle Time cards and their rewards.

Shuffle Time is also where you gain new Persona to use in battle, and in Persona Fusion. Fusion is also mostly the same, but includes some nice quality of life features from Persona 5, such as search fusion where you can filter fusions by viewing results as opposed to flicking through each Persona in your stock. Multi-Persona Fusion is also condensed down into Special Fusion, which cuts out some of the in-game waiting for Fusions with four or even five Persona.

The area where Reload is most obviously improved is in its visuals. Everything here has been completely remade from the ground up with truly stunning results. From the numerous locales of Tatsumi Port Island and the harrowing halls of Tartarus, to the expressive character portraits, Persona 3 feels more well realized than ever within Reload. Tartarus in particular has seen quite the face lift, with each block not only emphasizing their unique visual designs, but also varying in architecture and floor layouts. All of this coupled with the aforementioned overhaul of the user interface, and brand new animated and CG cutscenes leave Persona 3 Reload feeling like a true modernization of Persona 3 that retains all of the charm and atmosphere of the original.

The soundtrack is another absolute win in a series that never misses when it comes to music. Atsushi Kitajoh has done a stellar job of composing new original pieces for Reload, while also rearranging iconic tracks from Shoji Meguro’s original score. Mass Destruction in particular feels more rooted in its jazz motifs, with an incredible second verse that cements this remix as something that stands along the original instead of replacing it. Other classics like Iwatodai Dorm and When The Moon’s Reaching Out Stars have also been rearranged for Reload with similar changes, keeping things thematically cohesive at all times.

While Mass Destruction makes a glorious return, I’ll be the first to admit that Reload’s new original battle theme, It’s Going Down Now, is a new favourite battle theme in the series for me personally. It’s infectiously energetic and perfectly suited to the turn-based battles and melancholic theming of Persona 3. Similar to Persona 5 Royal’s Take Over, there’s nothing quite like ambushing an enemy, swiftly knocking them down, and initiating an all-out attack as the chorus swells into an incredible crescendo.

Coming hot off the heels of finishing Persona 3 Portable, I didn’t expect Persona 3 Reload to enrapture me as much as it did. It’s clear that this isn’t just a project ATLUS needed to do, but something that they wanted to do. Every aspect of it feels carefully considered to create a modernised version of Persona 3 that doesn’t betray its core theming and messages. A must-play for any Persona fan, new or old, and absolutely worth checking out for series first-timers.

The post Persona 3 Reload Review – Firing On All Cylinders 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.

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.

The reveal of God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla, a brand new DLC that adds a whole extra mode and story set after the end of the base game, during this year’s The Game Awards was enough of a surprise on its own. Even more shocking though, was the reveal that Santa Monica Studio was releasing this new DLC for free to owners of the game as a thank you for its huge success. Now, after having pumped more hours into it than some full games, I’m genuinely shocked that we’re not being charged for this.

When the news broke that Valhalla was essentially going to be a God of War-flavoured take on “roguelite” gameplay, I instantly thought of the upcoming The Last of Us Part II Remastered and its added No Return mode, which is set to have players take on waves of Infected and other enemies as a roster of iconic TLOU characters. Fundamentally, as far as the idea of randomised encounters and a run-based gameplay loop with both permanent and semi-permanent upgrades goes, the two are similar. God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla takes this a number of steps further though, presenting its own narrative experience clocking in at anywhere from five to ten hours depending on how you play.

Taking place at a point following the end of God of War Ragnarok, this new content sees Kratos and Mimir make their way to Valhalla itself after receiving a mysterious invitation, with Kratos hilariously breaking into the realm of fallen warriors the only way he knows how – forcing it open. Here, the two go on a cyclical journey of self-development that sees Kratos reckon with, and reconcile, his dark past. It’s not exactly new ground for Santa Monica Studio’s version of the character, but it’s a great excuse to bring more of his Greek adventures into the modern era than ever and also ties in well thematically with the core gameplay loop.

If you’re at all familiar with the idea of a roguelite, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Valhalla in terms of mechanics. Kratos enters the hallowed realm a near-blank slate in terms of power and progression, pushing as deeply as he can through a series of distinct stages and arenas built with semi-randomised enemy and item placements while growing stronger through one-off currency and upgrades acquired along the way – that are then lost should he fall and find himself sent back to the entrance.

Naturally, there are more permanent upgrades to be purchased with persistent currency at the shores of Valhalla where Kratos and Mimir have downtime to chat to the Valkyries and play around with (purely cosmetic) armour sets, so the more you fall and return the more prepared you’ll be going in each time. As you reach milestones in Valhalla, accompanied by the next bit of the narrative puzzle, your next journeys also increase in difficulty, resulting in a very comfy little difficulty curve that also forces you to continually adapt your combat strategy due to the random nature of the upgrades and challenges it throws at you.

The way everything is doled out and mixed up is really well-considered and means that it’s nearly impossible to ignore Kratos’ entire arsenal whether or not you ignored particular weapons or mechanics in the base game.

Despite time being at a premium, I made the decision to bump the mode up to the second-to-last difficulty setting, extending my journey somewhat as I fell a fair few times but went roaring straight back in. That’s a far cry from my usual style, but it’s a testament to how incredibly fun it’s been to push myself inside Valhalla’s super-satisfying loop.

With a sizeable gap since I last loaded up Ragnarok, it did take me a minute to readjust to the game’s quirks and make sense of a lot of the terms it was throwing at me, but once you get settled back in you’re quickly reminded of how crunchy and exciting God of War’s combat can be. Doubly so when the game uses its existing framework to entice out some really tantalising risk-reward scenarios where the threat of a reset meets the promise of some potentially massive spoils.

There are times where I found myself reminded that this is a free add-on and not a full expansion, like the relatively small pool of arenas that do start to feel repetitive after a while. I absolutely wasn’t expecting the amount of story and character work that’s here, though, especially when it delves into old school God of War territory – especially in its ending which is easily one of Kratos’ better moments among the modern titles.

Kratos is here to contemplate his future purpose and learns to forgive himself for his past deeds while still acknowledging and learning from them, making for a potent mix of the Greek and Norse sides of the franchise with some returning characters, locations and other bits that I wouldn’t want to spoil. It’s a treat for longtime fans as well as a very appreciated bit of history for those who jumped on in recent entries.

God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla can be downloaded for free right here for owners of the base God of War Ragnarok game on both PS5 and PS4.

If you don’t have the game you can get it on the PlayStation Store here or grab a physical copy from Amazon here.

The post I Can’t Believe God Of War Ragnarok: Valhalla Is Free 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.

[presto_player id=150280]

Feel more with PS5. Beyond the everyday. Beyond extraordinary. Even beyond imagination. Feel it now.

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.

AMAZON HAS THE CHEAPEST SHIPPED COPY AT $79 WITH FREE DELIVERY

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.

Get It On Amazon For $59 With Free Shipping

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.

A lot has happened in the world of Like a Dragon since the release of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. A complete pivot to a wildly different genre, a brand new ensemble of characters, and even a spin-off series in the form of Judgment. It’s a great time to be a fan of the franchise – especially if you’re invested in former series protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu. Despite shifting focus to the boisterous Ichiban Kasuga in the seventh mainline entry, the Dragon of Dojima refuses to bow out gracefully.

That brings us to Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, a shorter and more condensed side story that follows Kiryu after the events of Yakuza 6 leading up to the upcoming eighth entry. No matter how you feel about Kiryu’s conclusion in Yakuza 6, there’s no denying that The Man Who Erased His Name is a risky undertaking given the legacy of the character. While it doesn’t quite reach the crime drama heights of other recent entries, Gaiden offers an intimate and emotionally resonant exploration of Kiryu that delivers where it counts the most.

After faking his own death and abandoning his name to protect his family, Kazuma Kiryu is now working for the enigmatic Daidoji Faction. Under the codename of Joryu, Kiryu is undertaking top-secret missions for the Daidoji as one of their own agents. After a mission goes awry, Joryu is locked in conflict with a mystery figure trying to drive him out of hiding.

While this is a great setup, especially given Kiryu’s situation, it’s hard to properly buy into the stakes of it all if you’ve already played Yakuza 7. A majority of the tension relating to the broad strokes of the narrative here rests on events and plans that we’ve already seen transpire. New characters do a bit to keep things feeling unpredictable for the main story’s 8-10 hour runtime, but there were scant few moments where revelations truly surprised me in comparison to prior titles.

Where The Man Who Erased His Name unequivocally succeeds, though, is in its exploration of Kiryu. A shorter narrative, smaller cast of characters, and restrained scope give way to deeper insight into Kiryu’s state of mind, his unwavering stance against killing no matter the situation and the lengths that he goes to so that he can keep those closest to him safe. It culminates in one of the franchise’s most emotionally powerful cutscenes that hammers home the series’ core themes of family and sacrifice.

The supporting characters here also bring quite a lot to the table. Kihei Hanawa serves as Joryu’s handler in the Daidoji, constantly straddling the line between partners and friends in his relationship with Joryu while also knowing his secret identity. The new captain and acting patriarch of the Watase Family, Yuki Tsuruno, is another hardboiled Yakuza member whose abrasive exterior occasionally gives way to glimpses of someone who values his fellow Yakuza members above all else. A brand new info broker in Sotenbori known as Akame is another particular highlight, her easygoing yet self-sufficient nature bounces off of Joryu’s stoicism in entertaining fashion.

While Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon has adopted a turn-based RPG framework for the mainline series, The Man Who Erased His Name proudly returns to the beat em’ up roots of the original series that has since been adopted by the Judgment games. Much like the Takayuki Yagami of the aforementioned duology, Kiryu has two unique fighting styles to employ in combat. The first is Agent Style, focusing on fast and frequent light blows in combination with gadgets to keep large groups of enemies at bay. The second is Kiryu’s signature Yakuza Style, the hard-hitting single target approach that he’s known for.

While Yakuza Style is exactly what you expect it to be, Agent Style brings some fun new ideas to the table that make it a blast to use against hordes of enemies. From using the Serpent Boots to rocket your way around an arena, to tossing an explosive Firefly cigarette into an unsuspecting group of goons, there’s a lot of wacky fun to be had with these tools in punch-outs. My favourite is the Spider gadget, which lets you unleash spools of wire to grab enemies and yank them across the battlefield in glorious fashion.

It’s when you combine these styles that combat is at its most satisfying. Pulling someone in for a juggle with the Spider gadget and swapping to Yakuza Style for a proper beatdown while they’re still airborne never gets old. The ways gadgets can be upgraded to improve their efficiency or functionality gives them widespread application in many situations past their initial uses, such as being able to toss out more explosive cigarettes or pull in environmental objects from a distance to be used as weapons.

The Man Who Erased His Name simply wouldn’t be a Like a Dragon game without the implementation of Heat. It’s here with all the trimmings, from expending Heat with visceral and high damaging attacks to entering the high octane Extreme Heat Mode so you can unleash all manner of carnage onto your adversaries. It’s as rewarding and gratifying as it always has been. A nice touch is the inclusion Lost Judgment’s Mortal Reversal in the form of Ultimate Counters, allowing you to make a last second dodge for big damage if timed properly.

The Man Who Erased His Name’s core setting of Sotenbori feels quite safe given its prominence in recent entries, but its downplayed scale lends to the story’s more condensed nature quite nicely. It’s also packed with stuff to do, with mainstays like karaoke and arcades making their return alongside some returning gems like Pocket Circuit from Yakuza 0, and the cabaret club complete with live-action hostesses this time around. There’s also an all-new Boutique where you can customize Kiryu’s outfit to your heart’s content.

The Castle is an entirely new area to the series, propositioned as a scandalous adult theme park on an ominous container ship lurking in Osaka Bay. While quite small in total area, you can partake in gambling and engage in numerous activities within the Coliseum. There’s a couple of different modes to play around with here, from one-on-one skirmishes to more large scale conflicts where teams go head-to-head for glory. Hell Team Rumble even lets you organise and train your very own team to bring into the arena, with members that serve as fun nods to prior characters.

The other large chunk of side content comes in the form of the Akame Network. The Akame Network is a support system that Akame has setup for Sotenbori locals. As you walk the streets, you’ll come across people in need of help. Completing these short and sweet requests nets you cash and Akame Points, further expanding the network and allowing you to unlock new skills. These points can also be spent on gear, items, and cosmetics at the Akame Shop, so it always feels worthwhile to engage with these small errands as you run into them.

The Akame Network also has requests to be completed, which effectively serve as this entry’s version of Substories. While I’ve only completed a handful of the many available, each one employs the absurd side of this franchise’s tonal dissonance in excellent fashion. Better yet, they often call back to events and characters in prior entries. It would be a shame to spoil them here, but one early example was a Substory revolving around some Ryuji Goda lookalikes causing problems throughout Sotenbori, who are revealed to be part of a larger plan to bring back the Go-Ryu Clan which is swiftly shutdown by Joryu.

If this all sounds like a pretty safe and by the numbers Like a Dragon offering, that’s because it absolutely is. The Man Who Erased His Name feels tailor made for series veterans – especially those who’ve seen Kiryu’s journey through to where it is today. It feels decidedly old-school in its restrained approach to open-world design, and while I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, it would’ve been nice to see some more drastic changes for what is potentially Kiryu’s last solo outing.

The Dragon Engine continues to be a powerhouse in graphical fidelity and detail. The standard set in Yakuza 6 has been improved upon in every subsequent entry, and The Man Who Erased His Name is no stranger to that rule. The sheer detail in facial expressions are some of the best in the industry, and the virtual tourism brought about by such incredible attention to detail in recreating these locations is a constant joy. The Castle is also incredibly well-realised, brought to life by dazzling neon lights and excessively luxurious architecture.

The presentation is held together remarkably well by steady performance and a level of technical polish that every entry in this series exudes. That’s no small feat when you consider how crazy some of the fights get, especially in the Coliseum battles where things can get really out of hand. A special shoutout should also go to every member of the cast, who bring each character to life in a convincing manner. Takaya Kuroda in particular really delivers on an emotionally tormented Kiryu this time around, and does a lot of the heavy lifting in the game’s more poignant moments.

The post Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name Review – Yakuza In Disguise 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.

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.

GET IT FROM AMAZON FROM $64 WITH FREE SHIPPING

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.

The post Star Ocean: The Second Story R Review – A Sea Of Stars And More appeared first on Press Start.

It took me a minute to find my footing with Jusant. Ever since its reveal during the June Xbox Gaming Showcase, the lofty promise of “what if the climbing from Breath of the Wild but a whole game” has been swirling around in the back of my brain, idealised but never thoroughly considered. Never mind that it had emerged from French developer DON’T NOD, best known for its outstanding narrative work and hardly the first studio you’d call to mind to craft a relatively linear rock-climbing simulator. It’s in this dissonance though that Jusant has flourished, a collision of new ideas and studio-pedigree that results in a game with a rich, singular goal and an unmarked path toward it. Bumps and bruises fading as the view from the top comes around.

Jusant’s nameless protagonist is on a mission. Who they are, where they’ve come from, and why they’re so determined to reach their goal is almost immaterial to the game and is left in turn to be largely defined by whatever it is you, the player, decide to bring to this climb. Loosely you come to understand that the world of Jusant turns on an axis of absence; you emerge from an endless dry waste, once an ocean, and begin to ascend an impossibly tall and organically ornate pillar that reaches into the clouds and beyond. As you climb you learn more about the structure and the people that once built their lives around it, a people whose symbiosis with water produced majestic art and culture but, in its absence, have now fled into the wastes, leaving behind a vertical monument to their old ways and Jusant’s haunted relic of an obstacle course.

It is understood to the climber that atop this graveyard is a chance for new life, one they will be ferrying gently in their humble backpack. A kind of esoteric boy and his dog tale, Jusant has you caring for a strange creature whose body is composed of mystical, semi-formed liquid and whose small chirps have resonance with the world around you. Both emotionally charged lore ping and invaluable mechanical buddy, the two of you venture upward with Jusant’s simple, but refined, climbing systems, navigating a densely packed environment, and gently probing at the edges of the game’s aloof, but deeply affecting world. This is a game about taking your time, and while you could easily surmount the climb in around five hours, Jusant’s deliberate nature rewards an equally studious climber.

Which is something the game clearly communicates through its mountaineering with each handhold, footrest, and timely jump revolving around a limited stamina bar and dual trigger-controlled grips. The two shoulder triggers each align with the climber’s left and right hand, giving you freeform control over what each is holding onto at any given moment. The longer you hold or further you move, the more of a strain it places on your stamina meter, which can be partially restored by loosening your grip but never fully regained until you’re back on solid ground. As you progress further through the mountain, environmental stimuli will impact your manoeuvrability, like a hot sun draining your stamina faster or a strong wind giving your jumps, typically stamina heavy moves, a bit of extra distance.

The intensely singular nature of the climbing calls Death Stranding’s somewhat infamous walk balancing to mind. Jusant layers its climbing with some finesse and niceties but is ultimately only ever truly concerned with having you master a specific toolset and find your own flow with it. There’s no fail state, the climber protected by invisible walls on most perilous drops and each climb beginning with an anchor point and generous rope allowance with additional anchor points, player-placed and otherwise, dotting the way along lengthy climbs. Even if you do flub a jump or misjudge your stamina, you’ll plummet but lose nothing but time and some patience, spooling the rope back up as you begin again, a little wiser and maybe a little wearier.

At times Jusant can frustrate, its impeccable visual path delineation and rock-solid mechanical foundations wavering as you clumsily work through its more ill-advised tightly timed platforming puzzles, methodical rhythm interrupted by bouts of sporadic clambering. There are times this tension feels deliberate, but others lack the care you’ll come to expect from the game. Those aforementioned niceties go a long way to smooth over these moments at least; your blob creature can be called upon to perform a melodic chirp, bringing nearby fauna and creatures to life to assist in your platforming, while another prompt can guide you toward either the next progression point or one of Jusant’s many collectables. Littered throughout the mountain are dozens of nooks in which you can find traces of Jusant’s rich world, from extravagant art installations to hastily scribbled notes between people who once lived here.

The overarching aesthetic and tonal work of the game is often awe-inspired, those hard-earned rests between climbs made magic by the relics of the old world you can discover. Water, and more specifically its absence, is everything to Jusant, informing not only its broader plot but its thematic currents too; light and memory are refracted through liquid facsimiles housed in room-sized constructs, traces of sea creatures and living in balance with the ocean permeates every dwelling and abandoned business or home, the game’s chapter’s punctuated by towering monoliths activated by the sound of breath through shells. Your climb facilitates restoration of nature both mechanically and spiritually, but what water means to you will inform what you ultimately take away from Jusant’s tale.

This richly incentivising ambiguity is strained somewhat by the game’s more explicit plot work, those letters and correspondence found in the world often halting progress and imagination with walls of text. It’s not poorly written by any means; one instances saw my breath catch slightly as I poured over a diary entry lamenting the loss of a partner, “we’ll see each other again when the clouds decide” wrote someone long before I came to this place. It’s the kind of turn of phrase that tells me Jusant’s writing is always keenly aware of its all-encompassing thematic work, but the abundance of these text entries does puncture the otherwise ethereal tone. It’s not the first time Jusant made me think on Fumito Ueda’s works but where his worlds almost entirely trust the player to pulls its threads into a tapestry, Jusant feels hesitant to operate with the same confidence.

Still, Jusant is more than any individual stumble along its meditative ascension. Its closing moments, though bordering on reliance on the aesthetics of emotion more than the connective tissue itself, still managed to move me. An elegantly crafted landscape plays host to a culture both mystical and familiar as the game studiously teaches you the inherent value of a single act, done methodically and with care. Jusant’s plainly spoken world and restrained mechanics make for a timely and engaging experience but between the words, amid the climb, is where you’ll find Jusant’s true oasis.

The post Jusant Review – It’s The Climb appeared first on Press Start.

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.

The post Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery Review – A Ribbiting Series Of Cases To Croak 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.

AMAZON HAS PRE-ORDERS FOR $69 INCLUDING FREE SHIPPING

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.

No strangers to the world of cricket games, Melbourne’s own Big Ant Studios once again step up to the crease with Cricket 24. Timing the launch with the ICC 2023 Cricket World Cup and boasting increased licensed content such as the Indian Premier League, Big Bash League and more, the game looks toward boosting video game cricket to the same heights as the EA Sports FC or NBA 2K franchises, but definitely needs more polish to match the competition.

Seeking a bigger international stage, Cricket 24’s licensed content is a very mixed bag. The acquisition of licenses for international men’s and women’s leagues such as New Zealand’s Dream 11 Super Smash League, the Indian Premier League, the Caribbean Premier League, The Hundred as well as the Pakistan Super League gives players a wide variety of choice. However not all teams have been licensed; the Indian Premier League lacks two of its franchise teams, and the fact that the game itself is usually anchored around a now-ended Ashes series sets it back a little. Even though the launch coincides with the 2023 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup, there’s a big missed opportunity to utilise the format – while they have secured licensing for a wide array of national teams, the only way to enact the World Cup is to create the tournament yourself.

If you’ve played a cricket game in the past five or so years, you’d be no stranger to knowing that cricket is Big Ant Studios’ bread and butter (starting with Don Bradman Cricket) but it comes as a surprise to find a game that starts off… very basic. Generic rock tracks, bland and uninspiring menus – don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the “keep it simple” principle, but when every menu option looks the same it gets a tad boring, even before you’ve gotten yourself into a match. It doesn’t bode well when I boot up a PS5 game and feel like I’m looking at PS3-era titles and menus.

Career mode is a tad light-on when it comes to substance; managing your character involves watching them sit in their room or the change rooms between matches, with occasional trips to the sauna to aid in fatigue reduction. The upside is the customisation in the character creator gives you the ability to mould your character the way you want. I thought it was pretty funny having a character that permanently wears zinc all the time regardless of where he is. I also got a small pang of pride when I could choose a local club in Victoria as my character’s starting point to his career. The mode also gives you the option of playing solely as your character, or controlling the whole team, which is a nice touch.

Getting into gameplay and we bear witness to some of the most polarising aspects of the game. Graphically, its all over the place. It’s clear the most work has gone into the players, thanks to Big Ant’s dedication at scanning in over 300 players for some great attention to detail. I don’t live and breathe the sport, but I could definitely tell that I was seeing David Warner or Steve Smith even before their names appeared on screen. This level of detail also includes the licensed uniforms and bats as well. We lose a little detail when it comes to the different stadiums in the game, though.

Despite boasting many famous cricket grounds, each one feels as if its missing an essence of soul, whether it’s due to lack of crowd noise, or low-quality textures for the grounds and their stands. One local suburban match that I played, for some reason, decided to have pyrotechnics as pre-match entertainment, and another stadium in the Pakistan Super League decided to have the same pyrotechnics, but seemingly placed underneath the crowd. In fact, in that same match, the branding that appears on the boundary banners decided to hover in the sky instead, leaving blank purple banners around the ground.

Once you get past the uncanny valley of the visuals however, there is actually a great, responsive game underneath. Batting is definitely the most fun – understanding your shot selection, positioning and angles gives you a range of styles to play with. Bowling can be frustrating, as there is so much to tweak when it comes to power and delivery, however once you manage to get the right shots in you’ll find yourself taking plenty of wickets. The biggest positive that comes from the gameplay is the ability to play to your skill level. You can select an arcade style which allows you to play with ease, or if you want to get more technical you can switch up the control style to really finesse your game. The ability for new players, even those who have never played a cricket game previously, to jump in and learn with ease is definitely a credit, and experienced players still have the ability to finesse their skills.

That being said, fielding is probably the worst aspect. If you’re manually fielding or playing as an individual, the game rewards you, but if the AI is running your fielders they’re often slow to respond, or make the worst decisions. I can’t tell you how many times I had them looking down the barrel of the camera, only to throw the ball behind them with pinpoint accuracy. Similarly, the commentary team also didn’t seem to know what they were doing half the time – even the inclusion of Adam Gilchrist didn’t help. With the commentary team seemingly switching during the middle of the match and new commentators taking over, terrible shots were applauded and good shots were chastised, leading me to be truly confused as to whether we were watching the same game.

The post Cricket 24 Review – Won’t Bowl You Over 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.

AMAZON HAS THE CHEAPEST SHIPPED COPY AT $79 INCLUDING POSTAGE

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.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage takes place twenty years before Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and around nine hundred years after the events of Assassin’s Creed Origins. We play Basim as he begins his journey with the Hidden Ones, the group that would eventually call themselves Assassins. He, as expected, becomes embroiled in a silent war with The Order of the Ancients, a clandestine group that would ultimately become the Templars. Of course, people who played Valhalla will know that Basim is not all he seems. That aspect of his existence is explored in Mirage, albeit very lightly.

While I was intrigued as to how the plot of Mirage would play out as it started to get going, it does lose some steam about halfway through. Admittedly, we’ve had thirteen Assassin’s Creed games now with the same conflict playing out in each, and, as a result, Mirage does little to surprise. The plot is mainly engaging, but the series is reusing so many plot devices at this point that I feel it needs a refresh. It also does nothing to move the overarching story forward or tease what’s to come, which, after Valhalla’s ending, feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

The big selling point of Mirage is, ironically, how much smaller it is than its predecessors. It sounds like a bizarre concept, but it’s a welcome honing of the formula. Initially conceived as DLC for Valhalla, Mirage was eventually expanded to offer an experience akin to games like Brotherhood and Revelations. It provides a single map to explore with manageable and approachable tasks to complete and no deep RPG mechanics or stat management.

That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy Origins, Valhalla or even Odyssey, the latter of which dived headfirst into RPG territory. I enjoyed all those games. I love that Assassin’s Creed can adapt itself to be something slightly different in every game. But there’s a distinct beauty to Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s simplicity after the intensity and complexity of Valhalla’s experience. It feels fitting it’s releasing around the franchise’s fifteenth anniversary because it harkens back to the games that made the series so famous in the first place.

I say simplicity because Mirage doesn’t have power level requirements or even levelling or stats to pore over to make Basim stronger. Points are awarded for completing critical missions at specific points, and the skill tree has twenty-three skill nodes as opposed to Valhalla’s four hundred. All you have to worry about (and even then, you can quickly get through the game without doing so) is upgrading your gear and tools to better play the role of assassin.

Tools are the bread and butter of your experience as Basim, and they are incredibly helpful. Basim eventually gets a throwing knife, a noisemaker, a smoke bomb, a blowpipe and a trap. Each item can be upgraded up to three times, with each tier of tool upgrade giving you options to customize how that tool behaves. You can make your smoke bombs flammable or make your enemies forget they saw you when they breathe the smoke in, for example. They’re always able to be respecced and can be customized to suit your play style.

Mirage’s plot essentially co-opts the cult investigation structure of the previous games and adapts it to run across the entirety of its runtime. This means that you can investigate certain aspects at your leisure while the story progresses linearly before eventually converging to a finale. In each of the investigations, you’ll do essential recon work before confronting a member of the Order in a more extensive and more open-ended mission.

These missions are the cornerstone of Mirage and easily where the game is at its best. First established in Unity, these missions offer up large area to investigate, with many opportunities to uncover that’ll get you closer to your target. You might be able to bribe someone to find a way in or win an auction to get the attention of your target and gain an audience with them. You might find a note about a secret passage underneath the heavily fortified prison walls you need to infiltrate. There are around five to seven different ways to approach each mission.

THE CHEAPEST PHYSICAL COPY: $64 AT AMAZON

This approach to design for the key assassinations feels like a great way to mimic the style and structure of older Assassin’s Creed games but with the breadth and scope that newer technology and experience have afforded the developers. It’s not quite as open to the point where anything you can think is possible – like Tears of the Kingdom or even Hitman – but it does feel like there are options here for those who like to take an action-orientated approach, a stealth-orientated approach or both.

Stealth is the better option. Combat has less weight and complexity than Valhalla, but at the same time feels more dangerous. Enemies can swarm you quickly if you’re spotted, and most won’t wait their turn to attack you like in previous games. Basim can parry and follow up with a fatal attack, which feels better and more engaging than the countering system seen in the older games. But combat ramps up in intensity so quickly that it’s often better to stay hidden than create a commotion during your infiltrations.

But all this flexibility and openness in design can’t save Mirage from a major flaw that the series, for some reason, refuses to jettison. Tailing missions are back, and they’re just as tedious and as frustrating as in previous games. I challenge Ubisoft to find a way to make them exciting or remove them altogether. They’re exactly the same as when they first reared their ugly head in Assassin’s Creed II and haven’t evolved since – they’re awful and bring down an otherwise great main quest.

There are other activities when you’re not spending time on the main quest. However, most are collecting objects and handing them to NPCs for crafting components or rewards. Like world events in Valhalla, Tales of Baghdad are tiny side quests offering interesting stories that barely last more than five minutes. The problem is that, while it’s a great system to nab from Valhalla, there’s not enough of them in Mirage.

This is the main area where Mirage’s simplified scope becomes a bit of a double edged sword. The side content is numerous, but it’s less engaging than the previous games. I recognize the entire point of Mirage was to simplify things and harken back to the original three games, but the irony here is that in doing so, the same problems that plagued those games have reemerged. Given the sheer variety of experiences Ubisoft has to pull from, it’s a shame to see so little of that potential capitalized on.

From a presentation standpoint, Mirage has the same strengths and opportunities as Valhalla. Baghdad has been brought to life admirably, though despite promises that crowds would be as dense as Unity, Mirage never quite reaches those lofty heights. While I admit that I miss climbing the towers, cathedrals and even colossal statues of previous games, there is, once again, something beautiful in the simplicity of the world that Mirage presents. Lip-syncing is still distractingly off enough to take you out of certain scenes. However, it’s not catastrophic enough to ruin the experience.

The post Assassin’s Creed Mirage Review – Back To Basics In Baghdad appeared first on Press Start.

While I’m a massive fan of the concept of Separate Ways, subsequent revisits to the 2005 version in my later years have had me coming to terms with a simple fact. It just wasn’t that good. A hodgepodge of assets from RE4 stitched together to sell a second version of the game, it’s an interesting case study of what happens when you mix a game with stellar mechanics with lousy encounter design. Separate Ways has been given the remake treatment as downloadable content for Resident Evil 4. And with so much gained, it’s a massive surprise at just how much is on offer here for such a great price.

For the unaware, Separate Ways is a side story that tells Ada Wong’s side of the events of Resident Evil 4. You play Ada as she takes orders from her mysterious superior while colluding with Leon and Luis to find the amber she was after in the main game. It’s a comprehensive package that further rounds the already well-rounded Resident Evil 4. It fleshes out a lot more of Luis and Ada’s motivations and helps fill out the story and tie up any loose ends left hanging by Leon’s adventure.

As implied earlier, the original Separate Ways was made after the fact, with so many aspects of Ada’s side of the story lacking real cohesion with Leon’s. This version, however, feels much more thoughtfully considered. When Ada is crossing the roof of the church, she can hear Ashley crying while she waits to be rescued by Leon. Later, she can hear Leon fighting Salazar on the other side of the castle wall she climbs. They’re small touches, but replaying RE4 knowing that Ada is nearby is a nice recontextualization.

Where the original Separate Ways had you running through Resident Evil 4 backwards, the new Separate Ways is much more thoughtful in the paces it puts Ada through. Many areas are admittedly reused from the main game, but they’ve been twisted enough to resemble something new – not cynically or dully like in Shadows of Rose last year. There’s also more of an emphasis on espionage and reconnaissance in the opening chapters, which meshes well with Ada; things ramp up pretty quickly along its seven-chapter run.

An example of how Separate Ways twists what was presented in Resident Evil 4 is with the first boss battle. El Gigante is fought twice in the main story as Leon, but as Ada, you’ll fight one in the farm area from the beginning of the game. Ada’s grapple hook can be used to jump between rooftops of each barn and, of course, to swing by and deal damage to the beast’s weak point. It’s a fun remix of a battle I’ve personally done to death – and the rest of the encounters only get better. There are three other key boss encounters in Separate Ways, and they’re entirely new and slot nicely into the overall story.

Even more admirable, each aspect of Resident Evil 4 that was sorely missing from the remake has been reworked and incorporated into Ada’s side of the story. It’s a joy to see these key moments reimagined – the gondola ride, the laser room and even a missing boss I quickly noticed in my original review. It’s all included here in Separate Ways with the same sense of respect that the original remake had, and it all makes sense to “give” these encounters to Ada, given how she gets around. It’s remarkable how much it rounds out the already comprehensive package that Resident Evil 4 was.

We already knew Ada was a badass, but I can only appreciate her more as a character after seeing what she was up to after the events of RE4. Much like the remake, Separate Ways masterfully balances the core tenets that make Resident Evil compelling – it’s got a nice mix of puzzles, exhilarating action and some darker horror-tinged moments. While combat primarily flows the same, Ada is equipped with weapons not found in the main game. With enough spinels, she can even unlock the ability to rip away enemies’ shields with her grapple. It is an absolute game changer and ammo saver on higher difficulties.

As you play Separate Ways, you’ll be surprised at how many new and substantial encounters it throws at you. Priced at fifteen dollars, it will take most players between five to six hours to finish, even more if they explore every area and finish every request for the merchant. There’s even a set of challenges to complete with their own related unlockables – including classic costumes from the original Resident Evil 4 for the rest of the cast and the usual weird accessories for Ada herself.

While there was unwarranted controversy surrounding the recasting of Ada Wong with Lily Gao, she turns in an excellent performance here as we get to spend more time with Ada in Separate Ways. Lending an aloof tone with some quippy one-liners to rival the corniness of Leon, this is easily now my favourite interpretation of the character. There are even some great remixes of music from Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 – including Ada’s theme from the former and a very schmick remix of Infiltration from the latter.

As the credits rolled on Separate Ways, I couldn’t help but ruminate on how polished it was. It felt like the base game, just from a different perspective. The original Separate Ways had many scenes where characters would stand silent as Ada spoke to them. None of that is evident in the new Separate Ways; it feels just as big a budget as the game it complements. That being said, there was one scene where Ada interacted with another character just moments before the finale that was weird and stilted, but otherwise, the majority of Separate Ways feels well put together with excellent production values.

Separate Ways is now available as paid downloadable content on all platforms where Resident Evil 4 is available.

The post Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways Review – Ada Comes Out Swinging appeared first on Press Start.

For a game with a seemingly endless supply of porn jokes, Eternights is surprisingly sweet. Coming from the independent Studio Sai, Eternights is a scale relative but ambitious swing at the Persona-like. The easiest way to define the Atlus-led subgenre would be to cram a bunch of quirky teens into a high-stakes situation that links their social interactions to their combat abilities and see what happens. It has endless potential and it’s not all that surprising to finally see smaller studios attempt to recreate it, but Eternights isn’t content with a simple emulation. Instead, it layers its earnest (and incredibly horny) social elements with a robust, real time combat system, injecting some freshness into the formula. It also, crucially, lets gay people exist.

Eternights is largely about the end of the world as God-like beings collide over the existential fate of humanity – but it opens with two mates shit talking each other’s tinder profiles. The player character, a self-named 18-year-old dude, is lamenting his dating inexperience with Chani, his lifelong bro and eager wingman, the two sharing an immediate and easy cadence. After a short introduction to the game’s visual novel dialogue choices and overarching tone, the two lads find themselves trapped in a bunker as their city is sliced up by a series of colossal, magical walls. This opening tears through table setting, almost immediately demanding you get on board with its supernatural premise, the protagonist’s new mystical sword arm, and the introduction of the third primary character, pop-star Yuna.

It’s not poorly done, just a little breakneck when also trying to parse the profoundly sweaty vibes the game gives off around its young adult shenanigans. These are explicitly sexual characters, often stumbling on the line of sexualised, but almost always straightening back up with some decent writing or emotionally resonant story beat. It’s not going to be for everyone, but I can’t deny the kind of dumb shit I was thinking at 18 and to see these character’s perform exaggerated versions of those thoughts wasn’t entirely without charm. All said there are four other party members you’ll recruit over the course of the game’s roughly 10–15-hour campaign, three women and one other guy, all romanceable and all sporting their own backstories and gameplay mechanics. To break those newly erected walls, the gang will have to ride a beefed-up rail train through the city, taking each calendar day and night to hang out, work on themselves, and eventually venture into dungeons.

Eternights’ ensemble is a likeable bunch of archetypes, no single characterisation much to write home about but collectively an endearing cast all the same. The playable character is a bit of a blank slate, his personality and tone decided during conversations from a small range of dialogue choices that in turn lean him toward several potential personality types. My guy, Knox, ended up being a sensitive type who would often opt for acceptance with a dash of confidence about his situation. Which was fine, until the endgame came around and I needed a higher confidence level to access the final dates with my chosen romance. Fortunately, the game leaves time for some confidence training with your best mate, but it was a shame to see my natural leanings lock me out of certain options organically.

Your day to day on the horny express is broken up into several activities, all of which you can freely choose from but each taking up a portion of the day. The headliner is the social interactions, seen here as choosing to “spend time” with a character of your choice, but the crew is also your gateway to training and scavenging missions. Spending time with people takes many forms, each character’s ideal “date” representative of their personalities and proclivities. Sia, the science geek, would often ask to observe me in combat, her love language being that of cold numbers and charts; Yuna, Eternights’ obvious favourite choice, accompanied me to an old high school to talk about her life in the spotlight; Yohan, my obvious favourite choice, would visit me in my dreams and we’d talk about trauma responses while chasing ethereal butterflies. And yeah, that last one is a little wild, but Eternights does all of this with the same confidence, no situation or interaction too silly to impact its stride.

Nothing you do is time wasted in Eternights, every mechanical engagement rewarding you with tangible progress and deeper social interactions. Characters can offer the protagonist training sessions, short and simple minigames that grant boosts to certain social levels or social currency to be spent on the game’s skill trees. You can also sneak out at night with someone to loot nearby locations for essentials like towels and fresh coffee, these excursions yielding similar rewards and strong interpersonal connections. It’s a lean and refined core loop that gives you direct control over your combat potential and romantic possibilities while showcasing the game’s warm character writing and vibes.

Making love not war is a nice enough adage, but Eternights sports a surprisingly weighty real-time combat system to balance its social systems. Combat is all about momentum, building from your basic button mashing attack with Bayonetta style timed dodges, QTE-driven special moves, and a whole subclass of unique attacks and support abilities. If you land enough hits in a row, you’ll have access to a simple finisher move or a super-powered elemental blow that utilises the unique powers of your crew with the left trigger and a series of QTEs. The use of hit stop makes even the smallest attack feel mighty, a stylistic choice that has great effect on the experience. Eternights slowly feeds you increasingly powerful mechanics too, ensuring you’ll always have a cool new toy to play with as the plot progresses. Using your social interactions to unlock stronger skills feels natural and makes taking these characters into combat even more satisfying.

The gang will need to contend with a handful of dungeons throughout the game, each an escalating gauntlet of combat and puzzle-solving. These multileveled event scenarios are plot heavy and often quite cinematic, housing fully animated cutscenes and creative level design along with boss encounters that test your combat proficiency. The puzzles are a tad goofy but fun enough, often repeated simple floor pattern recognition, sliding blocks, and even a late-game run that saw me jot down numbers on pen and paper to make life easier. You’re more likely to hit combat rooms and large-scale encounters though, and Eternights has a genuinely fantastic grasp on enemy aesthetics and design, leaning into body horror in fun ways. Some encounters can get a little much, often descending into button-mashing to get through it, but the strength of the combat and overall visuals mostly mask this.

There’s a dash of Suda51-adjacent design philosophy in here, a strange and exaggerated melding of explicitly gamey mechanics to strengthen combat and its cinematic potential. It all locks into place with the game’s strong art-direction and animation fidelity. There are shortcuts you’ll need to allow for; major moments will often cut to black and explain something in plain text, no doubt a budget limitation you can meet halfway if you’re willing. But Eternights is frequently beautiful too, with expressive designs, sharp lighting, and a broad understanding of the more pleasing visual trappings of the genre and anime writ large. And while the writing can sometimes veer a little off-course, the voice work is stellar and always grounds these characters in the game’s unexpectedly sad tale.

There’s also Studio Sai’s decision to actively include queer romance in the game, something Atlus with its years of massive success and growth has still been unwilling to do. This is a genre predicated on the fundamentals of the human experience, Eternights smartly recognising that that experience comes in many forms. Yohan is as fleshed out as any of the heterosexual romance options in the game, showing up a little later than I’d have liked but a substantial portion of the second and third act is played with him in the team.

There are no jokes made at your expense for romancing him, no stilted subplots of unacceptance or half-arsed dates either, Yohan is a fully formed character and your story with him is profoundly moving at times. It’s not perfect; the inclusion of just one option is unbalanced and the game’s pacing still favours its women (all of whom I enjoyed but would have killed for a friend-zone button), but the ability to be gay in a genre so thoroughly alienating to me was a marvel. It was also emblematic of Eternights as a whole; a little uneven and requiring some good faith on the part of the player, but if you’re willing to get on board, this train ride will take you to some very cool places.

The post Eternights Review – It’s Persona-l appeared first on Press Start.

To think that the last Armored Core was almost a decade ago is nothing short of baffling. To think that FromSoftware has published no less than five action RPGs in that time is similarly astonishing. I wouldn’t have blamed them for never looking back, especially given that they’ve established an entire subset of the genre – the Soulslike. But now, FromSoftware is returning to what was arguably its biggest franchise prior; Armored Core. And while there was so much room for messing it up, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon never loses sight of its predecessors while still feeling as modern as ever.

Like the previous games, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon takes place in a world where civilisation has fallen. Humanity has found a cradle in the form of the planet of Rubicon, a new Earth of sorts. You play as a scientifically modified pilot named Raven, joined by their handler Walter and an AI named ALLMIND to help Raven while deployed on missions. Rubicon itself isn’t in a good place – burned by countless corporations pursuing a naturally occurring energy source called Coral. As a pilot and a mercenary, you’re stuck in the middle of the war between these corporations.

Even though several years have passed since the last Armored Core, admittedly, there’s not a whole lot different narratively here. Every game in the series has had some commentary on the effects of late-stage capitalism and both the horrors of war and the abuse of natural resources. Fires of Rubicon is no different. While this story is bound to appeal to some, especially with FromSoftware’s characteristic hands-off approach, it was humdrum for me. This is further exacerbated by the game’s minimalist presentation. Characters speak, but you never see them, and there’s not much visual stimuli. I recognise that’s how Armored Core was years ago, but today, Fires of Rubicon feels dry in this department because of it.

PRE-ORDER NOW AT AMAZON FOR $89 WITH FREE SHIPPING

It’s a great relief that everything else has been fantastically put together. Equally surprising and delightful, Fires of Rubicon plays just like Armored Core games have played in the past. Rather than try to shoe-horn modern open-world design sensibilities into the game, Fires of Rubicon presents itself as a list of missions to embark on. Some will take players minutes to complete, while others might take hours. But a good variety of missions here are always fun to work through. Of course, while Fires of Rubicon is a challenging experience, some modern tweaks are made to the formula to make it a whole lot better without betraying the spirit of its predecessors.

What took me aback initially was just how playable Fires of Rubicon is. It’s without a doubt one of the smoothest controlling games that I’ve played by the team at FromSoftware. It was initially a bit hard to get my head around controlling the four different weapon types and mobility options I had to juggle simultaneously. But once I did, I felt nothing short of godlike. Armored Core was previously known for how inaccessible and clunky it was, having players form a strange grip around their controller to play proficiently. But Fires of Rubicon is none of that – it’s just as deep and more playable without sacrificing depth of experience.

At the start of each mission, you’ll be able to customise your mech (or Core) for the battle ahead. Owing to series tradition, the customisation options are extensive, but your choices aren’t without consequence. Each part of your mech can be customised, and up to four weapons can be attached as long as they fit within the limit of the mech you’re working with. Making the wrong choice isn’t a big deal either – you can adjust the structure of your mech following death to change up your approach.

This is how Fires of Rubicon differentiates itself from the developer’s other games. For one, you’re never encouraged to stick with a single build. In fact, so many parts often have differing attributes that no individual part’ll ever fit every situation. Similarly, buying a part and selling it back has the same cost, so there’s no tangible penalty for experimenting. It’s a friendly system, and, honestly, its flexibility gives a great opportunity to overcome adversity with adjustments to your setup.

While Fires of Rubicon is difficult – perhaps even the most difficult FromSoftware game I’ve played – some nice adjustments to the game’s design make it a tad more forgiving. All missions incur an expense, and, as a mercenary, you’re expected to cover this expense by taking them out of your earnings. The better you do in each mission means that you’ll receive a better payout, meaning that you’ll be able to buy better grades of equipment in the future.

Where previous Armored Core games penalised you excessively, sometimes even sending you into debt, Fires of Rubicon feels a lot more forgiving in this area. For one, you don’t lose money or fail. Additionally, if you die at a checkpoint, you are brought back with all your heals  intact, which is a simple but forgiving design choice. It’s an especially welcome decision, given the intensity and breadth of the boss battles that you’ll encounter.

The marquee standout in Fires of Rubicon is easily its boss battles. There are a wide variety of enemies that you’ll have to deal with, but the boss encounters are some of the most adrenaline-fraught confrontations I’ve had in games. These bosses will test your mettle, and while I never found myself stuck on a boss for as long as I was with (pre-patch) Malenia, some of these encounters really had me questioning my life choices. But, as Fires of Rubicon encourages, the better life choice is to go back to your mech’s build and loadout and adjust to achieve your goals much more comfortably.

Besides the main missions, Fires of Rubicon also offers a separate Arena mode. In it, you’re pitted against other AI-controlled cores in intense battles. They’re fun diversions and enjoyable to engage with because they offer numerous rewards. Every battle completed unlocks that mech’s preset for you to build, allowing you to automatically do so if you have the parts on hand. You’ll also unlock upgrades for your mech’s operating system, granting damage boosts. It’s a great wealth of side content that offers a nice stopgap for those who don’t want to engage with customisation as much. It’s also great to fight a powerful foe, take them down, and then literally become them too.

Certain missions also present you with choices that can be made to alter the course the story takes. While I wasn’t quite resilient enough to play the game multiple times to do so, there are multiple endings. I alluded the relatively dry narrative earlier, so whether it’s worth replaying to see how things pan out differently will be a personal choice. But it’s still a neat touch that, once again, retains the spirit of the original games.

Irrespective of how I feel about the plot, Fires of Rubicon represents the most time I’ve spent with an Armored Core game. I can’t quite quantify whether it’s bigger than previous games in terms of sheer content, but a fresh run will easily take over twenty hours to finish. To top that off, there’s also an online-enabled PvP mode called NEST, though it’s hard to comment on how well that’s working given the pre-release nature of the game.

Of course, difficulty factors into how long I spent with Fires of Rubicon. Sometimes I spent hours on a single boss, knowing what I had to do but still somehow fumbling with my controller or getting too greedy with my hits. It feels like From’s other games in that way. But there’s no getting around it – Fires of Rubicon is brutal. There are no difficulty or accessibility options to assist you through it. As someone who is naturally proficient at these kinds of games, it wasn’t an issue for me, but it will absolutely be one for a specific subset of players.

In terms of presentation, Fires of Rubicon absolutely delivers. While the colour palette is probably one of the bleakest I’ve seen in games recently, it effectively illustrates the dilapidated and overused world of Rubicon. The game looks its best when you’re skating around an arena, shooting off a volley of lasers, missiles or both while simultaneously boosting out of enemy fire. Battles run incredibly fluid, with only some minor slowdown when there’s too much going on at once. I’d perhaps have liked some more colour in the art direction, but overall it’s still a nice-looking game that nails the staunch brutalist vibe the team is going for.

The post Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon Review – A Revitalising Revival 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.

GET IT ON AMAZON FOR $54.99 WITH FREE SHIPPING

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.

There’s a lot of friction in Atlas Fallen. Some of this is intentional; grinding across sand dunes and slamming overpowered attacks into fantastical creatures that are hungry for your blood to stain the earth below. Some of it isn’t; those same overpowered attacks in a constant wrestling match with the game’s camera while its overarching plot and writing catch like sand between gears. A slow but undeniable churn of grit in the machine that undercuts the game’s best ideas and brings an otherwise cool set of mechanics low.

I can always see the vision in a Deck13 game. The German developers have spent the better part of a decade emulating the FromSoftware house style, transplanting challenging action combat systems into fresh settings on a much leaner budget. The Surge games, both of which adhere much closer to the team’s inspiration points in terms of structure and theme, also embodied some of its best work. Tightly crafted experiences that introduced unique layers to the formula and successfully lifted it all into a gritty sci-fi world. Atlas Fallen pivots in almost every way; deliberate play spaces traded for open-zones, discreet encounters for bombastic rumbles, sharpened storytelling for genre pastiche. It goes on, but for the pockets of fun I had in Atlas Fallen, I struggled to see the vision.

Atlas, the titular world, has fallen. A harsh and arid land of rocky mountains, sandy dunes and dying pockets of forest, this primordial plateau has been the stage of a centuries long holy war. In the process, the land has been systematically strip mined of its Essence, a glittery sand-like substance that fuels the magic of the realm and is now solely meant for Atlas’ looming god, Thelos. Having taken the form of a massive stone idol that floats above the land, tracking its denizens like a fucked up Mona Lisa, Thelos has weaponised humanity’s belief systems and forged a religious army to do his bidding. You play as a Nameless, an underclass of people who form the worker backbone of the continent with very little in the way of compensation or basic respect.

THE CHEAPEST SHIPPED COPY: $79 AT AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING

Once you’ve customised your hero from a decent enough selection of hairstyles, you’ll be quickly introduced to the game’s central idea – the Gauntlet. Found during a disastrous trip across the country and quickly wielded to set herself free from servitude, the Gauntlet is 2023’s third sentient, magical handheld that cracks wise at the player while offering them access to escalating powers to use in combat. Atlas Fallen’s Gauntlet houses Nyall, a Na’vi-looking blue man with a vendetta against Thelos and a tremendous arse to boot. Nyall will be with you across your whole journey, granting access to a plethora of RPG systems, traversal tools, plotty dialogue and game hints, the latter of which can be thankfully toned down in the game’s settings.  

From here, Atlas Fallen is a pretty straightforward action RPG affair. You’ll be sent out across Atlas to collect pieces of the Gauntlet to power it up enough to progress to the next story beat, each portion of the map a discreet but interconnected series of open zones that house side quests and challenges to complete. The Gauntlet allows the Nameless to shift the sands of Atlas, raising platforms, activating timed magical puzzles, and best of all, propelling themselves across the sand like an ice skater. Deck13 use this to great effect, turning any open space into a slip and slide for the Nameless, and solving the open-world traversal slowdown effortlessly, if not seamlessly. You can only glide if the game registers sand beneath your feet, making some areas a clumsy stop/start experience as a small rock abruptly stops your flow in frustrating ways.

These flow issues are writ large in the game’s combat, an uneven and sporadically fun collision of systems. Atlas Fallen gives players an impressive arsenal of tools to play with, layering basic weapons like axes and whips with several types of modifiers and an underlying risk/reward micromanagement in Momentum. Landing consecutive blows against enemies raises the Momentum meter, unlocking evolved versions of your base weapon along with tiered special abilities, but also making you much more vulnerable to damage. Momentum can be expelled through critical strikes that deal massive damage and lower the bar again, making for a constant and engaging push and pull between power and limitations. It’s also consistently undercut by an unstable camera that pulls focus in frustrating ways during group encounters, endlessly fighting with the lock-on function to make for a disorientating experience.

Doubly so when camera control is essential to fully engaging with Atlas Fallen’s enemy designs, most of which require targeting specific body parts to deal meaningful damage. In concept it rules, harkening back to The Surge and allowing you to incapacitate certain attacks or cleave off new weapons by focusing on armoured limbs and the like. In practice, it wears thin, as to actually defeat a foe you’ll need to focus damage but the camera makes this an exercise in frustration. Atlas Fallen’s menagerie is detailed but limited, a rotating door of Wraiths who escalate over the course of the game but never vary all that much. It’s a combination of issues that take a baseline solid combat system and dulls its shine like sand slowly but surely burying a treasure.

Elsewhere there is a loose set of RPG systems churning away, most of which can be ignored to no real peril. There are a few currencies to collect to spend on vendors, leveling and perk slots; a crafting system that requires you to collect plants and ores from the world; a bunch of side quests and NPCs; armour customisation; the list goes on. The bulk of essentials will be given to the player via the main questline, but what really makes these systems forgettable is the overarching world of Atlas Fallen. It’s not bad, as such, but it’s shockingly dry. Voice acting and dialogue is about as unenthused by it all as I am writing this, and the repetition of the game’s missions and puzzle challenges quickly dispels any real sense of adventure.

Which is a shame because Atlas Fallen is partway to being exactly the kind of elevated action experience the genre deserves right now. A comforting throwback to design ethos of old, happy to let the player just wail on some monsters in a cool looking world. And there are elements of that kind of fun buried in here. Atlas feels grand, a massive playground to whip across the sands on and marvel at the imposing natural beauty of it all. Claiming it back from an evil god with these particular tools should be a great time. Instead, for the moments of fun I had at this beach, I just feel sunburnt and ready to wash the sand off.

The post Atlas Fallen Review – Sinking Sand 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.

Exoprimal feels like it’s from another era. It harkens back to a time when Capcom was slightly more experimental in its approach to making games. A time when they weren’t relying on remakes of tried-and-true classics but instead were creating new and engaging IPs. It’s a gamble, then, that Capcom would create a new IP and a new multiplayer IP in Exoprimal after their numerous successes with their flagship franchises. But Exoprimal is much better than I expected and does more for the hero shooter genre than I ever thought possible. The gamble paid off.

And there is a story to it all too. It’s 2043, three years since dinosaurs were unleashed worldwide from portals and tears in space and time. You play as a pilot who has crashed and landed on Bikitoa Island following the opening of another portal during a routine flight. Here, on the island, you’re greeted by an AI named Leviathan, who forces you and others into simulations of wargames while wearing powered exosuits against hordes of dinosaurs. It’s ridiculous, but it’s the right kind of ridiculous that lends itself well to the concept.

The fact that there’s even a story to follow in Exoprimal is also a bit of a miracle. Story progression is tied to how many battles you complete – you don’t even have to win – and they’re mapped out in a separate menu to look at in your own time. Some cutscenes are played after specific matches, further detailing the goings-on of your squad, but for the most part, you can engage with Exoprimal’s surprisingly robust story as you see fit. It’s certainly a nice inclusion and hopefully, the beginning of yet another universe for Capcom to pull from.

But it’s easily how Exoprimal carries itself in battle that makes it stand out. There’s technically only one mode called Dino Survival, but within that mode, a lot is going on. More than the game itself tells you. Each match pits two teams of five against each other in two phases. The first phase has the teams fighting to complete objectives faster than the other team in PvE situations. The second phase then moves both teams onto the same map into a PvPvE situation in a battle for the win.

For example, the first phase might have your team fighting waves of dinosaurs, defending a point on the map and then escorting to a certain point. The second phase might have your team protecting a payload (think Overwatch) while dinosaurs and other enemy players attack it. The assortment of objectives and activities you’re given is random, to a point, but there’s a lot here to keep the whole experience both engaging and enjoyable.

Exosuits are essentially heroes as they appear in other shooters of this ilk. There are ten suits to choose from in three categories – Assault (DPS), Tank and Support. Each suit has its own abilities and can be outfitted with unique modules to improve their performance and, more importantly, feel balanced. The exosuits are fun to learn and use and have wildly different ways to approach battle baked into their design. Even support, a category you rarely see to be so popular in games like this, gets a fair shake of the stick when players are building their teams.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $74.99 AT AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING

Even better, you can switch at any point in the match. With a button, your pilot can eject themselves from their exosuit and change to something else. I regularly switched up my suit depending on which objective was in play, which encourages experimentation with the numerous suits and their abilities.

But it’s not just about the players either. There are over fifteen different types of dinosaurs that the game will throw at you, big and small, that ensure that the action in Exoprimal never gets old. From the most basic form in the raptors and the Pteranodons to the history-bending neosaurs that mix dinosaurs we’ve come to know with outlandish mutations to make them more dangerous than ever. The game does a great job at mixing up the combinations of dinosaurs that it throws at you, and some of the heavier ones especially are difficult enough that they encourage you to work as a team to feel them faster than your opponents.

From time to time, the Leviathan AI will get testy and throw a random mission at you that becomes really intense. These are the moments where Leviathan will open a portal and pour out thousands of dinosaurs that attack you. Sometimes he’ll even cut a match short and transport you to an alternate dimension to fight a boss, turning respawns off and bringing together two competing teams of five to throw a ten-player co-op mission at you instead. It’s an incredibly dynamic system, and these set pieces seemingly bridge the gap between what you’d expect to see in a single-player campaign and the multiplayer game that Exoprimal is.

Of course, there is a big dark cloud looming over Exoprimal, and that’s the way that progression is handled. After competing in a certain number of matches, your party will eventually be interrupted by a “story” like mission that’ll pit you against a unique threat. Around six of these encounters’ll happen across sixty or so matches. They’re incredibly fun. But it’s what happens next that might be annoying or just too vague for some players.

Completing these missions then “opens up” more of Leviathan’s simulation for you. So future games you’ll play will have more objectives, maps, and dinosaurs thrown at you. Exoprimal isn’t forthcoming with how this content is dished out nor how you gain access to more of it. Playing with friends who are lower level than you will essentially “lock” you into the lower-level missions, creating an illusion that there’s only one map and a handful of dinosaurs. This is especially obvious in the opening weekend, where your average party level will be lower due to many factors, including the ease of access with the game’s inclusion on Game Pass and the like.

I’m trying to say that as time passes and the overall player population increases in level, the content on offer in Exoprimal will be more obvious to the broader player base. But the other side of this argument is that many players would not necessarily be bothered to get to this point but that they’ll assume Exoprimal is so much less than what it is. 

Exoprimal currently has five PvE objectives and five PvP objectives that can be played out across six unique maps. But most players will easily only see almost half of these if they are playing for several hours. Capcom is promising multiple free updates – including exosuit variants with new weapons, new objectives to complete, new maps and even new dinosaurs. If they keep the content coming, Exoprimal will be something special. It already is, but it needs to put its best foot forward now to convince players that there’s more to it than their lower-level parties might be showing them.

Regardless, at the end of the day, Exoprimal does what I previously thought was unthinkable. It makes a competitive multiplayer game fun, even when losing a battle. There’s a good breadth of balanced exosuits to play with and many activities and dinosaurs to mess around with. Mix this with a unique approach to storytelling and some pretty fantastic setpieces, and it seems Capcom may be on to a winner with some tweaks here and there.

The post Exoprimal Review – Don’t Call It A Dino Crisis 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.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $74.99 SHIPPED AT AMAZON / MIGHTYAPE

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.

Although it wasn’t overly surprising (but very welcome) to see Activision release the Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy back in 2017 to properly capitalise on nostalgia for the IP that it acquired in 2008, I’ll admit I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see the manic marsupial continue to star in his own titles in the years since. We had another re-do in the form of Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, followed by a wholly original (and shockingly punishing) platforming sequel with Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, and now yet another new and original Crash game has arrived – Crash Team Rumble.

Despite its initial reveal summoning my deepest desires for a return to the Crash Bash/Crash Boom Bang! party game school of mayhem, Crash Team Rumble is instead a competitive, multiplayer online battle arena-style effort where players compete to collect and deposit Wumpa fruit for the team across a variety of maps. As someone that’s largely steered away from even the most basic of MOBA-esque games, it’s certainly not something I would’ve considered dipping my toe into were it not for a lingering penchant for its mascot. That said, after spending a solid amount of time with Crash Team Rumble I can genuinely say I’ve been having a fair amount of fun with it – though glaring, foundational issues with its content offering and structure make it sadly difficult to recommend.

Let’s start with what works though, because my initial experience with Crash Team Rumble has been surprisingly positive. The basic premise is fairly easy for players of all ages to grasp (if I can do it, so can your kids), pitting two teams of four against each other to run around the selection of nine unique maps and collect Wumpa before bringing it back to their team’s scoring area and depositing it as quickly and completely as possible.

Nuance, and opposition, comes from the opposing team’s ability to interfere with that process. Players can attack each other, causing their opponent to drop Wumpa, activate score-boosting gems around each map, use unique character-based abilities and special items, and spend collected relics on game-changing powerups unique to each map in order to get a competitive edge and reach a total of 2000 points before the other team.

Like any good game of this ilk, it’s all about each player in a team working in tandem to manage these various mechanics and become a well-oiled machine of mayhem and Wumpa-hoarding. The included roster of eight recognisable Crash Bandicoot characters is divided into three categories – the Scorers whose characteristics and abilities make them the best fit for zipping around the map to pick up and deposit Wumpa, the Blockers who are more capable of attacking players and obstructing their goal zone to prevent scoring, and the Boosters who want to be activating boost gems around the map and otherwise acting as a support.

The synergy between these classes, even when a team is stacked in one direction or missing one of the three entirely, is pretty remarkable most of the time. In my many, many matches so far I’ve rarely seen anything get too one-sided with the majority of my bouts turning out to be thrilling nail-biters right up the finishing score. The game seems to do a pretty good job of matching and sorting players into appropriate teams before each round, which is great. All of the maps, though on the smaller size, feel unique in their layouts and the various power-ups they offer and are well-designed overall. Coupled with the fact that special abilities are charged by performing the actions your chosen class is intended for, it makes it easy to jump in with randoms and feel assured that everyone’s going to play their part.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $38 AT AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING

I’m embarrassed to admit that on more than one occasion I’ve found myself yelling at teammates and opponents alike through my TV screen (not into any actual comms, of course) as things got particularly heated. I haven’t managed to convince any of my mates to get into a game with me for some genuinely strategic play but my experience playing with silent strangers so far has been excellent. I have run into the occasional instances of particularly nasty Neo Cortex duos from players clued into the meta but those are few and far between and rarely soured my enjoyment.

So it’s a success on the gameplay front then, but the issues with Crash Team Rumble exist in just about everything outside of the matches themselves. For starters, there’s just that one game type to play. With nine maps and eight characters, repetition can set in pretty quickly. I’ve been playing a maximum of a couple hours a day since just before the game officially launched and I’m already feeling bored with the content on offer. The only thing keeping me going currently is the game’s Battle Pass-style progression, which in a game that’s boxed up and priced on shelves is also a disappointing choice. Between an anemic content offering and the slog of grinding out character levels on top of a timed, seasonal pass, Crash Team Rumble feels like it should’ve been a free-to-play game and not something that you’d pay up to $69.95 for.

At present, there isn’t any way to spend real money on anything, which is nice. But I also don’t know how that’s all going to shake out as far as future content goes, as much as I’ve enjoyed unlocking a heap of character skins and even iconic music from across the franchise that plays when I put the opposing team in the ground. It feels wrong to suggest, but I honestly might have been more optimistic about Crash Team Rumble’s future had Activision decided to make it a freemium release with a paid battle pass. It could have meant more people willing to give the game a go with friends, and as a paid product in the state it’s in right now I just don’t see it garnering the kind of audience to justify a continued investment in Toys For Bob putting out regular content updates.

At least it’s already seen some hefty discounts retail.

The post Crash Team Rumble Review – A Crateful Of Fun While It Lasts appeared first on Press Start.

Between Diablo III’s disastrous launch and the egregious monetization of Diablo Immortal, one of Blizzard’s most defining IP hasn’t been in a great spot as of late. It’s in these circumstances that Blizzard have decided to pivot back to what made Diablo special to begin with in Diablo IV. Moving back to a more grounded setting, honing focus on characters as opposed to spectacle, and polishing a beloved formula up to snuff for 2023 standards are just a few of the things this game has set out to achieve.

Diablo IV harkens back to Blizzard’s glory days, a time where the developer’s titles stood out on store shelves thanks to chunky boxes synonymous with quality and polish. It remains to be seen how its live service offerings will pan out over the coming months and years, but the day one package feels undeniably feature-complete, rich with content, and brandishes impeccable presentation informed by an unwavering commitment to the vision of a redefined Sanctuary. It might not break much new ground, but Diablo IV is a hell of a good time.

Some 30 years after the events of Diablo III, the war between angels and demons has taken its toll on both sides, and on Sanctuary itself. It’s in these moment of vulnerability that cultists have summoned Lilith, daughter of Mephisto and mother to Sanctuary. Her awakening brings only chaos, as demons and humans alike are overtaken by their sinful desires when graced by her presence.

In the absence of Tyrael, Lilith has claimed herself as the new protector of Sanctuary. The flipside of this coin is Inarius; co-creator of Sanctuary and founder of the Cathedral of Light. A fallen angel seeking redemption through ending Lilith’s newfound control, so that he can return to his rightful place in heaven. It’s in the midst of this conflict that the wanderer and the Horadrim set out to thwart Lilith’s plans and defend Sanctuary from the inevitable fallout of a foretold prophecy.

The conflict between Lilith and Inarius is grey and ambiguous in nature. Inarius’ goal is to the benefit of humanity, but his actions are driven by a prideful ignorance and want for acknowledgement from the high heavens. Lilith’s plans are portrayed in a similar light, but there’s always an undertone of uncertainty and manipulation whenever she’s stealing the scene on-screen. It’s a more nuanced and intricate take on the never-ending war between heaven and hell that prompts you to read between the lines as opposed to just taking a side.

Character development is similarly engaging when it comes to the Horadrim. Lorath and Donan represent everything wrong with the Horadrim as they tackle personal demons, where newcomer Neyrelle embodies everything the Horadrim are meant to be. Her naivety is sharpened into cautious optimism by the time credits roll, but the dynamic between these three always delivers, even if they don’t come together all too often.

Where the character stuff is mostly great, the pacing of the narrative itself is a bit of a mixed bag. The opening chapters work to lure you into a more grounded version of Sanctuary, with a seemingly innocuous string of events that take a hard left turn into the despair and corruption brought by Lilith’s summoning. Things do slow down quite a bit from there though, with Acts IV and V feeling particularly side-tracked by a game of cat and mouse. These sluggish middle chapters eventually give way to an Act VI that careens towards the finish line, punctuated by one of Blizzard’s hallmark CG cutscenes that really earns its scope and grandeur through subtle tension building.

The Cheapest Copy: $84 On Amazon With Free Delivery

Perhaps the most interesting detail in regards to narrative structure is its non-linear progression. Acts II and III, alongside certain quest chains in other acts, can be completed in any order you see fit. If there’s a particular character you want to see more of, or a zone you want to explore, you can do so without hindering progression. Most zones scale to your level, so there’s never any worry of being over/under levelled for a particular area. This also lends tremendously to replay value and character progression, as you can tackle certain dungeons for class specific rewards whenever you feel like it.

I came to appreciate it even further as I explored Sanctuary. This is an open-world packed with stuff to do, from single-room Cellars and multi-floored Dungeons to world events and hidden Altars of Lilith that provide permanent stat bumps to all characters you make on that Realm. Despite some of the content feeling recycled, there’s something around every corner, and not being railroaded into a single zone at a time makes for a refreshing sense of freedom in a genre that typically herds you down its golden path.

While some of the content on offer here can get repetitive after hours of play, there’s always a worthwhile reward to come by the end of it. Everything you do is also earning you reputation for whatever zone that activity is in, with each reward tier offering useful character upgrades, most of which are account-wide. Whether it be loot or playstyle-altering Aspects that can be previewed before you commit to running a dungeon, Diablo IV’s grind respects your time without ever taking away from its inherent satisfaction.

The biggest choice you make when starting a new Diablo game is almost always which class you’re going to descend into hell with first. I spent the majority of my time with Diablo IV’s Rogue. After some experimentation through the ability to respec at any time, I eventually landed on a glass cannon build that incentivized teetering on a knife’s edge, imbuing weapons with shadow damage and hitting enemies with hard and fast barrages of arrows and blades while making ample use of traps.

While I stuck with this core build once I landed on it, it’s remarkable how quickly you can flip a build onto its head and change the entire dynamic of a class. Rogues can go down many different routes, from melee or ranged only, to a hybrid class that makes use of stealth to reposition. Other classes offer a similar level of flexibility, but there are some clear balance issues at the moment that position certain classes as better than others.

Instead of redefining character progression, Diablo IV opts to add new layers of power onto your builds and gear through a few systems. Aside from being inundated with new equipment and gaining skill points each level, Aspects can also be unlocked through various means. Most of these are class specific, but there are a few that are universal. Earned Aspects can be imprinted onto gear to give bonuses that alter or compliment your playstyle. It adds a new layer to gear progression that isn’t as passive as simple stat bonuses, and instead incentivizes you to play around with new skills or build for ones you’ve taken a liking to.

The core gameplay loop will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s played Diablo before. It falls more in line with recent entries as opposed to the more deliberate nature of Diablo II, but that isn’t a detriment. Combat has a visceral flow to it that fits with the overall world and atmosphere Blizzard are looking to establish here in Diablo IV, where bodies ragdoll and rip apart due to the sheer force of your blows. Fallen enemies result in countless loot drops to bolster your character’s power, and the ever satisfying ding of a legendary drop still taps into a primal part of the brain. Aside from being Diablo IV’s highest rarity tier, legendary gear brings playstyle-altering passives and even bonus skill ranks for all manners of play.

A special mention should go to Diablo IV’s boss fights, which are almost always excellently designed, and represent the best of what ARPGs can achieve. I played all of my campaign on World Tier II, which offered challenging boss encounters that forced me to play in a more considered manner as opposed to hammering on my abilities and basic attacks. Dodging projectiles, reading tells, and making smart use of potions all coalesces into exhilarating encounters that kept me on the edge of my seat. Completion of the campaign also allows you to work up to higher World Tiers, further bolstering difficulty with the incentive of increased reward.

The other notable end game content comes in the form of Whispers of the Dead, and Helltides. The former sees you completing favors for The Tree of Whispers in specific zones as you build up to a point cap. These favors are often things you’ll already be doing, like Cellars, Dungeons, and world events. Once you’ve completed enough favors, you can turn in your Whispers for a cache of loot, containing a bunch of armour or weapons, gems, gold, and experience points.

Helltides are only unlocked and present on World Tier III and higher, where empowered demons spawn in a specific region. These demons drop Cinders, which can be spent to open Helltide chests scattered in the area, creating potential for top tier rewards if you’re willing to take the risk. These empowered demons are no walk in the park, but my experience with Helltides prop it up as some of the best content to engage with for high quality gear in the post-game.

Similarly interesting is the Plains of Hatred, which functions as a PvPvE zone. Defeating other players and demons in the Plains of Hatred will net you Seeds of Hatred, which need to be purified into Red Dust to be used as currency. The catch, is that players are free to attack you while you’re purifying, adding an inherent risk/reward factor in the process. You can of course opt to only engage in PvE, but you’ll need to purify at some point, so the Plains of Hatred are best ventured with friends. Earned Red Dust can later be spent on ornamental rewards like cosmetics and mounts.

This is all without discussing Strongholds, Capstone and Nightmare Dungeons, levelling other classes, the myriad of side quests available to you, and so much more. There’s a wealth of content to engage with across all skill levels in Diablo IV at launch, and it’s only going to get bigger with incoming seasonal offerings.

The biggest question mark at the moment lies in Diablo IV’s monetization. Blizzard have been clear that there’s no pay-for-power in Diablo IV, but it remains to be seen how egregious pricing is for the cosmetics and mounts on offer. The press build didn’t have a functioning store to peruse, but the easily accessible and simple transmog system allowed me to tailor the way my characters looked without spending a dime. It’s also worth mentioning that there’s going to be premium battle passes for post-launch seasons, but specific details on this were also absent in the review build.

Diablo IV’s impeccable presentation is the glue that holds this experience together. A more muted color palette stands in stark contrast with Diablo III and Immortal, falling much more in line with the first two games. Catacombs and dungeons are decorated with viscera and gory remnants of battles long past, bodies are posted up in the arid wastes of Khejistan as a grisly warning to adventurers and would-be heroes, and Scosglen’s countless ruins mark the history of its former inhabitants. It goes a long way to building a moody atmosphere and tone in this gothic wasteland.

That isn’t to say that Sanctuary is a landscape of dull greys and limestone yellows – quite the opposite, in fact. Each region offers something visually distinct from the last. Where the frozen Fractured Peaks is a frigid wasteland of cold death, Haweza is festering and humid bog filled with all manner of abominations. Each zone seamlessly blends into the next, all while offering their own interpretations of hell and how it spills over into the land. This is further bolstered by a diverse array of grotesque enemy designs that mix the familiarity of Diablo’s demonic trappings with eldritch horror.

Polish is also unsurprisingly up to snuff for Blizzard standards on the PC side of things. Performance was silky smooth across 30 or so hours of play, with the only real issues I encountered being some rubber banding when moving too fast on a mount. I’m unsure how things are on the console side, but I suspect that a similar standard is upheld.

Diablo IV doesn’t just feel like a return to form for the franchise, but also for Blizzard as a developer. There’s a keen awareness for what makes Diablo special present in Diablo IV. It’s as contemporary as it is traditional, understanding that ARPGs have evolved past the days of button mashing, but also paying homage to its forebears and legacy. It’s not without issues, but Diablo IV delivers where it counts.

The post Diablo IV Review – A Superb Return To Form appeared first on Press Start.

Street Fighter 6 needed to do everything it could to right the wrongs of its predecessor. With fighting games enjoying a strong resurgence in recent years, it’s simply not enough to cater solely to the hardcore audience and Street Fighter 6 knows that. Where Street Fighter 5 would eventually fumble to the finish line as a competent product, Street Fighter 6 starts off stronger than ever with an appeal to all audiences. And while the roster isn’t as numerous as most of its contemporaries, it’s laid a foundation riddled with a vigour that can only auspiciously grow into Capcom’s greatest fighter yet.

Street Fighter 6 doesn’t mess with the genre too much. You pick a character and battle it out with an opponent until one of you wins. It’s a system that works. Street Fighters’ main schtick has always been the solid systems underpinning the flow of its combat, making up for its lack of melodrama or violence with good old-fashioned gameplay. Street Fighter 6 is no different. It leverages a solid battle system to appeal to experienced players but incorporates some much-needed changes to welcome new and inexperienced players to the fold too.

The most obvious change here is the three control options it offers up. Typical fighting games require inputting commands and buttons to pull off special moves or combos. This is still in Street Fighter 6, as the “Classic” control mode. But two other control modes simplify things for newcomers. “Modern” lets players pull off special moves and combos with simplified and less intimidating inputs. “Dynamic” is even simpler – allowing flashier combos and move strings with the mashing of certain buttons – it acts as a de-facto “party” mode of sorts for a super casual player.

I’ve experienced first-hand how newer players to the genre might find these games overwhelming, especially when playing against somebody experienced. These control schemes don’t feel like afterthoughts. They’re an earnest step in the right direction to break down barriers that might stop people from picking up the controller. Some aspects of the Modern mode, such as lower damage output, might seem controversial. But it only seeks to illustrate the strength of it – you can throw out moves and combos faster than the average player, so a damage compromise seems fair.

Another less obvious way that Street Fighter 6 feels more approachable is the Drive system. It feels significantly streamlined by incorporating parrying, blocking, cancelling, and all other kinds of gimmicks from previous games into one system. You can use your drive meter to absorb attacks, counter them, or even block or cancel out a string of attacks. Like in previous games, it can even be used to enhance special moves. Giving players so many options at the beginning of a match leads to a flow of battle that’s much faster and, more importantly, more flexible for players.

The Drive system really is ingenious. It manages to roll the cooler gimmicks seen in previous Street Fighter games into one, but it also provides a consistent set of skills that every character can access from the beginning. If you can successfully grasp the concept of the Drive system as a whole, you have a substantial collection of abilities to fight with no matter who you choose. It’s a much more intelligent and elegant system than in Street Fighter 5 – where every V-Skill and V-Trigger had to be remembered and chosen at the beginning of each match. Even then, they were all wildly inconsistent and unbalanced. The Drive system is a more straightforward approach with much more potential.

Appealing to a wider audience, there’s a nice amount of content here to experience as a solo player. The newest, World Tour, has been done in some fighting games in the past, though not to the extent seen here. The mode puts your avatar character into the world of Street Fighter in an action RPG-like mode, where you’ll travel the world to learn moves from your favourite characters and throw down with people on the streets. The transition between fighting and exploration is seamless and fun from a gameplay perspective.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $89 WITH FREE SHIPPING FROM AMAZON

World Tour is, for the most part, enjoyable. It was fun to see all my favourite characters behave outside of a match and learn abilities from them to build my perfect characters. It’s not perfect, however. The plot is certainly engaging, but the world just isn’t as interesting or as lore-rich as Mortal Kombat would be in adapting this formula. There was even potential to have satisfying exploration with Metroid-esque gates that only certain abilities could open, but there isn’t anything of that sort here. Most quests are also “move to this area and speak to this person”, so while World Tour does a great job of teaching you the basics of Street Fighter 6, it’s not something I could play for long bouts at a time.

You can take your avatar or any other character straight into Battle Hub, a more complex lobby system for the game online. The hub is like a giant meeting place, allowing you to organize matches with other players or buy gear for your character at numerous stalls. There’s even a massive screen up front that celebrates high-performing players in each room. It’s a great idea that feels like the most well-realised execution of “community” in a fighting game. However, only time will tell whether this concept will stick. I play most of my fighters privately with the same people, but for those who are more sociable, this is an effortlessly seamless way to play with others.

I was fortunate enough to do this with both the betas and the pre-release period for the game. Thankfully, online performance is solid. I had better matches with the random Australian that I ran into (thank you, whoever you are), but even against higher latency opponents, the rollback-based net code performed admirably. Online, as a whole, is masterfully executed in Street Fighter 6. Performance is great. Rematches are quick and snappy. Rankings can be maintained on a per-character basis. The online offerings for Street Fighter 6 are nothing short of the industry’s best and are what other fighters should aspire to be.

Fighting Ground is the other third of the game, and it’s really just a one-stop shop for all the modes the game has to offer. You can fight each other locally, fight other players with crazier rulesets, learn character-specific combos or even just about how to play your favourite character and engage with character-specific stories in the Arcade mode. Back in the day, everything included in Fighting Ground would’ve been enough for a fighting game, but to see this and much more included in Street Fighter 6 is encouraging. For the old-school fan who isn’t a fan of the flashier lobbies that Battle Hub provides, you can also set up private rooms here to invite your friends.

And while Street Fighter 6 looks to be doing so much so well, there was one big glaring omission that I can’t ignore – and that’s costumes. I’d argue they’re a series or even a genre staple, but nothing was included in the pre-release build. Hopefully, these will be included with the addition of a day one patch, for sure, but if absolutely all extra costumes are relegated to paid microtransactions, then this arguably feels like a step back from the Fight Money system that Street Fighter 5 used.

Of course, stylistically, Street Fighter 6 is on point. Powered by the same engine that has powered Resident Evil and Devil May Cry, RE Engine sees each character taking a more realistic approach as a base. But then, building on that base, the game has been heavily stylized to offer up this strange yet distinct visual style that looks better than most fighters on the market today. The animations are fluid, and the flourishes of paint that flick off special moves are bright and striking. This is easily the best that Street Fighter has ever looked.

All of this comes together to offer up a package that tries to right the wrongs of its predecessor and succeeds. It’s truly exciting to see what Street Fighter 6 will look like in the coming years, though if the team can save Street Fighter 5, think about what they could do with this.

The post Street Fighter 6 Review – Hits In All The Right Places 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.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $74 LAST-GEN/$79 PS5/XBOX FROM AMAZON

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.

Allan Jeans once famously compared a drawn footy game to “dancing with your sister”. You can put on your best shirt, cut up shapes on the dance floor, but at the end of the night, there’ll be no result. It’s a quote that feels analogous for the latest iteration in the rather niche AFL video game series, which Big Ant Studios returns to after a decade-long absence. It’s flashier than before, it pulls a few more tricks out of the bag, but ultimately feels as hollow as gazing up at a tied-up scoreboard after a two-hour slogfest. 

There’s no denying that AFL, as a sport, is extremely complex. The real players and officials can barely keep up with the ever-expanding laundry list of rule changes year-to-year, so to expect a game developer—on a wafer-thin budget—to realise it 1:1 is pie in the sky stuff. Big Ant Studios developed the first modern AFL game, AFL Live, about a decade ago only for Wicked Witch to take over as custodians from then on.

Although they’ve cut their teeth developing other sporting titles, Big Ant’s return to AFL felt like a coming home story bigger to rival Jason Horne-Francis. Unfortunately, several of the persistent issues to plague these footy games remain, leaving us with yet another product befitting the sport’s niche status.

As Big Ant are still aggressively patching the game to mend its launch issues, I expect that in time many of my gripes will be fixed. Things like errant handballing, missed tackles, and frequent failure to actually deliver on the rules of the sport can all be tweaked and improved as time goes on. I do think there are some fundamental issues with momentum in the game when you turn the ball over against even the weakest of sides, as they seamlessly move the ball coast-to-coast like an unstoppable wave. The skill ceiling and learning curve for AFL 23 are both astronomical for a sports game, but when I look at the opposition move the ball in a way that would otherwise be impossible for the player, it becomes frustrating. 

It also doesn’t appear as though you’re able to implement much strategy to curtail ball movement like this. You can’t control eighteen players at once and there’s no meaningful way to tighten up formations, or instruct players to man-up in dying stages. It’s small omissions like this that makes this game in particular feel a little feature incomplete.

When it’s on your terms, however, the game can feel very satisfying. I think shorter field kicking is the best it has ever been and A.I. teammates always lead into space to make each kick look like a million bucks. Similarly, goalkicking takes on its best form and it’s the one facet of this game that players should immediately be able to pick up and play. The pendulum-style power and accuracy meter is instantly readable in a way many of the sport’s other systems are not, and it’s not like the game has a great tutorial to begin with. 

The entire suite of modes in AFL 23 is rather limited, in all honesty. There’s the bog standard season mode that sees you make your way through the fixture in pursuit of the Holy Grail. The game’s attempt at a management sim is much the same, except you’re charged with list, contract, and recruit management. For those that really like things like SuperCoach and other fantasy leagues, it might scratch an itch, but it’s largely bare bones. While the big leagues are certainly involved, it would appear that state and grassroots teams have been left on the bench this time around, which feels like a sad back step.

In the past, the online modes in AFL games have at least had some form of ladder or ranking system to tie it all together. Not only is that absent here, leaving the multiplayer side of things feeling rather pointless, with only a quick match option on offer, it’s impossible to find a match against.

This is a huge shame as, of the games I’ve played against randoms online, the game feels far more tense and balanced. It might expose shortcomings in the way ruck contests are handled because Max Gawn is effectively cheat codes, but I’ll admit happily I had the most fun with the game when not getting exposed and split open by improbable A.I. Despite its hang-ups elsewhere, latency surprisingly wasn’t a huge drama when it came to online play. 

In terms of presentation, it’s the best a footy game has looked. Of course, the bar has never been that high, but perusing the academy within the game’s menu and admiring the player’s models shows that a level of care has been put in here. A lot of effort has been put in to emulate the broadcast aspects of the game, from pre-game warm ups, the coin toss and the celebratory team song in the rooms after the final siren—they pulled real-life audio to make these as authentic as possible. It’s a shame there’s just no way around the same old stilted, robotic commentary we’ve always been treated to.

I wish more effort was put into bringing the crowd to life, nothing about it feels real. The polygonal cost might exceed a few hundred while the chants and cheers are piped in. To see the top deck of the Melbourne Cricket Ground vacant during the pointy end of September is baffling. 

There also seems to be less avenues for the sharing of user-generated content, most of which would already be the pits. It’s an area that Wicked Witch excelled at nearer the end of their tenure, but it has clearly not been a focus of Big Ant’s. Within the academy you’re able to knock up players, entire clubs, logos and stadiums, but the systems to do so are undercooked and the communal search functions to find something you actually like aren’t great. It might have been a glitch, but there’s no function to preview a piece of content before downloading it—a bare minimum in what is effectively a hub free of quality control. 

It’s probably never a promising sign when the minor, somewhat forgivable bugs become almost an unintended marketing beat for the game at launch. Things like the model for the head coach appearing as the goal umpire and the physics-defying “90m handball” have been everywhere, and it just speaks to a product that needed a little more time. Of course, releasing a game like this is never easy, especially in conjunction with the actual ongoing footy season, but you’d hope future patches to not only sharpen up this particular title but firm up the foundation for next year’s—if it happens.

With things like the Legends roster and Pro Teams to come, time is fortunately on Big Ant’s side to keep refining the experience for players. What’s there is good, but it’s light on many features that make it a fuller product. It’s a long season though and premierships aren’t won in May.

The post AFL 23 Review – Like Dancing With Your Sister 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.

It’s finally here. Almost a decade after its announcement and changing developers no less than three times, Dead Island 2 beats all odds. Having spent so long in development, I’d wondered if it could best the original game. It does in many ways, but it still feels like it came out of the same era of games, for better or for worse.

Dead Island 2 occurs a few months after the original game’s events. An infection has found its way to the sunny state of California, infecting everyone there and turning them into grotesque zombies and monsters. You play as one of six survivors whose plane crashes while trying to escape the quarantine zone. You’re eventually bitten, discover that you’re immune, and begin your journey, meeting up with survivors to plot your escape. It’s a done-to-death story but simple enough that it carries the action well.

As I mentioned in my preview last month, Dead Island 2 is most certainly going for a more tongue-in-cheek approach with its storytelling, for the most part. The game is loaded with humour and comedy that will land differently with different people, poking fun at the most vacuous of celebrity culture. The plot is serviceable at the most basic level but introduces a few mysteries about halfway through that aren’t entirely resolved when the credits roll. Perhaps this is the beginning of a new thread of stories for a sequel to deal with or even some hooks for DLC. Regardless, it’s incredibly simplistic.

Similarly, Dead Island 2 plays like almost no time has passed since the original was released over a decade ago. Like nearly anything that’s come before it, you’ll be thrown into California to complete optional side quests, quests that advance the plot or find weapons hidden by people throughout the map. It’s a typical open-world experience that anyone who’s played a Dead Island, Borderlands or Dying Light game will be familiar with. It’s a tried and true formula, but it’s not breaking much new ground.

One point of difference that Dead Island 2 is determined to make is that you can choose a playable character from a roster of six. Each of these characters has different strengths and weaknesses to suit your playstyle. But it ultimately doesn’t mean much. One, for example, boosts damage to enemies that aren’t surrounded by other enemies. This situation rarely happens in Dead Island 2. Another can create an explosive effect when hitting an enemy with a type of attack. The same effect can be stacked on weapons as you progress through the story. These innate skills are only meaningful in the opening moments of the game.

Every character has their own dialogue and personality too, but your character’s lines are chopped and changed around the dialogue of NPCs so that it rarely sounds like two people are in a room having a conversation. It removes so much from the story’s presentation, which was already lacking that I can’t help but feel like pulling them all together would’ve helped serve the story better.

But it’s not all bad. The FLESH system helps to make the combat much more satisfying than it has any right to be. It stands for Fully Location Evisceration System for Humanoids, and it’s a system that offers greater realism in how you rip, burn or tear your zombies apart. Every zombie you attack in Dead Island 2 will react differently and realistically to whatever weapon you’re using.

THE CHEAPEST COPY FOR $74.99 AT AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING

It’s a system that, in real time, is pretty impressive. Constantly hitting a zombie with a blunt weapon will see bones dent, crack and break. Slashing with a bladed weapon will separate the skin from muscle until you’re hitting bone. Attacking joints in a zombie’s leg will drop them to the floor. It’s a macabre system separating Dead Island 2 from those that came before it, even if its addition to the game is mainly cosmetic.

Another aspect unique to Dead Island 2 is the reliance on a card system rather than a traditional skill tree. These cards are decorated with some pretty gnarly artwork. They are given as rewards for completing certain challenges or through story progression. You can equip any combination to best create your perfect build – like giving your character an evade or a block. Others heal you when hitting a zombie with a heavy attack or boosting your damage after a successful block. There are over fifty cards to mix and match to suit your playstyle, a degree of flexibility that I appreciate more than a skill tree with respec.

A crafting system allows you to add certain elemental traits to your weapons too. Certain enemies are weaker to certain elements, but it adds a very satisfying tinge to the already satisfying combat. Hitting enemies with a spray of acidic bullets and watching their skin melt away down to bone is a fun, if not slightly disturbing sight. Similarly, hitting a zombie with an electrically charged weapon will fry them but also arc out electricity to enemies around them. In a body of water? The effect is amplified. It’s a fun little system that was a joy to engage with in a genre that usually has me rolling my eyes at crafting.

Depending on how much you engage with optional content, most players will get around fifteen to twenty hours out of Dead Island 2. Whether you’ll want to is another matter entirely, though co-op certainly helps make things a lot more fun, though the lack of any crossplay options in today’s climate feels like a miss. Despite there being multiple characters, too, there’s no reason to play through the game more than once as the plot progresses in the same way. While I’m not quite at the point of finishing the entirety of the game’s side quests, I’d estimate most players would get at least thirty hours out of finishing everything.

But I will warn you – Dead Island 2 is repetitive. So many objectives will have you heading to an item to activate, realising the item needs power to work, and then fighting off hordes of zombies while you wait for the power to be restored. You’ll reattach a valve to a pipe multiple times and turn it to access a new area. It’s, once again, bound to be an experience only saved by the funny interactions you have with zombies as you complete these objectives, but they’re still repetitive as ever.

In terms of presentation, Dead Island 2 hands in a decent performance. California as a setting is beautiful and almost genius or a game of this ilk. From the sweeping hillside neighbourhoods of Bel-Air to the sunny sands of Venice Beach, Dead Island 2 successfully captures a sense of paradise like Banoi in Dead Island before it, just a different type of paradise. It’s an immaculately realised setting I can’t find much fault with. Some visual glitches led to limbs dancing long after the zombie they were attached to had perished, but this only added to the comedy. Intentional or not.

Despite its shortcomings, I still had fun with Dead Island 2. It should grow old quickly on paper, but even playing by myself, I never tired of destroying countless hordes of zombies in exciting and varied ways. It’s by no means a perfect sequel, but it does a great job of channelling the spirit of the original, regardless.

The post Dead Island 2 Review – Trouble In Paradise 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.

THE CHEAPEST PRE-ORDER: $64 AT AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING.

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.

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.

[presto_player id=143577]

VIDEO PRESENTED BY PLAYSTATION VR2. CLICK TO LEARN MORE.

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.

Last year’s complete revamp of the WWE 2K series was a much-needed breath of fresh air, receiving a proper rebuild from top to bottom. In WWE 2K23, Visual Concepts has smartly tinkered with what made 2K22 so good, improving the game in key areas where it needed small but necessary improvements. Because of this, 2K23 is more about slight reinvention than it is complete revolution. That’s not a bad thing, though, as WWE 2K23 is more of what made last year’s game so damn good, and then some. 

Those who have played 2K22 will feel right at home when they fire up this year’s entry. Tweaks and refinements have been made to general gameplay – such as using your momentum meter for signatures and other ring antics, like possum pins and payback moves – alongside the addition of the excellent WarGames match type.

WarGames pits two teams of three or four against one another in two rings side by side. As expected, this immediately transcends into pure chaos, but the moment-to-moment action is stupidly enjoyable. Memorable moments arrive in spades thanks to the sheer amount of action going at one time, which is further made apparent when you take the action online and against friends (or rivals). While some connection issues hampered the fun online, it’s still silly, hilarious fun that is a welcome addition to the plethora of content already available in 2K23. 

[presto_player id=143577]

VIDEO PRESENTED BY PLAYSTATION VR2. CLICK TO LEARN MORE.

Aside from the sheer chaos of WarGames, the mode works because 2K23 controls excellently and looks great. Whether you’re a newbie, haven’t played a WWE game in a while or are a returning veteran of the series, the game caters for you and your skill level. And I can confidently say I’ve had more fun with this year’s entry than I have with any other wrestling game in over a decade. Whether it was performing something ludicrous off the stage ramp or hitting a perfect set of finishers to end a tough match, there was always something that captured my attention and made me smile. This also translated to the myriad of silly glitches I encountered throughout my time with the game, which were never too game-breaking to completely kill my enjoyment but certainly reared their head a little too much for my liking.

John Cena is the focus of this year’s Showcase mode, and I enjoyed my time with it. I particularly enjoyed the focus on Cena’s biggest losses rather than his victories, from his debut against Kurt Angle to getting properly dismantled by the Undertaker at Wrestlemania 34. Cena’s commentary provides some fascinating insight into his preparation behind these key matches, though there’s just not enough of it. This, combined with a lot of dead air during each match (thanks to the fact there’s no commentary, which is substituted for some truly awful b-tier rock music), makes for a fairly subpar experience on the presentation side of Showcase.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $74 PS4/Xbox One, $84 PS5/Xbox Series X at Amazon

That said, by taking control of Cena’s opponents throughout the years – following objectives and watching footage spliced in with gameplay as the match plays out – you’re never really doing the same thing twice, which was an annoyance of mine from last year’s Showcase mode. A lot of the matches have different opponents, meaning you’re rarely playing as a superstar more than once. This adds a decent amount of variety to the mode and kept me interested throughout, and while it was short (at around 2-3 hours) it was a nice trip down memory lane. 

If you’re sick of beating up John Cena, MyRise offers two stories to play through in 2K23 with a created superstar. Both are generally pretty enjoyable to venture through, giving you a handful of choices to make that slightly alter the story and encourage some replayability, while doling out some of the most cringe-worthy dialogue you’ll hear in a game this year. It’s not all that bad, but there was a certain point during The Lock’s story where I really began to hate my own character for being such a whiny brat. That said, I did enjoy the superstar cameos and variety of matches thrown my way during each story. 

A major gripe I had with MyRise were the loading screens, however. Loading screens were so consistent that I was constantly pulled out of any bit of immersion I’d had with the story. 2K23 is plagued with loading screens in general, but the issue really comes to a head when playing MyRise thanks to the consistency of them – whether you’re going between cutscenes or wanting to change your character’s entrance, moveset or look. They’re everywhere, and it was incredibly bothersome.

MyGM, 2K22’s flagship mode that puts you in the role of a GM competing with the other WWE brands, returns this year with some well-needed tweaks. You can now compete over the course of multiple seasons against up to three other players (whether that’s via local play or against AI), giving the mode some much needed longevity. It’s an absolute blast to play, too, though I do wish I was able to play against mates online in a sort of Mario Party-style format, as it seems almost geared for that. 

Even so, MyGM has been one of my favourite modes to jump into across both 2K22 and 2K23, and the addition of Hall of Fame and seasonal challenges, new match types and new GMs to pick from has made the mode a heck of a lot better. It’s a massive improvement over last year.

WWE 2K23’s Universe mode is the best it’s been in many years, too, giving players an unparalleled level of freedom to customise the WWE universe to their heart’s content. Whether you want to create dream rivalries and scenarios or bring in created wrestlers, shows, arenas or championships to spice things up, it’s entirely up to you. Both the manager and superstar modes in Universe mode impressed me with the amount of customisability on offer – there’s just so much to do and involve yourself in.

On the topic of customisability, the creation suite on offer in WWE 2K23 is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a sports game. Returning customisation options, like the ability to create shows, arenas, championships and the like are great, however the welcome return of advanced entrance customisation options gives players an unparalleled level of freedom. There’s truly so much room for experimentation here that I felt constantly overwhelmed with the options at hand. Community creations have already blown my mind during release week, whether they’re bringing old wrestlers back into the game or creating brand new ones, and that’s a testament to the options available.

The most disappointing part of 2K23 continues to be its MyFACTION mode, which sees little improvement this year. Much like last year, the mode did very little to entice me to play when every other mode was more enjoyable, rewarding and fun to work through. The rewards in MyFACTION are relatively meagre and it can feel like a slog at the best of times, making for the weakest mode of the lot by a decent margin.

Even with some minor disappointments and some of the most frustrating load times in a current-gen game I’ve experienced, I’ve had an absolute blast with WWE 2K23. It continues Visual Concepts’ upwards trajectory of the series which kicked off with WWE 2K22, and improves on the formula in small but significant ways. The addition of WarGames, a great new Showcase, an awesome roster and welcome tinkering of MyGM make for a game that wrestling fans should get plenty out of. And that’s not even mentioning the creation suite, which I have no doubt will continue to boggle my mind throughout the year. Wrestling fans can rejoice – WWE 2K23 is a triumph.

The post WWE 2K23 Review – Still Head of the Table appeared first on Press Start.

One of the greatest appeals of a good indie video game, to me, is knowing I’m playing something created with passion. The gulf in production values between a blockbuster release and a passion project from a small studio might be obvious at times, but the same can be said of the creativity and ingenuity between them.

Tchia is a fantastic example of this, as both a game that often feels compromised by its ambitions but never once seems burdened with them. It’s relentlessly charming and packed with the kinds of ideas that the churning, AAA machine wouldn’t touch with a million-dollar budget. It’s also intensely cultural, coming from Awaceb in New Caledonia (this is only their second game!) and steeped in local history and talent. It’s the kind of game where a handful of flaws is far from cause to look past it – it’s still an unforgettable and highly recommended experience.

Cast as the game’s titular heroine, Tchia introduces players to a fictional archipelago based loosely on New Caledonia, and one ruled with an iron first by an evil god named Meavora and his army of magical fabric warriors. After Meavora’s followers kidnap Tchia’s father and leave her stranded on her tiny island home, she decides to set out to the greater islands and formulate a plan to take him down and rescue his prisoners. Without giving anything away, while the game tells a fairly straightforward tale, there are actually some rather powerful moments told with a lot of nuance and from some refreshingly unique perspectives.

[presto_player id=143577]

VIDEO PRESENTED BY PLAYSTATION VR2. CLICK TO LEARN MORE.

Although there are some jarringly dark moments peppered throughout (fair warning if violence towards animals and infants could alarm you – there’s a bit of that here, though it’s all rather “cartoony” and there’s a Family Filter option), Tchia is also packed with charm with plenty of gorgeous and well-composed cutscenes with some genuinely great comedic timing at moments. Its narrative beats are constructed with the kind of care and production I’d expect from a CG-animated series on a major network. It’s also all been recorded in traditional languages by local talent, which is fantastic. Tchia is a game that doesn’t simply use culture as set dressing, it’s embedded in everything from the stories it tells and the way it tells them, to how it plays and what it wants players to take away from it.

As far as playing goes, what’s here is a freeform adventure in a sizeable open world made up of large and small islands with plenty of characters to meet, secrets to find and challenges to surmount. You’ll be guided throughout by a series of overarching quests, most of which task Tchia with going to specific places or collecting particular items, but you’ll more often than not find yourself simply exploring of your own accord, drawn to any number of points of interest that catch your eye.

Luckily, the act of getting around is one of the game’s greatest joys thanks to its unique mechanics. While you can walk, sail and use limited fast travel, by far the best way to traverse the game’s varied environments is to use Tchia’s power of Soul Jumping. Tchia can use her power to possess any animal in the game, as well as a huge number of inanimate objects, and take control of them. Some will have their own abilities used to solve light puzzles, like a crab’s pincers to cut through ropes or a lantern’s explosive heat to set things ablaze, but more often than not you’ll Soul Jump into a nearby bird to quickly fly across the islands or get real tricky and start flinging yourself through the air as an errant coconut.

Soul Jumping adds a ton to the experience of solving otherwise basic puzzles too, not least because the game has an admirable disregard for logic. Need to dig up a nearby treasure chest? Jump into a dog and get digging. No dogs around? Go to the next village over, find one, stuff it in your backpack next to the four bunches of bananas, dodgy radioactive canister and multiple live birds and return to the dig site with it. A prevailing design ethos of Tchia’s is “why not?” and I’m absolutely here for it.

That ideal goes across the board, too. Awaceb’s approach to gameplay systems in Tchia is “who cares about gameplay systems?” and instead the studio seems to have just created whatever gameplay mechanics it wanted to at any given moment. It gives the game a lovingly handcrafted quality and invites the player to be playful and expect the unexpected. One moment you’ll be slingshotting off a treetop to then Soul Jump mid-air into a soaring bird, fly across a city and jump back out to perform a 720 triple frontflip into the ocean, the next you’re playing ukulele alongside a tribe of magical, wooden people in a secret underground shrine. It’s not quite the emergent sandbox that was Breath of the Wild, but it has a similar playfulness – more like a toy box, I suppose.

Tchia also comes equipped with some great tools, like a ukulele that winds up imbued with some magical musical powers that allow her to learn simple tunes that have various effects like changing the time of day, summoning creatures or items or giving her temporary unlimited breath underwater. The ukulele is a constant, there are actually quite a number of musical play-alongs embedded in the story with songs recorded with Kanak choirs and musicians which are all beautiful, as is a small raft for sailing the open ocean, both of which can be customised quite a bit along with Tchia’s outfit as you find and unlock new cosmetic bits and pieces.

I’m especially fond of the tactility of everything in the game. Everything feels hands-on and, more often than not, if there’s something to be done you’ll be doing it in real-time. Even Tchia’s version of a “Photo Mode” has her using a camera with manual controls (including a tripod for timed shots) and then popping over to the nearest photo kit to develop all her film before it gets added to the in-game gallery.

Not all of Awaceb’s decisions pan out, though. For every stroke of genius like the in-game map that doesn’t actively show you Tchia’s location, instead requiring some proper orienteering and environmental context, there’s something equally baffling like a lengthy, late chapter consisting of mechanically monotonous and aesthetically dull “combat” sequences in some factory locations that has none of the charm of the rest of the game. Likewise, while the game’s simple visuals can often make for some stunning landscapes thanks to Unreal Engine 4-powered effects and massive draw distances, it rarely holds up to close scrutiny – especially in built-up areas where buildings and structures just look flat and unfinished.

The game feels woefully unpolished at times too, full of performance issues There are some egregious bugs as well, even after a few updates on PS5, but despite often finding myself stuck in some environmental geometry or unable to progress a quest, Tchia includes at least one immensely thoughtful quality-of-life feature in the ability to just skip entire gameplay segments from the pause screen. Not feeling a particular mini-game? Frustrated and running around trying to fetch a multitude of items for a quest? Skip it. Skip a quest, skip a chapter, skip the whole game if that’s something you wanted to do for whatever reason. I adore that it’s an option – and one that seems to work without a hitch which I’m quite impressed by.

In the first hour or so of playing Tchia, I honestly had no idea what to make of it. The care, and reverence for culture and local talent were clear, but the execution wasn’t. Another eight or so hours later, as I rolled the credits (and witnessed the game’s stellar ending), I realised I didn’t care about the latter when the former – in addition to the frequently creative and charming gameplay design on offer – was so utterly compelling. Tchia is messy, and sometimes weird, but usually in all the best ways. It’s rare a game feels this refreshing and earnest without any level of pretension or restraint, and it’s all the better for it.

The post Tchia Review – A Charming And Earnest Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

If you’d asked me how I felt about Destiny’s latest expansion, Lightfall, prior to release, I probably would’ve insinuated it was a homerun waiting to happen. It felt like the writing was on the wall – high stakes, a swanky new subclass in Strand, a new city to explore, and so much more. It’s these hopes and expectations that set a bar for Lightfall that it simply couldn’t meet.

Does that mean Lightfall is a bad expansion? No, I don’t think so, at least. Where Lightfall crashes and burns with its character writing and narrative, it excels in its new gameplay additions and changes. Where difficulty has been adjusted to be more in-line with the ever-looming threat of power creep, Neomuna can feel disparate and empty. For every step in the right direction, there’s also a step backwards that feels more tangible than ever given The Witch Queen’s myriad successes.

If you equivalize Destiny’s decade spanning saga to that of the MCU, Lightfall is essentially the Infinity War of this narrative. The threat we’ve all been waiting for is here – the Witness, alongside a transformed Calus as its newest disciple. After attacking Earth and taking the Traveler captive, the Witness sends Calus to Neptune in search of a mysterious paracausal object known as the Veil.

Lightfall’s opening is firing on all cylinders, properly establishing the threat of the Witness and a sense of urgency about the whole campaign as our guardians hitch a ride to the hidden city of Neomuna. There’s a sense of rivalry between ourselves and Calus as years of conflict have built up to this moment. It’s unfortunate then, that after the first two missions, the campaign comes to a screeching halt on all fronts.

There’s a few key offenders, the most glaring of which is the general lack of explanation and characterization. Despite it being mentioned multiple times over the years in the lore, the Veil is never fully explained or explored here in Lightfall. Jargon and technical terms are thrown around in similar fashion to that of Destiny’s original campaign – only there’s no external lore to properly support it. Not only does Lightfall leave you with more questions than it does answers, it does so in an unsatisfying manner.

It’s clear that Lightfall’s seasons are going to delve into these subject matters deeper. I’m sure we’ll eventually learn what the Veil actually is, what the Witness wants with it, what the Radial Mast was meant to do, and more. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s hard not to feel short-changed when we’re essentially back where we started before the expansion dropped. As we move into the final year of this saga, it’s a time to provide answers, not shroud players in more mystery.

The Cloud Striders in concept are a great idea – defenders of a city separated from Guardians and the Traveler’s protection. Rohan in particular is quite engaging as he nears the end of his tenure as Cloud Strider and mentor to Nimbus. There’s a lot of parallels to be drawn between him and Osiris, and there was great opportunity for real growth between them. Unfortunately, Rohan just doesn’t get enough screentime to become the fan favourite character he had the potential for.

Nimbus is similarly misspent, largely in the way that their dialogue betrays the tone and atmosphere Lightfall is trying to establish. They’re constantly quipping, even after traumatic events, often resulting in cringe inducing moments. A lot of their writing does fare better in the post-campaign quests, but it feels like too little too late for it to have any long-term impact on players.

Arguably the biggest problem with the Cloud Striders, is that time spent with them is time that could’ve been spent with established characters. Osiris and Caiatl, who should’ve been pivotal to the plot of Lightfall, have very little to do, filling minor roles at best. Caiatl feels especially wasted given the conflict with her father should’ve taken centre stage here. Calus also feels unexplored given how often he’s served as our adversary over the years. One character that undeniably delivers, though, is the Witness, who commands every single scene they’re in. It’s in brief and fleeting moments that we see them, but it’s clear Bungie has a handle on this character and its otherworldly nature.

One of the most lauded inclusions in The Witch Queen was a new approach to campaign design and difficulty. Lightfall continues the trend with a new Legendary campaign, bringing eight tightly-paced missions to surmount on Neomuna. I don’t think the quality is quite at the same level as The Witch Queen’s campaign, but still offers an enjoyable romp from start to finish. It feels more coherent with the 80’s action movie inspiration Bungie was going for. Tormentors also accomplish what they set out to do remarkably well, serving as a terrifying yet engaging enemy unit that feels distinct from any other.

A large part of this success is thanks to Strand, our second Darkness-based subclass. Learnt over the course of the campaign, Strand is all about tapping into an ethereal weave that connects everything. This core concept gives way to some truly whacky ideas like a grapple hook, suspending enemies with threads, and unleashing sentient Strand constructs called Threadlings. Each Strand subclass feels incredibly distinct and immediately powerful with proper buildcrafting. You can really get into a flow with high actions per minute and flexible gameplay loops with each ability at your disposal.

From the mobile and powerful Hunter Threadrunner to the minion master Warlock Broodweaver, Strand has much to offer in countless facets of Destiny 2. It also helps that there’s a decent selection of Strand weapons to pair with these subclasses, offering new Strand-based perks and abilities that really freshen up the sandbox. The grapple is a particular standout, offering unparalleled movement and interactions that weren’t possible before. It feels truly distinct in the broader scope of Destiny’s subclasses, which isn’t such an easy feat nowadays given the complexity of the pre-existing four.

Destiny has often struggled with recent destinations being empty and lacking in things to do. They’re visually stunning and offer some degree of exploration, but don’t have the same enemy density as other aspects of the game. Neomuna is an improvement in this regard but there’s still work to do be done. General exploration can often feel quite barren and lifeless, with all of Neomuna’s citizens residing in a state of digital consciousness. It means you’ll only ever come across enemies, digital constructs, and other Guardians.

Terminal Overload and the Vex Incursion Zone do quite a bit to alleviate how empty it can feel at times, providing activities with loads of enemy density and worthwhile rewards. The city itself is gorgeous, offering neon-soaked skylines and high-rise buildings that feel distinct in Destiny’s slew of locations. It’s a shame it isn’t more vertically inclined given Strand’s inclusion, but swinging around the city is still a blast nonetheless.

There are few things that players look forward to more in new expansions than the introduction of a brand-new raid. Lightfall’s comes in the form of Root of Nightmares, set in a pyramid ship belonging to the Witness, only terraformed by the Traveler. It’s a truly gorgeous raid, with some of the best visuals we’ve seen in a raid to date – which is no small feat.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Root of Nightmares sticks the landing in terms of gameplay and design. It’s a combat focused raid, which there’s nothing wrong with, but it comes at the cost of mechanics. While there’s something to be said for simpler raids, I’d argue that RoN is overly straightforward. Three of the four encounters feel as if they could be Dungeon encounters, requiring little to no communication and collaboration between players. There’s nothing wrong with a short and sweet raid ala Wrath of the Machine, but the limited mechanical complexity means a lot of time is spent dealing with combatants as opposed to engaging with mechanics and puzzles. Where Vow of Disciple maybe leaned a little too hard into mechanical depth, Root of Nightmares is skewed too far in the other direction.

While the seasons that launch alongside major expansions are typically lighter in content, they’re also some of the most consistent. It’s still early days for Season of Defiance, but what’s been released so far has been quite enjoyable. It offers a pretty standard Battlegrounds activity that’s made more engaging through difficulty and high enemy density. The new exotic mission, Avalon, is also a hit for many of the same reasons. The writing here is also leagues above that of the main narrative, and I look forward to tuning in every week to see how the battle on Earth unfolds now that Neptune is (relatively) safe, even if the seasonal model is feeling tired.

Power creep is a concept that frequently rears its head in live-service games, and Destiny 2 is no stranger to it. Our power has grown exponentially over the last few years, and Bungie have decided to reel it in a bit by raising the game’s overall difficulty floor. The changes mostly land, making general playlist content more engaging than usual, incentivizing players to make use of buildcrafting and loadouts.

Not all of it works, though. There’re a few kinks to be ironed out within certain difficulty tiers, Nightfalls, and even Root of Nightmares. A flat increase in difficulty doesn’t work for all aspects of the game, though I suspect it’ll take some more extensive playtesting and feedback to get these activities to where they need to be. As a veteran player, I appreciate the overall increase in challenge, but can also see how it’s alienated some of the casual player-base, and can feel inconsistent.

You could also argue that Lightfall’s best inclusions come in the form of its quality-of-life changes, which are plentiful and vastly improve the overall experience. The mod system has been streamlined to demystify buildcrafting, with many mods being rolled into the new Armor Charge system. While I was initially hesitant at how simplified it seemed to be, I’ve come around to the system quite a bit. Buildcrafting is much less convoluted and you spend less time in menus as a result, while also cutting down on the overall messiness of the inventory. Loadouts and the new mod screen similarly streamline the process of managing armour and mods, making for a much more seamless experience overall.

Another long-standing point of pain, Champions, have also been addressed via using built-in subclass verbs and abilities to stun them. This seemingly insignificant change allows for much more freedom in terms of loadout and weapon choice, and adds a much needed fluidity to the combat loop when dealing with Champions. Artifact Mods have also been reworked to always be active, with the caveat of only being able to unlock 12. You’re free to reset the Artifact whenever you’d like, but its once again another example of cutting down on monotony while still placing buildcrafting at the forefront of Destiny 2’s RPG systems.

Destiny has long had an issue of bringing new and returning players into the fold. Its lack of tutorials and seemingly convoluted systems were alienating to those looking to get into the game. Bungie have made many attempts to address this issue, the latest of which comes in the new Guardian Ranks system. Guardian Ranks acts as an account rank that is meant to display how experienced a Guardian is, while also pointing new players in the direction of what to do next. While I can’t speak for the new player experience (which still doesn’t seem all too great), Guardian Ranks are a nice way to signify a player’s experience with the game, though it has some problems.

Because Guardian Rank unlocks are retroactive, its as if every single player is rank six – the highest you can be when a season begins. This already poses some issues, as someone with 3000 hours versus someone with a few hundred will start a season with the same rank. Unlocking Advanced Ranks allows you to grow further, but they reset at the start of every season, bringing everyone back down to six.

The biggest problem with this is that the system doesn’t really function as intended, and going to all the effort to earn Advanced Ranks feels wrong knowing it’s going to reset. The decision to tie achieving a certain Commendation Score to Guardian Ranks is also a baffling decision, completely undermining their purpose as people hand them out left, right, and centre to bolster their own scores.

If there’s one thing you can always count on with Destiny, it’s that the art team is going to deliver – and deliver they did. Neomuna is positively brimming with detail and architecture that feels almost alien and out of place – the way that a hidden city should be. Root of Nightmares is a visual feast as previously mentioned, and the few forays we’ve had into the Vex Network have me yearning for more. The visual effects of Strand also really pop with neon green threads exploding in every direction as you unravel your foes.

In saying this, Lightfall does continue the trend of buggy expansion launches. While the actual day one experience was remarkably smooth, numerous issues have reared their heads since launch, some of which have yet to be fixed. Aside from the usual weapon and armour bugs that have them doing ludicrous amounts of damage, there’s also an issue with character and weapon models turning invisible during long play sessions, which is seemingly linked to the commendations system. There’s also countless enemy attacks and environmental hazards tied to framerate, which actively punishes players for playing at higher frames. I think its fair to expect bugs on launch, but it’s disappointing that these nagging issues have yet to be fixed.

Expressing my opinion on Lightfall has been tricky. I don’t think this expansion is nearly as bad as some are making it out to be, there’s plenty of good on offer here. Strand, loadouts, mod changes, the post campaign activities, and more are reason enough to argue that Destiny 2 is the best it’s ever been from a gameplay standpoint. Narratively, though, Lightfall objectively fumbles what should have been a homerun at a time where Bungie really can’t afford to do so.

I sincerely hope that the stuff that’s come after the campaign is a signifier of what’s we can expect with future seasons as we build up towards The Final Shape. Despite the disappointing narrative, I’ll keep coming back to Destiny 2 because the other inclusions are just that good, and if you can move past the shortcomings, you might just have a similar experience.

The post Destiny 2: Lightfall Review – Underwhelming Finality 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.

Despite the massive impact that FromSoftware’s titles have had on the games industry over the last decade, there are very few experiences that scratch the same itch. From’s world building and sense of place is unrivalled, it’s a daunting task to make a “Souls-like” and have it constantly compared to one of the most timeless franchises of the last decade. This is something Team Ninja has been keenly aware of in their forays into the genre, opting to focus on the combat and RPG aspects of these games to deliver something action-heavy and high-octane.

If the Nioh duology is Team Ninja’s answer to Dark Souls, then Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty serves the same purpose to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Much like Nioh, though, Wo Long’s comparisons to its parallel are surface deep, offering an experience that’s much different to From’s 2019 hit. It leans more heavily into the combat fantasy of split-second decisions, speedy reflexes, and flashy action to make for an immensely satisfying and mechanically deep experience that insists you step up to the plate and surmount its seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Set during the Later Han Dynasty of China, specifically the Three Kingdoms period, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty follows your unnamed player character navigate their way through the murky waters of war and chaos. Despite starting out as an unremarkable militia soldier, you’ll quickly gain notoriety as you rise up to fight back a demonic outbreak plaguing China, often crossing paths with notable figures from Chinese history in the process of dealing with the source of this supernatural threat.

Wo Long’s narrative ultimately serves as a sort of adaptation of these events with a dark fantasy flavour, imbuing it with supernatural elements and twisted takes on Chinese mythology. All the carnage and chaos that transpires really sells the idea that the long-standing Imperial dynasty is on the verge of collapse. The story itself is relatively paint-by-numbers, with a few interesting elements that might keep you from skipping cutscenes, but won’t necessarily have you on the edge of your seat. The most alluring aspect of it is interacting with storied heroes like Lu Bu and how they fit into Team Ninja’s take on a more dramatised retelling of the period.

Where Wo Long categorically excels, though, is in its combat. It’s similar to Sekiro at its core, but has so many in-depth systems built around it that it becomes a much more involved and measured process. That isn’t to discount the challenge of Sekiro’s rhythmic flow, but Wo Long has a much faster pace to it overall that demands your full attention at all times. Between regular encounters and boss fights, there’s much to look forward to for fans of the genre.

It’s all built around the Spirit Gauge, which acts as a sort of posture/poise meter, while also doubling as a resource in combat. Proper deflect timing, counters, and light attacks will build up this meter, while using heavy attacks, Wizardry Spells, and Martial Arts will expend it, as well as getting hit. Using any of the aforementioned attacks costs Spirit Gauge, but also grow in power in accordance with how much you have.

Breaking an enemy’s Spirit Gauge opens them up for a critical attack, but your own can also be broken, leaving you completely defenceless for a short window of time. It lends to a constant risk/reward factor in combat where you know that one more successful deflect means you can unleash a nasty heavy attack for big damage, or cast a Wizardry Spell without putting your own Spirit Gauge in danger.

Even dodging and deflecting costs Spirit Gauge to use, so throwing them out in the hope to survive will set you on path towards swift demise. It can be overwhelming at first, but you’ll quickly find that you perform every action in combat with intent, and the decision to tie your Martial Arts and Wizardry Spells to a consistently renewable resource means you’ll engage with them much more than you otherwise would.

The cherry on top are Critical Attacks and Divine Beasts. The former are heavy hitting attacks that can’t be blocked. Successfully deflecting these results in a large chunk of Spirit Gauge damage, as well as shortening the enemy’s overall Spirit Gauge until their next break. Divine Beasts function similarly to the Guardian Spirits of Nioh, where you can summon an equipped beast when the Divine Beast Gauge is full to gain advantages in combat, or use to them unleash a powerful attack.

Progression throughout levels is also another novel concept that Wo Long builds on in interesting ways, namely through the Morale system. While you’ll level and gear your character as you play through missions, each one also has its own Morale ranks to raise through exploration. You and your enemies have your own Morale ranks, which determine your overall strength within missions. Generally, you don’t want to go up against enemies with significantly higher levels of Morale than you. You lose Morale through death and getting hit by critical attacks, while it’s gained in a few ways, most notably through dispatching enemies, and via the brilliant Fortitude system.

Fortitude represents the lowest that your Morale can drop to. You’ll start main missions with zero Fortitude, while side missions are usually higher. As you explore levels, you’ll find Battle Flags and Marking Flags, both of which increase your Fortitude, meaning you’re slowly lifting your minimum Morale as you venture through each mission. This mechanic alone if enough to incentivise exploration in Wo Long’s environments. You can absolutely try to beeline to the boss room while gaining Morale on the way, but without hitting any flags, you’ll lose it all as soon as you die, and it isn’t exactly easy to recover.

AMAZON HAS THE CHEAPEST PRICE AT $79 WITH FREE DELIVERY

Morale applies to your enemies as well, which is another thing to consider. Hitting an enemy with a critical attack after breaking their Spirit Gauge will drop their Morale by one, and some enemies can boost their allies Morale passively. Additionally, you can find groups of enemies guarding Battle Flags that need to be dispatched before you can claim them, and picking them off one-by-one is incentivised to slowly whittle away at their Morale. Not only is it a fantastic form of progression within each level, but it also goes hand-in-hand with the setting and themes of Wo Long.

I will admit that there’s a lot to contend with here. Even the most seasoned of Souls-like veterans will need to take some time to adjust and learn all the systems at play here. It can be confusing at first, especially when so much is thrown at you in the opening hours of the game, but sticking with it gives way to systems that intertwine to create a cohesive combat system that’s incredibly satisfying to master.

A combat system like this is nothing without good enemy design, but this is another area where Wo Long delivers in spades. Both visually and mechanically, there are many foes to contend with here, each with unique move sets and capabilities that keep you on your toes. Seeing these Chinese myths converted into more demonic forms is fascinatingly morbid that always had me keen to see what was up next. The boss fights are a particular highlight, serving as firm punctuation marks to the end of each level. Some of them are definitively better than others, but they’re still always something to look forward to.

The other core form of progression is your traditional levelling, but there’s also some changes made here that keep Wo Long unique within the genre. Instead of investing points attained with each level in traditional stats, you can put it into one of five Virtues, each one scaling with different weapon types, boosting their own stats, and grating access to specific wizardry spells. There’s less incentive to generalise and a push to spec into one or two Virtues specifically to build out your character. The high level wizardry spells require quite high Virtue levels, so investing in a particular type yields worthwhile rewards.

When it comes to weapons and armour, there’s a tried and true focus on acquiring loot from chests, enemies, and by completing levels. Unfortunately, much like Team Ninja’s other titles, there is far too much loot to collect and manage. Stranger of Paradise made some progress in this regard via the inclusion of an auto-equip function, but even that is sorely lacking in Wo Long. You end up spending long stretches of time in menus, picking and choosing which armour and weapon combinations you want to use, along with ranged weapons and charms also.

A vast majority of the loot you’ll get across your first playthrough will eventually become useless, and ends up getting sold or tossed away at some point. One welcome inclusion is the ability to upgrade weapons and armour with materials, but it’s hard to commit to making a proper build when a bulk of the best gear drops in the post-game.

Speaking of weapons, there’s a wide array to choose from here, each with their own string of light attacks and a heavy attack. Each one also comes with a unique set of Martial Arts, and higher rarity weapons drop with special effects that can further cater to a particular play style. There’s a lot to sink your teeth into here if you’re a fan of Team Ninja’s post-game build crafting, but it can feel arbitrary outside of that as you constantly cycle through gear for better stats.

Wo Long isn’t a particularly pretty game in the traditional sense. It’s rife with grunge and rancid corruption that go a long way to building up the world and the events transpiring within it. Each battlefield you’ll visit is remarkably unique, from towering forts to serene mountainsides. No matter where you go, though, Demonic Qi has taken hold. It’s an all around well-realised setting that I never got tired of exploring despite how desolate and war-torn it can be at times.

The PS5 version features two visual presets, one that prioritises frame rate, and another that focuses on resolution. I found that the resolution mode, while gorgeous, often dropped below 60 frames when the going got tough, which isn’t ideal for a game as reflex based as this. The performance mode is what I spent my playthrough on, which sports a consistently smooth 60 frames no matter what was transpiring on screen.

While Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty falls victim to the problems of Team Ninja’s prior Souls-like outings, there’s no denying that there’s an excellently crafted game here that’s unique among their offerings. It has such strong combat, and some really great ideas that execute just as well, that it’s easy to look past what few flaws there are and really enjoy what’s on offer here. I’ve always enjoyed Team Ninja’s games, but Wo Long in particular is an experience I won’t be forgetting anytime soon, and one I’ll surely be revisiting over the years.

The post Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Review – Mechanical Bliss appeared first on Press Start.

Initially revealed at Gamescom last year, Scars Above is a challenging action game set in a science fiction-inspired world full of places to explore and creatures to survive. In truth it’s a little bit Souls, a little bit Metroid, and a lot of fun, elemental combat. It’s a lot smaller in scope than any of the games it seems inspired by, but Scars Above is a decently exciting romp through an alien planet, acquiring knowledge and burning things on your quest for truth and the scientific method.

Scars Above put you in the shoes of scientist Dr Kate Ward, one of a team sent to investigate a strange object in space. Soon enough though, things go awry and Kate finds herself stranded and alone on an alien planet searching for her colleagues and struggling to survive. You’ll encounter a strange, ghostly being that seems to be encouraging you to explore this strange planet, beckoning you to discover how it came to be as it is.

The game gives you three main ways to engage with its world – explore, do science, and fight. Exploration is fairly enjoyable, but don’t expect something as complex or rewarding as Metroid or Dark Souls on that front. Areas are structured around big alien objects called pillars. Think of these like checkpoints – you’ll start at the last pillar you checked in at if you die, and all the creatures you’ve defeated will return, but you’ll also reload your ammo reserves and restore your health.

Between pillars there is usually a path forward, and side paths that you can explore for collectibles and occasionally to open shortcut paths. Both are worthwhile. Finding a shortcut can help you get to areas more easily after dying and returning to a pillar, and collectibles are useful for upgrading your character and weapons for combat. Environments are varied enough to remain interesting, and you generally don’t spend long enough in any one place for things to feel stale. Exploring in Scars never really gets more cerebral than making sure you go down each fork in the road to find the goodies at the end, but it helps keep the pace brisk.

Science and the pursuit of knowledge as a theme is something that sets Scars apart, even if it is mostly set dressing. A few times during the game you’ll encounter situations or mechanisms you need to visually analyse to find important elements and then come to a conclusion about what happened or how a device functions. You don’t earn experience by defeating enemies like in most games, but by gaining knowledge about the world around you. This can be done by scanning the bodies of defeated creatures (only once per creature though, so there’s no grinding) and in a way that ironically engaged my ‘brain off’ mechanism – by finding ‘Knowledge Cubes’ littered around the environment.

The science theme is an interesting one and it’s used mostly to good effect. Your character becomes stronger through knowledge rather than strictly through violence and training. Just try not to think too hard about cubes that make you smarter.

Combat, then, is the other major piece of Scars Above’s gameplay, and it’s where the game shines brightest. Your main weapon is initially not a weapon at all, more a general science tool, but it unsurprisingly finds usefulness in combat. You can use different elemental projectiles which all have some effect on enemies and the environment around them. A lot of enemies have glowing weak points and some have moments of weakness you can exploit if you pay attention to their animations. Your initial weapon fires bolts of electricity and you’ll soon see the effect this can have on enemies that are wet or standing in water.

Later elemental upgrades like fire are used to set enemies or areas alight, and ice can slow quick enemies down to give you a chance to collect yourself. Throw in the gadgets you unlock throughout the game that give you even more options (highlights to me were capsules of flammable liquid that can set groups of creatures alight and a gravity well that can hold enemies in place for a short while) and you get a combat system that is easy enough to grasp but rewarding to experiment with.

Visually, Scars Above has it’s ups and downs. Cutscenes in particular bring things down quite a bit. The animation is quite wooden in both general movement as well as faces – it reminded me of scenes in the first Mass Effect and it feels a generation or two behind compared to its contemporaries. Once you’re through the cutscenes though, actual gameplay looks quite decent. There are some definite standout creature designs that I really enjoyed and some varied, well-realised alien environments to admire and move around in.

Sound design has some highlights as well. Music generally is pretty sparse during the experience, but some particularly cool moments are accented by fantastic sci-fi synth music that bring scenes to life.

I had a pretty fun time with Scars Above. Its themes of science and the pursuit of knowledge are a neat idea and the story goes to some interesting places that I found fairly compelling and even timely given recent advances in AI technology. The elementally-infused combat is engaging enough to feel fresh throughout and environments are varied enough that the exploration doesn’t get stale until a section in the late game that I found killed the pace a bit right as things were getting interesting.

Scars Above is out now on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Amazon has the game for $59 with free shipping.

The post Scars Above Review – The Pursuit of Knowledge appeared first on Press Start.

Atomic Heart is all at once the strangest, most off-the-wall, most bombastic game I think I’ll play this year. It’s got a self-referential, almost self-deprecating sense of humour that surprised me to no end and its nods to the games it so badly wanted to be—see any BioShock game—were so on the nose. 

To put it the only way I feel I can, Atomic Heart is unadulterated, pulp schlock. 

Based on my preview of the game, I’d expected Atomic Heart’s story to do its best to emulate BioShock’s musings on determinism and free will. Sadly, those that expect caviar and get served mince and mash are bound to be disappointed. That said, mince and mash is perfectly serviceable in a pinch and Atomic Heart gets the job done, it just never rises to the lofty heights of those it imitates. Its cast of characters, from top to bottom, is thoroughly repugnant and the “hero” has levels of vulgarity that should have died when Duke did forever ago.

There’s a particular character whose mad turn feels so unearned that it’s almost insulting. Hilariously, it all feels like another self-sabotage gunning for an impossible gold standard. Atomic Heart’s biggest sin, in the end, is that it forces us to reminisce about what is ultimately a better game.

It’s a shame because I feel as though all of the game’s action, if it were condensed down into a more linear experience, could make for a much better game. The two prongs of attack both feel great and feel like the only area where Atomic Heart might even edge out its precursor. I might have only secured blueprints for no more than a handful of the weapons on offer, but they all felt powerful in their own right. I’m a sucker for a shotgun and seeing the shells in Atomic Heart tear shreds off of the several automatons lining the halls—and even shearing them in half—never gets old.

The game’s most dazzling minutes, the ones that truly sell to me that fragments of the Atomic Heart game I wanted does exist, belong to the magnificent boss fights. Granted, they’re as plainly signposted as the story’s many “twists” by obvious arenas, but they’re a thrilling showcase of what the game does best and that’s its combat. 

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $84.99 AT AMAZON

And on the other hand, literally, is Charles. He’s a polymerised artificial intelligence that rides sidecar throughout your journey and serves as the other offensive prong in your arsenal. With Charles, you’ll be able to deal elemental damage, wield the wild powers of telekinesis, and shield yourself. Now, while the gunplay is a treat in Atomic Heart, all of the trimmings, such as the player’s upgrade paths—for guns, for Charles, and for the agent himself—feel like a bit of a mess. There’s simply too many currencies to keep straight, especially when it comes to sprucing up your gun shed.

As I gleaned from my initial preview, the game is structurally probably a bit more like Metro Exodus than it is Halo Infinite. The game is a series of overworlds separated by a series of facilities. The former are vast enough, though they’re ultimately void of anything worth seeing, so much so they might as well be a tunnel from point-to-point. Atomic Heart’s corridor crawling is the game at its best, and I’ll recall the game’s first handful of hours fondly. It doesn’t do anything particularly creative with how it structures fetch quests, but I do admire how it creates a sense of place and lets the untapped creativity of Atomic Heart’s design team run rampant.

When I previewed the game on PC, performance was as crisp as you’d hope for. Sadly, things aren’t quite as smooth for its console counterparts. The frame rate was largely inconsistent, pop-in was always a given, and I encountered a couple of hard crashes in one particularly theatrical boss fight. Other niggles, such as UI persisting throughout cutscenes, were present and kind of undercut the attempt at establishing some tone.

Another area that Atomic Heart has great success in is its art, although I’m prepared to omit any human characters from that otherwise blanket statement. Like in other areas, it borrows from BioShock’s handbook in delivering a world of several extremes—it showcases capitalist decadence through its lavish marble auditoriums, it also places man’s hubris on a pedestal through its dilapidated laboratories. As barren as it is, even the overworld, for all its lush greenery juxtaposed by abandoned cars, has a real Tales from the Loop appeal. I’ll go so far as to say if your interest in Atomic Heart is mainly from a design standpoint, buy the inevitable art book instead. 

While I ultimately did enjoy my time with Atomic Heart, I can’t not view it as a disappointment. For the few things it does well, its ambitions ultimately cripple it, leaving it firmly in the cold shadow of greater titles that it so desperately seeks to emulate.

Atomic Heart launches on February 21st for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC. Amazon has the cheapest copy at $84.99 with free shipping.

The post Atomic Heart Review – Achy Breaky Heart 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.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: STARTING FROM $69 WITH FREE SHIPPING FROM AMAZON

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.

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.

While I realise it’s an incredibly early call, it’s one I’m more than willing to make – SEASON: A letter to the future (stylisation intentional) is one of 2023’s first Game of the Year contenders.

In a stage of my life where time is precious it’s not often I find myself putting more than an hour or two into a single video game session, but for a full five-plus hours one balmy and slightly stormy afternoon I saw this particular game through from start screen to end credits. I’d found myself so completely enraptured and entangled in its world that I couldn’t fathom the idea of letting it go until it ultimately did the letting go for me – an experience mirrored by the woman I’d come to observe on-screen and shared between us via the controller in my hand.

To be fair, five hours isn’t really all that much to ask. And SEASON doesn’t ask at all, it invites you to give. You could give more, if you like, or perhaps less if you try, but in a game about capturing the fleeting moments before an inevitable end it feels natural to hold on as long as possible. In this world that developer Scavengers Studio has drawn out of nothing, one frozen in a moment that’s never existed, time is less a linear path and more a vessel to be filled with knowledge and discovery, with art and culture, with love and war, all crystallised and worshipped as memory.

Memory is the seen and unseen force driving SEASON’s story, in which a woman from a small village is tasked with capturing the memories of a world on the brink of being washed away by a ruinous event. Armed with an instant camera, an audio recorder, a journal and a bicycle, she’ll take her first ride through new lands, collecting the memories of the people and places about to be left behind. In this game’s reality, memories are almost material and tangible, able to be given as well as taken away, lending this task a special importance that becomes more evident with every new observation.

What this means, as a sharp reminder that this is in fact a video game that necessitates playing, is that you’ll guide this woman in a mostly freeform fashion within the cosy borders of Tieng Valley, searching for people and points of interest to record in your journal as sights, sounds, and artistic interpretations. It’s a task to not only collect memories, but to interpret and distill them into a record of a place in time and a study of its place in time. Which memories have endured in this place and why? How do they shape the land and those who live on it and how will their absence or presence shape the future? That’s for you to decide.

Your in-game journal is a nearly freeform expression of what you observe in this world, each page representing a small slice of the landscape that you can fill with whatever photos or audio recordings you make within them. Though there’s an end goal, and some important steps to get there, the way you move through the Tieng Valley and the things you take from it are entirely up to you. It’s a genuinely refreshing way to experience a piece of art, not just to witness it, or partake in it, but to actively preserve it. And not as a whole, but in a form that only you can give it and that only you will take away from it. That those things can be said of a finite collection of data engineered into one, consistent arrangement is quite something, I think.

If misguided attempts at flowery language are any indication, describing what SEASON means, is difficult. What it is, though, is a video game, and a very good one. Whether you’re gazing at beautiful vistas or seeing the game world rush past as you intuitively pedal your bicycle through the magic of the DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers and visceral feedback, it’s wonderfully pleasant in the hand. Scavengers Studio has made existing in this place a joy, giving players wonderful freedom to experience and parse things at their own pace without fear of getting it wrong. It’s a succinct little adventure, but one that has plenty of time for those inclined to take it.

As you travel around, taking snaps and audio clips and personally placing them inside your journal, you’ll slowly start to unravel the mysteries behind the impending cataclysmic event as well as the history leading up to it, occasionally meeting new faces and engaging in choice-driven dialogue. The game’s themes continue to ring true as you help its citizens decide what memories in their own lives are important and what can be gained by the forgetting of others. It’s all very simple but rarely anything less than enamouring and constantly inviting contemplation – it’s the kind of game to be thought about and talked about long after its powerful conclusion and far beyond the boundaries of its content and mechanics.

Above all else, SEASON: A letter to the future is a game that trusts players to take as much or as little from it as they want to carry with them, as much as they feel is necessary to keep it alive or as little as it takes to move forward into the new. As a video game it’s a solid and clever take on storytelling within the medium, albeit one with a noticeable number of bugs, performance hitches and glaring typos, but as a moment in time it’s entirely unforgettable.

The post SEASON: A Letter To The Future Review – An Unforgettable Experience appeared first on Press Start.

I used to adore the Need for Speed games. Underground on the GameCube was my obsession for a time with its combination of slick, night-time visuals and great-feeling arcade style racing absolutely slathered in early 2000s tuner culture. This time around we’ve got a full open city area full of events, traffic, collectibles and cops to escape; a hip hop laced soundtrack and cel-animation inspired visual flourishes. Need For Speed Unbound has some great aspects and absolutely kept my interest for the length of the campaign with new and faster cars to drive as I progressed – but a few annoyances dragged Criterion’s NFS experience down from greatness for me.

Unbound didn’t make a fantastic first impression on me. Likely due to my lack of experience with modern NFS games, I was expecting near Mario Kart levels of easy drifts and high speed races. I found the game much more demanding of control finesse. Especially in the fairly high powered car you get initially it was very easy to lose control around corners if I expected to just hold the accelerator and drift like it was Ridge Racer. Once I came to terms with actually needing to learn the racing model, adjusting handling of cars to suit my style I found keeping the car under control much easier. Challenging enough to feel rewarding (especially when the game rewards you with boost and a sweet visual flourish for nailing a corner) but still more forgiving than say Gran Turismo. Driving in Unbound feels pretty fantastic.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $78 WITH FREE DELIVERY

The game’s campaign is split into four weeks of driving in Lakeshore, each day split into day and night sessions and the week culminating in a qualifier event to eventually enter the Lakeshore Grand – the ultimate race to earn glory and fame. Each day and night will have a wide variety of events to compete in like races, drift events and takeovers (where you show off combos of drifts, jumps and target smashing) allowing you to pick your preferred way of competing. I really enjoyed the way the game is split into calendar days. It meant I could play for just a day, lock in some wins and reach a logical finishing point – or I could play an entire week in a play session if I felt like it.

It’s important gameplay wise too, as the more events you do in a single day, the more attention you’ll get from the cops. Racing for big rewards increases your heat level so there’s a constant risk/reward going on that keeps things tense. Winning big bucks only to lose your entire days winnings when you’re busted by the cops in the evening feels horrible, but is an effective way to encourage you to find better ways to lose the cops or maybe be a little more considered with how many events you participate in on a particular day.

The cops though, are one of my main annoyances with Unbound. They’re just so damned persistent. Things get easier as your car gets faster and more capable, but in the early days if you build up a decent heat level it can feel damn near impossible to lose the fuzz. Even when I had a fully upgraded, top of S+ tier car it was still more annoying than fun to lose cops given that the moment a helicopter flying overhead or a patrol car driving a nearby road spots you it’s fully back on with the map suddenly peppered with all terrain vehicles and police helicopters. Things get a little more manageable on the relaxed difficulty mode at least, but even there the police’s ability to spot and rain hell upon you at a moments notice gets tiring when all you really want to do is start the next event.

Unbound’s aesthetic is something that I think will be divisive, but personally I love the way it sticks to a very specific vibe. The visual style is semi-realistic with cel-animation flourishes which I think look fantastic, and the music is 100% hip hop. As someone who listens to quite a bit of the genre I recognised quite a few names, but there were some artists I’d never heard before. While I think I wore out the soundtrack by the time I finished the campaign, I love that the track choices had the breadth to introduce me to new music. The characters and dialogue you need to listen to while driving around though, I definitely found grating. It was hard to have all that much sympathy for a bunch of kids tearing up the streets, smashing up people’s cars and then getting on their high-horse about the cops daring to try breaking up their street races.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the Lakeshore Online mode of Unbound. It is entirely separate from the campaign, with a separate money balance and garage but functions in a similar way. You jump into an online city, drive around to events and invite the other players in the city to compete. I think if you enjoyed the campaign and wanted more, this could be a way to keep the whole thing going. I can understand why they’re totally separate garages, but it was a bit of a bummer to have to start from scratch again in the online mode for me.

There’s a lot I liked about NFS Unbound. I love that the game doesn’t expect you to come first to progress, and often I wasn’t even close. Higher places are in most cases just a slightly bigger payday so continuing on a 4th place still gets you some cash to upgrade and hopefully do better next time. I loved the commitment to modern car culture aesthetics, events like the takeover are a great addition along with the distinct visual and musical style choices. While I found the cops mostly tedious rather than exhilarating, once I lost them and got back to the racing I had a great time climbing the ladder, upgrading my cars, learning the city and eventually nailing the corners in races.

The post Need For Speed Unbound Review – High Stakes Racing appeared first on Press Start.

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.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $72.99 WITH FREE DELIVERY

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.

The post Crisis Core –Final Fantasy VII– Reunion Review – Absolutely Worth A Revisit appeared first on Press Start.

I’ve always been a big fan of Dead Space, so having a new game of that ilk in The Callisto Protocol was always going to be appealing. From the minds that brought us Dead Space, it’s occupying the same space as other fantastic spiritual successors like The Evil Within, Bayonetta, and even Lost Odyssey. After playing The Callisto Protocol, it’s clear that the Dead Space DNA has been left intact, but much like the new Biophage threat, it’s mutated into something entirely different.

The Callisto Protocol sees you taking on the role of Jacob Lee, a freight transporter pilot running jobs for the United Jupiter Company. His latest assignment is simple but lucrative – move some unlabelled but volatile cargo between Jupiter’s moons – Europa and Callisto. His ship is ambushed by a terrorist group, leading to a crash and subsequent imprisonment in a facility built on Callisto. Of course, while imprisoned, Jacob is broken out of his cell during an outbreak of an unknown pathogen and realises that he has to escape.

What follows is a story that is ironically only surprising in that there are almost no surprises. The Callisto Protocol wears its influences on its sleeve, no doubt, but it feels like a real missed opportunity to play with and subvert players’ expectations with how the game plays out. Instead, The Callisto Protocol delivers a sci-fi story shamelessly derived from the stories that inspired it – think Alien meets Dead Space – with little artistic flair to truly establish it as its own. That being said, The Callisto Protocol does feel more grounded than Dead Space, so anyone who found the gigantic space-faring bio-recombinant necromorphs obnoxious will find solace in the simplicity of The Callisto Protocol.

So as you’d expect, the game plays similarly to Dead Space. It’s a largely linear, narrative-driven thriller that sees Jacob working his way through Callisto’s facilities in an attempt to escape. But even though it’s clearly inspired by Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol does a few things that you’d never see in a Dead Space game in an attempt to carve out its own niche. It does this in a few ways – from telling a more grounded story and handling combat and encounter design.

The Callisto Protocol’s combat isn’t about dismembering but instead more about heavy hitting. With more of a focus on melee, you’ll spend much more time up close and personal with your enemies. With such an increased focus on melee, it also means that you’re given a whole bunch of manoeuvres to evade and block attacks from incoming enemies. This is done by holding the stick to the left or the right of an enemy as they attack or holding it back to block. While the game insists that there is no timing requirement, there were times when a successful dodge still led to me taking damage. It’s a cool system in practice and one that feels so good when you pull it off correctly, but one that could have been more consistent.

This dovetails rather awkwardly with the fact that while the combat has some great weight and is relentlessly satisfying, things start to fall apart when you’re being attacked by more than one enemy. Jacob can’t dodge more than one attack at a time, and you’re given few options to take on multiple enemies simultaneously. A heavy melee strike can hit multiple enemies, but it’s so slow to wind up that it is impractical in the middle of a pile-on.

If you’re not reading between the lines enough, I’ll say it. The Callisto Protocol is a challenging game. For the most part, it’s challenging in that you have to manage your resources effectively when engaging in battles with your enemies. In some aspects, and this is the minority of my experience, it’s challenging to the point where it can become frustrating. The combat system falling apart when faced with more than one enemy and attacks that kill in one hit are bound to frustrate players. As a massive fan of horror games, these kinds of challenges are ones I’m accustomed to (and perhaps even welcome), but for some players, it will be more frustrating than fulfilling. Accessibility options will no doubt remedy some of these frustrations – including auto-dodge and lock-on aiming, but Callisto can be a challenging game.

The weaponry you’re outfitted with is relatively modest, offering players variations on the typical pistol, shotgun, and assault rifle. None of the weapons ever really have a purposeful use – you can easily finish the game with the gun you’re given at the start – and it feels like a missed opportunity to have such simple weaponry.

That said, the combat does a fairly good job of forcing you to mix it up between weaponry, melee, and your telekinetic power (called GRP). There wasn’t a single time in the game when I relied on one more than the other. Pummelling an enemy in melee highlights an area on the enemy, which deals better damage if you shoot at that point quickly after dealing damage. It’s a simple system that never gets old. Throw in the ability to grab and throw enemies onto traps such as spikes, fans, or rotating blades with your GRP, and you’ve got a pretty strong combat system that The Callisto Protocol builds itself on.

It’s a shame that the enemy variety is so low. The new threat is called the Biophage, and there are only about six or seven enemies that you’ll encounter throughout the game. Perhaps even more disappointing is that about half of these enemies behave the same, merely looking slightly different. Games like Resident Evil 7: biohazard did so much with so little, so it can work, but the lack of enemy variety in The Callisto Protocol did mean that encounter design towards the end of the game did get a bit repetitious.

GRAB IT NOW: FROM $75 WITH FREE SHIPPING FROM AMAZON

Once again, some creative flourishes do their best to keep things interesting here. The second act encourages you to play stealthily due to the design of the enemies there, feeling more akin to the encounters found in games like The Last Of Us. Similarly, leaving enemies damaged but not dead for too long will see them mutate, but all this ever amounts to is literally turning them into bullet sponges who deal more damage. These are both great ideas, in concept, but I’d love to have seen different mutations that altered the flow of battle in other ways rather than just having to spend more ammo on them.

I previously referred to Callisto Protocol as a thriller, which was a deliberate distinction that I made. If I had to decide how scary a game like The Callisto Protocol is, I’d liken it closer to games like Dead Space 3 or Resident Evil 4. It’s a tense experience constantly throwing things at you, but it never quite reaches the lofty heights of terror similar to games like the first two Dead Spaces or even something like Resident Evil 7. The Callisto Protocol is a loud game, constantly throwing music and loud stingers at you to the point where it doesn’t give you the space to even build tension. Such a loudness takes away from the scares, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a tense experience.

As alluded to earlier, there aren’t any corners cut either. Your first run will easily take you upwards of fifteen hours to complete. My first run took almost twenty as I was taking my time to explore everything and defeat some of the more challenging encounters on the hardest difficulty. The game gives you some “optional” paths that further flesh out the story and rewards you with extra loot, but you can see everything the game offers in a single playthrough. There are no unlockables, unfortunately, and the new game plus mode is coming later too. So while the game is lacking in the replayability department, I never felt short-changed by the experience The Callisto Protocol provided “out of the box”.

When you start thinking about Callisto’s presentation, things get a bit more complicated. This is the first game in which I struggled to choose which mode to play in. One thing is sure, however, and that’s the fact that the production values are through the roof. Every cutscene has been well directed to the point where it would stand alongside games like Dead Space or even the recent God of War games – mimicking the “continuous cut” style that those games employ.

It is harder to deduce whether you’ll want to play this game in its performance or resolution modes. The 60fps option is fantastic, and post-patch works wonderfully. But it comes at the cost of reduced lighting effects, which is a pretty big trade-off in a game as atmospheric as this. Regardless of your choice, The Callisto Protocol is a great-looking game. The characters are well-detailed, the locales are beautifully realised, and the atmosphere is absolutely on point.

Although it might seem like I’ve been overly critical of The Callisto Protocol, it’s still one of the most enjoyable horror experiences I’ve had this year. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel in any tangible way but still offers up an engaging and enthralling experience from beginning to end, even if it’s devoid of surprises. It’s a cliché to say, but I’ll do it anyway – essentially, The Callisto Protocol feels greater than the sum of its parts – and I think any self-respecting horror or even action game fan owes it to themselves to check it out.

THE XBOX SERIES X VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post The Callisto Protocol Review – A Satisfyingly Tense Newcomer appeared first on Press Start.

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.

The Cheapest Price: $79.99 at Amazon with free shipping.

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. 

The post Marvel’s Midnight Suns Review – A Total Eclipse appeared first on Press Start.

Gungrave G.O.R.E. looks like it would have a heap of ingredients for a great game. Stylish gunplay, slick combos, a cool early-2000’s era property and mountains of bad guys to deal with – it almost sounds like Devil May Cry with a heavier focus on gunplay. I wish that were the case. While there is some fun to be found in developer Iggymob’s Gungrave G.O.R.E., it thoroughly outstays it’s welcome and ends up being a tedious, repetitive experience.

The setting is classic video game – you play as Grave, an undead near invulnerable soldier wielding dual pistols and a giant coffin for close-range bashing. You’re introduced to a series of mob bosses in an opening scene and then let loose to beat them one by one, area by area. It’s a story that harkens back to an earlier time in games, mostly serving as an excuse to blast a bunch of guys.

And blast you will. I hope you’re not prone to RSI symptoms if you want to play Gungrave because you’ll spend nearly the entire time pulling the right trigger to repeatedly blast wave after colour coded wave of bad guys the levels throw at you. There are a couple of neat systems that help make things a bit more engaging than just mindless blasting. There’s a ‘Beat’ meter which tracks your consecutive landed attacks while contributing both to your end of level score and your Demolition meter. Demolition moves use this meter to pull off flashy attacks which do big damage and refill some lost health.

You have a shield which recharges if you avoid damage long enough and you can help boost it back up by performing an execution move on a stunned enemy, Doom-style. This can be combined with a whip that you can use to pull stunned enemies to you, or zip yourself to them as a way to move around the battlefield. You’ll gradually unlock more close-combat moves which can be used to break enemies with shields, as well as Destruction moves and general character stat boosts like extra health and gun damage.

Even with this variety of actions and unlocks though, I found the game stopped being all that interesting after the first few levels. Each factory, warehouse and city street setting begins to blend into the next – to the point where it felt like a breath of fresh air once I reached a level with some vegetation. But more than the repetitive environments, the repetitive enemies and combat encounters really began to grate well before getting to the end. New enemy types are introduced so gradually, and half the time don’t really demand a different method of play to anything you’ve encountered before. Mash the trigger, use the Destruction moves as they charge, and dodge when you can.

Every time I played I got the distinct impression that the Gungrave G.O.R.E. needs a bunch more polish. I found some consistent bugs through my play through like a door that was supposed to open after an encounter just… not opening. Walking into a room, being blasted back through the door just as it automatically closed so I was stuck in a hallway until I restarted from the checkpoint. Music that doesn’t loop properly, instead just reaches the end of a track and begins again. And maybe most annoyingly, cut scene audio was consistently blown out. Volume was considerably higher than the regular game audio with voices sounding like they’d been amplified to within an inch of their life. This persisted even after closing and re-opening the game. Level and encounter design was messy as well. Bosses that are just sudden difficulty spikes, and some regular level encounters just threw an unreasonable amount of tanky enemies in an extremely uninteresting attempt at creating difficulty.

Having done some research on the original 2002 Gungrave game, it makes me wish Iggymob had borrowed from it’s cel-shaded anime-like visual style. While G.O.R.E. looks technically impressive, it definitely doesn’t have the same personality with it’s lightly stylised visuals. On PS5 it held up a consistent 60 frames per second in performance mode even with waves of enemies and objects in the scene breaking all over the place. There’s a quality mode which turns on ray-tracing at the expense of a 30-fps cap, but

I found the less fluid movement didn’t suit an action-focused game like this. I didn’t do any Digital Foundry style pixel counting, but in performance mode everything was super sharp on a 4K display. Things can look pretty spectacular when you’ve got the environment smashing around you, enemies coming from all directions and shots flying every which way – it’s just a shame the environments and enemies are so repetitive and soulless.

There is absolutely some fun to be found in Gungrave G.O.R.E. The over-the-top combat is spectacular to watch at times, and blasting at waves of various colour coded enemies is definitely fun for a while. Sadly, it is only a short while. For the majority of my 7-ish hours of play time I just found myself going through the motions. The story didn’t do much to invest me in the world and the environments and enemies were just so repetitive.

The post Gungrave G.O.R.E. Review – Two Tickets to the Gun Show appeared first on Press Start.

Given the whirlwind of releases over the last month or so, you’d be forgiven if Evil West has slipped under your radar. A brand new IP from Flying Wild Hog of Shadow Warrior fame, Evil West is something of a relic of the past, with a linear single player campaign, secret collectibles, weapon upgrades, perks, and so much more. This isn’t to say Evil West feels archaic, though, with a tightly paced campaign, satisfyingly brutal combat, and flexible progression that all coalesces into a thoroughly enjoyable carnage filled adventure.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $66 WITH FREE DELIVERY FROM AMAZON

Set in a Wild West under the threat of supernatural beings known as the Sanguisuge, you step into the shoes of Jesse Rentier, a vampire slayer and heir to the Rentier Institute. Headed by Jesse’s father, William Rentier, the Institute’s sole purpose is to eradicate the vampiric threat that has a stranglehold around the United States. With the Rentier Institute having weaponized steam and electricity, the Sanguisuge are desperate to survive against all odds, and launch a nation-wide attack to stamp out humanity for good.

It’s a fairly by the numbers narrative that’s made entertaining by its exaggerated characters and overt cheesiness. While Jesse himself is a pretty cookie-cutter protagonist, it’s supporting characters like long time vampire slayer Edgar Gravenor and doctor Emilia Blackwell that bring out the best in him through their interactions. The dialogue between them has a tongue-in-cheek awareness to it similar to Flying Wild Hog’s Shadow Warrior 3.  It’s also chock-full of references to longstanding franchises like DOOM, Castlevania, and more, further adding to the self-awareness. While it’s nothing to write home about overall, it serves as an engaging backdrop for the blood-soaked action built around it.

If I had to describe Evil West, I’d say it’s most akin to a third-person DOOM Eternal. It has a taut focus on resource management, target prioritization, and making you feel as badass as you look. The core combat revolves around ranged and melee attacks, where Jesse has access to close-quarters combos and long range guns. It’s a seamless and fluid melding of the two that make for an entirely unique and kinetic style of combat, where you swap between weapons as needed, weaving punches in between and tying it all off with a finisher for a much needed health drop.

Combat only deepens further when you unlock an electric powered gauntlet which has a slew of capabilities. It’s primary use is for electrocuting enemies, which allows you to follow up with a high damage beatdown, but it’s the way in which you can zap your foes that allow you to get creative. Whether it’s successfully timing parries, pulling foes towards you with a whip, or unleashing electric hell on the Sanguisuge in an overdrive mode, the gauntlet is consistently satisfying to use in combat, and this is only reinforced through progression.

As you move through linear levels, you’ll level up and obtain perk points which can be spent on new skills for Jesse. There’s a few different trees you can spec into here that provide unique and distinct playstyles, such as maximizing your energy regen to make the most of powerful gauntlet attacks, or exploiting environmental hazards against enemies to get the upper hand. Every perk point obtained is an ever alluring prospect of new ways to dispatch foes in a gloriously satisfying manner.

The plethora of weapons you obtain can also be upgraded over the journey as you collect Bucks. From a standard six shot revolver and bolt-action hunting rifle, to a literal flamethrower, there’s always a way to power up and customize your favorite weapons further. Everything combines to make for a certifiably bonkers combat system that’s practically begging for a new game plus playthrough once you roll credits, which really cements how much Jesse’s slaying capabilities expand over the course of the game.

THE CHEAPEST PHYSICAL COPY: $66.90 AT AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING.

All of these aspects, alongside the ability to refund perk points at any point, means you have a robust and flexible progression system that encourages you to experiment with Jesse’s skills. One playthrough wasn’t enough for me to obtain every upgrade, but I’m sure a new game plus playthrough will result in a fully upgraded and equipped Jesse which I’m sure is as crazy as I’m anticipating it to be.

The game is somewhat slow to get going, though. I found the first few missions fell into repetition in their combat arenas due to a relatively limited move set and weapon choice early on. This only lasted for the first 3-4 missions, but left combat feeling more mundane in its opening hours in comparison to how chaotic it can get in the second half of the game.

A combat system like this is nothing without enemy variety, though, and Evil West delivers on that in spades. It’s constantly serving up new combinations of enemy types that demand you to pick and choose what you want to focus on first to make things as easy as possible. During my roughly 10-hour playthrough on normal difficulty, I died a handful of times but ultimately felt like the difficulty curve was satisfying and rewarding. This is most prominent with Evil West’s bombastic boss fights, that demand a higher level of focus, prompt dodging, and exploiting enemy weak points.

While the missions in Evil West are remarkably linear, that certainly isn’t to its own detriment. Each mission hangs around for just the right amount of time, never overstaying its welcome or bowing out too soon to where its ideas can’t breathe. Despite the supernatural setting, Flying Wild Hog still finds ways to weave cowboy staples into these levels, such as an explosive train heist and tense bank robbery. Each level still has some hidden collectibles, skins, and upgrades to find, so it’s never as simple as walking straight ahead.

While I wasn’t able to test the coop during my time with Evil West, only the session host can progress through the story missions and character upgrades, meaning anyone who joins up to a session as a guest will lose all progress made when returning to their own file. Enemy health and damage is scaled up to account for the extra player, but it’s disappointing that a 10 hour experience like this is lacking in the ability to save progression between solo and coop play sessions. Still, though, the entire thing is playable with a mate, so there’s definitely some value to be found in that.

While the Wild West might typically be synonymous with rolling deserts and tumbleweed, Evil West bucks the trend by including a myriad of environments to explore, all as captivating as each other. From your typical western towns to blood leech ridden forests, each mission is a visual delight with a suitable amount of spectacle to each of them. It adds to that already tight pacing to keep you engaged and involved in each part of the world you visit.

While it doesn’t quite stand up to some triple A juggernauts of today, Evil West’s visual allure is in its style, bursting with the vibrant colors of blood and electricity in direct contrast with a steampunk aesthetic. It also ran remarkably well on my 3060ti, and I only ever encountered a few audio bugs during my playthrough.

THE PC VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Evil West Review – High Voltage Vampire Slaying appeared first on Press Start.

Another year, another Dark Pictures game. Little Hope was my least favourite, and last year’s House of Ashes was easily my favourite. So far, all of the games have taken some great horror concepts and flipped them on their head, subverting most, if not all, your expectations. The Devil In Me, then, is the ultimate subversion. That is to say, it’s exactly what it presents itself as, and as a result never quite feels like it capitalises on its fantastic premise. That’s not to say it’s bad – it’s heads and shoulders above Little Hope and better than The Quarry despite it’s significantly smaller scale – it’s just lacking any surprises.

Like the previous games, The Devil In Me is an interactive drama like Until Dawn and The Quarry. You play as a group of characters and must make decisions to navigate them through the story (hopefully alive) to the credits. Each decision you make can have rippling effects on how the story plays out, leading to multiple potential outcomes. Like the other Dark Pictures games, The Devil In Me is entirely self-contained, and you don’t need to play (or have liked) the previous games to appreciate this one.

The Devil In Me follows a crew of documentary filmmakers looking to revitalise their in-trouble series. The team is working on a project about one of the first serial killers in America, Henry Howard Holmes. Stuck on how to make the done-to-death angle interesting, the team receives a mysterious invite from an eccentric millionaire to come and visit his modern-day replica of the H.H. Holmes Murder Castle. In real life, the hotel was unremarkable, but in most fictional depictions, it’s portrayed with impossible spaces, dead-end hallways, and all kinds of other architectural idiosyncrasies designed to trap and kill people.

But I’m getting a bit carried away here. The Devil In Me follows the crew as they visit this totally-normal replica of a serial killer’s playground, but as they arrive, they realise that perhaps they’re being watched and even manipulated. Throw in a crazy masked serial killer and some SAW-esque traps and you’ve got yourself a horror movie, or in this case, a perfectly solid concept for a Dark Pictures game. A mysterious looming threat, a band of characters who love to hate each other, and a setting that’s ripe for scares.

It’s a bit of a shame then that The Devil In Me fails to capitalise on the potential of its concept as much as other games in the series have. I really enjoyed the journey from beginning to end, don’t get me wrong, but it did feel like the writers were playing it safe in some ways. I obviously will not spoil the places that the story goes, but I was waiting for a huge holy shit moment, as usually happens in the Dark Pictures games, and it never came. I’d even go as far as to say despite the grotesque nature of the plot and the violence in The Devil In Me, it’s easily the most grounded and restrained of the games yet.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $59 WITH FREE SHIPPING FROM AMAZON

It just feels like that Supermassive could’ve done a lot more with the clear SAW inspiration they’d taken for The Devil In Me. I was excited to have to, in the heat of a moment, perhaps do something horrible to my friend early on and then see how that would carry out for them as the story played out. Almost all the “SAW” like moments of The Devil In Me seem to result in somebody dying, and their story closed off. None of the decisions in these moments specifically ever felt especially weighty, and the odd moment where we did kill a cast member, it felt like an almost comical Final Destination-esque moment. I appreciate a good kill as much as the next person, but too much feels left to chance.

Thankfully, the improvements added in House of Ashes carry over with The Devil In Me. Fixed camera angles are still gone, and the useless dedicated flashlight button has been removed. Instead, we have a cursory inventory system that stores keys and unique items for each character. When I played a few chapters of the game last month, I was excited to see if this meant we’d be getting more of an exploration-based Resident Evil-like experience rather than a linear story. While character-specific items and abilities introduced new ways to explore the world of The Devil In Me, it never feels as dramatic a departure from the linear series formula as it could be.

Of course, the elements that do similarly work return here. Besides playing solo, Shared Story mode allows you to tackle the entire experience with a friend online, just as if you were playing together locally. Movie Night, on the other hand, lets you assign the five characters to up to four other people in the room to control. The game subsequently prompts each player when it’s their turn. I adore this mode and will never play a Supermassive game without it. However, I still wish that characters with lower screen time were marked somehow so they could be evenly divided between players.

But as always, each player in Movie Night can have the difficulty of their experience altered. Suppose there are people in your group who are terrible at QTEs or wanting more of a challenge. In that case, they can individually increase or decrease their difficulty. I think it’s a great idea, as these games tend to skew towards more casual audiences anyway, so being able to invite anyone into the fold is well worth the inclusion of difficulty options.

I can’t talk about a game like this without talking about the scares, either. The Devil In Me, as previously mentioned, feels a lot more grounded than in previous games. As such, your mileage may vary as to whether you could find this to be a truly terrifying experience, though for me personally the only scares I got here were from jump scares. Nothing as egregious or as annoying as Little Hope, mind you, as many of The Devil In Me’s jump scares feel well-measured and earned. But The Devil In Me lacks the tension that House of Ashes had.

Similarly, The Devil In Me’s presentation is very much all over the place. It’s hard to work out just how it doesn’t manage to look as good as its predecessors, but so many scenes feel like they’ve been lit incorrectly, or facial animations animated strangely. The central location that the game relies upon has a lot of charm, for sure, but overall, this is one of the most inconsistent-looking Supermassive game thus far. Some of these issues can be fixed with updates in the future, which is a shame because when The Devil In Me looks great, it looks really great.

Thankfully, the entirety of the cast feels really on point this time around, which is great given how flat Ashley Tisdale’s performance was in House of Ashes. The cast is led by a sensational Jessie Buckley, who keen eyes might recognise from Chernobyl, Fargo, or Taboo. The rest of the cast, who’ve made supporting appearances in Game of Thrones, Dune and Coronation Street all hand in decent enough performances to the point where I think they could be the most likeable protagonists in a Dark Pictures game.

THE PC VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post The Dark Pictures: The Devil In Me Review – You Probably SAW It Coming appeared first on Press Start.

After sharing similar thoughts on Call of Duty Modern Warfare II’s campaign as Brodie (find his campaign review here), I went into the game’s multiplayer expecting it to impress. However, with every step forward Modern Warfare II takes – like the new perks system and welcome changes to the ever-satisfying gunplay – there seemed to be something holding it back. 

Let’s get this out of the way, though – the gunplay in Modern Warfare II is exceptional, and it’s always been the series’ key strength no matter how rough other parts of the game are. The return of a quick time to kill makes every encounter tense, with new movement options – like the ever-excellent dolphin dive and reworked slide – giving players new ways of gaining an advantage over opponents.

While I usually prefer the usual 6v6 modes, I had a blast with Modern Warfare II’s Ground War Invasion mode as well. Packed full of enemy AI and other players, the sprawling maps were a great way of experimenting with new loadouts, weapons and perks to see what worked for me. And while the game’s AI in Invasion aren’t the brightest tools in the shed, it was a nice change to what is otherwise a hyper-focused set of 6v6 modes.

On that subject, all of the main 6v6 modes you’d come to expect are included in this year’s game, with a handful of new objective-based modes also making their way into the rotation. And while I’m usually one to stick to my beloved selections, I actually liked both of the new modes. 

The first, called Knock Out, tasks two teams of six to have hold of the briefcase when the round ends. It’s a best of five mode with only team revives enabled, meaning players need to stick together and communicate efficiently to get the win. Alternatively, a team can also win the round by eliminating every member of the other team. 

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $78 WITH FREE SHIPPING

I really liked this mode for a couple of reasons. As soon as a player takes possession of the briefcase, they become a moving target that’s highlighted to everyone on the map. This always makes for a tense final few moments where players need to be tactical and evade enemy fire, while also ensuring teammates are reviving those who have been downed. As you’d expect, each round tends to fluctuate depending on what happens in the first minute or so, and it makes for a focused and highly enjoyable change to the regular stuff we see every year.

The other new mode, called Prisoner Rescue, tasks players to locate hostages and to either get them out of the area or prevent their extraction, with the first team to 500 points winning the match. It didn’t quite tickle my fancy like Knock Out did, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Third person mode also makes its way to Modern Warfare II and it’s a blast. Combining a range of classic multiplayer modes into one playlist, third person mode completely changed the way I played the game. It forced me to think strategically about where I was on the map and how players could see me, which made for a genuinely different experience to anything else on offer. It’s not something I’ll always go to, but it’s great to have it there as an option when I don’t feel like any of the other modes on offer.

In terms of general gameplay changes, Infinity Ward’s made some interesting choices with the game’s perks and gunsmith systems. 

Rather than sticking with three always-on perks in your loadout, this year’s game elects to allow you to pick four. However, perks are divided up into three different categories: base perks, bonus perks and ultimate perks. Players start every game with two base perks, while the bonus perk and ultimate will unlock over time. Taking out enemies and completing objectives makes bonus and ultimate perks unlock quicker.

While it was a bit confusing in the beginning, the new system provides a lot of flexibility in the way loadouts can be created for specific game modes. Ultimate perks are incredibly handy, consisting of beloved perks like Dead Silence and Ghost, for example, and are great for team deathmatch and domination modes. Whereas you might want to opt for something a bit different for something like Ground War or Search & Destroy. There’s more than enough here to play around with, and it’s nice to finally get a bit of a rework to the age-old perk system.

Modern Warfare II’s revamped gunsmith system, on the other hand, took some time to even understand at a basic level. Weapon platforms have been introduced to the game, putting weapons into various families rather than having them separated. This allows players to unlock attachments for a ‘family’ of weapons rather than a single weapon itself, which in turn makes for a faster way to gather the attachments for newly unlocked weaponry. It’s a decent enough system once you get your head around it, however this is where my biggest issue with Modern Warfare II comes in – the game’s menus are absolutely atrocious. 

I can’t put it gently: Modern Warfare II’s menu system is easily the worst I’ve ever seen in a Call of Duty game. Doing the simplest of tasks – like changing your calling card or making a new loadout – is bogged down by countless, unnecessary submenus. It’s absolutely jarring to have to go through five submenus to get to things in the game, and it’s mind boggling how this version of the UI even made it to the retail release. It needs a serious rework already. 

Something else I was particularly taken aback by was the lack of Call of Duty mainstay content at launch, too. Two of the major omissions that particularly irked me was the lack of hardcore mode (which, to be fair, is slated for Season 1’s launch on November 16) and the barracks/challenges area. It’s ridiculous to me that, at the time of this review going live, you can’t check your stats properly – you can’t see active challenges you’re making progress towards aside from the three dailies that are in the main menu, while redeemed double weapon and level XP don’t have a counter going either. Combine this with the plethora of bugs currently plaguing every platform – from hard crashes to texture pop in – and it’s been a rough first week for the game.

That said, I did enjoy my time with the game’s Spec Ops mode. A continuation of the game’s main campaign, the three missions available at launch offer a great cooperative-focused change to what’s seen in the other main modes in Modern Warfare II. Each mission is different in its own way, with Low Profile – the most stealth-focused mission of the bunch – the highlight for me. Each mission won’t take you too long to complete, clocking in between 15 to 30 minutes each, but they do offer up nice cosmetic rewards and some XP for completing them. I hope to see more added to the game over time.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II doesn’t quite stick the landing, but I’ve had a blast playing it. The changes to gameplay and gunplay make the game feel incredibly slick and satisfying, with the selection of new modes more than welcome. It’s just a shame the game is absolutely riddled with technical issues and an awful menu system. Even so, there’s a lot to love about the game, but temper your expectations.

The post Call of Duty Modern Warfare II Multiplayer Review – An Imperfect Follow-up appeared first on Press Start.

In the interest of helping along anyone hoping to avoid even the most mundane of spoilers or simply here to glance at a review score in an effort to reconcile an expensive collector’s edition pre-order, I’m going to say this upfront – God of War Ragnarök is the best game of its kind that I’ve played since, well, the last one. After the significant shake-up of the series’ formula in the 2018 soft reboot it’s easy to understand a degree of hesitancy around a follow-up largely built on the same foundations. What’s important to remember though, is how good those foundations are and how much talent lives within the walls of Santa Monica Studio.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $95 WITH FREE SHIPPING FROM AMAZON

But when it comes to the end of everything as we know it, there’s no better place to start than the beginning. God of War Ragnarök picks up some years after the end of God of War 2018 and sees the godly father-son duo of Kratos and Atreus staring down the barrel of the apocalypse after receiving the world-shattering news that (here come some spoilers for the end of that game) Atreus is, in fact, the Norse god, Loki. With the titular Ragnarök approaching, and the nine realms plunged into ‘Fimbulwinter’, the pair set out on a new journey to band together whatever gods they can find willing to oppose the likes of Odin and Thor, unite the realms and attempt to drive back Ragnarök.

What follows over the next 20-50 hours is a fantasy epic unlike nearly anything I’ve experienced in a video game of this scope and prestige. To touch on even the most innocuous of story beats would be to spoil any number of genuinely memorable moments that continue to mine the depths of a rich cast of characters. As Kratos and Atreus chase myths and mysteries, repair bonds, form new ones, witness larger-than-life events and face impending doom they’re tested at every turn. Whether it’s Kratos’ past and the way it shapes the relationship with his son, Atreus’ teenage angst and desire for autonomy as his entire future is laid out in front of him in prophecy or Freya’s grief turned to hatred after the death of her own son, many of the same themes and ideas from the previous game are further explored here, but just as many new threads and perspectives are woven in.

And perspective is crucial to the tale that this game is trying to tell, something it nails by daring to match Kratos and Atreus up with new and returning faces for portions of its story as both travelling companions and active support in gameplay. Much like Horizon Forbidden West did earlier in the year, God of War Ragnarök enriches its world and cast of diverse beings by giving them all significantly more screen time and a more immediate role in the journey and it’s all the better for it. The mysterious entity behind the camera giving us the game’s single, unbroken shot continues to do the Lord’s work in imparting a sense of scale from the most grand to the most intimate, and the concept is taken to far further and more surprising places than anything from God of War 2018.

This is a tale of community, of strength, of reconciling with the past and embracing the future, of grief and acceptance and it’s one that couldn’t exist without Kratos but it no longer belongs solely to him. It belongs equally to Freya, the Norse God of War Tyr, the mysterious young giant Angrboda, to Odin, Thor and a huge number of others you haven’t seen yet. And, of course, Atreus. “It takes a village to raise a child” rings true here, with the duo’s found family growing over the course of the game and genuinely supporting each other in a way that feels rare in a video game, no less one so otherwise driven by spectacle. I absolutely would have loved to see some of the new faces here given more time to shine and have their stories and purpose more wholly explored, but I’m confident they’ll be appreciated regardless.

I’m not one for tears, but there were moments that definitely had me on the verge of them – and usually not because of some gut-punching twist or bad fate, but rather seeing these characters tested to their absolute limits and coming out better for it. The growth on display in this cast of well-rounded and surprisingly human-feeling gods and legends is immensely cathartic to witness. It’s a story told with deep respect for its characters, immense creativity, levity and solemnity in equal measure and a desire to inspire wonder in its audience.

We all remember the moment that Kratos takes up the Blades of Chaos again in the previous game, and the powerful concoction of giddy nostalgia and narrative weight that it bore, and Ragnarök does a great job of recapturing some of those feelings. But what’s hugely more impressive and commendable is the boldness with which it creates new feelings, blazes new trails and forges new legends that are just as powerful if not more. There’s so much I can’t and won’t say, but this sequel’s best sequences come from that same place of giving players new tools and mechanics to work with that don’t just add depth to gameplay but add meaning to the world and characters around them, and I think that’s something special.

What I can say on the subject of gameplay and that all-important concept of being an angry ex-God of War in a world full of mythical creatures to beat up is that combat in Ragnarök is an improvement on its predecessor in just about every way. I touched on it a little in my preview of the first few hours of the game and it holds true for the rest, there’s a new breadth to combat here afforded by increased verticality, a stronger focus on elemental abilities, better support from partner characters and a massively expanded variety of enemy types. Where things could eventually err towards predictability in God of War 2018, there’s nary an encounter I went into here where I could comfortably say I knew what to expect or how I would handle it.

Everything matters when going toe-to-toe with foes and creatures in Ragnarök , from the individual enemy designs and mechanics to how they’re grouped together and interact, to where you’re fighting them, who’s with you and what gear you’re using and all of these elements are constantly being mixed up in a way that no two fights feel the same. It’s all just as meaty and satisfying as ever, and for those hoping to see more boss battles this time around – there are a heap, and they’re all brilliant. There’s simply never a dull moment, and the pacing of both combat and exploration is aided immensely over the course of the core story content by some very smart, temporary changes in tone and perspective.

Further variety comes in an expanded arsenal and new tweaks to progression. Where a game like Forbidden West sought to expand its gear game by simply throwing tons of it at the player to its detriment, Ragnarök smartly adds nuance without overwhelming. Both gear and character progression benefit from the expanded elemental mechanics, greater variety of tools and more flexible customisation on offer, making upgrades and changes feel like measured choices that have tangible gameplay impacts. Things like greater variety in Kratos’ shields and how they impact gameplay, or the way that the skills you more frequently use eventually gain special slots to be further augmented with mods, go a long way to making things feel more personal and tailored without radically shaking up the already-excellent combat experience.

The character, equipment and shop menus don’t always do a great job of communicating crucial information, but once I wrapped my head around everything I appreciated the way the game encourages establishing your preferred playstyle early on with specialised gear and then has you tweak and build on it over time.

The allure of new loot and progression is, once again, a great reason to head off the critical path at every given opportunity and God of War Ragnarök continues its predecessor’s penchant for mixing up more linear and directed segments with plenty of opportunities to roam more open spaces within its larger realms. There’s much to admire about the mastery of design on display here. Nine realms all packed with networks of secrets and stories that steadily open up over the course of an otherwise tightly-scripted narrative that weaves in and out of them, a rotating roster of support characters, landscapes that change entire states on a whim, there are a ridiculous number of moving parts that all come together into something that feels precisely curated at every turn.

I’m particularly fond of the puzzle design on show in Ragnarök, whether it’s the one-off challenges you find dotted around each locale or the large scale, multi-part environmental puzzles that often reveal themselves further with repeated visits to an area. Kratos’ and Atreus’ expanded repertoires and the new gear they come into along the way are put to great use, and everything is impressively intuitive. There’s nothing you can’t figure out by applying what you’ve come to know about the rules of this universe, and the game is so confident of this fact that the most it does to hold your hand is have other characters naturally react to your progress and offer their own thoughts on the task at present.

Your companions’ quips and musings on the world around them are just as much reason to take every opportunity to explore, in fact. The game’s side quests and content are always narratively interesting, generously rewarding and often unexpected. Even 50 hours in I was seeing things I’d never seen before and getting the impression that my actions were having an impact within these nine realms. Admittedly, because the game’s realms and their gameplay possibilities don’t fully open up until you’re blessed with the full range of gear and abilities, the back half of the game can feel quite overwhelming with content – particularly right towards the end where you’re suddenly handed an enormous and largely optional new area stuffed with lengthy side quests and collectibles that threatens to ruin what is truthfully a bit of a thin climax.

There is a post-game state though, so you’re quite easily able to save the extra challenges and collectibles for when you’re ready to return to the game for your next God of War fix. I would heavily recommend diving right back in once you can as well, a post-game conclusion to one of the game’s most important and emotional moments does more to wrap the whole experience than the slightly shaky scenes before it.

Exploring each of the realms I was also constantly reminded of how strong a sense of place the team at Santa Monica Studio managed to create with the last game. Returning to familiar areas in this sequel, whether intact or completely transformed, immediately opened the gates to a flood of memories of puzzles, boss fights and pivotal scenes – despite my not having gone back to the 2018 game since that very year.

It’s all presented in a fashion more than deserving of its lineage, the trek across these varied and fantastical realms resulting in one of the most breathtaking audiovisual experiences in the medium from both a technical and artistic angle. Nothing in this franchise has come even close to the sense of wonder that permeates Ragnarök. It’s still a grim and violent fantasy, but Santa Monica Studio has packed such a vibrant and imaginative array of stunning landscapes, awesome creatures and magical moments all backed up by a wonderful score by the returning Bear McCreary that rivals some of the best soundtracks cinema has to offer when it comes to elevating the tone and mood of each scene.

You can almost sense Santa Monica directing the game’s every moment from behind this camera, whether you’re in control or not. Cutscenes and set piece moments benefit from masterful camera work with a filmic attention to composition and imagery, and universally phenomenal performances that result in these characters feeling both alive and larger-than-life in equal measure. That’s especially true of the Aesir gods like Odin and Thor, whose depictions in Ragnarök are a great deal of fun. There are scenes here that I can’t wait to talk to people about for either their pure visual splendour, emotional impact or for just being fucking cool – there’s one bar fight scene in particular that’s hands-down one of my favourite video game moments of all time.

It’s no secret that this is a game built primarily for the franchise’s enormous PS4 audience, with PS5-exclusive features few and far between and mostly confined to the physical realm with the DualSense controller’s haptics and adaptive triggers. The solution instead is art – bereft of buzzword tech like ray tracing, the studio has instead art-ed the shit out of everything it could possibly touch. The new generation edition is blessed with impossibly good-looking character models, lush environments with rich lighting and ridiculously detailed texture work that all adds up to a jaw-dropping presentation. As we explained during the game’s preview phase, there’s a nice amount of choice for PS5 players here in terms of visual/performance modes as well.

I’d be remiss to not once again call out the excellent suite of options on-hand for customising and tailoring the gameplay experience, either purely from a place of personal preference when it comes to how the game feels in the hand or in the name of making it as accessible and approachable as possible to all manner of players. You can read about these more in-depth in a piece we posted here.

The post God Of War Ragnarok Review – A Triumph Of Godlike Proportions appeared first on Press Start.

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.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $74.90 FROM AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING

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.

The post Sonic Frontiers Review – Brave New Zone appeared first on Press Start.

This is the single player/campaign portion of our Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 review with our multiplayer/full review to come following the game’s launch this weekend.

Despite still emerging as the best-selling game of last year, the disappointment around Vanguard was profound. So, as has happened a few times before, the eggs have returned to the safety of the Modern Warfare basket. And in delivering a follow-up to 2019’s reboot of the franchise’s most popular sub-series, Infinity Ward has played a rather safe hand. It delivers a familiarity and fan service only they’re capable of, built upon the bones of the original Modern Warfare 2 while telling a starkly different story. 

Modern Warfare feels like a snapshot of the last two decades of geopolitical tensions, but the line it walks has never been more grey. Not that it ever has, but the conflict Task Force 141 finds tangled up in doesn’t have archetypal heroes and villains. It’s men and women doing what they believe is right, regardless of their alignment within the bigger picture. Though it’s tough to follow at times with its tiny moving parts, the idea of “the team” is really sold throughout. I felt the choice to have Ghost be something of a pointman for the story, emerging from the quiet mysterious type to a slightly louder mysterious type, is inspired. I was actually surprised with how often Price, who is often seen as the series’ lead, took a backseat to let the remainder of the team shine. 

Not only do Gaz, Soap and Ghost all shine, I particularly grew attached to both Alejandro and Rodolfo. Their sub-plot, which saw them trying to wrestle control of Mexico back from the weapon-smuggling cartel aiding Al-Qatala, was an engrossing distraction from the bigger picture. 

We’re introduced to twisted versions of the characters we think we know, and our expectations of the narrative to be are subverted deftly in yet another globetrotting, geopolitical Mission: Impossible-like romp. It’s semi-grounded by real-world technologies, which I appreciate, but it certainly still lets loose like only a Call of Duty can.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $78 WITH FREE SHIPPING

It’s also amazingly nostalgic for the “original trilogy,” for want of a better term. There are some surprisingly wonderful character moments, full to the brim of the bravado and brotherly love you’d expect to see on an episode of Sons of Anarchy. There are also many callbacks to missions held dear, including storming a rain-slick freight ship, a prison break, and the obligatory aerial overwatch op. These aside, Modern Warfare 2’s campaign has tremendous variety, even if not all of the game’s seventeen levels hit the same. I felt the levels that served to showcase the shiny features in the game’s multiplayer were bottom-rung, especially ‘Violence and Timing’—a vehicular convoy mission which is meant to get players excited for driving jeeps in competitive modes. That said, there are some great open-ended stealth missions—‘El Sin Nombre’ for one—that felt almost like Hitman in their execution.

This newest instalment of Call of Duty continues the franchise’s consistent delivery of industry-leading mechanics, to the point where it’s hardly fair at this point. As a shooter it’s exceptionally tight, and it’s not easy to fault the game’s feel. I didn’t quite get a sense that the A.I. had improved out of sight, despite the team’s focus on creating a greater sense of immersion with enemies that were still easily duped and companions that, despite keeping their heads on a swivel, pathed rather awkwardly. Despite its clear strengths as a run and gun shooter, this game spent a lot of time turning the player into a vulnerable glass cannon in a handful of stealth missions. I’d never baulked at the slow burn ops historically, in fact I adore ‘All Ghillied Up’ from the first Modern Warfare, but the team’s decision to include mandatory crafting felt ill-considered. Scavenging for materials to cobble together smoke bombs and pry bars never feels as interesting as the covert stalking through enemy territory. 

The fidelity of the game’s pre-rendered scenes, much like Black Ops Cold War, is unbelievable. There were moments of such intense expression, captured in such detail, that I found myself questioning whether the scenes had been filmed live-action or not. It’s more or less matched by the in-game visuals, although there were noticeable pop-in issues in some of the larger open areas. 

Another vast disappointment is how the game performs. It does maintain a steady frame rate and runs rather well, it’s just that there are rampant bugs that mar nearly all facets of the game’s presentation. Hard crashes to the dashboard are one issue, though it’s the audiovisual glitches that cheated me out of truly experiencing some of the game’s key beats unfettered. On one occasion, no audio outside of gunfire was sounding while on another a black screen lingered in place of arguably the story’s biggest plot twist.

It was discovered, after some troubleshooting, that a simple mission restart from within the menu should do the trick. 

It might be a result of having been worked on by just about every studio under the Activision banner, but Call of Duty has always kind of been a benchmark for consistency within blockbuster video gaming. Modern Warfare 2 isn’t a bad outing by any means, I just don’t feel it plays to the series’ strengths. The overabundance of glacial stealth missions and the crude introduction of crafting mechanics two-thirds through the game continually stalling any momentum the game kept mounting. It eventually roll starts and emerges as a decent war thriller, underpinned by the camaraderie of Task Force 141.

The Xbox Series X version of this game was played for the purpose of this review. 

The post Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II Campaign Review – Playing It Safe appeared first on Press Start.

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. 

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $69 WITH FREE SHIPPING.

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.

The post New Tales From The Borderlands Review – Tale As Old As Time appeared first on Press Start.

When I reviewed No More Heroes III just over a year ago, I absolutely adored how it attempted to wrap up or at least provide a definitive end to Travis Touchdown’s story. For the most part, my opinion hasn’t changed but playing on the Nintendo Switch last year led to a myriad of performance issues. Now something we’ve come to expect from third parties on the Switch, No More Heroes III rectifies these performance issues by making the jump to other platforms. Make no mistake, this is the same game, but one with better performance and, without a doubt, the best way to play.

No More Heroes III takes place nine years after the events of the second game and two years after the events of Travis Strikes Again. Travis Touchdown is once again the star and takes it upon himself to protect the planet as an alien ship descends on Earth. Onboard is an intergalactic alien prince known simply as FU, who has brought with him a troupe of other aliens who want to conquer the planet out of sheer boredom.

No More Heroes III continues the story of Travis Touchdown from previous games. Still, as a standalone game, it is easy enough to follow. The history of the characters is rich – some of which spanning over a decade of games – but I wouldn’t be put off if you haven’t played the first two games or even Travis Strikes Again. Certainly, the direction that No More Heroes III takes might seem a bit out of the left field, but it naturally progresses from where Travis Strikes Again left things.

Regardless of your experience with the series, there’s no denying that No More Heroes III is a stylish affair. An endearingly potent love letter to video games, it’s clear that this is a product that auteur director Goichi Suda had every hand in creating. This isn’t just a tribute to No More Heroes as a series; it’s a celebration of Suda and his distinctly endearing style of game-making. It’s self-aware and fantastically written. That being said, one or two characters definitely didn’t need to make a return and aren’t entirely developed as much as the others, but overall, No More Heroes III is Suda’s stylish best, easily.

No More Heroes III plays closer to the original game than its sequel. You play as Travis Touchdown as he works his way up the Galactic Superhero Rankings. Essentially, you have to kill ten different bosses to save Earth from destruction. But this competition is run by the UAA, so in between missions, you’ll have to scrounge the open world for jobs and money to pay for each of your ranking battles. It’s a simple premise held together by the strength of its set pieces.

Speaking of simple, the combat inherits aspects from previous games while adding its twist. Travis will now fight with the identical beam katana from beginning to end but still retains his wrestling move repertoire. In addition, the death drive device on his arm can now be equipped with skills that are a little wackier – including installing turrets, teleporting dropkicks, and telekinetic throws. These do a great job of keeping the combat fresh without completely overhauling it – which is great as the combat in No More Heroes III is the smoothest the series has ever had.

Such streamlining has been applied to the structure of the game too. In previous games, you’d enter a level, fight through enemies and then battle the boss. In No More Heroes III, you’ll be treated to some scenes detailing the boss and their relationship with FU before being thrown straight into the battle. This revised structure has proven to be divisive between fans in the past year, but I feel that it results in a much better-paced experience with little to no downtime – a common issue that I found with both of the previous mainline titles.

But don’t fret – this doesn’t mean there is less “game” on offer. Between missions, Travis can explore five districts of an open world. To progress, you’ll find preliminary qualifying battles to take place in or pick up odd jobs to make money to pay for his entry fees. The battles are all single-room affairs that have you fighting all kinds of unique enemy types. These admittedly feel super game-like in how separated they are from the story, though it also, once again, means that No More Heroes III feels immaculately paced.

I say this because No More Heroes III commits to throwing new stuff at you regularly. I can probably count around ten unique enemies in the game, but mixing those battle encounters with other activities keeps things fresh to the end. These other activities include collecting scorpions, shooting crocodiles off the coast, going into space to defeat flying space peacocks with a mech suit, and mowing the lawn. It’s a wide variety of activities that never force themselves onto the player excessively but never feels like grinding if you want to go for extra resources.

But what would a No More Heroes game be without boss battles? Absolutely nothing – so it’s a boon that pretty much every single one on offer here is fantastic. Where previous games would throw ten battles at you and rely on the uniqueness of each boss to shake things up, some of these battles can even be described as genre-bending. I’m not going to ruin any of them here – that would be cruel – but every one of them has a uniqueness to them that can’t be understated.

Regardless of which difficulty you play on (though I warn you – Spicy is HARD), using extra resources allows you to improve Travis and his abilities however you want. You can invest in some pretty standard upgrades to health, damage dealt, and the like. But you can also craft chips that will improve some aspects of Travis while reducing others. I favoured wrestling moves more during the later battles, so I equipped chips that would enhance my wrestling damage while dropping damage of moves I never used. It’s a system that never feels one hundred percent necessary but is there to tinker with to get that extra edge on harder difficulties.

Most players will get twelve or so hours out of No More Heroes III depending on how much you do, though my first run took around fourteen. But there’s so much more to it than running through and doing all the battles. All kinds of collectibles are strewn throughout the open world. While they’re unnecessary, they will help those who want to finish the more formidable difficulty modes on New Game Plus. There’s, of course, a bunch of shirts and collectibles to find too.

In my original review, I was a massive fan of the artistic direction of No More Heroes III. It’s a bright style that pops with vibrant and numerous colour, though different from the previous two games in the series. It’s never dull to look at, and the bump in both resolution and framerate with this updated port only helps the game’s presentation. Where the original Switch version performed well during battles, there were still some pretty noticeable framerate drops during more intense battles and when exploring the game’s open world. Thankfully, with these ports, these performance issues are almost non-existent. They’re not rock solid, mind you, but the faster load times and better performance make this version of No More Heroes III the best you can buy.

The soundtrack is bold, brash, and vibrant on the other side of the presentation coin. An eclectic mix of electronic, industrial, and even some reggae-tinged pieces permeate every battle and every menu to give the game a vibe like no other. The voice work is similarly fantastic – and it’s such a joy to see everyone return to voice their respective characters, no matter how small their roles might be. As expected, Robin Atkin Downes is the standout here, lending Travis a cocky bravado like never before. Other highlights include Noshir Dalal, who voices FU with so much charm and intensity that I want to be mates with him, even if he wants to conquer my planet.

As I played No More Heroes III again, I continued to be enamoured with just how engaging an experience it is. At first glance, it looks like a retread of the things that No More Heroes has done before – a bunch of boss battles with some kooky direction and a cringe-worthy protagonist. But No More Heroes III is so much more than that – it subverts all your expectations to offer some of Suda’s best work. And this updated port makes things only better.

THE XBOX SERIES X|S VERSION WAS PLAYED ON A XBOX SERIES X FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post No More Heroes III Review – An Even Better Experience appeared first on Press Start.

There’s a lot of confusion surrounding what Overwatch 2 actually is. Is it a fully fledged sequel? A glorified update? Is it worthy of the 2 appended to its title in a seemingly desperate fashion? Even after its proper reveal in June of this year, many were left wondering that the game would actually entail. The answer lies somewhere in the middle of all the discourse and conversation surrounding the sequel to Blizzard’s seminal hero shooter.

Fundamentally, Overwatch 2 is a reworking and revamping of the original experience, made free in an age where live service games are becoming more and more accessible to the masses. With a shift to 5v5, an increased emphasis on teamwork, and thoughtful new hero designs, Overwatch 2 makes a good first impression, but ultimately, it feels incomplete and lacking in content.

A vast majority of the changes in Overwatch 2 come with changes to its core foundations and overall structure. The change to 5v5 as opposed to 6v6 is one that feels thought out and deliberate, placing more emphasis on the role of tanks and teambuilding for particular playstyles. It ultimately makes way for a quicker, more frenetic moment-to-moment experience that feels different from its predecessor but not to the point that it abandons its core identity. It’s clear that Overwatch 2 is going in hard on being a team-focused game, which comes with it’s own set of pros and cons.

While it’s relatively fun to solo queue into quick play matches, the real satisfaction comes from playing with friends, regardless of whether or not you want to coordinate and play seriously, or just casually and for fun. Being able to communicate and play as a team always was core to Overwatch’s core gameplay loop, but it feels even more paramount here, and is all the more rewarding for it. The downside to this is that the game just isn’t as fun playing solo, often feeling somewhat mindless and mundane outside of a competitive setting.

To adjust for the shift to 5v5, a few of the original heroes have been tweaked, adjusted, or straight up reworked to fit better into the new team sizes. Each role has their own passive abilities now to help them further, from support heroes gaining passive healing after a set amount of time or tanks taking less knockback and generating less Ultimate charge for healing and received damage.

Heroes like Orisa and Bastion have had their skills changed for the better, placing stronger emphasis on their roles and gameplay loops, giving them more identity in what’s grown to be a large roster. A special shoutout should go to Doomfist, who’s been entirely reworked into the Tank role, functioning as a sort of hybrid between offensive and defensive heroes. He’s loads of fun to play and balancing high-speed aggression with trying to stay alive was constantly entertaining and engaging. There are definitely some heroes who feel lost in translation, such as Widowmaker and Symmetra, who haven’t been adjusted to work better within a 5v5 framework, which is made even more noticeable by the heroes who did get brought forward.

The three new heroes coming at launch, Sojourn, Junker Queen, and Kiriko are all a resounding success as well. Each one has a kit that feeds into itself and flows with clear strengths and weaknesses. Sojourn, for example, is a high speed damage dealer with a rail cannon that’s charged up by its primary fire. She also has a projectile that functions as a vortex on impact, making for easy headshots with said railgun. Junker Queen and Kiriko have similarly coherent designs that feel like a definitive step up from some of the stuff we saw in the first game – especially at launch.

Not all is so consistent on the game mode front, unfortunately, and it’s made even more apparent here with the core changes made to Overwatch’s foundation. The new game mode, Push, sees teams going head to head over the control of an endearing robot, who will push a barricade towards the enemy’s spawn when in control of either team. It makes for a dynamic and ever-shifting battlefield where you constantly have to adapt to new terrain and evolving team compositions, and often results in some tense tie-breakers. The downside to this is that some of the other objective based game modes like Escort feel archaic in comparison, especially when the core gameplay has potential for so much more.

Map design is similarly untouched, with a few of the old ones fitting into the changes and others not so much. The six new maps coming with launch feel tailor designed for it, though, so I often found myself more excited to play on those than a majority of the returning maps. These maps are also set in new and interesting locations that hadn’t previously been explored before, including the likes of Rio De Janeiro, New York City, and Rome.

If all of that sounds bare-bones in regards to new content, that’s because it is. Overwatch 2 is launching with one new game mode, three new heroes, and six new maps, which feels decidedly lacking for what is meant to be a whole new sequel. The most glaring omission is the lack of the new PVE mode due for release sometime next year, which one can only assume is the reason things are so content-light on the multiplayer side of things. Still, though, it’s hard not to feel like Overwatch 2 is more of a glorified content update as opposed to a whole new beast at launch.

As with any live service game, Overwatch 2 is adopting the seasonal model, with roughly nine-week long seasons introducing new heroes, maps, game modes, and a season pass. While every new hero is automatically unlocked upon purchasing the season pass, players who choose to stick to the free track can only unlock them upon reaching tier 55, which is another strange decision given the already lacking number of brand-new heroes. Battle pass progression is also noticeably slow, even for those who pay for the premium track.

There’s also some baffling decisions that have been made in regards to the new player experience. As a first time user, you have to unlock the original cast of heroes from the first game over roughly 100 matches, limiting the potential pool of playable characters for new players right from the start. While I can understand the amount of options might be overwhelming for some, it’s a strange decision given the emphasis on teamwork and teambuilding, especially with competitive play unlocking at 50 quick play match wins.

One thing you can always count on with Blizzard, though, is production values and polish. Overwatch 2 is yet another outstanding showcase of attention-to-detail with characters that are positively bursting with emotion and personality, a timeless art style that’s quality is only emphasized by the engine upgrades, and fine-tuned optimization that leaves every aspect of the game feeling smooth and seamless. The new heroes, maps, and design reworks are particularly inspired, but even if some aren’t for you, there’s the option to opt for their Overwatch skins as well. Thankfully, all of your cosmetics also carry over to Overwatch 2 here, so there’s no need to worry about any precious skins or gold guns.

THE PC VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Overwatch 2 Review – A Solid Foundation But Lacking in New Content appeared first on Press Start.

Visual Concepts has finally found its groove with this year’s NBA game, knuckling down on the fundamentals while improving on a range of modes both new and old. It’s still not without its shortcomings, but there’s never been a better reason to jump back into the series than now. 

A lot of this comes down to the gameplay, which has seen significant improvement across the court. New animations make the game look and feel more like the real thing, while a welcome refresh to passing, in particular, provides a sense of freedom for players on offence. All players now have adrenaline boosts, too, which has been implemented to stop players from overdribbling. Each player has three boosts, which are consumed by performing explosive sprints. When you’ve consumed these boosts, your player will be noticeably slower until the shot clock is up or possession changes. It’s a welcome change, though it’s a bit odd that every single player has the same amount of boosts, no matter their experience or rating.

Defending has received a notable uplift, with well-needed refinements to shot blocking, steals, and ball strips, allowing for a range of different defensive maneuvers to call on throughout the course of a game. Similarly, match ups across the court are closer to what you see in the real world, with the game actively rewarding you for stacking the right player up against a dribbler and making the right decision when electing to block or steal. It’s a well needed refresh that injects a better sense of reward when taking risks, whether you’re on offence or defence, and it’s something that the series has desperately needed of late.

A refined focus on the court allows for NBA 2K23’s returning mode to shine, too. The Jordan Challenge, which looks at 15 of the biggest moments in Michael Jordan’s career, is a fantastic trip down memory lane of one of the all time greats of the game. The mode walks you through moments that defined Michael Jordan’s career, from his early college days to the iconic Bulls vs Jazz 1998 NBA Finals game.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $68 WITH FREE SHIPPING FROM AMAZON.

Throughout each of the games, you’ll be asked to complete a range of tasks. These range from relatively basic requirements like winning the game to scoring a certain amount of points or getting a particular amount of rebounds. This, combined with the excellent presentation package on offer, makes the Jordan Challenge one of the standout modes in 2K23 by some distance. Whether you’re an avid fan of the game or have dabbled in the sport every now and again, there’s something on offer for everyone in the mode.

MyNBA has seen a welcome refresh this year with the introduction of MyNBA Eras. Rather than focus on just the present, the mode now allows you to jump back to defining eras in the sport. Whether it’s the Magic vs Bird era from the early 80s to the Modern era, MyNBA Eras gives you the reigns to play through (and potentially change) iconic moments that changed professional basketball as we know it. Presentation packages, commentary, kits, courts and players are all expertly recreated here, making for one of the deepest modes in a sports game by a mile.

The Jordan Challenge’s visual presentation packages also make their way to MyNBA Eras, adding a nostalgic flavour to the mode. Jumping into the early 80s, for example, brings all of the classic presentation packages over while fuzzing up the visuals to look like you’re watching the game on a much older screen. While the filter can be turned off, it definitely adds to the immersion of playing those classic match ups and is a nice option to have.

I was particularly happy to see a bigger focus on the WNBA in this year’s game, with the inclusion of the Commissioner’s Cup a notable highlight. These inclusions are positive steps forward for the series, and there’s no doubt the mode is well above anything else seen in any other sports game right now, with a raft of options available for those wanting to play through The W or a WNBA season. 

NBA 2K23’s MyCAREER mode includes a range of improvements across the board, opening up a range of new ways to carve out your own story as an up and coming NBA star. Whether you want to dominate the paint or dip your toes into the world of a modern basketball star – where fashion, business and music are also huge parts of a player’s career – there’s more than enough content here to keep you entertained for a long while.

That said, the game’s story still finds itself going a bit too over the top for my liking and is filled with lots of grinding for those that don’t want to cough up some money to improve stats. Because of this, I found myself gravitating towards the more rewarding modes, like MyNBA Eras and the Jordan Challenge, rather than getting bogged down in the MyCAREER grind. Microtransactions are littered throughout MyCAREER, unsurprisingly, making the mode feel like it’s more keen to grab your money than it is about rewarding you as a player.

It’ll come as no surprise to hear 2K23’s MyTEAM mode continues to be the weakest mode of the bunch. Filled with predatory microtransactions, I found myself bouncing off of this mode relatively quickly. That said, there are some nice minor additions, with the single-player focused Clutch Time mode a particular highlight. Looking past this, though, it’s still easy to see the litany of issues I have with the way the microtransactions are structured and pushed. Your time’s better spent elsewhere in 2K23. 

While it still has its issues, Visual Concepts has done a good job in setting the NBA 2K series up for a positive future. The Jordan Challenge is excellent, and the improvements across almost all of the main modes are well appreciated. The game’s core gameplay has seen some well-needed revitalisation, too, coming together to form one of the most enjoyable basketball sims in many years.

The post NBA 2K23 Review – A Solid Step Forward appeared first on Press Start.

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.  

The post Wayward Strand Review – Everybody Needs Good Neighbours  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.

The post Pac-Man World RePac Review – A Platforming Relic appeared first on Press Start.

When Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird came up with the idea of four mutant turtles with ninjutsu skills in the 1980s, few would have believed that such a franchise could still be going strong nearly forty years later. But by the late 80s and early 90s, having the video game licensing to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was in effect a license to print money, and Konami were ready and raring to go. Here we arrive in the present day with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, a treasure trove of thirteen games developed by Konami for various platforms in their heyday; with genres spanning beat-‘em-ups, fighters, and platformers, and all featuring everyone’s favourite heroes in a half-shell.

TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection is a glorious trip back through time with an emphasis on preserving the game the way they were, while still throwing in some extra features and cool little easter eggs. This is how you want games to be emulated – scaled up for larger screen sizes (so it doesn’t look like you’ve just plugged a NES into your 65” OLED panel) as well as tweaked for speed and controller responsiveness.

Yes, it is still a tad jarring to be playing an old-school Game Boy game on your TV, but Digital Eclipse has done a fantastic job in mastering all of the retro titles for modern consoles and PC. There’s even some great TV/LCD screen filters to overlay as well, and the option to play certain games in their Japanese release too. For those who can’t stand the challenge, there’s save states and rewind modes to keep you from throwing your controller through the screen, and where available, local co-op is available too. At the time of writing, I wasn’t able to play the online features, but I guarantee if it’s anything like couch co-op it’ll be a blast.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $59 WITH FREE DELIVERY AT AMAZON

Outside of the games themselves, Digital Eclipse has raided the vault and provided a wealth of material to explore when you’re not playing as well – concept art, design sketches and even box art is available to flip through for each title, so you can see the full history of the game without having to track down a physical copy.
But enough gushing about the features, what about the games? Well here’s a brief run-down of what you get in the Cowabunga Collection (in order of their original release);

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES): The original TMNT game for the NES which plays like an RPG game. Players transition from side-scrolling action to overworld environments in a top-down perspective, with the ability to switch between Turtles at any time. If your Turtle’s health drops to zero, they are ‘captured’ by the enemy (but can be saved and returned to the team later on). Be prepared to be frustrated by the map obstacles and the overall difficulty.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade): Chances are this is the game that your parents, older siblings or relatives fed countless coins into back when it was released. With the ability to pick one of four Turtles (usually the arcade cabinets had a designated spot for each one) players venture through Manhattan in an effort to save April O’Neil and Splinter from the evil Shredder. Each Turtle has pros and cons to their gameplay style, and the enemies are colour-coded to the way they attack as well. Fight your way through each stage until you reach the boss battle at the end, usually a notable TMNT sub-villain.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES): It wasn’t going to be easy porting an arcade game with its own board to the NES, but Konami did it anyway. Extending the existing levels and throwing a few extra stages in as well, the game (billed as a sequel due to the TMNT moniker taken already) lacks any multiplayer mode but does pretty well to hold its own.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (Game Boy): The first handheld entry in the series, the game is a platformer where the four Turtles must venture to save April O’Neil while taking down Krang and Shredder. A pretty vanilla outing, but a good place to start nonetheless.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time (Arcade): One of, if not potentially THE best beat-‘em-up arcade games around, Turtles In Time builds on its arcade predecessor by adding more attacks and new stages. This time around you’re tasked with taking down Shredder and returning the Statue of Liberty to its rightful location. Expect to be hitting the “insert coin” button a fair bit though, because the difficulty really ramps up as you play through.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers (Game Boy): A more polished sequel to the Fall of the Foot Clan game. Switching between Turtles before a stage, each Turtle has their own strength and weakness in gameplay. The game adds a bit more depth than just a simple platformer, with sections that can be jumped to in the background and foreground.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES): A sequel to the NES port of the arcade game, but also an original title. The game takes its cues from the 5th season of the TMNT cartoon, and improves on the original NES port by speeding up the gameplay and introducing a two-player mode.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time (SNES): The first entry for the SNES, and in my opinion the best of the lot. The port of the arcade game resembles its original title very closely, and adds levels and assets from the original arcade game to make it a longer, more fun experience. This game is worth the price of admission alone.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis): Of course it wouldn’t have been fair on the Sega fans if they couldn’t get in on the TMNT action. Essentially a re-skinned version of Turtles in Time for the Genesis/Mega Drive, The Hyperstone Heist changes up a few of the boss characters and stages from Turtles in Time and creates a new story, while maintaining that difficulty.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy): The third game in the Game Boy platformer series, we see a huge shake-up in the gameplay – no longer linear and horizontal, the stages also become vertical and add the ability to collect full pizzas to keep your health up as you fight your way through to save the Turtles from capture. This one gets a bit frustrating though, as enemies seem to re-spawn once just out of frame.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (SNES/Sega Genesis/NES): Don’t be fooled – the games may have the same title, but all three iterations are wildly different.

The SNES version plays like a TMNT-skinned Street Fighter II, where you fight and build up a Mutagen Meter to perform special attacks, as well as having weak and strong kick and punch buttons assigned to the controller. The game introduces characters from the ‘Archie’ series of comics.

The NES version was the last game Konami released outside of Japan for the system, and strangely the game was never released in Japan. The game sees the Turtles hold a contest to see who is strong enough to take on the challenge of Shredder.

The Genesis version sees the Turtles and allies travelling through Dimension X, fighting clones of themselves as they rescue Splinter from Krang. This version is strangely darker and less fluid.

Of course, these games are all relics of their time, and are not without flaws – but usually indicative of the limitations of their technology. NES games still get some severe slowdowns with heaps of units on the screen, the Game Boy games have jarring and repetitive 8-bit music, and most or all of the games in the collection have a degree of difficulty that some are just not used to these days. Thankfully with the ability to change settings prior to playing, a lot of these gripes can be stopped before you start.

The PS5 version of this game was played for the purpose of this review.

The post Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection Review – The Sweet Spot appeared first on Press Start.

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

The post Cult Of The Lamb Review – The Kids Are Alright appeared first on Press Start.

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.

It’s bizarre to think that just nine months ago, MultiVersus leaked. A seemingly random collection of characters from Warner Bros. wide range of properties, it was hard to not write it off as a cynical Smash Brothers cash-in. Following several leaks and an early preview several months ago, MultiVersus is finally here. And while I was wrong about quite a few things from my initial impression of the reveal, it’s easily one of my most played games this year.

At first glance, you’d be forgiven for assuming MultiVersus was a clone of Super Smash Bros. The premise is remarkably similar – four players enter an arena and battle it out until nobody is left. The damage system is identical, too, with higher damaged enemies flying further when attacked. Flying out of bounds of the arena results in death and a point scored to the other team. But that’s where the similarities to games like Brawlhalla and Super Smash Brothers end – there’s a wealth of options in MultiVersus whether you’re playing with someone or solo.

When I previewed the game a few months ago, I was taken aback by how similar the game was to other successful service games like Apex Legends, Fornite and even Fall Guys. I even expressed some concern about the pace that you progress through the game. There are heaps of tasks to undertake to unlock currency, which can be used to purchase characters and cosmetics. As someone who lived through the first six generations of gaming, I will forever be skeptical about games that hinge their progression on lengthy time commitments from the player. But after two to three hours with the game, I had enough to unlock another character which felt reasonable given that the game is free to play.

Now that I’ve clocked over thirty to forty hours of the game across multiple platforms, I’m inclined to say that MultiVersus is a pretty good time and value for players. So far, there are around sixteen characters, and each has had so much love and care put into them that I can’t help but be excited to see who the team brings to the fold next. My favourite is still Velma, who fights with speech bubbles, calculations, and idea light bulbs. But other characters like Bugs Bunny play true to their Looney Tunes origins with over-the-top, brash cartoony special moves that add to the chaos of the fight. It’s a well-varied roster with a surprising amount of depth that I absolutely adore.

Similarly, the game still plays as well as I played it several months ago. It’s incredibly fast-paced, but at the same time, the controls are tight enough that it doesn’t feel slow or floaty. While not as tactilely satisfying as Smash Brothers, the heft of the attacks makes the game feel expensive. That might be a bizarre term to use. Still, the dedication to ensuring MultiVersus has a solid fighting engine and mechanics to build upon by the developer will surely pay off in the long term. It, quite simply, is one of the best-feeling platformer fighter I’ve played.

But perhaps the only barrier to my enjoyment was my initial expectation with MultiVersus. It’s most definitely not to be played or experienced like Smash Brothers. Whereas Smash Brothers has a shallow skill floor and mechanics that mean you can achieve basic competence with any character, MultiVersus almost demands you pick a main and stick with them for a bit. The depth of each of the characters’ move suites is so vast that, like other competitive fighting games, you’ll get the most out of it if you learn the ins and outs of a single character.

The most unique thing about MultiVersus is that the game is ostensibly designed around it’s primary mode – 2v2 teams. The characters in the game all have moves that usually have some kind of benefit to the team. Velma can buff her teammates she hits with her attacks but similarly debuffs an enemy if those attacks land on them instead. The all-original character Reindog can tether themselves to their teammate and pull them in should their teammate be in peril, though anyone touching the tether in the meantime still takes damage. Wonder Woman can even shield her partner from attacks. They’re all great touches that make this game feel like something more than the other platformer fighters on the market.

It’s the sense of team that really brings MultiVersus to life. The best matches I’ve had are the ones I play with friends – and while they’ve not all been well versed in how to use the buddy abilities – it’s been a real joy to either be saved or save them from danger at the end of a very dicey match. Other modes are on offer here, including a free for all mode that introduces items, but given how chaotic things get during 2v2, I found just throwing something else into the mix makes things even more so. Still, it’s an excellent option and one that I’ve especially enjoyed playing locally. I have and will continue to enjoy 2v2 when playing online, personally.

I’ve briefly touched on the nature of character unlocks, but everything else operates slightly differently. While I think the progression required to unlock characters feels adequate, the progression for everything else feels slow. To compound this, there doesn’t look like a lot to unlock or work towards in the current season pass. This is something that I’m almost certain will improve with time, but right now (besides characters themselves), things unlock slowly, and there isn’t a whole bunch to unlock. Skins are expensive too, but this is no different from other games of this ilk – they offer nothing of value in terms of gameplay and can be easily ignored.

A word of advice is that you can access any of the characters in The Lab offline. Think of it as a try before you buy system and one that I implore you to engage with before spending your precious gold., especially for some less conventional fighters like Arya or Tom & Jerry.

From a presentation aspect, MultiVersus is a great-looking game too. It boasts some rock-solid performance, and the art direction is similarly fantastically consistent. I’m genuinely excited to see how the developers will bring in other characters from more realistic franchises and match them to the art style of the roster here. If Arya Stark and LeBron James are indications, it’ll be incredibly executed. While the characters and art direction are great, the same can’t be said for the levels. While they’re all different locations, MultiVersus definitely has a variety of problems with its arenas that I can only hope will be fixed with future updates.

But perhaps the most prominent aspect that sticks out as being incredibly lacklustre is the music. Where there are so many fantastic franchises to pull some incredible music from, MultiVersus instead offers up dull and generic music that does little to inspire or motivate. It feels like the music you’d hear at a low-rate theme park rather than an inspiring medley of themes or motifs. Once again, I can only hope it improves as time goes by, but for now, it’s sorely lacking.

While it’s clear that some things need work on MultiVersus, it’s encouraging to see that the things that truly matter – the unlocking of characters and the core gameplay systems – are the things that have received the most attention. These are easily the two strongest tenets of MultiVersus’ offerings thus far. With time, I can only hope that the lack of variety in levels, lacklustre music, and slower cosmetic offerings can be remedied.

The post MultiVersus Review – A Strong Start With Some Earnest Effort appeared first on Press Start.

You’d have to be keeping a pretty low profile to have missed the hype surrounding Stray – the debut indie title from French development team BlueTwelve Studio that puts players in the shoes (or paws?) of a cat in a post-human world. After being picked up for publishing by Annapurna Interactive all the way back in 2016, the wait is over and the cat game is finally here! And I’m happy to say it’s bloody excellent.

The majority of Stray’s narrative takes place across a mysterious walled-in city (inspired by the now-demolished one in Kowloon), originally designed to keep its citizens safe from ‘The Outside’. Only, what was once a haven populated by humans is now a relic passed down to some of the only beings to have outlived catastrophe on the inside – a community of former companion robots. After accidentally falling into the city while exploring with its clowder of cat companions, our feline protagonist finds itself befriending a drone named B12 and starting off on a quest to find its way back.

With a translator now on hand to communicate with the robot population it quickly becomes clear that all are still living in deep fear of the outside, but the trail of a group of rebellious bots looking to prove that things are better beyond the walls leads the pair of hopeful escapees on an adventure across the city. It’s a simple but compelling enough setup that asks little of the player except to enjoy its stunningly-crafted little world and endearing characters and to that end it succeeds. Not least because the entire thing is a sumptuous visual feast that’s lush with detail soaked in gorgeous lighting and packed with impressively-rendered and animated characters. It’s the kind of video game space that I’d happily occupy well beyond the events contained within and just take in the sights and sounds. It’s one of the best-looking games I’ve played in ages both technically and artistically, and a seriously impressive effort from a small team.

Beyond its exemplary work in every other area, BlueTwelve’s greatest feat with Stray is crafting one of the most convincing and endearing video game heroes of our time. The unnamed leading kitty is a joy to control, bounding naturally up and down objects and structures in exactly the ways you’d expect from a cat. Better yet, there are countless opportunities to truly embody the cat life by unnecessarily knocking things over, scratching up furniture, nuzzling against the legs of strangers, sleeping and doing a heap of meowing – that last action even comes with its own dedicated button. There’s a really strong commitment on show to making sure that whatever challenges the game presents you the solutions really require you to ask the question, “What would a cat do?”

Stray also triumphs at making its adventure simple and satisfying to navigate which, given the perspective and agility of a cat, is impressive. Despite having all manner of structures, objects and furniture to climb, narrow walkways to cross or nooks to slip into it’s nearly always a cinch to read the environment and understand how and where to manoeuvre though. In lieu of a dedicated jump button, simply looking at something traversable will result in a button prompt to appear and allow you to perform the appropriate action. Your drone companion is also consistently helpful, reaching for switches and items you can’t and keeping track of whatever it is you’re meant to be doing.

The whole adventure is split up into distinct chapters with most new locations offering a slight change-up in gameplay. Some, like the slums or midtown, will give you some breathing room to explore populated areas and pick up a smattering of optional collectibles on your way to your core goals. Others are more linear, with some based around platforming, others around (fairly forgiving) stealth puzzles and some occasionally dipped in action sequences that see you trying to avoid or eradicate Zurks – gross, rat-like glowing alien creatures that eat just about anything have been decimating the robot population. It’s a good mix that means you won’t spend too long doing the same thing, but the chance to just wander around, get into mischief and interact with the often hilariously-written robot citizens in the more open sections is a definite highlight.

Whatever you’re doing, the pitch-perfect pacing and continuously inventive ways in which Stray presents cat-centric solutions to classic video game problems are very much worth celebrating. After the roughly five hours of gameplay required to see and do absolutely everything in Stray it’s not likely that you’ll come away having seen or done anything you haven’t before, but that’s hardly the point. This is a game about being a curious cat in an even more curious circumstance, and to that end it excels admirably. One aspect of the game’s ending does fall into a disappointing trap that feels unnecessary but is otherwise as cathartic and hopeful as you’d want.

The post Stray Review – A Meow-mentous Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

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.

The post Capcom Fighting Collection Review – Another Storied Celebration 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.

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.

The post Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge Review – Love-Letter Has Dimension X-Factor appeared first on Press Start.

Despite drawing inspiration from the best horror of the eighties, The Quarry takes place in the modern-day. You take control of a group of camp counsellors who decide to stay on for an extra night at Hackett’s Quarry, following their duties as camp leaders during the summer. A lot of bad stuff goes down, and things eventually unravel as alliances are tested, and things aren’t quite all that they seem. As with other Supermassive games, you’ll have to do your best to try and keep everyone alive and, as always, sometimes doing nothing is just as valid as a response as making a choice.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $81 ON AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING

You’ve probably already got an idea of what to expect from The Quarry. Suppose you’ve played any of Supermassive’s previous output, whether it be Until Dawn or The Dark Pictures games. In that case, there’s not a lot that’s changed here. An interactive drama of sorts, you’re tasked with making decisions and guiding your characters (ideally) through to the credits of the story. Every decision you make, no matter how innocuous, will usually affect how things play out. Like those that came before it, The Quarry tells a completely self-contained story, so you don’t have to play Until Dawn or any other games to appreciate it. It’s a very simple-to-play experience that I adore sharing with friends, no matter their skill level. 

While the story is the focus here, I’m wholly divided by it. Last month I was able to play a segment of the game and was excited to see how each character played into the mystery and just what the mystery was. I think that mystery wraps up nicely in the end – there’s nothing I was unclear on as the credits rolled – but I’d felt like I’d seen this story so many times before. That’s not to say it’s a bad story, I enjoyed the journey it took me on, but given Supermassive’s pedigree, I can’t help but feel they’d played it safe. I found beauty in the simplicity of Until Dawn seven years ago, but in the time since then, so much has happened in the genre. Even in the wake of Supermassive’s own Dark Pictures games, The Quarry feels almost pedestrian.

The most remarkable aspect of The Quarry that no other medium can ever accurately reproduce is how choices affect how the story plays out. As I mentioned previously, seemingly innocuous choices you make throughout the story may have instant consequences or latent ones much later in the game. Choosing to break into a cabin to get your belongings early on out of pure laziness might mean that same door won’t lock later on. Choosing to defend yourself in a fight (rather than run) might see your character mess up and die or cause a chain of events to get another character killed.

The choices you make aren’t ever visually documented in a way as simple as games like Detroit: Become Human did it, but I’d argue that’s because the consequences are so much more multi-faceted. A nice touch is that, at any point, you can pause and browse each of the “paths” you’ve chosen. They’re styled as old-school VHS horror films, and while they don’t show you the path you didn’t take, they do give some clues as to how each of your choices might have interacted with each other.

There were so many moments in The Quarry where I’d have this moment of realisation. This mental backtracking is where I realise how my actions have affected the result I’d come to. None of them ever feel unfair or unwarranted. Still, hindsight is always 20/20, so it’s perhaps I’m overcompensating for my own biases.

The main collectible in The Quarry is Tarot cards. At the end of each chapter, you’ll be able to give them to Eliza. She’s a fortune teller played by Grace Zabriskie, who plays a similar role to the psychiatrist from Until Dawn or the Curator from Dark Pictures. You can give her a tarot card on each visit, and in exchange, she’ll give you a short vision of the future. You’ll see a small piece of vision play out that’ll show you a character potentially dying in a future chapter. Of course, armed with this knowledge, you can attempt to avoid it, though the right way to do so isn’t always the obvious one.

I talked previously about how I felt that The Quarry was playing it a bit too safe, and I think that way, especially with the quick-time events. They’ve been grossly oversimplified in The Quarry (compared to Until Dawn and Dark Pictures). Most of them involve either moving the stick in a direction, mashing A, or holding A. There’s no mix-up to the buttons you have to press. Just putting these words to paper, I realise some might prefer that, but it meant that I almost knew what was coming whenever a more tense sequence started playing.

This is a shame because the accessibility options that The Quarry provides do a great job at adjusting the experience so that everyone can enjoy it. The difficulty and timing of the quick-time events and other aspects of the game can be adjusted to ensure that those who are naturally slower to react can still enjoy the game properly. I can appreciate this move towards accessibility, but at the same time it feels like, as a result, almost all of the challenge evaporates.

The breadth of multiplayer options returns from previous Supermassive games and, as always, is a welcome addition. Couch co-op is a blast and allows you to add as many characters as you want to each player in the room with you. While I will continue to enjoy this mode, it feels like each character has a different amount of screentime so some players might naturally be left playing less. I don’t know what the perfect solution is – but even a percentage indicator to indicate how much each character appears in the script, or something, would do wonders. In my session, I found myself selecting two characters who got the most runtime, so it felt like I was playing for most of the time.

Other ways to experience the story are also appreciated. Movie Mode allows players to just watch the story play out as film but choose whether everyone dies or lives. There’s another third option here – where you can adjust the individual personality of each character and just watch things play out too. This mode is a nice touch for those who want to see how things might play out without committing to a full playthrough, but it’d be so much better if (like a movie) we had ways to fast-forward it.

Of course, there is an online mode coming too, so if your current situation prevents you from catching up with your mates physically, hold out until that functionality is patched in sometime next month.

So is The Quarry scary? I’m hesitant to say so. While I derided Little Hope for incessantly throwing jump scares at the player, I adored House of Ashes for its restraint and the way it built tension. The Quarry doesn’t really do either – it feels more like a mystery thriller with a psychotic third act rather than a full-blown horror experience. That being said, some incredibly Gorey (and notably tense) sequences play out here, so it’s most certainly not for the squeamish. Stylistically, I adore how the creatures in this game “appear,” though I won’t say much more so as not to give away. So is it scary? Not outwardly, but it sure is tense.

As a whole, the entire cast turns in a decent performance. There were so many standouts here that I couldn’t possibly list them all, though my favourite was easily Lin Shaye as Constance. She plays so against type here that it felt a shame to see her relegated to so little screentime in the big scheme of things. I get it – this is a big cast – but so many of the older celebrities especially were more or less glorified cameos who showed up and then disappeared for a while. In particular, David Arquette is just playing a slightly savvier version of Dewey from Scream. However, this might be intentional given that a very similar tune plays when he’s on-screen in The Quarry as when he’s on-screen in Scream.

It doesn’t have to be said either. The Quarry is a stunning game and easily the best looking out of the Supermassive catalogue. So many times, I’d pause and be shocked that I was watching a game rather than a film. A few characters, especially Laura, have some facial animations that cross the uncanny valley a little bit too often. Still, on the whole, The Quarry is immaculately presented.

THE PC VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post The Quarry Review – An Enjoyable And Tense Cliché appeared first on Press Start.

As something of a platformer aficionado, I’m surprised that it’s taken me this long to play a Kao the Kangaroo game. The series first found life on home consoles with the Dreamcast original in 2000 before seeing a sequel on the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, but neither game or any subsequent spin-offs did particularly well with critics or audiences. It’s interesting then that some 20-odd years later we’re getting a brand new Kao game thanks to Polish studio Tate Multimedia, but unfortunately it seems Kao is destined to live in obscurity a little longer.

Kao the Kangaroo starts off much like any of its genre peers – a dark power has invaded Kao’s (pronounced K-O) world and spirited away a loved one, in this case his sister, Kaia. Armed with a pair of magical boxing gloves inherited from his equally-lost father, Kao decides it’s up to him to go and rescue Kaia and bring peace back to his world. I’ll admit, that’s about as much as I remember of this game’s plot despite how simple it is in theory, and that’s because as soon as the game’s events kick in it stops making any sense at all.

It’s probably a bit much to ask of a B-grade platformer to have any kind of compelling narrative, but Kao the Kangaroo’s writing is frankly dreadful. Plot points are introduced and dropped without warning or context, and at no point did I feel like I knew exactly what Kao was actually meant to be doing. Dialogue wavers between nonsensical and woefully unfunny, relying on borderline offensive stereotypes and punchlines based on horribly outdated memes. Worse still, in a world populated by kangaroos, koalas and plenty of cheap Australiana there isn’t a single Aussie accent to be heard.

All of this would be easily forgiven if Kao’s platforming was more interesting than its world or story, but gameplay here is unfortunately just as derivative and uninspired. Kao controls well enough and the game at least attempts to create a point-of-difference with its melee combat that grants its hero a scant few combos and a finishing move but it’s all bound to tepid level designs with annoyingly missable collectibles and boring puzzles. Kao’s gloves can be powered up with three different elements (fire, ice and wind) that allow him to manipulate different parts of the environment but every single one of the game’s puzzle sequences simply throws the necessary elemental power-up at you as it’s needed which takes away any and all challenge.

That’s not to say I never enjoyed the 7-8 hours I spent completing everything that Kao the Kangaroo has to offer, it’s still a classically-styled collectathon platformer so it’s sure to please long time fans of the genre even if it does nothing surprising. This is definitely a game better suited to young children who might want a Crash Bandicoot-inspired experience without so much challenge and who won’t balk at the middling boss fights and forgettable characters. Each of the 15 levels and 4 hub worlds at least looks nice as well, with plenty of striking and lush environments to explore. The game’s voice acting and music on the other hand are… decidedly average, and so I wound up switching them off in lieu of listening to my own music while I played.

Less forgivable are the constant bugs I experienced, everything from getting stuck in geometry to objects not disappearing, enemies wigging out, audio playing incorrectly, sound effects looping and UI elements lingering on screen. I didn’t experience anything that broke the game entirely or halted my experience but there were far too many times where I got stuck and wasn’t sure if I was doing the wrong thing or the game was behaving incorrectly. Usually it was the latter.

One particular issue, which isn’t a bug but as the game’s developers told me directly is intentional design, is that the game has no option to invert its camera controls. Such a basic feature being omitted with no plans to add it in after the fact is downright bewildering and sure to alienate a whole bunch of players – as an inverter myself I had to push on for the purpose of this review but I struggled with the camera throughout my entire playthrough.

The post Kao the Kangaroo Review – A Mediocre Blast From The Past appeared first on Press Start.

It’s been almost five years since we’ve had a new Sniper Elite game, and it’s safe to say it’s what developer Rebellion does best. They’ve dabbled in other experiences like Strange Brigade or even Zombie Army, the spin-off of this game. Still, none feel as slick or as polished as Sniper Elite. That being said, Sniper Elite 5 represents a major turning point for the franchise. It’s easily the best the developer has put out, but it’s also an indication that the series is perhaps in need of a bit of a refresh. And that all starts with its setting.

Sniper Elite 5 continues to follow hero sniper Karl Fairburne a year following the events of Sniper Elite 4. The US Rangers have tapped Karl to assist in weakening the Axis defense. It’s about a year after the events of the fourth game, and most of the major events take place around D-Day in France. Eventually, Karl contacts members of the French resistance before uncovering a secret Nazi plot – Operation Kraken – which he must both investigate and ultimately destroy.

There are some great attempts here to make Sniper Elite 5 more attractive, including introducing some more memorable supporting characters than ever seen before. Still, the truth is that the game’s plot is a little bit too pedestrian. We’ve perhaps had too many games take place during this conflict, and there’s really only so much you can do with it before it all feels like a retread. It’s a story rife with stereotypes and tired war conventions that I struggled to empathize with.

Thankfully, Sniper Elite 5 as a game is much better than the story it’s trying to tell. While it’s a fairly typical third-person shooter at a glance, there’s a lot to be found in each of the game’s wide-open levels. Continuing the design philosophy that I really appreciated in Sniper Elite 4, every level feels like a mini open-world. Large, sprawling and most importantly – alive. Each level is filled with things to uncover, whether main objectives or smaller optional objectives that provide greater experience rewards. There’s a lot to do in each level and they’re clearly built for replayability to, as each one has multiple entry points that must be unlocked and heaps of intel and collectibles to uncover.

Intel is the most interesting aspect here. In my first run of the first level, I found a radar tower that I had to destroy. The most obvious way the game led me initially was to scale it and use satchel charges to destroy it. Another way, however, came up on a repeat playthrough where I grabbed some intel from a dead body (or maybe somewhere else, I can’t be sure) and was instead given the location of a breaker box that would short the radar entirely without the need to collect explosives or scale it. It sounds minor, but it feels like a more natural progression from what Sniper Elite 4 offered and clearly highlights that there’s a lot more freedom in how you can approach your objectives.

Of course, the game is called Sniper Elite, so it would be remiss of me not to talk about the sniping. One thing I really appreciate about Sniper Elite 5 is how it allows you to customise the realism of how everything works. There’s an incredibly robust custom difficulty system that allows you to adjust how enemies behave, how much damage they’ll take but also other things that offer a more realistic sniping experience. The world is designed so that you’ll have to handle aspects such as bullet drop distance and wind into account, but if you want a more arcade-like experience, all of these features can be turned off. The result will appease both those wanting a more simulation-like experience with the game’s shooting or those who just want to line up the perfect shot and worry about nothing else with a less realistic, more game-like experience.

The X-Ray kill camera returns, too, as do options to either decrease or increase their frequency if you so wish. I thought I’d grown tired of this aspect, but it honestly never gets old. To line up the perfect shot and watch the bullet shatter the bone of your opponents or rupture their organs is a bit macabre but endlessly satisfying. The X-ray aspect has been expanded now, too – so sub-weapons can trigger them, too – but I’ll never get tired of watching a bullet pass through an enemy’s brain before splattering out the other side of their skull. I probably sound a bit unhinged talking about this, but it’s one of the most simple yet effective ways to make the kills in Sniper Elite 5 so gratifying.

Progression is similarly handled quite well. You are given a player level that raises with the completion of objectives and the achievement of specific kills that award you skill points. Points can then be invested in three (very modest) skill trees to improve how your character plays. Guns are also very customisable, and rather than obnoxiously tie these to grinding or levelling up, customisation parts are unlocked by finding gun workshops located on each level. Progression is fairly typical on the multiplayer side of things – level up to unlock load-outs, skins, and perks from one of four specialist classes.

While the open-level design is to be admired, and the kills are always so satisfying, some aspects of Sniper Elite 5 feel like they’re still stuck in the past. For a game that emphasizes exploration and openness, I can’t count how many times I’d go to run through a bush or past a fence and for it to be an invisible, impassable wall. This kind of game design feels, quite frankly, quite dated and is what’s really holding Sniper Elite 5 back. Too often, I’d be running from vantage point to vantage point, in a rush, and be stopped by a barrier that simply feels like it shouldn’t be there. I was frustrated with this in Sniper Elite 4, and it’s a shame to see it hasn’t been rectified here.

That being said, it’s admirable to see how many different ways you can play Sniper Elite 5. The whole campaign can be played with another person in co-op. The open nature of the level design lends itself nicely to splitting up and getting stuff done if you want to be efficient. I find it more fun to have one player on the ground and another spotting from a distance as a sniper – but that’s what makes Sniper Elite 5 so fun – the choice really is yours. More interestingly, another player can also invade your game at any point as an enemy sniper (though this can be turned off if you want a traditional experience), and it adds just another element to the already layered campaign.

There’s a suite of competitive multiplayer modes available too – though I didn’t spend much time with them during the pre-release period – they’re bound to appeal to series traditionalists as they return from previous games. Survival mode allows up to four players to take on waves of enemies and feels weirdly similar to Rebellion’s spin-off series, Zombie Army, sans Zombies. The other typical modes are here – free for all, team deathmatch, squad match and no cross modes. Squad match is the newest and has four teams of up to four players, whereas team deathmatch has two teams of eight battling each other. No-cross returns from Sniper Elite 4 and has two teams battling it out across long distances, separated by an impenetrable barrier to keep things fair and ensure its truly snipers only.

Sniper Elite 5 is easily the best looking of the series thus far in terms of presentation. The team at Rebellion has used photogrammetry to bring many of these locales to life, and the result is something that looks both realistic and crisp. The game runs at a very smooth sixty frames while looking beautiful on the PlayStation 5. While the original score is quite pedestrian, I appreciated the subtle accordion added to the music to really sell the idea that you’re shooting Nazis in France, even if it does feel a little on the nose.

THE PLAYSTATION 5 VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Sniper Elite 5 Review – Slightly Short Of The Perfect Shot appeared first on Press Start.

So many horror franchises are being adapted into the asymmetrical, four versus one multiplayer format. It makes sense – so many of those games often have groups of people running from a more powerful but solitary killer. Dead By Daylight is especially impressive for the licenses it manages to bring into its world, but none of these experiences has ever had the production value or competent gameplay to back it up. Evil Dead: The Game bucks this trend. Not only does it play remarkably better than its contemporaries, it is without a doubt the most fun I’ve had with a horror adaptation in a long, long time.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $59 ON AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING

Evil Dead: The Game doesn’t so much as tell a story as it celebrates one. A multiplayer game at its core, it brings together the best of the revered franchise. It fittingly adapts it to the ubiquitous asymmetric multiplayer experience that so many horror films seem to be co-opted for. Evil Dead feels quite appropriate for this setup – the franchise has previously been adapted into a Resident Evil-like horror experience and Dead Rising-like action adventure to average reception. For now, I’m confident in saying that this is the best adaptation of Evil Dead so far.

The premise for Evil Dead: The Game is simple. Four human survivors must rally together to defeat the Kandarian Demon. This unseen force can possess and manifest beings called “deadites,” which are creatures pulled from the franchise’s history. It’s a simple premise, though it feels more like an action-adventure style of game rather than the hide-and-seek style seen in games like Dead By Daylight, Friday The 13th and presumably the upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The twist here is that players can step into the role of the survivors or the demon, though you can play against an AI demon if you so wish to.

While it’s only been a week since launch, there is clear debate on which side of the battle is easier. My first instinct was that it was much harder for the survivors to be victorious, but playing the amount that I have for the past week, it’s been clear that a good team of well-coordinated survivors can easily beat the demon. Perhaps that’s what sets Evil Dead apart from its asymmetrical contemporaries – the fact that good teamwork is almost essential to survive. You’ll rarely be able to “wing it” by going solo.

Regardless, the survivors have a bit more to do than the demon. In each match, your team will have to explore a (rather large) area to find three pieces of a map. They’ll have to defend two points against waves of enemies for a certain amount of time before heading to an area to vanquish a demon and then protect another point. It’s a simple set of objectives that could get old quickly, but playing with different groups highlighted how dynamic the game could be. This fed into a set of new challenges to face every time I would play.

The survivors themselves are all uniquely tailored – each of them has a unique ability and unique stats that affect how they play. Your character’s stats can be boosted temporarily, like a MOBA, and are wiped at the end of the match. The other, more expansive skill tree gives you the ability to increase more permanent traits about your character. The latter can’t be completely filled but can be changed at any time, so you’ll have to really dedicate your points to a specific build of your character rather than just work towards maxing everything out entirely. I like this approach – it means that even though everyone might get to a max level with a specific character, their specific builds on the skill trees might ensure the player pool doesn’t all play the same.

Obviously, the demon plays solo but can summon a wealth of AI-controlled creatures to assist them. Each of them plays differently, too, but the demon’s gameplay emphasizes attempting to separate and pick off the survivors. The demon can do this by setting traps for the survivors and possessing certain inanimate objects to instill fear in the survivors. Raise their fear enough, and you’ll be able to possess the survivors themselves to either create in-fighting amongst the team or just waste precious resources. It’s well and truly griefing, but it’s so fun to mess around with players that it cleanses me of any guilt I feel.

Games like these will live and die on how they’re supported in the future, though, and that’s where it becomes difficult to predict Evil Dead’s longevity. At the moment, there are only really two maps with the same sets of objectives. Although there is great effort to make them feel different with weather effects and time of day, it feels a little light. Upcoming updates promise to bring at least one new map to the fold, and there’s potential to introduce content from the 2013 soft reboot. It’s much too early to make a call, but if the content keeps coming and things continue to be balanced, Evil Dead could have longer legs than any of the asymmetric multiplayer games.

I say this because there is one thing that’s absolutely obvious about Evil Dead: The Game, and that’s the fact it feels very well put together. Combat is responsive and fast whether you’re fighting with a gun or a melee weapon. There’s an Alan Wake-esque dodge, which is remarkably powerful if you learn to use it properly. So even under insurmountable odds, it’s possible to escape dicey situations. There’s no doubt that this game flows and plays better than, say, Dead by Daylight or Friday The 13th, so the foundation is well and truly there to overtake those games with enough future support. It’s just whether Saber will capitalise on that is to be seen.

There are also some single-player missions and options to play against the AI for those who don’t want to play against other people. Though they’re reasonably short, the missions offer up vignettes inspired by the films and recent television series. There’s also little to no production values here – expect to see some text with some (admittedly very nice) artwork to push the story along while you run between objectives and fight waves of enemies. To put it bluntly, even if you’re a fan of the franchise, these missions are well and truly not worth picking the game up for.

Overall, Evil Dead: The Game offers up a rock-solid foundation upon which I hope the developers will continue to build. While I’m getting close to spending thirty hours with it, I’m still having a lot of fun and do not want to stop anytime soon. Some little niggles that will no doubt be fixed, such as certain button prompts not working immediately, are outshone by what is an otherwise robust and cross-play enabled netcode.

THE XBOX SERIES X VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Evil Dead: The Game Review – A Surprisingly Robust Multiplayer Experience appeared first on Press Start.

Growing up my family didn’t have much disposable cash to spend on entertainment, let alone video games, so when I did eventually come to possess a PlayStation console it was by way of a hand-me-down from a relative. This particular PlayStation happened to be modified too, so it came with a bunch of highly questionable copies of games ready for me to play. This instant inherited library was what kickstarted my love for JRPGs and where I discovered my favourite game of all time in Final Fantasy VIII. Little did I know though that I’d also been blessed with access to a ton of games that were never actually released in Australia or other PAL regions. Games like Chrono Cross, the highly-regarded follow up to the SNES classic Chrono Trigger, and a game that’s never been (legally) available outside of Japan and the US before now.

That all changes with the release of Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, which not only plants the game firmly in the hands of gamers the world over and on a multitude of platforms but updates it with modern visuals and a few extra features to sweeten the deal.

The original version of Chrono Cross released to critical acclaim back in 2000, and with good reason. Rather than rehash what had come before in Chrono Trigger, the PlayStation sequel brought entirely new gameplay systems along with a compelling and well-told story that stood triumphantly on its own. By some black magic, the team managed to pull together 40-plus playable and swappable characters amongst a parallel-world plot with all of the bespoke dialogue and scenarios that involved and still come out with an end product that worked. It didn’t hurt either that it continued Square’s penchant for gorgeous visuals and CG cutscenes in its PS1 releases and came complete with one of gaming’s all-time great soundtracks thanks to Yasunori Mitsuda.

The game’s gameplay and battle systems were equally praised for bucking convention in the turn-based JRPG space. Combat deftly combined a risk-reward attack mechanic that balanced hit percentages and stamina with a meta where characters would receive buffs when the field of battle filled with an element they favoured. It also eschewed the idea of invisible random battles as well as employing a rudimentary point-and-click style of item interaction, all things that made it stand out against its contemporaries as the plucky and slightly experimental cousin to Final Fantasy. Of course there’s not much I can say about Chrono Cross itself that hasn’t been said many times over (and better) in the last 22 years. What I’m really here for is to break down what’s changed in the Radical Dreamers Edition and whether that makes it worth your time and money to play the game again or for the first time.

The biggest difference in Chrono Cross on modern consoles is obviously the HD graphical upgrade and this is probably the Radical Dreamers Edition’s most contentious change. See, it’s great to be able to play the game in much more modern resolutions but due to this being an upscaling of the source content and not a full-scale rebuild the results are a mixed bag. Much like Final Fantasy VIII Remastered, it’s a case of the updated character models and UI elements looking markedly better than their original counterparts while everything around them somehow looks slightly worse. The re-done 3D elements are sharp and new character models remain faithful to the originals while being given a tasteful update that still feels in step with the time, and the new character art in menus and text boxes is fairly nice across the board as well.

What’s most disappointing is the vaseline-smear filter applied aggressively over every pre-rendered background making them even less cohesive with the other visual elements. You’re able to switch back to ‘Classic’ visuals if you really can’t stand it, but only from the main menu and only with all the other HD updates turned off as well. Factor in as well the inconsistent frame rates and there’s a roughness that just doesn’t feel right in a modern HD re-release of such a revered title. It checks out given this release is an emulation as opposed to a full-on rebuild but it still sucks that more couldn’t be/hasn’t been done to make this the best way to play Chrono Cross. Hell, fans have done an excellent job with this on their own in the past.

It’s in the quality-of-life updates to the battle system that returning fans will likely find the most joy in replaying the game with this version. For starters you can turn battles off entirely which is a godsend during exploration, especially given that grinding battles isn’t really a viable way to progress in Chrono Cross anyway. When you do get into a fight you’re able to switch on an auto-battle that lets the game handle everything for you, as well as toggle on what is essentially an invincibility mode that causes every enemy attack to miss your party. Combined with a fast-forward toggle, this can really help with monotony out of fighting basic monster parties if you’re comfortable with breezing through everything. 

Not everyone will be compelled to tap into these options all the time but there are definite moments where they take the edge off of some of the game’s pain points. Dealing with that frustrating horse-feeding minigame in Viper Manor? Just switch on slow-motion mode and show those horses who’s boss (it’s them, they’re being fed literally hundreds of times in one night). The fast-forward and slow toggles are actually a holdover from the original but they’re available right away now, as opposed to unlocked after completing the game, and they really come in handy for the impatient among us. I just wish there was a quick save/load option outside of the occasional auto-saving, it seems like such an obvious inclusion for a title such as this.

So far, so very much like every other HD port that Square Enix has brought to modern machines in recent years. One very cool point of difference here though is the inclusion of Radical Dreamers, a text-based adventure that predates Chrono Cross itself and was never officially translated to English before now thanks to its existence on the Japan-only Satellaview device for the Super Famicom.

As a kind of a side-story/parallel to Chrono Cross, Radical Dreamers follows Serge, Kid and Magil in a heist attempt at Viper Manor that would later go on to inform one of the main game’s early missions. It’s hardly essential playing/reading over its 3-4 hour runtime but definitely an interesting look into the attitude of the franchise’s creators heading into Chrono Cross, while also offering a unique take on text adventure gameplay with its choice-based combat scenarios, timed events and light relationship building. It also feels quite dark and violent in comparison to the main game in ways I hadn’t expected. Overall, it’s just nice to see it finally translated and released in an official capacity (and the translation work isn’t half bad, either!)

With the inclusion of Radical Dreamers and the handy quality-of-life stuff, there’s definitely good reason to check out this re-release of Chrono Cross if you’re a longtime fan or curious JRPG enjoyer. It’s not all good, the visual update swings wildly between pleasant and puke-inducing for one, but the more available this game is the better I reckon.

The post Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Review – A Welcome Bit Of History appeared first on Press Start.

In my household, the expectations for this LEGO game have been built up. Bigger than a UCS Millennium Falcon #75192. My two sons, Luke and Ben, are budding master builders of actual physical bricks and TT Games’ full catalog. And when it comes to Star Wars, well, they were sired by a Sith who covertly manipulated events to get them named after his favourite Force users. By the time anybody caught on, it was way too late.

So yeah, we’re a triumvirate of veterans who really wanted LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga to be a new hope, not another half-baked clone. You can imagine our surprise, then, when we played a fully armed and operational reimagining that represents a Force-jump in evolution for this franchise.

It’s important to manage expectations on Skywalker Saga from the get go, however. For starters, it’s not simply an up-rezzed, level-for-level remake of 2007’s LEGO Star Wars The Complete Saga. Obviously, that game only covered six films as opposed to the full complement of nine movies here. And though you’ll spot a tiny handful of similar gameplay sections and reused cutscene gags, this is very much a page one rewrite of the greatest Star Wars piss-take this side of Spaceballs.

For seconds, you’re getting full VO this time around (calm down, there’s a mumble mode for you purists). With a few exceptions, the soundalike actors they went with are excellent. They nail the little inflections your brain expects when hearing those classic movie lines for the umpteenth time.

Lastly, when we talk of mechanical upgrades, what’s been done isn’t the equivalent C3PO getting a red arm after ten years—somebody has taken a serious hydrospanner to the combat and class systems. They’ve even bolted on a universe scale sandbox—24 planets with three or so settlement areas apiece, orbit arenas encircling each world, and an absolute bantha load of collectables.

Honestly, what’s here makes the 2000s games look like LEGO DUPLO Star Wars.

If you’ve somehow never played one of TT Games’ titles, you should know that they’re best consumed in 2P split-screen co-op. (Online would have been nice, but it’s somehow gotten the saber chop.) Play this (Han) solo or with “another” as a Force-dyad, and the experience will be relatively the same: slapstick melee/pew-pew combat, mass destruction of property, some class-specific puzzling and simplified jumpy-jump platforming. However, with two people, you can have these emergent, low-stakes frenemy fights along the way.

Understanding that everybody Stans a particular trilogy, TT has wisely opted to let you kick off at the three generational entry points of Phantom Menace, A New Hope or The Force Awakens. If you stick to the breadcrumbed objectives markers and ignore the many, many opportunities to go off track, you can clock a single movie in roughly an hour and a bit.

That runtime is roughly in line with the prequel and OG LEGO Star Wars titles which spun their respective trilogies out into four hour campaigns each. Mind you, when you consider we got a 6-hour story from a single film, LEGO Star Wars The Force Awakens, Skywalker Saga feels like it’s paced like a pod race.

On a more positive note, there are the many enhancements I alluded to earlier. There’s now a four-button combo system that thwarts button mashers while monetarily rewarding speed, consistency and timely counter presses. Gunplay includes a cover system, body part damage, gun crate “trade-up” weaponry, and a third-person cam that requires some recoil control. Though it has to be said that the latter frequently reduces you to squinting through an X-rayed version of your avatar to get a good shot off.

As you’d expect, your fisticuff capabilities are determined by the unique class-type of your current minifig—Jedi, Hero, Scavenger, Scoundrel, Bounty Hunter, Villain, Dark Side, Astromech, Protocol or ‘Extra’. Including DLCs there are 380 characters, each of them offering a means to circumvent specific environmental obstacles, decipher new quests or just fold in a cool combat skill. Case in point: using Jedi to fully possess enemies.

Oh, and it’s also worth mentioning that there’s a sprinkle of stealth in here, too. You can slowly acquire stormtrooper armour to go incognito or stay out of enemy vision cones in these My First Metal Gear sections. Like most of the game, there’s not a huge amount of depth or challenge to any of it, but TT earns solid points for mixing it up.

If your pants piece ever gets tired of legging it everywhere, you can always whip out your holoprojector and take to the stars. While this game is no danger of being mistaken for Rogue Squadron IV or a mini No Man’s Sky, the dogfighting and level of freedom impressed me quicker than the mishap had in the droid assembly line level.

You can get nice little space battles going with your favourite starship, each of them with the ability to roll, boost and lock on with homing torpedoes. The orbit areas around every planet are decently populated with asteroid fields, multi-ship dogfights, spawning aces, Capital ships to board, and stud comets to vaporise.

Even though I had to finish this on a deadline tighter than a mynock’s embrace, I got led astray by the side-opportunities in Skywalker Saga. Let’s do this by the numbers: if you want to earn the mysterious 100% completion reward, you need to tick off 225 minikits, 135 level challenges, 140 side missions, 731 puzzles, 38 trials and 10 challenges. One of the latter is my personal favourite, a Wandering Wookie who repeatedly Where’s Wallys his furry butt around this colossal universe.

Double—possibly triple-digit—hours of quality gameplay aside, Skywalker Saga isn’t without some misses. In the movie retellings, some barely significant parts in the series are given altogether too much screen time. Quick example: you have to physically hop in an X-wing after exploding Jabba to fly into orbit, go through a light speed load, land on Dagobah, and do an uneventful slog through the swamp to Yoda’s place to watch him die. Level complete.

Conversely, some cracking setpiece moments in the films can get lip-service in a cutscene, even though they’re fertile ground (read: a nice flat green piece) for gameplay. Quick example: the TIE escape with Poe and Finn gets a five second nod. That was a 10-minute affair in LEGO The Force Awakens.

It also has to be said that the new upgrades system is thicker than a Hutt but roughly about as useless in places. The four odd perks for every class are heavily weighted towards making the incredibly simple combat even easier. I honestly forgot all about it until the end credits of Rise of Skywalker. You’ll probably invest in the perks that reward you with extra studs for doing [class-specific menial task here], then ignore the rest.

Oh, and if you’re playing co-op, may I suggest you quickly secure the significantly higher ground that is your first controller. Often will be the time when a climactic 1v1 boss battle reduces player two to that of an awkward extra. Typically that’ll be a droid who’s about as useful as a poodoo-flavoured lollipop.

Be that as it may, the positives more than outweigh the negatives with this game. Genuinely humorous games are in painfully short supply in our medium, and Skywalker Saga is one of the rare few that can make you chortle like Salacious Crumb on red cordial. When it comes to mission titling and Easter Eggs in the sandbox, this game has clearly been made by a bunch of super nerds whose meme game is utterly on point.

Likewise, the slapstick antics in the mid-mission movies are brilliant. Quick example: Han telling his co-pilot to punch it, whereupon Chewie misinterprets and hauls off into C3PO’s face. We’ve all wanted to do it at some point. Let’s be honest.

The good times elevate even more when you factor in the stupid fun of co-op, particularly if you do literally Force lift your friend over a chasm and let them drop. Even better, there are a host of ludicrous bonus modes to chase, like “pew pew” sound effects, baguette sabers and a universe-wide rave dance. These are the rewards that make the blue milk worth the massive bantha squeeze.

THE PS5 VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL REVIEW CODE WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Review – Feel The Co-Op Within You appeared first on Press Start.

When looking back on Borderlands 2 and the way that it influences the games industry today, its hard to omit its fantastic slew of add-on content that released in time after launch. One of the most well received packs was Tiny Tina’s Assault On Dragon Keep, where players are plunged into Tina’s Bunkers and Badasses campaign, which is Pandora’s equivalent to Dungeons and Dragons. Its success can be attributed to so many reasons; an entirely unique setting, a funny narrative with a surprising emotional pay-off, its sporadic and off the wall nature, and more.

Almost 9 years on from its release, we have Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a spin-off of the main series that takes the ideas brought to the table by Assault On Dragon Keep, and extrapolates them into a full game. While Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a Borderlands game through and through, it manages to carve out its own identity among the pack, bringing new and interesting ideas to the series while still retaining the core elements that hooked players in to begin with. It’s not without its own drawbacks, but Wonderlands is an enjoyable experience from start to finish – especially with friends.

One of the main things people took issue with in the long awaited Borderlands 3 was its main narrative, and villains – the Calypso Twins. Most of the humour didn’t land, weird story decisions were handled poorly, and it was an all-around uninteresting plot that lacked a lot of the charm from the first two games. Gearbox Software seem to have taken that criticism to heart because Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is mostly a step in the right direction in this regard, bringing with it a different kind of humor better suited to today’s world, well-written characters, and side quests that have no right being as entertaining as they are.

After crash landing your ship on Pandora, you join Tiny Tina and her group of friends as they embark on a new campaign in Bunkers and Badasses, with Tina at the helm as Bunker Master. After creating your Fatemaker, you’re dropped into the Wonderlands with the task of stopping the Dragon Lord. Its a simple, and easy to follow story that excels not in its premise but in its writing and characters.

It leans heavily into the themes and trappings of DnD, but much like Dragon Keep, the Wonderlands are ever-changing and unpredictable thanks to Tina’s explosive personality. It provides meta commentary on not only DnD, but video game design in general, with fourth wall breaks and constant prodding at tropes we’ve all come to expect. It’s brought together by another excellent performance from Ashley Burch as Tiny Tina, as well as a solid supporting cast with Andy Samberg as Valentine and Wanda Sykes as Frette.

While a lot of Borderlands 3’s jokes ended up falling flat for a lot of players, I found myself always entertained by the bickering and back and forth between these characters, as well as the occasional one-liner from Tina here and there. There’s a deadpan delivery to a lot of the humour here that feels much more suitable compared to the often cringe inducing monologues of the Calypso Twins. A lot of this is also carried over into the side quests you’ll find scattered about the Wonderlands, making each one worth investigating to see what kind of ridiculous situations they confront you with.

The core appeal of Borderlands has always been the progression, loot, and customization, all of which are retained in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, and in some instances, improved. Instead of choosing a class based on a preset character, you’ll create your own Fatemaker from scratch with an extensive character creator. Leaning heavily into DnD, you can tailor almost every aspect of your character to your liking. From physical traits to choosing an upbringing that affects your base stat spread, there’s a startling amount of control here that allows for a more personal attachment to your character and class.

Speaking of which, there’s a whopping six classes to choose from in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, each with two Action Skills, a passive ability called Class Feats and one skill tree to invest points into. While each one has its own unique playstyle and incentivizes you to use particular weapons for maximum effect, they’re not as fleshed out as previous offerings, but for one reason. In true DnD fashion, Wonderlands eventually opens up the option of multi-classing to you, allowing you slot an additional class, giving you access to that class’s respective Feat, Action Skills, and skill tree. Every time you level up, you also gain a point to allocate into your stats, which influence things like weapon damage, spell cooldown, action skill cooldown and so on, allowing for even more flexibility.

It goes without saying that there’s so much here to experiment and play around with in regards to class synergies and build crafting. My main class was the Spore Warden, sporting a poison-farting mushroom companion and an affinity for applying elemental status effects. Combine that with the Clawstrider, which also has a companion, with a focus on dealing lightning and fire elemental damage through various means, and you have one of many lethal builds you can use in throughout the Wonderlands. The ability to respec all skill and stat points, alongside changing your secondary class means this system gives the player plenty of breathing room and agency in regards to trying new things, which is refreshingly flexible and can alter your gameplay loop quite a bit.

The other big new addition in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands comes in the form of the overworld, which connects all of the areas you’ll explore for actual quests. As you traverse it, you’ll come across random encounters, dungeons, collectibles, side quests, optional areas and more. Each major segment of the board has a Shrine that can be activated by collecting all of the shrine pieces in the area. These can be found in overworld challenges, dungeon encounters, or even backtracking, and they permanently boost things like loot quality and experience gains once unlocked, making them well worth the effort.

It’s a great inclusion that adds more depth and personality to the Wonderlands, providing an explorable hub world to move throughout as opposed to a standard hub that you teleport to levels from. There’s a lot here to be found for those who love secret hunting, and while dungeons rarely do much to change up their encounters, the enemy and location variety is enough to keep things feeling relatively fresh.

As expected with anything Borderlands, there’s a metric ton of guns and loot to be found that improve your character in a myriad of ways. There’s a lot of returning weapon archetypes here that behave how you’d expect, but some of them are more than meets the eye. There are assault rifles that will fire cross-bow like bolts, or submachine guns that fire out homing balls of pulsating energy. It all fits nicely with the overall setting and theme that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands establishes, and this extends further to the Spells and melee weapons.

Funnily enough, grenades aren’t really a thing in the Wonderlands, but Spells most definitely are. Spells are abilities you can slot that are also on a cooldown alongside your Action Skill, but each one behaves differently and has varying fire modes. From Fire and Forget Spells to Hold and Charge Spells, there’s plenty here to choose from and they drop just as often as guns do. Melee weapons also add an extra wrinkle onto combat, allowing you to customize your build even further and placing more emphasis on a typically mundane and one note action – especially if you’re playing the Stabbomancer class.

Once you reach level 40 and you start working out the finer details of your class and build, you unlock Mythic Ranking. Similar to Badass Ranks in previous games, Mythic Ranks are an extended progression system where levelling up nets you tokens you can use to slowly increase your stats to the highest they can be. The core difference in Wonderlands, though, is that Mythic Ranks are in the form of constellations, each one correlating to a particular playstyle. If you put a point into a particular tree, you have to move to a tree clockwise to the one you just invested in for the next point, which makes it feel rigid in comparison to the flexibility of other systems.

Where Borderlands has always allowed players to truly flex their build, is in the end game content. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands main end game comes in the form of Chaos Chamber, a randomly generated run through encounters that you can make easier or harder for yourself depending on how handsomely you want to be rewarded. As you clear waves, you can opt to activate modifiers that increase how many crystals you get as you complete a run, which are eventually used in the final room to chase certain weapon archetypes. The catch is that if you use up all of your lives in any given run, you’re booted back to the world and have to start fresh, making it a sort of rogue-lite mode.

It’s an addictive risk versus reward loop that incentivizes you to challenge yourself in the never-ending chase for loot, and it can all be played with friends or matchmade with strangers. Couple this with the Chaos Levels unlocked upon beating the campaign where you can increase enemy difficulty for more loot akin to Mayhem Levels, and you have plenty of reason to come back to Wonderlands after the credits roll. One weird omission that I couldn’t find was the option for new game plus, a staple in previous Borderlands games that’s seemingly absent here. I’m not sure if Gearbox want to pivot to a different kind of end game or if it’s being added in at launch, but its definitely disappointing that it’s missing here.

That’s another thing that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands should be applauded for, the cooperative play available at launch is mostly comprehensive. Aside from the disappointing lack of local PC coop, there’s almost everything else you could possibly want from a Borderlands game. Both the campaign, and Chaos Chamber are fully playable in coop, and both can be matchmade for those looking for people to play with. On top of that, all platforms will support cross-play on launch, meaning players can venture through the Wonderlands together, even if playing on different consoles.

If there’s one thing that never seems to get old about Borderlands, its the tried and true cel shaded art style that defines the visual aesthetics of these games. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is no different, but there’s something special about the way this world has been translated into this art style. These are some of the most diverse locales we’ve seen in a Borderlands game yet, from sand swept Sunfang Oasis to the lofty Tangledrift, there’s so much to see here within the trappings of fantasy that wasn’t explored in Assault On Dragon Keep. I’m also happy to report that the game feels very polished aside from one crash and some odd frame drops I experienced in one particular area.

THE PC VERSION OF THIS GAME WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands Review – More Than A One Shot Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

WWE 2K22 is a shining example of what taking a year off to reassess can do for a series. Following one of the worst WWE games to ever see the light of day in WWE 2K20, Visual Concepts has done an extraordinary job in executing the ultimate babyface turn – delivering one of the best wrestling games in years.

This starts with 2K22’s gameplay. What used to be one of the worst elements in recent 2K wrestling games has now become one of the best. The redesigned gameplay engine allows newcomers to pull off awesome-looking moves while being deep enough for veterans to seek their teeth into. Animations are less janky when compared to recent entries as well, making every move look closer to the real thing. The camera’s positioning, now much closer to the ring, plays a big role in enhancing the moment-to-moment action and is another welcome change to the game’s general presentation. This all comes together to form a more cohesive presentation package that kept me captivated throughout the many matches I played.

The control system’s revamp is a particular highlight this year. Light attacks, heavy attacks and grapples are assigned to individual face buttons and can be chained together to form devastating combos against an opponent. Reversals can still be performed through the assigned reversal button; however Visual Concepts has added a ‘breaker’ option – a new type of reversal that can quickly put you on the front foot. These are executed by guessing what the opponent is about to press – whether that’s the light attack, heavy attack or grapple button – and pressing the corresponding button at the same time. This will put an end to whatever move they’re trying to execute – whether it’s a chained combo or a few basic attacks – allowing you to then start going on the offensive yourself.

When executed correctly, breakers can change the entire flow of a match. On harder difficulties, these become necessities and ultimately make matches in 2K22 feel more fluid and enjoyable to play. They add an extra element of strategy to the mix, taking a step closer to what we watch on television each week all the while adding to the fun of the experience. After many years of the same old formula each year in these games, 2K22’s gameplay feels as fresh and exciting as a wrestling game ever has.

This year’s Showcase Mode covers the long-running career of one of my favourite wrestlers of all time, Rey Mysterio. Most of the matches included in Showcase Mode are pivotal matches in Mysterio’s career, like the Wrestlemania 21 match against Eddie Guerrero and his match for the World Heavyweight Championship against JBL at Judgment Day 2006. It was great to revisit these with commentary from Mysterio himself, as it provided a deeper insight into the importance of each match. Given Mysterio’s long-running history in the brand I was disappointed that only one WCW match was included, and the recent matches included were all relatively insignificant. It seems like a lot of the classics – like the Wrestlemania 22 triple threat match and his match against Chris Jericho at The Bash in 2009 – weren’t included due to the opponent either leaving WWE and/or joining up with rival brand AEW. All-in-all, it’s a nice look back at one of the most storied careers in WWE history, but it could have been done more justice.

On that subject, WWE 2K22’s roster is the weakest in some time. Neither good nor bad, there’s an odd mix of wrestlers in this year’s entry. A surprisingly large chunk have now either departed WWE or have been released, yet still made it into the game. In some ways this is great, as still having access to wrestlers like Jeff Hardy (one of my other all-time favourites) and Samoa Joe gives the roster some depth. Yet legends of yesteryear and notable up-and-comers are few and far between. Lucky those omissions can be downloaded through the rather excellent creation suite, huh?

MyGM suffers a bit because of this, but that still doesn’t take away from what is one of the best modes in WWE 2K22. Taking the reins of a WWE General Manager and battling it out against a rival with the goal of becoming the top-rated show, MyGM sparkles by shining a light on a different side of wrestling than what’s offered in the game’s other modes. Here, you pick which brand you’re going to take to the top, draft superstars to your chosen show and schedule matches and rivalries that will captivate the crowd.

Throughout the mode you’re able to directly control superstars in matches or simulate to your heart’s content – whatever you do, success is determined by examining wrestler types and setting matches up between wrestlers who can produce exciting matches with each other. This is where MyGM can get a bit confusing, though, as dream matches you thought would be instant classics – like Drew McIntyre vs Goldberg, for example – can earn underwhelming one-star ratings for being too boring. Drew McIntyre vs Riddle, though? Potential gold. It’s a bit bizarre, and it most definitely feels a bit wrong to pit superstars like Rey Mysterio up against Brock Lesnar, but there’s enough offered up in the mode to make it feel unique.

Throughout the MyGM season you’re able to sign free agents (as most of the big hitters won’t be available in the draft, weirdly enough) on either timed or permanent contracts as well as legends. You’re also able to use power cards, which can be earned by achieving a goal set by your commissioner each week. These give you bonuses to use on your superstars, on your own show or against the rival brand and play an important role in coming out on top.

You’re also given a budget in MyGM and need to keep a close eye on it as you progress. You’ll earn money for well-received shows which can be then used to buy more power cards, put on a better show (with a bigger arena, better lighting and pyros) and/or sign superstars to join your brand. MyGM rewards strategy first and foremost, and I enjoyed carving out different rivalries with wrestlers and having them crescendo at PPVs.

It’s a shame MyGM maxes out at 50 weeks long and only allows you to have two titles per brand (alongside a limited amount of match types), though I’m hopeful that this is a starting point for future iteration. I’d love to see more than just one rival brand to take on at the same time, while a long-winded schedule would call for some proper strategic planning. There’s certainly a lot of potential with the mode.

MyRISE takes a solid step forward this year, throwing away the wackiness seen in 2K20’s MyCAREER mode. Starting out at the WWE performance centre, MyRISE takes your created superstar through the ranks of the WWE, ultimately carving a path toward winning titles and achieving ultimate glory as a legend of the business. The voice acting here is still a little bit wonky, but it’s a more refined, grounded take on wrestling this time around. The sheer number of things to do gives the mode more than enough staying power and is a marked improvement over previous iterations.

The well-loved Universe Mode returns in WWE 2K22, too, allowing you to play through as a superstar or control all facets of the WWE in Classic Mode. There’s not a whole lot that’s changed here, but it’s the go-to option for those that want to dive deep into the business, controlling the many different storylines that run each week. Superstar Mode bakes that down to just playing as one superstar, forming rivalries, competing in a variety of different matches and attempting to win championships along the way. I found Classic Mode to be more rewarding than Superstar Mode, given the sheer number of options available in the former. It’s another solid option to sink your teeth into — just don’t expect any shiny new changes.

2K22’s MyFACTION mode, a single-player collectible card game that focuses on building a strong faction and competing against other factions, is rather dull. You earn points for completing objectives, earn tokens to spend on WWE superstars and, of course, buy virtual currency if you so desire.

I found MyFACTION to be the weakest mode available in 2K22 as progression felt slow and I have a particular disdain for 4v4 matches. They’d go on for far too long and I didn’t feel like I was really achieving anything by going through the mode’s proving grounds or towers. Progression in the game’s other modes will give you tokens to use in MyFACTION, but again I couldn’t help but feel like it was the least interesting mode of the bunch by some margin – especially when there’s so much fun to be had elsewhere.

It has its issues, but there’s no doubting WWE 2K22 is the best 2K wrestling game in many years. The new modes on offer, the gameplay revamp and the reworking of controls makes for an immensely engrossing experience. There’s still some way to go in making MyGM feel truer to its strategic aim and the Showcase Mode is missing some major matches in Rey Mysterio’s career, but there’s no doubting this is a significantly better product than what came before it.

The post WWE 2K22 Review – Head Of The Table appeared first on Press Start.

It’s no secret that Bungie has had innumerable ups and downs with Destiny over the last 8 years, but never has this been more evident since 2018’s Forsaken. Shadowkeep and Beyond Light, while bringing plenty to the table, often felt like expansions built to lay new ground for the core of the game to build itself upon. Expectations for the next major expansion were high, touting a long awaited villain in the form of Savathûn, a renewed focus on campaign design, and weapon crafting. It’s not without its growing pains, but after some time exploring what The Witch Queen has to offer, I’d argue that The Witch Queen isn’t just the best Destiny 2 expansion, but the best piece of content Bungie has put out since The Taken King, if not better.

If you aren’t familiar with the happenings of Destiny 2’s world, the last few months have been tumultuous to say the least. In the aftermath of exorcising Savathûn’s worm, Mars is suddenly returned to the solar system from the clutches of the Darkness, with Savathûn’s very own ship in tow. Upon boarding it, our guardians quickly discover that she has somehow stolen the power of the Light, gifting it to her very own Hive, and is using it to rebuild her Throne World. What follows is a 6-8 hour investigation into how Savathûn and her underlings came to gain this power, and how we can take it back.

Without spoiling too much, this is undoubtedly the best campaign Destiny has ever seen. Bungie had stated multiple times that there was a renewed focus on campaign and storytelling, but I don’t think anyone was quite ready for what we actually received. Eight extremely high quality missions, all superbly paced with engaging boss encounters, thrilling set pieces, and plot twists that even the most die-hard lore fans couldn’t have seen coming. Savathûn is more than just a typical antagonist – there’s merit to what she’s trying to achieve here, and what we find out about not only her and her Hive, but also the true nature of the Darkness is truly gripping from beginning to end.

There’s also the inclusion of a Legendary difficulty, which caps your power level below the mission’s recommended level, and will really put you to the test for those extra rewards as you play through the campaign. The cherry on top of all this is the option to replay any of the missions on either difficulty, meaning you can go through again on a higher or lower setting to see how it differs. For the longest time Destiny has struggled to turn its fantastic lore into immersive storytelling, and it feels like The Witch Queen – much like the last few seasons of content – is a real turning point for the franchise and a true return to form for Bungie.

While The Witch Queen doesn’t bring something as pivotal as all-new subclasses, it does mark the start of something much more important – the reworkings of the old Light subclasses, starting with Void 3.0. Those familiar with the way Stasis works will be right at home here. Each class can pick between different Super abilities, Grenades, Class Abilities, Aspects, and Fragments to allow for more customization and control over your builds.

The end result is truly remarkable, breathing new life into subclasses that felt ancient in comparison to the flexibility and adaptability of Stasis. Each class has a lot to play around with, and while there’s definitely some tuning needed for certain classes, there’s more reason than ever to be excited for Arc and Solar to receive the same treatment over the coming months.

There’s also the long awaited weapon crafting, which as of now feels like it’s going through some growing pains as Bungie works out how they want to implement it properly. A huge part of Destiny is the loot – chasing the rolls you want on all the new weapons that come out with each content drop.

It’s clear that weapon crafting isn’t supposed to replace this chase, but compliment it instead, allowing players to craft the roll that they covet for a particular weapon, and make it theirs. Unfortunately there’s quite a small pool of weapons to craft right now, and the caps for crafting materials are slightly too small, resulting in a lot of wastage as you earn other essential materials. While the core of it works and it serves its purpose, it’s clear that crafting is going to grow and change quite a lot over the next few seasons, which leaves it feeling like more of an experiment as opposed to a concrete addition to the game.

Weapon crafting is also the means by which we create the new weapon type: Glaives. A ranged/melee hybrid, the Glaive is unlike any other weapon type we’ve seen in Destiny before, boasting an energy blast, combos, and a shield that’s recharged by dealing damage with the projectile, it’s all about carefully weaving these actions together to become a lethal killing machine at close to mid range. While it remains to be seen how this archetype will fit into the broader  scope of content – especially endgame – there’s no denying that Bungie are still creating some of the best feeling weapons in first-person-shooters today.

The post-campaign content is also some of the most enjoyable we’ve had out of an expansion thus far as well. Wellspring is a 6-man matchmade activity that rotates between Attack and Defense everyday. Attack sees players launching an assault on the Wellspring to take it from the Hive, whereas Defense sees them protecting it from hordes of Scorn, eventually resulting in a chase against a Hive Lightbearer. Weekly Story Missions make their return here, allowing players to play specific story missions at a higher level for gear and weapon crafting materials.

In terms of more unique content, there’s also an all new Exotic Mission called Vox Obscura, which involves sieging a Cabal fortress under the cover of night to stop rogue transmissions from reaching their ominous receiver. This mission is a thrilling race against the clock as players blast open the doors to the Cabal installment with hijacked tanks, culminating in a boss fight and an all new Exotic weapon, the Dead Messenger. There’s so much variation in what The Witch Queen’s activities have to offer, and plenty of reason to engage with them, and that’s without mentioning the raid.

If there’s one day that the Destiny community comes together like no other, it’s during the first 24 hours of an all-new raid release. After a number of completions, both with the day one Contest modifier and on its normal difficulty modes, I think its safe to say that Vow of the Disciple is my new favorite raid in all of Destiny.

Without spoiling too much, the atmosphere and theme fits exceptionally well into the coming war between the Light and the Dark, and there’s a palpable sense of foreboding and dread that emanates from every major encounter in the raid. The boss fights in particular are undoubtedly some of Bungie’s best, bucking typical trends we’ve seen with bosses from previous raids that were becoming tired and overused. A special mention should go to the final boss, Rhulk, who is not only a spectacle to fight, but also has the lore and narrative chops to give the encounter meaning and context within the broader scope of the universe.

The final piece of the puzzle is the new season: Season of the Risen. While I can’t comment on its quality entirely as it hasn’t concluded yet, what’s here now continues the trend of challenging the beliefs of pre-established characters and throwing them into unforseen conflicts to gauge new perspectives and opinions, namely Lord Saladin and a vulnerable Crow, still reeling from the shock of Savathûn’s impersonation of Osiris.

This season is largely focused on working with Empress Caiatl and her legion to further uncover how the Hive came to posses the light. This is done through PsiOps Battlegrounds, a new 3-man matchmade activity that retains the trademark enemy density and fast paced gameplay we’ve seen from past seasonal activities. We’ve yet to see if this season will reach the heights of Season of the Chosen or Season of the Splicer, but Risen is off to a promising start, and I’ll be logging in every week to see how it develops.

It goes without saying that the state of PvE in Destiny 2 is arguably the strongest its ever been, unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Crucible, Gambit, and Trials of Osiris. While Bungie have been very transparent about the current state of Crucible and Gambit, the efforts made in The Witch Queen to help them maintain relevancy aren’t quite enough to bring them up to the same level as the PvE content. Crucible is still in dire need of maps, modes, and matchmaking adjustments, while Gambit is still largely uninteresting and frustrating despite the changes made at launch.

Trials of Osiris is its own bucket of worms. While a major shakeup in Season of the Lost saw player populations shoot up to an all time high in the playlist, it quickly becomes clear to anyone who engages with it that matchmaking is fundamentally flawed, and high-skill players abuse certain systems to get matched with low-skill players and promptly mop the floor with them. It’s not quite as bad as it was this time last year, but there’s still more work to be done to make Trials a much more healthy competitive experience compared to the luck-of-the-draw nature it currently suffers from for most players.

Bungie have always been praised for their excellent art direction, skyboxes and environments, and The Witch Queen is no different. Savathûn’s Throne World is distinctly divided between boggy swamps and Dark City ruins and a risen luminescent fortress built in the image of Savathûn’s newfound light. There’s a stark visual juxtaposition here that also communicates her developments as a character, further accentuating the themes of deception, and light versus dark. Once again, a special shoutout goes to the raid, which will constantly have you in awe as you ascend through one of the most visually unique raids we’ve seen so far.

While launch was surprisingly smooth, The Witch Queen wasn’t without its technical issues. Numerous weapons were disabled due to bugs over the last few weeks, certain activities can soft-lock players forcing a restart, crafting materials couldn’t be purchased, and the raid also suffered from various error codes on launch. While Bungie should be applauded for jumping on most of these in quick fashion, a few of them still plague the game today, and occasionally rear their heads to hamper the experience.

THE PC VERSION OF THIS GAME WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Review – An Immense Payoff appeared first on Press Start.

I’ll waste no words here. It’s remarkable that Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is actually fantastic. The first trailer was so misguided as a first impression that I’d argue it’s become a meme in and of itself. The demo wouldn’t work for several days following its upload. So many people I’d speak to have even forgotten this game exists beyond that first trailer. So much was against this game, and I was ready to be too. But now, having played from beginning to end, while still a bit rough around the edges, Stranger of Paradise is a fantastic Final Fantasy spin-off and perhaps even one of the best.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is essentially a retelling of the original Final Fantasy game, though told through an alternative “what-if” kind of scenario. You play as Jack, a man thrown into the world from another reality who barely remembers anything of his past. He meets up with four other similarly forgetful people. They set off on their merry way to restore four crystals in a bid to finally defeat Chaos, the evil being and final boss of the original Final Fantasy game.

There’s no sugar coating it – Stranger of Paradise’s story is the greatest most concentrated example of “so bad it’s good” that I think I’ve ever experienced in a video game. Jack himself is comically overwritten, and most of the game events occur with little connection between them. The opening scene where the major characters meet feels like it’s missing dialogue and context. It’s entirely cringe-worthy, but to the point where it was incredibly entertaining. I can see the plot and characterisation of Jack, especially being divisive amongst players. However, despite the fact this is abhorrently bad in terms of video game storytelling, it’s still remarkably entertaining.

It’s extremely fortunate, then, that Stranger of Paradise is a fantastic action game underneath it all. Much like Nioh before it with Dark Souls, many have been quick to compare this game to Nioh. While both are action RPGs, Stranger of Paradise carves out its own niche to offer something entirely its own. However, it’s similarly structured to Nioh. Each level is selected from a world map and offers a dungeon to crawl and a killer boss at the end. Some locations have more than one mission to offer too.

This means that Stranger of Paradise is comprised mainly of what it does best – combat. It’s without a doubt one of the fastest Team Ninja games I’ve played (second only to Ninja Gaiden itself) and has all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a game of this ilk. There’s parrying, evading, and blocking, and there are regular attacks and special attacks too. The most unique aspect is Soul Shield, a special block that depletes your stamina meter but recovers your MP.

The crux of the combat is around managing your MP pool, which powers both magic and special abilities that you’ll learn as you level up. Stranger of Paradise isn’t like other games in its genre – dying won’t lose you any experience. Instead, as you finish off enemies, you’ll be able to expand your maximum MP pool. Dying in Stranger of Paradise merely resets your maximum pool to its base levels, with an opportunity to return where you died to restore it too. It’s a much gentler way to punish players than games like Nioh, Dark Souls, and even Elden Ring did.

It’s all pretty standard stuff for an action game, though Stranger of Paradise does its best to fold Final Fantasy into that mix to offer up something much cooler.

Enter the jobs system. There are over twenty-five of them in Stranger of Paradise, and any Final Fantasy fan will be familiar with how they work. The job you choose for Jack governs what weapons he can use and what abilities he has access to. Most of these are pulled from classic Final Fantasy games – think the warrior, dragoon, or black mage. Each of them has their own skill tree that improves their abilities and grants bonuses no matter which jobs you have equipped. It’s a friendly system that encourages you to change things up, and, even better, you can hot-swap between two jobs at once on the battlefield.

What I really liked about the jobs system in Stranger of Paradise is how much flexibility it gives you in combat and how much depth there is to it. I’d often spend my time with the Sage – a master of both black and white magic – but also switch out my second job with one of the games many physical options too. Dragoons are masters of spears and can use the series signature “jump” move, while the Monks can buff themselves to deliver more damage per hit, as an example. There’s a heap on offer here, and being able to mix and match from a pool of over twenty jobs means there’s bound to be something here for everyone.

Similarly, while some abilities are tied to your job selection, others are bound to whatever weapon you have too. Learning one of the weapon-based abilities in one job unlocks it for any other job as long as you have that same weapon type equipped. These abilities are great, too – they can be slotted in between your regular attacks to alter your combos and create combos that best suit your playstyle. Top this with abilities that you can absorb from certain enemies and throwback at them, and you’ve got an excellent pool of options at any point in combat to pull from.

If I’ve not made it clear – the combat in Stranger of Paradise has greater depth and scope than I could have ever hoped for, and it’s why it’s such a joy to play no matter your playstyle or skill level.

The enemies and locations are similarly pooled from classic Final Fantasy lore. It’s fun to see all these classic creatures be tweaked to better suit the faster paced gameplay in Stranger of Paradise, and the boss battles can get especially hectic. Locations are similarly, while not exactly as they appear in other games, inspired by the classic games’ locations. It’s a bit of a shame then that about two thirds of the way through the game, the enemy variety is stifled considerably – you’ll fight pallet swapped versions of enemies you’ve already seen, though with different abilities.

Most would quickly take the mental shortcut and assume that Stranger of Paradise is as hard as games like Nioh or Dark Souls. While Stranger of Paradise can get pretty tough – it not only has selectable difficulties but even a casual mode that does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. I’m all for more people playing this game the way they want – even though I switched to Hard about a third of the way through to give myself more of a challenge. That being said, I never found myself stuck on any of the games’ numerous boss battles for more than an hour at a time. If you’re not as stubborn as me, you can lower the difficulty on the fly on a per-mission basis at any of the save points in the game.

Following completion of the game, there’s a brand-new mode called Chaos Mode, which feels like a new game plus mode of sorts that’s more difficult and tuned more with end game progression. Similarly, your job trees can be “mastered” to improve their benefits. So even though Stranger of Paradise will take most players between twenty-five to thirty hours to complete, there’s more to keep coming back for. Even cooler, two other players can tackle the game’s numerous main or side missions. Those who join their friends’ game will earn more than usual EXP through a consumable called anima shards, so there’s a nice incentive there to do so too.

The game isn’t without its faults, though. While it’s fantastic to be able to see all your collected gear appear on your character, Stranger of Paradise does fall victim to the dreaded looter-shooter mentality. I picked up over fifty pieces of equipment once, all with marginal stat differences in one level. To the game’s credit, it’s effortless to select multiple and discard them or dismantle them for components that can improve other weapons. But it feels pretty unfocused and, without a doubt, is one of the game’s weakest aspects. I rarely ever selected my equipment and just used the series-standard “optimise” option instead.

The game’s biggest downside is also the most obvious – its presentation. Stranger of Paradise looks great at times, but its production values feel remarkably low for the most part. I opted to play the game in performance mode, which meant an apparent reduction in resolution to get the game running as smoothly as it was. The worlds themselves are beautiful and well realised, as do most cinematics; it’s just that the game is lacking some kind of shine or polish to make it look as good as it can be. Mind you, it’s come a long way since the demo, with clear changes in lighting in an attempt to make it brighter and colourful, but it’s still a bit of a strange-looking game. It’s good that the music is great Final Fantasy fare, consisting of entirely original pieces and joyfully remixed pieces from older games.

THE PLAYSTATION 5 VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Review – Deep Chaotic Action appeared first on Press Start.

I have fond memories of being a teenage Car Guy the early 2000s. Going to car shows, reading car magazines, watching Fast & Furious movies and of course – playing the heck out of whatever racing games I could get my hands on. Some of the most memorable times were in front of Gran Turismo, utterly failing license tests in 2 and wondering if games would ever look better than Gran Turismo 3. It’s been a while since then, but playing Gran Turismo 7 has rekindled the same enthusiasm for cars that I had all that way back. The passion the developers have for cars and car history is infectious, and it’s hard not to catch the enthusiasm while playing through this intricately detailed driving simulation.

Gran Turismo 7 is eager to take any little bit of enthusiasm you have about cars and nurture it. More than just a driving simulation, GT7 wants to be a car enthusiast club and an interactive car museum. Playing through the game you’ll work your way through different styles of car from different areas of the world, learn about how the industry developed from its very beginnings and how different companies pushed the envelope in their own ways. I found the whole process super interesting and I’ve definitely come to appreciate more kinds of cars and the sheer effort that goes into developing and designing these machines over decades. GT7 teaches you all this in a way that is friendly and approachable whether you’re a die-hard car fan or totally new to the scene.

The main event so to speak, the actual driving of the cars, is pretty incredible. I can’t necessarily speak to realism since there’s not a lot of cross over between cars I’ve driven and cars available here, but the sheer level of detail Polyphony have captured in this simulation is impressive. The way your tires react differently in wet conditions, the way a turbocharger affects specific RPM ranges of your engine, even the different grip levels of different kinds of tires is noticeable. The sheer amount of factors you can tweak in your car and the environment is massive, and the fact that even a fair-weather car-guy like myself started to understand the differences when I made those tweaks is testament to how friendly and helpful this game at helping you learn.

One of the aspects that is difficult to replicate in driving simulations is the tactile feel. Past games have tried to replicate road surfaces through controller rumble for example, but Gran Turismo 7’s use of the DualSense haptic features really elevates the experience in a way I didn’t expect to appreciate as much as I did. I found myself unconsciously reacting to my tires slipping on a wet road as I felt the accelerator trigger slipping under my fingers and the way different sides of the controller gave haptic feedback depending on the road surface under each tire – they sound frivolous individually but add up to really feeling how your car drives more than I expected. I was amazed at how informative the haptic feedback was to my driving.

You’ll need every intuitive sense you have to wrangle some of these cars. Even the more tame, lower powered vehicles require patience and learning to get around a track. I found myself having an adjustment period for every new car I drove. It was a challenge, but it also makes every corner you get around without spinning out feel like a little victory. Thankfully, GT7 is super generous with the assists available so you can tailor the driving experience to exactly what you need to get the most out of it. You can start from one of three presets, and then drill into the specifics from there to get your experience exactly as you like. I found I really benefitted from on-track racing line and braking guides, but turned off the auto-accelerate and auto-brake options and this created a great balance of approachability and challenge for my needs. You can change these assist options at nearly any time. The game does softly encourage you sometimes to see if you might have outgrown some of the assists you’re using – but never forces the matter nor punishes you for your choices.

The World Map is where you’ll find most of the game’s ways to play. You can buy used or new cars, tune them to your heart’s content (with friendly advice from the mechanic so you can understand what each modification will do), enter races, or even take your car to one of hundreds of ‘Scapes’ for a photoshoot. The amount of content on offer is almost overwhelming – but thankfully the Café in the middle of the map provides some direction in what to do next if you’re unsure. Acting like a campaign of sorts, the friendly person at the Café will give you a series of Menu Books which act as gentle objectives to progress through the game with a gradual difficulty curve.

The objectives are usually about collecting cars through purchases or winning them in races, but over the course of the game will introduce you to all the core features available. It takes you through things in a logical way, encouraging you to get familiar with a particular type of car or part of the world for a while before moving on. I found the feeling of catching up with a friend at a cafe to talk about what I’d done, show off my cars and have him ramble on about history a lovely way to add a personal touch to what could have just been a sterile list of objectives.

Gran Turismo games have always pushed the envelope of what is technically possible on their respective consoles, and 7 is no exception. Every car is meticulously modelled inside and out down to the shape of the air-con vents and the tiny logos moulded into the headlight covers. Dynamic weather and time of day can change even during races, changing the driving conditions on the road as well as having an effect on visibility. There are two options for graphics modes in gameplay on PS5 – one which gets you a target 60 frames per second, and another that adds Ray Tracing at 30 frames per second. Both modes look fantastic so it’s down to how much you value more frames to decide which way you’ll prefer. I never noticed dips from the 60fps target, the driving experience was silky smooth. The game switches into the quality mode for non-gameplay scenes so you can appreciate the highest possible graphical detail where smoothness isn’t the biggest concern.

If there’s one thing that bothers me about GT7, it’s that your progress in the main game mode requires an internet connection at all times. The internet requirement enables some cool features like open lobbies at tracks to chat and have casual races, but being locked out of everything aside from quick race style events if your internet drops out sucks, to put it bluntly. I found if I dropped connection mid race the game wouldn’t save my progress, and I’d have to do the race over again. It stops you gaming the system by playing around with save files and the fact you can buy in-game currency on the PlayStation Store surely factors into it too – while it doesn’t ruin the game for me it’s a factor I think everyone should be aware of when looking at the game.

The post Gran Turismo 7 Review – Approachable Simulation appeared first on Press Start.

Since the release of Demon’s Souls in 2009, FromSoftware’s titles have blown up from cult followings to some of the most pivotal cornerstones we have in the industry today, influencing hundreds of games, and even creating its own sub-genre in the process. There’s a palpable and emphatic excitement present in the lead up to the release of a new From game, and never has this consensus been more apparent than with Elden Ring. It some ways, Elden Ring is a celebration of all that came before – a culmination of everything people love about Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro – while also elevating a well established formula to new heights with an open-world design philosophy similar to that of Breath of the Wild. The end result is one of From’s best experiences yet, positively dripping with creativity, attention to detail, and a sense of journey that will undoubtedly leave Elden Ring as one of the most talked about open-world games of this generation.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $79 WITH FREE DELIVERY AT AMAZON

Elden Ring is set in The Lands Between, a once prosperous and peaceful land that has since been plunged into chaos and desolation after a war suitably dubbed: The Shattering. The Elden Ring, now broken into pieces is held by six demigods, each of them corrupted by the very power of their Great Runes. It falls to you as The Tarnished to journey across The Lands Between, and fell these once great heroes so that you can rebuild the Elden Ring, become the Elden Lord and restore order and harmony to The Lands Between. If it sounds similar to Dark Souls III, that’s because it is, but where Elden Ring differentiates itself is in its setting, world concept, and characters.

Elden Ring’s founding world concept is the brainchild of a collaborative effort between Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin. While I’m not too familiar with Martin’s work on Game of Thrones, it’s clear to me where he’s had an impact on the way this world has been built and on the rules that it abides by. This is still a FromSoftware experience through and through though, you’ll meet an eclectic cast of superbly written characters, each cemented firmly into the world by their backstories and motivations. Whether it be the joyous and jolly Alexander, a sentient warrior pot, or the ever enigmatic Patches, there’s a little something here for everyone to gravitate towards. Likewise, the environmental storytelling on display here is as good as it’s always been, and every landscape effortlessly paints a picture of what we once was. No where is this sense of world and place more apparent than when exploring one of the many regions of The Lands Between.

Where Elden Ring separates itself the most from its predecessors, is in its structure and the way you progress through its world. After a short tutorial area, you’re dropped into Limgrave, a vertically varied landscape of lush greenery, and ruins, all of it punctuated by the mighty Stormveil Castle towering overhead. From this point, you’re free to explore to your heart’s content, with only the Sites of Grace – the new Bonfires – to nudge you in the right direction via an indicator on the map. While it’s easy to get lost exploring and sidetracked by all the optional content you can engage with, Elden Ring’s open world is at its best when you’re stumbling across things, spotting structures in the distance and thinking “What’s that?”, only to be rewarded with something upon further investigation.

These optional objectives can range from small-scale dungeons and enemy patrols, to overworld boss fights and new Sites of Grace to expand your fast travel options. Each region is densely packed with things to do, and none of them feel like bloat or wasted space, not once did I ever feel like I had to engage with them to progress the main quest. What’s more telling, perhaps, is the fact that I had to rip myself away from Limgrave to move onto the next area – a testament to the quality of these optional activities.

While you can fast travel to the different Sites of Grace you’ve unlocked across The Lands Between, your main means of exploration is via your spectral horse, Torrent. After progressing through the early areas of Limgrave, you’ll be given an item that allows you to summon Torrent at the press of a button. While mounted, you can double jump and make use of geysers to propel yourself up into the sky, making traversal that little bit more seamless. You can also engage in horseback combat, which more often than not feels clunky and lacks the impact of regular combat. Fortunately, the situations that require you to use Torrent to gain an advantage are far outweighed by those that don’t, but it’s still an awkward blemish on an otherwise polished combat system.

As you’re exploring a region for the first time, you’re almost always slowly moving towards that area’s Legacy Dungeon, an intricately designed exploration area that retains From’s expert level design that intertwines its own pathways and loops back on itself in unexpected ways. A special mention should go out to The Academy of Raya Lucaria, in the second area, Liurnia of the Lakes. Without spoiling too much, it’s a school ravaged by its knowledge-maddened alumni, with a thick fog that envelopes every aspect of its outside environments. It’s a dungeon that screams Bloodborne in its concept and design, and it’s a true wonder to explore as you ascend it’s gilded halls. All of these Legacy Dungeons are bolstered by some of From’s best boss fights yet, that will test your skills, and always seem to up the ante as you move forward, providing a challenging yet satisfying difficulty curve. Some are previous concepts taken further, classic one on ones, or wholly new ideas, and a vast majority of them – especially the end game ones – are thrilling to surmount.

Now for the elephant in the room – difficulty. While I wouldn’t say Elden Ring is the hardest of FromSoftware’s world renowned challenges, it definitely isn’t the easiest either. It is however, the most accessible. It’s clear that there’s a concerted effort here to explain systems and mechanics to newer players who mightn’t have much experience with other titles of this Ilk. Similarly, the non-linear design means that if you get truly stuck on a particular boss, you can leave, level up your character, upgrade your weapons, increase your Flask charges, and come back more powerful than before. There’s also the inclusion of Stakes of Marika, which will typically spawn you closer to your death location, making the inevitable trips back to the boss room relatively painless. Still though, this won’t trivialize encounters, so if you haven’t been one for smashing your head against a brick wall until the cracks start showing, Elden Ring won’t be the FromSoftware game to change that.

Then we get to the RPG elements present in Elden Ring, and they mostly behave how they have in past games. You’ll start out by creating your character with From’s most extensive customizer yet, and you’ll be prompted to pick a background for your base stats. While this doesn’t necessarily reflect what your build will look like by the end of the game, it sets a trajectory for what to focus on in the early game. Whether it be a full strength build with focus on wielding colossal great-swords and hammers, or a combined dexterity magic build that allows you to weave sorceries into your combat flow, there’s a lot to pick and choose from in Elden Ring.

The Weapon Arts system from Dark Souls III has also been reworked into Ashes of War. Each weapon comes with its own intrinsic Ashes of War, which behaves the same as Weapon Arts – powerful attacks or buffs at the cost of FP. The major improvement in this system, though, is that Ashes of War can be assigned to different weapons, as long as the archetype matches. Certain Ashes of War will also let you assign elemental affinities to your weapons, further deepening customization and build crafting. It’s a brilliantly free-flowing system that allows for deeper player choice, and creates a more meaningful bond with your weapons.

As if that wasn’t enough to begin with, Elden Ring also introduces Rune Arcs and Spirit Summoning. The latter allows you to summon AI spirits to fight with you during boss fights at the cost of FP, and these spirits can also be upgraded to bolster their HP and damage output. There’s all kinds of spirits with different strengths, so you’ll often have a suite you pick and choose from depending on the occasion. Rune Arcs are most comparable to Embers or Human Effigies from past games, but are far more rare, and introduce an interesting risk/reward system in the way they’re implemented. Every time you defeat the demigod of any given region, you’ll receive their Great Rune, which can be activated at a Divine Tower in their area.

You can only have one Great Rune equipped at any given time, and their bonuses are only active when a Rune Arc is used. These aren’t small bonuses. The first Great Rune, for example, boosts all of your attributes, effectively increasing your character’s level by 40 until your next death. Due to how rare Rune Arcs are, there’s a lot of deliberation to be had in regards to when you use these so you don’t waste them. The boost they provide might be all you need to bring that boss down, but make one mistake, and it’s gone. This system is less of a necessity and more of a bonus buff to use sparingly, but its inclusion is welcome nonetheless.

Lastly, there’s the return of player summoning, and invasions. PVP diehards will be glad to here that the addition of anti-cheat software on the PC version should hopefully result in less compromises. On the co-operative side, things are a bit mixed. While it all works good, players can only be summoned from Summoning Pools, pre-determined spots on the map that define the explorable area when a co-op session is active. All of the dungeons are fully playable in co-op, but if you were hoping to explore the overworld with friends in limitless fashion, you might find that the implementation here is restrictive. While I can understand trying to retain the somber and isolating experience of exploring The Lands Between by yourself, I can’t help but wonder what a more freeing and open co-op experience would’ve brought to the table.

I played Elden Ring on PC, and across the almost 60 hours I spent with it, I’m pleased to report that it’s a mostly polished experience. It’s goes without saying that this game is absolutely gorgeous, maybe not to the same capacity as another big triple A title to come out this month, but still had my jaw on the floor with some sweeping vistas and landscapes to take in at every turn. I’ve already spoken about how excellent I think Liurnia of the Lakes is, but that shouldn’t taken away from the crimson covered lands of Caelid or the golden sky perpetually hanging over the top of Altus Plateau. I did experience a few hiccups on PC, though, namely some stuttering and a couple crashes due to the anti-cheat software. I’m sure this will be ironed out by launch, though, and at the end of the day they were minor stumbles in a broadly polished experience, which is impressive considering how large the game world is.

THE PS5 EXPERIENCE

Whilst the majority of our time with Elden Ring was spent on PC, we did get to also play the game on PS5. There’s two modes, one that prioritizes framerate and one that prioritizes quality. As you’d expect, the framerate mode is closer to 60FPS whilst quality mode maxes out at 30FPS. Both see drops in frames, but you’ll absolutely want to go with the framerate mode to provide the most stable performance as possible. There was a noticeable amount of pop-in with the world loading in as you look around occasionally, but on the whole it is a stable experience and does not detract from the fantastic experience that Elden Ring is.

The post Elden Ring Review – A Formula Perfected appeared first on Press Start.

At the risk of alienating anyone reading this review before we’ve even gotten to the juicy bits – it took close to four years and as many restarts for me to finally invest in 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn enough to finish it. I remain incredibly impressed and grateful that the open-world video game equivalent of Dino-Riders managed to make its way into the stable of PlayStation’s blockbuster AAA exclusives, but there was no denying that this new IP from Killzone developer Guerrilla Games was an ambitious proof-of-concept more than a formula perfected.

Enter Horizon Forbidden West, a sequel that doesn’t just perfect the formula laid out by its predecessor but sets a whole new benchmark for all open world video games to come.

Picking up six months after the events of Horizon Zero Dawn this new journey finds our hero Aloy and her fellow Nora, Varl, setting out West of their homeland to a new territory in search of a backup of GAIA, the AI that can help them fix the dying world (if you haven’t played the first game or it’s been a while I’d urge a quick refresher before jumping into this). That goal quickly reveals itself to be more involved than expected though when the warring Tenakth tribes of the Forbidden West, mysteries surrounding an old world corporation called Far Zenith and a poisonous red blight on the plant life all work to complicate the mission.

To say that Forbidden West’s narrative ups the ante from the groundwork that Horizon Zero Dawn laid would be a severe understatement. The sequel manages to dig deep below surfaces that the original only scratched to find an abundant wellspring of lore and world building that had me enamoured from beginning to end. The tough part is talking about any of it – there are simply too many crucial narrative beats and revelations that would be a shame to spoil, suffice it to say that Guerrilla has again done an extraordinary job of exploring a vast range of themes in this fantastical world. This is a game that tackles ideas of purpose and legacy, religion and government, freedom of information, colonisation, race, technology, loss, pride and so much more and deftly delivers them in magnitudes both grandiose and miniscule.

One of Forbidden West’s biggest successes, and one that reveals itself almost immediately, is a far more convincing cast of characters that are better written, better rendered and animated and more pivotal to Aloy’s journey than ever. Gone are the original game’s stale and stilted conversations and in their place some of the most jaw-dropping character models and motion capture I’ve ever seen running in real time. This is coupled with top notch writing, supporting a very wise commitment to the game’s cast of secondary characters.

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $78 WITH FREE DELIVERY (FREE PS5 UPGRADE INCLUDED) / $98 FOR PS5 EDITION

Some of the best moments in Forbidden West come from Aloy’s interactions with others, the completely new world and deeper development of side characters naturally resulting in more engagement and exploration of her own thoughts and emotions. Every new human settlement is full of engaging and well-rounded stories that add depth to both Aloy and the world around her. Even the things that would be considered filler, the stuff in the open world that would typically be content for content’s sake, is often neatly woven into the world state or feeds into minor narrative beats which makes careful exploration a much more compelling prospect.

The newfound sense of companionship in Forbidden West’s narrative is bolstered by the structure of its open world as well, which begins with a base of operations for Aloy and her steadily-growing party. Grounding what eventually becomes a branching set of objectives in a central location that grows and changes as players achieve goals in the world makes a marked impact on the sense of progression through the game’s story and allows a ton of time for Aloy to have those meaningful and well-written conversations with her companions that I’ve already praised so much. Between the base and the other major settlements in the game there’s a far greater sense of place that was missing in the lonely wandering of the previous game’s world and its comparatively soulless centres of population.

Similarly, where Zero Dawn made dungeons and unique gameplay experiences out of the ruins of scientific bases and sprawling landmarks, Forbidden West gives players plenty of opportunity to explore smaller slices of the world as we know it now. Overgrown and dilapidated homesteads and town squares from the pre-apocalypse routinely become miniature puzzle sequences that flex the potential in Aloy’s new abilities and gear like the Pullcaster. 

The Forbidden West itself, which stretches from parts of Utah to the coast of San Francisco, is packed with a tremendous variety of biomes and more traversal opportunities than ever. Alongside new tools, Aloy’s range of movement has been expanded to include scaling many cliff faces even without defined handholds and – more excitingly – the ability to freely explore underwater. The feeling of immense verticality that Zero Dawn hinted at finally comes to fruition here and the underwater sections especially are used to great effect to add variety in both enemy encounters and exploration, with plenty of exciting secrets to find in out-of-reach places. And when you do reach those heights, sometimes even heights that Aloy can’t access alone, it’s nice to finally have an easy way of returning to solid ground with the brand-new paraglider Shieldwing.

If there’s one thing about Horizon Zero Dawn that I think everyone can agree on, it’s that combat against its catalogue of machines was the absolute highlight. Facing down its robotic facsimiles of recognisable dinosaurs and animals, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and valuable mechanical components remains one of the most unique thrills in gaming and Guerrilla has predictably identified this as one of the key areas to double down its efforts for the sequel. The catalogue of 40+ machines contains a staggering number of new types that are all just as unique and fun to wrestle with as the returning models, and thanks to the game’s added vertical depth includes quite a few more recreations of fearsome air and sea creatures. Where else but here could you see robotic takes on aquatic dinosaurs, kangaroos, baboons and elephants co-existing in a post-apocalyptic California but here?

Not content just to add more machine types and call it a day though, Guerrilla’s expanded Aloy’s combat abilities and arsenal of gear to a ridiculous degree. Not only are there some shockingly fun new weapons to wield like the often-explosive throwing spikes or the catch-and-return shredder gauntlets but familiar bow and sling types have been given vastly more variation that includes new damage types and firing modes. Aloy’s weapons as well as her gorgeously-rendered outfits can be upgraded and moulded to suit a multitude of playstyles, and a quick trip to the dyer in most settlements even allows for some basic colour customisation which I’ll admit I spent way too much time collecting resources for when I should have been saving the world.

Combat against humans still pales in comparison to machines, but there’s still a marked improvement here over what was in Zero Dawn. Straight off the bat one of the Forbidden West’s new tribes, the Tenakth, has mysteriously gained the ability to override machines themselves and so frequently rock up on the backs of machines like Ravagers and Tremortusks where they can prove mighty formidable. Melee combat with Aloy’s spear is also a far sight better than before, with her moveset and acrobatics greatly expanded on top of a new Resonator Blast finisher that can really turn the tide against man and metal alike. 

This is all helped along by slight, but thorough and meaningful improvements to the game’s UI. Aloy’s focus has seen some clever streamlining, helping to declutter the original game’s cluttered on-screen HUD by giving it two functions – a button press will quickly highlight any materials, handholds and other handy info in the immediate vicinity while a long press brings up the traditional scanning interface. Scanning machines or humans is a lot easier too, you’re able to quickly tab between each of an enemy’s parts to inspect them as well as a tag any desired part to keep it highlighted during combat. Small changes like this throughout gameplay and in menu screens really bring the game’s systems together to a much more cohesive whole than in Zero Dawn without radically changing the experience that fans loved.

Of bigger impact is the way each player’s gameplay style can uniquely develop and evolve with the game’s new progression systems. For starters you’ll net Skill Points much more frequently, but you’ve got no less than six separate trees to pour them into, and most skills across these categories have multiple levels to obtain to increase their effects. These range from increasing Aloy’s core strengths or opening up new tactical and stealth options to adding new secondary fire modes to the many different types of weapons available to her.

There are also the all-new Valor Surges which open up after you’ve unlocked the skills around them. Valor Surges are powerful buffs and abilities that Aloy can activate that bolster her in combat, from increased damage to special shielding and cloaking. This all adds up to a ridiculous degree of freedom in player builds that, combined with the enormous number of new machines and all of their intricacies, means that you’ll constantly be finding and trying new strategies while enjoying a power climb that moves at a cracking pace.

Add to all that the plethora of unique weapons and outfits available (all of which look incredibly cool, just quietly) that feel much more specialised this time around and can be enhanced and customised to further augment your playstyle and Horizon Forbidden West feels much more like a proper RPG than the original did. The added depth doesn’t come at the expense of playability either thanks to the way that most of these systems are better integrated into gameplay.

Despite the reservations I had initially about needing to retreat to a workbench to craft anything outside of ammo and traps and to apply gear upgrades, I almost instantly fell into what is a clearly intentional gameplay loop. Falling short of materials for an upgrade, creating a “job” to track my progress in obtaining them, hunting down the right machine and carefully removing the components I need before returning to make use of the spoils feels incredibly Monster Hunter-esque in a way that makes total sense for this franchise. Aloy’s new “stash” is a total godsend too, removing the original game’s annoying inventory micromanagement by simply whisking away excess resources for her to collect at any settlement or camp as needed. 

There are truly far more new additions to the core mechanics of combat, exploration and progression than I can comfortably explain in one review, but they’re each as meaningful as the next and slot ever-so-comfortably into the established framework. And whether Aloy is scrambling against scores of machines, doing some impromptu farming astride the boar-like Bristlebacks, restoring neon soaked nightlife to Las Vegas or diving for coral-covered shipwrecks there’s one thing that can’t be understated and that’s the game’s sheer visual splendour. 

Every inch of the Forbidden West is lush, vibrant, brimming with detail and full of life. Huge human settlements atop dilapidated satellite dishes in Utah teem with people, all living out their lives, some of them even contributing to a chorus of song that can be heard across the plains. Meanwhile, farther West in San Francisco coastal tribes settle in sand-covered villages where tropical weather regularly whips up into storms of rain and wind – much like the Northern settlements are occasionally battered by blizzards that always seem to stir just as Aloy is facing down a particularly nasty machine out on the deadly precipices of mountains. It’s all, every field and forest, every decaying ruin of a museum or residential street, every peak and trough a best-in-class showcase of both technical and artistic talent.

Even stripped of what it brings to the table in narrative or gameplay there is undeniable value in Horizon Forbidden West as pure spectacle. “Graphics aren’t everything” is a valid and nuanced argument, sure, but a game like this almost makes me believe that graphics can be everything, if that’s what you’re looking for and if they look as good as they do here. There is no shortage of creativity, care or commitment in every new area. Just when it seems like the well of surprises has run dry it spills over again as Aloy enters yet another innocuous-seeming crevice in another innocuous-seeming wall only to be treated to unmitigated wonder and beauty.

No matter which generation of PlayStation you’re on the sheer amount of time and attention put into every detail means you’re still getting some of the most incredible-looking characters, environments, weather, animation and cinematography in gaming right now, but as far as the PS5-specific experience goes there are numerous impactful improvements here, beginning with the options boost in visual quality. I had trepidations going in about how Forbidden West’s position as a cross-generation title would affect or potentially “hold back” the version that many likely splurged on shiny new consoles for, but Guerrilla has done a fantastic job of putting together a game that caters to both the strengths of the new hardware and the limitation of the old.

The biggest benefit you’ll see when exploring the Forbidden West on a PS5 is a level of detail that’s impossibly impressive with what is probably the most CG-like texture and asset work that I’ve ever seen, and all of it drawing out into the game’s vast distances with no perceptible loading in or scaling. Everything is just there, all at once and in its highest-possible quality as though it was carefully placed and optimised for a handcrafted cutscene, only it makes up an entire open world. In fact, Guerrilla has revealed in prior media releases it was able to apply the “cinematic” character lighting usually reserved for cutscenes to the entire game on PS5. The result isn’t technically realistic as nobody walks around with multiple invisible spotlights on them in the real world, but it adds greatly to the overall visual and gameplay experience by giving characters increased visibility and tangibility within the world.

If you’re playing on a PS5 you’ll get the option of two graphical modes – a Fidelity mode that aims for a 4K output at 30fps and a Performance mode that drops the resolution in favour of 60fps targeted performance. When I did eventually play through Horizon Zero Dawn I did so on the PS5 with that game’s 60fps patch and so I figured I’d be doing the same here, but I actually found the deficit in detail in the Performance mode large enough to be distracting and ended up switching over to Fidelity for most of the game. That and the lack of any recognisably modern visual features like ray-tracing in either mode, coupled with some occasionally jarring lighting changes and last-gen-looking shadows definitely underlines the game’s PS4 roots but none of it takes away from the immense quality of the art on display.

Of course there are other, recognisable PS5-exclusive features as well. Lightning-fast load times when booting the game from the menu or its Activity cards, or when fast travelling are a given (you’re even afforded the option to shorten the artificially-inflated load screens if you don’t care about missing the tooltips). There’s the requisite Tempest 3D Audio tech to heighten the powerful audio mix and soaring, cinematic soundtrack that ranks among some of the most empowering backing score in a game like this. 

Along with this comes the expected DualSense haptics and adaptive trigger support – though these actually rank as some of my favourite implementations yet with comprehensive feedback that isn’t overdone or intrusive and includes a ton of minor details that interact with the game in fun ways. The first time I realised that standing under a trickle of rainwater from a nearby ledge would result in realistic splashing of water on Aloy and the feeling of each individual droplet on the DualSense controller I was reminded of the powerful potential that Sony’s ambitious hardware holds. Thankfully for anyone averse to these things you’re able to tweak and customise it all or turn it off entirely.

That’s thanks to another stand-out consideration in Horizon Forbidden West, which is its raft of accessibility and difficulty options, many of which allow players to alter the gameplay experience at shockingly granular levels. I’d likely double the length of this review just describing the hugely positive effect these options had on my experience, so I’ve spun that discussion off into another piece which you can read more about in a piece coming later this week, but suffice it to say that Guerrilla has gone above and beyond in a lot of ways.

That’s the crux of it, really. In almost every way, Guerrilla has re-thought, refined and redoubled on everything that was good or bad about Horizon Zero Dawn while pushing nearly every boundary imaginable in how an open world video game can look and feel. Above all else, this is a game that consistently surprised me. Whether it was the escalating story beats that had me thinking “surely this is as wild as it gets” before getting even more wild or the frequent unexpected finds when I was out exploring the Forbidden West, from opening to end credits I simply never felt like I’d seen it all. Even after playing for 60-odd hours and getting the platinum trophy there is still so much out there for me to do, so much beauty to witness and so many more mysteries to uncover.

RELATED: BARGAIN GUIDE – HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST

The post Horizon Forbidden West Review – An Exceedingly Clever Sequel appeared first on Press Start.

Although Skate is a franchise on the mend thanks to the revitalising powers of an EA realising the potential their dormant IP holds, OlliOlli has been the last decade’s most enduring skating franchise. Although it maintains the series’ accessible and fun control scheme, OlliOlli World enjoys a totally rad coat of paint that serves to completely reinvent the game’s visual identity and attitude in fitting with what most stereotypically think of when they consider skater culture.

There’s plenty of lingo, baggy shorts, big grinds, and even bigger slams. And although the game can be hard to a hazardous degree, especially if you’re trying to clock every level’s toughest challenges, OlliOlli World doesn’t demand it of you. In fact, you’re able to experience as difficult a game as you choose as the pass mark, in most cases, is simply beating the level. In that sense, and coupled with its easy-to-pick-up controls, OlliOlli World pretty deliberately feels carefree and a perfect representation of that cruisy, laid-back skateboarding ethos that’s all-inclusive, non-competitive, and promotes growth at a steady pace. 

The point of OlliOlli World is to determine whether you, through your gnashing and shredding mastery, and with the help of a ragtag group of friends, are capable of easing Chiffon into retirement by taking over her nebulous, and apparently godlike, role as a ‘Skate Wizard’ of Radlandia. It’s an absurd premise that serves as a pretty outlandish backdrop for the game’s main event: good old-fashioned skating. 

Impressing the other, positively cartoonish, deities of Radlandia’s handful of regions is a towering task and requires you to skate through somewhere in the range of fifty levels that do certainly get tougher as the journey nears its end. Like previous entries, OlliOlli World’s levels play out in a side-scrolling fashion and require a certain aptitude for rhythm to chain together combos throughout the many obstacles you’ll face. The level design is layered, offering multiple paths that often lead to ‘gnarly routes’ that house the tougher tasks doled out by Mike, the brick shithouse dullard of the group. As they always have, OlliOlli’s controls borrow from the Skate playbook more than Tony Hawk’s. A controlled flick of the right stick determines the flip trick, grab, or grind you’ll pull off, while triggers control your skater’s rotation—a must for keeping those combos alive, along with wall rides and manuals. Quarter pipes are a new addition to OlliOlli World and, while they’re great for catching air and changing lanes, they create a certain unreadability to the level and, through constantly switching between left and right movement, makes the way forward harder to anticipate. 

Straying from the main course is a great way to unearth the side quests on offer, most of which involve tracking down the strangest of people who call Radlandia home. Although reaching them can be tricky, there’s a certain, disarming charm that comes from chatting with a buff, roided out seagull. 

While joining the Skate Wizard ranks and reaching Gnarvana is your skater’s ultimate goal, it serves as a bit of an endgame for those who reach it. Players who vibe with the chill, aimless act of skating can opt into the Gnarvana Portal and enjoy levels generated by certain parameters, like difficulty and length, by the player. It’s ultimately pointless and doesn’t quite hit like proper user-created levels might, but serves as a good means of practice. Each generated instance is given a postcode that players can share, creating a kind of competitive aspect to an otherwise meaningless aside. 

The Gnarvana League, on the other hand, could be the beginnings of a more durable reason to return to OlliOlli after the credits roll. Although it’s in its infancy and feels rather bare-bones, existing only as a daily challenge at the moment with a rudimentary ranking system, I feel as though it could evolve into something pretty cool. Being able to watch the table-topping runs through a replay is a good way to learn a trick or two. 

OlliOlli is like a rainbow-coloured fruit, now rich in colour and personality having shed its pixel art rind. As far as reinventions go, it’s hard to fault the game’s new direction. It’s a gorgeous hand-drawn approach that feels like it’s pulled from the pages of some coming of age, summery graphic novel—almost as if Bryan Lee O’Malley tried his hand at an Adventure Time, except it’s full of backwards caps and anthropomorphic ice-cream cones. The game’s soundtrack, a curated selection of warm and welcoming house music, fits the mood like a glove, including ‘Darling Gardens’ from Melbourne’s own Midflite. 

I’d go so far as to call OlliOlli World a feel-good game and it’s one that’ll catch a lot of people off guard, despite the franchise’s more than confident beginnings. I hope, through a bit of post-launch support, it continues to grow, especially when it comes to the lighter competitive aspects of Gnarvana. 

THE XBOX SERIES X VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WERE PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post OlliOlli World Review – Skate Or Die appeared first on Press Start.

The fact that Dying Light 2 Stay Human is even finished feels like a miracle. The game felt like it was in development hell for so long that I’d thought it’d ironically gone the same way as Dead Island 2. Now, almost six years after Dying Light, Dying Light 2 Stay Human has not only seen the light but come out swinging. And while its primary new focus – its story – falls flat, everything else about Dying Light 2 is a triumph.

Dying Light 2 takes place sometime after the events of the original. You play as Aiden, an infected survivor in a world infected by a new virus variant from the original game. Aiden is lucky – he has some kind of resistance to the virus – allowing him to remain human under the right conditions. The game follows him on a quest to find his sister in the oddly non-specific “City”, while also looking to shed light on events in his past that could explain his immunity. It’s a more personal story than Dying Light ever was, but such a story comes with a significant caveat.

That caveat is pretty damning – the overarching plot of Dying Light 2 just isn’t engaging. So many times, I’d find myself quite bluntly uninterested in Aiden’s personal quest to find his sister. It’s a shame, given that this is the most significant area that the game is trying to improve upon, but it falls flat. Techland has gone on record to say that there’s so much dialogue in this game, presumably to illustrate how seriously they’re taking the story. But given how meandering the plot is, I can’t help but wonder – what’s the point?

Much like how I felt about Dying Light, the ho-hum plot is mitigated by a core gameplay loop that is the strongest that the developer has ever put out. At its core, Dying Light 2 is a first-person open-world game. The core difference between Dying Light and its contemporaries is the parkour mechanics, which dovetail beautifully with the zombie chase mechanics. Thanks to these mechanics, Aiden can run, jump, and climb across almost any surface in the game world. They’re well developed when compared to the original Dying Light.

Dying Light 2 also replaces the City of Harran and the countryside of its expansion with a completely new setting in “The City”, a non-specific European locale that’s split into two distinct regions. The first region feels similar to Harran in the original Dying Light. The second region feels more unique and more akin to a proper city – tall skyscrapers and the like create a true concrete jungle where Dying Light 2 really finds its stride.

Tools such as the grappling hook and UV light return from previous games, but the paraglider is brand new. Perfectly adapted for the new setting, it allows you to use wind currents to glide from building to building. Throwing the paraglider into the mix with the parkour mechanics gives you a lot of flexibility in how you reach your locations, bolstering Dying Light 2’s already robust traversal mechanics.

Combat has also been tweaked but still feels satisfying. There are no more guns in abundant supply, so most action is relegated to rudimentary bows and crafted melee weapons. Single-use shotguns are craftable too, but otherwise, you’ll be beating zombies senseless with your creations. Combat in Dying Light 2 feels just right – the weight and heft of your weapons feel appropriate. Quite simply, it’ll never get old to send a zombie flying with a heavy weapon.

Yes, weapons have durability and will eventually break, but resources are so numerous that it nary becomes an issue in the game. But yes, the rumours are true; the weapons in Dying Light 2 can’t be repaired – so don’t go getting attached to anything.

Weapons can be bolstered with modifications carried over from Dying Light that make them behave differently, too. Some add poisoning effects, others are given more physical blowback, and some even freeze enemies in place. It’s rather goofy but feels like a nice callback to the cheeky tone Dead Island and Dying Light had.

With a game of this breadth and size, you’d expect to see the quality of the quests falter. The main quests are filled with some fantastic and tense gameplay moments, though the final act did grow tiresome and felt like it should’ve wrapped up a few battles earlier. Similarly, while there are many side quests on offer, none of them feel like throwaways, with production values (often but not always) on par with the main ones.

Putting quests aside, there’s also a heap of activities to distract you in the City. While these peppering across the map feels a little dated, the sheer variety here really saves things. There are climbing puzzles in the form of radio towers, water towers, and windmills. There are even quarantined areas that you enter from the top, descending deeper and deeper as you open shortcuts like a small self-contained rogue-like dungeon.

The most notable are the electricity stations and water towers. Both allow you to reroute resources to a settlement. Electricity stations, in particular, are fun puzzles that require you to connect two power sources with a cable, having to find the shortest distance between them to join them. Completing either of these locations will allow you to alter the world – rerouting to the military faction creates more traps and weapons in the open world. In contrast, the other faction places more components in the world to facilitate your parkour. Think more jump pads, ziplines, and air vents for your glider.

I’ve never quite seen an open-world game reward the player by changing the world they exist in so much, and while it doesn’t quite have the far-reaching consequences you’d expect on a story level, on a gameplay level, it’s a nice touch to be able to mould the City in the way that best suits your play style.

The day-night cycle in the original game was both unique and integral, so it only feels fitting that it be improved upon here. Where you’d previously have darted for a safe house at the first sign of night, Dying Light 2 makes an earnest effort to incentivise you to stay out. Chases themselves are now tiered similar to wanted levels in Grand Theft Auto, giving a better idea of when to bail yourself out. New indoor locales are also better explored at night – as the infected won’t be inside them at night but rather on the streets. Finally, some missions can only be completed at night.

While I enjoyed the nights of Dying Light, there was little reason to stay around for too long when the sun disappeared. Dying Light 2 does a great job of rectifying that issue rather well.

That being said, there are still a few things Dying Light 2 doesn’t get right. I’ve already detailed how the story is lacking, but the dialogue system it borrows from games like Mass Effect, and later Assassin’s Creed games lack any meaningful sense of consequence. Typically, tough choices rarely branch out too much and are often met with responses that almost always can be reduced to “that’s annoying to me, but I understand why you did it!” and the story just moving on. I understand what the team was aiming for here, but it feels glaringly inconsequential with how it’s presented here.

Much has been said about just how much content there is in the game. I’d estimate my first run easily took around twenty or so hours to finish. Doing absolutely everything the game offers could easily balloon that time to over a hundred or so hours. But I struggle to see just how someone could pull the much talked about five hundred or so hours out of Dying Light 2. Thankfully, if you’re really keen to know how the story progresses, joining another players game in co-op would let you do so without having to play the game all over again (as it’s just not worth it, honestly, to do it all again yourself)

From a presentation standpoint, Dying Light 2 offers three visual options. Resolution and quality options feel like a bit of a sore point where – they feel like they run at the same level of fidelity and performance as the original Dying Light did on base hardware of last generations consoles. My personal choice – performance mode – runs flawlessly. Everything looks crisp with some breathtaking locales and buttery smooth framerates that allow Dying Light 2 to put it’s best step forward both figuratively and literally. It just lends itself better to the game’s fast platforming and pacing.

The original score is similarly uneven. Sometimes it sounds like the media it’s doing a great job of emulating – with grim orchestral pieces akin to John Murphy’s work on films like 28 Days Later. There’s enough dark synth here to similarly give the game a futuristic yet desolate feeling that it’s gunning for. But the upbeat ones feel remarkably out of place – so many of these tracks feel like they were made for a different game.

The voice work is similarly mixed, and I was surprised to find Aiden’s voice actor wasn’t the same as Kyle’s from the original game. Surprisingly, Rosario Dawson steals the show here as Lawan. While I’ve made it quite clear how much I didn’t enjoy the story, every scene she was in was bizarrely compelling to watch. She does well here, even if the script sometimes gets a bit tawdry.

It might sound like I’m being harsh on Dying Light 2, but at the end of the day, it’s a fairly remarkable game and infinitely more enjoyable than Dying Light. It’s easily, without a doubt, greater than the sum of its parts.

THE PLAYSTATION 5  AND XBOX SERIES X VERSIONS WERE PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. DIGITAL COPIES OF THE GAMES WERE PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Dying Light 2 Stay Human Review – A Fluid & Frenetic Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

Rainbow Six was my first introduction to the world of Tom Clancy. Subsequently, it’s also the Tom Clancy franchise I’ve more closely aligned to since the original game hit the Nintendo 64 back in 1998. That being said, the Rainbow Six games always had you tackling a terrorist threat backed by a story of political intrigue. Never would I have expected to be fighting aliens in a Rainbow Six game, let alone a Tom Clancy one. But, differences aside, Rainbow Six Extraction is a surprisingly well-put-together experience that I enjoyed much more than I ever had imagined.

Keen players of Rainbow Six Siege would be familiar with the Outbreak event, which Extraction follows on from. Several years after the events of Siege, a meteorite falls in New Mexico, bringing with it a slew of deaths caused by a deadly pathogen, eventually discovered to be a parasite. Extraction has members of Team Rainbow entering areas ravaged by the parasitic outbreak, now called the Archaen, to collect intel on this new threat and save the locals. The plot is a nice bit of set dressing for the world of Rainbow Six though it ultimately plays little role in the game overall.

Rainbow Six Extraction takes the core concept of Rainbow Six Siege, flipping it from a competitive experience to a cooperative one. A purely PvE experience, you’ll tackle a set of objectives (called “incursions”) in groups of up to three people. Each of the areas you’ll be infiltrating is infested by the Archaens, and objectives are more than just killing them. Sometimes you’ll have to lure them back to a specific area. Other times you’ll have to cross an interdimensional portal to defeat a powerful boss. It’s kookier than you’d expect for either Rainbow Six or Tom Clancy, but it is something different.

There are around twelve or so objective types. They’re on such regular rotation that things rarely get as tedious as you’d expect them to.

After selecting an area to infiltrate, the game creates an incursion for you. Each incursion is divided into three phases of increasing intensity, with a specific objective being assigned to each stage. The further into an incursion, the better the rewards, but the more difficult the approach. After each phase, you can choose to progress to the next one or “cut your losses” and extract. Extracting yields the most points, but going deeper is almost always tempting to promise more points. It’s risk-reward in its purest form, and it’s addictive enough that I rarely extracted when I should have.

When I talk about risk, it’s more than just losing your progress or points. Each of your operators you take into an incursion is at risk of being injured or missing in action. If you get downed and aren’t rescued by your teammates, your character will be lost in that area until you revisit it. The next time you play it, one of the three objectives in the incursion will be a rescue mission of sorts that’ll add them back to your roster.

The kicker is that each of your characters’ won’t count towards your rank until they’re rescued. So, losing your best operator means will impact your team’s level more than if you lose one you’ve barely played with. Sometimes, it might even be more strategic to leave your partner behind during a mission as the risk of leaving the objective for rescue might be greater than the reward. It’s these on-the-fly changes in objectives and priorities where Rainbow Six Extraction really shines.

Thankfully, failure to rescue someone doesn’t mean they’re gone forever. While it could be a fun temporary twist, Permadeath isn’t a feature of Rainbow Six Extraction. Failure to rescue someone from their parasitic prison means they’ll still return to you, but with less experience points. It feels like a reasonably balanced way to punish sloppy plays without being needlessly cruel to the player. It’s so reasonable, in fact, that I’d want to jump straight back into a map to rescue an operator as soon as I lost them and try it all again.

Repetition and procedurally generated elements of games often leave me feeling short-changed or bored as things begin to repeat endlessly. Extraction does a great job at remedying this, drawing from a wide pool of variables – be it the Archaen you’ll encounter or the objectives themselves – to offer a unique incursion every time. It’s the type of repetition that fosters addiction, and it’s the reason I always kept Extraction feeling fresh, whether I was succeeding or failing.

The Archaen themselves add a lot of spice to the proceedings. Amongst all the types, they’ll alert the others and nearby nests to produce more if you’re seen. These moments, though seemingly impossible, are survivable but will often leave you crippled in some way or another. The enemy variety here is excellent – some will melee you, others take shots at you. Some might even explode when damaged, though they can damage fortifications you might set up too. Like mentioned previously, some even mimic other operators (like Sledge) in boss battle-like encounters.

When you bring together all the things that Rainbow Six Extraction does, it feels different from other PvE experiences on the market. So many of them are wave-based, action-packed thrillers that rarely require a true sense of strategy. Extraction feels more strategic in its approach. You can attempt to speed run the levels, but you’ll often be met with failure or severe crippling to the point where you’ll rarely make it to the end of an incursion scot-free. Stealth is the name of the game here, as pulling off takedowns and headshots literally clears a path through the player-slowing sludge the parasite creates, allowing you to move without hindrance through the maps.

In terms of progression, I previously eluded how the game handles your rank. The stronger your roster, the stronger your rank. Successful extractions with bigger groups also multiply the points you bring back with you. Being an entirely PvE experience, Extraction’s progression and rewards aren’t merely cosmetic. You’ll unlock new gadgets, new weapons, and other improvements that give the game an almost rogue-like sense of progression. There are still cosmetic customisations, some of which can be bought with real money, but nothing feels egregiously grindy. I’d often find myself trying “just one more” incursion to see what I’d get next. However, the lack of grind does make me wonder what will happen when players get to the end of the very achievable progression tree.

Enter the Maelstrom Protocol. Rainbow Six Extraction’s endgame mode remixes more or less everything, offering weekly assignments with specific operators that are more challenging than previous engagements. At the time of writing, it was difficult to grasp what Maelstrom Protocol looks like beyond its first week. Still, it has the potential to lengthen the replayability and replay value of Extraction well beyond what was initially expected.

While Rainbow Six Extraction does so much right, there are a few niggles I experienced during my time with the game. Less seriously, we often encountered a glitch where holding a button to revive a teammate wouldn’t work correctly. Whether this resulted from a congested connection or a simple glitch has yet to be seen. More subjectively, Extraction doesn’t really put its best foot forward when playing solo either. Perhaps this is a moot point given that this game is ostensibly designed for multiplayer, but it is worth mentioning for anyone who wants to tackle it all by themselves.

From a presentation standpoint, Extraction doesn’t break much new ground, if any. From a technical perspective, Extraction is a very dark affair. However, it uses this darkness to offer some moody lighting which is disappointingly not quite as good as it could be due to a distinct lack of HDR. That being said, the artistic direction and musical score are both fantastic. The parasite and its surroundings feel genuinely alien, and wading through these dark and infested worlds for the first time is a true treat.

All in all, we could argue about just how Tom Clancy or Rainbow Six the experience Extraction offers is, but at the end of the day it’s a remarkably strong if not modest PvE experience.

THE PLAYSTATION 5 VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction Review – An Infectious Experiment appeared first on Press Start.