Bullying is something we’ve either witnessed happening to those we know or to us ourselves. It can destroy confidence and a will to live, ruining lives and impacting childhoods well into becoming adults. Maybe we can blame the bully’s upbringing or the things going wrong in their own lives, but when those being affected are feeling crippled by that oppressive hold it has on them, crying in toilet cubicles afraid to leave, or refusing to get out of bed in the morning, it’s upsetting to see. Gylt starts off with a girl finding an alternative route home because she’s afraid of the bullies who are heckling and taunting her, setting the tone for what’s to come.

In the fictional town of Bethelwood in Maine, USA, Sally finds the town isn’t what it normally is, embodying the Silent Hill switcharoo, where weird creatures lurk in the shadows, streets now void of life. It’s spooky but not outright terrifying, and that’s fine. Gylt isn’t trying to be a brash and offensive bloodbath awash with mutilated bodies and shrieking banshees. The creepy monsters aren’t cutting you to shreds or impaling you with razor-sharp tendrils, but rather hunting you down and forcing you to start over from the last checkpoint, minus the grisly end. In an effort to avoid being spotted, you must sneak around the shadows, hiding behind bushes, crates, or whatever you find.

Each enemy has a field of vision, although you’re never quite sure what this is as darkness doesn’t always mean your invisible to them. It simply provides a better cushion of protection. They walk the same paths, so it’s easier to work out when they’ll start circling back towards you, giving you plenty of options to sneak past them and get to the next area of safety. You have a flashlight that can highlight a way through in the darkness, but it will also fend of monsters in a similar way to Alan Wake. These encounters aren’t particularly scary, and dealing with enemies can feel repetitive, but it doesn’t carry the same level of monotony other horrors have a tendency to exhibit.

Gylt has the occasional puzzle involving familiar tropes of the genre, such as finding certain keys or turning valves and moving climbable platforms, but they work well with the confines of the environment. You’re never stuck, and that simplicity makes for a nice flow to gameplay. The visuals look great on PlayStation 5, despite some of the darkly lit areas, yet environments like the arcade are brimming with vibrancy and offer a nice alternative to the gloom and eerie hallways of the school. It’s a pretty game, making the switch from Stadia exclusive to multi-platform very well.

As Sally searches for Emily, her missing cousin and another victim of bullying, the story fleshes out somewhat, although there feels like some omissions into the overarching narrative. It’s emotional at times, but some of the answers I had didn’t feel like they were answered. You can find letters and documents scattered around to provide some backstory, but I didn’t feel satisfied by the time it reached its conclusion. Others may feel different, and it may have a bigger impact on those that have been victims of bullying, but I didn’t get out of it the answers I wanted.

Gylt is enjoyable albeit familiar. with many mechanics seen in a fair few games before. Puzzles are relatively easy to solve, but they offer a nice break from the stealth elements, always giving you something to do while searching for your cousin. While the story is enjoyable, I feel like it could have done more in explaining things. It’s gorgeous to look at, touching upon a style of horror seldom seen in the medium, and despite it being on Stadia for almost four years, the transition to modern consoles has done it the world of good.

The post Gylt review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Which makes it all the more surprising that, in the 9 years since Saints Row IV, the franchise hasn’t budged a smegging inch. SRIV switched up the gameplay to such a degree that no one knew where the franchise could possibly go next. An alien invasion, a Matrix-style simulation, the Boss having actual superpowers, and the Saints running the USA from the highest seats of Congress. By achieving such dizzying heights of ridiculous fun and over-the-top catharsis, Volition only left themselves one direction to go in: backwards.

Saints Row 2022 is a bewildering game. It doesn’t even seem to exist in the right place in the lifespan of its own series. It feels and plays like a game from ten years ago, but what’s worse is that it carries itself with such a self-assured swagger. Volition seem to believe they’re bringing the people what they’ve been waiting for, but the cold hard truth is that you’ve played this game before, many times, a decade ago.

Relocating from Stillwater or Steelport to the city of Santo Ileso achieves nothing but a barely noticeable aesthetic change. The broad strokes of the world are the same as they have always been: gangs have limitless members and operate like corporate organisations, with little to no explanation as to why.

The story of Saints Row 2022 seems to be aiming for outrageous, but actually just comes across as tone-deaf and nonsensical. Your Boss is a down and out post-graduate waster with three roommates, two of whom happen to be members of Santo Ileso’s biggest gangs. Neenah is in the brutal Panteros, while Kevin is part of the psychedelic Idols Collective. The story begins with your first day working for Marshall, a Private Military Company that runs security for most of Santo Ileso. Apparently this requires no training or experience: you’re just given a gun and a uniform and sent on a mission to capture a crime lord. The opening mission is an awful mess of confused level design (for some reason the crime lord is holed up in a Wild West town), cringeworthy dialogue, and shoddy, cumbersome animation. And it only gets worse from here.

By day two, you’re head of Marshall Security, and by day three you’re fired and decide to start your own gang. There’s nothing organic about any of it. It all just happens, story beats slamming down with the grace and precision of a rain of frogs. After the very first mission you get access to your phone, where you can use apps to change your style or skills, access the GPS map, and select missions. Often missions appear in your phone without telling you they’re available, so every time you open it there are new ones. From clumsy wingsuit missions to the age-old insurance claim missions where you hurl yourself into traffic, everything you’d expect from a Saints Row game is here. The problem is, there’s nothing new mixed in with it.

It constantly loses sight of its own themes. One moment you’re struggling to make rent, next you’re spending $25000 on clothes. You take on hundreds of gang members in the middle of the street with zero consequences, but can clip an NPC car and have the police on you in moments. The plot is a confusing, meandering belch of random violence peppered with occasional, incongruous smatterings of well-written dialogue that never feels truly engaging.

Like the gameplay, the AI also feels ten years old. If you stop your car in the road, people will simply drive into it and each other to push it out of the way. Reaching a mission target causes all pursuers you’ve picked up to instantly give up and drive away. During gunfights everyone just stands in the open firing at one another. Occasionally an enemy will crouch behind cover, but there’s little point. With no cover mechanic for you, all you can do is strafe through gunfights until everyone is dead.

One saving grace is the Flow system, which allows you to build up a meter and unleash a one-shot takedown on any unshielded enemy. Some of the animations for these are pretty cool, but the physics and collision detection for them are as bad as they are everywhere else.

Sometimes, for example, you clip a car and it explodes instantly; sometimes you hit a curb and spin into the air; sometimes people collapse when you hit them like ragdolls in a stiff breeze, other times they catapult into the stratosphere. You even take damage if the car door clips your shoulder as you step out. These bugs may be nothing new to the system, but after 9 years Volition should have a handle on some of them by now. It’s shocking to even consider that Saints Row was quality tested at all, because it’s riddled with bugs and glitches. A lot of these can be excused in an open world game of this size; even GTA5 and Cyberpunk 2077 struggled under the weight of their worlds. But Saints Row rarely strings two lines of code together without a bug in-between.

On the plus side, Santo Ileso is a huge playground full of things to find, side missions to get involved in, and points of interest to photograph. Snapping landmarks with your phone will open fast-travel points to get around quicker (though you can’t use them during missions so good luck if you pick a mission you’re on the opposite side of the city to). Also, for some reason taking a picture of a decorative object allows you to instantly place a copy of it in your headquarters. The problem with Santo Ileso is that there’s nothing that makes you want to explore it. There is nothing here that you haven’t already seen, nothing surprising or exciting to stumble upon. Even the soundtrack when driving is lacklustre, offering repetitive, mostly C-tier songs.

As you grow your empire and buy up properties around the city, you’ll gain access to new side hustles and associates, as well as a growing gang of hoodlums who will help you in fights and drop off vehicles at your request. You can also unlock skills and perks as you level up, with bizarre abilities like a flaming dragon punch that the game doesn’t even try to contextualise.

A lot of fuss has been made about the game’s perceived “wokeness”, but it has been characteristically overblown. Yes, two of the four main characters are people of colour, one is bisexual, one is an intellectual, and the Boss is canonically a black woman, but if that level of diversity is enough to have you crying about wokeness I’d advise you not to watch any TV from the last 5 to 10 years lest you be truly offended by the sheer audacity of societal advancement.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing is that Saints Row 2022 had so much potential. Volition have been doing this for years, the series has pedigree. But this iteration falls at the first hurdle. Actually that’s inaccurate. The first hurdle was over a decade ago; this is like falling at the final hurdle having been fucking helicoptered to it.

If you turn off your critical brain and dive in, there’s fun to be had in the chaos. The humour does land sometimes, and the Boss is written with the same likeable rogue attitude as always, but you really have to embrace the bad to find the good. It’s a game that feels uncomfortably out of its time, like someone’s drunk uncle at an 18th birthday party who runs around in his shorts making gang signs and waggling his tongue before face-planting through the patio door.

Unfortunately, open world games have moved on since 2013, and Saints Row hasn’t. Maybe you could consider it a love letter to a bygone time when games were less concerned with quality and more with being fun, but that doesn’t explain why it feels so archaic and unwieldy. From the cumbersome menus and the bizarre jump animation when you throw a grenade, to the sluggish vehicle controls and imprecise, scrappy shooting, Saints Row is a disappointing callback to an era that open world games have worked hard to leave behind.

The post Saints Row review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Young Souls follows the story of siblings Jenn and Tristan. They’re outcasts and orphans, living with a professor who took them in  a year prior to the events of the game. They’re your typical teenagers: angry with the world but unsure why, and unwilling to go to school or accept any kind of authority. Even their relationship with the professor seems strained through no fault of his own. It is only when he’s kidnapped that Jenn and Tristan realise what he means to them. From there, the two unruly heroes do whatever it takes to get him back.

Young Souls: Rich combat

Combat is basic to begin with. You start with a sword and shield to battle goblins and other creatures. As you delve deeper into the parallel world, new weapons and abilities can be unlocked, as well as fancy armour that offers certain buffs. Fighting feels wonderful, thanks to responsive attacks that are felt with every blow you make. Throughout the dungeons, you’ll encounter a varied amount of creatures to do battle with. Some are pretty easy to defeat, but others can take a fair amount of skill to overcome. In some instances, I found parrying and dodging a little tricky. There’s a bit of unbalancing when it comes to certain enemies, but for the majority of time these systems work well.

Young Souls splits its time by having you journey through dungeons and fighting a plethora of enemies and spending the spoils of war in your town. Jenn and Tristan can go to the gym to improve their stats, sell unwanted items at the pawn shop, and level up at home. Most of the fun you’ll be having is in the dungeons. While there is a nice selection of enemies, some of the actual levels feel repetitive. It doesn’t affect the enjoyment of fighting, but Young Souls would benefit from a bit of a shake up. It is at its best when you’re playing around with different armour and weapons to take on various bosses, mixing up your loadouts to try and compliment each other.

Fighting with friends

The option to play in co-op means that journeying through the dungeons is more fun with another. When playing alone, you can switch between the siblings, but teaming up with a friend is a better way to play. As satisfying as the combat is, the visuals are just as pleasant. The pastel colour palette and variety in creatures, along with neat animations make Young Souls a treat on the eyes. While characters don’t speak, the writing is excellent. The twins have a great relationship, akin to most siblings. They may joke around, but it’s clear they love each other.

This also extends to the Dwarvengobben. Trying to rule over the goblins takes its toll, and it’s often funny hearing them talking to each other. They bumbling fools in every sense of the word, but there’re some great moments where I laughed whilst playing. The story kept me hooked, and I genuinely cared about what was happening to the professor as well as seeing his relationship unfold with the twins.

Young Souls is a great side-scrolling RPG that blends satisfying hack-and-slash with an engaging story. Some of the levels can feel repetitive, but Uppercut Games counters that by mixing up enemy types and grand boss fights. The writing is brilliant, and the visuals throughout are a pleasure to look at. If you’re after something that is both fun to play and filled with surprisingly deep RPG elements, I strongly advise you give Young Souls a go.

The post Young Souls review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

It tells the story of Nara, a gifted pilot who once served the despotic Circle as an Executioner. Alongside her AI ship, Forsaken (or Forsa), she spread the tyrannical will of the Circle throughout the galaxy, never questioning their immoral aspirations to unify the various colonies beneath a flag of fear. One day, after following a particularly despicable order, Nara became disillusioned and fled the Circle, abandoning Forsa and swearing to make amends somehow.

At the point where Chorus begins, Nara is working with the resistance. When the Circle catches up to her, she has little choice but to reunite with Forsaken and reawaken her lost powers. The marketing spiel about “Dual protagonists” is a bit of a reach. Nara is the protagonist, and Forsa talks to her. Often as a means of exposition. The problem here is that there’s little chemistry between them.

Chorus: A beautiful galaxy to shoot your way through

Fishlabs want us to feel the bond between Nara and her ship. They want us to feel it so badly that they repeatedly remind us that the bond exists by having one or other of them outright tell us it exists. What’s missing is real personality. They’re both so po-faced – Nara wrestling with her guilt and Forsa moping that she abandoned him – that there’s little levity and not a lot of compelling dialogue. It’s at least better than the way we’re given access to Nara’ s thoughts by her whispering them aloud.

But the story, capable but overly serious as it is, isn’t the main draw here. This is a space shooter, wihh each missiom seeing you following standard objectives to defeat enemy squadrons, escort allies, or destroy gun placements. Sometimes you’ll just be asked to find a specific location and search it for items of interest using one of Nara’s four pychic “Rites”.

The galaxy is semi-open, each self-contained area granting you the freedom to either follow the story missions or divulge from the critical path to explore, find credits, points of power, Nara’s lost memories, or opportunities to help the resistance. Sometimes you’ll happen across allies under attack, or those that need you to track and return stolen goods. There’s a small handful of different objectives, but nothing that feels unique to Chorus.

The last starfighter

That said, the Temples do feel like a departure. These ancient reliquaries house Nara’s forgotten Rites. Their tight spaces, deadly traps and many hazards make them tricky to navigate – not to mention the dark, oppressive presence that lurks within them. If you want to make it through you’ll need to master Forsaken’s Drift ability, and become comfortable flying at speed.

You can upgrade Forsa’s Hull, shields and weapons with materials and credits you find by stopping by at one of the numerous hangars, usually situated in friendly outposts. There’s no visual customisation, sadly, but you can earn upgrade Masteries by using skills and abilities repeatedly.

One thing Chorus really gets right is the aesthetic. Each area of the galaxy is stunning, with some of the most majestically beautiful sky boxes I’ve ever seen. Huge outposts hang in the ether, peppered with neon lights, massive gharish billboards and the twinkling lights of civilisation.The sense of scale is immense, as is the sense of space. There’s freedom to move in any direction, which is unusual even for a space sim. The shooting however, could be better.

Forsaken space

There’s no persistent target lock, for a start, whether you’re using the gatling gun, laser or missiles, and until you’ve upgraded a fair bit your hull is like paper. It’s infuriating how easily you’re destroyed and how long it takes for your paltry heal mechanic to cool down. And maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t get comfortable with the standard boost / drift controls. With the former on the left trigger and the latter on the left bumper, I found it hard to naturally transition between the two – which is utterly essential to survival. There’s no HOTAS support in Chorus, either, even on PC, which seems an odd choice.

Chorus is not a bad game, but it misses some of the targets it aims for. Although you have a semi-open galaxy to explore, there’s little of note to discover. There are no cosmetics or meaningful collectibles, and Nara’s constant whispering about everything you do find becomes annoying quickly. The shooting is solid but unremarkable, and despite some glorious visuals and a memorable soundtrack by Pedro Camacho, there’s no much here to truly excite.

It doesn’t lean enough into the elements that make it stand out, and sadly just takes itself far too seriously most of the time. That said, if you’re a fan of Space shooters and haven’t had a decent single player dogfighter to get lost in since Star Wars: Squadrons, Chorus is worth checking out.

The post Chorus review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Far Cry 6 Vaas: Insanity: Escape your mind

You start Vaas: Insanity with nothing more than a pistol. The main goal is to find three pieces of the Silver Dragon Blade. The trio of locations when the parts are located offer a proper challenge, even on the easiest of difficulties. There’s plenty to do outside of finding the pieces of the dagger, though. Being a roguelike, death will send you back to the Safe House where you lose the weapons you’ve unlocked, as well as cash and the temporary buffs you’ve found. Risk is around every corner, but so are rewards that make you better equipped to deal with the tougher segments of the game.

Mind Levels are how you manage the difficulty of Vaas: Insanity. You start off on the first level. After finding the Silver Dragon Blade for the first time and defeating the final waves of enemies, you can pick any Mind Level you want. After that, there’s is an increase of enemies and their types, as well as how aggressive they are. It can become ridiculously hard, but as long as you continue to upgrade and unlock new weapons and traits, you’ll be better equipped to deal with them. A plus to playing on a higher difficulty makes the rewards much greater as well.

A satisfying gameplay loop

Although you’re relatively weak in the beginning, Armory Challenges and Permanent Traits are you’re go to for becoming much more of a threat. Armory Challenges are essentially Cursed Chests from Diablo 3. If you kill all the enemies without dying, the weapon associated with it will become available to use on Rook Island. Visiting a Safe House and unlocking its Weapon Case will allow you to use it permanently. However, if you die, you’ll have to spend cash to get it back again. They are well worth risking your life for. Shotguns, grenade launchers, rifles, and bows are just some of the weapons available. If you’re playing higher Mind Levels, a diverse arsenal is going to be key to your survival.

Permanent Traits are the only thing you’re allowed to retain after death. Spending cash on these traits offer plenty of important upgrades. They fall into five categories: Pride, Greed, Vaas’ Wrath, Sloth, and Envy. Pride focuses on improving your health; Greed gives you the opportunity to retain more cash after death; Vaas’ Wrath focuses on takedowns and allows you to perform them with satisfying results; Sloth unlocks the wingsuit, parachute, and even a quad bike; and Envy adds gadget slots. They provide some fantastic abilities that make such a difference, especially when playing on the tougher difficulties.

Far Cry 6 Vaas: Insanity: Plenty to do

Along with weapons and traits, you can also find temporary buffs known as Powers throughout. These can be equipped to Vaas, giving extra abilities for as long as you manage to staff alive. They can be found from the various chests scattered around the island, and in various offer locations as well. This warped version of Rook Islands is filled with side activities like Mindfucks which are missions that reward you with cash; Citra’s Trials which throw heaps of enemies at you for a reward. At night, enemies turn into ghost-like beings that are a different breed when it comes to killing them. Vaas: Insanity can obviously be played over and over again, and doing so on harder difficulties makes these additional tasks fun to replay. In other words, explore every nook and cranny as there’re rewards everywhere.

Delving deep into Vaas’ mind is a troubling and uncomfortable experience. Finding visions throughout the expansion gives more details about his upbringing and his fucked up relationship with his sister Citra. Michael Mando is an excellent actor. Having him chatter to himself as you travel across the map, or interact with his sister fleshes out Vaas. There’s a reason he is the way he is. The story almost makes you sympathise with him. Ubisoft manages to build upon the character while at the same time provide the player with an exciting gameplay loop.

The definition of insanity

Far Cry 6 Vaas: Insanity is a wonderful expansion that introduces the roguelike genre to the series in style. Vaas’ backstory is well worth delving into. Through various visions and memory missions, one of the most iconic gaming villains is given a heart, albeit a deranged and bleeding one. There’s plenty of reasons to return after finishing the first difficulty, and some nice throwbacks to Far Cry 3. It bodes well for future expansions featuring Pagan Min and Joseph Seed. If you’re excited to explore the mind of a psychopath the world fell in love with, there’s little to be disappointed with. After all, who doesn’t enjoy a little crazy?

If you’re struggling to find all the silver dragon blade locations, check out our handy guide which lists them all.

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To outright call Just Dance 2022 formulaic would be inaccurate and, frankly, a little disparaging. It offers comfort in the form of familiarity, yes, but as with Ubisoft’s now-patented sandbox, the formula simply works. Rather than attempt to innovate in meaningful, and risky, ways, Ubisoft understand their brand. They know what they’re selling us, and we know what we’re buying. It’s a comforting circle.

Strictly speaking, I’m not sure I’m the intended audience for Just Dance 2022. You see, I am not a dancer. Never was, never ever will be. I have two left feet and the coordination and spacial awareness of a half-blind squirrel tied to a ceiling fan. And yet even I have a fair amount of knowledge – if not skill – when it comes to this franchise. Partly, this is attributed to just how accessible Just Dance is.

Just Dance 2022: Accessible fun

It hardly seems aimed at dancers. Since you control the action with just one hand (gripping a Joy-con on Switch or a mobile device on the other platforms), you could quite easily cheat the game and just wave your arms around like you did on Wii Boxing. And don’t deny it; we know you did it.

But that would be cheating yourself more. The point here is to have fun. It’s not a super competitive game. Even when playing head to head, either with someone beside you or distant internet folk on the World Dance Floor, the result will probably be the same: laughter. Unless you’re taking it seriously (which some may, of course), you’re definitely going to have a laugh with Just Dance 2022.

Its bright and colourful, with each of the 47 tracks sporting its own video. The majority of these are psychedelic affairs with professional dancers placed front and centre, with the controlling hand illuminated so you know where yours should be. Some have slightly higher production values though, such as “Human” by Sevdaliza which has the dancer in full costume on a set.

Dance til you pant

Set at Easy, Medium, or Hard, your goal is to love when they move, which sounds incredibly simple but which in practice is anything but for a non-dancer. Some tracks have extreme versions as well, which up the ante further. Of the 47 tracks on offer, only a select fee are real bangers. “Mood” by 24KGolden and “Pop/Stars” by K/DA are favourites, but it mixes in a few lesser known or international tracks in order to broaden the appeal across the demographic.

Speaking of which, Kids Mode returns, which features 8 new tracks for youngsters to bop to. This mode takes some of the more pressurising commands away, and replaces some of the language to appeal to the younger audience. It’s decent, but the tracks on offer are simply not that great unless you’re willing to fork it for Just Dance Unlimited.

This service costs a fair amount, but grants access to around 700 tracks for both grown-ups and kids. Compared to what’s on offer in the main game, you almost feel obliged to pay it. It doesn’t help that Just Dance 2022 reminds you about it constantly, after every dance, on the home screen. Even the pre-made playlists are predominantly Unlimited tracks. It’s irritating and a bit insulting. By now, they my as well just offer a paid update of tracks and features every year and stop re-charging for older songs.

Bussin’ it

One welcome return is Sweat Mode. This transforms every dance into a workout by replacing the score system with a calorie counter. It’s a great addition to the game overall, encouraging you to play solo and push yourself. It also makes for a much more entertaining workout than simply hitting the weights in the spare room.

As in previous entries, you spend in-game currency (earned by completing challenges) on a slot-machine that spits out random avatars, profile backgrounds, and titles. It’s a fun system that consistently rewards your efforts.

If you’re a fan of the series already, then Just Dance 2022 won’t surprise you in any way. But then if you’re a fan, you probably don’t want to be surprised. Anyone new to the franchise may not be overly wowed by the standard track list, but if you’re willing to pay for Unlimited I’d suggest you may never get bored. Either way, don’t be put off, regardless of whether you can dance or not. It may be familiar and it may bring little that’s new to the table, but it’s still a hell of a lot of fun.

The post Just Dance 2022 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

CHECK THIS OUT: Being back in Bright Falls is a great feeling | Read our Alan Wake review

Far Cry 6: So much fun

To say I’ve had a lot of fun would be a massive understatement. Far Cry 6 is a bottomless toy box for adults. Guns, bombs, cars, planes. Weaponised backpacks and animal sidekicks. The sky isn’t even the limit to the amount of things you can do. I spent almost 70 hours playing the previous entry in the series, and after a few hours in Ubisoft’s latest, it was apparent how bigger everything was. The map is gigantic; the vehicles range from tanks to fancy cars to horses; and the guns…oh, the guns. Despite it being chaotic almost all the time, it’s story has a lot of heart, and plenty to say about despotism and those living under the weight of a dictator.

You play as Dani Rojas, a person who helps a revolution gain traction in Yara. Playing as either a man or woman, you must bring various guerrillas together to topple Anton Castillo (voiced superbly by Giancarlo Esposito), a man hell-bent on ruling Yara with an iron fist. Unlike Far Cry 5, Rojas is fully voiced. It’s hugely important, especially as they’re someone who are passionate about their freedom and fighting for change on such a huge scale. Castillo believes he is a good man, helping to cure cancer, but is oblivious to the actual cost of doing such important work. He’s a vile human being, but in his head he’s a god.

A gripping tale of revolution

The supporting cast of characters are all fantastic. Juan Cortez is an old-timer who’s seen a lot of war before. Yelena is young, but has felt the wrath of Castillo from a young age. Jonrón is a young and fierce guerrilla, but she has a lot to learn. A lot of the cast fit into the story so well, never feeling like bit characters. They are given time to shine in their own spotlight, and each one is passionate about making Yara great once more. As for Yara, it’s heavily influenced by Cuba. With so much bloodshed and fierce leadership, it feels somewhat stuck in the 1950s. Like an old photo, come to life. There’re jungles, shanty towns, beautiful beaches, and abandoned zoos. It’s both beautiful and ugly all at the same time.

The main crux of Far Cry 6 is similar to the majority that came before. Complete main missions to progress the story. Infiltrate bases and outposts by turning off alarms and liberating them for your own use. Take part in side missions that give you extra stuff to play with. The main difference here is that there is just so much on offer. Let’s go back to the weapons for a second. You can unlock or buy a large amount of rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles, as well as other things like a gun that launches compact discs at sickening speeds towards enemies. I realised about 20 hours in that I’d been using the same weapon from the start, but if you’re fond of variety, Yara has you covered. If you’re in it for the long haul, I doubt you’ll ever want to – or be able to – stop playing.

Far Cry 6: New ways to improve your arsenal

You can now upgrade weapons on workbenches scattered around the map. By collected scraps of metal, broken glass, and other parts, new mods can be built that improve your weapon of choice. Along with the vast array of guns, you have a backpack called a Supremo. New ones can be bought or unlocked throughout your time in Yara, each with a unique ability. One deals poison damage and another emits an EMP wave capable of knocking out all alarms, as well as enemy helicopters from out of the sky. Again, I only ever used three particular ones, but there’re loads for you to get your hands on. After causing chaos in Yara, a gauge will fill up, indicating its main power can be used. It’s quite the game-changer.

A lot of the gameplay is very similar to the previous instalments. Apart from using the Supremo, the familiar gunplay and movement remains untouched, albeit sharper and more responsive. On PS5, each weapon feels different thanks to the haptic feedback, and there’s resistance when you pull the trigger. The same goes for driving, piloting, or riding. It’s one smooth beast, with wonderful control in every area. Although it feels similar, the environments are so different. With so many locations to visit, some places require more verticality and free-running than others. You’ll never visit everywhere in one sitting unless you plan on finishing every piece of side content.

Some smart additions

Take Esperanza, for example. It’s the only proper city in Far Cry 6. You won’t be heading there early on, but when you do, it has a much different feel. Your approach is more along the lines of using rooftops to avoid conflict and climbing ladders to get off ground. There’re tons of enemies in Yara, but you don’t have to fight all of them. Weapons can now be holstered, meaning not all soldiers try to blow your brains out the moment they see you. It’s a small yet smart addition to Far Cry. Even though you’re in the middle of a revolution, not everybody knows the name Dani Rojas yet, or that you’re a member of Libertad.

Yara is enormous. With a map so big, there’s more than enough to keep you occupied. On many of the roads, Castillo’s men have set up blockades for you to destroy. There’re anti-aircraft canons that need destroying so you can fly overhead without being shot down. The soldados (soldiers) are everywhere, reflecting just how much of a hold Castillo has on Yara. Thankfully, this means you can cause as much chaos as humanly possible, however you want. The huge bases that the army occupy have vehicles you can unlock, and there are various FND caches scatter the map for you to find. Fancy intercepting an FND convoy for camp resources? Want to race the army to a supply drop and get the gear before them? Go right ahead.

Far Cry 6: A beautiful yet haunted place

As you build friendships across Yara, you’ll be able to upgrade the camps for where your new allies live. Medicine and metal can then be used to build new buildings that offer everything from special hunting spots and fishing locations to improved Guerrilla support when taking on certain missions. From these camps, you can team up with players online to complete special missions, and also fight as chickens in cockfights. Yara Stories involve completing missions for side characters, and they help to flesh out their stories. Fangs for Hire are now called Amigos. You can complete missions to unlock new animals to support you in your revolution, all with individual skills to help you out. There’s just so much to do you’re never going to be bored. For some, this will be overwhelming, but for those who love Far Cry 6, it means you’ll have so many reasons to keep playing.

Far Cry 6 also gives you a special car that can be called at any time from your weapon wheel. It can be upgraded with different weapon types or colours, as well as decorations and horns. More cars can be unlocked for you to call instantaneously by taking part in special races as well. The sheer amount of content on offer will be overwhelming. I found I barely used the workbenches to upgrade weapons. That was mainly down to the fact I had my set weapons that I liked using. I stuck with the same car and rarely went fishing or hunting. I had enough gear that all the other stuff felt arbitrary.

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Similar approach, but bigger and better

Still, Ubisoft has put a hell of a lot of work into giving the player hours and hours of stuff to do. Whilst the same formulaic approach features, it’s so enjoyable blowing stuff up and killing the hundreds of soldiers. Other touches like using certain ammo types to take out enemies plays a roll, but again, I never really switched up weapons for a better effect. I was so invested in the story, and watching these affected guerillas, both young and old, fight together against a dictatorship needing to be overthrown was more than enough to draw me in. It’s more Far Cry, except this time it’s bigger and better. I’m a sucker for Far Cry, and even though there sometimes feel like there’s too much on offer, I enjoyed every second.

The post Far Cry 6 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

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Life is Strange: True Colors: A familiar feeling

True Colors is as indie as you can get. It ticks all the boxes on the Life is Strange checklist: a struggling YA protagonist; a quaint town; a soft rock/folk soundtrack; and all the other things you’ve come to expect from the series. However, after the first act, I realised how much Life is Strange has grown. Not only that, but the story takes a devastating turn and opens up to become one of the finest in the series to date. Yep, Life is Strange: True Colors is pretty fucking fantastic. In fact, there was a moment in Chapter Two that I was moved to tears. The gravity of what was happening and the sorrow the entire town got to me. It’s powerful stuff, guys.

The story focuses on Alex Chen, a troubled teenager who reunites with her brother, Gabe, after 8 years away. She arrives in Haven Springs, Colorado, and starts to fall in love with the sense of community, along with her brother’s friends. Everything is going so well until Gabe dies in a horrible accident after saving Ethan, Gabe’s girlfriend’s son. Up until that point, it felt very similar to the typical LiS formula, but the grandeur of True Colors started to show its cards. A darker narrative unfolded, and the way in which Alex uses her power featured some freaky and unnerving design choices.

More ambitious than before

Areas are much bigger in True Colors, and it is by far the prettiest. Haven Springs is a lovely town with a thriving community, but there is a darkness there. Highlighted by Alex’s ability to feel deeply what others are feeling, you begin to see how many of the characters are struggling with one thing or another. It turns out that Gabe’s death might not have been an accident, and as you investigate further, a thrilling and powerful story begins to be told, involving the Typhon Mining Company. I won’t ruin it for you, but True Colors is thrilling. I’ve not been this invested in Life is Strange since the first game, and you know what? It felt good.

Alex is such an interesting character. Not just because she’s an empath, either. She has such a beautiful smile, yet hiding behind it is a troubled girl who just wants to be loved. Using her empathic abilities opens up new dialogue choices and allows you to essentially read people’s minds. Certain items can be focused in on if they have an emotional tie to one of the characters as well. The power is useful, but quite often it affects Alex’s mental wellbeing, which is hard to watch at times. Erika Mori, the actor behind Alex, is sensational. A genuinely gifted actor who portrays every tear and delivers every line with honesty and vulnerability.

At certain points in the game, Alex senses the aura of a someone, be it sadness, fear, or anger. By zoning in on this, you unveil deeper feelings and thoughts, as well as a puzzle to solve. One of the earlier ones involving an old lady called Eleanor was particularly smart. These are prevalent throughout, and often provide a nice challenge aside from the standard dialogue choices. Everyone in the town shares in the pain of Gabe’s death, but nothing is quite what it seems.

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Life is Strange: Wonderful characters

Not only is Alex a great character, so too are the supporting cast. Jed, the owner of the Black Lantern bar is a local hero with a heart of gold. Steph is a troubled girl who loves LARP (live-action roleplaying), and Duckie is an old, eccentric guy who was a great friend to Gabe. Ryan, Gabe’s best friend becomes close with Alex in the wake of the accident, and Riley, someone Gabe was helping get into college are just another few examples of the fleshed out cast. Even Ma, the guy who many thought responsible at first for the accident, isn’t quite the bad guy everyone thinks.

It’s hard to talk about Life is Strange: True Colors without giving anything away. That being said, it is probably my favourite in the series. Little things like checking your social media feed and text messages make you feel a connection to the town. You can jump on Arcade games littered around, play Foosball, and so much more. The gameplay elements feel more fleshed out this time, making it easier to immerse yourself in both Haven Springs and the story itself.

Life is Strange: True Colors is both harrowing and wonderful. It’ll make you cry and laugh, but regardless of how you’ll feel, the story and decisions you make are what makes Alex’s story the best so far. It felt good to be back in love with Life is Strange, and I believe that has a lot to do with my love of Alex. I just wanted her to be OK, and to find some kind of closure after her brother dies. Throughout the entire game, I enjoyed where the story went. Deck Nine has made great use of the Empathy ability, and managed to write a powerful story around it.

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Perhaps the biggest deviation is that you don’t pick a culture at the beginning and run with it. In Humankind, humanity itself is your civilisation. You begin every game as a nomadic tribe with no home and no plan. You’ll move your little troop of tribespeople around the world looking for food, animals to hunt, and curiosities to spur your fledgling nation into its first tentative steps. After establishing an outpost and then your first small city, you’ll be allowed to choose a culture.

Humankind: A civilisation sim with a difference

There’s a lot to choose from too. From the Zhou or the Egyptians, to the Assyrians or Phoenecians, and each has their own look and city style. While this doesn’t sound like such a departure, the beauty of Humankind is that you don’t have to stick with your choice. Each race and culture brings its own Civic ideals, potential religions, military units and aspirations. Once you earn enough “Era Stars”, you can transcend to the next era. And here’s where you can make a sharp right turn into any of the other cultures. Once you do this, the two combine, sometimes synergising in interesting ways.

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For example, your cities don’t only produce districts and buildings. They also research and instigate “Infrastructures”. These include national and cultural skills like fishing, debating, writing, and irrigation, or city improvements such as libraries, universities, barracks or various marketplaces. These in turn can lead to new innovations, city tiles, or even further infrastructures. City tiles include market quarters, makers quarters, farms, animal sanctuaries, defensive rally points for your armies, and a host of other essentials and, well, non-essentials.

You won’t have to worry about setting up harvest routes to gold or iron nodes, either. If you claim a territory with a potential mine or other gather point, you can set up an Artisan’s Quarter to make use of it. You can also “buy” resource nodes from your political allies. These nodes are indispensable once you have them, as they are required for creating and upgrading military units, or for researching certain infrastructures. Iron, saltpetre, incense, copper, horses, aluminium – these resources and more will become the driving goal behind a lot of your expansion.

World war fun

Of course, claiming and expanding territory leads to conflict. While you can set the enemy AI to passive if you want to, the default mode is the opposite. You’ll regularly be approached by other leaders, sometimes to form alliances, sometimes with ludicrous demands. Sometimes they just want to trade, or open a trade route through your territory. You can customise all of them, if you wish, right down to their looks and emblems. Unlike some civilisation sims, Humankind doesn’t beat you over the head with war. Now and then you’ll find yourself in direct conflict, and if you’re not careful, enemies will occupy your towns. If they take them, they also get the territory and any resources therein. Unless you’re confident of winning, it’s better to avoid warfare altogether.

Regardless, armies you use to explore, whether land-based or seafaring, will often end up fighting. Mercenary bands roam the lands, and will engage you on sight. Combat is fairly basic, a simple case of which side has greater numbers and unit strength. There’s an element of random number luck in there too, as sometimes you’ll go in with a far superior force and still lose. Despite the simplistic nature, battles for land or survival are still tense affairs. I’d advise not choosing “Instant Resolution” though, as the luck of the roll seems to be against you.

Modern warfare

Though, you can always choose to play multiplayer and face off against other people. Playing a few games pre-release I got lucky, as most people are roughly as clueless as I am. Give it a few months and there will be some very dangerous armchair generals around. The multiplayer looks and feels almost identical to the campaign, with one major caveat: other people are crafty bastards. While the AI follows routines based on programmed personalities, people don’t. Players will lie, concoct schemes behind your back, and enact unpredictable campaigns against you. It makes for a much more dynamic, but potentially more frustrating, experience.

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There’s a great deal to manage in Humankind, as you can imagine. Time doesn’t pass in years; instead, it’s based on turns. Each turn you can move all your units, select new infrastructures or buildings to work on. You can begin recruiting military units, conduct political meetings, and assign new technology research. Although the first game you launch into will be endless, any new game will have a set number of turns (up to 600) before the game “ends”. Victory conditions include winning the Space Race or being the last nation left standing atop an empire of subjugated people. Each new game allows you to set parameters such as world-size and geography, allowing for a unique starting point each time.

Heavy lies the head

City well-being is based on Stability, which can be affected by anything from natural events to war, or bad decisions on your part. As you advance you’ll unlock “Civics”, which are binary choices concerning rules, religion, law, and government. For example, do you want free speech or censored speech; do you want a multicultural society or something more inward-facing. Should your government share power with your churches, or impose national atheism?

These choices all compact, synergise, or conflict with one another, creating a truly unique nation with every playthrough. By the time you reach the late game eras, you’ll have something that functions despite any choices you make, but may not prosper if you made the wrong ones. You can use national games, festivals and religious holidays to appease your people, or rule with an iron fist to get results. Either way, these decisions are yours to make and will eventually lead you either to the stars or to ruin.

It’s toward the latter eras that things begin to make less sense. It’s possible to still have your people living in Tudor houses while your nearest neighbour is in skyscrapers. And despite building high-tech train stations, modern city blocks and even planes, there are still horses and carts trundling round your buildings. It’s distracting and very odd, but symptomatic of being able to research technology so haphazardly.

Humankind: It’s a beautiful world

Humankind looks lovely, though, and tiny details make a wealth of difference. Birds and wildlife wheel and frolic; minute people go about their business. The bright, colourful aesthetic and likeable narration combine to create a sense of something like whimsy. I did, however, hit a few snags. Sometimes on loading in, your cities will take several turns to become fully visible. And more than once the world leaders completely changed. Oh, and it has a tendency to eat your save games, which happened to me and cost me about three hours of expansion. Hopefully these will be ironed out at launch or soon after.

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Having played so many civ sims over the decades, it takes a special one to really get my attention. Recently the likes of Per Aspera and Imagine Earth have taken the kind of chances only indie games take, but Humankind seems to tread a line between those riskier ventures and the more established franchises like Sid Meier’s. Playing it is both deeply relaxing and yet mentally stimulating, requiring you to think and plan but not constantly hitting you with war and disaster. The option to sculpt a nation from so many real-world cultures is genuinely exciting. The creative scope is immense, and I’m sure people will forge incredible things once it launches.

Despite a handful of technical issues that should be patched out quickly, Humankind is an effortlessly enjoyable, truly innovative civilisation sim. There are some cracks in the shiny veneer, for sure, but on the whole it’s a great experience with almost endless replayability. Oh, and the theme music is absolutely stunning, too.

The post Humankind review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Thematically, this should have been apparent from the off. The game begins with you dragging your body, newly formed from chunks of sediment, across the ground. You’re head is a singularity, a sentient black hole, and you’ve been birthed into this world with a purpose you won’t understand for some time. The denizens of this strange, disturbing land, believe you some kind of chosen one. Either to be revered or feared. Your proportionate limbs are an anomaly here. Everyone is made of rock, heads too big for their bodies. But you, the “Carven”, are different.

Grime: A challenging, atmospheric adventure

Wielding groteseque weaponry and garbed in armour made of stone, you’re here to hunt down the evils of this world. From lumbering soldiers to beasts that are more mouth than body, you’ll face them all. What makes Grime interesting, though, is the parry mechanic. When you perform a timed counter you do it not with your weapon but with your noggin. The unfortunate attacker – depending on their remaining health – will then be absorbed, dragged into the infinite, crushing singularity that is your head.

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Not only does this kill them and convert their “Breath” into healing energy, but it also allows you to learn certain traits. After successfully parrying an enemy so many times, you’ll pick up knowledge. This may allow you to heal on a successful parry, or detect nearby secrets. There’s a decent sized list of traits to unlock, and they’re all useful.

And you’ll need them to navigate Grime’s terrifyingly surreal world. This genre is often a fertile spot for the visual imagination. Dead Cells, Ori and the Blind Forest, Hollow Knight… These are titles that dazzle you with their art style before hooking you with their gameplay. Grime does the same, only with much less overt beauty. Its world is dark and cold, a place of stark stone and barren rock. There is the sense that the gods of this place are dead or gone, and hope has long since been replaced by desperation.

It’s a hard rock life

Fingers of bare rock grasp at thin air, body parts cast from sentient stone follow you or snatch at you as you pass. It’s a world that’s out to kill you, even though narratively, you are the hunter. As the crags tremble beneath your feet, you’ll move from fight to fight, your enemies marked as prey. They exist to be devoured, consumed – even the bosses.

Grime demands that you take your time and use the powers afforded to you. You can switch between two weapons at any time, from huge blades to burning censers and axes made from fisted hands. Whike the weapons have stats eerily similar to those in Dark Souls, the armour appears to be cosmetic.

Enemies you slay dissolve into Mass, which is used to upgrade your stats. You don’t lose Mass on death, thankfully, but are returned to the last checkpoint. Instead you lose your combo modifier, which increases the amount of Mass that enemies drop. It’s a neat system that still makes you want to reclaim your former “vessel” but doesn’t feel overly punishing. Similarly to Mortal Shell, smashing your previous Vessel will restore your health, giving you a free heal during boss encounters.

Grime: A stone-cold classic?

The world of Grime is a bizarre joy to explore. Some areas, such as the first major town, are stunning. It’s a vivid, beautiful spot amidst a sea of grey and brown. It’s also a great showcase for how talented and versatile this art team is. Even coming at this game with a critical eye, I struggle to find many faults with it. Perhaps the only real annoyance is that until you unlock shortcuts, the run back to some of the bosses can be painful. But then, shortcuts do exist to alleviate this.

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I do miss games that tell a coherent story, and Grime is another obscure tale told in fits and starts. But this isn’t a major problem, as exploring the world is so much fun. Seeking out hidden pathways, optional bosses, secret weapons and power-ups… This is the heart of these games and Grime delivers it in spades.

Grime is simply a phenomenal game, and is one of the best hardcore Metroidvanias I’ve played in a while. I’d advise any fan of the genre to seek it out and give it a try, and I promise it won’t disappoint.

The post GRIME review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Resident Evil Village: Ethan’s story continues

It’s been a few years since the tragedy at the Baker estate. In that time, Mia and Ethan have had a child together. They’ve moved away from America and are now raising their baby Rose in a secluded spot in Eastern Europe. All is good in the world. Well, for about five minutes at least. As Mia and Ethan are chatting in their lovely new home, Chris Redfield bursts in and guns Mia down. WTF, as the kids say. After being carried away by the BSAA, Ethan and Mia’s transport is attacked, leaving our protagonist to uncover a much wider plot that involves werewolves, more experiments, and a mysterious woman known as Miranda.

Much of the buzz has been around Lady Dimitrescu and her creepy af daughters. Yes, they play a role in Village, but it goes so far beyond that. In fact, the tall, big bosomed vampire is part of a council that has been experimenting on the villagers for reasons I shall not divulge. After escaping the Dimitrescu Mansion, the game opens up (as does the map), and Ethan ventures to various locations in an effort to save his daughter, battling a whole load of monsters that include werewolves, the aforementioned vampires, a mutated fish monster, a deformed giant baby, and so much more.

Gunfights and explosions aplenty

Whereas RE7 felt more restricted in its combat (at least until the final chapter), there is a lot of shooting this time around. There’s no denying you’ll be tearing through your munitions like a boss. Village offers plenty of weapons to be found or purchased throughout, but the option to upgrade weapons is more beneficial. Duke, the flabby and rather pale merchant pops up all over the place, and by collecting Lei (the currency) from downed enemies or selling valuable items, you’ll gradually be able to improve a weapon’s power, recoil, ammo capacity and more. Ammo can be purchased, as well as new parts for weapons that improve their performance. Duke is a useful ally who always has new stuff to buy, and there’s even an option to get food recipes by killing chickens, pigs, and fish.

Village has built upon the limited crafting in RE7 to provide more ways to acquire medical supplies, ammo, bombs, and mines. Every enemy will drop something, and most of the time it’s a crafting resource. You can buy new recipes to craft things like mines and sniper ammo from Duke. As long as you find enough materials, there’s plenty of opportunities to bolster your stock. Enemies will also drop Lei and ammo, with bosses or bigger enemies dropping valuable items. There’s never a fear of running out of something, and it helps to make Village a better experience for it. It’s a necessary feature, especially as there are times when you’re facing a fair few enemies. In that respect, it is so reminiscent of Resident Evil 4.

Fantastic puzzles

Whilst there is more combat in Resident Evil Village, it has its fair share of puzzles. Some of them are excellent. There are various clues through text or in paintings, so the answer is always hidden somewhere. In true Resi fashion, there are doors that cannot be opened straight away. Every area, be it the village, the catacombs, or the factory, an intricately designed labyrinth is ripe for exploration. Key items you find are no longer tied to your storage, so there’s no worry of having to store them or move them around to necessitate something new.

It is little alterations to the mechanics like this that make it more player friendly than it has been before. Another example is skippable cutscenes. Gone are the days of watching an entire monologue before attempting another boss fight. These changes make Village more enjoyable. Whilst they make things easier, the difficulty itself still poses a challenge. In RE7, I died far more times than I should, but the balance in Village is much better. Enemies take a fair amount of bullets to put down, but you always have the tools to do so.

Resident Evil Village: Breath-taking visuals

On PS5, Resident Evil Village looks unbelievable. You’ll visit plenty of places in and around the village, all blindingly beautiful. There is tons of blood and gore, but regardless of the grotesque nightmare you find yourself in, it is hard not to be blown away. The art deco style of Dimitrescu Mansion; the mechanical framework of the factory; the eerie village covered in snow and muck; the dank, damp, and dirty dungeons. Everything treats the eyes to a visual spectacle. The character animations are superb as well, from Ethan and Mia to other villains of the story. It is clear a lot of time and effort has been put in to making Village look the best it can be.

Resident Evil Village encapsulates the survival elements whilst opening up the playing field. Yes, there are still claustrophobic and fear-inducing moments, but it balances these with the heavier combat scenarios. In terms of environments, RE7 feels a lot smaller in comparison. I’m not sure anyone is prepared for the scope on offer in Village, and that is a good thing. Whilst it’s still a relatively short game (I finished the main campaign in 8 hrs 30 minutes), the journey you go on feels like one of the biggest yet.

Balancing the past, present, and future

Without ruining anything, there are elements of the story that people might not be happy with. For much of Village, the overarching story is absent, relying on building the characters of Miranda and her council of psychopaths. Towards the end, everything starts to ramp up. Ties to the series come in to play, and a lot of what you find out will bring a flutter to your fast-beating heart. Although there’re some fantastic moments in regards to Ethan and Mia’s next chapter, I was a bit disappointed with a couple of omissions, as well as how Capcom are relying to much on Resident Evil’s history instead of looking to the future. Still, Village is one hell of a joyride, and some of the encounters are staggering.

Resident Evil Village has managed to keep a series that has been going for 25 years feel new. Few other games could do what Capcom has done here. There are some truly stylish segments that come into play as soon as the opening cutscene plays out, and they never stop. Every step of Village was enjoyable. The combat is satisfying, the puzzles are well-orchestrated, and it looks fucking incredible. As a fan since the beginning, I adored Village. It embodies everything the series is known for as well as evolving in a fresh and exciting way. It’s amazing really. Going from third-person to first and still retaining what made the series so special is an admirable feat. If you were excited for Village, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

The post Resident Evil Village review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

In terms of the story or Judgment’s mechanics, everything remains untouched. It is the same game that released almost two years ago. Whilst it doesn’t share any real story beats with the Yakuza franchise, the story takes place in Kamurocho. Anyone familiar with Yakuza will know the streets like the back of their hand. It’s a pleasure to re-tread steps in the Red Light District of Tokyo, albeit in a rather different fashion.

Judgment: Same game but better looking

You play as an investigator called Takayuki Yagami who unravels a murder mystery in the heart of the city. Those niggles with the investigations still don’t sit right. The laborious task of scanning crime scenes and tailing suspects are the least fun elements. Thankfully, everything else is a blast. It might take a while to warm to the new protagonist, especially if you’re playing after becoming acquainted with the wonderful Ichiban Kasuga in Like a Dragon.

Whilst Judgment plays the same, the visuals have certainly been improved. Lighting is noticeable straight away. The reflections in puddles of the city looming above are clearer; neon signs are bright and distinct; and the general appearance of the city feels more alive. Character models are more refined, looking better in every way. It’s not a huge difference on Xbox Series S, but that’s down to the original looking pretty spectacular anyway.

Runs like clockwork

The power of next-gen is present in how it runs. 60fps makes all aspects of Judgment great, but combat plays out like a dream. Fighting is still satisfying, perhaps the best seen in the series. However, battles are more enjoyable thanks to the added ferociousness and power. There’s no latency at all. Everything runs buttery smooth and offers a solid gameplay loop whenever you’re fighting a bunch of enemies. The varied moves at your disposal are implemented as soon as you press the input, meaning fights are quick and responsive. Load times have been improved, too. Cutscenes now fly by and throw you back into the action much quicker.

Judgment is shinier, prettier, and more powerful on next-gen. Ryu Ga Gotoku has done a fantastic job of improving the game’s biggest plus point, the combat, as well as sharpening up the textures and resolution. It doesn’t look loads better than the original, but that’s a credit to the developers for already making a very beautiful game. What it does do is improve Judgment for next-gen consoles so that players who never got a chance to play it originally will be free to experience it in all its swanky glory.

The post Judgment next-gen review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Say the magic word

Adolescent protagonist Izzy longs to be a writer and, on the advice of her Gran, keeps a journal in which to collect her many thoughts. Lost Words uses the journal to tell two tales, one of Izzy and her family, and another of the fantasy world she creates. As she skips and leaps across the pages, using the words as ledges and paths, the story unfolds with a rare eloquence that combines Izzy’s earnest interpretations with real-world truths. Written by celebrated video game scribe Rhianna Pratchett, Lost Words: Beyond the Page draws you in without you even knowing it and holds your attention tight – so tight you don’t even realise, at first, that it’s drawing you on towards an ending you won’t want to read, but won’t be able to turn away from.

There’s real beauty here – in both the character of Izzy and in the fantasy world she writes. The story within the story takes place in the fairytale land of Estoria, where a young girl called Grace (you can choose from three names, as well as the colour of her dress and necklace) has just become the Guardian of the Fireflies, the protector of her little village. In this tale, a dragon descends and burns the village – and Grace sets off bravely through the fire and ruin to find the lost fireflies and save her family and friends.

“A writer writes…”

The dragon is a metaphor, of course, for events occurring in Izzy’s real life that she doesn’t fully understand. As you solve rudimentary puzzles and make subtle choices, you’ll begin to draw parallels. If there’s a complaint to level against Lost Words it’s that, as a game (or even two games), it’s a fairly spartan offering. The mechanics of the fantasy world don’t stretch much beyond running and jumping and moving the occasional boulder, and while Grace’s “word magic” is a neat touch it’s never used to solve anything particularly taxing.

For example, you can select the word “Rise” to lift platforms, or “Extinguish” to put out fires. Later you’ll find other words like “Break” and “Repair”. It’s never unclear which word you need in a given situation and there’s not really anyway to fail. If you mess up, you’ll just respawn more or less right where you are. Likewise, Izzy can’t ever fail in her journey unless you literally stop playing, and so while it tells a genuinely moving and beautiful story, it does so without ever fully engaging you with its gameplay, and that’s a shame as there’s certainly potential here for it to have gone that much further.

Simple and beautiful

But I’m not one for criticising what a game isn’t, and I fell in love with so many of its elements that I didn’t mind the game itself being fairly straightforward. The artwork is simple and beautiful at the same time, with Izzy’s pale journal pages splashed with shocks of colour and childlike animations. Estoria, by contrast, is consistently brighter and more vibrant.

Sadly, though, the beauty is there as a backdrop to a poignant and occasionally tragic story of a young girl forced to face truths that she shouldn’t have to yet, and anyone who has ever lost someone or had to endure the pain of a loved one suffering beyond their ability to help will feel a kinship with Izzy. Lost Words: Beyond the Page is a gorgeous, moving tale of two young girls facing an increasingly frightening world and eventually finding beauty where those less innocent might not, and that’s the kind of writing that transcends mediums.

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It’s finally time to eliminate the shady organisation known as Providence, and with the help of long-lost friend Lucas Grey and ICA handler Diana Burnwood, you’re tasked with putting an end to their powerful global rule. There are some major twists and turns, but it never does anything to elevate Agent 47 to anything other than the cold and calculated assassin we all know and love. I was hoping for some revelations about who the man is, or at least some detail on the character beyond the obvious. Going into Hitman 3, I struggled to remember any of the narrative from the previous two entries, but in all honesty, that’s not why I play them.

Much of the gameplay remains the same, but there’s a new tool at your disposal that helps with hacking doors, windows, and keypads. You cannot use the camera with every locked entrance, but Lucas Grey talks you through particular areas and lets you know when it can be used. Movement is fluid enough and staying in the shadows feels easy enough to do. If anything, stealth has been refined, but it’s seldom been an issue in the entirety of the trilogy.

The first level takes place in a huge skyscraper in Dubai, and it was within minutes that I fell deeply in love with Hitman 3. The bright sun shone through the golden chambers of the building, majestic pillars stood tall, and immaculate marble flooring lay at my feet, and hundreds of people from all walks of life passed me by, all unaware of what I was doing there. As with every Hitman game so far, I explored the area and waited until an opportunity arose to find my targets. It didn’t take long to find one, and from there I pursued one which led me straight to my mark. There are the mission objectives available to you which give you a foot in the door, or you can simply find your own way.

The first time I played the mission, I took one of the targets out on the roof after he invited me to be his personal guard. There, he wanted to see how well I could hit some moving targets with a knife. On the secluded area of the rooftop, I lodged one of the blades in his throat, then kicked him off the building. The second target was a bit trickier. I arranged a meeting with him, where he wanted me to kill someone who’d been a thorn in his side. Once I’d taken the new target out, I returned to the room and gained his trust, then escaped to his private quarters with him and managed to put a bullet in his head.

On my second playthrough, I did things completely differently. After using the new camera feature to hack open the electronic windows, I scaled the building and found the computer systems where I scheduled a meeting between the two targets. I took out a guard and dressed in his outfit, then joined the meeting as everyone else but the two targets were left the room. I activated the security for the room and shut it down, leaving me with the perfect opportunity to kill them both and leave the building without anyone suspecting a thing.

This is why I love Hitman 3. You can play it exactly how you want to. There’s a multitude of ways to kill your targets, distract guards, gain the trust of unsuspecting NPCs, or just have some fun. I dressed as a drug dealer and supplied pills to technicians, disguised myself as a chef and slipped poison into someone’s food, took a photo of someone and electrocuted them in the process, pushed a guard off a moving train, deejayed at a German club, threw an apricot at a maid, and squashed someone with a mechanical grape press. There are tons of outcomes and plenty of choices to make, with endless possibilities and playthroughs that make Hitman 3 an absolute hoot.

Of all the levels in Hitman 3, Dartmoor stands out as the best. It manages to encapsulate every element of gameplay so perfectly. Sneaking around the mansion, taking out your target with a range of smart and creative ways, using the wide range of opportunities to distract NPCs, and using your brains to solve an intricate puzzle. On top of all that, the layout of the grounds and the mansion are crafted superbly. Berlin isn’t quite as fun to play. It’s much harder to take out your targets as you’re walking around a huge nightclub with tons of people scattered around everywhere. It’s also a fairly bland environment, especially when compared to the grandeur of Dubai and Chongqing.

In a series that requires precision, patience, and careful planning, Hitman 3 breaks the mould slightly as it approaches the end. Of course, you can still attempt to achieve the ‘Silent Assassin’ rank, but it’s much more fun to use the variety of guns that are available. It gives us an insight into what IO might do with the James Bond franchise, as much of the combat is precise, constricted, and full of style. It feels more ambitious than Hitman and Hitman 2. Yes, there’s little difference in gameplay, but the levels and ideas at play make Hitman 3 the best so far.

Hitman 3 is a satisfying farewell to the world’s most famous assassin. The locations offer intelligent opportunities to take out your target, with plenty of replayability and moments of humour along the way. Berlin may not be the best of levels, but that’s only because the others are so exceptional, and thanks to the Mastery Ranks, you can replay every one over and over again to see how each mission objective plays out. There are tons of ways to gain XP, and completing the varying challenges gives you even more reason to play each level more than once. The visuals are stunning, the gameplay is smooth as silk, and although the story does nothing different to the everyday spy novel, you’ll still find plenty to enjoy.

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Its pixelated style harks back to an era of old. Whilst it has the 16-bit charm of many Mega Drive and SNES classics, it also has the difficulty. Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game – Complete Edition is hard. If you’re wanting to play it on your own, be prepared to die – a lot. You can grind for coins to eventually upgrade your arsenal, and as you level up you gain new moves, but it’ll take a while until you’re at a decent level to feel untouchable. If you don’t have the time or patience for this, you can team up with up to three friends online. There’s also couch co-op as well, so there will be plenty of opportunities to jump into a session with your pals.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game – Complete Edition is a treat on the eyes. The bright colours and punk rock attitude elevate the environments and visual effects, and the banging soundtrack by chiptune legends Anamanaguchi is equally as satisfying. There’s plenty of side-games to play whilst making your way through the levels that help to split up the somewhat monotonous combat. At the end of each world, you end up fighting each of Ramona’s exes. Whilst they become increasingly more difficult, there’s enough variety in them, even if it’s mainly a case of beating the crap out of them.

For example, Todd tries to hit you with his mutated arm and shock you with his electrified hair, whilst Roxanne is more agile, attacking you with her sword whilst sporadically disappearing. The enemies you fight throughout the worlds are diverse, as are the levels. Whether you’re fighting through snowy streets, onboard a moving train, or a film set, it’s wonderfully designed. With the polish the re-release brings, it looks fantastic on the Switch.

The extra game modes are fun for a while, but the only one with any staying power is Battle Royal, as long as you have some friends to play with. You essentially fight each other until there’s one person left standing. Boss Rush sees you face off against all the bosses; Survival Horror makes you face hordes of zombies in order to survive; and Dodgeball is, well, dodgeball. There are no new game modes in Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game – Complete Edition. That’s not such a bad thing, as not everyone will have been able to play this when it came out a decade ago. The combat manages to hold up today, thanks to the speed of it, but movement can be cumbersome, especially when facing multiple foes.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game – Complete Edition may not be on a par with Streets of Rage 4 or Battletoads from last year, but the style and variety will keep you occupied. If you’re willing to grind alone, or want something to play with your friends, it’s certainly worth the investment. It is hard, with every new level providing a steep difficulty curve, but much like Scotty P, if you have your mates by your side, you’ll get by in the end.

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There are three worlds in PHOGS!, and each one revolves around the most important pastimes in a canine’s life: sleeping, eating, and playing. You can visit each world in any order you prefer, and by using the shoulder buttons you can grab onto items as one of the two dogs, or press the trigger buttons to stretch your tummy. Both left and right buttons correspond to the different dogs, and by working out a rhythm between the two, you can solve many of the game’s puzzles.

PHOGS! allows you to play on your own, but you can also play with someone else. On the Nintendo Switch, I was controlling one dog and my daughter was controlling the other. By working together, you can complete challenges, and it became a lot of fun due to the variety of puzzles. I found it easier on my own, but that’s more down to my impatience waiting on my child to do what I needed her to do. Whichever way you decide to play, many will appreciate the comfortable difficulty level. Unlike Chasing Rats Games’ Struggling, you’re never stumped to find a solution, with a pace that welcomes both adults and children alike.

Each world in PHOGS! is completely different from the last, and as you travel between them thanks to huge worm-like creatures, you’ll have to finish mini-puzzles that feature a whole range of headscratchers. You may have to swing from one ring to the next, move giant watermelons to use as platforms, switch on lights, ride the dodgems, use the dogs like a hosepipe, and more. There’s so much enjoyment in everything you do, and thanks to the fluid movement and clever design, you’ll be captivated throughout.

If you do fail, there’s never much ground to make back up. If you fall off a platform, there’s an easy route back onto it. If you slide off the map, you are instantly loaded back into the action. Some might see this as too easy and therefore not appreciate the lack of punishment, but PHOGS! isn’t about constant failure – it’s far too nice for that. The fact that it’s aimed at families tells you everything. If you prefer a game that pushes you to tear your hair out in search of the solution, PHOGS! isn’t for you.

Besides puzzles, there’s some other stuff you can do to fill the time up between levels. Each area has a certain amount of dog bones to collect, and these can be found through helping NPCs. You may need to find vegetables to make a soup or help a farmer harvest his land. These additional challenges help to flesh out PHOGS! and give you a reason to explore every nook and cranny of the beautifully designed worlds. There is also a mysterious creature that hides throughout the levels, and you can also look out for him to give you something extra to do.

PHOGS! is a puzzler aimed at those who want a fun escape and a chilled-out experience, but also welcomes them to a place filled with happiness, charm, and comfort. Red and Blue are cute dogs that become more like your own pet as you progress through the game, with plenty of puzzles to solve and places to see. It’s a fundamental puzzler that manages to challenge you enough to keep you pressing through the colourful environments, but if you want more of a test, you might need to look elsewhere.

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Now we’ve addressed how both games are kindred spirits, it’s time to talk about why Fenyx Rising should be a shoe-in for everybody’s game of the year lists. Whilst there are tons of similarities with BotW, Immortals Fenyx Rising is a phenomenal action-adventure game featuring loads of intricate and inspiring puzzles, superb combat, and one of the most thrilling stories of 2020. The writing is excellent, and the titular character of Fenyx is so loveable it hurts.

The story is centred around the re-emergence of Typhon, the most powerful Titan of all time. The Gods have been cursed, their essence lost, and their fates doomed. Greek heroes like Odysseus and Herakles have been corrupted, and almost everyone else has been turned to stone. When it seems like all hope is lost, an unlikely hero called Fenyx embarks on a quest to save Greece and destroy Typhon once and for all. You get to customise your hero to be male or female, or non-binary if you so wish. Hair colour, their voice, facial hair, and tattoos can all be chosen before you head out on your adventure.

Everyone is going to have their own version of Fenyx, and mine was a girl with a big heart and purple hair. Jeffrey Yohalem has written one of the finest scripts of the year, if not the decade. Throughout your adventure, Zeus and Prometheus act as narrators. They help to fill in the story, react to what Fenyx is doing, and provide some genuinely funny moments. The humour lies sweetly at the heart of Immortals Fenyx Rising. It has lighter moments, but there’s also a moving tale about a father’s realisation that he might not have been the dad of the year.

Your main objective is to restore the essence of the Gods you encounter. Each God is tied to a particular area, and after scaling their statue, you embark on a quest line that has you completing varied tasks that never follow a generic pattern. You might have to solve a puzzle, then fight some enemies, then dive into a Vault to recover their essence, but it always mixes it up so no two paths are the same. Each of the Gods has a unique story in the way it relates to Zeus, their father, and you learn so much about who they are and how they came to be. Ares has become a chicken, Aphrodite a tree, Hephaistos an automaton, and Athena a child. Whenever you encounter a God, you’re instantly drawn in to their history, and the voice-acting is constantly top notch.

Outside of the main quests, Immortals Fenyx Rising offers you so much to do. By using a skill known as Far Sight (pressing down on the right analogue stick), you can survey the land and reveal certain places of interest. You can always explore freely, but using Far Sight helps you to uncover the closest puzzles and chests far quicker. Everything on offer helps to improve Fenyx’s skills as well as bolster their weapons and armour.

By completing Mythic Challenges, you gain Coins of Charon which can be used at the Hall of the Gods (the game’s hub) to unlock new God-like abilities and improve on your standard skills. Some of these are game-changers, such as Hephaistos’ Hammer. It does tons of damage, but it does consume a lot of stamina. These challenges are also excellent. You might have to find blue spheres to place into a constellation, race to the end of a course in a set time, or fire an arrow through rings until you light a pyre at the end. Whatever the challenge, I had a lot of fun trying to complete them. They can be tough, but the rewards are well worth it in the end.

Chests are scattered throughout the world, containing new weapons and armour sets, or cosmetic skins and upgrade materials, and each piece of armour or weapon has a particular buff that remains until you switch it out. You can also tame horses that have particular advantages, whether that be increased stamina or additional speed. Collecting enough Ambrosia will allow you to add an additional health chunk to your bar, diving into Vaults of Tartaros and solving the puzzles within grant you new gear and lightning bolts (which are needed for improving stamina), and side quests can be picked up to flesh out the overarching mythology of the story.

Combat in Immortals Fenyx Rising is sublime. Pressing the right shoulder button attacks with your sword whilst the right trigger lands a blow from your axe. Dodging or parrying successfully slows down time and opens up a small window of opportunity to do excess damage. When you start to incorporate all your Godly Powers, fighting plays like a dream. You can raise spears from the ground, charge fast at your enemies, use an almighty hammer to cause untold damage, and pull yourself closer to enemies to land a flurry of melee attacks. You’ll also unlock Phosphor – a Phoenix bird with a mix of powers – to aid you in battle.

Your bow and arrow is another great piece of gear, and tracking an Arrow of Apollo as it flies in slow motion towards an enemy’s head feels incredibly satisfying. Your bow becomes an important tool in many of the puzzles as you’ll need to fire with precision at targets that change wind direction, or hit other targets that open blocked doorways. You’ll fight a wide range of enemies straight from Greek mythology: Cerberus, Griffins, Minotaurs, Cyclops, Hecatoncheires, Harpies, and plenty more. Each one attacks differently, and you’ll always have to change tactics in battle because packs of varied monsters pop up all the time.

The environments in Immortals Fenyx Rising are gorgeous. From lush forests with glistening blue lakes to lands covered in dirt, ironworks, and fire, there are so many stunning places that they become a joy to explore. The mythological backbone of the game is present everywhere you look. Giant sculptures and monuments, castles with majestic architecture, and mountains that reach the heavens, the detail and design is near perfection. To add to how good this game looks, Gareth Coker’s score is incredible, using authentic Greek instrumentation and adding his own unique twist to suit the mood and area you’re in.

Travelling around the different regions is another part of Immortals Fenyx Rising that I adored. Using the Wings of Daedalus to glide off tall cliffs or monuments and riding around on your horse gives you chills, and climbing up mountains or golden buildings provides a sense of accomplishment due to the need to approach each one with caution; if your stamina depletes halfway, it’ll spell certain doom. At one point, you’ll face the harsh cold. If you don’t light the way with fire then death will be knocking on your door. These environmental challenges only add to the fantastical adventure you find yourself on, and as I look back after spending almost 30 hours with Fenyx, I miss it already.

Perhaps Immortals’ greatest achievement is the variety of its Vaults. Not only do they offer a nice break from exploring, they also offer diverse puzzles with intricate elements, and no two are the same. For example, many take the form of platforming puzzles where you’ll need to navigate wooden crates, metal pillars, and breakable stone cubes around obstacles like levitating platforms and updrafts. Trying to manage the large heavy spheres, air tunnels, corruption fields, and poisonous clouds takes up a lot of time, but the way puzzles are so intricately designed make it hard not be awed by them.

Immortals Fenyx Rising is an excellent adventure with challenging and inventive puzzles, a wonderful combat system, and a rich world ripe for exploring. The dialogue is funny, poignant, and thrilling, with a story that explores every facet of the human condition in a way that is relatable for everyone. It does share many similarities with BotW, almost shamelessly so at times, but this is without a doubt its own game, and the experience Ubisoft Quebec has in making open world games is on show throughout. I guess it depends how much you love Breath of the Wild, and whether you can get past many of the same ideas without feeling a little cheated. It offers a different spin on the stories of Zeus and his children, sweeping you up with its spellbinding tale and beautiful, charming world.

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Just Dance has a pretty addictive formula in place. Let’s start with its visuals first. Each song has a concept behind it with unique ideas and choreographed dances. The likes of Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s “Rain On Me” has an almost retro-futuristic style with tons of dancers in the background, all clad in sci-fi gear, whereas the likes of Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” has a fairly simplistic disco theming. All of these have a distinct style that ties songs together. There’s a certain brightness to every inch of Just Dance with the heavy use of pinks, whites, and blues. In each of these songs, there are a few dancers at the forefront with realistic body proportions and movements, presumably recorded with a green screen. So as not to make them feel out of place, they are cartoonified with only specific face features like glasses or hair shown to the viewer. They aren’t a person so much as a tutorial on how to perform certain dances.

Performing dances has you grab a JoyCon with one hand and mimic away. Dancers have a clearly defined left hand that you are supposed to copy. It is painted with bright colours and distinct from the rest of the dancer, so as to guide you. Choreography is as strong as it always has been with the easier tracks providing just enough fun so as to not feel too boring. It draws a good balance by making easy tracks fun and hard tracks difficult enough to provide their own challenge. It provides just enough weirdness through the likes of Toño Rosario’s “Kulikitaka” to draw a rather broad appeal to keep most members of a family rather happy.

Like all Just Dance titles, dancing like the characters in front of you isn’t required to actually do well. Potentially, if you’re a coward or cheater, you could just mimic one arm and leave the rest but Just Dance is hardly a serious game. It seems fairly clear from a single glance at Just Dance it attempts to prioritise a sense of fun rather than any serious attempt at dancing. This has always worked in its favour with a nice mix of actual dance moves and enough bears, pandas, walking smoothies, and whatever else to keep you somewhat entertained.

This moves us onto perhaps the most important thing about a new Just Dance title: its song list. Just Dance 2021 certainly has a decent selection of tracks with the TikTok popular “Say So” by Doja Cat, Lizzo’s huge hit “Juice” to the more jovial songs like the aforementioned “Kulikitaka” or the classic “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from Randy Newman. Over the 41 tracks, it features a few very big hits, some lesser-known, and a few selected for a broader appeal. The comments on the tracklist reveal sums it up far better than I can. About ten of the songs most people knew, a few were known (and loved) by a few excited Kpop fans, there’s a pretty big Latin pop fanbase and the rest weren’t really talked about. So far, so Just Dance. This is part of the charm of each year’s tracklist.

Unfortunately, this brings us to one of the biggest issues of a yearly release like this. Just Dance has a subscription service entitled “Just Dance Unlimited”. For about half the price of the base game, you can get every game in Just Dance history for the year. This is over 600 songs and a great way of never needing to open up your old games again. Unfortunately, with this amount of songs on offer, it feels hard to justify yet another year with so many songs. For the same price as a copy of Just Dance 2021, you can pick up last year’s version and a year of Just Dance Unlimited. Now you have to compare 40 news song to over 600 older ones. The new songs just aren’t good enough for that trade. It doesn’t help that each year is just so formulaic. If you put on 2020 by accident, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The art style stays the same, choreography similar and even the moments in between songs feel the same. Your profile has a level system where you can use a gacha machine (don’t worry, it uses in-game currency only) to unlock new profile icons, slogans, and others. This stayed the same from 2020 to 2021 except the progress I had already made was not kept.

Just Dance 2021 is exactly what you expect from it. It works fine and the visuals and choreography are as good as ever. This being said, there are very few changes in the base game and Just Dance Unlimited is a much better option for most, would be, dancers. It seems its very invention makes the subscription of a yearly Just Dance game feel obsolete. If you really want to play the 41 tracks that Just Dance 2021 has to offer and are willing to pay that premium, this won’t disappoint. But, if you are looking for a start into Just Dance, this probably isn’t the best place.

The post Just Dance 2021 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

I can see a lot of people struggling to look past the paywall when it comes to new Superstars. You aren’t given the complete roster from the off; instead, only a handful of them are available. Personally, I have no problem with working to unlock my favourite beefcakes because I’m always too overwhelmed when choosing who I’m going to wrestle with. Plus, it gives me a sense of accomplishment when I’ve worked hard to unlock guys like AJ Styles and Andre the Giant.

Saying that, a lot of the WWE Universe’s younger audience are likely to spend time playing this, and they might be put off by having to grind to get their favourites. If you aren’t familiar with Saber Interactive’s NBA 2K Playgrounds, this concept of playing to unlock will be alien, and with it not being 100% clear that not everyone will be available to play as from launch, many people might feel cheated.

Gameplay takes elements of the WWE 2K series and streamlines it, giving players a simple approach to wrestling. Each wrestler is categorised into five styles: High-Flyer, Powerhouse, Technician, All-Rounder, and Brawler. With each style, the basic moves remain the same regardless of who you choose. For example, despite Aleister Black and AJ Styles having very different move sets in real life, their moves are exactly the same. The only move that differs is their signature and finisher. This is the same across every class, so to the astute WWE fans that want individuality across the roster, you aren’t going to get it.

The focus is on fast and furious fighting, and at the end of the day, it is an arcade fighter. The fun is in playing against others and hitting buttons to get the upper hand. You can press Square and Triangle for punch and kick combos, and using the right stick will make you do a few actual moves. You can hold in the left trigger with a punch or kick to do a powerful strike, and then once you’ve built up your special gauge, pressing the two trigger buttons together will allow you to do your finisher. This gauge fills up relatively fast, but if you don’t want to wait, you can press a directional button on the D-pad to use specific power-ups in the interim.

The more you play, the more of these power-ups you unlock. Regaining health, the ability to take more damage, and landing more powerful strikes are just a small selection of these. Every class has benefits, but regardless of who you choose, it won’t take long to learn the ropes and use them all to your advantage. There are weapons and environmental dangers to use to your advantage. Alligators are at ringside, and you can throw your opponent into their jaws. There’s lava, explosive barrels, and bagpipes that will also be available to use to your advantage. Different weapons like steel chairs and rubber hammers can be used as well. These arenas, or battlegrounds, will be unlocked as you play through the campaign, and can then be used in exhibition fights.

The majority of the modes in WWE 2K Battlegrounds are pretty good. King of the Battleground is the stand out mode for me. You take part in a Royal Rumble-type match online where you join at ringside, and once a Superstar is eliminated in the ring, it’s your time to shine. You are rewarded for how long you stay in the match and how many eliminations you get. The load times are small, and even while you are waiting to join, you can beat the holy hell out of other real players at ringside to kill time before your number is called. There’re also online Tournaments you can join, again you are rewarded for getting further.

Battleground Challenge lets you take your created Superstar through a series of matches to earn in-game currency. These range from 1v1 matches to Steel Cage matches, and the more you play, the better the rewards. When it comes to creating your Superstar, there aren’t tons of options in the beginning, but you can unlock more throughout the game. Although there aren’t a lot of outfits to choose from, you can edit your face in a multitude of ways, giving you plenty of control in how you look.

The Campaign mode is one of my favourite aspects of WWE 2K Battlegrounds. When I knew I wouldn’t be able to play as my created Superstar, I was a little put off. Instead, you play as one of the fictional characters dreamed up by Saber Interactive. This actually works really well, as each match is set up with a comic book strip involving tons of real WWE Superstars. Legendary WWE manager and creative mastermind Paul Heyman pitches an idea to Vince McMahon, and from there you visit different locations around the world. It’s an entertaining story with some great comic book art.

Although you aren’t playing as yourself, encounters with the likes of Jake “The Snake” Roberts act as a nice surprise. Throughout every mode, your overall level grows, and each time you level up, you get more spending money to unlock whatever you wish. To get every Superstar, you’re likely to spend a lot of time playing through the modes, but it acts as a nice incentive to do so. I had a lot of fun playing, whether I was myself, one of the characters in Campaign mode, or a WWE Superstar.

WWE 2K Battlegrounds isn’t supposed to be taken seriously. The controls are basic, but I couldn’t help but enjoy the simplicity of it. Matches don’t last long, but when you are playing online or against a friend, it can be a blast. Some of the moves resulted in glitches where I was power slamming thin air, but after playing WWE 2K20, it was something I could happily see past. Commentary is repetitive, and on occasion the reversal mechanic didn’t always show the button prompts I needed to press.

The in-game currency is going to bother a lot of people, but WWE 2K Battlegrounds is a decent arcade fighter. The King of the Battleground is fantastic, and the Campaign is enjoyable thanks to the comic book cutscenes that never take themselves too seriously. The gameplay is easy to get to grips with, meaning anyone can pick up and play, and match types like the Steel Cage offer a fresh take on a familiar match type. It may not be perfect, but there is plenty of fun to be had.

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It would’ve been more beneficial to have EA do what Konami are doing with PES this year. Add a seasonal update and don’t charge for a full price game. There is far too much in Madden NFL 21 that has been completely ignored, and it’s obvious from the moment you jump in. Visuals haven’t really been touched, neither have some of the biggest modes in the series. Just like the Career Mode in FIFA, Franchise Mode has always been my favourite, but I’ve barely touched it this year.

Perhaps the biggest addition to Madden NFL 21 is The Yard. Taking place across various backyard environments, you play in 6v6 matches that focus more on scoring, removing many of the rules to ensure gameplay is more arcade-like than realistic. Each team gets three opportunities to score a touchdown. You can snap the ball to anyone, pass multiple times as long as you’re behind the Blitz line, and even punch and kick the ball to your fellow teammates. Whilst these matches don’t last too long, they offer a nice step away from the simulation of other modes.

You can pick a Prototype for your player which allows you to pick specific skills and attributes to build upon, and the more you play the more you can improve your ‘class’. You’ll also earn new items of clothing for your created avatar the more you level up, giving you a reason to continue in the mode. Your avatar will also be the character you use as part of the ‘Face of the Franchise’ mode, and is a vast improvement on last year’s. It’s story is still filled with tropes galore and moments that will have you cringing more than a David Brent joke, but at least it’s better than last year.

You start off as a quarterback that gets drafted in at college after the starting QB reveals to you he has a heart defect. He confides in you, asking you not to say anything, but regardless of whether you choose to or not, you’re still a tattletale. Much like previous iterations, you go through the rigmarole of playing through college, university, and then the NFL. There’re a fair amount of cutscenes even when you’re in the NFL, making it feel as though your entire career is part of a bigger narrative than ever before. The effort put into Longshot has never come back, and whilst Madden NFL 21 tries to incorporate passion and emotion, it falls pretty flat.

Gameplay probably sees the biggest improvement, but there’s nowhere near enough of a change for anyone outside of die-hard fans to really notice. When defending a play, your defensive line have more options to sack the quarterback, stopping pass rushes whilst using the right stick. If you’re making a pass or going on a run, you can now use the right stick to link together stiff arms and spins fluidly to break away down the field. These changes don’t do a lot to really change things, but they do allow for more control. The AI of your teammates feels like it’s regressed from last year. I often found running backs weren’t getting into space, and the linemen weren’t quick to move at all.

Madden NFL 21 looks almost identical to last year with some additional character animations and a fresh lick of paint. I can’t help but feel as though EA Sports are too busy thinking about future installments to give this year’s the attention it deserves. Not everyone will be able to buy a new console when they’re out, and this is likely to be the one Madden game they play over the next year. Franchise Mode has been ignored almost completely, as has Ultimate Team. I love Franchise Mode, but I had no inclination to play through an incredibly similar experience to the one I had last year. The mantra, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t cut the mustard when it’s a yearly iteration of a beloved game series.

Although Madden NFL 21 has some improvements to its gameplay, and the enjoyable The Yard Mode makes an impressive debut, there’s far too much that has been ignored. It feels more like an update than a fully blown follow-up, and it’s a real shame that Franchise Mode has been left in the dirt. Ultimate Team has received new artwork on the cards, but other than that it’s the same. The visuals are almost identical, and the overall presentation has nothing that makes it stand out. As you can probably tell, I’m pretty disappointed, and I really hope this isn’t a trend we’ll see in other upcoming sports titles. The future is important, but so is the here and now.

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Hitting the ball is done simply by pulling back on the right stick, then pushing forward when you’re at the correct power. This takes a little bit of time to get right, as the slightest misjudgement can send the ball a few feet in the wrong direction. A thick white line appears on the screen, and your back and front swing movement appears as a line within it. If you’re not straight enough, or you’re too fast or slow, it can have a negative impact on the accuracy of your swing. On top of the actual swing, there’re plenty of other factors you need to take into consideration.

Thankfully, the amount of control HB Studios gives you is excellent. You can adjust the trajectory of the ball, the power of each shot, and whether you need to curve the shot using the draw or fade. On top of all these choices, you have various shots to choose from depending on whereabouts you are on the course, and which clubs you may need to utilise. Thankfully, PGA Tour 2K21 suggests the best shot type and club for you, but you can change this depending on your preference. The Scout Cam can be turned on before you take each shot, and it allows you to see where the ball will land, and how level the ground is at the point of impact.

PGA Tour 2K21 also lets you have a bird’s eye view of the whole course including the putting green. The shot-line highlights the path of your shot, giving you the clearest idea of where your ball will land, and on the putting green you have the option to see where the slopes are, as well as a simulated guide as to whether the ball will go into the hole if you use the right power. All of these options can be turned off or on, giving players a varied difficulty palette. Whilst there are set difficulty levels, you can play around to get the most customisable experience ever seen in a golf game. There’s also an option to let the rumble of your controller let you know when to hit the shot instead of having the power bar appear on screen.

Turning this into a fully fledged 2K sports title makes the flow of everything work in tandem, allowing your created MyPlayer to earn an array of gear and clubs as you play. You do level up throughout the career, but there’re no skill trees to improve your skills. Whilst some may not like the fact your player doesn’t improve in stats, I actually found this a breath of fresh air. It means your player improves as you become better at the game, and no matter how much Virtual Currency you earn in PGA Tour 2K21, you can’t spend it to improve your stats.

There are plenty of items to purchase, from new sweaters to trousers to hats, and various golf clubs can be purchased that improve your overall golf bag. Some items are unlocked in your career as well, meaning you don’t have to spend money to gain a lot of new gear. I had a great time progressing through the career. It’s pretty straightforward in the way you start as an amateur to taking on real professionals on your route to win the FedExCup. Rivalries with these professionals open up the ability to earn new gear, but they never feel like anything more than an opportunity to gain swag.

Sponsorships play a role in your career as well, and by completing challenges set out by your sponsor, you’ll unlock more stuff exclusive to their brand. The main focus of the career is to experience all the new courses on offer and to enjoy the excellent golfing mechanics as your rank up in the leaderboards. 2K previously worked with HB Studios on Golf Club 2019, but this is the first time the 2K name has been associated with the franchise. There’s plenty of room for the two companies to grow, but this is a huge step in the right direction.

PGA Tour 2K21 is a beautiful game. The courses look both authentic and gorgeous. The lighting and shading highlights every course’s layout, with plenty of detail in the tiniest of places. The commentary is good, too, but I often found that Luke Elvy and Rich Beem repeated themselves quite a lot. Still, the presentation feels authentic, from replays to the camera angles, making the career thoroughly enjoyable on the whole.

Outside of the career, you can create Online Societies where friends can join up, set specific difficulty settings if you wish, and play your own courses or those created by the community. The Create a Course is a brilliant way to build courses not featured in the game (such as St. Andrews), and also build some rather impressive stuff. It’s intimidating at first due to the wealth of options, but once you get in the swing of it, you’ll likely end up perfecting the smallest of details to make sure your own course is something special. If you’re put off by it, you can just download courses that others have spent time creating, meaning there’re even more for you to get stuck in to.

PGA Tour 2K21 has the best gameplay in any golf game yet, giving you complete control over every shot. There’s plenty of help for newbies, and myriad options for the more experienced to get plenty out of it as well. The career mode has some of the prettiest official courses and PGA pros to compete against, but it’s not as fleshed out as you may think. Personally, I don’t think it matters. I had tons of fun competing against the world’s best, and the presentation and simplistic flow of the career made it easy to get on with, and, more importantly, enjoy.

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On the one hand, my not-so-great internet kind of proves where Stadia is going to fall down. Yes, any house can download Stadia onto any device, but if you don’t have a strong enough connection to use it, then why would you choose it over any other platform? And when I say my internet isn’t great, I don’t mean it’s bad. I have a busy house that’s streaming, downloading and uploading around the clock, but I struggled to get the best out of Orcs Must Die! 3 even when Stadia was the only thing running.

On the other hand, the concept is sound and the execution is solid if you do have a strong connection. From redeeming the game code to pressing start took around three minutes, compared to long download times on any other platform. But of course, Orcs Must Die! 3 is a Stadia exclusive – which is a shame, really, because Robot Entertainment are going to lose out on a lot of sales and goodwill for what is, in all fairness to them, a very decent game.

If you’ve ever played an Orcs Must Die! game before (not including the multiplayer-focused Unchained, which was a bit of a misfire) you’ll know what to expect. Part action RPG, part tower defence game, the campaign sees you plough your way through 18 stages where the focus is either on slaying the enemies encroaching on your fortress, or destroying the army besieging the fortress and then slaying them when they eventually, inevitably, break through.

Primarily you can choose between two player characters, sassy Kelsey and valiant Egan, although more characters become available once you finish the story. You’ll use a mix of ranged and melee weapons, magic spells and traps to stop invading orcs, ogres, goblins, gnolls and elementals from reaching the gate at the centre of the fortress. The story is more or less the same as the first two games, as you attempt to prevent a pantomime-y villain from doing villain stuff while cracking jokes and wiping out whole armies single-handedly.

Well, more or less single-handedly, as you can play the whole campaign in co-op and are actively encouraged to do so for the “War Scenarios”, a selection of missions that see you attempt to hold back a besieging army with catapults and ballistae, among other things. Working together allows you to hold off the horde for longer before you have to resort to the standard mission structure of killing everything that crosses your threshold.

Which, okay, is the most fun part of the game anyway. While Kelsey and Egan each have specific favourite weapons and abilities (and, weirdly, a pointless special skill such as Egan’s ground slam and Kelsey’s ability to levitate), you can also unlock others to us in each mission and assign them to inventory slots. These slots are also used for certain abilities and traps, so deciding what to take with you into a mission is crucial. By far, the most fun you’ll have is with the traps.

Each mission begins with a certain amount of time to ready your defences. During this time, ghostly representations of the Orcs will be shown so that you can get a feel for their mostly likely paths and plan accordingly. Now you can lay all manner of nasty traps to stop them, including spikes and lava pools, huge spring traps and deadly saw blades. There’s a sadistic glee to be had watching the enemy get sliced and diced or tossed around by your dastardly devices, and you’ll be rewarded with plenty of XP with which to unlock new items and abilities.

What’s weird is how familiar it all feels even after so long since the launch of the last game in 2012. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I got the definite sense that I’d played this game before. Some of that is down to the smooth animation and chunky cartoon aesthetic that has, more than anything, a strong Fortnite vibe. Some of it was down to the fact that the orcs themselves feel very samey, although there’s a decent selection of enemies overall including ogres, beasts and archers.

Graphically, I wish I could be specific about how it all looks, but my connection to Stadia was such that I saw barely a few seconds of it at a time at 4K resolution. I didn’t suffer much input lag and was able to keep playing and clearing stages, but it rarely looked all that clear and sometimes the frame rate would tank for a few seconds. Again, I could blame my connection for this, but, well, Stadia is offering a premium experience and that’s not what I got.

Orcs Must Die! 3 is a good game, though. The difficulty is slightly skewed towards co-op play, and a little more variety in mission types wouldn’t have gone amiss, but overall I can’t really fault what feels like a very faithful sequel. Just be aware that, regardless of how good the game may be, you’ve got to overcome any number of Stadia’s shortcomings to fully enjoy it.

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Crypto-137 has been sent to Earth to harvest human brain stems and save his predecessor Crypto-136 (who crash-landed before him) from the evil government agents. They’re planning on using alien tech and Furon DNA for their own dastardly plans, and Crypto isn’t having any of it. It can’t be nice having no genitalia, and it has left his entire race unable to reproduce. They’ve had to result to cloning, which hasn’t exactly gone to plan. Without their own DNA, the Furon race is soon to be extinct. A long time ago, a battle between aliens and humans left all humans with Furon DNA running through their bodies, so naturally it’s up to Crypto-137 to collect as much as he can to save his people.

Destroy All Humans! has a wonderful mix of missions. Some have you destroying a fairground or a seaside suburb, whilst others require you to abduct other humans and take them back to your ship. They’re normally quite short, which actually helps to keep the game moving. Along with the main objective, almost every mission will have side objectives, and by completing these you’ll earn more Furon DNA to upgrade your abilities and your saucer. The game isn’t particularly long, but I kind of like the fact it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Once you’ve completed a mission in a new area, you’re free to explore. Destroy All Humans! isn’t an open world, and there’s not much to do other than destroying buildings, cars, military vehicles, and killing the human race. Unless you’re trying to complete one of the four side missions, you’ll likely become bored of these exploration sections. These side missions don’t offer much to do outside of what you’re used to. Armageddon has you destroying entire towns with your saucer, Abduction sees how many people/animals you can abduct, Race has you following a drone, and Rampage lets you use all your weapons on-foot to kill as many people as possible. These missions reward you with DNA to upgrade, but they do become repetitive.

You’ve got a lot of weaponry to mix up just how you go about destroying all the humans. The Zap-O-Matic has you fry enemies to cinder, and your Disintegrator Ray burns their flesh off. You can use an Anal Probe to recover shield, or an Ion Detonator to blow up large areas of the map. Another very useful tool to Crypto is his psychokinesis. In many occasions, I rarely used my weapons because it’s satisfying to fling enemies into buildings or the sea, or into the air with a simple press of a button. You can also harvest brain stems to refill your shield, and use something called a Cortex Scan to read people’s minds. Your saucer has a Death Ray, which does exactly what it says on the tin, along with the ability to deflect missiles and cause sonic booms to cause untold amounts of destruction. Each ability you have can be upgraded on the Mothership with the Furon DNA you have collected, ranging from improving the blast radius of certain weapons, and increasing ammo capacity.

My favourite types of missions in Destroy All Humans! are the ones where you have to infiltrate a base or abduct an unsuspecting civilian. Your D-pad controls something known as a Holobob, and this tool allows you to mess with the minds of the public. Some situations require you to take on the form of a human, and by using the Holobob you can do just that. If you don’t use your Cortex Scan on other civilians, the effect will wear off and you’ll revert back to Crypto. You can also make humans cause a distraction for you to slip by, or control their minds so that they’ll follow and fight for you. There’s a meter in the game much like the star system in Grand Theft Auto. The more chaos you cause, the stronger the threat, but you can use your Holobob to make suspecting individuals forget what they saw before it all gets out of hand.

Whilst the gameplay can become repetitive, the writing gives you the push needed to play to the end. Destroy All Humans! has a lot of laughs, and scanning humans provides an insight into what they’re thinking. This element provides some hilarious moments, even if some are repeated every now and again. The story is a definite homage to the science fiction B-movies of the 1950s, never taking itself seriously. Crypto is a cynical and gruff alien that reminded me of Jack Nicholson, and I never grew tired of listening to his interactions with Pox, the alien directing you from the mothership. The cutscenes are also well written, the newspapers that pop up between missions are funny, and the general tone is a nice departure from many of the bleaker games on the market.

Destroy All Humans! is a superb remake of the original. The writing is excellent, the missions contain a nice mix of chaos and calm, and whilst the gameplay does become repetitive, I enjoyed revisiting Crypto and his plans to save his own race, even if it’s at the cost of our own. It’s colourful and comical, with visuals that definitely improve on the original, but it’s still not as sharp as I’d have liked. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t look bad, but some textures could have been better, and some animations could have been crisper. That being said, whether or not you played the original, the remake is well worth a punt.

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It’s a first person shooter, after all, which are pretty much ten-a-penny on any platform, and if you only watch it being played without playing it yourself it’s easy to wonder why it’s worth a fanfare. Depending on which part you watch it either looks like any other FPS, or like a clunky first person adventure that stops and starts and seems filled with fail states. So for those who have never played it, and especially those who have seen it in motion and presumed to know what it’s all about, I’ll explain briefly.

Superhot is a shooter wherein time only moves when you move, so a bullet fired from a gun will remain poised in the air, millimetres from the barrel, until you perform any action. When you stop, it will stop again. It forces you to weigh up every movement, to determine if making a kill is worth risking a bullet, as any hit will kill you instantly and force you to restart the scenario. Beating an area and defeating all the enemies rewards you with a full speed replay of events in which you look like an unassailable badass.

But as cool as Superhot undoubtedly is, it’s limited. Throwing, dodging, shooting and punching is fun, as is the bizarre, dimension-blurring metaworld in which it’s set, but sooner or later you’ll have seen all it has to offer and all that remains then is to solve each violent, slow-motion puzzle the game throws at you. To remedy this, stand alone expansion MIND CONTROL DELETE transforms Superhot into a first-person roguelike, presenting a change of pace on the same scale as the VR version did.

While missions and scenarios aren’t randomly generated, they are randomly queued, so each “run” is different. What’s more, you have three lives now, represented by hearts, so insta-kills are no longer a thing. As you progress you’ll periodically choose a mind hack, that alters a fundamental element like increasing movement speed or the number of bullets in a gun. Some will give more hearts, heal you, or assign you a random gun at the start of each scenario. More hacks can be unlocked, too, such as one that makes thrown items explode on impact, or another that grants you a devastating charged punch.

Each new hack changes the way you play, such as one that causes you to unleash a forward-facing explosion when you lose a heart, and therefore makes it almost worth taking a hit to clear out a room. Also, some enemies can’t be disarmed in MIND CONTROL DELETE, which forces you to keep moving and thus keep time pushing forward. For the first time, this expansion introduces new enemy types and bosses that will take more than just shooting to overcome. I won’t spoil the details, but the change of pace and tactics is welcome despite the increased challenge.

If anything, some of the new skill hacks feel like overkill. After all, your time manipulation power is already potent, and simply taking the extra heart every time will keep you alive. Fast reloads, bigger mags and increased movement speed are nice little bonuses, but they’re all dressing, really. Because they’re assigned by chance (you’ll always pick from a choice of two random hacks), you can’t plan for them, and so if you improve your survivability at every available opportunity you can’t really go wrong with your “build”.

The story is even more bonkers than before, and will make little sense whether you played the first or not. Essentially, though, the text chatting between you and your mysterious friend is gone, replaced simply by the repeated reaffirmation that what you are doing is pointless, suggesting that you could stop at any time but you won’t because you’re hooked on the repeated mindless killing. It’s not wrong, either, and as a narrative device it continues to work wonderfully, acknowledging that this is not set in the “real world” but that you’re addicted to violence and repetition nonetheless. And yes, it continues to refer to you as a “dog”, which is lovely.

If you’re already a fan of Superhot, MIND CONTROL DELETE will give you a damn good reason to go back to its surreal world. If you’ve never played before, be warned: this adds so much that it could ruin the original for you. The plot is as weird and obscure as ever, but it’s also irrelevant. Superhot’s hypnotic, violent rhythm is the star of the show, and for every hack you unlock and upgrade you earn, you’ll be rewarded with more ways to kill and survive. It’s hard to find a downside to the situation, other than that speedrunners may be put off by the randomised nature of each run. Beyond that, Superhot: MIND CONTROL DELETE is a truly fantastic, challenging shooter that makes an already incredible premise even better.

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From the moment you start playing, it’s obvious how much work has gone in to making Crayta a fun and accessible title. The visuals are bright, with a definite Overwatch and Fortnite inspiration in the way characters look and move. You’ll start off by creating your avatar, choosing hair styles, outfits, and more. The Store lets you obtain new stuff the more you play, such as emotes, outfits, and sprays. Once you’re done, you’re allowed to dive right in to either playing one of the pre-existing games, or crafting your very own.

At the time of writing, the game isn’t out yet, and Crayta is very much about exploring the creative process with others, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to do so. We were invited to a multiplayer session, but sadly I couldn’t make it. For a game that requires more than one person to play the creations, the lack of involvement from fans could really harm its success. Although the collaborative elements eluded me, I was still able to play around with different templates and tools to make my very own game. There are pre-set games available for you to tinker with, such as Capture the Flag and Team Elimination, and you can literally redesign the rules, visuals, and mechanics as you see fit. It offers you the ability to change the slightest thing, or completely change how they look and play. You have an asset gallery with loads of stylistic choices to play around with, where you can add a whole manner of things.

There’s a definite Minecraft vibe to the creation process. You pick a selection of items to layer into your game which appear in a bar at the bottom of the screen, and from there you can easily switch between them to make your game look unique. You can be as basic or as complicated as you want, and Crayta provides almost every possible option for you to tinker with. I spent a fair amount of time creating my own Team Elimination, and I was blown away by the intricacies of how varied I could make it. The first thing I did was try and create a map that looked the part.

I started off with grass, but there’s plenty of choice, such as carpets, ice, bricks, and lava. I could either add each block individually or fill the entire map with it. You can change the size of the block, spawn a ‘cloud’ of it, and layer everything depending on how precise you want it to be or how fast you want to build. Voxels make up the look of your map, and the Meshes provide you with objects you want to populate it with. There’re hundreds of things to choose from. Want to build a hospital wing filled with beds, chandeliers, cell blocks, fences, or gravestones? You got it. There are also little objects you can put in place like crates and basketballs, giving you 100% diversity in how you want your game to look.

You can add visual and sound effects to make elements of your game stand out, and Primitives allow you to edit practically every element of the HUD and gameplay. You can mess around with scoreboards, including which font and colour to use, the message that appears when a player joins a game, team names, whether you allow respawns, the pickup sound of a gun, and so much more. Crayta offers you the world, and it’s completely up to you how personal you want your game to be. I was a big fan of how easy it was to build my game. Literally anyone can make something in Crayta, regardless of age or ability.

For those of you who prefer a challenge, you don’t have to use one of the pre-set game modes. You can start from scratch, but I’d definitely play around in the templates available. As complex as it can be, Crayta allows you to grow as a ‘developer’ the more you play. It can be a challenge making sure you get it right, but the rewards are well worth the time you’ll spend creating. Out of all the games currently available that let you make your own video game, Crayta is definitely my favourite. I love the aesthetic because it feels familiar. It’s also easier to move around your map, letting you float or even use a drone to get from A to B. Swapping between edit and create is also done with the press of a button.

Currently, I haven’t been able to play a single game because of the lack of players creating because, obviously, it isn’t out yet. With it being on Stadia, I worry that this will continue even when Crayta comes out. It would be a real shame to see it fail because it’s been designed with all skill levels in mind. The concept behind having everyone work together to make unique games is a wholesome one, and it’d be disappointing if all this work was for nothing. Time will tell if Crayta makes an impact on its intended audience, but I sincerely hope it succeeds, because it’s definitely one of the best creative games on the market.

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I want to make it clear that although they may appear to be almost identical, Get Packed is significantly different. Yes, you are helping residents move house, frantically rushing through rooms to pick up furniture, but how you do this is actually easier to do. The town of Ditchlington has been bought out by a huge corporation known as Industrial Sat Co., and one of their first goals is to boot out all the residents living there, and this is where you come in. As an employee for Last-Ditch Removal Company, you must travel from house to house (or factory to supermarket) to grab as much stuff as possible before the three minute timer runs out.

It’s a colourful game, filled with wonderfully designed levels that throw different mechanics at you. You may have one house that has a trampoline in the garden that allows you to get to the top floor, or a slide in an office that lets you throw stuff onto it to get items moving faster towards the ground floor. Unlike Moving Out, getting through tight corridors or packed living spaces is much easier and faster, making it far more chaotic and fun. You can also use both hands to pick up two objects at one time. Not only does this help you to earn more money, but it also means you grab more stuff so your friends can’t.

You can earn plenty of money by being efficient, grabbing the better items and getting them to your van quickly, but it you’re clumsy and not paying attention, many of the furniture you pick up can become damaged. Not only does this lose you a chunk of the money you would otherwise have received for being careful, it forces you to think about the best way to remove the items, adding a layer of strategy to how you play.

Flat-packing big items of furniture is also possible, and this helps to turn double beds or corner sofas into small packages. To do so you must be holding them with both hands, but it can be tricky to do so. Once your removal van is full, you can send it off to make the drop off, but while doing so you can’t gather anymore money. Every location has exclusive items that bag you more cash, but you must find it before your friends do or the timer runs out. Get Packed is fun on your own, but even better with others.

The hilarity of grabbing items which your friends or family want, or stopping others from picking stuff up by grabbing them and dragging them off adds to the mayhem. It never got boring, but what’s more important is that it never became stressful either. It’s tons of fun, and my family and I laughed a lot more than we probably should. One mode has you competing with each other to grab as much stuff as you can, and another just wants you to destroy entire locations and get more breakages than your opponent. There’s tons of stuff to do, but whilst there is online multiplayer, you may struggle to find anyone due to few people using the Stadia.

Whilst Google Stadia continues to grow, Get Packed could be the game to get more players involved in the service. Its faced-paced and crazy style of play is more than enough to provide hours of entertainment. Playing in co-op is much more entertaining than playing alone, but getting a game online is harder than maneuvering a piano through a cat flap. Regardless, Get Packed is a fantastic exclusive, and should definitely be considered if you’re looking for something to play with your friends and family.

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Which, when you look at it subjectively, can only be a good thing. It means it’s never still long enough to go stale, and produces something fresh, to whatever result, each time. For me, though, Darksiders 3 was and still is the series’ weakest entry. The combat felt awkward at times, perhaps thanks to certain elements being forced in, and protagonist Fury lacked the gravitas of War or the menace of Death. And yet being the worst entry in a series like Darksiders is still standing above hundreds of other pretenders.

Either way, it seemed to me like the franchise had run its course and I wondered if we’d ever see fourth Horseman, Strife, introduced in the closing scenes of Fury’s tale, ride out on his own adventure. We asked, and the Airship Syndicate answered. Genesis was revealed and immediately pigeon-holed as Darksiders by way of Diablo, an isometric dungeon crawler on a smaller scale and with a tighter budget, an inferior substitute for the real thing. Well, some of those assumptions were right, but some were not.

For a start, the presence of comic book legend Joe Madeureira, director of the first Darksiders, is felt strongly in Genesis. So much so that after what felt like an earnest but slightly misfiring effort in Darksiders 3, Genesis feels like the series coming home. It might sound a cliche, but when you play it you’ll know exactly what I mean.

You’re warned from the off that Genesis is better played with a pad and the developers know what they’re talking about. I played a few early hours with Mouse and Keyboard and honestly, it’s a better fit on the controller. At no point does it feel like a watered down version of Darksiders – it feels exactly like Darksiders 1 felt, but from a different point of view. The combat is weighted and balanced, your attacks feel powerful, the abilities you uncover and the realms you traverse feel a natural part of the universe. This is no Diablo clone, despite the fountains of loot and the PoV – this is a Darksiders game through and through.

The plot is the usual Bible-baiting fantasy hokum. Lucifer has done the dirty in the Garden of Eden, and Paradise is in tatters, events which have led to a civil war in Hell. The Charred Council has dispatched two agents, War and Strife, to deal with Lucifer and put an end to the uprising. Siding with the Demon Lord Samael, as well as void merchant Vulgrim and his associate Dis, the two Horsemen must battle through various Hellscapes and slay Lucifer’s generals in a bid to lure out the beast himself.

You can switch between both brothers at will, even mid-fight, but they have different skills and abilities you’ll need to utilise to proceed. Combat sticks to an established formula but feels fluid and satisfying. War, unsurprisingly, hits brutally hard; his attacks are slower but heavier. Strife, on the other hand, wields twin handguns and daggers, so his melee attacks are fast and agile but he can do massive damage at range. Each Horseman has a modifiable suite of skills tied to their combat styles, as well as a bevy of special abilities you’ll need to unlock, such as Strife’s shadow decoy and War’s ring of blades.

War’s Chaoseater greatsword can be imbued with a variety of elements such as fire, thunder and life steal, to alter its properties and secondary attack, while Strife can unlock half a dozen different ammo types including a lava shot and an anti-gravity field. Later, you’ll be able to unlock synergy attacks to tag in the idle brother and perform a devastating assault. Each Horseman also has a Chaos form that unleashes a gargantuan demonic apparition capable of doing huge amounts of damage for a short period.

In between the combat, platforming and puzzle solving are the focus. The puzzles are nothing overly taxing, utilising each Horseman’s unique abilities. Strife can create Void portals at certain points which can be travelled through or used as conduits for thrown objects, while War’s Vorpal Blade can activate distant switches or transfer flame FR one place to another. Other abilities are unlocked as you progress which I won’t spoil here, but some later puzzles require complex use of several different skills, often under tight time constraints. Secrets are stashed everywhere, from Boatman Coins to health and wrath upgrades and even special moves.

As you cleave and blast your way through legions of demons and monsters you’ll earn fountains of coloured loot, mostly skulls to refill health and wrath, or bolster your pile of souls – but you’ll also see large glowing orbs known as Creature Cores. These are equippable upgrades that occupy their own tree, offering passive buffs as well as offensive bonuses like random summons and area damage. It’s a simple-yet-effective system to improve the efficiency of both protagonists. It’s in service to the co-op option, which you can drop in and out of at special stones dotted around each stage. Sadly, playing pre-release, I was unable to test the multiplayer element, but will do so at a later date.

If there’s an area that suffers thanks to the forced perspective, it’s the platforming. While the camera does a fairly decent job of swivelling to accommodate, now and then there’ll be a jump that’s difficult to correctly judge. The brothers can jump, glide and swing from ledge to ledge, but some sections require you to overcome veritable gauntlets without dying, and they can be tricky to nail first time. Some of the environments are so huge and detailed that it’s difficult to maintain a proper sense of scale. It’s not helped by a map which, for some reason, doesn’t show your position on it, instead forcing you to pathfind based on the shape of the level or which nearby artefacts you have and haven’t found.

While I’m touching on negatives, I should also point out that the writing isn’t always stellar. The plot itself is okay and the banter between War and Strife can be entertaining, but Strife is incredibly anachronistic. He spits words like “Dude!”, and “This is my jam!” while essentially break-dancing on bigger demons during his flashy finisher moves. I can understand the need to create a foil for War’s unflinchingly dour personality, but Strife’s attitude and mannerisms feel weirdly out of place, even when they’re occasionally funny.

But that’s a minor complaint in a title so lovingly made and well-crafted. The pacing is spot on – even the inclusion of an Arena mode halfway through doesn’t feel like filler, but rather an optional method of earning souls, as well as a break from exploration and puzzle-solving. Bosses come at you in fairly quick succession and, while the main events are distraction enough, some of the minibosses are quite heavily reused. For example, you’ll kill the same giant demon with a gatling gun at least half a dozen times. Again though, this is par for the course, and Genesis makes up for it by being so effortlessly playable.

It’s also gorgeous in places, and on a high-end PC with the graphics settings ramped up to Ultra it sings. The detailed environments seep with atmosphere, light and shadow working in perfect unison with the art style to deliver a variety of beautifully grim Hellscapes from frozen tundra to demonic forges and subterranean rivers of bubbling acid. And the score might be one of my favourites this year – I found myself replaying certain missions just to hear the music play again.

To call Genesis a return to form would be a tad unfair to Darksiders 3. Fury’s adventure had some great moments and more than earned its place in the franchise, but Genesis just feels like it’s on a higher level in many regards. From the gorgeous visuals to the smooth, frenetic combat and environments that beg to be explored, the quality on display here is incredibly impressive. Despite a smattering of minor issues and a few iffy design choices, Darksiders Genesis is still a fantastic videogame, and might even be the best Darksiders game to date.

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