One of the controllers coolest features is the ability to unscrew the sticks and buttons on the front to replace for a module that has the R1 and R2 buttons next to the X, Square, Triangle, and Circle buttons. For fighting fans, playing Street Fighter 6 with these in play makes a world of difference, allowing for much smoother and speedier combos to be inputted. There’s no lag whatsoever, and make for a fantastic gameplay experience when in a fight.

Other spare parts that can be added are an alternative D-pad, and a taller analogue stick perfect for precision during FPS titles like Call of Duty, when you need a tighter aim. All of these changes can be done quickly thanks to the mini tool included. Whatever you need, and whatever style you prefer when playing, the Victrix Pro BFG Controller has you covered. While it feels a little light in your hands, it’s in no way a flimsy controller, and does everything you need in any given situation.

There’re so many customisation options that you can take advantage of, whether a casual gamer or someone that thrives in the esports scene. The Tournament Lock option gives players confidence that any buttons accidentally pressed like the options button won’t hit. I’m not one such player, but it’s a fantastic addition for those who are. There are also sliders in place that can fix the position of where the triggers are pressed, allowing the amount of pressure needed to press them has a wide range for players.

On the back of the controller, there are four customisable buttons that can be mapped to any standard inputs for an added layer of customisation, however, I didn’t tend to use them as I would press them accidentally at times. The grip on the handles feels good, and provides no-slip performance, and the general feel of it is great. It works well across PC and PlayStation 5, and for those who use a PlayStation 4, the Victrix Pro BFG works for them as well.

It has the ability to play wireless as long as you insert the dongle into the console, and there’s a 3-metre long cable if you need to play wired. There’s no vibration or haptic feedback functionality, but it wasn’t an issue for me as I feel that’s still something developers are trying to get right, finding the balance between essential inclusion in a title and a novelty. It’s the customisation where it holds its own, and I’m more than impressed by what it offers.

The Victrix Pro BFG Controller is a fine addition to PlayStation, and has so many customisation options for a wide range of players and playstyles. The way it works with fighting titles is next level, and I never had any glitches or functionality issues. While the lack of vibration might put off casual gamers or PS5 fans, it’s all about how it feels to use, ergonomically designed to suit everyone, and the ease of use and set up make it one of the best third-party controllers on the market.

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The world of Ashan is under attack from a demonic otherworldly force, and it’s turning the five kingdoms against each other. With all the world leaders brutally murdered by this devilish foe, the only ones left to save the day are their young heirs. You’ll need to gather allies, legendary units and powerful artefacts from across the land if you want to win this war, so get ready for an epic fantasy adventure full of drama and battles.

Each combat encounter in Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes takes place across two halves of the screen, the top half belonging to the enemy and the bottom belonging to you. Both of these areas are filled with coloured units, and on your turn you can pick them up and drop them wherever you want. By lining up three identical units vertically you’ll activate them and a few turns later they’ll charge at the enemy, whereas lining them horizontally will turn them into a defensive wall.

Once a unit has charged up and is ready to attack, it’ll head straight upwards into the enemy forces. If it’s strong enough it’ll take down any walls and units in the way and reach the back of the army and deal damage to the enemy commander. Winning is (usually) as simple as dealing enough damage to reduce their HP to zero, but that’s easier said than done when the enemy is trying to do the same to you.

One way to get the edge over your opponents is to delete individual units to set off chains of matches and gain extra turns. You can also activate units of the same colour at the same time to set up a combo, which powers up the units enabling them to deal more damage. There are a lot of intricacies to this fantasy puzzle game, and you’ll need to keep them in mind if you want to deal some serious damage.

Another thing you’ll need to keep in mind are the differences between each of the units. You’ll start with simple archers that attack really quickly but don’t deal a ton of damage, but soon you’ll get hard hitting bears, soldiers, and even elite units. These special units are way more powerful than the rest of your army, with powerful special abilities like the deer that can jump over enemy walls, or the Treant that drains HP from the enemy and gives it to you. You’ll unlock all sorts of mythical creatures as you play, and can level them up to make them stronger too.

That’s right – Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes isn’t just about puzzle gameplay, it’s a full blown RPG. You’ll gain experience for your general and units after every battle, as well as resources to buy elite units and equipment that will add some interesting passive buffs to your team. The progression is really satisfying, and will ensure you stay interested for the entire lengthy campaign.

The story isn’t just made up of back to back battles either, there’s a world to explore, side quests, puzzles and boss fights packed into the twenty hour runtime. Separated into different chapters where you control different armies, there’s a wonderful amount of variety in this engaging puzzler.

Once you’re finally done with the main campaign, you can head into versus mode and take on bots, local friends or people across the globe. With a variety of different characters and units to use in this competitive mode it’s a blast taking on your friends, and it’s certainly a lot easier than online play was on the DS.

There’s not a whole lot to complain about in Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition, but calling it the definitive edition does feel a bit cheeky. The visual overhaul isn’t exactly jaw dropping, and the additional content is a single piece of non-story DLC. It’s a good job that the game was so good the first time around, and still feels fresh today.

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition is a wonderful match three RPG that’s just as good in 2023 as it was in 2009. The army battles are thoughtful and engaging, and the campaign manages to change things up constantly throughout the twenty hour runtime. The Definitive Edition doesn’t add a whole lot of content, but if you missed it the first time around then this is your chance to play a classic that’s aged like a fine wine.

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Remnant 2 is a sprawling, multi-branching labyrinth of a game. Each of its worlds is procedurally generated, as is your path through them. You’ll have a random starting world each time, and each of these worlds is broken down into random dungeons, objectives, and bosses. The idea is that no one will have the exact same experience, and it works incredibly well. There are overlaps, obviously. You’ll meet the same bosses over the course of several runs, and the items crafted from boss materials feel a little too restrictive, but ultimately your story will be yours alone.

Although, the story itself has a tad more setting than actual substance. Set some years after the first game, the Root has been effectively pushed out of Earth thanks to the actions of the Wanderer, Founder Ford, and your allies in From the Ashes. However, it hasn’t been fully vanquished, and the canon choices made at the end of the previous campaign have left many other worlds open to invasion. In Remnant 2, you’re the Traveler, a new protagonist who must take up arms against the Root. You’re joined by allies new and old, with many of the past game’s characters returning here, much older and more hopeful, living in a small town built above Ward 13. It’d be a nice place to settle down, but when your friend is dragged through the reactivated crystal, you’ve no choice but to go in and get them back.

The issue here is that because the worlds are so procedural, there’s little room for actual narrative development. Things just happen, and there’s very little growth and no real defining character moments. Characters who seem important initially get side-lined very swiftly, and the whole thing feels more like a device to give the action some context. Maybe that’s all it needs to be, but it would be nice to see Gunfire Games really lean into the characters they’ve created. More effort has gone into the individual stories of the worlds you visit, admittedly, but the motivation in each is often the same: We have a corrupted god that needs killing, go kill it, please.

Before you go on your deicidal rampage, though, you’ll need to select an Archetype from the initial 4 (5 if you pre-ordered and got the Gunslinger early). Although there’s a great deal of build diversity later, the first Archetype choice will greatly inform your play style for at least the first 10 hours. I went with Handler initially, as the option to take a brave little doggo into Hell with me was too much to resist. And when the time came to select a second to combine with Handler I chose Hunter, a long-range specialist whose skills and perks seemed like the perfect choice for my play style, which was to send the dog in to take threat while I fired from cover and used AoE weapon mods to slow the enemy.

Even in the early stages, I found the build compositions refreshing and exciting. The system has been massively overhauled from Remnant: From the Ashes, though. For a start, there are fewer armour sets and they no longer convey set bonuses. Instead, most of your stat bonuses and passive abilities come from Mutators and Relic Fragments. The former slot into your weapons, allowing you up to three. These can have a multitude of effects from increasing Weak Spot damage to reload speed, and many have multiple effects as they’re intended to replace the first game’s armour set bonuses.

The latter slot directly into your Relic. Initially, this is the Dragon Heart, but there are other versions to find that change the Relic’s effects the way you can change the Estus Flask in Elden Ring. The fragments themselves improve things like melee damage, crit chance, and cooldown timers. It means armour is mostly cosmetic, although elemental resistance still differs between articles of clothing.

As with any game of this depth, one or even two playthroughs isn’t sufficient to fully understand the build economy in Remnant 2. There are weapons, items, mutators, modifiers, and traits you won’t even earn or find without multiple playthroughs, which will keep even diehard min-maxers busy for a long time. What I will say is that I missed having the armour sets, and I hit a point around 12 hours where I’d maxed out my 10 Vigor points and had to look for other trait cards and mutators to increase my survivability further. Even if this is purely by design, it felt a little restrictive that I couldn’t improve my armour and health points for such a long time after only a dozen hours of play.

The weapons and gear you can find and earn feel good though, and I was always happy to return to Ward 13 after slaying a boss or completing an encounter to see what I could craft from the parts that dropped. The more I played the more I felt the need to investigate the mutators and mods I was collecting, to tweak and adapt my build in order to survive. As always though, there’s the sense that it’s only in the endgame that you’ll find the best gear.

Although, you can start the endgame fairly early in Remnant 2, sort of. After you finish whatever your first world is, you’ll have the option to switch to Adventure Mode and replay any worlds you’ve completed as many times as you like, with random dungeon rolls. You use the same character as your current playthrough, so any items and XP you collect is carried between the two. It’s a really fun way to level up a second Archetype without affecting your story progress. The campaign itself isn’t particularly long for the genre, but as with Remnant: From the Ashes, the idea is to replay and explore, uncovering all the secrets you can. And as the worlds are so diverse, it’s hard to get bored.

Remnant 2 is insanely creative. Not only in the appearance and tone of its worlds, but in the creatures within, and the boss fights and dungeon encounters. Not every dungeon has an actual boss fight, either; many have encounters instead. For example, in one area in the forest world of Yaesha, the finale of the dungeon saw me trying to outrun a huge contraption to the bottom of a massive helix as it crumbled around me and disgorged countless enemies. I also couldn’t go too fast or slow and had to periodically clear the mechanism of debris, meaning I had a genuine challenge on my hands.

The bosses themselves are almost all phenomenal. Some are smaller, more intimate encounters, such as the bow-wielding ghoul, Shrewd, or the giant Bloat King, a huge sewer slug possessed by an otherworldly wisp. But there are also large-scale fights against gargantuan creatures that almost feel like something from Returnal. Two in particular are very close to bullet-hell, and although I didn’t relish the thought of fighting either again, the experiences were exhilarating. The final boss in particular is incredibly tough, and had me re-speccing and upgrading for a while before I could beat it.

It’s hard to say exactly how deep Remnant 2’s various rabbit holes go. Some puzzles can be solved immediately, such as a clock tower puzzle in one of the Bloodborne-inspired districts of Losomn: Dran, while others require the passage of time and even repeat playthroughs or Adventure Mode runs to solve. There are mysteries everywhere; a door you can’t open here, a key that has no lock there, maybe an item you cannot reach, or an enigmatic item sold by a vendor that no one can identify. Every time I rolled Adventure Mode, I found at least one or two areas I’d never seen, and the ones I had seen were different, with new enemies, items, or tilesets mixed in with the familiar.

It helps that each of Remnant 2’s worlds have a distinct visual identity. N’Erud is a vast desert walled off by poisonous sandstorms and patrolled by rogue machines; Yaesha is a woodland world of eldritch forests and overgrown jungles; Losomn is split in half between the apocalyptic, Victoriana-themed Dran, and the lofty, gaudy Fae, a realm itself caught between two changeable world-states. There are a few other locations, too, and each has the same strong sense of place and purpose. It’s almost a shame that so much work and effort has gone into the lore and backstories of these worlds and not into the narrative itself.

Yet I find it hard to vehemently criticise Remnant 2 for the shortcomings of its story. It is, as the first game was, deliberately, bloody-mindedly obtuse. There’s more joy to be found by applying your own head-canon to events than having everything spelled out for you, in a similar vein to From Software’s Souls games. It’s all unknown, so that when your protagonist admits regularly that they don’t know what the hell is going on, you can relate. And as they gain understanding, so do you. I’m not saying it’s a masterful technique, but at no point did the story, or lack thereof, impact my enjoyment and investment in the game.

The shooting is as tight and precise as any 3rd person shooter I’ve played, with impactful, imaginative guns that can be modded and fitted with mutators or modifications that alter their appearance. Most of the best weapons are crafted from bits and pieces of vanquished gods and monsters, so there’s some very weird stuff in here. Wait until you see the gun covered in wriggling fingers, for example. If anything I’d have liked some choices thrown in here, or at least the need to grind some of these bosses for parts. Most of the time, a boss material will make either a new mod or a weapon, and that’s it, one item per material, with no real incentive to replay bosses besides a free upgrade. I’d have liked to see rarer models for repeat kills, or even choices that force you to replay a boss to collect everything. As it is, it feels a little limited.

In fact, that might be Remnant 2’s biggest problem. In creating something so modular and procedural, Gunfire Games have unleashed a behemoth in terms of balancing and build diversity. As such, they’ve had to impose limits elsewhere to wrestle it back under control. Therefore armour is limited, weapon crafting is simplified; even the story has to play it safe enough to allow players to experience the entire campaign in a totally random order, even down to the minutiae of which bosses they kill on the way. It’s a game positioned to receive regular content updates and tweaks, but that leaves the base game feeling just a little undercooked in certain areas.

Yet this is still an incredible achievement. Either solo or with others, the sense of wonder, curiosity, and sheer explorative joy can’t be denied. Every time you step through a new portal, you’re heading into a dungeon or area you can’t predict; every foggy boss door leads to a fight you can’t fully prepare for because you don’t know what’s coming. There are secrets on secrets, things you’ll walk right by the first time. There are multiple choices within each world, too; which characters to kill, and which to side with; whether to bend the knee or stand defiant; whether to save a world or doom it for your own reward. Despite a few shortcomings, Remnant 2 remains one of the most creative, fascinating, and compelling games of the last few years and stands as a testament to what this developer can do when they aim to impress.

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Viewfinder sees you transport between levels in a variety of ways. Sometimes you might need to locate a couple of batteries to power up a portal; use sound to initiate a path of electrical current; or stand on platforms to charge the gateway to another world. Much of the early stages see you finding photographs or paintings to then place in the environment, allowing you to pass into them and use whatever might be present in them, such as walls and ceilings as bridges to the end portal. These early levels aren’t particularly challenging, but they give you an idea about how the fundamental mechanics work.

Once you get to grips with how Viewfinder works, it decides to step things up and provide you with a camera that you can take your own pictures of the world with and then utilise them to find the right path to your goal. You might need more than one battery to power a panel, but by taking a photo of a battery or using a nearby photocopier, you’ll gain access to a second one, thus allowing you to complete the puzzle. Things get even wilder when parts of the environment disappear after taking a photo, or the negatives you gather start to play with the environment.

It starts to get more complex as you play, with some levels pushing your own creativity of what is possible. There are often multiple ways to solve something, and that was something I loved about Viewfinder. Much like it celebrates art in multiple forms, it also wants you to experiment and find your own way through the game. When it combines different styles of artwork by allowing you to travel through watercolour paintings, sketches complete with crosshatching, children’s drawings, and even cartoons, it becomes so fascinating you’ll often wonder how it was possible. It feeds on creativity, both in the designs of its puzzles and the ever-changing aesthetics of its world.

I never felt overwhelmed by the challenge, giving off similar vibes to Portal in how it layers new mechanics, however, the final puzzle, without giving anything away, requires both speed and creativity, forcing you to make use of everything you’ve learned up until that point. It’s the toughest part of Viewfinder, but it’s not without success if you have remembered everything up until that point. Scattered throughout the levels are telephones where someone called Jessie is communicating with you, offering some background to the narrative.

You’ll also meet a digital cat called Cait, who feeds you with little bits of the story until you realise what is going on, and there’re also gramophones that offer sound files from various characters who play a role in its tale. Viewfinder also has collectables scattered across the levels, and there are even optional puzzles that don’t need to be completed to progress from one hub to the next, but they add to the length of your playthrough. Once you’ve solved all the necessary puzzles, you’ll hop in a cable car and head to the next hub. It gives you a nice pacing between the worlds, and a brief respite before putting your brain to the test once again.

I was impressed with Viewfinder, especially with how it blends a variety of art with its puzzles. You’re constantly tested with new mechanics and ideas, yet it never throws too much at you. It looks incredible, and there’re also a few secrets and moments of warm silliness that further add to the charm of its gameplay. You will be challenged, especially towards the end, but it’s well worth playing if you want something that dares to push the boundaries of what’s possible within the single player puzzle genre. The story might be a bit hard to follow, but the world is filled with wonder.

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Dead Man’s Diary does have an interesting premise for the zombie game though. A self obsessed villain decided that when he died the Earth should no longer function, and set up a chain of nukes that pretty much destroyed everything. When this happened people started to hide in underground bunkers, but space was limited and supplies started to run low pretty quickly. After drawing the short straw our protagonist is kicked out of the bunker so others can live longer, so prepare for a whole lot of walking around in a desolate world.

Walking about is pretty much all you’ll be doing for most of the game, gathering supplies to make yourself shelter and to generally be healthy. There are four things you have to worry about in terms of staying alive in Dead Man’s Diary. Food and water are obvious, but there’s also radiation level (which you lower by taking Iodine Pills), and fever (which you lower by wrapping fabric soaked in vinegar and water around your legs). It’s standard topping-up-meter gameplay, but finding the items to do so is a chore.

The main reason for this is that there’s a chance that all the food and water you find is unsafe due to the radiation. This means scanning every single tin of beans and water bottle with your Geiger counter. And sadly, it takes ages to scan them. Most of the supplies you find end up being contaminated anyway, so it’s usually all for nothing. The worst aspect of this gameplay loop though, is that when you switch back to your torch afterwards you aren’t able to move until you release the controls entirely for a moment. I don’t think I really need to explain why that’s frustrating.

Dead Man’s Diary is split into distinct areas, and in most of these you’ll need to find the materials to build a fire and shelter before you progress. The grind of walking around environments where all the houses and alleys look the same is miserable, and you need so much wood, straw and metal posts to complete this tedious objective. After a few minutes of gathering, a handy white dot will start just pointing to the exact place you need to go, as if the developers knew how much of a drag this endeavour would be. You can turn this off if you want the true immersive apocalypse experience, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Once you’ve done enough collecting, it’s time for things to start kicking off. A loud noise will alert you to some sort of incoming threat (or sometimes will just happen for no reason at all) and you’ll need to find a safe space to avoid death. Whether it’s an angry bear or an atomic bomb, there’s only ever one place the game expects you to magically know where to go and if you don’t make it there as fast as possible then you’ll die. This will happen to you, and when it does you better not be expecting a handy autosave to ensure you don’t lose too much progress, because Dead Man’s Diary doesn’t like providing those.

It’s these little things that really ruin Dead Man’s Diary. Things like the sheer amount of invisible walls that’ll stop you from exploring and occasionally even trap you forever. Or your helpful white dot suddenly taking you to materials you don’t even need. In a game that’s already laborious, anything that makes it feel even worse to spend time playing is just not acceptable.

I also can’t talk about Dead Man’s Diary without mentioning the story and voice acting, which is cringe inducing. Cheesy and occasionally nonsensical lines are constantly spouted by the protagonist, and it’ll either be the worst or best part of the game for you based on how funny you find it.

As much as I didn’t enjoy playing Dead Man’s Diary, I can’t deny it has a few impressive elements. The visuals are way better than they have any right to be, and if you enjoy Skyrim style lockpicking you’re in for a treat. I’ll admit this doesn’t really feel like much of a selling point, but I like to give praise where it’s due.

Dead Man’s Diary is tedious, full of invisible walls, and often downright unfair. Whether you’re repeatedly scanning food to check for radiation or looking for the same old materials to build yet another shelter, I can almost guarantee you’ll be bored doing it. When there are so many better games with an apocalyptic setting, there’s sadly really no reason to play Dead Man’s Diary.

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Essentially Trails into Reverie is a continuation and ending of two different story arcs, the Crossbell arc (made up of the recently released Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure) and the Cold Steel arc. That’s six massive games that you pretty much need to have completed to fully enjoy the newest entry in the series, or you’ll be as lost as I was thanks to my lack of Cold Steel experience. I at least recognised Lloyd and the other SSS members though, so at least that’s something.

Recognising a few characters in a game with this many people in every scene is simply not enough, especially once you leave the first story route focused on Lloyd and his Crossbell friends. From start to finish big reveals were lost on me, but if you’re up on your Trails then this game is like Avengers: Endgame on steroids. Even without that required knowledge though, Trails Into Reverie is an epic tale with sensational turn based combat.

Trails Into Reverie has similar combat to the Crossbell games, with characters taking turns to use their Arts and Crafts. Crafts are individual to each character, use CP and can do anything from damage, heal or deal painful status effects. Arts are the magic of this series, and although they take time to cast the elemental effects they unleash are more than worth the wait.

To ensure you have the right Arts for the job you need to equip Quartz to your characters, which are basically gems you put into a little grid. Providing passive buffs and access to powerful Arts, you’ll want to experiment with these colourful rocks to create a team of powerhouses. Since Trails Into Reverie expects you to be familiar with the series, your characters come equipped with some decent Quartz from the jump, and you won’t have to worry about lengthy tutorials and boring battles in the first few hours.

This is especially true when you take into account all the special attacks and complex systems you’ll be expected to remember and use right away. S Crafts are special attacks that use up all your CP but can be used even when it isn’t your turn. Then there are follow up attacks that use up teamwork points and special Order Commands that apply buffs. It might sound a bit overwhelming at first, but before you know it you’ll be a master of combat and beating up bosses with the best of them.

To level up your team and be ready to save the day you’ll need to head into the True Reverie Corridor. This weird pocket dimension houses a big dungeon full of enemies, treasure and items called Sealing Stones which unlock characters, mini games and bits of story that help fill in some narrative gaps. You’ll spend a lot of time in the True Reverie Corridor, so it’s a good job it’s full of as much interesting stuff as it is.

All the best RPGs have plenty of mini games to invest your time into, and Trails into Reverie is no exception. There’s the series staple of fishing, a card game (be still my beating heart), and a quiz which is probably more enjoyable if you know the series inside out. When you don’t fancy whacking mechs with an axe, they’re the perfect distraction.

The biggest shock for me coming into Trails into Reverie were the 3D visuals. After the 2D chibi character models and isometric perspective of the Crossbell games it was interesting to see some of my favourite locations and party members in all their high fidelity glory. The visuals are nice enough, but I think I preferred the charm of those remastered PSP games.

The English voices were an unexpected addition too, but they’re certainly a welcome one. The audio in general is absolutely top notch, with some fantastic tunes waiting for you both in battle and while exploring the world. I’d expect no less from a Trails game, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive.

I played through Trails into Reverie entirely on the Nintendo Switch, and unfortunately that meant dealing with an inferior version of the game. The framerate of the game is shoddy at best, and while exploring the 3d world and moving the camera about the slowdown is real. Fortunately the combat isn’t really affected by these issues, but it’s pretty damn distracting and disappointing regardless.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie is clearly an epic RPG set in a deep and interesting universe, but unless you’ve played through at least six massive games before this one you won’t really understand what’s going on. Even if you’re a Trails veteran though I wouldn’t recommend you play the Switch version, and instead find another way to enjoy this brilliant and much anticipated game.

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The “story” this time around is just as boring and unexciting, with a bunch of teen or teen-adjacent space pilots on a journey through multiple galaxies while listening to cool songs and playing playground games. Within just a few levels I was rolling my eyes and jabbing the “skip dialogue” button, because I just feel this stuff was getting in the way of the actual gameplay, which in itself is pretty damn good.

By now, if you’ve played any Invector game then you know the drill. You have a spacecraft that flies along a fairly narrow space corridor, and you gather speed by hitting button prompts as you pass over them. At the lowest difficulty you’ll need to worry about LB, A and sliding the left stick to and from to shift left and right, while occasionally hitting the left trigger to boost when the meter is full.

At higher levels it increases the score threshold needed to pass a level, and adds new buttons into the mix. The jump from Casual to Normal still feels almost abusively steep, though, and even on the former setting the game will occasionally throw a sudden curveball your way, such as changing the mission parameters for one seemingly random level.

It’s a beautiful game though, even if you don’t really get to enjoy a lot of it because it’s whistling at such a speed. The colours are stunning, each environment carefully crafted to deliver a sense of pulse-pounding speed, as though you really are blasting through a cosmos of light and colour.

Obviously, though, it’s the soundtrack that makes the difference. With 40 tracks to fly to, there’s a superb selection of songs from Royal Blood to Tina Turner, few of which are repeated to the point of annoyance. Free-form single and multiplayer modes allow you to experience any song you’ve already unlocked as many times as you like, too. You can also extend the lifetime of the game by jumping into the multiplayer and challenging others to beat your score.

Invector: Rhythm Galaxy plays wonderfully well. It’s smooth and responsive, although it could use a little more rumble in the feedback. I played a lot of it on Steam Deck, where it looks beautiful, by the way, and it was smooth here as it is on PC. There is a sense here though that the series has kind of run its course. If you’re a fan of the genre and franchise then you may well advocate for more of the same each time, but the truth is that if you’ve played an Invector game before then you’ve kind of played this already. The songs may be different, but the gameplay is almost unchanged.

Controlling your spacecraft through floating rings, and hitting jumps and boosters just right still feels incredibly satisfying, but we’ve definitely done it before. It also feels weirdly anachronistic that one of the very best experiences that Rhythm Galaxy has to offer is playing a level over Tina Turner’s “The Best “, a song released way back in 1989.

Ultimately, Invector: Rhythm Galaxy is a very good rhythm game, of a calibre befitting a studio that has been making them for as long as Hello There Games has, but it’s also very safe and very familiar, doing little to freshen up proceedings besides adding an uncomfortably out-of-place narrative. There are some great tracks here, and it’s certainly beautiful to look at, but there’s not a lot here to really get your blood pumping.

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The main campaign is made up of six missions with various stages which take you through various environments like deep jungles and weapon facilities. Choosing between four weapons and a handful of grenades, you’ll have to kill a lot of enemies. The pistol is a simple weapon to use, however, it won’t cut the mustard when you’re facing down burly men wielding grenade launchers or helicopters. The submachine gun has an unbalanced spread of bullets, but as long as you’re pointing it in their general direction, you’ll be fine.

The other two weapons on Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission require two hands to hold, but I found the shotgun to be clumsy and pretty useless. Meant for close combat, I was rarely near enemies without more breathing down my neck. You don’t feel comfortable using it as at times there can be a lot of enemies shooting at you, making the assault rifle a much better choice. I seldom used anything else because it was the most effective. You can throw grenades into swarths of soldiers for quick bouts of destruction, too.

By killing enemies, you’ll earn more ammo, and there’re also various chickens and pigs that can be shot at to bag yourself a few more rounds, ammo vest, or first aid kit. Hostages are also scattered around the jungle, and by blasting off the cabin doors, you’ll free them to earn a first aid kit. Exploding barrels can be fired at for a nice explosion, and some enemies will drop special weapons in the form of a rocket launcher and grenade launcher.

There were other cool moments that pop up and mix up the gunplay, such as a stationary rail gun. Enemy soldiers come out you from the sky, sneaking around a building or from a local barracks. There are tanks, helicopters, and even boss fights at the end of each stage, always providing a challenge or two. The on-rails nature of combat is smooth and lacked any kind of motion sickness for me, and the difficulty didn’t tend to put an end to my run. Even if you do die, continues throw you right back into the action. All in all, Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission is fun as hell, albeit a tad repetitive and far too short.

You can obviously replay the campaign to get a better rank which is based off how good your combo kills are, how many first aid kits you use, and how much damage you take. I rarely dipped below an A rank, but the difficulty can be changed if you so wish. The only other mode is a survival mode where you pick a stage and fight off hordes of enemies until you die. There’s not a lot to do outside of this, but if you’re looking for something simple and quick, it might be worth a go.

Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission is a basic on-rails shooter, but its gunplay is pretty decent despite the shotgun being a little redundant. It’s too short and there’s little to do beyond the campaign and survival mode, yet it kept me interested. The story is daft and never takes itself seriously, but I found that refreshing as it was all about the chaos and gunfire. It tries to mix things up as it goes, and the easy controls make it a good jump in and play type of game.

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Our protagonist Marie isn’t the potion making whizz kid you’d expect from an Atelier game, she’s actually the bottom of her class at school. In order to light a fire under her posterior, Professor Ingrid gives her one final test, in the next five years either make an item worthy of a true alchemist or be expelled from Salburg academy. This isn’t long for Marie to step up, so get ready for a big adventure with a healthy dose of time pressure.

Although based on a game well over twenty years old at this point, the gameplay loop is pretty similar to the alchemy games we all know and love. You head out into the wilderness to gather materials, fight a few monsters along the way, then make your way back to the Atelier and make some items. Even in the simpler form of this older title it’s a great hook, and has all those lovely levels to raise so you improve along the way.

What makes Atelier Marie Remake different though is that five year time limit. Every action you take in the game uses up at least a day of your time, and they tick down fast. Gathering materials at a shiny spot, fighting monsters, and even going home to your Atelier will take a day of time away from you, and if you’re not careful those five years will be up before you’ve become a master cauldron mixer.

Alongside this overall time limit, there are also mid-semester assignments and quests from the inn that have their own deadlines. Whether you’re being made to gather a bunch of herbs or make friends with a certain number of the townsfolk, having a month to do so might sound like a breeze, but before you know it you’ll have spent a week fighting blue slimes.

The combat in Atelier Marie Remake is about as simple as it gets for a turn-based RPG. Marie and anyone she hires to adventure with her can attack, use an item or use their single special ability, and that’s pretty much it. That doesn’t mean that the battles aren’t enjoyable, but if you’re expecting to have to think long and hard about moves to use and different combat systems then you’ll be disappointed.

Alchemy is a lot simpler than it gets in later entries of the series too, and pretty much just involves finding the right items and hoping your alchemy levels are high enough to make a handy new bomb without anything going wrong. Crafting as much as possible will help level you up though, and with a bit of cash you can buy more recipes from the academy shop and extra equipment to make more advanced items. Although it’s lacking the puzzling elements of games like Atelier Sophie and Atelier Ryza, it still feels pretty good when you realise you can make something new of a decent quality rating.

Although the combat and alchemy feel a little dated compared to modern games, the visuals are fresh and modern. The chibi style character models work perfectly with the isometric viewpoint, and I loved pottering around the village and looking at the other adventures and NPCs doing their own thing. The music is delightful and catchy too, which is pretty much standard for the series at this point but appreciated nonetheless.

There is one aspect of Atelier Marie Remake I really need to bring to people’s attention, and it involves the five year time limit. This game is a pretty lengthy RPG that you’ll likely put dozens of hours into, and if you fail to make a good enough item once the five years is up then you simply fail. There’s no way to get extra time or rewind and make the game easier, you just have to start all over again and try harder next time. There is a difficulty mode that negates this (at the cost of a few story elements) but don’t go into the standard mode expecting to relax and take it easy if you want to actually finish the game.

Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg is an interesting look at the genesis of a popular RPG series, but compared to more modern entries it’s hard not to be a little underwhelmed. The time pressure you’re under provides an interesting hook, but the simpler combat and alchemy just don’t cut the mustard. If you’re looking for an RPG history lesson then you might get a kick out of Marie’s adventure, but don’t expect it to hold up to other recent releases.

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Oxenfree 2 takes this intuitive system up a notch. The dialogue rarely stops, informing as it does so much of the narrative, but it’s some of the best writing and voice acting I’ve heard in such a small-scale game. In fact, Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals is that perfect kind of sequel that uses the original game as a solid foundation, and then builds upon it in every way it can.

Perhaps the most telling element is the “Netflix” logo that fades in as Oxenfree 2 begins. This feels like a game made for the Stranger Things generation, as indeed the first one was before Stranger Things was even a major hit. The “small town gone bad” theme is prevalent, evoking parallels with Netflix’s paranormal TV show.

We’re introduced to protagonist Riley right away, as she prepares to start her first shift working for an environmental research department, planting radio transmitters along the coast near the small town of Camena. It sits opposite Edwards Island, the small lump of rock and sand that served as the setting for so much calamity in the first game. What begins with a simple radio chat with Evelyn, Riley’s supervisor, soon degenerates into something much creepier. Shortly after meeting her co-worker, handyman Jacob Summers, Riley finds herself repeating the same moments again and again thanks to a transdimensional anomaly on Edwards Island.

It doesn’t take long for Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals to become unsettling. Together with Jacob, Riley is tasked with planting four transmitters at the highest points around Camena and the nearby abandoned ghost town of Garland in a bid to overpower and remove the anomaly. But rather than this be a breakneck race to the finish, it’s much more intentionally slow-paced. Jacob and Riley have no vehicle, and must hike and climb to their destinations, dealing with increasingly hostile spirits trying to break into our world, and what may or may not be a sinister cult known as Parentage who have a connection with Camena’s checkered history.

Riley is a great protagonist too. A former resident of Camena, she joined the military to escape a broken home and has returned now, in her thirties, with secrets of her own. She’s strong, and confident, but carries an air of someone who has earned that confidence through training and conditioning, and developed that strength by fighting her whole life. She’s outdoorsy, athletic, pragmatic, but she’s also a realist who has little time for flights of fancy or what-ifs. Jacob is the perfect foil. Mild-mannered but courageous when his loved ones are in danger, unsure of his place in the world and living in the shadow of his more successful, estranged twin brother.

The interactions between Riley and Jacob power the beating heart of Oxenfree 2 in a more vital way than the relationships between Alex and her friends in the first game. It helps that these two are world-weary adults instead of snide teenagers, but it’s more than that. As they face increasingly messed-up, occasionally terrifying phenomena, they come to rely on each other, encouraging and supporting one another. Of course, you can choose to play Riley as a stone-cold bitch at times thanks to the dialogue system, but I found the warmer version to feel more natural.

It would have been quite easy for the writers to skew the dynamic between Jacob and Riley, to either include romance or, worse, make her a Mary Sue and him a bumbling cliche. Instead we get a relationship that feels believable, and proceeds along a natural course given the events that unfold. But it’s not just these characters who grow and change as the story progresses. Without spoiling too much, there are also “cult members” to contend with, who seem hell bent on opening a portal to let the Sunken into our world.

These antagonists continue the plot from the first game. Sailors on an experimental submarine, lost at sea thanks to a tragic friendly fire accident, now trapped in another dimension and seeking a way to return no matter the consequences – the Sunken are a terrifying, single-minded presence in Oxenfree 2, often possessing the living and steering events out of your control. Beyond that, though, Riley has a walkie-talkie with which to communicate with various other residents of Camena, including Evelyn, park ranger Shelley, fisherman Nick, and scientist Hank. Through your actions and choices these and other characters may or may not survive the night, adding an undercurrent of menace and accountability.

Outside of one moment in the first hour that felt a little slow, the 5-hour campaign is incredibly compelling, pulling you from mystery to mystery, exposing the secrets and pain of Riley’s haunted past, but also offering flash-forwards to a potentially grim future. I say “potentially” because, again, your choices will inform multiple events and endings.

While I felt the first Oxenfree had some issues with pacing, Lost Signals has no such shortcomings. There is, as I said, a moment early on where I was running for a long time with little to do, but in fairness I had gone the wrong way and had to backtrack. And the running was still filled with exposition and character building, so it wasn’t a waste. Arguably, Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals lacks big “wow” moments. There’s a few larger set-pieces in the back half, but it rarely comes close to thrilling, instead pulling you along with its incredible atmosphere, smart writing, and likable characters.

It doesn’t hurt that it’s gorgeous. Characters are animated with exaggerated personality, slumped shoulders, waving arms, ragdoll physics when they fall that add an unsettling air to moments of crisis. But the backdrops are often beautiful, and the environmental detail and juxtaposition of muted colours with the sharp, digital aesthetic of the otherworld are always effective. The map seems much larger than it actually is, and travelling anywhere never feels laborious, even if Riley has a tendency to force you to walk sometimes.

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals is a special game, one that feels almost old school at times despite the modern spin on dialogue and storytelling. It’s a small-scale adventure with far-reaching consequences, starring characters that are never sure whether they’re saving the whole world or just their own skins – or if they’re imagining it altogether. You don’t necessarily need to have played Oxenfree to enjoy Lost Signals (though I’d advise you to anyway because it’s a great game), but knowledge of the characters and events would help you understand some of the intricacies of the plot and the backstory of Camena and Edwards Island.

It’s not often a game of such comparatively small stature keeps its claws in after the credits roll, but Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals will likely stay with me for much longer than just another playthrough. Partly, this is down to the mysteries and secrets, some of which you just won’t see in one run because of the weight of choices you make. It’s occasionally scary, often funny, consistently creepy, and manages to be moving, usually when you’re not expecting it to be. But it’s also good-looking, fantastically well acted, and very clever. It’s quite light on puzzles and things to do beyond running, climbing and talking, but I devoured it in two sittings and couldn’t wait to play it again to make different choices, and find all the things I might have missed along the way.

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What happens next is the start of a strange, supernatural journey for our heroine. Regardless of which option you choose, an ethereal force won’t let Angie walk away, nor will it allow her to die. Even when you succumb and kick the chair away, the beam above cannot take the weight, and she lives to see another day. At this point, the decision is made to accept the offer of employment, with a view to earning enough to vicariously fulfil the dying wish of her late husband, and see the beautiful cherry blossoms of Japan.

The new gig is, on the surface, as a live-in carer to an old boy ensconced in the Devon countryside. This idyllic scenario takes a distinct left turn when Angie discovers a portal to another dimension behind a creepy door in the basement of the farmhouse. It transports her to the purgatory-like alternate reality known as Burnhouse Lane, where she is challenged by a mysterious feline to endure a veritable gauntlet of five horrific tasks, which if completed, will grant a cure to her lung cancer. As gaming scenarios go, this is a doozy.

Gameplay is a combination of side scrolling platforming and exploration set between Burnhouse Lane and the farmyard. There are puzzles, items such as keys to be found, and branching dialogue paths that affect the direction of the story. There are even combat sections that are evocative of other survival horror titles from days past – if you are a fan of the creepy and macabre stuff like this, then you will recognise these when they occur.

There is no dressing up the fact that there are some very disturbing sequences and adult themes at play, which I will not spoil here. There is a very good reason that you get a content warning when you boot this one up, something that Switch gamers may not be used to. Pikmin, this ain’t. It touches on things that some of you may find abhorrent or disgusting and unable to deal with.

As the plot thickens, things do also become a bit hammy and suspension of disbelief becomes impossible, particularly if like me you are English and know what actually goes on in the Devon countryside. Harvester would have you believe that it is a lawless land packed with firearms and crazed serial killers. It also becomes apparent that a lot of the game is actually taking place in the “real” world, as opposed to the vastly more interesting, monster-infested Burnhouse Lane.

This macabre, arcane horror is helped along nicely by the extremely effective soundtrack, which has a splendid post-rock feel, and is deployed with a light touch. Voice acting is a mixed bag, but there is some sterling work on display for Angie and kindly farmer George. The visual style is also a treat, employing a clash of styles which blends quirky hand drawn characters with backgrounds and environments that almost appear photoshopped.

The gameplay is not the most dynamic exploratory platforming you will ever experience, but it is soaked in atmosphere and intrigue, as well as being memorably disturbing to the point where I found myself thinking about it during a recent restless night. If like me you are like a moth to a flame for this kind of oddball folksy horror, then I would advise you to take a look – just be warned, it isn’t for the faint-hearted.

The post Burnhouse Lane review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

It’s a decent port, though. It tells the story of two warring Knights, Theoderich and Ulrich, formerly best friends until the latter claimed a powerful, evil relic at the tail end of the Crusades. The story is pretty good, though the telling of it suffers at the hands of an engine that struggles with the in-game cutscenes. Theoderich is a strong enough lead, if a little comparatively dull. All he wants is to live a quiet life away from war and bloodshed, but with Ulrich going off the reservation and raising an army to sack Britain, Theoderich has no choice but to get involved.

During fights you’ll be directing squads of troops around the battlefield. You’ve swordsmen, spearmen, archers, mounted knights, the usual assortment, and there’s a pretty simple loop of damage where one soldier type is more effective against another. Because the camera stays above the action, you’ll have a pretty good view of who’s doing what and where they are.

Each mission will have clear objectives as well as various side concerns. From all-out assaults to escorting VIPs, there’s a decent variety of missions across the 16 main stages. Your soldiers and hero characters all have unique abilities you can call upon, which never stray too far into fantasy. You won’t be summoning demons to fight or anything, but you can buff your squads, charge the enemy, or deliver precision volleys. You can even find loot such as special weapons and armour to outfit your men for war. It’s not the deepest system but it adds another layer of customisation and tactics.

Moving your squads around the battlefield is easy enough. You may well start an engagement in a position of advantage, but it does often last. Skirmishes are highly mobile, with enemies coming from all angles and directions. You’ll need to split your forces often in order to defend multiple fronts or flank the enemy where possible.

The Valiant plays great on a DualSense 5 controller. There aren’t a ton of button combos to worry about, and activating specials is as simple as hitting the corresponding button. I did find that it felt a little unresponsive at times, and my troops would just mill about a bit until I repeated a command. It’s also not always super clear to see what’s happening as the console version has no close-up zoom. Your men all blur in with the enemy after a while.

The console version launches with the main game, Skirmish mode, the online multiplayer, and the Last Man Standing horde mode where you just need to defend a trio of heroes against waves of enemies for as long as you can. It’s a great mode for those who crave a solid challenge, but the multiplayer will give you much more to think about. Adding other players into the mix is always a great way to increase the challenge, but arguably The Valiant doesn’t need it. It doesn’t add anything new to the overall experience, but rather changes the way you approach the core gameplay.

On PS5, The Valiant is just as playable and enjoyable as on PC, even if it’s not quite as good-looking. The control scheme works well, and there’s enough content across the different modes to keep you busy for a little while. There are better top-down strategy choices out there, such as the aforementioned Company of Heroes 3, but this is great if you’re a particular fan of medieval warfare. Whether you’re looking for an interesting if in-spectacular story campaign, or a challenge to stretch your tactical brain, The Valiant is a pretty solid option.

The post The Valiant console review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

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.

The main premise of Crash Team Rumble is quite simple. Two teams of four must collect more Wumpa fruit than the opposition, reaching the goal of 2,000. What makes things more complex – bringing the thrilling elements to it – is how you can take on different roles within your team. There are three roles at present, and each has a role with specific goals, and if everyone knows their role and sticks to it, matches can be fun.

The first role is the Scorer, and they’re responsible for collecting the fruit and delivering it to the scoring platform. Characters like Crash are faster than their teammates and can also carry more Wumpa. They have decent abilities to fend off enemies who want to try and attack them, however, the Blockers are much better at dishing out damage. Dingodile and Dr. N. Brio fall into this category, and their job is to hurt the enemy, protect the scorers, and try their best to defend their platform or prevent the opposition from depositing their Wumpa.

The final role is the Booster, and in my opinion, the most important. Not surprisingly, I found few players wanted to take on this role, just as players rarely want to be a Healer in Overwatch. Few people enjoy support roles, but I found them to be the most flexible. Coco and Dr. Neo Cortex play a pivotal role in building scoring multipliers by jumping on sets of gems, turning them the colour of their team. They can also activate map-specific bonuses such as the ability to heal all of your team or spawn a bonsai tree that’s home to a ton of Wumpa fruit.

In theory, players should stick to these roles. In the majority of matches I played, teams stuck to their roles for the most part, but it loses its enjoyment if players stray from them. Toys for Bob has been meticulous in how these roles all work together, so it’s a shame if players want to deviate. Of course, this isn’t a fault of the developer, but it loses its appeal when matches populated by strangers aren’t working together. Voice chat is integral to playing in unison, and if you’re risking matches with people you don’t know, the same level of enjoyment isn’t present.

Luckily, each player has a power-up that can be charged over time. These can range from a Flytrap Spitter that acts as a turret of sorts, and whenever an enemy is in range it’ll dish out a handful of damage. The Wumpa Stash increases your deposit bonus; Power Drain zaps the rate at which the enemy team’s fill their power-up gauge; and the Gasmoxian Guard is fantastic at dealing enemy damage and making it hard for the opposing team to drop off Wumpa.

Crash Team Rumble is fun to play as far as the controls go. The platforming elements are fluid and responsive, and I never had issues with movement or getting around. It also looks good, with the various maps all designed wonderfully. My main concern is how the Battle Pass progresses far too slowly, something I mentioned in our preview. The content within the battle pass isn’t that exciting either, unless you’re a diehard Crash fan, and the rate of progressing takes a lot of successful runs. There’s still some cool stuff, but having to pay for a game that still feels limited and then the battle pass, I’d have expected more.

Crash Team Rumble is much better than I first thought it would be. Matches can be a lot of fun if everyone sticks to their roles, and the maps look great, but are also designed in interesting ways to make use of character roles. As it’s a live-service title, I hope Toys for Bob is dedicated to keeping it fresh and it doesn’t become another victim of a low player base; though suggestions are this might already be happening. Despite a battle pass that takes a lot to progress through, there’s an enjoyable experience here.

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The thing is, while that story is a bit played out, the delivery system for it is so video gamey it’s unreal, and it works.. You start by creeping into a posh looking cliffside apartment, making early use of the climbing mechanics that let you both get higher, but also duck behind cover. Jennifer Hale‘s voice offers back-story over a radio, and at the critical point, both aurally and visually, you discover an unconscious Colonel Peter Conrad (played by David Hayter) in a weird futuristic bed that’s keeping him alive and is connected to his head. You’re going to have to go into his very consciousness (and sub-consciousness) to get to that core and win the day.

Virtual reality has offered fans of the FPS a whole new way to play their favourite genre for a while now, and Synapse is no different: a mixture of gunplay and telekinetic powers, asking you to go after waves of enemies, clearing them out before moving on to the next level, and getting deeper and deeper. The monochromatic environments are crisp and clean, only broken by bursts of colour from things you need to be attracted to, like explosive barrels. After your initial (forced to fail) run you’ll unlock telepathy and can toss the multitude of objects at the enemies, which is all well and good, but Synapse actually uses the PlayStation VR2’s exclusive functionality as well.

For instance, using eye tracking (though you don’t have to if you prefer not to for some reason) you will highlight the object you want to grab hold of, but it doesn’t even stop there. Due to the triggers on the controllers, you can squeeze them all the way to make a barrel explode instantly, or you can lightly feather it to pick them up and toss them at the enemy… and then squeeze them to explode the enemies along with it. A neat idea, but I confess that I struggled slightly with the depth part of movement. There seems to be some slight auto aim, but the enemies are squirrelly and move about a lot, and while tossing blocks side to side, or dropping them on their head is easy enough, forward and backwards is less easy. Also, the telekinesis is always mapped to your off-hand, and I would have liked to be able to switch this on the fly, making it a bit more high-intensity, action wise. You can move parts of the environment too, and Synapse is a pretty tactile game, all told.

As you’d expect from any decent roguelike, there are multiple weapons and ways to improve and progress. You are offered challenges that carry from run to run (in-run progress is reset each time you die, so you can’t keep guns you finish with), and completing these gives you skill points for a tree that does offer a lot of options pretty quickly. Within a few runs I had unlocked the option to have a health pool in each level; an uzi to pick up, and by the third or fourth run I had unlocked the option to throw enemies themselves.

There’s a real feeling of progression and that you are working towards something with the game, instead of it rubbing up against you, which in a genre that sometimes delights in brutalising the player, is quite a nice touch. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t easy by any stretch, it’s more that the progression feels inclined to let you get better, quicker, instead of punishing you for not being immediately great at everything.

One important thing to note is that the upgrades do make it easier (of course) and feel better, overall. Early doors you’ll be forgiven for feeling like the gunplay itself is a bit wonky. It’s fine, but I felt like my aim was truer than the in-game replication, and headshots aren’t always easy to pull off. That said, by the time you’re unlocking mid-run options to curve your bullets (at a reduction of damage) and using an uzi, it’s not much of an issue.

While Synapse does look great, some of the audio could have used a little work. Your cuff-based radar shows you enemy positions, health, and how many foes remain (as well as your currency for spending mid-run that’s dropped from enemies) but it almost need not bother. The directional audio is excellent, but ruined by the fact that some of the enemies just do not stop talking. As a friend of mine would say, “they’ve got more rabbit than Sainsburys” (other supermarkets are available), and the constant barking and chirruping could definitely do with being toned back a bit. You can jump into cover using your hands, but I often ended up going full guns-blazing in the early stages because I wanted to shut the enemies up quicker.

Synapse feels like a game that takes advantage of the relative youthfulness of virtual reality as a delivery system. As a bunch of ideas tacked on a wall, it might not seem that unique, but it’s the sum of its parts, and feels exciting and new, offering a one more go feel that is at the core of many of the very best VR games out there. It may not blow VR-veterans away, and there are some mechanical aspects that are simply too fiddly to be successful, but it’s a damn good time and offers a reason to keep putting that PSVR2 on your head, even in the hot and sweaty months, and it’s probably the best nDreams game to date.

The post Synapse review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

When it gets down to brass tacks, action inside the ring is relatively simple and addictive. Despite it being clunky at times, that feel of No Mercy and WrestleMania 2000 from the N64 days has been faithfully recreated, and more often than not, the gameplay is straightforward. The fundamentals are easy to master. You can punch and kick to deliver short combos, and lock in a grapple to perform a handful of moves. You can Irish whip an opponent into the corner or the ropes, and perform a few simple aerial moves off the top rope.

The move sets aren’t too varied, but it’s the ease of performing that makes it engaging. Some of the basic moves like picking up an opponent off the mat or turning them round for a grapple from behind aren’t detailed anywhere, so I had to work them out for myself. It’s a little frustrating, especially as some of the best signature moves are performed from behind. However, once you work it out, matches can flow reasonably well, and when you incorporate diving moves like the Tope Con Hilo et al, action is frantic. One of the coolest aspects of AEW: Fight Forever is how you can keep performing signature moves without losing the ability to do so.

For example, in one of my first matches, I played as Kenny Omega and hit a Dragon Screw Suplex, followed by a V-Trigger, then another couple of Dragon Screws. In a game that doesn’t take the realism too seriously, it adds one of the most realistic aspects of professional wrestling to it. Many matches will see a signature move performed a couple of times in succession, and it’s good they’ve incorporated it here. To perform a Special, or finishing move, you simply have to taunt the opponent with the right stick, then get in the correct position and flick the right stick again.

With most of the signatures and specials, you’ll get a quick replay that adds to the arcade feel, and it’s wonderful to watch. My biggest gripe, though, is that matches can be won in under a minute. Now I know this does happen, but AEW is known for its epic matches, and these quick finishes diminish the grandeur of getting Bryan Danielson to step up against the likes of CM Punk or Jon Moxley. It’s not the worst thing imaginable, but I often refused to pin an opponent because I wanted the matches to keep on going. The way you get to the point of pulling off a fancy move is by building momentum, and this can be done by executing different moves or gaining buffs for specific actions during a match.

It has a nice flow to it, and in 1v1, AEW: Fight Forever is excellent. Tag matches are also a lot of fun, as are the triple threat and 4-way matches, however, the real stars of the show are the Lights Out and Exploding Barbed Wire Matches. These are the moments where it doesn’t take itself seriously. Lights Out offers players a ton of different weapons to use against an enemy, such as a mop wrapped in barbed wire, a football helmet that can be thrown on an opponent, a baseball bat with nails attaches to it, golf clubs, and the more traditional weapons like steel chairs and tables. You can reach over the barriers and pick up a weapon quickly, making these matches even more enjoyable.

As for the Exploding Barbed Wire Match, after a certain time, the barbed wire that’s replaced the ring ropes will explode, greatly damaging anyone close enough. The Casino Battle Royale is also in AEW: Fight Forever, as are ladder matches, giving fans plenty of match types. It would have been cool to see trios matches included, along with the Iron Man match, Blood and Guts, and a few others, but in many ways, it feels like the game isn’t the complete package.

AEW: Fight Forever has a limited roster. Some professional wrestlers are being added, but there’re some notable omissions like The Acclaimed and Swerve Strickland, and future DLC additions like FTR, Keith Lee, and Hook should simply be a part of the original roster. I’m hoping that other professional wrestlers will be added later down the line because it does feel like it’s missing some key members of the roster. In other ways, AEW: Fight Forever feels massively out-of-date, and that they got to a point where they had to stop updating or else it would never be released, however, Ortiz and Santana are nowhere to be seen.

The Road to the Elite mode acts as a career of sorts, and Omega’s influence is felt right through it. He’s a massive fan of the Yakuza series and developers Ryu Ga Gotoku, and a lot of interactions have a similar humour and presentation. It’s silly at times, but I loved it, probably because I adore Yakuza as well. The mini games are also a ton of fun and again, feel like they’re a respectful nod to RGG as well. It only lasts for a year, but each block is made up of four weeks where you can go for a meal at a local restaurant or sightsee at specific places depending where Dynamite is being held; do some training at the gym; appear on a talk show; and even compete on Dark and Rampage, followed by competing at one of the four major PPVs.

Each week, completing these tasks help to improve your motivation, energy, skill points, and cash. The higher your energy and motivation, the better shape you’re in for your weekly match on Dynamite. The more skill points you have helps to upgrade your created wrestler’s (although you can play though the career as an AEW wrestler), and cash can be spent on unlocking weekly perks, however, I never felt like I needed them as the time I had across the week gave me enough opportunity to maximise things like how motivated or recovered I was. When it comes to the weekly match, stories from AEW’s early years feature, such as Inner Circle and MJF’s rivalry.

It is in these moments that it feels out of date the most. I get it’s celebrating its beginnings, but showing video packages of Taz introduce the FTW belt feels like a lifetime ago. Maybe I’m being too picky, as the actual flow of Road to the Elite is nice and quick, arcadey, and funny. Watching Hangman and me pose in front of the Lincoln Memorial, or getting a boop from Kris Statlander while eating my New York Hot dog shows how it doesn’t take itself seriously, as well as paying homage to RGG Studio. There’re also a ton of Easter eggs and in-jokes, including a few references to WWE thrown in for good measure.

The custom suite isn’t packed full of options, but there’re some decent enough options in the custom arenas. The custom wrestlers are limited, though. I couldn’t find a decent beard at all, and I hope these get added to the in-game store. By the end of my year in the career mode, I had so much cash I didn’t know what to do with it, so fingers crossed more stuff gets added. While it doesn’t feel unfinished, it does feel outdated at times, but thankfully it’s so much fun to play.

The gameplay in AEW: Fight Forever isn’t going to blow fans away, but it does remind me of the times spent on my N64 pulling off quick and simple moves that look awesome. Some of the wrestlers don’t look like who they’re supposed to be, but the characters are more cartoony than lifelike, and I’m fine with that. This isn’t a polished 2K WWE-style game. Fans might not like that, but I honestly enjoyed getting involved in matches. It’s quick and easy to jump in, and I hope more gets added to it over the coming months. It would be a shame if, after a few DLC drops, that’s all we get.

While AEW: Fight Forever does feel a little empty and outdated, jumping into a match as Chris Jericho, Orange Cassidy, and Britt Baker is so damn cool. I love this company with all my heart, and while I might have been down on it at certain points, I’m in no way disappointed. I just pray to TK and Yuke’s that there’s more to come from it down the line. Still, the developers have reminded us why they were so good at making wrestling games fun, just like what All Elite Wrestling has done for the sport as a whole.

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There’s an evil lurking within the town known as the Greed. At first, you’re not too sure what they are or where they came from, but as you progress through the episodes, you understand your own family’s involvement in their emergence and what your relevance is in the story. It’s often played out through 80s-style cartoon cutscenes between episodes and after spending coins to dig deeper into the lore. Even the story feels like a homage to classics from the time, and it really comes into its own after arriving on Main Street.

I’d never played a Kingdom game before, and its base-building elements were a nice surprise. Each episode follows a day and night cycle. In the day, you spend coins on expanding and reinforcing your base, hiring local kids to become builders or warriors ready to defend against the Greed when the night falls, and finding other ways to help your fight. You can head east or west of the base, chopping down trees to connect your base to the next area (wherever a traffic cone is present), while at the same time finding other objectives like recruiting one of your friends to help you out, or unlocking a new bike or mode of transport.

At the same time, you can upgrade your base to allow better fortifications against the enemy, and in turn unlocking a dumpster to help protect you as you push towards whatever the episode’s main objective is. As the day unfolds, you’ll earn more coins by finding chests or telephone boxes; collecting them off the kids within your camp who might have killed some nearby animals; through jobs the kids can complete like fishing or being a lifeguard; and more. The more coins you have, the stronger the base can become, and as you progress, new things can be constructed to help you out, such as turrets and laser-firing robots.

Kingdom Eighties has a nice flow to it, with the day and night cycle and the ease of dropping a few coins into something to either build or harvest, and there’re a ton of secrets to find that offer some really cool Easter eggs. My favourite involved a certain scene from Back to the Future Part II and an iconic skateboard, but there’s much more to find, and fans of pop culture from the time are going to have plenty of fun finding it all, with nods to E.T., Gremlins, and more.

When the night rolls around and the Greed begin to attack your base, it can be a tense experience, especially when you’re trying to decide whether you have time to fortify before one of the little creatures takes out a worker, or whether five archers are going to be enough to fend off the next wave. When I first started playing, I felt lost when it came to earning coins and what to do, as there was little guidance other than a floating figure who told you to go to something and pump some coins into a building or object.

You do begin to work out what you need to do, but the enemy can be relentless, and if they knock the crown off your head and take it back to where they came from, you’re screwed. Thankfully, the more coins you have and the better your defence, it starts to become rather satisfying. As the Leader, you start to unlock your friends to join you. The Champ is a jock with the ability to fend off the Greed with force; the Tinkerer is able to tweak inventions and help to fight the Greed; and the Wiz is a tech-loving nerd who helps with certain contraptions and problems you encounter.

The pixel-art is stunning, with various neon signs and homages to the 80s done so in plenty of detail, with gorgeous colour in everything you see, whether it’s at the camp you initially start at or the mall, it just looks so good. Even the animations of the various iterations of the enemy look great. The soundtrack is also a great addition to Kingdom Eighties, helping to bring the era alive and create both tense and beautiful moments throughout the story.

I love Kingdom Eighties. Not just because of the era it was set in, but because the gameplay is so addictive. The base-building elements and the exploration make every new episode exciting to play, and the different ways you must progress all pose interesting challenges. It was tricky to get to grips with at the start, and unless you’re fully prepared it can be easy to lose your crown. Regardless, I had so much fun with it, and I fell in love with the story and animation.

The post Kingdom Eighties review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

The series as a whole was not exactly groundbreaking in terms of dynamic platforming, but did stand out due to the anime-inspired characters. Whilst it’s sequel had more of a straight up Rockman/Mega Man feel, the first game in Winds platforming mini-saga is more of a scrolling hack and slash platformer, with a nice structure that allows you to choose your destination through the game using a Super Mario World-esque map.

You play the role of one of male/female due Tasuke or Kyapiko, who have been given crazy cyborg fighting upgrades by a mad scientist, so that they can take on the nefarious the rogues gallery of classic baddies. There are Gundam style robots, cybernetic monkeys (a real mainstay in games of the time, see Strider and King of the Monsters if you need further evidence) and even one dude who looks like a knock off of Darth Vader. Beating stages and rescuing citizens in distress allows you to buy stuff in shops to upgrade your character. But each boss you take down will also give your hero a permanent upgrade too – such as an improved energy bar, or boosted defence.

The stages look like you would expect from a 1989 PC Engine game – decent pixel art, some interesting, if heavily recycled enemy sprites and bosses, some of which have really lovely designs. The music is very much of its era, but suits the action perfectly. There is a two player coach co-op, and some lovely comfort options such as the now-standard scanline filter mode.

So far, so good….except for the fact that, sadly, the game just isn’t a very good one. The problems surface immediately and tell you that you are in for a bad time. The physics are all to-cock, with the inertia of movement an absolute pain. Acceleration is slow but once you do build any momentum it is hard to slow down. Dinky little platforms and this kind of setup are a terrible mix, and negotiating even the most simple level can be a traumatic lesson in pain. Throw into the mix some of the most outrageous collision detection I have experienced for many moons, and you have a game that is hard to recommend to anyone but the most hardcore PC Engine fans out there.

But then, thinking about it, this kind of title and its annoying unpolished controls were ten a penny back in 1989, and I would have probably still played it to death just out of sheer determination and spite. I can remember other platformers around then having similar issues, with the NES Turtles game being a prime suspect; and I must have spent weeks on that excruciating mess.

So what I am saying is, this is a great little piece of history, a gaming museum piece, and a labour of love that deserves a bit of respect, even if it is a pain in the arse at times. For the meagre asking price, you get some nice artwork and renderings of the original packaging and manual, the aforementioned filter and screen curvature options, and even have the ability to rewind gameplay which, admittedly, does take the sting out of some of the more precarious, anxiety inducing leaps of faith. But all told, if it’s better gameplay you want, then track down the far superior sequels.

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It’s a side-scrolling action-adventure game with more than a gentle dusting of Prince of Persia that won’t eat up much more than three or four hours of your week. What threatens early on to open up into a sprawling Metroidvania keeps things refreshingly tight, presenting a solid action game with a cool core mechanic and a handful of new ideas.

If there’s anything that feels undercooked though, it’s the narrative. Nocturnal tells the tale of Ardeshir, a soldier who has returned home to find the island he grew up on ravaged by a terrifying entity known as the Mist. With his family slain and his sister missing, Ardeshir must brave the horrors of the dark with only a huge flaming sword and infinite restarts to help him.

I joke, obviously, but the truth is if you want to learning anything about the world or the Mist or the Sacred Flame Ardeshir uses to imbue his sword, you’ll need to explore every nook and cranny. What story there is is told in tiny scraps of text split across twelve collectibles, which you’ll need to find and arrange. It’s more than a little annoying, especially as the mysterious old woman who keeps turning up would be an ideal exposition tool instead.

The fact that the devs even refer to it as a “love letter to the original Prince of Persia” should tell you everything you need to know here, though. Nocturnal is beautiful, fluid, and a joy to play, even if it does occasionally throw just a little too much at you.

As Ardeshir you must ignite your blade to carve a path through the darkness and defeat the tortured souls claimed by the Mist. The flame has a short timer which you can extend by spending Ash on a small upgrade tree. Once the light goes out, you’ll begin to take tick-damage until you expire or you cab reach another torch. Most are unlit, and the focus is on spreading the flame from point to point to create pools of luminescence that weaken your enemies.

The various contraptions such as lifts and doors are also powered by fire, necessitating speedy platforming between points. The jumping and dashing is precise, but when you start mixing it with sword swipes to light torches and activate ledges, it can become a little difficult to nail the timing. Likewise, there are times when you’re thrown into combat with multiple enemies and a rapidly dwindling flame, which feel frantic and desperate as you try to stay alive and reignite your blade.

A three-hit combo, i-frame dodge, and handful of special abilities make combat feel slick and rewarding, especially when you manage to fight your way out of a pile of enemies. The flames heal can heal you, but will be extinguished when they do so, forcing you to think carefully and adding an element of danger even to restoring your health.

About a third of the way in you’ll unlock a throwing knife for use in puzzles and combat, which will also ignite when it comes into contact with fire. This gives you more combat options – as does a powerful move that you unlock for the back half of the game. Nocturnal has cool ideas throughout, too, such as being able to set fire to dried vines and tapestries to create light and reveal puzzle solutions.

There’s a definite sense here that Nocturnal may have been envisioned as a Metroidvania once early in development. For example there are sometimes multiple routes, but it’s fifty-fifty if you pick the route that leads to a secret or the route that locks you into the critical path. Sadly, there’s rarely a way to tell which is which, either.

A small but well-thought-out skill tree allows you to improve your stats and abilities as you travel, and the core conceit of having to literally fight against the darkness trying to choke you is such a powerful and respectful homage to PoP that I couldn’t help but smile even when it became frantic. It’s never too stressful though, as regular checkpoints reduce the amount of retreading you’ll do even when it gets tough.

After only a few areas and a handful of boss fights, Nocturnal ends without much flourish, and left me wondering if it’s a secret proof of concept for a much grander sequel at some point down the line. For all that I appreciate the brevity, I kind of hope so, because Sunnyside have something very special here that could easily stand with the best if it had just a little more story and content.

The post Nocturnal review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

And really, a lot of that is what C-Smash VRS is now in 2023, only in virtual reality, with online versus modes. In truth, much like when Rez Infinite came to virtual reality devices, this almost feels like the idea the original creators had, only technology wasn’t within reach to make it happen. Now though, we have the PlayStation 5 and PSVR2, so it can exist, and it’s great fun.

You’re a ghostly apparition of a person, and “matches” start with you using your off-hand to hoist the ball toward you, before smashing it back. It’s intuitive because it’s a racquet sport, and if you’ve played Tennis, Squash, Badminton, or frankly, Wii Sports, you’ll know what you’re doing. That said, experience with ball-based sports like Tennis or Table Tennis will offer you a pretty cool moment when you’ll realise the “space ball” you’re hitting reacts as it should. Top spin, backspin, or hitting the ball at certain angles will curve or fade it as it would in real life, or at least in real life if you were in some form of zero gravity room. It’s quite a moment to see a ball turn as it should in reality, only in pixel-form in a modern game.

Once you’ve hit the ball the idea is very similar to Breakout, in that you want to keep it in motion and not miss it, because you’ll lose valuable time. You want to break through the obstacles as quickly as possible and progress to the next level, because a timer is constantly ticking away. In truth, it sometimes feels a little harsh on the people who don’t have enough space for a room scale experience. Played seated or standing-but-stationary, you can control your movement side to side with the left stick. You can adjust the experience so that if you’re newer to VR you will get protection from that movement, or turn it off and go full Henman on its ass.

There’s no question that C-Smash VRS is better with room scale movement, however. Here, you can get properly involved and play it like a real sport, dashing around to meet the ball coming back to you. Without this, you aren’t going to have the space to hit the ball as you’d want, and this will result in frustration due to time loss, and that’s because of how the single player campaign portion of the title works. It’s good that the sitting and standing options exist, but they do offer an inferior experience to the full roomscale one.

If you run out of time, that’s it: run is over, go back to the start. This penalty would be less harsh if the offered “Zen Mode” wasn’t also just as harsh. In Zen Mode you can restart the stage, but you still have a timer, and it’s not extended. The timer itself is one of the few casualties of the move to virtual reality for C-Smash VRS, in that it’s a fast moving game and the timer is on the floor, so it’s often not until it’s too late that you even notice you’re running out of time in the first place. It’s not a deal breaker, and the campaign is a nice experience that offers a challenge, but I just don’t feel it’s quite good enough to warrant coming back over and over, despite the rogue-like nature of each run.

The online multiplayer though, should it garner a community of like minded folks, is superb. With four modes to start with, you can get into the action and play against real people, trying to bat the entire wall back in a “control” type mode, where you have to hit specific spots on the board to push it back against your opponent. The winner is the person who controls the most board by the point the timer runs out. I won my first game and considered retiring, but such is the nature of how C-Smash VRS feels that I jumped back in. It has a “one more go” quality to it. Other modes include the likes of 1v1 (with a board to clear behind your opponent), but it all works well and is a nice way to feel like you’re playing a real world sport, only with a faceless opponent instead of your local rival.

While I’d strongly recommend playing in roomscale settings, C-Smash VRS feels like the culmination of an idea twenty-odd years in gestation. There’s even haptic feedback galore, and it all adds to the immersion the overall experience brings. While it stumbles slightly with its single player offering, the multiplayer modes really are addictive, and it’s a gorgeous looking game with a terrific soundtrack. On top of all that, it’s simple and fun, is a bit of a workout, and is a lower priced title: what more could you want?

The post C-Smash VRS review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Dr Fetus has been thwarted by Meat Boy more than enough times now, and he’s got a new plan to deal with this platforming problem once and for all. By cloning the square red hero he’s hoping he can abuse his power to do those dark deeds he’s so famous for, but this scientific endeavor isn’t exactly simple. The Meat Boys he’s producing just aren’t quite right, so to try and weed out the good ones Dr Fetus is throwing them all into deadly test chambers and hoping the best evolve into something resembling his rival. It’s a gloriously stupid concept, but it gives you a reason for the upcoming chaos.

Dr Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine is at its core a Puyo Puyo game, but if you’re not familiar with this particular puzzle game then this is how it works. Sets of two coloured clones slowly descend from the top of a stage, and your job is to rotate and place them together so that at least four of the same colour stick together. When this happens they’ll disappear, let any clones on top of them drop down, and give you more room to place more blobs.

This probably sounds pretty easy, but the real trick is learning how to place the clones so you can set off combos of matching colours. The easiest way to do this is by placing colours on top of each other so that when a set of clones is cleared the ones above them fall into place and connect with matching Meat Boys, but it’s easier said than done. High level Puyo Puyo gameplay is particularly mind blowing when you see the chains and combos start popping off, but Dr Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine is less about high scores and more about bloody carnage.

What makes this Meat Boy spinoff different to other puzzle games are the hazards that litter every single stage you’ll be presented with. Saw blades, swinging chainsaws and spooky ghosts litter every single level of this colour matching puzzle game, and are hell bent on ruining your carefully planned combos. If you happen to hit any of these hazards with your descending puzzle pieces you’ll immediately lose the level and have to start from the last checkpoint, but if they hit any of the clones you have placed on the ground they’ll just destroy them and leave you with less to match with. Navigating the hazards and making matches is hard work, and unfortunately not a whole lot of fun.

There’s definitely a reason why most puzzle games don’t have the constant threat of your coloured pieces being sliced into a pile of viscera, and that’s because it massively takes away from thoughtful gameplay. Even in the first world of Dr Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine it’s rare you’ll find a moment to put together a clever combo of clones, because there’s either not enough room to set it up or there’s a saw blade waiting to clear it away after a few seconds. Even dodging the obstacles as your pieces fall is annoying, and the punishment of having to start over after one accident with an enemy is way too punishing. I ended up turning on invincibility on the accessibility menu so I could actually enjoy the game, but in doing so was basically just playing standard Puyo Puyo.

There are a couple of clever ideas in the game that are supposed to mitigate the difficulty somewhat. One of these is the temporary invincibility you get when you manage to pull off a combo. This would be really helpful if setting up combos was easier with all the hazards, but it’s a start. There are also checkpoints in the middle of stages that ensure you don’t end up losing too much progress when you die, and getting enough matches to trigger them is pretty manageable. Each level will still feel like a grindy war of attrition as you slowly manage to make your way closer to the next checkpoint, but it at least makes it plausible to make it through a level.

I’ve been hard on Dr Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine, but it isn’t without its charm. One part of the game that’s undeniably great is the soundtrack, which is consistently banging. There are also some interesting elements that change as you progress in the story, like the designs of the clones as they evolve. It’s a cool visual twist that fits the narrative, and although not exactly important to the game as a whole I thought it was really neat.

Dr Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine makes a great case for why you shouldn’t add dangerous platforming hazards to a perfectly good puzzle game. All the intricacy and combo planning that goes into a good round of Puyo Puyo is lost when dealing with Fetus’ saw blades, and I just ended up feeling frustrated. If you’re a real puzzle game whizzkid who’s looking for a challenge then maybe you’ll have more fun than me, but otherwise it’s worth keeping Puyo Puyo and Meat Boy as far apart as possible.

The post Dr Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

This bundle of retro games is predominantly made up of the four classic Sonic games that we all know and love. Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic 3 and Knuckles and Sonic CD are where you’ll spend most of your time in this collection. These (mostly) fast paced platformers are as much fun as you remember, with corkscrews, loop the loops and springs aplenty littering the colourful stages and ensuring you have a fun time spinning about. If somehow you haven’t played a Sonic game before, the blend of satisfying momentum through a stage and hazards to deal with is truly 16-bit magic, and you should get to beating Robotnik as soon as possible.

Another great reason to have all these wonderful Sonic games in one place is because it means you can have fun with all the different bonus stages. I absolutely love the various levels housing Chaos Emeralds in these titles, from the spinning mazes of Sonic the Hedgehog to the tunnels of rings and mines from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. A fantastic feature of Sonic Origins Plus is the ability to retry these stages when you fail at the cost of a measly collectable coin, which means gathering all the gems and turning into Super Sonic is more manageable than ever.

There are a few other helpful features that make the games less punishing too when you’re playing the Anniversary versions of the main titles. One of these is the removal of lives entirely, meaning that death no longer has a consequence other than pushing you back to the nearest checkpoint. You can also restart stages at any time, which is great when you miss out on gathering enough rings to unlock a bonus stage. Finally you can save your game at any time and play something else, which doesn’t exactly sound like a feature but back in the good old days you had to beat Sonic in one sitting or start over.

The ability to play a few dusty old games probably doesn’t fill you with the urge to spend £35 on a new video game, but there are a few extras that add some value to the package. My favourite of these are the missions, which are specially designed mini stages with objectives to complete and a time limit. The variety of these missions is pretty fantastic, with some showcasing Knuckles flying to kill enemies, as well as pacifist missions and specially designed mazes that’ll really test your skills. You’ll be rewarded with those precious coins for getting a good rank too, which you can spend over at the museum.

The museum houses all sorts of artifacts from the history of Sonic, from concept art to videos of live concerts playing the themes we all know and love. It’s a cool thing to explore for hardcore fans of the series, but after unlocking some of the cooler animated story scenes and music I still had a whole lot of change that I wasn’t bothered about spending on pictures of crabs.

Pretty much all these features were available in the original Sonic Origins when it was released last year, so why buy the new Plus version of the game I hear you ask. Well the main reason for this is supposed to be the added Game Gear games. These twelve portable titles originally released on Sega’s ill fated handheld back in the day, and it won’t take you long to notice their limitations thanks to that. Honestly these additional games are barely worth playing, with massive framerate dips, subpar level design and horrendous sound quality. There are much better versions of some of the games included on other systems too (like Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Sonic Spinball) so including these piss poor versions feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth.

The other new feature of Sonic Origins Plus is the addition of Amy Rose as a playable character. Playing as the adorable pink hedgehog brings a couple of very minor changes to your moveset, but for the most part she’s pretty close to a palette swap of Sonic. I like the idea of adding a new character to the collection, but it’d be nice if her addition had shaken up these classics a little bit.

When playing Sonic Origins Plus, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d played loads of better collections of Sonic games in the past. When I bought Sonic Mega Collection on the GameCube in 2002 it included most of the games you’d want to play from this bundle alongside classics like Ristar, Sonic 3D Blast and Mean Bean Machine, so the selection here just feels a bit lackluster. The games are still great of course, but especially for a more complete version of Sonic Origins it feels way emptier than it should.

My final issue with Sonic Origins Plus is one that can’t really be helped, but is still very unfortunate. The music in Sonic 3 (which for those who don’t know was initially developed in part by Michael Jackson) can no longer be used for licencing reasons, and it just isn’t the same without the tunes from my childhood. Obviously there’s no easy fix for this, but it’s a shame nonetheless.

Sonic Origins Plus is a great way to play four fantastic games, but the overall package is a little bit weak. The new additions to the Plus version are weaker still, making it hard to recommend even the budget priced upgrade let alone the full package. Despite this though you simply can’t deny the quality of the fantastic games in this collection, and if you’re desperate for a way to play them on modern consoles then you’ll probably still be happy spinning your life away.

The post Sonic Origins Plus review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

There’s such a rich lore that runs throughout Final Fantasy 16. You are enamoured by the past and the present, and Clive’s own tale is more than enough of a reason to keep on playing, however, he is only a drop in the ocean of Square Enix’s George R.R. Martin-esque world. To understand what is at stake, you’re given constant details to everything that surrounds you, from the six realms within the land of Valisthea to the large cast of characters, to the implications of their actions and those who are capable of wielding the magic of the Mothercrystals.

It’s staggering how much there is to take in, whether through the easily accessible lore at your hideaway or the Active Time Lore feature that lets you check out key information during cutscenes. I’ll try and do it justice and give you a rough outline, but playing is the only way to appreciate how good this vast and expansive story really is. The Mothercrystals are great sources of magick and have blessed the people for years, yet the Blight has begun to take hold on the land, sending realms to war against each other, striking fear into people’s hearts at the thought of the aether no longer being there to offer comfort and peace.

You play as Clive, the First Shield of Rosaria and protector to Joshua, your brother and Dominant to the Eikon of fire known as Phoenix. After a tragedy befalls you and the blight begins to spread further, you and your friends make a choice that will affect the land forever. These Eikon’s are huge creatures that are attuned to the natural elements, and Dominants are those who are home to these powerful beings. Rarely do they wage war against each other, but with what is at stake, it’s becoming more and more frequent as the realms are in a constant state of war.

There are so many twists and turns that you’re always on the edge of your seat, and the inspiration taken from Game of Thrones is obvious. Not just in the story, but in how no-one is safe. Countless times when I started to like someone, they met a brutal death. It’s wonderfully written, and the characters are all brought to life by the hard work of the actors. There are certainly more northerners in FFXVI than Game of Thrones, once more showing the effect the books and the show have had on the developers. It’s by no means a negative, as the familiar Final Fantasy tropes start to appear, especially when it comes to the gargantuan Eikons.

I could gush over the story for another four or five paragraphs because it is so good. I was enraptured by Clive and the nuances of his performance, suddenly flipped on its head by overwhelming emotion during pivotal scenes, or Jill’s sweet and humble shell, cracking as you find out about how she was treated when she wasn’t in the company of Clive. There are layers to everyone, and even the enemies are fascinating, especially that of Kupka. Oh, and Cidolfus is a god-damn hero of mine, period.

As you play through the story and start to encounter new Dominants, Clive learns new abilities that can help you in multiple ways when slaying soldiers, monsters, and other various enemies. These Eikon attacks can be switched quickly in combat, with each one having a cooldown before using again. By progressing, you’ll naturally start to learn all the combinations that work for you, and while you may think you’ve got a rather hefty arsenal of magic to choose from, Final Fantasy 16 keeps throwing new elemental abilities at you. There’s an ability tree which makes all of your skills more effective, along with the option to unlock new ones that are more powerful. You can also reset any spent ability points in case you want to try another approach out.

These Eikon attacks can launch waves of flames at enemies, send lightening bolts at direct targets, or fire a flurry of punches at enemies by harnessing the power of Garuda, a wind-type Eikon. There are loads of skills available, along with other abilities via Eikons that help you get closer to targets, pull them towards you, summon a large rock shield, and more. One of the big features of battle is staggering, allowing you to break a tougher enemy’s Will Gauge or boss which renders them helpless for a short while. Not only does it stop them in their tracks, it also lets you dish out punishment without interruption from them.

Then there’s the Limit Break Gauge, a powerful ability that, when pressing the two analogue sticks together, unleashes a flurry of fire attacks in quick succession. Clive is imbued with variety in how you approach every battle, and it never becomes too complex or overwhelming thanks to how every attack and concept seems to work together in order to get the most effective results. You can also parry, and dodging at the right time allows you to return a strike without being blocked. There are many layers to combat and there’s never a dull moment as far as battles are concerned, with constant improvements and additions help to keep fights exciting.

Throughout Final Fantasy 16, your party might change from time to time, with each member having their own range of abilities. You’ve also got your trusty hound, Torgal, that is there to help dish out attacks whenever entering combat. He’s the Ghost to your Jon Snow, ever reliable and trusting, never afraid to get stuck in the throes of battle. Equipment can be picked up from bigger battles along with resources to reinforce armour and weapons at blacksmiths, and there is a range of enchanted gear from necklaces to rings that can be equipped to give you specific bonuses which affect the difficulty of the game.

While FFXVI doesn’t exactly let you choose between easy, normal, and hard, these items of jewellery affect the game massively. One will allow you to pull off all of your moves off by hammering Square, although you can also choose them in tandem, even if it becomes a little awkward when doing so. Another replenishes health, or makes Torgal attack without you needing to do a thing. There’s a wealth of gear and I love how you can chop and change them to suit your playstyle. I’ll forever be in debt to the one that highlighted an enemy attack which allowed me to dodge because, as incredible as the visuals are during a fight soaked in magic, it can be almost impossible to see where enemies are at times.

Throughout the campaign, you’ll gain access to various merchants in Valisthea who’ll sell you potions, tonics to allow temporary buffs to attack and defence, music tracks that can be selected at your hideaway’s tavern, and resources needed for certain upgrades. The bulk of your time between missions will be spent at your hideaway, and as the story progresses, new things get added to it such as Monster Hunts (essentially Witcher Contracts) ran by a Moogle; an encyclopaedia featuring all the characters you meet, and information about the ongoing war, and all other important information to make up a stunning visual glossary of your travels; a renown system whereby you’re rewarded in resources for your hard work; a blacksmith where your armour and weapons can be improved; a bedroom to read letters from your friends and acquaintances; a training room to brush up on skills and replay missions, and other various outlets.

Nothing feels arbitrary and everything has its place. You become fond of Charon’s surly nature and Gav’s positivity. You get excited to return in case of a new mission to expand your knowledge, skills, or benefits. It feels like a home, and that’s something Clive so desperately needs as he risks his life to help those in need. He’s been through so much and has spent so long torturing himself, yet his penchant for helping other branded (those with natural magical abilities) individuals remains at the forefront of everything he does. Touching on the story once more, the way branded are treated depending on where they reside is another fascinating part of the story. Some are heralded as lords while others are treated worse than dogs, adding even more layers to FFXVI’s overarching narrative.

Both the story and the world of Final Fantasy 16 is brought to life by the phenomenal graphics. Each realm you visit and the areas within are remarkable, impeccably designed and life-like, blurring the lines between computer animation and realism. The way characters move and act outside of cinematics are phenomenal, especially in some of the bigger set pieces. In a majority of the big boss fights, Clive channels his Eikon, and you’ll end up fighting other Eikon’s throughout the story, the intricacies of these fights are detailed to the last pixel. They left me floored every time, and when you’re watching cutscenes, there’s nothing else like it. FFXVI is perhaps the nicest looking game I’ve ever played.

These cinematics play out throughout the game, and there’re are a lot, however, you never feel like they outstay their welcome, and they do a fantastic job of fleshing out the story. Some of these scenes are highly emotional, and I didn’t realise how connected I was to certain characters until I felt the warmth of a tear on my cheek. This world, beautifully crafted by Square Enix, is filled with wonder, passion, beauty, and pain, and throughout it all, the art of it left me amazed. Each town has its own personality, whether you’re at Martha’s Keep, Lostwing, or Eastpool. You see different economies and politics affect the flow of things. You’ll agree and disagree with a range of characters and how they act, yet you’ll appreciate how the scope of war has affected this world.

While not quite open world, you’ll be able to fast travel via Obelisks located around Valisthea. Each area has a local map with various side quests to complete, chests to find, and other points of interest. The running mechanic is a little unreliable, and a small issue is not having the ability to press something to start sprinting. This is ironed out later on with the inclusion of mounts, specifically the chocobo, a Final Fantasy stalwart. Ladders, blockades, and chasms are automatically traversed by walking up to them, which takes away the need to press buttons as well, further emphasising the focus on FFXVI’s story. Each biome, whether a desert, forest, or volcano, is fascinating to explore and beautiful to look at, making every location a sight to behold.

Final Fantasy 16 is gigantic and ambitious, but rarely puts a foot wrong. Its story consistently moves and amuses you, with a wealth of interesting characters to befriend and mourn. Clive is an excellent protagonist, and his circle of friends become friends you want to protect with every fibre or your being. The combat is layered in so many ways, and you’re always learning something new to help you in the battle against the evil lurking in the shadows. Despite some combat clouding the screen with a lot of moving parts and an awkward camera angle here and there, there’s really little I can say that borders on the negative. Square Enix has outdone itself, making one of the richest Final Fantasy games of all time. And yes, that includes FFVII.

The post Final Fantasy 16 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

So let’s start there, because it might be a bone of contention to some, but even as someone who is pretty heavy on a fightstick, the buttons feel durable yet incredibly responsive. I was a little concerned initially with how sensitive the buttons were, but my worries were unfounded, as these are a superb, and premium feeling component. Likewise, the stick (eight-directional) itself feels high end, and exactly how you imagine, or would want a stick to feel. I’d argue that at a lower price, the stick itself feels similar to more premium priced sticks, and only the buttons feel slightly different, though at the point where it’d become an issue, you’d be talking about competitive play and preference to a longer or shorter throw button.

The HORI Fighting Stick Alpha does actually feel premium, and very well made. A clasp on the back allows you to open the entire box up to make any adjustments or repairs you might need and it’s all colour coded for ease of access, and while I didn’t go deep into the internal customisation, it all seems fairly simple, even down to changing the artwork on the top of the fightstick.

The inside section also hides the cable when not in use. There isn’t a huge amount of space inside the Alpha, so you will need to wrap the cable around the prongs inside to keep it away from the components and allow you to shut it easily, and while I’d have preferred a detachable cable, it’s not the end of the world and a nice solution to keep things tidy. It’s a nitpick, too, but it’d be nice for there to be a “click” to the clasp holding the box shut, too.

Another boon to the Alpha is how customisable it is from a software perspective. If you fancy connecting the stick to a PC you can use the official software to customise it even further, swapping buttons around, etc. It’s a nice option, but I suspect most people would be happy with the stick out of the box, and won’t need to play around with any of these options.

The Xbox version of the stick I looked at has multiple additional buttons (perhaps more than I’ve seen on a stick anywhere), with no doubling up on standard controller buttons: everything has its own functionality here. From left to right you’ll find everything from stick buttons, screenshot, share, and in a seriously nice touch, even mic controls like the option to mute. These are all well away from the main Hayabusa buttons and there’s no chance you could hit them by mistake in the heat of the moment.

Speaking of headsets and audio, there’s a standard 3.5mm jack on the left side of the fighting stick if you want to connect a wired headset, but generally speaking, the combination of buttons and functionality means that if you’re using the Alpha on a console, you can do everything from the fight stick in front of you, without needed to take your hands away for anything else.

Having mostly tested the Alpha with Street Fighter 6, and being by no means an expert (I’m getting too old to be good), the most important thing about the stick is how well it actually plays. The sensitivity of the Hayabusa buttons was an issue at first, but after a while you realise it’s an intentional design choice. The Alpha wants your thoughts turned into actions instantly, and that’s definitely something it succeeds at. In terms of the stick, it really is a fantastic piece of kit, and I found it helped my consistency for pulling off moves thanks to how accurate and well made it is.

Elsewhere, the matte finish is just fine, but at the price point I’d maybe expect it to be a little less plastic-based. It’s also a lot lighter than most other sticks I’ve used. Now that’s neither a negative or a positive, but is worth noting because the size of it might make people think it’s a heavy unit, but it’s actually quite light, comparatively.

These are, however, minor issues with an otherwise stellar product. The HORI Fighting Stick Alpha isn’t cheap, but it is cheaper than some of the competition out there, while retaining quality parts and a brand name you can trust. For fighting game fans, it’s hard to imagine anyone feeling let down with the Alpha, though depending on past experience with sticks, there may be a small adjustment period needed for the buttons. This really is a superb way to play your favourite fighting games.

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You’ll then proceed to tackle some more escapes centred around each of the three main suspects in the murder plot. Once you’ve completed each one, you’ll then be summoned to try and figure out who is responsible for the attempts on the headmaster’s life as part of the grand finale.

Gameplay remains pretty much unchanged from the main Escape Academy game. You’re pitched against various puzzle environments, where you have to move around and solve puzzles, crack codes, discover lock combinations, and more. There’s a set time for each one, although should you run out of time, you can always ask the game to add some more on for you, which is particularly useful if you’re right near the end and close to escaping. The hint system also returns, providing cryptic clues to progress to the next section of the puzzle, normally revealing just enough information to get you back on your way. Using hints or time extensions hinders your performance grade at the end though. So those looking for a sweep of A plus scores should try and steer clear of these and crack the escapes on their own.

And that feels perhaps slightly more plausible this time around. Escape from the Past feels slightly simpler compared to the Escape from Anti-Escape Island DLC, or indeed perhaps the more taxing parts of the main game. That’s not bad in itself, but those looking for the definitive challenge with this DLC may feel slightly disappointed. Sure, the countdown timer and large escapes add to a sense of anxiety and pressure. But in reality, most Escape Academy veterans shouldn’t struggle too much with the puzzles in Escape from the Past.

It’s difficult to say whether the timer just feels a little more generous or the puzzles just click now after so much practice, given this is the third time sampling the grey matter-whirring puzzles of Escape Academy. Either way, I definitely didn’t feel as pressured whilst playing, or nervous I’d run out of time as I did with the previous DLC. That’s not to say of course that it wasn’t fun. Escape from the Past is more Escape Academy in a good way in that the puzzles are varied, warrant exploration into all the nooks and crannies, and each task is a fair one, never feeling obtuse or forced. More often than not, you’re clear about what you need to generally, it’ll just be the how that stumps you for a while.

Escape to the Past is an interesting setting too because we’ve been here before – well technically after, chronologically – and so you’ll likely be familiar with a lot of the puzzle rooms you’re traversing. Sure the decor and clues are all mixed up, and some tweaks have been made, but you’ll remember a lot of these areas from the original game. And coupled with the fact you play as Solange, it’s a nice nod for fans of the story.

The flipside of that of course is that the puzzle rooms don’t feel as “new” as they usually do. And whilst there’s the usual “Oh that’s this area” each time, I still think the new and different areas in Escape from Anti-Escape Island felt fresher because we were exploring them for the first time. That said, the climactic moment of the the murder-mystery puzzle is well done. It requires you to piece together evidence making you feel like a modern-day Poirot, admittedly still with some dashes of Escape Academy bonkers puzzling thrown in too. It’s a nice little twist that gives the DLC purpose and a point of difference from the main game and other DLC.

Escape from the Past, then, is a nicely-crafted slice of escape room fun. It boasts the same level of quality, variation, and balance of head-scratching despite being fair puzzles that you’ve come to expect from Coin Crew Games in Escape Academy. It did feel slightly easier this time around, but the puzzles definitely will still stump you for a while. The murder mystery angle reaches a satisfying crescendo which leaves you in the driving seat to solve, and gives Escape from the Past its own vibe, despite looking very familiar thanks to its historical setting. This DLC is well worth a look for all Escape Academy fans.

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As is traditional in any farming game, you start your botanical adventure as a young whippersnapper who has inherited a farm. This time it’s because some relative has passed away, which means that the family dream of owning a successful farm falls to you. After getting a bit of help from the community you’re expected to get your hands dirty and sort out some produce to sell, so grab a hoe and some seeds and go hit the field.

If you’ve indulged in a bit of virtual farming before you know what to expect from the fruit and vegetable side of the game. First you’ll need to use your hoe on the soil to prepare it for planting, then pop a seed in and water it regularly until it starts producing food. It’s about as basic as farming gameplay gets, but when coupled with a need to manage your limited stamina every day it can become a little more strenuous.

It’ll take a while for you to really have to worry about getting too tired to finish your chores, but you should still prepare for this moment by learning to cook some stamina boosting snacks. You’ll find recipes for tasty meals dotted all over the village, but you can also experiment by cooking a couple of ingredients together and hoping for the best. Shoving a few vegetables together in a saucepan will probably produce some sort of tasty soup, but once you start finding scary mushrooms and dairy products it becomes a little trickier to freestyle your way to culinary greatness.

If you want regular milk and eggs for the kitchen (or just to sell for cold hard cash) you’ll need to get yourself some animals for the farm. At the start of the game you’re given a cow you can milk daily for a tasty sellable beverage, but with a bit of love, food and space to roam your livestock will become happier, produce higher quality goods and potentially even breed to give you even more furry or feathered friends. As long as you remember a few simple rules (like not letting your animals outside when It’s raining) you’ll have an endless supply of money and tasty food just waiting to be collected each morning.

An idyllic farm life is nice, but it’d be nicer with someone to share it with. Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life has you covered in this department, with a whole host of potential spouses just waiting to be swept off their feet if you give them enough gifts. Each love interest has different present preferences, so you’ll need to learn what your bae likes if you want them to move in. I personally went for the aloof girl who liked my fish because it was easy to get these for her, but if you’d rather pick flowers or whip up a tasty treat to impress someone then that’s an option too.

The first few days at the farm will probably seem a little boring, but before you know it you’ll discover all the extra things you can get up to to fill the hours of the day. Fishing is an easy option with plenty of opportunity for making money, but you can also go to the archaeological dig site and find some precious artifacts or head to the notice board and solve some of the problems of the other village people. Whichever route you take, with a bit of hard work you’ll soon start turning a profit which means more seeds for the garden, more animals, and plenty of kitchen upgrades to invest in if you really want to live the high life.

As much as I’d like to pretend that this loop of farming and chores is engaging in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, it doesn’t take long for the whole experience to start feeling a little tedious. Everything just moves a little bit too slowly, and none of the side activities, festivals, or locals can distract from that. The lack of a hook to really pull you deep into this picturesque world just means it feels like a chore to play the game, and I think a lot of that is because of the outdated source material.

Not all aspects of Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life feel old fashioned though. The character creation features the option for a non-binary character (which definitely wasn’t available on the GameCube!) and all the romance options are now available to you regardless of the gender you choose. It’s a relatively small change that doesn’t really affect how the game functions a whole lot, but it’s lovely to see a remake focusing on making the game more inclusive the second time around.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is a perfectly adequate farming game, but compared to some of the fantastic modern options out there it’s really hard to recommend. There’s just not a whole lot of interesting progression hooks to keep you invested in this world of countryside industry, and although the updated gender and relationship options are fantastic everything else about this game just feels dated.

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Set in the early 90s, the residents of Greyhill are under the impression the government are covering up an invasion by extra-terrestrial life. You play as a guy called Ryan Baker, and his introduction to the story instantly highlights the weak acting and writing. Listening to a radio conversation between Ryan and a few of the locals, you’re provided with some idea of what’s going on, albeit done in a way that lacks any kind of interest in the characters.

What makes it worse it that Ryan’s son is an annoying brat who’s lying in front of the TV as you hear some strange goings on outside. The character animations are lifeless, and as you go back and forth looking for a crowbar to open the shed, he just remains there not seeming to understand the gravity of the situation. What makes this opening section worse is how you have no idea where to look for the crowbar, or even that it’s a crowbar you’re looking for, as the dark environment and lack of polish muddies your field of vision. Unfortunately, this lack of direction is a constant theme throughout.

Ryan wanders around Greyhill with no way points or markers, instead heading in various directions hoping to find whatever it is you’re looking for. It’s only when he says something along the lines of “I shouldn’t go that way” do you get any sense of where to go. It ruins the tension and makes for a painful loop of exploration, and I often found my time wandering around was filled with nothing but acute frustration. Maybe I missed something here, but there wasn’t a time when I ever felt as if I was doing the right thing until I luckily stumbled upon it.

The aliens are supposed to be the main enemy here, but in Greyhill Incident, the AI is. Sometimes they’ll spot you instantly and send you running away for a brief respite of peace, and other times they don’t see you at all, even when you’re in the same field of vision. It’s completely unbalanced, taking away the fear of getting caught. Even when you do get attacked, the animations are comical, but you can swat them with your baseball bat (that takes far too long to do successfully) or blast them with a revolver.

The stealth mechanics are poor. You can hide in a trash can or an outhouse, but there’s no way to know if you’re safe once re-emerging. Sneaking around is slow in Greyhill Incident, and the stamina gauge for running around takes ages to refill, meaning you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It’s baffling just how unbalanced everything is, and when you’re playing a survival horror, you need at least some kind of lifeline if you’re trying to survive.

With poor writing and acting that never delivers, unbalanced gameplay with zero support or any kind of tutorial, and alien threats that are never threatening, Greyhill Incident is a big misstep for the genre. I wanted to find something I liked, but it just became painful to play, even with a mildly promising start. Sometimes the environment looks pretty, but more often than not it’s just too dark. It’s littered with issues that are never resolved, and one of its only saving graces is the short runtime. With games like Amnesia: The Bunker and Layers of Fear releasing recently, there’s sadly just no reason to give this a chance.

The post Greyhill Incident review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

I was lucky enough to review it last April, and without re-treading old ground, I found it rewarding once you got over the early grind. It can take some time to master the fundamentals of getting around and battling myriad creatures, but getting that right can open up a new level of replayability as you try to get further, earn more coin, fight tougher bosses, and use new weapons and skills. It’s a basic premise, but playing is such an addictive loop of failure and success, refusal to quit and refusal to play, and the thrill of the boss fight and the fear of them. Cellar Door is a master of the genre, and they get it right throughout.

You start off exploring a castle with a sword and a shield, a magic spell, and a special attack. Once you die (which you 100% will), you get to choose which of your heirs will succeed you to return to the castle and continue your legacy, and so begins the loop. There’re a ton of variables that affect new characters, and with a bunch of classes, weapons, and spells to choose from, there’s so much variety. As you play you can unlock more, but nothing has changed in its grind, however, if that’s something that drives you to play more, it won’t be a concern. Rogue Legacy 2 on PS5 has included everything from the two main updates and more, meaning you’re getting great value for money.

Since the original released, the two main updates (‘The Fabled Heroes’ and ‘The Swan Song’) introduced tons of new weapons, relics, spells, difficulties, and challenges, aimed at those hardcore fans that want to push themselves for better rewards. Not only does it give players more reason to keep playing, it shows just how improved the game is. Tweaks to gameplay and other technical aspects of RL2 have been introduced, and while I can’t pick out anything specific, it feels like a much tighter game on PlayStation.

Not only does it play sublimely, it looks gorgeous. It always did, but the colours and design of its 2.5D environment really pop, and the haptics of the PS5 controller are felt with every weapon in Rogue Legacy 2. There’s also a surprising amount of lore that gives those who enjoy story to find something to appreciate. It’s by no means deep like Skyrim or Final Fantasy, but it offers a nice background to what’s going on.

Rogue Legacy 2 on PS5 is a fantastic roguelike that takes the genre to its limits, putting on a masterclass of how to incorporate a ton of systems and make them work harmoniously together while pushing you to keep playing and progressing. Sure, it’s a slow grind to begin with and takes hours until you feel like you’re actually progressing, however, if you enjoy playing it won’t feel like too much of a chore until the real meat of the game starts to get cooking.

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Let’s be clear for a moment, though: this is very possibly the best Aliens game we’ve ever had. It knocks spots off titles like Colonial Marines and Fireteam Elite. Dark Descent is to Aliens what Isolation is to Alien, and that means both good and bad news – though mostly good.

For example, it still paints the Colonial Marines as tough but dumb hombres more likely to charge headlong into the unknown than analyse a situation for five minutes first. It still has a plot that relies on people making the worst possible decision at every moment. Case in point is how Aliens: Dark Descent begins. You play initially as Maeko Hayes, a Weyland-Yutani administrator aboard Pioneer Station, in orbit around the planet Lethe. When a xenomorph and a bunch of face huggers get loose aboard the station, Hayes’ first thought isn’t to run like hell or even sound a station-wide alarm. Instead, she goes and investigates. Alone. Without a gun.

It’s in service to the gameplay, of course. This section acts as a tutorial as you control Hayes around the darkened corridors towards the main control mainframe, looking for a way to stop the aliens getting off Pioneer station and down to the surface of Lethe. Sadly, it all goes completely arse-up and Pioneer is all but destroyed, as is the USS Otago, a huge military transport vessel analogous to the Sulaco, which crashes on Lethe along with Hayes and Jonas Harper, a marine sergeant thrust into a position of leadership because everyone above him is dead. They soon learn that Lethe is already infested, and if you ever want to get out you’ll need to work with Harper’s surviving marines, physicians and engineers to salvage parts and get the Otago starside again.

It’s a classic Aliens set up, and Lethe may as well be LV-426 based on the way it looks and feels. But it’s deliberate, evoking the sense that all of Weyland-Yutani’s facilities are churned out on a production line with little thought for the people who will live and work in them. What’s crucial here though is atmosphere, and Dark Descent nails the ambience of James Cameron’s 1986 masterpiece at every turn. Much of the game takes place in the corridors of various colony settlements, abandoned mines, refineries, science facilities, off-planet locations, and even the windblown surface of Lethe itself.

What makes Dark Descent feel so authentic though is the marines themselves. Ostensibly you are Hayes, directing the squad from the Otago while Harper provides support from the ARC. This allows him to move around the map at your command so you can ferry marines to the objectives, pick up survivors, and provide ground support with the ARC’s huge pulse cannons. While the hub activity between missions feels very XCOM, the missions themselves actually remind me more of Red Solstice 2: Survivors, eschewing turn-based tactics for slow-burn exploration and creeping terror interspersed with fast-paced, desperate firefights against the Xenomorphs and… other enemies.

Having played every Aliens game back to the ZX Spectrum version, I wasn’t prepared for Dark Descent to be as tense as it is. Usually these are games designed around shooting galleries, as Aliens gallop at you in groups eagre to choke down your hot lead. While they do their fair share of zerging here, most of the time you’ll be dealing with single drones that can pop out of vents or appear on your motion tracker, hoping you don’t make enough noise to attract more. When higher category Xenomorphs enter the fray, you may well spend some time playing cat and mouse to avoid them altogether.

The mission structure is interesting though. There are multiple objectives in each area, and you’re sometimes allowed to complete them in whichever order you choose. Because your marines are only human, they will get tired, scared, and stressed out. You have limited medkits containing bandages and mood stabilisers, but once your marines are in a state of panic you need to get out as quickly as you can. At this point they become irrational, missing shots and fumbling reloads, and if they’re tired and exhausted they can be dragged away by drones and never seen again. Worse, they will develop traumas such as pyrophobia, paranoia, and PTSD that you’ll need to treat case by case.

Of course, you have more than a few tricks up your sleeves, too. You can deploy sentry guns, mines, or pull out flamethrowers and handy shotguns for close encounters. As with XCOM, marines who survive missions will earn XP, which means you can promote them and alter their class. Snipers, medics, teckers, officers, smartgunners; all are available and critical on mission. Bear in mind, though, that death is permanent in Aliens: Dark Descent. Lose a marine and don’t have a good autosave to reload, and they’re gone forever. You can’t save-scum as all saves are automatic, and it can get incredibly hectic when a horde attacks you. Sometimes you’ll need to buy yourself some time by welding a door, which can also grant you a shelter to relieve stress and, with the right perks, heal or resupply your squad.

What makes it tactical is that everything requires a currency. Medkits to heal, tools to weld doors and hack terminals, Command Points to use shotguns, flamethrowers, mines – or to lay down suppressive fire, which is like a mobile version of the overwatch mechanic. As you move around mission areas a counter will tick away until the Xenomorphs come for you en masse. When this happens, deploy whatever defences you have and dig in. You can either slow or pause time for breathing room, but every time this happens it feels desperate and terrifying. If you’re unprepared or all in strung-out shape, you’re better off leaving and coming back later.

The story weaves in and out of your missions, and in the central hub you’ll upgrade, train and customise your soldiers, develop new weapons, research the xenomorph threat, and treat the wounded and traumatised in the medibay or therapy room. In order to make things happen you need to advance the day, and each day that passes sees the infestation escalate. This is your Death Clock, and when time is up, it’s game over, man.

So you’ll develop strategies that see you get in, complete objectives, and get out, salvaging as many supplies, medkits and ammo packs as you can, ready to refresh and try again the next day – but always with the knowledge that every dalliance brings you a step closer to destruction. Of course, completing major story objectives can knock the infestation level down a little, as can some of the random choice-based events that occur whenever you advance time.

That being said, the story will move on when you complete certain tasks. It tells an interesting tale too, dealing with not only the xenomorph threat but also secrets hidden in Hayes’ and Harper’s individual pasts, as well as a doomsday cult that worships the alien. It’s pretty par for the universe, but I found myself engaged with the two leads throughout. And your marines, too, become familiar to you as you play, so that when you lose a character you’ve named and shaped for hours, it hits harder.

Aliens: Dark Descent does struggle a little in the visual department, however. While environments and animations are great, the character models aren’t so impressive close up. The lip-synching in cutscenes is also weird, and characters have a bizarre rubber mask look. One guy in the first few scenes just looks like a Spitting Image puppet of Elton John. It’s a little weird, but not a major issue as you’re rarely dealing with characters up close.

The audio kind of makes up for it, too. From the iconic chitter of the M41-A Pulse Rifle to the beep of the motion tracker, Dark Descent nails the sound design throughout. There are sounds that have come to be considered quintessential to the franchise and they’re all present here. By God though, does it need some more dialogue lines in mission. You can only hear “Come on, team!” so many times before it starts to annoy.

But Aliens: Dark Descent is more than just another game wearing Aliens clothes and mimicking its catcalls. It’s a genuinely tense experience that strives to make use of the license at every opportunity. The way your marines can retreat while shooting, the lines of dialogue lifted from the movie, and the look and feel of the environments, weapons, and enemies, all combine to produce something incredibly faithful to the source.

It’s only really let down by glitches that may well be patched out in launch week but which did hamper my enjoyment a little. Occasional crashes, progress bugs, visual glitches, and noticeable framerate slowdown and texture pop-in plagued me throughout, and I dearly hope Tindalos gets it sorted sooner rather than later.

Anyone waiting for a genuinely good video game adaptation of Aliens can finally breathe a sigh of relief, though. Far more than any FPS or squad-based shooter, Dark Descent feels like something worthy of the name. It’s not perfect, of course; the technical issues require swift attention, and there are moments of frustration thanks to your squad’s occasional clumsy pathfinding, or sudden spikes in difficulty that you just can’t see coming, but it’s also one of the most immersive and exciting tactical shooters I’ve played, and a worthy successor and tribute to Cameron’s sci-fi classic.

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Park Beyond never makes much sense in the context of the real world, so don’t worry too much about this being some hyper realistic sim. It begins with you tossing a paper aeroplane out of your bedroom window that just happens to hit a young lass jetpacking over the city. She works for Park Beyond, and the ride you sketched on said paper plane lead to her auditioning you for a job by having you build a rollercoaster in the city. It makes absolutely no sense, but it’s a decent tutorial.

It’s a weird one though, since rollercoasters take up much less of your actual time in the game than, say, making sure park visitors can reach a toilet in time. Because once you start actually working for the company, your biggest concern is raising a currency called “Amazement”, and rollercoasters just don’t seem to cut the mustard. They also cost a lot, take ages to build, rarely turn a profit, and are just kind of “meh” altogether. See you’ll always begin in a place fairly packed with landscape features and adjusting the terrain always feels like busy work. Because even laying paths can be weirdly awkward (they have a tendency to bend how they want like those plastic snake toys you had as a kid), a lot of the time I found myself just making do.

See, every ride must have a queue path and an exit path, which must sometimes account for inclines and raised areas. This can often cause a problem because if people have to queue for too long without a toilet, food shop, or bench to squat on they’ll get fussy and your overall happiness rating will drop. In order to raise Amazement you need to keep the park fun, so that people can go ride to ride quickly, stuffing their faces with junk food and sweets on the way, or stop to puke in a convenient bin whenever they need to.

Of course, this means hiring entertainers, handy people, cleaners. Luckily your visitors tend to be pretty docile folk who never kick off; they just sulk and leave in a huff, and your overall positive ratings drop. You’ll unlock Modules as you raise your park’s level, which include extra themes for your rides and shops, or they’ll unlock new rides altogether. And when you have enough Amazement, you can impossify a ride, shop, rollercoaster, even a member of staff. This raises the effective level of the target, and allows you to generally charge more money per ticket.

Having a giant octopus ride that submerges the guests is great, but if you’re not turning a profit you may eventually start to struggle. There’s not much micromanagement here, though. Yes, you can adjust the prices of everything up to the toilets, and the individual items in the shops, but I never really struggled to make money. Individual rides, like the aforementioned coasters, don’t always turn a profit, but Park Beyond is more focused on having fun. Even when you’re introduced to your big rival, you won’t really feel the stress of competition; the name of the game is fun and, of course, impossification.

Weirdly, you have tons of decorative items unlocked from the start. Fountains, signs, lights, statues, trees, flower beds and various things like giant Rubik’s Cubes or prop vehicles are all available, but they’re purely cosmetic. Putting them all over the park can improve it visually for your benefit, but does nothing for the actual park so it’s not worth the effort unless you’re really into it.

Your board of directors in Park Beyond will throw in some challenges along the way, which you can find by mousing over the little red icons in the park. Annoyingly you can’t build on them or remove the icons, as they exist as physical things in the world even when you’ve beat the challenge. The board will also meet with you at the start of every “mission” to discuss the direction you want to take the park in. Izzy is concerned with money, eccentric millionaire Phil wants to have fun, engineer Sophia just wants you to challenge her. You don’t have to appease any of them if you don’t want to, as your focus will be on specific demographics.

Your visitors come in three categories: adults, teens, and families. You can zoom right into them (even body-jumping so you I can experience the park in hands-off first person), and this will help you understand whether they’re enjoying themselves, which rides they enjoyed, and how amazed they’ve been. It’s all much simpler than it sounds, and although you can get into the nitty gritty of what you pay your it staff and how much you charge for a candy apple, I rarely had to worry too much about it. If people get fussy, they usually just want more bins and services. Completing challenges is the biggest, well, challenge, but you usually have a few to aim for and can skip some of the tougher ones if you want to.

Park Beyond looks and sounds pretty good. I like getting down to ground level among the music and bustle, and it can be fun to ride your own rollercoasters, especially if you get creative and have them weave between your rides and landmarks like canyons and natural rock bridges. It’s a nice, accessible, mostly stress-free park building experience that may lack a bit of meat on its bones for fans of things like Rollercoaster Tycoon, but it’s a great way to kill a few hours nonetheless.

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For those not entirely sure what Layers of Fear is, it tells three stories. One of which is about a successful painter who begins to struggle with creating the next masterpiece; the other is about an actor who arrives on an ocean liner after being hand-picked by the director; and the final one is from the viewpoint of a writer who has been given the opportunity to write about the tragic lives of the previous two creators. The themes seen in the game touch on some rather heavy subject matter, yet they’re handled with sensitivity and are never gratuitous or unnecessary.

Neither a reboot or remake, Layers of Fear starts off where you play as the writer. Set in the mid-1950s, you have won the opportunity to write about these troubled artists at a creepy lighthouse. From there, you start to play the original game with voice-overs from the writer at certain points, along with returning gameplay sections where you explore the lighthouse and start to hear and see a plethora of creepy occurrences. Once the story of the painter has finished, you’ll explore Layers of Fear 2 aka The Actor, and it follows a similar pattern until the end. You’re also free to dive into the two additional stories that provide background to the wife and the daughter of the painter, and it all ties together in one seamless narrative that explores insanity and passion, both for those we love and the works we create.

The Painter’s story is perhaps my favourite. Set within the confines of a Victorian mansion, you start to uncover how a talented artist starts to struggle with the weight of success. On the outside, it looks as though he has it all: a loving wife, a unique gift, and a beautiful daughter. However, through letters and scraps of paper, and objects scattered around the house, you learn of a crumbling marriage, a crippling obsession with success, and a slow decent into madness. It’s psychological horror at its finest, drip-feeding you with details about where it all went wrong and what led to his shattered mental state, and at times it’s upsetting to see just how a broken home starts to form.

The story is further explored with the included DLC which follows his daughter years later as she returns to the house. It further cements ideas in your mind about their relationship, but also offers more sorrowful realisations about a man who couldn’t give his daughter what she needed. The new addition to Layers of Fear is ‘The Final Note,’ a short yet impactful insight from the viewpoint of the wife. Without being too spoiler-heavy, she was a talented musician that became a muse for the painter, but after a tragic accident, she struggled to remember who she was, leaving her feeling less of a woman and unloved by her husband.

While I didn’t enjoy the actor’s story as much, I still found it interesting and absorbing. Set on board the ocean liner, you start to uncover the intentions of the director and the relationship between the two siblings at the heart of everything, Lily and James. You are there to embody the role through method acting, something which is a relatively new concept in early 1900’s Hollywood. While it has parallels to the original, it’s able to create a dense narrative that almost always delivers. Having all of these stories in one game helps to create such a profound thesis on the mind and mental health, which is something I’ve not seen done as well as it is in Layers of Fear.

Each story isn’t solely told by reading documents and listening to the characters. The way the environments move and change without you ever noticing is incredible. Like a walk through an Escher painting, the world around you contorts and moves. As you enter a room and then turn around, everything is different. Walls close in on you, furniture slams into walls and lights flicker and burn out, floors disappear beneath you and your entire existence shift in the blink of an eye. The new technology makes these transitions flawless, leaving you constantly unsure and off-guard, and the effort put into this state of uncertainly is anything but harmonious.

Layers of Fear uses the environment to take your breath away when you least expect it. Sure, there’re jump scares at times, and maybe it relies on them a bit too often, but the real terror is never knowing what to expect. It subverts expectations from the genre and provides its horror through the way it manipulates imagery and your surroundings rather than a lazy reliance of blood and gore. It’s beautiful at times, and you forget about the tragedies if only for a second to appreciate how stunning it looks. The lighting is phenomenal, and even plays into the gameplay where you must use a torch to reveal secrets and dispel a woman that haunts you around the mansion, or animate static dummies in the actor’s story to aid you as you explore.

At times, movement can be a little slow, especially in the painter’s story, and the exploration is more on-rails than it is freeing. Travelling from room to room, you’ll route around your surroundings to find items of note or key information to read before moving on, but I enjoyed its pacing as the stories gripped me throughout. Layers of Fear also features a handful of puzzles which you must solve before leaving an area. Sometimes they’re engaging and get you thinking outside the box, where others feel arbitrary. One puzzle in the painter’s story has you moving around a room looking for a particular view through easels to unlock a door, where another sends you on a linear traipse through rooms to find a selection of keys with animals on them.

They’re an attempt to add gamey elements to Layers of Fear, and while they don’t always hit, they can be a nice distraction. What makes Anshar Studios and Bloober Team’s reimaging stand out are the set pieces. With visuals that constantly wowed me throughout, certain moments blew me away. It’d be unfair of me to ruin them for you now, but as each tale delves further into the human psyche, events get weirder and more abstract, and I was impressed with what the developers have done on the PlayStation 5.

Layers of Fear deals with trauma delicately while still managing to create scares throughout. Its brand of horror focuses on the psychological, leaving you uneasy every step of the way. It’s a visual masterpiece within the genre, and the stories tell a clear and terrifying tale, all tied together by the inclusion of the new character of the writer. Even if you’ve played the originals and liked them, there’s so much more at play to offer a new way to experience a series that helped to redefine what horror can be, and even now I can’t stop thinking about it.

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So this Precision Drive technology. Are they just fancy buzzwords akin to FIFA’s HyperMotion, or does it actually offer something that’s noticeable while playing? Well, I felt the controls were clunkier last year, and while they were an improvement on the series, F1 23 is a huge step up. Regardless of whether you’re participating in F3 or F1, the changes are pretty obvious. Gliding around the track at breakneck speeds isn’t as intimidating, and the ability to overtake and get up close to other drivers won’t strike fear into you.

Weaving on longer straights and even going into corners offers up a ton of precision with the smallest flick of the left analogue stick, and breaking feels more responsive. These are powerful cars, and Codemasters has found away to balance precise handling with managing their power. It feels easier to overtake despite the dangers still being present, as acceleration is more accessible across all areas of the track, however, breaking is balanced and provides more control, especially going into tighter corners. There’s a focus on grip coming out of corners as well, and it feels as though the developers have listened to feedback from last year.

In terms of the latest chapter in Braking Point, the concept is much the same, however, there’s more reaction to both your performances on the track and off. It didn’t seem to matter how you performed before, as the cutscenes and feedback were all prepared for simply completing objectives. While this is still the case with the cutscenes, your actions are highlighted on your social media feed and in the newspaper headlines. For example, one of my objectives was to finish higher than the cocky Devon Butler, but I ended up landing the podium in second place.

This was pointed out on my feed, as various people were tweeting commenting how impressed they were despite the issues surrounding Konnersport Butler, the team I was racing for. Other objectives such as fastest lap are also mentioned, along with reactions to other happenings going on throughout the season. Aiden Jackson’s story now follows him racing for a new team who are having their fair share of engineering problems, not to mention being a teammate of Butler, owned by his manipulative father, Davidoff. It also introduces F2 maestro Callie Mayer to the frame, and watching everyone’s story unfold was rather fun.

In the past, EA hasn’t always got it right, but there’s proof that when it hits, it hits hard. Take for example the first entry into the NFL’s Longshot storyline; evidence that story can find a place in sports games. Braking Point 2 is no different, and while some of it is a tad predictable, and how much Jackson starts off rather arrogant himself, I still liked it. As various characters, you’ll choose how to respond to certain questions from the press, offers from the media, and conversations with team mates and employees. Seeing Casper Akkerman return was also cool, especially with his inclusion into Konnersport.

The Career mode feels similar to last year, although there have been some refinements to reflect the real-world ratings of teams and drivers. There’re more racers to choose from, and the inclusion of the 35% race distance and red flags can now be selected for the most up-to-date, realistic experience. You can also participate in the Las Vegas and Qatar circuits for complete immersion in the sport, and the general animations feel more varied that F1 22, adding new visuals along with an immerse commentary set up. While there aren’t any massive additions, it feels as though Codemasters have gone for balance and refinement, which both seem to have been easily achieved.

F1 World seems to have combined the lacklustre F1 Life and its online elements to provide a bulkier experience. You can unlock supercars, create your own, and customise your appearance and your home, while at the same time take part in races that reflect the real-world season. Unfortunately I couldn’t try the mode out due to pre-release, but I love how it looks, and making the mode feel more important and a lot more substantial is definitely a step in the right direction.

Whether you’re looking for the most realistic F1 experience in how it controls and looks, EA Sports F1 23 has nailed it. Races are thrilling and the attention to every little movement to the controller is reflected instantly, providing complete control on the tracks. Visually it’s impressive, both with how the courses look and how the animations are presented, and the sounds of the cars on the circuits are more than impressive. If you felt like last year’s entry wasn’t quite enough, or didn’t offer you the best racing experience it could, this is definitely a big step in the right direction.

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Although the PC version had its share of technical issues, the PS5 version is mostly stable. The concessions come in the form of some of the texture work, with notably less detail and crispness to environments when zoomed in. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it’s something worth noting as you head into the two campaigns.

As stated in our PC review, both campaigns are pretty good, although it’s fair to say that the Africa campaign is just more interesting. This is partly down to the setting, as the brass tacks of both campaigns are largely the same. You split your time between controlling squabbling generals on the overmap and your soldiers in the mud, with the latter offering considerably more entertainment per minute. The overmap gameplay is OK, but you’ll spend more time choosing sides between your own commanders than engaging the enemy. And when you do engage, it rarely feels particularly difficult to move forward.

Much more involving are the strategic combat missions that put you in command of several squads of soldiers. Here you’ll advance in increments, capturing essential assets that allow you to create more unit, heal and reinforce your existing squads, or field vehicles to help turn the tide. These missions are the bread and butter of Company of Heroes 3 – Console Edition, and are responsible for every shred of genuine excitement and tension in the game.

You’ll need to keep squads in cover, lay down covering fire, deploy paratroopers and heavy artillery. Italy in particular has a couple of standout arenas along its fairly drab campaign where you’ll engage the enemy in urban areas, blasting snipers out of bell towers and taking cover behind ornate fountains.

Arguably there’s more fun to be had in either solo or multiplayer skirmishes than in the campaign. Following the story is entertaining enough, but there’s a childishness to it that feels at odds with the whole “theatre of war” thing, where your commanders sneer and jab at one another like school kids. Ultimately, it also doesn’t any matter much who you side with in the long term, as either path tends to be equally as tough or easy depending on your standpoint and the actual story isn’t nuanced enough to be affected.

You’re better off getting stuck in with your soldiers, who can be controlled in groups or individually, to flank the enemy, set up vantage points, or cover one another when needed. You will burn through men, but even when you are the dialogue is always genuinely chuckleworthy as the men trade barbs and words of tactless squaddie encouragement.

Unfortunately, translating the controls isn’t as smooth as it could be. We’ve yet to see a standardised version of gamepad controls for tactical squad games like this, and Company of Heroes 3 – Console Edition further highlights the need for it. It’s incredibly fiddly to select a single unit out of a group, and a lot of the commands are bogged down in menus and radial dials. It’s not helped by that loss of visual fidelity when zooming in, which compounds the issue.

One thing missing from the PS5 version in particular is haptic feedback. While it works best for fighters, racers, and FPS games, it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity given the amount of explosions and heavy vehicles at play here. Ultimately this is a mostly competent port of a very good tactical WWII game. It’s nice that console gamers can get their hands on it, but it still feels like a series that very much belongs on PC.

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The main story follows a woman called Polly who returns home after a long time to find out what happened to her mother, who has gone missing. A simple premise on the surface, but one that gets much bigger and important after discovering her connection to a mystical realm known as Reverie. It is here where she meets the Aspirations, individuals that embody the aspirations of humanity, such as power, chaos, and glory. The choices you make in the real world of Atina will affect what happens in Reverie, eventually choosing who will rule over the realm.

In Atina, you realise that the once peaceful community is under the watchful eye of a megacorporation, ruling with somewhat of an iron fist. They are ruining the very heart of Atina and all that reside there, forcing people to live in fear, struggling to have their voices heard, and having their unique history forgotten. When you’re responsible for certain decisions that affect both worlds, and not being able to reverse certain choices you make, there feels like there’s a lot riding on everything you say. It’s hard to say more about the story without ruining anything, but I became fully invested in Polly’s story, and the supporting cast of characters were all beautifully written.

While there’s an overarching story that manages to pack a lot of character development and grandeur into it, I became fascinated by the more personal story of family and love at its heart, and how important the ones in our lives are. The voice acting is strong throughout, especially some of the aspirations, and it always manages to throw some interesting decisions your way, whether they’re unexpected or inevitable.

The focal point of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is the Augural. It is a map of choices, including ones you’re about to make, ones you can choose to make later on, and ones that can’t be accessed because of previous choices already made. The risk of saying the wrong thing is always at the front of your mind, and it offers an interesting mechanic that hasn’t really been seen before. You could say something that will upset someone, or you could play it safe and say what they want to hear, but how will it help you find out where your mother went?

Other choices can affect your relationship with the Aspirations, and knowing who to side with for the right result all plays into the risk and rewards of using your words correctly. It’s impossible to know where the story is likely to go, so your basing your path on the chapter that lies before you, however, there’re certain tells that give you an idea of what might happen. Still, I found this approach to the choice mechanics fresh, unlike many visual novel games that feel rather barren of variety and personal sacrifice.

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is a beautiful game. The visual novel style may feel restrictive to players not familiar, as being able to explore so many gorgeous environments would have been a joy, but each scene is filled with vibrancy and attention to detail. Atina is a summery town and the sun-kissed streets and colourful backdrops are always beautiful to look at. Reverie is equally stunning, and I was always finding new locations as my favourites. There’s an almost old-school Disney charm to the style, and it’s definitely one of its strongest features.

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie challenges you to make the right choices although the chances of missteps are littered throughout. You learn through your mistakes, but they can often be costly to later chapters and story beats. It is the small realisations of your choices that highlight how strong a game it is. While the visual novel style might put people off, the writing is excellent, and probably DON’T NOD’s finest effort to date. The art style is delightful, and the way everything feeds into everything else shows the work put into its diverse story.

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In our preview, we acknowledged that MotoGP 23 is going to be a tough cookie to crack for new players. While this is still the case, there’re various options known as Neural Aids that can help you drastically, if a little too much. On the most easiest setting, all you have to do is use basic turning to remain on the track. Acceleration, breaking, and controlling the bike is practically done by the game itself, meaning you have little control over the bike. It’s a good feature if you’re coming in fresh, but the stabilisers feel well and truly stuck to you without any real wiggle room to move.

If you feel too constricted this way, the next setting is much more relaxed, but the difficulty spike is rather large. Learning every aspect of the nuances of handling is going to take time, along with many falls off your bike, but if you’re willing to stick to it, there’s a challenge that once conquered, makes MotoGP 23 a thrilling racer. It’s tough, especially when the new dynamic weather plays a part, but learning the importance of when to break, take advantage of tight corners and long straights, and track layouts, is all part of the fun, and teaches you to become a better driver.

The dynamic weather is an excellent feature in MotoGP 23. You might start a race with the weather being a touch overcast or even sunny, and after a couple of laps the heavens will open and you’ll be forced to change how you race. With rain pouring down onto the tarmac, it’s easier to lose control. In one of my races in the Career mode, I had the red flags stop the race due to dangerous driving conditions. While it was frustrating as I’d fought hard to take the lead, I like how the real-life elements show themselves.

The Career mode is the best feature of MotoGP 23. Starting as a rookie, you’ll race to win and rise the rankings, all while having to deal with other racers through social media. Certain people will message you, be it a rival or someone within your own team, and how you respond can affect the way they race against you on the track. Do you want to create a salty atmosphere and risk aggressive driving, or play it safe and be nice? The option is yours, and while I noticed some of these choices come in to play, it wasn’t always obvious. There are also objectives like beating a rival in a competition or finishing in a certain position, giving you something else to work on while playing.

As you progress through your career, you’ll be able to upgrade your bike, choose teams to race for, and more, giving you plenty of things to think about in-between races. While the career has improved since last year, the racing is where MotoGP is at its best. What makes this better is how good it looks. Tracks around the world are intricately designed, as are the bikes and their racers, but so too is the weather. When it rains, you’ll see rain drops on the screen which can affect how cautious you have to be, all in all creating a realistic experience.

The haptics on the DualSense are remarkable, with every small bump or terrain change felt, along with gear changes and throttle being felt in the controller. A lot of focus has been put onto how MotoGP 23 performs on modern consoles, and it’s more than noticeable. While there aren’t a ton of modes to choose between, you can still create your own Grand Prix, take part in time trials, and go online against other racers. There’s also a ton of customisable options for your racer, adding a personalised touch to proceedings.

MotoGP 23 is an improvement on last year, with a Career mode that’s trying out new features to make each season feel different to the last. The dynamic weather is a standout, as it forces you to change on the fly when the rain starts to fall, and the visuals elevate the feature while also leaving you impressed with how good it looks. While it still features a tough learning curve, there’re aids in place to make the transition between difficulty levels easier, helping to offer a smooth racing experience whatever mode you’re in.

The post MotoGP 23 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Essentially what Metalhead has delivered is a terrific balance of humorous, over the top cartoon charm, and a surprisingly deep set of gameplay mechanics that improve on the previous entries in the franchise and makes it a must buy for fans of America’s favourite pastime.

Whether or not you are familiar with the sport, the fundamentals of pitching, hitting and throwing are all implemented in a way that makes gameplay enjoyable, intuitive, and accessible. Striking the ball effectively is a simple case of getting timing right, whilst pitching is handled by using a simple aiming cursor. Being able to change the difficulty can make things easier and more simplified depending on the skill level of the player, meaning this is truly one that can be picked up and played by all.

There are a ton of features that offer all-new experiences or build on existing Super Mega fare. The level of customisation is frankly ridiculous and puts most fully licensed sports games to shame. The Shuffle Draft is one such winsome addition, which allows you to pick a roster that includes the fictitious (and nearly always highly charming, and hilarious) Super Mega stars with genuine licenced MLB legends like 25 time All-Star and in-GOAT-conversation Hank Aaron. There will also be over 200 other Legends that will be rotated in and out of rosters in the online Pennant Race mode.

The Franchise Mode is sensational, and one of the most enjoyable I have played in ages. You now have to be extra mindful of the chemistry within your team, and how the decisions you make will affect the morale of your team. An excellently implemented “loyalty” meter can swing both ways depending on how you deal with your charges. In keeping with the rich vein of humour that runs through the entire game, some of the player reactions will genuinely crease you up.

If you can develop a squad with pockets or cliques of players that share the same chemistry then it can give you buffs on certain traits. In game currency points enable you to upgrade the stats of players, and you can do so at whichever pace you wish: saving them to use down the line and rely on the chemistry and your own skill, or splashing them all in one go for instant baseball gratification.

However you decide to play, this is a superb looking title that is brimming with hilarity and comedic timing, with something for everyone. The presentation is whimsical and enticing and capable of drawing you in, but Super Mega Baseball 4 has massively addictive hidden depths that bely the cartoony feel, and for me place it amongst the best sporting titles to have dropped this year. It begs to be played in couch multiplayer with a few cold ones over the summer, but the franchise play will keep you going way beyond that. A home run.

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You play as a French soldier called Henri Clément during WWI who, after evading German fire, winds up on his own in a bunker plunged into darkness. After attempting to find your bearings, you realise you’re not alone. A nightmarish creature is stalking you, and when you first start to become aware of his presence, things go from bad to worse. As much as I hate this level of tension, I’m also enamoured by it. I struggled with Alien: Isolation for the same reason, except this time, you have less help on your side. There’s no handheld monitor, only your wits, and take it from me, they’ll end up being cut to shreds.

The first time I heard the growls of the beast through the crumbling walls, I felt my heart stop in my chest. I stopped dead in my tracks and tried to pinpoint whereabouts the sounds were coming from, but just like that, they fell silent. I had a crappy little dynamo flashlight that made a lot of noise every time it needed winding up, a revolver with a single bullet, and little else. You feel helpless, even when you start to gather other resources like flares and grenades, and that anxiety and fear is down to the exceptionally built moment-to-moment action.

You’re supposed to struggle at first. You’re supposed to feel like you haven’t got a chance of surviving. Every idea you have is either going to work or fail miserably, but the more you play and the more you experiment with particular outcomes, you start to gain a bit of confidence that everything is going to be alright. Of course, that confidence is dashed when the roars of the monster get so close and you run frantically back to the light, the safe space, or anywhere to get away from those horrifying noises. The first time I got caught, I audibly shouted myriad curse words at my screen, followed by pausing and stepping away for a while.

Amnesia: The Bunker is petrifying in the best possible way. Why did I continue to play when I knew that I could die at any moment? Why put myself through it again and again? Simply put, it’s incredibly smart. Despite it being rather dark at times, it pushes you to improvise, utilising the environment around you and the tools at your disposal. The freakish entity isn’t a fan of the light, and there’s a generator that can be re-fuelled with gasoline, and you have a stopwatch that syncs with the generator to tell you how much time you have left.

If you stray to far from the generator and the lights go out, there’s more of a chance you’re going to get caught. Using your flashlight is going to attract its attention if it’s relatively close, so is opening cupboards and doors, pulling cranks or running, and there’s little you can do to slow it down. You’re not entirely helpless, as the revolver can scare it off with a well-placed shot, but bullets are few and far between. You can use the fuel to pour onto the ground, then light it up to place a temporary barricade of fire, or place explosive barrels at certain spots that can then be blown up, and lead it towards wired explosives.

If for some reason you get injured, an untreated wound can cause you to lose blood, leaving a nice trail for the beast to follow. However, this can be used to your advantage if you’re happy to play with fire. I did it by mistake, but by bleeding all over the floor, I led it straight towards a barrel, and when turning around I was able to shoot it and send the monster fleeing. You have to use your initiative wherever you find yourself underground. While there are multiple options for you to escape, that sense of dread is always there, and it might be too much for some. I had to step away multiple times because I couldn’t cope with the anxious exploration, but it’s this fear that made me want to keep playing.

While exploring and searching through desks, cabinets, and other areas, you’ll start to piece together a narrative of what’s going on in Amnesia: The Bunker. It provides some background to the experiments being performed underground and to the various soldiers that have been a part of it, and while I found it interesting, the real story is the one you create for yourself. You learn about Henri, but it is how you play, the choices you make, and the encounters with the beast that will end up giving you the memorable moments of your own personal tale. There are rooms that require codes to get into, other sections of the bunker that will let you find new ways to survive, and countless documents and letters that sometimes offer clues.

Amnesia: The Bunker is not for the faint of heart. You’re always on edge and never truly safe, but it gives you multiple ways to escape being mauled by the beast and find a way out, all while setting the scene through various photos and documents. No items remain in the same place, meaning you can’t go back to an area and expect to find that item you need on a second attempt, and the claustrophobic nature of the gameplay is always ready to mess with your head. Frictional Games has set a new standard for horror games while pushing the boundaries of the Amnesia series to a whole new level.

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If you haven’t played a Katamari game before, the concept might sound a little unusual. You play as a little green fella called The Prince, and the aim of each stage is to push a ball (the Katamari) around the environment and roll up as many objects as possible. As the Katamari grows due to the amount of cakes, bottles of super glue and small children stuck to it you’ll be able to assimilate bigger objects, usually to a fairly ridiculous degree. It’s an extremely satisfying process, only made more entertaining by the silliness of the environment, lovely (updated) visuals and wacky soundtrack.

Controlling The Prince and his big ball of bits is rather unusual too, but once you get used to it the control scheme really works. To move forwards you hold both sticks forward, and can steer by releasing a stick or turn sharper by pushing the sticks in opposite directions. There are a few fancier manoeuvres too, like a dash done by pushing the sticks in opposite directions repeatedly. I know it sounds a little odd, but in the end it gives you a great deal of control over your Katamari.

You might be wondering why The Prince is so dedicated to rolling up objects. Well once a Katamari reaches a certain size it can be sent into orbit to become a planet obviously. This time around though The King of All Cosmos isn’t sending you on missions with the purpose of making planets, in a very meta twist you’re actually just taking requests from fans of the series and the planets are more of an afterthought. It’s nonsense at its finest, and the King especially is a truly wonderful character to interact with.

Once you’ve found a fan to help, you’ll be sent to a level to roll up some bits and bobs. Your standard stage of We Love Katamari Reroll sees you dropped into a location like a school, bedroom or zoo, and given a time limit to reach a certain size. It almost always feels like there’s easily enough time to accomplish this task, but at the end of each level you’ll set high scores and be generally moaned at by the King of All Cosmos for your poor performance which might make you go for a replay.

As someone who hadn’t played this particular game in the series, I was surprised by how many stages of We Love Katamari Reroll strayed from this tried and true path though. There was one stage where I had to light a campfire with my Katamari which meant avoiding water and constantly moving to keep the fire burning, in another stage my Katamari was replaced by a slender sumo wrestler who needed to bulk up for a fight so had to be fed as many kilograms of food as possible. My favourite stage though is set on a racetrack, and although it seems like a regular “get big” challenge you move ridiculously fast and do laps of the course while absorbing all the other racers. The variety is fantastic, and no matter what you’re doing it’s always a whole lot of silly entertainment.

There’s one part of We Love Katamari Reroll+ Royal Reverie that’s entirely new too, and that’s the Royal Reverie bit. This mode takes you into the memories of The King of All Cosmos, when he was just another small dude pushing a Katamari. These five brand new stages are all pretty challenging, with some wild conditions to fulfil if you want to beat them. Personally I thought the difficulty of these made them the least enjoyable part of the game, but if you’re a long time fan starved for ball rolling content then you might feel differently.

It’s the little things that make We Love Katamari Reroll special. Things like when you finish a stage and can find out how big your Katamari is by comparing it to everyday objects. I absolutely want to know that my big stupid ball is as big as 54,609 pencil sharpeners, and the fact you can keep spinning a slot machine to change the comparison object is genius. I also love dressing up my little prince in unlockable accessories, and taking selfies mid level for no reason whatsoever. We Love Katamari Reroll knows it’s completely daft, and embraces it with gusto.

There’s not a whole lot to complain about in We Love Katamari Reroll, but one aspect of the game did irritate me a little. The King of All Cosmos likes to pop up and talk while you’re in the middle of a mission, and when he does this he blocks the whole screen. Honestly it’s not a particularly big issue, but it was enough to interrupt my good times a little.

We Love Katamari Reroll+ Royal Reverie is a lovely remaster of my new favourite game in the Katamari series. The nonsense the series is known for is here in full force, and the variety of missions is fantastic. The new content isn’t incredible, but if you missed out on this game on the PS2 then you’ve got a hell of an opportunity to rectify that.

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You play as either male or female Agent 11, a Bourne/Bond-esque super agent tasked with infiltrating and dismantling six global gangs or agencies from the inside – often by smashing in faces and snapping femurs. There’s no spy work at play here beyond slapping the shit out of everyone who gets in your way.

It’s structured like a turn-based tactics game, with you allocated a set amount of movement and action points referred to as Momentum. Moves are dished out on cards, and you’ll begin each fresh run by selecting a deck with a certain theme. The default focuses on a mix of offence and defence, but others have specialisations or mixtures. You will need to unlock further options through progressions, so if you find yourself muddling on a little, hold tight and push through as you’ll eventually have a decent choice available.

I found most of the more successful runs to be book-ended by difficulty, particularly before I had unlocked enough new decks to vary my tactics. The challenge ramps up fast, too, as the game throws more and more enemies at you in small spaces crowded by vaguely defined furniture and scenery. The cards give you a good variety of attacks and defensive moves, but you must build up Momentum before you can spend it. This means playing certain cards tactically where possible, though there are times where you’ll have to make do.

Ultimately, you’ll be aiming to take out your enemies as quickly as you can, utilising the surroundings if possible. Smash their heads off a pipe or convenient for all works a treat, or booting them out the nearest window. The cast of enemies have various strengths and weaknesses, and it’s up to you to identify them and use them against your foes. For example, some enemies will attack with wild haymakers, and so luring them within range of their buddies will cause a chucklesome “accident”. Some have firearms and other weapons that you can manipulate and exploit.

The roguelike nature of the default difficulty means you’ll replay a lot of earlier missions (which you can skip after a certain point), but this has the upshot of getting you intimately acquainted with the mechanics of each enemy and card you can pull. You can also allow for replayable missions if you’d like a less strict challenge.

Another inspiration from John Wick Hex is the action replay when a mission is done. Ostensibly this is to show off your cool moves and level-headed tactics, but it suffers in the executions. It’s not smooth enough, and even with the dynamic camera on it judders and stumbles in motion. It doesn’t produce the kick-ass fight sequences it aims to, but it’s still a nice touch to have.

Fights in Tight Spaces has a solid core concept that mostly works in practice. It’s held back in some ways by its difficulty, which often demands perfection from the player and so leaves little room for real experimentation or risk-taking. Yes you can ultimately try different decks and combinations, but one wrong move can destroy you and so you’re discouraged from using tried and tested methods for each type of enemy.

Still, it’s a fun and stylish take on the turn-based tactics genre and blends deck-building and roguelike progression in a unique way that feels like it almost has a genre of its own. The replay system needs some fine-tuning and the difficulty may put you off at first, but it’s a decent game for those after a different kind of challenge.

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You split your time between two protagonists: lowly engineer Carter Diaz and decorated First Officer Jara Rydek. As the former you’ve been part of the crew of the U.S.S Resolute for a while, having been around six months before when an warp drive experiment almost obliterated the ship, and killed 20 crew members including the previous First Officer. As a result, tensions are high as Starfleet prepares to return the Resolute to active service despite the concerns of her crew. As the latter, you’re attempting to fill the shoes of your popular and highly thought-of predecessor.

It’s a narrative juxtaposition that mostly works, although Diaz often comes across as the slightly bumbling well-meaning sidekick to Rydek’s hyper-competent, no-nonsense leader. As both you’ll need to make decisions that impact how the supporting cast view you and, subsequently, treat you. A dangerous anomaly early on allows you to find your feet where the narrative is concerned, setting out your stall early doors in terms of who you’re likely to get on with better. From stiff upper-lipped Science Officers to enthusiastic fangirls, or from old friends joining the crew to a stuffy Vulcan Engineering Chief, there are plenty of faces to get to know and plenty of decisions to make.

Oddly, I much preferred the character stuff to the gameplay sections. You’ll often be asked to solve engineering issues as DIaz, for example, which are often so simple as to become a little tedious after a while. You also can’t invert the controller axis, which really irritated me when I was called to fire a phaser or pilot a ship, or even sneak around in some of the clunky stealth sections.

Star Trek: Resurgence is at its absolute best when you’re living out your Star Trek common fantasies, making split-second decisions on the Bridge or when out investigating alien worlds, solving problems that only you can solve. But as soon as it attempts to cut this with action-oriented gameplay the limitations of the engine simply can’t be ignored. Stealth in particular feels weird and awkward, and if you only had to deal with it once or twice I’d ignore it, but it becomes fairly frequent later on.

It’s a shame, because the setting, characters, writing and events are a Star Trek fan’s dream. Environments, particularly on the ship, are faithfully created, and all the technical jargon flows like a waterfall. Warp bubbles and tricorders and dialithium crystals may not mean much to the layman, but Trekkies will feel comfortably at home.

Where Star Trek: Resurgence really struggles, though, is in the visual department. It just doesn’t look very good, strongly resembling something like Mass Effect: Andromeda where character models are concerned. Dead-eyed stares, out-of-place expressions, weird pauses between lines of dialogue, and an overall woodenness to the animations compound to take you out of the moment time and time again. The models themselves are also far too uniform, and regardless of species every body shape is the same and only the head and hands appear alien, giving the impression that everyone is just wearing Halloween costumes. Starfleet in Resurgence seems to have a rigorous recruitment drive that requires everyone to wear the same size uniform with zero exceptions.

But as I said, die hard Star Trek fans will see past these imperfections and enjoy the ride. From escorting political ambassadors to heading into the unknown as part of a shore team, commanding a ship from the Captain’s chair to fiddling with the engines of an actual Federation Starship, there’s enough here to let you live out more or less any Star Trek fantasy you want to – within limits. A few famous faces from the greater universe also pop up from time to time, but it’s more fan service than crucial characterisation.

All in all, Star Trek: Resurgence offers a genuine thrill for big fans of the series, and more of a curio to anyone else. It’s neither as tightly crafted nor as good-looking as a Telltale game, but leans heavily on similar systems. Characters are largely well-written, and it feels authentic and true to what Star Trek is, but if you’re not much into the universe there’s little here to really hold your interest.

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The Nacon Daija is not cheap, let’s just get that out of the way. At around £240 (€279.90) it’s a high end model, and is for people who are pretty serious about their fighting games, and the hardware they use to play them. But this thing is an absolute beast, offering the potential to be your stick for a long, long time to come.

Nacon has partnered with Kayane, and says it’s been designed with professional esports players in mind, and I believe that wholeheartedly. With SANWA sticks and buttons, you know you’re getting a high quality action, here. But note that I said “sticks”, and that’s because there are two different stick heads included. The ball-head is attached out of the box, but open the case up and not only are there tools to change settings, but there’s a teardrop head as well, for those of you who grew up playing on Mortal Kombat cabs. Inside the Nacon Daija itself is where you’ll find the extras, and it’s nice to see the innards are well labelled, so if you do have to make any adjustments or fixes, most novices could even have a go.

Back outside, there eight button config feels great, and the stick is responsive, but not too sensitive that you’ll make mistakes on it. There’s a textured rest for your palms at the base, so if you’re playing with the stick on your lap, you can be comfortable with it there. The share button, touchpad, and other buttons all sit on the right side, while there are clasps on the right and left to unlock the box and open it up. A 3.5mm audio jack is also on the case so you can connect a wired headset if you need to, and the faceplate is removable so you can put your own in there instead of the Nacon branded plate that’s included.

A particularly nice touch is that the braided USB cable (A to C) is detachable. So while you can store it inside when not in use, because it’s the same cable that you’d use to charge your standard PlayStation DualSense (or other peripheral), the 3 meter cable means you can actually use it as your main charging cable for PS5 devices, as well.

Profiles and programmable buttons (with software) allow you to select between setups, and the Daija is compatible with PC as well, if you fancy that. Ultimately, though, there’s just no getting round the fact that this thing feels incredible premium. There is no part of this fightstick that feels cheap, or easily breakable. The buttons are great, and satisfying to get carried away with, and there’s even a lock button if you want to ensure nothing gets pressed by accident in the heat of battle. The Daija is a heavy stick, I will say that, but that’s to my tastes anyway, as it just makes it feel that much more expensive to hold.

It’s difficult to think how the Daija could actually be improved, and if you find a way, the likelihood is that thanks to it being customisable, and the tools to do so being included, you can make it even more to your tastes. So that’s a seriously appealing looking stick, great components, easy to switch components if you do want to, comfortable to hold, and responsive to the touch. Yes, it’s a lot of money, but it’s a premium product aimed at people who want that kind of fightstick.

I once thought I would never need another stick, but times change, hardware moves on, and new consoles come and go. However, what I do know now is that the NACON Daija is going to be my PS5 fightstick for the foreseeable. It has everything I want, and feels heavy in a way I appreciate. There’s nothing much I’d change about this stick, aside perhaps alternative face plates being included, since it’s a higher end model, price wise. Given that my only other experience with Nacon as a peripheral manufacturer is the RIG headset range and the Nacon Revolution X controller, this is a brand I’ll be paying a lot more attention to. The Daija is essential for fighting game fans who are hankering for that arcade feel, and I’d be surprised if anything else could come close to how good it feels.

You can grab the Nacon Daija directly from the company’s online store, here.

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For a relatively short game, Convergence packs in a serious amount of gadgets, powers and collectibles. It’s a MetroidVania at heart, as you bounce back and forth around small, compact areas, utilising Ekko’s suite of trinkets to get from A to B – and sometimes C.

The story focuses on the rivalry between two organisation, the Ferris Gang and the Poingdestre Family, who are locked in conflict over a rare mineral scattered across the city of Zaun following the explosion of a huge Spire. Joining forces with a slightly dodgy future version of himself, Ekko has no choice but to answer the call and put an end to both gangs before they can do permanent damage to the city.

Equipped with various time gadgets, Ekko is a pretty resourceful kid. Able to rewind time to undo damage or get out of scrapes, he is also able to combine a multitude of traversal moves to get around. You can wall-run, rail-grind, wall-jump, even teleport, and you’ll steadily unlock more and more powers such as the ability to slow time, and activate distant switches with a well-aimed throw.

Combat is a fast-paced affair, with a simple enough mix of melee attacks, parrying, and dodging through enemies. Red attacks can’t be dodged or parried, and later encounters become dense with enemies and projectiles. It’s not quite a bullet hell, but it feels close at times. You will need to utilise all of Ekko’s considerable abilities to survive.

Regular boss fights pit you against the controlling forces of the gang and the family as well as their toughest minions. It’s usually a case of pattern recognition and timing, but it’s easy to rely too much on the rewind mechanic and leave yourself open to attacks. Silly mistakes are costly in these boss battles, but the rewards are plentiful.

There are tons of collectibles to find in hidden chests that allow you to exchange goods with Ekko’s friends. You can customise your appearance, unlock special moves and skills such as a ground slam, and even assemble gadgets that can be equipped to increase Ekko’s innate abilities such as attack speed and survivability.

Convergence: A League of Legends Story doesn’t do anything really new or unique, but it’s a beautiful, fast-paced adventure nonetheless. It reminded me a lot of F.I.S.T: Forged in Shadow Torch, another superb steampunk-inspired Metroidvania. It’s aesthetically beautiful, incredibly stylish with some great animations that really convey the sense of speed well.

It’s all so wonderfully fluid, too, so racing from one place to another and solving puzzles to reach hidden chests never stops being fun. Some sequences require fast fingers and precise timing, holding platforms up with the power of time or slowing huge presses in a steampunk factory so you can dodge under them without being flattened.

Occasional issues with precision can mar the experience a little, though. Ekko has a time splitting technique that does massive damage to nearby enemies and it has an inexplicable tendency to just trigger on the other side of the screen – unless I missed a tooltip somewhere. Also, the platforming can sometimes feel a bit imprecise and fiddly, especially during challenge sections where the game is hurling enemies at you in quick succession.

Once again, though, Riot Forge demonstrate a commitment to this universe that goes far deeper than simply making bank. As with The Mageseeker and The Ruined King, Convergence is a fully fleshed-out experience that feels like it could exist completely separately to the larger franchise. It’s slick, good-looking, and very well-made, and developer Double Stallion have done an amazing job imbuing Zaun and its environs with colour and personality.

If you’re a fan of MetroidVanias, feel free to jump in with or without prior knowledge of the larger League of Legends universe. It’s a fantastic game in its own right, only held back by a few inconsistencies in the platforming. It may not bring anything truly new to the genre, but Convergence is a great time nonetheless.

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It’s hard to describe exactly why it works so well on your head. The cushions are incredibly well padded and soft as they press onto your ears, sure. But it’s more than that. Normally if I was saying “it’s got a lightweight feel to it”, that’d be a concern, but somehow NACON’s RIG brand nails this like no other headset I’ve ever worn. It doesn’t feel cheap, nor does it feel like it’ll break easily, it just sits on your head feeling light and soft, and that’s seriously something to celebrate. But look, for that price you’d rather expect a comfortable headset, right? Sure, but I just want to be clear: I’ve tried plenty of headsets over more than decade of reviewing this kind of tech, and the RIG brand still sits atop my list of “most comfy” headphones.

Moving on, the 800 Pro HX is wireless and includes a dock that it sits in to charge. There is another pretty cool reason for this dock, and that’s to pair it to your device. Should you want to sit the dock miles away from your Xbox or PC, that’s fine: it includes a USB dongle that plugs directly into your device for that reason. If you stick it in the back of your console or PC it’s going to lose some range, sure, but while we’re talking about “best in class”, the range of this thing is mad as well. I forgot I was walking away from my office at times, because music would still be playing on the headphones. What more could you want?

Back to that dongle, though, for a moment. Because the feature I most enjoyed is that if you are using the PC version, of have a desk setup where the dock will sit near the device it’s connected to, you can slot the USB dongle into the base itself (at a slight angle which, nit-picking, I know, but is slightly awkward to remove if you wanted to, for some reason) and connect the dock directly to your PC or console with an included cable. The model I have is USB, but newer models will be rolling out later this year with USB-C (and a better battery life on the 24 hours of service this model provided me). What I particularly like about how this works is niche to my setup, but it’s worth noting. I use XLR microphones and an external audio device for my PC, but switching the RIG 800 Pro HX off and docking it was like fully disconnecting it, meaning I could switch between my main audio device and these headphones simply by turning the Rig Pro on and off again.

Onto the most important factor, however: the audio. Crisp high end and deep bass are aided by the large cups that surround your ears, and thus you, with audio. Included in the package is Dolby Atmos support, and testing this out is reminiscent of the 3D audio the PlayStation 5’s Pulse 3D can put out. Now it’s important to note that not every PC game will support Dolby Atmos. When it does, it’s incredible. I found that gunfire with the RIG Pro 800 HX was incredibly precise, which isn’t to say that the rest didn’t sound as clear, just that it’s a standout for the headset.

While there are modern titles like Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, Resident Evil Village, Returnal, Gears 5, and more that do support Dolby Atmos, it’s worth noting it definitely isn’t a “standard”, as such, yet. You will absolutely notice a difference playing games with this enabled, and if you do grab this headset, make sure you set it up properly (read the instructions) and enable the feature by downloading the Windows App (if you’re using the PC headset) to do so. It’s perhaps slightly more of a faff than it working by default, but even the aforementioned Pulse Headset requires you to do some setup to turn it on with PlayStation 5.

I really do not have any criticisms of major note outside the fact it’s not available for PS5, but that also kind of makes sense since Sony has it’s own hardware to do the job for its users. With the modern “flip to talk/mute” microphone included, even using it for communication is a breeze, and while the mic isn’t exactly going to compete with any professional audio setup, it does the job for in-game comms and online meetings. The controls on the side of the headset itself are “endless” rollers, which might annoy some who prefer to “feel” when they’re at full volume, and I suppose if I was being harsh, I’d like the on/off button to work quicker, but that’s about it for my list of notable issues.

Serious audiophiles may want to look elsewhere for fully customisable audio, but for someone like myself who wants great sounding gameplay or music that can be worn comfortably for hours without worrying about a sweaty head, or compression, or even battery life letting you  down, it’s hard to imagine a time this won’t be sat on my desk in use next to me. Minor issues like a non-detachable mic, lack of wired (optical) option might be deal breakers at a higher price point, but for what this costs, how it sounds, and importantly, feels, this is probably the best mid-range headset I’ve used in a long time.

The post NACON RIG 800 Pro HX review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

In Japan of old, two siblings have been raised in a secret village to become the mightiest warriors since birth. This is because the Empress Himiko has plunged Japan into an age of chaos and misery, mainly because she’s possessed by a god who’s a real piece of work. After one last bit of training Ayame and Kensei are sent off on a quest to take back the country from evil and make all the civilians happy again, which might not be the most original of stories but it certainly gets the job done.

As you may have guessed from the name, you actually play as two characters in Chronicles of 2 Heroes, and this doesn’t just mean switching between characters when you fancy it. This is because they both have abilities that you absolutely must use to make it through even a single screen of the game. Ayame can jump and throw kunai, whereas Kensei can attack with his sword and do a horizontal dash across long distances. You read that right, one of the characters in this platformer can’t jump, so it’s a good job you can swap between the two with a cheeky press of the X button.

It’s a really fun mechanic, and means you’ll constantly be switching siblings to make it past tricky platforming puzzles. Maybe there’s a big line of flames that only Kensei can dash through, but on the other side there’s a punk with a bow whose arrows you’ll need to jump over. Swapping characters is instantaneous, so once you get used to how often you need to tag in your other hero it becomes second nature and feels amazing.

The basic abilities of the duo are fine, but it won’t take you long to start unlocking a shed load of other moves to play around with. Ayame gets a double jump pretty quickly which changes the game, whereas Kensei soon unlocks the ability to slice through enemies in his path when he dashes. The medallions that unlock these skills come thick and fast, and always lead to a new selection of tricky platforming challenges.

Honestly, tricky might be an understatement. Within the first hour of playing Chronicles of 2 Heroes I found an optional route leading to a health upgrade that was probably the toughest section of a game I’ve played this year. With constantly spawning flying enemies and vanishing platforms over a pit of flames I died over and over again until I finally made it to my reward, and it felt a little excessive for the opening area of a game. I suppose I could’ve skipped this area and proceeded down the main path, but I don’t really want to imagine how hard the rest of the game would’ve been with one less heart. The difficulty only gets worse later in the game too, especially when the checkpoints start to drift further and further apart.

Perhaps the mechanic that got me killed the most in Chronicles of 2 Heroes though was the parry. Both Ayame and Kensei can parry attacks, but in totally different ways. When Ayame uses a parry successfully she teleports behind the source of the attack, which means you can reach otherwise inaccessible places with ease. Kensei’s parry reflects projectiles, which although less flashy is very helpful against some tricky enemies. The idea of these different damage negating abilities is great, but in practice it’s another story. The window for parrying attacks is actually pretty long, but is way way before anything actually makes contact with your character. Trying to wrap your head around this timing is an absolute nightmare, and because of this the sections where you have to parry feel awful.

Chronicles of 2 Heroes describes itself as having MetroidVania elements, and that’s a very accurate description. Every so often you’ll see a path you can’t access with your current setup, and will need to come back later (using a handy teleporter) if you want the upgrade or hidden collectable cat that’s hiding at the other end of it. There’s not full on backtracking through areas, but it’s definitely worth remembering any suspicious bits of a level you go past.

It’d probably be easier to keep track of the places you want to return to if the map was a little more useful though. The whole thing is just a purple mess of squares, and has no points of interest marked on it whatsoever. You also can’t zoom it out far enough to see more than a small area, scrolling around on it is sluggish, and it takes a few seconds longer to load than is ideal. It might sound like a small aspect of the game to nitpick, but it’s really bloody annoying.

It might sound like I have a lot of complaints about Chronicles of 2 Heroes, but I actually really enjoyed playing it. It definitely helps that the 16-bit aesthetic is lovely to look at, and that the soundtrack is chiptune joy. It’s so close to being an absolutely great title for fans of tough as nails platformers, but a handful of issues hold it back from that.

Chronicles of 2 Heroes: Amaterasu’s Wrath is full of fantastic platforming and clever ideas, but has a few dodgy elements that prevent it from being truly great. The map and parry are just plain bad, and the difficulty is a little excessive especially at the very start of the game. The two character system and amount of upgrades you get for each of them is really impressive, but it probably won’t be enough for most people to forgive its issues.

The post Chronicles of 2 Heroes: Amaterasu’s Wrath review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Diablo 4 has been a long time coming. The third game was originally released as a PC exclusive in 2012 and despite its long-running seasonal model, fans have been waiting for a full-blooded sequel for some time. Not content with a full remaster of Diablo 2 nor fully sated by the money-grabbing Diablo Immortal, we’ve been waiting impatiently for a proper continuation of the series for eleven years. And here it is, in Diablo 4 – but is it everything we wanted it to be? Very probably almost.

This new entry is set some time after the events of Diablo 3. The Prime Evils are still imprisoned, but a misguided sect has resurrected Lilith, the daughter of Mephisto and niece to the titular Diablo. The opening cutscene wastes no time in establishing this world as violent, bloody, and pitch dark, and the rest of the game continues apace. As the Wanderer, your fate is tied to both Lilith and her father, as you must race to stop her from consuming his trapped soul and becoming powerful enough to control or destroy all of Sanctuary.

The campaign story does a solid job of pulling you through the massive open world, introducing new characters and reminding us of a few old ones along the way. You’re primarily aided by Lorath and Donan, former Horadrim mages who are all that remain of the once-powerful order that has battled against the Prime Evils for centuries. There are few major surprises in the narrative, but as in previous entries, the story isn’t afraid to get very dark, very quickly, and it’s certainly an entertaining, if bleak, tale. The action will shift into cutscenes quite often, offering much more of a cohesive plot than in previous games, but now and then you’ll be treated to a full CGI cinematic and each one is, as usual, breathtakingly well made.

Of course, this being Diablo 4, the story is secondary to the gameplay in every way. Those familiar with the series or the genre will know what to expect. You create your character from one of five classes, and begin as a lowly nobody who will eventually become a god-slaying powerhouse regardless of class. The campaign leads you from place to place completing multi-branching quests within a 6-Act arc, but dozens and dozens of side quests, world events, hidden shrines, altars and dungeons will vie for your attention every step of the way.

Diablo 4 is a huge game. Indeed, Sanctuary is a huge world, and even after almost 35 hours, with the campaign finished, I hadn’t uncovered all of the map when I jumped into the endgame. Blizzard have promised that each of their upcoming seasons will have a new theme and self-contained story which will revisit areas all over Sanctuary, but there are lots of reasons to simply explore. There are 120 optional Dungeons, each one quite large with multiple objectives and boss encounters that reward powerful loot and Aspects, which are unique effects you can apply to your gear to make it Legendary. Added to this are single-room cellars and sprawling Strongholds.

These Strongholds, such as the village of Nostrava, are long-form, higher level challenges but well worth doing for the loot and Renown they grant. Renown is a measure of your overall fame in each of Sanctuary’s main areas, and is earned mainly through exploring and uncovering fast travel Waypoints or the hidden Altars of Lilith. It’s worth grinding, too, as Renown grants things like skill points, and extra health potions for all of your characters.

It’s hard to talk too much about the loot economy. The build we played for review wasn’t the final version (for example the real money storefront wasn’t live or even present – though we were given a glimpse of how it should work), and so it’s hard to know whether Blizzard will tweak drop rates. Rare items seemed to drop most often after around level 25 (the soft cap is 100), with Legendaries being much less common. It did feel like items dropped far below my current level a lot, which meant I was upgrading my gear more often than changing it. Which may be deliberate, as there’s more of an emphasis on improving what you have than constantly swapping gear out. The transmog system allows you to break down any new item to unlock it as a cosmetic skin, so you won’t get bored of looking at the same set of armour for hours.

Diablo 4 often feels at odds with itself in terms of accessibility, though. While there’s a host of new or improved features such as the transmog system, the mount, and being able to transfer unique effects between your gear, it’s really not very kind to new players. The onboarding isn’t great, very little is tutorialised, and things like Aspects, Strongholds, and even some of the skill effects aren’t properly explained. Veterans, particularly those who played Immortal, may have an easier time, but newcomers will likely be scratching their heads over exactly what Overpower does, for instance.

And yet, despite some small issues in terms of design, Diablo 4 is still a fantastic game with so much content to get into. Once you beat the campaign you can choose to skip the story with subsequent characters, and start tackling Whispers of the Dead quests, which is this game’s answer to Diablo 3‘s bounties. These are events that pop up on timers for you to travel to and complete in order to earn Grim Favors, which you can turn in at an endgame vendor for special rewards. After beating the game in World Tier II, you can opt to tackle a Capstone Dungeon and unlock the next difficulty tier to keep the challenge feeling fresh and worthy of your might.

Everything can be attempted in co-op, with up to three others. Monsters scale with you and the game will favour the host’s world state, but it’s a great way to get through tougher content. While you will see other players out in the world, this is promised to be minimal, though you can see other players in towns and safe zones to socialise and trade items. Interestingly, the difficulty scales with you in every area, so even returning to Fractured Peaks at level 50 won’t be a total pushover. It’s a great way to ensure that nothing ever feels trivial, and even if it does get too easy you can always up the world tier or grind Strongholds and World Bosses.

If there’s one huge, glaring issue though, it’s the forced online aspect. In real terms, there’s no reason for this game to have an always online requirement. It may help Blizzard track analytics and will certainly ensure that the storefront and Battle Pass are ever-present, but in terms of benefit to the player, well, there is none. If anything, it causes issues with stability and performance. Although Blizzard assures us that crashes and rubber banding won’t occur when the servers are live at launch, I’m not convinced. Without an always online requirement, these things wouldn’t be an issue at all. It’s especially frustrating as a solo player who isn’t interested in microtransactions that you’ll be forced into a suboptimal environment for reasons that even Blizzard can’t fully explain with a straight face.

Sadly, this aspect simply holds back what is otherwise an excellent game. I played through with a Barbarian having taken a Rogue and Necromancer to level 20 during the Beta test, and then jumped in again as a Druid after I finished the campaign, and I can honestly say that every class so far feels great. There’s so much build variety that I was constantly respeccing my skills and adjusting my character, eventually settling on a Thorns/Bleed build that made mincemeat out of almost anything. Yet it never felt super easy on World Tier II.

It’s also a stunning game. The atmosphere is exceptional throughout, each area truly standing out with its own personality and ambience. From the frozen north to the deserts of Caldeum, from Kejhistan to swampy Hawezar, it never stops impressing. Even individual dungeons, caves, and towns feel different, and while many enemies are re-coloured later, there’s a rich variety of design. But perhaps more impressive than the visuals is the sound design. Not only does every score evoke a sense of the grandiose and the macabre, but the ambient sound is also spectacular. Playing with headphones, you can’t help but be immersed. Corridors echo with faint cries for help, creatures scurry in the shadows, growls and howls peel across the walls towards you. Outside, the wind and rain lash the world, as fires crackle and ancient signs creak in protest against the weather. It’s some of the best sound design in the genre, and never fails to convey the grim essence of Sanctuary.

Whatever your views on the online element or the premium store when it goes live, it’s hard to argue against the fact that Blizzard has built a game for the fans. Newcomers will muddle through and eventually pick it up, but veterans will feel right at home with Diablo 4. Despite a few odd design choices and a campaign that arguably goes on a few quests too long, there’s so much here to get into that it’s difficult to muster any real complaints where the gameplay is concerned. Loot economy and build diversity are impossible to really analyse until after launch, when more people are in the endgame sharing details, but it’s unlikely to disappoint at release.

Diablo 4 is no great evolution of the franchise, but it’s a solid entry nonetheless. It may not reinvent the wheel, but what it adds to the experience is, mostly, very welcome. There’s more scope for building a character truly unique to you, more content than any game in the series has ever offered at launch, and a hugely addictive, rewarding gameplay loop that will continue to evolve season after season. If you can make your peace with the online element and get your head around some of its more complex systems, Diablo 4 is an incredible adventure in a dark, compelling world.

Note: We played a pre-release version of Diablo 4 on a low-population server, and our progress was deleted after the review period closed.

The post Diablo 4 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Which is why in 2015, developer Nightdive Studios released an updated version of System Shock that made it once more accessible to PC gamers. It garnered such an interest that the same devs decided to take the concept further, and remake the entire game. The result is this: System Shock Remake, a faithful-to-a-fault homage to that ancient sci-fi horror classic.

It casts you as a hacker lost aboard Citadel Station, where a rogue AI called SHODAN has unleashed murder and mayhem. Like in Bioshock, the cause of the disruption isn’t immediately apparent. There are blood and bodies everywhere, shambling zombie-like enemies, and a lot of cameras and security turrets that really, really don’t like you.

To the more vehement fans of the original, it’s worth saying that the Remake does a solid job of recreating the gameplay and mechanics of the original, but it’s kind of a warts and all deal. While the puzzles remain intact, along with the layout of each area and the placement of enemies, certain things have been enhanced and modernised.

The combat, for example, is faster and more fluid, but it remains the weakest link in the chain. Melee weapons lack impact, and the shooting – particularly with the first few guns – feels wishy-washy at best. Enemies move towards you without much intelligence, and they rarely even strafe to avoid fire. It has all the feeling of an old school boomer shooter without the “boom”. Weapons hiss and fizzle, and nothing feels precise enough to be considered thrilling.

What is thrilling, however, are the hacking sections that see you “enter” the computer system. The game switches neatly into what feels like a space shooter, as you fend off digitised defences while connecting nodes by shooting at them. While it’s easy to get turned around and even easier to fail, these sections at least feel exciting.

Exploring the station – when not in combat – is compelling enough. You’ll need to piece together what happened from the scraps of info you can find, and while the mystery itself is nothing original, it does foster a genuinely tense and creepy atmosphere. Sound design is solid, too, which helps immerse you in the environment even when you’re just poking around the corners looking for clues or snatching everything off the shelves.

For a game purporting to be a remake, there are some frustratingly awkward systems at work, though. For example, the inventory is awful if you’re playing on a controller (and it’ll be interesting to see how that’s handled for the console version, coming later). It’s clunky and unwieldy, and I really can’t work out why when there are so many solid examples of inventory systems out there. For now, it’s far better experienced with mouse and keyboard, again: like the original.

It does look pretty beautiful though. It’s all deep reds, bright yellows, and dark blues, evoking a 90s-era Cyberpunk aesthetic that sings on the screen. The slight pixelation of the graphics is a gloriously creative touch, too, invoking your nostalgia while still looking modern and flashy. Many of the puzzles have a similar look to the original, and solutions you struggled to find 29 years ago remain intact here, so there will be no shortage of guides and walkthroughs that will get you through even with the updated visuals.

One thing that desperately needed an update is the signposting – in that there is none. New players will constantly get lost in Citadel Station with very few clear clues on where to go next or what to do. You will kind of just do things as they became available to do, hacking things for reasons you won’t really appreciate, or smashing zombies and cyborgs to bits because they are there to be hit or smashed. Again, fans or veterans of the original probably won’t have this issue, but newcomers may find it too obtuse to be enjoyable.

Regardless of which elements work and which fall flat, the System Shock Remake is a tricky game to whole-heartedly recommend. If it’s for fans of the original, it doesn’t really add anything to the game they already love. If it’s for newcomers who never played the original, then no amount of fancy graphics will cover up the dated mechanics, lacklustre combat, and clunky menus.

Perhaps if you’ve always wanted to play it but never had the chance, there’s something here for you, but otherwise the System Shock Remake occupies an odd little middle ground between a true remake and a graphical remaster that makes it more of a curio than anything else.

The post System Shock Remake review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Having the full game and its roster to play with extensively, and nothing has changed in this regard. As a one on one, this is something that you just constantly find yourself hankering for one more tear up. If you are all about that online fighting life, the Battle Hub makes getting a match a cinch, and once you have set up your profile you are straight into it. You may well get your ass handed to you initially, but you’ll get there. Even early doors the netcode is stable, and reliable: even cross Play is available. Throwing the Extreme Battle parameters into the mix lends a true sense of unpredictable chaos. You want to fight someone as a rampaging bull causes utter panic? You got it. Explosions, electricity, all manner of crazy restrictions and rules; no two experiences are the same. As “just” a fighting game, this is a terrific piece of work, as the core mechanics are superb, making it easily Capcom’s best since Street Fighter 4.

The new characters are varied, well thought-through, balanced, and unanimously intriguing to learn. Existing faves from previous games are all given a new lick of paint and tune up, whilst still feeling as warmly familiar as your favourite pair of slippers after a day on your feet at work. Just how Street Fighter 4 effortlessly melded brilliant new characters like Abel and Juri and made them feel like you had been playing them since the smoky arcades of the early 90s, the new contenders all feel like they fit perfectly into this world, with most having links to other SF alumni past and present.

Jamie is a swaggering alumnus of Yun and Yang who uses a tricksy Drunken Master style. Kimberley is an adorable 80s hip-hop influenced kid who learned all she knows from Bushinryu legend, Guy. Manon is a catwalk model turned badass judoka, whilst the towering Marisa brings a welcome command throwing presence to join Zangief, whilst also being a lady after my own heart with her love of ossobuco. JP is a Psycho Power wielding enigma, who is clearly positioned as part of some bigger-picture Shadaloo shenanigans. Rounding things out, and the best of the newies in my eyes – is Lily, an indigenous Mexican kid with links to the great T Hawk, sharing some of his moves. She also has a crazy set of fighting sticks, has the ability to generate her own additional power stocks to enhance moves, and is a great deal of fun to play.

Enabling newcomers to simplify the control scheme to a more accessible Modern scheme may sound like sacrilege to old school players like me, but in execution a proficient player using the traditional six button setup will nearly always triumph over someone attempting to spam. The Drive system also acknowledges overuse of its more precious functions by placing your fighter into a state of burnout punishment. The Drive system is incredibly easy to use regardless of how you want to control things.

Its predecessor was a difficult one to love. There was eventually a loaded roster, but shipping it as they did was always going to draw criticism. I distinctly remember the crushing feeling of “Is this it?”. Capcom was obviously deeply affected by this, so like a partner in the doghouse will overcompensate for whatever they have done to vex their other half, they have gone quite frankly almost over the top in bolting on additional pressies to win back the World Warrior fans. And baby, it feels so good.

Quite frankly, World Tour is the bravest, craziest, and funniest slice of balls-out proper video game nonsense I have probably ever seen bolted onto a modern big budget release. From an almost overwhelming list of options, you are tasked with creating your very own in-game avatar and are then thrust into a beautifully stylised mini-open world, the Capcom stalwart Metro City, the same place that you walloped your way through with Mike Haggar back in the day, the moustachioed Final Fight hulk who went on to be the most legendary Mayor the burg ever had, combining his civic duties with a career as a vigilante and active professional wrestler. It uses the vibrant cast of the main game as a series of sensei-like Masters. Progression allows you to spar with, converse with, and carry out missions for your Masters, thus deepening your relationship with them as you progress the flimsy yet shaggily loveable plot.

Despite nobody ever asking for anything vaguely resembling World Tour, it becomes quickly apparent that it is exceedingly generous in terms of its furiously addictive gameplay loops, and staggering amount of content, but also in the way it absolutely refuses to take itself seriously on any level. It harkens back to a time when the likes of SEGA would make really silly arcade games. It is the Dreamcast and Shenmue, sans-sailors. It is impossible to dislike, and I will happily square up in unarmed combat to anyone cold hearted and cynical enough to disagree.

Building those crucial relationships with legendary fighters gives you access to their unique moves and super art techniques; even the stance and movement of your chosen teacher. It never stops being funny seeing my enormous character, who resembles a large wardrobe with a head – move around the battles like Chun-Li.

You begin with a couple of Street Fighter 6 mascot Luke’s attacks, but travelling around and fulfilling missions allows you to create your own unique moveset for the many, many battles you will enjoy – and you will enjoy them. It is really satisfying to be able to combine specials you never ever thought you would pull off outside of one of them hooky Street Fighter II arcade cabinets back in the day. Shoryuken into a Spinning Bird Kick before electrocuting them with a blast of Brazilian voltage? Its all possible.

Learning specials also allows you to use them as Master Actions when exploring the wider world. As well as enabling you to initiate combat with NPCs by attacking them (something which never gets old or stops being funny), the Master Actions also lend proceedings – and it still feels weird writing this – a MetroidVania feel. You can use the aforementioned Spinning Bird Kick to fly through the air and reach platforms, or glide across water hazards. Rising uppercut punches can lift you up to reach higher plateaus. You can even use projectile attacks to destroy destructible scenery, which often leads to collectible rewards or cash.

Traversing the land is simple thanks to plenty of fast travel points, and the eventual ability to fly around the globe to visit far flung heroes and sit under their learning tree. There are secrets and Easter eggs for days, and if like me you have grown up on a sustained and nourished by a concoction of Capcom arcade titles, you will feel overwhelmed with joy at times. Little touches – like geographically accurate food items up for purchase – show how deep the attention to detail runs. Being able to eat a Brown Stew Chicken whilst visiting DeeJay in Jamaica is something I never imagined being a reality. You can have a full blown conversation with Damnd, for goodness sake! There is just so much to do, but nearly everything is there for a purpose – mainly to teach you how to play the game. For example, there is a bombastic pizza related minigame that is essentially a disguised way of showing you how to quickly input commands as you would when performing special moves.

All the fights you get into on the overworld have predetermined sets of conditions – such as performing a certain number of Drive related actions, having to pull off combos, or throw your opponent a set number of times. You can find out what these conditions are by approaching someone and pressing a button to determine whether or not it is worth kicking their head in. Fulfilling these will reward you with extra dosh (and of course, the currency is Zenny), XP, items of clothing, or one of the many items that exist to act as buffs, potions, or crafting materials. Yeah – there is crafting too. And a skills tree. And quite a large one at that! The upshot is that by playing World Tour not only do you have a tremendous time, but you are also being taught all about how to play a Street Fighter game, without even realising it. Oh, and you can also take your crackers self-made avatars into fights in the Battle Hub, which offers up the chance to see what ridiculous abominations similarly minded people around the world have created.

The generosity doesn’t end with World Tour. A full Arcade Mode has some excellent cutscenes, and the bonus of a wild amount of unlockable artwork as a reward for progress. The training missions and practise modes are the best you will encounter in a fighter, period. Not only are there the standard combo input missions, but the extensive Character Guides do a sterling job of actually showing you how each of the selectable characters play.

Rather than just showing you what buttons to press, you are guided through how, when, and why to perform certain actions, based upon the positions of the fighters, hit boxes, timing, and the many other factors at play. Along with the accessible control schemes, stuff like this means that there has never been a better time for first time players to get involved.

There are seven real-life names drafted in by Capcom to provide surprisingly unobtrusive and at times valuable colour commentary to your bouts. These include WWE star and fighting game fan Thea Trinidad, and veteran TastySteve. There are promised online events, a drip feed of DLC including new fighters and costumes – the whispers of a Lil Wayne inspired set of garments has me excited – and a constant rotation of fully playable classic Capcom arcade games, employing the same emulation as their Arcade Stadium. Yeah, you read that right: there are free arcade games buried inside Street Fighter 6.

Without wishing to engage hyperbole too much, this is without question the best fighting game package I have ever played. It is almost too much at times, and is a gloriously overwhelming beast that it is way too easy to sink hours of your life into. Having a fundamentally rock-solid engine is one thing, but the fan service and sheer scope of what Capcom has done in terms of additional content mean that it will keep you going far longer than a one-on-one fighter has any right to be able to. It is the sort of game that when DLC is released, you would actually look forward to splashing the cash to extend the fight. A true classic.

The post Street Fighter 6 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Our godly protagonist Gaia has a tough task on her hands, because the Earth is all but ruined. Guided by the voice of a big tree (obviously) it’s up to her to free the ghosts of all the now extinct animals on the planet, and fight back against the pollution. This isn’t an easy task though, because we really did a number on this poor world.

Now from that description of the story you’d probably assume that this was a narrative based game, maybe with a bit of wandering thrown in for good measure. Nope, After Us is a full blown 3d platformer set in this currently miserable location. You’ll spend the majority of your time in the game jumping between abandoned cars and climbing ruined buildings, all while looking for the best collectables in video game history.

Finding the ghosts of extinct animals is just delightful, because when you release them from their slumber they appear about the world. This means cute dogs, majestic oxen and playful pigeons will bring the linear levels to life once you free them, with plenty of them happy to provide some petting opportunities too. Dashing through caves full of furry friends is my idea of a good time, and watching the sky fill up with spectral fish in certain sections truly is a sight to behold.

In terms of actual gameplay, After Us is no slouch either. Gaia has plenty of movement abilities to play around with right from the start of the game, like running, double jumping and even an air dash. As time goes on you’ll unlock moves like the ability to climb certain surfaces and grind on vines, and before you know it you’ll be getting up onto all sorts of desolate structures on your quest.

The platforming in the game is perfectly serviceable, but could definitely be better. Gaia is very floaty to control, and getting her to land where you want her to can be a bit of a challenge. Alongside this she will also die when she falls from a high place (which happens way more often than you’d think) and there are patches of evil goo that kill you instantly if you get close to them. These platforming niggles and environmental hazards aren’t too much of an issue early on, but as the game progresses the added difficulty brings them to the forefront.

Despite these issues the platforming is for the most part enjoyable, which is more than can be said for the combat. The enemies in After Us are known as The Devourers, and they’re essentially greedy zombie humans who have sucked the planet dry. To take them out you have to fire your magic floating orb at them, while dodging their attacks. The main issue with this is that your projectile based offence rarely hits the target, and when it does it barely deals any damage. Inevitably this just means that a Devourer will manage to grab you mid-fight and you’ll have to mash X to escape. To call this combat loop tedious would be an understatement.

It isn’t all bad for After Us though, visually the game is absolutely stunning. The tragic environments of the decimated world are truly a sight to behold, from the highways of floating cars to the dusty wastelands packed with decaying buildings. Perhaps the best visual moments though come from you using your nature powers to cover nearby surfaces in grass. Standing under a pylon and covering it in lush green plants never stops being satisfying, and is occasionally even important to progress.

I should mention the technical issues I experienced playing After Us, because they are pretty noticeable. When loading in new areas the game often freezes for a few seconds before letting you continue, and this happens pretty regularly. It’s hardly going to ruin the experience for you, but it did take me out of the action during some fairly special moments.

After Us is a beautiful game with an important message about how we live our lives as consumers, that ultimately struggles to provide engaging enough gameplay to stick the landing. Setting ghost critters free and exploring the world is enjoyable, but the floaty platforming and dodgy combat really let it down.

The post After Us review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

The story told in The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a faithful one, and when it isn’t hampered by its various issues, I found it interesting how he was able to escape the belly of the beast under the Dark Tower of Sauron to being captured by the elves in Mirkwood. While it’s a constant battle not being put off by the voice actor’s portrayal of Gollum, the acting is strong by all characters. Andy Serkis did such an incredible job in the movies that anyone else is going to have a tough time playing him, and while not based on the films, it was impossible not to wish Serkis was at the helm of the character’s journey.

While that’s more a personal issue with not hearing Serkis, the voice acting is still strong. The constant bickering between Gollum and Sméagol is great, and knowing what we know from the books, Daedalic has been faithful in the source material, managing to tell a strong story featuring potentially the most interesting character in all of Tolkien’s work. It was also cool to see other facets of The Lord of the Rings feature throughout, whether involving particular elves or creatures within the darkness. There’s always a neat reference for the player to enjoy, and I shan’t ruin them for you here.

As Gollum, you’ll climb up huge structures, sneak past those who seek to capture and kill you, command companions, solve the odd puzzle, and more. Moving is sometimes loose and unresponsive, and the animations of certain actions feel off. When climbing, certain areas aren’t visible, and you only know to jump because an option to do so appears in the corner of your screen. While the stealth sections can be fun, I found enemies were just too dumb for their own good. Trying to lure out an orc by throwing a stone right at its feet didn’t illicit a response, and neither did throwing one at a huge metal pot.

When you have to command someone to move, you only get select positions to move them to, and it feels like an arbitrary addition to the gameplay. The controls lack polish and fluidity, and whatever I was doing, I could never put my full trust in the systems at my disposal. There are constant checkpoints so overshooting a jump or falling from too greater height can allow you to jump back in sharpish, so there is a way to mitigate some frustrations. There were times when I enjoyed certain moments of gameplay, especially when trying to climb up high into the Dark Tower and follow my trusty bird to steal some keys.

Sometimes I started floating on something I was trying to jump over and was unable to get off until it was too late, and crawling through small spaces was awkward. The whole concept of constantly battling between the two personalities of Gollum and Sméagol offered some clever breaks in gameplay as you can choose certain responses to those you have to talk to, and I like how you see his familiar traits of sneakiness and guile play into the story. You have to try and convince the other of the right course of action, but again, this could have just taken place organically.

The visuals are another problem at the heart of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. From the rough animations to texture popping, it doesn’t take advantage of the PlayStation 5 at all, whether in Performance or Quality mode. I had moments where Gollum was speaking yet his mouth didn’t move; cutscenes break suddenly into gameplay moments far too abruptly (although this has been sorted somewhat via a patch), and the same two aspects interchange randomly. There were sound issues, too. I had dialogue just stop halfway through a sentence, and characters talking over each other. The loading screens came out of nowhere and suddenly ended a cutscene without seamlessly transitioning.

I really wanted to love The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. While the story is its strongest feature, the technical issues hound almost every facet of it. From the visual glitches to a lack of polish in its gameplay, it’s hard to recommend this to those looking forward to venturing into Middle-Earth once more. While I’m sure future patches will fix some of the issues, I don’t think it’ll become a title that will stand up against some of the other great Lord of the Rings games we’ve seen over time, and as a lifelong Tolkien fan, I’m upset this wasn’t the game I wanted it to be.

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The bulk of Railway Empire 2 takes place in the campaign, where you’ll get to experience the rise of the locomotive across the world. It provides an extensive tutorial where you’re given a ton of guidance for how the fundamentals work. Sometimes when games are this detailed, you can be overwhelmed by what to do and how to manage your empire. While there is a lot you’ll have to learn, the campaign doesn’t rush you, and you always have plenty of time to do what needs to be done. There’s also a ‘Tips and Tricks’ menu that offers all kinds of details to help you along the way.

The main goal of Railway Empire 2 is to build railway lines to transport goods like wheat, meat, and cloth across the continent as cost effectively and efficiently as possible. You start by building two railway stations, tracks to join them, assigning railway routes, building gridirons to allow an effective flow of travel, and issue trains to get the job done. Maintenance and supply towers need to be build along the tracks, and making sure your lines don’t have lots of tunnels or bridges is the best way to save money. You’re always weighing up cost with efficiency, and this makes what you do one of the most engaging elements.

It’s been made easier to lay down tracks in Railway Empire 2 which is vitally important as its the basis of everything you do. Railway stations can have up to eight lines, meaning you can connect them to various mills and yards that produce key resources, along with joining up cities across the globe. You’re given constant guidance as to how much a line will cost so as not to dip into your budget too much, however, as you progress, you can take out bonds and pay it back, buy out the competition, and thrive in a multitude of ways to make sure your funds are always topped up. You can also expand your stations to include a wealth of options to improve both productivity and appeal.

Making sure you have hotels at stations allow passengers and mail to change trains. Warehouses help to keep more stock of valuable materials so they don’t impact supply runs. Productivity needs to be at an optimal level for your cities to grow, and as your population grows and you complete the various tasks throughout the campaign, you’ll be given the ability to research new trains, buildings, and more via Innovation Points. I’m describing it at its most basic level, but the attention to detail and level of crafting in how you go about thriving in the locomotive world is fantastic. You can even hire saboteurs to damage rival train companies, and while this doesn’t have to be done, it offers yet another way to approach how you build your empire.

Railway Empire 2 doesn’t have the greatest of visuals, but there’s so much detail. From high above the map, you can see a the country and its various cities and supply points, but when zooming in, you can see people going about their lives, intricacies in the designs of train stations and the trains themselves, and more. I loved using the camera view of the trains to go from one place to the next, pulling the horn and relaxing as we picked up our next shipment of corn. It was a nice break from the dealings of my company, but those business decisions were equally as exciting. Hiring employees, trading, buying properties – I enjoyed it all.

Outside of the campaign, there’re a ton of scenarios for you to dive into, along with a free play mode that allows you to set your own parameters. Gaming Minds Studios has given players a ton of options for how to play, and whatever mode you favour, building your empire is both exhilarating and engaging. Some players might be put off by the wealth of options, but take your time to learn its intricacies and there’s hours of gameplay to enjoy. Making mistakes is part of the process, and after a few small stumbles, I was able to make the most out of Railway Empire 2.

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