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.

The post Remnant 2 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

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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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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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.

The trade-off, of course, is that your phone is not directly connected to the controller, so it will not sap more of your precious bars during play. When everything is connected it is, length-wise like a slightly elongated Switch when you connect a HORI Split Pad. Battery life on a full charge is an impressive 20 hours. With the phone sitting flush inside the Nacon MG-X Pro, there is obviously no access to the headphone jack, so if you want sound, then you will need to connect to another Bluetooth audio device, or rely on the speakers on your phone.

Nacon offers a smaller version of the MG-X which is more portable and folds away nicely, however the buttons and D-Pad on that bad boy will be too fiddly if like me you have proper sausage fingers. The Pro is completely different and the spacing of buttons and feel of all the components is much more comfortable to play. The build quality is lovely: it feels premium, holds your smartphone in place effectively, and has excellent ergonomics up there with an actual Xbox official controller. The triggers and bumpers feel great, and the D-Pad is particularly impressive – I think I may actually prefer it to the one on the standard Xbox controller. The only real downside I can see other than the lack of access to headphone jack, is the omission of any rumble features, but that is to be expected and is par for the course for most devices of this ilk.

Gaming wise, you can stream directly from the Cloud using Game Pass, and during several hours I experienced only a few occasions where there was lag. Obviously, your gaming is only going to be as reliable as your internet connection, but if like me you have a stable wi-fi network everything should work like a dream. To eliminate any potential technical issues, if you have the ability to download games to your phone, then this is obviously the way to go. As well as Game Pass, there are also multiple games available on the Play Store that are compatible, opening up the accessibility on some games that are naturally fiddly to play using traditional touchscreen methods. If emulation is your thing, then I can confirm that it seems to work well with these sorts of things.

Interestingly, I was also able to get the device working with my PlayStation 5 using the PS Remote Play App on my phone – albeit only in the same room as my console. If like me you have Love Island-related limitations on access to the main television in your front room, this is a lovely surprise. I was particularly impressed at the lack of any lag or latency issues when playing a complex fighting game like Street Fighter 6.

There are a wide variety of controllers available now for use with mobile phones, however considering its current very generous pricing, near-Xbox official level aesthetics, and surprisingly good compatibility, the Nacon MG-X Pro is an excellent option.

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Even with the full range of desired weights and stick modifications, it has to be said that the unit does feel a little plasticky and lightweight compared to what you may expect from a pro grade and premium priced controller. It weighs in and is physically a bit smaller than the official counterpart. The additional customisable shoulder and trigger buttons on the rear of the controller are a nice addition and have a satisfying click. I do like being able to map button combos to these in my fighting games, and I am sure that they will be a boon for FPS fans. The actual face buttons on the other hand feel a bit strange. Unlike the official Microsoft versions they feel a bit springy and don’t have the right amount of “click” for my taste.

It is also a tad disappointing not to be able to play wirelessly given the relatively high price, however the cable provided is going to be easily long enough for most gaming spaces. Nacon swears by the wired option to reduce lag and latency issues, but the reality is I was unable to detect any difference between this and the variety of other wireless controllers I use at home.

Nacon have produced the Revolution X app as a means to customise and map your controller to within an inch of its life. In theory, being able to choose between a set of pre-loaded schemes, such as one for sports games, another for fighters), there seems to be a lot of emphasis on stick sensitivity that will go over the heads of most players, and likely isn’t technically precise enough to cater to high end pro esports users. There is nothing in the way of handholding or tutorials, so it is actually quite tricky to understand what is going on when you really delve deep into the options. I found it all a bit of a chore, but there is clearly the perfect profile in there for you if you are willing to work for it. The way you can quickly remap buttons, and even aesthetically alter the colour of the LED ring around your right stick is cool, as well, mind you.

One area where the Nacon Revolution X Pro does excel and even gets one over on Microsoft is the support for Dolby Atmos sound, if of course you have a headset that can deliver this superb, immersive audio. I thoroughly enjoyed blasting through Gears 5, hearing every little nuance of splattering Locust and space marine grunt. I had been tipped off that it is a particularly great title to experience with Dolby Atmos, and I was not disappointed.

Offering a wealth of customisation options and some cool features, the Nacon Revolution X Pro is a fine third-party controller, which falls just short of the best devices on the market by virtue of a slightly high price point, lack of wireless connectivity, slightly cheap feeling build and a tricky to negotiate and very finnicky app. At the RRP, I would suggest looking at one of the cheaper options on the market, although it is currently hovering around the £60 mark, which for me constitutes half decent value.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

The post Park Beyond review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

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.

The post Layers of Fear review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

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.

The post Super Mega Baseball 4 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

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 X Slayers are a powerful group of radical people who have sworn to fight the Psyko Sindikate. Our awesome protagonist Zane is a member of this badass group, and has pledged to defend the people of earth “even though they’re bleep-holes to us and don’t even deserve it”. When the Psykos find the Slayers’ secret base all bets are off, and only Zane remains to get revenge on these punks.

So you’re probably thinking this sounds like an awful story, and not necessarily that weird. Well, bizarrely, what makes this game interesting is actually the “developer”. This boomer shooter was masterfully crafted by the fictional character Zane Lofton from Hypnospace Outlaw. In that game he was your typical 90s teenage internet troll, and this is the video game he was drawing pictures of when he wasn’t bullying people online. Now in modern times Zane has found these old design documents, and enlisted a friend to help him make the game reality.

The end result is finally here. Slayers X is your typical DOOM/Quake inspired FPS, with 2d pixel enemies, big guns and a whole lot of gore. The pace is fast, the secrets are hidden, and the bad guys are plentiful. If you’ve played any of these classic shooters you’ll feel right at home, but at the very least Zane controls really well and is packing plenty of heat to deal with the Psykos.

You’d think given the fact that this game was “created” from the mind of a dickhead teen that it’d have some fairly outrageous weapons to use, but honestly they’re pretty standard. You start with double pistols, then as you progress through the levels you’ll find a shotgun, machine gun and rocket launcher to fill out your armoury. It’s for the most part a decent selection, but not necessarily a daring one.

There’s one gun that’s an exception to this rule though, and that’s the Sludge Launcher. This crossbow-like contraption fires globs of sludge which explode on impact like grenades, and also attracts rats which gnaw on the baddies. Some of the more standard guns have some interesting elements too, like the shotgun that fires glass instead of shells which means you can gather extra ammo by smashing shit up.

The enemies you use these violent tools on are, however, a little disappointing. There’s not necessarily a shortage of enemy types (from walking turds to demonic heads) but they’re all fairly stationary which makes fighting them feel a bit dull after a while. Even when the levels got fairly hectic later on I rarely felt worried for my health, and knew that as long as I just kept firing my explosive ordnance into the crowds I’d be okay.

The main reason for this game’s existence wasn’t to create the greatest FPS of all time, though, but rather to demonstrate what would happen if you allowed an awful teenage boy to create a video game. This means constant references to turds, one liners that disrespect the enemy’s mother and a whole lot of bragging about how cool the protagonist Zane is. I expected to absolutely love this downright stupid idea, but it turns out that even though it’s done ironically it’s still incredibly cringe-inducing to walk past shelves full of turd cereal and diarrhea burgers. The same can be said for the cutscenes that feature a main villain who constantly brags about banging your recently deceased mum. I guess I just don’t have a lot of nostalgia for my days of being an intolerable little shit.

There is one sin that Slayers X commits though that is far worse than any of the attempts at comedy. This sin is the fact that the glass shotgun feels way too weak, and shotguns are pretty much all I ever use in boomer shooters. It isn’t the only weapon that feels a bit pathetic either, which is a real shame.

Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer is a ridiculous concept for a video game, and it turns out there’s a good reason for that. The teenage boy inspired comedy just didn’t land for me at all, and the boomer shooter gameplay is just okay. As a massive fan of Hypnospace Outlaw I was really expecting to love this bizarre spinoff, and to say I was disappointed would be an understatement.

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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.

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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.

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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.

The post Railway Empire 2 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

It casts you as a space marine of the Ultramarines chapter sent on a mission to investigate corrupt Adeptus Mechanicus on the forgeworld of Graia. After your dropship crash-lands on the Chaos-infested planet, your mission is fairly simple: kill the ever-loving shit out of every xeno, heretic, and slathering Chaos beast that so much as looks at you funny. Actually, scratch “funny”. Hell, scratch “looks at you”, too. Just kill them all. If there’s time, maybe gather that intel for the Inquisitors while you’re there.

Armed with a chainsword on the left trigger and a selection of weapons from the titular Boltgun to a powerful plasma rifle, and equipped with a spread of devastating grenades, your only real mission is to get out alive while making sure everything even slightly non-human looking has a really bad day.

I’ve been getting genuinely fatigued with the constant wave of “old school boomer shooters” that think the best way to take Doom’s crown is to dress up like Doom, break into Doom’s dressing room, and hope no one notices the new “king” is looking a bit anaemic and not walking right. Boltgun doesn’t do this. Boltgun takes the crown right off original Doom’s head and promises to return it in a few days, thanks.

Whatever alchemy Auroch Digital have worked here, it’s potent. Boltgun feels frantic and exciting, violent and cathartic, but so straightforward that it never feels like work. There are no gimmicks, no attempts to innovate on a tried and tested formula, and yet somehow it doesn’t feel trite. The 360-degree shooting has a modern bent, with auto-aim locking to leaping, jumping targets and making your life easier. But beyond that, everything is so superbly old school.

You can alter the graphics if you like to be less pixelated and much smoother, but it has no effect on the gameplay. Either way there’s an impressive level of detail in the environments, and the enemy design is great. It’s easy to tell exactly what you’re shooting at in just a glance. Of course, this being a Warhammer 40K game there are skulls everywhere; in the decor, on your guns. I feel like furry dice in this universe would just be little dangling skulls.

Strafing and dodging bullets, grenades, fireballs, and acid spit is the order of the day. If anything, there are moments when it becomes a little too frantic. Surprisingly, the default difficulty is Easy (though there’s also an accessibility mode that lets you turn off death), and I had to up it to Medium early on because it felt a bit too much of a cake-walk.

Boss fights in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun are presented without too much fanfare. You’ll suddenly run into an enemy with an usually long health bar, often with a few extra skulls on it, natch, and after you kill them they often become regular enemies in the following stages. Most levels will have you “purge” an area, and the screen will go a shade of red and you’ll be required to obliterate everything until the screen goes back to normal. This is where the game ramps up in difficulty for a few minutes, and you can’t hoover up health and Contempt (that’s Armor, to you and me) as fast as you lose it.

Often during these sections you’ll be given one of several power-ups such as a one-hit-kill buff that lasts 30 seconds or a damage boost to your boltgun. It’s not quite the same as the berserk mode in Doom as you can still get flattened if you stand still too long. This is the big issue though: it’s very easy to get turned around due to vast sections of each level looking the same, and you’ll backtrack a lot through very similar environments.

More than once I started to feel just a little motion-sick charging around the missions looking for a colour-coded key or corresponding door, and although the missions are fairly linear, it’s not always easy to tell which direction you should be heading in. You have a servo-skull floating around with you that will often tell you if you’re going the right way, or if there’s a pick-up or secret nearby, but who’s got time to read when they’re dodging nurglings and pink horrors all over the shop? One day boomer shooters will come up with a different progression system to coloured key cards, but today is not that day.

Boltgun is a frantic old-school shooter that puts all its emphasis on cathartic fun. As such, the mindless violence can sometimes come into direct conflict with the not-so-intuitive level design, and it’s easy to get turned around and lost during hectic gunfights. Add this to the forced backtracking and key-finding, and the dopamine can take a serious knock now and then. Although, there’s something to be said for the sheer sense of weight and power you exude. Your marine feels like an 8-foot armour-clad man-tank and who could really ask for more.

Despite that, though, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a game that knows exactly what it wants to be. It sets out its stall early and rarely deviates from the plan, but what could be considered just another also-ran Doom-alike is saved by awesome shooting and a healthy regard for squibbing Chaos Terminators. Is it new and fresh? Not really, but it’s great fun all the same.

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It being a roguelite, this is the function by which you’ll return to life each time. With every new incarnation, Rene must travel the streets of Paris, choosing which faction to side with. There’s the Church, the Tribe, the Prince, and the Rebels, which seem to be the narrative choice anyway. Most of your primary allies are part of the Rebels, such as Ana and Maximillien.

Combat is slick and fast-paced, arming you initially with only a basic attack and a dodge which you can turn into an evasive roll with a long press. But you unlock more and more skills using Liberté’s fairly unique deckbuilding system. Each Deck can contain up to 40 cards, including dupes. To begin with you have a Ranged, Melee, and Rogue (stealth) deck, but you’ll very quickly be customising your own. As you venture out on behalf of Lady Bliss, seeking answers to question after question, you can choose a different Deck with each run.

You can build them however you like, but you can only take up to two of any card. These are both active and passive skills which will auto-assign to one of your buttons. The selection is impressive, with over 100 to find or craft throughout. From a single powerful pistol shot to summoning a lightning storm or healing your wounds, the variety is astounding. There are also items such as bombs, poison flasks, and food that conveys various benefits, sometimes for the duration of the run. In order to play a card, you will need Mana, a resource gained primarily from “burning” unwanted cards, though this can force some tough decisions when you’re low on Mana and desperate.

Combat feels a lot like, say, Diablo, as you mix and match these skills to gain distance, deal damage, or stay alive. Instead of a timer, skills require a certain number of hits on any enemy to recharge. It’s a fantastic system that promotes active play instead of just hanging back while you wait for a cooldown and it’s something I’m sure we’ll see in more games going forward. The only real downside to combat is that, now and then, I found my character would pause, or a button command wouldn’t register and I’d suffer damage. This is a major issue later as healing items are quite hard to come by.

As you progress you will unlock new skins for Rene. There are three, and while they all play differently at a basic level (Ana for example uses dual pistols instead of a melee weapon), you will switch back to Rene for character interactions and you’ll always talk in Rene’s voice. It’s a bit weird, to be honest, but often you won’t survive long enough to fret.

The Bliss gets worse and worse as you play. This bizarre corruption gets into people and animals, and can produce deranged zombies or monsters. Periodically you’ll come upon a statue of Lady Bliss, and you can choose to enter her domain to battle the monsters she produces or unleash the Bliss upon the city, causing your enemies to get stronger but boosting Rene’s connection to the magic. Entering the Bliss will put you against high-level enemies and takes serious resolve to get through.

Each time you complete an Act you’ll receive a Bliss Curse and it’s only here that I felt the difficulty skewing against me. These Curses can make your run an actual nightmare, adding damage effects to enemies, causing them to come back as zombies or flesh-eating maggot swarms. These Curses stack up to an insane degree, and they just don’t feel balanced by the cards in your deck.

Perhaps the biggest issue with Liberté is the lack of variety in locations, particularly early on. Even advancing through Acts sees you return to the same streets of Paris over and over. It mixes up bosses, events, objectives, enemies, and which vendors you come across, but for a solid three hours I played the same stretch of Parisian street, the same cathedral, the same Bliss gardens, and it really did start to grate. As a result, it’s probably a game best played in shorter sessions. You can always opt to play local multiplayer, too, if you like. This makes it feel considerably more arcadey, though the overall thrust of the gameplay doesn’t change. If anything, the screen just gets much busier and spotting your character among the enemies and attack effects can be a challenge.

Like Hades, the story in Liberté continues as you play. You will often visit the same areas and talk to characters, revealing more of the story. And each run will give you multiple chances to choose between the four factions to earn Favour and complete challenges. Favour is used to unlock crafting materials to forge new cards from blueprints, or unlock new skins and cards. Everything you unlock persists through incarnations, and so there’s always a sense of progression and you can continue earning Favour and unlocking items and cards even after the campaign story is done.

Liberté feels unique. Deckbuilding and isometric combat may be nothing new, but this combines the two wonderfully well. The story is intriguing, the characters are well written (if not always well acted), and the combat is fast, smooth, and rewarding. It does occasionally glitch and certainly needs more variety in locations throughout, but besides that Liberté is an exciting, fresh adventure in a compelling world and deserves to put developer Superstatic well and truly on the map.

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Apart from the occasional word from the young female protagonist, there’s no dialogue or conversation. Every thought or feeling is portrayed through Planet of Lana’s art and music, along with some moving animations between the moments where you’re playing. It tells the story of a girl who’s searching for her sister who, along with most of their village, have been captured by an army of machines. At first they seem like the big bad enemy, but as time goes on, a deeper meaning and history behind them begins to unravel. It’s smart, poignant, and rarely falters in its narrative.

There’s a clear inspiration from titles like Limbo and Flashback, with an art style familiar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. These help present an air of familiarity throughout the relatively short playtime, but Planet of Lana feels very much like its own game. As I raced across deserts on the back of a machine, wandered through dense jungles and forests, and explored abandoned buildings and caves, I was in awe of how fantastic everything looked. A lot of attention has been put into making everything so pretty, and it’s just one of the things I loved about it.

Another is its clever puzzles. Some are relatively straightforward while others are more layered. You befriend a little critter called Mui who helps you turn off electrical currents, knocks down ropes for you to climb up, distracts machines so you can get by, and more. As you start to understand more about the world, especially the bond between it and the animals, Mui starts to harness a specific power that can communicate with other creatures. It can form a connection which moves them into positions where you can climb on them, help you to raise and lower lakes, and even calm and control a gargantuan being where you can run across it.

There’s an organic feel to these puzzles, and developer Wishfully manages to get the balance between constant challenges and breathing room just right. You might have just had to solve a tougher puzzle involving certain musical notes or the banging of metal pipes, but afterwards you have time to appreciate the environment and prepare for the next puzzle. There’s always a new puzzle to solve, but you never feel bombarded by them. Planet of Lana is a relatively relaxing experience which allows you to appreciate the story of nature, family, and freedom even more.

The journey to find your sister is filled with plenty of drama and excitement. You’ll be left with a smile on your face for much of the time, although there are the odd times you’ll be filled with worry and a dash of anxiety. Mui is such a cutie, too. It’s interactions with the world and with you are so sweet, and there’s seldom moments where you don’t just want to pick them up and give them a cuddle. Planet of Lana is wonderful in almost every way, and I was gutted when the credits rolled as I could have played it for much longer.

As Planet of Lana reaches its final climax, the visuals really step up, as do the puzzles. It constantly improves in how you tackle each challenge, and while I loved much of it, some of the movement does feel a little slow. Running could be faster as could climbing, but then that might make it too easy. Regardless, everything works in harmony to present a stunning adventure with plenty of puzzles to solve, making this puzzler well worth playing, especially as it’ll be dropping on Xbox Game Pass upon release.

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After having a tutorial nightmare in a dingy demon world, our heroine protagonist wakes up in a hospital room. Once you’ve read a couple of notes stuck to the wall it becomes rather apparent that this is some sort of insane asylum, and that various psychiatrists have been investigating you specifically. Like most people locked up you’d rather be free, and the only way to figure out the root of why you’re here is by investigating your nightmares. I didn’t love the idea of the asylum from a mental health representation standpoint, complete with screaming in the corridors and scribbles on the walls, but it does provide a sort of safe house when you’re not in your nightmares.

The nightmares are essentially randomised stages of a DOOM or Quake style FPS, full of sinister demons and weapons to blast them with. There isn’t a whole lot to explain about how this works (you just point at baddies and shoot) but the controls and pacing just feels glorious. This is exactly the speed I want in an FPS, so you should expect to be doing a lot of twitchy shooting.

The weapons you’ll use in the nightmares aren’t just your standard guns though. The staples are all there (pistols, grenade launchers, the very best of shotguns) but there are also guns that shoot beehives, books that fire stones from between the pages, and even a sword and shield for some melee action. You never know what you’re going to get when you drop into a level, and can only keep a single murder tool with you at the end of a level so expect to try out a lot of different combinations.

Even when you find weapons of the same type, they’ll usually end up having different modifiers to vary things up even more too. Some weapons have a percent chance to stun, some might leech health, and others will send enemies flying away from you. It feels great when you find a rare weapon with all the best buffs to beat back the demon horde, at least until you lose it forever.

I know Roguelike elements can be a bit of a deal breaker for some people, but Nightmare Reaper doesn’t go overboard with them. Failing a level just kicks you back to the hospital instead of ending the run, and you’ll also gather currency to permanently power up your protagonist. The systems just aren’t overly punishing, and you feel like you’re always getting stronger as you go.

I need to talk more about the upgrade system though, because it is wild. When you load up the upgrade menu you’re greeted by something that looks suspiciously like the Super Mario Bros 3 world map, and if you have enough money you can play one of the 2d platforming levels that will upgrade a stat. The platforming is very basic (you can do a single jump and nothing else) but it’s a fun change of pace that I really wasn’t expecting in a retro FPS.

I wasn’t sure how much I’d appreciate the old school DOOM aesthetic of Nightmare Reaper, but they really captured those pixely monsters and sinister stylings. The best visual moment is when you die, because your character just stares at her bloody hands until they revert to normal and she wakes up in her room. It’s just a nice touch, and thematically it really works.

I’ve got a lot of good things to say about Nightmare Reaper, but it has a fair amount of issues too. Perhaps the biggest of these is how dark so many of the early environments are. Even with the brightness on the Switch turned up to full there were rooms where I couldn’t see where I was going, which obviously isn’t ideal.

There are some issues with the balance of the game too, especially when you spawn into a level. On an early stage I only had a knife to keep myself alive, and the first room had an enemy that was way too tough to take down with a flimsy butter knife and I died immediately. There are also some rooms with traps that just decimate you with hundreds of flaming orbs until you can deactivate them, and they aren’t fun to deal with and usually end in disaster.

Nightmare Reaper is a great FPS Roguelike, with fast paced gameplay and a whole host of weird and wonderful weapons. The environments can be a little dark and the balance is lacking, but it’s hard to get too upset about it when you’re throwing ninja stars at zombies.

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The premise of LEGO 2K Drive’s main campaign is pretty simple: take part in various competitions with the goal of conquering each area’s Grand Brick Arena tournament. You’ll participate in these races to earn a checkered flag, and when you’ve got enough, it’s time for the big one. Each race sees you try and defeat a rival with a somewhat humorous name and story, and while the act of racing is great thanks to the fine handling, your opponents tend to stay at your throats until the finish line.

Even when you’ve stuck to every corner with precision, made full use of your boosts, and blown opponents sky high with your power-ups, it sometimes feels like it’s for naught. You don’t feel rewarded for out-driving opponents as you would in other kart racers, and sometimes you can lose first position at the last hurdle through no fault of your own. Despite this issue, I loved the racing itself. While you can harness the ability to drift, there’s also a quick turn option that helps navigate some of the tighter corners.

Normal turning is sluggish, so making use of both drifting and sharp turning is vital. One of the coolest features of LEGO 2K Drive is the ability to seamlessly transition between off-road, open road, and boats. Whether exploring the world or in a race, your vehicle will automatically change depending on the terrain. Flying off a hillside and landing into the water below doesn’t mean you’ll crash and have to start over. Instead, you’ll transition to another vehicle and just keep on racing. You can also make use of a speed boost which is really handy, with the gauge built up faster by crashing into things.

While competitive racing is the main draw, there’s still lots to do while exploring. It feels as though Visual Concepts have taken a page out of Forza Horizon‘s book, as there are various challenges littered across the map. They’re quick to enter and provide a slew of challenges, such as beating a certain time or getting the most air following a jump, all rewarding you with XP to level up or cash. There are side quests that can be undertaken to unlock various customisable stuff, along with new cars and other rewards.

Tons of collectibles are scattered across the world as well, giving you plenty to do once the story is over. LEGO 2K Drive also has minigames to participate in, from saving villagers from zombie cowboys that eat up your vehicles to blowing up aliens, and there’s even a Squid Game-inspired red light green light challenge. There’s a lot of content here, and if you love how it feels to drive, then all this content will provide loads of optional stuff to do while trying to become the best racer around.

One of the best features of LEGO 2K Drive is the ability to fully build a car of your own from scratch. Brick-by-brick, you’re free to build cars you unlock or ones from your own imagination, and it’s a great feature that rewards you for creativity. Racing around in your own invention is pretty cool, and it’s one element that has been missing from a lot of TT Games’ LEGO entries. You can build various loadouts of cars and boats from unlocked vehicles or creations, and all have different stats, allowing you to select various loadouts depending on where your focus is.

LEGO 2K Drive is for everyone. While it definitely feels like it’s aimed more at kids, there’s a satisfying gameplay loop for older players as well. The creative side of it will definitely appeal to lifelong LEGO fans, especially when you get to read various manuals to help build pre-existing creations, and the wealth of side content is impressive. The handling is tight, but the more competitive aspects such as power-ups and one-upping the opposition could still do with a little work. It’s a solid starting point if it’s to be a franchise for the future, and even though the humour isn’t as witty as other LEGO games, I still raised a smile every now and again.

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The heart-warming and emotional tale of Tin Hearts follows an inventor called Albert Butterworth. Set in Victorian times, it follows his life as an inventor along with both his wife and young daughter. Although it starts off relatively sweet and happy, the fantastic score (composed by the talented Matthew Chastney) has a sense of foreboding filled with bittersweet and melancholic melodies. At a point in the story, you start to see where Albert’s journey is heading, and without spoiling anything, I’d suggest you grab the tissues.

Tin Hearts’ story is compelling and poignant, helped by the wonderful music, but it is the creativity in its puzzles that provide a lot of its charm. Each stage takes part in a particular place, be it your daughter’s bedroom, the garden, or basement, and new ideas are introduced throughout. You guide a select number of toy soldiers from the box they begin in and to a doorway somewhere in the room. The soldiers cannot deviate alone, so you must place toy blocks in their path to change their direction.

Later in the story, you can take charge of a sole toy soldier and move them around freely to help you get to the doorway at the end, but you’ll need to create a safe space for the other soldiers who are moving around on their own. You’ll be able to use toy canons to shoot down airships or ladders; fly across large areas thanks to pinwheels and fans; bounce on toy drums; and move toy trains that have blocks and drums attached to them, adding to the variety and complexity of the levels. Further gadgets and contraptions become available, too, but I won’t spoil them here, however, get ready to harness that electricity!

There’re different ways to reach your goal, along with secrets and achievements that allow you to replay in order to find them all. Some of the levels are designed across huge spaces, but it’s rarely frustrating thanks to the help you’re given along the way. You’ll unlock the ability to pause, which is a great tool as it’ll show you the soldier’s future path, letting you plan ahead and see where they’ll end up moving to within reason. Forgetting to pause or losing track of your soldier’s movements may happen, but you can rewind back and start from wherever you want.

This help doesn’t make Tin Hearts easy at all. Levels are still a challenge, especially later down the line, but they’re a gift that let you enjoy the story without getting annoyed by the difficulty of the puzzles. As you progress, you’ll unlock memories of Albert’s story, letting you view moments that happened in the room you’re in, or hear letters that have been sent by people that play a role in your family’s fate. I know I’ve mentioned the music already, but it’s such a beautifully written soundtrack, constantly supporting the emotional weight of the story.

As Albert is known as a fantastic inventor, so too should Rogue Sun be for their puzzles. There’re always new ideas added, whether in a new gadget being given to you, or fancy new ways to solve a puzzle. My only issue is that some of the viewpoints are awkward, and moving or aiming the canon and pinwheels can be tricky and slow. Despite this, Tin Hearts manages to become such a pleasant game, and the need to complete a puzzle to get to the next story beat becomes a constant goal. I fell in love with it instantly, and I never wanted it to end, despite shedding a tear or two.

Tin Hearts is inventive in its puzzle designs, and the visuals are brimming with colour and creativity. The music is excellent, and it constantly gets better the more it goes on. I rarely struggled yet was always challenged with each new stage, and despite some awkward camera angles and controls, I never wanted to put the controller down. Story will always be paramount in my ideal game, and Rogue Sun has delivered one that hits all the right notes, telling a moving tale of love and family.

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The concept is certainly similar. In the main scenario (for there are now three to choose from) your colony ship, the titular Alien Dawn, crash lands on a distant world and there are, initially, only four survivors. Whereas RimWorld let’s you choose from a selection of individuals with randomised personality traits, skills, and attitudes, Stranded lets you select from a remade roster of well over 20, with a huge spread of stats. Picking survivors with skills like Cooking, Construction, Intellect, and Combat make your life easier, but you’ll never cover all the bases.

For example, if you leave the difficulty settings alone and plumb for a random seed (the cipher by which your randomised starting location is chosen), not having a qualified healer is going to really hurt you. Likewise, come winter you’ll need a tailor to make better clothes for everyone. You might also need a competent farmer to grow crops, a crafter to make weapons and armour, etc. Everything matters, even down to picking someone with a musical talent who can keep everyone’s hopes up. No survivor is useless, but some are much more essential to a mission than others.

You can set different parameters, of course. You can opt to crash on a desert planet that suffers extremes of temperature, or switch on game rules which make everyone happier, remove the threat of alien attacks, or increase the number of survivors you can add to your group. Periodically while scavenging the spaceship debris or heading out on expedition you might happen upon a randomised Survivor who you can welcome into your camp. They’ll come with their own benefits and issues, but ultimately will always be another mouth to feed.

Of course, that’s not always an issue for long. There’s a lot of ways to die in Stranded: Alien Dawn. On default mode you’ll be attacked now and then by hordes of giant beetles and, later, huge scorpions. Building defences like walls, watchtowers, and turrets will hold them back, and later you can craft actual mechs and robots. But even if you disable these attacks, you can have people killed by disease, animals that attack in self defence, freak weather conditions, and so on. And you can’t replace people. It’s possible to eventually have just one survivor left to do everything, at which point you’re pretty much doomed.

Keeping people alive is, unsurprisingly, about developing routines. Someone needs to plant seeds and harvest crops, someone needs to cook, and repair damage caused by thunderstorms, animal attacks, and falling space debris. Someone else needs to be responsible for crafting, hunting, defending the colony. You can micromanage these activities, directing each survivor individually, or assign specific tasks to the survivor most suited to them. Likewise, you can set working, sleeping, relaxing, and hobby times for each person.

Certain personalities will clash, others will flourish. Some of the survivors have pre-determined relationships. There’s a trio of sisters for example, a few married couples, parents and their grown-up children. These relationships determine how the characters care for one another, how quickly they comfort a survivor on the verge of a meltdown. And you’ll need to move quickly yourself if this happens. Each survivor has a task they are interested in, which improves their happiness more quickly and allows them to level faster, and some have things they will flat out refuse to do even if their life depends on it.

They can venture as far as you’re prepared to send them for the sake of exploration and resource gathering, but living off the land won’t last long. You’ll need to establish a camp, farm land, perhaps tame and raise animals. The amount of crafting options is fairly staggering, as you research and unlock more and more workstations and methods of producing food and supplies. Eventually it’s absolutely possible to build everyone their own house with working electricity, and establish a little village protected by turrets and mechs, but that will take some considerable time and investment.

Should you desire a different challenge, you can select one of the other scenarios. One requires you to create a trading outpost lucrative enough to buy the planet you’re on; the military scenario allows you to take up to 6 survivors on a mission to establish a new relay on a distant world. The base gameplay is always roughly the same, but the end goal changes the way you approach the challenge before you.

Hopefully there will be new biomes introduced later. At the moment it’s limited to a fairly clement valley that will only really change in winter, or a desert world. It would also be nice to see a different type of enemy as opposed to giant bug swarms, but this is a survival sim with a thoroughly addictive gameplay loop. It borrows heavily from RimWorld and, indeed, The Sims, but Stranded: Alien Dawn meshes the borrowed elements together into something that feels both unique and immensely rewarding to play.

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As a custom made witch you’re tasked with finding a way to get rid of the pesky miasma that’s destroying all the farmland. Armed with magical powers and your charming familiar Huckleberry the cat, you set off to the edge of the miasma to set up a farm and do a bit of dangerous exploring into the sinister infected land.

Before you get to do any of the saving the day, you’ll need to set up a base camp and have your kitty companion teach you how to farm. It’s not particularly tricky to grow and harvest those veggies, you plant a sapling into some fertile soil, give it a little water and then after a couple of days you can manually pluck off any fruit or veg from the plant. At least that’s how the suckers do it, the rest of us use magic.

You see you can channel your magic through a crop to make it grow instantly, which as you can imagine is a pretty handy skill for a farmer to have. If you overdo it with the magic though the plant will blither and stop producing delicious goodies. It’s an interesting system in theory with some risk and reward to dabble in, but once you realize that the sweet spot of channelling twice works in almost all situations then some of the excitement is lost.

There are a couple of aspects of farming that just take too long as well. Moving your cursor around the plant to harvest any crops is unnecessarily cumbersome, and channelling is a chore too. To channel your magic into some corn or an apple tree you have to move your cursor slowly over orbs that surround the plant, and it just feels needlessly sluggish.

You’ll need the food from the plants to fill your belly, health and mana though, so it’s certainly a worthy cause. Hunger goes down pretty damn quickly and once it’s fully drained your health is next, so keeping that belly topped up is key. Once you’ve got a grill though the meals keep hunger locked up till lunch, and it’s not too big of an issue.

Another important cause in Homestead Arcana is upgrading your camp, which you’ll need some materials to do. You’d think this would involve some sort of chopping or mining, but all the parts you need grow on plants too so you’ll just be doing more plucking. I’ll admit when I first saw a plant growing metal ore I thought it was a novel idea, but eventually you realise that it just means there are less things to keep you interested in the game.

There are only so many materials that you can find in the area around your farm, and eventually you’ll have to take that first trip into the miasma. Aided by a plague doctor mask, you’re able to survive for a few minutes (which can be upgraded later on) in this dangerous environment. The miasma has a whole host of materials and recipes to find at the farms that were abandoned within, as well as monsters you’ll need to avoid if you want to keep your goodies. Eventually it becomes clear that with the right sort of fertilizer you’ll be able to push back this dangerous toxin and restore the world to its former glory, so that’s exactly what you start doing.

Alongside the main quest, you also get side objectives in the mail which can provide you with items and cash to spend at the merchant. Some of the handiest upgrades come at the cost of a good chunk of silver, so making the best items to sell for a tidy profit and completing the tasks you’re given is key if you want to move on up in the world.

It’s worth mentioning the performance issues I experienced when playing Homestead Arcana. On the Xbox Series S this colourful farming game has some pretty significant issues with the framerate (particularly when in the miasma). I also struggled to get the game to run without crashing and generally running poorly on Steam Deck (which admittedly can’t really be held against the game, but is worth keeping in mind if you want to do some farming on the go).

Homestead Arcana looks lovely and has some good ideas, but is ultimately just a bit of a slog to play. The farming takes so much longer than it needs to (whether you use magic or not), there’s a lack of interesting things to do, and it has some technical issues on Series S. In a marketplace that’s currently packed full of farming games, it’s just not one I could comfortably recommend right now.

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The competition was stripped of its world championship status in 1977 because of the sheer number of deaths, and now racers participate because they want to, not because it is a part of winning a title. As high as these risks are, and as punishing as the courses can be, people still participate. Whether it’s down to the thrill of the race, bragging rights, or pure unadulterated passion for the sport, RaceWard has encapsulated this world renowned TT in all its glory, laid bare for players to see. From the moment you’re let loose on the island, the dangers present themselves, and the adrenaline is what kept me so enamoured by it.

Handling in TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 3 is superb, but the learning curve takes time to master. It feels like you’re handling something both delicate and powerful, and managing the high speeds on the longer stretches with sharp turns amid dense woodlands and busy streets is no easy task. Bikes are weighty, and every turn requires precision and careful consideration so as not to cause an unnecessary crash. The animations of when you do clip something, or miscalculate manoeuvring and fly into the scenery are brutal, highlight just how fragile it can feel when racing.

When you do start to become familiar with the handling and the layouts of the courses, it’s very rewarding. It took a good few hours to balance the speed and power of the bikes, but when you’re going so fast aware of the dangers, yet are still managing to stay on your wheels, it’s one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve had in a racing game. Sometimes it can be a little too sensitive, especially when riding over the edge of a muddy embankment or some gravel, causing you to almost lose control and even fall off, but it will start to click. Learning the nuances of the courses and the different bikes is thoroughly enjoyable.

TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 3 gives you a ton of freedom to explore the island when not racing, allowing you to get familiar with every road, straight, and chicane. While the visuals aren’t as impressive as other racers, there’s been a lot of detail put in to recreating the Isle of Man. Truth be told, you don’t have a lot of time to enjoy the scenery anyway, given you’re so focused on trying not to fall off your bike. As you do explore the open roads and participate in various time trials and races, the sound design is fantastic, especially with how the DualSense has been used on PlayStation 5.

The throttle roars through the controller’s speaker, and the vibrations when speeding across the terrain can be felt in the palm of your hands, helping to immerse you in the thrills of competition. Every gear change feels like a pounding heartbeat, and the power of the bikes connect deeply with you as you’re playing. It’s yet another step in making you aware of both the excitement and the dangers of the TT, while showcasing the improvements made on the previous entry in the series. A fair amount of work has gone into making players aware of the competition and giving them enough to do in the process.

As you make your way across the island, there’re various icons that represent something for you to do. You can participate in either the Supersport or Superbike 2022 Season, and once you’ve decided if you want to race with a lighter or more powerful bike, you’re free to participate in a variety of challenges. Face-Offs see you race against a single component; Time Attacks give you the opportunity to beat a set time; Temporary Challenges don’t last forever, but give you another opportunity to set your best time; and Custom Events created by you or others can be undertaken as well. On top of these are the unofficial qualifiers and race events that make up your season until you’re ready to go for the iconic race itself.

The island is also filled with Discovery Points that provide background to the Isle of Man TT and its famous location as well, celebrating the rich history of the event. There’s plenty to do in TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 3, and you’re rewarded for you victories and achievements, allowing to upgrade your bike’s components such as the chassis, suspension, and engine, increase or decrease the amount of fuel in the tank, and more. Having a better bike means a higher chance of success, and the reward loop is as satisfying as it gets.

TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 3 is both brutal and thrilling, highlighting the dangers of the races you’ll find on the island whilst giving you one hell of a racing experience. It is difficult to begin with, and even after getting familiar with the gameplay, it still has frustrating moments, such as spending over 20 minutes in a Time Attack only to fail to beat the time. You’re putting in a lot of time into certain events because of the distance they cover, however, practice leads to success, and as you start to get better, there are few racers out there that make you feel as good as this.

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