The final boss of Remnant 2 is Annihilation, a two-phase fights that’s noticeably tougher than anything you will have faced before it. It’s so tough that we recommend facing it solo, as the increased HP in co-op makes it incredibly hard. You’ll face it in Root Earth after surviving a gauntlet of bosses and Root hounds, and it will take everything you have. Read on for our guide to beating Annihilation, the final boss of Remnant 2.

The boss arena – phase one

You’ll face Annihilation initially in a large space with a glowing red hole in the centre. There are glowing circles all around the floor which will explode if you stay in them too long – so don’t. Other than that, there’s nothing remarkable about the space – oh, and there’s absolutely no cover.

Annihilation’s attacks – phase one

The boss resembles a massive Root dragon and will spend the entirety of phase one airborne. He’s massive, sure, but also hard to target because he often swoops above you. He has a ton of different attacks, and learning the tells is essential. There are so many, we’ve listed them below:

Sword slam: Annihilation will bring his huge sowrd down on the ground, dealing massive damage. It’s quite easy to dodge, but it can catch you by surprise because he sometimes initiates it from som distance away, which is disorienting.

Sword drag: Holding the hilt two-handed, he’ll drag the sword through the ground towards you. It does massive damage and can stagger or knowck you down, so time it right and dodge it.

Energy pulse: Immediately after the sword drag he will always, without fail, trigger a red energy pulse, There’s a high-pitched noise accompanying it, so dodge when you hear it. You may not see it, as he’ll usually be behind you after the sword drag.

Sword thrust: Annihilation will raise his sword and plunge it into the ground, dealing huge AoE damage and knocking you down. He does this twice.

Root grab: He’ll either follow the sword thrust with a root grab or a barrage of energy rings. If it’s the root grab, you’ll know because he will twist his sword in the ground. Roots will burst up where you are and you must dodge at the precise moment, or else mash the prompted button to break free.

Double sword sweep: After the root grab he’ll follow up with a combo of one sweep, and then a second which always has a moment of hang, making it super hard to dodge.

Energy rings: Sometimes after the Sword thrust, he’ll conjure a load of glowing energy rings. They’ll pusle for a while, and you need to destroy them. After e few moments they’ll glow and fly towards you, which is enough to one-shot you even if you’re running 160 health and 115 armour.

You must learn to dodge these attacks if you want to survive phase one. There are few things you can do to counter him, except keep shooting between his attacks. On Survivor mode he isn’t a bullet sponge, but his damage output is no joke. Keep shooting his head, which is his weak spot. He doesn’t give you much time to heal or reload. Any items you can equip that speed up consumable use are essential, and bring ammo packs with you as it’s very hard to scoop up pickups during the fight.

The boss arena – phase two

Phase two of this fight is a nightmare. Not only are you locked in a much, much smaller space, but the layout and aesthetic are incredibly disorienting. There are constant flashing lights, and you can be afflicted with Malware, which disrupts your vision and restricts skill and mod use.

Annihilation’s attacks – phase two

As with phase one, he will begin with a sword slam. It will flash red where the sword is going, so dodge as soon as it does. You’ll have a split second to move after transitioning to the new arena. It will be followed by a sweep of his sword across the screen, preceeded by a high-pitched sword schwing to help you dodge.

When he raises up and the ground flashes yellow, dodge instantly, or you’ll be staggered or knocked down and take a massive hit of the Malware Blight. He usually follows with another sword sweep, and then a grid of red crosses will appear. Duck under this as it zooms towards you. Keep shooting his head, and he’ll begin to glitch.

Now when he attacks the arena will shift back to phase one, and his sword sweep will become the Double Sword Sweep. You must be quick to dodge here. From now through the fight, he will glitch back and forth between arenas, always right as he attacks, so learning the pattern is essential to survival. Eventually in the phase two arena he will raise up and conjure a load of glowing energy rings. You must destroy these before focusing on him, as they will explode and kill you instantly.

Now repeat the dodges and only fire when you’re clear to. Healing and reloading are incredibly risky in this fight, so try not to get caught mid-heal.

The boss arena – phase three

Phase three isn’t a full phase. Annihilation will come back to life for one last scare, and all you need to do is avoid the Root hounds and stay alive. He has no health bar here, so just ride it out until the cutscene kicks in.

Well done, you’ve beaten Annihilation, the final boss of Remnant 2. Collect your Broken Compass (for the Explorer Archetype), Forgotten Memory crafting material, and Scholar Trait card, which increases experience gained.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR REMNANT 2 BOSS GUIDES PAGE

WANT TO FIND MORE ARCHETYPES? CLICK HERE FOR OUR COMPLETE GUIDE

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to play online
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Ward 13 Safe
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Losomn Asylum safe

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The Primogenitor in Remnant 2 is the boss of the Hatchery Dungeon found in The Phantom Wasteland of N’Erud. You may not encounter it in a standard campaign playthrough, although it may sometimes be thr route you need to take to collect one of the Seeker’s Keys and to reach the Timeless Horizon area. It’s a pretty tough fight, especially early on, but luckily we’ve taken it down. Read on for our guide to defeating the Primogenitor in Remnant 2.

The boss arena

The Primogenitor is found in the deepest area of the Hatchery, surrounded by alien space crabs. The boss itself is remarkably small compared to other bosses in Remnant 2, and is actually a glowing blue space crab smaller than the Handler’s dog. However, the arena is full of giant creatures resembling Tardigrades, which it will occasionally assume control of. This makes the whole arena incredibly dangerous, especially if you roll off the main platform and find yourself in the more confined space below. If you do, climb back up and reposition yourself near a wall.

The Primogenitor’s attacks

While in control of one of its huge flying hosts, the Primogenitor will spit balls of cursed matter at you, inflicting Curse Blight if you stand around too long. It can’t be harmed in this state, and all you’ll do is kill the host. This is necessary though, as it will force the Primogenitor out. Once loose, it will attack you directly by leaping at you like a facehugger from Aliens. If it latches on it will deal damage and knock you down.

It will also spawn an absolute ton of adds, all small versions of the space crabs you’ve been fighting to get here. They will jump on you, slowing you and inflicting Curse build-up. Roll to remove them. Ideally you need an automatic weapon with a decent sized mag, or a heavy melee weapon. Clear them out, keep moving, and focus on the boss’s host to force it out.

It’s a bug hunt

Once the Primogenitor is loose, focus all your fire on it. It’s very fast, very small, and so anything that sprays or deals AoE damage is handy. Fire works incredibly well against the Primogenitor and its adds. If you’re inflicted with Curse, remove it quickly as it will remove a chunk of your health bar.

The boss doesn’t have a great deal of health, but it’s an incredibly annoying fight nonetheless. Keep moving and swatting the bugs, and you’ll evenutally defeat it, earning a Trait point and the Cracked Shell crafting material.

There you go, now you know how to take down the Primogenitor in Remnant 2.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR REMNANT 2 BOSS GUIDES PAGE

WANT TO FIND MORE ARCHETYPES? CLICK HERE FOR OUR COMPLETE GUIDE

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to play online
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Ward 13 Safe
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Losomn Asylum safe

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Remnant 2 is the kind of game that aims to cater to everyone’s playstyle, whether you want to push the DPS, heal your teammates, or just forge your path alone through its various post-apocalyptic worlds. Primarily, it does this with Archetypes, classes that decide your starting gear and form the backbone of any build. These character classes can completely change the way you play and prioritise certain items. One of the best in the game is the Gunslinger, a ranged DPS class that focuses on ammo reserves and increased rate of fire. Read on to find out how to unlock the Gunslinger Archetype in Remnant 2.

Remnant 2 | How to find the Gunslinger Archetype

The quickest way to unlock the Gunslinger Archetype is to pre-order Remnant 2. However, while this gives access as a starting Archetype, you will still need to unlock it if you started with one of the others. And while it’s technically very easy, it does take a while.

First you’ll need to finish the first world in your campaign, which means killing the first world boss and being transported to the Labyrinth. Once you’ve done that, head back to Ward 13 and go talk to Mudtooth. You’ll find him playing chess with Reggie. Now you need to get him to tell stories – and we mean all of his stories. He has around a dozen, and you’ll need to keep asking him to tell more until he says he’s run out. This takes a long, long time, even if you skip through them. Eventually he’ll just run out.

Now you need to go and play. He wouldn’t tell us any more stories until we finished our third world boss, at which point he opened up again to tell a few more. It takes less time to exhaust him than before, and when he finishes he’ll give you a Rusty Cylinder for being a good listener. Take this up to Wallace with 1500 scrap and 10 Lumenite Crystals to receive the Iron Cylinder. Equip it to unlock the Gunslinger Archetype.

What is the Gunslinger Archetype?

As the name suggests, this Archetype is all about the shooting. It focuses on sustained DPS, team ammunition conservation, and quick, hard damage when necessary. It’s also ridiculously cool, the stylish High Noon Duds gear allowing you to live out all your Wild West fantasies. Well, most of them.

It’s incredibly effective when paired with the Hunter Archetype once you can slot two, as the combination of high damage, range, fire rate and extra ammo makes for a lethal cocktail.

The Gunslinger also has a set of intrinsic perks that boost their abilities, as follows:

Prime Perk: Loaded
When activating any Gunslinger skill, both weapons are instantly reloaded, and gain infinite ammo for 5 seconds.

Skill 1: Quick Draw
Pull out your trusty side piece and unload up to 6 Critical Shots from the hip. Each shot deals 85.5 base damage and double Stagger value.

Press to instantly fire towards all enemies in view within 25m. Upon release, rounds will be divided equally among targets. Hold and release to manually aim and fire one single powerful shot on release.

Skill 2: Sidewinder
Calls upon the power of the Desert Sidewinder snake to increase ADS movement speed and Draw/Swap speed by 50%. Cycling weapons will automatically reload incoming firearms. Lasts 12 seconds.

Skill 3: Bulletstorm
Unleashes the full power and speed of the Gunslinger. Increases Fire Rate by 20% and Reload Speed by 50% for all ranged weapons. Lasts 20 seconds.

Single shot weapons become fully automatic. Kills instantly reload the current weapon. Instead of becoming fully automatic, bows and crossbows gain 15% Critical Chance and 50% increased Projectile Speed.

The Gunslinger also comes with the Ammo Reserves Trait card that increases your ammo reserves, naturally.

Swift Shot: Gain 6% Fire Rate and 10% Ranged Damage. Increases with Gunslinger level.

Posse Up: Ammo pickups award 20% additional ammo per player with the bonus split evenly among teammates.

Quick Hands: Firearms gain 10% Reload Speed.

Sleight of Hand: Using a Relic reloads equipped Firearm.

And now you know how to unlock the Gunslinger Archetype in Remnant 2. Why not check out the rest of our Remnant 2 guides while you’re here, including how to unlock the Explorer Archetype. If you’re struggling with a particular boss, check out our Remnant 2 Boss Guides for help.

WANT TO FIND MORE ARCHETYPES? CLICK HERE FOR OUR COMPLETE GUIDE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR REMNANT 2 BOSS GUIDES PAGE

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to play online
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Ward 13 Safe
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Losomn Asylum safe

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One of Remnant 2’s biggest strength is its gameplay diversity. Not only are the Campaign and Adventure Modes procedurally generated each time you start – meaning different bosses, items, and biomes every time – but the character builds are massively diverse. This is in part thanks to the variety of Archetypes – character classes that completely change the way you play and prioritise certain items. One of the coolest in the game is the Engineer, a powerful offensive class. Read on to find out how to unlock the Engineer Archetype in Remnant 2.

Remnant 2 | How to find the Engineer Archetype

The Engineer Archetype can be found in The Eon Vault area of N’Erud. You gain access to The Eon Vault while playing through the N’Erud story from the starting point of The Forgotten Prison. If you start N’Erud at the Seeker’s Rest starting point, you can find the Engineer in the Timeless Horizon are. Both are the second open areas of N’Erud’s respective stories.

While you can certainly find the Engineer without it, the Explorer Archetype makes it far easier thanks to the Treasure Finder perk. This highlights items of interest within a certain range with a purple glow. If you activate this ability while strafing the edge of the Eon Vault map, you will eventually spot a purple-outlined body within the poisonous fog.

We equipped everything we had that could reduce Blight build-up before venturing in, and it didn’t make much difference. You have to be very quick, fight through the initial bour of vomiting as your character enters the fog, and reach the body. You’ll find a full set of Engineer Armor on it, but that;s not what you need. Quickly grab the armour and then move past it to a small drop. A yellow pickup will be there – grab this as it’s the Alien Device you need. You will likely die, but that’s fine as long as you snag the pickup.

Now take it to Wallace and he’ll transform it into the Drzyr Caliper for 1500 scrap and 10 Lumenite Crystals.

What is the Engineer Archetype?

The Engineer in Remnant 2 is a damage-focused build that swaps out summoned companions for mounted turrets that they can remove and use as special Heavy Weapons. It’s ideal for soloists when combined with something like Alchemist, Medic, or Challenger as it offers massive offensive damage and high defence.

It’s perks focus on dishing out damage and survivability. We have listed its perks and their effects below:

Prime Perk: High Tech
Holding the Skill button will Overclock a carried or deployed Heavy Weapon. Overclocking grants Infinite Ammo, increased Fire Rate, and a 25% Damage buff for 15 seconds.

Skill 1: Heavy Weapon: Vulcan
Press to deploy a Vulcan Cannon Turret which lasts until its ammo is exhausted. Turrets that can aim will prioritise targets the player aims at. Press Skill again to enable autonomous targeting.

Hold to carry the Heavy Weapon, If Engineer’s Prime Perk is available, this will Overclock the weapon. Double press to reclaim the weapon and return 75% of its remaining ammo.

Heavy Weapon ammo regenerates at a rate of 1.136% per second and a Heavy Weapon can only be deployed if at least 25% of ammo is available.

Skill 2: Heavy Weapon: Flamethrower
Press to deploy a Flamethrower Turret which lasts until its ammo is exhausted. Turrets that can aim will prioritise targets the player aims at. Press Skill again to enable autonomous targeting.

Hold to carry the Heavy Weapon, If Engineer’s Prime Perk is available, this will Overclock the weapon. Double press to reclaim the weapon and return 75% of its remaining ammo.

Heavy Weapon ammo regenerates at a rate of 1.136% per second and a Heavy Weapon can only be deployed if at least 25% of ammo is available.

Skill 3: Heavy Weapon: Impact Cannon
Press to deploy an Impact Cannon Turret which lasts until its ammo is exhausted. Turrets that can aim will prioritise targets the player aims at. Press Skill again to enable autonomous targeting.

Hold to carry the Heavy Weapon, If Engineer’s Prime Perk is available, this will Overclock the weapon. Double press to reclaim the weapon and return 75% of its remaining ammo.

Heavy Weapon ammo regenerates at a rate of 1.136% per second and a Heavy Weapon can only be deployed if at least 25% of ammo is available.

The Engineer also has a set of intrinsic perks that boost its abilities, as follows:

Metalworker: Increases Skill Damage by 5%. Heavy Weapons gain 5% ammo capacity and 2.59% max health.

Magnetic Field: Heavy Weapons grant 15% damage reduction to all allies within 2.5m.

Heavy Mobility: Movement Speed while carrying a Heavy Weapon is increased by 35%.

Surplus: Using a Relic refills 15% of Heavy Weapon Ammo. Bonus is doubled when Heavy Weapon is stowed.

The Engineer also comes with the Fortify Trait card that increases Armor Effectiveness.

And now you know how to unlock the Engineer Archetype in Remnant 2. Why not check out the rest of our Remnant 2 guides while you’re here, including how to unlock the Alchemist Archetype. If you’re struggling with a particular boss, check out our Remnant 2 Boss Guides for help.

WANT TO FIND MORE ARCHETYPES? CLICK HERE FOR OUR COMPLETE GUIDE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR REMNANT 2 BOSS GUIDES PAGE

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to play online
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Ward 13 Safe
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Losomn Asylum safe

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The more we delve into Remnant 2, the more secrets we discover. From armour sets and weapons to puzzles and even secret Archetypes, Gunfire Games’ 3rd-person adventure is heaving with things to find and conundrums to solve. Speaking of Archetypes, how would you like to know how to unlock the Alchemist Archetype in Remnant 2? Read on for the complete guide.

Remnant 2 | How to find the Alchemist Archetype

This one is not only well-hidden; it’s also bloody scary when it happens. In order to find the item you need to unlock the Alchemist class, you need to be in Morrow Parish, in Losomn: Dran. We’ve heard of it happening elsewhere, but in our experience Morrow Parish was where it occurred.

Periodically, you’ll come across huge werewolf-like creatures fighting the Dran in the streets. When you damage them enough, they run away and disappear through small drain culverts with bent bars. If you go up to one of those, there’s a good chance one of the beasts will snatch you and pull you through. When it happens you’ll wake up on a pile of bones and the beast will be lurking nearby.

Kill it, and it will drop an item called a Mysterious Stone. Now take that to Wallace in Ward 13 and swap it for the Philosopher’s Stone. It’ll cost you 1500 scrap and 10 Lumenite Crystals.

What is the Alchemist Archetype?

Like the Medic, the Alchemist is designed for support and works great in a group or alongside a heavy damage Archetype like Hunter or Challenger. It’s skills focus on Vials, which can be smashed to impart buffs. It also comes with the Potency Trait Card that increases consumable duration.

It has some intriguing effects on things like Concoctions, Relic use and other chemical-based mechanics. We’ve listed its skills and perks below:

Prime Perk: Spirited
Alchemist can have 1 additional Concotion buff active.

Skill 1: Vial: Stone Mist
Creates a mysterious cloud that lasts 10 seconds and applies Stoneskin. Press to slam vial on the ground at your feet, hold and release to throw at a target area.

Stoneskin reduces damage by 25%, reduces Stagger by 1, greatly increase Blight build-up decay and makes target immune to Status Effects. Lasts 15 seconds.

Skill 2: Vial: Frenzy Dust
Creates a mysterious vapour cloud that lasts 10 seconds and applies Frenzied. Press to slam vial on the ground at your feet, hold and release to throw at a target area.

Frenzied increases Fire Rate, Reload Speed, and Melee Speed by 20%, and movement speed by 15%. Lasts 15 seconds.

Skill 3: Vial: Elixir of Life
Creates a mysterious vapour cloud that lasts 10 seconds and applies Living Will. Press to slam vial on the ground at your feet, hold and release to throw at a target area.

Living Will grants 5 Health Regen per second, and protects against fatal damage. Can revive downed players. Lasts 20 seconds.

Alchemist also has a set of intrinsic perks that boost their abilities, as follows:

Experimentalist: Using a Relic applies a random buff on the Alchemist for 30 seconds. Cannot be overriden.

Gold to Lead: Picking up scrap has a 15% chance to also award Ammo to the Alchemist.

Panacea: Curative effects apply to all allies within 15m, and grant an additional 15 Resistance.

Liquid Courage: Grants 2,5% increase to all damage. Increases with Alchemist Level.

And now you know how to unlock the Alchemist Archetype in Remnant 2. Why not check out the rest of our Remnant 2 guides while you’re here, including how to unlock the Summoner Archetype. If you’re struggling with a particular boss, check out our Remnant 2 Boss Guides for help.

WANT TO FIND MORE ARCHETYPES? CLICK HERE FOR OUR COMPLETE GUIDE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR REMNANT 2 BOSS GUIDES PAGE

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to play online
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Ward 13 Safe
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Losomn Asylum safe

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The Abomination can be the first main boss in Remnant 2 if you roll the Seeker’s Rest start in N’Erud. You’ll find the seething mass in the Putrid Domain dungeon, but you may have come across smaller versions beforehand in the Phantom Wasteland or Abyssal Rift. It’s not a particularly tough boss, comparatively speaking, but it can be infuriating if you face it early before you have a decent arsenal.

The boss arena

You’ll fight the Abomination in a fairly enclosed area that’s several kinds of gross all at once. It squeezes its bulk through a sewer opening and immediately begins its assault. Because the arena is small, getting some distance can be tricky – especially when it starts spawning adds. There’s a central pillar that allows you some cover if you need to reload or heal.

The Abomination’s attacks

For the first half of its health bar, the Abomination is just a bully. It will roll at you with impressive speed, dealing massive damage. Up close it will perform a combo of three swipes followed by a ground slam that causes Curse build up. It will also occasional hjurl explosive canisters at you that you’ll need to avoid. Periodically, adds will spawn, which can be a pain if you’re solo. A Handler has an advantage here, because your dog can keep the adds busy while you focus on the boss.

In the back half of its health bar the Handler will start using psychic abilities to levitate, shield itself, and throw chunks of debris at you. It will also build up a huge Curse pulse that you can hide from behind the central pillar in the room.

Break its shell

If you look closely, you’ll see that the Abomination is covered in huge metal plates. Shoot these off to uncover explosive canisters embedded in its flesh. Explode these to deal damage and expose pulsating purple weak points you can exploit. Popping the canisters will stagger it, exposing those weak points for a few seconds.

Use the environment!

Try to keep your distance from the Abomination where possible. Weapon Mods like Caltrops and Time Lapse work very well to slow it down. The central pillar in the room is your best friend, especially when the Abomination is airborne. Use it to heal, reload, and just to grab some cover when it starts vibrating and glowing purple.

You’ll also note explosive canisters lodged in the floor. Pop these at the right moment to damage the beast and knock it off-course if it’s mid-roll.

Stay mobile, keep damage consistent and watch your ammo, and you’ll take down the Abomination in Remnant 2 in no time. For beating it, you’ll recieve a Trait Point and a Mutated Growth crafting material.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR REMNANT 2 BOSS GUIDES PAGE

WANT TO FIND MORE ARCHETYPES? CLICK HERE FOR OUR COMPLETE GUIDE

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to play online
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Ward 13 Safe
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Losomn Asylum safe

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Shrewd is a pretty tough Remnant 2 boss that you can stumble upon in the Expanding Glade in Yaesha. He’s an archer that does powerful ranged and melee attacks, spawns adds, and – worst of all – can infect you with Root Rot. But don’t worry, we’re here to tell you exactly how to beat Shrewd in Remnant 2.

The boss arena

Like many boss arenas in Remnant 2, Shrewd fights in a doughnut-shaped area with a central tree that you can use for cover. There are no fall points here, and if you stick close to the tree you should be able to avoid most of his ranged attacks.

Shrewd’s attacks

Shrewd has two primary attacks: first, he’ll stand back on one of the three raised cliff-edges around the arena and hit you with arrows. They have a loud audio-cue when he fires, so use the tree for cover or roll to avoid. He’ll also shoot his arrows into the air, and when they land they’ll create AoE pools of Root Rot.

After a few volleys, he will teleport up close to you. When he does this, get ready to move fast. His melee attacks are swift and devastating. He’ll only hang around for a few combos, and then he will teleport back to a ledge. When he does this, eggs will burst from the ground and you only have a few seconds to destroy them before they spawn adds. Make sure to reload immediately after his melee phase and take the eggs out quickly.

Avoid Root Rot!

The biggest issue with the Shrewd fight is that he will infect you with Root Rot if he hits you multiple times. This is a horrible affliction that reduces your stamina bar and causes you to cough every 10 seconds, interrupting any action you’re performing, including evading or reloading.

Cure it with Oilskin Balm, which you can buy from Reggie in Ward 13 only after you’ve found it in a random chest in Yaesha. Alternatively, Bedel the Vaunnt (the Root-infected Pan you meet when you enter The Forbidden Grove area) sells the Rotward ring for 500 scrap that prevents Root Rot build up.

Move fast, avoid the pools of Root Rot, and take out the eggs as quickly as possible. Shrewd himself is fairly easy to hit when he’s on one of the ledges, but avoid him when he comes close. The Time Lapse weapon mod doesn’t seem to have much effect on him, either, so you’re best off simply evading until he gets bored and buggers off.

And that’s how you beat Shrewd in Remnant 2. His defeat will reward you with a Trait Point and Soul Sliver crafting material.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR REMNANT 2 BOSS GUIDES PAGE

WANT TO FIND MORE ARCHETYPES? CLICK HERE FOR OUR COMPLETE GUIDE

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to play online
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Ward 13 Safe
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Losomn Asylum safe

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Kaeula’s Shadow is a major boss fight in Remnant 2 that you won’t immediately know how to reach. You’ll find her in the Kaeula’s Rest dungeon in Yaesha. She’s a colossal Root-infected beast that can do serious damage and may take a few attempts – especially given how the fight starts. But worry not, for we have the guide to help you beat Kaeula’s Shadow in Remnant 2.

Remnant 2 | How to reach Kaeula’s Shadow

When you enter the Kaeula’s Rest area you’ll soon come to a huge body of water. You can run in it, but some areas are very deep and will slow you down. Push through the area, and you’ll enter the labyrinthine pathways of the dungeon. Here you’ll face ranged enemies and hulking brutes who will hit from a distance and can infect you with Root Rot.

Cure it with Oilskin Balm, which you can buy from Reggie in Ward 13 only after you’ve found it in a random chest in Yaesha. Alternatively, Bedel the Vaunnt (the Root-infected Pan you meet when you enter The Forbidden Grove area) sells the Rotward ring for 500 scrap that prevents Root Rot build up.

Eventually you’ll reach a huge statue with a ring at its base called the Tear of Kaeula. Take it, and then take a deep breath. You’ll be immediately grabbed by a huge tentacle and pulled through the floor, into the area – the body of water you crossed earlier.

The boss arena

The arena is half the fight. Not only are you wading through water, there are occasional deep spots that will severely hamper your movement. There’s also no cover from the boss, so you will need to try to avoid her attacks with well-timed evades.

This is a tough fight, partly because you may not be at full strength when it begins. If you die, you’ll respawn at the area’s first crystal right outside the room.

Kaeula’s Shadow attacks

Kaeula will attack with tentacle slams that deal damage and stagger you, or can knock you down under the water, slowing your recovery. She will occasionally burrow her tentacles, which will burst up below you. After a few minutes, she’ll dig down under the water, and spawn a bunch of tentacles with their own shared health bar. Take them out, avoiding their slam attacks. Be aware that it’s not easy to move in here.

When she resurfaces, Kaeula’s Shadow will be right on you. She will tentacle slam, and when you get some distance she’ll usually sweep her tentacle across the water, creating a wave that will knock you on your butt. Heal when you can, and keep targeting her head and chest with your attacks. When she dies, you’ll receive a Trait Point and the Twilight Dactylus crafting material.

A gift that keeps on giving

You’ll also walk away with the Tear of Kaeula, a ring that grants you two extra Relic uses when equipped. This is essential early on, but it has more than one use. Continue playing and you’ll eventually reach the Far Woods, one of the areas where the Blood Moon can spawn to farm material for the Summoner Archetype.

You’ll eventually come upon a huge glowing tree. The spirit residing within, Meidra, is Kaeula’s sister. Not only does he give you a reward  for answering her questions (we got the Barkskin Trait card for our answers), but she’ll also reward you with a powerful handgun if you give up the ring. Remember, if you don’t have the ring the next time you beat Kaeula’s Shadow, you will receive another copy of it.

So there you go: that’s how you beat Kaeula’s Shadow in Remnant 2.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR REMNANT 2 BOSS GUIDES PAGE

WANT TO FIND MORE ARCHETYPES? CLICK HERE FOR OUR COMPLETE GUIDE

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to play online
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Ward 13 Safe
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Losomn Asylum safe

The post Remnant 2 | How to beat Kaeula’s Shadow appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Remnant 2 has more than its fair share of secrets, but some of the most sought-after items are the keepsakes that Wallace can turn into Engrams – which are in turn used to unlock secret Archetypes. These are whole-new game-changing class kits, all of which can make a massive difference to how you play. We already showed you how to unlock the Summoner Archetype, but what about how to unlock the Explorer Archetype in Remnant 2? Read on to find out.

Remnant 2 | How to find the Explorer Archetype

Unfortunately, this is both very straightforward and very tough. To unlock Explorer, you need the Broken Compass item – and to get that you need to complete Remnant 2’s campaign once. That means beating the incredibly tough final boss and rolling a new campaign or Adventure.

When you do, you’ll find the Broken Compass in your inventory. Take it to Wallace with 1500 scrap and 10 Lumenite Crystals, and he’ll forge the Golden Compass engram for you. Simply equip it to unlock the Explorer Archetype in Remnant 2.

What is the Explorer Archetype?

The Explorer is a heavily utility-based Archetype that works best when combined with others. Starting out as an Explorer (which you can do if you roll a new character after unlocking it) would be particularly tough. It focuses on movement speed and item gathering, rather than straight DPS or survivability.

While it doesn’t offer the insane group support of the Medic or Hunter, and would certainly struggle alone more than, say, the Handler or Summoner, the Explorer is, unsurprisingly, built for exploration. The abilities are as follows:

Prime Perk: Lucky
Grants a 10% chance to spawn additional items and rarer drops when defeating powerful enemies.

Skill 1: Planeswalker
Increases movement speed by 20% and reduces Stamina cost for allies by 80%. Lasts 30 seconds.

Skill 2: Gold Digger
Dig into the ground to spring a fountain that grants a random buff. Fountains last 45 seconds and their buff lasts 15 seconds.

Fountains can grant either: 10% increase to all damage; 15% damage reduction; 1.5 Health Regen per second; or Haste.

Skill 3: Fortune Hunter
Increases the Explorer’s Treasure Sense to reveal special items within 40m for all allies. Lasts 60 seconds.

Explorer also has intrinsic Archetype perks that boost similar abilities, as below:

Scavenger: Pickups increase all damage dealt by 2% per stack for 15 seconds. Additional stacks increase duration up to 60 seconds. Stacks 5 times.

Metal Detector: Increase ammo, currency, and metal drop rate chance for entire party by 10%.

Prospector: Relic fragment discoveries for the Explorer drop at a higher quality.

Self Discovery: Using a Relic instantly fills Scavenger Stacks and prevents stack decay for 15 seconds.

There you go, now you know how to unlock the Explorer Archetype in Remnant 2 and what it does. Why not check out the rest of our Remnant 2 guides while you’re here, including how to unlock the Summoner Archetype. If you’re struggling with a particular boss, check out our Remnant 2 Boss Guides for help.

WANT TO FIND MORE ARCHETYPES? CLICK HERE FOR OUR COMPLETE GUIDE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR REMNANT 2 BOSS GUIDES PAGE

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to play online
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Ward 13 Safe
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Losomn Asylum safe

The post Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Explorer Archetype appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Remnant 2 introduces a lot of new systems and overhauls older ones, meaning some of it can be a little confusing even to veterans of From the Ashes. One new system involves Mutators, which are utterly essential to endgame builds regardless of your Archetype mix.

But how do you use them, where do you get them, and just what the hell do they do? Well, we’ve got you covered with our guide on how to use Mutators in Remnant 2.

What are Mutators?

Mutators in Remnant 2 are like passive mods. They slot into your kit and provide a multitude of different benefits. For example, the Lithely Mutator increases your reload speed based on how many enemies you killed with your current mag. They can drastically affect your builds, or add a little benefit here and there when you need it.

Essentially, they have replaced Armor Set Bonuses meaning you can wear whatever you like while still equipping up to three Mutators for the perks.

Remnant 2 | How do you get Mutators?

There are two main sources for Mutators. The first is to visit Dwell, the Pan vendor in Ward 13. He sells them for scrap and Relic Dust and will occasionally get a new one in. He will also upgrade them for scrap and Corrupted Lumenite, increasing their efficacy.

How do you use Mutators?

Mutators will slot in any weapon except the grey starting weapons. Any that you find or buy will have a Mutator slot; even the melee weapons you find that don’t have a Mod slot, or unique weapons with a fixed Mod slot, will have a Mutator Slot.

There’s no cost to slot one or remove one, though melee weapons can only equip Mutators with melee effects. Once you equip one (and you can have up to three), the effect is always ready to trigger. Some are continuous buffs, others require certain triggers such as a charged melee attack or a reload.

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Summoner Archetype

The post Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Although the five starting Archetypes in Remnant 2, there are also several “secret” Archetypes to be found in the various worlds and dungeons. We stumbled across one in our review playthrough, the Summoner, and in this guide we’ll tell you where to find it, and how to get the Summoner Archetype in Remnant 2.

What is the Summoner Archetype?

As you might have guessed, this class focuses heavily on summoning companions to fight for you and alongside you. It’s most analogous to, say, a Necromancer build, with perks that boost your summon strengths and the “Regrowth” Trait card that increases your health regen for every active summon.

It’s a massive game-changer in terms of gameplay and build composition, too, with an incredibly different skill set and a whole new suite of build options.

Remnant 2 | How to find the Summoner Archetype

So, this may rely on a little RNG. To unlock the Summoner, you’ll need to find the Bloodmoon Altar. For us, it appeared in the Far Woods area of Yaesha, although we’ve also seen it in the Forgotten Grove area, too. It shows up as a blue icon on the map that looks similar to a save crystal.

Of course, you can’t just pick it up. The Altar sells an Old Grimoire, as well as a melee weapon, two rings, an amulet, and the creepy Knotted Bone armour set. But while there’s a cost of scrap, you’ll also need Bloodmoon Essence – and the game gives you no clue how to get it. Oh, and you’ll need a hell of a lot to unlock everything.

How to farm Bloodmoon Essence

You can only obtain Bloodmoon Essence from one source: killing whisps during a Blood Moon. Unfortunately, this sounds easier than it is.

First of all, a Blood Moon is a randomly occurring event that may or may not be active when you warp into the Far Woods. It’s signified by, you guessed it, a massive crimson moon in the sky. When this happens, you’ll need to travel the map looking for glowing whisps in the sky. You can’t miss them, they don’t fly away, and you can’t miss the essence they drop as it tracks to you.

Sadly, though, they are rare. You’ll only find a total of 12 per Blood Moon and they don’t respawn when you rest or die. Once you have twelve, you need to keep travelling to and from Far Woods until a Blood Moon procs again.

The Grimoire costs 15 Bloodmoon Essence, so you’ll need to do it at least twice. The armour is worth having mostly because it’s badass, but also because it has the highest Blight Resistance, which is handy in Yaesha. There’s also a sword which is kind of ignorable, and some jewellery that boosts the strength of your summons.

I have the Grimoire – now what?

Now take it to Wallace in Ward 13 like the other Archetype items. Pay him 1500 scrap and 10 Lumenite Crystals and he’ll unlock the engram that allows you to equip the Summoner Archetype and raise a little army of minions to do your bidding. So now you know how to unlock the Summoner Archetype in Remnant 2.

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons

The post Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Summoner Archetype appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

As with Remnant: From the Ashes, Archetypes determine your starting “class” in Remnant 2 – but to a much greater degree in the sequel. Here, Archetypes form the backbone of your build, each coming with a Prime Perk, a unique Trait, and a spread of Perks and abilities. Initially, you can only choose and equip one, but at a certain point you’ll be able to double up – and that’s where it starts to get really interesting. But how exactly do you unlock a second Archetype in Remnant 2? Read on, and we’ll tell you.

Remnant 2 | How do I choose an Archetype?

First-time players will need to report to a familiar face from the first game when they first reach Ward 13. Little Wallace is all grown up, and he’s able to read fragments of your future, to help determine your path. Which you pick is really up to you, but there are degrees of difficulty here.

The Handler and Medic are arguably the best starting classes. The former has a doggy buddy that can deal damage, take threat, and can be upgraded to heal you and your allies or boost your damage. The latter is, obviously, a healer, and able to regenerate health without needing to use a Relic.

Then there’s the Challenger and Gunslinger, both of whom specialise in very different styles. The Challenger is a brutal tank, built for getting into the thick of it. What makes it tricky is that it requires getting up close to the enemy. The Gunslinger (only unlockable at the start if you preordered) is squishy, and designed to deal damage fast while avoiding direct conflict.

And then the Hunter is arguably the toughest starting Archetype. It takes while to become really good, as the Hunter’s intrinsic Trait simply increases range. You’ll need to stay away from the enemy and deal damage from afar. By the time you’re around level 5 of the Archetype, it starts to become the best damage powerhouse of all five, but it takes a while.

How do I unlock a secondary Archetype?

To unlock the Dual Archetype ability you will first need to spend 10 Trait Points anywhere in your Trait cards. Now you need an engram, an artifact that allows Wallace to unlock a new path for you. You can buy them from the following vendors for 1000 scrap (though you’ll need to find Gunslinger elsewhere):

• Challenger: Buy the Old Metal Tool from Reggie
• Medic: Buy the Medic Pin from Doc Norah
• Handler: Buy the Old Whistle from Mudtooth
• Hunter: But the War Medal from Brabus

Now take the item up to Wallace and pay him 1500 scrap and 10 Lumenite Crystals to convert the item into an engram. You can now equip a second Archetype, which will give you all its perks and abilities, and unlock a new trait card that will be active only when the Archetype is live. You can swap your Prime Archetype, too, but be aware that the Prime Perk is only active on your Primary Archetype.

There are also ways to find other engrams in the game to unlock secret Archetypes, such as the Summoner.

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Summoner Archetype

The post Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

If you want to survive in the harsh worlds of Remnant 2, you’re going to need the best gear you can get. As you can’t upgrade armour and can only boost Mutators and weapons, you’ll be spending a lot of time – and resources – pumping up your arsenal. Here’s how to upgrade weapons in Remnant 2.

First, you’re going to need scrap. Lots of scrap. Secondly, iron. This resource comes in three types in Remnant 2: iron, forged iron, and galvanised iron. Then you’ll need to go visit Rigs in Ward 13. As in From the Ashes, you’ll find him sharing a workshop with McCabe. He’ll upgrade your guns and melee weapons for increasing amounts.

Scrap can be found from defeated enemies and looting chests. While the same can be said of iron, you’ll also see that just lying around the landscape with a bright yellow glow. Hoover up as much as you can, because it never feels like you’ve got enough.

But what about your special, unique weapons? There are actually two ways to upgrade them. You can either take them to Rigs and pay scrap and Lumenite Crystals or you can farm bosses and world zones. Any weapon you find that you already have, or any boss material you collect that McCabe already turned into a weapon will add a +1 modifier to the item.

Not only does this let you save up your Lumenite, but it gives you a reason to go back and replay certain dungeons, and means co-op runs are never a waste of time. Now you know how to upgrade your guns and melee weapons in Remnant 2.

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How long to beat
Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Summoner Archetype

The post Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

I was a little late to the party with Remnant: From the Ashes, and not through a lack of will. I tried and failed to get into it several times around its launch, and it wasn’t until this year that it really made its mark on me. But once I was in, I was all the way in, which set me in great stead for the sequel. Remnant 2 refreshingly drops the subtitle, which you’d assume would be a metaphor for a simpler, more streamlined design. You’d be wrong, though, because Gunfire Games’ difficult second chapter deliberately ups the density, to often quite staggering results.

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.

The term “your mileage will vary” is more apt than ever when considering the runtime of Gunfire Games’ exceptional sequel, Remnant 2. This is a game with potentially endless replayability, even with the diminishing returns that will eventually come from repeat content.

As a sequel to Remnant: From the Ashes, fans will already know roughly what to expect here: procedurally-generated full-sized campaigns, and smaller bite-size Adventures to run random dungeons and uncover countless secrets across a trio of diverse worlds. But if you’re wondering just how long it takes to beat all of it, we’ve got you covered.

Remnant 2: how long to beat?

The primary campaign of Remnant 2 will see you visit a total of five worlds. Two are much smaller than the others and fixed, those being the Labyrinth and the final realm in which you’ll face the main boss of the campaign. The other three worlds come in a random order, and the content within is procedurally generated to quite an insane degree, meaning very few people will have the same dungeons and areas in the same order. There are also multiple story paths through those worlds, too.

Our initial playthrough saw us begin in the futuristic Phantom Wasteland of N’Erud. We then went to Losomn: Fae (one of two potential Losomn rolls), and then to the woodland world of Yaesha. This can be in any order. Discounting time spent in co-op and Adventure Mode, our campaign playthrough clocked in at around 22 hours, though this could be quicker or slower depending on how many bosses you face and which routes you take.

However, to see everything could take more than triple that, especially if you’re looking to uncover every boss, item, and hidden Archetype in the game. We would estimate around 60 – 80 hours to play the campaign multiple times and roll Adventure Mode a few times.

Which factors determine how long it takes to beat?

Lots. Not only is each world procedural, but there are multiple mysteries and puzzles that can eat away at your time. There are many dungeons scattered through each world, all of which hold treasures such as upgrade materials, boss drops, or even just Trait Points to help improve your build.

Playing in co-op elevates the experience, but you’ll only progress the host’s campaign, so you may well play some areas multiple times just to co-op. Factor in that some worlds have random conditions when you warp in that are required to solve puzzles or farm materials, and there’s no way to guarantee whether that will happen.

And finally, difficulty plays a major part. Remnant 2 is more accessible than the first game on Survivor Mode. Higher difficulties are tougher, and some of the bosses are a genuine challenge even on the easiest setting. The final boss, for example, may take multiple attempts even if you’re skilled.

Remnant 2: Can you continue after the campaign?

Yup. Finishing the campaign gives you a fairly ambiguous ending and then just drops you back in Ward 13 with the option to revisit areas you missed or re-roll the campaign, which is essentially New Game + as it scales enemies to match your current power level. Or, of course, you can continue re-rolling Adventure Mode. You keep everything you have unlocked so far on your character, so go nuts.

And there you go, now you know how long it takes to beat Remnant 2.

Why not check out our other Remnant 2 guides:

Remnant 2 | How to use Mutators
Remnant 2 | How to unlock a second Archetype
Remnant 2 | How to upgrade weapons
Remnant 2 | How to unlock the Summoner Archetype

The post Remnant 2 | How long to beat? appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Gunfire Games and Gearbox Publishing have today released a brand new trailer delving into the returning, reworked Hunter Archetype coming to Remnant 2. We’ve already been introduced to the Handler, Medic, Challenger, and Gunslinger, but the Hunter is the ideal Archetype for those who want to dish out damage and buff their teammates while staying out of trouble.

The trailer, shown below, takes a deep dive into the Archetype which has been retooled since its appearance in Remnant: From the Ashes. Hunters focus on long-range, precision with abilities that increase their fire rate, reload speed, accuracy, and ranged damage.

From a skill that marks all targets (even for your teammates) to outright invisibility, the Hunter is built for focused, sustained damage from the back of the crowd. It may not have the survivability of the Challenger, the healing skills of the Medic or the bestest boy companion of the Handler, but the Hunter brings the best ranged DPS of all classes, as well as a multitude of support skills and buffs.

In Remnant: From the Ashes, the Archetypes really only affected your starting gear and stats – in Remnant 2, Archetypes are essential elements that determine how you’ll fight your way through the apocalypse. From starting gear to Archetype Skills and Prime Perks, these classes will form the backbone of your builds.

CHECK IT OUT: Remnant: From the Ashes is still one of the most interesting Soulslikes we’ve had | Replayed

Given the wide variety of weapon types in Remnant: From the Ashes, we can expect some serious variety in Remnant 2, and the Hunter looks set to maximise damage output regardless of which guns you take out into the world to battle the Root.

Remnant 2 is set for release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S and X, and PC on July 22, 2023. You can pre-order now for access to the fifth starting Archetype, the Gunslinger. Check out the official Remnant 2 website for more details.

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I’m not sure how many Invector titles it’ll take before Hello There Games realise that the franchise doesn’t need context. We don’t need a bolted-on campaign to lend an air of forced authenticity to proceedings. It felt weird enough in Aviici Invector when we had to intercut our stirring tribute to the late, great Aviici with a dull yarn about a space pilot looking for chocolate, and now in Invector: Rhythm Galaxy, we’re doing something just as pointless for the sake of a “campaign”.

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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Yet Another Zombie Survivors has a silly name. It’s a name that’s obviously intended to poke fun at the fact it’s blatantly and deliberately aping Zombie Survivors and Vampire Survivors, just as the developers’ previous game Yet Another Zombie Defense did the same with tower defense games. I get it, of course, but it still makes me grind my teeth when I read it. That said, if the clumsy title doesn’t put you off downloading it, you’re in for a bit of a treat if reverse-bullet hell auto-shooters are your thing, because it’s a pretty decent example of the genre.

This is an early access release and so right now it’s knowingly unfinished, but what’s here is very addictive and a lot of fun. It follows the exact template laid down by other auto-shooters, where you move a single character around an isometric environment, focusing on dodging the increasing hordes of enemies while the AI does the blasting. The biggest difference in Yet Another Zombie Survivors is that it puts a lot of little bells and whistles on it.

You have, initially, three classes to choose from. Whether the names are placeholder isn’t clear, but you have ranged assault socialist SWAT, close-quarters fella, Tank, and the lightning-wielding Engineer. You can pick any as your leader, but periodically will be able to rescue two others who’ll just latch to your hip like a needy partner and effectively double your firepower while also increasing your health pool and unlocking new abilities.

These abilities are all on cooldowns and will trigger when it’s over without your input. SWAT has a grenade and helicopter that will swoop in and strafe the zombies; Engineer can drop a shock turret or trigger bursts of electrical damage; Tank can drop mines and summon saw blade drones that spin around your group and dice whatever gets in their way.

I’ve also unlocked Huntress and Ghost. The former is slow and precise and can rain arrows on the horde, while the latter is a melee-focused ninja who’s great at keeping the dead at a safe distance. Well, safer. Which survivors you come across is randomised (there’s also a Medic, and three others who’ll be related during early access), as are your perks. You’ll find chests dotted around that contain a choice of buffs, such as increased health, movement speed, or “Happiness”. I don’t know what Happiness does, but the loading screen tips told me it’s very important.

You’ll also level up at a rate of knots just by slaying out and collecting dropped diamonds, and each level gained gives you a choice of boosts to weapons and abilities, eventually upgrading your guns along the path of, say, pistol-SMG-assault rifle. You unlock more upgrades by hitting murder thresholds, a system which is bugged on my Tank and won’t let me hit it no matter what I do.

Finally, you earn money sporadically, which gives you Upgrade Points you can spend between runs on permanent boosts like more health, increased XP gains, damage resistance, etc. It’s basic stuff, but it’s effective nonetheless, and makes you feel you’re always improving even if you fail a run. And you’ll fail a lot of runs.

What begins with a couple of zombies shambling by who you’ll pop in the head just because they’re there and you might as well, soon becomes a frantic run-and-gun game of zombie tag as the horde surrounds and flows towards you like a big sea of jelly with teeth in. Movement speed boosts become your best friend when you’re met with super-zombies who can charge you, unleash swarms of zombie flies, spit poison, explode, or just run at you with a giant axe. Taking these down rewards you with huge amounts of XP, but they’re seriously tough, especially when you have three or four to deal with at once.

So there’s a level of planning and tactics to it that I wasn’t expecting, such as which upgrades to take first, which trio of slayers to pick, which buffs you choose from every chest you find. While it’s mostly random, there’s still an element of forethought required. It’s not exactly taxing, but it does add an extra dimension to the otherwise mostly mindless fun.

The fact it isn’t pixel art is also fairly refreshing at this stage. Auto-shooters are often incredibly low-effort (which is not the insult it sounds like), with simple art and straightforward mechanics, so thtle fact that Yet Another Zombie Survivors does a little more with the formula should be commended. It’s early days for the title right now, and early access will only see it grow and expand, adding new zones (there’s only one at present) and game modes, new survivors, weapons and, therefore, tactics. Get past the awkward title, and there’s a lot to like here, even at this stage.

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The life of a Jagged Alliance 3 mercenary is, surprisingly, quite close to that of a self-employed domestic plumber. You get up on a Sunday morning, open up your laptop, and you’ve got a job offer. Only instead of cleaning johnnies out of a U-bend, you head to some hot country on the other side of the world and shoot people alongside a bunch of other freelancers you’ve probably never met. And when the contract is up you just punch-out and go home, full of hasty bandaged bullet holes and with pockets full of ammunition and exotic “herbs”. Unless your employer (that’s the player) extends the contract, in which case you just dust off your gun and carry on until the money runs out or your breath does.

Jagged Alliance 3, as you may have guessed, is not a serious war game. It’s a turn-based tactics affair that sees your team of relentlessly mouthy, inexplicably cheerful international trouble-makers swan from place to place, putting bullet holes wherever they see a clean surface and generally saving the world one president-slash-dictator at a time. It doesn’t take itself seriously, which is a good thing, because it makes the jank in the tank much easier to swallow.

Because Jagged Alliance 3 is very janky at times. It bugs out now and then, enemies and mercs glitch, or the AI freaks out and doesn’t follow orders. But worst of all is that the Dreaded Chance-to-Hit Mechanic, also colloquially known as “That Fucking Chance-to-Hit Mechanic” is more of a menace here than it has been in any game since the first XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

How you can be a veteran globe-trotting gun for hire when you couldn’t hit a floor you’re lying down on is anyone’s guess. In the initial stages, the merc you just spent $12000 to recruit for seven days turns up packing precisely one handgun and maybe a pair of pliers or a med kit depending on their “specialty”, and then proceeds to miss any target that isn’t actively French-kissing the barrel of their gun. It wouldn’t be so bad if Jagged Alliance 3 didn’t have so many tools that are supposed to make shooting more accurate.

You can target individual body parts, use free aim, or even spend more Action Points to make the merc bite their tongue and knot their brows and really concentrate super hard – and they can still miss centre-mass from five feet away. It’s arguably the most irritating mechanic in gaming, and the genre has made great moves forward recently (see Gears Tactics and Showgunners, for solid examples). Jagged Alliance 3 isn’t interested in all that modern convenience, though: if the wind blows or a fly lands on a blade of grass nearby, the shot will spoon off into the bushes. And because of friendly fire, I had one merc outright downed by a teammate because he was within three feet of the 6ft doorway she was aiming through.

It’s a shame, really, because AI aside, Jagged Alliance 3 is a really fun, very entertaining tactical shooter. A lot of this comes from the mercs themselves. Each is fully voiced – and there’s around 20 of the buggers – and has their own personality. You can take any combination in, or even field two teams, and they’ll all comment on their own actions, your decisions, and events that happen around them. More than this, though, they’ll all talk during the static conversation cutscenes, meaning it feels slightly different when you replay levels with different mercs.

The story campaign is, overall, pretty serviceable. It doesn’t contain many surprises as this is no narrative-heavy adventure, but the plight of the fictional nation of Grand Chien (which I’m pretty sure means “big dog” though my French is rusty) is fairly easy to understand. The president has been kidnapped and the country is on the verge of civil war. So you need to prevent war by murdering all the enemy soldiers before they get the chance to mobilise properly. You do this by interacting with the people, including the loyalists who fight desperately against the evil Legion. While you will have set objectives across a given sector, you’ll also be given side quests that require you to go off the path to explore.

Travel between sectors takes time, which will in turn shave hours off your mercenaries’ contracted terms. In between objectives you can undertake various activities, such as treating your wounded, ordering supplies, or training the locals as militia fighters to defend places you’ve already liberated. This uses up some resources or money, or both, but it’s worth doing to keep your mercs fighting fit and your freed towns in-side.

The more you use each merc the more XP you’ll earn to unlock permanent perks that improve a multitude of different stats and abilities. These perks help shape your gung-ho mercenaries into much more dangerous fighters, and so that initial feeling of being about as much use as a chastity belt made of gummy worms doesn’t last for too long.

While you explore the terrain you can uncover boxes and crates or other lootable items containing body armour, clothing (non cosmetic, sadly), weapons, ammo, tools, bandages and ingredients for medkits and pills. Hitting alt will highlight items you can loot, and looting one will clear out the area immediately for your convenience. You can crouch and use stealth for silent takedown or to rob an area without being seen. Once you are spotted, though, you’ll enter the combat phase.

Here you move your mercs around a grid-based map, using full and half cover, overwatch fields of fire, explosives, special abilities and outright attacks. It’s very similar to any other TBT shooter, and fans of the genre won’t have any problems getting to grips with the mechanics. You’ll need to be mindful of elevation and distance to target, and whether or not it’s worth using a grenade to save a single mercenary. That said, the enemy AI isn’t great and they’ll often leave themselves open to flanking, or cluster in convenient grenade-ready groups.

Graphically, Jagged Alliance 3 is pretty enough but rarely spectacular. I suffered a little slow-down here and there during combat and I was playing with high settings. There’s a nice attention to detail in environments, and while the enemies are identikit, each merc has a distinct visual personality to set them apart.

You can play the entire game in online co-op mode if you choose, taking control of two or more mercs each, to coordinate actions, flank, and harry the enemy. You can’t explore separate map sectors or anything, but you can vary your tactics to tackle a given situation. The campaign is fully playable in coop, and both players can take part in conversations with NPCs.

There’s a lot to unpack and a lot to like in Jagged Alliance 3. The merc management system is solid, the gear system works very well, and it’s fun helping to manage and protect towns you’ve liberated from the enemy. The combat, too, can be very satisfying, particularly when you’ve been around a while and your mercs are well kitted-out and more likely to hit a wall from the inside. But the inconsistent AI and the awful chance-to-hit can occasionally threaten to unseat the whole experience. That it remains in the saddle is testament to how playable and likable Jagged Alliance 3 is.

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Even as a fairly social person I can respect the need for some privacy away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of humanity. In fact, part of what puts me off many online survival games like Ark: Survival Evolved and Rust is the presence of other people. I’d rather not be ganked or griefed while I’m trying to punch trees in peace. Which is why Enshrouded, the new medieval survival game from Keen Games, has my attention. There are no other players to wreck your rock piles while you’re out picking flowers and murdering rabbits. Oh, and you can dig a massive hole and build your entire base underground.

We recently had the chance to attend a hands-off presentation of Enshrouded, where we were shown around an hour of gameplay and were able to field questions afterwards. Taking inspiration from both Minecraft and Breath of the Wild, Enshrouded is an ambitious open world adventure set in a fantasy land that has been overtaken by a dense magical fog. Monsters and beasts lurk within the mist, which means you’ll need to make repeat excursions into the unknown if you want to get your hands on the best gear and materials.

The idea, as with most games like this (the developers cited Valheim as a major inspiration, too) is to allow you to build a base any way you like, whether it’s a thriving hub of industry where you can craft all day long or a menacing fortress from which to survey the lands below you. But in Enshrouded, you can opt to carve out chunks of the landscape and build your base in a cave.

During the Q&A, Antony Christoulaki (Enshrouded’s Creative Director and co-founder of Keen Games) confirmed that “You can terraform anywhere in the world with your pickaxe… but to use the advanced building tools you have to settle down with a base.” But your base is defined by where you build your Flame Altar, and you can put that wherever you like.

Obviously this in itself is cool. You can build vertically to a frankly insane depth, and there are no physics governing what remains above. So yes, you can also carve out a floating island as long as you can get to it (luckily you can also build pre-fab staircases). Getting down quickly, though, won’t be an issue. You have a wingsuit functionally similar to Breath of the Wild’s paraglider, and a stamina meter that will burn away as you climb, run or swim. Interestingly, there’s no carrying weight. Antony said, “We had that conversation and decided we didn’t want to make a puzzle out of your inventory – which can also be fun. But we left it for now as it would add another layer of balancing to deal with.” Again, though, he did say that if the community asks for it, never say never, essentially.

With Enshrouded heading towards early access, it’s nice to hear the Creative Director confirming how open the company is to feedback. Obviously they can’t promise to implement everything the community wants, but knowing that they’ll be going forward with the intent to listen to the players and examine other avenues is very encouraging.

When asked about the possibility of PvP, we were told that, for now, Endhrouded is a PvE/co-op game only. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because there is no PvP, you can feel secure leaving your base unguarded while you head out on expeditions, too. You’ll be able to find summoning items that let you summon permanent NPCs into your base such as a blacksmith. You can bring them recipes which don’t just require materials, but also improved conditions. An example we saw was a blacksmith who would only craft certain armour if you built him a shelter to work in. It encourages the building of a functional base that you can populate, rather than just a collection of workbenches and research tables.

Keen Games also developed Portal Knights which has fixed classes from the get-go. Enshrouded has a more malleable system which allows you to build into ranged, melee and magic skills in whichever way you choose. You can respec whenever, too, which facilitates the co-op multiplayer as you can adjust your skills and abilities to suit the needs of a group. For now the focus is on solo and co-op play, although the dev team are looking forward to seeing “what the public wants” after launch, so don’t rule out a PvP or hybrid mode down the line.

It takes the best elements of a standard open world solo RPG and adds on some super intriguing build mechanics. Combat looks pretty fun, too, with a standard light-heavy dodge-parry set-up, but with a host of skills and abilities as well as weapons to mix it up. You can find legendary armour and weaponry with special prefixes, or find rare ingredients to craft unique powerful gear. Antony was keen to stress that there’s no free-crafting or full sandbox mode coming at launch, though it’s something else the team will look at later. At launch, Keen Games really want people to explore the world they’ve built.

Something else we were shown was a quick tour of some of the world, and it’s huge. It reminded me of the recent Ravenbound with a bit of Kingdoms of Amalur thrown in. The overworld is a dense forest pock-marked with ruins and abandoned settlements, while the underground is blanketed by fog that hides numerous monsters, bosses, and even huge entities that you can destroy to reduce the fog for a while. Everything outside of your build zone will respawn over time, including enemies, materials, and even the fog.

Everything I saw during the hands-off demo convinced me that Enshrouded is the kind of survival adventure that I want to play. It looks more interesting and balanced than the recent Frozen Flame, which I felt suffered from a lack of fresh ideas. The free-form approach to base-building, and the onus on exploration that aspires to Link’s most recent adventures on Nintendo Switch, mark Enshrouded as one to keep a very close eye on as the fog clears.

Check out the trailer below for a sneak peak at how building and terraforming will work in Enshrouded.

Enshrouded is expected to come to Steam Early Access in late 2023.

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Shelley is the Park Ranger at Oberon Ranger Station who you’ll meet around a third of the way through Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals while looking for the key to pursue Charlie into Tootega Falls. She’s a plucky soul, and will put her responsibilities first and foremost – even above her own safety. She’s also a great fountain of knowledge on Parentage and their history with Camena. Unlike some of the other radio buddies who contact Riley on the walkie-talkie, Shelley can definitely die if you make the wrong choices.

Thankfully, here God is a Geek we know exactly how to keep Shelley alive. Follow this guide, and we’ll lay out everything you need to do for Shelley’s story in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals. Completing this will also net you the “Just Stay Put” trophy for your trouble.

Read on to see what you need to do:

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals | How to help Shelley

1. You will find Shelley on your walkie-talkie at the Ranger Station, on your way to Tootega Falls to place the third transmitter. After the story introduction with her is over, you’ll be able to chat with her about what she knows about Parentage.
2. As with everyone else, talk to Shelley whenever you can. Check every time you transition to a new screen or move the story forward to see if a new conversation is available.
3. If you have successfully exhausted her dialogue, after you have placed the Tootega Falls transmitter and are on your way to the North Carmena Community Centre, Shelley should call you in a bit of distress. She will play you a voicemail message which mentions your name. Confirm that you will look into it for her.
4. After you’re done in the Community Centre, make your way to Funnie’s Car Lot near the Uptown Harbor, and you should hear a phone ringing. Pick up the payphone outside the store and listen to the call. It is a warning to Shelley to stay indoors or she will die.
5. Contact Shelley and tell her to take the advice seriously and stay indoors. She will do so, and you will save her life and get the trophy.

If you follow our guide, you will save Shelley’s life in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals and got the “Just Stay Put” trophy.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR OXENFREE 2 COMPLETE WALKTHROUGH

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR OXENFREE 2 TROPHY GUIDE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR OXENFREE 2 COLLECTIBLES GUIDE

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You’ll first meet fisherman Nick on your way to the second transmitter, fairly early in your playthrough of Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals. He’s an ex-Airforce veteran who has always dreamed of exploring the unknown. He’s a great character, and not nearly as hard to get along with as some of Riley’s radio buddies. But if you want to help him survive the night, you need to steer him through the rough seas around Camena Coast.

Luckily, we’ve got the solution for you here at God is a Geek. Follow this guide, and we’ll lay out everything you need to do for Nick in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals. Completing this will also net you the the “Light of Possibility” trophy for your trouble.

Read on to see what you need to do:

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals | How to help Nick

1. On your way to Charity Point to place a transmitter, Nick – a fisherman – will get in contact with you. He will ask you to find his blue backpack. Accept his request, and then head down in the area you are in to find a small hut. Nick’s blue backpack is inside.
2. With Nick aware of his backpack, he will be silent for a while, but then get back in touch with you later in the story. He will ask you to keep in touch with him throughout the night.
3. You will now need to use your walkie-talkie with Nick a lot of times. The best thing to do (and this is true of everyone on the walkie-talkie) is to check if you can speak to them every time you enter a new screen, or if something interesting happens in the story. Always check, and if there’s an option to speak to him, do it. It will take a lot of conversations, but eventually you will get one that’s a lot of static. It’s a fantastic sequence, and it may seem like Nick has died. But don’t worry, he hasn’t.
4. His next call will be quite sombre, but he’s OK. This is the penultimate call and means you’re close. Now call him one last time and he’ll talk about the sky and how it is “bisected”. Respond with “It’s Something Unnatural”, and then “Here’s How to Open It”. Nick will go quiet and you will have helped him through the door and the trophy will pop.

If you follow these steps, you will have fulfilled Nick’s side-story in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals and got the “Light of Possibility” trophy.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR OXENFREE 2 COMPLETE WALKTHROUGH

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR OXENFREE 2 TROPHY GUIDE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR OXENFREE 2 COLLECTIBLES GUIDE

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Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals has been a long time coming. After Night School Studios debut title, Oxenfree, was released in 2016, fans have been wanting the sequel and have had to wait over half a decade for it. But it’s here now, available on Switch, PS4, PlayStation 5, PC, Mac, and even Netflix. In fact, that Netflix audience might even bring a new audience to the game and the genre, so our Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals walkthrough might be exactly what you need, especially if you’re new to the genre.

While the sequel does stay true to a lot of the ideas from the first game, it’s more puzzle orientated and has some optional quests that require you to use the old grey matter a bit, and our Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals walkthrough is going to solve all that and more for you, so let’s get started. Oh and be warned, to get 100% for the trophies or achievements, and to see all the endings, you will need to play through the game more than once, as there’s no way to manually save.

Also bear in mind that although this walkthrough will point out collectibles and side content as they come up, the purpose of this is to guide you along the critical path. We have more detailed guides for the side missions, trophies, and collectibles.

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals Complete Walkthrough

Jump to:

Part 1: Getting Started and the First Transmitter

Part 2: Returning to the First Transmitter

Part 3: Jacob’s Cabin

Part 4: The Caves

Part 5: The Second Transmitter

Part 6: The Ranger Station

Part 7: The Third Transmitter

Part 8: The North Camena Community Centre

Part 9: Garland and the final Transmitter

Part 10: Before you go any further…

Part 11: The Final Push

Part 1: Getting Started and the First Transmitter

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals begins with protagonist Riley waking up beneath an old lighthouse. Her radio will buzz, and a voice on the other side will talk. You won’t be able to make out most of it, so push on towards the steps and head on upwards to a graffiti-covered house above you. Go inside, ignoring the mess, and climb up towards the lighthouse. Interact with the tear and go through, and you’ll see a woman watching the sea. Talk to her to trigger a short scene.

Riley will now wake up on a bus stop bench in the town of Camena. Her radio is buzzing again, and this time it’s Evelyn, her new supervisor. She’ll give you details about your new job. It doesn’t really matter how you respond, but you can ask more about how certain things will work in the game and get some backstory about Riley and why she’s in Camena.

Evelyn will tell you to go up to the General Store and get your climbing gear, as you’ll be planting transmitters up and down the coast. Follow her instructions and head up to the General Store. She’ll take the time to fill you in on how the walkie-talkie works, so pay attention as you’ll be using it a lot throughout the game.

The General Store will be locked, so call Evelyn on Channel 7 and she’ll direct you to find Jacob Summers, your new partner. Head up the hill, past the bulletin board (which you can interact with), and walk towards Copper Creek Trail.

Continue to follow the path upwards, over the bridge, and then head downwards at the notice board. You’ll find Jacob having car trouble. Talk with him and then with Evelyn over the radio. You can choose to be nice or not, but if you’re looking to make friends with Jacob (which several trophies rely on), try to be nice and encouraging with him where possible. His car is wrecked, so you’ll need to proceed on foot. Jacob has the first transmitter you need, and he will give you a radio with which to tune into the local airwaves. This is a crucial tool that you’ll need throughout the adventure.

Once you’re on the move again, head upwards with Jacob towards the Pemmican Trailhead, which will lead all the way up past a creepy little shrine, a ledge you’ll need to shimmy over, and eventually a pair of benches. Choose to rest with Jacob or push on, and continue upwards. In the next screen you’ll come to a locked gate. Call Evelyn and she’ll ask you to get creative, so climb the nearby rockface, jump across the ledge above, and follow the path round until you’re on the other side of the gate. Unlock it for Jacob to come through.

Now you need to head up a bit further, past an animal burrow you can interact with (and where there’ll be a collectible later on), and you’ll find a little shelter overlooking a view of Edwards Island. Hop over the rail and down to the outcrop, where you can place the first transmitter. You’ll need to align the dish, which is a simple case of moving the sticks around until the light on the readout turns blue.

Once the dish is aligned, a short cutscene will play which will see a strange portal open over Edwards Island. Riley will now jump to two other destinations where all you can do is choose dialogue. The first is her with a young boy, the second is her on the beach with three kids wearing creepy masks, one of whom will approach you. After a short time, Riley will wake up on the bus stop bench in town again, with Evelyn on the radio.

Part 2: Returning to the First Transmitter

Riley takes the timeloop surprisingly well, so talk to Evelyn and then head up to the general store. As you approach it, the window will smash and the teen from the beach will come through. Whatever you say to her, you’ll immediately wake up back on the bench. Head back up to see the General Store ablaze, with the girl apparently talking to a glowing red spirit.

When you wake up again, head back up to where the General Store is still burning and head right. There’s now a weird machine on the bridge. Interact with it to trigger a mini-game where you’ll need to use both sticks to bring the shapes in-line. Now you’ll wake up yet again, and now need to head back up and instead go left, where there’s another machine. The puzzle is different but mechanically similar. Solve this one, and everything will go back to normal – only Jacob is missing.

You can follow your map back to where you first met Jacob, where you’ll find him again, freaking out about what happened and trying to fix his car. Talk to him and contact Evelyn. Regardless of what you say, you’ll be roped into finishing the job – which at this point means returning to the first transmitter. Take the radio and head on back up the hill.

On the way, your walkie-talkie will go off and you can listen to the three teens from the beach talking – or you can choose to interrupt, one of them – the ringleader – will call you back and tease you a little. Follow the same path as before, only now the locked gate is unlocked when you get there. Head up and up, then locate the first transmitter and interact with it.

After some spooky goings-on, Jacob will become possessed by a strange spirit and start glowing red. He’ll walk away, so follow him, and when he starts to mumble and Riley says she has to do something, pull out the radio with the right trigger. Now you need to tune the radio until you feel a vibration and hear audio interference, which should be around 92 – 93. Hold it in that spot and you’ll notice a little triangle begin to form in the air.

Jacob will react, too. Take it up to 100, and a second triangle will form and Jacob will start to levitate. At around 107.7, a third triangle will appear and create a huge portal similar to the one over Edwards Island. Jacob will drop, free. Now a strange voice will talk to Riley, and after a short series of flashbacks, you’ll find yourself with Jacob, beneath the portal, with a strange red figure walking towards you. Speak to it or don’t, and you’ll awaken with Jacob on a cliff edge near the entrance to Garland, with a climbing anchor nearby. You need your climbing gear to use it, which you don’t have yet. First, you’ll need to make a detour.

Part 3: Jacob’s Cabin

Head to the right and you’ll find yourself at Jacob’s truck again, with a timestamp of 11pm. Go right on by the truck, and head up the steps and past the notice board. Now cross the river using the stepping stones and head right into Berenson’s Creek. Jacob wants to retrieve some journals from his “cottage”, but first you have to get in and he’s locked himself out. Classic Jacob!

Despite the solution being pretty obvious (there’s a ladder right there), you’ll need to jump through a few hoops. First of all, you need to try to get in, so head to the front of the house and interact with the doggie door. Even though it looks like Riley would easily fit, she cant, and all you can do is interact uselessly with the lightswitch, a broom, and the garage door opener that’s out of reach. Come out, go right past Jacob and up to the red side door. Interact with it to see that it is locked, but now you can interact with the open window above.

Go back down, grab the ladder, return to the open window, place it down then climb up. Once inside you can go right to Jacob or look through his stuff, so do that. You’ll find some expositional objects and then head downstairs. His phone will ring and you’ll get a creepy phone call intended for Riley.

Now let Jacob in and he’ll start looking through his journals, eventually finding what he needs and piecing together a few theories. Essentially, to close the portal over Edwards Island, you need to plant three more transmitters, equidistant and at an elevation of 3000m. Luckily, Jacob knows just where to get them, too.

Use your map to return to the General Store. Jacob will lead you round behind it and locate the spare key to get inside, where you’ll need to blindly interact with a backpack to retrieve your climbing gear. You’re now equipped to use climbing anchors, which will allow you much more freedom around Camena.

COLLECTIBLE #8

Once you leave, head up the hill above you and go right by the bulletin board. You’ll see a solitary flag, and you should now see something that wasn’t there before: a tiny flashing light on the ground. This is your first collectible of thirteen, which are correspondences that help flesh out the backstory of Maggie Adler and Edwards Island.

You can also now explore previous areas of the map and pick up the following Collectibles:

• Collectible #2
• Collectible #5
• Collectible #7
• Collectible #9

Click here for the guide for all the collectibles in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Part 4: The Caves

Now equipped to climb, head back to Jacob’s cabin, and this time head up the hill behind it, and climb the rock face. Continue upwards to Waterhead Bluffs. Once in the next screen, interact with the climbing anchor to make a way downwards. You will reach a large gap, and acan either try to jump it or hop down – either way, you end up in the same place because gravity is a bitch. Continue down and you’ll see a cave opening on the left. Head on in.

Move through the small cave and you’ll emerge to find yourself shrouded in fog. A mystery man will call you on channel 5. Talk to him until he goes away, and he will immediately be followed by a guy who introduces himself as Nick Stuart, a local fisherman and retired amateur explorer. Pay attention to him, because he’s one of the people whose fates will be decided by your actions. You’ll notice that the fog has cleared, so head downwards to find the fisherman’s shack Nick tells you about. Head inside to locate his missing blue backpack, which is part of his “quest” should you want to get him out of this safely.

From the fisherman’s shack, head back up the climbable wall and go right then left into the next cave. You’ll see two climbing anchors above you which you don’t need to worry about yet. Go right through the cave until you reach some broken cables to interact with. You will need to descend to the cavern floor so keep moving down and left until you’re walking beside water. Cue an unsettling cutscene, so be prepared.

Eventually, you’ll find yourself below the broken cables, which you’ll learn is a derelict elevator from the old mining network. Keep going to find a canary in a cage and a climbing anchor. Use the anchor to go down and you’ll find a glowing golden tear in the air. For now you can’t interact with it beyond examining it. Head right until you reach the cave-in and Riley will suggest “using” the tear. So go do that.

You’ll need to tune to the right frequency with your radio, but once you do, the tear will open. Interact with it to go through, and you will find yourself in 1899 when the mine was still in operation.

TROPHY: MERRY SCARY CHRISTMAS

Keep walking through the mine, and Jacob will suggest playing a game of One Word Story. This is an opportunity to grab a trophy, but only if you select the correct One Word Story, so pay attention to the following:

Jacob will begin the story with the word “ONCE”

You will now have three options to choose from. You need to select “SANTA”.

Jacob will chuckle and then offer up the word “ATE” to continue your story.

Here you now need to pick the option “FOURTEEN” to progress the story correctly.

Jacob will offer up the macabre next word of “CHILDREN”.

Now it is your turn and you need to choose “LOUDLY”.

If done correctly you will both reflect on the dark story of “Once Santa at fourteen children loudly”

If you told this story, you will get yourself the “Merry Scary Christmas” trophy/achievement.

Click here for our full trophy guide for Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Go back and past the bird, which has been replaced with a dead one, suggesting all was not well in 1899. You’ll find the elevator operational, but the lever is activated from the bottom, so only one of you can ride in it. Bring it down and Jacob will get in, but when you send him up the cave will begin to shake. To get out, Riley will need to jump across the gap, so send the elevator back up so that the top of it bridges the gap to wear Jacob is. Now climb up the ladder quickly, jump to Jacob, and return to the present.

After all that excitement, it’s nice to be back outside again.

COLLECTIBLE #10

As you are scaling the rockface, you’ll be tempted to just keep going upwards. However, once you’re near the top, actually make your way to the right, and round and down the slope to the bottom right to find a new collectible.

Click here for the guide for all the collectibles in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Now head up to the cliff face, jumping from point to point, and lower the climbing rope for Jacob using the anchor. Head into the next cave, which moves right to left, and climb up the rockface. A few more steps in, and there’ll be a small gap to jump. Immediately after you do, Riley will get jump-scared and fall right off, landing below in the dark.

When Riley wakes up, she’ll be with her dad, quite possibly hallucinating an old memory of a time before they became estranged. Just follow the sequence, answering the questions however you see fit, until you eventually climb up to a ledge above. As you crawl under a tight overpass, the image will distort and you’ll find Jacob waiting by the ladder out.

Part 5: The Second Transmitter

Once you’re back outside, go up to the left and into the next cave. You’ll hear a voice on the radio of someone called Violet, a friend of Olivia Massel, the girl who confronted you outside the General Store at the beginning. Jacob knows of Olivia, who’s the surviving daughter of the Massel family, the primary members of a cult known as Parentage that has been around in Camena for a while. Her parents were killed in a plane crash, leaving her to practically raise herself.

The cave will spit you straight out the other side without needing to walk through it.

COLLECTIBLE #11

As you make your way up Charity Point, you will notice an outcrop of rocks to your right. So before heading over to the left towards Violet, jump over to the right, and then down to reach the ledge with the shiny collectible.

Click here for the guide for all the collectibles in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Now head back to the left beneath a small bridge to find Violet being accosted by a glowing red spirit on another bridge just beyond. Hurry up the ladder just in time to see Violet plummet to her apparent death.

At this point the world will distort, and you’ll be transported back a few metres. Violet will be up on the bridge, and Jacob will be sitting down on the ledeg by you. Both will have glowing, possessed eyes. Run by Jacob and up the ladder, and steel yourself for a short sequence of repeated teen suicide. Tell Violet not to jump when the option comes up, but she will anyway. Shortly after, Riley herself will fall, and you’ll find yourself back with Dad.

Finish the conversation, and Riley will be transported back to the present day. Jacob and Violet are still possessed, with the latter now walking along the rail of the bridge. If you head up and move towards her she’ll fall again, so instead go past Jacob to the right and find another radio tuning machine. Align the waveforms and Jacob will return to normal.

Now head back to the bridge where Violet is. If you want the best possible ending, you’ll need to make friends with Parentage. You can start here by being nice to Violet. There may be multiple choices that work, but during the conversation we chose “Take a breath”, “It’s not going to let you leave”, “Explain how to leave”, and “They won’t”.

When Violet is gone, head back to the right and up to Charity Point where you can place the second transmitter. Align the dish like before and watch the light show. Pat yourself on the back and head down, where you’ll see another bizarre hallucination, this one an apparent flash forward to Riley’s future. When it’s done, call Evelyn on Channel 7 and update her on your progress.

Part 6: The Ranger Station

Wander back down and head left, using the climbing anchors you saw earlier to get back down the hillside. Go back up to the right and re-enter Berenson Creek. When you’re back at Jacob’s house, you’ll have another vision, this time of Olivia trying to talk to her parents. It’s clear she misses them and wants to reach somewhere or something she calls “Planetshine”. When the hallucination fades, you’ll be back with Jacob.

Go to the right from Jacob’s house and exit to Port Tilia. Your destination is the Ranger’s Station, where Olivia has sent her other accomplice, Charlie. Clamber down using climbing anchors and you’ll spot Charlie. When Jacob gives chase, shout encouragement and follow them. He’ll go through an archway and lock the gate behind him, and you can’t get through. As with Violet, you need to be nice to Charlie from here if you want to make friends with him. He’ll run off, but ignore him for now. You have more pressing matters, and you need the key from the Ranger’s Station.

COLLECTIBLE #3

Go back to the left, climb the rock face on the far side of the waterfall, and head left and down to snag another collectible from the ledge.

COLLECTIBLE #6

Now go over the stepping stones above the waterfall and stop at the bulletin board. Now head right through a semi-hidden path for another collectible.

Click here for the guide for all the collectibles in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Then come back and take the path upwards to the Ranger’s Station. Go inside to find that it has been ransacked by Parentage.

You can explore the place a little, but you’ll need to use the phone to progress. Redial the last number called, as the other options are a waste of time. A Park Ranger named Shelley will answer. Tell her you need help, and she’ll go off to check on something, then come back. She’s easy to talk to and will tell you that she’ll help and you can find her on Channel 1 from now on. As with Evelyn and Nick, you’ll need to make the correct choices going forward in order to save her. She’ll tell you where the key is (it’s on the board by the phone), so take it and head back outside.

Go through the locked gate and make your way to the right. Eventually, you’ll drop down onto a beach and cross it under the light of the full moon. It’s one of the prettiest shots in the game, so drink it in. Once you’re on the other side, climb up and Jacob will spot Charlie and chase him again. Unfortunately, the cliff face he climbs will crumble, leaving you stranded on the beach. Once you’re alone, it all starts to get creepy again pretty quickly.

You’ll be contacted by a mystery caller on Channel 2 who wants to play a game of hide and seek. You can opt to not play, or even fail it, but if you’re trying to get the 100% completion you need to win. Follow the instructions you’re given, specifically the colder / warmer call-outs. The first target is a lamp to the far left of the area, just where you climbed up from the beach. Then you’ll be looking for an old burned-out fireplace at ground level, and finally, a cave entrance blocked by a boulder.

Part 7: The Third Transmitter

Move the boulder and enter the cave, and then follow the passage down to find an abandoned shoe. Interact with it to trigger a long flash forwards showing Riley and her eventual son, Rex. I don’t think you can make bad choices here, but after the sequence you’ll be back with Jacob on the beach, and he’ll tell you he lost Charlie.

Shake it off and climb up the rock face beside you and continue on (but dive back into the cave and collect the shoe – you need it later for an optional concern). When you enter the next screen it’s 1am, and you can contact Shelley for some advice here but she’ll just tell you to stop and smell the roses. Continue down and Jacob will spot Charlie again and chase him past some old graffiti-covered ruins.

When Jacob collars Charlie he’s furious, so you need to talk him down if you want to ultimately make friends with Charlie and rescue him from Olivia’s nightmare. We used the following dialogue choices going forward: “Back off, Jacob!”, “Tell us what you’re up to”, “God, you’re an ass”, “Woah, that’s too far!”. Now walk forward and interact when you see the words STOP JACOB. Now choose “Let me talk to him”, and “You explain tonight”, followed by “You need whose help?”

Now Charlie will become possessed and teleport to the ledge above you. Follow him up to find him on a huge bridge, still red-eyed. You need to tune your radio like you did when Jacob was possessed before. Spin the dial to 92, 101, and 107.7. The triangle will appear, and Charlie will be released to fall back to the ground.

After communing with the Sunken some more, check on Charlie to find that he’s alive but unconscious. You can’t help him, so Jacob suggests continuing on with your mission: plant the third transmitter.

COLLECTIBLE #1

Go right across the bridge and down to find a collectible on the stepping stones below you, then climb back up on the steps to the left.

Click here for the guide for all the collectibles in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Go left from the bridge and scale the cliff face, Plant the third transmitter at the highest point and align the dish as you have before. Go through the flash-forwards, and then when you return to the present day, Jacob will be missing. Don’t panic, he’s down on the bridge, but Charlie is gone. Call Evelyn and update her, then continue on. If you head back towards the moonlit beach, you’ll hear radio chatter from Parentage that will clue you in on their plan. They intend to build a device to disrupt your transmitters – for whatever reason, Olivia is hell-bent on letting the Sunken into our world.

COLLECTIBLE #12

Despite being able to access this area before your reach Tootega Falls, this collectible won’t appear until after you have set up the transmitter there. Once you have, you’ll be required to backtrack through Horseshoe Beach. But instead of heading straight left, head down, back to where you began the “hot and cold” game earlier. Near where you found the Chimney in that game, on the beach, is now a shiny collectible.

Click here for the guide for all the collectibles in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Part 8: The North Camena Community Centre

Parentage seem to be operating out of the town Community Centre. You’ve a long walk ahead of you now, as you need to go all the way back to the Uptown Harbour where Riley first woke up on the bus stop bench. Take this time to radio everyone: Shelley, Evelyn, Nick, and if you can, Maria. You can advance all of their stories by regularly interacting.

Shelley is courageous but will put herself in danger a lot if you don’t stop her; Nick will sail right into the eye of the storm unless you give him the knowledge he needs to survive; and Evelyn will lose her sister if you don’t persuade her to get into contact with her family. You can’t resolve everything at this point, but it’s worth remembering to check in with everybody as you travel.

TROPHY: 3AM FOOD FRIENDS

• The first thing to note about this trophy is that you and Jacob must be good friends at this point. Make sure to do everything possible during each conversation to be friendly and supportive towards Jacob.
• After you are returning from Tootega Falls, and heading towards North Carmena Community Centre, Jacob will strike up a conversation. Specifically, he will ask you if can ask you a dumb question. Reply with “Sure.”
• Note: This is the earliest this conversation can happen, if it doesn’t happen, keep playing and being nice to Jacob and he may say it later, after the Community Centre event for example.
• He will ask if you want to be friends after the adventure. Reply with “Yes But That’s Not a Dumb Question”. After a bit more chatter, he will asks “What do we call this new friendship?” and then you need to choose “We’re 3am Food Friends”. The conversation will then conclude and you will get this trophy.

Click here for our full trophy guide for Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Go right from Uptown Harbor and you’ll find yourself at the gates to the community centre. Head inside, and make your way to the top level where you’ll find a more powerful radio on a shelf. Head outside through the door to the right and inspect the antenna Olivia has built. It’s too sturdy to wreck manually, so you’ll need to power it down.

Follow the power cords downstairs, examing the various paraphernalia on the way. You’ll find a room with a poster on the wall and a heavy box on top of the wires. Move the box to find a secret door to the basement. Head downstairs and wreck all of Parentage’s shit – then freeze. The kids are back upstairs, and Olivia is furious.

You can’t really avoid being caught so just head upstairs and confront them. Olivia will lose her shit pretty quickly, and she’s backed up by the Sunken. Do your best to talk Violet and Charlie down, and Olivia too, whenever you can. Eventually, though, she’ll pull out a radio and start trying to tune into the other world. You need to stop her.

The community centre will be distorted, tipping up on its side. Ignore the distraction and follow Olivia, interacting with her as quickly as you can three times to stop her from opening a portal. Eventually – if you succeed – gravity will realign and you’ll be able to take the radio off her. Choose whether to smash it or keep it – but either way, get ready for some revelations.

TROPHY: PROBLEM SOLVED AND SHATTERED

• This trophy centres around the key moment in the North Camena Community Centre when the Sunken appear, and Olivia tries to tune into the Portal. Your job as Riley is to prevent her from doing so.
• To earn this trophy, you need to successfully stop her three times from tuning the radio and activating the portal. Each time, the Community Centre will shift, knocking the radio to a new location. Head there as quickly as you can to disrupt Olivia’s plan.
• Once you’ve succeeded, there will be a lengthy conversation where you try and ascertain what is going on. Eventually, Olivia will ask for her radio back. When given the option, to pick, choose [Smash Radio]. This will get you the trophy.

TROPHY: ON TOP OF THINGS

• Like “Problem Solved and Shattered”, this trophy centres around the key moment in the North Camena Community Centre when the Sunken appear, and Olivia tries to tune into the Portal.
• Note: This trophy is much easier if you have befriended Violet and Charlie. View the walkthroughs for A Brighter Shade of Violet and Charlie’s Angel for help there. If you are friends, they disrupt Olivia when she is getting to each radio, giving you more of a chance.
• Your job this time, is to flawlessly execute stopping Olivia. She can begin tuning the radio to try and find the right frequency each time, but she mustn’t have too much time at any point to begin locating the right frequency to begin opening the portal. Once she runs off upstairs to grab the radio, follow her up, either using the same left stairs, or the right ones if you prefer. Just get to her quickly before the portal begins to open.
• Now the house begins to shake. You need to get to each new radio location before Olivia find the correct channel each time.If you succeed in this three times, you will get the trophy.
• For the first radio, you’ll need to head immediately right and then out the door, to the outside. Head down the ladder, and then back into the house, into the shrine area to pick up the radio.
• For the next one, head left, and then down the stairs to the ground floor, then hurry to the left, and then up the stairs to the radio location.
• For the final one, the whole house gets flipped ninety degrees and you’ll need to climb the bannisters vertically. Head to the one to your left and interact to climb. Swing right to the step-ladder, then climb some more and then swing back left to the bannister. You’ll reach a gap in the bannister you’ll need to jump over. Then jump up to the floor, shimmy to your right, and jump up to get the radio.

Click here for our full trophy guide for Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Turns out Olivia just really misses her parents, and some entity on the other side has promised her a way to get to them. But it’s not the Sunken – it’s actually Alex, the protagonist from the first game, who is trapped in the in-between and just wants out. Olivia and Alex have struck a bargain to send Olivia over in Alex’s place.

After Alex goes, you need to leave the Community Centre and follow Olivia. She’d gone to Garland, the abandoned mining town on the far left side of the map. As you head back to Uptown Harbor, Riley will confess to Jacob that she’s pregnant – so the boy we’ve seen in the flash forwards is already conceived at this point. Either way, you’ve got one transmitter left and you’ve slowed Parentage down for now.

Part 9: Garland and the final Transmitter

Head back to Uptown Harbor and you’ll hear a phone ringing (this may only occur if you’re up to date with Shelley’s story at this point). Go left and down towards Funnies parking lot, where the payphone is ringing. Answer it, then call Shelley and convince her not to go out on her current call. If you let her go, you’ll lose her. Be sure to grab the collectible from beside the payphone, too.

Once you’re done go up and to the left, past Jacob’s truck and through the tunnel towards Garland Mines. Go down the climbing point and scale the cliff face to the left, and use the radio to break the radio lock by tuning to frequency 139. The gate should pop open and let you through.

When you reach Garland graveyard, Jacob will suggest getting above the church to plant the final transmitter. But that means finding a way into the old mines somehow. Olivia will call you and tease you here, but you can choose to be nice if you’re still trying to win her over.

COLLECTIBLE #4

After you’ve crossed Garland Bridge and entered Garland Ghost Town, head to the upper left area, and you should spot a church. There’s also a cemetery here too. Walk through the cemetery, up the steps, and towards the flashing item on the floor. Go ahead and pick it up

Click here for the guide for all the collectibles in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Go down to the NWMA building and note the strange machines dotted around. Olivia will call a second time here. Deal with her and then go down the ladder. To the right is an abandoned post office. Go inside and you’ll be contacted by Hank, the guy responsible for the machines. He’s been trying to snap a picture of anomalies and affected wildlife. His machines are called EMF Boosters, and can open small time tears like the one in the mine before. He will let you use them, but he’ll also ask a favour: he wants a picture of something living beyond the time tear.

TROPHY: I’VE HAD WEIRDER JOBS

• To complete this trophy, you need to pick up an item. You can get it well before you actually speak to Hank on the walkie-talkie for the first time. On Horseshoe Beach, where you play “hot and cold” with someone on line 2 of your walkie-talkie, it will eventually lead you to a cave. If you go in there, you can interact with a shoe, which triggers a scene with Rex on the beach. When you come to and can continue on towards Tootega Falls with Jacob, you actually want to go back to the cave instead. Move through it to find the shoe and pick it up. You can technically come back at any point after this to do this, but it makes sense to do it now as we’re passing by.
• Much later in the game, when you’re in Garland Ghost Town, you can explore the building to the bottom right of the town. This will be the postman’s office. Upon entering you’ll be greeted with a flash, and then Hank will contact you to tell you he’s investigating strange goings on. As payback for disrupting his work, he asks if you could do him a favour and take a picture of something strange for him. Agree to do this. Jacob will say it sounds like a bad idea but respond with “Well… Maybe”. Then interact with the unit in the house to switch it on.
• Use your caster on the tear to open it – you need to do this to progress the story anyway. Then you need to use the EMF transmitters to change the year the tear will take you to. The one next to the tear changes the century, and the one up the ladder from you changes the decade.
• The year you want to help Hank is 1930. So make sure the EMF transmitter up the ladder is on “3” and the one by the tear is on “9”. Then enter the tear. There should be a man sitting outside the building. Get Jacob to take a photo by interacting with the man. Exit the tear, and you can call Hank. After a couple of conversation choices, Hank will wish he had more concrete evidence at this point,  so reply with “I Have A Shoe?”.
• He will accept your suggestion and ask you to leave it in a safety deposit box back in the Post Office. Head back there and do so. Then talk to Hank a final time and he will introduce his wife, after chatting to her, Hank will be grateful, and you will finally see the trophy pop up.

Click here for our full trophy guide for Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

The machine up the ladder controls the century, and the one below controls the decade. You can’t adjust the millennium or the individual year. Set the date to 1890, and then go through the tear. You will now be able to cross the bridge and enter the mines, where there’s an exit tear waiting for you. Come out into the present day.

Follow the mines upwards, ever upwards, and then when you can head right to emerge outside, above the chapel. You’ll need to hop across onto the top of the stack, and climb up onto the very top. Unfortunately, as you plant the transmitter, Jacob will fall through the decaying roof. It’s a long way to fall, so you better get down and see if he’s okay.

Drop down and lower your rope into the stack. Now descend the impossibly long distance, and you’ll find yourself in the middle of the creepy old chapel. There are four candles but only one is lit. Take another candle from the back of the chapel and light them in the right order. Failure will make you start again. There’s actually a solution in the small window above you, but you need to light them in the following order: bottom left, top left, bottom right.

Once the candles are lit, the Sunken will assault you. Fight them off by using the frequency distorter that appears before you. Align the waveforms as you have before to silence the Sunken and save Jacob.

Now you have to climb back up the rope and align the transmitter dish to finally complete the objective. So that’s it, right? All four transmitters are placed and activated, and the radio waves are triangulated – so the Sunken should be gone and you can relax, right? Well, for a few moments, yes. But it doesn’t last long.

Part 10: Before you go any further…

Head back to Uptown Harbor and prepare to enjoy the rest of the morning with Jacob – until you go as far as the bridge, that is. At this point Jacob will become possessed by Alex who tells you this isn’t over. The Sunken have been manipulating Olivia when she thought she was talking to Alex, and theyre close to coming over. Olivia has gone to Edwards Island to use the radio tower there to open the portal fully.

Go back to the Harbor and down to the dock. You need a boat if you’re going to follow Olivia. Luckily, the little speedboat there belongs to a friend of Jacob’s and he knows where to find the key. Head back up the steps and over to the Eva’s Got Worms bait shop, which is luckily unlocked. Go in, get the key, and return to the town square – where an unexpected friend will show up: Jacob’s dog Athena, who he has been worrying about all night.

Whether you choose to pet Athena or not, you’ll get a trophy, but you can’t get both in one playthrough without reloading the last autosave and replaying the section. Jacob is so happy to see her that he immediately ties her to the bus stop like a sacrificial offering and prepares to leave with you – while also reminding you to the point of annoyance that this is it: this is your final chance to tie up loose ends before you head to Edwards Island. Call everyone you haven’t already called and see if you can finish their stories before continuing.

COLLECTIBLE #13

You need to return back to Jacob’s Cabin in Port Tilia. Below Jacob’s Cabin, you’ll see a walkway that goes down towards a metal building on the right. Outside the metal building will be the final collectible on the floor. Pick it up for an emotional conversation with Jacob.

Click here for the guide for all the collectibles in Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

When you get to the boat you have a choice to make: either take Jacob with you or force him to stay with Athena. If you leave him behind, he can’t influence the ending. If you take him, he’ll talk with you on the journey. If you leave him, Alex will appear and talk to you instead. Whatever you choose, this is it: so tie up those loose ends first!

Part 11: The Final Push

When you reach Edwards Island, follow the path up and right until you reach the beach where Alex and her friends are still in their time loop. Alex is lucent, and will guide you to the radio tower where Olivia is still bent on bringing the Sunken over. Climb up the radio tower and demand that the Sunken release the girl. They won’t, and Riley will be transported to a weird dark world.

Keep walking to the right until you reach a chair like your Dad’s from before. Sit in it for a creepy cutscene, then when you wake up, tune your radio to 101 beside the lamp. Now you’ll be back at the lighthouse from the very beginning of the game. Climb it, to find a young Maggie Adler at the top. Talk to her until you’re forced back into the dark world.

Now you’re in a bizarre room with four TVs, three of which are glowing red. Tune your radio beside each of the glowing TVs at the following frequencies: 90.7, 105, and 96. After a brief cutscene, you’ll be under a red light. Tune your radio to 101, and you’ll awaken at the fisherman’s shack, where you’ll find a grown-up Rex.

Talk to him, and he’ll give Riley some sage advice. When you get the option, choose (It’s not enough”, and then “To do something”. Rex will now send you back to the present. Now you need to tune the radio again to defest the Sunken and free Olivia. Tune it to 79.7, then 121, 94, and 79. The Sunken will be defeated, and you’ll be faced with a final choice.

Even though the Sunken are gone, the portal isn’t fully closed. To free Alex and her friends, someone needs to cross over. If Jacob is with you, you can ask him to do it, and if you’re friends at this point, he’ll go willingly. Or you can send Alex through, condemning her forever but saving all of you. You could also sacrifice Riley, but that would give up her future with Rex. Finally, there’s Olivia, who has made up her mind to go through and be with her parents.

Whatever you choose will effectively end the game, and only the final few cutscenes will remain, followed by a recap of all the choices you made and how many others made the same ones. I chose to let Olivia go through, which allowed Riley to return to Camena, where I chose to quit her job. She also spoke to a freed Alex and relieved Jacob, before settling down for a mostly happy life with her son. Whatever you choose to do, congratulations, you’ve completed Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR OXENFREE 2 TROPHY GUIDE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR OXENFREE 2 COLLECTIBLES GUIDE

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It’s not often that I watch the credits roll on a game and immediately want to start a new playthrough, just to make different choices and see how it affects the story – but Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals had its hooks well and truly in right up until the final moments and beyond. If you played the original you’ll remember that it was incredibly story-driven, as dialogue unfolded organically while you played, not stopping for cutscenes or long exchanges but allowing conversations to flow by assigning dialogue choices to simple button presses even as you guided protagonist Alex through gameplay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Valiant feels like a bit of an odd choice for a console port. While games like Age of Wonders 4 and Company of Heroes 3 made the transition, they did so with some genuine concessions to control and performance. The Valiant, released on PC back in October of ’22, doesn’t fare that much better, though it put considerably less strain on processors in the first place.

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.

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We’ve reached the point in the life cycle of the games industry where it’s rare to see anything truly innovative. And when you do so see something that feels brand new, it’s hard to predict what will permeate the cultural zeitgeist and what won’t. In a world where 2D Metroidvanias seem to fall with the rain, roughly every third game is a deck-builder, and fucking everything is a roguelite, it’s pretty easy to pinpoint which way the trends have been going for the last decade.

But while it took ages for people to start ripping off XCOM en masse, Mordor’s Nemesis System is still largely untouched, and we’re still waiting for a combat system that can out-Arkham Batman: Arkham Asylum, one innovation that took off like a rocket-propelled kangaroo was From Software’s particular brand of addictive self-flagellation. I refuse to use the term “masocore” in any way other than ironically, but the fact is people seem to like it when games hurt them –  as proven by every second game being a Soulslike.

This is something which I’m by turns both exhausted by and hugely grateful for, though, because without From Software’s Demon’s Souls we wouldn’t have eventually gotten Remnant: From the Ashes. Although, while Gunfire Games’ title certainly presents as a Soulslike, it remains one of the more original versions of the formula.

Root cause

Remnant: From the Ashes sets out its stall fairly early on. When your survivor finds his or herself in a dark, apocalyptic world, it’s made pretty clear that everything has gone to shit and it’s not planning a return visit any time soon. It’s a version of Earth ravaged by a trans-dimensional entity known only as the Root, which has spread its corruption throughout Earth and a handful of other worlds you’ll need to find your way into and out of throughout the campaign.

In trying to unlock the secrets of dimensional travel, humanity created the Dreamers, whose psychic powers opened doorways that allowed the Root to assault us and ultimately decimate our planet. What few survivors there are close to you reside in Ward 13, an underground bunker that also houses a huge crystal that not only allows fast travel but which also resurrects the fallen (and, of course, respawns all enemies throughout the world, natch). Your job is simple enough to understand but almost impossible to achieve: travel across dimensions, seek the source of the Root, and pluck it out once and for all.

This being a Soulslike, Remnant is fairly short on anything resembling meaty story beats. The closest you get to a real plot is when you meet various NPCs you’ll either aid or destroy, some of whom will give you a choice to make. Ultimately, this choice often boils down to whether or not you fancy another boss fight right now.

Remnant: From the Ashes Replayed: A vague tale

Of course, there are those who would argue that Remnant: From the Ashes doesn’t necessarily need a story. In many respects, most Soulslikes don’t need a story, but if you’re going to go the trouble of writing backstory and then hacking it down into flavour text, you might as well just give us it in the actual gameplay. Remnant does not do this, instead opting for a mix of incidental text, NPC dialogue, and environmental storytelling to get its point across.

Sadly though, this is why so much of it is confusing. And there will undoubtedly be people reading this who have played Remnant for ten hours a day for almost four years who’ll leap to the defence of its story and tell me its actually really rich and deep once you’ve read the description of every item umpteen times, beaten every boss, all the DLC, studied the Wiki, married and divorced one of the writers, and watched three-dozen YouTube videos explaining it all – but when it launched (and indeed for a while after), Remnant was as obtuse as Soulslikes come.

What was abundantly clear no matter how many times you played it, was that Remnant is not an easy-going game. It’s intentionally hard, deliberately unwelcoming to newcomers, and never gave much of a shit whether people liked it. Or at least, it always felt that way. Obviously Gunfire wanted people to buy it and play it, but there was an undeniable confidence to Remnant at launch that managed to be self-assured without being arrogant.

Always the quiet ones

It’s important to acknowledge how difficult that is to pull off, too. We’ve all seen hugely confident developers release games with the smug grin of a delusional pageant mum, only to meltdown in the exact same way when it turns out their only child has the same natural talent for entertainment as a hamster in a tumble dryer. It’s a far rarer beast when the developer is quietly confident, and then genuinely humble in the face of praise. Gunfire Games never even predicted Remnant would sell a million units – let alone the three million-plus it has now clocked up since launch – and so the success is all the sweeter.

A lot of its appeal stems from the fact that it was released as a complete experience, without an immediate announcement of DLC, without a cosmetic shop or an online component geared towards selling you things. Remnant launched with a full, multi-branching, semi-dynamic campaign, one that doesn’t always deliver the same encounters in the same order, but which always rewards exploration and perseverance.

Each of its four worlds feels different to the last, from the burned-out, nightmarish streets of the fallen Earth city wherein you begin, to the wind-blown deserts of Rhom and the festering swamps of Corsus. There’s an undeniable personality to everywhere you go, seen in the creative design of its creatures and monsters, in the visual details that help shore up the rickety narrative, in the atmosphere that groans through every gust of wind, creeps across every broken wall.

Remnant: From the Ashes replayed: Master blaster

Atmosphere will only get you so far, though, and sooner or later you’ve got to back up all these pretty sky-boxes with some actual gameplay. Thankfully, this is where Remnant: From the Ashes truly excels. From a worm’s-eye view, it’s a grungy third-person shooter that sees you traversing these decaying locales with a couple of guns, a melee weapon, and a backpack full of home-brewed potions and lotions to stave off the effects of bloodrot or radiation poisoning.

Examined more closely though, it’s not hard to see that Remnant’s appeal lies in the simple effectiveness of its brutal combat. You can equip two ranged weapons at a time, and every weapon can be equipped with a mod. In this world, magic is simply a thing, and so these mods can have a profound effect on your playstyle. From popping a healing fountain to imbuing your bullets with an element, or summoning a full-on demon Rottweiler that gets a buff when you ruffle the scruff of his steaming neck, there’s a mod for every occasion.

Hitting the attack button while aiming down sights will fire your equipped gun, while hitting it without the ADS will swing your melee weapon. It’s so ridiculously intuitive I can’t understand why more games aren’t doing it. You don’t need a dedicated melee button, and it makes every swing feel immediate. You don’t even have to think about it, as any enemy close enough to melee doesn’t require the precision of ADS at all. Also, it just feels so damn good. I’ll argue forever that Destiny 2 has the most satisfying “gun feel” of any shooter I’ve ever played, but Remnant comes incredibly close with some of its weapons, delivering an experience that never stops rewarding you just for blasting holes in demons.

An uncluttered apocalypse

Despite arguably being a weakness where story is concerned, Remnant’s simplicity remains its greatest strength in almost every other department. Even the multiplayer is user-friendly, allowing you to select a game to join, find your friends, or just leave your game open to the public. Story progression is locked to the host’s world, but you keep all the XP and loot you find when you return to your world.

Heading back to Ward 13 allows you upgrade your weapons and clothing, buy items, or improve your Dragon Heart – which is Remnant’s version of an Estus Flask. Here you can talk to NPCs to expand the lore, or take on side concerns to help the survivors, though don’t expect branching side missions that force you to backtrack around the world, killing ten of this or collecting five of that.

You will run some missions and areas multiple times if you engage in multiplayer a lot, but there’s an effortless likeability that stops Remnant: From the Ashes from feeling stale. If you do need a change of pace, the Swamps of Corsus DLC has a survival mode where you begin with basic gear and must stay alive as long as you can. It doesn’t add much to the core experience, but the gunplay is as crisp as ever.

Worth the risk

With the sequel, Remnant 2, landing oh-so-very soon, it may not be the best time to get into Remnant if you missed it first time for whatever reason, but I’d absolutely suggest that any Soulslike fan who hasn’t tried it really should. It’s not a game that stands out because it had a ridiculous budget, overblown marketing campaign, celebrity voice overs, or some kind of eye-rolling controversy. It’s a game that stands out simply because it’s bloody good.

It’s not always about how loud you bang your drum, or how much hype you pay to generate. On any even playing field the only guarantee of success is creating something to the best of your ability that people like. Any game that does anything new is a massive risk, but Gunfire Games managed to mitigate that risk by knowing when to chase trends and when to roll the dice on their own creativity.

Yes, Remnant will frustrate you at times; yes, you’ll get lost and wonder where the hell you’re meant to go roughly every nine-and-half minutes; and yes, the story is spread pretty damn thin (though you can always pick up the better-than-you-remember prequel Chronos: Before the Ashes if you want to fatten up the narrative), but despite all of this, Remnant: From the Ashes is still one of the most unique and interesting Soulslikes we’ve had for the last decade-and-a-half.

Excited for Remnant 2 after reading our replayed? Read our hands-on preview of Remnant 2. And come back soon for more replayed columns.

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Although the recent delay has pushed the Immortals of Aveum back by a month, publisher EA Originals and developer Ascendant Studios continue to whet our appetite with a brand new gameplay overview trailer,

In this deep dive, we learn more about the three colours of magic that power Immortals of Aveum’s fast-paced spellcasting combat. The trailer also shows off some of the customisation options and goes into a little detail about the skill trees and lore.

Set in the nation of Aveum, Immortals sees hero Jack – a powerful magnus (mage) able to wield all three colours of magic – go up against the nation of Rasharn in a desperate bid to end the Ever-War that threatens to destroy all five magical kingdoms and the world beyond.

Because Jack can wield all three colours of magic, you’ll be switching between them as the situation – and your style – dictates. There’s Fury magic for dealing high damage at a greater mana cost, Augment spells that can manipulate the environment, and Control magic to pull enemies towards you and slow their advance. You’ll need a combination of all three to survive the harsh environments and battlegrounds of Aveum.

You can see the Immortals of Aveum trailer below, or by heading over to the official YouTube channel.

If you want to know more about Immortals of Aveum, you can go check out the official blog post here, and find out more about the fantasy setting, the rules of magic, and what you’ll be getting up to when the game launches. You can also join the official Discord community by following this link.

Immortals of Aveum is set to release on August 22, 2023. Pre-orders are now live on Xbox Series X & S, PlayStation 5, and PC via the EA app, Steam, or the Epic Games Store.

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EA and Maxis have released a brand new trailer for the latest The Sims 4 expansion, The Sims 4 Horse Ranch, which will launch on July 20, 2023.

Similar to the Pets expansion, the Ranch will allow players to create their very own steed, customising them to the finest detail and even breeding them at Chestnut Ridge. As with other major expansions, the Horse Ranch will add a massive amount of content to The Sims 4, with a handful of brand new areas, new jobs, pursuits, and activities.

For example, your Sims can sheer sheep and milk goats to earn Simoleons, or ride your horse around the Ridge or into town. You will be able to host cookouts, line-dancing get-togethers, and take part in the Ranch Animal Day where you get to interact with animals besides horses.

In addition to looking majestic and adorable, your horses will have skills and stats such as Agility, Temperament, Endurance and Jumping, which you can develop by practice riding and increasing your bond with them. If you get good enough, you can even take part in competitions at the Equestrian Center.

As always, The Sims 4 Horse Ranch will also come with a host of new items to buy and build, so you can really show off your individual style, even when mucking out horse beds and raising farm animals.

Check out the brand new trailer below for an insight into how our new horsey friends will integrate into your existing households, as well as how the new elements will work when you head to Chestnut Ridge.

The Sims 4 is available on PS4, PS5, and Xbox, and on PC via the EA app, Steam, and Epic Store. The Sims 4 Horse Ranch is set to launch on July 20. Find out more here.

Read our review of The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle Expansion.

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If you asked me a few days ago about Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, I’d have referred to it as that “isometric Tomb Raider game from a few years ago”. Imagine my utter shock when I found out that it was originally released in 2010. Thirteen years ago – and not even on the Switch, because the Switch didn’t even exist yet. Quite why it’s taken so long to get Guardian of Light and its sequel, Temple of Osiris, onto Switch is anyone’s guess, but they’re finally here in the Lara Croft Collection.

I mean no hyperbole when I say that these two games are among the best of Ms. Croft’s adventures, top-down action-adventure games full of puzzles, platforming, and lots of violence from the short-short-clad tomb raider herself. As a huge plus, the Collection comes to Nintendo Switch with not only the two games but also 7 DLC packs across both titles – including the Deus Ex themed skin pack for the second game.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light hit before the 2012 reboot, at a time when it was still unsure where the character and franchise would go. Switching from the third-person camera of old to a new isometric viewpoint, it sees Lara searching for the fabled Mirror of Smoke. Sadly, it contains an ancient demon called Xolotl, who gets released and promptly goes on a rampage, leading to Lara teaming up with the guardian of the mirror, Totec, to stop it.

When played in two-player co-op mode (which is still available on Switch), Totec and Lara can work together directly. He’s a big dude with a spear and shield, which can be utilised for leg-ups and to make climbing points in the environment. When solo, he instead gives his magical spear to Lara, inadvertently creating one of the most satisfying one-shot weapons ever.

From there you’re pretty much doing the usual Tomb Raider things. Solving puzzles to unlock contraption ostensibly made by ancient civilisations but which would stump even the most forward-thinking modern physicist, destroying craftsmanship that has literally survived for hundreds of years until Lara came along, and, of course, annihilating the local fauna like she has a grudge against them.

The action is smooth and exciting though, with Lara able to cycle through several weapons including her signature dual pistols and an assault rifle. There are also bombs you can drop and detonate to damage enemies or help clear the way. You’ll find idols and artefacts scattered around that Lara can equip for permanent buffs (which sometimes have a light debuff attached, too). The isometric viewpoint and fixed camera can be a bit of a pain when you’re behind a high ledge or you’re trying to jump from pillar to pillar, but generally speaking it’s an incredibly competent action game with cool combat, and some interesting if rarely taxing puzzles.

One issue that plagues both games in the Lara Croft Collection is, unfortunately, unavoidable when played in handheld form: the camera is pulled back so far that Lara and the enemies are tiny on screen. On a TV or monitor it’s nowhere near as egregious, but on the Switch’s small screen – even the OLED – it may be enough to put some people off.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is a slightly better-looking game, though, having been released four years after its predecessor in 2014. It’s a touch shorter though, but makes up for it by upping the multiplayer component from two to four players. In this title, Lara teams up with two Egyptian gods, Horus and Isis, to track down the pieces of Osiris (like, his actual dismembered bits, for real) before the evil god Set can find them.

Again, the emphasis here is on exploration, puzzle-solving, and wildlife-bothering, only with a few added features. The spear is replaced with a magical staff, which can be used to direct light beams into mirrors in many of the puzzles. There’s also more gear in this game, and Lara can equip rings, amulets, and even vests with various stat-boosting features attached.

Puzzles change depending on how many players you have (similar to how Totec will lend you his shield in the first game), which is a great way to encourage multiplayer sessions and keep you on your toes each time. Although the runtime is shorter, it feels like there’s more in Temple of Osiris, perhaps because a lot of the optional challenge rooms feel a little more elaborate.

Fans of Lara will get a lot of joy from the Lara Croft Collection, but even newcomers just looking for an interesting adventure game will find a lot to like. Neither game is particularly deep or long, but the addition of the DLC packs helps to pad it out a little, and you can always go for 100% completion if you relish a longer challenge. If you’ve never played these games before, I can’t recommend them enough. They may feel and look their age now – especially on the Switch – but the gameplay and puzzles are still top notch.

The post The Lara Croft Collection review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

CD Projekt RED have today released two brand new videos for Phantom Liberty, the huge upcoming expansion to Cyberpunk 2077, over on the official YouTube channel.

The first is an interview with Keanu Reeves, who returns to Phantom Liberty as the legendary Johnny Silverhand. Reeves gives us a rundown of the new location, Dogtown, one of the most notorious districts of Night City, and explains a little about what Johnny and protagonist V will be getting up to in Phantom Liberty.

Coming on September 26, Phantom Liberty will also feature Idris Elba as FIA agent Solomon Reed, who will join V and her rockstar passenger as they get into new adventures and scrapes with some of Dogtown’s deadliest residents.

The second new video focuses on the district itself, as CD Projekt RED’s Quest Director Pawel Sasko guides us through the new location, spilling some juicy details on Dogtown and what we can expect to see.

Cyberpunk 2077 released in December of 2020 amidst a storm of controversy. While many, including us, praised its story, setting, and approach to characterisation of not only the people but Night City itself, many others struggled with the often shocking technical issues that plagued the RPG at launch.

We said in our review:

This is a truly exceptional video game. It wears its influences and heart on its sleeve, isn’t afraid to go to places many games would avoid, and delivers immersion and storytelling on a scale rarely seen, despite the best efforts of its own bugs and glitches to prevent that. After eight years in the making, we’re finally invited to Night City, but once you’re there, don’t be surprised if you never want to leave.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is set for release on September 26 2023 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S & X.

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Even as someone who spends a few hundred hours a year in MMOs or ARPGs, I acknowledge that there’s a lot to be said for brevity. In a world where games are increasingly judged on size over quality, I have nightmares of a dystopian future when save files are passed from generation to generation like fucking heirlooms. So now and then it’s nice to play game that can be over and done with in the space of an afternoon, like Nocturnal from Sunnyside Games.

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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Without meaning to sound unfair to an early preview build of a game, Testament: The Order of High Human didn’t make the best first impression on me. For a start, the title feels like it should pluralise “Human”, and every time I say it, it feels wrong. But beyond this, the gameplay itself is something a mixed bag.

From a frantic opening where you must flee from a powerful enemy up to the eventual boss fight that ended the preview, I struggled to settle into any kind of rhythm. Partly this is down to the voice acting, which feels just a little bit laboured. The main character speaks English, but it’s fairly clear that it’s not the actor’s first language. This in itself isn’t a major issues, but it can sometimes feel like the words just aren’t flowing naturally, especially when there’s so much clunky exposition early on. Sometimes the main character, Aran, will just outright tell you things under the pretence of an inner monologue, and it’s jarring at best.

What little backstory I could glean from the opening suggests that Aran was double-crossed by his brother Arva. As the King of the High Humans, Aran’s fall has affected the world of Tessara, leading to an invasion by the forces of darkness. As Aran, you must wield sowrds, bows, and magical spells to defeat the minions of chaos and save the realm.

Almost refreshingly, Testament: The Order of High Human isn’t a roguelite or Soulslike. It’s a first-person action-RPG that draws immediate parallels to Skyrim, although that’s probably not a mirror it should be holding up. While the few environments in the preview are certainly very good-looking and highly detailed, the gameplay itself is incredibly uneven.

Aran soon arms himself with a sword and bow, and the latter is by far the more useful. Aiming is precise and ranged damage is suitably high, so sticking an arrow through the head of what are clearly trolls but are referred to as “halflings” does what it says on the tin. Sadly, Aran is less proficient with a sword, and melee combat feels like your batting at flies rather than attacking bloodthirsty “halflings”.

The primary issue here is that despite ostensibly being of considerable marshal prowess, Aran swings his sword like it’s got a two-seater sofa nailed to it. There’s very little grace to the movement, and the impact is severely lacking. You can perform basic combos on enemies, but you can’t block incoming attacks, and so the only way to avoid damage is to constantly hit and run like you’re doing the Hokey Cokey. You do have a dodge, but it’s on cooldown, which makes absolutely no sense when so much of the combat involves sword-fighting.

As a result, any time you have to fight more than one enemy (which is often), combat becomes a hellish chore of attrition, slapping an enemy across the mush and then back-pedalling like a politician caught leaving a brothel. If the option was there to just shoot everything, I’d have done that, but your supply of arrows is far too stingy.

It’s a shame, too, because there are flashes of cool stuff in Testament: The Order of High Human. For a start, the magic has serious potential. There was only one spell available in the preview, but it worked well in tandem with the sword to weaken approaching enemies so they only needed one or two half-hearted lunges before they rag-dolled into the dirt. The boss encounter, too, is decent, helped by the fact that the hit and run tactic works far better on him than it does in any fight with more than a single enemy.  You can also wall run, which feels fluid and easy, linking together a few areas with first-person parkour that is surprisingly strong. These areas aren’t common, but are always fun to navigate.

I’d like to sat that Testament has potential, but with only a few weeks until its release date, I wonder if there’s enough time to fix everything. The promise of Metroidvania-style progression certainly has my attention, but I’m just not looking forward to having to endure the melee combat for the entire runtime. As an RPG, there’s a possibility for a build that focuses entirely on ranged combat, which might make it more palatable. I’m certainly not completely turned off. It’s a good-looking game with a handful of very decent ideas that could make it stand out in the genre, as long as Fairyship Games can tighten up the combat and dialogue.

Testament: The Order of High Human is due to hit Steam on July 13th.

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On first glance it would be quite easy to dismiss Battle Shapers as just another roguelite FPS following tried, tested, and arguably tired mechanics. Shoot, upgrade, dash, die, restart, right? But it doesn’t take more than a few minutes of action to make you realise that this one is a little bit different.

For a start, the quality is apparent from the off. This is a beautiful, brightly-coloured game, with environments akin to Overwatch and a frantic pace that only lets up when the immediate threat is dealt with. It flows wonderfully, and the gunplay feels tight, precise and responsive, landing in the sweet spot where aim assist and player skill prop each other up as nature intended.

You play as Ada, one of the titular Battle Shapers, cyborgs who can modularise their own bodies to suit different combat and mission parameters. You’ll be introduced to Cores right away, which are essentially Ada’s starting loadouts. Each run will begin with you selecting a core, and spending relevant currencies to unlock secondary weapons, or buffs that can be either permanent or run-based. Once inside the game world, special attacks, new weapons, and boosts to your stats and abilities will be awarded each time you clear a zone.

These will either come in the form of drops you cab swap out, or the option to choose one of three run-based buffs a-la Hades. These buffs are designed to work in tandem with your chosen Core, which altar Ada’s appearance but also fundamentally change the playstyle. For example, the base core is designed for survivability and moderate damage output, making you efficient enough but not allowing you to excel in a given field. Choosing the Strike Core, however, makes Ada far more melee-oriented, boosting your attack power at the cost of some defence and ranged damage.

It’s hard to sell how good Battle Shapers feels in words, but indie developer Metric Empire has captured something that feels immediately special here. For one, it’s balanced well, so even as a roguelite you’re not getting annihilated in moments and clever play or fast reflexes will often save your hide. Coloured loot boxes are dotted around each zone, dishing out money, armour, health, ammo, or the special upgrade currency you spend between runs.

Dealing enough damage to an enemy will cause it to enter a stunned state, wherein a single melee hit will cause it explode, dealing area damage and rewarding you with a shower of goodies. From turrets and drones to mobile robotic enemies, there’s a decent spread of opponents even in the demo. Sadly though, we could only opt to go after one of the three bosses in the demo, the Volt Colossus.

This guy and his buddies have taken over and corrupted the city of New Elysium, and it’s up to Ada to stop them. After the first few zones, you’ll be given the option to choose which one to pursue, locking you in until the boss is defeated or your run ends. Once the run is over or the boss is dead, you can return to the Hub and upgrade or unlock abilities, cores, weapons and various other gear.

It might be anything particularly new, but Battle Shapers is still incredibly likeable. Voice-acting would help, as currently nothing is voiced at all, but even without it, the world is colourful enough to hold your attention. It’s obviously too early to tell you if Battle Shapers is going to set the world alight, but the demo is very strong. There’s already a ton of different gear, weapons, cores, and upgrades to experiment with, and enough content to get a feel for what the full game will present. If nothing else, the demo has me hyped to get hold of the full game later in the year.

Battle Shapers is set to release on Steam in Fall 2023.

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Thanks to publisher Outright Games and developer Cradle Games, we got to see gameplay of their brand new title, Jumanji: Wild Adventures, due out this November on PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox.

Following on from the less-than-stellar Jumanji: The Video Game, Wild Adventures has switched to an isometric perspective and has added some enticing new features. It will allow players to choose to be any of the four main characters as you explore new environments lifted from the films. You can choose between Dr. Smolder Bravestone, Professor Shelly Oberon, Ruby Roundhouse, and Mouse Finbar, and can tackle the game alone or in co-op with friends.

While it won’t feature the voices of Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillen, or Kevin Hart, it does recreate their likenesses from the hit movies. You’ll be traversing trapped temples, white water rivers, overgrown jungle paths, and battling against a host of different enemies from the franchise, including pesky baboons.

The major selling point here is that there will be three main story bosses, and each time you start a new game, one will be randomly selected to steal the Jewel of Jumanji. You can take them on in any order you like, but you won’t know which one has the Jewel until you meet them and battle them.

In the preview we saw character’s jumping into a jeep to traverse sections of the map, bouncing on hippos, and kung-fu fighting against monkeys. Each character will have slightly different stats, too, as Bravestone, for example, is more of a fighter than Mouse. We’re promised different skills and abilities for all the characters, as well as the option to utilise weapons and other items to survive the adventure.

Although clearly designed with younger gamers in mind, Jumanji: Wild Adventures aims to cater to gamers of all ages. Outright Games were quick to reinforce that although it won’t feature a steep challenge for older gamers or parents, the combat and puzzles should be enough to keep them interested – especially with the multiple story paths.

You can see the PlayStation announcement trailer below:

Jumanji: Wild Adventures is set to release across all platforms this November.

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor released in April to some pretty high acclaim. Continuing the story of Cal Kestis that began in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Survivor tightened up many of its predecessor’s issues to deliver a compelling, engaging adventure. Some of the most common complaints, however, focused on the game’s stability, which wasn’t always great and varied from platform to platform.

Well, today developer Respawn have released a new patch that fixes a host of technical bugs and issues in the game. Below is a list of problems addressed in Patch 6, which should make the game much more stable across the board.

• Fix for bounty hunters not spawning
• Fix for an issue where Caij would become invisible
• Fix for occasional issue where “Find the Gorge’s Secret” Rumor could not be completed
• Collision improvements
• Improved blaster handling
• Fixes for Photo Mode
• Wind puzzle on Jedha fixed
• Updates to the holomap data
• The training dummy on Jedha was “sneaking around”. It has now been immobilized
• Various bug fixes & Improvements
• Various crash fixes across all platforms

The team at Respawn have also confirmed that they will continue to work on the technical side of the game going forward, so expect to see more patches down the line. If you haven’t played Survivor, you can read our review here, in which we said:

“Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is going to make a lot of fans happy, whether you’re unfamiliar with the wider universe or not. Combat and traversal is sublime, and despite certain boss fights being as tough as Beskar nails, the satisfaction of taking down a legendary enemy feels euphoric. There’s so much to do and see, with a story that grips you until the very end, never taking its foot off the gas and giving you all the thrills and excitement seen in some of the most highly regarded stories fans already know and love.”

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S and X.

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The Aliens universe can almost be likened to a sitcom at this point. Not because it’s particularly funny, but because nothing ever seems to advance significantly, and characters seem to learn nothing. How many times has someone in this universe stuck their face in something clearly dangerous, or gone creeping around in the dark alone expecting to not get the back of their skull ventilated by a lurking monstrosity? Aliens: Dark Descent is no different in this regard, but that’s the price you pay for something this painstakingly respectful of the source material.

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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I don’t tend to say this lightly, but in just the short period of time the Galacticare preview lasted, it really impressed me. It’s not often you get to diagnose and treat a skin infection in a gigantic space whale roughly the size of a London bus named Baz – but in Galacticare, it’s fairly commonplace.

You play as the new Director of the titular Galacticare, a hospital that orbits a far future Earth and treats the illnesses and injuries in patients both human and, well, not. You’re aided by the CEO, Kora Orion, and HEAL, a sarcastic AI with a stiff British accent and a mean streak. Your job is to outfit and staff the hospital, treat patients, decorate and facilitate the various treatment rooms and save as many lives as you can. Which, sadly, won’t be all of them.

This is because far-future medicine is bat-shit crazy. From a skin treatment machine that dissolves a patient’s flesh then reapplies it sans-scars, to a machine that forcefully removes bones and replaces them with fresh ones, the few treatment machines available here were funny and, frankly, mildly terrifying.

The preview began with an empty room that requires a reception desk, some decoration, and a few treatment rooms. You’ll then hire staff, open the hospital, and set about the running of it. Your responsibilities include adding décor and entertainment, vending machines, toilets, seating areas, a staff lounge. Your doctors and patients can be human or “Odhe”, which are little grey men strongly suggested to be the species who visited Roswell, among other things. There are likely many other species, treatments and options in the full game, but the preview is limited to just a few.

Medi-bots whizz around the place and can be assigned to maintenance or cleaning, while you’ll need to constantly monitor the moods of both patients and staff to keep the place operating on an even keel. Placement of items and upgrading rooms or staff couldn’t be much simpler than it is, which is good, because there will be a hell of a lot to juggle in the full game.

The primary hospital setting acts like a sandbox hub, but Kora mentions heading to oversee a music festival somewhere in the next mission which strongly hints at more dynamic fieldwork in the full game. If that’s the case, sign me up right now.

A lot of Galacticare is rooted in humour – even when a machine malfunctions and kills a patient there’s something oddly humorous about it. When HEAL told me I need to pay my staff “due to capitalism”, I sniggered. Even the maladies affecting your patients like Star Warts and Jellification are quite funny in context. Also, strange aliens will occasionally infest your hospital, such as Vomitongues, which literally make people puke everywhere on contact, or Solarks, which deposit vast amounts of cash into your bank account when you catch them.

Now and then your doctors will level up, allowing you to increase their skills. This is important to keeping them happy, as pissed off staff will abandon your hospital and you’ll need to hire rookies to replace them. You can also unlock room upgrades, and some of your patients – like the aforementioned Baz – will give you unique gifts as thanks. Baz even comes back later to sell you some upgrades, items, and a magic space-gel that stabilises critical patients.

While the preview is limited, it hints at a level of creativity and fun in the main game that I absolutely cannot wait to experience. Like Two-Point Hospital, Galacticare splits its time perfectly between genuinely challenging management and tongue-in-cheek humour, but with a distinctly Red Dwarf-ish flavour that I can’t get enough of.

Galacticare is due to launch later this year, and I’m already looking for excuses to go and see the doctor.

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“Impossification” might sound like a silly made up word, but it’s the backbone of everything you do in Park Beyond. It’s a theme park builder with some big ideas, not least of which is the concept of making things no one has ever seen before. It almost nails it, too, but innovation is a tough quarry to catch in this particular genre.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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After hitting PC and consoles in February of this year, Wild Hearts from EA and koei Tecmo, has recieved a handful of content updates introducing new Kemono to hunt, as well as new armour, cosmetics, gameplay featgures and even karakuri to use. Today marks the release of the latest Wild Hearts content update, which brings a new Kemono in the form of the Alpha Venomglider.

This update also allows you to forge a new armour set after hunting the monster a few times, as well as a new monacle cosmetic ornament, just for funsies. The update adds a story quest to hunt down the Alpha Venomglider, and then adds a new repeatable quest to hunt the new kemono for materials to craft the new gear, pictured here.

Wild Hearts is a monster-hunting adventure game that mixes an ancient Japanese aesthetic with a thrilling, innovative build-crafting system that sees you construct devices on the fly that can launch you into the air, allow you to glide, or otherwise hinder, harm, or outright slay the huge beasts you hunt. You can team up with friends and strangers, or tackle the danger alone with a variety of weapons that completely alter the way you approach each challenge.

When we reviewed Wild Hearts at launch we said: “Wild Hearts is a fantastic video game. It has so much flair and personality, and so much of it is designed with fun in mind. Yes, it’s challenging and some of the Kemono will test your skill and patience, but there’s so much to find and grind for, secrets in the wilderness to uncover, dozens and dozens of weapons to get to craft, side quests, repeatable hunts, optional Karakuri to unlock.” We also scored it a very respectable 9/10. You can check out the review video below:

Wild Hearts is available on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series S & X. The Wild Hearts Alpha Venomglider update is available to download now for free.

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According to my extensive research (by which I mean a three-minute excursion to Wiktionary), a Gord is “a medieval Slavonic fortified settlement, typically a group of wooden houses surrounded by a wall of earth and wood, with a palisade running along the top of the bulwark”. It’s ironic that despite being a European I could more easily tell you what a tepee or an igloo is. And frankly, it’s only a good thing that more and more developers are leaning into Slavic folklore and history when making games.

Recently we’ve seen titles like Blacktail explore the rich cultural mythology of ancient Europe, delving into legends we all remember just a little differently thanks to their bastardisation by mostly British or American storytellers. Gord is another title that seeks to shine a light on the lesser-celebrated Slavonic heritage, in the form of a survival settlement sim with no shortage of horror elements mixed in.

The two missions I played for the preview reminded me immediately of a dark fantasy version of Stranded: Alien Dawn. Success in Gord relies not just on being able to harvest resources quickly, but on maintaining the physical and mental health of your settlers. The early story follows the servants of a less-than-savoury monarch on a march through a wolf-haunted forest. While the two figures of authority, one a wizened druidic leader and the other an unlikeable little imp of a man, bicker and battle, you must take control of the few common travellers in your party.

Job one is to establish a base of operations, a protective bulwark that serves as the outer defences of your Gord. Having survived the dark woods and blood-hungry wolves, your people are more than eager to build a fence and get to work on a lumbermill, larder, and thatchery. You click on your individual settlers to assign them jobs, and they’ll carry them out exhaustion, collecting food, reeds and wood from both inside and beyond the settlement. The surrounding woods are dark, and you’ll often need to keep one character free as a guard to watch over the workers. The further they travel into the murky shadows, which replace the standard fog of war with a colourless film, the more dangerous it is.

This is a world of magic and monsters. Wolves, giant spiders, wendigos, evil spirits; even capricious gods, exist within the woods, and merely surviving encounters with them won’t be enough. Gord has intricate systems in place that force you to monitor not only your settlers’ physical wellbeing but also their mental health, as they can be deeply affected by ongoing trauma. This trauma can also affect those around them, requiring you to construct buildings like a meadhall and infirmary to help them cope.

Likewise, your people will have families, and slowly grow your population, which requires the gathering of more and more resources. A parent or sibling might be mauled to death by a wolf, or contract some disease from a roaming fey deity, and their state of mind and body will adversely affect their family members – especially if they die.

This kind of intricate human connection is core to Gord, which is why it reminds me at every turn of titles like RimWorld and Stranded. Sometimes you might do everything right, but a random event can set in motion a chain of entropy that sees you lose everything anyway. The two missions in the preview did a good job of introducing me to the broad strokes and mechanics of Gord, the emphasis on looking after my people despite the authority figures in the game either holding them in contempt or being too timid to protect them. It’s an interesting, complex, and multi-branching network of systems that seem almost incomprehensible at first but which will become clearer as you play, and lose, and make small steps of progress.

Although we didn’t see much of it in the preview, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are ways to combat the darkness, from training warriors and forging weapons and equipment, to inviting a witch to join your village who will bless you with temporary buffs against the evil denizens of the wilds. Ultimately Gord is a game about the people under your control, not necessarily the settlement itself. You won’t be using diplomacy to talk to neighbouring towns, and you won’t have to worry about other players or invading factions. The focus is on survival against all odds, and in that it’s almost refreshing.

To top it off, Gord is beautiful in a grimdark kind of way. It may be relentlessly bleak, but the use of light and shadow to illuminate detail is incredibly effective. There’s great attention to detail in the environment and buildings, and the way each of your settlers behaves differently hints at some complex wizardry under the hood. It’s impressive even at this early stage, and I’m looking forward to losing many hours to Gord’s gloomy world.

Gord is coming to PC on August 8th, 2023.

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Porting any complex tactical game from PC to console is always a big ask. Not necessarily because of the mechanics themselves, but because the controls always feel much better suited to the mouse and keyboard. Company of Heroes 3 – Console Edition is no exception. While it contains all the content of the PC version, it lacks some of the visual polish and struggles with translating the more precise commands.

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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I’ve never been a big fan of mobile gaming. It’s always been tricky to differentiate between the games made with a clear vision and ambition, and the games made to siphon your cash as quickly as possible. And often when you do manage to separate the two, there’s still significant overlap. But there are plenty around that at least offer a meaty chunk of content before they start stinging you, and surprisingly, The Division Resurgence looks set to fall into this category.

This is essentially The Division 1.5, slotting in-between the two mainstream games in terms of story and lore. It comes after the events of the original, and reintroduces a handful of characters. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them “fan-favourites”, but it’s nice to see certain faces again if you played the original way back when.

At brass tacks level, it plays the same as the main games. It’s a third-person cover shooter that sees you fight your way through a ravaged New York City, fighting down the same old gangs in the same old streets. The “Resurgence” part of the title is the giveaway here: everything you did in the first game has kind of been undone, all the snake-heads you severed have grown back, and it’s up to you to go out and machete them all off again.

It will also feature pretty much all the content of the base release, including the PvP Conflict mode and the Dark Zone, The Division‘s PvPvE mode that gave the original game its legs for quite some time. Both modes will work the same as they did before, with dedicated instances for both and their own line of rewards for taking part.

I played through the first five story missions in the preview build, and took care of a few side missions along the way and it was satisfying to be back in this world. The shooting feels just as smooth as it did before, with a satisfying zip and crackle when headshots drop an enemy or you stich a line of body shots across some ruffian’s windbreaker.

That The Division Resurgence has a full campaign as well as open world gameplay is both welcome and encouraging. With the added emphasis on cosmetic microtransactions, this could easily have been a PvP-focused cash grab, but there’s actually been some work put into it. The cover system is smooth, and shooting feels precise and responsive.

In the interest of science I played with the touchscreen controls for as long as I could. I really don’t enjoy having my massive thumbs obscuring half my screen – but then I was playing on an Oppo Reno-8 which is hardly a gaming phone. The 6.43 inch screen doesn’t lend itself to a UI that’s half-covered with prompts and touch buttons. I switched to my Gamesir X2-36 Bluetooth controller after about half an hour and the experience rapidly improved.

Played like this, it might as well have been any handheld game on a Switch or Steam Deck – though with some fairly massive graphical concessions. Again, my phone isn’t built for gaming so I was thankful I could run it so smoothly on Medium settings. On a low/mid-range phone the environments are covered in low-detail textures, the colours are too bright with very little shading, and there was horrendous texture pop-in throughout. That said, it’s a work in progress, and a more powerful device would likely yield better results for sure.

There were a few noticeable issues though, and not all technical. Your “partner” for the first few missions is Agent Kelly, one of those no-nonsense characters that the writers couldn’t decide on a personality for. She’s either rude to the point of frustration or offering to buy you a cold one, and her repeated cries of “Found some cover!” made it fortunate that I couldn’t turn around and shoot her myself.

Read our interview with The Division 2 creative director

In between missions there’s the standard Division hub where you can buy and sell gear, upgrade your equipment, and access your stash. This is very much The Division all over again and anyone familiar with the franchise will feel right at home. You can jump directly to a mission at any time from the map screen, too, which is convenient, and load times are surprisingly tight.

The Division Resurgence lacks the decayed beauty of the larger games, but loses little of the gameplay flavour. The loot system remains almost unchanged, with an onus on collecting sets for the bonuses they offer, and upgrading to succeed. It is very much the game you played before, with a different selection of Specialities but the same familiar gameplay nestled within each. After character creation I chose Vanguard, a class that carries a section of deployable cover, but I rarely found a use for it as there’s cover pretty much everywhere. Perhaps the Demolitionist would be more up my street.

Ubisoft have yet to show the cash shop in full swing so I can’t speak to prices or what it will sell, but at the very least the gameplay offers something for fans of the franchise to get their teeth into without MTX. It’s early days, but getting me interested in a mobile game is always a tough sell, and I came away from The Division: Resurgence at least looking forward to playing more.

The Division Resurgence is slated to release on iOS and Android in 2023.

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The makers of Oblivion Override have billed it as “Hades meets Megaman”, which is pretty accurate as descriptions go. But while it certainly wears Hades’ coat and Megaman’s hat, the entire rest of its wardrobe used to belong to Dead Cells.

It’s set in one of those vaguely post-apocalyptic worlds where everything is a junkyard, robots have taken over, and only a handful of good robots, sassy mechanics, and grumpy scientists can save the day. What we’re saving the day from isn’t entirely obvious at this point, either. As Oblivion Override heads into early access, it does so with very little superfluity – and by superfluity I mean narrative context.

You play as Crimson, at least initially, a robotic warrior with more than a hint of Dead Cells’ Beheaded. It’s incredibly stylish, looks and sounds absolutely beautiful, and plays like a fluid, responsive dream. The only issue at this point is that it’s brick hard and doesn’t give two shits for your tears.

As Crimson, you venture out into themed areas from a central hub, again much like Dead Cells. Stages consist of a multi-branching level connected by fast-travel teleporters, and culminate in a boss fight – and it’s the boss fights that create both a massive skill barrier and Oblivion Override’s only real frustration.

The first one, against a giant metal titan, is insanely hard. And not because of the mechanics necessarily. In fact, anyone used to relying on quick reflexes, hit and run attacks, and pattern recognition will be able to figure out the procedure quickly enough (You see? It’s even wearing Dead Cells’ underwear). The problem is how much health the boss has, how much damage it does, and the fact that its attacks have very little wind up and can be almost impossible to dodge due to their effective range.

But even that you could probably overcome, if it wasn’t for the fact that Oblivion Override demands an almost faultless performance. See, there are no heals. No potions or refill checkpoints. You play the entire stage and the boss fight with one health bar, and you can only top it up with laughably small increments from certain skills that may or may not become available in a given run.

After earning enough nanites you can hold the left trigger to upgrade Crimson, unlocking as many buffs as you can afford from a Hades-style menu. These may increase your damage output, add special effects to attacks, or buff you with the aforementioned “heals” that are so slight you may as well not bother.

What makes it more frustrating is that the level before the boss is so jaw-slackeningly good. The combat is amazing. It’s fast, liquid, brutally responsive. There’s a good selection of weapons that will randomise with each run (as does the level), and you can unlock them using a currency called Script. You buy them from Nico, a vendor who’s entirely robotic except her face and boobs, naturally, and they come in some wonderful shapes. My favorite is the Wok and Roll, an actual repurposed wok and noodle spoon combo that does superfast damage.

After each run, fail or not, you can upgrade Crimson with permanent buffs. Again though, these are tiny. Plus 5 damage, or plus 10 health when your pool is already 500 and enemies hit you for 30 to 60 damage at a time. As with Hades, the story seems to persist even with failure, as vendors you meet in the world will come back to the hub when you next respawn.

Unlike Dead Cells, though, you begin with a host of Metroidvania-style traversal moves already unlocked. You can double-jump, run up walls, and dash in the four primary directions which allow you to reach higher levels and comes with free i-frames for avoiding traps and enemy attacks.

It’s far too early to fully judge Oblivion Override. As it heads into early access there are balancing issues I hope the devs address, but beyond that it’s just a gorgeous hack and smash adventure with fantastic sound design and some incredible combat animation. Of course, maybe the steep difficulty is working as intended, but as with all early access titles, time will tell.

Oblivion Override enters Steam early access on June 14.

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Anyone who plays a lot of games – and I mean a lot of games, not just a few games a lot of the time – will likely tell you that it’s rare to see anything that feels really unique. Developers chase trends for a reason, the upshot of which is that over a given period a lot of new releases will borrow heavily from one another or from existing IP, and it all begins to feel like a rich soup cooked in a really big pot. Satisfying at first, certainly tasty, but there’s so much of it that it will have started to go off by the time you’re halfway through the French stick. Also, the idea that “unique” always means “good” can be a bit of a misconception. A statement which needs clarifying before I fully give the game away about Laika: Aged Through Blood.

I’ve been playing a preview build of this game and it’s left me with a very skewed set of conflicting opinions. For one, I absolutely know that this will appeal to plenty of people out there. It’s a post-apocalyptic, motorcycle-based side scrolling adventure featuring a cast of highly evolved mammals struggling to survive in a harsh, Mad Max-style world lorded over by the Birds, anthropomorphic gulls and crows. From the screenshots I was expecting a plucky protagonist quick with a quip, and a fairly standard story.

This illusion was shattered when, in the first few minutes, you come across one of your friends, a cute dog named Poochie, crucified in his own entrails. You’ll later meet Jakob, Poochie’s companion, who explains in detail exactly what the Birds did to him before they killed him. It was incredibly unsettling, as is the little whimper Laika gives when she’s killed (she’s a coyote, by the way), or the way enemies kind of burst in balloons of blood and feathers when you kill them.

I don’t mind violence in games. In fact, most games I play are built on a core of violence and explosions. I also get that this is a deliberate choice for Laika: Aged Through Blood. But cut with the cartoony Western / cutesy animals aesthetic it just made me feel really uneasy. Unfortunately, the gameplay didn’t do an awful lot to balance it out.

The core concept of Laika is that you have a motorcycle, and can use it as both a vehicle and a shield. Levels are laid out like BMX tracks, with huge ramps to trick off and steep drops to gather speed. Holding the left trigger accelerates the bike, while holding X will perform a drift turn so that you can head back to the left of the screen. The bike is bulletproof, so timing a drift right can deflect bullets, and position yourself during jumps makes you impervious to gunfire. You can also hold down the right trigger to activate Bullet Time and line up your next shot, which is often essential, as you barely have time to think when there’s more than one enemy firing at you and you’re in the middle of a jump.

And this is my original point: there’s no doubt people reading this who are super excited to play it just based on the vehicular combat and gratuitous animal torture, and that’s fine, you weirdos. But I also found Laika to be incredibly frustrating. There are multiple checkpoints, and so you never have to reply much on death, but the slightest mistake will see you shot, and even if Laika brushes her cute foxy nose against the ground, regardless of speed, she’ll explode like a water balloon and you’ll need to replay that section. As so much of it is skin-of-the-teeth hard, this can be an issue.

Again, though, the hardcore aspect will appeal to many – and I’d even say the levels have a speed run quality to them, as so much of it is about timing, positioning and forward-thinking. Until the boss fight that is. A massive machine known as the Hundred Hungry Beaks must be destroyed before you can go home and bury your friend, and it’s both simple and tedious. All you really have to do is ramp off it over and over again, shooting out its heads from above as you do. Unfortunately, your gun only holds two rounds and so even if you land every one you’ll be ramping off it about ten times or more.

Weirdly, upon killing the boss, the screen becomes saturated in a red mist that makes it almost impossible to see what’s going on and – even though the machine is destroyed – you have to do the entire fight again, without being able to see its health bar. I literally have no idea why this is a thing, but it turned a boring fight in to two boring fights and I really can’t understand the thinking behind it.

It may well be story-related, but either way, after that you return to the Village, a hub in the desert where you live with your little doggy community and Puppy, your daughter. And it’s here that my mind really started to boggle. Firstly, you’ll need to hold the trigger down and ride through the entire opening credits, which is just Laika riding to the left while a (admittedly beautiful) song plays over it. It’s a very odd sequence, though, that seems to want to evoke Marston’s ride home from Red Dead Redemption, but which does it at the wrong end of the story and with nothing worth looking at while you do it.

When you get to the hub, Laika walks so incredibly slowly and everything is so far apart that I found myself getting actually angry. It’s as if the developers of Laika: Aged Through Blood are deliberately trying to push the player’s patience. The world is bleak, fine, but the gameplay doesn’t have to be.

This is only a preview build, though, and there’s much more to Laika, for sure. The story is intriguing, hinting at some ancient power Laika possesses which will be revealed later in the story. And the world itself has potential, if you’re a fan of such grimdark universes. But right now it feels like Laika: Aged Through Blood is unique for some of the wrong reasons. The vehicular combat is great, if a little frustratingly hard, but the framework around just doesn’t quite hold up.

Laika: Aged Through Blood is coming to PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2023.

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On June 13, Refugium Games and publisher Perp Games will release new sci-fi themed survival horror The Greyhill Incident on consoles, while PC users can pick it up right now. Taking place in a small neighborhood invaded by hostile extraterrestrials, the game is a story-driven adventure wherein you play a plucky survivor who must work with his neighbours to survive the night.

As Ryan Baker, you’ll need to navigate the streets of Greyhill, avoiding the invaders, and get to the bottom of a sinister conspiracy. Developer Alan Roller says: “The horror game genre is huge with fervent fans, and we wanted to create something unique and nostalgic for them that combines horror and sci-fi. We felt a traditional alien invasion story that wove together an intricate web of conspiracy and extraterrestrial encounters would make for a great game and were surprised to see that we were venturing into uncharted territory. That led us paying homage to the iconic X-Files franchise and classic movies like Signs.”

Equipped with just a baseball bat, a revolver and “limited ammo”, you’ll need to use your wits and reflexes to stay alive, especially as your neighbours are relying on you, too. They’ll help out over the walkie-talkie, offering advice and guidance to help you stay one step ahead of the invaders. Check out the launch trailer below to see how you’ll be running, hiding, fighting, and solving puzzles as you strive to outwit the “greys”.

The Greyhill Incident will also come in a special “Abducted Edition” on PlayStation 5, which will be available a while after launch on June 23 in Europe and July 11 in the US. The standard edition launches for $29.99 on PC via Steam today, and is set to launch on June 13 on PS5, and Xbox Series S and X. You can check out the official website here, and look out for our coverage here on GodisaGeek.com.

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Station to Station is about as relaxing a railway sim as I’ve ever played. It’s a cute little voxel-art game that tasks you with creating a rail network connecting towns and villages with various production nodes, and it’s about as far from something like Railroad Tycoon as it’s possible to be within the same genre. If anything it’s closer to something like Little Cities, only not VR.

You don’t have to worry about maintaining staff or appeasing commuters; you don’t even have to worry too much about which trains to set on your shiny new rails in the demo I played. Yes, you can choose between light and heavy freight cars, but that’s about it. Station to Station is more concerned with the broad strokes, laying tracks and making sure tiny imaginary people get their bread and milk in the morning.

It’s a world that doesn’t make much sense and doesn’t really need to. Each level begins with a blank map rendered in muted colours. Almost immediately, a selection of little buildings will plonk down onto the landscape and you’ll be given pretty simple instructions: follow the rules of supply and demand, and give the people what they need.

Hitting the space bar will spawn a station which you must place adjacent to a building. The first level teaches you the fundamentals, as you then create track to connect this station to the next. Ideally, if you have a wheat farm, it needs to be connected to a flour mill, and then that to a bakery. When you start to spawn towns, you’ll need to find a way to supply it with everything it needs. Every time you complete a working track, a little bloom of colour brightens the area.

Each level is a kind of logic puzzle, though there’s nothing hugely taxing. You have limited money, but can play special cards to reduce the cost of rails and bridges, or transform a light freight train into a heavy one for free. It’s nothing particularly complex, though the preview only contained 3 levels and it may become more in-depth later.

The fact that there’s no destroy or bulldoze option is frustrating, though. If you make a mistake, you’re stuck with it, meaning repeated errors will eventually lead to a lack of money and a need to restart. More than once, the next set of buildings included on that landed on a stretch of track I’d already built. While the train ghosted right through it, I couldn’t then connect the building to another track or station.

You can only earn more money by creating working supply lines, and those that satisfy two sets of demands at once are more lucrative. Unfortunately you don’t earn money over time, and each payment is a one-off. Again, this encourages you to think of each level as a self-contained puzzle, often with secondary objectives such as finishing with a certain amount of money in the bank.

It’s is a very chill game, though. There are elements of frustration, but they’re minor because you’re not on a time limit or under any pressure, and unlike many management sims there are no constant pop-ups demanding you service this or deal with that. I’ve only seen three levels so far, and while they were pleasant enough and certainly gorgeous, there doesn’t appear to be an awful lot to Station to Station.

Obviously this may change at launch, and even if it doesn’t, it’s kind of the point anyway. Station to Station isn’t intended to be a frantic, stress-filled challenge, but rather a chill, relaxing experience and in that respect it definitely aims to deliver on time.

Station to Station is coming to PC in 2023.

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The best way to describe Fights in Tight Spaces is to evoke both John Wick Hex and Superhot. It takes the tactical plotting and foresight of the former and mixes it with the black, white and red aesthetic of the latter, creating a game that seems to offer immediate catharsis but demands something much more cerebral in practice.

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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While it might seem obvious to say this, Star Trek: Resurgence is really one for the Trekkies out there. Yes, I know: sterling insight as always – but I struggle to imagine non-fans of Roddenberry’s universe getting past certain barriers to truly enjoy the experience. It’s a narrative adventure in the vein of a Telltale series, with the focus on moral and choices, critical decisions, and heaps of quick-time event minigames.

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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Following in the footsteps of Mageseeker and The Ruined King, Convergence: A League of Legends Story continues to expand on the rich, compelling mythology of Riot’s seminal MOBA. Although not set in the same version of the universe as Netflix’s fantastic animated series, it is set in Zaun, the steampunk undercity that exists beneath the technologically-advanced Piltover. And focuses on Ekko, a teenaged inventor with the power to manipulate time.

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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Mateusz Zanik, Game Director of Cyberpunk 2077 and co-game Director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has co-founded a brand new, clean-slate studio named Blank. He joins forces with a number of CD Projekt RED alumni, including Jędrzej Mróz and Marcin Jefimow, as well as Narrative Director Artur Ganszyniec and Art Director Grzegorz Przybyś.

Together, they aim to bring beautifully crafted and unique games to players around the world, beginning with the unnamed project teased in the header image, a story-driven post-apocalyptic adventure with “a few twists”.

In Kanik’s own words: “We’re thrilled to announce Blank. and to start expanding our incredible team. After working for years in an increasingly conservative industry, we’re ready to make bold, impactful projects that share our unique creativity and values. Where the industry champions a dictatorship of the creative individual, we want to give ownership to the team. Where the industry leans on crunch culture, we prefer work-life balance. Where the industry says bigger is better, we’re setting our sights on highly polished games with a focus on emotion, story, and craftsmanship.”

Co-founder of new studio Blank, Marcin Jefimow also said: “Our game development philosophy comes from our own stories and experiences. With Blank. we want to build a space where we can honour our histories, but also be playful and open to brand new inspirations as we collaborate creatively. We’ve already got a head start on a budding new project that we can’t wait to share with players and craft with new team members.”

The Blank headquarters are situated in Warsaw, Poland, and currently has just 10 members. They are aiming to recruit as many 60 in order to bring their new project, and many more, to life.

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