Insurgency: Sandstorm Review – What's Old Is New Again

With our reinforcements depleted and the enemy firmly entrenched in its defensive positions, the outcome of this battle looks bleak. Rather than desperately charging headlong into the fire zone like lambs to the slaughter, before we respawn our commander urges the squad to hang back as he coordinates one last-ditch attempt to capture the objective. After flanking the control point with his observer to find a good vantage point, he orders gunship support to pick off exposed snipers and drive the remaining enemies indoors. The rest of us pop smoke grenades to cover our movement before infiltrating the building housing the objective. 

Some of us won’t make it out alive. As the smoke begins to clear, we stare unblinkingly into the corners of the bullet-riddled room in hopes of spotting the last few defenders before they see us. My finger hangs deliberately over the mouse button ready to unload, but they fire first. The room erupts with gunfire and two comrades grouped closely together shriek their last breaths, but their deaths are not in vain. The rest of us spot the muzzle fire and rain revenge, securing the objective and completing the improbable comeback. 

At its best, Insurgency: Sandstorm capably delivers heroic moments like these, where the tension would suffocate if it weren’t for the equal dose of adrenaline rushing through your veins. This tactical shooter demands precision and rewards teamwork, but it also expects you to do your homework and survive without the conveniences of modern shooters.

As the years have gone by, tactical shooters like Rainbow Six and Battlefield have slowly sanded away the rough edges from their spartan foundations to become more streamlined, bombastic, and inclusive. Insurgency is the old-school mercenary who fills that void for those craving the punishing realism of yesteryear. Bullets are deadly, and no medics are standing by to miraculously revive you after being downed. Grenades don’t have indicators when they land near your position, and the lack of mini-maps and killcams means snipers with good hiding spots don’t need to relocate. With no kill confirmations, you won’t even know whether you killed that soldier hiding behind cover until you see the dead body yourself. Those who prefer the more arcade-like approach to military games may find the lack of these quality-of-life systems frustrating. But if you embrace this more realistic combat and operate like your life is on the line, Insurgency comes alive.

Before you drop into a match, you must choose one of the eight classes. A few, like the commander and observer, have critical responsibilities, but the rest basically break down by weapon type. Developer New World Interactive smartly limits the number of players who can use the most powerful classes, which prevents matches from becoming frustrating due to too many snipers or rocket spamming. All the weapons and attachments are unlocked from the start, but your loadout is limited by weight so you have to make some tough choices. Do you carry extra grenades or fully invest in useful attachments for your primary weapon? The many combinations for each class encourage experimentation before you settle on a favorite loadout.

Each of the three competitive multiplayer modes focuses strictly on attacking or defending control points. Some require the attacking team to take them over sequentially, whereas others spread the fight out across multiple positions. Respawns come in waves, either based on a timer or gifted as a result of capturing a new control point. Patience is required, because you sometimes have to wait minutes rather than seconds before the reinforcements get deployed, and you’re often several hundred meters away from the hot zone once you drop back in. I appreciate respawning at a distance because it creates a natural frontline where you don’t feel constantly in danger of being flanked during your approach, but hoofing it as far as 300 meters brings to mind some of the boring treks in long-lost games like Delta Force. 

Over the course of battle, expect to see some technical glitches. Though my performance was generally stable, occasionally my soldier's hands would disappear or he would have problems vaulting through windows. The netcode also could use some refinement. There were times I made it safely behind cover but still took a fatal bullet mere nanoseconds after the fact. 

Though they lack the graphical polish of many modern shooters, Insurgency’s maps are well designed, with varied elevations, winding streets, and plenty of cover. But apart from the oil refinery, they all feel remarkably similar, as if they were adjacent war-torn districts of a no-name Middle Eastern territory. The game would benefit dramatically from some environmental variety; right now it doesn’t even include a map set during the night to mix things up. 

 

Some of the maps include a truck with a turret mounted in the flatbed, but the controls are lacking and the absence of more deadly player-controlled vehicles is noticeable given its modern military setting. Commanders can call in gunships, mortars, and drones to aid the cause, but each is automated once you choose the attack location. In a game so defined by skill and execution, it feels odd to take control of these devastating weapons away from the player.

New World scrapped its plans for a story campaign during development, so the only option outside of competitive multiplayer is a cooperative mode where your squad commandeers control points from an A.I. occupying force. Respawns only trigger after capturing the next objective, which adds much-needed tension to the otherwise generic mode. Playing through each map for the first time is a fun way to get your bearings and calls to mind Rainbow Six’s terrorist hunts, but there isn’t enough depth or variety here to encourage repeated playthroughs. 

The progression system feels similarly underequipped. Ranking up earns you currency to buy new cosmetics for both the security and insurgent forces, but the options are unimaginative and paltry compared to options found in other shooters like Ghost Recon Wildlands. With no accolade or medal awards, the only real reward for a well-played match in Insurgency is the pride you feel for a job well done. 

Insurgency: Sandstorm isn’t for everyone. Its steadfast commitment to realism may off put those who like to jump right into the action, respawn immediately after dying, and get showered with rewards for ranking up. At the same time, fans who lament the mainstream evolution of tactical shooters like Rainbow Six and Battlefield may find solace in this unforgiving, undeniably tense combat. Insurgency: Sandstorm may be spartan, but its limited package can still deliver memorable moments.

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Below Review - Curiosity And Consternation

Below is an experience shrouded in mystery and discovery. Your character is a mere speck on the screen, with a zoomed-out camera providing a sense of scale that shows how tiny you are in relation to a vast, often-unforgiving world. The highly stylized art style combines with Jim Guthrie’s enthralling soundtrack to create an immersive adventure that’s easy to get lost into. No matter how strange, everything in Below’s world feels like it belongs, from meandering foxes on a desolate beach to the soft breakaway of blocks as your lantern’s light creates a path through the darkness. But Below’s gameplay can be debilitatingly frustrating, because despite permanent progression through shortcuts and other unlocks, death is swift and devastating, and it can leave you without essential resources to collect your corpse with a fresh character.

Arriving at a mysterious island, your tiny adventurer is armed with a sword, shield, and little else. You figure out how to manage many survival aspects (food, water, heat) while exploring your way to the depths of the island through many biomes and challenges. Sometimes the challenges are survival-based, like staying alive in a frozen cave. Others are more traditional dangers, having to battle off increasingly dangerous enemies, blocking with your shield, dodging out of the way of attacks, and letting fly a perfectly aimed bomb arrow. Or perhaps you need to solve a puzzle by landing an arrow, shining your lantern, or swinging a hammer.

Along the way, you find (and craft) new equipment that allows you to handle increasingly deadlier environments and enemies as you delve deeper into the heart of the island, including a pocket dimension that allows you to store resources for safekeeping. Each new special item you find, buy, or craft allows for satisfying experimentation. Below is unusual in that the deeper you go and the more interesting and wondrous environments become, the more the enchantment is stifled by the sheer weight of lethal traps and foes. From the darkness floors and beyond, death becomes an oppressive force that’s not just difficult or challenging, but oppressive and unfun.

 

It can be an absolute nightmare to recover your supplies from a floor that you haven’t unlocked a fast route to, and life without your lantern (which must be recovered from death each time, a critical item that many of the game’s mechanics hinge on) is bleak. By the time you get to take on a super cool boss, you’re left more concerned about your potential mortality than getting to really enjoy how precise and crafted the movements of the entity are. As you travel through the weird and wonderful, much of the enjoyment can be lost, channeled into death concerns, grinding for supplies to ensure that you can recover from loss, or simply running back through lengthy segments to get back to where discovery can begin again.

While every tiny unearthed secret provides a pip of inspiring joy, a singular misstep into a one-shot trap or dark creature can sap the fun in a heartbeat, creating a world where the fear of death reigns over all with an overbearing, heavy-handed truncheon. I also ran into a demoralizing bug where a critical progression item was unable to be recovered after death, leaving me locked out of advancing and forced to restart with a fresh save file.

Despite death’s cold grip threatening to ruin everything (a sense which grows the further you progress thanks to several significant difficulty spikes), the core concepts of discovery and exploration shine through. Finding out how to make arrow-bombs to take out tough foes, finding a shop, crafting a stockpile of elixirs, finding a critical elevator to the surface, and putting new gear to use in order to tackle new environmental hazards feels satisfying to figure out on your own. The first time you engage with new areas and mechanics can be awe-inspiring, as each area has its own special identity that feels like it truly belongs. Putting together the often-esoteric pieces of the puzzle and looking up at the sky from the top of the island is inspiring.

Below’s death mechanics can be devastating and off-putting, and caused me to bounce off the game several times. The survival nags are annoying, and the grinding for a safety net feels like a busy chore, but the overall combination of stylized graphics and soundtrack create an incredible universe that begs to be experienced. You need serious tenacity and perseverance to see the sights, but they are wonders worth seeing.

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Battle Princess Madelyn Review – Retro To A Fault

Romanticizing the past is easy, but older games shouldn’t always be held up as examples to follow. The retro aesthetic has plenty of appeal, including a simplicity of concept and presentation that can be refreshing set against modern behemoths. But old-school styling and design can also add up to frustration, aimlessness, and exasperating difficulty. Battle Princess Madelyn nails the throwback vibe it’s shooting for, and in so doing, exhibits both the highs and lows of the games from which it draws inspiration. If someone told you this was a lost sequel to Ghouls ‘n Ghosts rediscovered after all these years, it would be easy to believe.

Battle Princess Madelyn unleashes the titular royal on a side-scrolling world filled with creeping undead, giant snakes, and demonic trees. Her family has been kidnapped by a malevolent force, and she flings an endless supply of spears and swords to overcome the threat. Through charming (if simply drawn) characters and cameos, the story takes on a personal vibe, and showcases a plucky, capable heroine with spark and panache.

The game features two different game modes, using the same environmental backgrounds, but with totally different level designs and approaches to progression. The story mode is a lengthier quest with lots of new items to unlock and secrets to discover, while the arcade mode is a more straightforward and linear path through challenging battles and platforming. These modes result in significant replay potential.

The story mode provides a satisfying progression of new weapons and armor, though I was disappointed that I ran out of things to spend my currency on well before the game’s conclusion. I encountered a multitude of side missions to tackle, but the absence of a quest log or directional aids makes them all blur together, and it’s often difficult to tell the difference between critical objectives or missions that just net you some extra currency.

I was continually impressed by the variety of monsters, animations, and environments to discover; the desire to see the next area helps motivate continued play. Simple but enjoyable fantasy combat kept me mashing buttons for hours, and the platforming is often difficult, but usually rewarding. Unfortunately, the levels are often confusing to navigate, offering little guidance on how to push the story forward. A smartly implemented hint system alleviates some of the worst offenses, if you check those tips out. In addition, your trusty ghost dog companion also barks and helps steer you toward important objects. Even so, the long checkpoints, frequent blind death drops, and extended vertical climbs that characterize many levels all add more frustration than enjoyment. Many story mode levels also demand backtracking after a boss fight or to find particular sub-levels; pacing would often be better if I was just teleported back to a dungeon entrance or quest completion.

The arcade mode offers a cleaner, more straightforward homage to the original formula. But players should be prepared for a devilish difficulty curve that might crush your spirit long before you see credits. I enjoyed the arcade style the most after first completing the story mode, at which point the added challenge felt manageable but still appropriately punishing.

Battle Princess Madelyn has a sweet, personal touch to it that shines through in the final product, as well as a message about the value of family. The game was built in part as a father’s message to his real-life daughter, and whether you know that backstory or not, it lends the story and gameplay a heartfelt and wholesome tone. The Ghouls ‘n Ghosts formula is a lesser-tapped classic that is reinvigorated here with skill, but some structural and design elements hold the experience back from greatness. I hope we get to see more adventures with Madelyn and her family; with some refinement, this whimsically macabre world would be a joy to explore again.

 

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Ashen Review – Turning Strangers Into Friends

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Dusk Review – Getting Old Schooled

Big-budget, triple-A experiences have never been better, but modern games have no shortage of long cutscenes and hand-holding tutorial sequences. In contrast, Dusk is a nostalgia trip that strips away modern expectations and delivers distilled FPS thrills. Dusk doesn't mess around with leveling mechanics or a sprawling narrative; it hands you a shotgun and lets you loose on a demon army. This simplicity is Dusk’s greatest strength, because this no-frills shooter is an excellent crash course in basic game design.

Dusk doesn't hide its homage to '90s corridor shooters like Doom and Quake. These straightforward, boxy levels are relatively short and filled with colored keycards and hidden monster closets. But, given its graphical constraints, Dusk’s environments are incredibly well-realized. Animated scarecrows stumble out of cornfields while rundown barns teem with hooded cultists and demonic goats. Each level features its own twist on folk horror, seemingly inspired by films like The Wicker Man and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. With sparing detail, Dusk establishes an ominous tone that completely sucked me in from level one.

One of the biggest reasons to explore every nook and cranny of Dusk’s short levels is to gain access to powerful weapons. Early on, I fell in love with dual-wielding shotguns, but another favorite go-to became the rivet gun, which fires off super-heated construction rivets that explode like miniature missiles. Unlike many classic FPS games, I constantly rotated through Dusk’s arsenal thanks to each weapon’s specialization. For example, the hunting rifle is a long-range tool that packs an incredible punch, while the crossbow fires magical green arrows that rip through multiple enemies and even fire through walls. Each weapon is incredibly satisfying, and thanks to an ample supply of ammo scattered on the ground, my magazines rarely ran dry.

 

Mastering Dusk’s arsenal is important, because the action is frantic. Every firefight feels like a dance as you rotate through insanely powerful weapons and strafe dozens of incoming foes. Most enemies do little more than stand and shoot or run straight at you, but given the sheer number of foes and the fact that different projectiles move at varying speeds, I was constantly on my toes. Dusk is a shooter with no reloading, no cover, and no nonsense, so every skirmish is an absolute thrill ride.

Dusk’s intensity also pairs well with its oppressive atmosphere. You rarely have time to think about the horrors you’ve witnessed because the game is continually tossing enemies at you and letting you burn off that nervous energy in combat. Dusk is at once nerve-racking and cathartic.

 

After you finish the extensive single-player campaign, you can jump online for 16-player multiplayer mayhem. While the online action remains fast-paced, deathmatch is the only multiplayer mode, and it only has a handful of interesting maps. I had no trouble jumping into online matches, but I did have trouble getting a full 16-player match going. An in-game link to a community Discord channel helps coordinate play sessions, but this feels like papering over a problem rather than providing reliable and robust matchmaking. Given online multiplayer's lack of options and intentional lack of progression, this mode feels more like a novelty. Fortunately, the single-player campaign is more than worth the price of admission.

The first-person shooter has evolved a great deal since Doom popularized the genre in 1993, but, in spite 25 years of innovations, Dusk proves that many of the old tricks still work incredibly well. Dusk might look and feel like a Quake mod, but it's so polished it feels modern. Anyone with even a hint of nostalgia in their bones for classic shooters should dive headfirst into Dusk.

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Gris Review – Not All Who Wander Are Lost

The protagonist of Gris charts her own way out of sadness, and while grief is often navigated alone, that is not necessarily the case here. Her path isn’t straightforward, but the game’s well-designed gameplay and levels don’t make you feel helpless and isolated, instead delivering catharsis.

The visual style immediately stoked my interest. It’s arresting and stylistic, accented by interesting and appropriate movements of the camera. The graphics’ clean lines are still expressive and often a fundamental part of the puzzles, instructive in how players can move about the world and interact with it. With that also comes enriching aural flourishes that further pull you in and changes of color that help express the protagonists’ progression.

 

Gris’ unnamed protagonist does not have a lot of powers in her arsenal, but make no mistake: This game is not just a pretty-looking, light platformer. What abilities she does have to influence environments build throughout the game, such as her dress becoming weighty or flowing to burst through or float across levels. The use of these powers is meted out to produce satisfying moments and to make sure there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to problems. One of my favorite reoccurring sequences involves reverse gravity areas, a nice confluence of the game’s form and function that also shows off Gris’ ability to deliver precise platforming.

I appreciate how Gris’ level design encourages exploration without sowing confusion, frustration, or leaving you lost when it comes to the larger tasks of solving puzzles or advancing the story. It’s not easy for a game to both give players a sense of exploration while still maintaining a framework for levels and puzzle gameplay that doesn’t make you feel like you’re simply moving from one task to the next. Even during backtracking, in Gris it’s like you’re seeing things for the first time because of the flow of the levels and the art style. This keeps it from feeling like you’re a rat enclosed in the walls of a maze simply bumping into things until you get it right.

Gris’ story is open to a range of interpretations, and it’s not important that you arrive at a specific meaning. Instead, in creating a well-constructed game, developer Nomada Studio has laid the foundations by which you can find your own sight and voice.

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Desert Child Review – Just Scraping By

Desert Child casts players as a desperate young man who can barely make ends meet as he strives for glory as a hoverbike racer. But even when you get first place, you aren’t showered with prize money; sometimes you’re lucky to win enough to maintain your bike and get a decent meal. The slow struggle to amass wealth is an unconventional subject for gaming, and Desert Child conveys it well. However, when it comes to providing fun and depth, this stylish title doesn’t make it across the finish line.

You experience the world of Desert Child in two ways: racing and wandering. The races are short one-on-one affairs that make you weigh your boost and ammo as you try to stay in the lead. Though you can pepper the screen with bullets if you want to, the most lucrative strategy involves shooting certain hazards (like TV monitors that drop money) while trying to bash other hazards with your bike. The process isn’t complicated, and once you get the hang of it, the races don’t demand new tactics. Unfortunately, because your winnings are so meager – especially early on – you need to race a lot to earn the money to compete in the final contest. That may be in service to Desert Child’s overall message, but without any meaningful evolution, action quickly grows stale and repetitive.

The only major source of variety is what upgrades you install on your bike. Working within the confines of a grid, you place mods of different shapes and sizes, then junction power to them to enhance their effects. This can result in things like a higher ammo cap, more money, and bigger bullets. However, because the total upgrades are few (and the upgrades you can equip at once even fewer), you don’t have much opportunity to develop different playstyles. You can technically use various guns, but that choice is made at the very beginning and set in stone, so you need to start a whole new game to experiment with those options.

The shallow racing puts the burden on your off-the-track activities to keep you invested, but those also fall short. While roaming the city, you can pick up other jobs (like pizza delivery and kangaroo herding) that are just different spins on the basic racing formula. Otherwise, your time between races is spent walking slowly across multiple interconnected screens in a routine of simple tasks like repairing your bike, buying some food, and depositing your leftover money in the bank. The distance between these errands is frustrating, because you don’t have anything interesting to do in the world as you make the rounds.

 

Though Desert Child doesn’t always succeed in its ambitions, it usually looks good in the attempt. The pixel art and soundtrack create a slick retro atmosphere, and unique camera angles give you surprising looks at certain parts of the city. But again, it all feels superficial because the minimal story and dialogue mean that you never get a good sense of the futuristic setting beneath its junky, dystopian veneer. Some of it is good for a chuckle (like how all food is just called “burger”), but don't expect to form any attachment to characters or the world around them.

Grinding for slim rewards during the few hours it takes to finish Desert Child  encourages you to think broadly about financial hardship. While that’s a worthwhile topic to consider, the inert world and thin gameplay aren’t enough to translate Desert Child’s core concept into an entertaining game.

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Just Cause 4 Review – An Explosive Sandbox Of Possibilities

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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Review – A Raucous Clash Reunion

From its humble Nintendo 64 beginnings, Super Smash Bros. has been a delightful neutral zone for players looking for top-tier competition as well as friends who just want to kick back and watch Princess Peach knock the stuffing out of Bowser. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the culmination of everything that’s come before, offering a massive roster of classic characters and stages and subtle additions that make the game feel fresh. Whether you haven’t played Smash since your dorm-room days or you breathlessly await each new entry, Ultimate is not to be missed.

One reason why the Smash Bros. series has been so successful is that it’s one of those games where the old “easy to learn, difficult to master” cliché applies. In that way, Ultimate maintains its reputation as being one of the best party games around. It’s a great equalizer, with characters that are recognizable and memorable, and above all else it's fun to play. Ultimate adds some new faces to the proceedings, like Animal Crossing’s Isabelle, Metroid’s Ridley, and the Inklings from Splatoon. I like seeing some new blood (even if it’s never spilled), but none of the new ones fully clicked with me. Isabelle comes closest, feeling like a fresh variation on Villager, but I kept getting drawn back to my old mainstays including returning favorite Pichu. 

Ultimate’s new World of Light solo mode wisely doesn’t try to shoehorn platforming elements or push too far beyond the core of what Smash does best. Instead, you navigate a large map and take on themed challenges. The gimmick – and it’s a pretty good one – is that you’re freeing the spirits of characters who have fallen to a mysterious force. The spirits represent a vast array of characters from the world of gaming, the majority of whom aren’t represented as playable heroes in the roster. For instance, one spot on the map might have you saving a goron chief from Ocarina of Time, aka a giant, tan-furred Donkey Kong. Or a battle against Snorlax might have newcomer King K. Rool taking on the role of the slumbering Pokémon. Basically, imagine the playable cast cosplaying a wide array of other gaming characters. I spent dozens of hours in the mode, and I was continuously surprised by how creative the developers got in finding doppelgangers for these matches. 

Once liberated, the spirits are added to your roster and provide buffs for your hero. Exploring the World of Light can be a little tough at the start, but by methodically battling across the map I slowly accrued gear that made me feel like I was gaming the system in the best possible way. Battles aren’t quite as scary when you have spirits that counteract the burning effects of a stage’s lava hazards and also give you a powerful weapon or regenerating health at the start of the match. You can train your spirits in dojos and send them on expeditions, too, leveling them up for more power and adding yet another fun twist.

 

Your collection of spirits can also migrate over to classic Smash modes, which further transforms the game. You want to use two final smashes with every activation? How does an extra jump sound? I’ve always enjoyed the barely contained chaos that Smash brings, so these extra enhancements are welcome. If the spirits seem like too much, plenty of other under-the-hood tweaks can customize the experience. The most noteworthy addition is creating and saving your own custom rule sets, which are then surfaced on the main Smash menu. As someone who only plays matches with stock lives, this fixes a small but longstanding issue. Now I can dive into matches at the press of a button instead of having to fiddle around with menus. Another cool new option is the ability to earn final smashes by filling a meter instead of breaking the smash ball. It changes the tenor of matches, since players can focus on their opponents as opposed to the floating object.

Single player is better than ever, but solely playing against the CPU is a sad existence. Unsurprisingly, Ultimate’s multiplayer component shines. Local co-op is great, with up to eight players fighting at once (or even more, though not simultaneously, with the return of tournament play). If you don’t have the controllers for that kind of gathering or your Smash crew has scattered over the years, online is a viable alternative. The four-way matches fill up quickly, though it falters where it actually matters. The framerate and overall stability is inconsistent, which is frustrating in a game that depends so heavily on reaction time. I had more than a few otherwise-preventable deaths after the game hiccupped as I was on my way back to terra firma. Ultimately, however, Smash is best played with your friends piled into the same space, where you can shout, cheer, and taunt with impunity at every close match.  

 

Once all the characters are unlocked, the character-select screen is a magnificent thing to behold, with every character from the previous games present. However, getting them to show up is another thing entirely. When you start, you’re given eight measly heroes to choose from. It’s a seemingly clever nod to the modest starting roster from the Nintendo 64 game that started it all. Once I was done chuckling at the familiar lineup, the realization that I was going to have to unlock more than 60 remaining characters set in. New faces pop in whether you’re playing regular matches with friends, classic battles against A.I., or in the World of Light mode, but it’s an unnecessarily tedious and antiquated process.

Ultimate is a tremendous package overall, including just about everything a Smash fan could want. Sure, there are a few omissions; the lack of a home-run challenge hurts, and I would have loved to see an updated take on the Poké Floats stage (or the ability to create my own). The biggest fault in this close-to-comprehensive collection is perhaps the flipside of one of its strengths: For all the new things it brings, it’s all very familiar. As fun as they are to play, the handful of new characters don’t have the same pop of novelty that past additions have delivered. It’s a solid lineup, just not one that’s especially surprising beyond its overall scale.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate isn’t dramatically reinventing the franchise, but that’s all right with me; it’s a refinement of what’s come before. Some of my favorite gaming moments have centered on Smash, and it’s great to have a solid new anchor for moments yet to come – even if it means getting knocked into oblivion by a snoozing Jigglypuff every once in a while. 

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Earth Defense Force 5 Review – A Weakening Resistance

It may not be complex, but the core of Earth Defense Force 5 is accessible and entertaining. You are a soldier who (along with the optional assistance of co-op buddies) fights off an invading horde of giant bugs, frogs, UFOs, and more. You customize your loadout with weapons that range from awesome to awful. When your enemies are destroyed, they may drop new weapons for you to equip on future missions. Plowing through swarms of baddies while hoping for good loot is a pillar of countless games, and it retains its primal appeal here. However, Earth Defense Force 5 doesn’t build on that foundation, even when compared to previous games in this series.

With cheesy dialogue and simple point-and-shoot gunplay, Earth Defense Force 5’s presentation and mechanics take a back seat to pure arcade action. Jumping into the fray is easy, whether you’re firing off hilariously short-ranged explosives or unleashing a barrage of powerful homing missiles. Your otherworldly foes explode in satisfying spurts of fire and goo, often flailing wildly from the generous application of exaggerated physics. The resulting B-movie vibe serves this experience well, doling out laughs while removing barriers between you and the main attraction: shooting at a screen full of enormous creatures with weapons of escalating destructive force.

The mayhem is charming, but Earth Defense Force 5 hits the same basic notes as its predecessors, parading out familiar enemies (or their analogues) in a routine that doesn’t introduce many unique twists. The previous installment changed the dynamic by offering four classes with different specialties, and those same four options reappear this time around. You can technically use classes to strategize with your teammates online or in split-screen, like having the support-focused Air Raider help guide the Fencer’s heavy firepower. However, the action rarely demands (or even encourages) that level of coordination. The balanced offense of the Ranger and airborne mobility of the Wing Diver classes remain the most satisfying and versatile options, especially for solo play.

Most of my favorite improvements to the formula are quality-of-life changes, like earning health and weapons for all classes, not just the one you are currently playing. This means that you aren’t starting from scratch four times if you want to get a taste of what each playstyle offers. I also appreciate that picking up duplicates can increase the weapon’s stats instead of just feeling like wasted effort.

 

Though the experience is more user-friendly, these changes aren’t enough for Earth Defense Force 5 to gain any ground. It doesn’t feel substantially different from when I first played Earth Defense Force 2017 over a decade ago. I’m shooting ants with rockets and machine guns of wildly inconsistent utility. I’m cackling as buildings collapse. I’m crossing my fingers for a better version of my favorite gun. It’s fun, but it’s practically identical to the fun offered by its predecessors. If this is your first time playing an EDF title, this fatigue may not be an issue; the idea at the heart of the game is still a blast. At the same time, Earth Defense Force 5 barely feels like a step up from a game that was considered clunky and unpolished in 2007.

As video games evolve, developers continually set new standards by creating experiences with sophisticated storytelling, heightened immersion, and jaw-dropping technology. Earth Defense Force 5 has none of those things – but that’s okay. This series has always had a single-minded commitment to one simple truth: It’s fun to use weird weapons to blast lots of aliens. That fact may never change, but in an industry that has been steadily raising the bar, Earth Defense Force 5 allows the series to fall further behind.

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The Council Review – The Wrong Side Of History

History is full of power struggles, great betrayals, and behind-the-scenes scheming. The ugly side of politics often rears its head as leaders engage in the cutthroat pursuit of protecting their citizens … and themselves. The Council explores this concept, allowing you to align yourself with renowned historical figures to decide what’s best for the world. With a cool geopolitical backdrop, you’d think The Council would be engaging. While the scheming is full of good ideas, it never lives up to its potential. The adventure is disappointing and unsatisfying, with ridiculous plotlines, technical shortcomings, and annoying puzzles. 

The Council begins as a mystery of sorts. You arrive at a strange manor where your mother has gone missing. The reason for your visit? Your mother is part of a secret society that determines how to govern the world. It’s up to you to investigate this unique group, which includes famous individuals such as George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. The plot starts off promising, referencing historical events and exploring how religion has influenced government, but as fictional elements grow more prominent, it goes even further off the rails. When a huge plot twist was revealed halfway through the five episode arc, I lost all enthusiasm for the story – and further developments made me even more disappointed. To be blunt, the plot insults your intelligence with clichéd good-versus-evil comparisons. The tale unfolds through voice acting so bad it’s distracting, and watching the wooden character models interact is just as jarring. This hurts the immersion just as much as the horrendous twists; for a narrative-driven experience like The Council, these are all big problems.

At the very least, The Council has some interesting wrinkles in how it explores choice and progression. Every political mastermind has skills that make them successful, and this is put directly into the gameplay with light RPG elements. You pick from three classes – diplomat, occult, or detective – but you’re not cut off from gaining skills in different trees. As you play, you can apply points to increase your prowess in particular skills, like conviction, diversion, and psychology. Permanent bonuses called talents are unlocked depending on how you react and what you find in the manor. These can be anything from gaining additional experience to obtaining extra items. As someone who plays a lot of RPGs and loves building characters, I enjoyed this aspect. You’re always balancing what’s more important for you to focus on. Do you want to level up the manipulation skill to get people to act in your interest, or invest in the ability to pick locks to obtain beneficial items and information?

 

This all plays into your conversations. Depending on your aptitudes and the information you uncover, certain dialogue options open up. As in politics, relationships are important and fragile. A wrong move can cost you, but you can also make enemies into allies just as quickly with the right argument. The basic gameplay revolves around effort points, where some dialogue options have a cost, and that cost is lowered depending on your skills. You only get so many each quest to expend, so choosing wisely is essential. You want to invest optimally, whether it’s in an alliance or learning a secret that changes your perspective on a situation. The game has its share of alternative paths because of this, but that doesn’t matter when they all lead you down bad plotlines.

In addition to exploring the manor, building relationships, and making decisions, you encounter puzzles, which are more complex and logic-centric than we’ve seen in recent narrative games like Life is Strange and Telltale’s The Walking Dead.  While I enjoy solving riddles and brain teasers, The Council’s puzzles are tedious. For instance, one had me matching religious figures in paintings to their associated bible verse. If that required me to sort through a book or two, it wouldn’t be so boring but this is a drawn-out process that you do multiple times by trying to decipher clues for the verses that span across many different gospels and passages. I much preferred when deducing solutions based on the information you have, such as learning how to write messages in a secret code and matching historical dates and events to access a secret room. As you solve various puzzles, expect to backtrack to talk to people and gather requested items, which is exacerbated by long load times when you enter a new room. 

The Council’s bad graphics, voice acting, and load times didn’t bother me as much as its problematic narrative. What’s the point of having choice and consequence when you don’t care about the story you’re inhabiting? The Council seems promising with its good ideas, but then when you get further into it, it betrays you like a dishonest politician. 

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Beat Saber Review – Engrossing Musical Swordplay

When virtual reality became a real product we could have in our homes, the platform promised the potential of lush, engaging, and fully realized worlds. We’re still working toward that future, but while we’re waiting, Beat Saber offers one of virtual reality’s best experiences. It doesn’t create a new world to explore; instead Beat Saber focuses on placing you in a song and giving you the tools to participate in its rhythms in ways that traditional music games can’t.

In Beat Saber you use two light swords (one blue and one red), and you swing them using Move controllers. Red and blue blocks fly toward you, indicating which saber you should use to hit them. Along with being color coded, the blocks also have arrows dictating the direction of your chop. A blue block flying at you on your right with an arrow pointing north requires you to attack it from the bottom swiping upward. A red block coming from the left with an westward pointing arrow requires you to swipe through it from right to left. These blocks fly at you in time with the music booming in your ears, and when you find the rhythm and take down each block, you feel like you’re conducting a violent symphony. It’s beautiful.

A clinical description of how the gameplay works really doesn’t do it justice. Wielding lightsabers to destroy blocks as the music and light show fully envelops you lets you focus on the task at hand with extreme precision. The music and visuals fully take over your peripherals, engrossing you and making you feel the music. It wasn’t long before I was slashing blocks based purely on the rhythm, embracing the choreography of each song and focusing less on the arrows on the blocks. It makes the experience a fantastic showcase for the platform and genuinely feels like something that wouldn’t work outside of a headset.

With driving beats and dance-worthy intensity, every song is enjoyable and perfect for the style of gameplay Beat Saber offers. However, compared to other rhythm and music games, the diversity isn’t there. The original soundtrack (no licensed songs here) stays rooted in techno-centric beats, and there are only 16 so you end up playing the same songs a lot.

Despite the repeated songs, the gameplay doesn’t grow stale. Early on, you simply grasp for high scores, but you eventually encounter tasks like completing a song without making wide arm movements, or missing a specific number of blocks without failing. The campaign also offers a deep challenge, dipping into the extreme difficulties before showing you the finish line. Even if you’ve been playing Beat Saber for months in early access on Vive and Rift, the campaign offers a worthwhile and enjoyable challenge.

 

You have an assortment of options for tackling songs outside of the campaign. You can do no-fail mode (helpful for learning the more difficult songs), play without arrows on the blocks, or play with single-color blocks. You can also elect to turn on modifiers for score boosts, like playing a song at double speed or making the arrows disappear from the blocks right before you swipe through them. I liked all these modifiers and how they added gameplay variety, which is important considering the small track list.

Beat Saber is a must-play for anyone interested in virtual reality, but not for the reasons we typically associate with the platform. It won’t make you crane your neck to take in the majesty of your surroundings, but Beat Saber uses VR to place you into the music and taps into your carnal desire to hit things with swords. Years into its life, the gaming public is still unsure of this new way to play video games, but Beat Saber has the potential to convince skeptics to take another look.

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Artifact Review - Analytical Adventure

Valve’s Artifact was announced to mixed reactions at the Dota 2 International tournament in 2017. Artifact apparently signaled Valve’s return to active game development, but it is different from the studio’s signature series like Half-Life and Portal. Instead, Artifact is a card game set in the world of Dota, and it is designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering. While Artifact is different from Dota 2’s team-based gameplay, much of the flavor and mechanics translate well into the three-lane game. If there’s one big similarity between the two Valve titles, it’s that some time and dedication are required to learning, understanding, and enjoying the game.

 

The easiest way to explain Artifact is that you’re playing three different games simultaneously with a single hand, and you need to use those cards to win two out of the three games (or win one of the games twice). Success is all about management and position; you need to make hundreds of decisions in a single game on both micro and macro levels. It’s overwhelming at first, but after many hours of play and mastery of the systems at work, the satisfaction of executing a perfectly timed game-winning move is immense. On the surface, Artifact appears to be a tangled web of randomness with so many aspects being left to chance, but corralling those variables and subtly working with the tide of each game creates an atmosphere unlike any other digital card game.

 

Everything hinges on your heroes. Your deck must contain five heroes, and they come with associated cards (Dota fans will recognize flavorful skills and abilities, but no previous Dota experience is required). These cards play well with the hero's stats and passive or active skill. For instance, one of the most powerful heroes in the game, Axe, doesn’t even have a passive. Axe is just a big pile of stats. As a red hero, Axe loves to fight and is more than a match for other heroes and creeps, so this is exactly where you want him, pummeling enemies into submission in direct combat with superior size. The other three colors all have their own specialties as well. Black focuses on gold acquisition, mobility, and assassination. Green has huge monster creeps available, huge health pools, and helpful buffs. Blue has frail heroes, but extremely impactful magic spells. You’re free to mix and match heroes and colors, but you can only play cards of a color in a lane with a corresponding color hero, so getting too bold could result in difficulty playing cards where you want.

 

 

Not only are you laying down creatures to attack your opponent and heroes and push the lanes, but you also gather gold from killing enemies. You spend this gold in the shop at the end of each round to buy various equipment that roughly falls into three categories: weapons, armor, and consumables. Just like in Dota, you want to have plenty of potions and town portal scrolls to keep your heroes healthy and moving to where they need to be. Big items can change the course of the game, but saving enough money to get them can be a losing strategy, as your opponent can dominate the board while you save.

 

Once you’re past the basics, higher levels of play open games within games, where bluffing and taking full advantage of initiative (who plays first in a lane) create game-defining big plays that can feel as epic as an Earthshaker Echoslam in Dota 2. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you’re rewarded with tons of satisfying gameplay. When is the right time to abandon a lane? Should you go all in on one lane or try to win two lanes? Should you commit heroes to defending a dead lane, and if so how many? Should you pass your turn to attempt to grab initiative back so you can make sure you have the first action during the next round? You’re going to be making an absurd number of choices, and they won’t always be right. As a longtime card game enthusiast, being faced with situations where there isn’t a definitive correct play is highly entertaining.

 

Constructed play takes a backseat to draft with the initial launch set. The metagame is already well established, and while things could change, powerful “best in every deck” heroes offer little flexibility in deckbuilding or room for creativity. Draft is another story, and is the best format available, allowing players to pick two cards out of packs until they create a full deck and take it into a string of battles. I hope the constructed format becomes more interesting as new heroes come into the game, but for now draft absolutely puts it to shame.

 

Players can play in free events with preconstructed Valve decks, free constructed/drafts with friends or random global players, and paid tournaments. Unlike many other digital card games, currently there are no progression systems or ways to earn cards outside of purchase.  All trades are made on the Steam market via buying and selling, so you can pick up exactly what you’re looking for, but you won’t be getting any free cards if you’re looking to build a collection. In this way Artifact feels like it’s hampered by an archaic physical card game model in the digital realm. While it’s not explicitly pay-to-win, it’s absolutely pay-to-compete and collect, and this feels restrictive – especially since you’re already paying a fee to purchase the game initially. Much can be said about psychological hooks that other digital card games employ to keep people playing and “grinding” but at least there’s an option to acquire cards slowly in those models. Here, you’re paying to engage in anything meaningful. Period. And it doesn’t feel good.

 

Artifact pulls a ton of flavor from Dota 2, but it’s not necessarily a game for Dota 2 players. Artifact is instead a highly cerebral card game of push and pull, with intense resource allocation and randomization management. Artifact is absolutely not for everyone, but it excels at creating a crazy strategy cocktail pulling from every bottle on the shelf. For card game fans, Artifact is not to be missed.

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Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden Review – A Strange Mutation

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Persona 3: Dancing In Moonlight Review - Remix My Dread

Returning to lengthy RPGs can be daunting, but just listening to the soundtrack can often bring back our favorite memories. Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight offers a more efficient way to relive those memories by dancing to the beat of remixes of composer Shoji Meguro’s great score. The nostalgia trip mostly works, even as it’s bogged down by a clunky interface and short setlist.

Dancing in Moonlight rewinds the clock on Persona 3, summoning the SEES team to the Velvet Room (remade into Club Velvet) on a random night before the end of the original storyline. Elizabeth, jealous that Margaret’s guest (the player character in Persona 4) managed to solve a mystery by dancing, engages with Caroline and Justine (the Velvet Room attendants from Persona 5), in a dance competition to see which cast comes out on top when it comes to busting out moves.

The dancing itself is straightforward as you tap or hold buttons in time with the music, though the interface can be too stylish for its own good. It prizes the J-Pop dance routines the Persona 3 cast performs in the background as much as the music itself, which means notes originate near the center and move toward the edges of the screen. The layout works well enough on lower difficulties, but as tougher songs introduce more intricate note patterns, it can be hard to discern what note to play as they drift apart. Notes that require you to tap multiple buttons at the same time are connected by a giant pink bar and clutter up the screen, and I even failed to notice a note completely in the chaos a few times. I got used to the interface and was able to have fun with it after a few hours, but it’s a case of form over function that emphasizes something I wasn’t paying much attention to most of the time.

You never have to play too seriously to progress, and a number of fun modifiers alleviate that frustration. Want to play any note using any button? Go for it. Think getting a “Good” rating on a note shouldn’t break your streak? Done. Unlocking and using these modifiers makes for some neat twists on the normally pass-or-fail rhythm genre, and some even increase the challenge by making notes disappear as they near the edge of the screen or having them randomly speed up or slow down. The helpful ones ding your score, but I still enjoyed how much I could tune the gameplay to my liking.

 

Some fans may be disappointed by the emphasis on remixes over originals, but there are plenty of standouts on the soundtrack; the new renditions of “Wiping All Out,” and “Want To Be Close,” in particular are fantastic, and the good songs more than make up for some of the more boring covers. The overall setlist suffers from being a little short (just over two dozen songs) and focusing on the same songs a little too much (including three versions of “Burn My Dread,” and two versions of “Mass Destruction”), which is a shame when songs like “Master of Tartarus” and “Iwatodai Dorm” are ripe for remixing.

Replaying songs unlocks new social-link conversations with the SEES team, which comprise most of the narrative in lieu of a proper story mode. As you finish more songs and wear different outfits, you get to have lighthearted chats about dancing, life goals, and more. Elizabeth frequently butts her way in throughout, and her naiveté about the real world (and its turns of phrases) make her the standout character. The plot is fairly bland and pointless, but the little moments along the way make up for it.

Dancing in Moonlight mostly does right by Persona 3’s soundtrack, eliciting fond memories of the entry that started this series on its path to mainstream stardom. Being able to tailor the rhythm-based gameplay to your liking makes it easy to dive in and nod along to your favorite songs, even if the setlist is short and lacks a bit of variety. If you’re eager to catch up with the cast or music of Persona 3, Dancing in Moonlight is worth a few excursions into the Dark Hour.

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Persona 5: Dancing In Starlight Review - Wake Up, Get Up, Dance Out There

As a rhythm-based spinoff, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight’s premise for getting the Phantom Thieves back together to dance is a bit of stretch, even by the series’ standards. But Joker and company are no strangers to absurd situations, and Persona 5’s soundtrack is strong enough that I don’t mind suspending disbelief to enjoy watching The Phantom Thieves dance to a slew of remixes, even if the rhythm-based gameplay at the heart of it all doesn’t quite hold up its end of the bargain. 

Dancing in Starlight takes place some time after the end of Persona 5. This time, the Phantom Thieves return to the Velvet Room to compete in a dance contest against the cast of Persona 3 to see which guest of the Velvet Room has the better moves. The first couple of scenes make it clear the events of this story won’t matter, however, as the contest takes place over the course of a single night everyone will be forced to forget as soon as it’s over.

The dancing itself is straightforward as you tap or hold buttons in time with the music, though the interface can be too stylish for its own good. It prizes the J-Pop dance routines the Persona 5 cast performs in the background as much as the music itself, which means notes originate near the center and move towards the edges of the screen. The layout works well enough on lower difficulties, but as tougher songs introduce more intricate note patterns, it can be hard to discern what note to play when as they drift apart. Notes that require you to tap multiple buttons at the same time are connected by a giant pink bar and clutter up the screen, and I even failed to notice a note completely in the chaos a few times. I got used to the interface and was able to have fun with it after a few hours, but it’s a case of form over function that emphasizes something I wasn’t paying much attention to most of the time.

You never have to play too seriously though to progress, though, and a number of fun modifiers alleviate that frustration. Want to play any note using any button? Go for it. Think getting a “Good” rating on a note shouldn’t break your streak? Done. Unlocking and using these modifiers makes for some neat twists on the normally pass-or-fail rhythm genre, and some even up the challenge by making notes disappear as they near the edge of the screen or having them randomly speed up or slow down. The helpful ones ding your score, but I still enjoyed how much I could change the game to my liking.

 

Dancing in Starlight does a good job of increasing the BPMs of Persona 5’s soundtrack to make each song more fun to play, but I can’t help but nitpick at some of the choices made in the setlist. It feels limited with just over two dozen songs, and it doesn’t help when the same songs come up multiple times. “Rivers in the Desert” is a fantastic song, but I don’t need the original, a remix, and a live version of it. What’s here is fairly strong, however, and aside from one or two clunkers, I was nodding my head along to every song.

The main reason for going back through these songs is to get the series’ trademark social links going. By completing certain objectives, you unlock new conversations with each member of the Phantom Thieves. Getting to know Makoto, Ryuji, and Ann better, even knowing these conversations with them would have no consequences, kept me going even as the gameplay started getting stale. These conversations also unlock new outfits and accessories to wear on the dance floor, and some of them can get pretty silly (in a good way).

Persona 5’s soundtrack helped define its captivating sense of style when it released last year, and Dancing in Starlight is a good celebration of it. The clumsy dancing interface and short tracklist make it fall short as a rhythm game, but some great remixes and fun progression hooks make it a worthwhile way to revisit the look, feel, and sound of one this generation’s most stylish RPGs.

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Darksiders III Review – A Quality Experience From Another Age

The Darksiders series is a pastiche of beloved games and genres that came before it. The first two Darksiders entries wore their Zelda, God of War, Metroid, and Diablo inspirations proudly and generally found success, even if they never quite reached the heights of any of those singular games. Darksiders III is similar in that its main inspirations are still easy to spot, but Zelda no longer serves as the pillar on which the game is built. The focus has shifted away from puzzles and acquiring items, and toward combat and navigation upgrades that help you move through the larger world. The result is a game that feels familiar – and dated – but with gameplay and level design that sing, even when its story is awkwardly clearing its throat.

Darksiders III follows Fury, the angriest and most unpredictable member of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. She is on a mission from the Charred Council to track down the seven deadly sins who escaped imprisonment when the world went to hell. Unlike War and Death from the first two games, she is not concerned with what brought about the apocalypse, making her goals different – at least initially.

Another big change for Darksiders III is the larger structure. The first two games were like Zelda titles, with puzzle-focused levels spread across a larger explorable world. Fury’s world is not broken apart in this way. In fact, I only solved a handful of puzzles across the entire experience. I personally loved those sequences in the previous games, but I did not miss them here. Moving through Darksiders III feels more like moving through a continuous series of interconnected areas with new movement abilities opening up more options for where Fury can go and what secrets she can uncover. The absence of a map is surprising, and I feared it would limit my ability to navigate, but the compass system does a good job directing you to your main objective, and secrets are broadcast well enough in the environment that they’re easy to spot. In these ways Darksiders III stands apart from the first two games and I appreciate the change. It makes it feel more like a well-executed, straight-on action experience.

Fury uses a chain-whip as her main attack, which gives her a wide attack range to take on surprisingly powerful foes. She also unlocks a boomerang-like weapon, as well as a handful of secondary blades. You switch between the secondary blades without entering a menu, and they each grant her specific navigation abilities. The icy swords allow her to walk on water, freezing it below her feet. Her fiery dual blades give her the ability to traipse through lava. Each has plenty of combos, but I had more fun relying on standard attacks and focusing on dodging out of the way to execute powerful, perfectly-timed counters. Fury doesn’t block (and sometimes yells at enemies derisively when they do), and it keeps the action brisk. She’s always on the offensive, which I appreciate as an impatient fighter.

Every enemy, and especially the bosses, pose a substantial threat. Even the early foes can fell Fury if she gets sloppy or overwhelmed. This makes exploration cautious and tense, which I like, but the checkpoints can sometimes be unnecessarily spaced out. A few bosses in particular are plagued by faraway checkpoints that led me to sprint past enemies for long stretches just to give my most recently discovered boss another shot.

 

Hunting the sins is the most compelling element of the story, as Fury’s goal is clear and the personifications of the sins each have interesting and unique designs. When the larger lore of the universe starts creeping in, however, things fall apart. Conspiracy theories run amok and important new characters are suddenly presented without a proper introduction. The final twists of the plot land with a thud, but I do like Fury and much of her dialogue. Among the heroes we have played so far in this series, she has the most personality and is my favorite.

In many ways, Darksiders III feels like a game from the previous console generation. Its art design is distinct, and feels like an old comic book with vibrant colors and villains that personify their names. But that’s an old trope today, and it lacks the graphical detail we have come to expect in modern games. Compared to its action game competitors, the production values are lacking and I did run into distracting graphical hiccups and one full crash that required a reset. With all that said, I was eager to see what was around every corner. The design of the world, the way Fury explores it, the few puzzles, and the combat are all well-designed, elevating it above the elements that make it feel like a game from the past.

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Fallout 76 Review – Over Encumbered

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Battlefield V Review – Hedge Warfare

They say all is fair in love and war, but Battlefield fans disagree. The lead-up to the series' return to World War II was firebombed by controversies centered on the role of women in virtual warfare, the perceived lack of authenticity in the new soldier customization system, and confusion over what exactly would be in the game on launch day. Once the dust settled and we finally stormed into the battle ourselves, the resulting game is far from the charred husk of Battlefield’s remains many haters anticipated. In fact, Battlefield V is the safest, most calculated release in the franchise’s history. Like a seasoned general confident in his approach to battle, DICE doesn’t make any bold, redefining changes; instead, the studio equips the game with fan-requested improvements that solidify the series’ tried-and-true cooperative, large-scale warfare formula. Battlefield V is more iterative than it is innovative, and when it does push the war efforts into new territory, the results are decidedly mixed. 

The series reputation for combat that emphasizes teamplay and large-scale warfare across land, air, and sea remains fully intact. Battlefield V urges players to squad up with others and cooperate to achieve success, demanding more from its audience than lone-wolf multiplayer games that encourage running and gunning with abandon. The diversity of play is still a compelling draw – being able to command a tank one round, hop into a fighter plane in another, or put your machine gun to good use as one of four distinct classes is an experience not many other competitive shooters offer.

Small changes can make big differences, and the most noticeable and appreciated improvement in Battlefield V directly affects your primary action: shooting. DICE reworked its ballistics system to remove random bullet deviation and deliver more predictable spray patterns for all its weapons. Gone are the days of simply taming a weapon. Now you can learn each rifle’s nuances and master its use, knowing when to let off the trigger to land a kill. Along with other subtle tweaks to aiming, the time-to-kill feels much faster as a result, finding the sweet spot between the more spongy Battlefield games of yore and the frantic one-shot-kills of hardcore mode. 

Squad play is the heart of series, and Battlefield V reinforces cooperation with a few subtle and smart changes. Health no longer fully regenerates, so you have to apply a bandage yourself or request one from a nearby medic if you get nicked. Anyone can revive a fallen teammate (though medics can do it in half the time), and holding out hope for a revive doesn’t punish your respawn time in the redeployment screen anymore. Soldiers don’t spawn with an overabundance of ammo, either, which means smart teams always enlist a support player in their squad. The reworked spotting system only allows recon players to individually mark targets (others can merely point to general areas), making them more vital than ever to the team’s cause. The class balance between the four roles may be the best it’s been to date; my only major complaints thus far are related to weapons. The medics need more primary options than just SMGs, which prove ineffective on larger maps that encourage more long-range skirmishes. The bipods on support weapons don’t deploy correctly on cover or railings, either, limiting their effectiveness unless you are prone.

 

Playing together has always earned players more points in Battlefield, but this year’s Squad Reinforcements system further encourages collaboration. Each team action slowly nets the squad points, which the leader can use to call in resupplies, order vehicles, or if they save up enough points, unleash a devastating rocket onto enemies. I like the idea of rewarding teamplay, but the system doesn’t share the wealth. Only squad leaders get points for the V1 rocket kills, which should be divided among the entire squad. 

Teamplay gets another boost thanks to the new fortifications system, which allows soldiers to bolster defensive positions at predetermined places with sandbags, barbed wire, and even weapon emplacements. This addition feels long overdue and fits perfectly into the Battlefield motif, giving soldiers who aren’t as comfortable staring down their sights another way to contribute to the war efforts. DICE’s first implementation feels rigid – there is no logic as to why fortifications are available for some spots in the base and not others – but at least it gives defenders cover when buildings around a flag are largely devastated. That said, defense still isn’t incentivized enough; players are still more prone to chase flags in older modes like Conquest rather than hunker down and hold a position. 

No matter whether you are attacking or defending, you can count on a gorgeous backdrop. Battlefield V only has eight maps at launch (much more should come via the Tides of War service), but the settings include wintery mountains, dusty deserts, lush countryside, and bombed-out cities. The weather effects add to the sense of mood; as the wind picks up in the harsher climate, visibility becomes impaired and forces teams to adjust their tactics. My favorite new map is Arras, which has a small French village in the midst of yellow canola fields that provide ample cover for encroaching enemies. The destructibility is turned back up to impressive levels we haven’t seen since the Bad Company games; tanks can roll right through buildings, and most cover can be obliterated with a well-placed rocket.

Each map is compatible with the six game modes Battlefield V currently features (more are on the way). The lineup includes old favorites like Conquest, Frontlines, Domination, and Battlefield 1’s popular Operations (which is rebranded here as Breakthrough). Battlefield V’s signature mode is Grand Operations, which preserves the multi-map battle format of its predecessor but sprinkles in a variety of other modes along the way. This change isn’t for the better, as some modes kill the tension and focused objectives that made Operations such a thrill. When Grand Operations maps open up to include more than three objectives at once, the battles become scattered and lose their intensity. 

Intensity is also scarce in the War Stories, the single-player campaign formatted like short stories. I love the concept of telling seldom-heard tales about war heroes who rose to the occasion in impossible circumstances, and DICE created interesting characters who each educate us about lesser-known fights during World War II.  I also appreciated the somber, revering tone the developers adopt to bring these three tales to life. But presentation aside, the missions feel rote, rarely tap into the Battlefield magic of large-scale warfare, and fail to create memorable moments like the multiplayer does. 

Regardless of which multiplayer mode you are playing, your experience feeds into a complex progression system that allows you to unlock new weapons, specializations, gadgets, and cosmetics for each class. The fashion available is conservative and nothing like the immersion-shattering gear many expected after seeing neon face paint and retro-futuristic prosthetic arms in the promotional footage – you’re mostly unlocking era-appropriate military gear in shades of green, gray, and tan. A currency system lets you buy more cosmetics, but the storefront feels like a conceptual test right now, with only 10 items to purchase. Most of the options available in the Armory are expensive, and it doesn’t populate the smaller cosmetics you can purchase buried deep within customization menus, so you never have the convenience of seeing all the available items in one place. 

Battlefield V’s new Company hub is your one-stop shop to customize your weapons, apparel, and vehicles, but doesn’t offer the flexibility longtime Battlefield fans expect. To reach its potential, we need to be able to save multiple configurations for each class so we can quickly swap between loadouts. For example, we should able to swap an Assault soldier armed with a long-range scope for one better suited for close-quarter battles on the fly.

Minor but persistent annoyances are also common on the warfront. While the new movement system looks good, soldiers have problems vaulting over small embankments and they sometimes clip through cover when prone or during revive animations. DICE’s stubborn approach to squad spawns means soldiers still appear out of nowhere in the middle of battle; this is especially annoying when you are engaged in a one-on-one firefight and suddenly you are vastly outnumbered. Occasionally, the explosives needed to destroy objectives fail to spawn, leaving attackers no chance to win the war, or the loading hangs in the middle of rounds, forcing you to restart the game altogether. DICE also removed the ability to switch teams, which some players abused in the past for a score advantage, but this means if your friend spawns in on the opposing team you have no immediate remedy at your disposal other than quitting and finding another match. Also, tanks are not fast or deadly enough; right now they are hulking machines that crawl across the battlefield at a snail’s pace, and panzerfausts carried by infantry are more dangerous to tanks than the hulking cannons of their counterparts.

Battlefield V is a hard game to critique at this stage. Many of the minor tweaks improve the overall gameplay, which is still fun. But the majority of the innovations have yet to arrive, and new systems like the Company and Armory still need to be fleshed out. This game’s legacy won’t stand on the content currently in the game. Ultimately, Battlefield V will be defined by the success or failure of the pending Combined Arms cooperative mode, Firestorm battle royale mode, and whether or not DICE can continually provide new and engaging content. On day one, the game feels a few reinforcements short to pull off the overwhelming victory we’ve come to expect given the series’ strong lineage.

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Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu & Eevee Review – A Classic Evolved

After two decades on dedicated handheld platforms, the Pokémon franchise is finally relocating to the big screen. While we wait for the first full-fledged RPG to hit Switch, Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee are remakes of the first generation of the series with modern graphics and updated gameplay. Exploring Kanto, building your team, fighting Team Rocket, and challenging gym leaders remains as thrilling as it was 20 years ago, but inconsistent motion controls ensure the transition to Switch isn’t seamless.

Let’s Go pulls you in with the same hooks as every other Pokémon game: You travel the region, collecting Pokémon, battling trainers in fun, turn-based combat, and earning your place in the Pokémon League in a lighthearted adventure. The series mantra of “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” holds true to this day, as finding a ton of unique monsters remains rewarding as you fill in your Pokédex and build your dream party.

Let’s Go remains faithful to the first-gen Pokémon games (specifically Yellow). I knew exactly where to go to complete optional quests, and still remembered the solutions to most puzzles. Despite being remakes, the Let’s Go games effectively move the Pokémon franchise forward with crisp visuals that recreate the familiar creatures and cities of the Kanto region. Seeing the battles play out how I originally pictured them in my head is a thrill. In addition to upgrading the visuals and sound, Let’s Go streamlines many of the more tedious elements of the original games.

Despite tasking you with exploring a faithfully recreated version of Kanto, a few surprises and tweaks keep the experience fresh. From riding Pokémon for faster travel to swapping your party on the fly without having to visit a Pokémon Center, myriad modern conveniences make these remakes feel right at home in 2018. Let’s Go isn’t challenging, but if you need an extra hand, a second player can shake a second Joy-Con to drop in and out of local cooperative multiplayer. This updated approach is further demonstrated in Let’s Go’s modern evolution of one of Pokémon’s oldest conventions: wild Pokémon encounters.

Not only are random encounters gone (now you see wild Pokémon roaming in the map), but you no longer must battle wild Pokémon to weaken them prior to catching (with a few exceptions). Instead, you simply flick your Joy-Con in their direction to land as accurate of a throw as possible – no battling necessary. Some players may miss having to weaken wild Pokémon you intend to catch, but after the initial shock of the simplification, I appreciated how it kept the pace of the game up. Not only does this separation make wild encounters feel distinct from trainer battles, but it makes the few wild Pokémon you do need to battle first feel special.

However, the motion controls for catching Pokémon, whether you’re using a Joy-Con or the Poké Ball Plus peripheral, are unreliable. On multiple occasions, I flicked my controller directly at the screen, only to have the ball sail in the wrong direction. Playing in handheld mode tones down the motion controls; you just aim with the gyroscope, then press a button to throw a ball. This makes handheld mode the best way to play Let’s Go, effectively deflating the excitement of the series being on consoles for the first time.

While you can find rare Pokémon in places you couldn’t before, other avenues of collecting uncommon species have been removed. You can now use lures to draw out rare Pokémon, but I’m disappointed the Game Corner no longer lets you play for items and Pokémon. My personal favorite, Safari Zone, has been replaced by Go Park, which lets you connect your Let’s Go save file with your Pokémon Go account.

 

Using Go Park, you can transfer previously captured Gen 1 creatures from Pokémon Go into Let’s Go. I love being able to move Pokémon from the mobile title into the Switch game, allowing me to further fill in my collection. After that, you enter Go Park and encounter these Pokémon as you would normally a wild Pokémon – you still need to toss a few balls at them to add them to your team in Let’s Go. While I enjoy this integration, I still miss the surprising nature of Safari Zone encounters, and I’m disappointed you can’t transfer Pokémon back to Pokémon Go once you’re finished. I hated losing my shiny Charizard in Pokémon Go so I could have him in Let’s Go. Also, if you’re hoping to start your playthrough with a full team of awesome monsters from Pokémon Go, you may be disappointed as you can’t use this functionality until you’re in Fuchsia City in the latter portion of the story.

Even if you’re not interested in the Pokémon Go integration, Let’s Go adds multiple reasons to keep playing after you finish the story. Throughout the adventure, you encounter coach trainers that put up a stiff challenge and reward you with move-teaching technical machines and stat-boosting items. Once you defeat the Elite Four at the end of the game, master trainers appear to put a specific Pokémon to the test. If you think your Charizard, for example, is better than the master trainer’s Charizard, they serve as an awesome challenge. While these special types of trainers are among the most difficult in the game and sometimes give you good rewards for beating them, the most meaningful reason to keep playing is to continue filling in the holes of your collection, with Mewtwo serving as the ultimate post-game addition to your collection.

Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu & Eevee are strong remakes of the original games. The feeling of amassing a giant collection of monsters and customizing your team never gets old, and the timeless turn-based combat is still fun to this day. Shoddy motion controls aside, Let's Go is a great time whether you’re a die-hard fan or a newcomer to the series.

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Overkill’s The Walking Dead Review – A Camp Not Worth Defending

Sometimes a game just doesn’t work out. Despite lots of time, a strong property, and capable development talent, the experience fails to solidify. In the case of Overkill’s The Walking Dead, major technical problems and connection issues, baffling gameplay systems and controls, tedious combat and stealth, and poorly structured missions all contrive to halt the fun.  A deep and rewarding upgrade and progression path hides behind the mess, but you’re unlikely to enjoy it, as the game fails to offer meaningful engagement.

In this four-player, first-person survival shooter, players take on new characters in The Walking Dead universe, but face gruesome challenges similar to those seen in the comic and TV shows. Working as a team, you scavenge for supplies and face off against enemy survivor groups, then defend your camp from those that would take what you have. The story is too bare-bones to hold up to scrutiny, though I appreciate the effort to surprise, including at least one cool character twist.

While purporting to be balanced for solo players or teams of various sizes, most missions are profoundly disheartening with anything less than a full four-person team. That’s a big problem, because matchmaking is spotty, and it is often unable to find me a matching team. Load times are long, and failure in a mission means starting over from the beginning. This can result in losing 30 minutes or more of time, with paltry rewards to show for the effort. When the games does manage to find a match, I’m often thrown in halfway through with the team already most of the way to failure. I’ve also encountered many hard crashes, together amounting to hours of lost progress.

Enemies are a mix of mindless undead and nearly mindless enemy survivors. The human enemies lack any of the tactical complexity you’d expect from any FPS of the last 10 years, often standing together in groups as you gun them down, even as they fail to animate in response to a hail of submachine gun bullets.

Gunplay is stiff and unresponsive. More prominent and frequent are lengthy sections of unsatisfying melee engagements. Whether bashing with a baseball bat or slashing with a machete, the close-up battles lack variety or panache, and regularly devolve into long stretches of standing in a doorway and repeatedly smashing the left mouse button for minutes at a time. A lackluster stealth system may as well be absent; it lacks sufficient cues to help you be successful, and the level design and enemy placements provide too few opportunities to be sneaky. A punishing sound meter discourages the use of your more interesting weapons and abilities, since it means that the zombie horde will soon descend. Upon death, an infuriatingly long respawn timer gives you just enough time to fume about the futility and loss of your free time.

The relatively small number of environments are confusing to navigate, with procedurally placed elements that frustrate as often as not, as you scramble around attempting to find the necessary jumper cables or gasoline. You’re encouraged to spend increasingly boring stretches scouring for additional bullets and supplies, slowing down any momentum a mission might have had.

The lone standout success is a rewarding progression system, which offers a lot to explore and plenty of opportunities for experimentation. Classes have their own leveling trees to improve abilities, though I would have liked more flexibility to customize what weapon skills each character can improve. As it is, if you like a particular ability, like the Scout’s smoke grenade, you’re obligated to go with her crossbow and pickaxe. Additional supplies let you upgrade your camp in a variety of ways, but you must balance your expenditures against the ongoing upkeep needs of your survivors, which makes for a compelling tension. As you gather more survivors, you can alternately send them out on missions or set them to work in the camp for some handy bonuses. Finally, a wide variety of weapons can be modded and improved over time. I appreciate the feature, but it also means that you’re wielding especially clumsy weapons in the early hours. Nonetheless, the growth of your camp and characters provides a sense that your missions have meaning, and may be enough to push you back into another banal scavenging run.

Overkill’s The Walking Dead plans to dole out content in seasons, so the current batch of missions will soon expand. But dramatic reworking of most core combat and mission systems are necessary before the game could be worthy of a recommendation. The premise sounds promising for fans of cooperative play, zombie action, and the taut survival storylines implied by the license. The execution fails to meet the needs of any of those groups. You’re better off heeding the warning – keep this menacing door closed, and leave the zombies to their gnawing hunger.

 

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Tetris Effect Review – A Dazzling Reimagining

Whether on CRT monitors, HDTVs, or the Game Boy’s monochromatic display, Tetris has long been a reliable source of entertainment (and jaw-clenching stress) for puzzle-seeking players. Its elegant simplicity has made it an enduring success, but with Tetris Effect, Monstars Inc. and Resonair shows that it’s possible to wring a few surprises from the classic game while respecting its primordial core. Tapping into their mastery of melding flashy audiovisual presentations with interlinked gameplay, the team has created a breathtaking interpretation of Tetris that makes the game feel fresh.

In Tetris Effect’s showcase mode, Journey, you travel through a variety of vignettes while playing Tetris. The sound builds and morphs as you play, accompanied by dazzling visuals. A wintry theme might incorporate the rhythmic sounds of crunching snow as you set blocks in place, with jingling bells sounding with their rotations. You delve deeper into a space capsule while you clear lines, as snippets of transmissions play in sync with the thumping soundtrack and your positioning of the blocks. The tetronimos change with each level, too, though those are just cosmetic adjustments. Functionally, a block is a block, whether it’s made of shimmering bubbles or rotating cogs. 

It’s hypnotic and wonderful, and a fantastic partner to the “in the zone” sensation that accompanies particularly good games of Tetris. I found myself instinctively rotating blocks in sync with the beat, and while it didn’t offer any benefits as far as scores went, it pulled me deeper into the game. The beats build and recedes like a great concert, culminating in a final level that is nothing short of magnificent. The visuals are amazing on traditional displays, but having your entire field of view enveloped by exploding particles and warping backdrops adds to the immersion – something I never thought I’d be concerned with in TetrThe biggest tweak to the overall formula in Journey is the time-stopping Zone mechanic, which gives you precious time to fix a few blunders or to finesse your way to even higher scores. One of my favorite things about Tetris is how you can extricate yourself from seemingly impossible situations; effective use of Zone makes those moments even more frequent. You have to earn it first, however, by clearing lines the old-fashioned way. Still, it’s a good thing to have in your back pocket for when you need it. 

 

A variety of other options offer further twists on Tetris’ core. In Sprint, you try to clear 40 lines as quickly as possible. Marathon mode challenges you to eliminate 150 lines, which is easier said than done. In Purify, you have to clear dark blocks from the field by clearing lines around them. Mystery mode is one of my favorites even though it made me want to punch walls; random effects like bombs, reversed controls, and other nuisances crop up as you play a marathon session. Even though you’re ultimately just clearing lines in all of these modes, they’re a fun and rewarding way to mix things up when you hit a wall. While I’d argue it would largely be missing the point, you can turn down the visual effects and music and just play a great game of Tetris, too, with a variety of customization options such as how many blocks appear in the preview panes and how rotation works once a tetronimo lands.

The fundamentals may be recognizable, but Tetris Effect feels like something new rather than another reskin of the same old game. The presentation is such a natural fit for the gameplay, and it adds an unexpected layer of emotion. Monstars Inc. and Resonair should be commended for taking a calculated risk and delivering its own unique take on a gaming standard.

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The Quiet Man Review – The Sound Of Failure

Not every game makes it as far as release. Even the biggest and most successful studios cancel projects when they aren’t shaping up. Those games may never see the light of day, but curious gamers can find footage of many abandoned titles online – and The Quiet Man reminds me of those videos. With a mishmash of awful storytelling and mechanics, this narrative-infused brawler plays like a failed proof-of-concept prototype. Even though it has technically released, The Quiet Man doesn’t feel finished; the entire experience is a series of cascading embarrassments that make you wonder how it escaped cancellation.

You play as Dane, a deaf man who beats up a bunch of people while chasing after a woman who gets kidnapped by a masked man. She looks like his mom for some reason, and also Dane’s friend and a cop are involved. I apologize for the vagueness in that description, but despite The Quiet Man’s attempt to be a narrative experience, it does basically nothing to convey its story.

For your first playthrough (which takes about three hours), the mixture of live-action and in-game cutscenes have no dialogue or subtitles. You’re left to watch these low-budget exchanges and wonder who the characters are, what they are doing, and how they are related to each other. This leaves you completely disengaged from what is happening. Imagine queuing up a few supplementary webisodes for a TV show you’ve never watched, then turning the volume off; that’s what to expect from The Quiet Man in terms of storytelling quality and production values.

One might argue that the lack of dialogue helps simulate Dane’s own experience with the events. However, people talk to Dane and he clearly understands what is being said to him; he smiles, frowns, and otherwise reacts in most scenes. That means everyone knows what’s happening except you, so the silence only serves to deny players insight. A second playthrough (which was patched in a week after release) adds in the missing dialogue, but here’s the problem: The disjointed, dreamlike tale you weave in your head is probably better than the real story, which is saturated with awful writing and laughably strained attempts at coolness. The Quiet Man is not worth playing even one time, and understanding its terrible narrative better certainly doesn’t make it worth playing two times.

 

When you aren’t spacing out during wordless exchanges, you’re participating in simple hand-to-hand combat. However, even basic brawling is beyond The Quiet Man’s capabilities. You can kick, punch, grab, and use takedowns, but how you attack is largely inconsequential. Enemies are stupid and lack variety, so you can just pound them with little thought or fear of reprisal. Battles are also short and predictable, so you don’t get a sensation of building up momentum. You usually just beat up a few bad guys – all of which are lazy stereotypes – before triggering the next cutscene or briefly walking through the lifeless environments.

Even worse, fights always have something that isn’t working correctly. Enemies warp to their positions during animations, phase through objects, or stand there waiting to get hit. The controls are sluggish and unresponsive, and the camera seems determined to periodically hide your opponents. While this all frustrated me at first, I gradually became resigned to the repetitive encounters and barely functional combat, and it’s hard to be frustrated when you don’t care.

The Quiet Man’s gameplay package is sloppy and boring, and its story is so bad that it needs to be buried in a second playthrough because it’s more tolerable when you don’t understand it. I want to call The Quiet Man a farce, but farces are funny. This game is just a conceptual catastrophe that does everything wrong and nothing interesting.

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