Diablo III Eternal Collection Review – Blizzard Puts The Devil In The Details

Red Dead Redemption II Review – An Open-World Western For The Ages

The world of Red Dead Redemption II is defined by violence, both in its passive and active forms. Bandits roam the highways, pilfering from the wealthy and poor alike. Predators mercilessly hunt and kill their prey in the unforgiving wilderness. Men of industry don’t blink twice stepping over the bodies of the sick and the dead to realize their economic ambitions. In this primordial stew of fear and savagery, the outlaw Van der Linde gang feels right at home. 

Led by the charismatic and resourceful Dutch van der Linde, this gang doesn’t think of itself as part of the problem. They support each other, primarily rob from the greed-lined pockets of the rich, and share the pioneer goal of buying a remote piece of land and settling down together far from the freedom-crushing existence of society. But as power structures shift and the unrelenting progress of government and technology swallow the untamed West, their particular sort of violence is speeding toward extinction.

If you’ve played Red Dead Redemption, you already know how this tragic story ends. But watching the fabric that holds the gang together fray and unravel as the law chases them across the country over the course of Red Dead Redemption II is riveting nonetheless. Once-vibrant camp nights filled with campfire songs and revelry are slowly replaced by suffocating discontent. Rival factions develop among the gang, and watching Dutch van der Linde transition from a relatively principled leader to an unhinged psychopath is one of the most vivid and raw portraits of villainy I’ve seen. 

Standing in the center of this savage storm is Arthur Morgan, Dutch’s righthand man. His gruff exterior and icy stare paint the picture of the prototypical outlaw, but underneath this gunslinger veneer is a reflective man struggling with his own mortality and the wayward morality of the gang’s increasingly desperate actions. He still feels more at home among thieves, liars, and murderers than he does with honest civilians, but he increasingly contemplates the real cost of their heinous actions. Player actions determine which of four ways Morgan’s character arc ends, but regardless of your decisions, his intimate struggle with the life he chose serves as the questioning heart of this epic Western experience. 

Using the word “epic” to describe Red Dead Redemption II feels understated. This is the biggest and most cohesive adventure Rockstar Games has ever created. A rare harmony exists between the narrative, gameplay systems, open world, and mission design. Their interdependent nature makes it tough to talk at any length about each individual element without venturing into spoiler territory; the fashion in which these elements mingle and coalesce over the course of the journey is interesting to witness.  

The story missions alone will likely take you 80-plus hours to complete. Surprisingly for a game of this length, Red Dead Redemption II only occasionally succumbs to repetition or boredom – primarily due to restrictions with when and where you can fast travel. As the gang is chased across the land by law, rival gangs, and the Pinkerton agency, Rockstar crafts a healthy diversity of settings. By the time you hang up your spurs, you will have robbed small-town banks, hijacked trains, executed jailbreaks, clashed with organized crime outfits, and challenged titans of industry. Sometimes you ride with the entire gang, other times the action revolves around only a few key actors, giving Rockstar time to flesh out Morgan’s compatriots. This includes getting to know Red Dead Redemption protagonist John Marston even better. Each gang member brings something unique to the table and most are likable, which gives the inevitable dissolution of their alliances a tragic weight. 

Violence is the only currency that applies across all the regions Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang traverse, so Red Dead Redemption II rarely leaves the comfort of wanton bloodshed, perhaps to a fault. That’s not to say the combat isn’t fun (it is), but it feels refreshing whenever Rockstar lets a mission play out without resorting to violent encounters, and I wish there were more quiet moments sprinkled throughout the story. The world is vibrant enough to sustain long sections where every mission doesn’t devolve into gunfights. 

 

Going back to other open-world games after playing Red Dead Redemption II won’t be easy; this is unequivocally the most well-crafted and fully realized open world in video games. The attention to detail Rockstar poured into creating this bloody interpretation of a historical period is remarkable. The wide expanses of wilderness feel alive thanks to an unrivaled dynamic weather system, ambient sound effects, and the most ambitious ecology of flora and fauna ever seen in games. You can spend hundreds of hours exploring the varied and gorgeous terrain, and Rockstar packs the game with side objectives to keep you busy. Hunting legendary animals, collecting plants for the crafting system, and exploring for dinosaur bones will keep you occupied on the frontier. Some of the best moments occur when you stumble onto a remote property and meet the colorful (and sometimes revolting) humans who call it home. 

When you head into town, Rockstar’s meticulous craftsmanship gets even more impressive. Each of the many towns and cities has its own character and personality, with the bustling New Orleans facsimile Saint Denis being the crown jewel. The cities are packed with things to do, from taking in a vaudeville show and getting your photo taken to meeting a memorable cast of strangers and perusing the intricately detailed shops. You can dive into a catalog at gun shops and general stores, or walk right up to the shelves and grab what you need. All the exteriors and interiors in the game look authentic to the time period and make you feel like you are visiting a place lost in time. Even the civilian population is remarkable – you can interact with each person you come across, and I rarely heard a repeated line of dialogue outside of some random encounters outside the city. New strangers continually pop up offering interesting side missions as well. 

Rockstar Games has outdone itself again with Red Dead Redemption II. The up-close portrayal of the outlaw Van der Linde gang’s unraveling is a compelling companion story that blends seamlessly with the original game, and depth and breadth of the open world is a technical triumph that every gamer should experience.

Starlink: Battle For Atlas Review – Introduction To Space Adventure

Wandersong Review – Adrift In The Land Of Whimsy

Wandersong’s hero is not a daring knight or sly rogue. He’s a bard and proud of it, constantly grinning and showering those around him with songs of mirth (even if they don’t want to listen). Thrust into the role of adventurer, he has to visit far off dimensions to learn a song to prevent the impending apocalypse. While the stakes are high, Wandersong’s proceedings are not grim. Like its goofy hero, this platformer/rhythm hybrid is dedicated to trying to make you grin.

The majority of Wandersong’s gameplay has you performing simple rhythm games, often during scenes where the bard needs to use music somehow, like putting on a concert with a group of talented misfits. You move the right thumbstick around a colorful music wheel, following a Simon Says routine to proceed. If you mess up, you have endless chances to redo the melody. As a result, the rhythm sections are rarely difficult, even in the later stages. But that also means they’re rarely interesting.

Platforming stages fare better, offering more challenge. You use the directional rhythm wheel to pilot platforms through obstacles, like singing high when you want to go high. These levels are at their best when they require you to use the bard’s voice to activate platforms and other traversal methods to progress. My favorite setup involved controlling the pathways of plant pods through a vertical maze. Wandersong occasionally veers into other gameplay elements to shake things up (like one section that has you trying to gather a band of people in a town where every citizen keeps to their automated schedule) but they don’t last too long. These tricks are amusing, but do little to hide the game’s biggest problem: Outside of the story and humor, Wandersong isn't much fun.

Gleefully colorful and simple, Wandersong doesn’t test your reaction-based mettle or prod your moral convictions with tough choices. The rhythm game feels the same every time and it grows stale quickly. The gameplay is light, but the colorful cast of characters, like a teenage witch with an attitude named Miriam and a caffeine-addicted pirate captain hopelessly in love with a mermaid, are charming enough to keep things engaging. There is also a surprising amount of melancholy beneath the happy-go lucky surface, particularly when it comes to the bard’s self-perception and the emotional struggles of several supporting characters. However, this is largely a lighthearted story about the power of friendship and perseverance.

The best moments occur when the bard’s cheerful outlook is thrown headlong against Miriam’s cynicism, leading to a number of engaging (sometimes funny, sometimes sad) conversations about life, duty, grief, and the struggle to do the right thing. Even when the tediousness of playing some of Wandersong’s weakest sections got to me, the promise of more scenes featuring these two was enough to keep me pushing through. The tweaking of fantasy trope characters is also fun, especially when it comes to the renowned hero of the land, Audrey, who constantly disrupts the bard’s plans with impulsive actions and a competitive streak.

Wandersong has more than its fair share of chuckles and even a few emotional beats that make the journey worth taking. Our hero is a lovable loser out to save the world, and the cast of vibrant personalities keeps things entertaining even when the platforming or rhythm feels tedious. Ridiculous gags involving our well-meaning hero experiencing caffeine for the first time or arguing with a bitter old granny to get her to teach him a song put a smile on my face. However, the gameplay distracts from these whimsical delights instead of complementing them. I walked away from my time with Wandersong having enjoyed the story beats and being charmed by both the world and its characters, but I wish I had more fun actually playing it.

 

Soulcalibur VI Review – Burning Brighter Than Ever

On its surface, Soulcalibur VI is a reboot for the weapon-focused fighting series. It eschews the slew of new characters in Soulcalibur V for a retelling of the events of the original Soulcalibur, and brings back most of the iconic characters in classic attire. Within that nostalgic pitch, however, is a combat system that deftly builds on its predecessors, with several smart improvements that give players of more ways to dig into a fighter that’s equal parts intricate and flashy.

Fighting is still rooted in simple 3D movements and vertical, horizontal, and kick attacks, while all feel intuitive. Although combos are more prominent than they have been in the past, most are simple; you benefit more from learning a wide array of attack strings to trick your opponent than optimizing how much damage you get when any of them land, which leads to diverse fights based on a great mix of reaction and memorization.

That said, a number of smart refinements make Soulcalibur VI’s combat more nuanced than its predecessors'. I was worried the new Reversal Edge attack would dumb down combat, but it actually adds an interesting new layer. Executing the move, which locks both players into a rock-paper-scissors showdown if landed, has some strategy behind it. You can charge it to parry attacks, or land it immediately if you catch someone off-guard.

A combination of new and refined defensive mechanics also make it easier to break out of an opponent’s pressure. Guard impacts now deflect any kind of attack and don’t use up your soul gauge, but still require clutch timing to pull off. The addition of the Soul Charge also gives you a way out of oppressive situations by knocking your opponent away and powering up your attacks for a short time.

With all these new options and the unique mechanics of individual characters, it helps that the onramp is smoother than ever. Not only does the tutorial get you up to speed on every universal mechanic, but the “combat lessons” tab in the pause menu gives you a brief rundown of each character’s gameplan, as well as a few suggestions about which moves to use at different ranges. This gives you a great starting point to work with as you find new options and introduce your own twists on your favorite character.

The single-player options include the standard arcade and training modes, but also two story modes. Libra of Soul is ambitious, but held back by an over-reliance on text and scattered pacing. It’s an RPG-lite experience in which you create a character based on another character’s fighting style then plot your course through a large map in search of opponents, quests, and weapons as you level up. You also do quite a bit of reading, however, which is frustrating since the narrative isn’t exactly compelling. The story takes place throughout the early years of the Soulcalibur series, as your character goes in search of both the Soul Edge and Soulcalibur while fending off mysterious “astral fissures” popping up around the world. Despite a few interesting questlines, most of the tales aren’t memorable.

 

Luckily, fights are frequent and varied enough that I was invested in the mode nonetheless. Matches might make the stage extra-slippery, certain attacks much stronger, or your opponent's attacks poisonous. I liked that I needed to zero in on different aspects of combat, managing my movements careful or learning what the best approach with a particular attack button is. The A.I. is surprisingly nuanced, too; I remember specific enemies that were overeager about reflecting my attacks or relentlessly tried to push me off the edge.

The other story mode, Soul Chronicle, takes a more traditional approach, consisting of visual-novel-style stills telling the story of individual characters in the early years of Soulcalibur’s timeline between fights. These storylines intersect with Libra of Soul and feel more coherent, but it’s only mildly interesting in the face of Libra of Soul’s grander scope.

The online suite is more standard, with the usual ranked matches, casual lobbies, replays, and leaderboards we’ve come to expect, though it’s a little unfortunate you can’t snag replays for high-ranked players. The matches I’ve played online thus far been stable and do a decent job of obscuring poor connections, though one and two-bar connections still have hitches and slowdown.

Soulcalibur VI takes the opportunity to re-introduce the series after a hiatus and runs with it, making the series feel fresh while offering a deep fighter with lots for lone players to dig into. The single-player offering suffers from some bloat, but weaves combat into its narrative better than most other fighting games, and the fighting at the center of it all is better than ever. Whether you’re a newcomer or a dedicated fan, the latest retelling of the story of souls and swords is a captivating one.

The World Ends With You: Final Remix Review – A Shoddy Cover Of A Great Original

The World Ends With You remains a bright spot in Square Enix’s catalogue – one of its most memorable and original projects. Back when it first launched in 2008, the game had style, substance, and took advantage of the Nintendo DS hardware in clever ways. Nearly a decade later, fans continue to beg for a sequel. Joining a previous mobile port, this Switch version provides another way to play The World Ends With You, featuring extras such as co-op, remixed music, and a brand-new scenario. The additions and overall port are disappointing and frustrating, making this an inferior-but-acceptable way to play this action/RPG. Even so, The World Ends With You is still a great game, and no amount of lackluster extra content can change that. 

The World Ends With You follows Neku Sakuraba, a young man who doesn’t really trust or care for other people. He wakes up with no memory in the middle of Shibuya, slowly being introduced to the Reapers’ Game, a week-long competition for the recently deceased, allowing them to win their life back or face erasure. To make it out alive, Neku must find a teammate and succeed at missions given to him with cryptic clues. During the game, Neku partners with three unique personalities: the upbeat Shiki, the elusive Joshua, and the hot-headed Beat. In the end, the narrative speaks to finding meaning in the world through others. The dark story remains captivating, thanks to its intriguing characters, stunning twists, and more poignant moments. 

One of the big draws on Switch is a new scenario called A New Day, which takes place after the main storyline. It throws Neku back into the game and pairs him with Beat again. They’re joined by a new character, a Reaper named Coco. She is an incredibly annoying, childish people-pleaser who has a valley girl accent, saying things like “totes” far too frequently. A New Day is only worth playing for what it teases at the end; other than that, it’s grindy, repetitive, and predictable. It takes a few hours to complete, holds more of a challenge than the main game with a few new enemies, and you can grab some new pins (your skills) for battle to vary things up, but none of that amounts to much fun.

 

I was super excited about the prospect of co-op in this version; it fits well with the core message of the game, which is the value of working together. However, the co-op is not well-suited for the Switch platform. The controls are normally touchscreen-heavy, but in co-op, you and your partner each take a JoyCon, relying on its motion controls like a Wii Remote to target and activate pins with the various motions such as slash and drag. It’s the worst way to play a game all about the fast-paced frenzy of battle. The JoyCons are imprecise and awkward, making it hard to target or even coordinate effectively with your partner. I was immediately turned off by co-op, as it’s more frustration than it’s worth.

Playing solo fares better, but the controls are far from perfect. Final Remix uses the same touchscreen controls as the iOS version, which lack the precision of a stylus. Dragging Neku around the screen to avoid attacks is the area most affected by this. The touch controls are also too sensitive, so going between areas can often be intolerable; it’s easy to accidentally drag Neku back to the previous location. Similar to issues in the original version, your inputs don’t always trigger or do what you intend as tapping, slashing, and pressing an enemy can register differently. That being said, the more you get in the groove and master your skills, the less frustrating this becomes. I still had fun chaining combos and getting powerful pins that offer cool abilities that cater to telekinesis, explosives, and physical moves.

The World Ends With You is a still a solid RPG with interesting mechanics and an engaging story, living up to its reputation. Even playing all these years later, it still feels very fresh with its own unique identity. While the Switch version is still fun, it’s far from a great port, and the extra content is pretty disappointing. Then again, if this is your only way to play or revisit a fantastic game, you should definitely take that opportunity. 

Return Of The Obra Dinn Review – Hauntingly Good

In Return of the Obra Dinn, you play an insurance inspector investigating an abandoned merchant ship to determine what happened to the crew. Armed with only a notebook and a handy device called a Memento Mori (which is capable of turning back time to the moment of someone’s death), your job is to run through the fates of the 60 people who once called the ship home. While this premise seems ripe for spooky thrills, Obra Dinn leans away from horror. Instead, it presents a quality puzzler that plays like an ambitious, surrealistic version of Clue.

Nothing is what it seems in Return of the Obra Dinn. Your two ways of interacting with the world are your Memento Mori and the journal, but both are surprisingly complex. Using the Memento Mori recreates the moment of a victim’s death as a freeze frame, including the surroundings. You can walk around, see the victim, the people who were around at the time of the killing, and hear voice snippets to explain the context of the deaths. One early scenario I discovered on the top deck of the ship had one man refusing to let a cargo worker onto a life boat in the middle of the storm before brutally bludgeoning the cargo worker to death to avenge the killing of his brother. I learned more about the brother’s death when I reached the cargo deck, which allowed me to see the full truth behind the scenario and make some important calls.

Obra Dinn isn’t a narrative adventure where you’re going to spy a sheet of paper that conveniently gives you the answer to one of your puzzles. You have to examine every scene and come back to them several times with the Memento Mori. While this might sound like tedious backtracking, it’s just the opposite. You often uncover new details that are essential in solving puzzles, like seeing new wounds or suspicious details in the margins of a scene.

Your journal holds a crew manifest, one sketch of the entire crew, a map of all the decks, and a glossary. It’s also where you input what you think happened to crew members, with every fate serving as a puzzle. You need to answer how the person died (or escaped), who they were killed by, and how. You have to get a trio of crew members’ fates correct before the journal validates them, curbing your ability to brute force your way through puzzles.

The goal seems straightforward, but Obra Dinn is hard. For those who remain undaunted by steep challenges, the interlocking puzzles are fantastic, especially as you come to understand the tools at your disposal. Early on, I rarely used the sketch in the journal because I was so focused on investigating the ties between crime scenes. However, the sketch is just as important because it reveals essential details as well (like how the crewmates from India all sit together and are always with one another) that you can use to help you figure out the identity of crewmates when your other methods fail.

Whenever you’re bogged down in a problem, you always have a way out – but you may have to question your assumptions. The game does a great job encouraging this as you tackle the trickier mysteries, like crewmates who are only in a few memories. You need to rely on abstract thinking and connecting events across scenarios. Determining certain fates require you to focus on what’s missing from a victim’s death scene rather than the things that are present.

What’s most impressive to me is how paradoxically linear and open Obra Dinn is. Most of the 60 puzzles can be solved in any order, with only the tools you’re given and your own detective skills to guide the way. I truly felt like I inhabited Obra Dinn’s world because of how strongly its detective gameplay gripped me. Even when I was struggling during my 12-hour playthrough to find answers or the next clue, I couldn’t walk away from the computer. I had to see this thing through.

My only frustration with the Obra Dinn is the overarching story. The plot is ultimately fine, with more than enough emotional beats coming together for an engaging mystery. However, the ultimate payoff fails to complement the thoughtful gameplay giving players who solve every fate the narrative short shrift. Luckily, the individual stories you learn about the crew during your investigations – their betrayals, ambitions, loves – are enticing enough on their own to make up for the deficit. This mixed quality of storytelling doesn’t stop the experience from highlighting its other strengths; Return Of Obra Dinn is a surprisingly hardcore detective title with a surreal bite, and one that shouldn’t be missed by anyone who loves a great challenge.

Jackbox Party Pack 5 Review – Four Out Of Five Ain't Bad

Lego DC Super-Villains Review – It's Quite Good To Be Bad

Momentum is a powerful force – just ask anyone who’s been on the receiving end of one of Superman’s flying kicks. On a more grounded level, the impulse to continue with what’s worked in the past can make a creative endeavor feel stale, whether we’re talking about superhero movies, comic books, or video games. Lego DC Super-Villains isn’t reimagining the core of the Lego games, but TT Games has clearly learned from recent missteps. The result is one of the best (and baddest) games that the studio has released.

The name should clue you in to its setup; forget about Batman and his super friends, this one’s all about the villains. In true Lego fashion, the roster includes big names like Joker and Lex Luthor, and a dizzying array of fun second-tier heels like Mirror Master and Granny Goodness. The original story is a hoot. The Justice League suddenly disappears, replaced with a group of shady individuals from Earth 3 calling themselves the Justice Syndicate. These also-rans seem like close-enough versions of their contemporaries, with Ultraman filling in Superman’s boots and Owlman donning Batman’s cowl. Ultimately, they’re up to no good, which is something that only Earth’s villains seem to notice. They can’t let these interlopers take advantage of Earth’s plunder; that’s their job! It’s a fun setup for the familiar sight gags, snappy (and well voiced) dialogue, and humorous tone we all know from TT Games.

You’re part of it all, too. In one of the boldest departures from past games, your created character is no longer relegated to free play. Instead, your creation is part of the narrative, right from the start. I enjoyed watching my minifig doppelganger gain new abilities throughout the tale, becoming one of the more powerful faces around (and an excellent utility player that helped minimize the need for swapping characters). I’ve never gotten into custom characters as much as my kids have, but this time around I was fine-tuning my hero as I unlocked new visual options.

DC Super-Villains backs up its charm with a host of gameplay improvements. First and foremost, it’s not prone to crashing or bugging out relentlessly. It also has little quality-of-life improvements sprinkled throughout. In the past, when you encounter a task that your current character can’t perform, such as blowing up silver bricks as Harley-Quinn, your character will look at the camera and shrug. Ordinarily, you’d then have to manually cycle through the roster to find the correct person for the job. Now, when you swap, it immediately jumps to an appropriate one – a particular time-saver in free-play mode, which offers more than a 100 different characters to pore over. Platforming is more precise than in past games, and level designs don’t lean on extended jumping sections as much as they have in the past. That aspect has always been weak, and it’s about time that TT Games gave it some attention. Puzzles can still occasionally be a little out there, but loads of built-in hints keep younger players and their impatient parents moving if needed.

 

When you’re done with the story, you explore a huge open world divided into well-known locations like Metropolis, Gotham City, and Smallville. You’ll probably spend most of your time exploring those spaces, solving one-off environmental puzzles and helping your fellow villains with silly side missions. You’re still a villain at heart, however, which means your actions can draw the attention of law enforcement if you’re not careful. It’s a low-key riff on Grand Theft Auto’s wanted levels, which answers the question: Why doesn’t anyone care that I’m breaking everything? Answer: They do, but it doesn’t get in the way too much.

I was disappointed with last year’s Lego Marvel Super-Heroes 2, but Lego DC Super-Villains addresses virtually everything I saw wrong with that release. If you hate Lego games, this isn’t going to change your mind. For everyone else, this is a delightful return to form which hopefully serves as a reference for TT Games’ future projects.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Review - Treyarch’s Gambit Yields Big Rewards

Every year, the unceasing refrain that Call of Duty is the same gets repeated like a dogmatic mantra. With Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Treyarch takes a big risk in removing a franchise staple – the single-player campaign – and embraces nothing but online multiplayer. The gamble pays off, as the title features more modes, settings, and ways to engage than any game in the series I can recall. The blazing new Blackout mode steals the zeitgeist of the battle royale’s thunder, packaging it in a polished, powerful entry to the burgeoning genre. If you’re willing to eschew single-player completely, the payoff is worth it.

While the other modes are great and could easily carry the title on their own, the unquestionable star of the show is Blackout, Call of Duty’s first foray into the battle-royale space. The pacing of the experience is almost perfect, with a lot less foraging and a lot more action thanks to a map size that facilitates a focus on fighting. Moments where you’re running around in the doldrums of fields, rocks, and trees without enemy contact are few and far between. Intense conflict is incentivized with supply drops and mystery boxes. To get the best weapons you often need to take on A.I. zombies, creating enjoyable risk-reward situations that must continually be weighed. Epic encounters are constant, from intense helicopter assaults that often end in fiery wrecks to cargo-truck supply-drop steals. Using tools from the traditional multiplayer modes, like the grapple gun or combat hatchet, is a joy, and even if you end up being a victim during an action-packed drop in the first moments of a match, the next is only moments away. You can play this mode solo, but it really sizzles in four-player squads with your friends.

Zombies mode is more expansive than ever, with three different cooperative experiences available (four if you have the season pass) and a slew of dials to turn, allowing players to create a tuned challenge to exacting specifications and modifiers. Players lamenting the absence of a campaign may find story-driven solace here, with each immersive and arcade-like scenario delving into the depths of horror and the occult. Weaving around environments pulled from Roman, Norse, Egyptian, and Celtic mythology in the time-twisting IX or searching the depths of a sinking Titanic in Voyage of Despair, zombies has tales to tell betwixt each wave. Secrets abound, but new interactions like banging on gongs to summon challenging champions in the depths under the arena or attempting to swim your way to the submerged rooms of the sinking ship provide interesting fare for all styles. Not only can you turn the dials to handcraft a zombie expedition to exacting specifications, but the character unlocks and progression are expansive as well, allowing made-to-order loadouts. Powerful talismans even allow you to break the rules, like starting a match off with an AR. With engaging characters, bizarre stories, and copious customization options, zombies is the best it has ever been.

Traditional multiplayer has been tweaked a bit, but the boots-on-the-ground solid shooting and scooting is rooted in classic Call of Duty. Players have a bit more health, an active heal, and additional incentives to embrace teamplay over simple kill-death-assist metrics, but the core is satisfying, fast, and fluid. The Counter-Strike-inspired Heist mode gives something a little different, as you purchase weapons and accessories each round for a single spawn. Still, the franchise underpinnings remain strong, even if they don’t reinvent the rifle. Those looking to prestige and explore new weapons, abilities, and operator mods have a large array of options.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 makes a sacrifice that’s sure to be off-putting to some with the lack of a campaign, but the surrender of tradition comes with sweeping and significant benefits. Blackout is the best battle-royale experience available today, zombies offers crazy customizable co-op, and multiplayer keeps things grounded for those looking for the classic core.

The Missing Review: More Hit Than Miss

Memoria is a remote island off the coast of Maine rumored to awaken the memories of everyone who sets foot on its deserted shores. When two young adults named J.J. and Emily set foot on the island for an intimate camping weekend, they inadvertently dredge up repressed emotions that send them into a destructive spiral. The Missing is the latest game from Deadly Premonition director Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro. As Swery fan have come to expect, The Missing features its fair share of bizarre and awkward moments, but it ultimately tells a poignant story using a mechanic that asks players to continually dismember their character.

As J.J. travels across Memoria Island looking for her missing friend, she encounters a series of deadly environmental hazards like electrified pools of water, razor-sharp buzzsaws, and fiery deathtraps. While most would meet a grizzly end in this harsh world, J.J. has the remarkable ability to regenerate her body and recover from any injury. Growing back lost limbs at the push of a button is a lot of fun, but how The Missing incorporates these body horrors into its puzzle is often brilliant. For example, at several points, I had to set J.J.’s body on fire to light up darkened corridors or use her charred flesh to set overgrown brambles ablaze.

One of my favorite ways to injure J.J. was to break her neck, which causes the entire world to flip upside-down. This leads to a series of clever environmental mazes that ask you to continually flip between these two perspectives. Fortunately, The Missing doesn’t belabor its gimmicks. As soon as I got the handle on one puzzle type, White Owls introduced a new element or put a new spin on an old mechanic in a fun way.

The Missing doesn’t hold your broken hands when you get stuck; it encourages trial and error. Fortunately, most of The Missing’s environmental puzzles are easily solved through logical deduction and exploration. On the other hand, The Missing fails to properly explain a few basic mechanics. I got stuck for far too long during one early puzzle because I didn’t realize I could throw objects, since you have to hold down a button to do so. Fortunately, there were only a handful of moments where I could have used a tooltip, and The Missing’s environmental challenges are rewarding enough that I found it easy to quickly move on to the next thing.

A sense of dread and sorrow underlies J.J.’s entire adventure, but the themes of destruction and regeneration tie into the narrative in a clever way. The Missing’s story features its fair share of weirdness, such as a doctor with a moose head or a talking stuffed animal, but, in the end, The Missing told a moving story about J.J.’s personal struggles that caught me off guard more than once. Like its surprisingly heartfelt narrative, this quirky indie side-scroller came out of nowhere, but I’m glad I didn’t miss out on The Missing.

Astro Bot Rescue Mission Review – A New Experience In A Familiar Genre

The platformer has been a video game staple for decades and for good reason. Understanding the genre’s mechanics are quick and easy, it affords the opportunity to create fascinating worlds worth exploring, and for some reason it is just super fun to make someone (or something) jump at your command. Astro Bot Rescue Mission takes these old traditions and makes them feel novel and fresh thanks to the way it combines mechanics and how it places the player in its world with the aid of virtual reality. The joyful experience is benefited by the necessity of a headset and is an excellent showcase for how virtual reality can improve and change a familiar experience.

In Rescue Mission, you are one of many Astro Bots, distinguished by a cape, who must rescue their brethren from an alien menace who threw all the other Astro Bots to nearby planets while breaking apart their mothership in the process. To do this, you must visit assorted planets that offer platforming challenges and eventually defeat each planet’s boss. You control your caped Astro Bot from the third-person perspective, following them through the stages turning your head or peaking around corners to make sure you’re keeping track. You are meant to be a character in the game and occasionally you must headbutt your way through an obstacle, or dodge a projectile, but the action and challenge is mostly relegated to the Astro Bot you control. You are acting as a spectator to the platforming, and it works exceptionally as a means of placing you in the world to absorb the atmosphere (and fantastic soundtrack) while you play an incredibly polished and charming action game.

Your interaction in the world is occasionally amplified by giving the controller (which appears in-world as a visible object) assorted powers. You may have to use a hose attachment to put out fires and water plants, or fire off a tethering rope to pull down obstacles and create tightropes for your Astro Bot to cross. These portions are a highlight as you genuinely feel like you are working in tandem with your Astro Bot to overcome challenges by interreacting directly with the world. It creates an enthralling sense of teamwork, even though you are in control of everything.

Along with jumping your way through the worlds, you must also rescue hidden Astro Bots. Finding them is a fun puzzle-solving exercise that also takes advantage of the virtual reality platform. Hearing the bots shout for help prompts you to stop, listen, and physically look around the environment to find them. For the most difficult bots, I would sometimes stand up to get a better view of my surroundings to pin them down. I especially liked the bots that hid themselves at the ends of long hallways perpendicular to the main path. These moments were strangely exhilarating as sending your bot so far away feels surprisingly dangerous. You’re a team, you and your caped Astro Bot, and to watch it travel so far away to save a friend made me feel proud. Pride was not something I expected to feel while controlling a cute little robot in a jumping adventure.

 

You can compare Rescue Mission to Mario titles like 3D World and 3D Land, and the correlation is more than a cursory way to say the three games are all platformers. Nintendo excels at using Mario to create unique experiences in the genre he helped establish, while also highlighting its hardware in interesting ways, and it is always done with an impressive level of polish. Rescue Bots ticks all those boxes, and also nails the difficult to quantify sensation of just being damn fun. Nearly every level introduces new mechanics, or uses the previously established mechanics in surprising ways, and nothing overstays its welcome. The moment you start to tire of something, you are off to an entirely different environment with a whole new set of fun challenges. All of that culminates in a final boss that uses everything you learned up to that point for a thrilling and exciting challenge.

Astro Bot Rescue Mission feels like it came out of nowhere to quietly prove that familiar genres can feel like new experiences with the aid of virtual reality. While the medium is capable of creating entirely new interactive experiences, Rescue Mission serves as a great reminder that the styles of games we already like can be translated to VR, and when it is done as well as it has been here, you get a chance to experience something that feels genuinely new and exciting.

Super Mario Party Review – Same Party, New Decorations

The Mario Party franchise has always been about the convergence of board games and minigames with Nintendo characters thrown into the mix. Recent entries deviated from the tried and true formula to unpopular results, but Super Mario Party returns the series to its roots. While the return to the standard board-game format is a welcome adjustment, Super Mario Party supplements the flagship approach with fun peripheral modes to create a mostly enjoyable party game anyone can pick up and play.

The mainstay board-game mode delivers the classic Mario Party experience of four players moving independently through different boards to collect the most stars before you reach the turn limit. While I’m glad this mode has returned, I’m disappointed by the board options. You can only play on four boards, and they all feel small, uninspired, and cramped. Progress through them is mostly linear, with only a few branching paths that eventually converge. While the linearity is alleviated in the free-roam Partner Party mode, the boards are largely forgettable.

One of the more frustrating elements of the Mario Party franchise persists with random dice rolls and arbitrary chance elements still ultimately determining the victor. This remains evident in how you collect stars, which are bought from Toadette if you encounter her on the board. After each star, Toadette relocates randomly across the board, further drilling in the luck element; if you get a star, there’s a small chance that Toadette will relocate just a few spaces down, essentially gifting you another star on your next turn.

As with all Mario Party games, the minigames that break up the board-game action are the real centerpieces. Competing in bite-sized competitions to earn coins is often exciting, and the stable of 80 new minigames features more hits than misses. My favorite minigames, like slapping your opponents at the right time for it to be captured on camera, create hilarious situations that stick with me after I turn the game off. Others, like blasting rivals away with high-powered water guns, deliver good action with simple-yet-solid gameplay. The highlights shine bright enough that when the occasional dud pops up, I don’t mind.

With such a strong stable of minigames, Super Mario Party also includes ways to enjoy them without moving across a board. River Survival puts all four players in a raft as they paddle down a treacherous river by moving the Joy-Cons like oars. Rowing down the river as one while steering clear of rocks and enemies makes for plenty of amusing moments, and I like how you can aim for balloons along the way to pause the rafting action and play a cooperative minigame to earn extra time to reach the goal. But with only 10 distinct 4-player co-op minigames, you get repeats often. This small catalogue also limits the replay value of the mode, as you can only play them so many times before they become routine for your group.

Sound Stage amps up the motion controls as it sends the characters on stage to compete in rhythm-based games. The presentation of this mode is exciting; the crowd cheers along as you progress through a handful of competitions, and I love how the music accompanying the minigames is tied into one song with a remix of the original Super Mario Bros. Underworld theme serving as a bridge. However, this mode runs into the same problem with variety, with only has 10 rhythm-based games to pull from. Despite this, I love playing through the energetic mode as an intermission between other activities.

 

Toad’s Rec Room is the most unique new mode, giving you the ability to combine two Switch screens to make your own battlefields or add additional puzzles. However, it serves as little more than a diversion. The other modes deliver more substantial experiences centered on the solid library of minigames.

If you want to party by yourself, the new Challenge Road puts you through all 80 minigames organized in a hub world. While some challenges simply have you beating the A.I. rivals, many of them add an extra layer of difficulty, like collecting a certain number of coins or not hitting any obstacles. These extra layers add additional excitement to the games, though since Challenge Road is single-player only, it’s frustrating when you get teamed up with an incompetent A.I. character. Thankfully, those moments are few enough that Challenge Road is a worthwhile solo mode that highlights the best part of Super Mario Party and acts as a solid side to the multiplayer meat of the experience.

Despite lackluster board design and side modes that can become repetitive, Super Mario Party is a fun group game that showcases a diverse collection of minigames. With so many different modes, it’s easy for you and your friends to consume the entertaining minigames Super Mario Party delivers.

Mega Man 11 Review – Graduated old school

When Mega Man jumped onto the scene in 1987, it was like nothing else. Players could determine the order in which they took down all of Dr. Wily’s evil robot masters and then steal their powers. After 30 years, that formula no longer feels novel, but Mega Man 11 proves that the classics are classic for a reason. Capcom has given the Blue Bomber a new coat of paint and a few new tricks, but Mega Man’s core gameplay remains challenging and rewarding.

Among the things that never change is Dr. Wily’s mad desire for power. Once again, he’s kidnapped eight of Dr. Light’s robots and reprogrammed them for evil. Robot masters are a highlight in any Mega Man game, and that remains true here; every boss has a unique gimmick that sets them apart stylistically, but their cute design is betrayed by their fearsome skills in battle. Every time I went toe-to-toe with one of these killer machines, it felt like an epic throw down. My heart raced as Block Man transformed into a two-story monstrosity who threw car-sized bricks, and my palms sweated as Acid Man sent waves of toxic sludge my way. Paying attention to your enemies’ tells and mastering their attack patterns is half the fun, and taking each robot master down for the first time is an absolute thrill.

The creative design of each robot carries through in their stages. Bounce Man’s level is my favorite, with bounce pads that send you ping-ponging around. I also loved falling across several screens before landing on a massive trampoline that shot me back into the sky. Other stages present memorable moments too, like outrunning a massive forest fire and bounding over icy platforms in the middle of a snowstorm. I never knew what to expect from each level, and their themes never overstayed their welcome.

The special weapons and abilities you earn are instrumental in overcoming each level’s challenges. For example, Acid Man’s acid barrier saved my skin more than once, and Impact Man’s pile driver is a dash attack that is invaluable during certain platforming sequences. You can swap between all of these abilities using the right analog stick, which is incredibly slick and minimizes the time you spend in menus. By the end of the game, I felt like a powerhouse as I quickly cycled through my abilities, overcoming every challenge.  

Even with all of these new toys, Mega Man’s most powerful skill is available from the start. The gear system allows you to slow down time or amplify your gun for a short period. This is the biggest change to Mega Man’s core gameplay in over 30 years, but it’s a welcome addition. These new tools turned what could have been frustrating challenges into death-defying stunts. Nothing is more satisfying than using the slow-mo gear to bound through tricky obstacles, then sidling up to enemies to unload a few overpowered shots into their weak spots. Overusing the gear system makes Mega Man overheat, so balancing these powers takes skill – but that only ratchets up the tension as the action intensifies.

 

Mega Man’s new tricks are even more important because Capcom didn’t pull any punches in terms of difficulty, but old-school challenge feels like a fair fight thanks to precise controls. Four different difficulty modes allow everyone to find a comfortable playthrough, but I had the most fun on the normal setting. The shop system also lets you tune your experience. You get to keep all the bolts you earn when you die, and these are used to purchase extra lives, energy refills, and permanent upgrades like larger buster shots and better traction on ice. So even when I crashed and burned during a boss fight, I never felt like all was lost.

Mega Man 9 and 10 were both loving throwbacks to the franchise’s NES roots, but Mega Man 11 is the first entry in ages that offers something new without sacrificing everything fans love. The new gear system is a cool mechanic, and Capcom’s level design feels classic in all the right ways. Mega Man 11 taps into the series’ past, but also serves as a solid foundation for the Blue Bomber’s next 30 years.

Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise Review – The Classic Manga Gets A Decent Adaptation

Originally published in the mid-‘80s, Fist of the North Star is a successful, post-apocalyptic manga that follows a martial artist named Kenshiro who has the power to make heads explode with a single punch. Lost Paradise tells a new story in the Fist of the North Star mythos but borrows known characters and story elements from the source material and structures the experience to play like the developer’s other game series, Yakuza. In some ways, this weird amalgamation of franchises works, but it’s not without shortcomings.

In a world ravaged by nuclear destruction, Kenshiro is a master of the Hokuto Shinken style of martial arts, which focuses on attacking pressure points on his opponents’ bodies. When done correctly, this causes them to explode in violent displays. This makes him a very powerful person in the apocalyptic world, but he has a heart of gold and cares only about finding his fiancée. He tries to avoid violence as best he can, but sometimes the only way to do that is to punch people so hard that their bodies burst like over-inflated balloons. In that strange paradox, Lost Paradise builds up an interesting, melodramatic, and sometimes humorous story. Kenshiro explores a large city full of quest-givers and minigames, beats up groups of thugs, and sometimes takes a car out into the nearby wasteland to find materials and explore other, smaller towns.

The narrative is built around soap-opera-style twists from severely serious characters who like to keep secrets. People you think are dead rarely are, and if they wear a mask, you better believe they’re hiding a revelation under there. The surprises drive engagement but are doled out at a snail’s pace. Walking from one story revelation to the next always involves getting sidetracked against your will, and a number of annoying missions force you to travel great distances to figure out what you need just so you can turn back around and get it.

Between (and during) the story and side missions, you drive around a large open wasteland and fight thousands of bad guys. The clumsy driving suffers from awkward physics, but as a way to diversify the mission structure, I appreciate its presence. You can upgrade your car with new materials, but they mostly offer underwhelmingly minor changes.

Creativity is not Kenshiro’s strong suit, and it shows in his fighting style. Plenty of unlockable combat upgrades are available, but few changed the way I approached combat. This makes health and power upgrades the most useful options. Though the upgrade system left me wanting more, I enjoyed the fighting despite the occasional difficulty spikes and repetition.

 

Fist of the North Star is an old property, and that age is reflected in how the world of Lost Paradise is rendered. The main female characters are underdressed, and the male characters are walking muscle towers who deliver one-liners like, “Villains don’t need graves.” Plus, the violence is glorified in a way that would make the original Mortal Kombat proud. Yes, this is faithful to the original manga, but that didn’t keep me from feeling embarrassed about playing it in front of others.

The melodrama of the main story is fun, but Lost Paradise shines brightest when it doesn’t take itself seriously. You can tackle minigames like one on a baseball field where thugs on motorcycles drive toward you and you knock them back with a giant piece of rebar. Another has you donning a lab coat and playing a rhythm game where you beat up bad guys trying to steal medicine from a clinic. These minigames and side missions (like one where you have to track down the “shoulder pad killer”) are a highlight, and it is always a treat to see the super serious Kenshiro participate in some bizarre frivolity.

The narrative moves slowly and side missions eagerly pull you away from the main story whether you want them to or not, but I was engaged throughout. I wanted to see what would happen next and was happy to beat up bad guys in order to do so. Shortcomings in the pacing and the lack of diversity in the combat pull down the experience, but I liked the time I spent with Kenshiro. The Fist of the North Star franchise feels dated in many ways, but you would be hard-pressed to find a better representation of its strange and violent world in a video game.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey Review – Fighting For Glory

Many mythological traditions involve some form of demigod, an exceptional individual born from the union of a human and a deity. These heroes accomplish astounding things thanks to their divine heritage, but their mortal sides keep them from joining the ranks of true gods. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey exists in the same place between two realms. With vast improvements to combat and progression, no other Assassin’s Creed had made players feel this capable and powerful. However, Odyssey struggles to find appropriate ways to exercise that power, presenting a vision of Ancient Greece that relies more on familiar routine than legendary feats.

Though it won’t be the subject of any epic poems, I still appreciate Odyssey’s incredible ambition. The team at Ubisoft Quebec built an immense open world full of towering statues and gorgeous landscapes that serve as a vivid backdrop for your quest. After choosing either Kassandra or Alexios as your protagonist (I prefer Kassandra’s voice performer), you set out on a journey that pits you against nations, cultists, and monsters. The new hero has a likeable confidence, and I enjoyed making choices and watching the consequences unfold, but the pacing is infuriating. Despite doing plenty of side quests, I often had to grind or complete a series of barely related tasks to advance the story. That drip-feed pattern over 50-plus hours puts a serious damper on the momentum.

Odyssey’s setting is new, but the gameplay builds on the foundation laid by Assassin’s Creed Origins last year, expanding the RPG systems and adding several new features. Melee combat is the most rewarding distillation of that process; encounters are a ballet of attacks and abilities punctuated by dodges and parries. As you fight, you build adrenaline to expend on a wide array of powers. Set your blades on fire, then slow time and attack multiple soldiers to engulf them in flames. Send a lieutenant in to distract a bandit while you take aim with a poison arrow. These abilities and more convey a dynamic and godlike sense of power, with a blend of action and reaction that creates my favorite combat system in the series.

Naval gameplay returns in Odyssey in its most full-featured incarnation since Black Flag and Rogue. You can upgrade your ship, find sunken ruins, and hunt down pirates. It all works well and provides simple fun, but Odyssey doesn’t give you much incentive to go sailing. The naval encounters aren’t complex enough to be gratifying, and the rewards aren’t good enough to be enticing. Though I enjoyed the lovely views from my ship and the occasional exchange of fiery arrows, the naval component ends up feeling inconsequential beyond its function as transportation.

One of Odyssey’s signature features is mercenaries – roaming warriors who present more challenge than average soldiers. They are like the Phylakes from Origins, but infinite in number, and you climb their ranks as you defeat them. Seeking these encounters pays off, because you get rewards (like decreased weapon enchantment cost) for killing mercenaries who rank higher than you – but that doesn’t always happen on your terms. Mercenaries hunt you down after you commit crimes, which can lead to improvised encounters that make great water-cooler moments. But the system creates just as many annoying scenarios, like an angry mercenary standing right next to the person you need for a quest. Attracting many mercenaries’ attention when you’re trying to do something delicate is also a pain, and getting them off your back is a hassle.

 

The volatility of the mercenary system is a symptom of a bigger problem: the rarity of deliberately crafted gameplay. The game doesn’t have a shortage of content; Ancient Greece is filled with activities like clearing camps, infiltrating forts, and waging war. I enjoyed those objectives, but I was hungry for more scenarios that felt less random and more carefully designed. Instead, Odyssey feels like an ecosystem set up and left to run on its own with little authorial interference. Too many quests send you sneaking around cookie-cutter compounds to contend with a standard assortment of patrolling guards as you loot chests, burn war supplies, or kill specific targets. With some notable exceptions, even the main story missions and key assassinations rely on these tasks, so your actions during major beats often don’t feel distinct or special compared to the rest of the experience. While those activities may be fun, their repetition and predictability drain some glory from your tale.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey aims high in its attempts to blend innovative additions with returning features. The execution might be uneven, but Ubisoft Quebec ultimately strikes a successful balance among the many parts. The story is compelling, both as a hero’s journey and in the way it ties into the series’ wider lore. Exploring the world is fun, combat is empowering, and getting epic loot is a thrill. That solid core formula carries Odyssey a long way, but like Icarus and his wax wings, it’s not enough to reach the bright star on the horizon.