Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores Review – Finishing Strong

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5
Publisher: PlayStation Studios
Developer: Guerrilla Games

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores serves fans a substantial dessert that brings the main course of the campaign to a satisfying close. A dangerous new sandbox and a compelling story await Aloy, offering a nice wrap-up that also provides some tantalizing glimpses into the future. 

Unlike Zero Dawn’s Frozen Wilds DLC, which was a good but skippable side story, Burning Shores has enough relevant plot advancement to make it closer to required playing. Taking place immediately after the sequel’s conclusion, this abbreviated tale sees Aloy travel to the volcanically fractured remains of Los Angeles to confront perhaps the series’ most twisted villain yet. The adventure takes some exciting turns and provides what I wanted most: a potential narrative blueprint for the third game. Burning Shores’ conclusion lays a good foundation for how Aloy and friends will tackle the next threat, so it’s a bummer PlayStation 4 owners have to settle for watching it on YouTube. I also enjoyed getting to spend more time with the Quen, my favorite faction in Forbidden West, especially because they introduced us Seyka, Aloy’s new companion and one of the primary highlights of Burning Shores. 

This capable warrior serves as the catalyst of Burning Shores’ story and sticks to Aloy’s side throughout the expansion. Seyka is essentially a more charismatic version of Aloy herself: steadfast and sometimes bull-headed, but gentle and loving to those in need, and with an endearing sense of humor to boot. Though the blossoming of their bond feels a little rushed to fit within the DLC’s shorter runtime, the two huntresses have some amusing interactions, such as trading humorous observations while exploring a crumbling dinosaur theme park. I hope we see more of Seyka in the future because she quickly skyrocketed toward the upper echelon of the series’ best characters. 

 

The islands that make up the former Tinseltown look unsurprisingly stunning; the volcanic lava rivers offer a great change of visual imagery. It’s a bummer that these molten hazards don’t factor more directly into gameplay, but LA sports a fun emphasis on verticality that takes more advantage of your flying mounts. Skyscrapers boast hidden entrances and secrets situated multiple stories above ground, letting me get more mileage out of my Sunwing or Waterwing, a new swimming variation that’s now my favorite mount. Aerial versions of the VR scenery puzzles further encourage going airborne, to the point that flying overshadows Aloy’s new motorized boat. Despite being the centerpiece mode of transportation for Burning Shores, the boat’s slower speed and its access being tethered to docks can’t overcome the thrill and convenience of flying anywhere at will (or fast travel, for that matter). As a result, I rarely used it outside of the required segments.

The handful of new machines that occupy the Burning Shores, such as a giant frog and oversized mechanical flies, aren’t as jaw-dropping as some of the existing machines, but they provide enjoyable new tests of your combat prowess. On top of dismantling these foes for new upgrade parts, I spent most of my time hunting a valuable new resource called Brimstone, glowing crystals used as the primary crafting material for Burning Shores’ new suite of powerful legendary weapons and armor. I appreciate that Brimstone is relatively abundant, letting me quickly acquire a fresh arsenal and wardrobe. 

Still, outside of obtaining a powerful new firearm mid-way through the expansion, Burning Shores doesn’t introduce features that dramatically shake up combat encounters. However, Sekya’s near-constant presence adds a welcome helping hand in a fight. She’s genuinely useful, often picking apart foes on her own or tying them down with her ropecaster so I can go in for the kill. Early on, puzzle-solving takes on a neat cooperative edge, such as Aloy and Seyka working together to build climbing paths for one another using a siege weapon. These sequences can trick you into thinking you’re playing with another real person, though I wish these ladies had more obstacles to tackle together during the rest of the experience. 

Burning Shores is an entertaining epilogue for Aloy’s sophomore outing. It’s more Forbidden West with a few cool wrinkles, meaning it’s a good reminder of the things that the game did right while retaining a few old headaches (like the hand-holding during puzzles). More than anything, Aloy’s trip to Hollywood justifies its existence by meaningfully building upon the base game’s story, paving a solid runway for the next title to take off. 

How To Access The DLC: To play Burning Shores, you’ll need to have completed the final campaign mission of Horizon Forbidden West. Once this is done, Aloy will receive a call on her Focus, which kicks off the DLC. If you’re returning to Forbidden West after an absence, this immediately occurs as soon as you drop back into the world.

Score: 8

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Review - Capturing The Fantasy

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Respawn Entertainment
Rating: Teen

If the only thought in your mind upon completing 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order was that you wanted more, then I have excellent news. Picking up where its predecessor left off, Jedi: Survivor isn’t just more of the same but more of virtually everything, with meaningful advances and improvements across the board. It’s a longer game with greater levels of customization, more enemies, more diverse approaches to combat and puzzles, and more storytelling and character development for its compelling cast of characters. While some structural and story choices start to wear thin, Jedi: Survivor is nonetheless a step up in almost all the ways that matter. It also manages to capture a lot of the tonal and thematic ideas that work about this fiction, helping cement its place as one of the best in the long history of Star Wars games.

As we rejoin Cal Kestis, there’s little of the step back in power that some action game sequels attempt. He's a full-fledged Jedi Knight, with all the Force powers and lightsaber tricks you worked so hard to earn last time still in place. Robust onboarding quickly gets into the action and story, making you feel powerful and capable. The flexibility of playstyle expands from there, with new saber stances and equipment that provide choice in confronting the galaxy’s dangers. The downside is that most upgrades to Cal’s use of the Force feel more like twists and tweaks rather than wholly new powers, but it’s a small price to pay for well-paced action from beginning to end.

Combat and dueling are excellent, demanding a Jedi’s patience for defense to master. It’s impressive to balance battle encounters across a big game like this so that they remain challenging at every step, but Cal’s new adventure manages to do so. A wide variety of formidable foes await, each demanding observation and canny button work. A few late-game bosses rely on frustrating cheap tricks, but they always make for climactic and affecting encounters.

I adore the mobility and navigation challenges, which nail that sense of controlling a Force-attuned hero leaping and swinging through seemingly impossible paths. Like the combat, a satisfying upward slope of complexity keeps traversal engaging throughout – no small feat in a game this big. Several scattered optional puzzles are also fiendishly clever, and I enjoyed them as a departure from the action.

While Jedi: Survivor includes several unique planets to visit, it grounds the experience in a single frontier world called Koboh, with more than a little Old West inspiration. Large swaths of the game unfold in the different corners of this semi-open world planet, filled with rumors to track down, bounties to hunt, and secrets to uncover. I like the locale, but by the end, I was growing tired of running in circles to the same destination after so many prior visits. Thankfully, whether on Koboh or visiting planets like Coruscant or Jedha, a new fast travel system makes navigation between meditation points easy.

Customization is foundational across the game and its reward systems, from tweaking hairstyles, jackets, and saber colors to character perks and powers. That extends to increased ownership over the world, through the ability to enhance a cantina with a garden, an aquarium, new visitors, and even musical tracks. I felt invested in the adventure and the improvements I found along the way.

Across its lengthy campaign, Jedi: Survivor takes an initially meandering course to find its plotline but eventually coalesces into a story about disparate people searching for a safe home. The moment-to-moment character interactions and dialogue help elevate the lack of focus, with some sweeping melodrama in the best traditions of Star Wars fiction. The distinctions between love and attachment, and the dangers of both, often lurk in the background of Star Wars stories. Those themes take centerstage this time, with memorable and rewarding results.

Developer Respawn Entertainment clearly took a measured and thoughtful approach to analyze what worked and what didn’t in its last Star Wars game, and Jedi: Survivor feels like a worthy attempt at evolution. It captures the magic of Star Wars as well as anything in the current canon, and it’s a stellar adventure in its own right. Still, nailing the fantasy of being a Jedi? Doesn’t hurt.

 

Score: 9.25

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Strayed Lights Review - Parry Me Through The Dark

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Embers
Developer: Embers
Rating: Teen

Introducing something new to me in action combat is rare. In games that feature it, you’re likely using either guns to kill enemies or melee action to take them down, and I’m not often surprised by how this can work. I can, of course, fall in love with familiar combat despite that, but it’s always exciting to experience something I haven’t before, which is what Strayed Lights manages to do. 

Relying almost exclusively on a unique parry system requiring you to switch between two colors to match your enemy’s attack, I couldn’t get enough of Strayed Lights’ action, even if it was repetitive. That this combat was wrapped up in a gorgeous, realized alien world and backed by a dynamic and musically diverse score from Austin Wintory (the composer of Journey and The Pathless) made my time with the game all the better. 

Strayed Lights begins with a birth of sorts. You start as a spark of light – an ember – on a journey to transcendence. To succeed, you must confront your inner demons – darkness – using a defense-focused combat style, all while exploring more of this ethereal sci-fi world to learn about your existence. In my first hour, I felt overwhelmed because developer Embers does little to hold your hand or even guide you in a direction, but the game’s openness is more linear than it first appears. 

Running around this world is great, but the platforming is sometimes less than stellar. Jumping feels strange because your character often hits the ground with a thud, and you must wait a few moments for them to recover and stand back up. This design choice makes larger jumps, of which there are many, feel burdensome. But platforming is rarely the star of this show as it’s more of a quick means to reach the next combat arena. 

 

When an enemy is close, a shadowy substance smears the edges of the screen, a rocky monster (sometimes two) appears, and Strayed Lights begins to shine. By pressing the left bumper, I can switch the color of the fiery light burning inside my character from blue to orange and back. This is important to nail down soon after the game begins because every enemy switches colors like this too. And you need to parry with the right bumper with your color matching theirs. This mechanic starts simple, but a third color you cannot match – purple – is thrown into the mix, requiring you to dodge. At its height, a fourth color is added and enemies quickly switch between them as they wail at you with three, four, and sometimes five hits. I loved frantically switching my colors to match theirs with a parry, dodging when required, and getting in hits with my limited offensive abilities. 

Parrying is the only way to regain health during combat, which required me to play more dangerously as my health dropped. There are abilities and special moves you can unlock for your combat repertoire but ultimately, learning Strayed Lights’ parry mechanic is crucial – there’s no reaching the end if you can’t nail the timing. I love a good parry in a game and this one remained satisfying through the end, but those who prefer to dodge in melee action games may struggle. 

Collecting shards from enemies to spend on abilities is satisfying, as is exploring the open areas to collect items connected to lore, leveling up, and more. Fortunately, straying from the path to find these collectibles requires little effort, which is good because it lets you get back to combat. The action is simple but satisfying, and while the instances where I had to fight more than one enemy at a time were more frustrating than anything else, I still enjoyed almost every combat scenario I stumbled into. 

The game lacks enemy variety, though. It initially seemed like each new area might have its own enemy makeup, but halfway through the game, I realized Strayed Lights only had a handful of monsters to throw at me. Learning each attack pattern was a fun mental exercise, and I would have liked more. 

Regardless of what I was doing, my eyes and ears were feasting. I entered each new open area in Strayed Lights delighted at the visual design before me. Suns and moons burn overhead, and landscapes are painted in beautiful hues of green, blue, neon pinks, and purples. My ember light of a character shined against these backdrops and my hard drive is home to a couple of dozen screenshots because of it. Wintory’s score matches the tone of each place, dancing between ethereal wind instruments and ritualistic percussion that seemed to be speaking its own alien language. Even when the gameplay falters, like in two-enemy combat scenarios or the game’s less-than-great platforming, I enjoyed being in this world because of Strayed Lights’ score and visual design. 

 

Strayed Lights is short, sweet, and mostly excels at what it asks players to do. Its unique parry-required combat brings something new to the table, and I enjoyed nearly every instance of it, especially in the larger boss-fight setpieces sprinkled through the journey. Its exploration doesn’t require much effort, which is a good thing because it largely doesn’t feel great to platform through areas. Its misses are easy to put aside, though, when what I’m looking at and hearing throughout the game is such a delight. Strayed Lights is a strong debut from Embers in almost every way and serves to highlight the importance of a game’s foundation. At its core, Strayed Lights revolves around a simple, intuitive, and unique combat system, and with this strong base in place, it’s no wonder the game shines as bright as it does.

Score: 8

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