Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Review – Well-Worn Fanservice

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Omega Force

Rating: Teen

Reviewed on: Switch

For many, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a revelation. Nintendo smartly rethought old conventions and delivered an adventure that felt new while holding true to the spirit of the series. I put almost 200 hours into Nintendo’s open-world epic, and after I’d put the controller down for the last time, I was hungry for even more. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity delivers that "even more" while we wait for the true sequel. It’s far from a revelation, but it is an adequate diversion.

Like the original Hyrule Warriors from 2014, Age of Calamity relies heavily on developer Omega Force’s Dynasty Warriors formula. Link and his fellow Hyruleans drop into sprawling battlefields and carve their way through armies of hundreds as they take over enemy encampments and ultimately turn the tide of war. The action is a bit monotonous, and I completed several combat encounters by spamming the basic attack button. Occasionally, I would throw a heavy attack in the mix just to change it up, but that was rarely necessary. 

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Age of Calamity gets more interesting once you encounter a squad leader. Unlike enemy grunts who fade to dust after three or four hits, leaders have health bars and require a bit more strategy. Link is equipped with a Sheikah Slate that lets him unleash a series of Rune attacks similar to Breath of the Wild. For example, you can freeze enemies with a stasis ability, and then slash at them with your sword. Alternatively, you can shield yourself from powerful attacks with giant blocks of ice. These Rune powers shake-up Hyrule Warriors' otherwise stale combat. Moreover, some enemies are especially susceptible to Link’s Rune abilities, so if you time your strikes, you can set them up for a quick finish. I especially loved tossing a bomb in an enemy's face as they were winding up for a big attack.  

Link is a well-rounded hero, but he is joined but some equally capable allies. During your journey, you unlock additional playable characters, such as the Ninja-like Impa and all four Divine Beast champions featured in Breath of the Wild. All of these heroes perform largely the same, but they have one or two special abilities that set them apart. I enjoyed chaining together electric attacks as Urbosa, and lobbing explosive chunks of magma across the battlefield as Daruk the Goron. On missions where you have multiple heroes on the battlefield, you can freely swap between them and even issue commands to your allies. While I appreciated being able to tell my heroes where to direct their efforts, the game doesn't make use of this feature in a meaningful way. I never felt encouraged to think about hero positioning or strategy, which feels like a missed opportunity. 

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Between battles, Link and his crew return to a Sheikah tower where they are presented with a map of Hyrule. This is the same map from Breath of the Wild, which is a nice touch. During this downtime, you can upgrade your weapons, buy items, or complete side missions. These quests are incredibly simple – almost trivial – and often have you delivering various resources to people across Hyrule. Completing these quests isn’t very satisfying, but it opens up new shops and sometimes unlocks new combos for your characters so it feels worth taking a few extra minutes to clean them off the map. These side missions offer a needed break from Hyrule Warriors' action, but the missions are so shallow they don't add anything noteworthy. 

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity looks a lot like Breath of the Wild, but it lacks the exploration and puzzle-solving elements that define the mainline Legend of Zelda series. Age of Calamity may not resemble a traditional Zelda game, but it’s not a bad time. The action is repetitive, but also relaxed and comfortable. It trades on your love for Nintendo’s classic franchise, and I was happy for the excuse to return to this version of Hyrule. I still feel like I'm chasing Breath of the Wild's high, and Age of Calamity is a small solace. 

Score: 7.5

Summary: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is far from a revelation, but it is an adequate diversion.

Concept: A narrative prequel to Nintendo’s phenomenal Breath of the Wild that features mindless-yet-serviceable action

Graphics: Breath of the Wild looked like a watercolor painting come to life, and Age of Calamity decently mimics that aesthetic

Sound: The score is subtle but nice, though the voicework tends to be a bit hammy

Playability: Most combat encounters can be completed by mashing a single button over and over, but later levels require some grinding

Entertainment: The action is tedious, but cutting through swaths of Bokoblins and single-handedly clearing a battlefield is still rewarding

Replay: Moderate

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Godfall Review – A Soulless Warrior

Publisher: Gearbox Software

Developer: Counterplay Games

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5

Also on: PC

Backed by razor-sharp combat, Godfall is at its best when a boss steps into the arena. These foes put up good fights and push you to use everything in your arsenal. The back-and-forth clashes against these titans are intense and lengthy, demanding speed, skill, and strategy. When you eventually deliver a finishing blow, you're rewarded with a feast of loot raining down in a dazzling showering of next-gen particle effects. The gear you obtain is almost always beneficial, giving you more powerful weapons and currency needed to make your existing equipment better. What comes next, however, is a daunting amount of repetition leading up to the next exciting boss encounter.

The meat on Godfall’s bones is little more than warriors with swords, but the visual stylization over that basic setup is beautiful and different. You’ll never once see a humanoid face; every character is outfitted in garish armors, usually themed after some kind of beast. These suits of steel have a stunning design, and convey the game’s unique blend of fantasy and science-fiction. The story, while beginning with a flashy cinematic of thousands of troops clashing on the battlefield, is surprisingly intimate, pitting your character, a fallen king named Orin, against his power-hungry brother Macros, who will destroy the world in his pursuit of becoming a god.

To reach Macros, you must first take down all of his lieutenants – each coming out of the woodwork after a certain number of story missions are completed. At this point, the narrative quickly loses its pulse and never recovers, being dominated by bland conversations with an A.I. being, and concluding with one of the most anticlimactic cliffhangers I’ve seen.

The mission designs and small open-world environments are equally as lifeless, serving up tedious steps required to unlock the next boss encounter. The worlds are highly detailed, but there isn’t much variety in the plant life or architecture, and it all starts to blend together into the same snapshot. You spend a lot of time snaking down the same paths for different mission objectives, and eventually realize you can skirt every encounter and just beeline it to the objective. After a few missions in the same area, I didn’t think twice about hoofing it; I made a habit of getting to the heart of the matter quickly.

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The one benefit of grinding out fights against the same groups of enemies in these areas is to gain experience that eventually awards skill points. Again, Godfall does a nice job of high-fiving players with statistical and functional bumps that immediately make a difference and make Orin more of a force on the battlefield. The standard enemy varieties perish quickly, but are still fun to take on, especially if you focus on weakening their guard to open them up to flashy finishers. You can also use Soulshatter, which allows you to bank damage that you can use to decimate an adversary, making them explode in an impressive spray of mist. No matter what your approach is, the game pushes you to alternate between two weapons, as damage dealt with one powers up the other. You have five weapon types in total, and all are fun to wield, feeling distinct with different timing windows and benefits.

A little variety is also tied to Valorplates, which are complete armor sets that impart slightly different combat capabilities, but not enough to truly change how you play. The Valorplates all look amazing, but have their own loadouts, which can be a bit of pain, as you need to unequip gear if you want to use it on another suit.

Each mission consists of three difficulties, with the highest limiting the number of attempts you get. On the lowest difficulty, if you die, you come right back to life and the damage you dealt to the enemy remains (although sometimes the game bugs out and resets it anyway). The higher difficulty is best played cooperatively with two friends, and is also where Godfall’s boss battles truly shine. A good deal of fun comes from coordinating strategies and trying to lure a foe your way to set him up for an uncontested assault from a friend.

Whether you are pairing two similarly leveled characters or a high-powered with a newcomer, the battles are balanced nicely for all involved, either upping the damage output for the player or making the fight harder. Loot is also individualized. I was impressed by just how well the cooperative play worked, although you can’t matchmake if your friends aren’t around. You need to group up with people you know. The campaign delivers plenty of missions to dive into, a robust co-op-focused endgame, along with an endless Tower of Trials that pumps out excellent loot (again recycling an environment you've already explored).

Like most loot-based games, you spend a lot of time in Godfall’s menus, equipping new swords and upgrading items to truly make enemies feel your wrath. Just know it’s a game that lives in the moment of combat and dies whenever attempting anything else, whether it’s drawing players into the worlds or trying to make them care about the characters and story.

If you want a looter-slasher that’s all about the stat bumps and the delight of seeing enemies suffer from the enchantments you worked hard to unlock, Godfall delivers plenty of that and is backed by a hell of a combat system. It hits that one note and holds it from start to finish.

Score: 7

Summary: Loot is handled remarkably well and combat is fun, but the world, story, and missions don't have much of a pulse.

Concept: A rewarding loot fest with dynamic combat and great boss battles that struggles with level design and story

Graphics: Godrays and particles are everywhere. The environment details and animations are top notch, but the worlds don’t feature much unique architecture, so it all looks the same

Sound: Orin sounds like Liam Neeson trying to be a Transformer – it works, but the dialogue still made me cringe. The pounding score and clanging of steel are nicely layered into the experience

Playability: Combat is simple in technique, but offers plenty of strategy in when to use specific attacks to take down the bosses

Entertainment: Fun to play solo or with friends, but both avenues are filled with monotonous level design

Replay: High

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Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Review – Mind Games And Motorized Mayhem

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Publisher: Activision

Developer: Treyarch

Rating: Mature

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War isn’t defined by any one standout mode; like its predecessors, it launches a trifecta of exciting experiences. Head back to the era of Ronald Reagan and the Cold War in a spy-thriller campaign, take on traditional multiplayer with a focus on vehicles, and blast away against the undead in zombie modes. As always, each part of the whole stacks up differently, but the annual Call of Duty release is once again a polished pearl of first-person shooting, even if it doesn’t shake up established systems.

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The campaign is an enjoyable-but-short return to form for Black Ops. It starts out with a classic Call of Duty guns-blazing soiree, transitions into more of a spy-vs-spy affair, and then goes off the rails with some absolutely wild, reality-warping fare. Taking Call of Duty to these weird places has been hit-and-miss in the past, but this story resonates well as you unearth its mysteries and make choices. While the multiple ending paths you can take won’t blow you away, they’re a neat little incentive to go back and replay missions another way. 

A character creator allows you to pick several profile perks to tailor your approach to the campaign. Subtle bonuses let you alter various aspects of your playstyle; I selected traits for a higher health pool and taking less damage while stationary, allowing me to handle trading fire from cover much more easily. Picking these bonuses doesn’t drastically change the action, but they provide a nice avenue for customization. 

While your core mission is to hunt down a covert Soviet operative known as Perseus, the journey takes you all over the world and even to the recesses of the mind. The best missions in the game have a “choose your own adventure” feel to them. One tasks you with playing a double agent through the famous KGB headquarters Lubynaka building, letting you solve some puzzles and come up with solutions as to how to sneak your strike team in. The absolute highlight of the late-game takes place in Vietnam, a mission with a well-designed looping structure that left me grinning and dumbstruck. 

While those missions steal the show, even the rank-and-file excursions around the globe pack plenty of punch and creativity. One trip takes you deep behind Soviet lines to discover a training facility where soldiers practice incursions on a quaint simulated USA town – and you can bet that gets rowdy in a hurry. While you can barrel through the critical path in the boisterous campaign in about five hours, you’d be passing up optional missions and plenty of secrets, including old Activision games to play. Of the three core pillars to this Call of Duty title, the campaign stands out as the winner despite its brevity.

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The multiplayer suite has plenty of options and modes for players of all types, but it all features the same excellent gunplay and choice that have formed the core of Call of Duty for years. Gunsmith lets you tweak and customize your weapons to fit even the most eclectic methods of play, and Combined Arms modes are much more vehicle focused than many CoD offerings. If you don’t like them, the other critical tried-and-true game modes are available, but there’s some nice variation to be had rolling around with gunboats and tanks. New weapon attachments and vehicle-buster equipment add another layer of depth to what’s already expected. However, that’s not the real draw of multiplayer. 

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Fireteams is a 40-person mode with four-person squads, and it features large-scale, team-based firefights similar to Call of Duty’s free-to-play battle royale, Warzone. However, Fireteams takes a more focused approach, without the unchecked chaos of Warzone (and without the threat of being booted). If you enjoy working with your friends in big battles and huge maps, this is the perfect opportunity to show off your teamwork. While the mode could be fun with random people, you’re going to want to bring three buddies you can talk to on voice chat for the best results – if you queue up and spray-and-pray like a team deathmatch, you’re going to get demolished. As a big fan of team-oriented Call of Duty with friends, this mode is an enjoyable change up from the frenetic fury of Warzone.

Finally, there’s Zombies. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War adds some new quirks to the core zombie experience by letting players bring their own loadout into the massive undead slaughterhouses. It feels good to take your honed weapons into the arena instead of relying on what you can find there, but wall-buying guns, powerups, and Juggernog buffs are all still critical parts of the mode. You can also now call a chopper and bail early on the wave-based horde instead of waiting to die, rewarding bonus points. If you’ve played Zombies before and love it, you’ll feel right at home. If you’ve been waiting for Zombies to do something new to get you onboard, this probably won’t do it. Cold War plays it dangerously safe with a mode that was once a revolutionary concept.

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PlayStation players also get access to Onslaught, a smaller-sized Zombies mode exclusive to PS4 and PS5 for one year. This is a kind of horde mode designed for one to two players instead of the standard four. With different perks, powers, and weapons every time, it’s a decidedly average (and repetitive) way to spend some time with a friend as you take out elite zomboids. Lastly, Dead Ops Arcade 3 is here for twin-stick shooting action and tomfoolery, which is a nice mode to relax with your buddies in because it’s so off-the-wall in terms of setting, humor, and structure. A sort of ode to the coin-op games of yesteryear, the game is a nice way to blow off steam after a few hours of standard Call of Duty.

If Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War excels at anything, it’s options. This isn’t uncommon for a Call of Duty title, but with a vast array of game modes for myriad player profiles and a fun campaign that retains a summer-blockbuster feel while getting weird and wild, the ride is a good one. 

The DualSense Difference
Not only does the PlayStation 5 controller offer fun chirps, barks, and other sound effects at the appropriate times, but the adaptive triggers provide varying tension, resistance, and feedback as you pop rounds off. Each weapon has been uniquely calibrated to work with the controller.
 

Score: 8.75

Summary: Call of Duty goes back to the 80's with a captivating campaign.

Concept: Track down a Soviet spy in the 1980s, engage in vehicle-infused multiplayer carnage, and co-op comradery in zombie modes

Graphics: A wide variety of entertaining and captivating environments take you through snow-swept valleys and gaudy interiors. It looks good and performs well on next-gen systems, but the visuals aren’t breathtaking

Sound: From big explosions to minor ricochets, the sound effects are on point. A powerful soundtrack keeps the pulse pounding even in the loadout menu

Playability: Several difficulty modes ensure you can tackle the campaign regardless of your shooter skills. The core gunplay feels smooth and is as solid as ever

Entertainment: Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War serves up a great campaign, solid multiplayer with fresh spins, and the zany zombie modes that we’ve come to expect from Treyarch

Replay: High

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