God of War Ragnarök Review – Next To Godliness

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
Publisher: PlayStation Studios
Developer: Santa Monica Studio
Rating: Mature

To call the 2018 God of War a sequel almost does it a disservice. Yes, it was a continuation of Kratos’ original multi-game journey, but it placed him and a new family in a foreign world to reflect on his past and try to secure his future. Kratos’ journey to connect to his son while battling a new legion of distrustful gods was a revelation in both video game storytelling and action, setting a high bar for the inevitable sequel. Ragnarök may lack the unique impact of the prior game, but everything that worked so well the first time comes forward, along with a story that earns the proper definition of the term epic.
 
Ragnarök basically picks up exactly where the previous left off in terms of narrative. Atreus is a little older and has shed the ‘boy’ nickname entirely. In a tradition established early in the God of War series, the opening hours are stellar. The action kicks off immediately, setting up new foes and old friends, but among all the explosive set pieces are quiet moments of engrossing performance showcase. Newcomer Odin and returning scorned mother Freya’s characterizations are particularly fantastic, but even the weakest performance in Ragnarök makes the typical video game performance pale in comparison.

The excellent moment-to-moment writing outdoes the already fantastic dialogue of the 2018 game. Ragnarök is, surprisingly, the funniest God of War to date. Kratos is the most stoic, straight man in all the nine realms and he surrounds himself with vulgar dwarves, a wisecracking decapitated head, a sometimes over-confident teenager, and more. I laughed often as Kratos said things like, “I do not need a snack,” when Sindri offered him food, or when he shared a dismissive grunt when characters made fun of him for only ever offering dismissive grunts.
 
As key as the story has become to this new era of God of War, the combat remains an equally important element. The most negative thing to be said about fighting the various enemies of the nine realms is it isn’t radically different or changed from the previous game. You start with more weapons this time around, but the core combos are mostly the same. The library of special attacks you can pull off is larger, but I admit I found my favorites early on and was not particularly compelled to experiment.
 
The types of enemies you fight, on the other hand, has greatly expanded. Mini bosses are numerous, and when they repeat, a new wrinkle is typically added, or it is a fully optional pursuit. The optional content, which accounts for far more than additional boss fights, makes up a large percentage of an already massive game. Alongside side quests to pursue next to the main path, there are also large open areas to be explored at your leisure with sled dogs that offer worthwhile moments of character development and tangible rewards. In some cases, I completed side stories with big, important moments and only learned they had been optional afterward.

 

Ragnarök, despite its fantastic setting, does feature a grounded tone thanks to its splendid performances and fully realized characters, but it is not afraid to be a fun video game. Puzzles expertly mix up the pace between combat encounters, and I was constantly impressed with how there always seemed to be story context for engaging in the video game parts. When ignoring the main task to find treasure chests, for example, Atreus would always take time to explain to the new characters that his dad likes loot. Despite the urgency of the story, Mimir would often make sure to state that we can take our time and explore if we want to. These little moments and bits of dialogue showcase Sony Santa Monica fully understands how its players want to interact with its game, and I was always thankful for that understanding.
 
Considering the player at every moment extends to the exceptional level design, as well. Whether visiting new versions of old locations or entirely new realms, each area wraps around itself to reveal shortcuts, or bypasses the need to backtrack. The well-designed combat arenas feature multiple levels to fight on and environmental attack options, like grabbing a giant rock to fling at that particularly pesky lizard. Even the way the player camera moves to hint at optional chests or tease new paths is impressive and consistent. The players’ direction is always considered.
 
God of War Ragnarök feels a lot like God of War (2018), which is a compliment considering how fantastic that game is. Sony Santa Monica was right to not break what wasn’t broken and it has expertly continued the story threads that were left hanging from the previous game. Any complaints about the overall experience (familiar combat, collecting and leveling up equipment isn’t particularly interesting) are quickly forgotten in the face of the compelling narrative, believable character relationships, and incredible visuals and animation. Even from its early PlayStation 2 days, the God of War series has always set a high, quality bar for itself, and with few exceptions, it manages to leap above that bar. God of War Ragnarök is no different.

Score: 9.5

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Resident Evil Village - Shadows Of Rose Review – Like Father Like Daughter

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Rating: Mature

Without spoiling the ending of Village, the story left off in a way that created some big, interesting questions about the future of Resident Evil. From its beginning, the series has never claimed a singular protagonist, but moving forward, it seemed Ethan’s daughter Rose was going to be an important character to the franchise and whatever narrative direction a potential Resident Evil IX might follow. The Shadows of Rose DLC offers the first chance to play as Rose while filling in a small story gap that arguably did not need filling. Even with a somewhat benign story, however, Shadows of Rose has a solid, condensed Resident Evil experience worth exploring.

The details of how are ultimately unimportant, but in Shadows of Rose, the titular Rose is afforded the opportunity to revisit the village her father rampaged through to save her. She’s not there in person, but rather exploring memories of the location using her abilities. To call Resident Evil grounded would be inaccurate, but because Rose is exploring memories as opposed to a real location, there are opportunities to create a more dreamlike and ultimately stranger experience than games past. Rose instantly jumps between locations based on the story and an already uncertain setting becomes even more unpredictable in a way that makes it scarier.

You also control Rose from the third-person. The perspective is a typical one for Resident Evil, but to explore locations from Village from behind Rose’s back feels surprisingly new. I prefer my Resident Evils in third-person (though I do enjoy the novelty of 7 and Village’s first-person perspective) and seeing the world from behind Rose’s shoulders is well-implemented.

 

Lady Dimitrescu unfortunately does not make an appearance in the game, but exploring her castle again (with many paths blocked and doors locked) is a scary thrill, especially with Rose’s abilities. Rose uses a handgun and a shotgun, but isn’t an especially proficient fighter. She eventually uses her abilities to slow down enemies, which works well with Resident Evil shooting as it lets you line up headshots with less urgency. The main use of her powers, however, is that she can destroy the flowers with spreading tendrils that have infected the castle from a distance. Between shooting mold creatures with limited ammo, I enjoyed solving the puzzles of how to reach these flowers to open new paths.

Rose also visits House Beneviento, which was home to Village’s (and maybe all of Resident Evil’s) most genuinely terrifying moments. Considering the recent legacy of House Beneviento, it’s no surprise that this is the scariest and most interesting part of the DLC. Rose must solve puzzles without her inventory (as her father did before her) and encounters mannequins that only move when you’re not looking at them. The mannequins wouldn’t make sense in a typical Resident Evil, but in this dreamlike, memory world, they function as some of the series’ most terrifying enemies. I was grateful to move past these horrifying yet impressive enemies.

To dive deeper would reveal important story beats, none of which stand out as being a major highlight, but I enjoyed learning more about Rose, revisiting locations from Village with a new perspective (both literally and figuratively), and getting more context on her role in the universe. Considering her potential importance in the future, I assume Shadows of Rose will be an experience worth having played, but I wouldn’t go quite as far as calling it required reading. For something more abstract and focused on horror within the world of Resident Evil, Shadows of Rose is worth exploring.

Score: 7.75

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The Entropy Centre Review – Reverse-Engineered Ingenuity

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Publisher: Playstack Ltd
Developer: Stubby Games
Rating: Everyone 10+

I don’t envy the developers of puzzle games. They have to create puzzles formidable enough to be challenging and exciting, but not so much that the player feels more burdened than empowered. The best walk that line almost perfectly, and The Entropy Centre is chock full of them. But The Entropy Centre is more than its brain teasers, and it’s that “more” where the game hits its stumbling blocks. Despite that, its core design is unlike anything I’ve ever played, and genre enthusiasts will find that this game bends their brains in new ways worth experiencing. I only wish the game’s pacing and polish lived up to the thrills its 60-plus puzzles gave me. 

Since The Entropy Centre’s reveal earlier this year, developer Stubby Games has been quite clear in its inspirations. This sci-fi game unfolds in an abandoned brutalist facility where you solve puzzles color coded primarily with orange and blue. Oh, and there’s an A.I. with a bubbly personality and a dry, deadpan sense of humor. Naturally, my mind immediately compares it to Valve’s Portal series, and on the gameplay front, The Entropy Centre succeeds.

Aria awakens in an abandoned moon facility called The Entropy Centre, left alone to discover that the Earth will experience a cataclysmic event any minute. It happens and because of the Earth’s destruction, said space facility is now at risk of blowing up, and Aria must stop it. To do this, she must solve puzzles with her A.I.-powered gun, Astra, to charge the station with entropy so that its time-reversing device can stop Earth’s apocalyptic calamity from ever happening in the first place. This premise immediately grabbed my attention, and I loved reading emails on the centre’s various computers to learn more about other apocalyptic events entropy had prevented. 

The story ties that premise, Aria and Astra’s place in it, and these in-world emails together nicely, warning that without forward thinking, no outside force can help the Earth survive; if we, the human race, don’t get our act together, our world will die. I just wished the game’s pacing didn’t dampen any climactic feeling I might have felt otherwise. Multiple times I thought I was reaching the game’s big “a-ha” moment, only for it to throw me through another gauntlet of challenges. And while I loved trying to solve each puzzle as an isolated instance, I didn’t love how often they felt like tiresome roadblocks during the game’s third act. The entire experience feels bloated as a result, and I felt exhausted more than anything else when the credits rolled. Still, though, that bloated third act is offset by two-thirds before it that are intriguing and engaging in a way the best games in this genre are. 

 

The game’s dozens of puzzles all revolve around special cubes. You place these cubes on pads to power up elevators or open gates. Some cubes don’t do anything on their own. Others act as jump pads to help you reach high-up platforms or as bridges to help you cross gaps. The Entropy Centre continues to dole out new types of cubes throughout the 15-hour experience, and I met each with enthusiasm to see how it might rearrange my mind’s puzzle-solving toolbox. The cubes alone won’t reveal your solution, though – you need Astra. This gun can turn back time on an individual object by 38.1 seconds and as a result, every obstacle becomes one where you must first envision how a sequence of events must play out and then reverse it in your head so that you know exactly how to set it up. To put it simply, solving a puzzle in The Entropy Centre requires that you determine where you need to end up and work backwards to find the beginning. 

By the end, I was solving puzzles using multiple cubes, all of which did different things, and feeling like a genius as I watched various time-reversing paths place everything exactly where I needed them. It hurt my brain at first – a lot – but I quickly learned the rules by which The Entropy Centre worked, and I was delighted to find an entirely new type of puzzle as a result. 

Occasionally, I’d lose five minutes of progress because a cube would disappear into a wall, causing me to restart the entire sequence. Nothing was more frustrating than watching a cube glitch into the wall before disappearing entirely. The game also crashed entirely on me a few times. Ultimately, though, the satisfaction that solving each puzzle gave me outweighed the frustrations I experienced.

With The Entropy Centre behind me, I’m fascinated by what Stubby Games accomplished with its debut. It’s full of excellent puzzles, but the stuff around them, like bugs and narrative pacing, stop the entire package from coming together in an equally impressive way. Despite the exhaustion I felt as the credits rolled, I’m stoked The Entropy Centre exists. It brings something unique and new to the genre, and I hope Stubby Games continues to iterate on that in a sequel, spin-off, or spiritual successor. It’s not every day a game shows me something I’ve never seen before that it also happens to nail, and what The Entropy Centre does well is worth pushing through its long narrative to ensure you see every trick up its sleeve.

Score: 8

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