Dordogne Review An Imaginative Escape

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Developer: UN JE NE SAIS QUOI, Umanimation
Rating: Everyone

Despite the protests of her father, a determined Mimi travels to the scenic French countryside of Dordogne to find a missing piece of herself. Awaiting her is the quaint home belonging to her recently departed grandmother, soon to be sold, as well as a summer’s worth of precious childhood memories Mimi inexplicably has no recollection of. How could she forget something so valuable, as well as the circumstances behind the rocky relationship between her father and grandparents? These are the hooks that propelled me through this pleasant and beautifully animated adventure game. While not mechanically dense or anywhere close to challenging, I enjoyed this relaxing French getaway. 

As Mimi inspects her grandmother Nora’s home and the surrounding grounds for clues, I engage in quirky interactions that add a flair of playfulness to otherwise mundane actions. Instead of pointing and clicking objects, I insert and rotate keys to open doors, tilt a box to pour cereal into a bowl (and all over the kitchen table), and hover my marionette-like hands over silverware to collect them from a riverbed. One of the most creative sequences involved slingshotting word bubble greetings over a cliff to convey shouting at a distant friend. I like that Dordogne regularly finds small but fresh spins on how you engage with its world. Using the small mouse-style cursor to perform these actions naturally feels more awkward with a controller, and it gets easily lost among the colorful, busy backdrops, but it gets the job done. 

Nearly all of these unique interactions are performed by a 12-year-old Mimi, who players control during numerous flashback sequences weaving the story of her summer vacation with Nora. She documents her stay by taking photos, capturing sound effects using a tape recorder, and collecting stickers, cassette tapes, and giant dreamlike words scattered across levels. The endgame for performing these tasks is filling pages of a scrapbook by forming simple poems from collected words and arranging photos and stickers. Outside of satisfying an innate desire to clean chapters of their allotted collectibles (and, unfortunately, you can’t replay chapters to find any missed ones), making these scrap pages offers no tangible reward other than the small pleasure of expressing myself in a limited way. 

Playing Dordogne is nice, but looking at it is even better. Thanks to a beautiful watercolor art direction, every scene feels like an interactive tour of an artist's gallery; you can actually see the brush strokes. The framing of certain scenes makes them look great as static images, but odd angles occasionally make it tricky to discern walkable paths; expect to bump up against some bushes and staircases until you find the way forward. Character models sport a similar visual appeal, and combined with the lovely soundtrack, Dordogne is like a charming French indie art film come to life. 

 

As a coming-of-age story primarily set in the early ‘80s (the adult Mimi sequences occur in 2002), Dordogne hits the right notes of being whimsical enough for kids but having enough dark overtones and mature discussions to give it some teeth for grown-ups. I felt warm and fuzzy watching Mimi and Nora bond over simple pleasures such as repairing a broken kayak or having a riverside picnic. The edges of the darker backstory involving Mimi’s family add intrigue that feels decently paid off by the end. However, more clarification on vague topics, such as the cause of Mimi’s father’s lifelong resentment towards his parents, would have been nice. The story also relies a fair bit on players locating easy-to-miss collectible letters that provide crucial context and backstory to critical events. 

As someone who derives real pleasure in admiring beautiful paintings, Dordogne ups the ante by letting me creatively interact with its gorgeous art. Even better, it layers a largely enjoyable tale on top of it. Like Mimi and Nora’s relationship, there are some bumps to overcome, but good times await those willing to work through them.

Score: 8

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Super Mega Baseball 4 Review - A Solid Changeup

Reviewed on: Switch
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: Metalhead Studio
Rating: Everyone

As the genre has progressed through the generations, sports video games have become increasingly complicated as they add more wrinkles to their team management tools and more depth to their on-the-field action. Super Mega Baseball 4 harkens back to the sports games of the mid-90s, bringing streamlined gameplay and astounding levels of customization while introducing novel concepts. But though the throwback approach is sound in many ways, it does come with some concessions.

Stepping onto the field in Super Mega Baseball 4 is a welcoming affair. I love the arcade-style approach gameplay takes. Through rock-solid mechanics, you can blast through a game in short order, all while feeling like you had a huge impact on every play. Metalhead Studio has done a great job of making it so scoring a strikeout from the rubber feels as good as sending a ball soaring into the bleachers from the batter’s box. However, fielding leaves some to be desired, as diving feels imprecise, and I sometimes struggled to predict where to position my outfielder.

Batters and fielders automatically lock onto the ball, while pitching and throwing is determined by quick minigames. Though it grew on me over the tens of games I played through, I always wished I could change the pitching game, which requires you to line up a moving reticule with your target.

 

Each of these can be tuned by changing your “Ego,” which essentially makes up your difficulty sliders, but I’m disappointed that none of these can be further changed. In fact, that’s one of my chief complaints about the otherwise solid Super Mega Baseball 4: The options are so barebones that they essentially only allow you to tune the audio and visuals of the game, but not the gameplay itself. If you want a different camera angle or to alter the control schemes, you’re completely out of luck.

Conversely, when it comes to team management, Super Mega Baseball 4 shines perhaps brighter than any other sports game to date. With hundreds of fictional players and real legends, the game already features a respectable roster even without the MLB license. However, I wanted to pay homage to the ‘90s era of baseball from which this game draws inspiration, and Super Mega Baseball 4 enabled me to do more than I even wanted, allowing me to customize every player’s looks, gear, animations, music, and abilities, plus the uniforms and logo of my team.

I poured time into creating my own squad full of some of the stars not in the game, and when I was finished, the time investment was well worth it as I had a team full of my favorite players from the era in which I most obsessed over the sport, which I could then take into every mode. The customization options in Super Mega Baseball 4 are nothing short of remarkable, and if you’re like me and took your virtual tee-ball swings in games like Triple Play Gold Edition or Tony La Russa Baseball 2, you will absolutely adore the roster control options of this game.

You can take any team into one-off games, single seasons, bracket-style tournaments, online leagues, or my personal favorite mode: Franchise. I adore the new Shuffle Draft system, which deals you eight cards from players still available on the draft board. After you choose your player for that round, the remaining seven cards are returned to the deck, the other teams go through the process, and you’re dealt eight more cards until the rosters are full. This provides an enthralling deckbuilding twist on the traditional draft conventions of sports games. On a couple of occasions, I did a Shuffle Draft for no reason other than to see what kind of team I could come up with.

While in Franchise mode, you’re presented with managerial decisions after each game. These range from which player gets the last pair of socks to who to blame for a bad loss. Though they sometimes become tedious, these decisions affect player loyalty, which comes into play in the offseason when it’s time to re-sign them. Free agency plays a big role, as contracts only last one year, and I appreciate the ability to make simple one-to-one decisions on a position basis each offseason. However, I’m disappointed by the lack of trading available. Even in older baseball video games, trading is one of my favorite activities to do in long-form modes, so its absence is a letdown.

Despite some disappointing options and feature exclusions, Super Mega Baseball 4 is a strong alternative to the annualized sim-facing MLB game from Sony. Fans of retro-style arcade baseball games will find a lot to love, and roster customization enthusiasts have their new gold standard.

Score: 8.25

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Diablo IV Review – Heaven-sent

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Rating: Mature

Diablo IV successfully tempts me to gleefully indulge in sin at every turn. A thrilling hunt for rare loot feeds my insatiable greed and lust for power. The satisfaction of slaughtering thousands of foes, supernatural or otherwise, leaves little room for remorse. Whether taking down the forces of darkness alone or with friends, this is a massive and deeply engrossing action RPG that keeps me coming back for more dozens upon dozens of hours later.

Diablo IV delivers a profoundly satisfying fantasy of growing a character from a one-trick pony to an unstoppable, highly specialized killing machine, thanks to its well-paced progression and pipeline of systems that reward multiple aspects of play. No matter which of the five classes you fancy, an increased focus on player maneuverability and a litany of enemies that encourage skillful play result in entertaining, thoughtful, and chaotic combat scenarios. Titanic, lengthy boss encounters skirt the line of feeling manageable and won by the skin of my teeth, offering the best examples of the game’s good difficulty balance.

I love that becoming stronger has less to do with grinding to raise my level and more with how I adjusted loadouts to maximize my playstyle and abilities. I am encouraged to regularly respec skill points to sample new powers and perks and enjoy the great sense of control over how my character shapes out. A more robust but easy-to-parse skill tree helps with this increased flexibility, and it gives way to a revamped Paragon Board upon hitting level 50 that offers an even more intricate and enjoyable form of self-improvement. 

Tinkering with gear proves an obsessive venture since I can replace unwanted armor traits with new ones, destroy useless loot for materials to improve favored equipment, or add sockets for stat-boosting gems. Loot drops bestow powerful gear at a good cadence, but even lousy gear feels valuable since, at the very least, I can turn common rags into vital materials to transform a great weapon into its final form. As strange as it sounds, I’m also glad I’m not finding amazing loot too often, letting me customize and grow attached to equipped gear without the fear or hassle of constantly ditching stuff for the shiny new toy.

Although exploring Sancutary’s five massive regions is sometimes a chore due to how long it takes to get a mount and the near-constant mugging from enemies, it’s a blast to uncover. Tackling over 100 good sidequests, some of which tell interesting multi-part stories, locating dozens of stat-raising Altars of Lilith, and exploring tons of randomized dungeons, feels worthwhile as they feed into Renown. This effective rewards system high-fives players for completing routine tasks like finding new areas, completing quests, and unlocking waypoints by rewarding additional skill points and, best of all, more potions. Renown also incentivized me to run dungeons that don’t offer Aspects, powerful item perks, specific to my class, or to clean up parts of the map I might have overlooked otherwise. Strongholds, objective-based enemy-laden areas, are my favorite side activity. Their steep and unique challenges presented worthy tests of my skill for a usually big payoff, such as new settlements and quests. 

Diablo IV’s centerpiece feature, its always-online shared open world, is largely unobtrusive during moment-to-moment gameplay. The multiple pre-release technical tests have seemingly paid off, as I’ve yet to experience any major connection hiccups. I generally favor solo play, but I never felt like the presence of others impeded my adventure, and the occasional instances I did encounter another human avatar added neat moments of emergent storytelling. When hordes of goatmen nearly tore me to pieces while tackling one of the many varied, often-challenging live events, a deus ex machina-style barrage of frost bolts from an intervening sorcerer player felt like a cool scripted rescue. While I’m happy to bid a friendly wave to such helpers before moving on, forming groups with strangers is easy, as is assembling friend parties to raid dungeons as a squad. 

Diablo IV’s reliance on an internet connection is still irksome on a conceptual level due to the reality of server issues preventing log-ins. As for the cosmetic-only in-game store, the pricing is relatively high for a full-priced release ($8 for a small accessory pack?), but the abundance of great-looking discoverable gear doesn’t leave me wanting to throw cash at cool threads. 

 

It’s not hard to sell me on a fun dungeon-crawling action RPG, but Diablo IV’s strong narrative is a treat. Lilith’s hostile takeover of Sanctuary and the disturbing events that follow gripped me thanks to the improved cinematography, something you don’t often see in top-down dungeon crawlers. In-game cutscenes do the strong performances and characterizations justice. I was almost as invested in learning more about a character or seeing the next big plot point as I was dungeon crawling. Copious references and surprise cameos will likely delight Diablo veterans, but even newcomers can absorb and enjoy the tale since it doesn’t rely heavily on existing knowledge of the previous entries. Tack on an infectious reverence for Diablo’s history, and the plot, especially its ending, has me itching to see where the cast goes next.

A substantial endgame offers several neat diversions that turn Sanctuary into a fun playground for turning a strong character into a god-like force. In addition to unlocking new World Tiers offering more demanding challenges and greater rewards, I liked engaging with Whispers of the Dead missions, which hand out exclusive goodies for completing them within a time limit. Exploring Helltides, recurring zones teeming with tough-as-nails variants of existing threats, is another solid measuring stick of my prowess. Nightmare Dungeons and PvP battles add other fun shakeups, forming an impressive dessert that fueled my drive to become stronger even after so many hours. 

Diablo IV continually seduces me with its promises of power and riches and regularly follows through. I’ve had a tough time putting it down even after starting fresh numerous times, and I get excited thinking about how I’ll be foiling Lilith’s plans in the months ahead as seasonal updates begin rolling out. Until then, I’m happy to continue relieving Sanctuary of its treasures – and demons of their lives –  in this devilishly impressive epic.

Score: 9.25

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