Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review - For The Guardians

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

After 10 years of storytelling, the overarching saga that was introduced in the original launch of Destiny has finally concluded. With The Final Shape, Bungie ties a bow on the vast majority of its lingering plotlines and questions and sets the stage for a new direction in subsequent releases. Ahead of that, this concluding chapter is extremely satisfying, offering a rousing, heartfelt, and character-driven wrap-up that does right by what has come before. From narrative to gameplay, this is not the installment that welcomes newcomers. But for every hour (or thousands of hours) a player has invested in this adventure, the ending on offer is that much more potent.

The Final Shape expansion transports Guardians into the mysterious interior of the massive spherical Traveler, a space of liminal and surreal environments halfway between real and imagined. In a decade of strong location design, this new destination is the most unusual and artistically striking, regularly nodding to places we’ve visited before and combining them with strange organic shapes like giant hands and faces carved in rock.

The campaign is set up as a non-stop journey from point A to B, with waypoints that act as moments of anguish and catharsis for the most important players in the story over the last decade. It’s the most human and relatable storytelling the franchise has yet managed.

Thanks to the delightfully dangerous Dread faction of enemies, and a number of raid-like mechanics, the missions feature a satisfying mix of intense action and gunplay while requiring careful observation. The story lands with a satisfying punch of exhilaration and emotion by weaving the raid completion and one final concluding activity together. Grand and epic storytelling demands a clever mix of bombast and poetic sensibility, and this is one of those times when a game has hit the mark.

The new prismatic subclasses – alongside a range of other new abilities – make this expansion the most mechanically complex the franchise has yet dared. Build-crafting and experimentation are necessities for high-level play. Despite some efforts to simplify, the glut of currencies and interwoven progression systems has grown painfully convoluted even for veteran players. It’s hard to even imagine how a newcomer would pierce the veil and get up to speed.

Nonetheless, Bungie deserves props for trying to explain systems in-game and providing guidance on how to improve. Alongside some awesome new exotics and legendary weapons (that almost feel like exotics), players have an enormous array of options to tweak and play how they want. The sandbox is vast, and we have plenty of unique ways to play inside.

Some new systems, like the new Pathfinder system, are fascinating ideas that nonetheless remain too prescriptive, often demanding styles of play that some players aren’t interested in trying. That said, many of the new public events, matchmade activities, and post-campaign missions are fun and thoughtfully built to allow for extensive and enjoyable replay. Many of the current high-tier activities, including the new raid and certain gear chases, are extremely challenging, and should offer a meaningful mountain to climb for most endgame players for many weeks ahead.

As if to remind players that one story’s conclusion is just the start of another, The Final Shape wasted little time in launching its new episodic structure to replace seasons. The full reach and potential of that new rollout approach goes beyond the scope of this review and will stretch into future months. However, it’s enough to know that a pleasing follow-through already awaits those who smash through the saga’s ending and are ready to keep going, with new activities and rewards, like exotic class items, waiting to be chased.

Over the years, Destiny 2 has ballooned into a massive and unwieldy beast, filled with cooperative and competitive experiences, hundreds of named characters and organizations, and an often-unapproachable vernacular that can take a long time to learn to speak and play. With The Final Shape, Bungie makes no apologies for the complexity but does finally offer purposeful punctuation to mark an endpoint. Largely unencumbered by what has come before, the frontiers ahead are now open to be revealed.

 

Score: 9

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Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance Review - Misery Loves Company

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Atlus
Rating: Mature

Despite being a flagship franchise, Atlus has never shied away from taking risks and experimenting with Shin Megami Tensei. Even without taking spinoffs like Persona or Devil Summoner into consideration, the “core” series has taken new forms and reinvented itself over multiple decades and platforms. 2021’s Shin Megami Tensei V was a prime example, both respecting its oppressive, hardcore roots while embracing Atlus’ evolving audience and conventional shifts in games as a whole. It only makes sense that in revisiting such a recent title, Atlus has done far more than produce a simple port with some bonuses. Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance is aptly titled; it’s an act of defiance against convention, criticism, and maybe even its own reputation.

SMT V was a big deal for the series, its HD debut after previously moving from the PlayStation 2 to the 3DS. It was a novel combination of post-apocalyptic doom and gloom with colorful superhero action. As the “Nabohino,” a powerful fusion of human and synthetic demon, players traversed the sand dunes of a long-dead Tokyo, fighting for control of the future in the aftermath of a war between Heaven and Hell. While some found the story lonely with a distinct lack of supporting characters, I found SMT’s recurring theme of a lone human fighting a hopeless battle in a world already lost more resonant than ever in the middle of a pandemic.

On the surface, SMT V: Vengeance is a home run without any extra effort. The original game being a Switch exclusive meant it arrived with inevitable technical compromises. Vengeance is still on the Switch, but its multiplatform debut means every inch of its world is out in full force. This game is as colorful as it is dour, juxtaposing multicultural religious imagery with post-apocalyptic destruction. Simply being able to dash across the shining dunes of Da’at (formerly Tokyo) without the frame rate sputtering is worth the price of admission.

But there’s so much more to Vengeance than a touch-up under the hood. Rather than being a sequel in the style of SMT IV: Apocalypse or a pseudo spinoff like SMT: If, Vengeance offers a totally new campaign scenario. Nearly the entire story is completely retold, using the original premise as a springboard to leap into a scenario with new central characters, antagonists, and entirely different endings. On top of that is a massive amount of retooling, with changes and adjustments that range from quality-of-life tweaks to brand-new features entirely. Vengeance is almost a whole new game that treats the original as a rough draft. “Almost” is a keyword here, because the original scenario is also selectable at the beginning, so you can still experience the original story while enjoying the new features and adjustments.

 

In many ways, the new scenario feels like a direct response to problems players had with SMT V the first time around. As a returning player and a longtime fan of the series in general, it’s a bizarre setup with an impressive level of self-awareness. Moments occur when the story appears to change from the original in a direct and crowd-pleasing way, only for it to yank the rug out from you violently, twisting the twist to make it even more unpleasant than before. While I didn’t agree with the criticisms that led to this new campaign in the first place, having a whole new story to dig into that toyed with my previous knowledge was a lot of fun.

The new character was intriguing and added a lot to the scenario, and getting more of the returning cast admittedly fleshed out the plot more. I did find having them playable to be kind of silly, as using a team full of my own demons was always more productive anyway.

This remixed approach could be confusing to a newcomer. Luckily, Vengeance accounts for that too, and the choice of which version to pursue is presented in-game in a way that’s practically seamless. It simply feels like yet another option in a game and series full of choices that impact where the narrative goes. There isn’t special attention drawn to it, nor does it feel like an awkward attempt to replace or undermine the original. It’s just more SMT V to dive into, which for an already jam-packed RPG full of narrative agency and monster-collecting action, is more food on the table for the feast. And it was a hell of a feast to begin with.

Score: 9

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Hauntii Review – Life After Death

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Firestoke Games
Developer: Moonloop Games
Rating: Everyone

Hauntii drew me in immediately thanks to its striking illustrated art direction and enchanting jazz noir soundtrack. A powerful opening sees the protagonist, an adorable ghost who recently died, attempting to ascend to a heavenly plane hand in hand with an angel-like guardian, only to be shackled and pulled back to the depths of Eternity. It’s an emotionally effective moment, and while the gameplay doesn’t always prove as captivating, it provides enough thrills to propel through an eye-popping journey through the afterlife.

As the ghost seeks to reunite with his winged companion, the game takes players across beautifully designed biomes in the realm of Eternity. From a dense forest village to my favorite locale, a bustling amusement park, I can’t stress enough how cool the game’s two-toned line art looks, especially in motion. Backing the visuals is a superb soundtrack that ranks among my favorites of the year. It bounces from sparse piano melodies and saxophone-fueled lo-fi beats to uplifting grandiose scores that effectively stir emotion. 

Despite its serenity, Hauntii is an action game at heart and plays like a top-down twin-stick shooter. In addition to the simple thrill of blasting foes with spectral energy by aiming the right stick, shooting objects lets you “haunt” them and utilize their unique abilities. Possessing other enemies can aid in the sometimes challenging combat encounters thanks to the superior firepower they can pack. Sure, I could rely on my own might, but it’s far more satisfying and effective to obliterate foes as a bomb-spewing flower bulb or take down aerial threats with a firework-blasting theme park employee. 

Hauntii routinely pushes players to rely on possession to overcome tough bouts that sometimes feature upwards of a dozen enemies firing bullet hell-style projectile spreads. The moment-to-moment blasting wears thin after a while, but creative boss encounters add interesting wrinkles. My favorite includes possessing a bomb-laden rollercoaster to drive through a trap-laden track to reach a towering monster. 

Other haunting interactions are less involved and more bespoke, like capturing a tree to shake currency and health from its branches. In that sense, Hauntii reminds me of Super Mario Odyssey, as some objects had no practical use but provided humorous, novel interactions. Other, more creative possessions let you manipulate the level design and navigation, such as raising platforms to create elevated pathways or inhabiting cosmic sand whales to navigate a turbulent vortex. 

 

Each area contains a number of hidden stars to collect, used for upgrading your number of hearts, shooting ammunition, and how often you can use the evade dash. They also unlock simple yet effective vignettes revealing a core memory of the ghost’s former life. Gathering these stars channels the satisfying scavenger hunt of 3D Mario games. Some stars lie in obscure corners, while others must be earned by completing basic side quests or performing hidden challenges, like clearing an area of threats. You don’t need them all, thankfully, as these aren’t always the most exciting tasks, and some repeat, like timed races and finding a lost dog. 

Exploring is also dampened by the deliberate movement speed, which is a notch slower than I’d like. Since most zones are expansive and require multiple visits, I often mashed the dash button to expedite travel. The elaborate art design and isometric viewing angles can also make navigating certain pathways, namely elevated ones, a tricky and sometimes irritating proposition due to the perspective. I could also do without collecting various but identical currencies to unlock different hats that, while cute, I wish you could remove instead of just switching to another. 

Though Hauntii offers simplistic shooter pleasure, my favorite moments didn’t involve blowing targets to smithereens. The voice-less story of the ghost gradually regaining precious memories only to be faced with surrendering them to crossover touched me at points. I enjoyed interacting with the kooky, amusing ghosts, like a paranoid scientist concocting hair-brained schemes to capture your angel friend like a Team Rocket villain. I never tired of soaking in the swelling musical score as the camera panned out to reveal a jaw-dropping backdrop. The beautiful ending sequence stands out as a highlight of the year. Hauntii transforms the understandable anxiety and fear surrounding death into an alluring and comforting reflection of the joy of life.

Score: 8.25

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