I had absolutely no expectations whatsoever for 007: First Light, which launches this week on Xbox Play Anywhere and Steam. I come away from this review with a potential pick for my personal Game of the Year.

I'm by no means a hardcore Bond fan, but I do have a fondness for the franchise. I have nostalgic memories watching the classics as a kid, from Goldfinger to GoldenEye (both movie and game). If you're a Brit, Bond is woven into the culture with everyone having at least some generalized awareness of its tropes and cliches.

I'm also, at best, a casual fan of IO, having long been impressed by Hitman, albeit from the sidelines, as a dabbler, and I'm by no means a stealth-assassin aficionado. Despite all of this, I came away from 007: First Light not only blown away by the game's raw quality, but also its thoughtful and authentic story delivery. IO has hit another level.

007: First Light takes what IO built within its dynamic open assassination sandboxes and deftly applies it to something more cinematic — while avoiding feeling overly linear or scripted. It pays raises a vodka martini to Ian Fleming's classic world in spades, remaining unapologetically British in delivery while pulling on contemporary real-world events that should be on everyone's radar.

007: First Light is an absolute masterpiece, and I am elated for the team at IO. There are some rough edges, but nothing a patch or two won't smooth out. I'm more than happy to recommend its beefy, 16+ hour campaign in full to players on Xbox and PC.

007: First Light review — Visuals, design, and performance

007: First Light runs on IOI's proprietary engine known as Glacier, giving 007: First Light a large variety of gameplay modularity and systems, wholly befitting of Bond. It's also not a bad looker, either, with impressive lighting and smoke detailing, and good shadows. I was a little disappointed with the overall performance compromises on Xbox Series X, however. Bond is best served on a high-end PC as usual.

007: First Light offers both performance and quality modes on Xbox Series X, although the frame rate is very poor on quality mode with the review build, with a juddery presentation. I suspect many, if not most, will use performance mode on Xbox Series X|S. In this mode, you do get a smooth 60 FPS throughout the whole game on the X with no noticeable dips, but the resolution takes a beating.

It dynamically scales to maintain pace with the target frame rate, which can result in pixelated presentation in some sequences. It's ultimately a minor gripe, though — and something I'm sure IO will optimize further in subsequent patches.

Clearly, the lion's share of 007: First Light's design work went into its characters. As a cinematic game, this was clearly the right choice. The main characters are evocative and give great performances, although the throwaway NPCs can look a little uncanny at times.

Glacier is still a great engine for creating immersive, realistic human spaces. Some scenes feature dozens of NPCs on-screen simultaneously (as was often true in Hitman), with key NPCs sporting their own behaviors and pathing. IO also continues its penchant for hefty detailing and realism, offering tons of reasons to explore the game's varied and sizeable playspaces.

007: First Light is a stealth game at its core, connecting Hitman-styled stealth sandbox action-puzzle environments between more Bond movie-style cinematic linear sequences. IO executes the blend of gameplay styles effortlessly, with great pacing between the game's bombastic action movie highs and more meticulous, analytical stealth segments.

Taking in 007: First Light's gallery of colorful characters, larger-than-life cinematic highs, and carefully crafted stealth sequences made me almost nostalgic at times. Structurally speaking, I more than once felt like I was a kid playing Metal Gear Solid again, and that's one of the best compliments I can give this game.

007: First Light review — Story and characters

Indeed, I can't praise IOI enough for the overall story delivery here. The quality of the digital acting and cinematic pacing is hard to nail by itself, but marry in the lofty expectations that come with a modern Bond experience ... and you've set yourself a pretty gargantuan challenge. IOI nailed it, through and through. 007: First Light is quite possibly not just the best Bond game ever made, it's also worthy of the best movies from the franchise's celebrated canon. Absolute cinema.

You play as a younger James Bond here. A RAF Aircrewman who found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or perhaps, it was the right place?

Salvaging an MI6 mission gone awry, the rookie Bond ends up inducted into an MI6 training program for his valor and proficiency in the field. The program is set to revive this universe's version of the "00" elite agent program ... although why it was shuttered in the first place is a major plot point.

I won't spoil the game's overarching beats, but throughout 007: First Light, you meet an incredible cast of memorable characters with Hollywood-grade delivery and fantastic dialogue. All of the Bond franchise's signature tropes are not only retained, but celebrated. Everything from Bond's irritatingly charming witticisms, a mysterious femme fatale, spy gadgets from the eccentric Q, and M — almost as new in the job as you, and terminally frustrated by Bond's cavalier antics.

Lenny Kravitz' bombastic crime lord Bawma, and others (spoilers), felt like an attempt to draw on some of Bond's larger-than-life classic villains. Yet, the overarching story 007: First Light tells feels scarily poignant and closer to home than I think many will be prepared for.

007 celebrates many different angles of Bond in a way that only a video game can — offering different Bond styles throughout its various systems, cinematic moments, and characters. Despite all of this, it never feels incohesive, which is incredibly impressive. 007: First Light, for its story alone, is well worth a place among the franchise's biggest and most celebrated movies.

Bond in 007: First Light is as green and reckless as they come, but he gets humbled pretty quickly. His maturity grows throughout the game, shadowed by the cold veteran Greenway, a former "00" relegated to a pencil pusher due to a notoriously botched op.

The way James' relationship and camaraderie grow with the supporting MI6 cast throughout the game was one of 007's high points for me, but what I enjoyed even more was how IOI delivered a contemporary narrative that should feel very relevant to anyone paying attention.

I don't want to spoil where the game takes some of these ideas, but 007: First Light also serves as a pretty stark warning about very, very real risks many of the world's biggest governments are already taking with certain companies and individuals ... I suspect those warnings will not be heeded.

In any case, like any great Bond movie, 007: First Light will run you through the whole gamut of human emotions, and I was fully invested throughout the whole show.

007: First Light review — Gameplay

I generally don't see myself as having the patience for stealth games like Hitman, but 007: First Light offers a vast variety of gameplay styles and opportunities to meet players where they are. Combat is not a "last resort" in 007: First Light.

Indeed, 007: First Light draws inspiration from the Batman Arkham games for its fist fighting. Dodge, parry, grab, and then execute form the basis of combat. But there's also so much more here.

First Light's close-quarters combat is incredibly dynamic, offering contextual opportunities that feel ripped straight out of the movie. What's all the more impressive is that it never feels overly scripted. James will dynamically use the environment to his advantage in combat, and you can throw objects and reach for other tools to stun and incapacitate foes on the fly. Run out of bullets? Throw your gun at them, too.

Oftentimes, I find games tend to put their focus on one specific style of gameplay, but First Light's gunplay is also incredibly robust. You can only wield guns and kill enemies in certain situations, when your "License to Kill" is active — James is bound by the law after all. Thankfully, there's a whole army of terrorists and mercenaries standing between Bond and his goals, with plenty of opportunities to cause mayhem and chaos.

James has various resources he can use in combat. The Q-Watch gadget lets you hack environmental details and set traps, luring enemies or stunning them for a quick stealth take down. You'll also gain focus points for successful actions and activities, which lets you slow down time during gunplay, Max Payne-style, for some slow-motion flourishes.

However, it also lets you use your spy craft persuasion tactics. You can walk up to a group of guards and confidently warn them that you're the IT guy here to check out a faulty server. If you have enough focus points, they'll buy the bluff temporarily at least. However, some smarter and more perceptive guards may be more difficult to persuade ...

The game also has more than its fair share of Hollywood-style set-piece moments. I found myself driving a garbage truck through packed London streets at one point, as mercs swarmed with silenced (and not so silenced) machine guns. There are obligatory car chases, parachute-free skydives, and other unexpected Bond-style "improvisations."

I played the game through on Normal difficulty across around 16 hours of playtime for the campaign. It also has some Metal Gear VR missions-style test levels you can try out, complete with leaderboards for skill expression. I want to also add that it had some of the best tutorial segments I've seen in a game, woven in as slick training montages.

007: First Light felt impeccably polished throughout. I was never disengaged or rushing to completion, even in the slower, stealthier segments — it was often here the characters and world-building shone the most. A huge variety of gameplay locations, gameplay styles, unique activities, set-piece moments, logic puzzles, investigations, platforming, and, honestly, exploration opportunities never left me wanting.

007: First Light review — Conclusion

I am rooting for 007. For one thing, it's becoming rare that we get games like this these days, particularly so at this level. It's even rarer that we get a game based on an existing IP that utterly nails the source material. It's rarer still that a AAA developer can stray from its bread-and-butter comfort zone and reach even higher — while also thoroughly succeeding.

007: First Light is as spectacular a game as it is a true Bond story and experience. The plot, the characters, the gameplay variety and pacing ... when you zoom out, the needle IOI had to thread makes for nothing short of a Herculean task. I hope the market rewards them in droves.

This is quintessential James Bond at its absolute best. Yes, I think there's room for optimization on console, and I have experienced a crash or two; the minor issues I experienced on my run didn't even come close to detracting from the overall package.

The fresh take on the franchise gives IOI a huge amount of runway for future installments (hopefully), and offers an angle underexplored by the movies themselves. It pays thoughtful homage to the franchise's iconic tropes without coming across as forced or ham-fisted, while also putting its own uniquely IOI mark on the legendary canon.

For anyone who has ever loved action-leaning stealth games, cinematic action games, or frankly, James Bond, all up — 007: First Light is absolutely essential.

007: First Light launches on May 27, 2026, for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. It's also part of Xbox Play Anywhere for Xbox consoles and the Xbox PC store.

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Back in 2005, Forza Motorsport screeched onto Xbox with one goal: to be the king of driving sims. It was all tight corners, white-knuckle precision, and the kind of seriousness that made you sweat over every gear shift. Fast forward to 2012, and suddenly Forza Horizon bursts onto the scene, tossing the rulebook out the window and blazing its own wild trail.

Horizon ditched the stuffy closed circuits for sprawling vistas, sun-soaked roads, and the kind of festival beats that make your speakers beg for mercy. It absolutely nailed the open-world vibe.

I still get flashbacks to Test Drive Unlimited. I miss my Bugatti Veyron.

Over the next fourteen years, the Horizon series evolved from Colorado hillside racing to a globe-trotting celebration of car culture, each entry layering on seasons, stories, and social cues while never forgetting the pure, grin-inducing joy of flooring it through an ever-changing landscape.

Now, with Forza Horizon 6, Playground Games has taken its wheels to Japan and delivered what feels like the franchise’s most confident, culturally immersive chapter yet.

From the neon pulse of Tokyo to mist-shrouded mountside grounds, Forza Horizon 6 doesn’t rewrite history, but layers perfection on top of perfection to make the latest entry the most polished experience to date.

Forza Horizon 6: The landscape of Japan

A lifetime ago, or at least it feels that way, I took a trip to Tokyo and fell head over heels for the place. I talk about it so much that anytime Japan comes up, my wife hits me with her classic, "Oh, you’ve been to Japan? News to me!" sarcasm. She’s heard it all before, but I can’t help myself.

I’m not about to start swinging a katana around or anything, but I like to think I know a thing or two about Japan. So when I fired up the new Horizon, I was hit with that same jaw-dropping awe I felt the first time I wandered Tokyo’s streets.

From the blinding lights of downtown to the peaceful hush of the countryside, Horizon 6 bottles up Japan’s spirit and pours it into every fence post and skyscraper. The game’s DNA is now part neon, part street racer, and all heart.

Forget just hunting down XP boards; now you’re on the lookout for adorable mascots scattered everywhere. Every region’s got its own little critter begging to be flattened by your V8, and the squeaks they make when you do? Chef’s kiss.

Street races are now their own beast, totally separate from the main Horizon grind. These unsponsored, underground events feel like you’ve stumbled into Tokyo’s secret racing underbelly, and I’m here for it. However, I was caught off guard by two things. They’re not huge, but still something worth mentioning.

When I visited Tokyo, one of the things that struck me was the size of it. From the Tokyo Skytree, a 2080-foot-tall building, no matter where I looked, I failed to find the limit of the never-ending cityscape. Forza Horizon 6 fails to capture that scale, but for a game that’s looking to capture the essence of the entire country, I forgive them for not capturing that massive city nature.

One of the areas I thought we’d visit for sure was Mt Fuji, how could we not? I was surprised to find out we don’t get to visit the great mountain in the background of every older Godzilla movie.

But fret not, for I have a very sneaky suspicion that’ll end up being one of the DLC packs we’ll get for the game in the future. My last, and very real complaint, is the fact that there were no 7-Eleven gas stations. If you've been to Tokyo, you know this is a Japanese cultural staple!

Forza Horizon 6: Racing never felt better

Let’s face it, if you’re playing Forza Horizon, you’re not looking for the greatest simulation game on the planet. What you’re looking for is something to poke around in and have a blast doing. Forza Motorsport, iRacing, Assetto Corsa, and other like-minded titles are there for those who want something in a more realistic form.

For those of us who long for something between that and Need For Speed, Forza Horizon is what we play. And boy am I here to tell you does Forza Horizon 6 ever play, and it plays hard.

That fun feel is back and better than ever with what feels like a near-never-ending list of vehicles to choose from. Clocking in at over 600 vehicles at release, nearly 100 more than Forza Horizon 5 launched with, I’m still digging away at unlocking or paying for the best and coolest looking vehicles available in the game.

Progression no longer feels like you’re just going from race to race. Instead of throwing the entire kitchen sink at you, Forza Horizon 6 locks much of the higher-end vehicle races to later stages.

As you progress through Horizon Events, the races that unlock will go from your D and C vehicle levels to B, A, and eventually S and the new ranking, R. Rather than picking your favorite McLaren from the start, players will be building toward those levels throughout the game's campaign, which gives that authentic career-building feel I felt was missing from the latest iteration.

The tone of a circuit race changes if you’re just picking some high-end track star every single time. Forcing players to stay within a specific class isn’t a step back, but an attempt to teach players that progression is meant to be meaningful and rewarding.

Not only are all event types back, but so are many more that players will be picking at for hours with friends. While I know most reviewers and creators haven’t been spending a ton of time in the event builder, some of the early ones I’ve seen are showcasing just how promising the feature from Forza Horizon 5 can be. What’s more, it can be done in multiplayer now.

In a session that feels more like a private match of Halo Forge, up to 12 players can co-create Lab Events in Forza Horizon now. Friends can now create together to make something amazing, awful, or hilarious to drive through.

Without tunes to choose from, I was forced to learn how to tune vehicles. From drag racing to grip machines, I learned the ins and outs (or at least, at a surface level) of what it means to make your vehicle the best it can be.

If you peek at the gallery below, you’ll see I spent way too much time battling other reviewers and creators. Sure, my scores will get demolished once the game goes public, but seeing familiar names below mine? That’s a flex I’ll cherish while it lasts. Don't worry, I'll share my tunes and vehicles in some upcoming guides!

In the spirit of competition, Forza Horizon 6 is also adding drag-racing events to multiplayer. In the past, players always lined up to race against one another and played on an honor system. Now, there’s a full-blown method of playing together with a scoreboard, disqualification for starting early, and everything else players need in a drag-racing event.

You can even moonlight as a food delivery driver. Yep, one of the side gigs has you zipping around, picking up takeout, and dropping it off to hungry NPCs. It’s not huge, but there are nine promotion ranks, and some even unlock new delivery rides. Who knew Forza would scratch my DoorDash itch?

Not everything’s a slam dunk, though. My biggest gripe? Some of the main Horizon Events. Sure, there are a few wild, super-Japanese races, but a couple of them just didn’t have that wow factor I was hoping for.

Too often, I was stuck racing against the same types of planes or on tracks that felt like déjà vu. Some set pieces were pure joy. One had me grinning like an idiot, but others? Not so much.

Another thing that might be seen as a positive, and forgive me if this was in a previous entry, but you can now rewind during skill events. I didn’t even realize this until I accidentally hit Y while shifting gears up a drift section, only to rewind back to a previous spot, where I retained the score I had at that moment.

So yeah, you can fix your mistakes mid-drift without restarting. Some folks will love it, but for leaderboard junkies like me, it feels a little cheap when you’re chasing bragging rights with your friends.

Forza Horizon 6: Building is now a thing

Got a lot of extra cash that you haven’t spent on a hundred cars? Time to pimp out your garage, or better yet, your own personal Estate. You get your own Playground to build whatever your heart dreams up. Stunt tracks? Go wild. Anime murals? Why not. Ultimate drift zone? Absolutely.

While some of the builds I came across have been rather lacking, as you can only do so much during a review before you have to move on and test the next feature, what I’ve seen so far has shown that the building tools are going to make Forza Horizon 6 extra special.

One build I stumbled into was a neon playground with giant ramps, bowling pins, and a volleyball the size of a bus. I can already see these features getting pushed to the edge of insanity, and I can’t wait to see what the community cooks up after launch.

Your Estate means your garage gets a makeover, too. I found a Halo Forerunner garage that looked incredible, until I loaded in and every prop did a super jump in the ceiling. Rest in peace, Master Chief.

Hopefully, things like this get sorted out over time, because I want more Forge in my Xbox games wherever I can get it. That, and the actual building tools feel a little fussy, especially in the garage. Unless I missed it, I couldn't snap walls in place to other walls — which, if it is there, means the scheme isn't very intuitive. If they aren't, how is it not there?

Forza Horizon 6: Stunning to feel, watch, and listen to

I know there’s this ongoing joke with the internet that graphics haven’t gotten any better with time. The worst example of this is people who keep posting gameplay videos of Battlefield 3, as if it holds a candle to Battlefield 6. Spoilers: It doesn’t.

I even recently saw a video on social media where players were comparing all the entries in the Forza Horizon series, including 6 to one another.

What especially caught me off guard was people saying none of them looked any better than Forza Horizon 3. I got a hell of a kick from that. Either those people have never touched a Forza Horizon game, or nostalgia’s got them in a chokehold.

The difference is night and day when looking at the surrounding areas. Not only that, but with every title, more of the environments have become destructive. In the newest game, I found myself plowing through entire forests without hitting any trees that couldn’t be toppled.

On Xbox Series X or PC, this is hands-down one of the best-looking racers I’ve ever played. Vibrant colors, real-time ray tracing, crowds that are steps above Madden fans (just don’t look too close in photo mode), the works.

The truth that graphics in general have started to flatline a bit is true. Diminishing returns is a thing as you get closer to photo realism, which is why we’re seeing companies like Nvidia push their latest lighting techniques. Forza Horizon 6 is not an exception to this rule, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a nice array of improvements.

In years past, I always felt like performance was a major trade-off in terms of visuals. This time, I couldn’t tell whether I enjoyed playing on my Xbox Series X with a Vizio OLED or my RTX 5080 build on my 4K ASUS OLED gaming monitor. Sure, there were differences, but nothing substantial in the heat of the moment when all chaos is breaking loose while racing against.

On Extreme RT settings, I was reaching 90 FPS with Nvidia DLSS set to Quality at 4K resolution. On Xbox, I didn’t test the framerate with any "standard" methodology, but I didn’t notice any frame rate dips while playing in Performance mode. The entire experience, whether Xbox or PC, felt incredibly smooth.

Forza Horizon 6: Should you buy it?

If you’ve ever enjoyed a Forza Horizon, you already know the answer: yes, this is an easy buy.

Forza Horizon 6 is the series at its most confident, most refined, and most fun. Everything that made the earlier games iconic is back, but with a slicker sheen and events that pop.

Is it more of the same? Absolutely, but when "the same" is already this good, there’s zero shame in doubling down. Forza Horizon’s magic is alive and well, and the new additions just keep the party going without losing that signature vibe.

CoLabs and The Estate are unexpected standouts, adding a ton of replay value and giving even long-time fans something new to chase. This isn’t just content for content’s sake. It all fits and feels right at home in the world Playground Games has built.

I love that with the throwback progression, you don’t just jump right into the fastest cars. Working your way up makes every win feel earned, and every new race a real step forward. Not every Horizon Event will knock your socks off, although the thrill is still there.

So here’s the deal: if you love racing and want an open-world experience that’s equal parts heart and horsepower, Forza Horizon 6 is a no-brainer. It’s the top dog for a reason, and this chapter just cements it.

Vampire Crawlers is the second game from developers poncle, of Vampire Survivors fame. Instrumental in bringing about a renaissance of roguelike games, they've fed us well with endless DLC, both paid and free, for their first title, and now they are back with a whole new game born from its DNA.

Vampire Survivors is a tough act to follow; it was a critical darling, earning three BAFTA awards, and maintains an incredibly high positive rating on Steam. It's the reason poncle has become synonymous with high-value, low-cost gaming. Can they keep up the winning streak? I think so.

I've been hopelessly addicted to Vampire Crawlers for a week now, putting it through its paces on the Xbox Series X, but the bulk of my playtime has been on the Xbox ROG Ally X, as it's a perfect handheld game. Here's everything you need to know about The Turbo Wildcard game from Vampire Survivors.

Vampire Crawlers Review: What is it?

While fans might have expected a Vampire Survivors 2, Vampire Crawlers is a pretty radical genre pivot that swaps the real-time bullet hell for a tactical, turn-based card game. It's a casual, turn-based deckbuilder with some roguelite elements set smack bang in the world of Vampire Survivors.

Instead of an open field of enemies working their way towards you, you explore grid-based multi-floor dungeons as a dungeon "Crawler' in first person. Expect a strategic loop of scoping the map for combat encounters, picking up loot, and leveling up your deck of cards to progress.

The Vampire Survivors' whimsy and charm is present in every facet of the game. Your arsenal is your deck composed of weapons Survivors fans will be familiar with: the Whip, Knife, Santa Water and everyone's favorite — Garlic, to name a few. The enemies will be familiar too, facing the same skeletons and bats amongst other unpleasant creatures, but from a different perspective. We aren't top-down anymore; we are face-to-face with those man-eating plants.

Our Crawler characters, which you choose from before entering the dungeon, bring unique passive triggers that respond to the cards you play. For example, Antonio grants a damage bonus every time you play an attack card. They even now have voice lines which bring a whole new breath of personality to the Vampire Survivors universe.

Vampire Crawlers Review: Gameplay

I was sent a review guide with the game, which like any provided instructions, I decided not to read at all and go in blind. Cool girls don't look at instructions. Presented with a small deck of cards and my first Crawler, I had no idea what I was doing in the first dungeon. I progressed through the game simply throwing cards out like Gambit and hoping for the best. Thankfully, the game does a great job of showing you what to do, and the first thing you will probably learn is chaining cards to make powerful combos.

The core of the strategy revolves around your mana pool. Each card has a cost, and your goal is to manage that pool while taking advantage of the Combo Stack. The game rewards you for playing cards in ascending mana cost (0-1-2-3); doing so triggers a multiplier that ramps up your damage exponentially. This is where the "Turbo" in the title comes from — once you find the rhythm, you can play your entire hand as fast as you can click, watching damage numbers skyrocket. The OVERKILL text and accompanying soundbites are particularly satisfying to say the least.

The signature Evolution system returns, too. Those familiar with Survivors will have a massive head start in knowing specifically which weapons and passives to combine to upgrade their cards. However, there are new layers here: you can find Gems to slot into specific cards for bonuses (like 2x damage) or find one-time-use Wildcards that act as combo extenders. These allow you to push a single turn into a god-like state of devastation that can clear a whole row of enemies at once if you... play your cards right (pun intended).

My personal favorite right now is going full Bone Build with Mortaccio. He gives extra projectiles, and there is nothing quite as satisfying as throwing Bone cards — which cost zero mana — and watching them bounce and bounce and bounce around the screen. I’ve hit a few walls of difficulty, but the beauty of this game is that death doesn't matter. It’s just an excuse to visit the Unlocks menu, find a doable goal, and bring a new item or stat boost into my next run.

If I had any criticisms, it would be that some map items are difficult to see when playing on a handheld device. However, there is a launch patch that should improve Steam Deck play and, by extension, handheld gaming on the ROG Ally X, so I'm hoping it will be fixed.

Vampire Crawlers Review: Should you buy it?

If you're a huge fan of Vampire Survivors and the aesthetic, this is a no-brainer purchase at $9.99, or you can play it day one on Xbox Game Pass. It’s an Xbox Play Anywhere title, and my progress synced flawlessly between my Series X and my handheld.

The only caveat I would say is that the gameplay loop is a big departure from the bullet hell style. This is a more methodical approach, at least initially. That being said, once you have a strong deck, you can use the auto-play button to just dump your entire hand at the enemy. I tend to do this when building up coins in dungeons I've already cleared.

I've been really into short, snappy "just one more session" games like Blue Prince, Ball X Pit, Balatro, and obviously Vampire Survivors, so Crawlers is the perfect game for me. It hits the same dopamine center that comes from building something quite ridiculous and watching it decimate the battlefield. If that sounds like your kinda thing too, you'll love this game.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Vampire Crawlers. poncle has managed to take the soul of their first hit and transplant it into a completely different body without losing what made it special. It is a game designed with a deep love for the genre and a respect for the player's time (and crucially, money). I only hope that it receives just as much love and adulation, and consequently bucket loads of DLC for me to get my teeth into.

The review guide mentions a few known issues being ironed out, such as Guardian encounters not always rotating correctly and some Wild Evo cards missing holographic effects. I also noticed that damage numbers on cards don't always perfectly match the enemy UI, but poncle is working on a clearer calculation display for the launch patch.

Vampire Crawlers is another triumph for poncle. Just be warned: "one more run" is a lie you will tell yourself every single night.

When I sat down to play Pragmata, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

This was the first game of the year I went into completely blind, withholding expectations while only knowing a fragment of the story. I even ignored the demo for Pragmata that I saw everyone raving about on social media.

As you can tell, I wanted to be surprised, and surprised I was. In all the best ways.

From the combat to the story's redefining of human nature, Pragmata pulls on the heartstrings when it needs to, while balancing the cute, relatable AI Diana against the dark onset of the protagonist’s situation.

Hugh, our game’s main character, finds himself alone on an AI-controlled moon base that looks to eradicate him at every turn. With the help of Diana, he hopes to make contact with Earth and get the hell off this rock before anything too damning happens.

Pragmata Review: Story

As I said previously, Hugh finds himself stranded alone on a moon base after a terrible run-in with the base’s local AI, IDUS, which has gone rogue.

Hugh and his crewmates are on a space flight to the moon to make contact with the corporation's local workforce. Contact was lost some days ago, and it’s up to him and his team to reestablish it between Earth and the base.

What seems like a routine mission is quickly turned on its head as his crewmates are killed or separated within minutes of their landing at the facility. Separated and alone, an android he later names Diana saves his life and wakes him up moments before IDUS initiates a protocol to terminate unwanted guests of the facility.

The timing of Pragmata’s release feels almost too perfect. It launched only days after the successful completion of the Artemis II moon mission, arriving at a moment when humanity is actively planning to build a permanent base on the moon in the middle of an AI boom.

A game about the terrifying consequences of AI on a lunar base could not have found a more fitting moment to land.

As the story progresses, so does your connection to the good AI, Diana. While her inherent ability to hack IDUS and fight against the onslaught of robotic enemies is terrific, it’s her insanely close nature to being a child that brings charm to the game’s story.

You’ll often share these child-like moments with her through REMs, or Earth Memories, that resemble some form of item from Earth. These include crayons, slides, and more, each offering Diana another toy to play with and another look for Hugh to treasure as he watches Diana learn more about the world around her.

The one thing I found less compelling was the juggling between this humanity exploration and Hugh’s situation. Hugh was often very protective or loving toward Diana, giving her plenty of childlike answers to her many questions.

This seemed to be at odds with the situation that Hugh found himself in, where it felt like the fact that his entire crew was gone was somewhat forgotten about. While it’s mentioned more than once after the fact, the weight of the horrific situation he finds himself in never really feels dire like you’d imagine it to be.

The counter to this is again, the story of Diana, which largely carries the game and is an absolute treasure to enjoy. Which, in turn, he makes heavy use of.

As cute as she is, Hugh utilizes Diana to combat IDUS in an attempt to contact Earth and make it home. Her caring nature doesn’t subvert her ability to offer Hugh a way out of his dire situation, and is all the more welcome as the circumstances on the lunar base play out.

He’ll also make use of the base’s unique feature, Lunafilament. This substance grants the ability to print anything literally into reality. From basic household items and weapons to entire compounds and lifeforms.

Pragmata Review: Combat and gameplay

Now it’s time to talk about the combat, because it’s where Pragmata immediately sets itself apart. The game weaves hacking into its shooter mechanics in a way that feels genuinely fresh. Not a gimmick bolted on, but a core part of how every encounter plays out.

If you’re looking for the standard point-and-click shooting mechanics of most shooters, Pragmata isn’t going to be the game for you. You’ll have to delicately or chaotically smash your face buttons in the direction of hacking completion before enemies take any meaningful damage.

Every enemy in the game must first be aimed at, in an attempt to “open” them to damage through a hacking interface that Diana grants Hugh. Initial offerings task the player with navigating through the interface to cross paths with nodes that offer more “hack time” upon completion for Hugh to dish out damage with his weapons.

These hacks can be supplemented with abilities that offer longer hacks, the ability to hack multiple enemies at once, stun-locks, and more. All of which can be bundled into one hack, or spread out as you see fit, as each ability is only activated when used during a hacking process.

All of this hacking plays out in real time, which is both fun and somewhat annoying at times. While battling enemies in smaller groups is manageable, it’s during moments of larger groups that you might find the hacking game more aggravating than fun.

Having to dodge enemy attacks, even when telegraphed, can be challenging when solving a hacking puzzle on the side of the screen. This overcomable annoyance is highlighted when taking on larger groups because you’ll also be dealing with enemies behind your character, making charge attacks or shooting from a distance.

The game is definitely challenging, and to a point where I absolutely love it, but I can’t help but shake the feeling that some of the challenge comes in the form of uncontrollable chaos that is beyond the player’s ability to control.

I use Elden Ring as an example, where chaos in that game is often caused by the player’s inability to manage it, or you find yourself throwing up because you ran into a dozen enemies without tackling them one at a time. Pragmata doesn’t offer that same tempo; instead, it throws those enemies at you without total ways to avoid damage.

Rather, you’ll find yourself needing to take damage in order to dish it out or at least make headway if you’re not equipped with the perfect build of hacking abilities for Diana.

Now, don’t get me wrong! Overall, I love the combat in Pragmata, and can’t wait to continue my playthrough to gather all the collectibles in the map (yes, you can double back to areas to unlock items you didn’t otherwise grab your first time through), but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the faults in it as well.

Like the fact that finishers are all the same across enemies and bosses. With a finisher for normal enemies and a separate one for bosses. Some added flair would have gone a long way.

Now, let’s talk weapons.

These weapons initially include a pistol that regenerates ammo over time, but quickly branch out into weapons like the Shockwave. The Shockwave is a devastating up-close shotgun that packs a punch and carried me through the game’s early heavy enemy combatants.

You’ll later obtain a railgun-like weapon, as well as a stasis deployment gun, grenade launcher, and plenty more! All of these weapons, but the pistol, need to be replenished in your base or picked up off the ground during lunar base exploration.

I won’t spoil too much, but you’ll find plenty of other weapons as well as other regenerative weapons later on. All of which can be upgraded back in your base that I eluded to earlier.

Speaking of, while out in the world, Hugh will come across multiple opponents that will deplete precious resources, such as armor regeneration and ammo for your secondary weapons. Thankfully, a small sort of sanctuary will be open to him and Diana, called The Shelter.

In the Shelter, players can upgrade their weapons with various buffs that include damage output, ammo count, or other effects native to the weapon itself. You can also increase base stats, such as your health and Diana’s hacking output.

These buffs aren’t anything spectacularly game-changing, but you can also unlock new abilities within the Shelter. Some of the early ones include a time slow upon successful enemy dodges, and the ability to get to your feet immediately after being knocked down.

These are fairly basic, but each one offers a counter to enemy annoyances or grants Hugh (hehe Hugh Grant) a boost to his power level that will continue to be challenged as he progresses through the base. The game’s basic path forward.

You’ll start near the loading dock, but as you continue, Hugh will find new ways forward into different parts of the lunar base. These include large cityscapes like New York and a “printed” Lunafilament forest.

Your Shelter will also get access to upgrades through the Camp bot, which offers services in exchange for collectible Shelter upgrades and Camp coins that you can find throughout the world in the form of quest items or item boxes.

Pragmata Review: Performance

I did my playthrough on Windows PC through Steam. My setup includes a 9800X3D, RTX 5080, and 64GB of CL30 6000Mhz DDR5 RAM. I played at 4K resolution.

Cranking everything to the max besides the normal PC player annoyances of Bloom and other effects we all seem to love to hate together, I was averaging around 55 FPS with DLSS set to Quality. Making use of 4X framegen, I was able to attain a steady 120+ FPS without any noticeable latency issues. These metrics include the use of Path Tracing as well.

What I did notice were some weird stutter or FPS issues with loading screens or interfaces. Occasionally, I’d see drops into the sub-40s as the game loaded the next cutscene or jumped from a conversation with the Camp Shelter bot.

Again, this was while playing at max settings in 4K, where the framerate held above 120 through combat and other intense scenes. It was only during down times or transitional cutscenes with characters at the Shelter that I’d see these weird drops. Disabling Path Tracing, at least for me, seemed to completely alleviate this issue, which leads me to believe something with this setting is causing a reload between certain scene transitions.

For the most part, performance was great during the moments you needed it to be, and I don’t think these drops were anything horrible, but it’s something that should be noted for the overall metrics junkies like me.

We also tested it on Xbox Series X, and found it to be a smooth experience with no crashes. The game runs at 60 FPS flawlessly in performance mode, although you lose some visual depth and sharpness in trade off. As is tradition.

Pragmata Review: Should you buy it?

Pragmata is a genuinely moving look at what it means to be human. The story of Diana’s curiosity and growth sits alongside combat that carves out its own space in a genre full of games that all start to blur together. The hacking system can get messy in the thick of a big fight, but it’s different enough from everything else out there that I’m willing to forgive the moments where it loses its footing.

Pragmata hit me the way Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and the original Dead Space did, games I look back fondly at, remembering them for everything they did right while giving me a lasting sense of happiness. And I’m already planning to go back through it for a full 100% run, which tells you everything.

That drive to find everything is something most modern games fail to incite in me. Pragmata’s classic linear design keeps it from ever feeling like a chore. You’re never staring down an open world checklist or cracking open a guide just to find the last collectible. Everything feels findable and doable.

What Pragmata does, it does with real conviction, and that deserves recognition. Capcom keeps finding ways to deliver, and Pragmata is the latest proof that the studio’s standards are only getting harder to meet.

Crimson Desert is one of those games I was genuinely afraid to review. Not because I thought it was going to be some terrible creation, but because I could tell that even after spending almost 100 hours, I’d still be left having not touched half the game.

What I didn’t expect was being able to walk away with that lack of seeing it all and still knowing how great the rest was yet to be. Crimson Desert surpassed my exceedingly high expectations in ways I never thought it would, while simultaneously leaving me wanting more from certain facets.

What Pearl Abyss has created is wonderful and should be celebrated in every way. Here’s my tale as to why.

Crimson Desert Review: The most ambitious single-player open world

One of the main concerns with Crimson Desert hasn’t been its size, but the potential lack of meaningful content to fill the space created. From the perspective of someone who’s poured over 70 hours into the game and feels like they’ve barely scratched the surface, there’s something for everyone.

In my time, which has been relegated to what I’ll refer to as the bottom left of the map, I’ve come across the following activities: Competitive Archery, thievery, outlaw tracking, investment banking, goods hauling, brawling, arm wrestling, hidden caves, ancient ruins with puzzles, multiple Abyss Sanctums, nearly 100 different creatures, 34 crafting manuals, 28 different factions, four mounts, and so much more.

I could turn this review into a boring list of all that I’ve found so far, but part of the majesty and mystique is not knowing; it’s the discovery of the event itself.

There will be so many opportunities for you to look up all the various activities that I implore you not to. If what you assume is already known, that crucial step of mystery is washed away.

I think the only way to really put this all into perspective is with a screenshot of the “knowledge base”.

As you can see from the above photo, of the 34 crafting manuals I found, there are over 300 more to find, 28 of 110 factions. Some of these I’ve kept a surprise for players on release day, but I’m sure there’s already a screenshot out there, either in someone else’s review or previously. But I also want to keep it a secret how much of the game you’ll unravel in your first fifty hours, or at least, somewhat of a secret.

You can go on for hours getting lost in areas, if not for finding random things to do here and there, but just to bask in the majesty of the world Pearl Abyss has created. The landscapes presented are both a beacon of guidance and a reason to lose oneself in timeless game sessions.

I am able to confirm the fact that it takes roughly four hours to travel the entire map on foot. If one were so bold as to try. However, that’s where the mount system comes in, which includes not only horses, but a total of 28 different mounts!

So don’t worry, securing travel across the continent will be a game in its own right.

The greatest travesty I have yet to face with Crimson Desert’s open world is the fact that I’ve had to play it under the pressure of time. For the first time in years, I feel the desire to go off in random directions, excited about what the next corner might bring. Something only games like Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, and others have given me.

Crimson Desert Review: Activities galore

As I mentioned previously, there’s a lot to come across in Crimson Desert. So much so that I’m absolutely positive I haven’t found or even tried everything there is to do.

Take investment banking, for example. Early on, I discovered a bank that allowed me to open an account for 100 silver, which, for starters, will seem a little hefty. It wasn’t until after opening the account that I realized I needed either a gold bar or another 500 silver to purchase one.

Thankfully, some hours later, I just so happened to find a gold bar on someone else. Once invested, I had the option for low, medium, and high-stakes investments.

Then I randomly came across the ability to sell stolen livestock. Yes, there is a fence that you can sell stolen or non-legitimate livestock to! Just when you thought investment banking was enough to get you by.

Then there are goods trading systems, which you can use to find and package goods at your camp to deliver somewhere else for profit. You can even buy trade goods at one market and deliver them somewhere else where they’re selling for more.

Seriously, this game has tons of things to do! However, that cataclysmic number of activities can sometimes backfire.

For instance, things like arm wrestling, archery competitions, and brawling. These activities are fun, little nothing-to-do moments of gameplay, but that’s the thing, they’re really nothing.

Brawling, for example, was a random little area I found outside of Hernand, the game’s first main city. Here, I jumped into a pit and smashed the melee button over and over. The only other action I had was to dodge.

If I did anything else, including holding the melee button, which causes your character to kick, I was immediately disqualified. There was no rhythm to this, just smash melee, dodge (maybe), and win. Rather than a mini-game, it felt like a quick “here’s what we could do if we made this brawling into a mini-game” demo.

That “every so often” of coming across needless or pointless activities didn’t really bolster my love of Crimson Desert’s open world. Instead, it was a negative on the experience, making the sum of the total parts feel disconnected from the game.

Then again, it's like this always, or even the majority of the time, but enough to the point where I wish something had been just a little more fleshed out.+

Crimson Desert Review: Gameplay and performance

The best way I can describe the combat of Crimson Desert is by letting you know there are roughly 30 different attack buttons/combinations. From melee to ranged options like guns, bows, and spells.

Just with melee alone, there is a decent variety of starting weapons that feel varied enough to keep combat fresh, just from light and heavy attacks. Basic swords, axes, scythes, spears, and more will take up your inventory rather quickly.

The amount I came across felt just enough so that I never felt overwhelmed or underwhelmed by any of the options I came across. This all comes before you come across unique weapons as well, like some that carry charged spirit attacks or secondary methods of damage.

Even the armor types are varied, in the form Zelda fans might find familiar. You’ll find cloth, plate, leather, and more, but each of these sets comes with different resistance types or other wonderful benefits like movement speed and attack bonuses. All weapons and armor can be upgraded through a process called refinement to improve damage and resistance.

Combat is just pure, unadulterated fun that never really grows tiresome. Whether it’s against the easier NPCs that you’ve out-leveled, or the terrifyingly strong armies of Demenis, your rather violent neighbor, Crimson Deserts combat is so fluid, the end result is always satisfying.

Then there’s a small subsection of spells powered by Spirit that mix and match so incredibly well. Literally fanning someone to death is about as awesome as stabbing them through the chest!

Storage

The collection of these items leads to one of the most glaring weaknesses the game currently has, and that’s inventory management. I’ve been told a patch will deliver some form of storage within homes, but there’s currently no way to keep items tucked away outside of keeping them in your own inventory.

You start with a decent 50 slots, but if you want to collect and hoard upgrade materials for your favorite weapons and armors, you’ll have to dedicate slots specifically to those resources. There’s no storing them away in some locked chest at your base, or even in your home located near your base.

Over time, you can increase inventory slots by completing quests, where you can end up with something like 200 slots. Still, carrying everything on your person at once felt odd and cumbersome to deal with at times, and felt like a major miss for a game with so many things to pick up.

Seriously, beginning with just creatures, you can collect their bones, hide, meat, horns, and even full-fledged butterflies, lizards, etc. There are like 30-something butterfly types alone, and every one you pick up takes a separate slot. Come on, Pearl Abyss, you had to know this would be a major issue, right?

Puzzles

Like all games with puzzles, Crimson Desert can be a hit or miss when it comes to the general pride you get from completing one. What I’m pleased to announce is that the majority of them slap.

Seriously, most of these puzzles remind me of a more “realistic” version of Breath of the Wild. That’s not to take shots at Zelda, only to properly showcase how Crimson Desert takes their physics-based movement puzzles with a bit less flair than something like Tears of the Kingdom.

There are so many moments I thought to myself, “Hey, I think this will work,” and it just ended up doing so. Seeing something, coming up with a clever idea that you haven’t even tried before, and then doing it is awesome when it works so often.

Early on, everything is satisfying because every mechanic is brand-new and shiny. As time goes on, simple tasks are interspersed with physics-based puzzles that feel like filler or are poorly presented.

Take, for example, somewhere along the line, you’ll help a group do a little research. If you account for all the dialogue and actual combat that takes place, as well as unique puzzle mechanics, the quest is pretty decently paced.

However, on top of that, Pearl Abyss added a weird slide puzzle to turn a generator on and insert 4 batteries (all in the same way) just as the quest starts. After some action and a weird amount of time running to the next heart-racing moment, you’re faced with another puzzle that I think is pretty much impossible without either your stamina buffed or the use of cold-resistant food/clothing.

The initial quips felt functional, but felt a little too much like filler for my taste. It was the insertion of unforeseen obstacles in the other puzzle that really threw me for a loop. What might suck is that I did the puzzle entirely wrong; I have no way of knowing. What I do know is that it wasn’t the only time I had this feeling.

Performance and character swapping

Performance for Windows PC has been nothing but terrific. I played on both a 4060 at 1080p and a 5080 at 4K, and have nothing but good things to say about how they play.

Starting with the 4060, I was able to push my settings all the way to cinematic with balanced DLSS to maintain 80 fps. Dropping those down gave much better native performance, too.

As for the 5080, I saw a general ~75 FPS performance at 4K cinematic with Quality DLSS. Since the FPS was above 60, I was able to turn on frame gen without sacrificing latency and saw spikes into the 200s.

Reconstruction ray tracing is where players might have a hard time. At 4K, cinematic, with ray-tracing enabled, I was bottoming out at less than 20 FPS, which is to be expected.

Some of these settings are obvious overkill, so I shouldn’t expect max of the max to work on anything but a 5090. The general settings are gorgeous, and from what I’ve played, incredibly well-optimized.

Bugs are another thing that I didn't personally experience, but heard plenty of during my review time. I'm not sure what to expect when the game hits release, but I've watched Pearl Abyss work tirelessly to fix any and all bugs reviewers encountered during their sessions.

So, like, I know this is supposed to be a thing, but in my 70 hours so far, I’ve felt as though this feature was some afterthought. It’s cool to swap between different adventurers ala GTA V character hot-swap, but none of the side characters really feel fully fleshed out.

I still swapped over to try different missions with them, but the entirety of this mechanic dropped off hard. Maybe later in the game, it will pick up, but I can’t help feeling like this had originally been part of the multiplayer experience.

Crimson Desert Review: The story of friendship and epic set pieces

The story starts off as a basic rebuild vengeance tale that delivers somewhat beyond serviceable results. I’m nowhere near done with the entirety of it, but it’s grown increasingly more interesting as time has passed.

Like many of the game’s systems, some of the initial story felt skipped, as though there may have been a prelude comic out there (or perhaps Black Desert, I’ve never played). You’re in a camp, where some of your comrades you never met have perished.

Within another few minutes, those responsible are back at it. The enemy gives reason to be lightly introduced to some of your comrades, as well as one of the big bads, but eventually become separated from one another before attempting to form together again during the opening quests. You’ll find more of your mates, otherwise known as the Greymanes, during your adventures.

Things take a literal other-worldly return before any of the reuniting begins, as you’re introduced to the concept of the Abyss. A parallel world of sorts that is separate from your realm. The game takes on a striking similarity to “Save the cheerleader. Save the world.”

Much of the moment-to-moment dialogue is "bleh", but the story shines during set-piece beats. Without spoiling anything, I’ve had multiple heart-pumping combat flashes that have left me wishing I’d saved just before to play it again.

The game tried to build up pivotal story moments. As though it attempted to perfect a well-paced novel. Instead, the jumbled mess of a story (especially early on) comes across as just another Korean-style MMO, serving as a bare-bones vehicle for the game's incredible gameplay.

Crimson Desert Review: Should you buy it?

If you're here and reading this, the answer is simple: yes. Crimson Desert is the kind of game that usually only comes along once in a generation, so singular in its ambition that it will define the gaming conversation for weeks, if not months, to come.

I’d say years, but the only game that will overtake it in scope is the billion-dollar GTA VI.

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, since you can never predict how the public or other reviewers will respond. But I lost count of the moments that stirred the same sense of awe I felt playing Elden Ring for the first time.

That feeling is rare, especially after 30 years with this hobby. Crimson Desert is the kind of game where the moment someone asks whether they should play it, the answer is already out of my mouth.

The only exception is someone who has no patience for true open-world exploration, someone who prefers a tight, linear narrative above all else.

Crimson Desert isn’t that, nor should it ever try to be. What it is, is something genuinely rare. A game I didn’t know I wanted, and couldn’t have imagined believing in, until I played it myself.

Resident Evil Requiem is almost here, and it might feel a tad bitter sweet.

A "requiem" is a mass held to honor those that have departed. It's also the name of Leon Kennedy's magnum revolver, and the namesake of the ninth mainline entry in one of gaming's most legendary franchises.

Requiem is intended to be a passing of the torch of sorts, as the saga featuring many of its original characters draws to a close to make way for a new era. Leon Kennedy, who debuted in Resident Evil 2 back in 1998, has certainly seen better days.

Dogged by decades of trauma fighting the world's most corrupt bio-corporations and physically corrupted undead horrors, Leon joins new protagonist Grace on a dual-experience partnership that reminisces of previous experiments like Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil 6 — both of which weren't particularly well received.

Does Resident Evil Requiem vindicate this formula? Can a single entry appeal to Resident Evil's diverging survival horror and action horror fan base? We played through the game on Xbox Series X and Windows PC to find out.

Welcome to our spoiler-free Resident Evil Requiem review.

Resident Evil Requiem review: Story, art, and performance

Resident Evil Requiem extends a dual-protagonist tradition that has been a staple of the franchise since the beginning, albeit in different flavors. Requiem tries to double and perhaps even triple down on this design, offering an entirely different gameplay experience based on which protagonist is currently center stage.

Leon Kennedy is one of the franchise's most experienced veterans. Leon reprises his role as a D.S.O. agent, acting on behalf of the United States government. He's joined by newcomer FBI technical analyst Grace Ashcroft, daughter of Resident Evil Outbreak's Alyssa Ashcroft, who finds her fate intertwined with that of Kennedy early on.

While investigating a string of mysterious deaths, Ashcroft finds herself kidnapped by a hulking, twisted vision of a mad scientist, we'd later know as Victor Gideon. Leon, who is also investigating the deaths, gives immediate chase.

Requiem is an absolutely stunning game, and continues the franchise's positive visual streak atop Capcom's impressive RE Engine. The game sings on Xbox Series X, and runs flawlessly on lower-end hardware. On our primary review platform, Xbox Series X, you can expect a smooth 60 FPS operation with zero hitching or frame pacing problems. We also tested the game at 1080p on an RTX 4060 PC, DLSS balanced with no frame gen, grabbing upwards of 144 FPS.

The RE Engine has been under some scrutiny thanks to Monster Hunter Wilds' notorious performance problems, but when used for its intended purpose, the engine is still one of the best out there. The facial motion capture is approaching uncanny levels of realism. The attention to detail in lighting is also a cut above, with light blooming through Grace's hair with realistic flair.

The visual buffet only elevates and enhances the game's story beats. Grace and Leon both give incredible performances, and Victor Gideon is a suitably horrifying antagonist — with the physical accoutrements of a Tyrant bioweapon coupled with a quiet sadism and intelligence reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter.

Leon's gameplay is supposed to represent more action-oriented Resident Evil entries, while Grace's is supposed to showcase the kind of vulnerability we felt playing the original games. This extends to the story beats too to some degree, with Grace's experience is steeped in horror, as her character stumbles through events few of us would be equipped to deal with were it real. Her vulnerability is well-delivered, as is her bravery in the face of impossible and traumatic scenarios. Leon by contrast is an invincible comic book superhero, which celebrates the franchise's over-the-top overtures. It didn't always work for me in contrast, though.

Occasionally I felt like the bombastic "rule of cool" Michael Bay-style presentation of Leon's sequences undermined the evocative story beats from Grace's arc. Capcom absolutely pulls no punches with Resident Evil Requiem. I won't spoil it by any means, but I was impressed by the boundaries the Resident Evil team were willing to push. It didn't always land for me — even when it was undeniably awesome. The whiplash effect can feel jarring. But, I am probably also overthinking it, and even if I am, it hardly degrades the overall experience.

Resident Evil Requiem's story will run you through a broad gamut of emotions, and leave you excited for the franchise's future.

Resident Evil Requiem review: Gameplay

Resident Evil Requiem, as noted in the game's marketing and beyond, strides a line between both classic survival horror and more action horror leanings in largely equal measure.

Grace's segments are absolutely classic Resident Evil. A zombie-infested mansion, a maze of maps, puzzles, key items, while desperately scrounging for ammunition. This is where the game felt the strongest in my view, but I'm also more a fan of that era of Resident Evil.

Grace's segments not only exhibit the classic-style Resident Evil user interface, but also come with similar constraints. Limited inventory space, intentionally restrictive, shaky controls, with aggressive and tough monstrosities at every corner. The game even doubles down on some of Resident Evil's more difficult classic elements. Crimson heads are back, in a sense, requiring players to consider dealing with corpses. The game also plays heavily with light and stealth on top.

You can sneak around and dispatch enemies to give yourself an edge against larger groups, while conserving ammunition in the process. Resident Evil Requiem also lets you play with a "Classic" save system, disabling auto saves and forcing you to stock up on Ink Ribbons, old-school style.

Whether you're playing as Grace or Leon, combat in Resident Evil Requiem is incredibly satisfying. The zombies and other enemies never feel bullet spongey, reacting dynamically to wounds and other types of attacks. Head crits still grant that satisfying pop made all the more spectacular with dynamic gore that paints walls and floors in spattered crimson stains.

It's not all throwbacks, though. Both characters have some new mechanics and toys they can play with, and both can be played in first and third-person optionally — a first for the franchise. Hauntingly, Capcom has given the zombies in Resident Evil Requiem a far deeper personality than in previous games. It felt almost as if every zombie I encountered was a unique model, complete with different behaviors, attack patterns, and even dialogue. This made dispatching them all the horrific and immersive.

Grace can craft emphasize stealth gameplay with haemoglobin hypodermic needles that can instantly detonate stunned or unaware zombies. Leon Kennedy by contrast is a martial arts expert, fully equipped with a massive arsenal of guns, ammo, and additional contextual melee combat cues. He runs faster, turns more smoothly, and comes with a hatchet that can be used to execute enemies permanently (even with a Monster Hunter-style sharpen mechanic.)

Leon's sections ironically could feel a tad more frustrating at times, particularly in the later levels, as the game throws enemies inspired by Resident Evil 4, 5, and 6 at you in shooting gallery-style events. On that point, Leon's segments can feel cathartic too, particularly after you've been struggling around in the dark with Grace for a few hours. Leon's UI even takes on a Resident Evil 4-inspired format, complete with a health bar rather than Grace's old-school heartbeat monitor. It's a nice touch, and it's in a lot of these small details that you know Capcom understands and celebrates both aspects of the franchise's legacy.

I was worried that Leon's segments would feel overly linear to that end, but thankfully Capcom clearly still recognizes that the ability to back track and explore is something that should be a staple of both its action and survival horror leanings. Complete with epic set-piece boss battles, bombastic and unexpected twists, and a broad variety of new and nostalgic locations — Resident Evil Requiem is likely to be celebrated as one of the franchise's greatest entries.

Resident Evil Requiem review: Should you buy it?

If you're a Resident Evil fan, this segment of the review is largely pointless — we know you're going to buy it, and you absolutely should. Resident Evil Requiem is steeped in new lore, great characters, exciting gameplay, and sports a meaty campaign well worth the price of admission.

The minute to minute gameplay is great, the character acting is top-tier, and the visuals are among the best we've seen from the genre. Resident Evil Requiem celebrates multiple aspects of the franchise, and largely manages to vindicate the dual-gameplay experiments of previous instalments.

It can feel a bit quirky at times. The emotional story telling and more impactful story beats can feel reduced when followed up almost immediately by cheesy high-action comic bookery — but your mileage may vary on that. A less cynical view might be that video games are the perfect medium for exploring multiple genres in a single package, and it's certainly not something that negatively impacts the entire experience. If anything, you might find it elevates it.

Resident Evil Requiem is the first blockbuster of 2026. Long, long, may this franchise live.

In 2019, legendary role-playing game (RPG) developer Obsidian Entertainment launched The Outer Worlds almost a year after the company had been acquired by Microsoft.

Published by Private Division due to preexisting contracts, The Outer Worlds was a hit, delivering something of a cross between Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, and Fallout. It was a fun, space western romp that leaned heavily into satirizing megacorporations while still handing out handfuls of heartwarming stories.

Fast-forward to 2025, and a sequel is launching in a banner year for Obsidian Entertainment, coming just months after the studio already delivered a fantasy RPG for Xbox Game Studios with Avowed, as well as an early access follow-up to its surprise survival hit, Grounded.

After 40 hours, I'm happy to say that The Outer Worlds 2 is more of the same where it counts, with a couple of key improvements that elevate the whole experience. A few bugs aside, it's a game worth making time for.

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Xbox Game Studios. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

What is The Outer Worlds 2?

The Outer Worlds 2 is a single-player role-playing game (RPG) developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Xbox Game Studios.

The game opens with players in the role of an Earth Directorate agent, someone whose job it is to ensure the law is still being followed and justice is carried out in the farthest colonies where dictatorships and megacorporations attempt to seize control. The agent is dispatched to Arcadia Colony, where things go horribly wrong.

As it is an RPG, players have to make hard choices, building relationships with squadmates and larger factions alike, crafting alliances or creating enemies. When the latter occurs, there is a wide range of weapons available to dispense justice, with flame shotguns, lightning chainguns, rocket launchers, plasma blades, frost rifles, and far more.

Players also have to select different skills, focusing on different abilities like Engineering or Leadership, that, in turn, unlock unique perks.

The Outer Worlds 2 can be played in first-person like its predecessor, but there's also a new third-person option, akin to games like Avowed or Bethesda Game Studios' Starfield.

The Outer Worlds 2 is available on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (via Battle.net, Steam, and Xbox on PC), and PlayStation 5. Like all Xbox first-party games, it's also available at launch in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

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The Outer Worlds 2: Story and characters

The Outer Worlds 2 focuses on a few different factions, with Auntie's Choice (the result of a merger between Spacer's Choice and Auntie Cleo's) waging war on Arcadia colony, a system of planets ruled by the iron-fisted dictatorship known as The Protectorate. Also entangled is The Order of the Ascendant, a scientifically-minded group that seeks to solve all chaos through mathematical understanding of...well, everything.

All the while, a strange problem threatens to destroy all of Arcadia, no matter who wins the war.

Because of this dynamic, the focus on tongue-in-cheek unrestrained capitalism takes a slight back seat in the main story in exchange for a darker tone, though it's still a present force affecting the lives of everyday citizens and soldiers.

Some of the best moments in the game come from exploring side stories, as well as interacting with your crewmates. Niles is an engineer and a fellow agent, and so you're given the opportunity to help shape his path and worldview the more you take him with you on assignments, though he (and your other crewmates) will push back and act against you if you aren't careful.

It's a delicate balance that could've easily felt annoying, but the result is that I was genuinely invested in everyone's life path and trying to help them be the best they could be. Even Aza, who appears to be a murderous psychopath, has some hidden depths worth exploring.

The Outer Worlds 2: Gameplay and features

While The Outer Worlds was a great game, filled with fun characters and interesting dialogue, it had one fairly major problem: the combat simply wasn't fun. Past a few hours, it felt entirely the same. That's a problem Obsidian Entertainment has massively corrected for The Outer Worlds 2.

Guns simply feel good, with every aspect like aiming and even reloading refined to be smoother, while landing headshots or ripping into foes with a machine gun has meaningful feedback. Over the 40 hours I played, blasting foes to smithereens with every armament I could get my hands on never got old.

That ties well into another aspect of the game that's improved over the first entry: The Flaw system. Every so often, you'll be offered a Flaw that provides a benefit in exchange for another penalty.

Early on, I was offered a Flaw that would've given me 3 skill points every level-up (a 50% increase that adds up meaningfully over time) in exchange for being required to distribute my skill points evenly through every available option. I didn't end up picking it, but having to sit and debate it with myself for a few minutes felt awesome, as a meaningful decision that struck at the heart of the actual game mechanics.

I also deeply appreciate how crunchy the skill system is. Simply put, if you don't invest in something, you may not have the best option for getting through a problem, tough luck!

Toward the end of the game, my character (with high Speech) was able to persuade antagonists to stand down and work together...but my lack of Science meant I couldn't solve many problems I encountered throughout missions.

It's a good approach that commits to its own design, and one that has me extremely curious to replay The Outer Worlds 2 with vastly different character builds.

The Outer Worlds 2: Visuals and audio

The Outer Worlds 2 looks good overall. While it's not the most visually demanding game around, the art direction goes a long way in aiding its presentation, bringing truly gorgeous alien worlds filled with crystal forests and ponds brimming with bioluminescence.

The game has Visual and Performance options on Xbox Series X. I opted to play in Performance mode, where it ran at 60 FPS in exchange for lowering the resolution. The framerate was fairly solid in moment-to-moment gameplay, though I did notice a few drops in pitched battles where explosions were constantly going off.

It's also worth noting that due to most planets being a bit larger and having more to explore than the first Outer Worlds, there are far fewer loading screens. You'll still encounter them aplenty if you're fast-traveling everywhere, but it's not as grating to explore and wander as before.

The audio design is likewise solid, though I do have to note the soundtrack seemed oddly subdued throughout much of the game. There are some good tracks, but they seem few and far between.

The Outer Worlds 2: Accessibility and approachability

The Outer Worlds 2 features a large number of different accessibility options. You can customize the user interface to your liking, including removing most of it or setting it to fade, increasing the size of text, and adjusting the colors (and background colors) of subtitles to make them more readable.

If you're worried about trying out this game without having played the first one, don't. Because The Outer Worlds 2 is set in an entirely new colony with a new cast of characters, you're not missing out on much by just hopping in here. You might miss a couple of jokes by not being as familiar with the corporations, but that's it.

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My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You've enjoyed other Obsidian games like Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds and Avowed.
• You enjoy role-playing games that focus on player choices and skills.
• You're a fan of first-person and third-person shooting combat systems.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You're not a fan of role-playing games with extensive dialogue and reading.
• You don't like science-fiction that heavily focus on human factions and space western settings.

The Outer Worlds 2 is what most players of the first game would hope and expect it to be: A slightly bigger game that keeps most of what made the formula work in the first place, improving on the handful of areas where players raised complaints.

I suspect and hope there'll be some fun conversations surrounding what Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 do differently in the months to come, and there are things I prefer about each game. Ultimately, I'm happy to have played both in the same year.

If you're a returning fan, diving into The Outer Worlds 2 is a no-brainer. If you were put off by the combat, then I'd still encourage you to give it a try, as the team has vastly improved the moment-to-moment gameplay without sacrificing anything else along the way.

With two story expansions promised to be on the way, I'm hoping to set foot on new strange worlds threatened by hyper-capitalism before long.

The Outer Worlds 2 launches on October 29 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.

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Ninja Gaiden has something of a storied history with Xbox.

The franchise itself debuted in the 1980s, but was rebooted in 2004 specifically for the original Xbox. Since then, it evolved into a sprawling franchise with a variety of remakes, spin offs, and more recently, remasters.

As we approach Xbox's 25th anniversary, it is perhaps appropriate that Ninja Gaiden is joining the likes of Gears of War, Halo, Forza, Flight Simulator, Age of Empires, and Fable as yet another Xbox story staple, developed in partnership between Xbox Game Studios, Koei Tecmo, Team Ninja, and now, the legendary Platinum Games.

Platinum Games is responsible for what is arguably one of the best 3D hack n' slash titles of all time in Metal Gear Rising (at least in my view), which is why I was more than excited to see how the studio handled Ninja Gaiden 4.

I openly admit I'm not a huge player of these titles, barely remembering my experience with the original game back in the day. I've been playing the remasters as part of the Master Collection released recently, but consider this more of a franchise newcomer's review, which I presume many of you will also be.

Ninja Gaiden is generally known for its combat complexity, difficulty, and shall we say "light" approach to story delivery. These are games all about style, slashing, and severed limbs — and Ninja Gaiden 4 delivers that in bloody abundance.

This review was conducted on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox Ally X using a code provided by Microsoft. Microsoft did not see the contents of this review prior to publication.

Ninja Gaiden 4 Review: Performance and Graphics

Ninja Gaiden 4 is the first game that I've reviewed roughly half of the time on the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, which is a testament to its overall optimization and performance quality.

Ninja Gaiden 4 is a hack n' slash showcase as noted, but the canvas upon which you can carve your bloody art is fairly impressive in its own right. Like other games, Ninja Gaiden is a meandering mash up between neo Japanese mysticism and cyberpunk vistas, and the developers spared no quarter expressing themselves here.

In Ninja Gaiden 4, you play as Yakumo, a young ninja of the Raven clan, directly rivalled against series' legend Ryu Hayabusa's Hayabusa clan. Yakumo's Raven lineage gives him an appropriate array of Raven-inspired powers which look as spectacular as they feel to deploy in combat, but we'll talk more about that in the gameplay segment.

Ninja Gaiden 4 doesn't revolutionize the franchise's delivery of storytelling. Once again, it's a pretty light-touch affair, providing the most thread-bare excuses to go headlong into slicing hundreds of enemies into tiny pieces. I think the game could've used a bit more ambition here.

I'm not suggesting it needed to transform into a cinematic masterpiece by any means, but the characters and story beats aren't even memorable really here. Metal Gear Rising's character roster spawned an array of memes that endure to this day, I doubt Ninja Gaiden 4's cast will be remembered in the same way. But it's not a big deal, I doubt many are exactly here for the story beats.

Where Ninja Gaiden 4 does truly excel is in its visual creativity. An ancient curse has gripped future Tokyo and threatens to spread beyond. Yakumo's quest to stop it puts him on a collision course with various factions that seem to want the curse to spread, alongside the demonic entities it summons. As a result, you'll face off against sci-fi ninja cyborgs and ancient folkloric demons in equal measure. Some of the boss designs look sooner ripped from a soulsborne title, and fit flawlessly into the visual universe being curated here.

The game is incredibly performant with crisp visuals. Performance mode is better on Xbox Series X|S, delivering 60 FPS while maintaining good visual clarity. On the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, the game is also very performant. I found it best with TSR scaling turned on and FSR turned off, with dynamic resolution scaling also turned off — as both could too aggressively crush visuals. FPS is nice, but there can be so much chaos on screen with projectiles and enemies rushing you from all sides that you might want to sacrifice some frames for visual clarity in this one. But even on the base Xbox Ally, you'll have a solid experience here with some graphics tweaks. Very impressive.

Ninja Gaiden 4 Review: Gameplay and Story

Ninja Gaiden 4 doesn't pull punches when it comes to relentless, restless violence, and we're absolutely here for it.

Armed with a range of deadly weapons, from simple katana's all the way up to Doctor Ocotpus-like sci-fi claws, Ninja Gaiden 4 gives you blank canvas and begs to be sprayed with severed limbs and splattered blood.

For this fourth instalment, Platinum Games' combat design shines through with gusto, proving that the studio behind titles like Nier Automata and Metal Gear Rising still has it. It borrows heavily from combat traditions outlined in the previous games, while expanding upon it with inspirations from the likes of Devil May Cry among others.

Continuously slashing enemies and weaving in parries and dodges raises your chances of severing an enemy's limb, leaving them open for an instant and stylish DOOM-like glory kill. These execution animations never get old, and are hugely varied across the game's different weapon types.

There's a truly huge array of combos and combat skills to learn for each weapon, and it can honestly be fairly daunting if you're not typically a fan of these types of games.

Mastering all of them fighting game-style will be absolutely necessary to conquering the game's higher difficulty modes. You can also get away with pretty much button mashing on the lower difficulties if you don't fancy getting too sweaty with the game's move lists. Even on normal, though, Ninja Gaiden 4 can be a deeply challenging game.

The game's signature combat move is Yakumo's Raven form, which can be triggered at will by holding down the left trigger. In this mode, Yakumo's attacks are augmented with the power of the Raven clan, and increase his damage, reach, and blocking power, while draining out its associated combat meter. Using these attacks wisely is crucial to avoiding damage, as enemies sometimes leave themselves open to be staggered specifically by Raven-enhanced attacks.

Learning enemy attack patterns and cleverly using the game's Raven form abilities made me feel smarter and more skillful than I am, which I think is the hall mark of a great hack n' slash title. It really accentuates that ninja fantasy with confidence, and its bombastic combat animations and execution sequences really injects some Metal Gear Rising nostalgia for good measure.

I do have some minor gripes as pertains to map design and side questing. Earning upgrades is often best done by performing side quests, which largely amount to "kill x mobs" and "find this item" drudgery. The fact there's no actual map system in the game can also make it a chore to actually find where a lot of these are — which is an old school tradition I think might've been best left in the old school. But they don't impede the game's beefy 10-12 hour campaign, unless you're trying to be a completionist.

Ninja Gaiden 4 Review: Conclusion

Ninja Gaiden 4 is a very strong entry in a year that has enjoyed many high profile ninja titles, from Shinobi, to Ghost of Yotei, to Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound itself. It doesn't reinvent the franchise's formula, instead respecting the franchise's strongest entries with a sprinkling of Platinum on top for good measure.

I wouldn't have minded a little bit more ambition with the game's characters or story delivery, and I don't mean 30 minutes of cutscenes between each action sequence either. But Devil May Cry 5 and even Platinum Games' own Nier Automata and Metal Gear Rising showed that you can have a hack n' slash that embraces the weird a little more and delivers something a bit more memorable. But I doubt many of you were here hoping for that.

What you were hoping for is wanton limb-slashing spectacle and style, and Ninja Gaiden 4 delivers that in buckets. This is a great start to what is hopefully a strong revival for one of the industry's most iconic hack n' slash traditions.

In my restless dreams, I see that town.

Genuinely. I think I have a cluster of neurons dedicated specifically to Silent Hill and Resident Evil, both games that heavily defined my childhood. I remember getting Silent Hill 2 for Christmas, and spending the festive day bunkered down in my room with the curtains drawn, having myself a second Halloween instead.

Silent Hill remains one of the industry's most iconic, most legendary video game franchises, horror or not. The uniquely haunting atmosphere, uncanny enemies, and now retro graphics have found a new life in modern times, too, inspiring a wave of analog horror projects in gaming and beyond.

It's against this backdrop of admiration and nostalgia that I dove into Silent Hill F on Xbox Series X (and a bit on PC too, via Xbox Play Anywhere). This is the first truly new entry in the franchise in years upon years, with a barrage of disappointing spin-offs in its rear-view mirror.

Following the confident remake of Silent Hill 2 from Bloober Team, it began to look like Silent Hill was ready for a big comeback. Bloober is also remaking Silent Hill 1, and doubtless, Silent Hill 3 and maybe even the controversial Silent Hill 4 will follow. But remakes won't last. Silent Hill needs new blood, too, which is where NeoBard stepped in with Silent Hill F.

Like a lot of Silent Hill fans, I was sceptical at best about this project for a variety of reasons, from its combat focus to its completely new setting. However, after spending a couple of dozen hours in Ebisugaoka, I left this new nightmare feeling haunted in the best and most familiar way possible.

Silent Hill is back. F is an unmissable Xbox, PC, and PS5 game for horror fans everywhere.

This review was written primarily on Xbox Series X with an Xbox Play Anywhere (Xbox / PC) code provided by Konami. Konami did not see the review prior to publishing.

Silent Hill F Review: Art and Performance

Silent Hill F follows the classic franchise traditions, taking place in a contemporary Earthly locale twisted by horrific corruption and nightmarish fog. Set in the mountain village of Ebisugaoka, Silent Hill F puts us in control of Hinako Shimizu, a troubled mid-teen embroiled in what seems to be standard high school drama and familial tensions. Those notions unravel quite quickly in Silent Hill F, however. More on that in the story segment.

Ebisugaoka is a truly gorgeous location and a very impressive canvas for presenting the horrors of Silent Hill F. Washed in that familiar fog, the town gradually succumbs to a seeping rot comprised of rapidly spawning Higanbana red spider lilies and mounds of heaving gore. Silent Hill F uses light and shadow incredibly well, contrasting the desaturated natural tones of its wooden architecture with the glistening crimson of the strange contagion gripping Ebisugaoka — leaving the impression of a town gradually slipping into the underworld.

No self-respecting Silent Hill landscape would be complete without horrific monsters to go with it, and F is no exception here either.

In typical Silent Hill fashion, the monsters in the game are in part inspired by the protagonist's central traumas. Expect to see contorted mannequinized school students eager to stab you in the back, and screeching matriarchal and patriarchal figures strewn through a nightmarish lens.

Silent Hill F's combat scenarios join previous games with dynamic music, which ramps up as more enemies enter the fray, or as your health depletes. Akira Yamaoka reprises his role as Silent Hill's signature sound architect, joining with Kensuke Inage, Dai, and Koichi "Xaki" Sakita to score the game. The team did a truly amazing job here, weaving in subtle nods to Silent Hill's iconic wailing radio in among the twisted Japanese folk-inspired tones.

I found the game to be decently performant on my Xbox Series X and my RTX 4080 PC. On Xbox Series X, I would have liked to have seen a smoother frame rate from the game's "quality" mode. I found it to be a tad too choppy to abide, and ended up switching it to performance mode for 60 FPS. Even there, some sequences had performance issues, but it was relatively rare. My PC is pretty beefy overall and was able to run Silent Hill F on high settings without issue. On the Legion Go (Z1E) on 30W turbo, it was also very playable, and even on lower settings like 15W, there were plenty of tweaks you could pull to get it to hit a smooth 30.

Silent Hill F Review: Gameplay

Silent Hill F is a survival horror at its core, with a large maze-like township with a solid variety of locales. You'll traverse densely packed urban areas, haunted farmland outskirts, mountain trails, and traditional complex interiors. There's also Silent Hill's signature "otherworld," which I won't spoil here; suffice to say that I felt like these segments were the game at its weakest and least creative, ironically, since inside an "otherworld," you're technically no longer constrained by having to make something seem realistic.

I found myself wishing more of the game took place in the township with its variety and "lived-in" sense of realism, rather than the repetitive and occasionally maddening corridors of the other world. Alas, maybe next time.

I played through most of Silent Hill F on the "hard" difficulty, although its "Story" difficulty says that's the difficulty setting for a standard Silent Hill experience. I wanted to get a good taste of its approach to combat, which even generated use of the dreaded "soulslike" word in some reports, and get a sense of how the different settings differed. As someone who's played a decent amount of soulsborne and soulslike games, I'm not sure I'd attach the "soulslike" moniker anywhere near Silent Hill F, but its combat is a lot more involved than previous instalments.

For those worrying that they made Silent Hill F more combat-heavy for the simple sake of it, there are actually some compelling story reasons as to why she's oddly adept with a baseball bat and the like, which you'll find out as you play. I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of the game's stamina, health, and "sanity" meters, as it does give it a bit more of an arcade-y feel. But I also acknowledge that's a personal taste thing. What I feel less is an issue with taste is how combat sometimes intersects with encounter design, which isn't always congruent.

It's satisfying to successfully intercept an enemy attack, leading to a powerful swing that will usually immediately stun or stagger a monster. You can extend these "parry" windows by spending sanity meter, too, which slows down time a bit. You can also spend sanity meter to tee up your own powerful attacks even outside of parry windows, albeit at permanent cost to your meter maximum. You can replenish all of this with consumables found in the field, of course, in tried-and-true survival horror fashion.

Where the combat doesn't perform as well is towards the end, when the game goes trigger-happy with combat gauntlets. Hinako is easily staggered by enemies, and being ganged up on in a corner and stun-locked can make for a frustrating end.

I played through most of the game on "hard" difficulty, but towards the end, when anywhere up to 4 monsters were chasing you down at a time, stunning, staggering, and depleting your stamina, I started to feel as though the combat hadn't been designed with these types of encounters in mind. Hinako is hardly agile and moves incredibly slowly in general. There are some charms and things you can equip that marginally improve your combat prowess, but it does little to offset the number of interrupts the game occasionally wants to throw at you.

The problem on the other end is that "Story" difficulty is too easy, ironically. The game absolutely inundates you with health consumables to the point you will have a permanently full inventory and will trivialize combat to the point of not needing any thought or care.

I think more care and effort spent on some of Silent Hill F's late-game forced combat situations might've helped its overall feeling, because the underlying combat gameplay is very good. It's very satisfying to crack into an enemy's porcelain skull with a sledgehammer, and managing equipment durability does force you into fearful and risky scenarios. I just wish it were tuned a little more with forethought to how frustrating some encounters can be on Hard difficulty, and how bland and easy Story difficulty is.

Luckily, the story is so, so good that any combat foibles I had were quite easily washed away.

Silent Hill F Review: Story (No Spoilers)

Hinako serves as the main protagonist throughout the entire game, as she navigates her increasingly haunted town and collaborates with her remaining school friends, who seem to be the only survivors.

At the start, Hinako leaves her family home following what seems to be some kind of argument with her parents, and resolves to meet her friends in her town. Set in 1960s Japan, the game's themes revolve around societal expectations at the time, which have caused strife between Hinako, her parents, and even her school friends.

While not explicitly stated, Hinako and her friends seem to be around the "tween" age, where the divide between childhood play and more adult concerns becomes blurry. Hinako and her best friend, Shu, still pine for the old days when they could hang out and play pretend battling aliens, even if society expects them to behave more "appropriately" for young men and women. That's only the most surface-level tension going on in Hinako's life, however.

The further you play, the more you'll learn about how complex and dark Hinako's personal life is, which feeds the horrors plaguing the town of Ebisugaoka.

In Silent Hill F, you'll explore a variety of locations Hinako is familiar with, and she'll remark, often nostalgically, about childhood events therein. Silent Hill F follows familiar themes and traditions from previous games to some degree, but there are some absolutely huge curve balls that left me jaw agape.

Silent Hill F pulls absolutely no punches with its story delivery, and explores very mature themes in a way that doesn't come across as simplistic or exploitative, nor for spectacle. The game leaves a lot up to the user's interpretation, too, potentially weaving in visual hints, metaphors, and symbolism that have broad implications both for Hinako and the entire Silent Hill mythos.

It's difficult to really traverse the depths of Silent Hill F's story without straying into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say, the character performances are excellent across the board, urging me to dig deeper into the game's rabbit hole despite some frustrations with the game's combat difficulty roller coaster. I found myself eagerly reading every note, and hanging on to every word, searching for clues in that familiar Silent Hill way. The dark corners of Hinako's personal experience made a fitting canvas for Silent Hill F, which combines those familial horrors with Japanese mysticism into something truly unique.

Like Hinako, I often found myself transported back to my childhood years in Silent Hill F, albeit vicariously through the safety of its video game lens — enthralled, intrigued, and horrified in the best possible way. I was restlessly invested in Hinako's plight from start to finish, and I'm curious to see if she will return someday, in some form, in a future instalment.

Silent Hill F Review: Final thoughts

If there's one word I can use to sum up how I felt about my experience with Silent Hill F, it's grateful. This was clearly a labor of love for NeoBard and everyone who worked on the game, tasked with adding to the legendary canon that is Silent Hill.

With years hidden in the shadows, Silent Hill as a franchise has taken on a life of its own to some degree, as fans pine for the uniquely gnawing horror that it represents.

Going from minimal expectations, it's more than I could've hoped for to say that Silent Hill F is absolutely worthy of a place among the best entries in the franchise, and definitely one you should personally experience.

Silent Hill F is thoughtful in its themes, confident in its presentation, ambitious with its combat design, and unapologetic with its violence. It's a game that will stick with you after you reach any one of its conclusions, and the nightmare continues even further in New Game+ with additional story elements.

Silent Hill F is one of 2025's best games, whether you're a fan of horror or simply want a deep story, frankly. Definitely don't miss this one.

In 2021, the experienced Swedish developers at MachineGames revealed that the team's next project would be an Indiana Jones game, with Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard serving as executive producer on the adventure.

It seemed a match made in heaven, and indeed, it was.

I absolutely loved Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and indeed, it ended up being my favorite game of last year, deftly mixing in MachineGames' experience in first-person combat and Nazi obliteration with carefully-constructed puzzles and a sense of cinematic adventure that could live up Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Naturally, I was curious about what the promised DLC would offer, and earlier this year, the team revealed The Order of Giants, with Indy exploring Rome in search of secrets surrounding the titular myths.

Having played through The Order of Giants, I'm happy to say it's well worth checking out and lives up to MachineGames' work on the main experience...for the most part.

This review was conducted using the same review copy of the Premium Edition of Indiana Jones and The Great Circle as our review of the base game, provided by Bethesda. They did not see or have any input in the content of this review.

What is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants?

The Order of Giants is a DLC (downloadable content) that expands Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with new areas to explore, a new story to follow, and more.

Like the main game, it's been developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is available on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5 for $20. Unlike the main game, it is not included in an Xbox Game Pass subscription.

The Order of Giants is also included in the Premium Edition of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, meaning that any players that picked up that more expensive version of the game already have access to this new story.

The Order of Giants is set during the Venice portion of the original game, with Indy veering off on a side quest, promising to help a priest named Father Orlando Ricci, who is accompanied a chatty parrot.

From there, things spiral out, and the intrepid hero is forced to explore the ruins under Rome in pursuit of a cult that seems to be guarding the secrets of an ancient Nameless Crusader.

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants review — What I liked

I half-considered trying to get away with a one-sentence review for this DLC, but the fact is, The Order of Giants is merely more of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

That's not even remotely a bad thing. I'm quite happy to have more puzzles to solve, with one particular contraption that's going to stick out in my brain long after I finished this adventure. Indeed, this DLC is dense with puzzles, and without spoilers, I appreciate how many of them played into the themes of Roman and Crusader history.

The game continues to look beautiful, and I also appreciate getting to see a bit of Rome, with quite literal layers of history to delve into.

Indiana Jones as a franchise plays into ancient cultures and lost worlds with a fun magnifying lens, taking a look at different ruins or myths and dressing them up with plausible explanations and fierce traps, with an extra touch of the strange that defies our understanding of reality.

All of that is present here in The Order of Giants, with Troy Baker continuing to give an incredible performance as the titular adventurer.

MachineGames continues to demonstrate a remarkable understanding of film techniques, with a couple of particular shots in certain cutscenes that feel like they've could've been plucked out of a nonexistent film from the era of the original trilogy.

The team's penchant for clever writing also continues, and I found myself always making sure to scour every single note I found for hidden gems. One particular highlight shed a light on the logistics behind running a cult, with a hilarious note on the quantities of food needed in order to host themed feasts.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants review — What I disliked

While I've had a great time with The Order of Giants, this bite-sized adventure does suffer in one major way. The antagonists here can't hold a candle to the forces you're up against across the Great Circle.

I'm certain it's a conscious choice by design — fighting cultists instead of fascists is a bit more lighthearted — but because you don't have long to get to know them, they're never really fleshed out in a serious way that makes them feel threatening. Emmerich Voss and Locus cast a towering shadow that simply isn't matched.

Tangentially, I also found this DLC to be just a tad shorter than I'd have liked, taking just under four hours to finish, though I'll likely tack on another hour as I finish my search for every last collectible. It's the better option compared to overstaying its welcome, but still, having just a bit more to do in Rome would've been nice.

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants review — My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You want even more of Indiana Jones.

While it's not quite a full expansion, The Order of Giants is the perfect excuse to revisit Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. There are new mysteries to solve, new photos to take, and even a cat to pet.

• You played the base game through Xbox Game Pass

While Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, this DLC is not, so you'll need to purchase it in order to play through the Roman adventure.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You didn't like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

If, for some reason, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle didn't click with you, then this DLC is absolutely not changing your opinion. It's more of what came before, with additional puzzles and sneaking through ancient ruins while clobbering opponents with whatever tools happen to be lying around.

Ultimately, it's pretty simple: If you liked what Indiana Jones and the Great Circle had to offer, then this is more of that. More puzzles to solve, but instead of knocking out fascists while examining ancient sites all around the world, you're clobbering strange cultists underneath Rome.

Playing through The Order of Giants has immediately refreshed me on just how much I enjoy MachineGames' take on the world's expert adventurer archeologist, and it has me reflecting on what I want to see the team do next.

With MachineGames studio head Jerk Gustafsson recently indicating that the team still wants to make Wolfenstein 3 — it's unlikely to be a coincidence that a Wolfenstein TV series is also reportedly in the works — I'm torn between my love of Indiana Jones and a desire to see BJ Blaskowicz get the final entry in his trilogy.

It's beyond unlikely that Indiana Jones finds any meaningful purchase in media outside of future MachineGames-developed titles. At the same time, the sheer brutality and careful introspection Wolfenstein: The New Order and The New Colossus offered is begging to be revisited, especially at times like this.

I'm torn, and I'm truly unsure what I'd prefer to see this talented studio do next.

Still, whatever it is, I'll be there, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of Nazis to kill.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants is available on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Steam and Xbox PC), and PlayStation 5, and is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026.

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I wrote previously how I owed Bloober Team an apology. When I heard the Observer, Layers of Fear developer was slated to tackle the Silent Hill 2 Remake, I wasn't particularly enamoured with the idea.

Silent Hill 2 is a personal pillar game for me, and Bloober's previous titles, while sporting shades of brilliance, never really gave the impression they could tackle something as subversive as Silent Hill.

I was dead wrong.

Silent Hill 2 Remake is up there with the likes of the Resident Evil remakes for quality and faithfulness to the source material, but it remained true that Bloober effectively had a legendary blueprint to work from here ... is it enough proof that Bloober Team could hit a similar high bar with one of their own franchises?

Cronos: The New Dawn emphatically says "yes."

Bloober Team has well and truly ascended to "AAA" quality with its very own IP. Cronos: The New Dawn takes everything the studio has learned about curating seminal horror experiences and pours it tenderly into an amalgamation that is as familiar and oddly nostalgic as it is fresh and bold.

The unnerving atmospherics, panic-inducing combat, and ambitious storytelling put Cronos: The New Dawn up there with the likes of Dead Space, Silent Hill, and, dare I say, Resident Evil itself as one of the best horror franchise debuts of all time.

Without spoilers, here's an overview of what you can expect from Cronos: The New Dawn, which launches on Xbox Series X|S (with Xbox Play Anywhere), PS5, and Windows PC on September 5, 2025.

This review was written with a code provided by Bloober Team, reviewed primarily on an Xbox Series X.

Cronos: The New Dawn — Visuals and sound

If there's one thing Bloober Team has always been able to nail, it's raw visuals and atmospherics. Cronos: The New Dawn is no different here, with a truly haunting collection of locales, and even timelines — more on that shortly.

In Cronos: The New Dawn, you play as the mysterious "Traveller," whose mission remains obscured in intrigue deep into the game. What is quite apparent from the outset is that something truly horrifying has happened to society, and possibly, the entire universe.

An unnamed virus has turned all biological entities into hideous lichen-like masses, mindlessly (and forcibly) merging themselves with other infected hosts to create even more glistening concoctions of bone and flesh, without even a hint of sanity.

You're here in the aftermath, as a sort of time traveller. The apocalypse has already happened, you're just a visitor, and that sense of loneliness punctuates across pockets of hideous and towering mounds of congealed body parts and flesh.

Set in Poland across multiple timelines, players navigate a variety of urban locations across a variety of points of decay and destruction. You'll encounter buildings that have been utterly twisted by the unnamed virus, making hallways look more akin to inner bowels, dripping and squelching underfoot.

On the flip side, time itself has also become fractured for reasons unknown. The sky is wreathed in an endless murk, choking visibility, and ramping up tension as you struggle to make out shadows in the fog. Bloober uses lighting absolutely masterfully here, with various segments shrouded in total darkness, save for the torch on your suit.

The warped flow of time has objects suspended in the air, with entire portions of the city twisted into the sky and floating in unknown space. The game flips seamlessly between sci-fi vistas and grotesque 80s-style body horror, with environs that bleed with lived-in details and palpitation-inducing sound treatment.

There were points during my run through Chronos: The New Dawn that I found myself stopping simply to admire the scenery. Bloober has always seemed savvy to how a player might behave in their games, and every time I felt like stopping to admire the view, the game's majestic soundtrack would kick in to accompany it in ways that felt dynamic and seamless.

The soundtrack in general is also just fantastic, generally leaning into nostalgic analogue 80s sci-fi tones, accentuated with a variety of creepy discordance as appropriate.

The game's dilapidated locations feel painstaking in their construction and detailing, and combined with stellar modelling work and fantastic dynamic lighting, Cronos: The New Dawn is as immersive as they come.

I played Cronos: The New Dawn primarily on Xbox Series X in quality mode at 30 FPS to get the full force of the game's lighting and murky inclemency, but it also has a 60 FPS mode for those who prefer the added frames. It's often the case that quality modes want for smoothness, but Bloober Team really delivered when it comes to performance here, with no perceptible frame drops or graphical glitches throughout my entire playthrough. I didn't encounter a single bug, crash, or game-breaking issue during play, which is a testament to Bloober's craft.

Cronos: The New Dawn — Gameplay

If you've played games like Dead Space or Resident Evil, you'll know immediately what to expect here — but I suspect fans of The Evil Within might more immediately get to grips with what Cronos asks of you.

Cronos: The New Dawn, much like its in-game monsters, feels like an amalgamation of various horror stylings. It borrows the armor-clad, helmeted protagonist of Dead Space, complete with heavy movement and two separate "last resort" melee attacks. It follows the over-the-shoulder survival horror gunplay style of Resident Evil 4 onwards, and the map design of Silent Hill 2, with mist-shrouded linear segments connecting more complex, often punishingly dark interior locations.

I felt like it reminisced mostly of The Evil Within, though, with its quite aggressive insistence that you should approach combat thoughtfully, and wield the environment as a primary weapon.

In Cronos: The New Dawn, you are a futuristic explorer of sorts, endowed with H.R. Giger-inspired retro-tech pulled straight out of Prometheus. However, you do sport an archetypical handgun and shotgun from the outset, albeit with a twist.

You can charge every weapon up to boost their damage, and boost their damage, you will very much want to do — ammo in this game is incredibly scarce, with Bloober carefully managing how much you receive when compared to the encounters dotted throughout the game's sizeable campaign. Throwing in a melee kill to save a couple of bullets or using a strategically-placed gas cannister to ignite enemies can save precious resources, and you'll need all you can find to survive.

Fire is also a very precious resource in the game, much like The Evil Within. The Traveller has a wrist-mounted flame thrower, Boba Fett style, that can be used to stun enemies and deal some modest damage over time. It can also be used to clear obstacles in the environment, but perhaps more crucially, it can be used to burn felled enemies into dust. Why is this important? Well, the nature of the virus compels the afflicted to literally merge together, forming huge clumps of hideous and violent biomass.

The more you allow enemies to merge, the more dangerous they become. They will sprout additional limbs, gain new abilities, and deal far more damage. Approaching combat carefully to prevent merging enemies forms a large basis of play, and it keeps combat encounters feeling as dynamic as they do frantic.

I was a bit disappointed when I noticed Cronos: The New Dawn clocked in at "only" 20GB, assuming that was indicative of the game's length. It isn't. Cronos is a very meaty game with a good variety of complex locales, easily topping 15+ hours for an average playthrough. Completionists hunting for every text and audio file, every secret, and every cat (yes, you can save cats in this game), may be looking at 18-20 hours on top.

I played the game quite slowly and methodically, checking every corner and managing ammunition carefully. The game is creepy first and foremost, but I would say it isn't quite as punishingly scary as something like Silent Hill or indeed The Evil Within. Cronos: The New Dawn doesn't lean on cheap jump scares or overly terrifying music to keep things tense, and its reassuring save room music is always a few corridors away to give you a welcoming reprieve.

The game's level designs, to that end, are very well done. Much like Resident Evil and similar games, Cronos has interior locations that require some puzzling and key hunting in order to progress. There is no map, but there is a compass that guides you in the general direction of your next objective. The level designs are varied enough to maintain a sense of direction despite the lack of an actual map, impressively. The hand-crafted details and landmarks help orient you, which is a testament to the game's thoughtful design.

Much like Dead Space and The Evil Within, you will have opportunities to upgrade your gear throughout. There are also tools and other items you'll unlock as you explore, helping you gain an edge over the game's various enemy types. Just as earlier enemy types start becoming trivial, the game throws new horrors into the mix to test you, however.

From the outset, your weapon sway can be quite aggressive, making landing shots tricky. The game does have quite aggressive aim-assist options, but I found them to be a little too aggressive at times, pulling your cursor away from enemy weak points and getting stubbornly locked onto resource crates and things like that. With a few upgrades to your accuracy, you won't have issues placing crucial headshots on enemies, however. A quick punch or flamethrower spray can also stun mobs, helping you line up shots more easily.

I found Cronos: The New Dawn to be fun and varied throughout my time with it. The diverse array of detailed locations, the environmental storytelling, the impressive vistas, and infectious combat made Cronos: The New Dawn one of the most fun action horror games I've played in years, but it's probably the game's maddeningly mysterious story that will hook you above all.

Cronos: The New Dawn — Story (No spoilers)

It's always a bit tricky reviewing a game's story without hitting spoiler territory, and Cronos: The New Dawn makes it particularly tough given its format — making every moment a potential spoiler.

As noted, you play as the Traveller, in what will seem from the outset like a deliciously warped homage to The Thing and 12 Monkeys in equal measure.

Much like 12 Monkeys, The Traveller hints that you have been sent from the future to gather information on the past, in an attempt to ascertain what caused the apocalypse. The virus has twisted and melted society into crazed cells of a deadly lichen-like slime mould, and if that wasn't bad enough, the laws of space and time also seem to be utterly broken.

The Traveller knows just about as much as you do going in, armed with only fragments of information on just what the hell went wrong. You will travel with them across different timelines, meeting key players during the events at the start of the outbreak, and exploring evidence about its concluding act.

The Traveller itself is shrouded in mystery throughout much of the game. She wears a large suit that shields her from the virus and time anomalies outside, but she also speaks with a robotic, minimalistic tone at the start of the game. The Traveller is part of an organization known as The Collective, who speak in riddles and has peppered the apocalyptic landscape with retro-future tech, including resources, weapons, save room check points, and blockades.

It seems, however, only one member of The Collective is allowed to actively search the wasteland at any one time. It gives Cronos: The New Dawn a uniquely lonely atmosphere, as you pick through the ruins of civilization and explore correspondence of various characters that may have been involved directly or indirectly with its downfall.

The game is set in Soviet-era Poland, primarily before the fall of the USSR. The game explores real-world themes of political corruption and Marxist-Leninist socialism. The futuristic "Collective" and the amalgamate hivemind of infected slime mould doubtlessly represent themes of losing one's individuality. It's furthered by the Traveller's "vocation." It's quite literally your job to travel to the past and physically extract (violently) the psyche of individuals before their minds are lost to the virus.

The more individuals you "extract" using your future tech serves to drive The Traveller down a winding road of warped sanity, with overlapping consciousnesses being absorbed directly into your suit's "Phylactery" computer. The information therein could help The Collective in its mission to ascertain what went wrong, but much like those who came before you, the risks get increasingly extreme as you plot your course through the wastes.

The present might be utterly destroyed, but across various trips to the past, you'll meet a variety of characters who were at ground zero during the outbreak. The game offers various choices that will shape the game's multiple endings, giving you plenty of reasons to return and try different routes through the game's beefy campaign.

Cronos: The New Dawn feels a bit like tumbling down a rabbit hole. Its unique blend of retro-futurism, high-concept time-travelling sci-fi, and traditional body horror feels like it shouldn't work on paper — but it inexplicably does. Cronos: The New Dawn's ambitious mish-mash of inspirations comes together in a glorious whole and emerges as something utterly unique in its own right.

Cronos: The New Dawn — Conclusion

Cronos: The New Dawn is the most excited I've been about a new game in a very long time. Independent developers are increasingly stepping up and taking the role traditional publishers used to fill, as they go off and chase infinite service games and shareholder bait. The creativity, ambition, and raw passion inherent in games like Cronos: The New Dawn remind me what I love so much about gaming, and it represents the culmination of years of hard work, learning, and growth for Bloober Team.

Cronos: The New Dawn is an absolutely fantastic horror sci-fi experience. Its classic survival horror gameplay will be immediately familiar to vets, but its mind-warping story showcases Bloober's unique talent for making horrific and fantastical scenarios seem uncannily believable.

Cronos: The New Dawn's satisfying combat, evocative environments, stellar sound work, polished performance, and inexplicably ambitious story showcase Bloober at its absolute best, solidifying their place as one of the industry's most exciting independent studios in the world. September 2025 is absolutely stacked, but horror fans absolutely must not sleep on this game.

Cronos: The New Dawn launches on Xbox Series X|S (Xbox Play Anywhere), PS5, and Windows PC on September 5, 2025.

I throw my shield into a Mancubus. I dodge, then parry a Pinky Rider's attack before smashing the armor of a Dread Knight with my flail. A weakened Komodo falls after two more blasts from the Super Shotgun.

So goes another round against the forces of Hell in DOOM: The Dark Ages, the latest first-person shooter in the long-running DOOM series.

While every DOOM game tries new things, DOOM: The Dark Ages is a radical departure from what came before, re-envisioning the Slayer as a bulky, implacable tank instead of a barrel-rolling fighter jet. You're still fast, but there's a new weight to everything. Every movement counts more than ever, and every attack must be more brutal than ever before.

It's a significant change, but it's one that works wildly, resulting in a campaign that's super fun to play, providing more weapons and tools to play around with as you smash through thousands of demons.

I've loved my time with DOOM: The Dark Ages, and it's a highlight for me in a year that's already stacked with fantastic games so far.

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Bethesda Softworks. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

What is DOOM: The Dark Ages?

• DOOM: The Dark Ages is a single-player first-person shooter.
• The game is developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks.
• It is a prequel to the company's prior titles DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal.

DOOM: The Dark Ages is a first-person shooter developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks.

Much like in DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal, players take control of the iconic Slayer, whose hatred for demons keeps him going again and again.

While you'll start off a bit limited, you gain more weapons and tools as you go, increasing your overall firepower and giving you options for how you want to tackle your foes.

Killing specific "Leader" demons will provide rewards, increasing the Slayer's health, armor, and maximum ammo.

DOOM: The Dark Ages will take around 14 or so hours for the average player, with more or less time depending on the difficulty settings chosen, as well as how much you want to explore in search of the game's myriad secrets.

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DOOM: The Dark Ages review — Story and characters

• DOOM: The Dark Ages takes place before the events of DOOM (2016).
• The story revolves around the threat of Prince Ahzrak, who leads the demons against the Night Sentinels.
• The Slayer is under the control of the Makyrs and used to aid the Night Sentinels.

DOOM: The Dark Ages is a prequel, telling the story of the long war between the Slayer and the Night Sentinels against the forces of Hell, the latter of which are being led by Prince Ahzrak.

The Slayer starts out under the control of the powerful Makyrs, deployed as a weapon where needed. He's a one-man army, but there may be more going on than is first apparent. If you've played the other games, you'll have a very rough idea of where things could be headed, but if not, this is the perfect point to jump in and come along for the ride.

The story is all carried with the tone of an M-rated Saturday morning cartoon. That's not a bad thing at all, as it perfectly suits the nature of DOOM, but it is a bit simple in nature, even though the lavish cutscenes look fantastic.

DOOM: The Dark Ages review — Gameplay and features

• DOOM: The Dark Ages slows down the overall game speed compared to Eternal.
• There's a huge focus on blocking and parrying, with mostly new weapons.
• Atlan Mech and Dragonback gameplay help break up the pacing.

DOOM: The Dark Ages makes some radical changes to the flow of gameplay. It's still "rip and tear," but with a much greater emphasis on trading heavy blows and standing fast on the battlefield.

The Slayer has been slowed down, with the double-jump removed. In its place is the Shield Saw, a multipurpose weapon that can be used to throw through lower-ranked demons, weaken larger foes, and block enemy attacks, with the option to parry certain key attacks. Attacks that can be parried glow green by default, though you can change the color if you'd prefer.

It's a deep-seated change to the overall game design, but it's one that works. Heavyset weapons complement that change, with an arsenal that includes plasma rifles, heavy spike throwers, and my personal favorite, Skullcrushers that chew up runed skulls and spew the sharp fragments into the forces of Hell.

While The Dark Ages is slower-paced than Eternal, you can ramp up the action if you find it a bit too slow. Personally, I opted to set the game speed to 120%, making it faster without losing the heavyset pace.

Battlefields are designed similarly to DOOM (2016), though with some larger maps that have more to explore. There are secrets everywhere, with collectible toys, pages of lore, and more to find, if you're so inclined.

Carefully exploring the map, solving puzzles, and completing mission-specific challenges will also reward you with Gold, Rubies, and Wraithstones, which are used to upgrade the Slayer's arsenal. The standard shotgun is already nice, but with a boost, it sets enemies on fire, making them drop armor fragments.

There are a lot of options here, making The Dark Ages feel far more flexible than the unyielding (if hyper-polished) combat loop present in Eternal. You may want to lean one way or another, but there's usually no one tool you must use, outside of the aforementioned blocking and parrying.

While these "standard" levels make up the majority of the 22-mission campaign, The Dark Ages further breaks up the pacing by letting you soar on the back of your dragon, Serrat, as well as climbing into a Pacific Rim-style combat mech called an Atlan.

These sections are fun, if a bit simple, with the dragon focused on racing across the skies, dodging enemy attacks to empower its chaingun before blasting demonic fighters to bits, or pouncing on a Titan and ripping its head off.

The Atlan is similarly simple, with a gameplay loop focused on punching and dodging enemy Titans before blasting them to bits with various oversized weapons. Both sections do a fantastic job of selling the Kaiju-like scale at hand, as looking carefully reveals tiny versions of the demons you're normally fighting on foot.

DOOM: The Dark Ages review — Visuals and audio

• DOOM: The Dark Ages looks fantastic, with great graphical detail.
• It runs at a steady 60 FPS without any issues and loads near-instantly on Xbox Series X.
• The soundtrack is solid with some great metal, though a hair below prior DOOM soundtracks.

Running on id Software's in-house idTech 8 engine, DOOM: The Dark Ages looks fantastic. Demons and environments alike are rendered in gorgeous detail, with ruins and gore given equal attention, while ray tracing is used to enhance overall image quality.

The game also has extensive HDR support, with tons of settings to tweak and higher potential brightness (depending on your screen) than I've seen in most other games, going all the way up to 10,000 nits.

While playing on Xbox Series X, the game always looked great, with beautiful skyboxes across medieval fortresses, lava flows in Hell, and even tentacled cosmic horrors. I also never noticed any framerate drops, even when destroying dozens of demons at a time.

I also noticed there are a ton of physical items to destroy or interact with, such as chairs, huge artillery shells, wood pallets, and other objects are knocked around whenever you sprint into them or shoot them.

DOOM games don't just have to look good; they have to sound good as well, and DOOM: The Dark Ages sounds excellent.

Playing with headphones, the thud of the Slayer landing three stories down after a jump was always wonderful, as are the various weapons, with crisp sound design making it clear when you've landed a parry or smashed a demon's armor into pieces.

Plasma weapons crackle with energy, grenades thump as they bounce, and other sweet sounds contribute to the overall feedback loop of an encounter.

The recent DOOM games also have a history of excellent soundtracks, with the tracks for The Dark Ages composed by Finishing Move, filled with heavy metal that suits the brutal tone, but it does feel like the one area where the game has stepped down.

I want to be very clear, I think it's a good soundtrack, with a couple of particularly stand-out pieces, but it comes on the back of the excellent, genre-defining work done by Mick Gordon for DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal, as well as Andrew Hulshult's contributions with The Ancient Gods Part 1 and Part 2.

DOOM: The Dark Ages review — Accessibility and approachability

• DOOM: The Dark Ages features numerous accessibility options.
• Of particular note is the "Magnify" option, which enlarges selected text.
• Players can also adjust several other aspects, including overall game speed.

There are a large number of accessibility options present in DOOM: The Dark Ages, easily eclipsing what was available in the prior games. In addition to many of the standard options seen in other games, such as adjustable font sizes, I really want to draw attention to the "Magnify" option this game uses.

With Magnify enabled, players can drastically blow up any message in the menus so that it nearly fills the screen, making it extremely easy to read any in-game text. This is an excellent option that really helps anyone who has trouble reading text, even with larger fonts, and I hope we'll see other games copy this feature.

As previously touched on, it's also extremely noteworthy that you can adjust the game speed and parry windows independently of the actual difficulty. This is a great way to tweak the experience to your liking, and I highly encourage anyone playing to spend a minute or two fiddling with these options in order to dial it in just right.

All of these features mean I can easily recommend DOOM: The Dark Ages to newcomers. The nature of the game as a prequel means you don't need extensive knowledge to hop in, and it's easily the most accessible game id Software has ever developed.

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DOOM: The Dark Ages review — My final thoughts

✅You should buy this if ...

• You enjoy single-player first-person shooters.

DOOM: The Dark Ages is a fully single-player game, with a campaign that takes a bit to finish and is packed with secrets to unlock on replays. If you enjoy single-player first-person shooters that have a huge focus on great-looking visuals as well as great gameplay, then you're going to have a lot of fun.

• You've liked the prior DOOM games

While DOOM: The Dark Ages takes some big swings by changing up parts of how the formula works, it's still the same "rip-and-tear" core that's been in action since DOOM (2016). If you enjoyed those games, there's no reason to expect you won't have fun here as well.

❌You should not buy this if ...

• You prefer multiplayer games over single-player campaigns.

While DOOM (2016) had more traditional multiplayer and DOOM Eternal had a Battlemode pitting one Slayer against two Demons, DOOM: The Dark Ages is completely devoid of any multiplayer elements, with the team instead focusing on a single-player campaign. If you only play games with multiplayer, then you'll likely find that focus to be off-putting.

Every DOOM game has evolved, offering something different. It's a refreshing take for a series, as there's a familiar backdrop behind it all, but each entry is allowed to stand on its own and figure out what it is.

To that end, DOOM: The Dark Ages understands exactly what it is. It's an action-packed romp in the vein of prior games, but with an infusion of dark fantasy and cosmic horror. The pace has been slowed down, and many of the tools have changed, providing a fresh take on the experience, but it's still DOOM.

As it turns out, that's more than enough. DOOM: The Dark Ages is pure fun, even if it's a bit silly at times, and I'm seriously looking forward to what the team at id Software cooks up for the promised campaign DLC. Hitting a demon with a flail or watching as a dragon rips apart a Titan doesn't get old.

DOOM: The Dark Ages is slated to launch on May 15, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (via Battle.net, Steam, and the Xbox App), and PlayStation 5. Premium Edition buyers get two-day early access. The standard edition of the game is included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

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First revealed in Summer 2024 and later appearing at Microsoft's 2025 Xbox Developer Direct show earlier this year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — the first game from the nascent game development studio Sandfall Interactive — has finally arrived. It stands as one of the year's most highly anticipated new RPGs, and is slated to go live on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Xbox Game Pass, and PS5 early tomorrow morning.

Clair Obscur immediately caught the eyes of many with its distinctive dark fantasy spin on the optimistic and romantic aesthetic of the French Belle Époque period, with further pre-release trailers teasing its blend of turn-based and real-time RPG mechanics. The narrative, too, has garnered significant interest, as the story promises nuanced and mature development and themes at a time when a lot of writing feels laden with shallow characters and grating MCU-esque quips.

I was very hopeful the game would live up to the hype when I started playing it for review a few weeks ago, and now that I've made my way through the adventure, I'm happy to say that it not only meets those expectations, but exceeds them, too. It's not without a few issues — I'll get into those throughout this review — but on the whole, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is everything I and many others were hoping it would be, and it's an RPG you won't want to miss.

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at CDKeys (Steam, PC) for $34.79
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at Amazon (Xbox) for $49.99

This review was conducted with the Windows PC version of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and made possible thanks to a Steam review code provided by Kepler Interactive. The company did not see the contents of this review before publication.

What is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?

If you've seen the trailers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, you'll have a good idea of what to expect from it already. If you've been exposed to little or nothing about the game before now, though, there are some things you should know before playing it (or reading this review). I'll cover them here.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a single player RPG set in a fictional alternate reality in which the Paintress — a mysterious and decidedly malevolent entity — paints a new number onto her faraway Monolith at the start of a new year, counting down from 100. At the end of that year, everyone of that age is erased from existence before a new number is painted; this has been slowly killing humanity for over 60 years, and as the story begins, every 34 year-old is wiped out as the Paintress' countdown ticks to 33.

In a desperate attempt to stop her, the people of Lumière — believed to be the last bastion of humanity in the world — routinely send out Expeditions of people living out their last year of life before the annual "gommage." Thus far, all past Expeditions have failed, though each has left behind flags, notes, and guidance for groups that come after them so that one may eventually reach the Paintress and slay her. The path to her Monolith is fraught with extremely difficult terrain, deadly monsters, and other dangers, but year by year, decade by decade, humanity has managed to progress closer and closer.

As the title of the game strongly suggests, you take control of men and women from Expedition 33 during the events of the story. Early on, the Expedition is brutally attacked, leaving only a few survivors (this was revealed in previews); it's up to them to keep pressing on and fight their way to the Paintress, all while simultaneously trying to process their grief and loss.

Though Clair Obscur isn't an open-world game, it does have large open levels with secret treasures, simple puzzles to solve, optional bosses to fight, along with side levels to unlock and travel to from the world map. Combat, meanwhile, is completely turn-based, with each character sporting unique systems and moves that synergize with the rest of your party. Interestingly, though, real-time action RPG-style mechanics play a big role on your turns as well as the enemy's (more on the combat in the next section).

The rest of the gameplay centers around traditional RPG concepts like leveling up stats, unlocking skills, getting better gear, and unlocking permanent upgrades by finding them in the world.

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Clair Obscur review: Gameplay, combat, and world

Similar to turn-based JRPGs like Final Fantasy or Persona, the true heart of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's gameplay lies within its combat system. Careful strategy and move selection are critical in those games, and such is the case in Sandfall Interactive's debut title as well; each Expeditioner can choose to use ranged attacks at the start of their turn and then either a Base Attack or a special Skill move, but they also have unique systems to keep in mind and Skills that synergize with others in the party.

For example, Lune — the elemental mage of the group — excels at applying status effects like Burn, which the rapier-wielding Maelle can take advantage of with one of her Skills to enter her unique Virtuoso Stance that boosts all damage by 200%. Lune's Skills also generate elemental Stains for herself, and if you use a Skill that benefits from that Stain on her next turn, it'll consume it for a big damage boost. Combat is full of opportunities for each party member to support each other or combo their own moves like this, making the strategic side of battles very enjoyable.

What sets Clair Obscur apart from many other JRPG-style turn-based games, however, is that it also places a strong emphasis on performing real-time maneuvers taken straight out of an action RPG. Choosing the Skill you use isn't the end of your turn; to actually maximize the effectiveness of that move, you'll need to execute some carefully timed button presses like you would in a rhythm game. Additionally, incoming attacks have to be dodged or parried, with the former easier (and thus, ideal for learning) and the latter more rewarding since fully parrying every part of a move nets you a deadly counter-attack. Attentive players can also use their basic ranged attack to target and break weak spots, hurting them significantly and/or interfering with enemy mechanics.

I've never been hugely into turn-based RPGs, but I do love action RPGs with dodge and parry mechanics like this, and Clair Obscur's fusion of the former's deeply strategic elements with the thrilling challenge of mastering fights in the latter has birthed combat system I've fallen in love with. From start to finish, every part of a turn cycle — hitting enemy weak spots, choosing which moves for your party to use, executing them, and then defending yourself against your foes — is engaging, ensuring that there's never a dull moment. And as you'd expect, the game's various boss fights are even more exciting, with most featuring bespoke mechanics to learn and exploit as well as especially tricky, but still well-telegraphed moves that are a blast to counter.

The battles are undeniably the highlight of Clair Obscur, and the game rightly makes them the focus of most of its 30-60 hour runtime. Between fights, though, you'll be exploring large, but linear levels with lots of side paths that lead to hidden treasures like new weapons, permanent upgrades, or special modifiers for your characters called Pictos; the latter improve stats and give you a wide range of notable effects, including raw stat increases under certain conditions, ways to generate extra Action Points (the resource needed for Skills), and huge buffs in exchange for drawbacks, among others. These items tend to be gated by optional boss battles or simple, yet enjoyable puzzles.

Another thing worth noting is that winning enough battles with Pictos equipped on a party member makes their effects — sans their base stat improvements — available for everyone on the team as a Lumina. You can only equip a limited number of Luminas with each party member's finite number of Lumina Points, though these are gradually increased over time as you find items that give you more. Thus, as you get more and more Lumina Points, you can experiment with more and more Picto effects.

The other part of the buildcrafting process comes from leveling up, leveling up core stats for things like HP and damage, and unlocking new Skills from each character's skill tree. There are plenty of different ways you can build each of your party members and all of them are viable, though certain limitations will drive you to think carefully about progression. Chief of these is the fact that respec items are somewhat rare, though you also have to keep in mind that you can only have six Skills equipped at once.

Overall, the gameplay of Clair Obscur is absolutely fantastic, and ultimately, my only real problem with it is that its various systems — both in combat and outside of it — are introduced so rapidly that I found it hard to wrap my head around everything the game was trying to teach me early on. Things became clearer with more playtime invested, though, and there's a helpful index of mechanics you can review at any time.

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Clair Obscur review: Story (no spoilers)

Another huge part of Clair Obscur is its narrative (covered here with no spoilers beyond preview-approved material) — an emotional and heartfelt story about Expedition 33's survivors forging ahead against all the odds, even as they're besieged by grief, loss, regret, and constant worry about what lies ahead of them. Throughout their journey, the Expeditioners encounter new friends like the comedic bloodthirsty Gestral creature Monoco and the mythical Esquie who gives them means to cross the lands, along with mysterious antagonists like Renoir — an aging man that's somehow still alive despite the Paintress' gommages.

I don't want to talk about the story too much in this review, but what I will say is that it's excellent, with varied characters that go through believable conflicts — both internally and between each other — that are written with weight, nuance, and sensitivity that feels appropriate for the subject matter, along with moments of levity to balance things out. It also certainly helps that it features a star-studded cast, including Charlie Cox (Daredevil) as Gustave, Jennifer English (Baldur's Gate 3, Shadowheart) as Maelle, Ben Starr (FFXVI, Clive Rosfield) as Verso, Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings, Gollum) as Renoir, and many other big names in voice talent.

The plot itself moves a bit fast for my liking, but it's hardly a major problem I'd seriously dock points from the story for. Enjoyable and foreshadowed twists more than make up for whatever that slightly rushed feeling takes away, as do the narrative's beautifully animated and shot cutscenes.

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Clair Obscur review: Visuals and audio

Though Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's development initially began with the older Unreal Engine 4, Sandfall Interactive eventually made the switch to Unreal Engine 5 to take advantage of its more advanced rendering capabilities. That definitely shows in-game, as the slightly stylized, highly detailed world of Clair Obscur is nothing less than a feast for the eyes.

As I said before, the overall aesthetic of the game is heavily inspired by the Belle Époque period of French history — a fact made apparent by Lumière's grand architecture, vibrant colors everywhere you look, suave character designs that look like they'd be right at home in the 18th Century, and the overarching feeling of hope and optimism that persists in the world despite everything that its inhabitants suffer. With that said, it's also colored distinctively by surrealism, with many of the game's diverse environments bearing bizarre and dreamlike vistas.

Rendered in cutting-edge detail, it's a gorgeous world, and one that's a good complement to the upsetting and confusing challenges that the characters do their best to work through over the course of the story. Together with Clair Obscur's vivacious animations and its striking visual effects, it also stands out quite a bit from most other modern titles.

The score composed by Lorien Testard is also worthy of high praise, with everything from grand orchestral instrumentals to tracks heavy with powerful choirs to listen to as your travel and fight your way to the Paintress and her Monolith. There's a fitting area and battle theme for every single level in the game, as well as tracks tailor-made for many of the biggest and most impactful moments in the narrative.

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Clair Obscur review: Performance and stability

Many titles made with Unreal Engine have a reputation for being rife with annoying stutters that often make moment-to-moment gameplay choppy and frustrating, so any time I review a game that uses it, I can't help but be a little nervous. In Clair Obscur's case, though, I barely experienced any stutters at all. There were a couple here or there, but they were very few and very far between.

Overall, performance was quite good on my Intel Core i5-12600K, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and 32GB DDR4 rig. On an ultrawide (3440x1440) monitor with Epic settings and NVIDIA DLSS upscaling disabled, I was getting a consistent 50-60 FPS during both exploration and combat, with rare dips into the high 40s during particularly intensive moments. With DLSS enabled on Quality mode, however, my framerate shot up to a range of the mid 70s to the low 90s.

That's not to say I didn't have any problems, though. In a few levels, texture and lighting pop-in was particularly apparent, leading to cases where I'd enter a new area and its environment would look jarringly different than how it did before I fully stepped in. On some rare, but nevertheless noteworthy occasions, the framerate would also fall down to the 30s and 40s for several minutes for an unknown reason. And while this didn't happen often, it did occur during a battle at a few points, which made dodging and parrying enemy attacks more difficult than it should have been.

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Clair Obscur review: Conclusion

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As someone who's only enjoyed turn-based games on occasion compared to RPGs with real-time mechanics, I went into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hopeful, but unsure of how I'd feel about an experience that aimed to merge the two into one cohesive formula. After playing through it, though, I'm both very impressed with and very enthusiastic about Sandfall Interactive's experimental fusion. It truly captures the best of both genres in its creative combat system, and supports that core of the game with an expertly written story and stunning audiovisual presentation.

I have little nitpicks about plot pacing and the speed at which things are introduced to you in the early game, and certain aspects about the game's overall performance could be better, too. All in all, though, this is undoubtedly one of the best Xbox games and best PC games of the year, and while the shadow dropped Oblivion remaster has stolen some of its launch thunder, this is nevertheless still a game I implore you not to pass up — especially since it's available on Xbox Game Pass.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 releases on April 24, 2025 on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Steam, Epic Games, Xbox app), and PS5 for $49.99. You also have the option of playing it on Xbox or PC through Xbox Game Pass.

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Pain and rot, beauty and love, fear and anger, hatred and hope. All of that and more is the foundation of the Deep South in the U.S., filled with loving people, cherished tradition, and ugly history mixed together.

That is the world developer Compulsion Games chose to explore with its latest title, South of Midnight, a game exploring the folklore of the South, with tales of strange creatures and haunted places, alongside odd characters hiding ever more secrets.

It's a game that could've felt empty or misaimed at multiple points, but instead resonates clearly, spinning a modern fairy tale that doesn't shy away from pain but instead dares to ask how it might be helped and relieved.

I've had a lot of fun exploring South of Midnight, and with the credits rolling just after 12 hours, it's a story I recommend others embark on.

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Xbox Game Studios. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

What is South of Midnight?

• South of Midnight is a third-person action-adventure game.
• It's developed by Compulsion Games and published by Xbox Game Studios.
• The game is available on Xbox Series X|S and PC, as well as Xbox Game Pass.

South of Midnight is developed by Compulsion Games, the Montreal-based studio that previously worked on Contrast and We Happy Few.

This is the team's first game developed fully as a part of Xbox Game Studios, with the studio being acquired by Microsoft back in 2018.

South of Midnight is a third-person action-adventure game, with players in the role of protagonist Hazel Flood, who loses her mother in a sudden flash flood. It's heavily based around Southern Gothic, a strange genre that's set in the decay, beauty, and horror of the American Deep South all at once, from the swamps of Louisiana and South Carolina to the mountain foothills of Tennessee and North Carolina.

Learning that she has a connection to a strange power called Weaving, Hazel embarks on a journey to find her mother, encountering creatures from Southern folklore along the way, such as the dreaded Two-Toed Tom and the strange Huggin' Molly.

South of Midnight will take around 10 to 12 hours to finish for a player pushing through the story, depending on exactly how long players take to scour their surroundings in search of collectibles.

The game is available for $40, and as an Xbox first-party game, it's also included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

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South of Midnight review: Story and characters

• South of Midnight is a story-driven game, with a heavy emphasis on characters.
• Hazel is the main protagonist, though she's also accompanied by Catfish.
• Numerous eclectic characters like Bunny and Roux round out the story.

Hazel is the protagonist of South of Midnight, and as performed by Adriyan Rae (with motion capture assistance from Nona Parker Johnson), she's extremely likable. She's smart, a bit skeptical, but incredibly kind.

That kindness is the core of the story and her role as a new Weaver, as Hazel untangles the knots that surround the lives of everyone around her. She doesn't always get things right, but she's driven by compassion even as she desperately attempts to find her mom.

Hazel is aided by Catfish, a wisecracking catfish that helps her adjust to the fact that all the old stories are real, though there's often more to situations than meets the eye. Their dynamic drives much of the game, and it's fun to watch unfold in a way that feels real, such as when Catfish teases Hazel for changing her clothes by asking if she got a promotion working at Piggly-Wiggly.

Other strange characters add to the world, such as Hazel's estranged grandmother, Bunny, an influential businesswoman. There's also Roux, a New Orleans huckster as polite as he is sly.

These personalities feel plucked straight out of fairy tales, with a dash of Boris Karloff's Thriller for good measure. Genre familiarity means you can see some of the twists coming a mile away, but that doesn't feel wrong, as fate unfolds true to the stories that have served as a bedrock for Southern Gothic as a genre.

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South of Midnight review: Gameplay and features

• South of Midnight's combat involves fighting and unraveling Haints.
• There's also a few boss fights against uniquely dangerous creatures.
• Hazel has fun combat abilities, but the limited enemy variety does show.

Gameplay in South of Midnight revolves around exploring the environment and clearing out Haints, creatures born of pain and trauma. To take on these Haints, Hazel has a variety of powers, being able to dodge and weave (literally), pushing and pulling the creatures before unraveling them.

Unraveling restores a bit of Hazel's health, but it also reduces the cooldown time on her powers, and before long, I found myself in a nice rhythm, unraveling creatures with ease.

It's helped by the fact that Hazel feels great to control, zipping around with speed and flashiness once you unlock a few different upgrades. She glides, grapples, dashes, and wall-runs, usually in free form but occasionally when fleeing from danger in escape sequences.

The enemy variety does grow a bit over time, with the game introducing a handful of stronger Haint variants as time goes on, but by around the two-thirds mark or so, you've seen everything it has to offer. It's not an awful range, but it does feel a fair bit repetitive, especially by the end, where you'll be fighting dozens upon dozens of enemies with little respite.

In order to grab the aforementioned upgrades, Hazel has to find Floofs, bits of cotton-like magical substance hidden everywhere. Under sheet metal, in rock piles, and even in animal burrows.

For the latter, Hazel has access to Crouton, a stuffed doll that comes to life, which can squeeze into places she doesn't fit, clearing a pathway or finding more Floofs.

In combat, Crouton helpfully possesses enemies, turning Haints against each other and providing some breathing room in particularly crowded fights.

While I won't provide spoilers, the biggest challenges in the game come via the boss fights against massive creatures, which usually involve some unique mechanics not seen elsewhere. These fights are setpieces, and usually provided the most challenge, with one in particular accounting for the majority of my deaths in the game.

Outside of combat, Hazel's powers can also be used for solving puzzles, though these are usually fairly simple, and only a handful gave me more than a few seconds' pause. Collectibles take the form of Floofs, readables like letters and newspapers that shed light on the story, and rare health filaments, the latter of which is used to increase Hazel's maximum health.

South of Midnight review: Visuals and audio

• South of Midnight features heavily stylized graphics that look wonderful.
• The soundtrack plays a key part in the game, telling a story of hurt and hope.
• On Xbox Series X, it runs at 4K 60 FPS, with very few performance drops.

Since its initial reveal, the style and look of South of Midnight have caught my eye, with the characters and creatures rendered in a stop motion aesthetic quite unlike the overwhelming majority of games available.

Combined with the strong art direction, it's beautiful to watch in motion, with Roux in particular being one of my favorite character designs I've seen a long while.

Despite the game's concise design, there's a great deal of variety, with eerie alligator-filled swamps and jutting crow-haunted mountains featured alike.

There's also some truly excellent poster work, with faded calls for unionization or slightly saucy advertisements that tell so much of the story of the town of Prospero and its surrounding environs.

Sound design plays a similarly important role in South of Midnight, with the sounds of creatures constantly all around you. Squealing pigs and cooing mourning doves join myriad insect life, and throughout the entire time I played, it always seemed that I could identify something making noise in the background.

This realistic presence is then layered with the supernatural, as strange voices call out ever-so-softly to Hazel whenever she uses her Weaving powers. It's a small touch, but one that's constantly there in my mind as I played.

The soundtrack is composed by Olivier Deriviere, also known for his work on the Plague Tale games. Most of the tracks are centered around a particular event or creature, recounting the history of woe that led to a particular moment.

These tracks build up through a chapter, first present as a whisper in Hazel's ear, introducing a few strums or a sudden lyric here and there before bursting into song during the confrontations. It became something I looked forward to in each chapter, as Deriviere's work captures multiple typical styles of Southern music tracks without much in the way of repetition.

South of Midnight review: Accessibility and approachability

• South of Midnight has numerous accessibility options.
• Players can adjust difficulty, fonts, hints, and much more.
• The setting will resonate for Southerners, but is explained for anyone unfamiliar.

South of Midnight features a wide array of accessibility options, letting players add a persistent dot, adjust font sizes, and more. If you suffer from wrist pain, you may want to alter holding down a button or adjust the camera sensitivity.

There are also some settings for audio cues, providing additional hints for locating collectibles that might be hard to see in the environment. For players who truly only care about the story, there's even an option to skip ahead a checkpoint if a particular fight or escape sequence is giving you too much trouble.

Given the deep dive this game holds into aspects of Southern life, there are certainly elements that may not hit the same for someone who didn't grow up or visit these states. Even so, the game does a fairly good job explaining its subject matter, especially the creatures that are usually center stage for several chapters.

South of Midnight review: My final thoughts

✅ You should buy this if ...

• You like third-person adventure games that are 10 to 12 hours long.

South of Midnight doesn't overstay its welcome, and pushing through the story will only take players about 10 hours. That number increases slightly if you're driven to find the various collectibles, but even so, you're only looking at around 12 hours of playtime at max.

• You're a fan of creepy stories, folkore, and the Deep South as a setting.

Southern Gothic, while an established genre, isn't a common setting for games. South of Midnight is one of the strongest ever takes on the setting, with creepy folklore and brushes with uncomfortable topics. Almost everyone is hiding secrets, good and ill, and that mystery is compelling for anyone who appreciates what a complicated mess the south can be.

❌ You should not buy this if ...

• You don't like third-person, story-focused games.

While South of Midnight's combat opens up over time, at the end of the day, this is a story-driven game. If, for whatever reason, that doesn't appeal to you — maybe you want a longer game, or you don't care to follow stories in general — then a lot of the attractive qualities disappear.

So much in South of Midnight is suited for my sensibilities, in unique ways that I know won't be the same for everyone. From the calls of various birds to the hanging moss, every detail of Southern life has been captured and enhanced, with a mystical quality lying over it all.

The South has a lot of hurt. Atrocities, violations, and pain. It still has a soul, something beautiful that I see every day. The immaculate art and audio work in this game reflect and contribute to that soul, something that shines in the character designs and stellar soundtrack.

At its core is a story with heart, a modern fairy tale with dark twists and sinister characters that speaks to human pain, the continuing wounds of trauma, and of accepting the mistakes you've made.

The combat is fun enough, though the formula crosses over from "well-established" to "begins to drag" by the time the credits roll. While I do think more enemy variety would've been nice, the game doesn't linger so long that it becomes a major problem.

I've enjoyed this yarn of a young Weaver aspiring to save her mother, and I truly hope we get to see more of Hazel in the future. South of Midnight is a love letter to Southern Gothic and the South, and it's one I hope people can come away from filled with more meaning.

South of Midnight launches on April 8, 2025, on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC (via Steam and the Xbox PC app). As an Xbox first-party game, it's included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. Early access is available for Premium Edition buyers starting on April 3.

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Ubisoft has had a rough few years, and that's an understatement.

Its most successful franchises have withered under repetitive, bloated, and outdated open-world game design, its attempts at new victories have failed thanks to half-hearted trend-chasing or truly broken launches, and the few gems we've seen have been subsequently abandoned because they weren't immediate financial successes.

Ubisoft has fallen from the height of video game publishers to one of the most derided and least trusted in the industry — and Assassin's Creed Shadows, the long-awaited sequel for Ubisoft's hero franchise, is one of its last chances to reverse the tide and restore community confidence.

When I went hands-on with Assassin's Creed Shadows, hours of gameplay were more than enough to convince me that Ubisoft at least deserved the chance at redemption. Now, I've sank an astonishing 112 hours into the final game (and one minute, to be exact), and my mind is made up.

Ubisoft actually pulled it off. Assassin's Creed Shadows isn't just a great game, it's one of the absolute best to ever come out of the publisher — and one of the best of the year so far. If Ubisoft can learn the right lessons from this title and take them forward, the publisher could be on the precipice of a slow, arduous, but possible comeback.

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Ubisoft. Ubisoft had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

AC Shadows review: What is it?

Assassin's Creed Shadows is a brand-new, mainline entry in the storied Assassin's Creed franchise, following 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla as an action-RPG rather than the classics-inspired Assassin's Creed Mirage released in 2023.

Developed by the flagship Ubisoft Quebec studio and published, of course, by Ubisoft, Assassin's Creed Shadows is the most important video game the French publisher has released in years.

Steady declines in trust and regular struggles to win over modern players have heavily impacted Ubisoft, led by years of increasingly formulaic, repetitive open-world games and half-hearted trend chasing.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is Ubisoft's latest attempt to rectify its mistakes, with a lot of hopes and expectations riding on this ambitious action-RPG.

Set in 16th-century feudal Japan torn apart by bloody conflicts between indifferent warlords, AC Shadows follows the adventures of young shinobi Naoe and legendary samurai Yasuke, giving players two entirely different playstyles from which to choose.

Assassin's Creed Shadows officially released on Mar. 20, 2025, for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5. We already know that the game will receive a major "Claws of Awaji" DLC expansion at some point in 2025.

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AC Shadows review: Performance and stability

One component contributing to Ubisoft's current dour standing is a reputation for launching games in a sorry state. Major performance issues, game-breaking bugs, and crashes have been common in many Ubisoft titles at launch.

The additional time in the oven Ubisoft gave Assassin's Creed Shadows has clearly paid off, though, as this game doesn't feel half-baked at all.

Performance has been excellent across the board, even in busy environments or during heated combat segments, and I've only noticed a handful of dropped frames or stutters.

Playing on Xbox Series X lets you choose between the framerate-prioritizing "Performance" mode and resolution-prioritizing "Quality" mode. The latter is locked to 30 frames-per-second, but it feels smooth and responsive alongside noticeably improved visuals, making it my preferred way to play.

I did encounter a myriad of random glitches and minor issues, though, especially with character and cloth animations, and occassionally the lighting engine. During my dozens of hours, the game crashed on me three times, but I lost next to no progress thanks to aggressive auto saves.

Ubisoft has been resolving issues at an impressive rate, too, as well as responding to player feedback with new features and quality-of-life improvements. Several of my complaints have already been directly addressed, and more updates are on the way.

On PC, matters are also quite positive. Assassin's Creed Shadows is a heavy game on your system, but it gives you a ton of options to tailor the game to your setup, including ultrawide monitor support, High Dynamic Range (HDR) support, an uncapped framerate, in-depth graphical customization, and AMD FidelityFX, NVIDIA DLSS, and Intel XeSS 2 integration for dynamic resolution, upscaling, and frame generation.

On ASUS ROG Ally X, I was able to enjoy playing the game at around 40 frames-per-second (FPS) on the lowest preset and AMD's Super Resolution and Frame Generation features enabled. This was on one of the most powerful handhelds, though, so others may have very different experiences.

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AC Shadows review: Visual and audio presentation

Assassin's Creed games have been known for their visual and audio presentation since the series' inception, with previous titles like Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag helping set the graphical standard for an entirely new generation of consoles.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla looked incredible, whatever weaknesses the game may have had, but Shadows comfortably surpasses it at every turn. Japan is already a beautiful country, and this game's idealized and polished visuals more than do it justice.

You'll find a stunning spectacle around every corner, with Assassin's Creed Shadows boasting varied, vertical, and vibrant landscapes adorned with swathes of lush foliage, dotted with intricately constructed buildings and temples, and teeming with worn roads, overgrown trails, and hidden secrets.

This game is beautifully rendered, with perfectly over-saturated visuals that highlight the immense detail in the environments. Towering mountains, tranquil oceans, vast tilled fields, shrouded groves of flowering trees, it's all tied together so well in a lovely clash of browns, blues, greens, whites, pinks, and more.

There's even a surprisingly vast variety of wildlife to encounter, including herds of deer, mischievous monkeys, lone foxes, families of tanuki, flocks of herons, geese, and crows, pairs of pheasants or hares, sniffling boars, and more.

Settlements will have their own ecosystems, too. Horses, pet dogs and cats (and their puppies or kittens), hungry strays — they're all there.

Don't worry; you can pet many of the animals, and those you do can actually be added to your hideout to visit at any point, while other pets can be collected from vendors, quests, or simply finding and painting them in the world as Naoe.

It's not just the natural environments, though. Castles, cities, villages, and even random farmhouses possess unmatched character.

There are entire districts of cities that you'll never need to visit (because there are no quests, vendors, or secrets) that nonetheless faithfully recreate the industries, markets, and houses that comprise it. Ubisoft has never struggled with the world-building aspects of its games, and Assassin's Creed Shadows showcases the publisher at its very best.

This isn't a static world, either. AC Shadows makes sure you, the player, know you have a presence in this rendition of Japan. Snow and mud defamation leave a persistent mark of your passing in your wake, while wind, rain, and snow leave their mark on your clothing and body.

Many of the environments you pass through acknowledge your existence, too. Plants and cloth will move as you pass, carts, doors, and furniture will suffer the consequences of heated combat and violent attacks, and animals will react to your approach (normally by running).

The world changes over time, too. The wind comes in any form, ranging from a light breeze to a bustling gust, while overcast clouds can bring misty mornings and light drizzles or violent torrents of rain and deep peals of thunder following sharp cracks of lightning. Blizzards can wash the world in frozen white, disguising the horizon from your view.

The world does change as day dynamically shifts into night and back again, and the weather further impacts the world by whipping plants and trees, casting leaves and petals into the sky and on the ground, and more — but the most dramatic changes come from the passing of seasons.

Ubisoft divided Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter into different stages — you don't just get Winter, you get the first snow blanketing the lingering orange and red foliage of Autumn, then you enter deep Winter and its frozen lakes, before finally transitioning back into the new green of Spring and its humid downpours.

I've not even talked about the beautifully detailed animations for animals, characters, and clothing, either. This game is spectacularly gorgeous in every sense of the word, and that does apply to audio, too.

AC Shadows delivers swelling and moving music, captivating ambient soundscapes, spontaneous and tactile gameplay effects, and more. It's all very well done, but you may be too busy taking screenshots to notice.

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AC Shadows review: Gameplay experience

Love it or hate it, Ubisoft continued to polish and refine the new RPG gameplay of Assassin's Creed through Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. Each game became increasingly bloated and repetitive, though, while the gameplay continued to trek further and further from what made Assassin's Creed one of the world's biggest franchises in the first place.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is still an action-RPG, but Ubisoft has done an excellent job paring down the excess fat, polishing gameplay and traversal, re-incentivising exploration, and giving players a proper, distinct choice between the fast-paced gameplay of old and the heavier combat of new.

Enter: Naoe and Yasuke. The twin protagonists (although Naoe definitely feels more like the main character, especially in the Prologue and Act 1) each play a huge role in the story. You can spend most of the time as either one after Act 1, and your choice will dramatically impact how you approach the game.

Naoe is the possessor of the iconic hidden blade, passed down to her by her father, and she is an accomplished, highly trained shinobi. The smallest and lightest assassin we've seen in the series yet, Naoe is also the most acrobatic and agile.

Using a vast arsenal of tools and weapons in addition to her physical talents, Naoe is able to find her way into places Yasuke could never reach. Her climbing prowess allows her to scale almost any wall, her grappling hook allows her to reach the places she can't climb, and her compact stature allows her to crawl or slip into areas no man could follow.

It's here where you see the most dramatic changes Ubisoft has made to the modern AC formula. Finally, parkour feels revitalized with a suite of new animations specific to Naoe. More importantly, it also feels more controlled despite the flashier animations.

How Naoe approaches ascension or descension depends on your approach and how you command her, with three of the four face buttons on your controller playing a role in her traversal abilities.

You'll still experience moments of frustration when Naoe doesn't respond the way you expected, failing to smoothly leap, roll, flip, or slide as she normally does, but my frustrations were far lesser than in previous AC games.

Yasuke, by contrast, can only climb the surfaces that give him adequate support to handle his increased mass and generous handhelds to accommodate his armored gloves.

You're not entirely limited to the ground (far from it), but Yasuke absolutely faces life head-on, including being able to physically barge through almost any obstacle (like barricaded gates, for example).

When you're not elegantly sliding across the boulder some idiot put in your path or gracefully flipping off a rooftop to assassinate some other idiots in the way of your landing, AC Shadows also shows its gameplay improvements through combat.

Yasuke and Naoe are equally gifted fighters but in very different ways. Each can utilize a unique set of tools, weapons, and abilities (that you can customize, evolve, and customize to your heart's content) that complement those styles.

Naoe specializes in diversion, distraction, and discrete assassination and, in a pinch, can rely on her parrying and evading skills to keep her in the action. She may not pack the punch that Yasuke does and she may not be able to take the same hits, but she's more than capable enough to come out of a heated battle unscathed.

Yasuke, on the other hand, does not find the word "subtle" in his vocabulary. His massive frame provides ample strength to wield an arsenal of weaponry that allows him to control entire battlefields with ease.

That size gives him space to don the toughest armor, too, so Yasuke can dish out damage in a wide area just as well as he can take it — and that's very well indeed.

Both play wonderfully, with interesting and engaging weapons and abilities that force you to think differently. I personally prefer Naoe, the successor to the golden age assassins we remember fondly, but Yasuke's brutal strength is extremely satisfying, too.

Beyond those two elements, Assassin's Creed Shadows also, finally meaningfully improves Ubisoft's open-world formula. No more is your map inundated with endless icons and a depressive grind to obtain 100% completion.

You're incentivized to explore because of the opportunities and secrets you may uncover, not to find one of a hundred collectibles you'll never actually care about.

Side quests and activities are more varied and dynamic than ever, although you're not entirely free of the open-world bloat. Side quests and activities can absolutely feel repetitive after a while, and obtaining 100% completing in AC Shadows remains a daunting task.

Even so, I remained engaged with Assassin's Creed Shadows for over 100 hours, exploring as much of the world as I could (and completing every single mission I could find), while most other games of this size lose me around the 60-hour mark.

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AC Shadows review: Story and characters

If you're marching into this section of the review with thoughts of "Ubisoft isn't respecting Japanese culture" and "Yasuke wasn't a real samurai" on your tongue, you can go ahead and leave.

I'm not going to claim that Assassin's Creed Shadows boasts the most realistic depiction of ancient Japan we've ever seen in video games, but I never expected it to — this is Assassin's Creed, a fantasy series grounded by a seed of historical truth.

What I can say, though, is that Ubisoft has done a great job paying respectful homage to Japanese culture while also retaining the fantastical, over-the-top elements that make this an Assassin's Creed game.

As always, it's clear that Ubisoft invested significant resources in researching this era of Japan, using the spoils of its efforts to inform the meticulous, deep worldbuilding in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Ultimately, that's what carries this game's narrative and single-player campaign. You're part of an alternate, dramatized Japanese history, but you can also immerse yourself in the unique culture of the period and its arts, customs, religions, and traditions.

AC Shadows is happy to take its time with cinematics, animations, or dialogue to remain faithful to its setting, too.

To be frank, I don't care if Yasuke was a storied warrior or a simple sword-bearer; Assassin's Creed Shadows explores the former within its fictional realm, including the course of his life after the death of his lord.

Yasuke is, in a single word, a complete badass. He's an awesome character, and it's interesting to see how the world around him reacts to his unfamiliar appearance before adjusting to acknowledge him as an honored samurai.

The vast majority of the people you'll meet are born-and-raised Japanese, of course, including Naoe, but there's also a fair number of Portuguese merchants, missionaries, and diplomats.

In the "Immersive Mode" (which I highly recommend), you'll experience the world of AC Shadows with everyone actually speaking Japanese or Portuguese as they would, with native speakers lending a ton of credibility and emotion to the voice acting (as opposed to the English voice acting, which is... ah, not great).

Yes, the worldbuilding and characters make Assassin's Creed Shadows' campaign, because the actual narrative treads safer paths. Naoe seeks revenge for the death of her father, unknowingly embroiling herself in a heated conflict that will not only decide the fate of her homeland... but also possibly the world as a whole.

It's a well-done story, and the writing is of decent caliber, but I doubt we'll see AC Shadows winning heaps of "Best Narrative" awards at the end of the year.

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AC Shadows review: Microtransactions and DLC

Modern Ubisoft games have especially been criticized for in-game stores laden with microtransactions on top of the premium price tag attached to its games, and Assassin's Creed Shadows does not buck that trend.

You can buy unique, legendary gear for Naoe and Yasuke, cosmetics for your allies and hideout, crafting resources to give you a leg up, and even a map to highlight the location of treasures and secrets in the world.

It's dumb, but the "pay-to-win" elements don't actually matter in a purely single-player game, and AC Shadows has felt perfectly balanced — to the point where I've never once felt tempted to dive into that store to skip some grinding.

You can also earn premium items just by playing the game. AC Shadows features a number of live service elements that stay completely out of your way unless you look for them.

You can complete time-limited events and mini-missions for in-game currency that you can use at the Exchange, a periodically refreshed shop offering random premium items. It adds more endgame content, it lets you pick up some sweet gear, and I've earned quite a bit just by playing the game (I never once sought out any of these features).

Assassin's Creed Shadows will get more content after launch, too. Sure, that means more optional purchases in the store if you care about it (most people won't), but we already know this game is getting post-launch expansions. The first one is coming later this year with over 10 hours of new content and a new area.

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AC Shadows review: Accessibility design

Ubisoft is one of the more underrated publishers when it comes to building approachable, accessible games, and Assassin's Creed Shadows is one of the company's best efforts.

While a complex game, AC Shadows' menus are quite legible, and you have a ton of options to customize your gameplay experience, including tuning the combat, exploration, and stealth difficulty (even enabling guaranteed assassinations), toggling sensitive content and visuals, and more.

When it comes to accessibility, you can toggle post-effects, bind individual controls with distinct profiles for controller and keyboard, adjust the mechanics for combat, events, and more. You even have individual deadzone and threshold sliders for each thumbstick and trigger.

Customize the Heads-Up Display (HUD) and adjust every element of the audio (including the frequency of music and the mix between loud, soft, dynamic, and ambient noises) — there's a lot here.

I wish Ubisoft had condensed the most important options into a dedicated "Accessibility" menu (like what you get when the game first starts), though, but my other complaints regarding needless hurdles in the UX have already been resolved by post-launch updates, like allowing you to sell or dismantle lots of gear at once.

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AC Shadows review: Final thoughts

✅You should play this if ...

• You're searching for a massive, beautiful world to spend a lot of time in
• You miss playing as an actual assassin in Assassin's Creed games
• You've been waiting for Ubisoft to return to form with its games

❌You should not play this if ...

• You really don't like the modern Assassin's Creed RPGs
• You'd much rather play more condensed 10-30 hours games

When the credits finally rolled in Assassin's Creed Shadows — after 112 hours of exploring Japan as Naoe and Yasuke — it took a very long time to roll. Hundreds of people worked on this game, and their efforts are obvious.

Recent Assassin's Creed games have been well made in their own right, but nothing since Black Flag has approached this level of polish, cohesion, and fun. Assassin's Creed Shadows is an incredible RPG and one of Ubisoft's best.

Dual protagonists blend the best of classic and modern Assassin's Creed games, and the straightfoward narrative is (at least in my opinion) somewhat elevated by focusing on Japan rather than some parallel modern timeline.

The gameplay is more refined and fluid than ever, and it actually feels meaningful to explore this world — which showcases Ubisoft's genuine expertise in worldbuilding. Assassin's Creed Shadows is also far more polished than we've seen from a flagship Ubisoft game in a very long time.

It all comes together to create a game-of-the-year contender for 2025. I can't overstate how impressive it is for any title to retain my attention for more than 60 hours, let alone keeping me hooked for well over 100. Assassin's Creed Shadows isn't perfect, but I love it anyways.

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With only a second to spare, my co-op partner opens the barrier in front of us. The attacking mechs fall through, giving a moment's respite. Noting the color coordination for the symbols on the wall, we then alternate our fire, sealing off the hatch and keeping more mechs from joining in.

That's just one of the dozens of gameplay scenarios you'll encounter in Split Fiction, the latest co-op game from developer Hazelight Studios.

Split Fiction is a triumph, a game that builds on what's come before while still finding time for new ideas. The sheer range of innovative concepts explored in gameplay is astounding to watch unfold, and it's some of the most fun I've had playing couch co-op in years.

The choice to focus specifically on science-fiction and fantasy setups could've been limiting, but the developers navigate the genres with ease, finding room to explore and change things up on a whim.

For anyone looking for a co-op gameplay to play, Split Fiction will stand out as one of the year's finest.

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Electronic Arts. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

What is Split Fiction?

• Split Fiction is a co-op game developed by Hazelight Studios.
• Split Fiction must be played in co-op
• Split Fiction has a Friend Pass, so only one player has to own the game.

Split Fiction is a third-person co-op adventure game developed by Hazelight Studios and published by Electronic Arts.

Like its two predecessors A Way Out and It Takes Two, Split Fiction requires you play the game entirely in co-op, and I have to commend Hazelight and Electronic Arts for outright recommending that you play the game in couch co-op with a friend or family member.

That meant I got to play this game with my brother for review, a kind of rare opportunity given the nature of most game review periods.

Again mirroring its predecessors, Split Fiction includes a Friend Pass, meaning that if you want to play online with a friend, only one player actually has to own the game, and the other can join in for free.

New to Split Fiction is cross-platform support for the Friend Pass, meaning someone on Xbox that buys the game could invite a friend on PC or PlayStation without issues.

Over the course of Split Fiction, you'll go through eight different chapters, with several "Side Stories" scattered throughout the chapters. Each chapter generally introduces new gameplay mechanics, meaning you're never doing the same thing for too long.

With these new mechanics, the genre of the game can shift from moment to moment, but as you'd expect, it's constantly exploring some version of fantasy or science-fiction.

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Split Fiction review: Story and characters

• The main protagonists in Split Fiction are two writers, Mio and Zoe.
• Split Fiction's story is sometimes a bit cheesy, but also heartwarming.
• There's a strong emphasis on the wonder of human creativity.

The main characters at the center of Split Fiction's plot are Mio and Zoe, who are performed by actresses Kaja Chan and Elsie Bennett, respectively.

These two couldn't be more of an odd pair. One writes science-fiction, the other enjoys fantasy. One likes revenge stories filled with killing, the other wants delightful stories stacked with whimsical fun.

Both are draft to the mysterious Rader Corporation in hopes of being published, when things go horribly wrong. From there, Mio and Zoe have to work together to escape the Matrix-like world they've become trapped in, while also keeping Rader from taking every last idea in their heads.

Over the course of the game, as they go through each other's stories, Mio and Zoe draw closer, learning to respect what they have in common but, more importantly, finding appreciation in what they don't.

Sometimes the writing veers into clichés, but it feels appropriate given the setting, and there are plenty of self-aware jabs traded between the two leads.

The core push for the story — two aspiring writers pushing back against having their work stolen by a massive corporation — feels especially poignant given the rise of generative AI and the well-founded concerns that companies will try to undermine creatives.

Split Fiction review: Gameplay and features

• Split Fiction is a third-person adventure game.
• New gameplay mechanics are rapidly introduced every level.
• Careful coordination between co-op partners is constantly required.

Split Fiction is built as something of a spiritual successor to It Takes Two, a fact that becomes obvious the moment you start controlling Zoe or Mio. Both characters can double jump, dash, and grapple to specific points, a simple but effective movement kit that stays throughout the game.

Like It Takes Two, Split Fiction constantly changes. Every chapter introduces a new gameplay mechanic or three. One moment, Zoe and Mio might be riding guiding a shuttle and shooting down attacking aircraft. The next, the pair could find themselves shapeshifting between different magical creatures.

It's that consistent creativity that makes Split Fiction shine. Even if you've played It Takes Two, there are tons of new ideas here, and while I don't want to spoil some of the wilder surprises, you have to work together with your co-op partner in order to succeed.

That might mean shooting color-coordinated targets to destroy enemy mechs and solve puzzles, or using more unique abilities to solve puzzles in outside-the-box ways.

One big change from It Takes Two is the removal of minigames. Instead of having smaller activities to compete in, the side content in Split Fiction takes the form of "Side Stories," smaller worlds that can optionally be accessed throughout a few specific levels.

These Side Stories are like mini-chapters, usually taking a few minutes to complete (though a handful are longer) and they shed further light on Mio and Zoe's ideas, revealing extra tidbits in their lives that have shaped them as writers.

I enjoyed these Side Stories and I like the change, though the spacing is a tad strange, as you'll have completed every Side Story in the game hours before it's over.

Split Fiction review: Visuals and audio

• The screen is usually divided in half, but occasionally combines for cutscenes.
• Split Fiction is generally a visual step up from It Takes Two, with far better human character models.
• The game's performance remains at a solid 60 FPS throughout on Xbox Series X.

Split Fiction is a good-looking game, with art direction that shifts constantly. One minute, you're watching the rain pour down in a cyberpunk-esque city. The next, you'll see gentle brooks bubbling in a fantastical realm of dragons.

That ostensible lack of focus could've been a detriment, but instead, the game looks all the better for it, with the reveal of a new location being exciting, and I never got tired of wondering just what the next level would look like.

Indeed, this is part of where the game's Side Stories shine the most. By providing breaks in the pacing for a few of the game's chapters, the change in scenery feels fresh, and a couple of the Side Stories are actually my favorite sections in the entire game.

Generally, the screen is divided in half, and while it would be easy for this to feel claustrophobic, the game does a fairly good job keeping you centered so you always have a good line of sight.

The camera will sometimes connect for particular set pieces or for the frequent cutscenes that are scattered throughout the story. It Takes Two handled things marginally better here, with a few more natural segues between camera shots, but the work here is still solid.

Despite something near-constantly attacking, collapsing, or just exploding the background, the game's framerate is well optimized, and I never noticed any meaningful drops in the 12+ hours I was playing on Xbox Series X.

I also have to praise the human character models, which are a significant step-up in quality over Hazelight's previous work. Zoe and Mio look great, and every line the actresses deliver is made more believable for it.

The soundtrack stays fun throughout the game, shifting tone to match the changing environments. It's firmly backdrop music, but it always suits the action on screen.

Split Fiction review: Accessibility and approachability

• Split Fiction has a handful of good accessibility options.
• Quick-time event options can help for anyone that doesn't want to mash buttons.
• Larger subtitle font size options are needed.

Split Fiction has a handful of accessibility options, many of which will be beneficial for less experienced with video games or with some form of physical impairment.

In particular, the ability to swap quick-time events from button mashing to holding a button down is extremely useful, and is a great way to keep anyone from wearing out their fingers.

You can also swap and rebind different buttons or keys as you see fit, as well as reducing enemy damage. Bear in mind that due to how the game works, damage can't be reduced for just one player, so this is a setting you'll need to agree on with your co-op partner before enabling.

While Split Fiction does naturally have subtitles, it does not support larger font sizes, and the subtitles are definitely on the smaller side. This could definitely be a problem for anyone with weaker vision, and I'd like to see subtitle font size adjustments added in the future.

As mentioned before, my brother and I both found this game to be a bit more difficult than It Takes Two, requiring even more careful coordination and split-second timing.

I don't think that's a negative at all, but it's worth noting that in general, Split Fiction is a hair less approachable for a newcomer than the studio's prior games.

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Split Fiction review: Final thoughts

You should buy this if ...

✅You want a gameplay-focused experience.

Split Fiction, like It Takes Two, introduces dozens of unique gameplay mechanics across the game's eight chapters. These ideas constantly shift, meaning no one element overstays its welcome or feels particularly overused. This is a fantastic game to play if you want to see new ideas not explored in games before.

✅You want a co-op game that was truly designed around co-op.

Unlike many games that can be played in co-op, Split Fiction is built around the concept of co-op, requiring players to work together in unique ways. Trying new things never gets old, and it's super-rewarding to solve puzzles and figure things out at the same time. That's especially true if you're playing in couch co-op, and this is a great game to play if you have a friend or partner that isn't used to playing games, but wants to learn.

You should not buy this if ...

❌You don't have someone you can play in co-op with, or don't like co-op games.

Split Fiction is a co-op game, and you can't play it in single-player. If you don't enjoy playing games in co-op for whatever reason, or finding timing that lines up across schedules isn't possible, then this isn't a game for you.

Going into Split Fiction, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. It would've been easy for the novelty of constantly-shifting gameplay to wear off just a bit, but the team at Hazelight kept finding new ideas and ways of pushing the boundaries.

I'm happy there's a still a team out there prioritizing co-op, building a game not with co-op as an option but at the forefront of every game design facet. Being able to play this with my brother has been a fantastic experience.

Yes, the writing occasionally made me roll my eyes, and you can see a dozen moments coming well in advance, but that's all by design. It doesn't change the heart and soul present here; a defiant note that human creativity is what drives genres forward, not the ability to steal random ideas and mash them up into slop.

Split Fiction builds on what's come before, especially It Takes Two, but ultimately it can stand on its own two feet with pride.

There are a handful of bugs to tackle, and I'd also like to see some additional subtitle options added in the future. These are only minor issues, however, and don't detract too much from the overall experience.

Split Fiction now takes its place as one of the best co-op games of the last several years, and I'm looking forward to replaying it in the future.

Split Fiction launches on March 6, 2025 across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (via Steam and the EA App), and PlayStation 5. The game includes a Friend Pass, meaning if one player buys the game, they can invite a friend to play with them for free, even across platforms.

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Nearly two years later, and one of my most successful articles of all time continues to be my impulsively written editorial on Citizen Sleeper, an underrated gem buried in the Xbox Game Pass catalog.

Now, we have a sequel for me to extol, once again helmed by the talented wordsmith Gareth Damian Martin, the one-person team behind Jump Over the Age. Martin's writing has continued to evolve, as has their worldbuilding prowess, with Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector building on the foundation that was first laid down by Citizen Sleeper.

What should've been the best birthday present for me is instead a slightly late review for Citizen Sleeper 2, as my Avowed review took precedent. There was no way I was going to let this title languish on my 185-games-long backlog, however, and Jump Over the Age's steadfast support for Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass subscription means that — like its predecessor — it's effortless to play this game across platforms. It's even easier to recommend it, too, as Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is in the running for one of my favorite video game sequels ever.

This review was made possible thanks to a copy accessed via Xbox Game Pass. Fellow Traveller had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

What is Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector?

• Citizen Sleeper 2 is the sequel to the dice-rolling RPG Citizen Sleeper.
• A new tale in the same universe, you fill the shoes of a different Sleeper.

Citizen Sleeper marked the beginning of a brand-new universe from developer Gareth Damian Martin of studio Jump Over the Age, and they expanded on it with Starward Vector.

Thousands of years of unchecked capitalism has successfully extended humanity's reach to the deep recesses of space, but even the most opulent and ambitious colonies have been devastated by decades of brutal corporate wars. Both Citizen Sleeper games occur many years after the Collapse of one of the most influential corporations, with the remnants of those communities now finding new ways to live on the scraps of surviving technology.

You play as a Sleeper, a mechanical entity with the mind and soul of a human. Your original counterpart wished for a better life and agreed to be frozen in time, in the process agreeing to have their consciousness emulated and planted in a robotic frame to work off the debt incurred. Sleepers are essentially legal slaves despite their sentience, but you broke away, finding a would-be savior that disabled your planted tracker.

Except your savior turned out to also be a malicious owner, just dressed in different colors. A desperate attempt to break your dependance on the drug that staves off your body's planned obsolescence results in a broken psyche and fractured memories, but you successfully flee from your captors. You now explore the Belt, looking for allies, a way to live free for good, and the answers behind why your body seems to be changing — even when that should be impossible.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is now available for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch. It's also a day one addition to Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, and Xbox Cloud Gaming, and supports Xbox Play Anywhere across Xbox and PC.

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Citizen Sleeper 2 review: The good

• The Citizen Sleeper games have some of the most beautiful writing.
• The sequel is no exception, with excellent narrative and character direction.
• The simple, dice-rolling RPG gameplay has also been refined.

The Citizen Sleeper games are not complex. They're inspired by tabletop RPGs, and it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate to describe them as text-based point-and-click adventures. There's next to no action, and skill checks will come in the form of time and resource management, not your reflexes or ability to combo button mashes.

Some of my favorite games of all time fall into this category, but it's always because they deliver in another area. For the first Citizen Sleeper, it was the elegant and insightful writing style, beautifully weaving together vulnerable narration, detailed descriptions, and creative analogies to build an entire universe, grow the people that inhabit it, and make you care about all of it.

I played the first Citizen Sleeper on a whim, and I was inspired to write about it because of how impactful its narrative direction, worldbuilding, and art design was to me. Set in a dystopian universe and seen through the eyes of a machine with the soul of a human, the Citizen Sleeper games invite in-depth discussions of the duality of life, the boundaries of a soul, the far-reaching effects of the past on our present and future, and more.

With Citizen Sleeper 2, I really do feel like Jump Over the Age raised their prose prowess to another level. The writing is flowery and dramatic, but never to the point that it feels pretentious or unwarranted; it's simply beautiful, and the lack of a single spoken word never deterred me from seeking out every sentence hidden within the game.

Of course, Starward Vector does tell a very different story. Citizen Sleeper begins with your Sleeper seeking any way to escape the company that creates them and ends with a poignant finale that calls into question what even makes a "human." Conversely, Starward Vector starts with your Sleeper already out of the clutches of the Essen-Arp corporation, instead focusing on the peril and strife that follows.

The first game begins slower but ends with a cataclysmic bang, while the second game maintains pretty consistent stakes throughout. If I had to decide which game personally impacted me the most, the first Citizen Sleeper's conclusion carved a home for itself in my memories, where it remains today. That being said, I slightly prefer the overall story of Citizen Sleeper 2, so there's really no right answer here — both games display brilliant storytelling.

When it comes to gameplay, it's much the same. I can't claim that either entry in the franchise is more complex or difficult than the other, but Starward Vector does implement some gameplay changes that do feel more refined, but less intense, than its predecessor.

Both games play similarly — you can explore various locations with set opportunities and ventures, and each will require resources, actions, or a combination of both to complete. Many of these opportunities also come with risk attached, with consequences divided between positive, neutral, and negative outcomes. Which you earn will come down to a combination of luck and skill.

You see, your actions are actually six-sided dice, of which you get five, rerolled at the beginning of each cycle (day). The number on the die reflects your chances of a positive outcome — 6 is 100% positive, 3 is 25% positive, 50% neutral, 25% negative, etcetera. However, you can accrue bonuses or penalties based on your Sleeper's unique skills, up to -2 or +2.

This is all the same as Citizen Sleeper, but Starward Vector does away with the need to constantly be on the lookout for Stabilizer, the drug that Essen-Arp designs its Sleepers to rely on. Instead, each of your dice has durability; accrue stress during contracts and your dice take damage. Too much, and the die becomes unusable until it's repaired. You can also build up Glitch, a new status effect that randomly affects dice and locks them to 20% positive, 80% negative.

It's an interesting and engaging system that makes time-locked missions far more interesting, but does make the day-to-day less stressful. I do prefer Starward Vector's gameplay, especially given how you can travel from location to location and take on new contracts, but I can just as easily recommend either Citizen Sleeper game to anyone looking for a great adventure inspired by tabletop RPGs.

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Citizen Sleeper 2 review: The bad

• A wider space to explore means each location feels less deep.
• There are some minor issues with subtitles and console controls.

One of the biggest departures in Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector compared to the first game is that you now have access to your own spaceship, and you can use it to travel between multiple locations across the Belt rather than be limited to one major location (the Erlin's Eye space station).

Starward Vector is a bigger game. Even including the three free DLCs released for Citizen Sleeper after launch, it still took me a couple of extra hours to fully explore Citizen Sleeper 2. There are more places to see, more people to meet, more goals to achieve; Starward Vector is wider and grander. That approach is excellent for a narrative-driven, choice-based RPG set in an intricately detailed universe, but it does come with one downside.

Erlin's Eye in Citizen Sleeper always felt like it was hiding more secrets from you. I could never guess quite when I'd discover a new store, or come across a fresh opportunity, or be approached by a mysterious stranger with concerningly relevant information. Citizen Sleeper may have been narrower in scope, but it was deep.

Starward Vector trades some of that depth for range. If Jump Over the Age built the Citizen Sleeper universe in a vast room, Starward Vector does a better job showing you the boundaries of that room — the first Citizen Sleeper makes you never want to leave the middle.

No individual location in Citizen Sleeper 2 ever feels thrown together or haphazardly crafted, but you never get the opportunity to fully fall in love with one place before you're off to the next.

Apart from that, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is still a little rough in some places. I did notice several instances of text that were clearly missing words or punctuation, for one, but more important are the control issues.

Starward Vector's menu-heavy interface translates to controller fine, at least for the most part, but some elements are very awkward to navigate. On top of that, my cursor vanished on multiple occasions, causing me to frantically mash buttons and open different menus to make it reappear. I never experienced any crashes or game-halting bugs, but the problems with controls were just frustrating enough to mention.

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Citizen Sleeper 2 review: Final thoughts

You should play this if ...

✅You loved the first Citizen Sleeper

It's a fresh story in a familiar universe, with all the writing and storytelling wonder that made you fall in love with the first game. What better recommendation is there than that?

✅You love slowly immersing yourself in a world

The Citizen Sleeper games aren't in a rush to establish their premise or guide you on your path. Instead, the world and characters are given time to evolve, to settle at your pace, so that each dramatic twist in the story is amplified. This is the game for those who dream about the worlds they're immersing themselves in.

You should not play this if ...

❌You don't have the patience or interest for text-based games

Citizen Sleeper 2's soundtrack may be gorgeous, but you won't find any emotional voice acting to go along with it. You'll be doing a lot of reading and not a lot of listening or button mashing in this game, and some gamers just don't vibe with that.

Can you believe I intended for this to be a short review? After all, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector has already been out for weeks. I had so much to say, though, and there are still so many words locked inside that I'm not allowing to spill out on the page. Citizen Sleeper is one of my favorite video games of all time, and Starward Vector is the near-perfect sequel that delivered exactly what I wanted.

When so many modern video games care only about the flashy visuals or exhilarating gameplay, Citizen Sleeper builds a universe full of stars and invites you to walk among them. You're just one thread in a grand tapestry, but you, not just the character you're imitating, still plays an important role in that tapestry. That's exactly what a great RPG should provide.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is now available on basically all platforms, but it's also a part of Xbox Game Pass. If you have yet to play the first game, that's also on Xbox Game Pass.

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Let's start this review off with one undeniable truth: I have a soft spot for Two Point Studios games. I've previously played Two Point Hospital and even wrote a review for Two Point Campus, and I've thoroughly enjoyed my time in this quirky little county that Two Point Studios has built.

There's a charm and goofiness to these games that would feel out of place in other management simulators. But it just feels right fixing a clown's broken funny bone or seeing a scientist trudge around "tarred and weathered" because of a rough expedition to uncover dinosaur bones.

When Two Point Campus was on the cusp of release, the development team put a lot of effort into highlighting how feedback from Two Point Hospital was vital to the development process.

In many ways, there are still traces of that feedback lingering in the UI and design for Two Point Museum. At some points, however, it feels like Two Point Studios failed to learn from the past and is repeating some of its original mistakes.

Two Point Museum — What I like

Set in the delightful world of Two Point County, Two Point Museum is a management simulator that wears its heart on its sleeve. It is the third entry in the Two Point franchise, following on the heels of Two Point Hospital and its sequel, Two Point Campus.

This time, players are put in the role of a museum curator, tasked with uncovering unique and exciting exhibits while managing the daily challenges of running a business that operates on little more than spit and wishes.

In the campaign, players start their first museum with a couple of lackluster exhibits and then fumble their way through sending out an expedition team (consisting of scientists, janitors, assistants, and security guards employed at the museum) to recover new artifacts for display.

Of course, if there is an opportunity for a cheesy joke or a goofy play on words, Two Point Museum is going to take it. So these expeditions can cause your employees to return to the museum with a plethora of quirky ailments.

You'll need to have made the accommodations to your staff room necessary to treat your team and keep them ready to restore exhibits or discover new ones.

Two Point Museum's guided campaign sees players flitting between a variety of unique themed museums. Things kick off with the prehistoric museum, and your teams are going out to dig up dinosaur bones.

You'll need to repeat some excavations for better quality exhibits or to uncover the parts to complete a bone set.

Once you complete the requirements to earn a star at the first museum, then you can move on to one of the two other museums that are unlocked. From this point, you'll find yourself either searching for spirits to create a paranormal museum with unruly ghosts or collecting aquatic creatures and managing aquariums.

There's a lot to take in as your museums expand, as some ghosts don't like to share their environment with certain other ghost types, and some fish have more demanding needs than their counterparts.

It's the variety of exhibit types and museum curation opportunities that really make Two Point Museum shine.

It would be easy enough for Two Point Studios to fall back on some goofy tropes from the previous two games. Instead, it truly feels like Two Point Museum stands on its own two feet when it comes to humor and creativity.

Of course, if the pressing weight of gameplay objectives is too much for you and you just want the freedom of creating your own museum with wild abandon, the Sandbox mode returns with Two Point Museum.

You can really let your creative freedom take hold. It's great to see this feature return for players who just want to experience Two Point Museum without any guardrails.

Two Point Museum — What I don't like

Two Point Museum is the third entry from Two Point Studios in this franchise, and it's hard to find fault when a team this talented so carefully crafts an experience. That's not to say that it's a perfect experience, but I do admit that it can be a little easy for me to gloss over issues because I'm so busy just having fun.

That doesn't mean that Two Point Museum is without faults, though. I still remember what a struggle using a controller for Two Point Hospital was, and then Two Point Campus made a significant leap in improvements for controller support thanks to Two Point Studios giving weight to player feedback. However, Two Point Museum does feel like it's a step backward when it comes to UI and controller inputs.

I played the game both on PC via Steam with mouse and keyboard inputs and on Xbox with a controller. In the past, I've preferred to play Two Point games on Windows via the Microsoft Store thanks to support for Play Anywhere, using a controller's analog sticks for camera controls and a mouse for simultaneously navigating UI.

My preferred setup is one that is a bit of an anomaly, due in part to my physical limitations from my disability. At the time of writing this review, I was unable to use controller inputs on Steam, and the Xbox version of the game did not support Play Anywhere entitlements, which created some barriers.

The limitations of Two Point Museum's accessibility didn't stop with input options, either. This is the third game in this franchise, all of which have NPCs providing dialogue via text captions and a radio that provides insight into what's happening in your buildings along with witty jokes and references. Unfortunately, the radio station still has no subtitles.

The lack of subtitles proves particularly frustrating when you're doing Curator Class missions, which serve as campaign skill checkpoints. In some instances, you'll have the radio mentioning that burglars are invading your museum, with the challenge being to stop them before they leave with your exhibits or other valuables. If you can't hear that they're incoming, however, it can be difficult to actually stop them.

Two Point Museum — Should you buy it?

I have my gripes about Two Point Museum, and it is a little disheartening that it feels like most of them are gripes I also had with Two Point Campus—especially when it comes to accessibility. However frustrating to navigate the UI with a controller feels, though, it's hard to deny that Two Point Museum is just fun to play.

It's the kind of game that you sit down and launch after dinner, thinking you'll play for a half hour to an hour while you have a little spare time. Then you look at the clock, it's 6 AM and the sun is coming up.

In an era when everybody is hyper-fixated on realism and frame rates and faux outrage at the next big AAA, it's nice to be able to sit down with a game that's just focused on being a good time. Two Point Studios embraces the wacky, the weird, and the absurd and makes it an enjoyable experience — minus a few quirks.

Could the controller mapping be better? Sure, but that could be said of a lot of games. Once you adjust to it, you're still going to lose 40+ hours in a week to Two Point Museum and be grateful for it. I, for one, can't wait to see where we get to go in Two Point County next.

Monster Hunter is a franchise that is near and dear to my heart. When I first moved country fully several years ago, it was right around the time Monster Hunter World launched for Xbox One. I had always been aware of the franchise, but never had a system upon which to play it, but with Capcom bringing the franchise to Xbox for the first time, I was immediately and irrevocably hooked.

It became the primary way me and my friends and family back home socialized. The sheer difficulty of the game and overcoming that challenge created epic multiplayer moments that I hadn't felt since the early World of Warcraft days. Defeating Arch Tempered Nergigante for the first time, raiding Kulve Taroth with the squad, and exploring the massive expansion of Iceborne all represent incredibly fond gaming memories.

It's against this high bar that Monster Hunter Wilds arrives in 2025, launching February 28 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC via Steam, and PlayStation 5. The various open beta tests were incredibly promising. Wilds' new open-world format, complete with the new Seikret mounts, dynamic weather events, and all-new combos and abilities, represent a ton of reasons to be excited for Wilds. Over the past week, I've been playing the game for review, and after felling every monster the game has to offer, I can't help but admit I feel somewhat dejected.

Monster Hunter Wilds is an amazing basis for something that could evolve to be a franchise high point, but I can't help but feel that the game is shipping without proper testing. Despite having amazing new monsters, incredible environmental design, and fun new weapon abilities — it's simply far too easy, even for casual players. It's a particular problem in a game like Monster Hunter because it undermines aspects of the game's premise, core systems, and long-term potential.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Graphics and Sound

If there's one aspect of Monster Hunter Wilds that sets a high bar, it's in the visuals department, at least on Xbox Series X. The open beta had created some jitters about performance, but I'm happy to report the game offers a good and stable experience across all graphics settings. You can sacrifice visual fidelity for 60 FPS, use a "balanced mode" to hit 40 FPS on FreeSync monitors, or gun for a resolution-first 30 FPS mode. I played the game primarily at 40 FPS, although 30 FPS offers a really impressive cinematic experience that really showcases the game's weather effects.

Indeed, one of Wilds' big new signature features is dynamic, evolving weather effects. It's incredibly exciting and epic when a Mad Maxian wall of sand rolls towards you in the desert, transporting you into another dimension, wracked by gigantic lightning bolts and bristling static. The forest region transforms from a stagnant, static swamp to a fresh water flood when the rains come, and then a colorful, blooming garden when the deluge subsides.

I do think that perhaps texture compression is ramped up a bit in Wilds to accommodate the game's lighting effects and generous draw distance, but it'll be up to you to decide if the trade-off is worth it. I will say that on Xbox Series X, texture popping remains an issue when turning the camera. Hopefully further optimizations can improve the experience there.

Some technical issues aside, the art direction is absolutely on point in Wilds, where the environmental design well and truly showcases the best of what Capcom has to offer.

Where Wilds' art direction continues to shine is in monster designs. Rey Dau's alarmingly alien cries and lightning railgun face is an exciting example of Monster Hunter's ecological realism that blends the fantastical in an uncannily believable way.

Nu Udra is a jaw-dropping animation triumph, with its deadly undulating tentacles plucked straight out of a Cthonic nightmare. There are tons of returning classic monsters, too, that I naturally won't spoil here, but it's exciting seeing certain critters return after not being seen for generations, recreated with modern visuals and flair.

Monster Hunter Wilds also takes a step up in the cinematics department, too. The game offers a more intimate story experience than some of its predecessors, and the expressive facial motion capture does help make the characters more memorable and fun to engage with. How engaging is the story overall, though?

Monster Hunter Wilds: Story

"Story" has never really truly been the focus of Monster Hunter games, but it does feel like Capcom is exploring building upon the game's back story and lore to add further depth as the franchise grows. Looking at the pre-orders on Steam, there's every reason to think Monster Hunter Wilds could end up being the biggest opening for the franchise so far and will also most likely be the first game in the franchise for many players.

Monster Hunter Wilds takes place in a new Eastern region called The Forbidden Lands, where a new guild commission has arrived to survey and research the area. The guild had assumed for years that the land was uninhabitable, dominated by insanely dangerous monsters, and opted instead to survey the area more safely from the air.

However, upon arriving, the commission spots a young boy who has become lost in the dunes, which throws what the Guild thought they knew about the region into question. After saving the disoriented lad, Nata, the guild discovers there's far more to The Forbidden Lands than they realized. Nata has no idea which direction he entered the desert from, and helping him find his way back home forms a large part of the story.

I'm sure some fans will find Nata's childish frustrations at times a bit grating at times, but he does evolve as a character throughout the story, and exploring his origins reveals intriguing new lore with broad implications for the entire Monster Hunter universe.

Indeed, the inclusion of returning characters like Gemma (formally known as 'Little Miss Forge' from Monster Hunter 4), now all grown up, suggests to me that Capcom is exploring adding deeper narrative depth to the franchise, and for the most part it works quite well in Monster Hunter Wilds. It is still relatively "soft" and arguably forgettable as a plot, but as I mentioned earlier, "story" has never typically been the focus of these games. The lore implications are perhaps the most interesting aspect of the game's story, but I'll leave those out for fear of spoilers.

What the story does do well is flesh out The Forbidden Lands' new areas, monsters, and characters, giving it a good foundation upon which to build. The guild doesn't have a strong foothold in the area, and what human tribes do exist are small in size and scattered in number.

The constant monster attacks and erratic weather have stifled technological advancement, but the locals know the land extremely well and form a symbiotic relationship with various creatures for mounts, food, and protection. The player can take advantage of some of these story elements in a gameplay context, trading for ingredients and acquiring Seikret mounts to traverse the game's large world.

The remoteness of the region and its story setting, unfortunately, means that the guild's resources are incredibly limited. I was saddened to find that there's no canteen facility in Wilds, for example. There's no botanical research farm for growing crops and materials either. The lack of a main "central hub" detracts from the charm, I would argue, with villages feeling small and anemic in flavor compared to World. Perhaps it fits the story and setting, but it's disappointing in practice.

"Disappointing in practice" also sadly describes Monster Hunter Wilds gameplay, as painful as it is to admit as a fan. The foundation is absolutely there, but some poor design decisions and, possibly, poor High Rank testing puts Wilds on the backfoot out of the gate.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Gameplay

Monster Hunter is a long and storied franchise, meaning different things to lots of different people. I came in at Monster Hunter World, which friends who are fans of the classic games often described as being "too casual" and "too easy." I certainly never felt that way about it when I was playing it for the first time, and I appreciated it for onboarding me gently into the franchise — but therein lies the challenge of developing games that have such a long legacy.

How do you satisfy existing fans' expectations while also delivering something new, while also keeping things accessible to potential new customers? I'm not sure Monster Hunter Wilds threads that needle well, and its seeming pursuit of "more accessible" gameplay undermines many other aspects of the game and could harm its staying power. Foundationally, though, Wilds is perhaps the most technically impressive canvas the franchise has seen yet and could easily evolve into something truly spectacular with some relatively easy tweaks.

For those who don't know, Monster Hunter games are generally combat-first titles that feature complex mechanics that reward players willing to learn through the nuances. They're almost analogous to fighting games in some ways, as Monster Hunter Wilds' 14 weapon types often feature complex combos to learn that force players to think tactically about whether to deploy them — lest you get punished heavily by those angry monsters.

Going for a slow, heavy combo as a monster is winding up its own attacks is liable to get you stunned, knocked over, and potentially killed. Learning when to weave your attacks in between monster's lunges, utilizing counters, guarding abilities, and invincibility frame dodges form the basis of play. Building gear sets to exploit monster weaknesses or behaviors, utilizing tools like traps, or special environmental interactions were the main things standing between you and victory. Or at least, they used to be.

Monster Hunter Wilds is generally too easy in every regard, and in any other type of game, that might not be a particularly big problem. In Monster Hunter, though, it deals cascading harm to the gameplay loop's ecosystem, much like the invasive predators the Guild asks you to hunt down.

Let's talk about the good stuff first, though. For Monster Hunter Wilds, Capcom built a massive, continuous open world that you can, theoretically, walk through from one end to the other without loading screens. It's a strong endorsement of the RE Engine how well this actually functions, and although it seems like there are some trade offs to speak of with regards to texture compression and the like, as I noted above.

But the cinematic opportunities from battling monsters in epic, dynamic weather systems, cut with dynamic lighting atop epic set-piece arenas, make the trade-offs worth it in my view. I won't spoil some of these moments, but they perhaps wouldn't be possible without the draw distances and environmental visuals Monster Hunter Wilds opted for here.

The environments are bristling with life, and even between hunts, simply exploring the game's world and watching critters of all shapes and sizes interact is almost a game unto itself. Wilds is the best kind of digital safari, where you can easily immerse yourself into the role of fantasy David Attenborough if you fancy, albeit with a giant sword on your back. I already praised the environmental design from an art perspective, but from a gameplay perspective, too, it's just utterly enchanting. It's worth it to put your Gunlance down every now and then and just soak in the atmosphere.

More good stuff, at least foundationally so, revolves around new weapon abilities. Every weapon got new features in Wilds, in some cases to address inefficiencies from World and Rise alike. Gunlance got impressive new combos that almost feel like you're wielding a flame thrower at times, especially with Normal shelling for extra magazine charges. The new power clash system for performing a perfect guard is a rewarding mechanic for skillful play with weapons like the Heavy Bowgun or Lance kit.

The Hunting Horn picked up its echo bubbles from Monster Hunter Rise, boosting both your offensive and supportive capabilities in interesting ways. I think, for the most part, the weapons changes and upgrades will be well received in Wilds, although they don't reach their true potential owing to some odd design decisions revolving around the monsters themselves and even the UI in some cases. Just writing this paragraph makes me jittery to jump back in and hunt down some more beasties for the sake of it. I wish, though, it wasn't just for the sake of it sometimes.

As I mentioned, Monster Hunter Wilds feels potentially too easy, even as a casual player. The game goes out of its way to protect you from one-shot attacks, giving you a huge red warning across your health bar if an incoming ability might kill you.

As such, instead of looking at the amazing monster designs, the game draws your attention to a wobbling red line, which, to me, felt not only a bit patronizing but distracting. And yes, you can't turn it off. It's a minor gripe, though there's worse to come.

The monsters often felt like they didn't have enough HP to offset the powerful new attacks most of the weapons now have. In addition, the game's new wound-targeting Focus Mode can, in some cases, stun and trip monsters far too frequently, trivializing fights. Other abilities of this nature, like Flash Pods, generally have diminishing returns.

I'm not sure if Focus Mode is bugged or not, but it felt quite unfair when a colleague and I were basically able to keep many High Rank endgame monsters frequently stunned, tripped, and knocked out simply by spamming Focus Mode attacks over and over. There are a couple of very high-end spoilery exceptions here, though, which do seem to have some stronger protections against Focus spam. I just wish there were perhaps a few more exceptions to that rule.

For the most part, when you combine these Focus Mode abilities with the various other powerful abilities you get, the powerful power-up mantles, and the Seikret mount's ability to whisk you off the floor and out of harm's way — hunting those epic, giant monsters starts feeling trivial. And sure, you do control the buttons you press, to quote DOOM.

You can turn off the Palico, who automatically drops traps flash pods and other gadgets for you. And you can simply opt-in to not using the Seikret, but it seems odd that the game wasn't designed around some of this stuff. The Seikret is a new gameplay feature that I would ultimately want to use for the sake of flavor. I just think it would've been better if it was woven into the game's balance rather than dropped on top of it.

Throughout the entire game, all the way to the final endgame monsters of High Rank's post-story content, I upgraded my gear maybe 3 or 4 times, and I did that primarily for the armor's looks rather than their stats and build opportunities. I never truly felt an impetus to upgrade and build specifically to counter a monster in Wilds this time around.

There weren't many times when I felt like a fight was so hard that I needed to ensure I had a full compliment of potions and food buffs in order to give myself an edge in combat. As such, all of the game's systems felt like incidental flavor rather than a necessary part of the "hunt." Although, that's not necessarily a universally bad thing. It depends on your perspective at the end of the day.

Furthermore, perhaps this design is well-intended. As I noted above, Monster Hunter Wilds is likely going to be the biggest opening for the franchise in history, flooding the game with new players. I suspect that Capcom will want to give new players a relatively easy onboarding experience before hitting them with more difficult, granular challenges later on with post-launch content.

But we're not discussing the future of the game here right now. This is a review designed to give feedback, share my personal opinion, and give you a glimpse at what to expect, whether you're a vet or a newcomer.

My criticisms of the difficulty aren't about gatekeeping the game for newcomers by any means. I'm all for making games more accessible to more people, but for a game like Monster Hunter, which revolves entirely around hunting monsters, the fact that Wilds doesn't really ask you to learn any of the fights or gear specifically for monster's weaknesses undermines many of the game's core features.

I think it's a bigger issue here than it would be in other games, potentially. I couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointment, even if hunting monsters with friends provides some good fun. That doesn't mean you'll feel disappointed, though. I'm interested to find out what the consensus will be on some of these things once the full game is accessible to more people. Because, like I said, the core loop remains intact. The environments and monsters are incredible, and the canvas here has so much raw potential.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Conclusion

For sure, the good news for Monster Hunter Wilds is that there is an incredibly strong foundation here. The game doesn't really utilize its continuous open world for any real purpose right now. But, it's easy to imagine how, one day, perhaps they could add an epic giant-scale battle that takes place across the entire map, forcing players to constantly give chase.

The Focus Mode attacks feel a bit too powerful and spammy right now, but what if they had unique interactions with specific monsters, or perhaps, were even required to weaken a particularly dangerous attack? The Seikret also just feels like it was added on top of what is otherwise a typical Monster Hunter, with little thought given to how its speed and agility might trivialize hunts in an imbalanced way.

It does feel like different parts of the Monster Hunter team weren't communicating very well about how their respective additions to the game might impact the whole, which is potentially an indictment of the overall game's direction.

Even beyond difficulty, I found myself missing things like a personal dwelling, a centralized city hub, and even the Palico canteen. Either way, Monster Hunter Wilds provides a fantastic and fun foundation, even if the difficulty curve does harm its longer-term viability.

Focus Mode could be given diminishing returns or stronger punishments for misuse. The death warning bar could be given a toggle or reduced (or removed) monster damage, and hit points can be buffed, at least in High Rank. If enough people feel, as I do, that the monsters need to be buffed a bit, it shouldn't be particularly difficult for Capcom to pull some levers to reinject more challenge into proceedings, at least in High Rank.

I'm just one reviewer offering one opinion that could very well fall outside the consensus, but I just feel like I should want and need to chase specific gear sets to really give the game that meaty feeling that Monster Hunter predecessors had. I should need to consider my positioning and consumables to counter more of what the game has to offer.

If I were Capcom, I would've thought they'd want people to have reasons to play the game for a long period of time, with more road bumps and difficult monsters along the way.

But perhaps the idea is that Wilds gets new people in the door and potentially hooked on the game for future updates and content drops. I suspect Wilds may be the best and most accessible way for new players to learn the game's core concepts, with more challenging content coming later for veterans and hardcore players. I would have thought that at least High Rank could deliver some of that, but at least this time, it was not meant to be.

Hunting down monsters in 4-player co-op is still fun. Discovering new creatures and seeing returning favorites remains exciting. The improved online systems are a welcome upgrade. And the art direction is absolutely fantastic. Monster Hunter World, with all of its post-launch content, was always going to be a tough act to follow.

I'm still excited and intrigued to see where Capcom takes Monster Hunter Wilds. The post-launch support of Monster Hunter World was essentially legendary, and as I said, it's hardly unsalvageable for those who may find themselves craving a deeper challenge.

The Like a Dragon series, formerly localized as Yakuza, is one I never had on my radar. For years, I'd look at trailers and think to myself, "Yeah, I'm not touching that." I forever imagined its weirdness was simply too alien for me to find enjoyable.

The opportunity arose for me to tackle Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name back in 2023, and I took it on as an eager gaming reviewer looking to leave his mark. Perhaps, I thought, I was cultured enough to enjoy a Yakuza game. I saw it as the perfect opportunity.

Within hours of starting my voyage, I bitterly realized how wrong I'd been. I had missed years of this franchise based on poorly preconceived notions. Gradually, the compounding interest in the story, minigames, combat, customization, and whatever else that particular Yakuza game had was splashing me in the face. I felt the weight of hundreds of hours of gameplay that all beckoned for me to master.

My journey into Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii has been nothing short of the same unyielding gameplay I fell in love with just a couple of years ago. Now, packed into a nautical adventure, Like a Dragon once again finds a way to redefine itself as a worthy sequel that comes only a year after Infinite Wealth.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by Sega. The company had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

The good

Goro Majima takes the helm in the latest entry in the series.

Waking up on the desolate shores of an island outside of Hawaii, Goro finds himself wrecked with amnesia, forgetting even his name. What's more, he's alone.

There's no one around who knows who he is as he wakes up to a ten-year-old named Noah, who starts a fight with some pirates in the first couple minutes. Yep, this is definitely a Yakuza game.

Mad Dog finds himself butting stern first with a group of pirates running amock on the island. Causing nothing but issues with the locals, Goro takes it upon himself to raid the ever-present pirate Keith and plunder his own ship. One that may lead to fortunes that are yet untold.

The once proud leader of the Majima family finds himself encompassed by hordes of pirates as he looks to climb the ranks of the Madlantis underworld. Forget his memory.

Why remember who you once were when what you are now is a pirate who has yet to find his potential? Goro thinks the same and sails forth at full speed.

I don't want to give away too much of the story. The winds and waves of Like a Dragon games are part of the fun, and spoiling anything now would put a proper cannonball-sized hole in the chest of gamers.

What you should know is the story is as excellent as it's always been. Hot on the heels of events in Infinite Wealth, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii gives a unique take on the Yakuza events that can't keep themselves from happening in Hawaii.

Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii's combat

I wasn't sure how I felt about combat at first. It felt like a sloppier version of Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name.

Cutting the anchor loose from that of the turn-based combat, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii takes another crack at the free-flow combat Kazuma Kiryu popularized in his last entry.

Over time, the depths of the systems at play bore fruit. A plethora of unlockable options started to rope me in. I found myself swapping back and forth much more frequently than I did in Like a Dragon Gaiden because I found the two styles incredibly useful from beginning to end of most combat situations.

I was smiling whether I was in a crowd, pitted against a singular boss enemy, or closing the distance between Goro and some deranged pistoleer. The combat punished me for over-extending and rewarded me for patience.

Any frustration I was enduring happened because I started button-mashing in hopes I could neglect the consequences.

Playing the pirate in Hawaii

I was in a boat similar to the combat when it came to authentic pirating. I wasn't totally in love at first, as it takes an entire chapter before the pirate ship portion of the game starts to take off.

The beginner ship doesn't quite make a good impression, but like all things Yakuza, it's the culmination of ideas that come later, which leads to a massive payoff. The pirating ended up becoming absolutely addictive.

Sailing the open seas, speeding through materials, battling degenerate pirates, and plundering booty from nearby islands. The total package hits perfectly late in Chapter 2 when you're forced into a brutal colosseum-style battle between pirates.

The king of everything else

The minigames yet again reign supreme. You can just chill playing darts, blow loads of gunpowder with batted cannonballs, and crack bombs downfield in a closest-to-pin challenge. Each feels rewarding, thanks to the shop system.

Acquiring points in any game leads to literal treasures that include rings, money, pirate points, and other trinkets that will either give you a combat or venture capital advantage.

There are so many other wonderful things in this game that deserve attention, like the bounty system, which tracks the player by finding outlaws scattered across different areas. Each presents their own level of challenge with a bounty reward equal to said challenge.

Then there's the segway scooters, a favorite of mine returning from Infinite Wealth that they've taken to the next level. Forget the taxis; take out a high-bar pink neon spitting two-wheeler that'll cause burn-in on your OLED TV for being so damn bright. I just wish I could pair it with a ridiculous solar-powering hat.

I'll let you find more for yourself, as some surprises are best left to the player. Needless to say, there's a lot to do. Then again, I've said it already, but it's a Yakuza game. You expected a metric #$%@ ton of things to do.

The bad

I have one problem with the game. It's an issue I haven't generally cared about before, but the Dragon Engine is really starting to show its age. From low-resolution surfaces to intensely poor FSR, the cross-generation development of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is getting painful.

The annoyance becomes obvious from the start. Sand and rock textures on the island are rough in the ways you don't want sand and rocks to be rough. The geometry is entirely missing from most surfaces and instead replaced by a flat two-dimensional surface.

We're now 5 years into the current generation, and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios is still developing their games for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. I get that there are a large number of users on those platforms still, but this hurts potential customers looking for a better experience if the only noticeable difference on their higher end systems is framerate.

The area that suffers most isn't surface textures; it's the water. When most of your game is based on pirating across the ocean, you better make sure your water looks good enough to sail. For me, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii entirely missed this mark.

Just to see if I was crazy, I went back and watched gameplay from Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. I debated which looked better or worse, and in neither case could I decide. The representations of the seaplay are just that dated.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth — Final Thoughts

You should play this if...

✅ You enjoy the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, or if you want something new to try

I will continue to trumpet this point. More people need to jump into the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. It's amazing what the developer can do with so little time.

✅ You're looking for that Black Flag kick

While it's not super realistic by any means, it's a fun, off-beat pirating adventure that has boarding and plenty of buccaneers to blast off the waters.

You should not play this if...

❌ You want the next great-looking game

At times, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii really shows its age, and it can be downright ugly. If that's a dealbreaker for you, perhaps wait for an entry in the series that ditches last-gen hardware.

It's time for players to jump in and experience what Like a Dragon has to offer. If you've never tried one of their games, I absolutely urge you to do so now. It's $60, but it's an absolute treasure trove of gameplay for a multitude of players.

If you appreciate anime, you'll love the story of Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. If you like minigames, look no further. If you miss Assassin's Creed Black Flag, get ready to plunder.

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (AoD) is infamous for being the instalment that almost killed the franchise. It was an ambitious attempt at bringing Lara Croft into the next-generation – that being the PS2 – and promised to deliver groundbreaking new gameplay mechanics, a branching storyline, updated graphics, and more open and complex level design.

As a massive Tomb Raider fan, I was hyped for this game. I vividly remember being a kid, watching all the trailers and behind the scenes content on the lead up to its release. Behind closed doors however, the game was in crisis. It simply wasn’t ready and required significantly more time in the oven to finish it.

Sadly, AoD never got that extra time, and was pushed out the door in an incredibly unfinished state. Much of the game was cut at the last minute to salvage a working product, and most of the bits that did ship did so in a very rough state. The game was basically held together with duct tape and prayers, and it showed.

So, when game developer Aspyr announced that it was remastering the rest of the classic Tomb Raider saga, including Angel of Darkness, I was instantly intrigued. The Tomb Raider 1-3 Remaster from last year is an almost perfect example of a remaster, focusing on updated visuals, quality of life improvements, and modern controls for new audiences.

But how do you remaster an unfinished game like Angel of Darkness that was panned for clunky controls, a convoluted storyline, and broken features? I was eager to find out, so when my review copy of Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered landed in my inbox, I instantly went straight to AoD to see what had (or hadn’t) improved.

This review was conducted on an Xbox Series X with a review code supplied by Aspyr. The developers did not see the contents of this review before publication.

Visuals and character models

First up, let’s talk visuals. The Tomb Raider 1-5 Remasters do a beautiful job at remastering how those old games look. Everything from lighting effects to character models, to map textures are updated to be more in line with what modern audiences expect, while staying true to the original aesthetics.

With AoD, that hasn't happened in its entirety. We’ll start with the new character models, which look fantastic. Lara’s new model is everything I could want in a modernized version of the character, with an updated polygon count that gives her a more natural appearance, and new clothes textures that provide a more realistic and high-detailed appearance. She now also blinks in cutscenes!

Other characters such as Kurtis, Eckhardt, Carvier, Bouchard, Janice, and more all look excellent as well. However, oddly, not all characters you interact with have been updated. Some of the less important characters haven’t been touched, including Marten Gunderson, the City guide, and a number of enemies including Boaz.

Because of this, it’s jarring when a character like Eckhardt shares a scene with Gunderson, because the difference in detail and quality between them is so vast when only one of their models have been updated. Additionally, even the updated models aren't always perfect. For example, I found that the hair on the front of Lara’s head isn’t dynamic on them new model, meaning it doesn’t move when she does. Her ponytail still does move, however.

AoD’s updated map textures are also a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, they do stay (mostly) true to the original’s aesthetic, but that's because the new textures are incredibly subtle in their improvements. In a lot of cases, these new textures are either simply upscaled or have been redrawn without adding any additional detail or depth.

In fact, I think some of the updated textures even removes detail in certain places. Many of AoD’s environments are gritty and grimy, but the new visuals seem to lack a lot of that grit and grime, resulting in very flat and dull looking environments. There was more than one occasion throughout my playthrough where I thought that the older, lower res textures looked better than the newer, higher-res textures because of that lack of detail.

I actually found myself switching back and forth between old and new visuals quite often, not because I wanted to see the difference, but because I couldn’t tell which graphics mode I was in a lot of the time. In some areas, the difference is barely noticeable, to the point where I don’t think it’d even be worth updating the textures in some places.

I’m also disappointed that not much has been done to improve lighting or enhance environments with additional details that previously weren't there. The other classic Tomb Raider remasters are so good because they add detail in areas that were lacking them with things like additional rocks or foliage, but no such treatment has been given to AoD.

Overall, the updated visuals are good, but they could have been amazing. The updated character models are great, but the flat map textures, untouched lighting, lack of additional detail, and random characters not being updated makes the other classic Tomb Raider remasters stand out even more. Hopefully updates will improve these areas.

Combat and modern controls

The AoD remaster finally brings a more tolerable control scheme to the game. AoD was originally panned for having terrible controls that didn’t lend themselves well to the overall level design. The remaster introduces the same “modern” control scheme that the other classic remasters have, meaning Lara now controls more like she does in Tomb Raider: Legend.

You can of course switch back to the classic “tank” control scheme if that’s something you prefer. I personally prefer the tank controls, if only because I find them to be more precise than the modern ones. The best way to describe the difference between each control scheme is that the modern controls provide responsive movement and a simplified control scheme, but at the cost of precision. The tank controls are much more precise but are harder to master.

(Note: If you are using modern controls, be aware that there are two "action" buttons for different things. Y for picking up items and pressing buttons, and RT for grabbing items and ledges. This took me a few minutes to figure out during my first run, because it's not explained in the game.)

I will say that regardless of the control scheme, Lara appears to move slightly faster in general. One of the big complaints people had with AoD originally was that Lara was slow. She moves off slow, runs slow, and stops slow. In the remaster, this has been sped up a bit, making her feel a little more responsive across the board.

I do think the new modern controls will give new audiences a fair shake at actually trying this game for the first time. More often than not, it was the old tank controls that turned players off, and that's no longer a barrier to entry here. That said, the modern controls will take a few minutes to get used to.

One area that hasn't really improved regardless of control scheme is combat. Combat sucks in the original game, and unfortunately the remaster does little to improve this. Outside of Lara now being a little faster in general, she still locks on to enemies and strafes when firing in a frustrating manner that feels heavy and unnatural.

This is especially the case with Kurtis, who is now able to equip the Chirugai Blade that he's seen using in cutscenes. This is now a weapon the player can use, but the control scheme is frankly painful. When equipped, Kurtis can no longer jump or strafe. His movement is slowed, and the blade itself isn't even that powerful.

What doesn't help is the goofy animation they've given Kurtis when he has the blade equipped and engaged in combat. He moves around like a grasshopper, and his responsiveness drops significantly. The only good thing about the Chirugai Blade is that it includes a button that gives you a temporary shield, not that I found I needed it.

On a more positive note, the remaster does is give Lara back her iconic dual pistols. Lara can be seen dual wielding pistols in many cutscenes, but the player was never actually able to equip them during the original game. That’s now fixed, as the player can now find and equip them throughout the game!

There are two types of dual-pistols that can be equipped by the player – dual Vector-R35’s and dual Scorpion X’s. They’ll be treated as dual weapons too, meaning they will deplete 9mm ammo twice as fast. Unfortunately, Lara herself isn’t able fire at two enemies simultaneously when dual wielding, unlike in prior classic games.

Story continuity and restored content

The AoD remaster attempts to fix some key issues with the unfinished state of the original game. Issues such as story continuity errors, confusing objectives, and cut mechanics and level areas have been addressed and even restored or completed.

As the original AoD launched in an unfinished state, there were many areas of the game that failed to properly inform the player of their next objective. The remaster aims to fix this by including cut dialog in key areas to give context to the player, and even fix continuity errors in some cases.

For example, an infamous continuity error in AoD is Lara’s outfit when moving from “The Strahov Fortress” into “The Bio-Research Facility.” In the original game, Lara inexplicably swaps her cargo pants for cargo shorts, even though the two levels are supposed to be a corridor apart from each other.

In the remaster, an attempt has been made to fix this continuity error by adding a line that gives context to the sudden outfit change. Now, Lara will say “Wear what’s comfortable, I always say” to imply she chose to swap out her pants for shorts during the loading screen because she was entering a warmer environment. She was probably keeping them in her backpack.

I found Lara now talks to herself a bit more than I remember her doing in the original game. She'll lend her thoughts on certain objectives and locations to nudge the player in the right direction. These seem to only occur when the level design isn't so clear. I also noticed that blood effects have been restored, too.

You’ll find small improvements like this all over the game, which I really like. I also love that Aspyr did its very best to restore some cut areas and mechanics in levels, the most notable of which is at the very start of the game. Lara will now suggest to the player that she can either climb a ladder or go through a doorway into a new area that was previously inaccessible.

This inaccessible area was originally cut for time, but Aspyr has finally finished it and it's now fully working and accessible in the game. It acts as an alternative training ground for the player to get used to the controls and plays nicely into the whole branching storyline aspect of the game.

Aspyr has also gone to lengths to restore a cut feature that allows Lara to buy and sell items during the Paris section of the game. Items you collect and money you find in this area now have a purpose, as you can now take them to the pawn brokers and sell them for additional cash, which you can spend on better weapons and health items.

In a vacuum, this is a great addition. However, this is the only part of the game where this mechanic is now implemented. Once you leave Paris, there isn't another pawn broker to buy or sell items at. This means all the items and money you collect from then onwards have no purpose.

This is where restoring an unfinished game like this begins to rear its ugly head. Even when you bring to life one of its many cut mechanics, the mechanic ultimately suffers because the rest of the game never got to a point where it could be implemented. Unfortunately, AoD is missing large chunks, including a hub world which would have let the player return to an area where they could buy and sell items for cash.

Ultimately, I am happy to see some of this cut content restored. I remember being a kid and learning about the secret training area in the first level, and discovering bugs that would let you access it. It was exciting back then, and being able to access a finished version officially is a dream come true for little me.

Features, enhancements, and bugs

If you were hoping that the remaster would fix all the bugs that AoD originally suffered from, you’re going to be disappointed. While I’m sure Aspyr has done its best to address bugs where it can, there are still plenty of bugs that I encountered throughout my playthrough.

For example, an iconic bug that I remember encountering all the time on PS2 is one where enemies will sometimes bounce into the sky after they're killed.. I found this to happen mostly on The Serpant Rouge, though I did spot it in a couple of other areas too. It happens randomly, so you might not encounter it at all.

I also ran into a bug that caused Lara to freeze in place twice. It happened on two different levels, seemingly randomly, and when it did happen the only fix was to load a previous save, because none of the buttons would free her. The game wasn’t frozen, just Lara was.

AI pathing continues to be a weak point here as well. More than once did an AI enemy either completely not see me, or get stuck in a corner and refuse to partake in the fight. This was an issue in the original game, and it's still an issue here with the remaster.

I also found that the ambient music that plays throughout levels would sometimes just stop, most commonly when loading into a new area. The only fix seemed to be to reload the save or push through until a new loading zone activates the music again.

Some areas appear to be missing textures, even in remastered visuals. The cutscene where Lara and Bouchard are talking in a car has no visuals out the window. Or maybe the windows are supposed to be blacked out.

Just like all the other classic Tomb Raider remasters, there are a few new features added to AoD that enhance the replayability of the game. For example, you can now change Lara's outfit on the fly once you've unlocked them, and you can even enable her iconic sunglasses that she'll keep throughout the game. You can also enable boss battle health bars now, which are truly helpful.

There's also the theater mode, which lets you fly a camera around the level and take photos of Lara in different poses. Unfortunately, this version of the theater mode is unlike the version in Tomb Raider IV and V. In those games, you can set up keyframes and create cinematic video shots. That's missing for the AoD version for some reason.

Final thoughts

Tomb Raider AoD Remastered is the best attempt I’ve seen yet at fixing this game. However, it’s not perfect. Updated map and object textures are good, but there's room for improvement here. There are also still bugs that I'd like to see fixed with future updates. Overall, the game does an excellent job at restoring cut content where possible, and fixes issues like player movement and story continuity which really do enhance the quality of this classic Tomb Raider game.

Unfortunately, the remaster can't help the fact that this game is chronically unfinished. Aspyr has done its best to fix the game up for a modern audience, but there's only so much you can do when half the game is outright missing. I love Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, and I appreciate this remaster too. But sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, and that's not the remasters fault.

The remaster does lower the barrrier for entry for modern audiences, especially PC players. The original AoD on PC is terrible. It's difficult to set up, and doesn't even work a lot of the time. This remaster solves those problems and makes jumping into the game as simple as launching it and starting a new save.

If you're interested in the development hell that Angel of Darkness endured back in 2003, be sure to check out Steve of Warr's excellent retrospective. He breaks down the good and the bad of the original AoD in great detail.

Obsidian Entertainment is one of my most adored developers under the Xbox Game Studios banner, so it's no wonder my excitement was sky-high for Avowed.

My excitement wasn't met with disappointment, either. Returning to the world of Eora from an all-new perspective has provided dozens of hours of joy, and my path through The Living Lands has been paved with endless exploration, colorful combat, delightful discussions, and tantalizing tales. Avowed is just fun, and it's one of the most memorable first-party Xbox games I've played in the last year, alongside Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

You can absolutely find the limits of Avowed's scope compared to the biggest and most ambitious RPGs (role-playing games), and even with a few additional months of development there are still some performance concerns and minor bugs. Despite that, though, Avowed has wholeheartedly captured my full attention on every front, from the world's presentation to the simple-yet-diverse combat. As Obsidian will tell you, this isn't the studio's take on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but Avowed does capture that same magic that makes the possibilities around every corner exciting.

This review was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by Xbox Game Studios. Obsidian Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

Avowed review: What is it?

• Avowed is a first/third-person fantasy RPG from Xbox Game Studios.
• It's set in Eora, the fictional universe from the Pillars of Eternity games.

Avowed is a brand-new franchise set in the existing Pillars of Eternity universe, taking place after the events of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. The game brings players to The Living Lands for the first time, and is designed to welcome brand-new players and existing fans of the acclaimed CRPG (computer role-playing game) series that came before. The world of Eora is seen in a new light, including its pantheon of fickle gods, its abundance of unique cultures and peoples, and the never-ending importance and influence of the soul.

Developed by Obsidian Entertainment (Grounded, Pentiment, The Outer Worlds, and more) and published by Xbox Game Studios, Avowed is a focused, semi-open-world fantasy RPG that can be played in both third and first-person perspectives. It's also a class-less role-playing game, meaning players can mix and match weapons, abilities, and skills however they choose.

Story-wise, Avowed follows the exploits of the Aedyran Envoy, an official emissary of their emperor tasked with traveling to The Living Lands to investigate the Dreamscourge. This mysterious plague is afflicting the land, plants, animals, and now even people of The Living Lands, rotting their souls and turning them into mindless creatures of violence. As the envoy, it's your job to discover the source of the Dreamscourge alongside the companions you meet on the way — and possibly discover your roots as a mysterious godlike, as well.

Avowed releases on Feb. 18, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass through Ultimate, PC, and Xbox Cloud Gaming tiers. Premium Edition and Premium Upgrade owners can play up to five days early on Feb. 13, 2025. You can buy Avowed now from $69.99 at Best Buy.

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Avowed review: Performance and presentation

• Avowed adapts a stylized art design with vibrant, saturated environments.
• The game looks amazing, with truly stunning world design.
• Performance is also solid, but there are framerate drops and other concerns.

Avowed doesn't mirror the darker mood of its initial reveal trailer, nor does it pursue the photorealistic visuals of many AAA RPGs and action-adventure games. Instead, Obsidian Entertainment brought The Living Lands to life by filling this world with life. There are four main areas in Avowed, separated by story progression and loading times, and each one is immediately and wholly visually distinct.

Dawnshore combines beautiful, golden beaches and lush plains with rocky crags and perilous mountains. Emerald Stair is saturated with lush foliage, dense trees, and a vast array of colorful fungi. Scattersharp is characterized by its ancient seabed, iron-rich desert, and sweeping cliffs. Galawain's Tusks isolates itself with a violent volcano and burning lava flows. Each region is spotted with signs of civilization both old and new, with settlements and ancient ruins alike drawing you in. I haven't even mentioned the plethora of entirely unique features each region boasts.

Obsidian did an incredible job designing a vibrant, vertical world; textures and colors are wonderful, and each environment looks natural and realistic without sacrificing the interactions and destructibility that ties into the gameplay. The Living Lands' people reflect their home, with a myriad of clothing and architecture styles that differentiate each place you visit, while the creatures and enemies you'll discover also possess distinct personalities. Avowed's art design and style both are top-notch, and help the game stand out amid a horde of other fantasy RPGs.

Audio design is excellent, too, with crisp ambient audio, immensely satisfying sound effects, clean and emotional voice acting, and a beautiful soundtrack that — while not the most memorable — still embodies The Living Lands. From both visual and acoustic standpoints, Obsidian Entertainment did a standout job.

It's in animations where you begin to see Avowed's more limited scope. Movements, facial animations during dialogue, and character actions are all fine but are frequently subject to bizarrely low framerates, latency, or minor visual glitches. From mice that seem to move at about five frames per second to characters speaking in ultra-slow motion, Avowed's animations lack the polish of their environments and visual presentation.

I can also say the same about performance. Avowed boasts 30 and 40 FPS gameplay modes on Xbox Series X and Series S, and an additional 60 FPS mode on Xbox Series X, and largely plays great. Framerates are smooth, visuals are sharp and consistent, and even large fights with plenty of flashy particle effects, explosions, and spells don't drag the game down to its knees. Some areas, though, are plagued with sporadic framerate drops, especially in the latter half of the game and even on the most performant 60 FPS mode.

Avowed can also struggle on lower-end hardware like the best gaming handhelds, and the Windows Central team has struggled to get the game to work at all on the Steam Deck. If you believe Avowed's visuals suggest it'll run perfectly on your low-end or non-gaming laptop, be sure to double-check Avowed's PC requirements first.

Obsidian's decision to delay Avowed likely had a major impact on the game's performance and stability, but there's clearly still some work to be done. I've encountered a variety of mild visual glitches, but there have been a handful of more concerning bugs and issues.

My colleague, Rebecca Spear, fell through the world after a door to an inaccessible building failed to render, and I have two quests that I simply cannot complete — one because the enemies I defeated never dropped any of the loot I needed to complete the bounty, and the other because two of the three people I needed to speak to refused to (possibly because I had spoken to them before starting the related quest).

Overall, though, Avowed is more than playable and plays decently smooth. It's also worth mentioning that Obsidian Entertainment shared the details of Avowed's day one patch with us, which we never saw during our review period; that patch is chunky, with dozens of fixes that mean you may never see most of the bugs the Windows Central team encountered. I'll update this section again if it seems Avowed is considerably more stable and polished after its official launch.

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Avowed review: Gameplay experience

• Avowed's gameplay centers around exploration and combat elements.
• Combat is class-less and diverse, allowing you to build two loadouts.
• Exploration also feels great, with fun traversal and plenty of secrets.

At first glance, it seems like Avowed plays like a smoother, more fluid Skyrim, but Obsidian's fantasy RPG has enough of its own character to stand out. This isn't an action RPG with high-speed, ultra-responsive combat. Instead, it builds an eclectic suite of abilities and weapons atop a consistent, tactile movement system. You can crouch, jump, dodge, clamber, and parkour your way across The Living Lands, wielding different gear in each hand and utilizing an array of unique spells and abilities.

Being able to independently choose what you use in each hand and then instantly change between two loadouts offers a lot of variety. You can rock a grimoire with four different spells and a spear, then instantly switch to a pair of powerful pistols, the whole time free to access all your standalone abilities, mastered spells, throwables, consumables, and companion abilities from the radial menu. What you choose to use will change your ability to block and parry, how efficiently and quickly you're able to attack or dodge, your range and impact, and more.

A class-less system means you're free to mix and match fighter, ranger, and wizard abilities however you want, and it's easy to respec all your abilities and even attribute points at any time. I redid my setup twice as I found new gear that I desperately wanted to use, including abandoning magic in favor of a powerful bow that deals arcing lightning damage with its arrows. There are a ton of different ways to approach combat, and combat itself is hectic and satisfying.

I had a lot of fun annihilating foes with a massive, perpetually bleeding greatsword, or firing an array of spells while swinging my sword, or shifting into a parallel dimension to unleash a devastating surprise attack on an unsuspecting foe, or... You get it. Combat in Avowed feels good, and being able to take advantage of the environment, like electrocuting puddles, setting fire to oil spills, and freezing your foes before shattering them, makes each battle feel more dynamic.

Combat is slower-paced, but I don't mind that. What I do mind is how slow character progression can feel at times. You level up slowly, and each ability and attribute point you earn won't always have a noticeable impact on your character. I either wish jumps per level were a little greater or you gained levels a little faster, just to make those milestones more memorable. Unique gear will make the largest difference on your playstyles, but the stat boosts and effects from a lot of that gear also feels surprisingly minimal, and only weapons allow any form of customization for the enchantments.

At least exploring for that unique gear and the materials to upgrade your equipment feels worthwhile. The world of Avowed is so consistently interesting, and the verticality and diversity of the environments means you'll never know where you'll find the next secrets. Ruins and cities are obvious locations, but there are plenty of underwater caches, buried caves only accessible via tiny openings hidden in crevices, clifftop camps at the end of arduous climbs, and much more that may provide the inspiration you need to change your build.

I loved exploring The Living Lands in search of hidden boss fights, undiscovered secrets, and unsolved puzzles. Much of what you'll find will be crafting materials and puzzles tend to be simple, but Avowed still somehow captures the magic that makes exploring in legendary titles like Skyrim so endlessly fun. Unique interactions, concealed quests, and interesting looks into the world of Eora and the history of The Living Lands all make exploring worthwhile, especially when you can rarely predict where the next secret will be.

Burn, freeze, shock, poison, bleed, paralyze, and stun your enemies. Unmask The Living Lands' treasure trove. Refine your character's combat, traversal, and conversation abilities. Assist the people you meet along the way. There's a lot to do, and you can spend a lot of time doing it. Avowed is a bit bigger than we were led to believe.

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Avowed review: Story, world, and characters

• Avowed's story is interesting and well-written, tying into existing lore.
• Characters are also multi-dimensional with fantastic voice acting.
• Decisions have noticeable and long-lasting impacts in quests.

Avowed's story can be summarized as such: The Aedyr Empire has a vested interest in The Living Lands, a lawless frontier for misfits and outcasts, and has sent its armies to establish law and order. However, a dreadful plague that directly attacks the soul itself is changing the landscape, choking farms and transforming people and animals. You are an envoy of Aedyr, sent to investigate and stop the Dreamscourge from destroying The Living Lands.

This story is interesting, combining themes of political disagreements, social and economic strife, nationalism, the pursuit and fear of science, the power of religious fanaticism, and more. You'll travel all over The Living Lands along your journey, learning more about yourself and the people who call this land home. More than that, you'll learn that you were fated to adventure to this place, as your very presence in The Living Lands changes its destiny. To that end, the decisions you make during the story have very real, very lasting impacts.

Obsidian Entertainment did an excellent job letting you, the player, roleplay as the envoy you want to be. The character creator isn't the most in-depth in an RPG, but you're given plenty of control over your appearance, starting stats, and even your backstory (which frequently impacts your choices during conversations). The actions you take and decisions you make during quests matter, and even the order in which you complete quests (and the side quests you choose to do at all) can provide new paths or obstacles later down the road.

Save one woman near the beginning of the game? It may save you from a fight with smugglers later on. Help a business owner protect her livelihood? You may turn a sworn enemy into an unlikely ally. The main story is interesting, with many twists and turns, great writing, and engaging stakes, but the side quests also matter a lot. I do think Avowed's side quests tend to be on the short side, but I'm still very happy that I've chosen to hunt down as many of them as I can during my playthrough.

The characters in Avowed are also well-written and well-acted, especially the companions. Unique, multi-dimensional personalities that are affected by your decisions and actions make these companions more than just friendly NPCs in battle, and it's another opportunity to roleplay. Sorry, no romance, though (I wish there was). The people you'll meet in The Living Lands also tend to be interesting, even those with whom you have limited interaction. Engaging with this world never stops being fun.

I just wish you had more impact on the world outside of quests. Destroying property, stealing everything in sight, or trying to attack random NPCs has no effect apart from the occasional comment; your decisions during quests make a difference, but outside of those guided missions, your touch on the world is limited to killing enemies and looting treasure. Dialogue shouldn't be the only place where the player can influence the world, but it does serve as another reminder that Obsidian never intended for Avowed to be the biggest, most ambitious RPG.

Despite the smaller focus, though, Avowed benefits greatly from being a part of a larger universe. The lore and history of Eora are unfathomably deep, and your exploits in The Living Lands build off the incredible worldbuilding Obsidian Entertainment is known for.

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Avowed review: Accessibility and approachability

• Avowed provides plenty of options for customizing the HUD and controls.
• It's also designed to be an approachable game with clear interfaces.
• Localization is a little limited, with some languages not available at launch.

Xbox Game Studios invests heavily in its accessibility efforts, so I wasn't too concerned about Avowed. From a foundational perspective, this is an approachable game with an intelligent control scheme, clear and easy-to-read interface, frequent and in-depth tutorials, and a ton of additional details that help you navigate the world and its gameplay systems.

Through the settings, you can also heavily customize those controls and the interface, with options for per-control remapping and control toggles, a ton of ways to tweak the camera and how it reacts to gameplay and combat, customizations for the interface and what elements appear and when. There are also options to finetune your combat experience with aim, dodge, and block assists, granular audio sliders, and a surprising number of options for subtitles and dialogue.

There's a field-of-view (FOV) slider and gamma settings, but Avowed doesn't feature any color-blind modes. Avowed generally does an excellent job combining audio and visual cues for combat and exploration, though, which should strike a good balance accommodating those with aural or ocular impairments.

One area where Avowed is on the weak side is with localization, which has long been a weak point for Xbox. All voice over will be available in English only, with subtitles localization available in English, Simplified Chinese, German, Italian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Mexico), and Russian. French will be available at launch but will be an imperfect translation that will be polished in a post-launch update, while Korean and Japanese support will be missing at launch but will be added in a one-month update after Avowed releases.

I wish Avowed had voice over localization in more languages, and it's still missing subtitles for languages like Arabic, Swedish, Dutch, and many more. Xbox really needs to step up its localization game across the board.

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Avowed review: Final thoughts

You should play this if ...

✅You're looking for an accessible fantasy RPG with first-class worldbuilding

Obsidian Entertainment is legendary for its worldbuilding, and Avowed is the latest positive mark on its resumé. Avowed is an accessible, approachable, and ridiculously fun fantasy RPG that provides plenty of opportunities to embrace the character you create and make your impact on the world.

✅You're a Pillars of Eternity fan looking to jump back into Eora

Eora is bustling with history and magic, and The Living Lands is the most beautifully chaotic continent of them all. You don't need to have played Pillars of Eternity to fully appreciate Avowed, but those who have will love all the references and nods to existing lore, especially the ones that relate to the decisions they made in the Pillars of Eternity games.

You should not play this if ...

❌You want to play a massive RPG that'll take 100+ hours to complete

If you're the kind of player that loves to immerse themselves in a single world for dozens or even hundreds of hours, and want an RPG that stacks countless systems on top of each other to keep those hours interesting, Avowed isn't quite that. It's larger than we expected, but this is still a more focused, modest RPG versus games like Baldur's Gate 3 or Dragon's Dogma 2.

Avowed isn’t Obsidian’s take on Skyrim, but it does still possess that same hard-to-quantify magic that causes a random boulder in the distance to capture your attention, holding you steadfast until you give into the random urge to wander off the path you’ve chosen to go and investigate it up close. Avowed rewards your efforts to explore, revealing that the obscure rock that only seemed a little odd is a desolate cave filled with corpses and the spiders the created them, or a secret hideaway built by two mysterious lovers who left small treasures of their relationship behind, or decrepit ruins of an ancient civilization so far gone that most don’t even know their name.

We were told that Avowed would be around 15-20 hours for the main story and be similar in scope to The Outer Worlds, which does feel accurate on that metric alone. I spent over 50 hours in The Living Lands, though, and I'm still not entirely confident I saw everything. That comes down to one thing: Avowed makes exploration far more fun than The Outer Worlds did, and its world feels far more complete. A varied combat system, gorgeous visuals, and an interesting story all help make Avowed one of the most fun RPGs I've played in a long while.

Obsidian Entertainment still has a fair number of bugs to iron out, though, and performance isn't always the best. On top of that, you can see where Avowed's scope is more limited compared to the biggest AAA RPGs, and Avowed doesn't exactly cost less than those games. Still, this is an early contender for my game of the year. Avowed is now available from $69.99 at Best Buy for Xbox and PC.

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There is no denying that World War 2 has been a gold mine for game developers. Countless stories can be told from the era, and pretty much all of them—while a little depressing—offer paths for catharsis or some sort of story about overcoming adversity. Nazis are truly the best video game villain at the end of the day because everybody agrees that Nazis are the bad guys. There really isn't much gray morality to contend with when it comes to World War 2 stories. The bad guys were unequivocally bad, and you can be good simply by smashing them. Brutally.

Rebellion has stretched that truth into a whole portfolio of games, with a particular focus on one franchise, where you earn bonus points for blasting off some Nazi nuts. We're talking about Sniper Elite, the Nazi-sniping series, where you can even take down Hitler with a nut shot if you're feeling particularly ornery. Their latest entry, Sniper Elite: Resistance, takes us to the front of French Resistance efforts to bring down the German occupation of France and stop the Nazis from developing a terrifying new wonder weapon.

Sniper Elite: Resistance Story and Gameplay (No spoilers)

Waiiiiit a second—that's not Karl Fairburne! The protagonist of Sniper Elite: Resistance is a fellow by the name of Harry Hawker. Long-time fans of the Sniper Elite franchise will actually recognize Harry as the default Co-op character skin from the last three Sniper Elite titles. However, if you're not really deep in the Sniper Elite lore, nobody would fault you for not recognizing the guy. He's a bit of an empty shell, with little backstory to speak of, and no real personality or energy. He just goes in the direction you point him and shoots Nazis.

That's not too much different from actually playing with Karl Fairburne, who is apparently too busy during Sniper Elite: Resistance's timeline to serve as our protagonist because he's busy with the events of Sniper Elite 5. Rude. Hawker is a bit older, with a bit more beard, but at the end of the day, he's just a generic shell of a character that's hard to care much about.

Harry can sure take out some Nazis, though, and that's what we're all here for anyway. He's perfectly capable with a sniper rifle (well, provided you are capable with one), an SMG, or a pistol, and you're going to project yourself onto him to explore the campaign's 9 semi-open world missions.

Like Sniper Elite 5, Resistance contains the missions for each chapter in one semi-open world. Players can explore the massive maps and take on one primary objective and a few side quests like taking out specific German officers or helping the Resistance. The side quests are entirely optional, and players can simply exfil from a mission once they've completed the main quest if they don't want to do all the extra stuff.

The extra stuff, though, is where all the good details of the game live. So much of what the German oppressors are doing is tucked inside of lore collectibles, and even creating new loadouts for your weapons while in a match requires you to search until you find a collectible workbench. Every element of the game's missions can also be approached in whatever way you choose. Go stealthy, taking out enemies and hiding bodies to protect your cover or parkour up a drain pipe, climb in a window, and hit the enemy with guns blazing.

Players can find propaganda posters in Sniper Elite: Resistance's campaign as a collectible, but these actually serve a secondary purpose of unlocking new challenges—6 in all—in the game's Propaganda mode. Propaganda mode puts players, armed only with a pistol, on a map with a specific number of enemies. The first player kill kicks off the mode's timer, which players must beat by clearing the area of all enemy forces before the clock hits 0. Any additional weapons and equipment must be scavenged. The mode awards medals for faster times, but I found it a bit too repetitive and uninteresting to grind them out.

I find Sniper Elite is a franchise best played with a friend, as it can be exciting to take your time and explore the maps looking for collectibles together. You can play the campaign cooperatively, or you can ramp up the stakes by allowing Axis invasions, which lets another player join your match as an enemy sniper. Allowing invasions does liven up the repetitious gameplay, as you never quite know how an invading player will behave. If you're not up for invasions, though, you can turn the system off or set it to invite-only.

Sniper Elite: Resistance also offers a standard PvP multiplayer experience with modes like deathmatch and free-for-all, but it feels like there's little to incentivize playing these modes for more than a few matches with friends.

Sniper Elite: Resistance Visuals and Sound

I remember being wholeheartedly stunned by how pretty Sniper Elite 5 was. Imagine my surprise when I launch Sniper Elite: Resistance and see the visuals of the game have taken 2 steps back from its predecessor. I can't even really describe what it is about Sniper Elite: Resistance that feels so wrong. It just hits you in a moment when you're staring down the scope, and you're looking for an enemy. The vines feel like they're cut out and pasted into the world haphazardly. The horribly uncanny waxy faces of the enemies are the stuff of nightmares.

I played Sniper Elite: Resistance both on my Xbox Series X and on my PC for this review, and in both instances I was disappointed with the visual state of the game. It's not ugly, by any means. The draw distance of the horizon, spanning to distant mountain ranges, can be stunning. There's just something about the close-up details, though, that doesn't feel right—especially with the X-ray cams for those beloved kill shots showing enemy weapons clipping through faces and arms in unnatural positions.

Thankfully, what Sniper Elite: Resistance lacks in visuals, it makes up for in sound design. There are some great moments in the game where you, the player, need to time shots to coincide with audio that can provide cover. Take a shot during a clap of thunder in a storm, or as a car with a loud engine passes by, for example. These aren't new gameplay mechanics for the franchise, but it is still an undeniably well-designed system. There are also visual cues for the audio mechanics, which provide a little extra accessibility for players with hearing impairments.

Sniper Elite: Resistance Conclusion

Nobody does bullet time-turned x-ray cams of kill shots on Nazi testicles better than Rebellion, and Sniper Elite: Resistance further proves there are no exceptions to that rule. I play a lot of shooters, but there's something special about loading into a Sniper Elite title. I know what I'm getting, sure. It's the comfort-food equivalent of Nazi shooters, after all. The recipe never really changes, but I'm still going to have my fill.

I do wish we had more of a reason to care about Harry Hawker and how he came to a life of sniping fascist nuts. And I wish the NPCs weren't soulless wax figures waiting for me to knock their teeth out with a sniper shot hidden by the sound of an approaching thunderstorm. I could probably sit here and come up with a laundry list of additional things I'd like to see the franchise add to help bolster replayability. But that's not what Sniper Elite: Resistance has.

I have to think about where it's at rather than where I want it to be. Is it perfect? No, but am I still going to have some fun? You can bet your bullets I am, and you probably will, too. Just don't blame me if those NPCs haunt you afterward.

Sniper Elite: Resistance, developed and published by Rebellion, is set to launch on all platforms on January 30. The game is a day-one launch on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, and supports Xbox Play Anywhere, meaning you only need to buy it once to play it on your Xbox consoles and your Windows PC. At that point, there's no good reason not to go secure some headshots (or nut shots. I won't judge.)

Dynasty Warriors has always been a macabre of warrior delights. Between basic combos, setting off Musou abilities, and juggling helpless opponents, you'll be hard-pressed not to grin at least once in a while playing any of the series entries. With the added benefits of an authentic next-gen experience and an overhaul of the game mechanics, Dynasty Warriors: Origins is an entry into the series that fans will have a lot of fun with.

No longer will you be tasked with picking a character to play the storyline through. You won't follow the kingdom story as individual characters like Dan Wei, Lui Bei, or Taishi Ci. Rather, you'll craft someone relatively quickly using a stripped-back character creator. From there, you've given an entirely new perspective on the events of the famed Three Kingdoms storyline that Dynasty Warriors is known for.

With a slow start, things begin to snowball as new weapons, battle tactics, and mechanics roll out. From earning your first horse to equipping abilities, opponents will become stricken with fear the further you progress. While I've always disliked the term "slow burn," Origins didn't entirely click with me until a couple of hours into my first 35-hour playthrough of the game's campaign.

So does playing as one character versus getting to use one of a plethora of generals and heroes from any of the three kingdoms pay off? Hell yeah, it does.

This review was conducted on the Xbox version of Dynasty Warriors: Origins and made possible thanks to an Xbox review code provided by Koei Tecmo Games. The company did not see the contents of this review before publication.

What is Dynasty Warriors: Origins?

If you don't know what Dynasty Warriors is or if it is a Warriors game at all, then we'll get you familiar with this genre. Try to think of the movie 300, where a mere battalion of Spartan soldiers face off against a horde of Persian troops. You're a one-man wrecking crew hellbent on destroying the forces before you, whatever affiliation they may have. Between squashing rebellions, dueling overly stylized generals, or juggling dozens of adversaries in the air at once, you quickly find out why there have been over 35 entries released in the past 20+ years.

The main focus is the overwhelming sensation of power against significantly larger forces. In Dynasty Warriors: Origins, you play as a nameless hero who's forgotten their past but has kept their battle prowess. As a result, players go about open battlefields in any direction they see fit in order to win the fight against whatever foe they face, be it the Yellow Turban Rebellion, Dong Zhou, or another significant hero/villain of the Three Kingdoms period.

Taking on these forces, the player will build up their army's morale, take over rival reinforcement bases, and tackle elite-level leaders that direct enemies to your slaughter of abilities. Between stylized martial weapon attacks, energized mystical abilities, and downright magic forces, you'll prevail on the soil one soldier at a time until they've all fallen before you.

The other main change has been the engine. With massive updates that now allow thousands of enemies on screen at once, players can see their horde of allied soldiers charging into a barrage of enemies. It's a sight to behold, one that every Dynasty Warriors game from now on needs.

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The story of Dynasty Warriors: Origins

The Three Kingdoms storyline is based on real-life historical Chinese events. This relatively known story starts with the fall of the Han Dynasty, giving a platform for the Yellow Turbans, a rebellious force led by the general Zhang Jiao. The struggle during the Yellow Turban rebellion caused three parties of power to continuously find themselves either allied or at odds with one another for years.

These three kingdoms are known as Wei, Wu, and Shu and were led by Cao Cao, Sun Jian, and Liu Bei, respectively. Each garnering dominion over the realm by either force and reason, honor and duty, or respect and loyalty. Each feels it is their right to lead through the circumstances they face.

While previous games in the series typically allowed players to choose someone aligned with one of these three kingdoms, Origins has you battle as a single person. No more will you play as iconic personalities such as Sun Quan, Pang Tong, or my personal favorite, Dian Wei. Instead, you'll play the nameless hero act. While this trope can be rather tiresome, it does well from this story's perspective.

You embark on this journey as a general observer of the Three Kingdom saga events, starting just before the Yellow Turban rebellion. Fighting the area's corruption, plague, and famine, the Yellow Turbans began their story as a force for good. However, many who find power will also find the greed within them, which forces the hands of heroes of the era, Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Jian, to step up and fight to save the people. In turn, not all of them are able to fight their own greed either.

From here, more corruption will follow. As fans may know, a favorite villain named Dong Zhou will rise to authority, compelling the three leading figures to resist together. After these events, you'll find yourself making the first genuine decisions by choosing a kingdom to bolster, as shown in Chapter 3. You'll watch this pick play out over the following two chapters, where the game culminates in a final battle that fans of the Three Kingdoms saga will know all too well once they reach it.

Red is my favorite color, so for simplistic reasons, I had to go with the Sun clan and follow my man, Sun Jian. While I'm very familiar with the events of the Three Kingdoms saga, Origins felt more personal than ever before. A story told a hundred times from slightly different character perspectives just doesn't hit as well as a fully fleshed-out drama.

Since you only play as a single, nameless character whose presence will be further explained during the story, this allows a much longer campaign to play out. Each decision act is more significant than what I've seen play out in previous games. You feel the characters' anguish during their losses and better understand the rationale behind their decisions.

You can even meet up with allies or foes between battles during private one-on-ones, where characters will give their sentiments toward you. Either respectively or dominantly. These meetings build your relationship with the respective characters, unlocking awe-striking abilities or helpful items.

Given these changes, the story hit better than it ever has before.

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The gameplay of Dynasty Warriors: Origins

The polish of Dynasty Warriors: Origins plays off immediately with the sharpest gameplay I've ever witnessed in the series. Tight attacks, easy-to-understand feedback, and mechanics that create unique opportunities for players to engage give a sense of completion I haven't felt from the series before. While playing as a distinct character may seem like it could lack depth, with a dozen armaments to choose from and a significant number of abilities that multiply that previous number, you'll find a depth of battle options to explore.

Combat

Normal and strong attack combos still exist, but the bread and butter of moves leading to your Musou attacks have changed. Battle Arts are attacks that players can acquire through various means, such as unlock trees, leveling weapons, or raising bonds with comrades. Each Battle Art uses Bravery, which is gathered through attack combos.

Battle Arts come in various forms, such as simple stuns or overpowering splashes rivaling missile explosions. These can be devastating and, combined with a fully unleashed Musou gauge, can take out even the best enemies when used in quick succession. Well, everyone except Lu Bu.

Musou attacks change from their basic form to their omnipotent form, the Ultimate Musou Attack. Each of the dozen weapons has its own unique stylized Musou attack. Basic Musou attacks take up a slither of the bar compared to Rage mode and Ultimate Musou. Using Rage allows you to become invincible and your Bravery gauge to fill up. While Rage mode is timed, using Battle Arts will hasten that decline until you unleash a Musuo attack at the end of Rage mode.

Rage mode became my go-to during crunch times. I constantly saved my Musou meter until I needed it during vital moments against end-level generals or when tremendous forces saved my careless play style. I'm somewhat of a charge-first, regret-actions-later kind of guy.

Battle System

A returning feature allows you to lead a squad of your own soldiers, this time under the name of Tactics. The word "Tactics" sounds like it would be in opposition to my playstyle, but it added a level of chaos to my battle plans that pleased me greatly. Using the new Eyes of the Sacred Bird ability, which slows time and allows you to oversee the battlefield from a better perspective, you can command your squad of allies to launch a volley of arrows, charge, defend, and more.

Morale is a basic element of the gameplay systems. Your side can find themselves in various states between being dominated and doing the dominating. Forms in between are less drastic, but the basic gist is that the lower or higher your morale is, the less or more effective the rest of your allied forces will be. If you've taken over the majority of bases in the level, planned successful charges, defeated multiple enemy officers, and more, you'll find battles are almost impossible to lose unless you die yourself. Keep in mind that this system works the other way as well.

You do get to play as others, although only briefly

Unlocked in Chapter 2, players can battle alongside a companion based on the kingdom they're fighting for. While I mainly focused on the Wu clan in my initial playthrough, I was still able to battle with the likes of Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Xiahou Dun, Huang Gai, and other heroes. However, that use is limited.

These companions aren't available at the start of the level; instead, they build their own Musou gauge as the battle progresses. Once they've reached the maximum, you can swap over to them. From here, you can use their personalized battle arts and attacks until you use their Musou gauge, at which point you'll be changed back to your character once more.

I'm not sure why they decided to limit your ability to play as other characters; it's a decision I disagree with. Players should have the choice to swap freely. At most, you'll have the option to assign one of three characters from any of the three kingdoms, so why make it so I get to play as them for like 30 seconds? I just don't get it.

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Should you buy Dynasty Warriors: Origins?

I was devastated initially to hear only a single character would be playable from start to finish. For me, the love of the game always came from the replayability of using different characters in the same battles across multiple playthroughs. Dan Wei would fight for the right to dominate the land under Cao Cao, while Lu Bu did what Lu Bu did best. After that initial shock, things started getting better.

The complexity level of Origins reaches new heights due to the otherwise heretical change. While much of what you'll find in the game could be found in previous entries, the polish of every component and additional layers has boosted the experience to another level.

Overall, I was thoroughly pleased with my experience. I may have some complaints, but when it comes down to it, this is just a plain ole' good Dynasty Warriors game that fans will absolutely love. Chopping down enemies never felt so good, and I can safely call this one of my favorite Dynasty Warriors games to date.

I'll see you on the battlefield, hero.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins releases on January 17, 2024, for $69.99 on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC via Steam.

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My whip cracks through the air and hits a Nazi guard on the hand, forcing him to drop his rifle. One hard punch sees him topple off the side of a cliff. Picking up his gun, there are two bullets left, which allow me to dispose of another guard, but three more are on the way. With another crack of my whip, I grab onto a nearby grapple point and swing across the cliff, dodging gunfire and making my escape into the sands of Egypt.

That’s one more daring escapade down in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a new adventure telling a story of globetrotting antics, puzzle-solving, and punching out Nazis. It’s a major leap for developer MachineGames, and while there are certainly some consistent elements carried over from the team’s past Wolfenstein titles, this title shows the confidence of a studio clearly capable of branching out into new territory.

The action feels beat-for-beat with the best of what the original films have to offer, but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn’t afraid to slow down and let the player breathe for a bit through puzzles and exploration that feel suited to a world of ancient mystery and conspiracy. A few bugs aside, this is an adventure worth taking that respects its source material but still leaves room for plenty of surprises along the way.

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Bethesda Softworks. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

What is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle?

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a (mostly) first-person adventure game developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks.

Players step into the shoes of the famous archeologist himself in 1937 — the game is set a few months before the events of The Last Crusade — as he’s drawn into a conspiracy that spans the entire world. To solve the mystery of the Great Circle, players need to pursue a number of objectives in places like the Vatican, Egypt, the Himalayas, and more.

There’s a variety of ways to accomplish these goals depending on if you prefer stealth or want to go in guns-blazing, but no matter the approach you take, you’ll have to solve strange puzzles and knock out more than your fair share of Nazis. Sometimes, it's easier to put on a disguise and avoid a dozen guards, but sometimes, you'll have to crack the whip and get to work.

A few areas allow you to go off the beaten path, undertaking side quests. These smaller adventures come in all shapes and sizes, with most of them providing rewards that make it easier to unlock new skills. These skills can add up quickly, bestowing benefits such as allowing you to reload your gun faster or making it harder for you to run out of stamina.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review — Story and characters

While there’s a full cast of characters in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the leading man himself obviously carries the show. Performed with fantastic flair by industry veteran Troy Baker, this version of Indiana Jones looks and sounds right, with the camera capturing all his small quirks and the ever-so-slightly awkward moments that make the adventurer so fun to watch.

Jones is also accompanied by Gina Lombardi (Alessandra Mastronardi), an Italian journalist who has her own reasons for getting involved. Gina and Indy initially team in classic “Frustrated Indy must put up with female companion” fashion, but Gina pulls her weight, and the game’s direction here fortunately slides away from some of the franchise’s tropes.

Every hero needs a villain, and that’s where Emmerich Voss comes in. Marios Gavrilis lends this Nazi researcher a sneering, ostensibly astute presentation and superiority complex befitting a servant of the Third Reich. Obsessed with psychological reductions, Voss’ interactions with his befuddled soldiers and Indy alike are always entertaining to watch unfold.

Rounding out the cast is Locus, a mysterious figure who kickstarts the plot by breaking into Marshall College and stealing a strange figurine. Locus is performed by the late Tony Todd, who passed away on November 6, with this game marking a posthumous release for the beloved horror icon. Locus is an imposing figure, but there’s more to him than just being a secondary antagonist for Indy.

The story unfolds at a fairly reliable pace, which naturally varies depending on whether you choose to explore and wander more or stick to the main path. All in all, it feels in touch with the movies from which it draws inspiration.

Every time I started to get a bit worried that things were going to drag on, the adventure took a sharp turn, and the scenery changed. With hours of cutscenes woven in, playing through the Great Circle felt at times like I was watching an Indiana Jones film, but the controller is never taken away for too long.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review — Gameplay and features

While Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a first-person game, much like MachineGames' Wolfenstein games, there are a fair few differences when stepping out of B.J. Blazkowicz's shoes and into Indiana's. The intrepid archeologist can throw a mean punch and is handy with his whip and revolver, but he's not a one-man army.

It's usually better to stealth your way through a crowded enemy camp, and with careful exploration, you can find enemy disguises that make this process much smoother, though elite enemy commanders will still sniff you if you get too close.

If combat does break out, then there's a serviceable melee system, allowing you to dodge and trade jabs to knock your foes out, while the ever-trusty whip can be used to pull opponents toward you and off of ledges. You're at a disadvantage if your enemies have ranged weapons though, so it's important to scour the environment for anything useful.

Practically everything can be used as an impromptu weapon, and I found myself pulverizing fascists with shovels, clubs, sledgehammers, and loaves of bread. You've also got your revolver, which can be used to decisively end any one-on-one fight, but the noise can draw in other nearby enemies if you aren't careful. You can also pick up weapons like rifles and shotguns, but you'll have to discard them when you run out of ammo.

When you're not fighting, you're exploring, and it's here that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle truly shines. The open-world segments are genuinely fun to traverse, and oftentimes, figuring out how to get from one place to another can be a puzzle by itself. It's super-satisfying to go exploring — realizing there's a way to climb up into a building with your whip and then unlock the front door for future usage — all in a way that brings immersive sims like Dishonored to mind.

Simply put, there is an enormous amount of puzzles (both directly in your way and off the beaten path), requiring clever usage of pipes, solving ciphers, and paying attention to discarded documents. You're aided in your exploration and puzzle-solving by your camera, which gives you numerous opportunities to take pictures in exchange for "Adventure Points." These points can be used to unlock new skills from any books you've found, so it's important to embrace your inner shutterbug.

Those pictures aren't just for points, though, and you can see the photos you've taken stored away in your journal as you progress through the game, making it something of a living document that lends itself to some cool moments. At one point, I overheard a couple of nuns mention that they wished they had a picture of someone, and I realized I could just hand them the photo I'd taken earlier.

I did run into a couple of bugs during my time with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Most were fairly minor, like examining an object and the camera zooming in far too close, something that was easily corrected by simply putting it down and picking it up again.

The checkpoint system caused a more irritating issue. While the game autosaves at regular intervals (usually without issue), I got stuck at one point, with the game reloading me outside of where I was supposed to be and making it impossible for me to escape before getting noticed by Nazi guards. I was able to use the save rollback feature to get to a checkpoint about 20 minutes prior, but I can see this issue causing problems for others if it isn't patched.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review — Visuals and audio

MachineGames is a longtime collaborator on id Tech with its sister studio id Software, and that technological prowess is put to good work here. I played Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on an Xbox Series X, and it looks great. Lush and frigid environs alike are rendered in sharp detail, from the jungles of Sukhothai to the darkest tunnels under the Vatican.

I did notice a bit of foliage pop in in one particularly large area, but that blip aside, it's a consistently impressive presentation. Indiana Jones is a series that's all about exploration, and it's fitting that there's a wide variety of locations to explore in equal detail. The in-game lighting is especially impressive, with beautiful rays that practically sizzle with the heat of Egypt's sandscapes. The game plays out at a consistent 60 FPS, and I only noticed one brief drop when I accidentally set off an exploding trap at point-blank range.

All of this is made more impressive thanks to the camera framing, which is practically shot like one of the films, right down to the timing of physical comedy and the way a shot will linger as it becomes clear Indy is making a mental connection regarding some hidden clue.

MachineGames has also done a great job on the game's audio design, and I highly recommend playing with one of the best headsets in order to appreciate the different noises of materials and effects across the world. During one particularly-tense infiltration mission, I could tell where every enemy commander was in the building simply by listening to the difference in footsteps as they walked across wooden or stone floors. This allowed me to swipe some Nazi gold relatively easily.

The soundtrack, composed by Gordy Haab, is a solid effort that clearly draws inspiration from the main themes of John Williams' iconic scores. It's a good soundtrack that delivers exactly what you expect, kicking and getting you in the mood for exploring ancient ruins and fistfights where needed.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review — Accessibility and approachability

Like many other modern games, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle features a suite of accessibility options designed to tackle a range of needs, including colorblindness or motion blur sensitivity. In addition to the difficulty settings, which make the combat sections more or less difficult, players can also separately set the puzzle difficulty, making many of the puzzles simpler if they just want to focus on the story.

There's also an additional hint system accessed through the aforementioned camera. This system (which applies to required puzzles, not optional side quests) allows you to receive increasingly detailed hints upon request. It's a good middle-ground point, and I appreciated not having a companion yell the answer to a problem because I was taking more than 30 seconds to think about it.

As for the game's general approachability, the standalone nature of the story (much like any of the films) means that you don't really need to be familiar with Indiana Jones in order to have fun. You'll certainly get more out of this from being a longtime fan, and there are a couple of story beats that lightly touch on some constant threads throughout the series, but newcomers should feel welcome overall.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review — Final Thoughts

I've spent 25 hours exploring the world in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and I've thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout this adventure. I was expecting to have fun, but I certainly wasn't expecting this game to cleverly blend immersive sim elements with actual cinematic storytelling, and it's been a fantastic experience.

From the manner in which every line is delivered and scene is shot to the smirk on Indy's face when solving a puzzle, it's clear that everyone at MachineGames just gets what makes Indiana Jones so special. This is a game that can sit next to the original trilogy with pride.

Aside from a small handful of bugs and checkpoint issues, I hope the developers can patch them soon; Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an absolute blast worthy of the iconic adventurer's name. I'm looking forward to replaying this game in the future (and checking out the promised DLC) as much as I rewatch Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Last Crusade.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launches across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate/PC Game Pass on Dec. 9, 2024. Premium Edition owners get early access starting on December 6. A PlayStation 5 version is currently slated to arrive at some point in Spring 2025.

Normally, when I review a game that is full of bugs, I'm not a happy camper. But Empire of the Ants has me seeing the world from a different angle. A very tiny, albeit strong, angle.

Taking control of 103,683rd has taught me what it means to be an ant trying to survive in the world, and it involves a surprising amount of termite murder.

All of this plays out in stunning photo realistic visuals with real-time strategy (RTS) gameplay as you help 103,683rd (No, really, that's her name.) in completing her mother, the Queen's, tasks and helping her sisters as their ant colony awakens from hibernation in the spring.

Empire of the Ants: What is it?

Based on a 1991 French science fiction novel 'Le Fourmis' by Bernard Weber, which tells a parallel tale of the lives of a human and an ant living in a colony in Paris. The novel was eventually translated into English, where it was dubbed Empire of the Ants. As for the game it inspired, Empire of the Ants is a real-time strategy game primarily centered around just one ant in particular.

The ant, 103,683rd, is part of a larger colony that is waking up after hibernating through the winter in the Fontainebleau forest. There is much work to do, as the colony needs to secure food and other resources while fending off threats from termites and other enemies.

Empire of the Ants was developed by Tower Five, published by Microids, and developed in Unreal Engine 5.4 using photogrammetry to ensure a hyperrealistic look and feel to the forest and creatures that inhabit it.

Empire of the Ants: Story and gameplay

While Empire of the Ants is based on the book of the same name by Bernard Werber, it has undergone some significant changes to its story to become the game we are presented with. Werber did work with Microids and Tower Five on the game adaptation of the book, but the human element of parallel lives with ants is lost here. Instead, we only see 103,683rd's view of the world set in the Fontainebleau forest as opposed to Paris. However, the forest setting provides its own challenges, dangers, and opportunities for storytelling.

We see 103,683rd's colony tackle several struggles, from finding resources to searching for missing members of the colony to helping a relative colony that is unprepared for a flood. 103,683rd's mother, the Queen, is pushing for colony expansion, and it is 103,683rd she expects to carry out copious amounts of termite murder for her.

This leads us to discuss Empire of the Ants' combat and gameplay. On its surface, Empire of the Ants is a "baby's first strategy" game. It's simplified and approachable, but hardcore fans of RTS titles are likely going to feel ham-stringed by what Empire of the Ants has to offer.

Combat missions typically focus on 103,683rd building up nests with defenses and then selecting a legion for that nest. Players are maxed at seven legions, severely limiting how many units can be utilized in battle. It's hard to justify building a legion of aphids, which are fragile and weak to all enemy types when you could just have an extra group of veteran warriors or another stronger legion instead.

Empire of the Ants does have a hierarchy for legion units and which type of unit is best to combat all others. However, because of the smaller number of units in play and the streamlined mechanics, it felt moot to focus on nitpicking enemy attacks. Rather, it was just as effective and more efficient to select all units and just have them pummel whatever termite mound or roving insect was the subject of my ire at the moment.

If you're looking to spend your entire time with Empire of the Ants carrying out insect warfare, you might be shocked to learn the game has a significant amount of exploration and platforming. 103,683rd visits hub cities between assignments, speaking with various Queens and sister ants for story bits. In some cases, 103,683rd is sent out on missions that involve very little strategy and a lot of platforming.

The problem is that 103,683rd is a very small ant in a very big world. Navigating these wide-open areas with her and trying to cross flooded zones that are instant death with a rudimentary jump feature that provides no insight into where you're going to land leaves a lot to be desired. It's a notable shift in gameplay that slows down the overall flow of Empire of the Ants negatively.

Empire of the Ants: Audio and visuals

To say that Empire of the Ants is anything but visually stunning would be to shortchange its accomplishment. I'm old enough to remember when Microid's first attempt at Empire of the Ants in the early 2000s was raked over the coals for its poor graphics. That's certainly not going to be the case with Tower Five's version. Utilizing Unreal Engine version 5.4 and photogrammetry to create a 1 to 1 photorealistic forest and the cast of insects, the visuals of Empire of the Ants are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

However, there is still some room for improvement in the world of Empire of the Ants. While it's easy to get lost staring at the way the light reflects through the tree canopy and the tree bark has just the right amount of crevices, it's still hard to miss that there's just a little bit of plasticity to the world. When the bugs crawl through the grass to their next battle, there's no give or life to the plants between their spindly little legs. There's no breeze blowing the foliage, and everything is just a bit too still.

It's pretty clear that Empire of the Ants' budget was gobbled up by licensing and the art department. The game's soundtrack consists of individual songs per level, but they were easily forgettable in the grand scheme. In missions with larger battles, the music would pick up and increase in intensity as you neared the final boss for that mission, which was a nice change. Tower Five recorded the sounds of the forest from live forests, giving a breath of life to the Fontainebleau.

Empire of the Ants: Final thoughts

There is certainly plenty of space in the real-time strategy genre for approachable and accessible games like Empire of the Ants. However, because the game has been billed as an RTS, fans of that genre may be in for a surprise if they load it up and discover they're expected to platform their way around a flooded forest and search for missing ants that are nearly invisible in the environment.

Empire of the Ants also offers a cross-platform multiplayer mode with 1v1 or 1v1v1 gameplay options. Again, the streamlined strategy gameplay makes this online mode a decent choice for beginners or those who want to dabble with an RTS. However, it is difficult to recommend a hardcore RTS fan pick this up for what amounts to a rock-paper-scissors level of strategy.

When it comes to the multiplayer, I feel like Empire of the Ants is the kind of game that would have benefited from inclusion into Xbox Game Pass if for nothing more than to build up that supporting player base. Unfortunately, at $50, it's a bit tougher of a sale, even if it is absolutely gorgeous.

The Black Ops subseries is on its sixth iteration at this point, and one would expect it to have found its footing by now. As part of the annual blockbuster Call of Duty franchise, it seems inevitable that Black Ops games are required to have these monumental (and memorable) campaign experiences.

A thrilling narrative that gets our blood pumping and makes us feel like a hero, but also presents us with gut-wrenching story beats that stay with us long after the credits roll. But Black Ops is a little different, we also expect an entire second story and game in the series’ massively popular Zombies mode, without even considering the effort put into multiplayer and Warzone integration.

It has been 4 years since the last Black Ops title was released, and the hype for Black Ops 6 is undeniable. A marketing campaign that rivaled Hollywood budgets with star-studded guest appearances, and promises of a return to classic Black Ops had us all on the edge of our seats, ready to shout “Black Ops is back!” With so much anticipation and expectation coloring the launch, could Black Ops 6 actually be everything that the players wanted?

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6—What is it?

The short answer to "What is Black Ops 6?" is that it’s the latest entry in a 20-year franchise of military arcade first-person shooters, and the sixth in the Black Ops series headlined by Treyarch Studios and published by Activision, now under the Xbox umbrella after a record-breaking merger. The Black Ops storyline often centers around conspiracies, the CIA and other secretive U.S. federal government operations, and world-changing, off-the-books missions carried out by elite operatives.

The longer answer is that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is the effective sequel to Treyarch’s Black Ops Cold War, which was released in 2020. The game is the sixth in the Black Ops franchise, but it plays fast and loose with the canon timeline by taking place before the events of Black Ops 3 and 4. Set in the 1990s, the Cold War has come to an end and our former protagonist, Frank Woods, is now wheelchair-bound. Russell Adler, also returning from Black Ops Cold War, has gone rogue. Players take the role of the mysterious, silent protagonist dubbed “Case”, and Woods’ rag-tag team of operators is rounded out by the pacifist Felix Neumann, the master of disguises Sevati “Sev” Dumas, and the moral compass that is Troy Marshall.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6—Campaign review

Black Ops 6 is set in a rewritten historical timeline that embraces the conspiracy theories of the past, taking players back to the US-Iraq war without ever actually having us engage with it. The rogue element to the Black Ops team means that they’re entirely off-the-books and flying by the seat of their pants as they chase down a mysterious entity dubbed the Pantheon.

Call of Duty as a franchise has never shied away from touching on hot-button political moments, but it has always done so with a shrouded hand—Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty: WWII had players infiltrate and liberate a concentration camp, for example, but stopped short of an emotional impact by having the players heroically rescue the squad’s lone Jewish protagonist. Similarly, Black Ops 6 has brief moments of history happening in the background, but you never really have a meaningful impact on them nor they on you. They’re more parallel events than actual experiences that you take in via the campaign.

One mission sees the rogue Black Ops team travel to Kuwait, and at one point we even witness the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein. However, we are whisked away via helicopter after holding our own against Pantheon on a rooftop and witness the finale of this scene through the open hatch of the cargo plane as opposed to actually being a part of it. It felt like a poignant metaphor for how Call of Duty engages with the past.

What Black Ops 6 lacks in historical substance, the game more than makes up for in sheer moxie and explosive action. The campaign fractures the players' time between semi-open world missions, a massive safe house with its own secrets, and more traditional, linear missions. There’s considerably more stealth gameplay baked into Black Ops 6 than any other Call of Duty title that came before it. Although these stealth sections are well-paced and fit exquisitely into the narrative, they do feel like they’re dominating gameplay time. If you’re looking for those high-octane combat sequences and the rush of pushing through an onslaught of enemies as an underdog squad, you may struggle to feel fulfilled by Black Ops 6’s all-too-brief moments of action. In general, the stealth gameplay of lurking around pickpocketing key cards and trying to get photos of out-of-reach politicians has the campaign feeling immersive, but slower than its predecessors.

That said, the action sequences we do have, are absolutely jam-packed with excitement, explosions, and chaos, the likes of which could be found in any blockbuster movie opening on the Fourth of July weekend. It’s Black Ops as it is meant to be, and I’m here for it. From launching over a police blockade on a stolen dirt bike and immediately being surrounded by enemy combatants in SUVs to fighting for our lives against an ever-increasing threat of psychological warfare and conspiracies turned reality. There are these truly fantastic moments that keep you on the edge of your seat-they just don’t last nearly long enough.

Unfortunately, the disjointed structure of the campaign is my biggest frustration with Black Ops 6. Each mission feels completely different from the one before it, and while the narrative and purpose of the plot are all intact, the way you engage with it is varied dramatically from mission to mission. Treyarch is no stranger to experimental gameplay, but I just can’t help but prefer linear campaigns to Black Ops 6’s fractured semi-open world/semi-linear attempt at storytelling. It may make me sound boring to say it, but I really just wanted the campaign to pick a lane.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6—Multiplayer review

Three pillars are vital to Black Ops feeling like—well, Black Ops. Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies. Treyarch has dared to make some drastic changes to multiplayer this year, and somehow nearly all of them have been for the better. First up is the introduction of Omnimovement, a complete overhaul of how players move and interact with the environment during Player-vs-Player (PvP) multiplayer matches. Omnimovement allows players to slide or dive in any direction, at any time, and is further refined by features like Intelligent Movement and Supine Prone.

Thousands of new animations were mo-capped by Treyarch Studios and finessed to make Omnimovement not just functionally viable, but visually striking, as well. Players often rely on quick visual cues as feedback on how interacting with another player panned out. Previous games in the series often left players wondering how a gunfight turned out the way it did because the animations seemingly did not match the other player’s actions. On more than one occasion I’ve had a player run past me and haphazardly take me out with a one-shot kill only to look back at a replay of the moment and realize that on my screen, it never even appeared as if the enemy aimed at me. The new animations from Treyarch now minimize these kinds of moments. If a player is walking sideways from side to side, the era of the crab walk is now gone and the animation more accurately depicts the player’s movement.

In addition to new animations and Omnimovement, accessibility features like Intelligent Movement offer greater accessibility to players who prefer to interact with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 with fewer button inputs. Instead of taking 7–8 button inputs to sprint and mantle, Black Ops 6 gives players the freedom to adjust settings that will complete the same action in just two button presses.

Like its predecessors, Black Ops 6 offers core and hardcore multiplayer across a variety of modes such as Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Domination, and the brand-new Kill Order across 16 brand-new launch maps. Treyarch has decided, however, to split these 16 maps into Core and Strike designations, with Core matching classic Call of Duty multiplayer gameplay, while Strike serves as a ‘Small map mosh pit” type of playlist without score streaks.

Those of us who prefer the chaos of small maps may find the thrill of a slew of Shipment-likes ready to go at launch exhilarating—that is until you realize you’re essentially punished for doing well by the lack of score streak availability. Small map mosh pits are great, but score streaks are half the fun of the chaos. Unfortunately, the majority of the small maps for Strike modes at launch are completely interiors, with little or no areas exposed to the sky for score streaks, leaving no real chance for Treyarch to add them back to the mode even if players requested it.

Black Ops 6 brings a dozen new, never-before-seen weapons into the fold for Multiplayer, and removes several that have proven to be problematic in recent years, including the Riot Shield and RGL 80 grenade launcher. Treyarch has nailed gun balance out of the gate, with every weapon feeling like it could be a sufficient counter to whatever the season’s latest meta cooks up. The XM4 seems to be dominating the battlefield at launch, and the CDL league has already settled a Gentleman’s Agreement (GA) to remove it from upcoming ranked and competitive play. However, Omnimovement and Intelligent Movement make it so easy to push back against heavy meta players and the “movement kings” of the past that most players will not notice when the base skews toward certain weapon types. We’ve all got camos to grind, after all.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6—Zombies review

At this point in the franchise's history, a Black Ops title without a Zombies mode is unfathomable. The mode has undergone a variety of changes and been presented in multiple formats over the years, but it's always reliably been there for Black Ops players. During the Modern Warfare 3 era, we had our first introduction to Zombies in an open-world setting, but the mode received limited updates and support in the year following its launch, unlike MW3’s multiplayer mode. There was some expectation that Modern Warfare Zombies might turn into a Warzone-like scenario, shifting with each new COD release but remaining the home for Zombies for an extended time.

Black Ops 6 ditched the Modern Warfare Zombies open-world arena, however, and returned to a classic round-based zombies approach. On one hand, you probably could criticize Treyarch for abandoning the MWZ and its player base, but on the other, I’d rather be here in Liberty Falls or Terminus anyway. I used to spend hours running circles with my friends on Kino Der Toten, training the last zombie, so somebody could run off to grab a snack between rounds or figuring out Easter eggs. I’ve always considered myself to be somewhat immune to nostalgia when it comes to gaming. But I’m over here excitedly texting my friends and asking if they’re going to be on so we can spend an evening on Zombies like it's 2010 again.

It’s truly a spin on the Zombie genre that you can really only get from round-based zombies in a Black Ops game. Returning to round-based Zombies might have single-handedly been one of the best decisions made by the Call of Duty team. It feels good to be back in that gameplay loop. It doesn’t just feel good, it looks good, and it plays like a dream. I have yet to come across a weapon in zombies that just felt like it didn’t work, they’re all well-balanced.

The layouts of both Terminus and Liberty Falls are intuitive, but marred by their own potential hazards that can keep you from ever feeling a little too comfortable while exploring. The Easter eggs are a nice challenge, but if you do find yourself overwhelmed you can fall back on playing solo via the new directed mode, which makes it more manageable. I’ve actually had to rely on wikis in the past in to help fill in Zombies lore that I missed from unobtainable Easter eggs. So having the new accessibility features really changes the game to be more playable for somebody who experiences fatigue like me. Though, I do still wish they were possible in squad mode—even if only the host could pause for a brief period of time.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6—Final thoughts

I’ve been playing Call of Duty titles for more than 15 years, and I’m not shy about my preferences for linear campaigns and limited tolerance for sci-fi elements. It’s why more often than not I find myself preferring Modern Warfare as a series over Black Ops. Initially, I wasn’t sold that Black Ops 6 would change that much. I played through the campaign on veteran as my initial run, and I did enjoy the gameplay at its most rudimentary level. But as I progressed through the missions, I began to feel as if there were better ways to transition between missions and experience the story. Sometimes the gameplay is linear, sometimes it's a semi-open world. I just wanted Treyarch and Raven Software to pick a lane, find a genre to park Black Ops 6 in, and leave it there. Even with that frustration, it didn’t necessarily detract from the overall quality of the campaign, and I did enjoy the narrative structure and the story that was being told.

When I play COD campaigns, I tend to do a one-shot veteran play through and then call it a day. I’m not keen on replaying the campaign beyond the story itself, and it's Multiplayer and Zombies where I spend most of my time. It's those modes where Black Ops 6 shines the brightest. I’ve had an incredible time playing Black Ops 6 at launch. So much that I could easily have been content with the multiplayer maps and Zombies gameplay offered at launch all the way up until whatever Call of Duty 2025 turns out to be is announced. Yet somehow, I get to sit here and know that there are going to be around 6 seasons of new content heading our way in the coming year. More maps to explore, new weapons to try—and that’s without even considering Warzone integration, which is merely weeks away. I couldn’t be more excited about the future of Black Ops 6.

It's been just over a year since I finally played GRIS for the first time, and it was one of the most memorable games I played in 2023. Now, the follow-up title from indie developer Nomada Studio is here, and it exceeds my expectations.

Where GRIS is a journey of grief and fear in which you passively struggle through your trauma, Neva tells a story of gaining strength in loss, of moving on and in so doing learning to protect what matters to you, and of cycles. It's not a direct continuation or even shares many similarities with its predecessor, but Neva does prove that the magic of GRIS' storytelling wasn't a fluke for Nomada Studio.

I loved playing Neva, and the strides Nomada has made in honing its craft made me wish even more desperately that the adventure didn't end so soon.

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Devolver Digital. The company had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

What is Neva?

The debut title from Nomada Studio, GRIS, was a narrative-driven puzzle-platformer with simple gameplay. Nearly six years later, Nomada has finally returned with Neva, which tells an all-new story in an all-new world, complete with a fresh visual style and a heap of new gameplay mechanics.

Neva tells the story of Alba, a young woman who is bonded to a massive, enigmatic wolf and their fragile cub. An encounter with a terrifying threat to nature and life itself leaves Alba and the cub heartbroken, though, and together they embark on a journey to grow together, battle the corruption plaguing their home, and discover their own way to peace.

Neva straddles the gap between puzzle-platformer and action-adventure genres thanks to the addition of combat and expanded platforming, but is still driven largely by its stunning art design and narrative direction. Like GRIS, Neva is a short adventure that shouldn't take more than five hours to complete.

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Neva review: The good

The pros highlights

• Neva adopts a new art style for Nomada Studio, and feels more polished and fluid than GRIS.
• The narrative is a little more straightforward than GRIS, but still leaves a lot up to personal interpretation.
• As a game, Neva is simply more fun to play than GRIS, with better platforming and added combat mechanics.

The moment Neva's opening track begins to lift, you're brought into the game like submerging in a warm bath. The instant the opening cinematic eases you into the world, you're held fast by the wash of saturated colors. Amazing art direction a great game does not make, but Neva stands as irrefutable proof that the developers at Nomada Studio stand among the very best when it comes to making games into art.

GRIS was a phenomenal display of artistic prowess in its own right, and personally I still love its unique watercolor style just a little more than Neva's flat color palette. It's clear from every other angle, though, that Nomada has dramatically upped its game in the graphics and animations department — Neva is buttery smooth, refined and polished to the limit, and feels like every single frame was hand-crafted with intent and care.

The soundtrack is also excellent. While not as memorable as some of the greats, Neva's original soundtrack still accompanies the visuals, world, and narrative with grace and emotion. The finished product is one that feels cohesive from end-to-end, even when Neva pushes its art design to the limit with massive, abstract set pieces and outlandish environments. Every single moment is gorgeous, and it was hard not to take approximately 400 screenshots.

As a game, Neva actually surprised me with the depth of its gameplay. There are the beginnings of an excellent Metroidvania platformer here, and that's not an exaggeration. Neva's platforming is miles ahead of GRIS' simplistic jumping, with precise double jumps, rolls and midair dashes, the ability to combo and chain jumping off of enemies, and more.

Alba is a capable warrior, too, and while combat is a simple combination of standard attacks and all your platforming abilities for mobility, it does feel fantastic. There's a good variety of enemies, too, and Neva does throw a myriad of unique and challenging bosses at you throughout its playtime. Your animal companion, Neva, also grows as the story progresses, gaining new abilities that help you with both traversal and combat.

Neva is not just another 2D platformer; it's obvious serious thought went into designing these expanded gameplay mechanics, and it paid off. GRIS was an experience, but Neva also manages to be a simply fun game.

FInally, there's the story. Alba isn't an outspoken protagonist — the only word you'll ever hear her say is the name of her wolf-like companion. In contrast, Neva is very vocal, and in every way feels like a real canine with his movements, mannerisms, and behavior. You'll have to collect Neva when he becomes distracted, call him to you when he wanders off, comfort him when he's scared, and even encourage him when he's uncertain of something.

Alba and Neva are connected through their shared trauma, the loss of Neva's parent. That grief has forged an immutable bond between the two, but grief is not the focal point of Neva. The world is falling to the corruption that took Neva's parent from him and Alba, and it's up to you to gain the strength to fight it back and the monsters it spawns, and prevent anyone from going through what you did ever again.

Where GRIS is filled with symbology and metaphors, Neva is a little more direct in its narrative delivery. What you take away from the story is still largely up to subjective interpretation, though — for me, it's about fighting to protect what you love and persevering through the harsh moments in the cycle of life. It's a beautiful story that ends as it begins, and it'll make you cry. Well, it at least made me cry.

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Neva review: The bad

The cons highlights

• More than anything, I just wish Neva was longer.
• The gameplay mechanics are good enough that Neva, in another universe, could've been a much longer adventure without issue.

Neva is an incredibly written, directed, and crafted narrative-adventure with an emotional story that will bring you to your knees. That being said, it also didn't impact me quite as hard as the sheer anguish of GRIS' grief-stricken journey, and I do feel that Neva loses some of the ethereal charm of GRIS with its flatter colors and textures.

I only have one real complaint with Neva, though, and that it's not longer. I felt that GRIS was the perfect length for the story it told, and Neva is a similar length. However, Neva's gameplay mechanics lend themselves far better to a longer format than GRIS, which offered little challenge to players during its runtime.

It takes less than five hours to complete Neva, and if you're thorough, you could also 100% all of the achievements on your first playthrough (I missed a few). I would've loved to see Neva more deeply explore its expanded platforming and added combat mechanics, but the adventure is over too soon.

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Neva review: Final thoughts

You should play this if ...

✅You were a fan of GRIS

Neva is everything a studio should aspire to for its second game, and is the perfect next title for anyone who was a fan of GRIS and want more of that emotional, artistic storytelling.

✅You love narrative-driven games that still feature satisfying gameplay

I absolutely do not mind if a game is a "walking simulator" as long as the format fits the story and the rest of the experience captivates me, but there are plenty who don't want to play a game that doesn't put gameplay front and center. Neva strikes a great balance between the two.

You should not play this if ...

❌You're looking for a new adventure to take up lots of your time

Neva approaches "masterpiece" level of artistry, but much of its impact is an afterimage left after you've already finished the game due to its brevity. This is not a title for those actively seeking a new 10+ hour long adventure.

I'll admit that it took me a few days longer than I wanted to get to Neva after I finished my Metaphor: ReFantazio review, but that's less a comment on how interesting Neva is and more evidence on just how incredible Metaphor: ReFantazio is.

Neva isn't likely to steal the "game of the year" crown from Atlus' magnum opus, but this is a bloody good game. It's everything I could've asked for from the studio that gave us GRIS, and it's everything I wanted it to be when I saw the first reveal trailer. It's so good that my only real complaint is that it ends too soon, like when you discover an incredible song and lose all sense of time.

Visually and narratively I expected nothing less from Nomada Studio, which upped its game considerably. What caught me off guard is just how much better the gameplay is in Neva versus its predecessor, showing that this team may have much more to show us yet. Neva is now available across Xbox, Windows PC, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch, and you can buy both GRIS and Neva for just $29.99 at Microsoft Store (Xbox) if you've yet to experience either.

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I adore a good narrative-driven game, especially if that game is built on giving players agency over the trajectory of the story, but subverts the illusion of free will without ever disrespecting your choices.

What I mean to say is a game that reacts to your actions, but never in the way you expect. It's the story equivalent of a monkey's paw, and that's exactly what Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut is. This horror-tinged visual novel is a love story on the surface, but underneath is an emotional allegory on the power of perspective, the consequence of action (including the lack thereof), and the immutable nature of forces beyond human understanding.

Slay the Princess is a known quantity that still remains as one of the highest rated PC games of all time, but now it has finally arrived on console alongside The Pristine Cut update, which massively expands the game with new art, new dialogue, new paths to follow, new Princesses to slay (or not), and new endings to discover. I'm reminded in all the best ways of my time reviewing The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, but Slay the Princess is still held back slightly by its technical execution.

This review was made possible thanks to a pre-release review code provided by Serenity Forge. The company had no input nor saw the contents of this review prior to publication.

What is Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut?

The original Slay the Princess was released on Oct. 23, 2023 exclusively for Windows PC, and became one of the highest rated games on Metacritic shortly after.

It's a psychological horror visual novel in which you (the protagonist) embark on a quest to slay a captured princess and, in the process, save the world. You're guided by the enigmatic Narrator and your own inner voices, but you'll learn early on that you don't always have to do as you're told.

Slay the Princess can be as short or as long as you want it to be, dictated by how much you explore, how much you rebel, how much you learn. In this fashion the narrative-delivery and choice-driven gameplay is very similar to The Stanley Parable, which can also be finished in 5 minutes or 15 hours, depending on your perspective of what "the end" really means. Now, The Pristine Cut is here to add approximately 35% more content to the base game in the form of new endings and new paths to follow, as well as expanded dialogue and artwork.

The Pristine Cut is a free update to the existing game on Steam, but it also comes alongside Slay the Princess' console release on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch consoles. Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut officially releases on Oct. 24, 2024.

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Slay the Princess review: The good

The pros highlights

• Being a visual novel, Slay the Princess is interacted with through the text-based choices you make.
• The entire game is wonderfully narrated and voiced, with a cast of interesting characters.
• The branching, multi-path narrative is also incredibly well-written and endlessly fascinating.

Do our choices have lasting consequences, or is everything ultimately meaningless in the end? Can life and death exist apart from each other, or do they simultaneously stream into and stem from the other? Are there real endings, or are there only new beginnings? Those questions are all too big; Slay the Princess is, after all, a simple story about a Hero on a quest to save the world from the Princess.

Slay the Princess always begins the same: "You're on a path in the woods, and at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess. You're here to slay her. If you don't, it will be the end of the world." At first, your mission is simple and your decisions equally so. You can question what you've been told to do, shirk your responsibility entirely and run away, or accept the fate that has been handed to you and progress forward.

You are guided by the seemingly all-knowing hand of the mysterious Narrator, and if you choose to follow his directions exactly, the world will be saved, and you'll receive your blissful award in a matter of minutes. That's the "good" ending, but is that the only ending you'll find? As you explore and make more decisions, are confronted by the consequences of those decisions, and make still more decisions, you'll soon discover that Slay the Princess is far from the simple tale you were told it would be, and that how this story ends is an enigmatic knot of different paths you can follow.

I won't say anything more beyond that. Just like with The Stanley Parable, the less you know about Slay the Princess, the better. Go in as blind as possible and don't let any one ending deter you. "The end is never the end," after all. Whichever choices you make, Slay the Princess will engage you with emotional voice acting that brings each character to life in whatever form they may come. The words with which the story is woven are beautiful, thought-provoking, or just downright terrifying. You are a character in a play just as much as you are the director, just as much as you are the audience.

I've spent 10 hours in Slay the Princess and have yet to discover all there is to discover. Serenity Forge and Black Tabby Games gave me a cheat sheet, but I refuse to look at it — just finding the path that'll take you to a new ending is half the fun. This is a truly phenomenal visual novel that expertly ties in dozens of themes and philosophies into a single experience, and if it weren't for the actual technical execution of that experience, I'd have next to nothing to complain about.

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Slay the Princess review: The bad

The cons highlights

• During my review, I encountered multiple issues with dialogue not playing or ending properly, and an entire path that was completely unplayable.
• Slay the Princess' menus are also very rough to navigate and lack the quality-of-life features I expect from a modern game.
• A pre-release patch improved matters, a launch day patch is planned, and menu navigation will supposedly improve after launch, but I have to review the game as it is now.

Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut may have enjoyed a very sparse section for its cons if it weren't for technical issues. During my playthrough, I encountered a variety of bugs and observed a number of barriers with the user interface.

Dialogue would sometimes not play, or would not stop correctly when you skipped, or would keep playing over into the next section, or would not pause correctly when the game menu was open. Menus suffered from visual issues, with items and options not highlighting correctly or responsively. I also encountered an entire path that was simply unplayable, at first freezing the game entirely and forcing me to restart it, and then (after a pre-launch patch) just flat out crashing whenever I reached a specific point.

The menus themselves are rough around the edges. It's awkward to navigate on a controller and your position in the menus is sort of but not really remembered between menu opens, which further adds to the confusion. There's a lack of information in areas, such as the save files not indicating what chapter or point of the story it is. In general, Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut suffers from a lack of technical refinement that stands in stark contrast to the polished, near-perfect storytelling and writing.

Black Tabby Games released a sizeable patch midway through my review period that fixed some issues, and a launch day patch is planned to hopefully fix the progression-stopping bug I encountered. I've also been told that the devs are working on a series of post-launch bugs to improve the menus and navigation, specifically. It's all good to hear and worth mentioning here, but as of the time of writing these issues remain.

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Slay the Princess review: Final thoughts

You should play this if ...

✅You love playing a role in an interesting story

Slay the Princess doesn't just put you in the shoes of the protagonist, you are the decider. This is a fantastic game for those who love to play an active role in incredibly written stories, where your choices do matter.

✅You're a fan of visual novels

Visual novels aren't always the most exciting of video games, but it's a potent medium for telling outlandish, chaotic, or downright insane stories that would be far more difficult in any other setting. This is one such visual novel, and it's awesome.

You should not play this if ...

❌You want lots of gameplay in your games

I personally love video games of almost every genre (except sports games, those just aren't my jam), but I do acknowledge those who don't enjoy video games without much gameplay. This being a visual novel is a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. I say the former, but you might say the latter.

It was difficult to land on a final review score for Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut, highlighting my issues with attempting to consolidate everything that encompasses a video game into a single number.

After all, this is one of the best narrative-driven games I have ever played and there's little to fault with the story, writing, voice acting, or gameplay (it's a visual novel). The Stanley Parable is another legendary game in the long list of titles I've completed, and it feels fantastic to find a like-minded gem telling a twisting story that bends and breaks your mind in equal measure. However, like I've said previously, I have to judge a product on what it is now, not on what it could be.

Fundamentally, Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut makes a compelling argument for being perfect as a visual novel, especially now that it is so expanded in terms of story content, art, and dialogue. However, bugs and unrefined menus still linger in the console release, and until those are resolved I simply can't score this game higher regardless of its storytelling prowess. If Black Tabby Games brings proper improvement to this game in the future (and I actually learn of them), I may have to revisit my review with some updated thoughts.

As a final note, I am immensely disappointed that there's no Collector's Edition for Xbox, but I do understand why so many physical editions skip the digital-dominated Xbox platform.

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When Metaphor: ReFantazio was first properly unveiled to the world, I honestly didn't give it much thought. I'll admit I've never played any of the Persona games, so a new IP from that team didn't hold much interest for me.

Then, by simply being the only person who was able to, I went hands-on with Metaphor: ReFantazio during Summer Game Fest 2024, and suddenly, this unique Japanese role-playing game was on my radar. Given the privilege of playing Metaphor: ReFantazio before its release, everything I felt during that initial preview has been reaffirmed at every turn. The new Studio Zero team at Persona publisher Atlus has crafted something special.

Admittedly, it did take me a very long time to properly finish Metaphor: ReFantazio, but my full review is here now that the credits are rolling. My exploits in the United Kingdom of Euchronia have captivated me for dozens of hours, engrossing me in a fascinating and incredibly detailed world caught in the battle between anxiety and hope. As I suspected when I first published this article as a review-in-progress, I honestly don't have to alter much of what I've written below — Metaphor: ReFantazio is absolutely one of the best Xbox games of the year, and is worthy of your attention (no matter how much of it is asked).

This review was made possible thanks to a pre-release review code provided by SEGA and Atlus. The companies had no input and did not see the contents of this review prior to publication.

What is Metaphor: ReFantazio?

Metaphor: ReFantazio is the first full project out of Studio Zero, the third (and newest) developer team at Atlus. Based in Japan and under the SEGA umbrella, Atlus is most known for its legendary Persona series of JRPGs, which boast a massive fanbase all over the world.

Studio Zero was formed by members of the Persona series team, director Katsura Hashino, character designer Shigenori Soejima, and composer Shoji Meguro after the release of Persona 5 Royale, who all set out to work on a brand-new IP for Atlus. The result is Metaphor: ReFantazio, which clearly borrows many gameplay and social simulation elements found in Persona games but with a more fantastical setting in an all-new, highly unique world.

Set in the United Kingdom of Euchronia, tragedy befalls the world when the king is assassinated, and his only heir is believed to be long-dead. Unbeknownst to his slayer, though, the king had used the god-like magic exclusive to the royal family to set in motion the Tournament for the Throne upon his death, a competition that would decide the next king from any of the nation's citizens based on the support and trust from the people. You play as an Elda, a member of an oft-scorned race, on a secret mission to save the Prince, the true Crown Heir, and prevent Euchronia from falling into chaos.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a massive RPG adventure with a mixture of real-time and strategic turn-based combat and a unique "class" system based on magical Archetypes. The game is releasing on Oct. 11, 2024, for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5|4, and can be purchased for $69.99 from Best Buy. There's also a Collector's Edition for $149.99 at Best Buy, too. If you're on the fence, you can play the first 5-7 hours of Metaphor: ReFantazio via its free demo, which transfers all progress to the main game.

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Metaphor: ReFantazio — Performance and stability

Performance highlights

• Metaphor: ReFantazio runs very well on Xbox Series X, with only a handful of dropped frames in the second half of the game.
• This has also been a very polished game for me, as I've encountered remarkably few bugs.
• The game runs well on ASUS ROG Ally, too, and a pre-release patch seems to have largely fixed performance issues we discovered on PC.

I mostly played Metaphor: ReFantazio on the Xbox Series X, and the game ran fantastically. You won't find many graphical or performance settings here (or basically any, for that matter), but the game does look and run great. Performance is smooth even in crowded areas or with a lot of enemies on-screen, and during my playthrough, I noticed a handful of dropped frames (mostly in the second half of the game during high-level combat).

Stability is also top-notch, with no crashes or major flaws. In fact, I can hardly think of any bugs I encountered at all, which is honestly remarkable for an RPG of this size. Some players who have played the demo on PC reported CPU-related performance issues, especially in large open areas, but I can tell you that a pre-release patch during our review period has cleared up those issues and given my colleague Alex Cope a rock-solid framerate on PC.

I also played Metaphor: ReFantazio for several hours on my ASUS ROG Ally X, and that was a way better experience than I expected. At 1080p and the Low graphical preset, with AMD's HYPR-RX graphical features enabled (our explainer on AMD Fluid Motion Frames on ROG Ally talks about some of this), I saw a stable ~35 frames-per-second (FPS) in open areas and ~65 FPS in combat and all other parts of the game. You can read my guide on playing Metaphor: ReFantazio on gaming handhelds for more info.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is also Xbox Play Anywhere, meaning you can buy it once from the Microsoft Store and play it on Xbox and PC (including handhelds) with all your progress synced to the cloud. That came in handy for my recent work-related trip to San Francisco, as I played Metaphor: ReFantazio for hours on the plane.

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Metaphor: ReFantazio — Art design and audio

Art & audio highlights

• Metaphor: ReFantazio has excellent art design, from its menus and interfaces to its character designs and worldbuilding.
• Its art style is likely to be divisive, however — this is hardly the most visually evocative game, with a flat and neutral color palette.
• However you feel about how the game looks, though, no one will argue that Metaphor: ReFantazio has solid audio design and a phenomenal soundtrack.

I personally enjoy how Metaphor: ReFantazio looks, as it's an approachable art style that scales very well across hardware. However, it is divisive, and I have already seen people dismiss Metaphor: ReFantazio because of its neutral, almost desaturated color palette and uneven texture qualities. For me, though, the art design outweighs any weaknesses in the style.

Metaphor: ReFantazio does an excellent job building a believable, engaging, and unique world filled with interesting and deep characters. There are some stunning environments in this game, and each character feels visually and deliberately distinct. Enemies are also fascinating and wildly diverse, to say the least, ranging from your average RPG baddies to truly horrific Eldritch-esque monstrosities. Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn't feel as "2D" as a lot of other 3D games with similar art styles, too — all the way to character clothing having proper depth and separation from the characters themselves.

The strengths of this game's art design are never more evident than in its cinematic cutscenes and its interfaces. The former are beautifully animated and are filled with color and emotion, so it's unfortunate that they feel so scarce in the grand scheme of the game. As for the menus, Metaphor: ReFantazio does a wonderful job balancing readability and usability with unique and striking visual designs and elements. Each menu feels wholly unique to Metaphor: ReFantazio, which is not an easy thing to accomplish.

Finally, audio! Not all of Metaphor: ReFantazio is fully narrated, but more than I expected is and the character voiceovers sound very good in both Japanese and English. Audio design is also solid for monsters, combat, and the world in general. All of it pales in comparison to this original soundtrack, though, which is composed by the masterful Shoji Meguro. This is a powerful, dynamic, and reactive soundtrack that perfectly underlines every battle, conversation, and development. It's the kind of soundtrack you don't even need the game itself to enjoy immensely.

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Metaphor: ReFantazio — Narrative and world

Narrative highlights

• At first glance Metaphor: ReFantazio tells a fairly predictable story of a struggle for power in a dystopian society wracked by classism and discrimination.
• However, the game deviates from the expected in several creative ways and is overall well-written and directed.
• Studio Zero also did a brilliant job building a world that feels believable and more alive than what we usually see in video games.

Louis, a commoner-turned-warlord due to his unparalleled, prodigious abilities in magic, combat, and tactics, has assassinated the rightful king of the United Kingdom of Euchronia. Years earlier, the one and only crown heir also vanished and was presumed killed. Louis had intended to take the throne for himself, citing power as being the only hierarchy worth respecting, but the king's forethought led to the activation of the royal family's all-powerful magic.

Instead of a violent coup, Louis is instead thrown into the Tournament for the Throne. According to the king and his magic, anyone who wins the trust and support of Euchronia's people during the set timeframe will become king, regardless of whether they're nobility, commoner, or criminal. Our protagonist, whom you name (but otherwise don't customize), has a different objective — slay Louis in order to break the curse that has rendered the missing prince comatose for years and restore his rightful place on the throne.

There's just one problem: Louis and all the other top candidates in the Tournament for the Throne are effectively immortal due to the protection of the king's royal magic, as violence and assassination are not the tools by which the king wishes his replacement to be chosen. This is the foundation for Metaphor: ReFantazio's main narrative, and it forces you and all your companions to be creative and actually join the Tournament for the Throne. You have to earn the support of the people who despise you because of your lineage in order to get closer to Louis and save the prince from certain death.

The longer the story became, the more I enjoyed it. The United Kingdom of Euchronia feels like a real, believable fantasy world that changes and progresses over time — and time does move. Everything you do progresses time, and you have to choose how you spend the limited time you have carefully; do you grow closer to your friends and followers, help people in need, grow stronger in dungeons, or move forward with your plans to save the prince?

During that time, you'll learn more about Euchronia and its united yet separate nations, the divided tribes (or races) that are shattered by rampant discrimination, and the imbalance between the poor masses and the wealthy few. You'll also learn that Euchronia may have looked more like our world a long time ago, but it was destroyed by the advent of technology that was too powerful to control. Metaphor: ReFantazio even goes so far as to actively recognize you as the player, positioning you as the unseen hand of fate guiding the protagonist in his world from our world.

Any underlying tropes in the genre are often subverted in Metaphor: ReFantazio, and there will be themes and even twists that you may not see. I also really enjoy the social simulation elements that are brought over from the Persona series, which sees you develop closer bonds with your companions in order to become more powerful through that trust and support. Some of these side stories are incredibly emotional, such as that of the young girl Maria, who welcomes you into her broken family after her father is murdered.

I was worried at first that the ever-progressing clock that I was introduced to during my demo would annoy me in the full game, but Metaphor: ReFantazio does a good job giving you access to the game in pieces and granting you just enough time to do basically everything as long as you're smart and carefully consider the order in which you do things.

Characters are also well written and voiced, and really add a lot to the narrative delivery. However, despite being this charismatic, chosen-by-fate leader, the protagonist plays a rather detached role much of the time, and often says little. There are also plenty of times where gameplay clearly takes a step back in order to prioritize the story, which I'm sure some gamers won't love.

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Metaphor: ReFantazio — Gameplay and combat

Gameplay highlights

• Metaphor: ReFantazio is basically split into three parts: strategic turn-based combat, dungeon exploration, overworld combat, and social simulation.
• All these pieces tie together well and have remained very fun and engaging after dozens of hours of play time.
• The turn-based combat is especially interesting because of the Archetype magic system, which lets you explore essentially countless different strategies with your party.

Metaphor: ReFantazio will likely be familiar to Persona fans, but this was my first time playing an RPG like this. In essence, your time in Euchronia will either be spent exploring dungeons and dispatching or stunning foes in quick, basic combat, engaging with more powerful enemies in tactic-heavy, diverse turn-based combat, or exploring peaceful areas and shopping, interacting with NPCs, developing bonds with followers and companions, and evolving your skills.

To start, Metaphor: ReFantazio is not an open-world game. In fact, it's fairly linear as RPGs go, slowly giving you access to more areas as you progress through the story and never really giving you the option to wander off the main path for 40 hours. You will have a lot of control over the order in which you do things and how you do them, but the bigger picture will look pretty similar from playthrough to playthrough.

When you're inside the hub areas like cities, you won't encounter combat, but you can listen to the chatter of NPCs. Yes, the people in cities and villages will be talking amongst themselves and even reacting to you and your actions, helping you learn much more about the world and your standing in it. Action-oriented gameplay is reserved for defined dungeons, which are incredibly varied in setting and challenge but largely resemble labyrinths filled with enemies and treasure.

When you're exploring dungeons, you're not simply wandering around waiting to be dragged into battles. You can battle even in real-time, quickly eliminating much weaker enemies or gaining an advantage over stronger foes by stunning them. There's risk, too, though, as enemies can attack you too (and if you're attacked by a strong opponent first, be prepared for an extraordinarily difficult fight).

When you are dragged into these turn-based fights, Metaphor: ReFantazio's gameplay truly shines. Your protagonist awakens an ancient magic known as Archetypes, which combines the souls of ancient heroes that followed similar paths. By channeling this magic through your emotions, you can unleash powerful abilities along that path. The protagonist can also awaken this ability in those he grows close to, but it goes even further: as you unlock new Archetypes and develop new bonds, you can also share any Archetype you've discovered with any of your companions, and those companions can also share the abilities and skills they've learned between the Archetypes they can channel.

Basically, Archetypes are like your classic RPG classes, but imagine that each character can learn any class you unlock and can mix and match the capabilities of those classes once they learn them. The result is a very diverse, dynamic combat system that allows for practically infinite strategies. You can let characters remain in their natural role decided by their unique strengths and weaknesses, of course, but you can also create truly unique combinations that take advantage of the vast range of offensive, defensive, supportive, and even team-based "Synthesis" abilities you'll learn.

Metaphor: ReFantazio continues to introduce new facets to this combat dozens of hours in. There's so much freedom here, and it meant that I was still excited by the combat up until the very end, especially as I discovered my enemies were given the same versatility as me.

The dungeons are fun to explore, and the combat is excellent, but I will say that Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn't do a great job making me excited to find a treasure chest, as a lot of the time, the loot you'll find inside is boring or useless. Still, I had a blast, even when I didn't have to actually play the game... but I can't say that for everyone.

There are multiple instances in Metaphor: ReFantazio where for 20, 30, 40 minutes or longer there is little to no gameplay. You can actually set down the controller and still progress, as it's all cinematics and conversations (both voiced and not). I didn't mind this as I'm actually engrossed in this world and its characters and want to learn more, but at times even I wondered when I'd actually be able to do something again. That's bound to deter players who care more about the gameplay than the story.

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Metaphor: ReFantazio — Accessibility and approachability

Accessibility highlights

• Metaphor: ReFantazio is fairly approachable, although it does throw a lot of information and systems at you that you're expected to remember, and tooltips are sparse.
• However, turn-based combat makes the gameplay very approachable, and there are various difficulty levels.
• Accessibility options are relatively limited, though, with no advanced options for visual, audible, or physical disabilities — not even a way to rebind controls.

Finally, as I usually do, I want to end on both the accessibility and approachability of Metaphor: ReFantazio.

This is an area where this genre of video games seems to struggle, and Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn't entirely buck those trends. As far as approachability is concerned, Metaphor is a straightforward game to ease into, with a fairly linear storyline that's easy to follow. Turn-based combat is also a boon for those who may struggle with challenging games that demand high physical coordination.

However, Metaphor: ReFantazio does throw a ton of systems at you, and while there are extensive tutorials, recaps, and summaries for you to peruse, you do have to go searching for them if you forget something. At least there are various difficulty tiers — both for those who want an easier time and for those who want to challenge themselves. Accessibility-wise, matters are also mixed.

You have your usual options for subtitles and granular audio controls, as well as an assortment of control and interface-related customizations. However, Metaphor: ReFantazio is missing some obvious features, such as color-blind modes, ways to improve the legibility and navigability of the menus, remappable controls (which should be a standard feature for any modern game), and more. I had certainly hoped for more from such an established studio in this department.

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Metaphor: ReFantazio review — Final thoughts

You should play this if ...

✅You love the Persona games already

If you're already a Persona fan, then this is a no-brainer for you. Metaphor: ReFantazio borrows a lot from the legendary JRPG franchise as it's made by many of the same people — it's just a new storyline in a new world with some fresh innovations.

✅You're looking for a meaty, expansive RPG to occupy your time

If you're on the market for a game that can potentially take up dozens of your hours, Metaphor: ReFantazio has the content and the diversity to do so and remain fun the entire time. That's especially true if you're exhausted by open worlds, as Metaphor: ReFantazio won't force you to explore endless plains and mountains.

You should not play this if ...

❌You can't stand games that take away gameplay at times

I'm really enjoying the story of Metaphor: ReFantazio so far, but I can't deny that I've simply not been holding the controller for at least an hour of the time I've spent with the game so far. If you're someone who wants your game (and its story) to be all gameplay, all the time, Metaphor: ReFantazio is likely to frustrate you.

Metaphor: ReFantazio marks the boundaries between hopes and anxieties, fantasy and reality, trust and fear, and weaves them into a magnificent fantasy world caught between the possibility of change and the potential for disaster. It takes a long time to fully tell that story, and even when the credits roll it's clear that the protagonist's story has only just begun.

At the end of the journey I shared with that protagonist, though, Metaphor: ReFantazio was insurmountable as my current game-of-the-year pick. This is one of the most impactful and memorable games I've played in years, and it honestly makes me want to visit the Persona series. I already added Persona 3 Reload and the rest of the Persona series to my Microsoft Store wishlist. Metaphor: ReFantazio is a lengthy, ambling RPG that focuses a lot on its worldbuilding, narrative, and characters, and I love it for that.

Masterminding the strangest concoctions of Archetypes, abilities, and equipment for my growing party was a source of joy for me these last couple of weeks. I admit there had been more than one instance of me lying in bed attempting to go to sleep, only to get back up, turn my Xbox back on, and play far too late into the night. Metaphor: ReFantazio's fascinating gameplay and social simulation elements, combined with its engrossing world and unique (sometimes on the nose) narrative, won me over well before I've crossed the finish line.

This is one for the Persona fans, the JRPG fans, the story-driven game fans... it's not for the players who demand every moment be nail-biting, action-packed gameplay. If you're sold, you can pick up Metaphor: ReFantazio on Xbox for $69.99 at Best Buy.

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Diablo 4's first expansion is finally upon us, and became fully unleashed on October 7, 2024.

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred continues the story of Mephisto, whose demonic machinations led him to become trapped in a soul stone at the end of Diablo 4. Returning from the first game, the young scholar Neyrelle has charged herself with the destruction of the Prime Evil, but carrying such a forsaken burden weighs heavy upon her very being.

Diablo 4 has had a successful year, albeit controversial to some degree among core fans and fans of the genre. Some of Diablo 4's seasonal content drops have been spectacular and infectious, while others have been middling and disappointing. Vessel of Hatred brings with it a Season of Hatred Rising, alongside a new storyline, new character class, new endgame activities, and much more. But it's not cheap, clocking in at $39.99 — approaching the price of a fully-priced game.

Naturally, that price will also help keep the free live service afloat in the coming year, but so too does the expensive in-game store, as well as its seasonal battle passes. It was with that in mind that I dove into this review, knowing full well that the price of the thing has been a contentious point already. On paper, Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred has a mountain of new content and features, but do they land as well as Diablo 3's Reaper of Souls did back in the day?

DEAL: Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred | was $39.99 now $35.49 at CD Keys (XBOX)

Join us, as we head into the jungles of Nahantu.

This review was conducted primarily on an RTX 4080 PC with a code provided by Blizzard Entertainment, who did not see the contents of this review prior to posting. Testing was also conducted on the Steam Deck, Xbox Series X|S, and the Lenovo Legion Go.

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred review — Art direction

There's zero doubt in my mind that Blizzard Entertainment is at the very apex of art direction in the video game industry, and remains an example to be followed from every angle. Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred very firmly continues this trend.

Diablo 4 is impeccably well-optimized, running on lower-end devices like the Xbox Series S and Steam Deck like a dream. On higher-end devices like the Xbox Series X and my RTX 4080 PC, it showcases much more extravagance, complete with ray-traced lighting and all the graphical bells and whistles that you can throw at it. The new region of Nahantu is a great stage to demonstrate how far Blizzard has come when building photorealistic environments — all without compromising performance by way of some Sancturian dark magic, apparently. The lush, verdant forests ooze with life and pockets of seething corruption, all while maintaining the choking darkness of Diablo 2's iconic veneer.

Indeed, much of Vessel of Hatred takes place in Nahantu, which first appeared in Diablo II, alongside nostalgic settlements like Kurast and even the ruins of Travincal. The story runs you through various locations old-school players may find familiar, dotted with side quests that will send you deep into the jungle's most forbidden climbs.

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred has some sequences that left me aghast. Given the limitations of Diablo's isometric camera, it's a testament to the game's direction and production values that they're still able to deliver something that feels so immersive and striking. I don't want to spoil some of these moments, but you'll know them when you see them — it's not all violence for the sake of violence either, even if I personally appreciate a bit of the old gore in my games. Nahantu proves itself to be a varied platform for all types of spectacle, despite some early reservations I had that it might seem too similar to the jungle swamps of Hawezar to the north. Nahantu's canopies project a wholly different naturalistic vibe, all without sacrificing the gothic undertones that permeate the whole project.

Diablo 4's base game already had spectacular music, and Vessel of Hatred doesn't disappoint on that note either. One particular quest really felt like it was gunning for a Heart of Darkness vibe as you cut through thick vines to traverse deeper and deeper into the thick, monster-infested jungle murk. As you progress, the music ramps up to suit, culminating with a crescendo of eerie tones perfectly depicting the manifested malice of the Lord of Hatred, whom the game's story revolves around. It was just patently fantastic to experience, but I couldn't help being disappointed at how few these moments were compared to the base game.

Blizzard can clearly still deliver spectacularly magical set pieces that perfectly weave suitably disturbing visuals and haunting music, complete with high-quality digital acting and voice work. But the way the game's story paced made me wonder if episodic, annual releases will undermine and unravel the otherwise excellent audio-visual directing.

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred review — Story

It's always a little tough to "review" a game's story without resorting to spoilers, but there are really a few things you should know before heading into Vessel of Hatred — namely, that it sports an "episodic" structure.

In Diablo 4, players hunt down Lilith, the daughter of Mephisto, who is attempting to, in her own way, "save" the realm of Sanctuary where we, the players, live. To do this, she's attempting to absorb the power of her father, the Prime Evil Mephisto, although, as you might expect, players prevent this from happening at the end of Diablo 4. The consequence is that Mephisto, who was slumbering and recuperating after his "death" in Diablo 2, is essentially unleashed. Contained within a soul stone, the young scholar Neyrelle takes it upon herself to drag Mephisto's disembodied spirit through Sanctuary in a quest to find a more "permanent" means of death for the Prime Evil. It seems that generally, demons cannot be truly killed and can only either be contained or sent back to the Hells to recuperate. Lilith's plan was to break this cycle of war and peace for Sanctuary, although it would likely have led to a dystopic world where Lilith became some sort of tyrant queen. Lilith and Mephisto both try to manipulate the characters of the game as well as the player, claiming that it's only through allegiance with them that the next major war between Heaven and Hell, with Sanctuary as the battlefield, can be stopped.

Mephisto's containment in the crystalline soul stone is essentially a band aid solution. His corruption is so potent, that the presence of the soul stone itself is enough to corrupt the land and anyone nearby. In this case, namely Neyrelle. In the spectacular opening pre-rendered cinematic, we see Neyrelle plagued by twisted, horrific visions of her death as Mephisto seeks control of her mind.

Neyrelle asked players not to follow, but following our better judgement, we opt to ride to her aid. Along the way, the player makes new acquaintances in the Kejistan and Nahantu region, including the mercenary Raheir, and the enigmatic Spiritborn adherent Eru, who serves as our guide in Nahantu.

As I mentioned, it's difficult to go in-depth without spoiling, and I definitely don't want to do that. However, there were aspects of Diablo 4's story that left me with a dejected, disappointed aftertaste, mainly owing to its length. You'll manage to get through this $40 expansion in around 4-5 hours without what I'd consider to be a satisfactory resolution at the end, either. The story's jaw-dropping apex made me feel like I was hitting the mid-point of the story rather than its zenith. It was made all the worse when the characters of the story began undermining what I had just witnessed by essentially talking me through a banal tutorial of Diablo 4's new seasonal content.

It was an effective way to suck all the gravitas out of what I had just witnessed and experienced and served to undo the sense of awe that Blizzard's writing and art team had managed to instill in a relatively short space of time.

"Okay, you finished the story now... off you go to grind Helltides," with hints that the story will continue after you pony up another $40 next year, not including battle passes and the like.

I don't begrudge games need to be profitable to serve their corporate overlords, and I wouldn't prefer Diablo 4 to gun for a free-to-play model either. The quality of the production values speaks for itself. Every character class has fresh voiceovers for both male and female models, complete with photorealistic visuals and high-quality motion capture. I know that isn't cheap. But it's not about the price here to some degree. There's potentially more than enough content in the story, but it was poorly paced.

Somehow, Vessel of Hatred threads the needle of offering too much and not enough. Exciting and interesting new characters are barely given a chance to shine before they're cast aside, and new plot threads aren't given the attention they need to land well. New monsters, creatures, villains, and heroes emerge rapidly, but blink, and you'll miss it all — and be left struggling to remember what happened.

I think the story could've used some linear sequences, perhaps in unique dungeons or strongholds, to add meat to the bones of what is ultimately a fantastic new arc for Diablo 4. When Vessel of Hatred's story works, it works extremely well. The Diablo 4 team has been truly incredible at subverting expectations, and some plot twists here I absolutely never saw coming. It's honestly a testament to Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred's quality that I was left wanting more. I was never bored, and I was utterly intrigued and invested by what was on offer. But I was also like, "wait, that's it?" at the end, which makes the case for its $40 price point difficult to parse by itself. And, of course, there's much more to Vessel of Hatred than its story, but we've yet to fully dig through everything that's on offer as we progress our review further.

I found myself thinking back to the Reaper of Souls days from Diablo 3, which told a very much more contained story but also spent a much longer time in development. I don't think you can really deliver a villain as worryingly charismatic as Mephisto in a single mini-expansion like this, so I was expecting at least some episodicity (yes, I made up a word). But I think more attention perhaps should've been paid to how the story would play out and align it more deeply with expectations. Is an annualized $40 expansion going to work for Diablo 4's story? It may well end up doing so. It's frustrating that we'll have to wait even longer to answer that question.

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred review — Gameplay

And here's where we hit the "in progress" portion of the review. A lot of Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred is ultimately tucked away behind dozens of hours of endgame play, which is where the vast majority of players will end up. I didn't have a suitable amount of time to get to that point, coupled with the fact the new Citadel "raid" dungeon is tuned for 4-player groups. To that end, this section is largely about some of the new features you'll experience as you level up toward that endgame bracket, and thankfully, a lot of it is really good.

The headline act here is the Spiritborn class, which is essentially Diablo 4's take on the classic Monk class. Spiritborn players fight with martial arts, summoning the spirits of powerful jungle entities to augment their abilities.

For most of my playthrough, I leveraged centipede abilities simply because I've never really seen anything like it in a game. The centipede's ultimate ability is a true spectacle, causing a writhing insectoid horror to erupt from the ground in a poison-spewing volcano, blasting enemies with a fetid Dragon Ball Z laser beam. You can also summon the powers of a gorilla, which orients around tanking and strength, as well as a powerful hawk form with a focus on agility. Finally, we have the jaguar, which revolves around rapid close-range attacks.

When you strike in melee, you teleport forward a little to meet your foes where they are, it gives the Spiritborn an impressive amount of agility, and allows you to move out of harms way too if you're clever with it. There seem to be mountains of build potential here, too, given that you can adopt alternative spirits and essentially wield multiple powers at once. I went all in on centipede abilities, but I can see builds emerge that synergize well by mixing it up. When you equip the gorilla passive, for example, it enables all centipede abilities to also count as gorilla abilities. It'll be interesting to see how the min-maxxers approach Spiritborn in the coming weeks.

The other major feature you'll engage with while leveling is the Mercenaries system. This is similar to features from previous Diablo games, allowing you to enlist the help of a team of mercenaries you'll meet through side quests and the main quest in Vessel of Hatred. They effectively function like necromancer minions, attacking mobs automatically at will, although they have mini talent trees to customize their abilities, which can also provide some synergies for certain builds and affixes.

My biggest issue with these mercenaries is that they generally lack personality beyond their initial unlock quest, although it's more of a story issue than gameplay potential. Once you unlock them, there's very little additional information about them. They rarely have anything unique to say and become far more mechanical than I would have expected. It's essentially like giving every player a necromancer Golem who is just as chatty. Once you've set them up, you'll forget they exist — you won't see them in the scrum of enemies on screen. It's a shame because I really wanted to know more about the strange, cursed kid Aldkin and the cannibal berserker Varyana, but alas, it was not to be. At the very least, they will offer some solid additional considerations for making custom builds, and there's always potential that Blizzard could flesh them out a bit more later on.

Another aspect of Diablo 4 that should boost playstyle customization is the new runes system, which tentatively, I found quite fun and interesting. I am by no means a theory crafter, but even from a simplistic level, I was able to create combinations that would supplement my build. I wanted more ultimate casts for my lovely centipede bro, so I built a rune combination that would decrease the ultimate cooldown every time I dodged. It's plain to see how much these runes could feed Diablo 4's already vast build customization system, at least for those who like to go off-meta.

At the time of writing this part, we still hadn't seen how Diablo 4's endgame would flow, but there are plenty of new things to try out if you don't want the full-blown breakdown we've just added below.

One of the new features is the Kurast Undercity, which is a time-trial dungeon that offers increasingly powerful rewards based on your performance. As a World of Warcraft player, I admit it gave me some bad memories of Blizzard's Torghast experiment, which was similar in functionality. However, I feel like it works infinitely better in Diablo 4, which has more rapid combat loops in general. Whether or not it'll start feeling like a chore remains to be seen, but exploring the depths of the Undercity is just one way that players can earn loot and prestige in the new expansion.

There's also the new Citadel, which is controversially tuned for 4-player groups. Diablo's experiment with more "MMO"-like activities hasn't gone over well with some players, who prefer to experience the game solo. If I had to drop a prediction, I could see Blizzard relenting on the Citadel's forced multi-player requirement or allowing you to play with AI companions instead, similarly to how World of Warcraft has begun approaching group content. During a developer Q&A session, Diablo 4 lead designer Rex Dickson explained that creating a solo version would require a "major redesign." Developing viable AI partners for all the custom mechanics would require significant investment in components not used elsewhere in the game, he explained. However, if others pick up on this issue, it's likely that demands for soloable versions will grow louder. We've seen Blizzard relent in response to player feedback before.

It's perhaps ironic that World of Warcraft is offering players more ways to play solo while Diablo IV is taking them away. As someone who does have a group of Diablo-bros to play with, I'm looking forward to trying it out, but I understand the frustrations of those who prefer to play solo.

Beyond that, there's a range of new difficulties, bosses, and seasonal activities to look forward to, detailed in the recent Diablo 4 Season of Hatred Rising stream. And now we've absorbed everything the endgame has to offer, I'm back with an update to present our more detailed endgame overview below, penned by our hardcore Diablo expert Jennifer Young.

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred review — Endgame

Our initial hesitancy to rate the expansion before experiencing the endgame in full, turned out to be justified. A massive chunk of the Diablo experience is all about what happens after hitting level 60 and stepping into the wild world of Torment difficulty. Now that we've had a few days to properly dive in, we've officially hit endgame, breezing through Torment 3 with a Spiritborn build so absurdly fun, it's basically begging to be nerfed in the next patch. Sure, doing zoomies through Nahantu with my Spiritborn is a blast, but it doesn’t fully mask the glaring issues that crop up once you’re done with the story.

Vessel of Hatred introduces two new endgame activities: the Kurast Undercity and the Dark Citadel. Let’s start with Kurast Undercity. The goal? Hit max ‘attunement’ while running through a three-floor dungeon, beating the clock by slaying demons conveniently marked with timer icons. When the timer runs out, or you hit attunement level 4, it’s time to face the district boss. It’s a visually stunning fight, but unfortunately, the loot at the end is about as exciting as stale bread. Despite multiple attempts, I wasn’t able to complete the ‘Priority Quest,’ which told me to ‘beat Alia,’ the district boss. After much frustration and searching Reddit for solution it seemed this was due to a bug that meant if I didn’t get the final hit on this boss whilst in a group, it wouldn’t count for me. Following a solo completion, I was ready to jump into the activity with gusto but on each subsequent side quest was met with bugs and crashes. Nothing worked first time. Now I finally have the Kurast Undercity fully unlocked, it still doesn’t seem to matter if I reach attunement level 1 or 4, if I offer a ‘tribute’ or not to increase my rewards. The rewards are lacklustre either way. It has promise but I’m sure isn’t currently working as intended.

As for the Dark Citadel, it’s a 2-4 player co-op dungeon, but again both me and my group were met with bugs in our attempts to unlock it. The Priority Quest that’s supposed to lead us there? Yep, you guessed it—bugged. When we did finally unlock, it’s actually a refreshing change of pace in the gameplay, with puzzles to complete as a group. The journey to actually access it somewhat soured my experience, but I do look forward to experimenting more with the weekly challenges. The bugs aren’t limited to just these endgame events. Ever since patch 2.0.2, I’ve been running into all sorts of problems, even while just trying to complete base content. As a completionist, not being able to unlock all the Tenets of Akarat (Vessel’s version of the Altar of Lilith) is driving me nuts. If another player activates one before I do, I’m locked out from completing it myself. Add to that NPCs like Neyrelle getting stuck on terrain during story quests, and I’ve had to restart my game more times than I care to admit.

Season 6 is also, I hate to say it, a bit of a dud. The Season of Hatred Rising directs you to go and hunt down Realmwalkers —massive enemies immune to your attacks that you have to chase across the map as they slowly, painfully slowly, spew out enemies. Eventually, they stop, become vulnerable, and you can finally whack them. After that, they drop a portal to a Seething Realm, which, to be fair, is a somewhat redeeming feature. You get to dive into loot-filled ruptures and even control the type of reward you’ll get. But getting to this point feels more like a chore than a challenge. And that’s it—that’s all Season 6 has to offer, along with a Reputation board for rewards. The board also completes at a snails pace compared to previous seasons, leading me to believe it’s also not working as intended. Blizzard have also removed the incentive of a Resplendant Spark (a crafting item for Mythic Uniques) upon completion, and consequently my enthusiasm to bother completing it. If you’re playing the season without purchasing the expansion, don’t expect much; it’s slim pickings.

Blizzard’s promised fixes for all of these issues and says they’re taking feedback on Season 6 activities, but right now, it feels like all the polish went into the shiny new Spiritborn class and not the endgame that returning hardcore players were always going to grind through. Despite playing long after finishing my Season activities in Season 4 and 5, I can’t say I’ll be doing the same with this Season, which isn’t ideal given Vessel of Hatred was supposed to be another new era for Diablo 4 with all of this new content to enjoy. With so many huge titles dropping this month—Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, just to name a couple—the ‘fix it later’ approach just doesn’t cut it, and certainly not when $40 is on the line.

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred review — Is it worth it?

In this Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred final review, we ultimately glimpse what Blizzard's long-term plan is for the game. Vessel of Hatred has dropped relatively quickly after the game's base launch, which is fairly impressive in of itself, but I'm left wondering if it was too fast. The game's story pacing undoubtedly trips itself up in places, leaving some characters feeling wasted and some story beats feeling undermined, but there are plenty of players who are more interested in how Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred will feel deeper into its endgame.

It didn't exactly fill me with confidence that I was playing something new and shiny when the main story quest sent me to start grinding Helltides again. One of the "new" dungeons it sent me to had that familiar Horadric vault layout, complete with the event with the Scottish lass, "you there!" she cried, again, asking for help, again. Just how much is actually new here? New rewards await with a new battle pass, Season of Hatred Rising, multiplayer Citadel raid, and more, but it has been interesting watching the wider audience's reaction to the expansion's overall value, and its polish issues.

You should buy Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred if: 

• You love the base game already.
• You've been waiting a while for the return of the Monk-style class.
• The idea of group-oriented "raid" content is interesting to you.

You should skip Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred if: 

• You're not very invested in the story and don't enjoy what the base endgame offers since there are no revolutionary changes here.
• You don't like Diablo 4's "seasonal" character progress structure.
• You find $40 to be a bit pricy for what amounts to 4-5 hours of story content and have no intentions to play in the endgame.

Diablo 4 is my "comfort food" game, which I play in between big releases. I suspect it's like that for a lot of people, too. One thing I often hear from people who don't want to play Diablo is that they don't like the fact the characters can't progress beyond a season. And indeed, there's nothing in Vessel of Hatred that I would exactly describe as revolutionary for new players. It's an expansion designed wholly for the existing player base, but I think even Diablo diehards may find the story delivery here a little anemic when it's all said and done.

The success of Vessel of Hatred is probably already written in stone. The game has already done incredibly well for Blizzard and Microsoft, generating tens of millions, according to some reports, despite a rocky initial start to its live service. As we dive deeper into the endgame, similar to Neyrelle's plight, we're discovering more and more bugs that mire the experience. I'm left with the bittersweet aftertaste of the story's spectacular highs and disappointing brevity. The foundation is incredibly strong, though. It's undeniable that the team has built a powerful stage upon which to further flesh out the Mephisto arc, I just hope that the team will continue to listen to feedback. So far, they've done a decent job on that front.

So, even if we're a little disappointed here, there's still reason to be optimistic about what is yet to come for Diablo IV.

As Melta blasts collide with screeching alien nightmares, I stand implacable, the only light the brief sizzle as Hormagaunts are vaporized a handful at a time. One of the daring creatures leaps in midair and is immediately kicked down, the quick parry restoring a portion of my armor. The grin on my face gets a little wider. 

So goes dozens of battles I've fought in with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, a game that is finally here years after first being announced back in 2021. This sequel arrives 13 years after its predecessor, something that many (myself included) never imagined would be happening after the collapse of publisher THQ. 

Under Saber Interactive and Focus Entertainment's guidance, Titus and the Ultramarines are back in action with a gore-drenched experience that looks great, sounds great, and just feels fun practically every step of the way. The story isn't anything revolutionary, but it serves its purpose of delivering the 40K experience in an adrenaline-fueled romp. A few technical issues do need to be addressed sooner rather than later, but I'll still be playing as more missions are added in the future. 

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Focus Entertainment. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

What is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2?

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a third-person shooter developed by Saber Interactive and published by Focus Entertainment. Set in Games Workshop's titular Warhammer 40K universe, Space Marine 2 is a sequel to the 2011 Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, bringing back the Ultramarine Titus in a new era.

Like its precursor, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 tasks players with slashing, bashing, punching, crushing, melting, shocking, and otherwise obliterating the enemies of the Imperium. This is accomplished with a number of iconic weapons straight from the tabletop figurines, including Power Swords, Thunder Hammers, Plasma Incinerators, and more. 

These instruments of war are sorely needed, as players have to face unending hordes of Tyranids, with flying, crawling, and swarming monstrosities barreling toward you, dozens at a time. The traitors of the Thousand Sons Legion are also a threat, bringing in reserves of cultists, Rubric Marines, and more. 

Players can go it alone, but they can also team up with others. The main campaign supports up to three-player co-op, and the player vs. environment (PvE) Operations mode is specifically built around co-op teams. Finally, the Eternal War mode splits players against other players (PvP) with loyalists vs. the forces of Chaos.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review — Story and characters

Scores and scores of years after the events of the first Space Marine, Titus serves with the Deathwatch, with deadly mission after deadly mission as a kind of penance for the accusations of heresy that were leveled against him. As Space Marine 2 kicks off, events conspire to bring Titus back into his chapter, the Ultramarines, as they are called on to stop a Tyranid invasion.

While there are some neat themes explored, such as the nature of secrets and what suspicion does to a brotherhood under the zealousness of the Imperium, things are by-and-large played fairly straight here. New foes are revealed and secrets are uncovered, but it's always in service of providing more targets for your Bolters. 

To be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing at all. The writing is doing what it needs to, with Titus firmly cementing his place in the halls of the greatest champions of humanity, even as supplemental dataslates and snippets of conversations hint toward the true horror of life under this kind of regime.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review — Gameplay and features

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 feels like a game with Xbox 360 design sensibilities married into modern processing power, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment. Controlling a Space Marine just feels fantastic, as you stomp and roll to meet your foes with heavy strides that even Gears of War characters would be impressed by.

The array of weapons similarly feel great, and the developers have achieved a careful balance of melee and ranged combat as you take on aliens and heretics alike. One minute you'll be mowing down a horde with Heavy Bolter, the next you're using a Power Sword to duel an enemy Tyranid Warrior. Parrying and dodging are critical, with careful timing rewarding you by replenishing your Armor, which absorbs a certain amount of damage before your health is affected.

Saber Interactive's proprietary Swarm engine is utilized here to great effect, as you are consistently outnumbered 100 to 1, fighting back desperately against a living tide of claws, teeth, venom, plasma, and sorcery. 

The mission variety in the campaign does lose some steam toward the end, with the more unique encounters mostly replaced with pushing through yet another enemy position. The game doesn't overstay its welcome however (I finished my first playthrough after 11 hours) so it's not a huge problem. 

All of my praise for the combat mechanics remains true in the co-op focused Operations mode, which is something of a secondary campaign. These missions (at least the ones available at launch) tie into the campaign, referencing secondary events and characters that are unfolding alongside story beats in the main narrative. 

This even extends to some boss battles that are unique to Operations, and I highly recommend playing through each mission at least once. Even if you don't like playing co-op, the lowest difficulty is perfectly doable with bots that fill in for other players when you're by yourself. 

While players have to take on the role of Titus and his compatriots in the campaign, Operations and Eternal War allow complete customization as you unlock new paints and armor parts, letting you build the Space Marine avatar of your dreams. I've personally decked my boys out as Space Wolves like my tabletop armies that I need to get back to working on, but you can opt for Imperial Fists, Iron Hands, or even create your own custom chapter.

The final game mode, the PvP-focused Eternal War, is one that I unfortunately can't speak to at the time I'm writing this review. Cross-play functionality (which is in the full game) was not available during the review period, and as such as I was not able to get a game lobby full in order to test out having Loyal Space Marines clash with the forces of Chaos. 

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review — Visuals and audio

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 looks extremely good, with some fantastic texture work across the ceramite armor of the titular superhuman soldiers and the jagged alien hides of their opponents. These are designs that hold up well even in the thick of combat as foes blur together as a seething mass, and watching a Tyranid horde charge your position is genuinely stunning. 

The audio design is similarly great, with the thunder of Bolters and the sizzle of plasma never getting old. There are a number of distinct audio cues that help to cut through the chaos of the battlefield, like the cry of a Sentry calling for reinforcements. It would be easy for the layers of destruction to fall into cacophony, but instead the battles sing. 

Unfortunately, one major complaint is a complete lack of HDR support. This is a real shame, as even basic implementation can make a game look radically better, and the art direction here is certainly well-suited to the enhancements HDR can provide. This is something I really hope the team chooses to add in the future.

There are two modes to choose from when playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 on Xbox Series X: Quality, which is set to 4K 30FPS, and Speed, which instead targets 1080p 60 FPS. Quality mode looks superb, and while 30 FPS certainly doesn't feel amazing with a frenetic third-person shooter, it's perfectly playable this way.

The resolution loss when choosing Speed mode is immediately noticeable, with less detail and a grainier appearance around tiny objects. At the same time, it certainly feels a lot better, and the framerate held up well considering the action that's constantly on screen, with some occasional dips as explosions went off and one brief but prolonged drop in a particularly taxing campaign encounter.

Load times were usually fine, if a tad longer than many other games, with new levels and missions taking around 15-20 seconds to load. I did encounter a nasty snag twice, with two missions getting stuck and failing to load or crash even after I'd waited a couple of minutes. Closing the game and relaunching it solved the issue both times, so hopefully this is a rare issue the developers can isolate and fix quickly.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review — Accessibility and approachability

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 does sport a handful of accessibility options like the ability to adjust motion blur and customize the game's subtitles, including allowing players to increase subtitle size and identify speaker names. There are also some colorblindness settings for the game's Parry and Dodge warnings. It's not a super comprehensive suite, but combined with the game's difficulty settings, it should be enough to ease the experience for anyone that has a hard time dealing with motion blur or tiny text. 

This is a sequel, but anyone who hasn't played the first game can jump in just fine, as the passage of time and new cast means that connections to the prior game are mostly limited to brief references that are easily grasped in the context of the moment. There are a couple of exceptions, but for the most part, Space Marine 2 stands on its own.

As for newcomers to 40K altogether, Space Marine 2 is a decent entry point, introducing a number of topics and factions slowly enough that players not neck-deep in lore discussions can still follow along, such as providing overviews of the Space Marine chapters that each heraldry pack hearkens from. There's certainly better starting points to be found, but if you've never encountered anything from Warhammer 40K before, you won't be too lost. 

Should you play Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2?

Overall, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a blast. It feels like the kind of game that used to be frequent in a bygone era but with bigger enemy hordes and better image quality. The story doesn't attempt anything extraordinary, but it's appropriately steeped in the reverence and terror of humanity's stalwart defenders, with the opportunity to unleash abject carnage every step of the way. 

Warhammer 40,000 enthusiasts will appreciate the finer details, but anyone that just wants to carve a path through teeming alien mobs will have a lot of fun, especially if they're playing in co-op. There are some technical problems to address, but with a robust roadmap of new missions and enemies in the coming months, I'm looking forward to taking up arms with the Emperor's Angels again and again.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 launches across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5 on Sep. 9, 2024. Owners of the Gold or Ultra Editions can start playing early on September 5.

I grew up playing classic Star Wars single-player adventures like the Kyle Katarn-centered Dark Forces and Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) series. Those games were amazing in their time, and I'm always hopeful that a new Star Wars RPG will recapture a similar excitement. As such, it's no surprise that I've been curious about Star Wars Outlawsever since Ubisoft revealed it, 

My interest in Outlaws especially peaked when I realized that this is technically the first open-world Star Wars game. Unlike the recent Cal Kestis' Star Wars Jedi games (which are hub-based), Outlaws has me playing as a scoundrel rather than as a Jedi, and, honestly, this is a focus that I've been dying to see in modern Star Wars games. 

I was traveling while playing Star Wars Outlaws, so I ended up running the game on both a gaming laptop (check out my Legion 9i (Gen 8) review) and my ROG Ally X. It took me roughly 30 hours to beat the main story and see credits roll. Here's what I think about this single-player adventure. 

This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Ubisoft. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

• Star Wars Outlaws Standard Edition (Xbox): $69.99 at CDKeys
• Star Wars Outlaws Gold Edition (Xbox) was $109.99 now $105.59 at CDKeys
• Star Wars Outlaws Ultimate Edition (Xbox) $129.99 at Xbox
  Star Wars Outlaws Standard Edition (PC) $69.99 at Ubisoft
• Star Wars Outlaws Gold Edition (PC) was $109.99 now $54.09 at CDKeys
• Star Wars Outlaws Ultimate Edition (PC) $129.99 at Ubisoft

Star Wars Outlaws: What is it?

STORY: At the start of Star Wars Outlaws, players are introduced to Kay Vess, a poor thief living in the casino city of Canto Bight on the planet Cantonica (seen in The Last Ledi). Her best friend and partner in crime, Nix, is a small mammalian creature that can use its axolotl-like antennae to sense items and people nearby. The two have worked together since Kay was a child and have learned to survive by pulling off small jobs and pickpocketing. 

However, they soon get in trouble and are forced to steal a ship and get off world. The Zerek Besh syndicate leader, Sliro, who is one of the most powerful people in the galaxy, puts a hit on her, and soon, she has all kinds of people looking for her. Eventually, a man named Jaylen Vrax ropes Kay into a heist that he's been planning and promises that Kay and Nix won't have to run anymore if they pull it off. To make sure she stays on target, Jaylen assigns a threatening ND-5 Clone Wars droid to work with Kay. Now, it's up to Kay to travel to various planets and assemble a crew to pull off the big score. 

TIMELINE: This adventure takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi — meaning Luke, Leia, Han, and friends haven't defeated the Empire yet. The war raging between the Galactic Empire and the Rebellion provides plenty of opportunities for Kay, most of which center around smuggling, theft, and other crimes. Warring crime syndicates dominate in places where the Empire isn't involved, so Kay must regularly take on jobs from each of these gangs. However, many of the decisions she makes will increase her Reputation at one syndicate while lowering it at another. It's a dangerous game to play, but one that can pay off if done correctly. 

DIFFICULTY & ACCESSIBILITY: There are four difficulty levels: Explorer (Story), Adventurer (Easy), Outlaw (Normal), and Scoundrel (Hard). It's possible another is unlocked once the game is beaten. A decent range of accessibility options are also available, including customizable colorblind presets, menu narration, and customizable hearing presets. 

Star Wars Outlaws: Story and progression

The overall idea for a heist in the Star Wars galaxy is intriguing. However, Outlaw's plot wouldn't be able to stand on its own feet if it wasn't propped up in Star Wars nostalgia. 

After breaking into the powerful Sliro's vault and barely getting away, Kay is strong-armed by Jaylen Vrax into not only joining his heist crew but gathering the various needed members for the operation. To keep her on target, Jaylen assigns his antique Clone Wars-era droid, ND-5, to assist Kay, but gives the droid directives to shoot her if she attempts to go against Jaylen's wishes. ND-5 has no say in the matter since he's programmed to obey Jaylen regardless of his own feelings. 

Parts of the story, especially relationships between characters, feel contrived and rushed. Like a child, Kay quickly gives her loyalty to characters who she's just met but withholds her affections at times from others with no rhyme or reason. This makes her seem immature and clueless while also making parts of the plot inconsistent and unbelievable. I hoped that Kay would evolve as the story progressed or that she would at least grow on me, but this wasn't the case. 

I won't go into end-game spoilers, but even her actions at the end of the main plot felt amateurish and unreasonable. That said, based on what I saw at the end of my game, I wouldn't be surprised if there are multiple endings depending on the quests you finish or your syndicate Reputation levels. I personally rushed through the game to be able to get this review out on time, but there are several other side quests that I could complete. So, who knows? Kay might come off a little different in a better ending if there is one. 

Really, the best part of Outlaws' storyline is that it sheds light on how the war between the Empire and the Rebellion affects average citizens. Kay hates how controlling the Empire is, but she's also quick to point out that the Rebels always think whatever they do is justified, even if it causes harm to others. It's no wonder Kay decides to play the system by dabbling in syndicate politics, pitting groups against each other, and making a life for herself as a free entity. But this doesn't stop her from learning from those she meets.

As far as progression goes, the way skill trees and side quests are implemented in Outlaws feels far more natural than in most other open-world games. Rather than simply having a skill tree readily at my disposal, I have to locate Experts on the planets I travel to and then complete a quest for these Experts to unlock them. Once done, these people have about five skills they can teach Kay. Much like the lauded Skyrim progression system, Kay only unlocks skills if she puts them to use.

For instance, Bram the Bartender is the first Expert Kay unlocks. His Fast-Talk skill distracts a single enemy with chatter, giving me a chance to take them out before they alert anyone else. If I manage to use this trick successfully six times, I can also unlock Keep Talking, which allows me to distract multiple enemies with Fast-Talk. All in all, this system makes learning skills feel more earned.

Outside of personal growth, Kay can also upgrade her speeder bike, blaster, clothing, and ship. Doing so might increase her firepower, defense, health, carrying capacity, and more. Specific component quests lead to necessary upgrade items. When acquired, these need to be taken back to an appropriate mechanic or workbench in order to implement the upgrade. In a similar vein, Kay can also find new street foods for Nix that give him additional perks, such as the ability to push grenades away from Kay.

Aside from the initial tutorial quests, many upgrade side quests are optional. This, in turn, makes me want to pursue upgrades rather than feeling obligated to do so. 

Star Wars Outlaws: Gameplay and combat

It shouldn't be too surprising given that this is a Ubisoft game, but in some ways, Outlaws plays like a satisfying Assassin's Creed Star Wars game. I mean that completing missions requires a lot of stealth takedowns and sneaking around in vents. Additionally, climbing up rocky cliff faces, swinging across gaps using ropes, slicing (hacking into computers), and scaling massive shipwrecks are also regular activities. So, if you like Assassin's Creed games, there's a good chance you'll like this one. 

During the course of a mission, you might be tasked with infiltrating a syndicate-controlled area, sneaking around an Imperial Compound, or exploring a cave or shipwreck in search of important items. The various mechanics available to me all work well and provide a fun way to explore the Star Wars galaxy.

Kay's companion, Nix, is honestly one of the best parts about Star Wars Outlaws. He's extremely cute in a Toothless-Stitch sort of way with his extra wide mouth, cute expressions, and rounded head. He does adorable things during cutscenes that frequently make me smile.

His antennae allow him to sense when people or valuable items are nearby, which glow blue after he's used his powers. As such, I found myself using this creature's abilities often. Kay can also command Nix to pickpocket non-playable characters (NPCs), fetch distant items, press buttons to unlock doors, distract sentries, attack enemies, and more. The more creative you get with Nix, the easier a job can be. More often than not, I found myself sending Nix to distract someone so I could sneak up behind them and quietly take them out. 

Regarding lock picking and slicing, Kay has to participate in small mini-games for these actions to be successful. Lock picking involves listening to a pattern (accompanied by a visual light cue) and pressing buttons in rhythm to the beat. Meanwhile, slicing is basically Wordle with alien digits. You select from a list of characters and enter them in. The character will get X'd out if it doesn't belong in the code.  A character will appear yellow if it belongs in the code but is in the wrong spot. Lastly, a character turns green if it belongs where it was placed. After some simple trial and error, deducing the accurate code is easy and satisfying.

Some of the controls for slicing, lock picking, opening vents, and other activities don't feel very intuitive. It took me a while to realize that activating slicing involves pressing the RT button on my ROG Ally X rather than A. Then after the Wordle part is done, I have to press A to toggle whatever command I'd just unlocked rather than it just being done. I'm accustomed to the controls now, but it could be confusing for beginners until they figure these controls out.

Weapon-wise, Kay only has regular access to her blaster, her fists, and some grenades when on foot. However, if a felled enemy drops a weapon, she can pick it up and use it until it runs out of ammo. There is a good range of guns, including snipers, rifles, and grenade launchers, to keep things interesting. Enemies can also drop grenades and healing Bacta Vials, which are necessary for survival. 

I really started to enjoy myself after I found my way into an Imperial facility and accidentally got discovered by an officer. Within minutes, the whole place was on alert and looking for me. I attempted to hide out on the roof only to see a Lambda-class T-4a shuttle land beside me and release more Storm Troopers into the grounds (sadly, I could not sneak into the ship). I managed to take down one of these enemies and steal their weapon (which was more powerful than Kay's blaster). Then I squirreled away into a protected corner and took out several Storm Troopers until the place was cleared out.

However, this put me on the Empire's wanted list, which meant that even after leaving the facility, patrolling groups of Scout Troopers were on the lookout and would chase after me if I came anywhere close. To clear my wanted status, I was told to head to a Death Trooper outpost. Once there, I had to sneak into a facility while avoiding detection by the black-armored Death Troopers, steal a key card from the commanding officer, and hack into the nearby terminal. Once done, I was blissfully anonymous to the Empire once more. The whole experience was very exciting and kept me on the edge of my seat.

Syndicates and side quests

So, how do side quests work in Outlaws? You can find many the old-fashioned way by exploring and talking to NPCs. Additionally, syndicate brokers await in city areas, and taking on jobs from these individuals can increase Kay's Reputation with specific criminal groups (The Hutt Cartel, Pyke Syndicate, or Crimson Dawn). Typically, the harder the job, the better the rewards and the more Reputation points she'll get for successfully completing them. Additionally, some quests are trickier than others and cannot be repeated if Kay is caught.

Near the end of a mission, I'm often given a choice between throwing one of two gangs under the bus or at least lying to one of them. This might involve betraying the group I initially signed on with or completing the job to the end. Kay is a scoundrel, after all, so I get to choose whatever outcome seems best to me. The trick is, figuring out which group to backstab at which time to hopefully keep a decent rep among all of them. 

The Reputation tab in the game menu shows my current standing with various criminal groups. If my reputation is "Good" or "Excellent," the syndicate will send me gifts and I'm free to walk around on their turf. But if I have "Poor", "Bad," or "Terrible" standing, gang members will either attack me on sight or will immediately remove me from their areas if I'm found sneaking around. Even when I've got an "Excellent" Reputation, there are always restricted areas within a syndicate-controlled area, so stealth will be necessary if you want to, say, rob the criminal group of its treasure vault. 

Between infiltration missions, I spend my time traveling to different planets, taking on side jobs in cantinas, gathering intel, playing simple arcade games in shops, racing around insanely fast on my speeder, or exploring the world for hidden treasure caches and other secrets. Exploration is usually rewarded with plenty of valuables to sell at shops, upgrade parts, or good old credits. If I find useful intel, I can even sell it to one of the syndicates and increase my Reputation that way.

The speeder bike can go much faster than a horse usually goes in Assassin's Creed games. I was even able to upgrade mine with a booster, so sometimes I can haul like mad over cliffs and off ramps. This is helpful when I'm being chased by angry syndicate members or patrolling Scout Troopers.

As someone who loves animals, I've appreciated that Kay is able to pet just about all of the docile creatures I've come across. The animations I've experienced are different from one species to the next, which helps make the act of petting newly discovered animals more rewarding. 

Don't worry. You can also pet Nix at any time by tapping his control button and then selecting him. Thank you for that, Massive Entertainment. 

Space travel and dogfights

As for space travel, Outlaws doesn't allow players to control landings or take offs. However, I can engage in dogfights in space and explore asteroid fields or nearby shipwrecks. Kay's ship, the Trailblazer, handles easily and can turn around quickly enough without feeling sluggish. 

If I've unlocked a planet to travel to, jumping to light speed doesn't take very long and I can zip around the galaxy pretty quickly. The actual areas of space I can explore feel somewhat small and limited, though. But this prevents the game from feeling too wide open and empty like Starfield does. 

Star Wars Outlaws: Art and performance

Art style and effects are things that this game absolutely nails. To help players appreciate the scope of the planets and locations explored, the game defaults to cinematic 21:9 wide-screen. You can go into settings and change it to full screen, but this completely changes the feel of your viewing area. In the case of stealth, I found being able to see more at once is also more helpful.

I love that Outlaws fully embraces the original trilogy's late 1970s and early 1980s aesthetic. Everything from Kay's hairstyle to her clothes, gear, ship, and speeder bike looks like it was taken from that time period. Because of this, she fits into her classic Star Wars settings perfectly. Additional clothes, paint jobs, and gear can be unlocked as the game progresses, and many of these things provide additional perks while still looking like they fit into this galaxy.

Meanwhile, each planet that Kay visits is lovingly detailed with the familiar plant life, buildings, locations, creatures, characters, and objects seen in the movies. I won't list all the planets so as not to spoil anything. Instead, I'll stick to describing Tatooine since it's been shown off in trailers and promo pictures. I get excited when I traverse through in-ground moisture farms, walk through the Mos Eisley Cantina, or come across a Jawa Sandcrawler on Tatooine. Everything looks amazing, with lots of textured detail, effects, and great shading. I frequently find myself opening photo mode to capture the gorgeous scenes I discover.

The NPCs and the two main characters also look great, although Kay's facial expressions sometimes look a little wooden during lower-priority quests. On the flip side, there are times when high-resolution cutscenes are triggered during the main plot's key moments. These are absolutely beautiful to watch, filled with even more stunning detail than regular gameplay.

Stuttering, choppiness, and bugs oh my!

As I previously mentioned, my time playing Star Wars Outlaws has been split between my ROG Ally X gaming handheld and my gaming PC (a Legion 9i gaming laptop with an Intel Core i9-13980HX and an RTX 4090 L). The game plays relatively smoothly on both devices when playing at the system's default settings. However, I did encounter several instances of screen tearing, choppy gameplay, and stuttering cutscenes on both PC and gaming handheld. It wasn't consistent, but when it happened, it was notable. 

This is very unfortunate, given how powerful my laptop is. As such, choppiness and stuttering might be more pronounced on a lower-tier gaming laptop, gaming PC, or gaming handheld. 

Don't plan on playing Star Wars Outlaws on Steam Deck, though. For one thing, the game isn't available on Steam, so it can't be accessed that way. Even if you get the game installed using a workaround (like I did), it will simply crash when you attempt to start the game. With any luck, a fix will come down the line to make it playable on Steam Deck, but it's best not to count on it. 

• RELATED: Star Wars Outlaws PC system requirements

But what about other platforms? My colleague, Zachary Boddy, has also been playing Outlaws on Xbox Series X and says the game looks good and plays well on the console. As a reminder, Star Wars Outlaws is not on Xbox Game Pass. If you want to play Ubisoft's adventure, you'll need to purchase it outside of the Xbox subscription service. 

Overall, the game runs well on PC, but in my 30 hours with Outlaws, I've seen Kay get stuck in the walls of a building, had a Storm Trooper respawn as I was defeating them, seen assets pop in and out of a still frame, had Kay turn into a wall of hair, viewed excessive stuttering through a cutscene, watched as textures turned to low resolution despite my higher settings, and more. Each of these problems was fixed by either fast traveling to another location or restarting the game. While sometimes frustrating, none of the bugs I encountered prevented me from progressing, and none of them were bad enough to diminish my overall playing experience.

Ubisoft let me know that it is aware of several issues on both PC and consoles and is working on fixing them. For instance, apparently playing the game for long stretches on PC can sometimes make the textures turn low, so that's probably one of the things I encountered. With any luck, the problems I mentioned will be resolved by launch or shortly thereafter.

Star Wars Outlaws: Can you play on gaming handhelds?

During the course of my testing, I played Star Wars Outlaws for several hours on my ROG Ally X. As such, I found that the game is very well suited to playing on Windows 11 gaming handhelds with an AMD Z1 Extreme processor. 

• RELATED: How to increase ROG Ally VRAM

Star Wars Outlaws: Should you play it?

It's not perfect, but overall, I've enjoyed my time with Kay, Nix, and ND-5. I'd even go so far as to say that this open-world adventure scratches an itch that the Star Wars Jedi games didn't satisfy. Massive Entertainment managed to beautifully recreate familiar locations while providing engaging activities to keep players entertained. From playing simple arcade games to breaking into mansions and racing around on a speeder bike, Outlaws delivers exciting action. 

If you like stealth mechanics, open-world RPGs, and Star Wars, then you really ought to check out Star Wars Outlaws. There are definitely some mechanics that could use a bit more polish, but overall, it's a very satisfying game. Focusing on the criminal underworld and giving players choices provides a strategic element that allows you to take in a very different side of a galaxy far far away, one that we haven't seen as much of in other Star Wars games. 

Star Wars Outlaws is single-player, open-world action game set to release on August 30, 2024 for Xbox Series X|S, PC (via Ubisoft Connect), and PlayStation 5. It is not available on Xbox Game Pass.