Leaderboard

NEW JEEP WRANGLER IN ARGENTINA During a recent event, the Jeep brand confirmed the arrival of the new generation of its iconic Wrangler model. The new body is named JL, and is offered in both two or four door versions. It will be a replacement for the current series, called JK, marketed for more than a decade. Aesthetically the new Wrangler seems not to change too much. That is because it maintains the unmistakable classic style, initiated in the forties by the first civilian Willys, manufactured from the Second World War. Among them, elements such as the classic circular headlights or the seven-bar front grill stand out. Despite technological advances, the new Jeep Wrangler also retains its off-road spirit. It keeps the qualities out of the way and the rigid axles, both in the front and rear train. At the moment the brand confirmed that the only motorization available in Argentina will be the V6 naphtero “Pentastar”, with 285 horsepower.

The Slovenian base, 20, has 42 points, 11 rebounds and 12 assists in his team's victory against San Antonio (117-110). "This guy can do whatever he wants on a basketball court." The forcefulness of Rick Carlisle, coach of the Mavericks, illustrates the moment of Luka Doncic, author of 42 points, 11 rebounds and 12 assists in the triumph of his team against San Antonio (117-110). The sixth triple double in 13 games for the base, which equals another record of LeBron James, his childhood idol. In the history of the NBA only these two geniuses signed a triple-double of 40 points with less than 21 years. "Right now he is starring in one of those magical streaks. Something phenomenal to see and be part of," Carlisle added after the classic Texan duel, the first without Dirk Nowitki in almost two decades. However, the immense void left by German has been occupied by Doncic, who decided the clash with a triple in the absence of 26 seconds (115-110) to quell the reaction of the Spurs, who had started the last quarter 14 points down. Dorian Finney-Smith (22 points) and Kristaps Porzingis (18 points, 10 rebounds) also punished Gregg Popovich's team, which now chains six consecutive losses. The 36 DeMar DeRozan points in the American Airlines Center were useless. The 19,637 spectators left the pavilion with the Doncic exhibition recorded on the retina.

Bravo Domșoară ai caștigat ! Stop vot ! vs1 : 4 vot vs2 : 8 vot Winner @#porto.xd

When it comes to reducing body weight, it is important to pay attention to what you eat and what you don't eat. Eating fruits is a great way to start burning fat and keep cravings for something sweet. Fruits contain very few calories and are full of nutrients to keep your stomach full for longer. According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, eating specific fruits can help you lose weight and reduce sizes. And these are the 5 most powerful fruits to burn fat. Apples They are one of the richest sources of fiber found in nature. Studies show that fiber is an integral part of the reduction of visceral (abdominal) fat, since a higher intake of soluble fiber per day is effective in reducing belly fat by a significant percentage. Apricots Despite its size, fresh apricots are a reliable source of insoluble fiber for people who follow a low-fat diet. Fiber absorbs greater amounts of water and prolongs the feeling of fullness after eating. That's why this little giant helps us lose weight. Avocados They are known for their high fat content, but they also help burn them. High amounts of omega 9 fatty acids, which are classified as monosaturated fats, facilitate metabolic processes and convert fat into energy. And if something contains avocado is omega 9. Bananas There is a myth about bananas that says they make belly fat accumulate, but in reality, they are excellent for reducing body fat, keep us satisfied for longer and its high content of magnesium and potassium helps with problems of indigestion and swelling. Blueberries In general, all types of berries have great health benefits, but blueberries are the king of these fruits. Cranberries are rich in antioxidants useful for fighting fats. Antioxidants help to speed up metabolism, which makes our body much more efficient to burn calories. So the best thing you can do is eat these fruits anywhere and as a complement to your breakfast, as a dessert after lunch or as a snack between meals.

There’s a poster for John Wick: Chapter 3 that positions Keanu Reeves in the path of an oncoming weather front, an angry dark cloud made up of thugs in suits. Within the roiling mass are guns – scores of them, all pointed at Wick’s head. It’s a striking piece of action movie art meant to evoke impossible odds: how can he get out of this one? John Wick Hex teaches you how. It is, as my dad and Desmond Tutu before him once said, like eating an elephant: a matter of tackling the meal one bite at a time. This is a turn-based tactics game that will appeal if you’re a fan of XCOM, but it’s no place for long-term strategy. There is no overarching plan that will see you from one end of a room full of goons to the other. Instead you have to do as Wick does: react, react, react, until the bodies pile high and the gunfire quiets. Your tools are the same as those of your enemies: punches, parries, pushes, and whichever loaded gun is closest. Your advantages are a slightly faster trigger finger, a thicker health bar, and the mind of John Wick. You spend the majority of your time occupying the thin mental space where Wick does his work, analysing the scene before him. Mercifully, in Hex, that split-second lasts as long as you need it to. Hex plots your moves, and everyone else’s, along a timeline at the top of the screen. There you can see exactly what’s coming and when precisely it will happen. A hit of any kind will interrupt a planned attack, so the trick is making sure that yours land first. nevitably, though, you’ll fall into situations where preventing every shot is impossible (Hex loves to test your footwork by throwing combinations of ranged and close-combat opponents at you). In those encounters, you have to settle for minimising the probability of being hit – crouching and rolling out of danger, or forcing other enemies in front of you. There was a danger that slowing Wick to a halt would take the action out of the action hero. But there’s a tremendous sense of momentum to Hex. Each microcosmic puzzle rewards decisive action, and I found myself playing at speed, almost reflexively. What’s more, the constant motion is not just in the moves but the levels: every stage of Wick’s journey is presented as a series of set pieces with a boss at the end – a reflection of his single-minded purpose. This simplicity works in Hex’s favour, but it also makes for a simple story. Those won over by the knotty moral choices of Bithell Games’ Subsurface and Quarantine Circular shouldn’t expect more of the same here – there isn’t room in Wick’s world for doubt. Set before his doomed retirement, the game concerns the kidnapping of two friends from the hitman-friendly Continental Hotel, Winston and Charon. It’s a setup that allows Bithell to comment on the underworld code and currency that constitutes the most intriguing part of the Wick films. But it leaves Wick himself at arm’s length. Winston, Charon, and the villain, Hex, narrate his exploits from a distance, leaving Reeves bereft of his one-liners. That said, John Wick Hex has no trouble in exporting the style of the movies. There are familiar locales, like the docklands, where yellow bollards recall the final fight of the first film. Wick’s hunt takes him through the grand art galleries and banks where crime enjoys a veneer of respectability to the subterranean places where its heart beats. The veins that take you there are vivid and varied. Then, when each level is over, you can watch back in real-time, enjoying the fight you’ve choreographed by ear as cinema. There’s a certain clunkiness that comes with the turn-based territory – at times Wick transitions clumsily between moves, as if he’s learned them from an instructional video a la Napoleon Dynamite. Sound and music bugs, meanwhile, can undermine the punch of these scenes. But often, played-back fights are so uncannily like the real thing you could slip them straight into any Wick film without embellishment. I can think of no higher praise for an adaptation.

Launched the new AMD drivers, specifically the Radeon Adrenalin version 19.11.3. The main feature of these new drivers is that they are optimized for DirectX 12 in Fortnite. The game adds support to DX12 and to offer the best performance in AMD graphics are updated. The only novelty of these new drivers is this, because theoretically in December the mother of all driver packages will arrive. For those who do not know, usually in December at AMD they launch a large driver package that adds many improvements. The main expected in this new package is the implementation of Ray Tracing by software. So it is logical that this controller and the Adrenalin 19.11.2 add very few novelties. Known issues Radeon RX 5700 series graphic products may experience intermittent loss of the screen or video signal during the game. Radeon RX 5700 series graphic products may experience stuttering in some 1080p games and low game configurations. Overlapping performance metrics can cause stuttering or flickering of the screen in some applications. Alternating HDR can cause system instability during games when Radeon ReLive is enabled. AMD Radeon VII may experience elevated memory clocks in idle or on the desktop. Overlapping performance metrics may report improper use of VRAM. Summon Radeon Overlay can cause games to lose focus or be minimized when HDR is enabled in Windows

Interesting graphics card that Gigabyte just announced for the most enthusiastic users. The company presents the RTX 2080 Super Gaming OC Waterfoce WB, for a customized liquid cooling system. As the name implies, this graphics card has factory overclocking for the most demanding. In addition, the kit includes G1 / 4 tubes for installation in our system. A graphics card is from Gigabyte, designed for the most demanding users who want the best performance. Liquid cooling allows the GPU to have no temperature problems and leads to better frequencies. They have not spent much with the frequencies, since it barely has overclocking in the GPU. Gigabyte presents a graphic card with block for RL Custom The block has been developed so that in addition to the GPU, it correctly cools VRAMs and MOSFETs. This guarantees us that we will not have the slightest problem when it comes to dissipating all the heat generated. A backplate has been included to prevent buckling of the graphics card in the future. On the design, this graphics card has two areas with RGB. The first is at the height of the G1 / 4 connectors and the second is at the center of the graph. We see a triangular opening that reminds us a lot of the Iron Man ARK. The methacrylate window lets us see the liquid and on its outer edge it has RGB lighting. The graphics card has dimensions of 267x137x37mm, so it is suitable for most boxes. It works at a base frequency of 1 650MHz and in Boost mode it will reach 1 845MZ (1 815MHz the reference model). It has 8GB GDDR6 @ 15.5GHz (without overclocking the memories). For video outputs this has three DisplayPort and an HDMI 2.0b.

v1 text, effect

V1: V2: Start vote!

Welcome to Csbd!

Bine ai venit!

India's winless run in the World Cup qualifiers extended to six matches after this result Aspirited performance from the Indian football team helped them walk away with a 1-1 draw against Afghanistan in their FIFA 2022 World Cup qualifier at the Central Republic Stadium in Dushanbe on Thursday. India were trailing 0-1 at the half-way mark after Zelfy Nazary put Afghanistan ahead in the 46th minute as he stormed into the box and smashed the ball past goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu. India created quite a few chances after being pushed on the backfoot and the efforts finally paid off in stoppage time when Seiminlen Doungel headed home a pin-point cross from the corner kick taken by Brandon Fernandes in the third minute of added time. India looked to take on the opposition but they could not create any clear chances, and the couple of half chances in the opening minutes failed to test the Afghan custodian. There was a change straightaway for India after the break as Stimac substituted Mandar with Farukh Choudhary. The visitors showed urgency and looked desperate for an equaliser. They had a chance in the 58th minute but skipper Sunil Chhetri's header off a cross from right back Pritam Kotal was saved by Azizi. At the other end, Gurpreet Singh Sandhu made a diving save. While he will be disappointed to end the match in a stalemate, Stimac's decision to bring in Doungel in place of Kotal paid dividends.

Welcome ?

Ford has teamed up with Webasto to develop a 100% electric prototype of the brand's iconic pony car. The Ford Mustang Lithium delivers 900 hp and 1,000 lb-ft of torque managed by a six-speed manual transmission, which is a possible path for the future of the most radical versions of muscle cars. According to Ford, the Mustang Lithium is not a single marketing exercise, but it is a test laboratory for battery and thermal management technologies. In addition to the replacement of the combustion engine with a dual electric one, the Mustang Lithium has a one-inch lowered suspension, 22 ”forged wheels, Torsen differential, six-piston Brembo brakes forward from the Shelby GT350 R and a polycarbonate window chest To see inside. The electrical system is 800 volts, the same as the Porsche Taycan, which is almost double compared to almost all electrical market. This allows the use of lighter components, more power and less heat generation. In the words of Hau Thai-Tang, Head of Product Development and Purchasing “It is no secret that Ford intends to electrify its most po[CENSORED]r models and this prototype developed in conjunction with Webasto allows us to show our customers what electric motor trains they can contribute to a car they know and love as the Mustang. ” Another interesting aspect is that the Mustang Lithium has several driving modes (Valet, Sport, Track and Beast) that allow you to control the torque according to different needs. These functions are controlled via a new 10.4 ”vertical screen. It is worth remembering that Ford's electrification plan is very serious, since the firm will invest 15 billion dollars until 2022 and in a few days, prior to the Los Angeles Auto show it will be presenting a new electric SUV with inspired design in the Mustang that will have a range of 480 km, as well as a fully electric F-150 pick up in a couple of years. The above, not to mention the hybrid offer the new Escape and Explorer.

Two AMD Threadripper processors have been announced, specifically the Threadripper 3960X and the Threadripper 3970X. These two processors are based on the Zen2 @ 7nm architecture manufactured by TSMC. The new AMD processors arrive with the TRX40 chipset, which adds support for PCIe 4.0. ASUS taking advantage of the official announcement of these processors to announce their compatible motherboards. ASUS has presented the ROG Zenith II Extreme motherboards that have an E-ATX format and the ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming and First TRX40-Pro ATX format. All three models have four PCIe 4.0 x16 slots with support for 4-Way SLI and 4-Way CrossFire configurations. These three motherboards support x16 / x8 / x16 / x8 graphic configurations. Three ASUS motherboards presented for the new AMD Threadripper The Zenith II Extreme model has 802.11ax WiFi support and Bluetooth 5.0. The motherboard is complemented with 10Gbps Ethernet connection using the Aquantia chipset. On the other hand, the TRX40-E has a 2.5Gbps chipset with the same WiFi and Bluetooth support. Finally, the TRX40-Pro offers Gigabit Ethernet and the possibility of adding a WiFi + Bluetooth module using an M.2 2230. The three motherboards despite being destined for the Workstation market have RGB LED lighting. They are powered by two 8-pin PCI connectors, in addition to the 24-pin ATX connector. The three models have eight DIMM DRR4 sockets for a maximum of 256GB and support for ECC memories. These three ASUS models have advanced audio codecs, with dedicated circuits and shielded sound system. It has a lot of connectors for water pump, fans and RGB lighting. They have USB 3.1, USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Type-C ports. Something quite interesting about Zenith II is that it has a small OLED screen that can be configured. The screen may display special information or error codes of the motherboard boot test. It includes a reinforcement back plate and an aluminum heatsink for VRM phases. The chipset on all models has a fan to cool it.

In a shanty town of tarpaulin and corrugated steel, a drunk is telling me a story about how he slipped and fell on his arse. I pick the cocky conversational response: “I would’ve landed on my feet. I have feline reflexes.” Turns out this is a hidden skill check against my sense of Savoir Faire, which replies: “No, you don’t.” I just got burned by my own psyche. The drunk continues with a peremptory “whatever”, and there’s no discernible gameplay impact. But I laugh out loud, despite being a little hurt on my character’s behalf. I feel like I understand him better, and that I sympathise with him more. The drunk rambles on, and a story that began as a light hearted, relatable tale of alcohol-induced misfortune takes a tragic turn as the consequences escalate: he loses his comfy house, his glamorous girlfriend, his lucrative job. The drunk blames all his current misery on that one heavy night. Guilt stings at having been so blasé in my initial reply, but there’s just a touch of ambiguity about his story, an attitude of backward-looking self-pity, and a hint that he had options to explore – and perhaps still does – which make him not unalloyedly sympathetic. This is what Disco Elysium is like. You play a detective who wakes up after a night of obliterative drinking with a purged memory and a shattered psyche. As a player knowing nothing about Disco Elysium’s weird and imaginative world, you learn about its history, politics, and unique physics (ooh) alongside your character. You emerge with an apocalyptic hangover into the Martinaise district of the city of Revachol, where a dockworkers’ strike is only the most obvious of many simmering local disputes. You have to solve a complicated murder case while navigating them all, despite your condition. The fragments of your mind try their best to help you along the way, offering an endearing cacophony of advice – sometimes unreliable, sometimes conflicting, always well-meaning. They are a cast of characters in their own right. Volition is the determined grown-up in the room, Electrochemistry a slice of id forever seeking altered states, while histrionic Drama addresses you as “sire” or “my liege”. These fragments are also skills into which you can invest points, the main purpose of which is to interact more successfully with the world. You might need to check against your Endurance to examine a rotting corpse without vomiting, or your Physical Instrument to beat up a racist security guard. If you hit certain skill thresholds, the corresponding voice will analyse someone’s statement for factual accuracy, hinting at, and sometimes unlocking, new directions in the conversation. So these checks combine with your own diligence and judgement – how thoroughly you search a room, how deftly you navigate an interrogation – in getting Revachol and its citizens to give up their secrets. Disco Elysium does a decent job of making such secrets available to all builds so no approach is materially better than another: multiple skills may apply to a given situation, and many problems can be resolved in multiple ways (pry open a rubbish compactor or convince the hostel manager to give you the key, for example). Your efforts are tested in several story-critical conversations with witnesses and suspects. It is magnificently satisfying to succeed in these inflection points because you did the groundwork. People will lie, deflect, and employ sophistry, charm, and ommission to make you doubt your case against them or their friends, and you may or may not be able to shoot them down with logic, evidence, and rhetorical tactics of your own. You need to not only ask the right questions, but resist the common RPG temptation of asking every question you can, in order to keep a witness compliant. This is an RPG without combat, but which takes exploration and conversation to genre-pushing new heights. As you might imagine, you spend a lot of time navigating dialogue trees as they unspool on a backdrop of cassette tape, so the writing has to do a lot of work. Fortunately, it’s consistently superlative. It is among the very, very best writing I’ve ever seen in games. Your shattered psyche and total ignorance of absolutely everything, even the axioms of reality, is a unique premise of which Estonian indie ZA/UM takes full advantage: no one’s told your sense of Rhetoric that you can’t persuade a shipping container to open its doors, or your Savoir Faire that you can’t teleport up a ladder. On a less abstract level, you can exhibit a range of personality traits – or ‘copotypes’ – and take a range of political positions. Judge Dredd fans can go around saying “I am the law”, while apologising for your character’s many, many screw-ups can get you branded a ‘sorry cop’. You are invited to opine on political and cultural issues, beginning with the dockworkers’ strike in the very earliest dialogues. Whichever position you take – even if you take none, which you can – ZA/UM isn’t content to let it sit comfortably. There’s sometimes a touch of South Park in the way that every perspective is criticised and ridiculed. When advocating the moralist centre to a eurotrance DJ who recalls Scooter’s HP Baxxter, I’m gratified that the impressionable dude adopts my position until he characterises it in these terms: “I’m swiftly moving toward a solution which pleases nobody!” Ouch. These personal and political traits add wonderful flavour to dialogues, but they also have a gameplay impact in that they can unlock ‘Thoughts’ (as can many other interactions). You can equip Thoughts to boost your skills and gain a range of other bonuses, as well as maluses. Defend ultraliberal economics often enough and you’ll get the chance to consider Indirect Modes of Taxation, which will cause further ultraliberal dialogue choices to generate money, but cost you a point of your Empathy skill to equip. Again, every position gets ridiculed. Disco Elysium tries and succeeds in striking a number of different moods. One of those moods is humour, which got in the way of my role-playing a bit, because it’s so hard not to pick the funny option. In my first playthrough I put points into intellect and psyche skills, intent on role-playing a quick-witted rhetoritician. That all goes to piss when I’m able to request a handout from a rich lady by simply screaming “MONEY!!!” at her in capital letters. I won’t spoil the rest of the conversation, but I can’t remember the last time a game made me laugh so hard. But Disco Elysium is so much more than just funny. It is angry. A missing person’s case in an impoverished fishing village concludes with some of the game’s iciest social commentary and its deepest humanity – yes, every position is criticised, but one senses that ZA/UM is more animated by some than others. If not that, then at least I was more animated by certain criticisms than others. Either way, it’s welcome. There needs to be room in this medium for games that are willing to provoke. Disco Elysium is also bittersweet. My alcoholic amnesia has erased the feeling of missing someone, so I ask a chilled yet melancholic truck driver about his family after bonding with him over poetry. He says it feels: “Good. And bad. An ache that brings you joy. I think of them a lot. I dream up these silly scenarios, in great detail. Of living with them. It comforts me.” I once thought that isometric RPGs struggle to evoke a sense of atmosphere compared with games that take a more immersive first- or third-person perspective, but Disco Elysium has done it. Haunting, crystalline music and carefully deployed ambient sounds, like lapping waves and rustling reeds, brilliantly support your sensory voices when they invite you to stop and drink in a scene, as they often will. Perception tells you what you hear in different directions, while Shivers can attune to the thrum of the city, flying across its frigid bay to bring you stories of its people. Revachol isn’t a traditionally pretty place – it’s all boarded-up businesses, broken masonry, and reinforced concrete – but it has more character and authenticity than most gaming locales. I love it, because I feel like I know it. My first (fairly completionist) playthrough – that of the intellectual centrist who imagines himself a rock star – took me a solid 35 hours. I’ve started a second, focusing on physical and motorics skills and championing ultraliberalism. A few key conversations and interactions have gone more differently than I had expected, and while the major story beats haven’t changed, my knowledge of what happens is actually keeping me engaged because I know how to do things better or differently. Enough has changed for me to happily finish a second run. Criticisms? I guess I have a few. Some signposting in the late-game is lacking – there are quests you’ll think you can advance, but which are actually dependent on something else. Disco Elysium doesn’t welcome min-maxers, either; you can’t see what a Thought will do until you’ve fully ‘internalised’ it, and if you don’t like its effects, you have to spend a skill point unequipping it. Expect to fail many skill checks. Annoying as this may be for those who like to ‘win’, this is one of those RPGs where role-playing and storytelling is the goal. The odd malus and the odd failure makes things more interesting. ‘Winning’ isn’t really the point, but you can always reload saves to retry failed skill checks if you want. And these are trivial imperfections in a shining gem of a game. There’s so much more I want to say about Disco Elysium, but a lot of it risks spoilers, and hey, you get it by now: This is one of the best games of the year. Please play it. Here are the Disco Elysium System Requirements (Minimum) CPU: Intel i5-7500 or AMD 1500 equivalent CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 4 GB OS: Windows 7/8/10 VIDEO CARD: Integrated Intel HD620 or equivalent PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 22 GB Disco Elysium Recommended Requirements CPU: Intel Core i7 or AMD 1800 equivalent CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Windows 7/8/10 VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA Geforce 1060 or equivalent PIXEL SHADER: 5.1 VERTEX SHADER: 5.1 FREE DISK SPACE: 22 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 3072 MB.

Corporations have taken us beyond the bounds of our solar system, but the enterprises that built life on the galactic frontier have charged a heavy price. Business is now both god and king, as middle managers take on the roles of regional governors and a new religion preaches your place among the corporate gears. You’re going to do your job until you can afford the rental fees on your grave site, or you’re going to come out branded an outlaw. In The Outer Worlds, you are very much one of those outlaws. Obsidian’s grimly satirical RPG puts you in the boots of a prospective colonist who’s freshly unfrozen after decades in suspended animation. But you’re the only one who’s awake. The Board – a bickering cabal of corporations that runs things in the colony – has left your colony ship to die, and you’ve only come through thanks to the somewhat-mad science of one Phineas Welles. The Board’s got secrets and Welles needs resources to awaken the rest of the frozen colonists, which leaves you to hop between the colonies in search of both answers and chemicals. While The Outer Worlds has been compared to Fallout ever since its debut – a combination of retro-futuristic aesthetics, first-person roleplaying, and involvement from the series’ original creators will do that – in action it feels almost nothing like the Black Isle classics or the post-Bethesda open worlds. Instead, this comes across more like a lost mid-2000s BioWare game. Most of the locations to which the main story points you are embroiled in some sort of conflict between a corporation and group living outside of the established rules. Your goals will usually intersect with those rivalries, leading you through a spiral of intertwining side-quests until you finally get to pick a side in a grand moral choice at the end of that chapter of your adventure. In other words, in the Obsidian pantheon this follows Knights of the Old Republic II much more closely than Fallout: New Vegas. The first big decision leaves you stuck between the Spacer’s Choice corporate colony and a group of rebels who’ve chosen to live at an outpost outside the city walls. You need a power drive to get off the planet, and you can only get it by sneaking into a power plant and shutting down the, err, power to one side or the other. There’s a bit of lip service paid to the idea that this is a tough choice, since shutting down the corporation’s energy source will leave a whole bunch of people out of jobs – but then you’ve also just spent hours watching Spacer’s Choice bear down and exploit its employees as only a hilariously corrupt megacorp can. It ends up being a decision between good with a bit of hardship, or absolute moustache-twirling evil (but at least the trains run on time). Other choices offer more nuance, but the writing is often at odds with itself – sometimes you’re in an intricately detailed, serious sci-fi world where everyone will suffer profound consequences as a result of your actions, while other moments put you in the midst of a bleak-but-ridiculous anti-corporate comedy. There are great moments at either end of The Outer Worlds’ tonal spectrum, and the payoffs are usually fantastic. There’s the loyal corporate salesman whose reward for service is a silly moon mask and a lifetime of spouting half-hearted slogans. There’s the philosophical war between an idealist rebel captain, his pragmatic compatriot who just wants to keep the people fed, and their counterpart inside the city walls who wants to build change under the Board’s rule. There are bits that are laugh-out-loud funny – like when you’ve got to collect grave rental fees from somebody who’s already dead – and others that are earnestly heartwarming, such as when you facilitate the first date of one of your party members. There are fantastic pieces throughout, certainly, but the tonal confusion makes it tough to stay invested in the story and characters through all of the resultant connective tissue. These portions tend to be the least interesting parts outside of the dialogue trees, too. The bigger worlds where you’ll spend most of your time are made up of densely packed points of interest like cities, outposts, and hideouts, spread out across the wilderness of a big, mostly open-ended map. These wilderness areas are where the game most feels like modern Fallout, but since your objectives are predominantly dictated by the quests you find, they don’t have the same sense of discovery – it’s just a bunch of the same few collections of bandits and wild beasts to wade through until you reach the next interesting location. A generous fast travel system at least means you don’t have to hike through the same area twice. Combat puts you in that awkward middle ground between FPS and RPG, but there’s just enough depth to your roleplaying abilities to make up for the fact that the game doesn’t feel like a dedicated shooter. You can slow down time at the press of a button – amusingly, the result of head trauma you suffer in the tutorial – which lets you examine enemies to see their strengths and weaknesses. The meter that governs this ability is basically frozen until you move, so you can sit for a moment, consider your actions, then line up a couple of headshots or crippling leg shots before returning to real-time combat to mop up. Skill points determine your effectiveness with various weapon types, and the more substantial perks that you get every other level let you create some pretty unusual builds. I struggled early on against armoured enemies, since I could never hang onto enough heavy ammunition to take them down, until I got a perk that let me knock off a point of an enemy’s armour rating with every ranged shot. From then on, simply dumping a light handgun clip into just about any enemy was sufficient to soften it up for the kill. There are a lot of fun little mechanics around the edges which help to add some life to combat that would otherwise be pretty familiar. Science weapons that you pick up through side-quests don’t deal the damage of their conventional counterparts, but they will let you do everything from launching marauders into the air to shrinking massive insects down to proper ant size. Each party member has a single unique ability, too. These all briefly pause the action for a cutscene, while your ally readies a weapon, deals some damage, and applies a temporary debuff to the foe you’ve sent them against. While the animations never change, they also rarely get old – at least, I never got tired of watching my world-weary preacher smite bad guys with a shotgun while reciting his holy book. Despite all the freedom to roam, The Outer Worlds is at its best in its most constrained locations – facilities, caverns, and ruins filled with powerful enemies and multiple paths. These sections feel almost like miniature Thief or Dishonored-style immersive sims, giving you a clear objective and loads of ways to go about achieving it. You can shoot your way through just about anything, sure, but you can also use stealth. You can hack computers to turn off security systems, or if you’ve got that skill high enough, you can turn the robotic defenders against their masters. You can almost always talk your way out of a boss fight. And sometimes, the optional quests you’ve done leading up to one of these locations can give you unexpected allies as you go. That’s a familiar list of options if you’ve played any open-ended RPG of the past few decades, but it’s in these de facto dungeons where the character you’ve built, the skills you’ve chosen, and the playstyle you’ve gone for really come together. It feels great, and it also helps that these sequences usually come at the conclusion of major plot arcs – so right as you’re feeling good about the choices you’ve made for your build, you’re also seeing the results of all the dialogue decisions you’ve been making over the previous few hours, and everything comes together in an often spectacular little package. The Outer Worlds falters in that there just aren’t enough of these moments. That leaves you playing hours of ‘good’ just to get to that 30-minute stretch of ‘great.’ That’s not a terrible ratio – especially as my fairly complete playthrough clocked in around 25 hours, not especially long as RPGs go – but it often feels that the game isn’t living up to its full potential. But while most of the elements that make up The Outer Worlds sit between ‘good enough’ and ‘great,’ there’s one legitimate bad point: the UI. You can only track one quest at a time, which is frustrating when you’ll often have three or four to attend to in the same location, and the only way to establish which is which is to track one, find it on the map, then go back to track the others and repeat the process. Inventory management is similarly frustrating – it’s way more difficult than it needs to be to compare equipment, the upgrade and mod systems take far too much time to sort through compared to the benefits they provide, and all of your normal sorting options for some reason disappear while you’re equipping party members. Even so, while Obsidian’s garnered quite a reputation for buggy games at launch, I didn’t run into many major technical issues during my time with the game. Well, not until the very end, at least – a single, repeatable crash during the game’s final sequence was the only bug I hit, but it was one that I could only get around by killing an NPC I’d much rather have talked to. That’ll surely get an eventual patch, and while it was disappointing in the moment, this is a much better technical showing than the studio has historically put forward. Much like the potential rewards from a life at the edge of the galaxy, then, despite some hardships along the way The Outer Worlds is a journey worth undertaking. Here are the The Outer Worlds System Requirements (Minimum) CPU: Intel Core i3-3225 or AMD Phenom II X6 1100T CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 4 GB OS: Windows 7 (SP1) 64bit VIDEO CARD: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850 PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 40 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1024 MB The Outer Worlds Recommended Requirements CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K or Ryzen 5 1600 CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Windows 10 64bit VIDEO CARD: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 470 PIXEL SHADER: 5.1 VERTEX SHADER: 5.1 FREE DISK SPACE: 40 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 6 GB.

In a recent look at Frontier’s furry new game in beta, I was left with the impression that Planet Zoo is a beast of a management sim, but one you’d still want to cuddle. Having now experienced the real deal, I can confidently say that initial reaction was spot on – the game is one hell of a meaty dish, but one I’m very glad I got my teeth into. When you fire up the game, you’re presented with multiple ways to jump into your zookeeping adventure, with options to make it as objective-led or open-ended as you like. There’s a guided Career Mode, Challenge Mode (with a full economy and various objectives to tackle offline), a Sandbox Mode in which to go wild, and an online Franchise Mode to show off your creations to players around the world. I spend the majority of my time in Career Mode, which drip-feeds you tutorial tips as you progress through various pre-made zoos. Taking your first steps, it’s difficult not to be struck by the game’s depth and scope. It seems like every factor you can think of that could have some influence – however minor or indirect – on an animal’s health and happiness has been modelled by developer Frontier. In construction terms, building a basic habitat is easy enough. Connect some barriers, add a door for the zookeeper, and you’re off – the controls and UI, for the most part, are really simple. But Planet Zoo incorporates a vast range of factors that must be considered when setting up the perfect homely habitats for your animal friends, and of course it’s in this that the real challenge of the game lies. There are the major facets to consider upfront: Are my ring-tailed lemurs fed and watered? Does my timber wolf have a pal? Are any cohabitees going to devour each other (or the guests)?. These are the big questions, but there are many lower tiers to worry about. Habitats can be optimised at the most granular level: are the plants in my panda pen matched to their native biome and continent? Do my Thomson’s gazelles have enough toy enrichment items? There’s also a terrain painting tool to ensure every inch of floor is suited to an animal’s preferred ground type, and even humidity and heating controls to tune the atmosphere to the exact degrees needed. Jurassic World: Evolution players will recognise much of this, but there’s even greater depth here. It’s a delicate challenge – especially if you fancy combining species in habitats – but there’s a supreme satisfaction in nudging my animals’ needs sliders up into the green, tracked per animal across tabs chock-full of scales and criteria. There’s also an extensive ‘Zoopedia’ offering real-world zoological information and further helpful tips for catering to my little (and big) ‘uns needs. Despite your best efforts, however, you’re often only able to give your animals so much. There’s further challenge in unlocking everything you need to be the best zookeeper you can be, including higher tier enrichment items, more knowledge of how to care for your charges, and even some new animal species. One such requirement is investing time in research, to which you can assign vets through research centres dotted about your zoo. Beyond this, there’s also the guests’ experience to consider, which is a sizeable task on its own, and – I begrudgingly acknowledge – a pretty vital one. They’ve got to have enough entertainment, education, and eateries to keep them happy and keep the bucks (both the financial and hoofed kind) coming in. Oh, and don’t forget some places to powder their noses, of course. It takes quite a bit of planning to get all of this right, and sometimes animal happiness and guest happiness clash. Planet Zoo’s creatures all have a ‘social’ well-being scale which measures their stress levels, and the game slaps me with a big red warning if one of my critters takes a bit of a nosedive in this department. Often, it’ll be because they’re feeling too watched, and unable to escape the voyeuristic gaze of curious guests. I have to respond by organising some privacy for the poor things. There are some creative ways of dealing with this, though, that achieve a happy outcome for both parties. You could opt for one-way glass that lets guests see in, but leaves creatures to chow down in peace, for example. It’s little touches like this that reflect Frontier’s focus on animal welfare and conservation – and as an animal lover, I really appreciate it. Considering all this complexity, Planet Zoo offers a pretty dexterous experience. For a start, it’s largely intuitive; I can find more or less everything in the menus where I would expect to, even as a relative newcomer to the genre, and there are often multiple ways of getting to the same option, so I don’t get stuck often. In many cases, clicking animals and zoo facilities mirrors what you can do by going through the menus. I sometimes wish that the game would remember my filters and selections a little more often as I navigate between those menus, however. For example, checking which species are compatible – i.e. won’t eat each other the second I turn my back – requires hopping between tabs in the Zoopedia and my zoo’s list of animals. Having to re-select filters frequently slows down the fun a little. What Planet Zoo captures exceptionally well is the sense that a zoo is a living, breathing creature of its own. There are any number of dynamic factors that it can throw at you, such as freak snowstorms in spring that oblige me to get some heaters plugged in for my critters ASAP, or striking my animals down with a sudden disease (organised zookeepers can preemptively put vets on researching cures, which helps avoid the frustration of random-seeming setbacks). This adds some challenge, and a little stress, but also a lot of fun – as I play I come to relish these curve balls. I have to emphasise, however, that the heroes of the game are the animals themselves. Frontier’s given each and every one of the more than 50 species in the game some serious attention in the looks department, and their animations are marvellous. I sometimes waste precious time I could spend thinking about improving the visitor experience just locking the camera onto a panda, watching it slope about and munch bamboo for a while, just because. Reflected in the attention to detail evident in bringing the animals to life is the game’s palpable sense of respect for them. Right from the get-go, zoo owner Bernard Goodwin and your tutor, Nancy Jones – who’s helpfully on-hand in Career Mode to remind you not to mix big cats with gazelles – pepper your adventure with little nuggets of trivia about the creatures in your care. This risks feeling forced, but it only builds your admiration for the creatures under your wing, inspiring you to Get. Their. Care. Right. Faced with all this pressure, constructing a zoo from scratch in Challenge Mode is a pretty exciting experience, though it’s a little overwhelming. I pick a biome, a continent, then start from what is essentially a gigantic field in that location. Comparing my fledgling enterprise to the devs’ glorious pre-made zoos is daunting, but it’s an exciting canvas for your creativity. The tools are there, so you have the scope to create basically anything you picture in your head. The game’s not without a few hitches, but they’re pretty minor. Some of the construction tools can be a little difficult to work out in places. For example, placing building ‘shells’ and then trying to slot shops and staff facilities into them is fiddly, and not particularly intuitive, which threw a couple of brief stumbling blocks my way when trying to progress through Career Mode. However, this isn’t true across the board – things like attaching staff rooms and small creature habitats to paths works seamlessly. It’s also worth noting that, while the zoos can be stunning (I particularly love the ornate Panda Park), they also feel pretty busy, especially when I’m running the game with the best specs. It can be hard to navigate the throngs of people and plants that festoon my giant enterprises sans menu, and I often have to wrestle with the camera to get a decent view of my animals, whether for functional purposes or to gaze lovingly upon them. But these are minor hiccups that briefly interrupt the fun rather than spoil it. Here are the Planet Zoo System Requirements (Minimum) CPU: Intel i5-2500 / AMD FX-6350 CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Windows 7 (SP1+)/8.1/10 64bit VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 (2GB) / AMD Radeon R9 270X (2GB) PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 16 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB Planet Zoo Recommended Requirements CPU: Intel i7-4770k / AMD Ryzen 5 1600 CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 16 GB OS: Windows 10 64bit VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB) or AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB) PIXEL SHADER: 5.1 VERTEX SHADER: 5.1 FREE DISK SPACE: 16 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 8192 MB

A Way Out is an action-adventure game developed by Hazelight Studios and published by Electronic Arts under their EA Originals program. It is the second video game to be directed by Josef Fares after Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. The game has no single-player option: it is only playable in either online or local split screen co-op between two players. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 23, 2018, selling over a million copies in two weeks. A Way Out dedicated its entire title to only one act of its story. It's a bit deceiving to call this a prison break game (even though, yes, they do eventually get out) because it's a lot of other things too. A Way Out is a revenge saga, a Bonnie and Clyde-like outwit and outrun the cops tale, a bonding adventure, and a guilt trip that masquerades as a road trip. What's left is this patchwork quilt of pastiche, a B-movie Frankenstein of a million things that have been done in cinema. But as far as video games go, A Way Out is often a brilliant cooperative experience that is legitimately enjoyable -- and that will be enough to convince you to turn a blind eye to a lot of the writing that's as delicate as a sledgehammer. A Way Out is a pure cooperative game in that it can't be played any other way. Two people are required, either through couch co-op or online play. (It's worth noting that purchasing the game essentially grants you an additional copy to gift to a friend. While this person can play through the entirety of the story, they can't unlock achievements and trophies.) There's good reason for this forced collaboration. A Way Out is structured such that a partner is necessary for most every moment. Some of it is done in predictable ways -- like someone standing on a platform while the other person moves it -- but a lot of it is better than that. An early sequence has both players in adjacent cells, requiring one person to act as a lookout for guards while the other creates an escape hatch through the back of the toilet. A little later, the duo maneuvers up a ventilation shaft by going back-to-back and slowly climbing by moving their legs at the exact same time. Because of this shared responsibility, A Way Out's protagonists are equally important although very different people. Vincent is a rational and mostly-quiet man who's at the very beginning of a 14-year sentence for white collar crimes (with a fishy murder charge tacked on too); Leo is a brash bruiser who has been in the clink for six months on armed robbery and grand theft charges. I don’t want to spoil anything about its finale, but know this: A Way Out is worth seeing through to the end. A Way Out’s revenge-fueled plot is structured around flashbacks to how Vincent and his next-cell-neighbor Leo ended up in this predicament, until the story catches up to them aboard a plane and carries on from there. It ebbs and flows like a movie, and it somewhat feels like one too, despite a runtime about three times longer than your average theater experience. You will spend a lot of its roughly six hours with your controller down, watching cutscenes. But you’re also often free to walk around in many of those moments, with the screen frequently split to accommodate both players’ freedom to move and explore. Gameplay A Way Out is an action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective. It is specifically designed for split-screen cooperative multiplayer, which means that it must be played with another player through either local or online play. In the game, players control Leo and Vincent, two convicted prisoners who must break out of prison and stay on the run from authorities. As the story of both protagonists is told simultaneously, their progress may not be synchronized, which may result in one player being able to control their character, while another is watching a cutscene. Players need to cooperate with each other in order to progress, and each situation can be approached differently, with both characters taking different roles. For instance, during an early segment of the game, the player controlling Vincent needs to distract a nurse and guard, so the player controlling Leo can find a chisel needed to aid their escape. These roles are not fixed, so Leo and Vincent can swap their roles in another playthrough. Players can interact with many non-playable characters, and there are dialogue options for players to choose. Similar to the PlayStation 4 version of Far Cry 4, players will be able to join online sessions (hosted by the player's friends) whether or not the joining player owns the actual game. They have similarities, though. They're both family men. Leo has a young son who he's trying to hide his criminal life from. Vincent went to prison when his wife was mere weeks away from giving birth to their first child. However, their strongest commonality is a vehement hatred for a man named Harvey. Breaking out and delivering just comeuppance is the greatest motivator for this narrative that relies on vengeance more than anything else. Along the way, Vincent and Leo begin to understand each other. They find ways to lean on and support each other emotionally, like when Leo eventually (and unexpectedly) suggests Vincent should write a letter to his wife that tells her what kind of husband and father he wants to be. It takes a while to get there though. Early intimate interactions between the two come off stilted and awkward. There are separate moments where they both explain the heart-breaking situations that led to their incarcerations; each time, the listener simply replied with "that's rough." I made a point of remembering the first "that's rough" because I thought it felt so human. What do you say when someone tells you something so crushing that you don't have a good response? What do you say when you feel like your words won't ever be good enough to serve as any sort of consolation? You end up muttering something like "oh, no" or "I'm so sorry" or "that's rough." But to have the second character return in kind with the exact same phrase, well, that's bad writing. Leo and Vincent each have believable motivations that become clear as the story unfolds. So, too, do the actors’ performances improve as the plot progresses, with most of the notably wooden dialogue delivery contained in the early scenes. It’s as if they had to get to know each other, just as we needed to get to know them. It’s interesting to talk to the same NPC with Leo and Vincent separately, one right after the other, because while the conversation will usually turn out the same way, the path of those chats will be completely different. Leo is more violent and action-first, while Vincent prefers to talk his way out of sticky situations. So when you’re given the choice to handle a tense moment with a curious police officer Leo’s way or Vincent’s way, Leo wants to knock him out, while Vincent fakes a highly contagious illness. Game Story In 1972, Vincent Moretti (Eric Krogh) is freshly incarcerated and sent to prison for fraud and murder. In jail, he meets Leo Caruso (Fares Fares), who has now been inside for 6 months for grand theft, assault and armed robbery. While in the cafeteria, a thug sent in by crime boss Harvey tries to murder Leo, but Vincent intervenes, resulting in both of them being sent to the infirmary while the thug is beaten to death after stabbing a prison guard. While in the infirmary, Leo requests Vincent's help to steal a chisel from the office. Vincent complies. After the theft, Vincent senses that Leo is planning on a prison break and offers to help so that he can escape too. Leo initially refuses, but begrudgingly agrees to collaborate when Vincent reveals he also has a grudge with Harvey. Leo and Vincent make progress on their escape plan, stealing sheets to make a rope and smuggling a wrench to open a grating. Using teamwork and gathered tools, the two escape from the jail on a rainy night. After evading the police in the wilderness, the two find an empty camp and fish to make food. Vincent reveals that Harvey had him launder money before murdering his brother as a warning and framing Vincent for the murder. Leo starts telling his story but is interrupted when a police helicopter flies by, causing both to start moving again. They later find an old couple's house, and the two steal new clothes, a shotgun and a truck before evading the pursuing police in the vehicle and, after crashing, a rowboat. After surviving a waterfall, the duo finds civilization, after which Leo reveals Harvey and him had stolen a valuable gem, a Black Orlov, but that when Leo tried selling it, Harvey betrayed him by killing their buyer and escaping with the gem, leading to Leo's arrest. At a trailer park in the city, Leo confirms the safety of his wife Linda and his son Alex, before going to a construction site with Vincent. They find Ray, one of Harvey's underlings who works as a construction foreman, and, after a chase, the two capture and interrogate him to find Harvey's location, which they find out is Mexico. Plotting revenge against Harvey, the duo robs a gas station to buy guns from an arms dealer, Jasmine. When the two leave, Jasmine follows them and betrays them by giving their location to Harvey. Later, at a telephone booth, Vincent calls Emily, a pilot, and convinces her to fly them to Mexico. He then learns from her that his wife, Carol, had just gone through childbirth. The duo agrees to go to the hospital, but a hitman sent by Harvey arrives, attempting to kill them, but in the end failing. They then go to the hospital and Vincent gets to see his newborn daughter, but quickly needs to leave as police officers surround the building. Leo is captured but manages to escape thanks to a diversion by Vincent. The next day, Emily flies Leo and Vincent to Mexico, and the two find their way to Harvey's mansion. After a firefight with Harvey's guards and Harvey himself, the two overpower Harvey, force him to return the Black Orlov and, after he attempts to take one of them hostage, kill him. Escaping with the Black Orlov, Vincent and Leo return to the United States on Emily's plane, but are immediately surrounded by police upon landing. An officer takes the Black Orlov from Leo and hands Vincent a gun, revealing that both him and Emily had been undercover police officers. Leo and Harvey's Black Orlov deal had actually been arranged by the police, and the dealer killed was Vincent's brother, Gary. Feeling betrayed, Leo subdues Vincent, takes him hostage and hijacks a police car to escape. While trying to avoid a police roadblock, he crashes the car into water. Both escape the submerged vehicle, Leo stealing a boat while Vincent is picked up by Emily in a police helicopter. After a chase where Vincent tries to destroy the engine of the boat, Leo jumps off before it crashes into explosive tanks and runs into a portside warehouse. Emily lands the helicopter and both her and Vincent chase him inside. Leo manages to ambush Emily, taking her gun away and ordering her to leave as this fight is between him and Vincent. The gunfight ends with both sides injured, unarmed, and exhausted on the top of the roof. Seeing that one of their guns is dropped nearby, both try to reach it, but only one is able to and shoots the other. The two share a final moment of friendship before the person shot dies from their injuries. If Leo survives, he takes Vincent's apology letter and delivers it to Carol, then proceeds to leave town with his family while Vincent's funeral is taking place. If Vincent survives, he informs Linda of Leo's death before returning to Carol, making amends to save their marriage and raise their daughter by revealing he resigned from the police and proclaiming that it's over. Frankly, A Way Out is littered with bad writing. It's full of the sort of clichéd one-liners that are an earmark of '80s crime movies. At one point, Vincent literally says "I'd rather be uptight than a loose cannon." These are regular occurrences, and they don't necessarily come off as adoring nods to their influences. They feel more like forced banter that doesn't elevate the story in any way. One of A Way Out's more stylish tricks lies in the presentation. The split-screen format lends itself to smooth transitions from cutscenes and into each player's perspective. Sometimes, when one person triggers a particularly important moment, the screen will grow in their favor and relegate the other player's going-ons to an afterthought. It's a double-edged sword though, as it can lead to some supremely stupid interactions. There's a hospital scene where my partner tried offering hope to a terminally ill cancer patient; I was in the other frame seeing how long I could balance myself in a wheelchair. But, for all the ridiculous situations and terrible dialogue, it's easy to stay enamored with A Way Out. Obvious influences like Shawshank Redemption and Scarface make for a game that feels familiar yet entertaining. (Seriously, there's even a sequence where you time your loud-noise-making to the crack of the thunder.) The explosive setpieces and creative cooperation make up for any bungled exposition. A Way Out is laced with small cooperative moments outside of just dialogue, too, like having to tap X simultaneously to bust through a door, or one person splashing around in a pond to chase the fish toward the other player holding a spear. But even though it’s focused on its story sequences, A Way Out is decidedly not a “walking simulator”-style adventure – in fact, it’s more like a collection of largely enjoyable minigames. Sometimes you’re sneaking around in tall grass like Sam Fisher, choking out bad guys. Sometimes you’re punching people from a 2.5D side-scrolling camera like it’s a Double Dragon remake. Sometimes you’re driving a car, or throwing darts, or playing a banjo, or shooting hoops, or arm wrestling, or fishing, or...you get the idea. All of that variety is a double-edged sword: though this swath of activities often left me smiling, the trade-off is that none of them control and feel as good as games dedicated to those ideas. The baseball segment won’t be unseating MLB The Show 18, is what I’m saying, but even so it put a smile on my face. “Clunky” is probably the best description of the worst A Way Out’s minigames ever get, with the gunplay feeling particularly subpar in this, the age of spectacularly polished shooters. There's a constant mood about A Way Out that makes it seem like it's more inventive than it really is. Disregard that and you're left with a decent-enough story with some genuinely enjoyable video game moments. It's campy fun and that's perfectly fine. Just don't expect too much more. Development A Way Out was developed by Hazelight Studios, a small team of developers in Sweden led by film director Josef Fares. Both Fares and several members of his team previously worked on the acclaimed title, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons from Starbreeze Studios. Production of the game began in the second half of 2014. The design philosophy for the game is that the team wanted to create a cooperative game that is unique and different. As a result, the team opted not use the traditional drop-in and drop-out cooperative format featured dominantly in mainstream cooperative games, and instead, the team decided to create a full game that must be played cooperatively with another player. According to Fares, the game was his passion project and he cancelled an upcoming feature film in order to devote more time to working on the game. The game uses Unreal Engine 4. Despite the game's heavy focus on multiplayer, the game was described as an "emotional adventure". As a result, cutscenes will play out even during online play to ensure that players can understand the story of the other character. The game features a wide variety of gameplay sequences from stealth to driving to ensure that players are often presented with different gameplay situations and generally make the game and its characters more interesting. To make the two protagonists more realistic, the team ensured that Leo and Vincent have distinct personalities and that they have different opinions and responses while interacting with the game's world. Fares Fares, a Swedish-Lebanese actor and Josef Fares' older brother, plays Leo. The title will be part of publisher Electronic Arts' EA Originals program, dedicated to funding small independent games. The partnership came to fruition when Patrick Söderlund, the Executive Vice President of Electronic Arts, approached Fares personally for collaboration after being impressed by Brothers. EA offered $3.7 million for the development of the game and gave Fares and his team complete creative control over the game's development. According to Fares, all revenue from sales of the game will go back to Hazelight. The formation of Hazelight Studios and the partnership between Hazelight and EA was officially unveiled at The Game Awards 2014. The game's title and gameplay was revealed at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017 during EA's press conference. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 23, 2018. None of those is A Way Out’s specialty, though. Instead, it focuses primarily on its story and the intertwining cooperative gameplay with the characters of Leo and Vincent themselves, and in those key areas it largely succeeds. Does the timing on certain moments seem implausibly convenient? Yes. Do the two men end up escaping unscathed from seemingly impossible scenarios? Uh-huh. (Side note: A Way Out’s police officers make Star Wars’ Stormtroopers look like expert marksmen.) The prison-breaking pair definitely don’t always get along, though, and sometimes they even compete, just like real frienemies would, which creates some fun player-versus-player moments. Neither my co-op partner nor I would give in during our button-mashing arm-wrestling match, even though it had no bearing on the game or the story, and I took a completely unnecessary glee in beating him in Connect Four (twice). At times it felt like we really were inhabiting these characters. A Way Out’s finest moments come when it’s at its most cinematic. The brilliantly choreographed hospital escape scene, for example, maintains one unbroken “camera shot” even as controls are cleverly trading back and forth between Leo and Vincent, while the aforementioned ending blends cinematography and gameplay in clever ways. And a Splinter Cell-esque back-to-back climb up a tall maintenance shaft requires the utmost cooperation and communication and had us laughing at every misstep. It was the peak of the mandatory cooperative gameplay that’s enforced here. And commendably, you get a free download token to give to a friend, so you only have to buy one copy to play online. The Verdict If you go into A Way Out thinking its mandatory two-player co-op is a gimmick, you’ll likely come out of it realizing that it couldn’t have been done any other way. Vincent and Leo’s journey will have you and a friend performing tasks together both mundane and dramatic, and the result is a memorable, variety-packed cinematic adventure that feels like what Telltale’s games might’ve evolved into if they’d leaned into game mechanics instead of phasing them out. REVIEW FROM MULTI RESOURCE