. PREDATOR

Game Informations : Developer: Obsidian Entertainment Publishers : Paradox interactive , Obsidian Entertainment Platforms: Microsoft windows , Mac OS , Linux Initial release date: August 25, 2015 Five minutes into Pillars of Eternity: The White March Part I, a snowball thrown by an ogre smacks Durance the fire priest dead. "Looks like we lost the angry one," my tank calls out. Not thirty seconds later, Sagani the ranger goes down to a cannon blast. It was all tough, frantic, and a little absurd, but it led me to believe that this little patch of content would live up to the greatness of the base Pillars of Eternity experience. The hours ahead, though enjoyable enough, proved otherwise though. Despite the fun of tougher encounters and a new setting, The White March often feels like a step down from the greatness of the vanilla release. The high point here is the setting of the White March mountains themselves, whose icy expanses provide a welcome counterpoint to the forests that characterized the base release. It's a land that's more crowded with loot and little tidbits of mouseover lore than the leafy expanses we've seen up until now, and it mercifully features more NPCs with their own quests and conversation options instead of the original's Kickstarter NPCs with bite-sized fan fiction. It's a shame, though, that the vaguely Nordic shacks and pitiful puddles of its hub town end up being used for little more than bleached backdrops for battles and conversations with the gloomy po[CENSORED]ce. This thread of inadequately wielded wonder runs throughout the whole expansion. It manifests itself in the disappointingly straightforward story of entrepreneurs attempting to reclaim an ancient dwarven forge, in predictable encounters with dwarven workers long dead, and it even shows up in the two new battle companions. One, a monk who's found hiding in a fish barrel, boasts a dual-wielding proficiency that's usually more interesting than the humor-laced platitudes that come out of his scarred mouth. Then there's the Devil of Caroc, a robotic-looking golem rogue whose main quirk is that she's unapologetically inclined to evil. Both possess strong foundations for memorable storylines and their general personalities exhibit Obsidian's usually stellar writing, but they quickly slip into predictable conversations that lack the memorable nuances of the old cast. Further caveats arise from the expansion's requirement of a save from before the main game's "point of no return" and after the first handful of events of Act II. It's a good thing that I recently started replaying Pillars of Eternity as a Barbarian, as my original playthrough had no elligible saves, which means I would have had to replay the entire game before I reached the relevant segment. I suspect it will be the same for other players, or at least those who aren't so fastidious about deleting old saves as I am. That's one of the most awkward things about expansions like this: they force you to step back to times when you had poorer gear and before you picked up a full loadout of skills. Especially when you've carefully made all the "right" decisions, replaying old saves feels a little like questing after Stephen King's Dark Tower. As a bonus, though, if you're one of the lucky bastards with a save point at, say, the Burial Isle before Pillars of Eternity's last chapters, you can choose to upscale the monsters to your level. If you're fine with jumping into combat with gear that far exceeds the content, that's fine, too — especially considering the often plodding nature of Pillars of Eternity's "pause and bark orders" combat. If that retro-centric design soured you on the original release, you'll be happy to know that The White March showcases Pillars of Eternity's recently improved AI, which grants enemies smarter moves and allows companions like Edér and Durance to use some of their abilities of their own accord. It's simple stuff — certainly not anything in the league of the multiple options you get in a game like Dragon Age: Inquisition — but it's usually enough to speed up the pace of combat so orchestrating each character's actions doesn't drag out the game's running time by hours. Greater combat challenges also reveal themselves, chiefly in the form of a high-level dungeon called Cragholdt Bluffs that will thwomp most parties below level 10 into the the ground faster than you can say "Icewind Dale." Much as in that beloved dungeon romp from 2000, combat is king here, and The White March does a good job of delivering it even if it lacks some of the inspiration of Black Isle's game. As the ogres in Stalwart demonstrated all too painfully, it occasionally manages to be harder than the core game and it tosses in extra variables such as enemies who are completely immune to certain types of damage. Enemies are usually positioned better too, thus prompting more thoughtful strategies to combat them. The level cap boost from 12 to 14 even provided handful of new abilities to meet these new challenges with. For instance, the Barbarian's newfound ability to leap into a throng of foes and wreak havok was particularly giddy fun. I enjoyed these changes, and despite my reservations, I generally enjoyed my roughly 20 hours with this first part of The White March. I loved Pillars of Eternity, and this at least does a decent job of scratching the itch for a bit more. Even so, I could never shake my disappointment that it lacks the storytelling finesse that made the original one of the great RPGs of our time. As much as I'm a sucker for these kinds of snow-tossed settings, the whole affair left me wondering why the Watcher was even bothering with this far-flung escapade in the first place. Time is of the essence and all that. But at least I got to see Durance get killed by a snowball. That's always something. Verdict The White March Part I provides some incentive to return to the Dyrwood in the form of a higher level cap, and the delightfully brutal combat, but few of the other new features leave a lasting impression. Despite an avalanche of possibilities provided by the wintry setting and the two ostensibly unique companions, the first half of The White March never feels like more than a side quest that was never implemented. There's still plenty on offer here for players who enjoy Pillars' combat above all else, but it's an expansion best suited to new players rather than veterans.

Game Informations : Developer: Naughty Dog Publishers : Sony Interactive Entertainment Platforms: PS4 , PS3 Initial release date: 1 novembre 2011 Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is the reason I play video games. From the smile plastered on my face during the opening montage to the disbelief that swept over me as Chapter 2 began to the middle of the night text message I shot a friend about a relationship reveal, I couldn't stop loving this touching, beautiful, fun and engaging game. From the moment the music swells on the title screen to the moment the credits roll, Uncharted 3 is a masterpiece.That shouldn't surprise you. The original Drake's Fortune set the bar for visuals and third-person adventures on the PlayStation 3. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves greatly improved on that, added multiplayer and climbed its way to the 2009 IGN Game of the Year award. Developer Naughty Dog spent the two years since then making bigger moments -- think platforming in a capsized cruise ship and surviving a cargo plane crash -- and working on the few complaints from the last title. Complaints primarily stemming from the fact that, to some, Uncharted 2 felt too much like the original Uncharted. Uncharted 3's tale sounds familiar. We have the same cast of characters in our handsome hero Nathan Drake and his seasoned mentor Victor "Sully" Sullivan and the same general idea of a lost city that needs finding before the bad guys get there. But this isn't the games that came before. Uncharted 3's greatest strength is its unpredictability. From the barroom brawl that opens the game and introduces its new melee system to a mid-game conversation between villainess Katherine Marlowe and Drake that literally redefines a pillar of this franchise, I didn't know what to expect in Uncharted 3. Naughty Dog sets aside the betrayal/twist formula used in the first two games and focuses on Nate and Sully's relationship. It takes you to the precipice of the Uncharted hallmarks you might expect, lets you stare at them, and then veers off in another direction. For the first time, the words "fun" and "useful" describe melee combat. Yes, the gameplay still revolves around climbing walls and shooting bad guys, but refinement is found those mechanics. For the first time, the words "fun" and "useful" describe melee combat. Uncharted 2's clumsy stealth parts no longer exist. Running through levels and taking cover doesn't get old because Naughty Dog has done so much to merge the gameplay with the story, perfecting the pacing and making everything look fantastic in the process thanks to cutting edge graphics and excellent cinematography. The end product rises above what the buttons do and how you maneuver Drake. Calling it a game sells Uncharted 3 short. This is an experience, a complete package. When I rant about why Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is better than just about anything on the market -- about why I think it's my new favorite game of all time -- I don't talk about the firefights, the new ability to throw grenades back at enemies or collecting the game's 101 well-hidden treasures. I talk about the heart-wrenching section where Drake is by himself and completely lost. He's on his last legs, he's desperate, and I'm right there with him. I'm pushing him through the journey at hand and it's clear that it's a game, but as he stumbles, seeks shelter and loses hope, my heart breaks. This is what Naughty Dog has been building to for the last four years. In a way, this is what Naughty Dog has been building to for the last four years. Players know the Uncharted cast. Most love the banter between Drake and Sully, the love affair between Elena and Drake or the one-liners Drake shouts to himself as the game goes on. Naughty Dog created a universe here that players feel connected with, but, again, the developers toy with that. They insert things that take the mentor/pupil relationship to another level. They flesh out backstories, they break bonds, and they make us face the characters' worst fears. And, no, those fears aren't clowns. A story-driven affair, Uncharted 3's believability and connection with the player comes from its performances. For the third game in a row, the cast dazzles. The actors record their lines along with their movements, and this leads to characters that feel real. The chemistry between them lights up the game in a way most mediums would kill for -- from tiny touches like fist bumps to major moments of bickering between lovers. Add in a musical score that accentuates the action and layer on the game's trademark, "best in the industry" graphics -- sand clinging to Drake's hair, fire creeping up walls, sunlight filtering through tattered roofs -- and you can see where this game becomes more than pressing the X button and jamming on analog sticks. When the tale finishes, you can look forward to multiplayer. Uncharted 2 introduced competitive and cooperative modes for the series, and Uncharted 3 improves them to make something special. The standard menu returns (team deathmatch, capture the flag, etc.), but Naughty Dog adds bonuses known as Boosters and Kickbacks to round out the experience. These are upgradable bonuses that you equip to make the multiplayer experience more your own. Boosters augment your entire session -- one reduces respawn time, one lets you climb faster -- whereas the in-match medals you earn count toward unlocking your Kickback, which can instantly spawn an RPG or double your cash earned for a short period of time. These spice up the gameplay; you can pepper them into one of your four saved loadouts and have a skill set for any situation. This stuff will keep me coming back. Even when I have a terrible match in Uncharted 3 multiplayer, I see the cash I've earned counting toward my next level and I see my Boosters earning experience and becoming more powerful. Toss all this into the pot, and matches in Uncharted 3 multiplayer feel fresh every time. The verticality mixed with gunplay leads to different attack plans. There's a sweet science to deploying a Kickback at the perfect time for a critical kill. New Power Plays give teams getting blown out a leg-up like double damage so that everyone feels like they have a shot at competing. Plus, three team deathmatch (2v2v2) is awesome, and you can play split-screen with two different PSN profiles, a rarity on the PlayStation 3. For many of you, these multiplayer facts aren't news, as fans have been playing the final version of multiplayer as part of a North American Subway promotion for weeks. However, there was an outcry when the beta went live because Naughty Dog adjusted the damage dealt by bullets and players were now able to absorb more. Many threw their hands up in disgust, and Naughty Dog listened. The developers went in and dialed the damage back to what it was in the summer beta. Don't mistake this anecdote as a mistake; it points out the commitment Naughty Dog puts into this multiplayer community. The developers make a game and they want people to enjoy it, they listen to feedback, and they act. There's not much more you can ask from a game creator, and it's one of the reasons I want to keep playing and keep leveling. Add in the fact that Naughty Dog supported Uncharted 2 multiplayer until now and already has seven DLC packs planned for Uncharted 3 multiplayer, and it's clear this game has legs. Verdict IGN defines a 10.0 -- a masterpiece -- as "the pinnacle of gaming, a masterpiece may not be flawless, but it is so exceptional that it is hard to imagine a game being better." That's Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. From start to finish, single player to multiplayer, this game sings. The characters, the graphics, the sound, the story – they’re all top notch. If you’re willing to skip Uncharted 3, be prepared to miss one of gaming’s finest moments.

Game Informations : Developer: Gearbox Software. Publishers : 2K Games. Platforms: Microsoft Windows Initial release date: March 26, 2020 We are gathered here today to talk about Guns, Love, and Tentacles, the sharply written Lovecraftian DLC for Borderlands 3 which puts the wedding of Sir Hammerlock and Wainwright Jacobs in the center of its scopes. Though everything about it is exactly what you’d expect from Borderlands DLC – in a good way – it also doesn’t do much to make its few short hours really stand out. What starts out as an eccentric couple’s wedding on the creepy, remote world of Xylourgos predictably turns into a nightmarish cataclysm of eldritch horrors. So, y’know, just some normal Borderlands stuff. You’ll smack, blast, and meat-bicycle your way through some unique areas like the eerie, possessed town of Cursehaven; the dark, sickening groves of Cankerwood; and the accursed halls of a manor controlled by a cult that worships a Cthulu-inspired God called Gythian. For a series that once had a big problem with the lack of diversity in its exclusively Pandoran environments, Guns, Love, and Tentacles feels like a victory lap of breathtaking views and unique areas. As usual, the Borderlands staples you know and love have been tweaked to fit the new setting, and in this case it results in some pretty gross aesthetics. For example, chests have a squid-like quality to them and gurgle and slither out juicy, slime-covered weapons, or they open a portal to another dimension and spit out some new items for your perusal. You’ll also have some new tentacle-themed cosmetics to unlock, like character skins and weapon ornaments. It’s a bummer, though, that there are no Lovecraftian weapons to chase. That’s a missed opportunity! It’s an overwhelmingly entertaining few hours thanks to stellar writing. The campaign is solid but short – you can blow through the bulk of it in just a few hours. That said, it’s an overwhelmingly entertaining few hours thanks to stellar writing and jokes that land more often than they miss. There are some misses in the level design, too, like a few sections which require platforming – something Borderlands has never been great with. One such section is a boss fight that requires you to jump onto levitating platforms to take down the enemy’s shields and if you make a wrong move you’ll need to start the fight all over again (unless you’re playing with a friend you can use as a spawn anchor). Fortunately for those of us who’ve been waiting for more DLC since December, there’s plenty to do aside from the main story. Sidequests are mostly entertaining distractions, and there are occult creature hunts to go on for Sir Hammerlock which can be fairly challenging. For rewards, you’ll have eight new legendary weapons to chase for those who want to be best equipped to slay Gythian’s octo-pals with extreme prejudice. On the other hand, some tasks are pretty dry, like picking flowers for your new testicle-eating friend. Yup. That’s a thing. On Xylourgos you’ll mainly fight against occult followers of Gythian. These weirdos interact with you and one another in all sorts of interesting ways during combat, like buffing and healing one another, resurrecting fallen allies from the dead as exploding suiciders, or even eating your guns. That’s right: they literally eat your guns, those monsters! Each encounter with these tentacle-loving psychopaths has to be considered before being tackled, because not killing necromancers before taking on everyone else could result in you getting overwhelmed by undead explodey boys. Xylourgos’ mobs are deadly, sometimes annoyingly so, but the end result is some of the most interesting combat encounters we’ve seen in Borderlands. It’s more Borderlands 3, which is great, but it feels by-the-numbers. Aside from the interesting new mobs, though, there isn’t really a whole lot that Guns, Love, and Tentacles does that’s unique. It’s more Borderlands 3, which is great, but it all ends up feeling like a very by-the-numbers expansion that’s fun for a few hours and not especially groundbreaking. Even the formidable bosses aren’t much more than bullet sponges with a bad attitude. But, y’know, when you find yourself shoving your fist into piles of wendigo dung, remember: this is exactly what you signed up for. Verdict Guns, Love, and Tentacles is a witty, solid expansion for Borderlands 3 that mostly plays it safe with a proven formula without introducing anything that makes it a must-play. Still, the environments and enemies are unique and interesting enough to provide new challenges to players. Oh, and do you like testicle jokes? It has testicle jokes.

Game Informations : Developer: TaleWorlds Entertainment Publishers : TaleWorlds Entertainment Platforms: Microsoft Windows Initial release date: 30 Marsh 2020 Not as much has changed in the world of Mount & Blade since 2010’s Warband as I might have expected. But when I get into one of Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlords’ pitched battles and charge through an enemy infantry formation while gleefully swinging my sword like a champion, it honestly feels like maybe what wasn’t broken didn’t need fixing. Sure, it’s not the most polished of experiences, hence the early access launch. But its exciting, tactical combat and gorgeous sandbox campaign map full of new lands to win and new characters to meet feed my deep, burning need for a nitty-gritty, intimate take on medieval-ish warfare. Bannerlord’s graphics are the most immediately impactful improvement from its decade-old predecessor. The stunning map allows you to scroll completely seamlessly from practically right over your character’s shoulder all the way up to a high-level strategic view, where you can decide whether to raid caravans, fight as a mercenary for a powerful lord, or even found your own kingdom. The lighting, textures, and terrain are all impressive, and the level of detail really makes me feel like I’m in a living world. The character models and armor textures are pretty slick as well, even if they do still seem a few steps behind the current generation of blockbusters. Bannerlord has also been drastically improved over Warband’s notoriously janky interface. It’s visually pleasing, well-organized, and easy to work with when you’re organizing your troops or unraveling the intriguing political web that binds each of the eight major factions. However, there are certain things that don’t have tooltips which I wish were better explained, such as what Morale actually does – there’s not even an encyclopedia entry for it. And there’s a significant amount of lag when switching between menus that kind of gets on my nerves. But it’s still a huge step up from what Warband players had to deal with that it feels like a big breath of fresh air. The interface is a huge step up from what Warband players had to deal with. Not everything else about Bannerlord does, though. For something that’s been in development for about eight years, there’s still a surprising amount of jank on display. Especially early on, before you get to the really good stuff, it’s easy to get the feeling that you’re just playing Warband with better graphics. Targeting and interacting with items and characters in towns and on battle maps is still imprecise and sometimes unresponsive. And there are some weird design decisions, like the fact that you have to wait through three loading screens to do something really simple like initiate a battle: one to speak to the enemy commander, one to load back into the world map, and one to actually start the fight. Even on an SSD with relatively short load times, that can get irritating. There are a lot of little things that really don’t feel modern, which are especially noticeable next to all of the ones that do. So naturally, the early gameplay will be pretty familiar to Mount & Blade veterans: You ride around the countryside doing missions and fighting bandits to gain gold, equipment, and reputation. These missions have a good deal of variety, which is nice since Warband could often feel like an endless loop of the same small list of tasks. Aside from old mainstays like escorting a caravan or hunting down poachers, you might be called on to resolve a blood feud or help merchants secure permits to sell their wares in a major town. These also inject a bit of worldbuilding and moral ambiguity in some interesting ways. That band of poachers might implore you not to side with the fat-cat nobles who are denying them the right to a livelihood, opening up an alternate path for resolving the situation. Each of the six playable factions has its own rich personality, backstory, and style of fighting. The worldbuilding in general is pretty great. Set about 200 years before Warband, we see the ancestors of some of the factions we know locked in a tense struggle centered on a collapsing, Roman-inspired empire that has broken into three parts. Each of the six playable factions has its own rich personality, backstory, and style of fighting. I wish your choice of national origin had a little bit more of an impact, though. As it stands, it’s mostly flavor that doesn’t impose restrictions that might make you significantly alter your playstyle. Anyone can recruit any kind of troops and join any faction they wish. You only get one small campaign bonus based on where you were born, like being able to build structures faster or reduced movement penalty in forest terrain. Once I got out and about and started meeting the various princes, lords, and knights, my interest in the world really picked up. There is an intricate political web to unravel between the leaders of the various factions, with each having a different story about what happened at a pivotal battle right before the start of the campaign that set the present events in motion. Piecing together the details will eventually lead you to two significant choices: joining an existing faction or starting your own, and trying to restore the old Calradian Empire or wiping its remnants from the map. While the story is presented pretty simplistically and without much dramatic flair, I could see these options providing a lot of replayability just due to the different flavor your campaign can take on based on which route you choose. Do you want to be the barbarian at the gates, or the successor to ancient glories? It’s on the battlefield where Bannerlord really delivers. But it’s on the battlefield where Bannerlord really delivers. The hitboxes on weapons and soldiers are impressively realistic, creating a high skill ceiling and a welcome sense of authenticity. You can have a spear thrust miss between someone’s shoulder and their helmet, and it’s always clear why the blow didn’t connect. This forced me to develop a good sense of timing and muscle memory to consistently get clean kills, which is a way more satisfying sense of progression than just putting points into a skill tree. I still don’t love the four-directional parry system, since we’ve seen that same thing done better in other games recently, and the lack of a stamina system can make one-on-one duels spammy and annoying, but at least I could strap on a shield and never have to worry about it. Battles also feature smoother animations and much better unit AI than Warband, which was prone to somehow find the worst possible way to interpret any orders it was given. The new command interface is clean, readable, and makes it very easy to form control groups and give specific, detailed orders like forming a shield wall or keeping their distance and skirmishing with ranged weapons. The tactical options available are broad and executing them is relatively painless, which is much more than I could say for Warband. I did run into some significant performance issues and stuttering on larger battles, and especially sieges, but it’s been getting better with the almost daily patches TaleWorlds has been releasing. The tactical options available are broad and executing them is relatively painless. Bannerlord’s biggest new systems are the Clan and Kingdom screens. Your clan includes your family and retainers, which can include a spouse and eventually children who can grow up and fight. If you join or end up ruling a kingdom, you can make changes like setting new tax laws – as long as your vassals approve, of course. The vassal management system is a bit clunky and unwieldy and mostly involves getting other lords on your side by tracking them down and earning their favor by picking correct dialogue options… but there’s a chance you’ll fail based on your Charm stat even if you say all the right things, and that’s just annoying. This is one area that could definitely use some more love before Bannerlord is ready to cast off its early access label. As is typical of an early access game, I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about weird and even game-breaking bugs out in the community, but mercifully I haven’t been the victim of any serious ones so far. I’ve hit a few irritating video and audio glitches here and there, of course. Reloading a save once caused some troops I recruited to mysteriously disappear. I also ran into a consistent crash bug when I tried to launch a siege after taking over as its leader from another character. Thankfully, the patches have been coming quickly and relentlessly and there seem to be fewer technical issues every time I boot Bannerlord up. Verdict It’s easy to focus on all the ways Mount & Blade II is still stuck in a rut starting out, but Bannerlord is an onion with lots of new layers that show themselves once you start to really dig into it. Especially for an early access game, it’s ambitious and reasonably well-polished, even if it still has a long way to go. And with the huge graphical and general usability improvements, a latter-day rehash of Warband – one of my favorite games of the last decade – isn’t even a bad thing by itself when you get right down to it.

Game Informations : Developer: Fireproof Studios Publishers : Fireproof Studios Platforms: Microsoft Windows , PS4 , Oculus Initial release date: 2020 I was already amused with the intricately designed puzzle boxes The Room VR: A Dark Matter was asking me to solve after its first couple levels, but the moment I was really sold on this eery VR puzzler was when it shrank me down to the size of a mouse to solve one from the inside. Its short series of fairly one-note challenges ultimately left me wanting more surprising moments like that, but Developer Fireproof Games has been making well-loved The Room games for more than eight years now, and the premise for the series is a fairly simple one: You’re dropped into a series of relatively small spaces (sometimes a single room, sometimes a series of connected ones) where you have to find clues in the environment and solve puzzles in order to complete a goal – in The Room VR’s case, you’re asked to find a handful of hidden relics. The Room VR: A Dark Matter Gameplay Screenshots The Room VR weaves these relics into a creepy, otherworldly plot about dark magic and invading monsters... I think? Honestly, I’m not totally sure. Its atmosphere is appropriately spooky throughout, but the story itself is poorly explained through a few hand-scrawled notes and brief glimpses of Myst-style FMV characters (one of whom so clearly seems to be wearing a fake rubber mask that it’s downright laughable), while also being completely pointless and unrelated to any of the puzzles you are actually solving. Though a villain was seemingly introduced, I genuinely have no idea who they were or what the ultimate threat was. Thankfully, I didn’t need any of that context to enjoy solving the puzzles at hand. The Room VR has three main levels – plus two short ones that mostly bookend the plot – each with an interesting theme (one is about Egyptian relics, while another is set in an old church) and a compelling set of challenges to best. Most of those take the form of more traditionally presented puzzle boxes, with your job being to twist a hidden piece, insert the right item, or find the correct combination to open part of it and be rewarded with your next clue – all of which is made more tactile and engaging when you get to use your actual VR hands to do that stuff. You’ll rarely just stand at a box until you find all its secrets. But what’s really nice about how The Room VR structures its puzzles is that you’ll rarely just stand in front of a box until you find all of its secrets and move on to the next one. Instead, clues and collectible objects intertwine – you may solve one part of a puzzle box only to get a pendant that you then need to take to another, which then gives you a clue for solving another, and so on. It adds a welcome bit of motion to the experience, and also frequently means there are multiple paths you could be making progress down at any given time. The Room VR also cuts out the impulse to check every little corner for clues by tying movement to predetermined teleportation points (with no free-movement option). That means you’ll only be able to go to a place if it has something useful for you within arms reach, which is certainly helpful even if it also makes puzzles a little more straightforward than I’d expected when I first arrived. Either way, I did appreciate that old points (and even objects you pick up) are often removed as options entirely when you’ve exhausted their purpose. Those little assistances feel necessary because the intuitive nature of VR muddles the clarity of what you can and can’t interact with at any given time. Part of the reason for that is because The Room VR really does look fantastic, and its intricately designed props are awesome to admire and inspect up close. But since the interactable bits of both the puzzle boxes and the environments around them blend into the decorative bits, I spent a lot of my time just grabbing at things to see if they were grabbable – which they frequently weren’t. Having every object bolted to the table unless you need to use it doesn’t feel great in VR, and can sometimes make figuring out solutions a matter of going through the motions rather than engaging in tricky problem solving. The moments I did get stuck were very rarely because a puzzle was too “hard,” but because the interactable nature of something just wasn’t made clear. There is a helpful built-in hint system I had to consult a couple of times, but doing so almost always made me go “Oh, I literally didn’t know I could interact with that,” rather than offering a moment of clever realization. It’s a shame that there’s just not much of this game total. That said, there were still plenty of very cool moments of cleverness thanks to a mechanic introduced in its church level: one that lets you shrink down and enter certain tiny openings. The first of these has you unlocking a cupboard by entering its keyhole and picking the lock from within by manually moving each pin, which was just awesome. Another great puzzle has you move the mechanisms inside a puzzle box at full size in order to build a bridge that you can then cross once shrunk down inside it. It’s a very weird and cool feeling, and one that absolutely takes advantage of what VR does well. It’s a shame that there’s just not much of this game total, though. The Room VR took me just over two hours to beat, which left me a bit startled when it was already over. While I certainly enjoyed what was there, I couldn’t help but want more of its cleverest ideas. This isn’t Fireproof Games’ fault, but in a post-Half-Life: Alyx VR world (that game’s hacking puzzles alone can be more challenging and more interesting than some similar ones The Room VR has to offer), this doesn’t feel like enough. Verdict The Room VR: A Dark Matter does a great job of making its interactive puzzle boxes more than just hunting for the right knob, often leaning into what VR does best by putting you into cool situations that are shown off in flashy and polished fashion. Unfortunately, there’s just not a lot of it here, and its intricate detail can occasionally cause confusion as you flail at the mostly inert world around you. Still, its two hours of puzzles were certainly worth solving.

Game Informations : Developer: Eugen Systems Publishers : Eugen Systems Platforms: Microsoft Windows Initial release date: 20 June 2019 A grandiose rendering of World War 2's Eastern Front, Steel Division 2 details Operation Bagration: The Red Army's back-breaking push against the Nazi war machine. It's an ambitious real-time strategy game, and though it ultimately fails to live up to a lot of that ambition—especially with its singleplayer campaign—the vastness of its battles captures the scale of total war with lavish detail. Operation Bagration was the June to August 1944 offensive that threw a huge number of the Soviet army's best troops against the German army in occupied Belarus and Poland. At the same time as the Normandy invasion thousands of kilometers away, the Soviet army surrounded and crushed Germany's Army Group Center, signaling the end for Germany in the east. The combatant divisions of troops in this game are weary veterans who have been at war for three years, many equipped with some of the most advanced weapons to be produced during the war. Others are fresh-faced conscripts and raw recruits, or back-line battalions forced into front line service by the onrushing offensive. You build your own customized divisions using the composition of these historical formations. Tactical battles are the heart of the game, real-time conflicts pitting dozens of units against each other in conflicts that feel real. Battles with 10 players on each team, each commanding a couple dozen units, feature prominently in online play and take place on a map so big you couldn't hope to support your furthest ally if you wanted to. It's warfare at a scale that inspires awe when you watch a replay. War Stories Steel Division 2 pushes realism as far as it can be pushed in the genre and still remain fun: A tank's main gun can fire massive distances—up to 2,000 meters—and even that kind of range doesn't scratch the width of a map. A multiple-rocket artillery piece can take minutes to reload. Infantry can fight for so long in urban warfare that they run completely dry of their thousands of rounds of ammunition, requiring you to bring in supply trucks with the next wave of reinforcements. SD2's tactical play forces you to care about details like force composition and deployment speed and how terrain affects the battlefield—and not in boring, simple ways, like Light Cover or Heavy Cover, but in a human scale that shapes the world your units move in. Two kilometers is a huge distance to ask your soldiers to charge on foot with people shooting at them. It's not a huge distance for the tank gun taking aim at your men. Matches are won or lost on the front line of combat, a colored line overlaying the field that pushes and pulls as units move. It's satisfying to shift, forming dynamic pockets and bulges and salients. New to SD2 are capture points, so battles are won by taking notable terrain features: hilltops, bridges, towns, roads. It's a marked improvement from the simple percentage of map control in Normandy '44. Interacting with that terrain is simple. The game's built-in range and line of sight checking tool is well made—it's hotkeyed to C—and sliding across the terrain to reveal high ground for overwatch or sheltered dells to advance along is a joy. Battles take place over three phases, A, B, and C, each of which escalates the fight, introduces new units, and changes your income of points to call in those units with. All of this is quite complex: there are systems for suppression, morale, armor penetration, resupply, repair, surrenders, shock, air combat, cover, and transports, and that isn't an exhaustive list. In an unforgivable sin, there is neither tutorial nor manual to help you learn the basics of the game. The UI is also woefully unequipped to direct you. How much fuel does this particular plane have left? Who are my soldiers shooting at? These are not things it will tell you at a glance. However, the result of all that complexity is a good, historical, tactical RTS. The scale of Steel Division 2 is grander than Normandy 44, and fielding a formation of 12 tanks or hundreds of infantry is no longer the exception in any given battle, it's the rule. The feel of it all fits the historical conflicts of the Eastern Front, battles that alternated between brutal frontal assaults and slick outmaneuvering. The maps play directly into this. Based on ordnance survey and aerial reconnaissance photography from the time, they have a remarkable fidelity and allow for tactical diversity. General disappointment One would hope that this fidelity would apply to Army General, the much-hyped single player campaign that scraps Normandy 44's scripted scenarios for a full-on strategic wargame. The sprawling Army General maps are a war table hundreds of kilometers square, each recreating a particular section of Operation Bagration. You’re given basic objectives and a historical layout of battalions to move about in turn-based rounds with your opponent. When you clash, you bring some of those battalions into real-time skirmishes. This sounds excellent, a partnership of real-time tactics and turn-based strategy. It is anything but. Army General suffers from a frustrating, terrible interface and poorly-explained, poorly-suited mechanics. It does have a manual, but one so vague as to be unhelpful. Units are moved around the map and attack via an action points system, but that system can be baffling to understand because it's married to real-world measurements in kilometers and an invisible grid overlay, with no indication as to why a battalion can't attack enemies or why it's moving so slowly even though you’re sure it's on a road and not in the adjacent swamp. It's the worst kind of wargame design: rote and derivative, detailed where it doesn't need to be, abstracted where it hurts most. The Army General mechanics even manage to throw off the tactical battles. Deployment phases are thrown out the window in favor of phases based on the position of the battalions on the map. (Which is finicky and frustrating, remember.) So sometimes you're stuck with no tanks, or no infantry, for half a fight. It's a bizarre choice for a game that otherwise prides itself on realism. Why would the recon group charge the German bunker line rather than wait 20 minutes for the tanks to show up? Worse, the AI is disastrously terrible at taking charge of allied battalions in these matches, turning from the otherwise-competent Skirmish partner into one that bull-headedly chooses a lane on the map and marches up it repeatedly. Also, you can't save during Army General battles, which can take an hour to resolve. Better together Despite the campaign's shortcomings, the multiplayer and skirmish warfare are still excellent. They feature some great innovations on Normandy '44. Command networks let you link your Leaders with a high-ranking officer for greater bonuses to those under their command. Radio-equipped artillery spotters let you lower aim time for your guns, so a well-placed spotter can increase the speed of your bombardments. They're both systems that play into the strength of Steel Division's gameplay: Planning, foresight, and careful deployment. The fights for prominent plateaus in particular are some of the most memorable struggles I've had in an RTS for a long time. Another player and I took up opposing positions in two woods on top of a large plateau in a map's center, with a field running east-west between us and a capture point in the middle. I got there first, the front line pushed out—the point was mine. I consolidated my position, using the high ground to support allies on either flank with anti-tank fire. I saw that enemies were bringing up some Panzer II light tanks, so I prepared machine guns and a medium tank. I realized too late that their infantry were assault units. Smoke shells made my carefully-prepared killing field moot, and their rush overwhelmed my riflemen while the light tanks flanked. The ridge was lost: I wrote off my surviving troops and saturated it with Katyusha rocket artillery. The new division building mechanics, on the other hand, are a misstep for the series. While in Normandy '44 each division's selection of units were locked to a particular phase, Steel Division 2 lets you take near any unit at any point—the tradeoff being that you can get more of the unit, or get it at a higher level of veterancy, if it appears in a later battle phase. It makes the process of readying a division for battle painfully fiddly. Do I want two Tigers in phase A, or four in phase B, or two veteran Tigers in phase B, or one elite in phase C? Moreover, it throws off the entire rhythm of the multiplayer matches. Phase A is no longer a tense maneuver of reconnaissance and light vehicles punctuated by a few heavy hitters, with a steady escalation from there culminating in a phase C of desperate last stands and heroic pushes for victory. The realism of phased deployment and careful force structure are out the window. Competitive multiplayer is now an exercise in brutal, calculated abuse of the forces available to you. Steel Division 2 is a good game buried under layers of frustrating obfuscation and burdened with a poor single player experience. Every time I was close to getting fully immersed, a new, ugly problem reared up to distract me. The ambitious bones of a truly great game are here, but ultimately it's hard to recommend this to anyone but those who already love the series' unique multiplayer.

Game Informations : Developer: Studio Ghibli , QLOC , Level-5 Publishers : Level-5 , Bandai Namco Entertainment , Sony interactive Entertainment , Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows , Nitendo Switch , PS3 , Nitendo DS Initial release date: 2019 Very few games look better than their sequels, but then Ni No Kuni is an exception to most rules. It makes its debut on PC after its successor, last year’s well-liked Revenant Kingdom, which took its visual cues from Wrath of the White Witch, but was made without the direct involvement of Studio Ghibli. This remaster doesn’t quite provoke the same saucer-eyed wonderment as the original did six years ago on PS3, but with Ghibli’s exceptional world building and typically gorgeous animation it’s still a beautiful thing. Before you get to its autumnal forests and icy grottoes, however, you’ll spend some time in the equally well-realised town of Motorville. When his mother dies, a young boy called Oliver travels to a fantastical world in the hope of bringing her back to life. He’s joined by Drippy, a teardrop-shaped fairy with a lantern dangling off the end of his nose, who is easily the best reason to stick with the English-language dub. Larking about and cracking wise in his rich Welsh burr—the highlight of what is a pretty terrific localisation all round—he’s one of the most appealing partner characters in any RPG. Some might find him overly chatty at times, but he’s always on the right side of annoying. Then again, Drippy does contribute to the game’s coddling approach to the problems you face, whether it’s a tricky boss or an environmental puzzle. Over the course of the game, Oliver gains a series of spells that let him unlock doors and chests, for example, or restore withered fungi into springy steps. He can even gather emotions from those with an excess of them: with permission, a lively villager will hand over their surplus exuberance so Oliver can perk up a lethargic guard, say. But the solution is almost always handed to you on a plate, giving you no room to work things out for yourself. I’m not sure its nannying tendencies are excused by the fact that it’s, y’know, for kids—children are brighter than games aimed at them often give them credit for. Blending command-based and real-time elements, the combat system isn’t nearly so straightforward. You can control Oliver—though the stick he starts out with has little effect, and the wand he gets a couple of hours in isn’t much of an improvement. So for the most part, you’re better leaving him on the sidelines and relying instead on a range of familiars, friendly creatures you’ll find throughout your adventure, and which you can feed and bond with between encounters. Positioning as well as timing is key: you’ll control your familiars directly, while giving them commands to attack, defend or dodge. Clear tells and long wind-ups for powerful attacks give you the chance to pull off counter-attacks or cause opponents to miss you, leaving them vulnerable for a short time. You’ll need to quickly collect the health and magic pickups that drop sporadically, and the rare golden orbs that allow for special attacks unique to each familiar. You’ll need to switch them out when they’re tired, while elemental strengths encourage you to chop and change depending on the opponents you’re facing. In places, it can feel fiddly and complex rather than deep, and in the early game you can get away with sending out your most powerful familiar and simply repeating the attack command. But when new characters and their familiars join your party, opening up new tactical possibilities—the AI isn’t perfect, but you can get them to focus on healing, or go all-out when a monster is stunned—it comes into its own. It may borrow various bits and pieces from other games but it combines them into something distinct. And though the monsters aren’t vintage Ghibli designs by any means, they’re still cute and characterful enough that you’ll likely grow quite attached to them. The story, by comparison, is more conventional, though a relentlessly punning script lends a bit of flavour to some fairly well-worn JRPG tropes. Find the great sages! Seek out the magical stones! As such, the appeal lies not in wondering what exciting plot development awaits you next (because, well, there aren’t any) but rather what gorgeous new setting you’re about to visit—and in Wrath of the White Witch, even the sewers are lovely. Technically speaking, it’s only a minor improvement over the original, though with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing and the option to uncap the frame rate make this the best-looking, best-performing version of an already handsome game. It helps no end to have Ghibli’s regular composer Joe Hisaishi on board: delicate and plaintive during the emotional moments, grand and sweeping in battle, his score makes the game sound almost as good as it looks. Your movement speed across the field map is slow, each trek to the next area punctuated by throwaway encounters against cannon-fodder enemies, but Hisaishi makes it all feel like an epic odyssey. As you progress, you’ll steadily fill up a lavish in-game tome that acts as a memento of your journey. It’s nice just to leaf through it every now and again to see how far you’ve come. On paper it sounds sickeningly sweet, though there are hints of the undercurrent of darkness that runs through Ghibli’s best work, even if it’s hardly Grave of the Fireflies. Wrath of the White Witch is traditional to a fault, and lacks the kingdom-building hook of its sequel, but it makes for a mostly pleasant, sporadically delightful, 40-plus hours of playful escapism.

Game Informations : Developer: Monolith Productions Publishers : Fox interactive , Mac Play , Sierra Entertainment , Vivendi Games , Vivendi , Imagineer , FoxNext , Wendros AB Platforms: Microsoft Windows , Mac OS , Play Station 2 Initial release date: 2014 No One Lives Forever review Hardly anybody does it better than Monolith does with this smart, cocky first-person spy thriller. At some point over the last couple of years, first-person shooters stopped having fun. I mean, they were still fun to play, but the developers seemed to shift away from the wide-eyed wonder of first-person action and delve instead into dark, somber, ultra-realist melodramas straight out of those awful gun-strapped paperbacks. No One Lives Forever is a welcome change: a swiftly paced, engaging adventure that cleverly mixes up gameplay styles. The plot is just like a nutty early Bond flick, the atmosphere is one of over-the-top Austin Powers Sixties grandeur, and the action shifts constantly from mode to mode as if you were playing a different game with each new mission. It's a ton of fun—like an old episode of Mission: Impossible as re-imagined by John Woo. Err… You play as Cate Archer, a predictably glamorous junior agent in the employ of UNITY, a secret international spy organization dedicated, hilariously, to stopping megalomaniacs. After UNITY's ranks are thinned by a vicious assassin, she's given access to Santa's Workshop, the tools-'n'-toys bureau of UNITY in which field agents are outfitted with the very latest in wild weapons and secret gadgets. A super-agent at last, it's time for Cate to roar. The first mission takes you to Morocco, where you have to guard the life of an ambassador. Here we get the first of a wide variety of gameplay modes: it's essentially a sniper game in this first sequence, as you pick off assassins from a hotel window and thwart the ambushes waiting for the ambassador as he moves through the level. This is where we first see how No One Lives Forever benefits from the realistic settings made possible by the LithTech 2.5 engine. The urban environment of Morocco—its city streets, the hotel, and the alleys interconnecting the map—are all rendered with exacting detail. The hotel lobby is filled with stuff—soda machines, potted plants, lounge chairs, throw rugs—all of which adds a weight of texture that's incredibly convincing. This same look and feel extends to the game's other locales, which include Berlin, the German Alps, and a tropical island hideaway. Each mission wields some devilishly varied action. In the Morocco stage alone, you'll move from a sniper nest to a more traditional alley-crawl to a motorcycle ride out to the coast, and finally (after a sweet Great Escape–style fence jump) on foot to storm a compound. Before the game is over, you'll have escaped a crashing plane (a brilliant sequence—you jump and free-fall to catch up with an enemy, then steal his parachute just in time for a full-on firefight in descent), leaped from a bridge onto a passing barge, scuba-dived to search a sunken freight ship, taken photos of secret files with a sunglasses-camera, and eventually made your way off-planet as a stowaway aboard a shuttle bound for an evil genius' space station. That's all in one game, folks! The value of all this variety can't be overstated. My biggest knock against almost any PC game these days is that it suffers from monotony. Soldier of Fortune, for example, is a ton of fun for the first couple of hours—but as soon as its novelty violence wore off, I got thoroughly bored with it, and fast. No One Lives Forever is aggressively new and different, mission by mission. You get an unbelievable amount of hardware to play around with, with each mission introducing new spy toys. The real-life weapons include a .38 revolver, an AK-47, an M79 grenade launcher, and even a Sportsman EX crossbow. Cate can stock up on dum-dum ammunition for increased destructive power, or phosphorous rounds when she needs to blast her way through total darkness. Sniper scopes, silencers, and laser targeting sights add to your killing power—and keep the shooter portion of the game from ever getting boring. And as far as gadgets go, there are some real doozies. Exploding lipstick grenades, anyone? Or how about a briefcase that conceals a built-in RPG? A perfume bottle that sprays acid? Let's just say the elves in Santa's Workshop produce lots of fun toys. Another huge appeal of the game, which again rewards mission by mission, is the fact that you can use multiple approaches successfully to complete objectives. Perhaps even more so than in the wonderful Deus Ex, No One Lives Forever convincingly allows you to use stealth to solve a lot of missions. Rather than just letting you slip behind the backs of guards, you need to worry about security cameras, attack dogs, and other hurdles to quiet progress. Or, if you say bollocks to the whole “sneaky” approach, you can get there even faster by going in guns a'-blazing. You won't be let down by the combat. The enemy AI is great: guards duck and cover, hide behind pillars, and scramble for their lives when caught out in the open. They react with far more plausibility than the bots in Quake III or Unreal Tournament. After you solve the single-player campaign (about 25 hours of gameplay), you can explore the multiplayer modes. They're mainly variations on standard deathmatch and team battle, but NOLF offers one very cool team mode in which one side plays as UNITY, the other as H.A.R.M. (the uproarious name for the insidious, well-financed anarchist group that emerges as the villain of the single-player game). In the team mode, maps from the single-player game are reconfigured for new, multi-team mission objectives, and the teams engage in a frenetic Spy vs. Spy scenario to win the day. The highest compliment I can pay No One Lives Forever is that it feels like I sampled five different games before reaching the end. And in an age where completing just one game can seem like a bit of a chore, this wildly varied adventure kept me hooked. If there's any real flaw, it's that the whole mood of the game is wacky enough to maybe turn some people off. Supposedly “secret” documents are lying out on park benches for the world to see. Goons wander the streets as if they were crossing guards. H.A.R.M. agents include a bloated Scotsman named Magnus Armstrong and a bloated German barmaid named Inge (both replete with absurd accents). An air of silliness is pervasive. It wasn't enough to bother me much, and at times I really appreciated the antics. But compare them to moments when trusted allies get killed, and Cate is crying, and suddenly the mood is supposed to be intensely real. It's a bit of a muddle, and for a game that devotes so much time to story-advancing cinematics, the whole feel should have been more consistent. But there's just no denying the fun factor of NOLF's many action sequences. You'll find a lot of gaming goodness packed into this box.

Game Informations : Developer: Koei tecmo games , Koei tecmo Holdings , Omega force Publishers : Bandai Namco Entertainment Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox one , Microsoft Windows Initial release date: March 27 , 2020 I thought I would be bored by the time I beat up my 500,000th marine lackey, but to my surprise, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 never let the smile fall from my face – except for when it’s trying to make me cry with its many faithfully recreated scenes of One Piece’s most emotional moments. One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is an Omega Force musou game through and through, letting you satisfyingly steamroll hundreds of thousands of enemies single handedly as powerful hero (or villain) characters. But it comes with most of the typical baggage that goes along with that distinction: it’s not the prettiest looking game in the world, there are lots of reused assets from prior games, and outside of a few select boss fights, its hoards of baddies offer very little resistance. The Greatest One Piece Moments of All Time That said, Pirate Warriors 4 managed to surprise me with a well thought out combat system that has a ton of variety strewn across its selection of more than 40 playable characters, excellent cooperative support, and a highly respectable retelling of One Piece’s absolutely massive story. Wealth, Fame, Power Pirate Warriors 4’s main story mode, Dramatic Log, attempts to summarize nearly 900 episodes worth of One Piece plot into a single 15-hour campaign. It’s an impossible task, to be frank, but a lot of effort was made to make these storybook-esque recaps as entertaining and informative as they can possibly be. Everything is fully voiced by the original Japanese cast; there’s a good mix of narration, still imagery, and scenes from the show recreated in-engine to keep things visually interesting; and when they do decide to go all out and do a full-on CG version of One Piece’s biggest moments, they always look and sound stunning with Omega Force’s signature guitar riff-heavy soundtrack pumping in the background, though many of those moments are straight-up reused from prior Pirate Warriors games. It’s also worth noting that if you’re coming into Pirate Warriors 4 as anything less than a gigantic One Piece fan who has watched everything up to the start of the currently airing Wano arc, you’re going to get spoiled big time. This definitely is not a replacement for actually watching the show. Pirate Warriors 4 covers six main arcs: Alabasta, Enies Lobby, the Paramount War, Dressrosa, Whole Cake Island, and a shoddily thrown together original version of the Wano arc that exists solely to give Pirate Warriors 4 an actual ending since the real Wano arc isn’t finished yet. Those who played Pirate Warriors 3 may get a little bit of deja vu, as the only completely new arcs are Whole Cake Island and Wano, but Pirate Warriors 4 goes much deeper into each of them than its predecessor, with every arc consisting of at least six missions. Each chapter has its own selection of playable characters to choose from, with some levels restricting you to just the one character that’s relevant to the story, while others allow you to choose from a wide variety of heroes that are present in the scene. I always jumped at the opportunity to try out a new character, and fortunately, those opportunities presented themselves at just about every turn. It was this variety that kept Dramatic Log fun and interesting throughout its 15 hour length, despite the repetition inherent to Pirate Warriors 4’s gameplay. Dramatic Log is the main course of Pirate Warriors 4, but there’s also the Treasure Log mode which is a series of mostly context-less levels that come with their own rewards and ready-made challenges. Just about everything in Pirate Warriors 4 can be played with two-players co-op in split-screen, but certain levels in Treasure Log can also be played with four players online, and have unique objectives as a result, which is great. Multiplayer is definitely a strong suit for Pirate Warriors 4, especially considering how easy it is to pick up, smash some buttons, and watch the fireworks fly. Take it to the Sky(piea) If you’ve played a musou game before, you know what to expect from Pirate Warriors 4 on a base level. This is a game all about simple button presses leading to impressive actions. One that treats enemies like they’re a million styrofoam peanuts and the player like they’re a leaf blower. This is a game all about simple button presses leading to impressive actions. Pirate Warriors 4 adds a few interesting wrinkles to the fold, mainly the ability for every character to utilize air combos, which actually does a lot to further differentiate its roster. By pressing the jump button in the middle of a combo, characters take everything around them up into the air where they have an all-new series of attacks. Some characters, like Sanji, absolutely thrive in the air where they can use multiple special moves to deal big damage or utilize a buff that gives them unlimited stamina, which allows them to continuously cancel and restart combos with an air dash to stay in the air for as long as they want. Other characters, like Jimbei, are hopeless in the air and basically need to be on the ground in order to do significant damage. The gameplay is super fast. With the ability to connect a three to four-hit ground combo, then launch enemies up for another combo, then combo that into a special move, which can then be canceled into more air combos, there’s just a ton of frenetic movement that always keeps the action fluid and exciting. Despite that though, the implementation of aerial combat is not perfect. Some characters are given the ability to fly freely, but the controls are messy. There’s no way to control your height, which can make it frustratingly difficult to actually hit enemies when you’re above them, and sometimes characters can move so fast that it can be hard to actually focus on a single enemy like a commander or boss if you need to take them down first. Above all else though, Pirate Warriors 4 is a One Piece power trip, and it’s a really good one at that. Just about every character feels insanely strong in their own satisfying way. Luffy in particular feels nigh unstoppable when he transforms into either of his Gear Four forms, but especially when he’s in Bounce Man form and starts charging up a Kong Gun that ominously looms over the heads of hundreds of helpless enemies that are about to get sent flying. Omega Force has done a great job with its progression mechanics as well. Not only does each character have their own skill trees that build upon their arsenal of unique moves and stats, but there’s also a universal skill tree that provides bonuses to all characters. It’s a nice system that forces you to make some interesting decisions when it comes to stats with regards to whether you spend resources making everyone a little bit stronger, or you focus in on making a single character stronger that you might only use for one level. Between the 15-hour story mode, the many additional hours that it’ll take to complete Treasure Log, and unlockable characters that are tied to getting S ranks on missions, there’s a ton of worthwhile content in Pirate Warriors 4 that will keep me busy for quite some time. Verdict One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is a great One Piece game, and though it wears its many flaws on its sleeveless, red button-down top and straw hat, its smart additions to combat go a long way in reducing the notorious tedium that typically plagues the musou genre. It’s still a tough sell to a non-One Piece fan, but as someone who absolutely loves One Piece and was only just sort of into Musou games, I found a ton to like in Pirate Warriors 4.

Game Informations : Developer: nWay Games , Animoca Publishers : nWay Games , Limited Run Games , Lionsgate Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox one , Google stadia , Microsoft Windows Initial release date: 2019 Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a great example of how far rock-solid mechanics and strong characters can take a fighting game, even when everything else is working against it. This nostalgia-fest has the look of a free-to-play mobile game, a complete lack of voice acting, a barebones set of modes and features, only nine characters, only five stages, repetitive and generic music, all on top of the stigma of being based off a licensed property not known for having a great video game track record. But against all odds, underneath all of that beats the heart of a fighting system developed with thought, care, and an obvious love for 2D tag fighting games. Battle for the Grid is a 3-on-3 tag fighter with a four-button combat system consisting of light, medium, heavy, and special attacks, much like Dragon Ball FighterZ. Also, like FighterZ, there are no complicated button inputs for special moves, with every move being performable by pressing a direction and a button. The result is a fighting system that all but removes the executional barrier of entry and focuses instead on fundamentals, which is great because the simplicity of the combat system is complemented by much more complex tag mechanics and a wild array of special moves that will have skilled players mixing opponents up like batter. The comeback mechanic is unique and totally in line with the Power Rangers brand. Beyond that, much of the depth comes from push blocks, armored EX moves, super moves, and a big, satisfying comeback mechanic in the form of a one-time use ultra attack that calls either a Megazord, Dragonzord, or Mega Goldar to use extremely powerful attacks that cover nearly the entire screen for a short time. The comeback mechanic is especially great, as it's unique, totally in line with the Power Rangers brand, and succeeds as a way to turn the tide of a losing match in your favor without feeling like a cheap win button. Battle for the Grid borrows its wonderful tag mechanics primarily from BlazBlue Cross Tag battle, and it works just as well here. You can call in an assist to have them do an attack, but then you also have the option to take control of the assist and tag your other character out, allowing you to convert combos off throws and continue combos with assists in fun and interesting ways. While there are only nine characters in Battle for the Grid, which is a paltry number by any measure, they are at least all extremely well defined and fun to play. Most typical fighting game archetypes are covered: Kat is a hyper rushdown-focused character, Tommy and Jason are great all-rounders that can do a little bit of everything, Mastodon Sentry and Ranger Killer are extremely effective zoners, Goldar and Magna Defender are the big, slow bruisers that dish out huge damage with just a few successful hits, Gia is a mid-range-focused powerhouse, and Drakkon fills the role of the tricky character with his highly technical mixups and move set. The main issue with Battle for the Grid is that everything surrounding its fundamentally solid and fun fighting system is utterly lacking. It’s not a very appealing game to look at, coming across as a marginally better-looking version of the Power Rangers: Legacy Wars mobile game and nowhere near up to the standard of the recent surge of fighting games; there’s virtually no voice acting outside of the announcer at the start of a match and a couple of monstrous growls from Goldar; the music is generic soft rock that quickly becomes repetitive because there are only five themes across the five stages; Arcade Mode is a bust, with virtually no story and poor AI; Training Mode lacks the basic function of being able to record and playback moves; there are plenty of graphical and sound bugs; and there’s no option to rematch in online play. To be fair, Battle for the Grid is a budget-priced game with $20 for the standard version at launch, and the content offered certainly matches up with its reduced price. There is also a $40 Collector’s Edition with the Season One pass, featuring three additional fighters down the line and a few skins, which seems of much more questionable value. There seem to be some substantial online bugs relating to blocking. Battle for the Grid will ultimately live or die based on the community that develops around it. Online play has been mostly solid on wired ethernet, but playing wirelessly on Switch had frequent drops in connection and otherwise laggy play, so I’d recommend avoiding wifi if possible. There also seem to be some substantial bugs that are exclusive to online play relating to blocking. In several matches, I experienced issues with consistently getting hit by lows despite doing nothing but holding crouch block, and also getting hit by normal jump-ins despite doing nothing but holding standing block. Hopefully, nWay is able to fix it because it really hurts the online experience. Verdict: There are some surprisingly good fighting game mechanics in Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, but there’s very little meat on that skeleton. A well-rounded roster of fun, nostalgic characters is represented poorly by dated graphics, slapdash presentation, and – most damningly – a lack of meaningful single-player content, other modes, characters, and stages. It’s a solid start for developer nWay’s first foray into the fighting game genre, but there’s a long way to go to make Power Rangers a contender in a space that’s become crowded with high-quality games.

Game Informations : Developer: Tokyo RPG Factory Publisher: Square Enix Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows Initial release date: 2019 It can be a lot of fun beating up mean ghosts while possessed by helpful ghosts to eventually free wayward ghosts from their earthly attachments, as I discovered in Oninaki’s stylish action RPG world. Some of the basics of combat feel a bit too clunky and repetitive for it to ascend all the way to the heavens, but the mature storytelling, captivating art, and excellent music had me wanting to stick around like an unfulfilled spectre. While Oninaki’s art style comes across as almost childlike, it works in service of a story that explores lots of deep, dark questions about death, uncertainty, and how we cope with those things. You play as a Watcher, a sort of morally ambiguous ghost cop responsible for making sure departed souls re-enter the cycle of reincarnation rather than hanging around as shadows of their former selves in the spirit world. Sometimes this means going as far as executing someone who can’t let go of the deceased so they can both be at peace, setting a clear tone early on that your journey is going to take you to some disturbing, thought-provoking places. The way that story is told is fairly linear and typical for a JRPG, with too much talking and not enough showing at times. The earlier missions carry an undercurrent of a coherent plot, but largely come across as a series of disjointed anecdotes without much flow between them or relation to a larger, ongoing quest. One of the highlights was getting to discover the buried memories of each of my Daemons – restless spirits who possess willing Watchers to enhance their combat abilities. Every Daemon was someone troubled in life with a secret reason for sticking around as a ghost, and I enjoyed getting to know them little by little as I leveled them up. Ghost-umization Daemons aren’t just there to add to the story, though. Each one also gives you a completely new playstyle to experiment with. Aisha, your first Daemon, is a katana master focused on fast strikes and great mobility. Zaav is a heavily-armored knight with a far-reaching lance and strong defensive abilities. Since each one changes everything from your movement to your basic attack capabilities, they are like playing a totally different class or character. Switching out on the fly brings some needed variety to the combat, though I often found I would mostly level one Daemon up and use them the vast majority of the time. There weren’t a lot of places where I felt like I really needed to pick the right fighting style for the task at hand, as opposed to the one I was most comfortable with. Since each Daemon is like playing a totally different class or character. There’s quite a bit of customizability with each Daemon, as well. They all possess extensive skill trees and can be equipped with up to three secondary skills, from ranged energy blasts to deadly cross-slashes. Add in the fact that each of these abilities can be upgraded with modifiers like doing more damage or generating more Affinity – a resource that lets you be fully possessed by your Daemon and go into a Super Saiyan-like mode for a limited time – and there are more combinations than I even had time to try. And that’s without getting into the straightforward but satisfying gear system that features upgrading weapons and modifying their properties by slotting in relics called Shadestones. When it comes to character customization, Oninaki doesn’t slouch. Despite all of this, I found the combat to be a little bit unwieldy and repetitive at times. The further into the game I got, the less pronounced this was, with increasing enemy diversity and unlocking new Daemons and abilities. But it never fully went away. Certain abilities, like the movement powers that are vital for avoiding strong attacks, never quite felt responsive enough. A lot of targeted strikes like Aisha’s Tranquil Mind, seemed to miss about half the time on smaller enemies even if it looked like I lined it up right. Using the right stick to aim often over-corrects for tiny nudges instead of actually pointing in the direction I’m pushing. I just got a lingering sense every time I was in combat that there were a few screws that needed some tightening for everything to feel as satisfying as it should. The graphics and the music don’t need any such tweaking, though. The characters, enemies, and environments are colorful but muted, supporting the feeling of traveling through a fairy tale land with lots of hidden pain and sadness lingering just below the surface. Somber mood pieces effectively accentuate many heartbreaking story moments that I didn’t see coming. And the boss music, which is energetic and woven with Celtic flair, is downright excellent. The bosses themselves are well-designed, challenging fights that could have really shined in a game with slightly tighter combat. Each is larger-than-life, ready to demolish you with fluid, impactful animations and plenty of tricks up their sleeves to keep you on your toes. Some of the normal enemies, especially later on, show a bit of this cunning. But just as often, I’d see a small group of them standing around doing nothing as if their AI had bugged out or something, even after being attacked. Verdict Oninaki is a gorgeous, distinctive, entertaining RPG that isn’t afraid to explore some heavy themes in novel and thought-provoking ways. It never rises above the fact that the combat feels like it’s not quite there. And at times, it can be overly wordy in the fashion that JRPGs often are. But its dark, beautiful world is a place I never tired of exploring, and the in-depth progression and customization systems provided plenty for my inner D&D nut to sink his teeth into.

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Game Informations : Developer: Voidpoint LLC Publisher: 3D Realms / 1C Company Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Linux Initial release date: 2019 There are two ways to play a neo-retro shooter like Ion Fury. One: embrace its zippy movement like you're speedrunning a '90s action movie, twitching and snapshotting your way through corridors. Two: meticulously run your eyes and hands along every pixelated surface until you've combed the entire map for secrets. 2019 is tiny renaissance for new FPSes inspired by old FPSes. Where Amid Evil and Dusk conjured the spirit of Quake and Heretic, Ion Fury is published by the company that created Duke Nukem 3D, in a retrofitted version of the original Build Engine. It's the gaming equivalent of a band reuniting for a new album 20 years later. Ion Fury does recreate many of the things that made Duke Nukem 3D great. An action hero's arsenal. Cheesy one-liners. Bright, expansive environments are dense with enemies and hard-to-spot secret passages. At one point I had to stun an enemy with my electrified baton, crouch-jump onto their skull, and leap to a ledge in order to reach a hidden area. But as it doubles down on the past, Ion Fury retains some of that era's limitations, too: dead-simple boss behavior, paper-thin storytelling, and a modest feeling of repetition toward the end of its 10-hour campaign. Still, it's potent nostalgia for anyone with affection for or curiosity about '90s FPSes. Despite its deep connection to Duke Nukem, Ion Fury's tone is surprisingly different. Supercop heroine Shelly Hamilton (originally written as Duke's sidekick in Duke Nukem Forever) isn't the crass, over-the-top parody that her crew-cutted cousin is. She drops catchphrases, but they aren't crude. The enemies she shoots are similarly serious, an army of cloaked soldiers and a few spooky man-machine hybrids that are miles away from pig cops in a strip club. Ion Fury feels a little more like RoboCop Doom—self-aware, but not truly silly—than it does Duke Nukem, then. And while I think that the game's setting is actually one of its best aspects, there were times that I missed the outright stupidity of Duke, particularly in Ion Fury's relatively vanilla weapon set. You've shot most of these guns before. Generally 3D Realms' approach is to take the genre staples that've sat along your keyboard's number keys for years and plug in little variations on the alt fire button. You can dual-wield the SMGs, which ignite enemies with incendiary ammo. You can spin the chaingun without firing it, like Team Fortress 2's Heavy. You can load the shotgun with shells or pipe grenades, which doesn't so much feel like an exciting alt-fire mode as it does a way of merging two conventional weapons. The guns are a little too familiar. Given its mad scientist villain and near-future setting, I wanted Ion Fury to put something ridiculous in my hands. The closest the game comes to a bona fide BFG are explosive discs that erupt into a fat cloud of cluster bombs. And there's the Bowling Bomb, a rolling grenade that homes-in on enemies when you charge it up—playful, but a little too fire-and-forget for my liking. It feels good to crack open a door and detonate an entire room with one of these throwables, but you can find weirder weapons in Duke Nukem fan mod Alien Armageddon, which offers rolling turret bots, an ice cannon, and an RPG that lobs miniature nukes. Is it wrong to expect a retro shooter to deliver something new? Other gripes: I don't love how effective the shotgun is at longer ranges because it means I rarely put it down. Auto-aim kicks in occasionally and can't be disabled, a particular annoyance on single-shot guns like the energy crossbow. The weapons individually underwhelm, but they work well enough as a team. Like most great '90s FPSes, Ion Fury feels best when you sprint into danger and then improvise your way out of it, cycling between five or six guns as you crouch-dodge, circle-strafe, run out of ammo, and lunge for a health kit. Headshots are a welcome modern detail, and the feeling of melting Ion Fury's basic enemy with a single revolver flick doesn't get old. Runner-up: rebounding a pipe grenade off a door frame to frag the cultist waiting inside. Ion Fury's hand-placed enemies are often waiting to ambush you around corners, and they put up a good fight. Cyborg skulls with spider legs hang on the ceiling ready to jump on you if you don't look up. Legless jetpack monstrosities fling lines of micro rockets at you, filling corridors with splash damage. My favorites were the mobile minibosses which emerge halfway through the game and finally forced me to backpedal. It's crucial to pick a difficulty level that challenges you, as you can't change this setting mid-campaign (although Ion Fury's seven chapters can be launched individually). But Ion Fury's chapter bosses are less reliable. They certainly check the nostalgia box with their simple scripting and exploitability. At their best, you're jumping around a big room at full speed in order to beat them, emptying every gun you're carrying. At their worst, you're standing still and unloading eight uninterrupted grenades into a cybernetic tank man who's been outsmarted by stairs. 3D Realms' reluctance to bring too much of the present into Ion Fury hurts the game here. If they Build it, we'll come Developer Voidpoint's love of the genre is tangible inside Ion Fury's levels. I love the game's color palette, the coat of blue-grey textures and sprites that stay with you as you shoot your way through slightly-futuristic cities and underground labs, walls that are coated with variously easy-to-spot references to Doom, Duke, Half-Life, and other games of the era. The whole world feels like its been marinating in its own juices since 1996, and almost every corner feels hand-crafted. At one point I stumbled into a Hogan's Alley police training course mixed with paper targets and enemies. Behind a bar, I threw Bowling Bombs down a literal bowling alley crawling with cyborg spiders. A couple of dank, muddy sections are the only exception. True to its retro inspiration, Ion Fury relies almost entirely on colored security keycards to gate progress through these levels. And even truer to those Nukem roots, the other way that Ion Fury opens doors is with explosions (these are so frequent that Shelly eventually remarks in exasperation that every time she touches a button, something blows up). These paths are laid out elegantly. Every level builds in an amount of fun backtracking, and subtle signposting means that you feel smart when you make your way through the maze. It's worth noting that Ion Fury's Build Engine backbone doesn't present any technical issues. The game supports widescreen resolutions and an FOV range of 70-120, and an fps cap of 240—Ion Fury is one of the rare games that you'll probably be able to hit that ceiling if you're running a variable refresh display. Quicksave and quickload are right there on F6 and F9, but you can limit the number of saves or disable checkpoints for a more spartan experience. Even alongside other recent, excellent retro FPSes, Ion Fury reminds us of how much this period of PC gaming has to offer. It's surely the best thing that's ever happened in the Build Engine, and although limitations of enemy and weapon design reveal themselves over time, the swift movement and sleek maps make Ion Fury a worthy indulgence in the past.