I don’t know how it happened, but I played Red Dead Redemption on Xbox 360 back in the day, got about 90 minutes in and dropped it entirely. I wish I could explain why, but I just don’t know. When the Switch port came along though, I thought it might be an opportunity to give this game another try – I like the Wild West as a setting, it’s got action, politics, human stories and some real depth to explore that I might appreciate more now than I did a decade ago.

After finally playing through Red Dead Redemption in its new Switch version, what I’ve found is a technically-strong port of a game from 2010, with all the baggage that comes from a game that’s now thirteen years old. It’s one I’m glad I finally got around to playing, but that wasn’t without its issues.

Red Dead Redemption drops you right into the declining American frontier of 1911. The Wild West idea is still alive, but is threatened by a looming ‘federal government’ and industrialisation. The feds have asked our protagonist and ex criminal gang member, John Marston, to hunt and kill the gang mates of his past life in exchange for the safety of his wife and child. As John, you’re unleashed onto the expansive open world of America amidst a time of great change, where cars and factories are changing the world.

While the game’s Grand Theft Auto DNA is immediately apparent in the way characters move and the mission-centric structure to its open world – Red Dead’s setting lends it quite a different feel to its modern forebears. The overall play area is fairly vast, being set near what is now the USA-Mexico border and allowing you to explore a pretty sizeable (especially for the time) area full of towns, cities and other locations of interest.

The feel of actually playing Redemption though is the first hint that this ground-breaking game from 2010 is beginning to show its age. Moving John feels rather clunky, he has a certain heft to him that makes small movements feel overly heavy. His animations (and those of pretty much every human in the game) look positively wooden by modern standards. Movement on a horse feels a bit more natural, but when combat is mixed in can become a bit messy. Combat generally is fairly imprecise, though this is helped out massively by the generous auto-aim which is on by default. It’s nothing bad enough to kill my enjoyment of the game, just something to get used to.

Redemption’s story was a little all over the place for me. I quite liked John Marston as a character. He’s ineffably cool in any situation and willing to do what must be done to complete his mission and ensure the safety of his family. The open nature of the story can introduce some real strange dissonance in his character, however. A major part of the story involves two warring factions in Mexico, a group of revolutionaries and a military force they oppose. RDR has John helping them both out – it’s a little bizarre to go from one mission helping the revolutionaries fight their oppressors and build relationships with important people in the revolution, but then the very next mission start murdering the very revolutionaries you were helping a moment ago without the slightest acknowledgement by the game of how utterly strange this is.

The overall arc of the game’s core characters is damned compelling though. The main antagonists especially get a chance to shine as people who made a name for themselves in a world that is rapidly disappearing. Seeing giants of the old west manage their identity through the death throes of the way of life that defined them is a highlight.

I found myself getting pleasantly lost in Redemption’s rendition of the American frontier. It’s an intriguing setting that allows larger-than-life characters to shine and show how they either adapted to a changing world or were left behind by it. Riding across vast deserts, helping people in distress, assaulting gang compounds and just taking in the beautiful environments of America and Mexico was great fun.

Even with this vast environment to explore, I found the Switch port never missed a beat performance-wise. It’s a 30-frames-per-second presentation, but that 30FPS felt solid and consistent throughout, making gameplay pleasantly smooth and responsive as a result. I did encounter occasional bugs that forced me to close and re-open the game to progress, which is disappointing, but a generous auto save meant I never lost too much time.

The post Red Dead Redemption (Switch) Review – Once Upon A Time in the West appeared first on Press Start.

Along with their ability to earnestly tackle grave subject matter, one thing that has always grabbed me about the catalogue from Deconstructeam is how concise, to-the-point, and economical they are in telling their stories. Although they might dance about to fill in the periphery of the main conflict, the way they’re effectively one-act stage plays grabs my attention. The Red Strings Clubs had its eponymous bar, the thrilling Gods Will Be Watching served a number of one-scene scenarios, and their latest title, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is set almost entirely upon an asteroid in the lonesome void of space. 

This isn’t a sisterhood of the travelling pants variety, what we’re presented in The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a witches’ coven on the verge of a leadership spill. You play as Fortuna, who has been relieved of her Tarot deck and condemned to the outer reaches of space for millennia. Early in the piece, and restless from serving a couple of centuries of her sentence, Fortuna breaks Magical Law to summon Abramar, an all-powerful Behemoth, to her beck and call. And like a spoiled brat, inconsiderate of the cost, she signs a pact with the Behemoth and is granted the faculties to craft a deck of her own and peer behind fate’s curtain once more. 

It wouldn’t be a Deconstructeam game if it didn’t have something to say, and Cosmic Wheel’s big themes include identity, living with a community, and, of course, the destructive results that trail in the wake of those irresponsible with their power. Framing all of that within the context of a witches’ coven makes for an ingenious premise that I couldn’t get enough of. Further to that, as witches are inherently women the cast is refreshingly made up almost entirely of strong, literally powerful, women even if a few take unconventional, mythical forms like the deer folk and the coven’s eldest who is an actual tree.

I always love how hands-on and personal the game mechanics feel in a Deconstructeam title. They never for a second feel at odds with the often-deeply private conversations that serve as the foundation for the game’s narrative and core loop. In fact, it’s often specifically entwined.

This time, instead of mixing drinks and hand-moulding implants out of genetic clay, you’re crafting, card-by-card, a new divination deck. By combining a number of pre-designed elements like backgrounds and arcana, you can create some truly unique designs that can bring on feelings of confrontation, confoundment, and all things in between. The game will spit out a charming title for your card along with a vague horoscope that stitches together the elements used to create something that feels forbidden and yours. Each of the pieces has a cost attached that, when placed, will draw from the four elements of magic held close in your grimoire: air, water, fire, and earth.

Although time becomes another “currency” you spend in the game’s last act, think of your grimoire as your magical bank balance. You can withdraw from the power source to devise new cards, and make deposits through readings with the many visitors that darken your door. Eventually, as you grow more powerful and are gifted more ominous arcana, you’ll be able to dispel old cards at your cauldron. Think of this function as a respec that returns all spent points back to your kitty, which I think is great because you’re never stifled by a lack of resources to hop in and create a new card. 

Creating a deck is just one part of the puzzle, it’s ultimately worthless without susceptible folk to give hope to. Fortunately, Abramar’s pact grants visitor privileges to Fortuna to soften the remaining cycles of exile she faces and, as such, serves her with a lot of opportunities to practice her art. Old friends, arbiters, and familiar faces from Fortuna’s pre-ascension years, all witches alike, interchangeably cross the cosmos to visit your little pit stop to talk shop and get a glimpse at the future that awaits them.

Like is so often the case, the conversations feel like the centerpiece of the experience. They’re really esoteric exchanges that lean full-weighted on philosophical ponderings about big concepts like defining the self, power abuse, Spider-Man’s great ethos about responsibility that’s even referenced tongue-in-cheek in-game, and, in the last act especially, communal politics. 

It was hard not to adore the insightful dialogue and writing in Cosmic Wheel, it’s brilliant and clever and never misses its mark with the message it’s hammering home. During the last act, as the pre-election campaigning to replace the coven’s figurehead rages on, all of the chatter is framed with the limits of a ticking clock that corners the player into a brief bout of time management that feels like an odd departure compared to the rest of the game’s chill pace.

For a narrative reason I won’t spoil, the implied stress of managing these resources is kind of artificial which does undercut the intended tension. It feels like a cut scene from Gods Will Be Watching, which does all of the things the last act tries to do but better. 

Of all the interpretations we’ve had of witches in popular culture, I do wholeheartedly think The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood’s take is the most quirky and special I’ve perhaps ever seen. They don’t entirely do away with the pointy hats and bubbling cauldron, but having the story be a centuries-spanning tale told largely aboard an asteroid roving against a star-speckled backdrop felt note-perfect and grand in a way most supernatural stories don’t.

I’m certainly glad the team didn’t do away with their signature art style for this game. In fact, keen-eyed players will notice several nods to the team’s back catalogue whether it’s the Red Strings Club itself or the elderly gardener from Essays on Empathy. While the cards we’re able to make in-game feel like they’re limitless in terms of creative potential, it’s impressive that the game’s established universe can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with just about anything I could conjure up. 

More than any of Deconstructeam’s other titles, I feel as though lore is packed into, and realised through beautiful pixel art, every inch of space here and it’s a story simply bursting with originality. 

The post The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood Review – Fresh From The Coven appeared first on Press Start.

I’m a big earbuds wearer in my everyday life, taking a pair of AirPod Pro 2 with me everywhere I go, but for obvious reasons, in the gaming world, I’d often stuck to bulky over-ear headphones. Ahead of Sony’s official wireless earbuds dropping later this year, Razer has dropped officially licensed PlayStation earbuds in the Hammerhead Hyperspeed earbuds that do a pretty fine job.

As far as connectivity goes, the earbuds connect to the PS5 via a USB-C dongle that means that latency is actually quite good when gaming. They can also simultaneously connect to a mobile device via Bluetooth which is great for taking calls or watching TikToks whilst gaming, but also great as it means you can take them out of the house to use for everyday life.

From a comfort level, they’re a little bit bigger than most in-ear earbuds, but they’re light and fit nicely with a range of tips included in the box.

You can’t have a premium audio experience without active noise cancelling and the Hammerhead Hyperspeed earbuds have both active noise cancelling with the ability to also use a transparency mode to let audio in at a heightened rate. It’s not the best noise cancelling that I’ve experienced, but it does a decent job due to the good fit of the earbuds.

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Similarly, there’s dual noise cancelling microphones, which again, are pretty serviceable but not the best that you’ll find in a gaming headset, but you’re choosing comfort over having the best of the best.

The audio quality is pretty fantastic with a wide soundstage and decent bass listening to a range of games and music, I was pretty happy with the audio coming through the buds, but my only minor criticism being it was maybe on the softer side.

What I really love about Razer products is that they have great app connectivity, and the Hammerhead is no exception. You can connect to an app on your phone to quickly swap between ANC modes, change EQ settings and also a range of other settings and function on the fly.

This is especially useful in this case, as the controls on the Hammerhead aren’t the most intuitive and often a little hard to use, but this becomes a non-issue with the app being connected with Bluetooth.

It wouldn’t be a Razer product without RGB, and the Hammerhead earbuds both have the signature Razer logo with fully customisable RGB, which is a little over the top, but there if you want it.

@shannongrixti

The first wireless PS5 earbuds have arrived in the Razer Hammerhead Hyperspeed earbuds #PS5 #PlayStation5 #PlayStation #Headphones #Earbuds #Razer

? original sound – Shannon Grixti | Gaming & Tech

You can expect to get roughly 5-6 hours of charge with each earbud, and an additional 30 or so hours with the case, which makes for fairly long gaming sessions. Obviously, you can just put one of them back in the case to charge whilst gaming with the other as well.

Really, at $270, if you’re looking for a comfortable wireless earbuds experience, I recommend the Razer Hammerhead Hyperspeed earbuds, at least until we have more information about Sony’s official wireless earbuds.

The post Razer Hammerhead Hyperspeed PS5 Wireless Earbuds Review – Pure Comfort appeared first on Press Start.

The original Moving Out was not only one of the more successful and charming runs at the “chaotic co-op sim” crown worn at the time by the likes of Overcooked, but it was a neat little Aussie success story with the folks at SMG Studio behind the wheel of the world’s hardest-working removalist truck. Fast forward three years and the team is back with a full-on sequel, revisiting the concept with an itemised list of new ideas and an already-solid foundation to build on and around.

As someone who’s just done the end-of-lease moving dance, a journey I had the distinct privilege of paying what might have been the world’s worst professional movers to accompany me on, I was excited to jump back into Moving Out to prove that I could have done an infinitely better job at it myself. Forgetting, of course, that the poor folks at Smooth Moves Inc. have a lot more to deal with than millennials with too many overpriced gaming collectibles to fret over.

Moving Out 2 opens with an excellent animated intro that perfectly captures the vibe of its 80s setting, before launching into its sizeable campaign. The team at Smooth Moves has run into a spot of bother after their boss, a sentient cardboard-box-person, accidentally rips open the fabric of time and space during an attempt to boost company efficiency by 90% with 90% less employees – a classic workplace caper. With the town of Packmore sporting some fresh new gaping portals into alternate universes, it’s up to you and the Smooth Moves crew to put everything back in its rightful place and restore order to the moververse, one truckload at a time.

The game’s campaign follows a pretty similar structure to before with a handful of “worlds” containing multiple levels (over 50 in total this time around) to play through, gradually unlocked as you complete objectives and raise your F.A.R.T. (Furniture Arrangement and Relocation Technician) ranking.

Each level presents its own spin on the task of loading up your truck with the correct bits of furniture, appliance and decor within a time limit. Like last time, what starts out as a mad dash to get everything in the truck as fast as possible while fighting intentionally-wobbly physics and physical conundrums in early stages quickly becomes so much more with out-of-this-world levels adding new opportunities and challenges outside of the realm of good customer service.

One level might see you and your team attempt to sort magical baubles onto their corresponding freight trains, or use drones to carve out new paths or cross chasms, there are even levels designed around moving in which challenge players to put items from the truck into their correct places within a building. Without spoiling too much, the situations in Moving Out 2 get a lot more wacky a lot faster than in the original, almost to a fault. There were times when I’d be flinging giant candies into basketball hoops with a slingshot or jumping through magical portals and wished I was just hilariously trying to drag an L-shaped couch through a narrow hallway or flex my Tetris skills to fix the horrendous packing job my partner had done on the truck.

It’s ultimately a good problem to have though, as the majority of Moving Out 2’s gimmicks make for a perfect blend of problem solving, teamwork and laugh-out-loud catastrophe when playing with others – which remains the undisputed best way to play this game. Whether you’re playing in couch co-op or (for the first time in this sequel) cross-platform online with up to three others, the game does a great job of scaling the challenge of its frankly loopy concepts for all team sizes and skills. I did find that a few levels veer wildly into overly punishing or absurdly easy territory seemingly at random, but with so many on offer a couple of duds doesn’t hurt too much.

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There are also some great assist options on-hand to help smooth things out if the team isn’t gelling or on even ground in terms of capabilities, like extended time limits, lighter items or even the ability to have objects disappear into the ether once they’re on the truck to make packing easier. I can’t speak so much to the actual accessibility of the experience but the settings there are fairly basic. With increased gameplay and visual complexity in the sequel it might still present some insurmountable hurdles, but the assists are definitely a welcome feature. The game manages to get a pass on some frustratingly inconsistent control and collision stuff as well, purely by virtue of frustrating inconsistency being its whole schtick, but it does wear a bit for anyone genuinely trying to achieve those Pro times and extra challenges.

SMG has absolutely nailed the presentation though, building on the visual blueprint set out by its predecessor and polishing it up to a sheen to be much more lush, vibrant and dynamic. It feels much stronger in its identity too, coming across as an overall more high-quality production. It looks nicer, but also more cohesive, and far richer. There’s plenty to unlock again as a reward for completing a litany of optional objectives in levels as well as discovering hidden secrets, including challenging new Arcade levels and over 30 characters to play as once you’ve unlocked them all.

Massive props has to go to Moving Out 2’s writers, who’ve really out-punned themselves in this effort. In fact, I reckon this game probably has the highest per-page saturation of puns in a video game to date, and the dialogue as a whole is thoroughly entertaining at every step of the way.

The post Moving Out 2 Review – Boxed Office Smash appeared first on Press Start.

There’s a lot of friction in Atlas Fallen. Some of this is intentional; grinding across sand dunes and slamming overpowered attacks into fantastical creatures that are hungry for your blood to stain the earth below. Some of it isn’t; those same overpowered attacks in a constant wrestling match with the game’s camera while its overarching plot and writing catch like sand between gears. A slow but undeniable churn of grit in the machine that undercuts the game’s best ideas and brings an otherwise cool set of mechanics low.

I can always see the vision in a Deck13 game. The German developers have spent the better part of a decade emulating the FromSoftware house style, transplanting challenging action combat systems into fresh settings on a much leaner budget. The Surge games, both of which adhere much closer to the team’s inspiration points in terms of structure and theme, also embodied some of its best work. Tightly crafted experiences that introduced unique layers to the formula and successfully lifted it all into a gritty sci-fi world. Atlas Fallen pivots in almost every way; deliberate play spaces traded for open-zones, discreet encounters for bombastic rumbles, sharpened storytelling for genre pastiche. It goes on, but for the pockets of fun I had in Atlas Fallen, I struggled to see the vision.

Atlas, the titular world, has fallen. A harsh and arid land of rocky mountains, sandy dunes and dying pockets of forest, this primordial plateau has been the stage of a centuries long holy war. In the process, the land has been systematically strip mined of its Essence, a glittery sand-like substance that fuels the magic of the realm and is now solely meant for Atlas’ looming god, Thelos. Having taken the form of a massive stone idol that floats above the land, tracking its denizens like a fucked up Mona Lisa, Thelos has weaponised humanity’s belief systems and forged a religious army to do his bidding. You play as a Nameless, an underclass of people who form the worker backbone of the continent with very little in the way of compensation or basic respect.

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Once you’ve customised your hero from a decent enough selection of hairstyles, you’ll be quickly introduced to the game’s central idea – the Gauntlet. Found during a disastrous trip across the country and quickly wielded to set herself free from servitude, the Gauntlet is 2023’s third sentient, magical handheld that cracks wise at the player while offering them access to escalating powers to use in combat. Atlas Fallen’s Gauntlet houses Nyall, a Na’vi-looking blue man with a vendetta against Thelos and a tremendous arse to boot. Nyall will be with you across your whole journey, granting access to a plethora of RPG systems, traversal tools, plotty dialogue and game hints, the latter of which can be thankfully toned down in the game’s settings.  

From here, Atlas Fallen is a pretty straightforward action RPG affair. You’ll be sent out across Atlas to collect pieces of the Gauntlet to power it up enough to progress to the next story beat, each portion of the map a discreet but interconnected series of open zones that house side quests and challenges to complete. The Gauntlet allows the Nameless to shift the sands of Atlas, raising platforms, activating timed magical puzzles, and best of all, propelling themselves across the sand like an ice skater. Deck13 use this to great effect, turning any open space into a slip and slide for the Nameless, and solving the open-world traversal slowdown effortlessly, if not seamlessly. You can only glide if the game registers sand beneath your feet, making some areas a clumsy stop/start experience as a small rock abruptly stops your flow in frustrating ways.

These flow issues are writ large in the game’s combat, an uneven and sporadically fun collision of systems. Atlas Fallen gives players an impressive arsenal of tools to play with, layering basic weapons like axes and whips with several types of modifiers and an underlying risk/reward micromanagement in Momentum. Landing consecutive blows against enemies raises the Momentum meter, unlocking evolved versions of your base weapon along with tiered special abilities, but also making you much more vulnerable to damage. Momentum can be expelled through critical strikes that deal massive damage and lower the bar again, making for a constant and engaging push and pull between power and limitations. It’s also consistently undercut by an unstable camera that pulls focus in frustrating ways during group encounters, endlessly fighting with the lock-on function to make for a disorientating experience.

Doubly so when camera control is essential to fully engaging with Atlas Fallen’s enemy designs, most of which require targeting specific body parts to deal meaningful damage. In concept it rules, harkening back to The Surge and allowing you to incapacitate certain attacks or cleave off new weapons by focusing on armoured limbs and the like. In practice, it wears thin, as to actually defeat a foe you’ll need to focus damage but the camera makes this an exercise in frustration. Atlas Fallen’s menagerie is detailed but limited, a rotating door of Wraiths who escalate over the course of the game but never vary all that much. It’s a combination of issues that take a baseline solid combat system and dulls its shine like sand slowly but surely burying a treasure.

Elsewhere there is a loose set of RPG systems churning away, most of which can be ignored to no real peril. There are a few currencies to collect to spend on vendors, leveling and perk slots; a crafting system that requires you to collect plants and ores from the world; a bunch of side quests and NPCs; armour customisation; the list goes on. The bulk of essentials will be given to the player via the main questline, but what really makes these systems forgettable is the overarching world of Atlas Fallen. It’s not bad, as such, but it’s shockingly dry. Voice acting and dialogue is about as unenthused by it all as I am writing this, and the repetition of the game’s missions and puzzle challenges quickly dispels any real sense of adventure.

Which is a shame because Atlas Fallen is partway to being exactly the kind of elevated action experience the genre deserves right now. A comforting throwback to design ethos of old, happy to let the player just wail on some monsters in a cool looking world. And there are elements of that kind of fun buried in here. Atlas feels grand, a massive playground to whip across the sands on and marvel at the imposing natural beauty of it all. Claiming it back from an evil god with these particular tools should be a great time. Instead, for the moments of fun I had at this beach, I just feel sunburnt and ready to wash the sand off.

The post Atlas Fallen Review – Sinking Sand appeared first on Press Start.

Once known as Chorus, Stray Gods is the ambitious debut title from Summerfall Studios, a new independent studio spearheaded by David Gaider, who cut his teeth in the industry taking the lead writing a number of BioWare games. The fashion in which it tells a fantastical story within a regular, urban setting reminded me a bit of Fables—the graphic novel on which The Wolf Among Us is based. However, it remains a novel experience by delivering much of its story through song. 

We’ve seen television veer into musical theatre from time to time, as shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scrubs have produced big, lavish episodes brimming with catchy songs and dance numbers. The results often speak for themselves, but they’re a creative, light-hearted departure from the main story arcs. I’ve not played every game ever so I won’t confidently declare Stray Gods to be a trailblazing first. However, given the team at the helm, it’s undoubtedly the highest-profile title to make the jump from game to musical. 

After the idol Calliope is unceremoniously killed under mysterious circumstances, her eidolon, the essence of an idol’s godlike powers, passes to Grace following a chance encounter the pair share during the latter’s band auditions. Calliope’s death becomes the subject of Grace’s trial at the hands of Athena and you’re tasked with proving your innocence before your trial and likely execution. I think the story is clever, especially the way it presents these gods within the context of a mortal world, and how the fatigue of their constant transmigration weighs heavily on them. 

Though it’s a big cast, with the likes of Laura Bailey and Troy Baker in the lead roles of Grace and Apollo respectively, you’d be forgiven for thinking Stray Gods is top-heavy in terms of talent. I’d argue that the game has a deep bench in terms of voice talent, even if they’re not as capable on the microphone as the leads—Rahul Kohli, who plays a bashful and bumbling Minotaur, remains a baffling choice as his singing chops are non-existent, leaving his comedic timing as his singular attribute in this particular performance. Similar deficiencies can be heard during harmonies, or in any of the many call-and-response phrasings involving more than one singer. There’s a lack of confidence that is audible from certain performers, whether it’s the material itself or their own hesitance; it does stick out like a sore thumb.

It’s evident that representation was a focus when pulling the ensemble together, the team even went as far as to reflect their actor in their god, where appropriate. For example, voiced by Erika Ishii, Hermes is presented as a gentle, genderfluid emissary, while Apollo is a shirtless surfer bro—so perhaps they’re not all one-for-one. It feels like an ensemble of angsty millennials, except the dialogue isn’t remotely as exhausting as that makes it sound. 

Though it is billed as a roleplaying musical, Stray Gods delivers more on the latter than the former. While you shouldn’t expect skill trees and stat distribution, your choices, and how you attempt to curry favour with the gods, can branch the narrative off in some significant ways which should come as no surprise for anyone familiar with Gaider’s work on Dragon Age and Knights of the Old Republic. Rather than accruing stats or having your choices ultimately unlock dialogue options, you’ll choose from a few proficiencies to carry with you throughout. I opted for charm and, later on when the option presented itself, I went for a more abrasive, ‘kick ass’ attitude adjustment. Like a lot of other narrative-driven, choose-your-own adventure-likes, these choices will open up dialogue options that, without providing much story craft, fill out the narrative’s flavour.

Stray Gods is also a very horny game. In fact, my biggest takeaway was that these idols have likely spent their era-spanning existence on the mount and the invitation is definitely extended in bulk, and accepted by, in my instance, Grace throughout her investigation. That said, pursuing these romantic interests didn’t really feel earned during my play through and felt like something of an afterthought and a means to fog the windows up a bit.

Another area where choices can create a bit of flavour is within the songs themselves. During a bunch of the numbers, Grace is able to interject or steer the arrangement in a particular direction, whether that’s an aggressive or passive path is up to the player. Not only does this provide a replay value, but it’s also a neat feature to offer a bit of agency over how a song pans out. I can’t help but feel that the songwriters might have been spread a bit thin considering every permutation, however. Except for a select few, the songs in Stray Gods don’t get their hooks in and are fast forgotten as you advance the plot. I do think the songs they choose to reprise and use as motifs throughout are well-picked, particularly Grace’s first solo which features prominently throughout. 

The game’s story unfolds similarly to a visual novel, serving the player with beautiful, hand-drawn frames that have small flourishes of expression to help make the cast feel alive. Excluding the few that don’t reside among mortals, the design of these idols remains pretty grounded throughout, though I would say their appearance reflects their personalities. One touch I loved was how the aspect ratio shifts to letterboxed for any of the musical numbers, it gives it a cinematic quality that flouts its low-cost presentation.

I also feel like Stray Gods aimed to present itself as a non-linear game all about choice but fails to deliver a compelling way to get from place to place. Picking whether to visit Apollo or Persephone from an over world map, for example, isn’t exactly an exciting transition. In fact, this game’s strengths from a visual design perspective definitely do not extend to the UI and UX, which is rather drab and had me wishing the team managed to implement a more appealing means to present the player with choice. 

The most damning thing I can say about Stray Gods is that it’s a musical with very few memorable tracks. Otherwise, it’s well-written and offers up a novel way to experience the gods among us trope. 

The post Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical Review – A Pitchy Performance appeared first on Press Start.

Venba, from a structural sense, reminds me a lot of Florence, a melancholic little mobile experience out of Melbourne’s own studio Mountains. It’s a fleeting, at times mournful, slice of life depiction of ordinary people living out relatively ordinary experiences. In a story that touches on cultural assimilation, identity in the face of harrowing bigotry, and relational memory through something as simple as cooking, it does an exceptional job blending these themes into a seventy minute vignette that cuts through to the core like a warm knife through butter. 

After immigrating to Canada with her beau, the eponymous Venba falls pregnant leaving the pair weighing up a shift back home to their native India rather than resign themselves to an unfulfilling life, full of failed ambition and struggle, in what would be a land of opportunity for their child. With hopeful naivety they opt to stick it out, struggling for steady work in their fields of expertise while raising a young son who immerses himself less and less in their family’s culture. As a parent, to have an unbridgeable rift form sounds like a nightmare and it’s a devastating scenario that Venba posits, but it does so through a lens that’s foreign to me and I think there’s valuable learning in that.

While it definitely speaks to interpersonal challenges, it makes them right through the commonalities that do come with heritage. It’s a solemn reminder that, whoever you are, life is just one-take. It’s their relationship with Kavin, their son, that reminded me of a sad fact I’d heard recently that suggests a majority of the time a parent will ever spend with their children is, for obvious reasons, in their first eighteen years of living. You imprint yourself on them, impart all you can, and then they’re gone. For the most part, at least. 

And in an hour and change, I feel like Venba serves as a lesson to make the most of those moments and memories and it does this, to great effect, through its singular gameplay mechanic of cooking. Just as Coffee Talk had its exchange of thoughts and ideas revolve around a hot pour, Venba expresses plenty through food—how it reflects culture, provides comfort, and how it can form and remain the basis of core memories so that all you’d need is a hint of cardamom to have a life lived come flooding back to you.

The act of cooking in Venba is pretty uncomplicated, it’s a simple and relaxing exercise of combination, just as soon as the method is pulled from memory. During the early chapters, Venba relies on her mother’s recipes which you’ll find etched in Tamil, although readable to us players in English, within a small, red journal. Oftentimes, steps will be obscured by a spill or a torn page so it’ll take a bit of experimentation to uncover the order of things. I do like how the game handles the exploratory side of cooking and how it doesn’t punish missteps. A ruined meal might go down the disposal at home, whereas Venba returns you to step one. 

There’s a saying that suggests food for the body isn’t enough, and that food must nourish the soul, as well. As someone who’s learned this first-hand, dabbling with the slow cooker in these winter months, Venba also hammers home the generational, inheritable qualities of the cooked meal which, while not so much in ours, is a massive part of South Asian cultures.

To say there’s a lot to Venba would be disingenuous. It’s stripped back and minimalistic in its approach to gameplay, but it’s clear from the offset that the mechanics serve their narrative purpose, creating a tangible link between mother and son that culminates by the game’s close. As I’ve mentioned, the game is short, totalling just seventy-five minutes. For a game like Florence, that runtime matched the gold-coin asking price, whereas Venba is a hair steeper, therefore making it a harder sell. 

Venba, as an era-spanning narrative game, does a great job of depicting the character’s lives throughout what is, by the end, a life shared for three decades. There’s a warmth in the game’s colour palette that calls to mind a curry on a cold day, and I adore the noticeable ageing of the characters, the technology of the eighties—which is where Venba’s journey begins—gradually informing their modern contemporaries, it’s so full of little touches that help Venba’s small world feel real. There’s also an authenticity that emanates from both the cuisine and score, which made me hungry and merry respectively.

Although I found Venba to be a moving and frankly educational vignette that sheds light on a culture and a people I know staggeringly little about, it is a tough sell at its price point given its length. But even though it doesn’t stick around nearly long enough to break the skin, we all know from the fruit and veg we eat each day that the skin is where the good stuff is.

The post Venba Review – Food For The Soul appeared first on Press Start.

With how relentlessly busy life can sometimes be, I’ve found myself turning to mobile gaming more and more, only less for native mobile apps and more through things like Xbox Cloud Gaming and PlayStation’s Remote Play feature. Being able to easily access my library of console games during a commute or just from the comfort of my bed as I (poorly) attempt to turn in for the night is fantastic – especially with a decent controller attachment. And that’s where the Backbone One comes in.

I’ve wanted to test one of these things for a while now, and with Backbone firing up a supporting device and app for Android phone users, it was only a matter of time before it also introduced an Android-compatible version of its PlayStation Edition Backbone One. With native support for in PlayStation Remote Play app and themed to match the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller, it was finally time for me to become a Backbone user, and I’m pretty glad I did.

Immediate impressions of the Backbone One from a hardware perspective are of a sturdy, well-built and comfortable controller attachment that’s super easy to pop on and off your choice of Android phone through a USB-C connection at the bottom. It’s fairly light without feeling flimsy and the plastic has a feel that’s a decent enough replacement for the actual DualSense body. The headphone jack is placed under the left handle and under the right is a handy USB-C charging port for keeping your device juiced up while you play, or even to use it tethered to a larger device like a tablet – a feature that’s already come in handy at my desk multiple times.

Moving to the controls themselves, you’re definitely not getting quite the same experience as using a real DualSense controller with smaller and more shallow buttons and triggers, but it’s still pretty high quality stuff overall compared to the handful of other mobile controllers I’ve tried out. The d-pad is a bit squishy for my liking, and the equivalents to the share and options buttons are positioned annoyingly low and in second billing to Backbone’s own function keys, but it’s otherwise pretty great in the hand in the heat of action.

There’s also the matter of the lack of an equivalent to the DualSense controller’s touch pad. While it kind of makes sense given this is little more than a reskin of the regular Backbone One, calling this a PlayStation mobile controller is a tiny bit of a stretch when it’s missing a prominent button that’s become very commonly-used in games. You can still access the touchpad in PlayStation’s Remote Play app by double-tapping the screen but it’s a cumbersome solution that makes this version of the Backbone feel a touch incomplete. I get why Backbone couldn’t really, say, add a touch function to the back of the device for PlayStation users without creating an entirely new product in the process, but it’s a noticeable omission.

That aside, everything performs nicely with a fairly quick response and the Backbone One feels seriously comfortable and satisfying to use, so overall it’s still a great choice for anyone serious about mobile gaming and remote play. Aside from Xbox and PlayStation games, I also spent a bit of time with Honkai: Star Rail and Ubisoft’s new The Division: Resurgence, which both felt exactly like the console-level experience their respective developers want to impart once I had a console-like controller in hand.

The dedicated Backbone app is also a great little tool for organising games from all of the different services that Android supports, not just limited to PlayStation games but also Xbox, Steam and Google Play. You do get a customised PlayStation-flavoured experience in the app when using this version of the Backbone One though, which is nice. You can set the Backbone app to open automatically when you attach the controller, too, making it quick and easy to jump into a game via Remote Play.

Amusingly I did find myself drawn more often toward Xbox Game Pass games when playing with the Backbone One just because Xbox Cloud Gaming is so easy and has such a great available library – at which point having the PlayStation buttons on my controller as opposed to the usual Backbone One keys that match the Xbox layout felt a bit silly – but that’s hardly a fault of Backbone’s hardware or software and just something to consider if you’re tossing up between different versions of the controller. Whether you go for this PlayStation Edition or the standard variant, you’re going to have a pretty good time.

The post Backbone One PlayStation Edition (Android) Review – For The Mobile Players appeared first on Press Start.

I’m genuinely not sure why Mickey Mouse hasn’t been the star of more video games of late, given Disney’s ongoing love of a bit o’ cash and the world’s most recognisable rodent being a massive draw, but the list of titles he has starred in over the years actually has some certified bangers. The Epic Mickey games wound up being a highlight in the Nintendo Wii’s catalogue, for example, and if we’re counting Kingdom Hearts, well, there’s no argument there.

If you’re old enough (like I am) though, it’s the “Illusion” brand of Disney/Mickey games that are the most memorable with some entries considered among the best platformers of the 8/16-bit generation. Dlala Studios’ Switch-exclusive Disney Illusion Island isn’t strictly a part of the loose series of Illusion titles but it’s definitely a de facto spiritual successor and instantly brings to mind memories of playing those games (for me, it was often at one of those combination cafe/indoor playground places where the controllers regularly had bite marks and the screens were smeared with buttered 100s & 1000s).

This new adventure sees Mickey Mouse, along with Minnie, Donald and Goofy, travel to the mysterious island of Monoth for the purpose of what’s meant to be a relaxing picnic. The gang quickly realises they’ve been called to Monoth for a purpose though, with its adorable residents requesting their help in locating three stolen, magical tomes from the three distinct biomes of Monoth in order to restore some semblance of peace. It’s a simple enough setup with some (incredibly predictable) twists but it’s entertaining enough thanks to great dialogue and attractive cutscenes moving the action along.

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In a move I maybe wouldn’t have expected from a family-friendly Disney mascot platformer, Illusion Island is essentially a metroidvania. That’s to say it’s set in a single, open map marked by distinct biomes that has players explore further and deeper as they gain new abilities with which to overcome once-insurmountable obstacles. It’s probably a bit closer to a My First Metroidvania though, as it’s completely free of combat and remains rather simple throughout its brisk, six-to-eight hour runtime. It definitely gets a little tougher in the later areas and you can set your own difficulty in a way by choosing how many “hearts” you start with as a base, but it’s pretty easy-going overall.

There are enemies dotted across the map, but they serve more as mobile obstacles and can’t be directly contended with (can I coin the term “avoidvania” or is that cringe?). Even the handful of boss-type encounters you’ll wind up in are more about flexing newfound traversal abilities than dealing direct damage, a choice that I can respect but that makes them rather toothless and unexciting. It’s a good thing then that moving about this 2D world is a heap of fun and gets progressively more so as you gain new skills like gliding, swinging and wall jumping, as is seeking out and collecting all the different bits and baubles tucked in every nook.

Co-op is where the game really shines though, especially if you’re someone more experienced playing with young children or infrequent gamers. Rather than just let players bounce around the world in unison and call it a day, Dlala has implemented a number of added features that make co-op play for up to four players on a single screen feel more constructive and collaborative. New abilities are opened up when more players join in, like being able to hug another player for a health boost or drop a rope from any platform to give them a leg up, which instantly makes for a great way to help younger kids play through the game or introduce less seasoned gamers to the genre.

Although the game can be knocked over in just shy of half a dozen hours, there’s enough reason to stick around and explore more of the secrets the sizeable map has to offer thanks to a bunch of different collectibles and “Accomplishments” to unlock, many of which dive into Mickey and Friends history to give players a veritable museum of neat throwbacks and curios to pore over.

Something that Disney Illusion Island has in spades is style, perfectly capturing the essence of Mickey and Friends history while also giving Dlala the chance to put their own stamp on things. Character designs are very reminiscent of the modern Mickey shorts, with exaggerated lines and simple colours given life through incredibly energetic animation. I adore the way that each character gets their own bespoke ability designs and animations to make them look unique from each other even if they’re mechanically identical. It also makes for some amusing story moments when Donald typically gets the worst-looking equipment among the crew.

My only gripe, which is really only because of how otherwise superb the game’s animation work is, is that player characters often look quite tiny on screen. It’s likely a necessary evil when it comes to accommodating four players across every area but it makes it harder to appreciate how fantastic a job the studio has done. I hadn’t realised before doing some quick Googling about Dlala that they were behind the recent Battletoads reboot but it makes perfect sense – they’ve clearly mastered the art of translating the quintessential Saturday morning cartoon animation into a playable format.

The game’s various biomes echo that idea with a noticeably flat and bold look to platforming elements against understated but rich backgrounds. Each major section of the map is distinct and abstract in a way that makes them enjoyable to look at and has each stand out nicely with its own palette and motifs.

The animated cutscenes sprinkled throughout the adventure are a definite highlight as well, and shockingly they’ve been crafted by the studio itself in-house – I’d absolutely watch a Dlala-led Mickey series if it existed. The proper voice cast is along for the ride too, which is great, although it’s a touch disappointing they’re not utilised outside of cutscenes. Instead we get regular ol’ text boxes peppered by the occasional cry or quip.

The post Disney Illusion Island Review – A Moderately Magical Mickeyvania appeared first on Press Start.

It doesn’t feel good to mention this, but it’s been almost a decade since Pikmin 3 was released. I can’t believe it. But while Pikmin’s releases have been sporadic, each game has scratched a different itch for fans. Now, with Pikmin 4, Nintendo has put its best foot forward in practically every aspect to offer one of the best Pikmin experiences ever. No, it’s not as challenging or unforgiving as the first game was, but it’s still just as engaging and charming twenty years on.

Not too keen to deviate from the tried and true narrative, Pikmin 4 once again opens with Captain Olimar crash-landing on an unknown planet and activating a distress signal to be rescued. You play as the newest recruit of the Rescue Corps, but in a continuing comedy of errors, your crew finds themselves also shipwrecked on the planet they need to rescue Olimar from. Your team is scattered across the planet, and it’s up to you to collect them and find Olimar. Again. Of course, there’s a little bit more to it, and while it’s hardly the most gripping of stories, it is one of the better Pikmin tales we’ve heard so far.

Pikmin 4 is hard to categorise. At its core, the franchise is Nintendo’s take on a real-time strategy game, but with puzzles thrown in to keep things interesting. The focus is on your horde of Pikmin that you can control. They’re plant-like creatures who can be directed to collect items, destroy obstacles and fight the hostile creatures you’ll encounter. Commanding your Pikmin is satisfying but harrowing – losing them is especially sad. This might sound a bit absurd, but Pikmin is one of the most potent games I’ve played about war that isn’t explicitly about war.

Bizarrely, every Pikmin game thus far has had a different focus, so opinions are diverse as to which one is the best. Pikmin 4 is different from other Pikmin games – it attempts to leverage the best bits of the last three games to offer the most complete Pikmin experience yet. Diehard fans will no doubt find disappointment in the statement that, yes, Pikmin 4 isn’t as challenging as the original Pikmin was. But the tension and difficulty escalate in a way that feels fair and appropriate and, as a result, much more forgiving without being insultingly easy.

Enter Oatchi. He’s a space dog found by the player when they first land on the planet and, without a doubt, the star of Pikmin 4. Oatchi can do it all – behave like a second squad leader or act like a supercharged Pikmin. He’s incredibly powerful, able to carry Pikmin over certain bodies of water or inflict massive damage against the hostile creatures you’ll encounter. His immense strength means he can hold items like a Pikmin can, and with certain upgrades, he can even resist the elements. He’s absolutely adorable and one of my favourite things about the game, though he does trivialize a lot of the difficulty in the opening areas of the game.

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Thankfully, as you progress through the story, the tendency to lean on Oatchi as a crutch becomes less tempting. Enemies will learn new tricks that will render Oatchi useless in certain situations or areas and will purposefully split you and your Pikmin away from him to get you to work harder for your wins. Make no mistake – Pikmin 4 can still be a challenging game; I had essentially halved my total Pikmin population as the credits rolled following some of the more intense battles the game offers.

Pikmin 4 is structured similarly to previous games. You have a hub area where you can upgrade Oatchi and decide where to explore for the day. The levels you’ll explore are more open-ended than in other Pikmin games – there’s rarely a linear path through them like in Pikmin 3. Pikmin 4 instead throws you onto a map and asks you to collect treasure, complete activities, and explore caves to earn enough resources to explore other areas of the planet. Each level is the biggest in series history, so there’s much to do in each. More encouragingly, they’re not just typical locales plucked from nature either; there are some new ideas explored here too.

This translates to a more open-ended experience. Pikmin 4 doesn’t have you separated from your crew and using days to catch up with them. Instead, you’re given free rein to explore each of these levels and bring back as much treasure to the ship as possible. The game splits them into four categories – Surface Exploration, Dandori Battles, Dandori Challenges and Caves.

Caves have made a long-awaited return from Pikmin 2 and a triumphant one. Easily the highlight of Pikmin 4, these caves are handmade content with a theme and puzzles and bosses to match them. Gone are the randomly generated caves from Pikmin 2. Instead, we have mini dungeons split into sub-levels that are a joy to explore. In each one, you’ll have to leverage the different Pikmin types to solve puzzles and harvest as much treasure from the dungeons as you can.

Other activities are a blast too. Dandori Challenges are designed to test how efficient you can be with a pre-determined party of Pikmin. Dandori Battles are even more hectic – pitting you against another character as you compete to collect the most treasure in an area. These battles work similarly to the Bingo Battles from Pikmin 3 and can be played with another player locally when not playing in the Story mode. They’re a fun and intense distraction with which I had more fun than I’d ever anticipated.

Sadly, the strength of the multiplayer offerings ends there. Besides these battles, Pikmin 4 does allow a second player to pick up a joy-con and throw pebbles at the screen. It’s a weird inclusion – but throwing pebbles at Pikmin will speed them up, while throwing them at enemies will whittle down their health. It breaks the balance of an already easy game and honestly feels like an afterthought. I recognize that the story doesn’t suit itself well to the robust co-op we’ve seen in Pikmin 3. However, even having a second player control Oatchi might’ve been more fun than what we got here. It just feels like a missed opportunity.

The other significant new addition is the nighttime expeditions, where the now classic feeling of tension you get from Pikmin games is found. There are ten to fifteen of them, and each has you defending mounds of glow sap from waves of aggressive enemies. As these challenges become more and more intense, you’ll have to assign Oatchi to protect specific points while you harvest Glow Pikmin (a special type of Pikmin unique to these expeditions) to build up your forces to defend yourself. They get very tense and are some of the more significant challenges in the game.

I mentioned before that Pikmin 4 feels like the most complete Pikmin experience thus far, owing to how much this game is packed. There are hundreds of enemies to encounter, over twenty caves to explore and even some other surprises that I won’t talk about. But more importantly – it’s all engaging. It’s a joy to complete and the first time in series history that I’ve 100%ed a Pikmin game on my first run without returning to it later. You’d think that making Pikmin more open-world and less story-driven would make the pacing suffer, but it doesn’t. Pikmin 4’s thirty-hour odyssey is engaging from beginning to end.

And, of course, we can’t ignore the game’s stellar presentation. Without a doubt, this is the best-looking game in the series. Not only from a technical standpoint but an artistic one too. I went back to all the Pikmin games before finishing Pikmin 4, and yes, Pikmin 4 is just a much better-executed visual feast than the games that came before it. It’s a more colourful and brighter world that’s a joy to explore. It’s also one of the best-performing games on the Switch I’ve played in recent years, which is always a pleasant surprise this late into a generation.

The post Pikmin 4 Review – The Cream Of The Crop appeared first on Press Start.

There have been many imaginative puzzle-adventure games over the course of the last generation or two that have been genre-defining. There’s a hard balance in crafting tasks that’ll challenge all comers, and I’d argue that something like The Witness, as magical as it was, might have proved a tad obtuse for the general gamer. Of the tentpole puzzlers that have paved the way here, Viewfinder reminds me most of Portal. It’s mechanically very different, but it serves up all of its elements and “aha!” moments at such a digestible cadence that I never felt like the game had me over a barrel.

Although Viewfinder itself isn’t a completely novel idea, games like Superliminal have toyed with perspective before, it spends its modest four hour runtime proving that it’s the best application of these problems that take just a tweak in viewpoint to press on, deeper into the journey.

I remember first seeing Viewfinder in action and marvelling at the creativity that has gone into interpreting so many of photography’s inseparable and notable elements—framing, single-use Polaroids, photocopying. Despite being a centuries-old technology, the magic of the photograph still makes my mind melt at times, so the transference of a static image into the game’s world here felt like sorcery.

Viewfinder does a wonderful job at introducing all of the player’s tools piecemeal, and I found myself constantly surprised at the game’s ingenuity. The goal is to, with the help of a butter-voiced cat guardian named Cait, progress through a computed construct to find mankind’s answer for their red alert climate crisis. With the aim of activating the terminal in each level, which frequently requires battery power to operate, you’ll need to exercise all of your smarts to get out.

With the godlike power of replication at your fingertips, you can manipulate photographs of walls to shape new bridges, you can manifest surplus batteries to power your exit, and you can even use ‘selfies’ as a means to copy yourself and transmit your matter to hard-to-reach places. There’s a liberating freedom in most of the tools Viewfinder offers, and it’s a freedom I abused at times to cheese my way through a few of the trickier endgame levels—which, similar to Tears of the Kingdom and its seemingly limitless systems—is more impressive than anything.

In that sense, I never found myself unable to get through the main game. The optional levels that can be found throughout the handful of hub areas, on the other hand, are going to have players digging deep because they’re particularly tough.

It certainly seems as though the Viewfinder team had kept much of the game’s story and mystery close to the vest. The game’s demo, which hooked me originally, didn’t give a sense of the overarching plot. While there’s a tangible story there, it feels reticent and not super consequential to the game’s core loop, meaning you can drink it up if that’s your preference, but if you’re just looking to solve a puzzle or two you don’t have to scour the map for every single audio log.

There’s definitely an interpersonal narrative there that spends the whole time raising its eyebrows suggestively towards the “games for change” end-of-year gong, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t serviceable.

There’s a vibrancy to the world of Viewfinder that’s more in line with The Witness than it is Portal, which leaned more on futuristic, machine-led sterility. The construct you explore seems built upon the fundamentals of classical Roman architecture, there’s a lot of concrete, arches and aqueducts presenting a clean, white canvas for the pops of colour evident throughout. Vegetation and technology come together to create a spectacularly vivid sandbox to get weird in, and the deeper you get into this construct the more abstract and disjointed it becomes.

Photographs are one way you can bend reality in Viewfinder, but the game makes a habit of leaving rich oil paintings, black and white line etchings, and ‘straight to the fridge’ kids drawings around to let players create these immersive, beautiful moments within all manner of art itself.

Not only is Viewfinder the best example of perspective-bending pageantry in video games yet, far exceeding its contemporaries that helped pave the path it walks, it’s arguably the most enjoyable puzzle game since Portal made us question a cake’s authenticity fifteen long years ago.

The post Viewfinder Review – A New Fantastic Point Of View appeared first on Press Start.

Exoprimal feels like it’s from another era. It harkens back to a time when Capcom was slightly more experimental in its approach to making games. A time when they weren’t relying on remakes of tried-and-true classics but instead were creating new and engaging IPs. It’s a gamble, then, that Capcom would create a new IP and a new multiplayer IP in Exoprimal after their numerous successes with their flagship franchises. But Exoprimal is much better than I expected and does more for the hero shooter genre than I ever thought possible. The gamble paid off.

And there is a story to it all too. It’s 2043, three years since dinosaurs were unleashed worldwide from portals and tears in space and time. You play as a pilot who has crashed and landed on Bikitoa Island following the opening of another portal during a routine flight. Here, on the island, you’re greeted by an AI named Leviathan, who forces you and others into simulations of wargames while wearing powered exosuits against hordes of dinosaurs. It’s ridiculous, but it’s the right kind of ridiculous that lends itself well to the concept.

The fact that there’s even a story to follow in Exoprimal is also a bit of a miracle. Story progression is tied to how many battles you complete – you don’t even have to win – and they’re mapped out in a separate menu to look at in your own time. Some cutscenes are played after specific matches, further detailing the goings-on of your squad, but for the most part, you can engage with Exoprimal’s surprisingly robust story as you see fit. It’s certainly a nice inclusion and hopefully, the beginning of yet another universe for Capcom to pull from.

But it’s easily how Exoprimal carries itself in battle that makes it stand out. There’s technically only one mode called Dino Survival, but within that mode, a lot is going on. More than the game itself tells you. Each match pits two teams of five against each other in two phases. The first phase has the teams fighting to complete objectives faster than the other team in PvE situations. The second phase then moves both teams onto the same map into a PvPvE situation in a battle for the win.

For example, the first phase might have your team fighting waves of dinosaurs, defending a point on the map and then escorting to a certain point. The second phase might have your team protecting a payload (think Overwatch) while dinosaurs and other enemy players attack it. The assortment of objectives and activities you’re given is random, to a point, but there’s a lot here to keep the whole experience both engaging and enjoyable.

Exosuits are essentially heroes as they appear in other shooters of this ilk. There are ten suits to choose from in three categories – Assault (DPS), Tank and Support. Each suit has its own abilities and can be outfitted with unique modules to improve their performance and, more importantly, feel balanced. The exosuits are fun to learn and use and have wildly different ways to approach battle baked into their design. Even support, a category you rarely see to be so popular in games like this, gets a fair shake of the stick when players are building their teams.

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Even better, you can switch at any point in the match. With a button, your pilot can eject themselves from their exosuit and change to something else. I regularly switched up my suit depending on which objective was in play, which encourages experimentation with the numerous suits and their abilities.

But it’s not just about the players either. There are over fifteen different types of dinosaurs that the game will throw at you, big and small, that ensure that the action in Exoprimal never gets old. From the most basic form in the raptors and the Pteranodons to the history-bending neosaurs that mix dinosaurs we’ve come to know with outlandish mutations to make them more dangerous than ever. The game does a great job at mixing up the combinations of dinosaurs that it throws at you, and some of the heavier ones especially are difficult enough that they encourage you to work as a team to feel them faster than your opponents.

From time to time, the Leviathan AI will get testy and throw a random mission at you that becomes really intense. These are the moments where Leviathan will open a portal and pour out thousands of dinosaurs that attack you. Sometimes he’ll even cut a match short and transport you to an alternate dimension to fight a boss, turning respawns off and bringing together two competing teams of five to throw a ten-player co-op mission at you instead. It’s an incredibly dynamic system, and these set pieces seemingly bridge the gap between what you’d expect to see in a single-player campaign and the multiplayer game that Exoprimal is.

Of course, there is a big dark cloud looming over Exoprimal, and that’s the way that progression is handled. After competing in a certain number of matches, your party will eventually be interrupted by a “story” like mission that’ll pit you against a unique threat. Around six of these encounters’ll happen across sixty or so matches. They’re incredibly fun. But it’s what happens next that might be annoying or just too vague for some players.

Completing these missions then “opens up” more of Leviathan’s simulation for you. So future games you’ll play will have more objectives, maps, and dinosaurs thrown at you. Exoprimal isn’t forthcoming with how this content is dished out nor how you gain access to more of it. Playing with friends who are lower level than you will essentially “lock” you into the lower-level missions, creating an illusion that there’s only one map and a handful of dinosaurs. This is especially obvious in the opening weekend, where your average party level will be lower due to many factors, including the ease of access with the game’s inclusion on Game Pass and the like.

I’m trying to say that as time passes and the overall player population increases in level, the content on offer in Exoprimal will be more obvious to the broader player base. But the other side of this argument is that many players would not necessarily be bothered to get to this point but that they’ll assume Exoprimal is so much less than what it is. 

Exoprimal currently has five PvE objectives and five PvP objectives that can be played out across six unique maps. But most players will easily only see almost half of these if they are playing for several hours. Capcom is promising multiple free updates – including exosuit variants with new weapons, new objectives to complete, new maps and even new dinosaurs. If they keep the content coming, Exoprimal will be something special. It already is, but it needs to put its best foot forward now to convince players that there’s more to it than their lower-level parties might be showing them.

Regardless, at the end of the day, Exoprimal does what I previously thought was unthinkable. It makes a competitive multiplayer game fun, even when losing a battle. There’s a good breadth of balanced exosuits to play with and many activities and dinosaurs to mess around with. Mix this with a unique approach to storytelling and some pretty fantastic setpieces, and it seems Capcom may be on to a winner with some tweaks here and there.

The post Exoprimal Review – Don’t Call It A Dino Crisis appeared first on Press Start.

The portable PC space has been moving at an even faster rate to what we’d been seeing previously. Just five months after reviewing the AYANEO 2, the company has followed up with the AYANEO 2S which really improves on the original, and takes it to the ASUS ROG Ally.

I’ll probably spend less time than I have in other reviews explaining how these portable PCs work but I’d highly recommend you check out my AYANEO 2 or AYANEO Air Plus review if you’re new to the space, and more time talking about the actual improvements on offer here as well as an early look at AYASPACE 2.0 that we’ve just received.

Many of the core AYANEO 2S features are the same as before. You’ve still got that gorgeous 1200p bezel-less display that is one of the best I’ve seen on any handheld, great ergonomics and a larger battery than what’s on offer in the ROG Ally.

The big reason for AYANEO releasing the AYANEO 2S is performance, and it definitely delivers that big of extra performance to bring it in line with the ASUS ROG Ally. The new AMD Ryzen 7 7840 processor as well as 32GB of ram is enough to really give it that extra bit of juice necessary for AAA gaming.

Whilst benchmarking five AAA games at 25w on high, I saw a 15-20% increase in performance on average, which was that little bit of extra juice required to really make the experience a lot smoother when playing AAA games.

Whilst the AYANEO 2 was fine in its performance, this really made me feel like I could push each game to the limit, with confidence that they’d perform well without any stuttering or having to further tweak settings. This might have to do with the extra 32GB of ram on offer as well in this particular version of the AYANEO 2S.

AYANEO 2S BENCHMARKS

25W TDP / 1200P / FSR 2 BALANCED / HIGH

• Forza Horizon 5 – 55 FPS
• Cyberpunk 2077 – 33 FPS
• Horizon – 53 FPS
• Returnal – 32 FPS
• F1 2022 – 62 FPS

A big part of the increased performance is that you can now get better performance at lower TDPs which in turn has a greater effect on battery life, particularly with indie games or whilst playing on lower settings.

When playing at 25W with 80% brightness, you can expect to get about an hour and 20 minutes of gameplay, which still isn’t great, but dropping that to 10-18w will put your mileage at 2-3 hours, which is acceptable.

Other improvements in the AYANEO 2S include the triggers, which have had their travel distance changed and are a lot less clicky than before.

The unit also runs a lot less hot due to a graphene patch and three copper heat dissipation. I noticed it was a lot less hot to touch whilst playing and the unit also runs quieter because it’s not as hot.

When I reviewed the ASUS ROG Ally, one of the things I really liked was the software, which I was so excited to get hands-on with an early beta version of AYASPACE 2.0. I’m really happy to report that it brings over many of the things that I loved about Armory Crate and really improves the overall experience.

Firstly, the whole experience just runs smoother even on 5w. Even though it’s still in beta, I didn’t experience a single crash or freeze. You can now easily control a lot more of the settings in the quick settings overlay, including changing TDP on the fly between presets. You can now also turn on a performance overlay with just one click in the quick settings menu.

The entire library system also just seems to be a lot cleaner and quicker to load games and also add them in as soon as they’re downloaded. It’s really fantastic to see AYANEO moving on this space, as I don’t know if anyone has ever questioned how fantastic their hardware is.

I’ve mentioned it in other reviews but the AYANEO docking station is a must-have if you’re using one of their devices. It can work with any of its products, but I can’t tell you how much this improved the experience. Not only did it mean that I could easily charge the device at all times, it also made connecting a monitor via HDMI as well as keyboards/mice a breeze.

As far as pricing goes, the AYANEO 2S is in early access at Indiegogo at the moment, and the prices are a lot more reasonable than they’ve ever been. You can expect to pay about $1,100 AUD for the entry level Geek 1S model and about $1,400 AUD for the entry level 2S model.

The post AYANEO 2S Review – Improvements Across The Board appeared first on Press Start.

Everybody 1-2 Switch has a bit of a weird history. Its predecessor was one of the Switch’s earliest first-party titles that, while doing a great job of showcasing the capabilities of the Joy-Con controllers, was relegated to Expensive Tech Demo Hell pretty quickly. Then in 2022, Fanbyte reported that a sequel to 1-2 Switch was secretly tucked away inside Nintendo’s vaults, having performed so poorly in player testing that the company wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it.

Fast forward almost exactly a year, and Everybody 1-2 Switch has finally materialised and, somewhat surprisingly, it seems to be more or less exactly the game that Fanbyte’s report described and originally had playtesters less than enthused. After getting to spend some time with the game at a Nintendo-held event with a couple other dozen journalists and content creators, and then playing a bunch more in the comfort (and privacy) of my own home, I can say that while I absolutely wish there was more content and variety here, Everybody 1-2 Switch is a half-decent follow-up to a game that I’m still prone to whipping out at gatherings to this day.

Booting up the game, you’re presented with a choice of either playing with Joy-Con controllers or smart devices – one of the big distinctions between this new title and the last one. From there you’re given the option of playing one of three different lengths of contests, either 20, 40 or 60 minutes with each a points-scoring competition set across a semi-random selection of mini-games. You’ll need to play the game this way initially, as playing each mini-game at least once is the only way to unlock them for on-demand play later on. Led by Horace, a man in a rubber horse mask acting as the game’s mascot and presenter, it’s all nicely presented but immediately quite barebones.

The important thing though, is the selection of games to play, and Everybody 1-2 Switch has 17 of them to choose from with just 13 being playable using a single Joy-Con for each player (up to a total of 8). Splitting however many players there are into two teams, the Joy-Con based games are simple, mostly quite physical affairs that ring true of what was in the last collection, things like Jump Rope, Hip Bump, Squats and Musical Chairs that are sure to get a giggle out of those participating and watching.

Some of the quirkier ones, like Kitchen Timer or UFOs, feel almost like the highlights of the original 1-2 Switch and its selection of games designed to sell what the Joy-Cons were being touted for at the time, but across the board there’s a bit of a lack of the truly special features like HD Rumble and the IR sensors being used – it’s pretty much all just basic motion-control stuff that most of the time doesn’t even demand a great deal of accuracy.

Nintendo was clearly inspired by Jackbox with some of the other gameplay concepts it’s brought to the table here, with a selection of games that can be optionally – or mandatorily – played with smart devices instead of Joy-Con controllers. The huge advantage is that, either in-person or via online servers you’ll be able to play some of the games with up to 100 players. Then, there are also a handful of games strictly playable with a smart device, and while some of these work and could actually be a ton of fun to see played out over web streams or on Discord hang-outs they’re definitely not all created equal.

Colour Shoot for instance, is a genius idea and a blast to play. It tasks two teams of players to match a colour displayed on-screen with something in the real world by taking a photo of it with their smart device camera, which in both the group session I attended and at home led to some great moments of discovery and more than a few giggles. It might be a bit wanky to say but having a game force me to properly break away and observe my surroundings, paying attention to something I’d normally take for granted like colour, felt genuinely fresh and inventive in a very Nintendo way. I also had a heap of fun with Ice Cream Parlour, flexing my mental muscles, listening skills and teamwork to record scoop orders at an ice cream store.

But for every Colour Shoot or Ice Cream Parlour, you get Bingo. Which is… bingo. Or Quiz Show, which is a very simple true or false competition where teams attempt to buzz in answers to basic trivia questions as fast as possible. It really doesn’t exemplify the kind creativity or chaos I’d expect from a Nintendo party, but the saving grace in Quiz Show is a custom question mode that would really suit tightly-knit social gatherings like weddings or showers with a more personal touch.

Similarly straddling the fence between creative and banal is Auction, which initially was a ton of fun with two opposing teams battling to outbid each other on different items worth specific point values. The rub lies in the fact that the items are worth different point values to either team, and those values are kept secret between teams, so strategy comes in feigning interest or disinterest in each article in order to trick your opponents into bidding high and burning through their pool of funds. With an on-device interface that lets you secretly chat amongst your fellow auction attendees and celebrate devious plays it’s very well thought-out, but the length of time it takes to figure out how to best work as a team and win is exactly how long it takes for the gimmick to get old.

I’ll avoid going into detail on absolutely every game that’s included here, for fear of spending more time writing about Everybody 1-2 Switch than it took for the game to go from official reveal to release, but what I’ve described so far should be taken as an indication of the overall quality of the package here – it’s a bit of a mixed bag. For every riotously fun party game, there’s one that doesn’t work, or one that does but gets old far too quickly. When the collection consists of 17 games in total (with some extra variations on most, to be fair) that doesn’t work out to great odds.

Something worth calling out is how easy that the smart device stuff is to set up for quick play in groups, taking the Jackbox philosophy of just handing out players a server-based room code (via a QR code or URL) to join in a game without having to deal with any sign-in rigmarole. It’s super painless, and each player gets to assign themselves a profile name, photo and send little chat messages and emotes during downtime which is cute. Plus, it really is a blast with large groups of people in a way that I’ve not yet experience when it comes to mini-game compilations.

Much like the original 1-2 Switch, at the end of the day Everybody 1-2 Switch is a decent little Switch title to have tucked away in a cupboard for your next drunken or family-oriented gathering. It’s a great way to get people moving, laughing and – in probably the biggest green tick for the sequel – playing and bonding as a team. I’d argue it actually offers a little more value than your average Jackbox Party Pack at $49.95 AUD, but it’s still missing the kind of creative spark I’d want from Nintendo. Presentation-wise it’s another combination of clean, high-res videos of actors doing the motions on-screen and VFX with stylised cut-outs and the like. It’s definitely got a bit more pizazz and seemingly higher production values than the previous game though, which is a plus.

At the end of the day, Everybody 1-2 Switch attempts to shake up the formula of its predecessor by introducing second-screen games and upping the potential player count considerably, and it does a decent enough job of it. Even at a cheaper price of entry than the last game was at launch though, the issue of longevity comes with the mixed quality of its 17 included mini-games and threatens to limit the potential fun.

The post Everybody 1-2 Switch Is A Slim But Genuinely Amusing Package appeared first on Press Start.

I think I was supposed to be paying a little more attention to what’s going on in Synapse, the latest from well-known VR studio nDreams (Fracked, Powerwash Simulator VR), especially given it features the vocal chops of some industry legends in Jennifer Hale and David Hayter, but the truth is I couldn’t tell you much of anything about what happened in it. I know that I was some kind of secret brain spy diving into the literal mind of a rogue Colonel through a virtual gateway in order to thwart some nasty plans, but truthfully I was far too immersed in being a certified badass throughout my handful of hours with the game to take too much notice, which I consider genuinely high praise.

When it’s not telling its incredibly-thin tale, Synapse takes cues from roguelite games with a run-based structure that sees you attempt to break through eight zones of defenses within your target’s mind before tackling a final showdown and “finishing” the game, with each death sending you back to the beginning. Of course, you’ll be better equipped going in each time thanks to points earned in previous runs which can be spent on upgrades to give you an edge.

It’s a mechanic that works especially well here, with the mini-challenges that dole out the necessary points making an otherwise-successful run still feel worthwhile. You’re not rewarded for how far you get in but by how you meet certain conditions in a growing challenge tree, so even if you don’t make it as far in as you’d like you’ll still usually feel like something was accomplished on each run.

Better yet, a fair few of the challenges involve making the best use of Synapse’s ridiculously fun take on shooting. Equipped with a gun in your dominant hand and telekinetic powers in the other, the game wants you to feel like a badass at every possible opportunity and it’s rare that it’s ever not the case. Synapse uses the PlayStation VR2’s eye tracking for targeting your telekinesis, which results in probably the closest video game Jedi simulation I’ve encountered. It’s especially great when you learn that you can lightly grip explosive barrels to move them around and then give a considered squeeze to crush and explode them.

On top of being able to fire a handful of different weapon types and throw shit around with your mind, Synapse also features a very cool cover system that essentially lets you use the L and R bumpers on the Sense controllers to grip any part of the environment to pull yourself behind it for protection or even to climb just about any wall or ledge you see. By the time you’ve unlocked a few upgrades and you’re able to throw dudes off ledges and even turn enemies against each other, weaving behind cover, pinning baddies on the ground while you finish them off with a close-range shotgun blast it’s an absolute thrill.

You’ll need to make good use of everything on offer too because Synapse isn’t shy of a challenge – expected given its roguelite tendencies. Ammo is incredibly scarce, as is health, at least until you fill out the top end of your upgrades, so making good use of your telekinetic powers to slam enemies against walls until they’re pulp, hurl their grenades back at them or just drop heavy boxes on their heads repeatedly is incredibly important. Eventually you’ll find yourself doing all of that and popping off headshots around every corner like you’re Keanu Reeves’ Neo mixed with Keanu Reeves’ John Wick.

A complete run to the game’s “conclusion” only takes about an hour in totality but most people will spend more than a few hours just getting to a point where that feels possible – at which stage a harder version of the run opens up and dangles a carrot of further narrative exploration, followed by an even tougher one. I did find myself wishing for more than four enemy types and four different weapons by the time I was well into my third complete playthrough, a similar criticism that developer nDreams has faced with its previous efforts, but simplicity does work in the game’s favour when it comes to letting players really hone their skills, and the level layouts and different enemy groupings that are generated for each run tend to feel unique time and time again.

Simplicity also extends to the game’s look, which – aside from the brief intro, intermission and end narrative sequences – is almost entirely monochrome. Any colour you’ll see within each zone is there to guide your eye toward something, whether it’s an item you’re focused on, an upgrade or healing station, the rain of fire from your weapons or the saving grace of a level exit. It’s gorgeous and striking, and makes encounters very easy and intuitive to read at a glance, especially with the extra immersion afforded by VR. It all looks nice and sharp and clear on the PS VR2 as well, although sometimes a zone would be shrouded by a fog that’s supposed to add extra spice by obscuring your view, but wound up making me feel a bit uncomfortable.

nDreams has also done a great job with the game’s audio production, with explosive effects, unnerving cult-like enemy barks, otherworldly wails and the aforementioned vocal tones of Hale and Hayter peppering the crunchy sci-fi soundtrack and really pulling the whole presentational package together.

All of the great PS VR2 features are also really well-utilised here. Bullets thumping into your head through the visor haptics, the feedback from the Sense haptics and adaptive triggers, 3D audio, all of it comes together superbly to put you in the zone the entire time you’re playing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this aware of my surroundings and assailants in a game like this and it just adds so much to the experience of being a badass mind infiltrator. Synapse really does feel like a game designed to take full advantage of the PS VR2.

This is also a game where I found using full analogue stick-based locomotion and smooth camera turning to be incredibly comfortable either standing or seated, despite its relatively quick pace. It almost felt necessary to play that way as well thanks to how spicy the challenge can be, but for those that need it all of the usual comfort features that you’d want from a VR title are present and work well.

The post Synapse Review – Insane In The Membrane appeared first on Press Start.

Being a detective is hard work. I would know, I’ve played so much Ace Attorney, Batman and LA Noire. Surely that counts for something. But despite all this experience with all these different kinds of detective games, I’ve never seen something like Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. It’s a zany and kooky take on a formula that I’m very familiar with, but it does things differently enough that it enthralled me from beginning to end.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code takes place in the Kanai Ward, a city overtaken by the ominous and authoritarian Amaterasu Corporation. The population is more or less dominated by the weight of the corporation’s power, with people not being allowed to leave the city. They’re everywhere, too – almost all goods and services are provided by Amaterasu, but rumours suggest they’re responsible for the rain that never stops pouring in Kanai. It’s an almost perfect setting for a dark but kooky detective drama, and that’s capitalised on pretty well with the story in Rain Code.

You play as Yuma Kokohead, a detective who awakens onboard an Amaterasu-owned train with no memory of who he was or is now. All he knows is that he’s bonded with Shinigami, a cheerful death god with a twisted sense of humour who haunts him as part of a pact made before Yuma lost his memory. To make matters worse, he’s been accused of murdering everyone on the train. To clear his name, he must prove his innocence to the Amaterasu Corp’s ironically named Peacemakers unit.

Of course, there’s more to it. As you begin to work with other detectives in the area to solve crimes, you’ll not only find mysteries to uncover but that Amaterasu is perhaps more of a presence in the city than they’re letting on. It’s an engaging story from beginning to end, and while there’s nothing too outlandish about the individual cases of each chapter, the overarching story can get pretty wild and goes in some unexpected places. Regardless, the most important thing with a game of this ilk is getting the story and pay-off right, and Master Detective Archive absolutely nails it. 

You’d expect nothing less from the minds that brought us games like Danganronpa and Zero Escape. Master Detective Archive feels like a natural progression of those games – a visual novel with more interactivity that lends the experience a more interesting and engaging style. Imagine if Ace Attorney and Danganronpa (somehow) had a child, and the Persona team dressed it. That’s what Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is. It’s equal parts mystery and adventure dripping in a style that, while liberally borrowing from Persona, is a joy to play. You’ll move from area to area to collect clues and eventually solve crimes and mysteries, but it’s the way Rain Code carries itself that separates it from the rest.

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In each chapter, Yuma and Shinigami are paired up with a detective from the agency and given a case to investigate. As you progress, Shinigami will file all of your evidence as “solution keys”, which will be helpful later. You’ll speak to people involved in the case, investigate the crime scene and chat with your assistant to work out theories about what happened. While these sequences are the most typical of the whole experience, they’re never too tiring and feel appropriate in length.

The city itself is explorable from the get-go, though it’s not quite as open or sprawling as other open worlds players are probably accustomed to. At first, I wasn’t even sure it was necessary, but I realised something after time. Just physically controlling Yuma as he explores the city and uncovers clues is much more engaging than running through dialogue, menus and static background images like other games do. Hearing Shinigami or Yuma speak about their own thoughts on the case while they do so is also a nice touch.

Your investigations are often aided by a partner with a “Forte” that they’ve honed since becoming a master detective. These are all kinds of whacky abilities – someone can summon the soul of a dead person, but only if they’re wearing that person’s clothes. Others can see how the scene of the crime looked when it was first discovered by the first witness. One can even turn back time, but only once. Not all these powers get equal amounts of screen time (and you’ll see why once you play), but they add a nice twist to the investigations.

See, these powers aren’t used actively, per se. Instead, each of the powers provides a twisted sense of logic you’ll have to learn and accept to make deductions about each case. For example, Halara Nightmare’s ability only allows you to return the crime scene to how it looked when first discovered. You don’t actively use this ability, but you incorporate your knowledge of how it works into making your deductions and working out who actually saw the crime scene first based on interviews and such. It’s an abstract way to keep things interesting – as each case is underpinned by logic determined by the powers your assistant has access to – and it never gets old.

Even more unexpectedly, you do most of your deductions in the mystery labyrinth. At key points throughout the story, you’ll be able to enter the mystery labyrinth for your case and finally unravel the mystery posed to you. It’s like a metaphysical world where the investigation process is turned into a dungeon of sorts – each line of questioning is represented by a different corridor to travel down in the labyrinth. You’ll also run into phantom versions of people in the real world hindering your case and engage in Reasoning Death Match with them. You’ll have to load your weapon with the solution keys discussed earlier to strike down their arguments as they literally spit them at you to defeat them in battle.

It’s a whacky way to present what would typically be a courtroom or trial situation in this type of game, but it pays off. While similar in visual style, every labyrinth has a mix of minigames and objectives thrown into each one to keep things interesting. Some are as simple as QTEs; others require you to choose an option out of three, with only one leading to the next room. There’s a lot done in the labyrinths to keep the unravelling of the mysteries fascinating, and every one of them even plays with the expectations set by them before, offering up the variety that would otherwise stagnate this format.

Being a story-based game, there’s not much to do once the credits roll. But that doesn’t matter – Master Detective Archive’s thirty-hour-plus runtime is more than satisfying to experience and doesn’t leave you feeling shortchanged. There are optional collectibles to find through clues given to you in the Kanai Ward that unlocks conversation scenes between Yuma and the other detectives, further fleshing out the game world. But beyond that, it’s a one-and-done affair.

Of course, we can’t talk about a Switch game without speaking about performance. Unfortunately, Master Detective Archive does not buck the trend. Running on Unreal Engine, you probably know what to expect from any game that looks this good running on the Switch. Lots of shimmering and lots of framerate drops are apparent here. It’s a bit fortunate that Master Detective Archive is so immaculately presented. The art direction, affectionately coined “psychopop” by its creator, is equally horrifying and colourful. It’s a really good looking game constrained by the aging hardware of the Switch, but such strong and distinctive art direction gets it over the finish line for me.

Similarly, the game’s audio presentation is also stellar. For one, I’d estimate over 90% of the dialogue is voiced and voiced well. Some dramatic scenes towards the end of the game are just perfectly played out. To have a game of the scope and scale of something like Danganronpa or Ace Attorney, but fully voiced, is honestly so impressive. But to have the entire cast turn in great performances with such a large cast with individual quirks and idiosyncrasies is even more so. Shinigami is easily the standout here. She’s equal parts horny and aggressive and I adore the way she brings so much levity to some of the darker scenes. She’s the gem in this already shining crown of voice actors.

The score matches the eclectic nature of the game’s presentation, making a melding of rock, techno and jazz that perfectly complements the drama of the game’s lengthy cutscenes. My only gripe here is that I feel like too many tracks are used too repetitiously, but otherwise, it’s a strong soundtrack and one that absolutely gets the heart beating during the more intense moments of the story.

The post Master Detective Archives: Rain Code Review – A Cheeky Engaging Mystery appeared first on Press Start.

I’ve been a desktop PC stalwart for as long as I can remember. I’ve used plenty of gaming-focused laptops in the past for one reason or another, but never felt compelled to go out and replace my Microsoft Surface or MacBook Pro with something more performant, or choose portability over just building myself a half-capable desktop rig. After spending a couple of weeks with the Lenovo Legion 7i Pro (Gen 8) though, I’m really starting to come around on what a “gaming” laptop is actually capable of and how far performance and features have come in a relatively manageable form factor.

The version of the Legion 7i Pro I tested retails for $5499 AUD and packs a 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900HX CPU, NVIDIA RTX 4080 Laptop GPU, 32GB of DDR5-5600MHz memory and a 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4, making it easily one of the most expensive and power-packed gaming laptops I’ve had the pleasure of using.

Despite all of this, it manages to look quite understated and nowhere near as “Hello I am a gamer” as I was expecting given the under-the-hood specs. It’s certainly got the angular flourishes and prominent grilles you’d associate with a gaming laptop but it’s an overall very premium aesthetic that I absolutely wouldn’t feel weird about breaking out in a meeting or at my local coffee shop.

Review Unit Specifications:

• CPU: 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900HX
• GPU: RTX 4080 Laptop 12GB GGDR6
• Panel: 16″ WQXGA (2560 x 1600), IPS, HDR400, 240Hz
• RAM: 32GB DDR5-5600MHz
• SSD: 1TB
• WLAN: Killer 802.11 2*2 AX + BT5.1
• Battery: 99.99Wh
• Keyboard: Per-key RGB

In terms of exterior hardware features, The Legion 7i Pro is well-appointed with the left side of the laptop packing a USB 3.2 Gen 1 and USB-C® 3.2 Gen 2 port, the right side hosting a combined headphone/mic jack and another USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, and a healthy row of ports lining the back with ethernet, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 2.1, two more USB 3.2 Gen 1s and the power connector. One thing I’ll always love about power-focused portable machines is the generosity of ports, and that’s thankfully more than accurate of this one.

I will admit, the way that all of these ports sit alongside rows of conspicuously-port-shaped fan outlets on the sides and back had me embarrassingly trying to shove connectors into the laptop’s fans when I wasn’t looking properly, but I feel like that’s potentially more of a me problem than anything else. It all feels nicely sturdy at least, aside from a little more flex in the lid/display than I’d like.

Moving to the bits you’ll spend the most time looking at, I have a lot of love for the keyboard on this thing. The per-key RGB lighting is certainly attractive on first boot, but may or may not be something you further customise/switch off entirely depending on your tastes. It’s about as well laid-out as laptop keyboards go, with the 16″ form factor allowing for a numpad without things feeling too cramped – and I love a numpad. Key presses feel nice and tactile and satisfying with a nice sense of travel and bounceback for laptop keys. The track pad is similarly good, nice and generous in size, satisfying to press and in all of my use it’s been responsive and picks up gestures well.

Then of course, we move to the gorgeous 16″ IPS 240Hz display on the Legion 7i Pro, which is fantastic. I’ve played with more than a few high refresh rate IPS panels before, but as someone who spends most of their gaming time on an LG C2 OLED telly it’s usually an adjustment going to a comparatively dull IPS display. That’s why I was surprised and ecstatic to see some very impressive, vibrant images here with a nice amount of contrast and – although I’m far from an expert on the subject of how accurate they are – some fantastic-looking colours. My gut instinct was to plug the laptop into my TV to fire up some games, but after seeing it in all of its glory I actually spent quite a bit of time using just the Legion 7i Pro’s display. Cyberpunk 2077 in particular, with the ray-traced, neon-soaked streets of Night City, came up an absolute treat.

And of course, with this machine packing a cutting-edge NVIDIA RTX 4080 Laptop GPU with 12GB of GDDR6 memory, playing Cyberpunk 2077 with all of those graphical bells and whistles turned on is absolutely a possibility. Lenovo’s special AI-powered performance engine with its own proprietary chip dedicated to balancing and optimising performance based on long-term use is a hard one to cover off in a time-limited review, but whatever Lenovo’s doing under the hood is definitely working as the Legion 7i Pro is an absurdly performant bit of gear.

CD Projekt’s troubled open-world action RPG was an obvious choice to christen my experience with the laptop, and immediately came up a treat, putting up performance generally above the 60 FPS range at 1080p, with the Ultra visual preset with ray-tracing turned on and the RTX 4080’s fancy DLSS 3 image reconstruction tech turned off. Switching DLSS 3 on I could comfortably push the resolution up to match the laptop’s 2560×1600 WQXGA native display resolution and still hover around a whopping 100 FPS, at which point Night City truly sprang to life in a way that I was yet to witness from a “portable” machine.

Similarly, throwing anything somewhat demanding that I had on hand like Red Dead Redemption 2, Death Stranding, Control, Far Cry 6 and more all resulted in the Legion 7i Pro spitting out frames faster than the bars in Worldwide Choppers Song. Whether you’re playing on an external display or on the laptop’s gorgeous internal one, you’re going to have a great time gaming on this thing (there’s a reason it costs in excess of $5k). Tobii Eye Tracking is included as well, which not only adds a neat level of immersion to some games but can be used for various quality-of-life and privacy features in Windows 11.

With all of this gaming power, naturally, comes incredible productivity performance as well. Packing a 13th Generation Intel Core i9-13900HX CPU there really wasn’t anything I could throw at this thing to make it sweat. While I didn’t run it through any specific productivity benchmarks, I spent some time in various Adobe Creative Suite applications like Photoshop and Premiere and found working with large, complex files and rendering out 4K video to be as painless as I could hope. Given how much my personal desktop can struggle with media processing it was actually hard to part with the Legion 7i Pro when it was time to send the review unit back.

Battery life, as expected with the kinds of performance and cooling solutions packed into this beast, is nothing too impressive. You’d be extremely lucky to get more than an hour and a some change of untethered gaming, and with general day-to-day use at a medium display brightness I wasn’t getting more than a handful of hours of use before needing to reach for the bulky charging brick. This is, unsurprisingly, a “desktop replacement” in every sense of the term. At 2.8kg, it’s not the kind of thing I’d consider throwing in my backpack for a day trip, anyways.

If I have to leverage any genuine criticism in all of this, it’s that the Legion 7i Pro does get pretty hot and loud. If you’ve spent even 10 minutes researching your next gaming laptop purchase, that will in no way surprise you, but it’s quite considerable here. It’s not hot enough to be uncomfortable to use on a desk, and not loud enough to drown out its own (reasonably good) speakers if you crank the volume a bit, but it’s definitely noticeable and potentially among the more offensive I’ve come across in my limited time testing gaming laptops. Not a deal-breaker by any stretch, but worth mentioning all the same.

It’s also worth mentioning that alternate configurations of this machine are available, including a considerably more affordable RTX 4070 model that’ll no doubt still push out some impressive performance, and both are discounted on Lenovo’s own store at the time of writing.

The post Lenovo Legion 7i Pro (Gen 8) Review – Unbelievable Portable Power appeared first on Press Start.

As someone who primarily watches the McMahon-Helmsley federation, because who could resist that Bloodline story arc, my familiarity with All Elite Wrestling is limited to an all-too arrogant-champion whose dedication to kayfabe knows no bounds, buckets of blood, and a little bit of the bubbly. When I heard that the upstart wanted to create a video game to recapture the feel of Nintendo 64-era games like WWF No Mercy, rather than compete with their 2K contemporaries, my ears pricked up. And then when I heard they managed to jag Hideyuki Iwashita to direct, I began to believe.

Almost immediately, AEW: Fight Forever captures the spirit of those AKI games I used to adore. It features the same arcade framework, and feels like No Mercy’s classic engine made new again. However, emulating a quarter-century old game can tend to expose a few gaps in budget and feature-suite, no matter how good the game’s feel is.

The wrestling itself feels very much like No Mercy or Wrestlemania 2000, mixing both regular or strong strikes and grapples to wear your opponent down. In a system that mirrors even modern wrestling games, the aim is to wear opponents down, causing limbic damage, while building enough momentum to perform your signature and finisher moves. In an effort to modernise its aged systems, action and passive skills can be assigned similarly to stat points, giving a variety of buffs that can help turn the tide of a match—desperation kick outs, kip ups, and first-strike buffs all add a strategic layer to the classic No Mercy formula. 

I also feel as though the way momentum is handled can lead to unbalanced experiences, from time to time. Unlike finishers, signature moves don’t seem to drain momentum which led to me giving out Stunners as though they were charitable donations. Similarly, I feel like frustration when playing is set to stem less from the difficulty itself and more from all-too-common cheap losses in the game’s bigger four-way matches. 

Although there are a good amount of match types, Road to Elite will be the main draw for people wanting some form of structure and story, a term I use loosely. It’s digestible and crafted with replay value in mind, and I’d sooner liken it to Mortal Kombat’s Tower than its story mode. With either a created or rostered superstar, you’ll progress through one year of AEW programming broken up into four blocks full of weekly shows leading up to the brand’s quarterly marquee events.

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Even if it’s largely forgettable to play, it’s the moments of history peppered throughout Road to Elite that make it feel special. It’s not exactly their rival’s seventy-some years of history they’re drawing from, but it’s nice to see all of the company’s defining moments across four years touched on, from the brand’s formation, to Jericho’s inaugural reign as champion, to CM Punk’s debut. It’s all framed within this weird, jet-setting adventure that highlights all of the lesser-thought of parts of the business—meet and greets, enjoying local cuisines, and even lifting weights. It all ties into the mode’s management busy work which lurks on the periphery of the fun stuff.

Though there are other superstars on the way courtesy of a season pass, Fight Forever’s roster of around fifty is pretty comprehensive. There’s one or two omissions I am a tad curious about, but it’s hard to fault the selection. It’s definitely big of those making the call to keep Cody Rhodes in the game in spite of his defection back to WWE to “finish the story”. His place in the startup’s history is assured, so it was nice to see. Similarly, the match types that are on offer cover off on everything the brand is known for, the most extreme being the Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch which is as nuts as it sounds—I can’t believe it’s a real match type. 

In one of the more unexpected twists, Fight Forever has a small selection of Pokémon Stadium-like mini-games to really hammer home that absurd, arcade feel the game has. Although the list of challenges alludes to more being added post-launch, the three we’ve got so far are a bit of fun. As a sucker for trivia, my favourite of the bunch is certainly the pop quiz full of deep cuts only fans could appreciate.

In addition to its season pass, Fight Forever has some other “live service” features like challenges, including both dailies and weeklies, that’ll line your pockets with credits to buy things like superstars, arena decor, and taunts from the shop. Some moves and taunts walk the line of trademark infringement, with Brock Lesnar’s devastating F5 featuring under the tongue-in-cheek name “Diverticulitis” while Roman Reigns’ lock and load taunt serves as acknowledgement of The Tribal Chief. As I’ve already unlocked a decent portion of what’s available, I look forward to seeing how often the shop’s stock is refreshed, if at all.

Because it’s a first effort, I didn’t want to be too critical of the game’s creation suites. I mean, you’re not going to see big communities emerge for created superstars in Fight Forever, and stitching together entrances using other star’s music and moves feels appropriately dated, given it’s something I recall doing back in No Mercy. Though I couldn’t manage to find anyone else playing pre-launch, I expect the game’s classic and largely accessible systems will breed a pretty fun and competitive space for people to enjoy wrestling without all of the deck-building nonsense its contemporaries have forced into the mainstream.

Through cartoonish, chonky character models, Fight Forever carves out a fun niche right beside the realistic presentation of the WWE titles. Chris Jericho’s keg-chest and CM Punk’s “most punchable face in wrestling” are both realised with comical accuracy, with all the roster looking the part aside from a couple of so-so renders. I wish I could say the presentation was spectacular throughout, though when you’re chasing the past’s glory as Fight Forever does, graphics ends up being an area where corners can be cut. Long, flashy entrances make way for truncated strolls, and blood spatter—as cool as it is to have a serial-bleeder like Moxley leaking claret like he was born to do—looks like a stamp that appears on the canvas, without any semblance of dynamic at all.

There are a lot of known graphical hitches that I’m sure will be ironed out by launch, including a lot of clipping and render issues. Though, that same cheapness extends to the voiceover efforts which are basically reserved for owner Tony Khan. Beyond that, the written word does the heavy lifting of the oddball drivel that comes out of other superstar’s mouths. A few gimmicks land within the scope of Road to Elite’s script, though it’s a bit of a mess considering I saw Kenny Omega referring to others as Kenny when cutting promos. 

It’s that kind of oddity that sums up the Fight Forever experience. For every bloody perfect thing it delivers from the vintage No Mercy experience, it serves up something you wish was left in the 64-bit age.

The post AEW: Fight Forever Review – Old, Elite Wrestling appeared first on Press Start.

Although it wasn’t overly surprising (but very welcome) to see Activision release the Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy back in 2017 to properly capitalise on nostalgia for the IP that it acquired in 2008, I’ll admit I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see the manic marsupial continue to star in his own titles in the years since. We had another re-do in the form of Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, followed by a wholly original (and shockingly punishing) platforming sequel with Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, and now yet another new and original Crash game has arrived – Crash Team Rumble.

Despite its initial reveal summoning my deepest desires for a return to the Crash Bash/Crash Boom Bang! party game school of mayhem, Crash Team Rumble is instead a competitive, multiplayer online battle arena-style effort where players compete to collect and deposit Wumpa fruit for the team across a variety of maps. As someone that’s largely steered away from even the most basic of MOBA-esque games, it’s certainly not something I would’ve considered dipping my toe into were it not for a lingering penchant for its mascot. That said, after spending a solid amount of time with Crash Team Rumble I can genuinely say I’ve been having a fair amount of fun with it – though glaring, foundational issues with its content offering and structure make it sadly difficult to recommend.

Let’s start with what works though, because my initial experience with Crash Team Rumble has been surprisingly positive. The basic premise is fairly easy for players of all ages to grasp (if I can do it, so can your kids), pitting two teams of four against each other to run around the selection of nine unique maps and collect Wumpa before bringing it back to their team’s scoring area and depositing it as quickly and completely as possible.

Nuance, and opposition, comes from the opposing team’s ability to interfere with that process. Players can attack each other, causing their opponent to drop Wumpa, activate score-boosting gems around each map, use unique character-based abilities and special items, and spend collected relics on game-changing powerups unique to each map in order to get a competitive edge and reach a total of 2000 points before the other team.

Like any good game of this ilk, it’s all about each player in a team working in tandem to manage these various mechanics and become a well-oiled machine of mayhem and Wumpa-hoarding. The included roster of eight recognisable Crash Bandicoot characters is divided into three categories – the Scorers whose characteristics and abilities make them the best fit for zipping around the map to pick up and deposit Wumpa, the Blockers who are more capable of attacking players and obstructing their goal zone to prevent scoring, and the Boosters who want to be activating boost gems around the map and otherwise acting as a support.

The synergy between these classes, even when a team is stacked in one direction or missing one of the three entirely, is pretty remarkable most of the time. In my many, many matches so far I’ve rarely seen anything get too one-sided with the majority of my bouts turning out to be thrilling nail-biters right up the finishing score. The game seems to do a pretty good job of matching and sorting players into appropriate teams before each round, which is great. All of the maps, though on the smaller size, feel unique in their layouts and the various power-ups they offer and are well-designed overall. Coupled with the fact that special abilities are charged by performing the actions your chosen class is intended for, it makes it easy to jump in with randoms and feel assured that everyone’s going to play their part.

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I’m embarrassed to admit that on more than one occasion I’ve found myself yelling at teammates and opponents alike through my TV screen (not into any actual comms, of course) as things got particularly heated. I haven’t managed to convince any of my mates to get into a game with me for some genuinely strategic play but my experience playing with silent strangers so far has been excellent. I have run into the occasional instances of particularly nasty Neo Cortex duos from players clued into the meta but those are few and far between and rarely soured my enjoyment.

So it’s a success on the gameplay front then, but the issues with Crash Team Rumble exist in just about everything outside of the matches themselves. For starters, there’s just that one game type to play. With nine maps and eight characters, repetition can set in pretty quickly. I’ve been playing a maximum of a couple hours a day since just before the game officially launched and I’m already feeling bored with the content on offer. The only thing keeping me going currently is the game’s Battle Pass-style progression, which in a game that’s boxed up and priced on shelves is also a disappointing choice. Between an anemic content offering and the slog of grinding out character levels on top of a timed, seasonal pass, Crash Team Rumble feels like it should’ve been a free-to-play game and not something that you’d pay up to $69.95 for.

At present, there isn’t any way to spend real money on anything, which is nice. But I also don’t know how that’s all going to shake out as far as future content goes, as much as I’ve enjoyed unlocking a heap of character skins and even iconic music from across the franchise that plays when I put the opposing team in the ground. It feels wrong to suggest, but I honestly might have been more optimistic about Crash Team Rumble’s future had Activision decided to make it a freemium release with a paid battle pass. It could have meant more people willing to give the game a go with friends, and as a paid product in the state it’s in right now I just don’t see it garnering the kind of audience to justify a continued investment in Toys For Bob putting out regular content updates.

At least it’s already seen some hefty discounts retail.

The post Crash Team Rumble Review – A Crateful Of Fun While It Lasts appeared first on Press Start.

The TV market has been hugely exciting this year with the likes of the Samsung S95C and Sony A95K bringing in the next generation of OLED in QD-OLED which takes brightness and vibrant to a whole new level. LG’s C range was what kicked it off though, and has become the go-to recommendation for any high-end TV over the last half a decade. This year’s LG C3 doesn’t do anything incredibly different to the C2/C1 that came before it, but it does make some smaller improvements to fix common complaints over the last few years.

I’m not going to spend a heap of time talking about the basic features of the LG C3. It really hasn’t changed a whole heap from the C2 and C1 (you can read those reviews HERE and HERE). It’s still a fantastic TV, but it’s definitely being left a little bit behind in the brightness and vibrance space by the likes of the Samsung S95C and Sony A95K (A95L to be released later this year as well). There’s also now a really clear gap between the C3 and G3 which is using WOLED technology to get that extra bit of added brightness and vibrance.

You’re still going to get a perfect contrast for inky blacks, and decent brightness with LG’s EVO brightness booster. It’s going to provide a perfect picture in dark rooms, but if you’re in a bright Australian room, the brightness (or lack of) as well as the glare is going to still be an issue, with other top-end models from other brands doing a better job at glare reduction due to the increased brightness and a glare reducing coating that just both aren’t on offer here. If you’re coming from an LED, you’ll still notice a big step-up with the C3 and won’t be disappointed, and a lot of this won’t be noticed unless you’re comparing side-by-side or have spent a considerable amount of time with the flagship TVs from other brands.

The actual TV design itself hasn’t changed too much. You’ve got an extremely slim top portion of the panel, with the a much thicker portion below it. Again, compared to the G3 and S95C, it’s no longer the most high-end experience, but if you’re just happy to put the TV on a stand, and not looking to wall mount, it doesn’t make the biggest of differences, and it’s still a nice looking TV with fairly thin bezels and a really understated design that will go well on any entertainment unit.

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One of my complaints with LG OLEDs in the past was the fact that if you’re using a soundbar, you couldn’t fit it below the TV, and LG has remedied this in a really clever way. If you buy the matching SC9S soundbar, it comes with a bracket that essentially allows you to do away with the C3 stand that’s included in the box, instead attaching both the TV and the soundbar to a singular bracket that not only ensures that the TV has enough clearance over the soundbar, but it’s a much cleaner setup having just one bracket tying both together at the back. It’s a little bit cumbersome to attach at first, but it’s a really nice finish. It also works for wall-mounting if you’re choosing to do that. If you’re trying to pair it with other, thicker soundbars, the TV stand in the box will still have the TV sitting quite low.

The actual soundbar itself is a really nice addition as well. The sound that comes out of the C3 is serviceable, but it’s a huge improvement when you add the soundbar and added sub. It’s got three upfiring channels which is perfect for Dolby Atmos content and you also get an extra HDMI 2.1 port (in lieu of the one you take up in your TV).

Not to be outdone by Samsung and Sony’s TV/soundbar sync, LG has introduced WOW Orchestra which basically utilises both the speakers of the C3 and SC9S soundbar in unison to increase the soundstage. The implementation feels on-par to that of other brands and sounds great for some content and not so good for others, so just turn it on and off as you see fit, but overall, the soundbar gets a tick of approval from me in terms of design and how well it integrates with the TV as well as the improved sound.

My only criticism is that I’d like to have seen rears included as well at $1,499 to be on-par with the Q990C as you’re definitely going to want rears if you take your audio seriously. I would definitely recommend pairing this soundbar with the TV though, just due to how well it integrates both in a design sense, but also how seamless the whole experience is from a UI point of view.

Other changes to the C3 include a quick cards system which basically groups categories such as home, sport, gaming etc into cards that you can use to access content and also HDMI Quick Switching which will basically cut out the weird black screen between going from an input such as the PS5 to your Apple TV.

Outside of that, it’s pretty much the same WebOS experience, with the magic remote not changing a whole lot either. It’s still really easy to use and pretty easy to make your way around content, and whether you’re using the Wii-like pointer, or just standard buttons, it’s hard to go wrong.

All-in-all, the LG C3 is going to be the TV that most people go for, just because it improves on a TV that has been a really easy recommendation to any movie lover or gamer over the last 3-4 years. Looking at current pricing though, the Samsung S95C is already on sale at $3,140 which is $500 cheaper than a C3, so for me with the S95C being significantly brighter, having a much better design with the One Connect box and the ability to reach 144hz, that would be an easy recommendation for me. Similarly, the LG CS can be had for well under $2,000 and for the everyday person, you’re not going to see a huge difference between these two TVs, so it does make the C3 a harder sell.

The post LG C3 OLED TV + SC9S Soundbar Review – A Perfect Match appeared first on Press Start.

Final Fantasy has been in something of a renaissance as of late. Between the near universal appraise of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, and Final Fantasy XIV delivering smash hits with every expansion release, FF fans have been eating good recently.

Despite this, the lack of a truly excellent mainline title has been sorely felt for some time. The once-ambitious Fabula Nova Crystallis that had shaped much of Final Fantasy for many years is now a distant memory, and Square Enix is looking to break free of its chains with Final Fantasy XVI. A grittier tone and the commitment to a real-time action combat framework are just a few of the ways that Creative Business Unit III is swinging big with the 16th mainline entry into this legendary franchise.

While Final Fantasy can vary wildly in gameplay and narrative settings, summons have been a constant all the way back through to Final Fantasy III. These incredible entities inspired by countless mythologies and religions take centre stage in Final Fantasy XVI’s story. Referred to as Eikons in FFXVI’s setting of Valisthea, these organic machines of destruction are locked in struggle against one another as warring kingdoms fight over dwindling resources. What’s more harrowing is that each Eikon is harboured by a Dominant – regular people that can tap into and unleash the powers of these epic beings.

The Mothercrystals sit at the core of this conflict; monolithic crystalline structures that function as hotspots for Aether and Magick as a result. All while this is going on, a destructive Blight inches its way towards capital cities, leaving desolate deadlands in its wake. It’s among the midst of this conflict and turmoil that Clive Rosfield seeks revenge for a tragic incident from his younger years that changed his life forever.

Final Fantasy XVI’s narrative takes place across three periods of Clive’s life, each one integral to his journey and offering something different in terms of overall tone and feel. Where the beginning of the game serves up a fitting introduction to Clive’s loved ones and kingdom in his early teens, the latter portions of his life explore a man broken by loss, fueled only by a need for revenge. It’s Clive’s cold determination that causes him to push others away, often shouldering his lofty burden alone despite the fact he has people to lean on.

Final Fantasy XVI goes far deeper than revenge, but it would be a shame to spoil it here. The overall story shifts dramatically after the first act for the better, moving to more fertile ground that allows for a deeper and more poignant exploration of its themes and ideas. In totality, FFXVI’s narrative is an all-timer of a JRPG tale about breaking free from the shackles of fate – no matter how impossible it seems. There’s also an excellent element of meta-narrative to it that longtime fans will no doubt recognize and get a kick out of as the story rolls on.

While it doesn’t break much new ground, the story is remarkably well told across a briskly-paced 35-hour (by JRPG standards) runtime for the core path, with endearingly complex characters and narrative beats that feel akin to Final Fantasy XIV’s lofty achievements. Clive is an immensely compelling protagonist that you can’t help but root for, and Ben Starr does a brilliant job of portraying a wide range of emotions for all manner of situations. The same can’t be said for all characters across this vast story, though, as one character in particular falls to the wayside towards the end of the game to prop Clive up further, which felt off in comparison to how they’re handled up to that point.

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A large reason the story succeeds in the way it does is thanks to how well-realised Valisthea is. The worldbuilding is deliciously palpable everywhere you go. Refugees flock to the Mothercrystals for shelter, corruption is rife among all kingdoms, and the discriminatory treatment of Magick-wielding Bearers is explored in confronting detail. It paves the way to a rich, dark fantasy world that feels oppressive and bleak, further punctuating fleeting flashes of hope and optimism found in Final Fantasy XVI’s most resonant moments. If you ever get lost in the grandeur, the inclusion of a Lorekeeper and the Active Time Lore feature means you can always freshen up on the happenings of the world and the connections between the people that inhabit it.

Instead of opting for a true open world ala Final Fantasy XV’s Eos, Valisthea is comprised of combat stages and open zones. Combat stages are narrative-focused levels made up of enemy encounters and boss fights, often popping up at key junctions in the narrative. The four open zones are more non-linear affairs, with hunts, side quests and collectibles to find off the beaten path. Each zone is big enough to incentivise exploration and curiosity, but small enough to not inundate or overwhelm.

The simple structure of moving through open zones as you progress towards combat stages keeps Final Fantasy XVI feeling fresh and varied throughout its relatively lengthy campaign. It’s easy to see why Final Fantasy XVI’s narrative has been referred to as a rollercoaster ride, with peaks and troughs to allow for set pieces of spectacle that contrast deeply with its more introspective moments. Combat stages never overstay their welcome, bowing out before their linearity can wear thin, and while the open zone portions can be shot through quite quickly, you’d be missing out by passing up on the available side content.

This is because the excellent writing found in the main story is present in a vast majority of the side quests. They often explore themes and ideas prominent throughout Valisthea in greater detail, and through numerous lenses. They also expand on characters key to Clive’s journey, and can lend a lot of emotional weight to some of the main narrative beats as a result. The tail end of the game has some particularly poignant side stories, as they payoff narrative threads and character arcs in satisfying fashion before the credits roll.

When you aren’t in the field, you’ll spend most of your time in the Hideaway, which serves as a base of operations for Clive and company. You can craft new weapons, purchase goods at the shop, listen to unlocked music tracks, replay combat stages and much more. The Hideaway doubles as a home away from home for Clive, and it becomes a community you’ll retreat to between exploration and big narrative beats. It’s always a joy to explore this space and talk with its denizens to see how they react to happenings in the world and Clive’s adventures.

Ever since Final Fantasy XIII, it’s felt like Final Fantasy’s combat systems have tried to emulate the cinematic spectacle of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children to varying degrees of success. Final Fantasy XVI feels like the first in the series to fully embrace an action framework for its combat system, completely abandoning anything that’s come before. Combat director Ryota Suzuki’s experience on Devil May Cry 5 and Dragon’s Dogma is infused into the DNA of FFXVI’s kinetic clashes.

At a base level, Clive has access to a quick four-hit combo, magic projectiles, and a dodge. You can mix and match slashes with magic attacks for Magic Burst combos, and last minute dodges lead into deft counterattacks. You also have Torgal; the best boy, and Clive’s pet wolf. Using the d-pad allows you to sic Torgal on enemies for quick damage and launchers, or even aid Clive with a regenerative heal to get you out of a pinch. It doesn’t have the depth and complexity akin to Devil May Cry, but there’s enough options here to afford a healthy amount of player expression and intricacies to learn.

Where things start to open up, is with the Eikons. As the dominant of Ifrit, Clive has access to Eikonic Feats and Abilities that drastically shake up combat. While you start with the blessing of the Phoenix, you’ll quickly unlock other Eikons to attune with, three being the max you can have equipped at any given time. Each Eikon has their own unique Eikonic Feat and slew of Eikonic Abilities to employ in combat, each with different strengths and weaknesses.

Where Phoenix is an all-rounder with an aggressive teleport in the form of Phoenix Shift, decent area of effect coverage with Scarlet Cyclone, and high single target damage in Rising Flames, Titan focuses on using well-timed blocks to launch your own all-out offensive. Each Eikon is remarkably unique in what they can do, becoming more and more intricate with each unlock.

Most enemies will fall victim to your attacks and Eikonic Abilities relatively quickly, but it’s the mini-bosses and boss fights where you really need to put in the work. These enemies also have Will gauges, which deplete as they take damage. Upon hitting 50% Will, an enemy will stagger briefly, and emptying it out in full will lead to a lengthy knockdown, boosting your own damage and making way for an opportunity to go all out. This is all without getting into Clive’s ability to Limit Break as a pseudo-Awakening mode, boosting damage and priming into an infernal state.

If it sounds similar to Final Fantasy VII Remake’s combat flow, that’s because it is, only much faster. Combat really starts to shine when you get a feel for the rhythm of these fights, pulling off precision dodge after precision dodge, unleashing Eikonic Abilities at just the right moments, only to unload even more carnage just as your enemies go down. It’s exhilarating stuff, especially in the late game against some of the tougher side hunts and boss battles which employ raid-like area of effect attacks and damage checks to get your blood pumping.

All of these elements build up to what are undoubtedly Final Fantasy XVI’s biggest moments – the Eikon battles. These are unbelievably huge confrontations between Eikons in all of their glory and power, offering a few distinct gameplay formats from the regular hacking and slashing. From an on-rails shoot em’ up to a wrestling match of titanic proportions, these fights are raw spectacle in every sense of the word. Limbs are torn off and holes are blasted through bodies, only for these wounds to heal as Eikons keep trading blows. Each one has you questioning how the next could possibly top it in scale, but FFXVI somehow rises to the occasion every single time.

These clashes also do a bit to help pacing as they act as a pseudo narrative reset, almost as if each one is the climactic conclusion to an arc in a much grander story. They’re few and far between but that makes them all the more special. My only gripe with the Eikon fights is that it feels like there’s one missing in the last third of the game, leaving a long-awaited confrontation feeling somewhat anticlimactic in comparison to other boss fights.

If you just can’t get enough of the combat after credits have rolled, Final Fantasy XVI has you covered. Aside from the aforementioned ability to replay combat stages, you can also tackle them in a scored Arcade Mode. In addition, the Chronolith trials are another worthwhile combat activity that tests your skills with a particular Eikon, locking your loadout in a 3-round gauntlet as you race against the timer to the finish line. There’s also a robust New Game Plus offering with an added difficulty that raises the level cap, remixes enemy placements, and adds new gear, allowing you to flex your Eikonic prowess while still being challenged.

The commitment to action combat also means that progression has shifted from traditional stat chasing and min-maxing to obtaining new combat techniques and upgrading your Eikon Abilities. Completing enemy encounters and quests nets you ability points, which can be spent to upgrade and master Eikonic Feats and Abilities at your leisure. Mastering an Eikon Ability allows it to be slotted onto any Eikon, meaning you can combine Eikonic Feats with abilities you usually wouldn’t be able to. Experimenting with this is good fun, as it can lead to combinations that allow for ludicrous amounts of damage that feel incredibly satisfying to pull off.

While Clive can be equipped with new armour and weapons as you craft and purchase them, they don’t do much other than increase stats. The biggest form of gear customization comes in the form of Accessories. You can have three equipped at any time, each one granting different effects, from reduced cooldowns, to increased ability damage, and even accessibility options like automatic dodging, healing, and Torgal commands for those who’re overwhelmed by FFXVI’s faster pace.

If you’ve laid eyes on Final Fantasy XVI in motion, you’ll know that it’s a visual marvel . Regardless of the mode you play on, FFXVI is chock-full of gorgeous environments that drip with attention to detail, bringing the dark fantasy setting of Valisthea to life. The Mothercrystals tower over their respective kingdoms, standing as beacons of hope for the masses, while remnants of a more advanced race known as the Fallen pepper landscapes surrounding them.  A special shoutout should go to the combat stages, where the more linear progression allows for tailored cinematic shots and eye-popping spectacle that never fails to disappoint.

Final Fantasy XVI has two main graphics options; Quality and Performance. They do what’s written on the box, but there’s a few caveats with each that are worth mentioning. Quality is putting out a native 1440p upscaled to 4K and targets 30 frames-per-second. Performance, which is where I spent a bulk of my time, runs at a native 1080p upscaled to 1440p and targeting 60 frames-per-second.

While performance mode manages to maintain a steady 60 across a vast majority of combat encounters, exploration drops down to an abrupt 30-40 frames-per-second for a temporary visual trade-off. While it’s nice to have improved quality when the game isn’t firing on all cylinders, it’s jarring to constantly move between two extremes when you’re frequently dipping in and out of combat. The ability to turn off motion-blur is also sorely lacking at launch, but is promised to be coming at a later date. Load times are lightning quick across the board, with instantaneous fast-travel alleviating any tedium associated with quests that have you darting around the map.

If there’s one thing you can always count on with Final Fantasy, it’s that you’re going to get an incredible soundtrack to elevate the experience. Final Fantasy XVI is no outlier in this regard. Masayoshi Soken’s work on Final Fantasy XIV is tangible in XVI’s more subdued tracks, particularly when exploring the overworld or hanging out in the Hideaway. The combat themes pick up in pace dramatically, and the orchestral grandeur of the Eikon battle themes are some of the best work Soken has ever done. Liberal use of vocals play a massive part in these tracks, affording a sense of gravity and weight to these fights that bolster key character moments and the clashing of wills.

It almost feels poetic that mainline Final Fantasy is back on-track amidst the myriad successes of other FF projects in recent years. There’s an undeniable confidence in the story told here, the world it’s built within, and in the dramatic shift to action-focused combat. A game this big can never be without issues, but Final Fantasy XVI delivers exactly what long time fans have been wanting from this legendary franchise for the last few years.

The post Final Fantasy XVI Review – An Eikonic Achievement appeared first on Press Start.

When you think about Bloober Team, you think about horror. But while they had shipped ten games in other genres before Layer of Fear, you’d be remiss for assuming it was their debut. Layers of Fear really put Bloober Team on the map. It balanced an intriguing story with a sense of atmospheric immersion unlike anything before. However, its lack of interactivity hurt it in places. Now, seven years later, Bloober has revisited the game that made it all happen for them. It’s called Layers of Fear once more, but it’s an all-encompassing package that is the best way to experience Layers of Fear, even with all its faults.

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While it shares a name with the first game, Layers of Fear is a compilation of everything released in the series. It includes Layers of Fear, its Inheritance expansion and Layers of Fear 2. These three components, previously only available on older consoles and built on Unity, have now been entirely remade and updated to run on Unreal Engine 5. The remarkable result is such a stark visual upgrade that it’s easily the best and most definitive way to jump into the Layers of Fear series.

But there’s a little bit more included here for returning fans too. On top of a rather generous upgrade pricing option, some brand-new content further fleshes out the game’s story. It will honestly be up for debate just how much these new additions add to the experience. It’s still a nice inclusion for those who’ve already played the previous games to death.

The first new inclusion is a brand-new chapter within the first game’s world. It’s called The Last Note, and it sees you playing as the wife of The Painter from the first game. It’s a very brief, albeit enlightening, chapter that tells her side of the story in an attempt to recontextualise events of the first game. With so much detail already put into Layers of Fear and Inheritance, I can’t help but feel this wasn’t needed though it comes with two endings.

I say this because while the second game is much less revered amongst the fans, it’s also had no attention paid to it beyond its original release. This would’ve been a great opportunity to better flesh out the characters’ stories in that game, so it feels a little misfire to not include anything in this otherwise robust package.

The other new inclusion is the story of a character known only as “The Writer”. Her story is presented as a framing narrative – you’ll play one of her (shorter) chapters between the chapters in Layers of Fear and Layers of Fear 2. They’re good at breaking up the monotony of these other chapters, but the transition to them is a bit jarring and not really justified narratively. Still, the writer’s story is a good attempt to tie all the stories together.

Once again, whether that’s done elegantly or in a totally satisfying matter is up for debate. I’m not going to spoil anything here – but it feels like The Writer’s story is doubling down on an aspect introduced in the second game that I wasn’t a fan of. I’m sure some fans will appreciate the direction it takes the story, but for me, it felt like a bit of a cop-out.

But credit must be given to Bloober Team and Anshar Studios. Most developers would be happy to port their old games to a new engine and leave it at that. Including new content in Layers of Fear is appreciated, even if that content doesn’t quite resonate with me. But it’s important to highlight that these aren’t straight remakes either. Both Layers of Fear games have had changes made to address criticisms aimed at them all those years ago.

Many encounters, especially in the first game, have been reworked to take advantage of both newer technology and the presumably evolving talents of the developers. Both games are still largely passive experiences, but some of these remixed and redesigned set pieces do good work in alleviating some of the repetition of the original games, where you’d walk through corridors and impossible spaces while scary voices whispered at you or objects fell to the ground and made loud noises.

This is done in both games in different ways. The first Layers of Fear gives The Painter a lantern to wield, which can “cleanse” objects or areas to reveal new paths in the world. It also allows him to fight off an enemy who stalks him in certain situations. During these moments, you’ll often evade an enemy while moving through a more open area to find a key and escape. This is a good attempt at cleansing Layers of Fear of its often derogatorily used term “walking simulator”, but it’s not quite as engaging as I’d hoped. It feels like Outlast, and given that I wasn’t a massive fan of this design choice almost ten years ago, it still doesn’t play well here.

The second Layers of Fear already had some moments where a monster stalks you, but the changes implemented here feel a bit more carefully considered. Here, you’re given a flashlight. It can stun the monster that stalks you through the ship, alleviating a key criticism of the original release. But It also can be used to solve puzzles – shining the light on specific mannequins will animate them to move something out of the way or hand you an item. It’s a lighter change, but its inclusion makes Layers of Fear 2 feel more like a “game”. It’s also used to up the ante during the game’s numerous chase sequences.

But at the end of the day, while these changes are numerous and nice, I’m reticent about declaring that you’ll suddenly like Layers of Fear if you never did initially. The style of scares is still the same – which will always be subjective at the end of the day. The experience is still essentially linear and, to a certain extent, predictable, despite implementing these more marginally open areas. I’m not implying that linear is always bad, but sometimes Layers of Fear feels so directed that the tension can evaporate once you realise you’re playing a game that wants you to take a particular path.

Of course, it goes without saying that Layers of Fear does a great job of looking the part. The jump to Unreal Engine 5 is nothing short of remarkable. Every location you trudge through looks phenomenal, rebuilt from the ground up to deliver a better sense of place than the original games. Horror games immensely benefit from a well-realised atmosphere, and Layers of Fear provides that in droves. Combining stellar sound design and some awe-inspiring ambient lighting really elevates the presentation of the games beyond what was presented all those years ago.

The post Layers of Fear Review – Adding The Final Strokes appeared first on Press Start.

AYANEO has been pumping out devices in the last year or so and yet somehow, they’re still finding new product markets that hit a new demographic and totally change the feel of the device. Enter, the AYANEO Air Plus which has the same 6800U processor (at least in the version I tested) as the AYANEO 2, but a form factor that isn’t too dissimilar to that of the AYANEO Air Pro, but with a slightly larger display and high-end performance, it feels like the sweet spot between all of the devices that came before it.

The AYANEO Air Plus has a 6-inch 1080p touchscreen IPS display, so it’s a touch bigger than the 5.5-inch found in the Air Pro, and it also loses that gorgeous OLED display, but it’s still a fantastic looking display with decent brightness and great colour vibrance.

The larger display means that it’s slightly bigger than the Air Pro as well, but I think it feels really good in the hands, not quite as big as the AYANEO 2, and also coming in at 130 grams less in weight, making it more comfortable for long term sessions. Really, it’s just impressive that this type of performance can come out of a handheld of this size.

The Air Plus features hall sensing mini joysticks, which aren’t as good as the AYANEO 2 joysticks, but super comfortable to use for the size, it has hall trigger triggers which feel great to use, and face buttons which feel a little bit smaller and more cramped than I’d like but again, they provided great responsiveness and still felt good in the hands.

In terms of inputs, it’s pretty standard among AYANEO devices now. You’ve got a full function USB4 USB-C port on the top and bottom which is fantastic for charging or connecting to an external GPU, you’ve got your MicroSD card slot, a fingerprint reader on the top as well as some extra macro buttons on either side of the top can be customised with actions like bringing up your keyboard or task manager.

Just in case you haven’t heard about AYANEO devices before, they run Windows, with this particular model running Windows 11, so absolutely any game that can be played on a PC can be played on this device. This isn’t limited to just Steam, but any launcher including Xbox Game Pass, Epic Games Store, Rockstar, Ubisoft etc.

There’s a big range of AYANEO Air Plus devices. All can be found on the Indiegogo site HERE. The 6800U model that I tested is aimed at high-end AAA gaming, and is priced appropriately at $1,205 AUD, but it goes as low as $412 AUD for the Ryzen 3 7320U or Intel Adler Lake i3 1215U which are great for lower demanding games on the indie side or maybe some basic emulation.

This is a very capable gaming device. Whilst playing games such as Returnal, Cyberpunk 2077 and The Last Of Us Part 1 at 25w with high settings at 1080p (with AMD FSR set to balanced), I was able to get near enough to 30FPS for all of them, with games such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and Forza Horizon 5 all pushing closer to 60 FPS, but you can expect to get even better performance if you’re happy to drop this down to 720p.

AYANEO AIR PLUS 6800U PERFORMANCE

1080 / High / AMD FSR: Balanced / 25w

• The Last Of Us Part 1 – 30 FPS
• Returnal: 27 FPS
• Horizon Zero Dawn 42 FPS
• Cyberpunk 2077: 27 FPS
• F1: 57 FPS
• Forza Horizon 5 – 51 FPS
• Red Dead Redemption 2 – 44 FPS

Battery life has been the big issue with any high-end Windows gaming device, and it’s not the worst that I’ve experienced with the AIR Plus. It has a larger 46.2Wh battery which lasted me about an hour playing at the 25w required to get a decent 1080p gaming experience, but when dropping to 20 watts I was able to push that to 90 minutes and you’d be looking at 2-3 hours when dropping this even further for indie games.

Whilst the AYANEO 2 got fairly hot when it launched (a heat dissipation kit has now been released), this isn’t really the case with the AIR Plus. The fans definitely ramp up which can get in the way of the speakers a little bit, but I’d rather that if it means keeping the actual unit cool in the hands.

As mentioned, the AYANEO Air Plus runs Windows 11 which is a huge positive for playing absolutely any game that you already own (and not just on Steam) as well as emulation, which obviously this machine excels at, but it’s also still a bit of a negative in the sense that Windows wasn’t really designed to be used with a touch screen. It’s absolutely fine if you’re just booting a game, and not an issue once you’re in, but it can still have its quirks if needing to navigate around, with it often being much easier to just pair a keyboard and mouse (which is super easy to do with Bluetooth or with a dongle).

AyaSpace is the device’s front-end loader, and it does a great job at providing an overlay with quick access to changing brightness and how much power you’re using, as well as sorting your games from all of your launchers and displaying them. There were still a few bugs, particularly when changing resolution or not loading games in, but it’s constantly being updated and worked on. As cool as a design feature that it is, I still found inconsistencies with the lighting up of the analogue sticks as well, particularly when having the device next to me and trying to sleep.

Ayaneo has launched a new multi docking station alongside this device, which is great for connecting the AYANEO Air Plus up to a monitor and playing games on the big screen or just using it for productivity. It can work with any of its products, but I can’t tell you how much this improved the experience. Not only did it mean that I could easily charge the device at all times, it also made connecting a monitor via HDMI as well as keyboards/mice a breeze. As I mentioned earlier, you could now literally use this as your daily driver without any issues, then pick it up to take it to bed and game.

This is just such an exciting space to watch and nobody is innovating faster than AYANEO who just keeps utilising the latest tech available in a number of form factors. It’ll be interesting to see how the soon to be released ASUS ROG Ally shakes up this market even further.

The AYANEO Air Plus is available on Indiegogo with early bird prices HERE. 

The post AYANEO Air Plus Review – Mighty Performance In A Great Form Factor appeared first on Press Start.

Between Diablo III’s disastrous launch and the egregious monetization of Diablo Immortal, one of Blizzard’s most defining IP hasn’t been in a great spot as of late. It’s in these circumstances that Blizzard have decided to pivot back to what made Diablo special to begin with in Diablo IV. Moving back to a more grounded setting, honing focus on characters as opposed to spectacle, and polishing a beloved formula up to snuff for 2023 standards are just a few of the things this game has set out to achieve.

Diablo IV harkens back to Blizzard’s glory days, a time where the developer’s titles stood out on store shelves thanks to chunky boxes synonymous with quality and polish. It remains to be seen how its live service offerings will pan out over the coming months and years, but the day one package feels undeniably feature-complete, rich with content, and brandishes impeccable presentation informed by an unwavering commitment to the vision of a redefined Sanctuary. It might not break much new ground, but Diablo IV is a hell of a good time.

Some 30 years after the events of Diablo III, the war between angels and demons has taken its toll on both sides, and on Sanctuary itself. It’s in these moment of vulnerability that cultists have summoned Lilith, daughter of Mephisto and mother to Sanctuary. Her awakening brings only chaos, as demons and humans alike are overtaken by their sinful desires when graced by her presence.

In the absence of Tyrael, Lilith has claimed herself as the new protector of Sanctuary. The flipside of this coin is Inarius; co-creator of Sanctuary and founder of the Cathedral of Light. A fallen angel seeking redemption through ending Lilith’s newfound control, so that he can return to his rightful place in heaven. It’s in the midst of this conflict that the wanderer and the Horadrim set out to thwart Lilith’s plans and defend Sanctuary from the inevitable fallout of a foretold prophecy.

The conflict between Lilith and Inarius is grey and ambiguous in nature. Inarius’ goal is to the benefit of humanity, but his actions are driven by a prideful ignorance and want for acknowledgement from the high heavens. Lilith’s plans are portrayed in a similar light, but there’s always an undertone of uncertainty and manipulation whenever she’s stealing the scene on-screen. It’s a more nuanced and intricate take on the never-ending war between heaven and hell that prompts you to read between the lines as opposed to just taking a side.

Character development is similarly engaging when it comes to the Horadrim. Lorath and Donan represent everything wrong with the Horadrim as they tackle personal demons, where newcomer Neyrelle embodies everything the Horadrim are meant to be. Her naivety is sharpened into cautious optimism by the time credits roll, but the dynamic between these three always delivers, even if they don’t come together all too often.

Where the character stuff is mostly great, the pacing of the narrative itself is a bit of a mixed bag. The opening chapters work to lure you into a more grounded version of Sanctuary, with a seemingly innocuous string of events that take a hard left turn into the despair and corruption brought by Lilith’s summoning. Things do slow down quite a bit from there though, with Acts IV and V feeling particularly side-tracked by a game of cat and mouse. These sluggish middle chapters eventually give way to an Act VI that careens towards the finish line, punctuated by one of Blizzard’s hallmark CG cutscenes that really earns its scope and grandeur through subtle tension building.

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Perhaps the most interesting detail in regards to narrative structure is its non-linear progression. Acts II and III, alongside certain quest chains in other acts, can be completed in any order you see fit. If there’s a particular character you want to see more of, or a zone you want to explore, you can do so without hindering progression. Most zones scale to your level, so there’s never any worry of being over/under levelled for a particular area. This also lends tremendously to replay value and character progression, as you can tackle certain dungeons for class specific rewards whenever you feel like it.

I came to appreciate it even further as I explored Sanctuary. This is an open-world packed with stuff to do, from single-room Cellars and multi-floored Dungeons to world events and hidden Altars of Lilith that provide permanent stat bumps to all characters you make on that Realm. Despite some of the content feeling recycled, there’s something around every corner, and not being railroaded into a single zone at a time makes for a refreshing sense of freedom in a genre that typically herds you down its golden path.

While some of the content on offer here can get repetitive after hours of play, there’s always a worthwhile reward to come by the end of it. Everything you do is also earning you reputation for whatever zone that activity is in, with each reward tier offering useful character upgrades, most of which are account-wide. Whether it be loot or playstyle-altering Aspects that can be previewed before you commit to running a dungeon, Diablo IV’s grind respects your time without ever taking away from its inherent satisfaction.

The biggest choice you make when starting a new Diablo game is almost always which class you’re going to descend into hell with first. I spent the majority of my time with Diablo IV’s Rogue. After some experimentation through the ability to respec at any time, I eventually landed on a glass cannon build that incentivized teetering on a knife’s edge, imbuing weapons with shadow damage and hitting enemies with hard and fast barrages of arrows and blades while making ample use of traps.

While I stuck with this core build once I landed on it, it’s remarkable how quickly you can flip a build onto its head and change the entire dynamic of a class. Rogues can go down many different routes, from melee or ranged only, to a hybrid class that makes use of stealth to reposition. Other classes offer a similar level of flexibility, but there are some clear balance issues at the moment that position certain classes as better than others.

Instead of redefining character progression, Diablo IV opts to add new layers of power onto your builds and gear through a few systems. Aside from being inundated with new equipment and gaining skill points each level, Aspects can also be unlocked through various means. Most of these are class specific, but there are a few that are universal. Earned Aspects can be imprinted onto gear to give bonuses that alter or compliment your playstyle. It adds a new layer to gear progression that isn’t as passive as simple stat bonuses, and instead incentivizes you to play around with new skills or build for ones you’ve taken a liking to.

The core gameplay loop will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s played Diablo before. It falls more in line with recent entries as opposed to the more deliberate nature of Diablo II, but that isn’t a detriment. Combat has a visceral flow to it that fits with the overall world and atmosphere Blizzard are looking to establish here in Diablo IV, where bodies ragdoll and rip apart due to the sheer force of your blows. Fallen enemies result in countless loot drops to bolster your character’s power, and the ever satisfying ding of a legendary drop still taps into a primal part of the brain. Aside from being Diablo IV’s highest rarity tier, legendary gear brings playstyle-altering passives and even bonus skill ranks for all manners of play.

A special mention should go to Diablo IV’s boss fights, which are almost always excellently designed, and represent the best of what ARPGs can achieve. I played all of my campaign on World Tier II, which offered challenging boss encounters that forced me to play in a more considered manner as opposed to hammering on my abilities and basic attacks. Dodging projectiles, reading tells, and making smart use of potions all coalesces into exhilarating encounters that kept me on the edge of my seat. Completion of the campaign also allows you to work up to higher World Tiers, further bolstering difficulty with the incentive of increased reward.

The other notable end game content comes in the form of Whispers of the Dead, and Helltides. The former sees you completing favors for The Tree of Whispers in specific zones as you build up to a point cap. These favors are often things you’ll already be doing, like Cellars, Dungeons, and world events. Once you’ve completed enough favors, you can turn in your Whispers for a cache of loot, containing a bunch of armour or weapons, gems, gold, and experience points.

Helltides are only unlocked and present on World Tier III and higher, where empowered demons spawn in a specific region. These demons drop Cinders, which can be spent to open Helltide chests scattered in the area, creating potential for top tier rewards if you’re willing to take the risk. These empowered demons are no walk in the park, but my experience with Helltides prop it up as some of the best content to engage with for high quality gear in the post-game.

Similarly interesting is the Plains of Hatred, which functions as a PvPvE zone. Defeating other players and demons in the Plains of Hatred will net you Seeds of Hatred, which need to be purified into Red Dust to be used as currency. The catch, is that players are free to attack you while you’re purifying, adding an inherent risk/reward factor in the process. You can of course opt to only engage in PvE, but you’ll need to purify at some point, so the Plains of Hatred are best ventured with friends. Earned Red Dust can later be spent on ornamental rewards like cosmetics and mounts.

This is all without discussing Strongholds, Capstone and Nightmare Dungeons, levelling other classes, the myriad of side quests available to you, and so much more. There’s a wealth of content to engage with across all skill levels in Diablo IV at launch, and it’s only going to get bigger with incoming seasonal offerings.

The biggest question mark at the moment lies in Diablo IV’s monetization. Blizzard have been clear that there’s no pay-for-power in Diablo IV, but it remains to be seen how egregious pricing is for the cosmetics and mounts on offer. The press build didn’t have a functioning store to peruse, but the easily accessible and simple transmog system allowed me to tailor the way my characters looked without spending a dime. It’s also worth mentioning that there’s going to be premium battle passes for post-launch seasons, but specific details on this were also absent in the review build.

Diablo IV’s impeccable presentation is the glue that holds this experience together. A more muted color palette stands in stark contrast with Diablo III and Immortal, falling much more in line with the first two games. Catacombs and dungeons are decorated with viscera and gory remnants of battles long past, bodies are posted up in the arid wastes of Khejistan as a grisly warning to adventurers and would-be heroes, and Scosglen’s countless ruins mark the history of its former inhabitants. It goes a long way to building a moody atmosphere and tone in this gothic wasteland.

That isn’t to say that Sanctuary is a landscape of dull greys and limestone yellows – quite the opposite, in fact. Each region offers something visually distinct from the last. Where the frozen Fractured Peaks is a frigid wasteland of cold death, Haweza is festering and humid bog filled with all manner of abominations. Each zone seamlessly blends into the next, all while offering their own interpretations of hell and how it spills over into the land. This is further bolstered by a diverse array of grotesque enemy designs that mix the familiarity of Diablo’s demonic trappings with eldritch horror.

Polish is also unsurprisingly up to snuff for Blizzard standards on the PC side of things. Performance was silky smooth across 30 or so hours of play, with the only real issues I encountered being some rubber banding when moving too fast on a mount. I’m unsure how things are on the console side, but I suspect that a similar standard is upheld.

Diablo IV doesn’t just feel like a return to form for the franchise, but also for Blizzard as a developer. There’s a keen awareness for what makes Diablo special present in Diablo IV. It’s as contemporary as it is traditional, understanding that ARPGs have evolved past the days of button mashing, but also paying homage to its forebears and legacy. It’s not without issues, but Diablo IV delivers where it counts.

The post Diablo IV Review – A Superb Return To Form appeared first on Press Start.

Street Fighter 6 needed to do everything it could to right the wrongs of its predecessor. With fighting games enjoying a strong resurgence in recent years, it’s simply not enough to cater solely to the hardcore audience and Street Fighter 6 knows that. Where Street Fighter 5 would eventually fumble to the finish line as a competent product, Street Fighter 6 starts off stronger than ever with an appeal to all audiences. And while the roster isn’t as numerous as most of its contemporaries, it’s laid a foundation riddled with a vigour that can only auspiciously grow into Capcom’s greatest fighter yet.

Street Fighter 6 doesn’t mess with the genre too much. You pick a character and battle it out with an opponent until one of you wins. It’s a system that works. Street Fighters’ main schtick has always been the solid systems underpinning the flow of its combat, making up for its lack of melodrama or violence with good old-fashioned gameplay. Street Fighter 6 is no different. It leverages a solid battle system to appeal to experienced players but incorporates some much-needed changes to welcome new and inexperienced players to the fold too.

The most obvious change here is the three control options it offers up. Typical fighting games require inputting commands and buttons to pull off special moves or combos. This is still in Street Fighter 6, as the “Classic” control mode. But two other control modes simplify things for newcomers. “Modern” lets players pull off special moves and combos with simplified and less intimidating inputs. “Dynamic” is even simpler – allowing flashier combos and move strings with the mashing of certain buttons – it acts as a de-facto “party” mode of sorts for a super casual player.

I’ve experienced first-hand how newer players to the genre might find these games overwhelming, especially when playing against somebody experienced. These control schemes don’t feel like afterthoughts. They’re an earnest step in the right direction to break down barriers that might stop people from picking up the controller. Some aspects of the Modern mode, such as lower damage output, might seem controversial. But it only seeks to illustrate the strength of it – you can throw out moves and combos faster than the average player, so a damage compromise seems fair.

Another less obvious way that Street Fighter 6 feels more approachable is the Drive system. It feels significantly streamlined by incorporating parrying, blocking, cancelling, and all other kinds of gimmicks from previous games into one system. You can use your drive meter to absorb attacks, counter them, or even block or cancel out a string of attacks. Like in previous games, it can even be used to enhance special moves. Giving players so many options at the beginning of a match leads to a flow of battle that’s much faster and, more importantly, more flexible for players.

The Drive system really is ingenious. It manages to roll the cooler gimmicks seen in previous Street Fighter games into one, but it also provides a consistent set of skills that every character can access from the beginning. If you can successfully grasp the concept of the Drive system as a whole, you have a substantial collection of abilities to fight with no matter who you choose. It’s a much more intelligent and elegant system than in Street Fighter 5 – where every V-Skill and V-Trigger had to be remembered and chosen at the beginning of each match. Even then, they were all wildly inconsistent and unbalanced. The Drive system is a more straightforward approach with much more potential.

Appealing to a wider audience, there’s a nice amount of content here to experience as a solo player. The newest, World Tour, has been done in some fighting games in the past, though not to the extent seen here. The mode puts your avatar character into the world of Street Fighter in an action RPG-like mode, where you’ll travel the world to learn moves from your favourite characters and throw down with people on the streets. The transition between fighting and exploration is seamless and fun from a gameplay perspective.

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World Tour is, for the most part, enjoyable. It was fun to see all my favourite characters behave outside of a match and learn abilities from them to build my perfect characters. It’s not perfect, however. The plot is certainly engaging, but the world just isn’t as interesting or as lore-rich as Mortal Kombat would be in adapting this formula. There was even potential to have satisfying exploration with Metroid-esque gates that only certain abilities could open, but there isn’t anything of that sort here. Most quests are also “move to this area and speak to this person”, so while World Tour does a great job of teaching you the basics of Street Fighter 6, it’s not something I could play for long bouts at a time.

You can take your avatar or any other character straight into Battle Hub, a more complex lobby system for the game online. The hub is like a giant meeting place, allowing you to organize matches with other players or buy gear for your character at numerous stalls. There’s even a massive screen up front that celebrates high-performing players in each room. It’s a great idea that feels like the most well-realised execution of “community” in a fighting game. However, only time will tell whether this concept will stick. I play most of my fighters privately with the same people, but for those who are more sociable, this is an effortlessly seamless way to play with others.

I was fortunate enough to do this with both the betas and the pre-release period for the game. Thankfully, online performance is solid. I had better matches with the random Australian that I ran into (thank you, whoever you are), but even against higher latency opponents, the rollback-based net code performed admirably. Online, as a whole, is masterfully executed in Street Fighter 6. Performance is great. Rematches are quick and snappy. Rankings can be maintained on a per-character basis. The online offerings for Street Fighter 6 are nothing short of the industry’s best and are what other fighters should aspire to be.

Fighting Ground is the other third of the game, and it’s really just a one-stop shop for all the modes the game has to offer. You can fight each other locally, fight other players with crazier rulesets, learn character-specific combos or even just about how to play your favourite character and engage with character-specific stories in the Arcade mode. Back in the day, everything included in Fighting Ground would’ve been enough for a fighting game, but to see this and much more included in Street Fighter 6 is encouraging. For the old-school fan who isn’t a fan of the flashier lobbies that Battle Hub provides, you can also set up private rooms here to invite your friends.

And while Street Fighter 6 looks to be doing so much so well, there was one big glaring omission that I can’t ignore – and that’s costumes. I’d argue they’re a series or even a genre staple, but nothing was included in the pre-release build. Hopefully, these will be included with the addition of a day one patch, for sure, but if absolutely all extra costumes are relegated to paid microtransactions, then this arguably feels like a step back from the Fight Money system that Street Fighter 5 used.

Of course, stylistically, Street Fighter 6 is on point. Powered by the same engine that has powered Resident Evil and Devil May Cry, RE Engine sees each character taking a more realistic approach as a base. But then, building on that base, the game has been heavily stylized to offer up this strange yet distinct visual style that looks better than most fighters on the market today. The animations are fluid, and the flourishes of paint that flick off special moves are bright and striking. This is easily the best that Street Fighter has ever looked.

All of this comes together to offer up a package that tries to right the wrongs of its predecessor and succeeds. It’s truly exciting to see what Street Fighter 6 will look like in the coming years, though if the team can save Street Fighter 5, think about what they could do with this.

The post Street Fighter 6 Review – Hits In All The Right Places appeared first on Press Start.

Valve introduced the Steam Deck 18 months ago and there has since been a sea of handheld PC devices that have arrived in all shapes and sizes. With the Steam Deck still not making its way to Australia, companies like AYANEO were left to bring their devices down under with the likes of the incredible AYANEO 2, but ASUS is the first company to truly tackle the worldwide market with its ASUS ROG Ally which will release in Australia on June 13th.

There was an immediate excitement when ASUS announced its new handheld just a few months ago, but it was met with reservation over what would presumably be an insanely high price. This didn’t eventuate with the unit coming in at $1,299 in Australia, which is very reasonable given the specs inside this handheld.

The ROG Ally has a 7-inch touchscreen screen with a 1080p/120hz refresh rate which is a big improvement on the competition. Whilst there are other 1080p handhelds, to my knowledge this is the first 120hz display in a Windows handheld, which is absolutely glorious for zipping around the screen, indie games or games such as COD: Modern Warfare 2 that can take advantage of frame rates beyond 60 FPS.

It also allows the ROG Ally to have VRR which is an absolute godsend in smoothing out frame rates which is a big deal in a device like this. The display is bright and vibrant, but maybe a touch less so than the AYANEO 2 when I compared them side-by-side. The speakers in this device are absolutely phenomenal as well, with the loudness being much more than necessary and it having a great amount of clarity and bass.

Another big difference is the weight of the device. In comparison to the Steam Deck’s 669 grams and the AYANEO 2’s 680 grams, the ROG ALLY comes in at 608 grams. This doesn’t sound like a big difference but at 10% lighter, and given the size of these devices, the Ally honestly feels super light in comparison to the AYANEO 2, and really makes for more comfortable sessions whilst holding the screen up in front of you in bed, or for longer periods of time. It was a huge point that ASUS wanted to drive home about the design of the Ally and it’s really worked out for the device.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $1,299 AUD FROM JB HI-FI

Otherwise, the Ally’s controls are as expected. The Ally closely mimics that of an Xbox controller which is a good thing as that’s mostly what Windows 11 recognises any connected controller as and displays on-screen controls accordingly. The only slight worry I have is the face buttons which actually feel quite good in the hands, but are quite low to the device, so I could see them potentially getting stuck.

The ASUS ROG Ally runs Windows 11 which is the biggest positive but also the most problematic part of the device. On one hand, it’s fantastic because you can play any game from any launcher, including Xbox Game Pass. If it plays on a Windows 11 laptop, more likely than not, it’ll play on the ROG Ally. The flip side of this is that it comes with the many quirks of Windows 11, which definitely was not built with a smaller touch-screen in mind, but you can connect a keyboard/mouse quite easily, and I’d definitely recommend doing that whilst you login to all of your launchers initially.

I had a few issues during my week with the device, which included losing display drivers and also the controller drivers, but these were swiftly fixed by either restarting the device or disabling and re-enabling the drivers. It’s also worth mentioning that this device is still in pre-release and has been receiving updates all week that have made the experience smoother. I only mention these problems because it is worth mentioning that this isn’t a Nintendo Switch-like experience where it’s pickup and play.

Just like any PC, there will be tinkering involved. Because this is literally a Windows 11 device, you can plug it into any monitor and it essentially becomes a PC. I was able to do this just using a USB-C cord to my monitor which was able to charge it and pass through 4K/60 video all with one cord.

Thankfully, your time spent in actual Windows 11 land will be minimal. ASUS has shipped the device with its own Armoury Crate SE software. This boots upon launch, and basically automatically loads in games as you download them from the variety of launchers that you install. It’s not without its glitches as well, but again, it has gotten a lot better even in the 10 days or so that I’ve had the device, so I have no doubt ASUS will continue to improve it.

Another great feature is Command Centre which basically is a quick menu that will overlay your game. You can use it to change brightness and sound as well as the resolution and frame rate and also do other more advanced things such as limit the frame rate or turn on AMD FSR to smooth frame rates further. You can also really handily turn on a real-time monitor to keep tabs on frame rate, temperature etc.

The actual gameplay experience with the ASUS ROG Ally is fairly phenomenal. I’ve reviewed a few AYANEO devices now, and have been blown away with how quickly these PC handhelds have come in just a year or so, but the ROG Ally is definitely the most solid experience that I’ve had so far. There are three (or technically four) power settings that can be used when computing or playing games. Silent (9w), Performance (15w) or Turbo (25w) which goes up to 30w when plugged into power.

I tested every AAA game that I played at 1080p with high settings with AMD FSR 2 set to balanced (where possible). I was utilising the 25w Turbo setting, which is pretty much essential when playing AAA games such as Returnal, Cyberpunk 2077 or Red Dead Redemption 2. When benchmarking, I was able to achieve frame rates of more than 30 FPS with every game that I tested, even hitting near 60 FPS with a few of the games. Again, this is running at high at 1080p, so if you want to push closer to the 60 and beyond, it’s absolutely achievable.

ASUS ROG ALLY BENCHMARKS:

1080p / high settings / balanced FSR / turbo (25w) mode

• Returnal – 30 FPS
• Cyberpunk 2077 – 32 FPS
• Horizon Zero Dawn – 50 FPS
• Forza Horizon 5 – 57 FPS
• Spider-Man Miles Morales – 47 FPS
• Red Dead Redemption 2 – 39 FPS
• F1 2022 – 69 FPS
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla- 56 FPS

I spent a lot of time playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and was just in constant amazement of how good the game looked and ran on a device that was not much bigger than a Nintendo Switch. I’d say the Ally really clicked for me though when playing Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 online. I was able to get 80 FPS+ on Turbo mode, fully taking advantage of that 120Hz display.

It ran without a hitch, and besides a slight downgrade in visuals from my PS5, it didn’t feel like a hampered experience in any way, so whilst I might not see myself playing a lot of high-end AAA games right through on the smaller screen, it’s absolutely a game-changer for games like Call of Duty or FIFA.

@shannongrixti

The ASUS ROG Ally is a super powerful Windows gaming handheld and it’s launching in Australia on June 13th for $1,299 AUD #ASUS #ASUSROGally #ROGally #steamdeck #windows11 #gaming #techtok

? original sound – Shannon Grixti | Gaming & Tech

What is really impressive as well is how well ASUS has done to distribute heat so that it comes out of the top and you don’t feel it in your hands at all, which is wildly different from the AYANEO 2. The fans are also super quiet to the point that you barely even hear them with the sound on.

Of course, this performance does come with a downside though and that is the battery life. Whilst the ROG Ally is a lot more powerful than the Steam Deck, because it’s a lot more locked down, Valve has been able to work some absolute sorcery in getting decent frame rates at lower power modes to last a good amount of hours whilst playing these games, which isn’t the case for the ROG Ally.

Whilst playing in the Turbo mode (25w), at the time of writing, you can expect to get about 45-50 minutes of battery life, which obviously isn’t ideal for use outside of the house, but it is fairly comparable with other Windows 11 devices such as the AYANEO 2 which lasts a bit longer at about 1 hour 10 minutes. Moving to performance mode, you’re able to push this to about 1 and a half hours and pushing to silent mode, you’re able to push it even further to 2.5 hours. These were all tested at about 80-90% brightness

ASUS ROG ALLY BATTERY LIFE:

Tested at 80% brightness

• Turbo Mode (25w): 45-55 minutes
• Performance Mode (15w): 1.5 hours
• Silent Mode (9w): 2.5 hours

This wasn’t at all surprising to me, but I’m sure these amounts will be surprising to a lot of you reading this. It’s just the price that has to be paid for such great performance. If you’re playing indie games, can definitely drop to those lower game modes, but at that point, I just worry that the experience is getting too close to the Nintendo Switch to justify the price tag. I played a good chunk of Planet of Lana in performance mode (15w) and was still able to get 60FPS, and dropping it to silent (9w) was still playable, so it absolutely is possible for these indie games to run incredibly well, if you’re wanting to extend battery life.

All-in-all, the release of the ASUS ROG Ally feels like a significant step forward in this category. It’s the second major company to join the space, and provides something totally different to that of the Steam Deck. It’ll be exciting to see where this space goes in the coming months and years, and I really hope ASUS continue to tinker with things and improve this device, as I feel like there is so much potential to still be realised, even beyond the fantastic experience that it is whilst gaming.

The ASUS ROG Ally is set to launch in Australia for $1,299 AUD on June 13th.

The post ASUS ROG Ally Review – A Big Leap Forward appeared first on Press Start.

For as long as I can reasonably remember (since 2015, a quick search has told me) there’s been one headset among many that’s commanded a great deal of respect and recommendation in the sub-$200 gaming headset space, and that’s the HyperX Cloud II. Since its original iteration and through various tweaks and new SKUs in the eight years following, it’s remained a staple in its weight class, and for good reason. Pairing better-than-average sound with good long-term comfort at a very reasonable price point has kept this thing in the mix for longer than most tech products could ever hope to stay on shelves. 

Nothing lasts forever though, and the reign of the HyperX Cloud II might finally be over, succeeded by the brand-spanking-new HyperX Cloud III.

The king is dead, long live the king.

Yes, HyperX has done the thing that I wasn’t sure they’d ever do and outright replaced their standard-bearing headset with a new iteration. More than just a change in connectivity or colour, it’s a shift in design alongside a hardware upgrade that brings the ageing Cloud II into a new generation. Importantly, it’s a successful venture. HyperX has managed to give their golden child the coming-of-age story it deserves in the Cloud III, with smart revisions that haven’t undermined what made its predecessor special.

Unboxing the HyperX Cloud III reveals a fairly stock-standard offering, with the headset itself along with the detachable microphone, small printed start guide and a 3.5mm AUX-to-USB-C adapter with an optional USB-A converter. The headset runs out to a fixed 3.5mm AUX cable so it can be plugged into the vast majority of PC/console/mobile devices either with an analog connection or with the USB adapter.

Design-wise, the Cloud III takes the same basic look of the Cloud II and gives it a bit of a modern refresh. Using similar materials throughout, it retains the rough size and construction of the previous model and its red, metallic arms but with slightly more rounded and sleek lines. The band and ear cushions are still using memory foam and leatherette material and while leatherette isn’t my first choice for these things it’s in keeping with tradition and noticeably softer than before. The microphone no longer wears a foam hat, but instead has a built-in mesh filter and comes with a handy LED mute indicator. A very basic combo of a volume scroll and a quick mute button embellish the cups on either side. 

All told, it’s a great little modernisation of the Cloud II’s look without completely sacrificing the existing visual identity. Importantly, it’s also still incredibly comfortable – much more so than the vast majority of other gaming headsets in its price class or even above. I’m someone whose ears heat up quite quickly, and I’ve always appreciated a good breathable fabric in that regard, but in terms of pure on-the-head fit and the comfort of the big, plush cups these are so good that the material feels like a non-issue. At just under 300g it’s a pretty standard weight, but never felt overbearing or tight on my unremarkably-sized noggin.

But while design and comfort are undeniably important in a headset, the true test is in the audio. The HyperX Cloud III has both the fortunate and unenviable position of following a headset that offered incredibly decent sound for its price point, with great balance and accuracy backed up by a better-than-average soundstage. Thankfully the Cloud III carries the torch superbly, once again building on the foundation laid without radically changing what people expect from it. With bigger, angled 53mm drivers and the introduction of DTS Headphone: X Spatial Audio the in-game experience is a whole level better while retaining the balance and positional chops that made the Cloud II so good for competitive PC gaming.

If you’re looking for a headset to really wow you in single-player blockbusters or the occasional movie, the Cloud III isn’t really working any harder than its predecessor, which is to say it’s probably not the best-geared for the task. This really is something for the competitive shooter crowd, offering a precise and clear auditory window into everything your opponents are doing. Footsteps, gunshots and everything in-between are clear-cut and easy to pick when it comes to direction and distance, proving why the Cloud II was an immediate go-to among the eSports elite.

Even if you’re not using the headset with a PC and getting DTS:X Spatial Audio there’s a very nice width and depth from the Cloud III that makes it a great wired option for something like a console, but it’s definitely good to have the option to further tweak the audio experience on Windows with the (admittedly fairly basic) HyperX NGENUITY software. NGENUITY doesn’t really stand up to some of the fancier software solutions from brands like SteelSeries or Razer, but luckily the headset sounds fantastic out-of-the-box which makes it a great multiplatform option.

The Cloud III’s microphone is an improvement on paper, going from a 6mm diameter to 10mm and offering “improved clarity” according to HyperX, and so far that seems to be a fair claim. It’s still a pretty standard headset mic among other pretty standard headset mics, but for the average person speaking with an inside voice it comes through nice and clear and actually does a pretty decent job of not picking up a lot of background noise. I was able to chat with friends with a TV going right near me and none of it bled into my comms, which is good. I tried shouting for a bit (sorry, pals) and it seems to blow out pretty easily at a raised volume but your mileage there will vary depending on how obnoxious you are.

At $159 AUD when it launches in Australia on May 31st, the HyperX Cloud III keeps confidently in step with the headset it’s replacing when it comes to bang-for-buck. There was little that could beat out the Cloud II in its price bracket, and that’s just as true here. That said, if you have a Cloud II that’s still going strong it probably doesn’t change the game enough to justify upgrading, but if you’re newly in the market for a sub-$200 gaming headset that works with a variety of devices and offers a genuine competitive edge with long-term comfort – don’t hesitate for a second.

The post HyperX Cloud III Review – A New Mid Range King Is Crowned appeared first on Press Start.

System Shock might arguably earn its place on a hypothetical Mt. Rushmore of first-person shooters. It introduced features that would instantly become de rigueur, changing the shooter landscape forever after its inception. It wasn’t quite the mainstream draw that Doom was to my violence-addled five year-old mind and, as such, it never became a touchstone for me. But to deny its legacy would be folly. 

Not only did it spawn a masterful sequel, it’s the grandfather of intelligent design and emergent gameplay in shooters. Were it not for System Shock, the existence of classics like BioShock, Half-Life and Prey would all be in doubt.

Nightdive Studios has long had their nose to the grindstone doing God’s work, putting their everything into preserving and recreating the essence of classic games that might, without a compatibility bump for modern platforms, be lost to time before long. While their work on System Shock is admirable, it’s the game’s genre-kickstarting systems and atmosphere that do the heavy lifting here. 

The entirety of the game takes place aboard nine levels of The Citadel, a lighthouse-class space station. Like so many of the immersive sim worlds that have drawn inspiration from System Shock’s setting, it’s a tremendously realised backdrop for what is a rich sci-fi thriller. 

With all of the station’s workers either being killed or succumbing to the virus on board, much of the game’s story is doled out through audio logs left behind by the hopeless or resolute hopeful as the station falls to the rule of SHODAN, the megalomaniac artificial intelligence that your character is coerced into unshackling from its ethical restraints in the game’s opening scene. One doesn’t need to have experienced System Shock to know that SHODAN is an absolutely iconic antagonist, her note-perfect malevolence and omnipresence is proof that her reputation as a bad bitch of video games is earned. 

As an immersive sim, System Shock offers little as far as tutorials go. It carefully sets the scene before letting you loose into Citadel to explore its labyrinthine halls and rescue humanity from obliteration. It’s certainly liberating for those wanting to lose themselves in a storied sci-fi playground, but the lack of onboarding is sure to drive a wedge for fans of more modern, linear first-person shooters. Though I was able to lean on guides for the original whenever I did get stuck, the way it all progresses and unfolds does feel rather intuitive despite how many layers there are.

The audio logs, as well as the radio chatter from those still living, act as guiding hands while filling gaps in the game’s narrative, which – while still presenting System Shock’s story beat-for-beat – has apparently been made more watertight. Being faithful has its hang-ups, however, as the ending remains a dour final note on what is a pretty remarkable journey in all. For how well the game escalates the threat with each level, it was a sadly boring climax.

It’s expectedly far advanced over the original, which is now three decades old, but this remake still manages to feel dated at times. Where other rebuilds manage to retell their stories in a modern framework, System Shock is still marred by some old school design. The combat lacks heft and feels cumbersome across the board, there’s an ironic lack of enemy intelligence, and the inventory system did bog things down when, due to the real lack of ammo, any gun needed to be viable but ultimately couldn’t due to lack of space. It’s not all bad though, being able to save anytime I wanted certainly came in handy in circumventing the game’s tiresome, unskippable death animations.

Although many of the game’s more impressive systems feel commonplace now, the knowledge that this game broke so much ground thirty years ago is astounding. You’re forced to economise attachable wares, like night vision or jet boots, that drain your power cells when active, various ammunition types, and dermal patches that buff things like reflexes and strength.

There’s also a bit of a Metroid feel to the game’s map. Instead of the path forward being ability-driven, however, it’s action-driven. In addition to bog standard keycards, destroying a floor’s surveillance systems to lower security levels or severing connections in the game’s entrancing wire-frame cyberspace can open doors throughout the station. The map, despite being an apparent improvement on the original, doesn’t exactly make exploration easy, but a few laps around each floor is sure to breed familiarity. 

Speaking of improvements over the original, this System Shock is expectedly leaps ahead visually when compared to its decades-old counterpart. That’s not to say it’s on par with this generation’s standard, but Nightdive’s commitment to the original’s vision is commendable. It’s easy enough to forgive a few muddy textures and Gollum-like mutant designs when there’s so much variety throughout. There’s so much identity in each of the Citadel’s floors, cyberspace is a trip, and so much of the heads-up display is distinctly cyberpunk.

The inimitable Terri Brosius returns without missing a beat to reprise her role as SHODAN. The character’s machinations are, of course, devised by the writers, but they’re dutifully brought to life by Brosius, complete with the same discordant cadence that propelled the character to infamy in the first place. 

The fact someone like me is now able to play a modern attempt at System Shock is a miracle. It’s iconic and influential in ways a lot of gamers might underestimate, so exploring this world today is a privilege. It does feel like a classic, for better and worse.

The post System Shock Review – A Sci-Fi Banquet appeared first on Press Start.

There was a time where I might have claimed that I “don’t need” PC speakers at my desk, that I “prefer” just to use headphones. And, at that time, I’d have meant it. More recently though, after having dabbled in external sound with Razer’s Leviathan V2 X PC soundbar, and especially now after spending some time with its flagship Razer Nommo V2 Pro speakers, I think I’ve become a convert. With this new set, I’m finally experiencing the kind of high-quality audio and gaming immersion that I usually get from my over-ear cans without having to sacrifice comfort over long periods – though at a cost I’m not sure everyone will be prepared to pay.

Unpacking the sizeable box that the Razer Nommo V2 Pro comes nestled in (and protected by a whole heap of cardboard and foam), first impressions are great. The two speakers are solid, with a good amount of heft and a matte black finish that seems to barely attract fingerprints. Like the older Razer Nommo speakers, they’re a unique cylindrical design, sitting on a fixed stand with a slightly-upturned angle. The included wireless subwoofer is similarly finished by a very nice matte black coat and feels a lot lighter than expected, though as you’ll read further down that bears no indication of its capabilities.

Design-wise, it’s a much more subtle look than the previous Nommo Pro, which featured a tall, cylindrical sub and speakers that sat on fairly high stalks with an extra cylinder on top for the tweeters. The new set definitely isn’t small by any measure, but it’s a more desk-friendly design overall than its predecessor. I’m really glad that a lot of Razer’s recent products have started to take a more understated and sleek design philosophy than its history of honestly garish, very gamer-y gear. The brand has really put a foot forward in making its products attractive to high-end users and then backing that up with high-end features and quality.

That is exactly the case here as well, as the Nommo V2 Pro’s two speakers deliver markedly excellent audio with crisp highs, a warm and detailed middle and rumbling bass with plenty of nuance (once you tone it down a little from the out-of-the-box setting) making for a fantastic experience. On paper, these have a very slightly less wide frequency response and are naturally missing the dedicated tweeters of the previous model, but they’re also around $200 cheaper and while I’ve never listened to the original Nommo Pro first-hand I can’t imagine there being a huge difference.

The first thing I did after setting these up was hit play on Sleep Token’s new record, Take Me Back To Eden, an album that swims through genres at an olympic pace, and it sounded every bit as gorgeous as I could’ve hoped. Even throwing something like the harsh tones and bold mix of 100 gecs’ Dumbest Girl Alive at the Nommo V2 Pro brought out sounds in the track I’d never noticed before, which is always a great sign. 

Music is likely just a small slice of the equation for a gaming audio solution though, and thanks to the THX Spatial Audio capabilities, the Razer Nommo V2 Pro delivers a definitively superb soundscape for games and movies, far better than I expected from two forward-firing speakers. This is absolutely a set of speakers designed for solo gaming/movie watching at a desk and not something that I’d recommend using to replace a proper soundbar/home theatre setup in the lounge room, but for the intended purpose they’re glorious. Doubly so in anything that benefits having preset THX Game Profiles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

It really is uncanny just how well these speakers can reproduce an incredibly accurate sense of 360° direction and subtle differences in distance when playing both certified and even non-certified games. They can also get loud at up to +99db, which is less a critique and more a warning to anyone with neighbours/cohabitants.

A lot of what makes the Nommo V2 Pro (and the rest of the Nommo V2 range) compelling in comparison to other alternatives is the simple integration with the Razer Synapse software. After I’d set them up, they instantly popped up in the Synapse suite and I was able to tweak things like the RGB lighting, power saving settings, full audio EQ as well as features like THX Spatial Audio and a neat but slightly underwhelming audio-monitoring lighting effect. I could also easily find all of my installed games and applications and give them individual audio presets to load whenever they were booted up.

As far as the RGB lighting goes (this being a Razer product, after all), I really dig the rear-projected ambient light from these. If you’re into expressing yourself through a desk full of different hues they do a great job of tying everything together with a bit of a fill of the back of your desk/wall without being obnoxious. At this higher end of the product line it would’ve been cool to maybe get multiple lighting zones per speaker but what’s here is great.

Pulling a lot of this together is the Razer Wireless Control Pod, a black disc-like device that looks a bit like a robot macaron and acts as the sole physical means of controller the Nommo V2 Pro and comes included in the box (or will soon be sold separately for anyone with the stripped-back Nommo V2 and Nommo V2 X). Featuring a textured, metallic metal top wheel that can be turned and clicked, as well as a single button on the base, this little gadget is actually surprisingly useful. With just the three inputs you’re able to control power, volume and mute, media playback, switch profiles and toggle between PC/bluetooth connection on a completely wireless little puck that’s lightweight, sits on a rubber pad so as not to slip with use and features a supposedly 8-month battery life off of the two included AA batteries.

The Razer Nommo V2 Pro is also compatible with PlayStation consoles via USB and mobile devices/Switch consoles via Bluetooth 5.3, meaning if you’re someone who has a console at their desk alongside a gaming PC you could feasibly switch with either a button press or quick cable swap – though when not connected to a PC with USB you’ll lose access to THX Spatial Audio which relies on the Razer Synapse software. That’s a pretty big compromise, and I definitely wouldn’t suggest picking these up solely for use with a console, but options are always welcome.

All told, the Razer Nommo V2 Pro has absolutely exceeded my expectations of what a set of desktop 2.1 PC gaming speakers could achieve in terms of both sound quality and immersion, but they come with a $699.95 price tag to match. It’s a clear drop from the previous Nommo Pro which went for upwards of $900, but it’s still a steep enough investment that it might give some people pause. If you’re rocking a gaming PC setup that cost more than a small car to put together and a set of fantastic-sounding speakers with impressive 360° spatial audio is the last piece of the puzzle though? Look absolutely no further.

The post Razer Nommo V2 Pro Review – Powerful And Immersive Desktop Sound appeared first on Press Start.

When The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum was revealed, it had more than a few people questioning who had asked for a game starring Gollum. It’s me. I’m that person who finds the idea of a game following the little weirdo quite appealing. He’s a strange little guy, sure, but his life has been utterly consumed by the Ring and the power it represents, and he’s instrumental in the overall narrative arc that is The Lord of the Rings.

I went in hoping that Gollum could be a window into this character that hadn’t been shown by film or game before. Disappointingly, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum really wasn’t that. It’s a game that feels precariously held together, lacks polish, feels horrible to play and is both technically and aesthetically dated.

The moment you gain control of Gollum you’ll probably notice his movements and actions feel strange. His repertoire consists of running around, sneaking, jumping and climbing using clearly marked handholds. I imagine the developers wanted him to play quite differently to the average athletic video game protagonist but rather than sneaky and agile, controlling Gollum feels clumsy and haphazard.

A majority of the game involves climbing to reach an objective. Sometimes you’ll latch to handholds like they’re magnetic, sometimes Gollum will fling himself with such ferocity that you overshoot the platform you wanted to land on and fall to the abyss below. I was fighting against the controls rather than using them to overcome a challenge, and as a result never felt accomplished once I got to where I wanted to go. Everything about moving through Gollum’s world is a slog.

So much of what the game asks you to do is utterly uninspired. I don’t know quite what I expected gameplay-wise from a Gollum title. A lot of sneaking, maybe some exploring. I certainly didn’t expect a game full of tailing missions and fetch quests – but that’s a lot of what I got. Seriously, the opening chapters are full of annoyingly-long fetch quests tasking Gollum to go and collect tags from corpses in a mine or herd a bunch of aggressive Mordor-cattle into cages.

Things don’t improve as the game goes on. There’s a little more variety, but lengthy insta-fail stealth sections that consist of mostly hiding in grass and waiting for enemies to turn around don’t exactly lift Gollum from gameplay tedium. It’s full of gameplay tropes that we’ve moved past for a good reason. It might be okay if somehow Gollum was a particularly great example of these tired game styles, but it’s definitively not.

A world that is exciting to explore and enjoyable to look at can elevate even the most mediocre of games. And yet, with all of Middle-Earth available as a possible environment, half of Gollum’s chapters are spent in a dull brown mine in Mordor doing prisoner work – every bit the dull brown trend that was tiresome in the Xbox 360 era. It makes the drudgeries you’re tasked with all the more mind-numbing.

Things do improve markedly in the latter half of the game, going from dull brown to a lush green palette. These later environments created occasional moments that had me stop to admire the view and made the still rather uninspired gameplay tasks a little more tolerable, but not by much.

The overall presentation here has more lows than highs. I do appreciate the voice work behind Gollum. The studio has managed to give him his own sound that does some justice to his warring personalities while avoiding sounding like an impression of Andy Serkis’ work in the franchise films. Gollum’s character design too is a high point, with his face being hugely expressive. There are also occasional musical moments that help to elevate the experience.

The same can’t be said for the game’s overall visuals which are hugely lacking in polish. Character models wouldn’t look out of place in a game from 2007, animations are very strange, and things like faces reverting to a default state in an instant after a character stops talking are minor in the grand scheme but make a rough looking game look even rougher. Gollum has a suite of graphics options on PS5 – performance, quality, quality with ray tracing, and the most interestingly-named option I’ve seen in a while, “Gollum Hair Simulation.”

The ray tracing option makes puddles and such ultra reflective, but strangely didn’t apply to an actual mirror I found in the game. Performance mode is where I spent most of my time and somehow despite looking like an early-generation PS4 game it still had plenty of hitches and performance hiccups while running on a PS5.

The one possible saving grace for a franchise like this could have been the story. Gollum is a hugely important character in The Lord of the Rings and his role outside of accompanying other characters has been rarely explored in film and games. Disappointingly, the story here is pretty threadbare. Nothing of great consequence happens across the game’s overall story arc and things finish with Gollum in a position to take his role in the established story. Gollum’s story could have made for something compelling, but what we get instead is a narrative justifying a smattering of video game tasks that does nothing for his character or the world he inhabits.

Early previews didn’t show it in the best light, but I still had some hope for this game to deliver some good moments for fans. Gollum is a compelling character and the world of Middle-Earth has so many interesting possible places to explore, but instead we spend most of our time enclosed in mines and woodland cities. Environments are devoid of life and full of unpolished, sharp edges. It looks like an average game from another era, and learns none of the gameplay lessons from then either.

The post The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum Review – Uninspired Drudgery appeared first on Press Start.

Before you even get a chance to wistfully marvel Kerriganly at the serenity, invasion—and one a long time coming—touches down, disturbing the peaceful human nature that Lana and her native kin have long enjoyed. Though what you embark upon is a rescue mission to free the people you care for, much of Planet of Lana is about the world itself. Not yet ravaged by the war on its doorstep, it’s an idyllic, harmonious place and I appreciated the unexpected, lingering moments afforded to really drink it all in and focus on the things worth fighting for, rather than the fight itself. 

As a “cinematic platformer,” Planet of Lana has certainly been shaped by the works of Playdead. It shares the wonderful, and sometimes arduous, sense of discovery that both Limbo and Inside offered while blanketing the adventure in an engrossing atmosphere. 

As Lana, a brave young native, and small pawn in a much larger conflict, you’ll adventure across a violent, sci-fi paradise playing peacekeeper against a cold, inhuman legion of mostly featureless machines. Lana is armed with just her wit, stealthy cunning, and an unwavering sense of bravery in the face of her own crepe-paper fragility, which makes the perilous journey that much more foreboding. 

I can’t fault Planet of Lana from a mechanical standpoint. The platforming is rather sound, effectively signposting what is and isn’t in reach of Lana at any given point. It can be tough to gauge which drops will send Lana to her death but the checkpointing is consistently good enough that there’s little risk in trying.  If I were to pick on anything at all, the ragdoll animation that comes with dying can bug out on occasion. It’s funnier than it is frustrating, but it’s also the only fly in the ointment of an otherwise immaculate presentation. 

One way Planet of Lana sets itself apart from Playdead’s works is in its adorable little companion. A small critter called Mui, not yet corrupted by the rigours of its wild life, takes to Lana and the pair become inseparable. Mui isn’t there just for its cute factor either, it turns out to be a pretty integral part of Planet of Lana’s gameplay loop. It’s almost equal parts exploration and problem-solving, though none of the puzzles offer up anything quite as mind-bending as Limbo’s gravity field, they’re still enough to get the brain ticking over. I always felt a jolt of gratification whenever things would fall into place. And despite being a wildling, Mui can take instruction. It has a surprisingly deep trick bag too—it can sit, follow, and possesses the dexterity to flip switches among other things. 

Similar to Limbo, the game is structured like a linear series of puzzle rooms, often dressed up as lush portions of the still-beautiful planet. As you work your way through, there’ll be occasions when Mui is off-screen—often by design. I did appreciate the team’s forethought to include a visible indicator to show Mui’s stance, which helps to smooth over some of the longer, more complicated sections that often involve going back for Mui, who might be grounded for one reason or another.

New mechanics and puzzle elements are introduced with each biome, which definitely helps to keep the formula fresh throughout what is an admittedly brief runtime of about four or five hours, depending on how efficient your problem-solving is. Being a featured Game Pass title, I don’t expect the length to be a huge setback. You’ll drain and fill riverbeds to manipulate water levels, you’ll get Mui to sever electrical cables to create rope swings, and you’ll even hijack a surveillance drone to utilise against its own kind. It’s hard not to admire the imagination poured into every facet of the game. 

The same applies to Planet of Lana’s art design, which I absolutely love. Especially the juxtaposition of technology and nature, and how the invading machines feel like the perfect thematic antithesis for the almost primitive residents of a peaceful fishing village. The overworld is rich with lively forests, and the iconic, hand-painted crescent moon backdrop seen in all of the key art peeks through the canopy to great effect, whereas the caverns beneath are spattered with historic, and mysterious, carvings and spider eggs—an effective signal for the danger that lies ahead. 

There are a handful of incredibly memorable set pieces that go above and beyond anything most games of this ilk would ever deliver. Although I am not necessarily a believer in the notion that everything has to be playable, contending with a few quick-time events during Planet of Lana’s bigger, cinematic narrative beats isn’t the end of the world.

The design of the machine army itself feels classically sci-fi—smooth, clean, characterless orbs on spider-like legs inject fear through presence alone. There are clear patterns in their patrols, yet they seem hard to predict. They communicate only through their singsong chime, visualised by a kaleidoscopic rainbow of colours within their single “eye”. It’s a small diegetic slice of a beautifully melancholic score from Takeshi Furukawa, who doesn’t put a note wrong in his first game since The Last Guardian. 

In a year that’s already given us Dredge, another phenomenal studio debut, I must declare Planet of Lana to be a pretty special game in its own right. More so than Dredge, I feel Planet of Lana could evolve easily as an IP—whether it be a sequel, a graphic novel, or an animated film, there are the makings of a saga here. As solid as the game is, I’ll have a hard time forgetting the beautiful contemplative moments that make up the moments in between. It’s mournful, hopeful, and bullishly effective at plucking at the heartstrings. 

The post Planet Of Lana Review – Irresistibly Gorgeous appeared first on Press Start.

I’m a sucker for a good arcade racer, and even more of a sucker for anything LEGO, so when LEGO 2K Drive was announced I knew I was all in from the get-go, even if I’ve never been a huge fan of developer Visual Concepts usual output – largely the NBA 2K and WWE 2K franchises. Still, I was pinning a lot of my hopes for a worthy successor to the classic LEGO Racers games, and thankfully this has delivered in ways I hadn’t even expected.

Accompanied by the legendary Clutch Racington and his robotic assistant, S.T.U.D., you play LEGO 2K Drive as a voiceless driver of your choosing, on a path to winning the coveted Sky Cup Grand Prix Trophy. The core of the game’s single-player offering is a hefty adventure through four distinct, open zones in pursuit entry into this ultimate race where you’ll find yourself completing quests, earning experience and taking on a series of entertainingly unique rivals across 24 main races – each with their own quirks to contend with on the track. It’s a bold mix of ideas plucked from open-world racers and LEGO platformers where your avatar is less the minifigure behind the wheel and more the brick-built vehicle surrounding it.

Whether it’s burning miniature rubber on the two dozen well-designed tracks or roaming free across the four maps that they exist within, the simple act of driving in LEGO 2K Drive is an absolute joy at all times. No other open-world driving game can boast the kind of freedom that exists here thanks to the combination of transforming vehicles and highly-destructible environments. The roads here are barely more than suggestions, with every point-of-interest a completely straight shot away if you’re creative enough. When you’re not screaming across the map you can just as easily move with the precision of a platformer using the dedicated jump and quick turn buttons, making navigation feel super approachable even for those less familiar with driving games.

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The real feat is that, despite possessing the traversal chops of an open-world action game when the situation calls, the actual act of racing feels as tight and skilled as the best arcade racers out there. Vehicles handle superbly no matter what form they take, with the nuances coming from a combination of how they’re built, the stats they possess and any added perks. Even before factoring in the ability to build new rides from scratch using hundreds of different LEGO pieces, there’s a heap of variety on offer to unlock and custom loadouts let you preset different trios of street, off-road and water vehicles for different situations.

You’ll race across these three different surface types in LEGO 2K Drive, with the game automatically switching you between your three preset vehicles for each situation. It took a hot minute to get used to seeing my ride rebuild itself into another form each time the ground beneath me changed, but it’s genuinely impressive to witness and makes the racing and action feel impressively dynamic. It’s not an understatement to say that the folks at Visual Concepts have nailed how this game feels to play in just about every moment. Even when you’re driving around in a giant hamburger, or some ridiculous creation of your own design that you spent hours building brick-by-brick to look utterly hilarious, it always works and always feels fantastic.

If you want to, you can really hone in on the brick-building aspect as well and carefully craft an arsenal of different builds for every need. Whether it’s gearing your vehicles to be more offensive or defensive in races, or specifically suited to certain types of open-world challenges, LEGO 2K Drive throws up a huge amount of different gameplay scenarios and you can tackle them with as much or as little engineering as you’d like. It’s a perfect match to the fun of LEGO itself, especially so when combined with the fact that your vehicles fall to their individual pieces with damage – and driving through all of the destructible LEGO bits throughout the world adds pieces back on.

It quickly becomes something more akin to an open-world adventure/RPG than a pure driving game, throwing new and more challenging obstacles your way through its series of quests that can be overcome with pure skill or navigated with thoughtful vehicle building. The world itself can even change in ways that affect races, like being rewarded a lawn mower in an optional side quest that can clear out patches of weeds across each map so they’re not in the way during races. There are a handful of “minigame” type main quests that are nowhere near as fun as the regular races and so feel a bit overused by the third time you’ve been forced to do each, but it’s a minor mark on an otherwise excellent 8-10-hour main run of missions.

Completing just the primary stuff still leaves about 80% of the game incomplete though, with LEGO 2K Drive stuffed to the gills with challenges, optional missions and a plethora of collectibles all offering up experience and cash to get even more out of the customisability of your LEGO rides. The primary way to get new drivers, LEGO pieces and vehicle perks is to complete more of the game, but there’s also the ever-present “Unkie’s Emporium” premium store beckoning at every garage stop. Being a 2K title it’s perhaps not surprising, but 2K Drive features an enormous catalogue of drivers, vehicles, LEGO pieces and decorations that can only be purchased using an in-game currency that’s drip-fed for free but buyable in bulk with real cash.

So far, so expected for just about any modern game, and it’s ultimately not all that intrusive on the fun of the game as a whole. This is a full-priced title though, one that’s already being supported by a paid season pass model, and yet a huge chunk of the coolest stuff is locked behind in-game purchases. By the time I’d completed every main and side quest in the game I’d earned enough currency to buy maybe three or four of the roughly 200 items on offer. Some younger players with enough time and patience might be able to grind out the bucks they need to get a good portion of it, but the rest are very likely to succumb to Unkie Monkey’s in-your-face salesmanship, which feels grubby.

[Note: The 2K team has reached out to inform us since this review was published to say that they’ve made some adjustments post-release, significantly increasing the payout of in-game currency from story progression and races. I’d already completed the vast majority of everything in the game by the time these came into effect so it’s difficult to test out how impactful this change is, but it’s worth highlighting that a change has been made.]

Putting the 2K-ness of it all aside, this is still a game built for pure joy, and that never lets up. It’s all superbly put together as well, with a well-realised aesthetic combining the plastic and organic worlds to great effect alongside flawless and fluid performance – at least as far as the PS5 version that I played. It’s easily the best-looking LEGO game that I’ve encountered, and by far one of the best-looking arcade racers around, with huge and detailed environments and massive amounts of LEGO-based destruction. Particularly impressive are the real-time cutscenes that use the same stop-motion style character animations as the excellent LEGO Movie, making me wish that TT Games had adopted something similar for its recent entries.

Oddly, the audio side of things in LEGO 2K Drive is a bit of a mess. I don’t know enough to know if it’s a low bitrate thing – the game’s paltry 8GB download on PS5 might suggest it is – but all of the voice work in the game sounds tinny and awful. It’s not just the sound quality either but the mix itself with volume issues in abundance that ruin the otherwise-great sound effects and mostly-good music. The trademark LEGO humour still manages to shine through though, with gloriously bad puns, visual gags and slapstick comedy in a relentless abundance that kept a stupid grin on my face the entire time.

So there’s a whole lot to love in LEGO 2K Drive, and I’ve not even touched on all of the multiplayer potential with the entire campaign playable in online co-op and all 24 superb races available to play locally or online in single race and cup configurations. It’s a fully-fledged adventure game and a top-notch multiplayer kart racer combined that easily trumps the likes of Mario Kart a run for its money as far as its content offering and variety goes, while also being shockingly competitive when it comes to the quality of the racing itself. This could’ve been a half-bricked grab at the LEGO crowd and still somewhat landed, but instead it’s thoroughly impressed me in just about every way.

The post LEGO 2K Drive Review – A Brickin’ Great Car-PG appeared first on Press Start.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an adventure that’s best experienced blind and organically. This review contains zero story spoilers beyond anything revealed in officially released trailers.

I didn’t like Breath of the Wild as much as most others seemed to. That much was obvious to anyone who knows me. I still think it’s a great game for what it is, but it missed the mark for me as a Zelda title, eschewing so much of what made the previous entries memorable for me. It was a sad time – I’d thought my interest in a series that played such a strong role in my formative years had long dwindled – until now. Six years later, everything has changed. And I hate being wrong.

The truth is that I can’t remember the last time that I played my Switch or even a video game with as much fervent intensity as I have with Tears of the Kingdom. It’s the potential I saw in Breath of the Wild but almost perfectly realised, balancing the new and the old to fill the void of what I was missing about Zelda.

Tears of the Kingdom is a sequel to Breath of the Wild in many ways. You’ll play as Link once more as he sees himself in conflict with a new threat to Hyrule. As mentioned above, I won’t talk about the plot as it’s best experienced as it unfolds through the game, but it’s certainly engaging. The structure is similar to Breath of the Wild, told through non-linear flashbacks that you can easily piece together as you find them.

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Despite being structured similarly to Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom’s plot is much more engrossing this time around. It rights so many wrongs of Breath of the Wild – one of which includes incorporating a villain with presence. Some opportunity has been left on the table, I feel. Zelda’s characterisation definitely feels like a step back from her appearance in Breath of the Wild, for example. Despite this, I found the overarching storyline and the beats connecting it captivating and enjoyable.

Tears of the Kingdom looks and plays like Breath of the Wild at first glance. So many characters and locations from the original are here. But what the game does differently from its predecessor makes it stand apart. Whether it be the dramatic inclusion of two new maps in the Sky and Depths or the improvements to the systems underpinning their exploration, it’s deceptively different to the widely adored game that came before it.

While a highlight in the game’s marketing, the Sky plays a surprisingly more minor role than expected. A selection of islands hovering above the main map, these can be hard to reach but almost always reward players with something special. So many of them invite exploration and discovery, often daring players to solve the simple goal of reaching them. Some serve as locations with hidden treasures, while others as perfect jumping-off points to access the areas below. This means you can line up a jump that takes you from the Sky, through Hyrule and into its Depths if you wish with no load times, which can be an astounding feat to pull off.

The biggest surprise for me has come from the Depths. It’s almost as big as the main Hyrule map and is a dark and sprawling location underneath it. It’s unlike anything Zelda has done before – a dark, lonely, isolated place that’s equally frightening and inviting. As you descend, you can illuminate your pitch-black path with equipment while activating checkpoint-like Lightroots that provide greater illumination. Breath of the Wild was about that authentic sense of discovery – and Tears of the Kingdom doubles down on this with just how much is hidden under Hyrule in the Depths.

The Depths are my favourite new inclusion, but they almost certainly feel like a de-facto hard mode. You don’t know where you’re going, getting hit by enemies down there reduces your maximum health (temporarily), and longer journeys are fruitful but challenging. The gear you discover in the Depths is almost always more helpful than on the surface and the resources are integral in fuelling some of the new powers that Link has at his disposal.

At first, I’d thought it was brave for the team to throw away the powers from Breath of the Wild in favour of these new ones, but they serve similar functions and, in some cases, more function than the runes. There are five powers that Link has access to, and while simple at first glance, their versatility fundamentally changes the way you approach and think about both combat and puzzles. Each of the powers is also used in exploration and combat, so you’ll utilise them all fairly regularly.

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The most significant new inclusion is Ultrahand, along with Autobuild. They’re intuitive powers that favour creativity but don’t necessarily require it. With Ultrahand, you can make the most haphazardly put-together structure or vehicle, and it will probably work to do what you need. Autobuild is even more essential – it allows you to save your favourite creations to create later using parts lying around or out of thin air (for a cost). Both are great tools, though Autobuild has prebuilt schematics to pull from if you can’t be bothered creating your own vehicles and structures to mess around with.

Link’s new powers and the well-designed puzzles come together to support the one concept that makes Tears of the Kingdom so special. If you can think to do it, it’ll probably work. This approach to design means that the Sky is the limit when it comes to the puzzles you encounter or the situations you’re challenged by across the game’s lengthy runtime. This complexity means that how well you do in Tears of the Kingdom depends on your problem-solving skills, which is arguably less accessible than what was presented in Breath of the Wild. But the options are so limitless that I struggle to fathom a situation where somebody would be genuinely stuck. It’s a robust game held together by such intuitive systems.

Once again, Tears of the Kingdom builds on Breath of the Wild to offer greater variety to the player. It builds on a solid foundation – offering a tweaked map that makes Hyrule feel fresh despite being so familiar. Similarly, there’s a great breadth of enemies to battle with, too – and without ruining things, anybody who had issues with the lack of enemy variety in the previous game will be happy with what’s on offer in Tears of the Kingdom.

Such variety in the enemy types dovetails beautifully with the combat system, which is supplemented well with the new Fuse ability. Allowing you to attach two items together and wield them as a weapon, Fuse allows you to increase a weapon’s power, reach or elemental properties at the press of a button. I was one of those naysayers regarding weapon degradation in Breath of the Wild, and while it’s still here in Tears of the Kingdom, the new Fuse system is an ingenious and elegant solution to that problem. Previously, in Breath of the Wild, I’d finish an encounter and have whittled through most of my weapon stocks. Now, in Tears of the Kingdom, I’d have done the same, but all the enemy parts I’d have gathered would allow me to craft newer and probably better weapons.

Even better, Divine Beasts are now replaced with thematic dungeons. They’re not traditional lock-and-key structures like in previous Zelda games, but instead, more openly designed areas that have you exploring to unlock a central structure that leads to a boss. It’s a more simplified format, leveraging an intelligent compromise between the openness of the new era of Zelda with the situational theming of classic dungeons. They’re all most certainly better than the Divine Beasts, but they’re not as complex as “traditional” dungeons of past games. Still, having unique aesthetics tied around a unique boss battle will be enough for most fans, which is what Tears of the Kingdom offers.

And yes, they’re proper bosses again. Each boss is tangentially attached to the story of the area you’re playing through and often requires you to utilise specific mechanics to take them down. They’re admittedly uneven in their design – some are better than others – but they’re once again better than the Blights in the previous game. There are even more fun optional bosses to encounter in the overworld too, but I won’t spoil them for the sake of preserving surprises.

There’s still much to engage in when you’re not completing the main story. There are over 150 shrines to complete, which feel more involved this time. There are also more than 200 side quests, over half of which have intriguing stories and even more worthwhile rewards. There’s a nice variety of activities on offer here. Even after seventy hours in this world, I wasn’t getting bored. Open-world fatigue is a genuine phenomenon at this point in the generation, so for Tears of the Kingdom to somehow sidestep that is nothing short of a testament to the strength of its design.

Of course, with a game this vast and ambitious on a system like the Switch, it’s important to mention performance. Tears of the Kingdom invariably performs better than Breath of the Wild. It also looks better than most games on the system, owing to a fantastically-realised sense of artistic direction. But it’s still a Nintendo Switch game at the end of the day, and strong artistic direction can only carry you so far. Luckily, I was fortunate not to notice much slowdown beyond the occasional moments where I’d be moving through a heavily populated group of enemies. It’s not the most solidly-performing of games, but it certainly fares a whole lot better than most of the games I’ve played on Switch over the last twelve months.

So much sets Tears of the Kingdom apart from other Zelda games. It’s a rare chance for the series to play with a direct sequel – embracing its changes, building upon them and offering something newer while continuing what worked. It’s a genuinely enthralling open world, an inviting playground that encourages exploration with a genuine sense of discovery that you don’t find in other contemporary games with much, much larger budgets. I struggle to find little wrong with its approach. It’s distracting in all the best ways and rewards that distraction consistently. It’s just a joy to lose yourself in.

The post The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Review – A Sequel That Defies Expectation appeared first on Press Start.

Allan Jeans once famously compared a drawn footy game to “dancing with your sister”. You can put on your best shirt, cut up shapes on the dance floor, but at the end of the night, there’ll be no result. It’s a quote that feels analogous for the latest iteration in the rather niche AFL video game series, which Big Ant Studios returns to after a decade-long absence. It’s flashier than before, it pulls a few more tricks out of the bag, but ultimately feels as hollow as gazing up at a tied-up scoreboard after a two-hour slogfest. 

There’s no denying that AFL, as a sport, is extremely complex. The real players and officials can barely keep up with the ever-expanding laundry list of rule changes year-to-year, so to expect a game developer—on a wafer-thin budget—to realise it 1:1 is pie in the sky stuff. Big Ant Studios developed the first modern AFL game, AFL Live, about a decade ago only for Wicked Witch to take over as custodians from then on.

Although they’ve cut their teeth developing other sporting titles, Big Ant’s return to AFL felt like a coming home story bigger to rival Jason Horne-Francis. Unfortunately, several of the persistent issues to plague these footy games remain, leaving us with yet another product befitting the sport’s niche status.

As Big Ant are still aggressively patching the game to mend its launch issues, I expect that in time many of my gripes will be fixed. Things like errant handballing, missed tackles, and frequent failure to actually deliver on the rules of the sport can all be tweaked and improved as time goes on. I do think there are some fundamental issues with momentum in the game when you turn the ball over against even the weakest of sides, as they seamlessly move the ball coast-to-coast like an unstoppable wave. The skill ceiling and learning curve for AFL 23 are both astronomical for a sports game, but when I look at the opposition move the ball in a way that would otherwise be impossible for the player, it becomes frustrating. 

It also doesn’t appear as though you’re able to implement much strategy to curtail ball movement like this. You can’t control eighteen players at once and there’s no meaningful way to tighten up formations, or instruct players to man-up in dying stages. It’s small omissions like this that makes this game in particular feel a little feature incomplete.

When it’s on your terms, however, the game can feel very satisfying. I think shorter field kicking is the best it has ever been and A.I. teammates always lead into space to make each kick look like a million bucks. Similarly, goalkicking takes on its best form and it’s the one facet of this game that players should immediately be able to pick up and play. The pendulum-style power and accuracy meter is instantly readable in a way many of the sport’s other systems are not, and it’s not like the game has a great tutorial to begin with. 

The entire suite of modes in AFL 23 is rather limited, in all honesty. There’s the bog standard season mode that sees you make your way through the fixture in pursuit of the Holy Grail. The game’s attempt at a management sim is much the same, except you’re charged with list, contract, and recruit management. For those that really like things like SuperCoach and other fantasy leagues, it might scratch an itch, but it’s largely bare bones. While the big leagues are certainly involved, it would appear that state and grassroots teams have been left on the bench this time around, which feels like a sad back step.

In the past, the online modes in AFL games have at least had some form of ladder or ranking system to tie it all together. Not only is that absent here, leaving the multiplayer side of things feeling rather pointless, with only a quick match option on offer, it’s impossible to find a match against.

This is a huge shame as, of the games I’ve played against randoms online, the game feels far more tense and balanced. It might expose shortcomings in the way ruck contests are handled because Max Gawn is effectively cheat codes, but I’ll admit happily I had the most fun with the game when not getting exposed and split open by improbable A.I. Despite its hang-ups elsewhere, latency surprisingly wasn’t a huge drama when it came to online play. 

In terms of presentation, it’s the best a footy game has looked. Of course, the bar has never been that high, but perusing the academy within the game’s menu and admiring the player’s models shows that a level of care has been put in here. A lot of effort has been put in to emulate the broadcast aspects of the game, from pre-game warm ups, the coin toss and the celebratory team song in the rooms after the final siren—they pulled real-life audio to make these as authentic as possible. It’s a shame there’s just no way around the same old stilted, robotic commentary we’ve always been treated to.

I wish more effort was put into bringing the crowd to life, nothing about it feels real. The polygonal cost might exceed a few hundred while the chants and cheers are piped in. To see the top deck of the Melbourne Cricket Ground vacant during the pointy end of September is baffling. 

There also seems to be less avenues for the sharing of user-generated content, most of which would already be the pits. It’s an area that Wicked Witch excelled at nearer the end of their tenure, but it has clearly not been a focus of Big Ant’s. Within the academy you’re able to knock up players, entire clubs, logos and stadiums, but the systems to do so are undercooked and the communal search functions to find something you actually like aren’t great. It might have been a glitch, but there’s no function to preview a piece of content before downloading it—a bare minimum in what is effectively a hub free of quality control. 

It’s probably never a promising sign when the minor, somewhat forgivable bugs become almost an unintended marketing beat for the game at launch. Things like the model for the head coach appearing as the goal umpire and the physics-defying “90m handball” have been everywhere, and it just speaks to a product that needed a little more time. Of course, releasing a game like this is never easy, especially in conjunction with the actual ongoing footy season, but you’d hope future patches to not only sharpen up this particular title but firm up the foundation for next year’s—if it happens.

With things like the Legends roster and Pro Teams to come, time is fortunately on Big Ant’s side to keep refining the experience for players. What’s there is good, but it’s light on many features that make it a fuller product. It’s a long season though and premierships aren’t won in May.

The post AFL 23 Review – Like Dancing With Your Sister appeared first on Press Start.

If Echo Generation was Cococucumber’s attempt at an eighties-infused Stranger Things send-up, then Ravenlok is their attempt at a faraway fantasy. So far as how it’s presented, Ravenlok is as charming as they come. It falls down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of wonderfully strange, and it finds inspiration in coming-of-age, fish out of water fairy tales like Spirited Away and Alice in Wonderland.

Ravenlok appears to hit on the well worn tropes of escapist fiction, as the game’s heroine retreats into fantasy to deal with her family’s countryside relocation.

I’d argue the game is intended for adolescents and younger and, as such, doesn’t really capitalise on the emotional weight that comes with such life-changing events. As wildly imaginative as the setting and lore seems to be, Ravenlok is handled simply when it comes to its rich-in-cliche narrative and dialogue, which won’t challenge even the most unaccomplished readers. Cliches set firmly aside, toppling the Caterpillar Queen’s harsh reign is a fantastical time and really does have the magical flair you’d want from a game like this. 

After you’re dubbed Ravenlok, prophesied saviour of the troubled realms, you’re given a crash course in defending yourself against all the nasties that wait ahead. The sword and shield you find at the game’s beginning will be the same one you deal your final blow with, and in a sense that simplicity will better suit a younger audience but it also places a lot of pressure on the game’s combat to be fun and dynamic in spite of this. Unfortunately it really isn’t to be, the game does trickle feed four special powers you can use in battle for added control, but it still remains fairly one-note from go to whoa. Ravenlok also resists the urge to implement any kind of skill tree, instead opting for a simple two-currency system of gold and feathers which are spent on potions, bombs, and stat buffs respectively. 

Even if the combat isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, there’s an undeniable joy in the adventure itself. It doesn’t waste a second of its eight-or-so-hour journey with each quest’s ultimate objective seeming to feed into the goal of the next. It was this briskness that helped the game feel moreish despite its shortcomings in other areas.

Ravenlok’s camera is without doubt the game’s biggest frustration. For a modern action-adventure game to not have a completely free camera feels like a sin. With a fixed and rather limited viewpoint in any given area, both exploration and combat can feel cumbersome and clunky.

While there’s an undeniable variety in terms of their designs, pretty much most of the kingdom’s defenders are as threatening as a wet lettuce leaf. Either there’s a glitch that causes stun locking, rendering them relatively inert, or the A.I. is just poor enough that the notion to fight back doesn’t register in their minds until it’s all too late. Judging by some of the oddly handled stealth sections the game has, which literally let me waltz by the guards in plain view, I suspect it’s the latter. 

With only a handful of realms, I did often manage to complete objectives out of sequence—I’d fairly often complete a fetch quest before I’d even been assigned it. It never broke the game, though I did suck the wind out of my sails time and again to have my immersion within this world dented. Inconsistent sequencing was the least of Ravenlok’s concerns as far as its design goes, and all it takes is one glance at the game’s regular, wave-defense ambushes you must survive. Some games will have enemies descend from the sky, or break through the earth’s soil to spring an attack, but Ravenlok simply has them materialise out of thin air.

I can’t overstate how pleasant Ravenlok’s world is, and how many allusions it makes to the fairy tales and fantasies we’ve grown up with. There’s a mirror-laden hedge maze labyrinth to explore, as well as an insanely scaled tea party where toppled tea pots and mouthwatering sweets are the scenery. Whoever was charged with Ravenlok’s art direction certainly read the book on fantasy and has done a fine job recrafting, in a lot of ways, the childlike wonder of these familiar scenes through the developer’s oft-used voxel art style. There are more than a few stunning vistas to take in, I especially loved the giant, cuddly looking Totoro-cat’s cliff side view of the labyrinth. Having enjoyed it in games like Cloudpunk, I feel the choice absolutely serves Ravenlok’s world and even the overuse of bloom throughout can’t stop this from being one of the better looking fantasy titles of the year, even if it doesn’t push the technical envelope.

The game’s score also gets a big tick, rounding out what is a pretty faultless fantasy presentation. As the story can be a tonal seesaw, Ravenlok’s orchestral follows. Elfman-like staccatos punch through the game’s more eerie beats, while I feel like the composer definitely attempts to invoke Hisaishi’s contemplative piano movements to underpin some of the more touching, heartful moments. 

If you’re after an action-adventure game that’ll challenge you with tasks requiring both physical and mental determination, Ravenlok probably isn’t that game—it’s too basic to stand shoulder to shoulder with contemporary fantasy titles that tend to be fuller packages. 

If you’re looking to be flown to a gorgeous, strange world for an afternoon and crudely hack your way through what feels like a greatest hits from the fairy tale annals, then you could definitely do worse.

The post Ravenlok Review – Reverie And Spirit appeared first on Press Start.

Last month, I wrote about Redfall’s bad press and how the game might face an uphill battle to win fans over come launch. As it turns out, host-only progression, inconvenient as it might be, isn’t even close to one of the game’s worst sins. It feels as though Redfall began life as a smaller project, almost like a stop-gap in development in between Dishonored games—like Deathloop’s apparent beginnings. Only with Redfall, it feels like they were told a year out from launch and decided to pad the experience out with anything but a checklist of things to do in the titular town.

Like a lot of Arkane’s stuff, there is actually a pretty wild story on offer with Redfall, if you’re happy to look for it. With the island under the authoritative rule of the vampire gods, the game does a pretty good job of unspooling their histories throughout the game’s rather cheap ‘live storyboard’ cutscenes that bookend most of the main missions.

Admittedly, there’s more of Arkane’s patented world-building present than I had given the game credit for during my hands-on. If anything, it’s the hero characters that don’t really lap up much focus. Though I didn’t play through all of them, Orlando Bloom, I mean Jacob, is loosely tied to Miss Whisper, the god responsible for “gifting” him his magical milky eye. So, I’d expect all of them to have their own forgettable vendettas.

I had originally pegged Redfall as Arkane’s attempt at a Far Cry game. After spending considerable time in it, I think a lot of its nuts and bolts are modelled after Destiny. For the most part it’s roaming an open sandbox and shooting shit up before returning to home base to top up ammo, spin a yarn with the non-playables, and receive the next thing to do. And like Bungie’s live-service marvel, this vampire-slaying shooter has a similarly quick and snappy brand of gunplay that’s very satisfying. All of the heroes have special powers at their disposal however, unlike Destiny where team composition is an enormous focus, there isn’t any meaningful synergy between them. At certain points it feels like the game’s co-op implementation was an afterthought and not part of the planning, to the point where I enjoyed Redfall as a single-player game much more.

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For a game that lazily guns for Destiny’s mantle with the game’s build, the loot system is pretty uninspiring. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the weapons we’re given, they’re hefty and feel tremendous in-hand, I just felt I was constantly having to leave behind my preferred, tricked out guns to keep up with the power grind. I do wish the game had some form of transmog so that I could imbue my barnacle-covered shotty, plucked from hell’s deep, with another’s power. 

The game has three mission types in total: main, side, and safe house, which are obviously collected from the various hole-ups about town. Although you could conceivably juggle several at once as there are several points where multiple are available, the game restricts you to holding just one of each at any given time. The sheer amount of backtracking in Redfall that results from this is a pain in the neck, and I think it’s all a mask for what is ultimately a game that’s light on content. Even small design choices like carpeting parts of the map in an evil red smoke that forces diversion en route to an objective feels like a means to keep the player busy and doing anything other than checking the next objective box. 

As if a player’s time wasn’t valuable enough, Redfall feels like a ten-hour game masquerading as a twenty-hour one.

I could take or leave the uninspired mission design throughout most of Redfall’s main story arc, which obviously takes place topside in a seemingly lived-in, yet mostly deserted town. I became considerably more intrigued once I explored the game’s admittedly meagre side content, including the vampire nests. These serve as brief dungeons that explore the “psychic realm” and offer up a twisted Frankenstein’s monster full of the island’s seaside aspects which really let the art team flex their collective muscle. 

It’s not hard to tell from first impressions that this game is an Arkane special. The art design, despite being failed in part by the game’s performance, is absolutely incredible. There is so much imagery in Redfall that feels iconic, from the enormous waves, suspended by dark magic, acting as a coastal perimeter for the town, to the blotted out sun—a clear call back to the devious works of Monty Burns. Like their past worlds, Dunwall and Blackreef, Redfall is believable as a town that’s been lived in and left in a hurry as a lot of the residential houses, upended by panic and turmoil, can be picked clean. I love everything about the vampires in Redfall, from their mad science origins to their distinct look, I particularly think whoever designed the gods themselves deserves a pat on the back. 

Contrary to my original belief that the game’s four gods might occupy the four corners of Redfall, the game is actually split into two maps. The one you start in is Redfall Commons, and you’ll move into Burial Point after dealing with the first of four gods. They treat this mid-game shift as a ‘point of no return’ moment, however, meaning all of the side content within the Commons cannot be returned to once you move on. It’s an odd decision to gate out half of the game’s content when a transitory load, like an island-to-island ferry or cable car, for example, could take you back and forth.

It’s well documented that, at launch, Redfall would be limited to 30fps. That, however, isn’t the worst of it. 

While scouring the island for things to do, I was subject to admittedly infrequent hard crashes, plentiful graphical glitches, and horrible plunges in frame rate during fights with particular vampire specials like Shroud, which blankets the world in a dark veil. Pop-in, which wasn’t limited to simple textures, marred part of the experience, too. I lost count of the times a squad of gun-toting adds would simply appear out of thin air and destroy me in seconds, setting me back to the last safehouse I passed so I could walk through minutes of relatively empty map once more. Put simply, Redfall is a frustratingly unoptimised game. 

It’s hard to criticise how Redfall runs when hosting a four-stack of slayers. Granted, the map is small, sparsely populated, and the game doesn’t deliver the hottest textures I’ve seen lately, but a solid netcode is something worth crediting. Of course, things like host-only progression, a seeming lack of level scaling, and persistent frustrating ready-up delays do make teaming up a far less appealing prospect. I think Arkane’s inexperience in developing a co-operative experience definitely cuts through with Redfall.

The post Redfall Review – Just A Biteful Of Fun appeared first on Press Start.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is Respawn Entertainment’s dark middle chapter. What Jedi: Survivor isn’t, is Respawn’s Empire Strikes Back. That would be too easy; instead, the team has crafted an unruly, introspective tale that pulls from the best of Star Wars storytelling while striking out on its own. It echoes Attack of the Clones and The Last Jedi, pivoting focus and intent seemingly on a whim to forefront its characters and massively expand its gameplay languages, resulting in a game that plays like an action movie but flows like a drama – a dissonance that requires Jedi-like trust in the process to eventually see the light.

Jedi: Fallen Order left Cal and the Mantis crew in a bit of no man’s land. Having conclusively destroyed the list of potential Jedi survivors, the little band of unlikely mates were set adrift into a galaxy that has already had its storytelling potentially largely tapped. These are the dark times, the height of Empire with only a budding sense of Rebellion to push back, and having run the gambit of iconic locations and faces in the first game, exactly where Respawn would take Cal next was something of an enigma. It’s here, in this freedom, Jedi: Survivor thrives.

Many years of fighting the Empire has fractured the crew, each of them peeling off one by one to pursue a different path after the inevitability of the imperial creep – except for Cal. Knighted in battle and unable to let go of the fight, we pick up with this version of the now seasoned Jedi in the midst of a Rebellion heist. Like the entire cast of the game, he’s changed. Jedi: Survivor’s Cal is stronger, faster and angrier. The game’s opening sequence is an all-timer in intention statements, a colourful and violent descent through Coruscant’s underworld culminating in a definitive blow dealt by Cal that lets the player know, right away, this is not going to go the way you think.

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Fleeing the scene and seeking to lay low for a while, Cal and BD-1 find themselves on Koboh, a sprawling, original planet that serves as the game’s hub world and primary location. That last point there is undoubtedly going to raise some eyebrows; the first game prided itself on being a galaxy-trotting adventure and Jedi: Survivor sprints in the opposite direction, instead opting for a more narrow scope but becoming deeper for it. Koboh is a towering achievement of Star Wars world design complete with a charming cantina, unique wildlife, half a dozen biomes and some deep cut lore that set my heart aflutter. Your adventure will send you to a handful of other locations but these are often much smaller instances, no less intricately crafted but all roads lead back to Koboh in the end.

Initially, this tighter loop made my brain short-circuit – for all my bluster about wanting entirely original Star Wars stories, I still found myself somewhat wanting for more recognisable planets and locations to visit. But the longer I sit with the game the more I’ve come to appreciate the intentionality behind it. Jedi: Survivor is rarely the game you’re expecting it to be and once you embrace that freefall, you can begin to appreciate the ride.

Jedi: Survivor’s core gameplay systems have been effectively perfected, a remarkable spit and shine of Fallen Order’s ambition to offer both meaningful combat and exploration. There are five different Lightsaber stances to choose from – single blade, dual blade, double blade, blaster and cross-guard, each offering players unique engagement methods that favour balance, speed, defense and power. You’re able to have two of each style equipped at any given time, flipping between them with a simple button press. These stances all sport their own skill trees that unlock progressively cooler moves, most of which drain your Force meter, which is then refilled by hitting foes with standard attacks.

Speaking of the Force, it has well and truly awakened in Jedi: Survivor. Cal begins the game with a basic assortment of abilities (Push, Pull, Mind Trick) that can all be upgraded through another set of skill trees. But the true joy of the game’s combat snaps into focus through the middle stretch, during which Cal will unlock additional Force powers that bolster his existing ones, allowing for markedly improved crowd control and offensive capabilities. There’s no wrong combination of stance and Force here, a delightful bit of player expression that allows you to build Cal out in the exact way you prefer to play. For instance, I sat on my skill points for hours waiting for the cross-guard stance to unlock, eventually dumping them all into the tree and wielding a Lightsaber claymore for the rest of the game.

Once you’ve found the stance you’re most comfortable with, the fluidity of Jedi: Survivor’s combat becomes undeniable. Cal has a bounty of animations to pull from, giving attacks contextually interesting outcomes that you’ve earned through a series of tight parries, dodges and deliberate blows. Stronger foes will deploy these same tactics against you in turn too, often requiring your patience to wear down stamina meters before you can break through and land a blow. Exchanges, largely, feel like a dance – weighty, pointed strikes spinning out into micro-breaks in flow that allow you to catch your breath before throwing yourself back into the fray.

Cal is every bit the Jedi Knight Cere expected him to become, and in turn, the player is allowed to experience a power fantasy that lifts the best elements from previous titles like the Jedi: Knight and Force Unleashed series. Jedi: Survivor does this without sacrificing its original intentions, rewarding conscious player choices with bombastic, cinematic thrills, capitalising on the contrast for great effect. Boss battles are the crown jewel of this balance, often extensive and incredibly trying exchanges that require your best play and in turn deliver some genuinely stunning set pieces that had my jaw cratered on the floor.    

Likewise, exploration has been vastly improved over the first game, with quality of life choices and a sharper eye for level design both elevating Jedi: Survivor. Cal moves much faster now, scampering along derelict ships and cliff faces with a fluidity that removes unnecessary player friction and allows you to feel more equipped to manoeuvre the game’s immaculate platforming playgrounds. Again, in pulling focus onto just a small selection of locations, Respawn has crafted far more engaging play spaces that utilise an array of traversal mechanics, including a contextual hook shot, improved Force jumping, ground and air mounts, and some Arkham-lite tools BD-1 picks up along the way. Traditional puzzles have been dialled back from the first game too; the ones that are here are enjoyable enough but largely Cal’s only barrier to progression will be your skill with his new movement abilities.

Conversely, Jedi: Survivor features a handful of systems that can be largely ignored by the player. There is a whole Perk system that requires slot management for passive boosts to your skills but to be frank, I had entirely forgotten about it for long stretches of play. That charming cantina on Koboh also has an adorable rooftop garden you can maintain with BD-1 but for the life of me I never found much of a mechanical imperative to return to it. There’s also the excellent cosmetic customisation suite that allows players to fully build their own saber, deck out BD-1 and the blaster in custom parts, and even change the colour shading on the dozens of outfit combinations. And yeah you can give Cal a mullet. The game never forces your hand on these systems, content to let you engage at your leisure, but this system passivity is at odds with, to my mind, the game’s most interesting player demand – that you care for the sake of caring.

Jedi: Survivor has a confidence in its storytelling and a faith in its audience, I find utterly fascinating. The game is effectively a four-act narrative, picking up and discarding threads with ferocious speed as it whips through tones and plots that run the gambit of earnest human drama to old Extended Universe novel pulp. The Empire takes a backseat for the majority of the game, instead Cal and friends are embroiled in the centuries old plot of High Republic era Jedi Dagan Gera as he races to claim an oasis planet hidden beyond an impenetrable abyss. Cal sees the planet as a potential Rebellion training ground, pitting him against Dagan as the two Jedi survivors duke it out to claim a new home. It’s smaller stakes than expected and gives the game room to explore what exactly it means to be a survivor in a galaxy this far gone.

This conflict draws in several familiar faces, as well as some compelling new ones, and forms a tremendous thematic backbone for the game. Dagan is a treat, absolutely devouring scenery as he paces in his ornate golden robes and taunts Cal for letting the galaxy fall after the High Republic. The game does a cursory job at educating players on the relatively recent Star Wars era, and while some aesthetic touchstones are present, the majority of the High Republic connections are found in data files and inference alone. You should still read those books though. Much like the planets, I was initially caught on this choice but Jedi: Survivor has so much more cooking than anticipated, and while its ambitions can result in some pacing hitches and speedy conclusions, its achievements are worth the scramble.

Much like Jedi: Fallen Order, moment-to-moment dialogue can still occasionally slip into broad strokes, or some exposition heavy exchanges, but Jedi: Survivor navigates these characters into far more interesting waters. Cal’s Jedi journey is perhaps most surprising, a brilliant echo of the High Republic teachings and a definitive answer to what exactly you do with this character. Elsewhere, Merin returns in a pivotal role that balances Cal’s changes and locks the two of them into exciting narrative potentials. Dagan is drawn a little lighter but remains fun throughout, and the new supporting cast are thoroughly likeable and will break your heart if you let them. It helps too that the game lets you spend more organic time with its characters as Cal is sometimes joined on missions by companions, giving them a chance to banter in mostly organic and charming ways.

The race to find a hidden planet is a wonderfully fun set up, all the more for giving Cal a plot that doesn’t necessitate known factors and instead allows Respawn to craft their very own corner of the galaxy. Jedi: Survivor overflows with colourful and expressive art that draws Star Wars in tones and shapes that feel fresh and exciting. From Koboh’s Old West-inspired ranch towns to Jedah’s ornate Jedi temples and even the phenomenal score and sound work, the game is dense with little flourishes that make it feel both a part of the larger galaxy but also distinctly its own beast. The only real issue is performance; playing on PlayStation I was hit with a fair few issues, from texture pop in to slowdown and clipping. Which is a shame because the game is otherwise a technical marvel, that gorgeous art direction rendered beautifully on screen, when it works.

Jedi: Survivor feels like it has something to prove. Maybe to the team behind it, whose ambitions for Cal have clearly grown exponentially in the interim years, and maybe to its audience, who the game places explicit trust in. It’s a game that dances, gleefully, in the tonal dissonance of its Star Wars building blocks. Colliding power fantasy mechanics, high-concept sci-fi and nuanced, character-driven writing, the end result occasionally stumbles trying to hold it all together but ultimately emerges a roaring success of genre melding. Jedi: Survivor is a monument to the best of Star Wars.

The post Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Review – An Audacious Middle Chapter appeared first on Press Start.

Strayed Lights is a game that came out of nowhere to land on my radar, but it landed hard. I’m a massive sucker for a simple, stylish indie adventure that can be blown over in an afternoon and straight out of the gate I can tell you that this game has all that and then some.

French studio Embers’ first outing casts players as a being born of light, taking them on a journey from birth to ascendance in a dreamlike world where they’ll need to battle their inner demons to bring about peace and a balance of energy. It’s a wordless and esoteric narrative that, at least as far as my own experience goes, serves primarily to offer up a cool-looking world and contextualise some inventive and exciting combat mechanics.

As you make your way through this mysterious world, split into two hubs of interconnected biomes, you’ll happen across its less-than-friendly denizens. Rather than a traditional blow-by-blow combat system, Strayed Lights’ is one of an exchanging of energies. You can certainly take swipes at them, but the true tactic is to carefully party every blow they send your way until you’ve successfully absorbed all of their energy meter into your own, at which point you can end things at the touch of a button.

The added complexity in all this is a colour-based system that rewards you for switching the ethereal glow of your body between orange or blue to match that of your enemy at the moment of parry. Parrying as the correct colour is how you’ll successfully absorb energy (and regain health) while getting the timing right but the colour wrong will still negate any damage but without the other benefits. It’s simple enough but deceptively engaging, as you’re not only learning each enemy type’s attack patterns but memorising which colour they’ll be at key points in their combos, including a third, purple colour signifying an unblockable attack that you’ll need to dodge instead.

This comes together wonderfully during the game’s marquee boss battles, which up the scale of your foes significantly while giving them unique extra mechanics to contend with. These are unanimously great fights that feel increasingly satisfying as you hone your partying and dodging skills against the regular enemies in the lead-up. There aren’t all that many encounters across the game’s four-hour runtime, maybe a dozen for each of the major areas, making them all feel like crucial steps in your journey.

The one concern I do have with Strayed Lights’ otherwise-commendable take on enemy encounters is that there’s a bit of built-in exclusion that comes from the colour aspect. With no settings to tweak how these are displayed or alternative method of delivering the information needed, those who struggle with colour vision could find themselves at a huge disadvantage, doubly so given there are no difficulty settings to speak of either.

Outside of combat, Strayed Lights’ loose exploration serves well enough as a stroll through its oneiric landscapes. There are some collectibles to be found off the beaten path that add towards character progression, and a smattering of abilities to upgrade as you go, but it’s otherwise fairly basic stuff. The positive there is it makes this an easy game to slip into and vibe with minimal interruption, and it keeps things nice and succinct. Upon finishing the game I was a little stung to find that it’s not possible to go back to the pre-climax state and search out anything I missed along the way – the game simply throws players back to the main menu with only “New Game” as an option to dive back in.

I’d happily take the plunge again though, not least because Strayed Lights is a beautiful experience. From the breathtaking environments and their abstract-but-endearing inhabitants to the awe inspiring boss designs and anime-as-hell set pieces tussles you’ll have with them, this is a very handsome title indeed. The music, dreamt up by Austin Wintory (Journey, ABZÛ), is equally gorgeous even if the games overall audio mix is a bit dull throughout.

It’s not out to shake up the indie video game space, but thanks to a uniquely engaging combat system and a consistent stream of wonderous sights and sounds, Strayed Lights is a worthwhile little journey that makes for a great lazy afternoon play. It’s unfortunate that the user experience has suffered an oversight or two, especially in areas of accessibility, but mainly because it’s a quiet gem of a game that absolutely deserves to be played.

The post Strayed Lights Mini Review – Colour Me Impressed appeared first on Press Start.

The original A Fisherman’s Tale was a delight when it released back in 2019, and still one of my favourite games on the original PlayStation VR. Cue my excitement when InnerspaceVR announced that a sequel was on the way with Another Fisherman’s Tale – as well as my slight hesitation at the fact that this new entry would be swapping out the recursive puzzles of the first game with a completely new mechanic.

Turns out any hesitation was completely unfounded on my part, as Another Fisherman’s Tale has proven to be every bit as creative and enjoyable with its puzzles as last time, and although they’re a little less mind-bending they still play with perspective in a uniquely satisfying way.

Let’s start at the start though – Another Fisherman’s Tale puts us back in the shoes of Bob, the fisherman/wooden puppet who we last saw wrestling with a mysterious and never-ending model lighthouse. Told from the dual perspectives of Bob and his daughter, Nina, it’s a chronicling of his past adventures, wrestling with pirates, treasures and mythical creatures. Each adventure is represented by an intricate model, with players controlling Nina inbetween stories as she pieces together her father’s history to discover more about him. It’s a thoughtful setup to the fantastical escapades of each chapter that brings a lot to the table to ground Bob’s character and wraps up nicely by the end.

Of course, as well-realised as the narrative is this is a puzzle game first and foremost, and Another Fisherman’s Tale’s unique mechanic this time around is Bob’s ability to remove his head, hands and legs at will from his wooden-doll body. This gives players a completely new way to engage with puzzles by literally being able to separate themselves from the situation at hand and get a new perspective by lobbing their head to a better vantage point, or popping off a hand and walking it through small crevices and tunnels to grab items or pull levers. You’ll also often have the opportunity to replace either of your hands with other tools like crab claws, hookshots and robot hands to add even more layers to puzzles.

These might be simple enough ideas on their own, but combined with the immersion of virtual reality it sells the concept of perspective even further. When your head’s on a perch in the corner of a room and you’re free to look around as you independently control your body, or when you have to follow your disembodied hand and peer into tight spaces to ensure you’re not going to send it into a hazard, it’s hard not to truly feel like parts of you have genuinely been relocated. Most VR games try their hardest to make it seem like you’re in another body – Another Fisherman’s Tale makes it seem like your body is in another place entirely.

Like the first game, the only real gripe I have here is the relative brevity of the experience. Coming in at under 2 hours I was happy that this is the kind of VR experience I can comfortably complete in one session without feeling the need for a break, but as a puzzle game there’s only so far things can be taken in that timeframe. I would’ve loved for the puzzle designs to escalate even further as there are some truly ingenious concepts at play here (I won’t spoil a single one because of how short the game is), but nothing that becomes overly taxing on the ol’ grey matter.

Playing on the PlayStation VR2, the game continues the solid aesthetic of its predecessor, but on a larger scale and with a nice amount of added flair, plus the obvious increased sharpness neat features like haptic feedback and adaptive triggers when played on the PS VR2. The first time I threw my own head across the room and felt the thump from the PS VR2 headset’s haptics in my own head was a pleasant shock.

If you’re a fan of inventive puzzle games attached to endearing and emotionally-driven narratives, and you’re lucky enough to have the hardware required to play it, I can wholeheartedly recommend Another Fisherman’s Tale as a great way to spend a couple of hours on a lazy weekend. I truly hope the folks at InnerspaceVR can expand even further with the next title, making it bigger and more challenging, but there’s no denying the smile on my face the entire time I was playing this one.

The post Another Fisherman’s Tale Mini Review – An Out-Of-Body VR Puzzler appeared first on Press Start.

It’s no secret that I adored Horizon Forbidden West when it launched last year, awarding it a 10/10 for taking what worked about its mostly-good predecessor and cranking the dial up to an 11. So when Guerrilla announced that fans would be able to return to the game in a sizeable expansion, especially one that takes Aloy to a post-machine-apocalypse Los Angeles, I was more than ready.

Burning Shores is exciting for a few key reasons. Firstly, it’s a completely post-game expansion meaning what we’re getting is more than just a side story carefully slotted into the existing framework of the game – instead it’s easy to assume it functions as a bridge to whatever Guerrilla has planned next for the franchise. Second, it’s exclusive to the PlayStation 5 version of the game, a choice that manifests quite clearly in not just the visual splendour but the content itself in the Burning Shores. And of course, new locations, characters, machines, gear and everything else that comes along are all very exciting for those of us that’ve squeezed Forbidden West dry of every drop of content.

Now, with the main quest component of Burning Shores under my belt along with the bulk of the optional bits, I can say with confidence that the expansion delivers on all of the above quite nicely, but it’s not without a few unfortunate stumbles and just a touch of over-familiarity.

Spoilers For The Ending Of Horizon Forbidden West From This Point On!

Provided you’ve completed the main questline in Forbidden West, Burning Shores opens with Aloy receiving a call out of the blue from Sylens, voiced of course by the late Lance Reddick in bittersweet fashion, revealing that he’s uncovered evidence that one of the members of Far Zenith remains alive and at large. The Musk-esque Walter Londra, CEO of space mining corporation Heaven¢, has holed up somewhere at his pre-apocalypse HQ in the Burning Shores, formerly Los Angeles, and is up to something. And so, Aloy sets off to new territory to see what’s up.

Discovering an encampment of stranded Quen refugees almost immediately after arriving, Aloy befriends Seyka, and with a shared interest in scoping out Londra’s location to find a missing Quen scouting party Seyka joins Aloy for the bulk of this new adventure. It’s clear early on that Guerrilla wants to establish Seyka as a prominent character in the Horizon universe, and she comes as a welcome addition both for her personal journey and interactions with Aloy as well as her utility in gameplay.

Unlike some of the other characters who’ve joined up with Aloy along the way in the base game, Seyka is a near-match for her understanding of the world and prowess in combat, making her less of a tag-along and more a partner. It’s something that works incredibly well to make Burning Shores feel different in the moment-to-moment as the two tackle each situation in tandem.

This comes in incredibly handy with facing down some of Burning Shores’ new challenges, whether it’s environmental puzzles and set pieces requiring the pair to work together or fights against touch new machines like the Bilegut. This huge, frog-like machine is easily one of my favourites in the game with its disgusting, acid-spewing “pores” and long, metallic tongue combined with its “eggs” that birth swarms of small but aggressive fly-like machines.

There’s an off-putting, organic quality to everything the Bilegut does that makes it feel much more threatening than most, so having Seyka on-hand is a godsend. She’s capable of the same kinds of tactics that players would employ as Aloy like using elemental damage or casting ropes to tie machines down, which almost gives the game the Monster Hunter-esque feel that I’m sure plenty of fans have imagined for the series as the two of you cooperate to bring down huge and formidable foes.

Another one of the new machines, the Waterwing, is equally exciting for different reasons. The Burning Shores are a set of broken-up land masses with a heap of verticality from immense cliffs and decaying skycrapers to deep oceans and volcanic ruptures and that means you’ll spend a lot of your time in the air – whether catching volcanic updrafts with your Glider or riding on the back of a machine. Waterwings are the go-to here for their ability to not just soar through the air but also dive down and rocket along underwater. Flying for the first time in Forbidden West was an exhilarating moment but this overgrown and ruined LA feels more purposefully built for taking to the skies and the oceans.

It also feels purposefully built for the power of the PS5, pushing the already-gorgeous Forbidden West to a whole new level with easily the most impressive vistas I’ve seen in a video game that only become even more impressive as you explore them close-up. Dense environments packed with lush lighting and mind blowing effects aren’t new to Horizon but there’s a definite sense that the studio really pushed things as hard as they could here, and that fancy new cloud tech is just divine.

Unfortunately, the expansion has also been strangely lacking in polish during my playthrough. There were several points where I encountered bugs from voice-overs disappearing during cutscenes to Aloy clipping through the environment and even some fight sequences being soft-locked when certain things didn’t activate as intended. The game still struggles to maintain a sense of fluidity in indoor environments where Aloy’s movements become awkward and the camera is consistently obscured by the architecture.

Those missteps don’t do too much to sully the experience though, and it’s one that Horizon fans absolutely won’t want to miss out on. It feels like essential playing for anyone who finished Forbidden West, introducing some great new characters and giving existing ones new moments of personal development, all while setting up some enticing threads and paying off others in incredible fashion. Some of my favourite parts of the main game came from a sense of wonder and discovery in how Guerrilla presents remnants of the Old World and takes players on journeys of discovery and without saying too much that’s in full effect here.

That’s all without even going into the many new mechanical wrinkles from new types of weapons to new abilities for Aloy to unlock that are generally quite exciting and useful, the additional side quests that include a returning favourite or two, fun collectibles to find across the sizeable new map and scattering of new ideas. I’m impressed by how well-paced and fresh the golden path feels in Burning Shores just as much as I’m enamoured with all of the discoveries to be had off that path.

Positioning this as a post-game expansion was a great move, because what’s here doesn’t just feel like extra content bolted onto Forbidden West, it’s a genuine continuation of the world, story, characters and gameplay and a great little lead into an exciting future.

The post Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores Review – A Worthy Expansion appeared first on Press Start.

After an unexpected two-year delay, Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is finally here. The collection was long looked forward to by fans who fell in love with the Advance Wars series when it launched over two decades ago. Now, while Fire Emblem has arguably overtaken its spot in the cultural zeitgeist, Advance War makes a return and in a big way too. But while Re-Boot Camp is an earnest attempt at a modern update, there are a few things left on the table that could help the package reach its full potential.

Re-Boot Camp includes brand new from-the-ground-up remakes of the original Advance Wars and its sequel. Initially released for the Game Boy Advance, these two games are narratively two sides of the same coin, so it makes sense to include them together. It makes even more sense given that, from a gameplay perspective, both games play pretty similarly, with little difference between them. Both titles have had a visual makeover and sport other gameplay-related improvements that make them more approachable and streamlined.

From a narrative perspective, things are pretty simple but take a surprising turn. Advance Wars sees you playing as leaders of the state’s military on a fictional continent. You are the Orange Star and the game opens with you being at war with the Blue Moon. These two nations have been in conflict for years, but when another two countries enter the fray – the Yellow Comet and the Green Earth – and accuse the Orange Star of starting a war between the other nations, things get a bit dicey. I won’t spoil how it plays out, but it’s an intriguing, simple, engaging story.

Fans of Fire Emblem have a lot to owe to Advance Wars. Developed by the same team, these games are turn-based strategy affairs. You and an opponent take turns defeating each other in war. A selection of different units are available to you with differing roles in battle. Some are better for simply scouting out the battlefield, and others can attack from afar. Some can transport other units greater distances than they could themselves. Your goal is to destroy all enemy units or capture the enemy HQ.

It’s a simple premise, but it requires some thinking. While released over two decades ago, Advance Wars still packs a punch with difficulty. You must think through every turn to come out on top, and the enemy AI can be relentless. I’m keen on this strong challenge, even if it took some getting used to, but I acknowledge other players might not be, and it might be a bit off-putting or overwhelming.

Re-Boot Camp thusly includes a new casual mode, but it feels like a poorly thought-out inclusion. This is the only issue I have with Re-Boot Camp. Both the original difficulty and the casual difficulty lack that Goldilocks principle. They’re tuned to occupy both ends of the difficulty curve with nothing in the middle to cater to the average player. I’d have loved to have seen a middle difficulty introduced, as both the provided options will alienate some players.

That’s my only major complaint about Re-Boot Camp which might seem a little controversial. Everything has been improved for the better. Bringing together both games under the same banner, the quality-of-life changes implemented here are integral. So many of these additions feel simple enough but impact the game’s flow dramatically. You can now fast-forward enemy turns and battle animations. You can reset your turn if you make a mistake, so long as you don’t end that turn. You can even attack an enemy outright by selecting them – which might sound like a small change – but any design choice that removes button presses to achieve the same result is a UX win.

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There are other aspects that are similarly fantastic – tutorials are now streamlined into the campaign, introduced to you more gradually rather than forcing you through some simpler uninteresting missions like the original game did. Even better, though these tutorials are embedded in the main missions now, they’re skippable for people who know what they’re doing. I appreciate good onboarding more than anyone, but also respecting returning players by allowing them to skip these elements that would otherwise bore them is, once again, a win for the player.

But putting all of those opening moments aside, both Advance Wars games still play as well as they did back then. The campaigns each gradually introduce the key concepts until you’re eventually faced with challenging gauntlets and a story that’s simple but intriguing enough to keep you going. It can be demotivating to spend fifteen to twenty minutes on a battle only to lose and start again, but that’s the nature of the beast with a game like this. However, the quality-of-life improvements mentioned earlier carry a lot of weight in alleviating this pain.

It boggles my mind to think that Fire Emblem fans who began their journey with that franchise on the 3DS might never have played an Advance Wars game. But given the shared DNA between the two, there’s most certainly some crossover in appeal, though it depends on what you enjoy Fire Emblem for. Today, Fire Emblem is just as much about taking your prospective waifu to a euphemistic tea party as it is about the solid strategic battle elements. Advance Wars feels ironically and oddly refreshing in that the gameplay takes centre stage first behind the characters and story. Your mileage will almost certainly vary, but I enjoyed playing a strategy game solely grounded in the strategy.

Of course, bundling together two games represents tremendous value for money. Both of the adventures included within will take most players upwards of forty hours to complete, and that’s before you might even try to attempt the high-difficulty campaigns on offer. There are also other modes to jump into as well. A level designer allows players to make their own missions while War Room pits the player against tough odds in even more brutal battles. Both are nice touches that add more value to Re-Boot Camps overall package, but I’m not so sure about the implementation of multiplayer.

Multiplayer was always contentious when it comes to Re-Boot Camp. I won’t beat around the bush – it’s a somewhat limited offering. I can appreciate that there is still support for a local four-player versus mode, but offering only a two-player online mode feels like a missed opportunity. Similarly, given games like Wargroove have popularised the notion of an asynchronous multiplayer mode – where you and others can play your turn at your own leisure rather than be stuck in a live game – to not see something like that implemented here also feels like a bit of a letdown. Of course, having online in a game that is ostensibly twenty years old is still a great addition, but given the current climate of these games, it still feels a bit simplistic in its offerings.

Perhaps even more controversial is the art style, however. Everything to do with Re-Boot Camp’s artistic direction is purely up to your personal tastes. On one hand, I miss the sprite-based look of the original game and could love to see what an art style like HD-2D could do for a game like this. On the other, while the fully rendered style does admittedly look cheaper and more generic, it does look more like plastic toys battling each other on the battlefield. I’m still determining which look I prefer overall, but the action that played out while units exchanged fire was definitely more interesting to look at than whatever is served up here.

On the other hand, the remake brings voice work that does a good job of breathing life into characters we’d previously never heard from. The cast does a great job at turning in some hammy performances that perfectly suit the tone of both games. The music, on the other hand, while good at first, can get grating during more extended missions. The developers were aware of this, I’m sure, as there is an option to turn it off, but it is most definitely worth mentioning.

While Re-Boot Camp doesn’t capitalise on its potential, it’s by far a much more accessible version of the original game it is based on. Your gripes with it will no doubt be purely based on personal factors. Still, there’s no denying that underneath it is a solid selection of strategy games that are well worth a look.

The post Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp Review – An All-Round Improvement appeared first on Press Start.

It’s finally here. Almost a decade after its announcement and changing developers no less than three times, Dead Island 2 beats all odds. Having spent so long in development, I’d wondered if it could best the original game. It does in many ways, but it still feels like it came out of the same era of games, for better or for worse.

Dead Island 2 occurs a few months after the original game’s events. An infection has found its way to the sunny state of California, infecting everyone there and turning them into grotesque zombies and monsters. You play as one of six survivors whose plane crashes while trying to escape the quarantine zone. You’re eventually bitten, discover that you’re immune, and begin your journey, meeting up with survivors to plot your escape. It’s a done-to-death story but simple enough that it carries the action well.

As I mentioned in my preview last month, Dead Island 2 is most certainly going for a more tongue-in-cheek approach with its storytelling, for the most part. The game is loaded with humour and comedy that will land differently with different people, poking fun at the most vacuous of celebrity culture. The plot is serviceable at the most basic level but introduces a few mysteries about halfway through that aren’t entirely resolved when the credits roll. Perhaps this is the beginning of a new thread of stories for a sequel to deal with or even some hooks for DLC. Regardless, it’s incredibly simplistic.

Similarly, Dead Island 2 plays like almost no time has passed since the original was released over a decade ago. Like nearly anything that’s come before it, you’ll be thrown into California to complete optional side quests, quests that advance the plot or find weapons hidden by people throughout the map. It’s a typical open-world experience that anyone who’s played a Dead Island, Borderlands or Dying Light game will be familiar with. It’s a tried and true formula, but it’s not breaking much new ground.

One point of difference that Dead Island 2 is determined to make is that you can choose a playable character from a roster of six. Each of these characters has different strengths and weaknesses to suit your playstyle. But it ultimately doesn’t mean much. One, for example, boosts damage to enemies that aren’t surrounded by other enemies. This situation rarely happens in Dead Island 2. Another can create an explosive effect when hitting an enemy with a type of attack. The same effect can be stacked on weapons as you progress through the story. These innate skills are only meaningful in the opening moments of the game.

Every character has their own dialogue and personality too, but your character’s lines are chopped and changed around the dialogue of NPCs so that it rarely sounds like two people are in a room having a conversation. It removes so much from the story’s presentation, which was already lacking that I can’t help but feel like pulling them all together would’ve helped serve the story better.

But it’s not all bad. The FLESH system helps to make the combat much more satisfying than it has any right to be. It stands for Fully Location Evisceration System for Humanoids, and it’s a system that offers greater realism in how you rip, burn or tear your zombies apart. Every zombie you attack in Dead Island 2 will react differently and realistically to whatever weapon you’re using.

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It’s a system that, in real time, is pretty impressive. Constantly hitting a zombie with a blunt weapon will see bones dent, crack and break. Slashing with a bladed weapon will separate the skin from muscle until you’re hitting bone. Attacking joints in a zombie’s leg will drop them to the floor. It’s a macabre system separating Dead Island 2 from those that came before it, even if its addition to the game is mainly cosmetic.

Another aspect unique to Dead Island 2 is the reliance on a card system rather than a traditional skill tree. These cards are decorated with some pretty gnarly artwork. They are given as rewards for completing certain challenges or through story progression. You can equip any combination to best create your perfect build – like giving your character an evade or a block. Others heal you when hitting a zombie with a heavy attack or boosting your damage after a successful block. There are over fifty cards to mix and match to suit your playstyle, a degree of flexibility that I appreciate more than a skill tree with respec.

A crafting system allows you to add certain elemental traits to your weapons too. Certain enemies are weaker to certain elements, but it adds a very satisfying tinge to the already satisfying combat. Hitting enemies with a spray of acidic bullets and watching their skin melt away down to bone is a fun, if not slightly disturbing sight. Similarly, hitting a zombie with an electrically charged weapon will fry them but also arc out electricity to enemies around them. In a body of water? The effect is amplified. It’s a fun little system that was a joy to engage with in a genre that usually has me rolling my eyes at crafting.

Depending on how much you engage with optional content, most players will get around fifteen to twenty hours out of Dead Island 2. Whether you’ll want to is another matter entirely, though co-op certainly helps make things a lot more fun, though the lack of any crossplay options in today’s climate feels like a miss. Despite there being multiple characters, too, there’s no reason to play through the game more than once as the plot progresses in the same way. While I’m not quite at the point of finishing the entirety of the game’s side quests, I’d estimate most players would get at least thirty hours out of finishing everything.

But I will warn you – Dead Island 2 is repetitive. So many objectives will have you heading to an item to activate, realising the item needs power to work, and then fighting off hordes of zombies while you wait for the power to be restored. You’ll reattach a valve to a pipe multiple times and turn it to access a new area. It’s, once again, bound to be an experience only saved by the funny interactions you have with zombies as you complete these objectives, but they’re still repetitive as ever.

In terms of presentation, Dead Island 2 hands in a decent performance. California as a setting is beautiful and almost genius or a game of this ilk. From the sweeping hillside neighbourhoods of Bel-Air to the sunny sands of Venice Beach, Dead Island 2 successfully captures a sense of paradise like Banoi in Dead Island before it, just a different type of paradise. It’s an immaculately realised setting I can’t find much fault with. Some visual glitches led to limbs dancing long after the zombie they were attached to had perished, but this only added to the comedy. Intentional or not.

Despite its shortcomings, I still had fun with Dead Island 2. It should grow old quickly on paper, but even playing by myself, I never tired of destroying countless hordes of zombies in exciting and varied ways. It’s by no means a perfect sequel, but it does a great job of channelling the spirit of the original, regardless.

The post Dead Island 2 Review – Trouble In Paradise appeared first on Press Start.

With the inherent success of Minecraft, we were always going to get plenty of spin-offs of all kinds that explore a diverse array of genres and experiences within the IP. 2015’s Minecraft: Story Mode and 2020’s Minecraft Dungeons have marked the beginning of this with varying levels of success, but there’s no denying their originality in comparison with vanilla Minecraft. The next title in this slew of spin-offs is Minecraft Legends, a self-described action strategy game that’s most comparable to the Dragon Quest Builders series, with a unique Minecraft flavor.

After my brief hands-on preview with the game in Tokyo, I mentioned that I’d had a good time with Legends, despite being worried about game length and how it would keep things fresh throughout its runtime, and that my brief hands-on with the multiplayer mode was a blast. After spending much more time with both of these modes, it’s clear that the preview I played had barely scratched the surface of what Legends has to offer. The end result is the best Minecraft spin-off yet that, despite some niggling issues, offers a satisfying and moreish gameplay loop and an intensely engaging versus mode.

The narrative here is about as deep as you’d expect from a Minecraft experience, but it is positively bursting at the seams with the charm the IP is known for. A dangerous threat from the Nether known as the Piglins have been spilling over into the overworld with plans of conquest and domination. Their bases poison the natural landscape with noxious gasses and Netherrack creeps further out as more Piglins pour in from protected Nether Portals found within each bastion. It falls to you to expunge the Piglin threat and send the three distinct factions back to the Nether.

Overall, it’s a feel-good narrative that employs plenty of slapstick humor and Minecraft trademarks to get you onboard. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t chuckle at a few of the visual gags, and the cutscenes on offer here have incredibly high production values that expand the sense of scope within Legends and mythos of Minecraft. It’s ultimately a good time, one that kids will likely get more of a kick out of, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing here for older fans.

Gameplay is where Minecraft Legends differs the most from its source material, offering the same core tenets of mining and crafting, in an entirely different format. Everything you do in Minecraft Legends comes back to the Allays, which are your main tool for gathering materials and building structures. A quick button combination can send these little guys out to harvest resources like wood, stone, coal, and more. Gathered materials can then be used by Builder Allays to form structures, mechanisms, and much more.

It’s a more passive way to engage with what’s effectively the core loop of Minecraft, but this is only to make room for all the extra stuff Legends brings with it. It’s through the gathering and utilization of these resources that you can push back the Piglin threat. From setting up defences around liberated villages to constructing a Redstone Launcher to blow open the gates of a Piglin base, everything eventually comes back to mining and building.

This core loop of gathering resources in order to bolster your own defensive and offensive capabilities is incredibly moreish. Where flexibility isn’t afforded in the structures you create, it is in the way you place them, the way they interact with each other, and in the way you pick and choose how best to use certain materials when trying to overthrow a particularly difficult Piglin base. It helps greatly that there’s an immense variety of things to build here that steadily unlock over the course of the campaign, constantly offering up new strategies and game plans to employ against the Piglins.

Your main method of siege comes in the form of Golems. These little guys can be amassed from crafted spawners, and brought along with you to tackle Piglin outposts. Each one specializes in different abilities, from healing and de-buff cleansing to stunning enemies or bringing down structures. You have to consider what kinds of Golems you want to bring with you on a siege given the obstacles, and that’s without talking about the ability to employ hallmark mobs.

Creepers, Skeletons, and Zombies are here in full force, united against the Piglin threat. You can also spawn these mobs alongside Golems, each one costing a little bit more in terms of resources in trade-off for extra power. The Skeletons, for example, excel at ranged combat and taking out enemy units, where Creepers make incredibly short work of enemy structures, making them useful in a pinch if you need a last ditch assault to bring down a Piglin base. While your army is initially limited to a total of 20 units, you can expand that number further, and simple commands can be issued in combat to have them focus on particular enemies or structures.

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Clearing Piglin outposts and liberating villages rewards you with Prismarine, a resource that’s key to upgrading your capabilities, resource capacity, and total army count. Prismarine is doled out often enough that there’s always something new to invest in upon returning to the Well of Fate, which almost always leads to meaningful player progression. It’ll have you constantly eyeing your Prismarine count so you know when you can get your next upgrade.

The general flow and progression of the campaign is also something I really enjoyed. After a brief tutorial and some opening objectives to get you to grips with the many systems of Minecraft Legends, you’re let loose to tackle the Piglin threat as you see fit. Three unique factions have setup three bases throughout the overworld, each one varying in difficulty and rewards. You’re encouraged to tackle the easy ones first, but there’s nothing stopping you from knocking on the doors of the most fortified of forts if you really want the challenge.

It’s this non-linear structure in combination with some extra-curricular open world activities that makes Legends so easy to play. You’ll stumble across mob outposts that have been taken over by Piglins, abandoned towers that can be deconstructed and tucked away for later use, and huge golems that’ll join you in your fight should they be resurrected. There’s always incentive and reward to explore outside of just gathering resources.

It comes to a head when all three of a faction’s bastions have been felled, and one final outpost makes itself known. These provide some of the best strategy Minecraft Legends has to offer, and are punctuated with explosive boss fights that test every skill you’ve learned during the campaign. It makes for a solid difficulty curve if you tackle bases in the right order, though I’m sure you can circumvent that order with some cheeky tactics and ample use of the game’s more powerful structures and minions.

Another thing to consider is the way that Piglins will launch attacks on allied villages when night falls, incentivizing you to build up defences around each one once liberated. You’re always warned in advance which village is going to be attacked, and it’s rewarding to see all your efforts pay off when a village successfully pushes back the Piglins without your help. One irk I had with this, though, is that if a village does fall, you have to retake it from the Piglins, which got tiresome in the second half of the game, especially when it means rebuilding defences.

While the campaign mode is able to be played in co-op, where I think Minecraft Legends is really going to take off, is in its versus mode. It’s a simple 4 versus 4 affair with either team trying to siege the other’s base and destroy their Fountain. All of the systems from the campaign are intact here, from Prismarine progression and Piglin outposts to resource harvesting – it’s all here in full force, and is of great importance.

While you could absolutely band together and launch an all out assault on the enemy base, there’s just as much value in spending time gathering resources and Prismarine to gain access to more structures. I can’t begin to fathom the kinds of long-winded matches that will come out of this mode once players jump into it. It has a MOBA-esque quality to it that instils an inherent tension in the experience, and it’s easily some of the most fun I’ve had with Minecraft Legends so far. While it’s a great time with friends, the mode does struggle with the inherent limited communication brought by matchmade games, as a lot of the enjoyment comes from planning and collaborating with allies.

As mentioned in my hands-on preview, everyone knows what they’re getting into when it comes to the visual presentation of anything related to Minecraft. Legends doesn’t shock or surprise in this regard, offering a tried-and-true art style that’s bolstered by a diverse range of biomes and some snazzy particle effects that tie the whole experience together. There’s plenty of new stuff to see here in the broad scope of Minecraft and the game always looks great, but don’t expect Legends to reinvent the wheel in this regard.

Performance on PC is similarly reliable, and I experienced very few technical issues aside from one notable audio bug. I’m not sure if it was something to do with the mixing, but some sound effects and dialogue lines were extremely quiet during my time with the game. This made it hard to get properly invested in cutscenes and did create a bit of a disconnect in battle as my sword swipes didn’t yield much feedback. It wasn’t enough to rip me out of the experience entirely, but the absence is notable enough to mention it here.

I’ve come away from my time with Minecraft Legends pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The campaign is a tightly paced jaunt through a new Minecraft experience that doesn’t outstay its welcome and offers a fresh spin on the strategy genre with a distinct Minecraft flavour. Despite having my fill of the campaign, I have no doubt I’ll be returning to Legends over the coming months to play its outrageously fun versus mode with friends, and I can’t recommend enough that you check it out to do the same.

The post Minecraft Legends Review – Building A New Kind of Strategy appeared first on Press Start.

I’ve long considered Tron to basically be The Wizard of Oz for software nerds, as its ‘stranger in a strange land’ trope depicts a mouthwatering battle of light and dark bits that’d have the interest of most sci-fi aficionados piqued. There have been several attempts to make Tron radical again throughout the decades, and it’s only now through Mike Bithell’s lens that I’m paying attention.

As Bithell’s games have always been, Tron Identity is rather simple conceptually. Where one might expect a light-cycle Road Rash clone, Bithell delivers a visual novel rich with mystery, tension, and corporate intrigue that, above all else, delivers a tantalising glimpse into Tron’s expanded universe. Like Bithell’s John Wick Hex before this, Tron Identity is a franchise tie-in that does make sense within its established world, it’s merely a shame that despite its broad concepts and themes, the lone and basic game loop at the heart of Identity, both in terms of gameplay and theme, is middling and forgettable.

Set within its own little Grid, forgotten by its creator and not dictated by user intervention, Tron: Identity justifies its narrative existence not by leaning heavily on the film’s lore, but rather expanding upon it. Once you press through the thickets of proper nouns that make the pacy story a bit of a whirlwind to navigate, what exists is a pretty sound thriller. It’s very layered and, as with most visual novels, it has a number of endings to seek out. For a game about following one’s programming, to have any sense of agency at all, which is something often missing from these quasi-choose-your-own adventure games, feels nice. 

The cast of programs you’ll encounter is certainly concentrated, with only a handful you’ll encounter at the Repository—a live-in FireCuda that serves as storage for the Grid’s most valuable data, and the scene of an expected breach which serves as the catalyst of your investigation. Regardless of any given character’s role within the network, they feel right in line with what one might expect from Tron. Bithell’s writing hits on all of the expected existential technobabble and musings, and the dilemmas you’ll face and where you place your trust and allegiances carry considerable weight.

A standard “run” of the game’s story is likely to last just a couple of hours, but if you’re the type to explore every outcome there’s enough replay value to justify the twenty-dollar price tag. 

Outside of the agonising choices you’ll be forced to make, Tron: Identity’s lone hand lies in defragging other programs’ identity discs. Unfortunately, and somewhat antithetical to how cool Tron is, this isn’t as fun as it sounds on paper. They take the form of a fairly basic card-matching puzzle where the aim is to rid of as many cards as possible by pairing them with either an equal suit or value. I’d hardly consider the varying conditions the game hurls at you drip fed, as the game is so fleeting, though they don’t do a lot to make it harder either. 

Making this singular gameplay beat available through superfluous endless mode outside of the story might be the single-most unappealing thing this game offers up. The player-character Query himself even begrudges the game’s hook, declaring that even he’d had enough for one night. 

Though not necessarily verified for it at this point, I did enjoy this game on the Steam Deck. As you’d expect, its brevity truly suits a handheld setting and the game did perform marvellously well on it. That said, it’s likely due in part to Tron being the draw it once was, therefore Bithell’s take on the franchise screams shoestring budget throughout its presentation.

It does capture the style and essence of Tron as blue and orange hues warm the game’s world, though it is depicted effectively through seemingly breathing concept art slides. 

Although it’s suggested there are more of these on the way, I can’t help but feel like a visual novel is an interesting choice for Tron. It is held tenuously together by Mike Bithell’s note-perfect script, character work, and creative vision in terms of what it achieves narratively, it’s unfortunate that it all unravels at the first sign of the arguably unnecessary gamification that continually distracts and detracts from the game’s clear strength. 

The post TRON: Identity Review – Derezzed appeared first on Press Start.

It’s been over seven years since EA Sports took its last swing at a golf game, but I’m pleased to say EA Sports PGA Tour is a heck of a lot better than that outing. It’s lacking in some staying power and I’ve had some frustrations with a handful of its gameplay mechanics, but there’s a lot here for newcomers and die hard fans of the sport to enjoy.

This starts with the approachability of PGA Tour’s gameplay. EA Orlando and EA Madrid have done an excellent job in making the game feel approachable for newcomers, all the while maintaining a sense of complexity for seasoned pros. This is due to the plethora of settings that can be fine tuned to get the most out of your time with the game.

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As someone who has an appreciation for the Mario Golf games (laugh at me if you will), I was curious to see if my enjoyment for the more arcade-style of golf would translate over to PGA Tour, and it has to a degree. You can adjust a variety of different systems, like swing difficulty, power boost and spin control, to make the game feel more arcadey and less unforgiving than what you’d see in a professional golf sim, and it mostly works.

Pure Strike, PGA Tour’s big gameplay innovation, also goes a long way in making the game feel realistic. Powered by PGA Tour ShotLink and TrackMan data, ball movement is accurately recreated according to the type of terrain it’s landed on, wind conditions and the club you’ve used. It did take me a bit to get used to, but after some time (and several woeful shots) I began to understand how to best place my shots and what to keep an eye out for. 

One thing I didn’t like, however, was the lag that would seemingly appear every time I went to take a swing. For a game that’s based heavily around accuracy and an appropriately timed swing, I often noticed my golfer not hitting the way I’d have liked them to thanks to the slight lag spike during the swing animation. I’m sure a jump in framerate would help (as the game’s currently locked to 30fps on current-consoles), yet no matter how much I tinkered with the settings I couldn’t seem to get rid of the problem. I’m unsure whether this is happening across other platforms, but my Xbox Series copy had this issue on both Series S and X, ultimately leading to some frustrating game situations.

Further to this, I’ve also experienced difficulties with the game’s suggested putting lines. There’s been more than a few times where I’d follow the line suggested by the game, only to have my ball miss the hole by some distance. I feel in these instances it’s been better for me to use my intuition rather than strictly following the guidance provided, but for beginners especially it’s a bit weird for the system to be so inaccurate at times.

I also found the game to be fairly averse in taking the time to guide players through the nitty gritty of the sport in my initial couple of sessions. While I generally know my way around golf, those who don’t know too much – be it the scoring system or types of clubs and shots – will likely feel overwhelmed at the beginning. Thankfully, there’s a decently large selection of challenge tutorials that help outline everything from approach shots all the way up to making the perfect putt, but you do need to look for them.

These come by the way of the Coaching Academy, which forms part of the challenge area in PGA Tour. Rather than being taken through little tutorials, you’re instead given challenges that range from getting a shot onto the fairway a certain amount of times to making a successful putt. It feels like it’s more about the experience of playing the game rather than getting bogged down in the theory of it all, which I can understand – there’s no better way to learn than failing, really. 

Along with the game’s Coaching Academy challenges, there’s a truly astounding amount of other challenges available to jump into from the get-go. There are real-time featured challenges that highlight what’s currently happening in the real sport, over 500 challenges based on championship moments from PGA and LPGA history and a section to earn sponsored gear to take onto the course with your golfer.

Completing challenges is fairly important no matter what you do in PGA Tour, as they act as a primary way of getting more experience for your created golfer as well as cash to spend on customisation items.

Most of my time was spent within the game’s career mode, as it has the most longevity to it. That’s not to say there’s not much else to keep yourself occupied in PGA Tour – as the game’s quick play section has a lot of fun little modes within it, alongside social and competitive options – but it was the best way to get acquainted with everything the game has to offer. 

Career mode casts your created golfer right into the spotlight, allowing you to take on the amateur circuit to rise up the ranks or bee-lining straight for the bigger tournaments – the choice is yours. And I really have enjoyed my time with it, whether that’s through the litany of competitions I’ve played through or the coach/sponsor challenges that have encouraged me to try something a bit different for some extra rewards.

The only major issue I had with the mode was how lifeless it felt at times. There’s just not a lot happening behind the scenes as you make your way through each tournament and set of challenges, which was disappointing.

As well as this, the commentary, while decent most of the time, didn’t feel as personalised as I’d hoped. This was in part due to the commentary team constantly referring to my golfer as the ‘featured golfer’. I did like how accurately the crowd seemed to react to my shots (whether they were good or bad) though, and the presentation packages continued to impress me throughout. With that said, everything else felt a little bit lacklustre in terms of general atmosphere.

Aside from gaining basic experience points for participating in tournaments and completing challenges, quests form a big part of PGA Tour’s progression system. They reward you with points that can be used to purchase new gear and equipment to deck your custom golfer out in. And while the system certainly works, lots of quests have more than a couple of goals to achieve, meaning it can feel like a bit of a slog to get to the nicer cosmetic items in the game. Similarly, you’ll need points to jump into the more prestigious online tournaments, so expect to spend quite a bit of time grinding for those higher priced items in the store.

Spending time out on the green isn’t so bad thanks to the gorgeously recreated (and brand new) courses on offer in PGA Tour. Whether you’re playing through Augusta National or plying your trade in the Wetlands fantasy course, there’s a lot to experience and admire. The team’s done a fantastic job bringing each course to life and making it look particularly wonderful. I was disappointed to see a lack of weather conditions in-game, though, and hope they might make an appearance in a post-launch update. 

PGA Tour’s menu system can feel a bit clunky, as well. Oftentimes it’s slow to update and can be confusing to actually navigate through, and it’s something I hope the team addresses sooner rather than later.

Similarly, the selection of professional golfers currently on offer is fairly disappointing. While greats like current world number one, Scottie Scheffler, are available to play, there are more than a few key players that aren’t included (for one reason or another). The team has said more will be added in post-launch updates, however.

It’s not all bad, and certainly marks a solid return to the course for EA Sports after many years out of the game. It might not be for everyone, and it can feel like a bit of a slog at times, but among the excellent selection of courses, deep career mode and accessible gameplay, EA Sports PGA Tour should satiate the appetite for those wanting an enjoyable golf game.

The post EA Sports PGA Tour Review – On Par appeared first on Press Start.

Note: While care has been taken to ensure this review contains as few spoilers as possible, if you’re looking to go into The Super Mario Bros. Movie completely fresh, we’d advise just scrolling down to the bottom and reading the review conclusion!

It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years since Nintendo last entrusted its most precious IP to Hollywood to produce a big-budget film. Well, given some of the sentiment towards 1993’s Super Mario Bros. maybe it isn’t so hard to fathom the lengthy dry (dry) spell, but it certainly makes this new occasion all the more monumentous. Yes, Mario is back on the big screen and this time it’s by way of a team-up with Illumination, of Minions fame, for a 3D-animated adventure.

If you’ve been paying any attention to the pre-release marketing for the film, you’ve probably got a pretty good idea of what’s going on here, story-wise. I’m obviously not going to touch on too many plot points for the sake of not spoiling anything, but the basic gist is this – Mario and Luigi are trying to boost their struggling Brooklyn plumbing business when they wander into a massive network of pipes underneath the city. Here, they stumble upon a mysterious green pipe (you know the kind) and are unceremoniously pulled from the real world into the “Mario” universe.

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It’s here that the pair are separated, with Mario landing in the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi in an altogether more dangerous realm controlled by the big bad Bowser, who’s just obtained the all-powerful Super Star. This naturally sets Mario on a mission to find his missing brother in the midst of Bowser’s war on the various realms, teaming up with Toad, Princess Peach and eventually Donkey Kong to take down the King of the Koopas – whose motivation for the hostile takeover is his amusingly-dreamy desire for a fairytale wedding with Peach.

What that means is that you’re essentially getting an Isekai-style romp through a number of recognisable Mario-verse worlds that’s as threadbare as many of the games it riffs on, a concoction of nostalgia-heavy set pieces loosely tied together by the gang’s journey to save Luigi and thwart Bowser’s marital obsessions. It very much comes from the “and then this happened” school of narrative, which might disappoint some hoping for a more inventive or subversive Super Mario story, but it gets the job done and does manage to scrape up a few memorable moments that aren’t simple nostalgia-bait.

Watch us review The Super Mario Bros. Movie on the Press Start Podcast

Go into the film with the right expectations, and you’re bound to have an excellent time. Again, you won’t catch me spoiling any of them here but The Super Mario Bros. Movie is positively lousy with gags and references to everything Mario. Just about the entire history of gaming’s most recognisable character is represented in some form, from direct nods to characters or themes from the enormous back catalogue of Mario games and media to blink-and-you’ll-miss-them sight gags and deep cuts.

Younger audiences will catch the blatant riffs on modern Mario platformers and games like Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart, and enjoy plenty of the slapstick humour that Illumination’s regular animated movie output is known for, while older viewers will no doubt have a blast doing the ol’ “Leo DiCaprio pointing at the screen” meme when things get super retro.

It was always going to be dangerous territory making a big-budget animated Super Mario Bros. film that relies so heavily on nostalgia and in-jokes to please audiences, but Nintendo and Illumination have absolutely nailed it here, with The Super Mario Bros. Movie feeling far more like a celebration of the mustachioed plumber’s long and diverse history than a soulless cash grab. My only gripe in this department is that a couple of very exciting inclusions that had been hinted at in the marketing amount to little more than barely-there flashes of locales. By far the film’s biggest success is how well and how often it integrates the logic of most Mario games into its world, often to amusing effect.

It also looks positively gorgeous. Nintendo has done well to attach itself to a 3D animation powerhouse like Illumination, who’ve really nailed the assignment when it comes to bringing these iconic characters and locations to life in the highest quality we’ve ever seen. It would have been a heck of a challenge to balance staying true to the relatively simple visuals that fans know while making sure there’s enough detail and expensive-looking sheen to satisfy a modern film audience, but the result is pitch perfect as far as I’m concerned. 

If you’ve never bemoaned the lack of a more powerful successor to the Nintendo Switch before now, you will after seeing the Mushroom Kingdom rendered the way it is here.

It was always going to be tricky to tie these ubiquitous, often barely-vocal characters to such well known voices, but the casting decisions here are almost unanimously spot on (almost) with Jack Black’s Bowser in particular stealing the show and delivering some of the movie’s best scenes. Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong is featured less heavily but also delivers in spades. Sure, this version of DK pretty much just sounds like Rogen, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to separate the two in my mind going forward. Oddly enough I was less enthused with Toad, played by Keegan-Michael Key putting on a very strained voice that’s seemingly then been pitched up in post. 

Everyone else is great – Anya Taylor-Joy does Peach justice and Fred Armisen is a delight as Cranky Kong. I almost think picking Pratt as Mario was a conscious decision to keep him as unremarkable and inoffensive as possible, so if that was the plan it’s definitely worked. Say what you will about Pratt, but he certainly knows how to make as little impact, negative or positive, as possible. Charlie Day takes an excellent crack at Luigi though, and the extended, Brooklyn-ite Mario family is thoroughly entertaining in the few scenes they’re a part of – to the point that I wish there’d been even more of their real-world shenanigans here.

Even when the plot takes a backseat to the film’s need to give you as much Mario universe as possible for your buck, there’s no denying every frame is magical, and every musical motif behind it is equally so. The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s soundtrack sits firmly in the “extremely Hollywood renditions of familiar tunes with occasional sprinklings of licensed music” territory that you might have gleaned from the trailers but it did absolute numbers on the nostalgia parts of my brain throughout and I imagine I won’t be alone. 

I’m not entirely sold on some of the pop song choices – Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out For A Hero must have bigger guns than Donkey Kong for all the animated film montages it’s carried at this point – but that’s quickly made up for by a wholly original song that’s sure to have a viral moment once the film is out there.

The post The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review – A Nostalgia-Fuelled Romp For Everyone appeared first on Press Start.

The Last of Us is my favourite game of all time. The Last of Us Part 1 on PC is, at the time of this review, the worst way to play it. Plagued by issues across the board – whether it’s stuttering, framerate instability, crashes, pop-in or visual glitching – Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy have a monumental task on their hands to fix what is easily the most disappointing PlayStation release to hit PC so far.

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Let me be clear, my PC is no slouch. I’ve got an Intel i7 8700K, an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti and 32GB of DDR4 RAM. Crucially, my graphics card has 12GB of VRAM, which seems to somehow be the requirement for a somewhat decent experience with The Last of Us Part 1 on PC. No matter whether you want to play at 1080p, 1440p or 4K, GPUs with less than 12GB of VRAM will struggle to run the game at medium or higher settings. It’s crazy. I know I’m in the minority when it comes to expensive gaming PCs, so I can’t imagine the trouble users must be having with less powerful rigs.

In the end, I’ve managed to get the game running at 4K and around 60fps with mostly high settings and DLSS set to quality (which renders at 1440p). Even then, I’ve suffered through a lot of stuttering and general framerate instability. Sometimes I’ve been lucky and had a fairly decent spell of 60fps gameplay (and in these moments the game feels and looks incredible), only to be then brought back down to Earth with some bizarre drops to 30fps or lower.

There’s been no rhyme or reason to the slowdowns either, as I’ve had drops happen in smaller, confined areas inside and some outside. Sometimes when I stand still and swivel the camera everything runs nicely, only to turn to garbage when I move my character. I’m just not quite sure what’s going on.

Further to this, I’ve had my fair share of crashes throughout my time playing. I’ve had the game hang on me as well as a couple of hard crashes requiring a full reboot, which has been very frustrating. My most recent crash made my PC reboot itself. 

Add to this the litany of visual glitches I’ve encountered, with a particularly odd one being white dots sporadically appearing on areas that have light shining on them, and it all comes together to form an experience that is not indicative of the game itself. And the game, of course, is phenomenal – the story is wonderful and we really liked the remake on PlayStation 5 (read our original review here), so it’s a real shame that the experience is awful on PC at the moment.

One positive is the game’s graphical options, however. There’s so much to tinker with it’s almost overwhelming. It also supports NVIDIA DLSS, as mentioned above, and AMD FSR 2.2, which become crucial for decent performance.

Right now I can’t recommend this port at all – it’s one of the worst PC ports I’ve played in some time. With so much momentum behind the series currently, I just can’t fathom why this wasn’t kept in the oven for a bit longer. It’s as simple as that.

There’s optimism to be had though, with Naughty Dog addressing the issues players have been having with the port and promising fixes as early as this week. While this review covers the game in the state that it’s currently in, we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the state of things going forward and will add further updates if the situation improves drastically.

A hotfix addressing jittering on mouse-controlled camera movement, some crashes, and more for The Last of Us Part I on PC is slated for Tuesday.

A larger patch with additional fixes will be deployed later in the week.

— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) March 31, 2023

In our original review of The Last of Us Part I on PS5, we said, “The Last of Us Part I is, for all intents and purposes, the same The Last of Us that you know. It doesn’t take liberties to completely reshape the experience and nor should it. It does, however, smartly enhance the original’s combat through A.I. advancements, and drags the original’s production values over the line to create a product that can stand unified with its more polished sequel. The Last Of Us: Part I is without doubt the most definitive version of The Last of Us on the market.”

The post The Last of Us Part I PC Review – A Bitter Disappointment appeared first on Press Start.

It’s absolutely no secret that LG has dominated the OLED space over the last half a decade or so in the TV space.

Without many OLED gaming monitor options, gamers opted to use the 55″ OLED TV as a monitor before LG released the 48″ and subsequent 42″ iterations, but they’ve now taken it one step further, releasing a 48″ OLED gaming monitor in its UltraGear line.

When talking pure visuals, you’d be hard pressed to tell the 48″ UltraGear OLED gaming monitor from the 48″ C2 OLED TV, but this is really the greatest compliment that I can give this monitor from a display point of view.  The blacks are still incredibly inky, colours are vibrant and with HDR10, you can expect similar levels of brightness in HDR.

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The two main differences between the 48GQ900-B UltraGear Monitor and LG’s C2 TV is the fact that the monitor has a matte, anti-glare screen, which some people might have an issue with and also the fact that unlike Samsung’s latest drop of monitors, there is no smart TV functionality out of the box, so you won’t be able to use it as a makeshift TV if you’re using it in a bedroom.

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There’s a couple of other features that are totally unique to the UltraGear 48″ monitor. First is the inclusion of an UltraGear Remote, which if I’m being honest, looks like something out of the 70s in terms of size, but it’s actually quite useful. Instead of reaching around and fiddling with buttons/a finicky knob on the monitor, you can use the remote to change things such as input, volume, change between game modes and such. It’s a really welcomed addition.

The other is what you’d expect to see in a gaming monitor, in the fact that there’s some serious RGBs on the chunkier bottom portion of the side profile. This can be customised between static colours or the usual RGB profiles.

When it comes to inputs, there’s 1 x HDMI 2.1 port and 2 HDMI 2.0 ports, as well as a Display Port and some USB up and down ports. With the PS5 connected, I was able to take advantage of 4K at 120Hz seamlessly, and it looked absolutely gorgeous.

The monitor has speakers which is really useful for those that might not have external speakers on their desk, and they’re really quite good too. I was getting a good amount of bass coming through whilst taking down infected in Resident Evil 4.

Whilst there are familiar features from LG’s OLED TV such as Game Bar which is still really useful here to quickly check that frame rate and VRR are enabled, there are more features that you’d expect to see in a gaming monitor such as an FPS counter, crosshair, and a black stabiliser, so if you’re wanting more of those settings that are more often on monitors, you should lean towards this over the 48″ C2. It also has NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium. You’re getting an 120Hz refresh rate (which can be overclocked to 138Hz) as well as a 0.1ms response time too.

I assume that a lot of people will be wondering whether to go for the 48″ C2 or 48″ 48GQ900 monitor, and that’s a hard one to answer, but I think the simple answer would be to go for whatever is cheaper. If you’re after a display that also acts as a TV, I feel like the C2 is the more obvious choice, but if you’re after more traditional monitor features, then this might be the way to go.

Regardless though, it’s just another way to buy what is one of the best displays both for general moving/tv show watching and also gaming, so you can’t go wrong either way.

The post LG 48″ UltraGear OLED Gaming Monitor Review – LG’s OLED Goodness In Monitor Form appeared first on Press Start.

Citizen Sleeper was, and still remains, one of my favourite releases of last year. It had one glaring problem though, at least on a personal level – it wasn’t available on PlayStation. My patience in waiting for all three of its free DLC episodes to launch before diving back into the game has paid off though, with the release of the final episode, Purge, coinciding with the game’s debut on PS5 and PS4.

I’m going to abstain from re-explaining what Citizen Sleeper is – you can read my full review of the game’s original release right underneath this write-up – and speak strictly to the new stuff, namely the PlayStation release and the full run of story DLC.

The long and short of it all is this; If you’re a PlayStation player and haven’t played Citizen Sleeper yet, please do. It’s an intoxicating mix of sci-fi flavoured capitalism critique aboard a diverse and characterful space station, tabletop mechanics, time management and branching narrative that’s deceptively simple with a powerful mechanical underbelly. There’s not much to say about the game’s port to PS5 and PS4 specifically, it’s by and large the same game available on other platforms, but it’s (hopefully) a whole new community of players given the chance to experience this indie masterpiece.

Returning as someone who’d played the game on another platform, I did find Citizen Sleeper a lot less daunting this time around, and felt a lot more confident in my ability to establish myself on the Eye and game its systems to pull myself out of poverty. I’m not sure that’s the right angle of attack for this game, but I kind of appreciated it.

The other side of the coin here, of course, is the availability of the three episodes making up Citizen Sleeper’s DLC sequence, which sees players navigate a spot of turmoil as a flotilla of interstellar refugees arrives at Erlin’s Eye, the station’s proprietors at Havenage unwilling to take a few thousand new souls into the already-struggling ecosystem. This trio of chapters arrives toward Citizen Sleeper’s “late game” with a simple item exchange requiring some degree of progress acting as a gate to entry, and definitely brought me back down to Earth (heh) when it came to my confidence as a veteran Sleeper.

The first episode, titled Flux, introduces players to Eshe and Peake, two new arrivals along with the refugee ships that act as a catalyst of sorts for the player, as the titular Sleeper, to understand that the plights of these people mirror much of your own. It’s an interesting shift in perspective after having worked and scraped and sacrificed everything to make a place for yourself on the Eye, only for thousands more to arrive looking to you to help them do the same. This 1-2 hour first chapter is a stressful one too, giving players a tight window of time to achieve quite a few tasks to make sneaking the refugee ships through quarantine and onto the Eye possible.

The next episode, Refuge, turns the attention to the flotilla itself and the three subgroups of people aboard its ships. Hailing from three different moons of a larger, inhabited planet, these groups have come from a three-way political tension to wind up displaced in unison. Thus, most of this episode focuses on getting to know each of the groups’ leaders and the individual needs of their crews to establish some degree of understanding. It’s a far more relaxed and text-heavy chapter, with plenty of new and well-written characters to get to know.

The final of these DLC episodes, Purge, is a special one and it’d be remiss of me to spoil just about any of it, suffice to say the tension and time critical panic of Flux returns here, and culminates in a hell of an ending, using all of the groundwork and character building established in the previous two episodes to great effect and tying up a bundle of threads from the base game in the process. I came away feeling the best I’ve felt about any of Citizen Sleeper’s prior possible resolutions, and I would absolutely urge anyone that’s played the main story portion to come back and play through all three new episodes.

Read my full review of the game’s original release below:

It was right around the point that I made the choice to go foraging for rare mushrooms over helping a stranded father and daughter get their one shot at a fresh start, that I realised Citizen Sleeper had made an arsehole out of me. I don’t know what it is about tabletop or tabletop-like games that does it, perhaps it’s the combination of high stakes and low odds that triggers a certain response, but I wind up looking out for me and myself alone. The dozens of names and faces aboard the doomed company-town-on-a-space-station-turned-intergalactic-refuge, Erlin’s Eye, became little more than stepping stones on my path to freedom but now that I’m on the outside I can’t say I care to look back in.

How did we get here, though? That’s the blank chapter in Citizen Sleeper’s slice-of-life narrative that you’ll be filling in. This bold new title from In Other Waters developer Jump Over The Age (Gareth Damien Martin) casts you as a ‘Sleeper’, a digital copy of a human consciousness in an artificial body, that has escaped the clutches of corporate ownership and found themselves aboard the Eye without so much as a plan to hang onto life let alone start a new one. Thanks to a built-in planned obsolescence, time is ticking before your physical form falls apart and so every moment and every decision counts as you explore the station, make allies and enemies and do what you must to survive, thrive or leave alive.

To say I fell in love with the world this game presents would be an understatement – I’m obsessed. Here’s a genuine sci-fi adventure game packed with intrigue, drama and challenge, but one that eschews putting a stick in your hand in favour of putting the world in your mind. Or is it your mind in the world? Citizen Sleeper tackles the heady subject matter of the coalescence of biological and synthetic life and the blurring of the lines between nature and data. Then it imagines how we might fuck even that up in the name of greed, putting your synthetic arse to work for scraps in the shell of a corporate space station like the data-digging equivalent of a hard-rock miner in a company town.

All of this is put together through the lens of a tabletop RPG, the world around you barely more than a top-down map of Erlin’s Eye adorned with icons representing places, people and tasks. The game plays out in Cycles that represent the passage of time – within a Cycle, you’re able to explore the Eye and take various actions, most of which require a roll of a dice to perform and determine their level of success. The number of dice you have at your disposal each Cycle depends on the current condition of your physical form, which degrades as your progress time and also as a result of work done. You’ll be able to take measures to ensure your energy levels stay high and your condition gets better before it gets worse, but it’s a careful balancing act between keeping yourself alive and using your time constructively.

The actions you’ll take aboard the Eye, things like undertaking work in a scrapyard, extracting data from terminals or navigating tricky social interactions, are all means to fulfil your Drives. Drives are your goals, they unlock as you meet new people and uncover new mysteries and they’re what will eventually see your story through to some kind of conclusion. Some can be treated with a certain degree of leisure, but others are at the mercy of Clocks – meters that count up as you perform certain actions or simply as Cycles pass. Between trying to achieve your Drives and manage the various Clocks around Erline’s Eye it almost feels like juggling pins and spinning plates at the same time. The juggling part is fine on its own, but those plates are a constant, looming threat to your ability to keep the pins up in the air. Also some of the plates will cause intergalactic bounty hunters to come and shoot you in the face if they stop spinning.

The result though is a game that hinges on two things – hard choices and bold risks. Not only will you need to gripe with your own time management, forethought and conscience when deciding what to focus your limited efforts on each Cycle, but even once you’ve formulated a plan there’s an element of chance that can completely undo everything. Actions that work on a dice roll can have positive, neutral or negative outcomes that are dictated by both the value of the dice you choose to play for it and your character’s own affinities. At the beginning of the game you’ll be asked to choose one of three classes with their own stats and unique buffs that can then be augmented with upgrade points earned from completing Drives.

The way that all of these different systems interweave and feed into the vast many narrative possibilities is an incredibly slick feat of design, especially once you get over the initial sense of being overwhelmed by them and start to understand how to focus on the outcomes you genuinely want to see. After that it’s just a matter of praying things work out – if you’re anything like me trying to leverage my Interface skill to score a job on a colony ship as a Junior Tech you’ll learn that part the hard way. It can all be quite stressful initially, but also just forgiving enough in the early hours that your failings feel more like new forks on your road to success than genuine disasters.

Citizen Sleeper is also a game that feels genuinely replayable. It can easily be finished in around five hours or less if you can stomach leaving friends, enemies and answers behind for a quick getaway. Or you can push yourself, play the long game, explore deeper and deeper into the Eye and seek out everything the game has to offer. Luckily, finishing the game creates a return point right beforehand so you can easily go back and forge an alternate path ahead should you want to, but it’s just as rewarding to start completely fresh and see how differently it can all go.

Life aboard Erlin’s Eye is presented with a clean and stylish aesthetic that works far harder than its combination of mostly static environments and text-based narrative would imply. For starters, the character portraits from acclaimed comic book artist Guillaume Singelin that accompany story beats are gorgeous and add incredible dimension to the game’s already-fantastic writing. When it kicks in, the game’s soundtrack from returning composer Amos Roddy swings deftly between ‘illicit underground fetish club in the year 2090’ and ‘metaphysical contemplations on a Korg MS20’ and it honestly slaps fucking ass. For a game where the most important bits are delivered mostly in text and numbers, Citizen Sleeper is an absolute vibe

The post Citizen Sleeper (Complete) Review – A Sleeper Hit Made Even Better appeared first on Press Start.

Given the exploding popularity of “pro” PC gaming peripherals, ubiquitous PC accessories turned into ultra-engineered light shows with more features than a DJ Khaled album, more and more manufacturers seem to be coming to market with all manner of purposefully-designed gaming keyboards. With so much choice on shelves, it can be overwhelming trying to find the one bit of kit that suits all of a person’s needs. 

For that reason, there’s also a massive community of enthusiasts going the custom route, building mechanical keyboards from pre-fabricated parts. While building something yourself is immensely satisfying, the keyboard scene can be overwhelming and also doesn’t leave a lot of room for some of the features that the big manufacturers have run wild with like fancy lighting and displays. That’s where the latest from ASUS, the ROG Azoth, comes in – offering a top-notch keyboard with a full suite of features that also works as a great entry point to mechanical keyboard maintenance.

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Right from the outset, it’s clear that what you’re getting with the Azoth is a premium product. Opening the box reveals a content offering typical of ASUS, all-inclusive and well packaged with the keyboard itself draped in a protective cloth and a veritable toolkit of extra bits hidden underneath. I don’t know about you, but I’m always incredibly happy to open a new, expensive purchase and be greeted with carefully-designed and well-appointed packaging that has everything I could possibly need included and that first impression went swimmingly here.

One of the first things you’ll notice about the Azoth when taking it out of the box and setting it down for the first time is that it’s hefty. There’s a good amount of weight to it, owing to a metal top frame alongside everything packed into it. It means it’s not the most portable keyboard despite the 75% form factor, but it’s incredibly stable and sturdy on a desk and isn’t likely to budge an inch even during the most intense gaming sessions. There are two sets of feet on the bottom of the ROG Azoth, allowing for three different typing angles depending on your flavour of comfort.

When it comes to the actual typing experience this is easily one of the most tactile and satisfying I’ve had with a retail gaming keyboard. Thanks to the combination of the pre-lubed ROG NX mechanical switches that feel incredibly smooth and consistent in both the initial press and springback, plus multiple layers of silicon gaskets, pads and foam supporting them all, there’s both an effortlessness and an assuredness to every keystroke. 

I’m not going to pretend to understand all the science and engineering of it all, but the result is it feels just right with a ton of give and tactile response but almost nothing in the way of excessive noise or rattling. Whether I was typing up a lengthy keyboard review (guess which one??), fervently slinging out barbs in heated group chat debates or smashing the ever-loving shit out of it during some particularly brutal games of Stepmania, not only did every keystroke register without skipping a beat but the thing didn’t budge an inch on my desk. It’s a tiny tank.

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The keycaps and switches included with the ROG Azoth are great – ours came with red switches, which I’m a big fan of, and the keycaps are PBT doubleshot caps that feel nice and premium and should be plenty durable. Of course, one of the great features of this keyboard is how much freedom there is to change anything you don’t like, with hot-swappable switches and the included DIY kit that contains a switch opener, keycap puller, switch puller, lube station, brush, and lubricant making it simple (well, more simple than usual) to get into its guts and make it your own.

Of course, buying a $400 gaming keyboard only to rip out the included switches and buy more is an expensive proposition, and what’s already there will be great for most, but having the option and the tools right out of the gate is very novel.

By far my favourite feature of the ROG Azoth though, is the 2-inch grayscale OLED panel adorning the top-right of the keyboard, offering a window into a number of things from quick access to settings like RGB brightness, onboard profiles and media playback to system monitoring information, music visualisers or just whatever image or GIF you want to load in – like a looping animation of the mum from The Incredibles.

Next to the display is a super handy three-way control knob that can be used contextually to do things like scroll up/down and select items, control volume and mute, increase or decrease brightness and so on, while one more button on the side switches between the different sets of options. It works pretty well and comes in incredibly handy, though I did find myself accidentally pressing the control knob when I meant to push it up or down as those functions are quite stiff.

Tying all of this together is the ASUS ROG Armoury Crate software, which is about as good as most other hardware vendors’ proprietary software. It’s a bit bloated, both with how many fairly useless menus and features it throws at you as well as how system-intensive it can be, but it’s pretty intuitive when it comes to the features most people would use like RGB/display customisation, macros and individual profiles. I just wish there was a “lite” version that did away with all the game launcher and news type stuff to make it a bit more lean and zippy.

Back to better news though, and the final piece of the puzzle in the ROG Azoth’s connectivity options, which are excellent. There’s a wired USB option, Bluetooth with support for up to three devices at a time, and ASUS’ own “SpeedNova” wireless option which it says offers ultra-low latency and optimised power efficiency. 

ASUS reckons you’ll get over 2000 hours of use out of the keyboard in 2.4GHz wireless mode with the RGB and OLED display turned off. I haven’t been able to verify that number because I love RGBs and OLED displays, but in the few weeks I’ve been using it there hasn’t been a need to charge it, so that’s a great sign.

Header image: ASUS ROG UK.

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In an unexpected twist on the regular city-builder trope, Terra Nil is completely free of skyscrapers, bridges, or any other monuments of civil engineering. It’s astutely anti-capitalist in that it dreams up, and has players build, a world that’s handed back to nature. It’s about rewilding, renewal, and recycling, and I think Terra Nil comes at an apt time in our humanity timeline.

As noble as Free Lives’ intentions may be, a niche game isn’t likely to make meaningful ripples in turning the tide against mankind’s slow burn of the only home we’ve got—but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth starting the conversation.

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Contrary to the aim of other city builders, like Sim City where the aim is to build up, Terra Nil’s focus is in leaving an evergreen, ultimately sustainable world behind. Of course, the game still plays mechanically like any builder title before it. An introductory set of tools allow you to introduce wind power and irrigation, creating a fertile landscape for flora and fauna to return.

There’s no “story” to speak of, not that that’s much of a surprise.

After a laborious effort at restoration, you’ll often disembark. This literal handover from the player to nature feels like the idea that’s driven home, and the one constant contribution of mankind, throughout Terra Nil. This is the game’s singular message, that if we left it all behind and vanished, our home would be better off without us. But the other inference is, the planet can’t heal on its own–it needs our help. A lot of “games for change” candidates deal with how we hurt each other, but this is perhaps the best example of how passively damaging we can be.

Terra Nil doesn’t assume for a second that city-builders are in vogue, and it does introduce its mechanics in phases before culminating in multi-goal stages that require you to meet varying conditions to cultivate growth. At first, the primary objective is terraforming an arid, tired landscape into a diverse, ecologically sound utopia of sorts. To do this, you place turbines to generate the energy that power the toxin scrubbers which in turn irrigate the soil, it’s a step-by-step journey to creating a lush, emerald paradise. For each tile you convert, you’re awarded points–the game’s only form of currency which is used to place and upgrade buildings.

The next step is creating the biomes and climates that spark the return of wildlife to the area. Whether it’s wetlands, flowering meadows, or dense rainforests, all of the terraforming done has subtle impacts on both the temperature and humidity. Managing these systems becomes a bit of a balancing act, especially if you’re trying for the game’s optional objectives which often require hitting certain markers to welcome the return of particular fauna, like deer, bears, and flamingos. If it sounds like an endless task, it’s not. Once you strike a harmonious balance of biomes and reintroduce enough animals into the ecosystem, it’s up to you to tear it all down, recycle your wares, and leave no trace you were ever there.

The most basic part of the core loop reminds me of Cloud Gardens, a similarly zen game about planting fantastical gardens in the sky, and how its slow grind ultimately gives way to lush, beautiful sights. 

The way Terra Nil also delivers its levels as these grand, multi-phase missions of reinvigoration is cleverly devised. Although the mission can be sprawling and quite involved, it holds off ever overwhelming you with too much to wrap your head around at once. 

I feel like Terra Nil smartly subverted what I expected from it as a city-builder, as it continues to layer systems onto those already introduced and hardwired into the genre. While I’d purposely call down tornadoes to level my cities in other builders, purposely and efficiently recycling every sign I ever existed to leave a rewilded biosphere behind feels particularly unique. Even after the credits roll, leaving the planet’s restoration curiously incomplete, Terra Nil serves up a series of extra scenarios where the challenge is heightened. 

Despite the challenge it can present to efficiently terraform the game’s handful of areas, Terra Nil is a pretty relaxing game and was helpful for winding down after a couple of long days. It isn’t exactly long at half a dozen hours, although there’s a bit of replay value if you’re hoping to reintroduce all species to their respective biomes. Though I might argue the UI is a little bit messy and tough to read at points, Terra Nil definitely is a pleasantly pretty game. Its isometric world view is a genre lynchpin and it’s hard not to be awestruck by the colour and life that you, through your actions, embed into the pixel art landscape. The game’s gentle score, from composer Meydän, is as soothing as a Butter Menthol, and is arguably more peaceful than the tranquillity of a whale’s song.

Terra Nil feels like a short-priced favourite to be the year’s game most capable of inspiring change. With a clear, damning message that we’re no good to our home, I felt Free Lives holding a mirror up to me. I considered my consumption, my waste, and the efforts I could go to to curve my own impact. I feel like the greater statement might have been to launch near Earth Hour to further amplify that initiative.

Terra Nil launches on PC on March 28th.

The post Terra Nil Review – A Relaxing Reverse City Builder appeared first on Press Start.

If a game offers a fishing mini-game, I tend to seek it out. Ever since Ocarina of Time introduced me to the concept of the trophy catch, games have been a convenient avenue to take part in a pastime I’ve never gravitated towards despite my late-grandad’s wishes. The exception is Dredge. It’s all fishing and dragging the waters in search of secrets that lurk in the undercurrent. And quite frankly, it’s a bloody riveting video game. 

Something that’s inevitable every calendar year is the handful of independent games that come as if from nowhere and ultimately feature heavily during end-year commendations. Celeste, Hades, Disco Elysium, and even last year’s Cult of the Lamb. All of these went on to transform the teams behind them into household names overnight.

I feel that Dredge has that special something that might see it cause ripples for the team at Black Salt Games across the pond in New Zealand.

Dredge is a pretty simple sell in terms of its darkly spun story, as you’re cast ashore by a fierce storm and come to capsize in the quaint, seaside village of Greater Marrow, the nucleus in this particular archipelago. You trade favours for a replacement vessel to get your sea legs back under you, only to discover the islands—as well as those who dwell there mostly in isolation—harbour some twisted, nasty surprises.

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One way you pick yourself up by your bootstraps is to ply your trade as a fisherman, collecting all manner of ocean life and selling it back to the town fishmonger for the right price, throughout your travels you’ll be able to dredge the sea floor for both trinkets and salvageable materials that, in turn, can be used to refine your boat like the Ship of Theseus—until its every part, from the lantern to trawl net, is better than before. There are several little systems at play that all interlink to make Dredge a surprisingly complete, and fun, fishing game. 

Rather than struggling against a tense line by mashing buttons, fishing in Dredge is a mostly peaceful test of timing. Depending on the magnitude of the catch, you’ll either deal with up to a couple of spinning rings with broken paths that you’ll hop between or a singular ring peppered with prompts to speed up the angling. Time is of the essence after all, as the clock ticks over quicker when you’re luring a shoal and you don’t want to get caught out at night—at least at first. 

Another of the game’s mild challenges come with its Resident Evil-like inventory management. Everything consumes space, from your boat’s components—although they become more compact the more you spend on refinements—to the fish you haul in. It’s a game within a game as each catch has a peculiar shape, it almost becomes a game of Tetris trying to wedge that last cod onboard. 

Whether it’s recovering mysterious artefacts for an enigmatic “collector” or assembling a mortar to help a marooned pilot, you’re given a lot of varied objectives to keep you occupied throughout the game’s ten hour story. Dredge’s showpiece, however, is absolutely the fishing. Mastering the day and night conditions and acquiring the perfect equipment depending on where you’re dropping a line are two key pieces of the puzzle when it comes to filling out your journal like it’s a National Geographic guide for the cruellest of seas. 

I’m delighted at just how much Dredge feels like a Pokémon game at times, and how much joy I felt trying to catch them all.

Aside from the regular cod, mackerel, eels, and sharks, nightfall brings a particularly macabre twist as aberrations of these fish are pulled up from the briny depths. I kind of see this as the Dredge equivalent of shiny Pokémon, even if they’re eye-catching in a different way. Slick with grime rather than a glittering sheen, the distorted monstrosities are the prize catches that’ll net you both renown and a handsome payday.

Nighttime fishing is a perilous endeavour however, as the untameable beasts of the deep tend to wreak havoc if you stay out after sundown. This is wonderfully juxtaposed by how peaceful fishing can be under the safeguard of the sun’s rays, although the tension and danger is ultimately undercut by the game’s end as you’re granted protection spells from the aforementioned “collector” that’ll let you temporarily ward off any danger, overload the boat’s engines with a burst of speed, or even simply instantly transmit yourself back to the safety of his manor-side dock.

In certain areas of the archipelago, these spells are a must. Frustratingly, and perhaps it’s an effort to not directly gate progress, if you find yourself in the Twisted Strand early on, you’ll quickly find it was a journey wasted—and it is a good day’s trip with an undercooked vessel. It’s commendable that the entire map is open from the jump, but discovering through sheer trial and error that the road through lies elsewhere can be a drag.

Dredge’s presentation is absolutely lovely, from its simple and readable UI to the game’s positively eldritch art direction that truly encapsulates the sinister scariness of the unknown that comes with a vast, open ocean. While it is a strong direction, certain things are clearly hampered by a shoestring budget—although none ultimately hamper the fun.

Character’s avatars are voiceless drawn stills and the comical animation of the truck-sized angler fish that can wreck your boat undercuts the terror to a degree, but it matters not when you’re teetering on sanity’s edge after a dangerous, sleepless night at sea and your mind plays spectacular tricks on you. Beautiful waves of light dance atop the still water, stunningly destructive whirlwinds blow through, and woes of fog cover cause jagged rocks to appear out of nowhere.

Dredge is a fresh take on the collect ‘em all trope and I particularly adore its eldritch dressing. I’m one who’s particularly petrified of the unknown, with the ocean and outer space being specific triggers of this in different ways. While not as infinitely vast as space, a fine case for the crushing scariness of the ocean is made by Dredge and you’ll long for the warm-glowing lantern, dangling like a beacon for safety on the dock in the distance.

Dredge will be a contender this year. And that’s not limited to the indie scene either, as I expect it’ll make waves and be Game of the Year bait in its own right.

Dredge is out on March 30th for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch and PC.

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Last year’s complete revamp of the WWE 2K series was a much-needed breath of fresh air, receiving a proper rebuild from top to bottom. In WWE 2K23, Visual Concepts has smartly tinkered with what made 2K22 so good, improving the game in key areas where it needed small but necessary improvements. Because of this, 2K23 is more about slight reinvention than it is complete revolution. That’s not a bad thing, though, as WWE 2K23 is more of what made last year’s game so damn good, and then some. 

Those who have played 2K22 will feel right at home when they fire up this year’s entry. Tweaks and refinements have been made to general gameplay – such as using your momentum meter for signatures and other ring antics, like possum pins and payback moves – alongside the addition of the excellent WarGames match type.

WarGames pits two teams of three or four against one another in two rings side by side. As expected, this immediately transcends into pure chaos, but the moment-to-moment action is stupidly enjoyable. Memorable moments arrive in spades thanks to the sheer amount of action going at one time, which is further made apparent when you take the action online and against friends (or rivals). While some connection issues hampered the fun online, it’s still silly, hilarious fun that is a welcome addition to the plethora of content already available in 2K23. 

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Aside from the sheer chaos of WarGames, the mode works because 2K23 controls excellently and looks great. Whether you’re a newbie, haven’t played a WWE game in a while or are a returning veteran of the series, the game caters for you and your skill level. And I can confidently say I’ve had more fun with this year’s entry than I have with any other wrestling game in over a decade. Whether it was performing something ludicrous off the stage ramp or hitting a perfect set of finishers to end a tough match, there was always something that captured my attention and made me smile. This also translated to the myriad of silly glitches I encountered throughout my time with the game, which were never too game-breaking to completely kill my enjoyment but certainly reared their head a little too much for my liking.

John Cena is the focus of this year’s Showcase mode, and I enjoyed my time with it. I particularly enjoyed the focus on Cena’s biggest losses rather than his victories, from his debut against Kurt Angle to getting properly dismantled by the Undertaker at Wrestlemania 34. Cena’s commentary provides some fascinating insight into his preparation behind these key matches, though there’s just not enough of it. This, combined with a lot of dead air during each match (thanks to the fact there’s no commentary, which is substituted for some truly awful b-tier rock music), makes for a fairly subpar experience on the presentation side of Showcase.

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That said, by taking control of Cena’s opponents throughout the years – following objectives and watching footage spliced in with gameplay as the match plays out – you’re never really doing the same thing twice, which was an annoyance of mine from last year’s Showcase mode. A lot of the matches have different opponents, meaning you’re rarely playing as a superstar more than once. This adds a decent amount of variety to the mode and kept me interested throughout, and while it was short (at around 2-3 hours) it was a nice trip down memory lane. 

If you’re sick of beating up John Cena, MyRise offers two stories to play through in 2K23 with a created superstar. Both are generally pretty enjoyable to venture through, giving you a handful of choices to make that slightly alter the story and encourage some replayability, while doling out some of the most cringe-worthy dialogue you’ll hear in a game this year. It’s not all that bad, but there was a certain point during The Lock’s story where I really began to hate my own character for being such a whiny brat. That said, I did enjoy the superstar cameos and variety of matches thrown my way during each story. 

A major gripe I had with MyRise were the loading screens, however. Loading screens were so consistent that I was constantly pulled out of any bit of immersion I’d had with the story. 2K23 is plagued with loading screens in general, but the issue really comes to a head when playing MyRise thanks to the consistency of them – whether you’re going between cutscenes or wanting to change your character’s entrance, moveset or look. They’re everywhere, and it was incredibly bothersome.

MyGM, 2K22’s flagship mode that puts you in the role of a GM competing with the other WWE brands, returns this year with some well-needed tweaks. You can now compete over the course of multiple seasons against up to three other players (whether that’s via local play or against AI), giving the mode some much needed longevity. It’s an absolute blast to play, too, though I do wish I was able to play against mates online in a sort of Mario Party-style format, as it seems almost geared for that. 

Even so, MyGM has been one of my favourite modes to jump into across both 2K22 and 2K23, and the addition of Hall of Fame and seasonal challenges, new match types and new GMs to pick from has made the mode a heck of a lot better. It’s a massive improvement over last year.

WWE 2K23’s Universe mode is the best it’s been in many years, too, giving players an unparalleled level of freedom to customise the WWE universe to their heart’s content. Whether you want to create dream rivalries and scenarios or bring in created wrestlers, shows, arenas or championships to spice things up, it’s entirely up to you. Both the manager and superstar modes in Universe mode impressed me with the amount of customisability on offer – there’s just so much to do and involve yourself in.

On the topic of customisability, the creation suite on offer in WWE 2K23 is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a sports game. Returning customisation options, like the ability to create shows, arenas, championships and the like are great, however the welcome return of advanced entrance customisation options gives players an unparalleled level of freedom. There’s truly so much room for experimentation here that I felt constantly overwhelmed with the options at hand. Community creations have already blown my mind during release week, whether they’re bringing old wrestlers back into the game or creating brand new ones, and that’s a testament to the options available.

The most disappointing part of 2K23 continues to be its MyFACTION mode, which sees little improvement this year. Much like last year, the mode did very little to entice me to play when every other mode was more enjoyable, rewarding and fun to work through. The rewards in MyFACTION are relatively meagre and it can feel like a slog at the best of times, making for the weakest mode of the lot by a decent margin.

Even with some minor disappointments and some of the most frustrating load times in a current-gen game I’ve experienced, I’ve had an absolute blast with WWE 2K23. It continues Visual Concepts’ upwards trajectory of the series which kicked off with WWE 2K22, and improves on the formula in small but significant ways. The addition of WarGames, a great new Showcase, an awesome roster and welcome tinkering of MyGM make for a game that wrestling fans should get plenty out of. And that’s not even mentioning the creation suite, which I have no doubt will continue to boggle my mind throughout the year. Wrestling fans can rejoice – WWE 2K23 is a triumph.

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One of the greatest appeals of a good indie video game, to me, is knowing I’m playing something created with passion. The gulf in production values between a blockbuster release and a passion project from a small studio might be obvious at times, but the same can be said of the creativity and ingenuity between them.

Tchia is a fantastic example of this, as both a game that often feels compromised by its ambitions but never once seems burdened with them. It’s relentlessly charming and packed with the kinds of ideas that the churning, AAA machine wouldn’t touch with a million-dollar budget. It’s also intensely cultural, coming from Awaceb in New Caledonia (this is only their second game!) and steeped in local history and talent. It’s the kind of game where a handful of flaws is far from cause to look past it – it’s still an unforgettable and highly recommended experience.

Cast as the game’s titular heroine, Tchia introduces players to a fictional archipelago based loosely on New Caledonia, and one ruled with an iron first by an evil god named Meavora and his army of magical fabric warriors. After Meavora’s followers kidnap Tchia’s father and leave her stranded on her tiny island home, she decides to set out to the greater islands and formulate a plan to take him down and rescue his prisoners. Without giving anything away, while the game tells a fairly straightforward tale, there are actually some rather powerful moments told with a lot of nuance and from some refreshingly unique perspectives.

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Although there are some jarringly dark moments peppered throughout (fair warning if violence towards animals and infants could alarm you – there’s a bit of that here, though it’s all rather “cartoony” and there’s a Family Filter option), Tchia is also packed with charm with plenty of gorgeous and well-composed cutscenes with some genuinely great comedic timing at moments. Its narrative beats are constructed with the kind of care and production I’d expect from a CG-animated series on a major network. It’s also all been recorded in traditional languages by local talent, which is fantastic. Tchia is a game that doesn’t simply use culture as set dressing, it’s embedded in everything from the stories it tells and the way it tells them, to how it plays and what it wants players to take away from it.

As far as playing goes, what’s here is a freeform adventure in a sizeable open world made up of large and small islands with plenty of characters to meet, secrets to find and challenges to surmount. You’ll be guided throughout by a series of overarching quests, most of which task Tchia with going to specific places or collecting particular items, but you’ll more often than not find yourself simply exploring of your own accord, drawn to any number of points of interest that catch your eye.

Luckily, the act of getting around is one of the game’s greatest joys thanks to its unique mechanics. While you can walk, sail and use limited fast travel, by far the best way to traverse the game’s varied environments is to use Tchia’s power of Soul Jumping. Tchia can use her power to possess any animal in the game, as well as a huge number of inanimate objects, and take control of them. Some will have their own abilities used to solve light puzzles, like a crab’s pincers to cut through ropes or a lantern’s explosive heat to set things ablaze, but more often than not you’ll Soul Jump into a nearby bird to quickly fly across the islands or get real tricky and start flinging yourself through the air as an errant coconut.

Soul Jumping adds a ton to the experience of solving otherwise basic puzzles too, not least because the game has an admirable disregard for logic. Need to dig up a nearby treasure chest? Jump into a dog and get digging. No dogs around? Go to the next village over, find one, stuff it in your backpack next to the four bunches of bananas, dodgy radioactive canister and multiple live birds and return to the dig site with it. A prevailing design ethos of Tchia’s is “why not?” and I’m absolutely here for it.

That ideal goes across the board, too. Awaceb’s approach to gameplay systems in Tchia is “who cares about gameplay systems?” and instead the studio seems to have just created whatever gameplay mechanics it wanted to at any given moment. It gives the game a lovingly handcrafted quality and invites the player to be playful and expect the unexpected. One moment you’ll be slingshotting off a treetop to then Soul Jump mid-air into a soaring bird, fly across a city and jump back out to perform a 720 triple frontflip into the ocean, the next you’re playing ukulele alongside a tribe of magical, wooden people in a secret underground shrine. It’s not quite the emergent sandbox that was Breath of the Wild, but it has a similar playfulness – more like a toy box, I suppose.

Tchia also comes equipped with some great tools, like a ukulele that winds up imbued with some magical musical powers that allow her to learn simple tunes that have various effects like changing the time of day, summoning creatures or items or giving her temporary unlimited breath underwater. The ukulele is a constant, there are actually quite a number of musical play-alongs embedded in the story with songs recorded with Kanak choirs and musicians which are all beautiful, as is a small raft for sailing the open ocean, both of which can be customised quite a bit along with Tchia’s outfit as you find and unlock new cosmetic bits and pieces.

I’m especially fond of the tactility of everything in the game. Everything feels hands-on and, more often than not, if there’s something to be done you’ll be doing it in real-time. Even Tchia’s version of a “Photo Mode” has her using a camera with manual controls (including a tripod for timed shots) and then popping over to the nearest photo kit to develop all her film before it gets added to the in-game gallery.

Not all of Awaceb’s decisions pan out, though. For every stroke of genius like the in-game map that doesn’t actively show you Tchia’s location, instead requiring some proper orienteering and environmental context, there’s something equally baffling like a lengthy, late chapter consisting of mechanically monotonous and aesthetically dull “combat” sequences in some factory locations that has none of the charm of the rest of the game. Likewise, while the game’s simple visuals can often make for some stunning landscapes thanks to Unreal Engine 4-powered effects and massive draw distances, it rarely holds up to close scrutiny – especially in built-up areas where buildings and structures just look flat and unfinished.

The game feels woefully unpolished at times too, full of performance issues There are some egregious bugs as well, even after a few updates on PS5, but despite often finding myself stuck in some environmental geometry or unable to progress a quest, Tchia includes at least one immensely thoughtful quality-of-life feature in the ability to just skip entire gameplay segments from the pause screen. Not feeling a particular mini-game? Frustrated and running around trying to fetch a multitude of items for a quest? Skip it. Skip a quest, skip a chapter, skip the whole game if that’s something you wanted to do for whatever reason. I adore that it’s an option – and one that seems to work without a hitch which I’m quite impressed by.

In the first hour or so of playing Tchia, I honestly had no idea what to make of it. The care, and reverence for culture and local talent were clear, but the execution wasn’t. Another eight or so hours later, as I rolled the credits (and witnessed the game’s stellar ending), I realised I didn’t care about the latter when the former – in addition to the frequently creative and charming gameplay design on offer – was so utterly compelling. Tchia is messy, and sometimes weird, but usually in all the best ways. It’s rare a game feels this refreshing and earnest without any level of pretension or restraint, and it’s all the better for it.

The post Tchia Review – A Charming And Earnest Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

I’m just gonna come out and say it – I have a very discerning bum when it comes to just about anything. Cushions, benches, toilet paper, whatever it is, my caboose is anything but loose. That’s probably why I’ve gone through as many office/gaming chair options as I have in the years that I’ve been at a desk on the regular, and why I’ll probably continue to do so. The good news is though, I think I’m going to be quite content for the foreseeable future with the Razer Iskur Fabric.

It’s that last word that stuck out to me right away when looking at this newer iteration of Razer’s foray into gaming furniture, because I can say with no hesitation that I’m not a fan of the synthetic leather upholstering of most other gaming chairs. Sure, fabric might not be as easy to keep clean (though Razer says this one’s spill-resistant), but it feels a heck of a lot nicer, it’s more temperate, and it looks far better. 

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A lot of that is going to come down to personal preference, of course, but with my gushing over fabric out of the way the rest of this review will focus on features that exist in Razer’s synthetic leather seats as well.

The most immediate realisation when the Iskur Fabric was dropped off at my door, is that it comes in a big ol’ box. Not unusual for a gaming chair, but definitely one of the more sizeable examples I’ve come across. Once I opened it up it was easy to see how it became so thicc, too, with a pretty astonishing amount of packaging material inside keeping everything well protected. 

You’ll be able to see in the below photo just how much leftover stuff there was for me to (responsibly) dispose of once I was done. If you’re someone with an aversion to waste, you might want to prepare yourself:

Setting the chair up was about as simple as most. It took myself and my partner maybe 20-25 minutes to put it all together, including unpacking and cleaning up the enormous amount of cardboard, foam and plastic. The hardest part was lining up the two main body pieces to then bolt them together, but everything else was as easy as sliding things into other things and securing them with the included tools. 

By far my favourite part of the entire experience was the comically-large instruction sheet, which could have easily just been a double-sided A4 but instead could double as a sun shade for your car’s windshield.

Once the thing was together and I was able to get buns-on with it, I realised just how much I’ve needed a much firmer cush’ for my tush. Like the fabric aspect, the relative hardness of the Iskur isn’t going to be for everyone, but it’s been great for me. There’s an XL version of the chair out there on the market, but even the standard one has a ton of room for booties and the racing seat-style design that’s ubiquitous with gaming chairs is incredibly comfortable in a multitude of sitting styles for long periods.

I’m especially impressed by how premium a lot of the Iskur Fabric looks and feels, though you’d hope so for an asking price of $799. The dark gray of the fabric and the understated embellishing (especially for Razer) make it come across as something you wouldn’t look twice at in a professional setting, and the metal accents on things like the excellent 4D armrest controls help sell that even further. 

The chair also comes with an optional memory foam head cushion at retail, though I can’t speak to its quality as my review unit was sadly sans cushion.

Adding to the list of premium features on the Iskur Fabric is an excellent lumbar support system, eschewing the stop-gap solutions of other chairs like attachable cushions or fixed supports for an adjustable system that can properly align to your spine. It’s as easy to adjust as anything else on the chair and I very quickly found the sweet spot for me and my poor, rarely cared-for back bones.

With a plethora of “gaming” chair options on the market with all manner of outrageous designs and questionable orthopedic support, it’s both welcome and mildly surprising that Razer has such an understated, premium and fully-featured seat on the market. The Razer Iskur Fabric isn’t cheap, or for everyone, but it’s been something of a holy grail in my search for a genuinely comfortable sitting situation that doesn’t look like it’s sponsored by G FUEL.

The post Razer Iskur Fabric Review – A High (Lum)bar For Gaming Chairs appeared first on Press Start.

I was sceptical from the beginning as to whether Capcom needed to remake Resident Evil 4. While it wasn’t my favourite in the series (a controversial opinion, perhaps), I could still appreciate its influence on the industry and why people loved it. Given its impact, I also felt like it still played fine enough. But it turns out I was wrong. Because while I was sceptical as ever, Capcom has put an earnest effort into ensuring that Resident Evil 4 not only reimagines the original experience. It absolutely eclipses it in practically every way.

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Resident Evil 4 follows the plot of the original game closely. You play Leon S Kennedy, who has since begun working for the US Government following his escapades in Resident Evil 2. He’s sent to a mountainous region in Spain to rescue Ashley Graham, the president’s daughter, from a strange cult living in the area with strange proclivities. He arrives, the villagers attack, and chaos ensues. It’s not your typical Resident Evil story, but it’s simple enough to follow regardless of whether you’re new to the series or a returning fan. It’s incredibly self-contained.

Resident Evil 4 does such a great job of recontextualising the events of the original game that I’m almost tempted to say it surpasses it. Where the original game was action heavy, the remake reimagines the whole adventure with a more horror-tinged atmosphere and aesthetic. It’s largely successful in doing so – there are some creepy moments throughout – though arguably nothing that reaches the creepier heights previously sought by the first half of 7 or Village’s now-infamous House Beneviento and its DLC.

But where the original game was lauded for its cheesy B-movie vibe and hammy one-liners, Capcom has seemingly done the impossible. It’s managed to translate the original game into the nigh photorealistic style of its current slew of Resident Evil games while keeping the cheese intact. While the one-liners and quips that Leon or his many enemies spout from moment to moment are different, they all still fit within the original game’s tone. It’s a truly masterful execution of what felt like an ambitious task.

And that’s really the running theme when talking about Resident Evil 4. It’s a remake that remarkably respects the game that came before it. It builds on the already strong foundation that the original game laid, updating it to feel like a classic Resident Evil game and a modern one. So much of the storytelling is elevated by the addition of numerous files detailing the backstory of the village and the cult. While its structure is the same – it cuts you off of each location after you finish it – it feels like three mini Resident Evil games packed into one, with each major area explorable more than before.

But it doesn’t stop there. The combat has been similarly revamped into something I can only describe as series-best. Everything in the original is here still– roundhouse kicks, goofy suplexes and a wild variety of weaponry. But Resident Evil 4 introduces a few simple mechanics that, once again, elevate the experience. Leon can now crouch – which sounds ridiculous to celebrate – but it opens up many evasion opportunities not previously available in the original. In addition to this is the parrying system, which uses up knife durability to prevent receiving damage. Your knife is repairable, and you can have many, so it’s not quite as annoying as expected.

And while the combat is excellent, the pacing is similarly immaculate. As I mentioned previously, everything you enjoyed about Resident Evil 4 is here in some form in the remake. There are key moments that you’ll remember, but they’ve either been condensed or changed entirely to flow better and offer a better experience that makes sense. Areas that previously served as weird, out-of-place in-between spaces have been reincorporated into a critical path that, once again, improves the game’s pacing. Resident Evil 4 is often said to be masterfully paced, but that remake only furthers that fact.

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Even the encounters you have with most enemies have been adjusted or reimagined to be something else, and it’s often for the better. Some of the boss battles in particular have been reworked in a way that they’re entirely something different (and better). Others have most certainly played it safe, but given how strong these battles were in the first place, it is encouraging to see them marginally improved rather than completely changed for the sake of changing it. The team has done a great job of crafting a delicate balance between old and new here, which is more than encouraging.

It’s not all retreads, though, as some things are brand new. It would be remiss to spoil just how much the main story deviates from the original in structure and flow, so I won’t. But this remake plays with your expectations if you’re a returning player, playfully winking at those who think they know the original game inside-out. It’s a kind of playfulness and willingness to have fun with fans’ expectations that I haven’t felt since 2002’s remake of the original game and one that no remake since has managed to capture.

The new optional content is a nice touch that isn’t excessive or detrimental to the game pacing. From time to time, the merchant will issue requests to the player to do something. These quests are often simple; find an item somewhere or kill a more powerful variant of an enemy you’ve already encountered. But they encourage backtracking and exploration of the world. Completing them gives you spinels, which can be traded with the merchant for goodies. There are around thirty or so of the quests to finish, but they’re all introduced at an appropriate enough rate that they never get in the way of the main game.

Even with the addition of the side quests, Resident Evil 4 still manages to clock in around the same time as the original game, though it’ll still take most players more time than the original. My first run through the game on Hardcore mode clocked in at around 26 hours. It’s undoubtedly the most substantial of the Resident Evil games Capcom has done since transitioning to RE Engine, and it’s a good type of substantial too. The game is constantly throwing a wealth of old and new enemies at you and leveraging its robust combat systems and high enemy variety to offer an evergreen experience.

Die-hard fans will notice a few omissions, however. A single boss from the original game is missing, but much like Resident Evil 2 before, I only yearned for these encounters to be included once I really thought about it. Resident Evil 4 is complete. It’s not missing aspects to the same extent as Resident Evil 3 was, and in fact, has had things added. Of course, The Mercenaries is sorely missed but it is coming as a free update later on down the track. Ada’s campaign, Separate Ways, is also missing. Still, given the lower quality of that campaign I wouldn’t be surprised to see Capcom reworking it to be something much more substantial and enjoyable down the line as downloadable content.

But what makes Resident Evil 4 such a compelling upgrade is the attention to detail and the sheer quality of its presentation. I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it – this is easily Capcom’s best-looking game since they switched to RE Engine. The Village, the Castle and the Island are all brought to life in ways that respect the original games while tinkering with them to be more cohesive. A cabin that was previously a single room has been expanded to multiple rooms with all kinds of macabre charms, alluding to the cultic presence scattered throughout. It really feels like the developers used the environment to not only update the look of the world but tell a deeper story within it. It’s a fantastic upgrade.

The same can be said for the sound design too. Floorboards creak. Caves drip. Mad rabid cultists breathe feverishly and heavily. It all comes together to give the world a great sense of atmosphere. The music has similarly been revamped and incorporates a lot of choral chanting to allude to the cult’s presence in the region. It’s a step up in practically every way – and while I was used to hearing certain tracks at specific points of the story in the original – these new tracks turn every boss encounter into a loud, confident bombastic set piece.

The post Resident Evil 4 Review – A Triumphant Reimagining appeared first on Press Start.

SteelSeries announced its first speaker line last year, with the Arena 3 being a basic 2.0 setup, the Arena 9 being a complete 5.1 surround sound experience and the Arena 7 sitting in the middle with a great sound and some innovative features to boot.

The Arena 7 setup comes with two speakers (each with its own driver and tweeter) and a rather large subwoofer. The design of both are quite sleek and understated, which I rather like, but as soon as you turn them on, you realise that they’re not just an average set of speakers design-wise.

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The Arena 7s both have a 4-zone RGB lighting on the back of them, that you’re able to customise anywhere from just a basic standard colour, to cycling through the rainbow to reacting with a keyboard press. The speakers also tilt quite easily, so that you can get that perfect reflection off your wall.

Compared to something like the Philips Hue Play Bar, it’s offers roughly the same brightness, and exactly like the Play Bar, you’re able to use the SteelSeries GG app to replicate what is happening on your screen (PC only) for a pretty immersive experience. There are a few issues with the software though when it comes to the lighting portion, and I hope that this does improve with time given this a new market for SteelSeries.

As far as connectivity goes, you can connect the SteelSeries Arena 7 to your Windows or Apple PC as well as your PlayStation device via USB C or the optical/3.5mm ports. There’s also Bluetooth connectivity that is super easy to setup and you’re able to play music through Bluetooth whilst also using one of the other inputs. The speakers are controlled by the knob on the right speaker, with the bass amount being controlled on the subwoofer.

SteelSeries make some of the best headsets on the market, with the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless still being my favourite headset to ever release, and I was really hopeful that this would translate to its line of speakers and it most certainly does.

The speakers provide a good amount of crispness and volume when listening to music, and the 6.5″ down-firing subwoofer provides a huge amount of bass that is absolutely satisfying no matter what’s blasting through the speakers.

Its obviously worth mentioning that it is quite sizeable, so you will want to make sure you’ve got space under the desk or a place to put in, but thankfully, it is really understated with its all-black design, so it doesn’t stand out at all.

Really, if you’re already in the SteelSeries eco system and want a pair of speakers, it’s a no-brainer to buy into the Arena line, even if it’s starting with the Arena 3s, but the subwoofer in the 7s really are worth the jump in my opinion.

The post SteelSeries Arena 7 Speakers Review – Bold & Bassy appeared first on Press Start.

If you’d asked me how I felt about Destiny’s latest expansion, Lightfall, prior to release, I probably would’ve insinuated it was a homerun waiting to happen. It felt like the writing was on the wall – high stakes, a swanky new subclass in Strand, a new city to explore, and so much more. It’s these hopes and expectations that set a bar for Lightfall that it simply couldn’t meet.

Does that mean Lightfall is a bad expansion? No, I don’t think so, at least. Where Lightfall crashes and burns with its character writing and narrative, it excels in its new gameplay additions and changes. Where difficulty has been adjusted to be more in-line with the ever-looming threat of power creep, Neomuna can feel disparate and empty. For every step in the right direction, there’s also a step backwards that feels more tangible than ever given The Witch Queen’s myriad successes.

If you equivalize Destiny’s decade spanning saga to that of the MCU, Lightfall is essentially the Infinity War of this narrative. The threat we’ve all been waiting for is here – the Witness, alongside a transformed Calus as its newest disciple. After attacking Earth and taking the Traveler captive, the Witness sends Calus to Neptune in search of a mysterious paracausal object known as the Veil.

Lightfall’s opening is firing on all cylinders, properly establishing the threat of the Witness and a sense of urgency about the whole campaign as our guardians hitch a ride to the hidden city of Neomuna. There’s a sense of rivalry between ourselves and Calus as years of conflict have built up to this moment. It’s unfortunate then, that after the first two missions, the campaign comes to a screeching halt on all fronts.

There’s a few key offenders, the most glaring of which is the general lack of explanation and characterization. Despite it being mentioned multiple times over the years in the lore, the Veil is never fully explained or explored here in Lightfall. Jargon and technical terms are thrown around in similar fashion to that of Destiny’s original campaign – only there’s no external lore to properly support it. Not only does Lightfall leave you with more questions than it does answers, it does so in an unsatisfying manner.

It’s clear that Lightfall’s seasons are going to delve into these subject matters deeper. I’m sure we’ll eventually learn what the Veil actually is, what the Witness wants with it, what the Radial Mast was meant to do, and more. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s hard not to feel short-changed when we’re essentially back where we started before the expansion dropped. As we move into the final year of this saga, it’s a time to provide answers, not shroud players in more mystery.

The Cloud Striders in concept are a great idea – defenders of a city separated from Guardians and the Traveler’s protection. Rohan in particular is quite engaging as he nears the end of his tenure as Cloud Strider and mentor to Nimbus. There’s a lot of parallels to be drawn between him and Osiris, and there was great opportunity for real growth between them. Unfortunately, Rohan just doesn’t get enough screentime to become the fan favourite character he had the potential for.

Nimbus is similarly misspent, largely in the way that their dialogue betrays the tone and atmosphere Lightfall is trying to establish. They’re constantly quipping, even after traumatic events, often resulting in cringe inducing moments. A lot of their writing does fare better in the post-campaign quests, but it feels like too little too late for it to have any long-term impact on players.

Arguably the biggest problem with the Cloud Striders, is that time spent with them is time that could’ve been spent with established characters. Osiris and Caiatl, who should’ve been pivotal to the plot of Lightfall, have very little to do, filling minor roles at best. Caiatl feels especially wasted given the conflict with her father should’ve taken centre stage here. Calus also feels unexplored given how often he’s served as our adversary over the years. One character that undeniably delivers, though, is the Witness, who commands every single scene they’re in. It’s in brief and fleeting moments that we see them, but it’s clear Bungie has a handle on this character and its otherworldly nature.

One of the most lauded inclusions in The Witch Queen was a new approach to campaign design and difficulty. Lightfall continues the trend with a new Legendary campaign, bringing eight tightly-paced missions to surmount on Neomuna. I don’t think the quality is quite at the same level as The Witch Queen’s campaign, but still offers an enjoyable romp from start to finish. It feels more coherent with the 80’s action movie inspiration Bungie was going for. Tormentors also accomplish what they set out to do remarkably well, serving as a terrifying yet engaging enemy unit that feels distinct from any other.

A large part of this success is thanks to Strand, our second Darkness-based subclass. Learnt over the course of the campaign, Strand is all about tapping into an ethereal weave that connects everything. This core concept gives way to some truly whacky ideas like a grapple hook, suspending enemies with threads, and unleashing sentient Strand constructs called Threadlings. Each Strand subclass feels incredibly distinct and immediately powerful with proper buildcrafting. You can really get into a flow with high actions per minute and flexible gameplay loops with each ability at your disposal.

From the mobile and powerful Hunter Threadrunner to the minion master Warlock Broodweaver, Strand has much to offer in countless facets of Destiny 2. It also helps that there’s a decent selection of Strand weapons to pair with these subclasses, offering new Strand-based perks and abilities that really freshen up the sandbox. The grapple is a particular standout, offering unparalleled movement and interactions that weren’t possible before. It feels truly distinct in the broader scope of Destiny’s subclasses, which isn’t such an easy feat nowadays given the complexity of the pre-existing four.

Destiny has often struggled with recent destinations being empty and lacking in things to do. They’re visually stunning and offer some degree of exploration, but don’t have the same enemy density as other aspects of the game. Neomuna is an improvement in this regard but there’s still work to do be done. General exploration can often feel quite barren and lifeless, with all of Neomuna’s citizens residing in a state of digital consciousness. It means you’ll only ever come across enemies, digital constructs, and other Guardians.

Terminal Overload and the Vex Incursion Zone do quite a bit to alleviate how empty it can feel at times, providing activities with loads of enemy density and worthwhile rewards. The city itself is gorgeous, offering neon-soaked skylines and high-rise buildings that feel distinct in Destiny’s slew of locations. It’s a shame it isn’t more vertically inclined given Strand’s inclusion, but swinging around the city is still a blast nonetheless.

There are few things that players look forward to more in new expansions than the introduction of a brand-new raid. Lightfall’s comes in the form of Root of Nightmares, set in a pyramid ship belonging to the Witness, only terraformed by the Traveler. It’s a truly gorgeous raid, with some of the best visuals we’ve seen in a raid to date – which is no small feat.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Root of Nightmares sticks the landing in terms of gameplay and design. It’s a combat focused raid, which there’s nothing wrong with, but it comes at the cost of mechanics. While there’s something to be said for simpler raids, I’d argue that RoN is overly straightforward. Three of the four encounters feel as if they could be Dungeon encounters, requiring little to no communication and collaboration between players. There’s nothing wrong with a short and sweet raid ala Wrath of the Machine, but the limited mechanical complexity means a lot of time is spent dealing with combatants as opposed to engaging with mechanics and puzzles. Where Vow of Disciple maybe leaned a little too hard into mechanical depth, Root of Nightmares is skewed too far in the other direction.

While the seasons that launch alongside major expansions are typically lighter in content, they’re also some of the most consistent. It’s still early days for Season of Defiance, but what’s been released so far has been quite enjoyable. It offers a pretty standard Battlegrounds activity that’s made more engaging through difficulty and high enemy density. The new exotic mission, Avalon, is also a hit for many of the same reasons. The writing here is also leagues above that of the main narrative, and I look forward to tuning in every week to see how the battle on Earth unfolds now that Neptune is (relatively) safe, even if the seasonal model is feeling tired.

Power creep is a concept that frequently rears its head in live-service games, and Destiny 2 is no stranger to it. Our power has grown exponentially over the last few years, and Bungie have decided to reel it in a bit by raising the game’s overall difficulty floor. The changes mostly land, making general playlist content more engaging than usual, incentivizing players to make use of buildcrafting and loadouts.

Not all of it works, though. There’re a few kinks to be ironed out within certain difficulty tiers, Nightfalls, and even Root of Nightmares. A flat increase in difficulty doesn’t work for all aspects of the game, though I suspect it’ll take some more extensive playtesting and feedback to get these activities to where they need to be. As a veteran player, I appreciate the overall increase in challenge, but can also see how it’s alienated some of the casual player-base, and can feel inconsistent.

You could also argue that Lightfall’s best inclusions come in the form of its quality-of-life changes, which are plentiful and vastly improve the overall experience. The mod system has been streamlined to demystify buildcrafting, with many mods being rolled into the new Armor Charge system. While I was initially hesitant at how simplified it seemed to be, I’ve come around to the system quite a bit. Buildcrafting is much less convoluted and you spend less time in menus as a result, while also cutting down on the overall messiness of the inventory. Loadouts and the new mod screen similarly streamline the process of managing armour and mods, making for a much more seamless experience overall.

Another long-standing point of pain, Champions, have also been addressed via using built-in subclass verbs and abilities to stun them. This seemingly insignificant change allows for much more freedom in terms of loadout and weapon choice, and adds a much needed fluidity to the combat loop when dealing with Champions. Artifact Mods have also been reworked to always be active, with the caveat of only being able to unlock 12. You’re free to reset the Artifact whenever you’d like, but its once again another example of cutting down on monotony while still placing buildcrafting at the forefront of Destiny 2’s RPG systems.

Destiny has long had an issue of bringing new and returning players into the fold. Its lack of tutorials and seemingly convoluted systems were alienating to those looking to get into the game. Bungie have made many attempts to address this issue, the latest of which comes in the new Guardian Ranks system. Guardian Ranks acts as an account rank that is meant to display how experienced a Guardian is, while also pointing new players in the direction of what to do next. While I can’t speak for the new player experience (which still doesn’t seem all too great), Guardian Ranks are a nice way to signify a player’s experience with the game, though it has some problems.

Because Guardian Rank unlocks are retroactive, its as if every single player is rank six – the highest you can be when a season begins. This already poses some issues, as someone with 3000 hours versus someone with a few hundred will start a season with the same rank. Unlocking Advanced Ranks allows you to grow further, but they reset at the start of every season, bringing everyone back down to six.

The biggest problem with this is that the system doesn’t really function as intended, and going to all the effort to earn Advanced Ranks feels wrong knowing it’s going to reset. The decision to tie achieving a certain Commendation Score to Guardian Ranks is also a baffling decision, completely undermining their purpose as people hand them out left, right, and centre to bolster their own scores.

If there’s one thing you can always count on with Destiny, it’s that the art team is going to deliver – and deliver they did. Neomuna is positively brimming with detail and architecture that feels almost alien and out of place – the way that a hidden city should be. Root of Nightmares is a visual feast as previously mentioned, and the few forays we’ve had into the Vex Network have me yearning for more. The visual effects of Strand also really pop with neon green threads exploding in every direction as you unravel your foes.

In saying this, Lightfall does continue the trend of buggy expansion launches. While the actual day one experience was remarkably smooth, numerous issues have reared their heads since launch, some of which have yet to be fixed. Aside from the usual weapon and armour bugs that have them doing ludicrous amounts of damage, there’s also an issue with character and weapon models turning invisible during long play sessions, which is seemingly linked to the commendations system. There’s also countless enemy attacks and environmental hazards tied to framerate, which actively punishes players for playing at higher frames. I think its fair to expect bugs on launch, but it’s disappointing that these nagging issues have yet to be fixed.

Expressing my opinion on Lightfall has been tricky. I don’t think this expansion is nearly as bad as some are making it out to be, there’s plenty of good on offer here. Strand, loadouts, mod changes, the post campaign activities, and more are reason enough to argue that Destiny 2 is the best it’s ever been from a gameplay standpoint. Narratively, though, Lightfall objectively fumbles what should have been a homerun at a time where Bungie really can’t afford to do so.

I sincerely hope that the stuff that’s come after the campaign is a signifier of what’s we can expect with future seasons as we build up towards The Final Shape. Despite the disappointing narrative, I’ll keep coming back to Destiny 2 because the other inclusions are just that good, and if you can move past the shortcomings, you might just have a similar experience.

The post Destiny 2: Lightfall Review – Underwhelming Finality appeared first on Press Start.

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a pleasant surprise. Released mere months after Bayonetta 3, the game offers a pseudo origin story for the coquettish witch. It does so differently but similarly to the games that came before it. I wrote at length about how the game’s opening chapters felt simplistic but held high hope that it would turn around as the game progressed. Now, having finished the entirety of the experience, I’m pleasantly surprised. Yes, Cereza and the Lost Demon is a different experience from the Bayonetta games as we know them, but it’s a direction that I wouldn’t mind seeing more games borrow from in the future.

Definitively, Cereza and the Lost Demon takes place before the events of the original Bayonetta. You play as Cereza, an Umbran Witch in training, who sees her mother locked up by the coven for cavorting with a Lumen Sage. Cereza is thus raised by Morgana, a strict teacher who only wants the best for her pupil. Following visions coming to her in a dream, Cereza heads into the mysterious Avalon Forest, looking for power to save her mother. Simultaneously, she summons a demon named Cheshire, who needs something in the forest to find his way home. The two head off into the woods and form an unlikely alliance.

While this is a prequel to the trio of games that came before it, Bayonetta Origins does a great job of adding much-needed context to the events of Bayonetta 3. There are many references to the other games and characters directly referenced between the two. Putting that aside, the game exists as a standalone experience too. Regardless of what you know about Bayonetta, in Cereza and the Lost Demon, it’s a joy to see Cereza start off lacking confidence and eventually become the Bayonetta we know today. Cheshire is similarly a fun foil to Cereza’s inexperienced nature. I was surprised to find myself caring so much about both of them towards the end of the game’s story.

As you’d probably know by now, Cereza and the Lost Demon isn’t a typical Bayonetta game. Instead, it plays most like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. A third-person game presented from an overlooking camera, each of the thumbsticks controls Cereza and Cheshire independently. Cereza can use her entry-level magic to interact with elements of the forest and temporarily debuff enemies. Cheshire is the primary damage dealer and can utilise a wealth of abilities to protect himself and Cereza from damage. It doesn’t sound straightforward, but it comes together relatively intuitively.

When you’re not exploring the many areas of the Avalon Forest, you’ll be in combat. During combat, Cereza can use her magic to bind enemies – slowing them down or bringing them to a halt entirely. On the other hand, Cheshire can attack with melee attacks and even perform flashy combos if he’s attacking enemies already bound by Cereza. It can get a bit intense, but it’s a serviceable combat system that perfectly complements the simplistic nature of the adventure. I spent most of the time in combat watching Cheshire, so you won’t always feel overwhelmed having to control both characters in battle.

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But as you progress through the game, more abilities are doled out to the duo that keeps things interesting. Without ruining anything, Cheshire gains abilities associated with the elements such as projectiles or heavy hitting slam attacks. Cereza also gets more abilities, which I won’t ruin here, but the brunt of the combat focus is on Cheshire. He has a nice range of abilities to unlock, and a surprisingly large and detailed skill tree helps unlock more abilities for both Cereza and Cheshire.

What surprised me even more about Cereza and the Lost Demon was the breadth of enemy types you encounter and even the boss battles. While they’re not as numerous as Bayonetta or as bombastic, they come close. Some of the set pieces feel closer to the first three games than anything else in terms of their action and intensity. It’s almost intentional that as Cereza progresses through the story and starts to resemble Bayonetta from a skill perspective, the game she’s in begins to resemble the games she will be in.

But outside of combat, Cereza and Cheshire can use their abilities, often together, to navigate the forest. A semi-open world, the forest is filled with collectibles that enhance abilities or health and many of them can be found after unlocking a new upgrade for the pair. Cereza can throw Cheshire to others areas as a miniature doll to open up new areas. Cheshire can use his water form to move around bodies of water while his fire form melts ice. There’s more, too, and the puzzles you encounter are by no means complex. However, it’s still satisfying to backtrack and find a new area to explore after obtaining something new.

If you’re connecting the dots, then you’ll probably think that Cereza and the Lost Demon borrows a bit from Metroid. And it does. The Avalon Forest and its surrounding areas can all be freely roamed to find collectibles and eventually unlock costumes for the duo after completing the game. “Sanctuaries” act as little spots for Cereza to rest but also as save and fast travel points. It’s a semi-open world that invites you to explore it if you wish, mainly to improve abilities and stats, but you can be engaged with as much or as little as you want to.

However, things get a bit more involved with the Tír na nÓg areas. These are otherworldly locales that are peppered throughout the map. Some are essential to continue, and others are optional. They’re essentially puzzle trials that Cereza and Cheshire must complete to “purify” the area and highlight other activities near the Tír na nÓg. Sometimes they’re combat trials, similar to the Alfheims from the original Bayonetta. Overall, they’re a great break from exploration and combat to offer a more honed puzzle experience.

Putting this all together, Cereza and the Lost Demon is a comprehensive action-adventure title. There’s a wealth of accessibility options if you’re struggling, but I’d estimate most players could get at least twelve to fifteen hours out of the adventure. Upon finishing, there’s still more to find in the forest and even a secondary story to unlock and play through. My only real complaint, and even then it’s not a huge one, is that this could’ve benefitted from some co-op functionality in some way, though it’s by no means a deal breaker. My first impression of this game was that it might be one-and-done, but with so much to unlock and see, Cereza and the Lost Demon is anything but phoned-in.

This notion can especially be applied to the game’s presentation. Most of the story is told through a mix of lore-filled collectibles and storybook-style cutscenes that, while static in their approach, are meticulously voiced by a strong cast of actors. Combine this with an artistic style that looks like a hand-painted watercolour painting, and you have something distinct and special. Performance-wise, the game runs close to sixty frames while docked and closer to thirty frames while portable. It’s by no means the worst running game on the Switch, but it’s not the best, either. It sits firmly in the middle.

The post Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon Review – A Bewitching Tale appeared first on Press Start.

Having not indulged in the first Figment game, to which this is a sequel, Creed Valley feels very much like another relapse within a disturbed mind. It tells its own contained story, complete with teaching moments. It does feel more like Dreamworks than Disney in its ability to deliver characters and dialogue to help stitch the gorgeous, hand painted world together, but it’s ultimately tough to fault this little indie that could.

You play as an elvish lad named Dusty, the embodiment of courage itself within the mind palace that Figment’s story takes place in. With Piper, his avian aid, he’s tasked with achieving peace inside of a headspace still plagued by nightmares. A day inside the mind is realised creatively, not only do you rhythmically dispatch nightmares but you wade between open-minded and closed-mindedness to converse with anthropomorphic, and quite frankly shaggy to an adorable degree, Opinions—which range from some profoundly important things like self-help to inane topics such as how to leave the toilet seat. 

Which is down, by the way.

There’s a meta story that exists beyond Dusty’s perception, as the nightmares he wrestles with serve as manifestations of external stresses that concern our hero’s owner. It’s not exactly Inside Out in terms of delivery, and it’s kind of just there—it’s doled out in between major story beats and in conjunction with the game’s sole collectible. 

Figment plays kind of like a game jam version of Bastion had it been mashed together with the concepts behind Psychonauts. It’s ultimately an isometric action game that incorporates environmental problem-solving, a small amount of detective work, and some humour to break up the action. 

That’s where the game does experience a few hang-ups. While it’s apt for what it is, Figment’s combat is rather one note. Where a game like Bastion has many weapons on top of many systems to give the gameplay a bit of heft, Figment arms you with a lone wooden sword that can attack lightly, slightly less lightly following a roll, or deflect comically drawn rockets that fire from the periphery of the mind’s defences.

It is simple, which will suit its intended audience, which I’m guessing is younger teens. But if you’re hoping for a rollicking action game with meat on the bone, this one is certainly style being favoured over substance. 

Figment’s marketing certainly promised a musical adventure and I feel like the game does ace this in a few key areas. Music is simply present everywhere in different forms, whether it’s a bridge made of piano ivories or boss fights dressed up as full blown musical numbers. Figment is certainly a theatrical game, and I couldn’t wipe the grin off of my face during any of the handful of original compositions. 

As far as ads go, the enemy variety is rather sparse too. Reflecting now, I can recall perhaps three or four enemies that’ll aim to cause you grief. While this’d spell trouble in a twelve hour game, Figment’s brevity serves it well here, ensuring that neither its limited mechanics and cast of villains overstay their welcome. If nothing else, Figment delivers a brief adventure fitting of its budget price.

The game’s art direction is one of its strongest points, without doubt. While mindset, which as I established there’s two to hop between, can guarantee varying moods, there’s a lovely assortment of colours this game leans on to deliver its oil paint on canvas aesthetic. I actually adored the imperfections too, especially the unevenly dried globs of paint. I feel like it has an almost rushed look that, in tandem with a particular scenic vista near the endgame, speaks to the inability of Dusty’s surrogate to slow down enough to smell the roses and ultimately embrace joy. 

I encountered only one game-halting bug in my handful of hours, but fortunately due to the rather short chapters, I was simply able to restart and quickly catch up. The game performed well otherwise, save for a few moments of slow down when one of the bigger skirmishes took place.

Figment 2: Creed Valley is a quaint game that’ll warm a lot of hearts. There’s nothing it does particularly wrong, in fact it’s quite capable in all facets of what a game can be. It’s simply a case of where less isn’t more, it’s just less. The combat is fun, but one-note and there aren’t enough enemy types to warrant strategic thought. Fortunately, the moxie of Dusty, the gleeful exuberance of the world itself, and the big showman-like show tunes from the roided-out baddies would make our Hugh blush.

It’s a fun romp, you’ve just gotta put your mind to it.

The post Figment 2: Creed Valley Review – In One Ear And Out The Other appeared first on Press Start.

It doesn’t happen often, and I’m not ashamed to admit when it does, but Before Your Eyes had me doing a cheeky little cry by the time its credits rolled around. Which is a weird phenomenon when you’re strapped into a VR headset, but to the PlayStation VR2’s credit it does have decent drainage for human tears, so that’s something. After just under two hours experiencing the abridged version of a life in its entirety, controlled entirely with my eyes, I remain convinced that the medium of VR still has an incredible amount of untapped potential when it comes to storytelling.

Before Your Eyes, without saying too much and spoiling what is a heck of an emotional ride, sees players take on the role of Benjamin Brynn, who is dead. As you’re ferried toward an ominous-looking tower to be judged by the “Gatekeeper,” steered there by a mysterious wolf-like fella, you learn that your ultimate fate will be decided by the story of your life before death and how compelling of a retelling your new canid companion can give it. And so, you’ll spend the next little while revisiting key moments in Ben’s life from infancy to childhood and beyond to piece together his journey.

While it’s a mostly passive experience with nothing in the way of obstacles or challenges to overcome, save for a handful of opportunities to choose your responses to situations, Before Your Eyes offers a novel take on interactivity with its titular gimmick – eye tracking. Thanks to the capabilities of the new PlayStation VR2 headset (the game was previously available for PC and mobile platforms with various control solutions), the entire game is controlled with nothing but glances and blinks. Each new scene generally has you fixed in place, observing the people around Ben like his aspiring-composer-turned-reluctant-accountant mother, his classically goofy dad or oddball friend Chloe, occasionally looking at people or objects when prompted and blinking to interact with them.

Blinking also serves as the game’s other core mechanic, where blinking during certain scenes will skip the story forward in time. It sounds simple enough, like pressing a button to cycle through scenes in a regular game, but when I say that this one idea had me shaken on multiple occasions throughout Before Your Eyes I’m not exaggerating. The amount of times I strained to keep both eyes open because I was invested in what was happening, only to accidentally blink and lose the moment forever is too painful to recall and really drove home the idea that I was seeing my life flash before my eyes, desperately clinging on to the pivotal moments that I wanted so badly to remember only to have them coldly ripped away from me. I feel as though loss is a tough thing to convey in a video game, but Before Your Eyes nails it.

There are other moments where the sensory experience of the PS VR2 further serves the emotional beats that the game is going for, especially in scenes where you’re asked to shut your eyes to keep the world around you moving. Tightly holding my eyes closed while my parents fight around me, glances of movement obscuring and revealing light that barely seeps through me eyelids and hearing their footsteps and voices shift around the room – well, let’s not explore that too deeply on a video game website but it got me good.

It’s all truly powerful stuff, in spite of the game’s relatively simplistic look, short runtime and sparse interactivity. What GoodbyeWorld Games has done with Before Your Eyes is execute on a novel concept with the perfect amount of restraint and a carefully-paced emotional journey to create something truly special, something that uses the medium of VR and the unique features of its target hardware to hit that much harder. If you’ve got a PS VR2 and a taste for artsy, contemplative indie experiences then you owe it to yourself to play this.

The post Before Your Eyes Mini Review – Not A Dry Eye In The House appeared first on Press Start.

The Outer Worlds was one of my favourite RPGs of the last generation, with Obsidian Entertainment playing to the strengths it proved in the fan-favourite Fallout: New Vegas and producing a succinct sci-fi romp with fantastic characters, a dense and detailed world and some hilarious writing.

Now, the game is back and jazzed up for both the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S platforms as well as PCs rocking more modern hardware. I’ve spent the last few days checking out the PS5 version specifically, after having originally reviewed the game and completed a couple of playthroughs on the PS4 where it certainly felt hamstrung by the comparatively meagre console hardware.

Free of last-gen confinement, the new Spacer’s Choice Edition of the game offers improved visuals, some slight gameplay tweaks, PS5-specific DualSense features and a complete content package with both previously-release DLC expansions.

PS4 (left) vs PS5 (right)

Naturally the most immediate difference in the new-gen version of the game is the visuals, which benefit from changes both big and small. The game’s sweeping, planetary environments look much more detailed and lush thanks to upgraded assets, better draw distances and an improved lighting model. A lot of characters and objects aren’t obviously improved until you compare them side-by-side with the last-gen versions of the games but they do sport some improved animation work in places. The game’s overall look is significantly nicer than before, and it all goes a long way to selling the incredible art direction that’s always been there.

Unfortunately, while it looks great performance is a bit weird (at least on console). There are two modes with a graphics-focused option offering a sharper image with noticeably better lighting and particle effects, as well as a performance option that dials things down slightly in favour of a higher framerate. I was expecting the performance setting to be leaning toward a locked 60fps given the age of the game and the power of the new machines but it seems to really struggle, instead wavering wildly and introducing some distracting stutter. While I’d normally be happy to take a bit of a visual hit and stick with the higher framerate option I’d actually almost recommend going the other way with this one and taking the nicer visuals – it’s a game that plays just fine at 30fps anyway.

PS5 Performance Mode (left) vs Graphics Mode (right)

One big performance benefit comes by way of the load times, which are far from instant here but still a huge reduction over the original’s frustratingly lengthy load screens on console.

As far as gameplay goes, this is pretty much still The Outer Worlds you know and love, although Obsidian does promise some small tweaks like an increased level cap, which should make coming back for a new playthrough at least a little more interesting, and improved companion and enemy AI – something I’m inclined to believe is a thing but is hard to realistically gauge after having not played the original in a while. Of course, both DLC expansions are included in Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos, which are both fine additions to the game. The addition of support for haptic feedback and adaptive triggers on PS5 is definitely welcome, with the game’s already-great selection of interesting and fun sci-fi weapons all feeling that much more distinct here.

The thing that makes or breaks the value proposition with The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition really is the way it’s being offered. If you’re brand new to the game and don’t own it on any platform, it’s around $90 AUD for this updated version including the expansions, which in my eyes isn’t too bad for what you’re getting. If you already own the game and not the extra DLC however, you’ll also still be up for the full ninety bucks, which kinda stings. Lastly, anyone who does own the base game and both expansions is eligible for a $12 paid upgrade. There’s probably a lot to argue around the value of these new-gen upgrades and the mechanics of how they’re implemented but I can’t help but feel this isn’t going to be ideal for a lot of prospective players.

There’s also no save transfer from the old version to this new one, which is a bit of a bummer.

At the end of the day, The Outer Worlds is still an excellent RPG that I’d highly recommend to fans of slightly-camp sci-fi adventures or most of Bethesda and Bioware’s catalogue. This new iteration isn’t perfect, but it’s both a great jumping-in point and a nice little upgrade for fans who don’t mind splashing a little cash to replay it in improved form.

If you’re yet to experience The Outer Worlds for yourself and you’re keen to know more, you can read my original review of the game (played on PS4) right here:

Picture this: you’re one out of tens of thousands of interplanetary colonists on The Hope, an enormous space station bound for a shiny new, corporate-owned colony in space. The trip is supposed to take ten long years, with the entire population in cryogenic sleep. Something goes awry though, and The Hope is stuck out in space for closer to seventy, at which point waking any human up from cryosleep would result in ‘explosive cell death’. A scientist by the name of Phineas Welles manages to science-up a chemical concoction to revive just one colonist though – you. You quickly learn that the corporate-owned Halcyon Colony hasn’t quite panned out the way it should’ve, with at least one planet already all but abandoned, and the divide between the powerful and the poor at its most extreme. Plus, the reasons for The Hope never making its destination are murky at best and sinister at worst. What would you do?

That’s the question that The Outer Worlds asks, but the answer is entirely up to you. I mean it when I say that, too. Keen to save your people and tear down the systematic oppression that the Halcyon Holdings Corporation is using to live in luxury at the cost of the colony? Sounds great. More concerned with taking advantage of the state of the colony and rising to power than helping revive the people on The Hope? Fuck those people. You do you. One of the reasons this all works so well is The Outer Worlds’ absolutely stellar (pun intended) writing. From the sheer enormity of incidental detail and pages upon pages of descriptive text contributing to the overall worldbuilding, to the superbly fleshed-out characters, it’s clear that a lot of love was poured into crafting the Halcyon Colony. There’s also some really welcome representation for sorely underrepresented groups in the game that comes across as genuine and meaningful, which is really nice to see. Above all, the game is gut-bustingly funny, to the point where I’d call this one of the all-time greatest examples of how comedy can really work in games.

Your immense influence on the narrative is impressive, as is the way that every quandary is less a simple moral choice than a considered and calculated maneuver. Obsidian have truly kept the ‘Role Playing’ in RPG alive in The Outer Worlds, and the way the story plays out from the grand scale to every small detail is entirely in your hands. At face value, the core mission and plot at the heart of the game is quite simple, but there’s a complex world full of equally complex systems to allow players to determine for themselves their role in the whole thing. Put in the hard work and you might start to see that the ‘bad guys’ aren’t always who you think they are, and sometimes you just have to kiss the corporate ring to get to where you need to be.

The other side of all this role-playing goodness is deep, robust and surprisingly approachable RPG progression. Everything your character does (or is able to do) in the Halcyon Colony is underpinned by their skills. Every time your character levels up they earn ten points to spend across seven skill groups, each with two or three subsets of skills. It’s mostly traditional RPG-type stuff like weapon proficiencies, sneaking and hacking, medicine, science and so on. The skills affect everything from your effectiveness in combat to the options available to you in conversations and the way in which you’re able to interact with the world. That might all seem pretty traditional as far as these types of games go, but The Outer Worlds does such a fantastic job of providing players with options upon options for how they approach each and every moment that where you put your points has a marked and tangible effect on every facet of your character’s journey.

One quick example of how this works in practice would be one of the many times that I found I needed access to a restricted area. The easiest way to traipse through off-limits places is to use your handy Holographic Shroud to disguise yourself as someone who is supposed to be there. Usually this is done by procuring a relevant ID, and so in this case I knew I could get one from a certain character. Trouble was, my character’s dialogue skills weren’t quite where they needed to be to convince this person to just part with their ID. My next best option would have been to just steal it from them, but my sneaking and lockpicking skills were also too low to get into their stash (and without them seeing) thanks to my oversized armour with its -5 sneak penalty. The solution? Go back to my ship, respec my skills to put more into lockpicking, strip (almost) naked, go back and break into the person’s place, steal their ID and be on my merry way. This one situation could have played out so many ways depending on my character’s build and how I, the player, wanted to approach it though. The way that character skills and playstyles gel together in The Outer Worlds is extremely satisfying and makes for some great emergent storytelling.

During this one encounter is also where my character picked up their first Flaw; an optional, permanent hit to a predetermined skill in return for an extra Perk point. In this case, the Flaw I was offered was ‘Paranoia’, a result of my being caught one too many times sneaking around restricted areas (although I always managed to talk my way out). Flaws are a lot of fun, taking your existing gameplay habits and offering you a chance to better yourself in spite of them. Fall off of stuff a lot? Being harshly debuffed when close to edges means you won’t get so close to them in future. Developed a fear of Raptidons from being mauled by them too often? Maybe now you’ll stop bothering them out in the wilderness. Okay, you probably won’t but you get the idea.

Companions are another big factor into how players’ individual stories will wind up being told. There are six of them in total, although it’s entirely possible to play through the game without ever letting any of them join your crew (good luck playing that way, though). Aside from helping you out in battle, each of these characters brings with them a rich backstory and their own personal quests to assist them in. These quests often mesh with existing storylines, and your companions will regularly interject in conversations with NPCs that are relevant to them, so the simple act of letting someone tag along on your adventures has a real effect on your experience. It’s also fun to experiment with different pairings of characters to see how they interact with each other. At one point I took a new companion out with myself and my favourite, Vicar Max, and we got exactly five minutes into exploring before she asked to call him ‘Vicky’ and he told her “Absolutely fucking not.”

While you could, with great difficulty, complete the entire game without ever taking another life – chances are that you’ll spend a decent chunk of your time in The Outer Worlds engaged in combat. For me, this is probably the game’s weakest area. Not that the combat is bad by any stretch, just that it doesn’t feel quite as fully realised as everything else. What’s there is solid; the shooting feels nice enough, the enemies (especially the awesome-looking alien creatures) are fun to fight and the companions are super helpful in a pinch. It wasn’t long before every fight started to feel the same though. Part of that can probably be attributed to my very basic, ‘tank-y’ character build, but this is also a relatively small world with few enemy types, whose AI patterns usually just boil down to rushing the player. There are a few awesome wrinkles to combat though; like Tactical Time Dilation, which lets you slow down the action and target specific enemy parts for crippling effects (think V.A.T.S., but with live aim).

This is without even going into the myriad options available when it comes to weapons, armour and other neat gear, but this is all Serious RPG Stuff that I’m not about to bore anyone with but RPG nerds will absolutely love. There are (mostly minor) gripes to be had though, starting with an occasionally clunky interface; especially the way item description boxes pop up over other items while you’re sorting through them. The ammo system can also be quite inconvenient – breaking weapons up into just three ammo categories means even if I spend the whole game armed with a wide spread of weapon types, they could all be pulling from the ‘heavy’ ammo category, leaving me with not enough of that and an abundance of ‘light’ and ‘energy’ ammo that I’ll never use.

One clear distinction from other, similar games that The Outer Worlds makes for itself is that it’s vibrant as hell. Obsidian weren’t afraid to give their world some actual colour, and the game is all the better for it. It borders on garish at times, but that’s just part of its charm. It really sells the satirical nature of the world, and also helps make the environment easy to read. Characters are equally creative and outlandish in their design, and look great in up-close conversation. They’re almost all voiced fantastically, too, with some notable names like Ashley Burch and Crispin Freeman among the very capable cast. The only real issues I had with the game’s presentation were the very noticeable texture pop-in that occurs when entering new areas and the annoying load screens when entering or exiting towns, larger buildings and the interior of the player’s ship, but those certainly aren’t deal-breakers.

The post The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition Review – Some Choice Upgrades appeared first on Press Start.

Despite the massive impact that FromSoftware’s titles have had on the games industry over the last decade, there are very few experiences that scratch the same itch. From’s world building and sense of place is unrivalled, it’s a daunting task to make a “Souls-like” and have it constantly compared to one of the most timeless franchises of the last decade. This is something Team Ninja has been keenly aware of in their forays into the genre, opting to focus on the combat and RPG aspects of these games to deliver something action-heavy and high-octane.

If the Nioh duology is Team Ninja’s answer to Dark Souls, then Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty serves the same purpose to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Much like Nioh, though, Wo Long’s comparisons to its parallel are surface deep, offering an experience that’s much different to From’s 2019 hit. It leans more heavily into the combat fantasy of split-second decisions, speedy reflexes, and flashy action to make for an immensely satisfying and mechanically deep experience that insists you step up to the plate and surmount its seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Set during the Later Han Dynasty of China, specifically the Three Kingdoms period, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty follows your unnamed player character navigate their way through the murky waters of war and chaos. Despite starting out as an unremarkable militia soldier, you’ll quickly gain notoriety as you rise up to fight back a demonic outbreak plaguing China, often crossing paths with notable figures from Chinese history in the process of dealing with the source of this supernatural threat.

Wo Long’s narrative ultimately serves as a sort of adaptation of these events with a dark fantasy flavour, imbuing it with supernatural elements and twisted takes on Chinese mythology. All the carnage and chaos that transpires really sells the idea that the long-standing Imperial dynasty is on the verge of collapse. The story itself is relatively paint-by-numbers, with a few interesting elements that might keep you from skipping cutscenes, but won’t necessarily have you on the edge of your seat. The most alluring aspect of it is interacting with storied heroes like Lu Bu and how they fit into Team Ninja’s take on a more dramatised retelling of the period.

Where Wo Long categorically excels, though, is in its combat. It’s similar to Sekiro at its core, but has so many in-depth systems built around it that it becomes a much more involved and measured process. That isn’t to discount the challenge of Sekiro’s rhythmic flow, but Wo Long has a much faster pace to it overall that demands your full attention at all times. Between regular encounters and boss fights, there’s much to look forward to for fans of the genre.

It’s all built around the Spirit Gauge, which acts as a sort of posture/poise meter, while also doubling as a resource in combat. Proper deflect timing, counters, and light attacks will build up this meter, while using heavy attacks, Wizardry Spells, and Martial Arts will expend it, as well as getting hit. Using any of the aforementioned attacks costs Spirit Gauge, but also grow in power in accordance with how much you have.

Breaking an enemy’s Spirit Gauge opens them up for a critical attack, but your own can also be broken, leaving you completely defenceless for a short window of time. It lends to a constant risk/reward factor in combat where you know that one more successful deflect means you can unleash a nasty heavy attack for big damage, or cast a Wizardry Spell without putting your own Spirit Gauge in danger.

Even dodging and deflecting costs Spirit Gauge to use, so throwing them out in the hope to survive will set you on path towards swift demise. It can be overwhelming at first, but you’ll quickly find that you perform every action in combat with intent, and the decision to tie your Martial Arts and Wizardry Spells to a consistently renewable resource means you’ll engage with them much more than you otherwise would.

The cherry on top are Critical Attacks and Divine Beasts. The former are heavy hitting attacks that can’t be blocked. Successfully deflecting these results in a large chunk of Spirit Gauge damage, as well as shortening the enemy’s overall Spirit Gauge until their next break. Divine Beasts function similarly to the Guardian Spirits of Nioh, where you can summon an equipped beast when the Divine Beast Gauge is full to gain advantages in combat, or use to them unleash a powerful attack.

Progression throughout levels is also another novel concept that Wo Long builds on in interesting ways, namely through the Morale system. While you’ll level and gear your character as you play through missions, each one also has its own Morale ranks to raise through exploration. You and your enemies have your own Morale ranks, which determine your overall strength within missions. Generally, you don’t want to go up against enemies with significantly higher levels of Morale than you. You lose Morale through death and getting hit by critical attacks, while it’s gained in a few ways, most notably through dispatching enemies, and via the brilliant Fortitude system.

Fortitude represents the lowest that your Morale can drop to. You’ll start main missions with zero Fortitude, while side missions are usually higher. As you explore levels, you’ll find Battle Flags and Marking Flags, both of which increase your Fortitude, meaning you’re slowly lifting your minimum Morale as you venture through each mission. This mechanic alone if enough to incentivise exploration in Wo Long’s environments. You can absolutely try to beeline to the boss room while gaining Morale on the way, but without hitting any flags, you’ll lose it all as soon as you die, and it isn’t exactly easy to recover.

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Morale applies to your enemies as well, which is another thing to consider. Hitting an enemy with a critical attack after breaking their Spirit Gauge will drop their Morale by one, and some enemies can boost their allies Morale passively. Additionally, you can find groups of enemies guarding Battle Flags that need to be dispatched before you can claim them, and picking them off one-by-one is incentivised to slowly whittle away at their Morale. Not only is it a fantastic form of progression within each level, but it also goes hand-in-hand with the setting and themes of Wo Long.

I will admit that there’s a lot to contend with here. Even the most seasoned of Souls-like veterans will need to take some time to adjust and learn all the systems at play here. It can be confusing at first, especially when so much is thrown at you in the opening hours of the game, but sticking with it gives way to systems that intertwine to create a cohesive combat system that’s incredibly satisfying to master.

A combat system like this is nothing without good enemy design, but this is another area where Wo Long delivers in spades. Both visually and mechanically, there are many foes to contend with here, each with unique move sets and capabilities that keep you on your toes. Seeing these Chinese myths converted into more demonic forms is fascinatingly morbid that always had me keen to see what was up next. The boss fights are a particular highlight, serving as firm punctuation marks to the end of each level. Some of them are definitively better than others, but they’re still always something to look forward to.

The other core form of progression is your traditional levelling, but there’s also some changes made here that keep Wo Long unique within the genre. Instead of investing points attained with each level in traditional stats, you can put it into one of five Virtues, each one scaling with different weapon types, boosting their own stats, and grating access to specific wizardry spells. There’s less incentive to generalise and a push to spec into one or two Virtues specifically to build out your character. The high level wizardry spells require quite high Virtue levels, so investing in a particular type yields worthwhile rewards.

When it comes to weapons and armour, there’s a tried and true focus on acquiring loot from chests, enemies, and by completing levels. Unfortunately, much like Team Ninja’s other titles, there is far too much loot to collect and manage. Stranger of Paradise made some progress in this regard via the inclusion of an auto-equip function, but even that is sorely lacking in Wo Long. You end up spending long stretches of time in menus, picking and choosing which armour and weapon combinations you want to use, along with ranged weapons and charms also.

A vast majority of the loot you’ll get across your first playthrough will eventually become useless, and ends up getting sold or tossed away at some point. One welcome inclusion is the ability to upgrade weapons and armour with materials, but it’s hard to commit to making a proper build when a bulk of the best gear drops in the post-game.

Speaking of weapons, there’s a wide array to choose from here, each with their own string of light attacks and a heavy attack. Each one also comes with a unique set of Martial Arts, and higher rarity weapons drop with special effects that can further cater to a particular play style. There’s a lot to sink your teeth into here if you’re a fan of Team Ninja’s post-game build crafting, but it can feel arbitrary outside of that as you constantly cycle through gear for better stats.

Wo Long isn’t a particularly pretty game in the traditional sense. It’s rife with grunge and rancid corruption that go a long way to building up the world and the events transpiring within it. Each battlefield you’ll visit is remarkably unique, from towering forts to serene mountainsides. No matter where you go, though, Demonic Qi has taken hold. It’s an all around well-realised setting that I never got tired of exploring despite how desolate and war-torn it can be at times.

The PS5 version features two visual presets, one that prioritises frame rate, and another that focuses on resolution. I found that the resolution mode, while gorgeous, often dropped below 60 frames when the going got tough, which isn’t ideal for a game as reflex based as this. The performance mode is what I spent my playthrough on, which sports a consistently smooth 60 frames no matter what was transpiring on screen.

While Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty falls victim to the problems of Team Ninja’s prior Souls-like outings, there’s no denying that there’s an excellently crafted game here that’s unique among their offerings. It has such strong combat, and some really great ideas that execute just as well, that it’s easy to look past what few flaws there are and really enjoy what’s on offer here. I’ve always enjoyed Team Ninja’s games, but Wo Long in particular is an experience I won’t be forgetting anytime soon, and one I’ll surely be revisiting over the years.

The post Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Review – Mechanical Bliss appeared first on Press Start.

Initially revealed at Gamescom last year, Scars Above is a challenging action game set in a science fiction-inspired world full of places to explore and creatures to survive. In truth it’s a little bit Souls, a little bit Metroid, and a lot of fun, elemental combat. It’s a lot smaller in scope than any of the games it seems inspired by, but Scars Above is a decently exciting romp through an alien planet, acquiring knowledge and burning things on your quest for truth and the scientific method.

Scars Above put you in the shoes of scientist Dr Kate Ward, one of a team sent to investigate a strange object in space. Soon enough though, things go awry and Kate finds herself stranded and alone on an alien planet searching for her colleagues and struggling to survive. You’ll encounter a strange, ghostly being that seems to be encouraging you to explore this strange planet, beckoning you to discover how it came to be as it is.

The game gives you three main ways to engage with its world – explore, do science, and fight. Exploration is fairly enjoyable, but don’t expect something as complex or rewarding as Metroid or Dark Souls on that front. Areas are structured around big alien objects called pillars. Think of these like checkpoints – you’ll start at the last pillar you checked in at if you die, and all the creatures you’ve defeated will return, but you’ll also reload your ammo reserves and restore your health.

Between pillars there is usually a path forward, and side paths that you can explore for collectibles and occasionally to open shortcut paths. Both are worthwhile. Finding a shortcut can help you get to areas more easily after dying and returning to a pillar, and collectibles are useful for upgrading your character and weapons for combat. Environments are varied enough to remain interesting, and you generally don’t spend long enough in any one place for things to feel stale. Exploring in Scars never really gets more cerebral than making sure you go down each fork in the road to find the goodies at the end, but it helps keep the pace brisk.

Science and the pursuit of knowledge as a theme is something that sets Scars apart, even if it is mostly set dressing. A few times during the game you’ll encounter situations or mechanisms you need to visually analyse to find important elements and then come to a conclusion about what happened or how a device functions. You don’t earn experience by defeating enemies like in most games, but by gaining knowledge about the world around you. This can be done by scanning the bodies of defeated creatures (only once per creature though, so there’s no grinding) and in a way that ironically engaged my ‘brain off’ mechanism – by finding ‘Knowledge Cubes’ littered around the environment.

The science theme is an interesting one and it’s used mostly to good effect. Your character becomes stronger through knowledge rather than strictly through violence and training. Just try not to think too hard about cubes that make you smarter.

Combat, then, is the other major piece of Scars Above’s gameplay, and it’s where the game shines brightest. Your main weapon is initially not a weapon at all, more a general science tool, but it unsurprisingly finds usefulness in combat. You can use different elemental projectiles which all have some effect on enemies and the environment around them. A lot of enemies have glowing weak points and some have moments of weakness you can exploit if you pay attention to their animations. Your initial weapon fires bolts of electricity and you’ll soon see the effect this can have on enemies that are wet or standing in water.

Later elemental upgrades like fire are used to set enemies or areas alight, and ice can slow quick enemies down to give you a chance to collect yourself. Throw in the gadgets you unlock throughout the game that give you even more options (highlights to me were capsules of flammable liquid that can set groups of creatures alight and a gravity well that can hold enemies in place for a short while) and you get a combat system that is easy enough to grasp but rewarding to experiment with.

Visually, Scars Above has it’s ups and downs. Cutscenes in particular bring things down quite a bit. The animation is quite wooden in both general movement as well as faces – it reminded me of scenes in the first Mass Effect and it feels a generation or two behind compared to its contemporaries. Once you’re through the cutscenes though, actual gameplay looks quite decent. There are some definite standout creature designs that I really enjoyed and some varied, well-realised alien environments to admire and move around in.

Sound design has some highlights as well. Music generally is pretty sparse during the experience, but some particularly cool moments are accented by fantastic sci-fi synth music that bring scenes to life.

I had a pretty fun time with Scars Above. Its themes of science and the pursuit of knowledge are a neat idea and the story goes to some interesting places that I found fairly compelling and even timely given recent advances in AI technology. The elementally-infused combat is engaging enough to feel fresh throughout and environments are varied enough that the exploration doesn’t get stale until a section in the late game that I found killed the pace a bit right as things were getting interesting.

Scars Above is out now on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Amazon has the game for $59 with free shipping.

The post Scars Above Review – The Pursuit of Knowledge appeared first on Press Start.

The idea of a “pro” gaming controller might still be alien to some, but with the advent of big-name entries into the market like the Xbox Elite Series 2 and the PlayStation DualSense Edge controller, it’s certainly feeling like a growing sector. Razer’s no stranger to the concept, having released more than a few pro-level controllers in the past, but the Wolverine V2 Pro – an officially licenced, wireless premium controller for the PS5 – might just be its boldest yet. And at an RRP of $475.95, it’s most expensive.

I’ve been putting the Razer Wolverine V2 Pro through its paces recently, in an effort to try to decipher whether or not that’s an appropriate amount of money to pay for this thing.

I’m hesitant to start making direct comparisons to PS5’s DualSense Edge controller this soon, but right off the bat the unboxing experience of the Razer Wolverine V2 Pro felt a little flat in comparison to Sony’s $150-cheaper alternative. Where that pad came packed inside an attractive and sturdy carrying case, complete with a 2.8m braided cable, a cable lock, four thumbstick caps and removable back paddles, Razer’s new controller sits in some protective foam with a 1.4m cable, the required wireless receiver and just two thumbstick caps.

Luckily once you’ve got the controller in-hand it’s clear that this is a well-made bit of kit. It’s surprisingly light for its size, especially compared to the rather dense Edge, but it feels sturdy and nicely finished with a matte body and textured grips that seem like they’ll hold up well to long-term use. I did notice that a couple of the rear switches on my review unit were loose enough that there was a consistent, audible ‘shake’ to them that occasionally wormed its way into my ear holes but hopefully that’s an exception rather than the norm. Asymmetrical thumbsticks are definitely a personal preference that may make or break the decision for some, but it’s definitely nice to have an option like this on the market.

Crucially, the buttons on the Wolverine V2 Pro feel fantastic to play with. The mechanical “Mecha-Tactile” face, shoulder and d-pad buttons have a wonderful, clicky press that not only actuates at lightning speeds but is genuinely addictive to use, basically emulating the responsive, tactile mouse clicks that PC players enjoy. The 8-way microswitch d-pad’s delightful clickiness makes it feel far more accurate and responsive than what just about any other controller offers. The triggers and analogue sticks are maybe a little less exciting to use, but both at least offer some degree of customisation with short-distance trigger stops that you can change individually on each and the aforementioned interchangeable thumbstick caps.

It’s hard to really gauge whether or not Razer’s Wolverine V2 Pro made me a better player while I was using it (the bar is so low that the science is just too unclear), I definitely felt like it could help me get better by pushing up the ceiling of performance. I’m not entirely convinced of the positioning of its two added shoulder buttons and four, neatly arranged back buttons for someone with small hands like myself but it’s more extra buttons than most. I do think that Hall Effect sensors in the thumbsticks would have been a superior inclusion and helped to justify the asking price, but they’re sadly not here.

And while most veteran players would argue that wired play is still the way to go, Razer’s argument in its HyperSpeed wireless connection is definitely a feasible alternative and it’s as easy as plugging the included USB receiver into the front or back ports on your PS5 and turning the controller on. Something the Wolverine V2 Pro can boast as a massive advantage over the DualSense family of controllers, including the Edge, is a battery that’ll last you more than one Destiny 2 raid. Battery life is rated at 10 hours with Chroma lighting on or a huge 28 hours with it off, and in my use I can corroborate that as being fairly spot-on. If your controller’s stamina is of any concern, this is a marked improvement and a major selling point in my eyes.

One big, on-the-box feature that can comfortably account for a portion of the asking price of the Wolverine V2 Pro is the official PlayStation licensing. Though, in practice this means far less than I was hoping. For a controller built in collaboration with PlayStation it’s disappointing that there’s no haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, built-in speaker or gyroscope – nothing that the competitive market it caters to would or should care about but all features the DualSense Edge still possesses. More annoyingly, the controller can’t be used to turn the PS5 console on – you’ll have to do that manually or through a HDMI-CEC compatible TV.

Since I’ve amassed a glut of PS5 controllers, I inevitably decided that I’d enjoy using the Wolverine V2 Pro with my PC – something that can easily be done by popping the HyperSpeed USB receiver into a free port and toggling the controller to “PC” mode on the back. After Windows recognised it, I jumped into the same Razer Synapse software I use to customise all of the other Razer peripherals plugged into my PC to start setting it up and customising it… only to find out I couldn’t do that.

Instead, any tweaks you want to make to the controller’s mappable buttons, performance or Chroma RGB lighting need to be done by syncing it up to the Razer Controller app on iOS or Android. Having to download an entirely separate app just to tweak a few settings felt like a step too far when Razer has an integrated ecosystem already, but I can definitely appreciate being able to do it from my phone if I’m, say, gaming in my lounge room or bringing the controller to a local tournament. So more choices would be nice, but the one available method is a good one.

In the Razer Controller app, you’re able to set up to four customisable profiles that can then be saved to the Wolverine V2 Pro itself and switched on the fly using a multifunction key underneath the PlayStation/power button. These profiles can contain settings for basic thumbstick sensitivity, the mapping of the two extra shoulder buttons and four back buttons and a single zone of Chroma RGB lighting. It’s a pretty barebones setup and definitely falls far short of competing controllers, plus it’s kind of a kick in the teeth that the example image of a Wolverine V2 Pro with Chroma RGB used right within the app suggests multi-zone lighting is a thing when it definitely is not.

And that’s the overall experience with Razer’s new PS5-licenced pro controller in a nutshell, really. What’s here is good, even great, with a premium build and comfort, good connectivity and some incredibly satisfying and responsive button switches making it a controller aimed squarely at pro players and absolutely nailing those fundamentals. At just shy of $500 though, it’s missing far too many features to recommend it over something like the DualSense Edge for those just wanting a flashier pad with all the bells and whistles.

The Razer Wolverine Pro V2 is available in Australian retailers now. Amazon currently has it at a discounted price of $449 with free shipping.

The post Razer Wolverine V2 Pro Review – A Solid But Compromised Pro Controller appeared first on Press Start.

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land marked a turning point for Kirby when it released on the Wii in 2011. Previous entries had mostly deviated from the traditional formula fans had come to expect, and tended to vary in quality from title to title. Return to Dream Land brought the series back to its fundamentals, eventually paving the way to the fantastic Kirby: Triple Deluxe, and its spiritual sequel Kirby: Planet Robobot.

Kirby’s come a long way since, with its first fully 3D entry in the form of Kirby and the Forgotten Land launching last year on the Switch. With a successful transition to the third dimension, and a relatively underwhelming 2D entry in Star Allies, it feels all too right for Return to Dream Land to receive the deluxe treatment. While the value proposition is questionable for those looking to double-dip, the end result is a content-packed experience that’s as timeless as it is charming, and one worth jumping into for any new fans of the franchise.

After watching an interdimensional ship known as the Lor Starcutter crash on planet Popstar, Kirby, Meta Knight, King Dedede, and Bandana Dee go to investigate. The pilot of the ship, Magalor, reveals to the gang that parts of the ship have been scattered across Popstar, and he can’t return home until the Starcutter is repaired. Selfless as ever, Kirby and co. set off to find the missing pieces in exchange for a trip to Magalor’s home world of Halcandra.

It’s a standard Kirby plot that any fan of the series can predict from the outset, but that doesn’t stop it from being a heartwarming little adventure across Popstar. It largely serves as the backdrop for the gameplay, but it’s cool to see Kirby’s mainstay villains set aside their differences to help Magalor. Throw in some revamped cutscenes and a few late-game story beats to keep things moving, and you end up with a cute little adventure about friendship and camaraderie that feels right at home in a Kirby game.

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe is largely the same experience as the original when it comes to the main story, with a few new bells and whistles to boot. It’s a very traditional 2D Kirby game, with a heap of Copy Abilities, collectibles to hunt down, bosses to battle, and platforming challenges to overcome. It’s a bit of mindless fun when playing solo that never overstays its welcome, but the game really excels in cooperative play, where all manner of chaos unfolds as you move through levels that introduce new mechanics and ideas that keeps you on your toes.

The Copy Abilities are where Return to Dream Land really shines. There’s a truckload of them to play with here, some of them new to the Deluxe version, but each one feels unique and fleshed out. It keeps the level to level progression varied, and it feels like there’s always something new to learn with each new ability you encounter. It all comes to a head with Super Abilities, where swallowing Super enemies grants Kirby temporary Copy Abilities that are vastly stronger than usual, allowing you to completely decimate enemies with attacks that fill the screen in glorious fashion.

While Kirby has never been about difficulty, Return to Dream Land has a noticeably flat difficulty curve throughout the main story, that only picks up a little bit towards the end. Part of this is due to the Super Abilities, but Return to Dream Land doesn’t go out of its way to challenge you in general, even when it comes down to hunting the Energy Spheres hiding in each level. There is decent incentive for collecting these, though, as they unlock doors on the Lor Starcutter that grant access to Copy Ability rooms and most notably – Copy Ability Challenges.

These are short and sweet platforming challenges that really test your aptitude with individual Copy Abilities. The idea is to make it to the goal with as many points as possible, through defeating enemies, collecting coins, and avoiding damage. It’s easy enough to get bronze and silver rankings for these, but the real chase comes from hunting down the gold ranks. The need for efficient use of Copy Abilities and precise platforming kept me coming back attempt after attempt so I could reach the ever-tantalising gold ranks for each challenge.

The two biggest inclusions in this package, come in the form of Helper Magalor and the Magalor Epilogue. The former serves as a helper mode where Magalor can double Kirby’s health, prevent him from falling into bottomless pits, as well as providing Copy Abilities during boss fights. Helper Magalor is an entirely optional inclusion, but one that’s much appreciated, and will no doubt help those who make use of it. The Magalor Epilogue is where a bulk of the new content lies, and unlocks upon completion of the main story.

The Magalor Epilogue is a thoroughly enjoyable 2-3 hours that Kirby fans are bound to love. Set after the events of the main story, Magalor wakes up in a realm between dimensions without his powers. You’ll traverse bite-sized levels and collect Magic Points that can be used to further upgrade Magalor’s abilities. Similar to the Copy Ability Challenges, each level in the Magalor Epilogue is ranked based on the amount of Magic Points you accrue in each level. You’ll find hitting higher ranks quite difficult early on, but as you progress through the worlds and unlock new abilities for Magalor, you can return to these stages to go after even higher scores.

There’s quite a bit to upgrade here, and the wide selection of abilities you can improve lends some player choice to the experience. Running through to the credits is fun enough as is, but it can’t be understated how satisfying it is to return to prior stages to get better rankings. You’ll rack up high combo counts that yield more Magic Points, gain access to powerful new abilities, and wipe the floor with bosses who initially proved more difficult the first time around due to Magalor’s limited skill-set. It’s a great inclusion with a decent chunk of playtime if you look to get the highest ranks on each stage, and also ties up the narrative quite nicely by the end of it all.

AMAZON HAS THE CHEAPEST PRICE AT $68 WITH FREE DELIVERY

A Kirby game isn’t a Kirby game without all the extra modes and subgames to play around with as well. Return to Dream Land Deluxe does not disappoint in this regard, with the series staple Arena Mode, Extra Mode, and a collection of simple yet entertaining Subgames to play with friends. Arena is the same as ever, giving players the opportunity to go up against a gauntlet of all the bosses in the game with any Copy Ability at your disposal. Extra Mode also adds some value for completionists, offering a more difficult version of the main story that unlocks the True Arena upon completion.

The Subgames are a particular standout in Return to Dream Land Deluxe. A lot of them are returning, with only two new ones accounted for in this package, but the quality standard here is quite high. They’re all small in scope and only take a few minutes to see through, but each offer a fun little distraction to play with friends aside from the main story. All of these are set within Merry Magoland which touts countless challenges to complete for cosmetic goodies, serving as a whimsical backdrop to the carnival-like nature of the Subgames.

While most of the Deluxe treatments typically upscale visuals to the Switch’s HD resolutions, Return to Dreamland Deluxe seems to have received some extra TLC. This game is gorgeous, and fits right at home on the Switch. All of the worlds feel distinct and varied with bright, energetic colour palettes and a striking art style that is always easy on the eyes. Special mention should go to the reworked backgrounds, which are so packed with detail and sense of place, it’s hard not to gawk at them each time you see a new one. This is coupled with rock-solid performance in both handheld and docked modes, making for an all-round smooth and fluid experience.

While Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe is a no brainer recommendation to those who’ve yet to jump in, it’s a bit more complex for those who’ve experienced it before. The new stuff here is fantastic, there just isn’t all that much of it, so whether or not the enhanced visuals and the Magalor Epilogue can justify the price is up to you. If you do take the plunge, you’ll be greeted with one of Kirby’s best 2D adventures, made even better.

The post Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe Review – A Quintessential Kirby Package appeared first on Press Start.

Atomic Heart is all at once the strangest, most off-the-wall, most bombastic game I think I’ll play this year. It’s got a self-referential, almost self-deprecating sense of humour that surprised me to no end and its nods to the games it so badly wanted to be—see any BioShock game—were so on the nose. 

To put it the only way I feel I can, Atomic Heart is unadulterated, pulp schlock. 

Based on my preview of the game, I’d expected Atomic Heart’s story to do its best to emulate BioShock’s musings on determinism and free will. Sadly, those that expect caviar and get served mince and mash are bound to be disappointed. That said, mince and mash is perfectly serviceable in a pinch and Atomic Heart gets the job done, it just never rises to the lofty heights of those it imitates. Its cast of characters, from top to bottom, is thoroughly repugnant and the “hero” has levels of vulgarity that should have died when Duke did forever ago.

There’s a particular character whose mad turn feels so unearned that it’s almost insulting. Hilariously, it all feels like another self-sabotage gunning for an impossible gold standard. Atomic Heart’s biggest sin, in the end, is that it forces us to reminisce about what is ultimately a better game.

It’s a shame because I feel as though all of the game’s action, if it were condensed down into a more linear experience, could make for a much better game. The two prongs of attack both feel great and feel like the only area where Atomic Heart might even edge out its precursor. I might have only secured blueprints for no more than a handful of the weapons on offer, but they all felt powerful in their own right. I’m a sucker for a shotgun and seeing the shells in Atomic Heart tear shreds off of the several automatons lining the halls—and even shearing them in half—never gets old.

The game’s most dazzling minutes, the ones that truly sell to me that fragments of the Atomic Heart game I wanted does exist, belong to the magnificent boss fights. Granted, they’re as plainly signposted as the story’s many “twists” by obvious arenas, but they’re a thrilling showcase of what the game does best and that’s its combat. 

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $84.99 AT AMAZON

And on the other hand, literally, is Charles. He’s a polymerised artificial intelligence that rides sidecar throughout your journey and serves as the other offensive prong in your arsenal. With Charles, you’ll be able to deal elemental damage, wield the wild powers of telekinesis, and shield yourself. Now, while the gunplay is a treat in Atomic Heart, all of the trimmings, such as the player’s upgrade paths—for guns, for Charles, and for the agent himself—feel like a bit of a mess. There’s simply too many currencies to keep straight, especially when it comes to sprucing up your gun shed.

As I gleaned from my initial preview, the game is structurally probably a bit more like Metro Exodus than it is Halo Infinite. The game is a series of overworlds separated by a series of facilities. The former are vast enough, though they’re ultimately void of anything worth seeing, so much so they might as well be a tunnel from point-to-point. Atomic Heart’s corridor crawling is the game at its best, and I’ll recall the game’s first handful of hours fondly. It doesn’t do anything particularly creative with how it structures fetch quests, but I do admire how it creates a sense of place and lets the untapped creativity of Atomic Heart’s design team run rampant.

When I previewed the game on PC, performance was as crisp as you’d hope for. Sadly, things aren’t quite as smooth for its console counterparts. The frame rate was largely inconsistent, pop-in was always a given, and I encountered a couple of hard crashes in one particularly theatrical boss fight. Other niggles, such as UI persisting throughout cutscenes, were present and kind of undercut the attempt at establishing some tone.

Another area that Atomic Heart has great success in is its art, although I’m prepared to omit any human characters from that otherwise blanket statement. Like in other areas, it borrows from BioShock’s handbook in delivering a world of several extremes—it showcases capitalist decadence through its lavish marble auditoriums, it also places man’s hubris on a pedestal through its dilapidated laboratories. As barren as it is, even the overworld, for all its lush greenery juxtaposed by abandoned cars, has a real Tales from the Loop appeal. I’ll go so far as to say if your interest in Atomic Heart is mainly from a design standpoint, buy the inevitable art book instead. 

While I ultimately did enjoy my time with Atomic Heart, I can’t not view it as a disappointment. For the few things it does well, its ambitions ultimately cripple it, leaving it firmly in the cold shadow of greater titles that it so desperately seeks to emulate.

Atomic Heart launches on February 21st for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC. Amazon has the cheapest copy at $84.99 with free shipping.

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When the original PlayStation VR arrived back in 2016, it shot into the then-burgeoning virtual reality market with hardware that was comfortable, accessible and – most importantly – affordable in comparison to its peers. That turned out to be the right move at the time, with the headset carving out a decent little piece of the VR market pie and commanding a decent amount of staying power in the years to come.

Fast forward almost seven years and the landscape is a little different for virtual reality tech. With high-end VR maturing and entry-level headsets like the Meta Quest 2 offering compelling, completely untethered VR experiences at a relatively modest price point there’s a lot more for PlayStation to prove with its follow-up effort. Dropping a little earlier into the life of the hardware it’s tied to and at a higher price point, the PlayStation VR2 feels like serious business in comparison to its predecessor. Sony successfully dipped its toes into the virtual waters and now it wants to swim with the sharks. It’s a good thing then, that the PS VR2’s teeth are as razor sharp as its visuals.

I went over a lot of this in my initial unboxing impressions (which you can read here) but it bears repeating – this is easily the most attractive, comfortable and well-constructed VR headsets I’ve used to date.

To begin with the headset itself is around 50g lighter than the first PS VR, but it’s also unburdened by the mess of cables and breakout boxes that made the previous iteration feel far bulkier than it actually was. This time around, there’s no extra box or HDMI passthrough or any of that junk. It’s just a single USB-C cable for the front of your PS5. A very, very long 4.5m USB-C cable that’s also surprisingly light and definitely will have enough give for most people to unknowingly wrap themselves in it a few times during play without any disaster striking.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $878 AT AMAZON WITH FREE SHIPPING.

Compared to the original PS VR’s IKEA-like setup, being able to simply take the thing out of the box, pop the cable into the front of the console and get playing is remarkable. I was worried that, having also used a Quest 2 quite a bit, the added cable would become an annoyance but I can’t say that I’ve even registered its existence more than once or twice during the time I’ve been playing.

Putting the headset on is a breeze, as well. Not a whole lot has changed from the last one, which is absolutely a good thing when that design was already fantastic. The headset is incredibly adjustable so once you slip it over your head by holding the button at the back and stretching it to accommodate your noggin, you simply spin a dial to tighten it up and then manoeuvre the front visor until it’s sitting comfortably in front of your eyes. Even with my fairly large glasses on I never once felt they were being pushed up against my face, with plenty of wiggle room. Crucially, the design of the rubber blinders around the lenses blocks out a ridiculous amount of ambient light.

Setting up the PS VR2 on the software side of things is also refreshingly easy and intuitive, with the headset’s mounted cameras and eye tracking technology doing a ton of the legwork. You’ll configure your play space simply by looking around you while it intelligently maps out walls, floors and any objects in the vicinity and creates a virtual boundary to keep you from punching nearby furniture in the heat of the moment. It’s in this step that you’ll also find out whether you’ve got the minimum required 2m x 2m clearance for “room scale” VR gameplay (essentially being able to physically move around a virtual space) or, if you live in an inner-city single bedroom apartment like me, are restricted to just the stationary standing/sitting experience.

One of the PlayStation VR2’s most interesting tricks, its eye tracking tech, also helps immensely with the initial setup by giving you an on-screen guide to how well-positioned the lenses are in relation to your pupils. With a combination of adjusting the position of the visor and turning the super-handy lens distance dial on the top of the visor you can very quickly get things looking just right for your eyes. Having eye tracking also enables the headset’s “foveated rendering” tech, which essentially allows games to render better detail in areas where you’re actively looking and dynamically scale back detail in areas you’re not – lending to better perceived visual quality and performance overall.

I can’t overstate how great the PlayStation VR2’s configuration and calibration process is in comparison to pretty well every other VR headset I’ve used. With just about any guesswork eliminated by the intelligent combination of hardware and software working together, I never once had to wonder whether I was getting the optimal experience.

Something I’ve been incredibly grateful for in my time with the PS VR2 is the ability to use its front-facing cameras as a window to the world outside of the headset. The surprisingly clear, black-and-white view is easily accessible just by pushing the Function button on the underside of the front visor which makes it easy to quickly reassess where you’re physically positioned in the room and if you’ve begun edging too close to a wall or bit of furniture, locate any controllers or people around you or even quickly jot down PlayStation VR2 review notes in your phone without having to remove the headset at all.

With the headset on and configured, one of the most immediately noticeable upgrades here is the pair of super-sharp 4K (2000 x 2040 per-eye) HDR OLED displays that represent a massive jump from the first PS VR and up there with some of the best resolutions that VR headsets have to offer. Aside from raw pixel count, the displays in the VR2 offer a fairly substantial 110 degree field of view and very decent brightness and colours. I’ve been particularly impressed with how little interference there is from the typical VR display issues like distortion and glare, with minimal god rays or “screen door” effect. It’s not completely without fault, there’s still a degree of softness to fine details like text and a bit of motion blur but overall it’s far superior to the likes of the Quest 2.

In the cinematic view, where the headset shows the regular PS5 home menu or any “flat” games or movies you might want to check out, is where I’m probably least inclined to choose the PS VR2’s display over simply using my OLED telly. The novelty of a floating cinema-esque screen in a virtual void that only you can see is novel enough if it’s your first time trying it out, but as sharp as the displays are for VR gaming they’re not quite fit for lengthy play sessions of regular titles.

RELATED: OUR HORIZON CALL OF THE MOUNTAIN REVIEW

One of my favourite inclusions, somewhat surprisingly to me, is the little in-ear headphones that come with the PS VR2. I’ll always opt for over-ear cans where possible, and fully expected to be opting for a slightly-awkward combo with my usual gaming headset, but I’m glad I gave these a go. For starters, they come attached to a little plastic bar that sits snugly into the back band to allow the buds to hang in just the right spot for the ears with no extra slack, and the headset even has a mounting port on each side to pop them into when you’re not using it.

They also sound great for an in-ear solution, with my playthrough of Horizon Call of the Mountain coming through with a good amount of crisp detail and juicy bass. Combined with the 3D audio processing and minimal physical interference it makes for a genuinely immersive audio experience out of the box – far and away more than I expected from some packed-in earphones.

The next piece of the hardware puzzle comes from the included Sense controllers. It’s hard to believe we ever made do with Sony’s decision to repurpose the godawful PS3 Move controllers for the original PlayStation VR, much less that they saw fit to sell them separately to the headset itself. Sure, it made the starter kit cheaper but having to tack on an extra $200ish to get a pair of Moves and the required camera on top sucked the joy out of that value proposition. We’re off to a much better start this time around with the controllers included in the box and no extra camera bits needed.

The Sense controllers a far more logical and comfortable design this time around, their hollow orb-like design ergonomically tailored to each hand to ensure every button is within reach and easy to read without the benefit of being able to see them, with your fingers naturally positioning around the analogue sticks, L1/R1 bumpers and L2/R2 triggers. It’s kind of like wearing a pair of sci-fi gloves with their stark black and white, orb-like design and I’m here for it. If you’ve used the Quest controllers in the past, the idea is similar here but a definite improvement again.

The Senses also pack in some especially neat features to bring a new level of immersion (and hopefully some neat future gameplay possibilities) to the table. Much like the PS5’s standard DualSense controller, they boast detailed haptic feedback along with adaptive triggers to simulate the feelings of your actions in games, something that Horizon Call of the Mountain uses to great effect. Being able to feel the difference between grabbing onto a rope and a stone ledge, or the tension of a bowstring that I’m pulling in real time adds a ton of immersion and really helps to remove the disconnect in your brain when grabbing or touching things in the virtual world isn’t mirrored in the physical realm. There are even haptics in the headset itself which are used to pretty good effect in games like Horizon and Thumper so I’m keen to see and feel more of that.

Something I’m hoping developers latch onto early and often is the finger tracking, which senses whether each of your fingers are gripping the controller to somewhat represent any in-game hands as close to your actual hands as possible. It’s fairly simplistic in what it understands about the positions of your fingers but being able to wave or throw up peace signs in something like Call of the Mountain is fun nonetheless. I’d be keen to see Sony work in some full hand-tracking ala the Quest 2 with potential software updates but for now what’s here could be used to decent effect.

With the cameras mounted into the front of the PS VR2’s visor, inside-out tracking means that not only is the whole thing a lot more simple to set up and use, it’s freakishly accurate and truly feels 1:1 at all times. Having spent a ton of time with the original PS VR I can’t overstate how wonderful it is to have motion controllers that are genuinely responsive and reliable, though that’s not to say the Senses are totally infallible. Lighting and environment are still crucial to getting the best experience, with everything performing its best in a well-lit space with as few errant lights and reflections as possible. 

While the overwhelming majority of my PS VR2 gameplay has been smooth sailing, I did notice that the reflection of my overhead lights on wooden floors or even the video output on my TV could often throw the cameras in my headset off. There’s an option in the settings to add a distinct border to the social screen so that the headset knows it’s looking at a TV which pretty much sorted that issue, but if you were hoping to get in some VR action with the Sense controllers in a dim or busy room you might have less luck – the system flat-out told me to go somewhere brighter when I tried to play at night with my lights off.

The other slight issue that was a constant in my PS VR2 experience was the 4-5 hour battery life of the Sense controllers. Granted, not many people are going to be playing VR titles for that long at a time, but it means that forgetting to charge them between sessions will very quickly kill the joy – especially considering that you only get one charging cable in the box. I’m sure most people will have at least one spare USB-C cable around the house but when the low battery notification specifically advises I charge both controllers together I can’t help but wonder if Sony’s hoping to subtly push people towards the $80 dual charger.

Of course, the thing that so many new gaming devices will live or die by is the quality of the available software, and the launch line-up is of particular importance when considering whether to drop north of $800 on an add-on to an already-expensive console. In this regard, the PS VR2 is doing just fine with a number of big ticket inclusions like Horizon Call of the Mountain, which is bloody excellent (you can read our review here), as well as free VR updates for games like Gran Turismo 7 and Resident Evil Village (which we haven’t been able to try just yet). Those three not only represent the “AAA” shelf in the PS VR2’s virtual suite, but they’re titles you won’t find on any other VR platform.

The rest of the VR2’s day one catalogue consists largely of games that have already graced the original PlayStation VR or other platforms like the Quest, meaning there’s maybe a little less excitement in the mix for VR veterans, but the upside is that it’s largely all top-notch stuff. The opportunity to play the likes of Moss/Moss Book II, Tetris Effect: Connected, Pistol Whip, After The Fall and other essential VR reading with the class-leading experience offered by the PS VR2 and the power of the PS5 is certainly not without merit.

The real test will be the long term, and how well the system is supported by exclusive titles and experiences not available on other, cheaper headsets. The hardware is exemplary, but if Sony wants players to hand over their credit cards past the initial period of launch excitement they need to compel them with equally exciting software.

The PlayStation VR2 releases on February 22nd, 2023.

PLAYSTATION VR2 PRE-ORDER LINKS:

• PlayStation VR2 Standard Kit – $878 with free shipping
• PlayStation VR2 Horizon Call of the Mountain Bundle – $958 with free shipping
• PlayStation VR2 Charging Station – $79 with free shipping

Lastly, if you’re looking for some quick recommendations for launch titles, we’ll have a more comprehensive rundown of our favourites over the coming days, but for now the standouts in the 15-ish games out of the launch line-up that I’ve had the time to play are:

The Best PlayStation VR Launch Games (So Far)

• Horizon Call of the Mountain
• Moss/Moss Book II
• Thumper
• Kayak VR: Mirage
• Cosmonious High
• Tentacular
• Song in the Smoke Rekindled
• Pistol Whip
• Tetris Effect: Connected
• Rez Infinite

The post PlayStation VR2 Review – Next-Gen VR Hardware Brimming With Potential appeared first on Press Start.

The rise of Yakuza’s popularity in the West has been something to behold over the last few years. Starting with Yakuza 0’s worldwide release in 2017, the franchise has propelled itself into the limelight, finally garnering the recognition and reception it deserves. The results of this have been felt quite quickly, with simultaneous releases and a slew of new projects in the coming years, including the long-awaited remake/localisation of Ryu ga Gotoku Ishin!, which only released in Japan when it originally launched in 2014.

It comes to us in 2023 rocking the brand new moniker for the series as Like A Dragon: Ishin!, and is fundamentally different from prior entries. Serving as a spin-off set in the samurai era of Japan as opposed to the bustling modern-day landscapes seen in mainline entries, Ishin offers up a unique flavour of Yakuza, one most comparable in gameplay to the likes of 5 and 0, but narratively, unlike anything we’ve had before. Despite some flaws, Like A Dragon: Ishin! is a wild ride that deserves a place in the pantheon of its predecessors, and is a must play for series veterans and newcomers alike.

Specifically set in the late Edo period, Japan is undergoing a transformation after the arrival of Western ships during the Bakumatsu era. Players step into the shoes of Sakamoto Ryoma, who bears a striking resemblance to former series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. Ryoma returns to his hometown of Tosa after spending time in Edo studying swordsmanship, and is soon pulled into a political conspiracy to upend the discriminatory social class system Tosa is embroiled in. Ryoma, together with his surrogate father Yoshida Toyo, and his best friend, Takechi Hanpeita, hatch a plan to free Tosa from its oppressive government.

Things quickly turn sour, though, as Toyo is assassinated by a masked assailant, forcing Ryoma to leave Tosa behind as the prime suspect of the murder, fleeing to Japan’s capital of Kyo. One year later, and going by the alias of Saito Hajime, Ryoma seeks to infiltrate the Shinsengumi in the search for his father’s murderer. In typical Yakuza fashion, what unfolds is a grand conspiracy that reaches far across Japan, with Ryoma taking centre stage in the conflict.

What’s most fascinating about Ishin’s narrative, though, is that it’s largely based off of people and events that actually happened in Japan during this time of turmoil. It’s obviously quite dramatised for the purpose of entertainment, but this aspect of the story folds in an element of historical accuracy that’s new to the series. Reading up on the people these characters were inspired by, and the events that they become entangled in was a cathartic moment of realisation and connection to the country’s storied history.

Series veterans will no doubt get a kick out of seeing fan favourite characters translated into these historical figures, which also keeps the narrative firmly rooted within the realms of Yakuza. These characters also don’t always align in behaviour and morals as their mainline series parallels, which makes for many unexpected moments and interactions that had me grinning from ear to ear. Another nice touch is the inclusion of characters from Yakuza 6, and Like A Dragon, who weren’t present in the original Japanese release. While I haven’t played the original, the inclusion of these characters feels more celebratory and reverent as opposed to invasive or out of place.

The story itself is compelling from start to finish, brought to life by consistently stunning cutscenes, excellent performances, and unending attention to detail. It holds remarkable pace, constantly dangling the carrot in front of you without ever divulging all of its answers until credits roll. Myriad twists and turns constantly kept me on the edge of my seat, and while I appreciate the labyrinthian plots of prior entries, it’s nice to have something more straightforward in nature, meaning Ishin spends less time exposition dumping, and more time with its characters and moral quandaries.

If you weren’t a fan of Like A Dragon’s shift to turn-based combat, Like A Dragon: Ishin! has you covered. With the original Japanese release slotted between Yakuza 5 and Yakuza 0, it comes as no surprise that Ishin offers some of the most well-realised action combat in the series. Ryoma has four styles accessible to him in combat; Swordsman, Gunman, Wild Dancer, and Brawler, each one offering their own set of strengths and weaknesses.

Where Brawler lacks the raw damage of Swordsman, it gives you access to grabs and environmental weapons. Likewise, Gunman grants you a slew of ranged attacks which are great at a distance, but will put you in a tricky place if enemies close in, while Wild Dancer offers loads of crowd control and far-reaching attacks in a trade for riskier defence options. It’s a more considered and deliberate combat system in comparison to the scrappy scuffles of prior games. Heat Actions also return in all their glory, with each style boasting a heap of satisfyingly crunchy attacks that rarely wear out their welcome.

The way Ishin handles progression ensures that you’re constantly unlocking new moves within each style to play around with. Using styles unlocks respective orbs to spend in their vast skill trees, where Training Orbs unlocked by accruing regular experience points can be used in any tree. This means you can always progress a tree you aren’t using as much as the others. The ability to refund Training Orbs in place of style specific orbs means you can chop and change skills as needed, and adds a nice degree of customisation to how you move through each style’s tree. You’ll also unlock the ability to use powerful special weapons that bring their own flair to combat.

The other system that spices up combat comes in the form of the Trooper Card system. These cards give Ryoma additional abilities to play with, from area-of-effect attacks and damage boosts to health regen and knockbacks. While they can feel overpowered early on, they balance out towards the second half of the game, and add an extra layer of progression aside from the stuff tied directly to Ryoma. A few of these are real-world celebrities and influencers which can be immersion breaking, but the Trooper Card system can be disabled if you want to play without it.

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The flipside of progression comes in the form of crafting, where materials obtained through various means can be spent to craft and enhance weapons. It works as a system and clicks nicely with the overall setting of Ishin, but can feel arbitrary when you’re constantly getting new weapons from bosses, Substories, and countless other sources. It’s a system where you get out what you put in, but I feel like there could’ve been more incentive to engage with it – especially in comparison to Yakuza: Like A Dragon’s crafting system.

A Yakuza game isn’t a Yakuza game without a compact open-world full of Substories and side content to engage with, and Ishin does not disappoint in this regard. Series mainstays like karaoke and dancing return in full-force here, but Ishin also brings along it’s own minigames to play around with. A highlight was chicken racing, where you can bet on rivalling chickens as they race around tracks. Another worthwhile distraction comes in the form of Ryoma’s villa, where you can have another life with Haruka, expanding your countryside villa as you farm, cook, and raise pets. There are so many to play around with when you want a break from the main plot, and they work together to produce the whacky tonal dissonance Yakuza is known for.

While not quite as many as other entries in the franchise, Ishin still offers a hefty number of Substories to engage with. While I can’t attest to the quality of all of them, the ones I did complete were thoroughly entertaining and well worth seeing through to the end. There’s one in particular surrounding an inari sushi salesman who sells out of product every day, where you’ll return to him morning after morning in the hopes that you’ll make it to the front of the line before he sells out. Without spoiling it, this absurd premise takes an unexpected yet heartwarming turn that further develops Ryoma’s character, while also building up the world around him.

From a technical perspective, Like A Dragon: Ishin! is mostly fine, but there are a few glaring flaws that often make themselves known while playing. The game looks and runs great, it might not stand up to the visual fidelity of Lost Judgment or Yakuza: Like A Dragon, but it definitely satisfies as a remaster/remake of a PS4 game. Cutscenes are remarkably gorgeous, and the art direction is well-realised within the setting of a historic Japan. The streets bustle in realistic fashion, with people going about their days, only to give way to atmospheric nights lit by restaurant lanterns and candles, creating a palpable sense of time and place.

Unfortunately, Ishin hitches a lot when jumping out of menus, whether that be when levelling up or accessing your inventory, often for a noticeable amount of time. I also had the game crash on me once, and the UI is noticeably bland – especially the text. None of these things were enough to outright ruin my experience with the game, but they happened often enough that it took me out of the experience.

Hopefully Like A Dragon: Ishin is the start of an effort to bring more of the Japan exclusive Yakuza games to the west. While Yakuza: Like A Dragon offers its own turn-based take on the franchise with a fantastic cast, I’d be lying if I didn’t emphasise how much of a blast it was to play a more traditional Yakuza game, for lack of a better word. Jumping into a game with familiar faces you’ve spent so many hours with is cathartic, especially in a setting as unique and well-realised as this one. Despite the core appeal to long-time fans, Ishin is also a great place for newcomers to jump in as well, with only tangential connections to the mainline series.

The post Like A Dragon: Ishin! Review – Return of the Dragon appeared first on Press Start.

The first Octopath Traveler was a great game, but I felt it was often misunderstood. It’s deliciously old school presentation set the scene for the game players wanted it to be – a fresh modern take on the RPG that still managed to look like it came from the golden years of the genre. Underneath it’s shiny veneer was some fantastic gameplay bolstered by a flexible job and party system. Now, Octopath Traveler II attempts to address the criticisms levelled at its predecessor to offer a more intertwined story. And while it’s not necessarily the direction I think the series needed to head in, it offers up more of what players loved five years ago.

The new game takes place in a new continent called Solistia. It’s different to Osterra from the previous game, sporting a much more modern setting. Solistia is in the midst of an industrial and trade revolution, so it feels like a time of great prosperity in the world. The story follows eight characters, each with their own stories and motivations. Some want to be the best in their field, others want to capitalise on the boom in trade. The story eventually converges, but like the original game, it really is all about the individual stories.

I adored Octopath Traveler but I feel like the concept is already starting to wear a little thin. So much of Octopath Traveler II feels lifted directly from the predecessor to the point that it can feel like  a retread at times. Where the original game lacked meaningful interactions between the party, Octopath Traveler II attempts to remedy this by incorporating new stories that usually intertwine two characters, complete with sub-chapters. While I feel like this is the right direction to move in, there were still moments overall where my main character would just stand there in silence while cutscenes centering on other characters played out.

It would be a logistical nightmare to accurately predict the order players obtain their party members and adjust dialogue and interactions accordingly. But I can’t help but feel that, with a little bit more linearity, a party with synergy at both a story and gameplay level could easily be developed. I admire the attempts to bring things closer together, even if that wasn’t the intention of the original game, but overall it feels like more of a half step towards that goal more than anything else.

But underneath the plot, there’s a fantastic game here too. Like the original, it’s a turn-based RPG that feels fast paced but still has enough depth to it that makes it fun to master. As mentioned previously, you’ll explore Solistia while following the individual stories of eight characters. The world itself is beautiful – presented in a unique 2D-HD style that the original game pioneered. But is Octopath Traveler II just a typical RPG with a nostalgic look art direction? It’s honestly so much more.

The battle system is just as strong as in the original game. A typical turn-based system with the Break and Boost mechanics returning. Each turn, each character gains a BP, which can then be used to increase your attacks or power in the same turn. Using this system to target an enemy’s weakness can “break” them, stunning them and, if planned correctly, prevent them from attacking and open them up to more damage. It’s hard to explain – and I implore you to try the demo – but it’s a satisfying combat system that rewards those who think about each turn and how they’ll flow into one another.

Octopath Traveler II does introduce a few new aspects to the combat. Latent powers are the most obvious. These are available to each character and are usable after filling a gauge that fills from either taking damage or breaking an enemy. Each power has a different effect, allowing you to focus a group-targeting spell onto a single enemy for extra damage or even buffing your party depending on the time of day. They’re a nice touch that adds an extra layer of strategizing to battle, but they’re also not essential enough that I found myself using them a whole lot.

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A little bit more essential is the robust jobs system that underpins the combat. Each of the playable characters has a primary job that denotes what abilities and weapons they can wield. Secondary jobs can be assigned to fill gaps in that character’s loadout. I’m a huge fan of a good job system in RPGs, and Octopath Traveler II has what I consider to be some genre-best execution of the concept. It’s so much fun to experiment with different combinations to build your perfect party, and almost mandatory to overcome the games later trickier chapters.

Outside of battles, the changes are more obvious. Path actions return, which allow you to interact with NPCs in different ways. You can rob them, convince them to follow you into battle or even bribe them for secrets. It’s always been a cool idea. Octopath Traveler II gives each character two path actions, dependent on the time of day. But in the original game, these actions often came in pairs, with one being superior to the other. One character can steal, for example, while another can still steal but only after battling the person. It felt a bit padded out in the original game, and by almost doubling the path actions in this game, it feels especially so.

I’ve talked a lot about who time of day affects so much in Octopath Traveler II, and that’s one of the cooler new aspects of the game. With the press of a button, the setting you’re in will change from day to night. Some path actions only work depending on the time of day and stronger enemies come out at night to do battle. You’ll even encounter different NPCs at night. It’s a bit gimmicky, but visually impressive to see the world change instantly in front of you. The music changes too – from flourishing orchestral tracks during the day to more subdued and relaxed pieces of the same music at night.

Other aspects are introduced that weren’t in the original, though aren’t as game changing as I’d have hoped. The party eventually gains access to a ship that allows them to travel between the two halves of Solistia. The “open sea” aspect of Octopath Traveler II is really just like a glorified world map. I appreciate the variety on offer here, but it feels like it’s being touted as a feature when it’s really something most older RPGs have had in the past.

But speaking of the past, there are times where I felt that Octopath Traveler II was perhaps living too far into it. With the advent of so many other RPGs incorporating time saving measures, there were too manty times where I’d spend so much time in Octopath Traveler II just grinding. Not even grinding to gain levels, mind you, just running between areas to heal at an inn so I could make progress in the story. So much of Octopath Traveler II feels old school your characters who are benched are still needed to be levelled up, especially if you want to tackle the optional final chapters.

It might sound asinine to complain about an RPG having a long runtime. But given how many other games in the genre have included time saving elements like quick battles or fast forward it feels especially egregious. Octopath Traveler II does let you double the battle speed and advance its cutscenes quickly, but these are surface level. The design fundamentals underpinning it, like the aforementioned levelling of benched characters and constant need to heal do not respect the players time.

Without a doubt, though, Octopath Traveler II is the best-looking rendition of 2D-HD yet. Not only does the game leverage the unique style to create a world much more modern than the previous game, but stunning camera work and frame composition leads to some pretty epic moments throughout the story. It all feels a lot higher budget than previously. Other small touches, like adding animations for attacking enemies, makes a great case for 2D-HD as an art direction not losing any of its lustre.

And the music. Oh, the music! Yasunori Nishiki returns to compose for Octopath Traveler II and it’s one of the most beautiful soundtracks I’ve ever borne witness (or listened) to. The soundtrack does not disappoint in any aspect. The voice work is similarly pretty strong, with both English and Japanese voice tracks being selectable. Some of the deliveries are still a little bit melodramatic, but otherwise the whole experience feels well produced and presented.

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The EA Originals imprint is fast becoming one of my favourites. First Unravel, then It Takes Two, and everything in between. The latest, Wild Hearts, is an unexpected collaboration between Koei Tecmo and EA and my favourite. Hunting down fantastical beasts in a wide-open world inspired by Feudal Japan is a great concept, and Wild Hearts has a few tricks up its sleeve that separates it from the rest. It has a few issues that begin to emerge the more time you spend with it, but overall, it’s a strong debut for what will hopefully become a new franchise from an unexpected collaboration.

Wild Hearts takes place in the world of Azuma, a land inspired by Feudal Japan overrun by a strange beast that locals call the Kemono. Each Kemono is a beast fused with nature and inspired by Eastern mythology. Imagine boars with gardens growing on their back or gorillas with lava coursing through their veins. Wild Hearts’ premise is simple – you’re a hunter who must bring balance to the world of Azuma by slaying the Kemono. It’s a simple premise that provides a reason to go out and hunt the Kemono, but while some of the battles are wildly cinematic, don’t expect Wild Hearts’ story to blow you away.

Then, the premise of the game is similar to games like Monster Hunter or the developers’ own Toukiden series. You’ll travel through Azuma, either solo or with friends, hunting the various Kemono. They’ll drop loot of some sort, you’ll regroup, create better weapons and armour, and go after even bigger Kemono. It’s a simple premise that doesn’t need much shake-up, but Wild Hearts does do things a little bit differently to distinguish itself from its contemporaries.

The most obvious difference is the presence of the Karakuri. In the plot, Karakuri is a mystical force that allows you to summon ancient technology mid-battle to help slay the Kemono. In terms of gameplay, it allows you to build structures during battle, ala Fortnite, to assist you in exploration and combat. Springs to cover great distances, walls to block dashing Kemono. Even giant hammers to deal massive damage. There’s a whole bunch of Karakuri, and more on the way, but it’s the sheer variety of them that opens up the combat to all kinds of approaches that you’d not even be able to consider in other games.

This does give off shades of games like Fortnite, but I wouldn’t let that put you off if that’s never been your thing. Building the Karakuri mid-battle, either for yourself or for friends to utilise, is an incredibly satisfying and easy process. You could technically play without them, but the game would offer a greater challenge than it already does. But why wouldn’t you? The Karakuri have effects that I’m not even sure are intentional but helpful – some can be used to cancel animations and offer a faster flow to the game’s combat.

There are over twenty different types of Karakuri, some of which have multiple uses. It’s a system that really changes how you approach your hunts. Some are simply reconnaissance tools, allowing you to highlight a certain Kemono you might be hunting. Others are highly damaging weapons or bombs. Some even enable your hunter to travel long distances in Death Stranding-esque ziplines or catapults. There’s a lot on offer here to think about before you even consider the weaponry you’ll be using. And that’s before you even begin to fuse them to make even better constructions with wilder effects.

Weapons in Wild Hearts give to you at certain points in the story and feel simpler than what you’d expect from games like Monster Hunter, but that’s not a slight against the game. While combos are arguably simpler than most players would be used to, every weapon in the game is a joy to use and grasp. There are around eight weapons to master in Wild Hearts, each unique, offering different playstyles to ensure most players find something that suits them.

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My obvious favourite is the Bladed Wagasa, a fast-bladed umbrella specialising in parrying and aerial combat. But other weapons behave differently to what you’d normally expect – the bow, for example, is all about stacking arrows and then “detonating” them to deal massive damage, rather than just a simple ranged weapon. Some are more technical than others, like the shapeshifting spear, but there’s a wide and varied enough selection.

Your weapons and karakuri are essential, but your preparation is vital to conquering the more difficult hunts of Wild Hearts. Early on in the game, I admittedly wasn’t paying a lot of attention to resistances in my load-outs, but a fire-based enemy absolutely destroyed me and sent me back to the drawing board to better equip myself. It feels a lot more purposeful and highlights just how important it is to get your build right before charging into battle. Something I recommend to anyone reading – make sure you use the food system. Going into a battle well-fed will offer you buffs that can be the difference between success and failure.

Your builds are important, too – as there are numerous sprawling skill trees to drop points into that’ll provide you with different skills to utilise on your hunt. There’s a deceiving amount of flexibility here, as your path through a skill will determine which skills you’ll “inherit.” This means that while two players might be at the same point on the skill tree, they might have inherited different skills and thus have different builds. Essentially, it means more flexibility in how you approach your builds to complement your playstyle. As things get increasingly complex, especially in the post-game, you’ll want to craft suitable enough armour or weapons but also make sure you’re looping around the tree to inherit the best skills. It’s early days, but the meta feels especially strong.

But be warned that Wild Hearts can be a bit of a grind, if not more so, than Monster Hunter. During my lengthy time with the game, I fell victim to numerous bottlenecks where I’d have to go grind a few more hunts to get the gear that I wanted. It’s something that I’m sure fans of games like Monster Hunter are used to, but it does feel a little bit more egregious here. On the other hand, hunts are, on average, shorter than Monster Hunter and the combat is so fun that it’s less of a grinding feeling despite properly being one.

But I’ve yet to talk about the Kemono, the beasts you’ll actually be hunting. Each is beautiful to look at, existing at the intersection of flora and fauna, but they’re all terrifying to battle. The Emberplume, a ferocious peacock, is my favourite, but there are around twenty or so Kemono to battle across Wild Hearts. As mentioned, some of them are a little more cinematic in their approach, but overall, it’s a nice variety. It’s a little bit of a shame to see some of the Kemono recycled towards the end of the story – for example, using a creature with an ice element rather than lava – the variety here is pretty good, even if I am keen, and left wanting more.

Thankfully, the game performs well online. The drop-in and drop-out options are seamless, and you can request help during a hunt with the hold of a button. There are traditional ways to invite people – like travelling to a certain point to summon them or whatever – but being able to do it on-the-fly is a nice touch. Similarly, progress is shared across all players, so you can play the entirety of Wild Hearts with two other friends if you wish. It can be a challenging game, so you’ll want someone by your side, even if the fights scale slightly with more players.

So then, to presentation, Wild Hearts is less consistent. Across my time with both the PC and console versions, there was notable texture pop-in and inconsistent framerate issues during more intense battles, even when playing in performance mode. It’s a shame, too, because the art direction is absolutely stunning – Azuma is a beautiful world filled with vast biomes inspired by the seasons, and the Kemono are beautifully designed. But the further you get into the game, the worse the performance gets. Hopefully, this can be optimised and fixed as time goes by, but for now, if you’re very sensitive to performance issues, then be aware that Wild Hearts isn’t perfect just yet.

I came away from my time with Wild Hearts last year excited to see more. Now, after experiencing the whole thing, I still feel the same. That’s not because Wild Hearts isn’t satisfying; it’s because the world that Koei Tecmo has crafted and the concept of the Kemono still has so much more potential that I hope we’ll get to see with expansions or perhaps even a sequel. But for now, Wild Hearts is the perfect jumping-off point for what will hopefully become a new franchise that spans many years to come.

The post Wild Hearts Review – A Hunter With Heart And Soul appeared first on Press Start.

While virtual reality has quickly become a space for some fantastically innovative and unique video game experiences, the number of titles that could comfortably be considered “AAA” VR blockbusters is quite small. With the arrival of the PlayStation VR2 though, it’s clear a killer app was needed to show potential punters that this is the next generation home VR platform, something to communicate what the combination of the PS5’s powerful hardware and the PS VR2’s cutting edge feature set could be capable of beyond novelty. Enter, Horizon Call of the Mountain.

As a side-story to the events of Horizons past, Call of the Mountain puts players in the figurative shoes of Ryas, an ex-Shadow Carja hoping to redeem himself in the eyes of the Carja and the Sundom as a whole. The game opens with the player being escorted to the care of Blameless Marad, who fans will recognise from the main series games, before things go awry and machines attack. As it turns out, the area of Brightdawn has been the subject of a series of machine ambushes and, in exchange for a pardon, the Carja want Ryas to go and investigate the cause of the attacks before the machines become a threat to the great city of Meridian.

If you’ve yet to immerse yourself in the world of Horizon and that all sounded like a whole lot of nonsense, fret not. While it’s handy to have a general idea of what’s going on in this world, especially where familiar faces pop up on occasion, the narrative in Call of the Mountain is by and large just an excuse to shoot you around various locations within the Sundom from one exciting encounter to another. Ryas as a character is a little ho-hum, but as a moderately blank slate for players to embody in virtual reality he does the job.

More important than what’s happening in Horizon Call of the Mountain, is what you’re doing, which is a whole lot of traversal, climbing, puzzling, combat and tinkering in VR, and that’s where this game shines on a whole new level. 

While the actual act of climbing is somewhat simple and pretty much exactly what you would expect from virtual alpining, it’s the climbs themselves in this game that are routinely exhilarating. Hanging off of dilapidated towers attached to cliffs hundreds of metres in the air and looking out across the enormous and richly detailed landscapes is easily one of the coolest gaming experiences I’ve had. You’ll genuinely feel like a badass as monkey-bar your way across makeshift rope bridges or hurl your Ropecaster across a ravine and swing to the other side like a 1997 Brendan Fraser.

Most of the missions you’ll go on and areas you’ll explore in Call of the Mountain will also task you with figuring out light environmental puzzles that are typically very hands-on. All of the opportunities that the game gives you to interact with things in a nearly 1:1 fashion are a heap of fun and feel incredibly tactile and natural – even the optional gesture-based movement that has you walk by gingerly swinging your arms works well as a stand-in for actual ambulating and doesn’t feel nearly as goofy as it probably looks from the outside. One of my favourite touches is the way the game has you physically craft the new weapons and gadgets you find blueprints for along the journey, putting the different components into place and binding them with rope.

As great as the climbing and puzzles are in Call of the Mountain, arguably the weaker link is its occasional set combat encounters against recognisable machines from the games. Aside from a handful of semi-stealth based Watcher sections, most of these take place in contained spaces with movement restricted to strafing left and right while you fire various arrows and bombs at your foes. Firesprite has done a very respectable job of translating the fun of strategically shooting off each machine’s crucial components and utilising elemental damage to exploit their weaknesses, making the core part of the combat experience a thrill, but the limited movement and awkward and unreliable dodging controls can lead to frustration. The fights are still exciting, especially against the most formidable of the machines, but they’re less successful overall than the game’s other portions.

There’s no denying the production values here are immense, with the game looking every bit as accomplished as a majority of “flat” AAA games. Sure, it’s not quite the technical powerhouse that something like Horizon Forbidden West is on PS5, but for the VR space it’s downright astonishing. Sweeping vistas, lush and detailed environments, gorgeous lighting and precise physics interactions all come together to mind-blowing effect here. Though I’m yet to have tackled any super-high end PC VR gaming on astronomically expensive equipment, this is easily the most visually impressive virtual reality title I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing. From an audio standpoint it’s also very impressive with a fantastic soundscape and score, all heightened by the Tempest 3D Audio Tech.

As far as other unique PS VR2 features go, the game also does a great job of showcasing things like haptic feedback, adaptive triggers and eye tracking. Haptics in the controller and the headset convey both immense feedback like the crashing of a Thunderjaw’s tail into a nearby turret or the force of a Stormbird’s beating wings, as well as small subtleties like the difference in the way a rope or a heavy stone feel in the hand. Eye tracking is used to great effect in ways that add to the immersion and augment gameplay nicely. NPCs will actively catch your gaze, which really took me aback when I first realised it was happening, and you can navigate menus just by looking at the options you want. There’s even an option to add extra aim assist to enemies and objects you’re focusing directly on, which I think is super neat.

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As someone who’s sunk easily over 100 combined hours in the two mainline Horizon games, probably the biggest draw here for me has been the prospect of seeing the many machines up close and personal, and Call of the Mountain definitely doesn’t disappoint. The sheer scale and detail of these things is a sight to behold and really puts into (literal) perspective just how fearsome and powerful the likes of Thunderjaws, Stormbirds and Fireclaws actually are in this world. A special extra mode available once you’ve gone through the onboarding portion of the campaign, called Machine Safari, that takes you on a five-minute boat tour where you can see the game’s svelte selection of machines going about their business without fear of being destroyed. If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to introduce someone new to VR via the PS VR2 it’s probably the best little experience I’ve come across yet.

It’s also packed with a number of wonderful little touches, like the way NPC characters dynamically react to you getting too close for comfort, even when they’re already speaking and animating in dialogue scenes, or the fact that you can accidentally burn yourself with a torch if you’re not careful about where you wave it. The team at Firesprite wasn’t afraid to let players have a little fun along their journey, with plenty of musical instruments, paintbrushes, breakable pottery and other distractions dotted along the way.

What’s crucial with Call of the Mountain is that, while all of the above is very fun and exciting, it could have easily come off as nothing more than a very expensive and well-polished tech demo. It manages to feel like more than that though, not only serving up a well-paced, 8-10 hour campaign full of engaging mechanics and progression but also giving players plenty of reason to come back with things like collectibles, extra challenges, the excellent Machine Safari mode and simply by virtue of its world being a fantastic place to immerse yourself in.

The PlayStation VR2 and Horizon Call of the Mountain release on February 22nd, 2023.

PLAYSTATION VR2 PRE-ORDER LINKS:

• PlayStation VR2 Standard Kit – $878 with free shipping
• PlayStation VR2 Horizon Call of the Mountain Bundle – $958 with free shipping
• PlayStation VR2 Charging Station – $79 with free shipping

The post Horizon Call Of The Mountain Review – A Thrilling AAA VR Experience appeared first on Press Start.

Returnal was one of my absolute favourite games from 2021. 

It’s the crown jewel of Housemarque’s catalogue and felt like the first real next-gen experience to land on the PlayStation 5. I’d even go so far as to suggest no game since has made use of the system’s unique features, including whip fast loading and the DualSense’s goods.

Of course, it was also known for being brutally tough and I have still never finished it, despite declaring my love for it at the time. 

It’s the game’s immense replayability and satisfying core loop that makes it an absolute gem for the gamer on the go. With Returnal’s release onto PC it also signals the game’s arrival onto all manner of handheld PCs, including Valve’s Steam Deck which is available through select retailers despite not seeing an official launch down under, or the Ayaneo 2 which is available now (read Shannon’s review of that here).

Granted, you won’t be able to enjoy the ultra wide resolution and the other upgrades on offer courtesy of a beefier rig, being able to take Returnal on the road is genuinely wonderful. I’d forgotten how alluring the game’s world is, so peculiarly alien and atmospheric with an unravelling mystery of otherworldly proportions. And of course, once you settle into the game’s groove it’s more than suited to that “one more run” mentality that people spend so many ride shares and lunch breaks on.

The experience isn’t without its share of hurdles, however.

As Returnal isn’t yet fully optimised for the platform—or “Deck verified” as they say—its performance can be rather suspect. Simple benchmarking bottoms out in terms of frame rate even on the lowest presets. In a game with so many particle effects and destructible environments, it’s probably no surprise the Steam Deck struggles a tad. 

Thanks to a wonderful feature called FidelityFX Super Resolution, a software-based supersampling process somewhat similar to DLSS, the game’s overall resolution is lowered to increase frame rate before the image is ultimately upscaled through AI. Although it’ll take a bit of menu diving to activate, the upswing is that a processor heavy game like Returnal can become playable. 

And what a game it is when it’s running at full flight.

To think Returnal entered the world as a game meant to bolster the existing roster of heavy hitters, only to become a staggeringly impressive display of technical prowess and one of PlayStation’s more exciting new IP. I expect there’s a day in the distant future where I might finally lay waste to all of the evil that calls Atropos home, but until then I’ll continue to enjoy one of the coolest bullet hell shooters on the market—a cosmic cocktail of sublime gunplay and Housemarque’s brand of arcade goodness. 

Returnal launches on PC on February 16th via Steam and Epic Games Store

For all of my original thoughts on Returnal, which I stand by to this day, you can read my review of the PS5 release below:

RETURNAL (PS5) REVIEW

On the back of Hades, the roguelike has found a rightful place in the videogame zeitgeist. A marriage of repetition and entropy, contending with chance itself is half the battle. Each subsequent run brings with it new learnings, but the procedural generation of the world makes it an imperfect lesson that can’t ever be taken as absolute gospel. The beauty is in the subversion of expectation and not knowing what’s around the corner or when relief will come.

Returnal, from developer Housemarque, leans into all that makes a roguelike what it is while bringing with it the creator’s own trademark flair. The game is unpredictable, insanely addictive, and it’s tougher than a two-dollar steak. It’ll knock you down constantly, but it’s the finding your feet and landing the knockout blow in the title fight that makes it such a rewarding experience.

After being compelled toward and crash-landing on Atropos, Selene begins her search for the source of a mysterious signal; a hopeful means for self-defense and escape. Her day takes an unnerving turn when she finds a side-arm next to her own body, an apparent copy of her very matter, dead and unceremoniously gone on the exotic planet’s surface. Next to her is an audio log, detailing findings she had no recollection of logging. Later, as her search for answers leads her to her death, Selene discovers death doesn’t mean the end here on Atropos, instead awaking at the moment of the crash to begin her odyssey anew. Unlike most roguelikes, I think Returnal does an excellent job of sewing the game’s core concept together with its plot. It’s clear there’s something not right about this place, as is evidenced by the old weatherboard house from Selene’s mysterious past, which is drip-fed at intervals that signpost progress, manifesting itself on one of Atropos’ winding, ever-changing paths.

Although I expect the game and its atmosphere will be compared at times to Ridley Scott’s Alien, I felt Returnal borrowed more from the Prometheus school of quiet horror and world-building. From the exotic flora to the weathered stone monuments — an impermanent legacy at first glance — it feels as though you’re drinking up the origins of this place and potentially the beginnings of all things. We’re strangers in a strange land in Returnal and it’s sold with terrifying efficiency.

Housemarque’s pedigree is felt in Returnal as their aptitude for bullet hell combat is at full force throughout the game’s moment-to-moment gameplay, from the identifiable patterns each enemy has to the fast and frenetic over-the-shoulder combat of a caliber not seen since Vanquish — sans the cover system. Although the weapons and their rolls found per run are random, much like most of what you’ll experience, there’s a simple proficiency system in place — experience can be gained through both kills and certain collectibles, which can be seen on the radar, and all amount to a power level that determines the strength of guns you’ll find. It’s elegant and easy to understand after a few runs, as are all of Returnal’s smorgasbord of systems.

As you’d expect from a first-party PlayStation Studios title, Returnal makes great use of the bells and whistles the console boasts. The sound design in the game, which is stellar, to say the least, lends itself so perfectly to the more dynamic and layered performance of 3D audio.

All of the features built into the DualSense serve to enrich the experience, from the haptic feedback which literally lets you feel the beaded trickle of a downpour to the adaptive triggers which make it a small twitch decision to switch from aiming to alt-fire, which is handy in a game where reaction time is everything.

While the game is blazing fast and players will enjoy snappy loads courtesy of the machine’s power, I did find that some of the paths leading to other biomes tended to be a little drawn out in an effort to let the world load in. From the slow, lumbering stone gates that block the third biome to the mile-long bridge that separates said biome from its final encounter, there’s a bit of padding that feels less impressive.

As is common in games like Returnal, there’s a good mix of permanent and impermanent abilities, with the former often seen as a progression benchmark that offers a shortcut to late-game areas and even to the doorstep of boss encounters in some instances—which is a relief, as the bosses can be grief incarnate. The great thing about the permanent unlocks in Returnal is that they’re a boon to both Selene’s explorative and combat capabilities, they’re a double threat.

The impermanent stuff is pretty much as you’d expect. Single-use items, like health vials, vanish without a trace, as do the altered statuses you’re lumped with from parasites and malignant items you’re able to collect. The game does a fine job of flagging and advertising the effects items will have on Selene — every positive buff more often than not carries an undesirable debuff.

Throughout each run, you’re able to collect a standard currency used for purchasing temporary buffs along the way as well as keys that’ll grant you access to rare item chests or secret gated rooms that hold comparable treasures. Of course, these things reset with every death, the only thing that won’t reset is Ether, a mysterious tender that transcends Selene’s ethereal Groundhog Day. It can be spent on artefacts, which grant a pretty powerful status effect for any given run, or it can be exhausted cleansing the corrupted chests of Atropos that would otherwise nerf Selene’s killing power. I wouldn’t say it’s commonplace in-world, though you’re able to get your hands on enough of it through the auxiliary challenges Returnal offers.

For some, it’ll only take seeing Returnal in action for some to take the punt on it. When you catch a glimpse of the frantic gunplay in this shifting landscape, all rendered at a near faultless 60fps and 4K, it isn’t what I’d call a hard sell. It has a phenomenal art direction and Atropos is largely the star. I felt for a while that the game was purposefully mood-lit in an attempt to mask undesirable textures, but it isn’t the case at all. Each of the biomes has a distinct personality and personnel and I can’t help but heap praise on how varied the enemy design is. On top of being fluid in motion, there are some commendable particle effects on display whenever Selene enters a portal only for her matter to derez and reconstruct on the other end, it’s a glorious effect and I never got tired of seeing it.

There’s a lot that’s memorable in the presentation for Returnal. Small character traits like Selene’s heterochromia iridum — different coloured irises — are small highlights that, when amplified like they tend to be here, help it stand out from the crowd. The same can be said for the little audio cue that alerts you that your alt-fire has cooled down, it became ingrained in me the more I played, it was as familiar to me as Gears of War’s active reload cue was in its time.

Although not directly multiplayer or co-op, Returnal has some cool, albeit limited, persistent world ideas that don’t feel entirely fleshed out. Digital ghosts of other scouts are often found near trouble spots and could be considered a red flag for a tough battle ahead, but these entirely optional moments grant a one-time chance to either avenge the dead scout or scavenge their resources for a small fee. Given there’s no actual peer-to-peer feedback, it comes off as faux interactivity that could have actually been really cool with better integration. Dark Souls has its signposting and invasions, and Death Stranding’s shared world felt unique and player-shaped, so it’s hard not to lament a missed chance no matter how small.

That’s not to say Returnal doesn’t have a lot to offer players in addition to its addictive ‘one more run’ loop. There’s a rich catalogue of history to fill out for Atropos which tells a fascinating story in its own right, and there’s a daily challenge good for both fun and in-game credits.

The post Returnal’s PC Release Makes For A Compelling Portable Experience appeared first on Press Start.

For as long as I’ve been a devout fan of the Final Fantasy franchise (and it’s been a while) I’ve been in love with the soundtracks – as I’m sure just about every other fan is. So when Theatrhythm Final Fantasy was first introduced to the world via the 3DS in 2012, I was in heaven. One of my fondest memories is rocking up way too early to one of the Distant Worlds Final Fantasy symphony orchestra productions with a group of my friends and all sitting around in a circle with our 3DSes jamming out to song after song.

Now, nearly a decade after the last entry, Theatrhythm Final Bar Line is bringing the music back in a big way in both handheld and home console form via the Nintendo Switch and PS4.

For a series that has no shame in flirting with excess, it’s no surprise that the third major entry in its rhythm spin-off series blows the wheels off what the previous games had to offer in terms of content. Curtain Call was already impressive with over 200 tracks to play in the base game, but Final Bar Line ups that number to a ridiculous 385 songs – and again that’s before including any of its already-exhaustive list of DLC tracks.

Oddly enough, to accommodate this swelling setlist Final Bar Line actually trims some of the fat of the previous titles by keeping things somewhat simple in the mode selection. You get the Series Quest mode, a free play Music Stage mode, online Multi Battles and that’s it. 

The first, Series Quest, does away with any kind of story or overworld map stuff in lieu of just letting you pick the Final Fantasy game of your choice and playing through its included songs in a general order. It’s the meat and potatoes of the game, being the main driver of progression and also the core way to unlock songs to play at your leisure in Music Stages. That detail did rub me the wrong way a little, not just for the inconvenience of having to play through 385 songs to unlock them all but because you’re initially locked out of the majority of the Final Fantasy titles and have to play far enough through others to earn “keys” to open the rest. I can appreciate that a sense of progressing through something is important, but not being able to dive straight into the Final Fantasy VIII soundtrack from the get-go was a frustration.

Luckily, the Theatrhythm series has the distinct advantage of being packed to the rafters with fantastic music, so even when you’re engaging with a game in the series that ranks low on a personal level it’s almost never a bad time. If a rhythm game lives or dies by its soundtrack then Final Bar Line is immortal. Not only has the team curated some iconic bangers from the mainling games I through XV, but there’s stuff here from spin-off games, remix and special event albums and other neat, deep cuts. If you’ve ever enjoyed a Final Fantasy game or soundtrack, you’ll absolutely find some gold here among the stacked playlist.

Bargain Guide – Theatrhythm Final Bar Line

There’s also a ton of DLC in the pipeline, from another 27 bonus tracks in the game’s Digital Deluxe Edition (which can be upgraded to from the standard digital or physical copy, thankfully) to a planned calendar of added tracks from other notable Square Enix franchises. Normally I’d scoff at the thought of a litany of paid DLC being laid out so emphatically at a game’s launch but given the sheer volume of content already included and the fact that the extra stuff will be coming from franchises like NieR, LIVE A LIVE, Chrono Trigger, Octopath Traveler, The World Ends With You and more I’m completely on board with the idea.

One of the big questions hanging over this new Theatrhythm game has been that of the controls. After all, the previous two titles have existed solely on platforms with some form of touchscreen and took full advantage of that by having players tap and swipe along to their music. On the PS4 where I played the game for review, there isn’t that facility, so everything has been moved to button presses and analog stick pushes. I wasn’t sure at first if it was going to work as well this way, but I’ve happily been proven wrong. 

Whichever specific “mode” of song gameplay you’re in, be it battle, field or event, the idea is still to follow along with rhythm prompts scrolling across the screen and hit them at the correct time. Instead of tapping or swiping, your standard “notes” can be activated with just about any button on the controller and the directional ones require a quick flick of either of the analogue sticks at the correct angle. Variations come in the form of button holds and double-ups that task you to use both sticks or press (again, basically any) two buttons, but that’s about as deep as it goes. That doesn’t mean you won’t be challenged, with varying difficulty levels offering up some absolutely cursed charts at the high end that I don’t think I could ever hope of nailing, but the barrier of entry even for non-rhythm savvy fans is nice and low.

Square Enix and indieszero clearly understand that their audience is comprised largely of JRPG nerds, so there are a ton of systems built-in to make this feel like a bit of a genre crossover. Anyone who’s played these games in the past will know generally what to expect – you’ll build your party of characters as you unlock them from across the many games, level them up by playing to unlock new abilities and give yourself an edge in stages, and collect “Rhythmia” and CollectaCards among other things.

Like Curtain Call before it, the RPG/character progression systems are fun but largely superfluous. It certainly helps to have some extra HP or saving grace abilities to fall back on if you’re doing particularly badly in a music stage, but as long as you’re doing the rhythm game thing of pressing the right buttons at the right time then you don’t really need to worry about your character builds or party make-up.

Still, there’s a giddy compulsion to boosting your party, calling on familiar summons, picking up collectible tat and movies/music to enjoy in the game’s Museum, and watching a bunch of different numbers continuously tick over as you play. I’ve already pumped decent hours into Final Bar Line in the short time I’ve had it and I can imagine I’ll spend so many more in the months to come. Sure, the formula is maybe starting to wear thin at this point but things were so bright to begin with that even a little lost shine can’t bring the experience down.

On the visual front, what you’re getting here isn’t all that different from the 3DS entries with your party of cute, chibi-fied Final Fantasy protagonists squaring off against equally adorable monsters and villains from the games. It all suits the big screen surprisingly well with bright, sharp art and plenty of real estate to work with. The only real issue I have here is that, more than likely just due to the massive number of tracks included, the stage backgrounds and enemies that you’ll encounter in a lot of songs don’t match their source material. It’s by no means a deal-breaker but playing along to the Balamb Garden theme song while walking through a high fantasy castle interior, for example, can feel like a bit of a let-down.

The only thing I haven’t been able to try out yet, but one that I doubt will have affected my enjoyment of the game in either direction, is the Multi Battle mode which pits you against up to three other players online in a point-scoring competition that features no fail state but awards each competitor an increasing shot at rewards as they score above their opponents. Head-to-head rhythm gaming can be a great time and I appreciate that everyone will technically walk away a winner, but I have doubts about the longevity or even initial popularity of the mode.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line releases on February 16th for PS4 and Switch. Amazon currently has the cheapest price at $74 with free shipping.

The post Theatrhythm Final Bar Line Review – A Big Score appeared first on Press Start.

Not wanting to be complacent, Ayaneo has dropped its third handheld in the last 12 months. This began with with the Ayaneo Next, then the smaller Ayaneo Air Pro and now the company is taking things to the next level with the newly released Ayaneo 2 which has just hit Australian stores.

The Ayaneo 2 differs from its former two releases in the sense that it’s much more powerful than the Steam Deck and actually feels quite future proof in a lot of its features. The biggest barrier of entry is still the price at $2,099 AUD (grab it here), but at least as far as performance goes, it’s pushed ahead of what the Steam Deck offers.

In case you haven’t read one of my Ayaneo reviews before, these are Windows devices (in this case it comes pre-loaded with Windows 11) that can play games from any launcher, so you’re able to boot up the Xbox Game Pass app, or Steam, or Epic, or any emulator that you like.

The Ayaneo 2 has a 7-inch 1200p display that literally has no bezel, so as far as design goes, not only does the Ayaneo 2 feel great in the hands, it’s a much better looking device than the Ayaneo Next or other handhelds in this space. The biggest compliment that I can offer it is that it feels like the PlayStation Vita re-born.

Whilst other Ayaneo devices have been criticised for being behind or on par with the Steam Deck performance-wise, The Ayaneo 2 sports a Zen3+ 6800U chip which delivers much better raw power compared to the Steam Deck’s custom Zen2 chip, often offering a 15-25% increase in gaming performance.

This is evident when booting up the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 or Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales, I was able to get a lot closer to 60FPS at 800p than I ever have been with the other Ayaneo devices. It felt like a much smoother experience than I’ve had on these handhelds previously, and honestly just impressed with every game that I booted up.

Cranking it beyond what the Steam Deck is capable of to a resolution of 1200p to make full use of the display and this still kept most AAA games at around the 30FPS mark, which was still more than respectable. With AMD FSR getting more advanced and better utilised, this should only get better and better.

Since I got the device, I’ve played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in bed most nights, and it just runs flawlessly without ever feeling like I’m dying due to performance issues. This is absolutely the first time I’ve used one of these devices and not felt like I’ve had to dial down settings or look to get that extra bit of performance, with the device being more than capable with anything that I threw at it.

With 16GB of memory and a 1TB SSD, it’s just crazy to me how close these are getting to proper computers, with the specs honestly outperforming a lot of what most everyday people would use as their daily driver. Whilst I’ll talk about the multi docking station a little bit later, this was the first time I actually connected one of these devices to a display and used it for a few days as a computer, and it just worked flawlessly, which goes a bit further in terms of bang for buck.

BUY IT FROM AMAZON FOR $2,099 AUD

As far as inputs go on the device, there’s three USB-C ports, two which can be used for charging and one for data. There’s also a MicroSD slot to easily expand storage and a fingerprint sensor on the power button. You also get two USB-A to USB-C adaptors in the box for connecting keyboards, mice or other accessories that might not have USB-C ports. Pretty much everything that you’d ever need both for gaming or computing is included.

Where this device feels better than the Steam Deck or previous Ayaneo products is that not only does it perform really, really well with AAA games, but it also feels future proof. You can connect an external GPU enclosure to the unit, to beef it up at your desk, and the SSD can be replaced with another standard SSD, if you’re wanting to increase storage. Neither of these things are necessary out of the box, but knowing it can be upgraded goes a long way to knowing you’re going to get long-term value.

It’s no secret that battery life is an issue with any portable device, and once again, it was on the shorter side here. You’re looking at 1.5-2 hours with a AAA game pushing at a 1200p resolution with the grunt required for the performance that I’ve spoken about, with this being a lot longer for indie games. Ayaneo is making some good progress towards getting this higher with a new app called SmartTDP which really cleverly uses only the exact amount of power required to push the desired frame rates, resulting in a longer battery life, but don’t expect to use it on long haul flights and such without a power bank.

As mentioned, the Ayaneo 2 runs Windows 11 which is a huge positive for playing absolutely any game that you already own (and not just on Steam) as well as emulation, which obviously this machine excels at, but it’s also still a bit of a negative in the sense that Windows wasn’t really designed to be used with a touch screen. It’s absolutely fine if you’re just booting a game, and not an issue once you’re in, but it can still have its quirks if needing to navigate around, with it often being much easier to just pair a keyboard and mouse (which is super easy to do with Bluetooth or with a dongle).

AyaSpace is the device’s front-end loader, and it does a great job at providing an overlay with quick access to changing brightness and how much power you’re using, as well as sorting your games from all of your launchers and displaying them. There were still a few bugs, particularly when changing resolution or not loading games in, but it’s constantly being updated and worked on. As cool as a design feature that it is, I still found inconsistencies with the lighting up of the analogue sticks as well, particularly when having the device next to me and trying to sleep.

Ayaneo has launched a new multi docking station alongside this device. It can work with any of its products, but I can’t tell you how much this improved the experience. Not only did it mean that I could easily charge the device at all times, it also made connecting a monitor via HDMI as well as keyboards/mice a breeze. As I mentioned earlier, you could now literally use this as your daily driver without any issues, then pick it up to take it to bed and game.

Really though, this is a versatile portable Windows device, whether you’re playing the latest AAA games, doing some Photoshop work at your desk or wanting a really good emulation device, despite the fact that it’s expensive, it does feel great from a performance point of view, and a lot closer to the uncompromised handheld dream I’ve always had.

The post Ayaneo 2 Review – The Handheld Dream appeared first on Press Start.

The Elgato Stream Deck has quickly become synonymous with easy, customisable control solutions for streamers and content creators working from a desk at home. Simple interfaces tied to great software make them a natural fit into any workspace or flow and intuitive to use for live casts, but if the increasing popularity of products like the Razer Stream Controller (or the Loupedeck Live device it’s based on) is any indication, the people are ready for more. More, in this case, being dials and touchscreens. Enter the Elgato Stream Deck +.

The Stream Deck + is, in essence, Elgato’s answer to something like the Loupedeck, swapping out some of the buttons on the regular Stream Deck for four knobs and a four-panel touchscreen display to go with them. In the box, you get the Deck + itself (naturally) as well as the detachable stand and USB-C to USB-A cable. Nice and simple. Much like the Mk2 version of the standard Stream Deck, this one is fixed at a 45-degree angle and can technically be removed but you’ll have to break out a screwdriver to do it.

In what I assume was the desire to keep the whole front panel looking uniform and sensical, the width of buttons has been reduced from five on the standard Stream Deck to four on the Stream Deck + which means with only two rows there’s a total of eight customisable keys here versus 15. That’s a pretty significant reduction and probably the only real issue I have with this new take on the Deck. That said, they’re a bit bigger than the others which is nice, and depending on what you’re doing with them the dials and touchscreen can easily replace multiple keys, particularly through Elgato’s Dial Stacks.

GET YOURS: ELGATO STREAM DECK + AT AMAZON – $326 WITH FREE SHIPPING

Dial Stacks allow you to assign multiple functions to a single dial, switching between them by pressing it in which also changes to the display on the touchscreen above it to reflect what setting you’re manipulating. It makes it super easy to, say, cycle through volume settings on multiple audio sources, change multiple values in an Adobe project or even set up your home smart lighting – I set each of the four dials to a different room in my apartment and switch between individual lights with a press which is honestly pretty neat and almost makes me want a second Stream Deck + just for home control stuff.

The dials themselves are great to use as well, with small but tactile ‘steps’ to each turn and a nice click to each press giving the brushed-metal knobs a very sleek and professional feel. Elgato has a handy page built into its Stream Deck Store that covers off a lot of the plugins that already support the dial/touchscreen combo, like a Discord Volume Mixer that can dynamically show you call participants and allow you to easily mix their levels on your end, or the Philips Hue plugin to easily switch and control lights, using the dials to adjust things like brightness and colour temperature.

The touchscreen bar on the Stream Deck + is fairly bright and sharp, much the same as what you get with the displays on the buttons above, although with the wider real estate there’s a lot of fun to be had coming up with attractive images and ways to display everything on it. You’re also saving more keys again here by being able to swipe the screen to change pages on the entire Deck, which would usually have taken up a precious slot on one of the buttons and feels natural to perform as an action. Having used the Razer Stream Controller previously I do miss the haptic feedback of the touch panels a little, but I’d absolutely cop that loss for the rest of what the Deck + has to offer.

On the software side of things, nothing much has changed. If you’ve used a Stream Deck before it’s all run through the exact same software suite, allowing users to drag and drop functions onto each key (and now the Dials as well), customise the keys with images and labels, download free plug-ins to add new functions and set up extra profiles/pages for different situations. The list of plug-ins available for the unique functions of the Deck + already seems to be growing nicely, but the longevity of it will heavily depend on that support.

I’ve been using the Stream Deck + in conjunction with Elgato’s Wave DX dynamic microphone and Wave XLR interface and there’s absolutely something to be said about the synergy of devices within the family. The company’s Wave Link audio solution is already great, and combined with the easy controls and integration of the Deck it’s made sitting down to record the Press Start Podcast every week or quickly and easily control OBS software with multiple sources an absolute breeze.

At the end of the day, whether or not the Stream Deck + is right for you will largely hinge on your need for the Dials and the incremental adjustment opportunities they provide. If your uses are more “binary” like activating transitions, switching things on/off or just hitting shortcuts then a standard Stream Deck should mostly suffice. If you’d like to instantly scale up your production potential and get something approaching your own mixing board without taking up a premium of space on your desk though, this is a very compelling option.

The post Elgato Stream Deck + Review – Dialled Up A Notch appeared first on Press Start.

With the success of Nintendo Switch and the pulling in of many lapsed gamers, so many classic instalments in classic franchises have had their moments and made returns to Nintendo’s gargantuanly successful platform. Everything you’ve loved before – including Pokemon Snap, Link’s Awakening or even classics that most of the buying public skipped on Wii U – made a reappearance on the Nintendo Switch. But one franchise has been left in the dark.

It’s been a long time since Metroid and Samus were heard from in any capacity. Metroid Prime 4 was first announced for the Switch in 2017. Six years ago. It’s since changed developers and rebooted development. We’ve even had a new Metroid game, Metroid Dread, the fifth game in the mainline series; and in that time, we’ve still had to wait to see what Metroid Prime 4 could look like.

But now, Nintendo has shifted focus to arguably one of the most critically well-received games in their lineup from one of the most commercially underappreciated series they hold. Metroid Prime Remastered feels like a triumph for both Nintendo and fans. For Nintendo, it’s a triumph in bringing back a classic game that not enough people have experienced. For fans, it’s the beginning of a long overdue acknowledgement that, finally, Metroid Prime is being given the treatment it deserves.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $49 FROM BIG W

As expected, the plot of Metroid Prime remains untouched in this remaster. The Prime series takes place between the events of the second and third games. Samus has crash-landed on Tallon IV while investigating an energy disturbance that she’s traced back to the Space Pirates. While trying to escape the planet, she uncovers yet another plot involving them and the titular Metroids. She attempts to eradicate them once more while escaping from Tallon IV.

I’ll get the obvious out of the way here, then. Metroid Prime Remastered is, without a doubt, the best way to experience Metroid Prime. It feels like one of the better examples of a remaster in games – artistically similar to the game it’s based on but with multiple new touches that help it feel modern, perhaps even feel just like you remembered it. But a lot has changed visually. On top of this, the controls have been reworked to offer modem dual-stick options too, though if you prefer the original control scheme, that’s here too, along with a slew of sensitivity options.

Those who have yet to play Metroid Prime would be left to wonder what’s so special about it. At the time, and even today, Metroid Prime was always an innovative take on the first-person shooter genre. It combines strong elements of action, exploration and puzzle solving to offer an authentic Metroid experience, but in 3D.

But what does that mean, exactly? Until Prime hit, the Metroid games were completely two-dimensional. Metroid Prime expanded that concept monstrously, offering a large interconnected world to explore with multiple paths through it. It’s a fun world to explore and incredibly satisfying to discover new pathways through. Every time you get a new power-up, you can explore new areas and start thinking about areas you’ve passed that were previously locked that you can now explore.

It’s a gameplay loop rooted deeply in backtracking, but that’s the charm of Metroid, and for the most part of Prime, it’s mostly satisfying.

Perfectly leveraging the jump to first person when it first debuted, Samus also gains access to visors for her helmet that can change how she interacts with the world. The scan visor is the main one you’ll be using, worldbuilding by giving you tidbits of info while also providing assistance to players who might be stuck. The thermal and x-ray visors she finds also provide her with different ways to interact with puzzles and track enemies. It’s a great system, though some players may still find an issue with how much stopping and scanning you might have to do.

Though it’s not all about exploration either. Samus is armed with various arm cannons to help her deal with the hostile fauna of Tallon IV and the Space Pirates overrunning it. The combat in Metroid Prime still feels snappy, owing greatly to a functional lock-on system. The enemy variety on offer here is similarly fantastic; the boss battles are especially sights to behold. So many of them are memorable setpieces that really test your mettle and are some of the most epic moments of Metroid Prime.

While the word “remaster” might insinuate a simple up-res, Metroid Prime Remastered is anything but and so much more. Practically every visual element has been remodelled or recreated in higher resolution with more detail than the original as playable on the Gamecube and Wii. It’s an incredible, high-effort remaster that absolutely nails the tone and atmosphere that the game is going for.

And the atmosphere is really where Metroid Prime shines. The game’s atmosphere is absolutely dripping; Tallon IV is a beautifully realised alien world filled with diverse biomes decorated with otherworldly landscapes. Though, Metroid Prime Remastered goes beyond just improving the world’s visuals. The lighting has been completely reworked to offer a greater ambience than in the original release.

I can’t overstate how these lighting improvements work to create a superior experience. They’re simple adjustments that make a huge difference. Just switching on a hologram system, only to see the glow of that hologram fill the room with light, is a level of attention to detail and fidelity that we don’t see on the Switch. It all comes together to make the world feel alive and real.

The stellar atmosphere is similarly amplified by a fantastic soundtrack. The original score by series composer Kenji Yamamoto does a great job of creating a unique sense of isolation and tension. New players will be able to look forward to hearing the epic and cinematic soundtrack the first time they visit locations like Magmoor Caverns and Phendrana Drifts. At the same time, returning fans will be reminded of the strength of the soundtrack.

I’ve played Metroid Prime multiple times, sometimes even with enhancements that only the modding community and dedicated fans could bring to it. But even though the Switch is objectively less powerful than a PC, Metroid Prime Remastered’s visual improvements more than makeup for it. Make no mistakes; this is undoubtedly one of the best-looking and smoothest-running games I’ve ever played on the Switch.

But despite how much Metroid Prime gets right, a few aspects still don’t sit right with me. While I’ve alluded that backtracking is a core design element of the series, Prime throws a quest at you towards the end of the game that requires you to do so in large amounts. It’s done in such a way that, while more straightforward on repeat playthroughs, it brings the story’s pacing to a halt towards the end.

All in all, though, this is a minor blemish on an otherwise lustrous package.

The post Metroid Prime Remastered Review – A Remasterpiece appeared first on Press Start.

If you’re somebody who grew up with Harry Potter, then Hogwarts Legacy is the game you’ve been dreaming about. You’ve probably got some well-placed nostalgia in the original games; enjoying the experience of going to class at Hogwarts, casting spells, and exploring the grounds. Until now, no game has come close to capturing the magic of the world of Harry Potter. While Hogwarts Legacy does have some of the pitfalls that many modern RPGs of today do, no game with magic feels as joyful to play as this. 

Hogwarts Legacy takes place over a hundred years before Harry Potter took his first train to the wizarding school. In the game, you play as your own student, unusual in that they’re beginning their magical journey at Hogwarts in their fifth year, but also in that they can tap into and harness a powerful force that not many people have been able to prior. It’s simply called “ancient magic”, and its rarity has made you a target for Ranrok, the leader of a goblin rebellion, who has allied himself with dark wizards to try and harness your ancient magic for their own purposes. 

While Hogwarts Legacy has little to do with the franchise it was born from, the plot is serviceable enough to keep you intrigued, even if it does take a bit to get going. There was rarely a surprise as the story played out, but I appreciate the dedication of Hogwarts trying to do its own thing and not simply being a retread of the conventions that we’ve come to see from both Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts. Regardless of where the story goes, it does a great job of nailing the feel and tone of a story set in the world of Harry Potter, which is a plus. 

But I’d fervently argue that the crux of the Hogwarts Legacy experience is just living your life in the world of Hogwarts. From a gameplay perspective, you’ve probably played the type of game that Hogwarts Legacy is before. It’s an open-world that’s populated with activities to undertake, characters to engage with, and secrets to uncover. Hogwarts Legacy’s world isn’t as big as other open-world games, but it’s packed with things to discover. Hogwarts itself is a marvel comprising winding corridors densely packed with hidden nooks and crannies just begging to be uncovered. The surrounding areas like Hogsmeade offer a shopping district for players, while the Highlands around Hogwarts is also explorable. It’s bigger than you’d expect but smaller by the standard of most open-world games. 

There’s a whole bunch of activities packed into Hogwarts Legacy’s world to uncover. The open world is filled with collectibles packed with little lore-laden tidbits that I’m sure fans of the Wizarding World will enjoy uncovering. Other activities include Merlin’s Trials, which act as Breath of the Wild-esque shrines, offering puzzles to solve with minimal guidance, and of course a wide range of beasts and dark wizards to take down. 

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Surprisingly, one of the strongest cores of the Hogwarts Legacy experience is the combat system. You’re eventually given just over twenty spells and each of them serves a great purpose in battle. With the press of a button, you can block spells with Protego, but perfectly blocking allows you to parry, throwing back a Stupefy to stun your attacker. There are dodge rolls as well for avoiding the odd unblockable attack, but magic is the solution to most of your problems in Hogwarts Legacy’s combat. 

I say that because the combat has been tuned to take advantage of most of the spells you’ll wield. Where other games might just add elemental weaknesses to their combat, Hogwarts Legacy has you exploiting physical weaknesses to get the jump on enemies. You can suspend mutant toads by their tongue mid-attack with Levioso, exposing their soft underbelly to deal critical damage. You can even slash that same tongue with Diffindo, a severing charm, to insta-kill it. A troll’s club can be Flipendo’d to deal critical damage to itself. You can even use Expelliarmus to interrupt a wizard’s casting or rip an axe out of a non-magical enemy’s hands and throw it back at them. There are even more options to exploit enemy weaknesses too, and it helps encourage the use of your whole repertoire of spells. 

Spellcasting and combat are just one side of the coin, however, as you’ll still have to do what you can around Hogwarts to be a star student for your house. Attending classes often unlocks new spells, but also opens up questlines for other students around Hogwarts who might need your help. There are clearly two tiers to Hogwarts Legacy’s side quests – some of the more involved quest lines feel like they could be in the main game, while others are delivering certain goods from one area of the map to another. 

Spells are not only used in combat either, with some of them being utilised to solve puzzles too. They’re the kind of puzzles that have clear solutions, so no immersive sim-like interactivity is present here, but they’re still just as satisfying once you realise what you have to do to solve them. It’s especially exciting, and perhaps even Metroid-like, to unlock a new spell and then go exploring to see what new areas of the castle or highlands you can explore now. It all comes together in the sense that there’s always something to do or see in Hogwarts Legacy no matter what point you’re at in the journey.  

Through the story, you’ll eventually be given access to The Room of Requirement. It’s designed to scratch that base management itch that many players might have – allowing you to conjure furniture to decorate it how you see fit. It’s so undemanding that if you hate this kind of thing in games you can safely ignore it, but it’s simple enough to engage with that it pays dividends if you do. You can set up potion stations, potted plants, and more to create your own little terrarium of sorts, which can then be harvested once a certain amount of time has passed. 

Within the Room of Requirement is also a selection of habitats to house the friendlier beasts in the game, which can be captured in a knapsack out in the wild similar to Newt’s suitcase in Fantastic Beasts. Emptying the knapsack then allows you to care for the beasts (or set up the systems that will care for them) which in turn provides you with materials to enhance your gear with. It’s another system with enough depth to it that it’s impressive that it’s even included. But if it’s not your thing, you can engage with it as much as you like. 

The main story will take most players around fifteen or twenty hours to complete, but Hogwarts Legacy’s world is full of other activities to fulfill. Completion of optional quests and finding certain collectibles contribute to challenge meters, which subsequently unlock sets of gear for players. It is admittedly done-to-death design in open-world games, but there is so much variety on offer here in a world so compelling that it doesn’t ever feel incessantly grindy. If you’ve got your eyes on completing everything, you could easily pull fifty or so hours out of Hogwarts Legacy or even more depending on how long you spend on each task.  

And I say that with love because Hogwarts Legacy is really good at making you feel inefficient. The world is so inviting, and the activities are just so compelling that I rarely travelled in a straight line from one objective to another without getting distracted by something else. I haven’t felt this compelled to explore an open world since dare I say it, Elden Ring, but it feels like the right mix of size and density for the type of experience it’s providing. 

It’s not all great though, and there are some things that I think Hogwarts Legacy could most certainly do better. For one, the gear system is great. There’s a nice variety of robes, scarves, glasses, and hats on offer that any wizard or witch would love to wear. You can even transmog anything at any point, but the gear itself feels a little bit tiresome to manage. You’ll often find yourself with five robes, all looking the same, but with slightly different stat increases. It’s not a huge dealbreaker, given that the combat feels more rooted in skill rather than pure number or stats crunching, but it was annoying enough to have to keep selling off the old stuff that I had to mention it here. 

And then there’s the absence of one of the most integral parts of the Harry Potter experience – Quidditch. There’s in-universe justification for why it’s not playable in Hogwarts Legacy, but it feels strange not to have it here when every other aspect of the Hogwarts experience is here. It by no means demotes the feelings of the experience, but even having the big Quidditch arena stand there, going unused, feels like a bit of a misnomer to not include it. 

From a presentation standpoint, Hogwarts Legacy does its best to align with the same visual style of the films. While it incorporates some of the classic motifs from John Williams’ now iconic score, Alexander Horowitz’s original score does a great job of evoking the wonder and whimsy of the Wizarding World without entirely relying on the crutch of nostalgia. My favourite touches were the very subdued but, once again, whimsical pieces that played while exploring. They just helped to give such a sense of tone and place to Hogwarts and its highlands as you uncover its many secrets. 

The post Hogwarts Legacy Review – A Spellbinding Adventure That Exceeds Expectation appeared first on Press Start.

As someone who wouldn’t remotely label themselves a “pro” gamer, the market of premium controllers like Xbox’s official Elite controllers or aftermarket pads from companies like SCUF has typically always eluded me. I love the feeling and construction of my Elite Series 2, but I can’t say that I’ve ever had the desire to mess with any of the added features that make its biggest selling points.

With PlayStation entering the fray with its own pro controller solution in the DualSense Edge though, I decided that maybe it was time to see just how much I could get out of a controller that costs about half as much as the console it’s designed for. After a good week of thorough use, I’m already struggling to go back to the regular DualSense – except for when the battery in my Edge dies and I have no other choice.

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The very first thing I noticed on PlayStation kindly sending me out a DualSense Edge for review is that the box it comes pack in is hefty. It’s markedly bigger than the normal DualSense box and significantly heavier, making it feel every bit imposing and important right from the moment you start to unbox it. Inside, everything is already neatly packed into the included carry case, a stark white and black number that exudes the PS5 aesthetic and will probably get very dirty very quickly if you’re frequently using it to cart the Edge around.

What you’re getting for your eye-watering $340 investment is the DualSense Edge controller itself (naturally), said carry case, a very nice 2.8m braided USB-C cable with an optional lock attachment, two extra pairs of analogue stick caps in the old PS3-style convex shape with high and low variants and two sets of optional back button attachments – one “paddle” style set and a smaller, half-dome set. It’s a decent amount of kit and somewhat in line with what you’d expect from the full Elite Series 2 package, although there are a couple of odd or disappointing choices in what’s included, but we’ll get to those a bit further down.

Picking up the DualSense Edge for the first time, it’s clear that all the heft isn’t just in the goodie bag of extras inside the box – the controller itself is quite weighty and solid. I wouldn’t call it heavy, but it’s definitely a discernible difference from the normie DualSense. It feels decidedly “premium”, like it’s made out of better stuff than most and built ready to tackle anything you throw at it. It definitely comes across in the hand as an expensive bit of gear, and it’s thoughtfully designed with flourishes like a textured grip at the back of the handles and on the L2/R2 triggers, shiny black finishes on the front face and buttons and a very handsome touch pad that’s a bit more angular and textured with little PlayStation icons.

Aside from aesthetic differences, the overall shape and fit of the Edge is pretty well on par with the existing DualSense which is a pretty commendable feat considering the amount of extra stuff packed into it. In additional to the usual fixtures this new take on Sony’s iconic controller includes two function (FN) buttons underneath the analogue sticks, trigger length sliders next to each set of shoulder buttons, and two slots to fit in either of the back button attachments that come with it.

Anyone who’s used a controller of this ilk will have a pretty good idea of what to expect from the lever-style back buttons, which are similar to what you’d find on the Elite controllers. More interesting are the half-dome variety which are smaller and seem to work better for people with a higher grip on the controller, for me these were definitely the preferred option but it’s great that there’s an alternative included. I very quickly found myself making use of the back buttons in Dead Space, where I mapped them to give me instant access to health and Isaac’s Stasis ability without having to take my fingers off the shoulder buttons. I also made use of being able to shorten the travel on the L2/R2 triggers to give my fingers a bit of reprieve when slinging spells in Forspoken, a nice little added comfort option that I hadn’t anticipated.

As far as the DualSense Edge’s analogue sticks go, it’s mostly good stuff. The sticks themselves are pretty well what you’d expect from the DualSense controller, of course with the point of difference that the tops can be swapped out with the PS3-esque convex ones included in the box. These come in standard and taller lengths for people that like to add some extra travel distance for games that beg extra nuance, but I’m a bit confused as to why we only get the taller option in the convex style caps. Surely it wouldn’t have taken much more effort to include a fourth set and give people taller versions of the default caps.

The biggest plus here though, is the user-serviceability of the DualSense Edge’s analogue stick modules, which can be entirely removed with a just a couple quick switch flips and replaced with brand new ones should your sticks succumb to the dreaded drift. Given the price point of the controller I almost would’ve expected PlayStation to opt for hall effect sensors over the drift-prone analogue equivalent, but at least it’s easy enough to pick up a $35 official replacement module and pop it in if you find yourself out of warranty and unwilling to shell out another $340.

Something I didn’t clock initially was the tiny release switch tucked away on the underside of the Edge to make the front faceplate pop off for getting at the modules. I’d gotten used to just (carefully) pulling the plates off of my standard PS5 controllers to swap them for aftermarket ones and automatically started doing the same here. Thankfully it doesn’t seem like it’s done any harm, but keep that in mind and learn from my mistake.

Aside from the impressive physical additions in the DualSense Edge, the software component is also largely a success. The FN buttons at the bottom of the pad are your gateway to a handful of shortcuts that help to tie the whole experience together alongside the UI integration on the PS5. The dedicated DualSense Edge settings menu on the PS5 allows users to adjust a heap of settings from completely reassigning buttons to adjusting deadzones for the triggers and sticks as well as sensitivity. All of these tweaks can be saved into custom profiles which can then be assigned to different combinations of the FN and face buttons to make quickly swapping between them a breeze. Combining the FN and d-pad buttons on the other hand makes it easy to quickly control PS5 audio settings when using an official headset, which I found immediately useful jumping into a party with some friends.

It does feel a little odd that both FN buttons have identical function. It makes sense from a comfort perspective when using them in combination with buttons on each end of the controller, but they still feel a touch redundant as two additional buttons that don’t actually add any new in-game functionality. Overall though, the software experience and ease of customisation and quick-switching is very impressive and a major selling point for picking up one of these official pro-style pads over a third-party offering. Hopefully down the line with firmware updates we’ll see the potential unlocked even further.

One thing that can’t easily be fixed or updated and stands out as one of the few sore points on the DualSense Edge is the little ol’ issue of battery life. The standard flavour of DualSense was already trailing behind just about every other controller when it came to its stamina, usually tapping out before hitting double digits in hours played. The Edge is no better in this regard, and if anything is slightly worse (as evidenced by the fact it’s physically smaller and holds less actual charge). I’ve found I get around 4-5 hours on a charge in games that utilise the full spectrum of haptic feedback/adaptive trigger features, though that can obviously be increased by switching those and other features off. For all the good that the Edge does, its poor battery life is a big detractor and could (and should) give many potential punters pause to pick one up.

Given the nice, long USB-C cable included it’s clear that there’s an expectation for users to opt for playing with the DualSense Edge plugged directly into the PS5 console, and that’s honestly a fine way to use it. I’m convinced that wireless latency isn’t that big an issue for 90% of players, even at higher skill levels, but the kinds of people investing in a controller like this would naturally gravitate towards a perceivably more reliable wired connection anyway. The included locking mechanism that you can attach to ensure the cable can’t accidentally be tugged out of your Edge is a nice inclusion, though the implication seems to be that people would rather risk their $800 console falling onto the floor than their controller skip a few beats if a pet or unruly housemate trips the cord.

The post PS5 DualSense Edge Review – A Feature-Packed Pro Controller That Nearly Nails It appeared first on Press Start.

Nostalgia sells. And in few places is that more true than the video game market. Whether it’s remakes, remasters, cheap ports or new ideas spun from old IP, nostalgia remains a potent force that’s often wielded with reckless abandon. 

When THQ Nordic first teamed up with Purple Lamp Studio to capitalise on their hold of the rights to the beloved PS2 platformer, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, it resulted in a surprisingly good trip down memory lane – one that no doubt resulted in the kind of easy money that would make Mr. Krabs swell in his shell. Purple Lamp clearly proved itself too, because it wasn’t long before it was handed the reins to develop an original 3D platformer based on the franchise – albeit one still largely powered by nostalgia. Enter, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake.

If there’s one thing modern popular media, especially in things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s that the quickest and easiest way to tap into nostalgia and fandom is with a multiverse storyline. How better to squeeze a metric ton of references and cameos in than whisking our heroes through a bunch of mashed up and barely-connected realms? That’s where The Cosmic Shake comes in, sending SpongeBob and Patrick on a world-hopping journey through several “WishWorlds” based on iconic locales and events from the Hillenburg-led first couple of seasons of the show.

That’s this game’s biggest drawcard too – if you were a fan of the yellow sponge in his earliest outings, you’ll instantly recognise the vast majority of the gags and situations here, and no doubt appreciate that they’re all wrapped up in a fresh story about a deceptive mermaid witch named Cassandra tricking SpongeBob and Patrick into tearing apart the fabric of Bikini Bottom and all delivered by the entire original voice cast.

It’s important that you enjoy that stuff going into The Cosmic Shake, too, because everything around it is about as bog-standard as it comes. As a 3D platformer it feels less like an iteration on what was delivered in Battle for Bikini Bottom and more like a direct continuation of that 2003 release. That’s not necessarily a bad thing on all fronts, but it’s an expectation that begs setting because it’s definitely a far cry from what one would expect from most modern platformers. 

As a licensed tie-in game based on a Nickelodeon property, it’s honestly still a cut above, though. For the budget price of entry, you’re getting an 8-10 hour adventure set across seven worlds and a sizable hub with tons of collectibles to find and easter eggs to do the Leo DiCaprio pointing gif at. Each world sees SpongeBob don a throwback costume and endeavour to rescue one of his friends from their own twisted wishes with Patrick in tow as a helpful, airborne balloon (there’s a reason for that) on hand to point him in the right direction or drop a fresh pair of health undies in a pinch.

Clocking in at anywhere up to an hour in length, each of these worlds represents a decent jaunt with a good amount of gameplay variety switching between precision platforming, light combat, minigames and the obligatory SpongeBob sliding sections. I can’t say I found the actual level design anything close to inspired, but if you enjoyed what BFBB had to offer, Purple Lamp has clearly set out to replicate the same simple, no-frills vibe that would definitely go down well with younger audiences who are less likely to baulk at its flaws. There are some interesting enough new wrinkles, like SpongeBob’s bubble attack that traps enemies in place or his karate kick, which is routinely combined with jumping and gliding to make for some pretty engaging platforming sections. 

There’s a lot that feels rehashed from the last game, for better or worse, but I feel it’s important to stress that I absolutely did have fun playing through this new adventure as a fan of collectathon 3D platformers. It’s not going to have an moustachioed Italians lining up to renew their plumber’s certification but it’s a far sight better than most of the licenced junk aimed at kids and parents out there.

It’s really the joy of the SpongeBob property and its cast of characters that carries The Cosmic Shake, a fact that I’m sure doesn’t come as a surprise. It’s here that Purple Lamp has really nailed the assignment, giving fans an enjoyable new story that’s positively stuffed with nostalgia for the earliest era of the cartoon. Only now it’s all presented through some genuinely attractive cutscenes backed up by brand-new voice work from the show’s cast. Despite being relatively simple, the in-game visuals build on what worked for Battle for Bikini Bottom and look perfectly pleasant, plus the 30+ unlockable costumes are a riot.

It’s tough to complain about a game like this with the context of its place in the landscape, but there are definitely some gripes I had that felt warranted. Enemy variety is just okay, with less than 10 different jelly-based bad guy types, but SpongeBob’s limited combat prowess makes them feel even more repetitive to fight. And you’ll do it a lot as you return to each world looking for collectibles with nearly no method of tracking beyond a number total, making constant backtracking a reality.

The post SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake Review – A Decent Bit Of F.U.N. appeared first on Press Start.

Brands like Silent Hill and Resident Evil have a cachet that has endured decades and they’re undoubtedly mammoths of the survival horror genre, but there’s no denying that Dead Space was an instant classic when it first launched two generations ago. It upended the genre’s “aim for the head” trope, delivered a master class in tone and atmosphere and proved the exception to the rule that in space people could absolutely hear you scream. 

EA Motive’s remake of Dead Space is absolutely divine.

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They could have easily turned in a prettier, 1:1 experience that served to copy and paste a game that didn’t really do a whole lot wrong to begin with. Instead, Motive has taken a modern classic and rebuilt it from the ground floor to meet the expectations of ‘today’s gamer’. Isaac Clarke is no longer the stoic, silent protagonist, encounters are more dynamic, and the game’s setting, the USG Ishimura—an iconic, sci-fi planet breaking starship that rivals Nostromo—is a seamless dreadnought without a loading screen in sight. 

While that’s undoubtedly exciting for people who adored the original Dead Space, I also expect there’s an audience of gamers who’ll be exposed to the series through this remake.

Dead Space’s narrative is a simple one at first glance. Aboard the Kellion, Isaac Clarke is lured to the USG Ishimura as part of a search and rescue mission, motivated largely by the fact he’s had radio silence from his wife Nicole, who has been serving aboard the vessel, after her last cryptic video log. Once aboard, things go pear shaped as Isaac is separated from his crew, pursued by mutated and reanimated corpses known as Necromorphs, and he’s left to unravel what happened here. Of course, fans will recall Dead Space having quite a bit of lore to uncover throughout.

EA Motive has done an incredible job at reworking several characters, from Isaac himself through Gunner Wright’s return performance, to Nicole and the more obscure, disposable characters like Dr. Cross, to craft a more cohesive narrative that you’re in for the duration. They’ve also injected pieces of that aforementioned lore into this game’s side missions, managing this time to show as well as tell while confirming a number of fan assumptions left unanswered by the original work.

Isaac’s resourcefulness and desperation is a very relatable part of his character. He’s just an everyman engineer and it shows through him brandishing his plasma cutter—intended as a mining tool—as a weapon. The spirit behind the original’s combat is firmly intact here, as Visceral’s genius twist on traditional survival horror tropes sees them flipped on their head. By establishing the destroyed brain matter of these reborn monstrosities, they cleverly abandoned the notion of delivering lethal headshots, instead pivoting to immobilisation. To do this, players need to sever the limbs of these horrors before leg-by-leg, and arm-by-arm eliminating their ability to reach you.

It’s an effective twist on the formula and holds up still today. The one thing that feels like it’s a detriment to every encounter and undercuts some of the tension felt is the game’s new Intensity Director. Despite the dynamicity introduced to encounters, it can tend to sap the feeling of dread as the game overwhelms you with numbers rather than fear. It felt, at times, a little closer to the more action-oriented sequels and felt notably less scary than I fondly remembered.

As far as new features go, Dead Space definitely delivers and, by the end, does feel like a new take on the experience rather than a road retread. Gated areas, unlocked only through increasing your security clearance aboard the vessel, coupled with the aforementioned side quests, give plenty of reason to trot to and fro on the seamless vessel—there’s a Metroid-feel to the game’s map that wasn’t quite evident before. The upgrade trees have been overhauled, removing any redundancies within the grid layout, and some of the weapons introduce brand new alt-fires that offer more creative and strategic avenues during some of the bigger arenas.

Moving about the vessel, and even transitioning between the story’s chapters, is also vastly different at times. I was pleasantly surprised at how often this Dead Space remake would subvert what I thought was coming and present the original’s story beats through a new lens.

Areas of the map with zero gravity now allow unfettered free movement, which is more in keeping with the original’s sequels. There are also a bunch of environmental obstacles, in the form of corrupted tendrils that can only be eradicated by shooting the glowing pustules. On top of challenging player progression throughout the ship, they also serve to pre-empt the weak spots on Dead Space’s infamous boss encounters. I’m also part way through my new game plus run and the addition of unique collectibles, stronger enemy variants and an alternate ending are going to do plenty to get me through again.

As with most remakes, and even remasters, the most apparent improvements come by way of fidelity and performance. Motive’s is clearly the prettiest and most optimised version of the game we’ve had the pleasure to play, and I certainly recommend people diving back in to opt for the performance mode. The rock solid frame rate lends to the game’s immersion and keeps players looped into the action. The game’s use of light and shadow has been completely overhauled, giving an even more grim personality to the game’s shining star—its world. It’s different enough, however it certainly honours Visceral’s tone, art direction, and atmosphere. 

One thing Resident Evil 2’s remake did exceedingly well was the wet gore that added a real splash to all things gruesome. Dead Space serves up the same sinewy slop alongside a layer system that results in literal peeling of flesh from bone. The first encounter where I stripped away meat from a Necromorph’s shin left me aghast. It really enhances the shock factor of having to shoot appendages off of the shambling dead.

One touch I really loved was the retro futuristic holographic menu that returns from the original game. It’s minor and ultimately means little in the game’s context, but seeing it and feeling that pang of nostalgia served as the perfect return to Dead Space.

Dead Space releases on January 27th for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. Amazon currently has the cheapest price at $74.99 with free shipping.

The post Dead Space Review – A Horror Classic Made Whole appeared first on Press Start.

While I realise it’s an incredibly early call, it’s one I’m more than willing to make – SEASON: A letter to the future (stylisation intentional) is one of 2023’s first Game of the Year contenders.

In a stage of my life where time is precious it’s not often I find myself putting more than an hour or two into a single video game session, but for a full five-plus hours one balmy and slightly stormy afternoon I saw this particular game through from start screen to end credits. I’d found myself so completely enraptured and entangled in its world that I couldn’t fathom the idea of letting it go until it ultimately did the letting go for me – an experience mirrored by the woman I’d come to observe on-screen and shared between us via the controller in my hand.

To be fair, five hours isn’t really all that much to ask. And SEASON doesn’t ask at all, it invites you to give. You could give more, if you like, or perhaps less if you try, but in a game about capturing the fleeting moments before an inevitable end it feels natural to hold on as long as possible. In this world that developer Scavengers Studio has drawn out of nothing, one frozen in a moment that’s never existed, time is less a linear path and more a vessel to be filled with knowledge and discovery, with art and culture, with love and war, all crystallised and worshipped as memory.

Memory is the seen and unseen force driving SEASON’s story, in which a woman from a small village is tasked with capturing the memories of a world on the brink of being washed away by a ruinous event. Armed with an instant camera, an audio recorder, a journal and a bicycle, she’ll take her first ride through new lands, collecting the memories of the people and places about to be left behind. In this game’s reality, memories are almost material and tangible, able to be given as well as taken away, lending this task a special importance that becomes more evident with every new observation.

What this means, as a sharp reminder that this is in fact a video game that necessitates playing, is that you’ll guide this woman in a mostly freeform fashion within the cosy borders of Tieng Valley, searching for people and points of interest to record in your journal as sights, sounds, and artistic interpretations. It’s a task to not only collect memories, but to interpret and distill them into a record of a place in time and a study of its place in time. Which memories have endured in this place and why? How do they shape the land and those who live on it and how will their absence or presence shape the future? That’s for you to decide.

Your in-game journal is a nearly freeform expression of what you observe in this world, each page representing a small slice of the landscape that you can fill with whatever photos or audio recordings you make within them. Though there’s an end goal, and some important steps to get there, the way you move through the Tieng Valley and the things you take from it are entirely up to you. It’s a genuinely refreshing way to experience a piece of art, not just to witness it, or partake in it, but to actively preserve it. And not as a whole, but in a form that only you can give it and that only you will take away from it. That those things can be said of a finite collection of data engineered into one, consistent arrangement is quite something, I think.

If misguided attempts at flowery language are any indication, describing what SEASON means, is difficult. What it is, though, is a video game, and a very good one. Whether you’re gazing at beautiful vistas or seeing the game world rush past as you intuitively pedal your bicycle through the magic of the DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers and visceral feedback, it’s wonderfully pleasant in the hand. Scavengers Studio has made existing in this place a joy, giving players wonderful freedom to experience and parse things at their own pace without fear of getting it wrong. It’s a succinct little adventure, but one that has plenty of time for those inclined to take it.

As you travel around, taking snaps and audio clips and personally placing them inside your journal, you’ll slowly start to unravel the mysteries behind the impending cataclysmic event as well as the history leading up to it, occasionally meeting new faces and engaging in choice-driven dialogue. The game’s themes continue to ring true as you help its citizens decide what memories in their own lives are important and what can be gained by the forgetting of others. It’s all very simple but rarely anything less than enamouring and constantly inviting contemplation – it’s the kind of game to be thought about and talked about long after its powerful conclusion and far beyond the boundaries of its content and mechanics.

Above all else, SEASON: A letter to the future is a game that trusts players to take as much or as little from it as they want to carry with them, as much as they feel is necessary to keep it alive or as little as it takes to move forward into the new. As a video game it’s a solid and clever take on storytelling within the medium, albeit one with a noticeable number of bugs, performance hitches and glaring typos, but as a moment in time it’s entirely unforgettable.

The post SEASON: A Letter To The Future Review – An Unforgettable Experience appeared first on Press Start.

Two years ago, when we first saw the PlayStation 5, we also saw Project Athia. It was a brand new game from Square Enix touted as a thrilling story-led adventure. Some thought it could be a new Final Fantasy game. Others thought it was a glorified tech demo, never to release. Now, Project Athia is Forspoken, making good on most of the promises made when it was first revealed. But with that declaration comes a few caveats. Yes, Forspoken is a story-led experience, but it’s average pacing really belies the potential of its unique and inspired combat systems.

You’re Frey Holland, an orphaned street kid whisked away from New York to a strange new world called Athia by a magical talking bracelet nicknamed Cuff. Standard stuff, I know. Frey has entered Athia in a state of turmoil – the four sorceresses (called the Tanta) ruling it have been corrupted by a mysterious presence referred to as “the break.” Frey is resistant to the break, so the people of Athia think she is the hero they need. She wants to get home. But she plays along, hoping that eventually, these two goals will converge. Of course, it’s never that simple.

One of the most impressive aspects of Forspoken is that the world of Athia is exceptionally well developed. There’s a lot to take in here as someone who can appreciate a good amount of lore in games. A joint writing effort between Garry Whitta (Rogue One) and Amy Hennig (Uncharted), I often found myself getting lost in the game’s numerous lore drops. Such a strong sense of worldbuilding establishes history for the world of Athia, so when the inevitable revelations come across in the story, the impact is more significant.

But I wish I could sing similar praise for the characterisation of Frey herself. The way she is characterised is so haphazard. There are times when she’s a sympathetic protagonist, especially in the opening hours, but others where she is genuinely mean to other characters for no reason and subsequently unlikeable. She eventually comes around as the story closes, but during battles, she’ll throw out Marvel-esque quips in a manner that I can only describe as cringe-worthy. There’s a fine line between confident and obnoxious, and Frey crosses it regularly. On the plus side, perhaps the developers knew this, as there are options to reduce the frequency of non-essential dialogue, but it still doesn’t excuse just how asinine it can be.

You’d be surprised to discover that I’m still keen to see another game set in this world and even more so to see Frey continue as its protagonist. Forspoken’s story comes together in such a satisfying manner that I’m almost disappointed to hear that the upcoming expansion will be a prequel rather than a sequel. Not seeing Frey or Athia again after both have been through so much would feel like a waste.

Athia is a massive open world, peppered with activities and checklists to finish. It’s a veritable playground, designed from the ground up to perfectly complement Frey’s unique abilities and how she gets around with the powers Cuff granted her. But if you’ve played any open-world game released in the past decade, you’ve probably already got a decent idea of how Forspoken is structured and where it falls flat.

It’s a relief, then, that Forspoken nails the sense of fluidity and speed in its attempt to offer traversal mechanics like no other. With the hold of a button, Frey can zip around in a magical parkour system called “Flow” to cover a great distance in no time at all. She can evade enemies, do flashy dodges, surfs across the water, and even grapple to new heights with her magic. It’s a sense of speed and subsequent freedom unlike any other I’ve seen in a game. It’s a joy to handle and never gets old. And it’s even better to see how these mechanics feed into the combat of the game.

In combat, Frey can wield four distinct types of magic with differing styles, so any action game fan will be able to find a style to suit them. It’s a deceptively deep system that splits its spells into defense and attack. Attack magic behaves similarly to weapons in games such as Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, allowing Frey to conjure explosive rocks, fiery spears, drenching tornadoes, and area-affecting lightning attacks. Support magic buffs, debuffs, and summons assistance for Frey. There are over forty spells to get acquainted with in Forspoken, and they’re all fun to use and just as viable as each other.

Couple these solid traversal mechanics with a robust magic system, and you’ve got a combat system in Forspoken that’s just fun. Really fun. The game throws all kinds of enemies at you, some of which have elemental weaknesses, adding an additional layer to the combat and encouraging you to change your approach. It’s a bit of a bizarre decision to relegate some boss battles behind optional side missions, which many players might not even see.

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I say this because Forspoken fills its map with hundreds of collectibles and activities to pad out the experience. I’ve alluded to this earlier in the review, and it’s just as you’d expect. Side missions are overly simplistic, rarely offering up more than a wave of enemies to defeat or an item to find. It’s one of the least compelling ways to do optional content, though I must credit Forspoken for not gating progress behind completing some of them like other games have in the past.

But if you stick with the game’s fifteen-hour main story, you’ll still find value in what Forspoken offers. Each boss battle with the Tanta, the villainous sorceresses, feels epic in scope and scale and tests Frey’s mettle. It’s a shame that the game is so poorly paced sometimes. The first half of the game dumps lore on you – not even through cutscenes, sometimes through mandatory lore entries – and then forces you to slow walk with people around a town before finally letting you loose to fight your first Tanta.

From that point on, the game rushes you through the rest at a breakneck pace. This is the part I liked – the game didn’t outstay its welcome and kept the momentum once it got going. It’s just questionable as to how many players will make it to this point. The opening moments are truly woeful – giving you a taste of Frey’s incredible powers but then literally and figuratively trapping you in a locale where you can’t use them. It feels needlessly long, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that these lore dumps were added to the game after everything else was said and done.

If you like to do everything in a game, though, there is a heap to do and find in the world of Athia. Completing quests unlocks cloaks, jewelry, and nail patterns that improve Frey’s stats and abilities. If you’re a crafting junkie too, there’s a heap of customising that can be done with individual equipment, like improving magic or defense. As I’ve mentioned, there’s a heap to see and do here, and you can do as much or as little as you like. But if you want to do absolutely everything, I can see players getting forty or so hours out of it. My advice? At a minimum, try a few of the dungeons. The boss battles contained within are great.

Forspoken puts its best foot forward when it comes to presentation. Everything is presented in these exotic gold-accented visuals, and the artistic direction is as strong as you’d expect from a team who has produced a Final Fantasy game. There are some awkward facial animations here and there, for sure, but it’s a fantastic-looking game. In terms of performance, the game has many resolution-first and framerate-first options, including high-framerate modes. In performance mode, I would find myself zipping around an arena that’s being showered with water, lightning, and flames all at once with little to no slowdown.

On the same token, Bear Mcreary and Garry Schyman’s original score lends dramatic bravado to the game’s battles and a sense of exotic otherworldliness when exploring Athia. It’s a great score that perfectly encapsulates the mood that Forspoken is going for and makes every moment feel uplifting and engaging.

The cast is similarly strong – Ella Balinska turns in an excellent performance as Frey, even though her moment-to-moment lines are average at times. The Tantas are brought to life with the help of some major talent in Janina Gavankar, Pollyanna Mcintosh, and Claudia Black. However, my favourite standout is the fiery archivist Johedy, played by The Greatest Showman’s Keala Settle. While the cast comprises mainly celebrities, they all do great work bringing their respective characters to life.

For all that’s bad about Forspoken, there’s a lot that’s good too, which I think is easy to forget. And it’s a shame because underneath the cringeworthy dialogue that Frey spouts from time to time and the done-to-death open-world design, there’s a fantastic game here with an even better premise. Forspoken is a game set in a well-developed world with some really fun and unique mechanics that I’ve never seen in other games. For that, it at least deserves some credit.

THE PLAYSTATION 5 VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Forspoken Review – A Tanta-lising But Uneven Adventure appeared first on Press Start.

It feels like yesterday that 2019’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses took the world by storm, quickly becoming the franchise’s best selling entry by a large margin, and propelling the series to new heights and popularity. It’s an entirely different style of Fire Emblem, bucking many of the trends and trappings that the series has heralded for so many years. It’s with this context that the pivot back to more traditional Fire Emblem in Fire Emblem Engage is a relatively strange one, omitting many of the changes and ideas brought to the table by Three Houses.

In a lot of ways, though, Fire Emblem Engage is exactly what series veterans have wanted more of since 2012’s incredible Fire Emblem Awakening. With a linear narrative, an amalgamation of new and old mechanics, and a premise that celebrates the franchise’s rich history, Engage is another addictively satisfying entry into this legendary series despite some glaring flaws.

Fire Emblem Engage sees players stepping into the shoes of Alear, a male or female protagonist who also happens to be a Divine Dragon. Destined to thwart the opposing Fell Dragon’s plans of conquest and war, Alear must set out across the land of Elyos to gather the all-powerful Emblem Rings, and build up an army strong enough to take on Sombron and his army of corrupted foes.

I mentioned in my hands-on preview that the first third of the narrative wasn’t doing much for me, both in regards to its characters and plot beats. Unfortunately, this trend continued well into the second half of the game, with predictable twists, underdeveloped characters, and a cast of villains that felt somewhat forced and uninteresting. In spite of all this, though, the middle stretch of Engage eventually gives way to a third act that’s filled with unexpected revelations, meaningful character development, and heightened stakes that reinforce the core themes and ideas at the heart of Engage’s story.

Villains who I’d initially found underwhelming presented more layers of depth to their characterisations and motives, Alear and their relationships with the Emblems and supporting cast became more profound, and there were moments of tension and emotion that had me hanging on every word. While it absolutely takes far too long to get going, I have no doubt that it’ll be Engage’s mostly excellent third act I remember its narrative by, not all the middling stuff that led up to it.

The inconsistent writing of the core narrative also extends to the support conversations between characters. For every eye-opening discussion between royalty of rivalling kingdoms, there’s another that lacks the same depth and thematic messaging. It often leaves the cast feeling uneven in terms of development and quality, making it easy to pick favourites as opposed to umming and ahhing over who to deepen your bond with next.

This is felt most sorely in the bond conversations with Emblem Rings, which are simple, two to three line exchanges that add nothing of substance to either character. It’s a shame given the legacy of these figures, and seeing them have at least one meaningful support relationship to develop between one of Engage’s new characters would’ve gone a long way to providing new perspectives and growth to established characterisations.

The turn-based tactics of Fire Emblem is where Engage excels the most, combining the franchise’s staple gameplay systems with new mechanics that further expand strategic depth and customisation. It feels most comparable to Awakening and some of the older titles as opposed to Fates or Three Houses, but I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing. Most of this is thanks to the return of the Weapon Triangle, a focus on individual units, and efforts to make each class viable in the grand schemes of battle.

The Weapon Triangle’s return isn’t a tit-for-tat recreation, though. Fire Emblem Engage places a premium on exploiting enemy weaknesses through the Break system, where winning a matchup in the Weapon Triangle can Break an enemy’s stance. This prevents any further counter-attacks when engaged in battle, and makes the enemy unit more susceptible to damage. You can also inflict Break through smashing enemies into other units or terrain through heavy Smash attacks, which hit hard, but always act last.

These two systems alone add incentive to spend time planning before battles, deliberating over what units to bring with you into a fight, and where to place them on the map. Similarly, the Break and Smash systems incentivise smart play to get the most out of their inherent bonuses, forcing you to think about positioning, and turn order in a way that hasn’t been this present since Awakening. It echoes old-school Fire Emblem with some modern trimmings that feel like a natural progression of ideas synonymous with Fire Emblem’s strategy.

Where Fire Emblem Engage separates itself most, is with the titular Engage system. As you collect the Emblem Rings throughout the story, you can sync them with units in your army. Each Emblem Ring is tied to a legendary hero from Fire Emblem’s past, including fan favourites like Marth, Ike, and Corrin, as well as lesser known characters like Micaiah, Leif, and Eirika. Every mainline FE game is accounted for here, making for a game that feels like a true celebration of the franchise’s storied history.

Pairing Emblem Rings with units is no small decision, as these units gain access to passive skills, abilities, and increased stats that can all turn the tide of a battle if used properly. Ike, for example, is a defensive powerhouse, making him an ideal choice for any unit that specialises in defense. Likewise, Micaiah excels at healing and holy magic, making her perfectly suited for a healer/mage class hybrid. Each Emblem has a unique identity in the broad scope of Engage, and fits in well with the context of their roles in their original games.

Each unit paired with an Emblem Ring can Engage in battle, assuming a more powerful fusion form between the unit and the Emblem. Not only does this boost stats, but also grants access to a skill that can be used once per Engage. These skills vary greatly from Emblem to Emblem, and have unique applications within combat. Micaiah’s Engage Skill allows you to perform a team-wide heal at the cost of her health, where Roy’s unleashes a mighty attack that sets nearby terrain on fire. While you can refill the Engage meter in battle, you’ll often only ever Engage once or twice in any given encounter, making these skills incredibly valuable.

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As characters deepen their bonds with paired Emblem Rings, you’ll gain SP to spend on inheriting the skills they provide. While these skills are always active when paired, spending SP to inherit them means that units can gain the passive benefits without being paired to that specific Emblem Ring. This incentivises moving Emblem Rings between units regularly to get the most out of your army, giving strong passive skills to units that otherwise wouldn’t have access to them.

The other form of progression tied to Emblem Rings is through Bond Rings. As you complete achievements, progress through the narrative, and generally play the game, you’ll earn Bond Fragments. You can spend 100 Bond Fragments to create one random Bond Ring, or 1000 for 10 Bond Rings, each one boosting the stats of that Emblem Ring. Each Bond Ring is related to a character from that Emblem’s Fire Emblem title, and different rarities of rings grant greater stat increases. It works as a sort of gacha system that never feels so necessary as to make the RNG frustrating, but not totally useless to the point where it takes away from the thrill of creating new rings. Duplicate Bond Rings can also be melded to create higher rarity rings, so there’s a little bad luck protection in that regard.

Class progression for your units is similarly in-depth and customisable as you progress through Engage’s narrative. Unlike Three Houses, you won’t be moving through a class tree to reach the highest level of class. Once you reach level 20 on a base class, you can spend a Master Seal to move onto an advanced class, and a Secondary Seal to make any changes to another class down the track. The depth comes from the ability to expand a unit’s weapon proficiencies through Emblem Rings, allowing them to move into any class tied to those weapon types.

General use of Emblem Rings and the Engage system will lead to paired units gaining weapon proficiencies for that Emblem’s available weapon types, providing more incentive to regularly switch up your Emblem Ring setup. Gaining these proficiencies is what allows units to move into classes they otherwise wouldn’t be able to, which means while every unit has an inherent class path to follow by default, you can also branch out, mixing and matching intrinsic abilities to create combinations you usually wouldn’t see. It makes for class progression that seems less non-linear than what’s present in Three Houses, but eventually opens up to a similar level of customisation.

If that all sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. Fire Emblem Engage throws the kitchen sink at you in terms of systems and mechanics to interact with, and that’s without talking about the Somniel. While Engage is a return to old-school Fire Emblem in a lot of ways, the trend of social aspects in RPGs set by Persona is in full-force here. While I’m usually partial to these systems or enjoy them as much as the core strategy, Engage’s implementation of them were exhausting more than they were addictive – especially coming from Three Houses.

The problem is the sheer number of things you can do, and how often you can do them. While you don’t have to engage with all of them at every opportunity, I felt obligated to in order to make the most out of progression. While there’s a traditional Fire Emblem world map, the Somniel serves as a hub between skirmishes for almost everything you could possibly need in terms of progression.

You can participate in training mini-games for temporary stat boosts, partake in fishing, train units in arena battles, share meals with allies, and pick up numerous shiny items to use in cooking and crafting. While most of this stuff is fine at first, it very quickly wears out its welcome as you realise rewards for these activities refresh after every single battle, not just chapter concluding fights, but also the side skirmishes you’ll engage with for extra resources and EXP. It’s a perpetually tiring cycle that only ever lets up on one or two occasions, and I grew to dread returning to the Somniel as a result.

One part of the Somniel that I am quite fond of, is the Tower of Trials. The Tower of Trials is a completely optional set of trials that you can participate in to gain resources that strengthen Engage weapons. While that probably sounds entirely necessary – it really isn’t, and a lot of the Trials feel designed to be post-game content. There’s three unique Trial types to play with, though, each one bringing something different to the table.

Tempest Trials are offline only, consecutive battles where you gain rewards and EXP after clearing a set number of maps. Relay Trials serve as a sort of asynchronous multiplayer mode, where players take turns ala a relay race in order to try and clear a map. Lastly, and most interesting, are the Outrealm Trials, where you can create a map, place units, and upload that configuration for other players to challenge online. Each one has provided fun and challenging ways to engage with the Fire Emblem formula outside of the traditional single player format, and I suspect that series veterans will find a lot of value in these modes after the credits roll.

Needless to say, there’s a heap of progression systems and mechanics to interact with here across the many chapters of Fire Emblem Engage, and this unfortunately led to a relatively stress-free experience on the normal difficulty. A base level understanding of the Weapon Triangle and smart use of Engage Skills can make short work of these battles, and some units can get so overpowered towards the late game that they could probably carry your entire team to victory alone. It’s disappointing given Fire Emblem’s reputation for difficulty, and long-time fans looking for a challenge should undoubtedly play the game on hard.

When you aren’t spending time in the Somniel or progressing through the narrative, you’ll spend time on the world map, taking part in optional battles for resources and completing Paralogues, which are effectively small side stories expanding on characters. A vast majority of the Paralogues in Engage focus on the Emblems, and reliving pivotal battles from their pasts. It’s a fun way to revisit these moments or experience them for the first time, and the extra bond levels they unlock are a nice incentive to tackle each and every one of them. These are also noticeably harder than the main story, and provide a nice challenge in contrast to regular battles.

One area where Fire Emblem Engage is an undisputed improvement over Three Houses, is in its presentation. There’s a clear effort made here for deeper visual fidelity despite the Switch’s aging hardware. The pixel-ridden edges of the models in Three Houses are nowhere to be found here, with much improved battle animations and a fantastic soundtrack to boot. Performance is similarly sharp, and those glorious CG anime cutscenes return in all of their beauty.

While I don’t think Three Houses looks inherently bad, it opts for a much more gritty and muted color palette, one that runs in tandem with the narrative themes and plot beats quite nicely. Engage is similarly aligned with its own overall tone, positively bursting at the seams with color and expressive character designs that while outlandish and eye-catching, rarely reach the point of absurdity. It’s a far cry from the Fire Emblem designs of old, but I think that Engage retains all the more identity as a result. There’s also a clear effort for more inclusivity here, with characters from all walks of life, with Timerra, Fogado, and Rosado as standout examples.

I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion over whether or not Fire Emblem Engage surpasses the lofty bar set by its predecessor, but I don’t know if that’s an entirely fair comparison. While it does pull from a number of its successes, Engage is a fundamentally different experience that’s clearly more inspired by classic Fire Emblem. It certainly doesn’t all land, but I think it does where it counts, with enticingly addictive strategy and in-depth customisation that makes for a celebration worth partaking in for fans both new, and old.

The post Fire Emblem Engage Review – An Imperfect But Worthy Celebration appeared first on Press Start.

Naturally, as a big fan of The Last Of Us, and also HBO’s shows such as True Blood and Chernobyl being among my favourite TV shows of all time, I was excited for HBO’s The Last Of Us TV adaption. I was expecting it to be an extremely well produced show, that faithfully retold Ellie and Joel’s journey, but as someone who is super familiar with the story, I wasn’t expecting to be absolutely enthralled with HBO’s adaption in the way that I was.

Rolling credits on the finale this morning, after binging the entire season over the last 3-4 days, I fell in love with this world, and these characters all over again. I’ll try and keep this review as spoiler free as possible, as this is a tricky one. Either you’re ingrained in this world and know it inside out, and any minor variation within the show will be new to you, or you’ll be totally new to this entire story, in which case I’d want to reveal as little as possible.

Just like everyone else, I wasn’t sure about seeing Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie. Not because I thought that their likeness didn’t fit the bill, but just because of these characters being so clear in my mind from the games in terms of how they look, how they speak, how they bounce off each other, but right from the get-go when these characters meet in episode one, I was sold.

Pascal and Ramsey have somehow made these characters their own, whilst retaining key mannerisms that made these characters so great to begin with. It’s hard to talk about their journey without revealing anything too important, but even though I knew exactly how the key plot points would play out, I still felt absolutely every struggle and triumph that this duo went through. I genuinely cared for them, and believed their absolute necessity to make it to their end goal, which is what a story like The Last Of Us calls for, and these performances deliver it in spades.

This is true for the entire cast of characters. Whether it be Merle Dandrige as Marlene, Euphoria’s Storm Reid as Riley or Yellow Jacket’s Melanie Lynskey as the newly introduced Kathleen, across the board, I believed every single one of these performances, and felt that in most cases, they actually added to what we’d known previously of this story.

Whilst the story of Ellie and Joel is obviously the hero here, and a lot of the way that story is told is very true to the source material (bar a few minor variations that I’d argue make more sense in context of what happens in the future), it was some of the other stories within this world that really captivated me.

For instance, an entire movie length episode is dedicated to Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank’s (Murray Bartlett’s) relationship, which resembles a very normal life, within a very abnormal world. This is touched on in the game, but very much as a foot note, where here’s it not only gives context to this relationship and situation which is very different to any other that we come across in The Last Of Us, but it also gives better context to Joel and Tess’ relationship before Ellie.

The same can be said for Sam and Henry, two brothers that we come across in the game, but their existence within the world is much more fleshed out within the TV show, which in my opinion is for the betterment of Joel and Ellie’s journey.

I really can’t stress enough just how much all of these variations which feel minor in isolation come together to flesh out this story and world in ways that I didn’t know or think that I wanted or needed, but it has made me more invested in this story.

As far as the pacing of the show goes, I thought it was fairly consistent, with it doing a great job of breaking out these individual stories into certain episodes, rather than keep you going back and forth before a large cast of characters. It made the stakes feel high in each episode, with the fate of each character that appears never feeling guaranteed that they’ll make it through to the end of the episode.

Whilst the infected don’t play a massive part in this series outside of obvious key points, for the most part, they are extremely believable and just as menacing as they are in the games. Particularly, the first scene which involves a hide and seek encounter with a Clicker. There were a few scenes that involved the infected, which felt a little bit unfinished, but this was an in-progress version of the show, so I’m fairly confident that they’ll be polished before they hit the screen.

The score was a massive part of The Last Of Us, and it’s all the same here, with some extremely familiar tunes coming through at key points to drive home what is happening on screen. This isn’t a huge surprise given it was composed by Santaolalla, who did the original two games as well.

Whilst the bar is low for video game TV and movie adaptions, HBO’s The Last Of Us rises above to be an absolute classic. It’d be a disservice to only go as far as saying that this is a fantastic TV show adaption of a video game, because on its own, it’s a must-watch piece of television.

HBO’s The Last Of Us launches on Foxtel/Binge on January 16th.

The post HBO’s The Last Of Us Review – Falling In Love With A Classic All Over Again appeared first on Press Start.

I’ve gone through a few different streaming/podcast-focussed desktop microphones in recent years, like the original HyperX QuadCast and most recently the Elgato Wave:3, but since getting a dedicated audio mixer for my desk I’ve been keen to step away from USB-based condenser microphones to a dynamic solution that runs through XLR.

Enter: The Elgato Wave DX.

Unboxing this new microphone, Elgato’s first XLR-based and dynamic solution, was definitely in stark contrast to when I first opened up my Wave:3. It’s a comparatively humble offering – the simplistic and cylindrical block of the microphone itself, devoid of any buttons or dials, and the lack of any cables or a stand serving as an early reminder that this isn’t a standalone device.

Rather, the Wave DX is designed to fit nicely into a complete audio setup with a dedicated interface and mounting solution (more on that in a bit), and its understated design speaks volumes to this. If it weren’t for the logo on the side, which you can actually remove in order to switch which direction you’re mounting the microphone from, you’d be hard pressed to guess its brand of origin at all. If a clean desk aesthetic is your thing, and it’s certainly becoming mine, this is an attractive little number.

I’ll admit I was hesitant to make the change from a condenser microphone to a dynamic one, particularly given I use my mic primarily for recording the Press Start podcast, as the generally accepted rule is that condenser mics have an edge when it comes to picking up more nuanced sound and from wider angles. Given that I only ever record right in front of my mic though, and using the excellent low-profile Elgato Wave arm, I was keen to see how the dynamic Wave DX helped with eliminating background noise and allowing me to get a little louder and more excitable without worrying about the sensitive pickup.

The extra durability and light weight are a boon as well, and Elgato has very thoughtfully designed the microphone’s internals to negate the need for any extra, external pop filter or shock mount.

The Cheapest Elgato Wave DX Price: $159 at Amazon.

The result of all this is that the audio picked up by the Wave DX sounds brilliant. Everything I’ve recorded with it so far has sounded crisp, clear and often surprisingly rich for what I was expecting from a dynamic pickup. There’s some serious magic coming from the dynamic capsule that Elgato has used here (in collaboration with Lewitt Audio) to produce sound that’s very comparable to what I expect from my more expensive condenser microphone.

It’s really a best-of-both-worlds scenario which is a surprising and exciting thing to discover, and means I’m easily happy to make this my permanent desktop mic going forward. Very particular users might still want to look into an added pop filter/shock mount of some kind as I did find the internal solution wasn’t quite as effective especially given the encouragement to speak very loudly and closely into it, but overall it’s performed well above my expectations.

Another motivator for my trying out an XLR-based microphone solution has been the increased flexibility when it comes to my hardware and software setup. There’s definitely a case to be made for the convenience of a USB microphone like the Wave:3 with all of its onboard controls and plug-and-play nature, but the simplicity and connectivity of the Wave DX means it’s a lot easier to fit into a more complex configuration.

While Elgato obviously sells its own XLR interface (aptly name the Elgato Wave XLR) and offers an excellent audio software suite, I’m currently using a Razer Audio Mixer – a device that I love but haven’t been able to use to its full potential with a USB microphone. With the Wave DX, I was able to just plug straight into my mixer via XLR and immediately start using it and customising the sound through Razer’s mixing software.

Therein lies the crux of it though – if you’re considering a Wave DX, or any XLR mic, you’re gonna need some extra bits and pieces. Chances are if you’re specifically looking for an XLR mic it’s because you already have something going on but if you’re jumping in fresh then expect to spend a lot more than the $169 asking price for the Wave DX itself. You’re going to need some kind of interface, first and foremost, to plug the thing into and control it.

Again, Elgato sells its own solution with the Wave XLR which goes for $239, already costing more than the microphone itself but cheaper solutions exist and this mic doesn’t require any phantom power. You’ll also need to buy an XLR cable as there isn’t one provided, nor is there any kind of stand so you’ll also have to source a stand or arm of some kind. I attached mine to the same low-profile Elgato Wave Arm that I was using with my previous microphone, but like the interface you can absolutely source something cheaper.

What this means in all is that the Elgato Wave DX is an incredibly capable microphone with fantastic audio and an attractive design that, on its own, is also quite affordable. It’s the bits around it that’ll truly determine if this is the solution for you.

If you’ve got an XLR-ready setup or you’re keen to use a dedicated hardware interface/mixer and have the extras factored into your budget, I’d happily recommend the Wave DX as a worthy bit of gear, but if you’re just starting out in streaming or podcasting or desk space is at a premium then an all-inclusive solution like the similarly-excellent Wave:3 might be the way to go.

The post Elgato Wave DX Review – Simple But Powerful appeared first on Press Start.

Foldable displays felt like a dream just 3-4 years ago, but after Samsung dropped the first actual consumer foldables in the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip, it feels like the floodgates have well and truly opened in terms of what’s possible in the bendable space, and that’s never felt truer than my time with the Corsair Xeneon Flex OLED monitor.

Let’s get the fun part out of the way. The Corsair Xeneon Flex contains a 45-inch LG OLED monitor that (you might have already guessed it), can bend. Using a handle on each side, each side of the monitor can freely go from flat, to an 800R curve. Honestly, I can’t tell you how many times I flipped back and forth, just in pure disbelief that not only did it work as expected, I started to see the benefit of both modes.

Now, obviously I was pretty cautious even after dozens of times flipping back and forth, just purely because I’ve always been taught to show extra care with OLED displays. As far as the actual bending mechanic goes, the monitor will make an audible click when it’s reached that 800R curve, or back in its flat position, and to be honest, I definitely took a bit of extra care, just because this is the only prototype unit in Australia, but I really didn’t ever feel like the monitor was going to break.

Whilst the bending mechanic felt surprisingly durable, the only small criticism is in the fact that obviously bending a 45-inch monitor comes with a certain amount of weight, which often either made the monitor tilt down or up, or just provided a bit more of movement on the stand than I would have liked, but honestly, unless you’re literally bending back and forth several times an hour, it’s totally fine.

@alwaysonaus

The Corsair Xeneon Flex is a fully bendable monitor. #tech #monitor #gamingmonitor #techtok #foldable #xeneonflex

? SZA BIG BOYS – Some rat ??

Behind the features that I’m sure some might see as a gimmick, is not only a really good monitor, but honestly probably my favourite ultra-wide monitor that I’ve ever used. Let’s talk about inputs because not only is there a great amount here, but I really like what Corsair has done with placement.

On the back, there’s 2x HDMI 2.1 ports, 1x DP 1.4 port, 1 x USB-C DP port (that was able to charge my MacBook Air M2 using 30w of charge as well as provide full 1440p signal), as well as 2 x USB type-A). What Corsair have also cleverly done is put some of the USB hub ports on the front, so you’ve got 2 x USB type-A ports as well as easy access to the input button, power button and controller. I’ve always hated monitors with hard to reach buttons on the back of the display, and this cleverly builds them into the front of the stand.

Now, I know that a lot of people are going to struggle to see past the bendable element of this monitor, but whether you’re wanting to use the monitor in flat, curved or both, this is just a really damn good monitor. I’ve always loved ultrawide monitors for gaming, but those such as the Alienware 34″ QD-OLED monitor were just a little bit too small for my liking when it comes to productivity, and the Xeneon Flex felt absolutely perfect. When in its 800R curved position, it fit my field of vision perfectly, letting me have a huge amount of windows on screen (which I often do) without feeling cramped or like I needed a second monitor. When it the flat position, it did tend to feel a little on the wide side, but that’s why the bending element is so great.

This is a 1440P OLED display with a 240Hz refresh rate. It features an anti-reflective LG OLED panel, so it’s absolutely gorgeous in terms of vibrancy and blacks appearing inky, and the 240Hz refresh rate also means that you’ll be zipping around the screen (even if you’ll likely need an RTX 4080 to take advantage of it). I did notice when on whiter screens (likely due to brightness limited tech in OLEDs), that the brightness did leave a little bit desired, but this was less of a case with gaming.

Coming from a 4K monitor, the pixel density at this size at 3440 x 1440, did leave a little bit to be desired, especially in this price range, and if I could choose between being able to flex the display or that increase in pixel density, I think I would choose the latter. It wasn’t unusable by any stretch, but it was at the point where it was noticeable when I first started using it.

Honestly though, when reviewing tech, I always tend to think about how I can see something fitting into my everyday lifestyle, and given I spend a lot of time behind a computer, I’m generally fairly good at working out very quickly whether I like something or not, and as I write this review on this very monitor, I feel like it’s actually made me more productive and I’m dreading going back to my regular setup, so that’s saying something.

Obviously playing games such as Forza Horizon 5 or Marvel’s Spider-Man are just an absolute joy on this display too. Again, I felt I needed to play in curved to really make the most of it, but I can totally see how if somebody has this monitor in their bedroom, and want to watch a movie in bed, then flexing either one side to angle towards you or having it in flat would be something you’d want to consider.

The Corsair Xeneon Flex is set to launch in Australia in February with an RRP of $3,799 AUD. 

The post Corsair Xeneon Flex 45″ OLED Review – A Fantastic Ultrawide That’s Got Serious Flex appeared first on Press Start.

I’ll cop to the fact that I’ve fallen off the VR bandwagon in recent years. When the original iteration of the PlayStation VR brough the tech into everyday living rooms and made it accessible I was all-in, regularly picking up new VR game releases and showing off the headset to my friends. As time passed and apartments grew smaller though, it started to fall by the wayside until, eventually, the PS5 came along and I didn’t bother mailing in for one of those annoying adapter doodads to make the PS VR work.

That’s all a very longwinded road to my point – which is that the last great VR game I played was Marvel’s Iron Man VR on the PS4. So when I was given the opportunity to check the game out again in its fresh new form on the Meta Quest 2 I was keen to see what improvements the team at Camouflaj had made in the two years since and how the wireless freedom and intuitive controllers on the Quest 2 could enhance the high-flying experience.

For those who’ve yet to check it out, Marvel’s Iron Man VR puts players firmly in Tony Stark’s iconic red suit as he battles a mysterious activist named Ghost, who’s taken to using Stark’s pre-Avengers weapons and tech to target Stark Industries locations around the globe. It’s a brisk, six-plus-hour adventure completely separate from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it’s realistically just a thin setup to get you flying around and shooting at stuff as Iron Man, but it works well enough and means that all you really need to worry about is getting into the action.

And that’s where Marvel’s Iron Man VR truly thrives, in handing players one of the most exciting power fantasies possible in a superhero game – the ability to fly around and blast evil drones with total freedom of movement. Without downplaying the incredible work that Camouflaj has done in producing the game itself, it has to be said that the idea of embodying Iron Man really feels like a shoo-in when it comes to the capabilities of current, consumer-level VR setups. If you’ve watched even a minute of the guy in action in the Marvel films you’ll have seen him whooshing about, using his hand thrusters to navigate the skies, and it’s that exact action that works as the glue binding the Marvel’s Iron Man VR experience together.

It was mostly true of the already-aged PlayStation Move controllers, but it’s especially true here; simulating Stark’s thrusters and assortment of weaponry with two motion controllers in hand feels fantastic. It’s absolutely one of those have-to-feel-it-to-believe-it situations but, still, believe it. Within mere minutes of being shown the basics, you’ll be jetting around with reckless abandon, deftly manoeuvring through cliffs and darting around groups of enemy drones. It’s shockingly natural in practice and the sense of genuinely being in mid-air and piloting the Iron Man suit is scarily palpable.

Through the dozen chapters in the game’s campaign you’ll slowly amass a growing arsenal of iconic Iron Man weaponry, customising your suit at Tony’s mansion with different weapons, upgrades and even liveries using points earned in missions. It’s a great little escalation of power and equipping different weapons into slots in your armour keeps things simple when you’re out and shooting. You’ve essentially got two fire modes per arm, a primary fire that works with palms out and a secondary one with palms down. Admittedly it did take me a little while to feel like I was properly executing the hand positions necessary to switch between these in the heat of the moment, and the game definitely struggles to make the distinction at times, but when it does work it’s a (literal) blast.

Iron Man VR is at its best when you’re in the heat of battle, juggling between the handful of different enemy drone types and figuring out in the moment which deft mid-air moves you’ll need to pull off at any given time. With the excellent tracking and intuitive layout on the Quest 2’s controllers, it’s all an absolute breeze. There’s also something to be said about being able to fully and physically rotate in 360 degrees with the Quest 2 headset on – something you couldn’t do on the PS VR with it bound to the console by a cumbersome cable. That fact alone quite nearly transforms the entire experience enough to make it worth double dipping if you played the PlayStation iteration, but you’re also getting a version of the game that looks sharper, performs better and is missing the egregious load times of old. That’s a huge plus.

What I’m less sold on are the frequent moments between missions where you play as the un-suited Stark in psuedo-cutscenes where you’ll walk around various areas and chat to other characters to move the story along. Most of these are fine, and the opportunities you get to explore a bit and play with different interactive bits like Stark’s various gadgets or the hoop challenge arcade game he seemingly has tucked away are a nice little diversion and good use of VR/motion controls. A lot of the time though you’ll get rooted to one spot while events take place and given how much momentum the rest of the gameplay has I would find myself getting antsy and wanting to at least be able to walk around a bit. That’s a miniscule gripe among everything else the game has to offer though, and if anything it’s just further proof of how fun and explosive the core missions are.

A code for Marvel’s Iron Man VR as well as the Meta Quest 2 hardware required to play it were provided by Camouflaj and Oculus Studios for the purpose of this review.

The post Marvel’s Iron Man VR Review – A High Flying Quest 2 Essential appeared first on Press Start.

With 11 mainline entries, countless spin-offs, and worldwide success, there are few franchises with a legacy similar to that of Dragon Quest’s. More than 35 years after the original’s release in Japan, Dragon Quest Treasures is more proof that the series is far from dead, presenting an experience that while far less complex than its predecessors,  echoes the inherent comfort and tantalizing allure of a Dragon Quest game. It’s a markedly different experience in comparison to anything that’s come before, with a stark focus on treasure hunting and spending time with your monster buddies in what can only be described as fantasy bliss.

Serving as a prequel to Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, Dragon Quest Treasures follows fan favorite character Erik, and his younger sister Mia as they seek to satiate their thirsts for adventure after running from the Vikings that took them in as their own. Their escapades see the pair encountering a pair of magical creatures, and are shortly whisked away to a mythical land known as Draconia. Much to their surprise, Draconia is positively stuffed with legendary treasure to find, so the two decide to partake in the adventure they so desperately crave while trying to find a way back home.

After being bestowed with a pair of magical Dragon Daggers, you set out across Draconia to hunt down the seven legendary Dragon Stones while building up your own faction of treasure hunters. It’s a remarkably simple yet heartwarming premise that never jumps the shark in ambition or stakes. It makes for a straightforward plot that despite lacking tons of depth, more than makes up for it in providing a cozy adventure that’s reminiscent of fantasies you’d make up in your head as a child. This is perhaps intentional given some of the narrative implications surrounding the true nature of Draconia, but to spoil that here would be a shame for those who love Erik as a character.

The gameplay loop is similarly straightforward, lacking the depth and complexity typically found underneath the surface of a mainline game, poising itself as less of an RPG and more of an exploration game. After a relatively slow opening few hours of tutorials, you’re let loose on the five islands of Draconia with the main objective of hunting for the seven Dragon Stones. You’re given a hint for each one at the outset, but these are cryptic and confusing by nature, and you’ll quickly find out that you’ll collect them over the course of the game as you learn more about their locations.

This means that for those who really want the thrill of hunting treasure with only the slightest hint of direction, you can comb through every nook and cranny of Draconia, looking for similarities between the landscape and clues you’re given. Otherwise, growing your base, collecting more treasure, and expanding your gang will lead to new levels of the Snarl being unearthed. The Snarl is a dungeon within your base of operations that give you a more specific idea as to the location of the Dragon Stones upon clearing combat challenges on each of its floors. It’s a genius way to go about the main treasure hunt at large, and ensures that the player is always in control.

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While everything built around the hunt for the Dragon Stones seems tangential at first, its slowly revealed that every system at play in Dragon Quest Treasures loops back into that core objective. Things like finding treasure in the wild, befriending monsters to bring with you on expeditions, or restoring the Trans-Draconic Railway Company to its former glory all contribute to the larger goal of expanding your faction’s reach. It means that whenever you set out on an expedition, there’s always something for you to do that has a meaningful impact on core objectives, making for an addictive “just one more thing” style of gameplay loop that makes Treasures very hard to put down.

A large part of this also comes down to how easy it is to engage in treasure hunting. When you set out on an expedition from home base, the Treasure Forecast gives you an idea on the likelihood of finding treasure on any given island. The party of monsters you bring with you will detect hidden treasure when you’re close to it, pointing you in the right direction via the compass. Once in the immediate area, you can scan again to get a snapshot of the treasure’s location from each of your monsters, and it’s down to you to find and unearth it. Each monster can only carry a certain amount of treasure, so each expedition is limited by carry capacities.

The longer you spend in the field, though, the more you put yourself at risk both inside and outside of combat. Higher level enemies will not hesitate to make quick work of your team, and Erik falling in battle results in a total loss of all collected treasure. You’ll also eventually be introduced to Rival Gangs, who attack your team and attempt to steal your treasure. There’s plenty of tools you can use to avoid both of these things, but proper party management, and understanding when to head back to base is of paramount importance, and makes for an exciting degree of risk versus reward. The reward? Watching the value of your vault go up as a multi-million dollar treasure gets appraised in complete euphoria.

Curating a party to take with you on an expedition isn’t such a straightforward process either, as each one offers unique stats, elemental affinities, and most importantly – Fortes. Fortes are traversal abilities that make exploring the islands of Draconia much more manageable, from things like springing off of a Slime to hanging off of the bottom of a Dracky. There are more Fortes than there are party slots, though, so thinking about what types of traversal you’ll need to effectively get around is a fun bit of strategy and organization to think about before you depart.

Recruiting new monsters then becomes an equally important part of the game outside of expeditions. As you fight monsters in combat, there’s a chance they’ll be impressed by your abilities and head to your base of operations for recruitment. Providing the necessary materials will have that monster join your barracks as an option to include in your party going forward.

One disappointing aspect of this system is that there’s a decidedly slim roster of monsters to choose from here. While all in all there’s a large number of “unique” monsters, a vast majority of these are recolored variants, with a grand total that amounts to only 16 truly unique monster types. Given the short length of the game, this isn’t a problem that devolves into repetition or monotony, but given Dragon Quest’s expansive roster of creatures, it’s hard not to feel like there should be more here.

Combat itself is also another pain-point due to its overly simplistic and repetitive nature. You only ever have direct control over Mia and Erik, with limited commands to issue to your actual party, that for the most part, fight autonomously and will often get hit by area-of-effect attacks despite your best efforts to pull them away. As Erik or Mia, you have access to a simple dagger combo, the slingshot-like catapult, and Dragon Attacks, meaning there isn’t much flexibility in terms of approaching combat encounters.

You’ll often just hack away at enemies, throw out the occasional screen-wiping Dragon Attack, and fire off some pellets for good measure. There is a bit of choice in the way you can use different pellets to exploit elemental weaknesses, but that’s the full extent of it. Combat is at its best in the few boss encounters Dragon Quest Treasures throws at you, where you also have to consider environmental hazards and more overbearing attacks as you dodge and weave through strikes to find an opening. While these encounters serve up a nice break from general combat, they make up a very small portion of the experience overall.

Between expeditions, you’ll spend time at your home base where you can swap between Erik and Mia as playable characters, explore the Snarl, and engage with numerous facilities. Aside from monster recruiting, you can also buy and craft catapult pellets, create food to use in the field for buffs, and send out parties of unused monsters to search for resources and treasure while you’re out on your own. Perhaps most important, is the vault room, where you can display your most valuable treasure on plinths, showing off the riches you’ve amassed from Draconia. It’s a space that feels lived in and real, and it’s always a joy to return to the quirky monsters that inhabit it.

As a Switch exclusive, Dragon Quest Treasures doesn’t have the same visual allure of Dragon Quest XI, or even Builders for that matter. It’s by no means bad, a lot of the monsters and character models are nicely detailed and brought to life with personality-fuelled animation, but a lot of the environmental design is held back by muddied texture work. Fortunately, performance was incredibly consistent across my roughly 9 hour playthrough, but it certainly would’ve been nice to get further lost in this world with more defined and immersive visual fidelity, especially with how varied each island of Draconia is.

While Dragon Quest Treasures might not reach the same heights as the Builders series, there’s a distinct identity and unique experience on offer here that any fan of Dragon Quest should look into. It retains the same comfort and nostalgia of a mainline entry with an adventure that’s as wholesome as it is simple in premise. It’s a shame that the franchise’s legacy with combat and monster variety isn’t translated here, but Dragon Quest Treasures offers a relaxing and enticing adventure in its own way.

THE NINTENDO SWITCH VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Dragon Quest Treasures Review – A Hidden Gem appeared first on Press Start.

Earlier this year I reviewed the Ayaneo Next which was Ayaneo’s second portable console (first to make it to Australia), and definitely more of a Steam Deck competitor with its $2,000 price tag. The latest Ayaneo handheld to launch in Australia this week is the Ayaneo Air Pro, which comes with a much cheaper price tag, and a host of new features that make it much more compelling for the average gamer.

The biggest difference between units is the size. The Ayaneo Air Pro comes in at 224mm (w) x 89mm (h) x 29mm (d) and weighs 450g which puts it a very similar size to that of the Nintendo Switch Lite, which is extremely impressive given the technology inside this little console and the type of games it can run. In reality, size and weight are the only comparisons that can be made between the Nintendo Switch and Air Pro’s capabilities.

As soon as you boot the device, one of the standouts of the Air Pro is the display. It’s a 1080p 5.5″ AMOLED touchscreen display that is absolutely gorgeous. The blacks are extremely black, the colours are very vivid and everything just pops and looks that much better than the Ayaneo Next and other gaming devices. It really took me back to the days of the PlayStation Vita, which is the greatest compliment that I could give any handheld device.

It’s really just a gorgeous piece of tech, especially in the black variant that we’re getting in Australia, with customisable LED rings around the analogue sticks adding an extra bit of pop. These can be fully customised in terms of colours, effect and obviously turned off if you find them distracting.

When it comes to ergonomics, it really feels like Ayaneo has nailed that too with the Air Pro. You’ve obviously got your analogue sticks, D-Pad, four face buttons, two shoulder buttons and two triggers which all feel really within reach and not cramped at all. You’ve also got four customiseable face buttons that are mapped to things such as getting to Aya Space (the handheld’s custom game launcher) as well as start and select. Just like with the Next, there’s a fingerprint sensor in the power button which is used to get into Windows.

Something that’s really clever though is the fact that Ayaneo has added two very slim buttons that run along the top between the shoulder buttons that you can customise to things such as showing all your windows or getting to task manager.

In terms of connectivity, there’s a MicroSD port which is great for expanding beyond the 512GB SSD that is inside the Air Pro. You’ve got two USB-C ports (one top and bottom for each charging) and a 3.5mm headphone jack, although there’s Bluetooth built in to connect headphones wirelessly.

THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $1,249 FROM AMAZON

As I established in my Ayaneo Next review, whilst these devices might appear similar to the likes of the Nintendo Switch on the surface, they’re much more akin to portable PCs in the sense that there’s more traditional PC components inside as well as fans and such to facilitate a more hardcore gaming experience.

In the case of the Air Pro, the device is running Windows 11 out of the box, and obviously, Windows wasn’t really designed for this type of portable experience, and as much as you’re able to use the touchscreen (which is very responsive), or connect a mouse/keyboard, you’ll want to be using Aya Aya Space or a custom launcher that has controller support to get around.

The Ayaneo Air Pro running Windows is still it’s biggest positive however, because unlike the Steam Deck which is primarily tied to Steam, the Air Pro  can not only run games from Steam, but it can also run games from Xbox Game Pass, Epic Games Store, EA, Ubisoft Connect, Rockstar Launcher, Battlenet or literally any other client that exists on Windows. That might sound small, but once you wrap your head around the fact that this device can seamlessly run literally any game that you could play on a PC without any limitations (or any that I could discover), it’s a pretty big deal, and completely changes your way of thinking in regards to portable gaming.

Aya Space acts a clever way to load all of your games into so that you can launch them right from the app and not having to rely on the Windows OS at all. You can also setup shortcuts, change inputs, look at how your CPU/GPU are running as well as install launchers right from the app. There’s also a really neat overlay that you can easily pull up over your game to quickly change power modes, change the brightness or launch into other apps. It’s still in beta, so it does have its fair share of bugs, but I was also able to load in other launchers such as Playnite which even allow you to create the Switch or PS5 theme with some lovely results. Just like everything else, the device running Windows 11 means that your options are literally endless.

As far as performance goes, the Ayaneo Air Pro has 5560U AMD Ryzen 5 graphics with 16gGB of ram. When it comes to indie games such as Cuphead, Hades or Dead Cells, you can expect to get 60FPS at 1080 whilst on the lower power modes, and even when compared to the Switch, it feels much more capable of an indie gaming device, but obviously you’re probably spending $1,200 to play AAA games on the go and thankfully, the Air Pro mostly delivers in this area too.

When you try to play AAA games such as Forza Horizon 5, Horizon Zero Dawn, God Of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man or the like, which are all games that I played on the Air Pro, you’ll want to be dropping your resolution to 720p and graphics to low, which will result in a performance of about 30-40 FPS, which is a little less than the numbers that I saw with the Next, but still really damn impressive given the size of this device and what we’re working with. AMD FSR 2 (AMD’s DLSS) is really helping do some of the heavy lifting here and will only improve performance with AI processing.

I will say that I’ve been using the Air Pro to play a lot of Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer, and it runs really smoothly and plays incredibly well on this smaller device. There we still moments where I was just in disbelief that I was able to play a game like that on a handheld that is as small as the Switch Lite. I’ll come back to it again, but unlike the Switch and even the Steam Deck, the greatest benefit of having an Ayaneo is the fact that you really don’t have to ever think about whether a game is on a certain store or compatible launcher. If it’s on PC, it’ll likely run to varying degrees and the freedom of that really can’t be overstated.

This is where battery life comes into it and is obviously one of the shortcomings for a device like this, where performance is more than acceptable but obviously running PC quality games will take its toll. Whilst you can expect to get a few hours of battery life for indie games at a lower TDP, once you crank that up to get AAA games running at an acceptable level, your battery life will deplete quickly where you can expect it to last about an hour and a half at most.

This is where the appeal does start to dwindle a little bit, as impressive as it is that these AAA games are able to run on a device like this, it does take the shine away a little bit knowing you’re only getting 60-90 minutes of game time without connecting to a power bank or being near a wall outlet. In saying that, if you’re someone who just travels a lot (and are going to be in hotel rooms away from your console) or wants to be able to play COD or FIFA comfortably in bed, this is where something like this might be worth it.

Another area where the Air Pro feels like a match made in heaven is for emulation. Again performance is just a bit below the Next (which is almost double the price), but it’s a really solid emulation machine across a wide variety of consoles.

The reality of all of this though is that the Ayaneo Air Pro is a really solid gaming device. It’s well-designed, games run well and the launcher is getting to a place where it feels quite stable and really improves the portable Windows experience. The future in this space is incredibly bright and this is absolutely another win for Ayaneo.

The Ayaneo Air Pro launches in Australia on December 20th. You can grab it on Amazon for $1,249 HERE.

The post Ayaneo Air Pro Review – OLED Portable PC Greatness appeared first on Press Start.

I used to adore the Need for Speed games. Underground on the GameCube was my obsession for a time with its combination of slick, night-time visuals and great-feeling arcade style racing absolutely slathered in early 2000s tuner culture. This time around we’ve got a full open city area full of events, traffic, collectibles and cops to escape; a hip hop laced soundtrack and cel-animation inspired visual flourishes. Need For Speed Unbound has some great aspects and absolutely kept my interest for the length of the campaign with new and faster cars to drive as I progressed – but a few annoyances dragged Criterion’s NFS experience down from greatness for me.

Unbound didn’t make a fantastic first impression on me. Likely due to my lack of experience with modern NFS games, I was expecting near Mario Kart levels of easy drifts and high speed races. I found the game much more demanding of control finesse. Especially in the fairly high powered car you get initially it was very easy to lose control around corners if I expected to just hold the accelerator and drift like it was Ridge Racer. Once I came to terms with actually needing to learn the racing model, adjusting handling of cars to suit my style I found keeping the car under control much easier. Challenging enough to feel rewarding (especially when the game rewards you with boost and a sweet visual flourish for nailing a corner) but still more forgiving than say Gran Turismo. Driving in Unbound feels pretty fantastic.

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The game’s campaign is split into four weeks of driving in Lakeshore, each day split into day and night sessions and the week culminating in a qualifier event to eventually enter the Lakeshore Grand – the ultimate race to earn glory and fame. Each day and night will have a wide variety of events to compete in like races, drift events and takeovers (where you show off combos of drifts, jumps and target smashing) allowing you to pick your preferred way of competing. I really enjoyed the way the game is split into calendar days. It meant I could play for just a day, lock in some wins and reach a logical finishing point – or I could play an entire week in a play session if I felt like it.

It’s important gameplay wise too, as the more events you do in a single day, the more attention you’ll get from the cops. Racing for big rewards increases your heat level so there’s a constant risk/reward going on that keeps things tense. Winning big bucks only to lose your entire days winnings when you’re busted by the cops in the evening feels horrible, but is an effective way to encourage you to find better ways to lose the cops or maybe be a little more considered with how many events you participate in on a particular day.

The cops though, are one of my main annoyances with Unbound. They’re just so damned persistent. Things get easier as your car gets faster and more capable, but in the early days if you build up a decent heat level it can feel damn near impossible to lose the fuzz. Even when I had a fully upgraded, top of S+ tier car it was still more annoying than fun to lose cops given that the moment a helicopter flying overhead or a patrol car driving a nearby road spots you it’s fully back on with the map suddenly peppered with all terrain vehicles and police helicopters. Things get a little more manageable on the relaxed difficulty mode at least, but even there the police’s ability to spot and rain hell upon you at a moments notice gets tiring when all you really want to do is start the next event.

Unbound’s aesthetic is something that I think will be divisive, but personally I love the way it sticks to a very specific vibe. The visual style is semi-realistic with cel-animation flourishes which I think look fantastic, and the music is 100% hip hop. As someone who listens to quite a bit of the genre I recognised quite a few names, but there were some artists I’d never heard before. While I think I wore out the soundtrack by the time I finished the campaign, I love that the track choices had the breadth to introduce me to new music. The characters and dialogue you need to listen to while driving around though, I definitely found grating. It was hard to have all that much sympathy for a bunch of kids tearing up the streets, smashing up people’s cars and then getting on their high-horse about the cops daring to try breaking up their street races.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the Lakeshore Online mode of Unbound. It is entirely separate from the campaign, with a separate money balance and garage but functions in a similar way. You jump into an online city, drive around to events and invite the other players in the city to compete. I think if you enjoyed the campaign and wanted more, this could be a way to keep the whole thing going. I can understand why they’re totally separate garages, but it was a bit of a bummer to have to start from scratch again in the online mode for me.

There’s a lot I liked about NFS Unbound. I love that the game doesn’t expect you to come first to progress, and often I wasn’t even close. Higher places are in most cases just a slightly bigger payday so continuing on a 4th place still gets you some cash to upgrade and hopefully do better next time. I loved the commitment to modern car culture aesthetics, events like the takeover are a great addition along with the distinct visual and musical style choices. While I found the cops mostly tedious rather than exhilarating, once I lost them and got back to the racing I had a great time climbing the ladder, upgrading my cars, learning the city and eventually nailing the corners in races.

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GRIS (pronounced like “grease” and meaning Grey in Spanish) was one of my favourite indie games of the last generation, so hearing the news that it would be getting a native new-gen version with 4K/120fps visuals was music to my ears and a stark reminder that it was high time to replay this gorgeous experience.

That time, dear readers, is now, and with a second playthrough under my belt not only has this re-release of Nomada Studio’s 2018 cult classic reaffirmed my adoration for the game but it’s also helped to rekindle my affections for games viewed firmly as “art”. GRIS is, after all, a moving artwork and never has that been more clear than now.

If you’re yet to have given GRIS a go, it’s a tough one to explain from a narrative perspective, revelling in ambiguity as it does. Playing as the titular Gris, your goal is to bring colour back to a mysterious and desolate world and ultimately recover your voice in a story that slowly reveals itself to be a rumination on grief, remorse, fear and ultimately self-actualisation. Polygon’s Charlie Hall penned an excellent piece on its themes back when the game first launched that’s well worth a read after playing through and digesting its themes for yourself.

When it comes to the game side of GRIS, what you’re in for is a fairly straightforward and incredibly chill adventure platformer that’ll see you make your way through a variety of 2D environments, solving light puzzles and making use of a series of gorgeous transformations that riff on Gris’ personal growth in the face of adversities. It’s free of fail states and rarely mentally taxing but compelling all the same thanks in large part to a number of interesting ideas and a malleable visual identity that adeptly complements what’s going on in any given moment.

GRIS doesn’t ask for much of your time, offering a 4-ish hour journey that you’ll eek ever so slightly more out of if you’re chasing trophies/achievements, but so many stunning views and memorable moments in time and stunning views are offered up in that time that every minute will stick with you. I envy anyone coming into the game for the first time with this new iteration, but even if you’ve experienced it before you’re sure to catch those feels all over again, no less because of the slick new visual treatment.

Running at an uncompromised 4K resolution at 120 entire frames per second (provided you’ve got the hardware for it), GRIS is a marvel. The painterly aspects of its existing aesthetic are only amplified by being presented in such a raw, high-fidelity manner. Anybody witnessing this game should be so lucky to see just one frame of its hand-painted scapes, let alone nearly 8000 of them every minute. I don’t often get excited about ports or remasters of games that simply up the pixel or frame count but this is one of those instances where the improvements made feel distinctly tangible, like you’re being invited into a piece of art with no velvet rope or plexiglass to dilute its splendour.

All that said, if you’ve played and enjoyed GRIS in the past – let it be known that this is undeniably the same game. While I’d enthusiastically advocate a replay to anyone, I wouldn’t go as far as saying that the 4K120 presentation is reason enough to double-dip in place of any of the many other compelling indie releases of 2022. If you’re fresh to the experience, don’t hesitate a second, but otherwise consider whether you possess the technology to get the most out of this new port and/or whether you’ve had your fill of what GRIS has to offer before now.

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a fantastic open-world action RPG more than worthy of the novels its world and characters are based on. Of that, there are few arguments.

CD Projekt RED had a lot to prove with its 2015 epic, following on from an already-excellent but mostly linear adventure in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, but it clearly nailed the assignment as it became a pivotal point in the franchise that’s since spawned DLC expansions, a Netflix live-action show and even an anime adaptation.

It’s hard to believe, but that was over seven years ago now, a hallmark amongst the last generation of console hardware and games. With the studio’s next big title, Cyberpunk 2077, not enjoying the same level of near-unanimous praise as Wild Hunt, fans have quickly become eager to step back into the shoes of Geralt of Rivia and relive the gigantic journey all over again. Thankfully, CDPR was listening and won’t see its community suffer the admittedly-wonky performance or somewhat aged designs decision of the original flavour of The Witcher 3 – instead blessing patient players with a remastered and reinvigorated new-gen version of the game built with PS5 and Xbox Series X|S in mind.

I’ve had a number of days to spend some early time with The Witcher 3’s PS5 update, which is free to existing owners of the game, replaying the adventure from a fresh save file (although you will have the option of transferring existing saves to this one) in an attempt to gauge whether or not diving back into Wild Hunt is worth the time of anyone who’s already invested 200+ hours into it in the past. The short answer? Absolutely.

That recommendation comes with a few caveats, of course, like do you have the time to replay The Witcher 3 right now? I certainly don’t, but for those of us still hanging onto our old physical discs or who’ve picked it up digitally through some sale or subscription in the past, it’s worth the low admission price of free to spend at least a few hours back in its world. If you’re totally new to the game and have even a passing interest in massive RPGs or caught the books or Netflix show and developed an interest in the franchise, even better, you’d do well to pick up a copy now and play it through in the best state it’s ever been.

Right off the bat, the most noticeable improvements in this new-gen SKU of The Witcher 3 come in the form of its visuals. CD Projekt RED has taken to the game’s core graphical feature set with an angle grinder and a fresh coat of paint, smoothing off the rough edges of the existing console release and then dialling the quality of just about everything up a fair few notches.

On PS5 and Xbox Series X, this starts with the choice between two distinct visual modes – a ray-traced mode that targets 30fps and a “performance” mode that sits closer to 60fps. Both options utilise AMD’s FSR 2.1 upscaling tech to produce a dynamic 4K resolution. I initially thought I was going to have a hard time choosing which mode to play in, especially because the difference in the quality of the lighting and shadows and the way everything comes together in the ray-traced mode is so incredibly stark. After trying both though, the 60fps target in the performance mode is definitely the real winner. There’s a natural beauty and wonder in the game’s world that comes through most in movement, whether it’s the remarkable weather and time-of-day effects, the way that foliage sways in the breeze and bends under foot, or just the scenery rushing by as you dash through on your trusty Roach. Running at high frame rates simply sells this better than ever before on consoles and really elevates the experience of just exploring and enjoying the massive open world.

Outside of the technical improvements, CDPR has also retooled a ton of the game’s assets, making use of a combination of community mods and in-house updates that have a pretty transformative effect on the game’s overall look. It’s great seeing a lot of cutscenes that were originally pre-rendered now produced in real time, and with character model and texture bumped up significantly, and a lot of the higher-quality models and shadow effects previously reserved only for cutscenes now carry across into general gameplay as well. Just about every object out in the world looks nicer, either because of added detail or just by way of the tweaked environment lighting and optional ray-tracing. I’m not someone that’s able to pick apart every pixel of every frame and discern what’s new or better, but it’s easy to appreciate the game’s image quality as a whole, now that it’s all a lot more cohesive with vastly bigger draw distances and object density and much-improved performance.

I only wish that CD Projekt RED had taken ideas from other, recent AAA titles and offered some kind of VRR/120Hz options for those with the display hardware capable of it. After enjoying God of War’s highest-fidelity visual mode at an unlocked framerate well above 30fps it’s just too much of an adjustment to play The Witcher 3 at 30fps in its ray-tracing mode. It’s unfortunate, because the game looks stunning with ray-traced global illumination and ambient occlusion implemented, but it just doesn’t feel anywhere near as good. In the end I found myself switching over to ray-tracing every time I reached a new area, just to see what it looked like and snap some gorgeous screenshots in the robust new Photo Mode. I imagine many will do the same.

Of course it’s not just visual improvements that make this the definitive version of the definitive open-world RPG. Taking a similar tact, CDPR has revamped many of the game’s underlying mechanics as well as implemented a number of welcome quality-of-life features, once again including some help from community-developed mods. Many of these go a long way to making The Witcher 3 feel more “modern” again, like the new cinematic camera that puts in more effort to frame Geralt’s heroic stature and all of the action he finds himself in. I occasionally found it awkward during fights or certain bits of navigation, more than likely just down to the fact that these encounters and environments were built with the more pulled-back view in mind, but overall it’s a nice way to replay the game from a slightly new perspective that looks a lot more impressive in the moment.

Also adding to this are changes to things like Sign casting, which lets you cast any of Geralt’s Signs by holding R1 and pressing the relevant face button, rather than having to pause the flow of battle to select a sign in the radial menu. It’s one simple tweak but it radically changes how fights feel once you’re used to it, and definitely has encouraged me to use more of the signs that I largely ignored in my original playthrough. CDPR says it’s implemented a lot of combat balance changes based on mods and feedback as well, and although it’s been too long between plays for me to really understand where those can be felt I’m already feeling a lot more confident in battle just because of how much more responsive everything is.

If you’re playing on PS5 you’ll also have the added benefits of console-specific features like adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, which while not overly game-changing have been a nice extra touch so far, as well as Activity Cards and other UI integrations that should help make the whole thing a lot more accessible. At the time of writing the UI features like Activity Cards hadn’t gone live yet, but I’m very keen to make good use of them for jumping straight into specific content as I keep playing.

There’s so much more to talk about when it comes to this hugely comprehensive upgrade to The Witcher 3, and probably a lot I’m yet to see first-hand in the gargantuan game, but I’m confident enough already to say that what you’re getting here is a lot for free. Even if you’re new, the game now comes with all of the excellent expansion content and improvements made to the game in the years since its original release, so it represents great value for money even before the new-gen upgrades. Without a doubt, if you’ve been on the fence about giving The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt another go around or dipping your toes in for the first time – now is your moment.

The post The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s PS5 And Xbox Series X|S Upgrade Is Massive And Transformative appeared first on Press Start.

Without fail, every time I decide I’m ready to upgrade my desktop PC or laptop and go through the list of must-haves before I go shopping, I forget about sound. As a heavy Discord/Zoom user I’m more than often rocking a gaming headset, but it’s the times between those that I forget about. 

Whether it’s chilling out to some indie video games or travelling down a YouTube rabbit hole, there are plenty of reasons why I’d want external speakers hooked up to my computer over spending hours upon hours wearing my headset. Problem is, I like to keep a tidy and compact working space and most decent PC speaker offerings command a bit of space and a fair amount of cabling to be effective.d

When I first started shopping around for an audio solution for my desk, the Razer Leviathan V2 was definitely the leading choice. The “soundbar” form factor would fit in much better with my desk arrangement for starters, plus it could be connected via Bluetooth to make for less cable clutter. The only downside was that it came with a separate subwoofer that I just don’t have room for.

Enter: The Razer Leviathan V2 X. A more affordable version of the Leviathan V2 that removes the external sub and is more compact overall. Now we’re talking! Of course, you don’t get a smaller, cheaper version of something without making some sacrifices along the way and the Leviathan V2 X definitely doesn’t have the same audio chops as its big brother but after a couple of weeks of use I have to admit I’m impressed by what this little thing is capable of – and it looks great to boot.

Unboxing the Leviathan V2 X is a typically-Razer experience with the compact outer packaging revealing the bare essentials inside – a small instruction booklet, a USB-C cable and the soundbar itself. Frustratingly, discovering that the cable inside was USB-C on both ends meant I had to run down to my local JB Hi-Fi and pick up an adapter for my PC’s USB-A ports. 

If you’ve got an extra C-to-A cable lying around you could feasibly use that too, but the one Razer supplies has a handy 90-degree bend to fit flush into the back of the soundbar so I wanted to stick with that. An adapter or alternate cable packed-in would have been super handy, but this is the budget version of the Leviathan V2 after all, so a pared-back experience is somewhat expected.

Thankfully that single USB-C cable acts as both a data connection and power delivery to the Leviathan V2 X, which makes it a breeze to situate on a desk without cable mess. It’s got Bluetooth 5.0 capabilities too, meaning you can slam that USB-C cable into a nearby wall adapter and use it as a speaker for your mobile devices, if that’s your schtick. If you’re not going for a super-immersive, cinematic audio experience at your computer desk, then simple is good and simple is exactly what this soundbar delivers.

Outside of the Razer logo on the front and buttons on top for input switching, volume and power, the Leviathan V2 X is a svelte little number. It’s a Razer product so naturally it’s got Chroma RGB lighting, which you can control through the Razer Synapse PC suite or the Razer Audio App.

The Razer Audio App on mobile devices is quite handy, allowing you to customise the RGB lighting, including switching on a toggle that makes it somewhat reactive to the audio coming through, and also includes a graphic equaliser with a few useful presets. The Synapse software on PC is a bit more comprehensive, giving you these same features plus handy extra toggles like the ability to turn off the lighting when your PC’s display is turned off or to set a secondary audio output device to one of the soundbar’s physical buttons to make switching to something like a headset easy and painless. Both of those features have absolutely come in handy while I’ve been using the V2 X so they’re a nice, surprising boon to owning the device.

Of course the real question is how the Leviathan V2 X performs as a soundbar, especially given the small form factor, low power draw and affordable price point. Inside the Razer Leviathan V2 X are two full-range drivers and two passive radiators that Razer reckons can reach up to 90dB when at a 1m range, which is probably more than anyone would want in front of them at a desk. 

It lacks the sub and THX Spatial Audio capabilities of its bigger brother, but I was genuinely pleased with the sound it pumps out in spite of all of the above. It’s not a particularly rich or powerful audio experience but it sounds great in most games I played with plenty of clarity and decent performance at higher volumes. I maybe wouldn’t go using it as a main driver for listening to music but as a dedicated PC gaming speaker it’s perfectly decent.

All told, for less than $200 the Razer Leviathan V2 X represents decent value, especially if what you’re looking for is a half-decent audio experience without adding too much extra clutter and cables to your desk. You can definitely go bigger and better with something like the Leviathan V2 but this one’s small, simple and packs in some great features while punching above its weight class in sound. For someone like me, that’s about the best I can ask for.

Get yours here.

The post Razer Leviathan V2 X Review – Big Gaming Sound That’s Small In Size And Price appeared first on Press Start.

Portal is one of my favourite games of all-time, but I hadn’t had a reason to go back to it in a long, long time and I’m very thankful that Portal with RTX paired with the RTX 4080 made me go back to it.

I must admit, when Portal with RTX was first revealed, I was a little sceptical, not in the sense that I didn’t think it’d look fantastic, but I just questioned whether Portal needed that extra shine and even more-so than Quake with RTX and Minecraft with RTX, after jumping into Portal with RTX, I quickly realised how wrong I was and that this feels like a match made in heaven.

It wasn’t until I jumped back into the game that I realised just how well ray-traced reflections and lighting instantly work well to enhance a game like Portal that is not only full of reflective surfaces but it also full of light sources flying off those surfaces, and even add the extra layer of well, portals into that and you’ve just got a huge chamber of reflections that absolutely delight the senses.

What looked flat in the original game (which I confirmed by going back to it), now feels alive. Balls of light now beam off the worlds with the entire world around you being fully reflective in real-time, giving it a greater sense of immersion and scale. Similarly, the portals reflect on the walls surrounding them too, making the world feel more 3D and less flat.

With my RTX 4080 at 4K, the game ran at about 79 FPS when taking advantage of DLSS 3.0 which once again really made playing this game in 4K a reality (which I touched on quite a lot in my 4080 review here). For reference, without DLSS 3.0 turned on, I was only able to get about 32 FPS which wildly changed the experience, and I would have had to drop it down from 4K without the brilliance that is DLSS 3.0.

As much as this feels like a tech demo to show off real-time ray-traced reflections (and it is), this once again feels like NVIDIA showing why DLSS 3.0 is going to be really important to delivering on the 4K dream.

When it comes to 3000 series owners, NVIDIA says that you can expect 60FPS at 1080p with a 3080 and 30FPS at 1080p with a 3060 both utilising DLSS 2.0, so that in itself shows how different the experience is with the RTX 4080 and DLSS 3.0.

Now, am I going to recommend that you run out and purchase an RTX 4080 just to play Portal with RTX? Probably not, but it’s free if you’re an owner of the game on Steam, and if you do happen to pickup a RTX 4080 or already own a 3000 series card, I absolutely recommend that you jump back into this game. Not only for the great game that it is, but to check out the ray-traced goodness, and if you’re a 4080 owner, the impressive technology that is DLSS 3.0.

Portal with RTX launches as a free update for Portal owners on Thursday December 8th.

The post Portal With RTX Is Absolutely Stunning And Runs Well On The RTX 4080 appeared first on Press Start.

After playing through the already-excellent Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for a third time in its newly-refreshed and revitalised form in Crisis Core –Final Fantasy VII– Reunion, one fact rang true throughout – this is a proper remaster. More than just a simple upscale or even a new coat of paint, it’s a carefully reconstructed and retooled product that wonderfully modernises a 14-year-old handheld game without any sacrifices to the core of the original. In short, it’s both the best way to play Crisis Core and a great new release in its own right.

Some context for those who’ve not played Crisis Core before, though: In this prequel set seven years before the events of the original Final Fantasy VII, players take on the role of Zack Fair, a Shinra SOLDIER operative that becomes embroiled in the fallout after his mentor, Angeal, and another SOLDIER 1st Class named Genesis seemingly turn on Shinra for reasons later explained. Set to the backdrop of a war with Wutai and the rapid takeover of Shinra and its clamour for the world’s precious resources, the game’s narrative ultimate leads players to a deeper look into the origins of Final Fantasy VII’s star players from Cloud and Sephiroth to Tifa, Aerith, Yuffie and many more.

Over the course of the 15-30 hour experience on offer, Crisis Core was an occasionally messy but ultimately clever prequel that quickly became the highlight of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII media blowout of the 2000s that also gave us the likes of the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children film. Back then, it was an exclusive to Sony’s PlayStation Portable handheld console, where it impressed with production values beyond what anyone was used to in such a small format and a compelling gameplay loop that included a unique, real-time combat system.

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Fast forward to today, and Final Fantasy VII is seeing something of a renaissance thanks to 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake kicking off a trilogy set to explore the original’s story and setting anew. Where that game was a wholly new take on the early portion of the main Final Fantasy VII game, Crisis Core Reunion is closer to a “remaster” of the PSP prequel, updating the presentation and crucial gameplay elements but leaving the core of the game largely intact. It makes a lot of sense too, where the PS1 original’s old-school JRPG sensibilities were due for an update in the remake, Crisis Core’s action-oriented gameplay and snappy pacing still hold up fairly well.

The biggest and most immediate changes in Crisis Core’s move to modern platforms nearly all stem from the vast gulf in functionality between the PSP’s restrictive button layouts and the controllers available to players on home consoles and PC. The simple addition of camera control with a right stick has a transformative impact on how the game is presented and how Zack handles in the moment, but the team at Square Enix has risen to this new challenge admirably by both ensuring players have stuff to look at outside of the confines of the original perspective and also taking the bulk of its combat gameplay back to the drawing board to rethink how it should work in the new format.

I mentioned a lot of what’s changed in my earlier preview impressions of the game, but the crux of it is that combat in Reunion feels vastly more fast-paced and reactive than in the PSP version of Crisis Core. Gone is the clunky, scrolling menu that bound all of your actions including basic attacks and magic, and now everything is mapped to the multitude of face and shoulder buttons available instead. With full, immediate control of Zack’s actions and a freely-adjustable camera, fights feel much closer to something like Final Fantasy VII Remake or even Kingdom Hearts.

All of the neat little wrinkles and ideas that made combat in Crisis Core unique and interesting the first time are still here, mind, like the compelling and unpredictable DMW system, the way Materia is incorporated into the flow of the action and the need to think hard about your equipment layout when facing down the game’s toughest foes, it’s all just a lot more manageable in the moment. Some new tweaks have been implemented to take advantage of Zack’s enhanced playability as well, such as the ability to cancel powerful foes’ ultimate attacks by pummelling them with strong abilities. In its new form, I’d almost be bold enough to suggest it’s one of my favourite takes on real-time combat that the Final Fantasy franchise has dabbled in thus far, despite a noticeable lack of challenge even on the Hard difficulty setting.

Outside of combat, the general gameplay and structure of Crisis Core is a lot more recognisable and true to the handheld original, although again the addition of full camera control does give everything a different feel. There are times where it’s more noticeable, in fact some of the late-game set pieces and minigames seemingly had to be modified to fit, but for the most part it’s the same game. That means what’s here is a mostly-linear jaunt through 10 distinct chapters where you’ll trek through a few key locales while occasionally being afforded the opportunity to wander sections of Midgar and other places of your own accord and pick up side content. Funnily enough, anyone coming to this game from Final Fantasy VII Remake will feel right at home with how everything is laid out, albeit of a much smaller scope here.

The one quirk of Crisis Core’s that might come out as a bit of a rub with new players is its reliance on bite-sized, self-contained “Missions” to pad out its gameplay offering. There are 300 of the bloody things, and while they were a fantastic way to offer PSP players short bursts of gameplay that they could knock out on a commute or during a bathroom break, they make less sense here. Each one is a barely minutes-long endeavour where you’re dropped into one of only a small selection of environments to navigate, picking up treasures and engaging in combat encounters on the way to take down a predetermined foe. 

These missions aren’t not fun, largely thanks to how good Reunion’s revamped combat is, but they get grindy real quick and they’re unfortunately quite essential to obtaining the game’s most useful items and abilities and keeping Zack levelled up to meet the challenge of the main content. At the end of the day there’s no getting around the fact that they’re a core component of the game and something returning fans will have already accepted, but new players might question what they’ve gotten themselves into after around the 150th mission.

Elsewhere, some very welcome quality-of-life improvements do go a long way to alleviating any frustration or tedium that might arise from the original’s design. All fights can be instantly restarted upon dying, for example, also offering players the opportunity to tweak their character build before going back for a second beating. Throw in auto-saves, increased checkpointing amongst multi-stage encounters and a vastly improved UI that pretty closely resembles Final Fantasy VII Remake’s menus and there’s much to appreciate about how Square Enix has considered where it presents Crisis Core warts-and-all and where it smooths off any rough edges.

Of course another huge selling point for Crisis Core Reunion is the massive upgrade to its visual and audio treatment. Built from the ground-up in Unreal Engine 4, it’s pretty well night-and-day compared to the PSP version, with model, texture and effect work that feels on par with the gorgeous Final Fantasy VII Remake. There are definitely some obvious holdovers from its origins, environments for example are packed with tons more detail but they’re still built on the same compact, basic layouts. Likewise character models are gorgeously-rendered with sharp texture work and new geometry but they’re placed on the existing rigs which means they animate like it’s still 2008, which can be awkward at times.

It’s still an enormous glow-up overall though, all of the new assets and effects combined with the razor-sharp resolutions and fluid performance afforded by new platforms make it an impressively new-feeling iteration that goes well beyond what’s expected from a modern remaster. It doesn’t stop at in-game visuals either, with Square Enix using a combination of AI-upscaled and edited original CG animations and some completely new content (gorgeous new summon sequences being a great example) to tie everything together.

There’s also the small matter of the game’s voice work which, shockingly, has been completely redone with the voice cast updated to match the Remake more closely and voice acting added to all of the previously text-only dialogue. It’s a pretty big deal and another stark example of just how much work has gone into updating Crisis Core beyond the expected new bells and whistles. It’s seriously impressive stuff, and the new cast does a great job overall, especially when it comes to characters who had zero voiced lines the first time around. What’s more, Crisis Core’s original composer, Takeharu Ishimoto, is back with brand-new arrangements, making Reunion just as much an updated aural experience as a visual and mechanical one.

To be frank, assessing this “remaster” as a whole is a difficult task, as anyone’s enjoyment of it will largely come down to what Crisis Core means to them. Devout fans who played it on PSP are going to see an old favourite in an entirely new light through well-considered updates designed to delight returning players, but those coming into it having missed the game in 2008 or entering fresh off of Final Fantasy VII Remake may find it a jarring transition. That said, critiquing it purely on the merits of the work done to enhance the base game it’s a stellar effort and a commendable commitment to producing something worthy of Final Fantasy VII fans’ love for this world and its characters.

The post Crisis Core –Final Fantasy VII– Reunion Review – Absolutely Worth A Revisit appeared first on Press Start.

It’s been a good few years since I’ve tried to use an iPad for productivity/work purposes, with my iPad Mini (2021) being largely used for media viewing, light browsing and travel, but I was really impressed to see just how far the Apple iPad Pro has come with this year’s iteration.

The last time I tried to properly use an iPad Pro would have been 2-3 years ago, and whilst it was an extremely impressive device, I remember having to defer to my MacBook for certain things, whether it be Photoshop or having to upload anything, but now, due to advances with iPad tech and also iPadOS 16 as well as apps like Photoshop being available on the iPad Pro, I was able to pretty much work solely off my iPad Pro without it feeling weird or like I had to come up with workarounds to make it happen.

Whilst I didn’t spend a lot of time with the last model, I know that not a lot has changed when it comes to form-factor. The iPad Pro (2022) still has a gorgeous 12.9″ Liquid Retina XDR display (on the model I’m using) that is powered by over 10,000 Mini-LEDs and is capable of 120Hz refresh rates and 1,000 nits of brightness (1,600 peak). It goes without saying that this is still one of the best screens that you’ll find on any device. Any content or photos looks absolutely gorgeous and it’s just a genuine joy to use. The same goes for four speakers on the device, where even if you’re not using AirPods or other headphones, you’re still going to have a fantastic listening experience.

Not much has changed with the cameras either, with the 2022 model having a 12MP front facing TrueDepth camera that can be used for Centre Stage with FaceTime, and is also used for FaceID unlocking. On the back, there’s a 12MP wide camera and a 10MP ultra wide camera on the back. Something that is new to the 2022 model is ProRes video capture, and the power provided by the M2 chip is enough to edit it as well.

Speaking of that M2 chip, it’s crazy to think that the chip that is in this device is technically more powerful than what it is in my 14″ MacBook Pro. I’m not the biggest user of labour-intensive programs of DaVinci Resolve or Ocane X, but everything from exporting photos or videos to zipping around apps was just incredibly smooth. Obviously, if you’re not using this device for labour-intensive tasks, then it might be a little bit overkill, but it’s hard not to be impressed by what else is there.

THE MAGIC KEYBOARD + APPLE PENCIL (2ND GEN)

The iPad Pro (2022) is still compatible with the same 2nd Gen Apple Pencil, but it’s an even better experience now. Thanks to that M2 Chip, the iPad Pro can now detect when the Apple Pencil (2nd gen) is 12mm (or less) away from the screen. This allows you to see exactly where your stroke or cursor will tap on before you make the connection with the screen.

For instance, in drawing apps, you’ll be able to see exactly where you’ll make your mark. When just zipping around the regular Apple UI, your app icons will wiggle as you move around the screen. It’s not something most people will need to run out to upgrade for, but it does make that Apple Pencil experience even better.

This was also my first experience with the Magic Keyboard, and despite it’s hefty price tag, it really does take the iPad Pro from being just a powerful table to a 2-in-1 computing experience. The way that it seamlessly connects to your iPad Pro magnetically and pops the screen up to a viewable level, just makes it a joy to use the iPad more productively. The fact that it’s charged by the iPad Pro is obviously still genius as well.

The keyboard is great to type on, and the trackpad, whilst on the smaller side, is a great experience and reflected really well on-screen with a little cursor. I always dreamed of having a MacBook with a touch screen, but I feel like this mostly delivers on this dream, and truly does provide the best of both worlds. The only thing worth mentioning is that obviously, unlike a laptop, because all the internals are in the iPad, it does make the experience top-heavy, meaning it’s a lot harder to use in bed or on your lap.

All-in-all, though, the Magic Keyboard is a really fantastic accessory and of such a high-quality. Apple really thought of everything, even allowing you to charge your iPad (and keyboard) through a secondary USB-C port that is in the actual keyboard itself.

IPADOS 16

The iPad has always been a phenomenal experience since the first iteration, but it’s no secret that it’s really been held back on the software side, but that’s finally been turning in the last few years, and iPadOS 16 really pushes this forward even further.

There’s a lot of the same improvements that are featured in both iOS16 and MacOS Ventura, such as an improved photo experience, improvements to iMessage such as un-sending and editing messages and also improvements to Mail such as undoing a send and scheduling emails, but the real hero is Stage Manager.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Stage Manager in MacOS Ventura as I feel that the Mac multitasking experience is fine, but on iPad, with a screen this big, I actually feel like it does enhance the experience. basically, Stage Manager allows you to have multiple workspaces on the go at once, which are reflected on the left side of the screen, from there, you can have multiple apps in each stage and easily re-size them and even overlap them, which to my knowledge is the first time you’ve been able to do this on iPad.

You can even connect your iPad Pro to an external display to allow even more stages that can display independently on your external monitor, which adds even more to the productivity piece, and that M2 chip really allows you to do all of this without a huge fuss. I wouldn’t say that Stage Manager is a perfect experience, and I think we’ll see changes and improvements over the coming years, but I do think like the multi-tasking, computing experience is really getting better on iPad.

GAMING ON IPAD PRO

Obviously, thanks to that gorgeous display and great speakers that I touched on earlier, gaming on the iPad Pro is a fantastic experience, especially when paired with a controller (which can be any of the PlayStation/Xbox/Nintendo variety).

Playing games using the touch screen can be a little bit awkward given the size of the screen, but it’s not a heavy device and obviously you’ll feel extremely immersed given how large and vibrant the screen is.

Surprisingly, Stage Manager also works with most games, so you can quickly flick to another app to answer an email or a message, then flip straight back without any issue.

As I’ve touched on so many times before Apple Arcade is well worth the price of omission with a wealth of fantastic indie games or more well-known franchises such as the NBA 2K franchise or the several household names such as Sonic or Pac-Man in Apple Arcade exclusive adventures.

All-in-all, picking an iPad has never been a harder decision, because they all really feel like they’ve been moved into this next generation of iPad, in which all of these devices are great for productivity and leisure. What I can say for sure though is that if you’re somebody who is doing a lot of 3D modelling, or working with ProRes video, then the iPad Pro (2022) is going to be more than capable.

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I’ve always been a big fan of Dead Space, so having a new game of that ilk in The Callisto Protocol was always going to be appealing. From the minds that brought us Dead Space, it’s occupying the same space as other fantastic spiritual successors like The Evil Within, Bayonetta, and even Lost Odyssey. After playing The Callisto Protocol, it’s clear that the Dead Space DNA has been left intact, but much like the new Biophage threat, it’s mutated into something entirely different.

The Callisto Protocol sees you taking on the role of Jacob Lee, a freight transporter pilot running jobs for the United Jupiter Company. His latest assignment is simple but lucrative – move some unlabelled but volatile cargo between Jupiter’s moons – Europa and Callisto. His ship is ambushed by a terrorist group, leading to a crash and subsequent imprisonment in a facility built on Callisto. Of course, while imprisoned, Jacob is broken out of his cell during an outbreak of an unknown pathogen and realises that he has to escape.

What follows is a story that is ironically only surprising in that there are almost no surprises. The Callisto Protocol wears its influences on its sleeve, no doubt, but it feels like a real missed opportunity to play with and subvert players’ expectations with how the game plays out. Instead, The Callisto Protocol delivers a sci-fi story shamelessly derived from the stories that inspired it – think Alien meets Dead Space – with little artistic flair to truly establish it as its own. That being said, The Callisto Protocol does feel more grounded than Dead Space, so anyone who found the gigantic space-faring bio-recombinant necromorphs obnoxious will find solace in the simplicity of The Callisto Protocol.

So as you’d expect, the game plays similarly to Dead Space. It’s a largely linear, narrative-driven thriller that sees Jacob working his way through Callisto’s facilities in an attempt to escape. But even though it’s clearly inspired by Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol does a few things that you’d never see in a Dead Space game in an attempt to carve out its own niche. It does this in a few ways – from telling a more grounded story and handling combat and encounter design.

The Callisto Protocol’s combat isn’t about dismembering but instead more about heavy hitting. With more of a focus on melee, you’ll spend much more time up close and personal with your enemies. With such an increased focus on melee, it also means that you’re given a whole bunch of manoeuvres to evade and block attacks from incoming enemies. This is done by holding the stick to the left or the right of an enemy as they attack or holding it back to block. While the game insists that there is no timing requirement, there were times when a successful dodge still led to me taking damage. It’s a cool system in practice and one that feels so good when you pull it off correctly, but one that could have been more consistent.

This dovetails rather awkwardly with the fact that while the combat has some great weight and is relentlessly satisfying, things start to fall apart when you’re being attacked by more than one enemy. Jacob can’t dodge more than one attack at a time, and you’re given few options to take on multiple enemies simultaneously. A heavy melee strike can hit multiple enemies, but it’s so slow to wind up that it is impractical in the middle of a pile-on.

If you’re not reading between the lines enough, I’ll say it. The Callisto Protocol is a challenging game. For the most part, it’s challenging in that you have to manage your resources effectively when engaging in battles with your enemies. In some aspects, and this is the minority of my experience, it’s challenging to the point where it can become frustrating. The combat system falling apart when faced with more than one enemy and attacks that kill in one hit are bound to frustrate players. As a massive fan of horror games, these kinds of challenges are ones I’m accustomed to (and perhaps even welcome), but for some players, it will be more frustrating than fulfilling. Accessibility options will no doubt remedy some of these frustrations – including auto-dodge and lock-on aiming, but Callisto can be a challenging game.

The weaponry you’re outfitted with is relatively modest, offering players variations on the typical pistol, shotgun, and assault rifle. None of the weapons ever really have a purposeful use – you can easily finish the game with the gun you’re given at the start – and it feels like a missed opportunity to have such simple weaponry.

That said, the combat does a fairly good job of forcing you to mix it up between weaponry, melee, and your telekinetic power (called GRP). There wasn’t a single time in the game when I relied on one more than the other. Pummelling an enemy in melee highlights an area on the enemy, which deals better damage if you shoot at that point quickly after dealing damage. It’s a simple system that never gets old. Throw in the ability to grab and throw enemies onto traps such as spikes, fans, or rotating blades with your GRP, and you’ve got a pretty strong combat system that The Callisto Protocol builds itself on.

It’s a shame that the enemy variety is so low. The new threat is called the Biophage, and there are only about six or seven enemies that you’ll encounter throughout the game. Perhaps even more disappointing is that about half of these enemies behave the same, merely looking slightly different. Games like Resident Evil 7: biohazard did so much with so little, so it can work, but the lack of enemy variety in The Callisto Protocol did mean that encounter design towards the end of the game did get a bit repetitious.

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Once again, some creative flourishes do their best to keep things interesting here. The second act encourages you to play stealthily due to the design of the enemies there, feeling more akin to the encounters found in games like The Last Of Us. Similarly, leaving enemies damaged but not dead for too long will see them mutate, but all this ever amounts to is literally turning them into bullet sponges who deal more damage. These are both great ideas, in concept, but I’d love to have seen different mutations that altered the flow of battle in other ways rather than just having to spend more ammo on them.

I previously referred to Callisto Protocol as a thriller, which was a deliberate distinction that I made. If I had to decide how scary a game like The Callisto Protocol is, I’d liken it closer to games like Dead Space 3 or Resident Evil 4. It’s a tense experience constantly throwing things at you, but it never quite reaches the lofty heights of terror similar to games like the first two Dead Spaces or even something like Resident Evil 7. The Callisto Protocol is a loud game, constantly throwing music and loud stingers at you to the point where it doesn’t give you the space to even build tension. Such a loudness takes away from the scares, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a tense experience.

As alluded to earlier, there aren’t any corners cut either. Your first run will easily take you upwards of fifteen hours to complete. My first run took almost twenty as I was taking my time to explore everything and defeat some of the more challenging encounters on the hardest difficulty. The game gives you some “optional” paths that further flesh out the story and rewards you with extra loot, but you can see everything the game offers in a single playthrough. There are no unlockables, unfortunately, and the new game plus mode is coming later too. So while the game is lacking in the replayability department, I never felt short-changed by the experience The Callisto Protocol provided “out of the box”.

When you start thinking about Callisto’s presentation, things get a bit more complicated. This is the first game in which I struggled to choose which mode to play in. One thing is sure, however, and that’s the fact that the production values are through the roof. Every cutscene has been well directed to the point where it would stand alongside games like Dead Space or even the recent God of War games – mimicking the “continuous cut” style that those games employ.

It is harder to deduce whether you’ll want to play this game in its performance or resolution modes. The 60fps option is fantastic, and post-patch works wonderfully. But it comes at the cost of reduced lighting effects, which is a pretty big trade-off in a game as atmospheric as this. Regardless of your choice, The Callisto Protocol is a great-looking game. The characters are well-detailed, the locales are beautifully realised, and the atmosphere is absolutely on point.

Although it might seem like I’ve been overly critical of The Callisto Protocol, it’s still one of the most enjoyable horror experiences I’ve had this year. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel in any tangible way but still offers up an engaging and enthralling experience from beginning to end, even if it’s devoid of surprises. It’s a cliché to say, but I’ll do it anyway – essentially, The Callisto Protocol feels greater than the sum of its parts – and I think any self-respecting horror or even action game fan owes it to themselves to check it out.

THE XBOX SERIES X VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

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Although they’re not short of wins with the terrific Spider-Man games, after the underwhelming response to ensemble-led misfire that was Marvel’s Avengers, it feels as though Marvel Games would be hungry for a win in the guise of a big, exciting team-up. On paper, Firaxis is the studio you’d put in charge of bringing a turn-based strategy flavour to one of the comic giant’s many properties. However, as fascinating a brood as the Midnight Suns are, this game’s strongest features are totally eclipsed by plenty of jank, a lot of cringy and uninteresting hangouts at home base, and presentation that doesn’t feel even remotely current.

The game’s most interesting ideas posited revolve around the turbulent peace treaty between the sides of might and magic in the Avengers and the Midnight Suns as they band together under one roof to put a stop to Lilith. As her reanimated progeny, “Hunter”—an imaginative name and occupation double—you’ll be recruited by the group to unlock the dormant memories that helped you fall mother dearest the first time around. I think it’s the attempt to do so much that sees Midnight Suns come up short in telling a focused, engaging story front-to-back. The relationships between the game’s several characters tie it all together, but there’s no belief behind any of them. The game might be crammed full of wall-to-wall heroes and villains and yet a meaningful arc never really emerges.

Midnight Suns is a toxic marriage between two ideas that, in theory, should work. Firaxis’ ability to iterate on their distinguished brand of turn-based strategy, through the implementation of free movement and a deck system, is undeniable and clearly is this particular game’s strength. But as with their last game, XCOM: Chimera Squad, their want to place the interpersonal ties on equal footing comes up short as pretty much any second spent on the Abbey grounds—which serves as both Hunter’s once resting place and the base of operations for the mission to take down Lilith—feels like a waste of time.

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Although the combat bonuses granted can be handy, building these relationships up through inane hangouts and jaw sessions is painfully lifeless. With dialogue and line delivery fit for a ham sandwich, I dreaded any moments of forced conversation.

Just as I think there are simply too many awkward pleasantries shared in the Abbey’s halls, I feel like Midnight Suns lobs a few too many ideas into the mix as far as upgrading your heroes goes. A few of the ideas, including rolling two identical cards into a souped up “+” variant and visiting Tony’s forge, work for me, though I fast gave up on sending heroes out on solo ops and other seemingly inconsequential things. 

Thankfully, the meat and bones of Midnight Suns’ squad-based strategic combat feels like Firaxis firing on all cylinders. Although I miss the easily quantifiable rules of grid-based movement, there’s certainly a cinematic feel to having the likes of Captain America, Captain Marvel, or Blade freely moving around the play space. Managing your heroism level, which can tick up or down based on cards played, is certainly the most strategic part of the fray, even it feels a bit random given the unpredictable nature of the draw. Of course, on the middling difficulty I played on, Midnight Suns is rather forgiving—when a character is downed in combat, you’re likely to be dealt a revive card, so the fall of the cards can fit the circumstance you’re in. 

Despite there not being a heap of variety within Hydra’s ranks, there’s enough going on per fight that you’ll need to keep your wits about you. After a while, already toppled bosses can pop up to mix things up and turn fairly standard battles into pressure cookers. The boss fights themselves have a big feel and are this game at its most “Marvel”. 

I feel like Midnight Suns’ presentation is several rungs below what should have been expected, and it’s even well below Marvel’s Avengers which, despite its undoubtedly larger budget, is still years older now. To say Midnight Suns is hamstrung graphically by its support of older tech is an understatement, which is a shame because its art direction isn’t bad. There are unfortunate masked loads like passing through a portal in Limbo which is every time backed up with a literal loading screen, it stutters, and on Steam Deck—which in fairness isn’t an optimised platform yet—it crashes after nearly every operation. The transitions between Hunter’s sleeping and waking existence are cumbersome and clunky, it feels as though the entire game is at times a stitched together Frankenstein’s monster. 

Outside of the aforementioned cringe line delivery pretty much across the board, Midnight Suns has pretty great sound design and an original score that’s suitably epic. 

Marvel’s Midnight Suns feels like proof that, at some point, Firaxis will perfect this formula they’re going for. Their handle for turn-based combat is top notch, it’s just all of the role-playing lite elements that ultimately hampers the experience. It has its share of issues but Midnight Suns is an easy enough recommendation for both strategy enthusiasts and those swept up by the Marvel machine. 

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Gungrave G.O.R.E. looks like it would have a heap of ingredients for a great game. Stylish gunplay, slick combos, a cool early-2000’s era property and mountains of bad guys to deal with – it almost sounds like Devil May Cry with a heavier focus on gunplay. I wish that were the case. While there is some fun to be found in developer Iggymob’s Gungrave G.O.R.E., it thoroughly outstays it’s welcome and ends up being a tedious, repetitive experience.

The setting is classic video game – you play as Grave, an undead near invulnerable soldier wielding dual pistols and a giant coffin for close-range bashing. You’re introduced to a series of mob bosses in an opening scene and then let loose to beat them one by one, area by area. It’s a story that harkens back to an earlier time in games, mostly serving as an excuse to blast a bunch of guys.

And blast you will. I hope you’re not prone to RSI symptoms if you want to play Gungrave because you’ll spend nearly the entire time pulling the right trigger to repeatedly blast wave after colour coded wave of bad guys the levels throw at you. There are a couple of neat systems that help make things a bit more engaging than just mindless blasting. There’s a ‘Beat’ meter which tracks your consecutive landed attacks while contributing both to your end of level score and your Demolition meter. Demolition moves use this meter to pull off flashy attacks which do big damage and refill some lost health.

You have a shield which recharges if you avoid damage long enough and you can help boost it back up by performing an execution move on a stunned enemy, Doom-style. This can be combined with a whip that you can use to pull stunned enemies to you, or zip yourself to them as a way to move around the battlefield. You’ll gradually unlock more close-combat moves which can be used to break enemies with shields, as well as Destruction moves and general character stat boosts like extra health and gun damage.

Even with this variety of actions and unlocks though, I found the game stopped being all that interesting after the first few levels. Each factory, warehouse and city street setting begins to blend into the next – to the point where it felt like a breath of fresh air once I reached a level with some vegetation. But more than the repetitive environments, the repetitive enemies and combat encounters really began to grate well before getting to the end. New enemy types are introduced so gradually, and half the time don’t really demand a different method of play to anything you’ve encountered before. Mash the trigger, use the Destruction moves as they charge, and dodge when you can.

Every time I played I got the distinct impression that the Gungrave G.O.R.E. needs a bunch more polish. I found some consistent bugs through my play through like a door that was supposed to open after an encounter just… not opening. Walking into a room, being blasted back through the door just as it automatically closed so I was stuck in a hallway until I restarted from the checkpoint. Music that doesn’t loop properly, instead just reaches the end of a track and begins again. And maybe most annoyingly, cut scene audio was consistently blown out. Volume was considerably higher than the regular game audio with voices sounding like they’d been amplified to within an inch of their life. This persisted even after closing and re-opening the game. Level and encounter design was messy as well. Bosses that are just sudden difficulty spikes, and some regular level encounters just threw an unreasonable amount of tanky enemies in an extremely uninteresting attempt at creating difficulty.

Having done some research on the original 2002 Gungrave game, it makes me wish Iggymob had borrowed from it’s cel-shaded anime-like visual style. While G.O.R.E. looks technically impressive, it definitely doesn’t have the same personality with it’s lightly stylised visuals. On PS5 it held up a consistent 60 frames per second in performance mode even with waves of enemies and objects in the scene breaking all over the place. There’s a quality mode which turns on ray-tracing at the expense of a 30-fps cap, but

I found the less fluid movement didn’t suit an action-focused game like this. I didn’t do any Digital Foundry style pixel counting, but in performance mode everything was super sharp on a 4K display. Things can look pretty spectacular when you’ve got the environment smashing around you, enemies coming from all directions and shots flying every which way – it’s just a shame the environments and enemies are so repetitive and soulless.

There is absolutely some fun to be found in Gungrave G.O.R.E. The over-the-top combat is spectacular to watch at times, and blasting at waves of various colour coded enemies is definitely fun for a while. Sadly, it is only a short while. For the majority of my 7-ish hours of play time I just found myself going through the motions. The story didn’t do much to invest me in the world and the environments and enemies were just so repetitive.

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Given the whirlwind of releases over the last month or so, you’d be forgiven if Evil West has slipped under your radar. A brand new IP from Flying Wild Hog of Shadow Warrior fame, Evil West is something of a relic of the past, with a linear single player campaign, secret collectibles, weapon upgrades, perks, and so much more. This isn’t to say Evil West feels archaic, though, with a tightly paced campaign, satisfyingly brutal combat, and flexible progression that all coalesces into a thoroughly enjoyable carnage filled adventure.

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Set in a Wild West under the threat of supernatural beings known as the Sanguisuge, you step into the shoes of Jesse Rentier, a vampire slayer and heir to the Rentier Institute. Headed by Jesse’s father, William Rentier, the Institute’s sole purpose is to eradicate the vampiric threat that has a stranglehold around the United States. With the Rentier Institute having weaponized steam and electricity, the Sanguisuge are desperate to survive against all odds, and launch a nation-wide attack to stamp out humanity for good.

It’s a fairly by the numbers narrative that’s made entertaining by its exaggerated characters and overt cheesiness. While Jesse himself is a pretty cookie-cutter protagonist, it’s supporting characters like long time vampire slayer Edgar Gravenor and doctor Emilia Blackwell that bring out the best in him through their interactions. The dialogue between them has a tongue-in-cheek awareness to it similar to Flying Wild Hog’s Shadow Warrior 3.  It’s also chock-full of references to longstanding franchises like DOOM, Castlevania, and more, further adding to the self-awareness. While it’s nothing to write home about overall, it serves as an engaging backdrop for the blood-soaked action built around it.

If I had to describe Evil West, I’d say it’s most akin to a third-person DOOM Eternal. It has a taut focus on resource management, target prioritization, and making you feel as badass as you look. The core combat revolves around ranged and melee attacks, where Jesse has access to close-quarters combos and long range guns. It’s a seamless and fluid melding of the two that make for an entirely unique and kinetic style of combat, where you swap between weapons as needed, weaving punches in between and tying it all off with a finisher for a much needed health drop.

Combat only deepens further when you unlock an electric powered gauntlet which has a slew of capabilities. It’s primary use is for electrocuting enemies, which allows you to follow up with a high damage beatdown, but it’s the way in which you can zap your foes that allow you to get creative. Whether it’s successfully timing parries, pulling foes towards you with a whip, or unleashing electric hell on the Sanguisuge in an overdrive mode, the gauntlet is consistently satisfying to use in combat, and this is only reinforced through progression.

As you move through linear levels, you’ll level up and obtain perk points which can be spent on new skills for Jesse. There’s a few different trees you can spec into here that provide unique and distinct playstyles, such as maximizing your energy regen to make the most of powerful gauntlet attacks, or exploiting environmental hazards against enemies to get the upper hand. Every perk point obtained is an ever alluring prospect of new ways to dispatch foes in a gloriously satisfying manner.

The plethora of weapons you obtain can also be upgraded over the journey as you collect Bucks. From a standard six shot revolver and bolt-action hunting rifle, to a literal flamethrower, there’s always a way to power up and customize your favorite weapons further. Everything combines to make for a certifiably bonkers combat system that’s practically begging for a new game plus playthrough once you roll credits, which really cements how much Jesse’s slaying capabilities expand over the course of the game.

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All of these aspects, alongside the ability to refund perk points at any point, means you have a robust and flexible progression system that encourages you to experiment with Jesse’s skills. One playthrough wasn’t enough for me to obtain every upgrade, but I’m sure a new game plus playthrough will result in a fully upgraded and equipped Jesse which I’m sure is as crazy as I’m anticipating it to be.

The game is somewhat slow to get going, though. I found the first few missions fell into repetition in their combat arenas due to a relatively limited move set and weapon choice early on. This only lasted for the first 3-4 missions, but left combat feeling more mundane in its opening hours in comparison to how chaotic it can get in the second half of the game.

A combat system like this is nothing without enemy variety, though, and Evil West delivers on that in spades. It’s constantly serving up new combinations of enemy types that demand you to pick and choose what you want to focus on first to make things as easy as possible. During my roughly 10-hour playthrough on normal difficulty, I died a handful of times but ultimately felt like the difficulty curve was satisfying and rewarding. This is most prominent with Evil West’s bombastic boss fights, that demand a higher level of focus, prompt dodging, and exploiting enemy weak points.

While the missions in Evil West are remarkably linear, that certainly isn’t to its own detriment. Each mission hangs around for just the right amount of time, never overstaying its welcome or bowing out too soon to where its ideas can’t breathe. Despite the supernatural setting, Flying Wild Hog still finds ways to weave cowboy staples into these levels, such as an explosive train heist and tense bank robbery. Each level still has some hidden collectibles, skins, and upgrades to find, so it’s never as simple as walking straight ahead.

While I wasn’t able to test the coop during my time with Evil West, only the session host can progress through the story missions and character upgrades, meaning anyone who joins up to a session as a guest will lose all progress made when returning to their own file. Enemy health and damage is scaled up to account for the extra player, but it’s disappointing that a 10 hour experience like this is lacking in the ability to save progression between solo and coop play sessions. Still, though, the entire thing is playable with a mate, so there’s definitely some value to be found in that.

While the Wild West might typically be synonymous with rolling deserts and tumbleweed, Evil West bucks the trend by including a myriad of environments to explore, all as captivating as each other. From your typical western towns to blood leech ridden forests, each mission is a visual delight with a suitable amount of spectacle to each of them. It adds to that already tight pacing to keep you engaged and involved in each part of the world you visit.

While it doesn’t quite stand up to some triple A juggernauts of today, Evil West’s visual allure is in its style, bursting with the vibrant colors of blood and electricity in direct contrast with a steampunk aesthetic. It also ran remarkably well on my 3060ti, and I only ever encountered a few audio bugs during my playthrough.

THE PC VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

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Another year, another Dark Pictures game. Little Hope was my least favourite, and last year’s House of Ashes was easily my favourite. So far, all of the games have taken some great horror concepts and flipped them on their head, subverting most, if not all, your expectations. The Devil In Me, then, is the ultimate subversion. That is to say, it’s exactly what it presents itself as, and as a result never quite feels like it capitalises on its fantastic premise. That’s not to say it’s bad – it’s heads and shoulders above Little Hope and better than The Quarry despite it’s significantly smaller scale – it’s just lacking any surprises.

Like the previous games, The Devil In Me is an interactive drama like Until Dawn and The Quarry. You play as a group of characters and must make decisions to navigate them through the story (hopefully alive) to the credits. Each decision you make can have rippling effects on how the story plays out, leading to multiple potential outcomes. Like the other Dark Pictures games, The Devil In Me is entirely self-contained, and you don’t need to play (or have liked) the previous games to appreciate this one.

The Devil In Me follows a crew of documentary filmmakers looking to revitalise their in-trouble series. The team is working on a project about one of the first serial killers in America, Henry Howard Holmes. Stuck on how to make the done-to-death angle interesting, the team receives a mysterious invite from an eccentric millionaire to come and visit his modern-day replica of the H.H. Holmes Murder Castle. In real life, the hotel was unremarkable, but in most fictional depictions, it’s portrayed with impossible spaces, dead-end hallways, and all kinds of other architectural idiosyncrasies designed to trap and kill people.

But I’m getting a bit carried away here. The Devil In Me follows the crew as they visit this totally-normal replica of a serial killer’s playground, but as they arrive, they realise that perhaps they’re being watched and even manipulated. Throw in a crazy masked serial killer and some SAW-esque traps and you’ve got yourself a horror movie, or in this case, a perfectly solid concept for a Dark Pictures game. A mysterious looming threat, a band of characters who love to hate each other, and a setting that’s ripe for scares.

It’s a bit of a shame then that The Devil In Me fails to capitalise on the potential of its concept as much as other games in the series have. I really enjoyed the journey from beginning to end, don’t get me wrong, but it did feel like the writers were playing it safe in some ways. I obviously will not spoil the places that the story goes, but I was waiting for a huge holy shit moment, as usually happens in the Dark Pictures games, and it never came. I’d even go as far as to say despite the grotesque nature of the plot and the violence in The Devil In Me, it’s easily the most grounded and restrained of the games yet.

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It just feels like that Supermassive could’ve done a lot more with the clear SAW inspiration they’d taken for The Devil In Me. I was excited to have to, in the heat of a moment, perhaps do something horrible to my friend early on and then see how that would carry out for them as the story played out. Almost all the “SAW” like moments of The Devil In Me seem to result in somebody dying, and their story closed off. None of the decisions in these moments specifically ever felt especially weighty, and the odd moment where we did kill a cast member, it felt like an almost comical Final Destination-esque moment. I appreciate a good kill as much as the next person, but too much feels left to chance.

Thankfully, the improvements added in House of Ashes carry over with The Devil In Me. Fixed camera angles are still gone, and the useless dedicated flashlight button has been removed. Instead, we have a cursory inventory system that stores keys and unique items for each character. When I played a few chapters of the game last month, I was excited to see if this meant we’d be getting more of an exploration-based Resident Evil-like experience rather than a linear story. While character-specific items and abilities introduced new ways to explore the world of The Devil In Me, it never feels as dramatic a departure from the linear series formula as it could be.

Of course, the elements that do similarly work return here. Besides playing solo, Shared Story mode allows you to tackle the entire experience with a friend online, just as if you were playing together locally. Movie Night, on the other hand, lets you assign the five characters to up to four other people in the room to control. The game subsequently prompts each player when it’s their turn. I adore this mode and will never play a Supermassive game without it. However, I still wish that characters with lower screen time were marked somehow so they could be evenly divided between players.

But as always, each player in Movie Night can have the difficulty of their experience altered. Suppose there are people in your group who are terrible at QTEs or wanting more of a challenge. In that case, they can individually increase or decrease their difficulty. I think it’s a great idea, as these games tend to skew towards more casual audiences anyway, so being able to invite anyone into the fold is well worth the inclusion of difficulty options.

I can’t talk about a game like this without talking about the scares, either. The Devil In Me, as previously mentioned, feels a lot more grounded than in previous games. As such, your mileage may vary as to whether you could find this to be a truly terrifying experience, though for me personally the only scares I got here were from jump scares. Nothing as egregious or as annoying as Little Hope, mind you, as many of The Devil In Me’s jump scares feel well-measured and earned. But The Devil In Me lacks the tension that House of Ashes had.

Similarly, The Devil In Me’s presentation is very much all over the place. It’s hard to work out just how it doesn’t manage to look as good as its predecessors, but so many scenes feel like they’ve been lit incorrectly, or facial animations animated strangely. The central location that the game relies upon has a lot of charm, for sure, but overall, this is one of the most inconsistent-looking Supermassive game thus far. Some of these issues can be fixed with updates in the future, which is a shame because when The Devil In Me looks great, it looks really great.

Thankfully, the entirety of the cast feels really on point this time around, which is great given how flat Ashley Tisdale’s performance was in House of Ashes. The cast is led by a sensational Jessie Buckley, who keen eyes might recognise from Chernobyl, Fargo, or Taboo. The rest of the cast, who’ve made supporting appearances in Game of Thrones, Dune and Coronation Street all hand in decent enough performances to the point where I think they could be the most likeable protagonists in a Dark Pictures game.

THE PC VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post The Dark Pictures: The Devil In Me Review – You Probably SAW It Coming appeared first on Press Start.

While playing Pokémon games as a kid was pure and unadulterated bliss, there was always a part of me that longed for a Pokémon game that conveyed the same sense of scale and adventure as the anime. More than 10 years on from the days of sinking hours into Pokémon Pearl after school, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet look to break the mold of a traditional mainline Pokémon title.

While other recent entries such as Sun and Moon have sought to rework the long-established framework of the gym challenge, Scarlet and Violet make much more substantial changes to the broader foundations of Pokémon. Despite some stumbles on the path to a more modern and refined Pokémon formula, Scarlet and Violet offer a tantalizing look into the future of Pokémon, and how this series can go so much further when letting go of its legacy.

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Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are set in the Paldea Region, primarily inspired by the Iberian Peninsula, specifically countries like Spain and Portugal. In a twist on the typical world setup, you play as a student freshly enrolled at Naranja (Scarlet) or Uva (Violet) Academy, coincidentally around the time that the Academy’s annual Treasure Hunt takes place. After a brief introductory segment, you’re thrust into the open world of Paldea with one goal in mind – to find your treasure. What entails is a somewhat non-linear romp through three unique narratives; Victory Road, Starfall Street, and Path of Legends.

It goes without saying that this is a structure that’s in stark contrast with its predecessors. Where previous entries had carefully curated linear paths to follow, Scarlet and Violet let you loose on all that Paldea has to offer, making for an unprecedented freedom not found in other Pokémon games. Each of the three narratives have their own cast of characters, ideas, and themes at play, and the ability to – mostly – bounce between them as you see fit does wonders for pacing and variation in gameplay.

While Victory Road is a standard fare gym challenge, Starfall Street and Path of Legends are what stuck with me the most after the credits rolled. Without getting into spoiler territory, these narratives explore aspects of the Pokémon world not previously tapped into by other games, with Starfall Street focusing on the impact bullying has on educational communities, while Path of Legends leans into the idea of mortality in Pokémon, and how they’re ultimately just as vulnerable as any other living creature. Although I wouldn’t say either of these stories are profoundly deep or head scratching in their messages and meanings, I did find myself invested enough in their characters and narrative developments to progress them whenever the opportunity arose.

The way you move between each of these narratives is through Koraidon or Miraidon, depending on your game version. The new flagship legendary Pokémon are mountable, similar to the rideable Pokémon found in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. As you progress through the game, new traversal abilities are unlocked, allowing you to more seamlessly access hard to reach areas of Paldea and streamlining traversal further. It’s a fun idea that fits the theme of adventure and slots into the shift to open-world quite nicely.

Despite fundamentally reworked foundations in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the core appeal of catching cute critters to build out your team as you venture through unknown lands is here in full-force. The roster of new monsters is a wildly varied bag of interesting type combinations and striking new designs, both good and bad. The good far outweighs the bad, though, and some of the highs are exceptionally high, with the likes of Armarouge and Ceruledge standing out in particular. One weird omission is that the ability to catch these critters like you could in Pokémon Legends: Arceus is nowhere to be found, returning to the comparatively archaic and sluggish ways of battling a Pokémon in order to catch it.

Once you pick your starter Pokémon from the new trio of Quaxly, Sprigatito, and Fuecoco, you’ll set off into the Paldea Region in search of your very own treasure. Victory Road primarily functions as a typical gym challenge from previous games, though the offering feels bare-bones in comparison. Each gym requires you to complete a gym test before challenging the gym leader, and while they’re inoffensive and simple in nature, they pale in comparison to the gym challenges of old. Actual fights with gym leaders are appropriately atmospheric, though, with crowds gathering around to watch your match unfold as the music swells up to grand heights.

Path of Legends on the other hand sees you helping fellow student Arven hunt down Herba Mystica and the abnormally sized Titan Pokémon that guard them. These encounters boil down to tracking down a Titan Pokémon within any given area, and battling it with Arven to force it to retreat. Instead of typical wild encounters, these battles are closer to the likes of a boss fight, as each Titan Pokémon has buffed up stats and health pools, and while they’re simple in nature, they offer a bit of spectacle and variation in comparison to typical encounters.

Starfall Street is by far the most unique storyline in the context of gameplay, as you attempt to dismantle a rebellious group of students known as Team Star. You’ll storm different Team Star bases across Paldea and send out your Pokémon to auto battle Team Stars own. Each one culminates in a battle with the base leader that’s most comparable to battling a gym leader. Again, these bases are straightforward but serve as a great way to break up pacing and open-world exploration.

Although you can technically battle any of the 5 Titans, 8 Gyms, and 5 Starfall bases in any order, fixed levels for each encounter means that there is a degree of linearity and structure to the order in which you complete them. This wouldn’t be such an issue if the difficulty curve didn’t feel so uneven as a result. There were multiple occasions where I encountered gyms and Titan Pokémon that I wanted to engage with, but couldn’t because of level differences. Getting on the right track is as simple as heading to the Pokémon Center and asking for advice on where to go next, but true non-linearity isn’t here as expected, and that’s disappointing.

One new inclusion that somewhat remedies this issue is the aforementioned auto-battle feature, where you can send out Pokémon to battle autonomously while you explore your surroundings. While I initially shrugged this mechanic off outside of mandatory use, it quickly became my main method to grind experience points and level up my Pokémon. It’s a simple addition that takes out a lot of the mundanity and grinding that you’d otherwise have to go through to meet certain challenges.

It also feeds into the excellent new TM Crafting system where you can create TMs using materials obtained from the overworld. The ability to create new TMs if you use one is a safety net that allows you to experiment with moves on Pokémon you typically wouldn’t without having to worry about wasting the TM. You also have the ability to remember any move your Pokémon has previously learnt, taking uncertainty out of the equation when it comes to building out your team.

If there’s one aspect of Pokémon games that have remained almost entirely unaltered, it’s the core battle system, and much the same can be said for Scarlet and Violet. More iterative than it is innovative, Scarlet and Violet opt to play it safe by adding a bevy of new moves that feel suitably useful in the broader scope of Pokémon moves, as well as the ability to Terastallize Pokémon in battle. Terastallization is a phenomenon only found in Paldea where Pokémon are crystalized in a gem-like casing, shifting their type to whatever their Tera type is, and boosting the power of that types respective moves.

While I was initially led to believe that Terastallization is a one-stop shop for a quick power boost, I quickly realized otherwise. Having Pokémon with Tera types that differ to their base types provides a level of strategy and thought that hasn’t been present in these kind of mechanics since X and Y’s Mega Evolution. The visual designs leave a lot to be desired, and the room for strategic use of Terastallizing within the main story is pretty slim, it’s clear that this is a mechanic that’s going to fundamentally shift how Pokémon is played at a competitive level.

Between dealing with Gyms, Titan Pokémon, and Team Star, you can also partake in trainer battles, and Tera Raids within the open-world. One key difference with trainer battles is that they have to be triggered by the player, making for more flexible and risk-free exploration especially if you’re running low on healing items as you race towards the next Pokémon Centre. Tera Raids are effectively Max Raid Battles from Sword and Shield, with the promise of Pokémon with unique Tera types that you typically wouldn’t find in the wild. These are quite the visual spectacle and I suspect undertaking high level Tera Raids will be very alluring for some in the post-game. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to try this or cooperative play during the review window, as online services were disabled.

Exploring Paldea itself is enticing in the sense you never know what Pokémon might be waiting for you around the corner, and there are a few mysteries to be solved during your journeys. Aside from this, though, it feels like something of an afterthought, lacking in any sort meaningful content to make you wonder about what might come next. The majority of the towns of Paldea are similarly underwhelming, as only a few have palpable identities and a sense of place within the world. It’s by no means bad, but these towns didn’t invoke any emotional response outside of a select few.

One area Pokémon has consistently underdelivered in since Sword and Shield (bar remakes), is in their presentation, visual fidelity, and performance. Unfortunately, Scarlet and Violet don’t entirely buck the trend, despite some small improvements. For starters, interior environments are vastly improved, and character models in general are more detailed and eye-catching. Environments are only marginally better than what was offered in previous entries, and the performance simply isn’t consistent enough to justify it, with regular slow-down and frame drops interrupting the experience. While there’s no doubt that the Switch is aging hardware, it’s painful to see Pokémon struggle with this yet again, while other titles manage to achieve much more with the same specs.

The post Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Review – A Tantalising Lens Into The Future appeared first on Press Start.

Obsidian, since their acquisition by Microsoft, has impressed with their ability to diversify, scale up and down and, most importantly, produce a finished product. Just like their sandbox-survival riff on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in Grounded, Pentiment has been lovingly cobbled together by the big hearts of a small team. It’s certainly not going to be for everybody, but as this game aptly portrays: you can’t be all things to all people. 

While contracting at the scriptorium at Kiersau Abbey, murder befalls the rural town of Tassing. As Andreas Maler, an illustrator, you find yourself fast entangled in the lives of both the abbots at the monastery and the Bavarian peasants they keep under their toe, by way of land tax and restrictions, at the foot of the meadows. It’s a superbly written, layered narrative that spans decades and details the prominence of religion and art during the period. It also speaks to a beautiful concept of earning the admiration of those who came before us, and it’s this notion that fuels the inciting event as an elder monk is hung out to dry by the church over the murder of an outspoken baron.

Stepping out from your role as a simple journeyman artist, you investigate the details of the grisly murder by engaging with both the brothers and nuns of the church and the townsfolk to reach a consensus. It’s almost as if Knives Out met Downton Abbey, so enjoyable and authentic are both aspects of the premise. Even as a role-playing game with layers, Pentiment respects your time because it is, after all, a fleeting commodity. Knowing I couldn’t speak to everyone, or cross check everything, meant that regardless of the evidence I put forward, doubt still lingered over whether justice is ever unclouded. I liked the ticking clock aspect and it left me wanting to return to the scene of the crime, so to speak, to explore other paths, despite the game being a respectable twenty hours long. 

Which sounds short for a role playing game, but long for a game with as few strings to its bow as Pentiment has. That said, despite its length and heavy admiration for the written word, Pentiment never outstayed its welcome. I felt awash with relief to roll credits, but not so I could move on but so that I could talk about it. I felt the mystery of who’s pulling the threads for all of the murders in Tassing culminates in a satisfying way, and I was compelled throughout the narrative’s many bait and switches.

I’d be fascinated to learn more about the development of Pentiment because it is such a niche idea. To have such heady concepts and grand ponderings delivered through what is a rather simple game is a choice, but one that doesn’t feel like a miss for the team. All of your time is spent either in the abbey, in the commons, or the surrounding woods, speaking to all manner of people with all manner of ideologies. It has exploratory aspects, though it isn’t open-world. Tassing has obvious limits, but rather than feeling restrictive and underdeveloped, it feels communal. You buy into what the team presents, even through the game’s hand-drawn aesthetic. 

Could Pentiment have worked better as a greater scope role playing game, knowing full well what Obsidian’s pedigree is? I actually don’t think so. Much of its charm is in its ardent commitment to the period’s art, which wouldn’t have worked in any other format. Andreas’ adventure feels like it exists within the margins of a living book, the game does not hold back from referencing history as it was—albeit dramatised for effect. Just as “Pentiment” means to a painting that has altered by simply drawing over the top of it, the game speaks to chipping away at falsehoods to unearth a hidden truth.

Although Pentiment can be a violent game, it’s all consequential to your testimony. Regardless of whether your suspect is guilty or dead, they’ll meet a confronting, grisly end in the town commons. What became of the first suspect fingered by Andreas actually came as quite a shock, as Pentiment’s sketched visuals did little to soften the gruesome death blows. Like all good game towns, the streets of Tassing fast grow memorable and it all becomes as familiar as the back of your hand. Inspired by illuminated manuscripts of the time, Pentiment’s lovely period-inspired character models pop against the more roughly detailed country backdrops, although it’s the smaller details that made Pentiment’s aesthetic so unforgettable. The sheen of the pencil’s lead scribing out the dialogue gives the sense you’re inside a retelling of a famous story, even the most intense, blunt comments mark the page with lead fractures as if the pencil were under great stress. Even the little gags like correcting incorrect spelling on the fly, it’s all so clever.

Although there’s nothing by way of spoken dialogue in Pentiment, it’s carried along by a performative medieval score that couples together with the almost-woodcut illustrations to capture the turbulence and dark undertones of the game’s whodunnit narrative. 

There are so many stars in this game’s conception. Josh Sawyer’s boldness to go out on a limb and direct a game that’s perhaps as niche as it gets is striking, but it’s sure to pay dividends. It’s a first-rate role playing game from a team who knows a thing about making them, though even all of the beautiful, stimulating writing is swiftly undercut by Hannah Kennedy’s art direction. When all of these powers combine, the story of Andreas Maler—a good man—is a powerful rumination on church and state, and riveting mystery, and a late charger for Game of the Year.

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How do you even begin to talk about a game like Goat Simulator 3? I could sit here and write all the crazy things that happened to my Goat and me during my time with it, but that would spoil so much. Despite having finished it and seeing the credits roll, I can’t tell you what the game is about. But while the concept undoubtedly baffles my old man brain, there is one thing I do know about Goat Simulator 3. It’s really stupid but really fun. And isn’t that enough?

Despite the title, Goat Simulator 3 is the second mainline Goat Simulator game. Setting the tone for the game’s humour, creative director Santiago Ferrero reckons it was named that because “God of War: Ragnarok was already taken”. Putting that unfortunate situation aside, Goat Simulator 3 does a fantastic job of building upon the foundations of the first game. As you’d expect, you play as a goat. As you might not expect, you’re thrown into the world on the back of a trailer in a sequence that mimics the opening to Skyrim. So yeah, Goat Simulator 3 is trying to be funny.

This time, your playground is San Angora, which is a bit different from the previous game. It’s bigger, though not as big as the open worlds most players would be accustomed to today. Goat Simulator 3 makes up for this with the sheer density of the map. It’s a real playground and a joy to mess around in. The general goal of the game is to wreak havoc to see how it plays out. After all, a lot of the original game’s notoriety came from the virality of the moments. Goat Simulator 3 is bound to see the same type of attention.

But there’s an admirable effort here to try and make Goat Simulator 3 more of a game with some structure. The open world is still there to play around in, but San Angora is peppered with activities called “Events” to complete. Each of them is usually a joke – help a Swedish person build some flatpacked furniture, kick some tree-hugging hippies off trees to help them grow, play the imperial march on church bells. There’s a nice variety of activities to do here that, more often than not, have funny punchlines.

But there are, of course, some moments where it can get a little bit cringe, though I’d be lying if I didn’t say that Goat Simulator 3 made me laugh on more than one occasion. To tell you everything I enjoyed about this game would be neglectful and irresponsible – the absurdity of these situations is in and of itself funny. But just know that no matter what type of gamer you are, whether you played Wolfenstein to Counter-Strike to Fortnite, Goat Simulator 3 no doubt does a good job at playing to a wide audience.

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Besides events, there are hundreds of “Instincts” to complete, too, though these aren’t mandatory to unlock anything or finish the story. Instead, completing them unlocks currency that can be exchanged for gear. Many of these Instincts feel closer to what was on offer in the first game – hit ten people with a specific item or drive a certain distance in a particular vehicle. They’re menial tasks and busy work. But they help make Goat Simulator 3 feel more fleshed out as a game.

Continuing this theme, Goat Simulator 3 rewards completion of Events with rankings that determine how high up in the Illuminati you are. Each rank you’re in expands your home base, similar to the castle from the first game. Finishing all the grades leads to the game’s final “boss” battle. I really appreciate the intention to better flesh out Goat Simulator 3 and give it more structure, but it doesn’t quite do as much with the concept as it could.

For one, I can’t help but feel that Goat Simulator 3 has become the thing that it’s satirising at points. The structure is like any open-world game of the last decade. Climb some towers, reveal some activities, complete some checklists and fill some progress meters to do it all again. Thankfully, Goat Simulator 3’s ridiculous physics and gameplay keep the game fun even if it doesn’t do everything it sets out to.

So much of Goat Simulator 3 is centered around unlocking gear, and for a good reason. So much of the gear can make your Goat fabulous and change form completely. Eventually, you can play as a giraffe, human, or shark. So much of the gear also comes with unique abilities designed to facilitate your goal of wreaking havoc and causing chaos. Rocket boots, laser beams, pizza launchers, magic beanstalk seeds; you name it, it’s probably in Goat Simulator 3 as a wearable. While I loved the huge slew of equipment and abilities, I often wished they were utilised more in the puzzles during the events.

Besides Events and Instincts, Goat Simulator 3 also features many minigames to jump into with friends. Accessible from the map, each of them allows up to four goats to battle it out in all kinds of precarious situations. Soccer, king of the hill, racing, demolition derbies. There’s a lot to do here, and the physics and gameplay upon which Goat Simulator 3 is built only make each of them funnier than it has any right to be.

More impressively, Goat Simulator 3 also supports both online and split-screen multiplayer. Online is missing the oft-included crossplay options, but including split-screen is a fantastic touch. While doing so drops the framerate down to an (apparently controversial) thirty frames per second, it was pretty impressive to see how much crazy shit I and three friends could conjure up without the game crashing. Splitscreen is oft forgotten as games have grown more complex, but for Goat Simulator 3 to both have a mode and one that works is to be commended.

So while you’ll be done with Goat Simulator 3’s simplistic story mode in about six or so hours, everything that remains after the credits have finished rolling make it stand out. A dense and fun open playground to mess around in with hundreds of items. With friends, either online or off, the sheer stupidity and chaotic nature of everything is bound to make you smile. And isn’t that what games should be about?

THE XBOX SERIES X VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.

The post Goat Simulator 3 Review – The Best Dumbest Fun appeared first on Press Start.

I was a huge PC gamer back in my early teen years, but as life got busy, I pivoted to consoles, turning a bit of a blind eye to the PC space, but the start of 2020 and working from home brought me back to the PC side with the RTX 2080 Super. I was impressed at the time given we were at the end of a console generation with the PS4 and Xbox One, but honestly, to think about how far we’ve come since then in the PC tech in just a few shorts years with the newly launched RTX 4080 blows my mind, especially when comparing to what current-gen consoles offer.

This isn’t going to be the most technical RTX 4080 review that you read, but it is going to be an honest comparison by an average gamer who spends quite a bit of time in the PC space, but still spends most nights primarily gaming on the PS5 and Xbox Series. One thing is for certain now is that’s more likely to change than ever before with the RTX 4080 as the sheer power on offer here and just ease of use that comes with plugging this big boy in, is something I’ve never experienced in the PC space. The results were instantly impressive and continued to blow me away as I kept loading up each game, particularly with the advancements made by DLSS 3.

THE DESIGN

The RTX 4080 Founders Edition follows in the footsteps of the RTX 3000 series and is quite frankly still one of the sexiest pieces of tech I’ve ever come acros. Everything from the unboxing experience, to seeing the premium feeling metal materials on the actual card itself is just a really high-end experience that you don’t get elsewhere.

The RTX 4080 FE still has its two blower fan type design, although the fans are much, much bigger, which results in some extremely impressive thermals, but also a much, much bigger physical foot print. In comparison to the RTX 3080 FE, the 4080 FE is 20mm longer, 25mm wider and a whopping 23mm thicker, which doesn’t sound like lot but results in a thickness that is 50% more than the RTX 3080. This is absolutely a 3-slot GPU that is going to require a larger case to slot it into, which isn’t a bad thing, but just something to be aware of as it’s definitely noticeably larger than the 3080 FE, and your current setup will need to be taken into consideration. This is likely to be a little bit more of a non-issue with aftermarket cards.

Thankfully, Mwave were able to come to my rescue by providing a case that the RTX 4080 FE could slot into with the Cooler Master Cosmos C700 which had the below specs:

• Intel Core i9-12900K
• 32GB DDR5 RAM
• Gigabyte Z690 AERO D
• CM Cosmos C700M EATX
• CM V Platinum Series 1300W
• Seagate FireCuda 530 1TB

Just like last year’s 3000 FE cards, NVIDIA has stuck with the tidy singular power cable that converts to 3x PCIe 8-pin cables to plug into your power supply. It now points upwards, which is a little better, but just like last year, does definitely take away from the really simplistic design of the card. I understand it’s not possible, but obviously I’d love the cords to be coming out the right side of the case to not take away from the design.

As far as ports go, it’s a very similar offering to last year’s models with three DP ports as well as one HDMI 2.1 port, so there’s really not shortage no matter how many devices you’re looking to plug into it.

DLSS 3 PERFORMANCE

If you’ve listened to my talking about tech on our podcast or read any other hardware reviews I’ve written, I couldn’t be a bigger fan of DLSS and what it has done for PC gaming. I want it everywhere as it just takes the stress out of worrying about frame rates and getting a smooth performance and that’s never been truer than what’s on offer with DLSS 3.

I’m not even going to try and pretend that I understand the full extent of the magic involved with DLSS 3, but basically, the 3 stands for three things: The brand new Frame Generation technology, Super Resolution (DLSS 2) as well as NVIDIA reflex. DLSS 3 is only available on the 4000 series cards thanks to the new ADA Lovelace architecture and the performance increase is instantly noticeable.

I don’t think it’d be unfair to say that the 3080 was a great entry point to 4K gaming, but it still felt like it wasn’t the fully realised experience in the sense that you couldn’t comfortably reach 4K 60FPS with absolutely every AAA game without having to compromise in certain areas, but with the 4080 and DLSS 3, not only is this a reality, but it goes far beyond that.

The greatest compliment that I can give the RTX 4080 is that it makes playing games on PC effortless. There wasn’t a single time during any of my testing where I felt like a game was stuttering, or that I needed to lower my settings, or turn off ray-tracing. It just worked, each and every time and felt like the ultimate 4K gaming experience.

Cyberpunk 2077 is still one of the great examples of stunning graphics within an open world and DLSS 3 allows you to stroll through the world in the way it was intended in full 4K with Psycho Ray-Tracing on. With DLSS 3, it runs at an extremely acceptable 92 FPS (with DLSS 3 set to balanced). Without DLSS 3, you’d be looking 29 FPS which means that DLSS 3 is providing more than 3x the performance, and that’s only going to improve with further improvements. With Cyberpunk 2077 running on the same settings on a 3080 using DLSS 2, we were able to achieve roughly 45 FPS, so it’s double the performance on a 4080 with DLSS 3.

A Plague Tale: Requiem is another great example. The game looks phenomenal and was able to run at 120FPS in 4K utilising DLSS 3 in our testing, which was over 2x the performance that we saw without DLSS 3, which ran at 58 FPS. The performance is buttery smooth and almost unbelievable. Coming from the PS5 version, the different is honestly night and day.

Microsoft Flight Simulator was yet another fantastic example, which has been plagued with performance issues even with the 3090, but I was now able to soar through the sky at 143 FPS at 4K with DLSS 3, which was again almost 2.5x the performance that I saw with DLSS 3 turned off at 60 FPS.

Another game worth calling out is F1 2022 which saw more than a 2x increase at 153 FPS with DLSS 3 turned on which dropped to a still acceptable 70 FPS without it. Taking every corner felt very smooth without a single bit of slowdown.

Other games tested such as Bright Memory Infinite, Destroy All Humans 2, F.I.S.T and Loopmancer all saw similar improvements of 2-3x with DLSS 3 turned on and all comfortable saw frame rates of beyond 144FPS in 4K. NVIDIA has said that there are over 35 DLSS 3 games in development and I can only hope that’s just the beginning.

Even with these insane results, the RTX 4080 FE was always running smoothly quiet and barely broke out of the mid 50s temperature wise, only cracking 60 degrees twice in well over 50 tests ran. Comparing power usage to that of the 3080, its significant less too, which is impressive given the results.

DLSS 2 PERFORMANCE & AV1 ENCODING

Even games that haven’t yet been optimised for DLSS 3 still ran incredibly well with almost all of the game that I tested still almost achieving 144 FPS.

Modern Warfare 2 was one worth calling out with the campaign achieving 157 FPS with DLSS turned on and 108 FPS without. This is almost double that of the 3080 performance which sits at around 80 FPS.

This was similar for PlayStation’s first-party offering on PC with Death Stranding, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn all sitting around the 144 FPS mark or beyond in some cases.

Games such as Gears 5 and Gears Tactics both reached 134 FPS and 114 FPS respectively, which is roughly a 1.5-1.8x increase on what we saw with 3080 performance, but I suspect that once more games get the DLSS 3 treatment, the performance boosts will be less what we’re seeing here.

As far as the 4080 goes for creative individuals, I’ve got no doubt that if you’re rendering 3D models or 4K video, you’re going to have a fantastic time with this GPU. There’s also now dual AV1 video encoders on board which means that you can stream at higher resolutions with the likes of Discord.

IS THE 4080 WORTH THE PRICE OF ADMISSION?

There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that the RTX 4080 is going to provide the 4K experience that we’ve been waiting for over the last few years, but you’re definitely going to be paying a premium for it. Given the RTX 4080 FE is going to be $2,200 AUD (but won’t be available here), it’s only reasonable to expect that third-party cards will start at $2,400 AUD and beyond. This is double what you can currently get a 3080 for, so the question remains is the 4080 worth the price of admission?

That’s a tricky question to answer. The easy answer is that you won’t be disappointed for even a single moment with the RTX 4080, but If you’ve already got a 3080, this will be dependant on how you feel your performance has been this far. If you’ve got a 4K/144hz monitor, you’ll absolutely be taking advantage of those extra frames with an RTX 4080, but if you’ve only got a 4K/60Hz monitor, then you might be content with what you have, and the extra frames (and money) might be lost on you.

If you’re in the market for a new GPU and you’re tossing up between the two, that’s going to be a much harder decision. 3080 prices have gone down quite a lot, and aren’t fetching anywhere near the insane prices that we saw during the middle of covid, but then again, with the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 getting an RTX Overdrive mode, and there clearly being more boundaries that can be pushed, if you’re all-in on PC gaming, you might be better off future proofing with an RTX 4080 or waiting for the inevitable 4070/4070 Ti.

The post NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition Review – 4K Gaming Without Compromise appeared first on Press Start.

As someone who really likes Playdead’s work, my eager eye has been set on Somerville for quite some time. From Jumpship, the independent studio jointly conceived by Playdead’s departed co-founder Dino Patti, Somerville’s world feels captivatingly alien, creating a weighted blanket of dread that suffocates much like its spiritual predecessor’s Limbo and Inside did. 

Where Limbo was a monochromatic saunter through a timeless dream space of horror and Inside targeted mind control and mankind’s reliance on technologies, Somerville riffs on cinematic sci-fi. It clearly draws inspiration from War of the Worlds for a number of its bigger set pieces as a hostile takeover by otherworldly forces unsettle a seemingly idyllic family life in rural England. Although I do have a read of my own on the game’s lingering and ambiguous climax, I suspect its grand meaning will be the source of fascinating discourse post-launch. 

It reminded me, somewhat fittingly, a lot of Edgar Wright’s The World’s End in both its wild story turns and some of the ideas it appears to tackle. It’s a game that can shock, surprise, and induce panic in great waves. 

With no regard for comfort, the brief narrative—which is devoid of any dialogue or narration, spoken or otherwise—twists and contorts on itself to the point where it’s nearly coherent in its own right, but ultimately it’s going to rely on a lot of interpretation from whoever experiences it.

Somerville, like Limbo and Inside before it, follows the same time-tested action-puzzle formula which, on this occasion, sees our nameless protagonist trying to escape from and survive an under-siege township through the harnessing of special abilities he’s imbued with after the visitors’ touchdown. With a simple touch, you’re able to amplify most light sources to dissolve and dissipate a murky, organic alien substance—seemingly born of technology—that blocks your path. As obtuse as the story can seem, all of Somerville’s many tests feel intuitive and I never got hung up on one thing for longer than five minutes. 

Outside of brainteasers, the bulk of Somerville’s runtime is made up of terrifically curated action set pieces that feel pulled from several sci-fi epics. Frantic woodland chases, soaring spacecraft, and explosive standoffs punctuate many of Somerville’s more exciting moments. While some are reminiscent of the harrowing spider pursuit from Limbo, most of the moments require you to break the line of sight with the invaders’ red gaze. Although the controls can be cumbersome during the longer chases, which will result in some frustrating deaths, I feel like it does a few things well with regard to the character’s contextual awareness. The A button serves as a kind of catch-all for any action you perform, be it prying open gates, crank-starting generators, or taking shelter inside a porta-loo to avoid being decimated by invaders—I particularly liked that, in one specific moment, the character would automatically take cover to avoid being spotted. 

In that sense, it’s animated more impressively than its predecessors, even if it’s more ambitious in both scope and appearance. Larger, more diverse play spaces and higher-polygon counts in the character models, which are still stylised with that particular indie flair, set Somerville on a rung higher than those before it.

It’s definitely nearer to Inside as far as aesthetic goes with its washed-out, bleak colour palette serving as the backdrop for the supernatural elements present, and it’s these elements that serve as the visual flair for the game. Great waves of rippling blue, and sometimes red, light course through the airwaves like spectacular Northern Lights as the block-matter ground contorts and curls underfoot. The game does a great job of signposting key items that, more often than not, serve as the interactive basis of the game’s many puzzles. They’re pretty much always orange and certainly give a good jumping-off point as you trawl the area for the way forward. 

Somerville’s score is like an unsettling thrum while hopeful piano melodies punctuate the story’s more tender, or peaceful, crawls. While the composed score is clearly not, the alien warbles feel diegetic within the world despite having a melody and rhythm of their own. And with no dialogue, it’s the music that does most of the heavy lifting in the game’s more emotional beats. 

Before everything is upended ten minutes into Somerville, the quiet delight of everyday life is painted with some wonderful accuracy during the game’s opening credits. There’s a dreary day, a long winding road, having the idiot box be the only light source in the living room. You begin to wonder whether losing this mundanity is a bad thing at all, and maybe that’s the point. Nevertheless, Somerville’s ability to sell the upheaval of this family’s freshly laid roots is so effective for many reasons, but one that stood out most to me was the space you’re in. By grounding Somerville where it does, the environmental artists can break up the monotony of the landscape with the horror of literal invasion. 

Somerville, with its mix of quiet, wholesome and thrilling moments, is an excellent debut from Jumpship and a worthy successor to the achievements of Limbo and Inside. Although it is steeped in mystery, the fact a game this thrilling and full of moments can exist and achieve what it does in just a handful of hours is damn cool. 

The post Somerville Review – War Of The Worlds appeared first on Press Start.

After sharing similar thoughts on Call of Duty Modern Warfare II’s campaign as Brodie (find his campaign review here), I went into the game’s multiplayer expecting it to impress. However, with every step forward Modern Warfare II takes – like the new perks system and welcome changes to the ever-satisfying gunplay – there seemed to be something holding it back. 

Let’s get this out of the way, though – the gunplay in Modern Warfare II is exceptional, and it’s always been the series’ key strength no matter how rough other parts of the game are. The return of a quick time to kill makes every encounter tense, with new movement options – like the ever-excellent dolphin dive and reworked slide – giving players new ways of gaining an advantage over opponents.

While I usually prefer the usual 6v6 modes, I had a blast with Modern Warfare II’s Ground War Invasion mode as well. Packed full of enemy AI and other players, the sprawling maps were a great way of experimenting with new loadouts, weapons and perks to see what worked for me. And while the game’s AI in Invasion aren’t the brightest tools in the shed, it was a nice change to what is otherwise a hyper-focused set of 6v6 modes.

On that subject, all of the main 6v6 modes you’d come to expect are included in this year’s game, with a handful of new objective-based modes also making their way into the rotation. And while I’m usually one to stick to my beloved selections, I actually liked both of the new modes. 

The first, called Knock Out, tasks two teams of six to have hold of the briefcase when the round ends. It’s a best of five mode with only team revives enabled, meaning players need to stick together and communicate efficiently to get the win. Alternatively, a team can also win the round by eliminating every member of the other team. 

THE CHEAPEST COPY: $78 WITH FREE SHIPPING

I really liked this mode for a couple of reasons. As soon as a player takes possession of the briefcase, they become a moving target that’s highlighted to everyone on the map. This always makes for a tense final few moments where players need to be tactical and evade enemy fire, while also ensuring teammates are reviving those who have been downed. As you’d expect, each round tends to fluctuate depending on what happens in the first minute or so, and it makes for a focused and highly enjoyable change to the regular stuff we see every year.

The other new mode, called Prisoner Rescue, tasks players to locate hostages and to either get them out of the area or prevent their extraction, with the first team to 500 points winning the match. It didn’t quite tickle my fancy like Knock Out did, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Third person mode also makes its way to Modern Warfare II and it’s a blast. Combining a range of classic multiplayer modes into one playlist, third person mode completely changed the way I played the game. It forced me to think strategically about where I was on the map and how players could see me, which made for a genuinely different experience to anything else on offer. It’s not something I’ll always go to, but it’s great to have it there as an option when I don’t feel like any of the other modes on offer.

In terms of general gameplay changes, Infinity Ward’s made some interesting choices with the game’s perks and gunsmith systems. 

Rather than sticking with three always-on perks in your loadout, this year’s game elects to allow you to pick four. However, perks are divided up into three different categories: base perks, bonus perks and ultimate perks. Players start every game with two base perks, while the bonus perk and ultimate will unlock over time. Taking out enemies and completing objectives makes bonus and ultimate perks unlock quicker.

While it was a bit confusing in the beginning, the new system provides a lot of flexibility in the way loadouts can be created for specific game modes. Ultimate perks are incredibly handy, consisting of beloved perks like Dead Silence and Ghost, for example, and are great for team deathmatch and domination modes. Whereas you might want to opt for something a bit different for something like Ground War or Search & Destroy. There’s more than enough here to play around with, and it’s nice to finally get a bit of a rework to the age-old perk system.

Modern Warfare II’s revamped gunsmith system, on the other hand, took some time to even understand at a basic level. Weapon platforms have been introduced to the game, putting weapons into various families rather than having them separated. This allows players to unlock attachments for a ‘family’ of weapons rather than a single weapon itself, which in turn makes for a faster way to gather the attachments for newly unlocked weaponry. It’s a decent enough system once you get your head around it, however this is where my biggest issue with Modern Warfare II comes in – the game’s menus are absolutely atrocious. 

I can’t put it gently: Modern Warfare II’s menu system is easily the worst I’ve ever seen in a Call of Duty game. Doing the simplest of tasks – like changing your calling card or making a new loadout – is bogged down by countless, unnecessary submenus. It’s absolutely jarring to have to go through five submenus to get to things in the game, and it’s mind boggling how this version of the UI even made it to the retail release. It needs a serious rework already. 

Something else I was particularly taken aback by was the lack of Call of Duty mainstay content at launch, too. Two of the major omissions that particularly irked me was the lack of hardcore mode (which, to be fair, is slated for Season 1’s launch on November 16) and the barracks/challenges area. It’s ridiculous to me that, at the time of this review going live, you can’t check your stats properly – you can’t see active challenges you’re making progress towards aside from the three dailies that are in the main menu, while redeemed double weapon and level XP don’t have a counter going either. Combine this with the plethora of bugs currently plaguing every platform – from hard crashes to texture pop in – and it’s been a rough first week for the game.

That said, I did enjoy my time with the game’s Spec Ops mode. A continuation of the game’s main campaign, the three missions available at launch offer a great cooperative-focused change to what’s seen in the other main modes in Modern Warfare II. Each mission is different in its own way, with Low Profile – the most stealth-focused mission of the bunch – the highlight for me. Each mission won’t take you too long to complete, clocking in between 15 to 30 minutes each, but they do offer up nice cosmetic rewards and some XP for completing them. I hope to see more added to the game over time.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II doesn’t quite stick the landing, but I’ve had a blast playing it. The changes to gameplay and gunplay make the game feel incredibly slick and satisfying, with the selection of new modes more than welcome. It’s just a shame the game is absolutely riddled with technical issues and an awful menu system. Even so, there’s a lot to love about the game, but temper your expectations.

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