One thing all results will have in common though, is the downtrodden starting point. No matter what you choose, your character is basically starting from the absolute bottom of whatever life path they’re in a.k.a. “fresh meat”. This places you in a position where you must either surprise everyone with success, or prove them right with failure.

"Darktide features guns, grenades, and more technically proficient weaponry in addition to the axes, swords, hammers, and supernatural things, and I’m happy to report they all feel absolutely fantastic to use."

Opening up with a rather convenient assault on an imperial prison, your character is able to escape and begin charting their own path. After this opening mission and some brief training, the game opens up into a hub world ties it all together where you buy and upgrade cosmetics, weapons and various abilities, deal with vendors and craftsmen, agree to special contracts, and the all-encompassing mission selection terminal where you connect with others and go about slaughtering enemies across the game’s world.

Four warriors take on hordes of enemies while accomplishing various tasks like taking an object to a certain point, defending a particular area, and of course wiping out infestations. Bolstering your team by mastering your own abilities is key here, and so is upgrading your weapons as often as you can. Even though the game only requires you to complete a small part of it, I highly recommend going through the entire training list as there are some moves you might not expect in a game like this. For instance, crouch sliding is a good way to avoid enemy fire for a couple seconds and to close the distance with a ranged enemy, only to follow up with a block push that can help you inflict you some additional damage on the enemy.

Darktide features guns, grenades, and more technically proficient weaponry in addition to the axes, swords, hammers, and supernatural things, and I’m happy to report they all feel absolutely fantastic to use. The same weight you would expect from a first person action game is still here, and even translates into the guns through bassier sound effects and a noticeable impact each bullet has on your target. With that, plus an even more refined feel to the hand-to-hand weapons, I think it’s pretty fair to say this game features some of the best first-person combat. The missions themselves don’t have a lot of different types, and mostly center around assassinations and clearing out hordes of enemies, but the side goals and difficulty options within each mission do make them very repeatable and varied. Coupling that with switching out your operative ever now and then and you’ll find just enough mission variety for the price tag.

Enemy variety is perhaps one area where Darktide can occasionally feel like a step back. Not in terms of the numbers of enemy types necessarily, but just in how they feel to fight. I certainly noticed a lot of different basic humanoid monsters in my time with Darktide, but only rarely did I ever feel like they had different attack styles for fighting me, or I needed different ones for them. Just about everybody can be blown up, shot, sliced and bludgeoned with about the same effectiveness. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy doing so, but it would have been nice to get a curveball here and there.

The biggest indicator of what an enemy is going to do isn’t so much in how they look, move or sound, but in what weapons they have, and if you go by that metric, the variety of basic enemies isn’t what I would call great. There are the expected larger brutes that require more of a team effort to take down, enemies that pin you down requiring your team to help, and mini bosses of course, but that’s something that should be expected in this genre at this point, so I can’t give too much credit there.

The visual design of Darktide’s levels make it one of the most passionately designed games from this portion of the Warhammer universe I’ve seen since Space Marine back in 2011, and that’s quite an accomplishment to my eyes. The Warhammer series has had its share of ups and downs since then, but make no mistake, there is a healthy amount of excellent representations of this unique world out there, and I know what a bold claim it is to say this is one of the best. The relentless grime, rust, and intermingling of grates, pipes and other cobbling of metal and stone in Darktide are some of the most meticulously detailed and thoughtfully constructed environments I’ve seen from this franchise.

They clearly made an effort in mixing up various color palettes and elevations, and I ultimately spend far more time marveling at what is here in Darktide than noticing what isn’t. That said, despite how large these levels are, each time you visit them, regardless of the objective, you start and end them in the same places, which is perhaps a missed opportunity to make the various returns to each zone feel just a bit more different.

"They clearly made an effort in mixing up various color palettes and elevations, and I ultimately spend far more time marveling at what is here in Darktide than noticing what isn’t. "

Thankfully, my primary concern with a game like this not running well or crashing a lot around launch was pretty quickly dashed away when everything, mostly, just worked. Don’t get me wrong, inconsistent frame-pacing and some strange glitches did occur, as is often the case with these sorts of games. In particular, one extremely frustrating instance of the ending extraction point not registering my team’s presence there was quite a bummer after spending half an hour coordinating with my team and getting to the end. Outside of that though, the game worked pretty well moment-to-moment on average. No crashes, and nothing game breaking other than that one instance. So, I fully expect Darktide to be running quite well for most people by the time they play it.

Darktide doesn’t shed the trappings of this tried-and-true formula quite enough to feel like a true evolution of the genre, but its excellent combat, a finely-detailed world, and addictive progression systems are what really count in a game like this and Darktide nails those things about as well as could be reasonably expected at this point, especially for a game that is launching at a rather low price. Some occasional technical issues and an unwillingness to truly burst out of the norms for the genre keep it from reaching enormous heights, but within the confines it sets for itself, this is about as good as it gets.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Thankfully Evil West largely lives up to the excessive hype I’ve assigned to it in my head. The characters are entertaining, the setting feels fresh, and the action is sufficiently chunky and vicious. While a little bit of monotony can come and go from a lot of the enemies blurring together a bit too much, and the somewhat redundant battle arenas not making too much effort to distinguish themselves from each other, I still found myself drawn in by the steadily expanding combat options, wicked upgrades, and pulpy story about cowboys, vampires, and a preposterously devastating gauntlet that gives God of War 3’s Nemean Cestus a run for its money.

"While a little bit of monotony can come and go from a lot of the enemies blurring together a bit too much, and the somewhat redundant battle arenas not making too much effort to distinguish themselves from each other, I still found myself drawn in by the steadily expanding combat options, wicked upgrades, and pulpy story about cowboys, vampires, and a preposterously devastating gauntlet that gives God of War 3’s Nemean Cestus a run for its money."

I have long since realized and grieved for the fact that we will probably never get a Dark Watch sequel. That game mixed a dark western atmosphere with gothic horror mythology and dropped it into what was, at the time, one of the best first-person shooters available, and I know we’ll probably never even get a remaster let alone a sequel. Evil West however comes much closer to that than I ever thought we’d get. On paper, it’s almost identical to Dark Watch with a special league of extraordinary gentlemen in the wild west defending the world from classic vampires and other monsters. That’s basically the exact same setting.

Still, Evil West goes in its own direction with it. This is a third person action game that plays a lot more like the new God of War games than it does anything else. Complete with the off-set close-up camera, chains to climb with pure upper body strength, treasure chests to rip open in an unnecessarily violent way, and little arrows telling you when you’re about to take damage from something off-screen. But outside of that I wouldn’t really compare it to anything else. It mixes a lot of different things into the combat pot, like several firearms that are used with different buttons as opposed to scrolling through an inventory wheel, and are also dependent on cool downs as opposed to managing ammo, all of which actually feels surprisingly natural once you get used to it.

Also, an electricity leash ability kinda like Bulletstorm’s that can separate enemies from the herd and bring them to you, or take you to straight to them for a quick pummeling, and the combat also rewards patience at times by giving you short windows to shoot enemies at certain key moments and in certain spots to deal extra damage and get more health and energy drops from them. Knocking enemies into spiked barrels, piles of TNT, and also each other is also a nice bonus when the opportunity arises, and with some of the large groups you’ll be taking on at once you will want to get familiar with making good use of these environmental hazards. Jesse has a nice tanky feeling to him that you don’t find often in such action heavy games, and it can lead to some really satisfying battles once you get acclimated to it.

"Jesse has a nice tanky feeling to him that you don’t find often in such action heavy games, and it can lead to some really satisfying battles once you get acclimated to it."

Going supercharged will have you zooming all around the arena dealing out electrical death at lightning speed for a few moments, but other than that the combat is quite deliberate and steady, which really sets it apart in the genre. My only real gripe is that the aim assist is so aggressive that it can make it hard to shoot TNT boxes if an enemy is nearby. You can turn that off, but then hitting enemies within those short little bonus windows gets a lot harder, so you just have to pick your poison. Some fairly basic skill trees for your different abilities and guns adds a little depth to things, and allows you to expand your move set quite a bit, but it’s nothing too fancy. For the most part, what you see is what you get in Evil West’s combat, and if you are like me, you’re probably just fine with that as long as it’s fun, which, it is.

Whether you prefer to create distance and blast enemies from afar, dip in and out of crowds with big AOE attacks, or just pound them all one by one into bloody stumps, whatever your playstyle is will almost always be a viable option – aside from the occasional obligatory sections where only certain types of enemies are present or boss fights – but even during these moments it’s usually pretty flexible and never feels too rigidly focused on doing things in only one way. Some might not like this, as the game so rarely encouraging one tactic over another might lead to you falling into a bit of a predictable rhythm of doing the same for the vast majority of the game, and normally I would agree with that being a potential criticism, but in this case, with the Evil West‘s combat being as devilishly fun as it is, the good sense of pacing between the combat sections, and the game not overstaying its welcome with a tight 15ish hour campaign, the repetition just never seemed to set in too deeply or for too long to ever truly feel like it was dragging down the experience in any notable way.

Much like the combat, the story and characters are pretty straight forward and don’t have a lot of depth to them, but unlike the combat, the predictable plot doesn’t really have anything particularly flashy about it to make up for that. This is probably the most disappointing part of the game, not because I was expecting a lot from it in this area, but because I just found myself drifting further and further away from being interested in it, unlike the gameplay itself which mostly stayed interesting throughout by just being so fun. Story clearly isn’t the main focus here, and I certainly didn’t hate it or anything, but I was hoping to experience something a little more worth following along with that could contextualize the righteous bloodshed. While Evil West’s narrative does have its bright spots that drew me in for short moments, especially towards the end, for the most part, I struggled to care very much about the main protagonist or any of his admittedly well-designed and acted cohorts.

"Evil West is a rather good-looking game, all things considered. With its tightly linear design and only a handful of characters and enemy types on display, I suppose it’s nothing that will blow people away, but all-in-all it does have a really good sense of its setting with everything from dusty saloons and timber laden mountainsides to otherworldly dungeons and mad scientist laboratories, the variety is certainly there."

Evil West is a rather good-looking game, all things considered. With its tightly linear design and only a handful of characters and enemy types on display, I suppose it’s nothing that will blow people away, but all-in-all it does have a really good sense of its setting with everything from dusty saloons and timber laden mountainsides to otherworldly dungeons and mad scientist laboratories, the variety is certainly there. Lots of the areas also have an aggressive sense of style with extremely oversaturated colors, that are almost too much at times, but still makes the games’ different levels feel extremely vivid and distinct. If you have a nice OLED panel to play this on, you may want to brace yourself for quite the visual onslaught. I like the style overall, but if it were any more intense, I’d be tempted to compensate by lowering my TVs saturation levels. Effects during combat are equally dazzling across the board and add that good sense of magical weirdness to the various impacts of your gauntlet abilities as well as the exaggerated blasts from your assortment of firearms. Compared to all of this, the execution animations almost seem tame, but they’re fun to pull off nonetheless.

On consoles, Evil West has a quality and performance mode, both of which are pretty stubborn in that the quality mode is locked at 30 frames with a native 2160p resolution, and the performance mode is a solid 60, but resolution is locked all the way down at 1080 which is a noticeable drop in sharpness. Xbox Series S has no such option and is locked with the worst of both worlds. As always, I do appreciate the options on the higher-end consoles, but something a little more dynamic would have been nice. Personally, after putting a few hours into both modes on the PS5, I found that I preferred to take the hit in resolution in exchange for the 60 frames, but both modes do a good job of emphasizing their strengths. Among other options is the ability to turn the spiders off if you have arachnophobia, which is something I haven’t seen before but always I’m glad to see more and more games embrace little tweaks like this. The more the merrier.

The linear design of the levels might be a disappointment to some, especially if you’re just now coming off of God of War Ragnoarok or something like that, but there is a good amount of small detours scattered pretty evenly throughout. It’s a bit of a shame that they don’t lead to anything more than just some extra money or lore, though. It would have been nice to stumble into some optional boss fights or even some regular fights, but from what I was able to discover that doesn’t seem to be a thing. Almost, if not all, of the meaningful combat encounters are only on the main path and nowhere else.

"Much like the combat, the story and characters are pretty straight forward and don’t have a lot of depth to them, but unlike the combat, the predictable plot doesn’t really have anything particularly flashy about it to make up for that."

Do I recommend Evil West? Well, at this point, I suspect you already know if this is your type of game or not. If you’re one of those gamers whose primary concern is the sheer amount of content per dollar, then maybe wait for a sale. That math doesn’t really work out in the game’s favor, and there’s not much replay value outside of a half-baked co-op mode that doesn’t let player 2 save their game, and a new game plus. Neither of which fundamentally change the game.

But, if you are more concerned with just enjoying a solid action game that isn’t afraid to do it’s own thing in a few ways, and beats you over the head with the small handful of things it does well while respecting your time and wrapping up right about when it should, then Evil West is a great choice. Being pretty firmly from the latter camp myself, I’d say this is one of the better action games of the year. I wish it did a bit more with its characters and surprised me a little more with its plot and level design, but there’s no denying the uncanny ability of Flying Wild Hog to capitalize on and squeeze every last bit of possible fun out of just a few cool ideas, and that ability is certainly on display here.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

This type of chatter has been notably lessened in the lead up to their newest installment – The Devil in Me – and that seemed like a more appropriate decision the more I played it. The Devil in Me is, in some ways, a wonderful step forward for the Dark Pictures Anthology, but in other areas, can still feel weighed down by the cliches and inconsistencies that have kept Supermassive Games from repeating the success of the one game from seven years ago, with which most people still associate them.

"The Devil in Me is, in some ways, a wonderful step forward for the Dark Pictures Anthology, but in other areas, can still feel weighed down by the cliches and inconsistencies that have kept Supermassive Games from repeating the success of the one game from seven years ago, with which most people still associate them."

If there’s anything that Supermassive’s lesser games have taught us it’s that an intriguing setting and compelling characters can make or break a game like this, so it’s equal parts relieving and disappointing that The Devil in Me’s setting of a trap-laden murder castle is one of their better backdrops, while the cast is, despite some bright spots, probably one of their worst. Here we have a down on their luck film crew in the final throes of cobbling together a documentary about H.H. Holmes. It’s not quite working out as they were hoping though, as they lack any real outstanding element to tie their project together, and also are clearly struggling with production fatigue.

Right on cue though, a special opportunity to get some great footage and introduce some real authenticity into their movie comes their way. While the situation they wind up in requiring them to relinquish their phones and put a body of water between them and any sort of help ultimately feels contrived as all hell, Supermassive’s writers do put just enough effort into justifying it to mitigate most of my eye-rolling.

This is a desperate group of filmmakers who really believe they’re onto something after all, and anybody who’s ever been through a college filmmaking class probably knows a few people who would have gladly done the same thing. Several of the characters tend to fall face first into a puddle of forgettable mediocrity when they are given any sort of focus. Still yet, I still found them, as an ensemble to be slightly more interesting after spending a few hours with them, despite some stiff gesturing here and there. Erin and Charlie are easily the two standouts, and I enjoyed sections involving them the most. In particular Erin’s shotgun mic she uses to create some legitimately harrowing moments.

There seems to be a nice synergy between how they were written and how they were performed that you don’t see in games all too often, let alone horror games, but it’s dragged down somewhat by the aforementioned woodenness of their movements and a series of predictable scenarios that just aren’t very scary. On the flipside, the tension that builds between climaxes can be palpable, and it’s nice to see a couple characters carrying some of the narrative load, and not just relegated to being villains or walk-on weirdos. Don’t get me wrong, this is not the worst cast in the genre. They do lean into flat delivery more than they should have, but if you couple them with a more interesting villain than usual for this series, a reasonably intriguing setting, and some of the best facial capture I’ve seen from any game in recent memory, then you have what I consider to be a solid package overall. I also enjoyed how much more grounded the story is here. While some of the death traps in the mansion are distractingly impractical, it’s nice to see the supernatural explanations dialed back to such a degree.

"This is not the worst cast in the genre. They do lean into flat delivery more than they should have, but if you couple them with a more interesting villain than usual for this series, a reasonably intriguing setting, and some of the best facial capture I’ve seen from any game in recent memory, then you have what I consider to be a solid package overall."

Another area I was surprised to see some positive changes in was the exploration and general gameplay. This game still fits neatly into the interactive drama/adventure game hybrid that the previous Dark Pictures games have established with quick time events, light puzzles, and meticulous exploration making up the bulk of what you’ll be doing – but they also introduced a true jogging button – a welcome change from the nearly-imperceptible fast walk from previous games. With this is also some light climbing of certain surfaces, and even jumping across small gaps. It might not sound like much, but it does introduce some sorely-needed variety into the several hours of roaming around and investigating that these games necessitate.

You also have a real inventory to manage now. It’s nothing fancy with only a few slots and rarely making you do much with it, but it helps set each character apart, as their different items impact how they play and can introduce completely different types of suspense. Also, keeping track of what you have and what you don’t adds a splash of depth that make this entry feel more like a real mystery adventure game that builds on the interactive drama format of its predecessors, as opposed to just continuing to repeat it note for note. The strictly choreographed QTE’s haven’t gone anywhere though, and neither have the choice-based mechanics that shape the narrative, so don’t get too excited in thinking this entry reinvents the series – it doesn’t. Nor does it need to. But it did need to show that Supermassive can still take this formula in new and interesting directions, which I feel, it ultimately does.

Earlier I briefly mentioned that the character models and facial capture is quite good in The Devil in Me, and that’s not all they get right in the graphics department. The environments are also exceptionally detailed, well lit, and just fun to poke around in, while also being more varied and interesting than the tight corridors of Man of Medan or the cluttered cabins of The Quarry, Despite the game being almost entirely centered around a single piece of property, the variety of situations you find your characters in is more diverse than you might expect. With the legend of H.H. Holmes murder castle already being quite an embellishment of the true story, this game’s villain takes the creative liberties with that inspiration and goes even further with a mostly amusing set of scenarios to explore and get killed in, despite rarely being particular scary. I don’t want to say too much more about that though, as most of the joy of discovering the ins and outs of the murder castle are derived from discovering it yourself.

"The new ideas it introduces into the formula might ultimately be too few and far between to totally make up for some of the lingering issues that have held back these games since this anthology began, but it’s still a solid horror adventure for fans of the series and the genre."

While some of The Devil in Me’s characterizations feel a bit too flat to really make the cast pop, and the more extreme moments of the story didn’t quite work for me, it’s hard to deny that this Dark Pictures entry has more going for it than not. The new ideas it introduces into the formula might ultimately be too few and far between to totally make up for some of the lingering issues that have held back these games since this anthology began, but it’s still a solid horror adventure for fans of the series and the genre.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Racing in WRC Generations feels about as good as the last couple of games, as the arcade-style approach from 5, 6, and 7 has found a much more satisfying middle ground with subsequent entries including this one. and if you’ve gotten used to that more recent mix, you’ll take right to it in this latest outing. Generations makes some slight adjustments while largely sticking to the formula. One of the adjustments in Generations certainly seems to be a more intuitive traction system, where the percentage of snow or rain on the ground and the type and placement of your tires is more important than ever before. Despite some muscle memory from racing on some of these tracks carrying over, this new degree of sensitivity will shake things up. Whether that is a good or bad development for the series will largely depend on your tastes, but I ended up going back and forth on it a bit personally.

"Despite some muscle memory from racing on some of these tracks carrying over, this new degree of sensitivity will shake things up. Whether that is a good or bad development for the series will largely depend on your tastes, but I ended up going back and forth on it a bit personally."

On one hand, the more pronounced control I had over how much I want to slide or stick to the ground certainly adds depth, but on the other, you can end up being punished greatly for even small miscalculations, which, to me, is counter to the kinetic soul of the racing in the series which has always rewarded its players most during races and for making the correct choices on the track, not so much for spending copious amounts of time in preparation menus making sure everything is perfectly tuned for the upcoming event. Still yet, the three primary difficulty settings and handful of other game-wide modifiers can alleviate this quite a bit, but in doing so, WRC Generations makes a common mistake among modern legacy racing game franchises by trading in a bit too much of its own identity in exchange for being a more well-rounded game.  As so often happens when this path is taken, the game clearly tries to please a larger audience at the potential expense of those who have supported the series up to this point. It’s not enough to drag the entire experience down by any means, but it is a small thorn in the side of an otherwise reliably competent racing experience.

Other small thorns include some stability issues that lead to me having a few hard crashes at seemingly random points in the game. No one occasion seemed particularly hectic or intense to me, so these crashes were a complete surprise and perhaps that makes them even more worrisome. Another issue that continues to linger in the WRC series is the lack of meaningful difference between too many of the vehicles. While the selection of cars is large in number, and the different classes do vary pretty well, too many of them are just too similar to really make you look forward to experimenting within whatever class of vehicle fits the event you’re in best.

All that said, most of the fundamentals that have been routinely polished with every entry have continued to improve in this one. The vast and beautiful environments are better than they’ve ever been with enhanced weather effects and denser flora, the pronounced differences in track type from pavement to gravel to dirt all hit better than ever with the PS5’s DualSense making you feel every pebble and speck of dirt getting kicked up, and the well-designed pace notes that keep you informed about what to expect with peripheral info that doesn’t make you take your eyes off the road like a minimap would.

These things quickly become the bedrock of WRC Generations and it’s good to see them in excellent shape here, although the DualSense sounds blaring out of the speaker might be a little too pronounced on their default setting for my taste. Still, with all of that, on top of the series’ best iteration of crew management, livery editor, and tech upgrade trees ever, we see a compelling package take shape for those that click with the slightly floaty but still somewhat realistic WRC-style of racing. And despite the hard crashes, I generally encountered very little frame rate drops or any other sort of visual oddity.

"While the selection of cars is large in number, and the different classes do vary pretty well, too many of them are just too similar to really make you look forward to experimenting within whatever class of vehicle fits the event you’re in best."

For the most part, WRC Generations seems to round out the ups and downs of the previous few games with an arguably ideal combination of what worked best in recent installments. While I wish it went further than surface level with its upgrades, it has by no means phoned in this entry. Its gameplay is just deep enough for big-time enthusiasts to justify spending dozens of hours in, while its learning curve is just shallow enough for more casual or arcade style racing fans to get plenty of enjoyment out of it too.

While it does ultimately pay the price of probably not wow-ing most people in either camp, it does handle the task of maximizing the knowledge the developer has clearly gained from the past few games while minimizing the price paid for the few wrinkles they were never quite able to totally iron out. Had the stability and variety been stepped up just a bit more, it would be a stronger recommendation, but as it is, I certainly wouldn’t ward you off if WRC Generations is something that you’re interested in. If you’re familiar with the series and generally know what to expect, then this is arguably the apex of the series up to this point but even if you’re new to the series, I still think there’s plenty of reason to give it a shot with some moderated expectations.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Breaking into dilapidated houses, clearing rooms, and holding your breath as you turn each corner are common themes in Modern Warfare games now, and they’re done here, at times, just as well as they’ve ever been. But it’s when they spiral into some of the series’ most hair-raising firefights in years, that these missions truly shine. The game’s better levels often start out with tightly composed operations where you’re clearing out a house. Floorboards creak as your boots crush broken glass with each step, combatants lash out at you as they try to take you by surprise, and after blasting the life out of them, you’ll hear they’re cohorts scuttling around in other rooms further away. It’s a rather nice collaboration between solid level design and top-notch audio engineering, that I think it’s fair to say is finally up there with the best in the genre.

"While the story of the campaign itself doesn’t quite live up to the original Modern Warfare 2, glimmers of true evolution do creep in here and there, and the reliably fun multiplayer rounds things out pretty well by delivering a handful of popular modes that feel as frantic and addictive as ever, despite not being the most bountiful selection of modes we’ve seen."

The larger battles that these moments usually blossom into are also quite the spectacle, and punctuate the missions nicely. That said, the broad strokes of Modern Warfare 2‘s campaign are pretty by the numbers and predictable for the series at this point. Sniper levels, some stealth sections, and a decent variety of locations that keep each mission feeling distinct from the last dress up the otherwise by-the-numbers approach. A handful of standout set pieces sprinkled in really make the campaign pop though, like an epic gunfight across multiple oil tankers and a particularly batty sequence where you’ll be leaping between multiple vehicles as you take down an enemy convoy.

A bit more attention is paid to choice here with breaching buildings being opened up to support multiple techniques. For instance, in one section, instead of just blasting your way through the front door and lighting the place up, you can drop a tear gas canister into the building through a vent on the roof, forcing enemies to vacate and expose their positions. This could make picking them off from the roof relatively easy. The choices are laid out nicely for you in these moments, and Modern Warfare 2 deserves some credit for giving you some opportunities to craft your own style and try out different things. While I wish they did it a bit more, the moments where it does hand you the keys to the car are a nice change of pace that didn’t go unnoticed by me.

In the latter half of the campaign some light crafting and survival mechanics are introduced that truly start to feel like something special, but, by the end of that section, I was torn between how much I enjoyed that aspect of it, and how baffled I was that the campaign waited so long to introduce me to such a small sampling of it. After that, and a few more interesting concepts that fizzled out too soon, I ultimately was left with the impression that Modern Warfare 2 had a lot of great ideas, and knew how to implement them, but for some reason was still afraid to totally dive into any one thing and make a truly special game, which is a shame, because if Infinity Ward proves anything with this mish mash of concepts, it’s that they are clearly a skilled enough developer to have gone in any number of directions and probably done a good job. And to me, that would have been preferable to the appetizer sampler approach to gameplay that they went with.

"I ultimately was left with the impression that Modern Warfare 2 had a lot of great ideas, and knew how to implement them, but for some reason was still afraid to totally dive into any one thing and make a truly special game, which is a shame, because if Infinity Ward proves anything with this mish mash of concepts, it’s that they are clearly a skilled enough developer to have gone in any number of directions and probably done a good job."

Modern Warfare 2’s story won’t be winning any awards with its mystery surrounding how Iran’s Qudz force has gotten ahold of some alarmingly powerful US military equipment. Shocker: the plot thickens as more military entities become implicated. Outside of the pretty cool and understated villain Hassan, very little happens that you won’t see coming, but it’s executed well enough for what it is. Soap, Ghost, Alejandro and company are all pretty well-defined characters (at least as far as characters in Call of Duty stories go) and they wind up being the best part of an already totally decent albeit unremarkable tale in this one. The variety is certainly there, and the story never gets too complicated to follow easily.

It’s ultimately good Call of Duty comfort food, but as this one shares the title of one of the most celebrated games of all time, I was expecting a little bit more on the narrative side of things, to at least perhaps come close to matching the original game of the same name. That’s not to say Modern Warfare 2 (2022) has nothing to say, or that it’s some sort of slouch compared to the past several entries though. In fact, I would probably say this is one of the better campaigns we’ve seen in recent years. It just doesn’t crack into the upper echelon of the better ones in the series. Which, again, had it been called anything else and not set that high bar for itself, it probably wouldn’t even have occurred to me to make that comparison. But as they say, if you come at the king, you best not miss.

Multiplayer is a reliably solid package with good variety as per usual for the series. A 3rd person mosh pit that includes Call of Duty flagship modes team deathmatch, domination and hardpoint, but played in a third person perspective, adds a bit of a different flavor to these tried-and-true ways to engage on the battlefield. Getting used to the different style of play with managing distance differently and switching shoulders often to keep an optimal angle is a nice challenge and I found myself liking the third person mode quite a bit after a few hours despite not being too keen on it at first. Meanwhile Prisoner Rescue stands as a functionally similar idea to capture the flag, but by making the courier of said prisoner essentially helpless and fully dependent on his or her team for safety, it really succeeds in ratcheting up the tension during those extractions.

"Multiplayer is a reliably solid package with good variety as per usual for the series."

Other additions to the franchise like ground war and invasion also make an appearance and will probably be the go-to modes for seasoned players looking for a bit more depth. I personally found the co-op modes to be the most welcome additions though, as low profile, denied area, and defender all cater to a completely different mindset than the purely competitive, which is something that tends to go neglected in the franchise outside of Zombies modes, which, had never really been for everybody and as of now, zombies are not a thing in Modern Warfare 2.

In these co-op modes you team up with others and accomplish objectives like defending areas from enemies and clearing out enemy positions, all while utilizing a similar backpack system to what’s in the campaign, where you keep different types of gear like turrets, cruise missiles, etc. There’s a lot of fun to be had here, and I hope Infinity Ward lets the spirit of OG Modern Warfare 2’s special operations live on through these by expanding on them further in the future. Thankfully the launch map selection is pretty decent, with only a couple of them feeling a bit too similar. They don’t nearly have as much repetition to them as some previous entries launch maps do. Still, spawn-killing is made a little bit too easy in some instances, as the layouts can make it pretty obvious where spawn points are likely to be.

Across all modes though, you’ll be earning attachments and other items for weapons that you use the most and you’re always feeling like there’s something right around the corner for you to earn. After a few hours of consistent play, you should have a good number of things to tinker around with and explore different combinations, using base perks and earned in match perks to mix things up even further. With all of this mixing and matching, after a few months, instances of coming across others with the exact same loadout as you will be fewer and further between. Keeping you motivated are also the fully planned-out upgrade tracks for weapons and their attachments, so setting your own goals will come naturally as you keep an eye on certain things you want.

"I feel like Call of Duty veterans who have been with the series a long time will find plenty to like in this newest entry. It can feel “back to basics” in some ways, which can be nice, but the game also pays a bit of a price for that by feeling a bit light on content compared to Cold War or even Vanguard with no zombies and fewer modes generally."

Ultimately, I feel like Call of Duty veterans who have been with the series a long time will find plenty to like in this newest entry. It can feel “back to basics” in some ways, which can be nice, but the game also pays a bit of a price for that by feeling a bit light on content compared to Cold War or even Vanguard with no zombies and fewer modes generally. That said, the variety in its modes, the versatile campaign, and fun co-op missions carry Modern Warfare 2 over the finish line just fine as a mostly satisfying entry in a series where it’s getting harder to please everyone in its increasingly large and diverse audience.

This game was reviewed on PC.

"The charm and humor that Borderlands games have long been so well known for continues to shine here, as it has done so consistently throughout the series, but for the more niche’ spin-off series focusing on the tales from it, it seems that Gearbox has not only succeeded in picking up the pieces dropped by Telltale games, but they have used them to assemble something even better that the last game with an experience that runs better, plays better, and sheds more light on its characters with its stellar writing and performances."

Out of the more notable improvements, New Tales from the Borderlands boasts a clearly better development toolset behind the curtain. The frame-rate hitching and input delay that so often plagued the Telltale games is nowhere to be seen here, outside of the occasional barely noticeable hiccup that falls well within acceptable parameters. I also get the sense that New Tales seems to feature more precise mo-cop for its actors, which is a great step up from the last game in the spin-off series, and really illustrates the subtle ticks, nods, and other small gestures that are so crucial to the humor of Borderlands and elevate the new characters’ personalities to great heights.

The same can’t quite be said for the story itself though, as it can feel like it’s shuffling around the same handful of ideas without actually building much with them for long stretches of time. Other times, it is exceptionally entertaining with its fresh cast – Fran and LOU13 being the clear stand-outs to me. No one character falls below good though, so the strong cast ends up being perhaps the story’s greatest strength. While it’s not always as consistently interesting as the story in other Borderlands games tends to be, it does shed more light on its characters than the last game by showing them in a larger variety of situations and giving them more opportunities to make drastically different decisions.

From the outrageously silly to the dramatic and serious, New Tales from the Borderlands really takes you on quite the narrative roller coaster with the clear emphasis on exploring its charming characters and putting them in challenging situations that force them to grow and show depth. Some choices are so drastically different from one another that it can be distracting as my brain was always trying to make sense out of what the canonical path really is, but I suppose that’s more of a ponderance for the choice-based narrative adventure genre at large than this specific game. In any case, while the story does have some dips in entertainment value, it mostly does a good job of managing the ebb and flow of climaxes and build-ups without spending too much time in any one segment.

"From the outrageously silly to the dramatic and serious, New Tales from the Borderlands really takes you on quite the narrative roller coaster with the clear emphasis on exploring its charming characters and putting them in challenging situations that force them to grow and show depth."

Gameplay is largely similar to the previous Tales from the Borderlands game with timed button prompts and choice making segments being the vast majority of it. There are of course moments where you can explore around a given space, investigate, and stumble into some funny optional interactions, but these segments are tightly confined and usually accompanied by something on the screen telling you exactly what to do when you’re ready to advance. If these segments could have been a little more open-ended and consequential as games like Detroit: Become Human and Syberia 3 have demonstrated as a superior approach, then that might have made New Tales from the Borderlands feel a little more like a major advancement from the previous game as opposed to the conservative upgrade it ended up as.

Given that the last game is nearly a decade old now, it would have been nice to see some larger spaces to explore and a more advanced web of outcomes that my exploration (or lack thereof) could’ve interfaced with. In the case of this particular series, there is certainly nothing wrong with more of the same, but with how New Tales plays things so safely as the narrative adventure genre has grown so much in recent years, the gameplay here can feel a little old hat and unambitious a lot of the time. If you’re coming at this game as a Borderlands fan primarily and not necessarily an avid player of narrative-based adventure games, you probably won’t even notice that, but if you are a fan of either of the games I just mentioned, New Tales from the Borderlands will feel quite simplistic in comparison.

New Tales from the Borderlands has the series’ iconic presentation down pat. The living comic-book aesthetic with thick black outlines and bold colors still looms large over the experience as it has done for its decade plus of games. The additional detail of skin textures and and different surfaces that has been added on in the more recent games can seem to clash with the simplistic nature of its style at times for me, but to each their own I suppose. More objectively speaking, the game runs well, registers inputs quickly, and does a great job of conveying the character’s personalities, style, and humor, just as any good borderlands game requires.

"Fans of this spin-off series and genre might be a little underwhelmed by the strict allegiance to the rules of its nearly-ten-year-old predecessor, but will more importantly continue to be charmed and entertained by the new faces and situations that this newest tale brings."

There is not much new for the Borderlands series in New Tales. It closely follows in the footsteps of the last game and only meaningfully expands on its ideas on rare occasion. Narratively, I would argue it’s a less consistently entertaining romp than its predecessor, yet the highs it does hit can feel higher than the ones in the previous game, and that is a trade-off you may or may not like depending on your taste. On the other side of the coin, the clear improvements on the back end make for a more pleasing gameplay experience despite the mechanics themselves being more focused on faithful replication of how the last game played rather than overhauling or advancing anything. As a result, it’s pretty clear this is a Gearbox game and not a Telltale game, but as a follow-up to Tales from the Borderlands, it undeniably checks more boxes than not, and shows that Gearbox is capable of putting out Borderlands games in both of the genres it’s taken part in. Bottom line? Fans of this spin-off series and genre might be a little underwhelmed by the strict allegiance to the rules of its nearly-ten-year-old predecessor, but will more importantly continue to be charmed and entertained by the new faces and situations that this newest tale brings.

This game was reviewed on PC.

For better and for worse, The Last Oricru is a large and open-ended game in a lot of ways. The freedom to run around, explore, battle with different enemies and unlock new areas at your own pace can feel liberating at times, but it’s when you try to make any sense of it that the seams begin to show. Characters that you come across and interact with often spend far too much time talking for how little they actually have to say, and your many redundant battles with folks from both sides of the conflict leave you feeling unattached and indifferent about how their war plays out. Mindless objectives also feeling disconnected from the broader story more often than not only detach you from the story even more.

"The Last Oricru can, at times, deliver some moderate fun within its combat and RPG mechanics when it’s not struggling to be interesting with its story and characters."

The tale of Silver trying to understand the world around him and his role within it felt relatable to me as the player only in that I had no idea what sort of story the game was trying to tell for most of my playtime. The setting is also hard to pin down in any logical way, as the medieval elements like candles and stone castles are so forcibly combined with mystical science fiction that it feels more like a clashing of ideas competing with each other than any sort of graceful melding. Some interesting agency is introduced with choices about who’s side you want to favor at important moments, but it’s too little too late to save a story that refuses to be compelling in just about every other way. Some decent voice acting throughout is also nice, but doesn’t make up for stiff animations, non-existent expressions, and the stuffy, bloated writing. The game does very little to create an enticing story or compelling characters, so it’s a shame to see the relatively good voice acting go to such a waste. To say The Last Oricru is some sort of substance-over-style game is not really the impression I’m trying to give though, as it has problems in nearly every area.

Combat itself can be satisfying when landing a final blow on an enemy after some carefully executed blocks and dodges, and the fairly steady pace at which you come across new weapons and armor feeds nicely into the gameplay cycle. Even though some of them require you to personally level up to be able to use them so they just kind of sit in your inventory for a while. This only seems to get better with time though, as more sorts of weapons and abilities become available as more enemies that require more skill on your part are presented.

This is dragged down a fair amount by a handful of shortcomings, though. Of them, the most prominent are the camera lock-on, which, when used, often presents more issues than it solves by making the camera angle tilt in an extremely unhelpful way that limits your view, and the fact that combos nonsensically trigger at times even if you’ve only clicked the attack button once, making the sort of kinetic rhythm that a game like this needs for combat to feel fun and responsive, nearly impossible. Combat is hampered further by enemies that are often extremely dumb and attack in the completely wrong direction and take such gratuitously long time to wind up an attack that it can almost feel insulting. Whatever bit of this that was supposed to feel like a souls-borne game is almost entirely overwhelmed by the distracting lack of cohesion or meaningful challenge in its combat.

That’s not to say the gameplay of The Last Oricru is without any bright spots, though. Local split-screen co-op is certainly one of them worth mentioning. It doesn’t change much about the core experience, but if you’re fine with not caring about what’s going on, and don’t mind the mediocre combat, some cheap fun can be had with a friend as with basically any other co-op game.

"The Last Oricru is not a game I would generally recommend. For everything I really liked, there were at least 2 or 3 adjacent blunders making my eyes roll into the back of my skull."

One thing I did consistently enjoy about The Last Oricru was the artistic acumen with which the game was designed. Putting aside the many unexceptional elements of the game, the sheer skill of the actual artists who designed the characters and levels is indisputable. While the clashing ideas do their best to distract from it, the detail, environmental effects, and flashy general presentation are on point. Seeing what the next area would look like quickly became my primary motivation to keep going in The Last Oricru, which perhaps says more about the rest of the game than it does about the art, but still, credit where it’s due. Also, while it certainly could still benefit from some optimization, I feel like it was running reasonably well for me all things considered.

The Last Oricru is not a game I would generally recommend. For everything I really liked, there were at least 2 or 3 adjacent blunders making my eyes roll into the back of my skull. While the negatives and positives do end up mostly canceling each other out for me, I’m not going to sit here and say it’s a complete failure or does nothing well. But given that it exists in a sea of other similar games where it so often fails to keep its head above the water let alone compete with the bigger successes of the genre, it’s a pretty tough sell. Hardcore souls-borne fans that consume every game that comes their way might enjoy its distinct art direction and steady progression, but upon comparing it to any other similar game they will likely walk away feeling neutral about it at best. To me, The Last Oricru basically embodies mediocrity. It’s not strikingly bad, nor is it what I would call good. It mostly lives on a very fine line between the two, only occasionally leaning towards one side or the other.

This game was reviewed on PC.

The thousands upon thousands of square kilometers that Dakar Desert Rally offers players to race in is immediately impressive, but more importantly, the space’s use goes beyond just being visually striking. Most of the time, cutting through the dunes and trails of the game’s many tracks can lead to some interesting results, such as shaving off a few fractions of a second from your time, and perhaps being the difference between earning a podium finish or not. Other times, sadly, the exploration is punished with small objects like logs, bushes, and rocks bringing your vehicle of choice to a complete stop when it’s pretty obvious that you should be able to trample over them.

"Fans of rally style racers of either the arcade or simulation persuasion are catered to more-or-less equally and there is no question that the racing itself is quite good most of the time. Still yet, with some questionable physics and inscrutable logic driving some of the game’s core mechanics and a general performance that isn’t nearly as consistent as it should be on the PS5, the claims made in the game’s marketing that Dakar Desert Rally is some sort of pinnacle of the off-road racing genre do ring a little hollow."

A small penalty for hitting things is certainly to be expected, but the way this game either lets things slide entirely or punishes you to the fullest extent, with very few instances of anything in between, can discourage taking advantage of the vast landscapes more often than it should. I also found some of the slipping and sliding to be a bit over the top, as even a mild to moderate slip up with braking or accelerating improperly can result in a complete 180 or even worse, making small problems into massive ones in the blink of an eye. Even for the obviously sandy and snowy physics, grip is lost far too easily and too often in Dakar Desert Rally. Adding a pinch of salt into that wound is that, despite being beautifully designed, some races go on just a bit long.

Before getting in too deep, Dakar Desert Rally does give you a chance to experience it in your own way, with three general difficulties to choose from. Sport, which will largely resemble other, more arcadey experiences with waypoint beacons on the screen that greatly help prevent you from getting turned around, slightly easier opponents, lower repair costs, and even a checkpoint system that lets you restart from any waypoint you’ve already reached, which is a system I like a lot better than the rewinds we see in a lot of similar racing games today. Despite the loss in authenticity, this mode might be best to get started with, as the other two ratchet up the difficulty quite a bit.

The next level up, called “professional”, steps up the opponent AI to being quite ruthless and difficult, more expensive repairs, and removes the waypoint beacons and replaces them with a far less discernible map system that takes longer to translate into useful information to you than it’s generally worth. But it still lets you keep the checkpoints. The hardest, simulation mode basically just strips away the checkpoints, and further elevates all of the previously mentioned aspects like opponent AI and repair costs. It’s so difficult that the game assumes you would be wasting your time with it at first anyway, and keeps it locked behind the first several hours of playtime. Like I said, unless you really just want to get thrown to the wolves, it’s probably best to start with sport mode and just work your way up. As always when a racing game includes this much flexibility in the difficulty, I appreciate the sentiment, and it probably will result in more players being able to enjoy the game, but it does undeniably come at the cost of the game having a greater sense of its own identity.

"As always when a racing game includes this much flexibility in the difficulty, I appreciate the sentiment, and it probably will result in more players being able to enjoy the game, but it does undeniably come at the cost of the game having a greater sense of its own identity."

Not getting as far into the weeds as other beefy racers tend to, your car tuning and repairs are a fairly simplified system that you can access between events as well as between races inside of events, which is a good thing, as you’ll be visiting both of these areas quite a bit to match your current terrain with the right set up, and keeping your vehicle in good shape to make sure everything works right. Keeping it nice and simple, you can also just select “repair all” and get everything back in order for one flat price. Different types of collisions and other wear and tear do result in different parts of your vehicle wearing down, but by all means if you don’t feel like paying too much attention to that and just want to get back into the action, hitting repair all will certainly get you there if you have the cash, which, if you’re even remotely decent at the game, you generally will.

Purchasing different vehicle types also doesn’t take forever like some other games in the genre, so you can start experimenting with different vehicles pretty quickly if you so desire. I came to be quite partial to the quad bikes myself, but each type feels pretty good to race as. Unfortunately, each also can fall victim to the fickle physics and the fragile balance of speed and stability often felt like a monkey on my back that I had to placate than a fun challenge to overcome. I wasn’t able to try the multiplayer mode in my review build, but I shudder to think of what could go wrong if any sort of systemic network problems get thrown on top of these other issues.

Dakar Desert Rally is without a doubt one of the most beautiful looking racers I’ve played on the PS5 so far. Sunsets absolutely glisten on the wet sand of tropical beaches, and palm tree leaves woft in the distance and foreground in a near photorealistic way, and I just can’t praise that aspect of the game enough. It has absolutely nailed the look and feel of all of its surprisingly varied assortment of tracks and locales. Results like this can only come from a formidable combination of real-world knowledge of how these locations work and top-notch video game artistic acumen, and it’s always a pleasure to take in a new location in the game, if only the game could run these areas properly when the action gets thick. Don’t get me wrong, most of the time, in performance mode, things were smooth enough. But almost every race did have a moment or two where the frame rate took a nose dive due to too many opponents crashing into each other at once and/or when too much water was being rendered at once. I suspect with the bit of ongoing support Dakar Desert Rally will likely get, this will be mitigated to some extent, but right now it’s tough to ignore.

"Dakar Desert Rally is without a doubt one of the most beautiful looking racers I’ve played on the PS5 so far."

At its core, Dakar Desert Rally does have more going for it than not. With equally gorgeous and gigantic racing environments to enjoy, intuitive management systems, and it’s obviously unique position among other modern big-budget racing games, it’s certainly nothing to sleep on. Most racing fans should give it a look at the very least. Getting hung up on a small handful of little things might slow it down a bit, but for most, I suspect Dakar Desert Rally will provide at least some, if not many hours of fun.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Caught between a weakened Odin, and an army of the undead threatening to bring about the end of the world, the Valkyrie accepts her mission of purifying the world and paving the way for Odin to regain control. That’s basically it story-wise for the first few of hours. As you hack away at the same handful of enemy types and even take down some massive Naglfars, some new characters are revealed that thicken the plot a bit, but little happens with the narrative to bring you anywhere near the edge of your seat until you’re much further in. This does give Valkyrie Elysium a slow start, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does take its sweet time compared to most of its contemporaries in the hack ‘n slash genre. In that, it sometimes feels like the remnants of its hardcore JRPG roots are still lingering around in there somewhere, but as the game rolls on, that notion fades away considerably. I’ll never fault a series for trying to genuinely reinvent itself, but I was a little disappointed to see Elysium reel itself in so much with the narrative considering its rich and complex history.

"While long-time Valkyrie Profile fans may balk at the brash stylistic shift and clear insistence on catering to a wider audience, for what it’s worth, Valkyrie Elysium does a great job of it."

Gameplay for Valkyrie Elysium is very strict about following the hack ‘n slash action RPG playbook, which, for many, will be totally fine. It certainly was for me. Mixing light and heavy attacks, upgrading abilities, and adapting to new enemy types are front and center. Similarly, to the story, the combat and move set take their time opening up, but even before they do, it’s pretty apparent that you have a really solid action game here. Attacks are impactful and fun to master, especially as you mix in dodges and parries to pull off different moves that make you quite nimble. Learning the different weapons is also fun, even though they aren’t as different as I’d like them to be, but executing a powerful combo and landing it on an enemy just right is accentuated with compelling, stylish animations that don’t overload your screen with nonsense, but still keep things cooking nicely.

The automatic soft-lock that keeps Valkyrie always attacking towards some enemy as long as it’s in range, and the soul chain that quickly closes large gaps can keep the action as aggressive as you want, while the hard lock that you activate with R3, her swift dodges and blocks facilitate more tactical and defensive approaches. All of which you’ll need to be familiar with. You’ll also need to get familiar with which art attacks work best on which enemies, and selecting the best weapon for each fight. Keeping two weapons and two elixirs equipped to the d-pad at all times keeps the player out of the menu screens in and in the action a bit more than other Japanese action RPGs, which I came to appreciate quite a bit. There is a good amount of flexibility here too, as most weapons or arts can be used in most situations, despite there clearly being favorable combinations that are very much worth leaning into.

Overall, I enjoy the combat quite a bit. The automatic soft lock might trip you up sometimes if you aren’t paying close attention to it, and I found myself babying the camera a little more than I would’ve liked, but the kinetic, weighty moment-to-moment action outweighed those gripes for me. Defeating enemies and smashing objects in the environment will yield different types of gems and other resources, and these are spent on upgrades to your abilities and weapons. These weapons can be upgraded further with runes which you’ll also come across here and there, and like most of the rest of the game, there’s really nothing in Valkyrie Elysium’s RPG mechanics that you haven’t seen before, which again, considering how finely tuned it all is, is perfectly acceptable.

"I enjoy the combat quite a bit. The automatic soft lock might trip you up sometimes if you aren’t paying close attention to it, and I found myself babying the camera a little more than I would’ve liked, but the kinetic, weighty moment-to-moment action outweighed those gripes for me."

At the same time though, I often found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hoping the game to throw some sort of monkey wrench into the mix to spice things up and surprise me, but sadly it never really did. Valkyrie Elysium does make a modest effort in this regard though, with the einherjars, which are spirits that Valkyrie meets and can summon later throughout the game to help in combat and aid you with accessing new areas. With the latter, einherjars don’t inject as much variety as they could have, as the handful of situations where they are required are immediately telegraphed to you as such, thus, not really eliciting much of the sense of discovery they could’ve. Despite that being their more prominent contextual purpose, unleashing them in battle fares much better, as mixing them with corresponding arts can produce powerful results.

Valkyrie Elysium’s levels are very linear, with little more than the occasional deviating path that leads to a dead end, a chest, and sometimes a short fight. The game does have sub quests, but they need to be selected from the hub world and pursued on their own instead of being integrated into the main chapters, which is a bit odd considering that the sub quests seem to share the same maps as main chapters anyway. Levels are also highly similar to each other thematically, with a lot of the same washed-out stone structures and pale fields hosting your gameplay. That’s not to say they look bad, in fact, the almost misty look to them does make sense with the ethereal tone of the game albeit at the cost of feeling a bit drab at times. The art direction is clearly defined though, and does show off some fairly high production values with lots of soft lighting and making the more colorful foreground action pop off the screen in comparison.

Also, snuggly fitting into the game’s larger tone nicely is the soundtrack, that superbly mixes the chord structures and themes that are to be expected in RPGs with many distinct drums, woodwinds and other instruments along with choir ensembles that feature a lot of range. From rumbling baritone voices to the far sweeter tenors and sopranos, I was a bit shocked to see such compositional breadth being applied to an action game’s soundtrack that didn’t necessarily need it, but of course is only enhanced by it. I highly suspect with all the talk about the genre shift for this game surely dominating discussions around it, the outstanding music in Valkyrie Elysium will almost certainly go down as its most underappreciated element.

"Valkyrie Elysium is definitely not your classic Valkyrie game. It’s completely reinvented for better and for worse. I have my gripes, and you probably will too, but ultimately the game works out quite nicely for what it’s trying to be."

If you haven’t picked up on it yet, Valkyrie Elysium is definitely not your classic Valkyrie game. It’s completely reinvented for better and for worse. I have my gripes, and you probably will too, but ultimately the game works out quite nicely for what it’s trying to be. Tonally, old fans might notice some whispers of Valkyrie Profile’s spirit here and there, but for the most part it’s going to require a completely different mindset. For those that are willing to take that leap of faith, you’ll be rewarded more often than not. And for those who just love a good hack ‘n slash action RPG, Valkyrie Elysium delivers a lively, appealing, and engaging one that doesn’t require a deep understanding of the previous games to enjoy. Hopefully Square Enix will support this new direction for the IP further with a sequel that tells a deeper story and gives us more elaborate levels to explore, but until then, this is a damn fine example of the genre and easily one of 2022’s best action games.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Soulstice tells the somewhat tragic tale of two sisters, Briar and Lute, fighting to close a tear in the veil; the cosmic membrane separating their world from a much more ferocious and sinister one. It’s a situation our main characters aren’t particularly surprised by, as the dastardly wraiths from the other side are known to attempt such things, but this time it’s on a much larger scale and presents an apocalyptic threat. Briar and Lute benefit from being “chimera” as in, a fusion of two souls. In their case, sisters. Lute is now a powerful ghost or “shade” that can wield all sorts of magical abilities while Briar has achieved supernatural levels of endurance and strength. Together they are quite the interdimensional force to be reckoned with, but so too is the army of monsters that await them.

"There’s just something about having a supernaturally powerful main character with a giant sword on their back that upgrades their abilities from currency earned from fighting as spectacularly as possible that just continues to endure. While Soulstice is without a doubt one of these sorts of games, I’d be lying to your face if I said it didn’t ultimately win me over with its often-superb mix of evolving old ideas and reinforcing them."

It’s a good albeit predictable tale that has our heroine duo coming across several other characters and tightly-designed areas in this gloomy, gothic world. Sometimes even coming across echoes of the past that provide some context for the story by giving you short glimpses into things that happened in any given area. These little scenes aren’t particularly expressive, but they are sufficiently harrowing, and more than get the job done of fleshing out the game’s world and breaking up the standard action game loop of tearing through enemies and exploring on your way to the next battle, and kind of remind me of talking to fallen warriors in the hall of heroes from MediEvil. I do wish that Briar and Lute were a bit more interesting themselves, especially Briar, who despite being unrelentingly cool and well designed, never really compelled me one way or another as a character.

The gameplay immediately makes it pretty clear that those who’ve ever played an action game from the PS2 or Xbox 360 eras will be right at home. A control scheme centered around light attacks with the Ashen Vindicator – Briar’s standard sword, and heavier blows from the Ashen Enforcer – a massive scythe or other weapons make a familiar set up, and as Briar’s arsenal expands, you’ll have different ways of making shorter work of monsters, but Soulstice also throws in some passive and active abilities with Lute, who can block attacks, freeze enemies, and dish out some pain of her own. Kind of like how Atreus works in God of War 2018. This is where the blending of old and new starts to show, a trend you’ll notice often in Soulstice. For starters, the often-fixed camera does relinquish control to the player, usually for the bigger fights, and then it plays more like a modern action game, but then it’s back to panning and trucking around during the platforming and exploration sections and even some battles for a more cinematic flair. This dual system creates a situation where the camera type switches around fairly often. Both systems work well enough, but the fixed angles can make platforming a bit wonky, and I can see how switching back and forth might feel jarring to some players.

You’ll probably hear people compare Soulstice’s combat to action games from the early 2000s a lot, and that’s not wrong. With Briars cartoonishly oversized sword magically resting in her back when not in use, it’s a tempting comparison to make. but when you get down to it, the individual strikes have more weight to them than that. Where action games from the early 2000s enables you to unleash flurries of attacks and barrage enemies with hyperactive nonsense, Soulstice is a little more deliberate and precise than that. Each and every strike matters – not nearly as much as they would in a Soulslike, mind you – but it still does have a knack for punishing you for too much mindless button mashing, thus forcing you to learn the ins and outs of Briars many weapons, Lute’s plethora of passive and active abilities, as well as the all-important banishment and evocation fields.

"You’ll probably hear people compare Soulstice’s combat to action games from the early 2000s a lot, and that’s not wrong."

These fields are used to great effect and make Soulstice stand apart from the crowd of hack and slash games a good bit. Controlling the blue evocation and the red banishment fields is a special ability that Lute can use to make corresponding enemies vulnerable, barriers breakable, and even reveal platforms that lead to hidden areas and items. Using them too long will hurt Lute though, which will in turn make you less lethal without her abilities for a short time, so there’s some strategy involved here.

Ultimately, the two fields mechanic isn’t that different from the multi-colored attack system of Heavenly Sword, but it’s used much more holistically throughout other facets of the game here like in exploration and puzzle solving that it frankly feels like a more organic part of this game than it did in that game. Also, a unity meter that illustrates the connection between Briar and Lute can add to the efficiency of combat and even lead to a devastating rapture state where Briar can easily tear through all enemies, fields be damned. so that’s something to keep an eye on as well. All-in-all the combat is fun to master and expand upon as new weapons and skills are added to your repertoire. All the weapons are fun to use and just different enough to make them all worth tinkering around with, although I have to admit I ended up favoring the hand of retribution probably more than I was supposed to.

Defeating enemies with quickness and purpose leads to a better score and collecting more crimson tear residue, at the end of a fight, which you can then spend on upgrades for Briar’s weapons, same for Lute with the cobalt-colored residue. I’ve got to admit I was surprised to see just how deep Lute’s move set goes, and how she can be upgraded into quite a juggernaut of her own in several different ways. Spend wisely though, as you only have the ability to buy items and skills in between levels or while talking with Layton; a traveler and observer that helps flesh out the story a little bit and also acts as the quintessential “whaddya buyin’?” character.

"Admittedly, some enjoyment of Soulstice may be gained or lost immediately depending on your personal experience with classic 3D action games."

Admittedly, some enjoyment of Soulstice may be gained or lost immediately depending on your personal experience with classic 3D action games. Soulstice proudly lives and dies by the same sword. Somebody who just got into the action genre within the last ten years or so might feel very differently about the game’s often fixed camera and highly linear layout than somebody who has fond memories of God of War 2. It’s also not helped much by some average-to-okay voice acting and writing, and the generic early 2000’s video game music is a pretty big missed opportunity as well. Still, regardless of the type of action you’re most comfortable with, Soulstice gets more than enough right with modern and classic ideas to be worth pushing through its few hang-ups.

This game was reviewed on PC.