ASKA takes place in a setting quite obviously inspired by viking folklore and fantasy. The story kicks off with your homeland getting destroyed, and your character setting off to create a new home for themselves. Along the way, some gigantic mythical monsters and sea storms cause your ship to get wrecked on a mysterious shore, where you must now set out to build yourself a new home. As far as the story goes, that’s the most you’re going to get out of ASKA. You’re given little in the way of direction unless you enable the tutorial, and are essentially left to your own devices as you start punching down trees and rocks to start making some of your starter gear.

The core survival crafting aspects of ASKA don’t really offer anything unique. The game follows the classic template: make some simple tools with things you find lying around in order to then cut down larger trees and smash bigger boulders in order to get even more materials for fancier tools. Along the way, you’re also going to start building a shelter of some description, starting with a simple campfire and a bed. You’re also going to have to forage for food and drinkable water, since starvation or thirst also carry with them some hefty penalties.

Thankfully, ASKA doesn’t just leave you in the dark about what you’re supposed to do next in order to progress. Assuming you left the tutorials enabled, the game occasionally spawns a mysterious wisp that provides you with some direction for your next steps. At first, this will be as simple as “build a campfire and upgrade it” or “make a stone ax to cut down a tree”. These tips eventually bring you into more complex gameplay mechanics without giving away too much, and this is where we get to talk about the unique hook of ASKA’s core game loop.

"You’re given little in the way of direction unless you enable the tutorial, and are essentially left to your own devices"

While you’re going to be surviving and crafting by yourself in the beginning, soon enough, you’ll bring in villagers to your settlement. This will also eventually lead you to expanding your base of operations, and even turning it into a small town. These villagers are far from just window dressing, however. The villagers are the core method of automation in ASKA. It’s by getting these villagers and stationing them at various workstations that you start automatically getting your hands on simpler materials.

The villager system is quite clever, since once you get a few villagers in your settlement, you don’t really have to worry about getting your hands on the more basic materials like wood and stone anymore; the villagers will be more than happy to help earn their keep by setting out to cut down trees and smash up rocks. This automation goes even further. Since you often have to turn several low-level raw materials into mid-level refined materials, villagers can similarly be tasked to, for example, turning all of the fiber you find into ropes, which can then be used for more complex building recipes.

On the other hand, the same villager system also makes the design for the earlier parts of the game suffer. Getting basic materials, especially in the beginning, can be an absolute drag. Unless you’re a fan of picking up stray stones on the ground, for example, you’re going to want to smash down some of the bigger rocks in your area. And smashing down these big rocks is a surprisingly massive undertaking. Even if you have the right tool for the job, you’re going to spend several seconds—maybe even a full minute—holding down the harvest key as your character chips away at a massive boulder. This aspect makes it feel like you were never really meant to be breaking up these giant rocks by yourself; the villagers are supposed to be handling these menial tasks.

"The villagers are the core method of automation in ASKA."

ASKA doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be a meditative, desolate experience in comparison to something like Valheim. Once you start bringing them in, villagers are going to be running around all over the place in order to complete the tasks you set them on, and aside from maybe the first hour or so, you’re not really going to get the lonesome experience that single player survival crafting games often tend to engender. ASKA also features a multiplayer mode for absolute chaos as well, since each player can essentially have their own villages, with their own villagers running around and farming or cutting down trees.

The exploration is where ASKA starts to really feel like an early access title. Make no mistake; ASKA is definitely a decent looking game, and there are also times when the randomly-generated world will throw out a gorgeous vista for you to stare in awe at. Rather, the fact that there isn’t really much to do in the game when you set out to explore other than maybe find more resources or take down some new enemies. In my time with ASKA, I wasn’t able to find a boss fight to start preparing for like I would in Valheim, for example, and most of the biomes in the game are still relatively same-y, with just different variations on forests and beaches.

There does seem to be a bit of content planned for the game throughout its early access period, however, since the title also features a dynamic weather system that doesn’t really affect you that much, even in the early game, aside from perhaps making you feel slightly colder than you would have otherwise. The core pull in ASKA right now feels like it might just be the building and town management parts. The crafting and building systems on their own are generic enough where it would be difficult to identify the game by those aspects alone in a sea of other survival crafting titles, and the villager system offers up just enough of a unique identity and potential for further expansion down the line.

"The crafting and building systems on their own are generic enough"

As it currently stands, ASKA feels relatively generic when compared to other games in the genre. The title certainly has some decent foundations, and with some tweaks, could even go on to be one of the stronger survival crafting games out there. Currently, however, aside from the villager system where you can automate parts of the game by having villagers gather materials and craft tools for you, there just isn’t enough unique or interesting about the game to warrant spending too much time with it. Thankfully, it’s just an early access release, and ASKA still has plenty of time to expand on some of its more interesting ideas and gameplay mechanics.

This game was previewed on PC.

STRONG SETTING

One of several areas where Rise of the Ronin is looking to do things a little differently than Team Ninja games have done in the past, its setting is a much more grounded and authentic one, with fantastical elements not having been part of the equation so far at all- and so far, I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen. Virtual historical tourism done right can elevate a game’s setting in several ways, and the first few hours of Rise of the Ronin suggest that that’s the road it’s headed down. It takes a while to get going – the first hour or so is a fairly guided section that begins with a tutorial and then puts you in a linear section set inside a ship – but it doesn’t take long for things to click once you enter the open world.

How the game executes the open world itself is, of course, a different question (more on that in a bit), but in these early hours, the aesthetic of Rise of the Ronin’s setting has been one of its stronger elements. Once I entered the open world, I spent some time in the countryside and its rural, less-developed environments, and but what really caught my eye was the city of Yokohama, which you enter pretty early on in the game. Its blend of feudal Japanese and Western industrial aesthetics is giving the city a very strong and distinct identity so far, and I’m excited to see how the rest of the map fares in this aspect.

INCONSISTENT OPEN WORLD

As mentioned earlier, Rise of the Ronin is Team Ninja’s first open world game, and based on what I’ve seen in the three hours I’ve spent with it so far, you can definitely tell that in more ways than one. Structurally, from what I’ve gathered so far, it doesn’t place too many restrictions on you and largely leaves you free to explore- which is great! But the actual activities in the world so far haven’t done much to stand out in any real way, while several areas of the world also don’t feel nearly as alive as they should. The city of Yokohama, for instance, has plenty of gorgeous environments, but in the time I’ve spent with the game so far, it hasn’t felt as bustling, busy, or loud as I had hoped it would.

The couple of side quests I’ve seen have had very little narrative weight to them, and their structure and core conceits have felt rote at best. Meanwhile, side activities outside of side quests have ranged from clearing out enemies from small settlements that they’ve occupied to finding and petting cats to visiting landmarks scattered throughout the city of Yokohama. Thanks to the strong visual aesthetic of the game and the fun traversal mechanics, I’ve still enjoyed exploring the world, but I’m hoping that side activities will become more varied and unique as the game continues to open up. So far, they’ve felt very by-the-numbers.

FUN TRAVERSAL

Rise of the Ronin’s traversal mechanics have looked like one of its biggest highlights in all that we’ve seen of it pre-launch, so it’s not surprising that that’s also been one of my bigger takeaways after three hours with the game. The star of the show is, of course, the flying device known as the Avicula, but I didn’t actually unlock that until the very final mission of the section I’ve played up to this point.

The bulk of my time has been spent running around, galloping on my horse (which is unlocked pretty soon after you first enter the open world), and using my grapple hook, and even that loop in and of itself has made for a lot of fun traversal moments. Movement feels very quick and responsive, and grappling to a rooftop and jumping from one building to the next has a great feel to it. Meanwhile, the Avicula, from what little I’ve used so far, controls very well, and given how easy it is to transition from gliding to jumping onto horseback, I imagine I’m going to be using a lot of fun (and having fun while doing so).

FUN COMBAT

This shouldn’t come as a surprise either. Combat has been Team Ninja’s bread and butter for as long as anyone can remember, and Rise of the Ronin puts its best foot forward in this area right off the bat. Again, I’m still very early in the game, which means many of the combat mechanics haven’t fully opened up yet, but it’s already been a blast. In true Team Ninja fashion, every hit feels crunchy and impactful (thanks in no small part to the considerable gore), the enemies move and attack in ways that constantly keep you on your toes, and the many, many different weapons feel great to use.

Though not nearly as challenging as something like Nioh (especially with the addition of multiple difficulty options), Rise of the Ronin can still be a challenging game if you’re not paying attention. Combat has been very parry-focused to this point, which means keeping a close eye on enemy movements, watching out for incoming attacks, and correctly timing your parries to stagger enemies and strike them when you’re weak is going to be key to success in combat. Stealth has been much less impressive – the mechanics have been rudimentary so far, and enemy AI isn’t the best in this area – but when the combat is in full flow, even in these early hours, it’s hard not to be captivated. During certain missions, you’ll also be accompanied by an AI companion that you can even swap to and play as, which has also added an interesting dynamic to encounters.

NUANCED PROGRESSION

Again, this should come as no surprised, given how in-depth and multilayered the progression mechanics have been in Team Ninja’s games in recent years. Rise of the Ronin is putting a great deal of emphasis on role-playing mechanics and build variety, and it’s doing so in a number of ways. For starters, you’ll be selecting a class at the outset for your character that will determine whether you want to start off with bonuses in combat, charisma, and the like, and which weapons you will be more proficient with.

Karma and XP gains count toward unlocking skill points, as well as variants of skill points that are used exclusively on unlocking and upgrading on intelligence, strength, or charisma skills, like being able to intimidate enemies, or gaining the ability to stealthily assassinate two enemies in quick succession. Beyond that, there’s also plenty of loot to keep an eye on, which means optimizing your build with the best possible equipment is crucial, while you’re also choosing which combat styles to equip with different weapons. All of this is just from the three hours that I’ve played, so I’m definitely excited to see how the game builds on these already-deep foundations.

WEAK STORYTELLING

It’s clear right off the bat that Rise of the Ronin is going for a more story-driven approach than past Team Ninja games, but so far, I’m not convinced it’s doing a particularly good job in this area. The writing has often been clunky, and the voice acting can feel a bit flat. The protagonist, in fact, is barely voiced at all, and though they do have their own backstory and motivations, they don’t really feel like they’re a meaningful part of the story in any real way, thanks to the almost complete lack of actual interactions with anyone else in the world.

I am, to be fair, intrigued by the larger, zoomed out plot of the game. Elements like the Westernization of Japan and the internal political and cultural strife the nation is facing in this period have shown some promise in my time with the game up to this point. But Rise of the Ronin is also trying to tell a more personal story of its protagonist trying to look for their blade twin, and that just isn’t grabbing me. I hope the game can change my mind. It has shown some promise with its choice and consequence mechanics- they’ve been pretty light so far, but I’ve been able to build stronger bonds with not only the characters that you meet, but with entire regions of the map through completion of side activities, and I think there’s some potential for solid storytelling there.

TECHNICAL ISSUES

The extreme polish that AAA games so often obsess over and spend ridiculous amounts of money trying to chase is beginning to look increasingly excessive by the day, so personally, my expectations for games have lowered in this area of late. Even so, Rise of the Ronin is often falling below those expectations. I do still think that this is a good looking game, but that’s largely down to its strong art design and aesthetic.

Purely in technical terms, I’ve noticed a few rough edges. I’ve seen a number of character models and faces that were lacking in detail (especially for the less important NPCs), textures are often muddy and can take a couple of seconds to load in, draw distances can look quite hazy. I’ve played exclusively on Performance Mode so far though, and the 60 FPS gameplay has been buttery smooth, so there’s that.

With its promise of a more small-scale and compact experience, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a game that’s caught the eye of many. With the series having attracted increasing criticisms with its recent instalments for its bloat, there’s been plenty of excitement about the fact that Mirage is once again promising a stealth and parkour-focused game that falls in line with classic Assassin’s Creed games and eschews the role playing systems of the series’ more recent instalments. 

The game is now less than a month away from launch, and ahead of its release, we recently had some hands-off time with it. After having watched over an hour of gameplay footage showcasing Mirage’s open world, combat, stealth, parkour, and more, there’s plenty that we’ve learned about the game that’s got us even more excited to get our hands on it. Here, we’re going to talk about those details.

BAGHDAD

Baghdad serves as Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s setting, and it’s emblematic of the game’s return-to-the-roots philosophy, bringing the franchise back to a Middle Eastern setting that focuses entirely on a single city. And the way in which the game is going about it looks very familiar as well- which, of course, is a good thing, because like older Assassin’s Creed games, the sense of place and atmosphere seeping through every inch of this game is one of its strongest elements, from what we’ve seen of it so far.

Crowds chatter around you in their native language, the streets are densely packed with people milling about and going about their business, vendors and shopkeepers ply their trade in busy areas, and all of it lends real authenticity to the game’s recreation of 9th century Baghdad. Being able to completely transport players to meticulously crafted recreations of historical settings was always where older Assassin’s Creed titles were strongest, and Mirage seems to be following suit on that front. Ubisoft is also promising plenty of variety across Baghdad’s several districts, and though the gameplay footage we saw took place entirely in the district of Karkh, the environments and areas we saw impressed up greatly with their level of detail and their atmosphere.

INVESTIGATIONS

Main missions in Assassin’s Creed Mirage take the form of investigation, and structurally, they borrow a lot of elements from several instalments in the series, both new and old. Each investigation has a main assassination target at its center, and getting to that target first requires completing other related missions that will help you gather clues. For instance, in the gameplay footage that we saw, Basim, the protagonist, met up with an old friend named Kong, a merchant, and through helping him with issues related to his business, Basim was able to uncover clues that helped him uncover the identity of the central target of that investigation.

OPEN WORLD ACTIVITIES

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is, of course, going to be a much smaller and more compact experience than the likes of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, which means its open world setting is going to be smaller in size as well. Even so, there’s plenty of side activities available in the open world of Baghdad. For starters, in the gameplay footage that we saw, we were also able to spot other activities that were available, with each district of Baghdad having gear chests to track down, artifacts and shards to collect, historical sites to visit, and more. Meanwhile, you can, of course, also pick up a variety of contracts at Hidden Ones Bureaus found throughout the city, with objectives ranging from stealing objects to assassinating targets to escorting NPCs to safety. Each contract also gives various rewards, including Tokens- speaking of which…

TOKENS

In exchange for completing Contracts, Basim is rewarded with Tokens, which can be used to your advantage in a variety of ways to help you accomplish your mission objectives. For instance, tou can also use Tokens to get mercenaries to attack enemies, musicians to play tunes that will distract guards, speakers to speak to agitated crowds and calm them down, and more. Each faction will also be tied to specific Token types, so if, for instance, you don’t have mercenary Tokens, you won’t be able to hire any mercenary groups.

EAGLE VISION

Eagle vision was once a staple of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, but in recent games, has been replaced by an actual eagle that you can take control of to scout out enemies and points of interest. Mirage, interestingly enough, is having its cake and eating it too. Like Bayek, Kassandra, and Eivor, Basim has an eagle that you can take control of while it’s in flight to scout ahead, but at the same time, like old school Assassin’s Creed protagonists, he can also activate Eagle Vision to highlight enemies, hiding places, key objects, and other things of note.

COMBAT

Combat in Assassin’s Creed changed radically with Origins, before which it was very much focused on countering and parrying enemies. And once again, this is an area where Mirage is borrowing elements from both styles. Like Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, combat is still hitbox-based, which means you can, if you want, play it that way. However, with enemies hitting much harder and Basim being much vulnerable to damage, that’s not the ideal approach.

Instead, parrying and countering are returning in Mirage as well. An enemy will start glowing before unleashing an attack, which is your cue to hit the parry button. Time it right, and the enemy will be left completely vulnerable for a short window, during which you can land a killing blow. It’s a cross between the series’ two very different eras of combat styles, and seems to be geared around encouraging stealth rather than out-and-out combat. Which, incidentally, brings us to our next point.

STEALTH

After what feels like ages, stealth is once again central to the experience in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and again, it’s borrowing plenty of elements from the series’ older instalments in this area. Basim has a number of tools at his disposal to aid in stealth. He can use smoke bombs to make is escape, firecrackers to distract guards, whistle to lure them to specific spots, and quietly pick them out from a distance with throwing knives.

Where hiding places are concerned, there’s plenty of options that series fans will find familiar, including rooftop gardens, veiled stalls, patches of bushes and tall grass, and of course, bales of hay. Meanwhile, social stealth is returning as well, with Basim now being able to blend in with crowds by slowly moving through them or sitting on benches occupied by other NPCs. And, of course, as mentioned previously, Basim is able to hire certain groups to help him in various ways as well, from calming agitated crowds to fighting or distracting guards. Oh, and you can also pickpocket people, which is done through a QTE-style minigame.

PARKOUR

Though parkour was once a crucial component of Assassin’s Creed games, recent instalments have seen it become heavily de-emphasized. With Mirage, however, the pendulum is swinging back, which, of course, aligns with the return to an urban cityscape setting. And not only is parkour back in full flow, it’s also looking quite impressive. Basim’s animations look smooth and precise, as he grabs on to crevices and handholds and what have you while clambering up and down structures of all shapes and sizes.

With the renewed importance of parkour, several familiar moves and animations are also returning. In addition to all the typical clambering and leaping you’d expect from an Assassin, the agile and nimble Basim can use lifts to instantly hoist himself up to rooftops, vault over objects, leap through windows and doorways, swing around corners, and more. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for alternative means of traversal, there’s some of that sprinkled in here as well, from stealing camels and other mounts to commandeering barges.

PROGRESSION

Unlike Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, Mirage is not an RPG, which means progression is much more simplified and streamlined, similar to older Assassin’s Creed titles. Not only do you have a much smaller pool of equippable gear, the skill tree has been significantly contracted as well, now encompassing three categories in total- Phantom, tied to your assassination skills, Trickster, tied to your inventory, and Predator, tied to Enkidu, your bird. Unlockable skills range from being able to unlock extra tool slots to increasing Enkidu’s range for tagging enemies to being able to perform chain assassinations.

NOTORIETY

Wantonly breaking the law will have strict consequences in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, in line with older titles in the series, thanks to the reintroduction of a Notoriety system. Committing criminal acts and causing disturbances will see your Notoriety level rising, and the higher it goes, the more difficult it will become for you to move through Baghdad undetected. At the highest Notoriety level, even civilians and random NPCs will be able to recognize you and alert the guards. Of course, there will be several ways to lower your Notoriety level- like tearing down Wanted posters of yourself, something veteran series fans will be very familiar with.

Graphics

If you look at The First Descendent’s Steam page, it becomes quite clear that high-fidelity graphics are supposed to be one of its selling points. Having spent a fair bit of time with the beta shows that this isn’t just a marketing bullet point; The First Descendent is definitely a gorgeous-looking game. Right from the tutorial boss fight in the opening down to the hub town of Albion and even the first real zone you enter—Kingston—The First Descendent manages to show off a variety of different aesthetic styles.

PC Options

It becomes quite clear that no small amount of effort has gone into making The First Descendent a PC game. What I mean by this is that the game offers an almost obscene amount of options for PC players to tinker around with for its graphics. While the beta’s upscaling options were unstable (it was a beta, after all), just about every other option was fantastically optimised. Having tried the game out on two different graphics cards—an AMD Radeon 5600 XT and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti—proved The First Descendent to be surprisingly scalable as well. While I had to turn the graphics options down by quite a few notches while playing on the older Radeon card, the 3060 Ti could handle just about any option I threw at it.

Prologue

The First Descendent has a relatively lengthy prologue that’s supposed to work as a tutorial, and it might just be one of the best tutorial sections in looter shooters out there. Compared to a game like Destiny 2, The First Descendent’s prologue teaches you all of the ins and outs of the core game loop, how you can use your various abilities, how the loot system works, and even how important various aspects of movement can be in a tense firefight.

Gameplay

The core gameplay of The First Descendent is essentially an incredibly fast-paced third-person shooter. You’re given a variety of options in terms of weapons and abilities, and even verticality plays a big part in the game’s various firefights. Key to all of this is the fact that you have a grappling hook allowing you to essentially jump across the game’s zones at incredible speeds. While the grappling hook does have a cooldown—you can’t just spam it non-stop—it does a lot to make the game’s encounters a lot more interesting than just circle-strafing and shooting bosses would have been.

Verticality

Since The First Descendent gives you a grappling hook, the movement, level design and encounter design quickly become some of the most interesting aspects of the game. Since you have effectively limitless options when it comes to gaining altitude within the confines of a single battle arena, the encounter design in the game becomes quite fun knowing that enemies can start coming in from just about anywhere. Also, and I can’t really stress this enough, shooting enemies while grappling around the ledges of various buildings is incredibly fun.

Loot

Possibly the most important aspect of a looter shooter—it’s right in the name—the loot in The First Descendent wasn’t something I was able to test out as much as I would have liked. While it did seem promising, with even the early game offering a good variety of loot not only in terms of the weapons themselves, but also the kind of bonuses I could add on to the weapon through the relatively-complicated runes system. While I did get to play a bit of the endgame, I was basically given a maxed out character and could largely just judge that part of the game on the merits of gameplay alone. The level of theorycrafting that’s bound to pop up once The First Descendent is out is going to be a better signifier of whether there’s a solid enough loot system in the game.

Story

The First Descendent’s story isn’t particularly groundbreaking. Much like many other looter shooters out there, humanity has to fight off a seemingly-alien threat in order to survive. Along the way there are undoubtedly quite a few spanners thrown in the wrench to make things more interesting—an enigmatic character makes herself known quite early on once you get to Kingston—but aside from its blend of sci-fi and fantasy tropes, The First Descendent’s story isn’t going to be blowing minds or setting records for creativity. It is, however, quite serviceable when it comes to giving the player an excuse to shoot down hordes of bad guys.

Characters

Quite possibly one of the weakest aspects of The First Descendent, you don’t really get to make your own character. During the beta, I was allowed to pick from one of three characters, each fulfilling a different aspect of the holy trinity of tank/damage dealer/support. While the studio does plan to support the game with the addition of character skins and other forms of customisation, the fact that it’s never truly *your* character might be a let down to some. Unfortunately, despite having you pick a bespoke character, you don’t really get much in the way of personality out of them aside from a little bit they get to show off in the opening cutscene for the prologue. The characters are hopefully more fleshed out later in the game’s story, but from having played only the beta, they felt like little more than a superficial way to distinguish between different abilities.

Endgame

To try out the endgame, I was given access to maxed out characters so that I could take part in Void Intercept Battles. The variety of these battles was quite interesting, and the co-op gameplay was a lot of fun. Given the right difficulty tuning, I could see myself logging into The First Descendent just to have a couple of runs of the Void Intercept Battles. The tuning is something I can’t comment too much on, however, since game balance often isn’t the highest priority for developers. It was also good to see that Void Intercept Battles offered matchmaking. While relatively difficult, these battles weren’t too complicated, and I could see The First Descendent having something along the lines of Destiny 2‘s raids in the full release.

Localisation

If it weren’t obvious by the fact that Nexon is developing and publishing The First Descendent, and the fact that the game’s aesthetics are right out of a South Korean-developed game, The First Descendent is clearly made with a South Korean audience in mind. And while there’s still a lot of work left to be done in terms of localisation, the beta was surprisingly well-polished. Aside from one relatively minor instance of seeing Korean text suddenly pop up on my objective list, just about everything from the writing to the voice acting was well done. Aside from minor translating errors in the UI—again, these things happen in betas—The First Descendent looks to be in pretty good shape for its launch.

Hunting Monsters

First and foremost, Wild Hearts is a monster hunting game. While there are a few other games in the genre, it has largely been dominated by Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise, and with good reason. Wild Hearts, however, looks to offer an alternative with all the right ingredients. It has the same core game loop as Monster Hunter, while sprinkling in its own ideas here and there to make it a completely unique experience.

At no point does Wild Hearts feel like a poor rip-off of Monster Hunter. Rather, owing to the strong execution of its own ideas, Wild Hearts definitely feels like its own take on the genre. From what we were able to play, its monsters—dubbed Kemono—are wonderfully designed, each one using attacks that would make sense for monsters of their kind to use.

While I do wish Wild Hearts made more of an earnest effort in explaining how its ecology works—one of the low key most interesting things about the Monster Hunter franchise—it’s quite likely that the preview build was limited in what it could show off and we’ll see things better explained in the full game.

The Weapons

One of the more interesting ways that Wild Hearts sets itself apart from its contemporaries is the choice of weapons it offers. Alongside standard options like a katana, a bow, or a nodachi, Wild Hearts also offers some weirder options, like an umbrella that acts as a weapon focused on aerial attacks. In true genre fashion, each weapon feels unique enough for the player’s choice of gear to have a meaningful impact on their playstyle.

When it comes to their movesets, all of the weapons feature extensive options for combos and engagement. Attack animations also tend to flow off each other quite seamlessly, allowing for interesting combos to happen. Where the standard katana focuses quite a bit on fast ground-based attacks, the umbrella instead focuses on fast-hitting aerial attacks, allowing you to take to the air at the press of a button and perform a variety of moves, including repositioning, without touching the ground for a fair amount of time.

All of this works quite closely with the game’s most unique hook…

How Building Sets it Apart

Building things in the middle of hunts is a big deal in Wild Hearts. Players can, at the press of a button, put down a wooden block to jump off, or a spring to quickly dash in a different direction. These small structures, dubbed Karakuri, are closely tied to how the Kemono in Wild Hearts are designed. Staggering a monster with your regular attacks, for example, is a great time to build a 3-blocks tall tower to jump off and land a massive blow.

Unlocking new patterns for your Karakuri is also an important form of progression. Having fought a couple of Kemono leading up to the preview build’s final hunt, I was able to unlock the Bulwark pattern, which is created by placing two columns of blocks that are three blocks tall. The Bulwark pattern creates a small wall in front of you, allowing you to catch your breath and pushes back any monster that might do a charge attack in the meantime.

Alongside building things in the middle of fights, you also build new Karakuri as a form of progression. To upgrade your weapons and armour, for example, you’ll have to build a forge. Interested in going out on a quick adventure and maybe hunt a Kemono along the way? Building a Tower will make tracking Kemono down much easier. How about improving the ingredients you have to make your next meal offer better buffs? Better build a drying rack to season all your meats and mushrooms.

In a way, the Karakuri system quite cleverly blends in elements of survival games with those of the typical monster hunting game.

Crafting

We can’t forget about the primary form of progression in the monster hunting genre—the crafting. As you’d expect, you can collect parts from the Kemono you’ve hunted to create better equipment. The preview build allowed me to hunt three Kemono, offering a total of four different armour sets. There isn’t much new here to comment on—if you’ve played a Monster Hunter game before, you won’t find anything different here.

If you haven’t played a Monster Hunter game before, here’s the quick explanation. You use the parts you get from hunting monsters, or Kemono in Wild Hearts, to forge new armour pieces. Each piece of armour offers a new skill, and different pieces from the same armour set often tend to give you skills that work well together.

The Focus on Story

While I wasn’t able to experience enough of the story in Wild Hearts to be able to judge the quality of its writing, I can safely say that the game focuses much more on its story than its contemporaries in the genre. The early storyline in the preview build largely revolved around a couple of survivors and figuring out how to get to a settlement.

While the focus on its story made for a relatively sluggish start constantly interrupted by conversations and cutscenes, the best thing I can say about it is that it does well to teach you its various gameplay mechanics. Concepts like the Hunters, the Kemono, and Karakuri are given interesting explanations in Wild Hearts, and by the end of the preview build’s story, I was quite interested in seeing where the plot would go next.

The Open World

Wild Hearts features what is described by its developers as a semi-open world. The preview build let me roam around to my heart’s content in its opening zones, and despite its relatively small size, it was a lot of fun to explore. The opening areas featured a surprising level of variety in its various biomes, and exploration always felt rewarding thanks to the fact that you’ll always find something, be it materials for crafting, ingredients for cooking, or even the Tsukumo—small mechanical things that follow you around and fight alongside you.

The open world also works quite well with the Karakuri system, since you also unlock buildings like a zipline that help you traverse through the deceptively-dense world. The zipline in particular was a lot of fun to set up and use, and was reminiscent of Death Stranding where you could build entire networks of ziplines to help you get around faster.

How Good it Looks

Wild Hearts is a good looking game. It makes brilliant use of a bright colour palette, evoking the ancient Japanese aesthetics that Koei Tecmo were going for. While it won’t be winning any rewards for its fidelity, the art direction does more than its fair share to help make Wild Hearts look good and unique. The open world looks great, and it never gets in the way of gameplay, since things you can and can’t traverse are quite clearly marked with good art direction.

The Kemono themselves also have interesting designs, with the studio opting to go for themes where flora and fauna come together in the monster designs. The Kingtusk, for example, looks like a giant boar wrapped around with vines, shrubs, and flowers. This also made it clear that the Kingtusk will have attacks that will make use of the vines.

While it looks great, however, things weren’t exactly perfect. I faced quite a few performance issues while playing Wild Hearts, and it struggled to keep a stable frame rate. It’s quite likely that the early build I was playing hadn’t been optimised yet, and I hope that when it’s out, Wild Hearts will run at a smooth frame rate. Despite the performance issues, however, I couldn’t really stop playing Wild Hearts just because of how fun and well-made it otherwise is, and there are few better ways to praise a game if you ask me.

We got to spend a couple of hours with the PC version of The Quarry. While the preview build we got to play was far from the full release, we did get to play just enough to understand the gist of the game and form a few opinions. Without further ado, here are our 10 biggest takeaways from spending a couple of hours with The Quarry.

Atmosphere

The first thing that The Quarry hits you with is its atmosphere. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of horror games with the same general premise, but some of the scariest parts of The Quarry were the quiet moments where you’re doing little more than walking around in a dark forest, or just looking for some towels in an old fishing hut. The Quarry does a phenomenal job of setting up the atmosphere, and the build up of tension leading up to its ultimate release is great.

Voice Acting

A lot of the characters’ humanity comes down to strong acting chops thanks to a phenomenal cast of actors. Featuring characters played by Ariel Winter, Justice Smith, and even David Arquette, the actors do a great job in nailing the facial expressions and voice acting that’s needed for a situation as tense as The Quarry presents. Even the quieter moments, like before things start getting really bad for our cast of camp counsellors, the actors do a great job in making you truly feel like these characters aren’t just a random group of strangers thrown together in a tense situation.

Amazing Facial Animations

Since its work on Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures Anthology, Supermassive Games has gotten insanely good at nailing facial animations and expressions, and the studio doesn’t disappoint on that front with The Quarry. Since a lot of the game is just characters talking with each other, it’s important that the situation is accurately captured in their reactions, and The Quarry definitely delivers on that front. From the smallest facial tics to the biggest expressions of exasperation, The Quarry’s cast of characters is really good at emoting.

Characters Feel Human

With great facial animations and voice acting, the two aspects combine to present a cast of characters that feel truly human. Be it their interactions around the crackling fires of a campsite while they’re simply playing truth or dare, or just a goofy contest for who gets peanut butter-based snacks, the camp counsellors come off as a fun group of people to be around. And once things start going truly wrong, their reactions—guided by the player—come off as some of the most realistic reactions one would expect. Where some characters would be calm and collected, others will start letting their adrenaline take over, making costly mistakes in the process.

Old-School Horror

The Quarry wears its influences on its sleeves, and the biggest influence seems to be classic slasher movies. Even the graphics options page gives you options for styles of horror films to visually emulate: indie horror, 80’s horror, and black-and-white classic horror. The writing takes this much further with a classic premise of youngsters being trapped in a mysterious forest while spooky things happen around them. Everything, from the setting, to the cast of characters, to even the horror elements, feels like it was inspired heavily by classic horror movies. Of course, the fact that the entirety of the game can be watched as if it were a movie from the Movie Mode certainly helps.

Smaller Scope, Gripping Story

The important thing to note about The Quarry is that it feels like the studio is going back to its roots with this one. Since its focus on the Dark Pictures Anthology, it has been a while since Supermassive Games told a more focused, concise story, and to that end, The Quarry feels like it’s closer to Until Dawn in scope and execution. Rather than jumping through various timelines like in Man of Medan, The Quarry wants to keep you in a single location and get really familiar with the setting. It wants you to get attached to the cast of characters, so that every mistake has weight and meaning. It wants you to feel the horror and pain the characters go through.

Well-Paced

While we only got to play a couple of the early chapters in The Quarry, the pacing was definitely not lacking. With a slow start, you get to know the protagonists. You get to see them bond over a fire at their camp site. You get to see some of their insecurities, their strengths, and a lot of their personalities. Most importantly, you’re constantly switching between characters, letting you experience the story through every character’s point of view on a regular basis. Once things start going wrong, you get to play through the same time frame with different characters. The Quarry’s pacing is great, at least early on in the game, and it doesn’t take too long for the horror to start.

Big Departure from Dark Pictures Anthology

The fact that The Quarry isn’t a part of the Dark Pictures Anthology actually does the game a huge service. Since it doesn’t have to worry about all the plot and baggage from Man of Medan or Little Hope, the scope can be narrower. The smaller scope works excellently for the type of story that The Quarry is trying to tell. Not everything has to be about a long-dead ancient evil and conspiracies, after all.

Paths Chosen

One of Supermassive Games’ greatest strengths has been the studio’s ability to make choices matter to a larger degree than most other games. If you’re familiar with the studio’s earlier works, you’ll be happy to know that The Quarry continues the same grand tradition. For those who don’t know, smaller choices in The Quarry will end up to some of the bigger choices mattering even more. Characters strengthen and strain their relationship with each other, depending on player choices, and by the end of the game, there isn’t even any real guarantee of who, if any, of the cast of characters will survive.

Awesome Setting

Hackett’s Quarry is one of the more interesting settings in a recent horror games. While nowhere nearly as insane as some other games, there’s a certain level of ‘real-ness’ to The Quarry’s setting that helps set it apart. The game will have players explore all over the place, and ultimately, get used to the titular quarry. Since it’s a horror game, when things inevitably start going wrong, Hackett’s Quarry becomes alien in a way that exemplifies the game’s horror elements. Just as easily as you’ll comfortably explore every nook and cranny of the fishing hut, you’ll be twitching at every extra footstep you hear, and you’ll be jumping at leaves blowing in the wind.

Great Use of an Expansive Roster

The tonal disparity between Batman and Bugs Bunny might seem insurmountable for a mash up fighting game to make any sense of, but Player First Games has, through a consistent artstyle that nicely accommodates everyone, and smart use of their various personalities, made it all work. Despite a wildly diverse set of characters like Jake the Dog and Arya from Game of Thrones, each character is somehow able to shine in their own way, honoring the world’s they’re from while still defining this new one together. It really is a sight to behold seeing Taz fling Wonder Woman across the stage with his trademark tornado while Bugs Bunny and Harley Quinn see whose giant mallet will reign supreme. It’s completely ridiculous, yet still ends up one of the most compelling new fighting game rosters to emerge from the genre in some time.

These fights and the characters that populate them are greatly enhanced by the appropriately recognizable music arrangements and authentic voice actors, most if not all of which seem to be the talent known for portraying these characters today. Hearing Kevin Conroy’s iconic Batman voice sling those foreboding one-liners while Tom’s priceless screaming rings out as he’s batted off the stage to his death is guaranteed to put a smile on absolutely anyone’s face. Some of those audio samples are oddly over amplified for some reason and can sound a bit distorted as a result, but I can’t imagine that not getting fixed before the games official release.

A Familiar Combat System

Given how immediately familiar the game feels to play, the combat system has instant appeal. MultiVersus does pull the genre into a new direction just enough with its own twists like an emphasis on carefully timed dodges instead of blocking and more teamwork-centric abilities like shared perks that buff your teammate and different classes for the characters that complement each other in interesting ways. So far, I’m not often seeing these complimentary tactics used to the extent they are probably designed to be, as each person just doing their own thing seems to be about as effective as anything else, but the ability to create a tactical synergy together is a nice layer of potential depth nonetheless.

As you might expect, the combat itself is snappy, and is surprisingly well-balanced despite a few attacks – like Taz’s tornado – feeling a little OP. A team of two Taz players who know this are basically unstoppable. But the game does give you a fair chance to redeem yourself as rematches can be done as long as everyone agrees to it up until the best of three matches is determined. So, while it does functionally cling to the core tenants of the genre quite a bit, it does successfully ripen some of them at the same time with pretty consistently positive results.

Compelling Progression and Unlockables

It’s certainly true that some of the inner-workings of the game are being held back. Still yet, the systems we do see here are compelling and fun. There is a separate experience path for each character that awards perks, emotes, and alternate skins for them as you play them, as well as an overall experience bar that awards coins that can be spent to unlock characters. Plus, additional side goals to chip away at across all characters and modes that also result in rewards.

Long sessions with the game have stayed consistently engaging for me as I always seem to be getting something new from perks, costume variants, and/or enough money to bag a new character. Obviously, this will slow down as more and more of the game is unlocked, but with the variety provided in the matches themselves and all of the options within lobby settings as well as a surprisingly customizable UI, there’s clearly more than enough to keep players going long after they’ve maxed out their preferred fighters.

4 Main Modes

Each of your progression metrics can be contributed to consecutively as you play across the games 1v1, 2v2, PvE and free for all modes. The 2v2 is the star of the show though as it seems to integrate MuliVersus’ core ideas best with more characters on screen and more opportunities to work together. That teamwork is lost in the 1v1 mode, but that still creates its own sort of tension with nothing to fall back on but your own skills – or lack thereof.  The co-op mode where you play against the AI wasn’t available when I was playing it, so the jury is still out on that.

Thankfully connectivity seems to be working well as I only found myself getting disconnected a couple of times throughout my multiple several-hour sessions. The only thing I’d like to see added to the experience is perhaps a more experimental mode that incentivizes that teamwork a bit more, as this could easily wind up being the game’s defining characteristic long-term. But as it is, the three main competitive modes as well as the PvE co-op mode feel like a fair amount of content for a game that costs exactly zero dollars to play.

A Free-to-Play Format

Under the hood we have a very similar format to most free to play games. Characters, perks, and cosmetics are unlockable with enough playtime, but with them being organized into different rarities, micro transactions will certainly play some role in the final version. Player First Games has said that they don’t want to monetize it to the point of it being pay-to-win, but with the monetization not currently being live, we can’t confirm or deny that beyond what they’ve said. Until we can, I sincerely hope Warner Brothers and Player First learn from the successes and failures of recent history and tread lightly in this regard.

All in all, it does appear that MultiVerses is unquestionably on track to be the most meaningful iteration of this genre to date. With a delightfully eclectic-yet synergistic roster of characters in a surprisingly fruitful marriage of platform fighting and free-to-play progression systems, Warner Brothers is definitely on to something special here. Provided the inevitable integration of the game’s monetization stays out of the magic’s way, I can easily see a dedicated community embracing MultiVerses right away, so hopefully Player First Games and Warner Bros are prepared to return the favor with the mindful long-term support it will need to truly go the distance.

5v5 is…

Fast-paced. Kind of messy. Incredibly fun when you get a pick and begin the snowball. Kind of a lost cause when you get picked and are snowballed. It has resulted in quick games, one where each team member’s importance is amplified beyond the original game. However, it’s also created a scenario where most Tanks are super-powerful and can not die, both due to their kits and their Supports.

This has led to a strategy where you’re better off ignoring the Tank, killing the Supports first and then mopping up everyone else, though obviously you’ll need coordination with your teammates. Some feel that the game has become much more FPS-heavy, which isn’t too far off in some instances.

Overall, 5v5 didn’t seem like an earth-shattering change at first but it’s clearly shifted the flow of the game. Playing as a Tank definitely allows for impacting the game more yet the amount of responsibility is higher – you can’t just leave your team and go on random flanks any more, Roadhog. Overall though, making comebacks when you’re a player down is much more difficult in Overwatch 2.

Maps

This probably won’t surprise you but 5v5 also feels incredibly weird on the old maps. Watchpoint Gibraltar, Lijiang Tower, Dorado and Ilios – which now have differing times of days to give them some useless spice – are pretty much the same as in Overwatch 1. However, the fights can be shorter or longer depending on how fundamentally your team understands their roles (along with the order they get picked). You may still get the pitched fights at Point B of Dorado and Gibraltar  but teams seem to cruise through more often than not.

By comparison, the new maps like Midtown, Circuit Royal, New Queen Street and Colosseo feel much more attuned for 5v5. They possess more flanking routes along with notable high-ground positions (which can be assailed in different ways). New Queen Street’s metro rail car and streets in Point A along with its overpass and construction in Point B offer their own unique ways to set up as well. Circuit Royal, Midtown and Colosseo are more symmetrical as a whole, which makes sense for the latter two as they’re built with the new mode Push in mind.

Push

Push is a good idea in theory, as each team gathers around a robot that must be accompanied to different points on the map. The team that reaches the final checkpoint, or which makes the most amount of progress, wins. The problem lies in the 5v5 set-up, which makes it tougher to turn fights around when you’re down a player, and the nature of the mode. Once a team has captured the first point, they unlock a spawn room closer to it.

This leads to instances where players won’t push the robot any further and instead use their spawn advantage to bunker down close to it. It’s a fairly snowball-heavy mode as is, especially in maps like Colosseo which are smaller, and it’s hard to really pinpoint a solution beyond increasing respawn times based on the opposing team’s proximity to the robot. As a replacement for Assault, it’s not terrible but definitely needs some tweaks.

Balance

A lot of discussion has been had on balance, which is understandable given some of the more abhorrent metas that emerged in Overwatch’s life-cycle – Moth meta, Goats, Double Shield, so on and so forth – and how long it took to address them. Blizzard has released balance updates for existing heroes in the Overwatch 2 beta at a relatively quick pace. For example, Soldier 76 was dubbed a little too strong and saw some nerfs to damage (though Tactical Visor got buffed so make of that what you will).

Zenyatta received some enhancements to his melee that provided knockback and increased damage – essentially a Lucio boop but with no cooldown. Sojourn feels a little more intuitive now – the increase to railgun shot size aids her style, even if her overall kit is simply “fine.” It’s not the big shake-up to the meta that Echo or Sigma provided but it’s early days yet. For all of her interesting tricks, it’s funny that Soldier 76 (who’s been present since the first game’s launch) is much more viable.

There’s plenty to be said about other heroes like Cassidy with his sticky bomb, Widowmaker with her 200 HP, Mei with her primary fire not freezing any more and so on and so forth but this is one aspect of the beta that I’ll cut them some slack. Things can and will change, as evidenced by impressions of Bastion being overpowered during the closed alpha. Currently, some maps lend themselves better to certain heroes – Widow on long-range, for example – but it’s safe to play your standard Soldier 76, Ana, Zenyatta/Lucio, Winston/Doomfist and Genji/Tracer for a good number of them. Rejoice, dive players. Weep, Pharah mains.

Reworks

One thing I can begrudge, however, are some of the reworks. Numbers and tweaking will determine how good Sombra and Bastion truly end up being. The latter does offer a more aggressive play-style thanks to a moving Sentry form and intriguing Ultimate, though it’s occasionally better suited to Escort. On the whole, however, Soldier 76 offers way more value even after the nerfs and can heal himself along with surrounding players.

Sombra is…still sort of Sombra just with Hack no longer canceling invisibility and EMP dealing some damage. It’s kind of a mixed bag and not having a front-lining damage dealer or a flanker that can execute those quick kills like Genji, Tracer or even Echo is tough, especially with only one Tank.

As for Orisa, she’s admittedly a lot more fun than her Overwatch 1 incarnation. Nailing fools with Javelins and rushing forward, destroying any projectiles while pushing them back with a spinning Javelin, is fun. I’m not the biggest fan of her damage reduction, especially in this current meta where ignoring the Tank and slaying the supports first seems to be key. But her play-style is a lot more engaging as opposed to the Overwatch 1 incarnation of simply huddling behind a shield.

As for Doomfist, he’s retained some mobility options while being much more tanky (due to being in the Tank role now). It’s an interesting rework but this still a character that is super-annoying to deal with when competent players are controlling him and an outright chore when incompetent players (like myself) try to figure out his style. Not the worst change but also just odd as a whole.

Otherwise, when it comes to the likes of Reinhardt and Winston, they’re still very good especially with the addition of two Firestrikes and charge cancelling for the former while the latter gets a charged railgun of his own. Tank-wise, though Zarya didn’t receive an extensive rework (she can now use two self-bubbles or two projected bubbles in a row). Nevertheless, she can still output tons of damage while supporting aggressive plays and Graviton Surge is still good for combo plays.

The Support Debate

Supports are in a somewhat weird spot. Thanks to no second tank to peel for them, it becomes harder to survive especially with DPS heroes receiving improved movement speed. However, they also have passive health regen, resulting in heroes like Lucio (and Mercy, if you’re skilled enough) being nigh-unkillable at times. Ana is also now more capable than ever of dueling with flankers, as is Zenyatta after his recent buff. If you have to deal with two Support heroes healing each other, then it can be tough at times.

But there’s no denying that disposing of the Supports before killing the Tank can result in a lot more pressure on the former. Simply sitting and heal-botting, even as Mercy and Lucio, isn’t the best strategy any more. Positioning is more important than ever and you’re pushed to perform.

As for other supports, Baptiste remains more or less the same though the lack of any real bunker comps makes him less viable. Brigitte can be situational – Rally is still strong but now provides temporary health instead of armor. Her Shield Bash no longer stuns but has increased distance and lower cooldown, making it easier to reposition. Her Whip Shot also feels quicker and deals decent damage. The days of DPS Moira are more or less back with Fade providing tons of mobility. It’s not the best play-style but it still works out.

Voice-Acting and Interactions

I know, I know – it’s a beta so the full story and final set of dialogues hasn’t been implemented. That being said, something has changed about the voice-acting in Overwatch 2. While Tracer previously sounded peppy and hyper-active, she seems almost comically so here. Soldier 76 keeps referencing locations that matches remind him of (seemingly teasing maps that may or may not be in the final game) while somehow being more gruff. Orisa sounds much less amicable and much more vengeful, which is a big contrast to her more gentle demeanor in the first game.

The interactions also leave a bit to be desired – while not fully implemented across the board, the exchanges between Lucio and D.Va felt artificial (when the objective is for them to be playful). File this under the “didn’t ask, don’t care” category of impressions but hopefully things are smoothed out in the future.

Ping System

Throughout my time with the closed beta, not many players really employed the Ping System. Yes, it’s useful for pointing out threats for the team to focus on. But it also generally doesn’t have as wide of an application as maps in Overwatch 2 are smaller. It can somewhat help to spot flankers and Ulting players though you’ll likely be dead by the time the rest of the team is aware. For the most part, however, positioning and being mindful of your healers is more important than simply pinging every random threat.

Going Forward

In summary, there are those who will dislike the changes – and overall state of the game – and those who will disagree, though both sides can admit that improvements are needed. You can blame messaging and whatnot since Overwatch 2’s main component has been marketed as PvE yet we have no access to it currently. The series has also been built off the back of a PvP-centric community so for many, PvP is all that matters.

Even with the changes though, it’s still the same Role Queue (with Open Queue added as an option recently), still the same annoyingly long queues for DPS players, still the same problems with coordination, still the same debates of skill floors vs. skill ceilings and whatnot. For those who first got into and enjoyed the original game, it was about having fun, first and foremost. Some of that is still there but the sequel exists in this weird state of being a more competitive title versus going completely nuts with its ideas.

I don’t know what the answer is and honestly, it’s too early to say how Blizzard will add on to the current structure. Even the Overwatch 1 beta was a far different beast than what we ended up with at launch. I can sympathize with those who don’t want to see a new structure but continued support and new content for the current game instead (especially since many of these changes will be coming to the first game). Regardless, whether it’s struggling to appeal to those who fell out with the series or hardcore fans, Overwatch 2’s PvP has a long ways to go yet.

IT’S NOT HORROR

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat- Tango Gameworks has, until now, been known as a survival horror specialist studio, as the developer of the Evil Within games. For a while, however, the developer has insisted that Ghostwire: Tokyo is not going to be a horror game, and that is very much something you should keep in mind as you head into it. There’s definitely some spooky stuff going on in Tokyo, and Ghostwire can often make your skin crawl with some strong horror-esque tones, but by and large, this is very much focused on action and open world exploration.

KK AND AKITO

There isn’t much I can say about Ghostwire: Tokyo’s story, on account of wanting to avoid spoilers, but the thing that has stood out to me so far that I can talk about is the dynamic between KK and Akito, the two main characters of the story. Akito is the protagonist, a human stuck in a Tokyo that’s been engulfed in a fog that’s making people vanish, and KK, the lingering spirit of a dead detective, decides to make himself at home in Akito’s body. Their relationship and interactions early on in the game are tense, and at times even hostile, but circumstances bring them together and they begrudgingly accept that they need each other’s help to accomplish their own personal goals. That change in dynamic has, until now, led to some fun interactions and quick banter between the two characters, often even during the course of gameplay at some innocuous little moments you wouldn’t expect, and I’m certainly excited to see how that bond develops.

OPEN WORLD STRUCTURE

After having experimented with semi-open world sections in The Evil Within 2, Tango Gameworks has gone for a full-fledged open world structure in Ghostwire: Tokyo. Soon after you get past chapter 1, the open world of Shibuya becomes available to you- though not all of it at once. Ghostwire takes the concept of fog of war almost literally- the city is engulfed in a strange fog, and the moment you enter it, you begin taking damage. Stay in it for too long, and you’re dead. That fog acts as a wall that sequesters you into a small portion of the open world map, that you can then expand by cleansing torii gates scattered throughout the city, making more of it available to explore. While the restricted nature of the open world might disappoint some, it does create a consistent forward momentum, while you also get the opportunity to clear off larger sections of the map as you play more.

EXPLORATION

So what exactly is exploration in Ghostwire: Tokyo like? Well, based on chapter 2, the movement is actually pretty basic- you can run and jump and crouch, though the game’s making use of that limited movement in interesting ways. The world of Ghostwire: Tokyo is surprisingly vertical- though I guess that makes sense, given that it’s set in Tokyo. There’s a lot of tall buildings that you can climb up to get to the rooftops, and these rooftops feel like an entirely separate layer on top of the open world map. There are also flying tengu spirits scattered across the world that you can grapple to to get straight to higher points. So far, moving through the open world of Ghostwire: Tokyo has felt rather unique in how freely it’s allowing me to alternate between exploring the streets while weaving in and out of alleys and jumping across rooftops and climbing to vantage points. The game also gives you a glide ability, which allows you to glide after jumping for a few brief seconds, making traversal across rooftops even more viable. So far, I’ve found the glide itself a little too floaty, but while I’m not a huge fan of how it feels, I’m hoping making progress in the skill trees will allow me to unlock improvements.

SPIRITS

Spirits are, in a way, the main impetus for exploring the world of Ghostwire: Tokyo, and have almost just as big of a role to play in the game’s progression mechanics. While Akito, thanks to KK, has managed to survive the effects of the fog blanketing Tokyo, pretty much every other person in the city has vanished. Scattered throughout the open world, you’ll find spirits that you can absorb using katashiros, after which you can send them outside the city using payphones to help restore them to their bodies. There’s thousands of spirits scattered throughout the game- and I mean thousands. As I explored a decent chunk of the map throughout chapter 2 of Ghostwire: Tokyo, the game told me that there were over 240,000 spirits in total to collect. Explore the city and you’ll find them scattered about the rooftops, hidden in back-alleys and corners, or being attacked by enemies, while completing quests and side quests rewards you with more spirits as well. Every time you free spirits using a payphone, you’re rewarded with meika, which you can spend at vendors, and XP, which helps unlock more skill points. Smartly, Ghostwire: Tokyo allows you to expand your pool of katashiro as well – you can purchase more of them from vendors, or get them from cleared torii gates – which means you can explore for longer periods and gather a larger pool of spirits before having to return to a payphone to free up your katashiros.

SIDE ACTIVITIES

Beyond hunting for spirits and jumping across rooftops, Ghostwire: Tokyo’s chapter 2 offered me a decent selection of optional content. There are side quests, as you’d expect, and their quality so far has varied. Some have been quite interesting, offering unique stories or focusing on interesting ideas or mechanics, though a couple so far have been fairly straightforward and largely forgettable. It’s definitely a net positive, and I’m tempted to track down every side quest that becomes available (and there’s been a decent number of them until now), even if nothing’s blown me away. Meanwhile, you can find collectibles, some of which can be sold at certain shops; you can clear areas of corruption throughout the city, which rewards you with larger clusters of spirits; and you can find and pet animals, and even read their thoughts. Meanwhile, finding new torii gates to make more of the map available is also something that I have enjoyed doing in the time that I’ve spent exploring the open world. Obviously, none of that is ground-breaking by any means, but though Ghostwire: Tokyo’s open world is quite formulaic, it’s still fun to explore and move through- until now, at least, and I sure hope that keeps up.

PROGRESSION

Like pretty much every other open world action-adventure game these days, Ghostwire: Tokyo incorporates light RPG mechanics for its progression system. Collecting spirits and completing quests rewards you with XP, which, in turn, increases your Synergy Level. Every time you level up, you get skill points that you can use to unlock skills and abilities across different trees. Certain, more powerful upgrades, meanwhile, need to be unlocked using Magatama, which is a pretty rare resource. Meanwhile, there’s meika to earn by exploring the world and completing quests and side quests, which is then used to purchase various items and consumables from yokai vendors scattered across the map. Speaking of consumables- while the most immediate purpose of consuming food in Ghostwire: Tokyo is to restore health, interestingly enough, every time you do that, your max HP also goes up a little, which is a unique twist to the healing mechanic. Meanwhile, a certain variant of consumables known as spectral food can provide other perks when consumed as well, such as increasing your damage, or increasing your perfect parry window.

COMBAT

Combat in Ghostwire: Tokyo has been a big mystery in the lead-up to launch, but after five hours with the game, I’ve found it fairly straightforward. Your main weapon is Weaving, which is basically magic that comes in several elemental variants, like wind or fire. A bulk of what I’ve played so far was spent with wind very much being my primary weapon- and it essentially functions as a gun, if we’re talking purely about the mechanics. You aim and shoot projectiles, and your pool of ammo depletes with each shot, though you can restore it by pulling cores out of enemies or destroying certain corrupted items floating in the world. It’s fun, but I feel like the moment-to-moment gameplay is, at its core, just a shooter that replaces guns with magic. Of course, as I learn new abilities and unlock more elements for Weaving, there’s every chance that combat will become more nuanced, so I’m hoping it’s the kind of system that seems straightforward at first, but opens up as I get further in the game. So far, there’s been plenty of enemy variety as well, from both a visual perspective and in terms of how they function in combat, so hopefully the game will keep introducing more new freaks and monstrosities as I progress further into it. Meanwhile, there are some rudimentary stealth mechanics that haven’t really made much of an impression so far, though the addition of a bow presents an interesting alternative for some short moments. Finally, melee combat has been inconsistent until now- while blocking in the right window to get a perfect parry feels satisfying, having to click the right stick to do a melee attack feels clunky.

This is of course not to say that The Anacrusis doesn’t have a few things going for it, nor is it to say that it can’t be fun at times. There’s a reason that so many games are still emulating the Left 4 Dead formula; it works. Even the worst iterations of it from the past few years can still deliver some enjoyable sessions – especially if you’re teaming up with your buddies. Anacrusis, thankfully, steers clear from that lower end of the spectrum though. With a fun late-’60’s to mid-70’s sci-fi aesthetic, a simple, instantly understandable UI, and gameplay that mostly functions as intended, Anacrusis checks a lot of the basic boxes that a game like this needs to ensure a successful trip across the universe.

As groovy as the aesthetic may be, and as often as I found myself reveling in the litany of design cues that were so expertly borrowed from Buck Rogers, Logan’s Run, and early Star Trek, I couldn’t help wishing that they had leaned into to it a bit more. The character’s designs fit the bill, but basically none of their personalities reflect anything proprietary to the setting. You could plop them into any other game like this and it would work about the same. Same goes for the lifeless mission structures and generic enemy types. There’s really nothing that stands out with any of the objectives throughout the game’s handful of missions – as if the developers gave up on being original before they even began crafting them. This isn’t helped by the levels not being particularly good at illustrating where you’re supposed to go next, and the fact that the AI for your teammates isn’t very good. Good luck trying to get past some of the game’s moments that require multiple players to press a button at the same time with a team of NPCs. Sometimes they cooperate, and sometimes they don’t.

While the enemies are slightly better than that, you’ll still see familiar types that you’ve already seen in countless other cooperative squad shooters for the last decade plus; a few variants of basic grunts, a small selection of heavies that temporarily incapacitate you and of course the brutes that bludgeon everyone in their path while absorbing gunfire like a D7 class Klingon starship. The only enemy that seemed like it was designed with any real originality is the flasher that calls in more aliens to your location while radiating a blinding light – making it hard to tell what’s what and potentially causing a lot of confusion with your team.

Moments with flashers can be pretty tense, as they mix up the battle nicely, but of course once you find and kill them, it’s back to blasting away at the comparatively less-imaginative alien assailants. I will give praise to the game’s weapons, though. It’s a relatively small arsenal for a $30 game, but the weapons do feel like they belong here. The pastel accents on the guns themselves, understated-but-fun sound effects, and playful color palettes of their gunfire all keep them serviceably fun to use in most situations. I never felt pigeon-holed into exclusively using any one weapon or like I had to avoid any one of them either.

Functionally, there isn’t anything particularly crazy here, with a basic pistol, the SMB submachine gun, shotgun-esque blaster, and the higher-range plasma rifle all filling the roles that those sorts of guns usually do in shooters. But the special weapons – that can only be found in the levels and cannot be replenished – are a different story. The auto-turret, laser rifle and arc rifle are where the most fun lies. The arc rifle in particular had me grinning with demented glee more often that it should have as I electrocuted entire rooms of enemies in just a few seconds. The different grenade types and occasional perks afforded to you from the game’s many “matter compilers” also add a bit of depth, but not much. Had the game leaned into its chosen aesthetic a bit more on the mission structure, character design, and enemy type fronts, it perhaps might have led them to more unique ideas that would’ve felt more proprietary to its setting like it did for the weapons, but as it is, despite the cool weapons, The Anacrusis too often abandons its own potential for most of what lies beneath its candy coating.

Functionally, my experience with the game has been mostly acceptable. While I have rarely managed to get a full team of actual human players, the games I did play in were reliable enough. I rarely experienced any major network issues or crashing. The frame-rate does dip a bit more than I would like though, and rarely holds on to full 60 for very long regardless of where I set the graphics settings, I suppose that’s about on-par with most of these sorts of games – especially at launch, but it’s still disappointing to see. I wouldn’t be surprised if that got smoothed over soon considering the somewhat simplistic art-style and lack of super-demanding effects, but I can’t give credit for improvements that haven’t happened yet.

Still, major dips in performance were generally rare for me. Outside of the aforementioned low-IQ AI, The Anacrusis does seem to have the fundamentals in place for a functional experience if nothing else. The main thing I would like to see added outside of better optimization is a lobby selection screen so I wouldn’t have to rely on the game’s match making. I do appreciate the AFK mode you can use to temporarily let an NPC fill in for you so nobody has to hold the rest of their team up, but things like that only count for so much if people aren’t playing the game.

Therein lies the biggest crime The Anacrusis commits. It’s a serviceably reliable, occasionally interesting, aesthetically funky trip down a woefully generic road of gameplay ideas. It’s true that any one of these types of games is always theoretically one revolutionary update away from being a massively improved experience, but with a game that mostly gives up on its own originality so quickly on everything beyond its surface, it’s hard to see a world in which The Anacrusis manages to cut through its contemporaries in any meaningful way.

I can absolutely see the art style and general simplicity being the main reasons for some players to choose it over other games, and I wouldn’t blame them for doing so as you could certainly do worse in the genre. But most players who have been around the cooperative squad shooter block a few times will likely be left wanting in too many areas for this to be particularly recommendable. It does a good enough job imitating the genre’s forefathers and sprinkles in just enough originality to be a decent game, but with too much of that originality living on the superficial side of the experience, and underwhelming performance also nipping at the fun, The Anacrusis is unavoidably unremarkable. It’s still in early access so I hope they can build itself in the coming months.

This game was previewed in early access on PC.