In many ways, Cost of Hope feels like a love letter to fans of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy. Many of the new locations you get to explore in the expansion are essentially remade versions of places we’ve been to during Shadow of Chornobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat, after all. What makes the DLC more interesting than just a retread of content we’ve already seen before, however, is just how these older locations feel to explore with the more modern gameplay systems offered by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

"The new zones added with Cost of Hope form the core of what GSC Game World is trying to achieve with the expansion."

Right off the bat, Cost of Hope feels quite different from the kinds of expansions and DLCs we typically see released for open-world games. Rather than offering just a new questline and perhaps a few new enemies, for instance, Cost of Hope instead offers a much more non-linear experience. Don’t get me wrong; there are certainly missions to complete, and plenty of breadcrumbs for players who want to experience the new plot. However, at its best, the expansion essentially offers a new playground with its own unique set of challenges. Despite my earlier assertion that the expansion feels like a love letter to older games, Cost of Hope also holds its own.

The new zones added with Cost of Hope form the core of what GSC Game World is trying to achieve with the expansion. Legendary locations that we last got to explore more than a decade ago, like the Iron Forest and the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, have been beautifully reimagined for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. For entirely new players, these locations, which you can visit in just about any order you like once you progress far enough into the main story of the expansion, will offer fresh grounds for exploration, including their own navigational and combat challenges. Fans of the franchise might also start getting quite excited at the prospect of revisiting these old zones once more, but many years have passed since we last saw them, and the exclusion zone is a volatile place. This means that there have been plenty of changes made to these zones.

The core theme of Cost of Hope is an overwhelming feeling of decay; we’re exploring these locations for the first time after many years, after all. Along with this, there is also an undercurrent of an invisible war being waged against two primary concepts: Duty and Freedom. This also plays into the choices you may have made in the base game, where you essentially have to side with either the Ward or the Spark. These choices affect your path through Cost of Hope in more subtle ways than just deciding which NPCs are hostile, however.

As the expansion notes, both of these sides also represent Duty and Freedom in their own unique ways. The Ward is more than happy to strictly control the exclusion zone, while the Spark wants to unleash it on the rest of the world. However, in the case of the base game, the concepts were being applied to the exclusion zone as a whole. In the expansion, things get more personal, with many of the characters you’re going to meet having to deal with their own conflicts regarding the concepts. Along with this, the new factions also fall under similar lines, and will have you working to ensure that the opposing faction doesn’t get too far ahead with its own plans.

However, while these themes are pretty great concepts to explore, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cost of Hope never feels like it lives up to the full potential of its ambitions. While the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games have often had some interesting stories, their biggest hooks have always been the world and gameplay, and Cost of Hope doesn’t really change much in this regard. The fact that most of the NPCs you meet are fairly shallow side characters whose entire personalities are basically decided by their factions drags the narrative down a bit. There are some attempts made at intrigue, with characters from either Duty or Freedom giving you tasks to accomplish with justifications that can be, at the best of times, half-truths, and at worst, complete lies, which presents an interesting quandary for the player since they have to decide who to trust without many ways of figuring out just what’s true. However, these choices never quite pay off in a satisfactory way, unfortunately.

"When it comes to moment-to-moment gameplay, Cost of Hope acts as a major distillation of all of the Update 2.0 changes."

The most interesting part about the entire conflict between Duty and Freedom is the fact that they have had to get along for several years because of the D4 Treaty. Cost of Hope starts out really strong, letting you see first-hand how this treaty is falling apart at the seams, and in the process, you get dragged into the conflict. On their own, neither Duty nor Freedom feel like fully fleshed out factions on their own, and rather, end up feeling like extensions of the Ward and the Spark from the base game, with Duty wanting to contain and research the exclusion zone, and Freedom wanting to treat the exclusion zone as if it were a gift to humanity.

When it comes to moment-to-moment gameplay, Cost of Hope acts as a major distillation of all of the Update 2.0 changes that have also been applied to the base game. This means that, in general, things like movement and gunplay feel a lot more refined.

The A-Life system – the biggest reason I enjoyed the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games – has also seen some massive upgrades. Sure, you won’t quite see things like NPCs wrapping up the game’s objectives without your involvement like we saw in the early development of Shadow of Chornobyl, but seeing the various groups of NPCs moving around in the massive open world and completing their own objectives, living out their own stories, is quite a joy. However, there are still a few bugs to work out in the A-Life system, and I’ve often noticed NPCs randomly sinking into the ground while simply being out on patrol, for example.

Despite this, however, there is something quite satisfying in just roaming around the exclusion zone, hearing some gunshots in the distance, and stumbling into a battle between some friendly NPCs and bandits. True to classic S.T.A.L.K.E.R. conventions, emergent NPC behavior can range from this to something more expansive, like setting up new bases and forward camps in areas you may have cleared of hostile forces. Similarly, the opposing faction NPCs don’t simply sit in a corner and twiddle their thumbs either; you’ll also often run into enemies that have simply been on your trail to get revenge for a previous gunfight, for instance.

Cost of Hope also includes a host of new gear to find, and while many of these additions were made to the base game as well with Update 2.0, they become easier to find in the expansion thanks to some of the newer enemy types you’ll fight. They’ll often be equipped with guns like the Arev assault rifle – a personal favorite of mine – that manages to set itself apart from the standard guns of the base game by offering its own unique feel when you pull the trigger, from the smallest factor, like how it sways while you’re aiming, to larger aspects, like what kinds of attachments can be equipped, the new gear opens up plenty of choices.

The new fog system also plays a major role in Cost of Hope. Since many of the new locations are even more dilapidated now than they were in older S.T.A.L.K.E.R. zones, GSC Game World has decided to further add on to the atmosphere by adding gameplay consequences to fog. Rather than simply being a visual effect, a foggy atmosphere also plays a role in making people and other creatures in the area harder to see and hear. These same properties also apply to you, however, so stealth-based gameplay has also gotten a considerable boost thanks to this change.

The entire expansion ends up feeling part of the larger whole presented by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, since you have to make quite a bit of progress in the main story to even start it. And while its introductory missions can be wrapped up relatively early after starting up a fresh playthrough – you get the first mission right after leaving the Lesser Zone – its story essentially grinds to a halt for a while, only picking up after you make your way around halfway through the campaign. Due to this, and the general nature of the game, it’s difficult to gauge the length of Cost of Hope in just hours. I spent multiple hours during my time reviewing it, but it is worth noting that I was also trying to be as thorough as possible when exploring its new locations.

"The entire expansion ends up feeling part of the larger whole presented by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl."

In general, the mission structure hasn’t changed too much from the base game, with objectives largely revolving around going to certain places, talking to characters, and occasionally clearing out an area of hostile units and getting your hands on specific items. If you’re looking for more interesting rewards than guns, armor, healing items, and bullets, however, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has never really had much to offer in that regard, and the expansion doesn’t change this.

My favorite thing to happen with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 thanks to Cost of Hope and Update 2.0 is the fact that GSC Game World made incredible gains in performance improvements. On my PC running on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and a Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, I was able to manage a steady frame rate of just over 70 FPS at 1440p. This then gave me further confidence to boost up my graphics settings ever-so-slightly, like higher texture quality, softer shadows, and more volumetric lighting, to hit a smooth 60 FPS and get some visual improvements out of the bargain without having to touch frame generation. Setting FSR 4 to Balanced has also offered a considerably more favorable ratio of visual fidelity to frame rate than previous versions of the technology have.

Thanks to GSC’s continued post-launch support, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has steadily evolved into a much stronger open-world experience, particularly for fans of atmospheric sandboxes. Cost of Hope, with its new zones and returning locations from older games, alongside the improvements introduced with Update 2.0, has only accelerated that evolution. While there are still bugs that need fixing and hard edges that need further polishing, the fact that Cost of Hope gives you even more of a reason to jump into the exclusion zone, even if you’ve already finished the base game, is a definite success.

While some of the open-world additions with Cost of Hope might seem like they’re geared specifically towards long-time fans of the franchise, even newcomers who jumped in with the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will find plenty to enjoy here. The new environments strike the perfect balance between creepy, dilapidated, and enticing that makes exploring them a lot of fun, and regardless of how much time you may have spent with any of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games before, you’ll undoubtedly find yourself sitting on the edge of your seat thanks to the tense gameplay.

Add on top the fact that Cost of Hope has been designed to weave in and out of the Heart of Chornobyl story, and you get an expansion that feels well worth the price of admission thanks to its fog-intensified atmosphere, new locations, missions, and even some of the new gear you can get your hands on.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Legacy Edition brings a suite of modernisations, and overall it’s a competent revival which makes the original more comfortable to play – especially for solo players. That said, nothing studio Aspyr Media brings fundamentally changes the path already laid by the old game. In short: the facelift is good, but some wrinkles can’t be ironed out.

"Disappointment fades as you level up each character, with more defining skills and abilities unlocked through their individual skill trees."

But, let’s start with a positive, and an important addition to solo play: character hot-swapping. Now, you don’t have to commit to a single archetype per campaign playthrough but can freely switch between them. Together with secrets and hidden areas now being visible to the whole party, plus health, mana, and XP permanently shown in the HUD, solo play is a much more viable endeavour than it was back in 2011.

Yet, as your War in the North journey begins, you won’t notice much distinction in each character’s combat style. Their early abilities feel remarkably similar in both manoeuvre and power. Dwarf Farin and Ranger Eradan even unlock comparative melee special attacks. It’s an initial disappointment, albeit rooted in the understanding the original game was heavily skewed toward three-player co-op. But, regardless, that disappointment fades as you level up each character, with more defining skills and abilities unlocked through their individual skill trees. Andriel the Elf Mage, for instance, learns increasingly powerful shockwaves for area-of-effect control, while Eradan can wield a blade in each hand.

As an aside, a pair of axes instead of a two-handed slab of steel isn’t necessarily the most optimal choice for Eradan, but visually it’s more striking. Through gradual stat increases and unlockable skills, character identity reveals itself, and synergies between team mates emerge. Although, a couple of noticeable drawbacks stop the process from being one of true experimentation. First, given Farin the Dwarf’s skill tree covers ranged specialisations, it seems prudent to invest stat points into his long-range ability, otherwise you won’t experience the full potential of his skill tree.

And second, and perhaps more glaring, the option to respec skill tree points comes at an exorbitant cost, leaving you committed to a particular build. So, if you decide mid-journey that you prefer Eradan with a weapon in each hand, you can’t take points out of his swordplay to reassign to dual-wielding, unless you save some mighty coin. Alongside the numerous quality-of-life updates Aspyr brought to the remaster, failing to soften the friction in character customisation seems a glaring oversight.

"The game’s underlying combat, for all these flashes of cinematic, arcade flair, is relatively basic."

But, you don’t need to find your weapon of choice to find spectacle in War in the North’s combat. While its foundations are functional – light and heavy attacks, dodge rolls, blocks, and the aforementioned melee specials – there are glimpses of visual flair befitting of Peter Jackson’s blockbuster cinematography. For instance, enemies can be worked into a stunned state, indicated by a yellow arrow above their heads. Executing a heavy attack here unleashes a powerful stab, slash, or dismemberment; a critical strike or finishing blow often accompanied by a zoomed in slo-mo so you can savour a flailing Orc limb.

Chaining attacks together boosts the damage extolled too, displayed in an arcade-style on-screen multiplier. Chasing the highest strike numbers without getting hit yourself became a mini-game unto itself, partially alleviating the repetition in bashing light and heavy attacks while waiting for your special to cooldown.

See, the game’s underlying combat, for all these flashes of cinematic, arcade flair, is relatively basic. Broad hitboxes soften the frustration of frequently missing your swing, yes, but occasionally awkward camera angles and an oversensitive target lock-on – something Aspyr refined for this remaster – mean skirmishes, overall, lack the polish of modern titles.

Worse still, enemy variety rarely evolves throughout long chapters, while trolls and other big enemies aren’t accompanied by recoil, feedback, or health bars. Structurally, you’ll be undertaking largely the same activities throughout each dungeon, too, with a loop following transitional spaces to arenas to waves of enemies back to transitional spaces, repeating for a couple of hours. This means that War in the North occasionally looks like the epic The Lord of the Rings action RPG it wants to be, but rarely feels like one.

So, whilst combat, in essence, is fun – especially when playing co-op – these grievances become incongruous: individual fights aren’t necessarily bad, it’s just that the game asks you to do them over and over again. Shorter levels could make progress more palatable, sure, and it’d certainly hasten the story, but when the same boss appears multiple times, hammering through chapters becomes attritional when it should feel varied and dynamic.

While the remaster does an amicable job of strengthening the solo experience, certain sequences expose the cracks Aspyr tried to hide. Case in point is the proliferation of turret segments in chapter one. Usually, in co-op, one player fires the turret while the others protect them, dealing with any enemies who filter through. But, despite the remaster refining your team’s AI, they still don’t appear interested in protecting the turret operator, leaving you exposed by an artificial difficulty spike. Couple this with limited healing resources, and difficult sections will need to be retried with an inability to restore health, making them doubly difficult.

"While the remaster does an amicable job of strengthening the solo experience, certain sequences expose the cracks Aspyr tried to hide."

If you do happen upon a shop between bouts, then you’ll have to manage the buying and selling of inventory and resources for each character if you’re fighting solo. It’s not a deal-breaker, but the still-clunky UI exposes some inefficiencies between collecting and outfitting each squad member. All in all, while solo play is more viable than ever, War in the North is still geared toward co-operative play – it’s the most ideal for minimal friction and maximum enjoyment.

Elsewhere, the original’s bugs and technical issues appear to have been addressed, while 60fps performance was smooth throughout, an occasional frame skip as enemies load into an arena notwithstanding. Auto-saving and free character swapping are genuine improvements, while Aspyr also preserves the original’s gritty Lord of the Ring’s atmosphere despite sharpening the fidelity. The remaster’s issues, really, are foundational. In other words: they’re unchangeable unless a more thorough revamp was undertaken.

Long, repetitive level design and enemy encounters, awkward cameras, functional combat – these can’t be as readily improved as HUD and technical performance can. Whether there’s an audience sizeable enough for a The Lord of the Rings game whose legacy is overshadowed by a pair Middle-Earth titles is debateable, but there’s an irony here as The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is exactly the kind of game that should be remade as what was originally there proved enough to capture a cult following.

Alas, if you loved War in the North back in 2011, this remaster is a considerably nicer way to revisit it. If you overlooked the original, then you’ll have to ask yourself if Legacy Edition fundamentally changes enough to warrant a second look.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

You might think that it’s an angle that’s been exhausted by stories since the dawn of time, but I can tell you that it’s a strong bond that can drive anyone to brave the flooded streets of Arkham. That’s a city where a lingering evil is never too far away, and its minions are a nasty bunch who want nothing more than for Calvin to be their next meal.

"Arkham’s desolation is handled very well, and it’s a treat for anybody who wants a world that feels like you’re only a second away from a horrifying end."

It’s clear from the opening minutes that Calvin’s no detective, but is still as smart and tenacious as Faye, his partner-in-crime. Although Faye is largely out of the picture thanks to a ritual gone wrong, her body imprisoned by an artifact called the Night Shade Mask, a smattering of flashbacks helps sell the bond between the two leads. In turn, that helps explain Calvin’s motivations, and introduces a hint of altruism to his character, who might otherwise feel like too much of a rogue for us to care about him.

That’s all I’m willing to say about the story, which is well-paced and does well to sustain an escalating threat level for Calvin to face as he makes his way across Arkham, meeting his fair share of eccentric survivors while he looks for a way to get Faye back on her feet and get the hell out. He’s not too talkative other than when pointing out useful things around him or giving us a bit of insight into what we might need to do to progress.

The rest of the cast is quite intriguing, each bringing something fresh to the table. I’m not going to forget meeting a guy who deliberately mutilated himself with the Slither, parasitic beings that inhabit the dead and proceed to feed off any living being in the vicinity. That someone would knowingly fuse themselves with something that terrifying presents a level of psychosis I’d be inclined to run the opposite way from in normal circumstances.

But Arkham’s circumstances are far from normal. The once-thriving and now abandoned city is the perfect stage for the franchise’s shift to a survival horror gameplay loop. Arkham’s desolation is handled very well, and it’s a treat for anybody who wants a world that feels like you’re only a second away from a horrifying end.

"Even in Performance Mode, reflections and lighting remain quite consistent, and maintain a level of quality that really sells Arkham as the perfect stage for a survival horror title like The Sinking City 2."

This is probably a good place to talk about the game’s visuals. Arkham’s flooded streets and the general air of abandonment in the city limit the amount of color and flair that’s on offer. What you do get is a well-executed vision of a flooded city where subdued hues and muted soundscapes add to the tension. Navigating the streets and buildings often leaves you unsettled, the silences as loud as the chittering of beasts and the guttural shouts of Slither-infected corpses that ring out as you walk or run along.

Even in Performance Mode, reflections and lighting remain quite consistent, and maintain a level of quality that really sells Arkham as the perfect stage for a survival horror title like The Sinking City 2. It’s a pity, then, that the things you do in it largely boil down to the same pattern with some minor changes such as brief chase sequences, but they’re definitely not enough. You’re given an objective to fulfil, which is often inconveniently placed at the other end of the city. You then get on a skiff and sail toward it to find a gate, or even a dead whale perhaps, blocking your path.

You get off at a nearby pier and explore the region around it to find ways to proceed. Of course, enemies and obstacles make that harder, while going out of your way to find scant resources and managing your limited inventory early on becomes a standard part of what you’re doing. It’s here that I found one of my few complaints about this game. With only limited inventory slots early on and a lot of stuff to carry around, you’re going to find yourself running between important locations and the nearest Safe Room too often.

For instance, I happened upon a locked door that needed a key. Perfect. I explored the area quite thoroughly before I found it, but couldn’t pick it up because my pockets were full of healing and crafting supplies while my Handgun and Shotgun took up the majority of my inventory capacity. It was then off to a Safe Room that was a little distance away to store a few items and return to pick up the key and a couple of crafting materials.

I was then able to open the door, only to find a whole bunch of other items, all important, that then required multiple trips to and from the Safe Room before I could have them squared away in my storage. It was tempting to just leave them there for later, but with Arkham’s landscape constantly shifting as you progress, that’s a risk you don’t want to take, as every scrap you can find is useful in keeping you alive.

"There’s a fair bit of enemy variety on offer, but the challenge they offer is largely due to Calvin’s own limitations in comparison to their superior agility."

Wouldn’t it have been more elegant to have key items picked up automatically while leaving us to manage everything else as and when we found it? I think it’s a better solution than what’s currently on offer, especially since the extra two slots you unlock as you go along don’t really help. Even on the easiest difficulty, Arkham’s threats proved to be quite potent thanks to how limited your supplies were, so you can imagine how much more tedious Normal feels with these restrictions. These limitations do ease up a bit once you start unlocking more slots later on through perk points and exploration, but the early going is definitely on the difficult side.

This brings me to the combat, where I’m quite happy to report that the controls are fluid and smooth, making those nerve-wracking encounters with enemies that are quite quick and all too hostile quite thrilling to take on. I’d say that the melee attacks feel clunky in comparison to the gunplay, but your mileage may vary on that front. You get a dodge too, but you’re going to have to be quite precise with the timing. There’s a fair bit of enemy variety on offer, but the challenge they offer is largely due to Calvin’s own limitations in comparison to their superior agility. It’s grounded well within the premise, forcing you to target enemy weak spots not just to bring them down and survive, but to ensure you’re using each bullet optimally.

You could just shoot away in a pinch, but you’d be much better served dodging attacks and creating space before taking a calmer and more collected approach. It’s here that the presentation truly shines, as you can’t help but feel a sense of panic once an enemy is on to you, and you find your ability to line up shots far more reliant on holding your nerves than you’d expect. Without diving into too many spoilers, there are a few hard fights ahead of you which are going to be quite memorable.

It bears mentioning that the semi-open world design lends itself very well to the focus on environmental storytelling while allowing Arkham to squirrel away secrets and puzzles that are optional, but often bring worthwhile rewards. There are whole quest chains in there sometimes, complete with clues that you must find and piece together on an Investigation Board that’s a lot simpler this time around, with difficulty sliders to help you find your way to important locations or items faster.

Between the great level design, the way information about the world is presented to you, and the twists and turns of the story, the rather predictable gameplay loop becomes less of an issue since exploring Arkham is enough of a reason to stick around. An early highlight of my time in it was when I stumbled upon a mysterious pillar with a note about a trident missing.

"With a story that works well to keep you invested in uncovering every secret you can find in Arkham, along with the city’s air of mysterious allure, it’s no surprise that I’m quite impressed with what The Sinking City 2 achieves."

I set off in search of it, eventually bringing it back only to find that I had to align four symbols in the right order to activate its latent power. Entering the wrong sequence came with consequences, and I spent way too long trying to guess the right one before eventually going off in search of more information. I soon found what I needed, returned to solve the puzzle, and made my way to a very valuable reward: Dream Essence.

It’s what you use to unlock upgrades for Calvin, with four categories available, each one unlocking the more points you sink into the previous set. Moreover, the upgrades you unlock, such as improved healing efficiency or increased weak-point damage, need to be individually equipped before they’re active. And you can only have one slot available until you spend Essence to unlock more. It’s a well-implemented system that incentivizes going off the beaten path and being very strategic with what you find in the process.

On my base PS5, performance was sublime with consistently good textures and frame rates making things move along quite smoothly. I didn’t see enough of a reason to switch to the game’s Quality Mode, since I prefer better frame rates

With a story that works well to keep you invested in uncovering every secret you can find in Arkham, along with the city’s air of mysterious allure, it’s no surprise that I’m quite impressed with what The Sinking City 2 achieves. The city’s glum and moody atmosphere might not terrify you in the beginning, but combined with its muted colors and an excellent soundtrack, it’s going to have you on edge with every step Calvin takes.

You’re never truly safe in Arkham, and that’s the game’s greatest strength. It nails down the shift to survival-horror, and while it utilises too many tried-and-tested genre staples, it brings enough new stuff to the table to make that a complaint I can live with. The rest of what’s on offer is an impressive take on Lovecraftian horror in a world that calls to you, not unlike the voices that reach out from the beyond in-game.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

So, why am I talking about Elden Ring in a review of Mortal Shell 2? Because after spending the last week with Cold Symmetry’s sequel, those inspirations are difficult to ignore, particularly in the way it approaches its world and progression, albeit in a more focused and compact fashion. More importantly, though, Mortal Shell 2 doesn’t simply live in the shadow of those influences but manages to provide its own spin specifically with regards to build and progression mechanics.

"Mortal Shell 2 doesn’t simply live in the shadow of those influences but manages to provide its own spin specifically with regards to build and progression mechanics."

The most obvious inspiration Mortal Shell 2 takes from Elden Ring is its open-world approach to level design and exploration. It isn’t as big as the Lands Between, obviously, instead focusing more on being compact and dense. On the surface, it may look like just another open world, but the deeper I ventured into it, the more familiar that design philosophy started to feel. Compared to the semi-open, hub-based structure of the first game, Mortal Shell 2 now features a far more seamless and interconnected landscape, with massive landmasses that encourage you to freely explore and carve out your own path.

There are several dungeons and beacon sites scattered across the world, with many asking you to cleanse the area or track down hidden items along the way. The overworld itself is exceptionally well designed, encouraging exploration both horizontally and vertically, while rewarding you for going off the beaten path. Although some of the dungeons and beacon-related areas can feel repetitive in structure, they still manage to look and feel distinct enough, with their own assortment of items and secrets to uncover, just like in Elden Ring. All of this is backed by fantastic art direction that constantly evokes darkness, despair and eeriness, you know, the familiar trademarks of a Soulslike game.

Individual character progression remains relatively simple: you collect Gloom, essentially the game’s equivalent of souls, and use it to raise your character level. Where progression becomes more interesting, however, is in how Mortal Shell 2 ties the discovery of new weapons, Shells, and other useful items directly into open-world exploration. The game clearly wants you to actively venture out into its world, and thankfully, it gives you enough guidance to keep that exploration focused. Want weapons like the Scythe, Crossbow or Martyr’s Blade? Simply purchase their respective maps from Merrick, the merchant, and the game will highlight a general search area rather than revealing the exact location. Looking for additional Shells works in a similar fashion, with their locations becoming available through Glimpses.

"The game clearly wants you to actively venture out into its world, and thankfully, it gives you enough guidance to keep that exploration focused. "

What I like about this system is that the resources required to uncover these locations, whether Gold Coins, Glimpses or Gloom, are fairly straightforward to obtain. As a result, exploration rarely feels aimless, with my travels constantly guided by clear objectives while still leaving enough room for discovery along the way.

However, the world of Mortal Shell 2 is intriguing enough that it’s incredibly easy to get sidetracked. Since I love exploring open-world games, I unlocked all the available map locations for items and weapons, they’re fairly cheap to procure, by the way, but even with those objectives marked out, the world itself would often pull me in a completely different direction. More than once, that curiosity led me straight into locations where an intimidating boss was roaming around, catching me completely off guard. There are a dime a dozen open-world games this generation, but Mortal Shell 2 creates that urge to explore by simplifying the systems surrounding exploration rather than constantly overwhelming you with them.

Mortal Shell 2 features eight Shells, more than double what was available in the original game, and each one brings its own abilities and playstyle to the table. For those unfamiliar with the system, Shells are essentially fallen warriors that you inhabit, with each granting access to abilities specific to that character. One, for example, can turn invisible for a set period of time, while another can perform a melee attack using a mechanical hook grafted onto their arm. Some Shells are even tied to bosses that you first need to defeat, allowing you to eventually make use of attacks you previously witnessed being used against you.

Unlocking each Shell also opens up more of its individual lore, returning from the original game in the form of short playable snippets that flesh out their respective backstories. You can access more of these by increasing your bond with a Shell, which also improves its revival efficiency. In practical terms, if you’re knocked out during combat, a stronger bond means fewer melee attacks are required before you can regain access to that Shell.

Each Shell can also be upgraded further to strengthen its defining abilities. The one I primarily used specialized in invisibility, for example, and investing in that ability allowed me to remain hidden for longer periods. Other upgrades can affect aspects such as movement speed, dodging and other traits tied specifically to the Shell you choose. Altogether, it creates an engaging progression system with plenty of room for build variety, and having that many meaningful choices available to the player is rarely a bad thing.

"The general enemy roster is also fairly extensive and changes noticeably from region to region."

Mortal Shell 2 doesn’t feature an especially large assortment of weaponry, with eight main weapons alongside a similar number of sidearms. While that may come across as a negative to some players, I think it fits the more focused experience the game is aiming for, something I touched on earlier. For most of my playthrough, I stuck with The Iconoclast, a two-handed greatsword found fairly early in the game, and simply focused on upgrading it. Although I did acquire several other weapons along the way, I found it more than capable of tearing through most of the challenges the world threw at me.

The sidearms, meanwhile, add a very different flavor to combat, with one resembling a shotgun and another functioning more like a submachine gun. Beyond upgrading these weapons individually, you can also find and equip Tarstones that grant specific effects, such as inflicting Bleed, imbuing your sidearms with burn, shock or poison, or increasing melee stagger damage. Tarstones themselves can also be upgraded, further strengthening their individual effects. The result is a combat system that blends more traditional weaponry, such as swords and greatswords, with more modern-feeling firearms and status effects, creating a combination that feels remarkably satisfying to experiment with and pull off in combat.

The general enemy roster is also fairly extensive and changes noticeably from region to region, somewhat reminiscent of Elden Ring. You might come across witches dancing around a village, immediately bringing the Celebrants from Elden Ring to mind, before venturing into swamps populated by corrupted snake- and frog-like creatures capable of inflicting Poison, or stumbling upon heavily armed knights patrolling more fortress-like locations. This mix of varied enemy designs and distinct attack patterns helps keep combat encounters feeling fresh as you move through the world.

From a difficulty perspective, Mortal Shell 2 offers a couple of interesting ways to tailor the experience. The default setting, which is what you begin the game with, provides a fairly challenging experience on its own, but you can bring the difficulty down somewhat by procuring a specific seal that makes encounters a little more forgiving. On the other hand, if you’re looking for something considerably tougher, you can activate Night Mode, which drastically ramps up the challenge while also increasing the rewards you receive in return. For the sake of our own sanity, we reviewed the game on its standard difficulty, and I found it to strike a reasonable balance between providing a challenge without becoming unnecessarily hard.

Likewise, Mortal Shell 2 is packed with bosses, whether they’re roaming the open world, waiting inside dungeons, or serving as story encounters beyond the corrupted gates. Boss fights are undoubtedly among the highlights of the experience, though I never found them to possess quite the same sense of scale or grandeur as those in FromSoftware’s games. That isn’t necessarily a criticism, because the bosses themselves are enjoyable and generally provide a solid challenge, but I do think this is one area where Mortal Shell 2 could have pushed things further.

"The bigger issue is the bugs, and unfortunately, they aren’t rare enough to simply ignore. "

It’s a limitation that many Soulslikes run into, understandably given their smaller budgets and development teams, but some larger and more spectacular encounters could have elevated the experience considerably. Still, the overall enemy variety is strong, and that’s something I certainly wouldn’t take away from the game.

On the technical front, I’ve already praised the game’s art direction, but I also think Mortal Shell 2 is one of the more graphically impressive Unreal Engine 5 games I’ve played recently. There are certainly signs of roughness here and there, but overall, this is a gorgeous game to look at, with its environments and visual design doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

The bigger issue is the bugs, and unfortunately, they aren’t rare enough to simply ignore. Some regular enemies occasionally stop attacking altogether or get stuck in the environment, and I even encountered a similar problem during one boss fight where the enemy simply became inactive and stood there doing nothing. I also noticed some minor input latency on PC, although adjusting the relevant in-game settings largely resolved it in my case. These are clearly polish-related issues that could potentially be addressed through a day-one patch, but as things stand, they’re noticeable enough to occasionally pull you out of the experience. Story-wise, I found the narrative to be bland, worthless, and uninspired, but I was so focused on the action and exploration that it rarely bothered me enough to detract from the overall experience.

To wrap things up, Mortal Shell 2 is an excellent Soulslike that gets so much right that its minor, albeit noticeable, shortcomings never managed to detract from the larger experience. Hopefully, some of the technical issues I encountered will be ironed out through post-launch patches, but even in its current state, there’s a lot here to appreciate. More importantly, Mortal Shell 2 feels like a significant step forward for Cold Symmetry, laying down a strong foundation for an even bigger and grander sequel should the studio ever decide to take the series further.

This game was reviewed on PC.

A year later, Hangar 13 has returned to the game with a new DLC, Man of Honor, which adds two more chapters to Enzo’s journey alongside additional content for Free Ride mode. There’s quite a bit here that fans of the original will appreciate, but let’s start with the elephant in the room: the story expansion.

Man of Honor takes place after Enzo Favara has earned his place within the Torrisi crime family. Rather than going further back into Enzo’s past, it fills in an earlier period of his time as a soldato while introducing Ennio Salieri, a character who will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played the first Mafia. Don Torrisi and Salieri have some history, and when the latter comes to him looking to settle a personal matter, the Don gives his approval and ropes Enzo and Cesare into helping him. Salieri’s ultimate goal is simple: earn enough money to leave Sicily behind and start a new life in America.

"There’s quite a bit here that fans of the original will appreciate"

As a result, Man of Honor places much more emphasis on Salieri than Enzo, with the latter essentially serving as the vehicle through which the expansion sets up Salieri’s future. The voice acting and cutscene direction are, as you would expect from a Mafia game, solid throughout. Salieri comes across as sharp, selfish and quick-witted, someone more than willing to use others to get what he wants, and that side of his personality is reflected throughout the expansion.

I won’t go too deeply into the story beyond saying that it’s a decent, if ultimately straightforward, tale built around one of the Mafia’s most fundamental rules: you don’t cross the Don. It wraps up rather quickly and respects your time, with a conclusion that is largely satisfying, even if much of what happens is fairly easy to see coming.

Lasting around two hours, Man of Honor feels, from a gameplay perspective, like a direct continuation of the base game. It delivers some excellent set pieces, including a chase sequence, several stealth sections, and action-heavy moments that eventually erupt into outright combat. If what you wanted was simply more Mafia: The Old Country, then Man of Honor provides exactly that, which also means it carries over both the strengths and shortcomings of the base experience.

Combat remains effective, though relatively simple and straightforward, while stealth once again follows the “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” approach. Even traversal remains familiar, whether you’re travelling on horseback or driving classic vehicles. Coincidentally, these are all things I enjoyed about the base game, so returning to them a year later was surprisingly satisfying. That said, if you didn’t enjoy The Old Country the first time around, there’s little here that will change your mind. This is an expansion rather than a major reworking of its mechanics. But for players who loved the base game, it provides an engaging afternoon’s worth of familiar Mafia gameplay without overstaying its welcome or pretending to be something radically different.

That is, until the compulsory instant-fail stealth sections come into play. There’s one particular set piece during the concluding events of Man of Honor where you simply cannot be detected, because the moment an enemy spots you, it’s an instant game over. Look, I get it, sometimes a game needs to impose a strict no-detection requirement, but the systems built around such a restriction also need to be engaging enough to justify it.

Take Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, for example, where the mechanics support those restrictions by giving you plenty of tools and gadgets to experiment with and work around different situations. In a game like Mafia, however, a section like this feels forced because the stealth mechanics simply aren’t deep enough to make that kind of limitation particularly enjoyable, and it ultimately pulled me out of the experience. Fortunately, this specific sequence only lasts for several minutes, but in an expansion this short, I still think it’s worth pointing out.

I also came across a few minor bugs here and there, including one during a chase sequence where Enzo’s animations suddenly went haywire and became stuck. It wasn’t anything game-breaking, but it did stand out, especially since I don’t recall encountering similar issues during my time with the base game.

Once you’re done with the story, Man of Honor also expands the game’s Free Ride mode with a number of Salieri-related missions, where he essentially acts as a quest giver to Enzo from his warehouse. To be transparent, I hadn’t experienced Free Ride before this since it was added after the game’s original release, but Salieri’s side tasks give the mode a little more narrative weight, especially since they provide additional background on his motivations and just how desperately he wants to make his way to America.

"Lasting around two hours, Man of Honor feels, from a gameplay perspective, like a direct continuation of the base game."

Again, these tasks largely follow the structure of missions from the base game, whether that means stealth-based infiltration, procuring valuable items, stealing vehicles, or completing the kinds of objectives you’ve already encountered throughout the campaign. The expansion also adds more weapons, knives, clothing options, and various items with effects that can influence combat encounters out in the field.

I like what Hangar 13 has done with Free Ride here, because it makes the world feel more worthwhile to explore by giving you more reasons to engage with it. My only question is whether some of this content could have been integrated more naturally into the story itself, which would have made the overall experience feel more connected. Regardless, Man of Honor improves Free Ride by making its existing world denser with engaging activities rather than simply increasing the size of the map.

For what it’s worth, Mafia: The Old Country – Man of Honor costs $9.99, which I think is a fair price for the experience it offers. There’s a reasonable argument that the expansion could have focused more on Enzo’s backstory rather than inserting a side story into the base game’s narrative, but I do feel that Hangar 13 is making an effort to connect The Old Country to the larger Mafia timeline, and so far, that approach is working well.

I appreciated Enzo’s characterization in the base game and would still love to see more added to his story if Hangar 13 has further content planned. As it stands, though, Man of Honor is a reasonable expansion of the base-game experience, sticking closely to what already worked rather than trying to reinvent it, and for an add-on of this size and price, that’s all it needs to do.

This game was reviewed on PC.

At its core, Duskfade is a relatively simple 3D platformer with hack-and-slash action combat, and brings to mind many classics from the PS1 and PS2 era (like MediEvil). Duskfade sets itself apart from these titles with its incredible production values that showcase polish and charm dripping from just about every single frame of the game.

"At its core, Duskfade is a relatively simple 3D platformer with hack-and-slash action combat, and brings to mind many classics from the PS1 and PS2 era"

The general story setup for Duskfade is quite simple. Taking place some time after the death of their grandfather has left Zirian and his sister, Allira, grieving. While life has continued for Zirian in the meantime, Allira has decided to lock herself in her room to work on something that will radically improve both of their lives. However, her experiments go horribly wrong, and a massive mystical clocktower springs out from the center of town. With Allira still seemingly trapped inside, Zirian decides to pick up his grandfather’s blade and sets off to rescue her.

During your initial incursion into the clocktower, you will also meet the secondary protagonist of the story – a mechanical bird named Cuckoo. Despite being quite helpful when it comes to navigating through the clocktower, Cuckoo seems to have some gaps in its mind that it is trying to sort out. The two then decide to team up and explore the world together with the main goal of destroying the clocktower. To achieve this, they will have to travel to four different corners of the world and release the mystical chains that are seemingly keeping the clocktower upright.

While far from the most innovative game out there in terms of narrative or style of storytelling, Duskfade does manage to get deeper with its core plot than its whimsical visuals would indicate. A core theme behind the entire story is the notion of grief, and how various characters often tend to find their own ways to deal with losing loved ones. Along with Allira and Zirian themselves showcasing two distinct examples of people dealing with grief in their own ways, the various citizens of the world that you can interact with also often tend to have something they’re grieving over as well. In terms of a narrative throughline, this works fairly well throughout the game, and is executed with subtlety, ensuring that you’re never really beaten over the head with a large bat emblazoned with the word “GRIEF” on it.

Similar themes can also be found in the various explorable zones of the game, where grief comes together with the idea of nostalgia to showcase a world that was once at the pinnacle of technological prowess but has since started falling into ruin. The core story also has an underlying plot that revolves around the Master Clockmakers having long-since disappeared before the events of the game. Along with rescuing Allira, discovering the relationship between these Clock Masters and the protagonist’s grandfather forms the main narrative backbone for Duskfade as a whole.

When it comes to the world itself, Duskfade shows quite a bit of imagination. Rather than simply opting for the naturalistic landscapes that one would expect from a fantasy setting these days, you instead get to double jump, grind, and wall run through some downright fantastical environments that can range from a ruined village now covered in flames to a series of strange crystal-laden floating islands, and even some beautiful gothic buildings that seem to be tearing themselves apart due to temporal rifts popping in and out of existence.

"While far from the most innovative game out there in terms of narrative or style of storytelling, Duskfade does manage to get deeper with its core plot than its whimsical visuals would indicate."

While the variety of these environments doesn’t quite become obvious right from the start, the brisk pace at which Duskfade moves ensures that, before long, you’ll find yourself exploring mystical clocktowers floating in the sky on your way to a massive volcano that seems to be in the midst of an eruption before then entering an idyllic forest where little seems to be wrong. While the way I may have described these levels might make the world seem disjointed, Duskfade is actually quite clever about how it transitions you between areas, with a few loading screens along the way acting as a metaphor for large distances between said zones being covered.

On the gameplay side of things, Duskfade is first and foremost a 3D platformer. Most of your time will be spent running around the world and navigating the various environmental obstacles along the way. While much of this gameplay is quite simple, with the player occasionally being asked to combine things like rolling, double jumping, and wall-running, there is also an attempt to add some depth to the platforming with the inclusion of more advanced moves. For example, jumping right after a roll will propel you much further than a typical jump-and-roll combo would. However, these moves never really feel necessary to proceed along the critical path, and are instead more useful for discovering secrets.

Over the course of the game, the platforming gets expanded on quite a bit with additional tools that are gained, like a grappling hook. Through these tools, new parts of the world become available, and traversal in general starts to feel smoother. The same tools also work as a great way to introduce additional challenges during platforming.

The grappling hook, for example, is introduced through a few simple, low-stakes platforming segments where failure doesn’t really mean much aside from needing to be more aware of where the grappling points are. As the same level progresses, the challenge starts getting deeper, and soon enough, you’ll find yourself needing to deal with the ebb and flow of magma that periodically reveal and hide platforms.

The level design generally feels great, and the platforming controls never feel floaty. Any jumps that I missed during my time with the game were largely my fault, and a second attempt quickly allowed me to avoid making the same mistakes. The fact that Duskfade is quite generous with its checkpoints also helps, especially once you start getting deeper into the game where mistakes can often result in quite a bit of damage being taken because you found yourself bouncing on magma with no safe platform to land on, for instance.

No discussion about platformers can ever truly be complete without discussing collectibles, and Duskfade has plenty of them, ranging from upgrade gears to musical sheets that can be used to change up the background track. Many of these are quite cleverly hidden out of your typical line of sight, with a slight shift in the camera angle often revealing them. Getting to them, however, tends to be slightly more challenging, and you’ll often find yourself needing to make a mental note about collectibles you can’t quite pick up yet because you haven’t unlocked the platforming capability. Thankfully, the fast travel screen for each area of the game also shows precise counters for how many you have found, and how many still have to be discovered.

Duskfade also has combat, and this is where the gameplay feels like a bit of a let down. Most encounters in the game can be handled by simply mashing on the single attack button you get, and as you get further into the game, you’ll grow your arsenal of moves with things like new combo enders and special abilities. Despite this, however, combat tends to feel quite floaty, and outside of a few boss encounters, doing more than simply mashing on the attack button and occasionally dodging feels like a waste of time.

"No discussion about platformers can ever truly be complete without discussing collectibles, and Duskfade has plenty of them"

Progression being quite simplistic also doesn’t help matters; during your travels, you’ll find plenty of currency that, along with a special item called an Upgrade Gear, can be used to unlock new moves and improve your damage. These upgrades don’t quite feel as meaningful as they should, however, since the combat never really gets complicated enough to demand the use of your new dodge-attack-follow-up.

Boss fights are one of the major highlights in this regard. Sticking to the classic game design axiom of a boss testing what the player has learned so far, these encounters tend to be slightly more complex than simply hitting the enemy and avoiding a few attacks. Fights tend to have different phases where even your platforming capabilities are put to the test. The main boss of the Volcano area, for instance, not only forces you to jump to higher platforms to avoid rising magma that engulfs the entire stage, but you’ll also have to start using the grappling hook when even the high ground becomes impossible to stand on.

One of Duskfade’s greatest achievements is how good the game looks. It fully leans into its self-described clockpunk aesthetics, combining the clockwork machinery of the world with a magical flair that makes the entire experience feel like it could have been a dream. The storybook aesthetics also allow for its characters being incredibly expressive, and while the voice acting is far from the best out there – its quality comparable to a typical show – seeing the emotions on the various characters’ faces certainly helps further sell the stakes of the narrative. The only real complaint I have in this regard is the fact that the occasional pre-rendered cutscenes are locked at 30 FPS, which makes the experience feel choppier than the smooth fast-paced gameplay of Duskfade would otherwise indicate.

Outside of these pre-rendered cutscenes – which admittedly are relatively rare and only kick in when you hit major plot beats – Duskfade ran quite well. On a PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, and a Radeon RX 7800XT GPU, I was able to maintain a steady frame rate of over 140 FPS while playing at 2560×1440. Since platforming games often depend on timely inputs that can often be affected by sudden frame drops, Duskfade presented zero issues in this regard.

Generally speaking, Duskfade is a great game with a fun story full of mature themes and a likeable pair of protagonists in Zirian and Cuckoo. While its combat might feel simple and shallow, the gameplay doesn’t feel out of place for what the game is trying to be at its core – an approachable 3D action platformer that can be enjoyed by just about any member of the family without wearing out its welcome thanks to its brisk campaign that can take around 10-12 hours to finish.

This game was reviewed on PC.

In reality, Crosby looks like he’ll remain on the Raiders for the foreseeable future, but in Madden NFL 27, I quickly made that thought a reality, sending a similar package to bring the elite edge rusher to the Bears and fulfilling my real-life wishes for the team at the very start of a new franchise save.

Madden NFL 27 feels a lot like those new-look Bears. They were already pretty good, finishing last season with a good record and some great highlights but ultimately falling short of Super Bowl glory and failing to take that true next step. With a shiny new edge rusher to complement the ascent of their cover-gracing quarterback Caleb Williams, they make a big upgrade in a spot with a clear need to undoubtedly make the team better, but it risks overshadowing some of the smaller needs across the rest of the team and creates some financial frustration with the huge salary cap hit that Maxx Crosby would take that stop the team from being as good as possible across all three phases.

With Madden 27, EA has made a flashy upgrade to one of its three main modes, overhauling the Franchise mode in a way that undeniably upgrades the experience with a fresh new look and a revamped balance between on-field and off-field priorities. That makes an already good experience better, but it’s not to say that the new-look Franchise makes up for some of the existing deficiencies under the hood, and there’s a glaring financial issue that threatens the whole package altogether.

" In reality, Crosby looks like he’ll remain on the Raiders for the foreseeable future, but in Madden NFL 27, I quickly made that thought a reality"

The most noticeable changes in Madden 27 are superficial. I first want to acknowledge the soundtrack, which for the first time I can remember, aims not to just have a playlist of enjoyable songs to listen to over and over again, but to pretty closely mirror the types of songs you would hear at an actual football game. With everything from “Mr. Brightside” and “Levels” to “Crazy Train” and “Kickstart My Heart,” it feels legitimately like a collection of songs that reflect the football experience, and most of those songs are classics to boot.

Elsewhere, Franchise mode has evolved from having a longlist of the same weekly activities to providing a more directed sequence of high-priority activities that are most pressing that week. Whereas the past version showed you more or less the same checklist every week, tasking you with sifting through menu after menu to find what you should be focusing on, this new version streamlines the experience, showing you no more than a dozen or so tasks that you should complete every week in big, easy to understand tiles. While there aren’t any entirely new activities to complete on a weekly basis, you’re able to get just as much done with less time wasted, and it ultimately encourages you to spend more time off the field because that time is spent much more productively.

In the past, having to check every week if I had new contracts to negotiate or players to keep happy made it feel overwhelming and increased how much I let the computer take over, and while it’s still possible to go as deep into the details as you’d like or, alternatively, delegate tasks with a single button press, the off-field tasks feel less like a chore this time around because it takes so much less time to navigate there.

Going hand-in-hand with the greater encouragement to negotiate or speak with players directly is the new Persona system for each player, which brings more structure to how players react in any given situation. Each player is assigned a handful of traits that characterize their mindset, closely mirroring how players are perceived in real life. Top quarterbacks like Josh Allen or Caleb Williams, for example, are often confident and reliable, while role players are typically team-first and opportunistic. These traits guide you in how you treat that player.

If you’re negotiating a contract with someone who’s direct and contract-minded, they probably aren’t going to respond well to a pitch that asks for a playoff discount; on the other hand, some players who are team-first might not need a longer contract or more guaranteed money to come to a deal. As morale oscillates and you speak with players one-on-one, you’ll also use these traits to dictate how you help them, which can often have a direct impact on how interested they are in staying with the team long-term.

"The most noticeable changes in Madden 27 are superficial."

These off-field changes are a nice counterbalance to the on-field gameplay, which, for another year, feels largely similar to last year but brings forward changes seen in EA’s College Football 27 and introduces a few new tweaks on its own. The biggest of these is a new catch meter that puts you more in control of your receiver’s catch timing, as long as the ball isn’t swatted away. If you land in the green, you’re almost guaranteed to make the catch, but the further into the yellow and red zones you land, the higher your chances of a drop.

I like this meter because it finally gives you more to do as a receiver, but because it’s impossible to have a timing meter like that on quick passes like slants or digs, it gets relegated to being used mainly on deep passes and becoming more of something that helps me on a Hail Mary than on an important 3rd down. Receivers and defensive backs also have more dynamic moves at the line of scrimmage, meaning you can now opt for a quick step or juke on the snap as a receiver or quickly adjust your leverage as a defender.

As a DB, this complements the improvements to pre-snap adjustments that were first introduced in CFB 27 that allow you to create your own custom adjustments and have more options as you read the offense, particularly with changes to the secondary that allow you to give more tangible instructions on how defensive backs should line up before the snap and react when a play breaks down.

What’s also carried over from CFB 27 is the inclusion in the Superstar player creator mode of three new positions: Tight End, Edge Rusher, and Free Safety. As a tight end, you have goals for both receiving and blocking, and while it definitely resembles the wide receiver path, especially when your training often includes the same drills a receiver would do, it’s much more about reading the defense and being able to either block the right person or find a soft spot in a zone defense.

There’s not quite as much differentiation on the defensive side of the ball, which is why playing as an edge rusher or a free safety feels like playing different aspects of the middle linebacker path that already existed, though I certainly appreciated the opportunity to try and one-up Myles Garrett and set the single-season sack record yet again.

Within Superstar mode, though, lies the more sinister aspect of Madden 27: its microtransactions. Microtransactions aren’t new for EA or Madden, which continues to reset your Ultimate Team each year, this year in a package that feels more or less identical to last year. What’s new, at least since EA backtracked on its attempt to do this in the college game, is the single-player microtransactions. As your character levels up, you gain new skill points that can be marked to your physical and mental traits and are the main way you increase your overall level, meant to mirror how a real player grows and improves over their career.

Totally understandable, except for the fact that you can also purchase your XP with real money to immediately get those points and become a superstar. Oh, and you can also purchase a separate Premium Pass that gives you access to twice the skill points and rewards. You can, of course, play games and complete weekly training to gain experience at no cost, but with no XP slider, there’s an omnipresent feeling that EA is purposefully slowing down progress with the direct goal of getting players to spend more money in a single player game they already own. You would think that after the College Football debacle just months earlier, EA might try to rein in the microtransactions, but instead it feels like they are planning to shoehorn these into as many game modes as possible.

"Within Superstar mode, though, lies the more sinister aspect of Madden 27: its microtransactions."

Like that Maxx Crosby trade, Madden NFL 27 is flashy. Unfortunately, in the first year after that trade, my Bears missed the playoffs, and then we entered salary cap hell that caused me to lose some great players and soft rebuild. Likewise, Madden 27 provides a clear, flashy upgrade to the Franchise mode both in how it looks and feels to play, particularly because of how much more enticing it is to handle off-the-field activities.

Outside of that, though, the rest of the package hasn’t moved much aside from some on-field tweaks and some new positions in Superstar, which is now inundated with single-player microtransactions. Madden tries to do something big this year, and though parts of it certainly improve, I can say from experience now that the flashiest move doesn’t always make the whole thing better.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

Rivers snake across the map, easily facilitating troop transports as well as subterfuge from those brave enough to dive through the waters. Napalm strikes and bombings contrast with tunnels that allow for quickly traversing distances and reinforcing allies. An almost obnoxious amount of foliage, which can feel like a nightmare to assail…until you decide to become one with the foliage itself.

However, if you’ve played any competitive multiplayer shooter in the past decade, you’ll know there will be problems. Those plaguing Hell Let Loose: Vietnam aren’t enough to leave it completely dead in the water, by a long shot. And yet, I can’t help but wonder if it could have used even more time for polish.

"This isn’t a gameplay loop that will always reward a one-man-army playstyle where you rush in guns-blazing, jumping and sliding hither and yon, and emerge victorious."

If you’ve played the original, much of the sequel will look structurally similar. Matches are 50v50. There’s no mini-map taking up screen real estate, though a compass is available below to reorient yourself. Assorted squads are available, covering different divisions: Infantry, Armor, Recon, and Helicopter. A Commander oversees everything, calling in airstrikes and supply drops when not outlining objectives to assault

And even within those divisions, you have finer roles. You could go in as a Rifleman, the frontliner who can keep squads topped off with ammo boxes, or a Grenadier who provides anti-armor explosive support. But besides the usual Medic or Sniper, there’s also the Machine Gunner, disrupting the enemy with suppressive fire at the cost of mobility. Or the Spotter, who essentially marks targets for their Sniper and can even provide vision on enemy units with a flare gun.

It’s a pretty assorted line-up, and even when everything devolves into chaos, knowing your role and leveraging it to the fullest can help ground you. During one match, I became a Crewman, gunning down human and armored targets as our driver desperately tried to navigate the harsh jungles of Huế Outskirts, where your average tree could disrupt sightlines something fierce. You wouldn’t think that pivoting the main gun would be such an arduously slow, painstaking task…just like the average wandering enemy wouldn’t think that a single 7.62MM shot could take them down. The more you know.

However, in Cam Ranh Port, after a short-lived (and disastrous) stint as a pilot, I took up the role of a Rifleman, pushing alongside other allies to desperately capture terrain. Though there’s still plenty of foliage to be found, a hefty portion of the map consisted of desert plains. Easier to spot enemies out, but even easier to get spotted and gunned down. Using whatever vegetation was available to outflank and sometimes climbing atop shipment containers down by the shore to take out enemies.

Your character can still sprint, crouch-run and crawl impossible distances without feeling like they’re swimming through the sheer humidity (more on that later) or at the mercy of malaria. That said, this isn’t a gameplay loop that will always reward a one-man-army playstyle where you rush in guns-blazing, jumping and sliding hither and yon, and emerge victorious. The pace is slower, methodical and tense; much of the time, listening to ambient sounds and being aware of your own noise can mean the difference between life and death.

"Despite playing on relatively high ping, connectivity also felt solid overall. But really, much of your enjoyment will be derived from how well you can play by Hell Let Loose’s rules."

And while this is an experience where you’re constantly calling out targets and objectives to your teammates, it also requires you to function without them. Maybe you’ll make a solid hero play. Maybe you’ll lie prone in the grass, desperately searching for their attackers before they can take out even more.

In that sense, the foundation of Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is certainly notable, and it’s backed by decent map design and solid gunplay. The problem lies in the optimization and overall presentation. It’s one thing to pick out targets like they’re needles in a proverbial haystack. Try doing it when there’s too much pop-in, the foliage is shimmering or, even worse, visual artifacting results in pixelated explosion smoke that affects the environment.

Even though several of the matches I played didn’t hit the 100-player cap despite coming pretty close, I can somewhat empathize with the dodgy performance. But when it’s causing so many visibility issues, it becomes nothing less than headache-inducing, especially with how long matches can be. During my Tank Crewman journey, despite not changing any settings, my frame rate took an inexplicable dive and remained so until I restarted my system. Cam Ranh Port proved more reliable for consistently hitting 60 FPS, so I can only assume that the sheer amount of foliage from earlier, combined with the balmy weather, proved too much. And it’s a shame because overall, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam’s environments are pretty detailed and atmospheric. Seeing such locales devolve in such a muddy manner is a shame.

Jank can also prove problematic at times. It’s most noticeable when moving through locations with your allies and colliding with them, resulting in awkward shuffling. Which may not seem all that harmful when all is quiet, but it can prove annoying in the heat of battle. Then there are the various bugs, from unmanned boats submerging and surfacing in the water. Or an instance where my character inexplicably began swimming through the air. I think it was because the game thought I hit the water, which was still a good dozen yards ahead. Maybe global warming hit much earlier than expected and in more bizarre ways than I thought. Either way, it didn’t help the realism.

I won’t deny the sheer shock and awe of seeing an area lit up by napalm, scorched earth and all, or the tension of following the radio leading to an NVA tunnel to dismantle it. Despite playing on relatively high ping, connectivity also felt solid overall. But really, much of your enjoyment will be derived from how well you can play by Hell Let Loose’s rules.

"I wouldn’t recommend abandoning your PvP comfort pick any time soon, but you never know – Vietnam may become an appealing destination in the next six months."

Unless you’re willing to take things slow, slog through engagements and flex to other roles, this may not be the competitive multiplayer FPS for you. Those who can get into it and look past the annoyances caused by the optimization and bugs will find a relatively deep experience with a strong atmosphere – where frustration can give way to some genuinely enthralling moments.

Whether that’s enough to sustain players through six maps and four modes at launch remains to be seen. Even with its highs and lows, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam has some appeal, even if it’s far from the most mainstream. I wouldn’t recommend abandoning your PvP comfort pick any time soon, but you never know – Vietnam may become an appealing destination in the next six months. For now, it’s a question of whether Expression Games can capitalize and refine it into something truly special.

This game was reviewed on PC.

But even with the polygonal models plastered with real-ish faces that nod along all the time, the aim assist that magnetizes towards targets, the actual aiming that feels downright clunky in this age of first-person shooters, and how closely it mimics the overall flow, Agent 64 is not that game. And expecting it to live up to that, especially when so many bigger developers and publishers have tried and failed, isn’t the best way to go in.

As a throwback to that gameplay, it’s successful. However, as its own experience, there are definitely highs and lows. Occasionally, it feels like the GoldenEye mechanics do much of the heavy lifting to make this an enjoyable experience. If you can accept that, Agent 64 might be a worthwhile retro shooter to while away a weekend or three.

"If you can keep all those caveats in mind, there is a boomer shooter feel to the mayhem, as you stagger enemies and gun them down before they even have a chance to get a shot off."

Except when it comes to the story. You play as John Walter, a secret agent who’s minding his own business and playing Nintendo 64 in his lush penthouse when suddenly, goons led by Dominic Pulp arrive to steal some “key.” He fights them off, naturally, and ends up captured, wherein he rendezvouses with his daughter. They set out to give chase to Pulp, learning about his motive and the larger organization behind him.

I wasn’t necessarily expecting compelling characterizations or voice acting (not that Agent 64 has any of the latter). Nor did I expect much of a cohesive flow between missions (which there thankfully is). Regardless, if you’re going in expecting some deeply impactful story, much less one that’s self-aware beyond a few Nintendo 64 references, you won’t find it here. Then again, it’s the missions and gameplay that made the original GoldenEye, and that remains the case here.

For starters, there are no health pickups or checkpoints in levels. You’ll need to pick up body armor, and on higher difficulties, there’s almost none. Aim assist is a must, both because of the lack of a crosshair and bullet spread. You can still hold down the right mouse button for more precise shots, but it feels just as unwieldy as the old days.

Long story short, the goal is to play through a level on a lower difficulty, learn the layout, and then attempt it again on at least Super Agent. It’s anyways required to earn enough Cyphers to unlock later acts. If you can keep all those caveats in mind, there is a boomer shooter feel to the mayhem, as you stagger enemies and gun them down before they even have a chance to get a shot off. Hanging behind corners, waiting for the right time to pop out, can sometimes get tense on the higher difficulties.

The actual missions, however, are fine, rarely approaching memorable. There is the odd scenario where you need to get a guard outfit and put it on manually – leading to a hilarious moment where I hadn’t done so in front of the enemy who had to open the door. They called reinforcements and just as I put the outfit on, they returned from whence they came, and all was well. Of course, upon calling the freight elevator, all the guards shortly turned hostile anyway, but I digress.

"Sometimes, enemies will react, swarming you very quickly. In such situations, the solution often involves heading back through the previous door and gunning them down as they pass through."

You’ll spend a hefty amount of time gunning down enemies, occasionally tossing explosives onto gate chains or a terminal and hacking a computer with – what else but – the hacktool. Some interesting twists involve fighting a helicopter with a rocket launcher or infiltrating an art museum to patch into a conference before spying on the same from above, and they’re fine, though not particularly exciting.

The AI can also feel inconsistent when it’s not outright dumb. Aside from the variety of foes, which feels about as repetitive as can be, their difficulty is tied directly to their aim. On Agent, they couldn’t hit the broad side of a space shuttle, even when you’re mere feet away. Super Agent cranks this up to a more balanced degree, and it’s here that level layout, combined with their placements, is put to the test. Some additional objectives are also thrown into the mix, so something like, say, the museum, which requires mostly clandestine work, will have a multi-level firefight thrown in where you need to recover some art pieces. That’s all well and good.

The problem is their overall reactions, and I’m not talking about the stylish little roll that adds nothing to their survivability. Some enemies will have clear line of sight but not become aware of your presence unless you cross a certain threshold. I ran into two enemies, both looking in the same direction, one on a higher level. The one on the ground didn’t spot me after a certain point, but the elevated one did. Solution? Take out the one above from a different angle. Will his falling body alert his comrade below? Of course not.

But that’s not always the case. Sometimes, enemies will react, swarming you very quickly. In such situations, the solution often involves heading back through the previous door and gunning them down as they pass through. In other cases, even with unsilenced weapons, they’ll go about their business without a care in the world despite the body count going up. Boss can’t be paying all that well, after all.

"If Agent 64: Spies Never Die, it’s that nostalgia can only really carry an experience so far. But in this case, it’s far enough, with the mission and level design coexisting well with the more archaic elements."

Beyond the Story (which also supports co-op), there are Contracts. Some of these require shooting hidden faces in previous levels, which then unlock special Paradox Mode versions set in the same. For example, Arcade Survivor turns the first level into a survival exercise where you need to keep killing enemies as quickly as possible to extend the timer long enough to extract. Another leaves you with only melee attacks while significantly increasing their damage. The same death timer rules apply, but it’s on the highest difficulty for laughs.

Of course, there’s also a dedicated Challenges mode which involves partaking in Arena battles against different CPU types. Completing the latter unlocks them as bots in multiplayer, and credit where it’s due: there is a pretty robust range of options, from CPU difficulty and starting weapons to available weapon pickups, match types, and so on. I don’t see it having much of a future in the competitive online space, whether it’s in the rudimentary map design or the actual balance, but it can offer some fun chaos now and again with bots.

If Agent 64: Spies Never Die, it’s that nostalgia can only really carry an experience so far. But in this case, it’s far enough, with the mission and level design coexisting well with the more archaic elements. As an homage to a shooter that defined a generation and Bond games for many years to come, it can be enjoyable, and should offer more than enough content for anyone who really wants to earn their 007 status – I mean, 64 Agent stripes.

This game was reviewed on PC.

But the mechanical foundations of its gameplay loop were definitely interesting back then, and have since made it quite a popular title in the illustrious franchise’s lineup. Indeed, it’s popular enough to warrant a free update that brings a graphical bump to the familiar game while adding an entirely new mission, complete with an antagonist who makes even El Sueño seem harmless by comparison?

But is it enough of a celebratory nod to 25 years of Ghost Recon? Does the new update make Wildlands feel more current-gen than the original version? Can the return of the Predator event be enough to put The Ghosts back in the limelight? Probably not, and that’s a shame.

Let’s get the new 4K/60 fps update out of the way early. Yes, it makes the graphics quite smooth while the visuals received a nice upgrade. Lighting and reflections look a lot better, although low-light situations do become problematic, a flaw I’m going to touch upon again a little later. However, the pop-in from the original release, along with character models and textures that look very outdated by modern standards, make it obvious that this one’s a last-gen title on a current-gen system.

However, the one upside here is that my base PS5 managed 60fps even in intense firefights and other resource-heavy situations, allowing for a very smooth experience and markedly better gunplay thanks to how much easier aiming is when there are more frames in play. I only wish that the load times had been better optimised, as getting in and out of the action took long enough for me to notice, which is saying something today.

Of course, the new Last Rites mission is the star of the show and its premise is interesting enough. Taking around one to two hours to finish, Last Rites is accessible directly from the main menu with no prerequisites. It sees the Ghosts return to Bolivia, where a new handler presents them with a fresh target: La Llorona. She’s a feisty one, and presented as an antagonist so unhinged, putting her out of her misery almost feels like a mercy. Of course, she’s inspired so much zealous fervor within her ranks that getting to her requires some meticulous work. Well, the Ghosts have never walked away from a challenge now, have they?

"The Ghosts return to Bolivia, where a new handler presents them with a fresh target."

The story has the twists and turns you’d come to expect from a Ghost Recon title, although one of them came early enough for it to feel like quite a curveball, and in a good way. Things are presented to you on the go just like in the base game, and you’re going to be spending your time traversing the new sub-region this mission’s locked into, with new information being presented to you with each objective you complete. It’s interesting, and definitely among the highlights of the update for me. It’s well-placed, well-written, and definitely more than capable of holding my interest.

The voice acting is effective, while the presentation feels a little too similar to the rest of the game to stand out. That the main Campaign’s fight against Santa Blanca only receives a passing mention is probably a good thing, since it frees this side chapter from having to force references to events from the rest of Bolivia into the fray. It helps keep Last Rites focused on its antagonists, and that’s a very good thing given that they come across as a viable threat.

However, the objectives themselves are nothing more than an excuse to send you from one place to the next, with armed compounds you must infiltrate to either collect intel yourself or perhaps send your drone to eavesdrop on a high-ranking member of La Llorona’s organization. Good luck finding something important in the dark, though. The low light performance was a serious downer, making it very annoying to navigate indoor environments.

You get to take the same vehicles that the base game offered, while some of them come with cool paint jobs to add a bit of celebratory flair to things. Of course, driving those vehicles is as frustrating as it’s ever been with their tendency to wildly oversteer and spin out of control at even the slightest bit of hard turning. What’s even more annoying is that dying or failing an objective respawns you at a considerable distance away, forcing you to endure another round of frustrating driving to return to where you were.

It’s slightly disappointing that a story that’s quite intriguing isn’t backed up by gameplay that matches it. Lackluster objectives are joined by an enemy AI that remains largely unchanged from the rest of the game, along with stealth options like Sync Shot that can let you command your teammates to just clear entire patrols without a single one of them being any the wiser. That thing seriously needs a nerf on its cooldowns given how it trivializes a lot of the game. Is it fun? Hell, yeah! Is it anything we haven’t already seen in Wildlands? Sadly no.

"The default setting is probably more than enough for casual players, but the more hardcore Ghosts amongst you are going to appreciate what’s on offer and how it makes things more demanding if that’s how you push your sliders."

I found myself tearing through missions on both Arcade and Normal, while greater difficulty options turned the tables on me more often than not. Of course, the new customization options are most welcome, letting you tweak everything from enemy behaviour and damage values to weapon restrictions, friendly fire, weather, and HUD elements until you’ve shaped the experience into something that feels just right for you. The default setting is probably more than enough for casual players, but the more hardcore Ghosts amongst you are going to appreciate what’s on offer and how it makes things more demanding if that’s how you push your sliders.

Enemy aggression and awareness are pretty great, although I’d say that it’s a very familiar AI given how many times we’ve seen it before. Wildlands might have been good for its time, but it’s too lacking by modern standards to make this free update do any wonders. Yes, the returning Predator event should give you a few more hours of fun, but it’s essentially as good now as it was then, and there isn’t much more to say about it.

As far as the free update goes, you’re getting a visual bump, a new standalone mission, customization options, and not really much else. Last Rites is definitely good enough to make Wildlands veterans come back to Bolivia for a time, but can it make them stay? That depends on how addictive they found the original base game. But for new players, if you weren’t already sold on Wildlands, it isn’t likely that Last Rites is going to work any miracles.

As a part of a game that’s still listed as a PS4 title, it’s probably worth taking advantage of the trial weekend to just dive into Wildlands and get through it if you don’t own a copy of the game. The current PlayStation Store discount is also quite tempting if Ghost Recon is something you’ve enjoyed over the years, or are curious about trying out. But as a purchase, it isn’t something I can recommend wholeheartedly in a world where titles like Ready or Not make for far better experiences.

Last Rites is enough of a firework show to mark a milestone that many other franchises in modern gaming would be envious of. But other than that, it isn’t much more than an interesting side chapter in Bolivia, far removed from Santa Blanca while retaining the main campaign’s limitations, and that’s probably its biggest weakness. It’s still fun if you’re playing it for free, though.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.