Improvements rolled through over the years for almost every aspect, and this expansion, coinciding with a free update, promises to be the most sweeping yet. And while there are some positive aspects, the expansion leaves me in the same spot as it did all those years – wanting, waiting for it deliver a better experience, rather than simply bolting on more systems and hitting those monthly active player counts. The expansion features a new end-game “activity” (heavy emphasis on the quotes), alongside odd additions (fishing) and actual, meaningful gameplay changes.

"For every impressively rendered cutscene, there are so many moments where you’re rooted in place, having to listen to a character drone on and on, then click on them for a dialogue option to trigger a cutscene. And no amount of skipping can fix that."

But above all, it’s about Mephisto, and if you’re already beyond caring about the plot, the expansion will do little to change your mind. Reuniting with Lorath Nair following discoveries made by Neyrelle, the Wanderer ventures to Skovos to stop the Primeval and his latest plan, which involves garnering the support of the people, including the Amazons, and harnessing an eclipse for some unknown purpose.

If you rolled a “world-ending scenario,” that’s a natural 20. Despite all of it, and even with reliable performances from the likes of Ralph Ineson, the plot really lurches along until you’re reunited with you-know-who, the explanation about as reasonable as “Somehow, Palpatine returned.”

Unfortunately, this whole cyclical nature of hatred isn’t something Blizzard is really keen on exploring, much less psychoanalysing but the current villain must be stopped because.

And doing that requires hunting down three pieces of a blade and stabbing him, lickity split, no fuss, no muss. Of course, it also doesn’t help that, once again, this doesn’t feel like much of the Wanderer’s story. Just that one is sidling along and partaking in events as they happen with the ever-nagging feeling that maybe we shouldn’t have killed the big bad all those years ago.

Anyway, by now, you’re probably wondering why I’m so held up by the story and the direction. Leaving aside that the above are really the only interesting parts about expansion’s plot, I can empathize with those who are only here to blast through monsters and earn sick loot. Who cares about the campaign when you’re going to clear it once and forget about it after?

Well, therein lies the problem, just as with the base game and Vessel of Hatred. The campaign is about eight hours long, and that’s by design. Blizzard really wants to linger on this story and characters, to the point where it hampers the pacing. For every impressively rendered cutscene, there are so many moments where you’re rooted in place, having to listen to a character drone on and on, then click on them for a dialogue option to trigger a cutscene. And no amount of skipping can fix that.

"We might as well get fishing out of the way first, since it’s the most straightforward. While starting as a side quest, it opens up the ability to fish anywhere in the world and add those catches to your collection."

It can be made more succinct – heck, there are several places where it is, as seen in the final hour or so – but despite how terse some of the situations are, Blizzard opts for verboseness. As a result, there’s much ado about nothing through the majority of this campaign, save for going somewhere to engage in almost as much rudimentary conversation as monster slaying.

Is it an improvement over Vessel of Hatred? It’s not saying much, but yes, and much of that can be attributed to the final boss, which is perhaps one of the best yet, balancing spectacle with interesting mechanics. I was gobsmacked throughout this whole encounter – by Diablo 4 standards, of course – especially given most of the standard fare that the rest of the expansion had to offer. There are some other cool moments in the story, and for once, Blizzard chose not to overtly push future threats for the sake of setting up its seasons.

Of course, that’s only one aspect of the Diablo 4 experience – the other, and one that players will be more interested in, is the endgame, specifically, War Plans, fishing and Echoing Hatred.

We might as well get fishing out of the way first, since it’s the most straightforward. While starting as a side quest, it opens up the ability to fish anywhere in the world and add those catches to your collection. The actual “mechanics” of it offer little more than opening the emote wheel – almost like Blizzard is mocking me at this point, given my severe dislike of quests that require it – and selecting “Fish.” From there, you wait till a catch bites and press the button at the right time.

Fish can be traded for high-level items and materials, and there are even dedicated challenges and cosmetic sets. Think of it as more of a side activity than anything else – something to complement the monster slaying.

Echoing Hatred, where you face endless hordes of progressively difficult enemies (and net better rewards depending on how long you survive), requires an exceedingly rare item that simply hasn’t dropped for me yet. There’s something to be said about endgame activities with high barriers to entry, but when you’ve advertised one as a major selling point for a $40 expansion, you would at least think that a free sample is due. A taste for what players can expect, but alas, there’s none of that here, so keep grinding away and hoping that it drops before Blizzard inevitably caves and either buffs the drop rate or offers a way to craft them.

"As you complete activities, you’ll earn skill points for distinct passive trees that can result in things such as Hellwyrms unleashing Chaos Rifts in Helltides, or the chance to fight two Initiate bosses after opening a Lair Boss’s chest. These don’t dramatically alter the activities in question."

Don’t worry, though, because you’ll be grinding out some very familiar activities courtesy of War Plans. The joke before expansion’s launch about how this is little more than a playlist of the current slate of endgame offerings, from a run in The Pit to completing a Nightmare Dungeon, isn’t exactly a joke. Granted, these are adjusted to more adequately fit a series of activities rather than standing on their own, so a Nightmare Dungeon will have more streamlined objectives. Which is all the more hilarious because trying to garner enough Aether for the alternate boss fight becomes much more challenging, though not downright impossible. Likewise, Helltides requires gathering enough Aberrant Cinders to open two chests and then dipping.

You’re rewarded after every activity completion and then receive a final reward once the entire War Plan is complete. Then you do it again. It’s not purely “play what you want” – there is some freedom in choosing different nodes, but the chances of outright avoiding the Undercity or not partaking in Helltides are very low, especially as the War Plans facilitate up to five activities in a row.

As you complete activities, you’ll earn skill points for distinct passive trees that can result in things such as Hellwyrms unleashing Chaos Rifts in Helltides, or the chance to fight two Initiate bosses after opening a Lair Boss’s chest. These don’t dramatically alter the activities in question – more like adding some bells and whistles, a major cut below the Atlas Tree in Path of Exile. Despite slightly spicing up these activities, it doesn’t feel like something befitting a paid expansion such as this. Also, I’m baffled why this system doesn’t include World Bosses or Legion Events. Perhaps coordinating those is too challenging, even if it would have helped the variety.

Nevertheless, you’ll spend a decent amount of time farming War Plans for new Seals and Horadric Cube materials. The latter can be used for a variety of things, from upgrading Rare loot to Legendaries (offering a decent power spike on new characters), adding new modifiers on existing gear at the cost of making it unmodifiable, transmuting three of the same item into a new one, and so on. And while I can appreciate being able to reroll the value of an Ancestral Unique’s core power or to remove Affixes, it doesn’t change the simplicity of the crafting system, nor really encourage much else beyond tossing in a relatively complete Ancestral, be it Unique or Legendary, and transfiguring (or “corrupting”) it for one last modifier.

"On the bright side, the two new classes are lots of fun. I spent the most time with Paladin, becoming Arbiter Andy, walking around and decimating enemies with Wing Strikes (which proved so good that I think the increased damage modifier has been outright removed from Tempering)."

You’re not going to brick the item or make it disappear, but in the same vein, the results thus far have left me wanting. It’s complimentary and definitely has its uses – all my fellow Jah Rune searchers, our time has come – and if you’ve ever wanted to craft a Common item from the ground up into something, then you can. But you could also just blast through the rest of the game and bathe in the loot explosions. It’s a process that, like the whole “unmodifiable” business, doesn’t really gel with what Diablo 4 is trying to offer.

Then again, at this point, I don’t quite know if Diablo 4 is trying to gel with what Diablo 4 is after, and nowhere is that more obvious than with the addition of the Talisman. You can equip a Seal that opens up several Charm Slots, letting you fit up to six (though you’ll be spending a lot of time with five for a while). While there are Magic, Rare and Unique Charms to equip, each with their own stats and benefits, Set bonuses also make a return, and once again, they’re going to railroad you into their bonuses to augment a specific playstyle.

I found that the Epiphany Set could suit one purpose of my Arbiter build, essentially giga-buffing the Ultimate to obscene levels for a short period while heavily reducing its cooldown. But on the other hand, the Iron Conviction set fed more into the aura playstyle, heavily improving survivability and making all those additional aura skill levels useful. Like the Cube, it’s complementary on top of your current build, but the very nature of the Set bonuses means they’ll dictate the meta rather than exist outside of it. And of course, each Charm has its own Ancestral version, because why not add another layer of RNG on top of everything else?

On the bright side, the two new classes are lots of fun. I spent the most time with Paladin, becoming Arbiter Andy, walking around and decimating enemies with Wing Strikes (which proved so good that I think the increased damage modifier has been outright removed from Tempering). While not too well-versed with the Warlock at present, I found its take on the summoner playstyle, which involved bringing in brutes and hurling bodies at enemies within a summoning circle to translate kills into more minions, to be chaotically enjoyable.

If you needed any impetus to pick up the expansion, it’s probably these two, because, for what it’s worth, Diablo 4’s base combat still feels viscerally enjoyable. I don’t have much to say about Skovos, save for the fact that it’s a gorgeous location, and once again, the art team at Blizzard continues to carry this property through thick and thin. It’s matched by the sound design and music teams – the former ensures that every single impact of the Paladin’s Falling Star feels weighty while the latter adds an air of almost Greek mythology to the region’s tunes.

"However, at this point, almost three years later, Diablo 4 still struggles to resonate with me. The ingredients are seemingly there, but the design decisions and overall endgame loop continue to disappoint, with War Plans feeling like little more than a band-aid fix to try and string them all together."

Diablo 4’s open world design, where you’re flitting from one place to the next on a mount, partaking in the same random world events on repeat, is what it is at this point. I’m not a fan, but at least Skovos feels less sprawling and more compact in its design, which means less travel time.

I would have loved to end this review by saying that this expansion is simply more Diablo 4, and that if you love the base game, then you’ll probably like this. Content-wise, that definitely holds, especially with the new classes, and there have been enough systemic changes in this latest update that lapsed players will want to come back and at least play around with all the systems.

However, at this point, almost three years later, Diablo 4 still struggles to resonate with me. The ingredients are seemingly there, but the design decisions and overall endgame loop continue to disappoint, with War Plans feeling like little more than a band-aid fix to try and string them all together. Maybe with the Hatred saga over and done with, the feeling of hope for the future will result in something, anything innovative or meaningful for the game as a whole. As it currently stands, however, it begets little more than a feeling of what could have been.

This expansion was reviewed on PC.

Well, Kiln is probably the first real exception to that. I don’t understand why it would go in this direction or how it could deliver something to appeal to the casual PvP crowd.

In its over-the-top, comedic announcement – later revealed to be highly scripted and exhausting – Kiln showcased a fusion of two base human instincts: Creation and destruction. The former was brought forth by an in-game pottery system, where your playable character could be given form and customized with various designs, stickers, and more. The latter is where the actual gameplay came in: Competitive multiplayer. That’s right – you were going to take those lovingly crafted pots and by gosh, destroy them in PvP matches against others.

It was almost easy to forget amid all this that the name actually comes from the core objective. Because you’re not just a pot smacking other pots, but also carrying water to extinguish the enemy team’s Kiln. The reasoning for this is flimsy at best, but Double Fine handles it with the usual narrative flair.

Plucked out of a shattered universe by Celadon, your spirit is given form in a pot. You have the freedom to shape other pots at will, and it’s not long before she sends you off to compete against spirit-bound pots, mysteriously teasing all the while.

Despite its relatively short length, this prologue highlights Double Fine’s strengths. Characterization, writing, a natural flow to the dialogue (one that becomes decidedly less enjoyable when reduced to standard vendor-speak) – and the set-up isn’t bad at all. If it were designed as a single-player game and given much more narrative gravitas and direction to go with the studio’s signature humor, Kiln could have really delivered something special narrative-wise.

Unfortunately, you’re then transported to a social hub where you can either shape different pots to inhabit, speak to Slip the dog who sells decorations, queue up for a match or invite others. On a daily basis, there’s a single pot that really wants you to smack it around and break it. Surprisingly, this comes across as only comically twisted, and I hope it stays that way.

One of the main selling points of Kiln is that you can design your own pot, and to that end, regardless of how creative you manage to be within the confines of its borders, there are eight “shapes.” For example, a rudimentary Vessel can unleash a charged sword slash. The longer it’s held, the more damage dealt in a forward arc, potentially smashing multiple opponents at a time. Craft a Bowl, and you can channel a Tornado that traps enemies and damages them. A Bottle can, meanwhile, unleash a stabbing Thrust that, while best suited for single-target, does a massive amount of damage.

You can further refine designs to achieve a proper balance of health and water capacity, or lean towards one over the other. The benefits are obvious – more health means more survivability in fights, while more water capacity means you can potentially deal more damage to the enemy Kiln.

Problems arise immediately once you start seeing other players with abilities that are simply not on your shelf, regardless of the shape. That’s because there’s also the clay size. As you level up, you get two more choices – Small and Large Clay, the former with more speed, which makes catching them with the awkward combos tedious, and the latter emphasizing more health. Currently, there are players taking advantage of the Small Cup’s Snake Can ability, which can deal damage over time. Landing the ability isn’t difficult, and there’s pretty much no counterplay. It can even stack, making it all the more obnoxious.

Then again, the Medium Cup’s Popcorn Blast isn’t any less skill-based, since you can charge it indefinitely, and it heavily damages enemies in a radius, even knocking them away. At least you can roll away from that if you know it’s coming.

Beyond the Clay types are different tools for further refining a pot (also locked behind leveling up), though you can enable a cross-section view for free. But once you’ve got the design down, it’s off to Quench, the only game mode where two teams of four players duke it out. And right away, I have to ask: Even if it’s only $20, why only one mode? Why no free-for-all, or something with larger teams? Not that the population is actually booming or anything, with a peak of less than 200 concurrent on Steam, but why not have private matches to let players alter the rules as they see fit?

If you can look past the iffy targeting and otherwise awkward melee combat, the map design in Kiln is…fine. There’s a stage with a mosh pit, where the center continually dips down, allowing for isolated skirmishes (or a top off of water), and another that involves platforming across moving boats to reach the enemy kiln. Athena’s War Room is interesting because both kilns are essentially across from each other – the water is located in a hedge maze-like layout, and you can shoot water to create timed barricades. This map was perhaps my favorite, since there were plenty of ways to evade and bamboozle enemies when you’re not all gathered at the junction, engaging in one big melee. Thinking I had cornered an opponent, only for them to dip under an opening and then re-emerge with a Sword thrust was pretty cool.

But such moments of strategy and counterplay are few and far between, despite Kiln placing so much emphasis on the same (right down to swapping to a different shape mid-match as a counterpick). I also found it quite annoying that most times when attacked by two players, the hit stun makes it nearly impossible to fight back. Granted, this emphasizes teamwork and rolling away while weak to find some backup, but it is so easily abusable when simply running around with another teammate and ganging up on those caught out.

You could argue that it’s not a “serious” PvP game, and yet, that just makes me wonder about the whole point of Kiln’s existence. It’s a faux Capture the Flag-style objective-based mode, with some MOBA lite meets party brawler elements – an intriguing fusion, but also one that never even sniffs the highs of any of the best in these genres.

And much as I actually like the art direction, especially in the stages, and the sound design, the performance on PC is truly an anomaly. Check the recommended requirements – an Intel Core Ultra 5 225 or AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, 32 GB of RAM and a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT with 12 GB VRAM – and then tell me whether it delivers fidelity deserving of the same. As a result, I had to run it on Medium settings at 1440p with DLSS and Frame Gen enabled. At least this delivered a relatively smooth frame rate, but the occasional hitch was noticeable.

At the end of the day, despite how neat it can be to craft a pot so thoroughly, Kiln is just another competitive multiplayer title to add to the pile – Double Fine’s own Bleeding Edge moment. Even if it receives more content down the line – which is usually when a player base massively drops – its uniqueness belies a gameplay loop that quickly becomes tedious and repetitive. Mostly dead on arrival and probably not aspiring to much more than an awkward experiment, I really hope it’s just that and nothing more.

This game was reviewed on PC.

"The Career offers the meatiest piece of gameplay, as usual, and has a handful of refinements that make it a smoother and more efficient experience."

MotoGP has historically been one of their titles with the most gravitas, running for more than two decades with its official license with MotoGP, but as with most annual sports or racing franchises, new releases have varied in their balance between adding new modes or content and simply updating rosters or licenses. While still gorgeous and smooth to play, MotoGP 26 falls more on the latter side of the balance, offering what is largely a mirror of last year’s game with some physics tweaking and minor expansions on the Arcade gameplay style and specialized Race Off modes. It remains the definitive MotoGP experience with a wide range of tracks, race types, and accessibility options, but MotoGP 26 doesn’t transform the formula for anyone who’s played it in recent years.

As with past MotoGP games, MotoGP 26 focuses on getting you on the track as quickly as possible. There are no major new modes this year, nor is there much of a story in the Career mode, as the core single player and multiplayer modes remain largely in tact from previous entries. There are your traditional single player and online modes, including the expansion of online lobbies to 22, though we were not able to test the online experience during the review period.

There’s also an introduction of a new card pack collection mode in the visual vein of an Ultimate Team experience, but fortunately these are costless and purely collectible, offering just another reason to keep playing and fill your collection.

The Career offers the meatiest piece of gameplay, as usual, and has a handful of refinements that make it a smoother and more efficient experience. You can create a character as always, but you can now also play as any of the real-life MotoGP riders and step into their shoes throughout the season and beyond, even if you choose to start your career at Moto3.

There is also more definitive week-to-week intrigue, as you are more able to directly respond in press conferences about who your rivals are and what parts of your bike you want to continue developing, and these directly impact the key opponents you have on the track and the way in which your bike improves over the season.

Beyond those updates, though, the Career mode is largely unchanged from previous entries. You play through the full season of Moto3, Moto2, or MotoGP as your selected or created driver, and each grand prix consists of the full weekend of practices, qualifying events, and races, including sprint races when you make your way to MotoGP weekends.

"The Arcade mode significantly pulls back the realism in favor of accessibility and ease of use."

Your ultimate goal, of course, is to collect as many points as possible throughout the races to win the championship by the end of the season, and in the meantime there are also weekly goals and multi-week rival challenges that pit you against another rider of your choosing to score more points than them in the coming weeks.

All of this is in service of keeping you on the track as much as possible while shaking up the week-to-week marathon of the season, and the on-track experience is another incremental step forward for the franchise. MotoGP’s gameplay has always been among its strongest features because it highlights the strong balance needed in this sport between high speeds and cornering, and the updates this year do nothing to disrupt that balance.

Bikes certainly feel more unique from one another than they have in the past, as some slower bikes would allow me to turn a corner easily while others struggle to turn but outpace other riders on straightaways, and there is something immensely satisfying about figuring out your bike’s tendencies and being able to perfectly make a tight turn and zoom past your opponents.

On the other hand, it can be immensely frustrating when you feel like you have no control over your bike, but the game fortunately offers a host of accessibility options to adjust to both your play style and your skill level, including returning its two main racing experiences: Sim, the pure simulation at the core of the MotoGP franchise, and Arcade, the more forgiving experience introduced last year. The Sim experience offers the most in-depth control over your bike and your team that you can have, down to tire compression and pit stop strategy, while also imposing the most realistic rules and riding physics the game offers.

The Arcade mode significantly pulls back the realism in favor of accessibility and ease of use. It’s much more difficult to wipe out, penalties are enforced at a much slower pace, and you can more easily recover from bouncing off of other drivers or running off track. It’s much easier to play in Arcade mode, but the Sim offers much more granular control and higher potential for your bike.

"Sound design is also a standout, as crowds roar over engines firing to recreate the feeling of being in high-pressure moments and reward the effort to reach the pinnacle of the sport."

These two racing experiences highlight the range that MotoGP’s gameplay can have from a difficulty and flexibility perspective. You can take either of those experiences at their default settings, or at any time you can change any number of rules around penalties, computer assistance, or AI difficulty, which can also be set to adapt to your own skill level. At their extremes, these could be either far too lenient or far too stringent for any individual player, but the ability to change the experience so drastically creates accessibility for hardcore and non-hardcore MotoGP fans alike.

There’s also an expansion of the different types of races that you can enter with the expansion of the Race Off mode, which has a variety of different bike types and tracks away from the spectacle of a full grand prix. The new production bikes, for example, add to the roster of flat bikes and minibikes that can be taken out for shorter races, and these handle completely differently from traditional bikes. These are fun to race, particularly when they show up as interlude weeks within the course of a Career season, but they certainly don’t have the depth that the classic on-track experience offers.

From a technical perspective, even for a MotoGP game, this game is gorgeous and runs incredibly smoothly. Each track is beautifully rendered and can look completely different depending on time of day and weather conditions, in addition to the impact those have on the racing itself. I had no technical hiccups throughout my time with the game, and while the off-track visuals are lower-quality, the overall visual style is beautiful and realistic.

Sound design is also a standout, as crowds roar over engines firing to recreate the feeling of being in high-pressure moments and reward the effort to reach the pinnacle of the sport, complementing strong and responsive controls that effectively use the controller’s haptic feedback.

"With its limited improvements, MotoGP 26 doesn’t move the needle from past entries in the franchise, but it remains the definitive experience for MotoGP fans."

Developer Milestone continues to up its game each year with the MotoGP franchise. While changes year-in and year-out aren’t always the most expansive, this franchise continues to cobble together the most refined and expansive MotoGP experience on the market. With that said, MotoGP 26 is one of the entries with fewer upgrades and more incremental changes.

The game continues to take steps in visual and auditory fidelity and offers a wide range of accessibility options that open the door to fans of all experience levels, but this year’s game largely feels like a slight update over last year. With its limited improvements, MotoGP 26 doesn’t move the needle from past entries in the franchise, but it remains the definitive experience for MotoGP fans.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

"What truly sets DarkSwitch apart is how it rethinks the core act of planning and building your city."

At first glance, DarkSwitch invites obvious comparisons with another narrative-centric city builder, Frostpunk. You have to plan your city’s build around a large, circular structure, make tough decisions across various aspects like research and resource priorities, and there’s even a hostile, seemingly natural phenomenon that contributes to an ever-growing “fear” meter that, when maxed out, essentially means game over.

What truly sets DarkSwitch apart is how it rethinks the core act of planning and building your city. The entire game revolves around building a settlement on and around the trunk of a massive tree. This means that, along with the 2D layout of the ground, you also get to play around with the Z-axis when figuring out where to put important buildings or how to plan your citizens’ daily commutes.

While it may sound like little more than a gimmick at first, just about every aspect of not only the core gameplay, but also the visuals and narrative of DarkSwitch revolve around this simple fact.

"The entire game revolves around building a settlement on and around the trunk of a massive tree."

When it comes to the second-to-second gameplay, things start off quite hectic. You begin with several homeless citizens in your settlement, and you need to figure out how you can feed them, house them, and put them to work. While the first two are simple enough, send them to forage for some raw food and set up a cooking house to turn it into more nutritious rations, that third one is where things get more complicated.

You have three types of citizens: laborers, scouts, and artisans. While seemingly interchangeable, just about every task benefits from careful micromanagement over who is assigned where. A fishing hut, for example, gets a productivity boost from laborers, and a penalty from artisans. Guard towers, on the other hand, benefit more from scouts than laborers. Just about every building and task has nuances like this that you’ll need to keep an eye on, especially since the harsh world of DarkSwitch also causes your available worker pool to fluctuate regularly.

After you’ve set up your core settlements, however, the general pace of DarkSwitch slows down quite a bit. You’re going to spend a lot more time waiting for resources to be gathered and processed or buildings to be built at this stage, and while this might sound like a drag to some players, I found it to be a fun break from a pace that would otherwise be too manic.

You finally get a chance to admire your planning along the tree trunk, after all. And make no mistake; while you won’t be doing too much in the mid-game, the tension never eases. Just as you start feeling a bit comfortable about your city, the game will start throwing new obstacles your way, be it the ever-encroaching magical fog, or a group of zealous templars looking to stamp out any form of resistance that might be hiding in your city.

DarkSwitch’s story has quite a bit going on. The world has been enshrouded by a fog that seems to have the magical ability to turn those caught in it insane. While the daytime seems to be quite safe, during the night, the fog tends to creep ever closer to human settlements.

If that weren’t problematic enough, there’s also a group of templars that seems to derive quite a bit of pleasure in “interrogating” regular citizens under the guise of investigating potential resistance. In the midst of all of this, you are tasked by the Archon to conduct some very important research, largely about the nature of the fog, in secret.

"After you’ve set up your core settlements, however, the general pace of DarkSwitch slows down quite a bit."

The first few hours of the story largely revolve around teaching you how to play DarkSwitch. Unfortunately, this tutorialization is also where the game’s flaws start becoming evident.

Rather than presenting players with objectives and gently guiding them by highlighting key UI elements, DarkSwitch instead stops you from doing anything and forces you to read a few back-to-back walls of text that will “helpfully” explain why you should, say, build housing to cure the homelessness crisis, or the importance of medical care centers around your city. While I have no problems with a game that wants to teach me how to play it, there has to be a better way to handle this than outright interrupting the player.

This issue persists for much of the game, since you’re also gradually unlocking brand new mechanics as you get deeper into the story. It gets especially frustrating when you start getting multiple quests to complete. For example, I was once planning out a lineup of Flameguard towers to make sure that the citizens I have working on the ground level don’t get engulfed by the fog during the dead of night. Right as I was about to put some of the buildings down, the game was interrupted by a tutorial message explaining how to scavenge discarded metal.

The building systems aren’t flawless either, but their issues are a bit more understandable. Since you are building your city around a massive tree and its surrounding areas, you often have to make decisions about whether the buildings you’re putting down should be on the ground, directly on the trunk, or on platforms built across the trunk.

Some buildings can only be built in one or two of these spots. While the choice is often easy, and you’ve likely decided on the ideal spot for, say, a new kitchen, well before actually clicking on the button, there’s extra friction because the game keeps trying to ‘intelligently’ guess where I want to place a building. A simple toggle for buildings that can be placed on multiple spots would have helped in this regard.

"The building systems aren’t flawless either, but their issues are a bit more understandable"

Interestingly, despite the complexity added to typical city-building gameplay by the existence of a vertical axis, the camera never really gave me too much trouble. You get two distinct camera modes that you can switch between at will, one that keeps the tree in the center and lets you navigate around it, and another that will feel more familiar to genre veterans, which lets you navigate in a more freeform way by using the WASD key cluster along with Q and E for rotation.

The visuals in DarkSwitch are also quite incredible, with its stylized take on the fantasy genre being a pleasure to look at. Seeing your citizens running around while they try to complete their tasks can often feel downright joyful despite the game’s generally dark fantasy setting. Of course, the fact that performance was stable certainly helped matters.

On a PC running on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, a Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, and 32 GB of RAM, I experienced essentially no slowdowns or hitches, with the frame rate holding steady at 60 FPS. Similarly, the moody audio soundscapes and music are also phenomenal, which should come as no surprise since it was handled by legendary Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka.

Thanks to its narrative focus and strong mission pacing, DarkSwitch does an excellent job of alternating between tense survival-driven stretches and quieter moments where you can appreciate the city you’ve built. Its tutorial interruptions and occasional building friction hold it back, but this is still an easy recommendation for city-builder fans and a strong one for newcomers willing to learn its systems.

This game was reviewed on PC.

And that’s why we’re here. I’ve sunk nearly a hundred and twenty hours into this adventure, and watched it evolve from its release build into a title that now stands as a very strong addition to the open world fantasy action genre. I can safely say that while I was fairly impressed in my original review owing to the game’s potential that was reliant on its issues being addressed, that’s now largely a thing of the past. So, what’s changed?

"The majority of my time in Pywel has been in Balanced Mode, and it’s a visual treat."

Let’s begin with the game’s graphics. On the base PS5, the release build’s Performance Mode was a bit of a mess. Blurry textures and a ton of pop-in were trade-offs I had to live with if I wanted to run the game at 60 fps, a compromise I’m normally okay with but just couldn’t live with given Pywel’s beauty. And while the game did a fairly good job of maintaining its framerate for the most part, it did tank quite noticeably in battles where there were numerous enemy forces in play.

But that’s all in the past now. The forced 4K option has addressed a lot of those blurry textures, and while the game does stutter in intense sections, the option to turn off V-Sync has helped with that, too. However, I’d say that Balanced mode with V-Sync turned off and a bit of tweaking to the camera acceleration setting, coupled with enhanced raytracing enabled, is still the way to go. Of course, Quality Mode has the best visual fidelity, but this is a title where its framerates can make a huge difference to the gameplay.

The majority of my time in Pywel has been in Balanced Mode, and it’s a visual treat. The draw distances have improved by leaps and bounds over the release build, and leaping off high places to zoom into the distance is now something I like to do often, just to take in the sights of the world below me. It’s addictive not just because it’s cool, but because it looks so spectacular, I just can’t get enough of it. I’d recommend messing with your settings a bit to see what works for you, but rest assured, you’re going to find something that clicks.

There isn’t a hint of pop-in now (other than on Performance Mode, that is), and the few visual issues, like a bit of shimmering around hair strands, are now gone. The reflections are a whole lot better, too, courtesy of the new raytracing options. As far as the visual fidelity is concerned, Crimson Desert’s now a brilliant title, even on a base PS5. Things look even better on the PS5 Pro’s 120Hz mode with excellent visual quality and stable frame rate.

"As far as the visual fidelity is concerned, Crimson Desert’s now a brilliant title, even on a base PS5."

Moving on from the game’s visuals, I don’t want to spend too much time on the game’s main story as it’s still too disjointed to do it any favors. That’s something I doubt can be fixed in any cost-effective manner, and it continues to be among the weakest sections of the game. I will say that the more diligent Greymanes among you might find more to like from it, and reading the knowledge part of your Journal does help give more context to the world and its inhabitants, even helping bridge narrative gaps between the various chapters.

I still think that both Damiane and Oongka deserved far more of a presence in the story, a sentiment that’s been shaped by the amount of time I’ve been spending exploring Pywel with them. And that’s not even factoring in their gameplay, which I’ll touch upon a little later down the line. I’d even say that they’re a tad more interesting than Kliff, and I switch to Damiane as soon as I’m free to play as any of the three characters.

While we’re on the subject of Damiane, I know that she begins as a guest of the Greymanes before the story gives her a very clumsy induction into their ranks. I really wish that moment had been presented better, perhaps with a sort of ceremony marking her entry into their order, considering they’re a pretty tight-knit bunch. It would have been a lot better than having her vanish for a major chunk of the story and returning for a single mission after which every person in Pywel magically considered her a Greymane.

Oongka’s introduction as a playable character is similarly shoehorned in, although it isn’t as jarring as Damiane’s. But the two of them sorely need more weapons and gear to make them stand on an equal footing with Kliff, who enjoys the lion’s share of the game’s discoverable gear.

"Even when I’m playing something else, or out and about in the real world, there’s a part of me that’s thinking about my gold deposit at Hernand’s bank, or the trade goods my Greymanes are bringing in."

And speaking of gear, I’m firmly of the opinion that upgrading armor and weapons should NOT need an Abyss Artifact, as other materials are fairly challenging to track down and provide enough of an extra layer to engage with the world without the need to farm for skill points too. I say that because it directly affected my enjoyment of Damiane and Oongka’s skill sets, as having to split a limited pool of skill points between three characters and their gear is a huge bummer. Here’s to hoping that future patches get that sorted.

While the story and the three playable characters continue to have flaws that hold the game back from being an absolute masterpiece, Pywel continues to be the star of the show and a reason why Crimson Desert is among the all-time greats in the open-world genre. Everything that was good about it in the release build continues to be a major draw, but spending more time with it has brought new ways to engage with every one of its systems, and the entire experience is so immersive that it’s become an obsession of mine.

Even when I’m playing something else, or out and about in the real world, there’s a part of me that’s thinking about my gold deposit at Hernand’s bank, or the trade goods my Greymanes are bringing in. Diving back into the game has me managing all of that before I set off in any direction, giving myself a challenge or two along the way.

Every session you play, whether it’s a short dive in to manage your resources or a long one where you uncover a significant part of your map’s fog of war, has meaningful ways to engage with a world that’s quite intricate and feels so tied to your narrative destiny that it all just fits somehow.

"When it’s played as intended, Crimson Desert gives you so many ways to get invested in the experience it’s trying to sell that it’s honestly hard to keep track of it all."

The in-game economy is a great example, and opens itself up so wonderfully that it’s become a very addictive part of my playtime. It all begins with your fellow Greymanes and the things they can set out to do for the faction on your behalf. Sending them out on missions initially gives you resources for your camp, but as you start to bring more of them back to your base at Howling Hill, you get access to more mission types, some of which reward you with goods that you can then sell for a tidy sum at Hernand’s Black Market Dealer.

That inflow of money slowly builds up alongside all the loot you sell from your adventures, and a cursory trip to the nearest bank gets you involved in an economy that’s fairly volatile, but largely ensures that your money needs for most of the game are met. Why go to all the trouble to set up my adventure’s funding, you ask? Well, I simply couldn’t see a Greymane choosing to pickpocket gold bars off nobles, and decided to play the game on its terms. But the option is there, and it’s a credit to how well Pywel has been built.

When it’s played as intended, Crimson Desert gives you so many ways to get invested in the experience it’s trying to sell that it’s honestly hard to keep track of it all. It puts you right in the middle of life as a Greymane trying to find a new path forward while investing your time and energy into Pywel’s welfare. And it’s done so immersively that it feels like you’re living a second life on that vast continent.

The new updates have made navigating the many menus you’ll be dealing with a lot easier, while streamlining the management of your inventory and storage at the camp has vastly improved as well. The latest patch has been a blessing on that front, as you now have dedicated storage for upgrade materials and cooking items at your house in the camp, and can draw on them without needing to have them on you.

"After the very welcome tweaking to sprinting controls, the new dodge mechanic now lets me use it to gain the upper hand in almost any combat situation as opposed to the clunky way it was handled before."

In turn, I see that freeing up more space for loot and armor with different Abyss Gears on them, which give you more options for different builds to handle a variety of situations. You earn more money while tearing through enemies in combat as well as valuable Abyss Artifacts, and it’s a win-win. Indeed, that’s been a recurring theme of these patches, each of them bringing meaningful changes to the gameplay loop and visual upgrades that have made this a very special experience.

My favorite among those changes is the new controls, with another crucial change coming through in the latest patch. The option to configure dodge rolls and dashes, each getting a unique input, is an absolute game-changer. After the very welcome tweaking to sprinting controls, the new dodge mechanic now lets me use it to gain the upper hand in almost any combat situation as opposed to the clunky way it was handled before.

I never could tell when I was going to dash out of attack’s range and stay in striking distance, or roll wildly out of the way, but I’ve already trained my muscle memory to the new controls. Combined with the new changes to storage and inventory management, each of Crimson Desert’s patches has revamped the game, making it a far cry from the release build I reviewed.

Of course, there’s enough that’s been said about the speedy update cycle and excellent changes that the developer has brought to the table, and I’d like to steer us towards the combat, which is now a power fantasy that I keep coming back to, with each of the three playable protagonists now tweaked to have similarities where they count, while retaining a distinct identity when blades are drawn.

"A transmog option for all those cool armor sets might help with a lot of tedious menus and make build flexibility in the game a whole lot more compatible with a fashion community that’s all about the drip you carry into your adventure."

While Kliff is an all-rounder who anyone who likes to play it safe is going to like, thanks to some of the shields you can find out in the world, Damiane brings a bit of speed and agility with her rapier. Of course, you could always go two-handed and give her a spear, with five distinct Abyss Gears giving you a bunch of ways to devastate enemy groups while her shield operates beside you, firing potent shots into your foes that let you stagger them more easily.

Dual-wielding rapiers is also an option, letting you bring six Abyss Gears to the fight, and switching between a spear and your rapier means you have so many ways to control a fight, no matter how fearsome your foes may be.

Oongka relies on his raw strength and Scatter Shots to keep his enemies in check, and I’m particularly fond of grappling moves and unarmed attacks when I play him. He’s the one I tend to rely on for Elemental damage with, using his moveset to unleash devastating attacks with fire, ice, and lightning to destroy large crowds and bosses alike.

It’s a symphony that has you eager to run into a group of bandits, and it’s applicable across all three of the playable protagonists, each of whom the world considers a Greymane.

"When you put your traversal, exploration, and combat all together, Crimson Desert becomes a sandbox where you’re constantly making new discoveries, and that’s especially true when you engage with its side content."

But what’s changed is the fact that they’re all equally capable of solving puzzles, making them all viable options for explorations, while a few missions and areas continue to be exclusive to Kliff. I’m sure a lot of us would like more story content for both Damiane and Oongka, but that’s sadly lacking and likely not high on the list of priorities given the current roadmap of work on the way. Damiane getting something akin to a Focused Force Palm is very welcome, though.

The fact that your loadout dictates how much of a threat any given enemy is going to be when you take them on is a great way of ensuring that the entirety of Pywel is at your doorstep if you decide to just explore it while the story remains on the back burner, and that’s a very good thing. A transmog option for all those cool armor sets might help with a lot of tedious menus and make build flexibility in the game a whole lot more compatible with a fashion community that’s all about the drip you carry into your adventure.

When you put your traversal, exploration, and combat all together, Crimson Desert becomes a sandbox where you’re constantly making new discoveries, and that’s especially true when you engage with its side content. I’ve previously talked to you about how Hernand keeps you so invested in all it has to offer that you almost forget to try and stop by new areas despite them being available to you outside of a few story-related caveats.

Helping one of the many factions in the region leads you to organic meetings with other ones, leading to an entirely new set of quests to try grabbing your attention. There’s also The Abyss to consider, and it’s where you need to go when you decide to add some of the element’s power into your attack patterns.

"The new design language with respect to puzzles is most welcome, though, and it’s now easier to gauge whether the solution you’re attempting is a step in the right direction"

Of course, that would mean hours solving a series of puzzles that are layered and complex, requiring that you assist in bringing some very complex machinery back into operation with nothing but your wits and Zxiom abilities to help. Of course, some of the required knowledge of other mechanics, such as the Stab move, is a detail that I discovered after a lot of frustration with a puzzle that required it. I’ve been a rather stubborn Greymane, refusing to look up solutions to such challenges, and it’s added a significant amount to my overall playtime. The new design language with respect to puzzles is most welcome, though, and it’s now easier to gauge whether the solution you’re attempting is a step in the right direction.

Each new discovery unfolds into another, and you’re soon left with so many different paths to take that each session of play feels like a whole season of an interesting TV show. I’m sure you’re well aware of the staggering amount of things you get to do and discover, but I must comment on how neatly it’s all woven into Pywel’s very fabric.

It’s that intersectionality between its many systems that lends Crimson Desert its unique charm. You’re never able to tell whether your latest adventure is going to lead you down a rabbit hole of discovery, a gruelling fight against an army of enemy forces, or a fairly relaxed time trekking through the world looking for ores and hides to improve your gear. I spent a fair bit of time hunting for the goose with a golden apple, for instance, but didn’t find it.

It’s evident that I really, really like Crimson Desert at this point. It’s definitely among my favorite games to play and will be for a while yet. So why have I not called it a masterpiece yet? That’s because it’s a flawed one. The boss fights are the best example of that. Allow me to explain.

"If you’ve come across a wagon-based mission or two, I sympathize with you, and not just because you’ve got Yann for company."

Aside from a few similar ones that are part of a couple of quest chains, most boss designs in the game are unique. They’re also immensely satisfying to take on, with readable animations and attack patterns that are just waiting to be exploited. Only, the combat camera and lock-on mechanic work against you, and they act as yet another thing to deal with in an already harrowing fight instead of useful tools that help you focus on what’s important in such an encounter.

With the option to re-engage fallen bosses coming to the game and the newly added Hard Mode, it’s a damn shame that these are problems that continue to be a part of those battles. That’s especially true considering that increased animation times on your heals with reduced parry and dodge windows mean that controlling your camera in the heat of battle is going to actively hamper your ability to see what’s unfolding on the battlefield. And with the way bosses leap, teleport, and fly, this is a problem that needs to be addressed.

And that’s just one area in which the game falters, and the spell it casts on you breaks. Another one is the glaring lack of voice lines for all playable characters, with generic answers and stony silences in places where there should have been witty retorts or empathetic assurances. It stands out against the NPCs, who are quite a chatty bunch, and it immediately creates a dissonance between all you’re doing for Pywel while distinctly feeling like you’re not fully a part of it.

If you’ve come across a wagon-based mission or two, I sympathize with you, and not just because you’ve got Yann for company. I’m fine with his character, although I know many of you would like nothing more than to banish him from the Greymanes ranks. But that’s what makes him unique to me. We’ve all got a friend like him, and it makes him immediately relatable as a result.

But anytime the man’s schemes required the use of a wagon, you’re in for a tedious trek through the land on a vehicle that’s so darn clunky once you get used to riding your horse or using all your tricks to stay airborne and soar across the landscape. All of these are minor complaints, to be sure, and some of them might get fixed in future patches. But there continue to be complaints that actively pull you out of the immersive experience in a way that makes them stand out.

"Crimson Desert is a fine addition to this year’s lineup of excellent titles, and its current build is one that has helped it earn a better impression than its initial release one"

I’m still happy to recommend Crimson Desert to anyone who has the time and patience to really get into it. It’s the kind of game that becomes a steady part of your daily routine, and a very entertaining one. If you’re that kind of player, this one’s going to be an absolute treat, and you’re joining a community of Greymanes who are always happy to help you out with useful tips and PSAs.

But if you’re a more story-focused player who prefers games that don’t take up too much of their time, and potentially require less effort to engage with, this one isn’t going to do you any favors. But it’s still going to have you enjoying yourself for however long you play it before dropping off.

Overall, Crimson Desert is a fine addition to this year’s lineup of excellent titles, and its current build is one that has helped it earn a better impression than its initial release one. It’s still short of absolute greatness, but it has come so tantalizingly close to that benchmark that it’s earned a second thorough look in my book.

This game was re-reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

If you’ve seen even the most basic smidge of Returnal gameplay, then Saros will be immediately familiar. The multitudes of bullet patterns, sometimes forming a rose-colored bath of death; the HR Giger-esque architecture in locations, be it mechanical or vaguely human-like; the profile of a protagonist who isn’t all that he seems; and, of course, the hunger to know more, long after the credits roll.

However, Saros doesn’t just emulate Returnal’s mechanics; it expands upon them. You could have told me that it’s just a bigger, more feature-packed version of that winning gameplay, and I would have never been more locked in. The best part is that Housemarque goes even further, leveraging its brand-new setting and characters in intriguing ways while exploring the various depths of madness humanity can sink into. And it does all of this while still delivering some of the best third-person shooter/bullet hell-like gameplay out there, if not the best, packaged within this entrancing narrative – at times flitting between a dream, and at others, a confusing nightmare.

"But Rahul Kohli is the clear star, and he’s able to turn in an understated, reserved performance, and gradually turn things up when the cracks begin to form. And that will happen, slowly, gently, as you speak with your companions between runs or indulge in cinematic cutscenes."

It all starts with Arjun Devraj waking up in an unknown location on Carcosa, as he dons a sun necklace and presses forward. Sadly, a painless death isn’t what awaits, as he quickly succumbs to the planet’s horrors before being sent back to The Passage. While empty at first, he meets a fellow crewmate, Tarn, seemingly driven mad by the Eclipse. Quick thinking on behalf of his commanding officer, Sheridan Bouchard (played by Jane Perry), ensures his survival, but things are far from peachy.

Other crew members emerge, shocked at Arjun’s return, and slowly, the whole sordid deal begins to unravel. The Soltari corporation sent expeditions, known as Echelons, to Carcosa to mine the valuable resource called Lucenite. But after no response from three of them, it’s on Echelon IV to investigate and find out what’s happening.

What it discovered was a world where the Eclipse rules, changing those under its spell, including the terrifying wildlife that roams the lands. Wanting to know what happened to the previous Echelons, Arjun sets forth into Carcosa, searching for answers. Of course, he has other motives for doing so – and even joining this expedition in the first place – which forms a major crux of the journey. But for now, he’s seemingly unaffected and driven to search for answers alongside potential survivors.

As you’d probably expect, the entire cast is excellent in their roles. Jane Perry is effortless as Bouchard, a commander who’s clearly out of her depth, yet trying her best to keep some semblance of command. Ben Prendergast adds some sense of stability in his role as Jerome, a fellow Soltari enforcer who’s surprisingly fatalistic. But Rahul Kohli is the clear star, and he’s able to turn in an understated, reserved performance, and gradually turn things up when the cracks begin to form.

And that will happen, slowly, gently, as you speak with your companions between runs or indulge in cinematic cutscenes. Saros has other ways to learn more about them and the rest of the world through logs, and hearing their pre-expedition selves explaining why they’d be best for the mission offers some much-needed context on their lives (and what they think of Arjun).

"It’s challenging enough to create so much variety in your average indie rogue-lite/like; that Housemarque is offering up these different sections with such immaculate architecture and presentation, while ensuring they’re distinguishable in at least one way from everything else, is incredible."

Of course, that’s only really the beginning, so it’s back to Carcosa, starting with the appropriately named Shattered Rise. Ruins of what was once a thriving civilization, intermixed with stunning vistas and ravines, offering only a taste of what the planet has in store (as above, not so below, and vice versa in many cases). Whether it’s the machinations of the Ancient Depths, their twisted tunnels packed with drilling equipment and sentient robots none too happy to see you, or the ever-mysterious city, Carcosa is simply brimming with gorgeous environments and architecture. The music is extremely well-tuned to it all, adding to the ominous tone when the action is more low-key but pumping out heavy, industrial, discordant beats during combat. It’s almost like you’re in a battle trance, and it’s awesome.

Then again, this is a rogue-lite, which means that the planet is constantly changing. Saros doesn’t take a fully procedurally generated approach to level design, but randomly arranges different hand-crafted sections for each run. One section could have two moving platforms, each towards a reward, and you need to pick one. The other could be a light puzzle that requires hitting some hidden switches to unlock a gate leading to a reward.

While having new sections to explore is always a good thing in a roguelite, sprinkling in parts that players have already experienced, especially in a game like this, requires a balance. You want players to feel like they’re mastering the biome without overwhelming them. Too many familiar-looking areas can dull any sense of wonder. Too much that’s new, and you start dulling the mastery aspect, making previous runs feel useless in the knowledge provided.

Saros strikes a seamless balance between the two – it’s almost like a feeling of déjà visité that scratches at your mind until you know what’s happening. It’s challenging enough to create so much variety in your average indie rogue-lite/like; that Housemarque is offering up these different sections with such immaculate architecture and presentation, while ensuring they’re distinguishable in at least one way from everything else, is incredible.

There are plenty of other ways that these biomes feel fresh, however. You’ll discover audio logs, holo logs and text documents from previous Echelons – and your own – talking about what’s happening. The Databank gradually fills up with messages regarding allies and enemies. And then there’s Carcosa’s environment itself, conveying the traces of past conflicts and other horrors beyond understanding between the odd mural or two.

"However, this is Housemarque, and it didn’t stop there because you also have the Corruption mechanic – another interesting twist. Usually, when the Eclipse is active, enemies will throw yellow projectiles at you, which reduce your max health on contact."

Things take a deeper turn when the Eclipse is activated, tinging the world in a reddish glow (to start with) as the walls sprout tentacles. These same tentacles will realistically bend around as you walk past them – another creepy detail, though it’s far from the last.

Plenty of other things undergo a transformation, which brings us to combat. You have a primary weapon and alternate firing mode to start with – certain weapons are autolock, with projectiles homing directly on enemies, while others require manual aiming. Like Returnal, the most basic means of survival is dashing and jumping over projectiles, and killing everything before it can kill you, which fuels your adrenaline and grants different buffs.

The biggest new addition is the Soltari shield. Ode to some of my favorite shmups, Ikaruga and Drainus, that included this mechanic, where you can absorb projectiles. Arjun won’t immediately unleash that power back at enemies here – instead, the projectiles fuel the new Power weapon. So right away, you’re looking at bullets as resources to harness. And while the starting Power weapon, Prominence, is ideal for some quick and dirty explosions, you’ll unlock other options, like the Dispiritor, which fires dozens of small homing projectiles that essentially infect an enemy. Kill them, and a small turret or tornado of the same cells forms, which can then infect other foes.

However, this is Housemarque, and it didn’t stop there because you also have the Corruption mechanic – another interesting twist. Usually, when the Eclipse is active, enemies will throw yellow projectiles at you, which reduce your max health on contact. This can be cleansed with Power weapon usage, even if you don’t get the health back (unless there’s an Artifact perk active). But then the ability to absorb corrupted projectiles becomes available, and it becomes a game of risk vs. reward, especially if you’ve already taken a few hits from the boss. Why not use that missing health to take on some Corruption, fueling your Power weapon in the process?

There is such a thing as being “too greedy,” however, and I don’t mean corrupting yourself so much that you only have a smidgen of health. Your shield has a duration, and any red projectiles or lasers – not to mention energy rings – will instantly break it, rendering you helpless for a period. But for me, it scratches that bullet hell itch, where pushing the limit is encouraged, and understanding the path to winning isn’t as exciting as consistently executing it. And if all this wasn’t enough, there’s also a parry mechanic, where you can deflect the energy from red projectiles back at enemies.

"If it wasn’t clear by now, Saros feels incredible to control, and thus accommodates a good many playstyles, whether you’re the type to hang back and pelt foes from a distance, using the environment as cover, or intimately understand what an enemy is going to do next before punching them in their face (or what appears to be their visage)."

If you can sense a shield turret is about to unleash a bloody rain, mark it as return to sender and blow them up from afar. So yes, on top of Drainus/Ikaruga, Housemarque added a bit of Sekiro into the mix, and it’s awesome, adding even more opportunities to harness bullets as resources. Absorb those corrupted projectiles for my Power weapon or punch the energy from red projectiles back at an enemy, potentially staggering them? Decisions, decisions.

If it wasn’t clear by now, Saros feels incredible to control, and thus accommodates a good many playstyles, whether you’re the type to hang back and pelt foes from a distance, using the environment as cover, or intimately understand what an enemy is going to do next before punching them in their face (or what appears to be their visage). Perhaps my only annoyances are when attempting to dash and accidentally riding a zipline or trying to pick something up, but the game slingshots me towards a grappling point instead, since they’re tied to the same button.

Its rogue-lite gameplay isn’t so much about crafting an entire build around a single primary or Power weapon – though some perk rolls are definitely better than others – as adapting to the circumstances. That also carries some risk vs reward, as you could take up a higher Proficiency weapon, even if it’s not your preferred type, for the sake of more damage and then try to reroll for something better. Maybe you’ll save those rerolls until the boss is next, and try for the best perk combo on a preferred weapon (which can also be done for Artifacts and Power weapons).

The only real drawback is that rogue-lite fans used to having extensive control over their loadouts may find it annoying that they can’t freely replace all of their Artifacts in favor of better ones during a run. You get one removal during a run – that too after several hours into the story – and that’s it, which lessens the desire to run through all the biomes rather than simply returning to The Passage. After all, why should one care about the slabs containing potential Artifacts when you can’t even pick them up, and your weapon of choice is more or less wreaking havoc?

Aside from returning to base and fast-traveling to and from any biome that you’d like, not to mention the ability to suspend a run and resume later, Housemarque accommodates players in many other ways. The Armor Matrix features a range of permanent unlocks, from increased health and shield duration to more Lucenite gain. Collecting Halcyon also nets other benefits, such as more Artifact slots, longer durations for Lucenite to remain on the ground, more health from Second Chance, and whatnot. It’s fairly easy to understand, but not super streamlined with branching paths for prioritizing the passives you want. It also remains fairly well-balanced, since you’re stopped by a node that requires defeating a boss to net further upgrades.

"A combination of several elements somewhat soured me on the ending, but it’s still a pretty strong story, one with some deeply overarching themes about human nature that kept me thinking hours after it was all said and done."

Then there are the Carcosan Modifiers, which essentially affect things like enemy damage received and dealt, whether Artifacts will carry negative effects, and so on. And while I appreciate this for essentially dictating the level of challenge that you want, you shouldn’t expect a Pact of Punishment-style progression system here. It’s simply for rogue-lite/bullet hell fiends like me who want to actually feel something when the base game isn’t doing it.

There are no extra rewards, extra lore bits (at least, none that I could uncover), nothing, which feels like a missed opportunity. On the bright side, it helps further mix up runs, like turning off the Armor Matrix and actually embarking on a more traditional, rogue-like loop, trying to decide which stat I want to lean into for my build, and really mulling over the different Artifacts.

Perhaps my biggest gripe with Saros is the ending. No spoilers whatsoever – no, not even a hint, but it simply left me wanting more. Sure, there will be plenty of logs to mop up, and I enjoyed going through everything to really assemble the full picture of what happened on Carcosa, but this style of storytelling is very much akin to Returnal.

It probably won’t be much of an issue for someone who takes their time, but being able to blast through the story in about 12 hours – entirely obsessed and driven by the plot the entire time, make no mistake – just made the inevitable credits feel like that much of a downer. However, this is coming from someone who finished Returnal in roughly the same amount of time, that too without any mid-run saves, and cleared the first biome of Saros on the first try. Your mileage may very well vary.

A combination of several elements somewhat soured me on the ending, but it’s still a pretty strong story, one with some deeply overarching themes about human nature that kept me thinking hours after it was all said and done. I still yearn for a dedicated post-game activity, maybe something akin to Returnal’s Tower of Sisyphus that could at least provide that near endless challenge of trying to beat other players’ high scores. Perhaps some time after launch, with the addition of co-op to boot.

"When you have a beautiful, stupendous creation, irresistible in its truth, like Saros, I’m more than content to serve."

When I first laid hands on Saros, it felt like everything I ever wanted, and then some, especially after waiting for so long. Having spent an extensive time with it, I don’t have that same sense that every single little desire of mine was met, but that’s perfectly fine when confronted with such a robust experience with some of the best third-person shooter gameplay, combined with a nuanced bullet hell system and progression that feels consistently rewarding. I lost count of the number of times my jaw was left agape, either due to the environmental wonders before me or from the many memorable encounters against its bosses.

The fact that I keep returning, even though the story is essentially wrapped, may be a curse in some ways. It probably means I’ve already begun the inevitable wait for the threequel, and to see what terrible new loop Housemarque has planned next. But when you have a beautiful, stupendous creation, irresistible in its truth, like Saros, I’m more than content to serve.

This game was reviewed on PS5.

Atomic Heart: Blood on Crystal picks up where the story last left off, with our ragtag group of heroes regrouping on a beach before they decide on their next move. In case you might have forgotten certain plot elements, thankfully, there’s even a recap video at the very beginning that provides a broad strokes-styled summary of the entire plot leading up to this moment. The DLC also assumes that P3 has been through all of the previous content after wrapping up the base game’s story, which also means that he’s at his most confident, and his allies are at their strongest when we start out.

"There isn’t much new happening there either, and the big betrayal is telegraphed so heavily from the opening cutscenes that I found myself yawning by the time the story finally pulled the trigger."

The story makes its intentions clear right from the start. P3 has just about had it with primary antagonist CHAR-les and has decided to shut down his operations once and for all. Before we can head to his base for one final assault, however, the beach where our heroes are regrouping comes under siege, forcing them to retreat.

Blood on Crystal’s pacing immediately slows to a crawl after this, with characters taking their sweet time to discuss the next steps of a plan that largely revolves around destroying things, while protagonist P3 is given a new companion in the form of NORA, now installed in his glove. This also sets up an eventual betrayal that is far too obvious. After being rescued from an ambush by Granny Zina, our heroes decide on a plan of action, which revolves around taking the fight to CHAR-les directly, right down to his secret Crystal Complex.

There isn’t much new happening there either, and the big betrayal is telegraphed so heavily from the opening cutscenes that I found myself yawning by the time the story finally pulled the trigger. Thankfully, not every aspect of the DLC is dull. It has some of the best boss fights of the entire game, with your final encounter against CHAR-les being especially noteworthy. Similarly, some of the environments can also look quite impressive at times, especially as you get further into the story.

Ultimately, Blood on Crystal’s story is held back by the same issue that has long made much of Atomic Heart’s narrative feel dull. Sure, there are a few characters that can be quite interesting, and the voice acting is often phenomenal.

However, the characters also have the tendency to not really take things seriously enough at times, which can lead to mid-combat dialogue that often feels ripped right out of a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in all of the worst ways. Those attempts at humor also undercut the DLC’s few moments of genuine pathos, because scenes that are meant to be emotional can only go so far when one of the central characters is an AI living inside a weapon vending machine.

"The entire DLC would have benefited from removing respawning enemies entirely"

This emphasis on wrapping up the main story also means that, outside of its story content and new levels, there isn’t much that feels fresh in Blood on Crystal. Sure, there are a few new enemy types here and there, but during the roughly four hours it takes to finish the DLC, you’ll still spend most of your time fighting the same bland robots with the same weapons you’ve been using since the start of Atomic Heart. Being stripped of your inventory at the start of the DLC was another point of frustration for me; you’ll spend a considerable amount of time with just your hammer and the Secateur, which also has the side effect of making early fights quite boring and forgettable. Getting your arsenal back to where it likely was by the end of the previous DLCs would require plenty of grinding and scrounging for crafting materials.

The poor pacing doesn’t just affect the story either; the level design can also feel sluggish, with simple puzzles often forcing you to backtrack just to make sure you haven’t missed anything. If that weren’t enough, Blood on Crystal also has the tendency to trigger enemy respawns a bit too often. Now, I get it: long stretches of simply walking through a game can be dull. However, the combat encounters you are often forced to fight through repeatedly aren’t particularly interesting. Rather, they act as little more than a way to drain you of your resources. The entire DLC would have benefited from removing respawning enemies entirely and instead adding fresh encounters to those otherwise long, drawn-out traversal sequences.

Overall, the gameplay feels dull, due in no small part to how repetitive the fights become. Sure, there are some theoretically good ideas here and there, like some of your powers being more effective against certain enemies. However, you can make your way through the entire DLC without having to think too much about any of it. The idea of CHANCE modules sounds great in theory. However, in practice, it never quite feels fluid enough to bother with.

"Blood on Crystal’s story is held back by the same issue that has long made much of Atomic Heart’s narrative feel dull."

There weren’t many performance issues to speak of. On my mid-range PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, a Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, and 32 GB of RAM, I was able to crank up all the visual settings to the max, minus the ray tracing, and could still stay above 60 FPS at 2560×1440. While the early parts of the DLC, especially the opening ambush, did raise some concern, with frame rates dipping to around 50 FPS at times, the rest of the experience was smooth sailing, with performance staying well above 70 FPS.

Unfortunately, Blood on Crystal is an entirely skippable DLC. While it does wrap up the main narrative threads left dangling by Atomic Heart and pave the way for future games, there’s little reason to actually play the DLC. The story is largely just fine, and while the boss fights can be pretty great, the rest of the DLC feels like a chore to play through. The lack of many new things to play around with like powers or weapons also doesn’t help, and the poor pacing extends well beyond just the awkwardly-timed dialogue, with the core gameplay being negatively affected thanks to the presence of respawning enemies.

Blood on Crystal’s one saving grace is its relatively short runtime. While I was able to wrap it up in around 4 hours, depending on your play style and your desire to hunt down collectibles and Trophies/Achievements, that figure could vary by about an hour either way. Despite this short time-to-beat, however, there also isn’t much of a reason to revisit the DLC once you’ve wrapped it up. All in all, the DLC is incredibly difficult to recommend for anyone who isn’t already a massive fan of Atomic Heart to begin with.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Narratively strung together with an otherworldly mystery, the game focuses on a handful of intricate puzzles that offer multiple independent solutions and force you to solve increasingly difficult questions, largely without holding your hand. Ultimately, The Cosmic Abyss, like its titular character, uses its overtly ominous presentation to hide even more secrets to discover underneath.

"Where The Cosmic Abyss differs from many of its counterparts, though, is in its lack of combat."

The Cosmic Abyss puts you into the shoes of Noah, an ocean investigator looking into the mysterious disappearance of a group of miners on a deep-sea expedition. Because of the nature of the investigation, you are sent alone with only your AI companion, Key, to track the miners and quickly find yourself sent through a portal to another world and set out on a mission to both understand the mysterious and unsettling world you’ve found yourself in and ultimately find your way back home.

Though it might be inexplicable to send someone alone on this type of mission, it properly sets the tone for the ominous and secluded experience you have through Noah, and naturally, as a Lovecraftian horror game, you begin to come across signs of other races with intelligence far beyond humans and terrifying supernatural beings.

Where The Cosmic Abyss differs from many of its counterparts, though, is in its lack of combat. While it’s possible to die at the hands of a monster on a couple occasions, this is a linear puzzle game wrapped in an atmospheric horror shell, as most of its 7 main chapters consist of one complex self-contained puzzle. These puzzles strike a delicate balance between forcing you to explore each area thoroughly and learn the rules of the game without becoming overly obtuse.

This is where you can clearly tell the influences from immersive sims like System Shock in the way you explore each area and are forced to largely handle things on your own. One highlight puzzle, for example, sees you having to open a portal on the other side of an uncrossable body of water. To do this, you have to learn the steps to complete a sacrificial ritual by translating the ritual’s steps, locate a number of crowns throughout blood-red waters, and manipulate the crowns in the right ways to trigger the ritual. Structurally, many of the puzzles, including this one, are familiar, but they each have a distinct eerie atmosphere with strikingly beautiful visuals and largely intuitive level design that propels you to always be finding new clues, even in areas you thought you’d already explored completely.

One of the key ways this is done is through your Sonar ping, which allows you to match frequencies with certain objects and locate other objects in the area with the same material. This means that the game doesn’t highlight every key item needed to progress. Those crowns, for example, are made from Bones, and you can only search for the other crowns made of the same material once you’ve found the first.

"On top of this, there are options to ask for more help from your AI companion in the form of three additional clues in certain situations."

This is a clever way to keep pushing you to experiment if you get stuck, even if this is where the game’s creativity can give way to opaqueness when you don’t quite know if you even have the material you’re searching for. As you work through each chapter, the puzzles increase in variety and difficulty. Another puzzle has you finding a way to either destroy or get around a massive otherworldly monster by finding its weaknesses, and later game puzzles require you to truly come to grips with the world you’ve entered and the characters within it.

When you put it all together, these puzzles can get very challenging very quickly, but fortunately, the game offers a bevy of accessibility options that help you solve them. Each discovery is placed on the game’s Mental Map, which allows you to sort clues, color code information, and often pose a deduction question that, when paired with the correct clue, gives you further information to help answer a question.

This system can be finnicky, especially when you’ve solved a question yourself but the correct clue for the deduction isn’t clear, but for puzzles with this much background and this many disparate clues, the Mental Map is an incredibly helpful way to sort and organize information, especially if you’re coming off multiple play sessions or just want to avoid having to backtrack just to read an old tablet.

On top of this, there are options to ask for more help from your AI companion in the form of three additional clues in certain situations. Some of these are direct answers to the puzzle, while others are less clear and more directional, but having these as optional additional help is a refreshing way to give the player a bit more of a hand when they need it without being overly invasive.

This is the type of game where knowing the solution to puzzles will ultimately hamper replay value, but to counteract it here, most puzzles have two independent solutions that connect with an in-game feature called Corruption that reflects how much you’ve given in throughout the game. Where puzzles have multiple solutions, one is typically slightly easier or more transparent but increases Noah’s Corruption, while the other is more difficult or complex but either reduces or has no impact on his Corruption level.

For example, the puzzle involving the sacrificial ritual, when completed, increases Noah’s Corruption by going through with a human sacrifice to open that portal, but there is an alternative path to open the portal through an underground electric system. Though they’re both solutions to the same problem, they hardly overlap, and this approach offers a ton of flexibility in how you approach each chapter.

 The Cosmic Abyss incorporates these choices on a narrative level by making Corruption an evolution of the moral slider. Chapters are interlaced with cutscenes that pull you further into this mysterious world as you follow the paths of the miners and have further revelations about yourself. There are immediate questions about the motivation of the miners to come to this place that subtly touch on the theme of corporate greed and power, but the overall narrative becomes more of a milquetoast Lovecraftian ride that hits many of the same plot points that you’d expect from this setting.

"There’s enough variety to make the runtime never feel overly long, and the optionality within each chapter provides a significant amount of replay value."

The performances are passable if a little stiff, but the writing often leaves something to be desired with the way it conveys information. It doesn’t always seem to know its expectations of the audience’s awareness of the lore, so characters can flip between overly explaining a revelation to having full conversations about it without introduction.

This sometimes clunky dialogue makes it feel like an exercise in getting from one visually interesting place to the next where the appeal is often more in the visual variety than in any major narrative reveals. Your corruption level directly impacts the final act, with multiple endings based on how much you’ve given in throughout the game. Combined with the opportunity to solve different puzzles, these different pieces of content offer an intriguing reason to come back for another 10-to-12 hour run through the campaign.

On the technical level is where the game flounders, at least at launch. Environments are beautiful and highly populated with dozens of clues and other interactable items, but this often comes at the expense of performance. Much of my experience was plagued with an apparent memory leak bug that caused the game to slow down over time and ultimately crash, particularly when looking through the text-heavy Mental Map. It’s a shame because when it runs well, this game is incredibly smooth with almost instantaneous loading, and while it saves frequently enough that it didn’t end up costing any significant time, it’s still an immersion-breaking experience.

Though familiar in its setting, The Cosmic Abyss uses the known Lovecraftian environment to enable the creative and intricate puzzles at the center of the experience. The constantly unsettling atmosphere provides an appropriate backdrop for you to explore each area and answer the increasingly complex questions the game throws your way, and there’s a satisfying sense of progression as you continuously unlock new clues and solve deductions.

The Cosmic Abyss is clever, varied, and propulsive, and while it doesn’t break new ground narratively, The Cosmic Abyss brings enough new to the table with its puzzle design to warrant revisiting a well-trodden influence.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

But as Sad Cat Studios showcased more, slowly but surely working towards a release date, wanting everything to be perfect, other concerns arose. In snippets, Replaced seemingly had it all, even within the confines of its 2.5D perspective. A combat system clearly based on the Batman: Arkham series. Intriguing characters with their own complicated – and often tragic – backstories. An atmosphere fueled by post-consumerist despair and nightmare scenarios, where humans are little more than products.

There’s quite a bit, but surely those disparate parts come together in the end, right? Well, not quite, and your mileage really will vary, depending on what exactly you expect from Replaced.

The story begins with R.E.A.C.H., an AI, investigating the well-being of its developer, Warren, who works at Phoenix Corp. After what seems to be an accident, the AI finds itself inhabiting the latter’s body. Even worse is the fact that the building is suffering numerous failures. Fires breaking out, roof panels collapsing, the works, and it’s all that R.E.A.C.H. can do to find help…until he discovers the police executing patients and mercilessly hunting him down.

"For all intents and purposes, that is the core of Replaced, and it’s backed by some compelling lore. The Prospero Incident, the journal of a fresh Termite who goes from owning slaves and weapons to losing it all – there’s some fantastic world-building going on."

Even if it goes on for slightly too long, it’s a compelling introduction to the world of Replaced, and R.E.A.C.H. serves as a strong medium for several reasons. On the one hand, there’s the official story about the world, and what he witnesses with his own eyes. Following a nuclear catastrophe that left a sizable portion of the country uninhabitable, the Phoenix Initiative arose, providing aid and opportunities for all and sundry. Of course, as with any megacorp, it’s also engaged in shady dealings. Building a Wall to curtain off a sizable portion of Phoenix City, seizing body parts and organs, then disposing of individuals without a care in the world (with many of the survivors taking up residence in The Station) – and that’s only to start.

On the other hand are Warren’s memories, which occasionally surface and reveal some very not-nice things about his developer. But perhaps most notable throughout is R.E.A.C.H.’s candor. Seeing him face reality, which clearly doesn’t line up with everything he’s been fed, is interesting, especially when he’s dealing with the whole experience of being human. It influences how he deals with others – honest to a fault, even when it’s not the best tactic. At times, it’s awkwardly charming, especially when interacting with Sadie, who runs the local arcade in the station; at others, he serves as a straight man to the energy of Tempest; and sometimes, his logic just can’t reconcile why someone had their larynx taken away or why one person has to die while the other lives due to insufficient medical care.

Of course, as despair-filled as Replaced can be, it’s also just so utterly gorgeous at every single turn. A simple stroll through The Station’s market reveals an incredible amount of detail – rundown stalls, shoddily constructed signs, decadents on crutches, barely functioning equipment, and so many different kinds of illumination. That lighting is all the more endearing when you’re walking through the outskirts of the wall at dusk, or watching the telltale glow of a Termite sniper to avoid a quick death. And even if it’s already been mentioned, it deserves repeating – the animation, which capably captures every little nuance, to an almost unnaturally impressive degree. It all meshes incredibly with the synth soundtrack, which can range from soothingly atmospheric to industrially oppressive.

For all intents and purposes, that is the core of Replaced, and it’s backed by some compelling lore. The Prospero Incident, the journal of a fresh Termite who goes from owning slaves and weapons to losing it all – there’s some fantastic world-building going on. And as dull as the optional quests can feel, at least they shine more light on the characters. Some of the lore doesn’t always feel represented in the actual plot, however, which is where the game’s first weakness emerges: Pacing.

"When everything flows together, the combat can feel good, though once again, it’s Arkham-inspired on a 2.5D plane. Anyone expecting the same level of feel and tactical brilliance will be left wanting."

While not the longest experience, the plot often feels like it drags at points. R.E.A.C.H.’s observations and conversations with Warren – or Warren’s body, rather – keep things moving while you’re actually playing. Stopping multiple times to interact with different items puts a slight damper on things. At best, it can feel like an adventure game; at worst, a walking simulator.

Aside from that, there’s the cinematic puzzle platforming and Free Flow Combat. While it takes a while to get going, the former does present some interesting scenarios, like turning off water valves and avoiding steam to ascend higher. They’re not always the most challenging or clever – you would think reaching that box on the walkway above meant pushing it down for…something, but no, it’s meant as a boost for climbing on the pipes above (and then you get to do it again). Some scenarios can also be randomly frustrating, like a Termite Sniper sweeping past a wall where I’m hidden, only to suddenly annihilate me. At least the movement is on point more often than not.

Combat is easy to pick up and feels impactful enough. Smack enemies with one button, counter them with the other, dodge red attacks, and power up the Huxley with enough hits to execute foes. Problems, as you would expect, emerge once you get the Pickaxe. It can destroy armor and shields – without doing this, they’ll remain invulnerable to hits or shots. Pretty simple, except it has an annoying wind-up.

Maybe you win the 50-50 and manage to get it off before an enemy uses their red attack. Maybe you don’t. The fact that they weave between other foes makes it all the more annoying, especially when trying to pick off ranged foes first. The Huxley also slowly loses charge if you’re not attacking, which means every opportunity to break armor on, say, a tank means still having to smack it twice, dodge its red attack, repeat, until you can take the shot.

When everything flows together, the combat can feel good, though once again, it’s Arkham-inspired on a 2.5D plane. Anyone expecting the same level of feel and tactical brilliance will be left wanting.

"Maybe that’s just my brain wanting something more from this brilliant aesthetic. Either way, it can be an enjoyable story for the cyberpunk aficionados, as long as you can accept its various stumbles."

Once again, it boils down to what you want out of Replaced. If it’s the vibe that you’re after – the graphics, the music, the world, and these characters – then it can absolutely fill that niche, so long as you’re fine with extensive conversations and methodical pacing. Neither combat nor platforming is the worst – not even close. You can find things to enjoy about either, but they just don’t measure up to the presentation or world-building.

The result is an experience which doesn’t feel like more than the sum of its parts (that too at times when it just manages to reach that). And as stunning as the vistas can be, the camera panning and zooming out to great effect, Replaced can feel equal parts movie-like and relatable – like you’re simply passing through some environments rather than really getting a feel for them. Maybe that’s just my brain wanting something more from this brilliant aesthetic. Either way, it can be an enjoyable story for the cyberpunk aficionados, as long as you can accept its various stumbles.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Then you’ve got Fumi Games’ debut effort, which tosses all that out the window for a rubberhose animation-inspired look. That in itself would probably be enough to have someone check a look – there’s a reason this went viral in the first place. But from the very second that one opens the game, hearing what may be protagonist Jack Pepper humming the theme in his stereotypically gruff voice, you know MOUSE: P.I. For Hire is going to be something special.

"This is a black and white tour de force as much as a well-paced shooter campaign with a heart of gold (and sometimes steel)."

While a dizzying amount of effort went into its visual style – and it is genuinely striking – Fumi Games’ true goals are loftier. Portraying this alternative history where charm and allure meet depravity, class divides and economic depression. Capturing the essence of mob fiction, icons like Dick Tracy, and a dash of Steamboat Willie, to deliver a compelling mystery narrative. Oh, and also delivering a very fun first-person shooter with plenty of wacky weapons, ink splatters (blood would be too excessive, after all), and responsive movement.

Which isn’t to say that MOUSE: P.I. For Hire is perfect in every single way, or couldn’t use improvements. It feels a little too streamlined in some aspects, a little too straightforward in others. But it’s not every day that a developer executes on its vision so well, drawing a sensible chuckle or two before the next over-the-top gun fight to start. This is a black and white tour de force as much as a well-paced shooter campaign with a heart of gold (and sometimes steel).

The scene is 1930s America, and the streets just aren’t the same. No, not because of the anthropomorphic mice (and shrews) or inexhaustible supply of cheese puns. Steve Bandel, the famous magician, has seemingly gone missing. Shrews are disappearing en masse. If that wasn’t enough, Betty Lynch, Steve’s former assistant and an accomplished actor, is also nowhere to be seen. What’s a private investigator and former war hero, Jack Pepper, to do in all this? The only thing he can do: Stick his snout where it doesn’t belong, turn up whatever clues he can, and pull off as many cheesy (in a good way) one-liners as he can.

Tale as old as time, or at least as old as detective noirs go, and delivered with unmatched panache that goes beyond the writing and animated cutscenes. Troy Baker slides effortlessly into the role of Pepper, but even the supporting cast – Florian Clare as the curious but indomitable Wanda Fuller, Camryn Grimes as the sweet but fiery Tammy Tumbler, Fred Tatasciore as John Brown (there’s a reason he’s probably the only John in Mouseburg), and Frank Todaro as the noble Cornelius Stilton – got the memo and knew exactly the kind of performances to turn in. The bit players – some briefly spotted, others unrevealed – also deserve their flowers, including that one goon who went, “I’m not your buddy, pal.” Simply fantastic.

"Don’t let Jack’s slicked hair and questioning stare fool you – he’s a real go-getter when it comes to spilling ink. If you’ve played any boomer shooter of late, then you’ll feel right at home with MOUSE’s shotguns, James Gun, and exotic sci-fi weaponry."

As much as all of this wowed me, however, there was a game to get into it, and I’ll admit: The overall structure of MOUSE can feel a little simplistic at first. Talk to an NPC, head to a location, gather some clues, pin them to the workboard, and with enough moxie, Jack can “resolve” the clue to open up the next location. Sometimes, the supporting cast will have some side jobs, oftentimes coinciding with a location that’s already on your radar. Not really much by way of detailed side quests – more like keeping your eyes open and collecting whatever they ask. And since you’ll be picking up anything that isn’t nailed down, it’s pretty trivial.

Give it enough time, however, and things become a lot more linear. Jack is handling three cases at once, and sometimes, multiple locations may open up. You could also stop at Roadhouses along the way, and collect blueprints to upgrade your weapons. More than a few safes lie in wait with the same…if you can navigate the tail-picking minigame, which can range from incredibly easy to low-key notorious, what with spikes, timers and limited moves.

The benefit of all these intertwining threads is that the pacing never sags and the mystery overwhelms. Every mission feels like a vital step forward, even if it doesn’t seem that way. It’s a testament to MOUSE’s confident writing, pulpy monologues and excellent depiction of mature themes that you’re enthralled all the way through. So much so that you may be left wanting at the very, very end, but what a ride it is.

Past the first level or two, each subsequent area packs the right amount of shortcuts and secrets, from hidden ducts to warp pipes. And while not exactly the kind of backtracking touted many years ago, the different traversal abilities really open things up when it comes to combat. Don’t let Jack’s slicked hair and questioning stare fool you – he’s a real go-getter when it comes to spilling ink. If you’ve played any boomer shooter of late, then you’ll feel right at home with MOUSE’s shotguns, James Gun, and exotic sci-fi weaponry.

"I’d be remiss not to mention the soundtrack, which is full of noir jazz bangers throughout. And speaking of Steamboat Willie, to say that my heart melted during a boat mission thanks to the piano play would be an understatement."

Each one feels distinct, from the heft of the pump-action shotgun to how exquisitely the Turpentine Gun cleans foes right down to their bones. Things can feel admittedly dull in the beginning when you’ve only got a pistol and your fists. As more weapons unlock and different varieties of enemies appear, you’ll start recognizing the right situations for using certain weapons. While it’s fun to combine different effects – freezing enemies and then shattering them with bullets – alternate firing modes add to the strategy. Nothing quite like a Turpentine pop that corrodes multiple enemies in a vicinity – though it may not be as useful as the MIND-D Conscious Gun’s beam when you need some serious damage to the noggin.

MOUSE keeps its encounters fresh throughout, whether it’s the combat arenas or the objectives and threats, which extends to the boss fights. Aside from one battle, which felt more like busywork than a truly titanic showdown, they’re all memorable, some leaning more into the over-the-top nature of the game while others demand more arena shooter-like skills.

I’d be remiss not to mention the soundtrack, which is full of noir jazz bangers throughout. And speaking of Steamboat Willie, to say that my heart melted during a boat mission thanks to the piano play would be an understatement. Of course, you should expect plenty of swing jazz as well – lots of heavy drums, trumpets, and saxophones, adding to the energy of encounters. Then there are the sound effects, which are the cherry on top. The sproing of your shoes when double-jumping, the little distortion filter – I could go on, but you probably get the point.

As for notable downsides, progression is too straightforward. Collect blueprints, spend them to upgrade weapons and unlock a neat little perk at the highest tier (or not, because several weapons don’t have them).

"It’s not trying to rewrite the book on first-person shooters or detective games, so much as present a stellar detective noir story with incredible characters, larger-than-life incidents, and a bit of magic."

Enemies also occasionally had some pathfinding issues, especially the flying ones that end up stuck in corners. Playing on Supersleuth, aka Hard Mode, presented enough of a challenge, but the ammo and health pickups felt a little abundant. Either way, if you’re well-versed in shooters, it’s the setting I recommend most.

All these complaints aside, though, MOUSE: P.I. For Hire is a great experience. It’s not trying to rewrite the book on first-person shooters or detective games, so much as present a stellar detective noir story with incredible characters, larger-than-life incidents, and a bit of magic. Even after completing it in about 15 hours, I rarely felt bored or disengaged, much less checked out of any dialogue. So whether you’re someone who loves the art style, wants another fun shooter, or seeks to dive into this glitzy but messed-up cartoon world, it’s well worth your time and money.

This game was reviewed on PC.