Atlas Fallen is a very ambitious title from developer Deck13. While overall it shares some similarities to their previous title, including Lords of the Fallen and The Surge 2, it's also their first step away from the Soulslike genre. At its core Atlas Fallen is a third-person action RPG that focuses on speed and fast-paced encounters. While you sometimes encounter groups of smaller enemies, the bulk of your enemies is giant hulking beasts, which quickly becomes a staple of the gameplay.

[caption id="attachment_395703" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Atlas Fallen (PC, PS5[reviewed], Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Deck13
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Release: August 10, 2023
MSRP: PC: $49.99, PS5 & Xbox Series X|S: $59.99

In Atlas Fallen, the world lies in ruin due to the savage sun god Thelos. Most of the once lush landscape is now entirely sand dunes with the occasional dead tree or patch of dried-out grass. The inhabitants are forced to serve Thelos by extracting a powerful resource called Essence from the world and delivering it to him. Some people have pledged loyalty to the sun god in exchange for an elevated status or a more desirable job in the harsh desert. Others are tasked with performing slave-like labor, extracting Essence, and transporting it across the dunes.

The protagonist discovers a powerful ancient Gauntlet that is able to manipulate Essence to shape the sand, granting its wielder powerful weapons and powers. With this newfound strength, the player sets out to lead a rebellion and put a stop to the savage rule of Thelos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGQfhGubWns

All hope relies on the Gauntlet

The Gauntlet allows you to equip two of three potential weapons at all times. The Dunecleaver is a powerful heavy weapon axe and hammer hybrid. The Sandwhip is a fast attacking whip that also allows you to close distances quickly. Finally, the Knuckledust is a hard-hitting fist weapon that also allows you to grow additional arms as you pound your foe. Each weapon has its own specific attacks and combos that synergize differently with the other weapons. Honestly, the three weapons are unique enough, but once I found the combo of weapons that worked for me—Sandwhip and Knuckledust—I never really found the need to ever us the third weapon.

While beating up on majestic beasts in the desert, you'll also learn how to master Atlas Fallen's Momentum system. Momentum is a bit of a risk-reward system. As you successfully land attacks, you will fill up your Momentum bar. As its filled, you will be able to carry out more hard-hitting special attacks. However, the fuller the bar is, the more damage you take when you are hit.

It's a great premise, but it honestly feels like it misses the mark a little bit. There's not truly any risk to be had, because at the end of the day you're just going to be focusing on beating down your enemy. I never really stopped building momentum to consider the risk of doing so. Instead, I'd just try to land as many attacks as I could while also prioritizing not getting hit so I didn't risk taking additional damage.

Throughout the world you will find deposits of Essence, as well as from dropped enemies. With this Essence you can unlock new abilities and upgrade your Gauntlet, increasing its capabilities.

[caption id="attachment_395700" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A truly beautiful world

Visually, the world of Atlas Fallen is simply beautiful. I literally found myself stopping to look around the vast open landscapes, and admiring the beauty of the ruins scattered amongst the sands. The detail in some of the areas such as the Knights of Bastengard Stronghold is second to none.

As you progress through the world you will visit three different areas in total. Each one has a main hub that you will pickup the bulk of your quests from. Additional optional quests and collectables are peppered all throughout the area as well, in no short supply. Your Gauntlet also has the ability to raise buried objects up out of the sand, which can include chests and even structures that allow you to reach higher elevation areas.

Some of the colossal beasts that you encounter are pretty incredible as well, both in size and appearance. Fans of Monster Hunter will find familiarities here, as some of the bigger monsters have various body parts that you can focus on. If you deal enough damage to them, they will break, causing massive damage to the enemy and also dropping special loot. Unfortunately, I found loot to be mostly irrelevant throughout Atlas Fallen. I still tried to break as many monster parts as I could, but never found the materials I obtained for doing so to really matter.

In fact, this is perhaps one of the bigger issues with Atlas Fallen. A lot of the systems in place are great in premise, and even have their own intricacies to them. However, in most cases they fall short in terms of relevancy. In a vast open world action RPG like Atlas Fallen, equipment and itemization should be important. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. In fact, I think it would be quite possible to play through all of Atlas Fallen without bothering to equip anything you've obtained throughout the entire experience.

[caption id="attachment_395704" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

But, not everything is beautiful

Unfortunately there are some pretty sizeable problems with Atlas Fallen as well. The biggest issue without a doubt is the voice acting. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect every title to have Baldur's Gate 3 level of voiceovers. But the voice acting in Atlas Fallen isn't even average, it's downright terrible. Some of the non-important side NPC's were alright, but the playable character as well as your main companion, Nyaal, were not great. It really took from the overall experience.

From a lore perspective, the weight of the world is on these two character's shoulders. But you wouldn't have known that based on their monotone line delivery. I know I'm emphasizing this a lot here, but can't stress how bad it is. We're talking worse than Peter Dinkelage as Ghost in Destiny 2 before they replaced him.

Overall the story of Atlas Fallen had a lot of potential, but it falls short and overall I think the voiceover was a big part of it. Furthermore, the story felt a bit rushed at times. In total it took me just over 14 hours to complete Atlas Fallen, but I did a good bit of the optional content it had to offer. If someone was beelining through the main story quests only, I would not be surprised to see a sub 10 hour completion. However, if you do choose to take your time and really explore every nook and cranny to obtain every collectible and complete every side quest, I could see it taking 20 hours.

Also, a lot of the potentially fantastic features in Atlas Fallen end up feeling tacked on. There's a feature called Watcher's Fury where once you've done enough to draw the attention of the eye of Thelos, he will create a massive sandstorm on your location. Inside the storm an onslaught of enemies will attack you, all while you have limited visibility. When I first encountered Watcher's Fury I was excited to see the outcome of it. You have the choice of running and escaping the storm, or fighting all the enemies to the end. At the end you get some rather basic loot...and that's about it.

All in all, the Watcher's Fury felt pretty lackluster in every way. Furthermore, I only experienced the Watcher's Fury a few times throughout Atlas Fallen, making me wonder why it existed in the first place.

[caption id="attachment_395708" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A flawed but good experience

Overall, I like Atlas Fallen. It's great to see Deck13 step outside its comfort zone and show us their take on an open world. It's a good time, but it could have been a great time.

This was honestly a tough title to review for me. In some ways, Atlas Fallen shows glimpses of a truly remarkable AAA title. The world is vast and beautiful and lively. But in other ways, it just makes me wish it had been more. The combat system had the potential to leave a memorable mark on the genre. But, in reality, it will instead probably end up being forgettable instead. It felt like perhaps Deck13 played things way too safe with their first non-Soulslike endeavor.

I do think there is reason enough to experience Atlas Fallen. Especially if you are a fan of the action RPG genre. It may not leave a lasting impression once you've completed the adventure. But it will be enjoyable enough along the way to hold your interest. Also, I didn't get the opportunity to try it out but you can play the entirety of Atlas Fallen co-operatively. Honestly, while I don't think that would fix any of the bigger flaws. However, I do think it could enhance the experience overall.

Perhaps the best words to summarize Atlas Fallen is this: I can't wait to see what Deck13 does next.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Atlas Fallen appeared first on Destructoid.

Accidental tourism

The Gamecube started off with a bang in 2001. As if Star War: Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader, Luigi’s Mansion, and Wave Race: Blue Storm weren’t enough to get fans through the year, Pikmin and Super Smash Bros. Melee dropped on the same day on December 3, 2001. It would be crazy to pit any game against such a titan today, but Smash Bros. wasn’t yet the institution it would soon become.

I have a lot of warm memories of Pikmin. I remember failing to get the last piece of the Dolphin on my first attempt and arguing about the existence of purple Pikmin on message boards. Good times.

In preparation for Pikmin 4 (which is one of my most anticipated games of the year), Nintendo has released the first two games on Switch in a nice, clear HD update. There's precedent. They previously surprised us with Metroid Prime Remastered, which was far more than just an HD port. Did Nintendo go to the same effort with Pikmin 1? No. Did I get the last piece of the Dolphin? You better believe it.

[caption id="attachment_388240" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Pikmin 1 (Switch)
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: June 21, 2023
MSRP: $29.99

Pikmin is the story of the intrepid Captain Olimar, whose intelligence is not up to par with his intrepidness. While cruising the galaxy in his favorite ship, he’s hit by an asteroid and sent crashing onto a nearby planet. With his only hope of escape in tatters, he enlists the aid of some indigenous root vegetables to help him piece it back together.

The original Pikmin is perhaps the most anxiety-inducing. You have 30 days to assemble your ship before Olimar’s life support runs out. There are 30 parts, though only 25 of them are necessary to prevent the spaceman’s posthumous metamorphosis. When you’re new to the game, maintaining a pace of obtaining a ship part each day can be a bit of a tall order. It’s sufficient enough, though. This time through the game, I managed to get everything in 18 days.

https://youtu.be/_kKLW7_218s

A new pair of glasses

While Pikmin 1 is largely a straight port of the Wii version played at a higher resolution, it’s been touched up. Mainly, this is just the interface, which displays in HD rather than simply upscaled from its original resolution. You can also play using either motion controls or joypad. Some people swear by using the pointer, but I feel most comfortable with two sticks.

At least I would, but the port also changes the use of the right stick. On the Gamecube version, simply pointing the stick would rally your Pikmin in that direction to attack or grab anything they ran into. In the port, it moves the camera. This makes a whole lot of sense to everybody except my thumbs. Holding the L button results in the right stick functioning as it did originally, but my muscle memory is so ingrained that I’d forget to do this when under pressure.

In any case, the point here is that you shouldn’t expect Pikmin 1 to have been given the tender, loving care of Metroid Prime Remastered. A closer expectation is that it’s more on the level of Super Mario Sunshine from the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection, which I still can’t believe is no longer available. That is screwed up.

[caption id="attachment_388241" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Root vegetables

In any case, Nintendo hasn’t imposed the same time limitation on the Pikmin remasters, which is nice. Pikmin maybe doesn’t top my list of favorite Gamecube games, but I still love it very much. It’s a survival game with none of the features that we would normally associate with the modern survival genre. It’s also interesting in the fact that you can grow hundreds of the little carrot people, and still, it’s hard not to feel bad when your judgment fails and a few dozen get squashed by a Wollyhop.

Poor identical little dudes.

Pikmin 1 is also the most straightforward in its concept. The only gating you run into is when it comes to collecting Pikmin abilities. You start off with only red, which are immune to fire and hit harder. Then there’s yellow that can carry bombs and fly farther when thrown. Finally, you obtain blue, who can breath underwater and that’s good enough. Once you have them all, the world is your oyster.

Actually, not quite. The different stages are unlocked after obtaining a certain number of ship parts, but the point is that, very early, you’re essentially let off the leash. The only thing between you and success is your vegetables and your brain. It’s quite refreshing, even if that means you can finish the game in 18 in-game days (8-ish hours for a fresh run).

[caption id="attachment_388243" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Carrot-kind

Pikmin’s unique premise and tight design have ensured that it remains rather ageless. Even the graphics, as aged as they are, still convey everything they need to. It’s every bit as enjoyable now as it was back in 2001. Pikmin nailed it so hard on the first try that its sequels could only really iterate on the concept.

Pikmin 4 is looking like it may be the biggest evolution the series has seen, but it’s unlikely you’ll need any prior experience with the earlier titles. Nonetheless, I absolutely recommend you check out Pikmin 1 if you haven’t already. If you are familiar with the original, just know that this is a solid port, but it doesn’t really add anything that wasn’t in the GameCube version. However, with its bumped-up resolution, it’s easily the best way to play this absolutely timeless fight for carrot-kind’s survival.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Pikmin 1 (2023) appeared first on Destructoid.

As I hung up the phone, it occurred to me, he'd grown up just like me

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life offers a slightly different take on the well-worn farming sim genre. As a new resident of the Forgotten Valley, you’re still here to revitalize an old farm and socialize with the townsfolk, but it’s that second aspect that takes a central role here. The point of your new life in this hamlet isn’t to save a farm or to stop the development of a theme park...

You’re here to make a life for yourself, one that is filled with love, family, and friends.

[caption id="attachment_387436" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life (PC, PS5, Switch [reviewed], Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Marvelous
Publisher: Xseed Games
Released: June 27, 2023
MSRP: $49.99

A Wonderful Life is one Story of Seasons title that genuinely lives up to its name. Prior games in the series — and when I say prior, I mean those before the release of the original version of this game back on the GameCube in 2003 — put the focus squarely on farming, with making friends and courtship positioned as side activities to keep players busy between harvests. In A Wonderful Life, those elements are the core of the experience. Yes, you'll still spend roughly half your time tending to crops and livestock as you would in any other Story of Seasons game, (and the farming system can get somewhat deep with hybrid crops and animal husbandry to consider), but nothing you do on this farm matters if you go home to an empty house and an empty bed at the end of the day.

It's your activities outside your farm that make the difference in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life. Meeting people, making friends, falling in love; these have (mostly) always been elements of the franchise, but here, whether or not you've had a life well-lived will be determined by your success in these areas.

The story of A Wonderful Life is divided into several periods of your farmer's life. You'll start the first year single and hopefully ready to mingle as you'll need to be married to one of the eight eligible townsfolk—same-sex relationships are an option here as is the option to make your farmer non-binary—by the end of winter or it's on to the end credits roll. From there, you and your companion will have a child, and the next several chapters will focus on how well you do as a parent, as a partner, and as a member of the community. As your child grows into an adult, you and your spouse will grow old. People in the town will age as well. Some will die. People will move, and others will make a new start in the Forgotten Valley.

I've played plenty of games in the Story of Seasons franchise over the past decade, but not one of them handles all of the stuff outside your farm as well as A Wonderful Life does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q2qKTRydI0

Life on the farm is pretty par for the course. To accommodate the structure of the game's story, each season in A Wonderful Life lasts just 10 days. For some crops, that might mean you get one shot at growing it a season. For players who like to maximize their farm's potential, there are hybrid fruits and vegetables to discover, several different breeds of cows, each with their own milk, and machines that can help guarantee high-quality crops. With the available arable land being as small as it is, tending to your farm will likely only take up a few hours each day. That leaves plenty of time to go fishing, help out at the archaeology site, complete various requests, participate in some mini-games, or try to strengthen your relationships with the people around town.

Or you can spend that time shaping your child into the adult they will become. In your role as a parent, you can help dictate your child's future, directing them toward one of several interests that may ultimately become their vocation. I'm not entirely sure how much of a difference it makes between which path your kid takes, but the destination didn't matter that much to me. It was the journey that won me over, all those nights spent playing with my daughter, buying her toys, and watching her grow from a toddler to a tween to an adult.

I don't have kids in real life. And, I'm not entirely sure if I want them. But seeing my virtual daughter grow into a young woman was something special to experience. In those moments, when time would jump ahead and I'd see how my rearing impacted her growth, I felt this sense of accomplishment no other Story of Seasons game has given me.

[caption id="attachment_387435" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

If you're already sold on Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life as a fan of the original and are just wondering how this remaster holds up, know that this is an exceptional version of the game. The Forgotten Valley looks wonderful in HD, it runs pretty much flawlessly on Switch, I appreciate most of the new character designs, and Marvelous has added enough new elements, including new hybrid crops, new recipes, and a new bachelor in Gordy, to make this a return visit well worth making if you've played it before.

Just don't expect certain elements, like animal husbandry, to have the depth they once did as a lot of the processes have been streamlined. For those who didn't give it a try on the GameCube or PlayStation 2, the easiest way to decide if this is right for you is to ask yourself how important you consider farming in your farming sims. If there is one complaint I have that isn't just nitpicking, it's that the audio isn't up to par with the rest of the presentation.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is a remarkable experience. It takes the classic farming formula and gives it a purpose beyond just seeing how many S-ranked tomatoes you can grow. With its focus on family, legacy, and living a good life, this is a farming sim where what you do away from the fields is as important as what you do when you're tilling that land. It's a game that encourages a healthy work-life balance, and there is no better lesson we need in our modern era than that.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life appeared first on Destructoid.

Back to the Little Tail Bronx

It felt like we weren’t going to see a sequel to 2021’s Fuga: Melodies of Steel. For starters, it ended rather conclusively. It also only sold modestly, and it feels like Cyberconnect has been trying unsuccessfully to get the Little Tail Bronx series to take off since Tail Concerto in 1998. Yet, here we are, with Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2.

I couldn’t be happier. The original Fuga was a surprisingly well-executed design that got a lot of mileage from what could be considered very simple mechanics. So, how do you expand on that? What can you do to improve what has already been polished to such a gloss?

Not much, I guess.

[caption id="attachment_387012" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Fuga: Melodies of Steel (PC, PS4, PS5 [Reviewed], Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch)
Developer: CyberConnect2
Publisher: CyberConnect2
Released: May 11, 2023
MSRP: $39.99

Taking place one year after the events of the first game, Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 sees the children reunite. However, before they even have time to catch up with one another, an ancient evil is re-awakened, a friend of theirs is killed, and they’re left chasing a new foe. Surprisingly, even though the kids still find themselves at the wheel of the giant Metal Slug-like Taranis, the plot manages to be mostly different.

In particular, I like the way Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 improves on its cast. While the children are all still children, one year is an eternity when you’re pre-teen. They’ve all grown from their experiences during the war and now have new strengths and insecurities. Characters who I maybe didn’t love in the first game, like Jin and Wappa, are given the chance to shine anew. Likewise, two boss characters from the previous title make their way aboard the Taranis, and in the new light of their diminished status, they add a nice flavor to the happenings on the tank.

That said, the narrative still has some of the same problems as the first game. The overarching plot seems to be stretched out to accommodate character growth. This time, it has trouble focusing on any significant event. Something happens to shake things up, and then it’s quickly resolved, and we move on. It’s definitely not terrible, but it’s not as interesting as the previous story, and that one was already not spectacular, to begin with.

https://youtu.be/hydneoxIkJ0

That's a big metal slug

The gameplay is more-or-less remixed rather than changed. Each of the characters has been gutted of their old skills, and they get an entirely new set of them. Once again, they commandeer either a machine gun, grenade launch, or cannon on the Taranis, and they may have something different this time around.

There are more widespread changes. The grenade launcher, for example, is where you’d commonly find the attacks that hit multiple targets in the first game. In Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2, these are spread out across the machine guns and cannons. The changes don’t make the game dramatically different, but they do mean that you’ll need to adopt new strategies to succeed.

The enemies have also been tweaked. While the enemy was defeated in the previous title, you still largely fight their tanks. This (along with many other questions raised at the beginning of the game) isn’t initially addressed, but you eventually do find out why you’re fighting zombie tanks. But while they’re the same old machines of war, various mutations within them mean that they have a lot of new tricks up their sleeve. Overall, there’s more variety here, even if some of the units are quite familiar.

[caption id="attachment_387013" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Powered by a forsaken child

Perhaps the most harrowing difference is with the Soul Cannon. In Fuga: Melodies of Steel, you could chamber a child in this massive metal appendage and destroy anything in your path with a single blast of terminated innocence. However, doing so would net you one of the less satisfactory conclusions to the game. Less tragically, it would kill the child.

That wouldn’t cut it for Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2. You’ve already had one game to build up your skills, and it’s less likely you’ll need to lean on a “get out of failure-free” card. Now, if you find yourself on a losing trajectory – say, your health drops below 50% in a boss battle – the Taranis will select a child at random to load into the cannon. You then have 20 turns to finish the battle, or that child gets a one-way ticket to the other side of your opponent.

To offset this, the Taranis also has access to the Managarm, which uses children as ammunition. However, the Managarm only leaves the child injured and isn’t a guaranteed win like the Soul Cannon. It also means you don’t get experience points from the battle you used it in, but it might be better than having to scrap unrealized potential off the wall.

[caption id="attachment_387014" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Unconventional ammunition

You’ve probably figured this out already, but it’s best if you play Fuga: Melodies of Steel before moving on to the sequel. There’s a recap available if you want to know what happened in the first game, but Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 works more as a continuation of the story rather than a completely new entry in the series.

To that extent, Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 might be a bit too conservative when it comes to advancing forward. Many of the assets are completely recycled, which I don’t usually count as a bad thing, but they’re not repurposed, just reused. So, many of the stages take place in the same areas of the first game, and the backgrounds feel mostly unchanged. Aspects of the game have been touched up but otherwise left the same. I feel like the intermissions and the plumbing of ruins for loot could have been completely revamped just to give players something fresh to do, but they weren’t. They feel the same.

To be fair, I played the two games back to back and didn’t really feel bored or underwhelmed. There’s an extreme sense of deja vu in Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2, but the core gameplay still proves to have longevity beyond its simple mechanics.

I have mixed feelings about how similar it is to the previous game. For one thing, the $39.99 asking price – while reasonable when you consider the length and quality of the game – feels like a lot when held up to its contemporaries in the small-budget space. On the other hand, if cutting corners was needed just to allow the series to continue, then I’m all for it.

[caption id="attachment_387016" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Old friends

That’s the most important thing to keep in mind: Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 is a continuation of the first game. While it remixes a lot of things to give you a fresh experience, nothing has been overhauled or upgraded to give you something new. If you wanted more Fuga – and who could blame you? – then that’s what you’re getting here. However, if you didn’t enjoy the first title, then there’s no hope for you here.

Yoann Gueritot, one of the directors who has now moved on to Platinum Games, has stated that Fuga is planned as a trilogy. I’m definitely on board with that, but I also kind of wish the series was doing more to earn that. A cohesive series of games is fine, but I prefer to see things evolve, expand, and reach for perfection as CyberConnect2 soldiers on. Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 is complacent. It’s great, but we’ve already seen its greatness. Eventually, it’s going to need to load something new into its cannon if it wants to get its dazzle back.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

In my armor-plated womb

The Phantom Limb from Venture Bros. explained to someone that “The Mona Lisa isn’t a better painting, merely a more famous painting.” It’s a quote that is an effectively concise way of explaining that something being mainstream is not necessarily an indicator of its quality. In the realm of video games, it is particularly useful, as the hyper-commercialized nature of it ensures that the cream doesn’t always rise to the top. Year after year, my favorite games are rarely the ones that are considered the period’s “big releases,” and that isn’t because I’m a snob. Sorry, I mean, that isn’t solely because I’m a snob.

2021’s Fuga: Melodies of Steel is an example of that. I personally overlooked the game for a couple of reasons. The first is that it didn’t get a whole lot of press, and the second is that, at $39.99, it has a high price tag compared to the games it appears to be competing against. Largely, the latter reason is a combination of me not having any money and small-budget games having been undervalued by a race to the bottom in mobile, PC, and XBLIG markets.

If my meandering around the point hasn’t made it clear, I think that’s a shame. Fuga: Melodies of Steel is a wonderful RPG experiment that shouldn’t be missed.

[caption id="attachment_386955" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Fuga: Melodies of Steel (PC, PS4, PS5 [Reviewed], Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch)
Developer: CyberConnect2
Publisher: CyberConnect2
Released: July 28, 2021
MSRP: $39.99

Fuga: Melodies of Steel takes place in the Little Tail Bronx (Tail Concerto, Solatorobo: Red the Hunter) universe’s world of floating continents and furries. Unconnected to the previous games in the setting, Fuga: Melodies of Steel is a thinly veiled parallel to World War 2. The country of Gasco is suddenly invaded by the Berman Empire (I’m serious), who go to work rounding people up for unknown reasons. A group of children, narrowly escaping capture, find a massive abandoned tank – the Taranis – in a cave and set out with it to save their families.

Between this and Blaster Master on NES, video games really make it seem easy to just come across buried tanks. I feel like this is a widespread childhood experience that I’m angry I missed out on.

It may sound somewhat trite, but the mix of storybook whimsy and harsh reality is one of the things that makes Fuga: Melodies of Steel so interesting. Early on, you’re presented with a mechanic that allows you to load one of the children into a cannon that allows you to instantly kill any enemy at the expense of the child. Literally, and according to lore, someone developed a giant cannon that specifically uses children as ammunition. Finally, a way to make children useful.

I can make it sound as amusing as I want, but the soul cannon, as a concept, is dark as heck. Forget a good/bad morality system, Fuga: Melodies of Steel just allows you to sacrifice a character to prevent losing progress. It’s made somewhat obvious that by using the cannon, you’re setting yourself up for a less desirable ending, but there’s always new game plus.

https://youtu.be/CbjXMMH0JzI

Rhythms of Iron

Despite setting itself up as a narrative-focused game, Fuga: Melodies of Steel isn’t super heavy with exposition. There are plenty of cutscene interruptions, but most of them are quite brief. It makes the smart choice of spreading the tale out across the entire experience so it doesn’t get too bogged down.

The gameplay itself is quite unique. You build up a cast of 12 children, field 6 of them at a time, but only three are active in battle at a time. The other three you have in the immediate wings are there as emotional support, building up a gauge based on their relationship with the current gunner ahead of them, allowing you to unleash powerful attacks based on your combination once the gauge is full.

Each child commandeers one of three types of weapon: machine gun, grenade launcher, and cannon. While these are largely stacked in the order you’d expect – machine gun is light and accurate, cannon hits hard but is less reliable, and grenade launch is an all-arounder – that’s only part of the story. Enemies all have icons on them that denote a specific weakness, but they don’t take more damage from the indicated weapon. Instead, if they have three blue icons on them, for example, hitting them three times with a machine gun delays their next attack.

It’s a lot to get into, with the children’s skills, additional ammunition types, statuses, and good old-fashioned luck playing a role. The end result, however, is a deceptively engaging layer of strategy. In RPGs, I’m used to just leaning against a few moves and largely brute-forcing everything. In Fuga: Melodies of Steel, that isn’t really an option. I had to think ahead and consider my moves. Otherwise, I’d be firing children out of a cannon.

[caption id="attachment_386956" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Juvenile artillery

Each chapter has your tank lumbering along a set path, and you simply choose which direction you take whenever it branches. Again, this is deceptively simple. Tracks are clearly labeled as “Safe, Normal, and Dangerous.” Dangerous paths will put more enemies in your way, but you’ll also collect more loot for upgrading your tank. If your tank has gone through the wringer, it might be better to choose a safer path, but it’s always tempting to embrace the danger when it means it might make things easier later on.

Fuga: Melodies of Steel’s greatest strength is making the most out of very little. You alternate between upgrading your tank and keeping the children’s spirits up, making choices on the world map, plumbing ruins for loot, and being in combat, and that’s about it from start to finish. However, because it’s so highly polished, it feels like more than enough to carry it through its 20-or-so-hour length.

Its only real vulnerabilities are in a couple of areas. The first is that the narrative isn’t that great. It’s told with care for its characters and love of its settings, but the overarching plot isn’t anything special. It’s not bad, but it’s a lot of being led from location to location with nothing substantial happening.

It also has really specific criteria for reaching the best ending. It’s something that you’re given little heads up on, and unless you’re trying to achieve it, you’ll probably miss it. Originally, this almost necessitated going through again in new game plus, but a later update relaxed this a bit. Now, if you get the worst ending, you can start again from where you’re required to start working toward a better conclusion. It’s not exactly the most heinous sin committed by a game, and I’m not sure them blatantly telling you what the requirement is would be a better solution; but if you’re set on not getting a bad ending, you may want to look up the criteria beforehand.

[caption id="attachment_386957" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

King Tiger

Fuga: Melodies of Steel is a masterclass of efficient design. A lot of breadth in gaming is achieved through padding, and a lot of depth is created through the layering of mechanics. It’s rare to see a game that achieves so much simply by polishing its core to an absolutely lustrous shine. It manages to earn its considerable longevity despite having a very tight loop. I can't help but find it admirable.

That’s not to say it’s going to appeal to everyone. Its deceptively simple gameplay won’t likely appeal to a more action-oriented and straightforward mindset. Likewise, the cute animal children might be a difficult taste to swallow for those who prefer their drama to be between hairless bags of flesh and chemicals. However, there’s a thoughtful earnestness to Fuga: Melodies of Steel that should really connect with anyone whose soul hasn’t been used as ammunition.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game purchased by the reviewer.]}

The post Review: Fuga: Melodies of Steel appeared first on Destructoid.

I didn't hear no bell...

Every fighting game franchise owes an unpayable debt to Street Fighter.

Oh, sure, Street Fighter wasn't the first slugger on the block, and we can tip our hats to forerunners such as Technos' Karate Champ and Irem's Yie Are Kung Fu for pioneering the genre itself. But, inarguably, it was the 1991 arrival of Capcom's Street Fighter II that truly popularised the one-on-one fighter on a global basis, reinventing competitive gaming, garnering millions of sales in the arcade and home market, and galvanizing itself as one of the premier franchises in history.

Street Fighter II wrote the blueprint that would be followed by every franchise eager to raise fists and feet in its wake. And while a handful of these excellent fighters would go on to achieve amazing success in their own right — building communities, breaking pop culture, and raking in beaucoup bucks — ultimately, they all pay homage to the king. When Street Fighter has the throne, you can't usurp it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_3cIvwbo98&ab_channel=Destructoid

In 2016, however, something went very wrong. That year, Capcom released Street Fighter V, bringing about one of the worst launches in the company's history. As a fighter, SFV was solid, but the launch was a disaster. Capcom delivered an uninspiring, threadbare title, lacking rudimentary features, missing trademark facets, and sporting a miserable U.I. and abominable netcode. Worse still, the title was devoid of charm and personality. It wasn't that Street Fighter V was terrible, it was... empty. Bland. An avatar bearing a familiar name but infused with an apathy that left its world cold and its characters hollow.

In the aftermath of this maligned release, Capcom reevaluated itself. Beginning with 2017's Monster Hunter World, the studio proceeded to knock out a string of hugely successful releases, leading to what is currently the most prosperous period in company history. And this week, seven years on from SFV's notorious debut, the prodigal son returns, determined to showcase improvement, win back its audience, and deliver a top-notch sequel that not only aims to surpass its predecessor, but also stake a claim as one of the greatest entries in the series' decades-long history.

[caption id="attachment_382452" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Street Fighter 6 (PlayStation [PS5 reviewed], PC, Xbox, Arcade)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Released: June 2, 2023
MSRP: $69.99

Capcom has openly expressed its intent to conceive Street Fighter 6 as something of a "Make Good" for the misgivings of Street Fighter V, while simultaneously presenting a new era of evolution for the legendary series. SF6 bears the hallmarks of this evolution not only in its core fighting systems, but across every element of its presentation. This revitalized approach includes a ground-up redesign of the audio/visual aesthetic, as well as the implementation of the celebrated RE Engine, in a bold effort to present the most feature-filled launch of a Street Fighter title to date.

While "Evolution" might have been the intended term, "Polished" is a far better word to describe the precision with which Capcom has addressed its sequel. The team has not only ensured that the key elements of the fight itself are to the highest standard of player expectation, but also that all of the smaller, equally important details are also addressed. SF6 sports a better ranking system, more attractive menus, fun side activities, slicker online capabilities, battle damage, cooler Vs. screens, sportsmanship rewards, segmented downloads, improved player profiles, and new training tools.

This is not to mention the inventive "Modern" and "Dynamic" control schemes, as well as the sequel's fantastic range of overdue accessibility features. And we're still only scratching the surface of the quality on display here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EnsDg6DCTE

Welcome to the Punch Party

For the majority of fighting game fans, "Fighting Ground" & "Battle Hub" are where it's at, packed out with an array of familiar modes including Online & Offline Vs., Team Battle, Combo Trials, Training Mode, and Character Guides. Also on deck are individual Arcade Stories for our World Warriors, as well as the comical Extreme Battle, which allows for chaotic throwdowns disrupted by a variety of modifiers.

It is in Fighting Ground that players will become best acquainted with Street Fighter 6's 18-strong roster, which features familiar faces such as Ken, Blanka, and Ryu from Streets, mixed in with fan favorites such as a (particularly foul-mouthed) Cammy and my own main squeeze, Juri. While some have balked at the concept of launching with "only" 18 characters, it should be noted that SF6 hosts some of the best iterations of these characters to date. Equally of note are seven newcomers — all of whom are extremely inviting, and many of whom boast mechanics that are wholly new to the franchise.

It is testament to the SF6 roster that these new fighters have already been warmly welcomed by the fanbase. Marisa, Manon, Jamie, and co. have created perhaps the biggest buzz newcomers have ever received in SF history. For the first time in a very long time, there is not only a desire to master multiple characters, but almost a stalemate of choice when it comes to experimenting with the debutantes.

Hope you like JP. You'll be seeing a lot of that prick online.

[caption id="attachment_382451" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Street Fighter 6 cast of skull-smackin' reprobates is given life through the sequel's trump card: it's vibrant aesthetic and full-throated personality. Boasting an "underground" vibe, SF6 feels electric, bursting with character and charisma, and awash in lurid color and bass-heavy beats. While the graffiti-inspired visuals and hip-hop flavor of the piece might not be to everyone's taste, there's no denying that SF6 has been jolted with the identity defibrillator that SFV sorely needed — Just try to ignore some of those bars in the background raps. Woof.

Our World Warriors have genuine presence and character, emboldened with fantastic models, series-best animation, and charismatic voice work. Street Fighter 6 is dripping with personality and bubbling with dynamism. Its exciting presentation style, superbly designed roster, myriad special effects, great character themes, and selection of colorful and lively arenas are the pulsating heart of the entire title.

It feels whole. It feels vigorous. It feels alive.

[caption id="attachment_382233" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Driving Miss Crazy

Ironically, it's redundant to spend too much of your precious time describing Street Fighter 6's actual gameplay, given Capcom's confidence in having dropped three betas and a demo to the player base. (You can also read my thoughts in previous articles). But it goes without saying that, once the bell rings, Street Fighter 6 offers spirited, breathless combat, substituting a modicum of speed from its predecessors for increased impact. The RE Engine is a surprisingly great fit for 2.5D fighting, (whether by design or by accident), and allows for stellar animation, smooth movement and dazzling effects.

The backbone of Street Fighter 6 is the Drive System, which allows for the armored Drive Impact, the dramatic Drive Parry, and the sneaky Drive Rush abilities, as well as an array of Overdrive moves. It is through management of this meter that the player dictates the flow of the fight, ensuring that they have the resources to stay in an advantageous position while being readily open to overspending when victory is in sight.

The key boon provided by Drive is that it provides opportunity for creativity. While SFV suffered from a prison of optimal combos — which essentially saw 90% of players fight in the exact same way — Street Fighter 6 forces moment-to-moment adaptation, based entirely on the given resources of the two combatants at any one time. It is through the Drive skills that we will see more varied combo routes, distinct playstyles, and character evolution in the coming years. This in itself places Street Fighter 6 over other iterations in regard to its meta-changing potential.

And yes, I know that Drive Impact seems too powerful right now... Give it time. We'll adapt.

[caption id="attachment_382456" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

The Ballad of Bosch

Essentially a hybrid of Street Fighter and Sega's Like a Dragon, "World Tour" sees the player create a custom avatar, (a feature that has already resulted in an abomination of ungodly creatures populating the lobbies), before dallying around cityscapes and completing subquests, all while getting into a series of random rumbles on a loosely defined "Search for Strength". As you progress through this mode, your character hooks up with each of the World Warriors, learning new techniques with which to build a bespoke moveset. Ever wanted to have Hadoken, Flash Kick, Yoga Teleport, AND Screw Piledriver? Well, have I got the character for you, kiddo.

While World Tour does a great job at helping players get to grips with the basics of Street Fighter, it is, ultimately, a lackluster experience. The problem lies in the narrative and its relation to the mode itself. To be clear, World Tour is not a NetherRealm-esque "Cinematic Story Mode". In fact, upon meeting each World Warrior, the player is treated to a splendid introductory cutscene, before said character chooses to basically stand in one spot and dole out text messages for the remainder of the story. None of the World Warriors interact with each other over the course of the story, generally existing only to offer up new moves, kick your ass in sparring sessions, and passive-aggressively accept your gifts.

Cammy did not want the rom-com DVD.

[caption id="attachment_382457" align="alignnone" width="640"] BUONO!! BUONO!! BUONO!![/caption]

Always the Son (Son)

World Tour focuses on the adventures of your voiceless protagonist and Everyone's Favorite New Character, Bosch — a tale of stolen bus stops, a neutered Mad Gear Gang, and the sort of narrative high-stakes that see Bosch kidnapped and Luke telling you to "Go to Jamaica and bring me back a memento" in response. Remember in SFV when Alex thought Dhalsim — DHALSIM — was a carjacker? Well, similarly non-sequitur writing applies here. Only the delightfully heinous JP shines through, easily donning the mantle of the series' most despicable villain since M. Bison.

Also... Juri seems really fucking depressed. If she wants coffee and a foot rub I'm here for her.

While World Tour isn't the "Street Fighter RPG" some might have hoped, it's not without its charm, and represents only one element of the package of great extra-curricular activities. The Arcade Mode unlocks lovely artwork and fun bonus stages; the combo trials are challenging; the avatar builder is hilarious in its Frankensteinian potential, and the Game Center is packed out with rotating Capcom classics, including gems Magic Sword, Final Fight, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Son Son, and others.

Hey, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo is here. That's worth the price of admission alone.

[caption id="attachment_382459" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

As those who have played the beta can attest, load times are lightning fast and the rollback netcode is superb, offering the tightest online in Street Fighter history. For review (PS5), I can report that SF6 sports a steady, reliable frame rate when in Performance Mode, though this is at the cost of some crispness on the character models. It should be noted that I experienced some screen tearing on my display when I activated the "Input Delay Reduction" feature, but this may vary with monitors.

Battle Hub represents the more social nature of SF6's multiplayer portion, offered as an optional gateway to online matches. Personally, I love it, with its hilariously broken Avatar Battles, awkward emoting, and terrifying rogues' gallery of custom monstrosities. It makes for a neat hangout if you have no pals like me... (except for my girlfriend Juri, of course.)

You'd probably like me to address the inevitable elephant of monetization, so let's do it.

Street Fighter 6 follows a seasonal DLC pattern, with the first season of post-release characters already announced. In addition, Capcom will be adopting a "Battle Pass" format for SF6, ("Fighter's Pass") with free and premium tracks offering rewards for players. Costumes, colors, avatar gear, and other items will be purchasable via "Fighter Coins" (real currency) and "Drive Tickets" (earned in-game). Each character currently has one alternate costume that can be unlocked through playing World Tour.

The specifics regarding all of the above are expected to roll out in the near future.

[caption id="attachment_382453" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

You've got a lot to learn before you beat me...

While the disappointment of World Tour, and the concerning nature of monetization weighs on the title, it cannot be emphasized enough that Street Fighter 6 is a magnificent fighter. From its wide array of modes and features, through its exciting cast, new mechanics, solid performance, and impressive visuals, Street Fighter 6 is a title that radiates excellence. There was a clear commitment by the team to deliver a thoroughly engaging fighter for both the dedicated SF community as well as curious onlookers, and this commitment has been fulfilled, resulting in a year-best release and a legitimate GOTY contender.

Fighting games are always a tough review. Every player has their own expectations on how any given example should look, control, and flow, with distinct designs speaking to distinct players. This is why we have such a vibrant and energetic competitive scene, populated with such passionate individuals. Regardless, in Street Fighter 6, Capcom has made a declaration to redraw FGC focus onto its flagship fighting title... perhaps the flagship fighting title... and has successfully delivered an outstanding contender for this coming generation of fighting games. Street Fighter is back on the throne.

And when you come at the king, you best not miss.

While not all of the design decisions and ambitious new modes hit their mark, Capcom's commitment to producing a polished and superlative fighter is readily apparent throughout this stellar release. A compelling roster, exciting visuals, crisp performance, and thrilling mechanics ensure that this prestige sequel is set to champion local, online, and competitive scenes for years to come.

Simply put, Street Fighter 6 is one of the very best entries in series history.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Street Fighter 6 appeared first on Destructoid.

The Shockmaster

It’s a weirdly good time to be a fan of Shockman. It’s not an extensive series, consisting of three games on the PC-Engine (the Japanese version of the Turbografx-16) and one title on the SNES via its Satellaview add-on. However, we only got one of these titles in the West, which was the second game.

However, we just recently got a fan translation of the Satellaview game, and not long after that, Ratalaika has seen to publish an official translation of the first game in the series, Kaizō Chōjin Shubibinman. Choosing the name Cyber Citizen Shockman to differentiate it from the 1992 Tuborgrafx-16 title, Shockman, it feels as though it came out of nowhere. And while it’s maybe not a must-play title, I’ll always celebrate a title getting localized.

[caption id="attachment_382114" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Cyber Citizen Shockman (PS4, PS5, Switch [Reviewed], Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Shinyuden
Publisher: Ratalaika
Released: May 19, 2023
MSRP: $5.99

While Shockman was something of a Mega Man clone, Cyber Citizen Shockman has more of a slashing element to it. Your default attack is just a sweep of your sword, and if you want to fire rainbows, you’ll need to get permission from the sheriff. That’s just a fantastic assembly of ideas.

Cyber Citizen Shockman is a story about youths fighting Darth Vader. You’re maybe a robot. You get pushed out the door by a scientist who repairs you when you die. There are dragons? It’s a bit insane.

Rather than a series of levels, you’re given a map of the city, and you can choose your path and backtrack if you want to. After clearing a level, you’ll be rewarded by a citizen for saving them and can sometimes buy gear from specific spots on the map. It’s not a bad setup, though navigating it is strangely unwieldy. Most importantly, though, you don’t have to repeat stages if you die. You can just continue where you left off.

[caption id="attachment_382116" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Johnny Turbo

Speaking of unwieldy, however, Cyber Citizen Shockman controls like a dumpster on wheels. It was initially released in 1989, and I don’t know what it was about PC-Engine games at the time, but a bunch of them attempted some really half-assed approach to momentum-based movement. So your character is slow to get up to speed and difficult to stop, which makes platforming feel like you’re controlling it with a mouse ball.

The level design doesn’t help, either. It will use excruciatingly fast platforms and ones that will just drop or move in unpredictable directions. There’s no real instant death in Cyber Citizen Shockman, but it just sucks to helplessly watch your robo-teen repeatedly bounce on a hazard because they are only capable of running jumps, and the platforming won’t accommodate this.

To make matters worse, the hit detection is just balls. You can eventually adapt by figuring out what hazards should be ducked under and which should be jumped over, but it’s a needlessly painful process. The bosses, however, good luck. You can certainly learn the pattern, but you have to be overly cautious not to bump into the air around them. I guess they’re wearing too much Axe body spray because getting anywhere near them is hazardous for your character.

[caption id="attachment_382117" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Hero of justice

The port isn’t bad. I don’t have any complaints. Weirdly, it seems to be running on the same emulation platform as the recent Ninja Jajamaru-Kun Collection. At the very least, they share extremely identical UI. I’m not sure why. While Ratalaika was involved in both products, City Connection handled Jajamaru while Shinyuden localized Cyber Citizen Shockman.

Regardless, while the Jajamaru collection had, uh, problems, Cyber Citizen Shockman doesn’t share them. Most noticeably, the CRT filter functions without completely destroying the framerate on the Switch version. I also didn’t notice any functional issues as I encountered with the bosses in one of the Jajamaru titles. These menus make me very suspicious, but I never found a problem with the port.

The supplemental material isn’t anything special. They include the instruction manual, but it wasn’t translated into English. I think it’s worth noting that Cyber Citizen Shockman is being released at an extremely reasonable $5.99. So while the recent Assault Suit Valken re-release not only included translated instructions but also a previously Japan-only guide, it was significantly more expensive at launch.

I can’t speak for everyone, and I don’t usually like to incorporate the cost into my critique, but $5.99 is generally the price I expect for a straight retro port. The fact that Ratalaika and Shiyuden not only ported the game but also translated it is enough. The manual, even not being translated, is just an appreciated extra.

[caption id="attachment_382118" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Passionate effort

On the other hand, Cyber Citizen Shockman just isn’t a very good game. It’s hardly a bad game, either, but it’s not particularly enjoyable to play. Poor hit detection and control completely overshadow any of its inventive qualities. That said, I greatly appreciate the effort that went into localizing it. Good or bad, any PC-Engine title from 1989 is going to be very niche in this part of the world, so there’s obviously a lot of passion involved in bringing it here.

I can’t exactly recommend Cyber Citizen Shockman if you’re just looking for a good platformer to play. However, if you know what you’re getting into, you can rest easy knowing that it’s a decent porting job that does exactly what it says on the package. Then again, it doesn’t cost all that much to find out for yourself, and may also encourage Ratalaika to localize more niche titles. So, I guess what I’m saying is: Yes, definitely buy Cyber Citizen Shockman.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Cyber Citizen Shockman appeared first on Destructoid.

It's probably too late to get my gut ready for swimsuit season

If you own a Nintendo Switch and want to keep in shape or get in shape, you have a lot of good options. There’s Ring Fit Adventure, three Fitness Boxing games (including this year’s Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star), several Just Dance titles, and Nintendo Switch Sports if you really get into it. Those are the ones you've probably heard of. If you really dig into the Switch catalog, you can find less mainstream but equally effective games like Let’s Get Fit and Yoga Master.

There is simply no shortage of available games that'll get you off the couch and into an exercise routine, and Fitness Circuit is yet another option.

[caption id="attachment_381023" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Fitness Circuit (Switch)
Developer: EXFIT, Jupiter
Publisher: Spike Chunsoft
Released: May 26, 2023
MSRP: $49.99

There are a few great ideas at play in Fitness Circuit. The exercise concept at the core of the game is Super Circuit Training, where you alternate between cardio and strength workouts. Each day you log in after creating your profile, you’ll be presented with a custom fitness routine that ties into your goals. The routine will mix cardio and strength activities that each ask players to go hard for about 45 seconds to a minute. At the end of your routine, you’ll get a minute-long break to hydrate before you repeat the exercises. If you don’t have enough time, you can choose to go through your daily routine just once, but the option is there to go through it multiple times.

Like with 2021’s Knockout Home Fitness, Fitness Circuit is aimed at people who are either already fit or at least not completely out of shape. I’m somewhere in the middle, meaning I had no trouble keeping up with the speed of the routines while also ending each training session drenched in sweat. And not in a sexy way. It took me about a week to gel with the program, but once I bumped my runs through my daily training routine to three, I started to understand the effectiveness of the alternating strategy.

The cardio exercises are designed to keep your body moving. You’ll do heel taps, kicks, punches, and other movements that wouldn’t be out of place in a Richard Simmons workout tape. Strength exercises are often slower and usually have you holding a position while stretching your muscles. There are 45 exercises in total, but not all of them feel equally effective. Cardio exercises like the March and Butt-Kick didn’t really feel like working out. But they were effective enough of giving my body something of a breather between the more impactful strength exercises. One thing to note is the game will say you train for “10 minutes a day,” but between the pre-workout stretch and the post-workout cooldown, you should give yourself at least a half hour to play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqnk_jfLUFU

As with other fitness games, you’re not going through this alone. Fitness Circuit has six trainers, voiced by anime voice actors like Emi Lo, Mick Lauer, and Amber May. These trainers are customizable with new outfits you unlock as you level up. Technically, the trainers aren’t trainers but rather runners. In the game, they’re competing in events in Extreme Park, which is basically a sci-fi version of American Gladiators. The better you do at your exercises, the faster they’ll complete their courses. This could have been a neat idea if the time and money were there to fully explore it, but Extreme Park’s inclusion here is merely a justification for them to do a lot of different sports in a futuristic setting.

I haven’t paid attention to the sports my runner was participating in because I’m too focused on doing the movements right. Fitness Circuit has a simple-to-understand guide for all the movements you need to do for each exercise. Do the move correctly, and you’ll get a “cool” rating. If you do it even a little bit correctly, you’ll earn an “ok,” while failing to do the exercise right will result in a “miss.” At least, that’s the intention. Because over the past 10 days of playing this game, I’ve found it doesn’t always accurately track your movements.

I’ve earned “ok” ratings where I know I should have had “cool,” and there should be no reason why I ever get a “miss” on any of these exercises. You can tell when the game fails to capture your movements. Each movement track has little stars you collect. The joy-con controllers softly vibrate with each one you get. If your controllers aren’t vibrating, it’s not reading your movements right. You can make little adjustments to your movement in order to get a better reading, but unless the controller is held perfectly still, there is no reason any player should be hit with a "miss." It’s not like the controls are so exact that it can tell if I’m not moving my arms at a perfect 90-degree angle.

[caption id="attachment_381022" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

One intriguing feature I sadly wasn’t able to try out is the online multiplayer mode. You and up to three friends who also own the game can compete in different exercise routines. This isn’t available locally, but exercising with a friend is a great way to keep on track. Multiplayer is only available in the Custom Circuit mode, where you can build your own routines or use ready-made ones using exercises you’ve unlocked. I’ve never been good at making my own routines (which is probably why Wii Fit didn’t work for me), so ready-built circuits are welcome. The one I’ve been using regularly is called Back Pain 1, and I’m really starting to feel its effect. If there are certain parts of the body you don’t want to work out, or if you don’t have the best balance out there, Fitness Circuit does allow players to exclude any exercise they don’t want to do.

There are some weird localization issues where the text doesn’t match what’s happening on the screen, and the audio could be better at guiding players when their faces are turned away from the screen. But beyond that and the aforementioned tracking issues, Fitness Circuit is a well-rounded package. If you’re looking for your first fitness game on Switch or have tired of all the other ones, consider it an effective way to keep active every day.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Fitness Circuit appeared first on Destructoid.

The Emperor demands your life

I don’t know a whole lot about the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Space guys in ostentatious armor. Orcs dressed like orcs. It’s a lot to take in. However, I do know a lot about first-person shooters, especially those created in the ‘90s, and since Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is designed to look like one of those, it’s the perfect crossover.

However, the indie and small-budget market is pretty saturated in retro-inspired shooters right now, so without being a fan of Warhammer 40,000, does Boltgun still do enough to stand out to me? No. But also very yes.

[caption id="attachment_381154" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (PC [Reviewed], PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch)
Developer: Auroch Digital
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Release: May 23, 2023
MSRP: $21.99

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is the story of… something happening. You’re an inquisitor sent to a planet to quell the chaos there. That doesn’t mean much to me, but it does mean that there’s lots of squishy things to shoot.

You’re placed in a pair of stompy space boots and given a gun that is both entirely unremarkable and completely awesome at the same time. The titular boltgun is nothing more than an assault rifle, but it rips through smaller enemies and sounds like someone using a jackhammer on a bass drum. The first thing you should know about Boltgun is that it’s extremely explode-y. Everyone dies with enthusiasm, spraying blood and body parts everywhere, and it’s an awesome spectacle.

Boltgun lives for making you feel powerful. Beyond the eponymous boltgun, every weapon gives you the feeling of repeatedly slamming a car door on someone’s dick. There’s a taunt button, which is amazing because there is no multiplayer. The enemies have no feelings, so shouting at them is just something to do to feel awesome. Your space boots are constantly stomping around, and you can boost your health and armor up to 300%. Your melee attack is a chainsaw sword, and you bring down bigger enemies with it by revving it against their faces.

There are many first-person shooters out there with a philosophy built around making you feel powerful, but I don’t think any have nailed it quite like Boltgun.

https://youtu.be/DJzGLICnZrg

Die heretic!

Though Boltgun is visibly inspired by ‘90s FPS games, most of the aesthetic is achieved through a filter that reduces color depth and increases pixelation. It’s a reasonably effective technique that creates a vintage look without having to compromise level geometry or complexity.

It also does a few new things that I haven’t really seen in an FPS before. Many of the enemies take quite a few bullets to put down, but rather than just allowing them to be damage sponges, each one displays a health bar that lets you know how close you are to dropping them. It’s a small detail, and Boltgun gets a lot of the small details very right. Like when your boltgun’s clip is running dry, and it starts to let out a mechanical rattle to accompany every shot. There’s a lot of care taken to get the experience feeling great.

[caption id="attachment_381150" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The might of the Imperium will crush you

Unfortunately, the level design doesn’t support all of this, and it’s actually somewhat baffling. The levels can get confusing. Walkways will criss-cross overhead, and there’s no map to help you out. However, that’s not the biggest issue.

The problem is that there’s a stunning lack of consistency. The first few levels seem to imply that Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun subscribes to a Doom Eternal formula where you’re largely entering small combat nodes that you clear before moving on, but it doesn’t stick to this. That’s fine because I prefer just wading through enemies the whole time, but it winds up trapped between these two approaches.

The issues that arise from this are twofold. First, it struggles with item placement. Second, it has problems with pacing.

The pacing is perhaps the strangest wrinkle. It’s not like perennial games such as Doom or Duke Nukem 3D didn’t have moments where you backtracked through empty rooms, it just feels extremely out of place with Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. Stomping around, taunting the walls, and hoovering up supplies just feels horrible when placed next to exploding dudes left and right.

However, item placement is the biggest issue. Typically, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun dumps ammunition and health on you. Little rotating models of crests and clips are everywhere. This makes it extremely noticeable when you’re trapped in an arena, and they’re nowhere to be found.

[caption id="attachment_381155" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Your death is my glory

I remember a particular encounter late in the game where I actually came extremely close to running out of ammo and wound up taking down a Lord of Change with the chainsword. There were times when I got low on health and had to disengage entirely from combat in order to search for the smaller nooks and crannies where larger pick-ups were hidden.

Part of that problem is that Boltgun is absolutely terrible with communication. The levels are busy, noisy places where it’s easy to overlook a locked door. Sometimes I’d finish arena moments only to find that I had missed an entire section of the area because the grey corridor was hidden amongst all the grey walls. There are yellow splotches of paint and candles in some areas to draw your attention to the intended path, but I feel like these were late additions. There was one area where I missed a row of candles entirely because they were hidden among the debris and glowing portals.

[caption id="attachment_381156" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The Emperor's hand will touch you

It lends to this confused feeling I got playing Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. For the first 20-or-so minutes after picking it up anew, I’d be having a blast. I’d feel like I was playing the best game ever. But after that initial blast of endorphins wore off I’d start feeling frustrated. I’d forge ahead until I reached a decent quitting point, put it down, then I never felt compelled to pick it up again. The only thing that really kept me going was the deadline for this review; otherwise, I think I probably would have stopped partway through and forgotten it at the bottom of my library.

That’s not to say Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is bad. It’s definitely not. In fact, it nails so many things that other games tend to fall short on. It manages to be this extremely impressive and unrelenting spectacle for huge swaths of time. It’s just there are parts of it that are needed to support these high points, and they’re all a bit rickety.

It’s one of those moments where I may have my complaints about the game, and I feel it’s extremely necessary to voice them. However, I also think you should try Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. This isn’t a lukewarm recommendation; it’s a hot one. Because despite all its problems, it’s something that needs to be seen and celebrated. There’s a chance that you won’t even notice the problems I outlined, and this will be a big hit with you. You might not even notice the same issues that I do. I think Boltgun deserves its chance, and you should definitely give it one, even if you have no connection with the license.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun appeared first on Destructoid.

Toil and trouble

Puzzle Bobble has been around roughly forever and has received far more sequels than its progenitor, Bubble Bobble, probably ever will. Far more than I can keep track of. I’ve generally been staying in my safe bubble (heh) of the first two titles.

Generally, the Puzzle Bobble formula is simple enough that there isn’t a whole lot of room for variation. New bubbles, power-ups, selectable characters; you can’t shake things up too much. With that in mind, Puzzle Bobble Everybubble is the best one I’ve played. And that’s simply because it’s the first I’ve played with co-op.

It’s not the first game in the series to have co-op (Bust-a-Move Bash on Wii allowed for 8-player cooperative), but it is the one that is most thoughtful about it, and that goes a long way.

[caption id="attachment_380956" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Puzzle Bobble Everybubble (Switch)
Developer: Taito
Publisher: ININ Games
Release: May 23, 2023
MSRP: $39.99

If you’re unfamiliar with Puzzle Bobble, you might know it better as Bust-a-Move, its localized title under Acclaim. I have no idea why it was called that. It doesn’t have anything to do with dancing. However, if you’re unfamiliar with Bust-a-Move, then that’s weird. Puzzle Bobble is a match-3 puzzle game that has you bouncing bubbles onto a field of colored bubbles, trying to eliminate them all.

Puzzle Bobble is technically a spin-off of Bubble Bobble, the all-time great arcade title about bubble-spitting lizards. It has very little in common, aside from starring the same characters, and I’m just learning that there’s deeper lore that’s at play here. Worse, Puzzle Bobble Everybubble seems to think you’re already up to date on it. I thought I was. I am clearly mistaken.

While Puzzle Bobble Everybubble takes place on the Rainbow Islands, it’s implied that Bub and Bob (and indeed, Peb and Pab) are just normally bubble-spitting dinosaurs. If you played Bubble Bobble, you’re probably aware that a wizard turned Bub and Bob from normal children into lizards, but Puzzle Bobble Everybubble suggests they’re just normal dragons.

This is madness. Do these people even care about continuity? Or is this even more horrible than I thought? Am I the one who is mistaken? Unthinkable.

The story of Puzzle Bobble Everybubble involves the Miniroons, who look exactly like Bub but smaller. They made a deal with the Grumple Grommit to give them the ability to spit bubbles, but you shouldn’t make a deal with someone who is called Super Drunk in Japanese. They can’t control their discharge, and soon the Rainbow Islands are flooded with bubbles.

I don’t know why I summarized the story because it really doesn’t matter.

https://youtu.be/15MLhVZcba0

Baburu!

There are generally two modes to Puzzle Bobble and they’re both represented in Puzzle Bobble Everybubble. The first is a puzzle mode where you try to clear a field as quickly as possible. This sometimes means you need to burst every bubble on the screen, while other times, the game just wants you to free all the Chack’ns trapped in bubbles.

The other mode is a more competitive take on this. More bubbles continually appear at the top of the screen, pushing the ones beneath to the bottom of the screen. The goal is to survive as long as possible. It’s roughly the same as it’s always been, barring a few power-ups thrown in. There’s a solo take on this in Blubba’s Tower, but it’s better played competitively.

The big draw for Puzzle Bobble Everybubble, however, is the co-op. The story is a series of puzzle-style boards that constantly throw in more and more wrinkles in the form of obstacles and power-ups. Every level scales for 1-4 players. It feels like attacking these sorts of puzzles with multiple people shouldn’t work, but it really, really does.

[caption id="attachment_380960" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Multiplayer etiquette

It can be difficult for a misanthrope like myself to put together a group for any multiplayer game. Despite this, I pulled it off for Puzzle Bobble Everybubble. I got my mother to join in, along with my husband, and we spent a good chunk of the day playing.

To demonstrate how well the multiplayer puzzles work, skillsets were hardly even. I play video games for a living, so my thumbs are far beefier than anyone else in my scrub family. Generally, this meant that while I was digging through my side of the field, my husband and mother were lending each other a hand to keep things in check. Usually, they wouldn’t be too far behind me, and even if they were, I’d then start popping bubbles from my corner of the playfield.

You are graded out of three stars based on the time you complete the levels in. A lot of the time, we could land three stars in our first handful of attempts, but even if we couldn’t, we could strategize based on our individual experiences and successes. It was a really great experience, even if we did eventually have to give up on certain star endeavors in favor of just proceeding with the game.

If you don’t have friends or just don’t like other humans, that’s understandable. You can have CPU-controlled bubblers stand in for real people, I just am not sure why you’d want to. They work. They probably make as many mistakes as an actual human. However, you can’t strategize with them or give them a Charlie horse when they screw up. So, I just don’t see the point.

[caption id="attachment_380962" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Beef thumbs

There's also a mode called Puzzle Bobble Vs. Space Invaders, which is a mash-up of the two games. It's fine but serves more as a curio than a worthwhile mode.

If you were hoping to play online, you’re only half in luck. You can play VS mode locally or online with two or four players, and there are leaderboards for Blubba’s Tower. However, if you want to play co-op story mode, you’re either out of luck or I’m just not looking in the right spots. Once again, I wouldn’t want to play with anyone out of punching range, but it would have at least been an option to have.

I also want to note that the aesthetics are… potentially divisive. They’re so damned saccharine that it’s almost grating, with the bubble-lizards all exclaiming in Japanese. The actual graphics are serviceable but extraordinarily unremarkable. It bothers me more than it should that the dinosaurs just throw bubbles with their hands rather than firing them out of weird bubble launchers.

Still, minor gripes aside, this is a rather solid Puzzle Bobble entry. The co-op story mode is a great time if you have friends. Considering the series has long leaned on its competitive aspect when it comes to multiplayer, this makes Puzzle Bobble Everybubble a great purchase for anyone who doesn’t use video games to assert dominance over their friends. Largely, Puzzle Bobble Everybubble is just more Puzzle Bobble, but it’s an extremely solid entry in the series with an addition that will make it almost indispensable to some fans of bubble popping.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Puzzle Bobble Everybubble appeared first on Destructoid.

Needs more Octan

I admire that so many developers and publishers out there are still chasing that kart racing checkered flag. Because there is one clear winner in this category, every other racer we get is just lucky to finish as a runner-up. Over the past few years, we’ve seen several new games in the genre come and go with little fanfare. I don’t know if the same fate will befall LEGO 2K Drive, but what I do know is the racing in this game is legitimately fun.

It’s just, well, a good chunk of everything around that racing is rather lackluster.

[caption id="attachment_380715" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

LEGO 2K Drive (PC, PS4, PS5 [reviewed], Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: 2K Games
Released: May 19, 2023
MSRP: $69.99

Welcome to Bricklandia, where racing is king, monsters are real, and you can’t get out of your car. As the newest driver on the block, you’re recruited by local legend Clutch Racington to prove your mettle on the track and defeat the vile racer Shadow Z to win the Sky Cup. It’s the exact type of simple story one should expect from a sandbox LEGO racing title, complete with child-friendly puns and jokes from the talkative supporting cast. While the story may live at the shallow end of the pool, the racing of LEGO 2K Drive has a surprising level of depth to it.

Don’t be mistaken. This is a kart racer through and through, with simple driving mechanics, weapons, boosts, and drifting that can take a bit of getting used to if you’re coming to it directly from the Mario Kart series. There’s also a handbrake that lets you do 90-degree turns on the fly, a mechanic the game makes full use of in its track design. All of LEGO 2k Drive's modes are available right from the start. There's the story mode, where you compete in a variety of races and challenges as you work toward winning the Sky Cup. There's the Cup Series, where you'll race through four of the game's 26 tracks trying the highest score to land atop (or above) the podium. There's a Race mode where you can test each LEGO 2k Drive track individually. Finally, there's a Minigame mode where you can play the minigames from the story mode. The Cup Series and Race modes can be played offline or online, though the latter option is only available if you sync up a 2K account to your game.

While the central appeal of LEGO 2K Drive lies in the sandbox areas of its story mode, its strength is in its track layouts. There are tricky tracks in Bricklandia, made trickier with the inclusion of small hazards like weeds that slow you down or spiders that block your view until you button mash enough to get them off of you. As you get into the meat of the campaign, you’ll unlock perks you can apply to your car that increase your boosting ability or give your vehicle extra health so it won't fall apart so quickly from damage. While your driver level determines your overall stats, perks can give you a slight advantage. The first perk I unlocked improved the handling of my cars, which was appreciated given the initial handling was looser than I like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNiiIxjRkUc

Choosing the right perks is crucial because, throughout LEGO 2K Drive, you’ll be driving one of three different types of vehicles at any given time. As you compete in a race or drive around the world, your vehicle will transform between a street racer, an off-road racer, and a boat, depending on the surface you’re on. Each time your vehicle changes forms, it does so in an explosion of brick building that still puts a smile on my face. It’s a seamless experience, and the fact that you can have that kind of variety in a single race is why I find the racing in this game to be as fantastic as it is.

Also fantastic are the designs of the vehicles. LEGO 2K Drive comes with a fully featured vehicle design workshop where you can make just about any car you want so long as you have the pieces available for it. Or you can make a piece of crap like I did. As long as it has wheels to race on or a base to float on, you drive it. But know that size and weight matter, so don't expect a ridiculously huge vehicle to handle like a nimble racer. There is an extensive tutorial that teaches you the most efficient ways to build your dream car. If you need inspiration, the developers did an outstanding job of putting together unique rides for nearly every racer you’ll face. My favorites were the hot chocolate mugs on wheels. For as much imagination as the developers put into the car designs, it doesn’t feel like that much thought was put into where you would be racing.

Bricklandia is split into four sandbox biomes. In the campaign, you’ll start in Turbo Acres for the tutorial before unlocking Big Butte County, Prospect Valley, and eventually Hauntsborough. Each area is pretty small in size. While the layout of each biome is unique and makes excellent use of the vehicle transformation gimmick, it was hard for me to shake the feeling of deja vu when driving through them. Part of the problem is Big Butte County and Prospect Valley feel interchangeable. That should have been something the developers tried to avoid when you only have four maps and one is for the tutorial.

The feeling of deja vu extends to the tracks. Because there are only three biomes beyond Turbo Acres, that means there are only three themes for all 26 tracks.

[caption id="attachment_380712" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

As you drive around each biome, you’ll encounter big blue arches signifying the various challenges you can attempt. Challenge types can run the gamut, covering everything from retrieving out-of-control jetpacks to driving your boat on a track designed for your street racer. My favorite of the game asks you to Wile E. Coyote it straight into a wall. Less fun were the challenges that involved pushing oddly shape objects to a goal point within a time limit. While I was happy to go for the gold in several of these challenges, there were more than a few I was perfectly fine sticking with my bronze.

If challenges aren’t your thing, know that you don’t have a choice if you want to see the story through to the end. LEGO 2K Drive likes to put up as many roadblocks as reasonably possible to keep players from progressing too fast. Whether it's forcing you to reach a certain racer level or requiring you to beat a minigame before you can participate in a race, you're going to be spending time just driving around looking for challenges to complete. But even some of those are restricted until you hit a certain level, which goes against the spirit of a sandbox racer.

This style of gatekeeping is an outdated idea of extending gameplay, and it sort of backfires here because it shows LEGO 2K Drive is light on content. Twenty-six tracks isn't a lot, and while the number of challenges might look numerous while playing, I came to realize that's only because they're all crammed into these small sandbox maps. It might not be so bad if the reward for completing some challenges wasn’t so pitiful.

The big rewards are in the races where you’ll face off against an eclectic group of rivals. There are three race difficulties (C, B, A) that correspond to your driver level. When going through the campaign, you’ll start in C until you win enough checkered flags and raise your driver level high enough to jump to B, and then again to A. What’s strange is I had a more difficult time winning in the C-class races than I did with the B-class or A-class. Maybe it’s just because I got better at drifting and boosting, but I find it odd that all my wins in C-class were by tenths of a second, while in B and A, I was winning by two or more seconds each race.

[caption id="attachment_380717" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Part of the reason all of my wins were by a few seconds or less is LEGO 2K Drive has a nasty case of rubberbanding. Think of the worst AI-come-from-behind win you’ve experienced in Mario Kart and get ready to see it in every race you enter. Couple that with the AI utilizing shortcuts you may not have had a chance to discover yet, and I wouldn’t blame you for calling BS if you lose the checkered flag in a photo finish. Again, I still won all of my races, it’s just rubberbanding made my wins far narrower than they otherwise would have been.

One thing to know about the races of LEGO 2K Drive is they can get hectic. Between gigantic vehicles, LEGO pieces flying all over the place, weapons coming out of nowhere, and a terrible item that portals you from your current position to near the front of the pack—and often right into a wall or hazard—it can be tough to get a clear sense of what is actually going on around you. There were a few races where I completely missed a turn because I was racing against giant vehicles that blocked my view while I opted for a tiny car I built myself. I would have attempted to build larger vehicles if unlocking the pieces wasn’t such a chore.

There is a fair number of pieces available right from the start, but earning new pieces playing the story mode can come at a snail's pace. Sometimes you’ll unlock one new brick type, while other times, a single decal. More pieces are available in the in-game store, which might be a dealbreaker for most players.

[caption id="attachment_380713" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

As you play through the campaign, you’ll collect Brickbux with each race and challenge you complete. Sometimes, it’s pocket change, other times, you’ll score a decent bit of cash. Brickbux can be spent at Unkie’s Emporium, where you’ll learn most everything in this game is way overpriced. Vehicles start at 10,000 Brickbux, while new minifigure avatars can run you 2,000 ‘bux and up. New pieces for the vehicle workshop are several thousand ‘bux as well. By the time I completed the campaign and won the Sky Trophy, I had about 33,000 Brickbux. Took me all of four purchases to wipe out my earnings. Considering how slowly ‘bux are earned from completing challenges and the fact you will hit a difficulty spike that may have you looking at the Emporium for answers, the publisher is clearly hoping people shell out real cash to supplement their in-game wallets. That probably explains why there’s no create-a-Minifigure feature here.

Can you just build whatever they sell in the Emporium? Maybe. I didn't take enough time to make my own version of the Hamburghini to see how it would match up to the store-bought version. But the cars up for purchase may come with stats and pieces you won't be able to recreate in the workshop. If you don’t want you or your kids dropping real money in this game, you can keep Unkie’s Emporium inaccessible as long as you don’t link up your game to a 2K account. But that comes at the cost of not getting access to multiplayer.

As I said at the top of this review, I think LEGO 2K Drive is a legitimately good racer. It handles well, it runs at an unshakable frame rate on PS5, the vehicle workshop is easy-to-use, and the track designs, while sorely limited in theme, complement the eccentricities of the gameplay. When I’m playing through the Cup Series either against the AI or online, I’m having a great time. It’s when I go back into the story mode that I’m reminded these worlds are rather basic, the monetization is questionable, and there just isn’t enough content in it right now.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: LEGO 2K Drive appeared first on Destructoid.

The Connoisseur's beat-'em-up is back

In recent years, the beat-'em-up, (or brawler, if you would prefer), genre has gone through a major renaissance. What was once confined to the golden coin-op age of the late '80s and early '90s — before falling short of expectations come the '00s — has found itself spraining fingers and cracking wrists once again — led by some bold new IPs and the return of some very familiar faces from the past.

In order to change with the times, these modern titles have been forced to add depth, variety, and longevity to what has mostly been a short-lived, quick-to-fatigue genre. In addition, the characters, worlds, and stories have been fleshed out to offer more context to the knuckle-dustin' action. And so, whether you're welcoming back franchises such as Streets of Rage 4 or TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, smashing up the playgrounds of Japan in River City Girls, or exploring new and exciting worlds offered in Mayhem Brawler, Final Vendetta, and Dragon's Crown. Beat-'em-up fans have it made.

But this renaissance did not, in fact, begin with any of the aforementioned games. It didn't even begin in the past few years. To look for a moment went the genre was reinvented with a roundhouse of vigor we should go back to September of 2017, and the quiet Steam release of Fight'N Rage, a game that wanted to not only capture the excitement of the games that came before it, but also offer players the excitement and depth expected of modern gaming. And it attempted to do all of the above with a single, solitary developer.

Six years later, Fight'N Rage is ready to do it, all over again, on PS5 and Xbox Series X. It's a game that is getting up there in years. But, as anyone who has watched the Rocky franchise knows, a true fighter is always ready for one more round.

[caption id="attachment_379548" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Fight'N Rage (PlayStation [PS5 reviewed], PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Seba Game Dev
Publisher: Blitworks
Released: March 1, 2023 (PS5), September 2017 (PC)
MSRP: $19.99

First released in the fall of 2017, Fight'N Rage is a passionate love letter to the heyday of arcade brawlers, developed and self-published by Seba Game Dev, which is a pseudonym for Uruguayan developer Sebastián Garcia. Garcia is the chief talent behind Fight'N Rage and created the world and its characters, crafted the in-game artwork, and coded the title itself all by his lonesome. Garcia's co-contributor is musician friend Gonzalo Varela, who composed and performed the scrapper's hard-rockin' soundtrack. The PC version was then ported to consoles by developer Blitworks.

History tells us that's it not impossible for one or two people to create something interesting, special, or at least intriguing, (for example Bright Memory by FYQD Studio), but it is rare for such a small project to not only pay effective tribute to a genre, but also to immediately present itself as one of the best offerings in that genre's history. And yet, Seba Game Dev readily handled this mammoth task, producing a title better than many of its influencers, while becoming an influence itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z6fl_yeaw0

Bottom of the food chain

Set against the backdrop of a miserable and dystopian future, where a devastating electromagnetic event known as The Big Pulse has destroyed all of mankind's technology, Fight'N Rage presents a world now ruled by a strange evolution, where anthropomorphized mutants have enslaved the human race. A literal natural climax to The Law of the Jungle. Most of humanity has now found itself languishing at the bottom of the food chain, yet there are those who wish for a better tomorrow. Three such individuals are our player protagonists.

They are the banished ninja F. Norris, the runaway slave turned martial arts master, Gal, and the human sympathizer and rebel mutant minotaur Ricardo. Facing a world willing to kill them on site, and afforded only the abilities offered by their fists and feet, our Heroic Trio finds themselves in the middle of a prison breakout, the first act of a brutal, one-night odyssey that will lead them to the throne of The Boss — A militaristic lion maniac who has dubbed himself King of this urban jungle.

The slight story is all atmosphere and little in the way of deep and meaningful musings on the human endeavor, but it is endowed with a melodramatic emotion — not to mention some surprisingly bleak moments of cruelty, that give it the vibe of 80s/90s dystopia comics such as Heavy Metal and 2000 A.D. There is something about Fight'N Rage's cartoonish pixelated world that is nostalgic and inviting, while still maintaining an unnerving level of hopelessness and despair. I mean, we probably deserve it, right?

[caption id="attachment_379544" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Contrast (and Brightness and Color) in Style

The aesthetic of Fight'N Rage is quite obviously that of the gorgeous pixelated paradises of yesterday, with delightfully drawn and animated characters popping out of the pixels in each and every encounter. Color-wise, there is a strange vulgarity to the visuals, with purposefully over-saturated colors and vibrant palettes that recall arcade monitors that should have been replaced a long time ago.

Various filters are available to enhance or decrease these effects — such as blur options, scanline emphasis, CRT curves on screen edges, muted color schemes, and even a moody black-and-white option. But however you choose to melt your eyeballs, Fight'n Rage has a distinctly unique style that captures the vibe of '80s in a "warts and all" fashion.

Tribute must also be paid to Varlea's utterly apocalyptic soundtrack, a wild, pulse-pounding mess of wailing guitars, moody pianos, and 16-bit synth. Each track is perfectly attuned to the mood and chaos of the stage, whether our heroes are picking their way through dank caverns, fighting to the death in vicious thunderstorms, or even throwing down in a tropical paradise. Varela "understood the assignment", as the kids aren't wont to say, and his score is a key element to the brawler's overall success.

Varela's raw soundtrack demands your quarters. Hire this dude for more projects, ah'm begging ya.

[caption id="attachment_379545" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

36 Crazyfists

The audio/visual package of Fight'n Rage counts for nothing if the gameplay doesn't deliver. And, as you might have gathered from the intro, Seba Game Dev's title is genuinely groundbreaking in that regard. Fight'N Rage filtered out the elements of brawlers that made them feel good in a Pavlovian sense, before adding key combat elements pulled from some of the finest one-on-one fighters ever made, including combos, oki, off-the-ground attacks, wall jumps, juggles, and parries —as well as multiple special moves and super attacks.

And while many modern brawlers, such as DotEmu's fantastic Streets of Rage 4, also understand this method of evolution, Fight'N Rage nailed this years ago, essentially setting a standard for brawler combat that all of its bigger budgeted contemporaries have since adopted.

It should be noted, however, that Fight'N Rage is proud of its knuckle-destroying challenge. And while anyone can enjoy the title on its easiest setting, players battling waves of dominatrices and Dobermans on higher difficulties will be forced to master the combat's intricacies. This has, in ensuing years, turned some away from the game, but the difficulty on display here feels true to the tools afforded the player. Fight'N Rage is hard, occasionally rock solid.

You always have the capability of protecting yourself in battle, but it's on you to learn how to do so.

[caption id="attachment_379546" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Downloadable Whatnow?

And you can do just that in one of the many modes offered outside of the standard story. Unlockable simply by playing through the game (win or lose), Fight'N Rage also offers a Combo Trials, Training Mode, Tutorials, Vs. Battle, Stage Practice, and Time Attack, as well as a metric ton of additional cosmetics including 15 costumes/colors for each character, playable villains, a jukebox, unlockable game modifiers, hidden special moves, and much more. Oh, and for Speedrun fans, a special Speedrun option adds an onscreen timer, and auto-skips all cutscenes for maximum frame efficiency.

None of these features, it must be pointed out, were paid DLC. Every mode, character, costume, and bonus feature is included with the title, which has always, generally, retailed at extremely low prices.

Perhaps this, more than anything else, is Fight'N Rage's greatest tribute to the gaming of yesterday.

[caption id="attachment_380513" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Flaws? Unfortunately yes, there are flaws. Fight'N Rage's limited budget leads to a sense of repetition in some enemy patterns, though this again is at least reflective of the game's old-school inspirations. There is no online co-op/vs option, though a three-player local co-op is supported. Fight'N Rage is most assuredly an excellent beat-'em-up, one of the very best, but it is somewhat specialist, and its true depth lies in repeated playthroughs, meticulous training, and a commitment to its punishing challenge. While there are modes suitable for a quick Friday Night knockabout with friends, some players may find it a little complex for their own hard brawlin' needs

Technically, the game runs extremely well, but the console port sweats a little with certain scenarios. Nothing game-breaking, but there are sporadic drops in frame rate, particularly during the ambitious, into-the-screen raft sequence. It's also important to note that the violent, flash 'n' shake heavy visuals will be rough on some players' peepers. Any video game fan who is affected by flashing imagery would do well to proceed with caution, as there is currently no option to reduce Fight'N Rage's range of full-screen flashes and possible strobe effects.

[caption id="attachment_379547" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

GO! GO! GO!

The beat-'em-up genre, almost as old as gaming itself, has been through two very specific "golden ages". The first happened in the very late '80s, and would see the arrival of Double Dragon, Final Fight,  Vendetta, and Kunio-kun. The second, well, we're in the middle of it right now, with modern classics such as Streets of Rage 4, River City Girls, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, and the upcoming Toxic Crusaders all capturing the excitement of their forebearers, while adding the depth and enhancement afforded by modern gaming.

But in the middle of these two wonderful eras, there's a transitional bridge, and that bridge was built by Fight'N Rage. Seba Game Dev's humble release offers gratitude and deference to the past, while paving the way for a fantastic new era of scrappers for the future. It's affordable, it's feature-packed, it's compact, and it's available on almost every platform. If you are a beat-'em-up aficionado, you owe it to yourself, (and the genre) to pick it up as soon as possible.

But then, if you are a beat-'em-up aficionado, chances are you already have.

Six years on from its initial release, Fight'N Rage retains its reputation as one of the greatest beat-'em-ups ever made, as well as a testament to the magnificent talent of its two-person development team. While its vulgar, neon nightmare visuals won't be to everyone's taste, and its rock-solid challenge is not to be denied, Fight'N Rage stands above many of its contemporaries as a lesson in retrofuturistic game design, bolstered by the power of a screaming guitar and a well-placed roundhouse.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Fight’N Rage appeared first on Destructoid.

It's in the blood

With Redfall, I keep going back to the beginning. In my review-in-progress from the start of this week, I opened with the game's introduction, because it paints quite the picture: a town overrun by vampires, some so powerful they can blot out the sun and freeze the oceans in place. It's a good horror set-up: you are the livestock, penned into the town of Redfall, and you will either fight or be food.

It's not too long after the introduction that I started to feel those drives fall by the wayside, though. There are pieces of Arkane Austin here, from immersive elements and storytelling to a generally interesting stylistic direction. But it all falters under the weight of bugs, repetition, locked-off doors, and a loop that didn't do much for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY9IncC6XI

Redfall (PC [Reviewed], Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Arkane Austin
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Release: May 1, 2023
MSRP: $69.99 (also on Game Pass)

Arkane Austin's Redfall is set in the titular town, which has been overrun by a cabal of vampires. There are both normal, blood-sucking vampires who can fly, rip, tear, and do short little teleports around the area. But your focus, as either a solo player or a crew, is on the small group of vampire ringleaders. They, along with their cultist followers and a private military hired to roll in and destroy corporate evidence of wrongdoing, are the primary villains and objectives you'll be going after in each part of Redfall.

Vampire slayers for hire

To do this, you'll need to pick a character and assemble the team. Redfall has some good character design, but in play, each one felt a bit lacking. Part of this problem is you get a decent amount of exposition through co-op, so I didn't learn too much about my character playing solo; when the fog-spewing vampire Miss Whisper taunted my character Remi about never seeing her brothers again, that was the moment I learned she had brothers.

[caption id="attachment_377471" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

It's possible I missed that story in the massive amount of text in Redfall, because there is a lot. Some of it is very good! A lot of it is also world-building, like a list of names for kitchen duty at the church or the same Aevum clinical trial pamphlet I'd seen a dozen times. Combine a bevy of text that could be important or mundane with a world that doesn't pause for you, and most times I was just shoving paper into my character's pocket and moving on. Which is a shame, because when the narrative clicks, I do think it has some interesting moments.

These are mostly in the main missions of Redfall, which will feel the closest to an immersive Arkane game. You'll have an objective (which I frustratingly had to keep setting as a personal waypoint so I could see it on my HUD compass), and several potential avenues of approach. There's a barn with intel on one of the vampire gods inside, defended by a sniper tower, turrets, and a ton of guards. Maybe you sneak in through an old bootlegger's tunnel, or you take out the UV lights keeping the vampires out and take advantage of the ensuing chaos.

Routes and openings

Immersive sims are one thing, but games with multiple paths or options are what I often relate to Arkane. And there are hints of that here in Redfall. The aforementioned mission is just one case; in a church in the game's second area, while knocking out a safehouse mission, I found a locked door that led to the attic, with environmental art making me wonder what could possibly be up there. But after turning the church over several times, I couldn't find the key. As it turns out, I needed to accept a main mission later on in the story's flowchart, which would then open the pathway to said key.

This felt indicative of a larger internal conflict of Redfall for me: while alternate pathways sometimes exist, other times and more often, you just need a key. A lot of Redfall, really, is going to a place, shooting vampires/cultists/PMC soldiers, picking up an objective, and returning to a safehouse for the next mission.

[caption id="attachment_376690" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Bethesda[/caption]

While the main missions provide some larger, more elaborate areas, the side and safehouse missions are where this repetition is really felt. Many of them involve going to a place and shooting something, whether it's a weak point on a giant wicker effigy or special-class vampire, or even multiple waves of enemies while defending a location. None of these stood out in particular, even the side missions linked to the characters found around the hub areas for each major zone of Redfall. Shoot a vampire, pick up a skull or item, and return.

Really, Redfall feels mostly like a shooter, both in co-op and solo play. You can feasibly sneak around, but there are barely any options for stealth takedowns (or for vampires, stakedowns). Aside from the few times the story asked me to keep it quiet, Redfall was mostly a firefight.

Lock and load

So how is Redfall as a shooter? It's got a decent number of guns, and many usual suspects. Some, like the shotgun and sniper rifle, feel good. Others, like handguns, felt a bit off. My favorite chunk of the arsenal was the vampire-specific weaponry. The flare gun is a neat addition, and the UV beam cannon adds an interesting weapon type. My absolute favorite, far and away, is the stake launcher. See, vampires can be put into a stunned state with normal bullets, but need to be fully done away with through petrification (through UV or sunlight), fire, or a stake to the heart.

The stake launcher says, "Why not launch the stakes into their heart?" And it really works. I love the power of it. The bulkiness of it. Racking stakes into the launcher port feels good, and even the little touches like the key on the body of the launcher add this DIY aspect that I love. Stakes offered an interesting dynamic; they're incredibly powerful, often able to one-shot normal vampires, and quickly deal with heftier varieties. But it's slow to reload, low in ammo capacity, and only really dispatches one enemy at a time.

[caption id="attachment_376681" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Though I love the stake launcher, other guns don't feel as compelling to me. An assault rifle is an assault rifle. Aside from its rate of fire or cosmetic upgrades, that gun type just goes up in damage over time. Most of the weapons, outside the gold tier, give you pretty numbers-based upgrades, like boosts to accuracy or reload speed. They don't feel very compelling, when other loot-driven shooters frequently offer more interesting upgrades that visibly and tangibly affect how you play. Often in Redfall, I was just looking to see if the number went up, and scrapping the lesser.

Built for blood

This carries over into skills and levelling up, too. Some upgrades for each character's abilities feel a bit meaningful, like adding an extra healing circle of Remi's ultimate, centered around the robot dog Bribón. But other options in the tree include upgrading ammo capacity, a very boring upgrade, or an upgrade for reviving teammates, which did nothing for me in solo play. It felt like there was a whole third of the ability tree I purposefully ignored.

Skills, themselves, can also feel lackluster in single player. I personally gelled a lot with my chosen vampire slayer, Remi, and her tool set. But it's a pretty straightforward set that, looping back to a previous section, doesn't open up a lot of interesting traversal options. I feel like these abilities probably all shine better together in co-op, which I played a few hours of for this review but ducked out of after, since co-op story progress only goes towards the host's file. There, skills could shine in concert with one another a bit more.

These tools also just feel unnecessary, as Redfall's shooter nature really just encourages taking out the enemy. Options for traversal, scouting, and other effects are nice, but I mostly just found myself in shootouts. And enemies died so fast (on the normal difficulty setting) that I rarely had time to set up some elaborate plan. Those plans often couldn't predict the wackiness of Redfall, either.

Hitch in the system

It's here I should probably talk a bit about the technical state of Redfall. It is, like many games released nowadays, in a state of flux. During the review process, I had a really tough time getting Redfall to run well on my PC. A day-one patch and driver update have since, at least somewhat, rectified that; I'm no longer on Low settings. I do still get very noticeable texture pop-ins and loading hitches.

[caption id="attachment_376685" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Enemies glide across the ground, characters T-pose, stealth detection doesn't always work leading to comical ring-around-the-rosie moments, and objects float in mid-air. At one point, my robot dog Bribón had completely disappeared from the game. As I was finishing Redfall for this review, objective markers for a completed mission were stuck on my screen. With live game development being the norm, I expect that months from now, many of these issues will be addressed. Some might be a bit more baked-in than others, but having already seen some technical tune-ups while reviewing, it feels like it's trending that way.

I'm curious to see if post-launch updates and additions can bring something to this game, as they have to so many before it. But even in those situations, that means waiting on updates and hoping. And I'm also not sure if technical fixes alone will solve all of my hold-ups with Redfall.

A world of darkness

Despite all this, there are parts of Redfall I do enjoy. The stake launcher, for one. The general look and feel of this world is incredible, and reflects a lot of what I like about Arkane's world-building in general. This coastal town has some great areas that look visually impressive, with psychic blasts tearing open the side of a house and twisting hallways bending through the creepy tunnels of a vampire nest. Little moments, like stepping through a movie theater screen into a new area, feel really great.

The classic vampire horror vibes are good. With long claws and menacing silhouettes, the undead ghouls are creepy, and small areas can still elicit tension as I round a corner or creep toward a cracked door. The story hits or misses for me, and I really wasn't wild about the still-scene story moments; while some work, they don't really match up to the feel of that original reveal trailer.

[caption id="attachment_377472" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

By the story's end, I was left a bit ambivalent. I didn't feel like I knew a ton about my chosen character, and while some of the moments were cool, Redfall's story doesn't have many unforeseen twists or turns. Most of its interesting bits are in the lore, as you look around and find it during missions. Some of those can still impress, at the least.

Into the night

By the time the credits rolled, I felt myself weighing how out how I felt about Redfall. Bugs and qualms aside, it feels like a game that's trying to do several interesting things, but misses on a lot of them. It's a big bummer, as I really do like Arkane's work, and I can see where the team had some really compelling ideas for a more action-driven game set in a world full of vampires.

As an immersive game, it falls short. And as a shooter, it's too routine for me. There are better options out there, with more dynamic loot and discoverable environmental interactions. There are better boss fights than we see here. The open world doesn't give me enough options, and too frequently, I found myself falling into a routine of running from waypoint to waypoint. I think Redfall is fine as a co-op game, maybe as something to pick up on Game Pass for Saturday night with pals. As a solo player, the tedium is much more palpable, and there's not enough in the story to push me forward.

I really spent most of my time playing Redfall thinking about what else Redfall could have been. I like that Arkane tried something new, and I'm bummed it came out like this. It's a really unique premise and concept in its first bite, but its fangs don't leave a lasting mark.

The post Review: Redfall appeared first on Destructoid.

Life like weeds

Each and every one of us walks through life without knowing exactly our purpose and then dies no closer to the truth. We struggle every day to find the things and people that make our existence feel even momentarily worthwhile. No matter what happens, how much wealth we acquire, or who we share our lives with, death is a solitary experience that we face alone.

But at least we’re not turnips.

Minabo (PC [Reviewed], PS4, PS5, Switch)
Developer: DevilishGames
Publisher: DevilishGames
Release: April 28, 2023
MSRP: $14.99

Minabo: A Walk Through Life attempts to frame the endless trials of existence in a cute game about turnips. You follow your lumpy blob of emotions from birth until the merciful release of death. Along the way, you can make friends! Or don’t. You can also have pets, but maybe you don’t want to. You can try to give your turnip the best possible life or have them be an unsympathetic hedonist who everyone hates.

Sort of.

Most of the gameplay involves walking to the right side of the screen. Your turnip is on a perpetual journey until they keel over. A metaphor for life. The people you meet along the way grow closer and sometimes get further away. You can even leave them behind. Relationships can be fleeting or solid, but it all depends on you and the person you’re with.

Minabo is a very simple game. Much of it is just tapping the space bar to make your turnip walk, and the other part is clicking another turnip in your path and selecting one of three options. They’re three different social interactions, and each will have its own chance of success based on various factors. I only know what a few of these factors are, because Minabo doesn’t tell you anything. Mostly, it just seems out of your control, just like life.

https://youtu.be/sldgy0PI268

I tried to get a handle on what Minabo is supposed to be, and I landed on it being a game that encourages experimentation. I tried to use it as a storytelling device, much like I would with The Sims, but so little happens throughout your turnip’s journey from cradle to grave. You can challenge yourself by being as polyamorous as possible. You can try having as many kids as possible and then immediately abandoning them. But these are things that only require a single playthrough, and there aren’t that many variations.

You can also win hats. Hats do various things, including allowing your turnip to marry its sibling. Hilariously it’s the crown that allows this. I’m shook. Turnip society is very unjudgmental, but I can’t help but jam my eyes into the sides of my sockets for this one. I tried having my turnip wear the crown once, and I now wish to purge my memory of incestuous turnips. It’s not that it’s explicit about it. It just feels wrong.

And then I failed the mission because I had to have my turnip die alongside a sibling, and once they become a… ugh… partner, they stop being a sibling. I don’t think that’s how that works.

[caption id="attachment_376101" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

You only live twice

I quit playing at about that time because I scrolled through the list of remaining missions and decided I’d seen enough. Some of the missions throw in instant death if you don’t live your life fast enough, but it’s not really much of a variation. Playing through a single mission takes an excruciatingly long time, even if you hurry your turnip to the final embrace of eternal obscurity.

It’s just so tedious, clicking on turnips and hoping they’re receptive to each of your commands. There’s no skill involved, which is fine, but so much of it feels random and out of your hands. I guess it’s an accurate representation of my life because it’s entirely out of my control, and I have to live by rules that I don’t fully understand.

It’s simple to a fault. This game is supposedly about life, but these turnips are completely unrelatable. They can’t see very far into the past, so they’re hardly the sum of all their actions and memories. They can’t see into the future, so they don’t know hope or dread. All they do is trek along. If they see a tombstone that says “acquaintance” on it, you can choose if they cry or curse the name.

Minabo was developed with the help of psychologists, which is maybe why it’s so healthy and wholesome. You fill your turnip’s social needs, but unlike an actual human, they don’t need to beg, borrow, or steal for it. If you want a polyamorous turnip, they don’t have to balance the feelings of their other partners because these vegetables don’t feel jealousy or resentment. This is why people don’t love turnips as much as their cousins, the potato: they’re just so boring!

[caption id="attachment_376102" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The simple life

It’s not that Minabo has absolutely no value. It’s a unique experience and perspective, and that’s value right there. However, while trying to create a facsimile of life, it just comes across as safe and boring. The best parts of it are when you think you’re doing something naughty or evil and nobody cares. It’s so hollow without any tension or chaos. The entire concept of walking ceaselessly through life suggests entropy, and there’s none.

Minabo boils life down a bit too far. Life is so unbearably exhausting and complicated, and Minabo is boring and simple. It’s not that I think that it needs to be crushingly depressing or maddeningly frustrating, but there needs to be some sort of conflict or tension. Don’t ask me to walk through life 25 times with only minor differences each time. Once is more than enough.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Minabo: A Walk Through Life appeared first on Destructoid.

Special Delivery

When I checked out the Mail Time demo earlier this year, I had a number of reservations. It felt rough and directionless, both of which are okay in a pre-release demo, but don’t inspire much faith. I need some indication that the concept will be delivered on. I need to see some chops. There weren’t a lot of chops on display in the Mail Time demo, which left me feeling cold.

So cold that I almost passed on the opportunity to review it. I was afraid that this would be yet another “cozy” game that thinks that being wholesome means not having any potato on its plate. That it would focus so much on being non-threatening that it loses all it’s depth and becomes a hollow, uncharming experience.

And I was right.

No, I’m joking. I’m never right. Mail Time is a good time.

[caption id="attachment_375713" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Mail Time (PC [Reviewed], Switch, PS4, PS5)
Developer: Kela van der Deijl
Publisher: Freedom Games
Release: April 27, 2023 (PC), TBA (Console)
MSRP: TBA

Mail Time puts you in the tiny socks of a mail scout (in training). It’s your first delivery, and if you manage to succeed, you become a full-blown mail scout. Mail scouts deliver letters, if you weren’t aware. There are a lot of rules, and your avatar knows them all by heart.

The big problem is that you’ve only got a name to tell you where your delivery is going. To find them, you’re going to have to ask around, and you’ll soon find that everyone has a problem and want their mail delivered.

You’re very tiny, and everything else is extremely big. The aesthetic evokes a hand-drawn style, and while it’s not technically impressive, it’s visually appealing. As much as I love the lo-fi aesthetic that is currently conquering the indie market, it’s nice to see such a unique art style. The way the dialogue windows are presented using expressive 2D images of the characters, much like a visual novel, is a very nice touch.

https://youtu.be/6F5CJHqCruM

There goes the neighborhood

Mail Time isn’t a very big game, and I don’t mean that as a complaint. You’re let loose in a smallish open-world. It doesn’t take you very long to cross it, especially when using your glider. However, all of its characters are nestled nicely in their homes. If anything, it’s a decent representation of an isolated neighborhood. Everybody knows each other and has some sort of opinion and gossip.

Considering objectives largely see you going from point A to point B to deliver messages and fetch items, the smaller world map is probably ideal. I kept hoping that there’d be another map that you move onto after completing the first one, but I later realized that would require you to leave all the characters you met behind, which probably wouldn’t be as cozy.

There’s a decent amount of verticality and much to explore. The movement physics in Mail Time are rather loose and weightless in a less modern sense, but it really works for the game’s exploration. While the area you trek through is rather small, there are a lot of visibly distinct areas to it. It reads very easily, making it difficult to get very lost.

[caption id="attachment_375716" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Fat cat

The story isn’t very deep, but the dialogue is charming. Just beware if you’re the type to skip dialogue, because it’s extremely easy here. Text boxes pop up already populated, so you can end up striking them down as quickly as they appear.

The writing has a light and optimistic touch. People can be jerks, but not in a very offensive way. There’s a lot of clever wordplay and a tonne of amusing jokes mixed throughout. Skipping through it would be an unfortunate waste, which is why I bring up that it’s so easy to do. The concept of delivering mail works in an interactive medium because it gives you the opportunity to get to know the characters better,

Even if you do read every last drop of language, Mail Time is a rather short game at maybe around 2 hours. There are stamps to collect, secrets to find, and you can generally go at your own pace, but even if you go out of your way to experience everything, it’s not going to stack up very high.

[caption id="attachment_375717" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Cottage-core fringe

I’ve become somewhat skeptical of the cozy cottage-core fringe of the indie market after being left disappointed by a few titles, but I’m happy to say that Mail Time delivers where I’ve seen others fall short. Trying to be friendly and welcoming doesn’t compromise it as a game. It manages to be compelling while not being challenging. It does this through breezy design, a lightweight world map, and enjoyable writing. It’s an excellent execution on its philosophy.

At the same time, it comes with a warning that applies to a lot of cozy games. It’s not a transcendental experience that is going to leave a permanent mark. It doesn’t aim to be taken very seriously. Mail Time wants to be an enjoyable and easy-going experience for everyone. It’s cute, inoffensive, and creative. Mail Time is perhaps exactly what we need more of.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Mail Time appeared first on Destructoid.

To Live and Die in HeLL.A.

During the 2014 Sony E3 press conference, viewers were treated to a surprise cinematic trailer, one that has since gone down in history. The trailer featured a meat-headed jogger taking a casual dash down Venice Beach, blissfully unaware of the absolutely bombastic chaos that was exploding all around him, as hordes of flesh-eating creatures lay waste to the beautiful people of California. Ultimately becoming one of the infected himself, the jogger is eventually wiped out by a speeding minivan, before an onscreen graphic finally reveals the trailer as a preview for Dead Island 2.

That trailer debuted almost 10 years ago. And on April 21, 2023, Dead Island 2 will finally release, two console generations on from its initial announcement, and after passing through no less than three development studios. Having been mired in development hell for almost a decade, and been the subject of cancellation rumors, internet jokes, and even a reference point for other games and studios, it seems a miracle that we finally have anything in our hands. But can the talent of British developer Dambuster Studios resurrect this long-since-decayed release, or would it have been better left dead and buried?

Look, we all know the story, so there ain't nothing left to it but to do it.

Dead Island 2 (PlayStation [PS5 reviewed], PC, Xbox)
Developer: Dambuster Studios
Publisher: Deep Silver
Released: April 21, 2023
MSRP: $69.99

It must be noted that, with Dead Island 2, Dambuster Studios is not attempting to reinvent the wheel. The long-time-coming sequel essentially builds upon the general design and gameplay structure of its now-decade-old predecessor. That isn't to say that this is a case of "If it ain't broke...", because Dead Island was fucking broke. This is a title where I once kicked an inflatable beach ball, which resulted in my character screaming, keeling over, and dying on the spot. No, rather than attempting a full conceptive rebirth, Dead Island 2 is more a "Take Two" on what came before, with stronger efforts made to deliver the player experience perhaps expected of that release.

Our story concerns a party of six survivors — each one the worst person you've ever met — who crawl from the wreckage of a failed evacuation flight, crash-landing in the heart of Los Angeles, or "Hell-A" as it is now known. Beginning in media res, the outbreak is already underway, covering the City of Angels in blood and bodies while the local authorities attempt to put a band-aid on an oozing, pustulous wound. Choosing one member of the pity party, our "Slayer" is thrust into the thick of the carnage, and must utilize adaptation, improvisation, and smart-mouthed quippin' (boy howdy, the quippin') to find their way out of the city and to higher ground, away from millions of arm-munching, TikTok-filming posers.

What follows is an open world odyssey, as the Slayer treks through a million-dollar city of broken dreams — From the closed gate communities of Bel Air and the splendor of Beverly Hills, to the baking, radiant sands of Venice Beach and, of course, the star-studded avenues and alleyways of Hollywood. It goes without saying that these venues have all seen better days — less brain-encrusted days, at least — and this bizarre juxtaposition of celebrity and atrocity never fails to remain an unnervingly attractive take on a potential armageddon. I'll still take it over Florida.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f70Uz0fnX7E

You Ought'nt Be In Pictures

Initially, Dead Island 2 appears poorly plotted at best and baffling at worst — why your punk-rock character chooses to instantly do the bidding of The Rich makes zero sense whatsoever — but, as the story progresses, an evolving tale of survival and desperation unfolds, joined by elements of conspiracy, human evolution, and man's endless inhumanity to man.

And though our ensemble cast is, for the most part, intolerable, a pragmatic realization gives way; These aren't bad people, per se, they're just in a bleak and thoroughly miserable situation. As the story progresses, we come to understand the stage and its players better. Even beginning to develop an actual kinship with the same folk that we originally couldn't stand the sight of. They aren't necessarily terrible. They're just human... Except for "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?" singer Sam B. He is terrible.

Though disconnecting at the outset, the spirit of Dead Island 2 and its world grows on the player as they come to understand the hopelessness that faces these stragglers — From the whiskey-soaked rock stars and uptight Hollywood divas, to bronze-skinned beach bums and simple folk just trying to survive, let alone thrive. The mask of humanity is off, and the outbreak is making a monster of many, as viral outbreaks tend to do. There are no real "good guys", just different shades of survivalist.

While it's fair to say that the plot of DI2 is hardly original, it's still surprisingly compelling. By the time the final act rolled around, all of sudden, the realization dawned that the survival of this pack of awful bastards had suddenly become the most important thing in my life.

Look, I know the trailers are terrible. There's some great performances in here. Honest.

Sun's Out, Guns Out

The core of Dead Island 2 is its combat. It's the decaying meat of the piece, and the melee-based carnage on offer here is brilliantly devised. Whether wielding swords, baseball bats, axes, steel pipes, or Triple H-esque sledgehammers, there is an effective, wholly satisfying weight and impact to the violence on display, bolstered by the addition of counters, parries, and gleefully explosive execution maneuvers. It's important that the melee is enjoyable, as it is ultimately 90% of the player's activities, and Dead Island 2's "crunch" is so delicious, that it actually becomes a tad detrimental to the game when guns finally do come into play, (though they do add some variety to all the home-run swingin' action).

In addition to the weaponry, Dead Island 2 has a mix-and-match build system, that affords your chosen Slayer various skills and perks, sometimes for free, sometimes at the detriment of other abilities. These range from defensive tactics such as dodges and slides, to bonuses such as damage boosts for downing zombies, or awarding health for severing undead limbs. Without giving too much away, things get pretty funky after a point, and you can make your Slayer quite the force to be reckoned with, finely tuned to your own bespoke playstyle.

Still, despite the enormous range of customizable weapons and skills on offer, Dead Island 2 remains challenging. Even as the Slayer levels up, the difficulty remains in a sweet spot that prevents the player from ever becoming too powerful. As kitted out as you become, the infected are perpetually a legitimate threat. But with clever combinations of weaponry, skills, elemental boosts, and environmental attacks, DI2 ensures that while the numbers are on the side of the undead, the wits are with the player.

A special tribute must also be paid to the most satisfying dropkick in video game history. A move that, I guarantee, will become your best friend. Especially on rooftops and in front of windows.

You can't spell slaughter without 'laughter'

Dead Island 2 is a repetitive game, wholly and unashamedly. It is essentially a title that tasks the player with going on endless "Locate this person/item" quests, almost always boiling down to making your way to the location in question and slaying triple figures' worth of zombies en route. There are plenty of side quests in each district, all of which offer rewards in the form of rare weapons, blueprints, and perks, but ultimately, Dead Island 2 only has one real trick, and that is to ask the player to get to an undead infested venue and back alive.

This in itself was a major problem with the first game, and would lead to boredom just scant hours in.

While DI2 doesn't stray too far from this design path, what it does do to combat fatigue is ensure that the environments are legitimately fun to explore, while constantly drip-feeding the player new characters, fun conversations, and a wide variety of different enemies to be hacked 'n' slashed. There is also a metric ton of environmental storytelling, much of which is of the tired "audio log" variety, but some of which is executed via simple set design and in-universe audio — distant screams, abandoned radios, a wedding from hell, a strongman competition turned massacre, a frightening theme park, and a horror movie set where things got a little too meta.

Dead Island 2 has a gameplay mentality that is generations old, but it uses the benefits of modern tech to polish up its 2010's vibe. The infected are large in number, varied in design, and look gruesomely gorgeous. The world itself is well-realized and intelligently mapped. Elemental and gore effects are dazzling, and cleverly limited use of music ensures that, while the combat is relentless, the player knows when shit is really going down.

Dead Island 2, at its heart, is an old-fashioned game, but it's wearing a damn flashy new suit.

Don't Forget to Bring a Towel

Dead Island 2 is far from an excellent title, and its flaws might turn away those without the patience to fully explore its world and mechanics. While it certainly gets better the deeper you delve into its world, this style of explorative, combat & craft-heavy action isn't going to be to everyone's tastes, especially in 2023. The endless grabbing of crafting components, audio logs, and keycards — actions that are so repetitive the Slayer themselves repeatedly rags on it — may lead some players to consider double-checking the calendar.

From a technical standpoint, the sequel is a massive improvement over the notorious original, but still suffers from choppiness — Minor frustrations such as immovable prompts, occasional clipping, failed enemy spawns, or unresponsive enemies. Strange one-off bugs, such as a character's voice remaining echoed even after they had left a building, (all of which fixed themselves after a reload). Performance-wise, however, the PS5 edition played for review was sound, maintaining its framerate in even the busiest and messiest of zombie massacres. Most importantly, I kicked a beach ball and kept breathing.

When you combine the small technical troubles with the generally Gen-7 approach to gameplay, Dead Island 2 becomes something of a divisive release. Those who perhaps crave more in the way of firearms, vehicular mayhem, or more variety in its quests and activities may struggle to persevere to the point where Hell-A opens up its vulgar box of delights. That said, those who enjoyed the original Dead Island, or similar relentless, zombie-smashing experiences — such as Capcom's Dead Rising, will think it's fucking Christmas, with perhaps the best gaming interpretation of a Zack Snyder zombie flick yet.

Rewarding player experimentation and exploration, you get out of DI2 what you put into it, and thus, it's very much a game for a specific and dedicated audience. And given its exceptionally lofty $70 price tag, "dedicated" is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence.

Gods and Monsters

I'll level with you. I didn't want to review Dead Island 2, and I sure as hell didn't want to play it on my own time. If you'd had asked me to point to a 2023 release that I felt was going to be an absolute slog to play, as well as being a chore to write about, then this sequel would've probably been number one with an acid-tipped bullet. 10 minutes into playing, I still felt this way, eye-rolling and deep sighing at the characters, the setup, and the teasing of 15 hours of fetch quests and keycard searching.

But, as time passed, as Hell-A opened up, as the combat evolved, and as I met more and more denizens of Hollyweird, I warmed up immensely to this title. I became excited to explore each new district, while digging the world design, the attractively gruesome visuals, and the "Glam Apocalypse" aesthetic. I appreciated the wanton, salacious, and satisfying violence, and, most surprisingly of all, this atrocious cast of characters eventually became my friends, (except for Sam B.)

It is testament to the talent of Dambuster Studios that they picked up the remnants of the most development hell title of the past 15 years — a game that had "contractual obligation" written all over it — and have turned it into a great sequel. Dead Island 2 sports a solid world, great audio/visuals, and an excellent combat system, wrapped up in a resonant, bleakly comic story of mankind's inability to ever save itself. Is it perfect? No, it's not, but it is the redemption story Dead Island needed, as well as perhaps the greatest example of a seemingly doomed release that actually delivered when it finally crawled out of purgatory. I was wrong. I had a fine time with a game I absolutely did not want to play.

And, y'know what? I actually think I'm gonna play through it again.

It shouldn't have worked. It should have been a disaster. A decade-long internet joke ending in a comically terrible release. And yet, with Dead Island 2, Dambuster delivers a sequel that hugely improves upon the original, offering raw, no-nonsense chaos, wrapped up in a gaudy wrapper of sun, sand, and slaughter. While the old-school, repetitive gameplay won't be to everyone's taste, decadent violence, tastelessly compelling environments, and a surprising amount of heart await those who have the patience to wade through the misery of a paradise lost.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Dead Island 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

I want my Slaw

Video rentals are one of those things that I fully accept is antiquated by modern technology, something that I absolutely would not be interested in a return of, but I still can’t help but miss. It’s hard to explain, and I’m not entirely sure I have a full handle on it.

The video store aesthetic was enough to get me interested in Rewind or Die. The “Night Shift” prologue was one of the highlights of 2022’s Stay Out of the House, so I was hoping for something similar. What we got was something different, but different can be good too.

[caption id="attachment_373420" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Rewind or Die (PC)
Developer: Comp-3 Interactive
Publisher: Torture Star Video
Release: April 14, 2023
MSRP: TBA

Rewind or Die begins with you getting called in for a late shift at your crummy job. It then goes into detail about how much your life sucks. Not only do you have to assist intolerable customers, but your boss is a dink. Amusingly, the game’s approach to showing this is disturbingly realistic, as it shows an employer who gradually whittles away at worker dignity while demanding more from them. One that is quick to remind that everyone is replaceable while also griping that good help is hard to find.

As the workday goes on, things start getting weirder. It begins by letting you know that recent murders have been centered around the video shop and that the victims were all customers. Weird calls start coming in, and things escalate from there.

One thing leads to another, and you find yourself in the clutches of a sadistic serial killer who wears a pig’s head to conceal their face. At least it’s better than being cornered by a guy who spouts movie trivia.

https://youtu.be/bQgOrKAvz0M

'Cause this is thriller

Rewind or Die is a little on the less-experimental end of the lo-fi horror spectrum. While many indie horror developers try some inventive ways to leave you stewing in that atmosphere or make the killer seem like an unstoppable threat, Rewind or Die is more direct. You actually spend very little time in the same environment with the killer, a lot of gameplay is simply completing tasks to proceed. While some of these puzzles are at least cleverly designed, they can be a bit underwhelming.

It feels rather mechanical, which sometimes works in the context of video games, but I think undermines the horror. You move between isolated places to solve puzzles, and at times, it feels like you’re forced to follow the dance steps.

The worst example of this is during a portion of the game where it feels like you’re supposed to be sneaking around. I quickly noticed that the slasher (who’s named Slaw, and I love it) doesn’t actually exist in the environment. So I just happily puttered around and solved the puzzles to continue. It wasn’t scary, it was more… peaceful?

[caption id="attachment_373422" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

You should probably just be kind

The upside to this is that Rewind or Die is a bit tighter and less janky than your typical indie horror. The downside is that also means it’s a bit less compelling. I’d go as far as saying it’s even a bit predictable with many of its beats. It’s so easy to read, that I almost knew what it expected of me before it asked me to do it. There’s definitely something to be said about the game’s focus. If you’ve detested the sub-genre's usual rough edges, then Rewind or Die might be a bit more reliable for you.

I’m not saying Rewind or Die is strictly linear, either. It’s just that in comparison to the more immersive sim approach of Stay Out of the House or the dedication to the grounded atmosphere of Bloodwash, it’s a different vector.

I definitely appreciate different approaches to the sub-genre. One of my favorite things about exploring lo-fi indie horror is that, even if it doesn’t always work out, developers try new things all the time. However, Rewind or Die doesn’t feel daring enough. It seems to subscribe too closely to your typical horror game language and doesn’t pull that off too well. It’s not bad. It just isn’t exciting.

[caption id="attachment_373421" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Stay Cool

It’s not a vector I’m particularly enthusiastic about. That might be down to my own expectations from the lo-fi horror sub-genre, but I also feel that there isn’t a whole lot of personality that shines through Rewind or Die. The narrative doesn’t really pitch any curveballs, the gameplay doesn’t twist things into interesting pretzels, and there isn’t really anything truly unique that I felt my teeth sink into.

That’s not to say I didn’t like Rewind or Die. It’s just not going to land on any of my must-play lists. I will reiterate that there isn’t anything offensively bad about it. It’s not extremely rough-edged like Christmas Massacre or as raunchy as Night at the Gates of Hell. However, both those games presented uniquely memorable moments, whereas Rewind or Die has a video rental shop. Video rental shops are terrific, but they’re just not horrific enough to carry an entire game.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Rewind or Die appeared first on Destructoid.

Hell of a tide

Don’t you hate it when you finish a hard day in the work mines, step blinking into the sunlight, and find out that the mountain you were on is now just a small island surrounded by ocean? So relatable. That’s how Flooded begins.

Flooded describes itself as a reverse city builder. What it means is that the world is currently undergoing flooding of biblical proportions, and you need to survive in small pockets of land, finish up your objectives, and escape before there’s no land left to dry your socks on. I wasn’t sure if this concept was really going to work for me, but now that I’ve played through Flooded, I realize that its design is not only palatable, but actually somewhat brilliant.

[caption id="attachment_373383" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Flooded (PC)
Developer: Artificial Disasters
Publisher: Artificial Disasters, Surefire.Games
Release: March 12, 2023
MSRP: TBA

You may think that Flooded is going to have some message about climate change and the environmental impact of humans, but it’s a lot more intimate than that. You follow a small group of miners as they attempt to survive the rising sea level. They’re not sure how it all happened, but they’re pretty sure climate change doesn’t work that fast.

Rather than try to build settlements and gain population, you work to achieve your objectives and move on before the oceans swallow you up. This means gathering resources and accomplishing goals as quickly as possible. Human lives aren’t really a factor here, so long as you tick all the boxes, you move on. Screw all those consumed by the ocean. They made the mistake of trusting my managerial skills. I have no sympathy.

https://youtu.be/pWAIm8y7lUw

Finality

The setup is essentially that you need to climb through 4 “eras” by completing goals and then spending a lump sum of resources to proceed. This might mean building a ship and exploring, creating enough of a certain building, or removing obstacles from the environment. While you do this, the water level rises every few minutes, sucking down any buildings on the shoreline. You can protect some areas by building bulwarks and artificial land, but that’s only a temporary solution, as producing enough material to do so requires a lot of land.

You need mines to get resources, then housing to keep all the workers, and then water to keep those things going. Then you’ll also need warehouses to keep your excess resources and electricity to upgrade buildings. Managing what little real estate you have available is key, as is moving quickly to get everything done before you run out of time.

It’s a well-handled and unique gameplay loop. SimCity was impressive for the time, as it had no strict ending, but there’s only so much appetite for endless city builders. As familiar as I got with Flooded, I was only able to protect my most important facilities temporarily. In some of the later stages, I had to just accept that I needed to let some of my infrastructure drop into Davey Jones’ locker and just focus on the task at hand. It’s not intensely stressful, but Flooded keeps a fire under your butt. Or maybe a jet of water would be more appropriate. Flooded is a bidet.

[caption id="attachment_373382" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Not my generation's problem

There are 12 levels, a quickplay, and an endless mode available. It’s not a tremendous amount of content, but I think it’s exactly the right amount. While Flooded is immensely fun, it does require a lot of starting over from scratch, and I feel there are only so many times you can do that before it becomes onerous.

This would be a worse problem, but there’s a lot of Flooded that’s randomized. The resource you need to proceed to a new era changes each time, so if you’ve been spending your lead frivolously to try and preserve land, it could throw a wrench in the works by suddenly forcing you to pay up 12,000 units. Likewise, the island you’re on in each level is procedurally generated, and while there’s only so much it can change on you, there are definitely some configurations that are more advantageous than others.

There is a decent amount of variety in your objectives as well, and new mechanics get added each mission. Beyond building, there’s a light RTS element as your settlers will be attacked by pirates occasionally. It doesn’t go hard on this concept (except in one of the endless modes), but the fact that Artificial Disasters went out of their way to create additional gameplay mechanics that aren’t necessarily typical for the genre, just for variety’s sake.

The story is also enjoyable, but not necessarily compelling. It’s very light-hearted, featuring some decent characters and a mountain of references to other media. The writing is optimistic, so even if it isn’t necessarily the deepest plot, it at least doesn’t stumble over itself trying to be anything more than it needs to be.

[caption id="attachment_373384" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Swallowed up

I enjoyed my time with Flooded more than I thought I would. I didn’t go in thinking I’d dislike the game, but I wasn’t expecting it to be as well-executed as it is. It’s just sort of unassuming, both in concept and aesthetic, but when you dig in, it’s hard not to appreciate how well all its different facets fit together.

For being a rather unique premise, Flooded offers a very tight and polished experience. It’s the sort of thing where I’m afraid that if you either add something or take it away, it will stop working. Just a terrific execution of its thesis. I’m not certain it will necessarily soak your socks like some more expansive builders might, but your time spent stranded will be worthwhile.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Flooded appeared first on Destructoid.

Identity Crisis

My introduction to Tron was actually through Monolith Production’s 2003 FPS, Tron 2.0. It was a great game and an unfortunate way to dive in. I later watched Tron and was disappointed that Tron 2.0’s nuanced and deep interpretation of the inner world of computers wasn’t informed by the storytelling from the 1982 film.

That’s not to say Tron isn’t worthwhile. It’s an imaginative setting that feels like an archaic interpretation of what computers would eventually be. Tron: Identity is an unassuming approach to that universe. It’s a visual novel and decidedly a small project made out of love for the property. Playing it, you can almost sense the excitement Bithell Games had for developing the title, and that goes a long way in making Tron: Identity a worthwhile title.

[caption id="attachment_373120" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Tron: Identity (PC [reviewed], Switch)
Developer: Bithell Games
Publisher: Bithell Games
Release: April 11, 2023
MSRP: $14.99

Taking place in an initially undefined part of the Tron timeline, Tron: Identity puts you in the role of Query, a Disciple of Tron who works without allegiance. Essentially, a private eye. At a place called “The Repository,” someone has blown open a vault and, it’s assumed, made off with something important. No one is quite sure what, and no one really knows why. That’s for you to find out.

Familiarity with the Tron mythos isn’t firmly required, but you’ll be diving in at the deep end without it. The Grid has been left on its own for so long, that the idea of a User has fallen to legend. Some people still believe firmly in these godly figures, while others believe only in programs. You’ll be hit with references of ENCOM, Flynn, and TRON, but the programs you meet along the way are new characters and they don’t have any definitive knowledge of what’s going on. However, the impact of the game’s revelations won’t be as significant without knowledge of what’s happened in the world previously.

https://youtu.be/nRKJ9ElRc8s

User error

Tron: Identity is firmly a visual novel with a light puzzle-solving mini-game. Essentially, some memories got rattled loose from some of the programs you meet, and you “defrag” their identity discs to get these memories back. It’s reasonably fun.

There’s an endless mode where you just play the mini-game, but I’m not sure it’s that cool. It’s definitely a lot better than playing another version of the light cycles again. For that matter, if you’re only here for the story, you can skip the defrag routine entirely and just proceed with the text.

The main meat of the game is the investigation. You have some sway over how things play out, but since a first-run playthrough is maybe 2-3 hours long, there isn’t a lot of opportunity for decision making. The decisions you do end up making are pretty impactful, though Tron: Identity likes to declare exactly where those effects are being felt. That said, they’re not obvious black-and-white moral choices. They’re the type of choices that there isn’t a right answer for, and you’ll likely end up pissing someone off.

[caption id="attachment_373118" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Neon noir

The narrative itself is very nuanced and satisfying. Even as someone who isn’t fully immersed in the Tron universe, it gave me a bunch of stuff to chew on and figure out after the game ended. It can sometimes be overly vague, and not being fully indoctrinated, I can’t help but feel I’ve probably missed some things. While this wasn’t a huge problem, there were times when I felt like I was making a decision without all the needed facts. Like Query knew more than I did.

There’s also the possibility that if you found Tron to be a bit hokey, this isn’t going to change your mind. I feel that the world presented does a great job of framing our own, but at the same time, I don’t know why it’s raining in a mainframe. I felt like I needed to suspend disbelief pretty hard everytime a program started showing emotions, but since this isn’t our world, and neither is it trying to be an accurate representation of a computer world, it gets to make the rules.

[caption id="attachment_373119" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Light reading

I really appreciate that Tron: Identity is as short as it is. It makes great use of its runtime, and playing through it again feels like a reasonable prospect. It tells a complete story but leaves things wide open to continue. In many ways, I love that the focus is entirely on the interior of The Grid and leaves out any human interference. It's a terrific approach.

Its focus is rather admirable. There’s no voice acting, the graphics are rather basic, but everything comes together wonderfully to get the job done. Fans of visual novels have been eating great recently, and Tron: Identity is another great morsel to dig your teeth into. Even if it’s not the most transcendental experience, it’s hard not to be charmed by the amount of love that’s been put into it.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Tron: Identity appeared first on Destructoid.

Strap your tool belt on, kid. We’re going in.

If there was ever a time for Nintendo to expand beyond games and enter the film industry, it’s right now. With the smashing success of the Nintendo Switch and a continuous stream of titles that easily eclipse the ten million mark in sales, this is arguably the most popular the company has been in its 100+ year history.

And that popularity can only grow as the millennials who have been with the brand since the early days of little gray boxes are starting to have families of their own, introducing their kids to the plumbers, the princesses, and the piranha plants that have defined their lives. This is a prime time for Nintendo to get out there with a product that’ll appeal to the original generation of Nintendo fans and those who will carry the torch in the future, and releasing a bright and beautiful animated film is a perfect way to do that.

I just wish it would have picked a better company than Illumination to do it with.

[caption id="attachment_372968" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot via Illumination[/caption]

The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic
Written by Matthew Fogel
Produced by Universal Pictures, Illumination, Nintendo
Released: April 5, 2023

For all the bluster and brouhaha that we had to endure in the months following the revelation that Chris Pratt would voice Mario, that should have been what people focused on. Despite its astounding success at the box office, Illumination doesn’t really make good films. Its first picture, Despicable Me, is the only movie from the company with a Rotten Tomatoes score over 80% and a Metacritic score over 70. I know The Super Mario Bros. Movie has sparked yet another tired debate about whether or not reviewers matter anymore, but let’s not pretend this company isn’t out there just coasting on the popularity of its Minions. Illumination isn’t a studio that’s going to take chances or attempt to subvert expectations. It has a dog-eared playbook it sticks to with every one of its films, The Super Mario Bros. Movie included.

That doesn't mean there's no love for the property here. The animation team did an incredible job in bringing every inch of the Mushroom Kingdom and beyond to the big screen. The art direction may be overly clean and without a unique personality, but it looks good enough. And great attention was paid to implementing many different elements from the games into the world, telling the audience the filmmakers have more than just cursory knowledge and appreciation of the series they're adapting.

The same can be said of the film's music. Composer Brian Tyler did a fantastic job seamlessly incorporating so many Koji Kondo works into his original score. It’s arguably the best part of the film, which is why it’s so disappointing several sequences were injected with predictable pop songs rather than letting Tyler work his magic. And when I say predictable pop songs, I mean predictable. Nobody should be using “Holding Out for a Hero” after Jennifer Saunders's mic drop in Shrek 2, “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” has been done to death, and going with a-ha's “Take On Me” for a brief karting sequence was enough to pull me right out of the film. Surprisingly, it was the voice acting that was able to pull me back in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjNcTBXTk4I

It's clear Jack Black is reveling in his role as Bowser, but he's not the only one going all out with his performance. Keegan-Michael Key, who plays the central Toad of the film, is outstanding, as are Kevin Michael Richardson (Kamek) and Fred Armisen (Cranky Kong), who seems to be channeling about six of his different SNL characters for the role. Despite the endless arguments and social media posts, Chris Pratt (Mario) is okay with a Brooklyn-adjacent accent layered on top of his regular voice. Charlie Day (Luigi) takes the same approach, and the two do come off sounding like brothers. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Anna-Taylor Joy (Princess Peach) sounds like Anna-Taylor Joy, while Seth Rogen (Donkey Kong) decided to attempt a cocky teenage version of himself, complete with "the Seth Rogen laugh."

The voice acting gets the job done, even if the story they're telling doesn't. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is hurriedly paced following its opening sequence in Brooklyn, allowing no time for original ideas or character development. Mario comes into this movie fully formed, already a tenacious go-getter who can handle himself well on a platform stage. Princess Peach also doesn't stray far from when we first meet her. If I were being generous with the term, I'd argue the only character here that does exhibit some growth is Luigi. But because he's sidelined for most of the film, his big moment doesn't have the impact it should.

It's surprising how many moments of this movie did not land with the audience at my screening. While a few points elicited laughter from the entire crowd, this reviewer included, many of its more obvious jokes failed to generate any reaction at all. Nearly all of its action sequences fell similarly flat. The only thing in this film that received any type of sustained response was the Mario Kart sequence. Once the first kart popped up on the screen, every kid around me started chirping “Mario Kart 8” like they were the seagulls from Finding Nemo.

[caption id="attachment_372970" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot via Illumination[/caption]

Beyond that scene, I didn’t really get the sense any of the kids in the theater were engaging with the film. It could be that I couldn’t hear them over the child next to me who would NOT SHUT UP, or it could be they just weren’t connecting with a movie that seems to be trying to speedrun itself.

At just 92 minutes, The Super Mario Bros. Movie doesn’t have a lot of time to work with. And the filmmakers did themselves no favors by trying to pack in as much as they could into such a brief runtime. From Mario Kart to Smash Bros. to a Bowser ballad the filmmakers probably should have just let Jack Black write himself, there isn’t one moment of respite throughout this film. Even when characters find themselves in peril, it’s resolved so quickly I wonder why that sequence was included at all, outside of using it as an opportunity to pop in a few more references from the games.

To be clear, I'm not anti-reference. I don’t necessarily have an issue with the filmmakers including details that connect this movie to the games. In fact, I enjoyed quite a few of them, particularly how they weren’t afraid of using elements from the more recent titles in the series (Cat Suit, Ice Flower) rather than just sticking to the classics. However, many of the references here are so inconsequential that they were clearly included, Chekov’s gun be damned, with the expectation they'll find their way into 50 different YouTube videos about “Things You Missed in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” The backgrounds of the early scenes in Brooklyn are littered with early Nintendo references, the type designed to turn the adults in the audience into the Pointing Rick Dalton meme.

[caption id="attachment_372971" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot via Illumination[/caption]

Again, the references here would be fine if they were in a movie attempting to tell an interesting story. But Illumination films don't tell interesting stories. Maybe they will in the future with Mike White (School of Rock, The White Lotus) on tap to pen the next two films from the studio. For now, they're settling with an experience designed to shuffle audiences from set piece to set piece as quickly as possible, never once asking you to think about what it is you're seeing on the screen.

The end result is The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a rather torpid piece of entertainment. I’ve seen many people online trying to deflect criticism of this film by stating it’s a kid’s movie, but that’s a rather lousy line of defense. Just because something is made for kids doesn’t mean it has to be superficial. Children are far more capable and cognizant than adults are willing to give them credit for, and we should be offering them more than literal eye candy, something beautiful to look at that provides zero sustenance.

Or, just make a Mario Kart movie because that seemed to be the only thing the kids at my screening actually cared about.

The post Review: The Super Mario Bros. Movie appeared first on Destructoid.

If you play just one wizard school game this year...

Since I first played Muramasa: The Demon Blade on the Nintendo Wii, I've made it a personal mission of mine to play every Vanillaware title I can on as many platforms as I can. That's how I ended up owning three copies of Dragon's Crown, and two copies each of Muramasa, 13 Sentinels, and Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir. I just can't get enough of their games. With consistently outstanding visuals and excellent gameplay, I have yet to be disappointed by a Vanillaware title. In fact, after playing through GrimGrimoire OnceMore, I'm not sure this developer is capable of making a game I won't like.

[caption id="attachment_371767" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

GrimGrimoire OnceMore (PS4, PS5, Switch [reviewed])
Developer: Vanillaware
Publisher: NIS America
Released: April 4, 2023
MSRP: $49.99

Set in a world that is definitely not Harry Potter but also not not Harry Potter, GrimGrimoire OnceMore follows the exploits of Lillet Blan, a new student at Silver Star Tower. It’s the former home of the Archmage, who many years ago was defeated by…sigh…Gammel Dore, who turned the tower into a magic academy. Lillet is there to learn from the great magicians housed inside, but her arrival coincides with a secret plot that seeks to wreak havoc on the school and its teachers. On her fifth day of lessons, tragedy strikes, and Lillet is thrown into a time loop that has her reliving her first five days at the school, giving her a chance to get to the bottom of this murderous mystery.

To keep her teachers and fellow students from meeting an early grave, Lillet will often have to defeat them on the battlefield. In each of GrimGrimoire OnceMore’s chapters, you’ll attempt to lead Lillet to victory in 2D real-time strategy battles. If you’re coming to this straight from 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, know that the RTS battles here trend closer to what you’d find in traditional entries in the genre. In battle, Lillet doesn’t do any of the fighting herself. Instead, she uses the various grimoires she’s earned to produce runes from which she'll summon familiars that do her fighting and resource harvesting. Familiars is the general term for any creature you can summon in battle, including fire-breathing dragons, various types of magical turrets, cats armed with sleep spells, and the most disturbing chimera I think I’ve ever seen.

Grimoires, runes, and familiars fall into four magical categories (Glamour, Necromancy, Sorcery, Alchemy) that are bound to a rock-paper-scissors power dynamic. It didn’t take me too long to get a good understanding of what beats what, but remembering the names of the different familiars you can summon and their special abilities was something of a struggle. In the early chapters, when the types of familiars were limited, I could power my way through every challenge. At around Lillet’s third trip through the loop, that was no longer working for me, and I had slow down and really think about I would go about defeating my enemies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrLNsphVTPE

It has been far too long since I’ve played a proper RTS. It’s probably something I shouldn't admit, but the last time I earnestly pursued the genre was more than 20 years ago when I got hooked on Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds on my eMac. My obsession with that game was triggered by my nostalgic memories of playing Command & Conquer: Red Alert with my friends in middle school. This genre used to devour a lot of my after-school time, so I was somewhat surprised at how rusty I was going into GrimGrimoire OnceMore.

The most obvious sign of this is how often I used the new fast-forward feature to speed through each battle. As the combat sequences can go on for quite some time, it’s a godsend of a feature. But it made me pretty careless in those opening hours, and I had to control my use of it if I wanted to see this game through to the end.

Another feature new in this remaster is the skill tree. Each of the different grimoires Lillet learns has its own tree. As you proceed through the story and complete optional side-missions, you earn coins you can spend on these trees to improve your units or give yourself an advantage in battle. In a very player-friendly decision, OnceMore allows you to respec these skill trees at any time, so if you walk into a challenge that is heavy on enemy Alchemy familiars, you can redistribute your coins to the Sorcery skill trees to get the upper hand. Some skills on the trees are locked to the game’s easy and hard modes, the latter of which NIS claims has been tweaked to provide a greater challenge than in the original release.

[caption id="attachment_371769" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A less useful new feature, for most of the narrative at least, is Grand Magic. This is—depending on your difficulty—a one-time-use-per-battle piece of magic that can deal a fantastic amount of damage to your enemies or heal your injured familiars. There are four different Grand Magic abilities, but it was rare for me to use anything other than Mana Burst (a massive flaming attack) on the few occasions I pulled the trigger on this ability. Once I started taking the game seriously and got back into the ebb and flow of the RTS genre, I had little use for this get-out-of-jail-free card.

Arguably, the feature most returning players will be interested in here is the HD visuals. GrimGrimoire OnceMore is a stunning game with gorgeous character art, beautiful hand-drawn story segments, and wonderfully creative creature design. Like almost every other Vanillaware title, it's a fabulous piece of art. If there is one area where the visuals do disappoint, it’s in the backgrounds of the battle sequences. Every battle takes place in the hallways of Silver Star Tower, and it just gets kind of dull after a while seeing the same setting again and again. Each battle map is constructed differently, but they pretty much blend into one another, even when you can see noticeable variations in the scenery.

[caption id="attachment_371768" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

That is likely my only complaint about this game. Because it’s breathtaking otherwise—particularly on my Switch OLED screen—it controls greatly, and the narrative is well-written, avoiding the expository pitfalls of the time-loop genre. Sure, most of the characters here are off-brand Hogwarts faculty members, but Vanillaware injected enough of its style into these caricatures to make them more than some dollar-store Wizarding World weirdos. The voice cast does a respectable job bringing these characters to life, though some sound far more gifted with the spoken word than others. That, or I just have a thing for actors who chew up the scenery.

The original GrimGrimoire was envisioned as the first in a franchise before poor sales put the kibosh on that idea. I don't know if Vanillaware and NIS America will be more successful this time around with GrimGrimoire OnceMore, but I hope they are because this game is a top to bottom delight and I would love to see what lies beyond the halls of Silver Star Tower.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: GrimGrimoire OnceMore appeared first on Destructoid.

A dire future

The Last Worker gives a unique perspective within the dystopian genre: a warehouse delivery employee for a monolithic organization. As the title suggests, you're the last person that hasn't been fired from this vital organization. Robots have replaced nearly everyone else at the company. However, as you find secrets about the shadowy owner, you're thrust into an investigation that can change the world forever.

With a concept like this, The Last Worker thankfully nails the storytelling with a thought-provoking script and impactful performances all around. Somehow, the developers Oiffy and Wolf & Wood Interactive make the act of organizing boxes entertaining, but with a time limit, it can feel frustratingly sluggish to control the character's levitating seat.

[caption id="attachment_371381" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The Last Worker (PS5 [reviewed without PSVR2 headset], PC, Xbox Series X/S, Switch]
Developer: Oiffy, Wolf & Wood Interactive
Publisher: Wired Productions
Released: March 30
MSRP: $19.99

The core theme of The Last Worker is how capitalism can be a threat to society if given too much power. Through second-hand accounts from the characters you meet, you'll learn basic healthcare is only for the elite, and millions are dying as the Earth spirals out of control. The story is deep and provides an engaging narrative throughout as the protagonist, Kurt, struggles to stay with the status quo or stand up against his boss.

Delivering packages

[caption id="attachment_371414" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

To stay off unemployment, Kurt has to keep shipping out those packages. Players will guide him around the warehouse to pick up packages he'll throw into tubes that transport each one to its destination. It doesn't sound that exciting at first glance, but with a time limit in place and the need to place packages in the right section, there's a lot to figure out. In one day of work, you'll want to send as many boxes to their designated area as possible. Otherwise, you'll lose.

While performing this task, you'll look for key details like the size and weight of the box. You'll also need to detect if it's damaged or if the product inside is expired, as those need to be sent to a rejection station. Similar to a game like Papers, Please, you're looking for key details. Making the decision of accepting the box or dismissing it is quite a kick. Your score will lessen if you incorrectly deal with the box. If you get an F, you'll be fired, making you restart the level.

Checking each element of the box under a time limit is actually thrilling. You have to spin it around, gaze at every side of the package, and make sure everything is correct. If damaged or incorrectly labeled, you tag it before returning it to the warehouse. The developers add new elements to the gameplay loop the further you get into the narrative, making this process entertaining throughout its six to eight-hour playtime. It's also entertaining to see what's inside the package; the items can be very bizarre, but they can also point out what's happening in the outside world.

It will get repetitive at times as you go to the same location over and over, but that is likely the intention in The Last Worker. Kurt has been performing this job for 25 years, and toward the latter half of the narrative, he is reaching his absolute limit. Twisting each box, messing with your equipment, and racing to get as many products shipped, despite being tired, reflects what an average warehouse employee goes through every day.

Gameplay issues

Unfortunately, the delivery process suffers from laggy controls. Movements feel sluggish, and having a cooldown to your sprinting motion is frustrating. Aiming is tedious as well as many of my packages fell to the aether below during the opening hours of the game. Despite these issues, I did get used to the awkward controls. As a result, I enjoyed my time as a delivery worker for Jüngle later on in the game. You also have to consider that you're playing as an overweight, older man with a walking stick while the robots are fast and efficient. Perhaps that is the reason why the movement is slow. It could be intentional.

One issue that does come up is the lack of direction the game gives you sometimes. Your guidance system doesn't tell you where to go at points, leading to some frustrating moments. After finishing the last delivery level in the game, you're left wandering the halls in silence. It doesn't give you any pointers on where to go, and for a long time, I thought the game was bugged. I restarted the level, only to realize there was a broken wall you needed to be near to activate the next part of the game. More functional UI or some pointers during these odd moments would be beneficial.

Be Sam "Deliver" Fisher

Another key element of The Last Worker is its stealth sections. Similar to a game like Beyond Good & Evil, you're sneaking through restricted areas, finding out what really goes on behind the scenes. As you're investigating key areas of the factory, you'll have to maneuver around robots that are scanning the area and protecting valuable resources like medication.

Finding hidden spots, waiting until the opportune moment, and then sneaking from place to place, such as through a tunnel, is exciting in The Last Worker. You have to use some patience to get through these levels. The developers do throw you a bone as you get one EMP blast per checkpoint; you can use it to take out one enemy to make the process a little easier for you. There's also a Hacking Tool mini-game that unlocks doors and safes.

The stealth levels are well-made and will need your noggin to work through. They add a nice change of pace to the overall gameplay of The Last Worker. Still, there are sluggish controls, but once again, you'll get used to them. At the end of each stealth section, there's usually a valuable resource that the protagonist needs, like medicine for his long-lost wife.

An excellent cast

What helps bring The Last Worker's story together is the script and performances from the cast. The characters in the game have well-rounded personalities, and you want to root for them. Their interactions sound natural, and there is wonderful humor spread throughout that lightens up the dystopian setting. The script delivers the powerful message of standing up to capitalism at the right moments perfectly.

Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (The Meg, True Detective) delivers a powerful performance as Kurt. His sarcasm and "dad humor" is naturally delivered. When he's suffering, you can truly hear it in his voice. His robotic companion Skew, played by Jason Isaacs (Castlevania, The Patriot),  is another memorable character as he curses and makes charming jokes towards the protagonist. Skew is an endearing robot you want to protect at all costs. You can tell the two friends are inseparable from their performances. Zelda Williams (The Legend of Korra, Were The World Mine) also plays a role that matches perfectly with the rest of the cast and helps give the emotional weight The Last Worker needs.

[caption id="attachment_371413" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Unfortunately, those fine performances can't quite save The Last Worker from ending on a sour note. There are three different options available to you from what I've played. Without going into detail, the true ending is undesirable. You don't get the payoff you're hoping for, as it's way too short. The other two endings juxtapose each other and make you scratch your head. In addition, there are some lines of dialogue that are repeated over and over and over again, pulling you out of the experience.

A unique art style

[caption id="attachment_371417" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Judge Dredd comics artist Mick McMahon is behind the striking art style in The Last Worker, and it shows. Within these cel-shaded graphics are some striking facial lines, impactful environmental imagery, and a darker take on beloved characters like Mickey Mouse and Sonic the Hedgehog within packages. It really pops on the screen and illustrates the dire, yet colorful tone The Last Worker is going for. It's a shame I couldn't experience this game in VR with PSVR2.

A well-crafted tale

Despite a few issues with the controls, The Last Worker is a riveting 6-to-8-hour narrative experience. Sorting each box as a pseudo-employee is surprisingly entertaining, and the characters are endearing. There are also twists and turns in the storyline that will keep you gripped throughout this journey, at least until the endings start to play out. With the gorgeous visuals by Mick McMahon, fun gameplay, and meaningful script, I'd happily recommend The Last Worker. You just need to struggle through the awkward controls and some confusing game design.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: The Last Worker appeared first on Destructoid.

Over here, stranger

The impact that Resident Evil 4 had on the industry can't be overstated. Mechanics that were refined in the title, such as the aiming and over-the-shoulder camera, became widespread in the console generation that followed. QTE events caught on in a big way, and set-piece moments became focal points in many big titles. Some of the best and worst parts of modern game design were first popularized in the 2005 title. As meandering and unfocused as it could be, it's an important and well-loved title.

When the Resident Evil 4 remake was announced, like many people, I wondered how Capcom would approach the most over-the-top and ridiculous elements that seem so out-of-place in the drab, monotonous high-budget market. Now I know the answer.

[caption id="attachment_369142" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Resident Evil 4 (PC, PS4, PS5 [reviewed], Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release: March 24, 2023
MSRP: $59.99

Six years after the worst first day on the job ever, Leon "Sherbert" Kennedy has an awesome jacket. Now working a different job, he has that jacket taken from him, and spends the entirety of the game trying to get it back. Also, the President of the United States’ daughter is missing in the area. Maybe find her and ask if she’s seen his jacket.

Leon’s jacket is lost somewhere in a remote part of Spain. Crawling across the countryside are angry people who have worms.

Resident Evil 4 can be neatly sliced into three parts: the village, the castle, and the island. The first part was a major departure for the series, simply due to it being more rural and not including zombies. Zombies don’t really pop up at all in a direct interpretation of the word; instead, having you fight faster, smarter enemies that come in various flavors. So, while the locations of the latter two parts of the game are more familiar in terms of Resident Evil aesthetics, the enemies and change of control style makes it feel like a largely different game throughout.

In a lot of ways, Resident Evil 4 was a necessary evolution of the series, as things were starting to grow a bit stale. However, this also means that a remake is less impactful than what we saw with the recent refurbishments of Resident Evil 2 and 3. It could be argued that Resident Evil 4 didn’t need a remake, and now that it’s here, that remains absolutely true.

https://youtu.be/Id2EaldBaWw

I'll never get over the loss of that jacket

The most appreciable difference in Resident Evil 4’s refresh is the graphics. It is, to my untrained eye, a top-to-bottom redo. However, beyond that, this will be extremely familiar to anyone who played the 2005 original version. Those three parts I mentioned above are still as starkly partitioned. Leon still loses his jacket and fights Napoleon. You can still take all the villagers and cultists on a scenic vacation to suplex city. If you haven’t played Resident Evil 4 in over 15 years, then you could potentially be tricked into believing this is just a visual upgrade. Even the behavior of the villagers was so familiar to me that I could almost take them down through muscle memory alone.

There is a tremendous list of omissions and additions made here too exhaustive for the contents of this review. However, I feel like I must stress that this is still entirely Resident Evil 4. It may look prettier, and you can move when you shoot, but thematically and mechanically, it’s more similar than dissimilar. It tries to land in a sweet spot of addressing past complaints and modernizing while retaining what people loved about Resident Evil 4. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I feel like they did pretty well on hitting that target.

This also means that certain things that might not be to people’s tastes are also often changed. Dialogue is redone, but Leon "Sicknasty" Kennedy still spouts ridiculous one-liners. The main antagonists have all returned, and they’re all still as shockingly out-of-place as they were before. I know there was some concern that Capcom would play it too straight with Resident Evil 4, but with a few exceptions, it’s just as atonal as it was originally. For better or worse.

[caption id="attachment_369143" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Nighty-night, knights

The greatest thing about Resident Evil 4 is that it’s fun. Whether you can move while aiming or not, the combat is reactive and enjoyable. Enemies are a nice mixture of varied and dumb, and there’s a bit of randomness that comes in when certain enemies take more shots or sometimes get back up after you kill them. You can shoot their legs to set them up for a suplex or wait for them to get close and parry them. My favorite is to lead them all into a big cluster and drop a grenade by their feet, especially when the president’s daughter is in the mosh-pit with them.

There’s a nice layer of progression spread over top, as well. You gradually get access to buy new weapons, can upgrade your favorites, and customize your kit as you see fit. Leon’s nimble fingers can also craft in the midst of battle, so there are plenty of strategies that come into play.

The biggest issue in all this is that it’s very front-loaded. The best section of the game is when you first enter the village, and it never reaches that height again. That’s not to say it doesn’t remain to be a fun time, but I just can’t believe they didn’t put together more complex set-pieces like that.

Speaking of which, Resident Evil 4 also has a dizzying amount of variety and is constantly throwing new stuff at you. When I say “new,” I mean it was new in 2005. There isn’t a lot here that’s going to surprise you if you’re familiar with its original state. They got rid of the quick-time events, which makes that whole deal with Jack Krauser a bit more tolerable, but there’s something else there in its place. They've also dropped in some new varieties of enemies, but they're not very meaningful additions. On the other hand, they blend in so well with the original cast that you'd be forgiven for not even realizing they're new.

A lot of people will be happy to hear that Ashley is less annoying. I didn't find her too awful in the original version, but she was so much easier to ignore this time around.

[caption id="attachment_369144" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

You wanna get ugly?

One thing to note is that a lot of side content isn’t even implemented yet. I was surprised, upon completing Resident Evil 4, that the Mercenaries mode doesn’t exist. Capcom has said that this will be coming in a post-release patch. What they haven’t clarified is where all the Ada Wong content is. The “Separate Ways” sub-story that was added in the PS2 version isn’t here. I have a creeping suspicion that it will be paid DLC, but since they haven’t said anything, that’s just speculation.

Resident Evil 4 was a groundbreaking title that shifted the direction of big-budget development. The over-the-shoulder camera angle employed was tremendously influential for years to come. It also shifted the Resident Evil series into its worst era, as Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 both followed its example before Capcom eventually corrected its course.

Back in 2005, I liked Resident Evil 4, but I didn’t love it. The remake hasn’t changed that. Unlike the Resident Evil 2 remake, which was revolutionary, Resident Evil 4’s glow-up is more of a faithful recreation rather than an overhaul. It changes just enough that, if you loved the original, I can’t guarantee this will leave you unperturbed. Meanwhile, if you didn’t like its first iteration, it’s not impossible that this will change your mind. The best I can say is that it is an earnest effort at recapturing the magic, and it’s worth checking out. It remains, as it always was, maddeningly inconsistent.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Resident Evil 4 (2023) appeared first on Destructoid.

The Mechs-files

I’m not sure I ever made it past the second mission in Cybernator as a kid, but it left an impact all the same. Released in Japan in 1992 as Assault Suit Valken for Super Famicom, it was the second in the Assault Suit series after Assault Suit Leynos. Aside from being about mecha, the two games seemed to have different approaches to design. While Leynos was a rather straightforward side-scroller, Assault Suit Valken had a more tangibly weighty and methodical approach. There was an odd sense of realism to its fantastic sci-fi themes.

However, its release as Cybernator by Konami on the SNES was somewhat compromised. The translation wasn’t the best, character portraits were removed, and the ending was censored. Rainmaker Productions seeks to rectify that with Assault Suit Valken Declassified. They’ve enlisted the legendary port-house M2 to transfer the title to modern consoles while Rainmaker themselves pack it with additional features. The result is the best way to experience the product, but there are some reservations.

[caption id="attachment_369929" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Assault Suit Valken: Declassified (Switch)
Developer: NCS Corporation, M2
Publisher: Rainmaker Productions
Released: March 30, 2023
MSRP: $24.99

Assault Suit Valken depicts a future war between two sides vying for control over the Earth’s exhausted resources and territory on the moon. You’re set in the stompy boots of a Valken mecha, and it’s up to you to do your part as a faceless soldier. There’s a real war-is-hell angle to everything, which makes it somewhat unique compared to other action games of the time.

What really made Assault Suit Valken stand apart, however, was the level of detail that went into it. A lot was done to maximize the feeling of stompiness. Your mecha moves slowly, grinding along the ground when you boost. Its thrusters seem to struggle to keep the mecha hovering in the air for even a short time. Bullets ricochet and tear gouges out of the environment. For a 1992 game, it’s a technical and visual treat.

It plays out in a linear, level-by-level formula. One of the major drawbacks of the original version was the limited continues and lack of lives. It was difficult to make any progress, as it was all too easy to make a mistake and get sent back to the start of the game. While those continues are still there by default, there is a way to change the game over to “free play” where you don’t have to worry about that. Aside from that, there are save states. However, there is no rewind. Either way, you have a better chance of getting to the end than you would with just an SNES cartridge.

https://youtu.be/Mc_EQ0HjkjM

Check out that ASS-117A

While Assault Suit Valken was remastered in 2004 for the PS2, that version is not what’s represented here. It is purely the Super Nintendo version. You can listen to the arranged soundtrack from the main menu, but I haven’t found a way to use it during gameplay. Some options do seem to be secretly locked at the beginning, but I haven’t found a way to swap the soundtrack during play.

The main difference in Assault Suit Valken Declassified is that the dialogue has been retranslated. The good news is that character portraits have returned, and more of the dialogue makes sense. The bad news is that the line, “The long ten seconds to death begins now…” has been removed. That line statement didn’t make a whole lot of sense within context, but it sounded cool.

Did you know the Valken’s model designation is ASS-117A? I am not making that up. I just learned it through Assault Suit Valken Declassified, and I am way too juvenile for this sort of thing.

I learned it from the previously Japan-only guidebook that rainmaker has recreated for the game. Not only does this include a walkthrough, but it also has a timeline and a trove of lore. It’s a rather comprehensive read, and considering that so little of this lore is actually conveyed through the game, it can provide a lot of insight. Obviously, none of this is essential to know, but a lot of it is relatively obscure outside of Japan.

[caption id="attachment_369930" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Supplemental reading

There’s also a lot of art included to go along with things. Some of it is concept art, but other pieces are newly created for this re-release. It’s not something I typically go crazy for, and this time is no different. However, it’s still cool.

Also recreated and translated is the manual. Considering the Cybernator manual completely bastardized the plot and made it sound extremely ‘90s in comparison, it’s nice to see it as it was originally intended. It’s only 12 pages long, but it really rounds out the package.

Included is an interview with Satoshi Nakai, who was responsible for the graphics on Assault Suit Valken. The interview is surprisingly enlightening, as it shows that his input was responsible for some of the best parts of the game, including the environmental damage. I also discovered that the Japan-only Front Mission: Gun Hazard is considered by him to be the real sequel to Assault Suit Valken. While I was well aware of their similarities, this is the first time I heard of the staff crossover. The director and programmer of the game, Hideo Suzuki, also worked on both projects.

[caption id="attachment_369931" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Gold-plated stompy-boots

If you go into Assault Suit Valken Declassified expecting a redone or expanded version of Cybernator, you’re probably going to be underwhelmed. What’s included is largely unchanged from the SNES version, aside from the updated translation and return of some minor removed features. There’s nothing revolutionary to the experience. The fact that there is no option or inclusion of the PS2 remaster unfortunately causes the whole experience to fall short of being absolutely definitive.

If there’s one majorly unfortunate part of the port as a product, it’s that $25 is a tall asking price, even if you have a keen interest in all the extras. You don’t have to reach very hard to find similar products for different games that are more reasonably priced.

But with that in mind, Assault Suit Valken Declassified is an undeniably loving return to the Super Famicom title. It’s plain to see that Rainmaker wanted to do the game justice and give North American fans the ability to enjoy it in the same way as it has in Japan. If you’re a fan of the game, it’s at least worth a look. If you haven’t tried it before, you’re long overdue for this mission. I just wish the price of entry was lower.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Assault Suit Valken Declassified appeared first on Destructoid.

Gone fishin'

Anecdotally, one of the most common complaints I hear about The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is that there was too much time spent sailing. That’s completely valid. I get it, not everyone is fine with looking at the ass end of a boat for large slabs of time, but for me, that was one of my favorite parts.

Dredge marries the ass end of a boat with horror. I love horror. I moved onto it after I explored so many depressing games that I eventually reached the other end of them and realized it was a cliff. So, rather than jump off that cliff, I turned around and meandered through the bramble field of horror. Let’s ignore this obvious cry for help and take a look at Dredge instead.

[caption id="attachment_369896" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Dredge (PC [Reviewed], Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Black Salt Games
Publisher: Team17
Released: March 30, 2023
MSRP: $24.99

Horror fishing is a vastly under-utilized genre of video game. Off the top of my head, I can only really think of one other game that did it: Monster Bass on PS1. Dredge takes a different approach.

You’re cast as a fisherman who is called to help the small town of Greater Morrow after their last fisherman…uh…did a bad job. You find out quickly that night is a bad time to be out at sea, as your ship is wrecked on the nearby rocks. The mayor hooks you up with a new ship (and debt) and sets you back off to work.

It’s not long before you pull up something horrible from the deep. Some of the fish are badly mutated. The townsfolk whisper of madness and other dark things. You learn the fate of the old mayor and get wrapped up in some questionable errands. Keep your head down and keep working. You’re just a fisherman. You know nothing of the horrors that lurk deep beneath the waves.

When it's raining and when it ain't

The mystery of Dredge is unfurled slowly. Then it just keeps unfurling. The main crux of the narrative is that you’re tasked with finding a number of items from the four corners of the map by this creepy guy who keeps casting spells on you.

Largely, you fish to make money. Money gets you better equipment and also helps keep your boat afloat. You can unlock new equipment by finding research material out at sea. This can allow you to get better fishing gear and engines. You’ll also find debris that can be used to improve your boat to hold more items.

Your goals also involve a lot of fishing. There’s an item to get in each of the four corners of the world, and usually, you’ll need specific species of fish in order to get to them. One, for example, has you slot in various sea creatures to unlock keys that eventually result in you getting the sought-after treasure. Another, those fish are used to make special chum, and so on. It’s a number of different fishing systems that all feed into one another. While the challenges in each part of the world are unique, they’re all unified under catching fish.

[caption id="attachment_369897" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A sailor's life

On the surface, Dredge is actually a rather relaxing game. Chugging across the waves in your little boat is peaceful, and the music is rather nice. Despite being a horror game, the biggest hazard is bumping into rocks. There are monstrous entities in the deep, but they’re not much of a threat as long as you give them a wide berth.

The relaxed mindset is probably the best one to go into Dredge with. The actual gameplay is rather drab. Not that I expected a lot of action here, but chugging back and forth from the different locations can grow a little stale over its 10-ish hour playtime. While some of the characters are relatively well-defined, not much is done with the dialogue system. There’s backstory floating on the waves, but I never found much of it to be very interesting.

For that matter, the narrative is pretty weak. It’s not bad, but it never quite makes it above the waves. The way it started, I half expected it to start out relatively normal while gradually piling on the horror as it continues. However, it never really gets to that point. It’s sort of flat throughout, and I was left a bit confused about how some of it progresses. By the end, I had some questions I felt I wasn’t provided answers for. Not in a “read between the lines” kind of way, but rather, “why did things unfold this way?” There’s no growing threat that leads to a terrific climax. It just kind of chugs along.

[caption id="attachment_369899" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Catch of the day

That’s not to say that Dredge is bad. It’s hardly condemning to say, “this fishing game is about fishing.” I’m mostly trying to stress that, “No, this is really about fishing.” The horror part is mostly a framework. The fishing mini-game isn’t that involving, which can lead to a bit of repetition. At least the progress is good.

I just don’t think Dredge is all that it could be. While the sea-harvesting foundation is solid and well thought out, nothing else around it has much depth. There’s a dearth of imagination surrounding it, which I found disappointing. The plot is lifeless, the gameplay is one-note, and it never really picks up speed. However, if you want a more relaxing take on horror, Dredge might be worth hauling up from the depths.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Dredge appeared first on Destructoid.

New platform, same great taste

As someone who spent much of the late 2000s deep in the RPG Maker community, I can’t believe how far the engine has come. RPG Maker is typically associated with low-quality Final Fantasy knockoffs, but funny enough, it’s the non-RPGs that became breakout hits. To The Moon set the stage for narrative RPG Maker games that are worth both time and money, and Laura Shigihara’s Rakuen follows in that proud tradition. Given Shigihara's involvement with the former project, this shouldn't come as a surprise.

Of course, this is old news by now. Rakuen originally released in 2017 to critical acclaim from fans and critics alike. Sporting an Overwhelmingly Positive consensus on Steam, words like “beautiful” and “masterpiece” typically describe this title in reviews. Now, nearly six years later, Rakuen is receiving a second wind with a Nintendo Switch port. Labeled Deluxe Edition, it combines the entirety of Rakuen with a couple of animated shorts and the brand-new game Mr. Saitou. The good news is that Rakuen is fantastic, and I was happy to finally experience this wonderful story. As for the new features that make this a “Deluxe Edition,” well… they certainly exist.

[caption id="attachment_369547" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Rakuen Deluxe Edition (PC, Nintendo Switch [reviewed])
Developer: Laura Shigihara
Publisher: Morizora Studios
Release: March 23rd, 2023 (Deluxe Edition)
MSRP: $24.99

Rakuen is a simple adventure game about a boy in a hospital called Boy. Textboxes literally address him as Boy, so I’m not being too cheeky here. The name Rakuen is derived from Boy’s favorite book, which his mother (referred to strictly as Mom) frequently reads to him. Shortly after the introductory sequence, Mom insists that the world inside of Rakuen is real, and they journey from the walls of the hospital to the fantasy realm for themselves.

It’s here that the core plot is laid out: Boy has a wish that only the forest guardian inside the book can grant. However, in order for the guardian to grant this wish, Boy must help the other residents of the hospital with their own personal traumas and heartaches. Conveniently, these characters exist in both the real world and the fantasy land that Boy and Mom explore. This allows the game to explore gravely serious subjects through a childlike perspective that helps soften the cold reality at the center of the story.

Rakuen deliberately blurs the line between imagination and reality, and it’s up to the player to determine where one realm ends and the other begins. The main plot takes a backseat for most of the adventure, with subtle clues scattered beneath the episodic stories that point towards how the tale will ultimately end. This approach serves Rakuen well overall. It’s not terribly difficult to figure out plot threads well before they happen, but the major story arcs of the game are told well enough to still hit hard even if you know they're coming. Make no mistake; Rakuen is a tearjerker. This is a game best played by someone ready to cry throughout its duration, even if the journey between those big emotional moments doesn't always hit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVwxS5IBUYw

Everything, everywhere, not all at once

If I had to describe the tone of Rakuen in one word, it would be “yes.”

The narrative freely oscillates between quirky humor, heartfelt drama, and even horror when necessary. My biggest misgiving with Rakuen is that its comedy is only okay most of the time. There are so many gags that just land weakly, often using Boy’s shocked face as a punchline over an actual joke. Don’t get me wrong, I love quirky humor as much as anyone. But many of Rakuen's lighter moments last a few lines too long and lack direction, as if Shigihara is riffing off the top of her head for filler to break up the drama.

Fortunately, there are bits that genuinely charm me and get a laugh. There’s a section involving a tea party that has some fantastic visual gags, bolstered by sharper writing that spends less time meandering around its jokes. As much as I enjoyed this section, it makes the comedy that came before it seem all the more aimless in comparison.

Conversely, the dramatic beats at the center of the episodic story arcs in Rakuen are universally great. Not only are the characters lovable and sympathetic, but their conflicts portray real-world trauma with devastating precision. As somebody who spent the majority of the COVID-19 pandemic caring for a person with a condition mirroring one found in the game, I needed a minute to get through his story's ending because of how true to life it was. Every tale in Rakuen is treated with respect and impeccable attention to detail, and the filler comedy becomes more infrequent as the plot progresses. I only wish the script received another round of polish to push it closer to this level of quality throughout its duration.

[caption id="attachment_369548" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Oh right, it’s a game

I’ve focused on writing until now because that’s overwhelmingly the main draw of Rakuen. It’s luckily fun to play too, if not a bit inconsistent.

For the first five hours, Rakuen does an admirable job of breaking up its plot arcs with adventure game elements. There’s a decent amount to explore with light secrets to uncover, which adds a great sense of progression. Boy and Mom will often find themselves in puzzle-based dungeons that are both fun on their own merits and award key items to unlock new areas. If you stretched the comparison paper thin, you might say it's a bit like a Zelda game.

There are a few obstacles that, for lack of a better term, feel very RPG Maker. These include hostile NPCs with predictable movement patterns and block-pushing puzzles, both of which are easy-to-code conflicts that inevitably pop up in any title made with the engine. This luckily won't mean anything to the vast majority of players, but anyone who has played many RPG Maker games will find these bits grating.

At its best, Rakuen does a great job weaving its level design into its already strong narrative. There’s one particular area involving a bear family (trust me, it makes sense in the game) that especially stands out. The puzzles are engaging, and the exploration subtly builds up the story like a good mystery. Unfortunately, shortly after this moment, Rakuen just…kind of gives up on gameplay. Puzzles are almost completely dropped as plot threads appear in rapid succession, largely forgoing this cohesion of gameplay and story that was just hitting its stride. I strongly got the impression that Shigihara just wanted the project to be done already after a certain point, though fortunately the significant story moments never drop in quality.

This leads to some bizarre pacing issues. Early plots feel like they drag at times, and the later plots go by too fast. This isn't a major issue, it's just jarring to watch how fast the back half of the story resolves.

[caption id="attachment_369549" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Hey, wanna listen to some tunes?

If there’s one element of Rakuen that is consistently excellent, it’s the music.

You can tell Laura Shigihara put all her heart and soul into the soundtrack. There aren’t any energetic bangers necessarily, but each track seamlessly enhances Rakuen’s atmosphere. The songs in the fantasy world evoke classic SNES RPGs, driving home feelings of whimsy to encourage exploration. When the game wants to be tense, the music puts in overtime to create more unease than the relatively basic 2D graphics ever could. Rakuen’s several vocal tracks especially deserve accolades, as they're universally poignant and lead to some of the game’s most powerful moments. I could frankly summarize the game by saying when Shigihara and friends start singing, I start crying.

Shigihara has generously uploaded the entire soundtrack to YouTube, but I recommend experiencing these tracks in context as much as possible. The music is tied deeply to the story, similar to "The Ballad of the Wind Fish" in Link's Awakening. I don't mean to downplay the clear effort put into the visual presentation, as there is some genuinely nice eye candy here. But to experience the best parts of this game, I highly recommend playing this one with headphones.

[caption id="attachment_369550" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

And now, a Mr. Saitou review

From the outside looking in, Rakuen may only look like a piece of the content available in Rakuen Deluxe Edition. The package also includes Mr. Saitou, which Shigihara herself calls "The next installment in the Rakuen universe."  I wrote some early impressions on Mr. Saitou during the February 2023 Steam Next Fest, so check those out here if you’d like a more detailed overview of the game. Unfortunately, for anyone who anticipated Mr. Saitou as a proper sequel to Rakuen, I hate to say you're going to be disappointed.

To kick off with a positive, I love how Mr. Saitou focuses on its core characters. Boy and Mom spend most of Rakuen as passive observers and feature little development outside of the game's beginning and end. Conversely, the titular Mr. Saitou and his eventual companion Brandon take center stage in their respective adventure. The dynamic between the two is incredibly wholesome and fits the atmosphere of Rakuen to a tee.

Unfortunately, Mr. Saitou otherwise forgoes the strengths of Rakuen and instead doubles down on quirky humor. Credit where credit’s due, there are more visual gags here that land better than the average Rakuen joke. There are also punchlines that veer into painfully unfunny territory. Look, I can shrug off a bad joke or a terribly out-of-date reference. Lord knows I've made plenty of those myself. The problem is that Mr. Saitou never hits any heartfelt highs that made Rakuen so special. You'll find an emotional hook buried here, but it's almost treated like an afterthought by the game's conclusion. I'm okay with Mr. Saitou going in a different direction than Rakuen, it just doesn't stick the landing.

[caption id="attachment_369551" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

New game nonplussed

Exacerbating Mr. Saitou’s issues is its rudimentary gameplay. Rakuen didn’t have a consistent stream of winners in its puzzle design, but there was at least a mix of decent brainteasers and basic challenges. Mr. Saitou, on the other hand, is only basic challenges. You got your standard RPG Maker block-pushing puzzles, and you have a running gimmick of math puzzles that Mr. Saitou absolutely runs into the ground. Also, there’s weirdly a lot of mandatory backtracking throughout the game. The slow walking speed in Rakuen was already problematic, but the sections in Mr. Saitou that literally consist of carrying things from point A to point B exacerbate the issue.

To be clear, I don’t think Mr. Saitou is unpleasant to play. It just doesn’t live up to the tone set by its predecessor or its own trailer. Even after searching every nook and cranny, Mr. Saitou took me less than two hours to finish. It’s not underwhelming because it’s short, it’s underwhelming because there’s so little to it. While I did enjoy seeing the quirky fantasy characters of Rakuen appear again, these were never the main draw of the original. That said, if Rakuen was your favorite game of the past six years, I suppose Mr. Saitou is good enough as a novelty.

I will say that Mr. Saitou works okay as a supplemental experience. There are genuine visual spectacles here, including one very fun sequence that I imagine will get a ton of hits on YouTube. With how heavy and heart-wrenching Rakuen is, Mr. Saitou offers a wholesome story to cool down with after your journey’s end. Its presence doesn’t make Rakuen Deluxe Edition worse, but you aren’t missing much by skipping it.

[caption id="attachment_369552" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Racking up features

Eagle-eyed fans may take umbrage with Rakuen referred to as an RPG Maker game. One of the major changes in this release is the new engine that allows the game to even run on the Switch. Since this is my first time with Rakuen, I can’t tell you specifically what has or hasn’t changed. However, having had experience with RPG Maker XP, I can say Deluxe Edition still feels like an RPG Maker game. The menus and performance all perfectly mirror the engine, for better or for worse. I’m sure this change is significant for the game’s development, but it doesn’t notably impact the end product.

The only other major addition to cover in Deluxe Edition are a few animated shorts called Farmer in the Sky. Much like Mr. Saitou, these are merely fine. I can appreciate the novelty of seeing the characters rendered in 3D, but the shorts themselves feel like pilots for something that never took off. They’re decently cute, and I'd imagine a young child could really enjoy these. Not that I’d want to devastate a young child with a heavy game like Rakuen, but I wouldn't take parenting advice from a game review.

Fortunately, Rakuen on its own justifies the Deluxe Edition. Though a bit uneven, its best moments are spectacular enough to warrant a recommendation for anyone in need of a good cry or two. I do wish Mr. Saitou reached the same emotional heights, but it’s serviceable if viewed strictly as a bonus. That said, if you wanted to save money and get vanilla Rakuen on PC, I wouldn’t stop you.

_{[This review was based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher. Dale North, former Editor-in-Chief of Destructoid, was involved in the creation of Rakuen. The author has never worked directly with Dale. As always, no relationships were factored into this article.]}

The post Review: Rakuen Deluxe Edition appeared first on Destructoid.

Step-up Enziguri

Last year, I stated that WWE 2K22 wasn’t so much “a step in the right direction,” but rather that it “picked itself off, dusted itself off, and went right back to the philosophy that it was following before.” This isn’t so much a condemnation. WWE 2K20 sank the series to new depths, and a course correction was needed. However, after I did the review of WWE 2K22, a patch was released by 2K Sports that corrupted my save data and made Universe Mode inaccessible. This was a commonly reported problem that never got fixed. You just had to delete your save data, start over, and hope the same thing happened.

However, with WWE 2K22 dead to me, I had high hopes for WWE 2K23 because the bar was still set extremely low. Thankfully, despite all my trepidation, it managed to step over it. I am so beaten down by the series by now that the bare minimum is acceptable. WWE 2K23 exceeds the bare minimum, proving that if you never give up, you might eventually become sufficient.

[caption id="attachment_369532" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

WWE 2K23 (PC [Reviewed], PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X)
Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: 2K
Released: March 16, 2023
MSRP: $59.99 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) | $69.99 (PS5, Xbox Series X|S)

John Cena is on the cover of WWE 2K23, which means he is the focus of Showcase mode. For years, Showcase mode has been probably one of the worst parts of the 2K series’ single-player events. Rather than just playing matches, you’re dropped into significant events from the star’s career. You then have to perform very specific moves in order to advance.

The twist here is that, rather than play as John Cena, you take the role of his opponents and get the chance to beat him up. That would be fun, but again, you’re just performing different dance steps. You're competing against an uncooperative computer-controlled wrestler to try and get them into place, just so you can pull off a very specific move. Chances are, you won't know how to do this move until you've opened the objective menu and read specifically how to do it. I can not imagine a more mechanical and less compelling approach to gameplay.

However, it’s worth it to endure playing through this significantly laborious mode because there are a lot of things that are only accessible once unlocked through playing these matches. One of them is Bruno Sammartino, who has been on my wishlist for the roster for years. There’s also ‘80s-era Hulk Hogan and various alternative appearances of other wrestlers. I just wish they weren’t locked behind such a tedious gameplay mode.

However, once you’ve got Bruno Sammartino available for grappling, you can get to the good stuff. A lot of the good stuff is still compromised in many ways, but it’s the best the series has seen since 2K took over.

https://youtu.be/0mRiUp36n-8

The time is now

Despite my considerable grievances with WWE 2K22, its foundation was surprisingly solid. After the trainwreck of WWE 2K20, 2K Sports took a year off to rework a lot of things, and the result was appreciable. Everything about the wrestling itself felt a lot more solid and enjoyable.

When you jump into WWE 2K23, much of it will still feel familiar. The UI, the customization suite, and the visual style are all the same as the previous few entries. Visually, the improvements made are extremely subtle. While I don’t necessarily feel that they need to overhaul the entire UX every entry, there are some drawbacks that weren’t addressed, specifically when it comes to sorting and filtering the move-list and even parts options in the create-a-wrestler modes. As it was in previous iterations, the creation suite is very onerous to sort through. The whole set of tools is very powerful and gets better year after year, but they definitely haven’t gotten any easier to use.

It is nice, however, that the advanced entrance editor has been re-implemented, largely as it had been before its removal. You can now choose individual segments from pre-existing entrances. While the fact that you cobble them together, it does give you the tools to create a near-perfect fit for your wrestlers. It makes it so you’re not necessarily going to have something easily identifiable as an existing wrestler’s entrance. I am so thankful to have it back.

[caption id="attachment_369531" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Rope break

The biggest, most appreciable change in WWE 2K23 is that MyGM mode has been expanded. After Universe died for me in WWE 2K22, I moved to play MyGM, and it was a decent stand-in. It’s a specific mode that has you run your own WWE “brand” and compete with the others for ratings based on how well you stack fights, manage rivalries, and book your shows. Now, it might be my preferred way to slap my wrestle figures against each other. There are now five brands to pick from (Raw, Smackdown, NXT, NXT 2.0, and WCW), which can be run by a number of GMs or one of your making. There are now four slots for participating shows, and they can be run by either a human or a CPU.

While the gameplay flow and UI (once again) is largely unchanged from last year, so much has been piled in that it doesn’t feel like a quickly thrown-together modifier. More match types are available. The roster that GMs pick from is still completely customizable, so you can tweak it for the feel you want or slot in your own creations.

I still wish I could create my own brand for MyGM mode. There are already tools for making your own show in Universe Mode, so I feel like it’s not much of a stretch that the ability would materialize, but it’s still not possible this year. Considering all the improvements made, I’m not too broken up by it. If anything, it makes me excited for next year when this sort of thing might make its way in. For now, it’s still an extremely fun campaign to toy around with.

[caption id="attachment_369534" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Standing 8-count

MyRise is about as decent as it was previously. It’s a good mode if you want a pre-assembled story to play through, rather than creating your own with the other modes, creation suites, and good old-fashioned imagination. There’s now a separate story for wrestlemen and wrestleladies. The voice acting, writing, and animation in this mode are all egregiously bad, but it’s a framework around solid wrestling, so it’s worth a look.

While it’s obvious that Visual Concepts is working hard to clean up the bloated and tangled backend of the game engine, there are still some holdover issues. Notably, the loading time can grow to obscene levels at times in WWE 2K23. This is especially prevalent when using lots of custom wrestlers and images and cramming them into the same match.

While I played on PS5 this year, last year has left me aware of the issues the PC version faced. Most notably, every time that a patch was dropped, the whole 60-70GB game file had to be re-downloaded. This year, that apparently isn’t the case, which shows some improvement on the technical side.

[caption id="attachment_369535" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Never give up

Each year for the WWE 2K series, there are always some steps forward and a few steps back. Depending on where your priorities lie, it’s entirely possible that there will be some drawbacks that will perturb you. This year, however, I feel like the product suits me better than it has in well over a decade. I still have a laundry list of things that I want to see implemented or re-implemented (custom entrance themes, better organization in creation suites, custom brands in MyGM, photo mode), but I’m at least content with what is in this year’s offering.

Building on the reasonably solid gameplay foundation of WWE 2K22, WWE 2K23 manages to finally find a comfortable spot. It is, at its core, the same general game that we get year after year. It kind of sucks that we have to keep paying for small improvements. However, small improvements got us here, and here is a pretty decent place to be.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: WWE 2K23 appeared first on Destructoid.

The game that grows

I misguidedly came into Tchia thinking it would be a lighthearted jaunt, something along the lines of Lil’ Gator Game or Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. To be fair, everything about this game screams "summer vacation". The island setting is marvelous and bright, the exact kind of setting I could use right now, having been trapped in a perpetual winter for the last three months. Its eponymous hero is the type of laid-back person I strive to be on holiday, eating delicious-looking food while chilling by the campfire with her ukulele in hand. That, to me, sounds like the perfect island getaway...

...but this journey would be no trip to Sandals.

[caption id="attachment_369491" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Tchia (PC, PS4, PS5 [reviewed])
Developer: Awaceb
Publisher: Kepler Interactive
Released: March 21, 2023
MSRP: $29.99

Tchia is on a quest to get her father back. Her idyllic island life was torn asunder with the arrival of an old acquaintance. Accompanied by two fabric soldiers, the three of them take Tchia’s dad to Meavora, a malevolent king who rules over this tiny archipelago. Meavora is about as evil of a villain as I’ve seen in quite some time. The monarch's introduction to the player was so dark and demented, that I couldn’t wait to start kicking their ass. But that would have to wait until I could expand Tchia’s powers. That, and complete the story, as Tchia's quest is largely tied to the narrative.

Our her has a few tools at her disposal, including a slingshot, a camera, and a flashlight, but the top weapon in Tchia’s arsenal is her "Soul Jumping" ability. With this, she can jump into any animal in the game and dozens of different objects. As you explore the world, Soul Jumping into a bird, dog, or even a rock will help Tchia travel faster than she can on foot. When in battle against Maano, the fabric soldiers mentioned earlier, she can possess gas cans and oil lamps that burn those mother truckers to ashes.

Yes, there is combat in Tchia, and in the beginning, it’s highly enjoyable. The first time I stumbled across a Maano Camp was when I realized there was more to this game than the fetch quests I was doing up until that point. I really had to be on my toes here, and taking possession of the various flammable objects at the camp and hurling them at my enemies provided the type of rush I didn’t think this game would provide. It was an absolute hoot the first few times I took them down, but like several elements in Tchia, it does tend to get drawn out a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbuZbzO5ghU

Maybe it’s padding the game time or maybe I was just going through the game a bit too fast, but some of the combat sections of Tchia do last a bit longer than I would have liked. The issue is, as much fun as I have with the combat, it doesn’t change. You’ll approach every Maano settlement the same way: grabbing explosives, taking control of them, and then lobbing them at your enemies. There are ways to change it up, like setting fire to a bigger object and throwing that at your enemies, but it’s more or less the same thing. Beyond the camps you’ll come across on your journey, there are four large industrial zones that play out like an all-out assault and four is probably one too many.

Now, the best way to avoid the feeling of monotony that I found is to actually explore these islands. The archipelago consists of two large islands where you’ll spend the majority of your time, but there are plenty of goodies to be found at sea. I adore the sailing mechanics in Tchia. You don’t just sit in one place and do everything. You actually have to move around the vessel to control the sail, steer and drop anchor. I didn’t do as much sailing as I thought I would in the game, but every time Tchia stepped foot on that boat, I could feel the same rush I got setting out in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Most of my traversal around this world was on foot and through Soul Jumping into birds and other creatures where I could. Rocks are plenty in this world if you just want to get around fast, but I was a bit disappointed with how sparse the wildlife could be in those moments when I had to travel high up over a mountain. Many times, I just couldn’t find a bird if my life depended on it. Tchia can climb on every surface with ease, though you’ll often come across an impossibly steep hillside that you’re able to slowly walk up rather than climb, which does point to the world not being as carefully designed as it could have been. But it’s negligible considering a lot of thought and care was put into the other ways Tchia can travel, including her super-useful slide skill and her ability to slingshot herself out of trees. Those are great traversal techniques when you just don’t have a bird or a bug around.

[caption id="attachment_369492" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

And you will want to explore as many of these islands as you can because there is so much to see. While the main narrative doesn’t do nearly a good enough job of taking you around the world—there’s an entire city I was basically able to ignore until the post-game—you are greatly rewarded for seeing as much as you can. Not only can you unlock new styles and accessories for Tchia and her boat, but you can also unlock new songs for her ukulele and discover challenge temples that’ll give you more time when you Soul Jump.

Unfortunately, finding every little point of interest in this game can be difficult. Because nothing in this world is exaggerated in design, everything blends into the environment with ease. That wouldn’t be a problem if some of the activities you need to find, like the rock-stacking mini-game that unlocks new ukulele songs, are so damn small you really have to be on the lookout for them. These points do glow with lensflare, but even that is small enough to miss. I appreciate how organic the world looks, but I wish the developers would have implemented something extra to help guide players toward these necessary points of interest.

I guess I shouldn’t be complaining too much about being given a reason to stay in this world for longer periods of time because it really is a special place to be. The developers made great use of Unreal Engine 4, creating a gorgeous world to explore whether you’re on land or under the sea. If there is one space where Tchia outdoes its main source of inspiration, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it’s with its reef-filled ocean that’s beckoned me to dive deep. These underwater habitats are a joy to explore while Soul Jumping as a fish, so much so that I spent far more time underwater than the game asked of me.

[caption id="attachment_369494" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

It’s the details in these reefs that make them so appealing; so worth your time. In fact, there are so many small details and little touches throughout the world that it’s hard for me to say which touch of “above and beyond” is my favorite. If I were to force myself to choose one for this review, it would be when you cycle through the chords on Tchia’s ukulele, you see her hands doing the proper fingering for the chord. Of course, that can be easy to miss when you’re in the middle of some of these little-too-long jam sessions, but the game does allow players to sit back and let Tchia do the work in these sections for them. That was the preferable way to go through them as it allowed me to read the lyrics along with the music. And if you’re wondering, the music is phenomenal throughout. Enough so that I’m waiting for Mondo or Fangamer to announce a vinyl of the OST. I will buy that day one if it ever becomes a reality.

Tchia might very well be the most ambitious indie game we see in 2023. This open-air and open-sea adventure takes some of the best gameplay elements from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey and combines them into an adventure that’s filled with heart, humor, and compassion across a breathtaking archipelago. If you enjoy games with exceptionally designed worlds that are meant to be explored with a fine-tooth comb, I can’t see any reason why you wouldn’t love what’s on offer in Tchia.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Tchia appeared first on Destructoid.

Starring Birdo

The DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe really hits its stride with Wave 3, dropping the best courses we’d seen in the Booster Course Pass. From the brilliantly simple reinvention of Boo Lake to the charming Christmas-themed jaunt that is Merry Mountain, it was going to be tough to surpass what Nintendo brought players in that wave.

Depending on who you ask, Booster Course Wave 4 might actually be the best set of tracks yet.

[caption id="attachment_368373" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Wave 4 (Switch)
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: March 9, 2023
MSRP: $24.99 (or part of Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack)

With a brand new track inspired by one of Nintendo’s most cherished franchises, Wave 4 has several stand-outs in its collection, including two beautiful tracks from Mario Kart Tour and a Mario Kart DS charmer I’d honestly forgotten all about. So, as I have done with Waves 1, 2, and 3, I’m reviewing and ranking each track from the fourth wave of Mario Kart 8 DLC, covering the Fruit Cup and the Boomerang Cup. And because she’s finally making her debut in Deluxe, this review will be all about Birdo.

[caption id="attachment_368377" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

8. Amsterdam Drift (MKT)

We’re starting off with a cheery track set in the Red Light District-less city of Amsterdam from Mario Kart Tour. As we’ve seen with most of the other tracks based on real cities of the world, Amsterdam Drift combines three different versions of the track from the mobile app into its three-lap race. One quick drive around the track will show you this course contains almost everything we stereotypically associate with Amsterdam, including tulips, windmills, and canals, the latter of which make up a huge chunk of the second lap of this race. All-in-all, Amsterdam Drift is a fine, if unexceptional track. It’s certainly better than a couple of other Tour tracks that have made the jump to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, especially at higher speeds, but there are superior ones to be found in Wave 4.

[caption id="attachment_368379" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

7. Riverside Park (MK:SC)

There are probably better tracks from Mario Kart: Super Circuit to choose from than Riverside Park, but I have to hand it to the developers for the wonderful job they did with its conversion to 3D. This brief jungle course has plenty of tight turns and little jumps to contend with, but the big feature of the track comes at the end with a huge 360-degree turn up a mountain and out a waterfall.

On the GBA, this was a flat and not-too-special turn. In revisiting it, the developers have transformed this final turn into an excellent set-piece that really lets the track stand on its own. Still, Lakeside Park would have been the better of the two to bring to the Booster Course Pass. Fingers crossed it shows up in one of the final two waves.

[caption id="attachment_368375" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

6. Bangkok Rush (MKT)

Bangkok Rush is a wonderful addition from Mario Kart Tour that offers up some of the most challenging turns I’ve seen yet in this DLC collection. Like all of the city courses, it offers up some charming recreations of real locations from Bangkok, including the famous Chao Phraya River and a Talat Rotfai.

The way the developers have incorporated these features into the race is brilliant, but what’s absolutely stunning about this track is how it gives players so many different routes they can take. Each lap will let players go high or stay low in certain sections, and there are benefits to both. Staying low gives you a lot more space to work with, but going high might help you win the race if you can master those corners and tight corridors. This track will be an absolute blast online and I can’t wait to see how players find the best route through it.

[caption id="attachment_368374" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

5. DK Summit (MKWii)

To many, DK Summit is one of the stand-out tracks from Mario Kart Wii. This reimagining of Double Dash’s DK Mountain as a downhill slalom sends racers careening down a snowy snowboard course complete with halfpipes, moguls, and other skiers to get in your way. It’s an absolute blast on 200cc, and it would likely be ranked higher here if my brain would just stop comparing it to Mount Wario, which takes the downhill ski concept and runs with it to places this track never could.

Still, I appreciate the changes the developers have made to the track, including reducing the width of it in many spots, because, like a lot of the tracks from Mario Kart Wii, the original was way too wide. That said, I do wish the snow in the final section would have kept its original size because now it's too easy for players to skip using the halfpipe altogether.

[caption id="attachment_368382" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

4. Mario Circuit (MKDS)

Are there other tracks from Mario Kart DS I would rather have seen in this wave? Of course. We still don’t have Airship Fortress or Delfino Square. But prior to racing through this in Wave 4, I had completely forgotten what Mario Circuit looked like in that game. It’s a highly forgettable track, which is why I’m so impressed with the glow-up it’s received with its appearance in the Booster Course Pass.

The best features of the track are still here, namely the fireball-spitting piranha plants, but an entire section of this course has been reimagined as a serene forest. It’s truly stunning to race through this track, and I love the addition of the sleeping Wiggler that wakes up and starts stomping around on the final lap. Maybe I’m being a bit too generous with this placement, but there is something so relaxing about this track that I can’t help but love it.

[caption id="attachment_368376" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

3. Singapore Speedway (MKT)

Singapore Speedway is the opposite of relaxing. This is a full-throttle race with an incredible sense of verticality that’ll have players gliding across the neon-lit cityscape. Like with Bangkok Rush, the way the track incorporates the sights of the city into the race is stunning. In the first lap, you’ll go flying to the top of the Marina Bay Sands resort and race in its rooftop pool.

The second lap includes a stunning and drift-friendly drive through a glowing Chinatown while the final lap sends racers careening on the city’s Gardens by the Bay. I would have ranked this track a spot higher, but the final lap does go on a bit longer than it should with a second trip to Chinatown. But beyond that, this is one of the best Mario Kart Tour tracks to make the jump to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

[caption id="attachment_368381" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

2. Waluigi Stadium (MK:DD)

Like with Mario Circuit, there are other tracks I would have rather seen from Mario Kart: Double Dash in this wave of DLC, including the outstanding Wario Colosseum or Mushroom City. But that doesn’t mean I’m not excited to see Waluigi Stadium back on my television screen. In fact, the changes made to the course improve it over its previous appearances in Double Dash and as a classic track in Mario Kart Wii. Waluigi’s Stadium has seen some much-needed renovations and the new nighttime setting is exactly what this course needs. The addition of two raised sections, one at the end of the halfpipe and one right before the final jump of the course, creates new opportunities for players to take the lead in the extremely tight races. It’s a solid addition, and I’m happy we didn’t have to wait for this one to show up in Mario Kart Tour before it was added here.

[caption id="attachment_368378" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

1. Yoshi’s Island (MK8DBCP)

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. It’s not every track that receives its own article written by Chris Carter. But when a track is this good, it deserves to be celebrated as much as possible. Yoshi’s Island is easily the best track we’ve seen in the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass. It is a brilliant reimagining of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island as a Mario Kart track, and the way the developers have incorporated so many things from that game and its sub-series sequels into the race should be celebrated. In fact, my jaw dropped for a good 45 seconds the first time I realized I could trigger the secret red path at the end of the track and jump through the flower ring. It’s a brilliant design with so many wonderful small features that I can’t help but love it. In both design and personality, Yoshi’s Island is a winner.

And hey, if we can get a track based on this Mario spin-off, maybe we can get a track based on one of the Wario titles. I mean, could you imagine Warioware or Wario Land: Shake It! as a Mario Kart track?

_{[This review is based on a retail version of the DLC purchased by the reviewer.]}

The post Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Wave 4 reviewed and ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

Ring my (Cross)Bell

Last year, NIS America made a Legend of Heroes fan out of me with the release of Trails from Zero, the first part of the Crossbell Arc of the greater Trails storyline. I found it to be a fascinating RPG with an outstanding narrative and gameplay structure that positioned the title as some sort of "playable police procedural". While overly talkative (and a bit ugly on the PS4), Trails from Zero ended up as one of my favorite games from last year.

Chances are I’ll be saying the same thing about Trails to Azure when we finally get through 2023.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure (PC, PS4 [reviewed], Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Falcom
Publisher: NIS America
Released: March 14, 2023
MSRP: $39.99 (Digital) / $49.99 (Physical)

Returning to the city-state of Crossbell in this direct sequel to The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero, Trails to Azure continues with the exploits of Lloyd Bannings, Elie MacDowell, and the rest of the Special Support Section (SSS) as they work against the odds in a city that is brimming with corruption. If you missed out on Trails from Zero, know that Azure generally expects players to come into it with first-hand knowledge of the events of the previous title. While there is a glossary that'll give you the gist, to really understand what's happening here, you should set aside 45 hours to play through the Zero before giving this a go.

Trails to Azure begins just a month after the events of the previous game, with the SSS attempting to maintain the fragile peace the denizens of Crossbell are enjoying. While corruption still looms large in the government, you get the sense that it's somewhat more manageable this time around. That is, until the West Zumeria Trade Conference abruptly changes the direction of this city-state's future, and not necessarily for the better.

As it was with Trails from Zero, the story of Azure will play out across several chapters that all feel like their own little episodes, with stories and characters that tie into the greater narrative. It's just as effective here, and solving the small cases that are assigned to the SSS each day only strengthens the procedural feel of this story structure as well as the already strong world-building. I adore RPGs that are massive, world-spanning adventures, but there is something so refreshing about playing a game where it's all localized to one incredible location. Especially when the story is this good.

Because of that, don't be surprised if you get a sense of deja vu in Trails to Azure. You'll be exploring many of the same locations and having way-too-long conversations with most of the same people throughout Crossbell. You'll also be engaging in combat pretty much exactly as you did before, with your team doing battle in a turn-based, grid-based format. Characters can attack with standard melee attacks, arts, crafts, and powerful S-Craft and Combo Crafts that unlock as you progress through the game. Crafts are dictated by the quartz you have assigned to each character, and new this time around is a Master Quartz that can level up with your characters (albeit very slowly).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcH5RXuZeh4

Also new is the Burst Guage, which fills up during certain battles and rewards your team with various buffs should you choose to use it. Its availability is limited to specific encounters and the final chapter, but when it's around, I would consider it to be a lifesaver. Because some of these battles are pretty damn difficult if, like me, you grow absentminded in properly equipping your team and upgrading your quartz. Looking back to the tough time I had with the last few battles in Trails from Zero, I kind of wish Burst could have been retroactively added to the SSS's first outing in Crossbell.

Speaking of the SSS, you'll have access to six party members for the majority of your excursion this time around. A new element in Azure are back attacks, which force your rear-guard characters into battle if an enemy attacks you from behind. It's a neat idea meant to keep players on their toes, but it only really came into play in the game's final chapter. For the rest of my journey, I was easily able to sneak up on foes on the field map, getting the advantage over them in battle. Of course, you do have the option to skip most of the map entirely with the new orbal car that'll whisk your team between locations, but it's probably best to head out on foot at least once for each path to open all the chests that are scattered across the land.

Beyond that, there really isn't much to say here that I couldn't have already said about Trails from Zero. Because at its core, Trails to Azure is just a simple continuation of that excellent RPG. And that's all it needs to be. I know many in the games journalism sphere tout the importance of innovation and divergence when it comes to sequels and franchises, but developers don't always need to try and reinvent the wheel with each game they release. Sometimes, more of the same is exactly what is needed. And The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is more of the same in the best possible way.

Before Trails from Zero, I didn't know anything about the Legend of Heroes series outside of the fact that people really like to complain about how text-heavy its titles are. And while the Crossbell arc could certainly use an editor in my mind, I would be fooling myself if I didn't admit that, when taken together as one complete experience, Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure are easily one of the best turn-based RPGs I've ever played. Here's to hoping someday I'll be able to find the time to see the rest of what this series has to offer.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure appeared first on Destructoid.