DLCs are a bit like a second slice of pie. If the first slice was good, do you really need more? And if the first slice was mid, will the second make it better? Especially with a well-received game, fans have come to expect DLC. But often it disappoints, either by being too short or feeling superfluous. Then there’s the difficult choice of how players will access the new content. Make it available to everyone and veteran players will complain, but make it dependent on finishing some major portion of the base game, and you lock out potential new fans (and income). FromSoftware has always been masters of DLC. With Shadow of the Erdtree, they have released what is likely the best DLC for any game, ever. Hyperbole? Maybe, maybe not.

Shadow of the Erdtree is the first — and certainly only — expansion for 2022’s Elden Ring. Playing a FromSoft game has always been like solving a Rubik’s cube covered in thorns. Beating it becomes an obsession, but at the cost of bloody hands. In many ways, Elden Ring gave the player optional padded gloves to wear, and it opened the door to millions of players. It could be said that Shadow of the Erdtree takes those gloves completely off. While it makes hefty demands, however, it pays equally hefty rewards. The challenge is back, baby.

The Question of Difficulty

When it was revealed that the DLC was gated behind a pair of late-game — though optional — bosses, some casual players were resigned to never playing it (only 62% of Elden Ring players had reached the required boss). Others scrambled to complete the basic requirements. But FromSoft knew its core audience. After over two years, the developer assumed that most dedicated players had beaten the game, often several timers over. The core fans were more than ready for new and heftier challenges. 

And challenge it delivered. To the point where the chorus of “it’s too difficult” became hard for FromSoftware to ignore. So, the developer did something rare in its history. Miyazaki and company tweaked the balance post-launch. They made the DLC-only upgrade system even more helpful to players in the early hours of the game.

FromSoft games have never just been about skill or gear, however. Lack one, and you can rely on the other to see you through. Shadow of the Erdtree’s enemies — especially bosses — are often immensely challenging. As always, players with a mastery of mechanics will have the easiest — though not easy — time. But anyone with high-level gear and a smart combination of weapons, armor, and enhancements can muscle through. Shadow of the Erdtree drops some amazing new weapons, too. They’ll change things up in the base game’s PvP community for sure. 

Smart Quality of Life Improvements

Shadow of the Erdtree gives fans both long-requested improvements to the game as well as QOL changes they didn’t even know they wanted. Most of these transfer to the base game as well. First and foremost is the ability to quickly identify new loot. After two years, a player’s inventory is a bulging treasure chest of stuff that can take a long time to scroll through. Shadow of Erdtree tags new acquisitions, making it easy to find that shiny new weapon or talisman. It’s a small thing but much appreciated.

Difficulty scaling in the DLC is handled in a way that rewards high-level players without punishing those with minimum stats. Rather than change the stats on enemies, the game generously doles out two optional items that increase both offensive and defensive player stats. Use the items and the game gets a little easier. But players can opt to not use them and keep the challenge dialed to max. This system doesn’t carry back into the base game. As noted, since release the developer has made the upgrade system even more useful to struggling players.

Lore and narrative are often ignored, but in FromSoftware games, they are nearly always guides to where to go next and what to do. Players of Elden Ring complained that the story signposting was a bit too obtuse. That’s a shame, because the mythic, multi-layered story in Elden Ring is haunting and tragic. 

The story and progression in Shadow of the Erdtree are more clearly designated by a series of crosses, each with a bit of lore and NPCs with helpful maps. Of course, players who couldn’t care less about why they’re there and the backstory of the bosses can still have plenty of hack-and-slash fun. As always, there is a world of hidden content for players to stumble upon. 

Matter of Size and Scope

A lot of DLCs are small chapters of added content that can be completed in a couple of hours. They offer up a new area, a handful of new enemies or weapons, and call it good.

As befits FromSoftware’s sprawling masterpiece of Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree is longer than the majority of action games, clocking in at a minimum of 30-40 hours. What’s not apparent from the map is that most zones have several vertical layers, underground dungeons, and hidden areas, so that the explorable map is much bigger than it already appears. Of course, just like the main game, Shadow of the Erdtree is filled with a huge amount of visual and artistic variety and environmental contrast.

While the DLC naturally recycles some enemy types from Elden Ring, it also includes well over 100 new bosses, dozens of new weapons, spells, incantations, and armor. It’s a great way to refresh the experience of the main game, as all of the new gear can be brought back into the base game to mix up familiar PvP play and make new game + runs more interesting. Generous is a serious understatement.

Nothing’s perfect, of course. Shadow of the Erdtree has a few performance problems and graphical quirks. The difficulty curve is a bit binary: either pretty easy or very difficult, with less middle ground than the base game. 

But small issues aside, Shadow of the Erdtree is everything FromSoftware fans were hoping for. Huge, complex, and challenging, Shadow of the Erdtree does what few DLCs accomplish. It gives the player a rewarding new experience by itself and enriches and even improves the base game. Yes, the wait was agony, but the reward is sweet. Like every FromSoft game, it raises the bar for other developers daring to release sub-par DLC.

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Although I’m several decades out of my teens, I can remember at least a little of what it was like. While the slang and tech have changed, navigating the treacherous waters of interpersonal relationships is still fraught with confusion and heartache. Joy, sorrow, and dashed hopes exchange places moment by moment. Then there’s the whole matter of finding meaning and direction. That formative and perplexing time forms the backdrop for Until Then, an interactive visual novel. But there are bigger themes and deeper mysteries than who is dating whom, and I’ll do my best not to spoil them.

B-Ball, Book Reports, and Crushes

Set in a fictionalized version of the present-day Philippines, Until Then’s main protagonist is Mark, a high school kid with more talent than ambition. Mark is the kind of kid who puts off school work until the last minute, risking the failure of his group’s presentation and the ire of Louise, a brainy, high-achieving classmate on whom he has a crush. Mark and Louise’s immediate friend group includes Cathy, a close friend of Mark who also has set her sights on Louise. In one series of scenes, we meet Louise’s secret best friend, the impetuous Sophia. We also learn that Louise has a secret boyfriend, an older student, and a budding rock star. For a moment, everyone’s romantic longings are dashed.

That all sounds pretty banal. Honestly, it takes some time for Until Then to pick up a little steam. However, by the end of the game’s first chapter, I was solidly invested in the characters. It was around this time that there were hints that things were not quite right. One character’s memories didn’t square with others, that kind of thing. As the narrative mysteries evolved, so did the characters, backgrounds, and their relationships.

Obviously, teens can be cruel, heartless, and unsympathetic. By and large, the kids at the center of Until Then are appealing, open-hearted, and aware that actions have consequences. I wish I could say more about the plot, but surprise and discovery are at the heart of the game. For a title in this genre, Until Then is a substantial game, clocking in at well over a dozen hours.

Point-and-Text Adventure

As engaging as its characters and story are, Until Then also plays with the visual novel format in a memorable way. A great deal of the dialogue is presented through real-time text chats that feel authentic and contemporary. While the text exchanges contain all the slang, erasures, and edits we’re used to, the teens in Until Then are considerably more literate, witty, and grammatically correct than their real-life counterparts. I suspect the Philippine education system might be to thank. As an aside, the game allows the player to “input” the pre-written texts in a way that’s a bit more immersive. Like any dialogue-based game, there are choices to be made, though I’m not sure how they impact the overall narrative. 

Aside from the texts, the story is mostly delivered through unvoiced dialogue, which means over a dozen hours of reading. Recognizing this can end up feeling repetitive, Until Then takes the format of a 2.5D action game, action being a very relative term for walking from place to place. There are also some simple mini-games, like a timed slider game to pick up fish balls from a street food cart. From buying a subway ticket to waking Mark with his alarm clock, these mundane tasks help bring the player into the character’s world. This becomes important later when the story begins to develop in more surprising ways. Still, don’t expect a lot of rewarding platforming or combat. Until Then is a visual novel, after all. For the player with a lot of time, there are a ton of optional interactions with NPCs and the environment. 

Move It Along

I have a couple of minor gripes about Until Then’s narrative mechanics. First, the game is too long by a couple of hours. I think this excess mostly comes from dialogue and texts that simply drag on a bit past their points of interest. There were a few times in the opening hours when I really wanted to move the story along. But then a new character or story development hooked me back in. 

Until Then has a retro, pixel art style that’s colorful and inviting. It took me a while to warm up to it, to be honest. I’m just a little tired of the aesthetic. However, the art is much more expressive and sophisticated than I originally gave it credit for, and the use of depth and detail kept the visuals interesting. There’s just enough visual information to portray emotion, and in this case, the reference to games fits the story naturally. The cities and countryside of the Philippines form a visually and culturally unique backdrop that integrates into the story without ever feeling artificial. 

Sound On

Any game without spoken dialogue depends that much more on sound design and music. Mark is a budding — if inconsistent — pianist, and his attitudes towards practice and music reflect larger emotional moments. Both Until Then’s musical score and diegetic music are well done and varied with the shifting moods of the story. The sounds of the environment, city noises, and nature are carefully crafted.

My feelings about Until Then evolved the longer I played. What at first seemed like a slow-paced visual novel with retro graphics gradually began to reveal itself as something much more sophisticated. Excellent character development and a surprising, emotionally varied narrative are at the heart of Until Then, but its storytelling mechanics are fresh and contemporary, too. Mark and his gang have interesting stories to tell, and so does Until Then.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

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A little over a year ago, I reviewed Warhammer 40K: Boltgun. Although built in a recent iteration of the Unreal engine, Boltgun hid its technical chops under a retro, classic Doom-style veneer. That wasn’t the only reference to old-school shooters. Everything from the flow of combat to the weapon effects felt like an homage. You could even adjust the level of pixelation from relatively smooth to super chunky. I had a great time. So I had high expectations for Forges of Corruption.

Forges of Corruption is the first DLC for Warhammer 40K: Boltgun, and if you enjoyed the base game, you’re in luck with the add-on. It bolts on (pun intended) a hefty new chapter and a handful of levels. Although it isn’t exactly standalone, Forges of Corruption is available after players have spent a fairly small amount of time in the main game.

Story Lite

No one comes to a Warhammer 40K shooter for the deep and nuanced narrative. There’s a little more to it, but the basics are: you’re a Space Marine named Malum Caedo, and your job is to stop Chaos from destroying the planet Graia. The DLC adds to the story but the objectives remain the same. Kill everything that moves.

To that straightforward end, most of the weapons from the main game reappear and there are two, beefy additions. The Missile Launcher’s name proves to be reliably accurate, with an impressive explosion when it hits the target. The Multi-Melta hits groups of enemies with a fiery, face-melting area-of-effect blast. Both weapons could be inheritors of Doom’s infamous BFG.

Enemies from the base game return in often overwhelming numbers. There are three new elite foes: the Terminator, the Helbrute, and the Havoc. As before, what Boltgun lacks in nuance it makes up for in crazy, chaotic battles that can — at the higher difficulties — be brutal. One of the base game’s minor flaws was its repetitive reliance on enemy counts to bolster the challenge. Unfortunately, Forges of Corruption hasn’t fixed this problem. The final battle is ridiculously long and borderline unfair.

Buttery

Forges of Corruption retains the same, smooth performance and fluid controls of the original. Once again it feels like classic shooters as we remember them, not as they actually ran. The soundtrack, weapon effects, and voice work are pure metal Warhammer 40K.

By popular demand, the developers have included a new Horde mode. It’s just the player against waves of beloved Warhammer 40K enemies, with each wave highlighting a new weapon. It’s a lot of fun for a while, but keeping the action in a confined space — no matter how well designed — and bound to a gameplay loop works against long-term enjoyment.

Everything that made Warhammer 40K: Boltgun a refreshing return to Doom-era shooter vibes is there in Forces of Corruption as well. The new weapons, enemies, and environments are seamless additions to the base game. A year later, a bit of the novelty has disappeared but like the base game, Forces of Corruption reminds us of simpler times when games had modest ambitions and a focus on fun above all.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

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On gamers’ radar for several years, Drova: Forsaken Kin is soon to be officially released. Fans of classic action RPGs are excited to get their hands on the final product. For the unfamiliar, Drova is a pixel art, isometric RPG with Souslike action mechanics and a fantasy setting that’s pure sword and sorcery. I had the opportunity to spend some time with a section of the game pre-release and came away intrigued.

Could It Be Magic

In the game’s opening cinematic, we learn that the Druids in our generally peace-loving land have found a magic crystal. It may or may not open a portal to another dimension, which goes by many names familiar to mythology, like Elysium. Your character follows a pair of Druids into the forest, where one of them is attacked by monsters and killed. After being attacked yourself, you find yourself in a mysterious new landscape.

What follows are the staples of ARPGs: exploration, combat, and crafting. While the slice I played didn’t contain the complete narrative, it’s clear that your goals are to help broker peace and understanding between different factions and even different dimensions. Along the way, you meet a very large cast of NPCs. Some want to help you, others need assistance, and more than a few are outright hostile.

Drova takes some inspiration from classic RPGs and games like Gothic, which brought together mysticism and sword-and-board combat. Drova doesn’t entirely escape Soulslike influences, either. Light and heavy attacks, blocking, parrying, and dodging are all in the mix. Ranged combat and magic are part of the formula, too.

Fog of War

Drova’s mechanics generally work as expected. You gather healing plants and crafting materials, pocket coins for later, and snag weapons from out in the wild. To learn spells and upgrade weapons, you need to find teachers and other NPCs, many of whom are not entirely neutral to the narrative. There’s a skill tree to unlock. In other words, players with even a passing familiarity with fantasy RPGs will feel comfortable and at home.

At least in the demo I played, the cinematic was still voiced in German (which actually perfectly fit the tone of the visuals), and there is no spoken dialogue in the game. There is, however, quite a bit of written dialogue and text. Most of it is pretty expository in the way games tend to be. That said, there’s a bit of profanity and a little color and personality here and there.

For many players, Drova’s pixel art will be a draw. For me, it was a slightly mixed bag. On one hand, the monster design and combat were both surprisingly effective, given their self-imposed graphical limitations. The world is by turn inviting, colorful and moody. On the other hand, the player character and NPCs were so blobby that real personalities couldn’t come through.

My last and biggest issue was the way the pixel art limitations impacted moving through the environment. It was often difficult to discern elevation changes or critical paths. While the game might be an “open world,” nearly every area is a maze of walls or other impediments. It creates a — perhaps intentional — feeling of claustrophobia.

On the Horizon

Despite a few negatives common to in-development games from smaller developers, Drova: Forsaken Kin manages to check several important boxes. As RPGs go, it’s appropriately deep and allows for a lot of variety in combat and character builds. Combat is fun and often very challenging. The intersection of ancient magic, bits of world mythology, and familiar fantasy adds texture to the narrative.

It’s clear that the developers have a clear vision for their game and have spent the last few years focused on refining the experience. I look forward to seeing what the complete game has to offer when it releases this year on PC, Switch, and consoles.

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I love survival crafting games, whether they’re “realistic” or more fanciful. There’s something relaxing and orderly about building a shelter from sticks and stones, taming the flora and fauna, and living to see another dawn. I think that games in the genre probably tap into a very deeply rooted instinct. One of the downsides of many survival games is that they’re very labor-intensive. You often have to do everything yourself. But what if you didn’t? What if you could entice others to do your dirty work? That’s the premise of ASKA.

ASKA is part of a recent tsunami of survival crafting games and even has a Viking/Norse setting similar to other games in the genre like Valheim. ASKA tasks one to four players with creating a thriving community and a large labor force that is relatively autonomous, once set in motion. In other words, ASKA adds a layer of being a middle manager to survival and crafting. Minus the office politics.

Start Slow

For the first several hours, at least, ASKA doesn’t necessarily innovate on the survival crafting formula. You have three basic needs — hunger, thirst, and temperature — to satisfy. So, naturally, you gather the basics like berries, stones and sticks, plant fibers, and potable water. Night falls and you build a warming fire. From there, you climb the expected tree of crafting sophistication by building better tools to gather better resources and build better shelters.

In this phase, ASKA gives the player some welcome quality-of-life tools. You can press a key to highlight otherwise hidden resources and there are plenty of pop-up tips and goals. Laying down even basic shelters and early buildings is easy and flexible, provided you have the resources. You can’t alter the aesthetics of your lean-to, but you can rotate it and find the optimal position in the landscape.

At the same time, ASKA also adds a bit of complication. Trees can’t simply be harvested, but processed into different components, fires require a steady stream of fuel, and crafting anything but the basics is a multi-stage affair. In the background, the animal needs of hunger and thirst demand attention. The first few hours of ASKA might feel slow to some. For others, the meticulous pacing and process will be exactly right.

We’re Hiring

If that was all there was to ASKA, it would probably get lost in the crowd, because while it’s pretty polished for an early-access game, those aspects are nothing new. In ASKA you gather another, magical resource called Jotun stones. Eventually, you create a beacon of sorts, fueled by Jotun, that summons recruitable workers to your growing little camp. Immediately you can assign these recruits to do some basic tasks, leaving you to move on to the next level of crafting or gathering.

Your new employees are not drones. They have the same needs as you have, and distinct preferences. Some prefer to work at night, others prefer daytime labor. This results in a balancing act. Those folks working under the hot sun will need water, for example. Fail to meet their needs or respect their preferences, and your disgruntled workforce will leave. Eventually — and again, this is a slow, patient process — you can expand your small settlement into a much more complex collection of buildings and a much larger, more specialized, and autonomous NPC workforce.

Unlike Valheim and several other games in the genre, ASKA is not PvP-focused. In fact, there is no PvP component at all. Instead, ASKA invites and encourages cooperative play with up to four players. Even one other human team member early on can change the slightly glacial pace of the first few hours.

Optimal Experience

Although there is no PvP combat, there is the threat of animal and supernatural foes that can play havoc with or even kill your villagers. You can build a community that is more focused on combat, which seems to increase the amount of severity of monster attacks. Or, you can maintain a minimal force of warriors that serve as protection from the occasional skeleton and wolf encounters.

On a scale of photorealism to outright stylized art, ASKA is definitely on the realistic side, though character models could use some refinement. The environments are lush and detailed and the lighting, day, night and night cycles and weather look great. The music is relatively understated but helps fill the sonic landscape in those early, lonely hours.

Although there are plenty of options for adjusting the graphics and audio, there aren’t a lot of ways to customize things like resource density or overall difficulty. For an early access title, ASKA ran at a pretty consistent 90fps, with a few graphical hiccups but no show-stoppers.

Employee Satisfaction

Apart from the villager recruitment aspects, ASKA is a well-made survival crafting game that comes into its own with friends. The NPC workforce mechanic is the real and literal game changer, however, and allows ASKA to stand apart from other games in the genre. No matter how you play it, ASKA favors patient, meticulous players with a love of detail and process. I guess I must be in that category. I enjoyed my time with ASKA and look forward to seeing it develop.

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Astor: Blade of the Monolith is the game equivalent of fast food. There are better, more satisfying, and original options out there, but it gets the job done. It’s an attractive, colorful, and pleasant enough action RPG, just don’t expect much more than surface-level enjoyment. 

Astor might not be a game you’ll obsessively return to, plumbing its depths and variety, but playing it is fun enough. Astor rings many nostalgic bells, especially for somewhat older gamers with fond memories of their PS2s. Its gameplay is a little basic, and its story is a little undercooked but that doesn’t translate into a bad time any more than it did back in the day. And it certainly looks worlds’ better than any PS2 or 3 game ever did. 

Another Day, Another World to Save

OK, enough prologue. Told through a well-voiced narrator but no spoken dialogue, Astor is about a hero trying to save one group of people from the threat of monsters while uncovering the mysteries surrounding why he has been chosen. If that sounds to you like the story setup for literally every action RPG ever, you’re right. The question is whether Astor (the game) spins the tale in a new way. 

Astor begins his journey exploring some archeological ruins on the planet Gliese before falling onto a newly discovered sword, a magical weapon that he uses to fight through the tutorial level, learn the game’s basic moves, and reach the open world. The tutorial teaches Astor some familiar ARPG mechanics like light and heavy attacks, blocks, parries, and roll dodges. Dark Souls it isn’t. There’s a bit of sluggishness to Astor’s movement, but landing a good hit or parry is pretty satisfying, and the Runic Swarm special abilities are fun to use. One thing players will want to change immediately is the weirdly atypical button assignment on controllers to another, more familiar option.

The player learns that the Diokek — the race of magical creatures to which Astor belongs — is under threat from creatures called the Hiltsik. The Diokek live in a cozy hub village and area called Crystal Haven. Overall, Astor’s art design is one of its strengths. The colorful, varied landscapes and masked creatures strike a balance between literal detail and cartoony cuteness. Some of the game is more open-world, allowing Astor to freely explore. Other sections are a bit more linear in design. There’s plenty of variety in the world. 

A Mechanic by Any Other Name

Nearly every action RPG uses narrative quests to guide the player to the next combat encounter or encourage exploration. For many players, the story takes a distant back seat to wailing on enemies. That’s certainly true of Astor, which guides the player on a series of pretty standard kill-and-fetch quests out in the world. Translation: don’t expect a ton of innovation in Astor’s quest design. While nearly all the environments are attractive to look at, some of them are pretty empty of content.

Astor: Blade of the Monolith doesn’t have a lot of original ideas. It borrows and refashions mechanics from other ARPGs, but mostly the grab-bag of systems work together well. Aside from the expected melee weapons, ranged weapons, and magic, Astor can use an ability to see the world through a magic lens. This allows Astor to see hidden paths, doors and solve environmental puzzles. It’s a cool idea, maybe not totally original, but implemented well.

Impatient or experienced ARPG players will balk at Astor’s deliberate pace, especially at the beginning. Following the tutorial, the game takes its sweet time in the narrative-heavy hub area before sending the player back out into the world. On one hand, it makes players attend to the story and lore. On the other hand, antsy players will be incentivized to just click through it.

Target Audience

I’ve focused a lot on the theme of Astor’s reliance on established tropes, but sometimes a comfortingly familiar game with pleasant aesthetics and appealing action totally fits the bill. Although I reviewed it on PC, I can see Astor: Blade of the Monolith being perfectly at home on the Switch.

Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a great introduction to the Soulslike mechanics that dominate ARPGs right now. I can see it appealing to younger or novice gamers. It’s family-friendly, colorful, and pretty satisfying to play. More hardcore action fans will probably find it too familiar and not quite as polished as their favorites. Overall, Astor: Blade of the Monolith brings together a collection of tried-and-true mechanics in a pretty satisfying way.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

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Depending on who you talk to, you’ll hear that the video game industry is in some degree of serious trouble. Studios get closed without warning, there are hundreds of layoffs and big projects are failing right and left. On the other hand, passion and creativity are still in abundance. As always, the indie and small studio scene continues to produce innovative, imaginative games. I had the chance to preview this year’s Summer Game Fest Day of the Devs presentation. I saw over 20 upcoming titles, and while I can’t preview them all, here are a handful that really stood out. That said, every game was interesting and deserving of attention.

Zoochosis (developer: Clapperheads)

The vast majority of games at Day of the Devs were characterized by stylized art, but Zoochosis stood out for its interesting premise and rich, detailed, and gruesome graphics. Zoochosis is like a marriage between a first-person horror game and a zoo management sim. In Zoochosis, you’re trying to find the cure for some sort of infection that is mutating the zoo animals into varying degrees of monstrous. There are also some basic sim tasks like feeding the animals and supervising breeding programs.

Building Relationships (developer: Tanat Boozayaangool)

The developer describes Building Relationships as “a weird, yet charming game. It’s hilarious at moments, while oddly contemplative at others. It’s daring, it’s queer, but also very stupid.” Born out of a 4-hour game jam, Building Relationships is sort of a chill dating and exploration sim, but with houses. You play as a house looking for love, exploring an island, and developing friendship and love connections with other structures like apartment buildings. Building Relationships stood out as one of the quirkier games at the show.

Koira (developer: Studio Tolima)

If, like me, you’re a sucker for games about animals (see Zoochosis above), you’ll want to check out Koira. In Koira, the player will “traverse a musical forest, solve ancient puzzles, meet woodland creatures, and try to find your way home.” It’s a 2D action-adventure game about rescuing a lost puppy in a magical, dangerous forest. With appealing, stylized art and an enchanting musical score, Koira is not entirely without some tension, as kidnappers and other forest dangers threaten the puppy. There is no dialogue, relying entirely on visuals, music, and gameplay to tell the story.

While Waiting (developer: Optiullsion Games)

We all spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen. You know, like standing in line at the DMV or picking up luggage at baggage claim. While Waiting asks the question, “What if you could turn that boring time into bits of imaginative play?” Told through attractive line art, While Waiting focuses on a single character through several stages of life like childhood, adolescence, and midlife. It places the character in over 100 situations where they have to wait and then asks them to fill their time creatively. It’s a bit like a puzzle game but without the fail state. I think While Waiting probably reminds us that every moment is an opportunity for discovery.

After Love (developer: Pikselnesia)

After Love is a mixture of narrative adventure, dating sim, and rhythm games with a richly emotional story and an attractive anime-influenced art style. Indonesian developer Pikselnesia describes how the player “players will take control of Rama, a young musician who has recently lost his girlfriend Cinta to illness. But Rama is having trouble moving on. That’s because he’s been hearing Cinta’s voice in his head, every day since she passed away, narrating his every waking moment.” With music by the Indonesian band L’alphalpha and set in modern-day Jakarta, After Love looks intriguing.

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If you’ve been playing video games for any length of time, you know that the popularity of genres waxes and wanes. Once upon a time, everything was a platformer. For a while, Diablo-style ARPGs dominated developers’ ideas. Currently, it seems like every other game is either a Soulslike or a survival and crafting clone. Serum, now in early access, falls into that latter category, but it has enough new ideas to make it stand out.

Timer Tension

Serum is a first-person survival/crafting action game that also has strong Chernobylite or S.T.A.L.K.E.R vibes in its setting and premise. Without going anywhere near spoilers, you play as a research scientist who wakes to find himself in a landscape corrupted by a poisonous blight. As is the way in these stories, the blight has churned and turned everything in the world into either dangerous monsters or useful scavenge, without much middle ground. Your task is to survive, figure out the story beats, and escape to your patiently waiting family, complete with a sickly child. You know, just to tug a little harder on the heartstrings and raise the tension.

The game’s big hook is that there’s a drug called serum that will stave off the effects of the blight, but only for a short period. You have a surgically implanted timer on your arm that ticks down after every serum injection. If it runs out, game (literally) over. The serum also has its own negative effects, so back at home base you need to purge your system of both blight and serum.

Most survival crafting games make the player pay attention to bodily functions like hunger, thirst, and sleep. In Serum, the main focus is on constantly injecting doses of serum and the omnipresent timer. Serum does double duty by having different crafted forms and formulas that come with additional powers, status effects, or benefits. Having to satiate hunger on top of the pressure of serum’s limited effectiveness would be too much. The upgraded serums often come with a tradeoff of power versus effective length.

Junkyard Dog

While the serum’s protective power starts on a ridiculously short, five-minute timer, one of the goals is to upgrade it to last longer. Eventually, the player can venture out for longer periods before heading back to a base station. Some players have complained that the constant pressure to take serum is annoying. Maybe, but it’s also the game’s biggest hook. Without it, Serum would be a pretty standard survival title.

Like the majority of games in the genre, the player takes increasingly longer and more dangerous trips away from the base, looking for materials and exploring. There are useful bits and bobs everywhere, from plants, animal parts, and rotting corpses to piles of discarded junk. Most important tasks beyond the basics are multi-stage assignments. These include collections of scavenging, building, or upgrading machines or equipment and simple environmental puzzles.

Combat plays an important role, too, as animals and monstrous creatures need to be harvested or killed to access new biomes. There are a variety of hand-crafted melee and ranged weapons. Like a lot of Serum at the edges, combat is a little janky and not quite dialed in. One annoyance of Serum’s mechanics is that the serum timer isn’t paused when accessing inventory or other information. Having to leave the game for any length of time means quitting out.

Work to be Done

Built using Unreal Engine 5, Serum looks like the recent game that it is. The blight-tinged, sickly green filter grows a bit repetitive, though later biomes have a wider color palette. On a very high-end PC, the game struggles with consistent frame rates and early access bugs and crashes. What’s kind of strange and a bit off-putting is that there is paid DLC already available, some for items that should probably be in the game. These include a story codex, a guidebook, plus a book of actual drink recipes inspired by the game. There’s something very wrong about paying four bucks to know what the heck the story is really about. Then again, it makes sense because Serum’s narrative and delivery have a lot of holes. There’s a lot of environmental storytelling, but nearly everything is expository and one-dimensional. Maybe the DLC fills in the blanks.

Overall, Serum has an interesting hook, gameplay loop, and a lot of potential. As with so many early-access games, it’s pretty rough around the edges. There are a lot of survival and crafting games, though, so any new one that manages to stand out is welcome.

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For a largely mythical time, place, and character, King Arthur and his court at Avalon have sure generated a lot of books, movies, and stories. It’s not hard to understand why. You’ve got intrigue, magic, knights, and a tenuous connection to actual history. Heck, I’ve been to Tintagel in Cornwall and it’s easy to imagine King Arthur striding through the ruined stone structure. However, the armies of Avalon warring with zombie Roman soldiers was not on my bingo card until I played King Arthur: Legion IX.

Take Your Turn

Legion IX occupies a middle ground between standalone DLC and a full-on sequel to Neocore’s King Arthur: Knight’s Tale. The first game leaned hard into the more arcane aspects of the Arthurian myth. Legion IX takes it even further, with Avalon defending itself against an army of undead Roman warriors. You play as Gaius Julius Mento, who leads a legion of demonic soldiers who recently escaped from the underworld to Avalon. You find the remnants of a Roman colony called Nova Roma and one of your tasks is to rebuild the settlement. Legion IX divides its campaign gameplay into simplified base building, exploration, gathering, and turn-based combat. If you played King Arthur: Knight’s Tale, you’ll be well prepared. If you didn’t, brace yourself for a learning curve and some trial and error.

Unlike some games in this genre, you don’t swap party members in and out but level up a consistent squad of up to six heroes, each with various loads out and utilities in combat. There’s no permadeath for your party members. If they die, they simply re-animate after the battle. One of the best and most rewarding aspects of Legion IX is the leveling and abilities system. Each hero has six active skills, nine passive skills, and a special skill, so there’s a ton of build variety to play with.

Once in combat, Legion IX plays like many similar, grid-based CRPGs. You have movement and action points, though AP can be used for positioning as well. You move all your players during each turn, then the enemy moves. There are several difficulty options, but even at a moderate level, there’s quite a challenge.

Outside of Combat

Combat is the crunchy core of Legion IX. In addition to building up Nova Roma with typical support structures that you’ll use to upgrade gear or your team, the campaign’s narrative takes place on an overworld map, where you pick the next mission. There are occasional branching choices but by and large, the campaign is pretty linear. The base game had a pretty nuanced morality system. In contrast, choices in Legion IX come down to good versus evil. Once in the field, your party will explore, solve some environmental puzzles, search for treasure, and engage in combat, often against much larger forces than your own. The good news is that those large enemy groups are often padded out by expendable, easily dispatched demon soldiers.

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The mission maps themselves are compact but full of little secrets and hidden loot. The battles themselves move quickly and, as long as your party isn’t completely wiped, even a last-man-standing victory levels everyone up. The environments themselves are a bit visually drab, desaturated, and generic, but do offer a lot of options in terms of party placement. Like the best tactical turn-based games, Legion IX requires a fair amount of planning and smart battlefield awareness.

While combat and characters are engaging, the game’s writing and voice acting are pretty disappointing. The cutscenes are well done and voice-acted, but in-game, things are much less impressive. Especially weird is the use of current slang, voiced by generic-sounding actors. It completely ruins the sense of historical time and place. It almost ventures into “so bad, it’s funny” territory. Alas, it doesn’t reach that critical mass and is just distracting.

Take Up Arms

Outside of the script and acting, Legion IX has effective music and audio design. Weapon sounds are crunchy and the music is appropriately styled for the heroic-demonic-magical setting. The game has an admirably large number of difficulty, accessibility, and performance settings. Aside from some pretty long initial load times and a bit of hesitation around response to commands, the game ran well.

Overall, fans of King Arthur: Knight’s Tale will enjoy this DLC expansion. Newcomers starting with Legion IX will need some onboarding. The game’s core combat remains challenging, interesting, and fun, even if the narrative and writing are disappointing. As a fan of Arthurian legends and history — and more importantly, tactical turn-based RPGs — I had a good time on the battlefields of Avalon.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

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Did you ever feel like your life was a play, and you were just an actor reading the same lines over and over, day in and day out? Yeah, me neither. Actually, I imagine we’ve all had that feeling of stasis, of things not changing. The film Groundhog Day expressed it brilliantly. Now we have Enotria: The Last Song, an upcoming Soulslike in which the inhabitants of an alternative reality Italy are trapped in a play.

Take the Stage

It’s called the Canovaccio, which in Italian literally means a type of play in the commedia dell’arte tradition. As an aside, grab your Italian dictionary. There are a lot of Italian phrases in the game. Sometimes this adds flavor to the narrative and mechanics. Now and then, it adds an unnecessary layer to pretty common ideas.

Enotria: The Last Song is the second Soulslike to embrace commedia dell’arte elements. Lives of P featured commedia visual motifs and some theatrical references, but Enotria really dives deeper into its theatrical foundation. The Canovaccio has enthralled the land, and everyone is essentially an actor endlessly repeating their scenes and lines. You play as the Maskless One, and your task is to defeat the Authors and free everyone from the play.

Because your role in the play is not assigned, you’re free to don different commedia-influenced masks. Each mask changes your character’s overall “class,” so you can instantly switch from a tanky fighter to a rogue-like swordsman. You can also change between loadouts on the fly. The mask system is probably Enotria’s most interesting innovation.

Familiar Stagecraft

Aside from the mask mechanic, Enotria sticks pretty closely to well-worn Soulslike conventions, albeit with new names and slight variations. There are the standard light/heavy/charged attacks, healing “bonfires,” dodge rolls, and parries. Unlike Dark Souls and its brethren, but similar to most action RPGs, there is a skill tree called the Path of Innovators. Players use Ardore to open up magical doors and change the immediate environment. For example, Ardore might reveal hidden platforms or change the floorplan. Sometimes this mechanic feels a bit arbitrary though, like changing a room for no particular reward or reason.

A game in the Soulslike genre by now comes with certain expectations and standards. Does combat feel fair, impactful, and fluid? Is the level of challenge reasonable but accessible? Do all the systems sync together? Being a demo and still several months away from release, none of these are completely dialed in.

Aside from some un-optimized performance and framerate issues, balancing is currently in need of attention. Elite normal enemies are harder to take down than some bosses, and some boss encounters are simply unfair due to mismatched levels or arenas. Level design is not remarkable (aside from the art style) and enemy placement could use some adjustment. These were all issues facing the recent Lords of the Fallen reboot. It took that game several updates to smooth everything out.

Tasty Minestrone

Enotria: The Last Song generally goes out of its way to avoid the dark gothic gloom of most Soulslikes. The sun-drenched Italian countryside is a welcome change and the visual references to Italian theatre traditions and characters are interesting. The developers promise three large regions, millions of build combinations, a 40+ hour experience, and much more. It’s an extremely ambitious goal for a relatively small team.

Aside from the balance issues, combat and exploration in Enotria: The Last Song will feel comfortably familiar but with enough variation to make it interesting. As someone coming from the music and theatre profession, it was cool to see my world represented in a game in some small way. Enotria: The Last Song’s demo showed a game with a lot of promise and some common, still-in-development issues to address before its September release. I look forward to seeing the curtain go up on the final version.

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Little Kitty, Big City is not a Soulslike or action RPG, where you arm a furry feline to the hilt with a growing arsenal of weapons. Although, that’s kind of a cool idea. And it’s not a grueling roguelike, where you only have nine lives, after which, game over and back to the start. Again, cool idea. No, Little Kitty, Big City is a gentle and appealing puzzle platformer. It starts and ends with the premise that cats are delightful, appealing creatures and you’re a monster if you don’t love them.

Homeward Bound

A black cat is taking a nap in the sun. When its luxurious stretch gets out of control, the cat slides from its cozy spot and finds itself at street level, several floors from home. For the next three or so hours, your task is to help the kitty find its way home. That’s the entire narrative if you want to call it that. The titular Little Kitty will never be in any real danger, get hurt, traumatized, and certainly not die.

The Big City isn’t exactly huge, either, more like a comfy inner-city neighborhood. It’s filled with all sorts of ledges, fences, walls, and windows just begging to be investigated. The local animals — dogs, cats, birds, chameleons, just to name a few — are amiable. They often have tasks to perform. It doesn’t take long for the neighborhood to become an enticing playground of opportunity.

Ultimately, the main quest is to get home. Secondarily, the kitty has to eat in order to make more powerful, acrobatic jumps. Finding fish to eat sets off a chain of engaging side quests, like finding 25 shiny objects for a clever crow. None of the quests are frustrating or arduous, but many of them do require some thought and careful observation.

Just Relax Already

Little Kitty, Big City has a gentle sense of humor that most often plays with the foibles of its human and animal characters. For example, there’s a chameleon who thinks its mastery of disguise is much better than it actually is. The cat mayor is annoyed by jelly jars. Little Kitty, Big City isn’t laugh-out-loud funny. But its clever, kind-hearted wit is appealing to all ages.

Any game with a cat protagonist is only as good as the way it reproduces feline movement and behavior. Little Kitty, Big City nails it. The game’s art is stylized and purposefully lacking in detail, but the cat animations are perfect and believable. This game was obviously made by folks who adore cats and other animals. The music easily syncs with the good-natured vibe of the images. It’s a bit jazz-inflected and fills in the space left by voiced dialogue.

A game entirely lacking in drama would be a snore. While the cat is in no mortal danger, there are hazards, inconveniences, and puzzles to add a bit of tension and struggle. I know folks who hate games, movies, or stories where animals are in real harm’s way. They should enjoy Little Kitty, Big City. If anything, the cat purposely trips humans right and left.

Even Cats Trip Now and Then

I only had a few and relatively minor quibbles about Little Kitty, Big City. The first concerns the game’s camera. It had a hard time in small spaces, which there are many of in the game. This meant moving and jumping precisely could be momentarily frustrating. The second issue is the lack of a map. Certainly, the kitty’s world isn’t huge but it would have been great to be reminded of where home actually was and where important “NPCs” were located.

Little Kitty, Big City is one of those rare games that appeal to all ages without dumbing anything down. It’s a short and relaxing romp that will make you appreciate your feline companions that much more. If you love cats you’ll enjoy this game. If you don’t, maybe Little Kitty, Big City will melt your monstrous heart.

***Xbox Series X code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Little Kitty, Big City Review – Feline Looking for Home appeared first on COGconnected.

I’m a fan of portentous (or pretentious, take your pick) action games with rich and challenging combat. But you know, every once in a while it’s great to cleanse the palate with something light, colorful, and simple. I think there’s a word for that: fun. RKGK/Rakugaki fits the bill. It’s fast, fluid, and comes at the player in bite-sized bits. It’s a perfect game to spend a few minutes with or get lost in for much longer.

Tag the World

RKGK has a story, or at least a premise. It takes place in a future-ish, dystopian metropolis of megalithic corporations called Cap City. One of them, B Corp, is run by the evil Mr. Buff, who has made it his mission to destroy personal expression. You play as Valah, a young graffiti artist. Together with the help of her fellow Rakugaki (the word means quick sketch or doodle in Japanese), Valah glides around Cap City, bringing the drab walls and giant screens alive with colorful graffiti. Naturally, her end goal is to defeat the villainous Mr. Buff and restore vibrant expression in Cap City. It’s an understatement to suggest that RKGK isn’t probably going to win awards for writing or dialogue, but it moves things along.

The developers have said that RKGK has a number of inspirations, including classic Japanese 3D platformers, anime, and the vibrant expression of Latin American graffiti artists. It’s quite a lively combination, and it shines through in the game itself.

RKGK’s narrative and action are told through six chapters, each one split into a sequence of repeatable, relatively short levels. Between each level, Valah returns to her hideout headquarters, where the other Rakugaki are waiting. While back at base, Valah can buy new outfits, check her stats, and interact with her friends. It’s all video game 101 stuff, absolutely nothing groundbreaking. That’s all fine by me. However, RKGK is primarily interested in action and platforming.

Jump, Slide, and Glide

Mechanically, RKGK is a pure action platformer, and its mechanics stick pretty close to the genre staples. Valah has a repertoire of jumps, double jumps, powered-up glides, and greased-up slides. Starting simply, the levels grow into an increasingly challenging collection of platforming moves that require planning and precision. Generally, movement is tuned well and hits the mark between forgiving and impossible. There are moments, however, when the game’s camera plays havoc with the player’s good intentions. This most often happens in tight, vertical spaces, making a series of wall jumps more frustrating than fun.

Now and then, Valah glides on rail segments. These are a fun change of pace. Obviously, there’s combat, too, both during levels and against chapter-ending bosses. Combat is another area where the game falters a little. Most of the normal little robot enemies are trivial. On the other hand, the bosses are more challenging but often repetitive fights.

As Valah moves through the world she picks up coins, spray paint cans, and health regens. Her goal, aside from survival, is to tag a number of large and small video screens with explosively colorful graffiti. Speed, pickups, deaths, and hitting all the targets result in an end-of-level grade. However, just finishing one level is enough to unlock the next. Levels can be repeated for a higher score and additional loot.

Joyful and Artistic

Aside from the well-tuned platforming, the absolute highlight of RKGK is the colorful world Valah creates with her graffiti. It’s beautiful, elaborate, and often full of animations and depth. Velah leaves a rainbow trail of paint wherever she goes. It’s both a way to keep track of where she’s been in a level and a way to transform the city from drab to fab. I wouldn’t go so far as to call RKGK a metaphor for the saving power of art in an autocratic world, but maybe it is.

The game’s music is cheerfully electronic and EDM-flavored as befits the game’s future setting. It ranges from tuneful and catchy to innocuous to annoying. There were just a few moments where it began to grate during repeated platforming attempts.

I wouldn’t call RKGK mindless fun, because its mechanics and level design have depth and reward multiple playthroughs. But it does harken back to classic action platformers where the focus is on entertainment, the bad guys are cartoons and the stakes are no higher than the next jump. As long as it’s done well, that’s sometimes enough.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post RKGK/Rakugaki Review – Let’s Paint the Town appeared first on COGconnected.

When I think about Ghost of Tsushima, it brings to mind a small cohort of story-driven, epic action games released approximately around the same time. Games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, and Elden Ring. They all have sprawling narratives, beautifully rendered worlds and characters, and excellent combat in common. Ghost of Tsushima is the latest of these legendary games to arrive on PC, thanks to Nixxes. It was worth the wait.

Good News Indeed

This is not a review of Ghost of Tsushima as a game. You can check that out here. The basic story is the lengthy journey of samurai Jin Sakai to rescue his uncle and rid the island of Tsushima of the invading Mongols. The original was released on PS4, then received an updated edition for the PS5 which included the excellent Iki Island DCL. Because Ghost of Tsushima appeared near the end of the PS4’s life, it took advantage of lessons learned over the console’s lifespan. Additionally, the game’s superlative art direction and historical detail added to already impressive visuals. The PC port of Ghost of Tsushima is essentially the PS5 version with a few welcome additions.

It’s probably not necessary to list all the reasons why PC players have wanted to get their hands on Ghost of Tsushima. In addition to opening up the game to players without PS5s, it promises much higher resolutions and improved graphics options, mouse and keyboard support, and of course, mod support. But gamers tend to brace themselves for disappointment when a port is announced. Many have gone south. Happily, Nixxes has a winner with this one.

Aside from pre-rendered cut scenes running locked at 30fps, there are a staggering number of ways to dial in the perfect experience. Whether you’re running an AMD or Nvidia GPU, all the expected advanced settings like DLAA or DLSS 3 or AMD’s FSR 3 are there and too many to list. Because the original was a PS4 game, the base quality is easily reproducible on mid-range PCs and GPUs. Those with monster rigs can scale up appropriately.

Some New Stuff

No matter how you run it, expect smooth sailing. Of course, the port supports both Xbox and DualSense controllers, plus a mouse and keyboard. There was some typical internet furor over the game’s PSN integration. There are some advantages to linking the game with your PSN account. These include syncing trophies and the inclusion of some bonus items. However, a connection to the PSN is not required for single players enjoying the campaign.

When it comes to nitpicking, there’s very little to complain about. There’s no skipping cutscenes, which is always a bit of a bummer in repeated plays. The inclusion of Iki Island DLC means that PC players come into Ghost of Tsushima with all the available content.

When it appeared on PS4 in 2020, Ghost of Tsushima was a bit overshadowed by some other heavy hitters like The Last of Us Part 2. Since then, and especially after the update on PS5, the game has only risen in respect and popularity. Ghost of Tsushima remains a fantastic action RPG with stellar performances, art direction, and gameplay. Nixxes’ PC version is a model for success: full-featured, stable, optimized, and a pleasure to play.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Ghost of Tsushima PC Review – Most Honorable Port appeared first on COGconnected.

I didn’t play 2023’s Dark Envoy, which is surprising because I try out the vast majority of action RPGs. So, unfortunately, I can’t speak to whatever changes or improvements appear in the new director’s cut release. All I can do is evaluate the game now, and assume it’s the best possible version. With that said, let’s get started.

Hybrid Action

Developed by Tower of Time’s Event Horizon, Dark Envoy is a cross between a third-person action RPG and a traditional CRPG, where players can pause the action and make tactical decisions. In Dark Envoy, the “Tactical Mode” is especially useful as the party grows from two to a more complex grouping. It’s particularly important as AI party members tend to have poor decision-making skills and battlefield awareness on their own. Going into Tactical Mode to move characters, select spells and ready-range weapons is an interesting blend-in with more action-focused mechanics. The downside is that the screen soon becomes a chaotic mess that’s difficult to parse or control.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves. You play as Malakai and Kaela, sibling warriors and relic hunter mercenaries in the rather generic fantasy, Guns-and-Sorcery world of Jäan. You can customize the appearance of the characters and you assign each of them one of four starting classes: warrior, ranger, engineer, or adept (i.e. mage). Eventually, upgrades and assigned points on a branching skill tree will open up several sub-classes to each base class. One of Dark Envoy’s strengths is in its build variety and deep skill tree. There are certainly lots of weapons, armor, and spells to play with, and tons of loot to find. I enjoyed the game’s hint of Steampunk.

Dark Envoy has a substantial campaign during which the siblings must fight against an imposing outer-worldly threat while aligning themselves with one of two competing factions for ultimate control of Jäan. Along the way the two starting characters assemble a party in classic CRPG style. As already noted, while the AI party members might have impressive gear and spells, they’re apt to make poor choices on their own.

Take the Bad with the Good

Not having played the original version of Dark Envoy, I checked out some review scores and I was surprised that many were quite positive. I say that I was surprised because my experience of the game was far more problematic.

The developer has noted that the director’s cut addresses some technical issues as well as bolstering the narrative. This is frankly shocking because Dark Envoy has more bugs and technical problems than I’ve seen in quite a while. Within the first 30 minutes of gameplay, I experienced: a cursor that had a mind of its own, characters that moved without direction, characters that didn’t move at all, and a consistent annoying glitch where characters would jitterbug whenever they touched the scenery. I mean, any scenic object. Every time.

For the sake of full transparency, I’ll note that Dark Envoy has a multiplayer mode that I was unable to test. It may well be that playing through the game with a friend is the preferred experience. I have read of some technical issues with this, but they might have been ironed out in the current iteration.

Indie studio or not, it’s disappointing that any action game doesn’t have competent controller support. Dark Envoy supports controllers in theory, but its implementation is buggy and awkward. Mouse and keyboard don’t fare much better, and default key assignments are frustrating and weird. While I’m in the piling on section, I’ll just add that the game’s story and dialogue aren’t great, and the voice acting doesn’t exactly elevate the material.

On the Positive Side?

Dark Envoy’s art style is colorful, with some impressive spell and weapon effects. In general, the visuals feel like they were influenced by a catalogue of other action RPGs and CRPGs, from Warhammer 40K to Baldur’s Gate. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Most games are a greatest hits compilation of previous ideas. Character models and enemies are fairly basic and have the recognizable janky animations common to indie titles that do what they can with modest means.

Dark Envoy isn’t without its strengths. The class system and skill trees lend themselves to interesting character builds and adventure party variety. But Director’s Cut or not, Dark Envoy simply had too many serious technical issues and minor hiccups. They constantly intruded into whatever fun the game was trying to give me. I’ll check back later to see if things improve but for now, Malakai and Kaela are on their own.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Dark Envoy Director’s Cut Review – Questionable Improvements appeared first on COGconnected.

When it comes to describing video games, “immersive” is used far too often. The sensation of being entirely lost in a game’s world, characters, and story is rare. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is one of those games that honestly earn being called immersive. Over Senua’s Saga’s eight or so hours, I quite regularly forgot I was playing a game. It’s so stunning, visceral, and emotionally involving that, on those rare occasions where Senua’s Saga ever-so-slightly stumbles, I was disoriented.

Fans of Ninja Theory’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice will immediately recognize some familiar mechanics, themes, and of course, the main character. To say that Senua’s Saga is similar to the first game is simultaneously correct, and entirely wrong. Senua’s Saga is so infinitely well made and assured that it makes the excellent original feel like a proof-of-concept sketch.

The Hero’s Journey

In the first game, Senua, a 10th-century Pict from the Orkney Islands, fights her way into Helheim to bring back her slain lover Dillion from the dead. Suffering from what we now call psychosis, Senua is tormented by voices in her head. The voices cajole, inspire, and cast doubt on Senua’s actions in turn. A large part of Senua’s Sacrifice is built around Senua coming to terms with her psychosis and the overpowering guilt she feels for Dillion’s death and the deaths of many others.

In Senua’s Saga, the voices have become, if not her superpower, at least her allies. The voices — now called Valkyries — continue to battle inside her head, joined by a far more ominous presence that is eventually revealed. But her relationship with them has shifted. It’s clear that Senua has more fully accepted, if not entirely embraced, this aspect of her personality. In Senua’s Saga, the voices help guide her towards a genuinely earned redemptive act.

But in Senua’s Saga, our hero is not entirely alone with her thoughts. She is joined on her quest by a trio of others. These are not typical RPG character types. There’s no mage or archer or tank. Instead, her companions are all survivors in one way or another, and who seek some form of redemption or retribution. They are willing to let Senua be the vehicle for it, with their help.

The Same, But Better

I’ve been deliberately vague about the narrative arc. In large part, it’s because to reveal nearly any details would ruin what’s so important to the experience. But you probably know from the trailers that Senua, now in Iceland, is on a quest to avenge her lover’s death at the hands of slavers and slay a giant or two. It’s a bit like saying Les Misérables is about some student protesters.

Like Senua’s Sacrifice, Senua’s Saga is a mix of exploration, environmental puzzles, and combat. I’d add narrative, but literally, everything in the game serves the story in one way or another. The story is simply delivered through a variety of mechanics.

All three of the game’s systems have been either refined, expanded, or both. While the first game’s puzzles often focused on seeing the environment in particular ways, Senua’s Saga includes some new puzzle types that relate specifically to a story theme. None of them are ultimately frustrating, but a few take some thought and/or trial and error. One of my very few complaints about Senua’s Saga is that, on rare occasions, the multipart puzzles became slightly repetitive and felt like video game busy work. These were the only moments that broke the otherwise excellent narrative pace and sense of immersion.

A Clash of Swords

Combat in the first game was criticized for feeling underdeveloped and unbalanced. In Senua’s Saga, the combat is brutal, visceral, and perfectly animated. Movement and weapons have weight and a sense of realism that was missing before. This is not Stellar Blade (or even Ninja Theory’s Heavenly Sword), with a hero dodging like a caffeinated jackrabbit. Senua’s dodges are relatively deliberate, the parry window is tight, and the more hits she takes, the slower her responses become. Unlike the first game, combat in Senua’s Saga is always a series of 1v1 encounters, most often in rapid succession. The number of enemy types is still relatively limited to human warriors, the supernatural draugr, and a few others. Within each group, there are enough variants to keep things interesting.

I never tired of it, and I kept thinking about what a traditional action RPG would be like with Senua’s flavor of combat. Mechanically, it’s not radically different or more complex than before, but it feels better and its role in the story has expanded. All that said, it’s still fair to note that, after a certain point, Senua’s move set in combat doesn’t change or evolve during the game, nor does her weapon vary.

Book Me A Flight

If there’s a video game that looks more impressive than Senua’s Saga, I haven’t seen it. The level of environmental and character detail is sort of astounding, and the feature film-worthy cinematic camera work is masterful. The constant ebb and flow from realism to a more magical reality is seamless. While much of Senua’s Saga is visually grim, dark, terrifying, and tense, there are moments of respite. The Icelandic countryside is postcard-perfect in all its craggy and desolate beauty. The widescreen letterbox format with no UI elements means there’s nothing visually distracting to break the spell.

The game’s binaural audio, archaic-feeling music, and polished voice acting are fully equal to the visuals. More to the point, they’re really not separate elements but flow organically from them. The game’s writing and dialogue have the poetic weight of a timeless Norse saga. Weight is the operative word. Anyone looking for levity, wit, or humor won’t find it in Senua’s Saga’s overall serious tone. But they will find a narrative arc that’s full of surprise and a depth of emotion.

At least for me, Senua’s Saga ran flawlessly, without a single bug or crash. On a Ryzen 9 7950 and Nvidia 4080 Super, I ran the game in 4K on high settings, with framerates in excess of 90fps. There was no pop-in at all, and just a few moments of stutter in one specific section. I can’t speak for its performance on Xbox, but the PC iteration seems well-optimized and very polished.

Remarkable Achievement

Thanks to a great number of expert advisors in the mental health field, and the input of people living with the condition, Senua’s experience of psychosis feels authentic and never just a video game gimmick. Ninja Theory’s attention to historical cultural detail and the narrative arc of classical mythology result in an 8-hour experience that is simply unforgettable. The game is a great example of balancing content, mechanics, and length. There will be those who complain that Senua’s Saga is not a 40-hour marathon. They are simply wrong. While the puzzles do not reward repeated play, the story and characters absolutely do.

Nothing’s perfect, however. Aside from some overly gamey puzzles, there were a few places where the game’s repeated structure of explore-combat-puzzle felt, if not predictable, at least a bit rigid. Even then, though, those individual elements remained entertaining to engage with.

It has been a very long time since I played a game as assured, polished, and emotionally affecting as Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. The first game was impressive, but the sequel brings everything Ninja Theory was trying to do into sharp, unforgettable focus. Senua’s new journey is epic and harrowing, told through cinematic visuals. jaw-dropping graphics and gameplay mechanics that feel at one with the story. It’s a saga of sadness, courage, challenge, and redemption, told by masters of their craft.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 Review – A Harrowing, Heroic and Hopeful Journey appeared first on COGconnected.

I’m not sure what I was expecting with Cryptmaster. At first glance, it kind of has a retro-first-person-shooter vibe. Its distinctive black-and-white art certainly suggests something sinister. Turns out, Cryptmaster is nothing like I thought it would be. It’s a genuinely unique combination of an action puzzle adventure game and a lot of typing. You’re probably wondering what that even means.

Wordle Goes to Hell

It isn’t all that difficult to summarize Cryptmaster’s narrative. You control four heroes and comb through an elaborate, labyrinthine dungeon to power a soulstone. Said soulstone is needed by the titular, ghostly Cryptmaster to free himself of spiritual imprisonment. Honestly, that story premise could lend itself to just about any genre of game.

Where Cryptmaster stands out is in the gameplay mechanics that push the story forward. Every action is text-based. You can’t open a chest, swing a sword, or raise a shield without figuring out and typing the appropriate word. We’re not talking monosyllabic verbs. Some of the vocabulary is advanced. Success comes from both a command of language and luck-enhanced guesswork. Each of the four heroes — Joro, Syn, Maz, and Nix — is powered up by guessing words in their vocabulary lists.

For example, you stumble upon a chest. You type “chest” to open it. To take what’s inside you need to guess its contents based on the number of letters and the Cryptmaster’s responses and clues. Use up all your guesses and you’ll have to move on. It’s possible to change the game’s settings to add more clues, however.

Every action in the game is like this, a combination of assessing the situation and guessing the words to move things along. Another example: you need to destroy some NPC-guarded altars to open the next area. You can do so in a wide range of ways. You could “smash” it, “desecrate” it, or “pee” on it. Yes, the game has a rather broad sense of humor.

Darkest Dungeon

Most of Cryptmaster takes place in a sprawling dungeon of long halls and side rooms filled with treasure, NPCs, and enemies. Several NPCs have side quests and there are many, sometimes quite difficult, puzzles to solve. Occasionally there’s an opportunity to play a word-based game called Whatever. It’s an entirely optional diversion but very engaging. Still, it doesn’t exactly change up the general experience.

If it was a timing-based, twitchy game that required fast typing and quick thinking Cryptmaster would be extra frustrating. As it is, there’s no problem spending a good long time figuring out answers. One small frustration is in the controls. Movement uses arrow keys. While the game supports controllers, the amount of typing makes it impractical.

Playing the Long Game

Cryptmaster’s aesthetic suggests it might be a compact experience but the game is over a dozen hours long, depending on skill at puzzle solving and wordplay. Divided into five lengthy chapters, the game’s black-and-white art is much less repetitive than I feared it would be. In large part, this comes from a surprising amount of detail and engaging animations. Now and then a key item will get visually lost in the scene, and sometimes it’s easy to overlook more hidden treasures. I enjoyed the game’s vaguely Lovecraftian enemy designs.

The game’s voice acting is atmospheric and excellent. Given the number of possible responses and vocabulary words to use, the array of verbal responses is impressive and almost always feels organic. There must be some digital audio magic under the hood, but it’s well hidden.

Games like Cryptmaster are rare. Not just because of a particular aesthetic or unique mechanic, but because they take a core idea and focus it. Cryptmaster is ok with not being for every gamer, but puzzle-RPG fans with a love of words, a wicked sense of humor, and a taste for the macabre will enjoy it.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Cryptmaster Review – Typing Be Damned appeared first on COGconnected.

Over 80 years after the conflict ended, World War 2 remains — as it should — an important subject for telling stories about conflict and heroism. Games set during the war cover almost every genre, from gritty shooters to grand strategy games. That brings us to Men of War 2, a sequel to 2009’s Men of War. Like the first game, Men of War 2 is a real-time strategy and tactics game focusing on small squads and tense encounters. The Men of War franchise has generated a vast number of spinoffs, but this is the legitimate sequel.

Men of War 2 includes a staggering number of unit types, representing both real and prototype armored vehicles, artillery, aircraft, and more. For me, it really brought home just how vast the war machinery was, and how much manpower and resources were thrown at research, development, and production in a very short time.

Gear Up

Men of War 2 includes a vast amount of content, both for single players and with others. To start, there is a story-driven campaign for the American, Soviet, and German forces. There is a secondary Historical campaign, each with a 6-mission sequence set during a specific encounter, like the 1941 Blitzkrieg or the battle for Normandy. There is a mode called Conquest, which is a grand strategy mode played on an overworld map with large-scale forces. Finally, a skirmish mode called Raid ties together a series of 16 short battles.

What’s a bit startling is the realization that all the single-player content is essentially icing on the cake. The real focus of Men of War 2 is multiplayer. To this end, there are three modes. Battalions focus on larger scale matches up to 5×5. Combined Arms is a more intimate, 1×1 through 3×3 mode. Classic multiplayer returns with the widest range of modifiers and ways to set up match parameters. The original Men of War and its spinoffs have a devoted following. Players of the first game will feel right at home in the sequel and relish the new modes and updates to older favorites.

By default, the game starts with the multiplayer mission selector, and playing single-player matches earns multiplayer gear unlocks. There are a few too many steps to get into the single-player campaign, which again is clearly not the focus.

Battlefield Chess

Aside from the Conquest mode, battles in Men of War 2 aren’t about vast numbers of resources and unlimited soldiers. In fact, these are limited and the death or destruction of any unit makes a huge difference. It’s very difficult to summarize gameplay in Men of War 2 because there are so many variables and rulesets. A simplified description would note that during each mission, completing objectives and destroying enemy units earns command points. Command points are used to purchase additional personnel and equipment. In some of the match types, there are Echelons. They essentially function as upgrade levels, unlocking higher tiers of units.

There are over 400 different unit types, covering boots on the ground, aircraft, and all manner of offensive and support vehicles. It’s important to realize that each and every one has a purpose and nothing is there as a novelty. Every player will have a favorite tank or half-track, artillery piece, or aircraft but smart commanders will, by necessity, dive deep into what’s available. It’s also possible to craft multiplayer matches that restrict units to a specific type, like tank v tank.

While the campaigns are long and complex, individual mission objectives are relatively compact. Taking out snipers, a dug-in force, or a series of anti-aircraft guns are familiar RTS-type tasks. In Men of War 2, there’s never one way to complete an objective. Missions all require a talent for solving puzzle-like situations and using the equipment on hand as efficiently as possible. Men of War 2 isn’t the most photorealistic game ever made. However, there’s realism where it counts, in the way cover, different types of ammunition, line of sight, units, and the environment all work together, for or against the player. Unlike some RTS games like Company of Heroes, there is no base building or construction in Men of War 2. Thank goodness. It would be overload.

Story Mode

Although lengthy, the single-player, story-based campaign might be the weakest element of the generous package. It’s simply not terribly well written or acted, and falls prey to cliche-heavy dialogue and situations. Thanks to some frustrating difficulty spikes, it’s best to save the Soviet campaign for last.

At the middle distance, Men of War 2 looks and sounds convincing, with outstanding explosion and weapon effects and punchy audio. Zoomed in, things look somewhat less impressive, with pretty janky animations and low-detailed textures. It’s a reminder that Men of War 2 is first a chess game of tactics and equipment, not so much a depiction of war at a human scale.

Men of War 2 appears more approachable than it actually is. There’s a depth and complexity that’s rewarding to master, but getting there takes a lot of time. Fans of the original will find it to be a worthy sequel. Casual RPG players might feel a little overwhelmed at first. Although there’s plenty of content for single players, Men of War 2 really comes into its own with or against other humans on the battlefield. In that genre, it’s one of the best.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Men of War 2 Review – War is Hellishly Complex appeared first on COGconnected.

Fresh off of Manor Lords, I find myself building, tilling the fields, and otherwise attending to the needs of another growing village. This time, though, I’m not in an exacting replica of the Middle Ages. Instead, I rule a colorful storybook land, complete with a towering beanstalk. This is Fabledom. It’s a generally chill building game in a very crowded genre. However, Fabledom’s connection to the world of fantasy and fairy tales sets it apart. Fabledom has been in early access for over a year and is now a fully-fledged title.

Open the Book

Fabledom opens with a narrated storybook introduction that perfectly sets the scene and establishes the aesthetic. You have a few choices at the beginning, such as some basic romance options for later in the game. You can also choose where you’d like to place your little kingdom on the world map. Fabledom isn’t Civilization. Where you start isn’t all that critical. At some point, you’ll encounter, romance, battle, and trade with neighboring realms, but that comes much later.

At its heart, Fabledom is a chill builder with pretty recognizable mechanics and a few key differences. You start with a small group of peasants, build some basics like housing and farms, and follow the steady drip of objectives and upgrades. There’s a surprising amount of depth and customization as you build out your town. For example, your farms can produce a wide variety of different crops and each house can support something extra, like a beehive or clothesline. This gives your settlement some character and specificity. It would be nice to have the ability to repaint buildings or to add some decorative touches.

Provided you have the resources and housing, new peasants will arrive at regular intervals. Of course, with more population comes a bigger tax base and more workers. More workers means more building and more new arrivals. You know the loop. One of Fabledom’s differences is the absence of the usual tech tree. Satisfy specific objectives, like collecting a certain amount of tax income, building tasks or resource production, and new options open up. Thanks to the game’s linear objectives, though, a certain amount of creativity and choice gets left behind. While keeping the populace happy isn’t too hard, there’s still a bit of micromanagement. Unassigned workers don’t leap at the chance for labor.

Romancing the Princess

Aside from the familiar building tasks, Fabledom leans into two other themes. Early on, for example, I had the opportunity to plant (or not) a towering beanstalk in my village. Can you guess what happens next? Whether it’s flying pigs, beanstalks, giants, witches, or other storybook tropes, Fabledom does a great job of suggesting a living fairytale. The other — somewhat surprising — theme is romance. Your neighboring kingdoms are full of flirty folk who want to do more than trade wheat and stone. Sometimes the tone and narration shift into a slightly more mature (but still family-friendly) gear. In any case, the romance angle is more than cosmetic, because those relationships have an impact on the health, growth, and economics of your kingdom and city. In Fabledom, “friends with benefits” means you get some much-needed food for the city.

Fabledom isn’t without the clash of swords, and part of the assignment eventually becomes building military units and defenses. Expanding the boundaries of the starting area necessitates creating a hero who can explore the countryside.

For those folks who just want to tinker and build, there is a Creative (i.e. sandbox) mode in which building times are instantaneous and everything is unlocked from the start. It’s fun to see what you can look forward to, but it’s also a bit lifeless.

Whether the Weather Matters

Generally, Fabledom does a stellar job of capturing the storybook/fairytale look, with rustic cottages progressing to more imposing half-timbered collections of buildings and finally, a towering castle. Seasons progress through some attractive weather effects, though there’s no day/night cycle, an odd omission in such a detail-focused game. Although the framerate is capped at 30fps, the performance was good. There’s not a ton of voice work, and the game’s music is about what you’d expect, given the subject matter. Both the music and environmental audio are understated, but at least there’s not a steady menu of chipper tunes.

One area where Fabledom hits some high marks is in its mechanical clarity. There are a lot of things to do, but the game is rarely opaque or confusing. It is slow, however, and even at triple speed, come prepared with some patience and a very large cup of tea. Nothing happens quickly. Fabledom definitely earns its spot in the “chill builder” genre.

Fabledom has deeper mechanics than maybe its storybook look suggests, and the folding-in of fairytale fantasy is winning. While both the fairytale and romance elements are unique twists, the core mechanics are pretty standard. Fans of the genre will feel right at home. I wouldn’t call Fabledom uninspired, but whatever it lacks in ambition it makes up in charm and familiar fun.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Fabledom Review – Off to Work We Go appeared first on COGconnected.

Unless you’ve been avoiding gaming news recently, you’ve probably heard of Manor Lords, the new city-builder sim from indie developer Slavic Magic. A huge hit on Steam, Manor Lords tasks the player with building a thriving settlement during the middle ages. Immersive, ridiculously deep but still accessible, Manor Lords is one of the best games of the year so far. Part of Manor Lords’ impressive authenticity comes from the brilliant musical score by Pressure Cooker, a small music production team headed by Elben Schutte and Daniel Caleb. Schutte generously answered some questions about Manor Lords’ music.

Manor Lords is set during the middle ages. Musically, it was a time in history dominated by two styles of music. There was choral music sung in churches and cathedrals. At the same time, there was a rich folk music tradition of improvisation. Of course, none of the folk music was written down. However, some of the folk tunes actually found their way into church music–much to the disapproval of church authorities.

Modern audiences have probably heard at least some medieval music thanks to movies and other forms of entertainment. It can sound pretty foreign to listeners raised on rock, pop, and rap. But deep down all music is built on the same components: melody, harmony, and rhythm. In skilled hands, arrangements of medieval music sound beautiful, elegant, and emotionally rich.

Balancing Act

The score for Manor Lords is split between actual middle ages music and original compositions. I asked Schutte how the team balanced the two styles. “We initially set out to write original music only, as is the natural instinct of any composer,” Schutte said. “However, as we threw ourselves deeper and deeper into the period music, we fell in love with some medieval pieces and felt it necessary to incorporate them to truly hit that authenticity.’

“We wanted to capture the authenticity of the period, but also capture the beauty of the game itself with cinematic elements. So it was ultimately always going to be a balancing act between writing original cinematic music and the interpolation of medieval music.”

Bringing Together Old and New

Squaring the ancient and still-developing sounds of medieval music with original compositions was a musical puzzle. Schutte said “This was indeed a big challenge, since we had two goals in mind, the cinematic capturing of the game and its environment, as well as the anchoring of the experience in the medieval time. We experimented with a lot of cross-pollinating the two music worlds, but this felt to us like it was interfering with the authenticity of the period music. We made the creative decision to allow the two sides their own space in the compositions instead.”

Harmony (i.e. chords) in medieval folk music followed different rules than we use today. Pressure Cooker found a brilliant bridge between the old and new by focusing on choral music of the time. “Some clues were drawn from the harmonic language found in the sacred choral music. The orchestral cues are thus a cinematic interpretation of harmonic choices that would’ve perhaps been made by composers of the period.” To casual listeners, the result is a seamless blend of ancient and modern styles.

Style Choices

There are obviously no recordings of music from the 14th century, and relatively few instruction manuals from the period. So, how did it sound? There is a lot of disagreement in the early music world (and yes, that’s a thing). I asked Schutte how they landed on the “sound” of the medieval selections. “The performers and musicians we chose to use really inspired us with their love and expertise of the music,” Schutte said. “We allowed our performers a lot of freedom to express the music on their respective instruments, so that we could capture something truly inspired and organic.’

“Our lute [an early instrument similar to a guitar] player would often use a feather to pluck at his instrument instead of just relying on fingerpicking, because this was often how folk music was performed. We did not know this initially, so we discovered details such as this along the way. The thing to get right for the singers was pronunciation, so we did a fair bit of research and collaborated with experts to get that right.”

Make It Up as You Go

People who study this sort of thing are in agreement that a lot of medieval folk music was probably improvised, a lot like jazz or rock solos. Improvisation plays a big role in the music for Manor Lords, but it connects to the written music very organically. “The performers were often given the cinematic music to listen to, to experience the feeling evoked by these elements and to draw harmonically from them, while maintaining the limitations of their instruments that gave them their unique sound and flavour. This required some experimentation!’

“Secondly, when it came to improvised sections we wanted them to feel unscripted and organic. We didn’t want to over-produce the parts and micro-manage them to death, but rather trust in our performers to carry the desired feeling we wished to evoke.”

Medieval Color

A lot of game music features electronics or digital samples. Obviously, this wasn’t an option for music written 800 years ago. As a result, Manor Lords’ music is almost entirely performed by live musicians on acoustic instruments: strings, fretted instrument, winds and percussion. Schutte said “We started out with sampled instruments, and added live instruments to sampled ones. As time went by on our quest toward authenticity, we landed up cutting all the samples . This definitely yielded the best result by far, both for the period and cinematic side of the music.”

Quite often game music is nothing more than an innocuous background to the action. While Pressure Cooker’s music does it’s scene-setting job in the game, it’s a great stand-alone listen. Calling it “beautiful” makes it sound a bit superficial. Schutte and Caleb’s score is beautiful, but it’s also a musically rich, intriguing, and entirely successful synthesis of styles.

***Special thanks to Elben Schutte, Daniel Caleb and Pressure Cooker. Soundtrack for Manor Lords is available for streaming via Laced Records: https://lnk.to/ManorLords***

The post The Magic of Manor Lords’ Medieval Music appeared first on COGconnected.

I review a lot of games. The parade of new titles is unrelenting. So, I love it when I’m required to dip back into a game that I really enjoyed but just haven’t had time to play. Case in point: Remnant 2, one of my favorite action games of the past few years. Remnant 2 is, of course, a sequel to a pretty misunderstood ARPG, Remnant: From the Ashes. At first, dismissed as “Dark Souls with guns,” the 2019 game grew a supportive player base over time and Gunfire Games added two DLCs. Remnant 2 was a bigger hit right out of the gate. The new DLC, The Forgotten Kingdom, follows on the heels of The Awakened King and is the middle DLC out of a planned trilogy.

Another Return

As fans of both games know, environments in Remnant and its sequel are procedurally generated. In the first game, this was made obvious by some awkward tile mismatches. The sequel is much better and the worlds flow naturally. For The Forgotten Kingdom, the player returns to the verdant, bioluminescent planet of Yaesha and its race called the Pan. It’s a disappointment — though a minor one — that we’re revisiting an already oft-visited world. The developers are an imaginative team and an entirely new world would have been magical.

In any case, early on the player meets “Walt,” a Pan archeologist of sorts. Walt sees a mural illustrating what may be a forgotten tribe. Throughout the DLC we meet Walt in different locations as he uncovers more ancient history. Early on, we also meet the DLC’s main boss, and the tried-and-true “bring-the-world-to-order” narrative is set in motion. The Forgotten Kingdom’s story isn’t especially memorable, but other aspects of the game make up for it.

Some games’ DLC require the player to have a relatively high-level character to enter (we’re looking at you, Elden Ring). Since the Remnant games scale enemy difficulty to the player’s power level, The Forgotten Kingdom can be accessed not long after playing through the base game’s tutorial area. What’s great about this is that players can bring DLC weapons, armor, and archetypes back to the main game.

Puzzlement

While The Forgotten Kingdom’s story is, well, a bit forgettable, the generally linear path is full of obstacles and puzzles. A lot of these require platforming and precise timing and would feel right at home in Tomb Raider. There’s a bit more verticality, too. On the whole, The Forgotten Kingdom feels a bit more compact than The Awakened King.

The vast majority of Remnant 2 players will be coming to this DLC for the loot: a new Archetype, new weapons, and armor. This aspect doesn’t disappoint. The new Archetype is called the Invoker. It’s an earth-magic type caster and healer, but this Archetype has some devastating offensive powers like the Way of Kaeula’s wall of electricity.

The array of new ranged and melee weapons is impressive and fun to discover. A player favorite is sure to be the Mirage, a melee weapon that surrounds the enemy with a blinding sandstorm. Some aspects of The Forgotten Kingdom feel lean, but not the amount of stuff to find and play with.

Visual Splendor

Every time I return to Remnant 2 I’m reminded how great the game looks and sounds. As usual, Yaesha is a riot of color and light, this time enriched by some vaguely Meso-American ruins and interior spaces. There are some new enemies too, and many are a real challenge to fight.

While yet another return to Yaesha is slightly disappointing, everything else about The Forgotten Kingdom is a must-have for Remnant 2 players. The enemies, weapons, bosses, and the new Archetype are all up to the base game’s overall excellence. Especially at a very reasonable price, it’s easy to recommend The Forgotten Kingdom.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Remnant 2: The Forgotten Kingdom DLC Review – The Magic Kingdom appeared first on COGconnected.

I’ve said it many times. In the vast ocean of copycats, sequels, and remakes, a video game that aspires to be different is welcome. When that game has a substantive theme or unique style, so much the better. Odd Meter’s Indika checks those boxes. It’s weird, sometimes confused and inconsistent, but it looks like almost nothing else and has a narrative and imagery unlike any I’ve experienced in a game.

We’ll Have Nun of That

Odd Meter is a developer that relocated from Russia to Kazakhstan. While normally a developer’s origin is irrelevant to their games, in Indika’s case, that move is significant for several reasons. For one, Indika is suffused with the architecture, dark humor, irony, and culture of Russia, especially that of the Russian Orthodox Church. Second, the studio moved in large part due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Odd Meter has a strong identity that challenges political and aesthetic norms. Of course, no matter the developer’s politics, a game is at heart a form of interactive entertainment. That’s the standard by which it has to be evaluated.

I’ll try not to spoil much of anything about Indika because there are some genuine shocks and surprises along the way. Fundamentally, Indika — the character — is a young nun in an alternative history, late 19th century Russia. Immense clockwork machines fill rooms at the convent and gas-powered bicycles plow through the snow. By and large, though, it’s a relatable and recognizable slice of history filled with military conflict, cruelty, and the humor of hopelessness. The tone and theme are thoroughly Russian, bringing to mind authors like Gogol and Dostoevsky, not to mention a handful of filmmakers.

Hearing Voices

The plot of Indika is, on the surface, fairly coherent. Indika is a young nun who has a history of hearing voices and seeing hallucinatory images, like dancing characters coming out of a priest’s mouth. The voice in Indika’s head may or may not be the devil. She may or may not suffer from mental illness or genuinely inspired religious visions. She definitely has a few secrets tucked away. Indika is sent on a quest to deliver a letter to a nearby monastery, thus beginning her adventure.

To describe the story further would ruin a lot of both the player’s and Indika’s surprises. But I can say that Indika — the game and the character — explores a lot of interesting themes, including sin, temptation and redemption, mental illness, and the not-especially-benign influences of the Church. Indika is treated cruelly by her peers but we learn early on that she’s neither innocent nor unable to defend herself. There’s a surprising amount of violence and sexual content in the game. Let’s face it, the devil isn’t necessarily a comforting voice. Very few games, if any, have explored these themes.

A Walk in the Woods

Indika has a striking, nearly monochromatic aesthetic that can be artistic and culturally authentic. Some of the characters, like Indika herself, are top-notch, expressive and affecting. Others seem less technically polished like they’ve dropped in from a long-ago game. The sense of physical and emotional bleakness is palpable. The developer has a strong connection to Russian architecture and iconography and it shows. There are stretches when Indika is suddenly relieved of its cold palette, and these are almost shocking. Rarely do we notice a game’s cinematography. Framing and composition are notable and help tell Indika’s uncomfortable tale.

The game’s often peculiar, philosophical, and surreal dialogue is generally very well acted by its trio of leads. Its music is spare and rarely draws attention to itself and the environmental audio is likewise understated. In terms of performance, I had some definite issues with stutters and framerate drops, so there’s some room for optimization.

The Devil is in the Details

If Indika stuck to its narrative adventure game structure, it would be a truly impressive exploration of a memorable character and themes. It’s a puzzle-heavy title, but most of the puzzles are pretty reasonable and logical, given enough thought. Where Indika fails to fully convince is in its mechanics. In some cases, there are choices that undercut the power of the narrative. In general, these are where the developer chooses to gamify the experience. For example, there are collectibles that earn points, but the developer clearly notes that the points mean nothing. Iconic-sounding chip tune music accompanies an otherwise serious sequence.

There are also several places when Indika wants to be an action game, where precisely timed inputs are betrayed by sluggish controls and movement. Less-than-perfect responses result in a fail state and repeated attempts. Quite often, mechanics are poorly explained or telegraphed. Several times, the developers change up both the style and controls of the game, using pixel art minigames to tell Indika’s backstory. The why of it makes a narrative sense, but the implementation can be frustrating. Having to replay an unskippable mini-game undercut not only the game’s goodwill but also slowed the pacing and the story’s building momentum. Those sections disrespect the game’s potential, but worse, they sometimes disrespect the player’s time.

Fail State

Indika has a compelling and genuinely original story to tell. It’s by turns darkly humorous, thought-provoking, philosophically challenging, and emotionally shocking. It’s weird, too, but sometimes more attached to its off-kilter elements than it should be. Things like ignoring fun and narrative consistency for the sake of being quirky feel like missteps when they waste the player’s time or slow the pace. Indika is definitely original and sometimes daring, but stumbles a bit in its execution. Imperfect or not, I can’t help but admire the look of the game, the memorable characters, and the audacious themes.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Indika Review – Pray for Us Sinners appeared first on COGconnected.

You know why you’re here. You didn’t just stumble upon this review, because the second DLC for the third game in a franchise isn’t going to appeal to just anyone. I’m guessing you’re into both Warhammer and the Total War games. You might have a shelf full of miniatures ready to go at a moment’s notice, and maybe a tabletop ready and waiting. You’d never in a million years confuse a Skaven with a Nurgle. What you want to know is, what’s in the new Warhammer 3: Thrones of Decay DLC? I’ll tell you.

History Lesson

But first, there might be a reader who isn’t a Warhammer fan, so let’s explain. You’ve certainly heard of Warhammer and/or Warhammer 40k. If not, you can hand in your nerd card on your way out. Warhammer is dark fantasy, Warhammer 40K is sci-fi. Both began life on the tabletop before making the inevitable leap to video games. Games Workshop isn’t always discriminating when it comes to licensing. As a result, there are dozens of Warhammer and 40K video games, in just about every genre, and they vary dramatically in quality.

Almost as well known as Warhammer, Creative Assembly’s Total War series of strategy and tactical games began in 2000 with games devoted to ancient Japan, medieval battles, and soon after, Rome. Total War games consistently have a vast, turn-based campaign played on an overworld map and tactical, real-time battles featuring hundreds of units. In 2016, the first Total War: Warhammer appeared, followed by sequels in 2017 and 2022. The two franchises fit together perfectly. The three games in the Total War: Warhammer series are not just brilliant representations of the Warhammer world and its factions, they’re all incredibly deep and fun. With each new game, all of the units from the old game stay in rotation. This means there’s a staggering amount of content.

The Hero’s Journey

This brings us to Thrones of Decay, the 6th DLC for Total War: Warhammer III. It follows two paid DLCs from 2023, Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs and Shadows of Change. While Thrones of Decay is a paid expansion, Creative Assembly also releases a vast amount of free content with each DLC. In addition to the usual updates and bug fixes, the new free stuff includes several heroes: Epidemius, Nurgle’s Tallyman, and The Gold Wizard.

At the heart of Thrones of Decay are three legendary Lords. Elspeth VonDraken, Magisterix of the Amethyst College and Arch-Wizard of the Lore of Death. Also known as the Dark Lady of Nuln, she is a potent Lore of Death spellcaster with a hefty scythe to boot.  Elspeth’s abilities grant her a healthy mix of melee prowess, subversion, and magic. She can ride a warhorse into battle and she has the ability to reverse the sands of time.

The Dwarf faction gains a new hero in Malakai Makaisson. A tragically disgraced Dwarf Engineer, he serves the Dwarfs as a ranged support Lord, tossing explosives toward the enemy with the Cinderblast Cluster Bomb, and blasting them to bits with his gun.

Finally, there’s my favorite, Tamurkhan the Maggot Lord. Tamurkhan is a powerful Chaos Lord and Champion of Nurgle. He functions as a tank, with the combined durability of an Ogre infested with a corpse maggot of Nurgle. He charges into battle astride Toad Dragon, Bubebolos.

Deep Gets Deeper

All of the new Lords come with new battle abilities and nearly a dozen related new units. Perhaps most importantly, each new hero brings new mechanics to the main campaign. They can also be played in skirmishes, of course, either against AI or other human players.

With 24 different factions and armies to choose from, Total War: Warhammer III is a very faithful, detailed recreation of the tabletop game. It breathes life into the iconic miniatures with excellent animations, brutal audio environments, and brilliant spell and battle effects. One of the things that I — and millions of fans — love about Warhammer is the grand operatic fantasy of the lore. Everything is heroically and emotionally oversized. In the game, music plays a significant role. It continues to be a highlight of the series.

Creative Assembly continues to support the base game with quality free and paid content. If you’re a fan of Total War: Warhammer III, Thrones of Decay is a no-brainer purchase. Like previous DLCs, it gives players a trio of new Lords to learn, a large number of new units to play with, and another reason to sink hours and hours into the game.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Total War: Warhammer 3 Thrones of Decay Review – More Pain, More Gain appeared first on COGconnected.

It isn’t much, this little plot of land. Just a clearing in the woods, really. But there’s plenty of tall timber, abundant berries, and even a few deer that our talented hunters can dispatch. There are only a handful of families in our little group. With hard work, organization, planning, and time, we can make a home from these humble resources. Now in early access, Manor Lords is a medieval building sim/RTS that moves at the speed of the seasons.

Choose Your Style

From the 30,000-foot view, Manor Lords has an outline not unfamiliar to strategy gamers. You start with a few tents and a small group of people, and over time make a thriving settlement. Depending on how you choose to play, Manor Lords can be about more than medieval daily life. It can have a strong military component as well, with wars and territorial disputes.

One of Manor Lords’ strengths, even in early access, is how easily the focus of the game can be shifted. There are three basic scenarios. One is entirely free of military conflict. At the other extreme is a scenario built around building military forces and capturing neighboring territory. The third scenario is a sweet spot that balances both. Even within the basic scenarios, there are many options for dialing in the experience.

However, no matter how you choose to play, Manor Lords has a deliberate pace. The game recognizes that in the real world, things take time. You can’t just instantly outfit your soldiers with bows. Those bows need wood, bowstring material, and metal for arrowheads. And each of those ingredients requires specialized buildings and people to work in them.

Medieval Micromanagement

Like building sims in any genre — from Cities: Skylines to Planet Coaster — Manor Lords has a strong puzzle-game aspect. Where, when, and how to allocate limited starting resources comes first. Planning for growth comes second, and sustainability comes next. Make a mistake at any step in the process, and the consequences can be dire. The strength of Manor Lords is in its relaxed pace. It’s almost never impossible to course correct.

Manor Lords is built around family units rather than single workers that pop magically from a town center, eager to work. Some families will autonomously assign themselves to needed tasks, like wood cutting or hunting. Other families are free agents, assignable to whatever work is most pressing.

Growing the settlement can feel opaque. It depends on the overall happiness of the village. Word gets around that your little town is a good place to raise a family, and the population grows. Like most building sims and strategy games, happiness comes from security, food, shelter, and those intangibles that make life worth living.

Step By Step

The first few hours in a game of Manor Lords are entirely about laying a strong foundation. There are lots of processes, buildings, and tasks, and everyone will have different priorities. Despite the complexity under the hood, Manor Lords has an easy-to-use interface and gives the player plenty of information.

But even at its most conflict-free setting, Manor Lords requires the player to play strategically. It’s easy to misplace buildings too far from resources or fail to consider the efficiencies of production chains. If it seems to take forever for hunters to return to town, it might be because their shack is halfway across the map.

The changing seasons play a large role in village life. Storing enough food for winter and fuel for fires comes from decisions made in the warm days of spring. Raising a military force is likewise a long-term planning task, doubly so because conscripting an army takes all the able-bodied men from the workforce. If they die in battle, it can decimate the village’s sustainability.

The Dark Ages Never Looked So Good

For a game just entering early access, Manor Lords looks incredible and has very few performance issues. It reminds us that early access doesn’t have to mean “essentially broken.” Either zoomed out or in first-person mode strolling through the town, there’s a lot of detail and character to everything. Get close and you can listen to the villagers comment on their daily lives and tasks. It isn’t a game where structures magically pop in and it’s fun to watch buildings rise, plank by plank.

Some impatient gamers might balk at Manor Lords’ deliberate pace, but really, it’s one of the game’s strengths. Things take time. Manor Lords does a great job of reminding us that villages are made up of lots of people doing lots of things with a common goal. It was true in the Middle Ages and it’s true today. Subtext aside, Manor Lords is a thoroughly engaging, detailed, and already polished building sim and RPG. I look forward to playing as the game moves toward final release.

Thank you for keeping it locked on COGconnected.

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The post From Sticks and Stones to Stately Homes in Manor Lords appeared first on COGconnected.

I really liked last year’s Dead Island 2. It was more than a worthy successor to the 2011 original. Moving the setting to a zombie-infested Los Angeles, the combat and gameplay were fun and the social satire was spot on if a bit obvious. The biggest drawback was that over time, the brain-dead enemies became a bit repetitious to fight, no matter how inventive the weapons. The first of three planned DLCs was Haus, which overall was a pretty mid experience. Now we have SoLa.

Cover Band or Superstar

With a running time of 2-4 hours — depending on your level, gear, and skills — SoLa takes place in and around an outdoor music festival, complete with main and side stages, concession stands, pools, and lots of little nooks and crannies. Right off the bat, SoLa’s setting has the potential for more variety than Haus’ claustrophobic survivalist compound. Unlocking SoLa means completing, at minimum, The Giant Slayer from the main game. Since the game doesn’t scale to player level, that might be a bit too early for the DLC’s significant difficulty.

The environments are still where Dead Island 2 shines the brightest. The graphics remain top-notch and the layer of social satire and over-the-top NPCs are fun to experience. Each DLC of course introduces some new enemy types and some inventive new ways to kill them. My grisly favorite this time around was a zombie that used their entrails like a deadly whip.

SoLa’s theme of music carries over from the setting to bosses and gameplay mechanics, like using powerful beats to attract zombies. The game’s main mission and side quests ping-pong the player between areas on the festival grounds, with one short jaunt back to home base.

Discordant Notes

Like a crowd surfer dropped by the crowd, SoLa doesn’t make it through the song unscathed. The biggest bummer is the amount of repetition. An example is the final boss, called The Dirge. Killing the Dirge means killing hordes of zombies to power up orgone spheres, which are thrown at the boss to make him temporarily vulnerable. This process is repeated three, nearly identical times. Die at any point and it’s a long, tedious do-over.

There are a lot of sections of SoLa that demand patience for repetition and being ok with repeated attempts, because this DLC is not easy. There are some fun new weapons to bring back to the base game but after hours of the main story and the first DLC, I was ready for SoLa to throw something really new my way. Grace, the DLCs main new character, is engaging enough and well-acted. Dead Island 2’s cut scenes and writing remain entertaining enough but the action is wearing a little thin.

2023’s Dead Island 2 was gaming junk food in the best possible way. It was dumb fun surrounded by smart humor and satire. In SoLa, none of that has really changed. Melee combat is still visceral — literally — and bloody good fun. The game’s visuals remain sharp, detailed, and full of humorous touches. The new DLC is an improvement over Haus, but there are more and more moments where things feel a bit stale, too. Come to SoLa with realistic expectations for more of the same, and it’ll be a pretty good time. Let’s hope that the planned third DLC shakes things up.

***Xbox Series X code provided by the publisher for review***

The post Dead Island 2 SoLa Review – Zombie Woodstock appeared first on COGconnected.

In retrospect, it seems like a no-brainer. Take a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids narrative and bolt it to survival crafting mechanics. It may be obvious in hindsight, but it took developer Obsidian’s Grounded a couple of years in early access before the game was ready for release. After living for two years as an Xbox/PC exclusive, Grounded has landed on PS5 and other consoles. Happily, Sony and Nintendo fanboys and girls can join the fun and see what all the well-deserved fuss was about.

Down to Size Adventuring

You can read COGconnected’s original review here. Grounded has a more than serviceable story. You play as one of four kids who have been inadvertently miniaturized and must survive in the suburban backyard jungle. The goal, of course, is escape and a return to normal size. This is where the game’s surprisingly deep survival, crafting, and combat mechanics come in.

The first thing you’ll notice is just how smartly the game has taken the miniature world and applied it to familiar RPG mechanics. Ant tunnels become danger-filled caves. Small garden pools become lakes. Discarded devices like Walkman tape decks provide life-saving technology and shelter. There are too many cool little ideas to mention, like being able to farm aphids for food or noticing how a small backyard has become a sprawling, open world map.

Let’s not overlook that, maybe for the first time in RPG history, it makes logical sense to battle giant wolf spiders. Not to mention ants, wasps, and small mammals. For the arachnophobes, there are accessibility settings to reduce the realism. For all its family-friendly vibes, Grounded doesn’t shy away from enemies lurking in the shadows, the threat of starvation, or challenging combat. Something to consider before handing the controller over to very young kids.

Have It Your Way

Played solo, Grounded can be a pretty difficult game. It takes a long time to learn the game’s mechanics and climb the tech tree. That’s not to suggest that it’s opaque or poorly designed, but the early hours require some patient grinding. Played in co-op, the experience transforms into the game it was probably meant to be. The new console releases support cross-play with Xbox and PC, so your friends with those versions can join you.

But the narrative mode isn’t the only way to experience Grounded. You can also play in creative or custom modes that focus more on crafting and survival. There are many ways to tailor Grounded’s challenge. You can take a very exacting and danger-filled game and dial it back to a chill crafting and exploration-focused good time. While the character creator is pretty basic, most of your time will probably be spent in first-person mode anyway. Overall, the game’s accessibility settings are quite extensive.

Evergreen Art

Although after four years, Grounded’s graphics are slightly showing their age, the game’s cartoony, Pixar-style realism still looks great. Everything is vibrant, colorful, and detailed. A lot of attention has been paid to insect authenticity, not just visually, but in terms of habitats, behavior, and relationships to other life in the environment. The game’s story and acting are good, though the world and its challenges take center stage.

Environmental audio carries quite a bit of responsibility in selling the miniature world. After all, who really knows what aphids chomping on grass sounds like? The game’s music is a bit understated but what you’d expect. It’s by turns gentle, tuneful, or ominous.

Still a Winner

Making its way to PS5 and Switch, it’s only a little disappointing that Grounded didn’t bring along a lot of new content, though it does include all updates, new ant queens, and a new game+ mode. Grounded is still an excellent and unique survival game. Its big-world crafting RPG mechanics scale down to miniature size quite well and there are a ton of ways to make the game your own. Like their PC and Xbox counterparts, Sony and Nintendo fans of the survival/crafting genre will not be disappointed by Grounded.

***PS5 code provided by the publisher for review***

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