HIGH First character maker in a Sonic game? Sweet!

LOW The level design, story, and gameplay are shockingly underwhelming.

WTF Avatars can wear a hat that says “Gamer”.

Sonic Forces has many interesting gameplay ideas and a dynamic character creation feature in this visually stylish package, but is constantly held back by a lack of creative level design, a lack of polish in its controls, and a story that fails to engage.

Shockingly, Dr. Eggman has defeated and imprisoned Sonic with his new mysteriously masked jackal comrade, Infinite, who bends reality using the Phantom Ruby. Now, with Eggman’s tyranny throwing the world into an apocalyptic state, a resistance team of Sonic’s friends must rescue our hero and save the world, with help from a Classic Sonic from another dimension and a rookie soldier — the Custom Avatar.

While this seems like a more mature premise than Sonic usually offers, the storytelling jarringly flip-flops between upbeat and serious, with tone-killing one-liners making things even worse. This incoherence shows that the story doesn’t know how to make players feel about the characters and story.

Additionally, many potentially interesting and dramatic plot points feel underdeveloped, and Infinite, the new enemy, lacks character development and any interesting use of his powers – are they real or just an illusion? It seems like even the writers don’t know the answer. In terms of play, Sonic Forces combines mechanics from previous entries – Modern Sonic’s fast-paced 3D “boost formula” and Classic Sonic’s 2D side-scrolling with the addition of Sonic Mania’s Drop Dash.

All of these elements are easy to pick up, and it can be entertaining to speed through stages while destroying hordes of enemies. Unfortunately, it all feels too simplistic too soon, making the gameplay loop feel repetitive.

Offering some variety, the Custom Avatar character wields “wispons” — weapons containing the superpowered aliens from Sonic Colors, which have various special attacks and powers. Occasionally, the Custom Avatar even teams up with Sonic in tag team stages.

Creating a character is a cute novelty with hundreds of pieces of clothing to be unlocked and seven species options, each with their own benefits (the bird species has a double jump, and so forth). Each Wispon has its own strengths and weaknesses, as well. A favorite was gaining insane speed from the Drill Wispon after mashing the trigger button.

Unfortunately, no matter what character the player chooses, the controls feel noticeably stiff, the running buildup too quick, and the jump too floaty – it all feels rushed and lacks the momentum and fluidity that made the classic 2D games rewarding to master. The stages, while linear, have some interesting obstacles – things like platforms that zoom forward when landing on them. A few even have alternate pathways, encouraging replayability with different Wispons that can aid in saving time or rewarding players with
hidden Red Star Rings.

But yet, it’s another mixed bag!

Most levels are much too short and don’t space out obstacles well. Excessive automated sequences remove player control and agency, and the potential of 3D gameplay is undercut in favor of basic, blocky 2D sections. Despite having 30 main stages, the the experience feel short-lived and repetitive. A smaller number of longer, more developed stages with fully fleshed-out mechanics would be a vast improvement. Visually, Sonic Forces again lurches one way, and then the other. The graphics and art style blend both cartoony and realistic, and the slick animations are a feast for the eyes while embodying Sonic’s cool, fast, and stylish qualities.

On the other hand, the animation during cutscenes gives characters wooden expressions and static movement, which is off-putting and immediately disengaged me from any potential drama. There’s also been a decent effort made to convey the world’s apocalyptic state through its original levels, with giant Death Egg Robots tearing up the city in Sunset Heights and flames burning around Luminous Forest. I wish the whole adventure was as original as these bits though, instead of otherwise mostly reusing past levels to pander for nostalgia — if Green Hill Zone is absolutely required as a level, it could have at least been altered to fit with the rest of the world in turmoil.

Overall, Sonic Forces’ potential for interesting storytelling, gameplay and level design are undercut by a lack of length, depth, and polish. Younger or casual players may enjoy Forces’ simplicity, but die-hard Sonic fans are better off playing Sonic Generations or Mania instead.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10

— Thomas Greeney

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sonic Team and Hardlight Studios and published
by Sega. It is currently available on PS4, XBO, Switch and PC. This copy was purchased as a
paid download and reviewed on PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were
devoted to the single-player mode and the game was completed. An extra 3 hours were spent
on the side content, from a total of 7 hours of gameplay to review the title. There are no
multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Fantasy Violence.
According to the site: Sonic Forces is an adventure platformer in which players help Sonic
and his friend defeat Dr. Eggman and his evil plans. As players speed through different
landscapes, they collect items (e.g., gold rings), avoid hazards, and use spin attacks to defeat
robotic foes and bosses. Players can also use a created character to fire grappling hooks and
other cartoony weapons (e.g., fire blasters, electric whip) to defeat enemies. During some boss encounters, players can perform close-up finishing blows that knock opponents out in dramatic fashion.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: Sonic Forces offers subtitles for cutscenes and
gameplay, and there are hints players can read. Text cannot be resized or altered. Other visual
elements will guide players through levels like button prompts and markers to indicate
enemies. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, Sonic Forces offers fully remappable controls.

The post Sonic Forces Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The last monster is a doozy.

LOW Having to do a boss fight six times because of an AI glitch.

WTF Is that a wading pool full of dentures?

Despite what feelings they might have about a Little Nightmares they didn’t make, the developers at Tarsier should be proud that they created a franchise with vibes so iconic that it’s possible for another studio to make something that is so instantly recognizable as Little Nightmares.

For all of its flaws, no one can make the argument that Little Nightmares 3 doesn’t feel like Little Nightmares. It hits all of the important franchise beats – there are creepily adorable main characters, an oppressive, oversized world, and monstrous entities wholly focused on the heroes’ demise.

What it lacks, by comparison, is a sense that these elements meld together to form a whole — because right now, Little Nightmares 3 feels more like a series of levels than a coherent experience.

Set in a horrible dreamworld recognizable to anyone who’s played any of the others in the franchise, LN3 follows children on a journey through four distinct worlds — a necropolis, a dusty wasteland where birds are slaughtered, a disgusting candy factory and a Dark Carnival where the displays are as upsetting as the attendees. Finally things move to a final level that I won’t reveal, save to say that it is seemingly tied closely to the series’ oblique mythology.

Hopefully one of my major issues is clear based on the list of levels I just outlined – namely that LN3 has no coherent flow to its progression.

While individual levels might have a sense of rising action – players invariably meet that level’s threat about a quarter of the way through and then have to deal with three further encounters before vanquishing it or making good their escape – there’s never a sense that an overall tale is being told. Low, the lead character, has a map that he consults before using his powers to teleport to new areas, but what these areas have to do with one another, or the goal he’s attempting to eventually reach never become clear. At the end of the adventure, I was left with more questions than answers.

To its credit, on a moment-to-moment basis LN3 works well. The puzzles are cleverly designed and clearly laid out, and the AI is good enough so that if a player doesn’t have a live co-op partner, they should have no trouble completing the many two-person objectives. I played most of the campaign in single-player mode, and almost never found myself getting stuck because the computer partner was too slow or confused about what to do.

That said, LN3 really does play better when two live players are involved, and it’s delightful being able to speed things along by having two people working on puzzle elements simultaneously. As such, it makes the lack of single-screen co-op feel like an oversight. There are a few locations when two characters have to separate, but they’re few and far between, and the success of things like It Takes Two and Split Fiction have proven that split-screens work just fine. At least they aren’t forcing players to buy two copies – as long as the host has a copy of LN3, their co-op partner can simply download the demo and play with a Friend’s Pass.

In a large sense, I don’t have many complaints about Little Nightmares 3. Each new area is beautifully realized, the monsters are scary, and the skin-of-the-teeth escapes are as thrilling as one would hope. However, as I closed in on the end, I couldn’t help but feel that it all felt vaguely hollow. It’s definitely a Little Nightmares title, but it never feels like it has anything to say, or that it’s building to something profound. Even the ending was underwhelming, although given that it has to be compared to the sadistic gut punch in Little Nightmares 2, that was probably always going to be the case.

Little Nightmares 3 might be the least of the trilogy so far, but anyone who wants to have a new experience in its horribly bleak and oppressive world will still find this a great opportunity to do so — it just doesn’t come together as darkly perfect as it should.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco. It currently available on PC/PS5/XBS-X/SW. Copies of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 10 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. 2 hours were spent in Multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, and it features Violence and Blood & Gore. This is a disturbing world full of violent imagery, but it’s presented in such a cartoony and grotesque way that I suspect even younger teens won’t find it excessive. Be prepared to be haunted by some of these creatures, though. That will happen.

Colorblind Modes: The game does contain colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All information is provided via text, which can be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Little Nightmares 3 Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The payoff of the ‘rare scrap collector’ storyline.

LOW Locking quests by accidentally moving the plot forward.

WTF So we’re just not going to explain the zombie robots?

In an age of bloated development and enormous open-world maps, I can’t remember the last time I got to the end of a game and found myself thinking wait… is that all there is? So, if nothing else, at least Robots at Midnight found an exciting new way to disappoint.

I’m being glib, of course. As a 3D action-adventure with Souls-inspired combat, there’s plenty to like about Robots at Midnight. However, the further I got into the experience, the more I found myself thinking that this couldn’t possibly be the whole game that the developers set out to make.

Set in the distant future after all life on earth has been wiped out by some kind of an electrical event, the player controls a teenage girl who was thrown into twenty years of stasis to protect her from rogue bots. She’s now awake and has a chance to explore the rusted-out and overgrown remains of an extremely small section of the world’s surface. There are only four distinct areas in the adventure, with each one featuring the same basic threats as the one before it.

As with most titles that broadly fit into the soulslike format – explore a wrecked location, kill enemies with mostly melee combat, reset monsters at campfires – there’s not much content here other than combat, and it’s extremely simple combat at that. Robots at Midnight‘s fighting involves locking onto enemies and using basic combos, then blocking when enemies attack or parrying to stagger them and set them up for a vicious counterattack. There’s an arsenal of weapons, but they don’t have major differences — just variations in damage, attack speed, and stamina usage while performing the same set of attacks.

Over the course of the adventure, the player can unlock three special techniques that offer concrete combat advantages. The first is a super punch that interrupts any enemy attack, ragdolling even bosses. The second is a laser blast that’s perfect for wiping out groups of foes, and the last is a ‘super-parry’ with timing so fiddly that I rolled credits before getting the hang of it — although Robots at Midnight‘s extremely brief running time was a factor in that.

To the game’s credit, it has some genuinely interesting creature design. All of the killer robots have seen better days — decades without humans to run the factories that make their parts have left them struggling to cobble together whatever repairs they can. These robots don’t fight with high-tech energy blades, they stumble around with nailbats and clubs built from bundles of rebar they’ve crudely welded together. The fact that the enemies are barely holding it together reinforces that this is a world on the edge of collapse. This precarity is only heightened by the titular midnight. It’s not just what comes after 11:59 PM, it’s also when a horrible beam of red energy sweeps across the planet and gremlins reanimate all of the robot corpses, turning them into mindless killing machines – moreso than they already were, anyway.

Which brings me to the most frustrating part of the experience – just how underexplained the story is.

There are a lot of strange elements here – the aforementioned zombie robots, a robot cult that worships the light beam, a leather-clad robot who ultimately serves as the main villain… even for a Souls-inspired game, Robots at Midnight does a terrible job of explaining any of these pieces. The main character is very interested in figuring out what’s going on the in world – she just never has the chance to do so.

Robots at Midnight is promising, and if this were an Early Access title, I’d be excited to see where it’s going. The combat is solid (if basic) the art style offers a cartoony take on a world post-collapse, and the mechanics of exploration were satisfying from moment to moment. Still, the whole thing feels like an idea for a game, as what was in front of me for review felt miles away from being a full, complete experience.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Finish Line games and published by Snail Games USA. It currently available on PC/PS5/XBS-X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 10 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. The game contains no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, features Violence. There’s constant human-on-robot violence and the game is set in a post-apocalypse, but there’s noting particularly traumatic about it. After all, it’s not like the player is ever introduced to any of the billions of people who were presumably killed offscreen. It’s fine for even younger teens to play.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All information is provided via text, which cannot be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Robots At Midnight Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH It’s Tail Time.

LOW It’s Tail Time.

WTF It’s Tail Time.

When I asked to review the remastered Gex Trilogy, I knew it would be a massive undertaking, the likes of which no one has seen before — and it is not possible to overstate how sarcastic I am being here.

Debuting back in 1994, Gex is a ‘beloved’ character mascot that the big bosses at Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix wheeled out for four years despite owning the IP for nearly two decades overall, and neither studio doing much of anything with it in all that time. 

After playing through this trilogy, it’s not surprising why.

Gex is not a compelling character, and the titles where he is featured are equally uninteresting. It’s clear that he was meant to compete with the plethora of 3D platforming mascots that came out in the late ’90s, such as Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot. However, comparing Gex to the brighter stars of the time is like pitting a toddler against a bulldozer. 

Gex’s whole personality is that he’s an anthropomorphic gecko obsessed with television. It’s a shoddy connection at best, but his whole mission across the three games is that he must tackle various villains in the Media Dimension, where he gets sucked into a TV and plays through levels based on TV show tropes and genres.

This is also, for better or worse, where he gets his humor. Gex is not the typical naive protagonist, working to save his home world from an evil threat. Instead, he behaves like a friend of a friend that you don’t really hang out with.

He’s jaded. He makes half-jokes that never land about movie stars that are no longer on the silver screen. Perhaps the most annoying part of the entire character is that every other sentence is either “It’s Tail Time” or “That’s what I call getting some tail.” The tail ‘jokes’, if one could even call them that, never stopped. It was agonizing. Maybe it was funny at one point, but I don’t think that point exists in the present day.

For this review, I played through portions of the original Gex (1995) and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (1999), and played through all of Gex: Enter the Gecko (1998).

The 1995 title is a fairly standard 2D platformer. The action, as is the level design and visuals. However, it’s difficult to focus on those when Gex’s story is devoid of purpose — his mission lacks a driving force to keep him going other than the fact that he’s just stuck in the Media Dimension.

It’s common with all the Gex games, but the main villain of all three titles, Rez, shows up at the beginning of each adventure, only to disappear until the very end. Therefore, none of the enemies seem connected with the overall plot, and are just there to be dealt with. There are TV remotes to collect in each level, but it never felt like I was progressing to an ending of any kind. 

The 3D platformers weren’t much better. Enter the Gecko (1998) was the title I spent the most time with, and it felt devoid of any life or spirit.

The same can be said for Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (1999). A part of the reason for this was the overall TV-theming — when a title like Gex chooses to use TV as the through-line between every world and also chooses to license no recognizable properties, it feels generic. I played through a bland, yet borderline racist ninja level. I played through a generic Jurassic Park-esque dinosaur level. Even the “Circuit” levels, which seemed like something straight out of Tron, were just not memorable. 

Story and bad character design aside, the 3D games are serviceable in terms of mechanics. The 3D platforming is solid, and the setpieces are interesting enough. Frankly, it’s remarkable that the Limited Run team could bring these games back from the ’90s and make them playable today in the 2020s. 

At the end of the day, I think the main lesson to take away from the Gex Trilogy is that just because a title has a serviceable design foundation and decent gameplay mechanics, it doesn’t mean that’s enough. If the experience relies on a mascot character to stand out from the pack and that character is annoying as all hell, it’s doomed from the start.

Out of all of the nearly-forgotten games to bring forward into the 2020s, I’m not sure why Limited Run chose Gex — it’s such an absurdist concept that I have to laugh at it now, but while playing Gex in the moment, I despised it. 

Rating: 3 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Limited Run Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PC. Approximately 11 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is rated T by the ESRB for Blood, Crude Humor, Fantasy Violence, Mild Language and Sexual Themes. Gex will make crude, sometimes sexual jokes like “Don’t drink the punch at Jerry Garcia’s,” and “I’m lost in Dick Dale’s colon.” The extent of the crude language is a statement like “Damn this pesky gravity to hell!” when Gex falls into a pit. The combat is fairly cartoony but there are a few sections with animated blood such as in the ninja levels.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Dear & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no subtitles for dialogue. This game is not accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game’s controls are fully remappable.

The post Gex Trilogy Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The latest Virtua Fighter 5 edition, with rollback, finally available on Steam.

LOW The single player component is pretty barebones.

WTF Kage’s flying headbutt down attack looks absolutely lethal — to himself.

Rejoice, ye faithful, for the grand Virtua Fighter resurgence is nigh! Hooray!

For those who missed the recent news, Virtua Fighter 6 has finally been announced after almost two decades of waiting, so what better way to celebrate this momentous occasion than for Sega to release a new version of Virtua Fighter 5 on Steam — along with some swanky new rollback netcode, a new intro song by legendary Sega vocalist Takenobu Mitsuyoshi and assorted balance changes? It may not be a brand new game, but still — nice.

Despite being based on a title that’s almost two decades old at this point, Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. looks amazing. Stage design in particular is downright spectacular, offering sweeping grasslands, vibrant rain-slick cityscapes and a raft that carries players past soaring pillars of rock as players attempt to dunk their opponent into the drink. Characters are large, well-defined and sharply rendered to take advantage of modern 4K displays.

In fact, the presentation is generally great overall with big, colorful menus that hew closely to PlayStation’s Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown release from three and a half years back. It pops just a little more vibrantly, however, and seeing the main menu screen rolling continuous high level matches that can be enlarged at the touch of a button is as fantastic a feature now as it was back then, as a great way for new or learning players to see how certain characters can operate in skilled hands.

Speaking of characters, there’s a roster of nineteen playable characters, all with distinct and viable martial arts styles on offer. From MMA and Jeet Kun Do to Bajiquan and Drunken Kung Fu, there’s a style to suit nearly every taste. Though, let’s be honest — anyone who isn’t using Vanessa Lewis is probably doing it wrong, as her grapple-based beatdowns are poetry in motion.

The beauty of Virtua Fighter is that all of these fighting styles somehow feel reasonably authentic to their source material, even when someone’s being uppercut six feet into the air and punched five times before they hit the floor. It just works and feels strangely realistic, though arguably filtered through the lens of a Hong Kong kung fu movie.

Additionally, there’s a purity to R.E.V.O.‘s pugilism that’s downright refreshing at this point. In a genre where progress seems to be trending towards tacking on as many Supers, Rage Arts, Drive Rushes and Heat Gauges as possible, it turns out that there’s a lot to be said for simply focusing on the fundamentals. It’s all easy to understand on a visual level too, with no lingering hurtboxes or similar idiosyncrasies throwing players for a loop. Controls are simple – a punch button, a kick button, a guard button and various combinations thereof are all that are needed to delve into an extremely precise fighting and technical experience.

If I had to summarize Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. ‘s matches in a single word, it would be ‘explosive’. It’s not a game that rewards all-out aggression, but when fighters do clash their health gauges can be stripped down in astonishingly short order. However, there’s less of a focus on rushdown than in some competing games as defensive options are strong, most non-specialized attacks won’t hurt downed opponents, and maneuvering around the arena is also incredibly important. A huge lead doesn’t mean much if a player gets sloppy and winds up being tossed out of the ring.

As for the balance changes, they’re subtle. Weight classes have been tweaked so Taka Arashi’s a little more vulnerable than he used to be, and Eileen isn’t such a temptingly lightweight target. Some older moves have been returned to a character’s repertoire, and it’s all just a little more balanced than ever. Not that it was badly tuned before — quite the opposite — but nearly twenty years of digging away at a game’s core will often result in uncovering a few rough edges.

While it’s an excellent offering overall, Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O.‘s biggest weaknesses tend to occur outside the fighting. Namely, as a modern fighting package, it’s lacking in extras needed to lure in casual players. Not everyone wants to spend all their time online, and aside from a training and arcade mode, there’s not much else for solo players other than watching high-level matches stream in through the main menu. There’s nothing here on par with the extensive single-player offerings seen in recent titles such as Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 and recent Mortal Kombat titles, and even character customization options have been pared back significantly since the days of the original Virtua Fighter 5 release.

Worse, though, for a title that focuses so much on online competitive play, there’s no cross-platform play with the PlayStation version of Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown, which has already been updated to maintain balance parity with R.E.V.O. Steam may be a huge platform, but with an older game like this Sega really should be casting the net as far and wide as it’ll go — and that includes an Xbox release too. Get everyone in on this party, dammit.

With those foibles noted, Virtua Fighter 5 is still a peerless fighter even after all this time, resulting in a game that’s still a joy to play. It’s the best version of a legendary fighting experience, and even if it doesn’t check all the expected boxes of a modern fighting game package, it still kicks ass.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega. It is currently available on PC. A similar version is available on PS4 and PS5, but is missing certain new additions such as rollback netcode. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download before a key was provided by the publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed with multiple characters. 7 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes. Furthermore, I’ve played a lot of VF5 over the years in its various forms.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, and Violence.  The official description reads as follows: This is a fighting game in which players choose from a large cast of international fighters to compete against others in one-on-one matches. Players punch, kick, and throw opponents as they attempt to drain their health bars. Combat is highlighted by impact sounds, cries of pain, and brief replay sequences of knockouts. These replays are shown from various camera angles, some of which are slightly zoomed in. Some female characters are designed with revealing costumes (e.g., deep cleavage, bikini-like tops); one character is depicted in a mannequin-like style with nipple-less breasts and buttocks. One character is described as using “Drunken Kung-fu” as his fighting style and can be seen drinking from a gourd during fights; some of his moves reference his drinking, letting players know how many drinks are needed to perform those attacks.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not offer subtitles. Characters have a few intro and win quotes delivered in various languages, none of which are necessary to enjoy the game or story. After all, there is no story aside from the background lore. Some audio cues can help discern certain moves, such as a swooshing noise signifying that sidestepping certain attacks isn’t possible, but there’s no need to rely on them. It’s a very visual game.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH It’s a fantastic reinterpretation of the metroidvania formula.

LOW Being unexpectedly locked out of the explorer frog’s sidequest.

WTF Hummus is easily available on a world like this??

Sparky has done a great job in covering Caravan SandWitch with his main review, and I don’t disagree on any of his points, other than perhaps the degree to which we enjoyed the experience. For me, it was easily one of the year’s best.

One thing that made it stand out were the vibes. As he correctly indicates, it’s an extremely chill experience, and that laid-back quality was was quite welcome in this tumultuous year of chaos. The lack of fall damage and combat were revelations, and after spending 12 hours with Sauge trying to complete every quest possible, I rolled credits without missing either. SandWitch didn’t need them, I didn’t crave them, and it says a lot about how certain experiences can choose non-traditional paths and thrive.

I also loved how the overall world design dovetailed with this fresh direction. The conceit of a large multi-galaxy conglomerate leaving the planet and abandoning all of their facilities, robots and gear was fascinating — coming across huge warehouses with the goods still in them, secure areas left unguarded, power plants sending electricity to nowhere, and autonomous robots performing tasks that no longer serve a purpose were all excellent world building, and spending time with the people left in capitalism’s wake is perhaps a tiny peek into our own future.

The scope of SandWitch was quite welcome, too. While the map makes the available territory seem much larger than it is, it’s quick and simple to cross from one end of the land to the other in a matter of minutes, and that was just fine! It never felt onerous or tedious to get anywhere, and I never felt like I needed or wanted tons more space. In fact, this cozy area suited me so well that I eventually became familiar enough with the landscape that I knew where I was going, even without the map.

With both the setting and size taken into consideration, it was then a bit of a revelation to see a truly fresh application of the metroidvania formula laid atop SandWitch‘s foundations.

SandWitch takes the traditionally-2D system of finding powerups and opening skill-gated parts of a world and successfully extrapolates it to a fully 3D open world environment. Rather than closing off sections of the world, certain buildings were closed or key facilities were inaccessible, so the freedom of being in an open world was still present. Of course, there were certainly places that the player would have to mentally make note of and return to later once they’d received some of the tools that Sauge eventually adds to her arsenal, but it felt logical and organic, and never artificially constrained. I’m honestly quite tired of the metroidvania formula as it is traditionally interpreted, but something about SandWitch made the proposal feel so new and curious that I was immediately sucked in and wanted to uncover every single secret.

Unfortunately, Sparky is dead correct when it comes to the story and the translation. For a game that clearly displays so much love and attention in so many aspects, it’s a shame that the script, dialogue and individual conversations fall flat.

Throughout the campaign there are tons of examples of phrases that feel slightly off, of someone’s point not quite being made, and a general lack of dramatic buildup to the climax despite of the fact that there are many, many opportunities for poignant moments and unfolding revelations.

I must stress to every developer reading this review — don’t skimp on the translation!! Don’t give it to AI for cleanup, and don’t give it to a friend who kinda-sorta knows English. A script can make or break an entire experience, and while Caravan SandWitch is something I absolutely loved, this could have been an all-time classic if the characters and story were better written. The translation is a huge, avoidable mess for a title that is otherwise precisely on-point, and it pained me to see how uncaring I was about the story in general.

With a script that’s so off, it really says something that not only was I invested enough to play Caravan SandWitch to completion, but that it ended up being one of my favorite experiences of the year in spite of the poor dialogue. Exploring this extremely chill, open world while digging around amongst the ruins of corporate greed held my attention from start to finish, and even by the time I had solved all the mysteries and had done all the things, I was still quite ready to spend more time in this world. It’s not without its flaws, but Caravan SandWitch remains one of my favorite experiences of 2024, and I would strongly encourage the developers to continue their work — I look forward to being delighted with something new.

Rating: 8.5

Disclosures: This game is developed by Studio Plane Toast and published by Dear Villagers. It is currently available on PC, PS5 and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via retail purchase and reviewed on PS5. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Language and Violent References. This is a terrible classification. The mentioned violence is no worse than your typical 6PM newscast and I can’t recall Sauge ever going harder than “drat”. My main reservation is that in one of its endings a character commits suicide by choosing to remain behind (offscreen) in an exploding building. Even with that, I would not put this above E10. The world’s most tedious and unlikable people (perhaps the ESRB raters are among them) will also be annoyed that Sauge has two dads and many individuals are referred to with they/them pronouns.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game is fully accessible. All dialogue is in text, but text cannot be resized or modified. There are no essential sound cues in gameplay.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls on PC. MK controls are as shown in the attached images. Controller defaults to X for interaction, Y for exiting / returning to van, A for jumping or acceleration boost (in van), B for exiting dialogues. Left and right sticks default to move and look, respectively, left and right triggers default to decelerate (in the van) and accelerate (on foot and in the van).

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HIGH The art style has its moments.

LOW The gamefeel, the puzzles, the teeth-grittingly slow pace…

WTF The two Andy Warhols in Artia (which is two too many)

The Plucky Squire has indie smash hit swagger. The concept? Main character Jot is a Link-like storybook hero who can alter his book’s world and even venture into the ‘real world’ outside of its pages. It immediately looks like a winner thanks to a charming art style, and the mechanical ideas shown from the earliest trailers pricked up the ears of huge swathes of the market.

Sadly – and it brings me no pleasure to say this – The Plucky Squire is bad. So bad, in fact, that I’m in the ludicrous position of admitting that this bright, cheery title was the worst thing I’ve played this year, and that I gave up before I finished it.

I sensed trouble within minutes of starting — or, I should say, within minutes of being given some meaningful control, because The Plucky Squire is obsessively chatty from the start, and it remains so throughout. Everything about the way Jot controls, both in the Zelda-esque 2D, top-down world of the storybook and the Mario-ish 3D real world, feels wrong. His sword swing is sluggish, he moves slowly, and his roll has a noticeably staccato rhythm to it. Playing Squire at anything less than 60fps further compounds these issues.

Zelda is not strictly about combat, but even in the ‘86 original Zelda, Link’s sword thrust was well-tuned and intuitive. Jot’s is not, and because many screens involve killing enemies, it’s not possible to ignore how skewed the gamefeel is. Enemy HP is too high as well, and everything takes too long to kill. There’s a half-baked upgrade system, but I felt forced to beeline for the damage upgrades to help speed things up. It’s just not good.

The other half of the Zelda equation is made up of puzzles, and Plucky Squire infuses its brainteasers with a text-based word-swapping element. Because Jot lives in a storybook, his adventures appear on the page as sentences. Certain words in these sentences can be picked up and shuffled around, and these changes alter the storybook page to suit the new sentence. The book may describe a lily pad as “small,” and it is indeed unable to hold his weight, but if Jot finds the word “big” somewhere else, he can pop it into that sentence to make the pad big enough to jump to.

Nice concept, flavorless execution. I don’t expect or want the puzzles in Plucky Squire to be brain-burning monstrosities, but what’s on offer in Squire will drop someone’s cranial temperature to absolute zero. It’s evident within seconds what’s required, there’s no room for unforeseen solutions, and it’s always just a matter of executing the sequence – and a sequence is often hampered by stodgy combat and incessant, play-stopping quips from the characters.

It also bothers me in particular that slotting in the wrong word doesn’t cause its own changes. Every valid sentence construction should enact its rule, with no exceptions. With the lily pad, if I put the word “stone” in instead of “big,” it should rightfully turn to stone. Instead, the sentence simply rejects it rather than altering the scene accordingly.

Then there are the 3D sections. While Jot’s moveset is unchanged, there’s more of an emphasis on platforming — platforming which is mediocre at best, stultifying at its (frequent) worst. The one-off concepts continue in 3D too, and I can’t help but kvetch about the fact that the first “out of the book” sequence has an instant fail stealth section that would’ve been tacky and outdated 15 years ago.

All of Squire’s good ideas stop at the flash of concept, and never generate the warmth that comes from meaningful mechanical exploration. Look at the slew of minigames it offers – these are meant to be cute riffs and homages to other games, but they’re flawed.

For example, the Punch-Out-style boxing episode for the first boss is terrible. Like all of his other actions, Jot’s punches and dodges just aren’t up to the standards of Little Mac’s. Furthermore, Plucky Squire is too anxious that players might not catch on to this simple fight and explains exactly how to beat it before it starts. Another early sequence that switches to a turn-based JRPG battle drags on well after the joke has been appreciated, forcing the player to sink into its fundamental mediocrity. Fortunately, the minigames can be skipped – I just wish other elements could be passed over as well…

It’s not even a matter of style over substance in Plucky Squire, because the art style, while striking and technically competent, is hollow and derivative — it lands somewhere between a twee Adventure Time with the numbers filed off and the DIY art label on a middling craft farmhouse ale. It’s sort of unique for a game to look like this, but so much art elsewhere looks exactly like this. There’s no surprising fire, no distinguishing eccentricity… no sense of character that wasn’t spooned out of a can.

The story of this storybook also grates. One the characters is a wizard named Moonbeard who wears cool shades and is also a DJ. There’s a mountain with a candy-colored heavy metal theme called Trarrg, and a swamp full of actor-snails that speak in bad couplets. It’s all so cringe-inducing, and frankly, trying way too hard. 

Cheeriness laid on thick can work, but Plucky Squire is so flat in its optimism that it comes across as dopey. There’s nary a shade of melancholy or maturity here, which is essential to great children’s stories. However, even if I liked the story – which I didn’t – it incessantly interrupts the gameplay.

One mandatory quest involves bringing pigs — sorry, I mean “Rubboinks” — back to their pen. After each one is dropped off, the jovial farmer stops Jot to let him know that, hey, he just dropped off a Rubboink! When dealing with the aforementioned snails, Jot must gather two different volumes of a book, one on each side of the screen, all with running commentary from the surrounding snails. When the sequence is over there’s an unskippable, joyless “skit” scene where the snail actors do their little play.

The storybook conceit itself also intrudes. Every time Jot leaves a screen, the book has to zoom out, flip the page, and zoom back in before he can move again — and some of these screens consist of a path with nothing on it that takes two seconds to traverse. Even outside of the storybook there are many long pans over the level, including ones that zoom in on keys, just in case anyone was worried about having to find it themselves. My enthusiasm was already sputtering out, but the fact that I couldn’t even move through Squire’s world at anything but a glacial pace is what ultimately killed it for me. Goodbye, Moonbeard. Don’t let the hard drive hit you on the way out.

I wish All Possible Futures luck in their future ventures, but here, in today’s hyper-crowded indie scene, there are dozens and dozens of games that deserve to be plucked up ahead of this Squire.

4.5 out of 10

— Ben Schwartz

Disclosures: This game is developed by All Possible Futures and published by Devolver Digital. It is available on PC, PS5, XBO/X/S and Switch. This copy of the game was obtainedvia publisher. Approximately 8 hours of play were devoted to the game, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Fantasy Violence. The ESRB rating summary is as follows: This is an action-adventure game in which players follow the story of a squire who explores 2D and 3D realms while trying to save his friends. Players traverse platform environments, solve puzzles, and fight whimsical enemies (e.g., goblins, birds, badgers). Players use a small sword to strike cartoony enemies that disappear into puffs of smoke when defeated. One mini-game depicts an exaggerated boxing match, with characters punching and dodging to defeat each other; action is highlighted by impact sounds, brief cries of pain, and screen-shaking effects.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered or resized. There are no audio cues needed for gameplay. This title is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

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HIGH Star Wars: Bounty Hunter finally has a PC port, 22 years later!

LOW The live system is still included, despite like a dozen other, more questionable changes?!

WTF When an emulator is better at remastering a game than a professional studio.

Disney might treat the original Star Wars Expanded Universe like a junk drawer these days, but boy howdy do they love to reach in for remasters every now and then. Having already handled most of the usual suspects (though I’m still waiting for a proper console port of Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight!), we’ve seen some solid remasters and re-releases. Sadly, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (2024) is not one of the good ones.

For those too young to know about this mid-’00s actioner, Bounty Hunter is the origin story of a hardened Mandalorian named Jango Fett. The story is set parallel to the events of The Phantom Menace and he’s struggling to make ends meet before being hired by Sith Lords to kill a target. This sets Fett on a collision course with Montross, a disgraced Mandalorian who betrayed their mutual mentor and effectively doomed their whole society. So yeah, pretty typical space Western fare with some mystical Jedi nonsense on the fringes.

What’s great for Star Wars fans here is the attention to detail. The story incorporates lore from the comics, even including a relevant issue for free as an unlockable for beating the game. Jango’s actor from Attack of the Clones reprises his role to great effect, and other stellar actors like Clancy Brown and Lucille Bliss bolster the cast. The events of the tale lead right up to Jango’s recruitment as the template of the clone army of the Galactic Republic. It’s not the most profound adventure, but that’s not the point — it’s here to be a charming tie-in story for those who wanted more out of Attack of the Clones’ revelations about the Fett family.

So, about the game itself.

The original Star Wars Bounty Hunter was a linear third-person action-adventure with 3D platforming and more shootouts than a Mandalorian can shake a blaster at. While the option to manually aim is there, it’s best to rely on its lock-on system to aim both pistols while diving into the fray. In terms of movement, Fett traverses the environment by climbing and boosting across gaps horizontally and vertically with his jetpack. That said — and it can’t be overstated — the parkour and traversal elements do not hold the player’s hand, and seeing Fett fall to his death sometimes is pretty much inevitable. Initial levels are more forgiving about this, but past the halfway mark, the player will encounter some areas that are sure to test one’s patience.

Fett’s health also doesn’t regenerate, so players must rely on enemies dropping healing bacta tanks, or finding extra health packs hidden around levels. While his pistols never run dry, much of Fett’s arsenal has limited uses, requiring tactful planning. This isn’t a modern titles where the slightest player error is compensated for — try something dumb, and odds are good Fett will end up dead. Also, if players are intending to 100% the campaign, they have to take the time to manually scan every NPC in line of sight (with an otherwise useless-scanner gadget) to see if they might be an optional bounty to collect – a tricky feat in combat-laden latter stages.

Despite all of the areas that might grate on a player, it offers a unique blend of action-adventure gameplay that’s still novel. The closest spiritual successor I can think of would be WET from back in 2009, which also had cinematic flair and a dual-pistol wielding protagonist. Considering that there aren’t many games occupying the same space, the prospect of a new version with “improvements” was exciting — yet after playing, I’m not sure what Aspyr thinks “improvement” means.

Take, for instance, how equipment-swapping no longer pauses play, so in every instance of needing a specific weapon or gadget, I have to hurriedly cycle through everything with the Q&E keys or my mouse wheel while under fire — not ideal when Fett will have a dozen-ish items to shuffle through in the late game.

More egregious is how the aiming and shooting are… changed. Understand, Bounty Hunter is meant to be played with lock-on targeting. Everything is built around this. Manual aiming is exclusively used for sniping, long distance shots, and manually guiding Fett’s rockets into some poor fool’s face. But now? The emphasis is now on manually aiming all the damn time.

Those who haven’t played Bounty Hunter might wonder why this is such a big deal. Surely it can’t be that different! No, it actually pretty much snaps the combat balance like Darth Vader manhandling the neck of an Imperial officer.

When playing in lock-on, Fett can dodge roll, leap and do cool moves to avoid getting shot. When manually aiming, players can expect to taking far more damage, and it was already tough to begin with. Adding insult to injury, the lock-on system did not get the same dev time that manual did, as it kept freaking out on me, zipping 180 degrees back and forth to find a target when enemies were standing right in front of me.

Bizarrely, the anachronistic ‘lives’ system is still here, though ripping it out could’ve been a truly beneficial gameplay change. The player gets five lives with no way to earn more, and in 2024 there’s no excuse for keeping it while Aspyr was making alterations to other systems. No one would’ve blinked an eye if it mysteriously vanished.

Despite all of this, I could still stomach the frustrations if Bounty Hunter wasn’t more prone to breaking than the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive. I encountered so many weird animation and camera bugs that any chance of immersion was soundly shattered. it’s all quite rough, from NPCs T-posing in cutscenes to seeing how absurdly easy it is to ghost the camera through the environment. 

Not helping matters, the new lighting and rendering techniques are often distracting while they introduce new graphical glitches, with weird Z-fighting (two textures conflicting to be rendered in the same space) that stuck out every now and then. When navigating vents, sometimes the collision detection would jam the camera inside Jango’s body, making it impossible to tell whether I was moving forward or back. At one point, manually aiming my gun broke Jango’s neck mid-animation, and the list goes on…

There was a chance for something great, here. Bounty Hunter is one of those titles that’s been absolutely deserving of a once-over to really make it shine. The stages are incredibly varied, the mixture of blazing guns and bombastic jet-powered parkour is oddly rare in Star Wars gaming, and it boasts a great pulpy story.

Should people play Star Wars: Bounty Hunter? Definitely. It’s an acquired taste, but I still enjoy its high points. But should anyone play it via this remastered edition? Goodness, no. Considering how long fans have waited for this title to get a next-gen boost, there’s no excuse to release it in this state. 

Final Score: 4 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Aspyr and published by Lucasfilm Games. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, XBO/X/S and Switch. This copy was provided via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Six hours were dedicated to the single-player campaign, and it was not completed.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T for Violence. It’s a Star Wars game, so nothing will get too intense but there are drug use references, and Fett is portrayed in a distinctly antihero manner given how casually he’ll kill anyone in his way. The player can even open fire on civilians! Honestly, it’s a bit weird how light the ESRB went. This is definitely something for teenagers and up, not the little ones.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game features subtitles and otherwise relies almost entirely on visual prompts for how to proceed. There are no audio cues needed for gameplay. This title is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the controls are not remappable, not even keyboard and mouse. The cheat console also requires navigating it like the player has a controller, which may be briefly discomforting to players used to being able to type directly with their keyboard.

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HIGH A great sense of scale.

LOW Not a ton of enemy and combat variety.

WTF The vehicles were abysmal to drive.

When working in a space with as many smash hits as the 3D platformer genre has, a studio has many sources of inspiration to draw from. They can take the Ratchet and Clank approach and focus on weapons and power-ups, they can focus on movement and verticality like the 3D Mario titles, or take it in any number of wacky directions one can imagine.

Akimbot lies somewhere in the middle of all of those choices, yet refuses to fully execute on any of them. After rolling credits, I was disappointed — with a bit more polish and inspiration, it could have been so much more.

The player begins in a mobile jail cell flying over a beachy planet. The player is in control of Exe, a robot mercenary taken captive by the all-powerful Algorithm — the world robot government that rules Akimbot’s universe. Exe is shacked up with Shipset, a wisecracking (albeit annoyingly-voiced) floating drone that has a grand plan to break them out of jail and begin a life on the run. The only problem? Both Exe and Shipset have unique skills of special use to the Algorithm.

As both very good at avoiding capture, taking hits and being accurate with their shots,the Algorithm forcibly tasks Exe and Shipset with trying to take down an aptly-named evil robot (Evilware) who is planning to summon a robot army to take over the universe and destroy the Algorithm. The Algorithm then compels them forward on on a wild goose chase through the past, present, and a few dream sequences to save the universe.

Akimbot is at its best when showing large-scale environments on the planets the pair are journeying across, as maps span what seem like miles between combat encounters. There are sandy beaches, poison swamps, and frigid tundras speckled with robotic life and remnants of civilizations, all captured in a blocky art style — but so much of it is just window dressing. There were many times I walked, dashed, and shot my way through these environments and felt that there was so much more that could have been done to make them feel richer. A little piece of lore or a few friendly NPCs would go a long way to fill these worlds with life.

Akimbot’s gunplay-focused combat mirrors the shallow feeling of the environments. Ultimately armed with an assault rifle, sniper rifle, minigun and rocket launcher, Exe needs to slay hordes of enemies from Evilware’s army as they shoot at him from afar. The loop is fairly engaging, but having gunplay be the main focus also necessitates a decent cover system and enough obstacles to hide behind and shoot between, which are mostly absent in Akimbot. Many times I’d peek out from behind a sliver of a pillar and be bombarded with enemy fire, only see nowhere else to hide. Exe’s health bar not being upgradable exacerbates the issue.

Combat variety is also a persistent problem in Akimbot. There are only four weapons during the campaign, but most encounters don’t require more than one. The sniper rifle outclasses every other weapon in the arsenal, taking out most enemies in two or three shots like clockwork. There were a few instances where I had to switch it up and disable shields with the rocket launcher or kil hordes of weak enemies with the minigun, but for the majority of the time, the sniper was all that was required. Akimbot could add a lot of much-needed variety by leaning into situational encounters that require players to try different tactics. Including some sort of more-realized upgrade system would have helped it feel fresher, as well.

However, one aspect that I did appreciate was the sense of scale often found in Akimbot. There are sections where Exe and Shipset fly to new planets, and in these segments it’s possible to see the end goal while still at the very beginning of the level, showing the entire task at once. Some of the boss fights employ a similar scale. When taking on flying spaceships and giant mechanical lizards, Exe and Shipset often seem as large as microbes in huge, hostile environments, and traversing incredibly long distances just to get a couple of quick hits on a boss made killing them feel rewarding.

Despite the combat overshadowing the rest of Akimbot, it is a 3D platformer with other dimensions. The platforming mechanics are solid, but often seem like filler among the gunplay encounters. Wall-running, grappling, and disappearing platforms are all a bit janky and feel unfinished in the grand scope of each level. There are also puzzles for Exe to “hack”, where he plays an abbreviated version of Snake or has to press a series of buttons in a certain order, all with a time limit. However, they don’t change in difficulty throughout, so they end up feeling more like chores to complete than anything else.

Atop all of these mechanics is a fairly interesting story of who deserves to wield power, and how much that power corrupts these robot leaders. EvilWare and the Algorithm are both evil but also not evil, and that they’re mainly just mad at each other. Unfortunately, despite how interesting the plot might be, the mechanics just don’t provide enough support to keep the entire experience feeling well-rounded.

Akimbot presents a lot of ideas that don’t significantly learn from or build on the milestones established by the 3D platformers that have come before it — and there are a lot of them to learn from. In the end, it’s a middling, uninspired entry into a genre crowded with bangers, and finds itself in need of both more polished mechanics and a livelier world. My hope is that Evil Raptor will improve on this first effort and expand on Exe’s story in a more realized way.

Rating: 5 out of 10

— Jack Dunn

Disclosures: The game was developed by Evil Raptor and is published by PLAION. It is currently available on PC, XBX/S, and PS5. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 9 hours was devoted to the game, and it was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has an ESRB rating of E for Fantasy Violence and Mild Language. All of the fighting in the game is between robots, though the game’s main weapons are guns. The mild language uses words like “bot” and “scrap” as placeholders for more choice words.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind options.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles in the game, and no audio cues are required for gameplay. The subtitles cannot be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable controls: Controls are fully remappable.

The post Akimbot Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Captivating visuals and great build variety.

LOW Pretty short overall.

WTF That golden boss…

It’s not often that a cartoony game grabs my attention — let alone holds it from start to finish — so I’m happy to report that Cat Quest 3 is one such gem. The strong artistic direction and the sheer absurdity of watching cute, furry sprites smacking each other with medieval weaponry while pretending to be pirates, kept me keen to see this adventure to the end. En garde!

Cat Quest 3 is a realtime action-RPG featuring 2D characters roaming a 3D world. The adventure begins with a short intro setting the stage for the main character’s goal of tracking down a legendary pirate treasure hidden by certain esoteric (yet fluffy) forces. This brief foreword was just enough to introduce the premise, preparing me for an adventure brimming with magic, cat puns aplenty, and a vibrant map full of legendary pirates.

Following that, I immediately took note of the eye-catching camera perspective Cat Quest 3 implements, where we observe things from a tilted overhead angle, allowing a clear view of the world’s islands, mountains, caverns, castles, taverns, towers, and seas as they pop into view as if being “discovered”.

I found this to be a neat solution for the mixed-dimensional presentation, as Cat Quest 3’s combat demands quick reflexes and purr-poseful legwork, since enemies usually appear in groups and operate on different movesets. So, while we direct our feline hero across the map (the world is a literal map, featuring cartographic lines and symbols) we clearly observe the area and any opposition nearby. This kingdom is brimming with dastardly pi-rats, supernatural entities, and a handful of eldritch surprises, all wearing era-appropriate apparel like feathery hats, eye patches, sabers, wands, shields, and a selection of ranged weaponry to boot.

Regarding the on-foot combat, as soon as Cat Quest 3’s few introductory bouts ended, I had a weighty selection of several types of armaments, including claws, swords, and axes, as well as pistols and double-barreled contraptions, presenting me with many choices of build. The items also carry ‘deeper’ RPG-stat-boosting purposes yielding maximum health increases, stronger armor ratings, faster attack speed, and so on. While I could swing the melee weapon of choice in prolonged fashion, ranged options were hampered by cumbersome reload periods, forcing me to learn how to use them strategically when surrounded by foes. While Cat Quest 3 definitely gets easier with play due to plentiful money for upgrades, the first 30 or so minutes were indeed rough.

However, while the aesthetics are on point, it’s safe to say that this isn’t the most optimized structure for combat. As all enemies are 2D sprites darting around a 3D world, their attack animations tend to overlap and become visually tough to parse (especially within narrow dungeons) and it gets even more chaotic when enemies start throwing fireballs. For instance, it’s hard to tell whether an enemy’s color change was due to my axe connecting or because the enemy was initiating a magical attack. Some instances of Cat Quest 3 were memorable simply due to how many sprites were present on screen at once, but they were reduced to being exercises in mayhem where I happily resorted to mashing buttons in the hopes of dwindling their health bars ASAP. Such im-purr-fections aside, I doubt many players will have a hard time getting on board, especially as the difficulty curve quickly boosts the player into a comfortable zone.

Between bouts of combat, Cat Quest 3 offers entertaining, pun-filled dialogues which are short enough not avoid interrupting the joy of slowly becoming the most fearsome purr-ate around, and I always cheered upon discovering yet another seemingly uneventful corner of the map that served as a starting point for an epic quest to thwart newly-introduced adversaries. The world’s rapid expansion was a highlight for me, and Cat Quest 3’s flavorful homages to other videogames and real-world celebrities made things that much sweeter. (Crank up the Meowtallika!!!)

As such, everything contained within Cat Quest 3 added up to a satisfying, fulfilling romp — and while I never encountered an obstacle that I couldn’t overcome within five minutes of trying, I did feel like I had accomplished something at the story’s conclusion, which only serves to show how expertly knitted-together the experience is. I found it to be utterly irresistible and, dare I say, purr-found!

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was developed by The Gentlebros and published by Kepler Interactive. It is currently available on Switch, PS4/5, PC, and XBO/X/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch Lite. Approximately 7 hours of play were devoted to the game, and it was completed. This game supports local co-op multiplayer for up to two players.

Parents: This game has received an E rating from the ESRB and contains Comic Mischief and Fantasy Violence. The game features medieval aesthetics heavily influenced by pirate legends akin to the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series. However, it also borrows from more complicated IPs like H.P. Lovercraft’s writings. Still, even if the story hints at a deeper overarching plot with giant cosmic creatures at the forefront, Cat Quest 3’s cartoony 2D characters and playful tone are the primary impressions players will be left with in the end. As such, I doubt that younger audiences will think twice about the game’s influences even after witnessing clear references to more serious material in a few of its dialogues.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue in this game is shown via textboxes, so they’re easy to keep track of at all times. All enemy attacks are clearly telegraphed on-screen with enemies signaling when they will strike next and in which general direction. There are no audio cues needed for gameplay. This experience is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game doesn’t offer a controller diagram and the controls are not remappable. However, the controls are fairly straightforward — on the Switch Lite, we use the left stick to move the character, the face buttons to strike and roll out of danger, and the bumpers are for magic attacks.

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