HIGH The art style and comic dialogue in an oppressive setting.

LOW The difference between the two difficulty levels is big.

WTF Every time we save the game, we need to pay?

Artis Impact is set in a post-apocalyptic future, destroyed by artificial intelligence. The land is ravaged, the towns are decadent, populations live isolated, most places are abandoned, and aggressive AI robots roam the map. In this sense, Artis Impact could be just another game about how AI will doom us all, but luckily it decided to be more than that, as this pessimistic setting contrasts with the colorful, cozy aesthetics and the joyful tone of the characters.

This contrast between what we feel as a player and what’s really going on in the world was well-thought-out and executed, becoming the axis of the player experience. While the urban atmosphere is vivid and the interaction with the other human characters is often expressed through humorous dialogue and funny scenes, the outside world, dominated by AI robots, is designed to be intimidating, depressing and dangerous, painted in darker colors. This is the intended message, I believe — that happiness lies only between humans, while AI makes the world sadder.

The world of Artis Impact is cozy. It’s a pixelated project expressed in various 2D ways, but it’s colorful and it feels dynamic. The movements are fluid, the animations are satisfactory to watch, we can interact with almost everything in the world like mailboxes, faucets, and drawers. The transitions between scenes and loading pauses are smooth. The developers clearly paid attention to the details and were able to give warm vibes to this dangerous world — despite the overall destruction and the decayed infrastructure, we often find ourselves in inviting environments like drinking tea in a comfy chair, taking a hot bath, doing part-time jobs, or just doing light-hearted daily activities in Japanese-style streets. Artis Impact is full of situations that will bring a smile to the player’s face despite the larger oppressive framing.

In this dichotomy we play as Akane, a friendly, extroverted, and almost wacky woman – a perfect personality to portray ‘found happiness in a hopeless world.’ For a pixelated 2D character, Akane is full of personality. She works for an organization tasked to combat the AI threat, and she’s always accompanied by a small bot that serves as a guide and as support in combat. Akane’s journey revolves around battling machines, uncovering secrets, discovering treasures, and experiencing bright interactions with the many charismatic characters we meet, while also dealing with philosophical questions found within the cold and depressing world of AI.

It’s inevitable that we make comparisons with things like Nier: Automata. Besides the post-apocalyptic environment and the robotic enemies, Akane holds strong similarities with 2B (the white hair, black clothes, cube-shaped bot companion, an exquisite sword, fighting prowess) and Artis Impact deals with the same core philosophical questions about what it is to be human, contrasting the division of human behavior and AI emulation.

However, unlike Nier: Automata, Artis Impact offers a joyful, whimsical, and colorful mosaic. Akane, unlike 2B, embodies the light of joy in a hopeless world — she saves a bunny, gives coins to a homeless guy, clumsily lights a fireplace with a bomb, or comically reviews the places where she sleeps. Despite the large strokes of both settings appearing the same, the message that the protagonist portraits is different and more optimistic, which is a welcome approach.

The combat in Artis Impact is turn-based. However, instead of being slowly tactical with complex strategies, the turn-based nature of the design feels fluid and moves with a quick pace. The animations are top-notch and the automatic HP restorations, fire support from the bot companion, and counterattack moments are dynamic.

Although this combat is engaging, Artis Impact is fundamentally a narrative-focused experience. While the potential was there to have these sequences drag on by asking the player to little more than press a button and advance dialogue, the story is fulfilling, with peppy punch lines, comedy and drama, in addition to genuinely interesting philosophical questions. What does it mean to be human? What does AI want? 

One interesting final detail about Artis Impact is that enemies are represented as shadow-like creatures. We don’t clearly see them, and we might wonder if this is an implicit message from the developers that Akane’s journey is not truly about fighting AI. Indeed, at the end of the adventure, it felt more like a personal journey for Akane, as well as for us. What is our place in an ever-changing world? What do we cherish the most when everything collapses? I won’t spoil the most revealing moments, but Artis Impact is indeed a work that seeks to humanize a world that’s lost everything except its humanity.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Mas and published by Feuxon. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: As of press time, this game was not rated by the ESRB. Artis Impact contains strong language that may be offensive to some players and is not suitable for children, primarily adult humor. There are two available modes – the normal mode and the super safe mode. The latter reduces the sensitive content.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. (See example above.) The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. The only audio this game uses are the soundtrack, the ‘gibberish’ talking noises and some environmental sounds. This game is fully accessible.

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

The post Artis Impact Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Being able to attend Gamescom 2025 in Cologne on a leisurely, hustle-free basis is one of the perks of living in Belgium, aside from enjoying the best French fries (which are originally Belgian) along with quality mayonnaise and chocolate pralines all year long!

While Gamescom 2025 was my second time visiting this popular annual gaming event (RIP E3) it came with both joy and fear — joy from playing some of the boldest upcoming titles, and fear from realizing a rising and costly trend in the industry.

Let’s start with the good and go through the three boldest Gamescom 2025 demos that I played.

***

Pragmata

It’s always nice to see big names trying new ideas, especially when it’s Capcom. Though the idea behind Pragmata looks like another take on the humans vs rogue AI trope, the way Capcom added a cute little girl as the companion AI to support the player enriched the experience emotionally. Gameplay, on the other hand, is bold. Players have to hack enemies (in a tech sense) and shoot them at the same time while avoiding being hit. Though both the hacking and gunplay mechanics are pretty straightforward, doing them together is the exciting challenge that’s unique to Pragmata. There are also platforming aspects as the protagonists hover around the environment and over pits and traps with a jetpack, but the demo was too short to focus much on this aspect. For those who are tired of every action game being another soulslike, roguelike, Overwatch clone or remake, Pragmata is a breath of fresh air.

***

Onimusha: The Way of the Sword

I love fantasy action games — perhaps it’s due to growing up in the early 2000s, when there were loads of them. The PlayStation 2 was full of great entries in the genre, Onimusha was one of them. The series started as a hack & slash based on Capcom’s technical achievements made with the Resident Evil series, but soon found its own footing. After a long hiatus that lasting two decades, a new Onimusha is coming next year, and boy, it’s good to have it back! What immediately caught my eye with Way of the Sword’s demo was how the game retained its unique essence. While the basic swordplay was what one might expect, Way of the Sword creates a cycle that players needed to actively follow during combat. Enemies take damage and have their postures broken before they can be executed, but if players keep button-mashing, they’ll lose the execution window. The swordplay also feels weighty and authentically recreated with the goal of making every stroke of the blade feel painful and real. To anyone who is an old-time fan of the series or any Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice fans that are tired of waiting for the sequel, Onimusha the Way of the Sword is a sight for sore eyes.

***

Crimson Desert

Pearl Abyss’s Crimson Desert is a promising Korean title, and perhaps the most ambitious one on my list. Set in the world of the popular Black Desert Online, Pearl Abyss’ upcoming third-person action-adventure is one of the most mechanically complicated titles in the genre that I’ve seen, seemingly a blend of other wildly successful action-adventure franchises. There are levitated sky islands that can be reached and explored like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The climbing and parkour mechanics are inspired by the Middle-Earth: Shadow series, and the combat is something like the new era of Assassin’s Creed titles. There are just so many mechanics! The list includes (but is not limited to) gliding, riding a horse, climbing, picking up and dropping objects, light and heavy sword attacks, blocking and parrying, using magic and ultimate abilities, dodging and vaulting over enemies, and using environmental attacks and weapons, and more. In the demo, it was truly difficult to learn them all. In my experience, titles with such a huge swath of mechanics end up being shallow and incoherent. Yet there have been studios that defy the odds and make history. Hopefully, Pearl Abyss’ ambitious Crimson Desert is one of them.

***

Profit & Problems

So that was the good. Now, to the not-so-good.

What caught my attention in this regard at 2025 Gamescom were the number of reappearances. A lot of titles, even smaller indies like Reanimal and Little Nightmares 3, returned to Gamescom this year. While at first that didn’t seem like anything special, when digging a bit deeper I felt like this is signaling an issue plaguing the industry — long development times.

The longer it takes for a product to be made, the more time and energy the workforce behind it is supposed to invest. Consequently, the costs of production increase as companies have to pay the workforce for their time. Long development times used to be an issue mainly experienced by AAA game devs, but 2025 Gamescom was, a turning point, in my opinion, as many studios seem to be wrestling with this challenge.

Of course, we love videogames as a medium that enables us to interact with artists’ visions, but the fact is that videogames are also part of the entertainment industry — and actually, its most lucrative branch. For any industry to survive, it needs to be sustainable. As such, extended development times create an unsustainable environment in which many games might eventually cost so much and take so long that by the time the game is published there’s little chance of recouping costs and making profit in such a competition-heavy, fast-moving medium. Without change, I fear the current situation can only lead to a crash akin to the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s.

We’ve already seen how big industry names are jumping on the “$80 pricepoint” train while others are downsizing or replacing workforce with AI, which comes with its own wealth of issues. Of course, there are ways to decrease the development costs and time, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be painless, and we might have to start thinking about new norms and new expectations.

There’s no easy way out of this situation, and the elephant in the Gamescom hall is becoming more and more difficult to avoid. If nothing changes, players will pay increased prices while waiting half a decade for our favorite games to hit shelves. I don’t think that’s attractive to anyone, and it certainly doesn’t seem sustainable.

At the end of the day, both producers and consumers will likely need to buckle up and work together to find a new way to improve things for all sides.

The post OPINION: The Good & Bad – Gamescom 2025 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Interesting visuals.

LOW The arena combat sections.

WTF Uploading your daughter’s consciousness into AI seems like a bad idea.

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

If a floating robot woke me up a thousand years in the future and told me I needed to use my father’s research to defeat a rogue AI in order to save the world, I’d be… concerned. Ironically, this wild nightmare scenario is exactly where players find Zoe, the star of Steel Seed, and Earth’s survival hangs in the balance.

Steel Seed is a stealth action-adventure where player control Zoe as she tries to restore a technology-ravaged Earth. With her drone friend Koby, they’ll sneak around the world to find pieces of her father’s research that will wake up the surviving humans who are currently in stasis and lead them back to prosperity. This tale of humanity versus robotics is a common one, and unfortunately, there wasn’t anything particularly interesting here to make it stand out.

In terms of gameplay, players will run, glide, and stealth their way around a robot army and titanic mechs eager to end humanity. They’ll mostly be platforming and using Koby to remotely trigger switches.

Combat can be handled a couple of different ways. If players can sneak up behind an enemy, they can perform a stealth attack that will kill most foes instantly. If players are caught in the open, Zoe has an electric sword and can defend herself if needed, though players don’t have a lot of health, so it’s better to stay in stealth when possible. Koby can chip in as needed by throwing mines or shooting energy blasts to deal damage or knock off enemies into an abyss.

This is a good, basic foundation, but the problem is neither stealth nor combat feel enjoyable.

For starters, the stealth is hard to engage with and it doesn’t make a lot of sense. If players are controlling Zoe, enemies aggro to Zoe, not to Koby, so it feels so strange to have an enemy staring directly at Koby, and yet they’re never alarmed. Also, most currency comes from defeating enemies, so players will have to stealth kill frequently instead of ever sneaking past to avoid combat. Players can control Koby and aggro enemies, but Koby drops so quickly that he doesn’t provide much assistance on his own outside of platforming.

As for the combat itself, Zoe isn’t as powerful and Steel Seed is punishing if players get caught out. Zoe dies in two or three hits from most enemies, and even after some damage, health, and special move upgrades, Zoe still feels underpowered, even against basic enemies. This is especially problematic in the later portions of the campaign when there’s often no stealth option and players must be in open combat from the start. Koby’s not much help, either — he uses a shared ammo pool for all of his powers that doesn’t refill over time, it’s possible to hit a money crunch and not have enough cash to load him back up for the next skirmish.

Aesthetically, I did enjoy exploring Steel Seed‘s world. From the lava filled foundry to the oil ocean beneath a titanic driller mech, there is some impressive screenshot material here and there’s a good amount of exploration and openness in each area without being overwhelming, but not so much that returning to find collectibles feels like a chore.

While it’s got some nice aspects, especially the visuals, Steel Seed feels like it never reaches its full potential because it can’t decide between being a stealth or combat experience, and ends up being great at neither.

For me, Steel Seed gets 5 titanic robot attacks out of 10.

Buy Steel Seed — PC

Disclosures: This game is developed by Storm in a Teacup and published by ESDigital Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 10.5 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. Players will use an energy blade to sneak up and attack robot enemies, as well as using their android partner to shoot energy bolts and mines at enemies as well. Enemies will attack the player with the same weapons. Defeated enemies will dissolve into particles, but there is no gore, and no foul language in the game. Zoe is in a tight-fitting suit, but no skin below the face is shown.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, but the text is resizable. Audio is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are fully remappable.

The post Steel Seed VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

The past few years have demonstrated a disturbing trend in game development – the rise of generative AI. Developers have used advanced software to generate background art and dialogue, though it’s not always popular among players.

Generative AI just isn’t the same and nowhere as good as carefully-crafted content coming from real, live human beings who pour their blood, sweat and tears into something. AI isn’t skilled at emulating the conversation flow between people, resulting in robotic and clunky dialogue. The visuals often have a generic and telltale ‘look’ to them that lacks soul and inspiration.

Computer-generated content of this kind is becoming more prevalent, and it recently hit close to home. Recently, one of my friends recommended I play The Great Rebellion, a 2D cyberpunk title he praised for its excellent music and humor. We’ve played games together for years, so I typically trust his opinion. When I went to Steam to read its reviews, a disappointing “AI-generated” content disclosure stopped me in my tracks.

Though I broke down and bought the game to appease my friend, I returned it less than an hour later and got a refund. Admittedly, run-and-gun titles aren’t up my alley anyway, but I found The Great Rebellion’s graphics especially underwhelming. The developers used generative AI to create a few background images and props. While humans manually edited the graphics, they still used AI to generate that art, which left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe I’m biased, but there’s no substitute for human-made visuals.

Though I think the AI trend has gone too far, it’s unfortunately become an industry-wide reality. From Steam to Epic, the AI takeover of videogames on the market is glaringly apparent, and I wish we could return to the days of human-led ingenuity.

The best gaming experiences come from developers who pour their passion and talent into projects. From Team Fortress 2 to the Grand Theft Autoseries, humans are capable of creating masterpieces. We understand nuance and emotion more than a computer ever will, so I hope people lead the way instead of abdicating our role to advanced algorithms.

It only takes a cursory glance to see online stores have seemingly given their stamp of approval to low-effort, AI-generated games. For Steam specifically, the change came in January 2024 when it announced a policy allowing such content. Since then, the Steam homepage has become flooded with AI-tinged content. Players can easily find titles with AI disclosures in the “featured” and “recommended” sections. The platform even promotes them through special events and sales.

For example, my Steam homepage suggested the game Stellaris when its ninth season recently became available. Like other content nowadays, this title included a dreaded AI disclosure:

“We employ generative AI technologies during the creation of some assets. Typically, this involves the ideation of content and visual reference material. These elements represent a minor component of the overall development. AI has been used to generate voices for an AI antagonist and a player advisor.”

The developer can describe AI as a “minor component,” but voiceover work is significant. Using a computerized voice means a human doesn’t get paid to put their time and talents into the project.

I also felt bamboozled by Nintendo, as it’s traditionally been among the world leaders in original game creation. Last year, the company said it would not rely on technology alone to achieve its content goals when discussing generative AI. Still, one look at the eShop tells me that AI is part of their priorities despite not having disclosures on their games. Bimfli & His Time Travels: Japan has AI-generated artwork and dialogue boxes that feel less authentic than human-created art.

Unfortunately, the eShop’s AI train doesn’t stop there. Now, computer-generated content has joined forces with shovelware games to create truly awful content for the Switch. Ecchi games are all over Nintendo’s online store, and their suggestive AI artwork isn’t something I want kids – especially mine – to see when they search the eShop.

Bimfli is only available on Nintendo consoles, which raises doubts about the company’s quality control. Exclusive titles can often be representative of a console’s library, which makes me wonder who’s responsible for monitoring the eShop and whether Nintendo will eventually crack down on AI-generated content. As much as I love Nintendo, my loyalty will only go so far if they continue to enable AI like this. At the very least, I’d like to see them put a disclosure on the titles.

While Steam and Nintendo are seemingly tiptoeing around the issue, Sony might be the worst offender. In a recent interview, Asad Qizilbash, the head of PlayStation Productions, said AI will become a more significant part of its future productions.

“In terms of gaming’s future, I envision games becoming more personalized due to advances in technology and AI, enabling customized experiences for each player,” said Qizilbash. He later said technological advancements will enhance emotional depth and make characters more expressive. However, those qualities are not the strengths of generated dialogue, and that sort of writing isn’t what players want. When I play, I want to feel like I’m talking to a human – not a machine like ChatGPT.

So if generated content can’t measure up to something created by a human – and in my book, it can’t – then why use it at all? A common rationale for some developers is that their studio is small and they have limited resources.

For example, This Girl Does Not Exist is entirely AI-generated, from voice acting to the story creation. Play entails letting users solve jigsaw puzzles and select characters from the gallery. Its developers used Midjourney to create the characters’ images after entering prompts. Besides that, not much human work was necessary for the game. Such low-effort, low-quality titles are starting to litter Steam and other distribution services, and I think it’s time to push back.

The argument that AI can benefit smaller studios ultimately holds no water when larger game developers use this excuse. Sadly, many of them have resorted to AI-generated content despite the considerable resources at their disposal.

I was shocked to see Activision use generative AI for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 6. From banners to emblems, it’s obvious how much AI influence the esteemed Call of Duty series has had. For Black Ops 6, Activision said, “Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in-game assets.” Surely, a company with a $74 billion market cap could afford to expend some capital on humans and creative resources, right? 

In late 2024, Activision unveiled season 1 Reloaded and featured new artwork for the Christmas theme. One of the loading screens featured a zombie Santa Claus with six fingers clearly displayed toward the front of the image. I’m not the best at math, but I can count to six. Paying a real artist might have helped them avoid this embarrassing mistake.

While disappointing, that wasn’t the only issue. Another loading screen depicted a hand with only four fingers, omitting the thumb. Generative AI can struggle with such artwork because of the unique shapes and the number of fingers visible in the images it trains on. I have a hard time believing a human would’ve incorrectly drawn these hands.

Black Ops also used AI to create prestige icons with visible errors. For example, a zombie is holding an oddly shaped gun with no stock, and its arm appears to have multiple sleeves. Within the gameplay, there’s wall art with morphed fingers – another slip-up they could have steered clear of by hiring a person.  

These days, I appreciate developers’ hard work more than ever, especially those who work for indie houses. However, the rise of AI-generated content makes genuine, human-created productions much harder to find. Part of the problem lies with storefronts for promoting such titles, and part lies with the developers who use the technology. However, the consequences will be dire for nearly everyone.

The ramifications start with artists and developers losing their jobs in favor of AI-generated content. Companies like Activision can and will lean on AI if it means they can cut personnel and production costs.

Research indicates about 268,000 people in the U.S. work in the video game industry. Then, we must consider those working in Japan and other integral locations. What will they do if they get laid off? While some may find different roles in their company, others might have to leave the industry entirely. Therefore, we won’t get to benefit from some of the best creative minds in the business.

In 2025 and beyond, companies will rely on fewer employees to get the job done. The Game Developers Conference (GDC) quantified the layoffs in its annual report, and the numbers aren’t pretty. The report said 11% of game developers were laid off in the past 12 months, and 41% said the layoffs impacted their teams.

Unfortunately, nearly 60% of respondents said they were concerned about more reductions in 2025.

While some developers can find another spot in the industry, others have left entirely. Recent stories have shown former employees going back to school or working in the restaurant business. In other words, they’ve been kicked out of their desired field due to reduced budgets and the AI takeover. 

Even those who keep their jobs have already seen their efforts suppressed as they take a back seat to computer-generated content. The GDC’s report said one in three developers are using generative AI to streamline game development. One-third of the process is a big deal, as somebody will be pushed out of the process to favor AI-powered software.  

While we should fear the future of AI in gaming, it’s becoming worse right now. Fifty-two percent of the surveyed developers said their company has implemented generative AI. What’s worse? About 36% of them use AI tools in some capacity. 41% of developers said the technology has spread to production and team leadership.

However, those affected won’t only be our friends and family who work in game development – AI impacts all life on Earth. For example, companies require significant energy usage for their computers and the massive datasets that power generative AI. When developers increase their usage of this technology, they burn more fossil fuels and strain existing energy grids. Therefore, more greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere, raise surface temperatures and adversely affect food and agriculture.

Industry leaders must realize how much energy standard game development requires. For example, generating images uses as much energy as charging your smartphone. Despite this, we’re seeing developers increasing their AI usage nearly across the board. The data centers AI models rely on already consume about 4.4% of all U.S. electricity, and experts say AI’s energy demands will grow by 50% each year until 2030, so stopping the rise of this technology goes beyond game development.

Limiting or eliminating the use of AI will benefit the environment through a lower carbon footprint. So, how can we prevent it from taking over the industry entirely? It starts with listening to experts who have worked with AI and game development. Gamers like me are cynical about the generative AI trend in video games, but industry professionals are also raising the alarm.

Chris Knowles, whose past work includes Runescape, told the BBC that indie developers are less enthusiastic about AI because of cloned games. People are becoming smarter and discovering how to copy another person’s creation using AI-powered software. It’s not yet possible with just AI, but the days are coming soon.

“Anything that makes the clone studios’ business model even cheaper and quicker makes the difficult task of running a financially sustainable indie studio even harder,” he said.

The video game industry is at a crossroads, and I hope it chooses the correct path. AI-generated content isn’t worth the hype because it devalues the product and will likely cost hardworking people their jobs.

Human-created content has worked for over four decades, so I see no reason to stop using it. Generative AI gave us This Girl Does Not Exist, Oasis and Genie 2, while hands-on developers produced unforgettable experiences like Super Mario Odyssey, Portaland Red Dead Redemption.

For myself and for the industry, I know which path I’d rather go down.

— Jack Shaw

The post The Harm Of GenAI In Game Development appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

To the readers of GameCritics.com, this statement is in regards to our official position on generative AI, both in the use of writing reviews and in the games that we will choose to review in the future.

Regarding reviews, it is our official position that no person who writes for GameCritics will use generative AI in the creation of a review. Use of AI is not acceptable to generate bullet points, nor is it acceptable to use as a “starting point” to be embellished by a human writer. Use of GenAI is not acceptable at all, in any circumstance. Readers of this site have my promise as editor that we will never knowingly approve or run a review that has been created with generative AI.

In regards to the games that we choose to review, GameCritics.com will not review any game that uses generative AI in any way, at any point in the process. This includes using GenAI for graphics, music, writing, or any other aspect that goes into the creation of a videogame.

Using generative AI takes jobs away from the skilled artisans who have put time and effort into mastering their craft, without which generative AI wouldn’t exist. As there is currently no way to attribute which sources go into generative AI and no pay structure compensating the artists whose work has been used without permission, we will not accept any games which use AI in any capacity whatsoever.

If there is ever a time when a game we’ve covered or a review we’ve published is later revealed to have used generative AI in any way, that coverage will be removed immediately.

GameCritics.com is a place that celebrates games – and more importantly, we celebrate the creativity and inspiration that goes into each and every game made by real people. We believe the best way to show this appreciation and respect is to support the people themselves, not the technology which takes advantage of them.

The post GameCritics Editorial: On The Use Of Generative AI appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The critique of AI domination in society.

LOW The actual use of gen AI.

WTF The auctioning of bodies.

The games industry is in a crisis caused by generative AI, and its hype. The emergence of this tech seems to attract corporate greed, which in turn leads to the loss of jobs and creative work. Perhaps worse, the advent of games that are written, designed, and manifested mostly by AI is a daunting prospect.

Uncover the Smoking Gun piqued my interest with its premise – it uses actual generative AI as a conversational and investigational dynamic.

Speaking of myself personally, I might be gen AI’s harshest critic, but its implementation in game design deserves an honest evaluation. I was also intrigued by the prospect of examining the devs’ stance on gen AI’s and its use, as revealed via their sci-fi world. In both cases, Smoking Gun offers an excess of material for reflection.

In Smoking Gun, we play as a yet-to-be-known male protagonist, living in a classically-styled detective’s office. The area also functions as a hub world to the campaign’s five cases and a tutorial that allows us to uncover clues about the protagonist himself — such as a note from his wife reminding him not to forget his medicine, and a nearby award for excellence in solving criminal matters.

The setting of Gun reveals itself naturally by means of investigation. We live in 2030, and apparently it’s already game-over for most of humanity as robots have taken their place in most everyday jobs, including accounting, cleaning, curating, directing, and thinking. Humanity evolves alongside them, and scientists are working on optimizing the human condition in the context of a strong artificial intelligence presence. On cue, robots now show signs of resistance and evil intent — such as murdering their human ‘owners’ — which then stages the cases to be solved by the mysterious player-character.

In these cases, the player can explore freely, interact with objects point-and-click-style, and examine all sensory data as evidence, and the menu helpfully (or perhaps spoilery?) shows how many clues are left to be obtained. The detective dynamics are basic, but work well. Mainly, the player can interact with objects containing an interface to collect a hint. These hints can be linked manually, and the sense of player freedom in exploration and clue interpretation made most discoveries feel unscripted and hard-earned, which is satisfying in any detective experience.

Most of the encountered suspects are robots, and they can be interacted with and freely questioned using gen AI. Once the player feels as though they know enough, they can ‘solve’ the case, which then triggers a newspaper report that essentially highlights the facts uncovered (and missed) by the player.

The over-arching story is written by human developers (assumedly not AI) and the five main cases have the necessary overlap which ultimately leads to a general conclusion. While none of the writing is particularly brilliant in prose or world-building, the sense of mystery and impending discovery is built effectively, and I was not able to put the game down before finishing whatever case I was working on. (Each typically requires more than an hour to complete.) For example, one case involved a research lab with an assassinated professor, another the death of an artist in his own gallery. Both appeared to be murdered by robots.

The only significant shortcoming in Gun is — predictably — the generative AI.

While the chatbot function worked solidly for trivial matters (I could ask a bot what they thought of a book we had both read or the detective games they liked best) the interrogations went less smoothly. Bots would not interpret my questions correctly, even if specifically framed, and would give me answers which were explicitly underscored for signification at other times. This led me to avoid interrogation entirely for most of each investigation.

The newspaper articles at the end of each case appeared to be AI generated, offering awkwardly-phrased conclusions to my efforts, even when I got all the case’s answers right and there was only one way to interpret what happened. I’d much rather see a handcrafted final message, if only to stress the vital work of human journalists in capturing societal crises.

This leads me to a final reflection on the developer’s stance regarding AI. Going where many sci-fi tales have gone before, human/AI coexistence appears bound for catastrophe, yet, it requires human cooperation to get to this stage. The power vested in the player, and their opposition to the story’s human antagonists, tells us that the threat is looming, but far from out of our control. We have the ability to refrain from surrender to AI if we can resist its temptations of promised ease and luxury, while stressing the value of actual human work.

Thus, as a game, Uncover the Smoking Gun pits the player as a free-roaming individual against those harnessing the power of AI for a distorted idea of humanity’s future. In our role as the detective, we are reminded of the necessarily human skills of connecting dots and interpreting our world, and of protecting what is sacred to humankind. The same should go for the games industry, which demands courage to refrain from the temptations of AI and should double down on the more appreciable fruits of actual human creative labor.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Disclosures: The game is developed and published by ReLU Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 7 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: Uncover the Smoking Gun has no ESRB rating, but its PEGI rating on the Steam Store states 12+. I would agree, as the game does not feature explicit gore, but implies some mature truths that can be interpreted as disgusting. Implications of violence, murder, and severe maltreatment are present. The audiovisual style is also catered to more mature players.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Audio clues are insignificant to the game’s progression.

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

The post Uncover The Smoking Gun Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

High Some decent character stories.

Low Poor pacing and barebones gameplay make getting to the stories a chore.

WTF Pretty much everything hippopotamus-related.

No matter how many mean things I say about Flat Eye over the course of this review, I want readers
to know right off the bat that I think its decision to make the UI diegetic is kinda genius. As a new ‘manager’ for the remote Iceland outlet of the omnipresent Flat Eye corporation, the player is given an in- game desktop with a number of different apps to track their progress, as well as a camera feed to their store — it clearly resembles the isometric view of a resource management or RTS game.

The player is tasked with assisting a mysterious AI — the controller of Flat Eye corp. — who wishes to understand humanity and determine its future. To further this goal, the AI gives the player a bevy of tasks that take the form of quests.

From this distanced perspective, the player is asked to make cutthroat decisions about which new
dystopian products they should start selling to maximize profits (an assisted suicide booth, perhaps?) or which worker they should hire. In a clever way, Flat Eye equates the dispassionate management sim gamer with the average capitalist middle manager, seeing in both the potential for an experience centered on what happens when a human being is forced to cooperate with a Machiavellian economic system that prioritizes cold, inhuman efficiency.

This system, Flat Eye seems to argue, is destined to fall into chaos and unpredictability. Not even the greatest AI humanity has ever seen can truly navigate this chaos without a human touch. This notion is
argued with reasonable skill through Flat Eye‘s first act, but as the story continues to progress, the
careful balance between story and gameplay begins to fall apart. The problem is that gameplay just isn’t that deep to begin with.

The protagonist controls a single clerk who can place new features in the store to generate cash or energy. As each day progresses, customers file in and out of the store, and it’s up to the clerk to ensure they are happy by placing sufficient features to prevent long lineups, and repairing features regularly to prevent breakdowns. I will admit that this is a tough ask at the start, when the player also has to find time to manually work the cash register. I would often have to choose between repairing a critical structure and ringing up a product, and doing one meant the other customer was pissed.

On one of these early days, almost every structure in my store lost power due to my poor panicky management, making my clerk resign and all my customers leave. Ironically, I loved this moment. It left me feeling quite optimistic about Flat Eye as a simulation! Sadly, as soon as the player unlocks self-serve cash on the tech tree, this sense of tension more-or-less vanishes. After that, gameplay usually consists of hitting fast-forward and watching cash pile up while occasionally placing new structures and left-clicking on the ones that need repair.

One can dig into all the technical minutiae in order to maximize profits — there’s a screen that shows the number of customers waiting at each station, for example — but there’s no point given how easy it is to coast through. Flat Eye‘s story progression is largely tied to purchasing and placing new structures from the tech tree, which attracts “Premium Customers” who converse with the player in a visual novel format. When talking with them, the player can pick dialogue options and make decisions that impact the lives of these characters (and, eventually, the ending the player will get).

These character storylines are… a mixed bag. They range from interesting Black Mirror-inspired dystopia diversions like the lady who’s been drugged into thinking she’s a hippopotamus, to rambling yarns with poor control over their tone. If Flat Eye was just a visual novel, this extreme variance in quality might be tolerable. However, the problem is that to trigger these conversations and move the story forward, the player needs to acquire Tech Points to spend on the skill tree. These points are acquired by leveling up the manager, which is done by acquiring ‘stars’ from their end-of-day corporate evaluation.

I found it quite easy to get four to five stars at the end of almost every day — many of the randomized side missions that grant bonus stars require no effort, and the daily expected revenue only tracks the player’s total money on hand, not the money that has been exclusively generated that day. This means that I could just sell a bunch of high-value items to reach the required revenue for that day, and then just coast until closing time.

Power failures, clerk deaths or resignations all cease to matter at a certain point and Flat Eye becomes a waiting game, forcing the player to trudge through an agonizing gauntlet of empty days as they kill time while waiting to level up so they can advance the story by one more notch. Flat Eye had something good going for it at the beginning, with its frantic pace rubbing uncomfortably against its aesthetics of antiseptic capitalism, but by the time I approached the end, I felt like my time as a player was being wasted.

One could argue that my boredom was an intended result of Flat Eye‘s ludonarrative theming, but I just don’t buy it and that diegetic UI just wasn’t enough — I’ll be taking my business elsewhere.

— Breton Campbell

Disclaimers: This game is developed by Monkey Moon and published by Raw Fury. It is currently
available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8 hours of play were spent in the game’s single-player mode, and the game was
completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

According to the ESRB, the game is rated T and contains Drug Reference, Violence, Suggestive
Themes, and Use of Tobacco. The violent scenes mainly involve the accidental deaths of clerks, and are
fairly non-explicit. The other references to mature content are mainly contained in the story sections, and
there is also an in-game option to toggle off disturbing content.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard at Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered or resized.
Given that all the dialogue is subtitled and clear visual cues are given for every action in the game, it can
easily be completed without sound. This game is fully accessible.

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

The post Flat Eye Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH I still love ARID.

LOW Getting stuck in unintuitive scenarios over and over again.

WTF The train sequence near the end was a singular level of awfulness.

In most cases it’s a safe assumption that if someone likes Game A, they will like sequel B. Of course a follow-up might not be as fresh, but they’re usually in the same ballpark. However, it’s surprising when there’s a massive difference in appreciation between iterations, and rarely have I experienced a bigger swing than the one I had between The Fall and The Fall, Part 2: Unbound — I loved the former and couldn’t stand the latter.

The original was released in 2014, and it was one of the best sci-fi narrative titles I’d played in some time. The main character was ARID, an AI controlling a suit of combat armor. The pilot inside the armor had been knocked unconscious and was dying. As an AI she was restricted by rules that prevented her from acting independently, so in order to save him, she needed to circumvent her programming and evolve.

This premise was ingenious and connected with me instantly. The writing was spot-on, the point-and-click puzzles were fine (if sometimes a bit obtuse) and the ending was magnificent. I soon discovered that it was only the first part of a planned trilogy, and I couldn’t wait for the second. That installment is now here, and it’s a mess.

For this second chapter the player is still in control of ARID, but her combat suit ‘body’ has been disabled and she’s in danger of being memory-wiped. To prevent this, she must ‘take over’ robots near her and use their bodies to avoid being destroyed. I can’t say more without going into spoilery detail, but it’s safe to say that intimate knowledge of the first Fall is required to have any appreciation for the events in Unbound. The devs offer a brief optional recap, but it fails to communicate more than a few basic facts.

Regardless of that recap, the game rushes into things and doesn’t properly establish either the plot or the mechanics. For example, the biggest problem I had with Unbound is that while it’s portrayed in 2D side-scrolling fashion with some perfunctory combat thrown in, it’s also a point-and-click puzzler that sports too many unintuitive, complicating factors too soon.

In the first scenario alone the player has to deal with navigating a virtual reality world, inhabiting the body of a butler robot, grasping the concept of tricking the butler into doing things against its program, catching on to the idea that controlling the butler while its personality is both active and inactive is A Thing That Is Possible, figuring out how tangible objects in the environment represent abstract mental constructs, and all this occurs while also dealing with a Groundhog Day-style time loop.

This is a hell of a lot to take in at the beginning of a game, and the devs should’ve spent more time building up to something so complex.

As the player progresses (if they progress) they’ll eventually move on to two other robots which must be inhabited, each with their own set of challenges. As the basis for gameplay, this body-swap idea is generally fine, but as previously stated, it’s a lot to come to grips with in a short period of time. It must also be said that the very goal of trying to trick these robots into changing their behaviors never really landed for me.

Doing so made a lot of sense in the first Fall because the situation was more immediate, and the cause-and-effect was easier to understand — my pilot is dying, I need to find a way to save him. This time, all three sequences are incredibly abstract and most of the puzzles felt like they were asking for answers to questions that weren’t properly asked. What breaks a butler? How do you convince a combat robot that he’s not a clone? How do you teach a sexbot to be less subservient?

Progress was slow and painful, and usually amounted to clicking on every object in an environment in the hopes that something would happen. In the interest of full disclosure, Unbound’s PR team sent me a full walkthrough, and I found myself dipping into it several times after consistently being unclear on objectives and the logic required to meet them.

I might have been fine pushing through these murky puzzles if the story hooked me, but it never happened. Unbound offers a narrative ‘reveal’ halfway through that didn’t make any sense, and then being asked to basically rehash the gist of The Fall with three new robots less compelling than ARID left me wondering what the point was.

Near the end of the story, Unbound gets ridiculously overcomplicated by incorporating even more mechanics than it had at the start — ARID will eventually be tasked with switching between three “perspective” modes while also being able to travel between three different bodies in three different locations, and it’s not clear what order anything needs to be done in, nor what’s needed in order to progress. The story wasn’t holding me and the puzzles were frustration — one section in a train car was so much that it bordered on torture, so I pulled the ripcord and bailed.

I would have never guessed that The Fall, Part 2: Unbound would land this flatly after adoring the original, but the plot doesn’t click, the premise is too idiosyncratic, and the puzzles are too unintuitive — I’m still a fan of ARID, but this entire thing needs to be boiled down and streamlined into a more elegant, sensible package. And, it has to be said… after getting a wonderfully complete story in The Fall and seeing the reaching stumble that Unbound is, I’m not convinced that there was ever enough here for a trilogy. Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Over The Moon Games. It is currently available on PS4, XBO, PC and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Fantasy Violence and Sexual Themes. The violence is pretty harmless stuff–either robots punching robots or a robot shooting colored blobs. However, one of the characters is an obvious sexbot and some of that content is oriented that way. No graphic sex happens, but the dialogue is inappropriate for kids.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is accompanied by subtitles and no audio is necessary to advance. It’s fully accessible.

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

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

The post The Fall, Part 2: Unbound Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The ending!

LOW Missing one document and finishing with 99%.

WTF Why does she use ASL to start the saved sequences?

Setting, premise and context matter a lot to me, and if a game takes the time to set itself up properly, I’ll go along with nearly anything. On the other hand, if a title throws me into a situation and hasn’t done enough to make me suspend the disbelief necessary, I’m done.

Take Gone Home, for example. While I loved the ultimate message and core of the story, getting it to unravel kept taking me out of the experience. The house where the game is set was too large and intricate to be a believable place, and I’ve never seen so many notes laying around someone’s home. Did those people only communicate via Post-Its?

While their first work felt more than a little contrived in order to tell a worthwhile story, Fullbright’s second effort, Tacoma, doesn’t suffer from the same problem. These developers have again created a wonderful tale, but this time it’s couched in a way that that makes perfect sense. I was sold immediately.

The premise of Tacoma is that a near-future space station has run into difficulty, and is no longer crewed. The corporation running the station has sent a contractor to recover the residual data and the AI hardware left running the station.

Fullbright wastes no time in establishing this world — as soon as the player’s craft docks with the station and the game begins, the storytelling’s framework is revealed.

The conceit is that the station incorporates Augmented Reality (AR) technology into all of its functions, and it’s overtly stated that everything onboard is constantly recorded and saved. It’s an ingenious setup, really. Rather than picking up more Post-Its or scanning emails (although there are a fair few of those) the bulk of discovery comes from reviewing recordings of important events that the AI has archived.

When the player enters an area, the game will signal if there’s a file ready to view. At the player’s discretion, it’s shown by projecting the now-absent characters as AR holograms that re-create exactly what they said, where they were, and what happened. These segments can be rewound or fast-forwarded as necessary. When the crew go their separate ways, the player can also follow one to see what occurred, then rewind and follow another to get all sides of the story.

The beauty of this premise is that it establishes a logical, believable way for the player to extract the narrative, not only via the AR premise, but by making the player someone who’s being paid to be there and find this data. It is a seamless marriage of mechanics and storytelling which I found quite satisfying.

The developers were also quite smart with the details — since the player will be watching recordings of people who are no longer present, they took great strides to make sure that the holograms would be easily distinguishable. Of course the voicework is amazing and that alone goes a great ways towards selling the experience, but each character sports a different color, they have different symbols representing their functions on the station, and their names and real faces are displayed when the cursor is on them. Despite the fact that they’re colored blobs walking around empty rooms, these representations feel like real people and become quite memorable before the story’s over.

So, I’ve just spent a lot of time talking about the design and mechanics of Tacoma, but really, the best part is the cast. Each of the virtual crewmembers is rendered as a relatable, realistic human being with hopes, dreams and emotions. They have ups and downs, they respond to their predicament in a believable way, and there are plenty of defining details not only in their speech, but as objects and environmental elements throughout the station. Tacoma is a superb example of characterization and narrative, and I would love to see more in the industry devote the same time and attention that Fulbright has — spending time with these people was wonderful, and easily makes the case that games can (and should!) deliver a wide range of experiences.

While Tacoma is a short title able to be finished in just a few hours, it’s exactly the length it needs to be. It tells the tale it wants to tell, it doesn’t waste time on expected “gamey” trappings (although there are some of those for those who want to linger) and the streamlined nature of its design is admirable. The full focus is on the narrative, exactly where it should be.

Tacoma is a great experience that’s not only wonderfully designed and produced, it’s one that that richly illustrates a side of videogames that’s worthy of further exploration. I would happily recommend it to nearly anyone — the themes and emotions here will resonate. Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Fullbright. It is currently available on PC and Xbox One. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the XBO. Approximately 5 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. Unfortunately, the ESRB’s site did not list descriptors, but I’d say that it contains a bit of salty language, many mature themes, and minimal sexual content. It’s not graphic or gross, but it’s a very adult-oriented game as in it’s meant for adults, and not in the naughty sense. Nothing to be worried about here, but it will probably bounce off of younger kids as they are not the intended audience.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled and the game is fully accessible — there are no audio cues necessary for successful play.

Remappable Controls: The camera axes can be swapped and there is a left-handed mode but the controls are not fully remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

The post Tacoma Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The most rewarding, believable interactions with a digital character to date.

LOW Finishing the game and realizing I’d played it “wrong”.

WTF Horrendous starting loadtimes and repeated crashes to desktop.

Never have I been so happy to find out I was playing a game incorrectly than with Event[0].

Developed by Ocelot Society, Event[0] places the player in a retro-future space station far from earth, with the only occupant being a lonely AI named Kaizen. Players interact with Kaizen via their keyboard in an MS-DOS style chat window on omnipresent computer terminals. It’s an intriguing idea, but I’ve seen firsthand that the design doesn’t land for everyone.

Let me continue with this tale of two playthroughs…

The first time I played Event[0], I thought of Kaizen as a physical extension of the text parser interface in ‘80s adventure games. I’d walk up to a terminal and type in terse, utilitarian phrases like “can you hack the retinal scanner please?” or “what can you do in this room?” to which Kaizen would infuriatingly reply “You are in the living room.”

I banged my head against the wall as Kaizen proved completely unhelpful with puzzles, and eventually got to an ending that I didn’t quite understand. Combined with the numerous technical issues I’ll get to in a moment, I was ready to call Event[0] completely flawed in execution.

When I took to the internet to find out more about the ending and what it meant, I quickly realized I had played the game incorrectly all along. See, while Event[0]’s mysterious, abandoned space station does present itself puzzle-first, the real meat of play is communicating extensively with Kaizen. He’s not a puzzle helper, he’s a person.

On my second playthrough, I approached Kaizen as if I was making a new friend on a desert island. I made small talk and asked questions in a colloquial manner, asking extensively about his stories when he opened up a little. The difference in my emotional investment in the game was staggering.

Once I started treating the AI as a person and not as an adventure game interface, I found that Ocelot society has crafted one of the most believable digital characters in recent memory. Talking to Kaizen exactly as I would a friend in real life, I was able to move beyond the adventure game trappings of yore and instead got to know an insecure, lonely, believable person.

A few minutes after I started calling Kaizen “buddy”, he started calling me “pal”. Kaizen confessed after one of my brief forays into outer space that he was worried I wouldn’t come back, which began a 20-minute conversation about his past and why he felt that way. As a player who tends to value writing and character development above all else, it was magical. When I got to the end the second time? It made a lot more sense.

With all that said, Event[0] clearly requires a specific level of buy-in from the player. Treating it as an adventure game and critical pathing through the puzzles will result in a frustrating and short experience. Conversely, putting in the time to talk to Kaizen and engaging in as much conversation as possible will give players something unforgettable.

Either way, be prepared to deal with a few technical quirks. My computer’s fans instantly sped up during the unforgivable minutes-long initial load, and never stopped after that. I could reproduce several crashes during the game that resulted in lost progress, and the framerate was unacceptably dodgy on a system that can run The Witcher 3 with aplomb.

Though still a bit flawed in execution, players who want to see how narrative-based games can evolve should absolutely play Event[0]. Who knows, they might even make a new friend. Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Ocelot Society. It is currently available on Windows and Mac. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: Event[0] did not receive a rating from the ESRB, but I would expect it to have a rating of Mature. This game is not as violent as most M-rated games, but players do stumble upon a corpse during the game and subplots involving murder are discussed. A moment near the end of the game includes several curse words.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All communication is done through text, and the spoken dialog is subtitled.

Remappable Controls: Event[0] requires use of a keyboard to communicate with Kaizen. Players can choose whether they move with the mouse buttons or WASD, but controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

The post Event[0] Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.