HIGH Surfing a missile into a building is rad as hell.

LOW There’s a suboptimal amount of downtime in the stage design.

WTF Joe’s eloquent way with words.

Are videogame bad guys deliberately stupid? It’s a question I’m sure nobody on the planet has ever asked before, but the bad guy in Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, Lord Ruse, comes across as a prime example of being a blithering dum-dum.

First, he’s a bad guy gunning for domination in a world where Sega’s premiere bad guy-killing ninja Joe Musashi exists. He then intentionally attacks Joe’s home while he’s chilling with his wife, dog and students, confidently relegating the killing of said super ninja to his most inept followers and leaving before the job’s done — so now Joe has to prioritize killing the bastard in a personal way.

Players will rely on Joe’s trusty katana during this 2D side scrolling quest, as well as a pocket full of throwing knives and an understated ability to dive-kick dudes in the face. Over time he’ll acquire new moves and additional gear, but don’t expect new weapon types. Blowing fire and summoning snake gods are all well and good, but Joe’s ultimately a katana guy through and through.

In his pursuit of vengeance, Joe will discover amulets that improve or modify certain abilities. He can equip some that cause enemies to drop more money or better healing items, while others offer rechargeable barriers that absorb a single attack or give significant damage buffs as his combo meter rises.

Naturally there are a ton of bad guys to meet and defeat along the way, from low level ninja to far more competent ‘elite’ demons, robots and skilled swordsmen.

Most enemies have two damage gauges to keep track of — their basic health and a stun meter that opens them up for an instant execution marker which will see Joe bullet across the screen turning every vulnerable enemy a into bloody mist. It should be mentioned that doing these instakills never, ever gets old and is heavily encouraged by showering players who use it with more resources than normal kills.

To get specific for a moment, there’s an excessive amount of hitstop on attacks, causing the action to briefly freeze as blade meets flesh. Most titles usually reserve this for heavy or perfectly-timed hits, but Shinobi: Art of Vengeance liberally applies it to pretty much everything. It’s a double-edged approach, with many combos feeling weighty and powerful in nature, but this staccato rhythm of sword swipes staggers the flow of combat and lingers just a little too long when the player takes damage from enemies.

With that said, for the most part the action feels solidly enjoyable with plenty of scope for player expression and experimenting with flamboyant combos that brutalize enemies halfway across the screen, their broken corpses flopping around like pincushions full of kunai. However, I’m also curious to see how the same combat engine would fare if the hitstop was completely absent.

Something that’s more of a clear issue is that Joe commits to certain attacks, meaning that he can’t roll or jump to safety until the attack completed. It leads to the master ninja feeling less sprightly than he probably should, tanking hits with his face instead of swiftly sweeping out of range, making performing certain moves more unsafe than they probably should be. Not that enemies are particularly deadly for the most part, many of them putter through their standard attack animations without much regard for what Joe’s up to.

Bosses are the usual motley crew of idiots who think that they can take on Joe Musashi and live, though series veterans will recognize a few returning faces. They’re fine, but rarely standout – most of them are punching bags, honestly. That’s not to say that they don’t have attack patterns that require avoiding, but Joe can absolutely body them for the most part.

In terms of presentation, Shinobi looks great — absolutely fantastic in places, even, with a hand-drawn art style that continually impresses from the first scene in a gorgeously sunlit field, all the way to later stages storming through rain-slick cities, towering mountain passes, underground secret bases and the welcome return of an awesome surfboarding section. That said, I do find the overly angular stage design to detract from things somewhat, though I’m sure the choice was made to make surface areas more easily recognizable.

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance takes a psuedo-metroidvania approach to level design. It isn’t all one large interconnected world to explore, but rather a bunch of levels peppered with secrets that can only be fully explored when bringing back tools and skills acquired in later levels — things like walls requiring climbing claws to scale, updrafts that necessitate the use of a glider, or anchor points that Musashi will need a grappling hook to latch onto.

Despite this, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance doesn’t take full advantage of the approach. Players will often return with new gear only to pick up a single item or perform a short platforming sequence instead of uncovering new areas to explore, enemies to kill and bosses to defeat. It’s largely disappointing when compared to other games that utilize the approach well, though there are portals known as Ankou rifts that offer more challenging subrooms filled with enemies or tougher platforming sections.

The puzzles on offer generally exist to slow the proceedings down. Flipping switches to open doors is rarely an exhilarating gameplay mechanic, and pushing heavy objects across a floor to block a laser or power a device doesn’t exactly scream high-speed ninja action. Little of this is significantly additive, instead leading to far more downtime than is desired.

I generally enjoyed Shinobi: Art of Vengeance just fine. On the upside, the combat engine is fluid and satisfying to experiment with, and for the most part Shinobi: Art of Vengeance generally offers a reasonably good time. However, as a longtime series fan I expected an absolutely awesome outing, and it never quite hit the heights I was hoping for.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Lizardcube and published by DotEmu. It is currently available on XBX/S/PS5/Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 20 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 Blood and Violence. The good stuff! The official description reads: This is an action-platformer in which players assume the role of a ninja leader trying to save the world from an evil corporation. From a 2D/sideways perspective, players explore levels while fighting various enemies (e.g., ninjas, soldiers, monsters). Players use swords, throwing stars, and dramatic special moves to kill enemies in frenetic combat; fighting is highlighted by cries of pain, brief slow-motion effects, and frequent blood splatter. One boss fight allows players to dive inside the creature and slash at a giant heart.

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. I don’t recall any instances where lack of sound would be a problem. I’d say it’s fully accessible without audio.

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

The post Shinobi: Art Of Vengeance Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Atmospheric. Exceptional pixel art.

LOW Minimal story and half-baked mechanics.

WTF Cow + wolf = giant monster bone bear?

TRANSCRIPT:

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

A distress signal sounds. A small response group led by a fierce warrior named Naut heads out to a space station inhabited by thousands of people, only to find it quiet and desolate — but not empty. They quickly discover that the residents have been turned into terrible monsters. With survival as the only option, this small band must fight the horde to stay alive, while ultimately trying to find out what happened.

Katanaut is a 2D action roguelike where players take on the role of Naut, a warrior with a knack for swords and an exterminator of monstrous creatures. Players will infiltrate the overrun space station, pick up special abilities and power ups, and fight bosses to get to the truth of what’s happening. As players go through each level and defeat enemies, they’ll uncover new things to unlock for future runs, like new weapons, guns, abilities, and passive upgrades. 

During play, there’s a lot of emphasis on movement and flow while balancing slicing with swords and shooting enemies. For example, the player’s gun only has a limited number of bullets, and gaining more requires players to get in close with melee, so each encounter becomes a bloody dance of shooting enemies from afar before diving headfirst into the horde to get ammo back.

In addition, there’s a wealth of active abilities that can boost Naut’s combat abilities, like a ball of eldritch lightning, summoning a small group of allies, or things like shield generation or damaging enemies if players dodge-roll through them. There’s plenty of variety overall to make each run feel unique in how players will interact with the environment and the horde they’re fighting through.

In terms of atmosphere, there’s an eerie and tense energy that Katanaut nails. Every cut paints the walls of the station in blood, and the environments become more and more grotesque as players near the core. There also seems to be a hint of mental manipulation – is Naut wanting to eliminate the threat and save the world, or is he trying to learn more and harness this power for himself? Is he being manipulated by this unknown power, or will he be strong enough to resist? Only time will tell as players run through again and again.

While this all seems like a recipe for success and Katanaut does give a strong first impression, that feeling, unfortunately, fades quickly.

My biggest issue with the experience is that the roguelike elements are here, but they aren’t quite on target. For example, while there are plenty of varied and interesting abilities, the guns feel too similar and boring. Sure, the damage of a given weapon can go up or down, but none felt that interesting, or even that different from one another, making guns overall seem like an afterthought.

Main melee weapons suffer from this as well, although this might be more of a pacing issue. Katanaut offers six main weapons, but I have yet to unlock more than one additional weapon after all the time I’ve spent with it, and that includes fully completing a run.

Speaking of pacing issues, it’s not limited to the main weapon unlocks. Looking at the campaign’s structure as a whole, progression from run to run feels so incremental that the time investment doesn’t feel worth it. Increasing health by one point, increasing stamina by five points, increasing katana damage by 5% — it all feels tiny, grindy and unsatisfying, and it makes the ultimate goal of reaching the end feel like an impossible slog that will take much, much longer than I want to spend with it.

These are all significant downsides, and the story was equally unsatisfying. Does a roguelike need to have a grand, overarching narrative to be good? No. But does it need to at least have some core of a story to motivate me for why I should care about going through this space station? I think so.

I wish I could say that the payoff was worth it, but after finishing a run, I got to see the credits for the game and then opened up an enhanced difficulty — and that was it! None of the story questions were answered! What was the villain’s motivation? Why create the monsters? If I beat the boss, why do I need to go back and do the same run again, but harder? This made the “ending” fall completely flat for me, and after that narrative letdown, I didn’t feel a lot of motivation to continue.

Katanaut looks good and has potential, and honestly, it’s getting better by the day. The developer has been dropping frequent updates that offer additions and enhancements that weren’t there when I first started playing, and the push and pull of going between melee and ranged during the action feels on point. However, there’s a lot of competition in the roguelike genre right now, and in order to succeed, Katanaut‘s going to need better handling of its story and adjustments to the grindy nature of the meta-progression. As it stands today, it didn’t land with me and I haven’t stuck with it, but that could change in the future with a few more patches and upgrades.

For me, Katanaut gets 6.5 otherworldly abominations out of ten.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Voidmaw. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8.5 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 all types of weapons (blades, guns, grenades, etc) to slice enemies to bloody pieces. Dead bodies and gore are shown in each level. There are a lot of otherworldly horrors comprised of fleshy tissue, blood, and teeth. While there is no salty language in the game, there’s plenty of disturbing imagery throughout.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

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

Controls: Controls are fully remappable.

The post Katanaut VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded to the Lies of P: Overture DLC on the So Videogames Podcast, Episode 443. For further coverage leading up to this review, please listen to Episode 442 and Episode 441.

Starting off with the DLC I mentioned last week, and I believe the week before — Lies of P: Overture. This is the expansion to Lies of P, the souls like featuring a theme that is kind of based around a fantastical version of Pinocchio coming to us from Korean developer, I believe their name is Neowiz. I think, the main game. Incredible stuff. I think it’s one of the, one of the only developers, I think, that really can hold their own with from when it comes to like, level design and just general gameplay flow. They’re not reinventing the Dark Souls wheel as other people have done, and which I think is a fine idea.

I certainly don’t think every game in the souls like genre has to be like Dark Souls. but neo is are clearly fans and lies of P. The base game is a pretty fantastic experience. It can be difficult, although I will say that this new DLC has included difficulty levels so it can be done. It can be done in souls like everybody pay attention. There’s easy, medium and hard and they work. They do not break the game. They do not, make things terrible. It takes the experience away from no one. the hard level is fucking hard. The medium level still pretty challenging. The easy level. It’s not a cakewalk, folks. It’s still difficult, but it is significantly easier than the hard level. So hats off, number one. Just right out of the gate. Hats off to neo is for adding goddamn difficulty levels. I know that all the get goods like whine and moan and kick and scream and no one wants the difficulty level and the souls like, but neo is proves you can do it and do it properly and successfully. It is great. I love, love, love that there are difficulty levels in this. It’s still a fucking great game. It doesn’t matter what difficulty, it’s still a great game. The mark of a great game, still a great game. Here it is. Okay. That said, okay, so the DLC is a I feel like it’s 15 or 20 hours at least, and it takes the main character P back in time.

So it acts as a prequel of sorts. And I, you know, it’s been a while since I played the base game of Lesa P. I didn’t remember the story beats, I didn’t remember the details. So as I was going through Lies of P: Overture, I was like, I kind of remember this, and I kind of sort of remember this. But when we got to the end of the DLC, it really brought things together and I was really quite impressed. But I’m watching my wife go back through Lesa P now. Quick throwback. If anybody was listening back then or if you know me or I’ve, I’ve talked about this a couple times. My wife was playing the base game of lies and P a while ago when it dropped. And there’s one portion of Lies of P, there’s only one, only one time in the entire game where they take away your bonfires, where you cannot leave the level, you cannot go and level up. You cannot go back and resupply. You just have to make it through the next battle. You have to, otherwise you cannot progress. And my wife got stuck. She was playing the game. She was low on supplies. She was in a bad way. She was actually going back to the hotel, which acts as your hub to respec as she got caught in this trap and she got so frustrated that she quit the game, but she saw me playing it.

She’s like, oh man, I wish I had finished that game. And I’m like, yeah, you had a good time, you should come back to it. So she did. Had to talk her into it a little bit, but I sold her when she knew that there were difficulty levels. And plus we knew where that catch point was. Right. So we knew it was coming. It wasn’t a surprise anymore. So she was well prepared this time. Went into it, blew through that boss like on the second attempt, no problem. And she got past it. Huge weight off her shoulders. I was so proud of her for coming back. And now she’s pushing on into the main game doing the DLC. But I bring this up because as I’m watching the wife go through the story, I’m kind of watching her play the main game again. I was like, oh, right. Like I remember all the characters and I remember all the narrative ties and all of the things. And so it’s making me really appreciate Lies of P much more. I, you know, I, I don’t necessarily advocate for replaying games unless you swing that way. I very rarely replay games, but if you are, or if you haven’t played lines up for a while, or if you’ve never played it it the DLC will make so much more sense and will be so much more meaningful.

If you have recently played through the base game of lies and and your memory is fresh on all the characters and all the plot beats, because the developers really go overboard and in a good way, in a good way. Not a bad way, a good way. On the story in Lies of P: Overture, the story beats are great, and in general I really celebrate lies. because not only do they break the mold by adding a difficulty level, they break the the from soft mold by telling a story that is very easy to follow and easy to understand, and they don’t make it cryptic. I mean, there’s item descriptions to read if you want to, but basically there’s tons of characters all around and they’re like, hey man, here’s what’s happening. And they just fucking tell you. And it works. It works well, the lies of PR world is amazing. It’s really well fleshed out and believable and full of atmosphere. It just proves you do not need to hold back all the information in order to make a compelling experience. Neowise proves you can just straight up tell people what the fuck is going on, and even give them a difficulty setting to, and it’s still a fucking great game. So I love them for breaking the mold that way as well. The story stuff in overture is amazing, especially when you get to the end. I thought it was quite touching and quite sad, and I very rarely feel that way about games in general, and certainly not much about souls likes, but they really lean into the narrative and the characterization, and I really appreciate what they did there.

I’m not going to spoil anything, but it was really well told. There were lots of callbacks to stuff in the main campaign. Lots of characters made a reappearance, lots of like lots of those moments where you’re like, oh, that’s where that dude came from. Or oh, I remember that guy. So that’s how that happened. And you get like a lot of those moments which stitched up together really well, which I think is great. I love it a lot. So the DLC gives you an easy mode, which is great or, you know, difficulty levels. let’s see, what else do they give you? I don’t know, there’s like a lot of stuff. I think that just lines up does really well. Like for example, there’s lots of quality of life touches. They change little things. Like when you have enough experience to gain a level, it changes the display. So you know right away if you can. So you’re not wasting your time going back to your bonfire. They also tell you how many levels you have saved up, in case you don’t want to risk going to the next section, which I think is great. you could find that out already, but having it right there, on the screen just makes it so much easier.

They go above and beyond to make sure you can finish the side quests. Every time you get a new item or a side quest item, an icon appears on the fast travel menu. So let’s say, for example, you’re in whatever level and you get a new item and you’re like, oh, right, this goes to so-and-so back wherever they were. If you go back to the bonfire like you’re about to fast travel, they’ll tell. They straight up tell you they’re like, this is the guy. They show you a little icon of the character, and all the characters in the game have little face icons and you recognize them. So you’re like, oh, it’s the shopkeeper, and he’s over on this street. They tell you literally where to go Exactly. And it just saves you so much fucking time. You don’t have to like YouTube it all the time or look it up. They just are like, here, this is where we want you to go, and you go and fucking do it. And I will say that in terms of level design, they are very conscientious about making these side quests easy to finish, because most of the time the guy or girl or robot or whoever that you need to talk to is very close to the bonfire that you go to. So like, it’s not like you got to like, dig deep in the hinterlands and keep going and like, you’re gonna get on.

It’s like most of the time it’s like, just go to the hotel or go to the street and there’s a guy standing right there. Or like, you go to this room, there’s a guy right there. And I fucking love that. Like, it’s like it doesn’t take away from the game at all. It makes it very easy to fix these, fix these things you need to fix. Solve these problems, help these people out, get these side quests done. It’s great. It’s like a quality of life thing that I think is amazing. I will say that.. What else? They also are really nice about giving you warnings to, like, if you’re about to get into a not in the main game. I think they’ve added this after that happened, I think they probably got some pushback on that. The thing that trapped my wife, I think a lot of people were kind of mad about that. but like now, when I was about to go into the final leg of the game, like, big warning comes up, hey, man, you’re about to go into the final leg. This is the end of the game. Are you sure you want to do this? I appreciate that, don’t trick me. Don’t let me. Don’t let me make a mistake I don’t want to make. So I like that a lot.

so that’s good stuff. They add a bunch of new weapons. The bow, which is the first truly ranged weapon of Liza P, which is amazing. I love the bow. It does not break the game, but it is just so useful and helps out so much. It’s probably why there’s always a ranged weapon in every fucking souls game ever, because sometimes you just need it. They add a boss rush and a boss replay mode. I didn’t mess around with those very much, but they’re there if you want to. overall, I mean, so it’s the same base game of Dark Souls third person combat, really tuned, really tight. I think it works well. Great atmosphere, great story, great character. lots of quality light stuff. It’s really, really good stuff. I’m not perfect, though. It’s not perfect. So I will say a couple of things. really quickly that could be improved. I feel like, For whatever reason, I got backed into corners more often here than I ever did before. Like, I would be rolling around and, you know, dodging, fighting some guy and I would find myself backed into a corner and then the enemies would close in, and then I couldn’t leave the corner and I would just get, like, trapped, you know, corner trapped. And I was stuck. That happened like a notable amount of times. And I don’t know if that’s like level design or it might have something to do with how many of the enemies in Lies of P, especially Overture, are extremely, like, overly aggressive.

I found that to be quite true. And it’s not just my imagination. As I was watching my wife play the game, she was rolling around and dodging guys and getting back stabs pretty easily. And that was all going fine. And then when she got to the DLC, she was not able to do that anymore. Like the dodges weren’t working. She couldn’t get the backstab in. I think they have really reduced the ability for me to move around. They want you to parry more often, which is a bad idea. so I think that, I got trapped in corners more often than I would have liked. That was not fun. I’ll say also that some of the bosses are just like so fucking super aggressive. Like, it’s really it’s really annoying. I did complete the DLC and I can think of like 2 or 3 bosses that just like they’re in your face constantly, like you barely have room to breathe. You barely have room to, like, use a health potion. And in lines of pee, you have to juggle a couple things, like you have to sharpen your weapon during a battle. You have to take like life potions. If you have any other supporting items, you have to kind of like mess around with the D-pad to kind of navigate those. And when you’ve got a guy stabbing you in the face with a sword 17,000 times and he never backs off, it’s really hard to do it.

So I feel like the bosses were a little bit too aggressive. a couple in particular, but overall I think they just turned up the aggression too much and they don’t give the player enough time to breathe. And that kind of goes hand in hand with the paring and the dodging. I think both these things need to be fixed. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but like, when you try to dodge Eliza, it’s, like, impossible. I feel like you can’t dodge anything anymore. you have to be, like. Like pixel perfect with your dodge to get that tiny ass little window of iframe invincibility frames. But like I was, was not dodging anything. And in fact, I was failing to dodge so often I had to change my play style. And P, his left arm is,mechanical and you can swap it out for different things. And there’s a shield arm, which I barely ever used in the main game. I only used it for like, I think two bosses and I never touched it otherwise. But in this I actually equipped it and left it on the whole time because I was having such a tough time dodging that I needed like an extra shield to kind of get through some of these sections, which to me feels wrong.

I feel like that you should be able to dodge out of the way. That should be a viable, tactic. I mean, that’s pretty viable for most souls games. It’s kind of a basic fundamental principle. So I feel like the dodging needs to be tweaked. You need more iframes or to make the animation quicker or something. It needs to be tweaked because dodging just does not feel viable. And I will also say the parrying Is tough. The timing on it is really tight and it’s also very unimpressive when you do it now. We have recently talked about Expedition 33 on the show. It’s definitely going to be one of my games of the year for sure. It’s a wonderful experience, but they take pairing to a whole new level where you just parry everything, and when you do, you get these awesome animations. Feels amazing and I feel like they have just raised the bar on parrying every game from this point forward from now until the end of time. If you’re going to do a parrying, it’s got to be a badass parry. Otherwise, why do it? And in P they don’t do badass parries. It’s like you. You parry, and if you do it correctly, you get like this tiny little flash of like red light. And honestly, it’s kind of tough to tell that you even parried. Like the enemies often don’t rock back, they don’t get stunned. There’s not much that happens other than the fact that P does not take damage, so it’s kind of like a survival tactic, but it’s not cool.

It’s not impressive, it doesn’t feel flashy when you do it, and it’s just not good enough anymore. They you need to parry, and when you parry, it’s got to be fucking like, stylish and flamboyant and badass. It’s got to be on the par of, like, expedition 33. They have just they have changed pairing forever. So props to Sandoval Interactive for that. And coming back to to doing pairing and PM like am I even pairing? Is this even happening? What’s even going on? I don’t understand anymore. It’s not enough. So they need to like fix that for sure. What else? Anything else? the only other thing that I kind of want to complain about, just to just to get it off my chest is. It’s like a, it’s like a, it’s a hit and a miss. It’s a hit in that like, developers let you respect so many things you can respect, you can disassemble your weapons, you can mix and match your weapons to make weapons that fit you. You can respec your own skill tree. You can respect the items that go into your mechanical arm. And if you want to rearrange those things, you can, which I think is great. You can basically respec anything in the game except weapon upgrade materials, which drives me fucking crazy.

I don’t know why they would let you respect basically everything, but not this because you find so many weapons and sometimes you just want to, like, experiment with them, right? So like, for example, my wife started out with the strength based weapons and she spect for that. And then after a while she’s like, oh, you know, I really like this. I like the agility weapons better. And I’m like, yeah, I like agility as well. So she respect. But she had sunk a lot of materials into strength based weapons by this point already. And you can alter them a little bit, but you can’t just fully respect them. I’m talking about get all your fucking materials back and just put those materials into something else. Why not? You went all the way on all these other systems, which is great and I love it and I respect you for that. Why would you not go all the way on the final system? I don’t see the logic here. And what I think it is, is adherence to the formula that FromSoftware laid out. I think they’re following it for whatever reason. They were willing to break the mold on so many things, but on this one, they were not willing to break the mold. And I just have to I have to say it’s a bad call, because you find so many weapons that you want to experiment with them all. You want to try them all, find favorites.

They’re great weapons, and especially in the DLC, there’s so many cool weapons to use that I wanted to try every one of them, but I didn’t have enough materials for all of them. And so I feel like just give me the materials back. Like let’s say for example, you can only maximum upgrade, maybe like three weapons. Okay, that’s fine, I can leave the other ones on upgraded, but if I want to switch, I will take my mats back and I will still only have three upgraded weapons. And honestly, what does it matter anyway? What? Does he even fucking care? I mean, you made these weapons. Do you want me to use them? Do you not like why did you create them if you don’t want me to use them? What is the value of locking me into weapons? When you let me change basically everything else in the game, it doesn’t make sense. I think it’s a mistake. I think it’s a genuine mistake. And I think, neo needs to fix that for next time. If you could take your weapon material upgrades back, that would be the fucking perfect thing, because then you could really mix and match and change your build and explore how the game plays and find something that really works. Why don’t you want to do that? I think you should do that. They’ve gone three quarters of the way. You might as well go all the way.

So that’s one of my other complaints. Other than that, I mean, so all that stuff said, all the stuff I’ve just ranted about, I think Lies of P: Overture is a pretty amazing DLC. It’s chunky. It took me, I believe, 15 to 20 hours, which felt like just the right length. It had story ties that were absolutely strongly tied to the main campaign. This wasn’t just like a tossed off, like one off. It was like it really called back to like, central characters to things that happened. Like it made sense. It explained a lot of plot holes that people thought were plot holes before. It plays well, it adds great weapons. I mean, the bow itself makes the DLC worth it, but like the Wolverine claws or the exploding sword, or the gun blade and stuff, or the arm that shoots blades, like there’s all sorts of stuff that I think are amazing you can take back to the main campaign. Overall, Lies of P: Overture delivers a lot of value. Great story, great gameplay, lots of new weapons to play with and it was a good length, too. Ultimately, I felt very satisfied by the time I finished it. It was a little bit on the difficult side. A little bit. Enemies that are too aggressive. And I got backed into corners a little bit too often. Could have polished up some of the spots, but you know those are those are small things.

Lies of P: Overture is pretty outstanding stuff, and this is a great way to do DLC. Other developers who make soulslikes should pay attention to how it was done here.

And the score for this content is 8.5 out of ten. Excellent stuff.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This content was developed by Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio, and published by Neowiz Games. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, and XBO/S/X. This copy of the DLC was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 18 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the content was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has received an M rating from the ESRB and contains Blood and Violence. The official summary reads: “This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of the puppet Pinocchio in his search to become human. From a third-person perspective, players explore environments, collect items, and battle various enemies (e.g., puppets, mechanoid creatures) in melee-style combat. Players use swords and mechanical arms with ranged attacks (e.g., Puppet String, Flamberge) to kill enemies. Boss battles depict more prolonged combat against larger enemies. Battles are highlighted by slashing sounds, cries of pain, and large blood-splatter effects. Some environments depict bloody corpses and large blood stains on the ground.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Every line of dialogue is accompanied by written text, and I personally found the font size to be easily readable. Sound is completely unimportant for playing and enjoying this game since there are no audio-only cues for incoming attacks. I played it for some time with the volume turned fully off and had no problems. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game offers a controller diagram and the controls are remappable. The default scheme is similar to other soulslikes, meaning we use the circle button to run/roll/dodge, the shoulder buttons are for light and strong attacks, the square button is for using items, the left stick is for movement and the right stick handles the camera.

The post SVG REVIEW Lies Of P: Overture appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The karakuri system adds a fresh, welcome twist to combat and exploration.

LOW I’m not in love with most of the crafted armor set designs.

WTF Japanese words scattered throughout the translation at random. Sou desu ne?

A few years ago, a nifty little hunting title known as Wild Hearts was released on most modern platforms, back before the Switch 2 was a thing. Released under the EA Originals banner, reportedly poor PC performance and quickly losing support meant that it never got the recognition I feel it deserved as a lovingly-crafted Monster Hunter-style adventure with a fresh tool-building twist intelligently grafted on to it.

Over the years I’ve made no secret of the fact that I thought Wild Hearts kicked ass. Now it’s back for another shot on Switch 2, dropping the EA umbrella and coming in hot with all previous DLC from the Karakuri Edition and post-release updates included as standard at launch.

Taking place in the gorgeously portrayed feudal Japan-themed Azuma across large hunting areas based on the four seasons, a critical imbalance in nature is causing gigantic monstrosities known as Kemono to venture outside of their usual territory and clash with the woefully-unprepared humans around the besieged hunter stronghold of Minato. It’s a story that delicately examines the subtle interpersonal relationship between man and nature, eventually coming to one inevitable conclusion — nature needs to get kicked right back into its hole, one squad of hunters at a time. Ooo-rah!

That said, while players will have to kill the vicious troublemakers endangering the lives of everyone in Minato, I knew I was going to love Wild Hearts almost immediately during one of the tutorial sequences where players are encouraged to stealthily sneak up behind a docile, passive animal and… pet the absolute hell out of it. Who’s a beautiful little abomination of nature? Is it you? Yes, it’s you! Awww, lookit your cute little face!

Rampaging monsters the size of a house trying to chew villagers in half don’t get off so lucky though, so it’s a good thing players have plenty of awesome weaponry to unlock and utilize against them whilst playing through the story. There’s a total of eight weapon types on offer, which are varied, effective and almost uniformly cool as hell.

For instance, the seemingly traditional Katana transforms into a ridiculously awesome bladed murderwhip threshing machine capable of whittling unfortunate kemono to bits at the touch of a button, and the Claw Blades allow hunters to hook into their target before dancing through the air, swooping in and out of range to avoid attacks while tearing into enemies with the same casual disregard for gravity usually seen in something like House of Flying Daggers. Even the Bow, rather than being a slow and precise single shot ranged option, is instead a relentless artillery machine capable of embedding dozens of arrows into hapless enemies before a charged shot detonates the lot at once.

Having been infused with a karakuri device at the start of the adventure, players are also able to use various resources to conjure up wonderful contraptions that make hunting more convenient and enjoyable. From permanent ziplines ferrying hunters up sheer cliff faces and across canyons, to gliders and launchpads helping them soar towards distant targets, various skills unlocked along the way make getting around each area a breeze.

Even better, there’s a wide range of camp amenities to help players mould the world of Azuma to their advantage. Tents can be placed to allow fast travel anywhere the player desires. Forges let players tinker with their equipment while away from headquarters. My own favorite camp was located on a lovely sandy beach where I had set up a kitchen to refine meals while passively harvesting fish from the sea nearby. It lends the world a sense of ownership not seen in many competing titles.

The karakuri aren’t just handy for getting around, though. Usually while fighting a boss for the first time, players will be struck by inspiration towards the latter stages of the battle, with an onscreen prompt flashing up to introduce a new tactic for overcoming deadly attacks or exploiting a weaknesses. The first time a giant boar performs its stampede attack only to be comically flipped fifty feet into the air by a hastily conjured bulwark is a gaming moment I’ll forever treasure.

There are a lot of these tactically-beneficial constructions to discover, from anti-air firework artillery blowing enemies out of the sky, to giant mallets smashing kemono sniping perches. They’re not necessary to succeed during hunts, but they certainly make things easier and are incredibly gratifying when used properly. By the end of the adventure some truly insane devices are at players’ disposal. Special mention goes to the Celestial Cannon, which is complete overkill in some circumstances but never fails to raise a grin.

As expected, the selection of beasts in Wild Hearts S gets more menacing as players progress. Initial encounters with giant rats and boars give way to gigantic lava-infused monkeys, glacial wolves and colossal tigers. There are a number of reskinned fights scattered across the four main lands of Azuma, but the variety seen in the enemy roster is still pretty decent.

Successful hunts naturally mean harvesting parts from these giant bosses in order to make new gear — and here’s where Wild Hearts S disappoints a little.

While the new equipment is undoubtedly useful, most of the armor sets look middling on a visual level. This led to me using the wooden ninja skin originally included in the Karakuri Edition from the start of the campaign all the way to the end. That one looks pretty awesome, unlike most of the craftable sets. Still, the stat boosts and bonus skills naturally make crafting worthwhile, conferring abilities like more effective healing, physical and elemental protections and various tweaks to stamina usage, evasion and special attacks.

Performance on the Switch 2 is generally decent. It’s not a locked 60fps, but it holds up better than I was expecting given the performance complaints leveled at the original on every platform. For what it’s worth, I thought it ran perfectly well on the Series X and this Switch 2 version didn’t have me balk at the comparison, so that’s a positive outcome for this port.

Wild Hearts S is a welcome and surprisingly capable port of what I always considered to be a truly fantastic and criminally underappreciated title when it launched a few years ago. EA may have dropped support for Wilds Hearts in a hurry, but I’d absolutely love if Omega Force continued to forge ahead with this IP independently. Azuma ain’t gonna save itself, after all, and it’s far too charming a world to leave to its own devices.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Omega Force and published by Koei Tecmo America. It is currently available on Switch 2, with a very similar original release on XBX/S/PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch 2.

Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed, alongside three full playthrough and hundreds of hours on the Series X version. 6 hours of play were spent in multiplayer in this version, with two entire playthroughs spent alongside friends on the previous platform.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Users Interact, Use of Alcohol and Violence. The official description reads: This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the role of a character that hunts down demonic creatures. As players traverse a fantasy world, they can complete quests, interact with characters, and battle large fantastical creatures (e.g., giant rats, demonic boars, ice wolves) in melee-style combat. Players use swords, claw blades, hand cannons, and bows to kill enemy creatures in fast-paced combat. Battles are accompanied by impact sounds, slashing and particle effects, and cries of pain. The game contains references to alcohol in the dialogue (e.g., “I’ve got some sake with your name on it”; “It’s a strong spirit that brings inebriation with a single sip”; “Drunk again”), and a handful of scenes depict characters drinking sake.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.  It should be noted that the accessibility settings found in Wild Hearts / S are extremely comprehensive, with a wide range of options to suit.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and/ or resized. The only thing I’d say Deaf players might have an issue with is locating hidden Tsukumo by their unique clacking sound. However, a later upgrade to the hunting towers allow for their locations to be revealed on the map screen, so this is a temporary issue.

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

The post Wild Hearts S Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Absolutely breathtaking vistas and art style.

LOW The amount of backtracking.

WTF Jesus Christ that’s a LOT of blood.

Every videogame teased in 2025 with a sword-wielding protagonist, believe it or not, is actually Dark Souls. To call the third-person action-adventure subgenre overplayed is an understatement — and few recent titles do enough to differentiate themselves from their medium-defining forefathers.

Hell is Us is the first time I’ve played a new title that takes notes from the soulslike genre, but instead of lurking under its shadow, walks in a different direction proudly. 

The player assumes the role of Remi, a career soldier who was shipped away from the civil-war-ridden country of Hadea as a young boy. Now, his personal mission is to get back into Hadea, find his family, and uncover the mystery of a society-altering calamity that sent demon-like creatures to prey on Hadeans on both sides of their civil war.

These creatures are the single plot device that keeps the story moving forward and leave the player asking all kinds of questions — what are they? Why do these beings move so weirdly? Why are they all white with a gaping hole where a face should be? The player must untangle this puzzle by talking to Hadean residents, picking up clues, and solving puzzles that take Remi across the country. 

Instead of going the typical soulslike route and focusing on combat, Hell is Us lives and dies by committing to the soulslike form of quest design. This means other than the opening dialogue sequce and talking to characters about what they need, it’s up to Remi and the player’s intuition alone to find quest items or the way forward. Puzzles require a little extra brainpower, whether it’s for a main quest, side content called “good deeds” to help civilians around Hadea, or when solving puzzles to get items. 

I can understand that this type of quest design may not work for everyone. Sometimes I’d go for entire hours of gameplay before I’d find an item and try to think “Who does this go to? Was it that person asking for ID cards? But I’m also not sure this is the right item?” It can feel like a mental balancing act at times. But other than a few sections prone to lots of backtracking as I got used to the quest design, like the beginning Acasa Marsha area and the hills where Remi learns more about his father, Hell is Us sold me with less handholding.

It’s established early on that everything in Hell is Us’ map pulls on mystical and religious lore to set the backdrop for the country’s conflict — entire towns were set ablaze, gigantic temples worshipping false gods were constructed, and civilians were ruled by hatred. The world of Hadea is broken beyond repair, and it’s easy to see why Remi was sent away by his parents.

Easily the strongest point of Rogue Factor’s design philosophy was putting the carnage of Hadea’s civil war on full display. Corpses line the streets of towns, blood runs through buildings, countless bodies hang limp from the little remaining vegetation that was left between bombings and flamethrower attacks. 

Among all of these depictions of carnage are smaller, more intimate moments — things like a vista looking across a mountain lake next to a field of azure flowers, or a massive statue of a creature and its gaping maw where a mouth should be. A burning town in the distance creating a nearly perfect sunset was haunting. 

Among the civilians, soldiers, and religious iconographies shrouded in smoke are the bright contrasts of Hadea — the creatures. Violently thrashing about like drunkenly-controlled marionettes painted white, they are so inhuman in nearly every way, and fighting these creatures highlights Hell is Us’ inspired combat system. I’m not leaving it for last because of any quality knock. It can easily stand on its own and is a treat to engage with in its own right.

Like a typical soulslike, there’s a strike, dodge, and block button, but every encounter has an added wrinkle. Every time Remi deals damage to an enemy, he can heal some of that damage back if the player times a button press correctly. Other dimensions include a drone that allows Remi to attack from above or spin in a whirlwind of blows, and “elemental” imbued attacks from enhanced weapons make combat encounters more engaging than a simple hack-and-slash. 

The mystical enemies come in all shapes and sizes. Some shoot projectiles, some disable Remi’s drone, some spawn enemies attached to them via an umbilical cord of sorts, making the player prioritize them before killing their host.

A note I will make on Hell is Us’ combat — if players experienced with soulslikes want to get the most out of the mechanics and consumables, play it on Hard Mode. While many combat encounters inspired me to think creatively, by the end of Hell is Us, I felt like I was mowing down enemies easily on Normal Mode while filling up a bag of consumables I never used once. 

Ultimately, the thing about Hell is Us that ties it all together is the title. The combat and exploration are merely a distraction from the real conflict happening in front of the player’s eyes — humans on both sides of the civil war (and those manipulating the war from behind the scenes) have committed far worse atrocities than the creatures ever have. 

Score: 8 out of 10

Buy Hell is Us – PC – XB – PS

Disclosures: This game is developed by Rogue Factor and published by Nacon. It is currently available on PC, XBX/S, and PS5. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PC. Approximately 19 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is rated M for Strong Language, Violence, Blood, Drug References, and Suggestive Themes. It is a very visceral depiction of a civil war with modern technology, so this game is not meant for kids whatsoever, including bodies hanging from trees, staircases lined with blood and human remains, and a colossal pile of human skeletons.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes available, including a setting to toggle color deficiency type and a slider with color deficiency compensation.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game’s story has subtitles which can be resized. Some puzzles do have audio cues to make it easier for players to find quests, but Hell is Us compensates with visual directional audio cues. The game is fully accessible.

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

The post Hell Is Us Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The animation is way better than it has a right to be.

LOW The story barely evolves and remains one-note from start to finish.

WTF Some of the fauna encountered expire horrifically during battle.

Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson is a 2D JRPG deckbuilder with rhythm action elements. Players take control of Rob, a talented but unknown musician from a remote area who harbors big dreams of trekking across the world and smashing his way to victory at the upcoming Battle of the Bands hosted by musical megacorp SMR.

However, whispers abound regarding this tournament. Could it be that SMR are instead up to nefarious schemes, rigging these battles so that only the most malleable and easily-bought contestants make it through to the end, winning a tournament that’s little more than a hollow scam to exploit musicians for corporate greed?

Well, yes. It pretty much says as much right from the start. Anyone expecting wild plot twists is going to leave disappointed, so expect musical assassins and goons to be deployed en masse to prevent Rob from winning the competition fairly.

See, music isn’t just a pleasant or occasionally irritating distraction in this world — it’s how people survive. Out in the forests and grasslands, acoustically empowered foes lie in wait to annihilate Rob via the medium of turn-based battles, and it’s here that the rhythm-based battle system comes into play.

Starting out with his trusty six string guitar, Rob can assemble a deck of commands that are randomly drawn from a pool. Three in a row can be set in motion to attack and debuff opponents, or heal and strengthen Rob’s defenses, with timing based QTE’s assigned to each action. Hitting these QTEs accurately can influence battle by enhancing damage dealt, or mitigating damage taken.

Rob will find three additional instruments to unleash havoc with, each of which has its own battle theme when in use. The Bass Guitar is a heavy hitter, the Synthesizer features a warlock style approach of slamming out buffs and debuffs, and the Eight String causes damage to Rob in order to power up its attacks. Each instrument also has passive qualities, with the Synthesizer triggering equipped mods if enough frequency is gained during the turn, for example.

Sound complicated? It can be if desired, though the extremely mild difficulty means that learning the nuances of the battle system isn’t necessary. QTE checks can also be disabled, which I did as I found they weren’t adding anything to the experience — with the Guitar Hero-style “Crescendo” super attacks being the one exception. After building enough meter and initiating the Crescendo (or having a boss encounter do the same to Rob) a musical highway of notes appears alongside a cool animation. It’s a neat touch.

The graphics are… interesting. I don’t think the style is anything to write home about, but the animation is almost unnecessarily lavish. Every attack has a different animation associated, including found or purchasable ones that can be cut into the deck. Cutscenes and Crescendo sequences have clearly had a lot of effort put into them, and it’s downright weird to see a fairly generic graphic style have an almost overwhelming amount of care put into the animation. It might even be a negative in some ways — with no way to skip many of these animations, they slow battles down more than necessary.

Exploration is pretty typical stuff. Each town has a few shops and NPCs, and Rob will occasionally encounter simple puzzles such as shoving boxes, copying environmental patterns or ensuring switches are hit in sequence. There’s a decent diversity of environments, but it’s notable that none of the characters Rob meets along the way are even remotely interesting or fleshed out. It harms the sense of discovery when all that’s waiting in the next outpost are more inconsequential background faces chucking out the odd music pun.

Fretless is remarkably frictionless, but not necessarily in a good way. Standard enemies pose little threat, but still take a while to whittle down with no way to skip attack animations or immediately stomp underpowered adversaries. I killed most bosses on my first attempt, with one of only two deaths in the entire game occurring because I killed myself attempting to learn the Eight String Guitar — which, as mentioned earlier, sacrifices Rob’s health to strengthen its attacks and can kill players who aren’t being judicious with its use.

Bizarrely, the final stretch of the adventure devolves into a monumentally non-thrilling stealth sequence where being spotted by roaming guards results in being evicted from the premises and starting over. On the one hand it’s simple to stay hidden, as their field of vision is projected around them in plain sight. On the other, it’s an absolutely terrible sequence that took far too long to get through, not helped by the fact that I spent ages looking for an exit, only to find that the camera perspective made said exit look like a solid wall.

It’s unfortunate that I find myself having to put the boot in this hard to what’s obviously a passion project from an indie developer, but my emotional state playing Fretless oscillated between boredom, irritation and occasionally finding it all mildly pleasant. Perhaps it will hit differently for someone who’s into the music scene or deckbuilders, but as a JRPG fan who’s partial to a good rhythm action game, it hit a bit of a bum note for me.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ritual Studios and published by Playdigious Originals. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 8 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has not been rated by the ESRB.  It’s fine for kids, I’d think, with its upbeat approach to nearly everything that’s going on and cartoonish villainy from the bad guys. However, watching the skin melt clean off (potentially artificial) wildlife to reveal a skeleton as they die seems massively at odds with its usual vibe, even if there’s no blood involved.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game’s story is told entirely in text, so subtitles aren’t needed. While music is a big part of the game, I don’t recall anything from the rhythm based gameplay that didn’t also have a visual cue that would suffice.

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

The post Fretless: The Wrath Of Riffson Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Finally unleashing the full-power Mech Mode.

LOW Spending 45 minutes trying to beat a single platforming sequence.

WTF Are those seriously Dig-Dug enemies?

Might as well rip the band-aid off right away — yes, this is the Pac-Man Metroidvania.

It’s about a gamer who gets pulled into a strange Namco-themed dimension and has their soul dropped into a swordfighting robot. It seems that Puck, the ravenous yellow sphere, needed someone to help her activate a giant machine for reasons that are way too convoluted to get into here, so the player got dragged into an insane sci-fi struggle because it seemed like they had… decent reflexes?

After that absurd opening, things get even stranger, as Puck and her player sidekick explore bizarre, shattered landscapes crammed full of biomechanical horrors. The player can fight back using fairly standard 2D side-scrolling combat. There are slash combos, dodges, parries, and an array of power moves that the player can obtain by killing bosses scattered around the world.

Well, killing and eating them, technically.

In Shadow Labyrinth‘s most potentially-upsetting detail, simply killing enemies isn’t sufficient to obtain new abilities and crafting resources. Once the player has slashed an enemy into submission, they have to remember to call Puck out so that she can lunge forward and chomp her way through the enemy corpse, gathering the items the player will need to craft upgrades. Luckily, boss devouring is an automatic process, although the form Puck takes in order to unlock new abilities is as horrifying as any of the twisted foes the player will encounter.

While Shadow Labyrinth can be appreciated for its tight, easy-to-learn combat, what it should be applauded for is the innovative take it has on classic Pac-Man gameplay.

Scattered throughout the map are special electrified floors. If the swordfighter steps onto them they’re instantly transformed into Pac-Man, complete with automatic movement and wakka-wakka sound effects. However, it’s more complex than Pac-Man ever was, because Puck has access to a jump move that allows her to vault from one electrified floor to the next. This one addition allows the developers to include maddeningly complex sequences that require pixel-perfect precision in order to vault through gauntlets of energy fencing and spinning buzzsaws.

There are even special dedicated Pac-Man levels that the player can defeat in order to unlock resources. Each one is a clever take on classic Pac-Man gameplay, with the player trying to collect enough pellets to switch over to ghost-eating mode while zipping through mazes that gradually fall apart as pieces of the world transform into weapons to be used against the ghosts. It’s to Shadow Labyrinth‘s credit that they included a minigame so creative in the ways it uses assumed familiarity with Pac-Man that it easily could have been sold as a stand-alone product.

While the gameplay is stellar and art design are truly exceptional, Shadow Labyrinth does have one major drawback, and it’s that it’s — and please excuse the wordplay — a little too labyrinthine.

The map is simply enormous. It takes forever to get from one place to the next, and fast-travel nodes are few and far between. It wouldn’t be so bad if the levels were absolutely packed with interesting features and monsters to fight, but that’s just not the case — every single one one of the areas has at least a few sections that force the player to simply wander for minutes on end to get to another checkpoint.

What’s worse is the sheer number of movement abilities the player needs to unlock in order to make their way around this enormous map. While it’s relatively common that metroidvanias ask the player to get a couple of movement upgrades to see everything, Shadow Labyrinth sets the number absurdly high. There are multiple jumps, air dashes, a grappling hook, a giant laser, and more. The map isn’t much help in keeping track of all the locations players will need to revisit, either — the player can unlock markers for it, but there are just four colors, and close to a dozen obstacle types.

It took me over sixty hours to do everything, and it’s not exaggerating to say that nearly half of that time was spent scouring the map for places to use a new ability I’d unlocked in the hopes of finding a path forward.

Shadow Labyrinth is also punishingly difficult at times — not just the devious and brutal bosses, either. Ithas some of the trickiest platforming I’ve seen in ages.

At a certain point it became clear that I could progress no further until I obtained the ability to double-jump. The only place I’d failed to search was a winding tunnel made of instant-death spikes that could only be navigated by zipping from one grapple-point to the next, with the slightest mis-angled shot or split-second hesitation erasing all progress. I’d hesitated in exploring based on the assumption that it was the kind of late-game location I was supposed to conquer after getting all of the movement abilities, but no, this ridiculously complex and demanding exercise in free-fall platforming was the barrier keeping me from the double-jump. This truly is a situation where only the most dedicated players need apply.

Shadow Labyrinth is equal parts magnificent and frustrating.

The action is stellar, the setting — largely made up of deep-cut references to Namco’s arcade history — is uniquely fascinating, and the retro Pac-Man gameplay is perhaps the best the franchise has ever offered. At the same time, it makes exploration such a chore that I swore off finishing it and stepped away from it more than a few times. I always came back, though, which goes to show just what an incredible job the developers have done here.

Even when I hated what I was doing, it was always a pleasure to engage with, and there aren’t a lot of games I can say the same about.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Bandai Namco. It is currently available on PC/SW/PS5/XBS. Copies of the game were purchased on Steam obtained and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 60 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Fantasy Violence. It’s fantastical and stylized action, and it’s safe for just about anyone to play. I’m serious about how scary Puck eating enemies is, though. It’s absolutely brutal, and deserves a warning if younger teens are interested in checking the game out.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All information is delivered via text on screen. I played most of the game without audio, and encountered no issues. This experience is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Shadow Labyrinth Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded to Death Stranding 2: On the Beach on the So Videogames Podcast, Episode 447.

For further coverage leading up to this review, please listen to Episode 445 and Episode 444.

BRAD: Let’s do a score.

CARLOS: Wait wait wait wait. Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. No. You’re fine. Let’s do a score. Let’s do a score. Can we do a score?

B: We’ll do the score. Carlos, now that we have, like, basically said everything. We’ve said everything about this game. You and I both played it. Both of us, like 50 or 60 hours. Whatever. Tell us, what’s your. What’s your final score for Death Stranding? Two?

C: Oh, I’m going first. I thought you were. Okay.

B: You’re the guest.

C: I haven’t even thought about it until just now. You just brought it up.

B: I know, I know.

C: You want me. To go because I thought you were going to go. Because I knew you had to do it for the thing. Okay? No. Let me. I’ll go first. Okay. I’m just, like, taking apart all the things I just said. If. If what did you give DS1? Do you know?

B: I want to say that I, Hold on. I gotta look it up, I don’t know. Hold on. I’m looking it up. I want to say that I gave it…. no, I’m not gonna. I want to say you give it an eight. I feel like I gave it an eight. Real time googling. I feel like we both gave it an eight.

C: Did we talk? We must have talked about it on the show.

B: Maybe I didn’t even review it. I don’t I don’t think I even reviewed it. I’m looking at… No, I don’t think I did an official review. I think we had.

C: I think that we’ve talked about on this show, we must and I think we both have said something like eight something.

B: If I was, if I was to go back now, like, literally right now and give Death Stranding one a score, I feel like it would be a nine, dude, honestly, because it’s so weird. The strand mechanics using navigation as the true challenge of the game, the way that stealth is kind of enforced, and the way that the beats kind of give you a different challenge. Not always pleasant, but I think they make you do something different than we have done before. Thematically. Well, fuck no no no no 8.5 because the story is so fucking awful. But I think mechanically true genius mechanically, but it is just diarrhea rocket dog shit for the story.

C: So I think mine would be eight because I didn’t finish it either. Because you said, nah, don’t you don’t have to finish it.

B: No, you didn’t miss nothing.

C: And so I didn’t miss anything. But at the same time, I didn’t like that garbage story. So. Yeah. So I think this one has got to be less than eight. that’s how. That’s why I was doing that.

B: Yeah, I gotcha.

C: I think it’s like a good cheese. This is the part where I get cancelled. I’m just overusing that word because it’s so played out. I think it’s a six.

B: Okay, okay.

C: 6.5. It’s a 6.5. I like the combat enough. I like going back to that world of being on a little place, and, the music kicks in and there’s moments that I was like, cool. But the Higgs thing really bothers me. Yeah. What? Higgs wasn’t in one, you know what I mean? Like that kind of annoying character wasn’t there?

B: Yeah, he just popped up, like at the very end or something. He was like, not even really. Present, right? But he wasn’t like this. Kind of like over omnipresent. and the unbelievable. Yeah. I think it’s got to be 6.5.

C: Okay. Okay.

B: That’s ironic because I was going to say 6.5 as well.

C: were you really?

B: It was really. Yeah. Because I feel like the script is terrible, the twists were predictably dumb, and the humanity isn’t present. The performances aren’t good, and none of the story works for me on any level. In terms of mechanics, the traversal that made it stand out for me before is not interesting this time around. It was all too easy, too fast and too simple. I didn’t get anything out of it that I wanted, and I and the pivot towards Metal Gear cheese, which is in the game quite a bit, and then the emphasis on combat, and it’s really like laissez faire combat, like you can really shoot a lot of stuff and not give a shit about any of it. I feel like most of what made the first Death Stranding unique has been stripped out, and because of that, it’s a much lesser experience. So for me, definitely like a 6.5 final score, I believe. Yeah.

C: All right. There you go, people. We did it.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Buy Death Stranding 2: On the Beach – PC – PS – XB

Disclosures: This game is developed by Kojima Productions and published by Sony Interactive. It is currently available on PS5. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 65 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 M and contains Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language and Violence. The official description reads: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is rated M for Mature 17+ by the ESRB with Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, and Violence. This is an action game in which players assume the role of a courier (Sam Porter Bridges) attempting to reconnect society in a post-apocalyptic world. From a third-person perspective, players traverse an open-world landscape to deliver various goods and packages. Along the way, players can engage in combat against human soldiers, battle androids, and ghostly apparitions. Players use melee weapons (e.g., battle guitar) and firearms (e.g., machine guns, sniper rifles) to kill enemies. Players also employ stealth takedowns to incapacitate soldiers discreetly. Battles are sometimes frenetic, accompanied by realistic gunfire, blood-splatter, and slow-motion effects. Some sequences depict additional acts of violence and/or gore: a man’s hands and legs sliced off by a robotic samurai; a man set on fire in a fantastical manner; a man cut in half by a giant machine. The word “f**k” is heard in the game.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game includes subtitles for all spoken dialogue. The game does use a variety of sound effects to signal the presence of various enemies, but there are visual cues that reflect those sounds. base don my time with it, I’d say it’s fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable, although certain functions can be altered.

The post SVG REVIEW Death Stranding 2: On The Beach appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Charming pixel art, modern civilization fallen into ruin with Norse mythological backdrop

LOW Clunky movement, weak combat, wonky UI

WTF Why do I need to disconnect my controller just for the game to be able to launch?

Vessels of Decay makes a good first impression. 

When I saw a gameplay video, I was instantly drawn in by the retro-inspired graphics, isometric action, RPG gameplay and a post-apocalyptic setting steeped in Norse mythology.

The player follows the adventures of siblings Freja and Mud as they fight a wide variety of monsters on their quest to restore the world’s former glory, which entails navigating dilapidated city centers and mysterious Zelda-esque temples chock full of puzzles and challenges.

When I finally set out on my hero’s journey, however, that first impression quickly soured due to a host of technical issues… starting with the game’s failure to launch.

After trying to boot it up several times and failing, I took to the Internet to see if anyone else had encountered the same issue. Other players had already figured out that Decay wouldn’t launch if they had a controller connected, so I had to disconnect my controller, reboot, and then plug the controller back in once the main menu had loaded.

The menu featured the same image used for the promo materials, and it captures what appealed to me in the first place — the two siblings standing on a precipice overlooking a vast landscape and facing what appeared to be a giant deer god. Honestly, it’s a scene worthy of being an album cover. Things were looking up again… for a little while, anyway.

Getting back to controllers, Decay is poorly optimized for them. Even when I tried to rebind the controls, the UI was so clunky that I had to go through and reconfirm or reassign every input entirely (there’s no way to change one and back out) so I eventually just settled on the default settings, which detracted from the overall experience as the developers made many odd choices in determining which buttons to have the player use for certain actions.

Past the controls, I wish I could say that Vessels of Decay lived up to my hopes and expectations, but truthfully, I’m struggling to find positive things to say about it. I liked the vibe and appreciated what I could glean from the few cutscenes and bits of dialogue (each chapter shifted perspective from one sibling to the other) but the way the story was presented made it a little tough to tell the different between dreams or visions and reality.

Initially, I remember being enchanted by the ethereal synth music and the nostalgic pixel art throughout the city ruins which served as the tutorial area where (sadly) I experienced even more egregious technical difficulties.

I was shown the ropes of combat soon after. The game offers heavy and light attacks, a parry, a dodge and executions, but the movement felt sluggish, even when “sprinting”, which was quite finicky. Platforming challenges like swinging from pole to pole across gaps were mired by inconsistent timing, particularly infuriating during a chase sequence when I was being pursued by a giant boar. Balancing on beams between buildings tended to be glitchy — sometimes I would still be walking as if I was on the beam after I had already jumped off and I would be forced to restart from the checkpoint.

Once I made it to the first boss arena, I was disappointed to find that my opponent, the giant boar, was not necessarily challenging, but was still an incredibly repetitive and frustrating fight. There were many times when nothing was happening on-screen, yet the arena would ‘vibrate’ to signify that the boar was stomping around somewhere, so I would have to wander around the arena until I finally triggered its charge attack.

Sometimes the boar wouldn’t make any noise as it did so, looking almost comical as it flew silently around the map trying to attack me. At other times, the camera would neither track me nor the boar, and would instead be fixed on a patch of trees somewhere. Such a viewpoint made it impossible for me to tell where I was or what was going on, so I would end up guessing and dodging blindly in a given direction. Miraculously, I managed to finally bring it down, but rather than feel accomplished, I mostly just felt relieved to have gotten past something that had been the source of so much frustration.

As things progressed, I unlocked some satisfying abilities like the Thorn Stomp which allowed me to use what was essentially a spell slot to trigger far off switches or attack enemies from a distance. I also enjoyed the Charge Dash, though it caused me to get stuck in the wall on several occasions, requiring me to reload the game from a previous save.

The various types of puzzles and challenges in each area weren’t anything that hasn’t been done before (I half-expected the item discovery sound effect from Zelda anytime I opened a chest) but the areas were aesthetically captivating, and at one point I came across a shopping mall which acted as the lair for a host of giants, goblins and trolls — an interesting location!

At this point, I’m running out of positives to share. I had completely lost interest in the story by this point of the game and all of the persistent technical issues drowned out any enjoyment Vessels of Decay had managed to cultivate. To be perfectly frank, it’s unlikely that the developers will be able to address all of the issues that would need to be resolved to make Decay appeal to a wider audience. There are a handful of great ideas here, but the execution falls so wide of the mark that I hope the devs can take this as a learning experience and improve their next venture.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

Buy Vessels of Decay — PC — XBO/X/S — PS4/PS5 — Switch

Disclosures: This game was developed by Simon Jakobsson and Aurora Punks and published by Headup. The game is currently available on PC, XBO/X/S, PS4, PS5 and Switch. It was obtained via publisher and reviewed for PC. Approximately 3.5 hours were devoted to the campaign mode. The game was not finished. There is no multiplayer mode.

Parents: This game is not yet rated but it would likely be rated T for cartoon violence, blood and gore.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game has only text-based dialogue and no audio cues that impact the gameplay in any significant way making it fully accessible.

Remappable controls: The controls can be remapped.

The post Vessels Of Decay Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The level design.

LOW In the sewers again, eh?

WTF Shouldn’t it be easier to hit enemies when aiming down the sights, not harder?

Nothing good ever happens in an underground science lab — whether it’s zombifying viruses, inter-dimensional hell portals, or just plain corporate greed run amok, these clandestine facilities inevitably court disaster.  As a retro-styled first-person shooter, Kvark is the latest title to explore the consequences of subterranean scholarship.

Set in Czechoslovakia during the late ’80s, Kvark tells the tale of an energy company attempting to branch into the weapons industry.  By experimenting on their employees with a mysterious substance called Anethium, the corporation manages to prove the above hypothesis.  Awakening in a cell on the bottom floor of the facility in the aftermath of a disaster, the player must fight their way to the safety of the surface.

A slow, exploration-based shooter, Kvark is clearly inspired by the original Half-Life, and models much of its structure and play after that seminal 1998 release.  While the similarities in theme and setting are obvious, the most interesting resonance is in the structure of the levels themselves.

Many stages are constructed in a circular manner, causing areas to often be revisited from new perspectives.  This design thesis is clearly established in the opening stage — shortly after exiting their cell into the multi-level prison, players will walk through a hallway with a barred, moss-covered window near the ceiling.  A room is visible through the bars with barrels and boxes piled high.  Several minutes (and many winding corridors) later I noticed that same barred window — this time near the floor — and realized I was looking back into the first hallway from the other side. 

This structural bookending, described as The Preacher Loop by GameCritics’ own Sparky Clarkson, defines the space by removing abstraction and reiterating its logical construction.  Through recognizable landmarks and showing the same spaces from new vantage points, the player becomes keenly aware of their progress and orientation within the environment.  As Sparky points out in his article, this design technique is a major factor in why Half-Life’s Black Mesa facility feels grounded and cohesive, and the effect is similar in Kvark.

Unfortunately, this thoughtful design is let down by Kvark’s inconsistent aesthetic direction.  The opening two thirds of Kvark take place in anonymous industrial spaces, sewers, and tunnels.  Occasionally, the player will pop into offices and labs which feature a more noteworthy brutalist aesthetic with stark, chunky concrete architecture and wood paneling.  These segments offer more visual interest and complement the recursive structure with more striking spaces.  However, it seemed as though every time I entered one of these areas, Kvark was quick to direct me back into the mines and tunnels, losing much of its spark in the process.

Compounding this issue are the repetitive mechanics.  Armed with the typical assortment of shotguns, rifles, and machine guns, the player must battle through an army of robots, mutants, and evil scientists.  While the play is functional, there’s little that sets it apart — the majority of encounters consist of enemies blindly charging after the player until they are eventually gunned down.  Though there is an undeniable thrill in this and the over-the-top gore is a constant source of amusement, there are few surprises, and I quickly tired of the monotony.

To be fair, the final third of Kvark is a marked improvement, and finally delivers on the promise of the clever level design.  Gone are the claustrophobic passages and burrows, when my character finally emerges on the surface. 

These sections feature much wider spaces with a broader selection of enemies, and the encounters become more dynamic. Objectives are telegraphed by distant, concrete edifices barely visible through the fog.  Airborne enemies pepper the player from above, their ground-based counterparts lobbing grenades as mutant rats charge out of the underbrush. In these late stages, Kvark finally comes into its own.

In the end, Kvark shows an enormous amount of promise.  However, its disparate elements coalesce too late in the runtime and are ultimately overshadowed by the uninspired combat and indistinct aesthetic direction.  That being said, there is a sense of momentum in the final stages of Kvark, and if the developers can focus on that quality and carry it forward, I have high hopes for their subsequent releases.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

Buy KVARK – PS – XB – Switch – PC

Disclosures: This game is developed by Latest Pass and published by Perun Creative. It is currently available on PS4/5, XBO/X/S, Switch, and PC.  This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 20 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 M and contains Blood and Gore, Use of Tobacco, Violence. This game is a first-person shooter where humans, zombies, rats and robots are killed with guns.  The visuals are presented in a blocky, low fidelity format, and are not photo-realistic.  When enemies are shot blood sprays out and stains the wall.  They can be decapitated, dismembered, and will occasionally explode into chunks of gore when killed. This is all presented in an over-the-top, unrealistic fashion but is still fairly graphic.  Cigarette butts can be picked up from ashtrays and smoked.  Normally this lowers the players health, but a perk can be obtained that heals the player when smoking cigarettes. There is no profanity or sexual content.

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. During gameplay, none of the enemy sounds are captioned or subtitled, and while there is no dialogue with the enemies, I did find that I was more susceptible to ambushes and attacks from behind when playing without sound. As such, this game is not fully accessible.

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

The post Kvark Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.