HIGH Addicting, fast-paced gameplay.

LOW Egoistic teammates.

WTF Bicycle kicks for days!!!

From French developers Sloclap, Rematch delivers an arcadey, action packed spin on the beautiful game. Differing from the beat em up genre of Sifu, Rematch doesn’t include any fighting, unless fighting with the controls count. The multiplayer soccer (or football) simulator focuses on teamwork and skill to create stunning goals fit only for the largest stage. Rematch executes this idea very well, but a few glaring issues sometimes lets the game trip over its own feet.

Rematch offers 3v3, 4v4, and 5v5 casual modes, and ranked 5v5. The player cycles between positions with multiple outfield ones and a goalkeeper, controlling a character in a third person point of view. Rematch doesn’t focus on realism, but instead gamifies soccer to make it less about actual tactics and more about the action – running, jumping, and diving. The arcade feel comes from everything being sped up. The pitch is similar to the one in Rocket League, with borders that the ball can ricochet off of. The actual playable area is small, and paired with rapid sprinting, aggressive slide tackles, and acrobatic kicks, the ball seems to never stop bouncing. Dribbling and fancy skills let the player live out their professional player dreams with adrenaline pumping plays that further make Rematch more of an action game than a soccer one.

Rematch uses the classic W,A,S,D controls to move, with a few special keys implemented. E for tackling, Q for jumping, and the mouse buttons for passing. Sprinting and slide tackling use the shift key and keys like F can change the type of pass. The mechanics of Rematch are easy enough to understand, but incredibly difficult to master. As the player advances divisions, people only get smarter. Learning how to properly use each key takes time, but the satisfaction of moving past opponents and scoring majestic goals makes the time commitment more than worth it. Even if the player isn’t into soccer in real life, the competitive gameplay still makes the game addicting.

In terms of graphics, Rematch uses bright colors and stylized art to further add to the arcade feel. Each game takes place in a unique stadium like a jungle, a desert, or even outer space. The settings are inspired by an environmentally friendly utopia, and the stadiums combined with nature highlight that. The colors are beautifully integrated, and sometimes I found myself stopping just to look at the background. Player customization is also diverse, with a large variety of attributes and colors to choose from.

While Rematch has a lot going for it, it does have some big negatives that need to be addressed. The most frustrating issue is passing, particularly on PC. Passing is done with the left mouse, but the sensitivity is turned up a lot. Just a tiny change in the mouse direction will cause the pass to go to a wildly different place. I frequently found my passes to go accidentally behind me, which really hindered goal scoring opportunities. Most other functions work well, but since passing is a huge part of Rematch, the unoptimized controls make it hard to deal with.

In my games, I also encountered bugs. These weren’t frequent, but when they happened it literally made the game unplayable. In one of my matches, I couldn’t touch the ball. It would go straight through me, which turned a fair match into a 5v4. When these bugs get patched, I expect the game to run much smoother.

My last complaint isn’t specific to Rematch, in fact it extends to all multiplayer games, but I still feel like it should be brought up. No one is Messi, and trying to dribble the enemy team while playing goalkeeper is not a viable strategy. Some teammates in Rematch let their egos take over, making selfish decisions and costing the team crucial goals. This happens way too often, and especially in ranked, feels enraging. Hopefully Sloclap will introduce a report button to help with this.

Rematch is a great example of when developers take a popular topic and put their own spin on it. Some might describe it as a “Rocket League without cars”, but it is so much more than that. The creativity Rematch encourages creates an engaging team-based game that incorporates every player. With easy to learn controls and flashy skills, fans and non-watchers alike are bound to enjoy this chaotic adaptation of soccer.

Rating: 8 out of 10

— Eddie Guo

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sloclap and published by Kepler Interactive. It is currently available on XBX/S/PS5/PC.This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 38 hours of play was devoted to the multiplayer mode. There is no set completion mark. There are no single-player modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E. There is nothing explicit and Rematch is safe for all ages.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game has player dialogue that does not affect gameplay. Voice chat exists but visual cues allow communication without talking (in fact, I turned voice chat off to stop toxicity). Informational text is communicated through text boxes that cannot be altered/resized.

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

The post Rematch Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on the So Videogames podcast, Episode 438. For the original coverage of the game, please listen to Episode 436 and Episode 437.

Final circle back is for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I talked about it last episode. Really liked it a lot. I ended up finishing the campaign between then and now. Took me ultimately about between 25 to 28 hours. And full disclosure, I just mainlined once I kind of got the grasp of the game. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is really a very interesting game on many levels, and I’m kind of toying with the idea of giving it a full review here, but I’m not sure.

Let me talk about it for a minute. We’ll see how I feel, I guess. But I mean overall. Okay. So let me just kind of nutshell, like I covered it pretty in depth last episode, I believe, or the one before, but recently. And anyway, now that I’ve kind of gotten into it, like I think there’s so many really cool things about it, I think the art design is great. I love the character designs, I love the vibe like their suits and the way they look like real people. And I think that a lot of the graphics are just really, really nice. The art style is definitely its own thing and it has its own style, and one of the things I was most impressed with in the campaign was how much they got across with just a look, a raised eyebrow when Gustav looks over and raises an eyebrow when he’s talking to someone. Or sometimes at camp, like two characters will kind of like look at each other and, you know, maybe a couple words will pass between them. But really, like, it’s just like a tilt of a head or the corner of a mouth raising up a little bit. I think they do a lot of really, really notable, um, expression work in this game that I think a lot of other games could take some notes from. So I think that’s pretty outstanding.

The music. I mean, probably the best soundtrack that we’re going to hear this year. And I really don’t think that I’m overstating the case there. I don’t think that’s hyperbole at all. I feel like every track is phenomenal. The overall composition for the entire piece as a game is phenomenal. I very rarely notice music, but this music, like, jumped up and slapped me in the face and said, you will pay attention to me. And I’m like, yes, yes, I absolutely will. Uh, all the different like themes and and moments that were supported and underscored by the song. The soundtrack is just like, you know, very rarely. If you listen to this show for any length of time, you know that I very rarely talk about music because I just, I don’t know, it just doesn’t factor in that much for me very often. But in this game, I think the music is an absolute triumph. Like just just off the hook. Amazing. In terms of the story not going to spoil anything here. This is not a spoiler cast and I okay, so I’ve got issues with some parts of it. I don’t think that it was 100% executed flawlessly as it could have been. I felt like there was a couple for me anyway, a couple beats where I felt like, okay, maybe that was a misstep, or maybe they could have sped something up over here, or they could have taken time over here.

Um, but talking about the main story itself, I know other people have described it like this, but wow, what a wild swing for the fences. And to be perfectly frank, I think it succeeds. I wasn’t sure where it was going. I was very curious to find out. And, and and the overall experience, I do want to say that the story is what carried me forward. I absolutely wanted to see how this was going to turn out. I was so curious to see what the writers had come up with. And they, they they surprised me, man. They really surprised me. It was nuanced. I think it was delicate. I think it was surprising. I think it was a really, really fine piece of writing. Overall. It showed restraint in some areas. It showed boldness in other areas. Again, not going to spoil anything, but I will say it is absolutely worth seeing to the end. And I don’t think that’s true of all RPG games. It wasn’t just a matter of what quests got finished and did the good guys win the end? It was absolutely about what is even happening and what is going on with these characters. And I was just so, so curious. And I do feel like ultimately the payoff was there. I do feel like it succeeded in that way. And it was really, really something else. Um, so yes, I think the story is a win. Absolutely not perfect. I think there’s a couple things I would change, but but a win.

And I think it’s also notable. Kind of like what they did with the facial expressions. I think there’s a lot of lessons to be taken from this story. I think it shows that we can reach for higher heights than perhaps writers have recently. I think that players are on board to be a little bit more challenged in some ways. I think that the writing really goes above and beyond, and I do want to celebrate it for that. So I think that’s incredible. Um, okay. As for the rest of it, I think that in terms of production and the gameplay, I think that’s where the game kind of, I hesitate to say it like it falls down for me, but I think perhaps, maybe that’s where I don’t click with it as strongly as I did with the other aspects. Um, I think that, I mean, number one UI is not great. The UI could be better. I think the tutorials are not great. Tutorials could be a lot better, especially for some of the systems, which I think are pretty intricate. Uh, some of the characters especially like CL like I just never fully understood her powers. And there’s a couple other aspects that I felt like really could have been tightened up a little bit. Um, I do think that the lack of a map genuinely hurts the game. I think the mini maps in each level are.

The lack of mini map is a big detriment, because I got confused and turned around all the time, constantly got lost. I can’t even count the number of times I thought I was moving forward, only to find myself back at the entry point of the map to realize I had simply retraced my steps and didn’t even know it until I got there. And I’m like, okay, that happened way too many times. And so these maps, I think are a problem. I think they need a mini map. I think also you need a quest list. I don’t think a quest list would be wrong. I think, um, being able, being able to put markers or just being able to like organize the world a little bit more, I think would have really helped. I know the team seems like they were kind of going for something outside the norm, and I think they did that in all the ways that really count. But I think taking away these kind of concessions to the player and quality of life things, that is not someplace that you need to push the boundaries. I think I think making the game easier to play for people who are busy, who have kids, who have spouses, who have jobs, who may have to be away from the game a couple days before they come back. I mean, those things are there for a reason. We’ve developed those things over time for reasons, and I don’t think it was great for them to, like, take that stuff away.

I will also say that. So I guess I’m of two minds when it comes to the main campaign. You can mainline the campaign, which is what I did. If you just go from hotspot to hotspot, boom, boom, boom all the way through. The difficulty is pretty easy and pretty straightforward, and I think I appreciated that. And I liked the ability to just go do the main story and be done, which is what I did. But that said, I would have liked more of an off ramp into some of the side activities. There’s actually quite a bit of side content which I did not engage in for a couple of reasons. Number one, I could never remember where it was after I decided I wasn’t going to do it at the time, I couldn’t come back to it. I just I didn’t have a notebook and a pen with me. I didn’t remember where things were and so I very often just forgot and I didn’t want to waste my time looking around. I don’t think that it’s easy to get around from place to place. I think fast travel at a certain point would have been fine. You do eventually get a flight ability, which helps, but it’s not the same thing as fast travel, especially when you’re trying to remember. Where was that one thing that I saw six hours ago? Was it here or was it here? Was it here I can’t remember, and being able to fast travel would have sped that up a little bit, just for practicality’s sake.

You know, I think also there weren’t very many pointers towards the side content. I know that there are companion quests, but I didn’t see any during my playthrough. I don’t know whether I just didn’t talk to people enough or whatever, but like a little more flagging, like I think would have helped. I know that they are kind of leaning into the exploration, but between the lack of a map and the lack of, um, the larger overworld map and the lack of fast travel and the lack of a quest list, I wasn’t really incentivized to do a lot of that searching for things. It felt like kind of a waste of time to just blindly go after things, and I just didn’t care for that. And I will also say that a lot of the side content was much, much, much, much, much harder than the main content, which I guess is fine, but I think having some of it be just easier and more approachable would be great. I felt like every time I tried to go off the beaten track, I got kicked in the face and that was a big problem. It really discouraged me from doing the other stuff. Um, so I think that was an issue.

I will also say that this game to me feels like it’s two halves on the one half. You have the story of the expeditioners and the cool narrative and the events of what happened. And then the other half is the combat system, and I feel like the game really hinges very heavily on the combat system, where I think anybody can probably make their way through it without too much trouble, as long as you’ve, you know, played a video game before. Um, but I think it, it is very specifically designed to appeal to people who like to tweak with the, um, the little bits and bobs, like the pick toes and the luminas and the, um, the different statuses and stuff like that. So like when I, when I beat the game, I think the highest damage I was ever doing at one time was probably something like 22 or 23,000, like for one hit, right? But I was talking to people, uh, some people over in the, uh, gaming the discord, and I’ve seen some people on YouTube and other people, I mean, I’ve seen some people like, hit like in the millions and it’s like, okay, that’s a cool thing that is optional and you don’t need to do it. But I feel like you have to kind of like to fiddle with those things a little bit. And if you don’t like to fiddle with equipping this, pick toe with this other thing that causes a status and then, you know, like you’ve got to really kind of like fiddle with all these little tiny settings.

And if you like it, I think it’s probably a, a tweakers Paradise. But if you don’t like it, I think the rest of the game is very harsh to you and does not make it easy to engage with the rest of the content. If you don’t get on board with what the developers want you to do. I think there’s a kind of rigidity there that I found a little bit off putting in terms of the mechanics. So so I felt like I really did lean into half of the game, but not the other half. I did kind of the bare minimum. I just wasn’t really that interested in trying to do all the tweaks and the Lumina tweaks and the weapon tweaks and stuff, like it just wasn’t that fun to me. Um, although I will. I mean, I can’t argue with the results. I mean, I’ve seen people do absolutely like crushing attacks that I thought were very cool, but I just didn’t get there. It didn’t click with me. Um, naturally, it just wasn’t something that that dragged me in. So I felt like I didn’t see as much as a game as I would have liked to, just because I didn’t feel very welcome, and I didn’t feel like the game was very open towards people who might be of a different persuasion, people who might be interested in other things.

And that kind of leads me to the other aspect of where this game can sometimes feel empty. If you don’t like the tweaking of the combat, like you’re going to be doing mostly combat, there weren’t a lot of side activities that you could engage in that would that would kind of expect in other RPGs of the type, like there was no village building. I mean, I guess there were character side quests, but I didn’t find those. I guess they were later, or maybe I just didn’t find them or I didn’t know where they were. Um, you know, there weren’t, like, all these other kind of, like, different types of activities for people who may want to engage in, like a broader, more well-rounded experience. Um, which isn’t to say that all RPGs need to be the same, but it kind of felt like it kind of felt like a lot of the stuff was gated out if you weren’t exactly in line with the developers, which it’s kind of frustrating. It’s kind of frustrating. I feel like this is such great content that it could have been opened up. It could have been rounded off a little bit. You could still have your incredibly difficult challenges, but I think more people could have been welcomed into the fold. And ultimately, you know, a more balanced experience could have been had. I mean, clearly that’s not what the developers are after.

And people are free to make whatever game they want to make, blah, blah, blah, I get it. For my taste, the game, overall, was a little bit too bifurcated for me — there was a big division between story and gameplay. But with that said, I did have a good time and have a lot of respect for what the story was going for. Nothing about it is perfect, but the developer is trying new things and bringing a lot of fresh blood and new energy new to the table, and I have the greatest respect for that.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is absolutely, without doubt, a notable title, and probably going to be one of the ten best of the year, even though I do have some issues with it. Overall, it’s something to be studied and learned from, and it’s got a lot to teach the rest of the industry. So fuck, I just talked for a million years. I should give it a review. Okay. So what? What score am I going to give it? I’m thinking I’m thinking, oh boy, I’m really I’m really divided here. I really am leaning towards 8.5 because I feel like the places where it’s strong, it’s extremely strong. But I will say that some of the drawbacks to me were pretty serious drawbacks, and they did hamper my enjoyment of the title overall. And they kind of reflected, um, maybe like some, some choices. I think that could have been a little bit more. Well considered.

Fuck it. Fuck. Okay, I’m gonna go with an official. Okay. 8.0. I got to do it 8.0. It’s really great. I think it’s notable. I think it’s going to be a landmark. Touchstone title for years to come. But I just have too many reservations about it to, like, embrace it fully. Wholeheartedly. Uh, yes. Eight.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Buy Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – PC – XB – PS

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive. It is currently available on PC, PS5 and XBX. This copy of the game was obtained via Game Pass and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 28 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, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, and Violence. The official description reads: This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the roles of expeditioners attempting to break a cycle of death. From a third-person perspective, players explore an open-world environment, interact with characters, and battle human and fantastical enemies in turn-based combat. Players select physical attacks (e.g., swords, guns), elemental attacks (e.g., lightning, fire), and skills from a menu to defeat enemies. Bloodstains can be seen on the ground in several environments. Cutscenes also depict instances of violence and blood/gore: characters stabbed; a character decapitated, with their headless body depicted in the background; characters shot; characters with large amounts of blood on their faces/clothes. In one area, players can stop in front of a brothel and hear sexual moaning sounds. Players are also able to advance character relationships, with innuendo in text (e.g., “Away from the others…[They] became a bit more than friends”; “They spend one final night together. It is truly passionate. [They] live something unforgettable”). The word “f**k” appears in the game.

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

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Almost all dialogue is subtitled. (I found a very few minor instances of dialogue in the world that were not subtitled.) Text can be resized. Names and colors can be added to the text. While parrying often relies on visual cues, some of the animations are quite tricky and some are easier to perform by listening for the audio cues, rather than relying on the visuals.

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

The post SVG REVIEW Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 8.5

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

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

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

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

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

The post Caravan SandWitch Second Opinion appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Simply chilling in high places and taking in the view of the world.

LOW The ending, which is poorly designed and written, and riddled with bugs.

WTF Oh, so that’s not a frog statue.

The planet Cigalo is dying. Its ecosystem has been shattered, its swamps drained, and its surface strip-mined in order to build a spaceborne array of solar panels that will eventually block out its sun. An environmental catastrophe interrupted the project and forced the exploiters to depart, leaving behind abandoned facilities and mountains of scrap.

As Caravan SandWitch begins, players step into the role of a teenage pilot trainee and Cigalo native named Sauge. She’s just received a distress signal from her sister, who was assumed dead after disappearing on on this half-ruined planet six years ago. Although that premise sounds grim, Caravan SandWitch itself is anything but. The desiccated world of Cigalo is rendered in attractive, saturated, cel-shaded graphics. There’s no combat whatsoever, and most of its play loops are built around exploring, collecting items, and driving folks around in a big, bright yellow van.

Sauge progresses the story mostly by reaching new sites in the world. Initially this is gated by a need to disable “jammers” that block communications and blot out the map, but as the plot unspools, it becomes necessary to reach specific locations to empower transmitters and link disparate decrepit industrial locations through a kind of teleportation network.

As is standard for third-person open-world games, these tasks are presented with a minimum of time pressure. A few character-related quests get locked out when Sauge gets a new tool, but more time is always available to finish these before moving on. The passage of days is noted, but nothing moves forward until Sauge collects enough scrap parts to build the next sensor or grapple gun and the player chooses to advance to the next chunk of the adventure.

Although driving the van is generally smooth, one could complain a bit about the platforming. Sauge will frequently clip through a ledge while mantling, particularly if the shape is odd. On tight ledges, Sauge will sometimes rotate in a random direction while jumping, though they will still grab and mantle to the next ledge correctly. Even when the animations got dodgy, the result was generally what I intended, and the small number of unexpected failures didn’t result in any permanent harm since Caravan SandWitch has no fall damage.

The total harmlessness of falling even from enormous heights might support a chill experience, but it also plays a part in rendering events curiously inert. It’s fine for a story not to have combat, but Caravan SandWitch feels like it goes beyond this to evict any kind of conflict entirely. Despite the desperation of the scenario players are presented with on Cigalo, Sauge gets to drift through it without truly confronting the planet’s exploiters, the elements, or even her parents.

For all her ominous looming, the eponymous Sand Witch does almost nothing directly injurious to any of the characters. The planet’s native sentient species, who suffered cultural and physical genocide, hold no apparent animosity towards the lingering humans on the planet. Only one character evinces even the slightest negativity towards Sauge and he’s quickly won over. Caravan SandWitch even shies away from confronting the damage the loss of Sauge’s sister’s caused the family.

The poorly-translated dialogue contributes to this problem. Almost every line in Caravan SandWitch is intelligible, but they’re often abrupt and unmusical, as if important nuances from the original French were elided by the translation. The conversations are functional, but any emotion comes across as perfunctory and shallow. It’s particularly bad towards the end of the campaign as the subpar dialogue interfered with the intelligibility of the action, sapping what little power there was in SandWitch’s contrived, half-baked endgame choice.

Despite its numerous charms, Caravan SandWitch just didn’t sit right with me. There is perhaps something to be said for a chill attitude in the midst of apocalypse, but this experience gets there by avoiding all of its tragedies, save one. The looming death of this world and seeming indifference from everyone inhabiting it left me too uneasy to fully accept the atmosphere Caravan SandWitch seemed to be after. While Cigalo was beautiful to see and relaxing to visit, even as the planet crept ever closer to collapse, I kept wishing that someone would rage against the dying of its light.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Studio Plane Toast and published by Dear Villagers. It is currently available on PC, PS5 and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via retail purchase and reviewed on a home-built Windows X PC equipped with a AMD Ryzen 2700X processor, an ASRock X470 motherboard, 32 GB RAM, and a single GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

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

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

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

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

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HIGH The cute, rotatable isometric perspective.

LOW A huge number of technical shortcomings.

WTF The occasional extremely sudden switches in location and perspective.

I’m not usually the type of person who complains about technical issues in videogames, but this principle of tolerance has a limit. 

In the case of Hercule Poirot: The London Case, for instance, the technical and logistical problems are so persistent and so acute that one can’t help but feel the presence of the developer in every scene, at every moment, scrambling to create a coherent experience. I applaud their efforts, in a certain sense. They’re clearly passionate about the source material, giving The London Case the feel of a charming puppet show put on by some well-meaning children. But, charm can only carry one so far when the mystery itself, the foundation of the whole edifice, is so consistently obscured by so many shortcomings. 

Let’s start this off with a compliment though. I like that the developers opted to create their own original mystery, rather than adapt a story from the Poirot books. Instead of starring old man Poirot, The London Case casts the detective as a fairly young person in charge of escorting a precious painting from Belgium to a London art gallery for display.

Naturally things go awry, leading to a winding, twisty series of mysteries within a larger mystery, but before all that, the player is placed in a tutorial level on a boat headed for London, allowing them to become acquainted with The London Case’s style and the rhythm of its gameplay.

Immediately, I was struck by the awkwardness of the presentation — the low detail of the environments, the stiltedness of the character animations, and whiplash transitions between scenes and camera angles during cutscenes and dialogue sections. That said, I did enjoy the way the player can rotate the scene at will like a little diorama, picking out clues through a shift in perspective. For some arbitrary reason the camera can’t be rotated when walking, which is frustrating given how slow the walk speed is, but… oh well. 

The intro section also introduces other main gameplay elements that will persist throughout the experience, a mixed bag that began to truly sour for me as the hours wore on.

Broadly, the player is asked to inspect the environment and talk to suspects for clues (occasionally interacting with 3D objects to pick out specific details), then connect these clues and other info in a series of deduction ‘webs,’ solve point-and-click-style inventory puzzles, and present the correct evidence during deduction sections. Some of the 3D objects are quite lovingly rendered (such as the knife that the player examines during the first chapter) but The London Case seems to arbitrarily assign both the important points of the object that need examining, as well as the placement of these important points. 

For example, an early chapter has the player examining a painting central to the mystery — arbitrarily, Poirot chooses to focus on the halo above the figures’ heads as a point of interest the player needs to select in order to advance. There’s no particular reason why Poirot would focus on this particular selection of the painting above any other, and moreover, there’s no reason why the player has to click on a specific section of the halo in order for the click to register. There’s a vague indicator when mousing over an area that contains an inspect-able point, but in my opinion it’s not enough to compensate for a minigame that often feels like padding, and an exercise in trial and error. 

Speaking of trial and error, all of the deduction sections (both the webs and the presentations that the player makes to other characters) can be failed an infinite amount of times, with zero penalty. Also, it’s not possible to go through with accusing the wrong person, or otherwise come to incorrect conclusions.

I realize that the developers are drawing on a larger point-and-click style when it comes to this lack of fail states, but it’s a little dissatisfying to play as a detective when there’s zero opportunities for failure. In contrast, a title like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments allows the player to come to completely erroneous conclusions, while letting them check their answer if they’re curious. There’s something very flashy and satisfying about coming up with the perfect conclusions when the possibility of failure exists, which is something that rarely happens in The London Case given how generous the safety net is. 

Instead, The London Case tries to offer a different avenue for player expression via the slightly nonlinear case progression, but more often than not I found myself wishing for a more streamlined — and coherent — experience.

At one point, Poirot recognized blue paint on an article of clothing, even though I hadn’t yet brought him to the room where the blue paint originated from! Other similar moments (such as a puzzle where the player is attempting to lure a cat out of a hole in a confession booth, which needs to be completed before Poirot is able to even able to talk to the cat’s owner about its whereabouts) suggest a story that has failed to take into account the true freedom required for such non-linearity. 

The London Case occupies a strange sort of middle ground — it wants to facilitate player freedom, while at the same time telling a focused point-and-click story with little room for deviation. Perhaps it would have functioned better as a more pure narrative experience — a visual novel, for instance. It certainly would have been easier to avoid the technical hiccups in that case! 

Rating: 3.5 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Blazing Griffin and published by Microids. It is currently available on PS5, PS4, Switch, XBO, PC, XBX/S. This copy of the game was via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8 hours of play was 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 Drug References, Mild Violence. The official description reads: This is a puzzle/investigation game in which players follow Hercule Poirot through a mystery involving a stolen painting. During the course of the investigation, players can examine corpses and hear dialogue about murder. One sequence depicts a character being shot (off screen); another man is knocked unconscious off-camera. One clue/item in the game is cocaine residue; text and dialogue discuss the negative effects of the drug.

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. Every puzzle and story beat has a readable visual cue as accompaniment, meaning that the entire game can easily be played without sound. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable. When controlling the game using a keyboard and mouse, the player is able to choose between two different key layouts. With a controller, the controls are not remappable: the left stick is used to walk around, the right stick is used to rotate the camera, X is used to interact with objects, Square pulls up the Objective screen, and Triangle pulls up the inventory screen.

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HIGH You can pet the dog AND the cat!

LOW Having to pause constantly for loading screens.

WTF Was that carrot laced with arsenic?

The little village of Sainte-Monique-Des-Monts, like all little villages, has a huge and terrible secret. A sin was committed here, and in 1896 the town’s efforts to cover it up result in summoning an evil creature that whispers to its folk in the darkness, recounting their crimes. Those it has not driven away seem to be going mad and on the verge of suicide. As the town’s doom approaches, the parish priest from a nearby village comes to The Whispering Valley to investigate.

The priest poses the first of The Whispering Valley‘s many problems, because while most of the characters are voiced, the protagonist is silent. Although he finds multiple dead bodies and witnesses several suicides, he does not audibly pray, nor does he even apparently cross himself. At the sight of his friend’s torment he callously says… nothing. This is not because he’s supposed to be some every-man — the whisperer torments the main character with visions of his past, so he is supposed to have a stained history. The decision to go with a silent, invisible cipher seems at odds with the specificity of his character and is of no apparent benefit.

The gameplay is standard point-and-click adventure fare, albeit inflected with a touch of horror atmosphere thanks to some effective sound design. Although The Whispering Valley’s spaces are three-dimensional, the protagonist cannot move freely. Instead, the player selects the next place to go. The movement hotspots are small and are sometimes not well-differentiated from the surroundings, especially outdoors. As a consequence, even figuring out how to move has the feel of a pixel hunt.

Ironically, this is good training for the puzzle gameplay, which is more of the same. A great deal of The Whispering Valley involves finding keys to open up houses or rooms within houses. Even in the few well-lit areas, these and other items are frequently hard to spot against the background. At one juncture I needed a knife and had to resort to meticulously scanning every inch of every screen to find it, a task only lengthened by the considerable spatial padding and numerous (and substantial) loading screens.

This is a long-solved problem in the genre — indeed, by virtue of “Look” this problem was solved before adventure games even progressed as far as using a mouse. A hotspot-highlight key is the modern version of this affordance, and The Whispering Valley desperately needs one.

Once an item is in hand, The Whispering Valley becomes rather straightforward. While it has several avenues of action in the beginning, around the halfway point it basically boils down to having only one thing at a time for the player to do, which is of a piece with the lack of interactivity. There is no “Inspect” action, and on most screens the only thing the protagonist can do is move. In some areas — most notably a large meadow in the second half of the game — there’s nothing to really look at.

The Whispering Valley at least avoids the worst kind of “adventure-game logic” as even the lengthier chains of action at least make sense internally. There are only a few true puzzles, and while I thought most of them were fine, I would be remiss not to mention that two of them critically rely on sounds that are not replicated in the subtitles. Players who can’t hear the sounds will not be able to move further.

I genuinely hate giving an earnest indie a bad review, but The Whispering Valley just gets too much wrong. There are positive points in its lovely environments and solidly effective sound design. The game also has a great atmosphere. Unfortunately, its padding, linearity, inaccessibility, lack of a main character, and pixel-hunt gameplay result in an experience that is dull and retrograde, even by the standards of the industry’s oldest genre.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Studio Chien d’Or. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on a home-built Windows X PC equipped with a AMD Ryzen 2700X processor, an ASRock X470 motherboard, 32 GB RAM , and a single GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card using driver 526.86. Approximately 3 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 has not been rated by the ESRB. Considering its content and themes I would rate it T. Numerous characters commit suicide in various fashions during the course of the game, some of them bloody. In addition, some already-dead bodies are discovered that are gory. Depression, suicide, and murder are discussed throughout. There are also a few jump scares.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers:  All dialogue in the game is subtitled, though the subtitles cannot be altered or resized. However, this game has two puzzles that absolutely rely on sound cues and in my opinion it cannot be completed by players who may have hearing issues. This game is not fully accessible.

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

The post The Whispering Valley Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Compelling investigative storylines.

LOW Minimal challenge in battles.

WTF Elise can cause literal storms!

Imagine leaving busy city life and moving permanently to the south of France. Sounds like heaven to most, what with the lack of traffic, picturesque views and sunny weather for nine out of twelve months during the year. Unfortunately for our protagonist in Broken Pieces, this quaint setting is ripe for something that feels pulled from the dark mind of Fabrice Du Welz, making Broken Pieces one of those titles whose content stands in stark contrast to the setting.

In Broken Pieces I played as Elise, a young woman who moves to the French coast with her fiancé, but it’s tough to tell from the disjointed manner in which the narrative initially presents itself. Essentially things start with Elise walking down a strange hallway and then she wakes up from a nightmare — and then boom! the game has begun. I didn’t even get to see my fiancé, all I have is their name. Not long after, Elise finds herself in the middle of a village teeming with mysterious happenings including cults making human sacrifices to top-secret military conspiracies – and oh yeah, Elise can cause literal storms.

3D thriller/horror games with fixed cameras were all the rage after the Resident Evil franchise clawed its way into the spotlight as the de facto standard for videogame horror. So, it only makes sense that a title like Broken pieces would emerge now given the recent success of the Resident Evil remakes and re-releases. Unfortunately, Broken Pieces doesn’t share the same level of quality.

To start, the incessant inner monologue of the protagonist makes for an annoying experience. I got the feeling that Broken Pieces was possibly pulled from some novel, but the devs made minimal effort to differentiate the two mediums — this often feels more like an audiobook than a videogame. Along the same lines, Elise’s perpetual inner monologue drops too many hints during cutscenes and in general play, turning puzzles that could have been thought-provoking into busywork that require a discerning ear rather than an agile mind. That said, the puzzles boil down to grabbing keys in obscure locations to open doors, or moving a battery to a door and connecting the wires in order to progress.

Elise’s voice actress is good at communicating shock, fear, curiosity and a full emotional range with her performance, but the sound quality doesn’t help her. It’s as if a low-quality microphone was used, giving her an artificially raspy, almost scratchy feel to her voice when the volume is turned up.

Combat was an afterthought that honestly should have been ignored by the developers. It boils down to being a forgiving auto-aim mechanic with a pistol that makes targeting enemies too easy. There’s a dodge mechanic if enemies get too close, but the button prompt never seemed to work in time.

The background setup of how Elaine became a detective/shooter/adventurer comes across as half-baked. Besides her almost non-existent background, her motivation for going to France is paper-thin and seems like something left thin in the hopes of being supported by a robust gameplay loop, but that loop doesn’t materialize. In another game this might have led to the script being the strong, supporting aspect, but that didn’t happen either.

Broken Pieces has hints of solid ideas, but rarely follows through on any of them. The gameplay is equally lukewarm, and this combination left me with a sense of apathy, not only for the character and her plight, but also for everything surrounding her. I feel like there’s a hint of something good here, but the project simply lacks the focus and follow-through needed to turn it into a gem.

— Patricio do Rosario

Disclosures: This game is published by Freedom Games and developed by Elseware Experience, Benoit Dereau and Mael Vignaux. It is available on Xbox One, XSX/S, PS4/5 and PC. This game copy was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Xbox Series X. Approximately 5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed.

Parents: The ESRB has rated this title T and contains Violence. I’d also call out mild language and thriller elements including suggested violence and horror.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are not available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Broken Pieces offers no options for audio accessibility other than subtitles (see example above) but these do not cover environmental sounds that assist with some puzzles. The game is playable without sound but a lot more trial and error is required without audio. Broken Pieces is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable. The left stick and d-pad control the character and item movement. The right stick is useless as the camera is fixed, the left bumper and the X button are also not utilized in Broken Pieces. The Right bumper is for changing camera views. The left trigger is used to toggle auto-aim, the right trigger is for firing shots at enemies. The A button is the main button for selecting options like opening doors, selecting items or picking tools and items up from the floor or wherever they are rested. The Y button is for changing the whether temporarily, I’m still in denial about how Elise can do that. The B button is mainly used to back out of menu screens, i.e. – the pause menu or the items menu.

The post Broken Pieces Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Mechanics far beyond the typical visual novel.

LOW Some pacing issues towards the end.

WTF A dirty priest with a dirty ‘stache.

Ambition: A Minuet in Power is, at base, a visual novel and dating sim set in near-Revolutionary Paris where decisions play a crucial role in how history will unfold, but the experience is buttressed by surprising depth, requiring strategic thinking lest the protagonist lose their head — literally.

The player takes on the role of Yvette Decaux as she moves from the countryside to Paris in 1789 to be with her fiancé, Baron Armand de Marbo. She soon discovers Armand is missing and is quickly drawn into the social strata (and schemes) of the Parisian elite. Will Yvette solve the mystery of her fiancé’s whereabouts or will she find a new romance among the delights of the metropolis?

There are six love interests in total, but the real draw here is the underlying political intrigue. As the campaign progresses, two major factions – Crown and Revolution – compete for power and the loyalty of three minor ones: Military, Bourgeoisie and Church.

How those power dynamics evolve is very much in the player’s hands. In my time with the game, I crafted both a new French republic and supported the continued tyranny of King Louis XVI, each with their own share of good and bad endings for poor Yvette.

The basic gameplay loop sees the player manage the newly-arrived up-and-comer’s social calendar. Some days will be spent exploring Paris, while others will be dedicated to parties or a rendezvous with a love interest. Occasionally, Yvette will need a rest in order to shave off exhaustion, which comes with its own penalties.

Although money is important for buying things and bribing, the real currency of Ambition is gossip. Varying degrees of chatter can be utilized through the local news rag to either make money or affect the factions by swaying loyalty or shifting power.

Gossip may be gained by visiting certain locations on the map, but is predominantly pilfered from parties hosted by one of the five factions. A party is ordered into several turns during which the player will typically select from several possible conversations, each with their own benefits or costs.

Every conversation is its own tactical engagement and two meters are usually at play — credibility and peril. Wear the right dress to the right party and gain credibility. Say the wrong thing and lose it. Additionally, some dialogue options are only viable with a certain amount of credibility.

Choices may also increase or decrease peril – a full bar will see a large credibility penalty and losing favor with just about everyone, and such a fall may have even more dire consequences later on.

This fine balancing act is a great dynamic as the player flits from conversation to conversation. It’s real risk vs reward – a dialogue choice may earn some powerful gossip, but the player has to weigh whether the accompanying possibility of a faux pas is worth it. It’s a level of strategic decision-making that makes this game so much more than just a text-scrolling visual novel.

That said, while the writing has its fair share of wit and charm, it’s not always extraordinarily engrossing, especially as conversations begin to repeat. By my second playthrough I was fast-clicking through nearly every dialogue, being more interested in exerting my influence on larger historical forces than the dalliances of Yvette.

One significant criticism is that towards the end of the second act, I more than once found myself in a “peril loop.” With my credibility shot, I would try to gain more by accepting party invitations, only to spend four turns at a party having the exact same conversation and, without the credibility to select a gainful option, would simply lose more credibility and gain more peril each time.

At that point there were few other options left on the map to alter my fortunes, which is part of a general pace slowdown during this section — it means earlier choices are crucial in order to avoid such a fate, but even being forced to pick from only losing options over and over again didn’t necessarily ruin the game, so much as damper its enjoyability. However, by that point the story was almost over anyway and my decisions were coming home to roost for the third and final act.

In terms of production, the art is solid, with nice flourishes on menu items and text boxes alongside pseudo-impressionistic backgrounds to give a sense of place. The character models and expressions are well-attuned to convey personality, especially the disgusting mustache on a rather salacious Italian priest. The audio features a luxurious cornucopia of period-appropriate music featuring strings, piano and other orchestral instruments. Ambient noise was also impressive — while on the Parisian streets there is a sound bed of the chattering crowd, footsteps and horse clops – go indoors and the noise is still there but muted, which is a shift that carries a real sense of movement from the street to the parlour.

Ambition is an appropriately-named title in terms of its genre — it is not without its flaws, but the overall experience is heightened by compelling core mechanics and a grandiose scope, and I recommend players take this captivating tour through 18th-century Paris to make their own history.

— Stephen Cook

Disclosures: This game is developed by Joy Manufacturing Co. and published by Iceberg Interactive. It is currently available on PC and planned for release on Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. The game includes mild sexual innuendo and some violence conveyed through text. It may not be appropriate thematically for young children.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

 Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game is conveyed entirely through text. The text cannot be altered or resized. There are no audio cues needed for gameplay. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. The primary control scheme is mouse and keyboard.

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HIGH The gravity shifting mechanic never, ever gets old.

LOW The escort and stealth missions are downright archaic.

WTF Whoops, sent another civilian plummeting to their death. Oh well!

Full disclosure — I haven’t played the original Gravity Rush beyond the first twenty minutes or so.

I fully intend to fix that particular oversight as soon as possible, but I’m assuming that the ending of the original didn’t wrap with protagonist Kat being forced into near-indentured servitude… and yet that’s exactly how Gravity Rush 2 begins. She’s somehow lost all her gravity defying powers, but thankfully it’s not long before she gets them back.

This disempowered beginning is a stylish introduction to the world, and allows new players time to get comfortable with it — it’s a beautiful and dangerous environment where massive chunks of land float around like small islands in the sky. From there, it isn’t long before the player learns of this world’s rich relentlessly squandering their wealth on grotesque gestures of one-upsmanship while the poor live in squalid shacks and can barely afford extravagant luxuries like heat or food. Since our heroine Kat isn’t one to take this sort of injustice lying down, she soon sets out to put things to rights.

It has to be said that Kat makes for an excellent leading character. Sure, she can be a little naive at times, and nobody so much as blinks when groups of civilians get swept up in her gravity fields and inadvertently hurled to their deaths — but hey, she’s weirdly likable, unfailingly optimistic and cheerful in the face of innumerable threats.

Besides Kat’s charm, the core mechanic of Gravity Rush 2 is its biggest strength. At the touch of a button, she’ll start floating around in the air. Tap it again, and her personal gravity field will suddenly shift, causing her to fall towards whatever the camera is pointing at. It’s an insanely cool trick that opens up the world in some amazing ways, allowing her to stick to walls, slide across most surfaces, or just walk around the undersides of buildings and islands. She may not actually fly, but it’s closer to the feeling of flying than many other games have managed to accomplish.

The combat revolves around gravity shifting as well. Enemies generally come in the form of humans or ‘Nevi’, amorphous inky black blobs that can mutate into various forms. To combat them, she can fly around and perform gravity enhanced drop kicks, swipe up nearby debris in a gravity field and toss it at foes, or sometimes just grab the enemies themselves and hurl them off the edge of the world. The targeting can be a little tricky at first and she doesn’t lock on quite as well as she probably should when dropkicking bad guys in the face, but it soon becomes second nature.

Getting back to the world where Kat adventures, it’s a joy to behold — artistically stunning, rendered in a sort of cel-shaded manner, and there’s pleasure to be found in simply running around playing with gravity. Plenty of side missions are available, and there’s an integrated online mode where small challenges can find their way into Kat’s world. For example, someone playing Gravity Rush 2 might use their in-game camera to take a picture of a hidden treasure chest, and the photo they send to other players will offer clues as to its location. I spent a ton of time just zooming around performing these minor (but enjoyable) tasks, and the developers offer a hell of a playground to go wild in.

However, Gravity Rush 2 fails to reach full potential because some of the mission types are incredibly poor. Escort quests and stealth missions rear their ugly heads in abundance, and their fail states can trigger without warning. This leads to some rather annoying trial-and-error moments where simply poking Kat’s head out of an alley can necessitate an unexpected do-over.

Then there are intermittent sections which take place in tight corridors, leading to disorienting moments where the camera gets hung up on walls and winds up obscuring the view of nearby foes. Also awful are the thrice-damned ‘challenge tablets’ which usually involve being asked to smack some enemies around in an annoyingly stop-and-start manner. They’re largely awful, coming across more like lazy tutorials for skills that have already been mastered rather than intelligently-designed trials.

While these leaden moments don’t make up the bulk of the adventure, why they were included at all is a complete mystery. For a game whose strengths revolve around a fantastically beautiful world and the complete freedom to fly off into any corner of it, it’s bizarre that these missions limit the player in weird and artificial ways, taking power away from the player rather than encouraging them to use Kat’s abilities inventively. These feel like overly conventional and outdated design approaches for a game that breaks the mold in so many other areas.

Despite those disappointing decisions, I still had a blast with Gravity Rush 2. The world’s beautiful, the cast is great, and Kat’s unique powers make it feel unlike anything else on the market. If the mission structure was anywhere near as inventive and enjoyable as the rest of the package, it would be an essential (and mindblowing) experience. As it stands, it’s just a damn good time interspersed with a scattering of tedium throughout. Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by SCE Japan Studio and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It is currently available on Playstation 4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 47 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no dedicated multiplayer modes, though challenges from other players will pop up during play.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated Teen and contains blood, fantasy violence, mild suggestive themes, partial nudity and use of alcohol. I’d say it’s pretty safe for kids overall, save for one brief scene in a comic book style cutscene where someone gets impaled on a spike — that one instance is pretty out of place.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: No real problems here — the game uses a made up language, so subtitles are always active and there’s plenty of indicators to point out where the action’s happening.

Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable, with a variety of button options available.

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

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