HIGH The Dark Grip power up is a blast.

LOW It’s a roguelike, so expect some runs to be complete write-offs.

WTF Dashing forwards doubles as a deflecting move?

Absolum takes place in a fantasy world where certain types of magic are militarily suppressed by a tyrant known as the Sun King who enforces his rule by locking up or murdering anyone who gets in the way of his ambition. Our heroes set off on an adventure to fight back and topple this system, only for things to go badly wrong roughly ten minutes into their mission.

Said heroes do have an ace up their sleeve though — while they can technically die, it doesn’t last long until they’re reborn in a sanctuary hidden away from prying eyes. So, after being stabbed, bludgeoned, bitten or burnt to death, they’re able to dust themselves off, power themselves up with various goodies from their previous attempt, and have another crack at taking down the Sun King.

Most of the enemies are a standard fantasy medley of orcs, goblins and humans poking at things with spears for the most part. That description also fits the playable characters who are a decent enough cast of misfits, and personable enough once they get talking. That said, Blaze Fielding levels of character design excellence are not to be seen here.

My main choice was the sword knight Galandra, a strong all-rounder. There’s also a Dwarf with stone-hard fists and a blunderbuss, a frog sorcerer who floats around the battlefield unleashing magical justice and a patchwork rogue type who seems the optimal choice for anyone looking to perform freeform combos. The first two are available from the outset, the latter two must be discovered on the journey.

While Absolum is definitely a roguelike, it offers a mostly-traditional 2D side-scrolling approach. Stroll from the left side of the screen to the right mangling anything that gets in the way, pick up gems and loot to either help in current or future runs, and choose a preferred path through the chaos.

If the setup is standard side scrolling fare, then it’s fair to say that the developers have pretty much nailed the combat. Players can run around, dash towards enemies to deflect their attacks, dash up or down to avoid them as well, and use a large variety of special moves to mince through enemy hordes. There’s even the occasional Golden Axe-style mount for added lethality and protection.

One twist to this formula is the addition of Rituals. After nearly every encounter in a given location, the player is offered various rewards ranging from gold and gems to Rituals that can substantially change their playstyle with tweaks such as punches setting foes aflame or well-timed dodges blasting them with lightning.

There are also character-exclusive perks like the Dark Grip, which I fell completely in love with since it turns out that strangling dudes in Absolum is totally awesome. Stroll up to some dirty-looking malcontent, hoist them up into the air by their throat and wait until they turn blue and die, coughing up large chunks of mana in the process.

It should be mentioned that the benefits of some options aren’t always exactly clear, as Absolum is often missing basic information in info panels such as how much damage being choked actually does (lots) to enemies or how effective a floating spectral sword is at stabbing dudes, but experimenting with new discoveries is all part of the experience.

In fact, ‘discovery’ is a watchword here as Absolum shows strength through the variety of things hurled at players. Especially in the early runs, there’s almost always some twist coming out of nowhere to open up new routes, make new friendships or reveal new enemies and bosses lurking in the shadows. One time I was waiting for a lift to another area, only to have a bunch of grenades hurled at me instead. I’m not sure if this was due to the character I picked or not, but my Dwarf didn’t get a warm welcome in that zone.

Of course, this variety in conjunction with the random nature of roguelikes has a downside. When scavenging for life-replenishing food after rough battles, it’s often (literally) a feast or a famine — pointlessly abundant one run with waste aplenty, then an absolute void of sustenance the next. The same goes for abilities and power-ups — one run offers perfectly synchronized Rituals that complement each other, and the next is nothing but a ramshackle collection of redundant nonsense that doesn’t mesh.

If I had a complaint besides the random awful luck of roguelikes, I’d have to say that I’m getting sick of seeing boss characters that borderline cheat by being slathered in hyperarmor that allows them to ignore player attacks until it shatters. It comes across as a bit lazy, honestly — there’s one Warlord boss in particular that takes nasty advantage of this with huge grab windows that last too long, able to snatch players out of combos, mid-attack. It’s not exactly game breaking, but I’d be happy to see it toned down or binned completely moving forward.

I’d also hoped for something to add replay value after killing the true final boss, but Absolum doesn’t introduce any new features that I’m aware of– no randomizers, no new skill tree unlock, and no surprise bonus characters. Given how generous the devs are with content up to that point, it’s a little strange to see the content feed suddenly stop dead like that. Rolling credits feels almost anticlimactic a result.

Minor quibbles aside, Absolum is an excellent beat-’em-up full of cool combos, neat build variations, random events and enjoyable roguelike power evolution spearheaded by a team that Absolumetely knows what they’re doing when it comes to crafting quality content. For fans of roguelikes or side-scrollers, this is one to check out.  

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Guard Crush/Supamonks 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 PC. Approximately 17 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 0 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes due to lack of available players pre release.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, and Use of Tobacco. The official description reads: Absolum is rated E10+ for Everyone 10+ by the ESRB with Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, and Use of Tobacco. This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the roles of rebel heroes battling a fantasy villain. From a 2D side-scrolling perspective, players use swords, spells, and melee-style attacks to defeat creatures and human enemies (e.g., goblins, raptors, captains, ghosts) in “beat-’em-up”-style combat. Battles are highlighted by impact sounds, colorful light effects, and cries of pain. A red puddle of blood is depicted on one ground level. One character is seen smoking a pipe. The words “damn” and “hell” appear in the game.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles that cannot be altered or resized. I don’t recall anything in the game that would require the use of hearing for successful play, so I’d say it’s fully accessible.

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

The post Absolum Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Unlocking Lu Bu.

LOW The second-to-last boss is a nightmare.

WTF There can’t really be this many playable characters, can there?

When I first got a look at the web of unlockable characters from which Abyss‘ roster is drawn, I was stunned. These couldn’t possibly all be playable, could they? Some of them had to be support characters merely there to boost stats when combined with others, right? But no, apparently the developers at Omega Force have gathered every fighter who ever appeared in a Samurai or Dynasty Warriors game and crammed them all into the most epic crossover they’ve ever attempted – and their last effort was Warriors All-Stars, a title that saw a cat version of Nobunaga Oda battling alongside the serial killers of Tecmo’s Deception.

The hook is that this time players aren’t engaging in a standard Musou, with missions to complete and bases to control and a plot to experience. No, Warriors Abyss is a roguelike arena battler, with the player controlling heroes summoned by the king of hell to aid him in pacifying an even more terrifying demon before it destroys the world. This is accomplished by picking any character from the two main musou franchises out there and taking the fight to endless hordes of angry ghosts.

The biggest change that Warriors Abyss makes to the third-person realtime action musou formula is camera positioning. While a standard musou has the player cleaving their way through hordes of generic soldiers to build up their stats before the officer battles that make up the real challenge, in Abyss players are under constant threat from powerful spirits with a wide variety of deadly ranged attacks.

Enemies announce those attacks by dropping purple fields on the ground to let the player know where they’re going to hit, and the player has just a second to get out of the way or interrupt the attack. This kind of reaction time wouldn’t be possible if the camera was right in the thick of the action like it was in Dynasty Warriors Origins, so the decision has been made to pull the camera back and show off the whole playfield, allowing for tactical decisions to be made as threats swarm all around.

Abyss also offers a fairly unique system for levelling characters up during their trip through the four layers of hell. There are experience points to gather and raw levelling will increase their stats, but the player can only succeed by recruiting other heroes onto their team, at a usual rate of one per stage. Every character has between one and three badges representing stats like strength, wisdom, speed, and the five videogame combat elements — wind, electricity, fire, ice, and murder. As players unlock partners, they stack up badges, and the more badges of a certain type they have, the more powerful the effect.

As is generally the case, it’s important to pick a upgrade path towards the start of a run and stick to it, but Warriors Abyss is so well-balanced that almost any build is a valid way to make it to the deepest corners of hell. A power build might offer huge amounts of raw damage, but a player who focuses entirely on wisdom will find themselves able to pull off a super attack every ten seconds or so, absolutely dominating everything but the final bosses.

The recruitable characters aren’t just there to pump stats, either, as up to six can join the player in combat. Fighting is handled in the standard musou fashion — the player has basic and strong attacks, and the number of basic attacks they perform in sequence before hitting the strong attack button determines which power technique they’ll use. There’s also an additional step in Abyss. Now, an additional button press will summon the a support hero bound to that attack to hop in and perform a special move. These moves have cooldowns, so the player can’t just spam screen-clearing team-ups to cheese their way through levels, but there’s such a wide variety of moves on offer that finding the right mix of partners becomes a minigame in itself.

Honestly, the sheer volume of things to consider when building a team is staggering. Each support character brings not only a badge and special move, they all have unique tactical abilities that activate when they’re combined with other characters. Recruiting three generals might massively lower certain cooldowns, while having five legendary archers can increase ranged damage by an enormous amount. Lu Bu, as the strongest character (he has 4 badges, one above the maximum for almost anyone else) naturally also has the best special ability — team him up with his iconic partners Dong Zhou and Diochan and his already extreme strength is doubled, rendering every opponent powerless to stop him.

While the lack of any meaningful narrative might hold Warriors Abyss from reaching the insane heights of Warriors All-Stars, the sheer volume of characters on offer gives it a huge amount of replayability. It doesn’t matter which character the player is fond of because they’re all here and ready to fight the armies of the dead. This is as charming a celebration of the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors franchises as I’ve seen, and fans should absolutely make it their business to get into it as soon as possible.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Omega Force and published by Tecmo Koei It is currently available on PC, XBS/X, and PS5. Copies of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. The game contains no Multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, and it contains Violence, Blood, Mild Suggestive Themes, and Alcohol Reference. The violence is meted out almost entirely against ghosts, and the suggestive themes warning seems to refer largely to costumes. Alcohol is used as a power-up to increase the player’s super meter, as is a tradition in the series. As far as brawler games go, this is one of the least objectionable, even for younger teens.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All information is provided via text, which cannot be resized. There are no important audio cues, and the game is fully accessible.

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

The post Warriors: Abyss Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The new boss fights are challenging, creative encounters.

LOW Things can get a bit too hectic with four players.

WTF There should’ve been an “easy online” mode from the start…

Casey Jones & The Junkyard Jam is the first piece of paid DLC released for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate, a competent roguelike from 2024.

This DLC is a fairly priced expansion to the base game that doesn’t alter its fundamentals, it merely allows a few more ways for players to find enjoyment while re-treading Splintered Fate’s chaotic stages. Hence, everything said in the full game’s review stands today, so readers should definitely check that out for full details.

Casey Jones & The Junkyard Jam DLC adds Casey as a new playable character. There’s also a new biome, complete with altered enemy types and two new bosses. Plotwise, the DLC revolves around a car theft committed by the Punk Frogs, prompting the team to head to their junkyard and look for clues with extreme prejudice.

The entire DLC will take around 10 minutes of a run’s time, as it’s merely a stage that we can opt for in lieu of the usual Bebop and Rocksteady stage that crops up. While that isn’t a lot of content per se, given the repeating nature of the title, spicing things up with a new biome is exactly what players need to disrupt the monotony. On top of that, the DLC introduces a few more shimmering portal types, allowing players to add punishing modifiers like limiting the number of dashes they can perform to gain heftier remuneration later on.

As with the base campaign, everything in Junkyard Jam is fully voiced and true to the source material — Casey Jones fans will surely feel glee as they step into the shoes of the hockey stick-wielding youngster, ready to aid the turtles in their never-ending quest.

As Casey is a human without a turtle shell on his back, his silhouette is easily discernable during play, which is important as two players can’t pick the same character during a run. Casey’s also no slouch, but selecting him offers a more calculated way to dominate Splintered Fate — while swinging the hockey stick is slow and cumbersome, he comes with a well-rounded skillset built around creating short windows for bestowing lethal damage. If done right, his combo can nullify a screenful of enemies in seconds, which makes him a popular choice in any combination of characters.

Junkyard Jam also brings other welcome changes — water damage has received a revamp, and some synergies have been tweaked, encouraging further experimentation. 

However, the most important change to the core experience comes with a free patch that the devs had rolled out prior — there’s finally an easy way to jump into an existing run!

Given that Splintered Fate was made for co-op, it was baffling that the game lacked an option to instantly connect with a random online team. This omission marred the entire experience and created a significant barrier to enjoyment. Now there’s a “Find Public Run” option that simplifies matters. Thanks to this patch, I was only playing solo for a small fraction of the review time, a stark difference to my previously lonely evaluation period. As such, the ability to quickly and easily join others boosts value of this title immensely. 

Casey Jones & The Junkyard Jam DLC isn’t a game-changer, but the asking price is low and the recent option to quickly join players online improves the entire package’s quality. As a result, those who might have given Splintered Fate a pass before might find themselves now intrigued by the possibility of slapping ninjas and robots around with three other players, at least for a few afternoons.

Rating: 7 out of 10 

Buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate: PC – Switch – iOS

Disclosures: This game was developed and published by Super Evil Mega Corp. It is currently available on Switch, PS5, PC, iOS, XBX/S, and Mac. This copy of the DLC was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch Lite. Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the original game and four more hours with the DLC, and the content was completed. The game features an intuitive hop-in/hop-out multiplayer mode, and up to four people can play at a time. 

Parents: This game has received an E rating from the ESRB and contains Fantasy Violence. The game features the titular cartoon characters as they battle through hordes of enemy ninjas and robots in an attempt to track down and save their kidnapped master. The writing, action, and art direction are all fateful to Nickelodeon’s long-running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue in this game is shown via textboxes and fairly well-acted voiceovers, so they’re easy to keep track of, even mid-fight. Text cannot be altered or resized. All enemy attacks are clearly telegraphed on-screen with easy-to-note areas of attack. I’d say this game is fully accessible. 

Remappable Controls: This game doesn’t offer a controller diagram and the controls are not remappable. However, the controls are displayed at all times at the screen’s corners (i.e., on the Switch, the face buttons are for striking, using special attacks, and dashing in and out of danger, while the left stick moves the character)

The post Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate – Casey Jones & The Junkyard Jam appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The fate of the nefarious Epi.

LOW The narrow roads of Forest Land.

WTF Wait, there’s a Forest Land? Can everyone not just move there?

Akira Toriyama demanded that we not take things too seriously. Yes, his most famous work, Dragon Ball Z, was about martial artists from space who genocide people on the reg, but there were always magic wishing dragons around to fix the worst of it, and how was an audience supposed to be scared of villains named after vegetables and milk products, anyway? There are scary moments, sure, but the goal was always to ensure that everyone was having a good time. So, I think it’s appropriate that Sand Land, likely the last videogame that Toriyama had a significant involvement in, is such a warm and joyous experience.

Starting off in lockstep with the manga it adapts, Sand Land immediately introduces the first of its leads — Beelzebub, the prince of demons — as he robs a shipment of water being transported. After using the encounter to tutorialize chasing and fighting foes, the game pauses to look at the prince’s softer side, as he shares some water with a thirsty human child. Belz (the short form of his name) is remarkably kind-hearted, even for a Toriyama main character, which gives his performative attempts at villainy a huge amount of charm.

Then Rao, the story’s other main character turns up, looking for a guide to the southern end of Sand Land — so-called because the river that ran through it dried up decades earlier. Rao believes that a huge reservoir of water is hidden somewhere deep in the desert wastes, and one tank heist later, the new partners are headed out into a sprawling open world packed with danger and adventure.

Sand Land has almost nothing but strengths, but even in an impressively designed third-person action-RPG experience like this, some elements are going to stand out. Here it’s the incredible work of the developers to make every part of the experience feel just right to the player. Whether Belz is running through ruined temples, flying through a canyon, or taking part in a tense tank battle, Sand Land is largely about using a variety of vehicles to traverse varied terrain and blow up adversaries, and an incredible amount of care has gone into ensuring that nothing gets between the player and what they want to accomplish.

Take, for example, the capsule system borrowed from Dragon Ball lore — the player has five vehicles at their disposal at all times, miniaturized and kept in their inventory. If Belz is zooming along the top of a dune on a motorcycle when a giant scorpion suddenly appears, simply open a menu and select the tank held in reserve, and Belz has swapped rides in a puff of smoke. There are jump bots for climbing mountains, hovercraft for crossing quicksand rivers, and battlesuits for close-up combat.

No matter the vehicle, Sand Land offers a huge map to explore, and the devs want to make sure that the experience never feels overwhelming. That involves stalwart genre elements like radio towers that reveal the map when repaired and ample fast-travel points, but mostly it’s about ensuring that maneuvering through the world is such a pleasure for the senses that it’s worth just picking a direction, speeding off towards it and seeing what happens.

Of course, this is an action RPG so the story counts, which means it’s good that Sand Land does an excellent job of adapting and expanding on the original manga. There’s a bit of a pacing issue a third of the way into the campaign, which is where the source material manga runs out of plot as all of the villains are defeated and the characters’ driving objectives have been accomplished. I cannot stress how much it feels like an ending — but it turns out that once everyone’s problems have been solved, the story is actually just getting started, as the real threat reveals itself.

I’ll admit the script has a little trouble shifting back into gear as the characters travel to Sand Land’s neighboring kingdom, the just-as-obviously-titled ‘Forest Land’, and I’d be lying if I said that the narrow cliffside paths in this second map are well-suited to most of the vehicles, but the story does become gripping so quickly that it’s difficult to complain about the second and third acts. Where the Sand Land map was packed with interesting characters who need assistance via a huge variety of side stories, Forest Land exists only to put the pedal to the metal and launch the player into the third act. Until the post-game, of course, when Forest Land opens up for exploration and turns out to have an interesting cast of characters all its own.

That larger cast is one of Sand Land‘s greatest strengths. Early on, players get access to Spino, a town with a garage they can use as a home base. Starting with just a handful of residents, the player can convince side characters to move to Spino by completing their quests. As the town’s population grows, the player will watch it transform in real time, growing from a few tents amidst a pile scrap to a lush oasis in the desert, full of productive citizens who have have been given a new chance at happiness by the player’s actions.

Sand Land is a magnificent experience. The combat is thrilling, the story is affecting, and the world demands to be explored. More than that, though, it’s incredible how adept it is at everything it tries. Yes, most of the time spent here is third-person vehicle exploration or on-foot brawling, but the developers are never afraid to mix things up, and all of it works just as well as the central mechanics. More than that, though, Sand Land is a deeply sweet game about fighting prejudice and division, and making a more perfect future by working together.

It’s truly tragic that Akira Toriyama has left us, but at least his final game was, perhaps, the best one ever based on his work.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by ILCA and published by Namco Bandai. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5 and XBO/S/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 60 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed twice.

Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, and contains Fantasy Violence, Language. I legit have no idea why this is a Teen game rather than E10. I’m pretty sure only two humans get killed during the entire thing, and only one of those is due to the player’s actions. This is so kid-friendly it’s ridiculous. If there’s and Language harder than ‘damn’, I missed it.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled, but incidental sounds like gunfire and enemy alerts are not — luckily there are big onscreen icons to let the player know when an enemy is targeting them, even offering an approximate direction for them to turn to! Subtitles can be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, the game’s controls are remappable.

The post Sand Land Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH A beautifully realized world in the Mignola style.

LOW Mechanically shallow.

WTF Punching Nazis is always good, even when it’s boring.

TRANSCRIPT:

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

I don’t know a lot about Hellboy as a franchise other than what I’ve seen in the movies, but having said that, I’ve always liked the character. When I saw the reveal trailer for the game back in 2022, I was floored with the art style and had to keep my eye on it. Sadly, despite my excitement, actually playing it cooled me off pretty quickly.

Hellboy: Web of Wyrd puts players in the roll of Hellboy on a mission to the Butterfly House — a residence built upon mystic ley lines. However, this mansion isn’t just a residence, but a portal to an alternate dimension known as “the Wyrd” into which Hellboy must go in order to save one of his teammates. He’s soon greeted by a character named Scheherazade who dubs him “The Protagonist” in a tale that will pit our hero against stone guardians, werewolves, and other terrible creatures.

Web of Wyrd is a run-based roguelike, and each level of the Butterfly House will take players from room to room while fighting sets of enemies. Mostly, this will be be punching and dodging attacks, and occasionally shooting Hellboy’s gun.

As enemies are defeated, they drop health, armor shards, runes (used for currency) or wyrd orbs used for permanent upgrades. Some rooms may have a power-up for Hellboy, and this can range from simple things like health or armor upgrades, to special abilities like increasing enemy damage with consecutive strikes. Players will eventually run into a boss for a big showdown before being returned to the Butterfly house — that is, if they don’t fall in combat first.

Outside of the runs through the mansion, players can use their accumulated wyrd orbs to invest in upgrades to Hellboy himself (more permanent health or armor, more damage, etc.), or to upgrade and unlock tools to use in each run, like a shotgun or grenade launcher, or a charm that can push enemies around the arena in combat. Web of Wyrd gives the players enough tools to make things interesting, but it’s never overwhelming since Hellboy can only have one gun and one charm per run.

While this all sounds solid enough for a roguelike, what makes me sad is the execution. Being largely a brawler, most of the focus is on punching enemies, and Web of Wyrd just doesn’t make this combat interesting.

There’s a light punch and a heavy punch, but nothing that justifies combining these two in any meaningful way. If enemies are hit enough, they can be stunned, which makes a heavy attack do more damage, but that’s the end of it. Otherwise, mashing the light punch until the enemy dies is a valid strategy. There’s plenty of enemy design that make foes look unique, but that doesn’t translate to their combat style, which is all pretty samey.

I think I’m also in a weird spot with this Web due to how many roguelikes I’ve already played. Every time a run ends, the narrative feels like it wants to give the player some type of dialogue — almost as if Hellboy has spent a lot of time in each area and really “learned” how to get through. So what’s the problem? Not to brag at all, but I didn’t die once. This meant there were few opportunities for the narrative to kick in, and the result was that the plot felt stilted and rushed.

Hellboy: Web of Wyrd feels very safe as roguelikes go — The controls are uncomplicated, the equipment is serviceable equipment, the enemies are straightforward, and it doesn’t go out of it’s way to do anything too strange or off the beaten path other than showcasing Mike Mignola’s iconic art style. Since that art was enough to get me in the door, it did what it needed to do, I suppose. Hellboy comic fans may enjoy this experience more than others as it was created with help from the writer of the comics, but I’m hoping that there are some updates down the road that will give the game a little more bite.

For me: Hellboy Web of Wyrd gets a 6.5 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Upstream Arcade and published by Good Shepard Entertainment. It is currently available on Steam, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 12 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Language and Violence. From the ERSB website: “This is an action game in which players assume the role of Hellboy as he descends into an alternate dimension to rescue an agent. From a third-person perspective, players traverse the comic book-styled world and battle fantastical creatures (e.g., stone golems, living statues) in close-up melee combat. Players use punches and a handgun to defeat enemy creatures. Combat is accompanied by impact sounds, gunfire, and cries of pain. The words “sh*t” and “a*shole” appear in the game.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in game, but text is not resizable. Audio mostly serves aesthetic purposes and is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable controls: Controls are completely remappable.

The post Hellboy: Web of Wyrd VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Picking up zombies and using them as a club to smash other zombies.

LOW The boss whose whole mechanic simply doesn’t work.

WTF I just got that boss so drunk he had to spend ten seconds vomiting all over the arena.

Set in an alternate-history Japan in which Admiral Perry’s black ships brought a zombie plague, Ed-0 Zombie Uprising traps a samurai inside a magical time loop, forcing the player to venture ceaselessly out into a world overrun with the undead, hoping to find a way to save the world from this horrible curse.

A mixture of Tenchu and Bikini Zombie Slayers with a roguelike structure, Ed-0 Zombie Uprising‘s third-person realtime combat gameplay is every bit as confusing and muddled as its influences would suggest.

Players start a run by picking from a set of unlocked areas, including a haunted forest, zombie-filled mansion and rural farmland, then drop into the zombie-packed zones completely unprepared for what they’re going to face. Proudly functioning as a true roguelike, the player goes into each new run woefully underpowered, barely able to take on even a handful of zombies at a time, and success will be determined almost entirely by which skills they luck into finding.

Special abilities are the bread and butter of the combat mechanics. While each of the three classes — Samurai, Sumo, and Ninja — each have perfectly functional basic, strong, and leaping attacks, enemies are so numerous and powerful that even the most skilled player will falter quickly under their onslaught. Progress is only possible when leaning heavily on special attacks, four of which can be used at a time, but they can’t be swapped – once a skill is equipped it must be destroyed to be replaced. There’s no moving powers back to the satchel for later use, no matter how helpful that would be.

These found skills heighten each character’s abilities to an impressive extent, transforming them into brutal monstrosities that can decimate zombie hordes in an instant… or at least, some skills can. Sadly, many of them are duds, some are useful only in extremely rare situations, and some have no obvious use at all, like bowing respectfully to enemies. (It’s possible there’s a time and a place for that one, but the only thing it ever got me was bitten.)

Each of the classes is focused on a different specialty. The samurai is best at one-on-one duels with powerful single enemies, turning aside their attacks and punishing them for the attempt. The sumo can absolutely wreck hordes, wiping out huge numbers simultaneously with devastating throws. The ninja is great at avoiding damage while utilizing powerful magic to stun and trap enemies, leaving them open for execution. Ed-0‘s problem is that the player isn’t able to swap between these characters freely, instead committing to one at the start of each run.

Since each run features situations that all three classes specialize in, character selection becomes a game of triage — choose the specialty the player is best at and hope that the situations fall in their favor, or pick one that makes up for their shortcomings and try to cover their bases? There’s no good answer here, and I spent dozens of hours trying to find one.

In addition to the skills that appear randomly, players can power up by equipping talismans that offer specific effects, from the mundane (500 extra hit points) to the exotic (the player is constantly drunk or on fire). These function similarly to the scrolls and potions that are found in classic roguelikes and -lites, to the point that if the player increases the game’s difficulty past Normal, the talismans will suddenly become unlabeled, forcing the player to either search for an identify scroll or blindly hope that they found something that boosts attack power, and not one that halves their movement speed.

Levels are also littered with consumable items to be used at the player’s discretion, and it’s in these items that Ed-0 really embraces the experimental fun of its roguelite roots. The hook? Any item that effects the player will have the same effect on non-boss enemies if thrown at them. A jug of sake will get an enemy just as drunk as it will the sumo, and a weakening talisman will sap as much strength from a giant zombie as it will from the heroic samurai.

There are also clever combinations available — rice balls and cuts of meat are more nourishing when cooked, so normally the player will be forced to go searching for an open flame. Unless, of course, they run into a terrifying flaming zombie! Simply toss the food at them and it will immediately increase in nutritional value — then, when cooking is done, douse them with a jar of water, transforming them back into a regular zombie that’s easy to cut down. It’s rare to see this kind of breadth of interactivity in what’s otherwise a fairly standard brawler, and this kind of genre innovation is very welcome.

Another place where Ed-0 innovates is level design. Things start with an unimpressive setting — a claustrophobic forest followed by a claustrophobic mansion followed by a claustrophobic castle, with the player running through identical hallways into fairly similar open rooms before the next hallway. Once they reach level 4, however, the stages massively open up and offer huge fields absolutely swarming with zombies, followed by burning cityscapes and a harshly windy chasm full of deadly drops. I was blown away not only by the variety on offer, but by the huge impacts they had on my strategy. such as?

Unfortunately, I had to stop at the chasm cliffside because of Ed-0‘s fatal flaw — it has some of the most poorly-designed boss fights I’ve encountered in recent memory.

They start out decently enough with a large, strong zombie, followed by a zombie that can scream and summon other zombies. Pretty standard stuff. Then things get bad, fast, with a steampunk zombie giant that’s impervious to damage. All of the skills the player has spent the whole run collecting and upgrading? Suddenly they’re worthless, as the only way to inflict damage is by throwing bombs at his head, and these bombs can only be acquired by letting zombies throw them at the player, then picking them up in the brief window before they explode. Also, due to a quirk of the hitboxes, the bombs only damage him about a third of the time. It’s terrible. his is followed by a flying zombie who only attacks with dropped bombs that are super-easy to dodge, or a particle beam that can be defeated by standing behind a rock.

After that is an ill-advised base defense sequence where the player has to stop too many zombies from crossing a bridge. The combat mechanics simply aren’t built with this kind of area control in mind, and I was only able to defeat this one by redoing the run until I’d lucked into collecting a bunch of portable whirlwinds to cheese my way through all the wave.

I’d actually considered giving up on Ed-0 at that point, but what finally drove away was the next boss, a giant poison tiger which is basically a Monster Hunter enemy. The camera can’t track fast enough to follow its movements, and the dodge function doesn’t send the player far enough to avoid its many unblockable attacks. After multiple attempts at facing it with different characters and strategies, I came to the conclusion that I simply wasn’t ever going to get past it, and began to suspect that the failure wasn’t entirely my fault.

These rough spots are a real shame, as there’s otherwise so much to recommend about Ed-0 Zombie Uprising. It’s an unusually well-paced roguelite that offers hour-long runs with enough skill involved so that it never feels like randomness is blocking a player from having a good experience. Without those terrible bosses, I’d consider Ed-0 a bold experiment that paid off impressively — but it does have those bosses, so I can’t think of it as anything other than a tragic failure.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by LANCARSE and published by D3 Publisher. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 40 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated M by the ESRB. It features Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Use of Alcohol. No kids allowed, obviously — this is a game largely about disassembling zombies with swords or brute force. The alcohol label is also is accurate. Both the player and enemies can become intoxicated using items, which makes them walk unevenly and regularly fall down.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the majority of the game without audio and encountered zero difficulties. All dialogue is subtitled and all vital information is provided visually. Subtitles cannot be resized. This game is fully remappable.

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

The post Ed-0 Zombie Uprising Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Great character designs with varied combat styles.

LOW This Switch port performs worse than on Playstation or PC.

WTF ‘The Seeds of Volition Bring Forth a Challenger’ is a weird intro to each bout.

Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Give Arc Systems Works an intellectual property and they’ll turn it into a beautiful and competent anime infused brawler. When they’re not polishing their own Guilty Gear to a mirror-like sheen, they’re turning Kill la Kill, Granblue Fantasy and Dragon Ball into visually stunning hyperkinetic beatdowns.

This is a company with a real talent for turning franchises into fighters, and naturally they’ve gone and done it again with Nexon and Neople’s Dungeon Fighter Online side-scrolling series, which is now a one-on-one anime fighter. It actually first came out in 2022, but was only recently brought to Nintendo’s Switch — and while it took a few visual knocks in the transition, it’s still a fine experience.

As is typical for a fighter, the story’s not much to write home about. There was this world, then the world fragmented a bit, and then these magical gates appeared to let people meet up who were destined to punch each other in the face… or something. Beyond that, there’s a range of the usual game modes to choose from, such as Arcade or Survival, and while the script is largely throwaway it does have some beautiful artwork between matches. (The first NPC I saw in Grappler’s story mode had me wishing she was a playable character.)

Speaking of the roster, there’s a total of sixteen characters so far. Weirdly, they aren’t given personal names and are instead referred to by their class — Grappler, Kunoichi, Striker, and that sort of thing. Regardless, the cast are almost certainly what most players would want from an anime fighter. The designs are on-point with a varied array of manly men and pretty ladies punching each other across the screen in aesthetically pleasing ways, employing either their fists or a variety of weapons such as guns and magical attacks to gain the upper hand.

For anyone who hasn’t played a 2D anime fighter before, battles are usually play out at a decent clip with a ton of visual effects whirling around the screen. Characters zip in and out of range with a variety of dashes and evasive tactics, zoning at range by employing projectiles or closing the distance to land punishing grappling techniques or various combo strikes. While DNF Duel does slow things down a touch compared to some of the more aggressive anime fighters on the market, players can still be murdered in a hurry if they let their guard down and receive an avalanche of special moves.

DNF Duel is fairly easy to pick up, with special moves activated via directions and a single button press, and stronger specials coming from a button that implements the character’s MP gauge — a resource which rapidly refills after use. There’s also a dual damage system where characters take permanent damage from attacks, but also temporary damage that can be recovered during battle by simply not taking more hits to the face.

One slight downside about this simpler approach (and a lack of defensive options) means that I quickly started to play in patterns. After I found a good opening gambit for a character, I’d use that over and over to get inside the opponent’s space rather than having any real ‘footsie’ or mix-up game to break through their guard, leading to abusing the same moves repeatedly. That said, I like the combat fine overall, even if it’s seemingly not really tuned for high-level play.

A more serious issue, however, is that DNF Duel on the Switch comes with performance issues. The excellent character portraits in the menus and versus screens are razor sharp, but once into the game proper, there’s an immediately noticeable (and offputting) blurry sheen smeared over the characters. The crisp detail seen in the PC and PS5 versions is gone, and previously fine lines now look like they’ve been roughly sketched out with a graphite pencil. The same lack of definition also applies to backgrounds, meaning the Switch version comes up short in a comparison between available platforms.

It’s not the end of the world, admittedly, but a large part of DNF Duel’s appeal lies in how good everything looks as all kinds of chaotic craziness unfolds on the screen, so some of the concessions made to get it running on Switch are a disappointing compromise.

Another thing that should be mentioned is that the online lobbies are basically dead. The Switch version of DNF Duel uses delay-based netcode instead of the universally-preferred rollback model, which unfortunately means a worse online performance and presumably no chance of ever seeing crossplay being activated to connect players up with people on other platforms.

The unfortunate result is that in a genre known to shine when taking on opponents of similar skills from across the world, most players will instead have to treat DNF Duel as a primarily single player experience or find matches through online forums and fan communities rather, than simply hopping on and playing online at their own convenience.

I found DNF Duel to be enjoyable overall, but this cool, high-energy anime fighter with great characters and an appealing style is hampered by a lack of depth, low online playerbase, and the Switch’s hardware. That said, when it comes to a bit of brawling on the go, players could certainly do a lot worse than this. It’s not going to be the next big thing in fighting games, but it doesn’t have to be in order to still offer a fairly solid experience.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Eighting, Arc System Works and Neople and published by Nexon. It is currently available on PS4/PS5/Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 4 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol and Violence.  This is a fighting game in which players can select from 16 characters in a fantastical world/storyline. Players use punches, kicks, and special moves to deplete opponents’ health bars in frenetic on-on-one combat. Fights are highlighted by cries of pain, dramatic light/sound effects, and screen-shaking effects. Cutscenes sometimes depict still images of characters with blood-splattered faces and clothes; one image briefly depicts a monster corpse impaled by several weapons. Some female characters are designed with revealing outfits (e.g., low-cut tops, deep cleavage) and jiggling breasts.

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. As a fighting game, the gameplay should be almost fully accessible without sound.

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

The post DNF Duel: Who’s Next Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Friendship super attacks are a delight.

LOW The bird ninja is essentially a machine built to stun-lock the player.

WTF That was a twenty-minute conversation leading into a 2-minute obstacle course.

If nothing else, Samurai Maiden has a great premise.

As the game opens, a modern-day student is dragged through time to the night that Nobunaga Oda was killed inside of a burning castle back in feudal Japan. With the help of a ninja, she’s able to intervene and defeat the zombies packing the halls, saving the embattled lord. This change in history leads to the opening of a rift that introduces more monsters, interdimensional enemies, and dire consequences should the player fail to fix everything that’s gone sideways.

A new 3D brawler from the developer responsible for such light fare as Bullet Girls Phantasia and Kandagawa Jet Girls, Samurai Maiden is basic, as far as gameplay goes. The player controls the titlular samurai, pitted against fantasy creatures and the undead as she attempts to unwind the damage caused by her trip back in time. There’s a surprisingly elaborate plot involving curses, demons and fated encounters, but the real attraction here is the swordplay — and as long as Samurai Maiden sticks to it, things work well.

Samurai Maiden has satisfying combat flow down pat. While there’s just one moveset with new abilities unlocked as players deepen their relationship with ninja sidekicks, the player is able to select from a couple of different swords that offer various strengths and encourage fresh playstyles. Slicing enemies has a satisfying feel to it — baddies stagger when slashed, they do exaggerated windups before unleashing attacks, and they even clearly telegraph where their ranged attacks are going to strike. Armed with the ability to block and dodge without restriction, it’s an incredibly fair combat system.

In addition to the base swordfighting, players have a trio of ninja to rely on, each one equipped with an elemental attack that charges up as the player racks up hits on opponents. In addition to special attacks, the sidekicks can help by using items, throwing rocks, and swinging across chasms. Every ability is useful at one time or another, and the player is free to swap between sidekicks at any point. One interesting wrinkle is that one ninja is always in combat with the player at any time, and they can be attacked by enemies. Samurai Maiden isn’t harsh enough to allow them to be KO’d, but they can be interrupted mid-attack, meaning the player has to be strategic about when and how to use the ninja — they can’t rescue players from unblockable boss attacks, and using one at the wrong time will waste their energy.

While the gameplay is solid, level design isn’t particularly interesting. The occasional castle or cave liven things up a little, but the majority of levels find the player hopping through a series of floating islands, with monsters popping up every time they arrive at a fenced-in arena. This leads to plenty of uninspiring backdrops where a uniformly-bland skybox hovers above the action. The platforming isn’t great either — the player is armed with a double-jump which smooths things out considerably, but the camera clearly isn’t suited to the action as it never pulls back far enough to give a good sense of where the character is going to land. Thankfully, outside of the challenge obstacle course levels, there’s not a ton of jumping required — it’s just enough to be annoying without being a dealbreaker. However, Samurai Maiden‘s biggest issue is how it handles character advancement.

Killing enemies earns currency that can be used to power up weapons and unlock costumes — the strange part is that the player’s health is directly tied to their weapon level. Every time a weapon levels up, it gains a few points of attack and a few hundred points of health. This means that switching to a new weapon not only massively lowers the player’s attack ability, but their health as well.

I’d gotten my base sword up to level 20, allowing me to tank my way through fights with over a thousand hit points. Then I made the mistake of trying out a new weapon in the next level — late in the campaign — and was suddenly getting one-shotted by almost every opponent. If players want to try new weapons, they’re essentially forced to grind for currency, which slows everything down considerably. It’s also strange that new abilities are tied to friendship levels with the Maiden’s ninja sidekicks, and these are raised by using ninja abilities in combat. The result? It’s vitally important that the player never lean on any one partner too much, or they’ll never get the chance to learn how to parry attacks or do aerial combos.

Finally, there’s the story, which deserves to be mentioned — I’m not clear about whether to treat it as a plus or a minus. It’s written well enough and the characters are enjoyable, but the presentation is a little challenging for what’s otherwise a fast-paced action game. Every level starts and ends with a long Visual-Novel-style conversation between characters that runs from five to ten minutes long, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that these take up more time than actually playing the levels does. It’s generally good stuff, but I can’t help but feel it could have been edited down. Thankfully, these can be skipped on replay, which is the only thing that makes grinding for levels tolerable.

Samurai Maiden is entertaining enough — the characters are likable, the combat is high-quality, and there’s enough to unlock to keep players coming back for ages, and all of its flaws are things that can be ignored or worked around. In the end, it’s a charmingly upbeat experience about a schoolgirl cutting up zombies with a sword, and what’s not to like about that?

Disclosures: This game is developed by SHADE and published by D3. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 40 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was not reviewed by the ESRB, but it contains Blood and Violence. Despite the schoolgirl vs. zombie premise, there’s nothing too lascivious or gory here. Player clothes are never torn off during combat, for example, and enemies die in fiery disintegration, rather than being torn to pieces.

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

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played most of the game without audio and encountered no difficulties. All dialogue is subtitled. Subtitles cannot be resized. This game is fully accessible.

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

The post Samurai Maiden Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Executing a perfect set of dodges and then walloping a goon.

LOW Minibosses showing up whenever they want.

WTF Sucker-punching is the ultimate technique.

Sifu is constructed around an ambitious concept that I suspect appeals to extremely few people.

In many ways, the ‘brawler’ genre its apotheosis with Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum and its sequels. They found a way to make a fight look and feel like a martial arts film, with a single hero battling scores of enemies simultaneously — and they did it all without getting into the minutiae of specific mechanics for every blow.

The innovation that made this possible was the ‘counter’ button, a single tap of which interrupts whatever the player is doing, and has them deliver a punishing blow to the foe about to attack. Dozens of other games have copied this structure to great effect, and it’s one of those indisputable evolutions in game design which feels so natural that in hindsight, it’s amazing that someone didn’t invent it sooner.

Sifu‘s angle is to go in the opposite direction by sweeping that elegance off the table and asking the player to map out every single blow and micromanage every detail of a fight in an attempt to simulate realistic mechanics of battle… and then it doesn’t give the player any of the tools necessary to make that possible.

A third-person brawler/roguelite set in the kind of locales where one might expect to see a martial arts fight take place, the nearly-plotless Sifu puts players in the slippers of a martial arts student who witnessed their family being massacred eight years earlier, and has spent the intervening time preparing themselves for a vengeance quest.

They’re aided in this quest by a set of magic coins that resurrect them any time they’re killed. The price? Years are tacked onto their age with every revival. Failure, in this case, costs time, with the player starting at 20, and failing their run if they die over the age of 70.

While that may sound like a huge number of chances, in practice, players can go through that lifetime incredibly quickly as the penalty grows each time. After the first death they’ll be 21 years old, the second will put them at 23, and so forth. That counter can be lowered by defeating powerful (sometimes optional) enemies, but for the majority of players, Sifu will frequently star a grey-haired master of Kung Fu.

This time passage mechanic has interesting effects on gameplay. The older the player gets, the more damage each individual strike does, and the shorter their health bar becomes. Health can be recovered by performing finishing moves on weakened enemies, so the general idea is that at the beginning of a run the player the player can absorb a few hits as they learn enemy patterns, but the further they get, the more they’ll have to rely on dodging. Any random enemy can kill the player with just handful of strikes, and bosses put the hero down with just a couple of solid hits.

Sifu lets players learn new moves through runs based on a ‘sample before paying’ kind of system. Killing enemies awards experience points which can be redeemed after death or at bonus shrines that appear a few times per level. Skills are fairly cheap to unlock, but if players want to keep them unlocked in all future runs, they’ll have to pay five times the base price. Sifu wants players to be absolutely certain before they commit to any one technique. This isn’t excessively punishing, however — in a nod towards old dogs and new tricks, every skill has an age beyond which it can’t be unlocked, so by the end of a run, there’s literally nothing for the player to spend their experience points on other than permanently unlocking their skills.

Perhaps Sifu’s greatest strength is its fantastic environments. From slums to art galleries to burning rural villages, each location is gorgeously rendered, packed with minute details that make them a pleasure to run through over and over again. In a departure for a roguelite, locations and enemy positions aren’t randomized, so players will be fighting the exact same battles in the exact same order. While there’s a certain degree of tedium inherent in this design, it gives the players a chance to attempt different approaches to a fight until they come across one that works for them — it adds a sort of ‘puzzle’ feel to the fistfights.

While what I’ve described so far seems well and good, but as a combat game Sifu’s biggest problem is a huge one — the combat.

Here’s the thing — Sifu’s developers wanted to take the incredibly precise, reflex-taxing combat of a fighting game and move it to the world of brawlers. The problem is that those things don’t fit together at all.

Players don’t only have to worry about attack and defense in Sifu, they have to be concerned with every minute bit of the action. Holding the block button protects from blows, but raises the player’s break meter, which will eventually leave them staggered and open for attack. They can always dodge attacks, but that requires them to move in the correct direction based on the enemy’s attack — and given how quickly everyone throws punches and kicks, telegraphing basically isn’t a thing.

Theoretically, players can stagger enemies by intercepting their attacks with parries, but the timing required is the most strict I’ve ever encountered. Games generally give players a third of a second before an attack lands to tap the parry button and stagger their opponent, but in Sifu it’s closer to 1/10th of a second, and only the lowest-level enemies are staggered with a single parry. Most enemies ask the player to intercept a whole flurry of attacks before they’ll get a chance to strike back! Also, tougher enemies will regularly throw out attacks that can’t be blocked or parried with no advanced warning. It’s a mess.

All of this can be manageable (even thrilling!) during one-on-one fights, but when multiple enemies attack at once, the mechanics simply can’t support what the game asks players to do. The big problem is a lack of crowd-control options.

When there are four enemies charging, I should have an option for hitting all of them at once, or at least separating out the one I want to focus on. Sifu has nearly no options for this, and instead encourages the player to constantly vault over waist-height obstacles, forcing foes to chase them around the arena. It works most of the time, but it also creates a situation where the player will have to constantly dodge out of the way, get a few hits in on one enemy, then dodge again, and this is repeated this until everyone is taken care of. It’s tedious and tiresome.

Sifu even finds ways to make foundational tactics frustratingly ineffective. When faced with a horde of enemies, the most effective tactic in most titles is to take out the fodder quickly so that one can focus on the toughest opponents. In Sifu, nearly any enemy can reveal themselves to secretly be a miniboss when the player tries to perform a finishing move on them. Remember, finishing moves are how the player regains health, so the act of trying to heal oneself will frequently spawn the second-toughest class of enemy in the game.

If all of that weren’t bad enough, the camera works to actively sabotage things.

Let’s say that players have the reflexes necessary to read their opponent’s moves and perfectly dodge or intercept them, but all of that is only possible if they can actually see their foe’s arms and legs. If the player gets anywhere near a wall, doing this becomes nearly impossible.

While the game can visually ‘phase out’ the waist-level obstacles and furniture, it can’t do that to walls, so any time the player gets close to one, the camera zooms in to the point where all that’s visible is the hero’s back. In order to have a chance of seeing what opponents are doing, the player has to stay in the middle of any room and give up the tactical advantage that walls provide. There are setpiece battles where the camera pulls back — such as a stunning tribute to Oldboy — and the boss fights tend to take place in open areas with good sightlines, but other than that, the camera proves to be one of the most implacable foes.

There is certainly an audience for Sifu — it’s stylish as hell, and the kind of people who are happy to spend the dozens of hours it takes to master a fighting game character might find the same sort of precision-based pleasures here that the developers’ previous game, Absolver, offered. However, Sifu’s developers set out to make the player feel like they were actually doing the fighting, but instead gave them tools suitable for a one-on-one fighting game and expected them to work against six enemies at once.

They don’t.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Sloclap. It is currently available on PC and PS4/5. A copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on PC. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed.

Parents: This game was rated M by the ESRB, and it contains Blood, Drug Reference, and Strong Language, and Violence. It’s a game about a martial artist on a murder spree, so no, it’s not appropriate for kids. Also, the crime syndicate he’s up against is involved in a drug-manufacturing concern, along with other hideous crimes.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. No audio cues are necessary for play. All dialogue is subtitled. Subtitles cannot be resized. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, the game’s controls are remappable.

The post Sifu Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Every time I dove off of a skyscraper and activated my paraglider.

LOW The last boss fight is a s-l-o-g.

WTF I think they accidentally created the same mission twice.

In its own way, Dying Light 2 is coming out at both the best and worst possible time. The story of humans trying to survive during a global pandemic feels very relevant today. Humans doing incredible or diabolical things as they work to help people or consolidate power during a crisis is a universal theme, and one that the world is literally struggling with at the time this review is being written.

Dying Light 2 picks up 20 years after the plot of the first game from 2015. In this sequel, the zombie virus formerly contained to the fictional city of Harran has now escaped, and the whole world has been overrun by the dead.

The player controls Aiden, who works as a Pilgrim — essentially a parkour-themed messenger who carries notes and small objects from one settlement to another. He’s haunted by memories of fleeing from a medical facility where he was put through horrific tests, and also desperate to find Mia, the sister he left behind. His quest takes him to Villedor, a European city which may be the last bastion of civilization anywhere on earth. Once he arrives he’ll have to battling the infected while navigating the shifting politics of the city.

As in the previous installment, first-person parkour is the focus of play here, and it’s magnificent. Unlike Harran, which was mostly made up of sheds, shacks, and a couple of multi-story buildings, Villedor is a notably vertical setting, with most structures in the first area being at least three stories tall, while the newer parts of town are absolutely packed with towers. The developers have also filled the environment with narrow, obstructed streets that force the action to the rooftops, where it belongs in a freerunning game.

The ease of climbing in the city is one of Dying Light 2’s best features. While there are yellow flags scattered around that mark safe traversal routes, the player is under no obligation to follow them — nearly every building has awnings and ledges that can be scaled, provided the player’s stamina has been upgraded enough. As the campaign progresses, tools unlock that make exploring even more satisfying. A paraglider which keeps falls from being fatal and a grappling hook that can cross wide gaps changes the movement flow to such an impressive extent that I found myself never bothering to fast-travel. Why would I ‘teleport’ when dashing, swinging, and gliding is such a pleasure?

In terms of gameplay, Dying Light 2 uses the same structure as its predecessor — missions are built around finding items, killing people, or unlocking facilities, but there’s now a larger focus on traversal-based puzzles. While the first game had a handful of sequences where the player had to climb some absurd structure with death-defying leaps, DL2 is absolutely loaded with them. Beyond the fact that ziplines are still inexplicably difficult to attach to, this is some of the best parkour I’ve ever seen in a videogame, and whenever play focuses on it, the results are stellar.

Along the same lines, Villedor is a truly interesting location to explore, and the day/night cycle does a great job of completely transforming the experience. During daylight zombies hide from the sun, making it a great time to get the lay of the land and to figure out how to climb imposing edifices. At night the zombies come out and look for food, giving players the opportunity to raid their nests while they’re gone.

This lair-raiding in particular is consistently thrilling. While most of the zombies are roaming elsewhere after sunset, there are always plenty of creeps hiding at home base, forcing the player to move quickly and quietly while grabbing what resources they can. It’s always incredibly tense — one wrong move can alert a whole crowd that will tear Aiden apart in just a few seconds.

While these aspects are all solid, the same can’t be said for the melee combat — it’s awkward at best.

Early on, players are introduced to the concept of ‘parkour combat’, in which they can use perfect parries to stagger opponents, and then instead of getting a free hit for critical damage, they can use that enemy as a springboard to drop-kick another enemy. While that might sound cool on paper, in practice all it does is fling the player around the map while robbing them of situational awareness and forcing them to turn their back on a staggered enemy who always starts swinging just as the player is finishing their attack.

Even worse is that human enemies do unblockable power attacks that must be dodged. This wouldn’t be a problem except that power attack animations are supposed to flash red as a warning, but they don’t often look meaningfully different from regular attacks most of the time. It’s also tough to know where to dodge safely when surrounded by five enemies and a limited ability to visually track more than two at a time due to the first-person perspective. On the upside, battling zombies works great, and the boss fights tend to be one-on-one affairs, ensuring they’re at least fair and playable.

The fights may be problematic, but where DL2 excels is in making the player feel like they’re in control of the narrative. The end of the game always offers the same beats but the route Aiden takes to get there and the characters involved along the way can vary widely based on key choices the player makes. They can even control the city’s development in meaningful ways — for example, the map has a number of ‘key structures’ that the player can unlock and assign to a faction. Do they want to empower the people who live in Villedor, or the cops who want to control it?

Not only do these decisions affect the flow of the story, each time the player supports one side or the other, new structures are added to the city streets. Side with the cops, and traps will be scattered everywhere, giving the player an easy way to take down huge numbers of zombies. Side with the civilians, and parkour tools will appear, allowing the player to springboard around to their heart’s content.

Technically speaking, Dying Light 2 was pretty rough at the time of review. While it’s inevitable that a game on this kind of scale is going to have some bugs, I encountered more than a few truly bad ones. Getting stuck in level geometry was a frequent occurrence, as were mission icons suddenly disappearing from the world. Worst, though, was a bug that caused cutscenes to skip all character dialogue — since the game doesn’t offer multiple save files or autosaves, once I’d missed a few lines, they were gone forever. This even happened while I was supposed to be making a pivotal choice, forcing me to make it without any conception of what the outcome might be.

DL2 is also strangely hostile to players who want to play in a more casual fashion. One of my favorite activities in open-world games is to get to the epilogue with a full-power character and then go back to wrap up side missions with over-leveled weapons and abilities. Dying Light 2 goes out of its way to prevent players from doing it this way, though — not only is there no NG+ option, but once the final story mission is complete, the game automatically switches to Nightmare difficulty with no way to go back to Normal. This ruins the save file for anyone who wants the game to be anything other than torture — it’s a bizarre choice, and one that I hope is patched out along with the bugs.

Despite the issues I’ve highlighted, Dying Light 2: Stay Human is an improvement over the original in nearly every way. While there’s plenty to complain about, the world is more interesting, the parkour is fantastic, and the story has more weight — of the two, it’s absolutely the superior game, and the thrill of rocketing through a crumbling city with monsters in hot pursuit is unparalleled in the genre. It’s not perfect, but it’s as good as parkour action gets.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Techland. It is currently available on PC, XBO/S/X and PS4/5. Copies of the game were obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 60 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. No time was spent in the game’s co-op mode.

Parents: This game was rated M by the ESRB, and it contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language and Suggestive Themes. No kids allowed. The game has constant, unimaginably brutal violence that no one under 18 should bear witness to. In addition to that, there’s plenty of swearing, implied and referenced sexual assault, and people getting drunk all the time. No kids, no way.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All dialogue is subtitled, and subtitles can be resized. Enemies approaching from offscreen are marked on the game’s HUD, preventing nasty surprises. This game is fully accessible.

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

The post Dying Light 2: Stay Human Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.