HIGH The chain tires – snowy roads be damned!

LOW Inadvertently locking myself out of the true ending.

WTF The snow-covered frozen corpses I kept finding.

If I showed up for the first day of work and was greeted with empty city streets, caustic shopkeepers, and sub-zero temperatures that apparently send me to a bizarre void world after several seconds of exposure, I would probably turn around and go home – which is probably why I’ve never been hired by the Easy Delivery Co. 

As a fresh-faced recruit, players will brave blizzards and uncanny townsfolk as they cruise snowy mountains delivering packages and piecing together the truth behind a mysterious village.

The core loop of Easy Delivery Co. is simple enough – select a job, head to point A to pick up, deliver to point B, get paid.  Structured as a semi-open-world courier simulator, charting a route across three primary burgs is left to the player’s discretion.  Longer distance deliveries net higher payouts which, in turn, can be redeemed for gasoline, vehicle upgrades, and supplies to guard against the cold.

Weather plays a key role in Easy Delivery Co., with any time spent outdoors presenting the danger of rapid hypothermia (and a quick return to that spooky void world – Yikes!)  Purchasing items such as logs to build a fire or coffee to keep up one’s cold tolerance and speed are crucial for surviving the long, cold nights.

Aesthetics are crucial for Easy Delivery Co.’s success and, thankfully, it more than delivers with its abrasive lo-fi ‘90s styling forming a rock-solid foundation for its foreboding world.  Jagged, warping power-lines crisscross vacant streets.  Tires spin, straining doggedly against slushy terrain while kicking up chunky white pixels in their wake.  High beams click on in the waning daylight, taillights rendering as warm halos in dithering snowfall. There’s a fuzziness to the whole affair – a juxtaposition of warmth and chill that is at once disconcerting as well as curiously comforting.

The narrative is, for the most part, told indirectly through conversation with the denizens of Mountain Town and the surroundings hamlets.  The player has one ally, MK. They’re apparently the only lucid character in the area, providing context for the proceedings and also acting as the primary quest giver.  The townsfolk in Easy Delivery Co., seemingly confined to their storefronts, are generally standoffish.  Some are downright hostile, but most just seem depressed and lonely as they reveal their neuroses and desires in casual conversation.

While uncovering the secrets at the heart of the wintry town and its melancholy inhabitants becomes the primary objective, the narrative ultimately ends up feeling like a bolster for the tonal elements, as opposed to an end in and of itself.  I appreciated the pervasive unease and slow rollout of details, though I didn’t end up feeling terribly invested in the outcome, with the climax hinging on an emotional connection I never experienced.

Further buoying the stellar presentation is Easy Delivery Co.’s strong mechanical core.  Controlled from the third or first-person perspectives, players will spend much of their time in their (surprisingly nimble) mini ‘kei’ truck, but on-foot journeys across the unforgiving tundra are occasionally necessary.

The kei truck proves a faithful steed, and I relished every opportunity to manually open its tailgate as I loaded a package (dutifully closing it behind me), kicking on the headlights and puttering into the wavering dark.  There is a reactivity in its handling – bouncing on its suspension over bumps, or losing traction as I hit a patch of snow or ice. It was rarely enough to jolt me off course, but just enough to demand my attention.

For the most part, Easy Delivery Co. lives up to its titular difficulty, but there is a subtle hostility in certain aspects of its design. 

The most notable of these is the map system, or lack thereof.  There is no mini-map, and while a full map can be accessed from the menu, it contains no indicators as to the player’s whereabouts — only a waypoint for the destination.  While the level design isn’t terribly complex and a healthy smattering of road signs helped keep me on course, I couldn’t ever shake the feeling of being vaguely lost. 

Overall, Easy Delivery Co. is a resoundingly successful marriage of tone and mechanics.  The developers demonstrate a keen eye toward player engagement, offering just enough depth to require my focus, but not so much as to distract from their haunting world.  While the narrative ultimately falls a bit flat, the quiet moments of brewing tea by firelight and harrowing drives through blinding blizzards will stick with me long after I make my final delivery.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Buy Easy Delivery Co. – PC

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sam C and published by Oro Interactive. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC.  Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: At the time of this review, this game has not been rated by the ESRB.  While there is no violence, blood, or gore there is spooky imagery that might be scary for younger or more sensitive audiences. Additionally, while there is no explicit sexual content, there is mildly suggestive dialogue during conversations with certain characters. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. I did not experience any issues when playing this game without sound, all audio cues are accompanied by visual indicators.  This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable.  While the primary controls cannot be altered in this game, the “Accept” and “Back” buttons can be reversed in the options menu.

The post Easy Delivery Co. Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Fighting games were never my specialty. My childhood best friend would always beat me at Soulcalibur II, no matter which character I picked – Astaroth’s axe could only take me so far, and Raphael could never save me from defeat. However, despite my struggles, I still came back to it… and many others like it.

While the competitive side of me wanted to improve at Soulcalibur, another part of me genuinely enjoyed the storytelling.

Fighters might not seem like they have substance beyond the mechanical aspects needed for mastery, but many of these titles offer so much more than just that. In addition to wild combos and flashy finishers, devs frequently give us character arcs and varying perspectives, which I find fascinating.

Soulcalibur was the first fighting game that won me over at a young age. From the first installment in 1998 to Soulcalibur VI in 2018, the plot has been compelling for over two decades.

The first Soulcalibur revolves around Soul Edge, a cursed sword that taints its owner and offers unlimited power. The weapon has corrupted a knight named Siegfried, who has turned into a bloodlusting monster named Nightmare due to its influence. While he’s already succumbed, Siegfried is determined to redeem himself and break free from its control.

The supporting cast have their own agendas. Heroes in Soul Edge want to destroy Nightmare and the sword, whereas others want to steal the sword’s power and claim glory for themselves.

Ultimately, the only way to stop Soul Edge is to wield Soulcalibur, an opposing holy sword. Along the way and through various sequels, we meet characters like Ivy Valentine and Xianghua, who fight to destroy the evil weapon and protect others from it.

The younger me enjoyed this plot, but focused more on the fighting aspect. However, the older and wiser version of me appreciates each game’s lore and how it all interconnects. With a wide cast typical of most fighting titles, players get different perspectives and viewpoints, enriching the experience.

In a way, I also felt like I grew up with the franchise. For example, Soulcalibur II was the first one I played when I was a kid, and it introduced me to Greek warrior Sophitia Alexandra. By the fifth game, we got to see her children, Patroklos and Pyrrha. While Soulcalibur V wasn’t a huge success, it provided nostalgia and plot continuity that kept me coming back.

While Soulcalibur was my first exposure, other titles made me appreciate the genre for more than just the battles. Tekken is one that has a special place in my heart.

I remember playing it on my dad’s PlayStation when I was too young to really know what I was doing, and I certainly didn’t grasp the more serious plot points. However, as I went through grade school, I connected the dots and realized how excellent its storytelling has been.

In this franchise we get plenty of drama worthy of a Shakespearean play with the Mishima and Kazama families. I remember my first time playing Tekken 2 and feeling shocked at seeing what Kazuya did to Heihachi — after defeating his father in the tournament, Kazuya threw Heihachi off a cliff, cementing a brutal cycle of betrayal and revenge within the Mishima family as one of the most important and frequently recurring plot points of the Tekken series.

Further, each sequel expands on core concepts like the Mishima Zaibatsu’s global influence and how they use it to host the King of the Iron Fist Tournament. This competition (and the premise of every Tekken installment) is that the event brings in fighters from around the world to win fame and money, but it’s also a vessel for the family’s power struggles and world domination plans. That’s a plotline I’d expect from an HBO show like “Succession.”

There are smaller stories in Tekken, though, to be sure. Take Anna Williams, who didn’t have much of a backstory in the first game. However, she quickly became an important figure when she thwarted her sister, Nina, from assassinating Heihachi in the Iron Fist Tournament.

Through the franchise, we’ve seen expansion on her grudge against Nina, her life as a bounty hunter and a rekindling of the siblings’ intense rivalry in Tekken 5. Fast forward to Tekken 8, and her DLC return as the game’s 37th character features an Anna that has evolved drastically from the one we were introduced to years earlier.

Anna and Nina have had a compelling rivalry for 30 years, and it hasn’t gotten old. I love seeing the clash of love-hate relationships in games, and while it might be relatable because of my own siblings… well, that’s beside the point.

While the two sisters captured my attention, there are plenty of stories for everyone to get caught up in through other franchises as well, not least of all, Mortal Kombat. For years, I associated it with spending a couple of quarters after eating Chuck E. Cheese pizza or throwing bowling balls in the gutter, but it doesn’t take long to see that the story is a central asset of the franchise now.

While the early titles were groundbreaking at the time thanks to digitized graphics and the controversial level of graphic violence, Mortal Kombat 9 is notable thanks to its improvements in the franchise’s storytelling abilities.

The title takes you back to the period of the first three MK games, and the writers seized the opportunity to reboot the narrative. From plot holes to retold stories, the production gave gamers the kind of storytelling richness the MK characters deserved in the original ‘90s titles.

For example, Mortal Kombat 9 provided more insight into martial arts fighter Liu Kang, who faced immense pressure to win the Mortal Kombat tournament and save Earth from invading forces from other dimensions. This would be crucial to the future of the series, as Liu Kang has quickly become the central focus of the new timeline.

We also got to see more details about individual character relationships, such as the rivalry between royal daughters Kitana and Mileena, or more insights into Scorpion, who’s hell-bent on revenge. Altogether, the reboot makes the concepts and content from the original games more cohesive and engaging through excellent storytelling.

Mortal Kombat 9 set the bar high, and the franchise has only improved since the 2011 release. Mortal Kombat 11 introduced Kronika, whose objective was to erase the existing timeline and bring more balance to the world. This gave us time travel and alternate versions of characters. Mortal Kombat 1 rebooted the series again, now in a new timeline entirely, with Liu Kang becoming the new godlike protector of Earth.

Thanks to the time and effort put into the script, playing Mortal Kombat today is much different than when I mashed buttons back in the arcade. Now I’m paying more attention to the plots and feeling more invested in the characters than ever. As a child, I never thought I’d be secretly rooting for Scorpion to get his revenge or that I’d feel so satisfied when Raiden finally accepts his role as a protector.

Despite “only” being fighting games, it’s easy to see the effort put into the Tekken, Mortal Kombat and Soulcalibur franchises. While some may only play these titles for their competitive or technical aspects, the plots have much to offer thanks to well-written and complex universes.

From power struggles to sibling rivalries, the creativity of the writing in fighting games keeps me coming back for more, despite being nowhere near the top when it comes to competing.

Now, with that said… let me call my friend to see if he’s up for a Soulcalibur II rematch. He doesn’t know I’ve been practicing for over 20 years!

— Jack Shaw

The post Why I Play Fighters (Despite Being Bad At Them!) appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Creative, thought-provoking worldbuilding that I will not soon forget. 

LOW A music-based game that forces players to dodge off beat still feels counter-intuitive. 

WTF Videogamedunkey is in this?? 

When I first started writing for GameCritics, one of the first titles I had the pleasure of reviewing was a strange looking title called Everhood. 

In my time with it, I was flabbergasted by Everhood’s commitment to storytelling, larger than life philosophical themes, and moral ambiguity — all of which have stuck with me. Four years later, when I saw Everhood was receiving a sequel, I jumped at the chance to see what else developers Jordi Roca and Chris Nordgren had up their sleeves. I’m happy to say, Everhood II takes all the successful elements of its predecessor, dials them up to eleven, and creates a superb experience that oozes with personality, comedy, and mystery. 

Everhood II takes its protagonist into a realm past death, riddled with danger and mind-bending realities. The player will befriend an enigmatic raven who encourages them to defeat an entity known as the Mind Dragon in order to escape this perilous dimension. Along the way, the player will travel across space and time, meet zany characters, and make critical decisions that will impact not just their story, but the entire cosmos. 

Though all of this sounds far-fetched, one of Everhood II’s greatest strengths is its cryptic, yet thought-provoking worldbuilding. Each of the realities the protagonist will visit feel lived-in, and are filled with memorable characters. From a battlefield decimated by the war between fruits and vegetables, to a digital circuit board riddled with viruses, exploring each setting without knowing who was truly friend or foe always kept me engaged.  

The main hook at the start is fighting against the initially-overpowered Mind Dragon, and upon the player’s defeat, traveling back to previously-visited worlds that will allow the protagonist to get stronger and more prepared for an inevitable rematch. However, each time a world is revisited, it changes drastically. Whether it’s the passage of 1000 years, or a town that once celebrated you as a hero but has now come to see you as the enemy, the choices made in-game will greatly affect the setting of the next environment, and perhaps the overall arc of the story itself, highly encouraging multiple playthroughs!  

Music-based combat as a concept remains mostly unchanged from the first Everhood. The player is on a five-note grid, and will have to dodge, absorb, and reflect incoming notes from their enemy. Though I found the musical tracks in the first installment to be mildly underwhelming, Everhood 2’s soundtrack is filled with psychedelic tunes that get the blood pumping with synth-based choruses when they’re not perfectly reflecting the personality of the opposing foe. 

However, the main issue I had with the first Everhood‘s battle system remains unchanged here in the sequel. Though the opponent is hurling notes in time with the music, it’s the player’s responsibility to dodge these notes when they arrive, and they’re usually off beat. There were times where I felt it was difficult to fully resonate with the music because I intuitively wanted to press buttons in time with the tunes, but succumbing to this urge would lead to my untimely death.  

Also, for an experience so entangled in its philosophical themes, music isn’t central to the plot, so it begs the question of why this combat system was picked in the first place. 

Apart from my modest frustrations with the combat system and a few too many time-shattering events to keep track of by the time I made it to the endgame, Everhood II is a triumphant follow-up to an already strong title. I will not soon forget the chaotic worlds visited, the eccentric friends made along the way, and the thought-provoking questions raised by my travels through the spirals of time. 

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Jordi Roca and Chris Nordgren and published by Foreign Gnomes. It is currently available on Switch and PC. Copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: This game was rated E+10 by the ESRB, and it contains Fantasy violence and mild blood. Themes of death, conflict, morality, and philosophy are intricately woven into the game’s core. I wouldn’t recommend the title to anyone younger than their early teens. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes, but there is an image sensitivity mode for those who might be sensitive to flashing lights or bright colors. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game is fully subtitled. Though the speed of the text can be changed, the size cannot. The game is music-based, and though one could get away with playing it without sound, that lack of audio input adds another level of difficulty to the combat.

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

The post Everhood 2 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.

Welcome to This Is Not A Review. In these articles we discuss general impressions, ideas and thoughts on any given game, but as the title implies, it’s not a review. Instead, it’s an exercise in offering a quick recommendation (or dismissal) after spending enough time to grasp the ideas and gameplay of a thing without necessarily playing it from A to Z.

The subject of this installment: Pathologic 3: Quarantine, developed by Ice-Pick Lodge and published by HypeTrain Digital.

The original Pathologic is a survival experience that challenged players to withstand twelve days in a small town of the Great Steppe that’s been wracked by a deadly (and possibly sentient) plague. The task is to contend with infection, obviously, but also with the societal decay that such an epidemic invites, all while searching for a possible cure and making difficult choices about whose lives to prioritize along the way. It’s survival horror in perhaps the most literal sense and a singular experiment in storytelling through mechanics and systems.

The premise is unique enough that the series’ trajectory since has been to revisit and expand upon the same setting and themes. Pathologic 2 was essentially a remake of the first entry, and it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played, but it only features one of the original three playable characters. Developer Ice-Pick Lodge originally intended to add the other two as DLC, but that project appears to have grown into yet another standalone entry in the series.

So, later this year we’ll be returning to the Steppe once again in Pathologic 3 to see how the updated engine affects the Bachelor’s side of the story. In the meantime, a free prologue, subtitled Quarantine, serves as an appetizer.

A full Pathologic campaign takes a couple dozen hours to complete and adheres to its own schedule, allowing players to largely travel where they want, when they want, even if it means missing key story events. Quarantine, which takes only a couple of hours of complete, is a much more rigidly guided experience. We’re given pieces of the story as we jump to various points on the timeline – before, after and during the outbreak – and we’re introduced to some new mechanics that differentiate the Bachelor’s path from that of the Haruspex in the previous entry.

Since the Bachelor is a doctor, his methods are more scientific than those of the Haruspex, who divines by examining entrails. As such, the standout sequence of Quarantine has us diagnosing patients by compiling lists of symptoms through both interviews and physical examination, giving us a glimpse of how we might save lives in this particular rendition of Pathologic.

The rest of Quarantine reminds me of the shortform Marble Nest that was released in the lead-up to Pathologic 2. Many of the strengths of the full game are evident here – particularly the script’s sharp wit, bolstered by an exceptional translation – but they feel somewhat muted without the chance to see Pathologic‘s systems evolve and interact on a large scale over an extended period of time. Pathologic being fatiguing is part of the experience, and it’s something we just don’t get in a prologue that can be completed in a single sitting, which is why it’s hard to judge Quarantine as a complete work.

Given that it’s short and free, though, it’s worth a look for anyone interested in Pathologic 3, if only as a vibe check — and if the third entry is successful enough, perhaps we’ll finally be able to play as the Changeling again in a prospective Pathologic 4.

Play Pathologic 3: Quarantine now for free – PC

The post This Is Not A Review – Pathologic 3: Quarantine appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Actual live-action video conversations with the developers

LOW Sometimes the music can be too loud in the golf sections

WTF This entire game is a WTF moment.

Mini Mini Golf Golf is the first time I’ve ever played a game that felt like the developers were talking directly to me. It’s an experimental title that bleeds the boundaries between player and developer in a beautiful digital symphony that’s disguised as a mini golf game.

The player starts as a worker at an environmental company, Axonia. I began in a dimly-lit room in front of two monitors — one playing a recycled, staticky video feed, and one blank with some tape with the word “data” written on it.

As a “resonant” at Axonia, the player must investigate a breakthrough solution for the world’s rapidly-rising sea levels developed by a rival company, Obrist. A secret project seemingly went up in flames, and the reason why is located in the data extracted from Obrist’s video feed.

The catch? The “data” is a mini golf game. Adjusting a dial on the first monitor plays a video of the Obrist project, a facility located deep within the Earth’s mantle that manually feeds artificial tectonic plates into the sea. The project’s “data” on the second screen is portrayed like something out of a putt-putt course, similar to something one might play with friends on a weekend.

I could go through the courses by manipulating a cursor to hit the ball while shooting for a low score on each hole, and it all seemed fairly standard… until I found that the valuable data that I was supposed to be looking for was locked behind the game.

“Locked behind” is perhaps not the right phrase. The data is physically intertwined with the architecture of each golf course, comprised of fragments of a larger network of memories left behind by a single worker at Obrist, named Vanya. The only way to tell Vanya’s story, and the story of what happened to the tectonic plate station, is held behind each of the eight holes.

The golf courses in Mini Mini Golf Golf are plain, visually designed like something out of a late ’90s computer title that my parents might’ve played on Windows XP. Just a few simple hills, obstacles like windmills here and there, but none pose any challenge.

Yet this sparse gameplay in Mini Mini Golf Golf presents an interesting puzzle — find a way to glitch out the course to access a memory from Vanya.

Each solution is in the video feeds, told directly through conversations with hosts of a makeshift talk show called “Mini Mini Talk Talk” that plays on the left monitor. A few solutions would be to get a hole-in-one, shoot the ball out of the course, or barely miss the hole exactly three times. Afterwards, the level breaks down in a digital cacophony.

Behind each glitched out level is a golf course stripped bare, with only multicolored skeletons of courses and grid patterns to point the way. Each shot towards the hole reveals a letter, and these letters spell out messages from Vanya that explain their work in the tectonic plate station.

Each golf level successfully glitched “unlocks” a chapter of their life, whether it be relationships, work or early childhood. However, by only obtaining it by glitching out of each level, it felt like information that I wasn’t supposed to see. Every victory felt like I was physically breaking the system down, with the sounds of shattering behind each message from Vanya that I had found. It felt like I was an unwelcome guest in Vanya’s mind.

Without spoilers, Vanya’s life was full of heartbreak and contradiction, yet their personal issues have to take a backseat to the world-saving potential of their work. Another portion of these memories tell the story of the tectonic plate station, and how the project gradually became unstable.

Ultimately, Mini Mini Golf Golf is about deciding whether saving the world is a human goal or a capitalistic one — or both. Various news clips play on the video monitor claiming companies like Axonia and Obrist are failing at their jobs to save the environment, yet Vanya believes there needs to be a human component in the solution to the rapidly-deteriorating climate.

Impossibly, somehow, all of this plot took a backseat to the real gem of Mini Mini Golf Golf — the “Mini Mini Talk Talk” talk show. Instead of hiring actors to tell the player solutions through hidden messages on the feed, the actual developers from 3 More Years are the ones talking to the player.

The meat of the talk show is about these devs using games as a time capsule for different points in their lives and how they’re currently using Mini Mini Golf Golf as a medium for disobedience. It’s easily the most direct example that I could find of a developer telling the player directly what the content is about, so that no amount of subjectivity obscures the Mini Mini Golf Golf’s true message. Mini Mini Golf Golf is about environmentalism and capitalism and how their combination might spell the end of the earth.

This title is a message of why ultimately this conflict will strip humanity from everyone, and why collective action is needed for real change.

Mini Mini Golf Golf is the most experimental gaming experience I’ve played in the past decade — and its message made every level worth savoring. It’s also an open conversation to the player from its developers, and it’s a conversation worth listening to.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

— Jack Dunn

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by 3 More Years. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PC. Approximately 3 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, but it does include mature themes of death and environmental destruction. However, there are no explicit visual depictions of death in the game.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Dear & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles and text (see examples above.) They cannot be resized. There are no significant auditory cues. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game’s controls involve only a mouse, and there is no remap option of any kind in the menus.

The post Mini Mini Golf Golf Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Tons of entertaining characters with lots to say.

LOW It’s too short. I want more!

WTF Live-action puppet shows? 

Before writing this review I tried to think of titles similar to Great God Grove, and came up with absolutely nothing. I’ve genuinely never played anything like it.

Great God Grove was developed by LimboLane, and is their third title. They describe themselves as “…an inclusive and queer-run games studio founded by Day and Yugo. We love to make things that squish and bounce! Our games feature all flavors of strange and compelling characters. Folks of all types and ages are invited into our weird and wacky worlds!”

It should come as no surprise, then, that Great God Grove is a quirky and character-driven game with a wacky world. I haven’t played their previous titles, Face Love and Smile For Me, but from the trailers I can see similar elements present in Great God Grove, like the art style and dialogue. My point being, they’ve had time to refine their style, and it’s paid off.

The story of Great God Grove follows a tourist visiting an island, who then gets wrapped up in a conspiracy. The island has a tradition of voting an outstanding individual to become a god, and said individual rises to godhood during an event called the Festival of the Rift. Unfortunately, the latest nominee has gone missing, but not before sending nasty letters to each god who ascended before them, throwing everything into chaos. It’s up to the tourist, named Godpoke, to fix things.

Gameplay-wise, it’s a linear, story driven puzzler. Every chapter had me walk around a map, and every puzzle was solved by talking to different characters and using their words on other characters.

Godpoke can vacuum up specific dialogue, which is the main gimmick of Great God Grove. Each chapter started out fairly restricted, but opened up as I talked to more and more people and solved their problems.

For example, in the second chapter I needed to give a baker an idea for a creative recipe. Earlier I had spoken to someone who said “…what if they had edible lipstick?”, and that was the solution. Even if I didn’t immediately know who to use the dialogue on, using the wrong dialogue on someone didn’t feel like a waste of time because they’ll have something to say about it.

The vibes of GGG‘s world are on point. The first god to appear is Ms. Mitternacht, a skeletal vulture in a nun outfit. However, before she appears, her presence is felt via her tears – they cause a downpour of rain in the starting area. In this way, every section of Great God Grove showcases the gods’ influence before the player talks to them. It’s an impressive way to build each of the gods up, and it also did wonders for worldbuilding, as it shows how each god influences their area.

If it wasn’t obvious, there’s a lot of reading involved. That isn’t usually my style, but I was curious about what each character would say in response to what I shot at them. However, my curiosity would mean nothing if the characters themselves weren’t interesting. Remember the part about strange and compelling characters? Great God Grove is full of them, especially the gods themselves.

Everyone on the island has some quirk that makes them stand out as a character. Take the Bizzyboys, for example. They’re green monkeys that follow the God of Leadership, and are faithfully dedicated to helping the grove. They all look similar (they even use the same 2D sprite, with slight differences in the form of accessories) but I was able to tell the difference between them because of their personalities.

What’s more, the connections between characters felt believable. Most of them have history with each other, and figuring out this history by being the middleman for tender moments was captivating. This kicked in, full-force, in chapter three, when two gods appear — Thespius, the god of love, and Click Clack, the god of storytelling. Usually, they work as a duo to create love stories, but their relationship has been strained. No spoilers for this situation, but using words from the story they wrote was touching.

What binds the whole experience together is the art style. It’s an interesting take on 2D, comparable to something like Paper Mario – colorful, expressive, and at times abstract. However, the most distinct visuals in all of Great God Grove aren’t 2D at all, but live-action puppet shows. Each chapter has a television that can be interacted with and run episodes produced by the Bizzyboys that explain some part of the world. I was not expecting these at all, but they were a nice change of pace and each episode filled in a piece of the overall story.

I was immediately hooked by Great God Grove because the mechanics of taking someone’s dialogue and using it on other characters is something I’ve never seen before, and so it fueled my curiosity. I went out of my way to see as many interactions as I could, and I’m glad I did. Everything in Great God Grove comes together to make a great (albeit short) experience that is well worth getting into.

Rating: 9 out of 10

— Zack Edwards

Disclosures: This game is developed by LimboLane and published by LimboLane and Fellow Traveler. It is currently available on XBX/S, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 7 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 E and contains Mild Fantasy Violence. It is safe for kids. There’s no objectionable content, as far as I can see.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and/ or resized. There are no audio cues needed for successful gameplay. This game is fully accessible.

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

The post Great God Grove Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Narrowly dodging a budgetary issue that could sink a run.

LOW Why do I need to build more buildings just to talk to people?

WTF Nuanced critiques of morality in civic management… in a videogame?!

When I agreed to look at Technotopia, I’ll admit it had the odds stacked against it. I’m just not huge on card-based games, and it feels like we’re drowning in a sea of roguelites lately. Yet despite those trepidations it just looked so gorgeous and unique, I couldn’t pass up the chance. And you know what? I’m glad I said yes! It’s a legitimately outstanding title, even as it dances with the cliches-of-the-day in today’s indie dev scene.

The central conceit is rather simple — it’s a city management sim handled through random card draws.

Players inhabit the role of Iris, the city’s AI in a near-future society. She works alongside her father, The Architect, to please four corrupt faction leaders currently running the city. Together, Iris and her father strive to make the world a better place while uncovering the corruption that surrounds them. It’s not a story that will shock anyone with its twists, but the fact the writing in a card-based management sim is good enough to be enthralled by is one hell of a trick. 

Honestly, it would’ve been easy to simply not have a story at all, or it could have been something super bland, but instead I was foiling terrorists, trying to un-rig elections, deleting internet reviews for a terrible cabaret singer (yes, really) and meeting up with a hacktivist to screw over her corporate overlords. Every character boasts a distinct voice, and I appreciated how biting the script’s social commentary is. I genuinely wanted to see what happened next, even if, again, it’s nothing too surprising.

Now, the gameplay. Rather than only being able to build based on the current card hand available, Technotopia takes some notes from Tetris — or more accurately, it borrows a few shapes.

In order to get the most out of the city, a player has to arrange buildings into various shapes, which add massive bonuses — the fastest way to build up resources needed for each faction to stay functional, and racing against the clock is key here. While Technotopia can be played at a leisurely pace, every building placed moves an overall countdown one notch forward.

In addition to this clever formula, Technotopia will also throw moral quandaries at the player that can tip the scales between factions. Are the workers demanding riots? Call in the digital Pinkertons, hear them out, or automate the jobs with machines. There’s an athlete struggling in the ring? Maybe give him some dope, or stay out of it. What’s brilliant is that there’s no indication of what the outcome for each choice will be — players have to learn the hard way what the best course of action is, and sometimes there may be more than one worth contemplating.

All of this is bolstered with a wealth of new buildings to place as the campaign progresses and progress with the factions carries over between runs. I’m also grateful that story objectives don’t reset, so it’s feasible for everyone, not just min-maxing civic leaders, to actually see the story’s conclusion. Plus, as I progressed, I’d get access to key structures that made the overhead costs of resources much easier to manage for each faction. The persistent progress in Technotopia is well-done.

Truly, I’m stunned at how little I have to criticize. Probably my biggest issue would be that once I finished the campaign, there weren’t many achievements or bonus objectives to tackle. Some sort of random challenge modifiers or even a sandbox mode where players can tinker with things or design their ideal cities would be a welcome bit of variety, but this is such a minor point that it’s hardly worth mentioning.

As someone who predominantly plays games antithetical to this experience, the fact it blew me away should speak volumes on how confidently it presents itself. It’s by far one of the best things I’ve played this year, and it just works in a way that is almost magical when considering how many bigger titles have fumbled the fundamentals Technotopia handles with ease. Whether one loves or hates card-based games, this is one worth playing, hands down.

Final Score: 10 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Yustas and published by Alawar. It is currently available on PC. This copy of Technotopia was provided via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 3 hours were dedicated to the single-player campaign, as well an additional 2 hours in the post-campaign and it was completed.

Parents:  This game is not rated by the ESRB, but contains Mild Violence and Suggestive References. This one is pretty safe when it comes to what’s depicted on-screen. There are references to terrorists, the mob, and at least two instances of murder, but it’s all purely through text, static images that obscure the actual violence, and vague references. It’s an otherwise relaxed, minimalist experience.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available. This is accounted for with distinct silhouettes for each building type, varying substantially in height and design.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All in-game dialogue is delivered purely through text. It’s a reasonable experience to play without sound, and I would say that it’s fully accessible.  

Remappable controls: No, the controls are not remappable controls. There are, however, both keyboard and mouse options, allowing it to be played one-handed with minimal movement.

The post Technotopia Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The art style has its moments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.5 out of 10

— Ben Schwartz

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

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

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

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

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

The post The Plucky Squire Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The environments and movement combine for immaculate vibes.

LOW The free-flowing movement can get out of control.

WTF The protagonist’s eyes make it look like he’s possessed.

I don’t think there is a game that embodies the spirit of Hayao Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli movies more than Europa — but instead of being a cheap copy, it carves its own path through stunning environments, whimsical gameplay, and a thoughtful message about mankind’s relationship with the natural world.

Europa is a 3D platformer where the player begins as Zee, an artificial boy equipped with a magical levitation device strapped to his back. With this jetpack full of whimsy, Zee gets to explore the idyllic paradise that is Europa, an extraplanetary colony meant to be mankind’s next utopia. Along the way, Zee collects pages of a journal from his dead father that guide him through this world as he uncovers the mystery of what happened to this abandoned paradise planet.

As his father’s narration via journal explains, Europa was a human utopia long in the making. Europa was supposed to be a place where humans could live without worry, but all that Zee can see are long-abandoned ruins without a trace of human activity. The only things left are the “gardeners” — a legion of AI-powered robots that made the planet liveable. The player gets to see thousands of these gardeners along their journey, as they’ve evolved into life forms that resemble Earth’s animals. I got to see herds of real deer along herds of robotic deer living together in harmony with flocks of mechanical birds flying above me.

All of these lifeforms live in the paradise that is Europa. It’s a world filled with peaceful environments taken straight out of a painting. Rolling hills, snowy mountaintops, endless oceans filled with bioluminescent life — it’s a miracle that all of these locations fit into this game cohesively, yet it’s crafted so seamlessly that I didn’t bat an eye.

However, traveling in this environment takes some getting used to. With Zee’s jetpack, he can hover just above the ground, charge up a tall jump, or fly across entire areas with the help of hundreds of pockets of energy (to keep his flight sustained) scattered around the world of Europa. Abundance and flow are critical gameplay themes in Zee’s journey, as every part of Europa’s movement ties into each other, and I was never far from another ball of energy I could use to power up a new flight, and I would often find myself chaining power jumps into hovers into longer flights as I flung myself across sections of the map.

At times this movement is clunky, since it’s difficult to slow Zee down and change direction when he reaches breakneck speeds, but since there’s no penalty in the form of losing health or “dying” if Zee gets blown off course, it’s fairly easy to reorient him. A core theme of the story is how mankind interacts with the natural world, and Zee feels like an integral part of the environment he is exploring, frictionlessly flowing in and out of areas. It’s like Zee is a leaf on the wind, and we’re just riding the current.

Zee’s journey isn’t just leaping and bounding around the world, though. Between every major area are usually a few simple puzzles and some collectibles for Zee to pick up. Featured treasures include items that boost the capacity of Zee’s jetpack and hidden emeralds that are the side collectibles of Europa. These emeralds reward player exploration and experimentation, and I wasn’t able to get even half of the forty available. However, I was able to complete all the puzzles around Europa.

Despite their simplicity, there were a few ideas that really stood out amongst other 3D platformers, including rotating platforms, disappearing blocks, and keys filled with energy scattered away from their appropriate keyholes. They’re all a bit rough around the edges, but they achieve their purpose in Europa’s overall narrative. That said, with only about six hours of total runtime, it’s unclear what these puzzles could have looked like with a few permutations thrown in the mix for a longer experience.

In a larger sense, what Europa is, more than anything else, is simple — yet not in a way that detracts from the overall experience. It’s incredibly focused in trying to show an idyllic paradise that happened to fail because of human hubris. The puzzles don’t need to be complex stratagems that take more than five minutes to solve. Some of the best moments in the campaign involve Zee simply flying around the world, carefree and exploring how alive Europa can be.

Interspersed with the wonders of this natural world is narration from Zee’s father. Rarely do I think that narration adds to an experience in a videogame, but Europa’s does the clever thing where they don’t tell the player exactly what they’re seeing, but they fill in the gaps where the player has questions. The writers lay out the story along Miyazakian principles of capitalism, exploitation, and destruction of the natural world eloquently, but in an innovative plot that flows between these themes. All of this is told by the deceased narrator, Zee’s father, who was supposed to be the architect of this paradise, yet ultimately found more happiness in his relationship with Zee.

Despite its simplicity, Europa establishes itself as a whimsical, wondrous experience floating through the wilds of a fallen utopia. I won’t forget it anytime soon.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

— Jack Dunn

Disclosures: The game was developed and published by Helder Pinto, Novadust Entertainment, and Chozabu (Alex PB). It is currently available on PC and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 6 hours were devoted to the game, and it was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has an ESRB rating of E for Mild Fantasy Violence. There is no combat in the game, but the main character does have to dodge energy blasts from hostile turrets and mechanical birds that try to knock him out of the sky.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind options.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles in the game, and no audio cues are required for gameplay. The subtitles can be resized into 7 different sizes. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable controls: Controls are fully remappable.

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