HIGH Absolutely breathtaking vistas and art style.

LOW The amount of backtracking.

WTF Jesus Christ that’s a LOT of blood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Score: 8 out of 10

Buy Hell is Us – PC – XB – PS

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

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

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

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

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

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

HIGH An exceptional narrative. 

LOW Technical issues.

WTF Learning new curse words in Italian!

It’s impossible to deny that Hangar 13’s Mafia series has strong, cinematic aspirations. While many narrative-focused titles pull from popular films, there’s a distinct feeling that in the case of Mafia, the clichéd sentiment of “it feels like I’m playing through a movie” really makes sense. 

The strength of each iteration in this long-running franchise (spanning two decades and four console generations) has always been the writing, presentation, and immersive worlds. As a fan of crime films, I’ve enjoyed playing through each successive release, pointing out obvious parallels between the games and movies that inspired them. From the clear callbacks to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas in Mafia II to the ’60s/’70s motifs in Mafia III, the series is a pastiche of the best mob movie tropes wrapped around some of the best writing videogames has to offer. 

The latest entry, Mafia: The Old Country, continues the pedigree by taking players back to the origins of the Sicilian Mafia. Set in the early 1900s, this third-person action-adventure has players controlling Enzo Favara on his rise from indentured sulfur mine worker to a bona fide member of Don Bernardo Torrisi’s crime family. His journey is one marred by bloodshed and the pursuit of vengeance, with loyalty to both the family and his closest friends tested throughout the roughly 12-hour campaign. 

Narratively, it’s almost unsurprising how well-written The Old Country is. It’s a gripping and mature tale that echoes the best mob films, especially the opening to The Godfather Part II. It hits all the major points that most crime films seem to hit, but it’s acted and told so well that I was engaged the whole time. 

Enzo himself is a fascinating character, echoing the likes of Robert De Niro’s character in Once Upon a Time in America or other notable tragic figures like Michael Corleone. There’s complexity in his journey, and the performance is strong. Other characters like Don Torrisi or his underboss, Luca, add to an already-rich story. 

This narrative is helped by excellent presentation throughout, ranging from exceptional character models to cutscene cinematography that furthers the idea that this is interactive crime drama. Cutscenes are presented with black bars above and below the screen to give a more cinematic feel. 

Those who have played earlier Mafia titles will feel right at home with the gameplay loop of the Old Country. Seen from a third-person perspective, The Old Country is a mostly linear and script-driven experience. Rather than focusing on a large, interactive open world that can be explored, the story is confined to a mission-based structure, which works. The change in structure allows for a more focused experience, with little filler slowing it down. 

The world itself is gorgeously rendered, with an amazing-looking Italian countryside. While focused on scripted sequences, there are some free-roaming areas that players can drive between or ride through on horseback. The world feels lived-in and real, and despite no gameplay incentives to explore aside from a few collectibles and bits of lore.

The snappy and responsive third-person shooting returns, with every shot feeling heavy and impactful. Snapping to cover and popping my head out to land a few hits on enemies was satisfying, and each gun has the expected pros and cons, like shotguns packing a bigger punch but being effective only at short range, while distance rifles feel unwieldy up close.

The biggest change to combat, however, is Enzo’s knife. Many missions require Enzo to use stealth, with players given the option to choke enemies out or quickly stab them to avoid detection. Knives can lose sharpness after use after silencing enemies or opening locked doors, so I appreciated this light resource management forcing me to choose when a knife was necessary.

Missions offer much variety, with some focusing on stealth and some that go loud and culminating in car chases throughout Sicily. One early highlight had me go on a collection run, picking up money that tenants across the map owed. One of the interactions tasked me with holding an unloaded gun on someone to force them to pay up, while another offered a firefight against bandits who were stealing from a farmer who’d already paid his protection money. There are plenty of great situations throughout the campaign, many mirroring iconic moments in mob films. 

My one major caveat about this otherwise-excellent experience is the presence of glitches. There was nothing game-breaking, but I noticed weird inconsistencies like enemies sliding through environments, audio cutting out abruptly in cutscenes, and NPCs clipping through objects. It’s a little immersion-breaking, but it didn’t ruin the experience.

Like the best crime films, Mafia: The Old Country succeeds thanks to a complex and dark tale of revenge and familial ties. It’s a short, yet satisfying ride, and Enzo’s tale is easily one of the best of the year. While some may lament the lack of an open world, the narrative and solid gameplay delivered by the developers makes this an offer no one should refuse. 

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Buy Mafia: The Old Country — PC — PS — XB 

Disclosures: This game is published by 2K and developed by Hangar 13. It is available on PC, XBX/S, and PS5. This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS5. Approximately 12 hours were spent in single-player, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes and Use of Alcohol . According to the site: This is an action-adventure game in which players follow the story of Enzo Favara’s ascension through a Mafia family in 1905 Sicily. Players engage in various criminal activities (e.g., extortion, theft, murder) at the behest of the Mafia. Some missions can involve using knives, pistols, rifles, shotguns, and explosives to kill enemy rivals and bandits. Combat is accompanied by realistic gunfire and cries of pain. Blood-splatter effects occur as enemies are killed; blood pools are depicted under bodies. Players can also employ stealth takedowns (e.g., throat slitting, stabbing from behind) to kill enemies discreetly. A handful of story sequences require players to execute characters at close range in order to progress. Cutscenes also depict intense acts of violence and/or gore: characters shot in the head; a man’s throat slit at close range; a bound man in a chair beaten to death; a character’s finger sliced off. The game contains some suggestive material: women escorting men inside a brothel; a man tied to a bed by two women inside the brothel; dialogue such as “I found them still in the whorehouse an hour ago” and “Give me…more vino and all the lovely boobies.” During the course of the game, players’ character can consume alcohol and drive while under the influence. The word “f**k” is heard in the game.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are not present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are plenty of visual cues during gameplay, like indicators to let players know where enemies are around them, as well as when they are shooting. HUD elements can be adjusted in the menu. Subtitles are present and can be resized. As no audio cues are needed for gameplay, I’d say this is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls cannot be remapped, but there is a diagram.

The post Mafia: The Old Country Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded to Monster Hunter Wilds on the So Videogames podcast, Episode 433. For the original, expanded coverage, please listen to episode 431.

BRAD: One more game and then we’re gonna wrap the show here. Monster Hunter Wilds, Carlos. Now, I talked about this earlier. I’m happy to circle back. And in fact, this is good timing for you because I have now played enough to where I feel comfortable giving it an official score, which I will do here on the show.

CARLOS: I will too.

B: Alright, but since I already covered a little bit, we will talk about your experience first and then we’ll circle back to my stuff. I think folks kind of know that I’m like the monster hunter guy, which is all fine, well and good. But, Carlos, tell us a little bit about your background. I have you, in my mind, pegged as being not the monster hunter guy, so tell us about your relationship with the series. Where are you coming from on this?

C: Well, I’ve talked about on the show, if you remember, over the course of many years, but it’s been a while. But I generally don’t like it. I don’t like the, uh, sharpening of swords, which they still have, which is still really dumb. A sword is still sharp. Doesn’t need to be sharpened. But they make it easier, as you probably obviously know, that you can sharpen it on your horse or your mount. so that makes it easier.

B: I do call it a horse, by the way, despite the fact it looks like a dinosaur. I call it my horse.

C: And so, in general, you know, I played Monster Hunter Worlds, liked it because it was a little more accessible. And I think I didn’t beat that, but I did like it a little more. But I still was annoyed because I just don’t ever want to like, you know, collect all that shit and do all the things. There’s like lots of things to do and collect and plan. I don’t want to do any of that strategy. You know, I just want to fight things. So I’m generally not that monster person. This is probably my favorite one because it’s just a no brainer. I think the devs were like, okay, let’s bring everybody in and make and like streamline the campaign. And that’s what they did. They made it “easier”. It is. And I mean, the main dragon I was fighting — spoiler –Their main bad monster thing. At the end of the campaign, I was like, oh, I got this. You know, like there was like no thought in my mind. I was like, oh, I don’t know, you know? I was like, yeah, I, I’m fine, you know. And so when I beat it, it’s like when the game starts that bullshit and, you know, you can go four more or three more chapters of stuff. So I might go back with my friends, you know, maybe even you and like and do some multiplayer stuff because I like my character. I had a pretty good time with it. It’s not my favorite game still, but I liked it. I thought the campaign story was just garbage. Uh, I so didn’t care about that kid. Just get him out of here, man. Get him out of here. I don’t care what he thinks and what he’s feeling. I just never cared about that kid. and the fact that we were doing everything for him. And I don’t love the idea of the ending. You know, I’m not going to spoil it, but that, you know, hidden message of what the story is about. No care. No care.

B: What? I don’t remember what the what secret is.

C: Guardians or whatever. The things that are in the little eggs.

B: What was the message?

C: Minor spoiler. Right now, for one minute. Yeah, they created those monsters. And that’s like a big reveal. They created monsters to protect them, and they’re in, like, eggs. Like clones. But who cares? Who cares? No one cares.

No, I didn’t care anything about the story. Had a good time. Beat it. Which I’ve never done. So that’s something, right?

B: Yes, that’s definitely something.

C: One big con, and you’ve probably already talked about it. But you beat the game. You beat this massive monster. You feeling badass? They make you do your first mission after you beat the game. And I died like, a million times to the bird guy because you gotta capture it. And it’s like, oh yeah, you can capture things. Did you know that? Here’s how you do it. Well, they don’t really tell you very well. And then the bird just pecks me to death, and I just die over and over, and I go, oh, cool. Great thing for an end game thing, buddy. Capture this thing that’s gonna peck. I hated that.

B: I think you’ve kind of hit on one of my big, big complaints of this game. So, like, I have ups and downs with this game, right? Like, I think it’s better than Monster Hunter World.

C: Yeah, I do too.

B: But also, Monster Hunter World is one of my least favorite Monster Hunters, like in the entire series. So it was kind of a low bar. I talked about it before. I’m not going to get super into the weeds here, but like so to give you context of where I’m at, I rolled the the initial credits. I want to say it was about 15 or 16 hours. So you can like get to the end. The first part of the the main campaign where you can just put the game down and be like, you know what, I had a good experience. This was fun and I’m gonna bounce. So that’s about 15 hours in. I’m now I’m like at 55 hours in. And so after you roll the credits the first time, there’s like like I mean, yeah, not to not to belittle anybody or anything, but like that’s really like the tutorial. The campaign is 15 hours of a miserable tutorial, but once you get past that, the real Monster Hunter begins with more options, more missions, more systems and different weapon upgrades. You get all sorts of like systems that open up that weren’t there before. So I think that’s kind of my big gripe about this game is like, they put this really, really boring — I hate the fucking story. I hate the story. I hate that the story, like, makes you watch so much walking and talking. I don’t care about the characters. It actually interferes with gameplay because there’s several times I wanted to go do a mission, and I couldn’t do a mission because I had to go through the story mission first, or I’ve got a quest to turn in and the guy to give it to isn’t there, because you got to watch the cutscene first, and it’s like it’s a problem.

I find it very irritating, but they also don’t prepare you for the real game, like the trapping thing like you just mentioned. You’re exactly correct. The very first mission after your credits is go capture something and they don’t tell you anything about capturing that. It barely even exists in the game until that point. It’s like, why did you, like, make me play 15 hours and you haven’t covered it at any point up until this point? So that part was a problem. Um, yeah, I have issues with this. But now. But I will say, to be fair, on the other side of the coin here, um, once you get past the first “ending” at 15 hours and get into the main portion of the game when the story takes a backseat, this is the experience that most Monster Hunter players are looking for. They give you, like, more armor types, more, um, upgrades, like more different systems, like you unlock like a whole other, like 2 or 3 other systems that you’ve never even seen in the game up until that point. And you have a bunch of side quests open up like it’s all like side quests all the time. Like, I don’t know if you noticed, but in the main campaign you get exactly. And I counted. You get exactly one side quest in the first 15 hours. All the rest of it is all main story quests, and then once you get past that, you’ve got like 50 side quests you can do, which is like more variety, gives you more choice.

You can go after different monsters you want to go after. So I think that makes the game better once you get into the what I see anyway as a long time Monster Hunter guy, what I kind of wanted from the game doesn’t appear until like 15 20 hours in. At that point, I started really enjoying myself where I’m like, okay, here’s the stuff that I wanted. Here’s the meatier stuff. The deeper stuff, it does get a lot harder. I’ll say that for sure. It gets way harder. Um, and that’s fine too. I’m not a difficulty whore, but I, you know, I, I do want to have like, a reason to strategize. I do want to tweak my armor a little bit. I want to use some gems and, and do some powers and attributes and stuff that you don’t really ever have to engage with in the first 15 hours or so. So there’s a lot of stuff here. I think it is a legit monster hunter at some point, but getting through 15 hours is kind of a big ask. It’s like you said, boring story, boring campaign, but the gameplay is okay. But still, for me anyway. It didn’t didn’t really open up for quite a while. So I guess Carlos, besides the capturing thing, you think you’re going to go back? Do you think you’re going to like, engage with the other systems, or what do you think you want from Monster Hunter at this point, now that you’ve kind of rolled credits?

C: The only thing is, I know that there’s three more chapters that I haven’t done. So, like, I like story bits, like we just said in the beginning. So I might want to do those right. And I might want to play with my friends. Like I have a couple friends who are playing it and I’m like, okay, maybe I’ll do that because I never do multiplayer, but in general, I got it, you know, like if that’s what they wanted me to do is to understand it and then be done. Well, success, you know, because I’m like, I might not have to go back.

B: Yeah, but you feel like you got a pretty good experience just from going through the story campaign and rolling credits. Yeah. Like you feel satisfied?

C: Yeah. I think it was worth the purchase or whatever.

B: All right. That’s that’s pretty fair. So for me,I was going to come back and give this game my official review because like I said, I’m like 50, 55 hours or something. I’m literally like, I think two fights away from the actual end of the campaign. And there’s more, of course, there’s more game, there’s optional battles, there’s new stuff updating all the time. They just added a brand new monster into the campaign, So forth and so on. so I think with everything I said in this show, everything I said in last show and what I know is still in the game to come, I think I feel pretty comfortable giving this game like an eight… an eight out of ten, but that’s with the caveat that you have to get past the first 15 hours of it. And that’s a huge ask. Like, I don’t say that lightly, and I never want to be the “it just gets good later” kind of guy, but in this case it really is true — for a good monster hunting experience, it doesn’t heat up until 15 hours in, which sucks. But I’m here now and I’ve been having fun, so I think an eight is the right way to go.

C: I agree.

B: I’m gonna give it an official 8.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Buy Monster Hunter Wilds: PC – PS – XB

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Capcom. It is currently available on PC, PS and XB. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 65 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the full campaign was completed. All 65 hours were spent in either offline multi (with bots) or online multi (with real players.)

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Crude Humor, and Violence. The official description reads: This is an adventure role-playing game in which players assume the role of a monster hunter attempting to save the people and ecosystem of forbidden lands. From a third-person perspective, players explore a fantasy world, complete quests, interact with characters, and battle fantastical creatures (e.g., dragons, dinosaurs, giant insects). Players use swords, hammers, axes, and bows to defeat enemies in fast-paced, melee-style combat. Battles are accompanied by impact sounds, explosions, and blood-splatter effects. One cutscene depicts a large monster using a flatulence attack, causing a brown cloud to knock back characters; some monsters are depicted urinating and defecating in the environment.

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

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled and the game comes with closed captions (and various display options) for supporting information. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable. The controls in Wilds are extremely complicated. There’s no one control diagram that shows everything, and most controls are context-sensitive, with many buttons having multiple functions based not only on the situation, but also on which weapon is being used. Players can toggle and switch many functions, but I would not say that the controls are fully remappable. In general, the left stick moves, the right stick handles camera, and the face/shoulder buttons handle a variety of other actions. Again, everything has multiple functions, so there’s no easy way of explaining it all — just assume every button and stick is used multiple times in multiple ways.

The post SVG REVIEW: Monster Hunter Wilds appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The world is survival horror perfection — dark, moody, and oppressive.

LOW Movement can be a bit finicky to learn. Objectives may not always be clear.

WTF The sewers were so intense!

Over the past couple of years, there’s been a resurgence of ‘classic’ survival horror — titles often employing low-fi graphics and content inspired by the parameters made popular in the original Resident Evil, which tended to focus on escaping horrific situations, giving players extremely scarce ammunition and healing, and a lot of puzzle-solving and exploration in addition to combat. Hollowbody, developed solely by Nathan Hamley, takes these time-honored concepts and amps them up.

In Hollowbody, players control Mica Holloway from the third-person perspective. (Tank controls are available for the hardcore.) She’s in search of her missing partner, Sasha, who’s disappeared in the “exclusion zone” — it’s an area that was quarantined six decades ago after a bioterrorism incident, leaving countless people stranded inside and left to die after the area was cordoned off. Mica crash-lands in the zone and must then struggle to survive after discovering the only things thriving in the zone are nightmarish monsters.

As she searches the area, Mica will pick up weapons to help her dispatch these hellish creatures. From simple things like a wooden stick with nails all the way up to a shotgun, I had no shortage of ways to defend myself. However, like most survival horror titles, ammunition is extremely limited, and only found in scant few locations throughout the world.

Since bullets were tight, I had to pick my battles wisely. I could easily dodge most enemies in open areas, but tight corridors meant that I often had to risk taking damage by trying to dodge or using a melee weapon before committing to firing off a few rounds. Ammo really is that scarce here, but in the end, I found that how precious it was given more weight to my situation in the world.

The atmosphere is absolutely on point, too. I found that I was generally tense while playing, and the settings are quite dark. Mica’s flashlight only provides so much visibility, and ambient light is limited. Sometimes lightning during a storm will light up the immediate areas, but it’s unreliable. It’s all, quite frankly, oppressive and creepy as hell. I was attempting to escape this horrific world, not fight the monsters within it — fear was my motivator, not a desire for action, and trying to stay alive is intense.

That fear is surely intentional, as evidenced by the environmental storytelling. As I explored, I found the remnants of people who lived and died through the incident that triggered the quarantine in the first place, and their stories were coldly haunting. For example, one of these conversations details features a couple of workers disposing of dead bodies by burning, and discussing the ethics of their work and the people who were trapped in the exclusion zone. In other areas, there were recordings I could intercept with Mica’s radio, and the final messages were damning, cruel, and sad. Not only was the zone hell on earth, it put Mica’s own desire to find her partner into focus — it would be all too easy for the zone to have another tragic tale to tell.

For those looking for old-school vibes and old-school challenge, there are multiple difficulties and unlockable game mode modifications, such as a first-person mode and a second ending. (Hollowbody is fairly brief, clocking in around 6—8 hours for an initial playthrough.)

I went through this harrowing adventure twice to see both endings, and it was worth it, as each paints a consequence for in-game actions. Without spoiling anything, my choices the second time changed some aspects of the experience completely, so I’d strongly argue that Hollowbody is worth playing twice. However, with that said, there are some minor nitpicks I have…

While the vibes are spot-on, the mechanics can be a bit weird. There’s an option to toggle auto-run, and when applied, it only activated when I pressed a button. However, I had to do this each time I interacted with an object, went into the menu, and engaged in combat. If I needed to shoot an enemy and quickly run away, I had to push the run button to toggle the auto-run again. This became annoying, but was bearable after some time, since I became I used to doing it after every action that required me to interact with the world or fight.

There’s also weird and inconsistent verbiage for certain action prompts. The developers will write “Seek” or “Use” for things like looking at an object or scene, for example. It was pretty inconsistent, but otherwise harmless. A more standardized word like “Interact” would have solved this issue. In some cases, I was expecting to find an object with “seek”, but Mica ended up simply looking at a scene and then opining on what was there.

Lastly, there are some small bugs lurking about. I encountered some minor clipping problems, such as going through a wall in one area and getting stuck, and an instance where it seemed like I could continue my progress from the demo, but attempting this caused Hollowbody to get trapped in a loading loop. Most of these bugs are fairly benign, however, and don’t really detract from the experience –though I do hope that they will be addressed in the future.

As a complete work, Hollowbody elevates video game horror by making players afraid of its world in a way that’s far more effective than many others, and its creepy atmosphere and oppressive gloom made me feel tense at all times. It’s a scary-as-hell love letter to fans of the genre, and I can only hope that horror devs out there take some inspiration from Nathan Hamley’s frightening work.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Headware Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 9 hours was devoted to the game, and it was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB, but it has content that falls in line with many other survival horror games, which typically fall under the M rating. This is not a game for children. Players will have to fight and kill mutated monsters that attempt to attack the player. A message before the game states that it contains violence, and depictions viewers may find disturbing and/or cruel. In my playthrough, there were several instances of adult language, such as “f*ck”. The setting is very grim, and has instances when the main character will encounter and opine on deceased individuals, including popups on screen detailing how these people died, such as starvation, dehydration, and disease. There are also dead bodies found in nearly every area. In one case, there’s an area where corpses have been piled up and then burnt. There are also scenes which either discuss or depict suicide, which can be very upsetting. Please remember that, in the United States, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 or 988 for short.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game offers subtitles. Subtitles cannot be altered or resized. While the text was generally large enough to read in most instances, larger font options would have helped. However, the game does include an option to prevent dialogue and text from automatically moving on to the next line in the script, giving plenty of time to read. This option is off by default. Some lines uttered by the character did not have matching text appear on-screen. There are no visual cues for monster groans and other audio associated with their proximity. This game is not accessible.

Remarkable Controls: Yes, this game’s controls are remappable.

The post Hollowbody Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Looks gorgeous, but at the cost of 60fps on console.

LOW A torturously unexciting puzzle gauntlet midway through the campaign.

WTF Key story beats presented like the holographic recordings from Tacoma.

In developing the original Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Ninja Theory famously consulted with mental health experts in creating a sympathetic portrayal of a character with psychosis. I’m not someone who experiences visions or hears voices, but I’ve had my own struggles with mental health, and I saw parallels between this Pict warrior’s acceptance of who she is and my own. Like so much great art, Hellblade had a specific and intended meaning, but could also be appreciated on broader levels.

As such, it gives me no pleasure to report that Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II made me feel very little on any level. Whatever their faults, I would never accuse Ninja Theory’s past titles of lacking a clear sense of direction, but I suppose it makes sense that their first sequel would be the one to break that streak. Every multi-part narrative, given enough time, eventually reaches the point where things just happen for the sake of having more story. With Hellblade, we’ve reached that point by episode two.

It’s difficult to pinpoint where exactly Hellblade II goes wrong when, on its surface, it treads closely to the original formula. One might expect Ninja Theory’s first major release under the Microsoft banner to be their most bloated, but initially it almost feels praiseworthy for what it doesn’t do. There’s no open world, no resource gathering or crafting, no skill tree that adds an extra 3% damage to Senua’s strong attacks, and no upgradable bracer that increases her parry window by a fraction of a millisecond.

In a climate where seemingly every major release is a months-long commitment, there’s something refreshing about a triple-A videogame that can be completed in a weekend and doesn’t force its players to learn a hundred new systems. If the mission statement with the original Hellblade was to offer big-budget production values at a modest scale and for a modest price, the sequel at least upholds the tradition of not wasting too much of our time.

However, while Hellblade II avoids many of the most frustrating tropes of modern gaming, it struggles to fill that space with anything else of substance. It can’t be overstated how much of Hellblade II is spent simply traipsing along linear paths with literally nothing to do but stare at the pretty scenery and wait for Senua to reach the next cutscene. My instinct is to say that an experience this beautiful and empty tends to arrive at the start of a console’s life cycle, when there’s new tech to show off and not much else to play, but that’s being unfair to forgettable launch titles. At least the action in Ryse: Son of Rome heated up more than once an hour.

The original Hellblade was admittedly light on mechanics, but it was story-first fare that trapped us in Senua’s version of hell and made us question what was real, going so far as to gaslight players into believing that their save files were at risk. It was a mean, oppressive, and grueling experience. It played with audience expectations up until the very end, when it beautifully tied the experience together with an empathetic message about accepting loss and living with — even embracing! — what can’t be changed.

Hellblade II, in stark constrast, has no edge and no sense of purpose. With Senua’s psychosis now mostly under control — the voices and visions are still there, but nowhere near as overwhelming — she’s forced to wander the “real” world, engaging in bland heroics and preaching messages of love and acceptance across a desolate landscape of pillaging and plundering. My most charitable reading of Hellblade II is that it reworks the sinister imagery of its predecessor into what feels like a morality tale for children — light versus darkness, love versus hate. I’m sure there are people out there who aren’t yet convinced that empathizing with one’s enemies is a more productive solution than enslaving them, but I doubt Ninja Theory will be the ones to change their minds.

I would go further, though, and argue that Hellblade II actively harms the franchise’s standing as a well-researched and sympathetic portrayal of mental health. The original lucidly visualized the invisible demons that people with mental health struggles deal with on a daily basis. Although it ultimately taught us to see Senua’s psychosis as a feature rather than a bug, it didn’t mince words about how self-destructive the mind can be, and how torturous such an existence often is.

That’s why Hellblade II largely lacking any sense of danger has repercussions beyond the game simply being boring. It portrays Senua as a singularly gifted force of good, but that’s rarely reinforced in any of the things that we’re actually doing as players. Without spoilers, there’s an excruciatingly long sequence midway through the campaign in which Senua is searching for something ancient and forbidden that can only be unearthed by “proving” herself. These trials are hyped up to be The Ultimate Test, and the ground is littered with the corpses of those who’ve failed.

Once there, it turns out that The Ultimate Test is just a series of rudimentary puzzles that largely involve flicking switches in the correct order. Putting aside the arbitrary nature of these puzzles — the rune-hunting exercises in the original Hellblade weren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but at least they served a thematic purpose! — they’re just insultingly easy. Even someone with no intuition for this sort of thing could bumble through using simple trial-and-error, yet Ninja Theory treats completion of this task like a show of worthiness on par with lifting Thor’s hammer. It’s infantilizing to both the player and to Senua herself, who’s seen by everyone in this world as some sort of mystical fairy child for essentially completing a dungeon from a junior-level Zelda clone.

As expected with Ninja Theory, presentation is not the problem here. They’re industry leaders when it comes to performance capture — working with Andy Serkis will do that for ya — and the way its animations seamlessly transition in and out of cutscenes is remarkable, even given how much we’ve been spoiled by modern tech. Hellblade II‘s announcement predates COVID-19 lockdowns, and while its long development cycle doesn’t feel evident in the scope of its story, it’s at least evident in the visuals and the level of polish.

On another positive note, the combat is still enjoyable. It’s simple and easy to grasp, and the camerawork, effects and sound design sell the power of every sword swing. It worked in the original as one of Ninja Theory’s tools of oppression and claustrophobia. Here, I just appreciated the jolt of energy in an experience where I was often pausing every few minutes to get up and pace around the room in order to stay awake. Sadly, while the fleeting combat segments are the only time Hellblade II builds any momentum, it’s never sustained for long. The climactic moments, for all of their flash and pomp, feel gamey and artificial, like the multiple instances in which Senua must run from cover to cover to avoid insta-death. That kind of thing would be a lot easier to forgive if I were engaged in the story, but alas.

Until now, I’ve liked each new Ninja Theory game more than the last, and I can never deny the craft on display. Given that this is their first major release since the Microsoft acquisition, I credit Hellblade II for not feeling compromised by corporate interests, but that only makes it more baffling that it lacks any real vision that I was able to discern. It’s not an offensively bad experience, and yet I can only offer one of the most damning criticisms imaginable — I have no idea why it was made.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ninja Theory and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is currently available on XBX/S and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on both XBX and PC. Approximately eight 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, Intense Violence and Strong Language. Not for kids! This is a spooky, sinister game full of impalements, dismemberments, and human sacrifice.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and resized. Considerable attention was paid to make Hellblade II more accessible in this department than its predecessor. I don’t recall any sequences in which hearing audio cues is an outright necessity, and the game includes a number of accessibility options such as closed captioning, menu narration and speaker direction. I believe this game is fully accessible.

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

The post Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Expands on everything that made its predecessor great, while adding much more.

LOW Getting eaten by the same Rancor over and over.

WTF I think I’m back to loving Star Wars again.

The Star Wars universe has had its ups and down in the last couple of years, but regardless, Disney is showing no signs of slowing down the release cycle of major stories to tell within the franchise. This includes the world of videogames, where the latest title, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, shines. 

A sequel to 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Survivor is a third-person action-adventure set five years later. The crew of the Mantis has splintered off to fight their own battles, while protagonist Cal Kestis continues to take on the Empire. He’s re-introduced to players while sabotaging things on the Imperial-occupied planet of Coruscant, but things quickly go wrong and he begins an epic quest that takes him across the galaxy far, far away. 

Similar to the first SWJ, Cal is on a journey to preserve the Jedi way and is faced with dangerous opposition. I’m intentionally going to be as vague as possible with story here because I enjoyed the narrative immensely and don’t want to take those reveals away from anyone. However, know that it’s a darker tale that takes players on a path full of loss, joy, and the ever-increasing need to fight for a cause by balancing despair and tense drama with the classic, light-hearted, and sometimes pulpy tone Star Wars is known for.

To its credit, the script is also full of exceptional and shocking twists that don’t rely too heavily on callbacks to past Star Wars media, and even the obvious (and occasionally forced) cameos don’t detract from how fresh the story feels. Additionally, I appreciate getting a hero who isn’t bound by some magical destiny as a ‘chosen one’ or someone who’s got the baggage of coming from a long line of famous Jedi. Cal is simply a guy in the right place at the right time, and he’s ready to take on any challenge that comes his way.

Returning characters Cal, Greez, Cere, and Merrin all have plenty to do, and interactions with them are some of my favorite parts of the story. New characters, like the rogue rebel fighter Bode Akuna and the villainous Rayvis, also round out the cast well. There are certainly bombastic set pieces and plenty of exciting adventure, but I appreciated the quiet moments full of heart and human drama.

While the narrative is surprisingly strong, what also surprised me was that the gameplay got a significant facelift — especially notable since I recently replayed Fallen Order, so the differences between the two are fresh in my mind.

The most significant introduction to combat are the new stances. Players may remember that in Fallen Order Cal was able to switch between his single lightsaber and a double-bladed one, with a dual-wielding ability being thrown in as a special move. In Survivor, players now have a choice between five different stances — single, double-bladed, dual-wielded, crossguard, and blaster. At every workbench or meditation circle, Cal can equip himself with two stances he wants to use, and can switch between either of them with the D-pad. Every lightsaber also has its own skill tree to upgrade and expand the skillset. 

The two I became attached to the most were the crossguard and the double-bladed. The former is essentially the lightsaber equivalent of an RPG broadsword that looks similar to Kylo Ren’s weapon from the recent sequel trilogy, complete with vents on each side of the hilt. Its damage and blocking ability are significantly better than the other types, at the cost of a slow windup speed. After a few upgrades, however, the crossguard was quite effective against bigger bosses. The double-bladed has a lightsaber beam coming out of each side. like Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. I was able to launch myself and spin the saber like helicopter blades, and even throw it like a kyber crystal-infused boomerang. It’s not quite as strong as other stances, but it makes for a great weapon against a large group of grunts. 

It’s no secret that  Fallen Order was inspired by the Souls series with its approach to combat. While interesting and enjoyable, the notes it took made most fights too slow and cumbersome. To me, it felt like the combat with anyone but the standard, blaster-wielding Stormtroopers was too drawn-out and protracted, and it wasn’t until later when I upgraded my abilities and unlocked most of the moves that I got into a good flow with combat. In contrast, Survivor gives players enough power and variety to pick up the pace, right from the start.

Another aspect of Survivor‘s combat that I loved was being able to choose how to approach each fight — at no point did I feel the need to sacrifice being smart and tactical.

For example, stormtroopers with shields can be taken down with brute force, though the most effective (and enjoyable) is to force-pull the shields out of their hands and launch them back at them. Moves like that never get old, and mixing in other force powers like the new Jedi mind trick ability (which has enemies fighting to defend the player in battle) makes combat feel faster, more nuanced and more engaging than last time. 

The buddy system is another great enhancement to fights. Throughout the story, Cal will partner up with Bode or Merrin for backup. In one instance, Bode might be called in to throw stun grenades and give Cal an opening to attack, while Merrin can trap them using her magick. This is specially useful during some of the harder fights against the new Battle Droid variants.

Combat isn’t the only thing that’s been ironed out. Navigation and exploration — a major sore point with many players in Fallen Order — got a major boost, thanks to Cal’s expanded traversal. He can still wall-run and double-jump, but he’s also got a brand new grappling hook and a few late-game additions to the arsenal. There’s also a larger emphasis on simply moving this time around, with many levels focusing on platforming or free-running. It feels like a huge step up.

The interconnected levels and metroidvania aspects of Fallen Order make a comeback in Survivor, but like the rest of the navigation, they get some smart tweaks.

An improved holo-map and fast travel have been added, meaning that Cal can travel between mediation points he’s previously visited, though this is limited to the current planet he’s on. Exploration also feels exceptionally worthwhile thanks to more meaningful collectibles. Every planet now has new things to find, such as the standard cosmetic options for Cal like beard and hair choices, weapon skins, and new jackets, shirts, and pants. More importantly, different currencies for shopkeepers on the hub planet of Koboh are scattered throughout, and these can be exchanged for even more cosmetics and items to place around Greez’s cantina, which acts as a hub of sorts. As someone who wasn’t actively diverting from the main path that often, I still found myself accumulating interesting stuff on the way to my next goal, and I can’t wait to go back and see what I missed.  

Speaking of Koboh, it’s a large, open-ended planet with much to do, including a variety of sidequests, optional boss fights and random enemy encounters around the map. This new, enriched content makes the planet (and all the others) feel expansive and dense. While not open-world, they’re big enough with many diversions from the critical path, and each one is full of secrets to find. This richness makes the world of Survivor feel like a series of real places, not just varying backdrops, and even after 30 hours of play there’s still plenty of left for to discover.

If I was simply grading Star Wars Jedi: Survivor in a straight comparison with its predecessor, it would already be a great game. However, Respawn took a hard look at what worked and what didn’t, and they’ve polished, fixed and expanded on virtually everything. From the robust combat suite, upgraded movement system, detailed world, and exciting story that not only rivals the best Star Wars games, but the major triple-A titles out right now, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is simply one of the best videogame sequels released in recent memory.

This trip to a galaxy far, far away is one that’s well worth taking.

Score: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is published by Electronic Arts and developed by Respawn Entertainment. It is available on PS5, XBX/S and PC.This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS5. Approximately 30 hours were spent in singleplayer and was completed. There is no multiplayer mode. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T for Mild Language and Violence. The site states: This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the role of an outlaw Jedi on the run from the Galactic Empire. From a third-person perspective, players explore alien planets while using their Jedi powers to traverse environments and battle enemies in melee-style combat. Players use lightsabers to slash and break apart alien creatures, droids, and humanoid enemies. Combat is fast paced, with cries of pain, impact sounds, and large explosions. Some sequences depict characters getting impaled through the chest. The words “a*s” and “bastard” are heard in the game.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are not present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles present in the game, as well as visual cues during gameplay. Subtitles can be adjusted, and in my view this game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls can be remapped.

The post Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Leon’s new defensive knife skills are an inspired addition.

LOW Some of the craziest moments of the original campaign are no more.

WTF Leon evading a dual chainsaw attack in the most bizarre and dangerous way possible.

When Ashley Graham, the daughter of the President of the United States of all people, is kidnapped by a weird group of deranged cultists with a penchant for murder in a backwater European village, the USA responds in the only way it knows how — by sending a single floppy-haired agent to get her back, uncover the despicable plan behind her disappearance, and save the world in the process.

Fortunately, the agent in the awesome bomber jacket is no ordinary man — he’s Leon S. Kennedy, one of the few survivors of the devastating Raccoon City zombie outbreak six years earlier, and he’s not taking any nonsense from these villagers. When one of them tries to axe him in the face after he asks a few polite questions… well, from that point it’s freaking on and he’s bringing Ashley back, even if he has to depopulate all Europe in order to do so.

Despite all of this preamble, Resident Evil 4 doesn’t really need much of an introduction given that it’s popularly considered one of the best games of all time. However, almost twenty years after its original release, Capcom clearly felt it was time to spruce it up with modern graphics and an updated control scheme utilizing twin analog sticks in a sensible manner, and they’ve done a fantastic job of doing so.

The feel of Resident Evil 4 has changed quite a bit since the 2005 edition, with more of an emphasis on moment-to-moment atmosphere. Whether breaking out a torch in dark areas littered with the corpses of victims or slowly creeping through a forest full of slavering lunatics, it’s more of a traditional survival horror experience this time.  Thankfully, though, when the action breaks out, it’s a hell of a lot more chaotic, violent and downright awesome than the term “survival horror” might suggest and there’s a blessed lack of loathsome puzzles stinking things up. Puzzles still exist, of course, but they’re generally simple and don’t clutter Leon’s inventory with useless garbage.

Whether being swarmed by parasite-infested villagers with bladed tentacle heads or being accosted by a boggle-eyed madman wielding a chainsaw, Leon’s more than capable of holding his own in a fight thanks to an appropriate amount of guns, ammunition and assorted variables like hand grenades and healing items.

Speaking of, the guns in RE4 are an absolute joy to use, delivering destruction and bloodshed with incredibly punchy sound effects. A shotgun blast into a crowd will not only blow these ne’er-do-wells off their feet, but also shear huge chunks of their body off in the process. Even comparatively low-powered pistols sound like the crack of doom and pop heads like pumpkins, especially as Leon progresses through the story and tunes up or replaces his guns with ever-more-lethal instruments of carnage.

One new and highly appreciated addition to the formula is the ability to parry enemy attacks using Leon’s trusty knife. Traditionally little more than a last resort, the knife is now an invaluable defensive tool capable of parrying anything from pitchforks to chainsaws, breaking free of enemy holds, and of course, the more traditional use of repeatedly stabbing bad guys in the face when the chips are down.

This level of knife-based punishment doesn’t come without cost, however. Leon’s knife will degrade over time and eventually break, requiring periodic repairs from merchants dotted around the map. Parrying most attacks or using a new stealth kill mechanic doesn’t cost much durability, though blocking a whirring chainsaw with the knife edge is going to destroy it in short order. It’s therefore important to balance using it for general convenience against saving it for a desperate last resort as it nears its breaking point.

Leon himself seems much weightier than he did in the past, leading to a more grounded and slightly less nimble control scheme. The tradeoff is that enemies also have more heft to them, so roundhouse kicking them into a wall feels incredibly crunchy and satisfying. New animations sell the sensation of combat beautifully, resulting in deliciously insane encounters against all sorts of twisted grotesques throughout the fifteen- to twenty-hour runtime.

After retrieving Ashley and having to work together to escape from the village, other design changes make themselves known. She’s less useless now thanks to a couple of selectable behavior modes that will see her staying close to the action or keeping her distance, and she’s now also able to perform basic functions like descending ladders or helping players out in unexpected ways.

Sadly, some of the goofier moments of old got cut from this release, which is unfortunate since those were also some of the most memorable. From flame-spewing dragon statues in the lava caverns to the infamously insane laser-rigged hallway, some of the most unique setpieces of the original are simply gone — yet the catapult section in the castle’s opening sequence not only remains intact, but has been made infinitely more annoying thanks to fewer opportunities to neutralize threats and more chances to get blown up seemingly at random.

Other complaints are few and far between, so it feels like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel when I say that there’s also a weird moment when the merchant unhelpfully warns Leon how he should attend to any unfinished business towards the end of the castle area before hitting a point of no return after he’s already passed it, so that could be a mildly annoying moment for completionists like myself.

Finally, as of release there’s no combat arena-style Mercenaries mode, nor the additional Separate Ways campaign equivalent featuring Ada Wong in her banging new pair of long boots. That said, Mercenaries is already confirmed to be on its way and even without Separate Ways, there’s more than enough content in Resident Evil 4 to justify the price given that it features a wealth of bonus content such as weapons, costumes and accessories to unlock after the credits roll for the first time.

Resident Evil 4 is a truly fantastic remake of an already-stellar title. Some of the omissions, tweaks and changes do mean that it’s a perfect complement to the original experience rather than a replacement, but this is about as fine an update to a classic as one could possibly hope for.

Roll on Resident Evil 5 — Sheva Alomar’s got some Majini throats that need slitting.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Capcom. It is currently available on XBX/S, PS4/5 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. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence and Strong Language. The official description reads as follows: This is a survival-horror game in which players assume the role of a government agent (Leon Kennedy) sent to rescue a character from a religious cult. From a third-person perspective, players explore a rural environment while searching for clues and fighting zombies and mutated creatures. Players use pistols, machine guns, shotguns, and explosives to kill enemy creatures in frenetic combat. Some weapons/attacks result in decapitation and/or dismemberment of enemies, along with large splatters of blood. Enemy attacks (e.g., chainsaws, tentacles) can also result in Leon being decapitated, blown apart, or impaled. Eviscerated animals and mutilated corpses are depicted in some environments. The words “f**k” and “sh*t” appear in the game.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and/or resized. Furthermore, Capcom have gone above and beyond to make this game accessible to as many players as possible, with closed captioning often warning of nearby sounds such as beeping explosives, squeaking collectibles or the demented mutterings of nearby villagers. Excellent job, Capcom.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. Well, at least on Keyboard and Mouse. Controller support has various presets available.

The post Resident Evil 4 (2023) Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH High-energy, fast pace and refined systems.

LOW Making the first boss a balls-hard Sekiro homage was a huge mistake.

WTF Where is that village key? And why are arrows so expensive?!?

I’m going to go ahead and call it right now — the worst design decision of 2023 is the first boss of Wo Long: Fallen Empire. Not only is this encounter brutally hard, it crops up in the earliest section of play, immediately after finishing the tutorials.

At this point, the player is still coming to grips with basic moves and they’ve yet to unlock most of the supplementary systems — multiple weapon choices, weapon and armor upgrades, magic spells, AI reinforcements, helpful status items, increased healing ability and even magical animals that can lend a hand. But at this point they’ve got none of it.

This is such a difficult first boss that I personally know of several people who quit the game and deleted it from their console after repeated defeats. The ironic thing is that (relatively speaking) this first battle is actually one of the toughest encounters in the entire campaign.

Even more ironic? Wo Long contains many obvious nods to FromSoft’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the Souls studio’s most unforgiving and prescriptive work, and this encounter is a clear homage to Sekiro‘s final boss, which is itself an infamously tough fight.

It makes no sense whatsoever to have the first boss be as tough as he is because once the player gets past it — if they get past it — there’s a lot to enjoy about Wo Long, and almost none of it approaches the difficulty of this aggressively arbitrary dick-measuring gitgud contest.

Mechanically and in most aspects of production, Wo Long is similar to Tecmo-Koei’s previous attempts at the soulslike genre, Nioh and Nioh 2.

The player starts by creating a character and then takes them on a tour of various war-torn settings, this time in Three Kingdoms-era China. From here Wo Long is a standard soulslike experience — travel through villages, forts, battlefields and other locations, each offering a variety of soldiers and supernatural monsters to eradicate via third-person melee. Level up, gain new weapons and armor, and grow tough enough to withstand anything the forces of evil can dredge up along the way. However, there are several design decisions which make the experience more than the sum of its parts.

For example, while they seem almost identical initially, Wo Long‘s systems are more streamlined and easier to understand than Nioh‘s. It’s not as heavy or frequent with loot drops, for instance, and there’s a smaller number of options that the player will find.

It feels a bit limiting at first, but once I settled on weapons that I liked and understood the now-simplified armor upgrading, I invested in just a few pieces and they carried me through the entire game comfortably. Overall, spending less time and effort on fewer pieces of gear meant that I spent more time on actually playing, rather than min-maxing numbers in menu screens. I also appreciated that there was no FAQ necessary to understand the upgrading, which hasn’t always been the case.

Looking at the combat itself, I think it’s a great combination of the solidly satisfying swordplay from Nioh and some ninja-oriented parrying concepts from Sekiro.

Basic combat is fast-paced and essentially identical to older Tecmo-Koei work, only now more streamlined and with a clearer emphasis on aggressive play. There are light and heavy attacks (stance changes are gone) and when enemies are about to unleash an unblockable attack signaled by an orange circle appearing in front of them, if the player can parry right before the attack hits, they negate all damage and will often put the enemy into a stun state, ripe for a massive hit.

Although having the ability to widen the parry window would be great, it works well and most of the animations that need to be parried are easy to read, with the exception of a few which were constant problems. (For some reason I could never get the timing down on the swamp mermaids or the boss who looks like a big ball of hair.) That said, I’m generally terrible at parrying in any game, but I was more successful here than not, and I loved how flashy and exciting it is when a parry happens — the camera does a dynamic quick-cut and loud sounds of metal clashing ring out made me feel like a superhero, if only for a second.

I’m sure some players will be glad to hear that parrying isn’t required for the majority of play, but there are two or three bosses who are inordinately difficult if the player can’t land them reliably. I got through them, but they were harder than I would have liked, and again, being able to modify the parry window would have been welcome.

Potential difficulties aside, this parry system is also part and parcel of another systems rework.

Each character, player or enemy, has a meter divided in half. The left side shows how close they are to being stunned, and the right side is energy that can be used to unleash special attacks and magic spells. Taking hits and being defensive fills up the left half, while parrying and pressing the attack fills up the right. It’s a push/pull tug-of-war system that clearly encourages the player to be as aggressive as possible, since by doing so they will be preventing themselves from being stunned and will have a constantly-regenerating supply of energy for bigger attacks and various magical abilities.

I liked this system not only because it makes a lot of sense and is easy to read in the heat of battle, it avoids the usual issue of limited magic points or managing mana. As long as the player can press the attack and keep gaining energy, they can increase the ferocity of their offensive. On the other hand, if they lose momentum or start blocking too much, they’ll be left trying to catch their breath while an enemy swoops in to deliver the hurt. Overall, it’s a balanced, clever concept that I enjoyed, and it works well.

Wo Long also has two other systems worthy of mention — co-op and the stealth.

The co-op allows others to be called in to help with a tough boss, or a mean level. While I was never able to summon anyone myself (perhaps I was too far into the campaign, having a pre-release review copy) I was often able to help others out. For those who don’t want to engage with anyone online, Wo Long lets players roll with up to two AI companions in almost every area. I found that I was able to count on the AI buddies to draw a good amount of aggro during boss battles, and they were appreciably helpful when trying to make progress. As a way of letting players self-regulate their own difficulty level, this was ace.

The stealth was also greatly appreciated. Rather than engaging in the ‘traditional’ sort where one crouches behind cover or looks for shadows to skulk in, the player merely needs to be behind-ish enemies in order to surprise them and deliver a huge chunk of backstab damage. It’s entirely gamified and wholly unbelievable, but it works because it’s a decision made in service to the game as a whole. Wo Long is all about being as aggressive as quickly and as often as possible, and asking players to put the brakes on to creep around for a few minutes would fly in the face of that. As such, adopting this stealth hybrid was a marvelous choice.

I was already a fan of Tecmo-Koei’s style when it comes to soulslikes, so the what worked before still worked for me here, and the changes were good ones. However, there were a few issues aside from that first boss…

For starters, the story is a huge weak point. There’s just not much to tell — basically, an evil wizard is doing evil stuff, a whole lot of warriors want to stop him, and the player fights alongside all of them to get the job done.

While the script features many characters who will surely be familiar to fans of the Three Kingdoms setting, there’s little development or personality on display. Almost every chapter introduces new faces that come and go for no obvious reason, and many who pop up are indistinguishable from each other — most of the dialogue sequences are just repeated iterations on the themes of ‘honor’ and ‘friendship’. By the time I rolled credits, I barely had any sense of who anyone was with the exception of a small handful, and I often found myself wanting to skip through the cutscenes since none of it held any interest.

Mechanically, I had issues with some of the weapons. Although there are a wide variety of weapon types in Wo Long, they fall into a few basic categories and I found the ‘slow, but hits hard’ weapons to be basically unusable since combat is lightning-fast. There wasn’t a sufficient upside to hitting harder if the slow speed meant that the hits never connected, or that long windups left the player open.

While the story is a bore and a couple of difficulty spikes pushed my parrying skills to the max, Wo Long: Fallen Empire still manages to deliver a solid and lengthy action-adventure on par with their previous successes, but with a slightly different and more refined flavor. Tecmo-Koei is better at the soulslike genre than most, and I am a fan of what they do — I just wish the developers would have reconsidered that abysmal first boss. Being an homage to something famously hard was an incomprehensibly poor choice, and it’s a shame that the rest of the campaign will go unseen by the people who walk away in frustration.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Team Ninja and published by Tecmo-Koei. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, XBO/S/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX in Performance mode. Approximately 38 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 2 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes assisting others.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore and Violence. The official description reads as follows: This is an action game in which players join a large-scale battle against an evil sorcerer in Late Han Dynasty China. From a third-person perspective, players use swords, spears, hammers, magic, and clubs in melee combat against enemies (e.g., soldiers, demons, ghouls). Combat is fast-paced, highlighted by large blood-splatter effects, screams of pain, and explosions. Finishing moves sometimes depict characters dramatically impaled on swords or lances. Several scenes depict multiple corpses and/or large pools/smears of blood.

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

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Dialogue in the game is subtitled. Subtitles can be resized. When enemies become aware of the player (or the player’s stealth fails) there is an audio sound that plays. If the player is looking directly at the enemy that becomes aware, there is a visual cue that shows their awareness changing. However, if the player is not looking at the enemy who becomes aware, that audio cue has no visual component. Therefore, this game is not fully accessible.

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

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HIGH Stunning a group of enemies with a pistol barrage, then pulling off chain executions.

LOW Wanted: Dead‘s performance on XBX is a dumpster fire.

WTF Umm… where’s the rest of the game?

Sometimes things seem too good to be true. A new intellectual property featuring a badass katana- and rifle-wielding police heroine mowing down bad guys by the hundreds on the streets of an alt-present cyberpunk skewing of Hong Kong inspired by Dominion Tank Police and Cyber City Oedo — and it’s developed by members of the team behind Ninja Gaiden and that game with Tina Armstrong and Christie in it?

With that sort of pedigree, do I even really need to play it before giving it a perfect rating? Probably not, but let’s stick it on for five minutes anyway to perform due diligence and… oh dear.

Oh, no. Oh, my word.

It turns out that Wanted: Dead has some… major… problems.

Taking place in third person, Wanted: Dead is a hybrid shooter/slasher actioner where switching between short and long range weapons on the fly is required to succeed. While main character Hannah Stone only carries a katana for close encounters, she has access to a personalized assault rifle and handgun that can be heavily modified between checkpoints, and she’ll use various subweapons in each level — SMGs, shotguns, LMGs, Chainsaws… the usual selections.

The combat system isn’t as complex as something like Ninja Gaiden, but when all’s working as intended it’s satisfying. Hits feel solid and impactful, even if some of the melee enemies soak up just a little too much damage. There’s also a cool execution mechanic where players stun or dismember some poor bugger and then brutalize them with a selection of execution animations, John Wick style. From hip tosses into headshots or ramming them into a wall before slicing their arms off, Stone’s enemies are undoubtedly in for a bad time.

Stone can gain access to new abilities as she progresses through each level using experience points earned from killing enemies, but these skills should all have been available from the beginning since many of them are what make the combat system shine.

Counter-attack follow ups, more generous parry windows, grenades, and a special move involving a series of handgun blasts that stun nearby enemies and open them up for a barrage of executions — it’s immensely gratifying  to see enemies getting chopped to bits in quick succession as a result of a well-timed super. The balance can be slightly questionable in places, though.

Ranged enemies are usually barely able to scratch Hannah, aside from certain unpredictable attacks — for example, any bastard that can whip out an incendiary grenade and toss it without warning. It does ludicrous damage on higher difficulties, can trap players in flames for its entire duration, and if Hannah’s in the middle of an execution when it lands at her feet she’s basically screwed with no way to cancel out and escape.

Hannah’s own tools can also prove unreliable. The grenade launcher’s a gamble in any fight, as the projected arc shown to the player doesn’t appear to be accurate. Firing it from cover or through narrow gaps, even when the reticule shows a clear path, is as likely to lead to her own death as that of the enemy. Similarly, grenade throws don’t necessarily follow the onscreen trajectory that pops up when they’re primed, often bouncing off doorframes and windows en route to their supposed destination.

These moments stick out like a sore thumb, because otherwise the combat feels pretty dang good thanks to a system that encourages parries and evasive actions with just a little assault rifle and explosive carnage tossed in for good measure. The handgun counter mechanic is an inspired addition, allowing for otherwise-lethal attacks to be neutralized (even at range) and the action heats up nicely as the campaign progresses both in enemy variety and unlocked skills. Checkpoints are spread a little thin, often bookended by much tougher encounters which threaten a chunk of repeated gameplay, but it’s not so bad as to be intrusive.

Outside of combat, the story isn’t up to much. Lieutenant Stone and her comrades in the Zombie Squad are a likable bunch of rogues, but the dialogue and writing is odd, to say the least. Characters with seemingly no purpose are introduced and dropped after a single scene, and while I love some of the accents in attendance, the voice acting is stilted and rarely seems to match what’s happening onscreen — things like battle cries being delivered in conversational tones, or enemies languidly calling Hannah weak and ineffectual while a dozen of their friends are lying in a pile of blood and limbs nearby.

It’s also not a spoiler to say that the storyline just stops at a certain point, and the end credits begin to roll with nothing resolved. It’s a bafflingly abrupt ending, bringing the adventure to a screeching halt just as things should be beginning to build to a climax. Blatant sequel baiting, perhaps, but also an immensely unsatisfying way to wrap things up.

The issue that most damages Wanted: Dead, however, is that its technical performance, at least on the Xbox Series X, is absolutely shambolic. Simply walking along a barren corridor where nothing’s happening can lead to framerate meltdowns, and when it slows down in the middle of a swordfight when timing parries and dodges is key to survival… it’s not great. It’s also very inconsistent. An encounter may run at a locked sixty frames per second initially, then turn into a slideshow upon reloading.

It even affects the ramen eating and karaoke minigames. Ever tried to perform well at a rhythm game when the timing cursor is haphazardly jerking all over the place? Trust me, it doesn’t work. And by the by, whoever decided that tying these minigames into the achievements list and making them unskippable during the story should be facing jail time.

These technical woes are enormously harmful to the overall experience, and they’re topped off beautifully by the game hard-crashing to the desktop every other hour or so. I don’t want to belabor the point, but the lack of quality control on display in Wanted: Dead is far, far below modern videogame standards. Even twenty years ago it would raised eyebrows. It’s effectively unfinished. It’s an absolute shame since I actually like the core experience on offer here, but in its current state only the most determined players will be able to persevere long enough to get enjoyment out of it.

In the end, I still enjoyed it enough to put in more than fifty hours in and still want to play more, despite all its problems. When it’s running as intended, it’s clear that this is the kind of game I’d like to see a lot more of — bloody, unpretentious, and gameplay-focused in a manner that’s eminently replayable thanks to strong core combat. That said, the good stuff in Wanted: Dead is buried under a mountain of problems — and when I say buried, I mean buried deep.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Soleil and published by 110 Industries. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S/PS4/PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 50 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed on all difficulty levels. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language and Suggestive Themes. The official ESRB description reads as follows: This is a third-person shooter in which players assume the role of a police squad member (Hannah Stone) engaging in combat missions in a futuristic Hong Kong. Players use machine guns, shotguns, explosives, and melee weapons (e.g., swords, chainsaws) to kill enemy soldiers in frenetic combat. Battles are highlighted by realistic gunfire, explosions, and large blood-splatter effects. Several attacks result in the dismemberment and/or decapitation of enemies; other attacks result in enemies sliced in half or exploding into pieces. Players can perform finishing attacks and trigger slow-motion effects (Bullet-time). The game contains references to suggestive material: a sexual joke referencing four testicles; a character depicted with deep cleavage; dialogue stating,; “A good bowl of soup is better than sex”; “There’s more male nudity in your stories than in a Joaquin Phoenix film”; “…[H]ow does it feel going d*wn on your sister?”). The words “f**k” and “sh*t” are heard in the game.

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. Most audio cues when enemies are about to launch a strong attack have an easily-seen visual indicator, though if the player is facing away from them and the camera angle is too close it won’t be viewable before it lands. Because of this, the game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable, though there are several presets to choose from.

The post Wanted: Dead Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Compelling investigative storylines.

LOW Minimal challenge in battles.

WTF Elise can cause literal storms!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Patricio do Rosario

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

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

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are not available.

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

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

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