HIGH The visual style

LOW The crashes, bugs and glitches

WTF The infinitude of rare resources

The Settlers is a series at its best when the player is empowered to bring a miniature
civilization to fruition from beginnings of poverty and scarcity. However, The Settlers: New
Allies does the complete opposite by facilitating as many resources as possible, and the socio-cultural dynamics of civilization are cast aside for a focus on military-industrial production and warfare. Adding insult to injury, at the time of review it was buggy and prone to crashing.

New Allies, like its predecessors, is a real-time strategy city-builder with a top-down
view focusing on a combination of resource management, warfare and city planning. The
campaign mode has players controlling a refugee group fleeing civil war in their native
kingdom. With each new scenario, the people progress toward their objective of finding a
peaceful new home away from strife.

This basic premise is embellished with pretty visuals and a functioning resource
management system. Civilians (up to a maximum of 500 in every campaign scenario) either
function as soldiers, engineers, laborers (such as foresters, fishers, bakers and miners) or —
if no task is assigned — as carriers. Carriers bring resources (wood, wheat, stone etc.) to a
settlement’s most nearby warehouse. The limited amount of civilians available make
balancing their jobs a significant component of successful management.

This core gameplay loop is New Allies’ strength, as it was with its predecessors.
Unfortunately, this basic joy is soon tarnished.

First, being a Ubisoft game, New Allies requires an additional step to get launched via
Ubisoft’s own storefront, Ubisoft Connect, thus extending the procedure to boot the game.
Once launched, I frequently encountered crashes, failure to load maps, and bugs where the
UI wouldn’t load, forcing me to restart. These issues were as prevalent as they were severe,
and I had to restart the game at least 50% of the time I tried to play.

I also experienced various in-game glitches, including a particularly annoying bug involving a
malfunctioning autosave system, corrupting both the autosave and manual save. The result
was a forced restart without recently saved progress, making me replay large portions –
sometimes hours‘ worth. This technical inadequacy is simply unacceptable, especially from a
huge publisher like Ubisoft.

I’ve already mentioned that the basic elements are solidly crafted, and managing laborers,
engineers, soldiers and carriers in a balanced manner presents the player with a decent
challenge. Still, this is the only successful system in place, as all external challenges such as
resource scarcity and invaders are easily negotiated, and there’s little internal pressure to
keep the player on their toes.

Resources are plentiful — farms don’t require fertile soil, self-regrowing trees make lumber an
infinite resource, and mines (gold, gem, stone, iron or coal) also provide inexhaustible
supplies. If some resources cannot be claimed in a particular scenario, it’s easy as pie to set
up a harbor, sell whatever surplus exists and acquire material that cannot be harvested.

While stone and lumber are essential for residential and defensive buildings, all other mined
materials have a final purpose of army construction. This, then, is what nearly every scenario
steers the player toward. Despite their peaceful intentions, the settlers must inevitably claim
a structure, destroy a ‘barbarian’ outpost, or defeat an encampment. Bafflingly, New
Allies doesn’t offer any peaceful alternatives, nor any more creative solutions to conflict.

A potential saving grace lies in the story’s emphasis on making friends with several
indigenous groups throughout the campaign. However, these story elements are left under-
explored, with the people taking the shape of stereotypical tropes such as a Viking and
spiritual clan. The player’s people easily take center stage, thus colonizing both the lands
and the narrative. The ‘enemies’ of the campaign are referred to as ‘barbarians,’ a likewise
stereotypical name that is not given proper nuance, regardless of an awkward and forced
twist at the end.

The Settlers: New Allies is the latest entry in a beloved and longstanding franchise, and
carries an inherent advantage of starting with a greatly successful formula. However, there
simply aren’t any exciting updates or formula explorations here. The buggy quality of the
code at time of review and utterly flat narrative are salt in the wound, resulting in a game that
does not boast a single positive reason to warrant a purchase.

Rating: 1 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ubisoft Düsseldorf and published by Ubisoft. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 34 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game’s campaign was completed. 0 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB this game is rated E10+ and contains Fantasy Violence. The ESRB’s description states: “This is a real-time strategy game in which players help a group of refugees establish a new settlement. From a top-down perspective, players construct buildings, gather resources, engage in trade, and battle rivals and enemy raiders. Players can deploy military units (e.g., soldiers, mages) to protect their settlement, with combat depicted as large-scale skirmishes (e.g., sword battle, shooting arrows, spell casting). Battles are highlighted by sword slashing, bright visual effects, and cries of pain; defeated units collapse to the ground and disappear.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and resized. Some in-game clues (such as “[army] recruitment complete”) are only available via audio, but the most essential information is covered by written dialogue and instruction.

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

The post The Settlers: New Allies Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Eventually (I assume?) this will be a fine release.

LOW It sure as s*** ain’t right now.

WTF Putting the level cap to 99 in this game is the definition of arbitrary and capricious.

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that made me ponder what the hell a written videogame review is even supposed to be in 2023 quite like The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition has.

Before we get into everything awful here, please read Josh Tolentino’s exceptional review for the original Outer Worlds. He does a great job running through what the game is and what makes it fabulous, and I find myself agreeing with so much of what he said. The Outer Worlds is a whip-smart Action-RPG with some truly outstanding writing that lambastes corporate culture while providing an exceptionally well-realized galaxy to explore. The game is directed by Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain, the original developers of the Fallout series as well as Fallout: New Vegas, and this definitely feels like something they would make.

My favorite thing about the dialogue and choices is that they’ve created a world that doesn’t define itself with the traditional ideals of “good” or “evil”. Essentially, everyone in The Outer Worlds is kind of a garbage human, so I found it liberating to go from virtuous hero in one scenario to being a sadistic, greedy bastard 30 minutes later because it felt like the right move at the time. I never found myself worrying about a morality arrow pointing in a specific direction due to a choice I made, and that’s a sign of a game where decisions truly matter.

In terms of combat, while it gets relatively monotonous, the shorter-than-average RPG runtime does a lot to make sure it doesn’t overstay its welcome, making The Outer Worlds an exceptional choice for anyone looking to play what is essentially a slightly improved, tighter Bethesda game. This is how I felt about it when it first released in 2019, and that is still the case today.

The Outer Worlds is a great videogame, full stop — but that’s not why people are reading this review.

No, they’re reading this because the recently released Spacer’s Choice Edition (a name so ironic given what that term means that I find it hard to believe Private Division didn’t know what they were implying) is the latest game industry dumpster fire, evidenced by the numerous reports citing its deficiencies, lots of anger, promises of patches, and the obligatory “we’re sorry” tweets from publisher 2K. It’s so bad that original developer Obsidian Entertainment even sent out an apology despite apparently having nothing to do with the new version.

That last bit is important.

While Obsidian actually did a fair bit of enhancing and patching to the original release, this new version of is essentially a whole new product, developed primarily by port-house-of-questionable-quality Virtuos, who are probably best known as the people behind the much-maligned Batman: Return To Arkham remasters.

When purchased (or “upgraded”) it shows up as a separate title, apart from the original release for those who owned it already. That’s because Private Division, the “boutique” publishing subsidiary of 2K, is about to lose the publishing rights to Microsoft, who now own Obsidian.

In other words, this is a cash-grab, and the last chance for 2K to capitalize on an IP before it’s no longer in their control. Also, is it a coincidence that something so clearly undercooked was released in mid-March (right before the end of the fiscal year) instead of being kept in the oven a bit longer? I’m not the first one on the internet to point out how hilarious/dystopian it is that The Outer Worlds has become such a cynical product of corporate apathy, but the projection going on here is something fierce.

So what the heck is the Spacer’s Choice Edition? Well it’s supposed to be an enhanced remaster of the original 2019 release with updated character models, new lighting, a new level cap, and they also threw in the DLC from the first game for good measure. It represents a pseudo “Definitive Edition” for a game that deserves such treatment, but it fails spectacularly at every turn.

I was given a code by the publisher for the Playstation 5 version. Like a lot of late-generation titles from the PS4/Xbox One era, The Outer Worlds did not perform well on then-modern hardware. It fared a little better on the PS4 Pro/Xbox One X, but for the most part they represented a significant step back from the PC version with bad framerates and a substantial nerfing of graphical fidelity.

While the graphics in the console version of Spacer’s Choice are a significant step up in terms of effects, the framerate is absolutely dreadful on PS5. There are two graphical options — quality mode targets 4K and 30FPS, and performance mode (I almost put that one in quotes) targets 1800p-ish resolution and 60FPS. Neither are particularly successful, but the performance mode has quite possibly the worst framerate I have encountered recently. It’s a stuttering mess that only reaches 60FPS while talking to characters in dialogue, and while the quality mode isn’t as ghastly as the performance mode, it certainly isn’t what anyone would classify as consistent.

That’s not the only problem. While the lighting engine has improved, the contrast of the images have been turned up considerably, making things look either incredibly washed-out or oddly neon in certain scenarios. The Outer Worlds was always colorful, but now it simply looks unnatural, and the lighting indoors is incredibly inconsistent. Combine that with the contrast issues, and some environments are borderline impossible to maneuver around because it’s so dark. I will give them credit for touching up and improving character models, but combined with the framerate, not only does it run like crap, I’m tempted to say it may be legitimately nauseating to look at.

Graphics aren’t the only place where Spacer’s Choice Edition is rushed. They’ve included the two DLC packs from the original release, but have done nothing to better integrate them into what should be a definitive edition. Both Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos are late-game expansions with a suggested minimum level warning, and both are introduced to the player early in the adventure when they won’t be able to properly tackle them. Also, the main menu advertises each DLC pack as if they’re something that can be bought instead of something I already own due to having this version. This is a small issue, but I think it speaks volumes about just how slapped-together this package feels.

The most significant gameplay enhancement comes in the form of a new level cap of 99. With the DLC installed, the original Outer Worlds had a level cap of 36, which doesn’t sound like much, but was perfectly adequate for an RPG that isn’t very long by RPG standards. One can blast through the main quest in about fifteen hours, and doing all the sidequests and DLC may take up to 50-ish hours. I find this a selling point by the way, as The Outer Worlds doesn’t have a lot of fat, nor does it have many quests that come off as filler. In my playthrough, I completed the main quest, did a fair amount of side content including both DLCs, all companion quests, some of the faction quests, and my final level was 46.

While Spacer’s Choice does benefit from being able to level past 36, I don’t see a world in which it has enough meat to justify going to level 99, and any significant benefit to a level cap increase probably peters out around level 50-ish. In The Outer Worlds, the vast majority of XP earned comes completing quests, and there aren’t an overwhelming amount of those to begin with. I suppose someone could spend 40 hours grinding through enemies to get to level 99, but I have no idea why anyone would want to. Spacer’s Choice does nothing to actually change the way leveling up works, nor does it rebalance the late game to accommodate this new cap. This is a poorly-implemented “enhancement” that serves only to be a bullet point on the back of the box.

The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition retails for $59.99, and while the price is a bit eyebrow-raising, the original version has maintained its value on digital storefronts surprisingly well. As such, if Spacer’s Choice actually was a definitive version, I wouldn’t find the price so tasteless. What I do find tasteless is the “upgrade” path, where players who own the original and the DLC can fork over another $10 to play a version that is worse than what they have.

So, at the moment this release is an abject mess. It performs poorly, it’s not a good deal from a cost perspective, it’s actively worse than previously-released versions, the gameplay enhancements are superfluous at best, the first of presumably many patches released didn’t seem to do much, and it comes off as nothing more than a cash grab for a quality game that deserves better. The nicest thing I can say about it is that the load times are slightly improved, but that tiny boost doesn’t make up for what went wrong here.

With the modern ability to patch games, there’s a good chance this review might be rendered completely irrelevant within a few months — that’s one of the perils of writing something in an age where so many experiences are dramatically different months after release. My hope is that someday the Spacer’s Choice Edition will be a great version of The Outer Worlds, but that day ain’t today.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This version of the game was originally developed by Obsidian, ported by Virtuos, and published by Private Division (A subsidiary of 2K games). It is currently available on PC, PS5, and XBS/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PS5. Approximately 42 hours of play were devoted to the single-player modes. There are no multiplayer modes. This version of the game was completed.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M with descriptors for Strong Language, Intense Violence, and Blood and Gore. The official ESRB description is as follows: “This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of a colonist in a space colony. From a first-person perspective, players explore an open-world environment, interact with characters, complete mission objectives, and battle alien creatures. Players use blasters, machine guns, and shotguns to kill creatures and human enemies in frenetic combat; action is highlighted by slow-motion and blood-splatter effects. Players can also shoot and kill civilians, though this may negatively affect players’ progress. Some attacks result in decapitation and dismemberment of creatures; one area depicts a dismembered corpse amid a large bloodstained environment. Cutscenes depict additional acts of violence: a man shooting himself in the head; a character executed off-screen. The words “f**k,” “sh*t,” and “a*shole” are heard throughout the game.“

Colorblind Modes: According to Obsidian, the game was explicitly designed to be playable independent of color information. However, it has no colorblind modes selectable.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue, cinematics, and combat barks are reflected in text and visual interface elements. The standard text is rather small, but a slider in the menu allows for larger text for those that require it, however the color of the font is not modifiable. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable, though there are several presets to choose from. A controller layout is available in the options menu.

The post The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition (PS5) Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Gorgeous visuals. Likable characters.

LOW Buggy and glitchy. Inadequate save system. Too much backtracking.

WTF How did I fall through the map more than once?

I was trying to come up with a clever, catchy introduction to discuss my feelings about Xel from Tiny Roar, and I was really struggling.  It took me a while to realize why, and then I understood — I realized that I feel kind of like a parent. I’m not angry at Xel, just disappointed because it could be so much better if it had applied itself. 

Xel tells the story of an enigmatic stranger crash-landing on the eponymous space station hurtling through the cosmos.  Upon extracting herself  from her wrecked ship, the stranger (eventually accepting the name Reid) attempts to discover the secrets Xel  has to offer, including her identity and past. Reid is quirky and likable, full of pluck and determination, and quick with a quip.  The people she meets along the way are guardedly welcoming, but not everything in this space station is what it seems, and glitches in its systems mean the end could come sooner than anyone is ready for.

Players control Reid from an isometric perspective, with the camera at (about) a 45 degree angle.  Like many other action-RPGs, players guide Reid through a series of environmental puzzles, light platforming (jumping is automatic when Reid approaches a gap so long as she’s properly lined up with her landing point) and quick, realtime combat involving slashing lots of robots with a sword. 

As Reid progresses, she’s able to find additional gear and weaponry including a cool web-shooter-like device for traversing gaps, remote ECM mines to disable enemies, and a flamethrower to melt ice (and enemies).  The hack-and-slash combat is fast and contains a bit of strategy when players need to work out enemy weaknesses and patterns.

So far, all of this is right in my wheelhouse.  I love traversing beautiful open-world maps, finding stuff to do, and smashing lots of baddies.  Unfortunately, Xel suffers from many glitches that constantly destroy the experience.

Xel‘s station is huge, and there’s a lot to do.  However, item markers are broken, meaning they don’t consistently register that a loot chest has been opened. That means a lot of backtracking to locations only to find that I’ve already claimed the goodies before. 

Also, many items in the world require pixel-perfect positioning to successfully operate.  I’ve spent several minutes trying to lower a ladder or activate a switch because either the ‘activate’ icon won’t appear, or I’m not in the perfect position for the game to recognize that I’ve done it. 

This same finicky quality applies to enemy hitboxes as well.  With certain items it’s easy to miss an attack despite being certain I was lined up properly, and the lock-on feature didn’t seem to help. 

Furthermore, while Reid is able to dodge attacks and carries a handy shield to deflect ranged shots, she’s unable to dodge many boss attacks and shield capacity is connected to her stamina bar, limiting its usefulness.  In the beginning of Xel this is mitigated by plentiful health replenishing items, but as time goes on, Reid is left to craft her own medicine at poorly-spaced campsites. 

The camera is also too zoomed out and at a terrible fixed angle.  It’s easy to lose sight of items (and opponents) behind corners of buildings, trees, or other pieces of scenery, making combat more difficult, and item collection damn near impossible at times. 

The save system is troublesome.  It relies on a series of manually-activated checkpoints which are scattered about the map.  During the tutorial these are regular, but as Xel goes on and the map opens up, they become few and far between.  It’s quite possible to meet an untimely end and be forced to replay 30-60 minutes to regain lost progress — an unacceptable situation which happened to me more than once.

Then, there are the game-breaking bugs. 

After the tutorial, I met a friendly soul who offered to take me to a place of sanctuary.  Sadly, he disappeared along the way, although his dialogue played without missing a beat.  Later, after fighting a series of difficult enemies and solving a tricky water level/time travel puzzle, I somehow clipped through the game world and fell into an infinite void.  I couldn’t move, couldn’t reload a save and couldn’t even exit the game. This was at least an hour of lost progress, and it wasn’t the only time.

Xel tries to tell a compelling story about time travel, loss, anger, and consequences, but the game just isn’t in great shape. I want to see what Tiny Roar can achieve after they patch the daylights out of Xel, or perhaps what they do in their next project.  As it stands, though, Xel needs to think about what it’s done and learn from tis mistakes before it’s not grounded anymore.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Tiny Roar and published by Assemble Entertainment.  It is currently available on Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Fantasy Violence  and Language. This game features combat against robotic enemies, both fantastical and humanoid.  One of the enemies is an enormous spider-robot, which may be frightening.  The game depicts a violent suicide, which may be a trigger for some, despite the lack of gore.  The main character, Reid, frequently uses profanity, mostly involving some form of s##t.   This game is not recommended for children, despite the cartoonish characters and vibrancy of the colors.

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. Dialogue is subtitled, although there are a few ambient moments of dialogue not fully conveyed by the subtitles.  All audio cues have a visual component, but there are several occasions where an enemy is effectively invisible due to the fixed nature of the camera.  These enemies attack without being seen, although the audio cue still plays.  Therefore, this game is not fully accessible.

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

The post Xel Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

The subject of this installment: Phoenix Point: Behemoth Edition, developed and published by Snapshot Games.

XCOM is back! Only… it isn’t actually called XCOM now, it’s been reincarnated as Phoenix Point, developed by Snapshot Games and spearheaded by the co-creator of XCOM himself, Julian Gollop. So it’s probably in good hands, right?

Well… based on the current build we can say that Phoenix Point has issues. Big, dangling, hairy issues that can’t be tucked away neatly as if they were never there.

The storyline begins as a deadly pathogen known as the Pandoravirus creeps across the world and infects large swathes of humanity, who then lose their minds and trot off into the sea before mutating into vicious semi-aquatic monsters bent on destroying what’s left of civilization. Of course, the surviving humans don’t fancy facing annihilation, so the remaining factions splinter apart, each with the goal of stopping this new pandemic in their own way.

Anyone who’s played an XCOM at any point will recognize what’s on offer here. During combat there’s a tactical overhead viewpoint with the playable squad available to scoot around the environment while picking up resources, taking cover behind objects, and blasting the hell out of enemies ranging from deformed humanoid crab-things to poisonous worms and deadly fungi. There are a number of victory conditions, ranging from retrieving intel to killing all enemies, or sometimes it’s good enough to simply make it out alive.

Between missions players will access the Geoscape — a map of the world where team Phoenix can fly around the globe to visit points of interest, establish bases, conduct research, train soldiers, develop weapons and a few other things. Again, it’ll look extremely familiar to anyone who’s played an XCOM before.

At first glance, Phoenix Point looks fine. It clearly hasn’t had the same development budget that the recent XCOM titles have — it has to make do with stiffly-animated illustrations instead of slick rendered cutscenes, and during battle there aren’t any cool slow-motion moments when a squad member hurls themselves through the nearest window and starts blasting at nearby enemies, but it does the job, even if it’s with a little less panache. As an XCOM fan, I was pretty sure I’d enjoy my time with Phoenix Point.

I was wrong. Dead wrong. Why? In its current state Phoenix Point is buggy as all hell, to the point of being borderline unplayable.

The first inkling I had that something was wrong occurred while scooting around the geoscape and unlocking points of interest — nothing was happening as I uncovered them. I’d find abandoned bases and attempt to reactivate them, only to find them inexplicably unresponsive. I’d shrug my shoulders and move on to the next, where I’d also activate a whole lot of nothing. I’d find a mission area, attempt to deploy, and nope… nothing. 

Eventually I reloaded a save and was beset by a sudden deluge of all the queued-up events that should have triggered along the way as each node was uncovered. Worse, reloading hadn’t actually fixed the issue since uncovering new spots on the map still didn’t trigger the corresponding new events, so it became clear that this was going to continue throughout the campaign.

While this was the worst bug I encountered during the time I spent with Phoenix Point, it certainly wasn’t the only bug.

Tapping the confirmation button in menus sometimes results in it registering twice, which ruins the multiple choice dialogue options and skips past potentially important information. Buttons can randomly become unresponsive mid-battle, resulting in the inability to scope out different terrain heights or it may even become impossible to attack, requiring a checkpoint reload. All of these issues were a constant hindrance throughout, severely affecting my ability to enjoy what was on offer.

It’s not just me being unlucky, either — a quick glance on various forums cited issues ranging from UI quibbles to the game refusing to save after missions, or even hard crashing to the dashboard on a regular basis.

Now, I’m not hard to keep happy when it comes to gaming. I’ll take a janky and unpolished (but enjoyable!) title over a slickly produced, soulless waste of time any day. However, there are limits, and chief amongst them is ensuring that the game in question actually works on a basic level. It’s hard to ignore that Phoenix Point is constantly shitting the bed any time it needs to provide commonplace features such as ‘saving‘, ‘registering button clicks‘ or ‘progressing the goddamn story‘, and that’s exactly what’s happening here.

In the times when it’s working as intended, there does seem to be a competent, if unexciting, version of XCOM lurking within. Therefore, Phoenix Point has two fairly pressing issues – the core game is chock-full of bugs that will undoubtedly kill any enthusiasm within a few missions, and… Firaxis’ excellent XCOM reboots still exists.

On the plus side, Phoenix Point is currently available on Xbox Game Pass, so subscribers can dip in after each update to see if the bugs have been squashed. Potential purchasers, however, should stay far, far away until those fixes are implemented. It doesn’t matter how competent the game design is when the experience can barely be classed as finished and playable in its current state.

Note: The Xbox Series X version was tested for the purposes of this article.

The post This Is Not A Review: Phoenix Point Behemoth Edition appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The game mostly works!

LOW It mostly works.

WTF Sure, don’t explain what those meters do until the end of the game.

Here at GameCritics we often get games that are given to us in an unfinished state and too broken to review, and at that point we normally reach out to the publisher or developer and let them know the review is put on hold, sometimes indefinitely.

Element Space was one of these wobbly titles that slipped off the radar, but I recently saw it coming up in Xbox sales, which suggested to me that the devs were happy enough with the current state of the game. I thought it might be time to revisit to see how it’s come along.

Element Space is an ambitious attempt to fuse the turn-based gameplay of X-Com with the space opera narrative of Mass Effect. This involves a lot of tactical squad combat with players using special abilities like grappling hooks, fire punches or enemy possession to overcome superior odds.

Between fights the player, as Captain Pietham, talks with their crew mates and upgrades their gear. Conversations will have multiple outcomes with the player leaning in one of four political directions. This, in turn, influences one of many galactic civilizations and may increase the loyalty level of that teammate.

Initially, loyalty just unlocks an extra perk, but Element Space reveals near the end of the game that these are narratively important too. As for that narrative, Captain Pietham is framed for treason by a mysterious group called Tempest who are trying to take over the galaxy. It’s down to Pietham to save everyone.

Now, I am going to say that the version of Element Space I finished this year is leaps and bounds improved from what I tried to review last year. Previously, I couldn’t finish the first major mission due to crippling bugs and an incredibly difficult fight that never explained how to manage the flow of combat. The good news is that the crippling bugs are now reduced.

The intro explains abilities, overwatches, and other elements common to turn-based tactics but fails to explain that it needs to be played much more aggressively than the traditional manner. Normal tactics are generally a case of laying down suppressing fire and teasing enemies into crossfires. In this case, most enemies can withstand one hit easily and will actively run away, using their superior numbers to take a few casualties and rip the player’s crew to shreds.

It doesn’t help that the first big story mission ends on an encounter that has a turn timer with instant-fail result on expiration. If the player fails twice on normal difficulty, then the whole mission has to be done again. It’s a horribly punishing experience that a masochist like me had take up as a challenge, but I imagine most others will give up at that point.

The issues don’t stop there. The claustrophobic camera doesn’t allow a full and clear view of the battlefield. The camera twists out of the way to make it hard to see and highlight enemies, and this failure of basic interface makes it tough to figure out whether I can make a shot or run to a waypoint without using up all my turns.

The politics and crew dynamics are interesting ideas, as is the fact that it doesn’t seem to be possible to recruit everyone in a single playthrough. The problem is that Element Space does a poor job of communicating this. I also think that there were missions I should have done to improve relations with certain factions and choices that I could have made, but I’m not sure what they were.

With these limits on the narrative Element Space is a title that begs to be replayed for different outcomes, but at around 15-20 hours for a single playthrough, and with the slow pace of the turn-based missions, there was no way I could be compelled to go through it more than once.

All of these issues are on top of the still-present bugs and glitches, and there are a lot — crashes, hard locks, incorrect information resulting in my characters shooting walls, character deaths making the whole screen blurry until the end of a mission, and more. If I focused just on these problems, this entire review could be a laundry list documenting the failings. Rather than wasting my word count on that, I think it is safe to just say the game is still really broken.      

Element Space is a fusion of two good ideas, utterly debilitated by poor pacing, an awful interface, game-breaking bugs, a brutal difficulty level, and mystifying metagame. Avoid it at all costs.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sixth Vowel and published by Blowfish Studios. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBO and XBX. Approximately 18 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Violence and Language. All of the combat is violent with people being shot or decked at close range, and in some cases cut apart by swords. There is no real gore, and no major swear words.

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. No audio cues are needed for play as this is a turn-based title. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. There is no screenshot for the controls. The Left Stick controls the cursor, the Right Stick controls the camera, Left and Right Triggers scroll through menu options and special abilities, the A Button confirms actions, the B Button cancels these, X and Y Buttons are used in a few menus for contextual options and Left and and Right on the D-Pad are used once in a sub-menu.

The post Element Space Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The world design is excessively vertical and clearly built for flying.

LOW Literally every second spent not flying.

WTF Are empty, buggy releases like this really the norm now?

Well, it happened again — another RPG loot-shooter promised to fulfill my desire to mindlessly blast enemies in a beautiful environment on a daily basis, and once again, it fell flat on its face.

In the world of Anthem, players act as guns for hire called freelancers. Once a noble group known for suiting up in “Javelin” mechs and defending humanity from the chaotic, enigmatic power of the Anthem, a cosmic-world creating force used by “The Creators,” freelancers lost favor in the public eye following a cataclysmic disaster. More on the story later, but let’s put it aside for now.

After selecting one of a few preset faces they’ll never see again, players are thrown into this disaster as a tutorial and it’s a pretty strong hook. The character and world are stunning to see in motion, but more importantly, I got my first taste of third-person flying in a javelin. These opening hours had me stoked to see where Anthem went.

It’s a damn shame then that Anthem’s beauty and flight are all it has going for it. Time spent on the ground means being bombarded by incessant loading screens and bugs, and feeling disappointed with boring loot, a one-note story and repetitive missions.

There are four playable javelins — the jack-of-all-trades Ranger, the zippy melee Interceptor, the mage-like Storm, and the tanky colossus. All play differently enough with a handful of interchangeable pieces of gear that provide abilities like grenades, melee strikes and area-of-effect attacks, but this brings me to my first handful of complaints.

Since this is a loot-shooter where dropped gear should be exciting and give players a way to distinguish themselves from one another, Anthem fails hard in this core aspect. In this genre, cosmetics are key, but in Anthem, the biggest changes players can make to their Javelins are in regards to their paint jobs. All cosmetic changes to armor, excluding paint jobs, must be purchased from the in-game store which only features a handful of items renewed every two days and cost an obscene amount of in-game currency. For those who don’t want to grind that much? They can be had for real-money microtransactions at about $5-$10 for a complete set.

Mechanics are just as important in loot-shooters, though, and after just a few hours, players will have seen almost everything since there are only around three guns of each type (three assault rifles, three shotguns, and so on) and even in the endgame when I was getting hyped-up “Masterwork” items, they looked and handled exactly the same as the ones I picked up more than twenty hours prior, the only difference being stronger random stat boosts. The same goes for grenades, missiles and elemental attacks with new numbers. abilities. My final, most efficient builds were almost identical to the starting ones, just with bigger numbers.

Beyond that, there’s no way to reroll stat boosts and numbers on any gear. I would often find a shotgun, for example, with decent damage that would have something like a 10% boost to sniper ammo and -5% to shotgun damage, making the thing effectively useless. There don’t seem to be any restrictions on what stat boosts are modified on weapons or gear, and not having the ability to tweak these numbers when finding endgame weapons is miserable. It takes hours and hours to grind the resources to craft or a drop of the only gear in Anthem that players are told matters, and when players get a bad set of stats, they just have to live with it or go try to grind out another one. This awful situation is made worse by the fact that the needed gear and resources are only available in missions called strongholds that must be repeated ad nauseum once they’ve beaten the bland 18-ish hour campaign.

Where Anthem’s #1 competitor Destiny has countless strikes, raids, PvP and variations of each to play after the story, Anthem only has three strongholds. Two of these strongholds are just repeated story missions, and while the third features a new area, it concludes with a repeated boss fight that’s only different in the sense that it now has a shield.

They all feature the same tedious mission design as the rest of the campaign, as well — fly to point A, shoot bad guys on the way, stand in a circle at point A, shoot bad guys while standing in the circle, fly to point B and repeat. Not only does this get old due to sheer repetition, it’s unengaging from the start. Some of the best moments in Anthem are had by flying around with a melee build, but when confined to a circle, close-range attacks can’t be used unless the whole squad feels like waiting for enemies to come to them. This limits the action to gunplay, which here is passable at best and boring at worst.

Putting all issues with design aside, the biggest problems in Anthem are the loading screens and bugs.

Anyone playing Anthem should probably prep a good mobile game or workout routine to occupy the time spent waiting. Everything players do seems to be met with a loading screen commonly longer than a minute, and each mission requires at least six loading screens. Getting into the hub world, entering the loadout screen, getting to mission select, entering actual gameplay, the end mission screen, and loading back into the hub world all bring an extended halt to play.

And the bugs! On top of all the waiting, Anthem is host to never-ending stability issues like getting booted off the server, losing all audio, and constantly being teleported to a restrictive mission area if teammates go too far ahead. Is this supposed to be gameplay? It feels more like punishment.

Getting back to the story that I put on hold at the beginning of this review, frankly I almost forgot about it. There are a handful of characters with a hint of personality, like Owen, the main character’s oracle/mission director, but none of them have anything worth saying.  The mystery of the Anthem’s power is never explained, and the central villain is shown in (maybe) three cutscenes total before players get to the final fight. Such an absent antagonist utterly fails to motivate progress.

This lack of focus and motivation in the story makes it especially difficult to muscle through Anthem’s mid-game wall of filler. Around ten hours in, I was met with four sets of trials to prove I was worthy to enter some tombs. These trials each had four challenges within them like “open 15 chests” and “defeat 50 enemies with your ultimate ability,” which led to an extra four hours of absolutely meaningless gameplay. After completion, was I met with a new dungeon, a boss fight, or some worthwhile loot? Nope, just dialogue boxes saying that I could now continue playing the story.

I can confidently say that I wouldn’t have completed Anthem if I didn’t need to write this review. No amount of pretty environments or impressive flight can make up for the sorry, incomplete state this game was released in, and given the flimsy foundation BioWare has laid here, I’m not confident in Anthem’s ability to survive as a loot-based co-op service. Until there’s more content, variation, and stability, players  should definitely steer clear of this one.

Disclosures: This game is developed by BioWare and published by EA. It is currently available on PC, XBO, and PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 25 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes and the game was completed.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Alcohol Reference, Language, Use of Tobacco, Violence, and Mild Blood. Some of the enemies are humans, but for the vast majority of the game, players will be gunning down and zapping bugs and alien humanoids. The only other flag I could see might be the occasional swear word, but it’s nothing alarming or grotesque, just exclamatory.

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

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Anthem without sound makes the mess of it all even worse. Subtitles zoom by pretty quickly which makes it difficult to pick up dialogue over combat, but they are a good, readable (and adjustable!) size. There is closed captioning for some things like [worried screaming] and [panting] but they seem random. Gameplay-wise there is an indicator on the compass for enemies out of players’ line of sight, but they are EXTREMELY small and easily get lost when there are an ungodly amount of particle effects and abilities being used onscreen. 

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

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