In this episode, Brad covers:
Citizen Sleeper 2 (SCORED REVIEW)
Pacific Drive
Saborus
Demonschool
Skate Story
Morsels
Night Swarm… and more!

You can also hear the show on iTunes

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post So Videogames Episode 466: Citizen Sleeper 2, Pacific Drive, Saborus, Demonschool, Skate Story, Morsels, Night Swarm appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Ricocheting through the last 20% of “Weave” with sparks flying en route to a record time.

LOW The overly technical and slow “Palm” track.

WTF It is insanely goofy that the sharpest turns are the easiest.

The simplest kind of racing comes in the form of the slot car. There’s no drafting, no steering, no brakes — just a grooved track and a way to go faster. Little Laps leans into this simplicity. There’s no story, no characters, and little customization, just 18 tracks (all accessible immediately) and 15 cars (unlocked by getting achievements) run by two buttons, one to go faster and the other to restart.

Most of those tracks are attractive, if somewhat lacking in background detail. The colors occasionally grate on the eyes, however, especially in the track labeled “Night”. The various cars amount to being just skins, as there are no differences in handling — it’s a slot racer — or acceleration, which is universally sluggish.

The key quirk of Little Laps is that velocity entering the curve doesn’t matter. As my parents know well, a slot car will take off into the air if it hits a hairpin too fast, but in Little Laps any curve can be passed safely as long as the accelerator isn’t touched while the car is turning.

An amusing consequence of this feature is that it inverts expectations about handling. Gentler curves become dangerous places where it’s easy to keep the accelerator down a fraction of a second too long. Hairpins become prime opportunities to gain speed, since they can tolerate the pedal hitting the metal almost up to the last instant.

When this gets going it looks great. Cars throw off sparks as they drift through absurdly sharp corners and weave automatically through wild S-curves with their tires squealing. An available “best time” shadow provided a yardstick against my own performance and global leaderboards let me see my progress against other gamers.

I enjoyed playing Little Laps in small bites, and it’s well-suited to the rhythm of making a few quick attempts at a record time, possibly shaving a few tenths of a second off this lap. In case of a wipeout, I can just hit the reset button and get right back in it.

Or, that’s what one would hope.

The sluggish acceleration rate has another consequence, in that the key to a record lap is entering it with momentum. The first lap, starting from a dead stop, will never produce a record time after the first attempt. As I continued to optimize play, I sometimes found that I needed a second lap to get up enough entry speed to have a chance at a record.

This means that a player isn’t really right back in the action after a wreck. Each restart entails a sluggish first lap before there’s any chance at improving time. Sometimes that lap helped me calm down after a stupid mistake, but mostly it felt like a waste.

Worse, that slow initial run doesn’t offer the opportunity to learn anything about timing acceleration for record-lap tries. As I played, I often noticed myself being more conservative than was reasonable (even when I was trying for a record) simply because I wanted to avoid those wasted laps.

That dead start ends up being a real drag on the whole experience, which is a shame. Little Laps is a charming and zippy single-button racer, but in a stripped-down, minimalist experience everything has to be just right and here a major element isn’t.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Conradical Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on a home built Windows 11 PC with a single GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card, a Ryzen 7 processor, and 64 GB of RAM. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There is no multiplayer mode.

Parents: As of press time this game has not been rated by the ESRB. It contains nothing worse than a car flying off a racetrack (with no visible wreck damage) and should logically be rated E.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game has no dialogue or story text. I found that the sound of tire squeals was helpful in judging when to let go of the accelerator, and accordingly found it somewhat more difficult to improve my times when I turned off sound.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. By default the space bar serves as the accelerator and R resets the race. Menus require the mouse. On an Xbox controller the A button is the accelerator and Y resets. Note: I found that when using a controller to move through the menus the cursor sometimes got “lost” and I had to back out with the B button.

The post Little Laps Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH An extremely satisfying gameplay loop.

LOW It’s not very obvious on how to “win” a run.

WTF Body horror… in my roguelite?

We’ve done it, folks. We’ve made a slot-machine roguelite. I think we can pack it up for the rest of time because we’ve made the single most addicting videogame known to man.

In all honesty, CloverPit somehow works as a videogame on a level that I didn’t know was possible. Instead of sticking to a source material’s roots and then adding endless customization like poker in Balatro, or weaving in story to build a larger world as seen in Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, CloverPit takes slot machines in a more horrifying direction.

Here, the player is trapped in the “CloverPit,” a 5×5 box of a room with a slot machine, a coin depository, an item shop, and not much else. It’s here where the player must play a slot machine and deposit enough coins by each deadline, or else risk the floor opening up and falling to their death. There are ways to rig the machine and items to save the player in times of distress, but ultimately, they’re at the mercy of Lady Luck.

So much of what makes a videogame great is atmosphere, but atmosphere isn’t limited to just music or the art direction. It’s ultimately a collection of small choices that make the experience enjoyable or memorable — sound effects, lighting, and small programming quirks. 

CloverPit has all of these and more. It’s filled with a kind of alchemy that I can barely explain in words, but it has that special sauce where every mechanic is designed to to keep people playing for as long as they can. Each set of spins sounds off with a garbled, electronic announcer saying “Let’s go gambling!” followed by satisfying sounds whenever the machine scores a pattern, and dissatisfying ones whenever they come up short. 

…But the horror is where CloverPit starts to get interesting.

See, the player is “promised” a way out of the pit if they score enough points on the slot machine – but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Each time they pass a scoring threshold, they’re forced to play again but just reach a higher point total. Eventually, they’re asked to get enough points to unlock a key that seems like a way out, but…

These evil undertones are even more exaggerated by CloverPit‘s dark, hard polygonal art style – which actually did make me feel like I was trapped in a pit with no escape. I felt compelled to play the slots, not just to beat the game, but to get the hell out of the pit. 

Unlike similar roguelites such as Balatro, it’s not obvious how to build a winning run in CloverPit. A slot machine seems like the most luck-of-the-draw machine out there, but CloverPit teaches the player how to win through various trials by fire. Since each round is a gamble, the player had better capitalize on every opportunity by knowing what they want to get out of it.

Each round starts with a choice — spin three times and get two tickets to buy items, or spin seven times and only get one ticket. Rounds pass with more and more choices, where players need to balance keeping enough coins to pass a deadline against buying items that will ultimately increase that coin total. Sometimes a spin will produce enough coins to pass a deadline early, granting the player an extra bonus of coins and tickets to splurge in the item shop. Yet maybe passing that deadline early isn’t the best idea – maybe they want to keep spinning in order to to bank coins for future rounds if they find their winning strategy is petering out. 

This decision-making in CloverPit feels also more weighty than other roguelikes because of the chances that I would be stopped in my tracks due to bad luck. Many runs become dead-on-arrival if the player doesn’t get items that either increase the score from each successful spin, or items that rig the slot machine to make certain symbols appear more often — and don’t forget about the chance to spin a 666, which causes the player to lose all money earned in that round! 

…But when I put things together correctly, avoided the 666 and I did win – ooh boy, that was the best feeling ever.

I haven’t even scratched the surface of what the slot machine has to offer in terms of winning strategies or clever tricks, as there are countless items to unlock, game modifiers to equip, and just more to play. In a decade where certain titles toe the line between gambling and games, CloverPit performs that dance beautifully and produces an unforgettable roguelite experience as a result — it’s a delight, and one of the most delightfully frustrating things I’ve played this year. 

Score: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Panik Arcade and published by Future Friends Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PC. Approximately 6 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 T for Teen on the ESRB. The game does have a small amount of gore and blood. Players must equip bloody human bones to get past certain portions of the game and there is blood lining the shelves within the cell the main character is trapped in.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game’s story is text-only but the subtitles cannot be resized. The game is not fully accessible. There are no audio cues needed for successful play.\

Remappable Controls: CloverPit is mouse and keyboard only, and there are a few different layouts for keyboards included beyond QWERTY. There are no remap options besides those.

The post CloverPit Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH First character maker in a Sonic game? Sweet!

LOW The level design, story, and gameplay are shockingly underwhelming.

WTF Avatars can wear a hat that says “Gamer”.

Sonic Forces has many interesting gameplay ideas and a dynamic character creation feature in this visually stylish package, but is constantly held back by a lack of creative level design, a lack of polish in its controls, and a story that fails to engage.

Shockingly, Dr. Eggman has defeated and imprisoned Sonic with his new mysteriously masked jackal comrade, Infinite, who bends reality using the Phantom Ruby. Now, with Eggman’s tyranny throwing the world into an apocalyptic state, a resistance team of Sonic’s friends must rescue our hero and save the world, with help from a Classic Sonic from another dimension and a rookie soldier — the Custom Avatar.

While this seems like a more mature premise than Sonic usually offers, the storytelling jarringly flip-flops between upbeat and serious, with tone-killing one-liners making things even worse. This incoherence shows that the story doesn’t know how to make players feel about the characters and story.

Additionally, many potentially interesting and dramatic plot points feel underdeveloped, and Infinite, the new enemy, lacks character development and any interesting use of his powers – are they real or just an illusion? It seems like even the writers don’t know the answer. In terms of play, Sonic Forces combines mechanics from previous entries – Modern Sonic’s fast-paced 3D “boost formula” and Classic Sonic’s 2D side-scrolling with the addition of Sonic Mania’s Drop Dash.

All of these elements are easy to pick up, and it can be entertaining to speed through stages while destroying hordes of enemies. Unfortunately, it all feels too simplistic too soon, making the gameplay loop feel repetitive.

Offering some variety, the Custom Avatar character wields “wispons” — weapons containing the superpowered aliens from Sonic Colors, which have various special attacks and powers. Occasionally, the Custom Avatar even teams up with Sonic in tag team stages.

Creating a character is a cute novelty with hundreds of pieces of clothing to be unlocked and seven species options, each with their own benefits (the bird species has a double jump, and so forth). Each Wispon has its own strengths and weaknesses, as well. A favorite was gaining insane speed from the Drill Wispon after mashing the trigger button.

Unfortunately, no matter what character the player chooses, the controls feel noticeably stiff, the running buildup too quick, and the jump too floaty – it all feels rushed and lacks the momentum and fluidity that made the classic 2D games rewarding to master. The stages, while linear, have some interesting obstacles – things like platforms that zoom forward when landing on them. A few even have alternate pathways, encouraging replayability with different Wispons that can aid in saving time or rewarding players with
hidden Red Star Rings.

But yet, it’s another mixed bag!

Most levels are much too short and don’t space out obstacles well. Excessive automated sequences remove player control and agency, and the potential of 3D gameplay is undercut in favor of basic, blocky 2D sections. Despite having 30 main stages, the the experience feel short-lived and repetitive. A smaller number of longer, more developed stages with fully fleshed-out mechanics would be a vast improvement. Visually, Sonic Forces again lurches one way, and then the other. The graphics and art style blend both cartoony and realistic, and the slick animations are a feast for the eyes while embodying Sonic’s cool, fast, and stylish qualities.

On the other hand, the animation during cutscenes gives characters wooden expressions and static movement, which is off-putting and immediately disengaged me from any potential drama. There’s also been a decent effort made to convey the world’s apocalyptic state through its original levels, with giant Death Egg Robots tearing up the city in Sunset Heights and flames burning around Luminous Forest. I wish the whole adventure was as original as these bits though, instead of otherwise mostly reusing past levels to pander for nostalgia — if Green Hill Zone is absolutely required as a level, it could have at least been altered to fit with the rest of the world in turmoil.

Overall, Sonic Forces’ potential for interesting storytelling, gameplay and level design are undercut by a lack of length, depth, and polish. Younger or casual players may enjoy Forces’ simplicity, but die-hard Sonic fans are better off playing Sonic Generations or Mania instead.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10

— Thomas Greeney

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sonic Team and Hardlight Studios and published
by Sega. It is currently available on PS4, XBO, Switch and PC. This copy was purchased as a
paid download and reviewed on PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were
devoted to the single-player mode and the game was completed. An extra 3 hours were spent
on the side content, from a total of 7 hours of gameplay to review the title. There are no
multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Fantasy Violence.
According to the site: Sonic Forces is an adventure platformer in which players help Sonic
and his friend defeat Dr. Eggman and his evil plans. As players speed through different
landscapes, they collect items (e.g., gold rings), avoid hazards, and use spin attacks to defeat
robotic foes and bosses. Players can also use a created character to fire grappling hooks and
other cartoony weapons (e.g., fire blasters, electric whip) to defeat enemies. During some boss encounters, players can perform close-up finishing blows that knock opponents out in dramatic fashion.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: Sonic Forces offers subtitles for cutscenes and
gameplay, and there are hints players can read. Text cannot be resized or altered. Other visual
elements will guide players through levels like button prompts and markers to indicate
enemies. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, Sonic Forces offers fully remappable controls.

The post Sonic Forces Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In this episode, Carlos Rodela returns to discuss a wide array of stuff, including but not limited to:

-Trails in the Sky: First Chapter
-Sektori
-Soulframe
-Meg’s Monster
-Octopath Traveler 0
-Citizen Sleeper 2

…And more!

You can also hear the show on iTunes

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post So Videogames Episode 465 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The atmosphere is top tier.

LOW Repetition and recycled content.

WTF …Happened to my save file?

Like every games writer approaching the end of the year, I’ve started to compile a list of my top 10 games of 2025 in an effort to appease the algorithmic gods that give this writing hobby of mine some semblance of meaning. As someone who is less constrained by the new release schedule than many, I like to focus on my top 10 experiences regardless of release date, so I don’t have to overlook any titles that impressed me. With that being said, here’s a sneak preview:

Pacific Drive is likely going to take the gold.

Loading into the original title, I expected a narrative heavy driving adventure. What I experienced was an extraction-based survival challenge with a large splash of SCP and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The player’s time is divided between maintaining their car’s condition by avoiding dangers in an anomaly-filled forest and looting every resource they can find in order to upgrade the car for even deeper ventures into a mysterious place called The Zone. I’m not a car guy, but I loved every second of my time exploring and learning about how the world worked, and by the time I was set to leave my garage for the final time, I had an appreciation for a game that tried something different and nailed the atmosphere it was going for.

With the recent release of the “Whispers in the Woods” expansion, I took the opportunity to grab my car keys and hit the road for another journey… and I have thoughts.

As an overview, the DLC adds an 8–12 hour side story campaign to the main title alongside new anomalies, new mechanics and a fully voice-acted narrative. The original mix of cozy and unnerving from Pacific Drive‘s initial release has been replaced with a spookier, more sinister tone as we learn more and more about a fanatical cult operating within The Zone. 

For players who read “Pacific Drive but spookier” and are already sold, then feel free to stop reading here. For everyone else, I can happily report the atmosphere in Whispers in the Woods has been amped up and the visuals continue to look phenomenal. However, there were a few bumps in the road… I was initially taken with the DLC, but as I started to settle into the new, poorly-explained gameplay loop, cracks started to appear.

There are two new main systems to contend with. Instead of collecting energy to form an exit gateway as in the original Pacific Drive, the player now needs to collect a certain number of “artifacts” that will be sacrificed at an altar to open an escape route. These artifacts each have their own quirk that will apply to the player and their car, with the effects ranging from good to ‘get rid of this thing as fast as possible’. I do like the fact that the player can no longer tell where the level exit will appear. Previously the escape could be trivialized by plotting a clear route, now the player needs to adapt on the fly, leading to far tenser rides.

Secondly, holding on to too many artifacts will gradually increase The Whispering Tide. If it maxes out “they” will begin hunting the player across the map, I will not be elaborating further because that’s part of the experience, but thankfully, this aspect can be offset this by equipping the remnant with attuned parts which will help hide the player’s presence from “them”.

In theory these are both fine systems, leading to more varied escapes and encouraging veteran players to update their car. Sadly, these new attuned parts are just glowing versions of existing parts, so I was forced to unlock everything again, minus the joy of discovery and added frustration because they are harder to repair. While different artifacts do have slightly different impact levels, the player almost always has the ability to choose either a positive one or an ignorable negative effect. This leads to the gameplay loop feeling very similar to the original Pacific Drive — simply collect enough circular energy sources to escape through a portal.

This repetition is not helped by the story missions being essentially the same task repeated seven times. Go to a new area and find an audio file, listen to it to unlock a trial with a special gameplay condition, complete the trial to unlock a new area, and repeat. The areas each have their own quirks and the trials often come with substantial restrictions, but I was left wanting when it came to the diversity I had hoped for from an expansion. The new anomalies are interesting but I had encountered the majority within a few hours of play and none caused me to change my approach to the maps, which are still heavily filled with well-known anomalies.

When it comes to the actual narrative, I prefer the story of the main game. However, I do want to acknowledge that the DLC offers strong voice performances to accompany the player throughout their journey. I was a disappointed to see there was less environmental storytelling than the first go-round and that it was almost all contained to audio logs, but the characters are at least interesting. For newer players, the story is completely separate from that of the original Pacific Drive, so players can drop in and out without concerns of spoilers.

I wanted to be able to write this review and profess my love for Whispers In The Woods as a reason to revisit one of my favorite titles of the past few years, but it left me wanting. On paper it’s more Pacific Drive with a Halloween skin, but I wanted more from an expansion. If it had been marketed as a smaller ‘trials’ pack my expectations might have been more in line with the actual experience.

There is clear care put into this expansion and it’s easy to see the vision Ironwood Studios had, it just didn’t land with me. However, I do hope they continue trying to experiment because I would love this studio to create a new experience as much as I love the original Pacific Drive.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

— Adam Sharman

Buy Pacific Drive: Whispers In the Woods — PC — PS — XB

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ironwood Studios and published by Kepler Interactive. It is currently available on PC, PS5 and XBX/S. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 9 hours of play were devoted to the expansion, on top of 32 hours in the main game, and the game was completed. There is currently no multiplayer option.

Parents: The game has an ESRB rating of T due to Fantasy Violence and Language. Pacific Drive can be very unnerving when the player is unaware of the world around them and the expansion has a horror theme including ghastly enemies that can ‘charge’ the player as a mild jump scare, although their threat level is minimal. The visuals and soundtrack of the expansion further play into this horror element but no violence is shown to the player character.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes alongside a host of accessibility features.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game has subtitles for all dialogue, which is the sole way the story is conveyed. No audio is essential for gameplay and the subtitles cannot be tweaked beyond on/off. While some anomalies have audio cues, these are all accompanied by some level of visual cue. It can be helpful to hear certain anomalies without looking, but this has minimal gameplay effect. The car can develop quirks which include the horn being honked as an effect, which may be more difficult to identify for players with hearing difficulty, but this is a rare occurrence and there are ways to identify the quirk without hearing the sound.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls on both keyboard and controller.

The post Pacific Drive: Whispers In The Woods Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Nuking the dragon with an array of archers before it torched anything.

LOW Wounded swordsmen taking space in my army without ever returning to action.

WTF This is obviously a fantasy world, yet there are no fantasy buildings or units?

The past decade has seen a flood of creative city-builders setting a new standard for the genre. It’s unfair, of course, to expect every indie team to turn out a Frostpunk or The Wandering Village, but the bar has been raised. That means some reasonably competent titles that don’t stand out will be forgotten, and unfortunately, that’s the fate I expect to befall Becastled.

Becastled is a phased-combat city-building game. The player’s forces can only build, recruit units, and gather resources during the day. Every night, “Lunar” enemies attack from a nearby spawn point and follow predictable paths. On each fifth night, a more powerful force attacks. At the edges of the map are a few towers that, when destroyed, provoke a more powerful attack featuring a boss. Destroying all of these towers grants victory.

There’s no campaign to speak of – the closest thing Becastled offers is a series of tutorials – and the meat of the experience is the freeplay mode described above. There’s also a sandbox mode that feels somewhat pointless, as it removes the core resource management aspect of play. A limited map editor is also available. For purposes of this review I tested the sandbox mode, made a few maps, completed the tutorial, and played five full rounds of varying difficulty in freeplay (each of which ran 2-4 hours).

Becastled’s maps are made of irregular polygons of territory, each of which can have a resource and trees, and one curious feature about these resources is that they don’t really deplete. Even on higher difficulties I never had a mineral or food resource run out. Except in the winter season, forests regenerate completely every day. This bounty eliminates the typical progression of city-builders, and among other things, it leads to oddities in city planning like massive stone walls that completely enclose a forest. Another curiosity is that the world of Becastled is clearly one that’s full of magic – the game’s “Lunar” enemies include a golem, a dragon, and a necromancer – but the player can’t create a building or unit that has any obvious magic capability — the closest one can get is an herbalist.

That herbalist building is not initially available, and must be researched on the rudimentary tech tree, which is only about two steps deep on average. Researching new techs is instantaneous and requires only that the player spend resources, primarily wood. This points to a significant resource imbalance in Becastled, as the need for wood is awfully steep since it’s needed to create every early building and also research every tech to get additional resources. Even obtaining the ability to trade other goods for wood requires 2000 units of wood in research, not counting what’s needed to recruit and sustain manpower and gather gold.

The lack of any other resource can be worked around, but if the player spawns in a map with no wood next to the initial position, they might as well restart. Strangely, the bare-bones map editor has no method for adjusting the position or density of forests, so even when creating a specific optimized world, one is utterly dependent on the RNG to get enough wood in the early game to survive.

I also noticed that units sometimes had trouble getting where they needed to go, or that they would make strange movements. This was most notable with the military units — archers would sometimes teleport outside of walls and troops would sometimes get trapped by a cluster of their comrades. Workers would also sometimes get stuck on terrain or be mysteriously unable to reach their work sites, even when nothing had changed from the previous day. Also, walls laid out near lakes would sometimes simply not get built.

During my time with Becastled, I noticed it being patched almost daily, yet each patch seemed to make pathfinding worse. The last time I played, military units would regularly fail to move at all when I clicked on a destination, and numerous workers failed to reach their work sites every day. This leaves me with some doubt that the pathfinding problems will be addressed.

While those are serious shortcomings, the fundamental problem with Becastled doesn’t really lie in its systems — the key issue is that there’s just no hook here. There’s no unique resource, no unusual mechanics, and no unexpected interplay between units or buildings. There’s not even anything approaching a graphical twist. Becastled is simplistic and straightforward to the point of being generic, and the magic that’s missing from the player’s build menu is also absent from the experience as a whole.

Becastled is certainly a game a person could spend hours playing, but in a genre crowded with unique and fascinating takes on the concept, I can’t think of a reason why one should put time into a title with so many annoyances and so little to recommend it.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Mana Potion Studios and published by Mana Potion Studios and Pingle Studios. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, Switch, and XBO/X/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on a home-built Windows 11 PC equipped with a single GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card (driver 581.80), a Ryzen 7 processor, and 64 GB of RAM. Approximately 15 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed (as described above). There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10 and contains Fantasy Violence. The violence is totally bloodless, just little guys falling over. If it can hold their interest, this is an all-ages joint.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: During main play there is no dialogue. In tutorials, dialogue is accompanied by text boxes (not true subtitles, example of text below) that cannot be resized. There is narration in the opening movie but no subtitles. During play there are no essential audio cues. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: On PC, this game offers partially remappable controls. Keyboard and mouse bindings can be changed, but it is not clear whether controller mapping can be changed (indeed I couldn’t find a page that even had the mapping on it). In KBM mode panning and rotating the map is primarily on the keyboard while the mouse is primarily for zooming. While hotkeys to perform a few functions on selected buildings are available, most selection and other functions uses clicking and dragging of the mouse. I found the game awkward to play with a controller. The left stick controls cursor movement (sluggishly) and the right stick adjusts the view. Buttons are used to select but once a building is selected the D-pad must be used to enter its menu and assign workers (using the face buttons).

The post Becastled Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In this episode, Brad gives a peek behind the GOTY curtain by going through the BIG list of titles that are in the running for 2025’s top ten!

You can also hear the show on iTunes

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post So Videogames Episode 464: PRE-GOTY appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

This late-landing episode is a solo joint with Brad covering:

Instruments of Destruction
Ultimate Zombie Defense
Clover Pit
Full Metal Schoolgirl
Blood West
Silly Polly Beast – Scored Review !
Dispatch – Scored Review !

…And more!

You can also hear the show on iTunes

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post So Videogames Episode 463 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Tutorials that help me get better at Lumines.

LOW Visual overload can make it hard to focus.

WTF How is the soundtrack this good?

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone, Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

I haven’t played a lot of Lumines, historically.

The remastered version from 2018 was my first intro to the series, and honestly… well, I didn’t really enjoy that first pass at it. It felt too loud, both audio and visually, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the horizontal puzzle style. Knowing that the people behind Tetris Effect were also behind Lumines, though, I wanted to give it another shot and see if this new entry was a better way to get into this franchise.

Mea culpa, Lumines — I was wrong about you. (At least in some ways.)

Lumines: Arise is a block dropping puzzle in conversation with Tetris, but rather than the classic tetrominos filling horizontal lines, it instead focuses on asking the player to create 2×2 blocks anywhere on a horizontal plane. Blocks drop from the top of the screen, and players need to move them around in order to create 2×2, 3×3, or larger, in order to score points. A “timeline” moves across the screen and erases any complete blocks it comes across, clearing more room for players to create more blocks, and so on. There is also a rare “chain block” that will allow all linked blocks of the same color to be erased from the timeline, even if they’re not in the shape of a square.

The big mechanical addition to this version is “burst”.

As players create blocks, a meter will fill at the top of the playfield. At any point, players will be able to activate the burst, which then stops blocks from falling for a few moments. If players can create a block during this burst period, it will cause blocks of the opposite color to fly above the screen. Players can continue and make more fly up. All of those blocks come rushing back down once the burst is over, then creating a large chunk of squares to combo with.

Gameplay is broken up into a couple of modes for Arise.

Journey takes players through sets of stages (four or five, normally) with increasing difficulty as things progress. Playlist mode allows players to combine their favorite stages together in a custom order to play, or just to watch if they want to take in the visuals and music. Lastly, there’s multiplayer, which consists of some solo leaderboard competition or battle modes.

I also will shout out the tutorials specifically as Arise tailors them to new players and gives small missions that make it easy to understand and learn not only how to play, but also how to grasp more advanced techniques. These tutorials made me better in a way other puzzle titles haven’t.

At this point in the review, it feels a little like burying the lead to only just now mention the visuals and the music.

Since each stage only has two colors players need to match, this mechanical simplicity allows for some creative and striking ways to keep the play field visually interesting, and the developers lean hard into delivering over-the-top sound and graphics, far above what you might expect for a puzzle title.

One in particular that I enjoyed was a food-themed level. Blocks started as red apples and green melons, but then changed to broccoli and tomatoes as I got further in, while classical string music played in the background. Another had orbs of fish and hermit crab shells that changed color to reflect the sun setting on the beach landscape behind the playfield while listening to slow, smooth pop vocals. The visuals and music combine masterfully to pull players into Arise on a level above just block-matching, and it eats up time in a way that hasn’t happened to me in a long while.

With that said, some of the levels do get overwhelming as previous versions of the game. However, there is a moment of pause and the music fades out between each song, giving a welcome break to catch your breath and reset before going into the next stage. There are also a wealth of accessibility options that allow players to adjust any of the visual stimuli including background effects, particle effects on the playfield, and so on. If it’s too much to take in visually, it can be turned down.

While my memories of playing it in the past weren’t great, the masterful music and visual presence combined in Lumines: Arise really turned me around on the series. It’s not one to miss!

For me, Lumines: Arise gets 8.5 blocks exploding into glitter out of 10.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Enhance and Monstars, Inc. and published by Enhance. It is currently available on PS5, PSVR2 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 6.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. Around 1 hour was spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Mild Fantasy Violence.  The blocks will explode into particles on screen, fantasy violence amounts to spiders and snakes that fight each other in the background (but these can be turned off in accessibility menus).

Colorblind Modes: There are multiple colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Sound is not needed to complete the game. Captions for character dialogue can be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls are completely remappable.

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