Phantom Blade Zero’s Combat Is So Good, You Won’t Care The Story Makes No Sense

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S-Game, the Chinese studio behind Phantom Blade Zero, clearly understands the core tenets of character-action games. If your melee combat isn't tight, responsive, and oozing cool, then what's the point? Some games might have better combat, but few can match Phantom Blade Zero's style. 

Every moment feels like you're in the middle of a Chinese martial-arts movie, pulling off moves that shouldn't be feasible--moves that go against what we expect from third-person action games--yet are baked into the mechanics. The game is not without issues, and they do hold it back from reaching the genre's upper echelons, but the highs are stratospheric.

Character-action games aren't typically known for telling riveting stories, and Phantom Blade Zero is no different. You play as Soul, a stoic assassin who dies in the game's opening moments when a sword tears through his heart. Soon after, a mysterious figure gives him a chance to come back from the dead, forcing him to choose between two artificial hearts. One will allow him to live but strip away all of his emotions, while the other will let him retain those emotions but only give him 66 days left on this mortal coil. Soul chooses the latter, setting up a 66-day quest to find a cure, unravel a conspiracy, and prove that he was framed for his master's murder.

It's a fairly ridiculous opening, but one that doesn't reflect the rest of the game. Much of Phantom Blade Zero's narrative unfolds through background machinations: in clandestine conversations, hidden notes, and secondhand information. Multiple organizations, people, and malicious schemes are in play, but it doesn't do a particularly good job of filling you in, so I found it tough to keep track of who's who and what's what. Some aspects eventually come into sharper focus toward the end of the game, but this feels like too little, too late.

You're essentially dropped into an established world where even the protagonist knows more than you do, referencing past events and showing familiarity with characters new to you. All you can do is attempt to piece together some kind of understanding through the notes and loading-screen tooltips, but even then you'll still be in the dark for a good chunk of the game's dialogue. 

There are some cool storytelling moments here and there, such as the way it uses hand-drawn watercolor animation whenever it flashes back to Soul's childhood. One sequence also features traditional Chinese shadow puppets (or Piyingxi) to explore a character's backstory. Repeating or explaining plot points during loading screens feels like a concession to its failures elsewhere, though, and ultimately, I found it difficult to latch onto anything that would make me care about the story. 

Unsurprisingly, combat is Phantom Blade Zero's bread and butter. It's also unlike anything else I've played, essentially translating the choreographed action of films like Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to a playable medium. Both movies are known as Wuxia, a Chinese genre of fiction and low fantasy that blends martial arts with fantastical elements. Wuxia fight scenes are known to be incredibly fluid and dynamic: half combat, half choreographed dance, with both sides attacking and defending at the same time, creating a calculated but frenetic spectacle of clashing steel. 

Phantom Blade Zero

The choreography isn't something you can replicate in video games without resorting to quick-time events, but Phantom Blade Zero still makes it look and feel like you're engaged in a cinematic, free-flowing dance to the death. You have light and heavy attacks at your disposal, with combos alternating between the two. The key is that these attacks require no commitment. 

There's never a point where an attack begins and locks you into an animation until it ends. Switching to defense--either to block or parry--is instantaneous, even if you're mid-combo. Some attacks will even deflect incoming strikes automatically, recreating the back-and-forth, simultaneous attack-and-defend action Wuxia is known for. The whole thing is antithetical to the call-and-response philosophy of so many other action games, but it works when enemies test your abilities.

Sometimes, particularly during boss battles, you still need to focus strictly on offense or defense--maybe because you've created an opening to counterattack or need to lock in and parry multiple strikes in quick succession--but the delineation isn't as common as it is elsewhere. Most combat encounters achieve this satisfying flow through speed, aggression, and how combos and parries gracefully intersect. Sure, you could sit back and wait for your opponent to attack, or you could rush in and deal damage while still watching for their attack cues. Every action you take is fast and responsive, and even the biggest, heaviest weapons are swung at a rapid pace.

Much of this fluidity comes from the game's excellent motion capture, which showcases each movement with the smoothness and intent you'd expect from seasoned martial artists. It's also complemented by an eclectic soundtrack that infuses the action with everything from Chinese rap, metal, and pop to somber piano pieces and electronic beats.

There's mechanical depth beyond the surface panache, too. These mechanics are more par for the course, but familiarity is important when trying something new. Sha-Chi, for instance, is Phantom Blade Zero's stamina system. The meter drains when you hold down the block button or perform heavy attacks, but successful parries will severely deplete your opponent's Sha-Chi instead, gradually breaking their guard and leaving them vulnerable to a flurry of offense. Blue and red flash attacks also denote special, telegraphed moves you need to either parry or dodge, with both tightening up the window for you to react.

Failing to do so will eat into your health bar, but depleting your Sha-Chi meter also takes you out of action for a few seconds. To counteract this, switching weapons quickly replenishes your Sha-Chi, letting you maintain the initiative with a different armament. You can equip two primary weapons to alternate between, which not only helps you manage your Sha-Chi, but also gives you more combat options when you consider how varied Phantom Blade Zero's plethora of swords, axes, and spears are.

Each one feels unique when executing your standard light and heavy attacks, and they all have various intricacies that unlock as you level them up. For a good chunk of the game, I used a sword called the Outlaw Warblade. With this two-handed weapon, heavy attacks deal increased damage by eating into your health, which switching to standard attacks then restores. It can be a risky but effective weapon to use, but one I wasn't afraid to equip knowing I could quickly switch to another weapon.

Whether it's a broken blade that transforms into a ranged weapon after drinking--while also making you move like Jackie Chan in Drunken Master--or a pair of swords that summon the power of both wind and thunder, the weapons on offer are incredibly fun to use. They're flexible, too, with an upgrade system that lets you refund and recover the materials you've spent, so you never feel locked into using a particular weapon just because you've spent time upgrading it. You're free to experiment and jump from one completely different arsenal to the next, which is a more than welcome choice.  

Each weapon also has a secondary attack that breaks the non-committal rule. Landing heavy attacks builds Sha-Chi Essence, which you can then spend on weapon-specific techniques called Power Surges. While some of these might enhance your offense for a short time, others unleash devastating combos that you can't cancel out of, forcing you to consider when the opportune time to utilize them is. 

Phantom Blade Zero

The same is true of Phantom Edges: secondary weapons you can use a limited number of times before needing to replenish their stock. These range from heavy axes that can break through shields and armor to ranged weapons, chained sickles, flying guillotines, and a magical bell that can summon puppets to fight by your side. Both Power Surges and Phantom Edges add another layer to Phantom Blade Zero's flashy combat, upping the ante in desperate situations or providing that extra oomph you need to finish off a boss.

Boss battles are where the game's combat truly sings: where spectacle and cinematic action are pushed to the forefront, with free-flowing and thrilling mechanics to back it all up. Whether it's a Lion Dancer that breathes fire and hops between wooden plinths, or a three-faced puppet summoning giant paper snakes from the earth, the bosses are distinct and built on spectacle. It's no surprise that these conflicts represent Phantom Blade Zero at its most challenging. It might not be a soulslike, but From Software's influence is felt here and elsewhere. 

The world, which blends a traditional kung-fu aesthetic with steampunk machinery and body modification, is all S-Game. The studio calls this style "kungfupunk," and it's an accurate descriptor, melding pagodas with industrial iron and billowing smoke. 

There's variety within this conceit, too. At one point, you traverse a once-verdant forest that's now crimson, stained red after a brutal battle, "as though the forest itself were weeping blood." Another area sees you using a steam-powered boat to navigate a vast lake dotted with islands, while you'll also venture into a town whose denizens have been transformed into wooden puppets, and a winding valley with waterfalls and cliffs overlooking its crystal-clear streams. 

It's a strongly realized world, but the level design is distinctly soulslike, with circuitous areas full of branching paths and looping shortcuts. It's one of the strongest examples of this type of level design, making each locale a treat to explore, though it doesn't always feel entirely necessary. 

Soulslike checkpoints let you replenish health and upgrade weapons and items, but crucially, they don't respawn enemies as you would expect. It's an odd choice, especially since enemies stay dead even after you die. This changes the dynamic of enemy encounters, essentially letting you whittle down a group of enemies even if they get the better of you.

This speaks to Phantom Blade Zero's overall leniency, though. Many of its boss battles contain multiple phases, but if you reach the second phase and die, you don't have to repeat the first. I'm a fan of this decision, because if I've already demonstrated I can beat the first phase, forcing me to do so again can be frustrating. 

There are also three difficulty levels to choose from. You can swap between them at any time, which is something I took advantage of to make some of the regular enemy encounters more interesting. This is Phantom Blade Zero's biggest flaw, as even on the hardest difficulty, it's too easy to simply button-mash your way to victory against most enemy types. Groups still gave me trouble on occasion, especially since switching lock-on targets in these instances is overly cumbersome, but as I mentioned earlier, taking out a few enemies is beneficial even if you die. 

As someone who plays these kinds of games a lot, this might not be the same experience for everyone. Yet the bosses still posed enough of a challenge that I had to bump the difficulty back down to medium, so it feels more like a wildly unbalanced swing than anything else.

It's disappointing because, under the right circumstances, Phantom Blade Zero's combat is spectacular. Its Wuxia-inspired action nails the free-flowing, back-and-forth nature of its kinetic influences with aplomb. Being able to cleave through dozens of enemies who barely put up a fight isn't a fatal flaw, but tedium, and the fact you know how thrilling combat can be makes it a more glaring issue. It's this misstep that holds Phantom Blade Zero back, but it's still a fantastic game that any action aficionado should lap up.

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This Character-Action Zombie Game Stumbles Into Its Own Way

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Stupid Never Dies makes a strong, if extremely weird, first impression. Wrapping roguelite progression around the system of an action-RPG and setting that story in an inventive punk-inspired world of monsters is an inviting hook. Plus, it's hard not to feel some affection for the dimwitted hero and his undoubtedly creepy quest to revive the supposed love of his afterlife. But the inventive world and a few neat ideas can only carry this game so far, and I ultimately struggled to look past the repetitive and often imprecise combat. 

The world of Stupid Never Dies has been completely taken over by monsters who emerged from inside the Earth's crust. These monsters are very conspicuously inspired by classic silver screen incarnations and popular B-movies, all filtered through a '90s or '00s pop-punk aesthetic. It's a stylish blend of influences that immediately identifies this game's goofball, self-effacing tone. 

Stupid Never Dies

When these monsters took over the world, they all but wiped out humanity. In the aftermath, a new caste system emerged, with zombies considered to be little more than cannon fodder in the fight for monster supremacy. Zombies who refused to fight in the war are seen as even lower than that--protagonist Davy is one of those, a teenage-looking undead who's more of a lover than a fighter.

In fact, Davy shambles his way into the adventure accidentally. He's just hungry, and happens to eat a weird glowing egg he finds laying around. This turns out to be a Phoenix Egg, giving him the ability to absorb power from other monsters. He doesn't really care to use this newfound power until an associate, Dr. Frank, tells him he may be able to use it to revive a dead girl named Julia who he's been infatuated with. Julia is a random human that Davy found in a freezer, and Davy sets his sights on reviving her solely because he imagines they would be a happy couple. 

This motivation doesn't give Julia any agency--we don't know whether she would even want to date a zombie, let alone Davy specifically, and that creates a problematic vibe for the setup. If the story treated this with any degree of seriousness it would be downright toxic. But this is not a serious game, and Davy is very pointedly presented as a complete dumbass, so I at least think we as the audience are supposed to recognize the obvious folly in his lovelorn puppy act. Still, it's a bit ick. 

Stupid Never Dies

This uncomfortable setup is also just quickly drowned out with lore and jokes. There's a ton of exposition at the very start to introduce you to this world, but a lot of it is delivered with a sort of "just go with it" haste. It seems at once proud of its stylish mash-up and embarrassed by it as a thin pretense for fighting movie monsters. The humor, similarly, is mostly kept just barely on the right side of cringe, though parts of the story occasionally veer over into being too cheesy or silly. 

To have any hope of reviving Julia, Davy has to defeat and absorb the power of KOM, the nickname given to the King of the Monsters. After destroying Earth, most of the monster races burrowed back underground, leaving only the lowly zombies to roam around on the surface. Davy descends into deeper and deeper layers to find new materials in his quest to revive Julia, all leading toward KOM. If he completes a particular boss target or takes a ride back to their home base in an abandoned shopping mall before being defeated, he keeps his gains and can cash them in for power-ups. That's where the roguelite structure comes in.

In the underground combat segments, Davy can move quickly and strike hard, behaving much like a hero in a character-action game. The enemies are nicely differentiated between mobs like lizardmen and skeletons and elites like cyclopes and harpies, offering a good bit of variety, especially since you can absorb the powers of elite enemies. (More on that momentarily). 

Stupid Never Dies

By default, Davy's moves feel floaty--flailing and imprecise. This makes sense, as he is a zombie, but it does mean your core moveset never feels very cool or stylish. Devil May Cry this game isn't. You can also parry enemy strikes--the game insists on exclusively calling this a "stupid parry" for no particular reason--or leap to reach flying enemies or knock them into walls or off the stage. Combat has a fun sense of chaos and momentum to it. 

As you level up, in roguelite fashion, you'll gain new perks to equip and upgrade. Some of these are fairly straightforward, like boosts to your attack or defense, while others are more specialized, like giving you a passive perk for how many enemies you've knocked off the edge of a stage. 

On top of that, Davy has a Bite ability, which you charge up through regular attacks. This functions as both a heal and a finisher, as you can chomp down on enemies to restore some Hit Points, but it's better saved to use as the fatal blow on an elite enemy, since that heals you for a greater amount and grants you a big power boost. A lot of the combat is about managing your bite gauge, building it up for a big enemy, and then chomping into an elite for an impactful heal.

Stupid Never Dies

Elite enemies also often drop skill cores that you can bite into as long as you have your gauge charged, which lets you add their transformation to a quick select. These are worth using instead of saving, since they expire, but they turn Davy into a super-powerful creature like a werewolf, lich, or snow fairy. Those greatly expand Davy's abilities and make him much more powerful than his standard zombie form. And like the regular upgrades, they also come in different rarities, so it's always exciting to see a legendary monster form that you know will really tear through enemy mobs or that impending boss. 

It all works pretty well, but progression can be achingly slow, and the early battles get repetitive fast. I found the game actually became much more fun in the "Go Nuts" mode, a modifier that makes your level progression much faster to speed you along, especially in the early stages. Stupid Never Dies hits its stride about halfway through each run, I found, so breezing past the early parts to get to the meat of the gameplay was just a better way to play. 

When you get back to base, there are a variety of upgrade systems. You have Bessie, who sells you upgrades you'll be able to find in the dungeons from then on; a nearby monster who gives you achievement rewards for completing milestones; Acelino, a weredog who can swap your body parts to build out Davy with various stat boosts and abilities; Milo's ice cream shop, which lets you trade giblet gelato for ranked skill and stat upgrades; and Julia, who you can give gifts to in order to earn stat upgrades to the Davy Burst, his super-powered ultimate state. In this base, you can also explore to talk with Dr. Frank about your monster dex, view and heart Julia's old social media posts, or change your soundtrack tunes.

Stupid Never Dies

The multitude of systems isn't exactly elegant, and what's worse, Davy always starts in the mall with a slow zombie shamble. You quickly unlock the ability to ride around on a motorized vacuum, but it's just baffling why you have to press the button to board the quicker ride every time. I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to actually walk around at his default slow pace, so why force the transition at all?

Other elements are similarly unwieldy. Bessie's upgrades are mostly understandable but sometimes the sheer number of variables just gets confusing, which at best breaks the momentum of a stage when you have to pause to decipher an ability, and at worst just gets so confusing that I'd bypass it altogether. On one recent run I had the option to choose an upgrade for: "Rate decrease for recoverable damage reduction over time +100." This was a good card judging by its rarity, but I honestly couldn't make heads or tails of what the heck it was supposed to do.

Then there's the addition of a timer, as indicated by a TickTock Teddy in the corner of your screen. This incentivizes you to skip some layers strategically since you simply do not have time to play all of them in a single run, and time-extension items give you one more thing to earn while you're choosing which layers to play. But it feels half-baked, since the difficulty of the bosses alone is enough of a friction point, and nothing feels as frustrating as nearly defeating a boss and then being brought down by an arbitrary time restriction. 

Stupid Never Dies

The time pressure also just makes certain aspects of the level design feel bad in unexpected ways. Airborne enemies are a particular pain because they are hard to hit and take longer to defeat, and you can just feel the timer counting down. Randomized stages can sometimes be difficult to navigate, wasting precious time. Even the long approach down a dark corridor to a formidable boss, which could feel properly dramatic and tension-building, instead just made me think of how much time I was burning on the way. 

These caveats and friction points ultimately harm the overall experience. The combat and merchant systems feel just a little too overstuffed and the timer is a frustrating and unnecessary addition that detracts from the overall flow of moving through the world. Stupid Never Dies has some good ideas going for it, including an inventive world, a likable idiot of a protagonist, and some cool combat mechanics like transforming into elite enemies. But it also has a lot of cringey plot points and jokes, repetitive and slow progression, and an awful timer system. I wish I could have enjoyed the positive aspects more, without the other cruft getting in the way.

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Nintendo Switch Sports Resort Is The Best Entry In The Series

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If Nintendo Switch Sports Resort's sole mission is to make you look and feel stupid and have a ton of fun with friends and family, then Nintendo has accomplished that mission with flying colors (and flailing arms). Considering Nintendo's other outings with its motion-controlled sports games, that shouldn't come as a surprise--nor should the feeling of a sore arm the next morning: a feeling that I consider nostalgic at this point.

Switch Sports Resort delivers the best showcase of sports and modes, making it feel like a complete experience and the most cohesive package in the series to date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tX12iFeM88

For the nostalgic-driven players, it's easy to notice which sports from previous games aren't included among the 12 here, like Chambara, Badminton, and Disc Golf. But in place of those missing games are what I consider to be the greatest hits of the series, joined by welcome additions like the tension-fest competition of Thumb Wrestling.

Of those 12 events, there are three "Leisure Sports" (game modes that don't require the player to be standing or exerting the use of a limb to flail), which include Prop Plane, Skateboarding, and Power Cruising. With the exception of Thumb Wrestling, the other eight more traditional sports will require you standing up in front of your TV, Joy-Cons in hand, and using physical gestures to mimic the act of playing the sport. You'll swing your whole arm for Tennis as if wielding a racket; raise your arm back and then swing forward to bowl; or, in the case of Archery, hold a Joy-Con in each hand, raising one arm forward and pulling back with the other to simulate drawing a bow--it all still feels awesome, just as it has since the original game. The Switch 2's HD Rumble is used well to enhance the experience with better feedback. In archery, for example, the controllers simulate the tension of the bowstring.

Like playing actual sports, your enjoyment mileage will vary. If I'm not good at a real-life sport, then clearly something is wrong with the sport and its in-game version. This was the case while playing Switch Sports Resort's rendition of Table Tennis against friends. I was terrible at it and therefore I blamed the game. However, someone I was playing with was doing well and seemed skilled in what they were doing. While I refused to believe that I'm the problem and that it isn't a skill issue, that experience proved to me that it is, indeed, a skill issue, and I just suck at Table Tennis. And it's fine!

This scenario captures the essence of playing this game with friends: the natural banter that comes with the playful competition in sports. Because while this particular player was able to beat me at Table Tennis, I absolutely destroyed them at regular ol' Tennis--a legacy sport in the series, and one I've loved since the original 2006 game. "Friendly" competition or showboating skills aside, each sport achieves what matters most: They're all fun to play.

Some sports are easier to engage with than others. Tennis, Bowling, Golf, and Boxing are the most pick-up-and-play friendly, but that doesn't dismiss the depth of skill that can be learned and applied. Golf takes advantage of the Joy-Con's position, so newcomers will need to pay attention to the angle of your swing, while experienced players will naturally consider how much the Joy-Con is tilted. In both cases, it feels intuitive. Golf remains one of the more chill sports to give your arms a bit of a rest and offers a wide variety of courses with varying difficulties.

Among the don't-fix-what-ain't-broke sports is bowling, which returns with a mode that features obstacles to bowl around and simultaneous bowl, so you and your friends don't have to wait to take turns. 100 Pin Bowling from the original Wii Sports Resort returns too, and, as before, few things are as satisfying as getting a 100-pin strike on your first frame.

I sorely missed Boxing in Switch Sports, and now my arms are sore from its return--I love it. Boxing can feel like you're just swinging wildly until your opponent is down, but Resort makes the addition of a stamina gauge (despite having my own real-life stamina gauge) for added strategy, incentivizing you to be more deliberate and methodical in your approach with your dodges, blocks, and left-and-right hooks. I can't say I was either deliberate or methodical in the matches I played because I was having too much fun just punching the air with all my might. Did I lose? Yes, and I don't care. 

Each sport offers its own distinct use of the Joy-Con, with sports like Volleyball and Basketball featuring a rotation of more complex movesets rather than the usual swinging and punching. As a result, these sports' tutorials are more cumbersome. When playing with a group of people, this can be a speed bump for the uninitiated, but it's worth having a little patience for the end result.

The complexities of Volleyball and Basketball are largely in the extra steps when learning about positioning for you and your teammates. Volleyball plays more like a choreographed dance as you change positions from passing, to setting up a shot, to blocking an incoming ball, all of which require the physical motion of raising your arms at just the right time. Basketball involves a few extra moves depending on your position. It took my friends and I a moment to fully grasp how to play it, but once I locked in with my teammate--leaning on communication and fighting off the urge to run in for a shot--a careful passing took place that, when done skillfully, felt satisfying. (It also helps that we won.)

Thankfully, both Volleyball and Basketball offer pick-up-and-play modes, which alleviate the more cumbersome nature of learning all the moves. For this, Basketball features several modes that focus on just shooting hoops against opponents, and Volleyball narrows down gameplay to a rhythm game where you are tasked with timing your ball bumps on a beat. They're both fun bite-sized helpings of each sport, with Basketball's Five-Streak Battle being a standout thanks to its tension to land five consecutive shots while three other opponents shoot for hoops simultaneously.

As is the case with playing any real-life sport, it's par for the course to get a little worn out while playing, and that's where Sports Resort's Leisure Sports come in. Leisure Sports are a standout, with each sport offering a much-appreciated change-up from the usual arm flailing. In Prop Plane, you control a plane by holding the Joy-Con like how you'd hold a paper plane, guiding it around the game's open world; Skateboarding takes advantage of the Joy-Con's mouse features, sliding it back on the surface to simulate pushing a skateboard; and Power Cruising has you control a jet ski by holding a Joy-Con in each hand, steering as if they were handlebars and twisting the right one to trigger a boost (with an optional solo Joy-Con control scheme, too). Each of these sports triggered a deep sense of nostalgia in me, being reminiscent of playing with toys as a kid, with the Joy-Cons becoming an extension of that feeling. In this case, the game itself simulates my imagination and it's just pure joy.

Each Leisure Sport has its own chill sightseeing mode that allows you to explore the Resort's island from land, water, and air, but, on the opposite end, they also have competitive modes. Competing in each one is very fun in its own right, and this is especially true for Skateboarding and Power Cruising, both of which have whispers of Mario Kart-style intro sequences. There's a wide array of courses that increase in difficulty and introduce speed boosts, tight turns, and some genuinely thrilling course-specific moments, like skateboarding down a mountain on a narrow path, neck-and-neck with my opponent, for example. They're so fun that it feels like a glaring misstep to not include the ability to compete against CPUs in this format. Compounding the problem, none of the Leisure Sports can be played online, which isn't the case for the other nine sports. 

Although Leisure Sports stumbles in their lack of CPU opponents, the other sports avoid the same pitfall with Island Crown, an in-game tournament-like mode where you can move up the ranks as you take on increasingly difficult CPU opponents. Three sports that are part of Island Crown can be played in co-op (Tennis, Volleyball, and Basketball), should you want to involve friends. Island Crown also showcases a large part of Resort's distinct personality, with each sport featuring its own ultimate opponent who you're moving up the ranks to take on. They’re colored with their own quips and share tips as you push through match after match. Ranking number one and taking down these pretty-faced athletes rewards you more accessories and items to customize your avatar with.

If you played Switch Sports, you'll be familiar with Resort's avatars and range of customization. They haven't evolved much from that game, nor did they need to. I mean, hey, I never thought it needed to evolve past the original Wii's Miis, and thankfully Nintendo continues to support them in this game too. So my dead-eyed Mii can still face-off against the new pretty-faced avatars. Additionally, there's an option to make all the CPU opponents Miis, which are populated from both Miis you've created on your console to randomly generated ones. The moment I realized this option was available, I changed it. Long live Miis.

The novelty of motion controls may be gone as motion-based functionality has been part of every Nintendo console for the last 20 years. What prevails, however, is the unabashed fun that ensues when gathering folks together to move and act silly in the name of virtual sports. Beyond that, Resort still manages to spark imagination with its Leisure Sports and showcases that there's still wonder in motion-controlled games, like when performing plane tricks with nothing but the motion of your hand.

As someone who played the original Wii Sports when it first released, and was awed by the rudimentary real-life movements being mimicked on screen, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort allowed me to feel that all over again as an adult. And it's a feeling best felt surrounded by friends. Whether you're a jaded 36-year-old man with no children (like me), a parent, a grandparent, or a kid, it's hard to imagine even the most calloused-hearted person not having fun with the game. Get your family together, get your friends, heck--invite your neighbors over, break out the party essentials, and have fun.

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Final Fantasy Resonance Saves A Great Story From Live-Service Oblivion

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It's not often that a live-service game gets any sort of attention after the servers have shut down, but there was something special about Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius. It was more than just a mediocre gacha-based RPG with Final Fantasy branding slapped on it--it featured a fully original story with unique characters, a fully fleshed-out setting, and plenty of that unmistakable Final Fantasy flavor. So when Square-Enix announced Final Fantasy Resonance--a full-fledged single-player remake of part of Brave Exvius's story--there was excitement. Former Brave Exvius players could revisit the setting they loved, and those who hadn't played could enjoy the story without all of the gacha baggage.

Retooling a live-service, gacha-monetized game into a single-player experience is no easy task, however, but Square-Enix clearly felt that the legacy of Brave Exvius was worth the effort. And while Final Fantasy Resonance succeeds admirably in retelling the saga of Rain and the battle against the Veritas, it does have a handful of shortcomings that keep it from becoming the next great Final Fantasy epic.

Resonance brings us to the world of Lapis, where adopted brothers Rain and Laswell are doing routine tasks for the Grandshelt Knights. Things quickly escalate, however: The pair encounter a mysterious armor-clad warrior, who's powerful enough to shatter the kingdom's Earth crystal before setting the kingdom's castle ablaze. One near-death encounter and mysterious-young-girl rescue later, Rain and Laswell learn that more armored sentinels are seeking to destroy the remaining crystals that maintain the world to settle a long-simmering grudge. Thus begins a grand adventure with twists, turns, mysteries, revelations, and an ever-growing party of traveling companions--the classic FF formula we've come to love. For the most part, it hews close to the original narrative of Brave Exvius, with some detours and extra exposition along the way. 

In many ways, Final Fantasy Resonance feels engineered as a callback to the olden days of the series. Story- and progression-wise, Resonance feels more in line with the 16-bit Final Fantasy games: mostly linear with some side trekking you can do if you feel so inclined. The narrative pacing is brisk, though it does take time to savor individual character arcs, like Rain and Lasswell’s rivalry, Nichol’s sense of familial duty, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding Rain’s father, Raegen. There are some fun little additions, too, like side quests that offer additional insights into the characters and setting, and on-field conversations you can trigger where characters banter about themselves.Places you visit offer hidden trinkets and treasures if you’re willing to poke around suspicious nooks and take side roads, making exploration satisfying. The HD-2D graphics also feature frequent callbacks to pixel-based Final Fantasy titles that eagle-eyed nostalgia fiends will find delightful. The soundtrack is excellent, offering new versions of classic Final Fantasy songs as well as its own set of defining music leitmotifs. With its presentation, it's easy to imagine Resonance as some sort of lost "middle step" between the pixel and polygon eras of FF.

For the most part, the game is a visual treat: Detailed sprites have fluid animations, and environments are packed with artistic flourishes (the water city Olderion and its surroundings are a personal favorite). The cinematic sequences also attempt to do action and camerawork in ways not yet seen in Square-Enix's HD-2D games. When it works, it looks great, but there are also times when odd-looking compositing of the pixel art over the background or an awkward animation takes you out of the moment. Still, it's hard not to respect the effort, even if there is a lot of reuse of Brave Exvius assets throughout.

So how does Resonance differ from the mobile game it's based on? For starters, the gacha-related element of the game has been completely eliminated. The concept of Visions--characters' spirits who aid the heroes with their unique abilities--still exists, with most of them derived from classic Final Fantasy titles. In Brave Exvius, these Visions were obtained and powered up through gacha — randomized rewards obtained by spending in-game currency (which can also be bought with real money)., but in Resonance you obtain them by visiting shrines hidden throughout the world, then power them up using Magicite items. There's a mix of both familiar faces and original characters in the Visions, though I found it disappointing that only the "main" characters in each FF game (and one beloved villain) got Visions when Brave Exvius was filled with fan favorites.

While Resonance succeeds admirably in retelling the saga of Rain, it does have a handful of shortcomings that keep it from becoming the next great Final Fantasy epic

While Visions were separate units in Brave Exvius, here they act as sort of a modular skillset, able to be equipped and exchanged throughout your party as needed to augment a character's default skills. Every Vision's skill loadout is unique, and by increasing their Mastery Rank through battle, characters can learn and equip individual Vision abilities, even if they aren't using that Vision. For example, when fully mastered, Terra's Vision grants a passive skill that allows characters to break the 9999-damage cap, while Zidane gives his wielder the Steal command. These can be set in a character's ability menu once learned. This system allows for fun character customization, letting you mold characters to your tastes--though one issue is that characters who join the party later have less to work with, simply because they join without any innate Vision skills.

Combat is the other area where Resonance deviates from its Brave Exvius roots. The often chaotic hybrid of turn-based, menu-driven, and tap-to-act combat that the mobile game offered has been completely replaced with a turn-based battle that feels like a hybrid of Persona, Octopath Traveler, and Final Fantasy XIII. 

Enemies have two meters attached to them: a health meter and a stagger meter. Smacking a foe with weaponry or magic depletes health, but it also reduces their stagger bar. The amount of stagger damage you do varies depending on your stats, various buffs, what sort of techniques were used, and so on. Enemies also generally have one (or more) weaknesses, and hitting that weakness deals both increased health damage and significantly boosted stagger damage.

Staggering enemies is important, because not only does it cancel all of their upcoming actions for that round of combat, it also greatly lowers their defense, leaving them open to a world of hurt from your highest-level techniques. The character who triggered the stagger also gets a bonus action at the end of the combat round. If you manage to put all the enemies onfield into stagger, you get the Sweeping Stagger status, which gives your entire party bonus turns, as well as lets you use the ultimate technique of one of the Visions your team has equipped to finish the round. If any enemy managed to survive the round, their stagger meter resets, and the cycle begins again. The benefits of staggering enemies are immense, making it essential to figure out how best to put enemies into stagger (almost always through hitting weaknesses) while keeping your own team safe from their attacks.

It's an interesting combat setup, which is why it's so frustrating when battles become slow-paced slogs. Even sped up, you'll run into fights that take their sweet time, since enemies frequently have high HP--more or less requiring you to stagger them to deal any real damage. (There's no auto-battle option, either.) I understand wanting players to engage with the mechanics, but combined with battles being unavoidable random encounters, it means you're often stuck just menuing through to hit all the weaknesses and hoping it's enough for the Sweeping Stagger so you can summon a Vision to wipe the board clean and move on. 

Compounding this issue is that a decent chunk of encounters simply aren't very interesting. Fights with interesting gimmicks that force you to change up the base strategy of "target stagger bar, heal when needed, then use high-cost high-damage skills during stagger, repeat" are rare, and many of them tend to be optional or late-game encounters. Those encounters are great, and they show the kind of strategic challenge that the combat system is capable of delivering. More often, though, Resonance would rather give you damage-sponge enemies that require little more strategy than patiently poking their weakness over and over again--which means that unknowingly entering certain fights without those skills is a recipe for tedium, since you can't swap Visions or party members mid-fight. (At least you can reload a save from combat.)

But for Resonance's faults, the game otherwise delivered exactly what I wanted--a way for everyone to experience the story, characters, and world of Brave Exvius once again. I can only hope that this is the first step in Square-Enix reviving some of its shuttered mobile games in ways that keep them playable for the future--especially since there's still a lot of story from Brave Exvius that goes beyond the events of this game. As both a remake and a standalone experience, Final Fantasy Resonance shines more than it stumbles.

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CoD: Modern Warfare 4 Goes Back To Basic To Properly Finish Its Story

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In 2019, Infinity Ward rebooted Call of Duty's Modern Warfare series, delivering a gritty and polished campaign featuring Captain Price and the assembly of the iconic Task Force 141. Despite the strong start, the series' sequels stumbled a bit, with  Modern Warfare 3 in particular standing out as having a weak story and open-world missions that missed the mark. But with Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward returns the series' campaign to strength with a satisfying narrative and well-crafted missions for an epic conclusion to the rebooted series.

Modern Warfare 4's single-player goes back to being a traditional and mostly linear experience that some recent entries have strayed from. There is only one open-world mission this year, and it is far more engaging than the previous attempts. Modern Warfare 4 doesn't introduce anything new or innovative, but it finds success with a consistently strong narrative and engaging gameplay built on nail-biting tension. Thankfully, you're never forced into any mission objectives that feel like silly chores or ill-timed distractions. Every mission in Modern Warfare 4 carries urgency and drives the plot forward.

That plot closes out the ongoing narrative surrounding Price and Task Force 141, but it also takes Call of Duty to Korea and introduces a fresh new cast of characters. The campaign intertwines two seemingly separate stories for an over-the-top, globetrotting affair across New York City, Paris, and Mumbai, in addition to several parts of Korea. This is the explosive Hollywood-style action you'd expect from a Call of Duty campaign at a quality level we haven't seen from the franchise in years--that includes the recent Black Ops entries.

One half of the game places you in the boots of Private Park, a young South Korean soldier, who has never experienced real combat before. Private Park and his squad are forced to fight back to save their country when North Korea launches an invasion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuzBlGUDxx4

The other half of the campaign follows the events of Modern Warfare 3 and the aftermath of John "Soap" MacTavish's death. In Modern Warfare 4, Captain Price is in a much darker place, going rogue to hunt down Makarov and also tie up any other loose ends with the villain's associates.

This new outlaw version of Price ties back to one of the most-telling quotes of Modern Warfare 2019, where he lays out his ethos on where the lines in war are."You draw the line wherever you need it, Sergeant," Price says. "End of the day, someone has to make the enemy scared of the dark. We get dirty and the world stays clean. That's the mission."

That line is seemingly in a place no one could have foreseen, as Price is furious and more willing than ever to get his hands dirty in pursuit of making everyone allied with Makarov scared of the dark. Being on the run leaves Price with very few allies, though. In a desperate attempt to reach the Archer (Mads Mikkelsen), who is another threat linked to Makarov, Price makes a deal with Valeria Garza and the cartel.

Price hasn't turned into a complete monster, but the cartel don't mind blasting through civilians in order to achieve their mission. This team-up makes for chaotic gunfights through Paris and engaging banter between the characters. Price is constantly trying to look out for civilians and wants to minimize the collateral damage, but Valeria just comically taunts him, calling him Papi and old man, as she operates with less strict rules. The extent to which Price is a contrast to Valeria becomes a key part of the story. After a chase scene where they commit a particularly brutal act of violence, Valeria tells Price that "he's still a good guy," but she is a notorious cartel leader trying to get paid for delivering a weapon to the bad guy, so how much weight can her words really carry?

Price's cartel team-up also leads him to realize this weapon delivery is dangerous enough to shift the balance of power, setting in motion a much greater conflict. To make matters worse, Price also has a target on his back as the remaining members of his Task Force 141 team, Simon "Ghost" Riley and Kyle "Gaz" Garrick, are sent to capture or kill him.

This manhunt for Price leads to a standout mission called Gone Dark, where your POV switches to Gaz as he hunts Price inside of a dark hotel. At the start of the series, Captain Price served as a mentor and moral compass for Gaz, so there's a lot of emotional weight to the mission as Gaz, and the player, see just how far Price has fallen from a clearer third-party perspective. There are shocking moments and intense exchanges between the now fractured members of Task Force 141 that leverage the squad's long history effectively. There's an emotional pull throughout the mission, as Price begs Ghost and Gaz to back off, and a bigger gut punch when Price says he doesn't want to kill them, but implies he will. These moments really nail down how Price's moral compass has broken. The events of Gone Dark also set up a powerful moment in a later mission to bring the series full circle in a way I appreciated.

The Korean invasion intertwines with Price's epic revenge tour, causing the new South Korean squad and US forces to team up. Although that may seem overwhelming, even with these shifting POVs and a non-chronological story, the narrative flows well from mission to mission, keeping things moving at a good clip through stealth missions, on-foot and vehicular chase sequences, slow-motion breach-and-clear segments, and even some satisfying action of manning a chopper gunner. There's also a Clean House-style mission with night-vision goggles, where you need to clear rooms with extreme trigger discipline to avoid shooting any civilians. 

Modern Warfare 4

Although the missions are a mostly familiar affair, they remain effective Call of Duty staples and the  campaign as a whole had me on the edge of my seat throughout. It doesn't necessarily do anything better than some of Call of Duty's most notable other campaigns, but it's proof that, for me, the series doesn't need to reinvent the wheel to produce a thrilling single-player experience. In this instance, having a strong narrative and compelling characters carried me through the missions. Whether I was playing as Park or Price, I always felt the weight of my actions.

The game's only open-world mission is called Stranded, and this is definitely one of Call of Duty's best attempts at a fully open-world mission. You play as Park, who is stranded behind enemy lines with his squad in a snowy and mountainous setting in Korea. Park needs to scavenge supplies to bring back to his squad, and there are three main objectives on the map. You can choose to complete these objectives in any order, but more notably, you can fast travel directly to each one and bypass the entire scavenging and exploration part of the mission. Doing this means you won't have the best guns and gear to complete your objectives, and it will mostly feel like you're navigating through a standard mission instead of going through a vast open-world experience you may not be interested in.

If you choose to explore in Stranded, there are bags of supplies to scavenge all around the map, and there are sealed shipping containers with combination lock puzzles you can solve to secure even more loot. The supplies you bring back to your squad can be used to repair suppressed weapons, craft lethal equipment, or utilize a mortar strike to help get the objectives done with more firepower or stealth, depending on your preferred playstyle. While I'm relieved the entire campaign isn't built on open exploration, there was an allure to the optional scavenging for weapon upgrades in Stranded. By undertaking a little of it, I looted enough supplies to secure Park a suppressed sniper rifle that proved its worth later. But for the sake of time, I fast traveled to my objectives with little consequence, calling into question the value of even having the option. At the very least, the open section introduces a replayability factor, for those that want it.

Modern Warfare 4 emphasizes boss-fight-style encounters where you only have your fists or a knife equipped and go toe-to-toe with an opponent. In these scenarios, of which there are a few, timing your blocks is critical, allowing you to parry and counter with hits of your own. Admittedly, these aren't overly complex fights, but they serve as a good way to mix things up and each one adds just the right amount of tension to the scenario and the campaign overall, especially when they tie into the competing ideologies that character dynamics are built on.

Modern Warfare 4

Modern Warfare 4 also keeps the optional dialogue prompts introduced in Modern Warfare 2, which allow you to ask your fellow soldiers questions or make small talk. You can choose to say nothing, but the banter usually adds a small layer of depth to the supporting characters and sometimes lightens the mood after an intense mission. It's a small amount of agency in what is essentially a rollercoaster that is appreciated, even if it doesn't really amount to anything deeper.

One mission places you in the boots of a high-ranked North Korean soldier who doesn't always agree with the orders he's given. This part of the story is a harrowing mission filled with public executions, but it does make use of the dialogue prompts as you walk around interrogating civilians, providing the opportunity to define the demeanour of the character a little more. The conversation prompts let you choose how to approach many situations. You can intimidate or try to calm people with the dialogue prompts you're given, but you can also just pull out your gun and threaten them with action instead of words. These small interactions don't impact the overall story and oftentimes your actions are fruitless, but it's good to have the option to choose empathy when dealing with civilians. Ultimately, this mission also does a good job of showing the ruthless nature of this North Korean threat, and how many soldiers will still blindly follow their orders.

While I'm more emotionally invested in the Task Force 141 storyline, I still enjoyed all of the missions focused on the South Korean squad. Park is forced into the military through conscription, so being a soldier wasn't a choice or an act of valor. Initially, it seems like he doesn't want to be a soldier at all, but when war hits his doorstep, he still tries to push back his fear and make the best decisions he can to protect his people. Park also provides a nice moral balance to Price's side of the campaign, where nothing matters except his thirst for revenge.

Despite the campaign otherwise being a blast, the final "boss fights" of the game are a major disappointment. Neither fight feels particularly challenging, and they feel too brief for the climactic moments, but the way the story concludes is satisfying all the same.

Overall, Modern Warfare 4 wraps up the series with several shocking moments and ends on a high note. The pacing never falters despite the two interwoven storylines and alternating POVs, and the wide variety of missions and locations ensure that the story remains engaging. Modern Warfare 4 is another edge-of-the-seat thrill ride. What distinguishes its campaign from others is a feeling that the devs had more time to think through the experience to create something that can serve as a worthy conclusion for the Modern Warfare series. Because of that, Modern Warfare 4's campaign ranks as the best we've seen since Modern Warfare 2019.

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The Live-Action Street Fighter Movie Curse Has Yet To Be Broken

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Street Fighter has long been more than just a fighting game. It’s impossible to discuss the most popular video game characters of all time without mentioning Chun-Li, Ryu, or Ken. For many of us, it shaped our '90s childhood at the arcade and served as our introduction to the fighting-game genre. It also has inspired multiple movies, comic books, an anime series and manga, on top of endless collaborations with other fighting game and comic book franchises.

Street Fighter's massive popularity is also a curse when it comes to live-action video game adaptations: 1994's Street Fighter and 2009's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li were poorly received, despite both films having big budgets and being hyped among fans. The franchise failing twice as live-action films was an embarrassment to Capcom, so it's no surprise fans would be concerned about a third attempt at creating a decent live-action film.

When Kitao Sakurai was announced as the Street Fighter director, fans were both excited and concerned about him taking reins due to a history of working closely with Eric Andre. There was hope though, especially with the positive reception of a few other video game adaptations in the last few years: Perhaps the experience of Andre’s eccentric style of comedy could mean a more unconventional approach, similar to Zach Cregger’s approach with Resident Evil? Maybe the casting mix of Andre, pro wrestlers, martial artists, and, for some reason, podcaster Andrew Schulz could produce a very chaotic live-action comedy? Unfortunately, the questions around the movie's identity are ultimately what hurt the adaptation the most because, even with  cartoonish action and plenty of attempts at humor, this Street Fighter movie doesn't really figure out what it is. 

As with many other adaptations of Street Fighter, Ken is rich and famous, but he is also a shell of the fighter he once was--Ryu's absence has clearly taken its toll. Noah Centineo encapsulates Ken’s flashy personality and inflated ego excellently, while showcasing his more fragile and sensitive side as he reminisces about his past life with Ryu. Meanwhile, Ryu is now living in the shadows as a homeless ramen chef. Andrew Koji as Ryu is also fantastic casting: His serious and noble demeanor, even when it comes to making terrible ramen, feels natural. The first act of Street Fighter is engaging thanks to its focus on Ken and Ryu’s relationship. Their individual personality quirks should have set the tone for the rest of the film, but sadly it starts to have an identity crisis when it transitions to the main plot.

Don’t get me wrong--there are still many aspects of the film that capture the essence of the Street Fighter games: vibrant and thrilling fight scenes, cheesy dialogue, and some initially questionable casting choices that finally make sense after seeing the movie, especially Noah Centineo's Ken Masters. Street Fighter also immediately captivates you. Shortly after the Capcom logo hypes up the audience, the film transitions to a beautifully animated sequence that highlights the deep bond between Ryu and Ken. The animated sequences are the best Street Fighter has ever looked on screen, and luckily these scenes become a staple throughout the film to highlight the history between the two young fighters.

Once the opening credits are over, the film continues to learn into '90s nostalgia with cool environments and oddly endearing comedic moments, as it depicts Ken living his life in 1993 without Ryu, his childhood rival and sworn brother who has been missing for years. Ken and Ryu’s last moment together was witnessing the death of their master, Gouken, by the deity Akuma, who was awakened by Ryu’s powers in the first World Warrior Tournament. Haunted by the death of their mentor and blaming himself for causing it, Ryu has disappeared from the fighting world.

As with other movies based on fighting games, Street Fighter is in a rush to reach its core goal: Get Ryu and all the iconic characters to battle in the World Warrior Tournament. The rush never fully allows the audience to absorb the other characters and environment. This flaw could have been balanced with the proper tone and character focus, but Street Fighter fails to do so, doing the cast a disservice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6sbm1OaJb8&t=1s

The biggest letdown is the dialogue, as the humor is inconsistent and the movie never fully understands its own tone. Some characters, like Chun-Li and Dan Hibiki, don't fully commit to their personalities, either. Perhaps it’s the juvenile scripting or a casting issue, but either way, it felt like I was watching amateur actors in poor cosplay rather than seeing well-realized versions of these characters coming to life on screen. At first, the cringeworthy interactions got a few laughs out of me and had some very minor endearing moments, but it tries too hard to keep that comedic momentum going and fails miserably. The film forces you to accept bad writing and performances to drive it forward instead of allowing any of the interactions to feel natural.

Chun-Li’s character was the most disappointing to me. Her tragic backstory of avenging her father is already canon, which should’ve made it easier to adapt into a decent side plot with the right amount of tweaking, but instead she is incredibly flat and never fully fleshed out. Actor Callina Liang seems bored and uncomfortable throughout the entire film, even during her intense interactions with M. Bison and minor action moments. The writing and odd directional choices cater to the male gaze, making it obvious she was lazily written by a man. As one of the most capable and badass female characters in gaming, Chun-Li and, by extension, Callina Liang deserved better, and so did the fans.

The dumbfounding casting and scripting choice for this film was Andrew Schulz as Dan Hibiki. When Street Fighter was first announced, there was an immense amount of backlash for the casting of Andrew Schulz--a controversial podcaster and stand-up comedian. I could go on about the drama surrounding Schulz’s audience, his racism, hot takes, comedic style, etc., but for the sake of our collective sanity, I'll just say  his inability to portray  Dan’s character with any competency is yet another reason to question why he has any involvement in the production.

In Street Fighter canon, Dan is often portrayed as cocky and arrogant, while also being a bit inept as a fighter, yet in the movie his characterization is unclear--is he slimy or charismatic? Is he supposed to crack jokes, or just be an awkward friend? It’s also very odd how prevalent Dan is throughout the film, especially since he is without an arc or story to justify his frequent presence. The movie tries to sell you on a bond between Dan and Ken, but it’s a very uncomfortable friendship that never seems realistic or entertaining. The one vulnerable moment between them is immediately ruined by a weirdly homophobic joke--which, sadly, the film has a few of--and it comes off unsettlingly. In general, Dan and his casting are flat and uninspiring.

The initial joy of '90s nostalgia also wears off pretty quickly. It was certainly a welcome choice to have '90s hits like Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It” and 4 Non Blondes’ "What's Up?” feature on the soundtrack, but the movie goes on to then disregard the era the movie takes place in by blasting “Who Let the Dogs Out?,” a song that came out in 2000. While the film still remains pretty colorful, the lack of commitment to being period accurate undermines the vibe frequently.

The only aspect of Street Fighter that maintains a consistent quality is the fight choreography. This film is not afraid to embrace the cartoony vibes and reference unique movesets: hurricane kicks left and right, the iconic Hadoken, Blanka’s Electric Thunders, Zangief’s spinning piledriver, and a few more are sprinkled throughout each fight. Although the action was a little more limited due to the PG-13 rating, I was still impressed with the over-the-top stunts and tonally varied fights--silly spats with gags, a John Wick-style club brawl, and a few unique 1v1 battles that closely resemble what you would see in a Street Fighter game.

It’s also disappointing that a movie called Street Fighter fails to use its tournament structure for more individual fights between side characters. I would’ve loved to see Guile bust out some Sonic moves, or M. Bison doing anything other than complaining he needs more psycho power, but the film attempts to make up for it with a mix of impressive martial arts and campy action sequences elsewhere. Despite a PG-13 rating that limits the level of violence, the choreography team does fantastic work nevertheless. I just wish it had more Street Fighter style fights with different characters instead of being overshadowed by the goofy brawls you see in typical martial arts films.

Street Fighter is full of goofy action, colorful shots, and gorgeous animated sequences that focus on the bond between Ryu and Ken. It’s entertaining for some silly, mindless fun, but also a very messy movie that never quite figures out its tone and fails to sell you on its plot or characters. This is the best Street Fighter live action we have as far though, but unfortunately that's not an accolade worth bragging about.

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Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse Is The Series At Its Best

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When playing Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, I couldn't stop thinking about Symphony of the Night. Almost 30 years ago, that game reinvented Castlevania as a search-action game, and did it so brilliantly that it earned half of the "metroidvania" portmanteau. Belmont's Curse does not attempt such a dramatic shift. It doesn't change genres or reinvent the series as something entirely new. What it does, however, is achieve a brilliant synthesis, with every component operating at peak performance to deliver a new high for the series. Castlevania is back, and it is fantastic.

Put simply, Belmont's Curse is the total package. A sprawling map bursting with mysteries to uncover, joyous traversal tools that make roaming the map feel great, a story that balances a macabre tone with occasional lightness, a cast of creative and well-drawn characters, and hands-down the best combat of any Castlevania game--in fact, among the best combat of any 2D action game, period.

What makes all of these synergize so well is the addition of the tarot cards, which serve as an elegant way to fuse the game's disparate elements, and makes them all feel like part of one cohesive whole. At different points your tarot deck serves as mission signposting, environmental puzzles, pieces of story lore, characters to serve as dialogue for Rose, boss locations, and ultimately, your pool of spells.

You play as Rose Belmont, daughter of Trevor Belmont, who has trained her whole life as the successor of the Belmont clan. Though silver-maned Trevor is still a capable fighter, Rose volunteers to investigate the otherworldly happenings in Paris, France, eager to prove herself worthy of the family name. But Rose is also afflicted with a cursed red mark on one arm, making her dangerously instrumental to the machinations of Dracula and his armies. 

The tarot deck is a set of magical cards gifted to Rose by her late mother, Sypha, who passed on the curse to her at birth. Each card represents a follower of Dracula, with honorific names like The Fallen, The Warrior, or The Builder. As you explore the castle you find clues that reveal story details and hints about how to find them, often both simultaneously, and they each have their own roles in Dracula's royal court. When Dracula's castle emerges in the heart of Paris--as you obviously knew it would, this is a Castlevania game, after all--the full deck is revealed, putting the complete array of monsters in your sights. Once you've tracked down and defeated one of Dracula's servants, their tarot card becomes an Arcana you can use as a spell, which then opens its own flexible progression system. It may sound complex, but the system is actually an ingenious way to merge different gameplay elements and make them all feel digestible and cohesive.

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

As an example, take the first boss, The Fallen. Finding him is a relatively simple task, given that it's meant to serve as a basic primer for finding clues and navigating the winding streets of Paris. When you defeat him, you absorb his Arcana, which grants you two important tools: a recognizable boomerang axe spell, and an arcane whip that allows you to grab onto grapple points to reach new locations. But this new traversal tool is also a combat tool, since the same function can grab onto any enemy; a well-timed strike while grappling toward the enemy can then do serious damage. Then on top of that, the combat tool itself can also be used for traversal, as enemies flying midair can help you reach distant platforms, as long as you can grapple onto them. It all harmonizes beautifully, and exemplifies Belmont's Curse as a whole--abundant with mechanics that complement and fold into others in surprising ways.

Dracula's legion of followers also serve another purpose, as being captured forces them into the tarot where they occupy a mindspace for Rose to speak with. This ultimately gives her characters to bounce off of for story purposes, but the characters are also well differentiated from each other. The Fallen is a gruff creature that comes to feel protective of Rose, whereas Medusa, even imprisoned in Rose's deck, is unsubtly rooting for her to fail and constantly trying to trick her into making moves that will further her master's plans. Lots of characters you find throughout have their own agendas and rivalries, and are often at cross-purposes with Rose or each other, adding a compelling dynamic as they all bicker inside of your head. The regular addition of characters in your deck means that any of them could interject in dialogue to offer some commentary--though the core cast, so to speak, remains the first three that you find. 

One drawback of having such a dynamic cast of characters is that the protagonist, Rose, is less interesting by comparison. She's a determined heroine archetype and remains that way throughout. She is a central point of gravity for all of the other characters to orbit around, and works on that level, but I do wish she had more agency herself. She is deadset on her mission from start to finish, and not much more. 

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

Each Arcana spell also comes with a set of three objectives to complete, called Works of Mercy. These can be as simple as defeating a set number of enemies with the relevant spell, but often are more complex to incentivize exploration or experimentation. One notable objective for The Warrior rewards you for finding a particular location, which works thematically with that character's story. One of Medusa's has you petrify an enemy carrying a shield, a reference to the myth of Perseus. Your reward for completing these is opening a node to choose one of three power-ups for the spell; once you've completed all three, you're rewarded with extra dialogue from the Arcana character. 

And so you explore the streets and undercity of Paris along with Dracula's castle in freeform fashion, an open structure lightly guides you toward critical objectives for unlocking new equipment that you need to reach other corners and layers of the world. If you're ever stuck you can refer to your tarot deck for clues that you may not have thought about for a while. The environmental puzzles add just enough brain-tickling challenge to make you observe carefully and think through the clues, without grinding your progress to a halt. And the ability to track down enemies and steal their powers makes for a compelling loop that reminded me of one of my favorite series: Mega Man. I was always eager to take down the next boss and see how they would augment my combat and traversal abilities. 

Combat is where you can truly see the expertise of developer Evil Empire shine through the most, as its expertise from Dead Cells transfers beautifully to this franchise. Your strikes across the wide variety of weapon types feel forceful and kinetic, and each weapon type has its own advantages and special charged ability. Your basic longsword is well balanced and lets you dash through enemies, while the whip has long reach but only the tip strikes with its full power. I found I favored the lance, with its versatility of long reach as a handheld weapon or the ability to throw it as a projectile, and ultimately stuck with it for a long time even after finding other weapons at higher levels. There are four weapons each across seven type categories, so the seven weapon types offer loads of room for experimentation to dial in on the one you like best, or just swapping situationally.

What makes the combat transcendant, though, is the addition of a parry. This is new ground for a Castlevania game, but it also works differently than the parry I've seen in many other games. As a holy shield gained from your second boss encounter, it works independently of your regular strikes. It doesn't interrupt your attacks, and by default the attack button is mapped to a face button while the parry is mapped to the left trigger. That means you can be attacking while also parrying your opponent's attack, making combat a lightning fast series of choices that puts you on offense and defense simultaneously. As someone who has struggled with many parry systems and never quite got into them in other games, this one made a believer out of me. It just feels so good to wail on an enemy, parry a projectile from behind, and then grapple over to finish them off. Belmont's Curse is full of moments like this, as practically every room you enter is occupied by enemies, and frequent forced combat encounters test your mettle against mixtures of them. 

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

This is not to say combat is easy. Far from it. The cursed streets of Paris and Dracula's castle are littered with monsters and ghouls familiar to Castlevania fans, reimagined for this combat style, and Rose is very vulnerable. It's easy to die even in regular combat encounters, and boss fights take a good bit of pattern recognition to learn tells before you can successfully fend them off. But the combat is so fine-tuned that you constantly feel in control and recognize what you did wrong. Very occasionally the screen would be so full of enemy attacks I missed a parry window because it was hard to read all the visual information at once, but it was rare enough not to detract from the overall experience. Similarly, navigating extended gauntlets of traps can be trying, but they always feel satisfying to complete, and you're rewarded with items like ability-augmenting Relics or further clues for your tarot deck.

If combat or traps give you trouble, Belmont's Curse adds a few quality-of-life features and options to ease your growth. For one, you keep all the XP earned during your runbacks to bosses, so even if you have to try a boss multiple times, you're still leveling up and gaining power on the way. You can also turn on the Custom Mode to tweak options like setting a checkpoint right in front of boss doors, boosting your damage output, reducing the damage from traps, and more. There doesn't seem to be any cost to using this system, and you can turn it on or off as you'd like. The one element missing, for good reason, are any extra navigational tools to find your way. It's clear that Evil Empire doesn't mind giving you a leg up on reflex-based challenges, but it still wants you to think through puzzles and explore to uncover secrets.

Belmont's Curse also has some of the most inventive bosses I've seen in the series history. One notable boss twice escaped to a different section, introducing a difficult platforming challenge in the middle of the fight to continue it. Another hexes you with a sigil indicating the number of hits you can take before you simply die, forcing you to minimize strikes on you even if you have plenty of healing items to prevent dying outright. Even after 20 hours there are many other bosses in my deck I have yet to find, and I'm eager to see what else Castlevania has to offer. 

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

Exploring the castle is a visual delight, because Belmont's Curse is gorgeous. Far from a gray-soaked castle, Evil Empire has leaned into its house art style of vivid, saturated hues and unexpected color palettes. The approach to Dracula's castle, in which Rose and all of the enemies are silhouetted against the pink-red color tone of a burning Paris behind them, is one of the most visually arresting moments I've seen in a game lately. The character designs themselves are distinct and creative, like Carmilla, a hemomancer whose slinky red gown is made of dripping blood. I could go on and on, but I'll let you discover them for yourself. Plus as you explore you get treated to new renditions of classic Castlevania music alongside new tunes that fit right into its milieu. 

Every element in Castlevania: Belmont's Curse works so well both independently and as part of the whole: flexible combat, beautifully acrobatic traversal, fine-tuned environmental puzzles, wide cast of interesting characters, and eye-catching visual panache--all wrapped within a smart tarot system that lets these ideas complement each other. Belmont's Curse feels destined to be regarded alongside Symphony of the Night as one of the best Castlevania games, and one of the best metroidvania games, of all time. 

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