Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined Review - Trimmed Sails, But Not Trimmed Enough

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Dragon Quest VII? Why? That was the question when I heard about this remake. Square Enix had successfully made HD-2D ports of Dragon Quest III, and a combined package for I-II. It seemed intent on reviving classic Dragon Quest games, in particular for newcomers who missed them the first time around. I was one of those newcomers, having only dabbled in a handful. But why skip ahead to Dragon Quest VII, by reputation one of the most notoriously off-putting and bloated games in the series? After more than 40 hours, I'm still not quite sure. Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined does a lovely job in presenting the world and spiritual aesthetics of Dragon Quest, and its suite of quality-of-life tools and shortcuts are appreciated for how they speed up the flow of the game. But it can often feel meandering and old-fashioned, in spite of itself.

Dragon Quest VII follows a pair of friends--Auster, the son of a humble port town fisherman, and Kiefer, the princely heir to their kingdom. The two are convinced that there's more to the world than their one humble kingdom, but when the adventure begins, there actually isn't. Your island is the only landmass on the map, and the world is isolated and lonely. This is essentially a world in which the villain has already won and wiped out nearly the entire planet. As the adventure unfolds, the two are joined by more companions and begin to find magical tablets that transport them back in time, helping to right some historical wrong or overcome an evil in the past, which then restores that island in the present. This structure sometimes goes to dark places, since each island is a place that was ultimately doomed in the past, often by their own hubris or inability to come to an understanding.

On one level, this time-hopping premise carries echoes of Chrono Trigger, another game famous for its Akira Toriyama character designs. You get to see what's gone wrong in the past and fix it, and then discover how your own intervention has manifested itself in the present, where inhabitants of the restored island have been living peacefully for centuries, unaware that they had previously been blinked out of existence. Some of the scenarios even have playful touches subverting expectations about what you'll find after centuries of the new land's culture left to its own devices.

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Code Vein 2 Review - Second Bite

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Code Vein 2's greatest strength is the variety of options it gives you in creating your personal vampiric warrior. Will you drain the blood from your enemies by gnashing away with a snarling wolf head on each shoulder, or summon a deadly eruption of metal thorns? Do you equip a shield that can block, one that can parry, or another that allows you to quick-step out of danger? Are you augmenting your offensive options with a long-range bow, or a battle axe that creates a temporal force field to slow down enemies? Combine all of this choice with a gothic anime aesthetic, and Code Vein 2 does just enough to stand apart amidst a sea of third-person, action-RPG soulslikes.

Unfortunately, it also falls into the same pitfalls as its predecessor in almost every other aspect. Bland enemy encounters, dreary environments and level design, combat inconsistencies, and poor technical performance ensure that Code Vein 2 is a stagnant sequel rather than a triumphant follow-up that improves upon its predecessor.

If you've never played the original game, Code Vein 2 is an anthology sequel, so no prior knowledge is necessary. All you need to know is that it takes place in a world on the precipice of ruin, where humans and Revenants--immortal beings with vampiric abilities--coexist and are forced to fight back against a cataclysmic event known as the Resurgence.

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Cairn Review - An Uphill Battle Worth Taking On

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A few hours into my climb, I hit the first of Cairn's seemingly insurmountable walls. The cave formation I'd descended into housed surfaces denser than anything I'd encountered on the face of the mountain. It was impossible to sink a piton into, meaning I'd have to effectively do a free solo climb to overcome it and progress.

At least, that's what I told myself. And so I threw myself at the jagged and uneven edges of that crystalline cavern. I tried and failed to find decent handholds and steady footing in the cracks of the walls. I slipped and fell a lot. Aava, Cairn's protagonist, slipped and fell a lot too, and as she did she scraped the bandaging off her digits, bloodied her feet, and screamed in frustration and contempt. Contempt at the choice I had made to stick her in this cave, and maybe even the choice that she'd made to climb Mt. Kami in the first place.

I think Aava and I are made of the same stuff, though, because we both bullishly pushed on. Eventually, we cleared that cave. We climbed its walls and came out on top. And you know what we were greeted by? An alternate path. One that appeared a whole hell of a lot easier than the path I'd made Aava take up. And you know? Deep down, I had known there must've been some other way up. I had known that Cairn threw down this gauntlet as an option and--perhaps because the game's development team understands the kind of masochistic, self-flagellating person who would play a game this demanding--they knew I'd pick it up and run with it rather than look for a way around.

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Big Hops Review - The Year's First Great Game Is Mario Meets Breath Of The Wild

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Hop is a little frog with big dreams. He wants to explore life outside his forest, and his call to adventure is rewarded with the unexpected ability to leapfrog between worlds and even dimensions. Luckshot Games, the developer and publisher of Big Hops, appears to be similarly ambitious, if this game is any indication. Big Hops is a modest 3D platformer that takes on some of the biggest in the industry, on their own turf, with confidence and poise. Even when it very occasionally falls just short, you can't help but respect the pluck it took to aim so high. Big Hops is a game centered on joyous movement that should put Luckshot on players' radars going forward.

From the very start, before Hop even leaves his homey little forest dwelling, you can sense Big Hops' inspirations. Hop's movement and (ahem) hops feel reminiscent of how Mario moves in Super Mario Odyssey, even including a belly slide that you can use to keep your forward momentum going. But on top of that, it layers in a few other elements. You can wall-run like in Prince of Persia or Titanfall. You can climb any wall a la Zelda: Breath of the Wild, complete with a stamina meter that determines how long you can cling to a surface. Your stretchy frog-tongue acts as a grapple to swing on hooks and grab handles, and it also makes it easy to grab things like bugs or fruits out of trees. It all feels so immediately natural, and part of the fun of Big Hops is learning how to connect your suite of movement options together.

Before long, Hop meets Diss, a strange extradimensional imp with a snarky attitude and questionable motivations. Diss spirits Hop away to The Void, a bridge between realms where gravity is strange and twisting upon itself. I couldn't help but be reminded of the flexible gravity system of Super Mario Galaxy, as Hop made a jump and suddenly landed upside-down with a changed perspective, but by this time the natural movement felt so smooth that the shift was easy to navigate.

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Bluey's Quest For The Gold Pen Review - Kindergarten Zelda

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Lots of cartoon trends come and go, but Bluey's rise to the top of the streaming landscape has been fueled by more substance than the typical preschool kids cartoon. The phenomenon has been almost as strong among adults as kids, as the show's strong writing, imaginative play, lovable characters, and surprisingly deep emotional intelligence has moved many adults to watch it as well. It was inevitable that the popularity of Bluey would invite video game adaptations. And while Quest for the Gold Pen is simple and familiar, it's also well-made in a way that could serve as a gentle early introduction for a new generation of gamers.

It's hard to talk about Quest for the Gold Pen without inviting comparisons to the other Bluey video game release, Bluey: The Video Game. That game from Artax and Outright Games captured the look of the cartoon remarkably well, but it was a bit dull. You mostly took part in minigames around the Heeler household, loosely built around the story of finding a treasure map. It was cute, but it lacked the heart and imagination of the cartoon, and its gameplay hooks weren't all that compelling.

Bluey's Quest for the Gold Pen, from Jetpack Joyride developer Halfbrick Studios, is almost the precise opposite: a more imaginative setting, with solid game mechanics underpinning it, but also more structured. You aren't just playing around the household and making your own fun this time, and a lot of the activities are very similar. But since it's presented in a familiar framework, this feels like a proper and recognizable video game--just paced a little slower to make it approachable for youngsters.

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Terminator 2D: No Fate Review - No Problemo

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If I could use only one word to encapsulate Terminator 2D: No Fate, it would be "authentic": Both in the way it faithfully recreates James Cameron's seminal 1991 action movie and its nostalgic love affair with the 16-bit era of video games. Movie tie-ins were mostly awful in the early '90s, but I could easily see myself renting No Fate from my local Blockbuster and blasting through its sidescrolling run-'n'-gun action in between episodes of Dragon Ball Z and WWF Smackdown.

It's a brief experience, with the credits arriving in less time than it takes to watch the entirety of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but No Fate is a licensed video game done right, created with palpable reverence for both its source material and the era of video games it emulates.

No Fate's story mode opens with a shot of rolling tarmac, as the painted yellow lines in the middle of the road scroll past at regular intervals. If you're a fan of Terminator 2, this shot will be a familiar sight, albeit one now rendered in gorgeous pixel art, with chiptune music and Sarah Connor's monologue presented as blocks of text rather than through Linda Hamilton's hushed tones. It's also in a different place--on a desert road instead of a Los Angeles freeway--and opens the game as opposed to bookending the movie.

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Octopath Traveler 0 Review - From Zero To Heroes

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Octopath Traveler 0 is now the third main game in the series that began Square Enix's "HD-2D" renaissance, taking both cult-classic and classically styled RPGs and imbuing them with a particular visual look and feel that pays homage to the heyday of 16-bit RPG excellence. Octopath itself has been iterated on enough that it's forged its own identity within that framework, giving Octopath Traveler 0 the freedom to break some of its own conventions and iterate on others. It's a reimagining of what an Octopath game means, and more than that, an excellent game in its own right.

Octopath Traveler 0 begins with character creation, which itself is a big departure from the Octopath norm. The games have previously told eight interconnected stories, each focused on named, individual characters. This new approach has you create your own protagonist, and they remain locked in your party throughout the entire game as the rest of it is filled in by various companion characters who you meet along your journey. The character creation is simplistic, with a handful of options for aspects like hairstyle and eye shape, but rendered in a retro pixel style that's enough to give you a good deal of flexibility.

That pixel-art style is largely unchanged from the previous two installments, and like many of the HD-2D games, it's an acquired taste. I found the lighting effects on the sprites to be distracting and washed out in handheld mode on Switch 2, but it looked much better on a big screen. Still, I find the art style in general to be fairly muddy and desaturated, and would appreciate the occasional vibrant splash of color, which Octopath 0 rarely provides.

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