Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival Is The Best Entry In The Franchise Since The Original Film

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Let's get the obvious out of the way: Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival is a grotesque game. It puts sex and extreme depictions of human mutilation front-and-center in its first-person perspective, and asks you to face it–even stick your hand in it. It's uncompromising in bringing Clive Barker's vision to a level of fidelity that not even the movies could dream of matching. It looks incredible.

While salacious in its nature, it can be easy–even forgiving–to fixate on Hellraiser: Revival for its lurid subject matter and blaze past its more considered themes of desire, abuse, and the darkest realms that linger in the human mind. But beyond the sensation of Revival's violence is a game that dares to be ambitious in both its gameplay and narrative.

Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival can feel like it's wearing the skin of other games at times. Each of its inspirations feeling like a Frankensteined limb attached to another. But by the end of this horror-action survival game, Revival becomes a beast all its own. Although it stumbles through an identity crisis in the early hours of its 10-hour runtime, it is unabashed in its display of grotesqueness and sexuality, and ascends as a game worth seeing through to the end.

Rooted in Clive Barker's original novella,The Hellbound Heart, and the first two films, Hellraiser: Revival takes place 20 years after the first movie. But don't worry--no prior knowledge of the franchise is required to engage with Revival's story. It focuses on Aidan Lynch and his girlfriend, Sunny–two folks from affluent families whose paths crossed in their joint journey to seek taboo and fringe forms of stimulation, by way of sexual desires and substance abuse. Sunny has a particular taste for collecting occult artifacts and manages to get her hands on the Genesis Configuration: one of the many mystical puzzle boxes that opens a gate to an eldritch realm of a neverending concrete labyrinth hellscape, home of the Cenobites–demon priest-like beings who seek to harvest souls and entrap them in an eternal hell of pain and pleasure.

Aidan, ignorant of the Genesis Configuration's otherworldly powers, uses the cube as a toy to evoke (consensual) pain on Sunny while making love, and in the process, triggers the box to summon the Cenobites, who mutilate Sunny in front of him and drag her away into The Labyrinth. Genesis Configuration in hand, Aidan marches into hell to get Sunny back.

It isn't long until Aidan finds himself at the center of the Scarlet Church, a cult of murderous psychopaths who worship the Cenobites and their god, The Leviathan, and seek ascension to become servants of its power. But on his journey, Aidan is haunted by much more than the terrors of the Cenobites, the monsters the realm produces, and the Scarlet Church itself. His own troubled past and vices, torment him too.

The setup for Revival paves way for myriad gameplay styles and design philosophies, and Revival attempts all of them, with the game's opening hours functioning much like a game-design tasting platter.

As Aidan, you'll find yourself stealth-killing cultists one moment, fighting tooth-and-nail with Condemned-like melee combat the next, and, soon after, shooting a machine gun at a horde of monsters, launching sawblades and performing Doom (2016)-esque glory kills. Oh, and there's Resident Evil 4 inventory management. The good news is that it all feels great, but I could also feel the game straining to pace its gameplay ambitions as it ushered me through scenario after scenario.

Sections often felt like self-contained miniature set pieces of what you'd expect in a Resident Evil-esque mansion, involving exploration and backtracking to find several keys in order to progress. But in Revival's case, most of it is confined to smaller spaces like finding toys for a dominatrix in a sex club in exchange for a key to the VIP lounge, or a literal mini-mansion that saw me unlocking one room at a time, each one revealing a key item to the next location. This scaled-down approach works in favor of the game's linear pacing to keep its narrative going over the game's tight runtime. It also demonstrated a clear understanding of classic RE design in a way that pleased my RE veteran brain.

It's all woven into a loop of stealth and white knuckle gun fights with capable and murderous cultists, until the power dynamic shifts as you face off against hordes of spongey Unworthy (zombie-like monsters). Going toe-to-toe with mobs of Unworthy better showcases the Genesis Configuration by using the environment in battle, along with kiting monsters into booby traps. Or, in later sections of the game, using the Configuration to move giant spinning propeller blades around an arena and turn enemies into mincemeat. 

At first, the Configuration functions much like the gravity gun from Half-Life 2–a device that can pick up and hold items from the environment and launch them as a weapon–albeit much more limited in the items it wields, ranging from saw blades, railroad spikes, and metal propellers, which are more like prescribed opportunities to pick up and use, rather than something as dynamic and freeform as the gravity gun. The saw blade, in particular, calls back to Half-Life 2's Ravenholm, and there's even a severed torso propped up on a saw blade in a wall as a direct nod.

With the Configuration's telekinesis gravity-gun-like ability, you can grab deadly items and launch them at enemies, cutting through a crowd and removing limbs, leaving a few poor saps to crawl your way instead. Eventually the Configuration can absorb fire, allowing you to hurl fireballs; move select structures around to solve puzzles or unleash them as deadly hazards against enemies; and unleash Hellchains, an ultimate ability that wraps a mob of enemies in hooks and rips them to shreds. It rules.

This frequent shift from offensive to methodical gameplay involving stealth and considered shots is not unlike the game's motif of power exchange that's hand-in-hand with BDSM culture. And regardless of the role the game puts you in, it feels good.

Revival offers a lot of tools in a fight, and when played well, can lead to a great synergy of violence. Objects like gas cans can be equipped, allowing me to pour trails of gasoline around an arena, strategizing for a fight I anticipated to come, and lay a trap of my own for unsuspecting cultists. In one case, I Home Alone'd a room with bear traps and gasoline, and the result was a satisfying display of dismembered legs, charred bodies, and used shell casings on the floor.

There are a lot of options, and thank the Leviathan that there's no skill tree or perk system to further complicate it. Combat skills evolve with the narrative's progression, and considering the snappiness of its length, Revival uses The Labyrinth to, once again, shakes things up. The Labyrinth often comes in as pacing speed bumps, shifting the focus away from combat encounters and more on traversal and puzzle-solving, functioning as breathing room between fights (despite being suffocating and claustrophobic in its own right). It adds yet another flavor of horror and gameplay, often introducing chase sequences that utilize Aidan's ability to sprint and slide under spiked chain obstacles.

These parts work in what they're trying to accomplish, but their linearity is so cut-and-dried at times that they feel too literal in their purpose–to slow the player down, or act as routine opportunities to dump exposition on the player to add some color to the Cenobites, explain what they are, and reveal their motivations. 

Like many things in the game, however, the game's clunkiness fades more and more as it progresses, especially as Aidan's world collides with the eldritch realm: the cold stone interweaving with the human world; the once neon BDSM club laced with the grey walls of the suffocating Labyrinth. Worlds mesh, allowing me to see earlier areas now wrapped in chains, flesh, and far-off sights of a fantastical maze. 

Among its many balancing acts is how it weighs its depiction of BDSM culture and kink. The taboo subculture is handled with consideration and care, never blurring the lines between people who part take in fetish practices and the murderous cultists who seek to torture and murder others for pleasure. It's emphasized by posters on the wall about consent and respect, as well as the game's dialogue. In one particular scene, Aidan is corrected by the merchant Zora. Upon entering a BDSM sex club, he claims he needs to get away from these maniacs (referring to the cultists), only for Zora to reply, "Careful now, most of these patrons are innocent maniacs, just yearning for something to satiate their desires." 

Furthermore, Revival's reliance on sex and explicit nudity–while plentiful, especially in the game's early hours–doesn't feel gratuitous. The display of sex is used with deliberate purpose, often to paint an image of those who seek physical desire, or, in Aidan and Sunny's case, to develop their characters as well as their motivations. 

Despite being an action-horror romp, the core of Revival is about the relationship between desires and needs, and it's the crux of Aidan's entire journey to go through hell in order to bring his companion back. But as the story progresses, Aidan's motivations are challenged in the process. "I love her, I need her," he claims to Zora, to which she replies, rather matter-of-factly, "Those are two different things." It's a throughline that anchors his arc from start to finish, and pays off well. 

Aidan is a well-realized character that's teetering on camp, but it's a camp that I welcome. Aidan is in ways something like an Ethan Winters from Resident Evil Biohazard and Village–a joe-schmo tossed into the deep end, who is a regular guy one moment, and then a gun-wielding, machete-slashing, herbalist self-healer the next. The difference between an Aidan and an Ethan is that Aidan's skills are explained, being a medical-school dropout seeking an elevation of life's offerings, by turning to a life of crime and joining a biker gang where he learned to use guns and get in fights. Like I said, it's campy, but I'm all for it. It also works because Aidan's backstory plays a part in his journey through Revival, often using his goody-two-shoes-turned-bad-boy nature to inform how he got here. It's the characterization that made me genuinely care about Aidan, his faults included.

Hellraiser: Revival consistently walks a fine line of never taking itself too seriously, without completely derailing its more serious and touchy themes of abuse, both with drugs and in relationships. Most of that heavy lifting is done by its larger-than-life villains who are eccentric cornballs (welcomed cornballs), especially Bruno, the "artist" whose art is mutilating corpses into absurd spectacles of flesh and bone. Revival is colored with a wide array of varied antagonists, including the leader of the Scarlet Church, Marlowe; his companion, the Sister of Mercy; or Charlotte, a young woman who volunteered herself to ascend as experiments to the Cenobites, and turns into a horrible creature that acts as the game's stalker, a la Resident Evil's Nemesis enemy, who terrorizes Aidan. 

Each character, and often the one they surround themselves with, have a surprising amount of depth and characterization. By the end, I knew and understood every villain I fought. 

The most grounded and compelling of these characters is Zora, the merchant who keeps tabs on Aidan. She also serves as Aidan's devil's advocate, questioning his motives around every corner, and forcing Aidan to sometimes question himself in the process. She is an anchor in the narrative, and is as vital to the story as Sunny, the villains, and the Cenobites themselves.

Everything the game attempts to accomplish synergizes so well by the end, that I wanted to start it all over again, which is why I'm let down that Revival doesn't offer a New Game Plus mode. I hope it's added in a future update, especially because the game's harder difficulty feels unbalanced and unfairly punishing. After completing the game on its normal difficulty, which presented a moderate, albeit, approachable challenge, I still yearned for an increased amount of pain to fulfill my pleasure to have my survival skills tested. 

The game's Hard difficulty, however, does not complement the game's existing design. Hard doesn't feature quick saves and has fewer save points, with those save points sometimes being located far apart. The difficulty is altered with the addition of more enemies in any given area, and alerting one will send all of them running exactly to your location. One area involved a lengthy stealth section where one wrong move could send me back 15 minutes, making the experience feel less rewarding of my skill, and more tedious to repeat over and over again. I wouldn't recommend Hard on a first playthrough, or even a second (unless you're truly seeking some masochistic ascension).

By the end, Hellraiser: Revival stood more confident and self-aware than its early hours, shaking off the imposter syndrome for an outfit that fits it just right. And damn, it looks good in it, too.

In a moment where conversations around modern audiences are becoming more averse to sex scenes, and mainstream video games are taking fewer and fewer risks, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival feels like a statement piece in both sex and violence. While explicit, Revival suspends these real-world topics to such fantastical extremes that I find it hard to view it literally. But the topics it tackles, from abuse to sexual exploration, still somehow remain tasteful when wrapped in its otherwise over-the-top depictions. But, hey, that's what made Clive Barker's original novella and the original Hellraiser film so compelling. And Hellraiser: Revival is a well-deserved addition to the Hellraiser legacy.

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Order Of The Sinking Star Sometimes Has Too Much Of A Great Thing

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A good puzzle game needs to constantly find new ways to challenge you, to walk you through skills and reward your observations, and to contain answers that make logical sense without being too obvious, or too obtuse. 

Order of the Sinking Star, the latest puzzler from developer Thekla Interactive and director Jonathan Blow, mostly hits those marks with impressive, cunning, and devious puzzle design. But even when it misses and gets frustrating, the game takes so many swings that it's easy to  head to another level and find another opportunity to bend your brain and stretch your smarts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMaW-V42Xwg

In fact, the best and worst part of Order of the Sinking Star is how expansive it is. Thekla touts over 1,000 puzzles to solve spread across an expansive overworld map that's full of discreet dungeon-like levels, mimicking the formula of 1987's The Legend of Zelda. And like the original Zelda, all of those puzzles involve pushing blocks around a grid, seen from a top-down perspective. Finding ways to keep the act of pushing blocks challenging, compelling, and unpredictable for hundreds of puzzles is Sinking Star's greatest feat, but that ingenuity can also make the game a little too sprawling and, at times, unwieldy.

All those puzzles are born of the many smart and intricate mechanics Order of the Sinking Star brings to bear on its simple underlying concept. The game finds you in what appears to be some kind of strange artificial garden facility, and you start by controlling a character who, after being plucked from some kind of battle, at first wonders if she's died and is now in the afterlife. But one assumes Valhalla or whatever would have more drinking and fewer brain teasers. As she sets about exploring, she discovers audio logs left behind by some other person who explored the place ahead of her and recorded his many findings.

Soon after, you enter a massive open overworld, where you can set out in four different directions, each representing a different set of mechanics. Those areas are each inspired by other, smaller puzzle games, and here those games' creators serve as level designers for their specific areas. From the overworld, you can enter different puzzle levels, activated from points on the ground like spaces on a game board. Completing those puzzles opens pathways forward to keep exploring the overworld.

What you soon discover is that each of these sections of the map, with its unique mechanics, represents a specific world in the multiverse sense. Each world has its own characters, whom you control within individual puzzle levels. The idea of different worlds and their denizens being pulled into this strange, ethereal place provides a story reason to include a ton of different mechanics, and then gives Order of the Sinking Star a handy excuse to combine them in fascinating and novel ways as the different worlds collide.

In the north, you run across levels inspired by the Heroes of Sokoban games, sporting traditional role-playing characters, like a Warrior, Mage, Thief, and so on. Each has their own capability: The Warrior can push multiple blocks at once as opposed to just one at a time, the Mage instantly swaps places with other characters or objects when he faces them, and the Thief can't push objects forward but can drag them behind her. The east draws its mechanics from the game Mirror Isles, where mirrors can teleport objects at right angles. The south, inspired by Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes, carries a series of puzzles that have to do with skipping stones across water to create pathways and divert currents, while the west builds on Promesst and is all about using special beams that let characters walk through walls, teleport long distances, destroy objects, and more.

Those individual areas work well as upgrades to and expansions on the original titles that inspired them, and present a wide array of different modes of thinking as you explore, thanks to the array of characters you control as you go. Several can't push things at all but can transform objects or carry them in a pocket. One guy wears a bulky contraption that means he needs empty space around him to turn, so you have to think differently about how he navigates levels than you do with other characters. All those elements make for strong, tough puzzles in their own right, but Order of the Sinking Star raises the bar significantly as it starts to mash the worlds and their mechanics together.

Sinking Star hits best when it's pushing you toward creative ways of thinking with combinations of all those different aspects, and the game deftly teaches you new concepts that build on old ones in mostly intuitive ways. The puzzle design all the way through is impressively tight, and you can always rely on the idea that if you're stumped, it's because you're missing something or you're not using all the included elements. Through my nearly 70 hours with the game, I encountered only one puzzle that could be solved in a way that didn't seem to be what the developers explicitly intended. Sinking Star produces a ton of "ah-ha!" moments as you realize what each puzzle is trying to show you, and you then extrapolate a leap that makes you feel extra smart.

One puzzle featured both a teleporting beam and the teleporting mirrors. Under the right circumstances, the mirrors can create copies of your character that you have to control all at once, and I quickly wound up with four characters to deal with--but this level had only one exit spot, so only one character could complete it. You can't kill any characters and still finish a level, so I had to find a way to zap these four copies back into a single guy, without using the mirrors. When I finally figured out how to fuse all those copies together like Brundlefly, it changed how I thought about all the elements and opened up new lines of thinking for puzzles I hadn't considered.

The drawback of four games' worth of good ideas mixing together is that you have to keep them all in your head at the same time, and things get very complicated the deeper you go. There are a few puzzles that cram so many things together that their challenge is derived from overwhelming you with rules and complexity, rather than forcing you to expand your thinking. 

There were also times when I stared at a puzzle for minutes or maybe hours, only to realize the solution was some simple but esoteric interaction of rules that I'd forgotten because there are so many to keep in mind. In one particularly vexing puzzle, I needed to use a pushing character, skipping stones, and the pulling character together, and figured out what I thought was the solution fairly quickly. But I found myself staring at the puzzle for hours, trying to figure out its second step. I realized much later that I did have the solution, but I'd wasted a bunch of time because I was misremembering a past rule about how the stones worked from puzzles I'd completed hours earlier.

So to some degree, the breadth of Sinking Star's mechanics can work against it, and the game can seem enormous for the sake of enormity. On the other hand, the game is so large that you can always just wander off and make headway elsewhere, because there's always something else to solve.

Sinking Star is also merciful in how easy it makes experimenting with different solutions to a puzzle and undoing your mistakes. An instant undo button dials you back one action, and an action includes moving a character by one grid square. It's extremely easy to just zap back in time to one step before you accidentally shoved some essential item off a cliff or trapped yourself in a corner. There's also a dedicated button for instantly restarting a puzzle with no loading. You can slow down and speed up time at a whim, making it easier to complete puzzles with tricky timing, or to skip the boring parts when you're stuck waiting for something to happen. Sinking Star's highly forgiving nature makes it very convenient to mess around and test ideas, without wasting any more of your time than you already are by being a little dense. More puzzlers should take a page from that design approach when they're able.

While overall, Sinking Star's puzzle design is great and the game is full of inventive challenges and fascinating interactions, it does wear on. The plot elements that are meant to provide you with an overarching drive to explore wind up being pretty thin--at least through the many tens of hours that I played. 

Each character has their own personality, agenda, and motivations, and all get waylaid by stumbling into this strange puzzle world. But the tidbits of story you find for each are never particularly satisfying. The RPG heroes from the north are chasing some evil magistrate, but he's little more than a disembodied voice, if he's present at all. The scavenger from the beam world wants to collect gems for research and personal profit, and I didn't really get what that would be good for. Those mirrors are part of some kind of series of trials and the mirror character failed them at some point in his past; so what? 

All the stories are told in tiny, spread-out tidbits, and mostly feel like they exist as a veneer to justify new puzzle ideas, which makes them more confusing than compelling. And the larger mystery of uncovering what this puzzle place is, why it exists, and who created it, is just as obtuse. There are answers here, that much is obvious, but they require an even bigger investment in plumbing Sinking Star's secrets. After hitting the first of the game's endings with little but more questions and a lot of hanging plot threads, it became clear that the motivation for continuing on in Sinking Star has to come from enjoying the discovery of what new and interesting challenges the developers have in store for you, and not uncovering the narrative that surrounds them.

Often, though, the challenges are enough. I loved realizing I'd learned something that could help me uncover a solution on the overworld, only to open up a whole new area with a bunch of puzzles working with fresh takes on what had already been established--and those takes never seem to run out or get stale. Order of the Sinking Star might work better had it been a bit more curated in deploying its massive pile of puzzles, but the occasional frustration and overcomplication is an affordable price of admission to play around with so many fun ideas.

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I Can’t Believe A Silly Star Wars Racing Roguelite Is One Of My Favorite Games This Year

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I felt such a sense of whiplash jumping into Star Wars Galactic Racer after playing Zero Company. Unlike Zero Company--and plenty of the other Star Wars games we've gotten in recent years, like Survivor and Squadrons--Galactic Racer isn't trying to emulate the science-fantasy drama that defines the majority of the Star Wars movies and other assorted fiction. Instead, it's silly. We're not making morally gray decisions in a fight against an evil empire here. No, we're trying to win a racing league in order to dethrone the comically evil rich competitor mounting some kind of hostile takeover of the league. Oh, and we have an infinite number of chances to qualify, and protagonist Shade can walk away from the most violent of wrecks without a scratch. It's such a ludicrous situation that makes no sense if you think through the logistics of it for even a moment. 

And yet that very absurdity is exactly what racing in the Star Wars universe is all about. It sees competitors strapping themselves into barely functioning death machines to jockey against each other at breakneck speeds while soaring past lava, through narrow desert canyons, over acid-filled valleys, and alongside icy cliffs to the cheers and jeers of a bloodthirsty audience. Everything about the competition is comically ridiculous, and by leaning into that irrationality, Galactic Racer not only feels authentic to that fantasy, but it's also a hilariously good time. 

You race through the game as Shade, a former-racer-turned-cargo-pilot, who finds themselves brought back into the sport as both a favor to the league's commissioner and as a means of seeking revenge against Kestar Bool, an arrogant champion who wronged Shade in the past. Galactic Racer doesn't do too much to set up the stakes for this plot, framing Shade's revenge through a lens of a mystery. What did Kestar do to Shade? Why does Shade always wear a helmet? Why is it so important for Shade to get Kestar to remember who they are beneath that helmet? Don't you want to learn these things? Yes, yes, I do.

However, while the mystique surrounding Shade, their relationship to Kestar, and the ramifications of the racing league at large for the galaxy are all intriguing setups that drive much of the drama in the early hours of Galactic Racer's story, the payoff to these questions is disappointing. The story eventually tells us the answers, but they're often hand-waved off in brief conversations, while Shade and the rest of the cast barely show any emotion--the direction for the voice acting is pretty good, but the final result sounds a little stiff, and the character models barely move and don't seem to change expression at all. These shortcomings don't ruin the experience of playing Galactic Racer, but they do detract from any sort of emotional depth that might be provided by the story.

The best part about the story is how it's framed. Galactic Racer's story is a roguelite, not a traditional single-player campaign. To face off against Kestar, Shade has to first qualify to participate in the racing league, and to qualify, they need to win qualifier matches across a number of different planets. If Shade is knocked out--by crashing one too many times or losing an important race, among other disqualifiers--they're forced to fly back to the starting planet of Jakku and attempt the run again. 

This is a fantastic gameplay loop for a racing game. While the order of the planets doesn't change (at least initially--more on that in a bit), the path Shade takes across each one is up to you. With every run, Galactic Racer randomizes two to three paths of progression, with each crossing into another at specific points to sometimes narrow down to only one way forward or ballooning out to multiple options. And each stop along the path is a different type of event. 

You might just be competing in a simple race, for example, or get asked by one of the other characters to help them test pilot a specially made vehicle through a trial. Some of my favorite events are Mystery Encounters, in which Shade meets up with a friend or foe to talk--the mystery is you don't know which until you've already chosen the event. In one, I saw Kestar demand Shade pay him back for a small fender bender, and when I had Shade refuse, I started the next race by immediately blowing up on the starting line, losing one of my do-overs, and Kestar gloating that I shouldn't have crossed him. It was so silly and surprising, I laughed out loud (don't worry; I rallied and went on to win anyway), but it's the example I think of now when describing how your chosen path can have unintended consequences. Most dangerous of all events are Eliminators, which slowly knock out the racers who are falling behind one-by-one--make it to the end and you'll earn extra rewards, but fail to keep up and you won't just lose the race; you'll be thrown back to the start at Jakku. 

The limited choices of what you can do next creates this thrilling sense of risk-versus-reward. Aiming for harder challenges can mean earning enough improvements to your speeder to finally win that final qualifier, a very tough race on all but the lowest difficulty, or it could be the one setback that sends you back to the start. There's a palpable tension to the campaign, enforcing the narrative stakes in a way that the dialogue between races never manages to. 

That tension carries into the moment-to-moment action as well. There's no guiding line in Galactic Racer, no voice in your ear telling you where to go or what to do, and no rewind function to correct a mistake. This puts the entire onus of individual decisions in your hands, and you have to make them at breakneck speeds because you go fast. Between the rumbling of your speeder through your controller, the escalating blurring of the environment, and the use of sound to emulate flying past objects, you feel like you're hurtling forward at speeds that should kill you, and it's only your quick thinking that can keep you from a multitude of career-ending crashes with every lap. This isn't a roguelite where you take stock of your options and make measured decisions; this is the slow accruement of muscle memory and honing of reflexes (and, heck, maybe mastering the Force) over repeated attempts to handle a rocket-propelled hover car. 

The design philosophy of each track leans into this idea too. While each planet offers its own unique challenges to deal with--Jakku's hot sun can more easily overheat your engines, for instance, while Sentinel I's pools of acid can melt away your speeder if you hover over them for too long--almost all of the tracks feature narrow tunnels, obtrusive obstacles, and exceptionally sharp turns. While there are a few outliers (Crait has an oval track in a wide-open salt field, for example), each track regularly pushes you into positions where you're jockeying against other racers for room and making quick judgement calls without a ton of space to maneuver. 

The tracks on some planets even encourage you to aim for the most narrow of routes. You can temporarily escape Jakku's burning sun in some places by avoiding the open fields of sand and speeding through the wreckage of a Star Destroyer, for example, and if you want to keep your engines from freezing on Ando Prime, you can thread the needle through the dastardly cramped heat lamps scattered about each track. These tight spaces make you feel like you're going even faster, as you need to regularly squeeze past obstacles in the blink of an eye to get ahead. Managing to do so is exhilarating, and forcing or tricking an opponent into succumbing to their own speed and crashing is even more so.

Succeeding at events earns you more points to upgrade your vehicle's stats, like more powerful acceleration or tighter cornering, as well as cash to buy parts for your speeder for that particular run. I always loved purchasing parts that could maximize how much of a boost I could gain by drafting off opponents or increase how long I could "safely" push a speeder's limited but extremely powerful Ramjet into the red before it exploded and took me out with it--anything to get that extra speed. But I was never afraid to try something else and discover a brand-new favorite strategy. I'm sure plenty of tier lists will come out in the wake of Galactic Racer's release that will tell you exactly which parts you should purchase and which you're better off avoiding, but I don't think there's actually an entirely bad one. This game encourages you to experiment and doesn't punish you for trying something new or adopting a different kind of racing strategy. As long as you get to the end, that's all that matters.

If you don't make it to the end, you lose all the upgrades and parts that you put into your speeder, but you can take all the points you accrued based on your performance in individual events to unlock stronger starting stats for your vehicle. You can also use these points to purchase other types of vehicles--you start off with only the well-balanced landspeeder, but the exceptionally fast speeder bike or quick-to-turn skim speeder might be more your speed. There's a separate pool of points for buying visual upgrades, none of which do anything beyond ensuring your ride looks how you want it to. It was tough for me to move away from my starting landspeeder after all the effort I put into customizing its aesthetic appearance and starting stats so that my speeder always began a run looking and handling just as I wanted, but Galactic Racer has a generous respec mechanic so trying out the other two (and falling in love with the skim speeder's knife edge mechanic) doesn't risk much beyond the time used to test them out.

In addition, fulfilling specific requirements or proving your worth to other characters during a run can unlock more starting playstyles and favors for all future attempts. Playstyles let you determine what starting equipment you have, like better shielding to take hits or an ion blaster to stun opponents, while favors give you even more bonuses, such as starting a run with a do-over if you disqualify or earning extra money for making your rivals crash. Over 15 hours into Galactic Racer, I'm still unlocking something new with each run, and while this consistent sense of progression presumably cannot last forever, lasting this long has kept every run filled with excitement. It can be such a bummer to crash and burn just one or two events away from the final goal, but at least I know I'll have a bunch of cool new stuff to try out next time around.

And man do I just want to keep going for that next time around. The framing of a racer within the looping nature of a roguelike is so deeply rewarding to keep playing through again and again.

Ultimately qualifying for the race is merely Act 1 of the game's story. With each subsequent act, more planets are added, and the order in which you race across them changes. New types of tracks are added, as well as more environmental hazards like mines or storms or darkness. Sponsors start weighing in, asking you to complete challenges within a single run to curry favor and fortune, and a betting system lets you wager your cash that you'll beat a specific racer in a single event, allowing you to form brief rivalries for profit. 

As the amount of features and mechanics grow, the number of events you need to complete just to get to the next act keeps growing too. What starts as a simple roguelite racer where every run is 20-40 minutes eventually grows into a gauntlet where every skill you've honed is put to the test in a lengthy planet-hopping adventure that can go for well over an hour on just one run. You can't save your progress within a run either, beyond just letting the game idle and putting your console or PC into standby (which I often had to do because racing near-flawlessly for over 60 minutes straight is pretty brutal). Every mistake I made near the end of my final runs of the story filled me with a spike of dread, but reaching the end of a run and hitting a milestone in the plot always filled me with a rush of adrenaline and accomplishment. I still have yet to complete Galactic Racer's final challenge--I choked on the second-to-last event of the run and had to sit down to write this review so that I could calm down--but all I can think about is trying again.

Granted, it's not all perfect. Galactic Racer has a good variety of tracks--enough to keep each run fresh as you try again and again, but few enough to let you slowly become familiar with them enough to develop strategies and discover shortcuts. But a few of the tracks, especially those on Jakku, have weird sign-posting that can make it irritatingly easy to get turned around and accidentally go the wrong way. 

And I can feel the lack of an excellent soundtrack as I continue to play. A few of the more recent Star Wars games have begun to dip into the culture of the galaxy far, far away--both Jedi games and Zero Company to an extent (and Outlaws especially)--and a big part of that has been getting to hear what in-universe music and radio stations sound like. So I'm baffled Galactic Racer doesn't give me anything to listen to while racing, save for the general ambient noise of each planet, a brief triumphant or defeated score to mark any of my victories or defeats, and the recycled shouts, quips, taunts, and proclamations made by the assortment of racers you hear whenever Shade passes them, gets passed by them, wins against them, or loses against them. Around hour eight or so, that repetition gets a little grating, and having something else to listen to might have alleviated that shortcoming.

Playing Galactic Racer reminds me of my favorite parts of the most recent Forza Horizon games: the first 10 minutes. That initial drive sequence that introduces the new setting, gets you acclimated to the gameplay basics, and moves you from one track to another to let you play around with different vehicles in a bunch of different environments is so fun. It's all about hearing the roar of the crowd and the excitement in the announcer's voice, not needing to rely on the rewind mechanic, and just feeling the rush and exhilarating joy of going really, really fast in a cool vehicle as the world around you becomes a blur. 

Galactic Racer is those absolutely perfect 10 minutes expanded into a full game. Every moment feels joyfully fast. Every decision carries the weight of tension. And every run is a rewarding chance to learn, improve, tinker, and adapt, whether it ends in success or failure. I can't wait to keep playing what's been my favorite racing game in years.

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Gears Of War: E-Day’s Campaign Is Buried In The Past

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The best prequels typically share the same thing in common. Whether it's Red Dead Redemption 2, Yakuza 0, Metal Gear Solid 3, or Halo: Reach, each game tells a story that recontextualizes what came before. Revisiting a game after playing its prequel should alter the experience, providing you with new knowledge that changes how you perceive certain characters, places, and scenes. 

The events of Red Dead Redemption 2 add emotional weight to the first game and John Marston's mission by humanizing his targets, just as Yakuza 0 deepens the bond between Kazuma Kiryu and Akira Nishikiyama, making the first game's tragic finale much more impactful.

Gears of War: E-Day doesn't do anything like this. 

The Coalition's latest venture back to the world of COGs and Locusts is a prequel to the 2006 original with nothing new to say. You already know where it's going: protagonists Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago go to war as the human world of the surface is invaded by the subterranean Locust, and the heroes survive to fight another day. Even then, there aren't any surprises on the way there. 

The most notable changes occur within the framework of its third-person, cover-based shooting. It's still distinctly Gears of War--full of meaty men wielding crunchy weapons--just with a few new bells and whistles added to improve aspects of its signature action. It's good, and the increased spectacle is impressive, but it doesn't do enough to elevate to greatness.   

For a series that has struggled, or been unwilling, to let go of the past, purposefully going back 14 years prior to the surprise attack that incited the series at least sounded like a solid idea. By tackling the past head-on, with one of the most important days in the series' fictional history, The Coalition gave itself the chance to examine the origins of Marcus, Dom, and the antagonistic Locust Horde from the very moment their fates intertwined. 

Instead, E-Day tells a fairly boilerplate story; one that feels like it was written specifically for series newcomers, rather than anyone who's already fought to the conclusion of the Locust War. There's one moment, for instance, when a character explains that throwing a grenade into a Locust-spawning Emergence Hole will close it, while familiar enemy types like Boomers, Tickers, and Reavers--creatures fans have been fighting for two decades--are given grand entrances.

Introducing or refamiliarizing players with certain aspects of the Gear's universe isn't a knock on the game in and of itself, but the heavy emphasis on treating these known quantities as novel is indicative of a wider issue. E-Day seems uninterested in surprising longtime fans or appealing to the series' own history. 

Marcus is still as gruff, authority-bucking, and no-nonsense as ever, despite a 14-year gap and everything that happened in between, while Dom's still going through the same emotional beats as before, worrying about the fate of his wife Maria. The pair haven't fully developed the close relationship they share in the original game, and mostly bond over their shared grief for the loss of Dom's brother, but their relationship isn't explored deeply enough to add anything interesting to what we already know. 

Even something like the invention of the iconic Mark 2 Lancer--the assault rifle with a chainsaw bayonet that has been a staple of the Gears of War games since the beginning--happens off-screen with a character you only briefly meet twice. It's a throwaway scene that demonstrates just how much this prequel feels disappointingly superfluous.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTxwN-Ck1Zw

The story is entertaining at face value, with plenty of intense action and cheesy one-liners. There's a horror-tinged element to some of the early missions, as you witness the sheer brutality of the Locust firsthand. And I also like the two new squad members, Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes, even if the game takes a while to touch on their backstories. 

It is odd, however, that neither character is ever put in any peril. This is reserved for characters we already know survive, so the stakes remain relatively low throughout E-Day. The story also ends with more questions than answers, seemingly setting up for a sequel or DLC at the very least. Meanwhile, the cliffhanger at the end of Gears 5 remains unaddressed.

Combat is E-Day's strong point. The Locust are still veritable meat bags, with bodies that explode into dense chunks and heads that pop like watermelons–combined with crunchy sound design that's pure dopamine. Classic weapons like the Gnasher shotgun and Longshot sniper rifle are as satisfying as ever, and brutally slicing a Locust in half with the Lancer's chainsaw remains an evergreen delight.

You can also find and equip weapon mods this time, too. This adds slightly more depth to combat, letting you tune gun behavior and add scopes, laser sights, and bayonets to weapons that wouldn't otherwise have them. Perfect reloads, the series' classic mechanic in which you get a damage bonus for hitting the reload button in time with an on-screen prompt, can be altered to grant incendiary ammo or increase the weapon's fire rate. You can also find mods that reduce flinch, speed up reloads, increase damage range, and more. It's a heavily customizable system that gives you the freedom to completely alter how some weapons function or simply boost aspects that play to their strengths.

It's not just your firearms that have been tinkered with, either. Marcus and company are much more agile than they have been in past games, able to slide, jump, quickly mantle over cover, and climb ledges with relative ease. This ties into the game's renewed focus on verticality in its level design, although being nimbler doesn't meaningfully transform how it feels to play Gears. 

E-Day is still a cover shooter. You now have more varied ways of moving from cover to cover, but the moment-to-moment action isn't all that different from what it was back in 2006, with an emphasis on popping up to take opportune shots or maneuvering to flank dug-in enemies. It's surprising how well the Gears formula holds up 20 years later, but also reveals how little has changed.

Gears 5 previously broke the series' mold by introducing open sandbox environments that allowed you to tackle objectives in the order of your choosing and explore vast areas aboard vehicles. E-Day follows suit but reins things in considerably, ditching the vehicles and focusing on smaller spaces. The entire game takes place in and around the city of Kalona, alternating between explorable open areas and more linear missions. 

When you're free to traverse blocks of the city, you'll find myriad collectibles and occasional side missions, but these sections mostly just bring the game's frenetic pace to a halt. The side missions lack variety, typically tasking you with surviving waves of enemies, and with many shops and apartments sharing the same layout, there's little of interest to find by exploring every nook and cranny. Teaming with other players helps, as you can spread out and find everything much faster, but co-op is obviously optional.

It's a shame, because Kalona's architecture is visually fascinating, mixing classical European-style buildings with more modern industrial factories--not to mention a gothic edge. You also get to see it gradually destroyed by revisiting the same locations a few hours apart. Witnessing a street where you once had a firefight turn into a giant sinkhole that cuts through the metro and beyond is an effective sight, showing how quickly the Locust decimated the city. 

This is the one area where E-Day does something interesting with its open-ended sections. Otherwise, its linear missions are far superior, honing in on that classic Gears action while going big on spectacle with some cinematic flair.

These moments are Gears of War: E-Day at its very best. There might be some new ideas here, but you also get the feeling that The Coalition isn't trying to reinvent the wheel. That's fine, but this also made me realize that my appetite for this kind of game just isn't as strong as it was, say, 10 years ago. There are only so many times you can man a gun turret before you never want to see another one again. For better or worse, E-Day is distinctly Gears, and I had a good time with it, even if the story is disappointing and the open areas are fairly dull. But that's all it is: a good game, propped up by combat that hasn't changed all that much over the past 20 years. That's enough to skate by, but I wish Gears of War would dig deeper.

[Editor's Note: Multiplayer servers go live at the same time as this review. This review will be updated in the next few days with multiplayer impressions and a finalized score.]

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End Of Abyss Commits A Metroidvania Cardinal Sin

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End of Abyss pulls from a lot of inspirations. It has the same texture to its creepy world as Little Nightmares, which makes sense, given the team at Section 9 Interactive includes some former creators of that series. It borrows a bit from soulslikes, with its towering bosses who pack a mean punch if you don't time your dodge-roll well. Its fixed camera angles are reminiscent of Resident Evil, especially when you can hear something monstrous in a room before you can see it. 

First and foremost, it's a third-person metroidvania in which you shoot monsters, solve environmental puzzles, and regularly unlock upgrades that enhance exploration. Some of its best parts are staples of the genre, but due to a few flaws, including one that broke my trust, and some poor blending of these influences, it winds up being an inconsistent patchwork instead of an inspired amalgamation.

In this 12- to 15-hour sci-fi horror story, you play Cel, a voiceless technician sent to investigate a facility that has gone dark for reasons unknown. Elsewhere in the third-person adventure, other characters try to help solve the mystery, each decked out in hazmat-like coveralls, as you reveal the massive facility floor by floor, section by section. You'll routinely unlock new items meant to send you backtracking to solve puzzles, uncover secrets, and ultimately beat the game. Of course, End of Abyss didn't invent this formula, but it uses it well, consistently giving me strong incentives to retrace my steps as I'd recall old routes I couldn't take until milestone moments in the story. 

This tried-and-true mode of exploration is my favorite part of the game. It was a tantalizing prospect to fight through a tough area with the game's twin-stick shooting mechanics and survival-horror-like limited resources to uncover things like explosive charges that can destroy some weak walls and floors, or a grappling hook that can pull down previously inaccessible ladders, revealing huge new avenues to explore, including many optional areas. Most upgrades are only found in optional areas, so I always made the time to seek them out as I tried to stay ahead of the many punishing enemies shambling around most corridors.

Physically, the explorable space is well-designed, often leaving me to chart much of the facility myself, with some valuable maps hidden off the main path that regularly rewarded my efforts with a full view of a given area. However, End of Abyss betrays its genre and the player alike with one particular area lacking in polish: those all-important maps sometimes lie to you. Due to an apparent bug, sometimes a door you've opened will still register as locked on the map, or a door for which you have the key won't remind you of that with the map icon the game uses to say, "Come back! You can open this one now." 

These are visual bugs only. I could still open a door if I had the right key, even if the map didn't tell me I could, and some doors locked on the map were wide open when I got there. But it meant having to juggle two versions of the game's many intricate areas in my head at once: the world according to the map, and the world according to reality.

It made my favorite part of End of Abyss more frustrating than it needed to be, with more than a few instances of this issue cropping up before I hit the credits. A patch for the game went out just before I faced the final boss, which scrubbed out some other issues I faced to the point that they're not even relevant to this review anymore, but the map problem remains for now. 

As much as I loved exploring every inch of the world, finding hidden bosses and precious resources alike, these sometimes faulty maps are a cardinal sin for a metroidvania, a genre that relies on these in-game signals for players to immerse themselves in their labyrinthine worlds. Once I realized I couldn't always trust the map, navigating became more stressful than some of the boss battles.

Though the map misled me at times, at least the world is gorgeous. End of Abyss's underground facility comes to life thanks to its awesome atmosphere and art direction. The midnight-blue color palette gives every inch of the space an eerie, unsettling feeling. Cel can often hardly see more than a few feet in front of her, and it's not long before she, and you as the player, will come to realize how unfortunate that can be. I love when a sci-fi story can still feel like a haunted house, and though End of Abyss' many kinds of enemies are usually closer to mutated zombies than ghosts, it's all enveloped in an air of disconcerting stillness that I adore.

A few bosses are memorable, but several others are too similar to stand apart.

When in combat, from a certain range, Cel's shots are mostly spot-on thanks to a soft auto-lock that assists you. Get too far away from an enemy, though, and targeting becomes more dependent on your manual aim, giving fights that classic horror thrill of missing shots you really needed to land. It's good tension, even if it can feel like some under-the-hood randomness is deciding your shots in a way I suspect may frustrate others.

There's no shortage of body horror in this game, which pulls from sci-fi classics like Alien, Event Horizon, and The Thing in different ways. Most enemies, with their noodly organic masses spilling out of their heads, behave like mindless drones, running or stumbling toward you, then clawing at you, latching onto your face, or stinging you, so it quickly becomes tense trying to keep a safe distance from the enemies without losing the aim assist that dispatches them more efficiently. 

Early on, every encounter felt like a tense fight for my life. My gun was underpowered and enemies were numerous and quick to close the gap between us, while the cramped quarters and fixed camera angles added purposeful friction. At times, I grew frustrated because of the game's soulslike inspirations. Some of that comes down to taste. I don't enjoy or, usually even play soulslikes because I don't have the interest in getting beaten by a single boss for long stretches of time, and a few times early on, that was my experience with End of Abyss.

But around the halfway point, everything began to click. My guns were more plentiful and powerful, having unlocked a shotgun, rifle, and flamethrower--though none of them really compared favorably to my fully upgraded pistol with infinite ammo. I got much better at timing my dodges, and after a few early bosses gave me fits, I beat several later ones in one or two tries each.

That's partly due to the game's satisfying power climb that ramps up the deeper you get into the story, though it's also true that most bosses don't offer much diversity when it comes to challenge. Most of them want to simply clobber you up close or from range, heaving a fleshy appendage at you with just a half-second's notice per attempt. Though each boss has its own look and a few have some unique gameplay wrinkles, several others hardly feel different from one another. Once you learn to take advantage of the dodge-roll's invincibility frames, you'll be just fine.

Managing a pack of enemies, especially of different types, is often very hard early on.

I went into End of Abyss expecting a tough horror game based on my previous hands-on sessions with the game, and though it is often difficult and the world is definitely horrific, I also came away feeling like the soulslike elements clash poorly with a horror game. The first time I'd enter a room and get swarmed by a specific onslaught of enemies, it was scary. But when I'd get to a restoration pod--a save point and stand-in for Dark Souls' bonfires--enemies would reset. That meant retreading my steps through areas, which, while exciting for their newly opened avenues and hidden upgrades, lost their scare factor when I encountered the same enemies doing the same things as before. There are only so many times the monster can jump out of the proverbial closet before someone sleeps through it unphased, you know? 

As a result, I stopped seeing End of Abyss as a true survival-horror experience and started seeing it more as a darker, creepier Metroid. I like that conceptually, too, though if that's what it wants to be, a more reliable map system is crucial. Getting lost because of faulty in-game hints happened too often for a game so reliant on exploration as its key ingredient. This problem may be fixed by the time you get to it, so you might have a better time than I did. 

There are only so many times the monster can jump out of the proverbial closet before someone sleeps through it unphased, you know? 

Ultimately, my 13 hours with End of Abyss were inconsistent, with long stretches of excitement broken up by regular beats of annoyance. When I was rolling right along, finding major and minor upgrades, unlocking crucial shortcuts, and taking on hordes of enemies in nail-biting combat, I really loved it. But too often, the map misled me, some encounters lost their luster through repetition, and some early difficulty spikes left me flustered. 

In one sense, the way End of Abyss pulls from so many different inspirations lends it much of its appeal. It's the rare sort of game where you could round up super-fans of Dark Souls, Resident Evil, and Metroid, and each of them might come away with something different they enjoyed. But even if a patch fixes my big issue with the map's reliability, it's this same blend of influences that hampers some parts, none more than the repetitive soulslike encounters that reduce its horror elements to mere aesthetics.

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Minecraft Dungeons 2 Is More Ambitious, More Interesting, And More Flawed

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When Minecraft Dungeons launched in 2020, it was difficult to know exactly what to make of it, or where it stood in the franchise as a whole. One of the world's most popular games had been transformed into a Diablo-lite-style action-RPG, taking away the mining and crafting that give Minecraft its name. In its place was something far more straightforward: kill monsters, collect loot, and repeat.

The simplicity of Minecraft Dungeons was both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. Its streamlined gear system made it easy to understand, while its enchantments gradually introduced more interesting build possibilities. But its combat could feel a bit too basic.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 feels like developers Mojang and Double Eleven focused their efforts with those limitations in mind. The sequel is far more honed in on what happens between the battles, with expanded inventory systems, more customization options, more reasons to explore, and--perhaps most importantly--a world that actually feels connected to the larger Minecraft universe.

Dungeons felt like it deliberately separated itself from the main game, and that was partly the point. Mojang wanted to create an experience that couldn't be found in vanilla Minecraft, while still using recognizable mobs, environments, and items to make it feel familiar. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD9GtlgU8_c

Dungeons 2 takes a bold and unusual approach that not many other large franchises could pull off. Its story brings the Sift dimension, which was created for this game but is also coming to the vanilla game in 2027. The Sift is accessed via a portal--a mechanic that will feel familiar to anyone who's played Minecraft--and houses an ethereal dimension with all-new environments, friendly mobs, and enemies. The Sift's being added to the base Minecraft game makes the relationship between the two games feel far more deliberate than it did in the first installment. It also allows Dungeons 2 to feel like a bigger part of the Minecraft universe, rather than a smaller branch forging its own path.

As a result of that, Dungeons 2 made me particularly invested in its new dimension. As a Minecraft fan and veteran player, I was also intrigued about whether any of the narrative elements would be carried over to the main game. I walked around the Sift feeling like I was intruding on an unreleased Minecraft build, eager to check out the biomes, friendly mobs, enemies, and potential materials that can be found in the first new Minecraft dimension in a decade and a half. The Sift is the first Minecraft dimension outside of the Overworld that doesn't feel immediately hostile. In Dungeons 2 it's under threat, so there are hostile mobs to deal with, but the pearlescent lakes, muted blue, pink, and purple color palette, and mobs that cheekily poke their tongue out by way of greeting all lead to a very serene world, one that I'm excited to explore in vanilla Minecraft in 2027. 

By having multiple armor pieces, adding Enchantment Books, and having the ability to jump, Dungeons 2 is actually closer to the vanilla Minecraft experience than its predecessor. It feels almost unbelievable that the first Dungeons didn't include jumping, but Dungeons 2 does. This allows for a broader scope of exploration as you can hop up to hidden platforms to uncover chests, jump across gaps to reach previously inaccessible areas, and dutifully check behind waterfalls for hidden loot. It also adds the jump-attack combination, which allows for a more powerful attack that affects any enemies in range and provides another means of effectively dealing with groups of enemies.

The storyline gives you something simple to care about. Your villager friends aren't just background characters wandering around and making "hmm" noises. They want to live peacefully, yet villains lurk around every corner determined to make that impossible. Every time they attempted to interfere with the villagers' attempts to live happily ever after, I found myself increasingly annoyed at them. It's not the deepest or most emotional narrative by any means, but Dungeons 2 understands that a straightforward story and likeable characters can work in tandem remarkably well. It's a notable improvement over the first game, where the story largely existed only to give you a reason to chase down the Arch-Illager. 

That's not the only area where Dungeons 2 improves upon its predecessor. The original Dungeons had an awkward economy that felt almost meaningless. You collected emeralds constantly but were limited in ways to spend them, with many options feeling worthless. In Dungeons 2, upgrading your gear at the Blacksmith improves your existing gear's stats substantially, while rolling for new gear at the town merchant has the potential to give you more powerful items to complement your build--especially if you've used Echo Shards to upgrade the merchant so he can offer stronger gear. 

Since the Blacksmith required rescuing in the original Dungeons, I somehow managed to miss his arrival in Dungeons 2. By the time I realized he was present in the sequel, I had already salvaged a considerable amount of gear that I probably would have kept had I known I could upgrade it. I'm undecided whether that's down to my campaign tunnel vision, or whether Mojang should have introduced him better.

There is still a problem with this system, though. In placing a maximum cap of 9,999 emeralds, I regularly found myself losing them as I wasn't watching my balance when salvaging old items to exchange for more emeralds. Then, as it can often cost in excess of 1,000 emeralds to upgrade an item, I'd find myself struggling for the currency. A cap absolutely should exist, since it's so easy to get emeralds via exploration and salvage, and is part of what led to emeralds feeling worthless in the original game. But when that cap is making you regularly lose currency that you're actively trying to spend on upgrades, it shows that the economic balance isn't quite right.

Where Dungeons 2 does excel hugely over its predecessor is in its willingness to allow you to establish a coherent build. Instead of one armor piece, you now equip a separate helmet, chest plate, leggings, and boots. This gives you more opportunities to shape your character around a particular playstyle, and I spent much of my playthrough experimenting with different combinations. I tried lightning-, poison-, and soul-focused builds, and each one changed the way I approached combat. 

The soul system was probably my biggest stumbling block. The game doesn't do a particularly good job of explaining what souls are, how you acquire them, or why you might want to build around them. I eventually worked it out through experimentation, but I shouldn't have needed to poke around quite as much just to discover something that is fundamental to an entire build archetype. Once you understand the systems, experimentation is enjoyable, but Dungeons 2 occasionally assumes that you know more than the game has actually taught you. 

A new type of equipment, Talismans, add another layer of build complexity. You can equip up to three at a time, and they grant you a passive ability--some summon other characters or creatures to fight alongside you, while others grant generous buffs to your health, attack power, ammo, and more. Amassing a decent collection of them relies on completing side quests and finding hidden loot, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it means players who rush through the main campaign are potentially missing some of the strongest tools they need to make more interesting builds.

While the first game already had plenty of replay value through its difficulty levels, repeatable missions, hidden levels, and eventual DLC, Dungeons 2 expands upon that even further. There are side quests, dungeons, repeatable boss fights, and Soul Surge activities to complete beyond finishing the campaign. Soul Surge activities are time-limited events where stronger enemies spawn in an area, rewarding higher-tier loot that you can't get through normal gameplay. As a result, Dungeons 2 feels like an ongoing adventure rather than a campaign you complete and never return to. 

It also adds a purpose to the loot system. If you're trying to perfect a poison build, getting another piece of equipment is no longer about increasing your power; it's about improving the synergy between your individual gear pieces. The hunt for the perfect item to slot into your build is pretty moreish, and Dungeons 2 gives plenty of opportunities to do that after the story ends.

However, there's a significant problem with the enchantment system. Enchantment Books are scarce, and I spent most of the main story limited to two of them for my armor pieces. You can use each book an infinite number of times, but in terms of build synergy, it's oddly restrictive. My favorite builds came way beyond the main campaign, and I didn't get that moment of feeling true satisfaction as my poison spread from mob to mob until many hours after I finished. Given the mob density throughout the story and the powerful bosses you face, it would have been more satisfying to discover a few more Enchantment Books as part of the storyline's rewards, instead of seeking them out post-game. However, being forced to explore Dungeons 2's gorgeous environments seeking out better loot is far from a terrible experience.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the biggest problem I faced. My roughly 15-hour playthrough of the main campaign was affected by a number of bugs and glitches, with one particularly persistent issue leaving a "Teleporting" label permanently stuck to my character. It wasn't merely a cosmetic annoyance either, as the bug affected traversal, at times preventing me from jumping or safely navigating the environment. Restarting my game could temporarily resolve some of those problems, but the Teleporting label itself never disappeared, meaning I completed about half of my playthrough with the intrusion. 

For a game that places so much emphasis on exploration and movement through its expanded environments, having traversal occasionally break is a serious problem. It's particularly unfortunate because Dungeons 2's environments are beautiful, and being able to properly explore them is part of what separates this sequel from the more linear structure of the original. Hopefully these issues are addressed in a patch at launch, because they undermine what is otherwise a considerably more polished sequel. 

Dungeons 2 isn't a radical reinvention, and rightly so. The first game was already an enjoyable, approachable dungeon crawler, even if it was deliberately lightweight. Dungeons 2 adds depth and connects its world to the wider Minecraft universe while adding a meaningful economy, a build system with considerably more freedom to experiment, and more post-campaign activities. 

Even though the restrictive emerald cap, scarce Enchantment Books, and technical issues dampened my experience somewhat, the difference between the titles is clear. Where Minecraft Dungeons was a charming introduction to the dungeon-crawler genre, Dungeons 2 builds a deeper action-RPG within the same familiar, blocky framework. While it doesn't completely escape the limitations of its predecessor, Minecraft Dungeons 2 is a more ambitious sequel that finally gives its loot, builds, and world the depth that was missing, even if a few rough edges remain.

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Ace Combat 8 Is Utterly Absurd–And Better Off For It

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I never knew I could be so enamored by clouds. There were times in my youth–typically sitting on a train or in the back of a car–when I would absentmindedly stare out the window at interesting cloud formations. Nowadays, phones, laptops, and handheld consoles tend to distract me from the world passing by, but in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, clouds are its ever-present pièce de résistance. 

For all the high-tech jets, explosive action, and melodrama at the game's core, it's the bountiful sky and its stunning portraits of a version of our planet at varying altitudes that truly grab the eye. Flying through a rain cloud as it douses the cockpit window with droplets of water never gets old, and simply cruising through the air is almost tranquil at times. 

Yet Ace Combat 8's clouds aren't mere window dressing. From gauging your altitude by the density of the clouds around you to using them as cover to break a missile lock, Ace Combat 8 uses this technology to push the series forward in tangible ways that go beyond aesthetics.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is one of the best examples of a game singlehandedly reviving a dormant series–and earning back its goodwill after the disappointment of Assault Horizon–so Ace Combat 8 didn't have to change all that much to keep the good times rolling. It stays true to the series' arcadey dogfighting roots while implementing a number of incremental improvements, making for a slightly more dynamic and intense experience as you go from sustaining heavy G-forces to unleashing a barrage of missiles. 

The story is more prominent and also personal this time around, too, strictly focusing on the members of a single squadron amid a major conflict. Set in Ace Combat's fictional war-torn world of Strangereal, the story begins as the Republic of Sotoa invades the Federation of Central Usea (FCU), quickly occupying much of the nation and scattering its military forces.

Outmanned and outgunned, the FCU relies on propaganda to keep morale alive. This is where the eponymous Wings of Theve comes into play: a legendary fighter pilot known for taking down dozens of enemy aircraft in the fight against the invading Sotoa forces. 

Except none of the pilot’s legend is true. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5irVTl0mD8

War propaganda is nothing new, of course, but this immediately reminded me of Ukraine's Ghost of Kyiv. This mythical flying ace was alleged to have shot down six Russian planes over the capital city of Kyiv back in February 2022. The Ghost's exploits quickly spread like wildfire in the media and online, but two months later, the Ukrainian air force revealed it was simply propaganda to boost morale.

It's easy to see how this might've influenced developer Bandai Namco Aces when creating Wings of Theve. But this is also an Ace Combat game, so it doesn't take long for things to get weird. Top Gun has always heavily influenced the series, so just imagine a scenario where Top Gun: Maverick opens with Tom Cruise crashing and dying, then passing his spirit on to a new pilot who adopts the Maverick callsign. 

For the rest of the movie, Tom Cruise exists as a dead guy in the new, silent protagonist's head, passing on sage wisdom and sharing his jaded thoughts on the war with a melancholy similar to the most recent Wolfenstein's B.J. Blazkowicz. Oh, and Top Gun is an anime now, too.

That is Ace Combat in a nutshell. A dead pilot narrating from inside your head might sound odd if you've never played the series before, but this kind of left-field choice is par for the course. Okay, maybe it has never gone quite this far--the Johnny Silverhand gimmick suits Cyberpunk much better--but it still fits the eccentric tone. There's no rhyme or reason to it, and the story wouldn't change all that much if it were removed entirely, yet I can't help feeling oddly gleeful that it even exists. 

Unfortunately, the basic premise doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. The pilot killed in the opening was the propagandized Wings of Theve, alleged to have shot down multiple enemies despite not opening fire on a single foe. Their famed callsign is now yours, but because this is a video game, it doesn't take long to turn fiction into fact. The Wings of Theve isn't an idea anymore; it's a real pilot who's gunning down enemies and turning the tide of war almost single-handedly, so anything interesting that might've derived from the propaganda angle is disappointingly absent.

Similarly, Ace Combat 8 lays the groundwork to comment on modern warfare in the age of social media, AI, and the mass sharing of disinformation, but all of these themes are ultimately window dressing. Social media is bad when the bad guys use it but good when the good guys do--this is the kind of social commentary you can expect.

Nuanced discussions aren't on the menu; instead, Ace Combat 8 basks in melodrama, with writing full of bold ideological statements and rousing speeches about borders, heroism, and the big blue sky. In the wrong hands, it could feel ham-fisted, but there's also a wide-eyed earnestness at play that's both endearing and optimistic. 

The new first-person perspective in cutscenes regularly features moments where you need to hit A to salute, shake hands, and so on, which veers into "Press F to pay respects" territory. Yet without Call of Duty's self-seriousness, it works in a campy sort of way. 

Humanizing touches also help the cast's pronounced personalities shine through, from Tasha Severskaya, a pink-haired civilian who's the squad's best pilot but hasn't yet pulled the trigger, to her wingman William Coster, who stays mostly silent until a mission where he learns one of the pilots you're trying to rescue used to be in his favorite rock band.

Ace Combat 8 does a good job building up your squad by delving into their unique character arcs through cutscenes and radio chatter during missions. The story has issues and is fairly by-the-numbers, but its bombast is entertaining enough, especially when it indulges in absurdity in a way only Ace Combat can. 

Where else would you face off against an ominous land battleship equipped with a railgun that can wipe out entire city blocks in an instant? Or regularly run into an evil squadron of enemy pilots that plays ominous music over the radio whenever they show up; music that gradually evolves each time they appear, eventually culminating in a pulse-racing dogfight set to some of the best video game music you'll likely ever hear.

Again, this is par for the course, whether it's a sweeping orchestral piece, a prolonged Spanish Guitar solo, or an up-tempo J-rock track. Ace Combat 8 lives up to the series' reputation for phenomenal music, adding another indispensable layer to the game's thrilling combat.

Flying through a rain cloud as it douses the cockpit window with droplets of water never gets old, and simply cruising through the air is almost tranquil at times.

Piloting its assortment of real and fictional jets is surprisingly simple, letting you get into the swing of things relatively quickly. Ace Combat 8 still has that classic arcadey Ace Combat style, but the planes feel slightly heavier than before--like there's more heft beneath the joystick--adding to the satisfying sensation that hits when you accelerate at full tilt and break through the sound barrier. 

The unmistakable crack of a sonic boom, accompanied by the distinctive vapor cone that engulfs your jet and then dissipates just as quickly as it arrives, is always exciting to pull off. Combine this with the way you can execute high-G turns, either to attempt to stay on the enemy's tail or dodge incoming missiles, and the act of soaring through the air is enjoyable in and of itself. 

Blowing up enemy aircraft is its own kind of reward, of course. Tougher enemies ensure that it's challenging to simply stay on their tail and achieve a missile lock-on, using tricks you would expect human pilots to use, such as dashing through clouds to break line-of-sight, launching flares, and pulling off cobra maneuvers to turn the hunter into the hunted. Some larger aircraft also have multiple lock-on targets, letting you pick whether you want to focus on, say, taking out their anti-aircraft guns first or destroying their propellers to send them tumbling out of the sky.   

Between knocking down buildings in the path of the aforementioned land battleship and shooting down suicidal drones to prevent them from destroying a space elevator, there's also plenty of variety from one mission to the next. After 30 years of Ace Combat, it feels like Bandai Namco Aces picked a few of their favorite scenarios from the series' past, while sprinkling in some new sortie types as well. 

One mission, for instance, has you flying an unarmed aircraft through a valley while avoiding detection from enemy radar. Others have you establish airspace dominance, follow contrails to locate massive stealth bombers, and take out coastal ground forces to protect your naval fleet's advance. There's a plethora of blood-pumping moments, although it does stumble into some pacing issues as well.

With 30 levels in total, Ace Combat 8 seems stretched at times. Some missions feel like filler, slightly nudging the story forward while tasking you with fairly basic objectives as though you're simply painting by numbers. They're not intrinsically bad, but these missions typically follow some of Ace Combat 8's more dramatic endeavors. 

I understand potentially wanting to break these levels up with more relaxed sorties to help you catch your breath, but it has the adverse effect of stalling the game's momentum. Fortunately, this isn't a problem as the campaign ramps up toward a particularly histrionic conclusion, yet I can't help but feel like it could've been a more tightly paced experience if a few missions were cut.

That said, I must commend some of these levels for being more open-ended, giving you the freedom to pick and choose your targets, which ties into Ace Combat 8's deeper pre-flight options. 

Before each mission, you can select your plane, its armaments, and a number of parts geared toward enhancing your mobility, weaponry, and other miscellaneous stats. You unlock all of this through an extensive Aircraft Tree, giving you new jets, weapons, and upgrades to play around with throughout the entirety of the game.

Some jets are tailored more for speed and dogfighting, while others excel at wiping out ground targets with bombs and land-based missile strikes. You can further improve these aspects with upgrade parts that enhance maneuverability, shorten air-to-air missile lock-on time, expand your bomb payload, and more. This isn't a rigid, universal system like before, either; each aircraft has a specific capacity for each upgrade type, making some of the more expensive jets feel much more powerful.

You can also outfit each squadmate with specific aircraft and weaponry, maybe balancing land-based attacks with air support, or fully favoring one or the other. However, I never noticed much difference in practice. The return of squad commands is more palpable, letting you order your squadmates to utilize their special weaponry when heavy targets appear, encourage them to be more aggressive, or demand that they fall back and support you. 

If you'd prefer having actual humans by your side, Ace Combat 8 also features the series' most exhaustive multiplayer suite so far. There are 100-player lobbies where you can customize your pilot avatar and wander around, visit the arcade to play Pac-Man, or head to a supply shop to obtain loot crates, among other distractions. 

There's also a battle pass--called the Ace Pass--with both free and premium tiers that unlock upgrades, consumables, and cosmetics for both your avatar and aircraft. We were only given a short multiplayer session to try out before launch, so it remains to be seen whether any pay-to-win aspects are at play. 

You can purchase new aircraft with an in-game currency earned by completing matches, but you're also limited by your rank, so you can't just buy the best jets right away. This seems like a good solution, but it depends on what's available if you're willing to spend real money.

Ace Combat 8's multiplayer rests on two main pillars: Co-op Assault and Co-op Warfare, which let you jump into PvE or PvP matches, respectively. Co-op Assault challenges teams of two to four players to complete a shared objective, rewarding victory to the team with the highest score. 

Co-op Warfare is similar, only you can destroy players on the other team as well, racking up points by taking out computer-controlled units and real players alike. Once again, the highest score wins, but escalating scores also raise the threat level, adding a score multiplier to each kill. The higher the threat, the bigger the swings, making for some intense matches.  

Additionally, limited-time modes occasionally pop up in lobbies. Scramble lets a team of four go head-to-head against powerful computer-controlled squads, while Emergency Sorties task eight players with defeating iconic super-weapons from previous Ace Combat games. Special PvP events also crop up from time to time, featuring four-on-four deathmatches and eight-player free-for-alls. 

Dogfights against human players are inherently fascinating, because even the best enemy AI can't possibly compare with the human mind. There's also plenty here if you'd prefer to team up with friends; the only question marks I have are centered on the battle pass and whether there are any other ways of spending real money to potentially gain an advantage. All of this remains to be seen.

Even if the multiplayer favors those with expendable cash, Ace Combat 8's single-player adventure is still worth the price of admission alone. The story could've been stronger--more introspective--but is entertaining regardless, and while there are some pacing issues with filler missions and some uneven momentum, much of the game is excellent, providing the series' signature blend of melodrama, stirring music, and thrilling aerial combat. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve picks up where Ace Combat 7 left off, underlining that the series is well and truly back to its best

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