u/Blurzerker

Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed Review

RELEASE: 2022

TIME PLAYED: 25 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+The upgraded graphics are colorful and striking, with a cartoonish art style that works wonders

+Like the first remake, some of the most fun arcade-style shooting and superpowers in gaming

+Crypto remains one of the more amusingly sociopathic gaming protagonists +Fun weapons that are ripe for emergent gameplay and comedy

-A lot of the humor has REALLY not aged well, whether due to being overly referential or just insensitive

-Many missions are either repetitive or just extremely poorly paced

Back when I was a cynical teenager in 2005, I thought the Destroy All Humans! games were the funniest thing in the galaxy. A sociopathic alien that sounded just like Jack Nicholson telekinetically throwing cows around and lampooning us silly humans for all of our stupid habits? It was absolute catnip to a fifteen year old who thought he knew everything and was fed up with the world. Over twenty years later, the remake of Cryptosporidium's sophomore outing is a surprising reminder of how well its fun-first, balance-second gameplay holds up - but also how dependent much of its humor is on being mean-spirited above all else.

Fresh off a total victory in in the 1950s USA, Cryptosporidium-137...well, he's dead for some reason, but not to worry! A decade later, Cryptosporidium-138 has all of his memories and is stronger to boot. Masquerading as the extremely human President of the United States, he's closing out the swinging 60s in style: trying to get revenge for the Furon mothership being blown up by the KGB and his boss/resident science expert Orthopox 13 being killed...though the ever-irascible commander, voiced by Richard Horvitz of Invader Zim fame, remains in the form of a floating hologram with his downloaded personality. Inevitably, he's dragged into a gonzo conspiracy involving drugged-out hippies, British superspies, and an extremely unfortunate portrayal of Japan.

Let's address the elephant in the room first. I try to take a nuanced view of 'offensive' humor; while I'm unapologetically one of those filthy 'woke leftists', I know everything exists in the context of the era it was created in, and that many jokes that don't land well these days are more out of ignorance than malice...but Destroy All Humans 2, much more than the first game and remake, REALLY makes some ill-advised decisions in my eyes that are tough to excuse even giving it twenty years of grace. Plenty of the humor, while occasionally eyeroll-worthy, isn't that bad; hippies smell, KGB agents all love vodka, whatever. And it IS funny a lot of the game, mostly when Crypto, slowly becoming more frustrated with his lot in life, starts snapping at anyone and everyone. But once I got to Japan...woof. Not only is the enemy faction there made up entirely of ninjas - in 1969, again - but they all speak with incredibly caricaturized accents voiced by white actors. When it comes to 'offensive' humor, I tend to respond first by asking myself: What's the joke? And in a lot of cases, it never seemed to go deeper than 'Asian people sound funny'. It was too lazy to even make me feel outraged, really; I just cringed. The game's treatment of the British and Russians isn't all that much better, but there's a weird specificity to the way the game lampoons the Japanese that just feels particularly one-dimensional.

This isn't, I emphasize, an attempt to tell anyone how to feel. I don't think that's useful, nor do I see it as practical; some will read the above paragraph and feel the need to defend the game's choices out of spite, and that's their prerogative. But a review - a good one, at least in my eyes - is about communicating the experience I had and advising of what a game contains, and I think this is all worth mentioning. If it doesn't bother you, great, have fun, but games cost money and those who might find this kind of content objectionable - or even just stupid - should be fairly warned.

Thankfully, the gameplay does hold up a lot better. Across a surprisingly meaty campaign, Crypto is tasked with blowing up buildings, slaughtering humans, and impersonating VIPs with his enormous suite of alien technology and psychic powers. The game shines when there's a chance to cut loose; while bonuses are usually offered for performing specific tasks, the best missions simply set the player loose with a goal in mind and let them solve it how they want. Because I'm vanilla as hell, I never stopped enjoying hoverboarding around simply flinging targets away with my mind, but I was also a big fan of Gastro, a summonable buddy that constantly talked shit, and the gun that summons actual meteor strikes.

Sadly, too many missions restrict the freedom that Destroy All Humans 2 excels at. Whether it's an overly-lengthy escort of Crypto's human love interest (yeah...) or defending fragile targets against multiple waves with little room to maneuver, the seams really start to show; enemy AI is incredibly simple, meaning that challenge usually just comes in the form of special foes who are immune to most of Crypto's kit or have highly inflated health bars. It never reached the point of becoming overly frustrating - though one mission, involving having to take down an enemy tower that seemed to summon an enormous wave of difficult enemies every time I so much as slightly damaged it came close - but Crypto being rather fragile even when upgraded meant that I spent almost as much of the game running around taking potshots and hiding behind cover as I did indulging in alien power fantasy.

Still, as juvenile and mean-spirited as Destroy All Humans 2 can get, there's something to be said for how much simple fun it can provide in an age where a surprising number of AAA games seem to struggle often with providing satisfying combat or a meaningful sense of growth. I can't presume to tell someone whether or not they should endure its puerile sensibilities to get to the good parts, but despite its pacing issues and occasionally ill-advised mission structure, it's a well-designed playground for those who want to see just how far they can launch an unfortunate cow into the stratosphere with their mind.

RELEASE: 2021

TIME PLAYED: 25 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★☆

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Gorgeous environments and fairly strong graphics

+Responsive and satisfying controls

+Unique powers that add a fun twist to a flight combat game

+Interesting and varied enemy types

-Story loses focus halfway through and has an aggressively bad ending

-Mission variety gets very thin for how long the game is

-Only the protagonist gets a character model, everyone else is relegated to portraits, which diminishes emotional impact

Chorus' protagonist, Nara, has done terrible things. It's something she wrestles with, complicated by the fact that doing these terrible things has given her incredible talents, both as a pilot and at more esoteric, supernatural things. This fact rests heavily in her heart; after all, does doing good with power begotten by sin redeem the sinner? It's a hell of a question, and one that the robust campaign of this story-driven space shooter doesn't quite answer -- but the game is still a rather good time.

Chorus kicks off with Nara - formerly a high-ranking officer of a cult called The Circle - making amends for the time she (checks notes) destroyed an entire planet in an act of superhuman zeal. She's doing this by assisting a secretive enclave of refugees on the edge of space, largely made up of survivors from attacks by the very same cult that she herself used to be part of. To nobody's surprise (I'm not being glib, even the characters have been anticipating this), The Circle begins to encroach on this sanctuary, and Nara realizes that doing little acts of good is no longer enough - if she wants to redeem herself, she has to stop The Circle once and for all.

It's a pretty good premise, and for about half the game, Chorus does plenty to capitalize on it. Since the dialogue is mostly through non-animated portraits, Nara's inner thoughts are established by her whispering to herself; the player gets a good look at her personality. Truth be told, I initially struggled to sympathize - her conflict about outing herself as a former genocidal imperialist felt like pretty small beans compared to the good she could do if she got over it - but to my pleasant surprise, one of the other major characters, her sentient ship itself, is the first person to call her out about this. I think mileage will vary based on personal tastes, but I was actually pretty pleased to see the narrative grapple with how much Nara would have to do to redeem herself for a crime as major as planetary genocide, and if she's even worthy of it in the first place.

Sadly, the second half of the plot takes things pretty far off the rails. I'll avoid spoilers, but the best way to describe it is that as the scale of the conflict grows and other factions get involved, the personal stakes fall away towards an increasingly unfocused exploration of Nara's powers and how she can restore them to their full potency. By the end of the game, I was fully tapped out of the story, largely because - while I certainly can't call what happens generic by any stretch - it became so abstract that it didn't seem to be saying anything anymore and was no longer engaging with its better themes.

Still, while I would have liked the story to be a little stronger for how much time is spent on it, space combat games tend to live or die by their core gameplay, and it's here that Chorus shines. The fundamentals are pretty familiar for dogfighting enthusiasts: Nara pilots her spaceship and takes down squadrons of enemies, often while juggling other objectives such as escorting defenseless cargo freighters or retrieving salvage crucial to the enclave. During the tutorial, I was struck by how awkward the combat felt, but once Nara got her real ship, Forsaken (the one I mentioned before that calls her out on her bullshit) it all made sense: the brief prologue is a masterful feint, an example of how limited everyone else is and how terrifying Nara is by comparison when she's at the helm of the vessel made for her.

Nara's a great pilot, but being great isn't always enough when outnumbered ten to one or having to challenge capital-class ships in just a fighter. What really sets her apart is her ability to tap into the Void. At first, she's only able to use this for sensory input, 'pinging' her surroundings not unlike living radar, but as the game progresses and her relationship with Forsaken deepens (alongside recovering some of her willingly excised memories), she picks up some incredible moves. Nara and Forsaken can maneuver in ways others simply can't. Near-instant 180s? Child's play, how about drift maneuvers by transforming the ship on the fly, or fully teleporting behind an enemy and blasting it apart with rockets?

Chorus gives Nara these abilities - alongside a decent array of weapons, with emphasis more on quality than quantity and each loadout being distinct - and then challenges her by making sure they're necessary. It's only a few hours before stranger and stronger enemies than simple fighters show up. On top of the capital ships that serve as minibosses I mentioned, there's esoteric beings from the same Void that Nara pulls her powers from that can match her a bit better and bring the numbers to keep things tense. I was consistently pretty happy with the game's difficulty curve, and even the dreaded escort missions typically were well-designed enough that I never got frustrated due to suicidal friendly AI.

Really, my only complaint with Chorus besides the story losing its way is that - both due to that narrative and in terms of simple mission design - it starts to drag by the end. If the plot held up better, I wouldn't mind so much that the fights started to blend together, but unfortunately, repetitive side quests and a long chain of flying between distant objectives in the last chapters means that Chorus' final verse lingers on a bit of a sour note. Despite this, it's an extremely strong and well-designed game where it counts, and I highly recommend it for its core combat alone, especially if you pace yourself and don't binge it all at once.

RELEASE: 2020

TIME PLAYED: 24 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Fun, three-layered twist on the roguelite card battler formula

+Interesting and varied decks that can be mixed for dynamic combos

+Tons of quality of life features like 8x speed modifiers and damage previews

-Balance feels shaky on the various decks as difficulty rises

I was a fairly recent Slay the Spire convert, but it awakened a pretty insatiable desire in me for roguelite card battlers, especially those with clever twists. Lucky me, then, when I had a week-long trip, a Steam Deck, and a desire for something replayable, and Monster Train popped up on my wishlist on sale. I might be new to the subgenre, but quality's easy to recognize, especially when it's so striking and novel as this.

The player's thrown into the game without much knowledge: Heaven has destroyed most of Hell, and the surviving demons have commandeered a train known as The Boneshaker that runs between the realms to protect the last Pyre that sustains their life force. While it's not explicitly stated whether or not demons are as malicious or evil as they are in other settings, it doesn't take much to side with the faction who's not attempting to do a genocide.

What this means in terms of actual gameplay is that the eponymous Monster Train (named thus I assume because the demons have also allied with fae and other mythical creatures) chugs through a series of levels in which the player gets a chance to upgrade their deck through purchases and events before ending in a battle against the angels and their human servants. The big twist is that the player's Pyre - effectively their life bar - is stationed on the fourth level of the train, and the enemies advance through the first through levels (usually but not always from the bottom up) trying to reach it. Saving for the miniboss or boss at the end of each combat stage, enemies will only linger on each floor for one turn, meaning that they need to either be taken down quickly or worn down before they finish their climb.

The player only starts with a single clan to play as - the fiery Hellhorned - but it doesn't take long to unlock another, and from there, it's a steady drip of new cards and clans to play that keeps things fresh. My favorite feature is that once the second clan is unlocked and onward, each run has the player choose a primary and a secondary clan, allowing them to blend playstyles. While I experimented with everyone, I wound up mostly favoring the Awoken, a nature-themed clan of plant monsters who had cheap, potent healing spells and tanky units, but lacked damage. As a result, I'd pair them with the Hellhorned and use their beefy frontliners to protect my fragile damage dealers as I enraged them and gave them purely offensive stats. Combat itself plays out pretty much automatically once the player starts the turn, so unit placement and planning are crucial to a successful run.

While the permanent boons are great, roguelites live and die by the variety they can inject into each run; after all, it's a genre built on repetition, and making starting over after a loss frustrating - or, perhaps worse, boring - is the worst sin one can make. Thankfully, Monster Train doesn't disappoint. Even on the initial difficulty, units can be upgraded with more health and damage or powerful effects like Quick (allowing them to attack first; most of the game is balanced around the enemies getting the first shot) or Multistrike (which multiplies their damage by adding another strike to their attack). Spells get plenty of love too, becoming cheaper or more powerful or even getting upgraded to always start in the player's hand. While it didn't take me long to find my favorite path to take with each card, there was more than enough variety to keep me experimenting with synergies the whole way through.

If I have any real complaint, it's that Monster Train's expansion - The Last Divinity - introduces a new zone and boss that feels pretty uneven in challenge. While each run, especially when Escalating the difficulty, tghrows curveballs in the base game, only Last Divinity feels like it severely punishes certain deck types -- for example, its final battle features room-sweeping attacks that can't be blocked by a tank, thus neutralizing much of the strategy of the Umbra Clan's 'Morsel' deck, where they devour weak minions each turn to grow stronger. I could also say that despite the rather abundant lore, there's effectively no real story, but considering this is a roguelite, I don't see it as a real negative, just worth noting.

In every way that counts, though, Monster Train absolutely rocks. With distinct visuals and interesting unit designs it's fun to watch, the strategic layer boasts tons of tactical depth, and convenience features like a damage preview and speed modifier emphasize polish and smoothness. It stands proudly on its own even in the rapidly growing deckbuilding roguelite subgenre, and my time with it has left me incredibly excited to tackle its more recent sequel.

RELEASE: 2019

TIME PLAYED: 22 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+I was able to make a pretty hilariously ridiculous character

+The AI companion is actually very competent

+The class-blending ability system from borrowing peoples' memories is fairly novel and neat

-The game is an aesthetic mess with incoherent and inconsistent designs for both characters and enemies, especially in regards to its women

-The story is rambling and falls flat in its attempts to sell its themes

-Companions never, ever, ever shut the hell up

-Combat is incredibly basic and almost every enemy in the game falls for Dark Souls 1-level tactics

-Level design and pacing are absolutely atrocious

--

Code Vein might be the most poignant lesson I've ever gotten that sometimes, maybe I should judge a book by its cover, or at least trust my own taste. I put off playing the game for a long time due to the look of it from the trailers I'd seen, but I wanted to be open-minded and give it a chance. I have to admit, I regret taking that dive - but for some reason (sunk cost fallacy?) I decided to play the whole way through, and I suppose the silver lining is that I now feel qualified to write this review.

Code Vein takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where roaming, vampire-like warriors named Revenants are tasked by the local authority with fending off the Horrors that have been born in the wake of the destruction. These Revenants require a steady supply of human blood, typically in the form of Blood Beads, and the tension between the Revenants - some of whom feel entitled to the blood they need to survive and view unpowered people as little more than slaves - and civilians is initially quite interesting, but is dropped almost immediately for a blander form of melodrama. The protagonist, initially a captive of one of these traveling groups of hostile Reavers, turns out to have the ability to copy the powers of anyone whose blood they consume and for some reason has a busty amnesiac woman following them around eager to serve them.

It was around the point I was being taken around the base I'd be operating out of that I initially started to roll my eyes and struggled to ever stop. I'm not a prude; I think there's nothing wrong with portraying sexuality in games. But Code Vein immediately committed one of my personal cardinal sins, which is that every woman I met had a ridiculously horny design, often with stick-thin arms, enormous breasts, and outfits that barely felt coherent with the setting -- while the men looked like paramilitary officers or were mostly armored. If the game's going to be horny, then it can be horny, but pointing it only at one gender - and having the characters look out-of-place in their own setting - is a double-whammy that left me irritable. Even in some famously frisky games, like Nier: Automata or Bayonetta, I always admired how well the protagonists rocked their looks and were consistent with the greater aesthetic, but Code Vein's incoherency aggravated me as much as its single-gender sexualization.

Still, I would have seen this as just a regrettable blemish if the rest of the game held up, but it simply does not. I will say that Code Vein does have a couple of novel ideas: before each outing from the base, the player can choose one of their companions to travel alongside them, and they are legitimately helpful. I found they killed a lot more enemies than I expected them to and didn't die as much as I was worried they would. For those who don't want a handicap, they're optional, so it's similar to the Souls' games summoned companions, but with less hassle. The blood techniques that serve as special moves are pretty neat, too; I was able to build my character like something of a berserker who buffed himself up before tougher fights and could swap between tough and steady or fragile but with enormous damage output just with a couple of casts.

But even when Code Vein works, it kind of doesn't. The AI companions are, without a doubt, the most obnoxious motherfuckers I've ever had the misfortune of encountering in a game. No matter which one you pick, they do NOT shut up. Every battle, every item collected, even just exploring - constant dialogue, and it's usually repeating the same two or three lines. A friend watching me stream decided to keep track of how often one companion said a particular line - it was over twenty times in five minutes for just THAT line, let alone other ones! And the blood techniques, while an intriguing twist, simply do not compensate for how fundamentally barren the combat is. Tricks that haven't worked in a FromSoft game since the first Dark Souls got me through 90% of Code Vein, like just circling around enemies and hitting them with repeated backstabs so easily I barely had to consider their attacks. The game's level design and enemy AI both feel a decade behind, right down to an entire zone that's shamelessly ripped off from Dark Souls' Anor Londo (but much worse designed). In fact, the vast majority of Code Vein's woefully easy even without a companion, save for a ridiculous and sudden spike from the penultimate and final bosses. I got through them, but the sheer jump from anything seen previous struck me as a jarring change of pace.

The story fares no better. Without delving too much into spoilers, the party goes from just trying to gather Blood Beads for their own survival to getting caught up in the fate of the world; again, there are shades of something interesting here, like the idea of having to deal with the individual pieces of a legendary figure sealed away into various hosts, but the somehow sedated melodrama ruined it for me. Just about every major reveal is delivered through the same 'walk slowly through a corridor of memories listening to two frozen figures talking', which got incredibly old the first time, let alone the twentieth.

I didn't want to hate Code Vein. The idea of going through a Soulsborne as a vampire-like being was fundamentally appealing, and I did actually enjoy how ridiculous I was able to make my playable character, with his beach towel and mouth full of onigiri. But one-dimensional characters with terrible designs, a garishly generic plotline, and combat that feels like it completely missed almost every development in ARPGs from 2010 onwards sabotaged my every attempt at enjoyment. Any one of these elements could have been forgiven if the rest of the experience held up, but that simply wasn't the case for me. For a game about blood and the bonds of humanity, Code Vein winds up being incredibly lifeless and sterile in every way that matters.

RELEASE: 2020

TIME PLAYED: 16 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+A fantastic twist on the Darkest Dungeon formula that flips the entire structure on its head

+A wide variety of powerful and interesting units

+Enjoyably melodramatic protagonist that's a level of evil gamers rarely get to play

-There's not much meat to the writing and the worldbuilding's a bit thin

-Lategame progression gets a bit bogged down in an increasingly unwieldy interface

---

In 2016, Darkest Dungeon broke ground on a form of roguelite that wound up resonating with a massive audience, selling millions despite its difficulty due to the powerful combination of a loquacious narrator, exciting combat, and distinct heroes. I remember at the time being confident that this would be the birth of a new subgenre of 'Dungeon-likes' that took advantage of this combination of procedural generation, party dynamics, and the opportunity for uncovering mysteries through gradually revealed lore. Unfortunately, my dream of this new world - this rogue state, if you will - didn't quite come to pass, but gems like Iratus: Lord of the Dead remind me that there's still studios out there innovating on the concept.

In an inversion of Darkest Dungeon's tale of adventurers gradually delving deeper and deeper into the earth, Iratus starts the player at the bottom - literally. Iratus (the man, not the game) is a powerful necromancer who was defeated ages ago by a party of noble heroes; unable to kill him for good, they chained him miles beneath the earth in a hidden tomb. Unfortunately for them, in the eras that have passed since, humanity has grown corrupt and decadent, and they inadvertently free him from his slumber when slave miners crack open his coffin. His rage at his defeat still very much fresh, Iratus kills his accidental rescuers and sets out to take revenge on the world of the living.

It's a delightful premise, even if the story doesn't do much more than set up the gameplay and get out of the way outside of a couple of cutscenes near the end. Iratus, however, is one chatty lord of the dead. Set up deep in the bowels of his former prison, he has plenty of dialogue and musings as he starts summoning the undead and putting them to work slaying his enemies and excavating the surrounding ruins to fortify his position. It leaves him in a similar role to Darkest Dungeon's infamous narrator, and while I can't say he's quite as memorable, I did enjoy just how gleefully evil the man is and how he has commentary about every unit the player can summon.

There's no lack of choice, either. As the game progresses, Iratus gains access to twenty different units, each with six possible abilities to use. Some, like the humble skeleton, are provided from the start. Others, like the fallen dhampir or the ice-wielding Unfrozen, have specific unlocking requirements. Some of these require beating the game on a certain difficulty, meaning multiple runs are required to explore every potential loadout, but others can be gotten by performing specific requirements, and this is where the system shines.

For those not familiar with Darkest Dungeon's Stress system, the horrors that the player's adventurers faced would build a meter that at the 50% point would cause them to potentially go insane and develop a crippling defect, with a small chance at shrugging it off and bolstering their team with their own virtue. At 100%, it could give the character a heart attack, killing them instantly, making managing Stress one of the game's primary mechanics. Continuing the theme of inversion, Iratus, being the villain of this particular story, is the one inflicting terror with an equivalent mechanic called Sanity. That fallen dhampir I mentioned? It's unlocked by killing enemy dhampirs' squads and leaving them as the sole survivor, then driving them insane with terror until they break and join your team. It's a delightful bit of role-playing, and serves the function of encouraging developing multiple teams in an organic way. Some enemy squads are tanky, but have shaky sanity due to their own problems. Instead of trying to tear down their defenses, I'd deploy my squad of horrifying spectres and turn them into gibbering lunatics.

Iratus is also pretty hands-on; though he isn't playable himself, the necromancer is all too eager to employ his alchemic know-how and mastery of sorcery to lend his minions aid or destroy his enemies. As the game progresses, the player unlocks a wide variety of spells that can reposition units, deal damage, buff and debuff, and more. There's also another degree of synergy here; some of the unit skills might be weak when it comes to hurting opponents, for example, but they generate more resources for Iratus to cast directly with. Once again, it's an impressive level of customization to one's playstyle, though I did find that by the time I was late in the game, the sheer number of buttons on my interface was getting a little bit out of hand. Unit stats and abilities, mana and rage resources, two pages of spells, another page of potions, turn order - it's not that it's necessarily too much on its own, but I found that the interface - while thematically gothic and brooding - didn't help much in terms of clarity.

There's a lot going on outside of combat, too, and thankfully I didn't have any problems with the interface there. Looting enemies for their remains lets you build and upgrade units with better-quality parts, and Iratus' base of operations expands through an enormous underground cavern that unlocks benefits by assigning or sacrificing minions to different locations. The sanity mechanic only affects enemies, too, which is both convenient and makes sense; I don't think my cannon-wielding zombie is really prone to trauma. As a result, there's little need to provide succor to your squad after a mission and the focus is on upgrading or replacing them with stronger options.

I just wish that I cared more about what was going on. Despite not being a particularly story-driven game, Darkest Dungeon got a lot of mileage out of its rich lore and narration. While Iratus' musings on how much he hates the living were often entertaining, there's only the barest skeleton (heh) of an actual plot here, mostly revolving around the balance of good and evil and the necessity of the death. I think what bothered me is that what's there isn't actually bad; the writing is enjoyable, and I was curious about the world I was slowly razing my way to the surface of, which made me a little frustrated that I didn't get more of it.

Still, I can't recommend the game enough. The combat feels well-balanced despite the large number of playable units, and while there's still some roguelite foundations, I found that permanently losing a run was nearly impossible as I always had enough parts to build a new team and implant them with brains that helped them start at a higher level. If you're craving a Darkest Dungeon-inspired experience that has its own twists or you just like those all-too-rare opportunities to be a gleefully villainous protagonist, Iratus: Lord of the Dead is a gloriously, goriously ghoulish time.

RELEASE: 2023

TIME PLAYED: 15 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Gorgeous, high-effort retro graphics that still boast high detail and ooze style

+A wide range of cybernetic implants that allow the player to make ridiculous builds

+Stellar level design

+Chainsaw leg baseball slide!!

-A few gimmicks outstay their welcome

-The last act's levels can drag a bit

Leaping between flying vehicles zipping through a tunnel at hundreds of miles per hour, I empty dual uzis into a minigun-wielding cyborg. I leap off a shuddering, flaming wreck just before it explodes and thrust both legs out to land on the next enemy a few cars over. He might be expecting a kick - instead, he gets a chainsaw to the head, buzzing him in half as I'm already sliding at an absurd speed to close the gap between my current platform and an enormous train packed with rocket launcher-wielding foes. The saw comes out again; this time, it mulches at least a dozen screaming psychos before they can take a swing with their improvised weapons. Soon, I'm circle-strafing what looks like Yes Man from Fallout: New Vegas on steroids, emptying clips into his television screen face while a floating obelisk that's made almost entirely of eyeballs as wide as I am tall tries to pick me off with plasma beams.

This is all just one level of Turbo Overkill, a slice of boomer shooter heaven that pushes the genre forward even as it fondly pays tribute to the past.

Johnny Turbo - what a name - is a 'street cleaner', a corporate mercenary sent to the planet of Paradise to investigate the unusual behavior of one of the company's most powerful assets: an advanced AI named Syn that's the secret to their success. Finding upon arrival that much of the cyberpunk-like supercity is aflame, he's tasked with tracking the rogue intelligence down while fighting through the hordes of the local gangsters and civilians who have been turned into its drones. While story is by no means the focus of Turbo Overkill, I actually had a lot of fun with the game's narrative; it's lightweight and unintrusive, but features some compellingly slimy characters who are fun to watch. Its infrequent cutscenes are useful breathers from the action, and are mostly just enjoyable excuses to watch Johnny do something sick or make a villain all the more delightfully hateable so that it's more fun to kill them later. It reminds me a lot of how fun Doom 2016's cutscenes were, before the franchise started to get bogged down in its own lore and self-seriousness come Eternal.

Unsurprisingly, the real focus is on the gameplay. A boomer shooter at heart, Turbo Overkill is about mowing down enormous numbers of enemies, navigating levels at a sprint that could violate local speed limits, and ferreting out the occasional bonuses and secrets. At these core conceits, the game does a fantastic job; moving and shooting feel great, and well-designed levels are both visually exciting and fun to navigate, with the retro-inspired graphics used as a basis to give a Blade Runner-style feel to things, but employing modern technology for draw distance and scale that makes it a treat for a player to look around and judge their next move. Enemies are well-designed, too; there's a nice mix of fodder and challenging foes in most encounters, and new foes are regularly introduced that add another dimension to fights.

What really makes the game stand out, however, is what it does to build on this rock solid foundation. In the last decade, we've seen a resurgence of boomer shooters, with some relying on their fundamentals and tone (like DUSK) and others leaning hard into something specific to make them stand out. Turbo Overkill makes a stellar effort at doing both, supplementing its fundamentals with an elaborate cybernetic system that gives the player a lot more say in Johnny's playstyle than they'd get in many shooters. By purchasing parts and implanting them into the available slots, the player can focus more on movement and parkour, offensive firepower, or even specific gimmicks. I, for example, bought the game in the first place due to the trailers showing Johnny baseball-sliding hundreds of feet at a time, his leg transforming into a chainsaw to obliterate everything in its path. With the game's upgrade system, I was not only able to make the chainsaw hit harder and leech more life from foes, but I was even able to implant a second chainsaw into my OTHER leg, doubling every benefit and turning the move from a way to suck a little health from fodder enemies into a vicious dropkick that could even deal significant damage to bosses.

This freedom of gameplay style is reflected in the level design, which veers more open-ended than many boomer shooters. I rarely felt hobbled by the lack of investment I made into the advanced parkour, but I saw plenty of opportunities where those who had could have taken routes or approached fights in ways that I couldn't. With how much there is to juggle, it's incredibly impressive that Turbo Overkill manages to be as persistently challenging as it is, even if I do recommend raising the difficulty one above normal if you want to struggle early on outside of the well-designed boss fights.

This isn't to say that I didn't have any complaints. A few levels built around gimmicks like driving Johnny's flying car outstayed their welcome and had me eager to get back to the shooting and platforming that the game does best. On the other end of the spectrum, while I mostly found the game well-paced, the third act has a lot of levels with back-to-back slugfests with enormous numbers of tough enemies; while I wouldn't necessarily cut any levels out given the choice, it would have been nice if the climax was more focused on the fantastic bespoke moments that it's already peppered with.

But these are minor nitpicks when weighed against everything that makes Turbo Overkill shine. Visceral and satisfying, gloriously violent and pointedly irreverent, it does what few retro-inspired shooters manage to do: pump new life into a well-trod genre and prove there's still room for innovation while not losing sight of the simple, satisfying thrills that made it evergreen in the first place. For that reason alone, I can't recommend it enough.

RELEASE: 2023

TIME PLAYED: 15 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Gorgeous, high-effort retro graphics that still boast high detail and ooze style

+A wide range of cybernetic implants that allow the player to make ridiculous builds

+Stellar level design

+Chainsaw leg baseball slide!!

-A few gimmicks outstay their welcome

-The last act's levels can drag a bit

Leaping between flying vehicles zipping through a tunnel at hundreds of miles per hour, I empty dual uzis into a minigun-wielding cyborg. I leap off a shuddering, flaming wreck just before it explodes and thrust both legs out to land on the next enemy a few cars over. He might be expecting a kick - instead, he gets a chainsaw to the head, buzzing him in half as I'm already sliding at an absurd speed to close the gap between my current platform and an enormous train packed with rocket launcher-wielding foes. The saw comes out again; this time, it mulches at least a dozen screaming psychos before they can take a swing with their improvised weapons. Soon, I'm circle-strafing what looks like Yes Man from Fallout: New Vegas on steroids, emptying clips into his television screen face while a floating obelisk that's made almost entirely of eyeballs as wide as I am tall tries to pick me off with plasma beams.

This is all just one level of Turbo Overkill, a slice of boomer shooter heaven that pushes the genre forward even as it fondly pays tribute to the past.

Johnny Turbo - what a name - is a 'street cleaner', a corporate mercenary sent to the planet of Paradise to investigate the unusual behavior of one of the company's most powerful assets: an advanced AI named Syn that's the secret to their success. Finding upon arrival that much of the cyberpunk-like supercity is aflame, he's tasked with tracking the rogue intelligence down while fighting through the hordes of the local gangsters and civilians who have been turned into its drones. While story is by no means the focus of Turbo Overkill, I actually had a lot of fun with the game's narrative; it's lightweight and unintrusive, but features some compellingly slimy characters who are fun to watch. Its infrequent cutscenes are useful breathers from the action, and are mostly just enjoyable excuses to watch Johnny do something sick or make a villain all the more delightfully hateable so that it's more fun to kill them later. It reminds me a lot of how fun Doom 2016's cutscenes were, before the franchise started to get bogged down in its own lore and self-seriousness come Eternal.

Unsurprisingly, the real focus is on the gameplay. A boomer shooter at heart, Turbo Overkill is about mowing down enormous numbers of enemies, navigating levels at a sprint that could violate local speed limits, and ferreting out the occasional bonuses and secrets. At these core conceits, the game does a fantastic job; moving and shooting feel great, and well-designed levels are both visually exciting and fun to navigate, with the retro-inspired graphics used as a basis to give a Blade Runner-style feel to things, but employing modern technology for draw distance and scale that makes it a treat for a player to look around and judge their next move. Enemies are well-designed, too; there's a nice mix of fodder and challenging foes in most encounters, and new foes are regularly introduced that add another dimension to fights.

What really makes the game stand out, however, is what it does to build on this rock solid foundation. In the last decade, we've seen a resurgence of boomer shooters, with some relying on their fundamentals and tone (like DUSK) and others leaning hard into something specific to make them stand out (like Ultrakill and its insane parkour and weapons). Turbo Overkill makes a stellar effort at doing both, supplementing its fundamentals with an elaborate cybernetic system that gives the player a lot more say in Johnny's playstyle than they'd get in many shooters. By purchasing parts and implanting them into the available slots, the player can focus more on movement and parkour, offensive firepower, or even specific gimmicks. I, for example, bought the game in the first place due to the trailers showing Johnny baseball-sliding hundreds of feet at a time, his leg transforming into a chainsaw to obliterate everything in its path. With the game's upgrade system, I was not only able to make the chainsaw hit harder and leech more life from foes, but I was even able to implant a second chainsaw into my OTHER leg, doubling every benefit and turning the move from a way to suck a little health from fodder enemies into a vicious dropkick that could even deal significant damage to bosses.

This freedom of gameplay style is reflected in the level design, which veers more open-ended than many boomer shooters. I rarely felt hobbled by the lack of investment I made into the advanced parkour, but I saw plenty of opportunities where those who had could have taken routes or approached fights in ways that I couldn't. With how much there is to juggle, it's incredibly impressive that Turbo Overkill manages to be as persistently challenging as it is, even if I do recommend raising the difficulty one above normal if you want to struggle early on outside of the well-designed boss fights.

This isn't to say that I didn't have any complaints. A few levels built around gimmicks like driving Johnny's flying car outstayed their welcome and had me eager to get back to the shooting and platforming that the game does best. On the other end of the spectrum, while I mostly found the game well-paced, the third act has a lot of levels with back-to-back slugfests with enormous numbers of tough enemies; while I wouldn't necessarily cut any levels out given the choice, it would have been nice if the climax was more focused on the fantastic bespoke moments that it's already peppered with.

But these are minor nitpicks when weighed against everything that makes Turbo Overkill shine. Visceral and satisfying, gloriously violent and pointedly irreverent, it does what few retro-inspired shooters manage to do: pump new life into a well-trod genre and prove there's still room for innovation while not losing sight of the simple, satisfying thrills that made it evergreen in the first place. For that reason alone, I can't recommend it enough.

RELEASE: 2024

TIME PLAYED: 21 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Charming and creative setting that the game takes full advantage of

+A large cast of endearing and memorable characters, including the protagonist

+A well-balanced blend of puzzle-solving and combat that stays fresh

+Simplistic but enjoyable combat

-The graphics can be inconsistent, with the heavy linework sometimes clashing with the pastel color palette

-Combat can err on the side of overly simplistic, especially later in the game

-Controls and optimization feel a little shy of polished

--

I'm not really the cynical gamer type. While I fully acknowledge that the industry is in a rough place right now (with particular sympathy to the developers affected by job insecurity), I play so many great games each year that it's hard to not be impressed by the creativity and ingenuity of the talent behind them. That said, for those who are feeling a little low about the hobby these days, I'd immediately prescribe an extra-strength dose of Dungeons of Hinterberg to cure what ails them. The debut title of Austrian studio Microbird Games, Dungeons of Hinterberg is packed full of so much sincerity and love for what it means to be a video game that it's hard to not be swept up in its enthusiasm despite some occasional hiccups.

Even the premise is immediately charming. Burnt out from working as a new lawyer, protagonist Luisa sets out on vacation to Hinterberg, a small Austrian village with a remarkable story: a few years back - only in this area and a few others scattered in equally remote places around the world - magic suddenly became real. Dungeons of varying difficulty opened up all over the mountain, and adventurers who set out to conquer them can gain temporary powers that allow them to tackle their challenges. Hinterberg, under its hawkish and opportunistic mayor, has immediately leaned into the presence of these dungeons to become a hotspot tourist attraction for adventurers, with a new culture forming from novices chatting about strategy over coffee to celebrity adventurers promoting their own brands of weapons and armor. Intrigued by the prospect of putting aside her law books and picking up a sword, Luisa dives right into danger, and she's one of my favorite protagonists in recent memory. Much of her inner conflict about what she's doing with her life and her sense of self-worth being tied to her work feels pretty deeply millennial-coded (though I'm sure others will relate), and I never stopped being impressed with how interesting her journey was.

The narrative doesn't shock with layers of twists and turns - Luisa is quickly revealed to be an unusually talented dungeon delver, something starts going wrong with the magic, and you can probably guess how much of it goes from there - but it's well-told with an emphasis on the many charming characters. Just hacking their way through dungeons won't get the player very far; Luisa's a social person, and the game is built around an almost Persona-like link system. Each day, on top of choosing to either rest for a stat boost or take on one of Hinterberg's dungeons, Luisa also has the chance to interact with the game's twenty-odd major characters, who each have their own reputation system, friendship perks, and often quests. Helping the local blacksmith negotiate with the massive chain store encroaching on her market might unlock new moves for Luisa's sword, while indulging a famous warrior's surprisingly nerdy interests can result in a huge boost to attack power based on her amusement stat from relaxing around town. It's a fun system that encourages getting invested in the town and its inhabitants, which in turn gives the narrative more weight.

Still, as fun as it is to explore the idyllic town, the primary meat of the game is the eponymous dungeons, and I'm happy to say that they're by and large a great time. By setting out into Hinterberg's surroundings, Luisa has to discover each of the entrances herself across four distinct biomes, though due to the fact they're the heart of the town's tourism, there's plenty of signage that at least points her in the right direction. This, combined with their rising difficulty being diegetically explained as the source of magic itself enjoying challenging newcomers, makes it easy to approach them with Luisa's eyes; it's most practical to knock them off the list in ascending order, but there's nothing stopping her from skipping a few ahead as long as she's got the required gear. Before entering each region's dungeons, she has to collect that zone's special powers - two each, with one focused on traversal and the other dealing with local obstacles.

Their primary use, however, is in puzzle-solving. Once inside the dungeons, the game shifts to a distinctly Zelda-inspired affair, and the region-specific powers are a large part of what makes Dungeons of Hinterberg such a brilliant experience. In between generally well-balanced combat encounters, Luisa has to use basic platforming and the two abilities she's currently got to solve puzzles and make it to the end of each dungeon, earning her progress stamp. For example, in the icy Kolmstein - my personal favorite region - her skills are Hover, which summons a hoverboard, and Light Ray, which allows her to fire a channeled laser. As a result, all of Kolmstein's dungeons are generally built around snowboarding around clearing ramps, blasting targets at high speed, and refracting her beam to form specific shapes. This emphasis on just two powers at a time keeps the game's complexity pretty low, so those who are craving a nail-biting puzzle experience might be disappointed, but I found it fantastic - if I got bored of snowboarding and laser beams (how could I?) I could travel instead to Brünnelsumpf, where I had to use a jelly cube and a plasma orb to approach more thoughtfully paced challenges, or clean up a few missed dungeons in Hinterwald, where carrying myself around in a whirlwind and flinging bursts of air tested my accuracy and timing.

That said, as much of a riot as Dungeons of Hinterberg is, it's definitely not perfect. The art style has some charming elements, but I'm not entirely sure it translates well into the videogame medium; while character models were usually okay (if a bit simplistic), I struggled with the design of some environments, where the hard, bold lines clashed aggressively with the low-poly, but extremely colorful pastels. Sometimes seeming painterly, sometimes more cel-shaded, the game swaps between gorgeous and frankly kind of painful to look at. I also didn't feel particularly enamored with Dungeons' boss fights; while they're mostly fine, the combat system isn't really built for them, and they generally just felt like an overly extended standard battle without much excitement. Finally, I had some technical hiccups; while I didn't experience any major crashes or the like, optimization in particular felt a little rough, with my framerate struggling at times a bit more than it felt like a game that looked like this should on a GTX 4070.

These issues are all minor in the face of just how fun and joyous the game ultimately is, though. Charmingly written and cheerfully adventurous, packed to the brim with amusing encounters and intriguing local mystery, Dungeons of Hinterberg wears its influences from Zelda, Persona, and more proudly on its sleeve, but the thing that impresses me most? With shocking aplomb for the first release from a new game studio, it stands perfectly well even compared to those genre giants.

Note: For the purposes of this project, 'moves' are defined as any action the character can take (in any game mode, so feats are excluded) that is not redundant with another action. For example, 'heavy finishers' count as 1 move - however, if there is a unique heavy finisher for the character, such as Berserker's special top heavy, that is a separate move.

My methods are not perfect; there's a lot of room to debate what should and shouldn't count as a move, but I tried to err on the side of caution and stuck to counting everything (including counting top/side lights as separate when I probably shouldn't have lol) unless it truly felt like it shouldn't be registered.

PLEASE be aware I mostly only did this to see if I could draw any interesting conclusions; this is not meant to be a commentary on balance. My thoughts on what this information actually MEANS are posted below the numbers.

From lowest to highest, here's how many moves every character has:

Pirate: 16

Shugoki: 18

Hitokiri: 18

Jiang Jun: 18

Zhanhu: 19

Orochi: 19

Peacekeeper: 19

Tiandi: 20

Berserker: 20

Kensei: 20

Conqueror: 20

Black Prior: 20

Nuxia: 21

Jormungandr: 21

Warlord: 22

Virtuosa: 22

Raider: 22

Ocelotl: 22

Aramusha: 22

Warmonger: 23

Gryphon: 23

Warden: 24

Valkyrie: 24

Shaman: 25

Varangian Guard: 25

Highlander: 26

Khatun: 26

Nobushi: 26

Lawbringer: 27

Afeera: 27

Centurion: 28

Kyoshin: 28

Sohei: 28

Gladiator: 29

Shinobi: 29

Juren: 29

Shaolin: 32

Medjay: 37 (holy shit)

--

TAKEAWAYS:

So again, I'm not trying to read into this too much beyond 'I think it's neat', but I do think there's a few interesting conclusions that can be drawn. I welcome disagreement or discussion, but these are my initial thoughts:

1. The smallest kits often tend to be the most wildly flexible, with Pirate being an extreme example of someone who actually has incredibly few moves but they have such wildly ranging applications that she's got insane mixup potential and oppressive pressure. Meanwhile, the largest kits tend to be packed with very inflexible and situational moves; Shaolin and Juren are all characters who have specific answers to things but Juren has surprisingly few 'general coverage' moves, and Medjay is infamous for much of his kit feeling extremely niche or not very useful due to a lack of properties on many of the moves (see point 3).
2. There hasn't been as much 'moveset creep' as some people think; while Juren's got a big kit, it's no bigger than Shinobi or Gladiator and is smaller than Shaolin or Medjay. Virtuosa's kit is actually downright small. I think what makes people often feel like Juren's overwhelming is that he has a disproportionate number of openers and special properties, but interestingly, after his openers chain, Juren 'funnels' quite narrowly which is a large part of why he struggles in top-tier duels despite his overwhelming presence in Dominion due to a combination of factors, not least of which are his feats.
3. Unsurprisingly, what makes characters oppressive in 1v1 situations - such as those competitive players often place top-tier like Centurion, Shaolin, etc - is a mix of specific callout tools and general pressure tools. Compared to Juren, Shaolin may not have as many insane properties loaded onto a single move, but he has a terrifying blend of accessibility, ease of use, and unique properties that make him very dominant, while Centurion benefits from the incredible versatility of a charged bash while still having other attack avenues compared to characters like Warden and Warmonger.

Of course, this is just my two cents, but I found it neat!

EDIT NOTE: A few of these I feel I counted some moves as separate when I shouldn't have, so I'm correcting accordingly. Happy to address specific concerns as long as I remain interested in doing so, lol.

Patch notes, so to speak:

Edit 1: Reduced Berserker's moveset from 25 to 20. Accidentally counted his zone attack's individual hits as their own moves due to an Excel spreadsheet mixup.

RELEASE: 2025

TIME PLAYED: 7 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Gorgeous art and environmental design with a unique stop motion animation style

+Hazel is a fantastic lead, with a likeable personality and fitting flaws for a teenager

+The story attempts an ambitious look at the trauma and mythology of the Southern US, an underserved setting

+Cinematic and visually arresting boss fights

-Combat is awkward, poorly paced, and overly basic

-Writing is clumsy and important themes are frequently rushed through and not given the nuance they deserve

-Many of the story's crucial elements are wielded as a blunt instrument

I so desperately wish I loved South of Midnight as much as I love what it's trying to do.

Born and raised in Gulf Coast Texas, I'm well-acquainted with the stereotypes - some founded in fact, others not - about the deep south. I've joined neighbors who refused to evacuate from deadly hurricanes at their pre-storm barbeques, had two-faced family members put on the perfect face of southern hospitality while espousing the most rancid beliefs possible in private, and been taught that the Civil War was about 'States' Rights' from a middle school teacher who wore confederate flags whenever possible. I'm well-acquainted with the ugliness and the beauty alike, from a queer cousin who adopted racist views to fit in to a grandfather who spent his retirement doing free carpentry work across town because that was what it meant to be a good Christian. All of this is to say that South of Midnight's spotlighting of southern culture and mythology immediately appealed to me, and was a big part of why I purchased the game. An underserved setting in media, the deep south is host to rich stories and terrible trauma, and Compulsion Games' action-adventure makes a sincere effort to dive deep into both. Unfortunately, it's beset by so many problems in the process that I was never able to quite click with it.

The premise is compelling enough: when a devastating flood sweeps away her home with her mother still inside, protagonist Hazel desperately attempts to chase her down, only to be confronted with a strange corruption, manifesting as twisted strands, that is slowly consuming her entire town. Discovering a set of enchanted tools in her estranged grandmother's house after the latter tries to restrain her, Hazel finds out - from a giant talking catfish, obviously - that she's a Weaver, someone who can see the Tapestry that binds creation. With her newfound powers, she sets out to not only rescue her mother, but battle the Haint spirits that are spreading and find the source of the corruption.

Between the strong opening sequence and the graphics, my first impression of the game was very positive. South of Midnight is utterly GORGEOUS, with both gameplay and cutscenes boasting a stop-motion inspired animation style that works especially well for supernatural beings like the aforementioned giant catfish. It's a joy to look at and I don't have a single complaint about the aesthetic or visuals from start to finish. The creative talent is on display from both developers and cast, with the voice actors doing stellar work to bring their characters to life. The soundtrack is vibrant and fitting, blending orchestral work with banjos, flutes, and southern choirs for a very authentic sound.

Unfortunately, the fantastic presentation wound up setting me up for serious disappointment. My earliest point of unpleasant friction was with the gameplay. I was halfway through the combat tutorial when I realized that attacking enemies as Hazel simply felt terrible. Despite exaggerated animations, there was no sense of impact to my blows, and enemies were difficult to read due to their often inhuman shape. Hazel does get some activated abilities to propel herself around and crowd control foes, but it's seasoning on a combat system that just doesn't feel good. The game itself isn't too challenging, and various difficulty options - including one to remove combat entirely - ensure the experience is customizable, but while I appreciate the option, there's something to be said for the fact it even had to be presented - and that it was tempting enough that I considered enabling it before long. Still, I'm one of the biggest suckers for narrative-based games in the world; some of my favorite games of all time - Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and more - have middling combat or worse, and that didn't stop me from loving them. But as much as I tried to meet South of Midnight on its own terms, I wound up no happier with the writing than I was with the gameplay.

It took me a little while to piece together exactly why I bounced so hard off South of Midnight's storytelling, but by the end of the game, I had figured it out: there's simply too many plot threads, and the narrative suffers immensely for it. See, while the framing of the story is Hazel trying to find her mother, she actually spends most of her time addressing smaller mysteries - mysteries often rooted in the generational trauma of the deep south. Part of being a Weaver is guiding the spirits of the lost and troubled to rest, and Hazel wastes little time in doing her duty, both because that's simply the kind of person she is and because these spirits often hold clues to her mother's location.

There's an admirable effort to weave (heh) the primary narrative together with these side stories, but South of Midnight simply rushes through them so quickly and approaches them so bluntly that I never found myself able to get attached. For example, early in the game, that catfish I mentioned earlier is being held in the air by an enormous tree possessed by the spirit of a young man who suffered a betrayal I won't spoil here. The tale of what happened to him, discovered through a blues song that adds more lyrics as the player progresses and ghostly images of the past, is undeniably tragic...but it wound up simply not hitting for me due to a combination of the song lyrics being almost comically blunt about what had occurred and there only being a handful of flashbacks before Hazel resolved his issue. After I had freed his spirit, I felt like I'd been rushed through a rollercoaster version of a Grimm Brothers story. From start to finish the entire sequence was maybe twenty minutes - most of that spent climbing and fighting - and this just kept happening. I'd enter a new area, find out about some horrible past trauma that left a troubled spirit behind, then fix it so quickly that I had barely processed what had happened. If these were the side quests in an RPG, I'd consider them shallow but interesting, but they're effectively what strings the main plot along in South of Midnight, and the substance just isn't there.

This isn't to say that South of Midnight's story is entirely bad - it has a strong final couple of chapters and some downright wonderful set pieces including a battle against a gigantic eldritch owl and a musical dance number in the underworld - but it's just too diluted and unfocused for how short the game is, trying to tell a half-dozen meaningful stories in as many hours (and that's if you don't skip the padded combat encounters). As much as I wanted to love it, I walked away dissatisfied, like I'd sampled a variety platter without ever actually having a meal to fill me up. Constantly gorgeous and occasionally brilliant, South of Midnight is a wonderful attempt at an artistic endeavor in an underserved setting, but as both a game and a story, it unfortunately disappointed me.

RELEASE: 2022

TIME PLAYED: 20 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE TL;DR BREAKDOWN

+Stellar graphical and art design make for a memorable, spirit-infested vision of Tokyo

+Combat has some novel ideas, like using expendable talismans for crowd control and charging elemental castings

+There's shades of an interesting story in deuteragonist KK and his old squad's history

-Protagonist Akito is a lame duck, with little personality and shallow motivations

-The story goes pretty much nowhere and spins its wheels for 90% of its duration

-Open world padding dilutes the game's best qualities into a series of fetch quests

I went into Ghostwire: Tokyo about as blind as one possibly could; I had never seen any trailers, wasn't familiar with its premise, and hadn't even purchased it considering I think I got it as a free giveaway on the Epic Store. With little preconception about what I was getting into, I felt delightfully open-minded about the game to come, and for what it's worth, I think that helped me appreciate some of what Ghostwire does well. Unfortunately, this ghost story's got not lack of flaws haunting the experience, and I walked away from it feeling much more mixed than I would have liked.

The opening cutscene sets things up pretty nicely, following a young man named Akito as he barrels through Tokyo on a motorcycle, only to fatally crash just as a mystical fog rolls through the town and rips people's spirits out of their bodies. Before death can fully take, he's possessed by the wraith of a dead ghost hunter named KK, who wants to use his body to stop the one behind this - a mysterious man in a Hannya mask - but Akito stubbornly clings to life. As a result, they're forced to share his earthly vessel, with Akito able to access KK's supernatural abilities but also dependent on his possession to not die from his injuries. Thankfully, it turns out their goals are aligned; Akito desperately wishes to see his sister, and due to being in a coma and thus also 'between life and death', she also so happens to be the primary target for the Hannya masked man to complete the ritual he's attempting to perform.

Once they've paused their bickering long enough to work out their dynamic Akito and KK give pursuit, and it's here that the game begins in proper. The early pacing is actually quite good about introducing new mechanics; it turns out that Ghostwire: Tokyo is closer to a magical FPS than anything, with combat involving 'Visitors' - various spirits based on a wide variety of Japanese myths - either approaching in melee or firing off bullet hell-style projectiles while Akito casts hand-signs reminiscent of Naruto to fight back with wind (weak but fast), water (powerful but short-range), and fire (extremely strong but slow and low-ammo) spells. Fundamentally, it all works quite well; skill points and story progress allow Akito to charge his magic to turn his wind bolts into a rapid-fire finger-gun or his water blades into a frost aura, and he gains supplementary tools like disposable crowd-control talismans and a powerful compound bow with enchanted arrows.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the game to start spinning its wheels and getting bogged down. After the reasonably fast-paced prologue, a deluge of optional activities open up for the player. By itself, this isn't offensive, but what quickly became evident to me is that most of it is just...clutter. As its world opens up, Ghostwire: Tokyo assaults the screen with food pickups, destructible objects to collect 'ammo' for spells and currency for buying from shops. Floating cat spirits called Nekomata ask Akito to find treasures. A tanuki wants its disguised companions to come home. Floating spirits - two hundred thousand of them - litter the air, collected in paper tags one to five hundred at a time. Once it starts it never stops, and much of it is punishing to ignore entirely. Sure, I could get by without the money from finding the treasure, but those two hundred thousand spirits? A single cluster of them provides more experience than a fight that takes twice as long; skip out on that and you're underleveled and under-skilled.

The argument can be made (and often is) that since these activities are fundamentally optional, I can simply 'skip' them, but I don't find that convincing. Even disregarding my personal belief that optional elements should still be scrutinized in a review to be thorough, attempting to disengage from the content can vary based on the game. Ignoring this content doesn't make it go away. It doesn't change the visual noise of the map, which filters are only partially effective at managing. It doesn't change the conscious design choice by the developer to make primary missions and combat give little gold and experience, meaning I'm incentivized to grind with this repetitive stuff. And most of all, it doesn't stop the constant tutorials about these mechanics from sabotaging the pacing of the story and hiding important details - details that could have been fascinating if delivered with more effort - behind what I can no longer restrain myself from calling slop. Despite an interesting mystery at its core, Ghostwire: Tokyo does effectively nothing with its story. Hours of main missions can ultimately be summarized as "Akito and KK corner the villain, he repeats his monologue from the start of the game, and then escapes while making them fight one of his minions." This happens four times, and if that doesn't sound like a lot, bear in mind that these are pretty much the only scenes the villain has. Anything remotely resembling a personality beyond his laughably generic motive is hidden away in codexes and journals.

Look, I don't like being mean. I write these reviews for fun and I don't get any enjoyment out of tearing a game to shreds. I go into every game hoping to like it, because it's my time and money on the line. But the thing that's so frustrating is that in a lot of ways, Ghostwire: Tokyo isn't bad. It really isn't. The art and graphics team did an amazing job; the game is gorgeous, even if the rain filter could stand to be a bit less oppressive, and the designs of the mythical spirits and yokai are awesome and novel. The setting leans into Japanese mythology more whole-heartedly than anything I've played except maybe Nioh 2, and it's a great palate cleanser in a glut of modern realism and western fantasy. The combat works on a fundamental level, and dashing around dodging a pair of scissors the size of my entire body while charging up an ice nova to shatter a dozen spirits is dope. KK, too, is an interesting character. As the player, we briefly interact with members of his old squad and get hints as to how things fell apart, but again, the most interesting aspects of this are relegated to text.

I wanted to like Ghostwire: Tokyo for its cool setting and 'mystical FPS' combat, but there's just no end to the self-sabotage. Fighting is entertaining, but simply not deep enough for how frequently the player gets jumped by enemies that give little experience or money when going from point A to point B. The setting is cool, but the plot is constantly interrupted by tutorials for different open world tasks and Akito never comes even close to developing a real personality. With plenty of style but questionable substance, I just can't recommend the game in good faith, even if I can tell that it'll very much scratch an itch for those who can overlook - or even enjoy - the constant obstacles it places in their path.

RELEASE: 2020

TIME PLAYED: 5.5 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★☆☆

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Strong character writing cementing the lead family's bond

+Some interesting pragmatism vs. idealism choices

+Expressive art and animations despite the simplistic graphics

+Short enough for multiple playthroughs to compare choices

-The scripted elements of the plot can feel a little overly railroaded

-Certain choices feel more obtuse than nuanced

In the words of the legendary Mel Brooks, "It's good to be the king." King Eryk of Davern rules a small domain, but at first glance, he seems to have it all: a loving and supportive wife, daughters who, despite their bickering, all adore their doting father, and subjects who by and large adore him. However, it isn't long at all before Yes, Your Grace reveals the cracks in the foundations of his life.

Despite his attempts to rule fairly, problems have piled up: a neighboring nation of wildmen has threatened to invade unless he marries his eldest daughter, Lorsulia, to their chieftain. Lacking the military to fend them off, he instead arranges her marriage to a prince named Ivo closer to her own age from a nearby kingdom strong enough to fend off the invasion. On top of justifiably infuriating Lorsulia, this winds up for naught; Ivo's father is poisoned at the wedding, incurring Ivo's wrath until justice is served.

Now juggling his family's personal conflicts, a pending invasion, the capricious whims of his new ally, and a sinking economy, King Eryk is under more stress than ever. In terms of gameplay, this means managing the kingdom's day-to-day troubles while also preparing for the inevitable upcoming war. Each morning, Eryk heads to the throne room and deals with a line of petitioners. These can range from struggling peasants to shady businessmen promoting their goods to potential allies offering soldiers - but never for free, of course. To keep the kingdom running, Eryk has to balance their needs with his expenses. Giving gold to a farmer who lost their crop is a generous move, but the treasury is already strained; will not being able to pay for mercenaries doom him later?

Thankfully, he's not entirely without help. On top of a bank willing to give loans (just be mindful of that interest), the king can recruit specialists who can set out and handle tasks without him needing to spend his limited coin. His Sergeant can handle matters of policing and encroaching scouting parties, his Herbalist can brew remedies and may even have a mystical gift for taming nature, and so on. Of course, they don't work for free either, so it circles back to managing the economy in the end.

After handling the day's business and planning what's to come, the King spends the evening with his family. Understandably, things are a little strained since Lorsulia left with her new husband, with his other daughters wondering if they'll eventually be used for political alliance and his wife reinforcing the necessity in the wake of a startling reveal. Eryk can smooth things over by promising to do better, but again, his words and his actions may not align, and weighing the needs of his family against those of the kingdom becomes a constant source of tension.

It's all quite rich and textured, which is why it's a shame that so much of it can feel on rails. This isn't to say that the choices don't matter; there are quite a few points that promote replay, and the difference between a masterfully handled kingdom and a poorly managed one is stark. But many of the plot's major events were put into motion before the game even started, and there isn't much the player - or King Eryk - can do to stop them. It's also difficult to not feel shorthanded occasionally, when some of these choices are undercut by consequences that might be impossible to foresee. Sometimes it felt sensible, but others, I couldn't help but sniff a bit of cheap 'balancing' to ensure I didn't get ahead of the game too much. Realistic, perhaps, in the way it shows how our choices can catch up to us years later, but it does undercut a bit of the sensation of having a say in the plot.

Still, despite this, Yes, Your Grace's snappy writing and thoughtful political intrigue make it worth a playthrough or two in my book. The sense of satisfaction upon keeping King Eryk's life together under impossible odds is prominent - I just wish that I had more of a hand in the major events.

I don't wanna do trivial questions but the Werewolf update didn't come with much of a guide and Google's got nothing.

I can see ult, but I'm struggling to find where Fury is. Apologies if it's obvious, I'm extremely colorblind and it makes UIs tough to read.

Also, how do you trigger the Takedowns from Prowl?

Thank you!