Days Gone begins in media res, throwing you directly into the chaos being wrecked by the undead (termed Freakers) before skirting ahead a couple of years into the zombie apocalypse. The Pacific Northwest is a misleadingly beautiful hellscape full of Freaker nests, hungry wildlife, and desperate killers. Luckily, you take the role of tough-guy Deacon St. John, an Oregon biker who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty to survive.

Before diving in and exploring the Freaker infested woods of Oregon, I was pleasantly surprised to see quite a few accessibility options. These included the ability to toggle additional and easier to read visual cues, simpler control options, and an auto-complete QTE option that is sure to make a lot of lives easier. Six different difficulty settings are also available from the start, giving players plenty of control to tailor the gameplay experience to their personal needs. Additionally, while I don’t have the newest gaming PC with updated specs, I was delighted with the game’s performance on its default settings. The world of Days Gone is quite expansive, has varying weather patterns, and is packed with enemies. Yet, I experienced absolutely no framerate or graphical issues, providing a smooth ride the entire time.

The most compelling gameplay element of Days Gone is that it stands proudly in the open-world genre, having been clearly inspired by strong aspects of its open-world predecessors. Gliding around the hilly trails of Oregon on Deacon’s motorcycle feels very thrilling, especially when you’re narrowly dodging bullets, chasing down bounties, or evading the grasps of Freakers. As you explore, side-quests and optional objectives will frequently pop up, such as hostage situations or Freaker nests that need exterminating. If you grow tired of biking across the map, a fast-travel option becomes available as well (provided your bike has enough fuel for the journey). While the environment may not be the most interesting to explore, it’s very dynamic and picturesque (despite, y’know, the occasional corpse). 

During the early parts of the game, you will inevitably be sneaking around Freakers and enemy camps until you obtain powerful killing alternatives. I’m a big fan of sneaking around in the Elder Scrolls series, so I felt right at home keeping in the shadows to unleash devastating sneak attacks on unsuspecting victims. The sneak element of the game is prevalent, with some missions of the main story requiring you to keep a low profile and spy on enemies, which I immediately knew would be hit-or-miss depending on the player. While enemies aren’t exactly seasoned killers, they are somewhat intuitive, following noises and light that you produce, and I had fun using rocks and traps as diversions to slip around.

Eventually, you’ll gain experience points that give you access to new skills and status upgrades. My favorite skill was Focused Shot, which allows you to slow down time for a brief moment while aiming, similar to using the bow-and-arrow in midair in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Days Gone does an excellent job of keeping the action unobstructed. Instead of pausing for things like switching weapons, crafting new items, and using healing items, it’s all utilized within seconds via an action wheel that slows downtime or button shortcuts. At one point early on, when a swarm of Freakers suddenly ambushed me, I was able to sprint away, craft three Molotov cocktails, and lob them their way within seconds, unscathed, which is a testament to how easy it is to pick up on the controls and mechanics.

While Days Gone certainly excels in visuals and gameplay mechanics, it, unfortunately, falls short in keeping it interesting and fresh as the hours tick by. While there is a main quest to complete, the story never truly reaches a compelling depth. There aren’t many characters to be invested in, and the ones you meet end up being pretty one-dimensional. Deacon’s quippy one-liners gave me a chuckle now and then as I nailed headshots on Freakers. Still, it starts to feel a bit tedious traveling long distances to watch a quick cutscene or take out an entire enemy camp just because Deacon was ordered to by a transient character. It is certainly a slow burn—the most significant plot twists and the full extent of the combat elements end up buried beneath hours and hours of tedious missions. 

The result is a game that feels more fun to jump in, complete a couple of missions, then call it a day. The novelty of things like upgrading Deacon’s motorcycle, buying new weapons, and exploring skill trees only lasts so long, and a story that can keep you gripped for the entire 30+ hours it takes to complete the game is hard to find at times. I found myself playing in short intervals because my attention span was getting lost in the woods as I drifted through them between long, repetitive missions and having to retrieve more gas between stops. 

Despite its shortcomings, Days Gone is a great addition to any PC gamer’s library. The abundance of missions guarantees that you’ll get a lot of bang for your buck—whether or not you stick it out all the way through comes down to how much the gameplay keeps you invested. 

Days Gone review code for PC provided by the publisher.

Days Gone is out now on PS4 and PC.

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In the same interview where PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan discussed the next generation of PlayStation VR, he reiterated the company’s desire to bringing select first-party titles to PC, and confirmed the next game to make the jump would be Days Gone this Spring.

Days Gone came out in 2019 on PS4, and ended up being a divisive title. The game concerned a former biker gang member surviving in a post-apocalyptic world where hordes of fast-paced infected roam the countryside. It received criticism for its technical faults and antiquated gameplay, but it also won many fans for its interesting characters, story, and impressive zombie hordes.

I reviewed the game for Bloody Disgusting and was somewhat disappointed in many aspects of it, but still found it enjoyable, if a little long. It’s a game that was massively improved on PS5 thanks to a performance patch though, so it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out on PC.

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New consoles are out, but you’d currently be lucky to find one available at retail price, let alone at any discount. So we’ll focus on some of the best deals for games rather than the hardware. If you did get a new console, however, there are some choice deals on extra storage, including a 2TB External Hard Drive for PS5 for just $75 at Walmart or this 8TB monster from Best Buy for just under $200. Perfect for keeping all your last generation games handy.

The stores also have the usual array of physical copies of games on sale, all at around the same prices as each other. There may be deeper discounts yet to be revealed, but in the meantime, here are a few highlights.

One of the most notable deals of the sales is for Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II, which is reduced to just $29.99 at Best Buy, Walmart, and Amazon among others. You can also pick up The Last of Us Remastered for a measly $9.99 at Walmart, Amazon, and more.

If you fancy some discounted gore-soaked fighting action then Mortal Kombat 11 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch) is down to just $12.99 at Best Buy, which is great if you bought a new console because PS4 and Xbox One versions include a free next-gen upgrade.

Nintendo Switch games are rarely down in price, so Luigi’s Mansion 3 being $39.99 at Best Buy is as close to a bargain as you’ll get for this family-friendly spooky gem.

GameStop kicks off its sale on November 25, and features game deals alongside heavy discounts on selected headsets, consoles, and is offering a $50 store voucher with the purchase of select Vizio 4K HDR TVs.

In the all-digital realm, there’s plenty of price cuts for the season. First up, the PlayStation Store Black Friday Deals have up to 70% off a variety of games including The Last of Us Part II, Doom Eternal, Resident Evil 3, Control: Ultimate Edition, Nioh 2, and Mortal Shell.

The Xbox Black Friday Sale has up to 50% off on games such as Resident Evil 3, Fallout 76, Sea of Thieves, Gears 5 (which has a free next-gen upgrade), Alice: Madness Returns, and the Arkane Anniversary Collection (which includes the Dishonored games and Prey).

Nintendo is also getting in on the digital sales fun with a sale on portable treats such as Dark Souls Remastered, Hades, Diablo III, and Carrion. 

On itch.io, there’s a Thankskilling Sale by Puppet Combo and Torture Star Video that gives you six games by the indie horror game creators including Baby Sitter Bloodbath, Nun Massacre, and The Horror of Salazar House for a total of $13.95. If you want something a bit different from your seasonal horror game playing, then this is a pretty good place to start.

Elsewhere on PC, you can head to The Humble Bundle Fall Sale which features up to 90% off PC games including Dead Rising 2, Wolfenstein II, Dying Light, Dead By Daylight: Silent Hill Chapter, Jurassic World: Evolution, and DOOM.

Steam’s sale is still yet to be revealed, but expect that to arrive on actual Black Friday with significant discounts on a lot of the usual suspects.

Here’s hoping you’ll have a relatively happy Thanksgiving, and grab a nice bargain or two to boot.

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Posting on the PS Blog, Naughty Dog revealed a plethora of goodies related to its critically-acclaimed survival horror series, with an additional lot of news coming tomorrow at 9:00am PT / 6:00pm CET on the official game website.

First up, The Last of Us will be getting a board game from CMON, the team behind the Bloodborne board game and God of War card game. It’s already in early development, and further details will be shared on the project at a later date.

Next, we have some fantastic-looking statues from Gaming Heads, the group behind the excellent Clicker statue that first got revealed during this annual celebration five years ago. The new statues feature Ellie as she appears in The Last of Us Part II. There are three variants of this 16″ statue, with extra detail and poseable arms and changeable facial expressions on the higher-end models.

The second announcement for statues was for the long-awaited Joel and Ellie pack, that recreates the two as seen in certain promotional images for the original game. The figures are 1/9 scale and can be placed separately or together. Pre-orders for all statues are ready now with the Ellie statues at Gaming Head’s website and the Joel and Ellie statues at Mamegyorai Collectibles.

There was also a reveal for a Mondo vinyl soundtrack for The Last of Us Part II. It comes on two vinyl records and Mondo will also release two limited edition posters. Those go on pre-order from tomorrow at 9:00am PT/12:00pm ET/6:00pm CET via Mondo’s site. Be warned, the posters will only be available until September 30 at 9:59pm PT.

Among the other things in this bumper announcement are a cosplay guide for Abby from TLOU Part II, a free dynamic theme for PS4 based on the beach from the game, savings on merchandise, and a Last of Us Part II photo contest. All of which you can find more about on the Blog post.

After all that, what could Naughty Dog possibly have left to announce tomorrow?

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First revealed earlier this year, the latest footage for the game reiterates a 2020 release date, but doesn’t have an exact day pinned down. Still, it’s looking good and gore-soaked.

A self-professed isometric Soulslike is inspired by the works of Lovecraft, and is filled with gruesome beasties to slay. Its visual style somewhat betrays just how violent and visceral it can be.

Expect to master your fighting abilities, go toe-to-tentacle with hulking malevolent deities, and die a lot when Morbid does eventually slither onto PS4, Xbox One, and PC later this year.

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Developer Raiser Games announced an October 29 release date for the fixed-camera throwback horror game on consoles at the Gamescom 2020 edition of the Future Games Show.

The game has you interchange between thirteen characters, all connected by their investigation into the malicious musical box in some way, and all do so at their own unique location. You must gather clues, solve puzzles, and escape the evil forces that come your way, but the kicker is, all of the protagonists can die permanently, with the story continuing through one of the remaining survivors.

It’s a game that proudly displays its survival horror influences, with plenty of nods to classics such as Clock Tower and the original Resident Evil.

With the next installment of The Dark Pictures Anthology also releasing at the end of October, there’s plenty of fresh spooky fare to play on Halloween night.

If you can’t wait that long, Song of Horror is currently available on Steam.

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The sequel is a continuation of the original story, with the previous protagonist, Six accompanying the new one on a fresh tale of terror. Trapped in a distorted world, the pair must work together to escape from the menacing and monstrous adults who roam it.

Little Nightmares II will be coming to PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on 11 February 2021.

The post New ‘Little Nightmares II’ Trailer Creeps Out With Febuary 2021 Release Date appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Then there are games that brazenly try and emulate a particular success story, and that invites extra scrutiny because if you’re going to essentially remake something iconic, you need to do something at least a bit better than it. Sometimes that happens, but mostly, you just end up wishing you were playing the very thing being ‘homaged’. That is, initially at least, the case with Mortal Shell.

Developer Cold Symmetry’s game is ‘homaging’ Dark Souls in a lot of familiar ways. There’s a Gothic/Medieval aesthetic, methodical, punishing melee-based combat, and a vague story that promises something deeper if you scratch beneath the surface. Even down to the way you awaken as a wretched version of yourself and restore some semblance of humanity (here it’s by ‘stealing’ corpses and using them as a ‘shell’ for your semi-spectral husk) is lifted from the From Software series. 

At this point, when there have been countless insipid attempts at recreating the winning Souls formula, the notable successes generally do one important thing; they put in something genuinely fresh. See The Surge 2’s limb-lopping cyber-take, or Nioh’s Japanese mythology and history come to life. In this regard, Mortal Shell begins by feeling underwhelmingly unoriginal. It undeniably takes time for its differences to truly grow out of the long shadow cast by its inspiration.

As with Mortal Shell’s inspiration, combat is about fighting one or two enemies at a time in sword-based duels (other weapons are available), and naturally, this means one mistimed move is near-fatal. The usual cycles of dodge, block, parry, and attack permeate each and every battle, and it’s essential to learn as fast as possible because providing healing items isn’t really Mortal Shell’s style, instead implementing health retrieval via the combat itself. Parrying builds up a Resolve meter that eventually gives the player an opportunity to strike a critical blow against foes, and gain some health in the process. Until you’re familiar with this process, expect to die swiftly and often.

The ‘Harden’ ability is where Mortal Shell actually differs most. An alternative to the block and parry technique, it reinforces your body with a stony substance that roots you in place and repels an attack, which can help to draw an enemy in before reverting back to normal and striking them. It comes with a significant cooldown period, meaning it doesn’t end up feeling pointless to have two block/parry systems. 

Harden is inarguably Mortal Shell’s neatest trick as it gives the overfamiliar set of mechanics some much-needed tactical depth. Something that is quite necessary for Mortal Shell given it relies on its combat to do the heavy lifting.

The other key difference is in how the game handles its ‘classes’; instead of being bogged down with a choice from the start, you can inhabit different ‘shells’ and thus play in different styles. Some shells are from hulking, lumbering warriors, others more graceful and quick. This also affects what weapons are used, which makes for interesting shifts in gameplay and allows for experimentation where sheer frustration may have otherwise been.

Impatience has always been a players’ biggest enemy in games like these, as the cycle of death chips away at resolve, causing increasingly rash decision-making as frustration builds. The laboring boredom of having to repeat a section time and again, making little or no progress is something that can be tough to accept. Ordinarily, if you’ve picked the wrong loadout for the job, you’re pretty much going to have to drive through the frustration or start over. Mortal Shell’s body-hopping system means you can flit between types to suit the situation.

Interestingly, the shells have backstories that can be discovered as you level up and gain abilities. The story is typically ambiguous, asking you to unearth it through objects in the world, but at least the shells bring something a bit different to the table.

None of this would matter much if Mortal Shell wasn’t at least half-decent to play, and I’d argue that it’s more accessible than a Souls game whilst still managing to maintain depth and mastery. Unfortunately, the feeling of it doesn’t sit quite right with me. In boss fights, it arguably shines brightest, where your various abilities come to the fore and showcase the game at its very best. The ‘harden’ system alongside the scarcity of health makes each of these epic encounters feel like the fight to the death they are. Against lesser foes, it doesn’t have quite the same luster to it. Dangerous enough to see you die easily, but rarely as interesting or engaging as they could be beyond being practice for the bigger showdowns.

It took a lot to get myself out of the mindset that this was styled a little too much like its direct inspiration. The early going was unpleasant and dreary. I did not expect to like Mortal Shell in that first hour. That had everything to do with how it was presented and my expectations of that, but once it opens up, the comparison begins to feel a lot less fair, even if it does remain valid to some degree. It scratches that Souls itch, and does some interesting things with combat. It feels like there’s a peak it should hit that it ultimately doesn’t quite reach, so instead, the endgame ends up rather routine.

This is a game made by a relative handful of people, and viewing it from that perspective, the whole package is more impressive, and shows plenty of room for growth in any future project. It certainly explains the limitations and faults found in certain areas. It doesn’t excuse them, but that knowledge does soften their impact. 

Mortal Shell review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

Mortal Shell is out digitally on August 18 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC via the Epic Games Store. A physical edition will release in October.

The post [Review] ‘Mortal Shell’ Can’t Quite Escape the Shadow of ‘Dark Souls’ Despite Its Interesting Combat Ideas appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

That, of course, is massively over-simplifying things because the devil is in the details. You can spin many, many different kinds of yarn from the same wheel. 

Take Maid of Sker, for example. It’s the latest in a long line of modern first-person horror games (usually set in large buildings where you must uncover their seedy history) that leave you relatively defenseless against stalking enemies. Having that structure is clearly a winner or it wouldn’t be repeated so often, but you have to have some combination of ideas of your own to differentiate from not only the standout examples, but also the painfully plain attempts. So while Maid of Sker is another first-person horror game set in an old sinister building where you’re hunted by murderous things, it definitely does have something of its own too. Whether that is enough to make it a good game is another question altogether.

Firstly, the story. Maid of Sker is based on Welsh folklore, specifically the tale of Elizabeth Williams and RD Blackmore’s three-part story. That provides an interesting departure from the current genre glut of cosmic horror tales and Texas Chainsaw fanfics. Instead, there’s a delightfully British feel to the surroundings, the atmosphere, and the horror itself. It’s a story of a family with a dark past, as its legacy is one of slavery, piracy, and murder. That past literally appears to have come back to haunt its current generation on the grounds of a secluded hotel on the Welsh Coast.

Before you get to the hotel, where the protagonist is seeking a reunion with a loved one, there’s a bit of traveling to do after you arrive at the quaint and quiet train station and set off up a winding forest road towards your destination. There’s a calming picturesque charm to this short walk, with the visual style making the scenery look like something from a painting. The warm and hazy glow of the sun, the gentle swoosh of wind through the trees, it’s the perfect way to set up the horrors you’ll soon face. A serene stroll through a beautiful place before the grim and dreary intensity of the dilapidated hotel. The intro is inarguably the most gorgeous-looking part of a game that is otherwise fairly standard, visually-speaking.

Upon entering the hotel it’s clear it’s rather neglected despite claims of a grand re-opening, and there’s nobody to greet you upon your arrival. After a bit of wandering, another person is discovered, or at least their voice behind a locked door, but it is soon silenced by something or someone that they seem awfully terrified by. It’s not long before you find out that the threat is a cult known as The Quiet Ones, and the game of cat and mouse begins in earnest.

Maid of Sker leaves you largely defenseless against these strange and violent folk, and as such, is pretty much a stealth-based horror. The game has a rather smart 3D audio system that means the enemy, who rely on sound to track you, will know where a noise is coming from almost exactly. Knocked over a bucket? Best hope you either have somewhere to hide or somewhere to run because they will find you if you stick around.

The defenses you do have are simple ones. Holding your breath is a key mechanic in your continuing survival, and using noise to your advantage can help you slip by certain foes unnoticed, but when all else fails you do have one last trick up your sleeve in the form of a sonic device that emits a din not best received by the Quiet Ones. It’s not something that can be used freely however, so it needs to be handled with care.

The chase is where Maid of Sker needs to succeed most. For all its Gothic British horror charm, it wouldn’t be an effective horror game without creating the necessary tension, fear, and panic of being hunted. For the most part, it does a good job. There’s a genuine sense of dread permeating every new encounter, and while the sound mechanic can be a bit disorientating and frustrating at first, learning its rules does make it seem like you’re turning the tables on your foes in real-time.

Sound really is Maid of Sker’s key selling point. With a budget likely far smaller than that of something like Resident Evil 7, it implements it smartly. Every floorboard creak, every clunking footstep, and each shaky breath you take adds to the growing uneasy atmosphere of the hotel. At least for a while anyway.

Towards the end of Maid of Sker, things get monotonous and the story’s conclusion isn’t especially satisfying or all that unique. So much is put into building up things in the opening hours, and there’s not all that much left to say after that as the whole thing runs out of steam. Frustration grows again as stealth becomes increasingly hard to do and punishment seems less fair.

Still, while it lasts, there’s a pretty good dose of first-person horror. The folklore background, period setting, and some hauntingly beautiful renditions of Welsh hymns add some flavor to a well-worn formula. The hotel’s nautical history and decoration also provide a bit of personality to the otherwise dreary halls. How you take to the stealth will determine how much you get on board with the game, as its peak is relatively small considering its liberal use.

While it may not be the most exotic horror establishment out there, I could think of worse places to visit than the Sker Hotel right now.

Maid of Sker review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

Maid of Sker is out now for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The post [Review] A Trip to the Welsh Coast Turns Sinister in Effective, Yet Uneven, Survival Horror ‘Maid of Sker’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Yet in the realm of videogames, the definition of what exactly constitutes a ‘’remake’’ is far more slippery and elusive. After all, the term could be used to describe anything from a glorified remaster with modern assets, (Shadow of the Colossus) to a faithful touch-up that augments things here and there (Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy), to an unrecognizable transformation that uses its forbear as a springboard for creating a whole new experience (Resident Evil 2). 

If you’re wondering which of these camps Destroy All Humans! falls into, then I would say that it most closely resembles the N.Sane Trilogy – insofar as it gives its predecessor a fresh coat of paint, whilst bolting on small refinements and the odd bonus mission. At its core however it is still fundamentally the same title that you remember from 15 years ago, retaining the classic gameplay loop and old level design. Hell, even the dialogue recordings have been left intact, albeit with a bit of spit and polish to make them sound more contemporary. 

Maps no longer have predetermined day and night settings. So, you can go for a moonlight stroll at the beach or visit the Carnival whilst basking in the sun.

For their part, the developers have categorized this not as a like-for-like adaptation, but rather as a ‘’remake of the memories’’ people have for the 2005 outing. In other words, it’s not the same warts and all approach that epitomized last year’s clunky-feeling MediEvil update. Instead, Black Forest Games have lovingly recreated Destroy All Humans as we imagine it to be through our collective nostalgia goggles, tweaking obsolete aspects where necessary and reverently preserving everything else. 

This was definitely the smartest way to handle it because, when you look at the original from a completely detached perspective, you realize that it hasn’t aged all that well. It’s very much a product of its time when it comes to the repetitive structure, the lowest common denominator humor (they sure do squeeze a lot of mileage out of those anal probe jokes), the disjointed narrative, and the fact that the open world is largely devoid of any meaningful activities. 

Nevertheless, in spite of all these dated elements, the PS2 gem has an enduring appeal that has continued to resonate with players for over a decade and a half. I myself purchased it on several consoles back in the day, not because I think it’s a legitimate masterpiece or anything, but because it offers a delicious power fantasy that cannot be indulged elsewhere.

Indeed, the concept of getting to roleplay as the antagonist from a retro sci-fi flick hasn’t lost any of its novelty in the intervening years. Terrorizing ‘50s suburbia with a disintegration ray that leaves behind nothing but charred, skeletal remains – ala Mars Attacks – flinging livestock around with your UFO’s abduction beam, and hypnotizing political figures into humiliating themselves on stage: the guilty pleasures of Destroy All Humans still hold up. 

I mean, who can resist the thrill of getting to run amok in what is essentially your own Mystery Science Theatre 3000 homage? Going on a spur-of-the-moment rampage has rarely been more enjoyable than it was here and, to its credit, the 2020 version elevates the fun factor to greater heights. 

The gallery menu lets you compare and contrast screenshots from the two games and the differences are striking. 

On that subject, the first thing you will notice upon booting up the remake is the considerable visual makeover. As with Crash Bandicoot or Shadow of the Colossus, the assets have been entirely rebuilt from scratch and the end result is a game that can comfortably stand alongside modern releases. Sure, the graphics are hardly photorealistic, but that’s clearly not what they were going for. Destroy All Humans is meant to be cartoony and heavily stylized, recalling the look of atomic age propaganda. 

That being said, they haven’t cut any corners with the details, as the game boasts gorgeous lighting, densely populated locales, fine textures, and individual flourishes that give each mini-sandbox its own unique flavor. For instance, Turnipseed Farm has pollen grains that clog up the air, Union Town is enveloped in a moody fog and the skyboxes of Area 42 are obscured by a trippy desert mirage effect. These lovingly crafted environments are an absolute delight to inhabit because they’ve got such rich personalities and are filled with charming nods to the past, as well as cool little Easter eggs for B-Movie aficionados to discover.

Likewise, the character models have received a significant facelift, one that’s in keeping with the exaggerated pop-art design. There’s an increased variety with the NPCs too – ranging from middle-aged snorkelers, to high school jocks and doomsday prophets – all of whom have idiosyncratic animations that make them feel more distinctive and alive than ever before. They’re no longer just anonymous pawns that can be interchangeably dispatched, which in turn makes it even more impactful when you electrocute a farmer to death with your Zap-O-Matic, or telekinetically launch a clueless beachgoer into the sea.

The oeuvre of Ed Wood gets a number of affectionate shoutouts.

It’s not just the visuals though. Minor adjustments have been made to nearly every facet of the gameplay, and whilst some of these changes are almost imperceptible, they leave a bigger mark than you might initially realize. In terms of controlling the little grey man himself, Cryptosporidium-137, you can now multitask by deploying his psychic talents and extraterrestrial weaponry at the same time. Plus, he can ‘’transmogrify’’ nearby objects (like boxes or parasols) into ammunition, theoretically ensuring that you have a bottomless supply and that your kill sprees never fizzle out. 

There’s also a useful lock-on function that makes it easier to run-and-gun, although this can be a tad unreliable and finicky, often misinterpreting what you’re trying to aim at. The inaccuracy is particularly vexing during the abduction side quests, wherein you are tasked with levitating specific items and steering them towards a roaming target. These tests are exacting and even the tiniest screwup or momentary delay can ruin what was otherwise a flawless attempt. It’s somewhat annoying then when you’ve got the cursor unambiguously trained on a dock worker and yet Crypto inexplicably picks up the van ten feet behind him instead.

Another thing that I’m honestly in two minds about is how they’ve weakened the Holobob, which was previously one of my favorite parts of the toolkit. Using advanced optics, this device allowed you to project an illusionary cloak around your avatar that disguised him as a regular human being. All you had to do was pick out a random pedestrian on the street, execute a simple button press, and then you were instantly incognito. Admittedly it was a bit overpowered, as you were free to cycle through identities on a dime and simultaneously had access to all of your other psychic abilities, but it was a ton of fun nonetheless. 

With the introduction of the ‘’follow’’ command, you can recruit a legion of brainwashed allies.

I used to love posing as an unassuming cheerleader whilst secretly hurling tanks around with my mind, much to the bemusement of ignorant earthlings. Yet I can’t do that in the remake. Here, if you so much as enter the wrong area or try to lift a football into the air, then your cover will be blown straight away. Moreover, it now takes longer to adopt a substitute mask, which in turn prevents you from quickly switching when you’ve been compromised. Overall, it just feels like some of the unmitigated joy has been sucked out of the feature. 

On the other hand, I do realize that it is clearly more balanced mechanic this way, as you’re forced to be crafty in espionage missions, due to the higher risk of being caught. From that perspective, I have grown to appreciate how the nerf adds a further layer of tension to the stealth. As I said, I’m kind of torn on the Holobob and I wish that there was an option to gradually restore it to its former glory, via the upgrade lab.  

Speaking of which, your skill tree has impressively ballooned to over double its original size. There are a dizzying amount of options for you to spend your hard-earned DNA (currency that you accumulate by either completing side activities, or by harvesting human brain stems), with some of these perks having massive ramifications on how you interact with the world. 

Noteworthy additions include the ‘’Extraction Chain’’ ability and the extensive jetpack modifications. The former is extremely helpful when you’re trying to scrounge together enough grey matter for another lab purchase, as it basically allows you to string a conga line of head explosions. In a nutshell, once you’ve invested in this devious trick, you can impel a human’s skull to burst open, whereupon the gory effect will be transferred to anyone else in the immediate vicinity. Think of it like you’re recreating the outrageous climax from Kingsman: The Secret Service, littering the neighborhood with multicolored craniums. Not to mention it’s just endlessly amusing trying to keep that gruesome streak going for as long as possible. 

To accommodate the range of new interactions, certain buttons have to double, triple, and even quadruple in their purpose. Suffice it to say, the confusing overlap can lead to frustration. 

As for the mobility improvements, Crypto’s jetpack is no longer restricted to purely vertical flight and is now capable of a nimble dash that helps you avoid incoming projectiles. What’s more, if you reach the end of this juicy upgrade branch, you eventually will be able to use the rear thrust mechanism to propel yourself around at breakneck speed, as if you’re skating on a pair hover boots. 

It’s an immensely satisfying traversal method in its own right and it really benefits how the time trials play out. Those races used to be uneventful chores (wherein you would idly jump from one waypoint to the next, without facing many obstacles), but your new maneuvers help to inject an extra degree of nuance and finesse into the proceedings. You’ll be deftly slaloming between trees, drifting across rooftops, and catapulting yourself up ramps in a fluid sequence that is highly rewarding. In fact, I was surprised by how addicted I became to memorizing the course layouts and perfecting ever turn, just so I could shave a couple of seconds off my personal record. 

Of course, the ground level combat only accounts for half the experience. Indeed, hopping into the driver’s seat of your spacecraft and obliterating townships from above is a totally different ballgame, with its own complex systems and mechanics. Luckily, the intoxicating thrill of setting cornfields ablaze, knocking over Ferris wheels, and deatomising skyscrapers hasn’t been remotely diminished by the passage of time, feeling just as good as it ever did. 

Wading through the aftermath of this destruction on foot is always a cathartic treat.

As with the Crypto gameplay, the act of piloting your saucer has evolved in a number of subtle ways. For instance, you can now manually calibrate the ship’s altitude, drain energy from human vehicles to repair damage, shoot directly beneath your vessel (Independence Day style), and knockback missiles with an inbuilt ‘’Repulsatron’’ gadget. I can’t imagine how I used to cope without these quality of life enhancements but they’re really valuable, especially the one that lets you summon your UFO from any landing pad, as opposed to just the one where you parked it.  

Complementing the various convenience tweaks, Black Forest has generously affixed brand-new content to the package as well. There are unlockable skins, mind-control powers ripped from the sequels, and optional secondary objectives that incentivize you to replay levels – usually by performing context specific kills or reaching a given checkpoint undetected. 

Crypto’s wardrobe boasts a selection of funny outfits, including a reference to another THQ property.

Most excitingly, however, they’ve managed to salvage an enigmatic mission that was cut from the 2005 release (known as The Wrong Stuff) that has you infiltrating an army base in order to sabotage an experimental fighter jet. It only takes about 15 minutes to wrap up – so don’t go in expecting a huge chunk of never-before-seen material – yet it features some of the best design in the whole game. Whereas other missions have a tendency to be relatively linear, The Wrong Stuff takes a more hands-off approach that encourages you to be creative in how you carry out tasks, akin to a rudimentary Hitman assignment. Granted, it’s not jaw-droppingly open-ended, particularly by modern standards, but it still makes for a nice change of pace and hints at untapped potential that future installments could maybe explore.  

In short, Black Forest has done a terrific job with this remake, delivering a $30 product that ought to be attractive for both loyal fans and series newbies alike. There are inevitable hiccups along the way – like how messy and unpredictable the controls can be – but generally, it represents a strong progression for the franchise. And although it may not be identical to the Destroy All Humans that fondly resides within our memories, it is crucially superior to it. 

Destroy All Humans! review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

Destroy All Humans! will be available on Xbox One, PC, and PS4 from 28th July. 

The post [Review] ‘Destroy All Humans!’ is a Riotous Blast From the Past appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Without getting too deep into spoilers, you play as multiple characters in this game, but two end up becoming the central focus: Ellie, and a new character named Abby. You play through vignettes with both of them leading up to where the action kicks off. Ellie starts out on patrol with her soon-to-be love interest Dina, and Abby is searching for someone who apparently lives in Jackson, the Wyoming settlement where Joel & Ellie now live. The two meet in a nightmarish way, and their lives are changed forever.

Once events are set into motion, the game takes place over only three days, first following Ellie, then Abby. These stories are supposed to run parallel to each other, informing how things are shaking out on the other character’s end, but because they’re back-to-back the game ends up feeling like a slog to get through, and the story is unbalanced and unwieldy. 

The Seattle we see in Naughty Dog’s newest project is a post-apocalyptic warzone, and crossing it is every bit as arduous as it sounds both mechanically, and narratively. Part II took its predecessor’s combat system and tuned it up quite a bit, especially by changing the variety of equipment available to you depending on which character you’re playing as. But, at its core, every combat encounter outside of boss fights is the same loop of stalking enemy patrols/infected through abandoned buildings and overgrown streets. 

If you’d like to get creative, you definitely can. There are a ton of ways to approach things if you’re feeling frisky, but by and large, the game won’t ask you to change up how you play. This, combined with the frequency of enemy encounters, made progressing feel like a chore as I went on. 

The monotony that starts to build with one character never gets to be relieved in full because you’re stuck with them for several hours before switching. As soon as you’ve gotten used to one, it’s time to play as the other. This does get a bit better in the late game, but at that point, I was so fatigued from the first 18-20 hours that I often found myself wondering when it was going to be over. 

This is not helped by the uneven and often equally monotonous story. Ellie really only stays interesting for the first of three days. After that, it’s a lot of tracking down landmarks and slaughtering anyone in your path, with little to no character or plot development in between. Despite being funny and somewhat awkward, Ellie’s character remains flat because it’s largely focused on Joel & her immunity. 

On the other hand, Abby’s storyline gets increasingly more interesting as the days go by, but suffers because there’s so much more character development and world-building jammed into the same three-day span. This made playing through Abby’s route frustrating because I wanted more time learning about this new area and what was going on, but that time was instead devoted to Ellie walking around by herself, murdering endless enemies largely in silence.  

One of Part II’s biggest issues is that despite being excessively long, it just doesn’t understand how to allocate its time appropriately. When I take a step back, I can see the skeleton of this story, and there could have been a solid foundation. But aside from way too many combat encounters, and focusing entirely too much on Ellie’s killing spree, the game isn’t confident enough in its subtleties, overcompensating with heavy-handed and time-consuming flashbacks.

I’m torn on these because they do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting for this story, but I think that fact most strikingly shows its inherent weakness. The Last of Us is definitely a zombie story focused on the monstrosity of humanity in crisis, so it invests a lot into important relationships from the past. But in places where a gentle touch with an implication or reminder would be more than enough, Naughty Dog’s delivery of these emotional points has the nuance of the bricks you throw at Clickers. This takes the feeling from heartwarming to redundancy in record time.

Meanwhile, the relationships that are central during the events of Part II are developed largely through brief dialogue interactions triggered by the environment. While there are character dynamics that feel genuine and emotional, they’re not given the time to realistically grow. I ended up really loving these relationships, but I constantly found myself wanting more time with them. Instead, that time went to racking up a higher body count.

Violence in this game is something that’s been a hot button issue since the start, and the sequel is definitely is more graphic than the original. Part II leans more heavily into the horror side of its zombie apocalypse, which includes a lot of blood, gore, and general maiming. It’s no more graphic than a Resident Evil game, but the enemies, sans infected, are very realistic. You’ll hear people’s gurgling final breaths as they go down under your blade, and soldiers calling out the names of their companions, dog and human alike. If you’re someone who can’t bear to hurt dogs in games, you shouldn’t play this. 

However, the violence isn’t just limited to gruesome spectacles and vicious jump scares. Another hot-button topic I want to address is the trans character, Lev, who was revealed through leaks to a litany of reactions both positive and negative. Without elaborating on his plotline, he is deadnamed, and he does experience violence that is motivated by transphobia. In spite of this, in the context of the game itself, I personally didn’t feel the treatment of this character was harmful. Part II is a story rooted in brutality and angst over the nature of violence and selfishness, and Lev isn’t spared from that. But he isn’t a joke, or a token. His story is one that’s familiar, but at least to me, it didn’t feel trope-ridden or toxic. Lev’s transness is a key part of his character, but it is respected by the protagonist in addition to other key parts of who he is, like his relationships with his family and religion.

There are multiple queer characters in Part II, and despite my initial hesitation, I do think they were done well overall. The relationship between Ellie and Dina is definitely the best sapphic romance I’ve seen depicted in a AAA game. There are also some really incredible accessibility options and a diverse cast both in race and gender, as well as body types to some degree. This is refreshing, especially given how skeptical I was going in, but honestly, this is the least AAA devs can be doing in this day and age. 

After getting through all the bloodshed, horror, and brief rays of light that The Last of Us Part II has to offer, I was tired and wondering what the point even was, but I don’t think it was for the reason the developers wanted me to. There are some excellent high points to be found in this game, but they’re buried in repetitive combat, narrative fluff that wants to hold your hand through emotional beats, and erratic pacing that leaves the story constantly feeling off-kilter. Part II wants to show the ever-present rot that power and authority create in people, but it trips over its own messy structure and narrative insecurity. This game was clearly intended to push what we think of as prestige AAA gaming to the next level, but much like Ellie, it got lost along the way.

The Last of Us Part II review code provided by the publisher.

The Last of Us Part II is out now on PS4.

The post [Review] ‘The Last of Us Part II’ Offers an Uneven and Overlong Journey Filled With Bloodshed and Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Maid of Sker employs a 3D audio-based AI system that allows the foul beasts that hunt you to pinpoint every tension-filled creak of a floorboard, and in this trailer, you see that up close as the protagonist has to hold their breath while a seemingly blind fiend tries to seek them out.

You’ll be able to hold your breath when Maid of Sker arrives on PS4, Xbox One, and PC sometime in July, with the Nintendo Switch version coming later.

The post New Gameplay Footage of Welsh Folklore Horror Game ‘Maid of Sker’ Will Make You Hold Your Breath appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

We start the game with a brief, infographic-style explanation of the concept of Integration. Should a person want or need to trade out their flesh and blood body for a robotic one, well, now we have the technology. This TLDR on the state of the world is interrupted as we pivot hard from the recording to a recorded message from soon-to-be protagonist Romer then to a scene of him being tortured by another robot man whose edgy black armor can only mean he’s the villain. There’s really not much explanation for what goes on next; Romer escapes with some other–I presume–prisoners aboard a ship and they promptly end up getting roped into the resistance group they encounter upon landing. Apparently things have gone a bit pear-shaped since that original Integration infomercial started airing. 

The resistance is filled with trope-laden characters, though I’d argue Waggoner is the worst of the bunch on that front. Filling the tired Magical Negro role, he’s an older Black man, appearing basically out of nowhere to recruit the gang and providing wisdom as they go about their journey. Waggoner is the heart of the operation, pushing more self-centered characters like Doyle to be more compassionate. He’s the only representative of the resistance you interact with for the first several missions, but he actively pushes to make Romer the leader and leading man, for no apparent reason other than he’s the celebrity hotshot.

The other characters aren’t much better. Coqui is a Latino jokester whose occasional use of the language feels woody and unnatural; Agnes is the stereotypical sassy Black woman; Seguin is less blatantly offensive, more just lacking. They allude to having gender nonconformity or transness in their human past, but don’t elaborate on it aside from the tropey sci-fi notion of “robot bodies are fully customizable, therefore I could customize it to fit my identity.” We don’t get enough real developed time with these characters for this to feel like anything other than another batch of walking stereotypes.

The world and the broader story also suffer from a lack of elaboration. Disintegration‘s narrative started off as if I had read a prequel comic. There’s chemistry between the characters that speak to longer bonds and friendships, but there’s no meat to them in the game itself because the action is already hurtling ahead at breakneck speed. We’re expected to fill in the gaps, but the gaps are really more like chasms when it comes to both the relationships and overarching story.

How Disintegration delivers context and lore is erratic and makes the stakes feel low. There’s no immediate reason to care other than that the game says you should. Despite having killed dozens, if not hundreds of them at this point, I’m still not entirely sure what the Rayonne’s overall bad guy angle is. They hate “natural” humans and want to force Integration but I couldn’t tell you more than that. I don’t think they, or Waggoner, even know.

Now, more than ever, it’s important to have substance in stories about resistance, but Disintegration doesn’t have a message beyond boilerplate sci-fi of what resistance might look like without much to back it up. 

Combat in Disintegration suffers from a similar problem. It’s clear that V1 wanted to take trends from other shooters and genres and fuse them into something novel, but it never gets there. Despite elaborating on systems like Mass Effect’s cover and ordering system, there’s really not much of interest in the result. 

Romer pilots a gravcycle, which for all intents and purposes is a one-person plane with varying guns and an environmental scanner. Most missions have at least two other companions tagging along, and you’re able to give them orders on where to move or to open containment cells or healing caches using your “command pulse.” The command pulse can also be used to order your squad to focus fire on a particular enemy. This is pretty essential to surviving missions, as the way you deliver health to your squad varies depending on the mission.

This is really the only variety in missions. Beyond having to figure out how you’re going to keep everyone alive when your health delivery system has changed, or has been removed altogether, the combat gets same-y very quickly. For the first few hours of the campaign, you’ll be facing maps that look fairly similar, trekking from cover cluster to cover cluster and dispatching the same three or four enemy types. After a mission or two, getting through levels is fairly mindless, and becomes a bit of a slog. Even when the scenery changes, the core premise of the combat encounters doesn’t. Not having a reason to be invested in killing the Red-Eyes doesn’t make things any more interesting either. 

The somewhat boring combat also isn’t helped by the multiple technical glitches Disintegration seems to be experiencing. I played on both PC and PS4 because of a game-breaking bug with my i5 processor, one that currently has no fix. During the third story mission, my game crashed four times, never saving my progress in the mission. The PS4 version did run better, but I still experienced a total crash and had multiple cutscenes that never loaded, despite the audio still playing. 

I love weird, ambitious games that take swings at big ideas, but V1 didn’t manage that here. Disintegration clearly wanted to use its gravcycle to take FPS games to new heights, but in the end, floated, slowly, while remaining low to the ground.

Disintegration review code for PS4, and PC provided by the publisher.

Disintegration is out June 16 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The post [Review] ‘Disintegration’ Tries to Take First-Person Combat to New Heights, But Can’t Get Off the Ground appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Zombies have allowed creators to spice things up in otherwise done to death storytelling, and add in layers of social commentary. George A. Romero was a master of this with his early zombie films like Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, but modern creators like Edgar Wright, Jim Jarmusch, and Yeon Sang-ho have integrated their personalities into the zombie subgenre to craft zombie stories wholly unique to them.

But when it comes to video games, zombies haven’t had the same level of treatment that shows and movies have shown. Not to say that there’s a lack of zombies in games because if anything, it’s almost to the point of oversaturation. Even the most low budget mobile game has a chance of including a little game involving you either barreling your way through a pack of the hungry undead or running away from them. 

In many ways, zombies in video games are presented as a little too simplistic to their filmed counterparts. In games, when you see them, you shoot, stab, or retreat until you find something better to use. The Call of Duty games, Dead Island and Dead Rising present the use of zombies as something to help ease the tension by giving the player something fun to play around with. 

That may seem like the point of video games in general, but as time has gone on, the storytelling aspect of video games has undergone a near-fundamental change. Stories in games are further removing the stigma of being “video game stories”, i.e. a story too trashy and niche for movies and TV, and this shift has resulted in games of all genres, zombies included, to experience a similar change in their narratives. 

This change has been in motion for many years now, with games like the Bioshock trilogy and David Cage’s Indigo Prophecy being but few of the games attempting to stand out as unique stories told through the lens of video games to varying degrees of success and failure. As it stands, it’s only a matter of time before the zombie genre becomes affected by this change.

Enter The Last of Us.

In 2013, Neil Druckmann and the people at Naughty Dog went and released an intriguing zombie game about a man named Joel escorting a teenage girl named Ellie across the United States in an effort to find a cure for the disease that has rapidly destroyed the country. The disease has turned many of the living into raging shells of their former selves as they have effectively succumbed to the disease, the same disease that Ellie appears to be immune from on account of a bite on her arm that didn’t become infected.

That’s essentially the catalyst for The Last of Us to get going on its main story, which has you control Joel as he battles through both zombies and hostile humans to keep Ellie safe. She, in turn, provides him with a helping hand as they encounter dangers along the way to potentially saving humanity from extinction. That’s survival horror at its most pure. The driving force of the game is making sure to stay alive despite the enormous odds against you and the characters presented.

But chances are, you probably already know this. Practically anyone who has played, seen a playthrough of, or even just read up on nuggets of info on the game already knows what The Last of Us is about. In 2013, the video game discourse was focused primarily on Naughty Dog’s zombie horror drama, with even the likes of Bioshock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto V paling in comparison to the heated discussion around The Last of Us.

With its countless Game of the Year awards, the discourse inevitably shifted to whether the game was truly that good or simply overrated by stuffy critics. How could a zombie game receive labels such as “one of the greats” and “one of the most important games ever made?” On the surface, it looks like a regular zombie survival game, having you barreling through hordes of enemies just like every other zombie game. Right?

Yes and no.

Much like The Walking Dead, The Last of Us places its priorities on the characters of the apocalypse, letting the players attach themselves to Joel and Ellie and whoever they came across over the course of the game. Some of the best zombie media out there prefer to employ similar tactics, with even the OG Night of the Living Dead shifting its focus to the characters amidst the zombie violence rather than solely the violence.

But in a game like The Last of Us, there comes the opportunity to provide a genuine zombie experience intermingling with the strong central characters in a manner that not even The Walking Dead was able to manage. Instead of simply watching characters scavenge for food or wondering why characters didn’t take the shotgun instead of the pistol, you live out those moments, essentially controlling the experience for yourself, which means when something inevitably goes wrong, it’s on YOU to solve the issue.

When playing through the 40th wave on a Call of Duty: Zombies map, the experience doesn’t feel the same as when you have to fight through a yard of zombies in The Last of Us with little to no ammo left. In the former, there’s the knowledge that you will be okay with the various weapons laid out for you across the map, providing an arcade experience that takes away the emotion of whatever story is happening onscreen and placing it on you to fill in the gaps.

The Last of Us incorporates a strategy that feels similar to the developers letting the players fill in the gaps, but the tension is heightened by the lack of resources laid out for you compared to COD. Not only are you left a severe disadvantage against the zombies of the world, but the realization that this could be bad news for Joel and Ellie, the central pair of the entire game, feels a little extra infuriating when a simple mistake forces you to watch a cutscene of either of them getting dogpiled by the zombie horde or enemy humans.

The storytelling in The Last of Us takes responsibility for that, sprinkling in quiet character moments during one of the many instances where Joel is just walking around with Ellie, whose back-and-forth dynamic is instrumental in developing the characters and expanding the dire world that the two are forced to live in. Bioshock Infinite gave us something similar with the dynamic between Booker and Elizabeth, but that game’s insane story and plasmid-focused gameplay strayed far from the somewhat small-scale and intimate nature of The Last of Us.

When critics and players rave about the game being one of the best of all time, it comes with the context of The Last of Us mixing story and gameplay so fluidly that it brought an experience not often found in the world of video games. Even some of the most popular story-driven games of the past 20 years like Bioshock, Red Dead Redemption, and Mass Effect still presented themselves as products made specifically in the realm of pure video games.

What I mean is that these games, while groundbreaking in their own ways, still felt like the types of stories you can only experience in the world of video games. Sure, watching a Western can offer a substitute for Red Dead, but Rockstar’s strengths in open-world exploration help the games feel more like video game-exclusive experiences. There’s still an emphasis on the game feeling like a game.

The Last of Us blurs these lines with fun game mechanics mixing with a strong and emotional story in an attempt to distance itself from the feeling of being too “gamey” for casual players and observers. The mechanics are simple, but vital to the universe, relying on scavenging and crafting a limited amount of resources to use, putting the players in the heads of Joel and Ellie, who are the perpetual underdogs in almost every moment of the game.

This mixture of gameplay and storytelling creates a world where the game you’re playing doesn’t necessarily feel like a game anymore and I don’t mean that in a David Cage-kind of way. Naughty Dog still presents a world that people can have fun exploring in a sense, but exploration is limited, bringing everyone closer to the characters since we are essentially stuck with them through their highs and lows. There are hardly moments of reprieve that other games would’ve gladly handed out to us after a hard mission. Here, the entire game is the mission.

Mixing the story and gameplay as such can have its risks. The game could feel like too much of a “walking simulator”, essentially shoving a movie in a game where you have little to no control over what progresses in the story. But The Last of Us walks that tightrope with gory grace, placing an equal emphasis on story progression and player freedom to explore each section of the game.

Naughty Dog is no strangers to this, with the Uncharted series also cleverly mixing story progression and fun gameplay, but it arguably feels the most refined in The Last of Us and as such, the gaming world took notice and naturally reacted with a mixture of annoyance and appreciation for the manner in which the acclaimed zombie drama helped break new ground with its form of interactive storytelling. Never intrusive, but still personal.

The success of The Last of Us wasn’t just a fluke either, as game developers took notice of the fact that this form of storytelling could be both profitable and useful for telling creative tales in their own games. When God of War for the PS4 came out, the callbacks to Druckmann’s survival horror drama came to fruition, with director Cory Barlog stating that he felt very inspired by what Druckmann and Naughty Dog did with their game to completely revamp the tone of the previously arcade-y God of War games.

But it doesn’t stop there. The likes of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Red Dead Redemption 2, Death Stranding, Soma, and even more recently with A Plague Tale: Innocence have taken great strides in implementing The Last of Us’ blend of storytelling and gameplay into their own narratives, opening the doors for video games to stand out for their stories. The Last of Us is not the first game to do this, but to normalize it the way it did all the way back in 2013 and have the domino effect still ongoing in 2020 is something truly astonishing. 

The Last of Us: Part II is mere weeks away from releasing after years of anticipation and games of a similar feel are on their way too, from Cyberpunk 2077 and the sequel to Hellblade, to fellow PlayStation exclusive Ghosts of Tsushima. Whatever the case may be, expect the games (and more in the future) to try and replicate elements of what The Last of Us did to further the development of video games as an art form. Not to say games aren’t already, but why stop here?

Legendary film critic, Roger Ebert, famously said that he doesn’t believe that video games can be high art and this inspired a wave of gamers attempting to prove him wrong. It seems he held strong to his word until the day he died, but the evolution of the video game as an art form is something that begs to be noticed by even the most skeptical living critic of gaming art. Video games, like movies and paintings, adapt and evolve over time and The Last of Us is arguably the most crucial part of the evolution in the 2010s.

Whether or not Part II simply continues where it originally started or takes the art form to another level remains to be seen, but it does nothing to diminish the impact that The Last of Us had in the gaming community the past decade. How video games as an art form evolve over time is unpredictable, but The Last of Us’ gaming footprint is almost guaranteed to be felt by the gaming world long after the PS3 and PS4 transform into relics of a different time.

The post ‘The Last of Us’: The Zombie Drama That Became a Decade-Defining Landmark for Video Games appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The minimalism that defines Maneater is not nearly as compelling. The open-world RPG, out today, casts players as the hungry and homicidal fish in question. It’s a novel take on a familiar formula and there’s a lot here to like. But, to borrow a metaphor from another generation’s blockbuster, it feels like too little butter scraped over too much bread. Even accounting for the hundreds of limbs you’ll sever with razor-sharp teeth, it feels like something’s missing.

Maneater has attracted plenty of games media attention on the strength of its unique premise. What if you were the killer shark terrorizing a beach? What if your presence ensured that it wasn’t safe to go back in the water? What if you were the reason they were gonna need a bigger boat? And, Maneater does a pretty great job of making this fantasy a reality. 

Swimming is simple and intuitive, and I never got tired of breaching the water’s surface for a front flip and cannonball splash. Maneater makes your mouth the gun — with distinct, bite-y lunges bound to each trigger — and the resulting actions feel, appropriately, like a speeding bullet finding its mark. These actions feel best when you are the predator, stalking your prey. Less so when your target can fight back. Combat — both with other carnivorous sea creatures and with human hunters — consist mostly of lunges and the camera often struggles to keep up. I don’t think I lost any battles because of this, but I consistently needed to take a moment to reposition my viewpoint.

Those problems aside, Maneater’s brand of marine melee mostly works. As you grow from (ahem) a baby shark into a massive monster, you can take breaks from the main quest to chew through a hierarchy of named hunters. To draw them out, you’ll need to cause mayhem, GTA-style, chomping innocent beachgoers and splintering waves of the hunter’s stooges. Thrash long enough and the hunter will make an appearance.

The resulting battles are easy at first because, as it turns out, no human is much of a match for a bull shark’s mouth full of knives. After a lengthy bout turning the water red, I was surprised how simple it was to leap into the air, lunge at the hunter, and X them off the bracket. As your infamy increases, hunters will come prepared with better defenses, which make these fights harder and more rewarding. Though, given that there are only 10 named hunters, I do wish that each battle was more unique. That said, one of the coolest things about these fights is that you get to decide where they take place. Losing repeatedly in the open ocean? Take the fight inland. The honeycombed tunnels beneath one of the game’s Venice-like port towns proved much more friendly for sharky stealth than the expansive gulf.

Hunter battles are a highpoint among the activities on offer here. Elsewhere, Maneater suffers from its campaign’s lack of focus. There is a story — our shark is on a quest to avenge her mother’s death and take down the hook-handed Cajun reality star fisherman who murdered her — and the little that is here is pretty good. The problem is, there are no story missions. Instead, you’ll complete a checklist of bog-standard open-world quests — kill 10 turtles, eat 10 humans, sink a hunter’s boat — until the game decides it’s time to dole out a bit of narrative. As many games do, Maneater treats cutscenes as a reward. But, I’ve rarely seen a reward so disconnected from the process of earning it.

What Maneater lacks in story or structure it makes up for in the simple joy of Chris Parnell’s presence. The comic actor, of Rick and Morty and “Lazy Sunday” fame, serves as narrator, dishing out real shark facts and fictional behavioral details on the “Florida Man” archetypes who hunt her. Some of these border on low-hanging fruit classism, but generally Parnell’s running commentary punches up, skewering the wealthy who demand beachfront property and the land developers who ensure they get it, habitat be damned. The folks at TripWire have loaded the map with interesting details and dioramas to find, and I enjoyed knowing that Parnell would always have something to say about whatever I found.

And Maneater’s setting ensures that the process of exploration is consistently rewarding. The world’s coasts, creeks, and canals are populated by real-world creatures that are often a thrill to encounter. As your shark gains mass and levels, aquatic lifeforms that once seemed fearsome become fodder. I loved returning to early areas and tearing the alligators that harassed my baby self into scaly ribbons. Though, the game’s gore does become slightly less palatable here. While years of violent games have numbed me to the sight of a virtual mutilated human corpse, seeing the bloody stump where an orca’s dorsal fin used to be made me feel bad.

Still, this highlights what makes Maneater unique and, more generally, is how it manages to find the fun despite its structural issues. You may have played a million open-world games. You may be sick-and-tired of checklist design. You may have been sick-and-tired of it for a decade. But, Maneater is just different enough, and just funny enough, and just gory enough, that for a while, you may manage to forget that it’s otherwise beached in the shallows.

Maneater review code for PC provided by the publisher.

Maneater is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC via the Epic Games Store.

The post [Review] ‘Maneater’ is a Shallow But Entertainingly Gory Shark RPG appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Brought to life following a modestly successful Kickstarter campaign back in May of 2015, Perception is the brainchild of a married couple (he a game designer with credits on Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite, she a novelist) and built by a small team of former Irrational Games employees. As a young woman named Cassie, players find themselves outside the front door of a decrepit mansion known as Echo Bluff. There’s a mystery surrounding the place, its history, and its appearances in Cassie’s dreams, so some sleuthing is necessary to get to the bottom of things. 

So far, so spooky, but the thing that makes this story unique for a horror game (and indeed horror stories in general) is the main character’s disability. Cassie is blind, and therefore so are you. In Perception, the only way to “see” is by tapping her cane, which will temporarily illuminate the pitch-black surroundings in a blue wave of echolocation. Other sources of sound -a leaky faucet, wind whooshing past a busted window- will offer a similar result. It’s a unique premise and more than a simple gimmick, as the game is structured to make Cassie’s brand of sight the only way to get around. Raising the gamma won’t help you here. The game also wants players to toe the line between viewing their surroundings and making too much noise, as it’s possible to alert the ghostly forces that haunt the house. If they successfully catch up to Cassie, it’s game over.

A refreshing thing about our heroine is that she’s no silent protagonist. Cassie is often shooting off at the mouth whether it’s out of boredom or fear, and actress Angela Morris does an excellent job infusing the game with personality. Some moments are legitimately funny and offer a decent tension-breaker before the scares and action ramp up again. Not everyone is a fan of the constant chatter, but there is an option to reduce the talk to plot-specific lines only.

Speaking of the plot, it’s appropriately ambitious and tragic for such a game. When crucial elements are found, the environment can actually change around the player, making all previous knowledge of the layout useless. The disorientation adds to the overall experience.

Some folks will weakly slander Perception by labeling it as a walking simulator. Others have accused it of not being scary. Fortunately, developer The Deep End Games weren’t content to finish the title and forget about it. Since its original release, several updates have been implemented that address the most common complaints. Two additional game modes were included, one that makes the game incredibly easy (in essence a true walking simulator for those who want it), the other makes it more difficult by making the Presence (the previously mentioned ghostie) more aggressive and more common. More dialogue, checkpoints and collectibles have been added since release as well. And there are a handful of amusing easter eggs to locate while playing, which is always fun.

Keep an eye out for some iconic artwork from a certain Mrs. Deetz.

Like some slow-burn horror flicks, the slower pace and melancholy tone of this title won’t be for everyone. For the horror gamer who’s interested in a quieter and unquestionably different experience, Perception is a solid choice. It’s the only time I’ve backed a video game on Kickstarter and not been disappointed.

Perception is available on PC, PS4, XBOX One, and Nintendo Switch.

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In yesterday’s audio teaser, Ellie is heard to say ‘I need to finish this’, and Joel replies ‘there’s a cost’ and in today’s full story trailer we get to see beyond that and delve into a vengeance-fuelled tale that seems to begin not too long after the events of the original game before shifting to the timeline of the older Ellie we’ve seen repeatedly during previous videos and images. What fuels this vengeance mission hopefully remains a mystery for many of you.

It’s been a rocky road to release, with delays, reports of unrest at the company, and an eventual leak of the game’s story by hackers so far in 2020, but demand and excitement for the sequel to the highly-revered 2013 post-apocalyptic PS3 title remain high.

It won’t be long before we find out if The Last of Us Part II can measure up to its iconic predecessor, as it releases on PS4 June 19.

The post The New Story Trailer For ‘The Last of Us Part II’ Shows Ellie’s Brutal Mission of Vengeance [Video] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The release of Black Forest Games’ remake of comedy sci-fi adventure Destroy All Humans! will be looming over the summer like a UFO over the White House, as it attacks PS4, Xbox One, and PC on July 28.

The remake of the cult PS2 hit sees an alien named Crypto-137 bring a mischievous reign of terror to Earth in the 1950s with his psychic abilities and death-dealing instruments of destruction. Crypto can read the minds of the populace, learning their shameful secrets, use mind-control to make them do things for you, drop cows on farmers, obliterate cities with a death ray, and perhaps most importantly, batter someone to death with their own hat.

If a regular copy of the game isn’t enough to whet your appetite, then the $399.99 Crypto-137 Edition might do it. This special collector’s edition includes a Crypto-137 figurine, a Crypto backpack, keychain, six lithographs, an anti-stress toy, and all in-game Crypto skins. That’s all contained within a premium box too. You can pre-order that now, as well as the less costly DNA Edition which retails at $149.99

We’ll be looking to the skies until July arrives.

The post ‘Destroy All Humans!’ Invades PC and Consoles This Summer appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After playing Resident Evil 3 this past week, the realization hit me. This game is not a remake. It is a reimagining; a sequel to last year’s Resident Evil 2.

If you think of it like that, you’re going to have a very fun time with Resident Evil 3. Otherwise, if you’re expecting it to be a remake, you’re likely going to be disappointed.

The story as a whole is well-written, and takes you in from start to finish. It begins at Jill Valentine’s apartment, and interestingly, that beginning actually harkens ‘forward’ to another installment in the series. Soon after this we’re introduced to Nemesis, a bioweapon with a directive to eradicate Jill and her S.T.A.R.S. teammates. The big brute is relentless and seemingly unkillable.

Jill then meets the squad of Carlos, Nicholai, and Mikhail, who work for the evil Umbrella corporation, and her journey intertwines with theirs as the hulking, horrific Nemesis stalks her. This loose template remains from the original, but it becomes clear that the game is going to do things with the plot quite differently this time around from the opening few minutes on. The details of that original story are blown apart and reconstructed in new ways to tie more coherently into the lore of Resident Evil as we know it now.

The graphics look fantastic here yet again, thanks to the RE Engine. They really bring out the grotesque look of the enemies and the damage they take. It also makes the big story action scenes into dazzling intense spectacles. As with Resident Evil 2, the lighting is exceptional, from the murky hallways briefly illuminated by flickering lights to the rich and vibrant neon signs glowing amid the wreckage of Raccoon City.

The redone music is also a huge plus, with reimagined callbacks to original tracks such as the ‘Nemesis’ theme and ‘The City of Ruin’, so the tension, especially during one particular location as Carlos, can really be ramped up. The performances are once again of great quality, with the dynamic between Jill and Carlos really selling the melodramatic urgency and chaos of the situation because of the motion-capture and voice work.

The monsters are, of course, the stars of the show, and while many are returning from Resident Evil 2, there’s plenty of new monstrosities to avoid being slaughtered by. For example, the reintroduction/redesign of the Hunters makes for a terrifying addition; they’re ugly (Predator-esque in fact), armored, fast, and if you’re not careful, can kill you in a single grisly blow.

Luckily, a ‘dodge’ mechanic, evolved from the one found in the original game, has your back when facing such deadly threats, and while it can be difficult to time it right, it’s a satisfying moment when the world slows to a crawl, and you pop that headshot, with the greatest satisfaction.

What many are here for is Nemesis and Nemesis is… fine. It bellows ‘STARS’ with that hunger and rage that fans will be all too familiar with, and comes after you like a parkouring Terminator. Yet it was disappointing that there were certain points where you are forced to fight it, and in a few of those situations, the method to beat the hulking monstrosity felt uninspired and underwhelming.

There is one time around a third of the way through where it was fun to beat him like this, especially as he learned how to dodge grenade shots. But further into the game, when it was repeating this ‘event’ in different locations, it just felt forced.

If I go any further I would be in spoiler-territory, but a lot felt more scripted than the original, and it hindered the character of Nemesis as a whole for me. There were barely any surprises seeing him compared to Mr. X, which made the allure of Nemesis so fun. You weren’t sure when he was going to appear in the majority of the original game. Regardless of this being a re-imagining, it would have been nice to have seen Nemesis burst through a door or a window much more often.

The Carlos section of the game takes you to some familiar locations. This is akin to the Ada Wong section of Resident Evil 2, but substantially longer. It’s an enjoyable change of pace, and certain things accomplished during this segment tie in to the events of Resident Evil 2 quite nicely. But in other ways, it’s a shame that the story took precedent here over the gameplay; it would have been nice to have explored a few more familiar areas at this point in time in Raccoon City, rather than be faced with locked doors or furniture blocking the way to other routes.

This is also an issue when locations from the original game are shown, but are inaccessible due to the reworked plot of this game. Some were mercifully welcome exclusions to me in particular, but others were a shame to lose.

Remember in The Simpsons when Millhouse wanted Itchy, Scratchy and Poochie to get to the fireworks factory and they never did? I had a couple of experiences like that in Resident Evil 3, which was unfortunate as I was very curious, even as this is a re-imagining, of what this current generation could have created here. But for the locations that stayed in, they work very well, especially towards the end of the game.

It doesn’t help that the game is quite brief. I was able to finish it in 4 hours on my first playthrough. I then completed it on ‘Normal’ in three and a half. It’s a shorter game than 2, but it really shouldn’t be. This is the only scenario you will be playing too, unlike Resident Evil 2, unless you start again on one of three difficulty settings, and eventually others once you finish your first playthrough.

There’s also a nice treat that I won’t spoil here, but make sure you gain as many points as you can throughout the game to purchase rewards of items and weapons.

It’s telling to me as to why RE: Resistance is launching alongside Resident Evil 3 now. It makes sense, considering the length of the game, but regardless, you will enjoy blasting your way through certain environments over and over again. It is a compelling game, and you will likely be going back repeatedly. The soul of this game was that it was an action game primarily, and the fact that there are far fewer puzzles here than the previous entry gives credence to that.

Here would have been a paragraph on my experiences with RE: Resistance, but there have been issues that have not allowed me to play it to give you my impressions. Those will now come in a separate piece after launch.

Even so, it’s a shame that ‘Mercenaries’ isn’t here. It was a fantastic mode that has been replaced by RE: Resistance. The only remnant of it seems to be this method of ‘collecting points’ through repeated play-throughs of the main game to collect certain items and weapons. It’s welcome, but there is one item that may require six or seven attempts to obtain it.

In ‘Mercenaries’, it was a matter of collecting money by reaching the end in a timely fashion, defeating hunters and zombies to rack up more time. I hope we see a return of this mode as DLC down the line, as the number of characters here and in RE:2 can more than make do for a remake of this mode. 

For those who have been waiting for a remake of the original game, this isn’t quite it. It’s clearly a reimagining, a ‘what could we have done if this was originally a sequel to begin with’ scenario. If you think of it as simply a sequel to last year’s remake to Resident Evil 2, then you’re probably going to have a better time with it. The story is engaging. Nemesis, at least in its first form, is as relentlessly terrifying as ever, before it becomes a repeated boss stage.

It’s at least an interesting, if lacking, reimagining, but it may have been better to treat this as more of a remake, as Resident Evil 2 was. It’s enjoyable, it’s pretty much everything you loved about last year’s entry, but there’s a nagging feeling that it could have been so much more.

Resident Evil 3 review code for PC provided by the publisher.

Resident Evil 3 is out April 3 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The post [Review] Reimagined ‘Resident Evil 3’ Is an Exciting Slice of Survival Horror That Leaves You Hungering For More appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Moons Of Madness plays in the vein of walking-simulator adventures (think Layers Of Fear). You take control of Shane Newehart, an engineer stationed on Mars who must confront the horrors taking place on the planet. Little by little, Shane comes across new monstrosities that threaten the lives of him and his colleagues. As he digs deeper into the cosmic forces at play, he discovers a threat far beyond his mortal understanding.

In general, environment design isn’t half bad either. Though some parts Shane explores are a little plain, the growing evil cosmic presence helps to spice things up. There are numerous Lovecraftian visual traits throughout the game; gigantic tentacle arms, Cthulhu-looking creatures, and an evil occult book are all here. To go along with its literary influence, the game also involves a psychological aspect to its story. At times, these qualities make for solid components to the experience. Some cool environment designs bring life to the game’s setting, offering some stark and chilling atmosphere. 

As far as gameplay is concerned, players utilize Shane to explore locales and interact with puzzles. And throughout one’s playthrough, you’ll come across a good variety of puzzles. One task may have you manipulating security cameras and another may have you sneaking past robots. Some puzzle types appear more than others, but there’s enough change to keep your mind busy. Puzzle difficulty ranges as well, with some requiring little to no thought, and some providing more of a challenge. 

All this said, however, the positives of Moons Of Madness do not ease the pain of its issues.

One big area where Moons Of Madness shows struggle is in its writing. For starters, the game’s characters are dull. Given that Shane spends so much of the game by himself, communication comes through in the form of radio chatter. Efforts are made to provide a mix of dialogue that is comical, suspenseful, and emotional, but most of it comes across corny. 

When it comes to the game’s narrative, credit is due regarding the Lovecraftian, cosmic horror angle. Though a little generic and vague at times, there are some interesting ideas the narrative explores. That said, and without giving away spoilers, the psychological approach feels empty. One can see that the writers were going for an intriguing angle, but the writing never fully commits, and only treads the emotional potential. 

On top of all of this, the overall presentation of horror throughout Moons Of Madness is weak. Along with the mediocre elements of psychological horror, the game throws a few jump scares at you, as well as moments of “tension.” I use quotations because when there is a moment that a monster is chasing you, it’s quite easy to avoid any real threat to your life. Managing other threats, such as violent plants and tentacles, proves to be even easier. Unlike the gripping tension and unnerving gameplay of titles like Outlast, Moons Of Madness is more passive in its gameplay.

You would think that the mix of cosmic horror and Lovecraft would come together to create this brutal air of despair, with monsters and mystery that work to crawl under your skin. Instead though, Moons Of Madness just wants to show interesting visuals, but not have them be all that interesting to engage with. With all the cool concepts that are present, it’s weird for them to feel so dull.

While the world design and puzzle engagement are serviceable, Moons Of Madness disappointments. Given what the game is pulling from for inspiration, it’s a shame to see a story and characters without substance. Moons Of Madness may get you to lose your mind out of boredom before any alien entity can get near.

Moons of Madness review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

Moons of Madness is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

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Even though the setting has been transplanted from dark fantasy castles to Gothic horror streets, you can still see some through lines in the way the worlds are built. The levels are still impeccably laid out, featuring nooks and crannies that need to be explored to be able to find items and weapons that will be useful on your journey. 

These items and weapons are still the way the main story is doled out throughout the game, giving you a double incentive to explore the twisty streets. Bloodborne also continues the tradition of building in several shortcuts that reward you for your progress, creating satisfying moments where you discover how different areas loop back on themselves to connect. One particularly inspiring example of this comes when you find an area in a midgame area that loops all the way back to the very beginning of the game. 

While exploration may feel similar, Bloodborne immediately sets itself apart from Dark Souls through its combat. It still emphasizes precision and timing in its execution, but the pace of it is completely different. There’s a much talked about moment early in the game where you find a corpse with a wooden shield, and the description of the shield includes “Shields are nice, but not if they engender passivity.”

This communicates the ethos of Bloodborne‘s combat perfectly: passivity will get you killed. You can no longer hide behind a shield to wait for the right moment to strike, but rather need to be actively dodging attacks while moving in for the perfectly timed kill. The game includes a health regeneration mechanic that heals you if you hit the enemy within a certain window, encouraging aggression by rewarding you for not backing off in a fight. 

One controversial change in the transition from Dark Souls to Bloodborne was the lack of “character builds.” in the latter. Despite having some magic that is introduced in the back half of the game, Bloodborne doesn’t really have much in the way of a viable range build; even the guns don’t deal significant damage. Rather than explicit character classes, the game instead has you pick from an incredibly diverse set of ‘trick weapons’ that all feel meaningfully different. These trick weapons each of an alternate mode, allowing you to perform devastating combos while mixing it up in combat. 

It’s interesting to look at Bloodborne as a midway point between Dark Souls and Sekiro, which did not have a wide variety of character options, despite featuring several other Souls-like mechanics. They took the wider build variety of Dark Souls and filed it down a bit, giving Bloodborne players a fewer number of weapons that had a greater amount of depth to them. In the move to Sekiro, FromSoftware narrowed it down more by essentially creating the character build for the player, then gave them some upgrade options to fine-tune it while still forcing the player to play how the developers intended. 

Themes of cycles and renewal permeate Dark Souls and Bloodborne games, which is appropriate given the way the series has been evolving. Each game they take lessons they’ve learned and iterate on them, keeping familiar concepts and making them feel fresh again. Fans of Dark Souls could jump into Bloodborne and simultaneously feel comfortable with the similarities and challenged by the differences. While they have been narrowing their focus recently with Sekiro, it will be interesting to see what lessons they take into the forthcoming and highly anticipated Elden Ring.

The post How the Gothic Horror-Themed ‘Bloodborne’ Revitalized the ‘Dark Souls’ Formula appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The Resident Evil 3: Raccoon City Demo is free now on PS4, Xbox and PC, and provides an enticing glimpse of 45-minutes of early game action. As the demo begins, Carlos and Jill have just met, and Carlos has brought Jill to a parked subway car to meet Mikhail Victor, a grizzled member of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service. From there, players are let loose on the city, invited to explore as Jill, with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

It’s a solid chunk of the game; small enough that you won’t feel like you’ve seen too much when you start the full game, but substantial enough that you’ll have a good idea of whether or not this reimagined version of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is for you. Here are five takeaways from our time with the demo.

If You Played the Resident Evil 2 Remake, You’ll Feel Right at Home

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but playing Resident Evil 3 feels almost exactly the same as playing Resident Evil 2. Jill’s movement speed, the way the guns handle, the UI for interacting with the world and your inventory — all of it communicates that this game, as much as it is a reimagining of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, is also very much a continuation of the ideas Capcom developed in the Resident Evil 2 remake. 

For example, zombies in Resident Evil 3 retain the hard-to-hit shaky shamble of their RE2 counterparts. Headshots, too, often remain ineffective. Instead, you’ll want to aim for your enemies’ legs to bring them to the ground, allowing you to dart around them. About two-thirds of the way through the demo, this kind of crowd control becomes significantly easier.

That’s when you pick up the shotgun and…

The Shotgun Rules

You can tell a lot about a game by how good the shotgun feels, and Resident Evil 3 is no exception. The Resident Evil series has typically prioritized strategic shooting over thoughtless blasting, and that’s still the case this time around. Shotgun ammo is scarce, so you’ll need to be picky with how you use it.

But, with a reticle the size of a cantaloupe (I’m barely exaggerating), using the ammo you do find to obliterate zombies is fast, easy and satisfying. A quick shot to the chest — and, seriously, the reticle is almost as big as their torso — will have most enemies down for the count.

The ‘90s Are In

From the campy movie posters (one, weirdly, is for Resident Evil 3: Nemesis) plastered on the subway walls to the giant Big Boy-like head smiling out at the city from atop a restaurant, Resident Evil 3 genuinely feels like a late ‘90s-set period piece at times. While few game levels will ever feel as perfectly realized as Resident Evil 2’s Raccoon Police Station, the chunk of urban corridors in this demo have personality to spare.

The Writing is Still Bad

At one point, Carlos tells Jill that clearing a path through the flames in a burning alley should be easy for a “tall drink of water like [her]self].” To which Jill replies, “Fuck you.”

Resident Evil 3 continues to widen the gap between the Naughty Dog-esque visual fidelity Capcom is capable with the RE Engine and the laughably bad dialogue that never seems to improve.

Nemesis is Scarier than Mr. X

Capcom is certainly onto something here. While the sections of Resident Evil 2 that had Mr. X loudly stomping around the police station were pulse-pounding, Nemesis evolves the dynamic in an interesting way. While Mr. X was plodding and inevitable, Nemesis is fast and unpredictable. If you see Nemesis at the end of a hallway, the only option is to stand your ground and attempt to dodge at the last second. Running won’t get you anywhere with this speedy mutant, who can close the gap, even from dozens of feet away, in the blink of an eye. 

But, Nemesis’ movements are also difficult to predict. In my first attempt at escape, the monster cornered me and killed me. The second time, I lost him in a building and, though taking the same route, easily escaped. Resident Evil 2 felt tailor-made for speedrunners, and I’m curious what the most nimble-fingered among us will be able to manage given the dynamism of Nemesis.

Of course, we’ll find out in a few short weeks.

The post 5 Takeaways from Capcom’s ‘Resident Evil 3’ Demo [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s a bubbling pot of juicy parts from the likes of DayZ, Left 4 Dead, Evolve, Crysis, PUBG, and Red Dead, but the meal it creates is something quite unlike any of those.

Set in Louisiana at the end of the 19th century, players are cast as monster hunters, fighting it out to pick up bounties on nefarious creatures stalking the swampy South. There’s a competitive element to it, as up to ten players in teams of two or solo, race to find the location of the target monster and escape. But that’s not the end of it. Every player has to uncover clues to that location whilst avoiding not only the other players, but also the lesser zombie-like beasts that roam the map. A battle royale-esque aspect comes into effect because when you’re eliminated, you’re out, so there’s no gung-ho and reckless play that won’t see you taking a bullet or getting gutted by a foul beast.

So begins a PvEvP cat and mouse game, where every player is trying to outthink the other. Sure you might be the first to uncover the clues to the monster’s location, but a bit of smart thinking from another player means they could just quietly follow you to the location, let you do the hard work and then swoop in and take the spoils. In short, paranoia and cunning are as useful as a good gun when it comes to Hunt Showdown.

An average match of Hunt Showdown is no quick fix. Expect to spend upwards of half an hour methodically journeying across the map, listening for gunfire, the groans of the undead, and getting into brief encounters that usually end up with someone dead. Of course, a bad choice or two can end your time in the match a lot sooner.

That pace is perfect for the melting pot Crytek has going on. In the quieter moments, there’s still plenty of atmosphere and tension as you really don’t know what’s happening next. Sure you can make a basic strategy for how to approach a mission, but given the human element can drastically change the in-match dynamic each time, there’s very little in the way of safety to even a seemingly serene situation. There’s a perverse pleasure in soaking up the hazy Louisiana atmosphere when death is around every corner. In terms of horror, the creepy Louisiana setting is unnerving in broad daylight, but when it’s dark? Suddenly the unknown becomes just that bit more terrifying.

When the action does kick in, it’s faithful to the methodical pace of the rest of the game, but in the moment it seems fleeting, brutal, and often sweat-inducingly tense. Weaponry is of the era, so there’s slow reloads and noisy gunfire. As a result, every shot you make needs to be hit, lest you end up funneled by someone else’s bullets, or worse, attract more attention than is necessary to your location. More often than not, confrontation is best avoided, and to that end, you can use the impressive sound design to steer clear of trouble spots, or use it to drive that trouble into the waiting arms of other nasty things. Hunt Showdown’s audio is so good, you can roughly tell exactly how far away a shot has been fired. Rarely has a game been better served by headphones or surround sound than this one. With it, every footstep, creak of a door, jangle of chain, and click of a gun is perfectly represented, and listening truly becomes your greatest tool.

Adding to the bounty hunting drama is the fact that when your character dies, that’s it. They and everything they held is gone. General progression carries over still, but it adds another pinch of spice to an already hot multiplayer dish. Happily, the game tells you this early on and allows you to keep your character alive regardless up to level 10, which is certainly long enough to get to grips with the way Hunt Showdown works. In fact, despite the unforgiving nature of the game, Crytek has done a splendid job of easing the player into the game. 

Obviously making off with the loot unscathed is hard work and most games aren’t going to end that way, so Crytek ensures you get XP rewards for all sorts of things, be it discovering clues, killing lesser monsters, or just lasting to the end, prize or not. The option for risk is there, but there are at least measures to remind you that you don’t need to sacrifice a precious character to a half-baked attempt at stealing the loot.

There’s plenty of fumbling quick deaths early on that act as little lessons in just that. For example, In one match during my early hours with the game, I stood atop a wall, trying to find the quietest, least confrontational route to my target. There were several lowly monsters scattered about the most direct route, and I could hear the crack of rifle fire close by, so I teetered along the wall, trying to go around, and eventually spotted a lone zombie-type enemy wandering frantically in front of where I wanted to go. No problem, I’ll just go and hammer it with a melee attack, right?

It saw me, screeched, and started moving toward me, so I panicked and fired at its head, missed, and hit its chest instead. Then it burst into flame and ran full pelt at me,  and began trying to tear my poor bounty hunter into barbecue strips. I just about killed it after much panicky running and reloading, took a breath, went to heal myself, and promptly got shot in the head by another player who had clearly been watching the whole thing play out from a distance. I admired the smarts of the bastard, but boy, did I feel stupid for getting sucked into that situation. The key thing though was that I was desperate to dive right back in, because Hunt Showdown’s emergent randomness makes for so many exciting one-off situations.

Oh and the reason that monster burst into flames? Well, you soon discover that there’s not just your garden variety zombies wandering about Louisiana. That particular enemy was an Immolator, which as you probably guessed, turns into fiery rage once provoked. Other unpleasant humanoids include bloated monstrosities that drip giant leech-like creatures as they walk, and water-dwelling hags that try to drag you to a swampy doom. They all have their own patterns and weaknesses, and again, as time goes by, you better understand how to tackle them, avoid them, and use them for your own gain. But they remain a threat long after you think you have a handle on things because the situations that get thrown up are so out of your control.

The creatures you are here to collect bounties on are something else though. These twisted nightmares include a spider with a human head and a pig-headed giant with a worryingly large blade in hand. They are faced in arena-like encounters, and each uses the environment to better stalk and slay you. They are essentially boss fights in the middle of a battle royale-esque survival game that dole out a reward you can only keep by escaping the map without being killed. It’s quite different from how the rest of a match feels, but still, it slots into the overall tone perfectly. As mentioned before, Hunt Showdown snaps together aspects of so many games, but makes them all gel into a seamless whole with impressive ease,

The only gripe I actually have is that the visuals suffer from a few minor technical hiccups, but honestly, given how bad some Crytek-made games have performed on console before, this is a largely smooth experience. I hope it retains a healthy audience though, because at present that’s the only real problem I can see going forward. Hunt Showdown is a worthy alternative to the usual multiplayer types out there, and it deserves to be seen as an important step in how the future of multiplayer shooters goes. 

Hunt Showdown review code provided by the publisher.

Hunt Showdown is out now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

The post [Review] ‘Hunt Showdown’ is an Atmospheric and Inventive Multiplayer Horror Shooter appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Different developers, unnecessary multiplayer, and the strange hook of letting you play as a Big Daddy, the previous game’s iconic set of minibosses, all tempered expectations from fans. Critics ended up treating the game rather favorably, but it failed to exceed the sales of the original. Now, 10 years after its release, it might be time for Bioshock 2 to finally get its due as the most satisfying game in the series.

One of the biggest disadvantages that Bioshock 2 has compared to the original is it doesn’t have that same wow factor. Bioshock has one of the all-time great openings, slowly showing you the beautiful, decaying city of Rapture, throwing you into the deep end and filling in details bit by bit. The first time you fight a Big Daddy is such a memorable combat encounter with one of the most iconic enemies in video games. Not to say that the second game doesn’t have great art design, but it just doesn’t have the same wonder seeing it the second time around. 

Another controversial choice that turned off some was casting the player as a Big Daddy, but this turns out to be one of the game’s strongest assets. I always have to think a bit to remember any details about Jack, the first game’s protagonist, but I always can quickly remember that Bioshock 2 casts you as a Big Daddy named Subject Delta who is trying to find your Little Sister. 

Since we already have been introduced to the world, the game instead tries to expand on that mythology and create a more personal story.  When Bioshock came out, it was heavily praised for its story, with emphasis on the big “Would you kindly” twist of the game and what it says about the nature of the medium. Bioshock 2 doesn’t try to work on a metatextual level in that regard, instead, reigning in the focus and telling a much more emotional tale. 

The way Bioshock 2 changes your relationship with the Little Sisters is also another significant thing to come out playing as a Big Daddy. In the first game, after defeating a Big Daddy you were given the option to either free the Little Sister from their horrific duty or harvest them, killing them to recover more of their precious ADAM. Many critics praised this choice, saying that it gave moral weight to an already philosophical game, but in retrospect, the choice wasn’t all that deep. Do you murder the innocent girl or not isn’t exactly the trolley problem, and there didn’t really end up being that much of a discrepancy between the two paths because you receive a bonus for saving all the sisters, evening out anything you would gain from harvesting. 

The sequel adds a wrinkle that not only complicates the moral choice, but also adds an incredibly thematic mode of play. After rescuing a Little Sister, you are given the option to harvest or adopt them. Adopting them gives you an almost tower defense-like experience where you try to protect the Little Sister while she goes about her duty of harvesting ADAM from nearby corpses. Afterward, you are again presented with the option to harvest or save the Little Sister and will be rewarded in a similar manner to the first game. It’s a smart way to use the already established lore (this is the role of the Big Daddy) to create a gameplay section that takes advantage of the trap-based arsenal that the player builds throughout the game. 

This option to allow the Little Sister to go about her duty also complicates the game morally, making the “good” decision of adopting then freeing the Little Sister actually more work gameplay-wise. If you truly want to add an ethical dilemma to the game, it shouldn’t be something that’s balanced and optimized to make sure both paths get even resources, but rather should have more work or less reward for doing the “right” thing, to truly test the player. 

This morality test carries over smartly to the multiple endings of the game as well. The first game featured this as well, but much of the impact of the finale of the game was overshadowed by the famous “Would you kindly?” twist that happens prior to the end. Since Bioshock 2 features more of an emotional core, the multiple endings have a stronger resonance. Not to spoil anything, but your choices end up directly influencing the behavior of the Little Sister you are rescuing, making important points about the nature of legacy and how we learn from the behavior of mentors and parents in our lives. 

On top of this improved emotional core to the story, there are also many quality of life improvements made to the combat in the game that make it feel tighter than the first one. Players can dual wield a plasmid power alongside a gun, giving you more tools to mix and match your attacks in interesting ways. The wide variety of plasmids, weapons and enhancement tonics you can mix allows you to create proper builds for your character with meaningfully different tactics in combat.

Do you focus on upgrading your melee skill and doing area of effect damage to be a close-range fighter? Do you upgrade your weapons to focus on traps and equip the more stealthy enhancements allowing you to fight from the shadows? This variety of choice empowers the player to play the game how they would like to, making for a compelling combat experience that refines what was strong about the original. 

Sometimes I think putting two in the title was one of the things that set up the expectations to be too high. Giving it a number makes people think that it’s going to be a substantial iteration on the core game, but what was given was more of substantial expansion. At one point, it was going to be called Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams, and maybe going with just that subtitle would have set up expectations better. Bioshock: Sea of Dreams communicates more clearly that it’s not going to be a radical shift enough to be a sequel, but rather another story set in the world players are familiar with, with some key quality of life improvements made to the gameplay.

Much like how Silent Hill 2 took what worked about the first one and added more polish and emotional depth in a familiar but no longer surprising setting, Bioshock 2 refined the first game and made something that, while not as much of a sea change (pun intended), is likely an overall better experience. 

The post 10 Years Ago Today, ‘Bioshock 2’ Returned to Rapture With Greater Depth appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The story that started towards the end of World War II, with a near-defeated Hitler turning the tables on the Allied forces by unleashing a zombie plague across Europe shouldn’t have much in the way of legs to make four whole games about it, especially as Hitler has been sent to Hell at this stage, but credit to Rebellion, it has found ways to delve deeper into the occult-themed invasion of the dead by tapping into the ‘80s horror vibe of films by Lamberto Bava and Lucio Fulci. Complete with all the splattery, grisly, synth-backed gore you might expect of such things.

As mentioned, Hitler is defeated, but the undead plague continues to grow in number and ferocity. As such a set of war-wizened Allied heroes must set out across Europe, fending off increasingly insane types of walking corpses as they uncover the mystery behind the ongoing infection of the continent.

Much as with previous entries, the objective of Zombie Army 4 is simple, and somewhat repetitive. In each location, you must complete tasks and defend important items as you progress towards a climactic siege against a seemingly unending horde of the undead. All the while you’re fighting off smaller pockets of Nazi zombies, often with a signature sniper rifle shot. This could have made fatigue an issue, given how many times that’s been done now, but Zombie Army 4 has a few new tricks and changes to refresh its tried and trusted formula.

This new story trip takes the player to haunts largely familiar to fans of the Sniper Elite series, albeit in a darker, moodier fashion. Starting in Italy, with trips to Sardinia and Venice among the locations, and jumping to Croatia and beyond. This time around each area is split into four sprawling war-torn playgrounds per chapter. There’s no denying there’s far more room for exploration and strategy in Zombie Army 4 thanks to much bigger, more detailed maps.

Each is full of alternate pathways, secret areas, and Easter Eggs. It’s almost always rewarding to stray off the beaten path, whether it be the acquiring of a handy gun add-on, some extra grenades, or the increasingly essential upgrade points. Best of all is picking out one of the many homages to horror movies and shows. It was fun to find nods to things such as Evil Dead, and Stranger Things, as well as the more nondescript presence of multiple evil dolls spanning the entire campaign. It’s nice to have a bit more to seek out than another ripe zombie melon to explode.

All the same, combat is the meat of Zombie Army 4, and this meat is tasty. Core to everything good about the Zombie Army series are those gratuitous X-ray kill cams from a well-placed sniper rifle round.

As with its Sniper Elite origins, Zombie Army makes a gory, grisly mini-party of popping heads, shattering bones, and vaporizing more delicate parts of the anatomy. For a horror fan, it’s an endlessly fascinating (and satisfying) spectacle. The slow start to a stage allowing you to casually pick off undead from a distance, the precise strike during the chaos of a horde descending on your position, and picking off those last stragglers in an intense standoff all make for exciting repeat experiences among the exploration and panic-inducing sieges.

The art of the siege is another strong suit of the game. It’s often clear when you’re going to be in for a big fight, and the game ensures you’re provided with some necessary materials to help ease your burden.

In addition to the myriad rifles, pistols, shotguns, and grenades are traps, both handheld and found in the levels themselves. For example, Venice has shark corpses rigged up to electrical currents, and when you hit a paddle with a bullet, it thrashes this way and that, tearing apart zombies as it does so. Elsewhere, propellers are turned into dicing death machines, bullhorns are used as lures for explosives, and portable trip mines can explode, incinerate, and electrify the Nazi horde.

Studying the environment and placing traps at key choke points are crucial to keeping the undead at bay long enough to avoid being overwhelmed, and despite the relative slowness of the majority of the undead, they can very, very easily overwhelm you with sheer numbers. Another of the key things that makes Zombie Army 4 tick is how quickly a serene situation can turn nasty, especially as progress is made through the campaign and more and more new zombie types are introduced.

Rebellion has gone all out in producing a wide range of undead. There’s plenty of the rank and file shambling Nazi fodder to obliterate, but other types are introduced at a decent pace. Some are revised versions of enemies from previous entries, while others are new to the series. You have the returning Nazi officers who can summon and resurrect the dead, suicide bombing zombies encased in straight jackets and screaming all the way to their second death, blind, but immensely vicious undead that locate via sound (looking and moving like a hybrid of The Last of Us’ Clickers and A Quiet Place’s foes.), and armor-clad giants that need to be relieved of their metal casing before taking them out more permanently.

There’s many more, and for the most part, they add something positive to the game, and often homage other famous movie monsters. One of these enemy types is an agile, scuttling, feral zombie that attacks in small groups. It first appears during a trip to an underground lab cloaked in darkness. They can run along the ceiling and pounce, which makes the already nervy journey through the murky dark that bit more stressful. These enemies work beautifully in situations like this, but later, when they pop up in more bright and open environments, they’re just an annoyance. It’s the biggest misuse of enemy types in the game, but there are certainly other occasions where it feels like you’re not well-equipped to deal with the myriad threats coming at you. 

Watch Zombie Army 4 in action.

That can be somewhat thrilling, as winging it against the odds makes for an organic experience, but on higher difficulty settings, in more extreme circumstances, it can feel unfair and needlessly frustrating. At least you can improve your character and come back to difficult situations better prepared.

Zombie Army 4 features a larger suite of player upgrades and customisation than before. There’s regular cosmetic changes, including emotes for co-op, but completing certain in-game checklists unlocks mods and upgrades for your characters and weapons that help in the fight against the undead masses.  For weapons, you can better your actions such as reload times, impact damage, and firing rates, while the characters can be made stronger against certain threats such as melee damage, explosives, and the like. The combat, while enjoyable, can get a tad draining with its rinse and repeat feel, but being able to throw in fresh things to the mix helps the replay value no end.

But if anything is going to keep you coming back, and indeed, enjoying Zombie Army 4 to the fullest, then it’ll be co-op play. Four players can join up for the campaign and horde modes to take on the zombie menace, and as you’d expect, it’s a great time. Laughing and joking over each other’s X-Ray kills frequently turns to frantically shouting out warnings and instructions as you attempt to secure your objective against an unearthly mass of inhumanity. As with most co-op experiences, any perceived flaws melt away in moments like these, and a successful co-op game is one that plays to that strength. In solo play, there’s still plenty of tension, anxiety, and giddy glee, but it’s just not as rich as it can be with a friend or three. 

Horde mode boils that down to its base level, giving you the high intensity parts of Zombie Army 4’s campaign consistently, increasing in stress and chaos as each wave ensues. It’s not original, it’s certainly not inventive, but it’s pure co-operative goodness. For many, that will be the reason to come back ahead of replaying the campaign.

One of the most pleasing things about Zombie Army 4 is this simplicity in an age of multiplayer games designed to last for years. Don’t get me wrong, you can get plenty of mileage out of Zombie Army 4’s co-op, and with more secrets, exploration, and progression than ever before, but it’s relatively short-term in a world of ‘Games as a Service’. That can be risky in this day and age, especially when you can’t guarantee a healthy playerbase for months on end (even with DLC layed out for the near future), but if last year’s World War Z taught us anything, you can easily find a willing audience for a simple, yet well-made, co-op horror shooter if you handle it right.

So Zombie Army 4 isn’t ripping up any trees in terms of originality, but it’s the ultimate version of the franchise’s best features. After all, what’s more satisfying than destroying Nazi zombies in stylish, violent fashion?

Zombie Army 4: Dead War review code for Xbox One provided by the publisher.

Zombie Army 4: Dead War is out Feb 4 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The post [Review] ‘Zombie Army 4: Dead War’ is the Ultimate Version of Rebellion’s Co-op Shooter Series appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Samurai Shodown first launched for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One worldwide in June 2019, followed by Google Stadia in November 2019. The Switch version launched in December 2019 in Japan, while a PC version is also being planned for the future.

The post ‘Samurai Shodown’ Arrives February 25 For Nintendo Switch appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But with overwhelming praise comes repetitiveness. There’s only so many different ways to spin the idea of The Last of Us being a truly one-of-a-kind game into an interesting topic for discussion through written media or videos. Sure, you’re bound to have the occasional counter-argument of the game actually being bad, but beyond that, the variety of content to pull from the topic can be quite limiting. Yeah, we know that The Last of Us is a critically acclaimed game adored by millions of people worldwide, but what else can you tell me about it?

It is precisely this type of phenomenon that, in turn, makes Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding such an interesting topic of discussion for gamers and online journalists. There is no one defining perspective of the notorious open-world post-apocalyptic action-drama, that finally dropped in November of 2019 after literally years of buildup. The game has not received the same type of praise that The Last of Us has received, but in no way is the game as critically panned as something like WWE 2K20.

Death Stranding stands firmly in the middle, perhaps unintentionally so, of those two games, being bombarded with a large number of reactions from many different areas of the spectrum. Kojima’s passion project has been dubbed a masterpiece, a grand disappointment, one of the worst games of 2019, a frustrating but worthwhile game, etc., from a wide variety of outlets and the fans themselves. People are truly divided on the game and this division, intentional or not, plays a role in the type of value I personally see in Kojima’s experimental drama.

Ever since its announcement at E3 2016, a year after Kojima’s infamous quarrel with Konami led to his departure from the company, Death Stranding was largely shrouded in mystery, with fans and journalists racking their brains on what he was going to do next. The official announcement trailer only added gas to the flames, showing a naked Norman Reedus holding a baby which quickly dissolves in his arms as 5 mysterious figures float over the ocean ahead looking on. 

Naturally, people were incredibly confused and that attitude impressively held for the entire duration of the game’s buildup towards release. Every new trailer would reveal only snippets of information and new characters, but no real explanation as to what Death Stranding was truly about. But in 2019, the details surrounding the game became a bit clearer as Kojima began to hint at one of the main themes of the long-awaited game: connection.

What he truly meant by that was still a total mystery, but there was now a big piece of the expectedly large and complicated puzzle that Kojima was presenting to us. Death Stranding would deal heavily with the idea of connection and the binds that tie society together as a functional whole. The official launch trailer in mid-2019 practically confirmed that, heavily insisting that the game was all about rebuilding a broken world.

How this theme is explored in Death Stranding is arguably the biggest contributor to the game’s divisive reputation. Upon launch, fans eager to try out Kojima’s game finally discovered that the method of rebuilding a society is a long and arduous process. The game, in true Kojima fashion, is loaded to the brim with long cutscenes that could easily pass as a mini-series on its own and the slow gameplay only made players feel the length more.

Death Stranding has you play Norman Reedus as Sam Porter Bridges, a porter (delivery man of sorts) that brings cargo and necessary equipment to various underground bunkers filled with people, all of whom are hiding from the surface world where a mysterious phenomenon titled the “Death Stranding” left the world in complete ruin, reducing the world to a pile of rocks and mountains. The few people that inhabit the surface world are hostile, often attacking anybody in their sight for their own selfish gains.

What doesn’t help the situation is the aftermath of the “Death Stranding”, which brings the world of the dead to the world of the living, interconnecting with each other with dire consequences. The undead souls, known as BTs, are the cause of various massive explosions that stem from consuming a living person without incineration. Worse yet, there are terrorists that intentionally cause these explosions (named Voidouts) for the sake of destruction. As Sam, you navigate through all these obstacles and a boatload of cutscenes to try and reconnect these societies torn apart by destruction and paranoia. 

The only way you can sense these BTs is through the use of a Bridge Baby (BB), a special baby encased in an artificial pod meant to simulate a womb (placed on Sam’s stomach no less). The BBs are able to sense the creatures, alerting them to your presence as a means to potentially avoid them, though even that can be quite tricky. BBs are generally seen as equipment, but with a living human being tied to your stomach, it’s hard to stay disconnected.

Are you still with me? Okay, then we can continue.

Obviously, there’s a lot of importance being emphasized in the story of Death Stranding. Kojima has stressed that the game is not so much about mindless shooting and violence, but about the power of connection and finding ways to cooperate to help solve each other’s problems, as well as provide a little bit of hope for anybody who may follow in our footsteps in the future. This is strengthened by the game’s insistence that you take different routes to avoid confrontation with hostiles, providing you with the necessary equipment to help you complete the many delivery missions you are assigned to without having to resort to brutal violence.

But why introduce all of these cool and terrifying concepts if we’re just going to be spending our time avoiding them? It seems rather contradictory that the game encourages us to stray away from the more action-heavy portions of the story while still providing us with enough equipment to make our way through the crazier levels. But once you combine Kojima’s admittedly heavy-handed story with the vast and sparsely populated setting, the game’s most terrifying implications come to light.

Spoilers for Death Stranding ahead. Proceed with caution.

Death Stranding, in many ways, attempts to tell the future (in its own fantastical way) of mankind and what will eventually become of us. The Death Stranding is ultimately Kojima’s take on the potential end of humanity, serving as an extinction event that is bound to happen, much in line with previous extinction events, i.e. the death of the dinosaurs. The Death Stranding is framed as a horrible, but necessary cycle to go through.

That is what Amelie, Sam’s “sister” who is ultimately revealed to be an Extinction Entity tasked with bringing about the next extinction event, explains to Sam as the end of the world approaches. According to Amelie, the next extinction cannot be prevented, but as Sam demonstrates, it can be held off through the combined efforts of humanity to restore and respect the world they live in. Even if extinction is inevitable, Sam finds a new purpose in rebuilding the world and the connections to different people, which is viewed as an alternative to complete world annihilation. By the end, the timefall has stopped and it seems as though there is hope for a better world despite its inevitable demise in the future.

Viewing the story as such not only brings a genuine sense of hope for the future, but it allows us to get a small glimpse into what we could become as well. Obviously, there’s little chance for us to encounter something such as BTs, but our own desire for isolation and sovereignty is something encountered all over the world. Countries isolating themselves from the rest of the world to follow their own set rules, pushing out foreigners and potential immigrants, and obviously the wall issue in the United States all point to an inane desire for independence, which can easily spiral out of control.

Kojima himself has mentioned that his game very much makes a point regarding these kinds of politics and his story is not exactly subtle with those points either, but what I feel has been missing from the discussion surrounding the game is how the gameplay and setting directly tie into what he’s trying to say. I’ve seen reviews – positive and negative – that seem to have missed the boat regarding the slow gameplay, with many reviewers simply commenting on how slow and boring it is for them.

In truth, Death Stranding earns a spot in the horror section of video games because of the slow and trudging gameplay that aims to antagonize the player at every turn. It’s harsh, unrelenting, and downright evil in some portions, especially when your delivery destination is a little farther than normal and you run out of necessary supplies by the middle part of your journey. All of the ladders, blood bags, and ammo are gone and suddenly there’s a slew of BTs ready to devour anything in their line of sight.

These portions of the game are certainly frustrating and can lead to moments where the journey may not even be worth it in the end. Sam himself sometimes utters these exact thoughts out loud as he’s climbing yet another mountain with heavy rainfall damaging his supplies or trying his best to keep his balance and not fall in a river. Kojima WANTS the players to feel frustrated, scared, and fed up with having to go through such a journey with minimal supplies to help them along the way. Though through this admittedly infuriating gameplay decision, it becomes clear that the scariest part of Death Stranding is the idea that nobody will be there to help you at your worst.

The Social Strand aspect of the game is designed to help you benefit from additional resources from real players across the globe, with ziplines, charging stations, timefall shelters, and even full-on roads to make your journey significantly easier compared to before. When a certain area is connected to the in-game “Chiral Network”, you are connected to an endless array of people, providing a sense of presence and comfort that you couldn’t afford when were alone.

It’s such a cathartic experience that makes traveling into unknown and disconnected areas that much more terrifying. The other players are not there to help you and the in-game characters mainly just speak to you through a transmitter, disconnecting you from the sparse traces of humanity left in the game world. When Sam is disconnected from the network, the journey truly begins to feel helpless and without that extra help, the experience evokes a sense of loneliness and despair. 

For the majority of Death Stranding, the player is truly alone in the world (with the exception of their BB), playing a character like Sam who has completely given up on the idea of reforming the nation. Sam prefers to live his life day-by-day, too tortured from his own past to motivate himself into serving a bigger cause. But the gameplay directly contradicts this belief, demonstrating the true horrific extent of simply “surviving.” How long before the world becomes too much for Sam? 

That same thought process extends to us as players. Sure, it’s an open-world game where you could travel wherever you want, but how is simply “existing” in the world satisfying in any way? Here, existing simply means avoiding death, but there’s nobody around to truly hang onto at that point. Even the BB can’t completely fill that need for human connection. Without a connection to somebody or some group of people, there’s no room to truly impact the world in a potentially positive manner. So simply being left to our own devices ultimately becomes our own undoing, leaving us completely alone to take on the burden of a world that is quickly falling apart at the seams.

Death Stranding plays up that level of existential horror with gameplay mechanics that are simultaneously experimental and frustrating. It’s maddening to lose all of your cargo when you can’t quite scale a mountain correctly, but with the Chiral Network, a zipline can save you the pain and suffering of having to go around a mountain or climbing through a tricky part of it. With a connection to other players, the threat of BTs, while everlasting, can be completely avoided with shortcuts, ziplines, and additional resources to help you fend them off without a huge struggle.

The way we use the internet in real life is a bit of a double-edged sword, with there being countless ways to use it for the purpose of harming others. Humans are complex in that regard, but a system that allows us to connect to practically anyone in the world is a window of endless opportunities to learn, help others, and broaden your own perspective and Hideo Kojima is using it to his advantage for Death Stranding, creating a game that is horrifying for its insane creature designs and painfully lonely experience, yet rewarding for the player’s efforts to strengthen connections and provide help for other players around the world.

Death Stranding may not be classified as a typical horror game, but its incredibly detailed world shredded by destruction and human wars introduce a kind of horror that slowly creeps up on the player. The horror of the game does not rely on cheap ways to scare the players for a short thrill. Instead, the looming dread of mass extinction and humanity’s fractured relationships with one another slowly burn themselves into the mind, letting the players meditate on how truly alone they are without connection.

To further illustrate this point, there’s a section of the game where you have to leave your BB behind to get repaired, leaving you completely alone to face the terrors of the outside world. Without that extra help, you are essentially blind and incredibly vulnerable for BTs to spot and try to kill you. The BBs help doesn’t guarantee complete avoidance of the BTs, but playing without one makes you truly helpless, with absolutely nobody to help you. With no connection, there’s little hope for you to come out unscathed. 

Yet, Death Stranding remains hopeful for the future. The story lets us see the true potential of something like the internet and what we can do with it, encouraging us to open up to others and help out with whatever we feel like we can do. Even if you’re somebody that’s prone to cutting yourself off from others, the game demonstrates that there will always be others out there to help you out with something, even if done in an indirect way.

I’m sure many of the player-made structures in Death Stranding aren’t done so with only one or two people in mind. Most of the time I built structures, it was to help myself out with various situations, but seeing that others used my structures and appreciated the help feels truly validating. People in the world were able to make their experiences easier through a portion of my help and I was able to use others’ structures for my own personal paths. The horror that we could’ve experienced in one section was now completely in our rear-view mirrors, prepping us for a potentially safer delivery. The world felt a little more alive in those instances.

Death Stranding will undoubtedly still spark intense debates over its quality or lack thereof, but the way I see it, Kojima and his studio managed to craft one of the most interesting horror-drama hybrids in quite some time. It won’t get the same reception as something like The Last of Us, but its own exploration of the devastating horror of our own disconnection from ourselves is something I believe will stick with players for a long time, even the ones that hated the game.

It’s quite ironic that a game about connection has left the gaming community divided, but much like the game’s horror, Death Stranding feels like something that will hit harder with patience and time. Perhaps another playthrough in the future will inspire new attitudes towards the game. Hell, maybe I’ll just end up hating the game the more I let it simmer. But at the end of the day, for better or for worse, Death Stranding is not a game meant to be enjoyed and maybe that’s for the best, even if that time isn’t now.

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Ancestors is a third-person survival game that takes place in prehistoric Africa where players take control of an ape lineage. The game’s focus is for players to evolve their species while discovering the intriguing world that surrounds them. The game expresses how the evolutionary journey is unique to everyone, encouraging players to proceed at their own pace. 

Focus on the particular ape a player controls will shift throughout their gameplay; while the player starts out playing as one ape, if and when that ape dies, the player will assume control of another ape in their clan. This process repeats until there are no apes left in the clan, the game at that point ends. 

Before entering the world of Ancestors, there is a note from the developer that states how they don’t intend on holding the player’s hand. Now to be fair, there are options that allow for tutorials to pop up, as well as the option to have a full HUD with details present. The game begins with an ape carrying a child; the pair are attacked and the child runs off to hide. The first task players are given is to find this child.

Assuming that the tutorials are turned on, the game will begin to share the various sensing abilities available to the apes. Using such abilities as “intelligence,” “smelling,” and “hearing,” the player can scope their environment for threats and points of interest. Different items and locations throughout Ancestors will be marked with an icon; once the player has inspected an item or location, it will be logged in their memory, allowing for easy recognition when analyzing the environment moving forward.

When I began looking for the child I used the hearing mechanic to scan the environment. When I called out, I heard the child call back, but could not confirm its location. Ancestors does not include any sort of mini-map; there is this odd circle indicator that displays the distance between the ape the player assumes control of and the rest of their clan. After running and jumping in all directions for some time, I eventually found the icon associated with the child. Upon locating the child, I was prompted to find our settlement. I didn’t have any immediate means of confirming where exactly our settlement was – that is until I was able to find the right icon associated with it. 

Ancestors continues in this prompt to prompt format, providing goals as one progresses in their journey. Between each of these prompts, players can explore the world and build upon the knowledge and skill set of their species.

Part of learning the mechanics to Ancestors depends on the player’s own sense of discovery. The game may state that a certain button activates an engagement, but it doesn’t explain how to fulfill the entire interaction. Coming across certain resolutions are easier compared to others depending on the type of interaction. For example, an ape can groom other apes to create a bond; a specific button will initiate said grooming, but the game doesn’t explicitly share how the button has to be pressed at a correct moment (indicated by a sound cue). Another example is the objective to give birth; there is a button to allow for mating, but afterward, there is no indication of what to do next. 

For the most part, the player has to discover how to properly use the mechanics on their own. Ancestors does offer a “Help” section in the menu to explain mechanics, but there is no further explanation on how to fully utilize a given function. Depending on the individual’s ability to pick up on details, some hints may not be totally apparent, making for more time spent trying to learn something rather than enjoying the fascinating landscape. 

Yet, in a way, learning the mechanics in this manner simulates the idea of self-discovery as a primitive species. And to be fair, if the player is willing to experiment and take their time with the mechanics, they will develop a stronger understanding of how those mechanics work moving forward. With an effort to look deeper into things, eventually, the stress factor will dissipate. 

The visuals of prehistoric Africa are stunning. The environment’s sprawling design can be a little overwhelming to venture through at first, but it can become easier to mentally map out each locale over time. As the player moves forward, more locations will open up to them. When discovering a new part of Ancestors, it’s important to note that apes may experience a fear factor of sorts; since this is brand new territory, the apes may react out of anxiety, sending them into a panic that takes minimal control away from the player. If in a panic for too long, a given ape will enter hysteria and run off, causing control to shift to a new ape. 

Ancestors’ world is full of cool and threatening creatures; from prehistoric crocodiles and pythons, to boars and tigers, there are many predators to keep an eye out for. Other than evading attacks, apes can also fight back against predators. 

As an ape, the player has the ability to climb up pretty much every tree and rock present. Though jumping to and from trees can be fun, climbing itself can be a hassle at times; when attempting to climb down a tree and approach a certain branch, I found it difficult to navigate based on my analog stick movements. The camera can also be a pain when striving to get a clear visual of direction while climbing. 

Whether tackling objectives or simply exploring the world, players will be able to advance their species. Broadening the knowledge of one’s clan comes in the form of inspecting the world; checking out different plants for examples and learning their properties becomes valuable information for future generations of apes. Observing and interacting with various animals in the world will also impact survival traits throughout the clan.

These actions eventually lead to opportunities where players can further progress their species’ neurological growth. Aspects such as motor functions and sensing abilities are some of the properties that can be upgraded. Upon reaching a certain point of development, the player can advance a generation, allowing them to see where their progress has taken their species. There are a couple of skill tree visuals to help players keep track of their overall evolution, as well as other stats regarding their ape lineage.

Along with their abilities, there are multiple statuses to keep in mind for the apes; everything from health, stamina, to dopamine levels, are significant to day to day survival. When it comes to mentioning these statuses, the game will say what one can do to alleviate any ailments associated with each status. But the game never explicitly says what to look for (it may just mention to find a plant with healing properties). At one point I found myself poisoned and was told to eat food to alleviate the affliction; unaware of what to actually look for, I ended up spending a great deal of time dragging my ape around and unable to help it (until the poison eventually left its body). 

By no means do I think Ancestors should baby the player. In all fairness, I think the self-discovery aspect to Ancestors is an interesting element that not only allows for a cool payoff, but also embraces the notion of a species learning about the life around them. I do feel though that the game could have amped up some mechanic explanations and maybe provided stronger hints regarding in-game actions. For example, mentioning what plants to look out for when an ape is hurt or poisoned would have been a tremendous help for those who are overwhelmed by Ancestors’ many elements. 

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey’s world and approach to evolution makes for an interesting and fun spin on exploration. It’s cool to see the amount of depth that has gone into this game to simulate the discovery of ancient times. For some players, however, the learning curve behind mechanics may be a bit much and take them out of the immersive gameplay. For anyone interested in the game, it’s essential to be patient, for there may be quite a bit of trial and error to endure at first. For those willing to press on, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey offers intellectually intriguing gameplay.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey review code provided by the publisher.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC via the Epic Games Store..

The post [Review] For Those Willing to Brave its Learning Curve, ‘Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey’ Makes For an Interesting Experience appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It has been a long and bumpy road for the Diaz brothers. Each episode of Life Is Strange 2 has provided further depth for players to connect with Sean and Daniel, offering adrenaline, tension, and intimacy. With Life Is Strange 2’s last entry, Episode 5: Wolves, the brothers reach the end of their journey. 

Picking up several weeks after the events of Episode 4: Faith, Sean and Daniel find themselves in the canyons of Arizona. Considering the game’s previous locales, this setting is by far the most stunning. The player eventually discovers that the brothers have been staying with their mother (who lives on a nearby desert commune). Similar to the cozy atmosphere found in Episode 3: Wastelands, Sean and Daniel find themselves among lovely company. 

There are several NPCs that make for delightful engagements. From the artistic Joan to the lovely Stanley and his partner Arthur, to that of a very interesting cameo from a past Life Is Strange title, the commune is a welcoming setting. Wolves also extends upon the boy’s relationship with their mother; whereas Faith provided backstory in regards to their mother, Wolves allows the player to see the boys spend time with her – to see them all as a family. 

The episode also includes some intriguing in-game interactions. The aforementioned Joan offers Sean and Daniel the chance to help her with a sculpture, the process adding a fresh spin on the game’s “aim and point” mechanics. Later on, after a specific conversation the brothers have with their mom, Sean has the chance to write her a letter; depending on how the player feels about said conversation, and if they decide to partake in the action, they can choose how Sean writes to her. It’s a small touch, yet the episode’s delivery of heartfelt emotion is so genuine, it almost compels you to take part in writing the letter. 

Eventually, the brothers make their way to the border, aiming to cross into Mexico. Without getting into spoilers, the rest of the episode turns into a whirlwind of adrenaline and emotions, guiding the player towards several intriguing endings. Each of these endings is unique, allowing the player to explore various narrative directions.

Speaking to the game’s story in general, Wolves keeps the player engaged from beginning to end. There is a great balance between serene and intense moments; Wolves is easily one of Life Is Strange 2’s most emotionally demanding episodes. As the game’s conclusion, one gets to experience the brothers at their closest; given all the hell they’ve gone through, their love and support for one another has stood up against every challenge. There is a great sense of love felt between the brothers throughout Wolves, making for a beautiful sendoff that’ll satisfy players.

Wolves not only proves to be a solid ending for the Diaz brothers, but it is also one of Life Is Strange 2’s best entries.

Episode Score:

With all five episodes of Life Is Strange 2 now out, how does the game stand as a whole? Mechanically the game does nothing new that past Life Is Strange titles haven’t done before; however, it is the relationship between Sean and Daniel that truly sells the experience of Life Is Strange 2. 

While not every episode lands well, the majority of them bring interesting depth to Sean and Daniel; as we see the brothers face off against various struggles, their personalities develop overtime. By placing the player in the shoes of Sean, they are able to experience the care and love he has for Daniel, and vice versa. Their travels weigh heavy on them, and as the player invests more time into their journey, they too experience the emotional stress the brothers endure. The writing that has gone into Sean and Daniel makes them feel authentic – they come across as people one could meet in the real world. That genuine aspect is essential in delivering the game’s emotional storytelling, further connecting the player to the brothers. 

It’s also worth mentioning the game’s exploration of racism in America. The game keeps the player engaged during the chilling moments where Sean is confronted by racist individuals; these moments are not only heartbreaking to witness, but they also serve to reflect a true horror in America. As a game that provides entertainment, while also including this significant reflection of our times, Life Is Strange 2 makes for a powerful work of art.

Having completed all five episodes, I would say there is an added benefit to playing all five close together; being able to experience the story as a whole, and having the emotional context of a previous episode closer to mind while progressing, allows for a more intimate experience. 

Whereas previous Life Is Strange games included great amounts of emotional storytelling, Life Is Strange 2 may be the series’ most brutal and heartwarming tale yet.

Life is Strange 2 Overall:

Life is Strange 2 review copy provided by the writer.

Life is Strange 2 is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The post [Review] With Episode 5: Wolves, ‘Life Is Strange 2’ Concludes Its Thrilling and Heartfelt Story appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

If you’re the type of person who likes to inhabit the role of a sneaky deadeye, or if you generally fancy yourself to be an ace marksman, then this should theoretically be right up your street. Because Contracts strips away pretty much everything else associated with the FPS genre, in favour of deepening your go-to playstyle. This tighter focus means that there’s room for more nuanced sniping, with the player having to figure out how a bullet’s trajectory will be impacted by various factors, including: the calibration of their scope; the elevation of their prey; the speed of the wind; and the calibre of their ammunition. 

Less about twitch reflexes or arcadey action, this grounded approach should generate compelling scenarios that rely on proper tactics. You know, the kind wherein even the slightest miscalculation could mean the difference between victory and failure. Indeed, if it all worked as intended, CI Games’ latest would be an absolutely riveting experience, along the same lines as Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. 

Just like Hideo Kojima’s 2015 masterpiece, Contracts prioritises emergent gameplay and an open-ended structure by dropping you into a series of non-linear maps. Each of these has a number of objectives for you to complete however you see fit, although the de facto assumption is that you will be using a sniper rifle at some point. Once you’ve selected your first target, it’s completely up to you to select a vantage point, do some reconnaissance, strategically plot out your movements and then orchestrate a perfect shot, all before slipping away to the extraction zone undetected. Or you could just run in guns blazing if that’s more your style. It’s entirely your choice. 

Taking out a bounty with surgical precision, knowing that it was your plan that got the job done and not a pre-ordained sequence of events, has the potential to be a uniquely rewarding gameplay loop. That’s what the game seems to be going for at least and – when the stars align – it occasionally succeeds, making you feel like a finely-tuned instrument of death. It even has this snazzy ‘’bullet-cam’’ effect that it reserves for particularly impressive shots and when this happens it’s hard to deny the pure endorphin rush you get. I mean, who doesn’t like a bit of ego-stroking now and again?

Yet the fantasy scenario described above is largely just that: a fantasy. For when all is said and done, the reality of playing Contracts is nowhere near as thrilling as it ought to be. On the contrary, it’s a pitiful mess comprised of baffling design choices, unresponsive controls, a dreadful U.I and some of the most persistent glitches that I’ve ever encountered in a video game. In fact, excluding a few cheap thrills, I would say that I hated virtually every minute of this excruciating chore, with it draining the last residues of my willpower just to reach the halfway mark. 

It doesn’t even take long for the cracks to manifest, as almost every single mechanic will fail on you at some point and it’s only a matter of time before you encounter a game-breaking bug that forces you to abandon your hard-earned progress. Speaking of which, if you’re unfortunate enough to buy this defective shambles, let me prepare you for the recurring frustrations that you’ll have to contend with. And oh boy are they numerous. 

Each play session begins with a catatonic loading screen, as your handler drones on about the sex-trafficking, human-rights-violating, cocaine-smuggling warlord of the week. I’m not sure why it bothers with these superficial intros, because they don’t really offer much in the way of context and the villains are all portrayed as interchangeable, eastern-European stereotypes anyway. Not one of them is given an ounce of characterization elsewhere, as they’re just cookie-cutter NPCs that are no different from regular grunts. Half of them aren’t even afforded unique lines of dialogue! It’s not like Dishonored either, wherein a briefing might clue you in to a target’s routine or highlight specific vulnerabilities to exploit. Nope, that would be too useful. 

Why it takes longer to load one of these modest levels than it does the entirety of Red Dead Redemption 2 is a mystery unto itself, because the end result is always a poorly-rendered district of Siberia. Anyway, once that’s over and done with, you’ll be dropped into the mission area with a minimum of five ‘’contracts’’ to complete. These invariably take the form of either sabotage opportunities, assassination bounties, or mind-numbing scavenger hunts and you will need to fulfil a certain quota of them in order to progress. There will also be an assortment of optional challenges, should you wish to earn a little extra in-game currency or upgrade points – though God knows why you’d you want to prolong this drudgery.

After you’ve selected your first objective, the next thing you’ll want to do is open the map and get your bearings. Alas, this can be more trouble than it’s worth, as you’ll be confronted with a migraine-inducing screen that is littered with near-indistinguishable markers. Exfil locations, fast travel points, hiding places and even fuse boxes all register as cyan blobs, so you’re unlikely to get much use out of this navigation tool. In fact, the only thing it’s really good for is setting waypoints in the general vicinity of each objective, but even that function can be hit and miss. Sometimes it will just refuse to let you move the cursor at all, whilst on other occasions you might set a destination only for it to disappear once you close the menu.

Nevertheless, let’s assume that you have managed to put down a waypoint. In order to actually see it, you’ll need to activate your ‘’seeker mask’ (which is essentially Contracts’ equivalent of Witcher senses or detective vision). Now that might not sound like a major issue and it probably wouldn’t be, were it not for the fact that these optics are so garish that they impair your vision more than they enhance it. Indeed, with the filter turned on, everything is smeared in a hideous orange tint and the screen is cluttered up with distracting geometric lines that have no purpose other than to annoy. 

Not only that, but the HUD tries to draw attention to every conceivable object in your periphery, through an overabundance of noisy symbols. It’s pure sensory overload, to the point where nothing is specifically being highlighted because everything is. Certain ‘’points of interest’’ also get their own distance measurements (which are helpfully displayed in white text, even though half the game takes place in wintery snowscapes) to confuse things further. In short, there’s simply too visual information here for you to process, yet keeping the visor on is an absolute necessity if you want to follow those waypoints.

On that note, let’s assume that you’re now making tracks in the direction of the chosen contract. Dotted along your route will be patrolling soldiers, whom you’re free to deal with at your discretion. This could mean sniping them from a long distance, deploying an explosive trap, or moving in for a discrete knife kill.

The latter approach comes with its own set of issues, as the stealth system here is obscenely janky. For a start, everyone’s cone of vision is limited to just a tiny sliver, meaning that you can waltz right past most enemies and they will be none the wiser. Meanwhile, if you do need to go prone, then your character has a vexing tendency to get caught on anything that remotely sticks out in the environment, with so much as a slight incline causing you to become irreversibly trapped. 

He’ll get stuck between trees, behind small rocks, on household stairs and sometimes he’ll seemingly be paralysed without any provocation whatsoever. That last one happened to me on several occasions, even when I was walking on perfectly flat land, so I know it wasn’t my fault. Worse still, to get out of these glitches you’ll have no choice but to jump up and down repeatedly, naturally giving away your position and ruining any tactical espionage action that you may otherwise have been enjoying.

Presuming you don’t get caught on a rogue twig, you’ve still got other unintended obstacles to worry about, like how crawling through grass completely obfuscates your vision. Granted, it wouldn’t make much sense for you to be able to see perfectly in this situation and I understand that the developers can’t make you overpowered whilst in cover. But equally, you shouldn’t have your entire FOV taken up by an ugly, blocky texture that induces motion sickness every time you budge an inch. I mean, one mid-game level takes place in a large field and after 5 minutes of wading through the low-res foliage, I felt an urge to lie down. 

There are just better ways of doing this kind of thing, for example, in MGS: Snake Eater (a title that cracked this over 15 years ago!) they make the greenery slightly translucent so that you can still make sense of your surroundings. Or if that’s too immersion-breaking for you, then why not just have the leaves brush aside when you move past them? It’s not rocket science!

If you’re able to stomach the abject nausea that accompanies moving through grass, then you’ll eventually be in a position to strike one of the guards. You’ll creep up behind him and prepare to click in the thumbstick for a stealth attack, only to find that the usual contextual prompt isn’t appearing. You give it a go regardless, thinking that perhaps the reason for this is that the training wheels have been taken off and that you’re no longer going to receive any visual cues to help you out. Yet when you do hit the button, nothing happens. You just stand there helplessly, as if you’re trained killer has been overcome with stage fright. 

This is not an isolated occurrence by the way. The button inputs in Sniper have a very non-committal relationship with their corresponding actions. It’s less that you’re issuing commands to your avatar and more that you’re offering vague suggestions for him to potentially consider. For instance, sometimes you’ll press ‘’X’’ and he will clamber onto a ledge, whereas other times he’ll just shrug his shoulders like a disaffected teenager who hates their job. Suffice it to say, it’s very irritating.

Now seeing as you failed to carry out that aforementioned stealth kill, your whereabouts have obviously been compromised and the whole area has been placed on high alert. Which means it’s time to abandon the flimsy pretense of being a covert operative and switch to your secondary weapon – either an assault rifle or a shotgun – to see how the game holds up as a traditional FPS. And in case you can’t detect a pattern emerging, it handles this side of things just as badly as it does everything else. 

Again, it’s all so last-gen with soldiers having no self-preservation instincts – often comically lining up to be dispatched – and the firearms feeling weak sauce thanks to the lackluster audio-visual feedback. Not to mention the fact that toggling between gadgets is a royal pain in the ass that’s barely worth the hassle, especially when you consider how ineffective most of them are (the grenades seem to have a blast radius of about 2 feet). 

Having said that, whilst open combat is incredibly outdated, it’s also a lot more efficient than going through the rigmarole of wobbly stealth. As such, you’re probably best-off rolling with it, so that you can get the job done quickly and press on with your journey. Incidentally, you’re likely nearing your destination now, but before you get there, you’re going to hit an obstruction in the form a towering rock formation. Luckily there is a way over this via some conveniently placed railings, which means it’s time for arguably the worst aspect of this whole ordeal: the first-person platforming!

These mechanics can be rough at the best of times, but words cannot express just how poorly they have been implemented here. Your depth-perception is completely warped (so you can’t adequately judge gaps), your jump distance is inconsistent to say the least, and the controls are totally unreliable. Plus, whenever you shimmy along a ledge the erratic camera-bob seems to imply that your head has been placed on some kind of gimbal, acting independently of the rest of your body. 

So yeah, Uncharted this ain’t and there’s inevitably a load of bugs further complicating matters, as you clip through ceilings, teleport into new positions and get caught in looping fall animations. The wall jump proves to be a fickle mistress as well, operating on different rules from a moment-to-moment basis. The tutorial vaguely stipulates that you’ll need to aim for an overhang in order to grab onto it, but what that means is anyone’s guess. There’s no reticule to line up with, so are we meant to just eyeball it, or is the center of the screen where we need to look? Or maybe it’s where your hand is gesturing? I really want to know, as none of these options appear to yield positive results and I consistently end up falling short of my target. 

Not that it matters, because even if you successfully make the jump, there’s no guarantee that your character will actually grip onto anything. He’s just as liable to faceplant the wall and slide to his untimely demise. Actually, it can be quite difficult to grab ahold of ledges in general, no matter how many times you hammer that X button. This is especially grating when you’re trying to claw your way out of sub-zero water to avoid freezing to death. In fact, on reflection, I think that’s the thing that killed me the most in this game: not rival snipers, sentry guns, or landmines, but my own protagonist’s stubborn refusal to pull himself out of icy lakes. 

Still, if you manage to overcome all of the above then you’ll soon make it to the top of the cliff, prompting your handler to announce that you’re on the outskirts of an enemy base. However, his dialogue is rudely interrupted by two nearby NPCs, who are engaged in a spot of ribaldry about how they’ve had carnal knowledge of one another’s spouses. Given that this is a recycled exchange that you’ve heard from about 10 other guards already (I guess they don’t have much else to talk about) you decide to eliminate them in order to focus on what’s being said over your radio. 

Yet doing so triggers your handler to start prattling on about how you can dispose of bodies in nearby containers and suddenly he’s talking over himself! As if that’s not bad enough, those guards you killed are miraculously continuing their witty banter from beyond the grave, so their audio is now overlapping with your schizophrenic partner’s to form a cacophonous din. You won’t be able to make heads or tails of any of this and you’ll just have to hope you don’t miss anything important in the shuffle. 

But let’s put those sound issues on the backburner for now. After all, you’ve finally made it to your sniper’s nest, where you’re overlooking a high-security compound that is positively teeming with infantrymen, enemy vehicles and CCTV cameras. Before you start picking off targets, you’ll want to do a bit of recon to ensure that sure you’ve considered all avenues. There are several ways of doing this, from finding an isolated guard and coercing him to giving up the whereabouts of his buddies, to flying a drone in for a closer look. Alternatively, you might want to stay rooted where you are and use your binoculars to manually tag individual threats. 

After scouting the area, it’ll be time to go prone, produce your sniper rifle and finally experience the game’s USP. And to be fair, this is the only part of Contracts that approaches any semblance of quality and when you get into the swing of things it’s admittedly quite gratifying. Popping off consecutive headshots from half a kilometer away, getting bullets to pierce through several guys at once, nailing an officer as they dash past a window – it all makes you feel pretty cool, even if you get the suspicion that the game is nudging some of your bullets in the right direction. As aforementioned, it’s reasonably well fleshed out too, with options for calibrating your scope to different elevations, multiple ammo variants and the ability to use a bipod for stabilization. 

Everything is going well for once, until you notice that someone is firing a mortar at you from behind a sandbag fort. You can’t quite get a bead on them from your current position and so decide to edge forward slightly for a better angle. Only instead of crawling, your character inexplicably rises to his feet and leaps off the cliff, like he’s committing ättestupa. Out-fucking-standing! All that progress gone, in a heartbeat, because apparently the sprint command works on an unintuitive toggle system here.

If you’re anything like me, this will be the point where you snap, decide that ’enough is enough’’ and uninstall the game for good. And take it from me, scrubbing this time-wasting garbage from your library will be the most satisfaction that it ever gives you. I know I might sound a tad bitter about this, but I gave Contacts plenty of chances to win me over and it just kept punishing me for it. 

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts is out now PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The post [Review] ‘Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts’ is a Tragic Misfire appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

As ever, there’s plenty of deals for gaming devices and software, and thankfully, we don’t need to throw it all on here as we’re only interested in what the best gaming deals for horror fans are. The best part is, you don’t even have to go to the store or wait for the post to enjoy some of these deals.

Consoles

Console bundles are usually a good bet for a Black Friday bargain, and there’s plenty about this year. Of interest include Walmart’s deals on a 1TB Xbox One X with the rather good Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order for just $349, saving $150 on the original price. If you’re after a less powerful Xbox then the Xbox One S is bundled with all five mainline Gears of War games for just $199 there (also available in an Xbox One X bundle for $349). There are other games bundled with that console too (and for $50 less you can get the All Digital version with Sea of Thieves, Minecraft, and Fortnite), but this is a pretty good price to have all the Gears you could eat.

The Nintendo Switch is retailing at around $299.99 at Walmart, Target, Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop, with a free digital copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, though there’s plenty of horror to be found in the eShop sales on Nintendo’s hybrid system too once you’ve purchased it.

The PS4 is owned by more than 100 million people now, and PS5 is on the horizon, but that probably won’t stop it selling well again this Black Friday. The PS4 Pro has a $100 price drop to $300 on most retail sites, a PS4 Slim bundle is available for $199 with Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and The Last of Us Remastered too, and if you hadn’t ventured into Virtual Reality yet, the PSVR bundle is selling at $199 as well with 5 games including Skyrim VR and Resident Evil 7.

Maybe you’d like something a bit more nostalgic, like a Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet for $229.99 (was $299.99)? Nothing says love like reliving the arcade euphoria of ripping out someone’s heart.

Accessories

If you’re looking for an extra controller, then there’s something out there for you. Xbox One controllers are reduced ($39 at Walmart), as are PS4 DualShock4s ($38.99 at Walmart with Fortnite DLC).

Need some JoyCons for your Nintendo Switch? There’s 25% off at Target, Best Buy and Amazon.

PC gamers can get their hands on discounted mice and keyboards from Best Buy, Newegg and the like. For gaming mice, the Logitech G502 Hero is down to just $35 at most outlets, whereas keyboards include the meaty Razer Turret at $50 off (now $200).

Headsets are also on sale, including the ROCCAT NoZ half price ($34.99) at Best Buy, and the Razer Kraken Tournament Edition down from $99.99 to $54.99 on Amazon. The PS4 Gold headset is reduced to $69 for the holidays.

Games

The digital game stores for the major consoles and PC already have a host of juicy deals up, and most brick and mortar stores and their sites are in on the act for physical copies. There’s far too many to list in one place but we’ve got links to some of the more relevant bargains out there below.

PlayStation Store Black Friday Sale (includes discounts on Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5, Metro Exodus, and more)

Xbox Sale (includes discounts on Gears 5, Borderlands 3, The Outer Worlds, and more

Nintendo eShop Black Friday Sale.

Steam Sale (includes deals on Dead Cells, Rage 2, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and many more)

Select Nintendo Switch titles are up to 33% off at Amazon, Best Buy, Gamestop, and Walmart.

Target Red Card holders can access savings now, including Hitman 2 for $15 and The Outer Worlds for $44.

Humble Bundle Store PC Fall Sale (includes discounts on Plants vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville, Code Vein, and Pathologic 2).

Particular horror game deals on several of the aforementioned sites include Days Gone for $20, Gears 5 for $30, MediEvil Remastered for $19.99, Bloodborne for $9.99, and Until Dawn for $9.99.

The post [Black Friday 2019] The Best Gaming Deals for Horror Fans appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The surprise announcement of a first-person Terminator game set in the Skynet-controlled future was well…surprising, even with a new film arriving, but all the same, it was sort of welcome, after all, it’s been a while since we got a half-decent Terminator game.

Fittingly, the last game release was, in fact, a tie-in for Terminator Salvation, a game that was somehow clunkier in plot delivery than the film it was peeled off the back of, and twice as nasty. It was clearly made on the cheap, but it still could have had at least a bit of passion towards the franchise.

Terminator Resistance does at least try to capture something about the world it’s inspired by. There’s definitely an atmosphere in close proximity to that of the scuzzy 80s vision of a Skynet apocalypse. Everything is murky and war-torn, with the only illumination coming from the raging fires and the searchlights of patrolling Skynet war machines.

We begin by seeing our pal (who we’ve personally known for all of six seconds) decimated by a T-800, and it looks like we’re next on the list. Luckily for us, a stranger distracts the gleaming death hulk long enough to allow for an escape which will now serve as a dreary excuse for a tutorial.

Tutorials are a necessity, even if it’s a game like this where you could have guessed most of the buttons ahead of time. The trick is to tie the tutorial into a fun, enthralling, and unobtrusive way. Terminator Resistance pieces together each prompt in an alarmingly basic manner, taking far too long to throw you in the deep end and do something exciting with it. On its own, this wouldn’t be a massive issue, but it’s padding, plain and simple here. It also serves as a first warning that you’re going to be taking a trip back to gaming past despite the future setting.

Terminator Resistance positions itself as an action RPG along the lines of Fallout 3, giving you things to loot, stats to upgrade, and choice-based conversations. Yet it’s all done with little ambition or desire for refinement. Everything about the game screams bare minimum or less, which produces a strange chimera that releases at the end of this decade, but could easily have come from the end of the previous one and still been underwhelming in its by-the-numbers approach.

This would have made for a passable rental back then. Nothing spectacular, yet enough to scratch a Terminator itch. Now it just comes across as laughably poor. On a PS4 Pro you’d be forgiven for thinking the game was being streamed on PS Now on a choppy connection. Being murky and muddy-looking works for the brand’s particular flavor of future doom and destruction, it doesn’t mean it should extend to every texture, character model, and effect. If you recall the horror that was Heavy Rain‘s fumbling sex scene, then you’ll be pleased/terrified to hear that Terminator Resistance has two of them that, partially thanks to the ropey character models, are far more awkward and horrific, especially as they occur in first-person and are initiated by wince-inducing dialog choices.

The dialog having choices is about as interesting as it gets as the rest of the story is a paint-by-numbers snorefest. If not for the odd bit of fan service, it’d be fortunate to be remembered at all. Not that the game is particularly engaging elsewhere.

There’s inconsistent and largely useless stealth that hasn’t taken into account any of the refinements made to such mechanics in the last 15 years. It would be more effective if the Terminators and various other death-dealing chrome buckets posed the kind of threat that James Cameron’s movies have suggested they do. Instead, they have reskinned AI goons from 2006, showing no signs of the notorious hunting abilities and smarts found in the films. During the tutorial, one walks within inches of your poorly-chosen cover and doesn’t so much as get an inkling you’re there. You have a tool that lets you see Terminators through walls and other obstructions, but the superior machine race can’t spot a man half-hidden behind a junked car.

Shooting is handled with a light touch, lacking the kind of meaty, thudding impact that would most benefit it most. Binary Domain, a game that came out in 2013 and is criminally forgotten too often, did Terminator-esque combat miles better, allowing limbs to be torn off its metal monstrosities and still have them come at you. There’s nothing quite like that here. Enemies just fall down, possibly out of boredom or gunshots tot he chassis, it’s hard to know for sure. Again, the T-800s and friends are the product of a super-smart robo revolution, but have the gumption and enthusiasm of an office worker 5 years too far into a bottom-rung position. Why send anyone back to prevent the war? If humanity was stupid enough to be overthrown by this lot, then it deserves to be vaporized.

Expectations were never going to be too high for Terminator Resistance. Alarm bells always go off when something like this pops out of the shadow of a movie release with little fanfare, but it’s remarkable how backward this game manages to be. It elicits no real emotional impact of any kind beyond maybe surprise when you find out this isn’t a HD remaster of some forgotten Xbox 360 title, but a brand new 2019 release. The low budget can be forgiven for some shortcomings, but this clearly didn’t get the time it needed to compliment said budget’s restrictions.

With Terminator Resistance, the robot apocalypse is here again, and it comes not with a bang, but a whimper.

Terminator Resistance review code provided by the publisher for PS4.

Terminator Resistance is out now on PS4, PC, and Xbox One.

The post [Review] ‘Terminator Resistance’ Goes Back to the Future With Underwhelming Results appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

With all of Tokyo Ghoul’s popularity, it was only a matter of time until we saw a video game adaptation in the west. Tokyo Ghoul:re [Call To Exist] is a re-telling of the series, including events from season one and its following seasons, Tokyo Ghoul √A and Tokyo Ghoul:re.

The narrative sticks to that of the anime source material, covering major plot points and glossing over the anime’s overall story. Die-hard Tokyo Ghoul fans will be able to follow along, but for those unfamiliar with the show, additional viewing will be required to understand the full emotional context of the plot and its characters. Ironically, the unlockable story details are super helpful to provide that context. 

[Call To Exist] primarily utilizes still images in a slideshow-esque manner to convey its narrative; there are cutscenes that take place during missions, but they offer minor kinetic action. For an anime with stellar fights, this makes for a total bore and letdown. Other anime games like the Naruto Ninja Storm series have recreated iconic fights in beautiful detail; so it’s a shame given the haunting atmosphere and adrenaline of Tokyo Ghoul that the game doesn’t display that sense of ferocity. Also, these cutscenes will depict “fights” by turning the screen black and emitting smacking and slashing sounds as blood splatter appears. This is horribly tacky, and even more confusing as to why this means of conveying battle was chosen over actual animated fighting.

In Dynasty Warriors-like fashion, the player moves their character along a linear path, cutting through and beating down waves of enemies. At times, one may need to find items to complete a task – but the primary focus is on fighting enemies. There are a slim number of enemy types, such as infantry grunts, tanks, and more powered up beings. Of all enemy encounters, boss fights provide a welcoming challenge. However, battle requires little strategy outside of evading attacks and swooping in to land a blow. A stamina bar is present and represents one’s ability to use dashes and more powerful moves. The longer one fights, the more they’ll increase their “Awakening Gauge”, allowing for a super attack once full.

Throughout the game the player has the ability to take control of multiple characters. While the main story focuses on Kaneki, additional characters are found in the side story options. Upon completing certain missions, an option will become available to replay it from a different character’s perspective. From Touka Kirishima to Koutarou Amon and others, the game provides a nice variety in its cast. For the most part, each character also feels different; some excel better at hand to hand combat, whereas some are more suited to long-range attacks. Each character fits into one of three classes – these consist of Ghouls, Doves, and Quinx. From Ghouls being able to self-heal, to Doves and Quinx being able to use different weapons, each class has something unique to offer.

On a technical level, the camera can get in the way of the player’s view. This becomes a problem when loads of enemies are on the screen. However, what really hurts [Call To Exist] are all its mini cutscenes. The game is constantly stopping to show another cutscene of enemies arriving. There are many moments where a player will defeat a wave of enemies, only to have a cutscene pop up displaying the arrival of more enemies; they will defeat those enemies, take a few steps, and then another cutscene will appear. This issue establishes a dragging pace, chipping away at the story’s excitement.

Outside of the single player story, [Call To Exist] offers a variety of multiplayer options, including a Horde mode, a co-op story mode, and PVP battles. In all these modes, the player is able to make a customized character. [Call To Exist] may not have the deepest character customization, but from the various clothes and item options, it does allow the player to create an avatar that looks like they popped out of the Tokyo Ghoul world. PVP matches boil down to bombastic, yet simplistic brawls. They essentially follow the same flow as combat found throughout the game’s story – dash in and attack, evade, dash in when the time is right and repeat. Other than the ability to play as characters from the show or as a custom character, the gameplay becomes too repetitive to hold up excitement.

With its dragging pace, awkward cutscenes, and passable additional content, Tokyo Ghoul:re [Call To Exist] barely holds it on with its own thanks to the action. The story will certainly capture the excitement of fans, while others may have issues getting totally on board. For such an awesome anime, Tokyo Ghoul:re [Call To Exist] barely holds on thanks to the action.

Tokyo Ghoul:re [Call To Exist] review code for PS4 provided by the publisher

Tokyo Ghoul:re [Call To Exist] is out now on PS4 and PC.

The post [Review] ‘Tokyo Ghoul:re [Call To Exist]’ Is a Flawed Experience That Even a Hardcore Fan May Find Tough To Enjoy appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

If we “meets/meets/meets” this one, we’ll be here all day, but here goes. It shares a whole lot of DNA with developer Respawn’s last single-player game, the possibly perfect Titanfall 2. You’ll platform your way across a variety of colorful planets with the help of double jumps and wall-running. It borrows heavily from God of War, which is fitting since Stig Asmussen directed GOW 3 before heading over to Respawn to helm Fallen Order. You’ll climb plenty of corrugated steel walls, textured cliff sides and rippled ice sheets as a camera follows you from a remove that suggests the Kratos of last generation (or the one before) more than the current one.

But Respawn has also drawn inspiration from outside the studio, too. Fallen Order is like Metroid Prime, in that you explore lonely alien worlds, scan machinery and unlock tools and abilities that allow you to access new areas as you progress. It’s like Super Mario Galaxy, in that you hop between planets with different themes and spend a lot of time sliding around on your butt and jumping on plants that function like naturally occurring trampolines. It’s like Uncharted but the ancient civilization whose tombs you ransack is alien instead of human. It’s like Dark Souls except the challenge here comes from trying to consistently remember where to stick that colon in the title.

All that to say, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is not, by any stretch, an original game. It borrows from everything and contributes almost nothing that hasn’t been done before. It doesn’t do combat as well as Sekiro or platforming as well as Titanfall. Its protagonist is pretty boring and it’s certainly buggy. But, it is easily the most fun I’ve had with any game this year. 

As a Star Wars fan, it’s difficult to separate my love for the game from my love for the greater franchise. This is a game that knows how to leverage the series’ iconography, music, even its PowerPoint slide scene transitions to great effect. If Rogue One was an addendum to the original Star Wars — a movie-length clarification of a puzzling plot detail — then Fallen Order is a game-length explication of Revenge of the Sith’s most genuinely emotional moment: Order 66, the culling of the Jedi, executed by the troops under their command. (And yes, I realize that acknowledging anything from the prequels as “genuinely emotional” marks me as a certain type of Star Wars fan).

As Cal Kestis, you are a survivor of that traumatic event, a Jedi apprentice hiding out as a scrapyard worker on Bracca, a mid-rim planet where Imperial starships go to die. Cal has cut himself off from the Force, until a friend’s near-death experience pushes him to reflexively tap into its power. This alerts the Empire to the presence of a Jedi on Bracca, and forces Cal to flee in order to survive. The resulting sequence is a thrillingly cinematic train ride that highlights the game’s Uncharted-style chops as a linear action game. The entire opening hour — complete with evocative shots of a ruined Star Destroyer and John Williams’ familiar orchestral swells — is excellent. I was immediately sold that a) I was in the Star Wars universe and b) I was about to embark on a Star Wars-ass adventure.

As that adventure begins in earnest, the game shifts gears somewhat. Cal is rescued from the Empire’s clutches by Cere Junda, a fallen Jedi who still believes in the power of the Order, and Greez Dritus, a four-armed ship captain with a Jersey accent and a fondness for saying “grab some seat” (an invitation which stands provided, that is, you won’t get oil all over the upholstery). The newly formed crew’s first stop is Bogano, a temperate planet where Cal meets BD-1, a tiny droid with a puppy dog personality, who will be his close companion throughout the adventure — chucking stim packs on command, opening crates and locked doors and generally being a great addition to the Star Wars canon of helpful, likable robots. On Bogano, what began as an on-rails action thrill ride opens up to include side routes, optional bosses and a whole mess of loot crates to hunt down containing new skins for your lightsaber, poncho, BD-1 and your hub ship, the Mantis.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but the game is called Fallen Order and your main quest has to do with finding a MacGuffin that will help get the Order unfallen. The actual what of the story is less interesting, though, than the who, where and why. As we get to know Cal and Cere, Fallen Order slowly reveals the pain that both characters are still dealing with; the trauma that’s still raw and red. It’s a breezy, exciting game, most of the time, but it’s also palpably sad. Star Wars has a habit of distancing itself from the series’ big events. The Empire fell just 30 years before The Force Awakens, and yet the actions that the Resistance took have already faded into legend; a new big bad evil fascist government has already arisen to take the old one’s place. But, in Fallen Order, the past feels near. Cal and Cere are still grieving and Respawn allows that pain room to breathe. Some of the game’s best moments, draw from this well, mining emotional resonance from the simple act of taking the series’ lore seriously.

All of that darkness, though, is contextualized within the framework of a breezy action-adventure game composed of equal parts exploration and combat. Both have flaws, to be sure. The lack of fast travel makes it difficult to get where you need to go quickly, and the 3-D map isn’t always easy to parse. Combat, likewise, is sometimes frustrating. The Souls-like system becomes increasingly satisfying as you unlock new skills and GIFs on Twitter have highlighted how flexible and expressive it can be. But some of the basics, like parrying, never feel quite snappy enough — and I suspect this will be doubly true for folks who have recently deflected their way through Sekiro’s gauntlet. This is true in traversal, as well. While wall-running is fun, Cal’s jumps feel slightly sluggish. It almost feels as though Cal’s movement in the early game was nerfed to make late game upgrades feel more useful. If that’s the case, it worked. I was ecstatic when I finally unlocked the double jump.

That may sound like a lot of problems, but Fallen Order’s biggest strength is its effortless variety. I never got tired of the combat, despite its flaws, because Respawn was shuffling me along to a gorgeous new environment to explore, a brain-teasing puzzle to crack, an emotional character moment to take in. Jedi: Fallen Order doesn’t do anything perfectly, but it does everything well. 

Everything, that is, except for technical optimization.The bugs I encountered in my playthrough were not serious and were few and far between. I hit a few hard crashes, which, honestly, might be an issue with my PC, not the game. I got stuck in the level geometry, once. And, Cal’s body occasionally would glitch through walls or the floor in ways that were ugly, but not game-breaking. However, from what I can tell from my Twitter feed, my playthrough seems to be the outlier. Console players, seem to have the worst of it, but PC players have also encountered bugginess. I can’t speak to that — again, the game mostly worked well for me — but this will undoubtedly be an issue for many players. I like this game a lot, but you may want to wait to check it out until a patch or two has smoothed over the technical shortcomings. 

That said, this game is good. While plenty will ding it for being derivative in its parts, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, in its gestalt, is something we don’t see often in games: a mixtape labeled “Good Star Wars Game.” Why play this game when Bloodborne exists? Because this game lets Bloodborne and Mario sit next to each other on a setlist. Now That’s What I Call Music 4 wasn’t original, sure. But, it DID put the Backstreet Boys, Eiffel 65 and Blink-182 on the same album. If you like the individual songs, this makes for a fantastic, Star Wars-as-all-hell playlist.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order review code on PC provided by the author.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The post ‘Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’ Borrows the Force of Many Popular Games to Make a Satisfying Blend appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In a forum post on the game’s site, the developer detailed this big new update that arrives in a few weeks on December 10.

Jurassic World Evolution: Return to Jurassic Park allows you to revisit some of the iconic islands from the film in an all new, captivating storyline delivered by the original cast. Join Dr. Ian Malcolm, Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler, as you return, reclaim and rebuild the beloved locations of Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna, and open the gates of Jurassic Park to the public for the first time in history.

Complete with a whole range of new buildings like the Visitor Centre and Aviary, as well as a plethora of classic dinosaur skins including the 93′ T. rex and Velociraptor, this exciting new expansion is sure to bring back fond memories for any Jurassic Park Fan.

New dinos are being added to, with the Compy and the Pteranodon coming along with the update.

A free update full of new features is also set to release soon as well. There’s little more in the way of details beyond that right now though.

It seemed like a matter of time until we saw some retro content for the game, and this is a pretty cool way of doing it.

Jurassic World: Evolution is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The post You Can Return to the Original ‘Jurassic Park’ in ‘Jurassic World Evolution’s Next DLC! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Through his work with the Metal Gear series, Kojima has crafted games that have not only broken the fourth wall at times, but elevated our understanding of how artists can utilize a given medium. Along with these qualities, his stories have always been prolific. From the horrors of war, to foreseeing the potential issues of vast interconnectivity via the internet, Kojima has always been one for thoughtful storytelling.

It has been three years since that initial trailer, and now that Death Stranding is in our hands, how does it stand as a game?

The world of Death Stranding takes place in a post-apocalyptic America torn apart by the “Death Stranding;” this cataclysmic event breached the barrier between life and death, inviting ominous beings known as “BTs” into our world (also known as “Beached Things”). Along with the presence of “Timefall”, a supernatural rain that speeds up the growth of anything it touches, America has become isolated. Now known as the “UCA” (United Cities of America), the country is a desolate wasteland, full of these otherworldly beings, terrorists, and lonely people.

As Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus), it is your job to reconnect America. At first Sam is reluctant to do what is asked of him; however, one event leads to another, guiding him from America’s east coast to its west coast. After this initial premise is provided to the player, the game takes a decent chunk of time to establish its mechanics and story. Roughly the first two hours of the game are a drag, offering little that is new to the plot outside of what we’ve seen from trailers. It is once you make it to “Chapter 3” that the story begins to pick up. 

Among his works, Death Stranding is by far Kojima’s most cerebral and convoluted game. Without getting into spoilers, plot details become more out there as the story progresses. Especially throughout the later chapters, Death Stranding begins to throw a lot at the player. With so much to juggle in regards to context and philosophical ideas, it may take reading up on a few details to have a full understanding. That said, the overall story provides awesome intellectual depth, while also including plenty of adrenaline-fueled moments. 

The cast of Death Stranding makes for a hit or miss. Sam is a dull protagonist, offering little substance. Die-Hardman (Tommie Earl Jenkins) and Deadman (likeness of Guillermo del Toro and voiced by Jesse Corti) start out as exposition dumps, the former making more of an impact on the story in later chapters. While she makes a brief appearance as Bridget Strand, Lindsey Wagner’s Amelie (voiced by Emily O’Brien) brings a good deal of mystery to the story.

The most emotionally interesting characters are that of Heartman (likeness of Nicholas Winding Refn and voiced by Darren Jacobs), Mama (Margaret Qualley), and Fragile (Léa Seydoux). Every character has a story behind their name, with said story involving a tragedy; the aforementioned three not only come with the most emotionally rich backgrounds, but said stories also add to the game’s themes.

The villains are some of the weaker members of Death Stranding’s cast. Cliff (Mads Mikkelsen) thankfully develops overtime and offers more to the narrative; it is Troy Baker’s Higgs that comes across as bland. Higgs can be boiled down to a “bad guy who just wants to do bad things.” Even though Baker’s performance is eccentric, he doesn’t provide anything for the player to latch onto. Ironically, Higgs and Heartman are the most “Kojima” characters in the game, each breaking the fourth wall at certain times.

On a graphical level, Death Stranding is stunning; this may easily be the best looking game environment there has ever been. From the grass to the rocks, to the water and even the mud, the game is delightful to look upon. Moving about the environment genuinely feels as if one is walking through a photograph. But with all this lovely world design, what does one actually do in Death Stranding? How exactly will Sam and the player “reconnect America?” 

By delivering packages. 

Well before its release, many have wondered what the gameplay of Death Stranding would actually involve. Is it another stealth-action game like Kojima’s Metal Gear entries? While there are moments involving action and some gun play, the blunt answer to that is no.

In the beginning of Death Stranding Sam learns of the Chiral Network; a “super internet” of sorts that will allow all the isolated settlements of America to unify. To set up the Chiral Network, Sam needs to travel to each individual location, bringing supplies along with him and establish a connection. This is the type of engagement one can expect for the majority of gameplay.

At each terminal, Sam is able to take on a variety of deliveries. Some of these deliveries progress the plot, while others act as side quests. The orders Sam will be traveling with involve items such as raw materials, medicine, weapons, and more. There is a cargo management system that helps players organize all the goods they are carrying with them. While the system is a little overwhelming at first, it becomes more understanding with each use. Each item the player adds to Sam’s load comes with weight; this weight will impact Sam’s ability to walk, run, and jump, so the player must be mindful of how much they have Sam take on. Each delivery also ends with a grading system, allowing the player to see how well they did in delivering said item(s), while also allowing further access to new tools they can use.

“Walking simulator” has become somewhat of a dirty word in the gaming world – but it’s also a term that can genuinely describe the gameplay of Death Stranding. If Sam is to travel by foot, which may happen quite often unless a mode of transportation is available, they’ll have to learn to keep their balance. If the player has a lot of packages on Sam, traveling requires juggling the R2 and L2 buttons, or even holding them both down for long periods of time to maintain balance. The game’s physics captures a duality that is both impressive and stressful as hell. The realistic nature of Sam carrying cargo and shifting his body to compensate for the weight is neat; on the other hand, it’s irritating to see Sam struggle over small obstacles that don’t appear that strenuous. Carrying cargo can be an ordeal; along with falling and damaging goods, the player has to watch out for Timefall. Thankfully there are means to repair packages if need be. 

How one plans their travels is also essential. Taking the wrong inventory can add to the stress of deliveries. There was one case where I had plenty of ladders and ropes on me, but ended up getting screwed over by not having any extra boots available. Walking long enough deteriorates worn boots, causing Sam’s feet to bleed, resulting in blood loss and slowing him down. During travels, it is important to be mindful of blood levels and stamina; the former can be treated with blood packs, while the latter can be treated with… Monster Energy drinks. This is a Kojima game of course, so there’s plenty of quirkiness to be found.

Such quirkiness can be found in Sam’s “Private Rooms.” These are rooms found at various terminals where Sam can rest, read about the game’s lore, and go to the bathroom. The rooms not only allow for rest, but also provide Kojima a means to goof around with the player. Want to take a look at the toys Sam has on his shelf? Press a button and he’ll come up to your face and point to said shelf. When Sam goes to the bathroom, you can also catch an ad for Norman Reedus’ TV show Ride With Norman Reedus. These sections make for a fun pause from Sam and the player’s intense journey.

As one progresses through Death Stranding, they will gain a stronger understanding of how to better prepare Sam for long trips. “Chiral Printing” allows for Sam to build a variety of tools. From crafting ropes and boots, to building bridges in the world, Chiral Printing can allow for much more convenient travels.

Where all these elements hit Death Stranding the worst is in its pacing. By all means, each of these mechanics function as they are supposed to throughout the game; the issue is that if the player makes the wrong slip (e.g. takes the wrong combination of items), then deliveries can be brutally dreadful. With the game’s physics and the world’s terrain, if one were to pack unwisely, they could find themselves walking Sam from one point to another for a decent twenty minutes in real time. And while the concept of walking may appear simple, it doesn’t help that Death Stranding’s world is barren. It may be stunning, but it’s possible for the visuals to wear off on the player after extended periods of time attempting to push the story forward.

To be fair, however, when one does have a moment to relax, there is a meditative quality to all that walking. Unless the player is on a time-sensitive order, it’s worth slowing down. With Sam on his own, there’s a sincere hermetic way of life. But then again, Sam isn’t really on his own, is he?

Accompanying Sam is BB (his “Bridge Baby”). In Death Stranding, BBs are premature children who have a connection between life and death. Throughout the game, the player may be required to provide support for BB; if BB begins to cry, one can rock it into relaxation. For a journey that feels so isolating, BB can be a comforting companion.

BB is also Sam and the player’s means of detecting BTs. A sensor on Sam’s shoulder, powered by BB, will light up and intensify when BTs are present. Said sensor can also provide Sam a means to plan out safe walking routes. In the beginning of the game there is no direct way to confront the BTs; the player needs to crouch down, move slowly, and hold their breath at times to sneak by them. Later on, weapons made of Sam’s blood, urine, and excrement (yep that’s a thing), become available to use against them. 

The stealth sections are intense, creating a superb element of suspense and tension. If Sam is to be captured by the BTs, it triggers a miniboss fight of sorts; these encounters involve bigger BTs that take on the form of Lovecraftian-like sea creatures and other beasts. While these are exhilarating at first, the thrills die off after a few encounters. It’s the same issue that some of the boss fights share – the manner in which these greater beings are handled is quite simple, requiring minimal effort to take down.

Along with BTs there are human enemies. MULEs are corrupt individuals who seek to attack those out in the open and steal cargo. One can outrun them or take them down in non-lethal or lethal manners. Unless the player wants to take a chance, it is better to take them down in a non-lethal way; this is because killing a person in Death Stranding may not only generate a new BT, but through necrosis, they can create a “void out.” This is a nuclear-like blast that will decimate the area, destroying any established structures. It’s an intriguing dynamic that encourages the player to stray away from violence, promoting for a different type of approach we don’t see much in AAA games.

It’s fair to say that a large portion of Death Stranding’s gameplay is far different compared to the majority of AAA games. Even in his past Metal Gear works, Kojima always provided players with the chance to approach his games differently. Whereas Konami wanted an action game, Kojima presented a stealth driven adventure. Where a game may include grenades and missiles, Kojima includes tranquilizers to use instead. Throughout his work, he has always presented a path for gamers that stays away from the conventional violence we are all too familiar with in games. With Death Stranding, not only does he build upon his philosophy of non-violence, he expands upon what it means for gamers to connect. 

For this part of the review, I think it is essential to speak further into my experience, as it reflects an understanding of what Kojima is striving for among players.

As I was playing Death Stranding in its beginning chapters, I kept waiting for the narrative to dive further into its themes of reconnecting America. With an understanding that this game was semi inspired by the actions of Trump and Brexit, I kept waiting for the characters and story to reflect how my actions were rebuilding the world and unifying everyone. But I wasn’t seeing much. NPCs would tell me they were happy with a package and glad to be part of the Chiral Network, but I didn’t see any changes outside of the ability to build items in more places. It was so much telling rather than showing. Because of the lore, I could understand why the world was devoid of interaction; however, for such heavy themes, I was expecting to witness and feel a part of this unity. 

At one point I found myself in a valley looking up at a brutal rock wall I wanted to get over. The wall didn’t provide a means to climb up on my own. Overwhelmed, I began thinking I would have to walk around the entire valley to get to where I needed to be – but then I saw a rope. As I approached the rope, I saw a name, one I did not recognize. It occurred to me that that this was a rope left by another player, and I realized right then and there where my efforts in the game mattered.

Throughout my own travels, I had left ropes and ladders in different parts of America; when you come into contact with these items, the game allows you to leave a “like” for the player who left said item. This mechanic is very much in the realm of likes utilized on social media. These likes have no intrinsic value within the game, but they are a gesture that the player can perform. At times I would see a mentioning on my screen where a different user “liked” one of the tools I had left behind. What was a difficult path for me at first was now an easier trip for them because of the work I had done (a satisfaction I had discovered with that rope in the valley).

In literature, film, and video games, characters and the plot express themes to us. We come to understand a message or concept because a character has realized it, or because something has been shown to the audience. But with Death Stranding, its themes are expressed through us, the players. 

In a hyper-connected sense (similar to Dark Souls or even like Minecraft), what we do in the world of Death Stranding impacts other players involved. We help make each other’s journeys easier. What began as frustration for me, expecting more from the plot, slowly began to evolve into a revelation – Kojima is having players act out the themes of his story. The game’s message is only present to us the more we help others. This creative approach is by far one of the most compelling elements of Death Stranding. Utilizing the medium of gaming, Kojima has expanded upon what it means to interact with one another.

Many games utilize cooperative play, but in the world of Death Stranding, cooperative play means so much more. In the context of popular gaming, in a world full of competitiveness, this may be one of the most sincere forms of helping one another ever portrayed in video games. With the game’s large scale, it’s impressive to see this much player interaction. Engagement also extends in how each player can leave emoji-like signs throughout the world; whether it’s a cheerleader to represent encouragement, or an arrow to help point someone in the right direction, signs make for an additional means for players to connect.

Along with its themes of connectivity, Death Stranding also explores some fascinating concepts surrounding death. Throughout the game, characters reference the “Beach,” a space that is the middle ground between life and death. Sam is known as a “Repatriate,” an individual who can return from the Beach upon death. When the player dies, they swim in a body of water, searching for a specific location to revive. From there, they bring Sam back to a location near the place of his death. The way Death Stranding tackles and speaks to death makes for a philosophical rush, providing additional intrigue to the experience.

With its “like system,” there are also some interesting approaches to critiquing social media use. Some characters wear masks and a lot of the NPCs appear to Sam as holograms, rather than come to him face to face. It’s an interesting dynamic surrounding the connectivity theme outside of player interaction. It’s funny in a sense how the game involves connecting others with a “super internet,” yet has such limited person to person interaction with the NPCs.

But with all these fascinating themes, connectivity, and game mechanics, does Death Stranding prove itself to be a satisfying gaming experience? Does it keep the player engaged? Well, that depends if you are open to something different and comfortable giving the experience time to develop.

For those wanting another Metal Gear or something fast and action-heavy, Death Stranding is going to be a total bore. And to be fair, the game can be brutally tedious; long stretches of time can be utterly boring. This is a game that is not meant to present you moment to moment adrenaline. It certainly delivers some moments of action, but this is a different kind of game. 

We all have collective expectations of our mainstream media – Marvel movies follow guidelines, our video games are meant to be pumped with action. It is understandable why an experience like Death Stranding may be difficult to get on board with right away. While the themes and story are intriguing, the gameplay is what may turn people away from it. For those who appreciate a slow experience with a beautiful atmosphere, Death Stranding has them covered.

I think there’s so much to digest, as well as being too early on, to have a conversation regarding whether or not Death Stranding is a “Hideo Kojima masterpiece.” I do see the potential for this game to receive greater understanding and respect over time. It is a stepping stone in what could become of gaming – what may come of this form of online connectivity? 

Death Stranding is not going to be for everyone – but for those players who take the time to walk the game’s immense land, there is something special to be found. There is something moving about people coming together all around the world to help others through a game; to come together and be part of one whole journey. 

Death Stranding is as thoughtful and meditative as it is a slog and convoluted. It is a different take on gaming that most of us gamers are not used to. It is a Hideo Kojima title where in-game actions provide a sense of emotional joy for players. Death Stranding, for all its depth and struggle, is a beautiful step forward for video games, and a potential taste of what the future may bring.

Death Stranding review copy provided by the author.

Death Stranding is out now on PS4, and on PC Summer 2020.

The post [Review] ‘Death Stranding’ is a Fascinating and Tedious Experience appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

From start to finish, six different boss fights fill The Copied Factory, each offering new variations of mechanics seen throughout FFXIV’s history. With the only weak outlier being the third fight, the range of fights feels unique enough from each other to keep you on your toes. I have to say that my favorite fight, mechanically speaking, is against the first boss, Serial-Joined Command Model. Lasers blast you from the periphery, all while orbs drop from rotating dispensers, keeping you on your toes at all times.

Lore-wise, the best fights are the third and the final ones. Engels comes straight from the opening fight in Nier: Automata, coupling an oversized enemy with heavy-hitting attacks if you so much as misstep. The final fight has a fair few phases, which are pretty straightforward, but the appeal comes in the scene the raid sets. You are caught in the middle of the epic showdown between 9S and 2B (well, 2P in FFXIV).

The over-the-top, screen-filling waves of orbs and action from the Nier franchise fits so well into FFXIV. The way that raid success depends on navigating boss mechanics has that similar strategic feel the Nier titles are known for. Orbs fly all over, lasers blast every which way, and survival is only as reliable as your efforts to stay out of their way. Oddly enough, this Nier-FFXIV mashup works almost better than other Final Fantasy mashups XIV has done previously.

On the FFXIV side of things, The Copied Factory benefits from an adjustment to gear distribution. The previous content push required players to farm events to collect multiple dropped items to exchange for gear pieces, with weekly limits in place to elongate playtime. This time around, actual pieces of gear drop, but the trade-off comes in the form of weekly limitations: one, in fact. You can only win one piece of gear each week, which follows a similar pattern to last expansion, but the farming time is reduced this time around.

The other tradeoff is a full glamour set. Upon defeating the last boss, the raid group can roll the dice to obtain a full set of glamour gear inspired by the queen herself, 2B. So, even though the gear looks exactly like the raid gear, you’ll have to apply them to your existing gear in order to fight anything. If you try to raid in the level 1 glamour gear… well, good luck to you.

It will be a few months before more of this crossover content will hit FFXIV, but the first round of said content has an intrigue all its own. You may have noticed that I didn’t mention much of the story here. I intentionally neglected to mention the narrative revolving around The Copied Factory because, well, I didn’t have the heart to spoil any of the interactions and shenanigans revolving around the two dwarves you work with. They’re just too great.

The post The Latest ‘Final Fantasy XIV’ Crossover Event Shows ‘Nier: Automata’ Fits Right in With the MMORPG Giant appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Using a visual style reminiscent of classic Tim Burton films, MediEvil tells the tale of Sir Dan, a fallen soldier known to the history books as the hero of Gallowmere who slew the evil necromancer Zarok. In truth, he fell in battle before he could even finish the charge. When Zarok returns a century later to conquer the land with an army of undead, the newly reanimated Dan takes it into his own hands to stop the sorcerer and live up to the legend.

Each level takes the form of a linear scenario that has Dan do a mix of puzzle-solving, platforming, and combat as he travels from the undead necropolis on his way to find Zarok. His quest sends him into dark enchanted forests, through haunted villages, and across desolate battlefields, with every stage changing up the theme and formula enough to keep it from feeling too repetitive. Going into a new area, you never quite know what to expect. 

There’s also a Chalice of Souls in every level to be collected once you kill enough enemies. Each one allows Dan a visit to the Hall of Heroes, a heavenly place where he can commune with other fallen warriors. Speaking with a hero rewards Dan with an upgrade to his arsenal, where weapons such as battleaxes, warhammers, and longbows can be obtained. They each vary in their potential, allowing for greater versatility when dealing with certain enemies. It also provides a big incentive to collect all the chalices and replay the levels if you missed one, as there might be a weapon unlock that can help you with a tough boss down the line.

These were key elements of the 1998 classic and they remain unchanged in this one. To remake it from the grave up, Sony handed the reins over to California-based developer Other Ocean to handle it. As a reinterpretation of the original, MediEvil is a spectacular upgrade. Every level has received a modern facelift but remains a near-perfect replica of its older counterpart. Much of the same dialogue is reused, including the late Paul Darrow’s brilliant performance as Zarok, while the Danny Elfman-inspired soundtrack receives a further cinematic buffer. It feels exactly how the original team intended but couldn’t achieve with the limitations of the PS1 hardware. Specifically, the world of Gallowmere is expanded, with more detail added to each stage that makes it believable and interesting.

With influences rooted in gothic architecture and classic fantasy archetypes, one of the most creative aspects in the original was the design of the bosses, and the remake fully respects that. The first major encounter is a stained-glass window that has been animated into the form of a demon. The janky appearance of this character was due to the PS1 polygon limits at the time, but the 2019 version capitalizes on that by adding new lighting and particle effects to make it creepier. Some bosses are even improved with new moves or phases to give each one some extra dramatic mass.

The issue with trying to recreate a beloved classic so closely is that it also inadvertently brings back the same flaws. The original game was heavily criticized for its awkward platforming, where you’d often have to make a pixel-perfect movement to land a jump correctly. The remake makes no such effort to improve upon this, as there were many points where I missed a landing that otherwise looked fine, resulting in me being submerged in deep water and losing a life. It’s frustrating when it happens, as there’s no room to learn from your mistakes when the problem is the platform hitboxes being unfair.

That does, however, make MediEvil’s biggest weakness its greatest strength depending on how you approach it: it still plays a lot like a PS1 title. By modern standards, the hack and slash combat is floaty, the camera is awful and the puerile dialogue isn’t any improvement. If you have no investment in the series and aren’t bound to it by nostalgia, you will struggle to have a great time with such outdated mechanics. In the 21 years since its original release, there have been better imitators that have tackled the genre in more accessible ways. However, the simplicity of using 20-year-old design principles also adds a lot of charm to it. As we’ve seen with recent hits like DUSK and A Hat in Time, recapturing the magic of ‘90s game design still has a place in the current gaming atmosphere.

For as long as I recall, MediEvil has been a crucial part of my gaming upbringing. It was the first game I ever played; I remember spending long weekends with my dad trying to beat a level. I remember using our horrible dial-up internet to look up cheat codes. I even remember going around the school playground shouting at the other children and muffling my voice like Sir Dan. This is for the fans and it’s not very accessible to anyone outside of that circle. Regardless, it was a big treat to see Sony has not entirely given up on the franchise, and if there’s enough interest, may consider developing a new game altogether.

MediEvil review code provided by the reviewer.

MediEvil is out now on PS4.

The post [Review] The ‘MediEvil’ Remake Reanimates a ’90s Treasure, Flaws and All appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

As a top-down shoot ‘em up, Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip offers a range of weaponry to go up against a range of zombies. Each character has a pistol with unlimited ammo, but can also pick up machine guns, shotguns, swords, grenades, and more. There are various zombie types players can engage with; you have the “Ninja” who can move fast, the vomit spewing “Vombie”, a clown zombie who has projectile weapons, and others. The gameplay itself is simple; in regards to console controls, one joystick moves the avatar, the other aims the weapon, and then you have your trigger, reload, and weapon pick up buttons.

Along with a health bar, each character also has a bar that represents a special ability; the more enemies one takes out, the more the bar fills. For Tallahassee, he has the ability to spin around like a top, mowing down any foes who get in his way. For Wichita, she can leave behind a clone that zombies may gather around, with said clone exploding after a certain time. You accumulate points throughout each level, allowing you to build upon different stats at the end; these stats include extending your health bar, how much damage you can deal, and other ability traits. 

The game offers two modes; one is a horde mode, the other a story mode. Horde mode plays out almost as you would imagine, but offers a fun twist. While you do have to survive waves of zombies, waves are broken up into objectives; during one wave you may have to kill a certain number of zombies; during the next wave, you may have to just last a certain amount of time. These goals update with each wave, providing a fresh take in each encounter.

Story mode is where things get a little grisly for Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip. For starters, the voice acting is terrible. It’s comical to hear how badly these actors are trying to emulate the tone of the actors from the Zombieland films; the attempted dorkiness of Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus is cringe-inducing. I get that the idea behind this voice acting is to recreate the vibe of the films, but it primarily comes across as boring and corny. 

The missions that make up the story mode are also lackluster; for the most part, each mission follows the group on random misadventures. The second level sees you guiding the group to find… a bathroom; Columbus needs to go to the bathroom, so you need to find a bathroom. Then there’s the following level that has you guide an older woman to and from objectives. Certainly there is an element of fun cheese to be found from time to time, but the execution in attempting to recreate the Zombieland film world mostly fails. Given its delivery of action and the ability to play with others, the game would make for a joy to play with friends – if only it weren’t for the price tag. 

While there is the story mode, horde mode, and the ability to download additional playable characters, there is not enough content or depth to justify a $39.99 price tag. For anyone who can remember that top-down version of Call Of Duty: Black Ops’ zombies, this Zombieland game is essentially a repurposed version of that. The gameplay feels more centered on that party atmosphere where friends jam out for 20 to 30 minutes; the game doesn’t offer itself to longevity since there is no depth to it. Maybe you could argue a $20 price tag for this kind of content, but for $39.99, you really ought to find a game that provides a hell of a lot more content. 

It’s a shame because Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip does have the feel of a good party game. Its variety of enemies and weapons, as well as the flow of combat, all lend itself to a consistent ride of adrenaline. But even if you ignore the sometimes cringy elements of its voice acting, there’s just not enough content for such a basic experience to justify the price of Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip.

Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip is out now on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

The post [Review] Video Game ‘Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip’ Finds Itself With Two Flat Tires appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Understandably the first thing many thought when learning that the people behind the original Fallout titles and those behind the beloved Fallout New Vegas were making a brand new RPG together was that this could be the ultimate blend of Fallout old and new in a shiny new package.

In many ways it is, yet the series it most resembles is Mass Effect. Planet-hopping sci-fi with warring factions and engaging companions? The Outer Worlds does this in a manner befitting Bioware’s sci-fi epic, but it’s fused with dark humor and a freeing morality system.

Despite these differences from what’s expected, it all begins in a warmly familiar way. Set in the future, The Outer Worlds takes place on the remote space colony known as Halcyon. Among this collection of terraformed planets and raggedy space stations you awaken aboard a stranded colony ship to discover you’re freshly unfrozen from cryogenic sleep and turns out, you’re probably the one to change the way things are down on the colony. Yes, the chosen one story is back, but that doesn’t exactly mean salvation for the Halcyon colony.

Halcyon is run by corporations that effectively act as factions. If citizens want food and housing they have to essentially tie themselves to one of the corporations for life and know little more than that. To break from this oppressive regime or to underperform for the corporation means being shunned and near-starved extremely far from Earth. The only problem is the corporations had only half-thought out this interstellar colony lark, and now viable food is becoming rare and Halcyon is on the brink of collapse. The protagonist’s quest begins with the idea to get the brightest minds ever frozen and stuffed into cryogenic tubes thawed out and working on a solution for that crisis. How it ends is up to you.

The Outer Worlds isn’t afraid to be political and makes humorous light of some highly-relatable topics (class wars, brands as a defining lifestyle choice, the gig economy), and that ultimately colors your journey and the choices you make. The writing is good enough to take a seemingly obvious solution and offer up another one that is equal to or supersedes the previous one. The Outer Worlds lives in the grey areas of morality, giving you the flexibility to be as honorable or shitty a human being as you’d like. The key to that is how flexible your options are for missions.

One early mission sees you out trying to get a power source for your ship and that leads you into a dilemma between two sides of a town. One is scrapping to live under corporate rule, but oh-so-willing to keep what little power they have over a renegade group who are living free of corporate shackles, but struggling to survive without supplies.

Both groups have a power supply, but each powers the towns they live in. From here your options are immense. I don’t want to spoil too much with this, but among the ways to get that power supply are straight-up murder of one party or even both, threatening one with shutdown if they don’t return to the other, and convincing one side to let the others be. The Outer Worlds lets you kill quest givers, and always offers up a new way of getting your objective done.

I replayed this particular scenario in a multitude of ways and got wildly different results. It even affected the companions I could recruit and later echoed out into other aspects of the story. The Outer Worlds may not be the largest RPG, but it has so much replay potential. In my first playthrough, playing as a Han Solo-esque antihero, I found all the potential companions, but didn’t get to visit every possible planet.

Yes, The Outer Worlds is positively bite-sized when compared to many RPG’s of the modern era. Rather than a big sprawling open world, The Outer Worlds is made up of smaller sections on a multitude of planets. There’s still exploration and looting within these sections, but it’s a more streamlined and condensed kind of exploration. It’s honestly a relief not to have to trudge around for hours when narratively, the planet’s are generally only sparsely populated with human activity and the identikit Western-style flat-pack buildings, so The Outer Worlds makes sure there’s more to find and do in these little pockets of life. Mainly by making sure the world-building and conversations are worth your time.

There’s plenty of chat too if you want it, most of it from the companions you can pick up along the way. There are five possible recruits for your ragtag spacefaring crew and each is worth having around, which makes preparing for exploration tough because you can only take two at a time. They chat amongst themselves, offer up advice, tell you their concerns, and have their own personal story arcs that can be filled out via their own questlines. They have their own upgrade trees, stats, weapons, and armor, and even throw in a special ability. They’re extremely handy in a fight and good company on your travels. My personal favorite is the adorably awkward engineer Parvati, who was full of excitement and nervousness about traveling through space as part of my team, and always felt like the grounded and good-hearted core of my decision-making. The other four have their qualities, but Parvati is one of my favorite NPCs for a good while.

When you’re not wandering about, trading barbs and heartfelt advice with the fine folk of the Halcyon colony, there’s a good chance you’ll be fighting something. Might be marauders, might be alien beasts, or it might just be the entire town you just enraged after shooting their leader in the face. Gunplay is more prominent than you might expect. Sure it has a slow-mo tactical shot system akin to Fallout‘s V.A.T.S. (explained amusingly here as a side effect of your lengthy cry-sleep thawing), but combat is faster than that series, and thankfully, while not exactly refined, it’s fun to get into a shootout, especially if you can find the rare science weapons scattered across colony space.

The regular guns are the usual flavors. Pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, and the like, all with modifiable aspects from pickups littered about the colony, but it’s the science weapons that add some spice to proceedings. There’s a shrink ray that keeps an enemy at a small size until you either stop hitting them with the ray or they explode from the tinyness. There’s a goo gun that causes enemies to float into the air for a short period whilst taking on damage, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I liked that they were these one-off things found at specific places in the game as it made them feel special.

There are also melee weapons. Blades, hammers, sickles, and scythes that can be made to do extra electric, acid, and plasma damage via modifications. They’re a bit fiddly in more open areas unless you use your time distortion ability, but they are great for crowd control. I just wish the transition on swapping between weapons was that bit quicker so you could switch between a gun and a melee weapon without having to worry about taking damage.

You won’t always have to fight your way out of angry disagreements though. If you put enough points into your intelligence and speech skills, you can actually talk your way out of quite a lot of potential flashpoints. It’s admirable how much thought has been put into all these eventualities, and while it’s not limitless by any stretch, it’s far more comprehensive than anything Obsidian has done before.

The big worry going into this game was Obsidian’s unfortunate, and slightly unjust, reputation for making broken, buggy games with cult status, but I’m happy to report that the odd hiccup and texture popup aside, this is as smooth as any game the developer has ever made. It’s a beautiful game to gawk at too, with the retro sci-fi look of the planets complimenting the Old West stylings of the colony towns and outposts.

A special shout out to the level up jingle too. Every time the orchestral swell played to signify my growing power, it made me feel like the champion of Halcyon I was being asked to be. A superb musical choice in a rather good soundtrack.

I’d love to go into more detail about The Outer Worlds, but a good chunk of what makes it special is the surprises big and small. There’s such a familiar framework, but it’s pared down to the essentials, daring to not waste your time with filler, and in that time, your perception of characters can be changed, the jokes can be appreciated (The Outer Worlds has a fantastic sense of humor), and the worlds can be marveled at. It’s a game that keeps on giving as you can miss so much depending on your choices, and in that sense, it’s very much got a classic game feel to it. It’s a mixture of eras poured into a satirical sci-fi romp and it’s such a joy to experience.

The Outer Worlds may not be exactly what I thought it would be, but I’m so glad it turned out to be what it is.

The Outer Worlds review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

The Outer Worlds is out October 25 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Epic Games Store.

The post [Review] ‘The Outer Worlds’ is a Fantastic Sci-Fi RPG, Full of Wit and Wickedness appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

For Trine 4, the original three heroes return, called to rescue a young prince who has unlocked some dark magic that unleashes monsters from his nightmares, and these now threaten the realm as he flees them. As a result, increasingly threatening purple-hued nasties crop up as the heroes chase after the panicked prince.

To get to the prince, physics-based puzzles must be overcome, utilizing the unique skills each hero possesses. You can switch between the three at will if you’re playing alone, or assign a particular character each in a co-op game. Depending on whether you play alone or not, the puzzles can alter to suit, which is a nice touch.

The wizard can conjure boxes and use magic to move certain objects in the game world. The assassin can fire elemental arrows and ones that create pulleys and bridges with rope, and the knight can use his shield to deflect light, water, and projectiles, plus he’s the most attack-based character with his sword.

Puzzles have changed little from earlier games. They involve stacking blocks, hitting switches, redirecting light and water sources, and creating bridges. The beauty of them is how they’re combined and executed. Frozenbyte has a real knack for creating satisfying puzzles. They’re not always particularly tough to crack, but there are some doozies that made me grin when I finally solved them. Given that the focus is on the puzzles, it’s great to see them so strong and interesting.

If only the combat was as refined. Only one character (the knight) really has an effective attacking strategy in solo play and even then it’s fairly clunky, swiping away haphazardly at threats. The assassin can freeze or set fire to enemies, but as combat encounters always take place in walled-off environments, it gets incredibly fiddly to get off shots accurately. The wizard is largely useless in these encounters unless you can use his box-conjuring power to knock an enemy off a ledge and into a spiked pit, but that’s not always an option.

It’s not really until the boss fights happen that each character really comes into their own in combat, but that’s because they usually involve solving some sort of puzzle to help vanquish them, whereas the regular battles are just straight fights in small arenas. It’s a good thing the majority of the game is about solving puzzles because too much more of the drab combat would probably sour the whole experience.

It’d have to try pretty hard to put you off though as Trine 4 is mesmerizing to look at and listen to. The visuals have always been a strong suit in this series and Trine 4 takes its fairytale fantasy look to new heights. the backgrounds are lavishly detailed and rich in vivid color. Design work on the bosses is inventive and varied, although the lesser beasts are somewhat ordinary.

The twinkly musical score is a perfect fit for the visual style too, giving off a strong aura of a land of magic and fairytales. The voice talent is decent, and again, in keeping with the overall tone. There’s nothing too mean-spirited, and the jokes, while tame, are pleasant and can raise a mild chuckle or two. The narration adds to the storybook feel too. Trine 4 is a big warm blanket of a game on a rainy Sunday afternoon. There’s monsters, and challenges, sure, but it doesn’t stop this being an enchanting experience.

Trine 4 isn’t a reinvention then, rather a return to that which made the series work in the first place. That alone was absolutely necessary after the misstep of the previous entry. There are times I wished there was a teensy bit more ambition with combat and platforming, but the meat of Trine 4 is the puzzles, and that is some pretty succulent meat.

Trine 4 review code provided by the publisher for PS4.

Trine 4 is out October 8 on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

The post [Review] ‘Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince’ sees the Fantasy Puzzle-Platformer Back to its Best appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s fair to say Ghostbusters is still one of the most accessible horror films of all time. It’s not only given us a treasured classic movie, but it also brought us Bill Murray’s most iconic performance, a hit song, an animated TV show, toy lines, and a video game that’s to this day, been as close to a long-awaited sequel with the original cast as we’re ever likely to get.

As you may have noticed with previous entries in the ‘Based on the Hit Film‘, getting a licensed game right is a very tricky thing for a variety of reasons, but as games have evolved, the technology has gotten closer to being able to capture the spirit of the films they’re based on, and married that to genuinely enjoyable games.

Ten years ago, developer Terminal Reality (who also made Blair Witch Vol. 1: Rustin Parr) released Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which coincided with the original film’s 25th anniversary year. This was no simple rush job to cash in on a milestone though.

In fact, this was essentially the sequel to Ghostbusters II. It was script-doctored by Dan Akyroyd and Harold Ramis, and saw them reprise their roles as Ray Stanz and Egon Spengler alongside Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Max Von Sydow, William Atherton, and Bill Murray. Even now in the age of celebrity appearances in games being normal, having that cast (sadly minus Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis) reassemble for a video game is really something special.

Taking place after the events of Ghostbusters II, Ghostbusters The Video Game puts you in the boiler suit of a new recruit to the spirit-snaring squad. Not long after being shown the ropes by the team, a supernatural pulse sees an epidemic of ghostly occurrences thrusts you into a fan-pleasing return to the first of many iconic locations, the Sedgewick Hotel, where you essentially get to recreate the hunt for Slimer from the first film, with a few new twists.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game makes the most of the ghostbusting equipment featured in the films. The proton pack is undoubtedly the star of the show. In most cases, you use its stream to wear down ghosts, then you’re able to wrangle them towards a trap, slamming them down to stun them further, then bam! Into the trap they go. As you face tougher enemies, new methods are needed in addition to this, and the proton pack, and other equipment can be upgraded to help you out in that regard. It also causes damage to the environment, which racks up onscreen in a cash amount. That bizarrely helps pay for your upgrades (though there’s a trophy to try and keep that damage to a minimum).

The PKE meter also plays a big part, using it not only to detect hidden ghosts, but uncover cursed item collectibles, and information. Whipping it out shifts to a first-person view, and you judge where the ghost/item is by following the pattern of LED dots and the position of the twin wands on its sides. There’s a few jump scares that come out of this, as you draw closer to a hidden specter, only to have it appear and come barreling towards you.

The upgrades quell the issue of repetition somewhat, easily the biggest weakness of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, but what really keeps it going along is the warm feeling of being back in this world as it should be. You have Bill Murray throwing out sarcastic one-liners, Harold Ramis’ deadpan dry humor, and even Max Von Sydow reprising his role as Vigo for a hilarious cameo. It really does feel like you’re back with childhood faves once more. Coming back to it again a decade later with this newly remastered version from Saber interactive (original developer Terminal Reality sadly folded in 2013), it’s amazing how well it holds up, and the talent on show is the main reason why.

The other reason is it hits a lot of comfortably nostalgic highs. Slimer and Vigo are the tip of the iceberg. There’s an explorable Ghostbusters HQ, the original soundtrack, pink slime, and fights against the Librarian Ghost and Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man among the highlights, and all are applied with care. It’s weaved into a fresh story that connects the history of the previous films with the game, as a vengeful spirit of a serial killer seeks to become a God.

We’re in the 35th anniversary year now of course, which makes it a perfect time as any to have this remastered version of this game reminding us of how good Ghostbusters can be. A bit of fresh goodwill for the franchise is always welcome, and with another film on the horizon, maybe we’ll get the Ghostbusters revival we’d hoped for.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered code provided by the publisher.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

The post [Review] ‘Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered’ Remains One of the Most Faithful Licensed Video Games appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The trailer shows that Ellie is definitely on a revenge mission, and it will see her up against the threat of a large armed force and of course, the infected.

Joel, looking old and battered, makes an appearance towards the end of the trailer, but it seems Ellie hasn’t seen him for a while…hmmm.

The Last of Us Part II will join Red Dead Redemption 2 in being shipped on two Blu Ray discs.

As if that wasn’t enough The Last of Us news, The Last of Us Remastered was revealed to be one of October’s PS Plus Titles. So if you’ve yet to experience it, well, here’s a good chance.

In a PlayStation Blog post, Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann reported that first gameplay impression from media will be released on Thursday, which is Outbreak Day, and also listed the different editions of the game you can purchase on February 21.

Let’s kick things off with the Collector’s Edition, which includes a beautifully crafted 12” Ellie statue, a life-sized replica of Ellie’s bracelet, a custom SteelBook case, 48-page mini art book from Dark Horse, a set of six enamel pins, lithograph art print, and a set of five stickers. The Collector’s Edition also comes with a voucher for digital content, including a PS4 dynamic theme, a set of six PSN avatars, a digital soundtrack, and a digital version of the mini art book.

The Ellie Edition gives you all of the contents of the Collector’s Edition, plus a full-sized, fully functional recreation of Ellie’s backpack, an embroidered patch, and a 7” vinyl record featuring music from the original soundtrack. We’ll also have a Special Edition version that features the custom SteelBook case and all of the digital content found in the Ellie Edition and Collector’s Edition.

For those that prefer to go digital, we have the Digital Deluxe Edition, which includes all of the digital content outlined above, as well as a digital copy of the Standard Edition. If you pre-order either of these versions on PlayStation Store, you’ll instantly receive a The Last of Us Part II PSN avatar featuring Ellie’s tattoo. Additionally, if you pre-order any edition of the game, you’ll also receive two in-game unlocks at launch:

• Ammo Capacity Upgrade: Instantly unlock an ammo capacity upgrade for Ellie’s pistol.
• Crafting Training Manual: Instantly unlock the Crafting Training Manual, which provides access to new crafting recipes and upgrades.

So just under five months until The Last of Us Part II. Excited?

The post ‘The Last of Us Part II’ Gets a February Date & ‘The Last of Us Remastered’ is in October’s PS Plus Lineup appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The original game, by developer Deck 13, was an unashamed Dark Souls-like action adventure that had two things going for it. A sci-fi setting featuring cybernetically-enhanced protagonist and enemies was one thing, but its interesting limb-targeting system was the thing that really made it stand out. It’s not like the rest of the game did so, with painfully ordinary visuals and a blander-than bland itself setting that saw you essentially move through an infinite hardware warehouse.

The Surge 2 kicks off after the events of the first game (if you can remember them) and starts in a Police Department medical bay as something murders all and sundry, and the prisoners run riot. By the time you destroy your first cybernetic boss and head outside, you’ve already seen more variety in the opening 45 minutes than the first game had in its entirety.

You play as the survivor of a plane crash who wakes up in the aforementioned medical bay, You fight off prisoners and police alike with your overpowered fists, and try your damndest to find an exit. Inadvertently helping you is a large robotic beast, rampaging through the building and making doors out of walls. The enemies up to this point are weak and rather human bar the drone robots, but so are you, so the playing field is somewhat level. That is until you’re tasked with finding your first rig, a cybernetic framework for your fleshy body.

This ends with your first boss fight. Your opponent is a security officer clad in his own rig (that you’re out to get a piece of). Whereas the game has been gently ushering you forward before, showing you the controls in small bites, you’re now tasked with taking all you’ve learned (and unlearned if you’re a regular with games like this) and pass your first test. It’s not a tough one, but it’s just enough to spark your interest in how The Surge 2 can play, and there are moments like this peppered quite regularly throughout the opening hours. It’s not especially revelatory, but you begin to understand just how much of a leap this is from the largely bland original.

The limb-targeting combat is tricky to use at first, but once it clicks, it becomes second nature. It adds a different kind of strategy to fights. weak spots are very specific. Take that first boss. His weakness is in his head, so whilst targetting him, you flick the right stick up to select his head as a specific target. Limbs have their own smaller health bar, and by wearing it down, you can perform a lethal contextual strike which almost always results in a severed body part. It’s not always a practical way to approach a fight so the grisly death scenes don’t get burned out from overuse. Instead, they feel like a little treat for smart combat work.

The directional targeting works in a defensive manner as well, with certain enemy attacks able to be nullified by blocking and pushing the right stick in the correct direction. Again, it’s a weird thing to get used to, but it’s ultimately rewarding to get to grips with.

You can find a variety of weapon types out in Jericho City (in most cases, ripped off your enemies bodies) that suit various play styles, from heavy-hitting sledgehammer types that melt enemies to spark-fizzing clubs, and nanotech-infused blades. All of these and your own cybernetic equipment are upgradable by collecting scrap and components, while the overall health, stamina, and battery of the player character are also able to be upgraded by funneling your tech scrap into leveling up.

The battery plays an important part in your arsenal. it holds several charges and is filled by stringing combos together. When your health gets low, you can use up one of those charges to heal yourself, and that’s generally what you have to do if you want to survive. Battery charge doesn’t stay around for long, but you can store heals for later if needed. It encourages aggressive play, as sitting back taking potshots with your drone can only do so much (and ammo is limited). You need to get stuck in, risk taking a hit or two. It’s a significant reason why The Surge 2’s combat is so enjoyable.

By the time I reached the later hours of the game and having to fend off multiple dangerous foes, the systems are so ingrained that it feels close to effortless when I switched between targets and their individual limbs, picking off stragglers with my personal turret and speed-dodging frighteningly fast attacks. This turns out to be an easier feat than taking on some particular bosses, which is more of a failure of balance regarding certain boss fights than a criticism of the combat.

After that escape from the Police Department, the big city opens up for the first time, and that familiar tingle of excitement grows from just thinking about all the possible exploration of its nooks and crannies. Jericho City is The Surge 2‘s sci-fi dystopia, and it has a familiar crumbling warzone look, and that means it lacks a bit of originality, but it’s an intriguing labyrinth to work your way through. Jericho City is functional, but it’s fair to say the inmates have taken over this particular asylum, with pockets of relative safety acting as a breather and a reward for the tough challenges faced along the way.

The Surge‘s version of bonfires are suit upgrade stations. From here you can do your upgrading, restore your health and even buy some new items. There are also hub areas where you can talk to traders, accept side missions, and generally take a break from the limb-flaying action. It’s these hub areas where the majority of the game’s story is told.

While the main story carries on from the first game, it’s not essential that you played it first. The Surge 2 lets its main threads dangle in the foreground without much in the way of subtlety, but the smaller, personal stories you find in side quests do help to flesh out this broken world of metal and concrete. It’s not the most memorable tale you’ll play through this year, but it adds a bit of seasoning to Jericho City’s own story.

What doesn’t make the stay in Jericho City so pleasant is the difficulty spikes. For the most part, The Surge 2 is a fair mistress, giving you visual and audio cues for enemy attack patterns, but when the boss fights kick in, that isn’t always enough help. While the player character is pretty swift on their feet, there’s a slight fumbling to complete animations, and that can see you caught out more often than not, and against bosses that is utterly devastating. It’s the only time it feels like you’re fighting the controls, and in turn, it makes certain boss battles appear cheap and unfair. In fairness, it never gets to the maddening hysteria of say, Sekiro’s boss fights, but where those just felt humbling, these can just feel like an unnecessary blockage.

the only other significant gripe I can point at is the slightly uneven graphical presentation. Jericho City is well designed, but the character models and textures are far more hit and miss. Look out onto the sprawl of the city and it’s undeniably impressive. look at the enemies, NPC’s and even the player character and it’s far less inspiring. They often look low-res and grubby, which detracts from some good design work. The more robotic enemy types fare better, and also tend to have a bit more imagination to their look. The Surge 2 isn’t much of a looker overall, rather it shows some beauty underneath layers of grime and machine oil.

These are still pretty minor grievances because all The Surge 2 really needed to do to be an improvement was to be a bit more interesting, and it’s definitely that. Refined combat, an intriguing and varied place to explore, and just more variety, in general, are huge contributors to The Surge 2‘s success as a hardcore action RPG and as a sequel. It’s not ripping up any rulebooks or striking out with all that much fresh ambition, but it is a supremely confident followup to a bang average game.

The Surge 2 review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

The Surge 2 is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

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Let me explain. 

When I was in high school, one of my classmates trotted out the old Confederate canard that the Civil War was fought over “states’ rights” during a history class. Our teacher challenged him. There was a natural arc, he said, to studying the Civil War. At first, when you knew almost nothing, you knew, at least,  that the Civil War was about slavery. Then, when you began to understand a little more, you started to see the complexities of the conflict, the economic factors at play, the nobility, the sense of duty, the desire for self-determination. And then, when you had studied the Civil War in great depth, you understood, once again, that, yep, it was about slavery.

The third mainline entry in Gearbox Software’s loot-shooter series has inspired a similar bell curve since its initial reveal in March. The gang was all there in that reveal trailer. Lilith, Brick, Claptrap and even Rhys from Telltale’s spin-off, Tales from the Borderlands. The advertising once again, trumpeted the inclusion of “over a billion guns.” The trailer revealed four new Vault Hunters, all of whom neatly slotted into the roles the first game established a decade ago. As so many critics, fans and casual observers noted back in March, it looked like more Borderlands.

But, when I got hands-on with the game back in May, I was impressed by the differences. A story that took players beyond the lawless desert planet, Pandora (or its moon)! A space station hub reminiscent of Eva’s Hammer from Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus! A new pair of baddies poised to potentially provide interesting commentary on the dangers of the influence “influencers” wield! That, plus a ton of quality-of-life changes, had me excited to see the nuances of the new direction Gearbox was taking with the series’ biggest entry yet.

But, now, with 40 hours of Borderlands 3 under my belt, I can tell you that that initial gut reaction was correct. It is more Borderlands. But, for the most part, it’s also better Borderlands.

So much of what Borderlands has always done well has reached its pinnacle here. The series’ comic book aesthetic has never looked better. In fact, on PC, with the settings cranked as high as my Predator Helios 300 could handle, this game looks jaw-droppingly good. The lines are finally crisp enough. The art is finally detailed enough. This is the first game in the series that you might actually mistake for a comic book panel (and a great photo mode ensures that you’ll be able to capture the best moments for posterity, from a more cinematic third-person perspective).

Even more importantly, the combat in Borderlands 3 is the best the series has ever delivered. In part, this is due to Gearbox’s excellent decision to allow players to replace their grenade slot with a second action ability. So, as Zane the Operative, I could summon a drone and sic it on an enemy, then hide behind the safety of an energy shield, laying down suppressive fire all the while. Or, I could create a double of myself, call up the drone, and stay out of combat entirely. Each of these abilities has its own skill tree and, as the game progressed, I unlocked new skills that tweaked each ability in interesting ways. Eventually, switching places with my body double would create an explosion AND regenerate my shield. Borderlands 3 is the most impressively deep RPG that Gearbox has created yet, and the combat soars as a result of the increased specificity.

The improved art plays a role here, too: the guns look fantastic, especially in action. They rattle as they fire off a barrage of bullets, smoke as they overheat, shine with an impeccable detail that simply wasn’t possible in 2012. The number of gun manufacturers this time around has expanded to nine, and each produces weapons with interesting strengths and weaknesses.  As always, you’ll need to equip weapons and shields with certain perks to give you an edge in the tougher battles. 

And there are plenty of tough battles. Borderlands 3’s boss fights vacillate wildly between the best and most creative in the series, and the most frustratingly badly designed — fights that, on solo, will leave you with no recourse but to overlevel them and brute force your way through. The best fights are thrilling dances that task you with dealing consistent damage to the heavy-hitters while managing a variety of smaller enemies. You’ll run, gun, use your abilities, stop very quickly to open crates and retrieve health and ammo. All of this feels more frenetic and smooth than ever because Gearbox has added the ability to mantle, slide and slam down on enemies heads from mid-air. These fights are frantic, but strategic, requiring split-second decision-making, that still manages to feel like important decision-making.

 However, those boss battles are often hamstrung by design that feels downright hostile to players attempting to hunt Vaults by themselves. The series’ “Fight For Your Life” mechanic — which gives you a small window of time to revive yourself by getting a kill while down — is at it’s best in this game, with a movement speed that’s been helpfully increased since Borderlands 2 (and will make it even harder to return to the original’s frozen-in-place “Last Stand”). But, certain boss battles — specifically, the optional fight against the electric-charged scumbag Killavolt and a very-not-optional late game battle — hit you with unavoidable AOE attacks and fail to reliably provide the enemies you need to kill to bring you back from the brink. 

These design issues are exacerbated by bugs. When I searched for help on the Killavolt fight, I found that some players seemed to encounter the version of the battle that I did — one with an unavoidable, lengthy AOE and scant enemies — while others had no such problem. Two guides I checked made no mention of these major issues, and message board threads were divided on whether these issues are even in the game. During a different battle, a boss who can follow the player out of the primary arena, disappeared from his chamber, and I had to search the surrounding area until he turned up. More than once I had to abandon a mission because the waypoint disappeared, or because an object I needed to collect vanished from the world. This wasn’t game-breaking — whenever I returned later the missions were working fine  — but it was annoying. 

The writing in this game will likely grate on you, as well, unless you have a very specific sense of humor or play with the sound off. Borderlands 3’s script has been widely panned by critics (and on Twitter) but the team behind the writing had the unenviable task of maintaining Borderlands’ identity in an era that feels, and in many ways is, utterly different from 2012. Some critics, and I’m among them, have outgrown a taste for humor that punches down. Others have circled the wagons around this kind of offensive humor with a ferocity that suggests they believe that their right to make fun of marginalized communities without any consequences is enshrined in the Constitution. Borderlands 3 has scrubbed slurs from its script. You won’t encounter a “Bullymong” and “Midgets” have been rebranded as “Tinks” (so named, according to Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, because they tinker, constructing turrets to do their fighting for them on the battlefield).

That’s good! I’m glad they took those slurs out! But, now that genuinely offensive humor is no longer risk-lessly financially viable, the writing team behind Borderlands 3 has opted to double down on dick and poop jokes. The goal here seems to be to retain the semblance of edge while removing any chance of actually offending anyone. The result is a game that is unceasingly puerile, still offensive but in the way that a 12-year-old’s loud burp at the dinner table might offend their parents. 

Humor is hard to pull off, and that’s doubly true in a game as massive as this one. But, Borderlands’ penchant to turn every character into a one-note gag has never been more clear than it is here. It doesn’t help that Rhys and Vaughn, two characters making the jump to the big time after starring in Tales from the Borderlands, feel smaller this time around. In Telltale’s hands, they felt like fully realized characters. Here, they’re just jokes like everyone else. Same goes for the new villains, Tyreen and Troy Calypso, who are more ideologically interesting than Handsome Jack, but less three-dimensional.

However, Borderlands 3 borrowed something else from Tales: that game’s planet-hopping wanderlust. While previous Borderlands games were mostly confined to one dusty/moon-dusty/snow-dusty desert planet, Tales was a hero’s journey, sending its characters on a trip around the stars. Borderlands 3 has likewise broadened its scope, beaming players down to a mountain monastery, a neon cityscape, a swampy jungle and more. Each feels legitimately distinct and while they sometimes feel like glorified corridors, they mostly succeed. The Louisiana-inspired Eden-6 is a particularly memorable, and even evocative, open world sandbox.

Well, kind of. Borderlands 3 still is basically an open world game — you’re free to ignore the plot, explore the world and tackle side quests at your leisure — but continues to divide its world into levels. When the first game launched in 2009 you could chalk this segmentation up to technical limitations, but in 2019 it feels bizarre for the galaxy to be cordoned off by pale blue barriers and load screens. It’s one of many ways, some good and some bad, that Borderlands refuses to change. You still spend a third of your time opening crates, comparing stats and managing an unwieldy inventory. You’ll put up with an onslaught of meme-y humor. Despite recent innovations in loot-shooter enemy design in games like The Division 2, you’ll still fight an army of bullet sponges.

Most of what this game has to offer hasn’t changed since 2012. It’s more Borderlands. Decide how you feel about that.

Borderlands 3 review code for PC provided by the publisher

Borderlands 3 is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC

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First, we we’re given a 7-minute ‘Briefing’ video, where Norman Reedus’ Sam Bridges is given the mission to travel across a broken America and reconnect it. He also is asked to bring back an old friend, played by Lindsay Wagner.

Later, Kojima ran commentary (in Japanese) on a 50-minute gameplay stream which laid out the finer details of what Sam is doing on his journey, and what he may encounter along the way.

Highlights include playing the harmonica to the delight of Sam’s Bridge Baby, a failed attempt at being stealthy in an enemy encampment, a delivery trolley being used as a hoverboard, and an epic battle against a giant oily creature.

The PlayStation Blog helpfully provided a breakdown of the footage and the various mechanics found within. You’ll have to prepare the right equipment for traveling, and depending on what you use, Sam’s mobility will be different. You can plan a route via the map, noting interesting areas, and ensuring you know what dangers you might face. Around the game world, there are items left by others, and you can leave them a ‘like’ (this seems to be to do with Death Stranding’s strange multiplayer). Sam does a fair bit of walking, but the footage also shows him commandeering a truck, and a motorcycle on his travels. He gets downtime too, including the aforementioned harmonica-playing, but he also takes a mudbath with his Bridge Baby and sings to it. Bless him.

A bit of everything then, and with more footage to come this week, we should know a lot more about how Death Stranding‘s gameplay ahead of its exclusive PS4 launch on November 8

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Take a sequence early in the game, where our protagonists are trying to escape from their captors. You need to break a window in time with the rumble of thunder so one of them can sneak out and steal a motorboat. Succeed and the bad guys are blissfully unaware of your skulking, fail and the remaining members of the group must try to fight off the alerted guards while you clamber towards the boat before anyone spots you. From that one change in the narrative, what happens next can be very different. In several runs through the game, this section ended in differing ways each time. Someone was shot, someone escaped, someone tried to be a hero and got the whole group back in hot water. Each time that one button press being hit or missed led to kind of change, and it’s fascinating to discover what sequence leads where.

Supermassive Games’ latest horror movie simulator marks the first entry in an eight-game anthology called The Dark Pictures. Each will blend some typical horror sub-genres together and give the player a kind of directorial control over the protagonists. With opening effort Man of Medan, we get a fusion of home invasion and ghost ship as a young quintet out on a dive at a previously undiscovered location come up first against pirates, then the titular ship, a WWII vessel lost since the war. Oh and being a lost boat in a horror game, something sinister lurks on board, and it’s there for you to offer up the poor souls you control.

Each character has base traits, which are essentially cue cards for how you should play them. Is a character deemed reckless? Then it would make sense they’d ignore a warning in order to get past an obstacle. Arrogant? Then saying the dangerous thing would be logical as it is deadly. You can play against these traits, and even give the characters little arcs of sorts where they learn to be more decisive, ruthless, etc. Embracing this side of Man of Medan really gets the most out of it. Especially when you throw in the newly-minted multiplayer modes.

While it would have been just fine to have eight small slices of Until Dawn-style horror game (and to a degree you still do have that), the multiplayer really changes the formula up, and adds another layer to the death-avoidance. Knowing your own real-life pals are able to affect your chances of survival in Man of Medan seems like such an obvious addition in hindsight, and with four other friends in local pass-the-pad mode, Movie Night, Man of Medan feels so right, so entertaining. It hides some of the shortcomings well in much the same way the choose your own adventure spookiness did for Until Dawn.

From a technical standpoint, Man of Medan’s shortcoming is, without doubt, the framerate, which casually drops now and again, usually when you’re not in direct control. It’s not exactly a terrible blight, but it does detract from the rather lovely visuals, and dilutes the odd bit of tension. Luckily this is not a particularly fast-paced game, so it’s not the problem it could have been. We have been assured that a Day One patch should fix this to some degree, so happily it’s been noticed and worked on, and hopefully helps out going forward.

Controlling the characters can feel a little clunky, especially when turning a sharp corner. They’ve been really well-animated, but that, unfortunately, means they take a lot longer to turn and walk away from an obstacle. It’s mildly frustrating, but it also kind of fits in the same way tank controls did for classic survival horror. The Q.T.E. button presses remain a perfect match for this kind of game, mostly because ‘failure’ isn’t necessarily game-ending and can actually produce interesting results. A big improvement on the previous model is the ‘staying still’ scenes. Whereas Until Dawn made you hold the controller still so your character doesn’t goof up and reveal their hiding spot, Man of Medan just asks you to tap a button to match an onscreen representation of a heartbeat. It’s a much better system, and more consistent with the button prompts found elsewhere in the game.

So, what about the story? It’s a crucial part of ensuring the other parts work after all. Get that wrong and it matters far less how good the multiplayer is, how great the game looks, or how devilishly devious the choices are. It’s certainly an interesting blend of horror. It’s based loosely on a real-life story about a lost ship, and dangles some intriguing possibilities into its mystery. The gang has to not only contend with the many freaky horrors of the titular ship, but also a very human threat. The second half of the game takes the ‘home invasion on a boat’ angle from the first half, and thrusts the entire cast into this ghost ship environment, effectively sewing the two story threads together. For the most part it works quite well, with the ship’s reality-altering power only making the gang’s captors more dangerous as things get increasingly crazy. There’s some wild imagery on display later in the game, including a pretty impressive-looking beast.

Bloody Disgusting Talks to Supermassive Games CEO Pete Samuels About  Horror Anthologies, Genre-Mashing, and More.

The ending comes a bit too soon for my liking, no matter how it turns out, and some of these ending options feel rather anticlimactic because things don’t ramp up to the finale enough beforehand. There are still some excellent ones though, and playing with others puts back the uncertainty that repeated playthroughs on your own takes away. You might know what to do in a scene in order to survive, but does your partner? The game may suggest a way to play as a character through their traits, but another human isn’t necessarily going to read them the same way you do. The only downside of playing online with someone is you notice the weirdly long pauses in a conversation more when it’s not you in control. A minor quibble really.

Man of Medan’s cast fit standard horror tropes to begin with (including a horndog rich boy, played with enthusiasm by Shawn Ashmore), yet as the story progresses, you may well feel differently about them as events show a new side to their personalities, which is another great thing carried over from Supermassive’s previous work. The human antagonists are a tad one-dimensional (they sure do like to tell you to shut the fuck up a lot), even if they aren’t the sole focus. They fill a job required by the story, but little else.

I’m quite fond of the host of The Dark Pictures anthology. The Curator pops up between chapters to discuss your choices so far and offer hints if you want them. His ever-so-slightly condescending tone as he congratulates/chides you for your efforts so far make him an entertaining host. As the only consistent character from game to game, it’s great to have such a strong link between this and future entries.

Sure, Man of Medan has a few rough edges, but it’s a confident first step in a new series of games. It keeps the core of what made people love Until Dawn and breathes fresh life into it by adding more depth to the branching narrative system, and including an excellent multiplayer side. A little more polish and a bit more bite to the game’s finale would be nice, but this is still a hugely entertaining slice of interactive horror that brings the thrilling uncertainty of other people’s decisions to the murder party.

Man of Medan review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.

Man of Medan is out August 30 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (2011) by Relic Entertainment

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a deceptively simple video game (and a rather blunt game-title). In it, players control a titular space marine—gene-enhanced humanoid beings of war and ruin who are clad in thick power armor and use larger-than-life weapons—sent to a forgeworld beset by cockney-accented Orks. Players shoot and slice their way through the green menace leaving only body parts and viscera in their wake. It all plays quite well and still holds up swimmingly, and it is a real shame that it is not backward compatible. And at face value, not much of it seems scary. Yet, once Chaos marines (evil space marines) and daemons of the warp get involved, things take a turn for the phantasmagoric in the creepiest ways possible. Oh, and the fact that every step of the way, the space marine story is filled with fascistic turns that will make anyone (including the story’s main character, Captain Titus) think twice about their in-game actions. 

Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr (2018) by NeocoreGames

An action RPG in the Warhammer 40K universe? Yes, please! Well, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr is exactly that. It is Diablo in space with oppressively grimdark visuals and lore. Far from a perfect game (just look at its name), Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr does excel in making the player feel one with the 40K setting. Planets are desolate and in varying states of decay and ruin. Monsters are around every corner and they range from “just scary” to downright petrifying. But this is 40K after all, so they all pop and tear apart in appropriately gory fashions. In some regards, players become the true horror of the experience—an overleveled Inquisitor mowing down swarms of lesser foes is, well, a power-trip for the ages. But if the game tips the level system against the player, then combat becomes a scary exercise in attrition. Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr is a delightfully eerie top-down experience that is imbued with horror from its very first screen—a gothic starship meandering through the miasma of space. 

Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior (2003) by Kuju Entertainment

Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior is a deceptively run-of-the-mill early 2000s first-person-shooter. Yet, players do not play as space marines or the Imperial Guard. Instead, players are dropped into the alien boots of the Tau—a blue, tall and lanky alien species who believes in “The Greater Good” and go to war in sleek, futuristic war machines. Playing as a Fire Warrior, war is fought with lasers and grenades. Rooms are cleared, enemies are put down, and all is as it should be in the dark future of the 41st Millenium. Fire Warrior only becomes truly terrifying when the player-controlled Tau face-off with space marines. We are so used to seeing this fictional universe through the lens of space marine’s helmet so it’s only right that we should experience what it must be like to be on the business end of their zealous wrath. And, well, it is wholly unnerving. These weapons of war are damage sponges whose weapons crack with apocalyptic fury, and as your fellow Tau blow apart all around you, you just might find yourself taking a break to catch your breath as the terror of war ramps up in Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior. 

Space Hulk (1993) by EA

Space Hulk is a bonafide classic that is rarely talked about today. Released for the PC and MS-DOS in 1993, Space Hulk saw players controlling cumbersome space marines in bulky terminator armor as they fought to clear derelict spacecraft of the genestealer hordes. Genestealers are fast, near-feline alien creatures that live to slice, chomp, and reign brutal death on anyone who crosses their path. Based off of the popular tabletop game, Space Hulk is a slow and claustrophobic tactical experience that is imbued with such intense claustrophobic horror that each move becomes a mountain unto itself. Death comes quickly and victory has to be earned through blood and loss. The game is so steeped in atmosphere that it is almost easy to forget that, above all else, Space Hulk is a stellar tactics title Yet, unlike most tactics games, Space Hulk will make you fear what lurks in the dark. 

Space Hulk: Deathwing (2016) by Streum On Studio & Cyanide Interactive

Like Space Hulk before it, Space Hulk: Deathwing concerns itself with terminator space marines ordered to purge genestealers from derelict ships. But in Space Hulk: Deathwing players experience the claustrophobic terror and brutally swift combat encounters in first-person. Yes, Space Hulk: Deathwing is a co-op first-person survival shooter that is a mix of Left 4 Dead with more exploration, as the game’s environments are large. But around most corners and behind most mag-locked doors lie hordes upon hordes of the genestealer menace. Combat is brutal. Space marines and genestealers rip and tear with unbridled fury and, well, limbs and innards cake every step of the terminator marines’ journey. When put into the first-person perspective the player experience of Space Hulk: Deathwing becomes all the more terrifying. Your field-of-vision is brought in and obfuscated by the heads-up-display of your terminator armor, and genestealers can attack from any and all directions, or from everywhere all at once. It is a claustrophobic experience in every regard no matter how open it gets, and on harder difficulties, it becomes a truly harrowing slice of horde-based survival horror. 

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Well, in reality, he just showed us some more Death Stranding, a game we still know bugger all about except Mads Mikkelsen and Norman Reedus get naked and a baby is in a jar. This is definitely exciting though, and this new footage does introduce some new characters with somewhat tragic backgrounds.

First, there was Margaret Qualley’s Mama, who has a maternal bond with a creepy invisible baby who was born on ‘the other side’, but is still connected by the umbilical cord. She can’t move from her location because she doesn’t want to lose her link to her child.

Next, the infamous Bridge Baby (the baby in a jar) gets an explanation of sorts, thanks to the avatar version of Guillermo Del Toro (Deadman) who tells us the baby needs to be synced to its ‘stillmother’, but tells Norman Reedus’ Sam not to get too attached to the sprog. Uh-oh.

Oh but that’s not all. Kojima then gave us a bit of fresh gameplay footage. Norman Reedus takes a piss that grows a mushroom… Yeah. Kojima explained that no matter how quick you turn the camera you can’t catch sight of the unsightly act, and urination is actually a weapon of some kind if other players choose to do the same thing in the same spot. Connecting the world through urine? Beautiful.

He then heads to a delivery point and interacts with another new character (who turns out to be Geoff Keighley in a cameo, voiced by Matt Mercer) then after falling, Sam placates his jar baby by rocking it. So delightfully odd as expected. Kojima promised there’s a lot more cameos throughout the game too.

Death Stranding is coming to PS4 on November 8, when maybe this will all make a bit more sense…or probably less of it. Excited either way!

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The live-action title gives you a choice over the titular Erica’s actions and responses as a mystery unfurls.

Interesting. We’ve had a few interactive live-action titles in recent times such as The Bunker, and Late Shift, so it’s nice to get another, different stab at it. Erica did get announced initially a couple of years back, but this is the first time we’ve seen it for some time.

It’s a part of Sony’s PlayLink series, where games are controlled by your mobile phone.

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