Observer: System Redux – REVIEW

OUR RATING 8.5/10

GAME OVERVIEW
The game puts you in the shoes of Daniel Lazarski, an elite detective in a very dark future (voiced by the late actor Rutger Hauer – known for his role in the mythical Blade Runner). This detail, together with the start of the adventure in a car whose interior is very similar to that of Harrison Ford’s character in that film, gives the feeling that you are going to be facing an unofficial adaptation of the Ridley Scott film, but finally this remains a tribute.

You are in the middle of 2084, with a world devastated by wars and dominated by large corporations, specifically, the Chiron corporation, which established a new world order – as the cyberpunk clichés command. In addition, people do not stop taking drugs and implanting all kinds of junk in their bodies, insisting on living in filthy places where murders occur at all hours, organs or substances of dubious origin are trafficked and the police can do little or nothing. To top it all, an epidemic called nanophagy is spreading rapidly among the population, killing all those who have implants or augments in their body.

Daniel Lazarski appears as an “observer” that is, a detective who infiltrates other people’s minds for clues.

GAMEPLAY
The adventure starts with a murder notice in an apartment building that you have to investigate and whose victim turns out to be your son, to complicate everything. The whole adventure takes place in this building, with several floors, basements and houses, in a rather labyrinthine structure and with a very oppressive setting, which is undoubtedly the best of the game.

The story is full of cyberpunk inspired, futuristic adventures with themes such as transhumanism. It is not usual for a narrative adventure of this style to have secondary ones, but the structure of the game feels great and it is a pleasure to explore every corner of the apartment block, with a sea of ​​puzzling and eccentric tenants who portray very well the year 2084 in which humanity has definitely lost its mind. 

The apartment complex has a lot to do more than meets the eye. And though Observer starts from the basis of a Walking Simulator, it leaves the player a lot of free will within the linearity that this genre has us accustomed to. While you follow the main plot, you can inspect the entire building to your liking, which will eventually lead to secondary plot threads or interesting conversations with the tenants. You can also learn more alternate stories and more information about the game universe by inspecting the computers that you will find out there and reading the data they contain. 

Alternating mainly between two modes of vision, one to search and analyze biological clues and the other digital, you have to sweep the scenarios well looking for information, interview suspects and getting into the minds of some characters, in nightmarish scenes that are spectacular. The developer is very good at this aspect, as we saw in Layers of Fear or in some moments of Blair Witch. These sequences perfectly merge terror and cyberpunk, something that we have rarely seen so successfully, and offer very impressive audiovisual moments.

You will be facing what we could consider a graphic adventure like the ones before, and although you are not going to find too complex puzzles, it does have its crumb to find some clues or passwords and know where to use them, because the scenario where it takes place is quite large and is easy to get lost. Observer is not a title that seeks to offer a challenge (not even in survival moments). What the game wants is to be played calmly, for the player to recreate the story and the details. For example, you can enter a room and be there for a while examining everything or investigating with forensic vision, and the best thing is that the more you recreate, the more things and more details you discover, which is without a doubt one of the Observer key points.

PROs, CONs and OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE
Observer offers an impeccable and tremendous artistic section inspired by the darkest and most decadent cyberpunk movement. Said quickly and concisely: you’ve never seen anything like it and you’ll never ever see anything like it.

Each of the rooms that you will visit will be a fountain marked by an aesthetic that emphasizes dirt, decadence and the unpleasant, but which, nevertheless, is still something extremely beautiful and stimulating to the eye. The walls reveal its interior wiring on all sides, as if it were the very “entrails” of the building. In the corridors there are monitors and bits of broken technology, often displaying disturbing images. There are destroyed walls, mattresses thrown on the floor and drug remains all around. Grime, trash, and decay accumulate at every corner, constantly giving the players a feeling of overwhelm and that the last thing you would do in your life would be to live in that place.

The holograms on the walls, often trying to uselessly “beautify” all the decadence to which you are exposed, the technological elements (monitors, computers, televisions or even the doorbells themselves) are displayed in a retro-futuristic aesthetic. All this, evidently making a masterful use of lighting and shadows where a great work of artistic direction is appreciated. In fact, graphically this remaster far surpasses the original title at all levels.

There are so many changes and new features in this Redux version that it is to be considered a remake, which is why we were so surprised that they have not fixed some details that hinder the gameplay. For example the unnecessarily confusing mission tracking menu, a bit chaotic to know what you are doing or what goals you are meeting. And then the worst thing, the interaction with the elements of the environment, which require you to be at a distance with very little margin of error, neither too close nor too far, right where the game wants, which does not make much sense. This becomes a problem, because until you are at that exact distance, the interact icon does not appear, and it is very easy to be exploring rooms, which are full of details, and miss something for something important because you did not get to the right distance, one too concrete. It is a very silly lump failure that we do not understand that they have not detected.

It is a shame that the technical execution and the graphic modes that have been included in the new consoles have made a bit of a mess. On PS5 and Xbox Series X it can be played at 1080p and 60fps, totally stable, and then we have an extra graphic mode on each of the consoles. On PS5 you can play with ray tracing, at 1080p and with a highly variable image rate, which ranges between 30fps and 50fps, but which even drops to 20. On Xbox Series X there is no ray tracing and you have a 4K mode instead, whose rate of images per second ranges between 40fps and 60fps.

Being such a slow game, these drops are not excessively serious, although optimization work is lacking, and in any case you can always play at 1080p and 60fps, which still looks great. They have also said that they will incorporate ray tracing in the X / S Series version.

Being Rutger Hauer the protagonist of the play, there is no lack of Blade Runner influences ; This can be seen at all times since Bloober Team has included a multitude of references to honor Ridley Scott’s film, such as rain, nones, palomans or some other more hidden scene among many other details. But Mr. Rutger Hauer stands out at the top of the game, especially with his voice, delivering a dubbing that is truly amazing and giving his character a strong “bitter detective” personality.

In conclusion, Observer: System Redux is not only an example of how to make a good remaster of a cult work: it is also a reference in the cyberpunk genre, science fiction and psychological terror. A work that is a tribute to the memory of Rutger Hauer, the leading actor of the game who died in 2019. A Walking Simulator that adds touches of other genres and gives a story with an incredible narrative, a unique artistic section with brutal graphics and that, if you replay it over time, you will discover even more details.

Observer: System Redux is a title to play at ease, in full relaxation, to enjoy its history, its setting and its details, to recreate the dark universe it offers; therefore, if what you are looking for is “some action” this may not be your game.

The original Observer was already a good game but now, with certain playable tweaks, new content and the enormous graphic improvement it has received, they make it a really attractive graphic or narrative adventure. Knowing that its history is not any wonder and it abuses the clichés of the genre, if you like the futuristic or cyberpunk setting as well as the touches of terror, it is an adventure with a lot of personality that surely will not disappoint you.

Ys 9: Monstrum Nox – REVIEW

OUR RATING 8.5/10

GAME OVERVIEW

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is an action RPG with dark, gothic themes, developed by Falcom and published by NIS America.

Players take on the role of Adol Christin, who, along with his friend Dogi, happened to arrive at the Prison City of Balduq at the end of a long journey. But things quickly turn for the worse, as Adol is sent to prison for his involvement in several questionable incidents in his past, making him a fugitive wanted by the Romun Empire.

A fortuitous moment allows Adol to escape his confines, which leads him to cross the path of a mysterious woman who curses him with the powers and responsibilities of the individuals known as Monstrums.

As the Crimson King, Adol is forced to fight to defend the city of Balduq from the darkness of the Grimwald Nox, while, at the same time, trying to uncover the truths hidden deep within the city’s imposing countenance.

GAMEPLAY

Ys IX retains much of Ys VIII’s battle system, albeit with a few new additions. For the uninitiated, Ys IX features a fast-paced party based battle system that allows you to quickly change from one party member to another while you relentlessly attack your enemies.

You’ll also have powerful skills at your disposal that you can either use in rapid succession or tie in with your combos, which can be quickly activated by holding and pressing the corresponding face buttons. You won’t be able to use these Skills forever of course, as you’ll be spending an SP meter that can only be replenished by attacking and defeating enemies with your regular attacks.

New to Ys IX is the Boost gauge, which takes Ys VIII’s Extra gauge and makes it a ton more useful. Much like the aforementioned SP meter, you’ll be able to build your Boost gauge simply by attacking and defeating enemies. As soon as you’ve filled up at least half of this gauge, you can activate Boost, which grants you increased HP and SP generation, movement speed, and heightened defense, attack, and skill damage.

Once activated, the Boost gauge will start ticking down until it’s completely emptied. While Boosted, you’ll also be able to unleash a powerful Extra Skill, which deals massive amounts of damage to surrounding enemies. Using your Extra Skill will consume all of your remaining gauge, and given that the damage it deals isn’t affected by it.

Also new to Ys IX is the ability to pull yourself towards your opponent quickly by way of the Crimson King’s Crimson Line, which lets you extend your combos by zipping around the arena with ease. This ability isn’t limited to the Crimson King, as every Monstrums’ special abilities are available for the entire party to use.

One of the best new addition to Ys IX’s battle system has less to do with how you’ll inflict massive amounts of damage to your enemies, but how you can render their attacks powerless. You’ll accomplish this utilizing Flash Move and Flash Guard. You can activate either by dodging or guarding attacks at the last minute respectively, and each Flash ability grants you different perks.

Flash Move will grant you temporary invulnerability and increased mobility, whereas Flash Guard will fill the Boost gauge and briefly guarantee critical attacks. Additionally, activating these Flash abilities will slow your enemies’ attacks down to a crawl, allowing you to take advantage of their momentary weakness. Being able to weave both at the right moment, while smacking your opponents with relentless attacks and Skills, is key to mastering Ys IX’s combat.

The various dungeons you’ll be exploring in Ys IX have a gameplay-centric design that’ll have you exploring every nook and cranny to uncover boatloads of hidden treasure. Ys IX’s dungeons feature tons of rooms that serve as large arenas, with interconnecting sections that feature lots of fun platforming and traversal opportunities.

Traversal is king in Ys IX, and you’ll find yourself gliding across crevasses, running up walls, and even grappling towards hard to reach vistas just to see what’s beyond your reach. The town itself was designed to be completely scalable, and you’ll find various points of interest in the most unexpected of places.

Apart from dungeons, you’ll also encounter monsters while exploring about town, hidden behind black tears in space. Touching these tears will create a small arena in the immediate area and initiate battle with no break in the action whatsoever. Despite that, any opportunity to test your combat proficiency is a good thing.

Setting aside the nuances of its combat, character progression still utilizes the familiar experience based leveling system, and upgrading weapons and armor are still very much the same in this game, requiring you to gather materials needed to increase each gear’s stats.

The Good, the Bad and the Overall Experience

Ys IX feels as though it offers a better balance with how you’re able to obtain upgrade materials that seems less tedious. Despite having an incredible battle system to play around with, there are a few aspects of Ys IX that might affect your enjoyment of it.

For starters, Ys IX contains several references to previous games that are weaved into the story for various reasons. Seeing these references brought up serves as validation for long time Ys fans who have stuck with the series for a long time. But for newcomers, some of these will come and go without any fanfare. That said, knowing these references aren’t required to understand the game’s overarching narrative, only that your experience will be enhanced if you’ve had prior knowledge.

Perhaps the least enjoyable part of Ys IX’s combat has to be its Nox battles, which occur on large scale battlefields that require all of the Monstrums’ participation. These are very much similar to the raid battles in Ys VIII, and these wave-based skirmishes are usually activated when the Nox meter hits at least 100. These battles also occur when areas of the town need to be uncovered, so you tend to run into these more often than you’d think. While I didn’t find these battles all too difficult, I’m indifferent with their implementation.

Ys IX’s level design aesthetic to be a bit wearisome when compared to the locales found in the previous game. Many of the game’s dungeons – especially early on – feature huge, boxy rooms depicted with drab, muted colors, with some that aren’t furnished in any noteworthy way.

It can make traversing some of its dungeons a bit frustrating given that there are only a few ways to tell rooms apart, forcing players to constantly check their map to make sure that they’re headed in the right direction.

This color palette extends to the town of Balduq itself, where you’ll be spending a good portion of the game exploring and interacting with its many residents.

The town’s plentiful spires and landmarks make navigating through its streets and walkways easier, providing noteworthy points of interest that’ll help orient yourself should the need arise. And yet, in hindsight, the choice to depict its locales in this manner might be a clever and minimalist way for Ys IX to get you to empathize with the citizenry’s hardships.

Being a setting that immediately follows the wonderfully colorful and vibrant locales of Ys VIII’s Seiren Island, the Prison City of Balduq stands in stark contrast with its dreary atmosphere and seemingly uninspired aesthetic.

Imagine living in a world that looks like this on a regular basis, with its most noteworthy feature being that of a prison that doesn’t seem to offer a clear way to return to society, if at all. And despite the advances in the town’s facilities thanks to the Romun Empire’s occupation, these features fail to address the underlying societal issues that seep through Balduq’s foundations, much less its encroaching Grimwald Nox problem.

With so many opportunities to explore and be involved in Ys IX’s world, you might even forget that the game also features an engaging and riveting story. Much of the game’s

Chapters are dedicated to getting to know specific Monstrums, allowing us to learn more about their backstories and motivations, as well as giving us a glimpse into how Balduqian society has affected them in some manner.

While this might sound like a predictable story structure for some, being able to know that each Chapter will delve into one of the Monstrums creates a sense of expectation and fulfillment that was lacking in the previous game’s storytelling.

Combining the anticipation of wanting to know which Monstrum we’ll get to meet next, alongside the drip feed of information and clues about the existence of the Monstrums and the Nox, makes for a narrative is, interestingly enough, compelling for an Ys game, one that many will talk about for quite a long time.

Apart from that, there are legitimate concerns from long-time Ys fans that Monstrum Nox might lean heavily towards a darker tone. Thankfully, Ys IX manages to strike a balance within itself, utilizing levity as opportunities to lighten the mood a bit.

And the wonderful cast outside of the Monstrums not only provide worthwhile companionship, but also deliver memorable moments that’ll even make you smile, something that no one would expect from a game that evokes such a dismal atmosphere.

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is an adventure unlike anything you’ve experienced in the series’ decades long history, and both newcomers and fans alike will have a great time unraveling its many mysteries.

NUTS – GAME REVIEW

OUR RATING 7.5/10

GAME OVERVIEW

Our story begins when your character arrive at a trailer in which you will conduct a research on squirrels. Such research consists of studying the behavior of squirrels in the region. Therefore, you must film your travels through the forests to find out more about the habitat.

However, this is not so simple, as squirrels travel throughout the forest, and your job is to position the cameras in one day to capture the images, and relocate them on to try to find the next part of the squirrel path.

As you progress, the plot develops with your character doing research and discovering that there is a mystery to be unveiled in the region. However, the part that will really hook the player, are the different mechanics of how to do this research.

GAMEPLAY

Initially you have a Scanner, in which you will use to send the information found to Nina, a fellow researcher with whom you talked over the phone. In your hands, you have a camera that allows you to photograph everything you want in the environment, in addition to having cameras on tripods that you can position around the scene during the day.

After positioning the cameras, you will enter the trailer where the equipment responsible for transmitting the images from the cameras to the TVs are. And this is where you’ll be able to play the video back and forth and pause. The images can be enlarged and printed, which is necessary in your missions.

Nina will tell you what to do at each moment, via fax. Through it, you also send the images with the information you find in your filming. The objective of the game consists of the routine of observing the environment during the day and identifying the best place for the camera tripod, and at night analyzing the results.

As you are researching squirrels, you have to understand their path, to identify where they live and even what other squirrels they interact with. As you progress, you are gaining other camera tripods, and this helps in more ways to achieve the research objective.

Gradually, the missions increase the difficulty of finding the path that the squirrels take, since they do not move only on the ground, they can jump from one tree to another and use paths hidden by the vegetation.

PROs, CONs and OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE

What we really liked about Nuts is the approach of a topic like squirrel research through the cameras. As you watch the videos during the night, it is easy to notice that the farther you are in the video and you see the squirrel, the closer you are to the final goal.

After all, this way of seeing progress removes frustration from puzzles, and can attract people who are not fans of the genre. It is satisfying to arrive at the end with the solution, and it is intriguing to try to understand why that information may be relevant to the story.

We have a very different art here, with almost nonexistent textures, focused only on simple colors. The scenarios are based on only two colors and variations of tones. The palette for each phase changes according to day and night. This change in the visual and the colors of the scenery, highlights the atmosphere of mystery that the game goes through.

However, it is sometimes difficult to see the way in these environments, and to know where to go. The developers could have made the art more carefully so as not to hinder the gameplay. Another problem is that twice the scenario ended up bugging and gets you stuck without being able to move, which forces the player to restart the game completely.

The tracks in the game are basic, but fulfill the necessary function for a puzzle game, however they are not tiring and at times, are relaxing. They don’t draw much attention, but as the focus is on thinking and creating a strategy, music doesn’t stand out too much is a positive thing. However, it is worth remembering that if you are looking for a soundtrack that is striking, in this case you may be disappointed, being just a functional soundtrack.

Although art has its differential, due to the variation of colors between the phases and between day and night, it is not as positive as the theme and mechanics used. The theme of this game is not at all common. For many, talking about research is a reason to roll their eyes, associate with boring things and even to create conspiracy theories of how research is useless.

People with a little more knowledge, on the other hand, will look at this theme and think: how will they do this? I believe that the idea instigates those who like to learn and know the importance of research. However, its mechanics are the most striking point, which is very unusual. Using cameras to solve a puzzle, which involves finding paths and understanding the behavior of squirrels, is a completely different theme than what you will find out there.

It is extremely pleasurable to reach the end of the missions, because through the time counter on TVs, the game shows you how far you are progressing in the puzzle, and how much remains to be solved. Therefore, there is no frustration of “I can’t solve this”, what exists is “I am getting closer to the solution”.

Unfortunately, frames are dropped frequently throughout the game. Most of the time it is not a serious problem. However, near the end there was a scene where you will fall off a slope, and here the frame drop made the game look like a power point presentation.

Nuts shows you a different way of seeing the world through the eyes of a squirrel. For this, you will carry out a lot of research to understand a little more about their habitat and where they live, which is a pleasant and light sensation.

Its main differential is in its mechanics, and in the use of cameras to search for squirrels. We have something innovative in a puzzle that involves studying the path of squirrels in the forest, and researching their behavior

Despite its technical problems with falling frames, Nuts has mechanics and themes that are out of the ordinary and hook you quickly, so it is very worth playing. Here is a good example of how to be creative and escape the sameness of the market.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse Earthblood – REVIEW

OUR RATING 6/10

GAME OVERVIEW

The game introduces us to a planet Earth that is being indiscriminately explored by large corporations – Endron, the game’s biggest villain. In addition to draining the planet’s resources, Endron conducts sinister experiments on human subjects, and the “ Earthblood protocol” mentioned in the game’s title alludes to this.

You will take on the role of Cahal, one of the members of a pack of werewolves who jointly try to save Gaia, Mother Earth. Cahal’s heart is kind, but his attitude is that of a tough and aggressive ruffian, a temperament that determines a good part of the dialogue options presented to the player.

Cahal has access to three different forms, which he can take at any time and in real time. There is the human form, the Lupus form (it turns into a huge wolf), and the Crinos form (it assumes itself as a fierce werewolf). The human form can interact with objects and talk, the Lupus form is fast and stealthy, and Crinos is a combat beast.

GAMEPLAY

Werewolf: The Apocalypse Earthblood have three phases, of which two are interrelated and one is a bit as a separate option. The first two could be defined as a role phase and a stealth phase and lastly, the combat phase. They are interrelated because your human face can open many doors and the correct answer can avoid complications.

While you are in human or common wolf form, the game is purely stealth: we must infiltrate enemy territory (military bases, refineries, laboratories) to fulfill objectives such as hacking systems, collecting information or sabotaging equipment.

As a human, Cahal has a crossbow, which he can use to both eliminate enemies and destroy surveillance cameras. You can also access computers to disable cameras and clear paths. By assuming the shape of a wolf, the character moves more quickly, goes unnoticed more easily and can, for example, use ventilation ducts to access new areas.

To guide you, you can use a “x-ray view” called Penumbra , which highlights enemies and points of interest in the scene.

There are a lot of soldiers and sentries patrolling each area of ​​the game, and you can try to wipe them out in stealth, sneakily eliminating them one by one, and sabotaging the doors where reinforcements will come in, in case you are seen – reinforcements will still come, but they will get hurt, with much less life.

In his animal form, Cahal has two attack buttons, but even his dash can damage enemies. It can also howl (which pushes enemies), heal itself and throw a kind of whirlwind, as well as pounce, throw and finish enemies. Filling a purple meter activates Frenzy , which increases your combos and makes all your strokes even more devastating. A lean but varied skill tree gives us more skills throughout the campaign. The experience points here are “spiritual points”, which we absorb from certain plants and totems.

Enemies will also get thicker as we go: at first we have just ordinary soldiers, but soon we will have enemies in battle mechs, big guys with shields, explosive drones and even the elite Endron guinea pigs , who have undergone terrible experiments and already nor can they be considered human anymore. Get rid of enemies who use silver bullets in their weapons first: as we have seen in great works with werewolves, silver is lethal to them!

It works like this: our camp is on the outskirts of an Endron plant . We must talk to our allies, who will give us missions to do inside the complex. Then we go there, face this mix of stealth + carnage that I showed up there for some areas until I reached the goal. That done, we go back to the camp, receive a new mission, and do it all over again.

Secondary missions give a slight breath to the format, but they are not very varied either. Our group is protected by a guardian spirit, Yfen, who is weakened by the presence of Wyrm emissaries. This spirit will ask us for things (like “wake up the spirits of the forest”), which can usually be done in this large hub around the camp. In the second half of the game, we traveled to another region (a desert in Nevada), but the pace of the game follows the same pattern.

There is a particularly interesting burst of creativity there for half the campaign: we must infiltrate a prison and get some information there. Of course, for that, we need to do some “favors”, and as we cannot become a werewolf inside, the game takes on a Hitman side : we must eliminate some targets discreetly, and make it look like it was an accident. There are no multiple approaches, nor anything very profound: it is a short stretch of the game, but one of the coolest, precisely because it escapes the formula.

PROs, CONs and OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE

The story in general is quite interesting as it presents us with certain moral vicissitudes, in addition to a very elaborate and deep setting, although unfortunately it ends up falling into certain clichés, which subtract the personality of the work. Werewolf: The Apocalypse Earthblood is a seemingly pretty game from the outside. The textures and designs look really eye-catching, giving a next gen look that sadly it doesn’t really have.

The game did a good job on certain designs, especially when it comes to the wolf form and everything related to the spiritual world. It is an aesthetic that is very reminiscent of Guillermo del Toro’s films, which has that aura of a magical and strange nature, even a little creepy so characteristic. All this accompanied by certain sequences with very interesting shots, which make us see that the people behind this project have worked a lot on it and have not tried to leave anything to chance.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood had a more modest budget production, made by an average studio, which does not fit as an “indie game”, nor as a “triple A”. So, however much, in terms of audiovisual, it is well resolved and has a very competent art direction, it is undeniable that some polishing was lacking.

The gameplay itself is quite fluid and responsive, but it lacks a little weight, especially when we are in Crinos form : striking a simple soldier and a huge mecha doesn’t make much difference. Lacks “weight” in the blows. In addition, the collision system is quite flawed. It is normal to see the character going through crates, tables and other objects.

As this is a cross-gen game, it unfortunately does not use the resources of Playstation 5. It runs smoothly at 60fps and there’s a pretty decent ray tracing in puddles and reflective surfaces, but otherwise it looks more like a game from the past generation than the new one, it doesn’t use the haptic feedback from DualSense.

What bothers most are the character models that we see more closely during dialogues and cutscenes. You will chat a lot in Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood (there are even options for dialogues and questions we can ask), but the robotic and artificial facial expressions break the mood of more tense conversations. The quality of the voiceovers is fickle: some are okay, others are quite terrible.

The soundtrack is somewhat terse, and although it does have a good theme, but it is generally quite functional. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, although it would have been nice if it gave it more personality. Everything ends up having a semi metal atmosphere that could have given much more of itself with somewhat more elaborate themes.

The soundtrack is good, especially for those who enjoy metal : there is a generic instrumental song during stealth, but the metal explodes heavy and aggressive when we are slicing enemies or facing bosses in Crinos form. The music on the home menu is particularly interesting – a metal with lyrics sung in a tribal tone language / dialect.

All considered, the game is neither revolutionary nor innovative, but it delivers a competent blend of stealth with hack ‘n slash – genres that are not very common to see together around – although it needed more polish, more whimsy, more refinement.

The campaign ends with a subtle hook for a sequel, which we all hope will come, bigger and better: with a decent budget (and polish), the game would really reach its potential, and maybe even become a legal franchise. However, so far what the developers have managed to deliver is a “double A” that is just good, only a little better than generic action games.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is being launched today (February 4, 2020), with versions for PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S .

The Medium – Game Review

OUR RATING 8/10

GAME OVERVIEW
The story starts with Marianne, who is a medium, attempting to discover why she was called to an abandoned building for help.

“Help” in her case, usually involves freeing a spirit and sending it towards the light but this time she finds herself embroiled in a dark and thrilling mystery linked to her own past.

The Medium takes place in Krakow, Poland, in the late 90s, and as stated above, we are in control of a medium called Marianne. She has the powerful gift of exploring the spirit world, a place with a heavy atmosphere that seems to gather the worst of human feelings. Another important point of her personality is that she also lives with the same dream of seeing the murder of a child, something she thinks is a premonition.

During a difficult time in her personal life, she receives a call from a mysterious man, who not only claims to know her, but also knows about her powers, as well as her recurring nightmares. To make it even stranger, he asks her to go to the Hotel Niwa, a haunted place where a massacre would have occurred. Taken by her need to find answers to her dreams, and still curious to know how that man knows so much. on it, Marianne begins her journey towards that macabre place.

GAMEPLAY
Marianne uses her psychic abilities to solve puzzles, fend off the forces of darkness and talk to the dead. It sounds like a pretty simple concept but it’s anything but that.

The real draw of the medium comes from Marianne’s ability to walk between worlds and this is where the game shines.

At certain points, the screen will split down the middle showing the living world on one side and the other side on the other. Marianne’s movements and actions run simultaneously in both, leading to fresh and innovative puzzle solving and new mechanics for the genre.

You can detach a spirit for a short out of body experience to access areas that cannot be entered in the real world. You’ll have to be quick though because otherwise a soul will be absorbed into the darkness.

PROs, CONs and OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE
Within five minutes of playing The Medium for the first time, you’ll be hit with a wave of nostalgia for the good old days. It gives vibes of both Resident Evil and Silent Hill, though this isn’t survival horror – it’s a psychological horror game.

The team at the Polish studio Bloober Team didn’t disappoint. For a developer who’s probably best known for their Blair Witch game in 2019, they really up their game for The Medium. The way the developers have combined these new mechanics makes The Medium feel like no game you’ve ever played.

The fixed camera angles of the game work the same way they did for the original Resident Evil games. They up the tension and keep you guessing what’s around each corner.

Having other worldly entities on your trail, shadows forming figures on the walls and doors shutting on their own gave a sense of both fright and excitement and the camera really helped to keep a high level of suspense throughout.

It’s not necessarily a terrifying game, though there were a couple of jump scares. Instead, the whole experience is more unnerving than anything, and that might have been the developer’s intention.

Some of the imagery on display mainly in the world of the dead was a little disturbing and some of the themes of the game, even the implied ones, might make you paranoid even after putting the controller down. The whole package keeps you on edge as any good horror game should.

The graphics and sounds do an incredible job of immersing the players. The real world areas are beautifully detailed and highly realistic, while the world of the dead is equally as impressive.

Where the game stands out graphically, is the lighting effects. The developers use these effects to keep you on edge through clever use of shadows and flickering lights casting eerie shapes on the walls – blink and you’ll miss it.

The Medium isn’t perfect though, the first thing is that while the camera angles are great for building tension, they sometimes become a hindrance. It was easy to become stuck trying to enter a doorway or figure out the way to go, particularly if that location was towards the camera or too far over to one side. This was frustrating at times.

Another problem is the split screen effect. While innovative and enjoyable for the most part, sometimes it can be a little difficult to concentrate on both screens. It was a little disorientating which may well have been by design but it can be confusing.

Where The Medium stumbles the most is with its pace. It begins slowly, giving you an introduction to the mechanics which is expected of any title, but it never really ups the tempo after that.

In moments that you’d expect the game to quicken the pace, such as when you’re being pursued by some freakish creature, it remains relaxed as though Marianne is taking a nice walk through the meadow rather than running for her life.

The Medium is still a good, solid game. The psychological horror was ever present and the mystery was deep, engaging and gripping. The world was immersive and there were some innovative new features on display that were well executed.

All that said, it still felt like something was missing. The game built suspense but it never really seemed to pay off. The gameplay is the most important part of any game, and with The Medium, it will be curiosity that will keep you playing. With each part of the story, the mystery deepened and that will keep you gripped. The gameplay is good but it lacked that special something that could have made it great.

Overall, The Medium is a good game. It’s well worth playing if you’re a fan of supernatural mysteries. It isn’t an action-orientated game even though there are a few moments that came close to what some would describe as “action”.

This is a mysterious, story driven, single player puzzle experience. If you’re looking for a gory frightfest of a game then The Medium probably isn’t it, but if you’re looking for a gripping story of the paranormal then this is definitely the game for you.

It’s well executed and the new innovative elements is very enjoyable. It’s ts slow pace can become a little tedious at times and the camera angles let it down in places, but it’s still a very well presented title with engaging storyline that keeps you hooked from start to finish.

Bezier : Second Edition – Game Review

OUR RATING 8/10

OVERVIEW
Bezier Second Edition is a neon infused twin-stick-shooter where you pilot the salve defense craft through a virtual void pack full of enemies. As you strive to defeat a big mean looking face known as Domus, the game features some high tempo gameplay and an awesome soundtrack to blast along too.

Your main goal in Bezier, aside from surviving of course, is to destroy enemies called Shields which spawn as you progress through levels.

GAMEPLAY
Getting into the game, you’ll find a number of gameplay features which set aside from the rest.
To kick things off, you can take a look at the game’s rather helpful help menu to familiarize yourself with some of the basic gameplay mechanics. Though it’s not overly complex and you can pick up most of it just by playing upon starting a new game. You get to select a difficulty and higher difficulties affect things like enemy health movement speed and the damage deal, as well as the amount of XP and points you earn from killing them. In addition to these things, you’ll also link out different types of enemy depending on the difficulty you play on.

Diving into the game on easy mode, you’ll be able to complete it the first time, making Bezier a very accessible game for more casual gamers or those just wanting to enjoy the gameplay experience without having to worry about one wrong move ending the run. Bezier features the familiar twin-stick shooter set up where your left thumbstick controls your ship whilst the right shoots in the direction that you aim it. Holding any of the face buttons will activate auto fire which temporarily replaces your standard fire but you have to use this spurring glare as it will quickly overheat and stop working until it cools back down again.

The screen does look a little busy at first. From top left to right, first we have the Level Meter which will slowly fill as you kill enemies and leveling up grants you all sorts of permanent upgrades. A list of which can be found in your stat sheet on the main menu. Next we have the Ouch Meter and you can think of this as your health meter, taking damage from enemies will reduce the Ouch Meter and losing all of your health will end your run. But green ouch turrets which spawn every so often drop health pickups when destroyed.

Then we have the Oomph Meter which fills as you gather tiny gems dropped by enemies and filling this meter increases your score multiplier. Your ship’s movement speed and weapon cooldown finally we have the Time Meter that counts down to zero at which point the level ends. It’s important to note though that you have to destroy all shields in a level before it ends, otherwise it’s an instant game over.

Now overlaid on top of the play area is the Radar which feels a little unusual to start with but you’ll soon get used to it. Enemies are shown as red dots on the radar and you’ll learn to use it to group up enemies and destroy a bunch of them at once. Destroying enemies next to each other creates a chain increasing the score you get from them and chaining enemies also causes explosions which destroys enemies nearby with larger chains creating bigger explosions. In addition to the red enemy markers, the Radar also displays green markers leading to ouch turrets and yellow markers which appear leading to shields.

The game features a wide variety of enemies. Each with their own movement patterns and attack patterns. Some enemies even cause status effects, leaving behind areas which drain your Oomph Meter or mute you – stopping you from firing your weapons. As you play through the levels, each one of them is set to a piece of music and aside from these tunes being pretty awesome, the enemies you face also change as the music transitions between different tones.

Calmer musical tones tend to feature slower moving enemies while faster pair sections are punctuated by a barrage of enemies and it’s a really cool feature.

Enemies called Shields are large static enemies and they come in a wide variety of forms, each of which requires a specific strategy to destroy. You have some Shields which are orbited by impenetrable barriers which you need to carefully navigate inside of to hit them. Others have coloured cubes hanging off them and you can only damage the shield by entering the coloured area which matches its hue.

Some Shields have a tail which must be destroyed before it can be damaged. Part of the fun and challenge of the game is working out how to destroy Shields which you’ve never encountered before. After destroying Shields, certain groups of enemies glowing yellow orbs called Stars will be dropped and collecting these allows you to activate upgrades seen across the bottom of the screen.

The first two upgrades are boost which increases your ship’s speed and blaster which upgrades your standard weapon reducing its cooldown increasing its damage and eventually causing you to fire three streams of bullets. The next six upgrades has special abilities and to equip any of these you have to collect multiple stars with each star moving your selection across by one while the boost and blaster skills can be upgraded multiple times.

You can only have one active ability at once and each ability offers a different benefit such as freezing all enemies nearby you, creating a bubble around you which enemies can’t enter or firing out a barrage of missiles which damage groups of enemies as they explodes. The Firefly upgrade which requires nine stars to activate can also be upgraded multiple times and each level of this upgrade spawns a small drone which will automatically target and fire on nearby enemies.

Collecting 10 stars activates Enrage Mode which maxes out your Ouch and Oomph Meters, allowing you to dish out tons of damage and making you invincible for a period of time.

Once you get into the last 20 seconds of the in-game timer, the game’s main baddie known as Domus will spawn and his big angry face will chase you around the arena until the timer reaches zero.

You’re unable to damage Domus until the final stage of the game, so you just have to keep your distance from him and destroy the waves of enemies. They freeze after successfully evading Domus, the stage will end and you’ll then get to choose which of two stages you want to play next.

Bezier’s 14 stages are laid out in the form of branching paths with each stage featuring different music tracks and enemies to face. You’ll need to play through the game multiple times to play them all. After your first completion of the, game you’ll unlock Endurance Mode which challenges you to fight your way through waves of enemies. In each wave, new shields will spawn and you simply have to survive for as long as possible to rack up as many points as you can.

Completing an Endurance Game will then unlock Daily Mission Mode where you also have to earn as many points as you can in a single level and each of game modes have Online Leaderboards where you can vie for the top spot against other players around the world.

PROs, CONs and OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE
The mixture of fast-paced action, wide variety of enemies and an upgrade system which encourages you to save your stars for more powerful abilities provides a very enjoyable and well thought out gameplay experience.

Its high score system and multiple level paths encourage replayability. When it comes to visuals, while simple, this game didn’t disappoint. Unsurprisingly, there’s no slowdown on the Nintendo Switch in either handheld or docked mode.

Audio-wise, whilst the sound effects are pretty standard, there is some nice voiceover in the game explaining how the virtual world that you found yourself in came to be. But it’s the game’s soundtrack, which really stands out, features an awesome mix of electronica and classical music.

When it comes to the issues, there are really very few to mention. The biggest issue was with trying to press the face buttons to activate all fire, as well as aiming and shooting with a thumbstick. Although you can only do one or the other, it’s not sure why they didn’t just bind it to a trigger button since both the trigger and bumper buttons perform the same function.

Aside from this, the background in levels is permanently black and players might experience an unusual floaty effect sometimes when explosions knocks you back. It could also be nice to have faced some challenging bosses at the end of each level instead of just evading Domus until he gave up chasing you.

Overall, Bezier is a great twin-stick shooter and if you’re a fan of these type of games, it’s highly recommended. The quality and quantity of the game is awesome. Great soundtrack, tight twin-stick gameplay mechanics and highly addictive gameplay loop.

While writing this review dated 28th of January 2021, you can pick this game up from Switch Eshop for only $4.99 (previously $19.99).

Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy – Review

OUR RATING 8/10

GAME OVERVIEW
The game starts with Ryza in his small town on Kurken Island, recalling the events of the first title. For three years, she was without her friends with whom she lived that great adventure. Now, the girl who was once seen as the mischievous tomboy in the village became the alchemist who helps everyone.

Moritz Brunnen, the most powerful man on the island and the father of one of Ryza’s friends, goes to her and delivers an oval object that looks more like a jewel and asks her to find out what it is about. Our protagonist, who was feeling stagnant in the mission that took place three years ago, decides to go to the royal capital to see her friends again and try to develop as an alchemist.

After a brief contextualization in the events that precede the story, we arrive at Ashra-am Baird, the great capital that will be our base scenario for the history of the game. In the city, the protagonist feels like a hick in the big city, stunned to see the place for the first time. Shortly afterwards, we met old acquaintances: Tao and Bos, Ryza’s friends who moved to study.

Tao, once a small and frightened boy, has grown to the point of becoming almost unrecognizable to those who knew him, while Bos follows what he was like in the first game, now a little more friendly. As we progress in the campaign, we get to know new characters and meet the protagonist’s old friends, now with other routines and concerns.

GAMEPLAY
After Tao helps Ryza find a place to live in the big city, they set out on an expedition to the ruins near a forest outside the capital. Here we are placed in one of the great mechanics of the series: exploration.

In this second game, exploration has gained a new layer of utility: clearing the ruins to find new information about them. As Tao studies them, he is trying to get to know them as much as possible and Ryza takes advantage of these expeditions to expand his knowledge as an alchemist. In these ruins, we will be presented to the Compass, an artifact that will guide us to find clues of information about the space in which we are inserted and thus unravel mysteries hidden in those environments, together with new ingredients and recipes for Ryza.

In Atelier, the player must search the game spaces in search of ingredients that can be collected to produce medicines, weapons, food and much more. Alchemy is a skill that few characters have in the game universe, and they are capable of producing almost everything in their cauldrons.

In this new interaction, Gust took care of mechanics to expand the exploration experience: now Ryza can venture through the scenarios with the help of a Spirit Beast, a magical being that can be summoned by her (after specific game events). The cute helper can also dig spaces on the floor of the sets and find special items.

In addition to hitchhiking, Ryza can also swim in some environments. In these spaces, the player will be able to cross specific areas and even dive and obtain exclusive items that are only available underwater. Another exploration mechanic is the use of the Emeral Band, which allows the player to go from one scenario to another, using a magic rope and, to finish the novelties, she can also climb stone walls with climbing plants. All of these mechanics expand the spaces for exploration, bringing a much greater dynamism and helping to transform gambling closer to a real adventure.

As we progress through the campaign and find new ingredients with more potent properties, we will be able to synthesize more refined items, whose effectiveness and quality improve exponentially.

The Skill Tree mechanic was also implemented, in which the player accumulates points when synthesizing, completing missions and exploring the ruins, being able to exchange them for new items that can be synthesized, improvements when forging new products or to explore the scenarios. This exit was very intelligent and talks very well with what was established in the first game.

PROs, CONs and OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE
The battle system is changed from a “traditional turn base” to “action turn base”. It’s a nice change of pace just as with the first, the battles in Riza 2 happen in real time with characters sliding along an action bar that determines when they can act. Once it is your turn though, you can’t just sit around deciding what to do as the battle keeps going while your turn is ticking. It gives the combat a sense of urgency and it might take some time getting used to.

The changes they made to the core is great. They removed the charging system, where are before you have to constantly go back to base and back to battle because your core charge ran out. Now core charge is replenished via skill use and you can repeatedly use the same bomb in a single battle, as long as you land enough skills to make up its core charge cost. Given that you can equip 4 items to each of your 3 active party members and 1 hot swappable character, there’s a lot of room for item use in battle.

This ties into the new skill chain feature which allows you to use multiple skills in a row, given the right amount of AP of course, this allows you to build core charge even faster. This gives the combat further ties to the game’s extensive crafting mechanics.

The crafting and gathering is still as fun as ever. It’s a fun and complex crafting system with the entire alchemy level from the first game is just completely thrown out the window, in favor of this new skill tree. It basically works like any other skill tree you would see in other jrpgs, allowing you to use experience earned during crafting to unlock new recipes and allows you to unlock even more recipes.

The skill tree also grants other bonuses like new super moves to use in combat and increased quality and quantity of gathered materials on the field.

The field actually saw some much more noticeable changes such as giving you a preview of what items are dropped from certain bushes, rocks and other objects.

The new exploration features allows you to swim, swing, dive climb, crawl and even ride an animal companion around. Some of these require you to first craft tools just like in the last game but all of them really opened up the game world in a fun way, making gathering a more involved experience.

Excellent graphics and music raised the bar. Bright vivid color, better lighting and shadows, excellent character designs and the detailed weather effects gives the game more “alive” feeling. You can even see characters get drenched from the rain. The soundtrack also improved a lot. It’s got that excellent mix of more adventurous exploration tracks, befitting of Ryze’s personality but also some more mysterious ominous stuff for story scenes.

With the new controls, you’re now able to remap them in game on both controller, keyboard and mouse. Although there are a few keys that can’t be remapped, the game finally has mouse support both in regular gameplay for camera movement and in the menus. The mouse support can be a bit spotty at times during alchemy but it’s good enough to the point that the game is actually playable without a controller.

The downside is the story is yet another further decline in quality. Ryze 2’s story is not only a downgrade from the original, but the weakest from the series thus far. As this is a sequel, it takes place after the events of the first game – three years to be exact. So you would expect that the game is going to expand on the characters established there while maybe taking them on another cool adventure. But the game instead has you spend more time with an animal sidekick that cannot even speak.

The characters from the first game eventually are introduced but they’re given the briefest stories before being shoehorned into this whole new plot. To sum it up without spoiling too much, instead of being a naturally developed adventure like the first game, this sequel has a very clear pattern to it. You arrive at a new set of ruins. Explore it enough to unlock a compass that then maps the ruins memories and then pick up these memories before engaging in a light puzzle game in order to unlock the ruined secrets.

You basically rinse and repeat this several times and you’ve cleared the game.

The act of filling out the journal with these memories can be very tedious. You have this list of 30 or so memories to scroll through and have to match each and every one of them to a couple keywords. A process that not only can take a while but doesn’t offer up much of a reward.

The main story is about as long as it was in the first game – 26 hours or so. That’s just the main story. The series is known for its wealth of content on top of that. There are extra side quests and even some post-game boss fights. There is also a new game plus mode that carries over some progress from the main game for those that want to go that route.

It is definitely still a worthwhile follow-up to the original the combat mechanics, crafting system and exploration. It may have taken a bit of a dive with regards to its story quality and the new exploration journal mechanic (which isn’t exactly the greatest) but if you like the first game, there’s still a lot to like with the sequel.

ORANGE CASt- REVIEW

OUR RATING 5/10

GAME OVERVIEW
Third person sci-fi alien space shooter begins with the destruction of your world and humanity’s elite space trooper taking down aliens and escaping just before its obliteration.

Your character is a guy that can be reborn to go and fight the enemy that’s coming.

GAMEPLAY
The game doesn’t actually tell you where you need to go. The world around you, depending on where you need to go, is destructible which is nice. You can destroy the world in order to open up areas of where you need to go.

The enemies don’t appear to have hit bars or health bars. It is important to note that you can have a 3D heads up display or you can have it like a 2D.

You’ve got different weapons you can choose from. It starts you off with a revolver and a pulse gun which destroys everything in its sight. The running movement’s a bit odd and aiming doesn’t really do a huge amount. You don’t zoom in a lot and there’s this weird shaking with the gun which is not ideal.

PROs, CONs and OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE
There are a lot of things going wrong in Orange Cast and the story seems like a pretty good place to start. Inspired by a series of books known as The Expanse, the game attempts to build a massive sci-fi space opera that’s clearly held together by sticks and scotch tape.

Everything about Orange Cast is a grand idea executed with minimal resources and shoddy development and the story is no different. For starters, the english translations are borderline incomprehensible to the point where it’s really difficult to understand what the story is. The second major problem is that none of the dialogue is spoken. You have to read it all. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but a huge portion of it comes to you during firefights, so it’ll go largely unread.

The nail in the coffin for the story is that it’s really just not that engaging. Even after intently reading the dialogue and finding extra codex entries, we have yet to find anything unique about the story that will make players want to hear more. The world that’s been built has so much potential. There are well detailed planets to explore. Little towns to shop around in and the beauty of space on your doorstep. But it’s all undercut by constant bugs and the cold empty linearity that feels more like an early access than a full release game.

Even just trying to make your way through the world results in groans and eye rolls as your character’s awkwardly animated run gets caught on every bush and root on the ground. The gameplay combat tries to be a mix between dead space and doom. Kinda creepy and kinda bloody. However, it’s never really tense enough to live up to the former and never smooth enough for the latter.

The persistent movement issues are always just the forefront of gameplay. Not only getting caught on imperceptible snags but also trying to run from point a to point b, or pull out your weapon and aim down your sights seems to only register occasionally.

For some reason when you place your camera over your left shoulder, it puts your character model almost in the middle of the screen blocking your view. There’s no setting to turn off screen shake which means that if you are prone to motion sickness, you will get very nauseous very quickly.

You have several different special abilities you can activate with your cue but not only did this not work at all but attempting to rebind the keys caused the game to crash every single time.
Neither of these bugs existed during the game’s prologue.

The biggest bug of all, if you die you literally just respawn at the last place you saved at with a hundred percent health and refilled ammo. This is a problem because you can quick save at any time even in the middle of a fight. So if you’re about to die or if you’re out of ammo just save because you’ll just reload that exact spot with plenty of bullets and health to continue the fight.

It’s really, really unfortunate that this is where they landed. What it all boils down to is too much game and not enough development with constant frame rate dips and audio bugs to show for it, making this really feel much more like a day one early access than a day one of a full release with its excessive bugs, uninspired combat and incoherent storytelling.

You can pick up Orange Cast on Steam. It definitely had the potential to be an insane mixture of Mass Effect and Doom. It will all feel nostalgic when you get to the first town and see a glimpse of what Orange Cast was supposed to be.

NEOVERSE – REVIEW

OUR RATING 7.5/10

GAME OVERVIEW
Neoverse is about humanity becoming too technologically advanced and started messing about with time and space in search of new worlds. Eventually, the multiverse was discovered, which resulted in them breaking time and space, creating the Neoverse – a new type of universe where different worlds overlapped with their own world.

The game doesn’t really delve much into the game’s storyline though you do get a little bit of text which scrolls on the main menu and a nice cut scene when you first start a new game.

Neoverse is an interesting roguelike deck building title where you get to venture as one of three different characters. Each with their own unique playstyles and decks which you’re gonna have to learn and master in order to defeat the wide variety of enemies that you face.

GAMEPLAY
Heading into the game, you will select your character but as is usually the case most things are locked, including two of the three characters and additional decks. You have to beat a few bosses to open up more options. Aside from the distinct appearances each character in the game comes with their own unique play styles and decks.

To start, you will have the sleek looking Naya the Agent who wields a neon katana and pistol. Her deck focus around mechanics that allow you to stack radiation onto enemies which bypasses the defenses and deals damage at the start of every turn.

Naya also gets a bunch of different cards with no mana costs that shoot her enemies. On the other hand, using these also builds overheat, dropping cards into her deck which deal damage to her. So you need to use other cards to keep your overheat stacks under control.

Moving on next to the heavily armoured Clarie the Paladin. Her deck focus on healing herself, punishing enemies for attacking her and draining the life from them healing her in the process. As with other characters, each of the deck focus more on one of these aspects giving her multiple playstyles.

With the priest deck, you’re going to be generating faith stacks to heal yourself and punishment stacks to return damage whenever enemies attack you. While the vampire deck on the other hand, contains cards which build vampiric stacks healing you with every attack you perform.

Finally, we have Helena the Summoner. She calls mythical creatures to aid her in battle. Helena uses command stacks by playing certain cards. This enables her to order these guardians to perform abilities dealing damage to single or multiple opponents or shielding herself from harm.

The gameplay with Helena focuses on switching between these guardians on the fly, depending on how the battle is going.

Once you’ve picked your preferred character and decided on a deck, you can then set off on a new journey to start. Only adventure mode will be unlocked at the beginning. You will then need to work your way through three areas, each containing five stages.

Prior to starting a stage, you get to select from one of three battles. Each of these presents a mission, offering rewards for completing their objectives including things like skill points, gold items, or cards. As well as healing a certain percentage of your health or allowing you to upgrade cards to higher star ratings that increases their effects.

If you’ve played card battle games before, Neoverse features a familiar concept of expending your mana, seen as an orange diamond to play the cards in your hand which are drawn at random from your deck. Each card has a specific mana cost, denoted by the number in the orange diamond on the cards themselves.

In each battle, you’ll face between one and three opponents and after expending all of your mana, your turn is over and the enemies get to perform their actions. You’re able to see what an enemy is about to do in their turn by hovering your cursor over the icon beneath them. This helps you to forward plan for their actions during your current turn battles.

You and the enemy take turns to attack and defend until either you lose all of your hit points, at which point you get a chance to attempt the battle again, or you kill all of the enemies for which you are rewarded with some gold, skill points, a new card and occasionally an item.

Cards come in four main types, indicated by the colour of the card and this is rather important.

You have blue defensive cards which generate shield stacks seen above your character, and these absorb points of damage from incoming enemy attacks. Red attack cards allow you to direct attacks towards single or multiple opponents and often come with additional status effects such as radiation or piercing, which bypasses enemy armor or others which reduce outgoing enemy damage.

The third type of card are purple instant cards which are generally utility cards. The call upon or enhance other cards. Finally, you have yellow constant cards which provide various beneficial effects to your character. These persist through the current battle. There are also white hindrance cards that are usually put into your deck by enemies and they generally have a variety of negative effects on your character.

The colors of the cards are so important because above your mana meter, you have something called “battletech” which features a series of coloured segments indicating the order in which cards must be played to activate it. Doing so triggers a combo enabling your next card to deal double damage. But messing up the chain resets the counter and presents you with a different set of colours to match.

The first of these is called Precision. This rewards you with additional gold for killing enemies and occurs when you deal the exact amount of damage required to kill an enemy. The second and possibly the most important gameplay mechanic you’re going to want to master is called Parrying. The parry effect triggers when your shield stacks block the same amount of damage delivered by an enemy attack. Successfully parrying will lock down an enemy making it unable to perform any actions next turn. This is especially useful when you’re facing multiple opponents or further on in the game, when enemies are throwing a ton of hindrance cards.

All throughout the game, you’ll accumulate gold which can be spent at the shop in between battles. Here you can purchase new cards to build up your deck with items which can be activated in battles. Providing various benefits or additional skill points, along with the ones earned from battles. You can also spend them to unlock skills, many of which are unique to each character and provide things like additional hp, mana or passive buffs for the rest of the game.

Beating the more challenging boss enemies found in the fifth battle of each area also rewards you with trophies. You can use these in the character select menu to unlock equippable items that provides you with additional buffs.

So in each run of adventure mode, the battles that you face are randomly selected providing plenty of replayability. While your first few runs probably won’t prove overly challenging, after completing the game with a character, you unlock the transcended universe which allows you to select an additional modifier – increasing the difficulty but providing more rewards.

In addition to adventure mode, you also have Hunter Mode. This allows you to select a bunch of cards to add to your starting deck before embarking on a mission to complete a series of 20 battles in a row.

Lastly, you have Challenge Mode. This lets you select one of your previously completed decks to pit against the most challenging enemies in the game. However, each time you start it this mode, you have to pay with trophies.

PROs, CONs and OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE
While you do get a few hints about how to play the game in your first few battles, it doesn’t really feel like they did a good enough job of explaining everything you need to know before starting. So you’re going to have to pick things up as you go along, especially with the card mechanics for each hero.

The deck building mechanics in general, has some great depth to them. It’s good how each character offered a different style of gameplay and there are plenty of options as the game went on to build your deck in the direction that you wanted.

The variety of enemies in the game was also good, with each set of enemies presenting their own challenge and strategies to beat. In Challenge Mode, it was a bit of an odd game concept to have to pay each time you pick this mode. You will end up not having enough since generally, players will choose to spend all of your trophies for character items.

But as with all games, there are elements of luck involved and you might occasionally feel underprepared for the enemies that you’re up against. Thankfully, these occurrences are very few and most fights can be easily beaten with some clever strategizing.

When it comes to visuals, the game looks pretty decent although texture resolution has obviously took a hit and at times it did look like someone had been a little overzealous with the sharpness filter in some areas.

Audio-wise, there are some nice sound effects for enemy and character actions, and abilities. And though pretty limited, the game’s soundtrack wasn’t too bad either with some nice relaxing menu music and thumping drum beats to accompany battles.

Neoverse is a very solid deck building game with some enjoyable combat mechanics and plenty of variety if you’re into the genre. You must be prepared to learn as you play and don’t expect too much from the game’s storyline. Its price may be a little too high for those who are still on the fence with this one. You can get Neoverse Trinity Edition from the Switch EShop $24. Alternatively, the game’s also available on Xbox and Steam.

When it comes down to whether or not Neoverse is worth picking up we’d say if you’re a fan of deck building, rogue-like play, you’ll likely have fun playing this game.

HITMAN 3 – REVIEW

OUR RATING 8/10

GAME OVERVIEW
Hitman 3 is the conclusion of the World of Assassination saga, which closes the cycle started in 2016 last generation. It started in an episodic way, but now it’s back to being a full-fledged product.

The game’s story follows Agent 47 in his quest for revenge against ICA and the organization called Providence. These organizations, which are inserted in various spheres of society, are cunning and will go to great lengths to complete their goals. In addition to 47, other well-known characters from the franchise make their faces, such as Diana Burnwood and Lucas Gray. They have their brilliance and are not just cutscenes, showing that the franchise can be something even bigger.

The plot of the franchise shows a good evolution in terms of narrative, bringing more layers to the characters. With each completed mission, we have cutscenes that take the climax to a new level, whether to show the next objective or even to add more fuel to the fire. Some missions will remain in your memory, with epic moments and full of twists.

GAMEPLAY
The highlight of this new trilogy was offering freedom to the player, with a sandbox map that opens up a range of possibilities. This was accomplished with mastery in the third game, with even more ways to eliminate your targets and some goals that are more than murdered targets. These objectives create situations of tension in the plot, which take the story to another level. It was a maturity easily perceived in that third game.

Some features like the famous elusive target will be released via free updates. For those who do not know this mode, the player has a special target that can only be accessed once, without saving, a death with only one attempt. The aggravation contracts bring modifiers to make our lives more difficult. The Hitman 3 menu features all the missions in this trilogy, as long as the player has purchased previous games. This is a great facilitator for the franchise fan who wants to search some missions.

Hitman has always been a franchise that prioritizes gameplay, with great possibilities for the player. In Hitman 3  the same type of commands were maintained, something that even the player being a novice can learn with a few minutes, and if he wants to do a workout, he can complete the tutorial that precedes the main phases.

PROs, CONs and OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE
One of IO Interactive‘s main promises was the evolution of the Glacier engine used in the Hitman franchise , which underwent a fire test, and had to deal with the generation transition, which lately has been causing a lot of trouble in some games. In addition, Hitman 3  was the first project published by the company, which gained independent status, since before the official distribution was made by Square Enix.

The most noticeable change regarding gameplay is the use of a camera, which can be used to activate photography mode or to hack doors and some computers. An interesting aspect of the game is the inclusion of investigative elements, whose puzzle solving forces the player out of his comfort zone.

In the first few minutes some changes are noticeable, especially in the graphics that are incredible. It was not just the graphics that were boosted, we had a considerable improvement in the movements of Agent 47, which now has more fluid actions, and that do not cause strangeness to the player.

Another interesting point of the Glacier engine is its physics, which has good interactions with objects, that is, the bodies when they are shot do not fall like a stone, which offers a good truth to what is happening on the screen. The wind is also well represented in the engine, with effects that make the character’s clothes move naturally.

The map is vast and well-populated, with a large number of NPCs on the screen, something that has been seen in other games in the franchise, but that has gained a greater proportion in that game.

The graphics, as said before, are at a very high level, with great lighting and shadow effects. Even running on a base console, it seemed that you can still take advantage of Ray Tracing techniques, such was the beauty of some scenarios. One of the coolest effects in the game was the rain, which simulated something very close to reality. The phase design was very well built, with locations full of details. Since Hitman 3 maps are sandboxed, these types of games are generally not as detailed, but here each corner of the map brings a possibility and also something to say.

The sound is sensational, with great effects and even some tracks that pack the game well. Interestingly the only problem that may arise in the game is in the location, which has no audio, or subtitles, something that isquite strange, since the previous games in this trilogy had some location. But that can be fixed with some updating.

Hitman 3 is one of the best games in the franchise, with a gameplay that offers great freedom for the player to complete their goals in any way they wish. The possibilities are even more creative, increasing the replay factor with features that encourage us to complete the same stage several times to be more and more fun.

The story goes deeper into the lore of the franchise, with very interesting secondary characters, who have more layers in their personality. The improvements to the Glacier engine were welcome, with incredible graphics and one of the best optimizations I’ve seen in this generation transition.