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Darksiders 3 is the souls-lite version of the Darksiders series, replacing the Zelda gameplay of the first and Prince of Persia style of the second with a large interconnected world and the need for well timed dodges and counter attacks. I don’t think I have ever played a series that changes gameplay as well as the Darksiders series. If you like souls like games, being punished for button mashing or games that require twitch like reaction speeds in combat then Darksiders 3 is for you.

One thing Darksiders excelled at telling the same story from different point of views. If you were hoping DS3 was going to continue the story from where the first game ended then prepare to be disappointed. Starting 10 years after the prologue of the first game (and finishing somewhere before the end of the second game and before war is sent back to earth in the first) you take control of Fury, the 3rd horsemen. Disdainful of her fellow riders and full of anger and boredom she is summoned by the charred counsel to capture the 7 sins, monstrous beings that are the embodiment of their traits, that serve neither heaven or hell but will still destroy the balance if left unchecked. What starts off as a simple story of hunting down the sins turns into a very decent story of betrayal and provides tons of character growth as Fury slowly comes to see the flaws of the sins in herself and has to grow to overcome them, least she succumbs to them. This also changes her view on her fellow riders, characters from the other races and humanity itself.

Gameplay is been completely changed compared to the previous 2 games. Being a souls like game, death comes often and quickly, with basic enemies being able to kills you with a few hits. Using items has a cool down and takes item to use in game, which can be interrupted. The game is slightly more forgiving as there aren’t many enemies that hide behind object or behind blind corners, so if you are somewhat coordinated those death don’t happen all that frequently. Death when does happen will put you back at the last serpent hole point you were at and drop all your souls (currency). Unlike most game failing to collect these straight after your death doesn’t make you lose them- they hang around until you pick them up making it much more forgiving. You don’t have a stamina bar and can dodge to your hearts content. Souls are used for upgrading your level, with only 3 stats, health, physical and arcane damage being available. Each increase to one of these provides diminishing returns, and while tempting to dump all into 1 stat it’s good to at least upgrade semi evenly for a while so you don’t end up as a glass cannon. Weapons and eventually armour can also be upgraded for slight increases in stats or buffs, but the big buffs come from enhancements you can place in each weapon that provide active and passive bonuses.

The world is designed very well, with what is initially a liner path somewhat giving you an option of where to explore and who to fight before again becoming a fixed route at the end. The game does very little to show you where you have to go, with the only help bring a icon the points you to the closet sin(and the path to get to it). You don’t have to follow this, and exploring often rewards you with more collectables and items. After unlocking all the powers the game truly opens up, showing you just how connected the world is (it’s like a giant honeycomb). There are tons of secrets and extra places to explore if you can find the time. There are a fair few puzzle you have to solve, with the throwing bugs being some of the most annoying mini games I have played in a while.

The combat and enemies are well done, with each enemy being unique (no reused skins in here) and having a tell that advises when an attacking is coming. Just mashing the attack button will get you killed quickly, with the game rewarding perfect dodges that usually do a lot more damage and leave the enemy open for a few more attacks. You have a good choice of weapons, from your basic whip to each of the hollow infused forms that provide their own special moves and charged attacks. While the extra weapons won’t really help that much in combat it’s nice to be able to set enemies on fire or use a force attack to break the guard if blocking’s enemies. You have a wrath attack that changes depending on which power is selected that can easily help in combat, and the havoc mode where you can destroy anything that stands in your way for a short amount of time. The boss fights were outstanding, really bringing home the mechanics of the game and unforgiving if you forget them. Each of the bosses has great dialogue as they try and temp fury (I loved Sloth, Wrath and Lust), and the multipart fights were a good challenge. First time around I thought they were very difficult, but after respecting my stats and with a bit more practice I breezed through them a second time.

The voice work and cinematics were very good. Fury’s VA does a good job conveying her constant anger, and through it her growth central to the story. Other major supporting characters and bosses are also given a good amount of screen time and I loved the scenes where each of the sins try and tempt fury. The background music fit the game well, never overshadowing the dialogue or sound effects, but supporting the game from the background. The game does have a lot of pauses (either with in game cinematics or set movies) that introduce new bosses, concepts or character growth. For some reason the text in the cinematics doesn’t carry across in the screenshots in the base game, but works in the DLC.

The DLCs are a mixed bag. Both add new armours (which the crucible armour being helpful while The Voids abysmal armour is the best in game and should be your go to). The crucible is a easier version of what was in Darksiders 2, this time with plenty of mob rounds where you can replenish health, wrath and fury for the upcoming fights. By the time you have unlocked all of the fights it’s already endgame content, but the rewards might be able to help you get items and upgrades that you missed during the main play through. The Voids it more of a puzzle orientated dungeon, which you have to use each of the force hollows to proceed, and they get progressively harder. It does provide 4 new weapons (so you can slot in unused enhancements for the passive buff bonus) which is a massive bonus. The bosses are tough compared to the rest of the boss fights (however build upon an attack pattern for the DLCs end boss). The fight cinematics were quite funny, and not what I expected.

There is some replayability, with the option of a new game plus mode that gets increasingly more difficult to play, but nowhere near what was in The Surge. You do keep all your upgrades and items from previous play throughs, and while enemies are tougher to kill, you should already have a good handle on things. There is the options of changing combat to classic mode (items are used instantly and attacks don’t interrupt you)

If you are chasing 100% achievements then you will need to purchase both the DLC’s and grind a bit, as it requires at least 2 playthoughs, but it’s fairly easy to do and much more forgiving than other souls like games.

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XCOM:Chimera Squad is XCOM meets COPS, putting the agency’s newly created Chimera squad in charge of protecting City 31 after an assassination on its elected leader, with you focusing on investigating the 3 disparage groups that might have had the means or motive for the attack while trying to stop the city sliding into anarchy. I don’t think it’s as good as XCOM 2, but worth a look if you like the XCOM series and always wanted to control the aliens or like tactical games with RPG elements. It has a much more focused story and shorter gameplay (about 15-20 hours to complete) with the removal of much of the customisation that the XCOM series is known for, and its current patch version is still very buggy. I can’t help but think that it was rushed out when another few month of QA would have really helped with the overall polish.

The plot continues from where XCOM2 left off, but this time with the resistance forces being successful in defeating the Elders. This has left majority of their forces stranded on earth with no leadership to follow (or control them). This game does a good job an explaining what has happened in the following 5 years, from the aliens being detained, processed and integrated into a unique, multicultural city which is designed for all species to live. There are lots of little touches that nod to this, from alien news presenters, advertisements for food (still don’t know what Sectoids can eat as everything seems lethal to them), and how each of the species treat and talk about each other. I would have liked a little more of this, but what was present was good. You are primarily investigating 3 different groups in the city, and working out if they are responsible for the attack on the mayor. After selecting which group to investigate the others are locked out until the active investigation is completed, however this adds more active dark events to future investigations. I did like the fact that the end mission for each faction changes slightly depending on when the faction is investigated.

The city map (which replaces the Geoscope from the previous game) states the current city status (with a game over happening if the city’s anarchy counter is filled). Each mission that isn’t performed increases the unrest in that district (there are usually 2-3 missions available at any one point), and when a district’s unrest is high enough it adds anarchy to the tally, which replaces the avatar project bar. This makes a game a balancing act between taking a missions for its rewards vs keeping district unrest low. This isn’t much of an issue in easier difficulty settings, but becomes a main focus on impossible. You can send agents for training and healing, choose new abilities for them, purchase equipment, conduct research and occasionally purchase from the scavenger market (black market) for unique items. Some missions require you to deploy your squad of 4 agents, while others just increase the day counter and give you resources. Intel is the most sought after resource, as its used for upgrading your intel teams (they provide different bonuses when completing missions and can reduce anarchy), as well as making purchases from the scavenger market. Not managing a base lets you purely focus on the missions and research, but removes a lot of the urgency between what is really needed.

The Tactical gameplay is mostly the same as XCOM2, however most mission continue over multiple area’s and the new breach mode which is the defining gameplay mechanic every mission starts with. Each mission has a few different entry methods, from using explosives to blast through walls, rappelling through windows or slithering through vents to get the jump on enemies. This gives you a free round of firing on enemies and sometimes buffs or debuffs that can last for the first round or the entire battle. All characters on the battlefield are then played through an initiative order (instead of turns for an entire side). This can make focusing on enemies who is higher up on the initiative order a better choice to stop return fire, however it might conflict with a better target or an enemy who could cause more damage. Items and some characters can expand the available entry points, giving you more options if the mission allows for it. Some missions require you to rescue a VIP, others are to destroy or capture an object or hostile leader, but majority of them are require the neutralisation of all enemies with intel being awarded for capturing enemies alive and not killing them. Losing an agent isn’t the end, however you will have a game over if one of them bleed’s out in the field o you fail any mission. One of the big drawcards of xcom was the ability to lose the battle but still win the war- that has been removed here. Each of the 3 primary investigations resolves around you ticking down the clock (6-9 days worth) to unlock the next major story component of the investigation, in which the pattern repeats. The game does a good job with the 3 different factions, but really ham fists the reveal for the final boss. It could have used one or two separate missions to join the dots.

Each of the groups are mostly comprised of set units (ones is heavily psionic Humans, one is Mutons, while the last is Androids and ex advent troops), while mixed in with generic enemies. All of the groups were well fleshed out (each of the enemies are different enough that you are forced to prioritise who to aim for, and different enough in abilities and dark events that it doesn’t constantly feel like you are fighting the same enemies repeatedly. The boss fights are better designed, requiring you to perform set tasks while gunning on the run. The last fight is epic, with a lot of stages that usually mean you are out of special abilities to use in the last fight, making it a real fight of attrition. The generic missions are good, but aren’t as scripted as the story missions.

Visually the stages are good, from shootouts in nightclubs, convenience stores, rooftops, factories, offices and the unique story stages. Your agents look good and each is unique, but the customisation is sorely lacking, with only armour colour and special weapons showing up. It would have been nice if there were a lot more character models in the game, as all the enemies look the same, and civilians all wear the same clothes (no Mutons in Hawaiian shirts). The UI is good, and shows all the options available to damage enemies, including environmental and friendly damage). I miss the broadcasts you used to get from (Bradford), as they have been replaced with an anime style picture of the character talking. All the environments seem to be destructible, with most missions ending with a lack of cover for the characters and walls missing.

Other than the constant crashes to desktops and missing items bug the biggest letdown is the voice acting. It’s plain to hear the VA’s didn’t know some of their characters were non-human before recording, everyone sounds normal. Torque the viper agent’s tone sounds the same Blueblood, the human pistoleer. Their actual recording were good, and back at base there are lots of banter between agents which is good, and usually humorous to listen too. All of the old advent speech is missing, everyone learnt English very quickly within the last 5 years. The soundtracks are good, especially the beat playing in the nightclub missions.

The modding community is going ballistic, with mods for everything. You can add in new sub objectives (like armed civilians), new skins to completely new agents, new abilities along with tons of UI fixes and tweaks. The workshop might be one of the games saving graces.

If you are aiming for 100% achievements, then all should come naturally, with the only hard one being completing the game in impossible mode. If you can live with the crashes, then it also requires 3 playthroughs.

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Pyre is another one of those amazing games where the gameplay is deceptively difficult although quite simple, the story forces you to make choices you aren’t ready for and the artwork and music elevate it to a must play game. I normally stay away from anything sports related when gaming, but recommend this to anyone who likes basketball type sports or games that constantly make you question your choices.

Set in a high fantasy setting. you take the role of the reader, a person banished from the commonwealth to the downside, a hellish landscape where life is hard and most perish soon after becoming an exile. You are found by a trio of saviours and soon take up the mantle of the reader (being one of the few people who are literate) who guides the Nightwings (your team) in the rites, a basketball like competition where if you win you might be able to send a banished teammate home, with all crimes forgiven and a glorious future. What begins as a simple task of winning to keep the promise you made together turns into a hand wringing choice of who plays, and who you vote to send home. Do you send your best home, making future matches harder? What about the opponents, many who have been exiled unjustly or because of political reasons? Does sacrificing one person’s happiness outweigh the many? The underlying themes of personal redemption, loss and sacrifice are constantly hammered home, each choice becoming harder as the game plays on. I loved that your team are essentially the last boss (think of them as the Bulls during their championship heyday), the rites stop if you don’t play, forcing all the other teams to compete against each other for that slim chance to best you and be.

The gameplay is simple but yet complex at higher difficulties, and allows for lots of intricate strategies depending on who you field. Your goal is to get the celestial orb (the ball) and use it to douse the opponent’s pyre (the net). If a character dives into the pyre they are excluded from the next round, otherwise the orb can be thrown into the pyre which allows all characters to return, however running the risk of it being intercepted. A character’s aura size is their defence, when an aura touches an opponent they are banished for a set time. Each character has different speed, stamina, jump distances, aura sizes, aura shapes and attacks that can be used for offence and defence, as well as passive buffs. You can only control one character at a time but switch between the 3 characters that you have selected. Carrying the orb will remove that character’s aura and disable attacks, so while it’s tempting to try and run one character down the court it makes sense to move all 3 down, trying to banish the other sides characters so you have a free shot at the pyre. A level of planning is required, if you play with the same characters too often they are forced to miss a rite, which can leave you with a team of underperforming characters at a critical rite you want to win. Loss isn’t an end in Pyre, and while you miss out on XP, you gain XP at twice the rate next time you win. The opponent’s saviour their victory, moving up the ladder for a greater chance at a liberation rite, where the winner sets one character free. Losing one match may allow you to come back stronger, more focused against a weaker team. Sometimes losing is winning.

Pyre, like Bastion before it is an explosion of colour, each world map point is wonderfully drawn with points to interact with, choices to make with full lore of each area slowly being drop fed to you as you play. Each stage is slightly different, with some favouring characters who can fly, others who can zip around quickly or can use other abilities. Characters have a wonderful style about them, and a lot of the game is spent talking to your teammates and the trip to the destination, not the destination itself.

The sounds and music are amazing as ever, and while most characters vocals are gibberish, The Voice who commentates the matches and equally uplifts and belittles you’re efforts is great to listen to. The music is full of string instrumentals and matches the game perfectly. There are a few songs with vocals, and they positioned at perfect places in the game. I loved how the end credits song changes to what you accomplished in game, I haven’t seen that done before.

The controls are quite intuitive and there aren’t a lot of combinations to remember. You can play using a keyboard but I highly recommend using a controller. There is a option for local co-op, which does allow you to try using the opponents leaders, instead of the 9 standard ones.

The only DLC for the game is the soundtrack, and as mentioned before its good.

If you are trying to get 100% achievements then Pyre is quite easy, though it requires 2 play throughs to finish on the hardest difficulty.

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The Mega Man legacy collection is an excellent port of the first 6 games from the NES (originally released between 87-93) but released on steam in 2015, and shows how with a little bit of work old games can be made playable to be enjoyed by new generations of players. This is a great port, and if you like retro gaming or platformers then I highly recommend you pick this up when on sale.

I grew up playing the first 2 Mega Mans, I know them for the brutal platformers they are- they require precise timing, knowledge of the enemies, stage layout, boss weaknesses and patience to keep doing the same thing over and over until you get it right. They weren’t forgiving then, and still aren’t now, but Capcom have rightly decided to help players out and have added some new features to help those who want to use it. All the games have a rewind feature (like Price of Persia) that allows you to rewind death or damage, making all of the games much easier to play. No longer do you have to have near perfect runs, if you make a mistake you can try again as many times as you need. Mega man required precise inputs to play back in the day (the Mega Man X series was more forgiving). The port ran well for me, I didn’t suffer any slow down or crashes. I wouldn’t bother playing the game on a keyboard, it was designed for a controller. Make sure you have one you want to have a good time playing this.

The collection covers the first 6 games, and you can see the evolution of the games over the years, from new features and abilities to stage design and boss fights (from 10 to close to 20). Considering they were all on the same hardware it’s a good view into how much developers can push a system once they know it’s workings. Each of the games adds a little bit more, from extra bosses to fight, new rush abilities, secondary paths in stages, multipart fights and hidden extras. While most of the bosses follow a similar format (industrial robots) the later games branch right out into the weird, with 6 being around a fighting contest.

Visually the game is very aged (it’s from 87) and was made for old 4:3 aspect ratios, however you have the option to put borders in to fill the black space or stretch out the screen to fit modern hardware, along with v-sync and filters to give you that old hardware feel. I did have a few instances where some graphics in both 1,2 & 6 both flickered, making some attacks/enemies or backgrounds nearly invisible, however this only happened in a few instances and the rewind features helped offset this.

The 8 bit sounds brings back memories, and the added feature to play any of the soundtracks in any order from the main menu was good. I’m surprised that the soundtracks aren’t available as DLC (the Mega Man X collection does offer them, but at a premium price).

Also included are a whole bunch of extras, including character artwork, backgrounds for each enemy as well as weapon stats and notes for enemy/boss weaknesses. Whoever decided to change the Japanese box art for the first 3 games western release needs to be taken out back and beaten with a rubber hose. Copies of the original manual aren’t included, this is the only thing missing from the collection. The big draw would be the challenge mode, which contains 54 remixed stages and boss Rush battles which you to try to complete as quickly as possible. Lots of these require dedicated knowledge the layout and weapons available to get the best times, and with the rewind function absent require a great deal of skill to pass.

If you are chasing 100% achievements then it’s possible, but majority of your time will be spent trying to get gold in the challenges which aren’t easy and demand a mastery that many wont achieve.

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Mortal Kombat 11 continues the 4-year release cycle being released in 2019, promoting more streamlined combat with less breaks in the action, much better connectivity for multiplayer and greater fighter customization. It also continues the story of the newest generation of fighters trying to protect Earthrealm, this time from a new enemy. It looks very sleek, is great fun to play and I highly recommend it if you like fighting games.

If you play Mortal Kombat for the story then you shouldn’t be disappointed. It has a great plot, and instead of replaying the events of games 5-8 it completely branches off in a new direction, while doing various nods to the previous entries. While I was looking forward to taking on Onaga and Blaze, and with Raiden being the badass god Earthrealm deserves a much older entity the Titan Kronika decides Raiden has caused enough problems and promptly smashes different timelines together, removing Dark Raiden from the present but warping tons of characters from the past to the present, including an uncorrupted Raiden. It’s very much like the Injustice storyline where there is now a very good reason for past versions of characters to fight their future selves, while bringing lots of fan favorites back. A lot of the story is based around this character progression, with younger characters trying to figure out if they can change the future to avoid certain fates, sometimes fighting their future selves who are battle weary or in shock at having lost friends return or current enemies they have no knowledge of. Others peel off and join Kronika because of the better future she promises. It’s a very interesting dynamic, while being serious it’s also very light hearted (the young Johnny Cage and Old Johnny Cage parts are the best, along with anything starring Kano). After 11 games, some characters still can’t seem to get a break (I’m looking at you scorpion) . The main story progresses slightly differently this time, with the option of selecting which character you can play as for some fights. While the end outcome is the same, it’s interesting to see the different verbal sparring that happens between the characters.

The combat is much more streamlined. In MK11. X-Ray moves, which were performed upon filling a gauge in the previous game for massive amounts of damage and could be performed anytime during the match have been removed. They have been replaced by fatal blows, which only occur when the player is down to 30% life and can only be performed once, offer the player a quick way of getting back into the match if they are taking a beating. Many moves also have a crushing blow animation, which is slightly longer than the normal move (and zooms into the bones breaking), but offer a slightly longer windows to pile on some extra hits to the opponent. Perfect blocks are also new, allowing you to recover quicker from enemy attacks and help launch counter offensives if timed correctly. Each stage still has objects that can be used, these are now split into defensive and offensive moves that each have their own gauge and slowly refill during the fights. You can also break out of an air juggle, or roll when stuck in a corner, but these use all of the defensive gauge, so if not timed well might set up for a more painful combo later. Fighting is all about learning combos to maximize damage, and not blindly button mashing. While the base AI is pretty easy to destroy even on Hard, Online opponents who have mastered combos can do some crazy damage, I’ve has combos of 50% used against me. Getting anywhere near a corner is also a setup for getting pummeled. For me personally, I found anything more than a basic combo hard to pull off, they require nearly perfect timing, but are very rewarding when you do manage to do it. The tutorial system is quite expansive, maybe a little less than the killer instinct system but it does a very good job of teaching combos, timing rates, and all the different techniques used. The AI fights are interesting to mess around with- it’s basically your AI team tweaked to what you want them to do vs an opponent’s. It can be a good idea to watch and see what combos the AI can pull off, to see if the move set you have selects flows in combat.

The online connectivity seemed a lot better than in the previous game. I didn’t have any drop outs, and most of my matches had very little lag, compared to the previous game where every match would disconnect. While you aren’t matched by skill level, every match was enjoyable (even when getting destroyed). Invasion towers have been removed, and now there is a co-op tower where you work along side 1-2 others for better loots rewards while taking on characters who have super beefed up defense and damage. Towers still rotate in and out of existence, so the challenges are varied as are the rewards. Match modifiers seem to be locked to the towers, but don’t need to be unlocked in the Krypt anymore.

Character customization has been greatly expanded, instead of picking a variant with set moves and fixed costume you now have the flexibility to pick whatever you have unlocked for the character to wear, as well as individual moves, intros and finishing sequences. Each character has 3 pieces of equipment they can choose from which you can pick from freely(say scorpions rope dart, swords or mask), though the only further editing you can do is slotting in gems that provide your AI character different buffs. Each of the characters have great back and forth verbal sparring before the match and quite a few different costume to wear (with many nods to all the different outfits they have worn in previous games, movies and other material they have been in). Battle damage has been toned down, characters will have cuts, bruising and bleeding and slightly damaged clothes that matches the sides the character has been taking hits on, but nothing that shreds the clothes like in the last game. The female outfits have also been mostly desexualized, no more scraps of cloth or outfits that would look like it belongs at the beach.

The Krypt returns, and is more like its own separate side adventure. There is lots of exploring to do, 3 separate currencies, plenty of tools you need to collect to progress and hidden areas and characters to find. Majority of the standard chests are randomized drops, so if you are hunting a certain piece of equipment then you are in for a lot of grinding. The soul and heart chests are fixed.

Visually the game looks great, running smoothly at 4K. The stages are a great nod to the previous games, and having some backgrounds merge past and present was very cool. I do wish it had of added some extra functionality to them (like smashing between times to fight on a different stage or allowing stage fatalities).

I thought the voice acting was good, though in some places not as good as the previous game. Most of the previous voices actors for characters didn’t return, if you have played the previous game recently you can pick this up. The music was as good as ever.

For the DLC I would recommend the character pack and Shao Khan, but advise staying away from purchasing Frost, as she is unlockable though playing the first part of the campaign and I can’t recommend paying for something that can be unlocked with 20 minutes of gameplay.

This might be the first Mortal Kombat game that is actually easy to earn 100% achievements in, with the toughest challenges being the combo tutorial and having 3 players in the same co-op tower.

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Secret of Mana is an action RPG that was originally released in the Super Nintendo in 93 and remade in 2018 with updated graphics and a remastered soundtrack. This remake seems to have a lot of people out of sorts, with the changes to music and visuals. If you are looking for a simple action RPG to sink a few hours into that doesn’t require much grinding then this is the game for you. If you had to pick between this and Trials of Mana I would recommend playing Trials, as it’s plot is much better with 6 characters with interwoven stories, it improves on nearly all of this games systems and has multiple endings. Like Final Fantasy these games aren’t connected to each other, so nothing carries over plot wise between games.

Having finished the original multiple times, I found this version more than serviceable and enjoyable to play. I didn’t mind the simplified graphics (think Nintendo DS looks, though I wished the newly added speech matched the characters mouths when they talk), and the remastered soundtrack is amazing. A guide, monster list and weapon list have all been added, in case you are trying a 100% run to help you keep track of things or want to look at the character models. The characters undergo extra development with little scenes that play when resting at inn’s, that slowly progress their team development and show off their personalities. The game lacks any sort of manual or training system, it took me ages to figure out how to quick switch between the characters. It still supports three people playing at once, though I wasn’t able to test this.

This remake leaves the simplistic plot intact, only adding one small island to the map for a quick gag joke that was cut from the SNES version. You still play as Randi, an orphaned youth who after a dare gone wrong removes the mana sword from the stone in the lake, releasing monsters into the world. You are soon joined by Primm, a noblewomen who is trying to escape a arranged engagement and Popoi, a spirit trickster who tries to hustle money with a dodgy circus act. While all have separate motives for staying together, their quests combine to recharge the mana sword and stop the empire from taking control of the mana fortress, a doomsday weapon that nearly destroyed the world in ages past. Like the original you can change the names to something more fitting (none of them are used in the new audio) and shows how much games have matured in the last 3 decades.

Combat has changed slightly, with attacks being able to go in any direction, which can cause a lot more misses now. The party controlled AI also seems drafter, though they will plug away at whatever they can based on your instructions (they won’t auto cast magic). Fighting is action oriented, (like Zelda), but requiring you to wait for the attack gauge to fill to do decent damage. Weapons and magic still increase in proficiency via use, and are still locked to acquiring orbs and Mana Seeds. Fights can be ignored completely by running past the enemies, and magic can be cast as soon as the previous spell’s guardian is finished (very little cool down). The original game limited only 3 enemies on the screen at once, I’m not sure why this was copied across now that memory restraints aren’t a problem. The game itself is still very easy to play (there’s one tough boos and that’s only because of the instant death when the timer runs out). Accidently over leveling is a problem, and with all damage/health being tied directly to the character levels this can make future areas a breeze to pass through. Defense/Evade is tied to the equipped armors, as long as you purchase new armor when available you shouldn’t run into issues. The ring system is still included, but for some reason items quantities are locked to what was available on the SNES (this was updated in future releases on other systems).

Graphically everything has changed. The character models, enemies and environment are now all 3D (think FF3 remake), though lots of the special character animations now seem to have been lost. A nice touch was adding the original map as a minimap on the screen. Overcharged spells keep their extra animation, and the new levels of weapons are more easily visible on each of the characters. It would have been great to have the option to flick between old style graphics and the new style. Lots of the enemies are re-used with different skins, which was fine in 93 but looks lazy now. There are small differences (other than color), but they are very minor.

Secret of mana was one of those games that was swell known for its amazing soundtrack and this copy doesn’t disappoint- in fact you can switch between the original soundtrack and new soundtrack at any point in the game. The only things I would wish for is the alternative versions of tracks be available, though you can listen to these on YouTube. I think all of the newer versions sound great when played within the game, with many of them sounding better than the originals. This holds true for all of the tracks except for the Dark Lich boss battle music, which when listening to it by itself sounds chaotically jumbled and discordant. The voice acting wasn’t too bad, the 3 main heroes and most of the supporting cast were voiced decently, and without re-writing the script the speech follows the original very closely (and keeps all the cheesy enemies mha ha ha laughs).

I seem to be lucky with my play thorough, only having one crash to deal with before the first boss. Luckily the game incorporates a auto save feature (separate to your normal saves), so if it does crash at least your progress isn’t overly impacted. While the crash was annoying at least I hadn’t lost everything I had done.

If you are chasing 100% achievements then this game is pretty easy, with only a small part of grinding required for some of the enemy and equipment achievements.

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I’m surprised it has taken so long for Mega Man X to make its way to Steam, fans have been screaming out for years that they want it available on Steam. A.R.E.S came very close, but left everyone wanting more. 20xx had the gameplay, but some of its procedural stage designs became spike traps. Mighty #9’s hype train ultimately left the game not living up to expectations. Capcom has finally realized that there is a market for their older games and ported the first four of the X series together in one collection, 25 years after the original games release. If you like any of the X series (or the above mentioned games) or like great gaming soundtracks then you owe it to yourself to pick up the first collection.

You play as X (an Android) as he has to go between different stages and destroy the Reploids masters (Replica Android’s that are based off X’s design) that have gone maverick and are threatening humanity. X knows most of the master’s in each game, and being a pacifist at heart who has to fight his former friends makes his struggles that much harder. Each master has a weakness to one of the other masters weapons, and the path through each game is decided heavily on this. Each stage contains lots of secrets from upgrades that increase your life to part upgrades that make grant you new abilities. Each x game progresses this concept a little further, with the dash becoming more distinctive and the buster upgrades allowing bigger blasts to eventually have two variants in X4 to choose from.

I think the production quality on X -X3 was very high, the stages are designed very well, the music is phenomenal and encourage exploring and trying different things to succeed. The boss designs were great and certain weapons removed abilities from other bosses. X2 and X3 allowed different outcomes depending on your actions during the game. X4 was the shift from Super Nintendo to PlayStation and it shows. The graphics aren’t quite as crisp (there is a lot more animation however for every enemy and X/Zero), and my god the added voice work is horrible. YouTube any of the movie scenes, they are very low quality for a AAA game. It did add a host of new features like hover cycle stages, rotating stages, a energy weapon sub tank and 2 separate storyline’s. X4 seems a lot shorter, but is essentially 2 games, one where you play with X, and the other you play with the swordsman Zero. Abilities are different between the 2 as are the playstyles (Zero comes fully upgraded with parts already) and most of the upgrades from bosses are enhanced abilities rather than moves.

If you were a fan of the soundtracks from the originals then there is a built in music player where you can load up the tracks from the first 4 games and play, though if you want to play them outside the game you are forced to pay the stupidly high DLC prices for them. One game soundtrack costs more than the collection!

I wouldn’t bother playing the game on a keyboard, it was designed for a controller. Make sure you have one you want to have a good time playing this.

As a port Capcom have out done their selves, adding tons of extras and different modes for you to explore. I don’t think there has been a port as comprehensive as this. All games allow you to play in a rookie mode, which drastically reduces the damage you take. There is a challenge mode where you fight 2 bosses at the same time (from all the games x through to x6) and have to select which weapons to use before to compete in a global leaderboard. You can view tons of artwork, listen to the soundtracks and see all of the merchandise and old TV ads. There is a prequel animation that explains the events before the first game, it was interesting to watch as I hadn’t seen it before. You have the option to stretch the aspect ratio (the games where produced when widescreens didn’t exist) or keep the original and full the boarders with artwork, as well as adding different visual filters to the game in case you want that authentic CRT monitor or old TV feel. My one gripe is that in some stages the game slows right down for no reason, for games that were made in 93 this shouldn’t be a problem in modern hardware.

If you are chasing 100% achievements then it’s quite possible, as finishing all the games isn’t overly difficult, and everything else should either come naturally during gameplay or doesn’t take long to find.

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For a game that was only released in 2019, Jump force completely misses the mark with making a compelling single player experience, with its saving grace being the multiplayer and character creation. For every good feature or system the game has, it is offset by something that just doesn’t quite come together how it should. If you enjoy 3 vs 3 fighters or love the idea of having lots of major anime characters from different series fight each other then you should enjoy this game. If you only follow one or two of the series then you might get enjoyment out of this, but will likely be better served buying the respective games that focus on them. I love anime and know most of the series that are making appearances so recommend this (only just and only when on sale) but your mileage might vary.

Jump force is based around all the major manga series worlds being linked to the real world, allowing the respective villains from each series to start decimating each other’s and our real world, which acts as the hub world. Teams of hero’s are deployed to contain the threat, and during one battle, you as a normal civilian are fatality injured. The only way to save you is to infuse you with the umbra cube, which transforms you into a hero capable of joining jump force, an organization set up to use the jump hero’s to stop the threat and minimize damage. It’s a great excuse to see characters from different series fight each other with their signature moves, and while there is a very large cast it loses points for not having Kenpachi from Bleach or Saitama from One Punchman. Some of the included series only have 1 or 2 characters where as others have 5 or 6.

Jump force lots of things right, but also falls short on lots of other things making it a real mixed bag. First up, the character creator is good. It gives you plenty of options from each of the different series, though like all characters they look more realistic than cartoonish. There is a ton of options to choose from, and your character can be edited at any point (except for the sex and primary attack group that it belongs to). Majority of the special moves that you can acquire can be purchased, removing the need to grind stages with RNG drops, same with the clothing options. The remaining moves/clothes require you to clear its required mission with an S rank, which might be hard depending on your skill level. The single player campaign has a terrible storyline, and while it takes time to figure out combos and learn the games system any difficulty in completing missions is due to the fact you will usually always be under leveled against the AI. Experience gain is fairly slow (outside of story missions) until expert free missions are unlocked, where your characters xp gain skyrockets.

The tutorial systems in the game is a joke, it barely explains anything, and even though hints are constantly displayed, the benefit is barely noticed against majority of the AI. It switches between overly powerful, and standing still waiting to be hit. The mob enemies(venoms) come in a few varieties and you will be fighting lots of them. Thankfully their uniform show what move set they will be using (Naruto, one piece or dragonball). The level system isn’t explained at all, nor the J-Skill system and its buffs). There are a very good selection of moves from each major series(and from the thousands you could pick from what I’ve seen the ones available are pretty iconic and all look great when being used). The fighting itself is pretty good, with blocking, using assists and mobility being the key to winning. Since very few moves bypass a block, no chip damage, and characters being unable to escape when the mobility gauge is empty you can set up horrific combos (I’ve seen 75% life in one combo). The awakening and ultimate moves are very cool for most of the characters. The animation is excellent as you move around the arena and pull off special moves, but nonexistent during cut scenes. All abilities leave damage around the stage and the stages can be completed totaled if the correct moves are used during an awakening(this starts a stage transition). Characters clothing suffer damage as well as fights wear on.

The hub city you use to launch most of the missions from is big for no reason other than to make you constantly travel between different areas, and many of the story fights feel like padding. Free missions are where most of the games padding’s comes from, but it’s much easier to get items to drop from these missions (compared to dragonball xenoverse) and I loved the fact that everything could be bought as long as you have the money. The missions don’t display if you have already own a move or clothing, making it a manual process if you want a certain move set or clothing options.

One of the more glaring problems is using the lifelike character models - merging all of the different series together and keeping a cohesive look completely fails. Having Goku from Dragonball and Blackbeard from One Piece together highlights this, as they are drawn in a completely different style. While I though each respective character looked good, having them next to each other really emphases this. The other problem is to make things remotely fair many characters have been massively depowered. Characters like Deku are on the same power level Goku. This leaves major holes in the story, where Goku and Naruto are struggling against basic enemies, being overwhelmed by numbers.

For the life of me I can’t understand why much of the game isn’t voiced. For a flagship game celebrating everything Jump, only a few of the cut scenes and fights are voiced. Everything by else is just dialogue boxes. It comes across as incredibly lazy. The game mentioned that there is only Japanese voices so if you don’t like Gokus shrill feminine Japanese voice actor then be prepared- I forgot this and was disappointed when I realized I couldn’t change this).

Multiplayer is good, thought the lobby needs lots of work. I didn’t seem to suffer too much slow down or lag, and over 100+ games only suffered one disconnect. For friendly matches you have lots of options to select, and can use lots of the options from the campaign. Ranked matches reset character lvls to 1 to make it a more fairer contest. There still seem to be quite a few people playing the game, which is good news. I have had periods where the game sits waiting to find someone to play against, and there is no indication that there is anyone available.

The current available DLC consists of extra characters. You can play against them even if you don’t own the DLC, and some of their move sets seem very powerful.

The game isn’t hard to get 100% achievement, but it requires you to have a friend who you can play against.

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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a 3rd person action adventure game with light puzzle elements released in 2017. It has an amazing vocal track, polished story and great graphics and likely the most accurate depiction of psychosis that has been depicted in a video game. While on the shorter side at 6-8 hours of gameplay I highly recommend giving it ago, as it’s quite a unique experience.

You play as Senua, a Pict (Celtic) warrior from around 700AD in the period where the Vikings are starting to raid their settlements. After a year of self-imposed exile from her village, she returns to find it pillaged and burnt to the ground with her lover sacrificed to the Norse god Hela, and embarks on a journey to Helheim to recover her lovers soul and save him .

What makes this game stand out is that Senua is suffering from psychosis (she calls it the darkness and sees it as a literal darkness that crawls up her arm every time you die), and you experience what she hears and sees. There are constant voices (the furies) which give conflicting advice, some constantly put you down and belittle your efforts and advise you are going to fail, one speaks directly to you breaking the 4th wall while one helps when it can. They also act as the gauge to your health, getting more panicky as you take damage and get closer to death (they don’t want you to succeed, but don’t want to die). The psychosis warps everything you see and experience, a unobstructed path can be an ambush full of enemies or journey into the unknown depths. Druth’s stories of the Norsemen mix with her psychosis, his stories become her reality, their cruelty and ferocity represented by the disembodied enemies you fight and the Norse gods you encounter.

Gameplay is a mix fighting waves of enemies and solving puzzles to continue progressing. Most of the stages are linier, with little deviation other than hunting for hidden lorestones that give expositions of Norse culture and fuel Senua’s delusions. The lorestones also act as a rough guide to how far through the stage you are (and advise if you have missed any). Combat requires a mix of light, heavy and melee attacks to break blocking enemies, with a correctly timed block stunning an enemy and dodging an option for the enemy attacks that can’t be blocked. Each enemy is vulnerable to a type of attack, and while easy the issue is the quantity of enemies that mob you and attack from your blind spots. There is no HUD, and the threat of permadeath (your save file being wiped) is a constant reminder to not charge recklessly into fights (it make you paranoid when it starts encroaching her head)

Visually the game is stunning, though I did have a few clipping issues where Senua clips into the environment more than I was expecting. Nothing too crazy, but it was out of place considering how polished this game is. The camera pans so you face Senua often and you can see the horror on her face. A lot of the games fights and puzzles rely on its musical and visual cues, foreshadowing upcoming fights or floating runes for alerting you are close to where you need to be to solve the puzzle. Environments can go from being vibrant and alive to grey and lifeless instantly, much like Senua’s mood and state of mind. There are stages where you are mostly in the dark, and have to focus to see where you are, or easily become disoriented in the dark or worse are killed by the imaginary beings that live just outside your vision. There is a fire puzzle that is a nightmare to finish but looks amazing. There is a photo mode that you can use to edit and take pictures of the game, removing enemies and Senua for that perfect picture.

All of the vocal tracks are amazing, from Druth’s recounting of Norse folklore and his personal story, to the constant whispering of the furies and the darkness’s stern uncompromising speech. The music is kind of lost behind all of the above except when you are fighting when is thunders over the top of everything else, but it fits and isn’t competing against the rest of the vocals.

If you are chasing 100% achievements then it is easy to get as long as you don’t miss any lorestones.

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Final Fantasy 13 was ported to steam in 2014, 4 years after it was released on the PlayStation 3 (2010). As a port it just functions, adding nothing additional and only offering basic controller support (there isn’t even an option to exit the game, that’s controlled from the keyboard and the buttons that are supported still show the keyboard icons on screen- which don’t always map correctly). It’s not a bad game but I can easily see why people dislike it and if you don’t explore the end game content then you miss out on a fair amount of interesting fights, abilities and lore.

In a sense FF13 is two games, one is a very liner corridor fighter with a bare semblance to previous FF games, and the other is a post game FF version of monster hunter, where you are tasked with taking on ever challenging fights and really delve into the upgrade and leveling system. Together it’s not a bad game, however it removes most of the ionic systems found in FF games (over world map, jobs/class system, magic, selecting party members, character levels, mini games, interacting with NPC’s), changes the battle system entirely and streamlines everything else for majority of the game (imagine a cut down version of FFX). Most of the main game is liner, with little diversity in options with the only diversions being secrets and chapter 11. The paradigm system doesn’t really unlock until very late in the game, a fair chuck plays out as a very long tutorial (almost the first 35 hours of it). All of starting 5 characters start off annoying, though they do grow on you. Sazh and Fang were by far the best from the beginning, but the others do become more likable as the game goes on.

One of the big changes is the job system has been removed, following a much more streamlined version of the system that FFX uses. While everyone can eventually do the same job, some characters perform the roles better, and each character unlocks different abilities on the same tree, as well as having different stats. Each class provides a bonus to the other characters, which multiplies if you are using more than one at a time. The classes that you do have access to kind of mix all the previous jobs together, and function more like a mmorpg with the commando dealing damage and slowing the stagger bar decrease, Ravager being a nuker that uses magic but injects large increases to the stagger bar, a standard medic, Sentinel being a tank, Synergist buffing your party and the Saboteur debuffing your enemies.

This leads into the biggest change in the game, the actual battle system. Since random battles have been removed you see the enemies on the path in front of you, sometimes allowing you to get preemptive strike in and allowing you to plan your setup in advance. Instead of controlling the whole party, you only input the commands for the leader, with the 2 other team members being driven by the AI. Battles are more focused around smart use of the paradigm system, shifting between different character sets when needed to stagger enemies. Instead of wailing away at enemies, each enemy has a stagger bar, where enough hits will leave the enemy open to massive damage until they recover. Not damaging enemies reset the bar so you have to manage doing damage, healing buffing and having the team in the best place for when the enemies are staggered. Each battle is rated out of 5 stars, which can increase the drops from monsters.

Weapons and accessories can also be upgraded, increasing their stats and abilities, and transforming into different versions when they reach a set level and a unique item is used. The crafting system is actually very good, but you can play most of the game without really exploring it. It really comes into its own in the post game content, with many of the fights being the only location you can find equipment. The games economy is really tightly controlled, with gil (money) being the resource you are going to struggle to find. Most of the enemy drops are sold for a pittance, and also provide very little upgrade experience making them useless. All the best drops are locked to the hardest enemies on the game to kill, though tackling it as post game content eventually gets you to a place where you can semi reliably farm the, which you will need to do for the end game upgrades.

The game is set on the floating world of Cocoon, a floating paradise where humans are looked after by god like deities, the Fal’Cie. Every citizen knows of the war between Cocoon and Pulse, where Pulse forces attacked Cocoon, tearing open Cocoons outer shell but ultimately failing to destroy it. Ever since, the population has been ever vigilant against anything that has come from Pulse, purging anyone who might have come into contact with anything relating to Pulse. When a Pulse Fal’Cie is found to be slumbering on Cocoon, then entire district it is located in is set to be purged, starting the flight of the 6 characters. All of them have different motivations and reasons for being in the district at the time, which is explained in jumbled flashbacks 13 day period prior to the games opening events, and are slowly fed to the characters. All of them require each other to survive, but distrust and initially hate each other. Because of this I found the first few chapters harder to stay motivated with, but it gets better as they start working as a team. Many of the games criticisms (no NPC’s, limited exploring, corridor maps) make perfect sense when taking the story into account -you are being hunted by the entire world, you wouldn’t stop to do a side quest.

Visually it’s one of the prettiest FF games released, with stylish attack animations that flow into each other depending on what is selected, the characters and enemies moving around the battlefield after attacks. There are a ton of cut scenes and movies that play at checkpoints or when the party composition changes. While all of the environments looks great, they are essentially set corridors (you can only travel from point a to point b). Enemy design is also great, with distinct differences between enemies found in different areas (cocoon and gran pulse). While there are a fair few re-skins there are tons of unique enemies to fight. Having enemy groups fight each other is also very cool to interrupt.

The voice acting is excellent, and I liked the fact that both Vanille and fang have quite different voice patterns (re Australian accents) that strongly hint to them being quite different to the other 4 characters. The music was very good, with a heavy use of electric guitars and orchestra pieces.

If you are aiming for 100% achievements then there is a lot of end game grinding to do. The base game can be finished in 30 hours, though to finish everything easily requires double that. Collecting all equipment and getting 5 stars in all 64 missions requires hours of grinding for the required items and money, though the fights are quite impressive and there is a sense of achievement in taking down the big enemies.

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