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Arkane Austin, the studio behind Redfall, reportedly had a roadmap that was actively being worked on to improve the game before it was revealed that Xbox would be shutting down four studios, including Arkane Austin.

According to an IGN report, the team was working on DLC for the game and a series of updates that were expected to be released soon. But due to recent events, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see the studio’s work come to light. Prior to the studio closing, players would have received two new characters who were a part of the Hero Pass by Halloween.

One of these updates would have included an offline mode that was teased in the past. In an interview with Eurogamer, Harvey Smith, the game director of Redfall, said that the team was “looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future.”

Thankfully, Arkane Studios has announced that those who purchased the Bit Back Editon, which sold for $100 USD, “will be eligible to receive the value of the upgrade” on the official Arkane Studios X/Twitter account. For more information on how to claim your credit, click here.

The news that Xbox was closing down four of its studios shocked many people, including multiple game developers across the industry.

Snag 15 Audiobooks For $18 In Humble’s LitRPG Bundle

Gunar

May 7, 2024

With the LitRPG genre, authors combine the deep storytelling of novels with the game elements of MMOs and RPGs, creating a more interactive experience. Humble’s LitRPG Audiobook Bundle offers as many as 15 of those books, making this a pretty great deal for fans who are looking to fill out their libraries.

The bundle includes 15 different audiobooks that blend RPG mechanics and genre fiction. You’ll even get a few full series. They include the Chronicles of Sir Crabby books, about a sentient crab fighting through an RPG-esque ocean, written by the author of the Noobtown series; the first two entries into the Qi=MC2 series, about a character trapped in a strange world and forced to take on challenges to increase his strength; and the first two Speedrunning the Multiverse books, about a godlike character battling through the multiverse to alleviate his boredom.

The price you choose to pay dictates how many novels you’ll get, and even at cheaper prices, you’re still getting a pretty good deal. Pay $1 and you’ll get Speedrunning the Multiverse: Book 1 by Adastra339. Upping the price to $10 adds Speedrunning the Multiverse: Book 2, as well as Runeseeker and Runeseeker 2, by C.J. Thompson and J.M. Clarke. You get all 17 LitRPGs if you kick the price up to a minimum of $18. Check out the full list below.

You can also find quite a few of these LitRPG offerings, including the Qi=MC2 and Sir Crabby books, included in a Kindle Unlimited subscription, if you’d rather read than listen. In fact, Kindle Unlimited gets you even more books in the Speedrunning the Universe, Qi=MC2, 12 Miles Below, Runeseeker, and Divine Progression series. You can also get them piecemeal on Kindle through Amazon if you’d rather not spring for a Kindle Unlimited subscription, but for more than you’d pay in the Humble bundle.

Best Kindle LitRPG Deals on Amazon

Game Developers React To Xbox Closing Down Multiple Studios

Gunar

May 7, 2024

Earlier today, it was revealed that Xbox is shutting down four of its studios. The studios included Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. Since the announcement, various developers across the industry have voiced their opinions on the matter.

Dinga Bakaba, the director of Akrane Lyon, shared their thoughts in a series of posts on X/Twitter. Bakaba called Microsoft’s recent decision “absolutely terrible” and continued by saying, “To any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment/cultural industry, and your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists/entertainers and help them create value for you.”

This is absolutely terrible. Permission to be human : to any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment/cultural industry, and your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists/entertainers and help them create value for you.

— Dinga Bakaba 451 (@DBakaba) May 7, 2024

In the same thread, Bakaba pleaded with executives to not “throw us into gold fever gambits, don’t use us as strawmen for miscalculations/blind spots, don’t make our work environments Darwinist jungles.” As the post continued, Bakaba called the closure of these studios a “fuc*king gut stab.” They continued by saying, “Lyon is safe, but please be tactful and discerning about all this, and respect affected folks’ voice and leave it room to be heard, it’s their story to tell, their feelings to express.”

Bakaba wasn’t the only Xbox employee sounding off, either. Alistair Hatch, the Regional Director for Northern, Eastern, and Southern Europe at Bethesda, took to X/Twitter to say that recent layoffs left them feeling “Angry. Frustrated. Shocked. Furious. Speechless. Dumbfounded. Perplexed.”

Angry. Frustrated. Shocked. Furious. Speechless. Dumbfounded. Perplexed.
I have so much love for the studios affected. The people that made those teams were incredible, hard working, dedicated, and talented.
This is horrible.

— Alistair Hatch (@el_hatcherino) May 7, 2024

Meanwhile, Adam Boyes, the co-CEO of Iron Galaxy Studios, simply shared a screenshot of a GeekWire article from April revealing that Microsoft saw a 17% increase in revenue and declared $21.9 billion in profit in the most recent financial earnings report.

Thomas Mahler, the CEO and game director of Moon Studios, the team behind the Ori series and the upcoming No Rest for the Wicked, went on to explain on X/Twitter that the recent layoffs are the reason why they didn’t “allow Moon Studios to get acquired by a big publisher.” Mahler continued, “I’ve lived through the 90s and saw what happened when smaller studios got acquired by EA. Never again.”

To everyone whose been pestering me for years about why we didn’t allow Moon Studios to get acquired by a big publisher…
That’s why.
I’ve lived through the 90s and saw what happened when smaller studios got acquired by EA.
Never again 🤣😂 https://t.co/BHXm37PC2M

— thomasmahler (@thomasmahler) May 7, 2024

It’s also worth mentioning that this isn’t Microsoft’s first round of layoffs this year. Earlier in January, Mircosoft announced that it was cutting 1,900 jobs.

Try Your Luck And Get Games For 70 Cents Each With Fanatical’s Mystery Mayhem Bundle

Gunar

May 7, 2024

Fanatical’s long-running series of mystery bundles is back with a new offering for risk-takers and those who have fond memories of grab-bags at dollar stores. Mystery Mayhem is loaded with Steam games that you may or may not have heard of before buying. The only way to find out what you’re buying is to order a key–or five, 10, 15, even 20 keys. The more you spend, the less you pay for each key. Pricing starts at $1 for a single key and drops all the way down to 70 cents per game ($14 total) for 20 keys.

“Unleash your inner strategist with immersive tactical gameplay, embark on epic quests filled with twists and turns, or engage in heart-pounding multiplayer battles with friends and foes alike,” Fanatical’s description reads. Between hidden indie gems to blockbuster hits, there are also several high-value bundles sprinkled into the mix. These bundles include: Helldivers 2’s Super Citizen Edition, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Horizon Forbidden West: Complete Edition, and Persona 3 Reload.

It’s a good time to dive into the PC version of Helldivers 2, one of the best games of 2024 so far, especially since Sony has reversed course on its unpopular PSN integration plans.

It’s worth noting that if you purchase one mystery bundle, you will receive different games regardless of how many games you get, but purchasing multiple bundles through one or more orders opens up the possibility for getting duplicates of certain games.

For more great deals at Fanatical, check out the retailer’s May Madness Sale. Alongside discounts on thousands of PC games, anyone spending $12 or more gets to use the May Madness Spin to Win wheel to earn free games, coupons, or other special bonuses, if luck is on their side. It’s worth noting that the vast majority of games and bundles, including the awesome Fallout bundle, are eligible for the Spin to Win promotion, but Mystery Mayhem is excluded.

Disclosure: GameSpot and Fanatical are both owned by Fandom.

Game Reviews

Top Spin 2K25 Review – Painting The Lines

Tennis, at its core, is a game about legacy. Names like Billie Jean King, Pete Sampras, and the Williams sisters are immortalized through legendary matches, on-court triumphs, and tournament dominance that have shaped the history of the sport. It seems appropriate, then, that the Top Spin series has lived on in similar reverence since Top Spin 4, which was released over a decade ago to critical acclaim. Now, with developer Hanger 13 at the helm, Top Spin makes its long-awaited return. It serves up an ace in the all-important gameplay aspects, but double faults on content and troubling microstransaction focus mean it’s still far from a grand slam.

Gameplay takes center court in the newest entry and it’s excellent. Moving around the court feels great thanks to a strong sense of momentum and weight. That’s especially true on different surfaces, as the firm footing of a hard court gives way to sliding around on clay. It looks authentic, and factoring in the different starts and stops on the numerous types of surfaces is an important consideration when playing a match.

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Now Playing: TopSpin 2K25 – Official “Rally On!” Announcement Trailer

Different shots are mapped to various buttons and do an excellent job conveying just how sophisticated volleys are. Whether you are hitting a hard straight shot, curving slices, or smashing a ball right up the line with hard-to-handle top spin, the various options are meaningfully different. A simple timing system lets you tap for controlled returns, or hold to generate power, with both options depending on releasing at the right moment to determine accuracy. It’s straightforward, and rewarding to execute . There’s a place and application for each, like intentionally hitting a slow rolling shot to give yourself an opportunity to reposition yourself on the court, or sending a lob high over the head of an opponent who has creeped too close to the net.

That strategic element of tennis is Top Spin’s biggest triumph. Trading power-shots as you send your opponent all over the court expending energy is exhilarating thanks to the sense of speed and impact. Breaking yourself out of the same situation by returning a ball in an awkward spot with unwiedly spin, creating a fault from the other player, is a diabolical joy. There’s a “chess, but with rackets” quality to the game of tennis that translates well to Top Spin 2K25, and dominating on the court is as dependent on decision-making as it is on pure stick skills.

The most substantial mode is MyCareer. Here you create your own tennis pro and build them up from newcomer to champion. Your time is divided by month, and each is broken into segments for Training, Special Events, and Tournaments. Training is a mostly good setup, as you are thrust into minigames that challenge you to execute particular shots, and does a decent job refining basic skills. Special Events are one-off matches, often with a specific goal in mind, like hitting 10 target areas during the game. These can be a solid choice for XP farming, and can also unlock sponsor packages, which in turn increase the selection of the purely cosmetic items in the Pro Shop that are used to dress up your character.

The main feature is the tournaments, where you take on other top players to battle for victory and a chance to climb the tennis ranks. There are different levels of tournaments, and gaining access to more prestigious events involves increasing your status, making your way from Unknown up to a Legend. Improving your status requires accomplishing a checklist of goals, and can contain things like winning a certain number of tournaments, successfully completing training, or working your way up the tennis ranks. The system is well-tuned and does a good job of ensuring that, by the time you are ready to take on higher-level tournaments, they are challenging but not insurmountable.

Building XP and leveling up your character gives you points to spend for increasing your player’s attributes, including speed, stamina, and reaction speed. Your maximum level is capped at 30, so you won’t be able to max out every category, which is a limitation that encourages building with specific goals in mind. Boost your player’s serve, forehand, and power, for example, and you’ll be capable of dominating the court with overwhelming smashes, while a speed/volley combo can wreak havoc with angles and positioning. But no one player can dominate in all facets of the game.

As you progress and win Special Events you will earn Fittings for your racket like strings or a new frame. These confer attribute bonuses on your player and come in three quality tiers, with higher tiers offering greater boosts. Hirable coaches have a similar effect, conferring boosts after completing a few on-court objectives. Together, these systems reinforce one of gaming’s great unwritten rules: sports games are secretly RPGs. And in the case of Top Spin, it’s a pretty good one.

One of the key considerations comes in the form of a fatigue system that adds an interesting layer of long-term planning. Every match takes away from your player’s fatigue. When it drops below a certain level, they gain the potential for a minor injury, which reduces certain attributes until it heals. If you keep playing without resting, it can lead to a major injury, sidelining you for multiple months. There’s an engaging risk/reward to deciding when you can push through another event, and when you need to take a break to recuperate. After all, burning th candle at both ends for too long could mean you’re forced to miss a career-defining tournament down the line.

There’s no prefabricated story mode, and I think that is for the best in this case as not all sports games need to be scripted to provide engaging drama. Top Spin does a great job creating an environment for on-court stories told through the game of tennis to shine. At one point, my player was run down after back-to-back tournaments and had just picked up a minor injury. I was all set to rest him for a month or two to recover, but then I realized Wimbledon was the next event. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, leading to the most challenging five rounds of matches I had played. Taking on the best players in tennis with my power game diminished by the injury meant I had to rely on subterfuge, finesse, and good old-fashioned moxie to make it to the end. Fighting through the challenges to grasp victory in a hard-fought final far exceeded any contrived storyline.

The problem with Top Spin 2K25 is there is little to do in MyCareer other than continuing to rotate through the three monthly activities, and the threadbare presentation wears thin quickly. It doesn’t take very long to develop your player far enough that you can easily win any match, at which point it really feels like you are just going through the motions over and over again, checking off objectives to increase your status and sitting at the top rank. Every tournament–from the small cup contests to the most prestigious Major–has an identical victory cutscene, with the same person giving you the exact same trophy. There’s no announcing crew, and ball-tracking graphics packages like Shot Spot are used exceedingly sparingly, which is a shame. There are eventually some interesting surprise matches we won’t spoil, but those are limited, and don’t appear until very deep into the game.

The options outside of MyCareer are extremely barebones. It’s somewhat understandable for what effectively amounts to a fresh launch for the Top Spin series, but it stands out when other sports games, including NBA 2K, have so many more modes. Outside of MyCareer, local play is limited to list single and doubles exhibition games, and the Top Spin Academy tutorials. The latter is narrated by tennis legend John McEnroe, and while it’s a good overview of how to play, it doesn’t offer much value after an initial run through,

The online assortment isn’t much better. The exhibition mode is restricted to one-on-one matchmade games. No option to play against friends or team-up with them for doubles play is a huge miss. The 2K Tour lets you play ranked games to climb a seasonal leaderboard, but the small roster of 11 men and 14 women is missing many notable athletes, including the #1 player from the men’s rankings, Novak Djokovik. There also aren’t any apparent rewards for placing well in the tour, leaving no clear incentive to play other than bragging rights.

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World Tour is the online competitive arena for created players. It is fun to go online and see how someone you built compares to another player’s athlete, and the cat-and-mouse game on the court versus a human offers unique opportunities to use feints and other misdirections that AI-controlled players tend not to respond to. Unfortunately, this is where Top Spin’s biggest sin comes most into focus as well: microtransations. The Centre Court Pass is the de facto battle pass. Thirteen of the 50 tiers are free, but the rest require you to buy the paid premium pass. That would be okay if the items were purely cosmetic, but it also contains boosters for XP, which leads to increased levels and higher attributes, as well as offering VC, the in-game currency. VC can be earned through normal gameplay, but accumulates at a slow rate. That’s a problem when you are required to spend almost 3,000 VC to respec your character if you decide you want to redistribute their attribute points. You could spend hours grinding matches to make that much VC, or you could drop about $20 to get just enough points to pay for it. It’s simply egregious.

Top Spin 2K25 gets the most important piece right: It plays great. It wonderfully combines smooth and responsive gameplay with the engaging tactical aspects of tennis to create something that is a joy on the court. It’s too bad the presentation is barebones and the suite of gameplay modes is limited. Ultimately though, it’s the onerous microtransactions– once again front and center in a 2K sports game–that truly hold it back and keep Top Spin 2K25 from approaching the series’ former glory.

Gunar

May 1, 2024

Indika Review – The Devil Makes Three

Indika is a hard game to define. It looks like a horror game, but it’s not scary–at least not in the conventional sense. It plays like a third-person puzzle game, but most of the puzzles don’t require much thought. What Indika definitely is, however, is a fascinating psychological examination of faith and doubt that’s supported by remarkable visuals and mature writing. Occasionally, its ambitions get a little unwieldy, but developer Odd Meter’s decision to take on these heady themes and confidently explore nearly all of them is an impressive feat.

You play as Indika, a nun tormented by a demonic voice in her head, as she travels across a nightmarish interpretation of 19th-century Russia to deliver a letter. Most of the game consists of traveling from point A to B, solving a few puzzles, and watching cutscenes, but within these tasks are moments of introspection and self-discovery. Along the way, she meets an escaped convict named Ilya who claims God speaks to him. What ensues is a nuanced exploration of faith and doubt, love and hate, and pleasure and suffering. Both characters believe in the same God; rather than pitting a believer against a nonbeliever, Indika explores the space that exists between two interpretations of the same faith. This specificity allows Odd Meter to delve into different shades of Christianity and examine how the same texts, rituals, and prayers can be bent to ascertain different meanings.

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These frequent philosophical exchanges could have easily come off as overwrought or self-indulgent, but all these musings are in service of the characters and their development over the course of the story. For example, Indika tells Ilya she joined the convent of her own volition, but because her decision was fueled by emotions and experiences that were out of her control, can she really say she became a nun through her own free will? Ilya challenges this notion, and declares that free will is how we rise above our biological dispositions. Reflective conversations like these are key to Indika’s character as she grapples with her faith and attempts to make sense of her life.

It helps that Indika is portrayed by the fantastic Isabella Inchbald, and Louis Boyer embodies Ilya with equal confidence. There’s a raw authenticity and conviction to their performances that bring both characters to life. You can hear the fear and doubt in Indika’s voice and the desperation and hope in Ilya’s. Meanwhile, Silas Carson’s portrayal of the devil is humorous, sadistic, and cordial in his demeanor as he deftly narrates the action. While the writing and acting are great, they are occasionally undermined by awkward animations. Sometimes the action will look a bit too robotic, or dialogue won’t quite sync up with a character’s mouth. These are minor issues overall, but sometimes it was just enough to take me out of a scene.

Nevertheless, Indika is one of the most visually arresting games I’ve ever played. Developer Odd Meter uses framing, color, and lighting to achieve a look and feel that is rarely seen in games. Wide-angle shots often distort Indika’s facial features and warp the background to give the experience a voyeuristic feel. The framing, meanwhile, consistently impresses as it accentuates the action and world. In one section, after being chased by a wolf the size of a truck, the beast takes a tumble and wedges itself in a water wheel. What follows is a subdued conversation between Indika, Ilya, and the devil in her head about whether or not a beast can be sinful, as the camera tracks the dead wolf being dragged underwater by the water wheel. It’s a macabre scene given the context alone, but the stylistic choices allow the tone to meet the moment more effectively than a standard shot/reverse shot conversation would.

Rather than pitting a believer against a nonbeliever, Indika explores the space that exists between two interpretations of the same faith.

These choices aren’t just for show, either. They are bold and sometimes jarring creative decisions that reflect Indika’s inner turmoil as she travels across Russia. There are sections where the world–at least from Indika’s perspective–is split in two. When this happens, an oppressive and discordant synth kicks in as hellish red light soaks the scene. Through prayer, Indika can reforge the world around her and suppress the chaos. To progress, you–and by extension, Indika–must rip apart and merge her world by alternating between Indika’s cacophonous hell and her quiet reality. Although rare, these moments give weight and meaning to Indika’s gameplay as they leverage Indika’s themes of faith and doubt.

The same can’t always be said for the game’s puzzles, though. Most are simple and mundane: Move some boxes around, manipulate a crane, and strategically align lifts and elevators. Puzzles like these make sense in the early hours, as the game familiarizes you with Indika and her menial life. But as her world expands, these bland puzzles start to feel tonally and narratively incongruous as Indika struggles with her faith, especially when some puzzles literally let you tear the world apart, while others have you shove a box around.

With these criticisms in mind, it may seem like this story would be better told as a film or book. What’s fascinating, though, is that Indika clearly understands the medium it inhabits. It brazenly leverages video game tropes to elevate its themes. You’ll earn points for acts of faith, such as performing the sign of the cross at crucial moments, lighting altars, and collecting religious texts. You can then use these points to unlock skills that increase the amount of points Indika can earn. The thing is, these points do nothing. The loading screens even tell you they are useless. They have no discernible value and are simply a shallow way to measure Indika’s faith.

Yet, I didn’t want to miss any of it. I lit every altar, collected every text, and mashed the sign-of-the-cross button (yes, there’s a button) at every opportunity. It’s almost silly to gamify this stuff, but putting Indika through the motions as she builds up an arbitrary “faith” score while she’s actively questioning her faith is brilliant. I grew up religious. I went to church every Sunday and attended Catholic school. There was a distinct period in my life when I was questioning my beliefs, yet I still held on to some of those ingrained rituals. There was a quiet guilt that I couldn’t expunge: a feeling that could only be alleviated by going through the motions. In a way, it feels like Indika is using the language of video games and my understanding of them to reinforce her feelings of faith and doubt. Indika is about the internal struggle of a nun who isn’t entirely sure what she believes anymore, but seeing her cling to tradition–through my actions–is powerful.

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Although Indika does an excellent job exploring its themes of faith and doubt, there’s one subject the game doesn’t handle with the care it requires. In one particular scene near the end of the game, it touches on some uncomfortable territory that–depending on your interpretation of the story and its themes–might feel unnecessary. Up until that point, the evil that exists in the world feels intangible and theoretical. Indika and Ilya talk of hell and demons, but it always feels distant, almost as if God is protecting Indika on her journey. That is, until the final moments of the game, which allude to a sexual assault. The reasoning behind this scene is to test Indika’s faith, but as it stands, the scene in question feels like a means to an end rather than something Odd Meter wanted to properly explore.

Given the Catholic Church’s long and pockmarked history of sexual abuse, it makes sense that it plays such a critical role in Indika, but it’s not examined with the care that is necessary. The scene and what follows are clearly intended to elicit a lot of different emotions and speculation, but when those knee-jerk reactions stem from something so traumatic, it feels unearned. It’s almost as if the game wants you to move on as quickly as it does, which stands out as unusual in a game that is otherwise very thorough in its interrogation of sensitive subject matter. To be clear, Odd Meter doesn’t botch this scene entirely. Atrocity is often the most difficult test of faith, and they had the good sense not to show the assault itself. However, once the scene ends, it feels like Indika is barrelling towards its conclusion, while I was still trying to make sense of what just happened.

I’m often frustrated when developers lean on religious iconography but fail to explore faith in a meaningful way. Some of the greatest works of art exist because of religion, either as an exploration of it, a testament to it, or a denouncement of it. Human history is inextricably tied to religious faith. Yet, outside of a few exceptions, games tend to avoid commenting on religion without obfuscating it behind fake dogmas and fantastical gods. Indika’s direct examination of Christianity allows it to better explore the gray areas of religion and faith that are often lost when the recognizable specifics are swapped with allegorical fiction. And while the execution occasionally falters, its willingness to grapple with these difficult themes, and the conclusions it draws, make Indika a fascinating journey.

Gunar

May 1, 2024

Endless Ocean: Luminous Review – Hope You Really Like Fish

Between the advent of cozy games, farm sims, rhythm games, narrative adventures, and more, we’re in something of a golden age of non-violent games. If you want to take a break from shooting and punching and instead just relax with some chill vibes, you have myriad options available to you. Endless Ocean: Luminous is an aquatic take, letting you freely explore the ocean with no danger or violence to speak of whatsoever. It sometimes straddles the line between game and edutainment in ways that could be engaging, but achingly slow progression and a lack of realism leave it feeling washed up.

Scientists say only 5% of the ocean has been explored. The name Endless Ocean, and the unexplored nature of the ocean itself, suggests an incredible degree of possibility and adventure. In practice, though, there actually isn’t all that much to do in Endless Ocean: Luminous. You can take part in a Solo Dive, in which you explore a seemingly randomized map; a Shared Dive, which is just a Solo Dive with friends exploring the same map together online using Nintendo’s Switch Online service (complete with its usual shortcomings); and Story Mode, which gives you short missions consisting of objectives accompanied by a little dialogue.

With this dearth of options, its approach to progression gating further compounds the lack of variety. After the first handful of story missions, the others are locked behind scanning ocean creatures in Shared or Solo dives. To scan you just hold the L button in the direction of sea life until the meter fills, which then gives a detailed look at the creatures in your scan. But the progress gates are set so absurdly high that the novelty wears off quickly. One of the earliest gates is set at 500 scans, which felt high but reasonable. The next was at 1,000, so I had to get another 500. That rubbed me the wrong way. By the time I reached the next gate, set at 2,000–meaning I needed another 1,000 scans–the chill vibes were gone. I was just annoyed. It’s hard to overstate how frustrating it is to spend almost an hour roaming around a randomized map scanning fish, only to exit the map and find I’ve only gained another 200 pips toward my next story goal. Plus, judging by the creature log, there are just under 600 species of sea life total in the game. Why would you need to scan 2,000 times to see a mid-game story mission?

Not that there’s much story to tell. You’re a new diver accompanied by an AI companion, exploring phenomena of glowing fish, and sometimes you’re accompanied by a brash (but actually cowardly) fellow diver named Daniel. The story missions are short and largely uneventful. Sometimes they end so quickly that I was genuinely surprised. Other times, they feel like a glorified tutorial, which makes it that much stranger to gate it behind so much free-roaming playtime. At least one of them is just a cutscene with no actual diving gameplay whatsoever. Occasionally, the story mode will deliver something unexpected and fun, like a massive or fantastical species of fish, but those moments are few and far between. There is a meta-story involving an ancient relic with 99 slots, which you fill in by discovering certain artifacts scattered randomly throughout dives or by fulfilling achievement objectives, but it feels more like a busywork checklist than a real story-driver.

And because the scanning requirements are so excessive, small inconveniences feel more impactful than they should. It’s easy to pick up a fish you’ve already scanned while trying to register a new one. Every time you scan any fish, it zooms in on them for a moment, forcing you to hit B to back out of the detailed view. If you scan multiple species at once, they’re grouped in a listing together, which is meant to be a convenience feature–but new species aren’t prioritized in the list, so you need to scroll down to find any with a “???” designation to mark them as discovered. If you don’t, the unidentified fish remains unidentified. If you scan a large school of the same fish, they’ll all be listed separately. In Solo Dives, the map is slowly charted in segments as you explore, but keeping an eye on the map to make sure I was filling in the little squares meant I could fail to notice a fish swimming by, or I could miss a depth change that may reward me for diving deeper.

Your dives get you experience points to level up, which increases your dive capacity, which you can use to tag sea creatures to swim alongside you. At first, these only include the smallest of sea creatures, but as you build capacity, you can swim with larger ones that are used to solve riddles. A stone tablet might challenge you to come back with a particular type of turtle or a fish that “sails as it swims.” Even then, though, the solutions are too rigid. When I returned to the tablet with a “Sailfish,” nothing happened, presumably because it was not the specific solution the riddle had in mind.

A Shared Dive in Endless Ocean: Luminous

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In addition to story progress and dive capacity, leveling up also opens new but severely limited tiers of customization options. Those include palette swaps for your diver or individual SCUBA suit parts, different stickers to apply to your profile, and emotes. There isn’t even a different helmet or mouthpiece, just the default in different colors.

It feels as if the goal was to create a virtual, interactive aquatic museum, and the variety of sea life does support this nicely. It actually is exciting the first time you see a new species of sea turtle or an extinct megalodon shark, even if you know that it can’t hurt you. But the mechanical underpinnings get in the way of its potential as a museum too. For example, every species of fish has a blurb with some interesting marine facts, complete with a reading of it from your AI companion. This could be a cool and educational feature, but when you’re pressed to perform thousands of scans, it’s hard to bother listening to every blurb. There also isn’t an indicator for when you’ve already heard a blurb, and since you’ll see species repeated a lot, it’s nearly impossible to remember which ones you have or haven’t heard–even if you can tell dozens of roughly similar-looking fish apart, which I can’t.

In part due to its non-violent nature, Endless Ocean does not present the depths very realistically, even to my layman’s eyes. Your oxygen is unlimited, and you don’t need to worry about temperature or depth. You’ll never freeze or get decompression sickness or drown. More aggressive species will never attack you. Species of fish seem to be scattered more or less randomly around the map, which leads to oddities like finding large-scale creatures in shallow waters, or discovering deep-sea dwellers in middle-depths instead of the deepest, almost pitch-black parts of the ocean where they actually reside. And while this is likely a limitation of the Switch hardware, the fish, coral, and ocean floor themselves aren’t rendered photorealistically enough to instill a sense of awe and majesty.

It seems Endless Ocean wants you to spend most of your time diving with friends to pass the time. The Shared Dives option is the first one on the menu, after all, and it is easier to fulfill the simple procedural objectives when you’re paired with other divers. But like most Switch games, you join friendly games using a digital code, and there isn’t built-in voice chat, so you can’t really treat it like an underwater virtual lobby. Even if you could, though, scanning fish with your friends would not sustain the group fun for anyone but the most devoted of sea-life enthusiasts.

Endless Ocean: Luminous could have been a realistic SCUBA sim with all the treacherous hazards that real underwater divers need to consider, a relaxing chill-vibes game that’s mostly about finding fish with your friends, or a story-driven game centered around discovering awesome and even extinct underwater beasts. It has pieces of all of those, but it doesn’t commit to any of them. Instead, it takes the enormity and glory of earth’s largest and most mysterious region and turns exploring it into a dull, repetitive chore.

Gunar

May 1, 2024

Final Fantasy 16: The Rising Tide Review – Riding The Wave

It’s always a bit weird to go back to a game you finished for story-centric DLC, especially when the base game had a pretty definitive ending. However, those that have just a little bit more left in the tank can take the opportunity to give a game you really loved one more high note to end on. I often think of the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC as the best example–an oddly placed, yet near-perfect send-off. Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide evokes similar feelings in that I was just happy to have an excuse to revisit that world and spend a bit more time with characters I cherished. While it does largely play out like more Final Fantasy XVI content, The Rising Tide fills in a few blanks left behind and lets you wield two new Eikons in a questline that reaches similar heights of the original game.

The Rising Tide questline is slotted into FFXVI right before the main game’s point of no return, making it feel like an impromptu diversion at a critical point in the story. That said, it is necessary, as many of the events leading up to the DLC provide the context around its story. As Clive, you and the crew are invited to visit a region called Mysidia–a quiet area tucked away in the north and cloaked under the veil of powerful magic to both conceal itself from the rest of the world and maintain a facade of bright blue skies. It’s a new area for the game that has its own interesting, isolated society and lets you explore a relatively small but vibrant region, and its stunning views remind you of how FFXVI uses its technical strengths to paint a vibrant and enticing world.

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Now Playing: FINAL FANTASY XVI – The Rising Tide DLC Release Date Trailer

Much of FFXVI was visually dour given its grim nature, so Mysidia’s tropical tinge is a refreshing contrast. But this isn’t a vacation for Clive–The Rising Tide revolves around the history of Leviathan as an Eikon that, like every other Eikon, was wielded in bad faith. Through the main scenario quests and sidequests, you learn about the people of Mysidia, their way of life, and their particular relationship with Leviathan. The people are self-sustaining and treat magic quite differently from the rest of Valisthea, and their leader, Shula, embodies their ethos as she accompanies you throughout the DLC. She’s not exactly a standout character in the grand scheme of things, but she is a solid anchor for The Rising Tide and provides a good enough excuse for dragging Clive off the beaten path. It’s a twist to the typical FFXVI plot beat and comes around to be a rather sweet story about breaking generational curses in a way that lends itself more to FFXVI’s softer side.

That’s not to say The Rising Tide doesn’t go hard, because like the base game, its blend of intense boss fights woven into impressive cinematic cuts remains the foundation here. Along with the new region are an additional dungeon and another larger-than-life Eikon battles. While the dungeon itself is quite short, the boss fight that awaits at the end of it features some clever and inventive mechanics that even impressed the Final Fantasy XIV Savage raider in me. FFXVI’s base game shares a lot of similarities with the MMORPG in terms of battle mechanics, and this remains true here, but a few twists caught me off guard and left me grinning when I was able to overcome them. And even if I could see it coming from a mile away, the build-up to another climactic Eikon battle and the arduous fight itself brought back that specific feeling of hype FFXVI was so damn good at evoking. The telegraphing of certain mechanics in the EIkon battle aren’t always great, so there is some trial-and-error as you bang your head against the wall to get through it. Still, figuring out how to resolve the mechanics along with pulling off nasty, weighty attacks as Ifrit was as gratifying as ever, matching the best of what the original game had to offer.

As a chapter all about Leviathan, being able to use the power of the iconic serpent is a definite highlight. Creative Business Unit III really said, “What if we gave Clive a gun?” and that’s essentially what they did. Leviathan is a projectile-focused Eikon power that has its own unique mode that turns Clive’s arm into a shotgun capable of blasting lethal chunks of water, and boy, does it melt away enemies’ stagger meter. For cooldowns, you also get a rapid-fire bubble blast and wave-like ability that starts from the sides and crunches small enemies together, making them easy targets for shotgun blasts or any other AoE spell you have lined up. There’s a satisfying feedback to landing shots and weaving between Leviathan’s moveset, and it’s great to see that FFXVI brand of action combat still had room for creative ideas.

On top of that, you also get to wield Ultima as an Eikon power, which allows Clive to hover with wings that can also violently swipe at mobs of enemies. Many of the cooldown abilities with Ultima are heavy and dramatic displays of power that aren’t exactly conducive to swiftly weaving into an attack rotation–if you just want to disrespectfully pummel enemies, Ultima is the Eikon for you. Ultima is unlocked by starting up the new content called Kairos Gates, which is part of the DLC’s package. It’s a run-based combat challenge where you gradually build Clive with boons and enhancements to help make it through a genuinely tough gauntlet of enemy hordes and remixed bosses. The menus and sound effects between rounds are encased in an old-school Final Fantasy presentation which is a cute touch, but these fights are anything but cute. If you’ve been wanting FFXVI to up the difficulty, it’s a decent, albeit straightforward, way to get more out of its combat.

The Rising Tide contains a handful of sidequests to fill out Mysidia, which offer rewards or unlock features for the region. These range from talking to NPCs, fetching items in the world, taking out certain targets, or some combination of those things–mostly continuing the typical FFXVI quest design, which wasn’t exactly its strong suit. Not that it’s surprising, but many of the conversations in the DLC still have that odd, stiff style of conversation via a cutscene that stood out like sore thumbs in the original game. It’s another one of those FFXIV-isms that don’t quite hold up when used in a highly produced, prestige-style game.

However, the DLC does use sidequests effectively in a few key ways. For one, they tend to be more combat-focused so they’re opportunities to sharpen those new Eikon-wielding skills. But after the DLC’s main scenario is done, a new batch of sidequests pop up to let the overall story breathe, and they’re vital for giving Shula and the people of Mysidia closure. I’m a bit shocked these are marked as sidequests considering how impactful they are in contextualizing The Rising Tide. And while the reward for completing all of it isn’t necessarily a tangible one, it’s an emotional payoff that provides instead brings some much needed warmth to FFXVI’s dark world.

The wonders of Mysidia are also represented in the new music for The Rising Tide. To the surprise of absolutely no one, composer Masayoshi Soken and his team were cooking once again. The main village of Haven has a catchy yet sorrowful acoustic tune that wonderfully captures the setting, and the beautiful overworld theme struck me as an extension of the bittersweet feelings I had playing through parts of FFXIV: Endwalker. The dungeon theme incorporates light electronic elements to communicate something inexplicably magical about the environment while also calling back to the main leitmotif used throughout FFXVI, as if to wrap the whole journey together through sound. While the Eikon boss battle theme is among the explosive and impressive tracks to hype you up in the moment, it’s the more calming music, where the emotional nuances of the adventure are delivered through the notes that make up the songs.

Playing through The Rising Tide was bittersweet. For all its flaws, I have a deep fondness for Final Fantasy XVI, so I was happy to have a strong hook to bring me back to Valisthea, even if it was a rather short-lived journey that wrapped up just as I was starting to vibe with the new setting, abilities, and characters. In several ways, The Rising Tide offers something I wish the original game had a bit more of in its story: vibrance and warmth. FFXVI was outwardly grim and dark–fitting what it was going for. But having this contrast that complements the core themes of the original game was a real treat, especially with some great gameplay twists along the way. The Rising Tide is an easy recommendation for those who enjoyed the base game, and a damn fine way to send off FFXVI.

Gunar

April 26, 2024

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Review – One In A Hundred

In the years since the explosion of game crowdfunding, a stigma has emerged surrounding these titles. Yes, there have been plenty of games that enjoyed great success after their crowdfunding campaigns, but more people remember the high-profile flops: games with big names and ambitious promises attached that, for a variety of reasons, betrayed the high hopes fans held for them. Many of these were revivals–spiritual or otherwise–of beloved series from ages past. Now we have Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a crowdfunded game designed to carry the torch of the much-beloved Suikoden series from the PS1 and PS2–and, with such a high pedigree attached, there’s understandable trepidation: Will this be a glorious return to form, or another disappointment? Fortunately, for us (and all of the backers), it turned out wonderfully.

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Eiyuden Chronicle begins when a young man named Nowa joins the Eltisweiss Watch, a small militia unit under the command of Countess Perielle of the League of Nations. On a joint mission with a military team from the Galdean Empire, the Watch discovers a powerful, ancient artifact, the Primal Lens, earning everyone involved instant renown. However, it’s not long before squabbling between the Empire and League over the device, along with internal power struggles in the Empire, erupts into an invasion of Eltisweiss and a full-blown war. As the scope of the conflict expands, so does the story: Nowa rebuilds a resistance army in an abandoned castle, Imperial military prodigy Seign struggles with his feelings of obligation, friendship, and loyalty, and a young warrior woman named Marisa finds her clan caught in the middle.

The story doesn’t shy away from its similarities to games in the Suikoden series. In several ways, it outright embraces them: a story that branches into multiple viewpoints, loyalties among friends being tested during war, internal political intrigue, powerful magic runes being a crucial plot device, and, most obviously, the conceit of building a huge band of warriors to take on an even bigger enemy. The story was helmed by Suikoden creator and writer Yoshitaka Murayama (who sadly passed away shortly before the game’s release), and it brims with the warmth, wit, and plot twists that made the early Suikoden titles so engaging and memorable.

Throughout the game, you’ll be on the lookout for more characters to bolster the ranks of the Watch and, eventually, help build a base for the Resistance army. Some characters are easy to find and recruit, but others will require some searching or additional effort: You may have to go back to a town or dungeon from much earlier in the game, locate a rare item, play a minigame, or fend off a vicious foe to get someone to join the crew. Searching for heroes is a lot of fun (and much easier once you get the fast-travel ability), and the reward of seeing your base grow and improve with the efforts of your new comrades is immensely satisfying.

But the characters themselves are often their own reward. Despite having such a large cast, Eiyuden Chronicle manages to give each character their own unique voice and personality. They don’t just fall into the background once their recruitment arc is over, either; they’ll comment on current story events while they’re in your party, chatter as you explore towns, and interact with other characters at the base and elsewhere on your travels. Sometimes they’ll show up to add extra flair when you least expect it, like when they get dragged into judging a cooking competition.

Aside from giving you a good amount of freedom to search for friends when you feel like it, Eiyuden Chronicle’s story progression is similar to the typical JRPG: mostly linear with major setpieces and battles to highlight key story points. You’ll go through the usual dungeons, deserts, tundras, forests, and mines, sometimes needing to solve puzzles to progress. While most of the puzzles are pretty simple, they can sometimes be more obnoxious than intended due to random enemy encounters interrupting things at the worst possible times. Still, the dungeon design is solid and exploration is generally rewarding.

Despite having such a large cast, Eiyuden Chronicle manages to give each character their own unique voice and personality

Combat is also heavily based on the Suikoden games: turn-based, with up to six active party members at a time, plus a seventh support member who can grant passive benefits like stat boosts or money gain. Characters can have both skills based on SP (which regenerates over time) and MP (which needs items to restore), and each be changed based on the runes that character has equipped. Placement is key: Some attacks and skills won’t reach far beyond the front row, while some less-armored characters work better in the back–and there are also skills that target entire rows. One distinct combat element carried over from Suikoden is multi-character team attacks that require two or more characters with some sort of connection to be in the party together, who can then perform a tandem specialty attack.

Not every character in your army is available to fight, but you’re still given a very wide selection of party members to pick from to fight the way you prefer. You’re probably not going to use every single character you recruit in combat, and that’s fine–seeing who you click with and building them up generally works well. And if you do need to bring a character you’ve been neglecting up to snuff, a graduated XP system works to get them to parity with your high-level warriors quickly. A bit of auto-battling and they should be set.

Boss battles are where things get interesting. Many boss fights in the game come with some sort of interactable gimmick that changes the way you approach the battle. These can be objects to hide behind to avoid damage, background objects that cause damage to either you or the opponent based on who gets to it first, or even a treasure lying just beyond a row of foes. Sometimes these gimmicks are really fun and clever, like a boss who gets knocked off-balance when one of the lackeys hoisting them on their backs is felled, leaving it defenseless. Sometimes it’s miserable, like needing to guess which side of the arena the enemy will appear on to hit a book and deal extra damage, missing entirely if you guess wrong. When the gimmicks are good, they make for very fun fights, but when they’re not, you’ll be longing for more straightforward combat. And sometimes the boss is simply a big difficulty spike in general, leaving you in a very bad situation if you come in ill-prepared.

Gallery

By far the worst combat experience, however, are the large-scale army battles. These play out like a turn-based strategy game, with your party members commanding armies and moving around a grid, but lack any of the fun and excitement you’ll find in a dedicated strategy-RPG. You spend most of the time just watching things happen, feeling like you have very little control over the proceedings as the armies you moved around, slowly engage the enemy. You’re left hoping they’ll do more damage than the opposition so you can go back to the fun parts of the game instead.

Overall, Eiyuden Chronicle hits the retro-RPG sweet spot nicely. It’s focused on delivering that warm, comforting feeling of a classic JRPG, and even all of the side distractions–the card minigame, the weird Pokemon/Beyblade hybrid top minigame, the raising/racing sim, even commodities trading–don’t distract too much from the game’s prime mission. Add some gorgeously painted and animated spritework and a stellar soundtrack into the mix, and you’ve got a delightful experience that sometimes falters, though not enough to make you put it down. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes might not be revolutionary, but it successfully delivered on its core promise–and that’s really all it needed to do.

Gunar

April 25, 2024

Ereban: Shadow Legacy Review – Way Of Shadow

In what feels like a spiritual successor to 2016’s Aragami, Ereban: Shadow Legacy transforms you into a deadly shadow that can become one with the darkness–the ultimate stealth operative. The game doesn’t quite deliver the necessary challenge to make for a successful stealth game, however, as the first trick you learn will get you through the entire game without a hitch. It does far better on the platforming front, and though its cast of characters could have used some fleshing out, the futuristic sci-fi world they inhabit is cultivated with colorful sights and intriguing snippets of lore.

As its name implies, Shadow Legacy’s main gimmick is its use of shadows. You play as Ayana, the last of the titular Ereban, a people who possess the innate ability to become one with and manipulate shadows. Using her shadow merge ability, Ayana can sink into shadows to creep past enemies, slink up walls, and dispose of bodies, encouraging you to stick to the shadows where your toolbelt is at its strongest. Alongside these shadow abilities, Ayana has an assortment of advanced gadgets–some are always useful like a recon pulse that marks enemies and items through walls, while others are more situational like mines that stun targets–which work regardless of the lighting situation.

Light is Ayana’s enemy–you don’t want to stay in it for too long.

I initially thought that this would present plenty of opportunities and strategies to sneak past enemies, most of whom will take out Ayana in a single hit. There’s a healthy variety of foes who want to take her down–standard enemies don’t pose much threat beyond the flashlight they carry to take away your darkness, but the more adept snipers can spot you from afar and the stealthy droids who can go invisible can ruin your day if you’re not taking time to look for the telltale shimmer. And then there are the human enemies who present a moral quandary rather than a gameplay one–while the mechanical droid-like enemies that dominate each level can be killed with impunity, murdering the living and breathing human workers will negatively impact Ayana’s morality and others’ perception of her (which I’ll touch on a bit more later).

Unfortunately, Ayana’s natural ability to merge into the shadows and traverse unseen is very powerful–so powerful, in fact, that you don’t really need to rely on anything else. The enemies aren’t very smart either, so they’re easy to avoid even if you solely rely on shadow merge. This means that it’s actually quite easy to go through the entire game without being seen or resorting to lethally cutting down humans, making for a stealth game that doesn’t quite give you enough opposition to challenge you to think critically when it comes to circumnavigating a threat. There aren’t any difficulty settings to make the enemies smarter or more plentiful either–though you can adjust how many environmental guides show up in each level (purple lamps or purple paint that point you in the general direction you have to go, for example).

It’s pretty easy to get past guards when you can move along walls.

Shadow Legacy teases you with a tantalizing view of what it could be in its third chapter, briefly breaking free from its otherwise linear stealth levels to give you a playground in which you can tackle an assortment of missions in any order within an open area. Within this open space, you have more of a choice in how you approach each assignment instead of being funneled through a more linear challenge. Mistakes have a more drastic impact because you’re not moving from one area to the next–it’s all one big connected location, where your actions can snowball into unintended effects. Ayana’s assortment of abilities and gadgets also have way more utility in this level. The binoculars used for scouting and mapping enemy movements are way more valuable in a giant open space than in an enclosed laboratory or city street, for instance. The game never opts for this format again, however, and in doing so it leaves me wishing for what might have been.

To the game’s credit, the back half of Shadow Legacy has some creative set pieces from a platforming standpoint, with one section in particular that I adored for how well it challenged and encouraged me to utilize all I had learned up to that point in one fast-paced gauntlet. Shadow merge can be used to eject out of shadows to make otherwise impossible jumps or interact with the environment to solve simple riddles–skills that apply to challenges that steadily get more complex as the game goes on. Even if Shadow Legacy falls short of being a great stealth game, it’s a good platformer. The environmental elements create an assortment of shadows–some oddly shaped, others that move, and still more that can be altered–and figuring out how to reach an out-of-the-way platform is sometimes a puzzle within itself, made trickier and more rewarding to solve given the stamina meter tied to Ayana’s shadow merge. Not only do you have to figure out which shadows to move or follow or jump between, but you also usually have to do it in a timely manner.

Character development feels rushed in Shadow Legacy, especially when it comes to the supporting cast.

In service of these platforming challenges, Shadow Legacy features a colorful diversity of locales, ranging from an outpost in the desert to an autonomous factory. My favorite is an urban street that hints at the human life that once populated it, now devoid of any movement save for the autonomous drones that patrol the streets and promise that this is for the best. Sporadic graffiti and text logs hint at the growing loss of autonomy among the human citizens leading up to the corporate takeover that promised everyone a better life. It’s such an eerie level, framed against the setting sun that’s causing the street to slowly be encroached by shadow. It feels fitting that Ayana uses those same shadows to sneak her way past the guards searching for her, paralleling how the oppressive regime’s efforts can’t stop the resistance–they squeezed so much life out of this one city block that now there’s no living soul to report Ayana to the authorities, just dumb, easily-fooled machines.

Guiding Ayana through these challenges is a story that never quite gets room to breathe. Initially trapped by an AI-controlled entity hellbent on using her powers for some unknown purpose, Ayana finds herself quickly working with the resistance seeking to free themselves from corporate tyranny. Ayana is hesitant to work with them, having heard they’re nothing more than terrorists but agrees to use her unique skillset to help on the condition that the group gives her everything they know about the Ereban people. There are some interesting, albeit familiar, narrative themes here, but Shadow Legacy rushes through them–Ayana buys into the resistance’s cause remarkably quickly, for example, despite being given no catalyst to do so.

This is my favorite area in the game. It’s so beautiful and yet so eerie.

In the game’s third chapter, Ayana is warned to spare humans so as to help alleviate the accusations that the members of the resistance are terrorists. This is the game’s morality system, shifting the coloring of Ayana’s design toward shining white or sinister purple depending on how bloodthirsty you play her. As far as I can tell, the ramifications of this only impact one small moment in the final level of the game–it’s not much of a narrative payoff.

At certain points in the story, Ayana can upgrade her shadow powers and you have a choice of whether to unlock new branches on one of two skill trees. One branch leans toward non-lethal abilities, like cushioning your footsteps, while the other opts for skills that make you a better killer, like making it easier to hide bodies so your deeds aren’t discovered. This creates some fun replayability as it’s impossible to fully unlock both branches in a single playthrough, but, again, shadow merge is just too strong. The new powers are cool, but I never had to use them, as shadow merge makes it fairly easy to sneak through a level without being spotted. Granted, I opted for a nonlethal run. It’s possible that if I had aimed for a playthrough where I killed everything that moved, I’d have needed to rely on more of the powers that hide bodies or kill multiple enemies at a time in order to not alert guards that something was wrong.

Ereban: Shadow Legacy sits in a weird place for me. As a stealth game, it rarely challenged me, reducing protagonist Ayana into a one-trick pony that could sneak past any target with the same shadow merge skill every time. But as a platformer, Shadow Legacy incorporates some entertaining puzzles that grow increasingly complex and rewarding to overcome. I never quite managed to connect to Ayana’s journey against the autonomous overlords planning to doom an entire civilization, but I had a lot of fun slinking up walls and exploding out of the darkness, striving to time my jumps with the movement of a windmill and the rotating shadow it was casting. Those nail-biting moments are the ones that stuck with me, not the dozenth time I slunk past an unsuspecting droid.

Gunar

April 24, 2024

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