HIGH It’s a haunting, lonely place.

LOW We’re still revisiting old locales?

WTF I turned to stone.

Editor’s Note: This review is for the Remnant II DLC only. For the full writeup of the base game including expanded information and system explanations, please see the main review here.

*

When is a remix just a rehash? That’s the driving question to ask when approaching Remnant II’s DLC. I was unimpressed with The Awakened King, which felt like it added some odds and ends rather than anything substantial. The Forgotten Kingdom offers much the same — a few new areas of a previous realm with some slight tweaks (the jungles of Yaesha now have more purple luminescent foliage), a handful of enemies, some new bosses, one additional archetype and a slew of new items.

… And yet I liked this DLC much more than the last.

Maybe I’ve just hit the acceptance stage of grief for the fact that in its DLC so far, developer Gunfire Games seems to be foregoing the exploration of new realms and simply revisiting the old — at a $10 price point, it’s probably unfair to expect much more. But for myself, a player more interested in the world-building of the series rather than min-maxing a particular build, I also think Forgotten Kingdom is more interesting, plot-wise.

Awakened King was a denouement for the story of the Fae — the final coda on the plotline of an eternal-sleep curse and a two-faced usurper. In the DLC, The One True King woke up mad as hell, and the player had to deal with the repercussions.

Forgotten Kingdom centers on the fate of a legendary king and lost tribe of the Pan, the goat-like sentient species of the Yaesha realm who escaped the onslaught of the interdimensional aliens (and series antagonists) The Root. Yet all the player finds are the ruins of a once-mighty empire.

The plotline brings with it a palpable atmosphere of loneliness and loss. While the jungle sections are lush and there’s still the occasional appearance of The Root, the most common enemy type are stone automata from a long-past era, falling apart and sometimes missing limbs or heads. The headlining and most memorable song is more meditative than thrilling, lacking big bombastic crescendos and often punctuated by haunting acoustic strings or reeds.

NPCs to talk to are few and far between. During the journey, the player will repeatedly run into a Pan nicknamed “Walt,” an explorer who hopes to find the lost tribe as he learns more of their fate etched into ancient murals. There’s also a shattered goddess, angry and confused, who tasks the player with a main questline centered on retrieving something. With a little exploration, one can also find a human stranded for over a century who dreams of returning to a futuristic and bountiful Earth that no longer exists. Each of these characters is lost and seeking a means to be whole again.

On the mechanical side, there’s a new complement of weapons and equipment to let folks change up their playstyle. The new “Invoker” archetype is a strong addition, boasting a badass druid-like outfit and powers that feel truly elemental — for instance, the first attack unlocked creates a large tidal wave to strike multiple foes.

The level design of these new DLC areas have a thrilling (and sometimes dangerous) verticality to keep fights fresh — I remember one section hopping from tower to tower as I battled a flying gargoyle and flame-spewing pots with legs. There’s also a section that basically turned Remnant II into a platformer. Although it nearly made me scream in frustration, it was ultimately a satisfying and novel alternative to the usual shoot, dodge, and die gameplay — although there’s still plenty of that. The bosses of Forgotten Kingdom are mechanically interesting, offering patterns to memorize and dodge instead of asking the player to face hordes of enemies. They’re nice fights, though they don’t compare to highs of the base game. 

Of course, all of the new DLC sections can be integrated into a re-roll of the main adventure’s content, but one nice perk is that Forgotten Kingdom also adds new bosses to old sections of the base game, another value-add that makes me want to try another run.

Remnant II: The Forgotten Kingdom worked for me because it’s more than a rehash. Between the standalone story for the jungle realm of Yaesha and a good chunk of new booms and buffs for the more mechanically-inclined, this expansion is certainly full of good reasons to return to these realms.

Score: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Gunfire Games and published by Gearbox Publishing. It is currently available on XBX, PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, and Violence. The official description reads as follows: This is a third-person action game in which players assume the role of a human survivor in a post-apocalyptic, fantasy world. Players travel between four different realms to battle demonic forces, alien creatures, and corrupted mutants in frenetic combat. Players use pistols, rifles, shotguns, and melee weapons to kill enemy forces. Battles are highlighted by realistic gunfire, cries of pain, and frequent blood-splatter effects. Some attacks on enemy creatures can result in decapitation, with large blood-splatter. One quest item players must retrieve is a severed, bloody hand, which can be examined at close range. The game depicts a topless elven female character, with an exposed breast and nipple. The words “f*k,” “sht,” and “a*shole” are heard in the game.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized.  Audio cues for enemy presence and attacks do not have a visual component onscreen. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. 

VIDEO SCRIPT

There’s a new Sniper Elite game coming soon.

On one level this is super-exciting because as a longtime fan of the series I’ve reviewed all of them for Gamecritics, and have watched as the franchise has gradually improved and been perfected over the years by developers with a passion for delivering the most intense stealth and sniping experience possible.

The setting this time – France – promises castles, rivers, ports, and the kind of verdant forests we don’t get enough of in the franchise, The wooded area in Sniper Elite 4 was a delight, and the little bits of nature that I saw in this hands-on preview were both gorgeous and a perfect place to explore and stalk through.

Gameplay-wise, Sniper Elite 5 mostly offers refinements to the design elements we saw in SE3 and SE4.

For example, instead of swapping out their starting kit, players scavenge weapons from the fallen dead and hold onto them as temporary weapons to be used for a few minutes and discarded. It’s a decent system, and does a good job of showing off the different ways guns can be customized, as enemy weapons come with a wide variety of sights, barrels, and magazines. This leads to some questions about why there’s a silenced colt .45 with a 17-bullet capacity lying around a French farmhouse, but players are ostensibly expected to enjoy sampling the armaments rather than worrying about the realism of the situation.

The game even takes a note from Hitman‘s book by setting up specific ways to kill mission targets for rewards. In the level I played, I was asked to drop a chandelier on an officer’s head while he was surveying stolen art in a ballroom. It’s an interesting addition that should encourage players to go back to levels multiple times and test out a variety of approaches.

If these were all the changes that Rebellion made to Sniper Elite, it would be one of my most-anticipated games of the year.

Tragically, this isn’t the case.

Why? Because they made one additional change that transforms the adventure from a delightful fantasy to be savored and turns it into a nightmare to be deeply concerned about.

That change? Non-lethal options.

I was genuinely aghast when I watched the ‘how to play’ video and saw Karl Fairburne – the main character of the SE series, and a man known only for massacring nazis – flip his knife around and clonk a nazi over the head instead of slitting his throat. I don’t have footage of this because why would I ever do something like that in this game? I do, however, have footage of SE5‘s menus which clearly establish that not only does the game have fantasy non-lethal ammunition for weapons, but there are actual badges for getting through a level without killing any non-key targets.

That’s right – Sniper Elite 5 will award experience points for NOT killing Nazis.

To be absolutely crystal clear, this is the Sniper Elite franchise – a series that leads the industry in depicting the brutal murder of Nazis, and I revel in the joyful depiction of shrapnel perforating the internal organs of Nazi soldiers in gruesome slow-motion. Indeed, the point of this series is to remind people that Nazis are monsters, and to allow them to deliver brutal deaths to the Nazis whose actions have earned them… and yet, apparently the developers at Rebellion have decided you should be able to liberate France and dispense justice without hurting Nazis?

To those who might say – ‘Well, this is for people who don’t like games to be disgusting‘ I say turn off the x-ray death cam.

To those who might say ‘Maybe there should be less-violent options for people who are interested in the story‘, I say play something else – Sniper Elite is, and has always been, a game about murdering Nazis. If you want to avoid killing things, play a Thief game, or play Metal Gear – they require or at least heavily encourage stealth without murder.

For disturbed individuals who want to play as a Nazi, I’m sure EA and Activision will be happy to take your money, but this is Sniper Elite. This is a game about killing Nazis.

What makes this design decision even worse is the reality that in our current political climate, American politicians go in front of cameras and use Hitler as a role model and an actual fascist is in a head-to-head runoff to be the president of France. At this moment in time as literal, real-world fascism is on the rise, Rebellion has decided to make killing Nazis optional. The game is literally about stopping a Nazi invasion of America and the developers think it’s a good idea to say that hey, maybe we don’t have to kill Nazis?

Who was asking for this? What were the developers thinking??

And no, that question is not rhetorical. I actually need to know because this game has been in development for years.

Hundreds of people have worked on it.

At some point, at least one of them had to say ‘Maybe Nazis shouldn’t die in this game.’ and then some number of people had to approve that decision.

And then people had to code in an ‘unconscious’ state to enemies.

And then they had to craft animations of people getting knocked out.

And then they had to design the badges that players get for not killing Nazis.

This didn’t happen accidentally. People decided that Sniper Elite, which had, up until this moment, been where people who want to kill Nazis in videogames go to have the best possible experience killing Nazis – should suddenly become be a game where maybe it’s okay for Nazis to get a pass??

This is disgusting.

Luckily, there’s still time to fix this. Sniper Elite 5 doesn’t come out for another six weeks, and this isn’t a difficult thing to patch out. Remove the ‘knock-out’ button and prompt. Delete all references to non-lethal ammunition from the loadout screen and game world, and erase those badges from the awards menu.

Nazis need to die, and it’s Sniper Elite‘s job to make those deaths as entertaining as possible. So fix this, Rebellion, or be remembered as the company that pulled an abrupt about-face in a world with real, actual fascism on the rise and said ‘Hey, maybe the Nazis weren’t so bad, after all…‘

World War Z, the dynamic and extremely replayable co-op zombie shooter, is getting a huge content upgrade this month in the form of the Aftermath update. I was lucky enough to get a chance to play it, and I’ve come away impressed with the changes the developers have made to their already-compelling third person shooter.

The most notable thing is, of course, that it’s no longer strictly a third person game. In the most crucial change to the way WWZ is played, there’s now a first-person option which gives players the chance to aim down their gun’s barrel at the oncoming hordes. The natural response to this news is, of course, that a first-person World War Z is just Left 4 Dead, but I didn’t find that to be the case since each game has a distinctly different play flow.

While the seminal classic L4D focuses on claustrophobic battles in restricted locations against dozens of zombies, WWZ is all about giant setpiece combat with huge open arenas and long sightlines, allowing the player to marvel (and panic) at hundreds of screaming zombies heading straight for them.

This design focus was on display in the two levels I sampled, drawn from the new Italy and Russia campaigns. Each one had two of these ‘siege’ sequences in which the player has a minute to set up defenses as hordes of the living dead draw closer. Watching zombies spill out of a building in the distance and coalesce into a black column of sprinting monstrosities was a sight to behold. I continue to be amazed at the way the game’s engine manages to handle the scores of zombies all at once, never slowing down.

In addition to the new levels, the Aftermath update offers a new character class, the Vanguard. While lacking in offensive capability, they come equipped with a shield that can withstand whatever the zombies throw at it. While basically useless on its own, the Vanguard is a potent addition to any team smart enough to stick together because the secret to surviving WWZ is finding chokepoints where their numerical advantage of zombies can be rendered irrelevant. Having a walking wall on the team means that players can create chokepoints nearly anywhere they want (save for the siege battles, of course) – even siege onslaughts can be slowed by positioning the shield-bearer at the tops of ramps and staircases.

There’s also a new enemy in the game, but it’s not a new humanoid — players now have to watch out for hordes of flesh-eating rats capable of stripping a player down to the bone in a matter of seconds. The developers explained that part of their design philosophy is to find ways to force players to work together, and the rats do a great job of that. While a grenade can disperse the rodents instantly, the optimal approach is to get the whole team shooting at them simultaneously in order to save those precious grenades for the zombies.

Perhaps the most exciting development, though, are the new randomized objectives.

Since WWZ is built around players going through the same levels time and again, grinding experience and improving their characters, veterans learn every surprise the maps have to offer very quickly, to the point where they’re able to play them on autopilot. The new campaigns try to remedy that by offering randomized objectives.

I saw this in action during one of the Kamchatka missions, in which there were three switches scattered around the map that needed to be flipped in a specific order. According to the developers, which switches are involved and what order they need to be flipped will change every time, forcing players to explore the map during each run. Sadly, this type of objective hasn’t been edited into the original campaigns, but it’s sure to make the new ones a popular choice.

World War Z was already a fantastic co-op experience, and these new additions expand on it perfectly without damaging anything that was already there. The one thing I wasn’t able to try out was the upgraded horde mode, which is exclusive to the next-generation console version of the game. I was promised truly unbelievable numbers of zombies, and that definitely sounds amazing, but for now we’ll just have to wait and see.

World War Z: Aftermath comes out on PC, PS4/5, and XBO/S/X on September 21st. It will be available as a standalone package containing all existing WWZ content, and those who already own WWZ will be able to purchase the new content as DLC.

HIGH The final battle with #SPACEDEVIL

LOW Spending hours failing to upgrade my vampire.

WTF The Canadian Bear-Man questline.

After a series of sequels, the Earth Defense Force series has its formula locked in. Giant ants, giant spiders, giant robots — toss in a few new monsters for every new game, remember to include a remake of the famous “Brute Force” level, and then push it out the door. Even Iron Rain, the ‘Westernized’ title developed by Yukes, rather than series stalwarts Sandlot, didn’t change much beyond making capitalism the story’s villain. With a built-in fanbase and a gameplay loop that people love, it was time for EDF to take a chance and do something crazy.

EDF: World Brothers is that crazy.

Despite a new graphical style where realistic character models are replaced my Minecraft-style voxel figures, the structure of Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is identical to every other entry in the series — aliens are attacking the earth, and it’s up to a group of ragtag soldiers from around the world to beat them back.

It’s still a third person shooter where the camera is placed directly above and behind the playable character for maximum peripheral visibility. The story is still broken down into few dozen discrete missions where the player equips a team and sends them out to destroy a certain amount of enemies until they’re cleared to come home. There’s only one real change this time, and that’s just how silly everything has become.

It’s not just the voxel art that establishes World Brothers as the most kid-friendly game in the franchise — the tone has been completely transformed. While people might have balked at the wobbly robots or questionable voice acting, every EDF game is a dead-serious story about humans staving off extinction by battling against overwhelming odds. World Brothers, on the other hand, is the story of the Space Devil gathering up all of the motherships from previous iterations and using them to split the earth — which in this game is rendered as a cube — into six flat planes. Why has the Space Devil done this? Does it really matter? The point here is that a threat has appeared, and it’s up to a diverse cast of soldiers to deal with it.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that World Brothers leans heavily into the diversity angle. Instead of generic soldier classes, the game offers distinct characters, all of them either drawn from previous EDF entries or themed around the country they’re from. Brazil offers a samba dancer dressed for Carnivale, Japan has a ninja and a cat-themed maid, Norway offers a viking, and so forth. Everything is broad stereotypes and national costumes, and the most surprising thing is that, other than the Mexican who introduces himself by saying he’s too hung over to talk, the devs manage to stay just this side of offensive generalization.

In addition to providing an enormous roster of characters — dozens of different types, each with three color variations that also have different stats — the character-focused gameplay is how the developers have revamped weapon unlocking. Gone are the days of searching for weapon crates or researching new items. Instead, each map has 3-5 fallen soldiers that need to be rescued. When they are, the character is either unlocked for use, or if the player already has them, levels them up. Each new character has a chance to bring with them a new weapon, and each level they earn gives them access to a new weapon type.

Special abilities are key to winning, and what differentiates World Brothers from the rest of the series. Replacing the old system where the player kills monsters until they can summon an airstrike or vehicle, now each character has a unique power capable of wiping out enemies, healing troops, or massively increasing the team’s power. Even when playing solo, the player can choose to bring up to four characters to each mission and can freely swap between them at any moment. With this change, support characters are suddenly valuable in single player EDF in a way they never have been before.

While each new wrinkle to the tried-and-true formula is a delight, it does have one major drawback — the grindiness is turned up to 11. Every EDF expects people to replay levels over and over again to unlock weapons and gain armor, but World Brothers is worse than most in this respect because upgrading is only possible by rescuing teammates, and there’s a hard limit of 5 per mission. This means that the truly high-end weapons and powerful characters are going to be available only to those who are truly devoted to the gameplay loop.

Even if World Brothers were just a quickie distraction meant to tide fans over until the post-apocalyptic madness of EDF6 it would still be worth a look. It manages to be so much more than that, though — the huge cast, constantly surprising powers, humorous writing and huge numbers of classic enemies and heroes all combine to turn this into a celebration of the franchise. Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is a love letter to one of the craziest videogame series ever, and its simplified look and gameplay ironically make this unbelievably niche title one of the best jumping-on points the series has ever offered.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Yukes and published by D3 Publisher. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 80 hours of play were devoted to the singleplayer mode, and the game was completed. 10 hours were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB and features Violence, Blood and Mild Language. I can’t imagine any parent objecting to this too strenuously. Only robots and insects are killed, and it’s almost completely bloodless. This is the cutest, safest epic-action game ever, and a perfect place for kids to learn about the genre.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the majority of the game without audio and encountered zero difficulties. All dialogue is subtitled and all vital information is provided visually. Subtitles cannot be resized. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

HIGH Battling a giant floof while wearing power armor.

LOW There’s no excuse for melee combat this awkward.

WTF The giant monster that wears teddy bear-themed pajamas.

The action-RPG can be a difficult nut to crack. Combat needs to feel fluid and visceral so that it doesn’t seem like fights are won by stat checks instead of skill, but at the same time, character builds need to feel different enough for players to get the sense that they’re crafting their own personal take on the world. Biomutant, which takes players on a journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape packed with… adorable fur monsters… does its best at finding a balance between those poles, but ends up struggling as much as it succeeds.

Biomutant is set on a future version of Earth, long after humans have fled the planet and left behind enough toxic waste to mutate the remaining wildlife into bipedal martial artists. The plot kicks off with a battle between the main character — a one-eyed ronin designed prior to the campaign — and “The Meat-Eater”, a giant wolf famous for being the only non-vegetarian left in the world. Once each has gone their separate ways, the ronin runs into an old friend who explains that giant monsters are feasting on the roots of the enormous tree which is filtering poison out of the water and soil. Unless they’re stopped, the world is going to go through a second, more final apocalypse.

It’s not difficult to pinpoint Biomutant’s greatest strength since the creature design here is stellar. There are seemingly endless variations on each type of monster that the ronin can come up against — from tiny balls of fur and teeth to enormous behemoths, each new type that appears is a delightful surprise. In addition, there are a half-dozen factions of humanoid enemies, each with its own style of armor and weaponry, ensuring that the player will constantly come up against new foes for the length of the campaign. The only problem I had here was that some of them were so cute that I hesitated to kill them off.

Biomutant‘s map is also a marvel. Learning the key lesson (see: ELEX) that a world should be both easy to traverse and constantly providing strange new sights, Biomutant’s areas are some of the best post-apocalyptic landscapes I’ve ever seen. From green fields to icy tundra, and from sun-flecked beaches to blackened plains, each new biome offers distinct environmental features and unique threats, not to mention dozens of locations to investigate. One of my main criteria when judging open-world titles is to see how much time I spend exploring the world before getting around to pursuing the main questline. Biomutant’s world is so intriguing and dense that I was level 20 before I checked in on the giant world-eaters threatening creation.

While Biomutant may look fantastic and has one of my favorite open-world maps, it stumbles badly right out of the gate when it comes to the story.

The developers have made the strange choice to not voice the game’s characters — the ronin and all the people they meet speak gibberish, and a narrator explains what’s going on in the conversation, which has the effect of distancing players from the characters and their concerns. Other than the ronin (still ticked off about the time his parents were killed by the Meat-Eater) I didn’t make a connection with any other characters. In a larger sense, it feels like Biomutant has a premise more than it has a story. A threat is established and the player has to defeat it, but the details of that threat don’t resonate because the lack of detailed characterizations makes it feel like there aren’t any stakes.

Another large problem is the combat, which is balanced terribly. Well, that’s not entirely accurate — the gunplay and magic powers work fine, but the melee is mess. The developers are obviously going for weighty, impactful fights full of dodges, perfect parries, and brutal counters, but they don’t let players lock on to enemies. Instead, players get a ‘soft-lock’ on whoever the game decides that they’re attacking. It’s needlessly awkward, and made more so by the fact that it’s strangely difficult to stagger an opponent. Enemies barely react to being hit, making it tough to open them up for combos — especially frustrating with giant humanoids and large beasts who can attack continuously without any clear way to interrupt them.

Biomutant‘s combat would be a complete wash if it weren’t for the fact that every type of gun works great, and they all come with infinite ammo. As a third-person shooter that focuses on close-range gunplay and flashy dodges, it’s quite good– but as a brawler, Biomutant is inexcusably bad. If players had to rely solely on melee combat, it would be nearly unplayable.

Biomutant’s saving grace is how willing it is to get weird and different with its gameplay. There are puzzles to solve, walls to climb, ancient fallout shelters to plunder, and more — behind every corner, there was something new to uncover.

The game is also unusually helpful when it comes to sidequests. Once players know about a type of quest, such as repairing an old radar dish or watching a filmstrip, all of the information on how to complete that quest turns up in their journal. Then, the moment that quest is finished, the next iteration of it pops up on the map, taking all of the frustrating searching out of the process. This makes things considerably easier to complete than a traditional open-world RPG, but it feels right for Biomutant –– the developers are obviously proud of the world they’ve built, and want to minimize obstacles that would keep players from seeing all of it.

It’s rare that I’ll forgive lackluster story or mediocre combat, but the unbelievably positive energy in its other aspects creates such a winning atmosphere that I find it hard to hold its failures against it. Yes, Biomutant‘s story could be a lot better, but it’s also an adventure where an otter in a wetsuit builds the player a jetski so they can cruise to an archipelago and battle mutants around the rusty remains of ancient shipwrecks. I wish the fighting was more thoughtfully designed, but then again, a lemur taught me how to use a submarine so I could fight a giant turtle in an underwater city.

What Biomutant lacks in polish, it makes up for in audacity, and I appreciate that.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Experiment 101 and published by THQ Nordic. It is currently available on PC, XBO/S/X and PS4/5. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. The game has no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, and it features Alcohol Reference, Blood, Crude Humor, Fantasy Violence, and Use of Tobacco. For a game about murderous beasts stalking a post-apocalyptic world, Biomutant is fairly wholesome. Yes, people talk about drinking and smoking, and there’s quite a bit of blood and tragedy in the game, but by and large, even younger teens should be fine playing it without any trouble.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the majority of the game without audio and encountered zero difficulties. All dialogue is subtitled and all vital information is provided visually. Subtitles can be resized. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the controls are not remappable.

HIGH Zipping through a high-tech base as everything explodes around me.

LOW A boss that’s out of bounds and impossible to shoot.

WTF Your enemy in this mission: Meteorites!

It takes a lot of nerve to dive headfirst into a world as bizarre as the one DAEMON X MACHINA offers. Starting with one of the most jarringly dense opening cutscenes I’ve seen in ages, the game throws one bizarre twist after another at the player.

Here’s a precis – the moon exploded, wiping out most of life on Earth. Computer programs have attained sentience and use automated factories to crank out drones meant to finish the job started by the moon. A superintelligent computer leads the human effort to fight the AI threat, but a surprisingly large amount of the time, that entails pitting various mercenaries against one another at the behest of sinister conglomerates.

…Got it?

It’s a a great big mess that gets more confusing with each new character introduction and dialogue scene dropped into the middle of a deathmatch or boss fight. At the center of this maelstrom is the player, controlling a mute cipher whose only role is to be awesome at completing missions while all this craziness spins around them.

A third-person shooter, DXM puts players in charge of a customizable mech with surprisingly intuitive controls and sets them loose on a chain of missions that will reveal the terrifying secrets of its world. I won’t lie, though, I was still puzzled about a few things after the credits rolled.

What is clear is that there’s a huge amount of variety in DXM‘s missions – they start simple with the player wiping out opposition in a variety of post-apocalyptic maps, but things quickly take a turn for the unusual. Several storyline missions will switch objectives midway through, with new foes turning up and new goals unlocking. There are even missions that completely upend the experience, with the player suddenly out of their mech and stealthing their way through a research facility, and ones where they find themselves dropped into the cockpit of an ultra-heavy battlemech, stomping around ruined cities while firing volleys of missiles and crushing tanks underfoot.

This unpredictable mission structure makes it a challenge to build the perfect mech loadout for any given assignment. If they’re told to destroy an enemy factory, for example, it makes sense to bring along bazookas and heavy ballistic missiles. But, what if quick-boosting mercenaries arrive to defend the facility after a couple of buildings have been wrecked? Hopefully the player packed some assault rifles and lock-on missiles as backup weapons, or it’s a trip back to the mission select screen to refit the mech.

DXM‘s arsenal is enormous, with everything from SMGs to laser cannons, and the player can choose any style they like. The mech suit offers quite a bit of aim assistance (necessary, since enemy mechs are able to boost and hover with as much agility as the player) so the idea is to keep the target at the center of the screen and hit the trigger once a lock-on has been achieved. This works great most of the time, and only causes problems during boss fights when the auto-aim might decide a giant robot’s heavily armored hull is a more important target than the glowing weak point just to its side.

The control scheme grants mechs three main modes — at any moment the player can switch between prioritizing their craft’s shields (halving incoming damage), weapons (doubling outgoing damage), or thrusters (unlocking unlimited boost until the power runs out.) Adroitly flipping between these modes is the key to success in the game. Powering shields while taking fire on approach, blasting the enemy to pieces with bonus damage, and then zipping freely away is a dynamite tactic that can wipe out almost any for if executed carefully.

These controls work just as well for multiplayer as they do for the story mode. There’s traditional deathmatch gameplay in which players can entertain themselves boosting and dodging against real life opponents, but much more interesting are the co-op features. While it’s great to have help taking down some of the enormous bosses, the real star of the show is a randomized dungeon mode, in which teams of players delve into AI-controlled depths in the hopes of finding rare tech to customize their mechs.

DAEMON X MACHINA might have an overwrought, needlessly complicated plot, but doesn’t that usually go hand-in-hand with giant robot narratives? Whether or not players are interested in the story, there’s a huge amount of great gameplay on offer with dozens of story and side missions and replayable multiplayer content. From any perspective, DXM offers great value and gameplay, making it one of the top mech games available.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Marvelous and published by XSEED. It is currently available on PC and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 25 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. Four hours were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, and Mild Language. Yes, robots are constantly blowing each other up, but the pilots almost always make it out alive so generally players are just wrecking technology. I honestly didn’t notice any language, even of the mild variety. There’s a little existential horror in what the game has to say about AI and the way players can transform their avatar into a post-human beast to keep up with their enemies, but that’s it as far as sensitive material goes.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the majority of the game without sound and encountered no difficulties. There are ample dialogue and mission information is given via subtitles and text. Text cannot be resized. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

HIGH That’s a way more satisfying final boss fight than the original.

LOW Groups of more than two zombies can stun-lock like mad.

WTF I’m sad that the giant worm boss didn’t make the cut.

If the Resident Evil series were an amusement park, Resident Evil 3 would be the roller coaster to Resident Evil 2‘s haunted house. There’s no subtlety to be found here — no slow-burn tension. No, it’s just one burst of action followed by another until the player is left exhausted. If RE2 wanted to scare players, RE3 wants to blow them away, and at its best it does just that.

A fairly faithful remake of the PS1 game Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, 2020’s RE3 wastes almost no time tossing players into its high-octane nightmare world. After a minute of first-person perspective designed to trick fans into thinking it might be a RE7-style exercise in grueling horror, the camera pulls back to third-person-shooter distance just in time for the fan-favorite Nemesis to burst onto the scene.

What follows is perhaps the best first fifteen minutes any game has ever offered. It sets up the Nemesis as an implacable, tireless foe, series protagonist Jill Valentine as a scrappy survivor, and Raccoon City as the site of open warfare between the living and the dead. Moving seamlessly between half a dozen locations, the chase that opens RE3 is a masterpiece of experiential design — yes, it’s completely scripted at every moment, but it’s such a rush that it’s impossible to find fault in it.

Once Jill escapes, RE3 finally opens up… but not all that much. The player is given a set of tasks to aid survivors in a downtown subway station, and this quest makes up the first third of the campaign. Considering RE3‘s interest in being a faster, more action-packed entry, it’s notable that the chores Jill has to perform are far more grounded in reality than one would expect, given the series’ history.

In fact, RE3 is almost completely lacking in puzzles, keys and backtracking. Essentially, Capcom has stripped out everything that would slow it down — RE3 seems mostly concerned with moving the player from setpiece to setpiece, as if terrified that they will become bored if they go more than a few minutes without gunning down a horde of zombies.

At this point it’s important to note how threadbare the plot is, and just how short the running time will probably be for most players. I spent ample time searching every nook and cranny and unlocking all of the hidden chests, and my first playthrough lasted only three and a half hours. By optimizing my path and skipping cutscenes, I got that down to around 75 minutes on my second run — in light of all this, and a bunch of reused assets and locations, RE3 feels more like an expansion pack for RE2 than a game with its own identity and story to tell.

One big problem is that Nemesis was originally intended as an amped-up version of 1998’s Mr. X who would be able to follow the player from screen to screen, turning the first RE3 into a terrifying chase. Unfortunately, since last year’s RE2 remake has already transformed Mr. X into that kind of foe, Nemesis winds up feeling redundant. He’s also too easy to dodge and beat up, and the player can exploit this by luring him into the game’s many traps.

Other than the diminished menace of Nemesis, RE3‘s weakest quality is the character work. The game is so action-heavy that there’s no time for anything but the shallowest action-movie banter between two main characters who almost never interact. This was a problem with the original, of course, but that iteration made up for its relatively shallow plot by offering two big innovations.

The first innovation was that there was a branching path through the campaign that led to different climaxes and character outcomes. Second, each time the game was completed, players were treated to an epilogue featuring a character that fans were invested in. RE3 has cut both of these features, so surface-level is action is all it has to offer.

Fundamentally, Resident Evil 3 is two great chase scenes, four awesome boss fights, and a bunch of mediocre filler to make up the rest of the running time. It’s a magnificent, breathtaking ride the first time through, but once that initial ride is over, it becomes a competent zombie shooter and little else.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Capcom. It’s currently available on PC, PS4 and XBO. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 25 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. It has no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The ESRB gave this game an M rating, and it contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Strong Language. It’s horrifically violent and packed with swearing. Heads explode into flaps of flesh, throats are torn open with teeth, and people are swallowed whole. This is horror violence as nasty as it gets, and parents need to keep their kids away from it.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the majority of the game without sound and encountered a few difficulties. There’s no onscreen indicator to let players know when zombies or other creatures are approaching, so without the ability to hear zombie moans or Nemesis’ clomping footsteps, players can expect to get ambushed a LOT. There’s even one monster that one-hit-kills Jill if she’s caught unawares. I’d suggest playing on Assisted mode, where the frequent autosaves and regenerative health will serve to smooth out the difficulty spikes. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls on PC.

HIGH I’ll never get tired of killing you, Zombie Hitler.

LOW Waiting two minutes in an empty arena to kill a shield zombie.

WTF That is… a lot of tank.

Fans of the first three installments might be confused that Rebellion took the word “Nazi” out of the title for number four, but it’s understandable from a marketing perspective since actual Nazis are attempting a comeback around the world. However, one could also make the argument that it’s the perfect time for a game featuring the wholesale slaughter of (undead) Nazis that have crawled out their way out of hell. Thankfully, this slight change in branding is the only compromise that Rebellion has made — this latest entry is still the grindhouse splatterfest that fans of the series have come to expect.

In the aftermath of Super-Hitler’s death at the end of NZA3, the world expected the zombies he raised to quietly march back to their graves. Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred — it seems that sending Hitler to hell has only made him stronger, and now portals releasing nightmarish monstrosities are opening up all across Europe. It’s up to Karl, Boris, and two new additions to the roster, Jun and Shola, to end the occult war once and for all.

From a gameplay standpoint, this feels as much like a sequel to Rebellion’s 2018 3rd-Person Shooter Strange Brigade as it does a follow-up to the NZA trilogy. It’s a fantastic choice on the developers’ part since SB was a masterful example of quick and brutal co-op gameplay, and transitioning those mechanics into the gore-strewn locales of Zombie Army 4 works perfectly.

While there’s plenty of opportunity for Sniper Elite purists to practice precision shooting, other playstyles are also encouraged and ZA4‘s varied arsenal adapts well to player preferences. Each weapon category (rifles, secondary weapons, and pistols) has multiple options available, varying wildly in firing speed and power. SMGs, shotguns, and even pistols are all effective choices, and just like in SB, killing enemies quickly unlocks a brutal takedown that can end any enemy’s unlife with the simple tap of a button.

The devs have also added special powers to each weapon class — pistols can mark and execute half a dozen zombies in less than two seconds, rifles can stagger an entire horde with an overpowered round, and secondary weapons slow time to let the player unleash a hail of lead while dodging out of trouble. Each weapon also has a unique upgrade tree where players use upgrade kits found in the world to imbue them with elemental powers, buff their damage, or even make them unusually effective at smashing zombie skulls.

The thing that elevates ZA4 above the rest of the franchise is the care that the devs have taken to build a world where the gameplay makes perfect sense. The rest of the series was always held back by having to use Sniper Elite V2‘s assets — fine for stealth kills and long-range shooting, but never ideal for taking on hordes of zombies. This time the levels feel perfectly balanced for battling the undead thanks to defensible chokepoints to mine, overlooks for sniping, and plenty of debris-strewn arenas for players to dodge through while shotgunning zombies to pieces.

Incredibly, the maps work just as well for single player as they do for co-op. A lone soldier can easily move from one area to another while changing their tactics as the tide of battle shifts, but bringing a team will allow each player to pick a role and stick to it. A sniper can provides overwatch for an emplaced machine gunner while a melee specialist covers their flanks, for example. ZA4 doesn’t require teamwork to be entertaining, but it certainly rewards it as co-op is clearly the best way to experience ZA4.

Also impressive is the wide variety of enemies. Offering the largest roster of any Zombie Army game, ZA4 offers more than a dozen different types, from plain zombies and Resident Evil-inspired creepers, all the way up to nightmarish shadow demons that teleport soldiers across the map and scream the skin off their bones.

Just as in Strange Brigade, these enemies are meted out gradually over the course of the campaign to ensure that there are always surprises in store for the length of the campaign, and the final boss must be seen to be believed. The only dud is the shield zombie that hides behind a bulletproof barrier and lobs grenades with unerring accuracy. It’s completely manageable in co-op because it’s easy to flank, but solo players will find themselves frustrated as they wait for the shielder to pop its head out from behind cover while a horde closes in around them. In fact, they disrupt the flow of combat so badly in 1P that they should have been included only in multiplayer.

After wondering where it could go after the third entry, Zombie Army 4: Dead War is a fitting finale to the franchise. Everything about the presentation is top-notch, and there’s even a special surprise for anyone playing on the PS4. Between Left 4 Dead and World War Z, the co-op zombie shooter is a genre with some truly great titles, and now Rebellion has finally made a game that deserves to be named among the best of them.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Rebellion. It is currently available on PC, XBO and PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed multiple times. 5 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Language. This is as far from acceptable for children as you can get. It’s brutally violent, full of Nazi iconography, and even contains the odd naughty word! Seriously, though, the loving detail with which exploding torsos are rendered in slow-motion will be troubling to any parent. Consider Strange Brigade instead – it’s a largely bloodless take on the same concept by the same developers.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Please stick to Easy difficulty. While the game does an incredibly good job of being accessible by offering resizable subtitles for all in-game dialogue and onscreen indicators to let players know when zombies are approaching, there are ‘Suicider’ enemies that run screaming towards the player before blowing themselves up. They move fast, and the only real warning they’re on the way is the distinctive sound they make. Without that warning, they will hit you, and frequently. On easy difficulty they can’t one-shot kill you, though, so the game will be playable. Only attempt higher difficulty levels if you have a good team that’s always ready to revive you.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. It does, however, offer the option to plug in a USB mouse and keyboard if you want to enjoy more precise shooting!

HIGH Using a magnum kill a licker by shooting through a zombie’s head.

LOW The stories don’t match up?

WTF You are inappropriately flirty given the situation, Claire.

In 2002, Capcom released the so-called ‘REmake’ — an updated version of the original Resident Evil that was essentially the exact same game with better graphics. It was the absolute apex of fixed-camera presentation, but just two years later RE4 would render it irrelevant. In contrast, 2019’s Resident Evil 2 has rebuilt itself from the ground up using the same locations, characters, and story, but slides them into a modernized experience. The result is that it successfully recreates the feeling of playing the original from 1998 while delivering smart updates at the same time. The REmake was a tribute, but this version of Resident Evil 2 is a rebirth.

For those not coming to RE2 with a longstanding familiarity (surely plenty of people since it’s been 17 since the original release on PS1) Resident Evil 2 follows Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, two youths who find themselves trapped inside the zombie-infested Raccoon City and have to fight their way to safety — a journey that will wind up revealing all of the dirty secrets hidden beneath the carnage-strewn streets.

Players start by selecting either character, then set about exploring an ornate and labyrinthine police station, gathering keys to unlock doors and various items to complete objectives. They’ll also spend a significant amount of time juggling inventory space to ensure that they have enough ammo and health items to survive inevitable encounters with the hungry dead. In one of the RE2‘s biggest nods to modern accessibility, an autosave system has been added that creates a checkpoint every time something major happens. Using the original manual save rooms is now completely optional.

While the change to a traditional third-person camera (the original offered fixed camera angles) isn’t as great a transformation as RE7‘s first-person experience, it was absolutely the right choice for the intensely combat-focused RE2, as the game is packed with vicious, fast-moving foes. Being able to easily track them around a widescreen view is absolutely integral to survival, and the combat is a melange of the best ideas the series has ever had — the direct aiming and free movement was snatched from RE6, and the moddable weapons and ammo crafting were grabbed from RE2 and RE3 respectively. Most vitally, though, defense items have made a triumphant return from the REmake!

Most of the enemies focus on grabbing the player, and can do huge amounts of damage if they’re successful. Instead of the ability to quickly dodge or block incoming attacks, players can pick up a number of limited-use defense items. When grabbed, the player is given a prompt to tap a button that results in defensive maneuver like a brutal stabbing, or jamming an explosive device into a creature’s mouth, depending on what they have equipped. It’s a great system for balancing out the often-severe difficulty — players get a second chance when they make a mistake, but they’re always reminded that those extra chances are limited in number.

Enemies look and behave fantastically well. Zombies shamble and stumble around, easy to stun but hard to kill without a decapitation. Lickers move like lightning, and writhe with strange animations. However, RE2‘s most fantastic foe is easily Mr. X, a trenchcoat-wearing giant who was originally relegated to a player’s second run-through. His part has been beefed-up considerably, as he now bedevils both characters through nearly half of the experience. Now that modern tech has done away with loading screens, this imposing hunter is free to chase players from room to room, with few places being truly safe. Every time his heavy footsteps become audible, the tension ratchets up considerably.

One of the main selling points of the original RE2 was the ‘zapping system’, which let one character take on the main plot, followed by the second character playing a complementary version with different bosses. That concept has been recreated here, but only somewhat — this time Leon and Claire each have distinct storylines and exclusive areas, but with one exception, they fight the same bosses in the same places. This isn’t a huge problem since Leon and Claire feels radically different from each other, but the biggest impact is on the storyline.

Over the course of two playthroughs I saw characters die and then come back to life, I saw a room get destroyed twice by the same climactic boss fight, and I saw two people get trapped in the same room at what must have been the same time, but magically, neither of them ran into one another. While it’s too bad the developers weren’t able to make the twin storylines mesh more organically as they did back then, the biggest oversight is keeping Leon and Claire apart for almost the entire campaign. The two characters meet at the start, get separated immediately, chat once through a locked fence, and then don’t run into each other again until the game is over. All of the voice actors do a good job, and the realistic, expressive models allow for legitimate moments of emotion, but because the two leads spend essentially no time together, their flirty camaraderie seems badly out of place.

With just one new area per character, this RE2 isn’t much larger than the original was. I was able to get through my first playthrough in around six hours, with my second taking just three and a half. Alternate costumes and special weapons are locked away behind low completion times and playing on hard difficulty, though — there’s enough here to justify half a dozen replays, even if it’s just to test out how all of the weapons work on the different enemies. I’ve played through it four times so far, and haven’t yet tired of the combat.

Resident Evil 2 is an exceptionally good survival horror game that looks fantastic and plays like a dream. It also proves that the Raccoon City police station was one of the greatest videogame maps of all time, as the concept of letting players take on two different halves of the same story is just as brilliant now as it was back then. Even concerns about modern players’ lack of interest in old-school inventory management (a notorious complaint for most of the series) have been addressed, with item boxes now sprinkled liberally throughout and an expandable inventory that can hold up to 20 items.

Capcom has taken their one of their greatest triumphs and successfully modernized it for today’s audiences — it’s quite an accomplishment, and even if it can’t deliver the kind of grueling visceral horror that Resident Evil 7 did on PSVR, it’s still a hell of a ride. Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Capcom. It is currently available on PS4, XBO, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed multiple times. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Strong Language. It’s a zombie game, and one of the most explicitly gory ones at that. There arfe exposed entrails, torn-off pieces of flesh, and the second-most upsetting head explosions I’ve ever seen. Also, there’s plenty of swearing and plenty of children getting killed. Keep kids far from this one.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Unfortunately, you will have a great deal of trouble playing the game. Being able to hear the groans, skittering, or thumps of approaching enemies is vitally important to gameplay, and there are no visual cues letting you know when those sounds are happening. If you stick to easy mode you’ll probably be able to muscle through it, but be prepared to get unfairly grabbed A LOT. All dialogue is subtitled. The subtitles cannot be resized.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls on the keyboard. The mouse controls aiming, shooting and camera movement, with the keyboard handling movement and menu navigation. All keys can be rebound. On the controller, the player must select from a few control options.

HIGH Using the energy lasso power to disintegrate a crowd of zombies in seconds.

LOW The fleeing relic carriers are far too easy to miss.

WTF The whole final boss fight.

All of their guns are golden. I think it’s important to note that right off the top.

Other games may ask players to grind, ‘prestige’ or pay real money for golden weaponry, but Strange Brigade just throws it at the player. Every character’s starting gun is gold, engraved, and covered in custom detailing. It’s not a random thing, it’s not something the developers did on a whim – it’s a mission statement, because SB is a game devoted to excess.

A third-person shooter set in an apocryphal time between the two world wars, Strange Brigade lets players pick from four stalwart adventurers and sets them on a quest to stop an evil Egyptian goddess from conquering the world. How can they save the day? By shooting zombies. Hundreds and thousands of zombies.

As a spiritual follow-up to Rebellion’s Nazi Zombie Army, Strange Brigade offers the same kind of co-op thrills that series specialized in, now expanded to an impressive degree. Where NZA was beholden to Sniper Elite‘s mechanics whether or not they made sense, SB has been built from the ground up to give up to four players the best possible ride as they shatter long-dead walking corpses.

In addition to a wide array of firearms and grenades, each character comes with a special perk such as unlocking secret doors or gaining health with every kill. They also each have a super attack that’s powered by collecting the souls of defeated foes. The choice of character is more than aesthetic here, as the various skills suit different playstyles that can work well in combination with one another. One character might be able to lure a mob of zombies around a decoy, while another leaps in with an explosive power dive to wipe them out in a single strike. The devs have managed a perfect balance here — all of the characters are perfectly playable solo, but have clear roles to fill in multiplayer.

The levels are built around facilitating fast and brutal combat thanks to corridors packed with zombies and infested arenas with clear sightlines and player-activated traps. Combat is frantic, with SB constantly surprising players for almost its entire length — there are eight standard levels and one abbreviated final boss level, and every one introduces at least two new enemy types that complicate things.

While the game can easily be played via nonstop combat, each level is also littered with hidden rooms and puzzle doors. A few of these are mandatory – energy beam puzzles or lights that have to be shot in a certain order – but the vast majority are optional. It’s here that the developers truly make the game feel as accessible to single players as it is to groups – something NZA never managed.

When played solo, these side objectives completely change the pace by encouraging full exploration of the stunning levels, each one littered with clever detail work and gorgeous vistas. To keep from feeling repetitive, games need to constantly change either mechanics or environments, and Strange Brigade goes hard for the second option. Every level follows a simple ‘kill plenty of enemies on the way to the boss fight’ structure, but each location is vastly different than the last. Moving from day to night, and from claustrophobic tunnels to wide-open plazas, every area offers a distinct architectural style and a twist on pathfinding, ensuring that the player never gets hit with a sense of deja vu.

Strange Brigade is the rare title that manages to construct completely satisfying single- and multiplayer experiences in the exact same space. It’s not a huge project — a motivated team could blast through in under five hours while digging up all of the secrets might take closer to twenty — but it’s immensely replayable thanks to character variety and the different dynamics of co-op and solo modes. With each new Sniper Elite game being markedly better than the last and Battlezone being a standout achievement in VR tank simulation, I feel like I say this at least once a year, but it’s always true — Rebellion has done it again! Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Rebellion. It is currently available on PC, PS4, and XBO. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4 Pro. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. Five hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Animated Blood, and Violence. This game is weirdly safe for an ultra-violent romp. There’s no vulgarity, and the violence is almost entirely bloodless since players are battling reanimated corpses. A few giant scorpions bleed, but that’s it.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played a good amount of the game without audio and had almost no problems. The developers have come up with a clever way for the Deaf to know if they’re about to be attacked by offscreen enemies – spectral hands appear at the edges of the screen to alert players. It’s creepy and helpful at the same time! Now, the problems. There are enemies that carry valuable relics and cat statues that can be shot for cash rewards. Both make their presence known only by sound effects. While it’s possible to stumble onto them without hearing the telltale jingling or meows, it’s far more difficult than if the developers had added a ‘meowing’ and ‘jingling’ visual cue when they appear. All dialogue is subtitled, though. (Yep, they’re there… Look closely below. The subs are tiny!!)

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.