HIGH Modifying the arsenal for the player and enemies simultaneously was fascinating.

LOW Given how long the runs are, more randomization would have helped.

WTF Equipping an entire mansion with shotguns went exactly how I expected.

TRANSCRIPT: OTXO is a combat intensive top down shooter. And yet, there’s nuance buried beneath the body count. The player can’t mindlessly run and gun- since they can only hold one weapon at a time, every weapon has limited ammo… and it’s treated a bit more realistically than you’d expect. Specifically, most weapons work off clips, which means that when reloaded- the rest of the ammo in the clip is discarded. Since each gun only has one spare by default, this can get awkward in a prolonged firefight. Still, it teaches the player to to improvise. Specifically, by throwing spent weapons at enemies, and then scooping up the first weapon they can get ahold of Which is made all the more compelling by OTXO’s hefty library of weapons, and how it influences the world.

See, anytime the player unlocks a new weapon- it’s not just something they’ll encounter. Rather, since they primary source of firearms is from the cold dead hands of the Manses denizens, they’re effectively choosing the loadouts of every enemy they’ll encounter, minus a few specific exceptions. This ability to craft challenge runs, as well as the dynamic arsenals that can be fought against makes for some fascinating fights- especially when the weapons available are less than optimal. (And then there’s me- who swears by shotguns since a fair number are shell loaded.) That said, there are some consistent elements in the protagonists arsenal.

First is the dodge- On the surface it’s a simple source of I-frames, but it also doubles as a solid escape or gap closer, especially since it can be used to vault over larger objects like tables. That said, this pales compared to ‘Focus Mode’/bullet time. While short-lived, the ability to see incoming bullets and weave between the pellets of a shotgun blast is an -incredible- survival tool. But what about the runs themselves?

Well, each playthrough of OTXO tasks you with conquering 8 distinct areas, composed of several smaller rooms, and culminating in a boss fight. Each one starts in the Infinite Foyer- which is a warm up area- but past that, the specific order of things changes (though, harder areas are still reserved for the tail end, and the final stage is always the same). While this sounds simple, the order of things can make a fairly large impact.

For instance, The Untold Bathhouse doesn’t seem like a large departure from the initial area- until the player gets closer to the water, and their vision fogs up. It also introduces lizard enemies, who shred health with their rapid lunge attacks. Then there’s things like The Bottomless Cellar- a late game region steeped in darkness, hindering visibility save for a narrow cone. This is bad enough in itself, but what makes it harrowing is it’s tight maze of corridors…and the introduction of suicide bombers. But, what does the order matter in all of this?

Well, once an area has been traversed, it then adds its distinct enemies to the ones which follow, which can make for a rather nasty problem- such as adding cloaking enemies and turret outposts to the aforementioned cellars. And then further compounded by enemy modifiers. Since each region pas the first -also- empowers any enemy you encounter with such winning combinations as ‘fast’, ‘perceptive’, or ‘armoured’ – so the player can get rushed down from afar by the worst the game can throw at them. Oh, and the order in which regions are tackled is completely arbitrary, so there’s no real strategic component to the route chosen. It’s not easy- to the point that -getting- to the bosses felt less brutal, more often than not. At least, past the first encounter. They -do- have some pretty nasty tricks up their sleeve- especially since their patterns change up once they get low on health. Still each region has a fixed boss, so acclimatizing to their bag of tricks feels inevitable. Also, boss fights grant infinite ammo, so, which allows for a pretty stable battle strategy.

Now, this might all sound good and great- but it’s about this point that I mention where OTXO starts to stumble, and that’s largely with its rogue components. Now, while I certainly enjoy the various stages it provides and the way that you can get some very dynamic enemy arrangements to challenge- it wasn’t long until i found myself encountering a certain problem, over, and over again- and that was largely vested in it’s stage design.

See, OTXO requires the player to clear -all- of its regions during a successful playthrough, so, in the case of a player getting near the climax and dying repeatedly, they’ll see those earlier areas a -lot-. To the point that it won’t be long until they’ll start to pick out the fact that there isn’t as much variety as they might like. This iterative element, especially since it’s hard to avoid, definitely weighs on the gameplay experience in the long run, and yet, I still found that OTXO had enough in its bag of tricks to keep me entertained- partly due to a few other odds and ends. Such as alcoholism.

Okay, so! There’s a bar which crops up every so often- and the player can spend the money they earn by slaughtering mooks to buy drinks/run specific perks. These run the gamut from ‘extra health’ or ‘reduced incoming damage’, to interesting options such as ‘increased damage but enemies can hear the player from further away’, or ‘increased damage, but bullets don’t fly straight’ (which pairs with ‘bullets richochet off walls in a -very- funny way.) If kills are chained together, a considerable amount of money can be made- which makes creating builds during a run pretty viable, especially when the ability to change what’s ‘on tap’/reroll is considered. …But what about long term meta upgrades?

Well, as far as making things *easier* OTXO isn’t really geared towards doing that. Money -can- be spent at the bar to permanently introduce more drinks to the pool, but a fair number of the original perks can take the player to victory. That said- the arsenal would wind up looking a bit sparse, and that’s because of how weapons are unlocked. Because, for some unfathomable reasons, they are stashed away in capsule machines. Every so often, a player can encounter a hidden room, with a capsule machine in a corner. For a low amount of money, it can be turned- potentially providing the player with a random weapon… or a toy. It’s weird, and wacky- and it can take a while, but there’s some really good stuff stashed away in there. I just- wasn’t able to finish it off until I’d finished the game, and unlocked the optional run challenges, such as the one that gave starting money in exchange for nothing dropping. And that wound up being more to finish things off then really using them, since while I’d unlocked a much more punishing ‘Impossible mode’ I wasn’t inclined to run through it.

That said, OTXO kept me roped in for nearly 25 hours- so on the whole? I’d say I had a good time.

Rating: 8 out of 10

— Arlyeon, Crit Hit

This game is developed by Lateralis Heavy Industries and published by Super Rare Originals. It is currently available on PS4/5, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC Approximately 26 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, Intense Violence, Language, and Use of Alcohol.

Colorblind Modes: It’s primarily black and white – I think it’s colorblind-friendly by default! As such there are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no audio dialogue and no audio cues that are necessary for play. This game is fully accessible.

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

HIGH Hitting a huge group of goblins with the wand for the first time.

LOW The final third feels like a letdown.

WTF The musical mid-game box battle.

With a return to their mid-’90s roots, first-person shooters have had something of a renaissance in recent years. These retro-styled titles are a welcome shot of adrenaline for a genre that has long become tired and stale. Chop Goblins is the distillation of this genre down to its most potent elements.

With an average playthrough lasting only 30 minutes, there is no room for Chop Goblins to slow down. Upon starting a new game, the first thing I notice is the music. Synth-heavy and bizarrely upbeat, the soundtrack has me bobbing my head as I blow away goblins in time with the tunes. This emphasis on rhythm creates a sense of urgency – in reality, there is no time limit, but I can’t shake the feeling that I need to move as fast as I possibly can.

Theoretically, Chop Goblins is a run-based shooter with an emphasis on achieving the highest score possible – but I’d be lying if I said maximizing my score multiplier is what propels me through each level. That propulsion instead comes from the very intentional design decisions, both in the visuals and gameplay.

To call the aesthetics utilitarian may be something of an overstatement — textures are basic to the point of being boring, barely registering as I dart through. Rather, the developer has focused on lighting to
differentiate each stage. While the details blur together, a castle corridor bathed in blue or hard white sun on marble columns stand out clearly in my mind. This offers a sense of visual identity for each section without the cost of high-res textures or assets – I’m moving too quickly to notice the details anyway.

The enemy design, on the other hand, is more noteworthy. While still decidedly lo-fi, careful attention has been paid to ensuring each enemy type has an immediately recognizable silhouette and easily-readable move-set. With flailing arms, big bulbous heads full of teeth and pitch-shifted voices, the titular goblins provide ripe targets as I blast my way through their lilting cries of “Chop! Chop! Chop!” Each level offers a new enemy type, steadily increasing in difficulty and capability.

Forgoing the randomized procedural generation typical of run-based games, Chop Goblins instead relies on carefully-crafted enemy encounters, hidden rooms, and alternate routes to keep subsequent playthroughs interesting. As I fly forward, there are multiple paths, and I choose without thinking as I make steady progress, rarely feeling lost or having to double back. Suddenly the walls around me are gone. I see a gaggle of goblins in the clearing ahead and a carefully-aimed shot hits a gas can. There’s an explosion, and for a moment, I can breathe as the world slows down for the first time since hitting ‘New Game’ and bloody chunks float suspended in the air.

Set pieces such as this emerge organically from the violence around me, providing strategic opportunity, shock and humor. However, some incongruous design decisions in later levels slow my progress.

For example, there are nominal attempts at puzzles that feel out of place – these rarely require more than simple environmental observation, but with a runtime of 30 minutes, they prove an unnecessary distraction from the otherwise insistent speed. Additionally, Chop Goblins crescendos early with the final stage feeling redundant and anti-climactic. However, the overall experience is so brief that I barely have
time to register the complaint.

Scope is a critical part of any project, and Chop Goblins understands this perfectly. By setting their sights modestly and emphasizing speed and tone, the developer manages an almost perfect execution of their vision – there is no waste, and every element keeps me engaged in its mad rush.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

— Ryan Nalley

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by David Szymanski. It is currently
available on PC and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 2 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game
was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Violence. The enemies are all fantasy based (monsters and goblins) and while there is plenty of blood, it’s low fidelity and non-realistic. When killed with an explosive enemies will explode into chunks of blood, but it’s all presented in a light-hearted cartoony fashion. There is a ‘Kids Mode’ setting which cuts down on the blood and changes the color to green – this also removes the chunks of blood when a goblin is blown up.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not offer subtitles. The only spoken dialogue in the game is in the form of random phrases from the enemies and is not represented visually. The enemies are constantly making noise, and while playing without sound I did notice the enemies to be more difficult to locate, particularly in more complex levels. All other sound effects have an accompanying visual cue. All narrative information is conveyed through text boxes preceding each level and is not spoken aloud. The in-game text cannot be altered and/or resized. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. Additionally, all analog inputs (left and right sticks and triggers) can be calibrated individually to account for sensitivity and
deadzones.

HIGH Call of Duty has never been more player-driven, and I’m here for it.

LOW A grindy zombies mode with permadeath and ridiculous internet speed demands!

WTF People complaining about a campaign being replayable?!

None of us anticipated the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot turning the Call of Duty franchise into an Marvel-esque interconnected patchwork universe. Developer Treyarch sticks to the past, Infinity Ward to the present, and Sledgehammer — once again — are left to pick up the pieces while hoping that at some point they’ll stop being crunched to fill the release schedule. 

A game’s merits should stand on their own no matter what, but the sheer battle of ambition versus limited time and resources is increasingly apparent here. Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy Modern Warfare 3, much like Sledgehammer’s very first game… Modern Warfare 3 (2011). Except this time they’re not finishing a trilogy, but updating a live service juggernaut. This is a title that clearly wants to be bigger, bolder, and better than its predecessor in every way — if only it’d had the time to deliver on everything.

The story of this first-person shooter picks up directly after the events of Modern Warfare 2’s… err… multiplayer story events. Sadly, just like its predecessor, the insistence that the narrative has to be woven into Warzone and other modes is going to leave some utterly baffled. Why is Graves still alive? It’s all explained in a cutscene players have to look up online! What’s the significance of Yuri and Makarov’s new roles in this continuity? Great question! Despite solid presentation and Makarov’s plot being smaller ins scale than literally starting World War III, it’s still a baffling time. No story should require this much homework. 

It’s a shame because this is easily one of the most replayable campaigns in series history thanks to the room players have to improvise, and there’s incentive to dive back in thanks to a wealth of hidden gear and perks players can use on repeat playthroughs. It’s not a full-on immersive sim, but there’s clear potential for Call of Duty’s future campaigns to learn from this design. For example, my favorite moment in the campaign was when I managed to use a parachute to glide past an entire onslaught of enemies and quickly extract from an enemy-occupied dam, completely unscripted. 

That same mission throws a curveball where one of the four bombs that need defusing is on a moving truck that, if not intercepted, ends up behind heavily-armed enemies. However, there’s the option of dropping in behind all of them to disable the bomb and sneak away into the nearby water. This freedom of choice is made all the more enjoyable thanks to the ability to customize a loadout, or even bring in one-use killstreaks on repeat runs.

So many missions are flexible in ways that allow for creativity that they kept me coming back to find more permutations in how each mini-sandbox can play out. There are no protracted car chases nor any “defeat a soldier as a child” nonsense missions like we’ve gotten in the past. Instead, this new approach captures the freedom seen in Battlefield 1 & V’s campaigns.

Better yet, this campaign truly feels balanced for Hardened difficulty in a way Infinity Ward’s last two entries struggled to justify because it demands more improvisation. When playing on Easy or Normal, players can shrug off bullets and plow through missions. Most people I’ve seen complaining about the campaign did just this, opting for the least interesting options. Hardened makes equipping armor plates important, every one-time killstreak counts, and all of the assets become that much more vital and no amount of pre-existing knowledge will offset that. It feels designed for it.

As for multiplayer, the return of fan-favorite maps from the original Modern Warfare 2 is great, with some wonderful tune-ups that keep classics like Terminal and Rust as relevant as ever. Also, not only are the large-scale, Battlefield-style Ground War and Invasion modes back, but War mode’s more cinematic, scripted missions makes its way here from Vanguard. These modes are typically more forgiving moshpits, offering guided objectives that aren’t over in ten seconds — Invasion even offers bot enemies alongside human opponents. Meanwhile, the more intimate 2 v 2, 6 v 6, and 10 v 10 modes from Modern Warfare 2 return intact for faster action. Whether it’s a big bombastic fight or tense up close fighting, Modern Warfare 3 delivers in spades.

While customizing multiplayer loadouts is a series staple at this point, things like finetuning everything from gun handling to ability perks are made more welcoming. I particularly appreciate how I can unlock equipment early by doing daily challenges. Want a certain scorestreak, weapon attachment, or grenade? Complete some dailies or score some victories, and it’s unlocked! While players can also unlock gear by exfiltrating with it in the new Zombies mode, I personally found the daily challenges far more reliable. Sadly, the lobby UI is as terrible as ever, but once I finally got the lay of the land, the extent of playstyle personalization proved staggering.

Besides that, the amount of accessibility features here are worth celebrating. While not quite on the level of Sony and Microsoft’s first-party games, Modern Warfare III has a dense suite of options for all kinds of players, whether one wants to adjust keybindings or improve visual clarity to compensate for an inability to rely on audio cues. While it’s unfortunate that certain accessibility perks require unlocking (such as high-contrast footprints from enemies who just passed by) these options are quite welcome.

Movement has also been greatly improved. The slightly longer time to kill isn’t quite as meaningful an improvement – even going up against higher skill players, it rarely tipped the scales for either opponent. That said, the diving, sliding, and mid-range aiming are all wonderful additions that amp up the versatility of each map. It’s become second nature for me to dive out of incoming fire, slide in like a John Woo hero with my P9 blazing, or even sneak up on snipers to shank them from behind. It’s incredible how even fairly condensed maps capture the jungle gym feeling the series has lacked since Black Ops 3.

On the other hand, war against the undead has been turned into a chore. Despite still being helmed by Treyarch, the Zombies mode is now generic extraction with the PvP aspect removed, and the result is that it’s as soulless as the vacant-eyed shamblers waiting to be slaughtered.

All I did for eighteen hours was drop in, fight zombies while playing the same handful of “Contract” missions in a single sandbox map, and eventually bug out when the timer expired. It’s a shame, because there are story missions — they’re just locked behind absurd challenges to grind through. Those wanting to see the story bits will have to rinse and repeat for three “acts” told primarily through audiologs.

Even in the mere months since release, I’m seeing fewer and fewer players bothering with it, and I can’t blame them. This mode reeks of being rushed, made worse because it’s permadeath if someone quits mid-match or gets killed without extracting via helicopter. In fact, one time I was downed while aboard the helicopter, and it still refused to count my extraction as a success! Such stringency actively disincentivizes playing unless someone has a guaranteed uninterrupted hour, which not everyone has on a regular basis.

With Modern Warfare 3, Sledgehammer has tried to offer something both for fans of the classics and those who want to see this series evolve, and like Ghosts, Black Ops 3, and Infinite Warfare before it, I suspect this will be an entry that people will be calling underrated five years from now. I’m not waiting that long to show it some love, though. I’ve had a blast playing Modern Warfare 3, both in the campaign and in multiplayer. The Zombies mode may be lacking, but I can live with that. My only real concern is that I hope Sledgehammer and Treyarch aren’t forced to crunch like this again for the sake of annual release deadlines.

Final Score: 8 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sledgehammer Games and Treyarch and published by Activision-Blizzard. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, XBO/S/X. This copy was obtained via commercial purchase and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 10+ hours were dedicated to the single-player campaign, and it was completed twice. Approximately 18 hours were dedicated to the zombies campaign, and it was not completed. It also features an extensive suite of competitive multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, and Use of Drugs. It’s a modern military shooter with graphic violence, swearing, morally ambiguous characters, and vividly depicts a terrorist attack from the first person perspective of a victim with a bomb vest forced upon them. Despite marketing depicting a thirteen year-old ‘squadding up’, parents should be very hesitant to let anyone under seventeen from playing the campaign or zombies mode. The more traditional multiplayer modes downplay the more serious tone, but still feature gore and viscera when explosive weapons are used. There are Microtransactions.

Colorblind modes: There are colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles, as well as indicating incoming fire and being in enemy line of sight with an orange flash in the direction of enemies. Multiple settings can be adjusted, from stick sensitivity for those with motor function limitations, to heightened visual contrast in the campaign that highlights allies in blue and enemies in red. Every relevant piece of information is transmitted visually. However, in competitive multiplayer, there is still somewhat of a disadvantage until you unlock a perk that shows enemy footprints when they’ve recently passed through. This is distinctly less of an issue in the zombies mode, as there are few ranged enemies. Regardless, it’s a reasonable experience to play without sound.  

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

HIGH Using a scrub bomb to clean a whole hull in a single second.

LOW Trying to figure out a fish’s favorite food.

WTF In the distant future we’re still linking six-packs with plastic rings?

We’re living in a time of precarious ocean health. Garbage islands, microplastics fouling the food chain, chemicals creating dead zones where nothing can live… Loddlenaut looks at this horrific situation and asks ‘okay, but what if this was easily fixable’?

In this third-person aquatic adventure, a giant corporation has absolutely wrecked the ecosystem of a faraway planet’s ocean, so the player is hired to clean it all up. Luckily they’re armed with the most beautiful fantasy item imaginable – a cleaning gun! Alternately a junk magnet that grabs up large items and a laser that vaporizes concentrated pollutant gunk, this thing is a blast to use, and allows for whole areas of the undersea world to be tidied up in a matter of minutes.

The gameplay is basic and easy to grasp by design. This was obviously constructed with young players in mind, and as such, Loddlenaut goes out of its way to give the player a helping hand as no precision is required with cleanup – the player only ever has to get their targeted garbage somewhere near the middle of the screen and a robust auto-aim will handle the rest, snatching up six-pack rings and discarded tuna cans on the move with just a few taps of a button. No matter how expansive a field of gunk may be, simply holding down ‘fire’ and pointing in the approximate direction will make short work of it.

While Loddlenaut offers just a handful of areas to clean – each one located a little deeper in the ocean — it constantly mixes up objectives in order to hold the player’s interest. Just tidying things isn’t the only task here. No, all of the random junk needs to be separated out into different types of garbage and fed into recyclers. Pop enough junk in, and the player is rewarded with a cube of modular plastic, metal, or glass, which can then be used to construct upgrades to face new challenges. Whether it’s a giant vacuum that sucks up clouds of microplastics or a rideable scrubber to scour every trace of pollution from the ocean floor, there’s always some new way of interacting with the world right around the corner.

In addition to the cleaning that makes up most of Loddlenaut‘s runtime, there’s also a virtual pet mechanic, as the various biomes are home to axolotl-themed aliens that the player can hang out with. It’s not the deepest system I’ve seen — basically, the player just scrubs down an area to attract them and then guides their evolution by feeding them different plants — but it does add an extra bit of cuteness to a game that was already overstuffed with it. The design philosophy is to keep everything round and adorable, and it’s remarkably consistent througout.

Leaning hard into the child-friendly space, Loddlenaut is a low-threat proposition. There are no monsters made of goop to battle, nor evil polluting robots to avoid. The only danger the player comes up against is their oxygen running out. However, even that isn’t too much of a threat, since not only can the player construct oxygen-refilling rings wherever they like, but completely cleaned plants regularly produce bubbles of oxygen that the player can collect to top up their tank.

Since the gameplay is so friendly, the only real issue I encountered with Loddlenaut is how it never engages with its premise in a meaningful way.

I know that this title is aimed at children, but so was Loddlenaut‘s closest analog, Island Saver, and that didn’t back away from the inevitably anticapitalist implications of its pollution-fighting plot. Loddlenaut, by comparison, soft-pedals the sinister actions of the corporation that ruined the planet. There’s a darkness at the core of the game, as it’s established that the corporation has extracted all the money it can from the planet before moving on to a larger world to do the same thing again. The player is just a part of the system that ruined the planet, with their salary paid from the profits the corporation made wiping out the planet’s native life.

As such, Loddlenaut offers a fantasy version of capitalism where all of a company’s casual ravaging of the natural world can be repaired if just a little money is set aside. While I’m not saying that Loddlenaut had to pause for a fifteen minute lecture on the horrors of coral bleaching, I will say it’s borderline irresponsible in how it presents easy solutions to nightmarishly complex problems.

Loddlenaut is cute, and sweet, and extremely playable, and a very appropriate game for children. The only thing I suggest is that those kids are guided to the proper understanding that while the game accurately demonstrates just how important ocean rescue is, that it badly misrepresents the ease with which such a thing can be accomplished — and how it’s allowed to happen in the first place.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed Moon Lagoon and published by Secret Mode. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 4 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.

Parents: This game was not rated by the ESRB, but it is effectively E-grade content. There’s nothing scary here, no salaciousness, no drugs – the most questionable thing is that some pieces of garbage are pretty clearly wine bottles. Beyond that, it’s totally safe.

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 Finding the secret faction’s hidden bunker.

LOW Trying to balance a motorcycle on cables.

WTF I was supposed to be watching for [REDACTED] this whole time?!

I finished playing Laika: Aged Through Blood two months ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Normally I roll credits and then start a review immediately, because I’ve got a pretty good sense of how I feel about a game by the time it’s finished. My feelings about Laika, however… well, it’s safe to say that they’ve been colored by real-world events that the developers couldn’t possibly have anticipated when they picked a release date in October, 2023.

Laika: Aged Through Blood is the story of the titular Laika, a dirtbike-riding coyote with an unusual gift – she can’t die. Every time she does, her body and all of her possessions explode into a mist that reforms at a nearby checkpoint. What would be an unremarkable mechanic in most titles instead forms the backbone of this story’s narrative.

Laika is a member of an oppressed minority. In the desert wasteland where she lives, any creature that isn’t a bird is forced to live in a state of constant precarity. At any moment, the avians can come along and kick them off of their land, killing anyone they please with no repercussions. All of her people have been forced to hide in the most barren section of the wasteland, with their only defense against complete annihilation being Laika’s strange gift.

The plot begins with an act of brutality so vile that it requires a content warning of its own at the start of the game – Laika’s nephew is murdered in the most awful way imaginable, and his father goes looking for revenge. Laika has to rush in the hopes of stopping him before he kills any bird soldiers – she wants revenge for her nephew as much as anyone, but is aware that any attack on the birds will be used as a justification for their army to restart their genocidal war against all non-birds in the desert. She’s too late, of course. Once the prologue is complete, the wasteland is flooded with soldiers dragging Laika into a war she didn’t want, and can’t possibly win.

That’s a bunch of words I’ve just written without mentioning gameplay, because while the mechanics are effectively perfect and its levels expertly designed to take advantage of Trials-style 2D motorbike gameplay, Laika doesn’t want the player to enjoy what they’re doing.

Every element is meant to be as unpleasant and difficult to manage as possible. The currency is the innards of Laika’s slain foes. Bonuses to abilities are only available by cooking meals, and their effects wear off so quickly that they’re not worth the trouble of making. Weapon and equipment upgrades are so ridiculously expensive, and their unique parts so hard to find, it’s as if the developers are actively discouraging the player from improving their gear — which wouldn’t surprise me, since improved gear makes it easier to kill birds, which is the last thing the game wants players to be doing.

For the first two-thirds of the adventure I struggled to figure out exactly what Laika was trying to accomplish. The bike controls are incredibly smooth, and it’s a pleasure to speed through the wasteland. Other than a couple of punishing boss fights, the combat isn’t particularly difficult – Laika is exceptionally good at killing birds thanks to a bullet-time effect whenever she aims a weapon. Also, most fights are essentially optional, as the player can use Laika’s bike to block incoming bullets, or even reflect them back at foes, allowing her to speed away safely without pulling a trigger. This is an experience with well-designed combat that seems to actively discourage the player from engaging in it. I couldn’t wrap my head around whether this was a choice or a mistake.

…And then I arrived at the bird city.

It’s a tiny section of the campaign. Laika has to go looking for someone in a city, which is a location completely different from everything else offered to this point. In the city, non-birds are allowed to live as an underclass with no rights of any kind, but at least they’re not being actively wiped out. While there, Laika can find a bird soldier with a message that changes everything, turning the narrative on its head and forcing the player to question everything they’ve done up until that point. It’s as brilliant a moment as I’ve seen in a game, and it reveals that nothing has been unintentional about the design. Every mechanic has been in service of the story, and unlike most games, the misery is the point.

Laika is not an easy game to enjoy. It’s a story, at its core, about how dehumanization of an enemy is a necessary step preceding genocide — about how people will become monsters if left with no other options. Most importantly, though, it’s about how cycles of violence can only end if people make the decision to not pull a trigger, no matter how difficult that might be. It’s a brutal, uncompromising journey, and it should have been one of the best titles of 2023, even if reality hadn’t decided to make it painfully relevant.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed Brainwash Gang and published by Headup Publishing. It is currently available on PC, XBO/S/X, PS4/5, SW. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the singleplayer mode, and the game was completed.

Parents: This game is rated M by the ESRB, and it contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Strong Language. It’s an experience about bloody vengeance and it doesn’t shy away from children being killed. Keep young kids away from it, but show it to older teens so they can’t appreciate its incredibly valuable message.

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: Yes, the game’s controls are remappable.

HIGH New options for new builds.

LOW My frames… again.

WTF Didn’t realize that was a cliff…

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.

Playing The Awakened King is like eating a plain dessert after a sumptuous meal — slightly unsatisfying, and easy to forget in light of what came before. Now, I’m not saying Remnant II’s first DLC is somehow so egregiously bad it ruins the main experience — a gem — retroactively. What I’m saying is these piecemeal additions don’t add much to the experience.

The Awakened King does offer several new possible permutations of the base game’s Losomn world, split between the fantastical palace areas of the Fae and the Victorian-inspired urban dredge of the Dran — or, as I affectionately call them, the Bloodborne parts. The new sections that aren’t just new riffs on previous areas are set along a coast, where the ramshackle harbor and derelict lighthouse stand in stark contrast to the majesty of a castle commanding the skyline.

There are only a couple truly new bosses as well (I’m not counting stat-buffed enemies called “aberrations”) that I found mostly underwhelming. Fighting big boss The One True King — the angry, awakened monarch whose magical repose caused conflict in the base game — was the highlight, if only because of his gargantuan size and whiplash-inducing teleportation. However, even including him, no boss encounter here ever reached the mechanical cleverness of those in the base campaign.

Aimed more at die-hard players than casual travelers like myself, the most the DLC has to offer is a slew of new weapons and items to further trick out already-established builds. For example, the Executor mutator increases both melee charge and attack speed for those who want to make hand-to-hand combat more viable, while there are a slew of new items that build on status effects, like the Shadow of Misery ring that increases status damage by a full 15 per cent. There’s also a new archetype, the Ritualist, which similarly plays with those status effects and features a delightfully witchy unique armor.

The previous game, Remnant: From the Ashes, had an infamously content-light initial DLC, and Awakened King is certainly better than that. However, the future additions to Ashes brought new biomes and enemies, and while I had hoped The Awakened King would be of a similar caliber, it falls short — in terms of story and setpieces, a player could probably see most of what’s on offer here in around four or five hours.

Technically, the first thing I noticed when booting up the new area was a precipitous drop in frames — the rainy weather means the shore runs significantly worse than any of the base game areas, at least on my PC. But, with a few setting tweaks I was able to fully appreciate the new gloomy atmosphere.

I was excited to dive back into Remnant II and wanted to see what new wonders Gunfire Games could cook up. There might be something juicier in the next expansion, but this one more feels like a few odds and ends than anything substantial. The One True King may be awakened, but players should feel free to sleep on this DLC.

Score: 6 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 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 5 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

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. 

HIGH Fast, frenetic action featuring enough guns to choke a camel…

LOW… except when it forces undercooked horror sections down the player’s throat.

WTF Would it hurt to signpost objectives and pathways more clearly?

Trepang2 is an early ’00s-style throwback first-person shooter which begins with our hero, Subject 106, whiling his days away as a prisoner on a military black site. These cads don’t even have a Netflix subscription available to help pass the time, forcing him to watch boring old videos of nukes going off on loop. Enough is enough, and when he’s sprung from captivity by unknown forces, Subject 106 decides that it’s time for a little payback. ‘A little payback’ in this case naturally translates to ‘killing hundreds of people’, so let the good times roll!

After a short stint through the tutorial mission where Subject 106 learns to live, love and kill again using the game’s expansive arsenal of deadly modern-day weapons such as assault rifles, shotguns and submachine guns, players will be spirited away to a different hidden military base where they can hop into a chopper and fly across the globe to whichever hotspot is full of baddies that need a good killing, hopefully culminating in taking down the corporation that imprisoned him and solving the cryptic command to ‘break the cycle’ he’s constantly assailed by. He might even find out who he really is along the way.

…Because amnesia. Always amnesia.

During combat, Subject 106 is a capable little supersoldier. He can slow down time whenever a breather’s needed, or slide into a chameleon-style stealth mode to flank or surprise his foes. Grabbing enemies as human shields is simple, as is booting enemies into the air and emptying half a clip into them before they hit the ground. Later on, Subject 106 can dual-wield most weapons including full length shotguns — which, after finding the required parts, can then be modified to light bad guys aflame. It’s as insane as it sounds with incendiary buckshot filling the screen when enemies caught in the middle spontaneously ignite and burn to ash.

So far so good. Simple, unpretentious setup and bloody gunplay aplenty. Trepang2 does a good job with the basic premise of having players slice through enemy military units like a hot bullet through soft human kidneys, but unfortunately it begins to buckle under some of the peripheral design.

See, Trepang2 isn’t just a military shooter. It’s also a spooky paranormal horror experience!

Cue way too much walking down empty corridors while less-than-scary happenings occur around the player. Some of the jumpscares are laughably bad, and while the overall project is intended as an homage or sort of spiritual successor to the F.E.A.R. series, maybe they should have ditched this particular aspect on the grounds that it’s almost completely ineffective.

Getting back to the killing everyone in sight thing, I found myself ignoring most of the available combat options. It’s not possible to aim down sights with most firearms, and while there is aim assist, it doesn’t seem very strong. This leads me to think that Trepang2 was very much built with PC players using a mouse and keyboard in mind, and the console/controller experience was an afterthought.

It may admittedly be a skill issue, or perhaps I’m too used to the generous assistance in other games, but I’d often fail to do what I planned during firefights whenever I decided to get fancy. For example, I’d slide kick ever-so-slightly to the side of an enemy. I’d riddle the area just behind a moving mercenary with gunfire as he very slowly strafed away. I’d jump kick a wall instead of someone’s face.

In the end, after screwing up enough attempts to pointlessly look awesome, I often resorted to simply activating slow motion, running straight at my enemies and pulling the trigger until they were dead. Certainly not as cool as slide kicking some dude into the air, priming one of his grenades and hurling the poor bastard into a cluster of his similarly doomed buddies, but at least this tactic always worked when I needed it to.

Enemy behavior can be strange too. They’ve clearly been tasked with creating an intense and chaotic atmosphere, so they’ll scream and fire pointlessly into the walls if need be. They also revel in endlessly strafing sideways and running away from the player in many instances, which unfortunately robs the combat of intensity — having a loud, booming soundtrack shattering the player’s ears while wondering where the last couple of enemies are hiding creates significant tonal dissonance.

More damningly, navigation in each stage can be absolutely lousy with lots of identical doors, corridors and little direction as to which of them progresses the mission. During one side operation I completed my main objective then ran around blindly wondering where the hell I was supposed to go under extremely heavy fire, while in another I wandered aimlessly for ages after dismissing one potential route thinking it led outside the house I’d entered. Turns out it actually had a small hatch hidden away, leading further into the level. It’s remarkable that such linear design still had me getting lost or backtracking completely by accident.

It may sound like I’m focusing on the negatives too much here, but much of what I enjoyed about Trepang2‘s premise was ultimately undercut by its various weaknesses. What initially seems like a promising concoction of bloody firefights, psychic superpowers and absolute bedlam suffers from poor pacing, muddled direction, odd enemy AI and controls that are more suited to a mouse and keyboard than a controller. When it works as intended brief flashes of brilliance are tucked away in the combat, when taken as a whole it winds up being a fairly middling experience.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Trepang Studios and published by Team17. It is currently available on XBX/S, PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 15 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 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. The official listing reads: This is a first-person shooter in which players assume the role of an escaped soldier (Subject 106) on a mission to destroy a corporation that imprisoned him. Players traverse a corporate facility and use pistols, machine guns, shotguns, and explosives to kill enemy soldiers in frenetic combat. Battles are highlighted by realistic gunfire, explosions, and slow-motion effects. Some attacks result in dismemberment and/or decapitation, with body parts and large bloodstains depicted; players can also inflict severe damage on corpses (i.e., post-mortem damage), resulting in body parts exploding and remaining on the ground. The words “f**k” and “sh*t” 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 and they’re pretty dang small. It should be largely playable without sound, though locating certain enemies without their audio cues may take a little longer than usual during the mop up phase of each encounter.

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

HIGH Quite possibly the most faithful videogame adaptation of a film property in history.

LOW Definitely has some Eurojank.

WTF Maybe don’t think too hard about how the concept of Robocop in 2023 is a tad problematic

1987’s Robocop is a stupendous movie.

While I think its cultural reputation as seminal social commentary is a bit overplayed, Paul Verhoeven’s satire of 1980s corporate culture and the erosion of America’s social safety net remains surprisingly poignant today. It’s a smart film, but I also adore Robocop because it’s one of the best action films of the ’80s with blissfully gory shootouts, an exceptional cast, lots of people getting thrown through windows, and perhaps the finest collection of criminal henchmen in cinema history. It’s violent, it’s hilarious, it’s ridiculous, and it’s awesome. Robocop is, emphatically, the best movie one could possibly make about a robot cop.

Unfortunately, nearly every attempt since the first film to capture that same magic has ranged from subpar to borderline offensive. Robocop 2 has fans (I’m not one of them) but it’s at least better than Robocop 3 or the Canadian live action TV show where Robocop was not allowed to shoot anyone. The recent remake tried too hard to lean into the social commentary aspect and forgot to make a goofy action movie.

Detective Alex Murphy — the organic part of Robocop — has fared even worse in the videogame sphere, featuring a handful of mediocre-at-best 8/16-bit games, along with one of the worst XBox games of all time.

It’s not been easy being a Robocop fan over the last 35 years, but that changes today since Robocop: Rogue City is one of the best movie-license games ever made. Critics often talk about licensed games and their ability to “capture the spirit” of their source material, but Rogue City doesn’t capture the spirit — it is the spirit of Robocop.

Rogue City is a zero-nonsense first person shooter that perfectly emulates the shootouts from the 1987 film. Robocop is OP AF, and experiencing him blow through every criminal, scumbag, punk, lowlife, hoodlum, druggie, and thug in Detroit is immensely satisfying.

It’s not only that the developers made a wonderfully accurate film-version Detroit, they also absolutely nailed the music and sound design, with the biggest win being actor Peter Weller reprieving his iconic role (and he knocked out of the park at the age of 76). The feature that really ties it all together is the green-tinted HUD and user interface that perfectly emulates the look of Robocop’s actual HUD in the film. Rogue City is not an exceptional videogame, but the stellar presentation ensures the overall package far exceeds the sum of its parts.

Beyond all this, Robocop: Rogue City excels because I cannot possibly imagine a Robocop game that more successfully turns the core motifs of its source material into actual gameplay. Teyon, building off of its success of making the only good Terminator game, clearly put some thought into how a Robocop game should play.

For example, Robocop’s Auto-9 is one of the most iconic fictional guns in cinema history, and by the end of the campaign after upgrades, it’s a patently unfair armament for the disposing of threats to the public good. There’s even a mod that increases the gore to an absurd degree. The player can pick up a standard set of weapons dropped by criminals, but all I wanted to use was my personal hand cannon.

Teyon also thought about Robocop’s built-in deficiencies. He’s essentially a tank, and moves like one. He can’t jump, and his sprint could only be described as a mild jaunt. He turns slowly, and Murphy is not particularly nimble. Robocop’s health bar is laughably huge as it legitimately may take 500 bullets to take him down, but all of these qualities are countered by fast-moving enemies on motorbikes, grenade-throwing enemies, radio-equipped baddies who call in reinforcements, and enemies who who wear body and face armor to give themselves a couple more seconds of life before justice is served.

The game also succeeds at telling a pretty good Robocop story. The action canonically takes place between Robocop 2 and 3, smartly ensuring that nothing from Robocop 3 must be referenced or included. For those who’ve never seen 2, all the info anyone needs to feel caught up is knowledge of its superdrug Nuke. The script centers around Robocop investigating a menacing main villain who is the brother of the guy who turned into Toxie the Toxic Avenger, and then exploded at the end of the first movie. There’s also some interesting parts delving into Robocop’s psyche via mandated psychiatric evaluations. It’s not exemplary, but the writing nails the right feel and keeps things engaging.

Fans will be delighted to see that all of the main sets from the original movie make an appearance, and the police department in particular is astoundingly well-represented. After every main level there are interludes where Robocop can do things like fix a fusebox or help a sergeant file some paperwork — mundane stuff, but it does an awesome job of worldbuilding and shows that despite being Robocop, he’s still detective Alex Murphy working at the Detroit police department underneath the chrome.

The icing on the cake here is that Robocop is a detective. Players can scan environments to look for clues to further progression — basic, but it works well enough, and there’s a surprising amount of dialogue and with branching trees that have a fairly substantial impact on various aspects of the story. One quick example would be Murphy finding people doing graffiti and either giving them a ticket or letting them off with a stern warning, affecting the public’s trust of Robocop.

As a Robocop fan, I found the totality of the experience to be practically flawless, but there are some quirks. Things like weird visual glitches — nothing gamebreaking but occasionally a body will start to whirl around the screen as if it’s getting sucked into a black hole. The graphics are… good… but occasionally, some dead-eyed character models and static camera angles in cutscenes will remind players that this is still a lower-budget release made by a smaller team. That’s okay, by the way! The people at Teyon have found a niche making great titles based on ’80s action movies, and I look forward to them making a Predator game because that just makes all the sense in the world. Hell, maybe give them another crack at Rambo, they’ve clearly learned a lot since the last time they tried.

Robocop: Rogue City exceeded my wildest expectations when it comes to what a Robocop game could be, and the team at Teyon should be immensely proud of delivering a true love letter to one of the defining films of the 1980s. Anyone who’s even a casual fan of Robocop should buy this game without hesitation as soon as feasibly possible — no Robocop fan will walk away disappointed, and this experience is worth way more than a dollar.

RATING: 9 out Of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Teyon and published by Nacon. It is currently available on XBX/S, PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 17 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Use of Drugs and Strong Language. Parents, this one is pretty simple — do not buy Robocop: Rogue City for your kid. It is astoundingly violent, every other word the perps say is f***, there’s tons of drug use, and generally speaking this is a game for adults.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can not be altered and/or resized. Gameplay-based subtitles are detailed, neon green to match the HUD, and there are no necessary audio cues. The game’s HUD is both fantastic and full of information, so that’s a plus. I’d say this is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls are not remappable on consoles, but the game offers three different presets, and each one of those has a lefty flip. A full controller layout is available in the options menu as well.

HIGH The imagined cultures of alien realms

LOW My frames too often

WTF There’s a rifle partly made of fingers

Remnant II was hyped up by many as “Dark Souls with guns” leading up to its release. 

Following the formula set by its predecessor, it has many similarities to FromSoft’s genre-defining series, from a design philosophy imbuing a dark setting and punishing difficulty, down to small mechanical touches like bonfire-type save points that respawn enemies and recharge healing items.

So yes, it’s a little Dark Souls with guns — a fairly apt comparison and a strong selling point, but the thing that impressed me most about Remnant II was the setting.

Or, more accurately, settings.

The main plot sees players traveling from a post-apocalyptic Earth to alternate realities and shooting just about anything that moves on a quest to end a dimension-hopping evil. Each of the five worlds (two revisited from the previous iteration) is beautifully rendered and designed, offering more intrigue in any one than some titles have in an entire playthrough.

They all have their own unique enemies and mysteries as well, from the Victorian-era city inhabited by the Dran and infiltrated by the magical Fae (a section that gave me serious Bloodborne vibes) to the desert wasteland of N’Erud overrun by psychic zombies and deadly robots. 

It’s not just Dark Souls with guns, but also a good amount of Doctor Who — only rather than solving problems with wry wit and cleverness, the player unleashes a fusillade of fire. 

That intriguing premise is backed up by solid combat mechanics. From a third-person perspective, Players load up with a primary and secondary gun, a melee weapon, and a slew of consumables and spell attachments for fights devoid of static cover mechanics. Rather, players will need to sprint around and time their dodges (there’s the Souls influence again) to avoid becoming a smear on alien pavement.

Remnant II is a looter shooter, meaning players will be scrounging around for currency as they level up their character. Although unlike many other titles within the genre, it’s decidedly not a live service — no pay-for currency and no incremental algorithmically-generated variants. With the items and mods on offer, though, there’s still enough here for a build-obsessed whiz without necessarily alienating those who looking for a good ol’ run and gun.

This all may sound familiar because much of what I’ve described was already in the original Remnant: From the Ashes, but what this sequel does is take that foundation to the next level. 

Locations feel more expansive and offer more verticality, whereas boss encounters require more on-the-fly problem-solving rather than just mowing down intermittent hordes. Algorithmically-generated maps have been fine-tuned, and the same location may feature different events or sections, encouraging multiple playthroughs. And then there are the character archetypes — essentially classes with special abilities that add real customization beyond weapon choice. 

Players can also go solo, join up with friends or even posse up with strangers. Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on your perspective — there is zero player interaction, meaning no chat, no VOIP, and no gestures.

Another small gripe, especially in these early days after release, is that this is currently not a well-optimized game on PC. I’ve had massive frame drops while another friend has had so much graphical glitching that some areas nearly unplayable.

Those issues aside, while it might be convenient shorthand to describe Remnant II as Dark Souls with guns, it must also be said that it is its own genre-defining achievement — a co-op looter shooter that finds its own unique, otherworldly identity without succumbing to the worst instincts of the genre.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Gunfire Games and published by Gearbox Publishing. It is currently available on XBX/PS5/PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. 20 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

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. 

HIGH Great sidequests and random events

LOW The story is underwhelming.

WTF Why won’t it end already?

Space combat simulators aren’t as a popular a breed today as they were in the late ’90s. Yet, every now and then a good one hits digital shelves and reminds us that this genre still has life left in it. Everspace 2 is the latest example.

Everspace 2 is the sequel to roguelike space shooter Everspace, with some core changes. The roguelike elements from the first are replaced with a focus on looter-shooter mechanisms that require the player to frequently collect items and weapons from defeated enemies in order to upgrade their ship. Players can engage in action-packed space combat in first-person, third-person and cabin view, explore the galaxy, help different factions and groups with their quests and uncover the mysteries of an ancient alien civilization.

The adventure tells the story of the protagonist, Adam, as he’s trying to lay low and live a normal life in the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) as a miner, but things take a wrong turn and his cover is blown. With authorities after him and a friend in dire medical straits, he tries to set things right. Or perhaps I should say that Everspace 2 attempts to tell this story, but fails dramatically.

While the initial build-up goes well, it turns into a long sequence of MacGuffins (such as powering up the base where Adam’s hiding out in order to access the map) which is then used to find medicine to cure the friend, and then Adam starts doing chores for multiple NPCs in order to enlist their help in the search for a hidden treasure. This stuff is too shallow to be stretched out for the thirty-three hours I put in!

Not only did the story fail to carry me for the length of the campaign, even after that extended playtime, I had not leveled up enough to complete the final mission by the time I got there. The amount of grind required is truly exhausting, and I even had to lower the difficulty for the final battle in order to roll credits..

So, about that grind. As mentioned, Everspace 2 is a looter-shooter, only set in space. Ship weapons and items such as shield generators can be looted (or purchased) and upgraded the same way armor and accessories would be in most loot-focused RPGs like Diablo. Unfortunately, Everspace 2 allows leveling up each item and weapon only once, which is why players must constantly look for new gear in order to keep up with the increasing difficulty of enemies — it’s impossible to settle on the perfect loadout and simply upgrade it until the end of the campaign.

While looting, players will notice that the world of Everspace 2 is huge and well-populated. There are seven solar systems, each containing multiple planets and points of interest. Players can travel between the systems using jump gates and travel between planets in hyper-speed mode. After entering the vicinity of a planet or a point of interest, they can use full ship functions such as weapons and close-range maneuvers.

I’m happy to report that despite the apparent emptiness of space, there are tons of random events such as rescuing ships from minefields or defeating space pirates that pop up during hyper-speed travel sessions.

These side missions are actually quite memorable! Not just repetitive combat scenarios, some are puzzles that need to be solved, some are fetchquests, and others are rescue missions or even drone-controlling minigames. The amount of hard work put towards sidequest design is perfectly evident and it pays off — and that goes double for sidequests with compelling stories, like helping a group of miners find their own colony and free themselves from corporate exploitation.

While Everspace 2’s main story is a flop, the side missions are awesome and make traveling from point to point much less tedious, and especially when one considers that the instant fast-travel system is introduced far too late (plus, it requires grinding for resources to activate!)

While the travel can sometimes be annoying despite the encounters that help keep it fresh, another issue while zipping around the galaxy is the frequency of loading screens. Every time the player enters and exits hyper-speed, the game goes to a loading screen for a few seconds. Considering that Everspace 2 is running on current-gen hardware, this should be a more seamless experience — or at least, loads should be hidden more elegantly.

Everspace 2 is the definition of a mixed bag — it’s great in some areas, but awful in others. For every exciting sidequest or random event, there’s a long, boring main mission to suffer through. For every thrilling combat scenario, there are dozens of loading screens that rip me out of the experience. I wish it held together a bit more consistently because Everspace 2 starts off as a promising adventure, but by the time I reached the end of Adam’s saga, seeing credits felt, ultimately, more like a burden lifted from my shoulders than the epic end to a space odyssey it could have been.  

Score: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by ROCKFISH Games. It is currently available on PC, XBO, XBSX/S, PS5 and PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PC. Approximately 33 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is rated T by the ESRB, and contains Language, Mild Blood, Mild Suggestive Themes, and Violence.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game has subtitles and they cannot be resized or altered. There are important audio cues during combat and exploration that are not subtitled, so therefore the game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game’s controls are remappable.