Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart review

There are some series in gaming where you pretty much know what to expect before you even hit start. Neither the story nor the gameplay will present any surprises, with everything playing out pretty much how you’d expect, and yet, they’re immensely fun regardless. Ratchet and Clank is one of those games, and Rift Apart is another fantastic addition to the franchise.

It makes a glorious first impression right out of the gate, as we see our two heroes being celebrated as galactic heroes in a futuristic parade. It’s our first opportunity to marvel at the game’s graphics, which make full use of the PS5’s technical prowess. The newest version of Metropolis bursts with colour and life, instilling Pixar-like wonder as you bounce around the different floats within the parade.

The other planets you’ll visit throughout the game are similarly spectacular. Whether that’s the incredibly purple Blizar Prime or the sandy Torren IV, each new area looks fantastic and a joy to explore. They don’t merely pop with colour either. They’re amazingly detailed, particularly Nefarious City, a futuristic locale that’s teeming with life on a level I’ve not seen in a console game before.

However, this is an action-packed series. So, you don’t get to admire the scenery for too long before Ratchet and Clank’s long-time nemesis, Dr Nefarious, gatecrashes the procession in a bid to steal the Dimensionator; a powerful device that can open portals to other universes. After a lengthy scuffle, it explodes, damaging all of time and space before trapping our heroes and their old foe in an alternate dimension. The titular duo becomes separated before learning that, in this universe, Dr Nefarious is an Emperor and infinitely more competent than the one they’ve repeatedly defeated for years. A big concern for certain, given that the fate of multiple universes is at stake.

But an alternate Nefarious means this universe has counterparts for all the characters we’ve come to know. Whether that’s Captain Qwark, Pierre the pirate or Skid Mcmarx, meeting them becomes something to look forward to, if only to find out how different they are in this universe. Chief among these alternate versions is Rivet, this universe’s last remaining Lombax, who we get to play as after she teams up with Clank in the early knockings.

If you find yourself concerned about playing a different character from Ratchet, fear not. Insomniac has a knack for creating lovable characters, and Rivet is no exception. She’s kind-hearted, fearless and faces danger with unrelenting joy. The notion of riding an explosive swamp creature terrifies both Ratchet and Clank, but Rivet takes it in her stride and even gets excited about the idea. She even has her own tragic origin story that involves Kit – Clank’s counterpart – that shows the strength of character she possesses compared to most.

The narrative as a whole is good fun. Despite the seemingly large stakes, it clips along at a pleasant pace with no real sense of urgency. That might sound negative, but the Ratchet and Clank games are such lovely places to be. An overly dramatic story isn’t really required. It briefly touches on themes like loneliness and forgiveness but doesn’t lean on them too heavily. It is a game for children, after all. The aim is to have a blast with a smile on your face.

And that is something that the stellar gameplay of Rift Apart is more than happy to provide. If you’ve played any of the previous games in the series, you’ll be more than familiar with the whacky arsenal of weapons you’ll accrue throughout your adventure. There are some fairly standard gun types that you’ll be well-acquainted with, such as chunky shotguns and deadly accurate rifles, but there are others that are wondrously bizarre.

There’s the Topiary Sprinkler, a deployable turret of sorts that will promptly turn any enemy into a well-trimmed hedge version of themself. Ultimately, it’s an overly elaborate stun, but it’s that needlessness that makes it fantastic. Beyond that, you’ve got the Ricochet, which fires a projectile that you can make hit the same enemy over and over by continuing to tap the trigger like repeated slaps to the face in an episode of Looney Tunes.

If I had any criticism about the game’s array of weapons, it’s that there might be one too many. There are a couple that fall a little flat compared to the others. For instance, the Cold Snap – a gun that turns enemies into an ice cube – feels like a less effective form of the Topiary Sprinkler. Meanwhile, the Void Repulser, which provides a shield you can also fire, is a less than impressive shotgun. Still, there’s so much glorious chaos on screen. A few dud weapons hardly spoil the fun.

However, if battling endless waves of enemies was the entire game, it might have become a little stale after a few hours. If you know the series, though, you’ll know that Insomniac always inject a good deal of variety into these games. Outside of battle, you’ll traverse the numerous planets using high-speed hover boots, take a rollercoaster trip around parts of levels using grind rails and engage in a spot of light platforming between killing a colourful cast of alien enemies. It makes exploring each planet a treat, and a series of fantastic set pieces link it all together to make it more exhilarating.

Thanks to the universe’s impending collapse, rifts in time and space have a habit of opening up throughout the game. At their best, these create some fantastic segments where Ratchet or Rivet fall through multiple worlds at a time whilst some gargantuan monster pursues you. It truly feels like you’re on some obnoxious ride at a theme park that decided health and safety regulations were entirely optional. It falters as a mechanic in regular gameplay, though. It acts more like an alternate version of a grapple point, which is slightly disappointing. I was hoping it would have more interesting effects on gameplay than simply moving me a bit further away.

But that’s merely Lombax-centric gameplay variety. Insomniac also decided we’d need a break from that occasionally, so they included a few other gameplay types to keep things interesting. One of those sees you playing as Clank in puzzle-based sections where the aim is to guide multiple spectral versions of our favourite little robot to a gate at the other side of the room. To do this, you can grab various orbs that can alter the pathway to the exit. As with most Clank sections historically, it’s not fantastic, but the puzzles are never overly difficult, and it provides a bit of much-needed calm.

Another of the side gameplay types is much more successful. It sees you controlling Glitch, a little robot designed to eliminate viruses in computer systems. In-game, this translates to gunning downing an abundance of enemies with rapid-firing machine guns. It’s great fun, partly because the shooting provides so much haptic feedback, you feel like the most powerful being on Earth. It also has a cute narrative, as Glitch slowly grows in confidence throughout the game, eventually believing in its ability as a vanquisher of viruses.

Ultimately, if you’ve enjoyed a Ratchet and Clank before, then you’re likely going to love Rift Apart. It looks absolutely stunning. Its predecessor remains one of the best-looking PS4 games, and I can see that being the case with Rift Apart on the PS5. Similarly, the gameplay is fantastic, with excellent weapons and set pieces making for an enjoyable ride. Looking for faults just seems like unnecessary nitpicking.

8/10

New Pokemon Snap review

Around twenty years ago, there were two games I played a frankly obscene amount. The first was Pokemon Stadium, where seeing these creatures that had previously been confined to my Game Boy Pocket duke it out in 3D blew my eight-year-old mind. The second was Pokemon Snap, a game that captured my imagination in an entirely different way.

Not only did it render Pokemon in 3D, but it also saw them milling about in their natural habitat. They didn’t have to battle against one another, allowing them to mind their own business as they would out in the wild by sleeping, eating and even playing with one another. My job was to witness and encourage these different interactions before capturing them on camera. It was a cute concept and one I found endlessly addictive.

As you might imagine then, when I first heard about New Pokemon Snap, I was incredibly excited to play it. Since the first game, hundreds of new Pokemon have been introduced, meaning the potential for discovering and capturing adorable to epic to funny moments on camera is huge. In that sense, the game didn’t disappoint, but I still find myself a little mixed on New Pokemon Snap as a whole.

The game takes place in the Lental region, a series of small islands with extremely varied biomes. Here, Professor Mirror tasks you with heading into these often gorgeous locales to snap a few pics of the local wildlife whilst looking into the Illumina phenomenon, an unusual, though beautiful, reaction between fauna and Pokemon that creates a stunning glowing effect.

Much like its predecessor, New Pokemon Snap is an on-rails experience that quickly instils a warm feeling of nostalgia the first time your transport, the NEO-ONE, touches down on Florio Nature Park. Seeing Pokemon flitting about in the wild remains a delight after 20 years, possibly because there are plenty of new creatures to witness lazing about in the grass or casually bobbing around in a hot spring. It looks lovely.

There are plenty of moments that are sure to bring a smile to your face if you’re a long-time Pokemon Snap fan or of the franchise in general. Whether that’s a Bidoof proudly popping its head out of the dam it recently finished building or a Pikipek merrily hammering away on a tree trunk with its beak. And these are solely natural occurrences. With your involvement, you can discover even more wonderful sequences.

At first, you will only be armed with your camera. But eventually, your photography arsenal will expand. This will include fluffruit, apples certain Pokemon find delicious and Illumina orbs, glowing balls that can incite some glorious poses. Beyond that, there’s the scanner, which helps you find hints and attracts Pokemon alongside the melody player, which plays a little ditty that can make Pokemon dance and become irritated in equal measure. They can be used in numerous ways to uncover some brilliant sequences, some of which are more complex than you might imagine. I wouldn’t dream of spoiling them here, though, since this sense of discovery is New Pokemon Snap’s main draw.

You see, the first time you uncover these moments is undeniably spectacular and all you could hope for in a sequel to Pokemon Snap. But the impact they have is immediately reduced on repeated viewing, especially when coupled with the game’s progression system. Unlike the first game, where you could occasionally find new areas by blowing up a conveniently placed Electrode or coaxing a Porygon out of hiding and onto a switch with a Pester Ball, you merely have to collect points or take specific pictures.

This leads to a feeling of over-familiarity with each stage as you run through it multiple times to rack up enough points to unlock the next area. In truth, it doesn’t take that many attempts to uncover another course. But the first time you encounter a new Pokemon is so enthralling that any amount of grinding serves to delay getting that feeling once again. If the developers wrapped it up in a different package, such as photographing a certain number of new Pokemon species or hunting for some mechanism that unlocks the next stage, it wouldn’t have seemed as unnecessary. Instead, it’s a far more blatant request to replay each level to pad out the length of the story.

I’m not opposed to the idea of replaying the courses. Each photograph is rated from one to four stars before being scored by Professor Mirror based on various criteria such as size and placement, meaning there are plenty of different poses and interactions to find to fill in your Photodex, which is great. However, I would have been more willing to do this if I could have explored the whole island first before being asked to play the levels several times.

Of course, there were elements of this in the first game too, where you would replay levels looking to take better pictures for a higher score. The thing is, Pokemon Snap released over twenty years ago and still included more fun ways to unlock new courses in addition to simply grinding for a better score. Whilst New Pokemon Snap is streets ahead in terms of graphics and spectacular moments, it has regressed in terms of progression.

Similarly, though the photos you can capture with your camera are incredible, the Pokemon in New Pokemon Snap feel a little less interactive than you might expect. There are plenty of occasions where they will not respond to anything you do to them. The sound of the melody player will fall on deaf ears, the fluffruit will bounce off their body, and the Illumina orb will make them glow for a moment but yield nothing else.

In these instances, they will go about their business undeterred by your presence, disconnecting you from the world. It’s a minor problem when you consider how many poses and documentary-esque sequences there are, but it still feels somewhat jarring at times. It makes it feel like a sequel that could have been released years ago rather than in 2021.

But in many ways, that’s probably the whole point. New Pokemon Snap is purely for people who played the original game and, obviously, Pokemon itself, making it a much harder sell for anyone else. Fans, however, will be transported back to their childhood as soon as they start taking pictures with their fancy camera. If a smidgen of grinding doesn’t phase you, there are very few reasons to dislike New Pokemon Snap, and I highly doubt it’ll bother most people as much as it did me.

6/10

Little Nightmares II review

Despite some issues with its controls, I thoroughly enjoyed the original Little Nightmares. Tarsier Studios created such a compelling, macabre world that I even played all three pieces of DLC that were released, something I very rarely do. Naturally, I was pretty excited about what Little Nightmares II might offer. Ultimately, I wasn’t disappointed, though many of the issues that permeated the first remain.

In Little Nightmares II, you play as Mono, a young boy who wears a brown paper bag on his head. His adventure begins in the Wilderness before eventually taking him to the Pale City, which is as creepy as the name suggests. He doesn’t have to face its twisted populace alone, though. Six, the original game’s protagonist, is also by his side through most of the game.

Together they have to deal with several creepy people, and much like the first game, these warped humans stick in your mind long after you finish playing. There’s The Teacher, who can stretch her neck to great lengths with a disturbing creak and emits a horrifying squawk whenever she spies our protagonist. The Doctor is a gelatinous blob of a man who traverses his hospital by inching along the ceiling, breathing heavily in such an unsettling manner you will hear it in your sleep.

There’s also the game’s main antagonist, The Thin Man, a gangly individual who acts more calmly than most Little Nightmares villains, but with no less menace. His influence is felt beyond the areas you physically encounter him, however. He has some involvement in The Broadcast, a signal that beams into the many television sets that litter the game’s levels and causes any adult nearby to stare mindlessly into the static that fills the screen.

Much like the first game, the story is told without words and is arguably more intriguing for it. Tarsier Studios leave just the right amount of the narrative to your interpretation to encourage some interesting discussions among fans. The lack of dialogue also aids in creating the game’s magnificent, disconcerting atmosphere. When paired with the deliciously macabre visuals and ominous, sparingly used soundtrack, the result is a horror game that can actually maintain the creepiness throughout its runtime rather than petering out after the introductory hours.

The atmosphere has never been an area where Tarsier Studios has struggled. So this isn’t particularly surprising, although its brilliance should absolutely be celebrated. Instead, the original Little Nightmares only faltered when it came to the gameplay itself. Unfortunately, many of these issues still persist, especially with the controls themselves, which feel somewhat cumbersome.

How detrimental this can be depends on which part of the game you’re playing. There are several chase sequences in Little Nightmares II where the 3D movement in a 2.5D world causes you to unwittingly swerve off course and ultimately get captured by whichever crazed monster is pursuing you. It does detract slightly from what the game is trying to achieve in these moments, but elsewhere, the game generally elevates itself above its predecessor.

The original felt like a string of successful stealth sections marred by puzzles that involved throwing objects at buttons before dabbling in the aforementioned clunky chase sequences. Little Nightmares II, meanwhile, feels much more varied. For instance, there are eerie porcelain bullies that roam The Teacher’s school that you’ll actually be able to fight, an option that only emerged in The Residence DLC in the original.

There are hammers dotted about this area that Mono can drag around behind him, looking somewhat like a horror villain himself, before shattering the heads of these creatures. Another section in the hospital sees you sneaking through darkened wards where you are pursued by horrifying mannequins that will stop in their tracks if you shine your flashlight on them. There are problems with both, the timing for killing the bullies is overly precise, and sometimes the mannequins are undeterred by the beam of your torch.

But, Little Nightmares II doesn’t linger on these sections for so long that they become overly irritating. In fact, the mannequin section, in particular, is very effective despite its flaws. Hearing the clicking of their plastic limbs shuffling after you in the dark makes it incredibly tense as you desperately swing your torch in their direction to keep them frozen, which becomes increasingly difficult as more appear.

In a late section of the game, you will gain the ability to teleport through the same television sets that hypnotise the inhabitants of the Pale City. This is the peak of Little Nightmares II’s puzzling prowess. It’s incredibly enjoyable to figure out how to use these TVs to jump around the level, often avoiding a fatal death by a fraction of a second. And, smartly, these puzzles only appear in one portion of the game, ensuring they don’t outstay their welcome.

There are still puzzles that feel more like fetch quests, such as searching for three fuses to open one door. But they’re often gathered by solving a chess puzzle before avoiding the clutches of a different enemy, which mixes up the pacing, rather than it feeling like you’re simply wandering back and forth looking for items. The puzzles, in general, are rarely too taxing and usually have pretty logical solutions, which is good since exploring the world and unravelling the story is Little Nightmares II’s main draw.

If you enjoyed Little Nightmares, then you will most definitely enjoy the second instalment. The stellar atmosphere created by the first is as strong as ever, and the wordless narrative is compelling right up until its jaw-dropping conclusion. However, if the cumbersome controls put you off the original, they haven’t been improved drastically in the second. Regardless, there is definitely a more enjoyable variety to the gameplay that mitigates some of the frustration.

7/10

Code Vein review

From the very first trailer, Code Vein was consistently referred to as ‘Anime Dark Souls’. It wasn’t hard to see why. The character designs were distinctly of that ilk, and the combat was undeniably souls-like. However, I still didn’t expect that to ring as true as it does now the game has arrived. Code Vein is ‘Anime Dark Souls’. As lazy or flippant as that might be, for better and worse, it’s an apt description.

It’s a very trope-filled game from both sides of that description. You’ve got your bonfire and soul equivalents, the build-up to boss fights and the fairly miserable world that all souls-like games seem to revel in. But on the other side of the coin, there are the usual traits you expect to see in anime-styled Japanese games.

For instance, the story has far too much exposition, making sure you’re left under no illusion whatsoever about the story’s events. It’s dense with lore and, at times, even ensures you’re taking it all in by having different characters repeating the same tidbits. Not that I can entirely blame it, there are so many buzzwords to learn like Revenant, Successor and Watcher that it probably needs to repeat itself so you can commit all the lore it chucks at you to memory.

That’s not to say the story isn’t enjoyable, however. There are plenty of genuinely emotional moments scattered throughout the narrative. If there’s one thing Japanese games always seem to do well, it’s sombre scenes between characters, and there are quite a few of those in Code Vein. Perhaps it’s how openly the characters wear their hearts on their sleeves that you can’t help but feel invested in such candid emotions.

But it lacks that subtlety that makes the world of Dark Souls so compelling, which is only accentuated by the anime trappings. The camera frequently makes a conscious effort to ensure it’s firmly planted on any female character’s unnatural, oversized breasts. That might well be a selling point for some people, but I just found it tiring after the third lady character stumbled in with more jiggle physics occurring than should ever be necessary.

That being said. The character designs are otherwise very good, particularly those of the enemies and bosses. In the world of Code Vein, Revenants – basically vampires – can become Lost (Hollow) if they breathe in too much of the infected air. This leads to an array of cool-looking monstrosities donning gas masks. Then there are the bosses, which range from a knight with moose antlers to a wolf with six giant human arms reaching out from its sides. There’s a lot of creativity to be found in the character’s designs when the camera stops focusing on the cleavage.

That promise of creativity is also extended to the players themselves when they’re designing their Revenant. Code Vein has one of the most impressive character creators I can recall. There’s a myriad of choices for making your Revenant, down to something as seemingly small as adjusting the size of any accessories you choose to adorn them with. Writing about it doesn’t really do the sheer number of options justice. You have to see it for yourself.

It’s a shame then that the effort put into the character designs doesn’t extend the game world itself. For the most part, it’s a fairly bland desolate city. Sure, you pop into a few castles here and a desert there, but they’re not particularly inspiring backdrops. One part of the story sends you to a cathedral that has shades of Anor Londo about it, with beautiful white architecture that’s at odds with the grim locales you’ve visited up to that point. The problem is, this area is a labyrinthine mess where you’ll get lost for quite some time because everything looks the same.

Code Vein remedies this slightly by having an excellent in-game map. As you make your way through the different areas, you will activate Mistles. This bonfire equivalent unveils more of the map that was previously covered with fog. Either way, though, wherever you walk, you’ll leave a little breadcrumb trail behind you on that map so you can easily see where you’ve been and where you’re yet to explore. It’s a nice little feature and makes traversing the occasionally labyrinthine areas a smidgen more bearable.

The combat being pretty good also helps stave off the boredom of wandering around the same area for hours too. If you’ve played any other games of this style, you’ll know what to expect, and Code Vein comes closer to the gold standard that is Dark Souls than most, except Nioh. You can dodge, block and parry depending on your preference, and there’s a great deal of enjoyment from timing any of these things well. It’s only really let down by a disappointing lightweight feel to the weapons. Even the larger hammers don’t carry the heft you’d desire, but it’s insurmountably better than the combat than, say, Lords of the Fallen offered.

It’s never particularly difficult, though. Perhaps at this stage, we’ve played so many of these games that they can’t challenge us, in the same way, any more. I only ever really died to standard enemies during lapses in concentration and mostly because they hit incredibly hard on the occasions they do land their blows. It’s an issue that plagues the game a little. It’s almost as if they weren’t too sure how to make the game harder, so they just made every enemy have Deontay Wilder’s knockout power.

This extends to the bosses as well. I often found myself beating them with relative ease, except for one boss later in the game, which gave me a fair bit of trouble. The pattern my battles followed was that I’d easily get them down to an eighth of their health, but they’d hit harder as their bar depleted. I would then find myself dying with the boss on next to no health because, at that point, they’d been buffed enough to have one-shot strength. I’m not sure if this was a deliberate design choice to make it feel like you were always close to winning or just not balancing the fight very well.

Code Vein significantly deviates from other souls-like games with a stronger focus on the cooperative angle. Even when playing offline, the game wants you to have an AI-controlled partner to help you out in battle. You can get rid of them, but the story is about your journey with these people, so it made more sense, to me, to have one of them by my side in battle, even though I generally prefer to play souls-likes solo.

And they’re mostly pretty useful too. Yakumo, in particular, can handle most situations on his own if you’ll let him. Your companions can also revive you during a battle at the cost of half their health, and you can do the same for them, which can turn around a fight that would otherwise be over if you were playing Code Vein solo. So they’re pretty nice to have around when they’re not incessantly repeating the same chatter over and over.

You see, when you’re wandering about, they’ll offer advice based on your situation, such as suggesting returning to base if you’re out of healing or avoiding certain enemies that appear too strong. This is all very helpful at first and makes the world feel a bit more alive, but the issue is, they repeat a lot of these lines so often they quickly become very irksome.

For the most part, though, Code Vein is good fun. It definitely doesn’t surpass the games that it’s heavily influenced by, but if you’re anything like me and have played them far too much at this point, it certainly makes for a nice change of pace. Plus, you could spend an entire game’s worth of time just making your character, which is impressive enough by itself.

7/10

Control review

I’ve always been enamoured by paranormal stories. Something about otherworldy forces interfering with our reality intrigues me. So when I heard this was the focus of Remedy’s latest effort, I was excited to see what they’d do with it. Ultimately, I found myself more impressed by other facets of the game, but Control is still absolutely worth your time.

You play as Jesse Faden, a young woman who’s out to find her brother after he was taken away by the Federal Bureau of Control. Her tireless search is aided by a strange being, that appears to exist within her mind, and leads her to the FBC headquarters. There she finds herself in the Oldest House, a secret government building dedicated to studying phenomena that mucks about with the laws of reality.

It’s a cracking premise for a game, and there’s a lot of talk about Objects of Power – items that have touched the astral plane – and Altered World Events – a phenomenon caused by interactions with other dimensions – that promise copious amounts of paranormal weirdness but never truly delivers it. Now, it’s not to say that there isn’t any of that. The corridors of the Oldest House are littered with infected humans that float lifelessly in mid-air, chanting some nondescript babble that is undeniably creepy. However, the enemies you face are often just a little too standard.

You see, there’s been a paranatural breach in the Oldest House that has seen an outbreak of a being known as the Hiss. This otherwordly force can infect humans and turn them into soldiers for the Hiss to use. That mostly means you’ll be fighting folks with guns with a little wispy effect around them, so you know they’re not quite human anymore.

There are multiple variants of Hiss, and some of them do use various telepathic abilities. But throughout the game’s lore, you’ll read a lot of stories about Objects of Power with all kinds of crazy effects. And it’s frequently a shame that most of these become relegated to lore notes. There are so many pieces of paper scattered around the Oldest House that you might find yourself getting tired of reading them, even though there’s some great stuff to peruse.

But the game rarely shows some of the crazier stuff depicted in those collectables. There’s one section later in Control where you experience a smidgen of this when you come across a maze that contorts in various ways. Here you’re backed up by a fantastic, procedurally generated rock song that loops certain parts to ensure it always matches the action as you make your way through. More moments like this would have been amazing, rather than leaving this to be the standout moment of the entire game.

There are some excellent performances from the various characters, though. Jesse herself is an enjoyable protagonist. She frequently talks to her aforementioned paranatural guide in these asides that could just as easily be aimed at the player. It’s entertaining to watch as she analyses each person she’s talking to and debates with herself how much to tell them. Then there’s Ahti, the Finnish janitor, who has that wonderful trait of being far more clued in than anyone realises because it’s all hidden behind a calmly mad exterior.

So ultimately, the story is fairly odd and enjoyable, but it doesn’t quite hit the weirdness that it could or maybe should have. What we’re left with is serviceable enough. It’s intriguing to the extent you’ll want to push through until the end, though it does feel like it’s building to unravelling an intriguing mystery that never really materialises.

Where Control does excel, however, is within the gameplay. Our hero Jesse ends up the recipient of her own Object of Power, a transforming gun called the Service Weapon. Initially a pistol, you’ll be able to buy yourself different forms for the gun that you can swap between by gathering materials from enemies. This includes a shotgun, sniper rifle and even a grenade launcher type mode.

The shooting is top-tier for a third-person game, with each shot from any of the gun’s modes sounding and feeling very powerful. But it’s not just the shooting that makes Control a genuine joy to play. You’ll also be able to acquire several different powers that you can make use of to take down the Hiss.

These are gained by binding Objects of Power to yourself, which is often a simple case of darting through one of those minimalist-looking places that construct itself around you as you walk through it. The main power you’ll use to kill the Hiss with is Launch, which is essentially telekinesis.

This will see Jesse grab any nearby object and toss it towards the Hiss. At first, you can only hurl smaller items, but you’ll be able to upgrade it to a point where you’ll be able to lob forklifts at them. If there’s no moveable object within range, then Jesse will use her telekinetic prowess to rip a chunk of concrete out of the ground itself, and it’s this destructibility that helps make this power feel so good.

The game has semi-destructible environments with tables, glass, bits of walls and other objects unfortunate enough to get in the way of flying around the room during battle. It gives your abilities a genuine feeling of power as you affect the world around you. It makes fighting the Hiss a lot more fun than it might have been.

Other powers at your disposal allow you to levitate, and shield yourself by creating a concrete defence formation like a more rocky Magneto alternative and able to turn low-health enemies against their former Hiss brethren. The levitating, in particular, is a joy and floating in the sky whilst raining slabs of concrete down on enemies is something I never truly knew I needed before.

This stellar combat is marred somewhat by framerate issues that I’ve experienced on the PS4 version of Control. When there’s a notable number of enemies and various objects you can knock around, the framerate does suffer. But honestly, I normally find framerate drops incredibly frustrating, but I enjoyed Control’s combat so much it didn’t irk me as much as it usually would. So it’s a testament to the excellent job Remedy has done in that area.

An area the game falters, however, is the world and making your way around it. Control is a pseudo-open-world game where you’ll travel to different levels of the Oldest House via elevator and unlock various fast travel points throughout each floor. Each of these areas is kind of like a mini-open world.

Navigating them using the in-game map is a real nightmare. The floor might have multiple levels that aren’t made clear on the map at all, so it’s near impossible to work out where you’re going. In truth, you’re better off using the signs to different places around the floor, though you won’t always be able to rely on them.

On top of that, the environments themselves are fairly bland though technically impressive. Offices and grey corridors populate most of Control’s areas, which aren’t exciting to explore. Given the paranormal nature of the game’s world and the potential for Alternate World Events to whisk you off to various astral planes, it’s a shame that the world isn’t all that interesting to look at a lot of the time. It’s not universally a problem, but there are moments where you feel like you’re just walking around the same corridors in an endless loop.

Control excels in combat, which is so much fun that when the end credits started rolling, I didn’t feel like I had enough, so I’m overjoyed we’ll be getting some DLC. The story is an intriguing ride and truly does have some excellent moments like the aforementioned maze. But the biggest folly was to relegate some interesting paranormal encounters to mere lore notes. It just leaves you thinking that you’ve been deprived of the most compelling story the Oldest House has to offer. Irrespective of that, Control is a great game and is well worth your time.

8/10

Is anyone else gassed about Galarian Weezing?

A few years ago, I wrote about why I thought the Alolan forms, regional variants of existing Pokemon, were a great addition. Fast forward to now, and I can’t help but feel like one particular new Pokemon variant has been specifically aimed at me. Of course, it hasn’t, but I’m still chuffed nonetheless. That Pokemon variant is Galarian Weezing.

Back in 2016, I specifically cited Alolan Exeggutor as being fantastic simply because it’s so ridiculous. Galarian Weezing isn’t entirely different. The fact that it now proudly sports two gigantic smokestacks on top of its heads, or I guess its entire being, does look undoubtedly silly. But it’s also brilliant for that exact reason.

But whilst Alolan Exeggutor’s design is pretty much palm trees are tall, let’s add some serious length to Exeggutor. Job done. There’s an awful lot more to Galarian Weezing than making it significantly taller.

As you may know, the new region in Pokemon Shield and Sword is based on England, and with this variant of Weezing, they’ve made numerous references to Industrial Revolution England. They’re not hard to spot, so I don’t think I’m a genius for noticing, but I think they are geniuses for making them.

Firstly, the most noticeable thing is the smokestacks. Obviously, factories were big back in the 1800s, so they’re a clear nod to that. But, to make them double up as top hats, something the rich would frequently wear back then, is a very cute detail.

Then you’ve got the pollution facial ‘hair’. Again, it was very common during the Industrial Revolution for blokes to have a moustache whilst the impact on the environment from the smoke that billowed from the factories was severe. So once again, they’ve paired the style of the period with the living conditions expertly.

Lastly, the Industrial Revolution was a pretty grim-looking period. The working conditions were often dangerous and unclean. Understandably, people, particularly the poor, probably weren’t all that high on morale. And Weezing has always been one of the more fiercely unhappy-looking Pokemon.

Couple all of this with the fact that Weezing has always been one of my top Pokemon. James was always my favourite character in the anime, so I also developed an affinity for his original partner in Weezing. So to see it get a makeover that, in my opinion, is incredibly clever from a theme standpoint is amazing.

I don’t know why this design makes it a poison/fairy Pokemon, though. My brain is still working on that.

What’s new in Nioh 2?

The first Nioh was an excellent game, and arguably the best ‘Soulsborne-like’ that doesn’t have FromSoftware on the box. Although, The Surge still holds a special, albeit questionable, place in my heart. I was fortunate enough to be invited to the alpha for Nioh 2 and now that I’ve had time to digest it all, let’s discuss what’s new and how it’s shaping up.

Yokai Shift and Yokai Soul Cores

The biggest change in how you play Nioh 2 comes in the form of Yokai Shift and Yokai Skills. In the original, you’d build up a meter that allowed you to activate your living weapon. It was essentially just an effect on your sword, and an added ranged attack determined by which guardian spirit you had equipped. Good for dishing out more damage, but nothing more exciting than a temporary buff.

In Nioh 2, however, you will temporarily turn into a demon yourself, gaining access to a variety of different attacks depending on which Guardian Spirit you have equipped. For example, if you have the fish spirit, Kagewani, then you’ll gain fast ranged attacks. Meanwhile, if you have Makami, a fiery dog-like creature, you’ll have slow but powerful melee attacks.

You’ll also be able to gather Yokai Soul cores from your slain enemies. These are essentially extra skills to use once your Yokai Force meter has filled up. It’s easy enough to fill. You just have to attack enemies. These beefed-up attacks are called Yokai Skills and vary greatly. Some may be a simple hammer smash on the ground, whilst others may summon a snake that slithers a set distance before returning, doing damage to anything it encounters en route.

All of this serves to make your Guardian Spirit feel a lot more important, which is good. Given the name, they should feel vital. When you die, it will protect your Amrita (souls), giving you one chance to pick them up again. During this time, you feel a lot less powerful without access to Yokai Skills or your Yokai form. This can be tough, especially if you find them crucial in beating certain enemies.

Bosses

Of course, it’s no surprise there are bosses in Nioh 2, but the way they work is a little different, and it may give us an indication of what to expect in the release version. There were two bosses to do battle with, Enenra, a sort of smoke-based demon and Yatsu-No-Kami, a snake who can spontaneously grow two extra snakes to use as arms.

Enenra initially appears to be a fairly straightforward boss, busting out some kicks and slamming the ground with its fists. But, as with the later boss, there seems to be an emphasis on bosses being able to cover all ranges. If you’re too far away, it will also summon a wall of mini-tornadoes and hurl them towards you or become a giant tornado itself and quickly close the distance.

Similarly, Yatsu-No-Kami is capable of attacking you from any part of the arena, though it seems to randomly choose its attacks whilst Enenra seems to choose them based on distance. It can spit poison across the room, charge you at an alarming speed (with questionable hitboxes it has to be said) or bury its snake appendages into the ground where they’ll resurface wherever you dare stand.

Both bosses are also capable of taking the battle into the Yokai Realm. Here things can become more tricky. The reduced Ki (stamina) recovery means that you’re potentially more vulnerable, but remaining aggressive is rewarded as you’ll fill up your Yokai weapon meter faster. This can lead to plenty of Yokai Weapon attacks, which can dish out a tonne of damage, making short work of Enenra in particular.

With Yatsu-No-Kami, though, you’ll probably find a different tactic more effective. When it initiates a Yokai shift, its snake arms detach and roam the battlefield after you. Killing both of them instantly switches the realm back. However, it can be tricky since there are three enemies after you in a relatively small space, so getting blindsided by the big serpent isn’t uncommon.

Overall, they’re both good fun to fight, with Enenra being noticeably easier whilst Yatsu-No-Kami gave me more trouble than 90% of bosses from the first game. There seems to be an attempt to keep you on your toes, and instead of having phases that only change with health, they will swap between them after a certain amount of time too. This helps make them feel a little more unpredictable at first and also removes the question of why bosses hold back their most powerful moves until they’re almost dead.

Benevolent Graves

The Revenants from the first game return, but there’s also the option to summon a friendly version to join you in battle. If you’ve not played Nioh, Revenants were essentially ghosts of other players or sometimes NPCs you could battle to earn loot.

Benevolent graves are the reverse of that, and they mostly serve as a meatshield, not really offering too much that makes them worth summing beyond wanting a distraction. I don’t tend to summon in these types of games anyway, preferring to do them solo from start to finish, so these benevolent graves being fairly uninteresting doesn’t overly concern me.

Character customisation

There were only presets and gender to choose from in the demo, but there appears to be a good number of options to create your samurai that are currently locked away. Personally, this is a big deal. I found William to be a fairly dull character in the original game, so creating my own is much more appealing. There also appears to be customisation for your character’s demon form. This feature wasn’t accessible in the demo, but I love the concept and am intrigued to see how customisable it is in the final version.

Overall impressions

For the most part, Nioh 2 could be described as Nioh 1.5. Aside from the Yokai Skills and Shift, not much has changed with regard to how you play the game itself. But, Nioh was already an excellent game, so only tweaking a few things and making a couple of good changes is the smart move for me. I’d rather they didn’t over-haul something and risk making it worse. Character customisation is always welcome in my book, and I’ll be interested to see how much of it there is for your Yokai form. I was already pretty excited about Nioh 2, but after playing the demo, I’m looking forward to it even more.

Rage 2 review

The announcement that the first Rage would be getting a sequel was quite a surprise. Not because it was a bad game, the gameplay was excellent, but because beyond that, it was painfully vanilla. This led many to forget it was something that ever existed, and I’d just assumed that was the same for id Software. Honestly, if I close my eyes and try to imagine Rage, all I see is a bucket load of sand, dilapidated buildings and that little three-pronged Frisbee they pushed as a USP. And yet, here we are. Rage 2 is out now, and this time around it’s made a concentrated effort to be remembered, with mixed results.

Taking place after the first game, Rage’s wasteland has had something of a makeover. Apparently, in the last 30 years, everyone discovered masses of hair dye and spray paint. Rage 2’s world is much more colourful, with bright pinks, greens and blues cheering up the place. Whether that’s graffiti on previously drab buildings or atop the many punk haircuts people sport, it immediately gives everything a lot more character than its predecessor.

The tone has seen a bit of shift too. Perhaps inspired slightly by Borderlands, Rage 2 has a more quirky tone, with humour that the first game was severely lacking. There are even characters here you may remember in a few years. Admittedly not that many, but there are still some, which is an improvement from zero. A majority of the NPCs living in the settlements are completely forgettable and uninteresting, so you’ll find yourself ignoring them in the end.

However, there are some good characters, like Dr Kvasir, who was actually in the first game. This time around, however, his mad scientist demeanour provides some funny moments. His design is infinitely more intriguing too. In the original, he donned a fairly bland outfit, but now, he’s perched on top of a mutant that carries him everywhere. Its name is Legs, and its mouth moves in sync with the doctors, which is delightfully creepy.

That being said, this added effort to have a little more personality doesn’t stop the story from being a complete non-event. The setup is pretty much this; you are the last Ranger, an advanced type of soldier, who is tasked with stopping Dr Martin Cross, who was also apparently in the original. To do this, you have to do a few missions for three other returning characters, so they’ll help you stop him. And that’s pretty much it. It’s about as short as it sounds with only nine missions total, which is bizarre for an open-world game, but given its predecessors narrative, that’s probably for the best.

Instead, id Software decided to double down on where they excelled in the first game, the combat. If you enjoyed Doom (2016’s) shooting mechanics, you’ll quickly become enamoured with what Rage 2’s cooking. Every gun feels so satisfying to use, whether that’s the weighty assault rifle or the more spicy weapons such as the rail gun, which feels like it’s slinging actual train carriages. It may come as no surprise, however, that the shotgun steals the show.

id Software has always known how to do shotguns, and Rage 2 keeps up this glorious tradition. It fires in a wonderful bass tone that makes it sound obscenely powerful. There’s almost something compulsive to it. I would often switch to another weapon and find myself itching to swap back. If that mutant or wastelander stood within shotgun range, I wouldn’t dare use anything else.

Stacked on top of this, you also have a few abilities at your disposal. Some of these are pretty forgettable, like a shield you can throw down to stop the incoming fire, which seems far too passive for this game. There are also smaller powers that add greatly to the movement of the game, such as short-range dashes to dodge enemy rockets or even faster sprint speed that gets ludicrously quick. These both add to the frenetic nature of the combat, but they’re not the stars of the show.

The powers that truly shine are Slam, Shatter and Overdrive. Overdrive is what it says on the tin. The screen gains a flickering pink tint for a bit, amping up the power of your guns. That’s right! It’s possible to make the shotgun even more incredible for a brief time. It has a somewhat different effect for each weapon, but all you need to know is they’ve got plenty more kick.

On the flip side, Slam and Shatter aren’t simply beautifully stylised buffs like Overdrive. They’re a destructive beast in their own right. Shatter is essentially force push but more lethal. Not only does it send enemies flying into each other. It also destroys any armour they may have foolishly assumed would defend them. Shatter is somewhat similar in that it can send folks flying, except it takes the more flamboyant form of a devastating ground pound that can kill enemies with its seismic force.

Neither of these things is particularly new, but they’re designed to feel as strong as possible to provide the power fantasy Rage 2 wants you to experience. They’re both accompanied by a touch of slow motion and this almost otherworldly sounding blast. Slam will toss up a few rocks for good measure too, so you feel like you’ve also moved the ground itself.

There’s also car combat in Rage 2, and whilst it’s not as good as the regular shooting, it’s still good fun. Rage 2 is a collaborative effort between id and Avalanche, the folks who made Just Cause and, more importantly for this discussion, Mad Max (2015). If you’ve ever played Mad Max, then you’ll know that it has excellent car combat.

It’s not quite as good in Rage 2. There’s no harpoon for starters, but unloading rockets into other vehicles and ramming them at high speed is still enjoyable and watching them swerve off the road and explode in a big old fireball never ceases to be a good thing. However, the world feels quite sparsely populated, so you won’t be doing as much of this as you might like.

Unfortunately, even though the combat is excellent, it’s often hampered by the open-world setting. The side-missions, which make up the bulk of the content, are very straightforward. It is always a case of go here and kill these people or destroy specific objects type stuff. The joy of killing enemies never fades, but the lull in between really kills the momentum that makes the game enjoyable.

You’ll turn up at an enemy camp, quickly obliterate them because you’re so powerful and then drive to the next without seeing another soul en route. Only seeing enemies in great numbers in these settlements not only makes the world feel quite empty, it almost makes it weird to design it in this manner. Especially since it mostly means that it keeps you away from shooting people in the face, which is all you want to be doing.

The progression is also less than ideal. Most players will probably assume that you’ll amass your arsenal of guns and powers as you play through the story. This is surprisingly not true for Rage 2. All of these goodies are located in arks, and you’ll only run into a few of them by following the story. The rest you’ll have to hunt for. You do get the shotgun through the story, though. This may not matter all that much to everyone then since it is all you need. If it does, just remember to do a little exploring before ploughing through the story.

There are also a few minor niggles beyond this that don’t hugely detract from what Rage 2 does so well but are irksome nonetheless. The menu on PS4 and Xbox One has some delay issues, making navigating it a little cumbersome. There’s a lot to do within the menu itself, including several pages for upgrading weapons, powers and projects.

Herein lies another minor gripe. There are so many different things to find that essentially upgrade items. You get project tokens for clearing out bandit camps which can then be used to buy skills. Then there are separate weapon and nanotrite (your abilities) upgrades. But upgrading either also involves the use of feltrite, a material found in pink lidded chests or on fallen meteorites.

It works differently in both cases, which makes it needlessly confusing. With weapons, you must spend a certain amount of feltrite before buying an upgrade using your weapon mod. Your abilities, on the other hand, can be upgraded normally only using nanotrite mods. But they do have passive effects that you need feltrite to upgrade. It’s not overly difficult to figure out. It just feels a tad convoluted.

Rage 2 has made an effort to be more memorable than its predecessor, and combat-wise it’s certainly done that, improving on the originals already excellent gun-play. Elsewhere it has mixed results. The punk aesthetic certainly gives it a more distinctive look, but the world still feels empty, and the open-world structure only exacerbates this. The switch to a more quirky, Borderlands-like humour has its moments, but there simply aren’t enough good characters to notice it that much, and the story remains lacklustre. But if you’re just looking purely for an excellent combat (shotgun) mechanics, then Rage 2 has you covered.

7/10

Days Gone review

Days Gone is the latest PS4 exclusive, something that Sony has raised the bar with this generation. Bloodborne, Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War are just a handful of the excellent games you can only play on PlayStation, and it’s led to a deserved reputation for creating worthwhile titles. Days Gone, however, is the first misstep they’ve had, depending on your view of Detroit: Become Human, but even though it leaves a lot to be desired, it’s still alright.

Set in a post-apocalyptic Oregon, Days Gone hardly has the most tantalising premise. A virus has spread throughout the world, turning the populace into, yes, you guessed it folks, zombies. You play as former motorbike club member Deacon St. John who’s on a never-ending quest to find his wife, despite knowing her chances of survival are very slim. The story pretty much plays out exactly as you’d expect, with all the twists being so obvious, there’s little joy to be found in guessing them.

That’s not to say the story is impossible to enjoy, though. While it’s undoubtedly a cookie-cutter narrative, the performances of nearly every single character provide enough incentive to keep playing. Whether that’s Iron Mike, a camp leader dedicated to maintaining traditional laws or O’Brian, a nervous scientist investigating the cause of the virus, they’re all excellently performed.

Our protagonist, Deacon, is no exception. Sam Witwer does an excellent job throughout Days Gone of making Deacon likeable despite him being an incredibly questionable person. He’s quick to violence and anger, frequently combining the two whenever a problem arises and often making things worse long term. Despite this, you also can’t help but feel sorry for him when he clearly tries his best to do good.

One story thread involves Deacon finding a young girl named Lisa, whom he wholeheartedly does his utmost to help. Ultimately, he arguably achieves this, but the route it takes to get to this stage is progressively more and more devastating. It makes you think she’d probably have been better off if he’d never met her at all, even though he ultimately helps her learn to survive.

Unlike a lot of violent protagonists, though, Deacon remains somewhat relatable because he bears mental scars for a lot of the bad things he’s done. This is particularly noticeable whenever he’s alone and starts talking to himself. He delivers his lines in rushed utterances that sound a lot like the ramblings of a broken man. He also has noticeable difficulty talking to people, stumbling over words and sometimes losing his train of thought. This is a stark contrast to the Deacon we see in flashback cutscenes, where he’s shown to be more of a cheesy smooth talker. It’s an excellent performance that turns a seemingly generic protagonist into a far more interesting one.

And whilst the story itself isn’t anything original, that doesn’t stop the brutal nature of some scenes really hitting the mark. There’s a cult group called the Rippers who worship the zombies. They perform a whole host of uncomfortable things to regular folk that have the misfortune of running into them. Their actions are hard to watch, and it is very effective for making you hate them.

Unfortunately, this is the only real area where Days Gone excels. The gameplay itself is serviceable at best and draws influence from a plethora of other successful and better titles. You’ve got an open world littered with hostile human camps that you can conquer using a stealthy or less subtle approach a la Far Cry. There’s also the mediocre shooting found in Uncharted alongside light survival mechanics that predominately involves crafting bandages, making throwable explosives and maintaining your motorbike. Bike aside, this is very similar to the crafting you’d find in a game like The Last of Us, where the story also draws its emotional focus from.

Now, as I’ve said, it’s all functions fine, but because it’s all pulling from vastly superior games, it does make everything seem blander. There’s nothing wrong with wearing your influences proudly, but it becomes a worse decision when you don’t execute it well. Even just having a zombie apocalypse feels uninspired. There are all the archetypes you’d expect, from the big tanky lads to the ones that scream, inviting more undead into your immediate vicinity.

Some of the mission types also feel a little outdated. There’s these sections with NERO scientists, a bunch of folks investigating the zombie outbreak, where you cannot be seen by them and have to gain intel by staying in the listening range of the head scientist until a bar has filled. The game tells you that you can’t kill them because their equipment is too good and getting spotted is an instant fail. What follows is a boring stealth section where getting caught is only scary because it means you’ll have to do it again. Fortunately, these stealth sections are pretty simple and don’t make up the bulk of the game.

Throw in the numerous bugs Days Gone has alongside fairly standard gameplay, however, and it becomes a much more difficult game to recommend. The game occasionally crashes, and the framerate often forgets it’s supposed to exist. These are the two big concerns, although a few smaller issues can be an annoyance too.

Whilst cutting about on your motorcycle, you’re inevitably going to crash from time to time. The outcome? Well, that’s incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes a simple tap into a tree trunk will do nothing more than a minor bit of damage. But other times it will toss Deacon off his ride, killing him in the process. There are also radio conversations that will repeat themselves, and you’ll have to leave various camps to discover there is a mission there for you to do. None of these things are game-breaking problems, but it highlights the lack of polish this Sony exclusive has compared to the others.

There are a few areas where it does impress. The much-touted hordes of zombies are impressive. There can be thousands of them snaking around roads, all charging after our favourite biker. It’s an incredible sight to behold, even if killing them all is more a test of patience than anything else, as you slowly chip away at their numbers by guiding them towards explosive barrels or bombs you’ve placed on the floor.

Several smaller touches give you a real feeling of progression too. As you complete missions for camps, you’ll increase your trust level with them. As this happens, the inhabitants of those camps will be friendlier towards you, going from indifferent to acquaintance to showing genuine concern for your safety. This growth in trust also means you can buy better guns and acquire better upgrades for your bike.

Your ride is clearly something the developers wanted you to value. And once you’ve upgraded the fuel tank, so you’re not having to scavenge for a jerry can every five minutes, the bike does become something of a loyal companion. You can customise its appearance with decals and different paint jobs, so it has a personal flair to it, which is good fun. It’s just a shame that throughout the early game, its tiny fuel tank means you resent it until much later.

It’d be very easy to write Days Gone off here. It’s hard to talk about it honestly without mentioning the myriad of bugs it has alongside the gameplay being merely okay. The problem is, this will always make it sound like a dreadful game, which it isn’t. However, it’s not worth paying full price since not many people buy games on quality voice acting alone. But once it inevitably drops below, say £20 or your regional equivalent, it’s worth a shot. The chances are you’ll find yourself surprised by how enjoyable a game seemingly this average can be.

6/10

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice review

FromSoftware never fails to surprise me with their ability to make their games feel familiar yet completely different at the same time. In Dark Souls, I found comfort hiding behind a shield and waiting for the right moments to get a few hits in. Bloodborne forced me out of this mindset after punishing my cautious play style numerous times. Now Sekiro has come along and, on the surface, appears to have slotted in between these two styles, demanding a mixture of defence and aggressive counter-attacks. But in practice, the transition is nowhere near as smooth as the one from Lothric to Yharnam and will divide opinion among diehard fans.

Combat aside, Sekiro is still an entirely different beast from its predecessors. There’s no character creation, no plethora of weapons to choose from or stats to level up. Instead, you only gain attack power and health by beating bosses and mini-bosses. On a scale from RPG to an action game, Sekiro perches much closer to the latter. If you’re looking for a Soulsborne with different set dressing, then you’ll probably be disappointed. It even has a more explicitly told story, though still obtuse by most narrative standards. Sacrilege right? Well, go in embracing the change, and you’ll find that Sekiro is a cracking game.

Set in a fictionalised version of Sengoku period Japan, Sekiro follows the titular character as he attempts to make good on his promise to follow the Iron Code to protect his master Kuro at all costs. The game promptly kicks off with Kuro being kidnapped, Sekiro is far from a perfect shinobi it has to be said, and we follow his journey to save him. It’s an interesting tale, if a little standard, largely due to Sekiro himself being a pretty dull character.

He barely says anything and seems to have very little interest when he does, save for a few moments. Whilst I can accept that it wasn’t From’s intention to let you create a character because they had their own story they wanted to tell, I feel Sekiro is enough of a blank slate that it wouldn’t have hurt to let people make their own shinobi and leave him voiceless.

Despite this, the compelling world-building FromSoftware is known for is still here and as strong as ever. Items you pick up from enemies or through looting abandoned temples shed more information about what’s going on in the world, and you’ll slowly piece together some interesting lore about this version of Japan. It also successfully maintains the sullen atmosphere that’s been a staple of FromSoftware games for a while now despite looking a lot more cheerful.

It’s a beautiful world to explore on the surface. It seems that the developers discovered an entirely new colour palette for Sekiro with pink and light blue foliage found in pleasing abundance. It all serves to create a stark contrast when you discover how broken this world is. Coming across an area with gorgeous lakes and serene mountains stretching in the distance suggests a peaceful village buried in the middle of it. But, appearances can be deceiving as you get up close and personal with these locales and discover how bad things have become.

Alongside being more traditionally beautiful, the way you explore Sekiro’s world is also different. Poor Sekiro gets his arm lopped off fairly early in the story before a former shinobi gives him a prosthetic arm replacement that allows him to, among other things, use it as a grappling hook to scale areas he couldn’t otherwise reach.

It takes adventuring to a new, literal, level. No longer do you have to stare up at amazing scenery and just think it looks cool. In Sekiro, you’ll be able to zip up most of it. It gives the feeling that you’re exploring the world in a way that other characters in the game simply can’t. In reality, it’s just replaced a pathway with a quick whoosh over a gap, but it makes you feel like you’re discovering impossible to reach places.

Beyond this, the prosthetic will also help you out in battle, whether that’s using the grapple arm feature to find a sneaky route around an enemy so you can get in a quick stealth kill or by using one of the many attachments in more overt combat. These include firecrackers that can be used to blind enemies, opening them up for a few free swings or some strange feather-based short-range teleportation device to get you out of a sticky situation. No really, that’s a thing.

As cool as these attachments are, you’ll probably only use a select few against specific bosses or enemies where they work incredibly well. For instance, there are enemies with shields that can be splintered with an axe prosthetic, leaving them vulnerable to a katana to the throat. But these lads only appear in a few areas, meaning you’d only be using the axe to inflict more posture damage (more on that later) or just because you like it (I did).

But for the most part, the game can be completed without using them, and you may forget they exist. This is more of a testament to the sword on sword combat than a knock on the prosthetics. As you’d expect from this developer, the gameplay is fantastic, with some of the most satisfying sword fighting I’ve ever experienced.

There’s no stamina in Sekiro. Instead, this has been replaced by a posture bar. When this bar gets filled by hitting the enemy enough, they’ll become stunned, opening them up for a deathblow. This wonderfully gory execution results in an almost comical shower of blood that makes you feel like the death-bringing shinobi we all want to be, whether we knew it or not.

But it’s not just the end result that’s satisfying. The whole process feels excellent. The posture bar will fill up regardless of if your opponent is blocking your attacks, so you’re encouraged to attack them even if their guard is up. This results in a glorious clanging of swords with sparks flying off them as they connect. This sound and visual double threat make a potentially repetitive combat system constantly enjoyable.

You cannot just attack with reckless abandon, though. After a few swipes at your enemy, there will be an orange aura in addition to sparks that will signify you’ve been deflected. It’s at this point you’ll want to go on the defensive. This means blocking just as their weapon makes contact with you, and getting the timing right will result in a successful deflection, filling their posture bar, bringing you closer to that sweet deathblow.

When perfectly timing these deflections, following a flurry of attacks, it’s incredibly satisfying to use the enemies aggression against them before punishing them with your own. Get the timing wrong, however, and you’ll likely meet a swift end. Here, Sekiro may become too frustrating for some people.

Sekiro demands near perfection. Most enemies can kill you in only a few hits, so if you screw up even for a second, the punishment is often death, particularly against the more difficult bosses. Even if you survive and heal back up, your opponent may have recovered their posture, meaning you’re effectively starting over again. It can feel insurmountable at times. You get an extra attempt thanks to the whole ‘Shadows Die Twice’ shtick, effectively meaning an extra life, which can balance out getting cut down instantly.

The punishment for dying is arguably harsher than in previous games. In Sekiro, you gain experience towards a skill point as well as Sen, the game’s currency. When you’ve got enough experience for that skill point, it’s banked and cannot be lost. But if you don’t and, die you’ll lose half of it. There is a percentage chance you won’t lose anything but this will decrease with more deaths and will require the use of a rare(ish) item to restore.

It certainly sounds harsh until you realise the skill tree isn’t that important after getting a few useful passives and extra moves. There are special moves called Combat Arts that you can equip one of. These fancy moves often don’t feel entirely necessary, so it’s a shame that the majority of the skill tree is populated with them. There are a couple that makes beating certain mini-bosses and bosses a non-event, though.

The bosses are, as you’d expect, mostly excellent. If you’re a proponent for the best bosses in From games being the 1 on 1 tussles with other (slightly oversized) humans, then Sekiro comes bearing many gifts. There are numerous, tough and enjoyable encounters with well-trained swordsmen and women that range from blindingly fast dagger wielders requiring quick reactions for deflections to heavier hitters armed with huge swords where dodging is preferred.

Unlike regular enemies, bosses and mini-bosses alike will require more than one deathblow, which means longer battles and multiple phases to learn. It helps to elevate them as opponents and raises the tension when you finally whittle them down to their last phase, hoping this will be the attempt where you finally take them out. There’s always a brief slow-motion pause before you deliver the final deathblow that gives you a moment to really savour your impending victory before plunging a katana into their chest. It feels so good.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an excellent game that’s also oddly difficult to recommend to new players and FromSoftware stalwarts alike. It can seem overly punishing at times, demanding a level of perfection that not every player is capable of, and there’s no option to bring someone in to help you. It’s also a huge departure from the RPG aspects of previous titles, which leaves it with very little replay value. However, it still has the excellent combat and world-building that FromSoftware is known for, so if you can click with the mechanics, you’re going to love Sekiro.

8/10