HIGH Stepping into [redacted location] for the first time.

LOW A pretty obnoxious summoner boss in one of the sub-dungeons.

WTF Count Ymir’s whole deal.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review covers the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC only. For a more complete description of Elden Ring systems and general information, please see our main review.

*

We have officially reached the point where mainstream videogames are so massive in scale that their DLC is the size of an ideal standalone release. Featuring an entirely new open-world map that’s maybe a third the size of the main campaign, and hosting a self-contained story quest that took me over 30 hours to complete, Shadow of the Erdtree — the first and only expansion for Elden Ring — feels unusually ceremonious, even by FromSoft standards. That it improves an already fantastic experience should come as no surprise given the developer’s track record with DLC, but what’s most impressive is that it feels almost like a miniature Elden Ring in and of itself.

The expansion (accessed from Mohg’s boss arena after defeating both he and Starscourge Radahn) concerns Miquella, one of the most enigmatic figures from the main quest. Supposedly one of the more benevolent of Marika’s children, all we know going into SotE is that he has discarded his corporeal flesh and retreated to another realm called the Land of Shadow. Much like the Lands Between, it resides under a massive tree and has already been ravaged by war before we arrive. We don’t immediately know where Miquella is, but others have come seeking him as well. Naturally, their stories often unfold whether we’re around to experience them or not.

SotE is large enough that it requires its own difficulty curve, and immediately there’s a problem. This is explicitly endgame content, meaning that by the time players are even able to access this expansion, they’re likely at the point where their build is beginning to plateau and leveling up has less impact. To counteract this, the devs added collectible items that can be used to boost player stats, but they’re only effective in the Land of Shadow. They’re typically found near major landmarks and after defeating bosses, so the player’s power level in SotE will depend in part on how thorough they are. It feels less organic than earning experience and fine-tuning a build, though I’m hard-pressed to think of a better way to do it.

There are all manner of new weapons and spells to play around with, but SotE feels mostly familiar, perhaps overly so at first. One of the most common complaints I’ve seen about the base game is that it felt emptier than previous FromSoft releases — that the open world added dead space between places of interest. Those folks will likely feel the same way about SotE, and I’ll admit that for the opening hours, I worried that the spell was breaking for me. I was seeing plenty of the usual suspects — oh look, another Ulcerated Tree Spirit — and the rewards for careful exploration were often crafting materials, smithing stones, or nothing at all. Even some of the early dungeons read like Elden Ring leftovers, such as a small castle on the initial horizon that feels a bit like a warmed-over Caria Manor.

As I delved deeper into the Land of Shadow, however, I came to realize that FromSoft had found new ways of hiding their light under a bushel. They can no longer surprise us with scale — not after the core campaign disguised the size of its map and hit us with a Z-axis expansion — so instead they rely upon our existing understanding of Elden Ring to wow us with some of their wildest, most colorful and varied landscapes yet, and with them some extraordinary additions to the mythos. Miquella may be the focus of the expansion, but other factions that were previously under-represented are elaborated upon here.

FromSoft is often criticized for a relatively hands-off storytelling approach that relegates most of the relevant details to item descriptions, but I see it from a different angle. The lore enriches the experience for those with the drive to seek it out, but FromSoft stories tend to be simple in nature and more about the personal journey. The unique amount of information that each player absorbs is part of that. We’ve been wanting to know more about Miquella for more than two years, and now that I’ve played SotE, I believe I have a decent understanding of him. However, that’s only based on the incomplete picture that I have, drawn using whatever details I happened to pick up. I have zero doubt that my understanding will continue to evolve when the community gets its hands on the expansion.

There are few things I value more in videogames than a sense of discovery, and FromSoft can scratch that itch better than nearly anyone. They know how to tempt us with a tantalizing silhouette on the horizon. My character’s voyage through the Land of Shadow was dictated almost entirely by me seeing something cool in the distance, wondering how to get to it, figuring it out, and being rewarded. Sometimes that reward was just a gorgeous view, but that can be enough. Anyone able to even reach this DLC certainly understands by now the value of slowly opening a massive door to reveal a beautiful vista on the other side.

I wrote in my initial impressions of Elden Ring that its free-roaming nature and almost total plotlessness made it feel closer in spirit to early Zelda than nearly any other modern title. That’s doubly true for SotE, partly because it’s more compact, and partly because FromSoft hasn’t leaned this hard into abstract space in a while. SotE‘s centerpiece legacy dungeon, for example, never once feels like a practical dwelling, but its gimmick is something we never saw in the main content — it’s a castle with numerous entrances and exits that requires multiple passes to complete and acts as a conduit between other parts of the map. That’s worth the trade-off, and it’s part of what makes SotE unique from even the base game, where the regions were largely arranged in a line.

Of course SotE isn’t a metroidvania, but it shares some common DNA in how vertically aligned it is and how often it dips, overlaps and doubles back on itself. While it’s not as impressive a feat as the original Dark Souls perfectly positioning its levels and skyboxes in such a way as to create the illusion of an open world, it’s not far behind. There’s something satisfying about skipping a seemingly non-optional dungeon by finding an obscure side route that spits me out at the back end.

The new bosses (of which there are many) are also almost uniformly great, which should come as good news to those who found Elden Ring‘s original rogues’ gallery a bit lacking. I can’t elaborate much, but there are delightfully few gimmicks to be found here — these are simply well-tuned battles in visually stunning arenas. In fact, I would go so far as to say that there is a higher number of great boss fights in SotE than in the entire base game.

There’s a caveat, though. A new FromSoft release always comes with the advent of a new Ultimate Opponent, and SotE‘s main quest culminates in a final boss that I suspect will break a lot of people. I haven’t decided whether it’s tougher than Malenia, but the fact that I’m even considering the possibility should be all the information that anyone needs. The encounter itself is an awe-inspiring story moment, so to a degree it’s earned — this isn’t so much a criticism as me issuing a “buyer beware.” Miyazaki’s stated goal with Elden Ring was to make it their most accessible game ever, and I do wonder if their ongoing quest to find every player’s pain threshold is at odds with that.

FromSoft frequently quotes its own work, and in the spirit of Elden Ring being something of a victory lap for them, SotE unambiguously references pretty much all of their recent output. Even fans of Bloodborne and Sekiro will spot some familiar imagery, all remixed to feel fresh and of a piece with the universe of Elden Ring. It’s a nice way to cap off a tremendous winning streak and reaffirms that the modern FromSoft catalogue is something we still so rarely see in this medium — an actual body of work defined by a unifying vision.

Given that Shadow of the Erdtree is roughly the size of what a standalone FromSoft game used to be — it took me longer to finish this than, say, Bloodborne or Dark Souls III — I imagine that it will be received like one. While it took some time to find its footing, it emerged not just as a great expansion, but as a great entry in the studio’s catalogue, period. It’s a shame that the barrier for entry is so high, because I’m already looking forward to revisiting it.

8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco. It is currently available on XBO/X/S, PS4/5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 35 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. The entirety of play was spent with multiplayer features enabled.

Parents: According to the ESRB this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes and Violence. There are a couple of suggestive character designs throughout and a bit of mild profanity, but the violence is where Elden Ring earns its rating. This is arguably FromSoft’s most gruesome game to date, with severed parts and mutilated corpses littering the landscape. While it’s fitting with the tone of the world and tastefully portrayed, it’s not for children.

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 are frequently used to notify players of either points of interest or approaching enemies, and the game doesn’t offer any sort of visual representation of these cues. The lack of visual cues renders an already-obtuse game even more difficult, and forces players to be even more alert. As such, this game is not fully accessible.

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

The post Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH This is some of the finest videogame combat ever created.

LOW Buff Totems are still inexplicably awful additions to any encounter.

WTF They removed the DOOG easter egg? Give it back, cowards!

Does Doom even need an introduction these days? It almost seems pointless to mention that it’s a first-person shooter where players are tasked with battling the forces of Hell itself since it’s such an iconic series at this point. The 2016 reboot was almost impeccably successful at reinventing the series for modern audiences, Doom Eternal made the combat even wilder and more intense, and now we have The Ancient Gods DLC, which continues where Eternal left off.

Interestingly, The Ancient Gods isn’t DLC in the standard sense since owning the base game isn’t necessary. Although it’s a direct continuation happening after the end of Doom Eternal‘s campaign, it can be bought and played as a standalone package. However, since Gods starts off at endgame levels of difficulty and only ramps up to near-ludicrous extremes from there, I can only imagine it would be a brick wall for new players. There are selectable difficulty levels, though.

I played through The Ancient Gods on “Ultra Violence” difficulty using a controller, which offered a fairly stiff challenge without feeling completely over-the-top or insurmountable. Players start out fully-stocked with all of the upgrades and weapons from the base game aside from the Crucible sword, so things start out the way they mean to continue — i.e., eyeball burstingly violent.

Like all the best combat titles, practice makes perfect, and some of the enemy encounters here practically had me spitting blood the first time I took them on. During a second runthrough, I had to stop and check that I hadn’t accidentally dropped the difficulty down a notch as I was ripping clean through sections that had initially seemed like progress-halting walls of sheer difficulty.

The fights are set in all-new environments. The first stage is magnificently atmospheric, taking place on a storm-battered oil rig in the midst of a rampaging demon invasion. The next involves traversing a cursed swamp that somehow defies videogame conventions by not being bland as hell, and then it all culminates in a return trip to Urdak. The design here is consistently strong, occasionally breaking up combat with extremely simple puzzles and traversal, and completing hidden challenges will unlock new power-up support runes.

Gods offers a few new enemy types that shake up the core combat loop slightly. The “Spirit” in particular is a real pain to contend with, thanks to its possessing nearby enemies and making them significantly deadlier until forcibly evicted from their host via the business end of a shotgun. They also remove certain weaknesses from their host such as flinching animations, but they do have a vulnerability to the plasma rifle’s alt-fire even while inhabiting another body, which evens the odds a little.

The other enemy additions are more standard fare. There’s a turret that pops up and takes potshots so long as the player isn’t too close or aiming directly at it for too long, and a new Makyr variant that’s completely invincible apart from during certain attack phases. These enemies require a slightly different approach, though some players will undoubtedly find the inability to simply pump lead into them as restrictive as they did with the Marauders in Doom Eternal.

Incidentally, those same players will be delighted to hear that there’s now a section featuring two Marauders attacking at once, as well as a Marauder hopped-up from a buff Totem. Never say that id Software doesn’t listen to complaints. They do — they just laugh at them.

The music remains fantastic throughout, with Mick Gordon’s noted departure from the series more than capably handled by Andrew Hulshult and David Levy. There was concern that the change in composers would result in a lesser experience in a game renowned for its soundtrack, but that’s not the case at all.

If I were to complain about any one thing The Ancient Gods does, it’s that the storyline is still clinging to the Elder Scrolls level bullshit that Doom Eternal introduced to the series. It’s pure cringe that tries to stuff a turgid high fantasy tale into a series featuring an angry space guy who shoots baddies in the face. This time he’s tasked with resurrecting “The Father” at the behest of “The Seraphim” with a surprise appearance by “The Dark Lord”. It’s about as interesting as its sounds, which is to say, not in the slightest.

If I were to complain about two things, it’s that buff totems are still one of the dumbest additions to the Doom experience. Suddenly being expected to go on an impromptu treasure hunt mid-battle to punch a stupid little object  hidden away somewhere that happens to be powering up nearby enemies into murderbeasts isn’t an amusing or entertaining twist on the gameplay, it’s just plain irritating. Thankfully they don’t show up too often, but the correct amount of appearances at this point is ‘zero’. (Still, at least there’s no purple goo this time out.)

Oh, alright. Three things. The bosses in Doom franchise continue to suck ass, with two more unique yet less-than-thrilling level finales to encounter. It’s almost remarkable that they haven’t been able to design even one boss encounter in the last two games that’s been a pleasure to fight. I’m fairly sure the developers know it too, given that dying multiple times on a boss encounter allows players to slap on some special armor and effectively bypass these lackluster creations.

Still, while it’s easy to nitpick, it’s even easier to rave about how great the rest of the The Ancient Gods is. I’m not sure this is the best place to jump into Doom Eternal given its initial difficulty, but picking up the whole package is absolutely recommended. The Ancient Gods consistently delivers some of the best combat ever seen, and delivers it in spades.

Disclosures: This game is developed by id Software and published by Bethesda. It is currently available on PC, PS4 and XBO. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on PC. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. No time was spent in multiplayer modes, as the Battle Mode reportedly has no changes made to it.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore and Intense Violence. I’ll just cut and paste most of the ESRB breakdown here, because it’s pretty good: Players use machine guns, shotguns, laser rifles, and blasters to kill demons in frenetic combat. Large blood-splatter effects occur frequently as enemies get decapitated and/or dismembered during combat. Players can also use blades and chainsaws to dismember and decapitate enemies at close range. Combat is frenetic, highlighted by realistic gunfire, screams of pain, and large explosions. Hell yeah!

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: While there are onscreen indicators showing where damage is coming from, playing Doom Eternal without sound would be very difficult on higher difficulties. Knowing where enemies are coming from is crucial, and the only real way to do that for an enemy outside the player’s view is listening out for their telltale sounds.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls, at least on keyboard and mouse. The controller has a variety of preset modes to choose from instead.

The post Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods DLC review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Leave The Lights On

HIGH Turning Assist Mode on and burning through the back half.

LOW Darkness is one of the worst videogame gimmicks, ever.

WTF Alan’s barely in this.

Disclaimer: This review is for Control’s AWE content only. For a full review of the base game, please go here. For a review of Control: The Foundation, go here. Also, be aware that players wanting to start AWE must have first finished the 7th story mission from the main game, titled “The Face of the Enemy“.

After playing Control: AWE, I’m convinced there’s a hidden formula for creating successful add-ons. The longer it’s been since release, the more an expansion must offer — not ‘more’ in terms of content, though, but in concept.

When a level pack or extra challenges drop soon after launch, most players are generally glad to get more as long as they enjoyed the core experience. It’s still fresh in their minds, and they’re probably not feeling done with their purchase yet. Control was my game of the year in 2019, and if $10 would have bought me another five hours after rolling credits, I would have gladly paid and played.

On the other hand, when developers take their time and a long window between content drops occurs, that material has to be good enough and special enough to get players to come back after they’ve moved on.

It’s been a full year since Remedy’s latest hit consoles and I’ve played — literally — dozens of games since then. While I have fond memories of Jesse Faden and her shenanigans in The Oldest House, I want something new if I’m coming back. Unfortunately, AWE fails to offer any surprises or interesting twists, instead delivering what feels like the dullest parts of the campaign slightly remixed.

In AWE, Jesse is led to a new section of The Oldest House which has been acting as a prison to someone (or something) with links to Remedy’s hit from 2010, Alan Wake. As she investigates, a few brief, oblique cutscenes with Wake pop up as she comes across assorted documents, voice recordings, more Hiss to shoot, and so on. It’s par for the Control course, but at this point that’s not necessarily a good thing.

The last DLC, The Foundation, took Jesse to a part of the House that looked visually distinct and she did new things with new powers. In contrast, AWE is largely indistinguishable from the base game. Players can expect the same gray hallways and large rooms populated with the same enemies they’ve been through time and again. The new map even feels cut-and-pasted — for example, the large bridge/turntable feature so memorable the first time it appeared is re-used here, and more than once.

When not shooting mobs, Jesse occasionally uses light to burn away black blobs that block her way (a direct nod to Wake’s use of flashlights) and will spend a significant amount of time fitting Control’s ubiquitous power cubes into slots to activate gates and lights. There’s also also a separate kind of darkness that enervates Jesse, so that’s a genuinely new wrinkle. However, these things don’t add up to much, and the darkness was more irritating than engaging.

Oh, look forward to a handful of miserable boss fights, as well.

The one bright spot is that alongside AWE, Remedy has released a free “Assist Mode” update to Control which gives the player powerful options to tailor gameplay — increase energy gain, reduce damage taken, or just go whole hog and activate true invulnerability and the power to kill any enemy in one shot. Given how dull and annoying AWE is, being able to speed through the worst parts of it was a godsend.

While I greatly enjoyed Control and The Foundation was solid, it feels like Remedy didn’t have any gas left in the tank for AWE. It’s visually boring, it’s irritating to play, and the connections to Alan Wake are laughably thin — the entirety of it could have been summed up in 90-second cinematic trailer. If this content had been available when I was going through Control the first time, I probably wouldn’t have objected. But now, a year later? It’s far too little, far too late.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Remedy and published by 505 Games. It is currently available on PC, PS4 and XBO. This copy of the add-on was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to it, and the main questline was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood, Strong Language and Violence. Control might be rated M, but I didn’t experience anything memorable that some T-rated games like Uncharted don’t get away with. There is violence and language, but none of it is over-the-top. I don’t see any problem with early teenagers playing this with some adult supervision.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes but an option to toggle enemies’ health bars between red or yellow exists.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Control features subtitles in three different sizes for all spoken dialogue in the game. It also features an option to put a shaded box behind the subtitles for better clarity. Control features text-overlay options for signs in the world, but the subtitle size changes do not affect the sign overlay text size. Control is more difficult without sound due to a drastic music change that signals when enemies are on the attack and when they’re asbent. This music change has no visual cue. Also, Control includes three options for subtitle sizes, the largest is shown below.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls on the PS4 version. Y and X-Axes and stick sensitivity can be changed. A picture of the PS4’s controller setup is below.

The post Control: AWE Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The addition of NPCs, many quality of life upgrades.

LOW Badly designed story missions.

WTF Why does this game not have a ping feature?

This review covers only the Fallout 76: Wastelanders add-on content. For more information on the base game, Fallout 76, please see Mike Suskie’s full review.

Wastelanders is the highly anticipated update to Bethesda’s MMO Fallout 76. This update aims to bring life to the wasteland — a place that’s been criticized by players for feeling too empty. The solution? Add human NPCs and a new main quest to replace the never-ending scavenger hunt that marred the original Fallout 76. Wastelanders provides a mix of new areas to explore, such as new buildings and camps, and revitalizes existing parts of the world by including story beats that encourage the player to visit far reaches of the map. What used to be abandoned facilities and camps are now filled with fellow survivors.

While the Wastelanders update changes the story and the way players interact with the world, the core features of Fallout 76 remain the same. The combat still feels like Fallout, walking across the wasteland still feels the same as it did at launch (albeit with less crashes), and the RPG elements are untouched.

At its essence, the Wastelanders update is great. The inclusion of NPCs does a solid job of making Appalachia come alive and the new storyline is so much more compelling than the original. Sadly, Wastelanders is only an update, so issues with the source material still diminish the overall experience.

Take one of the first opening missions for example. After finding the NPCs that highlight the Wastelanders update, I’m told about two warring factions: The Settlers and the Raiders. The obvious progression of the story leads me to learn more about these factions and ultimately decide who I will join. As I’m following the mission to learn more about this bustling world, my progress grinds to a halt as I’m tasked with running multiple fetch quests for a robot named Rose.

These missions are incredibly tedious, requiring me to leave her outpost, walk five minutes, kill some enemies, and return, which then includes another five minutes of loading screens. The worst part is that they take me away from the heart of the Wastelanders update — human NPCs.

Times like this are where Wastelanders fails. It withholds great interactions with human NPCs for too long by forcing players to trudge through a significant chunk of dull content in order to get to the highlights like building reputation with the factions and ultimately choosing one to side with, a feature that the Fallout series is well known for.

That said, there’s still a lot of enjoyment to be had in Fallout 76: Wastelanders, and the addition of NPCs has done wonders to the experience beyond what I expected. These aren’t simply skin-covered robots that roam the wasteland, these are real-feeling human NPCs that interact with each other, play instruments with one another, and make comments about the player’s armor and weaponry.

I was at a picnic table taking a load off during my first few hours of play when I saw the first bit of interaction between NPCs in Wastelanders. A farmhand named Jide walked over to a security bot and did some routine checkups on her. He narrated his actions, noting that a part needed to be repaired soon, and then went back to his work. This was the moment that I realized Bethesda wanted to bring life to the Wasteland, not just another way to deliver fetch quests.

The quality-of-life upgrades are superb as well. Players who haven’t returned to Fallout 76 in some time will be happy to hear that quests are much easier to track, with the ability to track specific quest locations while turning other off. Players can also find specific quest locations from the Pip-boy, which is incredibly helpful in a map as big as Appalachia.

Fallout 76: Wastelanders is a compelling reason for gamers to return to Appalachia and explore the wasteland, but with that said, I did play the majority of Wastelanders with friends. While I completed most of the story missions solo, I still had a team in-game that I frequently chatted with, which made the mundane bits of Fallout 76, such as walking long distances to the next objective or waiting through long load times, much more bearable.

Playing solo can still be entertaining, but the moments of loneliness hang over the player like a cloud while they’re traveling from point A to point B. In the end, it comes down to personal preference — some will enjoy the solemn journeys found in Appalachia, while others will only play when friends are online, but even without them, the Wastelanders update is a step in the right direction.

— Seth Morris

***

Disclosures: This game is developed by Bethesda and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is currently available on Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. This copy of the game was obtained via Paid download via PlayStation Store and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 16 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. 16 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol The official ESRB description reads as follows: This is an open-world role-playing game in which players must survive/thrive in a post-apocalyptic world. From a first- or third-person perspective, players search for supplies/food while battling other survivors and mutant creatures. Players use machetes, machine guns, rocket launchers, and grenades to kill ghoul-like creatures and other enemies in frenetic combat. Some weapons allow players to blow ghouls apart, resulting in flying limbs and chunks of flesh; wounded characters can also be executed with gunshots to the head, resulting in decapitation. The game includes frequent references to drugs called Chems, which are sometimes used as plot points for characters; Chems can be found, manufactured, and used to enhance performance/skills of characters, though there is no actual depiction of use. A handful of story missions require players’ character to acquire ingredients to make alcoholic beverages; one alcoholic drink (Nukashine) can discolor and/or cause the screen to blur after being consumed. The words “f**k” and “sh*t” appear in the dialogue.

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

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles in Fallout 76. The only audio cues that do not have a visual component are the noises that enemies make. These noises will occasionally show up through subtitles, but they are not reliable. 

Remappable Controls: The following functions are remappable — Attack, Aim/Block, Bash/Power Attack/Grenade, Activate, Ready/Reload, Map, Pip-Boy, Toggle POV/Workshop, Jump, Sprint, VATS, Sneak.

The post Fallout 76: Wastelanders Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

The subject of this installment: the Revelations DLC for Age of Wonders: Planetfall, developed by Triumph Studios and published by Paradox Interactive.

After putting in over a thousand turns during my review for Age of Wonders: Planetfall, I can’t say that I’m starved for more content from DLC.

Revelations couldn’t have been an easy delivery for the developers either, considering that they were following up one of the most pleasant surprises in strategy gaming last year and expanding a strategy game is often a risky move — additional elements can easily lead to unnecessary cluttering of the original design. Unfortunately, Revelations falls into that trap.

The big thematic hook for this DLC is the introduction of the Es’Teq — an ancient biomechanical race whose theocratic culture revolves around the eternal preservation of the soul.

There’s no shortage of alien races in science fiction that touch on these ideas – there’s more than a passing resemblance to the Necron from Warhammer 40K here – but Triumph does what they can to find a home for these ancient undead in the aftermath of Planetfall’s campaign.

Even though this new race has a similar techno-religious feel to the Celestian units from the base game, the tactical design of the Es’Teq’s Heritor technology stands out by focusing on “essence” — a spiritual energy that can be extracted from enemies and used as a consumable resource. It’s an interesting concept that forces the player to assess whether it’s worth cashing in essence for short-term gains, but the lack of synergies with other existing units makes it feel disconnected from the rest of the design.

Similarly, the new “anomalous sites” that show up on the strategic map in are too self-contained and disruptive to the overall pace of play. These sites usually offer branching paths to different outcomes and rewards, but the choices required to go through those paths often take multiple turns to resolve, which then makes their narratives harder to follow as numerous events and combat encounters happen elsewhere in the world.

On top of that, the player is required to park a unit on the site for these choices to progress, which clashes with the way that Planetfall’s design encourages the player to be more proactive in exploring the map. By requiring units to simply wait at a site until the exploration plays out, strategic play is noticeably slowed — I wouldn’t be surprised if many players simply ignore these sites altogether.

Even though I can’t enthusiastically recommend Revelations, I would still say that returning to Age of Wonders: Planetfall is worthwhile for those who haven’t played much since launch. As usual with games under Paradox’s stewardship, a steady pace of patches have delivered various UI and design improvements, including orbital platforms and the ability to manually retry automated tactical battles. This DLC may not be a great fit, but the core content is still worth the time spent among the stars.

The post This Is Not A Review: Age Of Wonders – Planetfall – Revelations appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The new mounts are a fantastic addition to the formula.

LOW Environmental slope attacks not triggering when they should.

WTF Shouldn’t there have been a Dragon’s Dogma crossover event by now?

It’s fair to say that the release of Monster Hunter World was a resounding success for Capcom’s flagship hunting series. With somewhere in the ballpark of fifteen million copies shipped (to date) and finally introducing sizable numbers of Western players to what makes their franchise so beloved in its home region of Japan, expectations were high for this first (and final) major expansion to the game. Thankfully, Monster Hunter World: Iceborne knocks it clean out of the park with a huge amount of fresh content for new and returning players alike.

Players will need to own and have completed the base game to get the most out of Iceborne‘s new content, given that it primarily takes place after the campaign of the original release, but given how successful World was at attracting and retaining new players, that shouldn’t be a problem for most. Hell, it’s the perfect time to hop in for new players as well.

So what does this expansion offer, exactly? Well, Iceborne offers a ton more monsters, loot and a truly fantastic new environment in the form of Hoarfrost Reach — it’s a beautiful arctic setting filled with new wildlife, new quirks and colossal lumbering enemies ready to rip the throats out of anyone who dares venture there. It’s also time to up the difficulty with all new Master Rank content, which is a new level of challenge roughly analogous to G-Rank from previous entries.

For anyone who feels guilty about heading into these habitats to cull the local wildlife… well, Capcom has these sensitive souls covered. The target monsters tend to be truly unconscionable bastards who routinely introduce themselves in cutscenes where they murder anything that happens to be in the immediate area. It’s guilt-free slaying at its finest. And besides, trapping the buggers earns more rewards than wiping them out.

Speaking of the monsters, there’s a lot of them to burn through. One of the first new ones introduced is a huge Mammoth-like thing that rips giant rocks and trees out of the ground and runs around pulverizing anything in its way. Later, players will contend with massive area-of-effect freezing attacks, health-melting lasers and massive scattershot explosions rupturing the earth. There are also a number of new subspecies like the Coral Palomu, which differentiates itself from the others by turning into a water spewing twizzler when provoked.

It’s a tough hike in the frozen north, but there’s help available back at the freshly-established frontier camp in Seliana. Amongst the usual shops and gathering hubs, hunters can take monster parts and turn them into sets of armor and weapons that tweak parameters players can be having trouble with. From faster healing to removing stun states, there’s a loadout for every monster and preference imaginable.

One of the larger additions to Iceborne is the Clutch Claw, a grappling hook that allows for the temporary mounting of monsters, followed by wounding them (leading to additional damage on the wounded part) or making them flinch into obstacles where they’ll wind up stunned. It’s a powerful tool which can initially be a little cumbersome to use, especially when a monster’s thrashing about so violently players wind up desperately clinging to their balls instead of their faces.

That said, pulling off a flinch shot and seeing one of these colossal beasts go speeding face-first into a wall before collapsing into a dazed heap is incredibly satisfying. It’s just a shame I spent almost as much time zipping straight into their gaping maws before being headbutted halfway across the arena…

Even better than the Claw is the inclusion of mounts, unlockable after completing an early side quest. During a hunt, players can call in local wildlife to use as an impromptu taxi service, automatically sniffing out tracks or ferrying them to target monsters and points of interest. It’s an amazing addition — when a foe takes to its heels, players can call in these buddies and give chase in automated comfort, quaffing healing potions or sharpening their weapons en route to the next showdown.

The Palicos (feline bodyguards for solo and duo Hunters) also get a set of fantastic upgrades exclusive to the Iceborne update, from healing stations that can resurrect knocked out players to a dazzling pyrotechnical display of pure murder in the form of a fireworks volcano that lures in monsters and burns the hell out of them.

So, there’s a lot to recommend this expansion and it’s hard to be disappointed with Iceborne‘s offerings. However, most of this is old news to anyone who’s played the console versions. So, how’s the PC port looking?

Well, I abandoned a three-hundred-hour save on the PS4 where all my friends were to jump ship over to the PC, and I don’t regret it for a moment. The drastically-decreased loading times completely revitalize the experience, and seeing Hoarfrost Reach running at sixty frames a second during a snowstorm is spectacular. It’s a fantastic port, and anyone with a decent PC should pick this up instead of the console versions. Double dip if need be — it’s that much of an improvement.

As far as the faults of Iceborne go, there aren’t many, but there are admittedly a few that stick out.

One of the most obvious is that players still can’t journey through the story mode together because there’s an unfathomably terrible design restriction in place that prevents Hunters from teaming up on a quest until they’ve watched a monster’s introductory cutscene. Why? Buggered if I know. The cutscenes are nice enough I guess, but they’re not so special that they should force players to repeatedly break up and rejoin their groups over and over. It was irritating before, and it’s still irritating now. For such a multiplayer focused adventure, this is a bizarre oversight.

Secondly, I don’t want to spoil the end boss encounter with too many specifics about how it operates, but many common “final boss” failures of design are present here, from camera angles that can make certain attacks impossible to see for melee users, to a huge health pool that risks making the whole thing feel like a drawn-out slog. It’s an underwhelming climax for what is otherwise a thrilling adventure.

Finally, the post game content is… eh, it’s a massive grind. The gameplay remains fantastic, but there are various factors that lock endgame gear and bosses behind a massive unavoidable timesink. To put some perspective on this, the main storyline removes the Master Rank cap at level 22 after taking down the final boss — it takes about thirty hours or so for an average player. The final, hidden boss unlocks at Master Rank level one hundred. This is, to put it mildly, somewhat excessive.

I also don’t want to say too much about the Guiding Lands, but that area of the game could definitely use some tweaks as well.

In the end, these complaints aren’t enough to tarnish the experience in any meaningful way. It’s still a lengthy, rewarding and enjoyable expansion that’s one of the best of its type, breathing new life into a base game that was still going strong in the first place. Iceborne simply cements Monster Hunter World‘s position at the top of the Hunting genre, providing one of the best and most fully-featured expansions in recent memory for a title that would already gleefully suck up hundreds of hours even in its original iteration.

Anyone who’s a fan of the series should be all-in on this expansion already, and for anyone yet to check it out… well, now may very well be the best time.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Capcom. It is currently available on .PS4, Xbox One and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 160 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode (in addition to 50 hours in the PC’s base game, and around 300 total for the PS4 version) and the game was completed. The multiplayer mode was enabled at all times, and while most of my testing was spent solo on the PC version I also spent a fair amount of hunting with friends as well.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Mild Language, Use of Alcohol and Violence. It’s pretty tame, cartoonish stuff. Players don’t even get smashed when carousing at the inn after a hunt, which is totally optional anyway.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Iceborne does a great job of accompanying aural indicators with on-screen warnings and prompts. While there may be the occasional enraged scream preceding a particularly dangerous attack that goes unchecked, they do a great job of catering for deaf and hard of hearing players overall. Subtitles are available throughout, but I couldn’t see a way to resize them.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls, at least on the Keyboard and Mouse setup. Controller options are the same as the console versions. LB brings up a radial menu, LT aims the slinger / clutch claw, RB sheathes the weapon or sprints. X uses items, A dodges, B interacts with items that can be collected and Y attacks. However, many of these buttons are contextual and will change use depending on the player’s current status, stance or undertaking.

The post Monster Hunter World: Iceborne PC review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

On December 11th, Digital Extremes released the next big content patch for their hit MMO shooter, Warframe. Titled “Fortuna”, this update brings vehicles, new characters, items, and a whole new open-world area. This content also incorporates brand-new systems, giving first-timers and veterans alike something to check out.

The expansion opens on the subterranean hi-tech city, Fortuna. Sharp carbon fiber and steel plates cut back and forth, softened by blue and pink neons. Cyborg workers pound away amongst gutters full of coolant gel.

While they work, the workers sing a chorus about the hardships of their world. This song captures the tone Fortuna’s population — hardworking, oppressed, but hopeful. You really feel like they need help, and you’re just the space ninja for the job.

[Caption: If you haven’t heard this song, We All Lift Together, check out the Fortuna intro on Youtube here (hyperlink)]

The city of Fortuna acts as your hub for missions and vending, and the game prompts you to complete a short series of missions upon first arriving that will unlock all of the vendors and NPCs you’ll need while exploring the massive surface of Venus outside the city.

To help explore the gargantuan map, you need some new “wheels”, and at the end of the main story quests in the area, you’ll earn a hoverboard called a “K-Drive”. This vehicle lets you rocket across the surface of land and water. You can even do tricks to have some fun and earn reputation in Fortuna!

These boards can be upgraded with different parts to alter its performance. Of course, you can also slap some decals on there. What’s a skateboard without custom stickers?

New vendors hawk their wares in Fortuna. First off, the merchant Legs sells customizable pet Moas, just like the Corpus enemy type employ, and the bipedal bot is assembled from various components. Parts alter the Moa’s appearance and abilities depending on what pieces you use.

Next, “Rude” Zuud sells Kit guns, which are customizable secondary weapons. Just like the Moas or Zaws, she puts the guns together from various parts. The pieces determine the weapon’s stats, damage types, firing modes, and more. These weapons can be quite powerful, so it’s worth taking the time to gather the scrap to build them.

DE released a second set of Fortuna content on PC soon after the first. This patch adds monster hunting minigames, more vendors, and items. There’s also a new high-level encounter where players can fight a legendary gigantic spider monster.

A few weeks after Fortuna was released, DE also launched Warframe on an entirely new platform — the Nintendo Switch! Here’s a few commonly asked questions we’ve seen about the port.

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Is it feature complete? Warframe seems way too huge to be on the Switch!

The Switch port contains all the same content as PS4, PC, and Xbox. The version on Switch is 23.5, Mask of Revenant, so it’s behind the other consoles in patches, but DE plans to have all platforms matched up by Q1 2019.

How does the online play work on Switch? If I put it in sleep mode, what happens?

The Switch disconnects from the WF servers in sleep mode. If you’re in a mission, you’ll be kicked back out to the login screen.

How do the controls compare to other versions?

The Switch port’s controls are understandably awkward using the base Joycons. If you hook up a Pro controller, it handles almost exactly Xbox or PS4 controls. At present, the Switch version does not support USB mouse or keyboard, unlike other consoles.

Can I transfer my account to Switch?

If you are coming from PC, yes. At the time of writing this article, PC players can copy their save to Switch by going to https://www.warframe.com/news/account-migration-is-live. Account transfers will only be temporarily available. This isn’t true cross-saving though – the two accounts progress separately through the game after copying.

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Fortuna and it’s huge scope showcases Warframe’s tremendous potential. DE continues to expand the world at a breakneck pace, giving players a constant stream of new adventures. Exciting changes are coming for Warframe next year. Ship-to-ship space combat, coming early 2019!

— Michael Prehn

The post Warframe Update: Fortuna Expansion & Switch Port appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In mid-April, Digital Extremes expanded their flagship online shooter, Warframe. Here’s a quick summary of what they added in version 22.17!

First up, there’s a new mission type called Sanctuary Onslaught. An endless mission type, players drop into random environments with hordes of enemies. The goal is to kill as fast as possible and to keep your Efficiency meter from hitting zero as targets get harder and harder to put down.

This is similar to existing mission types like Survival and Defense. There are no resource drops, but increased experience gain makes up for the lack of material gains, and the rounds are incredibly fast. Getting a prize from Sanctuary Onslaught takes about 2-4 minutes, which is great for ninjas with only a little spare time. There’s also an Elite version of this mode, with tougher foes, limits placed on your powers, and even better prizes.

In addition to the new mode, they added three more weapons!

The Veldt is a well-rounded semi-auto rifle. For people who enjoy great punch and high versatility, the Veldt feels great. Throwing on a Shred mod or another fire rate buff can make the Veldt a strong all-purpose punisher.

The Hystrix sidearm is another versatile weapon. The secondary fire cycles through elements of fire, ice, shock, and toxin. Whichever element you choose is added to each shot, independent of mods. This allows for crazy status combos that debilitate enemies with a pile of debuffs.

The Hystrix’s damage, critical stats, fire rate, and reload speed are all above average. This allows you to mod the sidearm for virtually any focus you’d like. With a maxed Pistol Gambit and Target Cracker, this pistol has a 50% crit chance and 3.5x crit multiplier. Coupled with the high fire rate, you’ll be stapling enemies to the walls.

The new melee weapon called the Dual Keres is a critical hit machine. Boasting the highest crit chance of any dual sword type along with solid base damage, the Keres inflicts high damage fast. Unfortunately, it comes with a stance polarity that doesn’t favor high attack speed. You’ll want to reshape these swords with a Forma to equip Swirling Tiger stance. Once you’ve built it up a bit, the Dual Keres will shred even high-level foes.

The new warframe from this update, Khora, fits with the overall theme of versatile additions. She boasts above-average speed, armor, and crowd control abilities. The powers at her disposal include brutal whip attacks, crowd ensnaring traps, and even team healing. Finally, Khora’s ultimate throws out a strangling cage made of whips, which can easily wreak havoc on enemy forces. Along with this wide complement of abilities, Khora brings extra backup.

Khora’s passive summons an extra-powerful Kavat companion. This creature fights alongside you, tearing into foes and healing your team, and you can use any regular Kavat mods to power up this minion. It’s worth mentioning that this special companion can be used in addition to your normal pets. This lets you roll into a mission with your very own squad of three right off the bat!

With all of Khora’s options, mod builds will vary greatly player-to-player. In my view, she benefits most from range and duration boosts like Stretch and Continuity to extend the effectiveness of her traps. Also, mods on your melee weapon are reflected via her Whipclaw power, which allows you to do tons of damage with a critical melee weapon, like the Dual Keres.

As per usual, this update also included more Tennogen cosmetic items, item rebalances, and updated lighting effects. 22.17 brings in a sprinkle of all the new stuff veterans look for in an update, and the new mechanics brought in with Khora and the Hystrix add keep up DE’s spree of new ideas as well. Of course the new content outlined here is free, and if you play on PS4, you don’t even need PS Plus to group up with friends!

— Michael Prehn

The post Warframe’s Spring 2018 Update appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Commanding 100,000 troops to lay waste to the evil Cao Cao.

LOW Turning my fingers into pretzels trying to input certain commands.

WTF Buying two 700 year-old, 750 page novels to better grasp what the hell all of this is about.

I’m a person who takes videogames fairly seriously. I’ve been playing for around 25 years, and i pride myself on having varied taste. So, it’s not every day that someone like me runs into a franchise with at least thirteen entries and a thirty-year history that they have absolutely zero experience with. Like many, my initial thought about the long-running Romance Of The Three Kingdoms series was that it was some sort of Dynasty Warriors title, since it’s made by the same guys and they tend to make games that play a lot like Dynasty Warriors. However, if the setting and the outlandish characters characters were removed, ROTK is probably the most un-DW game in existence.

So why the sudden interest in a seemingly impenetrable series? I’m coming at this review with a slightly more personal slant to it, as life currently has me teaching English at a primary school in Luoyang, Henan Province, China. Luoyang is one of China’s four ancient capitals, and it plays an integral part in the story that the original historical novels were based on. The books are also possibly the most read non-religious text in history, so playing a game to possibly learn something and better connect with my friends, colleagues, and the city around me made taking on Romance Of The Three Kingdoms XIII quite intriguing.

It’s been out for about a year on the PS4 and PC, and it recently received the boringly-named Fame And Strategy expansion pack. The Xbox platform has never exactly been a hotbed for Japanese niche strategy titles, but Tecmo Koei decided to bundle it all together so that Microsoft’s boxes could finally experience feudal China in all its number-crunching glory.

To give a brief description of what this game is, exactly, and how it plays would be… nearly impossible. There’s a lot going on, and even with a twelve hour tutorial, players may still be overwhelmed. It would take ages to fully detail every single system at play here, so I’m not even going to try.

The meat of the game is selecting an avatar and working to rule all of civilized China. There’s much more to it, however. After choosing one of over seven hundred characters, the scenario itself can be modified heavily. The time period, strength of each faction, and even things like if the player character can die of old age or not can be set individually. The sheer vastness of the options means that any player who ends up digging this game will have near infinite replay value ahead of them.

The chosen character falls into two groups: Generals feature a traditional strategy role with full control over the kingdom and being in charge of that whole take-over-China thing. For those who wanna try something a little different, there’s also an advisory role where suggestions are made to the general. Gain favor due to (hopefully) sound advice, and rise up the ranks in hopes of becoming a governor.

The best aspect of this latest entry in the series is that it represents the best possible time for newcomers in the form of Hero Mode. Added to the traditional main campaign are a series of short scenarios designed to teach the player everything there is to know about playing Romance. These range from rebuilding the destroyed city of Luoyang while learning how to properly cultivate a thriving culture (as well as building an army) to thwarting an emperor’s rule by manipulating a love triangle, hence teaching the player how to coerce relationships and properly spy on enemies.

This mode also does a great job of introducing the player to various rock-paper-scissors themed mini-games involving everything from horseback combat to spirited debates on important local political grievances (For real. It’s kinda amazing). The player’s chances of winning these games are increased by an individual character’s rating in things like military prowess or communication skills. it may be difficult to defeat the legendary warrior Lu Bu in combat, but talking circles around him in the palace could prove just as effective.

Lo Kuan-chung’s seminal historical fiction series is a daunting undertaking, but ROTKXIII does a good job introducing players to it without buying 1,500 pages worth of paperback (like I did). It hits the major beats of the story in hero mode while portraying the motivations of the houses of Wei, Shu, and Wu to an audience who may have no idea who any of these people are. Numbers heavy strategy games like this usually don’t focus on their production, but ROTK‘s lavishly produced setting and score does an amazing job of transporting players into Feudal China circa 220AD.

The new expansion also adds a side-story to the hero mode, which could best be described as fan fiction, and serves to introduce the new gameplay wrinkles. With Fame And Strategy, the player’s deeds spread throughout the land with a fame ranking which influences how other characters in the world interact with them. Random events like the occasional natural disaster have also been added to spice things up, but the randomness of these portions may put off players who meticulously plan everything.

The story and interactions are told through still images of the characters speaking to each other, which I usually find bothersome, but thanks to the absolutely incredible character artwork from Hiroyuki Suwahara and little touches like subtle breathing animations, they spring to life. The game also features dual audio for voice tracks, but not the kind one may expect –the options are Japanese and Mandarin. Trust me, go for the Chinese. The voice actors really get into it, particularly in the confident/menacing heavy laugh category.

The graphics from a technical level are…understandable… given the scope of what’s going on, sans for the fairly egregious slowdown that happens constantly. There are a lot of numbers being processed under the hood, so they probably didn’t have the power available for extra polygons, but I wish it was a little more colorful in-game, especially when compared to the vibrant hand-drawn artwork used throughout. The two don’t juxtapose well considering the varying levels of browns and greens used in the overworld. Also, zooming all the way in on combatants as they do battle may result in a slight chuckle — they resemble poorly-animating sticks flailing their way to victory.

The fact that it works as well as it does on a controller is quite admirable, but it’s also clear that a mouse & keyboard would be the preferred option, as there are just too many options and submenus on-screen at once. Add in multiple characters, and it can be difficult to highlight the right one without zooming in, given the general impreciseness of using an analog stick as a cursor. There’s also a lot of ‘press X and then toggle with X to do X’, and the screen can be completely cluttered with various commands.

If what I’ve described sounds appealing, prospective rulers can expect to pay a whopping $69.99 for this bundle on Xbox, but I can confidently state that this is, without question, the most complex console game I have ever played and there is absolutely nothing else like it on the system. That alone makes it noteworthy, and potentially worth a look for anyone wanting to try something new. Romance Of The Three Kingdoms XIII is a deep, highly rewarding strategy title that insists on persistence, patience, and a high commitment. I’m unable to speak on behalf of ROTK die-hards, but as someone who came in completely bereft of knowledge of the franchise, this thirteenth entry does a solid job to bring in new players, which, considering how damn intricate it can be, is commendable. Rating: 7.5 out of 10

— Jarrod Johnston

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Koei Tecmo. It is currently available on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Xbox One. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The Hero Mode was completed along with extra time spent in the main mode. There are no multiplayer options

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Violence, Mild Language, and Use of Alcohol. This is a historical simulation game in which players assume the role of a ruler uniting the kingdoms of ancient China. Players manage economic/domestic affairs and engage in military campaigns against neighboring kingdoms. Combat is usually depicted from an overhead perspective, with players deploying military units (e.g., small armies of soldiers, cavalry) on a battlefield. Slashing effects and cries of pain can be heard during battles. Players can also zoom-in on battles, and engage in brief mini-games of one-on-one combat with generals. The game contains some alcohol references in the dialogue (e.g., “A man should sing the praises of his wine” and “When drunk he would whip his men.”). The word “bastard” appears in dialogue.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Subtitles are available, and there are no necessary audio cues. As an extremely text-heavy game, players with hearing issues should have no problems.

Remappable Controls: This game’s controls have two presets to choose from, but they are not fully remappable.

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

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