Author: Andrew Logue

  • Review: The System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster is a respectful update that had me yearning for a proper remake (Xbox Series)

    Review: The System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster is a respectful update that had me yearning for a proper remake (Xbox Series)

    Nightdive Studios’ System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster gives modern gamers, across all current- and last-gen hardware, a chance to play or replay one of the progenitors of the immersive-sim genre now running on their flexible KEX Engine. What you take away from the experience, however, might depend on your expectations going in and your interest in video game history.

    It is important to note up front that this 25th Anniversary Remaster still provides much the same gameplay and visual experience as 1999’s System Shock 2 Classic that’s still available on PC storefronts. There are subtle quality-of-life and visual enhancements you might assume were always there; accessibility is improved with competent gamepad support (for PC too); and the PC version retains modding support. Although it’s not how I would recommend experiencing System Shock 2 for the first time, the co-operative mode returns with cross-platform play. It’s a respectful remaster, though PC players with modding experience might find it unambitious.

    First-time players coming from the System Shock (2023) remake might struggle with the gameplay and visual regressions in this tale of yet another cybernetically-enhanced, amnesiac protagonist going up against a resurgent SHODAN and her former creations. Nevertheless, I would argue System Shock 2 stands alongside games like 1998’s Half-life as timeless, having established the foundations of a genre. The biggest issue is that unlike the games it inspired – think 2017’s Prey, 2012’s Dishonored, or even its spiritual successor, 2007’s Bioshock – the combat feels incredibly dated.

    System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster Janky Combat
    Monkey meet (floaty and unsatisfying) wrench.

    There is mechanical complexity, with different weapon types, specialised ammunition, and Psi powers best suited to organic, robotic, or hybrid enemies, but the audiovisual feedback is minimal and unsatisfying. It’s more RPG than shooter, with tangible progress measured by how big a chunk of a health-bar each attack removes before triggering a canned death animation. Experienced players could exploit the limited AI and level geometry for easier kills, but new players will find survival a function of their player build, loadout, and resources, not their mobility and aim.

    Regardless of whether you’re swinging a melee weapon that clips through enemies, firing an energy weapon with muted sound effects, or casting a Psi power with underwhelming particle effects, a degree of auto-aim and visible enemy health-bars are needed to offset simple hitboxes, inconsistent hit reactions, and the lack of visceral impact. This weakness would be fatal for a dedicated FPS, but to System Shock 2’s credit, it becomes less significant when you consider the number of other systems and modifiers at play during any given encounter.

    System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster Ammunition Types
    Shredding enemy health bars by using the correct ammunition type is mildly enjoyable, and so too are the new weapon models and reload animations.

    Starting at the beginning, a gamified class-creation tutorial guides you through the basics and introduces three military paths. The Navy career (my preferred choice) offers hacking, repair, and maintenance buffs – all handled through a simple mini-game – that make using conventional weapons, specialised ammunition, and hacked security systems optimal. For those wanting a more direct approach to combat, the Marine career boosts strength, endurance, and weapon skills, which make melee brawls and using heavy or exotic weapons with splash damage feasible – just don’t expect many opportunities to bypass threats.

    If you’re looking for a less conventional experience, the OSA career offers over 30 psionic powers across five tiers. There are mundane alternatives to resistances, weapon repairs, and healing, but you’ll also find creative and potentially game-breaking options like remote hacking, invisibility, organic mind-control, and teleportation. Even the simple direct damage powers offer a unique mechanic that allows you to overcharge them during casting – albeit with the risk of damaging yourself if your timing is off.

    System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster Hacking Turrets
    They’re not as robust as I’d like, but hacked turrets are a great way to even the odds or keep corridors clear for backtracking.

    Regardless of your early choices, every career can invest cyber modules (typically granted as a reward for completing objectives) to boost primary attributes, weapon skills, tech skills, or psi powers. Depending on the chosen difficulty – which modifies health, psi-points, and the cost of upgrades – it makes sense to prioritise a few to stay ahead of the escalating difficulty curve, but multi-classing is viable if you thoroughly explore for additional cyber module stashes.

    You can tailor your build even further with four OS upgrades for powerful passives; energy-draining armour and implants; and there is no shortage of consumables to keep you alive during protracted fights or when navigating hazardous areas. There are also organic and robotic components to research for new weapons and damage buffs against enemy types – though a dedicated research skill and backtracking to chemical storerooms for research material still feels like poorly-implemented padding.

    System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster Upgrades
    Although not mandatory, every class benefits from investing a few points in Strength to wear better armour, and Cyber Affinity and Hacking to temporarily disable security systems.

    Exploration is still a key element of gameplay, even if the level design and quest structure lack the degree of flexibility seen in modern immersive sims. The menu interface tracks overarching objectives and even the steps taken towards completing them, but clues on how to progress are still found in scattered audio-logs that are often easy to miss. Keycards, keypads, and environmental hazards gently guide the player, but even with a detailed map, System Shock 2 is a game in which you need to take note of text logs and environmental signposting to avoid frustration.

    That said, methodical exploration is how you come to appreciate what all good immersive sims excel at: rewarding or punishing player agency based on how cautious or reckless they are. The decks of TriOptimum’s Von Braun starship and the UNN Rickenbacker are not as large or maze-like as Citadel Station, but the first two-thirds of the game will take you through them more than once and it becomes difficult to avoid combat. You will often open new paths between the interconnected map segments, and there’s incentive to return with improved skills to access new gear or cyber module stashes.

    System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster Recreation Deck Map
    For new players, there’s an early OS upgrade that provides the schematics for both vessels and makes it a lot easier to find locations mentioned in text or audio-logs.

    You slowly come to recognise which routes bypass patrolling enemies; which rooms near central elevators are best used for item storage; and which upgrade terminal, recharge station, surgical bed, or vending machine is the safest to return to when you need to restock. The narrative moves forward as you complete objectives, but the more you explore, the more audio-logs you find that expand on secondary story arcs. These delve into the discovery of the parasite known as The Many, the corruption of the Xerxes AI, the internal strife and downfall of the crew, and the return of SHODAN.

    As with the original System Shock and its remake, fear of the unknown gives way to empowering familiarity – but that is not to say System Shock 2 is forgiving of reckless play. Aside from robust melee weapons that serve as a last resort for late-game enemy variants, weapons degrade with use and ammunition, psi-hypos, and the nanite currency – used for hacking and vending machines – are effectively finite.

    System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster Shodan Reveal
    Given her image is plastered all over the marketing materials, it should come as no surprise SHODAN makes her return, leaving the player caught between an untrustworthy genocidal AI and parasitic hive mind organism.

    A lack of resources coupled with a few dubious and unaltered quests never impedes progress, but it can kill the pacing. Looping around the recreation deck looking for codes hidden in artwork was as tedious as ever; consuming my last nanites to hack a vending machine that then forced me to buy a quest-essential item was infuriating; and hunting eggs in convoluted engine deck of The Rickenbacker was only marginally less tedious than the aforementioned artwork code hunt.

    As such, the System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster offers both anachronistic fun and frustration – to the point I was enjoying it but simultaneously thinking how much better a full-blown remake like System Shock (2023) would be. The visual enhancements, like improved textures, ambient occlusion, and more intricate weapon models make a significant difference when compared side by side, but it ultimately looks and plays like the early 3D FPS-RPG hybrid it is.

    System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster The Many Boss Fight
    If you disliked The Flood levels in any of the Halo games, you’re going to find the finale of System Shock 2 equally frustrating.

    As fan of the genre and the original, it feels like a smartly remastered and well-priced excuse to replay it, but I have doubts new fans of the IP coming from the System Shock (2023) remake will find it that playable. On the other hand, those with a gaming history going back a decade or two could treat it as a playable history lesson, showcasing the origins of many mechanics, scenarios, and storytelling methods you’ll have seen in later games.

    Pros:

    • A smart and respectful remaster that preserves System Shock 2’s timeless qualities and a few flaws
    • The updated textures, ambient lighting, and new weapon models don’t gel with the original designs
    • Competent gamepad controls and a multi-plat release improves accessibility
    • There’s only one cyberspace section at the end (which I guess some might consider a negative)

    Cons:

    • It ultimately looks and plays just like the late ‘90s early 3D FPS-RPG hybrid it is
    • Some laborious objectives remain unaltered and can drag down the pacing

    Score: 8/10

    System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch 1/2.

  • Review: The Alters (Xbox Series)

    Review: The Alters (Xbox Series)

    The Alters is a streamlined and mechanically satisfying survival-game that also asks the question: what would you do if literally faced with the branching possibilities of the choices you never made?

    The overarching plot slowly drifted into the back of my mind the longer I played, but The Alters has an intriguing premise that draws on several classic sci-fi tropes to turn a traditional survival game, with a strong focus on time management, into a thought-provoking journey filled with moments of frustration, elation, and unexpected warmth.

    Jan Dowski, a 35-year-old builder who has already accumulated a lifetime’s worth of regrets, emerges from a landing capsule on an alien world. He soon discovers his captain and crew are dead, and although their massive, wheel-like is base is intact, the engines are offline – a severe problem when the approaching sunrise in this triple star system will bathe the area in lethal radiation.

    After exploring for some basic resources and establishing a distorted communication link to the Ally Corporation funding the mission, Jan discovers the base’s quantum computer, the “Womb” cloning facility, and the rare element “Rapidium” found on the planet, offer him an unconventional means of survival: cloning himself to create a new crew – the titular “Alters” – by imprinting their minds with specialised knowledge and simulated life-paths based on different decisions made at key moments in his digitised memory timeline.

    Most of the narrative is centred on Jan and the fate of his Alters, but you’ll also piece together what happened to the mission through exploration.

    The more you think about it, the more dubious science and plot-holes you can spot in The Alters, but 11 Bit Studios gets around this by keeping the entire experience surreal. Is the Jan Dowski you are playing as really the original? What should you make of the fact every Alter’s life path converges on joining the Dolly Missions at 35? What is the fate of the Alters if they return to this timeline’s Earth? If interstellar travel and quantum computing are commonplace in this universe, why is the search for the time-manipulating Rapidium so important to humanity’s survival?

    I think what I like most about The Alters is how little those details mattered when I was engaged with the minute-to-minute gameplay and watching my growing Alter crew interact with one another.

    The Alters will remind you over and over again that it’s our decisions and life experience that shapes us, not genetics or ancestry.

    I’d describe The Alters as a hybrid of traditional third-person exploration game and a time-management-heavy survival game, just with a weird and wild crew management twist.

    Upon arriving in a new region, you explore on foot during so-called “daytime” hours – periods of low light and radiation levels – to discover and clear paths to resource deposits, build mining outposts and connect them with pylons, scan and destroy anomalies, find scattered mission gear for base upgrades, personal belongings to boost Alter morale, and later track down even weirder alien samples used for higher-tier research. It looks and feels suitably hands-on and immersive, though after establishing a resource chain, the bulk of your playtime is going to be spent interacting with base functions, engaging with Alters, or navigating assignment, production, and research menus.

    It’s tempting to maximise your exploration and mining time outdoors, but darkness, anomalies, and radiation burns can leave you sleeping in the infirmary with less productive time.

    The escalating resource and crafting requirements needed to survive and progress are streamlined compared to many of its peers, but time is always your enemy in The Alters. Efficient working hours are limited without enforcing mood-sapping crunch; the approaching sunrise shortens the time you can spend outside without racking up radiation burns; and a crew of alternate personalities are far more challenging to sustain than the generic staff you’d see in a game like XCOM. You’re not just building dormitories, labs, workshops, and radiation shields; you’ll also need to consider personal cabins, social facilities, contemplation rooms, and gyms.

    Each branch from Jan’s original timeline can result in wildly different personalities, with different anxieties, motivations, and triggers; all of which you’ll want to read up on in the simulated timeline before considering your responses in dialogue or when faced with suggestions. You will have to balance competing requests, deal with the fallout, and keep them all fed, physically healthy, mentally healthy, and entertained. Not treating your Alters as individuals is the quickest way to foster rebellion and jeopardise the mission when they ignore your orders or work inefficiently.

    There are plenty of actions, big and small, that can influence the mood of your Alters – but there are also obvious story beats that’ll trigger scenarios regardless.

    Regardless of the difficulties you pick for the game’s economy and action elements, you need empathise with your alternate Jans and occasionally boost their morale with gifts, social activities like beer pong and movies, and considering personal requests. It is impossible to clone every Alter variant and experience every potential outcome in a single playthrough, but good relationships teach Jan new life lessons that provide unique dialogue options, open new research paths, and alter the end-of-act outcomes.

    There is a lot to juggle as the clock marches on, but all the assists you could want are present. With enough Alters, the early exploration step gives way to a lot of menu-based gameplay as you quickly build and rearrange base modules, assign Alters to resource or production tasks, select research priorities, and set minimum stock levels or continuous production queues to maintain essentials like food, radiation filters, and repair kits for the sporadic magnetic storms that devastate base modules and hamper most outdoor activities.

    The chosen difficulty coupled with your skill at managing both time and Alters will determine if the mission plays out as scrappy and desperate attempt to survive on the edge, or as a well-oil machine that keeps on top of objectives and ahead of the sunrise with minimal trauma and injuries to the crew. That said, there are a few narrative beats that happen regardless of your actions.

    Building, rearranging, and navigating your expanding base is a breeze – just be aware the more modules you have, the more Alters you’ll need to maintain it, and the more fuel you’ll need for the onward journey.

    With the focus on crew interactions as much as it is on the survival mechanics, it helps that The Alters mid-tier price-point does not mean low production values. Like most survival games with base-building and menu-driven systems, The Alters gets a lot of playtime out of limited assets, but it feels polished and the compact environments – both the expanding base and increasingly vertical outdoor regions – look incredibly detailed and atmospheric. Character models also look good, with only a few stiff animations during emotive gestures or while climbing.

    More important is the writing, voice work, and delivery – both during moments where the Alter’s divergent personalities clash, and those in which they share cherished memories or establish new bonds. There are generic lines for common events and gameplay triggers, but I found it easy to empathise with Jan in all his forms. His Alters are exaggerated archetypes but they do an impressive job of leaving you frustrated with their vices, like pride, stubbornness, or self-pity, yet it also often left me elated during moments of unexpected compassion and warmth.

    All that said, I’m no psychologist or support worker with professional experience, so you might find the lack of subtlety in how some mental health issues are presented problematic.

    The Alters is not really an action-heavy game, but exploration on foot and targeting anomaly weak-points to destroy them feels good.

    Even as someone who prefers methodical games that move at my pace over those with time pressures, I enjoyed The Alters far more than I expected. Not so much for the survival gameplay – which is competent, streamlined, and challenging enough in its own right – but more for the thrill of discovering what new Alter I could create, discovering how their lives played out compared to the original Jan Dowski, and watching them bond or clash with one another under increasing pressure.

    I’m not sure if the writing and performances are quite good enough to compete with overproduced, “AAA”-style cinematic adventures with their ridiculous budgets, but The Alters actually got me thinking about whether you could ever stay sane if given the knowledge of the near infinite possibilities of all the decisions you’ve never made.

    Pros:

    • An intriguing setting with a weird and wild crew management twist
    • Streamlined but satisfying survival and time management mechanics
    • A gorgeous alien world to explore and solid voice acting
    • Recreating the high school band with your Alters

    Cons:

    • Possibly too much menu-driven gameplay for some
    • Early challenges can feel unforgiving if you pick the wrong Alter type or research path first

    Score: 9/10

    The Alters was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.

  • Retrospective: Citizen Sleeper (2023) is all about building a new life, one cycle at a time

    Retrospective: Citizen Sleeper (2023) is all about building a new life, one cycle at a time

    With so many games and so little time, Citizen Sleeper was yet another indie release that caught my eye before being swamped by tsunami of gaming news promoting the next best thing. Thankfully, returning to it three years late is easy, with the minimalist but stylish visuals, slick interface, and evocative soundtrack effectively timeless. And I’m glad I did return, as there is something comfortingly familiar yet fresh about the hybrid structure that blends a choice-driven visual novel with a dice-driven, tabletop-style RPG. It’s also uplifting as hell, despite the often-bleak setting and scenarios you’ll face, and had me wondering if my life was also just a string of choices and more RNG than I care for?

    It’s worth noting up front that you need to be comfortable with a lot of reading if you’re going to gel with Citizen Sleeper. There is no voice work and often paragraph after paragraph of text to work through. From the opening sequence that introduces you to your synthetic “Sleeper” body with a transferred consciousness, through to the heartfelt culmination of relationship-building quest-lines, and the handful of potential endings, Citizen Sleeper conveys everything through excellent writing, lightly animated character portraits, and the accompanying soundtrack. I found it an impressively thought-provoking experience that generated stronger emotions than the glut of cinematic “AAA” games I’ve played over the last decade – many of which featured professional voice work and lavish motion capture.

    There’s a diverse cast to meet and while many are familiar stereotypes, there is always a satisfying number of resolutions based on your interactions.

    It’s possible you will recognise many of the sci-fi tropes the world of Citizen Sleeper is built upon, but the setting remains a strong hook throughout as the game doesn’t rush to explain everything up front. Instead, each character has a link to major players in the Citizen Sleeper universe, and through interacting with them you’ll come to understand the past and present of the world you now inhabit. What’s clear from the get-go is that “The Eye”, a decaying ring station in the Helion system, on the edge of the Core region, is home to human, augmented, and synthetic workers – some bound by company contracts or gang debts – all trying to get by providing essential services or engaging in dangerous space-faring work, like terraforming, resource extraction, and salvaging.

    A corporate collapse a generation before resulted in the emergence of several factions: a workers union that evolved into a corporation with a structure it once despised; a gang straddling the line between governing body and criminality; a commune trying to make The Eye self-sufficient through novel food production methods; a charitable organisation driving new colonisation efforts; and a curious assortment of forgotten AI constructs. It is into this diverse and fragile fringe society that your Sleeper finds themselves, with no friends, no stable work, and no access to the stabiliser drugs essential for maintaining their synthetic bodies.

    It is, admittedly, and incredibly menu-driven game, but you can still find joy in mundane interactions once you’ve become familiar with station life.

    To survive, you’ll need to explore, find work opportunities, forge new friendships, and decide what purpose your new life serves on the edge of the inhabited universe. You do that by way an abstract and menu-driven system that is mechanically simple and intuitive yet, thanks to the incredible writing and characterisation, still engaging and frequently tense. If you strip away the narrative layer, Citizen Sleeper is a combination of timers, meters, dice rolls modified by a simple skill tree, and player choices that shape future interactions. It sounds incredibly dry, but like a table-top RPG led by an experienced GM, simple actions can be thrilling with the right narrative framing and high stakes.

    Each cycle, you awake hungry and watch the condition of your synthetic body deteriorate. Each cycle, you’re dealt five or less dice that dictate your chances of successfully completing a job to earn currency to buy food or stabiliser drugs; values that influence your chances of mastering a social interaction that could improve your local reputation; or the exact values required to hack systems within The Eye’s vast and collapsing information network.

    Completing “drives” – a mix of optional and mandatory quest lines – reward you with skill points you can invest in a skill tree that both improves your dice rolls and provides useful perks.

    Every time the story imposes a cycle limit before events transpire or limits the number of times you can bungle a task, a segmented ring slowly fills up with abstract but terrifying red markers. Combined with the ever-present hunger and condition meters, they serve as a constant reminder you are living on the edge, and every decision is meaningful.

    The gameplay mechanics can generate tension well enough, but what makes Citizen Sleeper special is how almost every interaction, be that player choice or dice roll, is linked to a specific faction or character. Through repetition, you’ll come to know them all, and through constant engagement, you’ll dig deeper into their lives. You’ll unlock new interactions with a cast of troubled but often hopeful citizens and slowly establish yourself on The Eye. You’ll soon realise Citizen Sleeper has few fail states beyond locking you out of some endings, but thanks to great writing and multiple quest outcomes, it’s incredibly satisfying to define your character through their choices and interactions with others – regardless of whether you choose to settle on The Eye or find a way to move on.

    So much of the game is just meters, timers, and dice rolls, but context is everything.

    Wrapping up, Citizen Sleeper is any easy addition to an ever-growing list of iconic indie games that demonstrate how much you can achieve with very little. It’s like a well-written choose-your-own-adventure novel, in which triggering the next turn of the page means engaging in some simple but satisfying table-top-style dice rolls that can sometimes work for or against you. Citizen Sleeper also remains a timely reminder that if you are looking for a place in a community, you should be looking for a collective of individuals that share your values and struggles, not some monolithic organisation – be that corporate, political, or religious – with the expectation of your adherence to some ideological dogma that those in charge rarely follow themselves.

    Citizen Sleeper was played on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch.

  • Impressions: Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon Console Port (Xbox Series S|X)

    Impressions: Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon Console Port (Xbox Series S|X)

    I’m always excited for ambitious indie or “AA” RPGs, especially those that might offer serious mechanical or narrative depth – even if it is often found under a veneer of jank like much of Piranha Bytes’ output. In recent years, I’ve sunk more time into both classic and new budget RPGs, like Gothic, Two Worlds, ATOM RPG, and Chernobylite, than I have into AAA RPGs that usually offer incredible production values at the expense of gameplay freedom or branching narratives. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon in one such mid-tier RPG, with a console port arriving after a year in PC early access. Unfortunately, without serious optimisation patches, the result is a mix of admirable ambition and infuriating instability that is much tougher to recommend than its highly praised PC counterpart.

    Starting with the good, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon’s grimdark reimagining of Arthurian legend provides a strong narrative hook. Centuries before the game takes place, a relentless plague – the “Red Death” – swept over Arthur Pendragon’s homeland, forcing him to lead survivors to colonise the mythical island of Avalon and drive back the presence of “Wryd” magic using ancient menhirs activated by Merlin. Your protagonist finds themselves imprisoned on Asylum Island just off the coast, tortured by “Red Priests” that have turned to increasingly desperate and brutal methods to treat the resurgent plague. During this prologue, your hero is bound to a fragment of King Arthur’s soul – now a spectre seemingly oblivious of recent events, who wants to be reborn to restore his kingdom. Unexpectedly, a Knight of the Round Table that aids your escape seems intent on destroying the soul fragments and preventing his rebirth.

    There are few inherently good or bad factions, and each region offers a choice to determine its fate.

    Shipwrecked on the misty southern shores of Avalon, you soon discover that Arthur has been revived multiple times over the centuries to restore the Kingdom of Man, but those efforts have been in vain. The Wyrdness continues to reclaim more of the island, corrupting humans, animals, and mythical beasts. Society has become increasingly brutal, with those taking up the mantle of a Knight of the Round Table no less savage than the bandits that raid caravans and villages. Conflict is brewing between Kamelot and the local human tribes, while a schism in Kamelot’s Court might result in civil war. It’s a dark and blood-soaked setting for a suitably dark and blood-soaked game, but the overarching goal is made clear from the start: regardless of the factions you aid or hinder along the way, you’re going to collect the fragments of Arthur’s soul to revive him or destroy him.

    The basic gameplay loop has been compared to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which is not an unfair observation, but at least faction and ending choices feel more involved than Skyrim’s singular and half-baked “Civil War” questline. Combined, these regions may not match the scale of an Elder Scrolls map, but they are dense and diverse, packed with quest givers, marked locations, and hundreds of unmarked secrets for those who explore every corner. You assign armour and accessories to equipment slots; you assign weapons, shields, and spells to your left and right hand; you wield blades, hammers, bows, explosives, elemental magic, and summons against both human and monstrous enemies; you craft, brew, and cook hundreds of items to aid you in battle; and you fetch or kill an improbable number things to gain experience towards a flexible levelling system.

    There are a ton of viable builds with complementary skills and gear, yet I still fell back into old habits.

    There is an overworld with hub settlements and significant locations. There’s no shortage of interior locations like caves, crypts, ruins, and temples that conveniently loop around on themselves and have a treasure chest at the end. Named enemies serve as boss encounters and often guard the aforementioned treasure chests. Respawning overworld enemies allow you to farm experience and crafting materials and they become tougher during the night when afflicted by Wyrd magic. There’s also a ridiculous amount of gear, consumables, and crafting materials to loot from containers, locked chests, or corpses after every battle. At this point, you’d be right to think Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon offers few surprises for fans of the genre and, if anything, the size of many locations, the enemy respawn rate, and the sheer number of optional systems and item tiers can start to feel like unnecessary padding at times.

    Thankfully, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon benefits from its setting and build flexibility. You gain proficiency levels and bonus XP by repeatedly using specific gear and skills like in Skyrim, but for each level you gain and attribute point and skill point to invest wherever you so choose. You can just scrape by as a generalist on medium difficulty, but you can also focus on two or three skill tress with complementary perks, supplement those skills with armour and accessory buffs, and become overpowered – so long as you’re not forced into an encounter outside of your comfort zone. Dialogue and quest solutions are more focussed, with the main quest often forcing you to pick a faction in each region, with player choice and attribute-checks slightly altering events or changing the outcome of standalone side quests. All familiar systems but they’re elevated by the Celtic setting, diverse and enthusiastic voice work, and a soundtrack that shifts from serene exploration tunes to metal combat tracks.

    You can scrape by on the default normal difficulty as a generalist, but it is worth prioritising a few skills and weapon types if you want to survive boss encounters without exploiting the AI or spamming summons.

    The problem – as of this impressions piece going up – is that the console release of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon intersperses familiar and satisfying gameplay with a mix of exploitable jank, performance issues, and both random and repeatable crashes. As a mid-tier game with mid-tier pricing, I don’t mind that it often looks and feels last-gen, and I always appreciate games that let me survive tough encounters by clipping through geometry, spamming summons, exploiting OP skills, or dubious AI pathfinding. I don’t even have an issue with the residual PC-like menu that lets you freely toggle resolutions, framerate caps, v-sync, and vegetation quality. What I don’t appreciate is how little those settings influence the wildly variable performance on an Xbox Series X; how console-level VRR doesn’t work if you disable v-sync; or how simply running between certain areas or spawning multiple summons can tank the framerate and crash the game.

    To Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon’s credit, you can manually save, quick-save, and even maintain a half-dozen autosaves as often as every minute. This limits lost progress, sure, but random crashes can still ruin tough combat encounters in which saving is disabled, and some areas of the Keeper fortress hub became a stuttering mess and even inaccessible at times – notably the blacksmith and path towards the outlying village. I often had to take lengthy detours around the hub or fast-travel back and forth – presumably loading and de-loading map data – before I could finally engage with essential NPCs and merchants. For a game with dozens of multi-part quests that involve backtracking, this grew more annoying the longer I played and always left me on edge, incessantly saving just in case an autosave triggered in an area that would crash the game again after reloading.

    So many good boys/girls lost while I spent my time strafing behind enemies with a dagger!

    It’s all the more frustrating as I’ve been enjoying Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon despite those issues and desperately want to push forward into Act 2. However, given the current state of the console port during the first act – the act I assume benefitted the most from the early access period – I’m reluctant endure more performance hitches and the ever-present threat of crashes. For fans of the genre who don’t have the option of playing this on PC, I’d suggest you keep Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon on your radar while it receives more patches as there’s a solid and satisfying, 7/10-style budget RPG just waiting to emerge from a mire of technical issues.

    Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon was played on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.

  • Review: Trident’s Tale (Nintendo Switch)

    Review: Trident’s Tale (Nintendo Switch)

    It’s time to man the mizzenmast, batten those hatches, and get a new plank to walk, because the briny seven seas be calling again. Aaargh, me mateys! Me cutlass be ready for a new pirate adventure and the burying of treasure!

    Developer 3DClouds is attempting to fill that piratical itch with Trident’s Tale, a swashbuckling, seven seas-crossing tale of piracy, treasure hunting, and skeletons. You play as Ocean, a pirate wannabe who can’t wait to leave her island home. But when Ocean finds a hidden piece of the legendary Storm Trident, she puts herself in the crosshairs of a nefarious group of undead pirates also looking for all the pieces.

    The Trident, you see, contains the power of a god and, if all the pieces are united, that power goes to the wielder. To survive, Ocean has to assemble a crew, find the remaining pieces, and become a legend in the process.

    Trident’s Tale cribs it’s ideas from games that have come before about the golden age of piracy. As Trident’s Tale is an all-ages game that feels like it was made with kids in mind, those inspirations have been trimmed back to present an easy-to-get-to-grips-with adventure that spends as much of its time on land as it does at sea.

    The gameplay is split into two distinct sections, both beholden to the idea of exploration. There’s a third person, on-foot adventure mode that combines melee combat with light puzzle solving and a healthy dose of platforming. There are, of course, ship sequences that see you explore a large, watery map full of islands and other ships – many of which you can scuttle to continue funding your voyage.

    When you’re not swaying all over the poop deck (that’s real, look it up), your land-legs will be getting a good deal of use on the islands you can explore, either for side-quests and items, or to progress the story. There are resources to collect for a simple crafting system, basic platforming in many locations a nice sense of verticality, and lots of melee combat to go around. The undead will hound your every move. Thankfully, you have a trusty cutlass and pistol to deal with them.

    Ocean has access to light and heavy attacks, a dash to get out of the way, and a pistol that is probably the most useful item in her arsenal. Each weapon has its own special ability, such as the pistols default ability to stun enemies briefly. Scattered across the game are recipes for new weapons, armour, and ship upgrades that use those shiny chunks of bone and iron you’ve been collecting. You can also simply upgrade your existing ones.

    Ogh, and what would a pirate be without a crew? As you travel across the world, you’ll recruit more scallywags to your cause who, thankfully, provide more than just snarky quips while sailing. These crew members give you access to magical attacks for use in both melee and naval combat. A song that heals you while stunning enemies? I’ll take that please!

    Ocean spends a lot of time sailing the seven seas so blue, so it’s nice that ship control and combat have been simplified as well. You raise your sails to get moving, with three settings for speed, and can pick up floating crates in the ocean to gain more resources. There are many islands to explore, either to continue the story, explore temples, find even more resources, or engage in side-quests.

    You can dock at harbours to make life easier or, if you’re close to an island, abandon the helm and dive into the cooling waters for a quick swim to shore, all of which is handled seamlessly. You can always fast-travel to your ship and islands you’ve already explored, which makes backtracking a breeze.

    Where naval combat is concerned, the direction you’re looking aims your cannons. The only complication is adjusting the height of your shot for a broadside or judging the distance when using the front or rear cannons. When an enemy ship is on its last legs, you’ll get a boarding option that just nets you more resources before it’s scuttled. Sadly, there’s no actual boarding of other ships or fighting their crew which was a bit of a letdown.

    The story is passable Saturday-afternoon, pulp fare with a humorous take on proceedings. How much that humour lands will depend on the player though. While I wasn’t too chuffed with much of the dialogue, I did enjoy some of the cringy pirate dad jokes during the loading screens. The voice acting is passable as well and the narrative gets the job done even if it doesn’t truly immerse you in the world or the supposedly high stakes.

    Sadly, Trident’s Tale comes with some serious waterlogged issues that spoil the adventure. Some of those issues are design-related, but the rest are down to poor performance that seriously hampers the experience on the Nintendo Switch.

    The camera position in combat when locked on is a complete pain as it drops low behind your character and obscures the actual combat, blocking your view of both the enemies and their incoming attacks. I stopped using the lock-on and kept the camera at a 3/4 view of the action, which made combat far more palatable as there’s a degree of auto-aim that’ll make sure you don’t miss.

    This introduces the problem of the environment blocking the view depending on the area, but it’s less frustrating than the lock-on issues. on that note, the lock-on disengages as soon as you turn your back to an enemy, so pretty much every move that dashes back and out of harm’s way renders it useless. For a few battles where you really need the lock-on, this is a pain.

    Most significant are the games visuals and performance issues that I’ assume’d hope are limited to the Switch and maybe the last-gen consoles. Bluntly put, this is another case of Unreal Engine and the Switch not mixing politely.

    The stylised art style is nice enough, but the games resolution on Switch is so low that it really hampers visual clarity. Most of the time, it just looks very hazy, with everything from characters to foliage looking blurry and aliased to the point where it can even affect ship-based combat when your circular crosshair gets lost in the visual noise.

    Pop-in, as we’ve come to expect from UE titles, is also present, with smaller environmental assets and props popping in mere feet from the player character. At one point, I wasn’t sure if the circular blob masquerading as a tree was meant to look that way or the textures simply hadn’t loaded in.

    Finally, there’s the overall framerate which can create a sluggish feeling experience, particularly in combat against multiple opponents, where inputs don’t always register. It’s not unplayable mind you, but it feels like the Switch version of the game needs more optimisation. Surprisingly, the developers have managed to implement some fairly nice looking screen space reflections on water surfaces. It does help to make the water look nicer, but I’d gladly see this effect sacrificed in favour of a higher resolution and a more stable frame-rate.

    Even with all these issues, I still found myself enjoying much my time with Trident’s Tale, especially once I ditched the lock-on for combat. There’s a fun, all-ages adventure here just waiting to be given a chance – but I don’t think the Switch version is the best way to experience it.

    Pros:

    • Simple fun designed for all ages
    • Exploration and naval combat feels rewarding
    • Plenty of crafting recipes to find

    Cons:

    • Runs at a low resolution on the Nintendo Switch with severe pop-in
    • The poor framerate results in sluggish controls
    • Some terrible dialogue
    • A frustrating lock-on camera

    Score: 5/10

    Trident’s Tale was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One/Series S|X , and PS4/5.

  • Editorial: Kvark offers a taste of Half-Life that’s increasingly hard to find on console

    Editorial: Kvark offers a taste of Half-Life that’s increasingly hard to find on console

    Looking at Kvark’s retro-styled visuals, industrial complex setting, and science-gone-wrong premise, it is easy enough to make Half-Life comparisons – but those features could apply to hundreds of games released since 1998. The Half-Life characteristic that Kvark emulates best is that satisfying, cyclic rhythm between exploration, environmental puzzles, and brief, brutal firefights. Kvark released on PC near the end of last year, but I wanted to replay the console port as there are few games that capture the essence of Half-Life on console, and Valve seems disinterested in preserving access to their Xbox 360- and PS3-era ports like The Orange Box collection and the Left 4 Dead games.

    Having turned off subtitles for the propaganda videos that play between chapters, this was more or less my thoughts on the narrative throughout.

    Unlike Half-Life‘s unexpectedly strong narrative thread, Kvark sticks to the classic retro-FPS approach of providing some light context and leaving the rest up to the player. It takes place in an alternate-history Czech Republic, under Soviet-style rule during the Cold War period. The titular “Kvark” corporation has moved on from nuclear power, to nuclear weapons, and finally a dubious injectable substance – “anethium” – to create super-workers and super-soldiers. It’s a videogame setup we’ve seen a hundred times before, so it should come as no surprise your prisoner protagonist wakes up in a cell to discover both human clean-up teams and grotesque mutants are out to kill them.

    There are entertaining propaganda videos that reveal what the corporation has been up to and hint at the threats you’ll face in the upcoming chapter, but the bulk of the storytelling is handled by scattered notes or hidden drawings that reveal the ineptitude of the government and staff, or provide the odd code or hint to access secret areas. Survival is your primary goal, and as the Kvark complex was relocated far underground to avoid the gaze of Western imperialist spies, that means an 8–10-hour gauntlet through prisons, sewers, manufacturing facilities, mines, laboratories, and quarantine zones. The overall tone is one of dark, cynical humour, but it can feel suitably oppressive and tense, with open skies only appearing in the final third of the game.

    Kvark is excessively gory, with improbably huge blood splatters and abundant severed limbs, but it’s more comical than gruesome.

    Gameplaywise, Kvark focusses on what all good first-person shooters should: responsive movement; weapons that look, sound, and feel good to use; and hand-crafted combat encounters against a variety of enemy types that force you to use your full arsenal. There’s nothing inherently novel about the shooting or the traditional weapon categories – ranging from a mostly ceremonial wrench through a pistol, shotguns, rifles, a crossbow, an energy weapon, a grenade, and a minigun – but they all have a situational use and limited ammunition reserves that prevent you from just sticking to an allrounder. Even the perfunctory skill tree, which encourages you to hunt for anethium injectables, offers mostly incremental buffs and one risk-reward perk that reduces total health and healing efficiency in exchange for health gain through kills.

    With solid but familiar foundations, it’s that aforementioned rhythm of exploration and environmental puzzling, interspersed with bouts of violent combat, that channel Half-Life vibes. Aside from a few short-lived platforming sections in the second chapter, both the level design and variety feel good given its length, with many looping back, over, or under themselves to give an impressive sense of scale. Within the ruined corridors, rooms, and vents of the facility you’ll scrounge for weapons, ammunition, and secrets; you’ll flip switches, connect cables, ride carts, and activate machinery to open the way forward; and you’ll deal with clean-up squads and hordes of mutants by staying mobile, kiting melee enemies, prioritising those with ranged attacks, and making use of explosives (or explosive hazards) – all before shifting back to exploring for more resources in preparation for the next combat encounter.

    Anethium-mutated creatures are uniformly irritating and a pain to fight in tight spaces.

    Kvark feels more forgiving than it did during early access period, but the checkpoints and resource stashes still feel balanced around surviving a handful of significant encounters each level – encouraging a more methodical and tactical approach to firefights on all but the easiest difficulty. As the game progresses, you’ll encounter larger mobs in bigger and more hazardous arenas that’ll test your shooting skills or your ability to scavenge resources mid-battle. Mutated rats, spiders, and zombies rush you or spew glowing goo and webbing that make fighting in tight spaces a pain. Clean-up squads force you to use cover as they evolve from baton- and pistol-wielding goons supported by flying drones, into armoured squads with shotguns, flamethrowers, miniguns, and robot support. With the action confined to an arena, it was only the three boss encounters that felt more annoying than challenging, with the focus on dealing with mobs while avoiding AoE attacks and hitting weak-points.

    When it comes to the presentation, Kvark will likely be divisive. I enjoy the clean, retro-styled visuals imitating early fully-3D environments and the ability to interact with so many objects, but there is a lot of asset reuse to build out the more sprawling levels. Every other element feels near-perfect, from the blocky character models, crude weapon animations, and chunky gore effects, to the ambient audio, roar of gunfire, and a mostly subdued electronic soundtrack that ramps up during combat. It also ran smoothly on an Xbox Series X – performance that’ll likely hold true for current-gen consoles – with a helpful touch of auto-aim and some decent rumble feedback for gunfire and footsteps. The only notable issues I found (as of this review going up) were several crashes during the second level of the first chapter, and the placement of some checkpoints at the entrance of restock rooms instead of at the exit, so you have to collect everything again after reloading.

    The boss fights are a mix of traditional and weird, but I never found them as exciting as most common combat scenarios.

    Taken as a whole, Kvark doesn’t offer much novelty when it comes to the premise, mechanics, or visual style, but it has something so many modern games lack – rhythm and pacing. You could go back and call Half-Life dated based on the visuals, limited set-pieces, and no progression mechanics, but I’d challenge anyone to play it and claim it’s not fun. Kvark is not as timeless, sure, but it finds a similar groove by ensuring you’re constantly cycling between exploration, light puzzling, and brutal firefights, all before hitting the next checkpoint and starting the cycle anew. As such, Kvark is easy to recommend – especially at an indie price-point – to fans of the genre that play on console and want a taste of that classic Half-Life formula.

    Kvark was played on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch.

  • Preview: Starship Troopers: Extermination offers cooperative chaos that could do with a little more order (v1.4)

    Preview: Starship Troopers: Extermination offers cooperative chaos that could do with a little more order (v1.4)

    The ongoing success of Helldivers 2 makes it easy to forget Offworld’s Starship Troopers: Extermination launched into PC early access in May 2023 seven months before it and finally arrived on consoles with the v1.0 release in October 2024, nine months late. The post-launch roadmap still promises updates – including a much-needed overhaul of the “Galactic Front” campaign structure – and the small but consistent player base has fluctuated back and forth between positive and negative sentiment.

    Returning to it on console, two years after covering that early access build, it still offers chaotic cooperative fun with brisk progression mechanics and authentic Starship Troopers aesthetics. However, those looking for a daily fix will find the lack of variety becomes an issue after just a handful of missions.

    With a cooperative PvE shooter core, Starship Troopers: Extermination has always benefited from simplicity. You can (and should) drop straight into the so-called “Main Missions” and learn as you go – especially as the base building tutorial and bland “Solo” missions are not even remotely indicative of its potential.

    It’s a class-based FPS with armoured Guardians and Demolishers to hold the line, mobile Rangers and Snipers to mark and prioritise targets, and Engineers and Medics to provide support for structures and infantry. You run and gun between objective points, toss grenades and lay mines, and activate class-based abilities on a cooldown to try turn the tide. There are few surprises where the shooting is concerned, but shredding a bug in a shower of gore looks and feels good.

    There needs to be a mission modifier for unlimited ammo turrets as I could do this all day.

    Starship Troopers: Extermination’s strengths and weaknesses are both tied to the evolving mission structure and base-building elements. Missions follow a similar flow: you’re dropped into the battlefield, you capture control points on the route towards a major objective, you defend refineries and gather ore, build and defend a base until a timed- or wave-based objective is fulfilled, and finally rush to extraction.

    Missions are dynamically generated across one of three large maps – with variable weather conditions, time of day, and difficulty mutators – but there’s clearly a limited number of locations objectives can spawn. As a result, you’ll soon end up taking the same routes and defending the same bases over and over again.

    For existing fans of the IP, there’s a familiar roster of Drones, Warriors, and Tigers Elites that’ll rush you; Inferno and Plasma bugs that’ll bombard fortifications at range; an infuriating “Gunner” bug that can whittle down your health from afar; and a massive Tanker Bug as a special event. Befitting the source material, their primary method of victory is overwhelming force, with each mission ramping up the threat level over time and tougher variants emerging. Surviving on foot is a challenge, even if you can coordinate all 16 players, but that is where the streamlined base-building mechanic comes into play.

    Building and maintaining a well-fortified base can be satisfying but it’s rare 16 players spread across 5 fireteams coordinate effectively.

    Within designated areas, you can rapidly assemble outposts around a key structure, building layers of walls, bunkers, towers, turrets, automated sentries, and stockpiles of ammunition for infantry or turrets you’ll need to maintain. Building options all fit into a single menu, you can rotate and align structures easily, and building or repairing simply involves holding down the trigger on the repair tool. On higher difficulties and during siege events, fortifications are the only viable way to survive an onslaught that is unrelenting by the time the extraction shuttles arrive. Mounting a turret, opening fire on an advancing horde, and watching bug corpses pile up against the walls looks and feels incredible – but building bases and coordinating defence is where Starship Troopers: Extermination can also frustrate.

    Although each class has unique and powerful abilities and utility tools when used strategically – such as the Guardians personal fortification or a Medics reviving drone – expanding fortifications and assigning enough infantry to man each approach is messy. Open chat in multiplayer games is the last thing I’d recommend, but even if you’re just communicating with friends or a within a 4-player fireteam, that still leaves up to a dozen other players doing their own thing, and the incredibly limited “ping” system only marks waypoints or enemies.

    All too often, the quickest fireteams build up defences on one side of the base while leaving gaps in the other, or separate from the group to complete optional mission objectives without alerting others to cover their absence.

    Playing as a Medic or Engineer provides an incredibly satisfying support class experience.

    More than ever, I feel Starship Troopers: Extermination still needs a more fleshed out ping system that could be coupled with class- or fireteam-specific limitations. Giving each fireteam a defined purpose might be useful, such as having one dedicated to Engineers and base-building, another for jet-pack equipped Rangers to tackle distant objectives quickly. I’d also like to see a reduction in the speed at which the threat-level escalates, if only to encourage groups pursuing optional mission objectives. It could add some much-needed variety as you’re often knee deep in bugs within 10 minutes, and there’s no viable way to break off from defending the primary objective.

    Of course, it’s a tough ask going up against a competitor with the backing of a publisher the size of PlayStation, but if Starship Troopers: Extermination could focus on polishing and diversifying what it already has, it could provide a much-needed alternative.

    Starship Troopers: Extermination was played on Xbox Series X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.

  • Editorial: The System Shock (2023) remake rewards the thoughtful and punishes the reckless

    Editorial: The System Shock (2023) remake rewards the thoughtful and punishes the reckless

    As a fan of the immersive sim genre, it’s hard to decide which was the greater tragedy: having to wait 18 years between System Shock 2 and its closest spiritual successor, Prey (2017); or watching Prey (2017)’s developer, Arkane Texas, forced to churn out Redfall in 2023 before being unceremoniously shuttered by Xbox. At least that year Nightdive Studios’ remake of the first System Shock finally arrived on PC, after a turbulent 8-year development cycle that included IP licensing concerns, extended periods of silence, three complete restarts, and a shift from Unity to Unreal Engine 4. To their credit, the result was mostly worth the wait.

    Replaying it by way of 2024’s excellent console ports (for both current- and last-gen hardware), the System Shock remake is faithful to a fault in some regards, but still infinitely more playable without the original’s clunky FPS/point-and-click hybrid controls. System Shock (2023) is far more involved than a traditional FPS, but it controls like one and works well enough when using a controller – aside from sluggish inventory management and an awkward lean toggle.

    The updated UE4 visuals and new synth-heavy renditions of the original soundtrack generate late-‘80s/early-‘90s sci-fi vibes – think harsh lines, retro-futuristic tech, an abundance of specular reflections, and overblown neon lighting – and those fresh visuals are enhanced by a pixel filter that adds a veneer of retro-inspired chunkiness to close-range textures, character models, and 3D objects.

    What could possibly go wrong if I remove the ethical constraints on an AI designed by an unethical corporation?

    While the audiovisual overhaul and updated control scheme are obvious changes up front, System Shock (2023) deserves more praise for how it manages to recreate much of the original’s level design, mission flow, and iconic encounters, despite expanding and enhancing every element.

    Moving through the multi-level and often maze-like Citadel Station still feels tense and sometimes terrifying, especially given how little handholding there is and the high level of challenge. In stark contrast to the “follow-the-icon” mentality of most modern games, you need to pay attention to your map and signposting to navigate. You also need to parse radio transmissions and audio-logs for clues on how to progress, slowly piecing together the desperate plans of the former crew.

    It helps that System Shock has a cliched but compelling “AI gone rogue” plot. After being arrested for attempting to steal designs for a Tri-Optimum neuro-mod, your hacker protagonist finds themselves transported to Citadel Station and confronted by Vice President Edward Diego with a simple offer: become part of their dubious experiments or utilise their skills to remove the ethical constraints on the station AI, SHODAN, and receive the modification they were after as a reward. Emerging from a medical pod six months later, it turns out unshackling an AI with a god complex was a poor choice and she now wants you crushed like an insect.

    The environments may look wildly different, but returning fans will spot the same basic level layout and familiar encounters.

    It’s a great setup, but aside from a handful of calls from survivors or Earthside Tri-Optimum staff, the bulk of storytelling is conveyed through optional audio-logs that near-perfectly correlate with environmental details. The more attention you give to the narrative elements, the more you get out of them.

    A first playthrough also nails the sensation of awakening amid a disaster, alone and out of your depth. However, the updated mechanics and returning difficulty levels allow you to tailor the experience to be more forgiving of rushed exploration, poor planning, or scrappy combat.

    The overhauled UI and menus better track progression, grid-based inventory management and quick slots for combat are a godsend, and you can customise the difficulty of individual systems. You get simple map markers on the easiest mission difficulty or a 10-hour time limit on hard. Combat is always challenging, but you can tweak incoming damage, mob sizes, and the respawn rate. Cyberspace battles – which play out like classic 6DOF shooters – can be colourful diversions or bullet-hell chaos. Puzzles – a mix of balancing voltages, rerouting power, and finding codes – can be brief distractions or leave you wishing you had a logic probe to simply override them.

    I set the puzzle difficulty hard and never used a single logic probe – but I know these are not for everyone.

    There are fans of the original that would suggest maxing every difficulty aside from enforcing the time-limit for a first playthrough, but I’d argue even on the easiest settings, System Shock (2023) never loses that inherently challenging immersive sim core. Running straight into a horde of cyborgs is likely to see you shredded regardless of the difficulty, while too many scrappy fights early on will leave you short on supplies and forced to adapt.

    The ability to revive at Restoration Bays is available regardless of the difficulty, so adding a few basic map markers, or simplifying cyberspace combat for those who hate that style of gameplay, is a worthwhile addition if it encourages a modern audience to stick it with it long enough to understand and appreciate the genre’s distinctive player-driven flow.

    All of which brings me to what I love most about System Shock (2023) and the genre as a whole. A good immersive sim punishes a player for a thoughtless approach and sloppy execution, but rewards preparation, planning, and the smart or unconventional use of the tools provided. It’s a genre that facilitates save-scumming, but not to encourage a trial-and-error approach; rather, it allows the player to iterate on a plan and master its execution. An ambush or boss fight shouldn’t require constant quick saving behind every piece of cover to manipulate the odds of being hit; you should want to reload a boss fight because you’ve thought of a way to optimise your approach and finish them off more efficiently.

    The more you explore, the more tools you’ll have at your disposable, but inventory management becomes essential.

    System Shock (2023) features a handful of mandatory boss fights and ambushes, but most can be subverted by finding alternate paths; engaging in some minor sequence-breaking using the upgraded jump boots; or simply burning through stockpiled ammunition and consumables to trivialise battles. An early boss encounter against a cyborg Diego can play out as a panicked firefight that has you scrambling to dodge plasma rounds and flee as he teleports in close with a laser rapier. Alternatively, you could apply a Reflex Reaction Aid to slow time, a Berserk Combat Booster to buff melee damage, charge in and finish him off with a flurry of your own laser rapier before he can even trigger his teleport.

    The same flexibility applies to conspicuously empty rooms that scream: “ambush”. You could also bolster yourself with dermal patches in preparation for a slow-mo scrap, or you could fling disc-like proximity mines at every wall panel, engage your shield mod, and rush to the middle of the room to watch your foes disintegrate in a flurry of explosions around you.

    Of course, with a limited inventory and storage options, the tools at your disposal are dependent on your willingness to explore, backtrack, and prepare. There’s almost always enough to get by – even within boss arenas if you survive long enough to find them – but cautious and systematic explorers are rewarded with early access to powerful weapons, mod and weapon upgrades, and no shortage of character-enhancing dermal patches and meds.

    If you’re struggling with any of the mandatory boss fights, a laser rapier coupled with a Reflex Reaction Aid and Berserk Combat Booster will see you through every encounter aside from the last battle in cyberspace.

    Wrapping up, I’d reiterate my argument that a good immersive sim should ensure players can always progress using the tools or mechanics provided, conventionally or otherwise; it should reward them for exploration, preparation, and planning; and punish them for thoughtlessness or scrappy execution. I’ve played far too many modern games that, while often technically impressive and mechanically polished, are so reliant on familiar and effortless gameplay – the idea that player friction should be minimised – that my brain switches off and I run on autopilot until the next set-piece or elaborate cutscenes regains my attention.

    A good immersive sim may lack that scripted spectacle and controlled pacing, but I prefer games where the minute-to-minute gameplay – that essential “game” part of videogame – is consistently engaging and rewarding. If you feel the same, the immersive sim genre is well worth your attention and the System Shock (2023) remake is one of many excellent options available on console and PC.

    System Shock (2023) was played on Xbox Series S|X. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, and PS4/5.

  • Editorial: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered offers new visuals layered upon old problems

    Editorial: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered offers new visuals layered upon old problems

    With a wildly successfully sequel and extensive modding support for the original release, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered falls in an unfortunate middle ground.

    I’m part of an audience of existing fans happy to purchase another Elder Scrolls game several times over, no doubt thanks to a heady dose of nostalgia for time when we had the time to “live another life, in another world”. However, there’s a reason they went with “remastered” in the title instead of “remake”, and I feel your history with the game – if any – could have a significant impact on your experience.

    Honestly, I’d have preferred The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind received this level of attention, but there’s no denying Oblivion was instrumental in popularising the IP on consoles and it laid the foundations for the success of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Still, after 25 hours spent following the primary questline with a few diversions, it’s easy enough to recommend this remaster if you’re after a mostly vanilla Oblivion experience in 2025 (assuming you have the hardware to run it).

    For newcomers or those who loved Skyrim but missed Oblivion for whatever reason, it’ll scratch a lot of familiar itches – so long as you can accept its fledgling mechanics and systems can feel underdeveloped and even more janky at times. For returning fans, it’ll depend on your tolerance for Oblivion’s most notable failing.

    Sir Patrick Stewart only gets a handful of lines before his assassination. Remarkably, Sean Bean survives the entire game before meeting his fate.

    For newcomers, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is, unsurprisingly, set during the “Oblivion Crisis” – an event often mentioned in Skyrim as the catalyst for the rise of the Third Aldmeri Dominion that would go on to fracture the Empire unified under the Septims.

    Your protagonist is another prisoner who finds themselves swept up in events and during a bland cave- and sewer-based tutorial, they witness the assassination of the emperor; they’re tasked with finding a hidden heir to the throne; and told to help him “close shut the jaws of Oblivion”.

    Of course, this is an Elder Scrolls game so you can pursue those instructions with vigour or just ignore them for hundreds of hours if you wish. Almost two decades on, Oblivion still excels at what Bethesda Game Studios have always done well: presenting the player with a massive world to explore, packed with things to see and do, and the flexibility to tackle it in any way you choose – in theory.

    You craft your would-be hero using a horrific selection of cosmetic options somehow worse than the original; you wade through innumerable tutorial screens; pick your starting class, major skills, and star sign; and finally emerge into the high fantasy-inspired heartland of the Empire, Cyrodill.

    The primary quest points to a small priory to the north-west; the Imperial City looms over you; there’s a dank cave entrance or beautiful Ayleid ruin near at hand; and the map screen provides a half-dozen other cities you can instantly fast-travel to. It’s still a sensation as overwhelming as it is exhilarating even in 2025.

    Even sticking to the critical story path, it’ll take you through all of the cities and past a ton dungeons to explore.

    If you prioritise the primary quest, you’ll be knee-deep in cultists, Oblivion portals, and Daedra as you seek the last Septim heir and fight back against the schemes of Daedric Prince, Mehrunes Dagon. Alternatively, you can join and climb the ranks of the fighters, mage, or thieves guild – each dealing with nefarious plots to destabilise them from within and without.

    You can seek out Daedric shrines to complete a mix of questionable and often hilarious quests to gain their favour and unique gear, or you can just travel from city to city, solving local problems that are sometimes exactly what they seem but often come with unexpected twists.

    On paper, and for a dozen or so hours, Oblivion really sells that “live another life, in another world” premise. It’s also at its best when tackled organically. I’d neither recommend mainlining the primary quest, nor systematically clearing every location on the map. The end-of-the-world threat will happily wait on you and, attempting to do everything, everywhere, all at once, just highlights the AI routine limitations and dialogue inconsistencies.

    If you just go with the flow – mixing up exploration and combat with persuasion challenges, thievery, and alchemy – it’s easy to get pleasantly side-tracked for hours at a time and better immerse yourself in a game world that, when studied too closely, is bizarrely dense yet underpopulated.

    In retrospect, I don’t know what to make of The Elder Scrolls racial stereotypes but they certainly have some choice lines.

    Of course, all open-world games face the same challenge: how do you keep players engaged while maintaining some semblance of pacing when you’re offering up a hundred hours’ worth of questing and dungeon-delving?

    Oblivion’s answer was level-scaling. The idea being no matter what path you took, you’d face off against increasingly tough enemies with your upgraded skills, while looting higher-tier gear from their corpses or chests (with increasingly tough locks).

    It was a noble but inherently flawed effort, and it remains an issue the remaster has lightly tweaked but not resolved. The obvious problem with this design is that level-scaling robs the player of any sense of meaningful progression for much of their playtime.

    The need to balance player progression and the difficulty curve is always an issue in RPGs, but the modern approach is to reward over-levelled players with an easier time on the critical path, while still providing optional challenging content and the promise of greater rewards to keep them engaged.

    In Oblivion, you’re constantly improving your skills through use, boosting attributes each time you level-up, and you’ll be looting or purchasing better gear and spells as you go; however, every combat encounter and dungeon-delve plays out much the same way for several dozen hours.

    It’s a sensation compounded by the fact Oblivion is still more RPG than action game. You can stay mobile and block or dodge but combat ultimately boils down to hitting things with blades, arrows, or spells until they die. Progression is measured by how few hits it takes to kill something.

    It’s only when you unlock the highest skill perks and access game-breaking enchantments – such as Chameleon-enchanted armour and paralysis-enchanted weapons – that it’ll satisfy the typical RPG power fantasy.

    An epic battle alongside short-lived NPCs that sadly don’t benefit from the level-scaling system your enemies do.

    It should also come as no surprise that level-scaling can play hell with quest design and what passes for rudimentary set-pieces.

    Skyrim had its moments, but I feel most fans would agree the sense of exploration and the prospect of discovering something unique-ish was the main draw, not the quest design. Oblivion nails the first part, but you’ve got even simpler quest scripting, clunky set-pieces, and no traditional companions to liven things up

    Quests are typically a variant of “go here”, “fetch this”, or “kill that”, with the most memorable boing those that offer multiple or unexpected outcomes. However, those are almost always standalone quests that will, at most, result in a different reward item or trigger a new generic line from townsfolk when you bring up the topic.

    Oblivion is notable for introducing the “Radiant AI” system to give NPCs a simple daily routine that is significant to some quests, but it doesn’t take long to realise the bulk of scripting boils down to whether an NPC is in possession of an item, at a location, or flagged as dead.

    Many of these basic quests are elevated by hilarious writing, goofy voice work, and plenty of animation jank, but the bulk of your time is spent away from settlements, scouring overlong, multi-zoned dungeons or Oblivion planes on your own.

    Expendable NPC companions that feature if a handful of quests don’t benefit from level-scaling and die almost instantly if you’ve out-levelled them – either in battle or through sheer stupidity – leaving you alone once again to slog through hordes of enemies.

    The only way to circumvent this is to exploit invulnerable plot-critical NPCs, dragging them along as silent but useful damage sponges without completing their respective quests.

    Never waste the opportunity to drag plot-critical and immortal NPCs along as unofficial companions.

    Although The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered does little to address the game’s fundamental flaw, it does include some significant gameplay tweaks to go along with the gorgeous Unreal Engine 5-powered visual overlay.

    The most impactful changes are how both major and minor skill gains now contribute towards the player level, and which skills you improve no longer influence how many points you can boost attributes. You simply earn 12 “virtue points” each level, which you can invest across three attributes of your choice. You can still make your own bad levelling decisions, but as you retroactively gain health for strength and endurance boosts, it removes the likelihood of non-combat classes being one-shot at higher levels.

    There is also a range of smaller but welcome changes, like more responsive menu-ing, increased movement speed and sprinting, health regeneration outside of combat, more reliable stagger animations based on where you aim, no fatigue penalty to attack damage, reliably recoverable arrows that both fly faster and hit harder, and tweaks to skill perk tiers – some new, some adjusted, and some just rearranged so you gain access to more useful ones earlier.

    Despite these changes, old problems return when trying to boost combat-related skills if you realise you need a melee/ranged fallback, or maybe some elemental damage spells for resistant enemy types. The only sensible approach is to find and pay trainers, as low-level weapon skills and damage-dealing spells become laughably ineffective against higher level foes.

    It’s been a long time since I’ve played the vanilla version of Oblivion, but tweaks to the levelling system do not feel like they drastically alter the experience.

    I’ve got this far without praising the audiovisual enhancements and, for returning players, it’s an impressive overhaul that turns Oblivion’s distinctive but barren landscapes and interiors into something akin to a modern release.

    Geometric complexity, textures, vegetation, water, weather, environmental details, character models, movement and attack animations, lip-syncing and facial expressions – they all take a generational leap in quality, albeit not always a consistent leap.

    I’d argue the global illumination system for the sun, moon, and other light sources feels most transformative, bathing the world in more realistic and atmospheric shades of light and dark. Oblivion always did creepy interiors well, and they feel even more terrifying this time round.

    The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered touches up the voice work without changing the weird, wild, and openly prejudiced (in-universe) dialogue, something most notable during hilarious NPC interactions driven by the Radiant AI system. These exchanges rarely have logical replies or a consistent tone, yet the system excels at antagonistic conversations between NPCs of difference races and class (in the socioeconomic sense). There’s also limited new voice acting to better differentiate Tamriel’s many races, while some NPCs that previously had multiple voice actor lines assigned to them have been fixed.

    Combat audio effects and ambience have been added to improve combat and exploration respectively, though volume levels can feel off compared to the original. In contrast, the soundtrack needed no tweaking as it still holds up brilliantly, providing memorable orchestral themes for any scenario.

    Emerging from the tutorial sewers in the backwards-compatible Xbox 360 version of Oblivion (which at least holds 60fps).
    Emerging from the tutorial sewers in Oblivion Remastered played on an Xbox Series X.

    All that said, the gameplay tweaks and audiovisual updates can only do so much when the aged Gamebryo engine is presumably chugging away just below the surface.

    The increasingly repetitive nature of Cyrodiil’s overworld and dungeons is hardest to disguise, particularly when maybe two dozen quest-related locations feel truly unique in appearance or design (and The Shivering Isles expansion accounts for much of this).

    Every asset used to build the world has clearly been overhauled in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, but it’s not clear if any new assets were created. The bulk of Cyrodiil is still rolling, forested hills, while the “dungeons” are crafted using just a handful of tile-sets – think cave, mine, ruin, fort, city, and Oblivion plane – each with a limited number of building blocks. The world also retains its segmented nature, with dungeons, cities, the structures within them, and even each floor of some structures connected by loading screens.

    You could argue Oblivion’s dungeons are typically larger and more elaborate than Skyrim’s convenient loops, but very few have memorable puzzle rooms, unique vistas, or anything close to the epic scope of the Blackreach Cavern. It becomes a serious problem when there are well over 200 dungeons to explore and, depending on your approach to the tackling the main quest, up to 50 Oblivion portals that can spawn.

    Is all this content mandatory? No, but even sticking to the primary questline left me frustrated with the degree of repetition in this replay.

    Many interior locations now look stunning thanks to the overhauled visuals and lighting – though it doesn’t take long ot recognise the same rooms and hallways.

    Returning to my opening line, it leaves The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered in a weird place. Given the response, it feels like a project targeting fans of the original – yet it retains many flaws that’ll quickly frustrate those fans. The visual overhaul and gameplay tweaks are an improvement – and there’s no denying the power of nostalgia – but it’s unlikely these remastering efforts would push me to complete it again over a modded version of the original.

    With that said, I feel it’s newcomers to the IP or curious Skyrim fans that might benefit the most from this release, as they’ll find it easier to look past Oblivion’s flaws as they experience the wonder of simply exploring Cyrodiil’s cities, countryside, and dungeons for the first time.

    The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered was played on Xbox Series S|X using an Xbox Game Pass subscription. It is also available on PC and PS5.

  • Review: Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy (2025)

    Review: Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy (2025)

    It’s depressing how many remade or remastered games I can now claim to have originally played over three decades ago. Many retro-inspired games have moved on from pixel art to target the look and feel of early 3D games from the late ‘90s on PC or 32-bit consoles – the era that cemented my love of gaming as a lifetime hobby. Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy (2025) is one such remake; an updated, expanded, and lavish overhaul of a 1999 point-and-click adventure, known primarily for its association with Belgian artist Benoît Sokal who created many of the creature designs and backdrops before going on to work on the more recognisable Syberia games.

    This remake takes the classic first-person point-and-click structure and converts those weirdly proportioned 360-degree panoramas into beautiful and detailed 3D environments. There’s no free movement, but abrupt screen transitions and an overreliance on short cutscenes are replaced with slick in-game animations for set-pieces, transitions, interactions, and puzzle devices.

    You could argue the updated visuals don’t always capture the bleak atmosphere of the original, but when combined with an expanded soundtrack, new voice work, and more narration, it makes for a cohesive and cinematic adventure with production values closer to what you’d expect from a modern release.

    There are no on-screen quest markers or a permanent HUD, but you can enable player assists for a smoother journey (which I’d strongly recommend using if you’re ever stuck for an extended period).

    It’s not just the audiovisual experience that’s been overhauled. A lot of work has gone into expanding and enhancing every location while still retaining the basic layout, significant landmarks, artistic designs, and all the original notebook sketches. The unnamed protagonist also gains more agency and personality through their many journal entries that, in turn, flesh out secondary narratives only briefly touched upon in the original.

    That said, the point-and-click core remains unchanged, and almost all the original puzzles return in some form – albeit often just one part of an expanded design that now requires a few more steps and some QTE-like inputs.

    You’re still exploring compact but detailed locations on the hunt for documents, puzzles, key items, and clues, typically to find fuel or data discs to power the incredible transforming Hydrofloat craft. Puzzles are still designed around using key items on puzzles objects or the environment, but you must often figure out the correct sequence of actions even if you have all the items on hand.

    The remake might not compete with AAA games for texture detail and lighting quality, but there’s a strong and consistent artistic direction that never failed to impress.

    It retains that classic and increasingly niche design, in which more involved and convoluted puzzles are your reward for making progress. No matter how dangerous or desperate the scenario may seem, Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy (2025) has no time-limits, and the world might as well be frozen as you plod around each area and figure out the route forward.

    For those who’ve grown up with games that hold your hand to the point of feeling patronising, Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy (2025) can feel too unguided at first, dropping you into dense environments with no HUD or quest log in the corner. Some purists might argue that was integral to immersing yourself in the game world, but the remake expands the journal feature considerably. It offers an improved interface for collected items and notes; you can fast-travel between significant locations once you’ve found a map of the area; and you can enable several player assists.

    By default, the journal tracks core tasks and highlights secondary stories if you’ve found any associated documents or environmental clues, but you can also enable hotspot highlights at the press of a button and a tiered hint system.

    Discovering the fate of Valembois’ former companions provides a strong narrative hook, though you’ll want to hunt for optional lore documents to get the full picture.

    All of which make it much easier to maintain pacing and ensure you reach the end of Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy (2025) without hitting roadblocks; essential in an age of diminished attention spans, especially for a niche genre, with dated gameplay that only holds up when paired with a strong narrative hook.

    You need to be invested in the fate of the young reporter, looking to make a name for themselves by undoing the shameful legacy of the dying explorer Valembois. You need to be curious about the fate of his former companions and the dark history of the now isolationist Amerzone nation. You need to understand the reporter’s drive to push ever further upriver, consequences be damned, to see if Valembois’ descriptions of bizarre creatures and ecosystems are accurate or deserving of the ridicule that drove him into seclusion.

    The updated journal in the remake improves the storytelling while also allowing the game to dig deeper into themes of traditional societies living in harmony with nature, the impact of colonialism on native cultures, and the rise of post-colonial autocracies with leaders that twist foreign governance concepts to their own needs. Having a transparent list of notes and chapter locations assigned to each side story could be a double-edge sword for completionists that won’t move on before they’ve found everything, but your reward for finding them all is a short summary of events from the protagonist, befitting their profession. It’s a smart way to literally gather the player’s thoughts and deliver exposition before they set off to the next act.

    No matter how much has changed, it’s still a classic point-and-click adventure at heart.

    The best thing I can say about Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy (2025) is that I never expected to enjoy it so much. It’s longer and more complex than the original, but it’s still a brisk experience by modern standards and doesn’t ask more of you than it gives back.

    It provided plenty of exciting spectacle but moved at my own pace, making for a pleasant change from the high-stress, action-oriented titles that make up the bulk of my gaming diet. The gameplay is classic and inherently dated – even with a few updated mechanics and assists – but the audiovisual overhaul makes it feel like a grand adventure the original creators could only dream of. It’s a niche genre now, but for fans, this is about as good as it gets if you’re looking for a remake that respects the original but expands and enhances every aspect of it.

    Pros:

    • An updated, expanded, and lavish overhaul of a lesser-known classic
    • Slick animations and interactions make for a more cinematic adventure
    • An improved journal, more exposition, and frequent narration enhance the storytelling
    • Optional player assists to prevent puzzle roadblocks from killing narrative pacing

    Cons:

    • The updated mechanics and assists won’t change your mind if you’re not a fan of the genre
    • Some noticeable framerate drops when using the performance mode on consoles

    Score: 9/10

    Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy (2025) was reviewed on Xbox Series X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.