Category: Editorials & Retrospectives

  • Editorial: Crow Country might be the cosiest survival-horror game (and perfect for the Nintendo Switch)

    Editorial: Crow Country might be the cosiest survival-horror game (and perfect for the Nintendo Switch)

    Crow Country is an incredible homage to classic survival-horror from the 32-bit era – think Resident Evil and Silent Hill – but it’s also one of the most charming games I can think of in the genre, and a near-perfect fit for the Nintendo Switch as a result. It’s suitably creepy and tense at times, but also accessible, humorous, and often heartfelt. It’s got resource management elements and revels in the illogical puzzle design so prevalent in the genre, but it could easily serve as an entry point into classic survival-horror for new or younger players.

    The highlight for me is the fantastic air of mystery about it. The protagonist – supposedly “Special Agent Mara Forest” – clearly knows far more then she’s willing reveal to others, and constantly slips up in conversation with others or when making observations about what she sees around her.

    She arrives at the shuttered Crow Country amusement park, two years after an incident led to its closure, only to find its rundown attractions still occupied by shambling, vaguely humanoid creatures, several evasive former staff members, and other interested parties, all converging on the same evening.

    Like any good horror game, Crow Country leaves the player feeling confused and vulnerable at first, but as Mara solves more puzzles, opens up new areas, interacts with survivors, and night falls, she slowly unravels an admittedly weird sci-fi-ish conspiracy and discovers the motivations of the former staff and the owner she’s desperate to find – Edward Crow.

    As Mara uncovers the truth, observant players can also piece together clues from several notes and Mara’s conversations to figure out who she really is and why she’s there long before the story tells you outright. It’s not then most surprising reveal, sure, but the narrative moves at a brisk pace and never feels secondary to the gameplay.

    How you traverse the small but dense environments, solve puzzles, and survive will feel comfortingly familiar to survival-horror fans. You’ll explore an expanding and evolving map room-by-room; you’re locked in place to shoot using a laser pointer; you can run past shambling foes; hoover up ammunition, grenades, med-kits, and antidotes; solve puzzles and complete mini-games to find key items or secrets (like powerful weapons and upgrades for them); and soak in the wonderfully detailed, retro-styled environments complemented by creepy ambience and music. My only real criticism of Crow Country is that the gameplay offers few surprises to veterans of the genre.

    Crow Country’s 5-ish hour playtime works in its favour here, as the combat is limited but never frustrating, the puzzles and mini-games always entertaining, and secrets are abundant. If you dislike the sluggish combat, you can avoid everything but the final boss if you’re nimble. Crow Country has a curious twist on the traditional survival-horror formula, as despite new “guests”, traps, and even boobytrapped items appearing as the night progresses, the horror elements diminish over time.

    There are some dark and tragic moments, but it was hard not to get behind Mara’s dogged determination, fearlessness, and fondness for awkward jokes. I soon found myself less interested in hoarding resources and purging every room, and instead fixated on unravelling the true nature of the park and Mara’s connection to it.

    For those who value an entertaining story and good narrative pacing above survival mechanics, Crow Country also offers a ton of smart assists to avoid aimless backtracking. The map highlights unsolved puzzle locations or points of interest, and fortune teller machine can offer hints. Shortcuts and save rooms (with soothing music, of course) are smartly placed, and there’s no inventory limit or item boxes – just a maximum amount of ammunition and healing items you can carry at any given time. If you run low on supplies, returning to Mara’s car, rumaging through a trash can, or kicking a vending machine will likely spit out a box of handgun bullets or small med-kit.

    Even the ranking system rewards playing it safe as it doesn’t consider total playtime or number of saves. There’s also an “Exploration” mode that disable enemies completely, or a “Murder of Crows” mode for those who want a tougher challenge with most assists disabled or limited.

    Better still, irrespective of whether you’re playing it docked or in handheld mode, Crow Country looks great (especially on an OLED display), sounds great, and runs smoothly on the Nintendo Switch. The only notable difference from the next-gen console versions is that larger rooms can take a few more seconds longer to load.

    I called it a homage, but perhaps the most novel thing about Crow Country is that it’s a rare example of “cosy” survival horror. The sort of game perfect for playing cozied up under blanket – on the couch or in bed – despite the horror-focused nature of the genre.

    Crow Country was played 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: Alone in the Dark (2024) is yet another game that committed the unforgivable crime of being good rather than critically acclaimed

    Editorial: Alone in the Dark (2024) is yet another game that committed the unforgivable crime of being good rather than critically acclaimed

    Alone in the Dark (2024) is not some underappreciated masterpiece, but it is a smart and competently designed reimagining of the influential 1993 original. It plays as a third-person adventure – taking the same approach as Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes – and transforms a terribly-aged classic into something that straddles the line between narrative-driven, puzzle-oriented “walking sim” and traditional survival-horror: think limited resources, weapon durability, gruesome monsters, and puzzling your through a sprawling mansion full of unorthodox locks.

    Entering a market dominated by recognisable IP it once inspired, replicating the success of recent titles like the Resident Evil 4 remake or Alan Wake 2 was unlikely; however, as a “AA”-style game priced accordingly, it sure as hell didn’t deserve to do so badly the developer Pieces Interactive was shut down a month after its launch.

    Like so many mid-tier and high-profile indie games released over the last decade, Alone in the Dark (2024) committed the unforgivable crime of just being good, rather than critically acclaimed; more often than not a death sentence for IP and sometimes developers in a modern video game market seemingly desperate to gorge itself to death on a never-changing buffet. Yes, the combat is clunky, but I’d argue every other element is good to great.

    The storytelling, the cast, the puzzles, and the thick atmosphere generated by the impressive visuals, ambience, and period-appropriate soundtrack; these are all essential components of a narrative-heavy horror game that takes you far beyond the walls of the Decerto manor. Even the voice work – criticised by those I’ll wager have not played beyond the opening chapter – is a great fit for the protagonists as they begin to question their own sanity and struggle with past trauma. When you throw in accessible gameplay mechanics, brisk narrative pacing, two playable characters with unique encounters, and multiple endings, Alone in the Dark (2024) gets far more right than wrong.

    Unfortunately, that means little in 2024, when talent and quality seem less important than the cosmic alignment of effective marketing, a quiet release period, and luck if a game wants to stand out in a marketplace that’s saturated, risk-averse, and increasingly dominated by the same established IP we’ve seen for decades.

    It’s a shame too that so many reviewers and commentators casually dismiss games like Alone in the Dark (2024) as “not good enough” in contrast to its “AAA” peers, as survival-horror fans are going to deprive themselves of one of the more interesting and stylishly told narratives in the genre. As a remake of sorts, Alone in the Dark (2024) obviously draws on concepts from the original, with ideas from Lovecraft novels and cliches you’d expect from a 1920’s period piece, but it weaves them into a briskly paced narrative with plenty of reveals, red herrings, twists, scares, and cinematic flair.

    Aristocrat Emily Hartwood and grizzled PI Edward Carnby arrive at Decerto Manor looking for her eccentric uncle, who sent a confused letter about a “Dark Man” haunting him and staff engaged in occult rituals. Unlike the original – in which he’s already dead and the abandoned manor is filled with an assortment of creatures and spirits – the remake is set in a dilapidated mental health retreat run by the condescending Dr. Grey and his evasive staff.

    Jeremy Hartwood has gone missing, some of the patients and staff have died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and yet those who remain only seem interested in preparing for a yearly ritual that supposedly has Louisiana Voodoo roots. After skulking through the creepy manor and encountering a few callbacks to the original, a search of Jeremy’s room reveals the designs for a mysterious talisman, before the protagonist you chose is pulled into a nightmarish version of the New Orleans French Quarter based on Jeremy’s twisted memories and wild imagination.

    It’s a slow but unsettling opening that suddenly changes pace and throws you in the deep end, setting the stage for how subsequent chapters will play out as you explore every inch of the manor and increasingly fantastical and often beautiful dreamscapes. The dual-protagonist setup is designed for replays, despite functioning more like the original Resident Evil than Resident Evil 2’s connected A/B scenarios. There is plenty of overlap when it comes to puzzles and progression, but the focus of the story changes and, until the default finale, you’re always left wondering if anything they experience is real.

    Emily sinks into melancholy as she deals with Dr. Grey’s insinuations and tries to discover if the “Dark Man” man haunting her uncle is an actual curse, or just the manifestation of her family’s mental health history. In contrast, Carnby spends more time investigating the cult-like activities of the staff, while becoming increasingly manic in his attempt to save Jeremy from an occult contract – seemingly to make up for past failings.

    During the opening chapters, with identical puzzles and combat scenarios, the differences between the Emily and Carnby feel limited to when and where they encounter the secondary cast, and the nature of their interactions influenced by their personality, gender, and history. Whoever you’re not playing as becomes a foil for the lead, seemingly oblivious to the supernatural elements and often a source of humour when their paths converge. The second of five chapters gives you a little freedom as to the path you take through the manor, but the payoff is the lengthy fourth chapter that lets you tackle three objectives in any order and features a unique section for each protagonist that delves into their suppressed memories.

    If you want to get the full picture – or one of three secret endings based on collectibles and optional interactions – two playthroughs are essential, and all the more enjoyable thanks to a new-game-plus update that adds in new encounters and some unexpected scares.

    What I’m getting at is don’t leave games like Alone in the Dark (2024) languishing in the dark if you’re a fan of the genre – just because some circle-jerk internet chorus believes video games are worth little unless they attain a poorly-defined and often inconsistent “critically acclaimed” status. If this sort of hit-or-fail-terribly mentality continues, we’ll end up in an era of high-production value, low-risk, “AAA” homogeneity – a feat many large publishers have already attained with their remarkably expensive, polished, and heavily-marketed releases that are forgotten within a month. There’s still plenty of value in lower-budget and appropriately priced games that are just good, or hell, just interesting, especially when the quality of entertainment is so subjective anyway.

    Alone in the Dark (2024) was played on Xbox Series S|X. It’s also available on PC and PS5.

  • Editorial: Phantom Fury takes too long to get good in an age when no one has patience

    Editorial: Phantom Fury takes too long to get good in an age when no one has patience

    Phantom Fury requires several hours of patience before it starts to shine – and even then, you’ll have to endure a considerable degree of jank and inconsistent quality throughout. In an era where competition is fierce and patience non-existent, it received middling reviews and predominantly negative user scores. Perhaps more annoying for the fans of the genre, Phantom Fury was yet another retro-inspired shooter published under Gearbox, which must have suffered from a turbulent development cycle. It’s got plenty of B-movie charm, solid shooting, and some standout level design, but these moments are interspersed with clunky or dull sections, often designed to highlight derivative and undercooked mechanics that ultimately dilute the experience rather than enhance it.

    Phantom Fury serves as a sequel to 2019’s Ion Fury and a prequel to 2016’s Bombshell which first introduced bomb disposal expert Shelly Harrison. It features all the cliched villainy you’d expect, with power-hungry military men, unethical scientists, no shortage of betrayals, and plenty of cringeworthy one-liners. It dips briefly into Shelly’s past to flesh out her character, and it even features a cameo from John Blade – protagonist of 1998’s Sin – who gifts you his iconic magnum for the finale. That said, it’s not a game you should play for the plot as, at best, it provides a barely coherent excuse to push you from level to level and provide some justification for Shelly’s vendetta.

    Unlike Ion Fury – which used a modified version of the Build Engine that powered its inspiration, Duke Nukem – Phantom Fury emulates classic 3D shooters, such as Quake II, Half-life, and Sin, using an Unreal Engine 4 build that’ll look and feel familiar if you’ve played Graven. Rather than blisteringly fast movement, snappy shooting, coloured key hunts, and gory sprite-work, Phantom Fury is a more grounded 3D FPS, with greater verticality, more physics objects, more complex set-pieces, and chunkier gore – but also an identity crisis.

    The opening level provides a hint of what’s to come, as you’re forced to read emails for codes, manipulate devices using terminals, stack crates, sneak through vents, and enter “0451” on a keypad to progress – all while being bombarded with updates to your mission log. It’s not bad in and of itself, and I’d argue a game like Graven benefitted from exploration, puzzling, and secret-hunting that was more enjoyable than the combat ever was. My issue is that Phantom Fury could stand on its own two feet as a pure FPS. It offers a diverse and situational arsenal, and plenty of mid- to late-game encounters that’ll test your mobility, tactics, and aim.

    However, the first third seems unfocused, happy to funnel you between bland corridor firefights against a small and familiar roster of enemy archetypes, frequently interspersed with gimmicky and janky set-pieces. The early game also saddles you with just a basic pistol, a pitifully weak pump shotgun, and the iconic Loverboy revolver that is still powerful, but also less reliable at locking on to enemies for a double-tap. To rub salt in the wound, my settings would often reset when loading a save, the weapon-wheel could stop working until I paused and un-paused the game, and rare hard crashes had a nasty habit of happening right at the end of gruelling battles or boss fights.

    Yet despite those issues, by the time I entered the White Sands laboratory near the 3-hour mark, with nearly half the arsenal unlocked, Phantom Fury was starting to feel more like the iconic 3D shooters it wants to emulate. It pushed me to keep mobile, prioritise targets, constantly swap to the most effective tool for the job, and hoover up health and ammo pick-ups amidst the chaos.

    The degree of interactivity in the game world felt less like puzzle-based roadblocks, and more integral to the combat experience. Exploding barrels and steam vents sent enemies flying; the crates and walls I used for cover could crumble under fire; while in the background glass and props shattered, alarms went off showering the area in water or smoke, and soundtrack ramped up and down in sync with the action. Holding objects as shields or flinging them as weapons never felt reliable, but Shelly’s bionic arm allowed me to punch melee enemies into gibs or briefly block incoming fire as I got close with the triple-barrelled Motherflakker shotgun in hand.

    It was also around that point the level and encounter design began to feel a little more refined, consistent, and polished. Phantom Fury follows the traditional design of tight corridors leading into open arenas, but each level felt more interconnected and made better use of 3D space. You would emerge above or below areas you fought through earlier, open up smart shortcuts back after completing a sub-objective, while a greater variety of enemy archetypes would limit your ability to hunker down behind corners.

    Standout examples include the aforementioned “Buried Lab” that takes inspiration from Half-life’s “Blast Pit”, as you work your way around a central chamber reactivating a locked-down facility, dealing with rogue GDF forces and escaped mutants. After that came the “Train to Flagstaff” level, which sees you battling through claustrophobic carriages, before fighting your way back across the top of the train and fending off a helicopter. The “Grand Canyon Facility” is another interconnected laboratory level with some great vistas, while the “Los Alamos” levels begin with an outdoor rampage and giant mech battle, before completely shifting gear as you explore a creepy abandoned facility, juggling power distribution to access new areas and fending off mutants in the dark. The game culminates with running battles through the ruined streets of Chicago, a scrappy firefight up a skyscraper, and multi-phase rooftop boss battles.

    Unfortunately, Phantom Fury’s is also described as a “road movie adventure”, which means vehicle sections that range from mediocre to frustrating. Your first encounter with a GDF jeep makes the Warthog sections in 2001’s Halo look remarkable in comparison, with clunky handling, boring terrain, and a useless machine gun that takes an age just to kill a basic grunt. A section in a stolen jet is entirely on-the-rails, leaving you to simply aim and alternate between another useless machine gun and moderately more useful missiles. A submersible section is perhaps the worst, combining imprecise movement with inaccurate torpedoes and swimming mutants that’ll insta-kill you if they get close.

    None of these sections are particularly long in the grand scheme of things, but they’re sandwiched between the good levels, felt the most janky, and always served as a downer.

    As a consequence – and even after two major patches – it’s not easy to recommend Phantom Fury without highlighting the caveats. After a plodding opening hour or two, it gets into a groove – but it’s one that’s periodically interrupted by weak vehicle sections. What’s worse is that they never feel like a core part of the gameplay loop – just gimmicky additions that would have been better left as short cutscene transitions so the devs could double-down on polishing the on-foot sections. If you’ve got this far though, I’d say fans of the genre should grab it on a sale, just temper your expectations for an hour or two, and try focus on the 80% of the game that Phantom Fury gets mostly right.

    Phantom Fury was played on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PlayStation 5.

  • Retrospective: Ryse: Son of Rome (2013)

    Retrospective: Ryse: Son of Rome (2013)

    I only picked up an Xbox One three years into the last generation, and Ryse: Son of Rome didn’t even enter my mind when I was looking for what few exclusives I’d missed. I eventually added it to my library when it was heavily discounted and promptly ignored it for another 5 years according to my transaction history. Having finally played through the campaign mode in 2024, two thoughts stood out: one, the negative sentiment towards Xbox after the botched Xbox One launch must’ve been severe if both this game and IP were swiftly forgotten; and two, I really miss big-budget games that could be completed in a dozen or less hours, and had actual endings that let me walk away with a sense of completion.

    Which is not to imply Ryse: Son of Rome is some underappreciated masterpiece. By 2013 standards, it would have felt distinctly average aside from the technical highlights. By 2024 standards, I found some of its flaws now feel like positives – so long as you go in with your expectations in check. It functions as a compact version of the formulaic action-adventure that now dominates blockbuster games: a third-person perspective with lavish character models and animations; a strong focus on the presentation with lengthy cutscenes for storytelling; and a cinematic flair to the action, with tons of canned animations and the sensation the game is sometimes playing itself for fear you interrupt the transitions into cutscenes. The only thing it’s missing is an open-world structure – which I now consider that a good thing.

    What made it most enjoyable to me in 2024 was the pacing of its brief campaign; brevity that serves the gameplay loop well, as it probably wouldn’t hold up past the 8-hour mark, no matter how much audiovisual spectacle is thrown at you. You control Roman soldier Marius Titus, in an alternate history Rome, during the time of Emperor Nero (and yes, he has much the same physique as Demetrian Titus in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine if that came to mind!). Political change is in the air and the vast expanse of the Empire is making it difficult to govern. After a chaotic prologue sets the stakes, Marius recounts his story to the emperor leading up to that point, beginning with a visit to his Senator father and family in Rome after completing his training. The reunion is interrupted when a barbarian war party raids the city; his mother and sister are on screen just long enough to die and provide motivation for another hyper-masculine, vengeance-driven campaign; and his father only lasts a little longer before telling him to save Rome in his dying breath.

    What follows is a visually diverse and often spectacular campaign that’ll see you invade Britannia in the Roman equivalent of the D-Day Landings, battle southern rebels and wild Northmen in the fog-swathed Highlands, evacuate a fortress city under siege, and finally return to a collapsing Rome after Marius realises a cowardly emperor and his psychopathic sons might be the real problem as “barbarian” hordes rise up as a result of Roman oppression. Naturally, you’ll meet and kill several historical figures from legend in the process. On the sidelines, there’s another battle being waged by Roman gods trying manipulate mankind through prophecy and direct intervention, with Marius taking up the mantle of Damocles to enact revenge. I found the storytelling still holds up thanks to the impressive visuals and sense of scale (well, for the time), the lengthy but well-directed cutscenes, and some excellent voice work throughout.

    Now I’ve got this far without discussing gameplay, as while tutorials make it sound complex, the mechanics are simple, satisfying, but increasingly repetitive by the end. Ryse: Son of Rome uses the classic attack, dodge, block, and counter rhythm that Batman: Arkham Asylum pioneered in 2009 – just with a sword-and-shield focus, less “gadgets”, and gory takedowns. You build up combos with basic strikes; you block or parry with your shield; dodge glowing attacks; kick or use charged attacks to break an enemy’s guard; use a focus ability to slow time for free hits, and trigger QTE-driven executions on a single or pair of targets. These executions never fail once started, but if you match the prompts, you get bonus points towards health and focus restoration, a temporary damage boost, or XP that goes into a perfunctory skill tree that boosts basic attributes and execution bonuses. It’s an intuitive enough system that looks and feels great when you hold off a surrounding horde and execute them all in gory fashion.

    The problem with Ryse: Son of Rome is that it barely evolves over what was a 7-ish hour campaign for me – possibly less if you just ignore the underwhelming collectibles. For the bulk of your playtime, you move down glorified corridors with beautiful and sometimes chaotic backdrops full of battling soldiers, frequently getting locked into combat arenas – sometimes literally – until you defeat all the enemies. If you’re lucky, there might be two paths you can take, or a dead-end with a collectible. To spice things up, you’ll sometimes fight alongside fellow soldiers, triggering sequences where you march in a shielded formation and fling spears at archers, defend a point by assigning shield-bearers and archers to cover paths, and even engage in turret sequences using implausibly rapid-fire crossbows. Each act also features a boss fight or two, but these are often simplistic one-vs-one battles that only ask you observe attack patterns in each phase, then trigger the right counter to chip away at their health bar. Even on higher difficulties, they’re underwhelming compared to common late-game battles that throw numerous enemy variants at you simultaneously.

    Now despite wrapping up on a negative note, most of my gameplay concerns only came to mind after I had finished the campaign and had time to mull over the experience. When you consider Sony released The Last of Us in the same year, pushing the technical limits of the PlayStation 3 and their storytelling ambitions, it’s easy to see why Ryse: Son of Rome failed to stand out. However, when you consider 2020’s The Last of Us: Part II now demands 25+ hours of trudging through misery interspersed with despair to see the end, I think there’s still good reason to return to older and shorter big-budget titles – even if they were considered unremarkable at the time. If you missed it at launch, Ryse: Son of Rome still offers a single satisfying playthough for those short on time but after a “AAA” experience.

    Ryse: Son of Rome was played on an Xbox Series S|X. It is also available on Xbox One and PC.

  • Editorial: Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition is perfect for those who love methodical dungeon delving

    Editorial: Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition is perfect for those who love methodical dungeon delving

    If someone told me they thought the Hammerwatch games were boring, I’d be hard-pressed to argue despite enjoying them so much. The developers Crackshell were inspired by the early Gauntlet games from the mid- to late-’80s (something made obvious the moment you discover a secret level) so Hammerwatch offers up a mix of systematic exploration, switch and key hunts, hundreds of secrets to find, deadly traps to avoid, and chaotic combat against hordes of monsters and damage-sponge bosses – all of which feels much more exciting if you bring a friend or three along for the ride.

    The game uses a top-down perspective with gorgeous pixel-art and sprite-work, coupled with a catchy “8-bit orchestral” soundtrack from composer-duo Two Feathers that has been stuck in my head for over a decade. On paper, it sounds solid but unlike so many modern games, progression and pacing are rigidly methodical and formulaic, which won’t appeal to everyone.

    If I had to pick one argument as to why I love the Hammerwatch IP, it would be that the games feel like the antithesis of modern ARPGs like Diablo III or IV, Path of Exile, and Grim Dawn. All excellent games in their own right, but all with a focus almost entirely on character and gear progression through repetition. Even if they offer epic stories and stylish cinematics, their game worlds are designed for infinite grinding and many use procedural generation. As such, the layout of a dungeon rarely matters, there are few locations that feel unique, and it’s rare you get to make lasting change to the environment despite all your time and effort.

    In contrast, every campaign in the recently remastered Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition makes learning the level layout essential to finding exits, secret hunting, upgrading your hero, and surviving hordes of monsters and deadly traps.

    None of which makes Hammerwatch novel in the traditional sense – just pleasingly anachronistic in contrast to modern games, as it rewards systematically tackling everything on offer and there’s actually a finite amount. You push forward room by room, revealing the dungeon layout and expanding a useful auto-map; you keep an eye out for switches and traps; and you plan how best to kite enemies that’ll shred your health bar in seconds if you end up surrounded. Scattered checkpoints function as save and respawn points; food and potions keep your health and mana topped up; gold is spent on trainers to unlock or improve hero skills; while dozens of secrets range from more gold and accessories to extra lives, and there are even hidden collectibles if you want the “true” ending to some campaigns.

    Unlike many other ARPGs in which repetition equates to progression, Hammerwatch doesn’t have respawning monsters and there’s no XP or loot gained from slaying them. Instead, thorough exploration, hoovering up every last piece of gold, and secret hunting is how you improve your hero. Collectible power-ups provide an incremental but permanent buff to your core attributes; weapon upgrades, higher-tier offensive skills, and a bigger mana bar all boost your damage output; while upgrades to your armour level, defensive skills, and health bar make you more resilient.

    The more you explore and the more enemies you clear out, the easier it is to backtrack through sprawling levels on the hunt for the secrets and gold you need to become more powerful. Finding every power-up and upgrading everything is not essential but also can’t grind endless trash mobs if you’re having difficulty with a boss encounter.

    Played from a top-down perspective, with twin-stick-style controls and only a handful of abilities to consider per class, Hammerwatch is simple to pick up and the on-screen action is typically easy to follow – useful in a game where mobility and a bit of strategy also count for a lot. However, with the prospect of limited lives, the risk of stumbling into insta-kill traps, and tough boss encounters that can feel like bullet-hell shooters, it remains a challenging game irrespective of your chosen difficulty – at least if you stick to the default settings.

    Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition offers a short but useful list of modifiers, independent of difficulty, that you can pick from before starting a campaign. For new players (or those with an inexperienced co-op companion) infinite lives or bonus life pick-ups let you to focus on exploration and secret hunting with reduced risk. For wizards and warriors alike, buffs to health and mana regeneration can keep them in the fight without the need to backtrack for consumables.

    At this point, it’s worth wrapping up by discussing why I’m highlighting the more recent (and pricier) Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition, instead of the original release I first played a decade ago. Part of the that is simply to support the developer and hope profits eventually go to a console port of Serious Sam’s Bogus Detour (the best Serious Sam game since the original pair), but I also thought it would be useful given the developer’s website and storefront listings are surprisingly low on detail and initially put me off picking it up until it was suitably discounted. First up, the remastering effort is excellent – just in sense it looks like you might remember it. Go back and take a look at the original however, and the improvements to the artwork, sprites, atmospheric effects, auto-map, and control scheme are obvious and much needed.

    From a gameplay perspective, you have updated introductions and conclusions for each campaign that tie into the larger narrative introduced in Hammerwatch II; you have access to all seven classes with new customisation options and some nice situational voice lines; and there’s a simple tiered accessory system that add a little more diversity to character builds – though you can only carry one at a time.

    Most significant for returning players is the substantial “Shaftlocke Tower” campaign, which remasters assets from the rogue-like Heroes of Hammerwatch, and turns them into a traditional campaign even longer than the length of the original, packed with an expanding hub, more intricate levels, tougher combat encounters, more bosses, and more secrets. The only downside is that, if like me, you first replay the original Castle Hammerwatch and brisk Temple of the Sun campaigns back-to-back, Shaftlocke Tower can push that formulaic structure to breaking point.

    Wrapping up, despite the higher price point and the reworked “more of the same” approach to the new campaign, I’d still recommend Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition to existing fans, those that wanted a traditional campaign from Heroes of Hammerwatch, and as the best starting point for new players, whether on PC or any of the consoles – even if it took a few patches to get to the “definitive” experience. It’s not for everyone and fans of modern ARPGs might find it too dull – but if you get a kick out of systematically clearing dungeons, room by room, floor by floor, and hunting for secrets, Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition offers a lot of quality content and an indie price point.

    Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition was played on Nintendo Switch. It is also available on PC, Xbox One/Series S|X, and PS4/5.

  • Editorial: Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin is a great case study on what does and does not work with console RTS

    Editorial: Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin is a great case study on what does and does not work with console RTS

    As someone who has always enjoyed playing real-time strategy ports on console – going all the way back to Command & Conquer and Red Alert on the PS1 – Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin feels like a case study on what does and doesn’t work when you have to work around the limitations of a gamepad.

    During the cinematic-heavy campaign, there were times I was reminded of the methodical, scripted approach Blizzard pioneered with the StarCraft and WarCraft III – a design that works well enough on console when the player has more control over the pacing. The rest of the time – by which I mean a third of the campaign missions and every other mode: AI skirmishes, Conquest, or multiplayer – it often felt like trying to play a fast-paced, lane- and territory-control-focussed MOBA with a severe handicap.

    Starting with the positives, there’s a cinematic 18-mission campaign, with four difficulty settings and optional mission challenges, complemented by AI skirmish maps and a Conquest mode – think a succession of increasingly tough skirmish maps with modifiers. With beautiful environments, detailed character models, and intricate unit animation, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin’s in-engine cutscenes do an impressive job presenting another grim, violent, yet often amusing and absurd Warhammer story. It’s full of contrived scenarios, improbable attrition rates, one-note faction leaders making poor decisions, and – more so than any recent RTS I can think of – it shamelessly functions as a glorified tutorial for basic commands, faction abilities, and game modes.

    The Stormcast Eternals seek an artefact of power that may help them reclaim the Region of Ghur; the Ork Kruleboyz are in pursuit of the same prize to elevate the status of their Warboss; and a few flashback missions reveal how The Disciples of Tzeentch originally battled the undead Nighthaunt faction for possession of the artefact. It’s all stylishly presented and – if you can get to grips with the gamepad controls and gameplay basics – the campaign is decent fun and moves at a brisk pace, switching up factions, objective types, and introducing a few novel scenarios. There are times you’re just battling from point-A to point-B down branching corridors, claiming Arcane Conduits to build outposts and generate resources as you go, but there are a few missions that rely almost exclusively on heroes; one that functions as an unforgiving tower defence; one that features clunky stealth; several that have you battle over control points, and even gimmicky boss battles that add some twist to chipping away at a giant HP bar.

    The campaign also serves to highlight what the control scheme and game design gets right. Much like the underappreciated Halo Wars 1 and 2, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin focuses on streamlined base-building, managing only two resources, and smaller skirmishes influenced by unit composition, positioning, and the strategic use of abilities – more so than sheer numbers. You can upgrade you primary building to recruit new unit types and unlock three-tiers of unit and outpost upgrades – many of which are mutually exclusive abilities or passive buffs to specialise units. Each faction also has two defence-oriented structures – a tower that deals minor damage but buys you time to muster your army, and a healing bastion to support defensive groups.

    The controls are what you’d expect from a modern console RTS with one situationally useful addition – “DirectStep” control. The camera latches to your selected unit or group, it’s easier to aim and trigger abilities, and you assign movement or attack-move waypoints to individual units. It’s a smart option for managing small skirmishes but it decreases situational awareness, and I found myself falling back on the emulated reticule controls. In the introduction, I mentioned Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin could feel like a MOBA, and that’s because it adheres to the rule-of-three design and forces you to multi-task. There are three unit types in the combat triangle (shields vs. bows, bows vs. swords, and swords vs, shields); often three objectives to clear out or three control points to hold; and there are typically three paths you need to defend around any Arcane Conduit. It should come as no surprise the d-pad is used to manage 3 control groups, pad with the last input used to quickly cycle through units within a group.

    On paper and in practice, the controls and streamlined gameplay loop work well enough in the campaign – even on tougher missions that feel like skirmish maps with the AI playing by a general ruleset, rather than custom scripting. The problem is how quickly they buckle when you’re under pressure. In addition to juggling multiple control groups spread across a map, you’ve got to cycle units to access their abilities, deal with barely coherent formations, and interrupt dubious automated decisions. The challenge feels greater still when you realise how quickly the balance of combat shifts when something goes wrong – allowing other players or the AI to push you into a losing spiral. In Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, the less of the map you control, the less you can upgrade or reinforce your troops, and the less multitasking your opponent requires to contain and destroy you.

    The most persistent issue is micro-managing your way around the combat-lock mechanic. Units engaged at melee range can’t disengage – unless they’re sent retreating back to your main structure before you can regain control. With no obvious formation behaviour and ranged units prone to outrunning melee units, you need to constantly assign individual attack orders based on type, then utilise abilities to further modify the flow of battle – usually by buffing your troops or inflicting an area-of-affect attack. You can alternate between move and attack-move commands, and you can define the firing-arc of ranged units, but to effectively micromanage just one army, you need to use all three available control groups. On top of that challenge, you’ve still got pathfinding issues and, despite several upgrades allowing you to focus on ranged damage, hybrid units are prone to engaging in melee once they get close – even if their target is combat-locked with another unit.

    As a result, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin sits in a weird middle ground, demonstrating both smart design decisions that make a lot of sense in a console RTS – but it also demands a degree of manic multitasking simply not suited to a gamepad. Most campaign missions are either scripted enough or offer maps defensible enough that you can push out cautiously and regroup if things go wrong. However, that’s simply not an option on AI skirmish or Conquest maps, where even the low-difficulty AI can simultaneously contest all control points, harass your outposts, and spam abilities in battle against your primary force. It had me wishing for a pause-and-command option even if it was antithetical to the developer’s intent. An inadvertent positive is that a few multiplayer matches against other human players felt more balanced, as my opponents stuck to managing a single but mobile army I could frantically counter with my own.

    Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin was played on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.

  • Retrospective: Tomb Raider I Remastered

    Retrospective: Tomb Raider I Remastered

    There are few games as deserving of preservation as the original Tomb Raider. Not because it’s some timeless masterpiece that holds up today, but as a reminder of where we’ve come from, and how far we’ve come. If you’re a fan of games set 3D environments and played from a third-person perspective – the vast majority of blockbuster titles – you could trace at least some part of their ancestry back to 1996’s Tomb Raider.

    Replaying it in 2024, in its freshly remastered form, has been unexpectedly compelling – albeit with a mix of highs and lows I expected. There was raw nostalgia for my 11-year-old self, sitting in front of a small CRT screen, playing it on a SEGA Saturn rented from the local video store – my first experience exploring a truly 3D world after growing up with a NES that was as old as I was, and infrequent visits to arcades to play on-the-rail light-gun games. It was a pivotal moment that ensured video games would became a lifelong hobby – with my very own PSOne and a copy of Tomb Raider II the following year cementing my love of the character and IP.

    If you only have experience with the Crystal Dynamics trilogies – 2006’s Legends or 2013’s soft reboot – Lara Croft in 1996 was a rare example of a female protagonist, at least outside of RPGs with character creation, and, rarer still, possessed a physicality typically reserved for male leads. She was an acrobatic heroine with calves, quads, and glutes so strong she could lunge-jump her own height and was strong enough to push and drag around 8 cubic-metre blocks of stone. The first Tomb Raider would pit her against an equally capable villainess and give her the chance to save the world at the expense of power and fame. I doubt representation was Core Designs’ original intent, but Lara nonetheless proved instrumental in drawing more female gamers into a hobby that all too often felt like young to middle-aged men developing games for young to middle-aged men.

    Of course, nostalgia can only take you so far and it was impossible to enjoy the remaster without looking at it through the lens of 28-years of gaming advances. Revolutionary for the time – and possessing an impressive sense of scale and verticality that early 3D FPS and dungeon crawlers lacked – Tomb Raider now offers a purity of design, so uncluttered by secondary mechanics it almost feels novel. The bulk of the experience is simply observing, planning, and traversing blocky 3D environments using Lara’s equally rigid, grid-based move-set. The goal? Rarely more complex than finding key items or switches within a level to open the exit to the next, before a crude in-game cutscene or flashier CG variant pushed the story forward.

    To spice things up, Lara will sometimes need to solve basic spatial puzzles that typically involve slowly pushing or pulling blocks; while other times she’ll need to draw her weapons to slay a shameful number of endangered species, a few that should’ve stayed extinct, tough mythical creatures, and a handful of human bosses that are an unfortunate reflection of cultural and racial stereotypes in the 1990s. Much like the platforming, combat is all about using Lara’s rigid move-set to avoid enemies that follow far less predictable patterns – often in tight spaces with perilous drops. Combat never feels more than functional, but many encounters can be rendered trivial if you horde powerful ammunition or find high-ground to exploit the limited AI pathfinding. Just don’t stop to ponder who left modern ammunition and health kits in ancient ruins supposedly unexplored in centuries.

    By far the greatest challenge comes from mastering the original controls, especially as the alternative controls offered in this remaster are a twitchy abomination not worth considering. It’s a rough transition from modern games – games that strive to make you not think about the complexity of traversal – however, once you’ve get to grips with Lara’s move-set, they feels perfectly suited to the blocky but carefully crafted environments. It’s a game that requires patience, with a strong focus on planning a sequence of moves and lining up jumps, rather than being reactive, and you’ll want to save regularly if you don’t enjoy hearing Lara’s scream followed by a sickening crunch. The obvious caveat to this design is how clumsy and frustrating simple tasks end up feeling – such as lining Lara up to interact with a switch or pick-up, and how long it can take to trek back to the start of a jumping sequence if you mess up.

    Moving on to the remastering effort itself – Tomb Raider I Remastered feels smartly touched up and respectful of the original vision, while the only major gripe I have is aforementioned and entirely optional alternate controls. Texture work, character models, and lighting have been overhauled – with the addition of more props where appropriate, and minor geometry changes to introduce new light sources like open ceilings. The world itself is still blocky, and the seams between textures are still obvious, but they feel suitably detailed for modern TVs, those representing water surfaces or lava are better animated, and some even have an impressive parallax effect to simulate depth.

    All character models retain their somewhat angular designs and jerky motion, but they look much more detailed and have been embellished with plenty of added detail – including updated faces and basic lip-syncing for in-game cutscenes. Pixelated 2D sprites for pick-ups and props have been replaced with 3D models, and you can enable an interaction icon to make them easier to find – along with switches and key holes. The new lighting model – especially in rare locations that use beautiful new sky-boxes – looks great, adds to the immersion, and even simulates taking on the colour of the environment. There are more atmospheric effects like dust and mist, while a few locations even have puddles with reflections!

    Talking of atmosphere, Tomb Raider I Remastered still relies primarily on ambient audio to capture that feeling of isolation you’d expect exploring long lost tombs – but it feels like they’ve added a few more music triggers and possibly repurposed a few tracks from the later games. In short, this remaster excels at presenting Tomb Raider as you might remember it. There are oddities, like how some areas feel too dark and the new 3D models for key items too small, but you can always swap back and forth between the remastered and classic visual mode – though you then have to deal with a stuttering 30fps cap that feels awful compared to the remasters 60fps achieved through frame interpolation.

    All of which brings me to who I’d recommend Tomb Raider I Remastered to. From a pure preservation angle and for those interested in the history of video games, it’s an essential remaster. For those just considering the entertainment potential – this is more for fans of the original, especially those without the patience to deal with DOSBOX settings on PC, or console players that once had to deal with a frustratingly restrictive save crystal mechanic. As a long-time fan, the first three acts in Peru, Greece, and Egypt remain the highlight – and levels like The Lost Valley, St. Francis’ Folly, Temple Midas, Obelisk of Khamoon, and Sanctuary of the Scion have not diminished with age. If anything, they finally have a degree of visual spectacle to complement their impressive scope.

    For everyone else still curious in Lara’s original outing, I’d rather suggest Crystal Dynamic’s excellent 2006 reboot, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, which can still serve as an excellent stand-alone experience.

    Tomb Raider I Remastered 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.

  • Retrospective: The Last Guardian (2016)

    Retrospective: The Last Guardian (2016)

    There are many games I enjoy that are objectively average or bad, and quite a few I dislike that consensus tells me are good. The Last Guardian sits somewhere in the middle as one of the rare games I desperately wanted to like more than I did.

    Coming from the now defunct Studio Japan and director Fumito Ueda – of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus fame – and having gone through a tortuous development cycle going back to the PlayStation 3 era, The Last Guardian is an unevenly paced journey, with incredible storytelling and audiovisual spectacle shackled to clunky and often frustrating gameplay.

    The Last Guardian follows the trials and tribulations of a young boy who awakens in a cave alongside a wounded chimera, “Trico”, with no idea where he is, how he got there, or what the tattoos that now cover his body mean. Just like Ueda’s prior games, it features a compelling mix of oppressive isolation, risky platforming, and wondrous discovery that only makes sense from the perspective of a child.

    The ancient ruins are sprawling but also vertical and continuous, ensuring you can often see where you need to be and look back from whence you came. Despite the scale, there’s plenty of fine detail as both environmental storytelling and character interactions carry the story, with limited narration – much of it for guidance if you get stuck – and only a handful of cutscenes that eventually reveal past events.

    It’s not the most original story of a child and beast bonding and saving one another from a shared threat, but it is beautifully told through the aforementioned cutscenes and evolving in-game interactions. The journey is full of literal ups and downs as the boy and Trico try to access a mysterious tower that dominates the ruins – a tower seemingly protected by other aggressive chimera and a source of much pain for Trico.

    After key moments in the story, their bond grows and the boy gains more direct control of Trico through a series of simple, exaggerated gestures. Simultaneously, Trico regrows its feathers and horns, becomes more assertive in pointing out the way forward, and acts without needing player input – but it also becomes more tender and protective of the boy.

    If nothing else, The Last Guardian is a game for pet lovers – so long as you can take the emotional highs and with the gut-punching lows. Trico feels like a mix of kitten and dog – clumsy, playful, and nimble, but also loyal, protective, and food-obsessed. Interactions are wonderfully animated, as Trico investigates and prods the environment, fixates on barrels of blue food, and nuzzles the boy playfully if you remain idle. On the other hand, it’s devastating to watch Trico limp around and whimper when injured, or become manic and uncontrollable when frightened or enraged.

    Feeding and calming Trico are in-game mechanics, and the boy can stroke it in several spots to elicit different reactions. Despite the increasingly weird and fantastical setting, these small and significant animation details make their evolving relationship feel real.

    Unfortunately, The Last Guardian rarely plays as well as it looks and sounds – especially during an opening half that features gameplay scenarios frustrating by design. For the first few hours, the boy can only call Trico towards a location; cling to Trico’s flank or leap from its back to reach high places; and very briefly use a shield to clear obstacles with tail-spawned lightning before it disappears until the final act.

    Given Trico’s often erratic movement in confined spaces and around jump points, far too much time is spent repeatedly shuffling the boy around and spamming the “call” button, then desperately clambering onto Trico’s back while praying it doesn’t start moving.

    Now, given Trico becomes more controllable and helpful over time – saving the boy from certain doom multiple times thanks to his indestructible shirt and wrists of steel – it’s much easier to forgive this design when The Last Guardian can be completed in a dozen hours.

    What doesn’t improve, however, are the loose and inconsistent controls, which make platforming and puzzle elements feel too unpredictable. A big part of the problem is how The Last Guardian frequently shifts between free- and semi-fixed camera control, which makes it difficult to predict which direction the boy will jump, and often sends Trico leaping back across a chasm you just struggled to clear. Mercifully, checkpoints were frequent enough to limit time lost.

    Unfortunately, there are other gameplay issues. The first is a common problem with all cinematic games – not doing what the developers expected. A prime example was a cave-in that had me clambering around trying to free Trico, when what I needed to do was abandon Trico and walk away down a corridor until I encountered hostile spectral armour, triggering a scripted sequence.

    Talking of spectral armour, Trico is quick to smash them apart but, when separated, they chase down the boy and attempt to carry him off. It’s a fate easily circumvented by mashing buttons, but while it initially added tension to puzzle sequences, these encounters soon become annoying. You either run loops to clear space or just accept endless button-mashing disruptions.

    To The Last Guardian’s credit, there is a cutscene around two-thirds of the way through the game that felt like a pay-off, followed soon after by the reappearance of the shield and the catharsis that comes from blasting them apart with lightning.

    Now returning to my point about wanting to like The Last Guardian more than I did, it is still a game I’d recommend everyone try despite my issues with it – and not least of all because it’s frequently discounted, still looks incredible, and has a 60fps update for the PS5 that make it feel smoother but does little to remedy the control issues.

    Aside from being an intensely cinematic, audiovisual spectacle the PlayStation brand has become renowned for, The Last Guardian is one of the few games that manages to capture the subtleties of human-animal bonds by smartly working into the narrative, animations, and gameplay mechanics. Animal companions have become ubiquitous in modern games, but most are little more than easily marketable gimmicks that function as cute accessories you can pet when you’re bored. Despite the potential for frustration, The Last Guardian‘s mythical Trico feels more real than any other animal companion in video games that came before it or since.

    The Last Guardian is available on PS4 and PS5.

  • Retrospective: Syberia (2002)

    Retrospective: Syberia (2002)

    As a point-and-click adventure originally released on PC in 2002, it’s easy to criticise elements of Syberia’s gameplay, but replaying it for the third time on the Nintendo Switch – the best console port by far – I’m still impressed by its relatable protagonist, timeless artistic vision, and serenely melancholic atmosphere.

    Kate goes adrift

    Syberia wastes no time setting the scene and offering a tantalising glimpse of what awaits Kate Walker, a young and idealistic lawyer from New York, sent to the moribund town of Valadilene in the French Alps to conclude the sale of an ageing automaton factory.

    She arrives just in time to witness the funeral precession for the late factory owner, Anna Voralberg, who revealed the existence of a living heir in her final correspondence. Given the importance of the deal, Kate is left with little choice but to track down Anna’s brother Hans – initially thought to have died decades before – and discover more about his troubled family and the legacy he left behind while traversing Eurasia with an automaton engineer named Oscar and a fantastical wind-up train of his design.

    Oscar proves the perfect companion as his rigid protocols often frustrate Kate’s adventure… yet he frequently demonstrates hints of insight far beyond his supposed programming allows.

    Despite her obvious commitment to the task, it’s clear from the outset that Kate isn’t comfortable in a rigid corporate environment. She marvels at the weird, wonderful, and sometimes terrifying things she encounters on her journey, but takes them all in her stride. She respects locals with quirky customs and is compassionate when helping others, but she also has a strong set of morals and won’t hesitate to call out scheming or dishonest behaviour – even if she’s willing to bend the rules a few times to progress.

    In contrast, the people she left behind in New York are mostly brash, self-interested, morally flexible, and possess limited imagination. Her boss has no interest in her situation beyond her ability to seal the deal; her fiancé Dan seems unable to differentiate between their romantic and business dynamic, treating her more as an accessory to his ambitions; her mother frequently talks over her and uses guilt as leverage; while her friend Olivia seems has little passion for their profession beyond the lifestyle it allows.

    There’s no shortage of flashbacks, lengthy journal entries, and conversations that reveal Hans Voralberg’s uplifting yet often tragic journey across Eurasia. As one of two disabled characters Kate encounters in the game, it’s worth noting some of the secondary cast is far from sympathetic, and I don’t know if that was deliberate or evidence of the writer’s views.

    Kate frequently receives calls from them or calls them for assistance during her adventure, and they serve as useful foils that highlight Kate’s character development. Their lives are so ordinary they can barely comprehend what she’s describing and experiencing, while their desperate attempts to discourage Kate and bring her back home to re-establish the status quo border on self-destructive.

    As a result, simply watching Kate discover who she really is – or maybe rediscover herself – is even more satisfying than the overarching narrative and circumventing the many roadblocks along the way.

    The secondary cast is mostly recognisable cliches, but Kate’s rebellion against their narrow and unromantic worldview makes for great character development.

    Artistic vision > technical prowess

    Of course, a great protagonist and interesting premise still need a good setting, and Benoît Sokal’s creative vision ensures Syberia is one of the few games with legitimately timeless aesthetics.

    Kate’s world is similar but not exactly our own, though it’s not hard to immerse yourself in it with many modern and historical parallels. There are European towns still dealing with the devastation of the Second World War on industry and families, while Russia – possibly still a Union of some sort – is full of ageing industrial and military complexes abandoned after a Cold War era.

    Valadilene sports cobbled streets, art-deco houses, and an intricate automaton factory, but only a handful of people with nowhere else to go remain. The Barrockstadt University, with its massive mammoth exhibits and tropical aviary, is fading into obscurity, with a few lingering staff and fewer students, all surrounded by decade-old military fortifications and damaged houses that were never restored. The decrepit Komkolzgrad industrial complex and cosmodrome are inhabited by two solitary caretakers with unfulfilled dreams. The Aralbad resort is a refuge for faded stars, situated on the edge of a corrosive salt lake, full of rusted shipwrecks that hint at a more prosperous past.

    The visual design and atmosphere of Aralbad are a perfect match for its inhabitants – an isolated hideaway for fading stars slowly wasting away.

    Although most backdrops are beautiful and smartly framed static images, there are a handful of video-loop backdrops for more intricate structures, simple water shaders, and 3D character models that add life to many scenes. As a reward for solving more complex puzzles, there are several cutscenes that demonstrate Sokal’s intricate automaton designs in action or handle a few action-centric moments.

    The visuals are complemented by an immersive ambient audio mix and a limited but evocative soundtrack themed around each location – but only sometimes. Syberia has moments of near silence, and I was never sure if it was by design or just audio bugs that have plagued prior releases to varying degrees.

    So Syberia is not exactly subtle about using art and music to express its themes, but this does ensure Kate’s journey through forgotten places filled with forgotten people provides a strangely compelling combination of intricate beauty and haunting solitude.

    Every backdrop – regardless of whether it features a puzzle or not – feels smartly framed, intricately detailed, and atmospheric.

    Streamlined adventuring but dated designs still frustrate

    When it comes to actually playing Syberia, well, it’s a traditional point-and-click experience that can feel anachronistic by modern standards – even if it’s more streamlined than many of its contemporaries.

    To solve an assortment of contrived and often absurd puzzles, you’ll be conversing with the small secondary cast, making the odd phone call, collecting notes for clues, collecting key items to use on the appropriate object, and flicking switches and levers on intricate contraptions or control panels.

    Advancing dialogue sequences usually require you to simply exhaust available options, but there’s plenty of optional details for those that want it.

    To Syberia’s credit, there are only a handful of puzzles per location, and they all feel reasonably logical given the setting – aside from a late-game cocktail mixing contraption. They never require too many steps or items to solve; there are no red herrings; and there are only 2-4 significant NPCs in any location you need to interact with.

    Furthermore, the puzzles and dialogue sequences are usually sequential and scripted, so you’ll never be overwhelmed trying to juggle multiple puzzles and inventory items. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean Syberia is devoid of classic point-and-click bullshit.

    The infamous cocktail puzzle is probably the least logical and most contrived example in the game, and it’s not helped by the twitchy selection cursor when using a gamepad.

    The first issue, spotting key items within detailed backdrops, can be resolved by enabling icon highlights in the assists menu, but the second issue is inherent to the design of the game – the size of each location and the impact that has on puzzles that force you to backtrack. Unlike many modern point-and-click adventures that feature fewer but denser locations, Syberia aims for an impressive sense of scale, with many of its beautiful backdrops serving as nothing but set-dressing you need to traverse repeatedly.

    In Valadilene, your departure is interrupted when you have to trudge across town to forge a clearance certificate; in Barrockstadt, discovering the location of a rare plant species requires talking to several NPCs scattered across the university grounds repeatedly; in Aralbad, you’ll run up and down an unnecessarily long pier. These moments are compounded by Kate’s sedate pace, inconsistent screen transition triggers, and fixed camera angles that make it easy to mix up your inputs.

    It’s not as bad as it sounds if you know where you’re going, but should you ever get confused, it makes aimless wondering a pain in the arse.

    I spent an inordinate amount of time running around the cosmodrome looking for this nigh-invisible crank handle before discovering the assists menu.

    Going off the rails, on the rails

    So Syberia is not without flaws inherent in the genre but, on balance, I’d still recommend picking it up if you’ve got any interest in the history of point-and-click games; or if you’re willing to forgive a few anachronistic elements for an uplifting narrative that sees Kate grow as a person while journeying through a weird, melancholic, but wondrous world.

    As for which versions to play – PC players who want a classic mouse-driven experience should stick to the GOG or Steam releases, both of which have been updated a few times for modern systems. It’s a tougher choice for console players as I’d only recommend the Nintendo Switch version that sports functional shaders, the ability to switch to the original 4:3 ratio, and even touch-screen play. At a push, the backwards-compatible Xbox 360 version – or PlayStation3 version if you’ve still got it plugged in – are fine but the backdrops and character models are stretched to fit that widescreen aspect ratio, the audio is even more buggy, and many backdrops feel completely static.

    Syberia was played on the Nintendo Switch 1. It is also available on PC, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox One/Series S/X (back compat), and PS3.

  • Retrospective: Vaporum (2017)

    Retrospective: Vaporum (2017)

    I love Vaporum and many of the classic games that inspired it, but it’s a difficult sell to newcomers. Clunky, archaic movement limitations and artificial grid-like environments – elements you might criticise in any other modern game – are core gameplay features and, if you buy into the nostalgic aspect, all part of the charm

    Vaporum is a retro-inspired but infinitely more accessible modern “blobber” – think first-person dungeon-crawler, usually party-based, and with RPG elements. You trudge around labyrinthine grid-based levels, searching for keys, solving puzzles, hunting for secret areas, avoiding hazards, and defeating enemies to progress between floors. It’s a wonderfully contrived game world that makes little sense unless the primary purpose of the facility was to frustrate and/or kill its researchers.

    Events take place entirely within a massive steampunk tower, in the midst of a raging and stormy sea, though figuring out who the protagonist is forms part of the early mystery. The ominous tower beckons them in and although they know they have some connection to it, everything else is a blur.

    As you explore, a combination of written notes and scratchy audio logs spur on their memory, leading to revelatory monologues that slowly reveal the truth about their past and the present research into a mysterious substance known as “Fumium”. It’s a dated but effective approach that works in a game not particularly suited to conventional cinematics – though I wish there was a little more world-building to flesh out events beyond the tower.

    Although many games in this sub-genre – from 1985’s The Bard’s Tale to 2017’s StarCrawlers – shift into turn-based combat when you encounter a foe, Vaporum uses the real-time approach first pioneered by 1987’s Dungeon Master and almost perfected by 2012’s Legend of Grimrock. Unlike many of its predecessors – and one of the reasons it received multiple console ports – is that is Vaporum is not “party-based” and doesn’t rely extensively on an emulated mouse cursor in combat.

    You control a lumbering exoskeleton rig – a sensation not dissimilar to Delta in BioShock 2 – with four starting classes to pick from. These range from pure offence to pure defence, with a few unique perks and 10 gear slots that can be configured without restrictions. There are two offensive slots that can either handle one-handed maces, blades, or pistols combined with a shield, or a single but powerful two-handed weapon. You unlock up to four “gadget” slots that provide elemental damage or support abilities akin to spells, and there are four armour slots to mix and match attribute-boosting gear.

    Fumium gained from destroyed enemies goes towards increasing your rig level, unlocking circuits to invest in a dozen linear skill trees that cover weapon types, energy generation for gadgets, elemental damage and resistance, and general survivability. Each point invested provides a useful but incremental upgrade, while the third level provides a minor perk, and the fifth a choice between two major perks.

    On the whole, it’s a versatile and adaptable system that replaces multiple less-specialised party members. It also feels reasonably balanced given you can only max out 3 or 4 skill trees in a single playthrough. You could prioritise damage output to quickly remove threats; turn yourself into a physical and elementally resistant tank that reflects back a huge portion of damage; or pick a middle ground.

    Whatever your choice, exploration, puzzling, and indeed the combat all hinge on understanding and navigating the grid-like environment, rather than simply increasing your level and gear quality – a design many seem to ignore when you consider the number of videos with players retreating into a corner to just trade blows with enemies.

    Vaporum can look and sound great despite its relative simplicity. The throbbing, clanking, and hissing industrial-steampunk setting is a perfect match for the artificial grid-based world. That said, Vaporum is at its most boring when you’re plodding down claustrophobic corridors or backtracking to a locked door, moving past hundreds of near-identically-textured walls and floors.

    You move block by block in any direction relative to your view, which you can swing 90 degrees at a time. Free-look is great to scan for nefariously-hidden switches and objects, and you’ll engage in some light inventory management and menu-ing to use key items.

    Thankfully, what it lacks in fluidity, it makes up for with purpose.

    When you’re forced to move quickly to hit switches, dodge floor traps, or engage in combat with multiple foes, you’ll come to appreciate the convoluted but engaging movement system that forces you to be actively aware of your position in grid space.

    There are times you need to dash between multiple switches by picking the most effective route. Other times you’ll be dashing between safe spots to avoid fireballs or pit traps. Far too much time is spent shifting around large boxes around to open a path. No matter what you’re doing,

    When it comes to secret hunting, the predictable and repetitive grid-like nature of the environment is both a blessing and a curse. A quick look at the map often reveals blank spaces that hide a secret room but opening them can mean hunting for the tiniest differences in a common texture. It’s worth the effort though, as powerful gear, consumables that permanently increase your basic attributes, rare upgrade circuits, and even revealing documents are common rewards.

    Battling on a grid can feel a bit limited at first and, so long as you’re up against a single enemy and have a 2-by-2 grid space, it’s possible to simply shuffle around them and get in free hits as they transition or reorient. Vaporum attempts to spice things up by giving some enemies projectile attacks, quick strafes, area-of-effect attacks, knock-back attacks, and sideswipes, but one-on-one battles are always survivable if you’re patient.

    In contrast, group battles – especially those with hazards thrown in – will quickly tax your powers of observation, planning, adaptability, and reflexes. Vaporum is perhaps too fond of locking you in rooms, resulting in combat that feels like an awkward dance as you avoid being boxed in, try not to strafe into a hazard or AoE attack, dodge crisscrossing projectiles (or lead enemies into them), clear space to trigger a repair kit, and line up priority targets.

    It’s often chaotic and unpredictable but if you keep a clear head and have a decent sense of spatial awareness, it can be a lot of fun and you’ll often come out on top.

    So, six years on from launch, and 36 years since Dungeon Master introduced real-time combat to the formula, Vaporum is an interesting mix of old designs with more modern sensibilities. The PC version feels most intuitive to play but the console ports are great, irrespective of which platform/s you own.

    I strongly recommend it for dungeon-crawler and RPG fans, though I’d hazard a guess the audience will always be niche. That said, if you can wrap your brain around the grid-based structure, Vaporum provides a weirdly compelling mix of methodical exploration and secret hunting, plenty of mentally taxing spatial puzzles, and high-intensity combat that requires you simultaneously plan and react.

    Screenshots were captured on the Nintendo Switch. Vaporum is also available on PC, Xbox One/Xbox Series, PS4/PS5.