I enjoy dying in Heave Ho 2. I’m not doing it on purpose, but it’s usually because I miscalculated a swing, was accidentally dropped off a cliff by my brother, or, most often of all, tried to make a comically long jump I had no chance of landing. The act of playing is so ridiculous and fun, and setbacks are so minimal, that I simply don’t mind. I don’t love every level, and the Showdown mode is largely forgettable, but this sequel from developer Le Cartel Studio is a great way to spend a few afternoons with family and friends. 

In Heave Ho 2, each player controls a head with two arms, and each hand can grab nearby items or surfaces by pressing a button. The act of moving across a stage is easier said than done, especially at the start, and even once you get the hang of it, you always look and feel hilariously ridiculous. Since the game is multiplayer-only, most levels require you to work together (though others can be completed by progressing forward one at a time), either by linking your arms to make one long chain of hands or by collaborating to accomplish a goal. Regardless, it always looks silly, which never gets old, and as chaotic as it looks, the game controls really well. 

While many levels in the co-op campaign task players with getting from one side of the map to the other, some worlds have different objectives or add twists to complicate your progress. I really appreciate how those goals shift across the eight worlds. Flying High has you navigate ski lifts, gondolas, and icy mountains to reach your goal, but levels in Manor Mysteries hide keys to unlock the exit, and Spacebound Squad has you navigating zero-gravity, sometimes teaming up to pilot a spaceship. Each time you boot the game up, you’re in for something new.

Not every world is a winner, though. Chef’s Orders, a world where you stack ingredients on a plate, is consistently frustrating. Heave Ho 2 is built for movement or carrying small items, but my group of players did not enjoy moving the much larger items. Similarly, Medieval Travels has several levels where you transport a king on his throne without tipping him over, and we found it so unintuitive that we accepted help from the game’s cat drone, which appears after you’ve spent a long time struggling and probably need a cop out to move on. I admire, however, that Le Cartel took risks on these unique levels, even if they didn’t always land.

The campaign has about 60 levels, each with two to three optional objectives, like finishing within a certain time frame, finding mysterious hands to grab, or fitting into hidden silhouettes. There’s also an equippable camera that you can bring across the game to complete even more objectives, capturing photos of the party doing specific, often silly tasks. While I beat Heave Ho 2 across roughly eight hours of gameplay, we spent a while getting distracted by side objectives, and I’m confident we could spend plenty more if we wanted to 100% the game. The robust list of achievements is a smart way to make the most out of the game’s modest amount of content, adding significant replay value.

Each objective makes progress towards a series of unlocks. Some are cosmetic, like the game’s roster of crossover skins from other video games (I’ve unlocked everything from an Among Us Crewmate to Henry from Kingdom Come: Deliverance II), but others add mechanical value by giving players items to equip going into stages. The Ima Rock freezes you in the air, allowing a friend to use you as a platform, while the arm spray extends an ally’s arms, making distant platforms easier to grab. The items add great complexity to the game, and I love that most of them are geared around aiding teammates, rather than oneself, but I wish they were unlocked faster. I only unlocked an umbrella (used for Mary Poppins-style floating) after going back to replay old stages, and I would’ve loved to have it when I was playing through the first time.

The game’s other mode, Showdown, is a fine side mode to experiment with once or twice, but it’s far shallower than the co-op levels. Players go head-to-head in a rotating playlist of maps and one of three objectives: a race, a challenge to see who survives longest, or a dash to see who can grab a handle first (which is also just a race, to be honest). The first player or team to get five wins comes out on top. Showdown is briefly entertaining, but that’s the only ruleset it has, and it doesn’t reward repeated play the way the main levels do, so I don’t expect most to spend much time with it.

I have a soft spot for goofy physics-based co-op games in general, but Heave Ho 2 was a hit no matter who I put it in front of. Its wacky exterior is supported by a solid core of great controls and smart level design. Not all of its gambles pay off, but I’m fine accepting a little jank in an otherwise jolly experience.

Source link

Denshattack is the best post-apocalyptic stunt train driving action sports simulator anime ever created. I haven’t done the research to confirm the veracity of that statement because I am confident I don’t need to. Despite clear inspirations from games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the Sega Dreamcast era, Denshattack is truly novel, and that is a rare superlative to apply to a video game in 2026. Developer Undercoders has taken what I believe is the universal childhood memory of grasping a handheld toy vehicle (a train in this case) and imagining it could fly, flip, grind, and race along walls without any regard for the laws of physics or gravity. That experience with objectives and a high score is basically what Denshattack is, and the result is a delightful, if sometimes intense, sprint through a joyful world.

In some ways, Denshattack feels like a rhythm game, but without a reliance on pressing buttons in time with music (though, side note – the soundtrack is great). Racing down the tracks and avoiding obstacles while leaping your train and using the right control stick to perform various tricks requires split-second decision-making, and I am impressed by how much trust developer Undercoders has in my reaction time. The game is not scared to throw lots of high-speed, unexpected obstacles at you in a way I appreciate. But it also meant I was never compelled to dive deeper into its trick system and learn its intricacies. I was happy just rotating the control stick a bunch and hoping for the best, which isn’t super rewarding.

I like Denshattack’s structure and challenge in that if you want to get a high score and achieve all of the game’s “Dares” (individual challenges customized to each level), then you can and will likely replay each level over and over, potentially to frustration. But checkpoints are generous, and restarts are quick. Perfection is not demanded, but is rewarded if you want to pursue it. If you just want to see all the frequent surprises and progress the bubbly story forward, it’s lots of fun just making it to the finish line of each level.

And “surprises” is a key word. Denshattack is longer than I expected, taking about 13 hours to see credits, but it does not feel overlong thanks to its impressive ability to constantly mix up the gameplay and present you with frequent absurd and unexpected scenarios all the way through the final level. Whether you’re chasing and fighting a giant robot through a collapsing city or pulling off tricks to rally a giant baseball back to sender, Denshattack is always making you do something crazy. Those two examples alone happen very early in the game. There are plenty of other moments like that throughout that I won’t spoil.

New train stunt abilities also appear often, and each new level is carefully designed to help you take advantage of those new mechanics. The levels often blur by in only a few minutes, but undeniable care has been taken to ensure every moment is bombastic, exciting, and importantly, weird.

The narrative is full of strange personalities and interesting character designs that pull heavily from anime tropes in a way that feels like acknowledgement rather than cliché. Rivals become advocates who join your team, and your motivation to become the best Denshattacker (even though you just learned what that is) energizes you to succeed. I was never particularly moved by the plot, nor can I even really identify a personal favorite character, but I like the world as a fun wrapping for why you’re stunt-driving a train through a Japan decimated by a colorful environmental apocalypse.

Denshattack is weird as hell, and it leans into its strange premise with earned confidence, constantly building and layering on its ideas throughout. It avoids any whiffs of boredom by ripping through environments at full speed, but that also didn’t give me much time to take it all in and immerse myself in the admittedly absurd world. When you’re too busy having fun by avoiding every potential crash along the way, though, maybe that proves stopping and smelling the roses is overrated.

For more on Denshattack, you can read about the game’s Dreamcast inspirations here.

Source link

The murder mystery genre clings tightly to a tried-and-true formula – a set toolbox and sequence of necessary events – that confines any story that adheres to its style. What’s so delightful about The Mermaid Mask is that it follows every rule and acknowledges every well-worn trope, but still stands with exciting and exceptional storytelling. With memorable puzzles, eye-catching animations, and a spirited voice cast, I admire the way the story was told just as much as the story itself.

Magnus Mortuga, captain of the Mortuga Submarine, has been killed, and it’s up to Detective Grimoire and his assistant Sally to solve the case. The ensuing investigation is compelling and exciting, and I’m pleased to say the conclusion is surprising and satisfying. I loved the previous title, Tangle Tower, but found its final moments to be its weakest; the culprit in The Mermaid Mask is superior, and the art and animation surrounding the investigation’s climax are perhaps my favorite in the whole game. SFB Games is also particularly skilled at writing funny, conversational exchanges between characters (which often work thanks to Grimoire and Sally’s respective line deliveries). 

The Mermaid Mask takes place entirely within the aforementioned submersible, combining point-and-click gameplay with puzzle-solving and lots of conversations with the vehicle’s inhabitants. Each room is eccentric, reflecting its inhabitants, and has a backdrop scattered with evidence (the game has about 50 pieces total) for you to investigate. The sheer volume of evidence can become overwhelming later in the game, when you’re hunting for that last clue or two to trigger a confrontation to move the story forward, but an optional hint system (free of cost and punishment) can nudge you in the right direction if you feel stuck.

The game is particularly dialogue-heavy, but there’s not a boring performance in the entire voice cast. Symmetry speaks with an almost Shakespearean meter; Zephyr’s low-pitched voice is mysterious and alluring; and Sinthia’s earnest enthusiasm is endearing. Combined with charming character designs and lovingly detailed animation, the whole crew of Mortuga’s submarine comes to life from the game’s earliest moments. After completing the game, there’s an extensive art gallery showcasing early concept art for each character, complete with artist commentary. I highly recommend checking it out.

The soundtrack enhances the whole experience. Music in a game like this has to set the tone while staying out of the way of the dialogue and story. Raphael Benjamin Meyer’s orchestral soundtrack is just exciting enough to catch my ear and specific enough to fit each occasion, but subtle enough that it never gets between me and the characters I’m speaking to. I was also impressed by how many unique tracks the game has – there’s a theme for every character, and various minigames get their own songs – especially since it could have scraped by with much less.

I particularly appreciate how The Mermaid Mask makes players earn their clues and conclusions. It’s not enough to present the right evidence at the right time – there’s also a fill-in-the-blank minigame (a series staple) that asks you to draw conclusions based on relevant information. The Mermaid Mask also includes many 3D puzzles to solve, typically used to open locked boxes or reveal hidden compartments. The puzzles are also all ideas I’ve never seen before, like twisting a pig’s expression to create certain numbers, arranging a grid of peculiar skulls, or cataloging mushroom species. The puzzles often appear inscrutable, but you can solve most of them just by analyzing them hard enough, which really helped me get into the detective mindset. If you can’t figure them out, Grimoire and Sally will give a few more details on each failed attempt.

The Mermaid Mask is the best Detective Grimoire adventure yet. Its art, music, voice cast, and puzzle design are all worthy of praise, but they’re held together by a great story and a fun script, complete with all the quips and twists I’ve come to expect from SFB’s mystery series. I spent my entire playthrough engrossed and engaged, and I hope the development team gets to make plenty more sequels.

Source link

Every college football player knows their third year defines their career trajectory. That’s why one of EA Sports College Football 27’s (CFB27) cover athletes, Dante Moore, opted to return to Oregon rather than declare for the 2026 NFL Draft. The talented quarterback understood that another strong season would increase his already-impressive draft stock. Like Moore, CFB27 enters its junior year with high expectations. The previous two entries showcased bursts of potential, and EA Tiburon’s third effort brings strong tweaks and new mechanics to both sides of the ball while also reintroducing a well-liked arcade mode. Thankfully, these updates expand on the series’ highlight reel, even if some egregious lowlights threaten to tarnish its legacy. 

College football is about extreme speed and physicality. CFB27 embraces that from the moment the ball is hiked. Pass catchers and blitzers attempt to jump the snap, finding holes in coverage and blocks, respectively. Defensive backs use their hands to jostle receivers at the line of scrimmage and in the secondary, disrupting routes. Desperate quarterbacks lunge over manpiles at the one-yard line. Success on CFB27’s gridiron, like in real life, is tied to split-second decision-making and timing. Throwing a dot through double coverage and making a risky time-based catch against human or computer-controlled opponents is always exciting. And flicking a stick to wrap up a beefy runner, rather than clicking a button, feels strikingly organic. Everything looks great and plays well, especially during inclement weather, and EA Tiburon finally included a detailed skills trainer in the main menu to help freshmen and seniors alike learn these new and improved interactions.

Most of the smart gameplay changes are best experienced in Road to Glory. The new edge, free safety, and tight end positions are welcome additions to the loop, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Edges see the most action per down, fighting through double teams, chip blocks, and tackle-avoidant ball carriers. Stat increases come easily when you’re that close to the quarterback, but the same can’t be said for the often deflating safety experience. I was usually too far back to stop the run, and unless the offense needed a deep pass, my zones were rarely targeted. Playing as a tight end, however, offered a more dynamic career. If I wasn’t one-handing catches between the hashes, I was pancaking rushers like the dynamic playmaker scouts projected me to be. 

Sadly, my other responsibilities, balancing academics, leadership, health, fitness, and brand, are less interesting. Not much happens beyond weekly practices and matchups. Moreover, none of the micromanagement activities come close to feeling as impactful as my gameday performances. Occasionally, teammates, classmates, coaches, and sponsors spice up the monotony, offering extracurricular opportunities, like skipping class for a party, watching film, or starring in commercials, but beyond accepting or declining their invitations for temporary buffs/debuffs, the loop grew stale long before I hung up my cleats. And inconsistencies in presentation, like being berated by my coach even after scoring a flashy, game-winning touchdown, as well as context – the university newspaper interviewed me about being a quarterback even though I was a linebacker – were concerning. 

Unfortunately, intrusive microtransactions have also been added to the mix. In Road to Glory, ability points can be purchased to sidestep the slow burn of player progression. That, in and of itself, is bad enough, but CFB27 takes this a step further by including similar predatory tactics in its beloved Dynasty mode. By removing options to accelerate coach progression, players are now forced to either gradually increase their level over a long 30-year career or spend money to unlock their favorite skills ASAP. Fast-tracking your player or coach’s development using the latter method is nowhere near as intrusive as the College Football Ultimate Team advertisements that litter the main menu. Even so, incentivizing players to disengage with Road to Glory and Dynasty’s deep progression systems is a massive step back, rendering CFB’s most popular game modes inconsistent at best and hollow at worst. 

This shift is particularly alarming because Dynasty is otherwise in the best shape it’s ever been in. Dynamic athletic director expectations imbue each college with much-needed personality. The fans and wider administration of the University of Alabama expect playoff berths every year and won’t be too keen on keeping you around if losses start to mount. But the less prominent Kent State is more focused on rebuilding following a mass exodus of talent after a middling 2025 season, understanding that true success takes years to achieve. I loved playing within the confines of both extremes. Losing to hated rival Ohio State in my first year with Michigan was serious enough to land me on the hot seat, while signing my first three-star recruit after winning a bowl game with a small school practically transformed me into a community hero overnight. 

Both outcomes felt deeply personalized and empowered me to invest dozens of hours in Dynasty’s best new feature, Blueprint, which gave me unprecedented control over how I built my football program. From dumping a fortune or a few pennies’ worth of Dynasty Points into equipment like ice baths, reducing the wear and tear of my players, to hiring support staff for a sports performance department that facilitated offseason training, CFB27’s newfound level of freedom in recruiting, developing, and retaining talent has never been more intuitive or satisfying. That’s not to say the mode is without flaws – I’ve witnessed major schools with truckloads of NIL money sign dozens of highly touted recruits, leaving the rest of the college football landscape in shambles. This might not be so far removed from the bleak realities of the sport, but seeing Georgia bring in a whopping 25 four-star and 9 five-star players each year is downright immersion-breaking and, quite frankly, ridiculous. 

Ultimate Team is the same polarizing, heavily monetized mode as in previous games. Complete challenges, collect (or buy) currency, open card packs. Rinse and repeat. I can see how the allure of acquiring coveted players and maxing their overalls can be appealing to competitive football fans, but the deeper and more expansive Dynasty and Road to Glory campaigns will likely monopolize my time. 

I’ll probably even jump into Mascot Mashup on occasion, too. A nice callback to the classic, zany quickplay mode from EA Sports’ NCAA Football franchise, Mascot Mashup pits over 100 teams of iconic mascots against each other. Unlocking them is as simple as winning a Play Now match with the college of your choice. Mascot Matchup serves as a nice break from some of the other, more intense offerings. There’s plenty of laughs to be had alone or with friends, especially after seeing an Indiana Hoosier side-flip-juke a Stanford tree and run 60 yards to daylight.

On the field, CFB27 dazzles. I never tired of running down The Hill in Clemson Memorial Stadium, the pyrotechnics lighting the night sky and a swarm of drones tracing a Tiger above a distant jumbotron. Sudden rain and snowstorms constantly made fourth-quarter bouts more epic. And celebrating with my guys after running back an interception was arguably more cathartic than watching the real thing. Nevertheless, the off-the-field issues, namely, shallow progression systems and the transformative inclusion of microtransactions in practically every mode, were disappointing. CFB27 made some fantastic key plays down the stretch in its junior season, but the team will need to make more improvements in the offseason if it wants to hoist that championship trophy next year. 

Source link

After well over a dozen mainline entries, Black Flag remains one of the most fondly remembered in the long canon of Assassin’s Creed entries. It’s little surprise that Ubisoft chose this installment for a robust reenvisioning. While not a fundamental remake of the original 2013 game, Resynced is also far more than the standard remaster some might expect, as it features expansive gameplay and narrative additions and tweaks, along with a complete visual overhaul. The result is an impressive and sizeable game that maintains both the charm and some of the rough edges that defined the original. After 13 years, there’s enough new here to delight returning fans, but it’s also notable for being modernized to a degree that new players should find a lot to enjoy.

Black Flag benefits tremendously from one of the great narrative maxims: pirates are fun. Across the series’ many historical time periods, few have featured such an inherently attractive setting and concept. Black Flag Resynced ably captures what works about the pirate fantasy. The revamped ship combat is approachable and explosive, if eventually a bit repetitive. The narrative dialogue is salty and rowdy. The sea shanties are jaunty. The many islands at the edge of the horizon are filled with secret chests, messages in bottles, and forgotten treasure caves. The sunsets across the West Indies are to die for. The game’s greatest success is its spot-on pirate experience, and that alone is worth a lot.

The story of Edward Kenway is one of my least favorite of the many Assassins we’ve met. He spends most of the tale obsessed with his own acquisition of wealth, and the plot fails to nail what works for me about the Assassin’s Creed formula. That hasn’t changed in Resynced, and the broader narrative can still sometimes feel disjointed and missing in some important transitional moments, especially in the later hours. However, re-recorded and expanded dialogue helps the storytelling feel modern and dramatic. And new content helps fill in some important gaps that previously felt barren. I especially like the new naval officer missions, which help your ship’s crew feel a bit more dynamic. I also like some of the expanded storytelling around historical pirates like Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet. The modern-day story component from the original Black Flag is now absent. While that was never a high point, I still feel the series as a whole misses the boat by not tying these historical narratives together with a more meaningful twist on the modern-day Assassin/Templar conflict.

Virtually every element of gameplay has been retouched in some way, and it’s all for the better. Parkour feels smoother and more flexible. Combat has increased options for parries, takedowns, and tools. Poor tailing missions are scaled back. Stealth is easier to navigate. The Hideout in Great Inagua offers new options for expansion and growth, fostering a stronger sense of investment in the place. Explorable locations are fleshed out, with more secrets to uncover. Difficulty and accessibility settings dramatically expand the play customizability. Taken together, these improvements make a big difference and help Resynced feel fresh and up to date, and that extends to the visuals, too.

The Caribbean seas and islands of Black Flag Resynced make it an exceptionally beautiful game, adding to a clear allure in going off the beaten path and exploring. Beyond nailing the pirate aesthetic, it’s the sense of freeform discovery that is the game’s other undeniable success. There’s so much to do, and a lot of it is great fun. Dive for sunken treasure. Hunt animals. Build a pirate fleet. Hunt Templars. Fill your mansion with art. Track down legendary ships. Conquer forts. Follow treasure maps. Even when Black Flag Resynced flirts with feature bloat, there’s no denying its capacity to distract and offer more to do.   

For me, a lot of the joy and excitement of Assassin’s Creed comes from visiting a new era in history and rediscovering the series’ conflict through the lens of that time and place. This return to a familiar locale lacks that, but it should still offer it for newer players who never experienced the game more than a decade ago. But even without that sense of newness, Black Flag Resynced is an impressive rework, setting a high bar for how to return to an older action game and make it relevant once more. I’d prefer to sail to new horizons, but I’m also happy to rediscover a journey that reminds me why I embraced the franchise in the first place.

Source link

I’ve been conflicted about Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced since it was announced. The original 2013 pirate action-adventure is one of my favorite games ever, so my immediate reaction to hearing it was getting a remake for current-era consoles was excitement. In that very first announcement video, Ubisoft said that Resynced would not reinvent protagonist Edward Kenway’s tale, but that there would be large changes to combat, parkour, stealth, and the structure of the overall story. And while changes like that fall within the framework of what a remake is, I couldn’t tell if these adjustments would mean Resynced still felt faithful to the original game. And regardless of whether or not it was, there was also the bigger question of if this remake would be better than Black Flag.

Having now played Resynced, I don’t think it is better. That still means Resynced is pretty good. Black Flag is one of the best games in the Assassin’s Creed series, and Resynced doesn’t change so much that that’s no longer the case. The issue is that for every positive change that Resynced makes to Black Flag, it stumbles into creating a new problem.

If you asked me what Black Flag is, I’d tell you it was a treasure hunt. You play as a normal employee of an entertainment company in the 21st century who is scrubbing through the memories of Edward Kenway, a Welsh privateer-turned-pirate trying to make his fortune in the 18th century, via a machine called an Animus. Your mission is initially just to capture footage of Edward’s life to make a new media project. However, your research into Edward’s memories draws the attention of your bosses. Turns out, Edward stumbled across someone who knew of a site called the Observatory during this period of his life, and your bosses want to know whether Edward ever found it himself. They task you with spending more and more time reliving Edward’s life in hopes of finding where it’s hidden in the past, so that they can rediscover it for themselves in the modern day. 

You don’t know what the Observatory really is or why you’re looking for it, and your efforts slowly pull you into a shadow war between freedom-protecting Assassins and order-oriented Templars–and at the same time, you see Edward similarly get pulled into that same conflict 300 years earlier. Mirroring your character’s life to Edward’s is straightforward but effective narrative framing, and it adds this incredible science-fiction flavoring to what’s an already terrific historical fantasy adventure. To date, it’s one of the best intertwined present-and-past stories in the series–only the first two Assassin’s Creed games do it better.

Resynced gets rid of pretty much all of that. The intro does establish that you’re experiencing a simulation of Edward’s life via the Animus but doesn’t provide any reasoning up front as to why you’re doing it. The original game’s modern-day missions have been completely stripped away, reframing the entire adventure. It no longer feels like a sci-fi treasure hunt.

Instead, Resynced is a sci-fi rebellion. But you won’t get this framing if you just play Resynced’s story, as the modern-day missions that provide this framing are all optional.

Resynced is actually a sequel to Assassin’s Creed Shadows, not Assassin’s Creed III like the original Black Flag. It continues the story of Animus users who have awakened as Travelers to fight against Ego, an artificial intelligence created by the Templars that is now training itself to become the perfect overlord of the human race. If you go out of your way to find them (like really out of your way–the game does not make it easy for you), you can find rifts that allow you to temporarily enter what I can only surmise is the Black Room, where Ego shows you how it would use details of Edward, Blackbeard, and Mary Read’s lives to generate what it thinks is a better version of historical events. 

Ego theorizes that if these three pirates’ stories were that of a man who returned to his wife, a pirate captain who took the king’s pardon, and an Assassin who left the Brotherhood, and all three were ultimately rewarded with wealth and happiness for choosing to live as good little sheep, then perhaps more Animus users like you would be inspired to fall in line rather than embrace a chaotic life and seek out personal fame, fortune, and freedom. In Ego’s eyes, the best way to guide humanity into a better future is if the ugliness of the past is erased and replaced with something that is safe and sober, but robbed of all reason and sapped of all spirit.

This. Is. Fascinating! However, this weird-as-hell (in a cool way) sci-fi story is frustratingly tucked away in optional side content that’s not easy to find because it’s not even marked on the in-game map. You just have to know where to look for these four rifts or spend hours scouring every corner of the Caribbean. And hopefully you’ve also done all the rifts in Shadows so that you have the context for who Ego is, why the Guide and Eagle are fighting Ego, who the Guide and Eagle even are (it is a whole thing, let me tell you), and what it means for you to be one of the Travelers. 

This bizarre mishandling of the framing device for Resynced’s story encapsulates the remake’s failings. It does a lot of cool stuff, but it also doesn’t use that cool stuff very effectively. It’s so bewildering to play this game and see moments of brilliance continuously mishandled. 

I adore what Resynced does for Anne Bonny, for example, a character who takes on an important role in the final chapters of Black Flag but is largely absent for most of the story. Resynced has Anne introduced as soon as Edward returns to Nassau at the very beginning of the game, and she regularly pops up in the story after that in reimagined cutscenes and brand-new missions that further flesh out her importance to Edward. It makes all of the already-great scenes involving her in the later chapters hit even harder. The same is true for Ed Thatch and Stede Bonnet, both of whom also get more screen time and brand-new missions that continue their storylines after their departure from Black Flag’s story and give them a more fulfilling end.

So why then does Resynced bother to add brand-new characters who have very little screentime and unrewarding finales to their arcs that leaves them feeling separated from Edward’s tale? The remake is fixing the problem of Black Flag’s old characters and then adding new characters who have the flaws that were just fixed in the original characters, preserving one of the original problems of Black Flag.

Resynced’s other issues aren’t nearly as severe, but they all add up and needle at you throughout the experience. Most are a result of trying to fit Black Flag into a new game engine. What the various teams across Ubisoft have been able to accomplish with Ubisoft Anvil is to be commended (Mirage and Resynced feel so much better to play than Origins), but it’s still clearly an engine designed for an action-RPG, not a stealth-driven action-adventure. Edward’s freerunning is better than the likes of Origins’ Bayek or Odyssey’s Kassandra, but both the mechanical depth and the feeling of his freerunning still fall behind Unity’s Arno and the protagonists who preceded him. 

And while combat does at times feel like a modern take on the counter-heavy combat of Black Flag, the use of pistols, the rope dart, the sweeping kick, and the forward kick is clearly just a cleverly hidden version of the battle abilities from the RPG-style Assassin’s Creed games–there’s a bit more strategy to using these equipment and skills in Resynced, but not enough to keep combat exciting across a 30-hour story given the poor enemy variety. 

The new animations and voicelines are hit-or-miss too. Many of Edward’s new lines add excellent insight to his character during scenes where there previously was none, while some of the new lines–especially his extremely pro-Assassin, anti-Templar one-liners that he spouts with every Assassin Contract–feel like a mischaracterization that makes him oddly heroic during a portion of the game where he has to be a scumbag for the story to work. Brand-new cutscenes add more story, but at the cost of poor facial animations that look like wooden puppets talking to each other. Some of the cutscenes that were in the original game are also somehow worse, with strange facial hiccups (at least on Xbox Series X) distorting the longing glances, winks, smirks, scowls, and contemplative sighs that carried so much narrative weight in the original Black Flag.

Resynced also gives Edward the ability to quietly crouch walk and slink behind cover anywhere, not just stalker zones, and incorporates some of Shadows’ uses of weather and darkness to add new considerations to stealth, but the remake’s outright removal of all tailing missions (which, admittedly were a pain point in the original game) means these improvements don’t have much use. Social stealth is also back in Resynced (great!) but almost every mission that relied on those mechanics has been removed or changed, meaning there’s little chance to engage with it (bad!). 

In fact, when it comes to the mass deletion of all mandatory tailing missions and changing almost every social stealth mission so that they no longer rely on stealth mechanics, Resynced feels like too big of a swing in the other direction, recreating Black Flag into a game like the action-packed adventures of Kassandra or Eivor. And that makes sense–all of these games are made in the same engine.

The issue is that, unlike those games, Resynced isn’t an RPG–there are no ways for Edward to talk his way through problems, disguise himself, or create clever opportunities. He can only engage through the action part of the action-RPG formula. So instead of having missions with a wide variety and breadth of structure, you’re still mostly doing the same thing over and over. Resynced might have been a stronger experience if only half of the social stealth-driven tailing missions were removed, as changing pretty much all of them and moving Edward’s story in a more action-oriented direction simply shifts one problem into another. 

Weird camera cuts and dramatic perspective shifts during assassination takedowns and chain kills also make it irritatingly tricky to keep track of enemies in enclosed spaces, like caves or the decks of smaller ships–it’s totally fine to have this in the wide-open locales of Origins’ Egypt or Odyssey’s Greece, but it clashes with Black Flag’s structure. The game hasn’t changed enough to fit the new game engine, which leads me to wonder why this wasn’t just a brand-new pirate adventure during this time period that followed a new protagonist. Edward meets so many other Assassins! We didn’t need to stick to the rigidity of his story again if it doesn’t really fit the mechanics of this new game engine.

I could go on but the point remains: There are plenty of great changes in Resynced, but equally a ton of pain points in trying to force the Black Flag structure to fit into an engine designed for a very different type of Assassin’s Creed. This makes Resynced less of a new gold standard for Edward’s adventure, and more of a bizzaro-world variation of the original Black Flag. If you haven’t played Black Flag (or at least don’t revisit it often), you should play Resynced, because even though it doesn’t feel like a faithful remake to me, it is still remaking a game that’s already critically acclaimed. But if you have played Black Flag, I’m not sure if Resynced will hit you as hard emotionally as you’re hoping for.

All said, I regard Resynced with the exact same sentiments as Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Resynced goes beyond the scope of a traditional remaster and adjusts the content of Black Flag to make improvements to the experience (what you’d expect for a remake). But the downside to these fixes is that it highlights problems that weren’t fixed or, even worse, new problems that didn’t even exist in the original game. Resynced is a half-step toward something truly fantastic. If you play it, you will see the strengths of Black Flag. You will see why the original game was the de facto pirate video game for years. But you will also find a remake that doesn’t manage to take the crown from the very game that it’s remaking.

Source link

Few deny the impressive and surprisingly consistent creativity Nintendo has delivered for more than 40 years, but even within that ecosystem of fun ideas, Rhythm Heaven stands out. The series represents a wonderful and wildly unique collection of concepts that are not beholden to Nintendo’s history and make me happy, proud, anxious, and angry all in equal measure. Groove is not my favorite in the series, but it stands tall alongside the rest to earn permanent placement on my Switch hard drive.

If you’re unfamiliar, Rhythm Heaven (and Groove is no exception) is a collection of individual rhythm minigames that sound and play differently but are all based on tapping only one button (but occasionally two) in time with infectious music and charming visuals. Sometimes you’re a frog launching fellow frogs into the air with a lilypad trampoline. Sometimes you have to bounce fruit across your arms by flexing your muscles. All the games are weird, they all have little stories, and they’re all memorable in one way or another.

Groove’s collection is great. I genuinely don’t think there is a single game among its more than 100 single and multiplayer games that I actively dislike. But there also weren’t any I immediately flagged as new, all-time favorites. The larger collection meets, but does not exceed, my expectations for strange and memorable games and music, which I am more than happy with.

Beatspell is the most unique new mode that functions a bit like an action game, even if it is pitched as a turn-based RPG. As you earn medals and complete games, you get the opportunity to make more progress in Beatspell, which involves using specific rhythms to execute offensive and defensive spells against enemies. It has an optional story to read, which I appreciate, as Rhythm Heaven historically does not care about context (and it doesn’t need to). I like making choices about which spells to acquire, as it is a factor of weakness consideration, but also, which rhythms you are good at executing. Playing Beatspell without having to make progress in the main game would have been nice, but I do see the value in spreading it out over the larger experience. It prevents you from losing yourself to one musical game for too long, which can be exhausting, as all the games require extreme focus.

Taking breaks and jumping around is the best way to play, and another way the game smartly encourages that is by randomly, periodically picking a game that you are allowed to attempt to get a Perfect score on. Even if you have a perfect run, you won’t get the special badge unless you get it perfect during these specific moments. I don’t mind the opportunity to perfect a game popping up without warning – it makes your attempts special and scary. But it can be annoying to have to wait to try to get the badge on Slice N Dice Kitchen, for example, when you’ve really got the hang of it and happen to be in the mood to play it.

And speaking of Perfect attempts, I struggled to play Rhythm Heaven Groove on a TV. A dedicated character warns you in that cute Nintendo way that TV or wireless headphone play may cause difficult-to-perceive delays and highlights settings that attempt to address those issues, but it just wasn’t enough for me. My Really Goods and Just OKs changed to Awesomes and Superbs the moment I switched to handheld and wired headphones. It is a frustrating technical limitation, but one that can thankfully be overcome as long as you don’t mind playing outside the dock.

The other unexpected downside of Groove is that its menus are oddly underwhelming. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter because the games are fun and the music is great; that’s the important part. But I was surprised at how unfinished the UI feels, especially when compared to the bombastic presentation of Rhythm Heaven Megamix on 3DS.

Beatspell is Groove’s most novel element, and it’s an exciting mode that I would be eager to play as a potential standalone game in the future. The core rhythm minigames don’t offer quite the same level of bizarre surprise as previous games in the series, but they are all still very good, and I absolutely see myself returning to them in the future when I am craving that unique, rewarding rhythm gameplay.

Source link

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have known that Rhythm Heaven was a close cousin to WarioWare, but it never stood out to me as strongly as it did while playing Rhythm Heaven Groove. The sheer unapologetic weirdness of it intertwined with the strict timing-based minigames made this feel like WarioWare, but as a rhythm game. And I feel like a fool for just now discovering that these are two great tastes that go great together.

The influences from WarioWare will be obvious to anyone who has played that long-running gonzo microgame series, but unlike those, the individual games in Rhythm Heaven Groove last much longer than a few seconds. After a short practice round to learn the rhythm and button prompts, you go into the actual performance that mixes together commands to the rhythm of a song. Almost all of your commands are mapped to the A button, but more complicated arrangements add one of the D-pad buttons for a different command. In an early game where you’re driving a stunt car for a commercial, for example, the A button accelerates while the D-pad Down hits the brakes, so you need to alternate between them on command to stay aligned with the other stunt cars.

The WarioWare spirit shines through in both the art style–an eclectic blend of crude simplicity, chunky cartoonism, and occasional hyper-realism–and also in the gonzo spirit of the games themselves. The stunt car example is one of the more normal ones, but many of the games are downright bizarre. Across the breadth of Rhythm Heaven, you’ll have to jump and roll as a cat doll, bounce fruits off your muscles as a bodybuilder, sort delicious pudding from tainted living pudding cups as a factory robot, and jump over windshield wipers during a rainstorm. The game frequently surprises you with new creative applications that all feel different, even if they’re mechanically very similar. That sense of surprise meant that even when I didn’t like a game as much, I loved seeing the creativity.

In addition to adapting to each game’s rhythm, you also often have to contend with distractions in the background. The kitty-hopping game–Hop, Stop, N Roll–transforms the background from a simple wood-paneled design to a kaleidoscopic beach scene, so part of the challenge is keeping your concentration and the beat going while the world changes around you. When you learn to “read” the games, you also start to notice little signs about your performance, like your fellow performer in the umbrella-folding game shooting you a dirty look if your timing was just slightly off. 

Rhythm Heaven Groove

While the WarioWare influence is obvious, my time with Rhythm Heaven Groove also reminded me of another long-lost rhythm game: Elite Beat Agents. While no game has quite substituted for EBA’s charm, mixing storytelling with pop songs and rhythmic touch screen taps, Rhythm Heaven Groove is similarly focused on nailing your percussive beats. The sound design has excellent feedback with a sharp, snappy snare that punctuates even harder when you nail a beat perfectly. Sometimes I would simply close my eyes to feel my way through the rhythm, and it worked just as well as watching on-screen. Everything has a sound cue, so this is one game you actually can play blindfolded. 

My absolute favorite aspect of Rhythm Heaven Groove, though, were the Remix stages. Each column consists of four stages, and they all feel varied as you’re playing them and climbing the tower. When you reach the top, all four get remixed into one game, sometimes set to a real, credited J-pop song. At this point, all those games that seemed so different feel like different parts of the same whole, and you get to see them coming together. Sometimes a game will even fade into another mid-beat, showing you that you’re actually keeping the same rhythm across both. It’s a very cool magic trick. 

That said, the mapping of commands onto the D-pad would occasionally trip me up, because it wasn’t always the same D-pad button across each game. Since the Remix stages start without any warm-up time, I would sometimes finish a set of stages and come back to do the Remix later, only to discover I had completely forgotten which D-pad button to use. Aside from trial and error, the only solution is to quit out and find the individual minigames, and then redo their practice modes as a reminder. It’s not terribly intuitive, and there’s not any particular reason the D-pad prompt couldn’t just be consistent throughout all of the minigames. Yes it’s a little more elegant that D-Pad Left triggers a crab claw and D-Pad Down hits the car brakes, but would it really matter if they were the same? On that one point, the game became less about rhythm and more about memorization, which undermined the fun. 

Rhythm Heaven Groove

And as much fun as it was in handheld, I struggled with playing Rhythm Heaven Groove on my TV. To its credit, the game recognizes when you’ve hooked it up to your TV for the first time and conducts a quick calibration game in an effort to reduce the effects of lag. But even after going through that, I struggled to hit my marks across several games playing on my TV with a Pro Controller, even in games I had already mastered in handheld mode. The game does note that some TVs just behave differently than others, so your mileage may vary.  

Those same struggles with TV lag may have impacted my multiplayer experience, but not enough to detract from the fun. I dabbled in all the games with my two kids of varying ages, and after some early struggles, we found a handful of favorites that created the kind of raucous party atmosphere that Rhythm Heaven is obviously going for. There’s a great mix of competitive and cooperative game types, and unlike the single-player columns that offer different games as you climb, these offer new twists on the games you’ve already mastered. We were only playing with two players at a time, but it fills in the extra spots with bots regardless of your player count for a total of four. As long as you have at least one buddy, you can play all of the multiplayer games.

So many of the multiplayer games are strong that it’s hard to pick favorites, but a few stand out. A virus-busting game shoots a disease through tubes, so you have to pin them with precise timing as they come, and your position in the four quadrants of protection rotates each turn. A tennis game imitates an RPG as you lob balls to defeat approaching enemies and save a prince. Cake Wait revolves around waiting until exactly 3 o’clock to grab the single slice of cake on the table, testing your ability to count down on-tempo. An Arkanoid-like arrow-shooting game has you break bricks protecting a bomb as you race to be the first to hit and detonate it. There is even a card-flipping memory game, but instead of pictures, you’re matching particular drum rhythms as displayed by toe-tapping chickens. All of these are delivered with the same goofball spirit as the rest of the game, which makes it disarmingly funny. 

Rhythm Heaven Groove

Still, multiplayer lends itself to the big-screen experience of a TV, and we did occasionally find it hard to master the timing in some minigames. One of the first, in which you pluck hairs from an onion, consistently tripped us up, even after going back to it once we had performed much better on some of the other games. It’s hard to say if this was due to TV lag or if that particular game is just surprisingly strict, but it was a noticeable change from the kooky fun of the others to consistently failing out of that one.

Nintendo is one of the biggest and oldest game publishers in the world, so it feels strange to say that something it made carries itself with indie sensibilities. But that’s always been true of WarioWare, and by extension, it’s true of Rhythm Heaven Groove. It’s such a strange, low-fi game that it comes off as if the team is getting away with something while the boss isn’t looking. But it’s also a genuinely welcome addition to my Switch collection, because it’s such an oddity. Whenever I feel the need to tap my toes while feeling the beat of a tadpole march, or invite my friends to compete in a foot race as lucha libre across giant bouncy balls, I’ll return to Rhythm Heaven.

Source link

Legendary boxer Marvin Hagler once said, “It’s difficult to get up and do roadwork at five in the morning when you’re sleeping in silk sheets.” While this refers to getting rich through combat sports and therefore losing the work ethic you once had, the notion could also be applied to EA Sports and its lack of competition. The Madden franchise, with its NFL exclusivity, has long drawn the ire of fans for a perceived lack of innovation due to its monopolization of the NFL video game space, and after spending many hours with EA Sports UFC 6, I’m starting to worry the same problem might have transposed to this franchise as well.

To be clear, the gameplay in UFC 6 is the best this franchise has seen. Thanks to new ways of differentiating the fighters, either via animations, movements, tendencies, or signature ways of attacking, EA Vancouver finally cracked the code on making combatants feel distinct. And those fighters largely look incredible; though your mileage will vary based on fighter popularity, the biggest stars’ likenesses are often dead-on in UFC 6. This permeates the experience, whether you’re playing a quick one-off fight in the game’s capable online suite or diving deeper into longer-tail modes.

UFC 6 carries forward the series’ pedigree of action-packed fights inside the cage; though grappling options are always available, in my experience, wrestling-heavy affairs are rare. That’s a good thing, as grappling continues to be a sore spot, straddling the line between being too cryptic and too mindless. Instead, fights often quickly develop into high-speed chess matches and violent car crashes. Thanks to improved blocking and more variance in striking, it pays to be strategic, particularly as you manage your stamina over the course of an extended bout. And thanks to an evident focus on approachability, anyone can ease into the action with optional features like slow-motion in-fight moments, beginner control schemes, and simplified grappling. 

This entry also introduces a Flow State mechanic, which uses a charging meter and aims to emulate the feeling of a fighter being in the zone. Once you enter Flow State, activated with a push of the d-pad, the background noise fades away, and your fighter temporarily gains a performance boost. This addition effectively captures the momentum shift that can occur when everything starts clicking, but it also veers the action heavily to the arcade side of the fence.

However, like many UFC stars past and present, the in-Octagon performance isn’t the problem – it’s everything that happens outside of the fights. The M rating affords more blood in the cage, but it’s more often used to listen to (mostly) uncensored rap and nu metal songs on repeat in the poorly optimized menus. You still have access to all the modes of recent games; I enjoyed putting together my dream fight card, setting up a one-night tournament like the early days of the promotion, or pulling off fantasy matchups between two legends in their primes, but I’m always drawn to the longer-form experiences. 

UFC 6 touts two distinct career modes, but unfortunately, both fall flat. The standard career mode features the same loop as past games: You sign to fight a specific opponent, then manage your week-by-week bandwidth by completing a combination of sparring and promotional activities. However, this quickly becomes repetitive, as you complete the same few activities multiple times per fight with a career spread across 30-plus fights. You can simulate some of the activities you’ve already completed, but you get fewer benefits, and with all the promotional activities simply being menu items you select, it doesn’t take long for the tedium to set in. 

Even the new player-agency elements fall woefully short of expectations, giving you occasional binary choices that range from how you trash-talk to whether you want to fall for your coach’s get-rich-quick scheme. These feel inconsequential at best and outright annoying at worst; by the end of the first couple of years, I was hoping to change camps like in past games, but that is one area of player agency that’s missing. Normally, I’m glued to this mode with each new entry, but since I’ve played all previous UFC games, UFC 6’s career mode quickly gave me an unshakeable sensation of “been there, done that.”

It’s perhaps why I was so hopeful for The Legacy, a narrative-driven twist on career, where you take control of a fictional UFC prospect. This mode, with its M-rated story and promise of fights that spill outside of the Octagon, has a ton of potential, but once you get past the short, forgettable story, it’s just the standard career mode without your custom fighter. After seeing the story through to the end, you can continue playing career mode as the narrative’s protagonist, but I left The Legacy shortly after its narrative conclusion, likely never to return.

The one UFC 6 mode that impressed me is the Hall of Legends, a new interactive museum that highlights three current UFC fighters. Walking around a lovingly crafted museum themed after Max Holloway’s home of Hawaii or one that pays homage to Zhang Weili’s Chinese origin in third person delivers a cool immersive experience, giving you bite-sized documentaries of each fighter and tasking you with re-creating iconic moments from their careers in-game. It’s here that the dev team’s love of the sport really shines, but when there are only three fights to relive per fighter, and the documentary footage seems to be all repurposed from past UFC content, I was left wanting more.

Instead, the one area that feels completely excessive and largely unnecessary is perhaps the most baffling: The Gym. This area serves as a menu-based training system, where you navigate some of the laggiest and most unwieldy screens to assign trainers to fighters to arbitrarily unlock cosmetic items. It almost serves as a chart-your-own-path daily login bonus, with each new level for every fighter unlocking new items to equip, but it all feels so tiresome and unnecessary. In fact, the menus throughout the entire UFC 6 package are so laggy that they bring the menu-heavy experiences of The Gym and both career modes down in noticeable ways. In some cases, they’re so poorly optimized that the music even skips as the next screen loads.

UFC 6’s incremental gameplay improvements and bewildering stagnation fly in the face of the fact that it’s been three years since the last entry in the series. With annualized sports franchises, you almost expect iterative innovations year after year, but after such a long wait, I expected a bigger bump with UFC 6. The improved character models, graphics, and fighter distinctions are welcome improvements, but when almost everything else feels so familiar or inessential, I can’t help but wonder if EA Sports’ UFC franchise has experienced too much time uncontested at the top.

Source link

There’s a reason Nintendo keeps remaking Star Fox 64. The N64 iteration of the rail shooter–at the time, the second Star Fox release–remains the apex of the franchise: a genuinely fantastic game that still holds up and stands the test of time. Subsequent sequels that have attempted to recapture the magic have floundered by comparison. This latest iteration, simply titled “Star Fox” for what I can only assume is meant to be a soft reboot, plays just as great as you remember and looks even better. But if you’ve already played Star Fox 64 in any iteration, it will be hard to shake the feeling of deja vu. 

For the uninitiated, or perhaps those who just learned about ultra-cool guy Fox McCloud from his spotlight-stealing cameo in the Mario Galaxy movie, Star Fox takes place in a galaxy called the Lylat system, composed of anthropomorphic animals with futuristic space-travel technology. Star Fox is a group of well-funded fighter-jock mercenaries who are regularly called upon by a military general, a dog named Pepper, to assist their space-combat operations. 

As established in an opening cutscene, some years ago Fox’s father, James McCloud, was en route to investigate questionable activity on a planet named Venom, when his wingmate Pigma betrayed him to the mad scientist Andross. James was lost, his trusty wingman Peppy escaped, and Andross kept quietly assembling his army for an invasion of the rest of the Lylat system. 

That sequence establishes one of the major new features of this remake: fully animated cutscenes. And to their credit, these are very well-made sequences. The aerial stunts look cool while staying true to the original spirit where needed, and the voice acting has been updated to facilitate the expanded scope. The more realistic character designs were divisive when shown off earlier this year, but I felt fine with them from the beginning, and after spending some time seeing them animated in cutscenes, I’ve come to really appreciate the look. Their faces are nicely expressive and textures like fur give them a sense of realism, while still staying in the fantastical world of space animals. The vast majority of the cutscenes take place aboard their docking ship, the Great Fox, as they discuss strategy, but the characters are still given lots of characterization in their movements and gestures to express their perspectives and personalities. For example, Falco rolls his eyes a lot, because he is above all kind of a jerk.

A similarly heightened level of visual fidelity is present in the stages themselves, which look recognizable to their N64 counterparts without feeling too beholden to their jagged edges and geometry. While all of the stages look great, the upgraded style is most impressive when it shows off new flourishes that weren’t available in the original, like the lighting effects of your lasers reflecting off of surfaces and illuminating dark caves. Star Fox 64 always excelled at stage variety, but this remake accentuates it by making each stage appear vastly different than the rest. I especially loved revisiting the stages that are major departures from the others, like the water world Aquas, the surface of the sun on Solar, or the wacky and kaleidoscopic Meteos wormhole. 

Star Fox

Revisiting all the areas takes at least a few runs because of how the stage layout has worked since the original. One of the coolest aspects of Star Fox 64, and again here, is the ability to carve your way from one side of the galaxy to another in a relatively freeform fashion, completing optional objectives. In broad terms, you can see the three paths as Easy, Medium, and Hard, but you aren’t limited to one track. If you know how to find your way, you can easily hop between paths throughout, so you aren’t committed to only staying on one difficulty track. Completing a hidden objective that opens the harder path will always let you switch to the easier one, but if you only complete the easier objective, you can’t switch to the harder path.

In the original Star Fox 64, this was presented rather plainly, with a blue, yellow, or red line showing where you can go. In this version, it’s given a good deal more panache, thanks again to the new extended cutscenes. Rather than simply present you with a choice of locations for your next mission, each mission starts with General Pepper debriefing from the last mission and explaining the strategic importance of both next possible locations. One might have a suspected bioweapon while the other is an outpost under attack. In each case Pepper outlines why Star Fox is the best or perhaps only available force to complete this mission. And since there’s some overlap, as you could approach a planet from different directions, it’s particularly impressive how these cutscenes stitch different pieces together without feeling noticeably disjointed. 

These all lead to the same outcome, of course. You’re ultimately headed toward Venom no matter what, and it doesn’t make a difference in the end whether you went to Sector X or Solar, but it does a good job of tying the journey together and giving each mission an appropriate amount of weight. Sometimes I even felt bad abandoning one planet in need for another, even knowing that it doesn’t have any impact.

Star Fox

The extended cutscenes also help define the characters’ relationships with each other and with General Pepper. Falco has always been portrayed as a cocky hotshot, but here we get to see him slowly warming to Fox’s leadership. Peppy is the assured veteran who trusts Fox will come into his own as a leader. We even get some insight about why the team keeps Slippy around, as the cutscenes sell him as a machinist wunderkind who’s always two steps ahead in anticipating their equipment needs. And Fox, for his part, is played as the cool Han Solo type–a mercenary needling General Pepper to pay for their valuable services, even if he’s obviously going to do the heroic thing regardless. 

Wayfinding to new paths is a little easier this time around too. Dialogue will drop hints about what to do to open new paths, without being overly on the nose or spelling it out for you. If you miss an optional objective, it’s easier to restart a stage from the beginning or from your most recent checkpoint, and doing so doesn’t even cost you a life or eliminate your laser upgrades or bombs. You can even entirely complete a stage, see where it leads, and then go back and do it again immediately to try for another way. 

That said, I was surprised that each run through the Lylat system is treated as its own distinct game progression, just like the original. That means that once you finish the game, you’ll need to start anew on Corneria and cut your path through from the beginning. This is true to the original, and I don’t mind the faithfulness, to a point. But for returning fans who already know their way around, it would have been nice to have the option to track which paths you’ve already opened and let you jump back to planets, eventually creating a fully filled-out star map.

And while the updated visuals are often gorgeous, they do come with some trade-offs that take getting used to. For one thing, your targets are a lot less obvious with much more happening on-screen, visually, so it’s easier to miss a flyer who gets away. In boss battles, weak points are less obvious than the glowing vulnerabilities of the original, and they don’t flash as brightly when you land a successful hit to let you know that you’re doing damage. And with the higher fidelity making everything look much more like it has weight and bulk, it’s a little strange when a capital warship in Area 6 explodes like an empty cardboard box.

Star Fox

The other marquee feature of this release is multiplayer, which adds online play, and GameChat camera integration for animalistic avatars. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try any of the pre-release online multiplayer sessions, so I’ll have to reserve my judgments on that aspect until I can try it in a live environment. We’ll update this review once we’ve been able to sufficiently test it out.

Star Fox is a remake, but it also appears to be an attempt at a reset. The franchise has never really found its footing, despite clearly having a lot of love from Nintendo. This story has always felt like a starting point, establishing the characters and hinting at their backstory. So altogether, this remake may be the best possible way to give the series a fresh start. At the same time, the original still holds up very well, and if you have Switch Online with the Expansion Pass, you can already play it. That makes this hard to recommend, which is a shame. If Nintendo means this to be a new beginning for Star Fox, retreading familiar ground undermines the effort.

Source link