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Darktide is finally here–somewhat. The pre-order Beta has kicked off, and if you pay in you can get early access to developer Fat Shark’s follow-up to Vermintide 2. If you want to play a game that is still going through the tweaking process, it’s not a bad time to jump in, since progress should transfer over to the actual release. That is, of course, if everything goes to plan. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, or just Darktide, is a cooperative first person shooter where you and a group of three others take on the forces of Chaos in the Hive City of Tertium on Atoma Prime. If you have no idea what any of that means, that’s okay, you don’t need to be super knowledgeable about 40k lore to enjoy the immensely satisfying gameplay of Darktide. Developer Fatshark has an amazing pedigree when it comes to creating Left 4 Dead style cooperative first person shooters, as they demonstrated with the Warhammer: Endtimes – Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2, the latter of which gave Valve’s on seminal series a run for its money. This time around Fatshark has channeled a few other popular co-op games, notably Deep Rock Galactic, as inspiration for their newest grimdark shooter with the ability to mix and match classes and an ever-changing, timed mission board. This pre-order beta doesn’t have everything that will be in the final version of Darktide, but I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve played so far. While there are three classes to choose from initially: the Veteran Sharpshooter, Psyker Psykinetic, Ogryn, and Zealot Preacher. I’ve spent most of my time with the Veteran Sharpshooter, plugging enemies with my Recon Lasgun and more recently chunking them to a gory death with my boltgun. There are only limited mission types available during the beta period, with only 10 of the 13 planned mission types going to be available. The full launch of Darktide will include optimization (which is much needed), over 60 weapons, 13 mission types, the ability to upgrade weapons, and a new zone. The Pre-Order beta will see these features unlock each week until the launch on November 30th. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is shaping up to be an exciting follow-up to Vermintide 2. It has immensely satisfying melee combat, and gunplay, each of which doesn’t quite match the Vermintide 2 experience, but will feel familiar to veterans of that series. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide will release on November 30th. Steam keys were provided to us for this preview

There are a lot of ways to learn as a kid these days. There’s the things we grew up on like picture book and PBS as well as educational video games for computer, consoles, and the tablets that most children under 5 can navigate better than we even can. There’s virtual home assistants that can spout out facts whenever a kid feels like asking, so you don’t have to table that question about if the cat can eat strawberries or if pigs are smarter than dolphins. With all those options though, what makes an educational aid worth adding to your household (or to the household of your favorite nephew/niece/grandkid). It has to be something wholesome, heavy-duty, full of features and options and most importantly, appealing to the kids who’ll be the target audience. Enter the Storypod. This screenless interactive audio device is there to help children learn to read, test their skills in all academic areas, develop their creativity, establish good bedtime hygiene and even help them connect with relatives. It’s a lot to pack into one small device that looks like a slightly heartier Echo or Nest Hub. But, the Storypod manages to be a pretty solid learning device with a whole lot of appeal for kids of a broad range of ages, from newborns to 7 year olds. It features a great library of its own, as well as access to some truly classic stories, trivia, and even access to classic characters and stories like Daniel the Tiger and the Gruffalo. Storypod is designed not simply as a reading aid, and not just for one age group, and this is where it really shines. It’s got a diverse range of functions, from stories and songs to trivia and even nighttime routines. It can encourage early language skills in babies, help with naptime with a soothing nightlight and lullabies, and at later ages help children express their creativity, reinforce what they’re learning in school and help them deal with social issues and big emotions. As for its form factor, it’s a hardy, slightly hefty speaker system with a cuddly knit wrap that is of course changeable to almost any color in the rainbow. It features interactive lights, and a huge range of accessories which includes Crafties. Crafties are adorable little yarn animal friends that magnetically attach to the top of the Storypod and have their own individual programming. Each cute little animal or character has its own curricula, from emotions and healthy eating to subaquatic adventures or even some great topics like inclusion, diversity and history. You can also purchase storybooks which you can read along to with the Storypod, or have your child read along with. These storybooks are also begun by scanning on the top of the pod and have a page by page pace that’s not hard for children to keep up with or control. There’s even a special type of Craftie that allows you or anyone you allow to access the Storypod environment with can use to record up to 100 minutes of audio on, meaning out of state or country relatives and friends can say hello, send messages and tell special stories from a world away. Storypod works via a phone app and charges via USB. Parents can control the library and programming from their phone and it’s easy to set up. Audio is loud, crisp and clear, and the device itself is sturdy and attractive. Crafties, the beanie-babyesque friends your kids will likely want to acquire in droves, run about 20 dollars a piece and involve a good amount of content for the money, with most books running about 12 dollars a piece. Unlike some of the other literacy tools we’ve tried out l feel like this is the most bang for the buck, the easiest to use and the most fully featured, and I heartily recommend it for your own kids or as a gift this holiday season. For more information on the Storypod, visit their website here.

While some co-op video games test the boundaries of friendship, playing on the couch with a buddy or significant other is one of my favorite types of video game playing. Ship of Fools is a rare game that’s all about two player cooperation, but also mixes in some rogue-ish elements in to create a game where communication is vital, but chaos reigns. Ship of Fools is a roguelike action game where you and a friend brave the monster filled seas in a ship called The Stormstrider. Your goal is to fend off threats using the two on board cannons as you pass into each new hex on the shrinking map. A darkness is overtaking each sea, and you only have so many moves before it overwhelms everything, leading to a boss battle. Find upgrades like artifacts that can give you buffs, like increased damage output—or find entirely different projectiles to load into your cannons to even the odds. While you spend most of your time on The Stormstrider in Ship of Fools, you don’t really control it. Rather, you decide where to travel on a hex map, and then you have to react to whatever encounter pops up—and that’s more often than not a fight. The Stormstrider comes equipped with two cannons, each can be picked up and replaced, but only on the four designated cannon stations—two at starboard and two at port. Similarly, there are three cargo locations on the ship to store your loot. Anything not secured to a cargo location is lost when you change hexes. Strangely, your default ammo source takes up one of these hexes. Combat in Ship of Fools is your main activity, unfortunately. I would have loved to see some co-op style challenges, like some sort of puzzle solving, but most of the time you and your buddy will have to man the cannons. You can attempt battles with a dedicated cannoneer, but it’s best if both of you fire and reload your cannon yourselves while fending off the waves of enemies. You start with a default, single shot cannon, but eventually discover different types of guns as you progress. You can mix and match these cannons as you like, so if you prefer grapeshot while your buddy prefers the OG cannon, you don’t have to compromise. Ship of Fools is a roguelike, but it doesn’t rock the boat much in terms of what to expect. You can choose where to go on a hex map, with each tile potentially representing items or enemy encounters. During your explorations you will unlock new NPCs that will help you back at the base camp in preparation for each run—like the blacksmith who upgrades your weapons, or the person who gives you new buffs for each run. There are also different player characters you can unlock through exploration, each of which carries a trinket that bestows a unique ability—like faster firing when that character reloads a cannon. While Ship of Fools is definitely fun to play with friends, it didn’t keep me hooked like some roguelikes. It feels like it’s a little light on content, and that we saw most everything there was to see after a couple of hours of gameplay. It possesses an art style and charm that vaguely reminds me of Don’t Starve, but it wasn’t enough to keep going. Ship of Fools is available today for PC via Steam and on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X and Nintendo Switch. A Steam key was provided to us for this review.

Every once and a while a game comes along that becomes my happy place. A safe space where time and objective hold no power; where you can take a deep breath. Paradise Marsh is my new happy place. It’s a game of endless repeated exploration that rewards you for enjoying the simplicity of the surroundings. The initial gameplay and style of Paradise Marsh is one of a bright, almost cell shaded, marsh that is filled with all sorts of insects and creatures for you to catch and learn about. The marsh itself is endless, so any direction for exploration is warranted due to procedural generation. As you travel through the infinite spaces, you’ll happen upon bugs to collect with your trusty net. Doing so will provide an entry on the creature in your journal and a suggestion on how many to collect. Also messages in bottles provide a nice short story to accompany your exploration. The collection aspect is a fun goal if you need it but it’s an unnecessary one as exploring can quickly put you into a real positive zen state. While walking through the marshes, you’ll see day and night cycles (with different creatures to collect,) and weather patterns. Winter will turn to Spring, Spring will bring the rains and into Summer. It’s a peaceful rhythm to experience. There are also a few differentiating land mass events that you will encounter like geysers, bridges, trees and other things that pepper the environment. Collecting the creatures of the marshes is also quite a modest affair. You can sneak up slowly and swipe them up with your net. That’s pretty much it, with a few variances on when and where they can be encountered. Once collected, there are obelisks that can be used to access the stars in the sky. Each bug has their own unique constellation and if you collect the full number from your journal, you can complete their constellation, rewarding you with a pleasant short story or folk tale. These constellations are just a way to track bug collection but with the random nature of the marshes, there’s very little urgency presented. Paradise Marsh provides a pure, clean experience that doesn’t overload you with a lot of frills. It presents you with the opportunity to enjoy a nice relaxing space in which to aimlessly explore. Too often we are bombarded with overly complicated media and systems in games, so to see something so simple feels refreshing. Paradise Marsh is a humble game with a humble price point, that doesn’t do a lot, but does it very well.

When you’ve been performing as long as Tegan & Sara have been, you’re expecting a grand showing of their diverse and evolving sound. Luckily the duo is not one to disappoint and this past weekend at the Vic Theatre they brought their best even as a cold threatened to take out a voice or two. Alongside Tomberlin, Tegan & Sara were able to give the adoring crowd at the Vic a very fun and special night. I’ve been a fan of Tomberlin since Mirah picked her album for the Joyful Noise White Label series. At Weddings which would eventually be released by Saddle Creek stands a perfect debut album and since then Tomberlin has only grown as an artist. I Don’t Know Who Needs To Hear This… is a fantastic follow up and offers up a gentle of evolution of the tenderness Tomberlin has cultivated. Despite a sinus infection, Tomberlin delivered a gorgeous set of songs for the packed Vic Theatre. Starting off with “Any Other Way”, a track that is so synonymous with her sound that it didn’t take much time capture the crowd’s attention. It’s a perfect intro to her newer tracks like “Sunstruck” and “Tap”, which was a massive stand out of the set. “Tap the heart until I hate myself” she croons in a beautiful cadence that permeates throughout the song. It’s an introspective stream of consciousness kind of song that works so well with Tomberlin’s beautiful voice. When the time finally came for Tegan & Sara to take the stage, the reverent crowd boiled over and their excitement was palpable. The crowd was assuredly filled with diehard fans who likely had been checking in on the duo’s recent setlists and were aware of what was to take place. While this tour is in support of of their jam filled Crybaby, it’s clear that Tegan & Sara have taken this touring opportunity to play a little bit of everything. Every album since If It Was You (save the more rock forward Hey, I’m Just Like You) was touched on and it made for a set of fan favorites that honestly could not be denied its flowers. Tegan & Sara‘s sound has certainly evolved to a more dancey pop focus of the years and it really works in a live setting. However that didn’t stop old favorites from fitting right in with the night. “I Bet it Stung” and “Back in Your Head” came early on in the set, filled with all the familiar lines that have endured over the years including the latter’s pained final chant of “I’m not unfaithful but I’ll stray”. the mixed so well with newer and just as memorable songs like the sparkling “Boyfriend” and “Faded Like a Feeling”. Throughout the night the pair’s storytelling abilities stretched from their songs and into their stage banter. From discussing their connections with their older songs and Chicago to their new normal in Sara dealing with her newborn. Tegan & Sara are open books and aren’t afraid of sharing every last bit of them,self with the crowd, even if it’s an embarrassing coffee spill in the streets of Chicago or struggling with a baby who is only sleeping 45 minutes at a time The duo explained to the crowd that they always hated the whole moving around that comes with encores. The reminisced about doing silly things in lieu of the typical encore walk off, but today they were just going to keep going. And the crowd was certainly down for that because they were at their most appreciative. “Call It Off” from The Con and “Where Does the Good Go” off of So Jealous were being belted out right back at Tegan & Sara. Maybe it’s because those songs are such powerful example of what makes the pair so important to so many people, maybe it was the crowd lending a helping hand to the pair’s voices which despite being a little sick were delivering. Whatever the case, voices came together beautiful before leading into “Yellow” and the set closer, a remixed version of “Closer”. “All I want to get is a little bit closer” over the darker instrumentals felt like a fantastic send off to this incredible show. All photos by Julian Ramirez This review was originally published at Third Coast Review. You can check out more pictures here.

I love twin stick shooters. So when I get a chance to play a twin stick shooter with an emphasis on co-op, it’s an easy sell. After all, the original great twin stick shooters were arcade games that allowed for a second player. From Space is a neon drenched take on alien invasion, and tasks you with taking down the alien population. Might as well bring some friends. From Space is a twin stick shooter with an emphasis on co-op play. In it, you play as one of six specialists as you fight against waves of neon pink enemies, completing objectives, and acquiring new weapons and skills as you go. It sounds like the recipe for hours of co-op entertainment, right? From Space has some great ideas, and even executes them pretty well. But then why is everything so damn boring? I have to say, I was initially impressed with From Space. It had some pretty graphics and some great lighting effects that really pulled me into its alien invasion setting. Even the pink aliens, which looked generic to me in promotional art, ended up being interesting and even attractive to look at—well, as attractive as pink slime monsters with teeth can be. Despite its initial appeal, however, From Space is a surprisingly boring game, and that’s because of a number of factors. While From Space has exciting moments—like screens full of aliens to mow down with various weaponry—it didn’t really do a good job of keeping my attention. Weapons, at first, felt good to fire. I expected to accumulate more firepower as the game progressed, but at a certain point, it felt like the newer weapons I was receiving were a downgrade rather than an improvement. Player progression also was lacking. Along with new weapons, you can also unlock different perks that go into up to six unlockable slots. And while From Space does a good job creating the visuals of a world being invaded by aliens, the level design itself is unexciting. Enemy, missions, and level design is also lacking as you perform the same tasks over similar levels fighting similar enemies. From Space has a massive emphasis on co-op play. While it can be played in single player, even its Steam store page urges you to squad up. I did not, since my playtime was spent in prerelease, I had no one to squad up with. Even if I did play with friends, I don’t think the inherent fun of having my buddies along would save this game for the fundamental problems it has. It’s almost like From Space spends too much of its time trying to be visually impressive, instead of fun. Each enemy type has a Borderlands style introduction, which, at this point, please stop. And each of its pink aliens are so visually similar it felt even more unnecessary here. But From Space is sometimes so visually busy it’s hard to tell what’s even happening on the screen. Most egregious are the pop-ups that have vital information, but doesn’t pause the game. You’re forced to die to read them, or dismiss them to live without having time to read the text. From Space should have been released as an Early Access title, as it definitely needs more development time. It’s possible that From Space can still be turned into a fun game through updates, but right now it’s a twin stick shooter with lackluster progression—and it just isn’t that fun to play. From Space is available on Steam and for Nintendo Switch. A Steam key was provided to us for this review

When I heard Illfonic was making a 4v1 game based on the Ghostbusters franchise, I was a little skeptical. I mean, how can you capture that Ghostbusters movie feel while also making compelling (and fun) gameplay? It had to have been a balancing act, but I feel like Illfonic has mostly pulled it off, though it does feel a little light on content. Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is a 4v1 asymmetrical multiplayer game where four players take on the role of the Ghostbusters, and one player takes on the role of a ghost haunting one of five locations. As the Ghostbuster you’ll use your gadgets to track, find, and attempt to capture the ghost, destroying its respawn rifts along the way. As the ghost, your job is to haunt the building and scare off patrons. When the building is completely haunted you have a chance to win. But if the ghost loses all of its respawn rifts and is captured, the Ghostbusters win. As the Ghostbusters, your goal is to find the ghost and wrangle it with your proton packs, ultimately capturing it. If you manage to capture the ghost, it can still escape! There are three rifts hidden through each map, and as long as there’s a rift standing, the ghost can respawn. However, respawning also destroys the rift—so if you aggressively hunt the ghost, you can end the level after capturing it three times to close each of its rifts, and a fourth and final time while it’s riftless. As a ghost, your goal is to haunt the building, scare off people, and generally subvert the Ghostbusters’ effort to stop you. While some ghosts can go head-to-head with a Ghostbuster or two (especially the Basher) a full four Ghostbusters can easily tether and trap you. As the ghost, you can break tether, and even break out of a trap as its pulling you in. If you want to be extra annoying, you can even close and steal the trap. Additionally, if the Ghostbusters find one of your rifts you can take the rift and hide it into a different object—making them search for it all over again. You can also cause all sorts of little annoyances that will help slow down the Ghostbusters, like closing and stealing traps, sabotaging Proton Packs, and more. It’s important that the Proton Pack feels good, and I’m impressed with how Illfonic managed to make it actually feel like you’re wrangling a spirit at the end of an energy beam. Throwing traps is an important skill to have, because sometimes a perfectly thrown trap can mean the difference between capturing the ghost and it slipping out of your tether again. You are armed with your trusty PKE meter, too, but I found that tracking the ghost and its rifts with a PKE meter really depends on the type of ghost you’re playing against, because if a ghost doesn’t try to stay hidden it’s pretty easy to find—you just have to look for its trail of slime and other telltale signs of the ghost, like haunted objects. The PKE meter is great for sending out a burst of EM energy, stunning ghosts and destroying haunted objects. Each match of Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is pretty short, with most ending in under 10 minutes, and rarely going over 12. This is the perfect match length because it makes you want to keep jumping in for “just one more round.” It also helps that each map is perfectly sized for hunting: not too big that you run for minutes without action, but not too small that it’s impossible to hide in as the ghost. While there is gear and ghost progression in Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, I actually thought it went a little too fast. I was able to unlock most everything the game had in under 12 hours of gameplay. As the Ghostbusters, you unlock cosmetics as your account level goes up, but you unlock better equipment as you use each set of gear. If you want to get a better trap, for instance, you have to have successes in wrangling the ghost into your trap. To unlock different ghosts, you just have to play the game as they unlock every 10 account levels. However, each ghost has three variants, which you unlock through playing as that specific ghost. That goes the same for its cosmetics, which unlock the more you play as any specific ghost. There are five different ghosts you can play as, each with their own stats and ultimates. Some ghosts are better at haunting the building, while others are better at scaring off people—both of which increase the haunt level. Some ghosts can fight the Busters, while with others it is best to always avoid them. While each ghost has their own strengths and weaknesses, none really have a completely unique playstyle. But their differences are enough to make them interesting to both play as, and against. One of the things that really surprised me about Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is how family friendly it manages to be, while also being compelling and fun. Even my friend, who is all about gritty realism and gore, played Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed without a complaint. It’s not exactly a scary game, but visually it borders on Pixar and realism. But ghosts don’t actually kill people—just scare off patrons, or “slime” Ghostbusters, incapacitating them for a while. As you play the game and increase your player level, you’ll unlock new story beats. Yes, that’s right: there’s actually a narrative as you progress and increase in account level. Your progress in the story has no effect on the world or the gameplay, but it does add a nice bit of flavor for the Ghostbuster fans . As much as I love Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed for the week or so I’ve been playing it, I really worry about its longevity. I’ve only played Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed for only about a dozen hours (according to the Epic Game Store’s tracker) and I’ve unlocked almost everything in the game. While I was intentionally trying to level up my account as fast as possible to see everything the game had to offer, I was still able to finish the task surprisingly fast. The one thing that I’m most impressed with Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is just how much it feels like a Ghostbusters product. In fact, everything from its character interactions with the environment to its musical cues. This is a rare game where IP marries with gameplay wonderfully. I’m just worried since it feels a bit light on content for now. However, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is great fun, and manages to even be family friendly. Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed will release on October 18th on PC via the Epic Games Store and on PlayStation 4 and Playstation 5 as well as Xbox Series S|X and Xbox One. An Epic Games Store key was provided to us for this review

Halloween has come and gone and almost overnight, so have the majority of news stories on “rainbow fentanyl” possibly appearing in the hauls of candy kids brought home after trick or treating. Urban myths and moral panics surrounding Halloween are older than the parents of this year’s current crop of trick or treaters, and most likely, as old as their grandparents. Warnings of nefarious individuals putting razor blades, poison, and drugs of almost every kind into bags of candy to be brought home by unsuspecting children hit the headlines like clockwork at the beginning of fall each year, and spread incredibly fast. Near the end of August, the DEA issued an ominous press release warning of “a new method used by drug cartels to sell highly addictive and potentially deadly fentanyl made to look like candy to children and young people.” The release went on to say this was “a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults.” While it doesn’t mention Halloween specifically, the inference was quickly made by local and national news outlets, and another urban legend was born. As time drew closer to Halloween, news stories about this latest yet very familiar panic spread like wildfire. Warnings and predictions became more dire. Law enforcement made a few large fentanyl busts, including one where the drug was found in candy boxes and another where it was found in Lego boxes. The DEA was all too quick to make the connection that it was a marketing ploy, rather than a convenient method of drug smuggling. “This is deliberate. This is a calculated, treacherous deception to market rainbow fentanyl like candy,” said Frank Tarentino, the DEA Special Agent in Charge at an October press conference, according to broadcast news reports. “This is every parent’s worst nightmare, especially in the month of October as Halloween fast approaches.” Several weeks and more than 1,500 news stories later, according to Washington Post journalist Paul Farhi, not a single credible confirmed incident of a dealer slipping fentanyl into candy baskets in order to get kids hooked on the drug has materialized. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, as killing one’s customers right off the bat would be a bad business model, and we can’t think of any situation where a rich person would want to give away tens of thousands of dollars worth of anything for free. “Drug dealers aren’t going to give away their drugs,” said Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, in an interview with The Atlantic. “And if they are going to give them away to try and attract business, they aren’t going to give them away to elementary-school students. What are they gonna do, get their milk money?” Best has been studying the urban legend surrounding intentionally contaminated Halloween candy for nearly four decades, with data he says goes back to 1958. Writing for CNN, Best said in all that time he “can’t find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating.” The myth however, continues to not only persist, but is fueled and amplified by both news outlets looking for easy clicks on crime reporting and politicians and pundits alike looking for a boogeyman to strike down while appearing tough on crime. Senate Republicans released a PSA in early October practically dripping with fear and panic. “The powerful drug cartels are coming after your kids, your neighbors, your students, your family members, and your friends. No one is spared as fake pills laced with fentanyl are beginning to look like candy in an effort to lure young Americans,” said Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn. Both the GOP and its chief mouthpiece, Fox News, tried to tie the myth to President Joe Biden and Democrats. Lauding the infamously failed “just say no” campaign during President Ronald Reagan’s failed War on Drugs, one Fox columnist wrote “Former first lady Nancy Reagan built an entire anti-drug campaign urging kids to "Just Say No" in the 1980s, but President Biden just says "Yes" to drug traffickers pouring over the border illegally and going after our kids.” Democrats too, pushed the panic button, with Chuck Schumer saying in September “They’re trying to get children younger and younger to take this horrible, horrible drug,” Schumer said. “This is nothing short of despicable by these drug dealers, who are luring kids, young kids, to take this drug with terrible consequences for themselves.” Drug addiction, overdoses, and substance abuse at large are real problems in America that require thoughtful and careful solutions that address the root causes, and do so in a way that reduces harm. Moral panics based on flimsy or no evidence and hearsay do nothing to address this problem, and in fact, cause more harm. The stigma attached to drug use, which trickles all the way down to even legal or legal in some places substances like marijuana only push people further away from attempting to access what little resources might be available for help. Meanwhile, fake news stories pushing panics give life to grifters and opportunists all too eager to use the fear they create to move forward with an agenda that makes America look and feel all the more dystopian.

Every once in a while two albums are released and demand to be compared and contrasted. Co-Dependent Review brings together those albums as two of our writers give the albums a listen and rank the best they have to offer in a rotating lineup of categories. IN this inaugural edition Alex Orona and Julian Ramirez take on Taylor Swift's Midnights and Carly Rae Jepsen's The Loneliest Time. Julian Ramirez: A couple weeks ago two behemoths of pop music, albeit with very different fan bases, released some highly anticipated albums. Taylor Swift’s Midnights and Carly Rae Jepsen ’s The Loneliest Time. Both albums have been receiving their flowers since release and with good cause. Both albums are worth late fall records that will surely be playing well into spring next year. Alex Orona: Both are great pop music artists in their own right but Carly Rae Jepsen never really broke into the mainstream since "Call Me Maybe". Instead she continued garnering more underground and nerd cred to form a solid fan base while Taylor Swift still remains at the top of her game as far as being a prominent hit maker. Best Single JR: Carly Rae Jepsen - "Western Wind" I’ve always considered Rostam Batmanglij the secret sauce of anything he’s involved with and this song is no exception. While I typically shy away from songs that sound so different from the rest of the album, this just hit the spot. The constant percussion and much more chilled presentation is a nice respite from the more 80s twinged jams that the album is chock full of. Plus I’m a sucker for layered references and the Greek pantheon nods are perfect. AO: Carly Rae Jepsen "Beach House" I absolutely agree with "Western Wind" as a solid single. I feel like Carly works best when she leans into that 80’s aesthetic. For me Beach House was too funny and too dancy to not put it as my favorite single off this album. I still dance around my kitchen to this one when cooking. Most Danceable Track JR: Carly Rae Jepsen "Beach House" Who doesn't like dancing to a song about the terrors of the dating world and references to getting murdered in at a beach house? But seriously, the grooves on this song make you forget about the fuckboy/serial killer antics and make you lose yourself to dance. AO: Carly Rae Jepsen "Shooting Star" I don’t know, while Beach House is fantastic for dancing, the beat of “Shooting Star” just hits so hard. Plus that tiny bit of auto tune to Carly’s voice here adds some extra flavor. You could have told me that this was a one off Daft Punk or Black Eyed Peas song and I’d believe it. I expect to hear this in the future at clubs. Best Intro (Side 1, Track 1s) Taylor Swift - "Lavender Haze" AO: This really brings the vibes. A dark dance rhythm with some clear not giving a fuck attitude that makes you want to relax into a scene of smokey lavender haze. This is somehow both angsty and sexy in equal measure and I’m here for it. "Surrender My Heart" is a fantastic power ballad, I felt like Lavender Haze put me in a real mood that I didn’t want to come away from. Also considering Taylor uses a lot of vocal echo effects on this album, this was one where it felt restrained, which is good. JR: Completely agree! I think the hazy instrumentals mixed with the almost hip hop beat lead in make for an interesting track that grabs you right off the bat. The reference to lavender haze from Mad Men is certainly interesting, especially since the phrase has grown over the years and has a more specific meaning than just any two people falling in love. Best Ballad Carly Rae Jepsen "Surrender My Heart" AO: I feel both albums failed to bring the ballads but "Surrender My Heart" feels like the call out to the world that you are ready to love again. Real Lizzo "2 Be Loved" moods here and it feels confident. It’s putting your heart on your sleeve while emphasizing the 80’s synth that really punctuates CRJ’s style. JR: Again, I agree. Could you say that a lot of the tracks on Swift's album are close to being ballads since they are so ingrained with storytelling and themes of love? Sure, but "Surrender My Heart" is so unabashedly a ballad that it takes this category easily. Best Feel Good Track AO: Taylor Swift - "Sweet Nothing" Sometimes simplicity is best and in this case it’s just Taylor and a keyboard. It’s just a basic melody and lyrics but they speak volumes with their message. Sometimes a lack of expectations from your partner is all you need to feel welcome when the world feels so cold. Also the faint trumpets that punctuate the chorus are chefs kiss. JR: Taylor Swift - "Snow on the Beach " “Sweet Nothing” definitely has that easy go lucky feel to it but I think "Snow on the Beach" has this interesting fairy-tale quality to it. Lana Del Rey also adds a lot to the whole dreamy aesthetic the song (and album) is going for, really making it feel like it's floating as she and Swift serenade you with a tale of two people falling in love. Best Final Track (not counting bonus tracks) JR: Carly Rae Jepsen "The Loneliest Time" Much like the opening track going to Swift, I don’t think there's any denying the closing track goes to Jepsen. Swift’s “Mastermind” feels like it’s ramping up to something but never truly gets there despite that being everything that the song is about - “You knew that I'm a mastermind and now you're mine”. “The Loneliest Time” on the other hand has Jepsen at her most sparkly and determined sounding despite the song’s theme of being just out of reach. Plus how can you deny the Rufus Wainwright’s duets and the infectious TikTok anthem in the line “But you know what? I'm comin' back for you, baby, I'm comin' back for you!” AO: Carly Rae Jepsen "The Loneliest Time" Absolutely. While “Mastermind” almost felt manipulative, ”The Loneliest Time” felt like an agreement between two people to just be together and enjoy each others company. Rufus Wainwright being the perfect accompaniment to CRJ’s confident vocals while the rest of her band transports you to the neon lights of a discotheque. Best Bonus Track AO: Carly Rae Jepsen "Anxious" How do you make a song about being anxious about your partner’s reputation into a dancy funk disco track? I don’t know how but I was tapping my feet the entire way. It’s got a phenomenal headbob effect, where you can’t help but move to it. Top quality production with vocal drops, fantastic synth arrangements. JR: Taylor Swift "Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve" If there is any track that absolutely, positively, should have been included in the album proper: "Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve" is it. It feels like a great summation of a lot of Swift's songwriting about personal breakups. It's so layered with references and killer lines that are actually hold up Swift's lyrics properly with the driving rhythms haze. Final Thoughts AO: I felt like Taylor had more thematic elements, considering it was a concept album, I still found the voice echo effects overused. As a full project, Taylor’s is more fully realized, but I still feel like Carly Rae Jepsen’s music generally sticks with me longer as a singular song catalog. JR: I typically gravitate to the more album focused releases, so I should like Midnights more than I do. But I think Carly Rae Jepsen has been making some of the funnest pop music in recent memory and while The Loneliest Time may just be a collection on 80s inspired hits, it more than satisfies my need for bright sounds in my life.

It’s so easy to compare one video game to another when writing reviews. While that’s something I try to avoid, it’s hard, especially when a game does little to hide its inspiration. Such is the case with The Entropy Centre, a game that is full of its own ideas, but one that also takes wholesale inspiration from the Portal series. The Entropy Centre is a puzzle game played from the first person perspective. In it you play as Aria, seemingly the last human left alive after a mysterious cataclysmic event. But that’s okay, because as an Entropy Centre Puzzle solver, it’s your job to save the Earth. And how do you do that? Through puzzle solving, of course. But while the Entropy Centre has been saving the Earth from cataclysmic events for decades, something has gone terribly wrong. Aided by ASTRA, your AI inhabited time reversing gun, it’s your job to figure out what happened to the Entropy Centre and its employees—and to save Earth. At the core of The Entropy Centre is a Sci-Fi mystery, and I can’t help but get wrapped up in those. While your AI companion ASTRA provides some levity and lore context, it never quite matches up with Portal’s GLADoS, despite some very on the nose parallels--there’s even a fat joke thrown in there at one point. While The Entropy Centre doesn’t make any overt references to the Portal series, it’s almost unashamed in how much it copies Valve, but changes just enough to make it its own thing. But what makes a great puzzle game isn’t just the set decorations, but the puzzles themselves. As an Entropy Centre employee, your job is to solve puzzles to create entropy, which powers the organization’s time-reversing technology, which they use on large scale to help Earth avoid destruction. On a smaller scale, this technology is used to solve puzzles. You can’t just go reversing anything and everything, however—only puzzle elements can be rewound, as well as environmental elements that have recently been changed. That usually means you can un-break walls, reconstruct walkways, etc. But the bread and butter of The Entropy Centre is its cube-based puzzle solving. The Entropy Centre does a good job easing you into its various puzzle mechanics. You start with putting blocks on pressure switches, and eventually move up to more complicated mechanics involving walkways, lasers, block transforming fields and more. You can carry blocks, and most importantly, rewind their position in space time—or even freeze them in place, stuck in time until you manipulate another object or release them. Each object can only be rewound a finite amount of time—about 36 seconds or so. I always say that puzzle games are easier or harder based on whoever is playing them. I found the puzzles in The Entropy Centre to be incredibly easy. I’m not sure why, but I was rarely stumped for more than a few moments. It feels like the nature of the time rewinding systems in The Entropy Centre restrict the possible solutions. And most puzzles simply require you to work backwards to make them work. Even towards the end of the game, when most of the puzzle systems are incorporated, there are only ever one or two parts to consider. Even when I completed a particularly difficult puzzle, I never really felt that “a ha!” moment that made playing Portal and Portal 2 so satisfying. More than easy puzzles, some of the puzzles felt a little half baked. Sometimes I found myself solving a puzzle while bypassing certain elements completely. I wasn’t intentionally trying to cheese them, but sometimes the most obvious answer felt like an unintended one—which makes the puzzles feel a rough around the edges. I didn’t run into any bugs in my playthrough, however, so at least from my experience The Entropy Centre is sound on a technical level. While The Entropy Centre takes a lot of cues from Portal, its time reversing puzzle mechanic is pretty different than the portals of Portal. However, its aping of Portal is probably some of its best parts in regards to the setting and lore. It’s too bad the puzzles themselves never felt as refined or engaging as Portal’s challenges. But if you’re looking for a decent puzzle game with a mystery at its heart, The Entropy Centre is a pretty good option. The Entropy Centre will release tomorrow on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store and for PlayStation and Xbox. A Steam key was provided to us for this review

The Steam Deck is a runaway hit, and the best handheld console I’ve ever played. Even so, it was a bummer to have to wait for Valve’s official dock, so I decided to look around for alternatives. It looks like the Steam Deck Dock by JSaux does the job, and pretty well. If you saw the official Steam Deck Dock first look at the Tokyo game show, you’ll see that JSAUX has the right idea in terms of their docks. In fact, the JSAUX “upgraded” dock has a lot going for it. It has a HDMI 4k output at 60Hz, a LAN port that gives you gigabit speeds, three USB-A 3.0 ports, and the (unfortunately only) USB-C hookup to charge and connect your deck to the dock. I was hoping that somehow someone would come up with a dock that defied the Deck’s design–that top mounted USB-C input. Because of the Deck’s USB location, using the Steam Deck in a docked experience isn’t seamless like the Nintendo Switch. First of all, you have to plug the USB C into the upper port of your Deck–something that Switch bypasses by having a hardware connection on the bottom, making docking your Switch and getting into TV mode easy, and even a little fun. Conversely, the docked experience with the Steam Deck has been a mixed bag, but most of that has been fixed with new Steam Deck updates that have rolled out. While the JSAUX Dock does everything I want it to, it’s not perfect. I do wish it was a little heavier. I’m sure some will appreciate a light device, but for something that requires stiff cables to stick out of the back of the device, it’s surprisingly not as stable as a Nintendo Switch dock. It also doesn’t have a screen shield, which is something I was baffled by on the Switch until using this Dock. I also wish the JSAUX Dock had more USB-C ports, but that’s a problem even the official Dock looks like it’ll have at release–at least according to what we saw at the Tokyo Game Show. Docking the Steam Deck was not, and is not, a seamless experience–but I’m wondering if that’s more on the software side for the Deck itself instead of any product that is being put out. When I hooked the dock up to a 4k TV, I was forced to change the resolution for each individual game. Not only that, but the UI itself scaled to 4k, dragging the system performance down while in the menu. After the latest Beta and Preview updates, however, docking the Deck into a JSAUX Dock is almost great at any resolution. Games scale automatically, or based on the global resolution setting in the Deck itself. The JSAUX Dock is not only an excellent stopgap, but it might be just as good as the real thing. I’ll have to wait until I get my hands on the official Steam Deck Dock, but for now, the JSAUX Steam Deck Dock does everything I wanted the OEM dock to do, and with its newer model releasing with an NVME slot, it feels like JSAUX is beating Valve at its own game. A part of me wonders if the Steam Deck Dock is ready, but it’s the Steam Deck itself that is going through the necessary changes before the proper Steam Deck Dock is rolled out. That said, if you have a tiny bit of know-how, you can make the JSAUX Dock work for you. You can check out the JSAUX Dock here. A Jsaux Dock was sent to us for the purposes of this review.

I’m a huge Warhammer: Vermintide 2 fan. It’s a game I’ve played almost weekly since its Early Access release. While my group and I have cooled on it a bit since the Bela’kor update messed with the balance of the Chaos Wastes game mode, it wasn’t something to worry about since Darktide was on the near horizon. Well, I finally got a chance to play Darktide myself, and let me say: the wait has been worth it. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is an upcoming first person four player co-op game, and a bit of a spiritual successor to Fatshark’s Vermintide games. Set in the Grim Dark future of the 40k universe, Darktide isn’t just Vermintide 2 in space–but it still brings that same great weapon feel as you fight off the forces of Chaos through the darkened, rusted corridors of Tertium’s underbelly. If you’re not familiar with Warhammer 40,000, its bleak techno fascist future, that’s okay, all you need to know is that the Emperor’s will is indomitable, and as prisoner “rejects” you’re in no place to refuse. You’ll be thrust into the bowels of the hive city Tertium in search of the source of the encroaching Chaos, fighting a dark tide of Chaos corrupted enemies along the way. One of the things that made Vermintide 2 so enduringly fun was its fantastic melee combat, and Darktide doesn’t disappoint. Enemies in Darktide feel a bit more formidable than those in Vermintide 2, however, and ranged enemies pose a constant threat, where they would mostly just be a nuisance or occasional danger in Vermintide 2. Ranged combat feels great, however, and the inclusion of genuine ranged threats really does a lot to make Darktide standout from Vermintide 2. While Vermintide 2 had five premade characters, Darktide has you create your own unique character with their own backstory selected from an arrangement of backstories. While I’ll definitely miss having established characters to play as, being able to create your own character with their own backstory is an equitable trade-off. At launch, there will only be 4 classes, with new classes being promised every quarter. But for those (like me) who have been waiting on Sienna’s final career in Vermintide 2, this might not be the most welcome news. Still, the four classes that were available during the Beta were fun and varied–but I don’t think it’ll be enough for a full release. Despite Darktide not officially launching into Early Access, it sort of feels like it is. Not only that, but Fatshark is undecided whether it will charge for new classes–and with a game that has a Premium Currency, that’s a little bit of a bummer. However, new game modes, areas, and missions are promised to remain free according to a statement Fatshark released on Friday. As a longtime Vermintide fan, I’m definitely excited for Darktide. If you’re at all interested in Left 4 Dead style co-op games, Fatshark has the formula figured out. I can’t wait until Warhammer 40,000 releases next month. After the fun we had in the beta, it’s going to be a long wait. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide will be available on November 30th. A set of Beta keys was provided to us for this preview.