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I’ve been a fan of developer Frictional Games since I played Penumbra: Overture. In fact, I heartily recommend their game Soma to anyone who might ask me for game recommendations. But Frictional Games is best known for their Amnesia series. While I thought their previous entry Amnesia: Rebirth might have pulled the curtain back a tad too far, Amnesia: The Bunker is a return to form for Frictional Games, with gameplay that calls back to the Penumbra series. It’s also damn scary. Amnesia: The Bunker is a first person survival horror game. In it, you play as a World War I soldier who has recently recovered from a wound only to wake up to a horror: trapped alone in an underground bunker with a bloodthirsty creature. The officers escaped, and collapsed the tunnel behind them, so you have to find a way out of the bunker while avoiding the creature. It won’t be easy, however, as you also have to find your way around obstacles, through locked doors, and around traps left by the soldiers who have died before you. You have to do all of this while trying to keep the lights on at all costs, because the creature prefers to hunt in the dark. But the generator loves to gulp down fuel, and you’re either forced to use your noisy wind-up flashlight, improvise a light source, or attempt to survive the bunker by groping around in the dark. When you first start up Amnesia: The Bunker ( or The Bunker) you’re forced to play through a clumsy beginning that establishes the setting, and works a bit like a tutorial. It’s an unfortunate first impression, but it’s quickly forgotten as the game immediately creates a tense atmosphere that only gets more intense as you continue to play. Once you’re on your own, there’s a message that informs you that “if you think it’s possible, it probably is” in regards to what The Bunker’s physics-driven interactions can be. While there is definitely some possibility for emergent gameplay, I found this mostly means finding creative ways to break down doors, and sometimes clever ways of warding off the creature. Doors are your main obstacle in The Bunker, and while some can be smashed open (or blown up, shot, etc.) others will require you to find keys or combinations to the locks that impede your way forward. Most of these keys and combinations can be found through careful exploration, but also by reading the various notes left around. This is how the story is told, and gives you an idea of what happened in the bunker leading up to its current state. There’s always a sense of dread in The Bunker. There’s the constant time pressure of the generator and its fuel consumption, and the pressure of item management: inventory space is limited, so you have to decide what’s important, or what gets left behind in your stash. There’s only one “safe” room in The Bunker, and one save point, meaning you’ll have to explore outward from there. The further out you go, the more intense the pressures can be. And of course, there’s the constant dread of knowing the monster is actively hunting you and may be lurking just around the corner. The creature itself never quite invoked the same childhood induced trauma levels of fear that the xenomorph in Alien: Isolation caused me—but it comes pretty damn close. While most games developed by Frictional Games have you helpless and unable to fight, you can actually fight back against the monster in The Bunker—but anything you do to it will just slow it down. While the creature is repelled by the light, you aren’t safe just because you’re in a bright room: once he sees you, unless you can fight back you’re dead. While the monster isn’t the only enemy you’ll face in The Bunker— it will be a constant threat through your entire playthrough. Even after you’ve played through The Bunker the first time, new playthroughs can have their own challenges. Certain elements in The Bunker are randomized. The codes you find in your playthrough are randomly generated, and even sometimes randomly placed. Resources are randomly generated and placed in different locations on each new playthrough. Even traps are randomized by placement and type. There is also Steam Workshop support, which opens up the possibility of being able to play user made content—and I can’t wait to see what the community comes up with. If you find that The Bunker is too difficult, there’s an “easy” mode that allows you to explore with a little less pressure from the monster. Conversely there’s a “hard” mode for those who want an increased challenge. Amnesia: The Bunker is a fantastic game. It’s easily the most terrifying game I’ve played since Alien: Isolation. It instills a sense of dread and its intensity ramps up until the very end. If you’re a fan of horror Amnesia: The Bunker is one of the best and scariest games out there.  Amnesia: The Bunker is available June 6 for PC via Steam and on the Epic Games Store.     A Steam key was given to us for this review

I’m a sucker for games that have the player character exploring abandoned sci-fi facilities and derelict spacecraft. I love to piece together a mystery, and Return to Grace promised a mystery wrapped in a 60’s sci-fi aesthetic. Return to Grace is a first person narrative heavy adventure game with a few minor puzzles. In it you play as Adie, an archeologist looking for an AI that ushered in a golden age for humanity, but disappeared, only to plunge humanity into a new dark age. As Adie you’ve found the spire—the facility that housed Grace. As you explore deeper into the spire you will find the answers to what was beyond Grace’s disappearance. Adie is accompanied by several AI voices that are piped in through Adie’s suit. These different personalities are probably the highlight of the game, and they drive the story and serve as a way to give context to the environments that Adie finds herself in. Each of these AIs are driven by different personalities. Return to Grace can probably be best described as a “walking simulator” but it does have a few—very simple—puzzles. Most of the game is about linear exploration and lots of dialogue. While this might sound boring to some, I was definitely intrigued until the very end—but there is no payoff whatsoever, and a bunch of questions that are left unanswered. I can’t really say that Return to Grace is a bad game—it has some contemplative moments and good voice acting—but I’m not sure it even accomplished what the developers were hoping for. When I got to the end and the answers to the mysteries of Grace’s disappearance, it all was so anticlimactic I almost couldn’t believe it when the credits started to roll. There is so much potential and built-up backstory that is never satisfactorily answered in Return to Grace. In fact, in retrospect, it’s hard to even fathom what the ultimate goal of this experience was. It doesn’t come to any philosophical epiphany, the main character doesn’t really grow—and as the player, I was left with just as many questions as answers. There are some snazzy visuals, and a great mid-century modern styled sci-fi aesthetic—but it fails to stick the landing, nor does it have many compelling gameplay moments. Return to Grace is available today A Steam key was provided to us for this review

GLaDOS is perhaps the most famous rogue AI in video games, but long before I played Portal I was facing off against an antagonist an AI that absolutely terrifies me in a way that GLaDOS doesn’t: Shodan. While there is some humor in GLaDOS’s horror, Shodan is a terrifying megalomaniaca AIl that revels in genetic experiments and creating cyborg monstrosities while demanding her subjects worship her as a god. System Shock is a first person adventure game that has been painstakingly recreated by brilliant retro resurrectors Night Dive Studios. In it, you play as a who is hacker forced to fight their way through Citadel station after the station’s AI went rogue. In fact, you’re the reason Shodan’s leash is unhooked. It’s your job to undo this damage as you find yourself trapped on a Citadel Station that is controlled by Shodan, with its cramped corridors filled with mutants, cyborgs, and robots bent on destroying or enslaving you. Body horror abounds in high definition. Before the denizens of Citadel Station were depicted in highly pixelated gore, you can see the fruit of Shodan’s carnage in a whole new way. Despite System Shock’s graphical overhaul, Night Dive Studios left a bit of pixelated retro feel in their art. If you get really close to an object the textures are pixelated in a way that feels like a deliberate art choice by the developers. It helps maintain that retro feel. But you also have all of the modern graphical bells and whistles you’d expect. While the graphics changed significantly, there has been obvious care put into System Shock’s gameplay. It feels like a modern game, but it’s surprisingly faithful to it’s the original’s design. And that means this is a true retro adventure. There is absolutely no hand-holding, so you have to pay attention to dialogue and the environment to find your next task. There are no waypoints. You can reference dialogue snippets that you find as you explore Citadel Station and discover audio logs left from the deceased crew. There are also little to no explanation on the game’s mechanics—if you’re not familiar with this type of game, the learning curve might be frustrating. Especially because there’s a real possibility you can play yourself into a corner. If you don’t save often enough, or lose track of an important game item, you can lose chunks of time. I found myself going back to my old habit of saving frequently, and creating a new save file each time I saved so I could go back and undo anything that might get me stuck. System Shock comes from an age of corridor shooters, and feels only one step removed from a grid-based role-playing game. What I mean by that is: most of the game takes placed in cramped environments. You could argue that this is appropriate for a space station, but it does make System Shock feel labyrthine and claustrophobic—but more in a hard to navigate way than in a scary way. In fact, despite the Shodan’s threats and the prodigious amounts of gore, System Shock isn’t a very scary game. It does achieve a cyberpunk sci-fi atmosphere, but the hacker you play as feels very capable of handling the threats that Shodan produces. Once I got a lightsaber (sorry, laser rapier) and boots that let me run super-fast and nearly fly, I felt like Shodan should be afraid of me. System Shock is definitely one of the most authentically cyberpunk games I’ve played in a long time. Even the original game’s infamous cyberspace hacking segments are created in bright neon colors that invoke the feeling of flying through the ‘net and compromising systems in a way that 90’s popular media promised us. While System Shock contains some frustrating elements for the uninitiated, fans of the original will absolutely love this remake. It’s even more accessible to modern audiences, if they possess a little patience to weather the 90’s video game design. This is my favorite game of its type since 2017’s Prey, and an absolutely worthy remake to a 90’s sci-fi video game classic. System Shock is available today on PC via Steam and the Epic Game Store. A Steam key was given to us for this review

Kill It With Fire is a first person comedy game that was released back in 2020 for all platforms. In it, you are part of the Kill It With Fire exterminators, tasked with killing an infestation in a house, only to find it worse than you can have ever possibly imagined. Using a plethora of silly and outlandish weapons, you can destroy hordes and hordes of spiders, but now in 2023 we get this experience in VR! Now you can be fully immersed in arachnophobic nightmare or revenge fantasy. Unfortunately for me, it’s the former. I am not deathly afraid of spiders, but on average am not a huge fan of their presence so hearing the skittering sounds in the background doesn't play well to me. Which speaks a lot to what VR can add to a game like this. As per the original version, you get access to a plethora of hilariously inappropriate weapons while exploring varied environments to assassinate multiple different types of spiders. The weapons can be as simple as a shoe, or a rocket launcher. They really do escalate in a hilarious way. Each level has multiple parts, gated off by spider kills, so you have to kill more and more to progress. To assist in that is your trusty spider detector, which has a radar and beeps when spiders are nearby. You aren't just limited to weapons either, as anything in the environment can also act as a certified spider smasher. There’s a level of freestyle to the killing mechanics and the levels provide enough varied spaces to compliment your full armory. From gas stations to office buildings, your adventure in spider murder takes you all over that small town. Each level feeds into the next, in a way that makes sense for the story. Did I say story? Yes, there is a throughline to Kill It With Fire’s levels that tells a cohesive and hilarious narrative and the nature of the spider infestation. While I wouldn’t want to ruin all the wacky places the story takes you, I will say, it’s consistent with the tone of the game overall and that’s all you can ask for. The gating feels fair and easily doable, so the levels flow easy. The art design is a simplified cell shading look that really limits the details to the need to know objects, which isn’t a negative but this game isn’t winning any awards for graphical texture detail. Upgrades and battery packs can be found throughout the environment, which provide perks for the level as well as modifiers later on. As far as VR is concerned, Kill It With Fire adapts so-so. On your right wrist is the spider tracker, and on your left is where you deposit items you find like ammo or upgrades. Grabbing and using items feels relatively seamless with a few hitches but nothing game breaking. Grip is with one trigger, while the second trigger can magnetize items to you directly. Dual wielding weapons feels like an amazing fever dream. Aiming your shots is gladly forgiving, though throwing grenades has a lot to be desired. The real pain point is in the movement. You move with your left stick, while the right stick is snap movement. Both work fluidly but do not work with the motion functions of your brain. Free movement also works but all movement induced a heavy seasickness in me. I could only play two levels at a time before stopping due to the overwhelming queasy feeling. While this is a single knock against the game, it fully hindered my ability to play. I eventually finished the game, but it took a lot of time and patience. Also make sure you have a wide area of play, as I was taking large swings of my arms, frantically trying to kill spiders that I definitely punched a few walls. Kill It With Fire VR is a fantastic idea for a VR mode… on paper. A first person shooter with a creepy crawler spider theme? Fantastic! A shooter that provides a ridiculously large inventory of weapons? Perfect! The problem lies in the movement. We haven’t gotten a firm grasp of full movement with VR games and Kill It With Fire VR is no different. It’s as nausea inducing as it is hilarious as the concept, which honestly runs short a few levels before the end. Kill It With Fire into VR well mechanically, but maybe pop a dramamine before plugging in that headset.

Netflix is beginning to officially crack down on password sharing in the United States. On Tuesday, the company began sending emails to users reading that an account is “for you and the people you live with - your household.” “A Netflix account is for use by one household,” the streaming giant wrote in a blog post announcing the change. “Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are — at home, on the go, on holiday — and take advantage of new features like Transfer Profile and Manage Access and Devices.” Twitter screencap The crackdown on password sharing - a practice the company once vehemently encouraged - has been a long time coming. Netflix announced its plans to limit the practice in 2022, saying at the time it had been working for a year to “enable members who share outside their household to do so easily and securely, while also paying a bit more.” The company then rolled out paid password sharing on the international market. Netflix said they initially experienced cancellations, but ultimately saw users come back. "As with Latin America, we see a cancel reaction in each market when we announce the news, which impacts near term member growth," the company said in a letter to shareholders, according to NPR. But as borrowers start to activate their own accounts and existing members add 'extra member' accounts, we see increased acquisition and revenue." Netflix, which boasts it has around 235 million subscribers worldwide, says that some 100 million accounts share passwords. Now, if a subscriber wants to continue allowing someone to use their password, they’ll have to pay an extra $7.99 a month. Paid subscribers can add up to two people they don’t live with to their accounts. Screencap via Netflix Netflix has said that password sharing has impacted its “ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.” In 2022, the company reported a loss of subscribers for the first time in 10 years, though those numbers bounced back in the first quarter of 2023. The company meanwhile reported revenue of $8.2 billion in the first quarter of 2023, up from $7.9 billion in the first quarter of 2022.

You’d be forgiven if you thought the cola wars were the stuff of Billy Joel anthems and not a current affair. By now it’s pretty clear the two titans will continue on in endless battle with legions of fans on either side just about as rabid about it in some cases as painted up football fans on Super Bowl Sunday. Past the days of petty lawsuits trying to buy each other out and weird attempts at sabotage, we’re in a sort of cold war. You’re a Coke or you’re a Pepsi if you’re in the game at all, but you’ve got a backup player because with the way franchises handle cola sales, you’re gonna eventually show up at a Pepsi place as a Coke fan and vice versa. Enter the lemon lime soda. It’s sort of the Luigi of beverages. Pretty powerful, refreshing, and honestly, a delight, but always upstaged by its red-suspenders wearing brother cola. Sibling rivalry aside, lemon-lime sodas are a Miss Congeniality of sorts in the soda world. Inoffensive, crisp, refreshing and light. Perfectly effervescent it feels sort of healthy compared to cola, but still indulgent enough to be fun. The OG lemon lime soda has been around for over 90 years now, kicking off its longrunning runner up status as “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda'' which is almost as bad a marketing move as describing a flavor of Coke as the flavor of “transformation” which turns out to be a lot like a Werther’s Original meets suntan lotion situation that frankly, we were not okay with. Eventually though, after its original formula stopped containing lithium and it was sold for your enjoyment and not your medicinal benefit, it got a brand new image, the label 7-UP and the privilege of being the first. It’s controversial, but 7-UP remains this author’s favorite - it’s got more bubble, more cut, and less cloying sweetness than its more popular cousins Sprite and Sierra Mist, though less notoriety. Speaking of Sierra Mist - well, sometimes the sibling rivalry results in a killing off from within, and that’s exactly what happened to this longtime Pepsi companion. It’s not the first time, with Pepsi also trying to kill off Sierra Mist back in 2016, when it rebranded it to Mist Twist, and perhaps not as impactful as the runaway success of Sprite, but if you weren’t already aware, you’ve drunk your last drop of the arguably underappreciated font of those misty mountains. Starry is something new, entirely - or that’s what Pepsi would love for us to believe. It hits different, it declares on its homepage. A ‘crisp, clear burst of lemon lime flavor.’ ‘Good vibes, great taste’ it declares elsewhere on the about page. Hell, it even pokes fun at the drama on its own Tiktok page. It’s hip, it’s new, and whether you like it or not, if you want lemon lime deliciousness with your Mexican pizza at Taco Bell, it’s here to stay. Personally we find it much better in cans and bottles than in fountains in nearby restaurants, but it’s hard to tell if it’s Starry’s fault or the fault of a few questionable machines and mixes. This isn’t the first fallen soldier for Pepsi in recent times, either. Does anyone remember Slice? As much as I now recall being a fan of this fruity blast from the past, it took some digging to even remember that that was Sierra Mist’s predecessor, and Teem before that. The sad truth is, nothing’s gonna stop the gears of war from turning, and that means even if we miss it, we have to accept that Sierra Mist is now forever in the firmament as a brilliant memory we can no longer grasp, and Starry is here to stay.

I've been playing a lot of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide lately. Despite its flaws, it has great combat. One of my favorite weapons in Darktide is the boltgun—and right around the time I was discovering how satisfying it is to blow heretics into little chunks, the announcement trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun came to my attention. Its intersection of boomer shooter meets Warhammer 40,000 was intriguing enough, but the fact that it was all about the boltgun made it a must-play for me. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (Boltgun) is a first person retro shooter—or “boomer shooter” if you prefer. In it, you play as a Space Marine tasked with purging Chaos and its heretical followers. You really don’t need much more impetus to take out your chainsword and fight the corrupted forces of chaos. As a retro style first person shooter, Boltgun is about fighting hordes of enemies with a huge arsenal of weapons. Combat in Boltgun feels great, and weapons in Boltgun have some serious power. I would argue it’s too much at once, but anything less wouldn’t deliver on the Boltgun promise. I was gibbing enemies from the moment I picked up the eponymous weapon. But it’s not just about the Boltgun – each weapon feels powerful to use. From the meltagun to the heavy bolter, there was not a single disappointing firearm, with each feeling like it had its place in the arsenal. And,if you run out of ammo, or just want to get up close and personal, you always have your trusty chainsword. Boltgun also features a pretty good variety of enemy types — from those that will stay back and take shots at a distance, to enemies that will intentionally try to get in your face. Some of the larger enemies felt like bullet sponges, but there were never too many of these — and they helped keep the pace of fights interesting. Boltgun is at its best when you’re in the thick of combat. I appreciate the occasional lull to break up the action, but I often found myself getting lost in Boltgun’s levels. Unfortunately, the level design in Boltgun isn’t always good. Some of the levels can be frustrating to navigate because of the sameness of the textures and corridors, which is especially frustrating with the lack of any sort of map. And while looking for color coded keys to open like-colored doors is a staple of retro shooters, this was leaned on too heavily in Boltgun. Despite Boltgun’s occasionally frustrating level design, there are visual set pieces and vistas that really sell the Warhammer 40,000 experience, and make Boltgun a pretty game. There are some settings that you can tweak to make Boltgun even more visually appealing, though, including a retro slider that allows you to adjust just how retro and/or pixelated you want your game to look. Even with the retro visuals turned down all the way, Boltgun still looks retro—just as if you were playing it on a really good computer in the mid to late 90s. While I enjoyed my playthrough of Boltgun, I was waiting for the game to show me something new or even just something different. Other retro styled shooters have done a great job keeping me engaged beyond simply shooting endless waves of enemies. That said, I really loved the combat, and it ticked a few retro shooter boxes for me. However, its level design is often boring, and occasionally frustrating. There’s a lot to like about Boltgun, but not enough to make me want another playthrough. If you want to slay heretics in the Emperor’s name and can look past a few minor flaws, you’ll probably enjoy Boltgun. Boltgun is available today on Xbox One and Xbox X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 as well as for PC via Steam. A Steam key was provided to us for this review.

On Wednesday, Montana became the first state in the US to ban the app TikTok. “Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party,” said Montana Governor Greg Gianforte, in a statement. The bill, which would go into effect on January 2024, would prohibit downloads of the app in the state and would fine any “entity” - an app store or TikTok itself - $10,000 a day anytime someone “is offered the ability” to download the app. For the moment, the penalties would not apply to users, but that would mean that stores like Google and Apple would be liable for violations. According to a report from the Associated Press, TikTok says there are some 200,000 users in Montana, as well as 6,000 businesses that use the platform. In a statement from the company in March, TikTok touted that 150 million Americans across the nation use the app as of February 2023. The bill is expected to be challenged in court and if it were to hold up, would have wide reaching ramifications in the United States for technology, social media, and free speech. Gianforte, whose political rise became international news in 2017 when he body slammed a Guardian journalist on the eve of his election to Congress, along with a wide variety of American politicians have said that the desire to curtail or outright ban TikTok use is over alleged concerns over data mining and the app being a “propaganda tool for the Chinese government.” According to ABC, Keegan Medrano, policy director for the ACLU of Montana, said the Legislature “trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information and run their small business, in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment.” On Twitter, the ACLU said “This law tramples on our free speech rights under the guise of national security and lays the groundwork for excessive government control over the internet. Elected officials do not have the right to selectively censor entire social media apps based on their country of origin.” Tiktok has vehemently denied that it shares data with the Chinese government. In a March congressional hearing, CEO Shou Zi Chew said the company has been building a “firewall to seal off protected U.S. user data from unauthorized foreign access.” “The bottom line is this: American data stored on American soil, by an American company, overseen by American personnel," Chew said, according to Reuters. While privacy and data collection should absolutely be concerns, TikTok is far from alone in the practice of harvesting user data and handling it improperly. Nearly every major social media and tech company not only employs the practice but has had issues with handling user data. Meta - which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp - agreed in December of 2022 to pay $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit as a result of revelations in 2018 that a third party, a data analytics firm called Cambridge Analytica employed by the Trump campaign, “may have” improperly accessed the personal information of some 87 million users. Meta was also fined $400 million by an EU privacy regulator in January for illegally forcing users to accept personalized ads. In November of 2022, Snapchat settled a lawsuit for $35 million in Illinois alleging the company violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. In 2019, Google and YouTube paid a record $170 million to settle a complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General alleging YouTube illegally collected the personal information of children without parental consent. Twitter is also facing a wide-ranging investigation by the FTC into its privacy practices. While the federal government and at least 34 states ban the app on official phones - employees of governments and agencies are barred from using the app on their work phones - a blanket ban across an entire state could be extremely hard to enforce. Even if the app were unavailable for download directly from an app store or geofencing technology were employed to enforce the ban, they can be bypassed by using VPN services. Immediately enforceable or not, the ban sets up a drastic and dangerous precedent for government overreach into how and what Americans use to access social media and communicate in general. Gianforte also announced Wednesday that the use of all social media applications which “provide information and data to foreign adversaries” would be banned on any government issued device. Those apps include other apps owned by TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, as well as WeChat, headquartered in China, and Telegram, which was founded by a pair of Russian entrepreneurs and is now headquartered in Dubai. Similar legislation with broad language that could be interpreted in many ways that could impact the access Americans have through social media is also making its way through congress. A bipartisan bill dubbed the RESTRICT (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology) Act, introduced in March, would give the Secretary of Commerce and the President the power to restrict access to social media and other technology from “foreign adversaries.” According to an analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the language RESTRICT Act could give the government broad and troubling investigative powers, potentially punish VPN users, be applied to a broad swath of technology, and give more power to the executive branch while removing “many of the commonsense restrictions that exist under the Foreign Intelligence Services Act (FISA).” The EFF says that if Congress is concerned about foreign adversaries or other nations collecting data, “it should focus on comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation that will have a real impact, and protect our data no matter what platform it’s on—TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else that profits from our private information” “Foreign adversaries won't be able to get our data from social media companies if the social media companies aren't allowed to collect, retain, and sell it in the first place,” writes the organization.

I have a confession to make: I’ve never beaten Myst. “Yeah, but haven’t you reviewed it?” You might ask. And to that I’d have to say: wow, thanks for following my work! That’s amazing. Developer Cyan’s seminal work was a cultural phenomenon when it was released back in the early days of CD-ROM video games–when full motion video and hi fidelity audio soundtracks were emerging novelties. Firmament is a first person adventure game with an emphasis on solving puzzles. To solve those puzzles you’re given a tool called an “Adjunct.” You'll use this Adjunct across three realms to manipulate various pieces of machinery on the behest of a voice that serves as a source of exposition and also as a guide as you work to discover the true nature of the Firmament This isn’t Cyan’s first rodeo when it comes to creating enigmatic worlds that beg for exploration, even if exploring them means solving puzzles. The three realms each seem to serve a specific function in a steampunk society that values work and obedience. You play as a character that has no memories, woken from a hibernation to serve as a Keeper to the Firmament–but you soon discover that there’s a mystery to be solved. While previous Cyan developed games have relied on moon logic and cryptic puzzles, the type of puzzles you’ll experience in Firmament never felt like they required leaps of logic. Everything made sense, and there were only a few times when I felt like I was missing the way forward. And while puzzle difficulty varies from person to person, I found Firmament to be right in that sweet spot where it wasn’t impossibly hard, but still challenging enough to stump me from time to time. To solve puzzles in Firmament you’re given a tool called the Adjunct, which shoots out a lead that allows you to manipulate an object once attached. The Adjunct acts in a sort of binary fashion: you can turn something on or off, move it left or right, etc. For some objects you can switch modes; so something you can turn left or right you can also move forward or backward, for instance. While this sounds simplistic, developer Cyan has created a series of clever ways to make the Adjunct feel like more than a way to turn switches on and off. Firmament has a wide variety of puzzle types. Some use logic, others use line of sight, etc. Puzzles aren’t always just standalone, as you’ll sometimes have to manipulate something at one end of a realm to create a way forward on the other end. As you explore more of the world of Firmament you’ll get upgrades to the Adjunct to allow you to get to places you weren’t able to before. There are three upgrades: torque, range and concatenate. Torque allows you to turn certain switches you previously couldn’t, Range extends the reach of the Adjunct, and Concatenate allows you to chain together switches, often to power something. Firmament is completely playable in VR, and it feels like it was designed to be. There are many times when you are gifted a beautiful vista just for figuring out a mundane puzzle. And the Adjunct was designed specifically to be used as a hand-mounted device–a simple twist left or right actuates the switches throughout Firmament. However, there are a lot of times where you ride elevators and vehicles, something that was not pleasant for someone who is easily motion sick, like myself. I ended up playing Firmament mostly with a good old fashioned monitor, thank you very much. I really enjoyed Firmament. Cyan has a specific brand of world building and puzzle solving that has captivated me ever since I was a little kid, and Firmament really sates a specific appetite. It feels like a game that was made by a developer that has had decades to hone their puzzle chops. It also has a story that compelled me to look for answers. And though the answer ended up being a little cliche, I really enjoyed the view. Firmament is available today on Steam for PC and Mac, and for most VR systems, with a PlayStation 4 and 5 and Playstation VR release planned for some time in the future. A Steam key was provided to us for this review

Everyone loves to say lightning never strikes twice but let’s be real: Nintendo makes lightning happen, and even when they do catch a little help because everyone’s suddenly stranded at home when their latest Animal Crossing title hits, they hardly need it. Ever since the Switch took the world by storm, there've been lightning strikes everywhere you look, and Tears of the Kingdom was bound to be more of the same. But really. Did we think that after Breath of the Wild basically reshaped the landscape of gaming by redefining things like exploration and open worlds Nintendo didn’t have the time since then to hit us again with an even more exciting sequel? Tears of the Kingdom has been captivating people worldwide since minute one. Forbes is agape in wonder that it’s even real, Mashable is putting together amazing America’s Funniest Home Video Style bloopers everyone can enjoy, and Ars Technica is helping you hack your way to better frame rates on Switch so you can capture it in all its magnificence. As we’ve been diving in and initial reviews have been coming out, we can see that Tears of the Kingdom is proving one of those rare sequels that reminds you of all the things you loved about the first game and then gifts you with the beauty of all new things to blow your mind. So while you can’t really predict these sort of things, you can make educated guesses. We had a feeling Tears of the Kingdom would break records in scores and sales, and it’s been proving true at every turn, including the most recent report from Nintendo itself to BusinessWire that the game had sold 10 million copies worldwide in only THREE days. That makes it the fastest selling Zelda game in the series. But that’s not all. A little search led us to this: With some notable exceptions on the list of best-selling video games found on Wikipedia, like Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V which top the list, in a moment that will again surprise no one, this record in particular is usually held by Nintendo and then broken by them. From Animal Crossing to Wii Sports, Mario Kart 8, Tetris and Smash Bros, only to be broken again a few years later by Nintendo. We’d argue it’s part of the Nintendo Magic, though there’s plenty of detractors that’d just roll their eyes at the statement. It’s easy to get the love/hate relationship people have with Nintendo - we often feel both - but it’s hard to ignore something like this. Our take? Exploration is the best way to find anything out - and that’s what Tears of the Kingdom is all about. Jump off the edge and explore it, and we suspect you’ll enjoy your journey. And that’s what great games are all about.

Darkest Dungeon was a darling when it was released seven years ago. Darkest Dungeon wasn’t unique, but it excelled in creating its sense of grim dread and kept me pushing through constant defeat. While Darkest Dungeon II does a great job with its atmosphere, developer Red Hook made changes that took away the sense of danger, something its predecessor did so well. Darkest Dungeon II is a roguelite game where you travel across a monster infested landscape in the hopes of thwarting the apocalypse that began in the first game. Darkest Dungeon was known for its ruthless difficulty, and perma-death: when your character died, they were dead. In the sequel,death is just an inconvenience, and dead characters come back when you start a new run. It could be argued that the permadeath mechanic was all window dressing, but it was enough for me to feel an investment in these (ultimately doomed) characters. Darkest Dungeon II never quite makes me feel the same way. Instead, it’s a game that feels less tense and more grindy. But perma-death makes the stakes feel real. Without it Darkest Dungeon II loses some of its grim darkness, which enhanced the first game considerably. Darkest Dungeon II fulfills the apocalyptic promise of the first game–with your goal to put an end to the ongoing apocalypse.The world is beset with creatures, and you have to navigate your stagecoach through increasingly dangerous paths.Your choice of paths to take in Darkest Dungeon II is one of the most significant changes made. While you mostly stayed in the same place in the first game, Darkest Dungeon II has you on the move from the start. Instead of picking missions among the locations on your estate, there is a branching pathway. This will look familiar to anyone who has played roguelikes in the last few years, as many games have adopted this approach since Slay the Spire made it popular. The entire party travels in your trusty stagecoach from one encounter to the next. Your stagecoach is part of the journey, and is a bit like a party member. It can have items equipped and can take damage, which requires repair. Your choice of path to take in Darkest Dungeon will affect your character’s sanity, the condition of the coach, and what encounters you’ll find on the road–among other things. Combat in Darkest Dungeon II isn’t so far off from the first game. Positioning is important, as your character’s abilities are dependent on where they’re positioned in the stack. Once felled, enemies leave corpses behind, which sometimes need to be cleared to effectively attack those in a lane that is unreachable or not ideal. It’s also best to mitigate damage, because there is limited potential for healing between combat encounters—especially if you’re venturing in a lair, where enemies will come at you in wave after wave. After a long journey, your surviving heroes do get some respite,in the form of Inns that mark the end of that leg of your travels. The Inn is where you can use specialized Inn items, as well as make sure your heroes are equipped and ready to take on the next section of your journey, with the mountain being your ultimate destination. Another deviation in Darkest Dungeon II is its art. While it mostly retains the same style, it’s only a semblance of its predecessors' superbly hand drawn visuals, as they’re replaced with 3D models. This does create some more graphical fidelity, but it comes at the expense of grittiness. While Darkest Dungeon II has a great atmosphere, it never recreates that sense of danger and hopelessness that its predecessor excelled at. Its change of graphical style and gameplay were bold moves, but they’re a little too much of a departure for someone looking for more Darkest Dungeon. It’s by no means a bad game, just a sophomore slump for the series, and a case of “it ain’t broke, but let’s fix it.” I’m hoping to see a third that builds on the strength of both games. Darkest Dungeon II is available now for PC via the Epic Game Store, and Steam. A Steam key was provided to us for this review.

There’s the gaming world you know and the gaming world you don’t. Even if you don’t classify yourself as a “gamer,” simply put, you probably are. Whether it’s quick mobile games, the New York Times crossword, or a long dormant love of Tetris reawakened by Hollywood’s new interest in the game, play has touched your life. Play is essential for people of all ages - it’s good for your brain and expands your horizons. Even if you do have a love for video games and spend a lot of time with them like we do, there’s so much more to discover. Video games aren’t just one thing, just like film isn’t all noir and music isn’t all jazz – they’re a myriad of different things – and there’s room for even more. That’s what we love about attending LudoNarraCon every year. While this virtual convention is a celebration of narrative driven games, you’ll find that narrative games come in a lot of different varieties, from platformers and survival horror to shooters, puzzle games and even rhythm games. This year, devs from all over the world came together to showcase their amazing creations. There were 43 games on exhibit, some available for the first time, some previously unavailable digitally and some returning favorites, with 35+ demos to work our way through, and though we encourage you to explore them all, there’s a few we wanted to share as our top picks. Enjoy! Cryptmaster We’ll start things off spooky with Cryptmaster. This is a dungeon adventure unlike any other you’ve likely embarked on, whether it be tabletop rpging or with a mouse and keyboard. It mixes up elements of an old school text-based adventure with a typing game and a traditional adventure game and throws in some heavy Cryptkeeper/Goosebumps 90s irreverence to create a really unique, charming game that’s both interesting and silly. You’ve died, and are now subject to the Cryptmaster’s whims. In this world though, words control everything, so you’ll need to choose them carefully. As you adventure from one room to another in typical dungeon style, you’ll need to type to the Cryptmaster (or speak to him using a mic, if you prefer) to tell him what to do. In Cryptmaster, you can type or speak any word you can think of, and as you do, you’ll unlock things like companions, chests, powers, and gear. Combat is also done by typing, and any time you type something successful, you get closer to unlocking other mysteries by gaining letters from your victories. It’s a truly interesting technique and its implementation continues to evolve through the gameplay. Add to that an intriguing world and just enough lack of detail to how you ended up here and we think it’s worth diving into. It has a planned release for 2024 and we’ll be keeping an eye on it. Death Trick Double Blind Death Trick: Double Blind is a detective game with a few unexpected twists. When a circus’ star magician vanishes and the loss of this marquee act threatens to close the show altogether, an unlikely duo of magician and detective pair up to make sure the show does go on and the mystery is solved. We really loved the interplay of the magician and detective’s storylines, and the different ways that they interacted with the characters and environment they were placed in, and while not actually a point and click adventure, a few of the game’s mechanics reminded us of some of our favorites. You can question people, examine items, and contradict theories that you or others have about the disappearance, and some of those mechanics work together to almost make the game seem like point and click adventures of yore. In the short time we had with this game we were compelled to find out more, and we’ll definitely be there to finish detecting when this game finally releases. Harmony: The Fall of Reverie Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is an interesting tale that takes place in two different worlds with one connection- your character, Polly, who has returned from years abroad to help locate her missing mother. When she gets home, she discovers everything isn’t as it once was, with an evil corporation nipping at the heels of her hometown, and a previously undiscovered power of clairvoyance that connects her to a different realm called Reverie. She’ll need to harness her godlike powers in Reverie and make the right decisions back home to find her mother and save her home. One of the draws of this game was its Inside-like look at emotions and the well thought out way you can choose to interact in a situation. Too often in narrative games you’ll know what you’re supposed to choose and what will or won’t work, but to Harmony’s credit, often both approaches can work. There’s certain things that are inevitable that you’re actually forced to experience, but different types of nodes in the overarching story path called the Augural will change things not just for the next chapter, but perhaps even the overall ending. We found ourselves easily connecting to the characters and empathizing with them while also intrigued by the looming threat of megacorp MK and the mystery surrounding Polly/Harmony’s mom’s disappearance. It’s a story with more than a little fantasy that rings true because the emotions are relatable and presented realistically, and it’s why we’re looking forward to its imminent release on June 8th. Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical Have you ever wanted everything to be a musical? For song and dance to reign and everyone to dance in the streets to even the mundanities of life, a la the musical episode of Buffy, “Once More with Feeling?” Well, if you’re that person (and we are out there!) you will not want to miss Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical. This is a game unlike any other we’ve seen so far, and that’s to its credit. In it, you’ll play as Grace, a member of a band who’s sort of lost her way and isn’t certain about her next steps. Before she can do much plaintive singing about it though, her life changes in drastic ways, and she discovers she has otherworldly powers- more specifically, the power of a Muse who was murdered. Now not so aimless, Grace must find out what happened to her predecessor by interrogating gods hiding amongst mere mortals - all in song. While we’ve been let down hard by video game musicals in the past, the music was immediately compelling, and Stray Gods never pulled any punches as far as difficult choicemaking. You’ll have to make decisions on the spur of the moment that you’re unsure of and see where it takes you. It’s immediately compelling with characters you can and do instantly fall in love with, and like any good musical has some real showstoppers even in the demo. Simply put, everything about Stray Gods made us giddy, from the musical interplay between characters to the storyline and quick choices that are in no way easy, and it’s already on our wishlist, with a planned release date of August 3, 2023. The Invincible The Invincible is one of those games where as soon as you step foot into its world, there’s an air of mystery and dread. You’ll be playing as Yasna, a scientist who went on an expedition to a strange planet and winds up alone, without her crew. You’ll be tasked with piecing together what happened while avoiding having it happen to you, using steampunk style tools and your detective skills. While it’s still in development, it’s already beautiful to behold and invokes a serious sense of “scared and alone” in us, and we’re very excited to unwrap more of the mystery. Without any cheap jump scares, we were still constantly looking over our shoulders and sure that something terrible was about to happen the whole time we played the demo - and that kind of tension and mystery is something that’s hard to ignore. Luckily we won’t have to wait long to take the full expedition, since it’s planned for release sometime in 2023. Wrestling with Emotions: New Kid on the Block Wrestling with Emotions isn’t exactly new. We saw the original at one of the original Bit Bash summer festivals, and fell in love with it right away. Luckily for us this LudoNarraCon, there’s more to love, with New Kid on the Block, which is a mashup of old and new that hits a perfect note. If you’ve never played this game before, you’re a luchador style wrestler who desperately wants to fall in love, or at least in like, and cuddle some cutie-pie wrestlers. As weird as that sounds, this game ends up being a dating sim of the wildest and weirdest type, where you both wrestle and, as the title explains, wrestle with your emotions. Will you break the rules in hopes of catching a makeout sesh with the main men and women of wrestling? Will you become strong in the ring and great with your cuddles? It remains to be seen but the bottom line is you will have fun in this colorful, cuddle centric version of ‘94, you will embrace the sexy, and, in a surprising twist that really made us smile, you will find a real heart to the game that endears you beyond all the silliness and seduction. There’s no set release date yet but the demo will tide you over, so make sure to wishlist it and download that demo now. 1000xRESIST 1000xResist is another game with an immediately immersive environment. It’s post-apocalpse times, and you’re a clone who worships the last remaining human, an entity known as the Allmother. Humans were wiped out over 1000 years ago and you have to piece together the truth of what happened by phasing through time and memories. 1000xResist has an almost J-horror sort of vibe, and considering we’ve all been through an actual pandemic, this scenario was already unsettling. You’re activated at a school and have to piece things together as you go, by switching between the past and the present, to unravel what actually occurred. This game is eerie and mysterious, and with a planned release date in 2023, one you should have on your wishlist. Dead Pets Unleashed Last but not least is colorful, comical Dead Pets Unleashed. This game oozes with charm and evokes things like Hi-Fi Rush, an early favorite game this year, and Scott Pilgrim. It’s another band on the skids tale, where a struggling punk band is stuck in a stalemate after 10 years, where you play as Gordy, a demon who’s looking for their place in life. When I say you play as Gordy, it means all of her life, from getting up and dressed in the morning (shower or not) to getting food (same old hotdogs), working a dead end job and performing with her band. At the heart of it, Dead Pets Unleashed is a rhythm game, where you’ll play along to the beat with an awesome punk soundtrack. But there’s more to it than that, from the “fashion souls” aspect of getting dressed to the mini games that have you making the perfect (or grossest) hot dog, waiting tables, and halfheartedly dating to satisfy your parents, while secretly self-sabotaging before and on dates. It’s a lot of story, a lot of heart, and fantastic mechanics to match that make this game hard to put down once you’ve picked it up. I think if any element from the music to the art to the actual mechanics of even the smallest of mini-games were off it might make this title less compelling, but we had as much fun waiting tables Overcooked/VR the Diner Duo style as we did smashin’ our guitar to the beat on stage, and we’re interested to see just what happens to Gordy and the band when it all plays out. This game, tragically, does not have a full release date yet, but we’ve already wishlisted it and will be first to let you know when we know it’s about to release- it’s one you won’t want to miss. And that's all from this year's LudoNarraCon. Get out there and explore something new in games, and we'll see you next year.