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My backlog from 2023 is a mile long, but I’m surprised it took me this long to get to RoboCop: Rogue City. If you grew up in the 80’s, 90’s or early 00’s, it's a safe bet you've seen RoboCop. While there have been plenty of RoboCop games before, nothing comes as close as RoboCop: Rogue City does to make you feel like you’re the titular shiny policeman with a hand cannon tucked into his leg. This is a game that was designed for millennials. RoboCop: Rogue City is a first person shooter with a surprising amount of narrative beats. It takes place between the movies RoboCop and RoboCop 2. Unlike RoboCop 3, Peter Weller returns for Rogue City, providing the voice for the now cyborg Alex Murphy, or as Omni Consumer Products (OCP) designated him: RoboCop. There are some other familiar faces around, including RoboCop’s parter Lewis. Unfortunately, only Weller returns to reprise his role, while everyone else is voiced by kinda sound-a-likes that deliver wooden performances. I was half expecting RoboCop: Rogue City to be a corridor shooter with a few cutscenes in between to give context to the action. Instead, Rogue City takes a more Deus Ex: Mankind Divided approach by putting you into large (not quite open world) locations where you can explore and fight crime. You can even write tickets for cars parked illegally. It’s really impressive with the level of detail to the RoboCop world, but it also makes you feel more like a cop than just a killing machine. There are a lot of interactions with NPCs, too. You have some moral choices to make, usually siding between the corporate fascist OCP, or the government of Detroit that is just trying to do the right thing. Whether you help certain people or not will have consequences for the future, but they mainly affect story beats only. And there is so much story. There are main plots and side plots galore. And that brings me to my first and most significant complaint about RoboCop: Rogue City: there is almost too much story. I’m glad Rogue City isn’t a corridor shooter, but I’d also like there to be less breaks in the action. It feels like for every few minutes I get to play with my gun out there is at least 5 minutes of exposition waiting around the next gameplay corner. And while these side quests and conversations with NPCs aren’t horrible, they take time away from what makes Rogue City fantastic: its gunplay. RoboCop: Rogue City does an excellent job making you feel like RoboCop. You clomp around with weight. You twirl you sidearm with gusto. And you take down perps with little to no remorse. Sure, you're a cop so you can’t just shoot everything that moves, but more often than not thugs will take out their guns, inviting their gruesome demise. There are hostages you have to look out for occasionally, but luckily the hostage sequences are spread out to not feel overbearing. Everything about the combat feels great, from the sounds to the firing of the gun. There is even a RoboCop appropriate targeting system that highlights enemies. It’s an amazing feeling to clomp through firefights taking out perps with a burst of the iconic handcannon. You can pick up other weapons along the way as your enemies drop them, but I found myself sticking with RoboCop’s overpowered pistol–mostly because of the upgrade system that turned it into a really fun gun to use. While not exactly an RPG, there is a simple skill system in RoboCop: Rogue City that lets you enhance everything from your damage to your conversational skills. You can also upgrade RoboCop’s sidearm by switching out different circuit boards, each with their own potential for modifiers that change multiple aspects of the gun, from its fire rate, how much damage it does, etc. Like I said before, RoboCop: Rogue City feels like a game for millennials. But it stands on its own, without much prior knowledge of the franchise. However, if you’ve seen the movies Rogue City is a real treat, full of the ultra violence and dark humor that made the original movie so popular. RoboCop: Rogue City is available now on PC via Steam and the Epic Game Store and for PlayStation 5 as well as Xbox Series S|X.

The Mandalorian and Grogu was announced today, and it will feature two of the most popular characters in the recent Star Wars ouevre . For other IPs it wouldn’t be a surprise that Disney decided to make a feature length film featuring the duo, but for Star Wars it's unprecedented. Still, it’s hardly a surprise. Star Wars films aren’t in the best of shape. While most of the TV shows revolving around that IP have been mostly well received by critics and audiences, the latest Star Wars trilogy received mixed reactions from fans. Now it seems that Disney is leaning on some of its most prominent characters, and that means it's either finally giving fans what they want–or hoping this Hail Mary will “save” what some see as a flagging Star Wars film franchise. The Mandalorian started off as a Disney + show and quickly became popular among core Star Wars fans while also bringing in lots of new fans. It was such a success that it’s not unusual to see stuffed “baby Yodas” on the shelves of most any store. And starring as the titular Mandalorian, Pedro Pascal’s popularity has exploded, making him a household name. After Disney acquired the Star Wars IP for over $4 billion dollars, it has had varying degrees of success with the franchise. While Kathleen Kennedy was lauded by some for overseeing Star Wars as it tried new things, she was hated by the subset of fans that hated how they handled the legacy cast. It’ll be interesting to see if The Mandalorian and Grogu can revitalize the Star Wars IP as a film franchise. One thing’s for sure, though: we’ll be seeing more “baby Yoda” on store shelves–at least for the foreseeable future.

Game Chops is a Video Game Record Label that specializes in signing artists who inspire video game music or provide stylized covers of popular video game music since 2012 but never putting together a full album until later. Now they are home to such popular artists like DJ Cutman and Helynt. After an already jam packed year of video game albums, 14 in total this year alone, comes Sonic and Chill by Funk Fiction. A slick funk based cover album of familiar tunes that really blast our nostalgia ridden brains back to 1991. Funk Fiction himself has been crafting synth wave remixes for a long while (2017)  but with Sonic and Chill he brings the funk to some of our childhood classic songs from the Sega Genesis but with fantastic chilled out vibes popularized on lofi channels across youtube. Favorites like Green Hill Zone, Marble Zone and Angel Island Zone bring us back to our adolescence but it isn’t all remixes. Songs like Chill Zone and File Select take a popular theme or tone and use it to create something wholly new. Clocking in at around 43 minutes, Game Chops and Funk Fiction have really created a special kind of vibe using the Sonic the Hedgehog music catalog and the lo-fi aesthetic that has become all the rage in the last couple of years. With Zelda and Chill, and Mario and Chill already in the collection, Sonic and Chill is a perfect addition in keeping with the fantastic Game Chops lineage.

The show that has been wowing audiences around the world has returned to its self proclaimed second home in the Windy City. Chicago, in partnership with Lin-Manuel Miranda, welcomed Hamilton to the Nederlander Theatre in the Loop this September. We recently were in attendance for a performance and it seems like Hamilton hasn’t missed a beat since it’s departure. There were a few adjustments made only by actor choice but overall, it still hit the same highs as before, with the stand outs being Josh Marin as the King of England and Alex Nicholson. Both commanded audience attention when on stage, hitting every comedy queue and high note necessary for their roles. The audience came in full support of the show's return with near, if not fully sold out shows. With not an empty seat in the house, the new cast felt the love with uproarious applause from the crowd. There is an ongoing lottery sign up on the Hamilton website if you’d like to try your hand on that but otherwise get your tickets early! Tickets are available until January 2024, but no word on the show's run coming to an end officially yet.

I can always appreciate a good, slow, contemplative puzzle game. However, I can’t say I’ve ever played a game that is part meditative, and part exhilarating in the same way as Jusant. Justant is a third person adventure game. In it, you play as a person determined to climb a tower of rock that extends into the sky. You’re not really given too much of a reason why you’re climbing this rock face besides “because it’s there.” At least at first. Jusant tells its story through clues you discover in a civilization that lived in the tower, but left after the rain stopped and all the water started to go away. You aren’t ever told why you need to climb besides there’s no other way than up. Along with you on the ride to the top is a cute little blue water creature called a Ballast.This little guy does more than just look adorable–you can use it to highlight secrets or points of interest in the environment to discover. You can even use your Ballast to interact with the environment. For example, it can revive plants, creating handholds that allow you to climb to areas you couldn’t access before. While most games just have players press a button to grab a ledge and then press up to climb, Jusant has mechanics that are a little more involved than that. Each trigger on the controller acts as each hand–you pull the trigger, and that hand grabs the nearest handhold, and vice versa. This isn’t always the most precise system, as your character’s hands don’t always go where you expect, but that happened only a few times. There are scenarios which require you to consider which hand to use, or require you to swap hands–but once I got used to the controls, it felt like second nature, even when the handholds got more complicated. Stamina is also a consideration, as you can't just climb forever. However, running out of stamina isn’t a death sentence, because you’re always clipped into a safety device–whether it’s a piton you place yourself, or a designated safe zone in the rock. I never played another game that handles climbing quite like Jusant does. Climbing in video games is often at the threat of death. Not in Jusant. Instead, failure is met with the opportunity to try again–not a grisly death scene to ruin your good vibes. During your climb, you can place a set number of pitons that act as sort of checkpoints. If you fall, you can just reel yourself back up to your last safe location and try again. Because there’s no threat of dying, climbing in Jusant doesn’t feel as nerve wracking as in other games–even as you’re climbing to incredible heights. I’m afraid of heights, but knowing that I can’t fall to my death doesn’t invoke that fear at all, so I can focus on the climb. And climbing in Jusant is damn fun. It was a joy to explore off of the beaten path just so I can find my way back up to where I was–it’s that satisfying. While fun, climbing stays pretty simple: There isn’t much variation in the way you can use your character to climb–and there are no skill points to spend to level up or anything like that. However, there are a few things in the environment that change how climbing works, like the flowers that you can revive with your friendly Ballast–and more. Jusant is fantastic from beginning to end, but it does have some issues. My biggest complaint about Jusant revolves around its end. I don’t want to spoil too much, and while I thought the very end was absolutely beautiful, the conclusion with the mountain itself is a bit anti-climb-actic. Okay, sorry, I really wanted to throw that in there. But there are other little things about Jusant that stop it from being a perfect game. While I appreciate the semi-novel climbing mechanics, they ultimately felt unnecessary. Handholds were mostly always available, and I eventually found myself mindlessly spamming Left Trigger / Right Trigger until I got to where I wanted to go. There were just a few times that I had to carefully consider where to put my hands. On top of that, sometimes the hands would bug out and do all sorts of crazy things visually. 2023 is shaping up to be one of the best years in gaming in a really long time. It’s inevitable that some great games are going to be lost in all of the noise, but I hope Jusant climbs to the top to get the recognition it deserves. It’s a slow burn punctuated by exciting climbing sequences, and definitely one of the standout games of this already standout year. Jusant is available today on PC via Steam and on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and the Windows store. A Steam key was provided to us for this review

I first became familiar with Junji Ito’s work while browsing the web late at night–which turned out to be a big mistake. When I found out that there was a game being made using Ito’s work as inspiration, I was excited to see what was in store. After finding out it was all being done as a text-based throwback, I was even more excited to see the finished product. World of Horror is a point and click horror adventure game that is heavily inspired by Junji Ito, while also containing Lovecraftian monsters and other horror inspirations. Ito’s art style is definitely the most prevalent, and the different cases you solve could come straight from Ito’s manga. Okay, not quite–since Ito tends to be a bit more creative. However, the creep factor is till there, and is somehow enhanced by the low-fidelity presentation. In World of Horror you play as one of 14 playable characters, just trying to make their way through the increasingly terrifying world. Your goal is, ultimately, to stop whatever ancient evil you’re currently up against. It will be an uphill battle, however. But you can recruit some help along the way–and they make great sacrifices to horrors you may not want your character to interact with directly. There are all types of horrifying things to run into in World of Horror. Some of these events will resolve on their own. Others will require you to make choices–with these choices potentially lowering your health (stamina) or increasing your curse level, etc. There are combat events that have your character directly battling with unspeakable terrors. These combat encounters are turn-based, and allow you to cue up a certain number of actions or attacks before executing them–and hoping you can kill them before they kill you. While World of Horror says it’s an homage to pre-VGA mostly text-based adventures. I used to play games like that when I was a kid (yeah, I’m old as hell) but I don’t remember them being so busy, visually. The tutorial even makes mention of that. That means World of Horror is a hard game to wrap your head around–especially if you’ve played nothing but games with HD graphics your entire life. This isn’t to knock on World of Horror’s art style. In fact, I would love to see more games take more chances in their mechanics and presentation. World of Horror requires a bit of a learning curve. World of Horror does a great job in its homage to classic old school adventure games. There are a few different ways you can experience this: through 1-bit or 2-bit mode, which changes the visuals overall. There are also a few color filter options that let you experience World of Horror in the most comfortable way–or just how you prefer it. I can’t say I’ve ever played a game quite like World of Horror. It has a mixture of genuinely unsettling moments mixed in with exquisitely executed jump scares. It feels more like a board game than an old school adventure game, but that’s okay–it’s still very fun to play. It’s also very difficult, so be prepared to die a few times before you figure out what’s going on, or at least go in at a lower difficult to get a hang of its unwieldy UI. World of Horror is available now on Steam A Steam key was provided to us for this review.

I’d like to say that my predictions for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game weren’t true, and that it was extremely popular. It’s gotten a bit of a bump for spooky season. While The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game doesn’t capture the same sense of dread the film invokes, it does have some exciting moments as you try to escape with your lives. Screenshot: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game So Gun media has a thing with horror movie IPs and asymmetrical horror games, that’s apparent. Their previous entry into this niche sub-genre, Friday the 13th, developed by Illfonic, didn’t do so great after a lawsuit destroyed any chances of that game getting further updates. That’s was a bummer, but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game sounded like a great follow-up. Developed by British studio Sumo Nottingham, Gun had new talent working on yet another horror IP–so what could go wrong this time? I would love to say that asymmetrical multiplayer games were more common, but sadly, there hasn’t really been any great examples since Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 and Evolve. There’s an argument to be made for Dead by Daylight, but it doesn’t quite capture the feel of a team working against another team. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game does scratch the itch for that a bit. Screenshot: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game you can play as four survivors trying to make their way out of the house of the murderous Sawyer family. Or you play as the family themselves in a 4v3 format (four survivors, two family members and Leatherface) Each survivor and family member has their own strengths, weaknesses, and abilities to exploit. It’s all pretty run-of-the mill, and makes some characters shine over others. There are also environmental hazards and obstacles that either the survivors or family can exploit, depending on the context. For instance, survivors can run under obstacles that might block family members, while the family can open/lock doors–or even just bust through obstacles. I would love to speak to the longevity of this game, but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game servers are mostly empty. They have even turned off crossplay between PC and console players due to hackers running rampant on PC. So if you own the game on PC, you’re just shit out of luck until these issues are patched out. And by that time, who will care? This game doesn’t have the longevity to last past a few months. It’ll have a DLC or two and then get lost to the next streaming sensation. Screenshot: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game Something that Dead by Daylight did right was have a general IP. There are only so many ways you can exploit The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And while the game did a great job in its visual recreation of the movie, it didn’t really capture the feel of the film.Sure, it kinda looks like the movie, but the claustrophobic horror and dawning realization of the family’s depravity are all lost to character select screens and character abilities. At least Friday the 13th had schlock built in. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre invoked an acute sense of dread that would be hard to recreate in a game, let alone an asymmetrical multiplayer game. At least I know this game will never be popular enough that Leatherface will make his way into Fortnite. Hey, it wasn’t all bad. I did get to go to a pre-release party and meet Kane Hodder and some of the cast of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well as some actors that did work for the game. I also met some influencers with questionable marketing suggestions and $75 dollar an hour consulting fees. Also, we didn’t get prerelease keys, and smaller publications were relegated to getting post-release keys, guaranteeing that we’ll lose out on the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game’s moment. Because that’s all it really had, just a flash and it was gone, off of the radar of most gamers, and into obscurity where it belongs. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Game is available now for Xbox Series S|X, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, and for PC via Steam.

All of the items on this 31 days of horror have so far been about monsters or supernatural entities that have you on their radar. Carrion flips the script and turns you into an insatiable, tentacled flesh beast–and it’s fun as hell. Carrion is a side scrolling action meets puzzle platformer that has you playing as a teethed and tentacled flesh creature. Your goal is to free yourself from the research facility where you’re being held–while devouring your enemies along the way and acquiring new abilities. As you make your way through the facility with the goal of escaping, you’ll not only meet terrified scientists but also armed guards–even those equipped in armored mech suits. Even as an amorphous ball of flesh, you can be killed. To combat this you’re fast, and can get to places the humans can’t–allowing you to jump out of air ducts to devour them–or you can pull them in and eat them there. There is a lot of flesh eating in this game, I should point out. As the monster you move inhumanly fast, and can run through a group of hapless people in moments. And if they know you’re around, armed humans will be more cautious–while the scientists cower in fear, and cry. It’s very dark, but you’re a hungry ball of flesh–and you have to eat something. The more you eat, the larger you get as you take on more and more mass. And the amount of mass you have surprisingly makes a difference. As a larger mass you can take more damage, but you can fit through smaller spaces if you have less mass. Luckily you can shed mass willfully and without having to take damage. In fact, you can leave your chunks of flesh behind so that they can be re-aquired later to bring you back up to size. Fleshily. While there have been games where you play as the antagonist, nothing quite captures playing a body horror, Aliens-adjacent flesh beast like Carrion does. If you’re tired of being scared this Halloween season, and instead want to bite back, there’s nothing quite like Carrion.

This is probably the last major character update–and possibly one of the last major updates for Warhammer: Vermintide 2. This four player co-op game was the best of its kind until Darktide came around to usurp the throne. But I had a blast going back into Vermintide 2 to check out the new Necromancer career. Vermintide 2 is still an amazingly fun game. I think we’ve been waiting just over a year for Fatshark to finally release Sienna’s final career. I was convinced for a while there that they were moving onto Darktide completely, and letting the fourth career slot for Sienna remain empty. But the Necromancer is here–and out of all of the possibilities I saw thrown around for Sienna’s final career, Necromancer definitely wasn’t one of them. Necromancers, thanks to Diablo 2, are usually associated with magic casting characters that can potentially have a small army of undead following them around and doing their bidding. And that’s exactly how Vermintide 2’s Necromancer works. It was something I didn’t believe could fit into Vermintide 2 gameplay seamlessly the way it does. It’s really impressive how well the Necromancer and her abilities fit into the established Ubersreik 4 (or 5… it doesn’t matter). The talent tree for Necromancer doesn’t give you much wiggle room. Your skeletons are always a part of her build, since it’s her ultimate ability. You can choose to upgrade that, or put more points into her casting abilities. I decided to go full undead army raising, and it’s surprisingly effective. Monster encounters became easier to manage with a group of skeletons putting on melee pressure while the other players can hammer away at it–or take care of other threats that pop up during the fight. The skeletons have three modes: fight, defend, and travel. You can direct them to attack or defend. The only problem with this, is that her item that controls the skeletons is shared with the potion slot–making it easy to accidentally drink potions when you’re just trying to set your skeletons on a defensive line, or get them to attack an enemy. The skeletons you summon can also go where players can’t: if you have them attack a distant enemy, they can use the same paths the enemy takes–so that means over unclimbable ledges, etc. The Necromancer career also comes with two unique weapons – the soul staff and the scythe, or technically the Soulstealer Staff and Ensorcelled Reaper. At first, I didn’t really like the reaper’s swing pattern–but it didn’t take me long to get used to it, and now it’s one of my favorite weapons. The Soulstealer Staff is one of Sienna’s most unique weapons, and allows you to fire bolts of fire. It also has a secondary mode that works a bit like the Psyker’s head pop from Darktide, it just requires you to keep line of sight of the enemy. While I’m excited to play Sienna’s new career, it might be a little too late for my group. I know there are others out there that still primarily play Vermintide 2 and even prefer it over Darktide–but with Darktide’s new class overhaul, it’s hard to find time to get back to Vermintide 2. Which is a shame, because it scratches a different itch than Darktide, and it’s one of the best 4 player co-op games ever. And the Necromancer career is the perfect excuse to go back and kick some Skaven (and northmen) butt.

I think Inside is probably one of those games that lives rent free in my head. It’s one of my favorite side-scrolling games of all time, with developer PlayDead’s Limbo occupying one of the top spots right along with it. However, Inside takes all of the lessons from Limbo and applies them to make a nearly perfect narratively driven side scrolling adventure. Inside may have been released in 2016, but it really doesn’t feel like it has aged a day. This moody, dark, side scrolling puzzle platformer has you playing as a boy, running away from an unknown government (?) entity while having bizarre encounters that only get weirder as you go. And the thing is, despite having a clear narrative there are no words exchanged–and nothing is really ever explained. Which just adds to the mystery, and the eerieness. One of its greatest storytelling feats is being able to tell such an intriguing story without giving anything away. As far as gameplay, Inside is extremely simple–you can jump, run, and interact with objects, often through pushing buttons or being able to push/pull objects. This is something taken from PlayDead’s earlier game Limbo, that had similarly simple controls in a world that has a lot of expression, but no clear answers. In Inside you’ll often find yourself at a place where you have to overcome a hazard, or bypass an obstacle either through timing or by solving a puzzle. Most puzzles in Inside are solved through logical deduction. Physics in the game work as you would expect them to work in real life (mostly). There’s no real way to describe what you’ll encounter in Inside without spoilers–and it’s best to go in blind, and enjoy its atmosphere. The atmosphere is really what makes Inside stand apart, and its soundtrack and sound design help with this immensely. The art style is also nearly impeccable, and doesn’t rely on flashy graphics to convey what it wants. Inside is more likely to age gracefully than other games. It’s hard to discuss Inside while staying spoiler-free. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants a horror game that is drenched in atmosphere without jump scares.

I love Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, and I have since day one. Even so, I acknowledged in my review that it’s not quite the game that Fatshark had promised–and it had so much more potential. It was also heartbreaking to see the fanbase hate on it, since it had so many good things going for it. Since the class overhaul, the community is singing a different tune–and even praising Darktide for things that have been in the game since day one–and that warms my cold, cynical heart. However, the class overhaul was necessary to turn Darktide from wasted potential to the best modern four player co-op game you can play right now. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide–or just Darktide–is a four player first person perspective cooperative game set on one of 40k’s hive worlds that has a bit of a Chaos problem brewing. You play as a character arrested for whatever reason you decide in your backstory, and forced to fight the Emperor’s enemies as a pawn for the Inquisition. It’s seen as a suicide mission, and your character isn’t expected to survive–but as they complete more missions, they gain more trust and eventually get accepted into the ranks of the Inquisition. There are four classes in Darktide: veteran, zealot, ogryn and psyker. When the game first released, each class had a set of inherent skills and you could further hone them into the character you wanted by choosing a few key talents. That entire system has since been thrown out, and now each of these classes have three robust branching paths they can take to build their character–or you can even choose to turn your character into a hybrid of two classes. The class overhaul significantly changes the potential for each class. Instead of each class being defined by their ultimate ability and a few other details, you can make the class into exactly what you want it to be. Each character now has access to three different grenade types (for the Psyker, this is three different casting abilities instead.) For instance: I always loved the Ogryn’s weapons, but in the original class system I was forced to play an Ogryn with few ranged abilities and emphasis on melee. Now I can build an Ogryn that is all about shooting his oversized guns–and it’s glorious. There has also been an overhaul to Darktide’s weapon procurement and upgrade system. There’s still a lot of gambling involved, but now you can switch weapon Blessings out without fear of locking your weapon. It’s still possible to get a “brick” weapon–one that meets max weapon level, but is stuck with bad perks. But it’s by no means necessary to min-max in Darktide to succeed–and those trying to find the perfect weapon are just wasting their time. I would have liked to see more levels come along with the patch, but the levels that we have are still pretty great. While some of them are just alternate routes that have you running “backwards” through a level, the design of each level is fantastic–just like I said in my original review. There are often multiple paths forward, and if you take an alternate route you can usually get to where you want to go–instead of being met with a dead end. Levels are also dripping with atmosphere, and gives the sense of claustrophobic dread. Despite Darktide having great gunplay with impactful weapons and having melee that is one of the best melee combat systems in any first person game I’ve played it was missing something. The class overhaul turns Darktide from a good game into a classic I will play for years. It creates a way to make fun new builds that just weren’t possible in the previous class system.

Okay, I’ll say it: this is better than Deathloop. I’m biased, because I loved Prey, but I also loved its setting. Mooncrash is the last good thing that developer Arkane Austin has produced. Especially compared to the abysmal Redfall. Mooncrash is less horror than Prey, and more roguelite. But you’re on a space station full of killer robots and angry mimics: close enough. Prey: Mooncrash was a surprise. It was announced and released during this year’s E3 and it’s for a game that hasn’t been making many splashes since its release over a year ago (check out our review of Prey here: it was the first full game review to appear on Third Coast Review!) and it has since sort of drifted into obscurity, overshadowed by bigger Bethesda franchises and announcements. That’s what made Mooncrash feel like it came out of left field for me, but it got me to revisit a game I had thought about properly in months. Prey: Mooncrash isn’t just a mission set in the Prey universe. Instead of retreading the same formula as the main installment, Mooncrash went a completely different direction and opted to feature rogue-lite elements. It’s probably not what anyone expected, but it turned out to be a pretty genius move. It’s a variation on the Prey formula done in an extremely effective and fun way. If you’re looking for more Prey, you might be disappointed, as though Mooncrash does retain some of the base game’s stealth, exploration and looting, it’s presented in a completely different form factor. The premise of Mooncrash is interesting: you’re working for a company that is in direct competition with the Transtar corportation called Rasma. Your goal is to use a simulation to navigate the Transtar lunar base—a sort of sister facility to Prey’s Talos 1. The lunar base is having the same problems as Talos 1—the Typhon have escaped containment and most personnel are dead. In Mooncrash your objective is relatively simple: escape from the moon. How you choose to do that is largely up to you—sort of. You start with one character, and as you explore around the moon base you will not only discover the fate of the test subjects and personnel, you will unlock different items via fabrication plans, gain points to spend on later runs, and find different characters to unlock, with there being five playable characters total. Eventually, as you unlock more characters, more abilities will open which will allow more exploration of the facility. Using Neuromods on a character unlocks that ability permanently, so even after a successful escape—or an untimely death due to the Typhon threat—you will keep your abilities once you reset the simulation. Until the simulation is reset, though, you can continue to move your characters who are not dead, or who have not escaped through it . The facility itself doesn’t reset after a run, either, unless you specifically tell it to. That means that anything your character has repaired, looted, etc. will remain in that state until the simulation is reset. You don’t have unlimited time with each character to explore the facility, though. From the moment you enter the simulation, you’re battling a timer in the form of worsening corruption level. There are 5 levels of corruption, and once it gets too high you are kicked out of the simulation and it resets. Corruption doesn’t only act as a timer, it also acts as a difficulty modifier: the higher the corruption level, the harder the enemies get. Not only that, but changing from one corruption level to another will respawn enemies that were previously defeated. There is an item that you can loot, buy, or create that reduces your corruption level, though, so you aren’t entirely beholden to the timer if you plan well enough. Planning for a run is half the fun I had in Mooncrash—whether it was outfitting my character before running them through the moon base, or planning on who I was going to utilize for what purpose and what exit they will ultimately be taking. Mooncrash allows for a fair amount of optimization when it comes to how to approach an escape run, but there’s a catch: each simulation reset means the lunar base may be slightly different from your previous run: some entry doors will be broken, stairs that were previously broken may be usable, etc. There are also a series of environmental hazards that can afflict an area like fire, radiation, or even lack of power or oxygen. The story in Prey: Mooncrash is compelling. In fact, it was my main motivating factor in completing all of the 27 objectives that you are expected to eventually perform once in the simulation. These range from escaping the moon, to scanning a certain number of Typhons, to eventually finding a way for all five of your crew members to get off the moon simultaneously. Completing more objectives gives you access to more story outside of the moon base simulation. I found little I didn’t like about Prey: Mooncrash. It was definitely a surprise—and an addicting one that I had trouble putting down. If you ever played Prey or similar games and wondered what it would be like if you had put your ability points into hacking instead of repair, or into combat psionics instead of weapon proficiencies, Mooncrash allows you to play in multiple different ways, and even forces you to try different loadouts as each character you can play as has their own strengths, weaknesses, and abilities available to them. The only thing I really wished Mooncrash had was the ability to set the simulation to exactly what you want it to be. The ability to manipulate variables to make the facility harder or easier to navigate, at say, the expense of being able to complete objectives, would be great for planning purposes. Also, I wish the moonbase was a little larger. As it is right now, there are three major departments—Moonworks, Pytheas Labs, and Crew Annex—which are all centered around a reduced gravity moon crater. Any additional size probably adds a ton of variables to anyone trying to find the best run through the moon base, but I just like the world of Prey so much I just want more. Also, the story, despite how compelling it was, didn’t pay off as much as I was hoping, and only gives us the slightest peek into the greater Prey universe. If you liked Prey but aren’t considering Mooncrash because it’s too much of a variation on the main formula, you should reconsider. Mooncrash is an extremely fun, tight experience that can easily add hours and hours of playtime on top of the already meaty Prey. Prey: Mooncrash is available now as downloadable content to the base game. This article was originally published on June 18, 2018 at this location.