Thirsty Suitors mixes turn-based combat with a quicktime event-fuelled cooking minigame and a mostly-optional skateboarding system complete with combos and tricks. It’s a strange blend of genres, but it’s all tied together by an excellent story and strong structure.

In each chapter of the game, you set out from your parents’ house with a main quest and possibly some side quests to do. You pick one of the two explorable areas, and skate around them towards your objective. On the way, you can interact with floating objects to fight random battles, participate in optional skate challenges, or just rack up a huge combo and find some health or mana pickups laying around. Skating is like a simplified, more forgiving Tony Hawk game, but gets pretty hard if you pursue a lot of the optional challenges. Once you arrive at a quest, you’ll get some dialogue options, experience the story, and inevitably be pulled into battle.

The combat rests upon its weakness system: You can guess an enemy’s weakness based on their personality, and if they fall for a taunt, they’ll be debuffed, and take extra damage from attacking skills of that type. All 5 types are the same except for the specific debuff they inflict, and the combat isn’t super deep as a result, but it’s elevated by the storytelling woven through the main story fights. You’ll be given dialogue options that can change the fight’s trajectory, as well as hints as to which types they’re weak to. It’s exciting to balance the mechanical aspects of combat with the ever-changing landscape of the fight, and makes the story battles far more interesting than random encounters.

WATCH THE THIRSTY SUITORS VIDEO REVIEW ABOVE

The combat also features action commands, which boil down to a QTE that reduces the damage you take or increases the damage you inflict. They’re a little repetitive, but they keep the combat from feeling automatic, and work to highlight certain late game moments.

More than anything, Thirsty Suitors leans on its story, and the writing is excellent. The game has a deep grasp of intergenerational trauma, family dynamics, Indian-American culture, and dysfunctional coping mechanisms, and turns these into both the game’s emotional core and expressive fantasy visuals. The animation here is very funny, but also depicts the emotional reality of the situation. Jala parkours all over the place, her dad wobbles onto the table, and her mum stiffly makes passive aggressive comments.

A lot of the game is about Jala atoning for her past, and overcoming the ways she has hurt people to protect herself. Your choices impact her personality in three stats, which influences certain parts of the story as well as her combat stats.

The cooking minigames are made up of slightly more involved quicktime events than the regular actions commands, combined with conversations with your parents and a metre management minigame. Again, it’s nothing too deep, but the story is so good and they’re infrequent enough that it stays fresh.

The game’s art is stylish and coherent, and the music, animation, and effects all support this. There’s plenty to do in Thirsty Suitors, as you can skate as different characters, including a cat and dog, and you can also unlock songs and outfits for Jala. The game took me 9 and a half hours, and I did barely any of the skating challenges, but completed all the side quests and cooking recipes I could find.

This is one of the best stories in a game this year. If you like sharp writing, turn-based combat, a little skating, and don’t mind some quick time events, this is easy to recommend.

Thirsty Suitors is available now on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series S and X, Nintendo Switch, and PC, and is also a part of Game Pass

Along the way, a helpful companion aids you in solving environmental puzzles and discreetly guides you toward collectibles that expand the narrative. As you ascend, swing, and advance, you’ll traverse stunning biomes, find solace in tranquil melodies, and gain a panoramic view of the myriad obstacles you’ve conquered.

Don’t Nod has a reputation for crafting immersive narrative-driven games where player choices wield influence over the storyline. Jusant diverged from this, opting to convey its narrative primarily through text based collectible items, which can be ignored at one’s discretion. While the collectibles encountered in the game contribute to narrative depth, they were a bit too lengthy for my taste. And since I didn’t stumble across every item, my understanding of the storyline was hindered, and quite frankly, I’d prefer traditional storytelling altogether.

WATCH THE JUSANT VIDEO REVIEW ABOVE

While the narrative quality in Jusant varies, the gameplay is where it truly shines. From the moment you embark on your ascent, you encounter straightforward yet captivating controls. You’re constantly using the triggers for each hand, setting pitons for swinging or safety, monitoring stamina, and leveraging your companion for environmental puzzles, providing an engaging and physically interactive experience. Though my fingers underwent a substantial workout, the title’s simplistic gameplay formula kept me enthralled and interested throughout.

This game doesn’t throw traditional puzzles at you. Instead, you’ve got to be a bit strategic in how you progress. You’ll have to know when to double jump, use your companion’s special ability to get climbable plants in range, or even place your pitons to assist with your swing. It’s also easy to get in the groove and completely forget about your pitons, which slowed me down. Throughout my playthrough, reminders constantly popped up to assist, which I definitely needed.

The soundtrack does a fantastic job of creating a soothing vibe that sets the perfect tone for the game. Even though I see Jusant as a kind of “chill dad game,” the music is truly outstanding. Whether you’re wandering through dark caves or facing off against wild winds, the soundtrack really adds an emotional layer to your adventure. It can go from subtle and mellow to bold and powerful at just the right moments, and I absolutely loved that about it. I also completely gushed over the visuals here as the soft color palette helps paint each area in a significant way. It’s truly beautiful to overlook the mountain and truly take in the view. Outside of one biome, each section has a sense of calmness to it and blends in seamlessly with the music.

Jusant is a refreshing departure from the norm. Featuring straightforward yet highly enjoyable gameplay, captivating biomes and landscapes, and an OST brimming with character, it offers minimal room for critique. My biggest concern about the game is its duration. Completing the game in a single session is effortlessly attainable, and left me wanting more. But for those seeking a casual, visually striking, and notably distinctive experience, Jusant should 1000% be on your radar. The is available now Ion Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS5 and PC for $24.99. It’s also set to launch day and date on Game Pass.

For our video review of Jusant, as well as so many more games, check out our new 3 Minute Reviews YouTube channel.

You play as Malakai and Kaela, a sibling pair of relic hunters hailing from the City of Bones, an isolated desert town that’s an oasis of peace in the otherwise conflict-embroiled fantasy world of Jäan. When chaos and tragedy arrive on their doorstep, the brother-sister duo sets out on a mission to unmask the villains who’ve turned their lives upside down, eventually finding themselves playing critical roles in a war with higher stakes than they ever could have imagined.

Dark Envoy allows you to fully customize both Malakai and Kaela for combat, beginning with selecting from four base classes — warrior, ranger, engineer, or adept. As you level up, you increase various statistics and choose class specializations, each offering its own set of active and passive skills. You can also craft and enchant weapons, armor, and stat-boosting jewelry to further complement each character’s fighting style. I opted to use some pretty standard builds — for example, I made Kaela a sharpshooter, invested many of her attribute points into speed, and equipped her with light armor to create a character that could zip around the outskirts of the battlefield, taking out enemies from afar. In addition to Kaela and Malakai, there’s a small pool of partially modifiable companion characters to round out a party of four for each mission.

WATCH THE DARK ENVOY VIDEO REVIEW ABOVE

Dark Envoy’s combat incorporates a unique “Tactical Mode,” which permits you to slow or pause time to survey the battlefield and give directions to your units. Though I initially found this mechanic intriguing and thought the first boss fight encouraged me to use it in an effective and engaging way, for the vast majority of the game, it only served to make some uninteresting, extremely repetitive battles even longer than they needed to be. There was very little variety among enemies or map layouts, and although I sampled every difficulty setting besides “insane,” I never felt as though any real strategy came into play. I found myself using the same handful of skills — turning on “Tactical Mode” to aim the offensive ones and turning it off again to wait out the cooldown period — on an endless loop, cutting down wave after wave of enemies and wishing the fight would end faster.

I was similarly disappointed by Dark Envoy’s story, especially when it came to the branching plot. As one example, you must eventually choose to side with either the Empire or the League in the war, a decision that somehow managed to feel entirely meaningless. Both factions are described as immoral, but they’re never really shown acting in ways that illuminate their differing ideologies. Even Malakai and Kaela’s companions have no substantial thoughts on the matter — they’re perfectly content to join up with whatever side you prefer, which (if you ask me) is a remarkably blasé attitude to have about going to war.

I would be remiss not to mention that the review build of Dark Envoy suffered from a multitude of stability and performance issues, including skipping cutscenes, flickering textures, asynchronous audio, physics and pathfinding glitches, freezes, lag, and more. Often, one particular character would stand frozen in the middle of combat despite having the “move to attack” or “autonomous” stances toggled on, and even when I manually prompted him to target an enemy, he’d sometimes just stop walking before he got there. Once, the post-battle dialogue played while the boss was still very much alive and kicking, which left me distracted during the fight and confused after it was over. The list goes on, and while none of these snags could individually be described as a dealbreaker, they added up to produce a gameplay experience that was frequently frustrating.

Overall, my 30-hour playthrough of Dark Envoy was intermittently fun for the first five or so hours despite the technical issues, but the remaining 25 hours failed to deliver enough combat variety or narrative nuance to hold my interest.

Dark Envoy is available now for $29.99 on PC and will be available for Xbox and PlayStation 5 in early 2024. For more 3 Minute Reviews, check out our hub page.

World of Horror is a game that’s been in Early Access for a handful of years but has now crawled out of the choppy seas of game development, fully formed and ready to devour your time.

So here’s the set-up. You play as one of several teenage protagonists solving a pinboard full of local mysteries whose tendrils grip a seemingly quiet seaside town. I’m talking bloated corpses, melting men, ghost girls with curtains of long black hair, and other supernatural terrors. You need to defeat these evils by collecting objects, exploring different parts of town, and surviving encounters with horrible beings. 

World of Horror is roguelike in structure, meaning when you start each run the game will select five stories from a larger pool of investigations. Playthroughs last between 30 minutes to over an hour – that is if you can survive. You solve each of these investigations by visiting different locations in town and then facing random encounters. The outcome of these random events relies on your character’s RPG-style stats. You’ll be tasked with navigating creepy hospitals, abandoned houses, and the local high school. Oof, I’m so freaked out by that high school – if you know, you know. 

There’ll be times when you’ll be confronted with something truly horrifying and so must resort to combat, with the chilling rumours you’ve heard during your investigation materializing into shocking reality. These encounters are turn-based and you’ll be using a combination of attacking, defending, dodging as well as casting spells and curses. An action bar caps how many moves you can stack in a single sequence, and you then unleash it all in one turn. 

These encounters are in a word, uh terrifying. In other games, usually, the ghosties remain mostly hidden, creating a tense atmosphere. But World of Horror doesn’t mess around, and you’re face to face with these monsters – wide smiles, stretched skin, swollen faces-  you take in every single pixel that makes up their grotesque form. It’s like reading a Junji Ito manga and turning the page to a full-page panel of pure nightmare fuel. 

Runs can be difficult at first, especially when you’re looking at an overwhelming interface. It’s a throwback to the designs of classic adventure games but at first glance, it’s a lot. But World of Horror’s tutorials do a relatively good job of onboarding you, and you quickly get to understand how to navigate the game’s labyrinth of symbols, buttons, and mechanics. At first, an object or action might seem kinda useless, that’s until you discover a hyper-specific situation where they can be game-changing, and even unlock new interactions and endings. Completing a run in World of Horror is a delicate balance of strategy and luck. 

The game will dish out a handful of different mysteries each run, but due to its roguelike structure, you’ll bump into the same monsters and events quite a few times. For me, this repetition never dulled their impact, it just meant that I got another chance finding a better solution or gaining more insight into the best strategy. But the best thing about starting a new run is there’s always a chance you might encounter something new, a terror you’ve not seen before. And that’s the pull of World Of Horror – there’s always more lurking in its tangle of stories. And I want to seek out each and every one. If you want to join me on my kind of creepy quest, you can buy World of Horror over on Steam, Nintendo Switch and PS4.

Finn’s moveset is small. You can roll by holding the trigger to gain speed, jump, attack the ground to do a longer jump, and jump immediately after touching the ground to jump higher. Although you’ll unlock new abilities as you collect more eggs, the platforming stays simple and precise, and the bulk of the game is spent using your limited abilities to solve puzzles. 

Distant eggs generally involve hybrid puzzle-solving and platforming. You explore to find a way up, but there’s something stopping you, and you have to solve a minor puzzle to remove the obstacle. In general, these are easy, but satisfying, because they require understanding your platforming abilities to overcome your low jump height, and using the nearby interactable parts of the level. Maybe you need to grow a tree so you have something to jump onto, or maybe you just need to climb up to a different platform and glide over, once you unlock that ability.

WATCH THE CAVERN OF DREAMS VIDEO REVIEW ABOVE

Puzzles, on the other hand, often involve finding things that connect in different areas of the level. For example, a switch for a locked door is found by following a riddle’s clue to another area of the level. A few puzzles are incredibly obscure, but the majority of them are relatively enjoyable, testing your sense of exploration, and occasionally your ability to understand how different parts of the level connect.

There’s no combat in Cavern of Dreams, but this isn’t necessarily in the game’s favour. While many platformers have boring combat, it makes you pay attention in between the jumping challenges. When looking for your next puzzle to solve in Cavern of Dreams, there’s nothing to do but run.

To be fair, Finn’s roll can be a lot of fun to use. Rolling down a hill, then taking a big jump with the momentum you gained is satisfying on its own. That said, going up slopes is painfully slow, and Finn’s moveset is small, leaving you with little to mess around with other than rolling.

The problem is that the platforming is overly punishing. There’s no health system to speak of, so pits will instantly kill you, and other hazards bounce you unpredictably backwards, often into a pit. When you die, you’re sent to the last door you exited, which can be all the way at the beginning of a level. Because the unlockable buttslam is the only way to gain height, you’re best off halting all momentum and carefully taking each jump. The game has a bunch of narrow platforms above pits where you can lose minutes of progress, and when levels lean into that, it can be more tiresome than fun. The joyful elements of the platforming aren’t encouraged, and instead the game feels more like a cautious puzzle platformer.

Cavern of Dreams is heavily inspired by Nintendo 64 platformers, with a blur filter, low poly models, and simple, charming music. I definitely had fun for the game’s 5 hours, despite the last level being pretty annoying. But I found myself wishing the movement was faster and more frantic, and that just isn’t what this game is. If you prefer your platformers with a focus on the joy of movement, this isn’t for you. But if you like 3D puzzle platformers or classic N64 games like Rocket: Robot on Wheels, this is worth considering, because taken on its own terms, it’s a charming little adventure.

You play as Jack, a Ghostrunner or cybernetic ninja with amnesia, and due to your actions in the last game, the city is suffering from a massive power vacuum. All manner of fledgling factions are now looking to take control, including a newly emerged group of Ghostrunners thought to be dismantled who see you and your group as a tool of their oppression.

There’s a handy recap of the last game’s events in the extras menu but enough context is provided in the narrative to get you up to speed even if you skip it. This game’s story hits on a refreshing premise that suggests the fall of a ruthless dictator is not immediately followed by rainbows and sunshine. The supporting cast from the first game is joined by a few defectors from the old regime and the tensions between the groups now trying to work together make for intriguing drama, but many of the characters themselves are lacking any real distinctive personalities or designs. However, the band of enemy Ghosrunners don’t have that problem, as their overly dramatic rhetoric and displays of aggression keep events interesting.

WATCH THE GHOSTRUNNER 2 VIDEO REVIEW ABOVE

The hardcore and fast-paced action of Ghostrunner excels at giving you several simple tools paired with elaborate enemy and platforming challenges to make use of them. You can run on walls, grind on rails, slide on the ground, block and deflect projectiles with your sword and even change direction mid-air using bullet time. Active combat skills double as smart traversal tools that work your brain just as hard as your fingers as you swap between them in the heat of movement. You can equip and manage chips on your motherboard that specialize in certain skills providing passive bonuses to things like your stamina consumption or shuriken properties, allowing you to be better at the things you like. The addition of motorcycle sections and a wingsuit integrate surprisingly well with all your other skills, making for insanely cool strings of ninja techniques and parkour mayhem.

As powerful as you are, death is still easy to come by. Both you and enemies die in a single hit, so encounters push you to embrace perfection while clearing an arena. The quick restarts upon death temper a lot of frustration, and instead encourage you to master its combat puzzles by trying out new angles of attack and learning exactly what threats the enemies are to you in any given moment. Platforming and puzzle sections can be just as trying, but are amazingly fun with the game’s generous checkpoint system moving you along at a brisk pace.

Boss battles also make use of checkpointing which may have diluted a lot of their challenge, but this does seem necessary since they take multiple hits while you still die in one. Otherwise they are great spectacles that aren’t afraid to mix platforming into their designs rather than just combat.

Visually, Ghostrunner pulls off the cyberpunk aesthetic admirably and does a great job of making the environment look like an actual city rather than just a ninja’s playground. It hides a ton of collectables in small off-routes that can give you new weapon skins or background lore to dig through, and missions will tell you how much is left to find at their conclusion.

I was able to roll credits in just under 12 hours, but the desire to just play again and improve my times and deaths is noteworthy. There’s a roguelike mini game that lets you take on some pre-made virtual challenges, thrown at you in random configurations that I intend to spend a ton more time in. Ghostrunner 2 is a fantastic action platformer that provides spectacle, challenges and just plain fun the whole way through, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for the series. The game is out on October 26th for $39.99 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

If you’re not familiar with the character or his story, Web of Wyrd will not help you with that. You’re dropped right into the middle of an ongoing mission for the BRPD, an organization that prevents paranormal incidents from destroying our world; at least that’s what I think they do, as neither the acronym nor their mission statement is ever expressly explained. The storyline just doesn’t make much sense, and only gets more confusing as it goes with twists in the plot dependent on prior knowledge of the Hellboy lore.

I really like how Hellboy Web of Wyrd looks. Its action is filled with flashing comic art effects and screen-filling colors to emphasize impacts, and it also seems to drop a few frames from animations to subtly invoke a stop motion-like feel, similar to the Spider-Verse movies. But in contrast, the environments are quite dull.

But those tedious environments are just the start of the problems, as the game’s rogue-lite loop is quite thin as well. You’ll traverse four realms in total, defeating a boss at each conclusion. Stages are a series of combat chambers connected by gated hallways occasionally lined with easy to avoid traps. You’ll stumble across random upgrades that offer you increased health or armor, or special modifiers for your abilities like freezing enemies or damage-dealing dodges. Once you complete all four areas, a fifth is revealed, but you’re abruptly booted back to base and forced to redo each area with the new fifth one bolted onto the end. If that wasn’t exhausting enough, the finale has you re-run all versions of that fifth stage again in a single run.

WATCH THE HELLBOY WEB OF WYRD VIDEO REVIEW ABOVE

Upgrades you can buy from the hub area will carry over between runs, but death carries no harsh penalty other than starting a stage again from the beginning. Enemy encounters aren’t difficult enough to make the repetition frustrating, but the combat suffers from that lack of challenge. Hellboy’s fists are your primary mode of attack, and his repeatable 3 hit combo and heavier charged swings land with satisfying thuds. A dramatic finisher on stunned enemies can push them across an arena and slam them into walls and structures. You can throw debris, and dodge or block at the last second to slow down time and knock enemies back. You also have access to guns and relics as support items that can help you deal damage, stun, or clear space.

Arenas will spawn several trash mob enemies alongside 1 or 2 actual threats. Strangely, these main enemies are the only ones that can be targeted, and taking them down will despawn all the rest. But the biggest drawback to the combat is that all of the enemies you can target essentially have the same attacks. Diagonal swings need to be sidestepped, hooks need to be ducked, and double arm attacks blocked. As soon as you pick up on the tells, every enemy becomes child’s play, and flashy visuals can’t rescue the onsetting monotony.

I ran into a couple of technical issues as well, such as collectables I grabbed in stages not having any way for me to check on them despite voice lines saying I should ask an NPC back at base about them. A relic meant to teleport me to enemies worked maybe once the entire time I used it, and after beating the final boss my screen faded to white and the game soft locked. Needless to say, it was a disappointing end to my 8 hour playthrough. Upstream Arcade actually pushed the original embargo date back to provide a patch that did fix that ending bug, but that doesn’t address the overall stingy gameplay offerings.

Hellboy Web of Wyrd has the look and feel of something really cool, but it’s let down by almost every other aspect of its execution. Even amazing voice talent from the late Lance Reddick as Hellboy and the legendary Steve Blum as Lucky don’t add anything noteworthy to the time spent. The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.

Just like before, you collect a wealth of diecast Hot Wheels vehicles and race along the brand’s iconic orange tracks with elaborate curves, jumps, and hazards to navigate. However, instead of receiving new cars from blind boxes like in the first game, you can now use the in-game currency you win from races to purchase vehicles from a limited selection that refreshes every 40 or so minutes. The collection aspect continues to be the biggest progression draw for the series, as even more vehicle types have been introduced like motorbikes and ATVs. But it’s still disappointing that there isn’t any sort of museum or gallery dedicated to the history of the brand or fun facts about any of the toy models.

WATCH THE HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED 2: TURBOCHARGED VIDEO REVIEW ABOVE

The single-player mode, now called Creature Rampage, has been given a light kid-friendly story told through short cutscenes with energetic motion comic panels and overtly corny dialogue from its chipper characters. It’s pretty inoffensive, but largely forgettable, and I wouldn’t be surprised if even the kids skipped through them to get back to the racing. Creature Rampage adds a couple new challenges like a checkpoint race that takes place on the floors of some of its maps rather than the tracks, and a new Boss race that has you break through targets while increasing your lap time to avoid losing the battle. While I like the target races, I miss the significantly more intense boss races from the first game that were challenging multi lap gauntlets. 

In fact, a number of small tweaks to most of the new track designs seem to lower a bit of the skill ceiling. Awkward lips and jumps that would have your car careen off the track if you didn’t hit them just right now have magnetic strips near the landings to ensure you don’t. Some of the bigger jumps make use of the Turbocharger tagline and boost you automatically across massive gaps, there are even jump pads that auto flip your vehicle to upside down tracks. There are still instances where you’ll manually have to handle all of these situations but they are fewer and farther in between. There are new mechanics introduced as well like the ability to jump or to side check opponents off their racing lines, both of which are managed by the same meter that handles your boost. These new skills fit seamlessly into the fast and furious gameplay, and coupled with competent AI and inventive track layouts, you’ll cross many a finish line while on the edge of your seat.

While I wasn’t able to find any online matches during the review period, you’re able to group with up to 10 other players in a slim offering of online modes. You can create your own custom tracks or race on others made by the community, though your custom vehicle designs will need to be shared online before you can download them back to be used on your cars. The livery editor is largely unchanged from the last game giving you a blank plastic slate with a ton of layers to get creative with.

Visually, Unleashed 2 still impresses with its insane level of accuracy in regards to its toy vehicles and play sets, but there appears to be an extra level of detail in the brand new background environments that swap kitchens and class rooms for arcades and museums. Its sound design also perfectly captures the fanfare of screeching tires, roaring engines, and hissing Nitrous. The accompanying music selection is a bit of a let down though, with a couple of tracks that are outright distracting in how offputting they are.

All in all, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged does little to alter the winning formula of the first title. It’s still an exciting arcade racer with depth and great track designs, but this iteration feels like it’s coasting on its laurels rather than realizing its true potential. The game is out Oct 19 for $49.99 on PC, Playstation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.

WATCH THE SONIC SUPERSTARS VIDEO REVIEW ABOVE

While going through the four-hour campaign, you’ll choose between Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, each complete with their own unique moves and sense of momentum. The tiered layouts of each stage encourage you to replay them with different characters, as Knuckles climbing or Amy’s double jump may help you reach new paths. The 12 mains zones spread across a simple world map have some genuinely neat themes and gimmicks, like a bouncy sand snake that flows through a desert, and a factory that’s under self-destruct orders which you can delay by making it to switches on time. I dug the variety, and it kept me excited to see what new twists might lay around the corner.

That said, there’s a lot going on in both the foreground and background, and when coupled with the general speed of the action and tons of particle effects, it can sometimes be a bit overwhelming, leading to some unfair deaths by overstimulation.

In traditional fashion, Superstars has a slew of mid-level bonus challenges that range from familiar ball-based journeys through spinning boards, to frustrating-as-hell grappling courses where you’re chasing down one of the Chaos Emeralds. While the wonky physics make these latter ones a drag to complete, they’re worth putting up with because each Emerald grants you a different power up that you can trigger throughout the main levels. These range from temporary sight of hidden platforms and walls, to summoning a horde of clones to zip across the screen. This power refills anytime you pass a checkpoint, allowing you a ton of opportunities to experiment with them throughout the game. This sense of play encouraged me to explore the levels more often than in previous 2D Sonic games, although I’d say that’s not a very high bar to clear.

Each stage culminates in a boss encounter, which are mostly creative and enjoyable. There are some annoying ones where it feels like you’re almost forced to fail once or twice to learn the patterns, but the unlimited lives and liberal checkpoints alleviated any major frustrations. 

While Superstars has drop-in, drop-out co-op for up to four players, the sheer speed of the action makes it a bit of a mess. Co-op in a 2D platformer is a tough thing to nail, and Sonic stumbles like so many others before it. Thankfully I still had a good time while playing through the campaign solo. The whole game is wrapped in some great music, menus, and overlays that lean into an early-’90s Toys R Us aesthetic, hearkening back to the series’ apex in effective ways.

While Sonic Superstars doesn’t quite reach the highs of the Genesis games, CD, or Mania, not to mention the stronger 3D entries like Adventure or Frontiers, it’s a solid 2D chapter with a handful of great new ideas, and some rather forgettable ones. Charting the quality of the Sonic franchise over the past 30 years can feel like you’re mapping out a particularly windy and turbulent course, but thankfully this one doesn’t drop you right in the middle of a bottomless pit. Sonic Superstars is available now for $59.99 on PC, both generations of Xbox and PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.

Watch the Review in 3 Minutes for Wizard with a Gun, an ambitious sandbox survival game that gets a bit too bogged down in the minutia.

Wizard with a Gun Review Transcript

Wizard with a Gun is a sandbox survival game from developer Galvanic Games and publisher Devolver Digital that sends players either solo or in a group on a quest to rebuild the universe and time itself.

I don’t know what I was expecting from a game called “Wizard with a Gun,” but what I got still managed to surprise me. This is an ambitious little action-adventure game that somehow finds a way to combine elements from things like Bastion and Minecraft to create a package with memorable music, engaging gameplay, eye-catching visuals, and solid world-building. And while it works most of the time, there are quite a few things that could be refined to make this the kind of game you can’t put down.

You play as a Gunmancer, which, yeah, is a wizard with a gun, but that’s selling it a bit short. You can be a wizard with a pistol or a submachine gun, or a rifle, or a shotgun. While these are decent options, the combat’s potential truly lies with elemental bullet types like fire, ice, lighting, water, and poison. Past that, you can toy around with other ammo types and modifiers with special effects, such as oil bullets for extra fire damage, or freezing bullets, which can trap targets. It doesn’t feel quite as tight as it should, but it’s still endlessly satisfying to find synergies between your tools.

Combat is one of Wizard with a Gun’s key components, but the backdrop of your shooting gallery is interesting, too. The main story takes place between two worlds: The Shatter and the Tower. The latter is a customizable crafting hub where you can create, decorate, and read up on bite-sized bits of lore that you’ve collected. It also houses the Chronomancer’s Wheel, a broken time-travel machine that you’ll need to fix by collecting missing cogs.

As you might’ve guessed, those cogs are lost in the Shatter and often guarded by an impressive list of enemies that includes a great assortment of bosses and mini-bosses. What helps the Shatter really stand out, though, is the ever-present timer sitting at the top of the screen. This countdown represents the strength of chaos, and when it reaches zero, you’ll have to make your way back to The Tower while the world ends around you. It’s basically a countdown to hard mode, creating a risk-reward system for those who are willing to lose it all for some extra loot.

While I enjoy most of what Wizard with a Gun offers, my feelings about the crafting mechanics aren’t as positive. As you explore the Shatter, you’ll come across different biomes with unique resources that can be used to make guns, ammo, workbenches, and much more. What starts as a pool of materials quickly expands into an ocean of items to manage, and while there are a few ways to organize your goods, clunky menu navigation makes crafting upgrades and new ammo types feel like a chore. It’s a massive shame because while combat pushed me to try bullet combinations, the fun-killing menu simulator felt hellbent on holding me back. I didn’t hate crafting, but its edges, which permeate nearly every aspect of the game, are too rough to ignore.

From exploration to decoration, it seems like you can experience everything Wizard with a Gun has to offer with a friend. Outside of a few connectivity hiccups, my brief time online revealed an experience that could be perfect for co-op. That’s because Galvanic has crafted a game that nails two-thirds of its core offerings even if that last, intrusive third consumed far too much of my 12-hour playtime.

So, if you check out this isometric shooter’s twangy guitar tunes and vibrant cartoon visuals, and I think you should, just be prepared for a lot more than a wizard with a gun. Wizard with a Gun is out now for $24.99 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S.

Watch the Review in 3 Minutes for Lords of the Fallen, a tough-as-nails Soulslike from Hexworks. For more on the game, check out our top tips for getting starting in LotF.

Lords of the Fallen Review Transcript

Lords of the Fallen is a recursive action RPG from Hexworks and a reboot of 2014’s Lords of the Fallen by Deck 13. The premise remains the same, the evil god Adyr who once enslaved mankind was banished to the Umbral Plane but after millennia of building his power there he has orchestrated an invasion of demons and corrupted worshipers to sow chaos and set him free.

As a dark crusader in possession of the Umbral Lamp, a tool that lets you travel between the two planes, it’s your duty to put an end to Adyr once again. The setup is straightforward and standard fare for this genre and there’s clearly been a lot of thought put into the world’s history. But I just couldn’t get a grasp on any of the plot points. You’ll meet several dreary characters who have their own motivations and thoughts on the world’s state of affairs, yet not one left much of an impression on me. 

However, the idea of jumping between two planes of existence is a striking effect that did leave an impression, though not always a good one. When you enter Umbral, the area you’re standing in transforms into a ghastly fetid hive of insect-like pods and plantlike corruption but it can change in ways that allow you to navigate to new sections via secret bridges, platforms, or open doors. It doubles the sense of exploration for every location you visit but Umbral is extremely dangerous, which is something I’ll get to later. 

Now I want to preface this next section by saying I’ve completed Sekiro, I’ve finished Hollow Knight, and beaten Celeste. I love a game that offers a steep challenge. But Lords of the Fallen is one of the most oppressively difficult games I’ve played in some time.

Its level design is confusing and paths will often circle you back to earlier areas you didn’t want to be in while desperately searching for the way forward. They are also filled with a very high density of enemies. But the bigger issue is those areas often include much tougher mini-boss style enemies among their ranks. Unlike similar games, if you’re not locked in an arena and see a named health bar that enemy will continuously respawn between deaths like the weaker mobs. You could just run from them all, except fully navigating most areas will require you to enter the Umbral plane. Entering Umbral will wither half your health, which greys it out and puts you at risk of losing it entirely if you don’t damage enemies to gain it back.  It will also often reveal an entirely new set of enemies hiding behind the veil. 

The Umbral set can also have mini-boss enemies among their ranks, and the initial set of enemies on the mortal plane can still see and attack you. If you were to take the time to skillfully kill every single threat in your immediate vicinity on both planes in order to move safely the Umbral plane has infinitely respawning mobs that increase in number the longer you stay. It can be exceedingly frustrating to play Lords of the Fallen with any level of caution, it seems far more interested in rushing you into making mistakes and falling for its many traps. There seems to be a real issue with balance as the same enemies in new areas seem to keep pace with you, dulling any sense of power progression.

This is especially disappointing because it does have a really fun combat system that gives you access to a versatile suite of moves depending on the weapon you’re wielding. You can block and parry with shields, kick enemies out of guard or off ledges, dodge and roll with a double tap and your Umbral lamp allows you to rip the soul out of some enemies for a few free shots, though it’s a lot less useful than I’d have liked. The boss encounters are also quite good, offering interesting mechanics that require you to use your environment, or disable buffs before engaging.

But I had to call it quits after about 18 hours. Lords of the Fallen is a vast improvement over its 2014 namesake, but the over-tuned difficulty does its fresh ideas and great feeling combat a world of disservice. I’m certain this will find an adoring audience amongst the most masochistic of gamers, but I’d rather spend my time with the hair left that I haven’t pulled out. The game is out now for $59.99 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Watch the Review in 3 Minutes for The Lamplighters League, a pulpy turn-based tactics game by Harebrained Schemes.

The Lamplighters League Review Transcript

The Lamplighters League is a turn-based tactics game by Harebrained Schemes in which you fight to stop supernatural forces from ending the world.

Each mission features two modes: real time recon, and turn-based combat. At the beginning of each mission, the enemy forces won’t know you’re there, and you can use takedown abilities to thin out the enemy forces, explore to find resources, and move towards your objectives. You have a limited number of takedowns, and some enemies are completely immune to them, so you’ll inevitably end up in combat. Outside of some fiddly detection mechanics, this works well for the game.

In combat, agents start the turn with 2 action points each, which you can spend on movement or abilities unique to that character Everyone has a basic gun or melee attack, but they also have unique passive and active abilities that grant them interesting playstyles.

After a mission, you choose upgrades and heal your group of mercenaries, then pick a new mission from the world map. Three members of the Banished Court are striving to open a tower that will give them control over reality, and each week, the gauges at the top of the screen increase. If any of the three fills all the way up, it’s game over.

If you fight a battle against one of the groups, you’ll stop their gauge from increasing, so you’ll often be juggling missions that have the resources you need, missions that stop a large increase of a certain group’s gauge, and critical missions that get you closer to your overall goal. The choices here feel meaningful, but not overly complex.

New units from recruitment missions come with entirely new sets of abilities, and they’re exciting to experiment with, especially combined with the upgrade system. Each agent has a skill tree, as well as three equipment slots and three Undrawn Hand card slots that can modify their playstyle, and synergizing these different upgrades can lead to some broken, riotously fun combinations.

After each mission, you’ll be presented with a semi-random selection of cards to equip on the agents who completed it. These effects can be quite strong, like an ability that grants an extra AP, or recovers health while attacking, and the cards can also be upgraded. The randomness adds a nice bit of chance in creating truly powerful units, and encourages you to use units you want to upgrade.

That said, there’s no real reason to use or upgrade more than four agents. You’ll often have so many healing resources that the wounds acquired in battle can be banished immediately, and even wounded agents are quite usable. Skill points are shared between all agents, so you might as well stack them onto the same few, since you can only take three on most missions anyway, with four used for the big ones.

Each character is well written and distinct, and the overall story is fun, though meager. The game as a whole looks fairly good, especially the pulpy character designs, and while the music gets repetitive due to the game’s length, the voice acting and sound effects are well executed.

I finished a rushed playthrough of The Lamplighters League in around 27 hours on normal difficulty. There aren’t many unique features to note, but I enjoyed my time with the game’s solid design. It’s reasonably replayable due to some randomness, but there’s not as much sheer content here as in games like XCOM or Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which may disappoint some.

If you’re not a fan of turn-based tactics games, The Lamplighters League isn’t going to sell you on the genre. But for those who are, this is a far above average, if unremarkable, take on the formula with clever character abilities, and it’s worth a few dozen hours of your time.

The Lamplighters League is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series S and X, and PC for $49.99, or included with Xbox Game Pass.