The premise of this PlayStation 2 game is pretty interesting, to the point where I’d have loved to see more games set in the same universe, giant robots or not. It’s revealed that space is filled with something known as “Nectar Radiance,” a substance that poisons all organic life. Yes, there is radiation in space, but Robot Alchemic Drive takes that premise and runs with it.

Any manned space missions result in the deaths of the crew, so mankind is unable to leave Earth. The game doesn’t really delve into the state of the planet, but it means that the populace can forget about ditching Earth. There’s no heading off into space to ruin some other planet; this is the only one they get.

The game begins with giant, kaiju-style aliens turning up, which is where you come in. For some reason, your 17-year-old protagonist is not only the chairman of an Earth Defense Force-style organization, but they’re the only ones who can pilot Earth’s giant defense robots. As you do.

What sets Robot Alchemic Drive apart from MechWarrior, Armored Core, and the like is that you’re controlling the robot from outside. There’s no strapping yourself into a cockpit; your vantage point is either on the robot’s shoulder or somewhere else on the battlefield.

There’s no camera feed, so you only ever see through your character’s eyes. So, as you’re brawling away with your remote-control robot, the absolute best you’ll have is a Street Fighter II-style side-on view of the two. But then the fight moves, or you do, and you’re left struggling to catch up.

That might sound like a terrible, terrible game, and if you crave precision from your giant robot games, R.A.D.’s take could, understandably, be a turnoff. But when you get to grips with it, it’s an entertaining albeit slightly janky joy.

For a start, unlike so many mech games, it delivers a real sense of scale. As much as I enjoy the MechWarrior and Armored Core series, it often feels as if you’re battling away in a scale model of a city. By putting you on the ground (or on top of skyscrapers, your choice), R.A.D. absolutely sells the sense that you’re watching these behemoths brawl. It’s not unlike City Shrouded in Shadow, in fact, but with less staring at Ultraman’s taint.

Then there are the decisions it forces you to make, when it comes to picking your vantage point. You can control your giant robot or your human character, but never both at the same time. Yes, you can jetpack onto your robot’s shoulder, but the moment they’re floored, you’ll be tumbling ground-ward. The closer you are to the fight, the easier it is to make your punches land, but the more danger you’re in.

You’ll initially find yourself fumbling with the controls, particularly if you opt for the tougher “normal” mode control scheme, but that’s half the fun. You’ll get to grips with the game, but things are always going to get a bit silly. It doesn’t quite hit QWOP levels of absurdity, but if you’ve ever watched Robot Wars, you’ll have a feeling for the kind of chaos that can ensue. And it deserves to be reactivated for a modern audience.

Remaking Robot Alchemic Drive isn’t an impossibility, either. I’m not sure who the rights currently rest with, but publisher Enix merged with Square Enix and developer Sandlot, the company that made the Earth Defense Force games, is also very much around today. The original game, sadly, has never been released as a PlayStation Classic and goes for silly prices on eBay.

I never dabbled in the game’s two-player versus mode, but the prospect of playing it online makes me grin. Do you take on your enemy robot to robot, or do you go hunting for their controller? Just imagine smugly pummeling another player only to lose when the skyscraper you were sitting on crumbles beneath you.

Yes, a remake could tweak its slightly wonky tank controls, but it’d be just as much fun to leave them alone. I can picture half of YouTube embracing the lunacy of giant mechs just flailing around, like a gin-addled version of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.

Robot Alchemic Drive won’t figure into any Evo tournaments, but it wouldn’t have to. Nor does it have to rock next-gen graphics — just look at the success of the Earth Defense Force series. But this robot-on-monster brawler is too entertaining and too ridiculous to remain forgotten.

Some lean into the base-building aspect, while others embrace the scavenging and survival aspects of the game. Others may choose to go sledding with the precious soul that is Kelvin. But right now, I’m embracing the joys of running the hell away.

To its credit, Sons of the Forest starts slow, luring into you a false sense of security. The game bills itself as an “open-world survival horror simulator,” but when you’re pottering around, plundering suitcases, it’s all too easy to forget about that aspect of the game. Even when you blunder into a cannibal camp, they don’t immediately descend on you.

If you’ve not played The Forest, you may come to the conclusion that’s the norm, that they stay to their allotted zones. But then they start lurking at the edges of your camp or stalking you when you’re out scavenging. Soon, they start attacking, and the more in-game days pass, the more numerous those attacks become.

That’s what led to my abandoning my beach shelter and fleeing into the woods, hoping that Kelvin wasn’t being made into sandwiches. Was that a lack of foresight on my part? Could I abandon that save and start again? Yes, and yes.

I do have several playthroughs on the go, including one where I’ve actually planned for those attacks, building a more durable, long-term base. Sons of the Forest doesn’t, yet, have stone walls, but there are ways to make it less likely you’ll end up on the menu.

But I keep returning to that particular playthrough just because it’s such a rush to try — and fail — to stay ahead of this game’s enemies. I’m not chuckling merrily to myself as they try to murder me, (Okay, maybe I’ve thumbed my nose once or twice.) but it’s an experience I embrace as a horror aficionado.

It echoes how frantic some horror movies are, with the protagonists forced to think on their feet as the dead rise or some other looming force stalks them. When cannibals turned up at my beach base, I didn’t have an escape plan. If anything, I planned on holding my ground.

I fought off the first one, but when I saw their four-armed and/or skittering brethren, my stomach dropped. I was going to have to abandon my shelter to a superior force, and so I fled, rushing into the jungle. At least, that’s how it would have looked to an observer.

When faced with a fight-or-flight decision in Sons of the Forest, what’s actually likely to be going through your head is all the work you put into your base. Sure, mine wasn’t going to win any awards, but it was mine. Like Dawn of the Dead’s Stephen, I didn’t want to abandon my hideout. But unlike Stephen, I decided it wasn’t worth dying for and beat a hasty retreat.

If my foes had pursued me there and then, I’d have cursed Sons of the Forest for being unfair, but the game does give you time to catch your breath. And it gives you just a little space, more so than, say, Resident Evil 2 and your relentless pursuer Mr X.

However, the tension never goes away, so whether or not you decide to settle somewhere else, you’re always looking over your shoulder. You’ve learned your lesson, which is, unless you’re prepared to start the whole playthrough from scratch, to always be ready to move on.

So when it came to building a new base, I wasn’t thinking about fortifying it. Instead, I was looking to buy myself just enough time to get a treehouse up. If you’re lucky enough to have nabbed the zipline, or crafted a sled, there are a couple of escape options right there. Right now, I’m on my third base, and I’m already getting ready to flee.

In multiplayer you do have a little more backup, and the game’s bugs, solo or otherwise, can undermine Sons of the Forest’s horror. On a separate playthrough, I watched four cannibals just materialize in front of me. Yes, there was still that fear factor, but having them visibly spawn in didn’t do the game’s fear factor any favors.

Letting enemies pile the pressure on, even if the player’s essentially standing still, is a risky move. I can think of ways of evening the odds, going to that liferaft and grabbing the pistol, for a start. But I’ve become hooked on Son of the Forest’s high-pressure horror, the situation I’ve — through my lack of judgment — let myself get into.

It’s the intoxicating buzz of watching my back, the pulse-pounding terror of having to flee, and the optimistic, on-the-fly planning involved in setting up a new base. Will my character die horribly in the process? Yes, and they have, more than once. But when escaping by the skin of your teeth is this much of a rush, I’m not going to stop just yet.

There’s a case in point early on where, to unlock a door, you have to gather four canisters, from four different areas. Remember how the tank-control Resident Evil games would have you doing something ridiculous like putting a medal of a unicorn’s head into a socket just to make progress? Atomic Heart takes that to the next level.

You can’t just pick up those four canisters, either — you have to undertake other tasks, such as zapping several targets so a canister fills faster. Even the Umbrella Corporation would dismiss the endeavor as just too ridiculous. But I pressed on, reasoning that it was the game’s attempt to introduce me to some new foes and skills. Besides, smashing those mustachioed robots never really gets old.

But then — it happened. In a moment that still boggles my mind, P-3 made some crack about how ridiculous it was that the scientists would have to gather these canisters every time they wanted to open the door.

“I know!” I barely managed to stop myself from screaming. Up until then I’d been going along with Atomic Heart’s busywork, but this was the tipping point. My brain tried to process the rationale behind this particular dialogue, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Yes, Atomic Heart has its fair share of off-the-wall humor, including a ridiculous, perpetually horny vending machine. And some of the time it works. But was Mundfish really expecting people to laugh at the team pointing out how tedious a particular task was? Was this an effort to excuse this particular errand — one that they themselves put into the game?

It’s not so much a knowing wink as someone elbowing you in the ribs and then breaking down sobbing when you don’t laugh along with them. And it continues, to some extent, throughout the game. The game sends you to collect train tickets from dead or dying NPCs, and when you find one, it’s rejected by the train robot. But wait, P-3 is exasperated as you are, so it’s all okay!

It’s not, Atomic Heart. It’s really not.

That’s not the only problem the game has — sometimes the game’s humor clashes with the more serious (though not exactly hard sci-fi) story Atomic Heart is trying to tell — but it’s the one problem that, from my perspective at least, is most likely to pull you out of the game.

What Atomic Heart misses is that most gamers can recognize a fetch quest a mile off, whether that’s uncovering the Sword of Xzzzyzzzark or finding the Red Skull Key to open the Red Door. Yes, you can mix things up a little, but we still know what’s going on.

What matters is that a game’s core gameplay, the activities you’re participating in to get that key, is entertaining. Yes, the objective might be questionable, but if the journey’s a joy, that fades into the background.

At some level, I know that Dead Space, including the remake, makes me a dogsbody. Am I okay with that? Not exactly. But the game is so much fun that I’m willing to forgive it. Mentally, I push it aside and get on with the serious business of killing Necromorphs.

And that’s what I was trying to do with Atomic Heart, rather than tut or roll my eyes at the rigmarole of collecting Object A, B, and C to open Door D. After all, along the way I’d get to freeze and/or electrocute an awful lot of enemies — the game’s Frostbite power has a similar effect to Dead Space’s Stasis, but it’s much cooler to use.

But by introducing quips about these tasks — not just once but on multiple occasions — Atomic Heart shoved them to the front of my mind. Maybe Mundfish hoped that, by mocking them, players would overlook their absurdity? But it has the opposite effect: You’re forced to focus on how ridiculous they are.

And five minutes after whatever sarcastic comment P-3 has uttered, you’ll still be thinking about it. If you’re not dwelling on the actual comment, you’ll be scratching your head as to why someone at Mundfish thought it was a good idea.

When it comes to giving players multiple objectives, a little imagination can go a long way. Take BioShock, which Atomic Heart bears more than a passing resemblance to. One of the game’s more entertaining quests gives you multiple objectives. But you’re not finding canisters; you’re killing people and photographing their corpses for deranged “artist” Sander Cohen.

Yes, it’s gruesome, but it’s hugely memorable, even today. Grabbing a few canisters or hunting high and low for a train ticket isn’t anywhere as nearly as dramatic. And pointing out how little sense it makes, in-universe, really doesn’t do Atomic Heart any favors.

Yakuza: Dead Souls takes place after Yakuza 4 and sees the district of Kamurocho fall foul of a zombie outbreak. That, in turn, sees the district quarantined as the undead — and a few other Resident Evil-style nasties — make their presence known. As Kazuma Kiryu and three other characters, you’ve got to not only survive but get to the truth about the outbreak.

If that sounds a little familiar, you’re not wrong. The Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare expansion did something similar. As Rockstar’s Dan Houser put it at the time, they wanted it to feel like “by day people shot a serious revisionist Western, and by night some maniacs invaded the studio and filmed a somewhat insane horror movie using the same sets and cast.”

The same is true of Yakuza: Dead Souls. Kamurocho is still the Kamurocho of Yakuza 4; you can still participate in activities like karaoke and billiards. But there’s some magnificent post-apocalyptic set dressing, and the game only dials the mayhem up from there.

Buildings explode, tanks roll into the city, boss monsters rise to challenge the game’s four playable protagonists. Speaking of which, one of the four, Ryuji Goda, has a metal arm that turns into a machine gun. Didn’t he die in an earlier game? Yes, but Yakuza: Dead Souls is considered non-canon, which allows the game to get away with absolutely anything.

But like all the best zombie movies, it’s the characters that make it shine. Goro Majima started as series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu’s rival, before eventually becoming an ally. While there have been glimpses of something else, he’s usually portrayed as violent and unhinged.

In Yakuza: Dead Souls, the first game to let you play as this ridiculous character, we see another side to him. He steps up to take charge of a group of survivors, not just organizing them but serving as their protector. There’s a beautiful moment where a little girl thanks him for his efforts, and for once, this motormouth is utterly speechless.

If you’re a follower of the Yakuza series, a zombie aficionado, or just a fan of bottom-kicking action games, you might be thinking this all sounds pretty amazing. But there’s a good reason I’ve barely touched on Dead Souls’ gameplay, because it’s the gameplay that a remake sorely needs to overhaul.

Putting zombies in Yakuza (or as it’s now known, Like a Dragon) should theoretically let you take brawling to the next level. Forget just smacking people with a bike — think about all the stuff you could get away with without 17 “Kazuma Kiryu never killed anyone” videos popping up. Just imagine decapitating the undead with a road sign, pile-driving them into the ground, or using them to bludgeon a bigger monster. Dead Rising 2, released the year before Yakuza: Dead Souls, featured those sorts of activities and was a big success for Capcom. But that’s not what publisher Sega and its developer, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, went with.

Instead, they gave the characters guns. You don’t even get the option to pummel a zombie with a restaurant sign — guns are compulsory. Leaving aside Japan’s strict gun laws, (We are talking about the fictionalized Yakuza here.) the game just isn’t built for firearms, and it absolutely shows.

It’s not that you need to make headshots; you can blast away with or without aiming and still make a kill. But it often feels like you’re fighting against the controls. It’s a little like the original Resident Evil but with a much larger number of zombies to take on. In Resident Evil, you’d have to reposition yourself, but you were only taking on, at most, a handful of enemies. Here, the more the game throws at you, the clunkier it feels.

Is Yakuza: Dead Souls still fun? Yes, but it could be so, so much better. Assuming Sega didn’t go full RPG, as Yakuza: Like a Dragon did, one option for a remake is to use an entirely new engine, one that can handle third- and first-person shooting. But given the expense and effort involved, I can’t see that happening.

What we really need is a Yakuza: Dead Souls remake that ditches the shooting, outside of cutscenes, and goes all in on hand-to-hand combat. Does taking zombies on with your fists make sense? Not really, but when did Yakuza / Like a Dragon ever need to make sense?

After all, this is a series where adult babies are a regular fixture. The last main-series entry has a protagonist who imagines every encounter as a turn-based RPG battle, and another has an actual battleship that’s just been sitting there since World War II.

So how about a remake, Sega? Yakuza: Dead Souls may not have nailed the combat, but it was spot-on with the concept, the characters, and the story. It took Yakuza’s silliness and ran with it — it just needs a chance to rise from its grave.

As revealed at the last Nintendo Direct, we’re getting a new Professor Layton game, Professor Layton and the World of Steam. I couldn’t be happier with the news — not because I’m looking forward to playing it (though I definitely am) but because it brings the possibility of a Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 2 that bit closer.

If you’ve not played the original Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright, you’ve missed out on one of the wonderfully ridiculous games of all time. It’s a crying shame that, thanks to the Nintendo 3DS eShop closing at the end of March, the game will only be available on cartridge. Still, there’s always eBay, right? Not when the game is selling for $149.99.

Both the Ace Attorney and Professor Layton games are silly in their own right. Yes, Japa— er, America’s overhauled justice system means that trials have to be completed in three days. But forcing defense attorney Phoenix Wright to prove who actually committed a crime is stretching credulity. Not to mention that time he had to defend an orca whale.

Then there’s Professor Layton who, along with Luke, traveled 10 years into the future. Only he didn’t — it was a massive replica London, constructed to fool some scientists into making an actual time machine. I absolutely swear I’m not making this up.

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney took the daftness of both franchises and squared it. Yes, you can roll your eyes at Professor Layton’s underground city, but it’s still within the realm of Bond villainy. Layton versus Wright, on the other hand, was something else entirely.

The premise was that both Layton and Wright ended up in a medieval town known as Labyrinthia, where magic was real and people weren’t particularly fond of witches. So, while you’d have Layton roaming the town looking for clues and solving puzzles, Wright was using his legal skills to stop people from being burned at the stake. As you do.

But this particular rabbit hole went so, so much deeper. This world’s magic meant you could create portals on green surfaces, provided you had the incantation and gem. Except the reason a gem and an incantation was needed was because magic wasn’t real, and this allowed it to be staged.

And the people? They’d volunteered to have their memories wiped, but there was something in the water so that when you rang a bell people fell asleep. That also led to a big fire that traumatized a chemical company CEO’s daughter, so he created all the medieval schtick as therapy and…

Does it sound like I’m talking absolute nonsense? That’s because I am. When the credits rolled on Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, when you had time to think, it became apparent just how utterly daft it all was.

The spell that created a portal on green-colored walls, for example? If magic was fiction, then how could someone actually reach through the wall? Did someone turn up, there and then, to hypnotize them into thinking it had worked? Did they get Penn and Teller involved? Why did they even have to prove it had been used? And yet, while I was playing Layton vs. Wright, I was absolutely swept up in the madness.

Because that’s Layton vs. Wright’s biggest accomplishment, more so than bringing those two legends together. It told a story that was patently ridiculous and yet kept you absolutely hooked. It maintained such a sense of speed that you were too busy tackling the next problem to call the story into question.

So when you discovered what the witch burnings really were, you were too busy to realize that revelation undermined half of the “trials” that had taken place. Logically, discovering magic was a fiction meant that my court-conquering defense arguments didn’t make a lick of sense. But instead of mumbling, “Hey, wait a minute…” and setting down my 3DS, I was too distracted by the energy and the sheer entertainment factor of it all.

The game’s rousing soundtrack played a significant part, but it was the sheer pace of the game and, in particular, the courtroom sections that helped pull off the illusion. I tip my hat to developers Level-5 and Capcom — I can barely comprehend the kind of convoluted planning that must have been involved in crafting the game.

Layton vs. Wright was a masterstroke of momentum and misdirection that gave you an immediate problem to solve. “Turnabout” comes up often in the Ace Attorney series, the idea that Phoenix’s fortunes can turn on a dime. Layton vs. Wright turned things up to 11, almost blinding you to the house of cards the game was building. Think BioShock’s big twist was, er, shocking? This game threw out those kinds of revelations every five minutes.

It’s that kind of experience that Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 2 could deliver with maybe a little more Miles Edgeworth thrown into the mix. Let Nintendo Switch owners experience the kind of absurdity that only the combined forces of Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright can offer.

So, when the credits roll, I’ll sit there, astonished by how expertly I’ve been fooled, too transfixed by every contrivance to notice the whole story was built on sand. And maybe, just maybe, a matchstick puzzle or two.

Prior to the game’s release, the series penned players into relatively small areas, pitting you against just a handful of foes. The Resident Evil 2 remake lets zombies hammer down doors to get to you, but in the original, zombies remained within their respective rooms. Instead, as the games progressed, you’d run into nastier foes such as the Hunter or Licker. Barring the odd scripted sequence, these would still stay where they were spawned, but they’d have a better chance of taking your head off in one fell swoop.

Not so in Resident Evil 4. It lures you into a false sense of security by having you wander a small woodside trail, dispatching just a handful of enemies as you go. If you’ve last dabbled in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica or Resident Evil 0, it feels a little familiar, reassuringly so.

But the moment you hit the first village section of Resident Evil 4, everything changes. There are at least a dozen villagers, mostly armed, milling around multiple buildings. They haven’t seen you yet, but that’s not a concession on Resident Evil 4’s part. No, the game wants you to dwell on the situation, to appreciate just how outnumbered you are.

That’s where Resident Evil 4’s village houses come in. In some games, they’d be locked or boarded up. You’d fumble with the doorknob only to be presented with, “It looks like the lock is broken. I can’t open it,” or some similarly frustrating message. But here, those rustic dwellings are your chance to take on the villagers on your terms.

There is one semi-scripted sequence where the game clues you into this. But even before that, you can take refuge in a house, shove a chest of drawers against the door, and hope for the best. Until you leave the village behind you, there are several opportunities to hole up in a house. And you absolutely should, because Resident Evil 4’s mini-sieges are absolutely exhilarating.

If you’ve seen Night of the Living Dead, either George Romero’s original or Tom Savini’s remake, you’ll have some idea of what to expect. Once alerted — word travels quick — the villagers descend on you, pounding at your barricade.

Some games might helpfully display a damage bar over the door, but not Resident Evil 4. You’ve no idea how long you’ve got before it gives way. And unlike in Night of the Living Dead, there’s no one to help you out. So when you hear a smash upstairs, you’re the one who has to investigate. When you see the villagers — who are much smarter than zombies — have pushed a ladder against the building, it’s up to you to fend them off.

You’re juggling plates just to stay alive, even more so if you’re playing at a higher difficulty level — let your attention wander and you’ll be dead before you can say, “Aaargh… Lord Sadler.” It certainly helps to have an exit plan, whether that’s leaping out of a window or taking to the roof as the infected villagers fill the floors below.

If you are playing Resident Evil 4 on Easy Mode you can, more or less, just take on the villagers out in the open, but you’re seriously missing out. Whether you survive the onslaught or end up getting a chainsaw introduced to your neck, this aspect of the game is a real rush.

Unfortunately, it’s so much fun that the rest of the game feels like a bit of an anticlimax — it’s good, but those opening village sections are something else. I’ve played the whole game through maybe four or five times, but I’ve spent hours upon hours barricading defending those worryingly flammable shacks.

The Mercenaries mode doesn’t cater to a good siege in quite the same way, marking you not on how long you survive but on how many villagers you dispatch. And yes, there are more than a handful of first-person zombie defense games, but Resident Evil 4’s own take on Night of the Living Dead is hard to beat.

So I’m eager to see how the upcoming remake handles those early-game village encounters. I’m still disappointed that Resident Evil 3 ditched a chunk of the original game, but even so, both it and the Resident Evil 2 remake improve on the original in almost every respect. A recently released Game Informer video confirms that you’ll be revisiting the village at night, so there’s potential for some nighttime shack-defense shenanigans.

Just imagine gazing out of a broken window, squinting as you survey possible escape routes, ready for when the villagers break through the door. Then, somewhere in the darkness, you hear the sound of a chainsaw revving up. March 24 can’t come soon enough.

1. “You’re that amped about Hell? Go there!”
2. “Wow. You sound like a serial killer.”
3. “It’s comforting to know that I lack the culinary finesse of a caveman.”
4. “Well, in my defence, you don’t really look like a Lisa.”
5. “What, and suck all the spontaneity out of being young and stupid? I’d rather live in the dark.”
6. “It’s the pants, isn’t it? It’s okay. I couldn’t take me seriously in these things either.”
7. “If you’re going to rhyme everything, then just kill me now.”
8. “There’s no way I’m letting myself lose to this bitch.”
9. “So you’re saying her superpower is a law degree and a bullshit radar?”
10. “I feel the need for more sugar than the human body can handle.”
11. “I am not requesting an audience with someone who enjoys dismembering people!”
12. “That’ll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo!”

It’s not as easy as it sounds, but my youthful exposure to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the reasons I’m absolutely fine with the much-maligned dialogue of Forspoken. I’d describe it as Whedonesque, but in the light of recent history, that could be taken entirely the wrong way.

If you’ve never watched Buffy, you’ve missed out on a treat. Yes, it has the same fuzzy ‘90s aesthetic as Highlander: The Series and Hercules: The Legendary Journey, but it eclipses both those shows. And CGI aside, it fares pretty well, even by today’s standards.

The show’s dialogue, however, is on an entirely different level. Technically it’s English, but it’s so ridiculously quippy that it doesn’t resemble actual human conversation. There are lines like, “I’m cookie dough. I’m not done baking. I’m not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I’m gonna turn out to be.”

Buffy’s writers were well aware of how the dialogue was received, and that didn’t stop them. The whole “That’ll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo!” line was poking fun at how bizarre some of the lines were. But it had its own charm, and Forspoken puts me right back into that space.

So while some people were rolling their eyes at the trailer’s “That is something I do now. I do magic, talk to sentient cuffs, kill jacked-up beasts,” line, I was getting that Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibe. And when I got my hands on Forspoken, when the Frey / Cuff banter started flying back and forth, I was feeling that ‘90s-era TV vibe.

Admittedly, there were a few moments where Frey’s utterances had me facepalming, despite Ella Balinska’s excellent voice acting. But it had nothing to do with the way they were phrased. For example, at one point Frey expresses astonishment that someone actually likes their parents. I understand that Frey’s had it rough, dumped as a baby in a tunnel and passing through various foster homes. But I don’t buy that a loving parent or parents is such an alien concept to her. Yes, it’s that I have a problem with — not Frey talking about her rap sheet as she murders a mutant deer.

And while it’s the Buffy the Vampire Slayer connection that helps sell me on the dialogue in Forspoken, it wouldn’t be entirely out of place in, say, a Marvel movie. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, for example, fires off cheesy dialogue like, “Hey, guys! The illegal weapons ferry deal was at 10:30. You missed it.” Is it funny? Yes. Is it in character for the superhero? Absolutely. Is that a sentence an actual human, outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, would ever utter? No.

One significant factor is that, while Spider-Man: Homecoming is all but universally loved, the same isn’t true of Forspoken. I’ve gotten a big kick out of the game, but it does have its issues — and it certainly wasn’t a good look when a pre-launch trailer made, shall we say, creative use of some quotes.

So, if Forspoken’s gameplay hasn’t grabbed you, that could be enough – Buffy fan or not – to have you cringing at Frey’s dialogue. Developer Luminous Productions apparently anticipated that not everyone would embrace the Frey / Cuff chatter, giving players the option to dial it right back.

But did it always? I suspect that particular feature was patched in after Forspoken’s other infamous “So Let Me Get This Straight” trailer came out, which went so far as to put Frey’s quips on screen in big letters. You know, just in case you missed it. That heavily memed trailer no doubt cemented a lot of people’s preconceptions about the game and its dialogue. The game itself isn’t wall-to-wall quippery, but that’s the impression it gives.

But I’m happy for Forspoken to drag me back into the Buffyzone, and as soon as I’m done with Dead Space, I can see myself paying a return visit to Sunnyda.. er, Athea. Now, if you’ll excuse me, this “Put Sarah Michelle Gellar in Starfield” petition isn’t going to post itself.

Those answers: 1. Buffy  2. Forspoken  3. Buffy  4. Forspoken  5. Buffy  6. Buffy  7. Forspoken  8. Forspoken  9. Forspoken  10. Buffy  11. Forspoken  12. Buffy

What’s worse than being slaughtered by a flesh-crafted abomination and having your own corpse warped into a hideous and equally murderous form? Not much, but planet cracking in Dead Space comes a close second to its Necromorph nightmare.

It’s not just that planet cracking unleashed the creatures on the USG Ishimura, the massive vessel where Dead Space takes place. Even without their putting in an appearance, this mining enterprise is deeply disquieting. And yet it’s also typically, depressingly human.

If you’ve not played Dead Space and are maybe holding out for the remake, I’ll elaborate. Thanks to overpopulation, Earth’s resources are almost exhausted, so the only way for humanity to sustain itself is through plundering other planets for theirs. That’s not a particularly new concept as far as sci-fi goes, but Dead Space goes the extra mile. In this universe, massive vessels “crack” the planet and tear a vast piece out of it. Humanity then mines that chunk and sends the resources back home.

Forget “boldly going” or even terraforming other worlds — planet cracking is the reason that mankind ventures into space. Dead Space 2’s catch-up movie really drives this home — in addition to showing the technology in action — but all the time you’re playing Dead Space, you’re orbiting a world that’s been ripped right open.

“You may have read reports that claim the destruction of a planet can destroy an entire solar system due to the disruption in the gravitation forces that hold each celestial object in orbit. Some of the wilder reports claim this causes the whole system to spin out of control or causes planets to smash into each other.” reads one of Dead Space’s in-game logs, before claiming to debunk it: “Planet Cracking is perfectly safe and provides an essential service to Earth and the colonies. With all Planet Cracks, the planets are carefully chosen for their mineral content, net worth, and the safety with which they can be dismantled.”

Fracking parallels aside, the prospect of a planet coming apart or careening into some heavenly body is just chilling. And for at least half of the people involved in planet cracking, there’s no easy way out. Why? Because the fun starts well before the planet cracker turns up.

Dead Space’s Aegis VII colony was a colony of miners, sent there to prepare the surface for the cracker, undertaking seismic surveys and the like. Then, two to three years later, they got to watch, stomachs knotted, as an almost unimaginably large piece of the planet was wrenched free. Would everything go according to plan, leaving them free to mine this vast fragment? Or would it end in a repeat of the “Wanat Disaster,” which saw an entire colony wiped out, along with the planet cracking vessel and its support crew?

The game’s mega corp, the Concordance Extraction Corporation, does assert there was one such incident. But, if we follow real world parallels, that probably means there’s been at least a few more complete losses the public didn’t find out about and a whole range of larger-scale fatalities.

Even then, the job’s not done until that colossal bounty has been exhausted. Just imagine living in one of those colonies, knowing the planet itself could destabilize and that there’s nowhere to run. Even if the Necromorph infection hadn’t overtaken the colony, day-to-day life could have been absolutely harrowing.

On a larger scale, Dead Space predicts that humanity’s legacy to the cosmos is one of destruction. Though it doesn’t specify how many solar systems that’s spread over, Dead Space mentions three dozen planet cracks. That’s 36 planets that have been pillaged, with major consequences for any life on that planet and, potentially, the whole system. Sure, the Dead Space universe has its own explanation for the Fermi paradox — the lack of advanced extraterrestrial life — but that’s not to say there weren’t less-advanced life forms on the planets the mining company picked.

Whenever the game referenced planet cracking, I found myself pondering the kind of damage the human race had left behind. How many planets crumbled, after we’d taken what we wanted and moved on? What effect did their destruction have? Losing Jupiter (ignoring that you can’t “crack” Jupiter) would result in a lot more asteroids coming Earth’s way, but who’s to say that, in different solar systems, the effect wouldn’t be more drastic?

And then there’s the prospect of someone — or something — catching up with us. What if, despite the best efforts of the Necromorphs, there is intelligent, non-human, non-Necromorph life? Just imagine them discovering the sheer abandon we’ve demonstrated and following the trail back to Earth.

But that’s humanity for you. We’ve treated Earth with disdain, and there’s no indication we’ll do anything different with the rest of the universe. Or is there? Because the original Dead Space games cast doubt on whether planet cracking is really our own will.

The Markers have a relatively immediate effect on those who find them, creating Necromorphs along the way, but it’s implied that there are longer-term implications. The Marker found on Earth may have accelerated evolution and could have been influencing humanity since then, pushing them to overpopulation.

So, the invention of planet cracking may well have been a subtle “push” to uncover more Markers, an alternative to duplicating them. After all, it ultimately led to the reactivation of Aegis VII’s man-made Red Marker. But I honestly can’t decide what’s worse — that humanity was being influenced by the Markers or that, entirely off their own backs, they decided to strip-mine the cosmos.

Whatever your interpretation, with its new-gen graphics and single seamless level, the Dead Space remake should ensure that, wherever on the USG Ishimura you roam, the specter of planet cracking is never far away.

I’m talking about the Aliens: Dark Descent sanity system, which according to the game’s website will see you “carefully managing your soldiers’ health, resources, and sanity, to avoid permanent team losses and mental breakdowns.” In other words, your squad members will be affected by their various encounters, and if you treat them like disposable assets, your mission could be doomed.

Why is this important? Because like in James Cameron’s movie, it lets the marines themselves stand out. Sure, you always knew that Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley was going to make it through the film, but it was the cast as a whole that made it work.

Rather than just being disposable meatheads who died when Aliens needed them to, you got to see them react under stress in wholly believable ways. Hudson is arguably the weakest link amongst the grunts, but after encountering an unknown, truly alien foe, would any of us react differently?

As badass as Vasquez is, you can still see the cracks starting to appear. And Gorman? He’s easy to hate at first, but accepting his failures, he becomes a more likeable individual as the movie progresses. And Hicks? While he steps up to take command, he’s not just some invulnerable ‘80s movie badass either.

Cameron had to let their personalities shine too because, as a character, the Xenomorph was severely diminished. It went from being a solitary predator to one of a multitude that, with the right weaponry, could be annihilated in a heartbeat. That’s a lesson most of the games have missed. Amanda Ripley aside, I can hardly name a single human character from any of the Alien games.

So the sanity system in Aliens: Dark Descent could force you to pay attention to your marines, and if sufficiently detailed, it could let them shine as individuals. In other words, developer Tindalos Interactive needs to create characters who react in different ways, with different personality traits. Don’t just give us a squad that’s wall-to-wall Hudsons, with each having one single sanity slider who then loses it when it hits zero.

Instead, Aliens: Dark Descent needs a character who, as their sanity drops, grows more and more distrustful of you, their leader. So, instead of panicking and shooting at everything that moves, they ignore your commands entirely and, for a couple of minutes at least, go their own way. Just imagine having your carefully planned strategy “ruined” because your marines have lost trust in you.

As to what would lead to a sanity drop, I hope Tindalos has also mixed things up there. The game The Thing had a system whereby, aside from losing trust in people, your fellow soldiers were at risk of snapping. But monsters aside, spotting blood in a room would always set them off, without fail.

Aliens: Dark Descent, on the other hand, should factor in other elements. Consider the bond between Marines, for example. In the Aliens movie, Vasquez was torn up about losing Frost, more so than any other squadmate. So I’ve got my fingers crossed that if marines are close friends (or more), losing them or seeing them injured will have more of a profound effect. Sure, Marine X may be just one person, but if their death will screw up half the squad, do you really risk them?

Introducing a sanity system is a gamble for any game. Some games like GameCube’s Eternal Darkness actually messed with the player by breaking the fourth wall. But there’s always the risk that, while the character is supposedly losing their grip on reality, the player is just sitting there rolling their eyes.

With Aliens: Dark Descent you won’t be the one told you’re losing your mind, tapping your fingers while the screen goes all wibbly-wobbly — you’re not being dictated to. But there are still potential pitfalls here. Yes, as The Thing proved, oversimplifying the whole sanity/stress system is a risk.

But there’s also the danger of letting the player play themselves into a corner, where every one of their marines is a nervous wreck. Depending on when they last saved, it could mean either a) backtracking or b) just leading the squad to their deaths.

Is it appropriate to punish the player for seeing their marines as disposable assets? Probably. Is it fun? That all depends upon how fair or otherwise the player perceives the sanity system to be. And if the player feels like they’re fighting against the sanity system, rather than working with it, that could cost Aliens: Dark Descent players.

With a somewhat vague 2023 release window, it’ll likely be a while until we see if Aliens: Dark Descent lives up to its cinematic roots and gives you a squad whose sanity and survival really matter.

No, I’m not talking about Frinky’s online FPS, as much fun as it looks. Chaos, or Chaos: The Battle of Wizards, to give it its full title, was the turn-based strategy game that Gollop created 10 years or so before XCOM. Its existence led to Rebelstar, which led to XCOM, which, eventually, led to Firaxis’ 2012 XCOM reboot.

Like the rebooted XCOM, Chaos featured turn-based combat against both human and AI-controlled foes. And like in that title, chance was a significant factor. It’s become a running joke that in XCOM you can be standing right in front of an opponent and still miss, but the magic-based Chaos had a wonderful way of handling such potential irritations.

You had a bank of single-use spells that would let you summon flesh-hungry zombies, bow-wielding centaurs, giants, and much more. But the tougher a creature was, the less chance you had of successfully summoning it. So a zombie summoning spell had a good chance of succeeding, but if you wanted a dragon, there was only a 10% chance of summoning it.

That’s where the game got sneaky. Each time you chose to create a creature, Chaos would ask the all important question: “Illusion? (Press Y or N).” If you chose no, the game would roll the (virtual) dice and either spawn the creature or present you with a terse “SPELL FAILS.”

But if you said yes, the spell would succeed every time. And even better, your illusory creature was capable of dealing as much damage as the real one. Your imaginary dragon could quite easily turn an enemy wizard or any of their creatures to ash.

The snag was that an enemy wizard could cast “Disbelieve,” the only spell that didn’t disappear after a single use, and if they targeted an imaginary / illusory creature, it vanished. And if it didn’t? They’d just wasted a turn and, if an enemy was close enough, their life.

It might sound like a relatively simple mechanic, but it was a beautiful stroke of genius that added an extra dimension to Chaos’s strategic combat. It left other players with a gamble — sure, that manticore was probably an illusion, but what if it wasn’t? Were you prepared to take that risk to get in spell-casting range?

The caster, too, was left to decide whether it was worth creating a creature that could be wished away. Playing Chaos, I found myself second-guessing my opponents, human and AI alike. Should I use an illusion to create a lower-level creature, assuming that my enemies would be less likely to suspect it of being fake? Or did I whisk up a dragon and do as much damage as I could before someone disbelieved it?  Unlike Chaos Reborn, its 2015 reimagining, turns weren’t timed, which is why I sometimes spent minutes agonizing over whether to press Y or N.

What was especially entertaining were the strange little scenarios illusion magic threw up. I once created an imaginary dragon and ordered it to lay waste to an opponent. They, in turn, used “Subversion” to turn it to their side, no doubt feeling pretty smug about it. I watched as they used it to lay waste to an opponent, then, just when they thought they had me, I disbelieved it away.

That small victory didn’t last — a couple of matches later I’d run out of spells and was just spamming Disbelieve at anything that came near me, with decidedly mixed results. But there were other things to love about Chaos, too — the simple single-screen battlefield, for a start. If you wanted cover, you’d have to create it yourself.

Then there were the handful of truly chaotic spells, the ones that, once cast, you had no control over. Gooey Blob wouldn’t only provide cover, but it’d grow to choke the battlefield unless your opponents decided to try to band together to stop it. And since there could be only one victor, that kind of cooperation was rare.

But how would illusions figure into XCOM? The series isn’t exactly known for its use of magic. Holograms, on the other hand, are based in science, and the series has already dabbled with them. Why not give us a multiplayer mode where aliens and humans alike have figured out how to give holograms substance?

Just imagine how satisfying it’d be to have that minigun-toting extraterrestrial disappear into nothing without your having to fire a shot. Or alternatively, to watch an enemy squad get gunned down because they were banking on your heavy-hitter being entirely holographic.

As for the original Chaos, Chaos Reborn hasn’t grabbed me in quite the same way. However, Chaos Funk is a nearly identical version of the original, and if you can get a few friends involved, it’s a real time sink. Just don’t blame me when a pretend dragon turns you to a cinder.

It all boils down to the way that Marvel’s Spider-Man webs any would-be corpses to the walls of buildings. It’s possible you haven’t noticed this, too caught up in the joy of hurling criminals over railings. But instead of having their corpses crunch on the pavement, they’re actually webbed to the first flat surface they go past.

Did I actually expect to get away with killing people as Spider-Man? Not officially, at least. Sure, Robert Kirkman’s Marvel Zombies had Spider-Man devouring the Silver Surfer and, off-screen, eating Aunt May and Mary Jane. But that was before Disney took over, and it tends to be more protective of its properties.

But I did hope against hope that, through some oversight or glitch, I would be able to throw villains off skyscrapers. I’m fascinated by the idea of superhero games letting you breach, unintentionally or otherwise, each hero’s personal code.

The earliest superhero games do tend to contain some oddities. Superman, published in 1985 for the Commodore 64, doesn’t turn Superman into a homicidal maniac, but it does feature sections where you control Darkseid and attempt to dispatch the Man of Steel.

But open-world superhero games pose their own challenge. The bigger the game, and the bigger the play area, the more likely it is that players are going to find something you’ve missed — speedrunners are evidence of that.

Take the Batman: Arkham games, both Rocksteady’s trilogy and odd-one-out Arkham Origins. The Return to Arkham reissue seems to have eliminated most of these exploits and bugs, but under certain circumstances, you could send criminals plummeting to their death. You could even yank cops off water towers. Yes, villains are supposed to end up dangling via a length of Bat-wire, but that didn’t always happen.

And this is all on top of Batman’s normal villain-pummeling activities, which, let’s face it, are going to leave them with some potentially life-altering issues. Batman might not kill, but as this study suggests, being hit by a bean bag gun (which Arkham Knight’s Batmobile fires) can have serious consequences.

Batman is, at least, supposed to be edgy(ish), so letting someone plummet to their doom is less out of character. But Spider-Man is so wholesome that making him a murderer or at the least responsible for manslaughter is massively out of character. That’s why I find it so fascinating.

You can already be a menace in Marvel’s Spider-Man (the PS4 disc-based version at least) thanks to the object-flinging mechanic. It doesn’t matter if there aren’t any criminals around; you can web up barrels and the like and hurl them at a crowd of pedestrians. I like to imagine J. Jonah Jameson dropping his coffee as a trash can smashes into the wall, inches from his head.

Did developer Insomniac know people could do this? Certainly. Given that there’s an on-screen prompt to web-grab objects and a crowd reaction, someone spotted this. And while you can’t actually hit people with trash cans, this level of non-Jameson-targeted assholery is out of character and the public let you know what they think of it.

But what was the alternative? Locking down the ability so it was only available in combat? That, in turn, could cause problems when running into Marvel’s Spider-Man’s non-storyline open-world crimes. So the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man can just grab objects off the street and pitch them into the crowd. And of course, that’s what I do any time I hit street level.

But murder? So far, Marvel’s Spider-Man has prevented me from dispatching hoodlums, thanks to its web-based “safety” system. I’ve taken to following villains as they fall, hoping this’ll be the time that the safety system will glitch out and their web-free corpse will end up decorating the street below.

Does this make a terrible person? Yes. Am I going to attempt the same in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2? Also yes. Sure, there are PC mods that remove this feature, but that’s cheating. I’m no speedrunner, but when it hits PS5, my holy grail is going to be glitching Peter Parker into offing someone.

You can bet there’ll be a whole host of new abilities, and I have my fingers crossed that at least one of those, used in the right circumstances, will bypass Insomniac’s magical mystery web mechanic. After all, as Uncle Ben put it, “With great power comes great responsibility to wash all this scum off the streets.”

I don’t mean Genestealers — though the idea of getting infected and, four generations later, popping out a many-limbed murderbeast is a little harrowing. I also don’t mean the Nephilim, an alien race who swept across several human worlds and “preached a message of spiritual salvation and eventual heavenly reward,” then fed on the psychic energy of their devotees. Hey, nobody said Warhammer 40K was subtle.

No, I’m talking about Dreadnoughts, which, despite resembling some kind of stomping battle robot, are much, much worse. Utilized both by the vast human empire and the forces that oppose it in Warhammer 40K, Dreadnoughts are a way of ensuring wounded soldiers — in particular, humanity’s most venerated and effective warriors — can continue to fight.

If you’re blissfully unaware of 40K’s almost comically grim universe, you might be thinking it’s something along the lines of in Avatar. Maybe the Space Marine in question is temporarily enclosed in some pod, controlling one of these walking tanks. The Ork legions are being ripped to shreds, but to Sam Worthington it’s just another glorious day in the corps.

You’re half right. The Dreadnoughts are under Space Marine control and there’s a pod involved, but there’s nothing temporary about their situation. A wounded Marine, one who’s judged to be worth preserving, is sealed within a Dreadnought. Their body — or whatever is left of it — is hooked into a cybernetic support system, left to atrophy due to lack of use.

They’re still capable of communicating via a synthesized voice, but there’s no way to remove the “organic component.” And as the Imperium of Mankind’s heavy hitters, they’re typically left dormant and awakened only when they’re needed. It’s a pretty disturbing life, if you can call it that.

It’s this nightmare that begs to be explored in a game. Dreadnoughts have figured into a handful of games, from Space Crusade to Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector and beyond. The former is based on a kid-friendly board game, so it’s understandable it doesn’t explain the Chaos Dreadnought’s true origins. In the latter, you tend to see Dreadnoughts as walking tanks, nothing more.

So it’s about time a Warhammer 40K game put the player inside one of these Dreadnoughts, these clunking terrors. Just imagine a survival horror game where survival is the horror and where death is all but unobtainable. And all the while you’ve got Space Marines revering you, begging you for your wisdom.

Time jumps are sometimes frowned on in fiction, but that’s all a Dreadnought has — waking up, wading into combat if they’re lucky, then being shut off until they’re next needed. That’s not to say all Dreadnoughts actively seek death — far from it. Space Marines are genetically and physically modified and are indoctrinated to regard mankind’s undying (though possibly unaware) Emperor as their God. In theory, this conditioning carries on through to the Dreadnought stage, leading them to embrace their condition.

But what if they don’t? What if all that additional Dreadnought circuitry is filtering its occupant’s thoughts and stifling the ability to express their true feelings? One common gripe about Fallout 4 is that the dialogue prompts don’t match what your character actually says. Now imagine how frustrating it would be to have your words warped by the onboard Mind Impulse Unit.

“Please, let me die…” would become “Glory to the Imperium!” and so on. Given how much firepower a Dreadnought has as its disposal, you can bet there are safeguards in place. Or for contrast, flip between an Imperium Dreadnought and a Chaos Dreadnought. Chaos Marines, unlike their Imperium counterparts, dread the prospect of becoming a Dreadnought.

Putting the player in a mechanical behemoth might risk dialing back the challenge, but that’s assuming you can control the Dreadnought with ease. BE-A Walker also puts you in charge of a giant, stomping murder machine but adopts an almost QWOP-style approach to movement. This, in turn, tempers the sense of power you’d otherwise have. Every step would feel like wading through mud.

Or why not make the Dreadnought the secondary character in a Warhammer 40K game? Space Marines feature heavily in the franchise, but it’s regular, unaltered humans that make up the bulk of the Imperium’s forces. And as such, they’re marginally more likely to doubt the Imperium’s fascist propaganda.

So why not cast the player as a human soldier, current or retired, who stumbles across a rogue Dreadnought? Assuming it doesn’t gun you down on sight, it would lead to some soul-searching ethical dilemmas. With the occupant begging you to end its life, would you comply? Would you allow the Space Marines to capture and “repair” it? Or would you be judged a heretic for having helped it elude its pursuers?

Ultimately, whether it’s a case of sealing the player in the suffocating confines of a Dreadnought’s armor or making them a passive observer of its torment, these walking tombs deserve to be explored.