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Doom Eternal : The Ancient Gods Part 1 feels like a thrilling action movie occasionally interrupted by a game of I Spy. You want to keep watching John Wick’s balletic slaughter but your impertinent host won’t unpause the Blu-ray until you spot the ficus in the background. It’s also tough as nails. If you haven't played Doom Eternal since it launched back in March, the first moments of its new DLC, The Ancient Gods Part 1, will feel like a kick in the teeth--n a good way, mostly. Once you get back in the demon-slaying swing of things, it's exciting to have more high-level Doom Eternal to play, unconstrained by the need to reintroduce you to the basics. But, still: Be ready. The Ancient Gods Part 1 picks up right where Eternal left off. After an opening "previously on" text screen and a cutscene that will remind you that Doom Eternal focused way too much on story and Proper Noun-riddled lore, the DLC tosses you back into the action. Your entire roster of weapons--save

By this point, nearly four years into the Switch's life cycle, Nintendo has repackaged almost all of Wii U's most noteworthy games for the system's successor, with only a handful of holdovers yet to make the jump. Pikmin 3 is the latest Wii U gem to be dusted off and repurposed for Switch, and like other "deluxe" offerings, it arrives on the hybrid console packed together with all of its original DLC and a smattering of new content--in this case, a handful of additional missions starring series mainstays Olimar and Louie--making this the definitive version of one of the company's most underrated titles. Although the side story missions are the biggest selling point, Pikmin 3 has actually received a fair number of other tweaks in its move to Switch as well. There are new difficulty options, a hint system that helpfully nudges wayward players in the right direction, and other additions like badges--unlockable achievements that are doled out upon completing spe

Watch Dogs: Legion takes the foundations and ideas of its predecessors and expands upon them exponentially. The core conceit of Legion lies in the old adage of "strength in numbers," which manifests in the game letting you recruit and play as nearly any character you come across, amassing a ragtag crew of freedom fighters. This open-ended stance to fighting the system is a significant change for the franchise, and it's bolstered by improved hacking and social-engineering gameplay. Legion's approach, while admirable, does have some unintended issues that make its powerful message of unity waver at inopportune times, but it still manages to make a profound statement about hope with its novel approach to player agency. Legion is set in a near-future, more technologically advanced London. Longstanding hacker group DedSec has been framed for a series of bombings in the city, and its members are branded as terrorists. This, however, was all engineered by the mysterious ri

Ring of Pain is a roguelike card game that's too damned creepy to not live rent-free in your head long after you're finished. You play as someone trapped in darkness, unsure of who can help you out and who intends to lead you into ruin. The constant uncertainty leaves you always second-guessing yourself, while the action manages to keep you firmly in the moment as you juggle satisfying risk-reward choices. This balance of feeling both powerful and vulnerable--but in different ways depending on your choices--manages to shake up potentially repetitive attempts to navigate the rings of cards in your efforts to escape this eerie, unsettling world. Each run in Ring of Pain starts out largely the same: It's just you and a circle of cards that probably want to kill you. Two cards in the circle are in the foreground and can be viewed and interacted with immediately. Cards feature an interesting array of spooky creatures that can be fought or dodged, items to be collected and equi

Ghostrunner 's intense first-person parkour platforming demands perfection. Whether you're clearing out a neon cityscape of cyberpunk goons or racing on walls and sliding through vents of a gigantic factory, even a small miscalculation will get you killed. Your jumps need to be precise. Every swing of your sword should be deadly. Anything less isn't up to robot ninja spec. Ghostrunner is quick to punish, but it's also more than willing to reward players who rise to its challenge. Bouncing from wall to wall feels like flying. Running circles around gunmen, dodging bullets, and cutting them down without a scratch is exhilarating. It's a high-risk, high-reward situation: Struggling with failure after failure, even on simple tasks, is incredibly frustrating early on, but that anger eventually dissipates as your skill grows to reveal a thrilling test of your abilities. Set in a cyberpunk-style post-apocalyptic world, Ghostrunner puts you in control of a robot ninja assa

There are times in life where it feels like no matter what you do, something is waiting to ruin your day. Obstacles that come from all directions, trying to take you down when you're just trying your best to make it to the next day. Perhaps they're big, foreboding, and scary. Maybe there are lots of little things that can harm you just as easily. Something might seemingly come out of nowhere and just wreck your entire being. That's the vibe of the year 2020 Disc Room , a ball of anxious energy in the form of a 2D action game. But as nerve-racking as that sounds, Disc Room is also a game that will eventually encourage you to come to terms with frequent failure, learning instead to cherish the small successes that help you push forward. A giant disc-shaped object has appeared over Jupiter, or so Disc Room's introductory text tells you, and as a charming little space person your goal is to explore what is revealed to be a labyrinth filled with numerous deadly rooms. Each

One of Noita 's best spells is the ability to summon a torrential downpour from thin air. A heavy, magical cloud bursts open above you, extinguishing damaging flames or washing away toxic poisons. Having this ability on one of my many runs always reassured me that I could be a little more reckless with my navigation through Noita's dangerous biomes--at least it did, until I discovered that I could just as easily drown myself in many of its narrow and twisting procedurally-generated mazes. A big part of Noita's appeal is watching how all its physics-based systems interact with each other. This 2D roguelike's dynamic world is brought to life with vibrant pixels, each one reactive to the world and circumstances around it. Fires will spread and engulf nearby wooden structures, slowly burning them away. Those wooden structures might support a giant vat of toxic sludge, which will quickly pour through the tunnels of a mine once its supports are gone. This sludge, in turn, ca

Back in 2010, developer Frictional Games set the tone for PC indie horror games with Amnesia: The Dark Descent . Focused heavily on story, it created its scares through an intensity of atmosphere and an emphasis on powerlessness. With Amnesia: Rebirth , it feels like Frictional has fully refined its particular approach to horror. You're trapped in a deadly, smothering world, struggling against your character's limitations and even her perceptions. Rebirth is Frictional's best game yet, marrying a deep, mysterious story to the signature mechanics the developer has been refining over the course of 13 years of horror games. Amnesia: Rebirth continues Frictional's specific approach to story and horror, which emphasizes avoiding conflict, hiding, and mastering your character's own fear. It also adds to the story told in The Dark Descent, although you don't need to know that game well to follow this narrative of this one. (The narrative doesn't link to Amnesia: A

Editor's note: Ring Fit Adventure first released on October 18, 2019. Because we were unable to review the game back then, we're taking this opportunity--the one-year anniversary of its release--to give it a full evaluation now. In this review, Jenae Sitzes reflects on a full year of on-and-off workouts with Nintendo Switch's premier fitness game. Over the past decade-plus, Nintendo has established itself as the home for fitness games. Wii Fit and its enhanced version, Wii Fit Plus, have together sold over 43 million copies worldwide, so it was only a matter of time before the company attempted to replicate that success on Nintendo Switch. Fortunately, Wii Fit's successor is far more ambitious than many people may have anticipated. Released one year ago on October 18, 2019, Ring Fit Adventure is not Wii Fit 2.0, but rather a full-blown fitness RPG with an overarching story, skill tree, and vibrant, lively landscapes. Not only is it far more ambitious in terms of sco

Ikenfell is a magical school in its seemingly natural state: peril. Students have gone missing, strange trees are cropping up, and other magical anomalies plague the land. As Mariette, the non-magical yet still worried sister of one of Ikenfell’s students, you embark on a journey through this pixelated 2D RPG adventure to save her, the school, and maybe the whole world. A number of interesting ideas in both story and combat make Ikenfell an appealing prospect, but since some prove stronger than others in execution, ultimately it's a journey with more than a few bumps in the road. As the game begins, Mariette almost immediately gains supernatural pyromantic abilities thanks to strange magical occurrences. It actually feels a bit at odds with the message of not needing to be magical to be heroic, which throws the vibe off kilter right from the beginning. The conceit does make sense within the context of the story, though, and sets out one of the first mysteries in the game. New for

EA normally releases new NHL games during the Stanley Cup playoffs when the sporting world is focused on hockey, but complications due to COVID-19 led to a delay for NHL 21 . The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup weeks ago, and as a result, ice hockey has escaped the wider public sports consciousness as other leagues take hold. But NHL 21 is a compelling reason to care about hockey again, as this year's game delivers a major improvement to the story mode, adds a flashy new arcade-style mode in HUT Rush, and makes the on-the-ice gameplay better than ever thanks to a series of new skill moves that let you play with more style. Be A Pro 2.0 The biggest new addition for NHL 21 is the expanded and improved Be A Pro. After NHL 20 delivered basically no updates on the career-focused mode, NHL 21 offers a huge step forward thanks to a cinematic-style campaign of sorts, where you create a character and guide them through their career, beginning in either Europe or the Canadian Hocke

When you hear the words "free-to-play," you probably think of very specific kinds of games: mobile time-killers, first-person shooters with loot boxes, MMORPGs. However, a story-driven, open-world action-RPG in a similar vein to Zelda: Breath of the Wild is probably not what springs to mind. But that's exactly what Genshin Impact aims to be. It delivers a large, lore-filled, graphically lush world with nuanced combat, character-building, exploration mechanics, and co-op crossplay across multiple platforms at the most appealing price point possible--free! And while it succeeds admirably for the most part, it stumbles in a few key ways that remind you that there's no such thing as a fully free-to-play game. Genshin Impact makes a great first impression. The anime-inspired visuals are inviting and colorful, and the fully voiced, nicely choreographed cutscenes give the game the feel of a premium product. It also gets you going with the gameplay very quickly; thanks to s

For all the ups and downs I've had with various Star Wars media products over the past few decades, the formative space combat simulations of X-Wing and TIE Fighter on MS-DOS (or at least, my memory of them) have always been a fixed highlight. It's hard to go astray when you're focused on the minutiae of inherently cool sci-fi fantasy planes, as opposed to whatever's going on with Jedi lineages or space politics now. There have been a few arcade-style Star Wars space combat games that filled the 20-year period since the last flight simulator , and some of them were even good . But Star Wars: Squadrons is now making a welcome return to some of the simulator intricacies, while still retaining a large degree of the approachable spectacle of the arcade-style flight games. And the balance Squadrons has settled on works very well in creating an experience that makes you feel as if you're really an active participant in a Star War. The basic mechanics will be familiar

It's common in games for death to go unexplored. When it's not used as a narrative device to motivate living characters, it's brushed aside as collateral for a game's mechanics, with few interrogating the effects of your actions. I Am Dead is nothing like that. Not only do you play as a recently deceased protagonist, but its warm and welcoming tale explores themes of what it means to leave a legacy--however big or small--on the people you shared your brief time with while alive. Playing as former museum curator Morris Lupton and guided by his equally dead pet dog, Sparky, you explore the recent history of the fictional island of Shelmerston in search of a new guardian for the tranquil settlement. The island's dormant volcano is being kept at bay by the waning spirit of a former inhabitant, forcing Lupton to search for a replacement from a handful of other Shelmerston inhabitants that have recently found themselves in the afterlife. With the ability to explore some

Super Mario Bros. 35 marks something of a historic moment for the multitalented plumber. In Mario's extensive past, there have been plenty of multiplayer games, but many of these come in the form of sporting spin-offs or asynchronous multiplayer where you take turns attempting levels. Even the likes of New Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario 3D World --both of which feature competitive elements--ultimately revolve around a shared goal of completing levels together as the main objective. This is where Super Mario Bros. 35 stands out; Mario's latest in a long line of entries is the first time you compete synchronously against other players on traditional platforming courses. It's a significant achievement both in and of itself and as an online multiplayer experience, even if there can be a few dull moments. In the vein of fellow Nintendo Switch Online release Tetris 99 , Super Mario Bros. 35 has you compete against up to 34 others simultaneously to be the last Mario standing,

As I played The Solitaire Conspiracy , I couldn’t help but wonder what other classics of tabletop gaming would benefit from the treatment that the solo card game receives here. Story-driven checkers? Chess with hero characters? Mancala with a leaderboard? The latest project from Bithell Games reimagines solitaire as a means of espionage. And while the FMV story that frames each hand is pretty predictable, the mechanical ramifications of this conceit make for a fantastic take on the traditional card game. You are an unwitting spy, kidnapped and put to work by Protega, an intel organization working outside the confines of any nation’s government. Protega is represented to you by Kinda Funny’s Greg Miller as Jim Ratio, your handler and constant companion throughout the campaign. Ratio tells you that you need to take down a mysterious figure called Solitaire, who has shut down Protega’s means of communication with their operatives out in the field. It’s your mission to regain control of t

With next-gen consoles only a few weeks away, FIFA 21 feels like a swan song for the current generation of sports games. It ostensibly wraps up an era that was defined by the increasing prevalence of microtransactions and the game modes designed around them, and FIFA 21 is no different in this regard. Ultimate Team is still front and center as the main draw for many players, but this year's game is also the most robust version of FIFA in series history. Volta Football has been expanded after debuting last year, Career Mode has finally received some much-needed new additions, and there are even new ways to play Ultimate Team. None of this is revelatory--and that remains true on the pitch, where subtle attacking changes make for a more dynamic game of football--but each of these aspects sets FIFA up for the future while also ensuring that this year's game is still worth playing. The latest gameplay changes aren't immediately obvious when you step onto the pitch for the firs

Kirby Fighters 2 has somewhat of an adorable identity crisis on its puffy, pink hands. It initially comes across as a gateway fighting game, an entry step even before the widely-loved Super Smash Bros. series. Approachable in both controls and tone, Kirby Fighters 2 is a mostly pleasant brawler bursting with charm. A slender content offering and some bizarre difficult spikes notwithstanding, Kirby's latest spinoff is a capable combatant. There are no stage knockouts or lives here, just a scrap until someone gets knocked out. Also, most of the characters are Kirby--well, a variety of Kirbys equipped with different copy abilities, alongside some other familiar characters who aren't Kirby to round out the roster. Among the pink puffballs of pain are series classics such as the Link-wannabe Sword Kirby, Artist Kirby who draws minions to cause damage, and Bomb Kirby, who does exactly what you think. My personal favourite is Wrestler Kirby, thanks to his stylish little lucha libre-

The increasingly popular reboot-sequel is a hard needle to thread. You have to create a game that hews close enough to the original to make nostalgic fans happy, while modernizing and innovating enough to resonate with new players. Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time balances the two effortlessly. It impeccably preserves the vibrant look and feel of the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy, while integrating new ideas and platforming possibilities. And like the original Crash games, the hybrid of Crash's old and new ideas will test your platforming skills in interesting new ways. Like its groan-inducing dad-joke of a subtitle says, Crash 4 is about time… travel. When the villains of Crash's past open an interdimensional portal, Crash and Coco have to collect a set of quantum masks in order to set things right. As with past Crash games, small exchanges in cutscenes between levels do a lot of narrative legwork. It's not much of a "story" per se, but Crash and his f