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Developer Platinum Games' style is instantly recognizable--flashy, fast-paced action that oozes with personality and flair. World of Demons brings that signature style to Apple Arcade, giving you control of a samurai named Onimaru and thrusting you into, well, a world of demons. That successful Platinum formula translates well to iOS devices, with simple touch controls and quick action that looks and feels great on the smaller screen. There are some issues lying underneath--mostly in the camera system--but those problems aren't enough to derail this otherwise solid action experience. World of Demons follows Onimaru, a lone samurai fighting against an army of vicious demons called yokai. Our hero is building an army of his own, however, as every enemy he defeats will join him in the fight against the game's main antagonist, the demon king Shuten Doji. Onimaru himself controls exactly like a Platinum Games protagonist, deftly running around stages while slashing with his ma...

When I reviewed Miitopia on 3DS in 2017, I wasn’t terribly impressed. The game was dull, simplistic, and felt so random that I barely felt like I was playing it. But, as we’ve learned over the years, games can be improved significantly from their initial launches, and I figured that a Switch remake of Miitopia would be the perfect opportunity for Nintendo to fix the flaws of the 3DS release. Unfortunately, while there are notable improvements, the core game is still the same tiresome, repetitive experience from four years ago. Miitopia is a game where you take created Mii characters--based on yourself, friends and family, celebrities, fantasy characters, whoever--and “cast” them as player and NPC characters in a simple RPG story. The Dark Lord of Miitopia is ruining the peace and stealing the faces of the populace, so it’s up to you and your merry band of adventurers to gear up and put a stop to his wickedness, with plenty of goofy character interactions and dialogue snippets along th...

Knockout City's colorful, cartoonish aesthetic plays host to a relatively straightforward game of dodgeball, putting two teams against each other in a war waged with red rubber balls. But once you start factoring in deployable gliders, balls that can trap opponents in cages, and throwing techniques that can bend your shots around corners, Knockout City's identity starts to bubble to the surface. In between the satisfying thunks of direct hits and the grace of each character's movements, Knockout City features a satisfying level of depth that balances its pickup-and-play nature with a compelling competitive element that's difficult to walk away from. Each of Knockout City's rotating modes rests on the fundamentals of finding a ball and trying to hit opposing players twice with it for a knockout, racking up your team's score in the process. Knockout City makes this both simple and satisfying by automatically targeting enemies for you, but giving you control over ...

It's been a whole console generation since we last saw Shepard, Tali, Garrus, and the rest of the Normandy crew. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters BioWare's space opera RPG trilogy for the new generation of consoles, enhancing the visuals, implementing quality of life improvements, and making welcome adjustments to certain content for all three games. In those adjustments, Legendary Edition occasionally draws unwanted attention to parts of the trilogy that haven't aged gracefully, but as a whole, this remaster is a good way to see what all the fuss is about if you missed out on the first three Mass Effect games the first time around, or are just looking for a reason to dive into them again. The core of Mass Effect is its choice- and consequence-driven narrative. As Commander Shepard, the first human to be given the role of a Spectre (basically a space cop) in the interspecies Milky Way government, you are put into many situations where you have the final say on how...

When you think of a private detective, you might see a tough guy in a felt fedora, cigarette perched above his chiseled jaw, puffing moodily in an office chair with the blinds drawn. If Nintendo has anything to say about it, though, next time you picture a gumshoe it will be a skinny, teenage boy who can't remember his own name. That's because the publisher has resurrected both Famicom Detective Club outings: The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind. This pair of adventure games debuted on the NES in the late ‘80s and cast players as a kid sleuth solving crimes in rural Japan. These remakes are impressively thorough, eschewing the pixelated graphics of the originals for a striking anime-inspired look and full Japanese voice acting. Mechanically, both titles are still products of their time and, as a result, progressing through the story can sometimes be frustratingly opaque. But, the stories themselves--particularly The Missing Heir's--are compelling enough that I w...

Biomutant's post-apocalyptic open world differs from the norm, even if it's guilty of adhering to a few familiar tropes. The remnants of its neglected towns are still populated by dilapidated buildings and roaming bandits, and its overgrown roadways are littered with the burnt-out husks of abandoned vehicles. But Biomutant also utilizes a vivid color palette that makes its verdant fields and picturesque red mountains pop with the kind of striking vibrancy that's rarely associated with the apocalypse. Throw in some furry anthropomorphic creatures, and Biomutant's character design and general style is certainly atypical of the genre. Yet it also consists of a mishmash of fairly obvious influences, from a Breath of the Wild-esque structure to combo-driven combat that's similar to Devil May Cry, and other familiar elements from the likes of Fallout, Max Payne, and Borderlands. It's a flavorful petri dish, for sure, and there are plenty of uneven and drab aspects to...

Editor's Note: In May 2021, Sony ported Days Gone to PC. In addition to compiling two years' worth of updates since the 2019 game's initial launch, the Windows version offers opportunities for enhanced graphics and performance with more powerful gaming PCs. Mike Epstein delivers his impressions on the game's technical improvements and how they may change your experience playing the PC version of Days Gone. GameSpot's original review for Days Gone is below in full and the assessment for the PC version is integrated at the end. This review contains minor spoilers about mission structure and overall story direction. There are no spoilers for major narrative moments. Around 10 hours into Days Gone , you're thrown into a hunting tutorial apropos of nothing. The over-the-top libertarian character takes you out with a rifle and shows you how to track a deer, although you've already had a tracking tutorial. You're then tasked with getting more meat for you an...

Mobile versions of console or PC titles used to carry the stigma of being poor cousins, but as games like Fortnite and Genshin Impact have shown, it's possible for mobile games to be just as good as their console counterparts. At first glance, NBA 2K21 Arcade Edition seems like it will follow suit; the game looks very impressive, the action runs smoothly, and every NBA team (with full rosters) is available from the start. I thought I'd have all I need to enjoy some great NBA action wherever I went, but the more I played the more I realized what I thought would be a deep experience was instead very shallow. NBA 2K21 Arcade is the annual basketball franchise's first appearance in Apple Arcade, and it features three main modes: Play Now, MyCareer, and Black Top. The game does a great job of bringing the impressive visuals of the NBA 2K games to iOS, with player models here looking pretty close to their real-life counterparts. The Play Now feature is straightforward: pick t...

On paper, Hood: Outlaws and Legends has a lot going for it. It's a competitive riff on the co-op multiplayer heist game where two teams of four merry men and women simultaneously attempt to unlock a vault and extract a giant chest of gold. Its stealthy race to elude computer-controlled knights and rival players rarely plays out with the grace implied by the concept. More often, the competition for keys, chests, and respawn points devolve into protracted brawls that showcase Hood's clumsy combat, rather than dynamic stealth. Throw in some confusing UI, easily exploitable stealth-kill mechanics, and myriad small design flaws, and Hood's execution fails to deliver the goods it's promised. Each match in Hood has four phases. First, someone needs to steal the vault key from the invincible (but generally unaware) Sheriff. Second, you find and open the vault. Third, someone carries the chest to one of a few extraction points on the map. Once the chest is locked in, one or two...

The Assassin's Creed franchise has typically relied on its story-based DLC to enhance the narrative of its games. This is usually done in one of two ways: As a means of filling in obvious holes within a game's plot (like Assassin's Creed II 's Bonfire of the Vanities), or as a method of continuing a protagonist's story to further explain how they connect to other games in the series (like Odyssey 's Legacy of the First Blade). The first of Assassin's Creed Valhalla 's two post-launch story-driven DLCs, Wrath of the Druids, doesn't fit into either camp. Without much tying it back to the main story of Valhalla or the franchise as a whole, the DLC doesn't quite serve a distinct purpose and it's worse off for it. In Wrath of the Druids, Eivor receives a letter from her cousin Barid saying that he wishes to see her again--as it happens, he's become king of Dublin, a major port town in Ireland. Upon arrival in Ireland, Eivor learns that Barid ...

Some video game franchises seem destined for the mobile gaming scene, their format ideally suited for touchscreen controls or quick on-the-go gaming sessions. Bandai Namco's drum-pounding rhythm game Taiko no Tatsujin is the latest established franchise to make the jump to mobile, and it's a match made in heaven. Bright, colorful, and full of charm, Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat will have you smiling from ear to ear as you tap tap tap away to its catchy soundtrack. It's just a shame that fun has such a short shelf life. Pop Tap Beat follows the standard rhythm genre format: notes travel from one side of the screen to the other (in this case right to left), and you tap the screen when each one reaches a circle to score points. The closer to the circle the note is when you tap, the more in rhythm with the song you are and the more points you score. It's a simple system that's easy to understand and pick up even if this is your first time playing a rhythm game, makin...

Over its 25-year history, the Resident Evil series has continually changed and evolved, like a mad scientist who injects himself with a questionable bio-weapon, mutating into something new every time he shows up. For the most part, those evolutions have been fascinating recombinations of elements as Resident Evil tries different mixes of survival-horror and action gameplay. With Resident Evil 7 , Capcom swung for the fences with a first-person perspective, a narrower scope, and more horror-focused gameplay. Resident Evil Village evolves that idea to make something that feels very different from its predecessor, but which is just as engaging. Though the perspective and mechanical underpinnings are the same, Village branches off in its own direction from RE7, capturing some of the things that were great about that game while resisting the impulse to retread the same ground. While it's still frightening at points, it takes a less horror-driven tack on the same underlying first-pers...

The enemy outnumbers us two-to-one and reinforcements are still days away. The raucous Gaul army is at our gates, baying for blood; each enemy soldier is coated in white and blue war paint and a select few operate battering rams that'll plough through our modest wooden defenses in a matter of minutes. The scent of death is in the air and we've got no choice but to stand our ground and fight. "One of you is worth any number of them," bellows our general, shattering the tense silence with an impassioned war cry. "We face adversity, a band of brothers, dedicated to the warrior's code of strength and victory," he continues, rallying the troops. "But we will never know defeat while we stand together! This day we add another triumph to the history of our people! We will be honored as men!" Whether you go on to achieve victory or succumb to overwhelming odds, moments like this are part of what made Rome: Total War such a beloved strategy game when it...