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It's hard to ponder the infinite possibilities of space and not get romantic about it. Our imagination of the cosmos has taken many artistic forms, and the hard science behind the greatest discoveries on the final frontier has been just as enthralling. It's this sense of wonder that makes the prospect of Starfield so intriguing--even more so than if it were just Bethesda Game Studios' next major RPG. However, it's best to cast aside that love and fascination with space because, at its core, Starfield follows a very familiar formula without meaningfully engaging with its setting or the gameplay systems therein. Starfield is undoubtedly impressive in scale, from the sheer number of star systems and planets you can explore to the multitude of gameplay mechanics that tie the experience together. But once you start to see how all these big ideas are interconnected from a narrative perspective and technical standpoint, the illusion of a grand cosmic voyage shatters and the ...

Rubicon 3, the setting for Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, is a far cry from the likes of Lordran and The Lands Between, immediately establishing a striking sci-fi aesthetic that's unlike anything From Software has created in the past decade. Lessons learned from the studio's most recent output are evident in Armored Core VI, but don't go in expecting this to be Dark Souls with mechs. The sixth numbered entry in the series is a decidedly Armored Core game, meshing exciting mech-on-mech action with the highly customizable assembly of your giant robot. It's a game for the die-hards but also represents the most approachable game in the series thus far--one that sees From Software return to its roots in triumphant fashion. Though Rubicon 3 might be able to sustain human life, it's still an incredibly hostile place. Occupying corporations wage war against each other, local resistance fighters, and a governmental space force, for control of the planet and its valuable...

Put a few humans in outer space for a story set in the future and the result always seems to be that nothing will go their way. That's once again the broad strokes of this latest space thriller, Fort Solis, but the intrigue, as ever, is in the details. Developer Fallen Leaf does a good job of hiding the satisfying answers to its central mysteries up to the very end, which makes its story consistently absorbing even as some of its gameplay elements betray its own Hollywood-inspired intentions. Fort Solis is a third-person adventure game that tells a story reminiscent of Moon and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's slow, sometimes to a fault, and more concerned with its message and themes than action set-pieces. That doesn't mean it's a low-stakes tale. On the contrary, the secrets tucked away in Fort Solis are existential, but it's expressed through the eyes of a small cast of interesting characters whom you'll get to know over the game's five-hour story. Fort Soli...

At first, Immortals of Aveum pleasantly surprised me, putting a lot more stock into its narrative themes of environmentalism than I expected its wartime story to cover. The focus for this first-person shooter, however, is still on blasting baddies, albeit with a variety of bullet-inspired spells instead of traditional firearms. And although all the shooting is exciting for the first half of the game, it becomes increasingly annoying in the latter half when firefights get longer and more frequent. These shoot-outs interrupt the story's momentum by dragging it out, curating an irritating sense of repetitive tedium. Though you're slinging spells in Immortals, the magic you're casting is more cosmetic flavoring to what is otherwise a fairly traditional military shooter. Red magic unleashes with all the concussive force of a shotgun while green magic slowly ramps with the heated ferocity of a light machine gun and blue magic slices through the air with the precision of a bolt-...

One of my fondest memories as a football fan is Chris Johnson's 2,000-yard season in 2009. As arguably the fastest player the league has ever seen, the running back forever known as CJ2K was a one-man highlight reel, turning would-be six-yard gains into 50+ yard touchdowns all season long. But if you watch those highlights , you'll find a common theme: Titans wideout Kenny Britt was so often downfield blocking, creating vital running lanes through which CJ would weave with his unrivaled quickness. Britt is an unsung hero of CJ's historic season. In Madden 24 , it's been great to find players can now enjoy similarly helpful downfield blocking like never before. This fix to the running game is precisely the sort of tangible improvement I hope for with every new Madden game. But examples such as this are overshadowed by a lack of major additions to Madden's suite of features and modes. That improvement to blocking has been a minor bullet point of EA's marketing in...

Whether it's a giant woman willfully letting the Children of Moonlight deglove one of her hands; a bearded man leaking golden honey out of gaping wounds in his palms, face, and back; or a vendor that's simply an arm protruding from a towering pile of goods, developer The Game Kitchen has a knack for creating surreal pixel art imagery. Blasphemous 2 sees the Seville-based studio delve further into Andalusian and Spanish culture, iconography, and folklore to concoct a gothic, quasi-Catholic world that's as gruesome as it is fascinating. Inspired by the religious paintings of Francisco Goya and the architecture of cities like Seville and Cadiz, Blasphemous 2 follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, mixing its unique and harrowing aesthetic with a gameplay amalgam of Metroidvanias and Souls-likes. Where the first game faltered, however, its sequel makes significant improvements, resulting in a thrilling adventure that doesn't run out of steam. As solid as the original ...

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is an ideal summer movie. The franchise went on to become single-mindedly obsessed with its breakout star, Captain Jack Sparrow, but the first movie was an agile, lightly spooky swashbuckling adventure. Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew shares that movie's spirit of goofy haunted slapstick with a heart and real dramatic stakes, and blends it with an expertly crafted stealth-strategy campaign. It all comes together into one of my favorite games of the year. Shadow Gambit centers around the Red Marley, a living, talking ghost ship with an undead crew who have fallen to the Inquisition of the Burning Maiden. You play primarily as Afia, as she revives the cursed compatriots one by one and gathers information on the hidden treasure of the Red Marley's captain, Captain Mordechai, who is conspicuously absent. The search for Mordechai's treasure is an intriguing hook that propels the plot forward and balances well against the oft...

1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a horror landmark. It's gritty like no other, unflinching in its brutality, and downright terrifying as often as it wants to be. Bringing those same qualities to a video game adaptation of the movie milestone would be paramount, which is exactly what Gun Media and Sumo Nottingham have done. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (TCM) is every bit as nauseatingly tense as the classic movie, all while cleverly gamifying its scares in ways that are satisfying and built for the long haul. Asymmetrical horror multiplayer games have been experiencing a golden age for several years now, but TCM is already my favorite of them. In TCM, a unique 4v3 setup allows each round to play out like an actual horror movie. What I didn't realize until I played it for review is that to properly balance this particular game, creating an even playing field isn't necessarily the best approach. Each round is a horror story, and its team of "victims" inte...

I've played plenty of video games over the years that have both rewarded and punished me for the choices I've made, creating this powerful sense of agency in the narrative. Those games feel like I have a hand in shaping the outcome of the story, one in which successfully navigating a tricky conversation is empowering and not quite finding the words for a tough heart-to-heart is devastating. Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musical builds on that sensation but within the three-act structure of a musical. This combination is an impressive accomplishment, and it's incredible to watch how all those choices can build on one another, culminating in a finale that you helped shape. Together, it makes Stray Gods one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had. Set within our world--but one in which there's an ounce of truth to the myths surrounding the Greek gods, titans, and their multitude of offspring--Stray Gods starts off like your typical visual novel. Conversati...

Comedian and HBO host John Oliver once said "wrestling is better than the things you like." The same can't always be said of wrestling games, but WrestleQuest, a new role-playing game (RPG) from Mega Cat Studios, had the potential to give truth to that statement. Unfortunately, though, WrestleQuest is marred by a litany of issues. Some are directly tied to its gameplay mechanics, while others are related to its presentation. Together they mean that what could've been a promising offering for fans of wrestling has its charm wear off in a short span of time. Your journey in WrestleQuest starts with podcast hosts regaling you of an exciting tale, one where athletes come from humble beginnings, taking on all challenges before reaching the big leagues. You're introduced to one of the main characters, the Muchacho Man Randy Santos, an obvious nod to Macho Man Randy Savage. With big goals and big dreams, Randy is joined by friends who are also seeking to prove themselv...

[Editor's note: This review encompasses episodes one, two, and three of The Expanse: A Telltale Series] Within minutes of firing up the first episode of The Expanse: A Telltale Series , you'll be faced with a series of life-or-death choices. Though some choices may seem trivial at first, nearly all of them result in "[character name] will remember that" appearing in the top-left corner of the screen, leaving you to wonder what exactly will happen if that choice comes back to bite you a few episodes later. These kinds of narrative choices and consequences are a staple of the Telltale brand and, at first glance, one might mistake The Expanse for a clone of the studio's previous games , reskinned to reflect the appropriate franchise--but this couldn't be further from the truth. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that Deck Nine Games--the studio that developed Life Is Strange: True Colors and is iTelltale's co-developer for this project--has quite lit...

Multiplayer games can live or die based on first impressions, with many games putting their best foot forward by immediately showing off the variety of content they have. Exoprimal takes the opposite approach, only sharing a slice of what it has to offer for the first few hours of gameplay, risking people bouncing off due to a lack of content. It holds back its best moments and more interesting missions for anyone willing to put in the work. Intense and exciting surprises await those who put in the time to reach them--something that it's well worth doing. Exoprimal is a 5v5 shooter, except that the majority of your time will be spent shooting hordes of AI-controlled dinosaurs and not the enemy team. Players race to complete a series of objectives, culminating in a final one that sometimes has PvP elements. Most missions follow this structure, with a few special missions taking place later in the story that deviate from this formula. The gameplay itself is primarily about fightin...