Recent reviews by Vhaen

So far, I am enjoying this game. It has a lot going for it, especially since it's free.

However, it faces two significant problems related to the anti-cheat. First, it's ineffective, and 80% of lobbies are rampant with cheaters. And more importantly, it constantly runs on your PC even if you haven't RUN the game yet. Anti-Cheat Expert (ACE) stops you from launching any games with Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC). This is beyond ridiculous. A game should not affect your PC when it's CLOSED.

Game is great and has a strong developer team behind it; lots of new content. But by far the absolute worst matchmaking system I have ever seen to date. Predetermined coin-flipping system that punishes you through losing streaks followed by win streaks. It's actually obvious. Engagement based matchmaking can suck my ass.

» There are some games that keep you entertained for a weekend. Some keep you busy for an hour on a weeknight after failing to settle on what new Netflix documentary to watch next. But then, every so often, a game like Balatro turns up and takes hold of your entire life – to the point where you open up your wardrobe, and the only four suits your eyes can make out are clubs, spades, diamonds, and hearts. This poker-influenced roguelike may appear straightforward at first, but take the risk of picking it up, and its ludicrously fun gameplay loop won’t let you put it down.

» Never has the power of placing down a simple pair of kings garnered more delight than in Balatro, where it can suddenly conjure up an 82 x 146 multiplier as you watch the resulting equation satisfyingly solve itself. A deck-building roguelike quite like no other, it sacrifices the combat that has made so many in the genre, such as Slay the Spire, popular and doesn’t even attempt a story that the likes of Hades told so well. Instead, Balatro relies solely on the power of playing cards to keep you engaged, and it does so with aplomb, gripping my attention tight with its relatively simple but effective toolset.

Tasked with hitting increasingly higher scores set by a small blind, big blind, and boss in each of the eight “antes” that make up a run, it's your job to engineer poker hands by discarding cards and hoping you draw the ones you need. Play these hands before running out of your limited attempts to build a high enough score, and you’ll move on to the next challenge with the ability to improve or modify your deck between encounters. Masquerading itself as a poker simulation, Balatro begs to be experimented with to the point of breaking, setting out its rules just as quickly as it encourages them to be broken.

» This experimentation requires you to grasp only the basics of poker (you need to know next to nothing in reality) before manipulating your deck to score preferred hands more frequently. My chosen tactic quickly focused on creating as many flushes as possible (five cards of the same suit), so I transformed as many cards in my deck into the same suit as possible. To do that, you spend money wisely between rounds and cross your fingers for the right cards. Luck is still involved, just as in poker and roguelikes, but Balatro never feels unfair, with every corner backed into being of your creation.

Much of the luck comes from the gamble of opening booster packs after each round. The quicker you reach a target score, the more money you’ll earn to improve your deck. These packs vary in type, each offering a selection of cards with abilities that may or may not help. Celestial packs contain cards tied to different scoring poker hands. As I often go for flushes, I’m always on the lookout for Jupiter, which boosts the multiplier score of any flush for the rest of that run. Then, there are arcana packs containing tarot cards with wild one-time effects. Some can turn three of your cards into a different suit (helpful to flush fanatics), while others may double the money in your bank for future investments.

There are plenty of other card types to find, but discovering and unlocking each is a big part of the thrill of Balatro’s progression, as things you previously thought impossible reveal themselves with regularity. While nothing gives you a permanent advantage, striving to unlock more exciting options creates an incredibly fun loop that every great roguelike aims to achieve: finding the fun in failure. Even an unsuccessful run made me want to start over to watch that multiplier number tick up again.

» It’s very easy to lose yourself in Balatro, not only through its moreish gameplay but also in its hypnotic swirling background art and accompanying musical score. And while it hardly pushes any graphics engine to sweat, the confident art direction shines through in some of its more fantastical card designs, with an old-school CRT filter giving an eerie, off-kilter edge to its otherwise colourful charm. As do the grinning jokers that adorn the cards at the heart of Balatro, even its name – the word itself being an ancient Roman term for a professional Jester. However, these age-old harlequins are crucial to its thoroughly modern formula. Despite devilish appearances, jokers are your friends and the key to unlocking Balatro's biggest scoring combinations.

» Jokers are (to use a confusing metaphor) your ace in the hole. They offer huge multipliers and influential abilities that often dictate your run's course. You may be looking to turn your whole deck to diamonds, only to stumble across a joker that scores you 40 more points every time you play a spade, meaning your tactics take a complete 180-degree turn mid-run. With initial room for only five jokers to take effect at a time, however, you must think carefully about which ones to pick and how they synergize most effectively. It’s a delicate balance, but get it right, and you’ll reap the rewards as absurdly high-scoring hands become a breeze to play.

This will ultimately lead you to reach the end of a Balatro run, by which point you’ll have likely hit 24 ever-increasing point targets. But that isn’t the end. You can then seamlessly up the ante (literally) and carry your victorious deck into an endless mode to see just how high your score can go. Once the end of the line is inevitably hit, your first victory with a given starter deck will encourage you to play again using a newly unlocked one, each of which comes with its boons and drawbacks – those range from changing the number of point-scoring hands you can play per round to starting with no face cards whatsoever. Unlocked all of the 15 decks? Try winning with each in the increasingly escalating difficulty modes, which offer a real challenge for even those who feel like they’ve worked out all of the tricks that Balatro hides up its sleeve.

» I’m nowhere near this point, however. With well over 25 hours logged and still a handful of decks to unlock, I’m still thinking about that next run and what twist of fate will stand in my way. If there are any gripes to be had with Balatro, it's that sometimes failure does seem to just come down to pure luck, whether that’s through nothing of use appearing in the card store between rounds or simply the right cards not appearing in your hand at a crucial moment. But it feels wrong to consider this a genuine negative when its two parents – poker and roguelikes – are both hugely reliant on the thrill of chance. Even the best-laid plans can often fail, but I have never felt cheated. It's ironic for a game that encourages nothing but cheating.

» Remarkably approachable with complex systems waiting for those willing to lose themselves to it, Balatro successfully assembles the infinitely fun gameplay loop that every great roguelike sets out to create. It takes the fundamentally simple nature of poker’s scoring hands and shuffles in deep mechanics that don’t feel like a chore to learn but are always thrilling to exploit. A deck-builder of endlessly satisfying proportions, it’s the sort of fun that threatens to derail whole weekend plans as you stay awake far too late, staring into the eyes of a jester tempting you for just one more run. Simply put, Balatro is no joker but, in fact, an ace.


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» Playing Sleeping Dogs kept me on the edge of my seat, but not for the reasons you might expect. Sure, its melee combat and gun-play provide plenty of thrills, the driving is extraordinarily fun in all of its arcade glory, and there’s a lot to do in the version of Hong Kong that developer United Front Games created. But at the end of my nearly 20-hour experience, none of that mattered to me as much as the story did. It’s that story, coupled with rock-solid mechanics and a task-heavy world, that sets Sleeping Dogs apart from its competition.

» See, Sleeping Dogs isn’t your typical Grand Theft Auto clone. Unlike other titans of the genre -- Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption and Saints Row: The Third -- your character, Wei Shen, doesn’t have roguish, violent tendencies just because he’s a criminal looking to make a few bucks. Rather, Shen is a calculated and complicated figure, an undercover cop with plenty of experience in both the United States and Hong Kong who returns to his native land in order to help get the city’s thriving criminal enterprises under control. But as Shen gets sucked further and further into the Triad underworld he initially wants to unravel, his motives – and which side he’ll end up falling in line with – become increasingly blurred.

» Sleeping Dogs’ blurred lines come to the fore as soon as you’re introduced to the game’s unique levelling system, which allots Shen experience points in three specific areas: Cop, Triad and Face. The experience points are, in turn, used to unlock new, unique abilities. Cop and Triad points often intermingle with one another as you complete the game’s primary missions, rewarding you for how careful you are with innocents and personal and private property (Cop) while simultaneously challenging you to brutalize your enemies with as much reckless abandon and gore as you can muster (Triad).

‘Face,’ on the other hand, has everything to do with how the citizenry of Hong Kong feel about you, making it not only the most abstract of the experience meters, but perhaps the most interesting as well. Doing all kinds of favours for the anonymous masses net you ‘Face’ experience, so whether you’re assisting a merchant, chasing down some drunks or otherwise generally helping out the working class folk (and the occasional two-bit criminal) of Hong Kong, expect your Face meter to rise steadily.

A unique, multi-faceted experience system like this makes Sleeping Dogs a more deliberate affair than its contemporaries. On most main story missions, for instance, you will be docked police points for ramming into street lights with your car, accidentally striking a civilian or letting stray bullets seep into a storefront. But this is balanced by your brutality with Triad members. Using the game’s array of exceptionally gory kills is a great way to build that Triad meter to its maximum level as quickly as humanly possible. The experience system’s dynamics will keep you on your toes, and because you can replay missions once they’re completed, you could always go back to try things a little differently if you’re unsatisfied with the outcome as it currently stands.

» Sleeping Dogs’ version of Hong Kong is purportedly influenced by and designed after the real city. Its four districts are distinct, and the map sprawls considerably, although it’s probably not quite as big as Liberty City or Steelport. What makes it stand out, however, is how alive and well-populated it is. The AI in the game is smart, the passing chatter of NPCs well-executed, and the ebbs and flows of the city as it vacillates between day and night make it a believable setting worthy of exhaustive exploration.

Stellar voice acting simply adds to this emphasis on realism and believability. The game employs a unique mixture of Chinese and English that doesn’t sound corny or ill-executed. Characters openly change things up depending on the nature and cadence of conversation, and you can follow along, when necessary, via subtitles. This approach is bold and risky, but it’s also top-notch and worth commending. The graphics, on the other hand, are good, but they certainly won’t blow you away. There are definite draw distance problems to be had with the game and some texture loading issues as well.

» At its heart, Sleeping Dogs does many of the things its top echelon competition in the genre already does pretty well, but where the game really shines is in the handful of things it does decidedly better. Hand-to-hand combat, for instance, is button-mashy and simple – almost Arkham City-like -- but works really well and makes Grand Theft Auto IV look subpar and archaic by comparison. This is good, as you’ll be relying on hand-to-hand combat with the occasional weapon thrown in – such as a kitchen knife, a pipe or a nightstick – for a majority of the game. Likewise, Sleeping Dog’s driving mechanics are immaculate, outclassing its closest competition. In other words, expect to be surprised by how much better Sleeping Dogs does certain things than games you’d, at first glance, think completely outshine it.

» Then again, the game’s single biggest issue is with its camera. The camera often repositions itself towards centre, even when you’re using the analog stick to maneuver it while driving. This can significantly complicate navigating tight quarters or getting a look around your vehicle in open spaces. The camera can also be frustrating in some combat situations, though this is far less pronounced. The camera’s real deficit rests almost solely in conjunction with driving around Hong Kong, but this problem shouldn’t be overblown. You won’t always – or even often – encounter situations where this is a problem, and it generally doesn't detract from how fun it is to drive around. But it’s still worth noting.

» All in all, Sleeping Dogs did things that wowed me from the moment I started playing, and it never really stopped. A few finicky issues aside, Sleeping Dogs has proven itself worthy of joining the top class of open-world sandbox games revolutionized by the likes of Grand Theft Auto IV and currently topped by more recent additions like Saints Row: The Third. But don’t be confused; Sleeping Dogs does some things better than even the cream of the crop, and its story will be what keeps you focused on playing. The fact that the game happens to play well is simply icing on the cake.


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» If there’s one genre that lends itself to boom or bust, it's the online shooter. For every success like Call of Duty, Halo, or Apex Legends, it seems like there are at least a dozen other games that have come and gone with barely a spark before they fizzle. With so many good competitive shooters in play, what makes one stand out? After dozens of hours, I’m beginning to see how The Finals answers those questions: with an excellent gameshow-infused style and a brilliantly destructible playground.

» There are currently two main modes: the first, Quick Cash, has each team vying to collect a vault of coins and deposit it at a designated spot on the map, which tends to result in the bloody convergence of all three squads at those points. This effectively keeps the action going, and because taking over the deposit doesn’t reset its progress, rounds move steadily and avoid momentum-killing stalemates altogether.

Meanwhile, the Bank It mode focuses a bit more on direct PvP battles, but they also tend to be more scattered. Here, each player carries coins in their virtual pockets, all of which is gathered either from vaults around the map or by eliminating enemies. The on-the-fly strategizing of going for kills one second and then needing to deposit your loot before it all goes to waste the next is exciting, and it’s pretty fun to eliminate someone right in front of the bank so you can deposit all their coins yourself.

Individually, both modes are well-designed and generally very fun. The fact that The Finals is limited to just those two options, however, is a red flag. If the player base starts to grow tired of these game types and there aren’t any other options, there is a real possibility of people moving on before too long. While I didn’t find that to be an issue during my time playing, that does present a potential concern for the long-term health of this community that I hope is addressed with new modes in future updates.

Once you’ve played a few matches you’ll unlock tournaments, and this is where the competitive attitude of The Finals really shines. The primary tournament mode puts you and seven other teams in a bracket playing modified versions of Cashout. Two games of four teams each run simultaneously, with the top two squads from each game advancing to the second round. The top two teams from that game then face off in a direct 3v3 match to determine the overall winner. It does a great job mixing the high-stakes nature of actual competition with rounds that are fast and satisfying enough to elicit that “just one more game” feeling after each tournament. There’s a ranked version, where players can move up in leagues based on their performance.

» You can choose from three different weight classes for your character, and they all play very differently from each other. The Light build, for example, focuses on mobility, trading stopping power for a grappling hook to quickly get to high or far places. The Medium, meanwhile, is an all-rounder and has abilities that focus on support, such as its healing beam. Finally, there’s the Heavy, which could have been taken straight from Rainbow Six: Siege, as it alternates between controlling the battlefield with heavy weapons and smashing through walls like the Juggernaut.

There’s a solid variety of equipment for you to choose from before each match, and they can have a major impact on the battlefield if used properly. There are standard choices, like frag grenades and deployable cover, and those are tried and true options that do what you’d expect – but they hardly stand out when you can instead drop jump pads that launch you high into the air, or goo grenades that can seal large spaces with an expanding foam. Some options are universal, like the pyro grenades, while others are restricted to specific classes like the Medium builds’ defibrillator that instantly revives downed teammates.

» Each character archetype also has a litany of cosmetics that can be unlocked through XP progression or by spending real-world money. There’s a pretty solid assortment to choose from right out of the gate, though the amount of time it takes to unlock good-looking items (without taking out your wallet) requires major retuning. After 20 hours, the best I could afford was some fanny packs and tights on one character, which makes getting the whole squad glammed up feel like a pipe dream.

That slow progression is also true of VRs, the in-game “cash” you earn for playing that’s used to unlock non-cosmetic things like different abilities, weapons, and gadgets. I get that there needs to be a balance between giving you everything too soon, which can take away the joy of progression, and making it take too long to earn things, but right now The Finals skews a bit too much towards the latter. It’s hard to experiment with builds when all the pieces for each character are locked behind dozens of hours of matches.

» The destructibility of each stage is the real star of The Finals. Sure, you can enter a room from the door or window. But taking the less obvious path of crashing right through the ceiling is a thrilling way to get the drop on unsuspecting teams, and you haven’t played The Finals until you’ve stolen the vault by blowing a hole in an upper floor and had it drop right in front of you. By the end of a tense match, the battlefield is often littered with debris from entire buildings beginning to collapse.

There’s a lot more to that system than some cool rubble and an ad hoc door, too, as the strategic impact is huge. One map is high atop skyscrapers connected by sky bridges, and I sat in stunned silence the first time I saw a team destroy the section where a bridge met a building, causing the entire thing to collapse to the ground below. Split-second judgment calls when buildings fall around you about whether to jump off or ride the debris down can make or break firefights and create unforgettable moments – like when my entire team was dead in the final seconds of a match, and the only thing that stopped another team from stealing the bank for the win was the amount of rubble they had to dig through to reach it.

» There will always be an element of luck in the quality of teammates you are matched with, which is a big part of why The Finals (as with most team-based shooters) is better across the board with people you know. It’s so much fun to coordinate an assault with friends or to seize the bank and then protect it with mines and defensive structures. It’s also a huge advantage to work together. A flamethrower wielding Heavy supported by a healing beam from a Medium can wipe an entire team, and the strategic element of choosing complementary builds and kits is very engaging. When someone dies, they leave an action figure behind that can be used to revive them, and scooping one up so you can find a safe place to bring them back is as useful as it is hilarious.

» The Finals does a great job standing out from the competitive shooter crowd thanks to its fast-paced action, excellent environmental destruction, and gameshow-meets-squad shooter vibes. The way flying through the battlefield with a grappling hook or hulk-smashing through buildings mixes with its strict, objective-based modes is a breath of fresh air. It’s a concern that there are only two of those modes total right now, and it definitely feels like both in-game balance and the overall reward economy need some adjustments. But those are small critiques relative to the outrageous fun and breathtaking spectacle of buildings crumbling around you.


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» Dead Cells is a triumph of shockingly good game design: the ever-changing guts of its beautifully illustrated levels, a staggering array of game-changing weapons and gadgets, and its breakneck motion fuse into an engrossing loop. It’s so engaging that even after dozens of hours clawing through its island fortress, I’m still discovering and devouring new morsels.

» The heart of Dead Cells is its layered commitment to risk and reward. At its surface, you’re a decapitated prisoner reanimated for some unknown reason to run through a dozen levels that are gorgeously detailed — even though they’re procedurally generated — only to die and use what you’ve learned and collected to get a little farther the next time. This loop is at the core of what makes progressing through Dead Cells so special. Each new zone you reveal, each new artifact or weapon or skill you uncover, it all spurs that bittersweet, rewarding sense you’re slowly peeling away a great mystery.

The placement and order of its levels are Dead Cells’ skeletal frame, but the ever-changing layouts and enemy and item placements are the blood that pumps through its heart. It’s what makes every run different enough to be consistently tense and surprising and what challenges the notion you’ve seen it all when you’re dozens of runs through. You simply don’t know what you’re going to find, because it could be anything from a huge pool of equipment that’s delivered with perfect pacing. And just when I thought I’d dredged the best from that pool, in the very next run a shiny new toy would drop with glittering fanfare and I’d race to bank it with The Collector.

And though it may sting when you have to say goodbye to those perfect turrets that helped you progress further than ever before — the ones that set victims ablaze and do double damage to burning enemies in tandem — or the tens of thousands of gold you’ve collected on a particularly bountiful run, the actual progression comes from unlocking buffs, skills, and weapons between each run that never go away — no matter how often you thrust your face into walls of spikes while trying to set a new land speed record in the Ancient Sewers.

But through that constant repetition, like being trapped in some kind of gothic-horror Groundhog Day, you’ll scrape together money, blueprints for new items, and Cells you can spend to unlock blueprints and buffs for future use. Each small bit of persistent power you pick up propels you forward like a bloody snowball careening down a mountain until you feel unstoppable.

» Momentum is where Dead Cells really shines. Its slick system of running, jumping, dodging, and pounding through these dungeons feels so good that the desire to move and attack quickly overrides a lot of the caution that comes with a game where death sends you back to the beginning.

Motion Twin’s subtle design pushes you forward through ingenious touches. You’re rewarded for multi-kills with a burst of movement speed to keep propelling you forward. You don’t take damage from colliding with enemies, only their attacks inflict harm, and that grants a sense of safety even in the presence of diverse and deadly foes. If you’re wily enough, move fast enough, or jump precisely enough, you’re untouchable.

Dead Cells’ movement and combat encourage you to put it all on the line to get a little farther. It’s meant to be replayed dozens of times, unlocking another small but significant fragment of the broad skillset with each new artifact you earn. Once you’ve unlocked all of the clever Metroid-style abilities you’re eventually able to move unrestricted through Dead Cells’ darkest recesses to uncover its skimpy, but fun, bits of story and cleverly hidden game references in secret areas.

There’s a genuine sense that the secrets hiding near the end of Dead Cells’ journey are as potent as those you’re able to unlock near the start. Finding a rune in the acidic pits of the Toxic Sewers changed my first 15 minutes of every run thereafter. I now had access to a hefty portion of new equipment, secret areas, and alternate routes that were once unreachable. There was almost a rush in dying because it meant I could dive back into the opening minutes to uncover something I previously couldn’t. That feeling carries over with each new artifact, especially after discovering what’s on the other side of the final boss.

» The real diversity in each run comes from an excellent set of choices in how you want the second-to-second gameplay to work. Perhaps you’ll blitzkrieg through with speed and fire and sword — you’ll be rewarded for your reckless pace with access to timed locking gates that only open if you reach them in their stingily allotted times. Or maybe you’ll go through Dead Cells methodically, using ranged weapons, traps, and turrets to safely pierce, poison, burn, or butcher enemies and thoroughly explore every inch of each level for treasure. You’ll be stronger for it.

These playstyles are changeable on the fly, too, thanks to Dead Cells’ smart system for powering up throughout a run by collecting Scrolls of Power. In the beginning, you’re weak and fragile, but as you collect these scrolls you’ll be able to choose a build based on your style and items. The catch is that building an aspect buffs its associated weapons and skills and it’s also how you increase your maximum health pool.

The more scrolls you dump into a specific aspect, the less overall health you get for each consecutive one, so if you want to play a headless beefcake capable of taking a blow, it’s wise to spread your points out. However, doing so means you’re not particularly powerful with any one set of items, so your damage likely won’t be enough to whittle down the ever-inflating enemies in the later levels. I love that in Dead Cells you are free to experiment, but you don’t quite know how it will all shake out. Your starting weapons, the items you pick up, and their modifiers are always different. It keeps you improvising.

After all of the experimenting, the one overarching strategy I discovered was that you can’t always go for the throat. My first 10 runs in Dead Cells were all aimed directly at the final boss, but I quickly realized spending over an hour to get there only to immediately die because I hadn’t properly prepared was a waste of effort. My revised strategy was to focus on extracting blueprints for new gear in some runs, and on harvesting Cells to unlock those items and buffs in others. And every once in a while, I’d just run like a madman with a death wish and explore as much as possible.

For a more dramatic change of pace, there’s a daily dungeon outside of your main campaign that tosses you into a random map with random pickups to see how fast you can kill the boss. And, like all things in Dead Cells, this mode also rewards permanent progression (in the form of blueprints) for consecutively clearing these challenges each day. It’s a fun distraction and gives you the chance to test out gear you’ve yet to find in your game.

» Overall, Dead Cells is rewarding in its flexibility in a way few games are. Each easily digestible run through its beautifully detailed and shifting levels instills a feeling of discovery and familiarity. It goads you to push the limits of your ability and mercilessly crushes you when you get too comfortable. There are layers of strategy and tactics buried not only in the immediate choices you make, but in the grander metagame each run builds toward. It resembles a triumphant union of instinct, forethought, fun, and failure.


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» There is no shortage of great ninja-centric video games out there, from Metal Gear Rising to more recent gems like Katana Zero. But even among those, Ghostrunner stands out by being 100% committed to delivering that fantasy of becoming a super fast and deadly assassin. This is a game where you run fast, slide fast, kill fast, and if you can’t do those things fast enough, you die fast. It can be very demanding and requires pinpoint platforming precision and split-second decision-making, but it’s rarely ever frustrating thanks to instant respawns, mostly generous checkpointing, and most importantly, open-ended combat encounters that offer multiple methods of approach.

» Taking place in a cyberpunk-themed post-apocalypse, Ghostrunner tells the story of a cybernetically enhanced swordsman who awakens after getting thrown out of a tower with little memory of what happened to him, who he is, or why he feels compelled to immediately plunge a sword into the poor soul waiting below him. Guided by the disembodied voice of an old man known as The Architect, the Ghostrunner gets wrapped up in an ongoing power struggle between the supposed rulers of this broken world, the efforts of a dying resistance, and the mystery of who he is.

» It’s a predictable tale, but the story is nonetheless well told and respectably voice-acted. What’s especially great though is how the storytelling rarely slows down the fast pace of this six to eight-hour campaign. There’s a lot of well-acted dialogue in Ghostrunner, but it all plays out via conversations that happen in the head of the main character. That gives you the choice to either stop and listen intently to what’s being said or to just push on through the various parkour-heavy platforming challenges that typically accompany any long exposition dumps.

» Of course, the action is what you’re here for – and if you’ve got a thing for lightning-quick, reflex-intensive, high-risk/high-reward combat that gets decided with just a single strike, then Ghostrunner was made just for you.

The only main weapon in Ghostrunner is a sword, though your speed and mobility options are weapons unto themselves. The Ghostrunner can run along walls, slide down slopes with great speed, and also utilize a quick dash that can be held down to slow down time and alter the direction of his momentum in mid-air. Chaining all of these abilities together created a wonderful flow of movement that allowed me to nearly effortlessly close the distance between me and the more basic enemies before satisfyingly slicing them in half.

» Those basic enemies aren’t your only foes for long though, and one of the best things about Ghostrunner is how your adversaries always rise to meet your growing skills and abilities. Just when I got comfortable dodging and deflecting the bullets of the single-shot pistol-wielding enemies, I had to deal with machine gun-wielding soldiers who forced me to keep moving if I wanted to survive long enough to be able to hit them while they were reloading. After I got used to dealing with those, I had to learn how to deal with shielded enemies that could only be hit from behind.

Ghostrunner does an amazing job of always keeping its action fresh, and not just by periodically adding in new enemy types. Pretty much every level introduces something new into the mix, whether it’s an environmental mechanic like grind rails that completely change up how you navigate through a level, a temporary powerup such as a slow down that allows you to deal with a group of enemies that would otherwise be nearly impossible to take on without dying or a shield battery that must be destroyed first to deal with the rest of the enemies in an encounter. Ghostrunner rarely stays on one theme for too long, and as a result, the combat feels impeccably paced and never feels like it's running out of ideas.

Best of all is the amount of flexibility each combat scenario offers. There are often multiple entry points to any given encounter and each comes with its challenges. You might take the right side and have to deal with a machine gun enemy and a long path before you can get to him. Or you could take the left path, take down a ninja guarding a shuriken powerup, and then grind on a rail sniping enemies as you go. I felt like I was always rewarded for checking out different routes whenever I hit a wall.

» While its platforming portions are much more linear, they still benefit from a ton of variety in their challenges. Sometimes you’ll have to hack something to freeze it in place while you navigate through or around it, other times you’ll have to quickly throw shurikens at power plates to open a door and dash through it before it closes, and you’ll often find yourself using dash in creative ways to get through tricky obstacles. The deep well of ideas Ghostrunner uses to power its short campaign is not quite Titanfall 2 levels, but it’s extremely deep nonetheless.

However, sometimes these ideas do overreach a bit and don’t quite fit with Ghostrunner’s controls. One section, for example, has you collecting 13 items scattered all around a constantly rotating object. It’s an awkward area with physics that feels off and frustrating mantling issues that send you flying towards your death when all you meant to do was pull yourself up to a ledge.

» Ghostrunner also uses an interesting, albeit slightly gimmicky, upgrade system that allows you to alter and enhance your abilities. You earn upgrades automatically as you progress, which take the form of Tetris-like blocks that can be rotated and placed onto a grid. Space is limited, and the better upgrades take much more of the grid, so you’ll have to pick and choose which upgrades you want to have active at any time. The upgrades themselves are pretty good, and I found myself largely keeping space reserved for deflection-based options since I loved being able to bounce bullets back at enemies. That said, I found myself not caring about rearranging puzzle pieces to try and find an “optimal” placement, especially since any unused spaces on the grid will speed up your regeneration of a resource called focus.

Focus can be used to power one of your four special moves that function as a limited and situationally dependent ace in the hole. Blink, for example, can cut straight through shielded and otherwise tough to bring down enemies with one strike and keep your momentum going; Tempest, on the other hand, can be used to reflect projectiles that are otherwise extremely tough to avoid; and Surge is an anime-style sword energy slash that can take out multiple enemies from a distance. The last special move is a bit of a spoiler, but also has its situational advantages.

It’s also impressive that Ghostrunner’s sights and sounds are no slouch either. This is a gorgeous-looking game with an equally excellent synthwave-inspired soundtrack that will keep your head bumping throughout.

» With its breakneck pace and skill-heavy gameplay, Ghostrunner is a speedrunner’s dream. But even beyond that demographic, this is a great first-person action game that feels punishing but fair. You may die hundreds of times, but instantaneous respawns and generous checkpointing ensure that Ghostrunner’s challenging combat and platforming never become a chore. More than all of that though, Ghostrunner is jam-packed with a great variety of enemies, mechanics, and special powers that constantly changed up how I approached its many unique encounters. That meant it always felt fresh, and by the end of its six to eight-hour campaign, I was all too eager to jump back in for seconds.


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STEP 1: Buy a steering wheel and shifter
STEP 2: Install Shutoko Revival Project
STEP 3: *VROOOM STUTUTU*

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Me: 18 kills in Warzone
Players: This mf is cheating *Spam report*
Ricochet: Thank you for submitting your report
Me: *Gets shadow banned*

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» What Remains of Edith Finch stands tall as one of the finest magical-realism stories in all of video games. A first-person, story-driven experience akin to Gone Home and Firewatch, it tells the incredible, tragic, and constantly surprising multi-generational history of the Finch family. As you explore the gorgeous labyrinthine home, you’ll go on a guided history of each family member, delve into what may or may not be a familial curse, and ultimately learn how each one succumbed to it. Developer Giant Sparrow has once again created something truly remarkable.

» In the two hours it took me to fully explore I ran the emotional gamut from feeling completely devastated to full of an energetic light to annoyed by noticeable performance dips, especially when I approached the house for the first time. The only challenge is finding a way into each locked room of the house, generally through the use of secret passages that make the whole thing exude the charm and imagination of a pop-up book. While exploring the house, the last living member of the Finch family, Edith, narrates stories of the house, her family, and how the incredible lives they lived untimely came to an end.

» While the whole thing is pretty much devoid of any friction preventing you from progressing (there are even fewer puzzles here than in the aforementioned Gone Home), the joy of Edith Finch is in fully immersing yourself in the final moments of each Finch’s life. Once you find a specific memento in each of their rooms, you’re treated to a story of their death, told through fantastical allegories. Each one is presented through a completely different gameplay experience that continually subverted my expectations. With each one, nothing is safe when it comes to the art style, perspective, or gameplay genre. I don’t want to spoil them because I got so much joy out of never knowing where the next memory would take me. Except for one awkward sequence where you control animals from a first-person perspective, there’s a dreamlike nature to the way these sequences not only bend the rules but completely obliterate them.

While each story is ultimately about death, it’s wonderful how full of life every tale is. Even something as heart-wrenching as the death of a child is presented with such exuberant creativity and magic. While experiencing the final moments of their lives is unquestionably tragic, the way they embrace it and welcome whatever might come next fills each story with light. The eccentric family reminded me of The Tenenbaums from Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums or the Glass family from J.D. Salinger’s various works. Learning how they were all related and how the various deaths impacted each surviving member is something that I won’t soon forget.

» One thing I love about the house itself is how incredibly lived-in it feels. It doesn’t come across as a set designed around the idea of a video game level, but rather a home that a dozen members of an impossibly creative family lived in over several generations. Part of this comes at the cost of interactivity – there’s very little in the house you can touch or manipulate. Like a museum, there’s a “look, but don’t touch” policy here. But honestly, this didn’t bother me given how much I enjoyed the act of meticulously looking at every beautiful detail of the world.

» Though it only took just under two hours to complete, the second the credits stopped rolling I immediately restarted What Remains of Edith Finch. Each of the vignettes is so distinct and surprising that I didn’t have enough time to absorb and dissect what I had just played before being whisked away to the next one. But after fully piecing together the threads of the family and sifting through the allegories of their final moments, I was left with a beautiful, heartbreaking mosaic that exudes life, even when mired in death.


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