This is a charming, voxel-art lightweight RPG from developer Bunnyhug and published by Coatsink, which sees you take a rookie angler to east coast Canada to restore the fortunes of the rundown town of Moonglow Bay. You open the game by creating your character from a small number of pre-set looks, complete with choice of pronouns. Should a game featuring the ability to choose your own pronouns be something worth having to highlight? No, it should be common place in games where you create your own character, but I’ll applaud Bunnyhug and Coatsink for producing an open and inclusive game.

I chose to create a character looking like an older man, and was given the backstory of my wife going missing while out fishing three years ago. The game started with my character receiving a letter confirming that his wife was now legally considered deceased, with his daughter visiting town to help process the loss.

Whether other characters have different backstories I’m not sure, but the premise is that the town of Moonglow has fallen on hard times since the disappearance of my character’s wife. There are many factors at play, but a sense of gloom has certainly fallen over the town with rumours of monstrous fish terrorising those who brave the waters of the Bay, scaring away tourists and keeping the locals from their daily catch.

It is a simple setup for an adventure which sees a relaxing gameplay loop ensue. Venture out on your boat to catch some fish, cook some delicious looking grub to sell and use your earnings to help the town return to its glory days. Oh, and conquer one or two of those rumoured monsters in a fishing boss fight.

The joy is in the simplicity. You don’t need to be a professional angler in the real world to get a bite on your line. As long as you combine your rod, lure and bait types properly you can shift the odds in the type of fish that you’ll catch and make landing them that much easier. If casting your rod gets tiring you can throw a net or drop off some lobster pots to collect later. It means that you can quickly acquire a plentiful haul to turn into tasty grub.

Cooking itself is a bit of a faff. Each step of preparing a meal requires a QTE event. For instance, chopping your potatoes when making chips requires timing a button press with the several chopping sections on a meter. Washing your fish before cooking requires keeping your analogue stick in a moving zone. Each step when cooking a meal has a similar QTE, and after a while I found myself getting bored. Fortunately, you can batch cook your meals if you have enough of the right fish, but after mastering a meal it still felt a hassle having to repeat the same cycle. Still, I’d rather be making some delicious dishes in Moonglow Bay than dealing with the hassle in the real world.

Away from the kitchen though and the story of Moonglow comes to the fore. You can earn the thanks of the locals by cooking their favourite dishes, learn more about different fish and their habits. by taking them to the aquarium and earning shells (the local currency) by selling meals from your house. As you meet more residents you can spend your hard–earned shells on bringing the local bar back to life, or helping the mayor and his family refurbish different tourist attractions.

Helping the town re-find its mojo is heart-warming, but the true adventure comes in unearthing the rumours of the monster fish. Each requires a different approach or pre-requisite, usually upgrading your boat to take on the challenge of the area you’ll be fishing in. They’re moments which act as an exclamation point on various chapters of the story before you cap off that moment in the story back in town.

I’ve been having a very serene time with Moonglow Bay, and if the thought of a fishing game fills you with horror, have no fear. This is certainly more RPG than fishing simulator, all wrapped up with a wonderful story.

You can find out more about Moonglow Bay here. 

Before I get into that in any further detail, hit the break for my first impressions of EA and DICE’s upcoming title.

This is a good looking game, of that there can be no doubt. I was running at 1440p with high settings across the board and was very impressed. With the game being set in the near future, the visual stylings are much more in keeping with Battlefield 3 and 4 than the last two historic World War titles. Compared with the earlier titles, this has that je ne sais quoi that is “next gen”. Performance was rock solid on my Razer laptop running the mobile nVidia 3070 chip. I wasn’t keeping track of frame rates, but it generally felt consistent which is always a good sign. I didn’t have any crashes, although getting connected to the DICE servers on launching the beta was a bit hit and miss, but retrying a couple of times got that sorted.

The beta offered one map, Orbital which features the range of combat areas that you would expect from a Battlefield game. Despite several rounds of action, seeing the bright sunshine turn into a rain soaked quagmire, I didn’t get to see the tornado that others have reported. Levolution is there, but I need to play more to see it truly impact on proceedings. With conquest mode in 2042 the map is split into zones of control, with each zone potentially having multiple capture points. This change to the usual conquest formula adds a whole new layer to the action whereby zones will be contested when control points are split between the two sides. It looks set to put well organised squads in a better position to change the course of battle.

I do wonder whether the teamwork and squad play that has long defined Battlefield will be embraced by players in the same way here as in the past. The scoreboard, which so many people care about, is focused on kills and kill assists while supporting functions such as revives and flag captures seem to be side-barred from the overall scoreboard and only contribute to your progression through the ranks. This is a beta, and some elements might be subject to change before release, and I can’t pass judgement until the full scope of player progression and unlocks is fully revealed. But at the moment, I fear the community will leave wins, losses and teamwork to the backburner in favour of racking up the kills. I hope to be proven wrong on that front.

Pulling back from those elements, the action on the ground, in vehicles or in the air feels as good as ever when it comes to Battlefield. The return to a contemporary timesetting allows for action which feels more naturally paced. While I enjoyed the previous two titles in the series, the multiplayer action often felt like it had been injected with speed, and didn’t always fit the time period. With 2042 there are no such issues with classes (or specialists), weapons and vehicles all feeling like they are combining well. As time goes on, some class and weapon combinations will undoubtedly be deemed overpowered, but I was happy enough not to be sniped at every step I took.

I was especially impressed with two features. The first sees you press the B button to bring up an iPad equivalent from where you can easily request a vehicle to be dropped at your location. Time will tell whether this will be abused, but the ability to call a transport vehicle to the field when you’re stuck miles from the action is welcomed. The other cool feature was tied to the T button, and this allows you to customise your primary weapon on the fly. I could enter the action with a bog-standard assault rifle, and at the press of a button choose my sights and other gizmos to meet my favoured playstyle. It serves to get you into the action and away from the deployment screen, and hopefully will lead to a game where you aren’t inundated with thousands of unlocks each round.

All things considered, I’m very much a fan of the boots on the ground action in 2042, but have reservations around whether some of the scoring changes will detract from the focus on teamwork.

Would I contemplate sinking my teeth into the DLC if it wasn’t for the Assist Mode that came with a large update to the game back in August 2020? I think not.

There’s a great sense of place when it comes to the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control. I am of course talking about The Oldest House, a shape shifting locale which holds many secrets alongside a wonderful diorama of the hometown of protagonist Jesse, and even its own quarry. Sadly, it’s also a pretty boring office complex which at times left me yearning for the ventilation shafts of Black Mesa.

If the locations you explore in Control are an eclectic mix of highs and lows, the story beats that accompany team are perfectly in sync. While getting the pacing right in a vast game like this isn’t easy, all too often I found my time spent monotonously fighting the same groupings of enemies, just waiting for the next thrill.

Back in Week 133 of Our Week in Games I highlighted the enjoyment I had with the A Matter of Time side-mission. It had a simple driving force of finding a stricken trooper and getting him the medical help he needed, but it was a mission with a clear thread to follow, all made complete with weirdness that Control is so good at.

Drawing a tenuous link with my recent TV watching habits, this was a good ‘Monster of the Week’ style mission that, while not matching the excellence of something like Squeeze, the third episode of The X-Files, was certainly enjoyable.

Sadly, to a large extent the main storyline was more reminiscent of latter series mythology X-Files episodes. Lots of potential, but ultimately failing to stick the landing and lacking the fizz and sparkle that highlighted some of the standalone episodes.

There are no doubt some great set piece moments like gazing upon the quarry at the heart of the Oldest House, while the majesty of the Ashtray Maze is nearly worth the price of entry alone.

The combat in Control could have been so much fun, with the dimension bending and otherworldly shenanigans lending themselves perfectly to an awe-inspiring arsenal and range of abilities. As it is, the weaponry is subdued with even the rocket launcher lacking any thrill. The abilities on offer add some spice, but the repetitive enemies and encounters soon drag.

If it wasn’t for Assist Mode and the ability to turn on one-shot kills and invulnerability at the flick of a switch, I wouldn’t have made it to the end. But being able to feel like a god allowed me to rattle through the combat and enjoy the special locations that the Oldest House would reveal.

It’s the thought of missing out on another moment like the Ashtray Maze, combined with Assist Mode that will bring me back to complete the DLC. In an era where traditional cheats are few and far between in singleplayer games, I have to thank Remedy for including the Assist Mode and will pray to the gaming gods that more singleplayer games (and yes, I’m including the solo modes of titles like Demon’s Souls) include something like the Assist Mode in future.

The history of episodic game releases isn’t one necessarily filled with success. SiN only saw the one episode released, and the cliff-hanger we’ve been left on since Half-Life: Episode 2 still hurts. The release of Hitman in 2016 was proof that with the right game, going episodic could work. I remember reading the excitement doing the rounds over the course of 2016 as new levels were released on a monthly schedule and appreciating (from afar) the work that IO Interactive had done.

The release schedule gave players time to fully explore and understand each location. The secrets of the Paris level unfurled as the first month went by, soon followed by speed runners competing for a spot at the top of the leaderboards. With so much on offer in each location with the main targets, story missions and numerous challenges available, the pacing of the releases “really allowed a lot of people to dig very deep into the levels because we obviously had them at a month at a time until a new level came out…we got a lot of feedback from both players and some journalists saying it sort of forced your hand to really dig in there, and we believe that was a big strength.”

That was creative director Christian Elverdam talking to Screen Rant in 2018 about the decision to release Hitman 2 as a complete package. Christian went on to say “we had players say it was a shame not to be able to play the story from start to finish…then, the story itself is only a portion of the game – the story that will actually be available on Day 1. And it also allows us some freedom that I also like, which is it’s anyone’s guess where the next [elusive] target is going to be, what’s going to happen.”

I can appreciate the arguments from IO Interactive for moving away from the episodic release schedule as the live content around elusive targets, escalation contracts and more are key parts of the appeal of the World of Assassination trilogy. In hindsight I wonder in IO would have preferred to have kept with the episodic approach.

Imagine a world where Hitman 2 was released as Hitman: Season 2. Through the wizardry of patches they could have brought the technological improvements seen in the sequel into the core game and allowing for a smoother user experience around retaining game progression and still being able to play all of the locations in one package.

While you can import Hitman 2016’s levels into the sequel and onwards into Hitman 3, the process isn’t straightforward. Take a read of the official guide to the process to importing progression and levels and see if you can make head or tail of it on first sight. Let’s be honest, it’s a bit of a mess in the best world for those who own the games on consoles (albeit in the right format), but on the PC things are even worse.

For those who bought the first two games on Steam, the only way (at the time of writing) to get the Hitman and Hitman 2 levels playable in the latest game is to buy an access pack on the Epic store where the new game is a PC exclusive. Where PC gamers historically used to have advantages in these situations over console players, with Hitman 3 the tables have been turned.

It doesn’t help that there are multiple ‘access packs’ available on the Epic store with the differences (apart from price) buried in the descriptor text. Even then they amount to saying, “Purchasing or redeeming this Access Pass will grant access to the locations from [Hitman 1 or 2 version]”. The blame here doesn’t fall squarely on IO’s shoulders, and some consideration needs to be given to this being their first self-published title, but perhaps Epic listing the locations and contracts available in each access pack would offer some clarity to the matter. It doesn’t make up for the fact that back in August 2020 the studio said “We want to make it a seamless process for our PC players to enjoy Hitman 3 on a different PC platform and continue to enjoy the benefits of our World of Assassination.”

While I can understand that going from Square-Enix publishing the 2016 Hitman, to Warner Bros. handling the release of Hitman 2 to self-publishing can’t have been an easy process, I do wonder whether continuing with the episodic approach would have paid off better, perhaps by using the season pass moniker that is au fait with multiplayer live service games.

Having just completed the first game in the World of Assassination trilogy, I can appreciate how good the games are. I just wish the release process had continued in the same vein as the first game. Or that at the very least, Steam players aren’t being disenfranchised as they are.

You probably know the basics of the setting by now. You take the role of Eivor, a Norwegian Viking who travels to England with their Raven Clan to raid, make friends and create a new life. It’s a simple idea with the classic Assassin’s vs Templars dynamic of the series framed as a battle between the Hidden Ones and Order of the Ancients for influence over the English kingdoms of the 9^th Century.

In a similar fashion to Odyssey you can choose whether to play through as a female or male version of Eivor, or “let the Animus decide” which will change your version of Eivor to best suit the DNA flow or somesuch Animus jargon. I started with the Animus version which gave me a female Eivor who I took through the prologue set in the snows of Norway, before ultimately settling on playing as the female Eivor for my whole playthrough. It’s nice that you can change between the options as you wish, but with the start of the game putting you in female Eivor’s shoes, it does raise a question as to why the initial marketing of the game focused on male Eivor. I wonder how those editorial changes will influence those types of decisions in the future.

The Norwegian prologue sets the scene for some of the core mechanics that will take you through the rest of the game. Combat in general is near as damnit identical to Odyssey with a focus on parrying and abilities, but the return of the hidden blade puts a focus on the stealthy approach that hasn’t been seen since the series entered full-blown RPG territory. I appreciate being able to sneak about with my cloak up and take down bad guys from bushes, and there are moments where social blending is useful, but ultimately Valhalla is still geared towards large fight scenes.

You are guided towards these larger fights through the Raid and Assault mechanics. Once you arrive in England and have established your settlement of Ravensthorpe (which I can’t stop calling Ravenholm) you will require supplies and building materials to construct the various buildings that are required to expand your new home. Key Raid locations tend to marked on your map, though by navigating the riverways of England in your longship you will find numerous smaller villages and military encampments you can Raid. For the smaller locales you can usually steal the relevant goodies by yourself, either through a stealthy approach or by going loud, but the larger Raids which are predominantly on monasteries need your Viking warriors by your side to force open doors and the chests containing your glorious loot.

The Assaults which bookend the main story chapters are a step up from Raids. They are large scale battles where you take your clan to the main fortress of the antagonist of that chapter. They involve plenty of bloodshed and breaking through gates guarding the centre of the settlement or castle until you find the chapter boss. While there is scope for approaching these Assaults in different ways and a chance for delivering a one-shot stealth kill on the bosses, I ultimately took the most obvious path of using a battering ram to breakdown the gates, and defeating the bad guy in one-on-one combat.

I am a big fan of how Valhalla structures your story and side missions. With Odyssey at the 25-hour mark, my quest log was filled with main missions and side-quests with icons filling the map to the point of incomprehension. Valhalla takes a more controlled approach to things, I might have a small range of quests granted by my friends in Ravensthorpe, but side-missions from any and every random Anglo-Saxon or Viking you come across just don’t exist in the same way that you might expect.

Rather than having available mission markers appear in every town or village, the map highlights wealth (armour, skill upgrades), artifacts (treasure maps, Roman trinkets) or mysteries (small quests, encounters with beings of Norse lore) through colour coded dots. Each dot offers something to do, but they don’t rationalise into a marker revealing their true meaning until you come across them. It makes for travelling through the gorgeous swathes of English countryside much more rewarding when you feel that you have stumbled across something worth finding. Sometimes you might find a puzzle which you can’t complete until much later in the game, but other times there is a simple joy in finding a hidden entrance and figuring out how to gain access, then exploring until you find your reward.

For some this might lead to a game world which feels empty and devoid of life, for me it means I can focus on the main story missions when I want but also offering a true sense of exploration and excitement when I find something new. Viewpoints are of course important to climb and synchronise, but even then they will only reveal the wealth, artifact or mystery locations, not what those specific moments are.

Story missions themselves tend to follow a fairly structured route, but feel like well paced chapters in a novel with an introduction in Ravensthorpe, plenty of middle action then a blow-off battle during the Assault, normally followed by a quest which feels like a nice epilogue to wrap up that part of the story.

The story chapters in England are focused on forming alliances with established Viking settlements or friendly Anglo-Saxon rulers, and while the game might not accurately represent 9^th Century English politics, it makes sense in the context of the game and the story being told.

What you have with Valhalla is a very good game, and one that when I put together my Game of the Year thoughts will come right near the top. It offers a beautiful world to explore, although it certainly lacks the Mediterranean flair of Odyssey, and the structure of the quests avoids the sense of being overwhelmed that can come with so many open-world RPGs. The return of some aspects of the traditional ‘Assassin’ moments is welcomed, and there is enough Norse mythology to entertain those who want something beyond the real world. It’s up there with some of the best games I’ve played this year, and is a great game, not just a great Assassin’s game.

The Verdict – Red Mist

Platforms Available – PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series S|X

Platform Reviewed – PlayStation 5

For more on our scoring policy, please see this post. Review based on retail purchased copy.

DOOM 2016 blew me away. Confident, stunning, and raw, DOOM created a visceral combat experience like no other I had played. It reconfigured the mythology of the series, leaning into its absurdity and turning the ‘Marine’ into the ‘Slayer’—a fetishised figure who exists as the perfect distillation of the first-person player and their ability to conquer entire armies single-handedly.

In doing so id flipped the middle finger at the wisdom that had led to Doom 3—the misguided belief that its future lay in ham-fisted horror—and aggressively yanked the past into the present, gleefully littering their glorified arenas with colourful power-ups, secrets, and challenges. It defied how we’ve come to think about the modern shooter by unapologetically embracing its identity as a game.

It was Doom, but it felt new and contemporary, working hard to craft players’ movements and actions into something that reflected the titan whose suit they occupied. The enfant terrible of this work was the ‘glory kill’, a manoeuvre where you snap to an enemy in its death throes and deliver a fatal blow. The animation varies depending on the angle and position of the kill, and a successful performance will merit an outpouring of bullets from the eviscerated demon.

No crates, no ammo boxes—to keep yourself alive you had to kill, which added new dimensions to the combat. id had unlocked something raw and powerful with their vigorous, demanding combat system, and I couldn’t wait for more.

Enter DOOM: Eternal. In many ways Eternal was an even better product than DOOM, amplifying everything about the first instalment and kindly removing us from Mars for the first time since…Hell on Earth? The variety of settings showed just how much potential the franchise really has for expanding its scope.

It did come, though, with a bloated and stuffy expansion of the mythology, and the first DLC pack—The Ancient Gods: Part One—takes it even farther. I didn’t care about it in DOOM, I cared even less about it in Eternal, and my interest pretty much flat-lined here. I’ll get into why a bit later.

The Ancient Gods picks up where Eternal left off: although the Doom Slayer stopped Hell’s invasion of Earth, his destruction of the Khan Maykr lead to the desolation of Urdak and allowed Hell to regain its supremacy once again.

Now they’re back on Earth and determined to finish what they started. Too bad for them the Slayer is very much of the same mind. Only he means to finish them permanently, and his solution to that is…a creative one.

It’s not just the story that picks up where Eternal ended, though. The difficulty is exactly where you left it as well, meaning the game hits you hard and fast the moment you’re out of the gate. Having not played Eternal since April this proved a significant challenge for me. It was like the game was actively beating me back, so I struggled to get into the rhythm of things again. You do start with all your weapons, runes and upgrades to compensate for the immediate assault on your person, but what was once an intuitive grasp of my combat style had completely waned.

The extent to which this is a problem is debatable. For the most part I don’t think it’s an issue and is arguably what fans expect, but I feel compelled to flag it…

…because I had to dial the difficulty down to ‘I’m Too Young to Die’ (easy!) to actually beat the game. Which is kind of funny given when I first started Eternal I rolled ‘Ultra Violence’ (hard!) and two levels in switched to ‘Hurt Me Plenty’ (apparently medium). I guess DOOM is doing its job—it broke me.

The physicality of the Doom Slayer is something Eternal explored by introducing more platform elements, which meant jumping from climbable surface to climbable surface and occasionally swinging from bars. There was a bit too much of it for my liking—the Slayer is a big, clunky instrument of war, not an acrobat, and I fell more times than I think is reasonable for a Doom game.

The platforming makes a return here, but it’s been smoothed out so as to be less frustrating. You’ll also be doing a bit of swimming, both in the ocean and through copious toxic swamps. Immersed in liquid with that metal shell over your body, there’s a real sense of inhabiting the character that I think this incarnation of Doom just does really, really well.

It also continues to be the most diverse in terms of settings. You start on an enormous oil rig before venturing off into other worlds, most notably the Blood Swamps, which is a miasma of gnarled trees, noxious fumes, and the aforementioned toxic vats. There’s some interesting gameplay ideas here too, like when you need follow and remain within the sphere of a spirit dog otherwise you’ll be subjected to the deleterious effects of the swamp. It’s a clever way of restricting your space to fight, providing a welcome twist on the relentless combat.

I mentioned earlier that I wasn’t particularly compelled by the story. I’ll start by saying that I think there’s a lot that the developers are getting “right” with their approach to the absurdity of Doom. They go nuts with the basic premise, which is what Doom was always best suited for. It’s just a shame I just can’t bring myself to care about what’s happening outside of the combat.

I suspect it has something to do with the over-written and jargon heavy nature of the lore, which feels less like a story with a purpose and more being lost within a Warhammer Codex. Or maybe it’s the fact that there’s only lore, and no story with no real characters. Maybe that works for some folks, but for me it’s a bore.

The Ancient Gods: Part One does at least end on a cliff-hanger that opens things up in an intriguing way, but it might be too late for me to really care.

I really enjoyed the DLC once I got into it, but it did take some time. You might need to be patient, not to mention persistent, with the difficulty, but it will reward you for it. It’s more Eternal with a few twists, unique gameplay additions, and, for those who care, a story that seems to be moving towards a definitive endpoint.

I’m sure Part Two will be a bloodbath, but at this point I’m more curious to see how much more mileage id are able to wring out of their premise than what happens in the war between humanity and Hell.

The Verdict – Head Shot
Platforms Available – PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S & Xbox One
Platform Reviewed – PC
Review based on Steam media account copy. Please read this post for more on our scoring policy.

The headline features of the update are the addition of a new squad member known as Jack, a drone that will always be at your side. Alongside Jack are a new range of enemies known as Deviants and a new tier of Supreme equipment. Rather than hamfistedly jacking these new additions in your existing campaigns for those playing on the PC, there is a new Jacked campaign which features these new gameplay additions. As someone who first played Gears Tactics when first released on the PC, it’s nice to see the game getting some love and attention from the devs at Splash Damage and The Coalition. While I haven’t started a Jacked campaign, I do appreciate that it stands as its own distinct option on the main menu with its own range of save slots to sit alongside the save slots for a normal campaign.

The addition of Jack as a new squad member who, once found through the campaign is always available will certainly offer a new dynamic to how you approach missions. One range of Jack’s skills are Aura’s of which some are linked to the classes of your more human based squad members. Something like the Sniper Aura will give any snipers in range a +40% critical hit chance, something which combined with sensible equipment and skill choices will make your sniper a critical hit killing machine. Towards the end of my normal campaign I found myself in situations where, thanks to skills and bonus action points from executing enemies, my snipers would have ten or more actions per turn. Making these shots all land as critical hits is a dream, but with the new range of highly dangerous Deviant enemies, using Jack to your best ability will make or break your campaign.

While I am certainly pleased to see Gears Tactics receive this hefty update, having recently completed the main campaign and starting the Veteran missions, I don’t see a need to start a new war against the Locust. The promise of more loot, skills and cruel mission modifiers in the Veteran missions will be more than enough to keep me busy, but for those after a new twist on their experience, the Jack campaign will definitely be worth checking out.

Away from the action, the quality of life improvements are welcomed with open arms. I complained in my review that the UI when managing your troops was clearly designed with a console and gamepad users in mind, but with this update to coincide with the Xbox Series release this part of UI has been heavily revamped. It is still so very clearly designed for use with a gamepad, but the layout is much more user friendly even for those of us playing with a keyboard and mouse. Other accessibility tweaks come with adjustable UI and subtitle font sizes and a screen reader, but most important to me are the improved colour blind mode options which make identifying enemy overwatch zones much easier to identify.

Steam tells me that I’ve not put over 30 hours into Gears Tactics, and I can certainly see myself dipping in and out to knock off the odd Veteran mission here and there. This is a very good game, and while critics have argued that there aren’t many launch titles for the Series S|X release, I think Gears Tactics must be considered a must buy.

Sadly, a (very) pretty but lightweight racer which offers plenty of muddy “rallying” (and I use that word in the loosest possible way) but not much bite. There’s a broad career mode filled with voice overs from Nolan North and Troy Baker along with the hosts of the in-game podcast (James Pumphrey and Nolan Sykes), a pair of cool dudes that might appeal to some, but left me stuffing my ears with cotton wool.

The production values around the podcast and interactions with North and Baker are top notch, but I was left wondering why I was meant to care. Without the opportunity to create a character or having any visual representation for North and Baker, your left with the voice overs…and that’s about it. Codemasters spent time before launch talking about your rise from obscurity to infamy, but that doesn’t correlate to the action.

From the off you are able to get into a range of cars across the various classes without spending a penny, with these starter cars from my experience being more than good enough to win you plenty of events. There’s no sense of starting off in the lower rungs of the DIRT racing world in a beat up old banger and working your way up the ranks, catching the eyes of sponsors (and the characters of North and Baker) before breaking through to the top tier machinery. That would have been a wild ride, but instead your left with an ongoing sequence of events with the dude bros occasionally chipping in post-race with some witty comments.

The positive is that for the most part the racing itself is a great laugh…in the right vehicle. Some of the races which require hulking SUVs feel sluggish and lacking in that seat of the pants thrill you want from off-road racing. Get yourself into a proper rally car (the Skoda Fabia is a greater starter) or a Porsche 911, stick the rear end out and you feel the speed and wildness that Dirt 5 seems to keep tucked away.

You can plot your own course through the 130+ events and nine different event types, so you can pick and choose your way to the races and cars that you really enjoy. I found the career menu enjoyably bright and full of life, but soon enough lost track of the difference between an Ultra Cross event on the ice of Roosevelt Island and an Ice Breaker event at the same location. Unsurprisingly given my predilection towards the Dirt Rally side of Codemasters’ off-road stable, I found myself favouring the point-to-point Rally Raid events…or was it Stampede? A bit of curation of the events might have helped each style and location stand out from the crowd.

One event that did standout (apart from the love or hate Gymkhana stuff) was Path Finder. A truly innovative event type sees you compete by yourself against the clock in a course more suited to the Trials games than Dirt. Yet it works so well as you plot your way through the environments that have evidently been so carefully created. I wish they put you in the same life or death peril as Trials, but they are surely a standout event in the crowded career mode.

While I might have criticisms of the bloated and uninspired career mode, so much of the attraction of Dirt 5 comes to the courses themselves. Yes, the racing can at times be bland if the combination of cars and course doesn’t work, but the tracks will always stand out. My PC doesn’t have the grunt to play this at 4K, but I am so happy that I recently purchased a new 28” monitor. So much is going on in each event, from flares marking the route to jets flying overhead or going from a dry sunny start to a lightning storm in the dead of night. And that’s what you might see in just the one event.

Ultimately, I feel like Dirt 5 could have been so much more. A smattering of free-roam locales with these curated events would have been so much more interesting than the career mode you’re left with. The Playgrounds mode I checked out in August will undoubtedly grab the attention of the community, while the multiplayer races and party modes sound like they’ll be a thrill, especially in local couch play. As it is, the highs of the best singleplayer events don’t make up for those which don’t have the same level of pizazz, despite the visual splendour. It’s far from being a miss, but Dirt 5 falls short of the potential it so clearly has.

The Verdict – On Target
Platforms Available – PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series S/X
Platform Reviewed – PC
For more on our scoring policy, please read this post. Review based on code supplied by PR.

I have been dipping in and out of The Outer Worlds since lockdown back in March, and completed it on the eve of the Welsh lockdown this week. I’ve certainly enjoyed my time with this spacefaring adventure from Obsidian Entertainment, and all the while I’ve felt that it’s a lightweight Fallout game with a sci-fi rather than post-apocalyptic twist. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it certainly lacks the touch of magic, and storytelling subtlety of the defining RPG of the generation, The Witcher 3.

The Outer Worlds takes place in the planetary system of Halcyon in a universe where humanity has spread its wings from Earth and colonised other systems. A colony ship, The Hope, mysteriously got lost on its transit from Earth and is found by a mad scientist after 70 odd years floating in the dark with a hold full of cryogenically frozen colonists. It’s here where the aforementioned mad scientist wakes you from your slumber…cue character creation!

You can play around somewhat during the character creation, but as this is a story of humanity, your options are fairly bland. There is an interesting quirk where you choose your characters employment background which helps tweak some of your starting skills and other attributes. It’s a shame that your background (I was a the spacefaring equivalent of a civil servant) doesn’t in itself seem to play into how others perceive you. If you want to have a wider variety of options during conversations, you would be sensible investing your ability points into your dialogue and technical (science, engineering, medical) skills.

After character creation, your mad scientist saviour sends you to meet a contact on Terra 2…but unfortunately your landing pod lands on your contact, leaving you to fend for yourself to fulfil your ultimate quest of helping save the remaining colonists from The Hope. Fortunately, your contact was a Captain who had a spaceship, The Unreliable, stuck without fuel on Terra 2, but happily waiting for you to fill up and take to the skies.

As you start to explore the starting town of Edgewater on Terra 2, you soon realise that among the usual RPG side quests there is a fundamental good or evil choice to be made around how you acquire the fuel for The Unreliable. There are some shades of grey between the two factions at play, but it boils down to siding with the Board supporting faction who care little for their workers, or the ragtag band of rebels. Violence is one way forward, but using your personal skills can lead you to a peaceful resolution. It’s a fine story, and one that is told well, but the behaviour of those who follow the Board who control the Halcyon colony is so on the nose that even if you wanted to roleplay someone a bit evil, you’d likely be put off supporting them.

On the bright side, Edgewater is where you meet your first two companions in Parvati and Vicar Max. You can play the game solo if you wish, but companions do prove useful in combat and offer for some welcome chatter during your travels. You will though have varying affinity with the companions. I immediately warmed to Parvati and was happy to help her fulfil her companion specific love story to the blissful end. While I did fill my roster of companions, it was only Parvati and Max that I ever took on missions or engaged with in any meaningful way. In short, your mileage with the companions and their specific quest lines will vary greatly.

The factions are one of the other key sources of quests in The Outer Worlds, with your behaviour during quests (and when roaming the various locales) altering their attitudes to you. One such faction, Sublight Salvage and Shipping are a band of spacefaring pirates without any love for the Board, but their own loose morals. While undertaking some quests for them on Terra 1, a planet abandoned by the Board, I fancied a nose at the computer of their leader on the ground. Having been entwined in a drug running ring by one of their faction members, I wanted to nose at their leader’s computer and see what dastardly tricks they were getting up to.

I wasn’t too subtle when hacking into the computer and ended up in a gun fight, rapidly clearing out the faction members from their base and gaining a very poor reputation. I didn’t fancy doing any save scumming, so hunted down the drug dealer and dealt him some swift justice by way of a shotgun blast to the face. I’d become fully hostile to Sublight by this point and was deemed a shoot on sight enemy. Certainly, an entertaining turn of events.

It was on Terra 1 that I enjoyed the best moral compass quest tree. One corporate faction who were trying to do better than the all-powerful Board, and a band of rebels that were led by an idealistic leader. Digging into the conflict between these groups was a welcome diversion from the main quest and showed that The Outer Worlds could, at times, handle a quest with depth and complexity.

I found it a shame then that the main story quest was comparatively so lacking. While your mad scientist patron has some questionable morals, when compared with the Board he is a patron saint. My endgame was a disappointing affair simply resulting in some massive firefights and an uninspiring boss battle. Fortunately, after completing the action I was treated to a nice sequence surmising how the Halcyon colony fared after my shenanigans.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that The Outer Worlds on normal difficulty mode is very easy, and while you can make use of stealth, you don’t need to as combat is lightweight with most of the guns you pick up along the way easily handling most foes with some light modding to suit your preferred approach. If you want a true challenge, I’d recommend Supernova mode. It falls short of an Ironman mode, but does put the onus on you to eat and sleep to keep alive, while your companions can die permanently.

I realise now that what started off as a news post about The Outer Worlds landing on Steam and GOG has turned into my very own Verdict. There’s certainly not enough going on here to go anywhere near a Red Mist, but the fundamentals are sound, and the quests and companions which do shine are very enjoyable. It’s a shame that The Outer Worlds doesn’t hit those heights consistently, otherwise it might have been a notch higher.

The Verdict – Headshot
Platforms Available­ – PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch
Platform Reviewed – PlayStation 4
For more on our scoring policy, read this post. Review based on retail purchased copy.

Steam vs Epic

I won’t be touching the Epic vs Apple war that is raging, instead I want to talk about the cold war that exists at the moment between Valve and Epic around their respective storefronts. The release of some titles as exclusives on the Epic store has been occurring since day one which causes enough grief for some, but generally doesn’t impact on the end consumer as there is a store out there where they can get access to the games they want.

The problem, which is one that I have experienced, comes with yearly franchises which have a 12-month exclusivity with Epic, and then still land on Steam. It wouldn’t matter with a standalone AAA title, but when it comes to something like the official WRC games, you see last years WRC 8 arriving on Steam with the typical announcements that a brand new release would receive. It doesn’t help that publishers can’t reference other stores on their Steam pages anymore, and it’s an example of how store exclusivity ultimately leads to poor experiences for the consumer.

While a game like WRC 8 might be new to Steam, it is far from a new title, and this is where storefront exclusivity leads to problems if the publishers aren’t up front and open with their store pages.

Nintendo eShop

The Nintendo eShop should be a perfect place for finding some of the amazing titles that make their way onto the Nintendo Switch, whether they’re AAA ports or indie gems, there are loads of great games out there to pick up. The trouble is, the eShop is flawed. It isn’t just difficult to find the games you want through poor menus and a lack of refined filters, it’s down to how Nintendo categorise things like their Best Sellers chart. Mike Rose from No More Robots (think Yes, Your Grace and Descenders) breaks down how the eShop fails to highlight those games that make the most revenue, but those that sell the most units. It all means that the eShop charts can get filled with those games with lower Metacritic ratings, but on massive discounts. Take a read of Mike’s thread, it’s well worth a read.

https://twitter.com/RaveofRavendale/status/1309471448344526848?s=09

nVidia

We touched on this during Our Week in Games 112 where the release of nVidia’s RTX3080 card was undermined by a surge of bots buying stock. nVidia detailed some of this issues on their blog, highlighting a combination of unprecedented demand (and the aforementioned bots) leave consumers with few options to pick up a new card without exploring the potentially murky world of eBay.

The problems nVidia experienced clearly weren’t a conscious decision to leave fans disappointed, but it’s an event which goes to show that even in the specialised world of very expensive, cutting edge graphics cards, there are those out there looking to make a quick buck and retailers need to be sharper to preventing abuse of the systems by the more nefarious people out there.

New generation consoles

There is so much that could be written about the reveals, pricing, naming conventions and much more when it comes to the release of the new consoles from Microsoft and Sony. But one thing that I think is clear is that between the manufacturers, mainstream stores such as Argos and Amazon and the consumers there is a bit of a disconnect.

The tweet below has exploded over recent days, and while I doubt it’s accuracy, I have no doubt that some parents who don’t know much about the games industry are going to make a mistake and buy the wrong console.

Xbox One X sales rank is up 747% on Amazon lol…

Wonder how many people bought an Xbox One X instead of an Xbox Series X https://t.co/atj4thPwqD pic.twitter.com/CUzRkib3Sr

— Andrew Alerts (@AndrewAlerts) September 22, 2020

I don’t think we can put the blame for this down on parents not knowing what they are getting themselves into. There’s discourse going around that people should do their research before buying such expensive kit with references being made about how problems with naming conventions don’t hit new TV or mobile phone purchases. The trouble is, that discourse is kept within the echo chamber of those with a vested interest in the gaming industry.

I’ve done a very unscientific search on amazon.co.uk for ‘new xbox’ and ‘new playstation’, two potential search terms that I can imagine those outside our sphere of knowledge might use to search for that special Christmas present for their children. Take a look below (images taken 26^th September):

Surely the generalist retailers like amazon should be doing more within their search tools to direct people in the right direction? If we were living in a normal world, then I would have been expecting parents to make a beeline for GAME or other specialist retailers and asking in-person for what they can do with ordering the new consoles.

That’s not to say Microsoft and Sony don’t have questions to answer. The branding of the Xbox ecosystem has been disparate since the Xbox 360 arrived, and it only gets worse with the Series S and Series X. Sony have avoided some of the same pitfalls with the PlayStation, but have fallen down in other areas with a lack of clarity around backwards compatibility and platform exclusives.

I’m not sure what the solutions would be, does UKIE as our national trade body need to do more, or should the console manufacturers and game publishers take better care of consumer needs?

Let us know what you think in the comments.