So, where do you work, Peter?

HOLE takes heavy inspiration from ‘the backrooms’; a weird, office/industrial liminal space from the realm of internet creepy pasta. Tight corridors, desk partitions and rack shelving make up a hellish maze in which you’ll try and survive. This is a shooter however, and you’re not entirely powerless in the face of what you’ll encounter in these corridors. Trusty Glock in hand, you’ll creep from room to room in search of an extraction point.

Honestly the less you know the better. I’ll spoil as little as possible, but I’d stop here and play it,

I’d never played an extraction shooter before this but it’s a familiar rogue-lite style loop. The longer you survive the more of your colleagues you’ll have to deal with. The more time spent in office, the more currency, data and items you’ll collect. Successfully extract and you’ll get to bank all of the resources you collect, die and you’ll only take home 10% of your hard won gains(though any collectables are safe). Death is always pretty close, an errant headshot from the, mostly inaccruate, office denizens can end things abruptly.

We need to talk about your TPS reports.

The design of HOLE’s map is oppressive, it’s dark, claustrophobic and almost every meeting room, storage cupboard and corridor looks identical. Is it an infinite space? Is it a map you can learn. As you lay down bits of mental string in this awful labyrinth, you’ll enjoy moments of satisfying familiarity as you begin to piece together the layout in your head. Even then it’s hard to every be 100% confident in navigating it.

What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?

5 or 6 minutes into a run, I was feeling great, it was the most resources I’d ever managed to gather. I’d found the exit and was being careful not to stray beyond where I could see it. “This is it, I’m gaming the system, I’ll camp by the exit, until I reach the practical limits of what the starting pistol can achieve and then I’ll dip the moment it gets too hairy”.

As the firefight heats up, a growing pile of loot builds up at the far end of the corridor I’m firing down. A break, the last of the enemies goes down. This is the moment right? Nice and simple, dash down the end, grab it and go. Of course the moment I’ve got the loot, more figures swarm the area I’d just left and a hail of shots panics me. I duck into a side room and as the sprint animation dips the torch, can’t see where I’ve gone. When I finally stop I’ve got no clue how to get back to the exit. The directional sound of gunfire, footsteps and weird mumbling is all around me. There should only be a turn or two before I’m back in the right corridor, the exit microwave in my path. Of course I turn the corner and it’s empty. The threat level ticks over into level five and I’m hearing sounds I’ve never heard before so I sprint for it. Straight into what turns out to be a supply cupboard, three figures in masks, and the end of my run.

I can’t believe what a bunch of nerds we are.

For all it’s creepy atmosphere and growing sense of threat, HOLE’s gun-play is satisfying. A single head shot will suffice for all of the basic enemies and the stun mechanic helps mitigate the tedium that can arise from bullet sponge armoured foes. Shooting their legs or kicking then down before mag dumping has a certain comedic quality.

There’s a clear sense of John Wick-style gun fetishism to the game. The sort of game I’d expect to see Jonathan Ferguson (Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK which houses…) smilingly dissect. Separate indicators for ammunition in the magazine and in the chamber. Competition style two cartridge reloads of the shotgun. A button to cock the gun, separate from the reload button turns weapon management into a multi-step process without becoming annoying. As your barrel heat rises, the chance of a jam increases which will require you to mash the cocking button until the spent case is knocked clear. Later unlocks offer the chance to customise your weapons and gradually you’ll go from cautiously creeping around corners to hunting out fights. Even as you power up, a moment of over confidence or panic can quickly end things.

Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays?

HOLE’s directional sound cements the experience of the game, combined with the labyrinthine maps, it lures you in or sets you running. There’s a simple language to the lo-fi sounds each indicating a certain reward or enemy type. The office is all on a single level but later on you’ll encounter verticality and the challenge of working out whether the sound is above or below.

…and it was everything that I thought it could be.

It might take a few runs to find your footing but there’s a constant sense of progression and I’ve hit what feels like the end game in about seven hours. And honestly I want to play around in it a little more as there are still some secrets I’ve yet to uncover.

Want some neat little video game recommendations?

Cleaning up

Structurally, The Gunk is a standard 3D platformer, with a few puzzle-ish bits thrown in here and there. In many ways it reminds me of older games, with its discrete zones, clear objectives and visual structure. Hoovering the goop is satisfying in that cleaning-up sort of way, though maybe a mechanical incentive for doing so might have made it a little nicer. General upgrades for your character, as well as a couple that help with progression, are purchased using materials, which serve as the incentive for exploration. When defeated, the enemy ‘animals’ drop upgrade materials, so perhaps rebalancing this upgrade unit and rewarding the player with one for clearing a gunk ‘node’ would have helped keep the dopamine flowing. 

The game’s limited ‘combat’ basically revolves around hoovering up enemies and throwing them at other enemies, or yanking them out of the ground. The Gunk probably could have done with a few extra enemy types over the long run. There are some boss fights, but they’re both uncomplicated affairs and don’t really make use of many of the game’s mechanics, which is a shame. I think The Gunk could have leaned into the gunk a bit more. Some of the game’s best bits come in the form of puzzling out which smaller, discrete gunk patches need to be cleared first to unlock different pathways or progression plants. Overall, the gameplay design of The Gunk is a bit back-to-basics, reminding me in a lot of ways of classic 3D platformers of the 5th console generation. 

More to do than hoovering goo

While there are some promising parts about the level design, it could have done with some more variation. You spend most of the game following the same pipe back to its source. While it does a competent job of introducing minor new mechanics and then remixing old ones through the length of the game, it’s just a bit basic. There is maybe one little side-path per area with an extra resource node you can poke into and then shortcut back to the main path and continue on. On a few occasions you have to venture into differing nearby areas to find stuff to progress, which changes it up nicely. Near the end of the game The Gunk gets a bit more daring with it, with one single area having multiple sub-zones you need to clear to move on. The level designs are generally simple and satisfying, but you’ll have been introduced to all the ‘tools’ to progress after the first few chapters, and the rest is variation on the same themes. An extra mechanic or two at around the 75% mark wouldn’t have gone amiss. Another mild gripe is the game’s reliance on only letting you grab marked ledges – without the magic yellow paint, ledges just out of jump clearance are completely inaccessible. It’s not the end of the world, but it does make some of the platforming challenges that little bit more artificial. 

The Gunk’s visuals and sound are far from messy

The aesthetic and music are really nice, though. Your spaceship and the two lead characters, Rani and Becks, have a well-stylised, cartoonish look, with the tech satisfyingly blocky and vaguely retro. Rani looks like she’s got a huge Gameboy stuck to her, presumably to play with her enormous robot hand. While the gunk itself is deliberately visually monotonous and renders environments the same way, once you clear it the world springs to life with a vibrant colour palette. While nothing stood out to me about the sound design, the music is consistently thematic and evocative, really dominating the aural experience of the game. Graphically it’s quite nice, with good lighting and interesting zones. At least on the Series S there’s a bit of texture muddiness when you get too close to some stuff. There’s no real getting around the fact that the bright, fun, restored zones are the highlight of the game and as the plot progresses it follows that classic structure of becoming darker and more serious visually, which means less forest and more gunk. It’s a bit of a shame, but not exactly a huge issue. 

The main plot revolves around uncovering the mystery of the gunk, unsurprisingly, and the main character ‘drama’ is about the idealistic adventurer Rani’s contrast with the practical and pragmatic Becks. They’re both well-established from the start and develop quite nicely through the course of the game, chatting away through their radios with well-delivered voice work. I don’t think there’ll be any huge surprises in terms of where the plot goes, but it’s charming and good-hearted, and really that’s enough for a game like this. There are some nice little points of colourful background-filling, too, through the radio. It stops short of full-on World-Building but it’s enough to provide gentle support to the game’s themes. With the weird pollution goo all over the place, The Gunk has some planet-saving environmentalist notes that carry through the game. 

The Gunk took me a little under 5 hours to beat, a well-pitched completion time for what it is. If you’ve got Game Pass and are into 3D platformer games, it’s a no-brainer, go check it out. Most of the attention seems to have been placed on the aesthetics and audio in favour of complex or significantly evolving gameplay challenges. While it’s not to the complete expense of these other factors, it is noticeable. It carries its straightforward story off with relative style and quality – though in my opinion the ending is a little weak – and its character arcs are satisfying. If you’re a 3D platformer veteran the formula might be a bit simple once you scrape off the outer layer of gunk, but it scrubs up alright.

I’ve been posting more lately – most recently, I wrote a retrospective of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. George recently wrote about fun roguelite PVP game Rounds, which is definitely worth a look.

You can also use our Amazon affiliate link to give us a little kickback on purchases, or our Ko-Fi, if you’re an extraordinarily kind human and want to directly chuck us some money.

Space Marine has since stuck itself in the collective consciousness of anyone into both 40K and videogames, spoken of in increasingly reverent tones over time even as the estimations of its sister RTS has declined (particularly after Dawn of War III). Surprising everyone, the big Games Workshop machine announced Space Marine II, following up on the plot of the first combined with the new gubbins they’ve been advancing inside the 40K lore-verse, though it’s no longer developed by Relic. 

The central features of Space Marine’s combat are the melee whacking and the health-restoring executions. The game, of course, is a third-person shooter, so there’s a lot of shooting too, which is punchy and all the weapons feel like they serve a purpose throughout the campaign. I have vague memories of 2011, and the increasing prevalence of canned kills was becoming a bit of a gripe at the time, and for some this game changed their minds. This direction of travel continued, of course, and I think that Space Marine did serve as inspiration for games like 2016’s Doom, which really improved on the executions-for-health formula.

It’s not as polished, fast, or refined as Doom, and the lack of invincibility means you can’t use them in a panic to regain health, but once you get into the swing of it there’s a good rhythm to shooting, whacking, stunning and executing. They’re quite enjoyable in Space Marine, with a good sense of heft and brutality, though they can be quite temperamental when foes are near geometry. Oftentimes you’ll be chainsawing an Ork that’s a little further away than the game thinks it is, or stomping someone literally into a wall. 

Something that you don’t notice so much ten years on, but I remember remarking on at the time, is the total absence of a cover system. The cultural landscape of the third-person shooter circa 2011 was still dominated by the cover-shooter at the zenith of games like Gears of War. The choice not to use the in-vogue regenerating health and magnetised chest-high walls was almost brave. In fact, there’s a lot of stuff that’s notable by its absence in Space Marine – even though half the game has you hanging out with your squad, the game has no way to meaningfully interact with them, and you can’t give them orders. This is a game entirely focused on you, as Big Boy Captain Titus, running around the level shooting and chopping the foes of the Imperium, and it does a great job at that; just don’t expect anything else.

I chose to play Space Marine on Hard this time, having completed the game on Normal the first time I played it (I usually like to try out a game’s ‘medium’ difficulty first, as this is usually where the designers have given the most attention). I was a little worried going into this that it would irreparably damage the central power fantasy that makes Space Marine’s combat enjoyable; slashing through hordes of enemies as a nigh-invulnerable hulk in 8 feet of power armour. Surprisingly, it held up pretty well and, if anything, added to the experience. My fuzzy, decade-old memories of playing this game when it came out tell me that I didn’t make much use of some of the game’s core mechanics, like the Fury activation, or throw too many grenades, or consider enemy types when choosing weapons before an encounter. There’s just a little added layer of tactical depth when it comes to playing the game through as a slightly more delicate 8ft hulk. 

You have to select targets with increased precision. While the most deserving of instant death are the Orkish rocket launcher Boyz and Nobz, any ranged unit slides a few tiers up on the murderisation matrix, as their piddling damage individually starts to stack up if not eliminated. The Chaos enemies are a bit of another bag, and my biggest complaint about the game’s combat balancing. The enemy Space Marines are pretty tanky, which is fine, but they’re also designed specifically to be killed by canned execution and will otherwise survive quite a long time. The renegade guardsmen also do quite a lot of damage, and alongside really high-damaging foes like the floating Psykers it adds up to a lot more time pretending Space Marine is a cover shooter and cowering behind metal boxes. The game also commits one cardinal sin, one borderline unforgivable crime – cutscenes are unskippable, and the checkpoint for the last boss places you right before one of the game’s longest. Absolutely heinous.

Non-shooty bits are virtually nonexistent. There are a few quiet moments of downtime where you are forced to walk and talk, but the pacing reminds me mostly of something like Gears of War, another game where you play gruff spacedudes. The ‘downtime’, such as it is, mostly consists of walk-and-talk sections where you’re forced down to normal speed while you wander through an area with guardsmen or chat on the radio past some scenery after a set-piece moment. In a classic blast-from-the-past, collectibles are solely audio logs, hidden variously in random bits of levels.

What’s most bizarre is that there are clearly tons of other bits of the levels that could have stuff in them, but don’t – if you waste time poking around every hallway or open door, you might be left scratching your head. I attribute this to the fact that levels from singleplayer are recycled either in part or whole in the multiplayer modes, including the co-op Exterminatus. Interestingly, I thought that something about the way I play games had fundamentally changed; in many new games I find myself looking around for collectibles and secrets way more than before. On reflection, playing a game with design sensibilities so staunchly 7th-gen as this, I’m pretty sure it’s just that collectibles used to be much more sparse and level design used to waste your time more.  

There aren’t really a lot of games coming out anymore like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. That isn’t to say that there are no more third-person shooters, but rather that the market aim of this game has disappeared in the intervening decade. This is a relatively-polished, singleplayer-focused game with a campaign mode that lasts about 5 hours, give or take. It’s clearly not got a gigantic budget, even for the time, but it’s impossible to imagine something like Space Marine getting greenlit today. Players would almost certainly throw a fit over the lack of content, there’s no live-service elements, not even an upgrade tree. Of course, in that inexplicable way of things, despite being a mid-budget or AA title, Space Marine still somehow finds scope to hire a celebrity voice actor (Mark Strong) to play Captain Titus – not returning for the new game, but he’s been replaced by another actor, though a lower-profile one.

You just play the game and shoot dudes, and that’s fine. The multiplayer modes are also fine, though not outstanding – better than could be said for a few other games like this, where they were tacked-on. I wish the co-op mode had got a bit more love, given how much people liked the vaguely-similar Last Stand mode/standalone thing for Dawn of War II: Retribution, though since these games existed at around the same time I can understand Relic maybe not wanting to step on their own toes. Maybe I’ll eat my own words here and Space Marine 2 will follow the same formula as the first game, but I doubt it. The original is the sort of game that would average just under 80 on Metacritic, and appeared right as this sort of game was fading quietly from existence, which makes its revival in a sequel all the more surprising.

So, what of the plot, the atmosphere, and the general 40K-ness – that particular metric by which so many of the franchise’s games live or die? While it’s not quite got the exact scale and quality I remember from 2011, having aged, much of the atmosphere is still there, especially when it comes to the enormous factories, huge trains and mega-architecture of the Forge World on which the game is set. Some of the texture-work is a bit muddy and there’s some low-res stuff on close inspection (and a couple still-image skyboxes) but the general impression is there. Many of the outdoor environments are where the game’s age really shows, and while you can argue that the bombed-out grey hab-blocks and brownish trenches are authentically part of the setting, they’re not executed with huge success, feeling a bit low-detail. Don’t let this detract too much though, as many of the good bits really do kick ass. I remember being stunned by how cool the Marines themselves look, and they still look excellent now. The lighting is a particular strength, and as Titus’s big ol’ power-boots thud down the hallway of a ransacked factory-cathedral, purity seals streaming from his hyper-detailed armour, the game feels really alive. 

Speaking of Titus himself, people really love this guy. I think he’s sort of the classic ‘protagonist Space Marine’ of the sort you see in a lot of 40K material. By that I mean he doesn’t hew too closely to the Imperium’s bureaucratic rules (plot-relevant), has a distinct human side, and lacks that sort of helmeted transhuman inscrutability that other stuff will often lean into. In this way, he reminds me of other centre-stage Space Marines who get given a more empathetic view for the benefit of the audience, like the Horus Heresy’s Garviel Loken. He’s flanked by a limited secondary cast, mostly just grizzled-veteran Sidonus and rulebound rookie Leandros, who’s always there to bother Titus when he strays from the official policies of Space Marinery. The voice cast is still notably solid, with Mark Strong’s turn as the very-shiny cool-dude Titus sounding about as heroic as ever a Space Marine has.

The plot of the game is quite basic, but feels correctly immersed in that Warhammer 40,000 juice that everyone likes. Orks are threatening to completely overtake a vital Forge World, the products of which are too essential to lose for the sprawling Imperium. Of course, like many 40K stories it uses the Imperium of Man as a protagonist faction. It also stars a Space Marine chapter as upstanding and regular as the Ultramarines. As a result, it’s not exactly the most nuanced material in the 40K setting. There are bits of it, here and there; blaring announcements reminding the factories’ workers that they must fulfil their quotas, even as the invasion causes thousands of absences, and many voice logs that shine a bit of light into the cold-hearted bureaucracy that really isn’t too fussed about all the people as long as the Manufactorum stays intact. If you’re used to the bloody and complex plotlines that are present in the best of the setting’s stories, Space Marine might not live up to it, but it has its own tensions that play out, especially as the forces of Chaos become a problem and Leandros gets upset. The game ends on a cliffhanger, which up until recently we all assumed would never be resolved. 

Space Marine isn’t perfect, but it is solid. It’s a sparse game in many ways, one that feels tied to an earlier age of short, cinematic shooter campaigns. If new games feel unnecessarily padded and drawn-out to you, that might be sweet relief. That really is more than you can say about many games released for the 40K franchise in the last few years. While there have been a few diamonds and a few games that showed promise (Necromunda: Hired Gun and Mechanicus come to mind), there’s also been an awful lot of dross. Since the license’s release from the rigor mortis grip of THQ, the approach has been much more scattergun, for better or for worse.

I have a bit of a habit of revisiting things with a critical eye, so I worry I’ve been a bit unfair on Space Marine, a game I genuinely like, here. In fact, it’s an interesting artifact of this game’s form-factor, I think. These games, about the length of two movies and running entirely on big-explosion set-pieces, have a habit of just enjoyably sliding past the eyes. The gameplay is genuinely solid – and scales well with difficulty, which is nice – with a good mixture of target-selecting ranged shootygunsand melee combat. The setting of the game is mostly still impressive and it’s graphically not aged too badly, as long as you don’t look too close. Like many things in 40K, it feels like a relic of a bygone age, but not really in a bad way. Though I wish that this wasn’t the case, that the last decade had been kinder to 40K games, Space Marine remains steadfast as one of the most memorable games in the setting. 

I recently wrote on another good game featuring old gods hungry for murder (a bit of a tenuous link) in Paradise Killer. Nevi and George are forever painting little 40K fellas, like in their Hobby Roundup for this January. And this one’s not related at all but George also wrote about Rounds, a great wee game.

You can also use our Amazon affiliate link to give us a little kickback on purchases, or our Ko-Fi, if you’re an extraordinarily kind human and want to directly chuck us some money.

Move, shoot, jump, block. That’s the game. Or at least that’s how the game begins. Over five rounds of Rounds things will get incresingly funky. Every time you lose a round (each round is a best of 3 games), you get to choose one of five random perks cards to add to your build. While you both start out as belligerent peas shooting slow bullets at each other, by the end of the match you’ll each be a chaotic ball of lethality (hopefully lethal for your opponent). Increase your bullet speed, now make them bounce, a splash of timed explosive and maybe a little poison for good measure. Give up on guns entirely and turn your block into a deadly area effect weapon combining the ability to slow your opponent with a circular saw.

Growing your build over the course of a Rounds match is exciting, there’s ton of novelty in discovering new cards and seeing how they work in combo with each other. As you’re given five to choose from at random, you can’t pre-plan an optimised build, instead you’re pushed into experimentation. Sure, if you play enough you’ll become familiar with most of the cards and the sorts of combos to look out for. I hope Landfall will expand the card pool further just to extend the length of time in which new cards and combos continue to be a fun novelty.

(Hello – checking in 3 years after I first drafted this article and while there haven’t been any content updates Landfall have released Rounds on Xbox. I cling to the hope of more cards)

Gav: I’m not as qualified to talk about Rounds, as I’ve only played it a couple of times with George and have never been invited to the official Rounds discord (George: My only ever public online game ended with a discord invite – the cult of Rounds is strong). What I did play was kinetic, exciting and socially interesting. It’s maybe not the sort of game I’d be interested in playing with randoms online, but as a couch game or one with friends it’s immensely enjoyable. Intense 1-on-1 competition, a little bit of shouting, and a simple formula that encourages variance and experimentation.

Discovering the little combinations and messing around with them leads to the development of microcosmic metagames between you and your adversaries. Rapid-fire pick and counterpick as the needle swings one way or the other. You either change your strategy on the fly, or just double down on one – in my case, picking tons of health cards, and in George’s case, choosing semi-suicidal ricochet ones. The moment-to-moment platform shooting gameplay is solid enough, but it’s the skill selection that makes this game shine. It’s no surprise that the game’s main ‘gimmick’ is what makes it special, but it’s the little pseudo-social aspect, rather than simply min-maxing your choices, that makes it stand out to me.

George: That “homing + richochet + bullet speed” combo was this close to greatness. Even if the bullets did bounce back and home in on me most of the time. Rounds is a game that’s easy to fall in love with and I’d love to….

Older George: Not sure where that sentence was going to end when I closed this draft several years ago but as mentioned Rounds is now releasing on Xbox and I look forward to more people joining the cult. It will be right at home on console. It’s a game I can’t stop wanting to show people people – it’s a game out of time. If Rounds had launched in 2004 we’d be remembering it alongside the other local multiplayer greats like Smash Bros and Goldeneye (Look I’m not that old, I’d personally go Nightfire).

If you want more chaotic dueling then you like the cut and thrust of our Hellish Quart Impressions. Gav’s been rounding up pocket sized monsters and putting them to work – check out his thoughts on Palworld.

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Crime-solving inheritances, but focused on exploration

There are other games that share some DNA with this one. Probably the most striking would be Danganronpa. On a basic level the 3D walking-and-talking gameplay is very reminiscent of this other weirdo murder-solving game, with a particular detail being the way the character sprites live in a 3D space. This isn’t to say that Paradise Killer is at all derivative of Danganronpa, just that it shares a few gameplay conventions and aesthetic flourishes – I think the fundamentals of how you’ll spend your time in Paradise Killer are quite different to Danganronpa, with a vastly increased focus on exploration and much less trial time. 

The main point of difference would be that Paradise Killer has an extreme focus on exploration, much more so than other titles in the genre. You find details of the world, investigate the murder and source precious collectibles primarily by sprinting around the place, poking your nose into every possible cavity on the island, and doing a little bit of platforming. There’s this wonderful quality to Paradise Killer’s island, a fun intentionality in every square inch of its design – there are almost no invisible walls, and every part of it entices you to investigate more. There’s a near-immersive-sim quality to the way the game lets you find creative, platforming-based solutions to some environmental puzzles; instead of flipping the electrical switch to unlock a gate, you can find your way up to a building above the enclosure and drop in. It’s also impressive that, despite how often I did stuff like this, I never found myself getting stuck anywhere.

The island and its people all have mysteries to be uncovered

Yet where games like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa frequently rely on piecing together disparate elements of a bizarre case at trial, Paradise Killer puts much more emphasis on thorough exploration and investigation. Sometimes you can go into an AA trial phase with borderline zero idea of what happened, only for a wild sequence of witness slip-ups and last second interventions to assist you with seat-of-your-pants murder-solving. The aforementioned focus on exploring every inch of the island will also lead you to explore every inch of the mystery; progression through the geography of Paradise Killer basically goes hand-in-hand with progressing your understanding of the murder plot.

It’s the characters and the environment that really make Paradise Killer‘s investigation so compelling. From goat-headed idols to skeleton bartenders and chatty demons from the void, the island is populated by some really peculiar people. The conversations make up the game’s social element, and are really quite engaging. The characters have enough motivation and personality to be recognisable as fully-formed people (some of them you can even sympathise with), but those motivations exist within a world of occult morals alien to our own; the oddity is what makes Paradise Killer so compelling from bottom to top. This is a bit of a cliché, but the island itself is a character as much as anyone else – all the explorable areas have clearly had a metric ton of thought put into their location, form and function in the Syndicate’s bizarre world.

Whether or not you find Paradise Killer’s gameplay loop engaging will be the main sticking point for most players. There is a lot of wandering around, not always with a clear idea of where to go, though the game does its best to remind you what to do. When it’s in motion it’s a joy, as you traverse the environment, find secrets, converse with and interrogate a cast of fabulous weirdos and scour every last inch of the island’s deceitful corners. It does occasionally halt, though, resulting in periods of aimless exploration (at least if you’re as daft as me) – if you were looking for tips, I’d say don’t neglect the power of conversation, as topics frequently point you towards other places and people. After all, the characters are brilliant, and gathering as much information as you can through conversation and exploration is key to solving the game’s mystery during thet trial phase. You can choose to end the game whenever you want – how good your deductions will be in the Syndicate’s court is down to how much info you’ve gathered.

I basically ran into some of the game’s very useful permanent upgrades (delivered by relaxing in a hot-spring) by chance – if you were looking to speed up the process of discovery without quite spoiling the game, that’d be a place to check out. At any rate, the wandering isn’t so bad, even if it can occasionally end up directionless – chilling out going back and forth across the game’s world, hanging out with the characters, and soaking up the immaculate vibe. And what a vibe it is. The music is a special highlight of the game, tying the entire theme together. I had a bit of a weird moment when I realised the OST was made by Barry ‘Epoch’ Topping, who I’ve listened to discussing some truly disgusting shit on the 2 Good Boys podcast.

Paradise Killer’s oddities are what draw you in. It’s a bit hard to describe what I mean here without playing the game, but even from learning characters’ names there’s an intriguing sense of mystery. Things are recognisable but not quite normal. The characters are people, full and fleshed-out (except the skeleton), but there’s something fundamentally not-quite-human about their ethics and way of seeing the world. The retro-coloured, vapourwave-soaked aesthetics of the death-cult island meld with the cheerful but slightly offbeat soundtrack to create an atmosphere that’s extremely unique.

The island itself is desolate, despite the hundreds of years of personal history it contains – most of the permanent residents have left or been murdered, and the enslaved human caste has been ritually sacrified to power the next, ‘perfect’ version of their Paradise. Paradise Killer is so wonderfully ‘off’ – in a way that demands to be experienced in order to be fully communicated. By the time the credits roll and a voiced version of one of the game’s wonderful tracks kick in, you’ll probably want to stay forever in this messed-up vision of paradise.

We’ve not got a massive amount of murder-mystery content on our site, and nothing quite compares to Paradise Killer. I did write about Palworld lately, which is sort of weird, I guess! Check out our games of the year as well.

You can also use our Amazon affiliate link to give us a little kickback on purchases, or our Ko-Fi, if you’re an extraordinarily kind human and want to directly chuck us some money.

Janky Unity asset-flip survival game this is not; it’s a respectable, solid entry in the genre, that looks genuinely good, runs well and has a solid sense of self despite its ‘inspirations’. It does share a huge amount of DNA with developer Pocketpair’s previous game Craftopia, which was basically Breath of the Wild-but-survival-crafting game, so I imagine that this explains some of the bits that surprised me about the general quality (more on this later). Even my worries about self-indulgent edginess seem to be mostly unfounded, though I think this may be a deal-breaker for some. I’ve cleared the game’s first boss tower, ending the fairly comprehensive tutorial element and felt ready to write up my first impressions.

Heavily-inspired, one might say

‘Original’ is not the word I would use for Palworld, of course. Basically every aspect of the game has been borrowed from somewhere. Pokémon is the most obvious, but Palworld’s well-used photocopier scoops UI and aesthetic notes from Breath of the Wild, as well as being mainly a fairly ‘standard’ version of the survival genre’s codified and well-trodden gameplay standards. Most notably, I think, it’s been looking at ARK: Survival Evolved‘s homework, though I’ve not played that game myself. Palworld is undeniably somewhat creatively bankrupt, even if the execution of all the disparate bits it’s yoinked from various sources is pretty good. How much this matters to you will be a matter of personal preference.

There’s been intense Online Discourse (generally poor-quality, as usual) about whether or not the unique intensity of Palworld‘s mimicry constitutes real-deal plagiarism; the we-have-Pokémon-at-home Pals are extremely close in style to the real thing and some definitely skirt the line. If some of these showed up in an actual Pokémon game you might not think twice, which is a double-edged sword. It’s clearly what they’re going for and they’re achieving it well, but that lack of originality can chafe if the inherent comedy doesn’t quite hit.

Yet Palworld is surprisingly well-planned

Despite being early access, what first struck me is how considered the game’s opening act is. It feels very polished for a game that’s so early in its lifespan, with a lengthy set of tutorial objectives that guide you through everything, a well-laid-out user interface, and decent quality of life. It is a pretty bog-standard craftathon game, but the controls, interface and so on all feel good to interact with, and even combat feels pretty good. Combat is maybe somewhat basic, in the sense that the Pals are intended to work basically autonomously with their stats and preselected skills while you run around whacking or shooting yourself. The exploration and Pal-collection is also very serviceable, reminding me most of Arceus. Lower Pals’ health and they’re easier to capture in your ‘Pal Sphere’ – you know the drill. Capture them and you can then use them in battle or for tasks at your base. Monster-collecting is a well-trod genre by now, and we know it’s satisfying and fun because people keep doing it.

Base-building is quite satisfying, with all the different Pals possessing different skills and being able to autonomously do different things. Some you find will have boosts to parts of their skillset, and as you add more bits to your base you can turn it into its own little autonomous system. I’m sure this genre’s long-time players will find a lot of fun to be had here. I’ve only made it a little into the game so far, but it’s easy to automate the more tedious resource collection bits, and I imagine the game gets nuttier with it over time. Balancing the Pals’ happiness meter (marked as sanity) wasn’t too difficult as long as I built the available amenities (I am not a particularly brutal industrialist). I experienced a few pathfinding issues with Pals getting stuck in the base, but they wiggled out eventually. I might give up before I find out; tends to be that as I discover loads of advanced recipes where I have to get X to make Y to craft eight of Z in order to get a new upgrade I start to zone out.

Is Palworld 2edgy4u? Not really, but maybe for some

One of the elephants in the room is the same thing that’s attracted so many people to the game: the concept. For some the “Pokémon but you can bash them with clubs, give them AK-47s, and put them to work as an industrial labour force” angle might be a step too far in the direction of the crass or juvenile. One thing I will say for Palworld is that it never really pushes this edginess that far; once you get over the initial shock-humour hurdle it’s basically business as usual. In a way the cold mechanical abstraction of the survival-crafting genre subsumes the concept’s edgier components within it. Of course, if you view it as a heinous desecration of some core part of your childhood, you’ll probably never get along with Palworld, and that’s fine. Again that double-edged sword, flying, perhaps, too close to the sun.

If the inherent comedy of the premise lands (as it did a wee bit with me) it takes the literal and figurative edge off. It’s not really a particularly dark-humour game, cartoonish and bloodless, and when defeated the pals comically bounce away waving their arms. There’s no Read Dead-type graphic hunting mechanics. In a way most of this comes from oft-repeated fridge-logic jokes about Gamefreak’s ‘real’ series; Aren’t the Pokémon sort of forced to fight or work? What’s the deal with the occasionally freaky naturalistic descriptions of Pokémon behaviour? Do they eat the little fellas? Depending on your attitude you’ll either process this reflection from Palworld as poking fun or a grave insult: chuckle- or cringe-worthy. (Some of the description text for the Pals is quite funny.)

To summarise: Genuinely enjoyable (if you like this type of game)

I’ve enjoyed my time wandering around the Palworld so far. Like many of its genre it’s an easy game to get lost in. Its aesthetic mimicry is very convincing and in a way this is what a current-gen Pokémon game ‘should’ look like (minus the miniguns). Exploring the game’s BoTW-esque environments is fun, collecting Pals is fun. For an Early Access game it’s got plenty of content already, enough to justify its price (potentially nothing if you’ve got Game Pass). The structure looks to be a bit repetitive (just going after bosses, upgrading your base and so on) and relies heavily on the inherent ‘fun’ of the recursive crafting/catching loop. However, the trappings of the craftathon genre and the monster-catching loop basically speak for themselves as tried-and-tested gameplay mechanics.

Of course, I’m not sure my opinion really matters anyway, considering it’s sold an ungodly number of units in just the first handful of days. But it is a decent game, surprisingly enough, and not just a meme. If you find it inherently repulsive but enjoy the crafting mechanics, don’t worry; I’m sure Palworld will have plenty of imitators soon enough that don’t look quite so precisely like Pokémon. What’s here, though, is a solid experience all round, despite my initial misgivings; though the tone of the game may still be offputting to some potential players that doesn’t seem to have slowed Palworld‘s roll much.

Note: for some reason the Game Pass version, at time of writing, was one patch behind the main branch and to my knowledge still can’t play with Steam users (though it can with Xbox). Worth recognising.

With the start of 2024 we’re committing to doing more stuff. Check out our recent round-up of the best games we played last year. If you’re into fighting games, look into my review of Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, and if you like miniatures and painting check out George and Nevi’s hobby summary for January.

If you like our stuff, please consider sharing, or checking us out on Twitter, Instagram or YouTube! If you’re super keen, here’s a link to our Ko-Fi page.

Painting

Nevi: This month saw a lot of additions to my Warhammer 40,000 Death Guard army. If you’ve been following us on Instagram (which you really should), you’ll have seen me bolster my force with lots of Terminators. The Blightlord were a joy to paint, even if it meant basically treating them like characters and working on them individually. They have loads of details and each one could basically sub in as a Chaos Lord in Terminator armour, which is really cool as I now have an awkward number of eight to fit in a five-man squad. I’ll get onto it in the Playing section but man I wish they were more exciting on the tabletop.

George: My hobby January got off to a flying start, or should I say flying finish? Adding the final touches to my Corsair Voidscarred team ‘The Dawn Treaders’ for Kill Team. I’d been racing to finish them before Christmas but the last few basing bits and powerswords eluded me. These were the first models I picked up for Kill Team (back in 2022!), alongside my Fallen Dark Angel legionaries. The sheer amount of detail scared me off a bit and easier projects kept jumping the queue ahead of them. Very pleased with how they’ve turned out and I’m glad I held off as I think my painting has definitely improved since I first got them.

Taking their place on my hobby bench are the Agents of the Inquisition. My local game store, Comics, Games & Coffee in Chichester is running their yearly ‘Copper Grot’ painting competition. I was over the moon to win their unit category last year with my Kroot Farstalkers. This year I’m going for a John Blanche inspired grimy weathered look – this band of weirdos making their last stand on some hellish forgotten world. I’ll be cracking out the oil washes for that grimy effect, something I experimented with for my Sisters of Battle. With assembly done, I’m now in the proces of painting them as brightly as possible to contast against the dark grime to come later.

Tabletop Games

Nevi: I only managed to get in one game in January which was a continuation of a Warhammer 40,000 Crusade at my local games club (shout out to Wharfedale Tabletop Games and Rowan for crafting the campaign). I have sporadically participated in the campaign with my Death Guard army, The Terriblis Rusticae helping the Ruin faction destroy the local sector.

In my single game, I took on the Necrons in an extremely close game in terms of model count but that had a massive swing to the Rusticae when it came to points. I’d never fought the Void Dragon before and he was a beast. He smashed through my new Predator tank like it was nothing and the best way I could deal with him was to kite him around the board and focus on scoring points. As I eluded to before, I wish the Blightlords were a bit better on the tabletop. They looks cool, but don’t really do very much damage and feel like they die too quickly as well. I’ve got my fingers crossed they get some love in the Codex.

George: I love the colour scheme of Nevi’s Deathguard, seeing that tide of rust sweep over the board looks fantastic – a neat twist on their usual putresecent greens and whites. Orange is clearly a popular colour as my own orange minis made the table this month. The Cosairs went straight off the painting table into my first non-combat patrol game of 10th edition 40k. The real reason I got them ready was for Kill Team. I played my first game on the new terrain set for Season 3, ‘Bheta-Decima’. Set on a decaying ocean rig, the board is a series of raised walkways above an ocean zone minis can’t stand in and obscures shooting.

I’ve been playing this edition of Kill Team for a little over a year and I’m in love with the system. I wouldn’t call it a quick game as it can take anywhere from 1.5-3hrs but I love that every model plays a part. There’s no wasted hobby effort on chaff troops whose only job is to stand on a back objective or screen a charge. Even the lowliest guard rifleman can pivot a game with their actions. While the rules are fiddly, once you’ve got your head around the line of sight system, it’s a really tight game where smart positioning is crucial.

When my most regular opponent moved with his Tempestus Scions to Wales, at the end of last year, I’ve been trying to get more people into Kill Team at the store. This snowballed a bit and this weekend (3rd Feb) I’m running an introductory event to the game. The aim is to get all the people that have shown an interest and maybe played one or two games, more confident with the rules. The plan is to run 3 rounds of matched play tournament format games with a few fun narrative rules sprinkled in. I’ve got a sheet of achievements players can try and complete over the day and there will be a leaderboard with a champion from each team competing for the most kills. Bit nervous as I’ve never run an event like this before. Hopefully everyone will come away having enjoyed themselves and learned a little bit more. All three types of table will be in play from the scrap ruins of Octarius and the corridors of the Gallowdark to the new gantries of Bheta-Decima.

I’m now realising just how packed a month January was. I also played my third Star Wars: Legion event, and I somehow managed to win it! My second event with Yoda and Padme leading a bunch of clones. It’s a popular archetype at the moment in the wider meta and with good reason. You get a ton of tokens to ensure your dice are reliable, the clones hit like a truck and Yoda, the wizened little goblin he is, is can play to the objectives like nothing else in the game. Looking forward to the next event in the series, Padawans in Portsmouth VI in April. Plenty of time to get some practice with a new list – Obi-wan & Commander Cody are the likely candidates to lead it.

It wasn’t all miniatures, I recieved a copy of Imperium: Horizons to review for the March issue of Tabletop Gaming Magazine. Early spoilers it’s good! It’s rulesy and the set up and pack up is a pain but the game itself reminded me of some of my favourite aspects of the Civilization video game series. It’s a deckbuilder / tableau builder hybrid all about assembling an engine that churns out victory points. Now that sounds like it should be a very dry eurogame affair but somehow it manages to give you a real sense of narrative even as you’re crunching the puzzle of its many systems.

Video Games

Nevi: For Xmas, I got Persona 5 on Switch. Persona 4 is one of my all-time favourite games, so I’ve been excited to sink into the world of the Phantom Thieves, and I haven’t been disappointed. Persona 5 is exactly what I wanted it to be with the swishy menus, crunchy turn-based combat and engaging story. I’m only a few hours into the game and enjoying the first dungeon but having it on Switch means I can dip into it for short bursts.

Nevi: My New Year’s resolution, of sorts, is to focus on a single game at a time. As part of this, and the fact that I don’t realistically at the moment play many games, I’ve cancelled all my game subscription services. So no more Playstation Plus, Xbox Game Pass or Nintendo Online. Not only does that feel like a massive financial burden off my shoulders but I’m looking forward to just playing games I actually own. I have Yakuza 3 – 6 (A series that stole Gav’s heart) sitting in my library waiting for a chance to shine, AI: The Somnium Files that I was excited to play but got shelved and loads of other titles that I bought and ignored. I think a lot of people talk about their backlog and how daunting it seems. Well this year, little by little I’m going to try and at the very least not add to mine (very aware that Persona 5 is like a 60-hour-plus game). It is one of the games industry’s biggest scams that we all own piles of games we’ve never touched. I made a little video about the fear of missing out a few years ago so it is about time I took my own advice.

Thanks for reading. You can check out Gav’s article on Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising or our 2023 round-up.

You can also use our Amazon affiliate link or Humble affiliate link to give us a little kickback on purchases, or our Ko-Fi, if you’re an extraordinarily kind human and want to directly chuck us some money.

Granblue rides again

Versus and Rising are back-to-basics, simplified approaches to fighting games. Where something like DNF Duel is that for fast-paced anime bullshit, Versus was more traditional and Street Fighter-y in nature, favouring lower combo damage (mostly) and more grounded poking. Some characters had powerful options to get in but this was the exception rather than the rule and outside of the corner (and some anti-air and air-to-air hits) damage was low and rounds could take a while.

One of its innovations, much to purists’ chagrin, was simple inputs. Versus was a bit stingier with these; if you used them you did less damage and your cooldowns were longer. Rising loosens things up even further — there’s only a 10% damage bonus for technical inputs if they’re done from neutral, i.e. not in a combo. Some cool bits have been caught in the crossfire, though, like Djeeta’s fun Deadly Rave-type rhythmic super just being a normal input now.

What’s changed between Versus and Rising?

Rising swings the pendulum way back to the ‘anime’ type, mostly by introducing some new mechanics (staggeringly powerful Ultimate Skills and Raging Strike, which along with some tweaks to the combo system enables much higher average damage). Most of these are genuine good fun — while some characters’ Ultimate Skills feel horrifyingly strong (Zeta’s beam and dive haunt my nightmares) the majority are a good trade-off between meter and utility. As well as all the characters from the first game, Rising includes four newbies: Anila, Siegfried, Nier and Grimnir. They’re all good additions (though Nier feels very oppressive in the current version).

The big new addition is Bravery Points, a resource which is spent for guard cancels (a get-off-me while blocking, and very strong) and Raging Strike, the replacement for the universal overhead. It is, however, even slower and more telegraphed than the overhead used to be. Even in Versus it could be difficult to open people up if they didn’t care about taking their turn back, and this feels similar in Rising. It’s just as well most fighting game players do a good enough job getting themselves hit. Rising also removes Rush, Backshift and Overdrive. If you played the original game and can’t remember what those even are, they’re options that were added to Versus in 2022, with the aim of providing alternate ways to spend meter (now occupied by Ultimate Skills and the Raging Strike followup).

Universal dash attacks might also divide opinions as a system change. They’re extremely powerful in the current version of the game. Tagging one from a distance with a long-range poke is generally unrewarding, while doing a dashing light attack usually leads to a full combo on hit or advantage on block. It’s similar to some other semi-ignorant mechanics (DBFZ‘s superdash, drive rush/impact etc.) but feels like it has less defined counterplay than those.

Characters and personality

Through the course of its life Versus gained a fairly large suite of colourful characters from the gacha game. Visuals and attention to detail were (and remain) a highlight, with Arc System Works delivering their trademark 2.5D style — some of the supers are genuinely impressive. ArcSys have been practising this style since the gorgeous Guilty Gear Xrd, and are still improving. If you like watching your intros (and/or care about the characters at all) you’ll notice a surprising depth of interactions; basically every character, even the former DLC ones, have specific intro lines and win-quotes for every other character. It’s a little thing but it adds a level of personality that’s often absent in modern fighters. The music is also a highlight; while some inspire raw fear for other reasons (Lowain’s theme), many of them are genuinely catchy tunes that don’t intrude too much on the action.

Speaking of characters, there are some mild balance concerns with the game currently; while some of the cast have taken to the new mechanics like a duck to water, others are struggling to swim. The likes of Percival, Katalina, Ferry and Zooey all feel a bit like they’re still playing Versus while others are playing Rising (and boy are Seox, Nier and Zeta playing Rising). I’d like to see the team bring some of the weaker characters up to par, reserving gentler adjustments for the stronger ones. In Versus I remember a lot of nerfing and tons of fun options being removed, so with the game’s shift towards madcap action it’d be nice to stick with that design philosophy.

Features: Rising‘s singleplayer and other random additions

Thankfully it seems like the days of barebones online-only fighting games are a thing of the past. Back when Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 were the big names it felt like that was the way things were going. The original Versus was quite feature-rich when it came to offline content; if anything Rising scales it back, while still feeling like a complete package.

It’s actually pared back the story mode a bit; while this reduces some of the grind it does feel like a shame. While Versus had Granblue Fantasy-inspired RPG mechanics in the story mode (levelling characters, collecting weapons), Rising gets rid of these, but keeps mechanics around the collection of support skills through the story and side-quests.

It’s still pretty good though, and presents the option to skip Part 1, which is essentially the story mode from the first game. It also dumps the Tower mode from Versus, which tied into the RPG mechanics. Rising has a traditional arcade mode, as you’d expect from a fighting game, with multiple paths and varying difficulty levels. It’s fun but if anything a bit easy; don’t expect brutal difficulty from it (or from the story mode, for that matter). If you’re one of that rare breed that plays fighting games purely singleplayer I’d recommend getting Versus on a sale, and maybe looking into Rising later if you really dig it.

Big improvements for multiplayer

Rising’s much better features in other areas make it a much more well-rounded package, though. The online play is much improved from the original game (more on this in a moment), the lobbies have been transformed, and there is even, for whatever reason, a mode that’s a bit like Fall Guys. In particular the changes from Versus to Rising highlight the strides that have been made in netcode in just a few years. Versus released shortly before Japanese developers really caught up to the West in terms of netcode, and a combo of that and the Coronavirus proved fatal for the game; without offline play, the game’s low playercount and truly dated delay netcode made it a pain to play at all. Rising feels smooth as butter online in comparison, with playable connections even across pretty significant distances (though at 125ms ping and beyond you’re still asking for trouble). 

There’s a level of care and detail that’s gone into Rising’s online features that’s lovely to see, even if there are some gaps. It’s missing any way to filter your matches at all except in the roughest terms and there isn’t any way to see connection quality before you accept; some areas like Australia and South Africa are stuck playing on far-away servers and accepting poor connections; you currently can’t join random room matches (the only way to unlimited rematch).

Rising has a wonderful sense of progression even outside of going on a win-streak in Ranked or the online lobbies. As you play a character you’ll progress down an unlock path, getting colours and weapon skins as you go — you can also spend in-game currency to play a crane game to unlock others. Coming this month is also a Battle Pass-type system along with the first DLC — speaking of which, there’s a plan for the entire first season. While I could take or leave the aggressive Season Pass approach of a lot of fighting games personally, it’s clearly a must-have for a game to stay alive in the modern era.

Conclusion

When it all comes together, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is a blast. The gorgeous visuals, fantastic music and sound and the faster and more frenetic pace of the game really work. The changes to the formula will depend on your specific taste, but the mastery of the audiovisual experience (provided you like anime stuff) can’t be denied. With a variety of content and a smooth experience whether playing offline, online, with friends or without, I’d heartily recommend Rising to just about anyone. Rising has a wealth of upcoming content and support, so it looks like it’s got a good service life ahead of it — go give the aforementioned free version a try if it’s up your alley.

The only recent thing we’ve got is our 2023 round-up, so go read that if you like (Granblue features there as well).

You can also use our Amazon affiliate link to give us a little kickback on purchases, or our Ko-Fi, if you’re an extraordinarily kind human and want to directly chuck us some money.

Gav

The format for this appears to be to get the excuses in (Nevi’s is pretty good, as it happens). I moved house this year, so that’s mine on the record as well, though it’s not as convincing. I’ve barely played any new games this year – surprise, two of the ones I did play are fighting games. (note: in the process of writing this I realised I had actually played quite a few)

Video Games: fighters, robots and indies

Street Fighter 6 came out in June and I spent a while playing it, but I wasn’t really in the frame of mind at the time for a new fighting game, so it fell by the wayside a bit. I intend to pick it up again in 2024 (if I don’t get too distracted by Tekken 8). However, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising has taken up much of my attention since it was released last month. I think a full review is forthcoming for this one, but it’s a much-appreciated update to the original game, full of new mechanics and quality-of-life improvements (rollback netcode, crossplay, revamped lobbies, and a Fall Guys mode for some reason). It’s genuinely a blast, especially with friends; and it has a free version, too. Go check it out.

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon takes my pick for action game. I bought this one to play while house-sitting partway through the year and happily spent hours customising my robot to take on other, increasingly bizarre and terrifying, robots. I still need to come back to it as I’ve not delved into the game’s multiple New Game+ pathways yet. AC6 really is a special game, combining the esoteric depths of the other Armored Core games with the presentation and verve that’s made Fromsoft’s Souls/Borne/Ring-y games so popular, alongside the developer’s trademark approach to challenge. If I were to nominate one Game of the GOTY of the Year it’d likely be this one (because I’ve not played Baldur’s Gate 3, owing to a complex network of guilt about not finishing various games, including Divinity: Original Sin 2, yet).

On the indie end, though it’s not from this year I played Citizen Sleeper, which I can’t recommend highly enough. Exciting, intriguing, and genuinely touching; this dice-based RPG slash visual novel has it all. There was also Chained Echoes, also a 2022 release, from a solo developer at that – really impressive. I put more than a few hours into Boneraiser Minions, a fun little Vampire Survivors-y game. A very late addition to this list is Sea of Stars – I’m just a few hours deep into this one on Game Pass but having an absolute blast with the combat, music and gorgeous pixel art. Definitely my indie GOTGOTYOTY.

I also played Starfield this year, as it is on Game Pass as well. End paragraph.

Board Games

I’ve not really played that many board games this year. George convinced me to give Undaunted: Stalingrad a shot, and we’re a few rounds into a campaign of that, which has been pretty fun (insofar as it can be fun to watch your men slowly suffer attrition in the brutal warfare of history’s bloodiest battle).

I’ve once again determined to host a D&D game this year (even as IP owners Hasbro make it more and more difficult to support them in good conscience), so that is theoretically nice, anyway.

Nevi

2023 was my first full year of being a Dad. So as you can imagine my time to play games was limited. However, between naps and the constant laundry, I managed to find a little bit of time here and there.

Video Games: 3DS ramble and anime nonsense

Firstly, I need to say that I haven’t played any of the big hitters that came out this year. I’m not even sure I played any games that came out this year. So my picks are going to reflect that to the extent that the first games I’ll talk about came out many moons ago – The Legacy of Goku series.

For me, a big part of the year was small handheld gaming where I could squeeze in a short burst here and there. I modded my 3DS after the eShop closed as there was no longer any moral quandary. I’ve yet to try any 3DS games on it and have loved exploring the GBA catalogue instead. And nothing quite beats a sequential game series that follows a story that you’ve loved since you were a child. So wrapped myself in my nostalgia blanket and tucked myself into some of the best Dragon Ball Z games ever made (yes even the first one).

My brief sales pitch of the Legacy of Goku series is that they are Dragon Ball Z pixel action games that follow each major saga of the series with each game iterating on the one before. While I think everyone can agree that they peaked in Legacy of Goku 2, the others have merit. The first game is very rough and requires a lot of patience but it is far from the worst game I’ve ever played and if you approach it with a “Dark Souls” mentality, you’ll be fine. My issue with Buu’s Fury is that it overcomplicates everything and by doing so makes the game far too easy. However, it is still a lot of fun and rounds the serious out nicely. In case anyone is listening, do a remaster on a modern console; please.

Anyway, onto my actual “game of the year” – Scarlet Nexus. A reminder that, yes I know it came out in 2021 and no I don’t care. Scarlet Nexus succeeds in playing like a Platinum crossed with Persona‘s cast of characters that you gradually get to know via a weird gift-giving relationship mechanic. It isn’t perfect by any means. By the end of the game, you are an absolute demon and the story is often a confusing mess that comes and goes. However, it does several unique things that meant that it captivated me for most of the year.

The first truly mad and genius move is to split the game into two distinct playthroughs and to really see the full story you should do both. And this isn’t a short game by any means, we are talking 30 hours for the first playthrough and maybe half that for the second assuming you do it on New Game+ to keep all your stats etc. That is a heck of a commitment when you’ll see a lot of very similar story beats just from a different perspective for about half the run time. And yet, that is what sets Scarlet Nexus down the road of brilliance.

This is a very anime story and as such makes basically no sense at all. It has a cast of fairly cliche characters, most of which you’ll come to love in a Stockholm esche way. Knitting it all together is the frenetic combat where you use psychokinesis to move objects around and tap into your teammate’s unique abilities at a button press to summon flames, duplicate yourself or teleport. And while at first, it is a confusing mess, once it clicks you feel like a god. And when you have a tiny human keeping you up half the night and wiping her snotty nose on your neck, sometimes you need to play as a guy or gal with a sword who can pull up their hood and endlessly drop rubble on a monster with mannequin arms, a bulls body and a tree for a head.

While I stand by the fact that only half the story makes no sense, even after reading up on it afterwards, and the fact that Shiden wins the prize for most annoying person with superpowers award; I was swept away to this strange world for two full playthroughs in year where I struggled to get into any other big game experience. So that’s why Scarlet Nexus is my game of the year.

Board Games

This year, playing board games was hard. If you think squeezing in some time for video games with a little one is hard imagine having to organise seeing other humans outside your home on top of that. So basically the only thing I’ve played of this ilk this year is a few games of Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition. And I’ve loved it. They basically fixed all my issues with 9th and I could just enjoy throwing dice and moving tiny toy soldiers around with an easy-to-use and understand ruleset. Thank you Games Workshop.

In all seriousness though, 10th Edition got me really excited to play 40k again. For a lot of 9th Editon, my game of choice was Middle Earth SBG and while I still love that (even despite the main person I played with moved to Cornwall, they are forgiven and I hope they are very happy down there) the grimdark of the 41st millennium is an evocative place to roll dice. And with the added benefit of the new app and not needing to carry around half a library of rules, it makes jumping into a game the easiest it has ever been. If you’ve been on the edge and are not sure about Warhammer, I encourage you to grab a friend or local store and have a go. In a world of screens and expensive eggs; painting and playing Warhammer in its various forms has helped to keep me sane.

George

Video Games

The easy pick for my 2023 was Cyberpunk 2077. I tried Cyberpunk a few months after release and bounced off it after a few hours. Diving back in with the expansion Phantom Liberty and a few quality-of-life mods, I could finally enjoy the stories Night City had to tell

V is a tragic character, they avoid death once but it leaves them damaged and stuck with a chronic case of Keanu Reeves. Their fate looms on the horizon and everything tells you it’s not going to be a happy one. The game’s breadth often means you might spend a lot of time with a character only for the questline to end, and they disappear for hours of game time. Compared to so many other modern RPGs all about gathering a happy band of friends that can overcome any obstacle, Cyberpunk feels decidedly lonely at times. 

I also want to shout out the romance plotlines, which are surprisingly heartfelt and charmingly awkward. Given how much gratuitous sex and violence is present in Night City, I didn’t expect to be cringing over cheesy lines as V tries to express their romantic intentions. The scenes aren’t that long but they’re a nice change of pace from the rest of the game.

Cyberpunk’s stories are definitely its highlight, but the revamped gameplay finally makes the bits in between the narrative good fun as well. By the end, combat becomes a bit trivial but there are enough toys and upgrades to keep you entertained til the credits.

Honourable Mention: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Better combat and more enemy variety made Survivor a much more of a playground than Fallen Order. The story is hit-and-miss. The big quest is bland but hanging out with your Mantis crewmates is always a treat. Thankfully the final act knows what’s actually interesting and pulled me back in just as I was beginning to get tired of star MacGuffins.

Board Games

After a dalliance with Warhammer 40k 9th edition in 2022, 2023 was the year I really fell for Star Wars: Legion. It’s been a long time coming, I first tried it in a demo game with Nevi at the UK Games Expo in 2018. Then lockdown I picked up some models (you can spot them in the 2021 Games article) and it slowly grew from there. I didn’t play the full game until 2022 and thanks to some lovely players in a tiny local community the game has hooked me. Despite not trying to approach Legion with the intention of competitive play, I ended up going to two local tournaments in Portsmouth. Seb is a terrain wizard and a fantastic event organiser – you can see some of his amazing tables and find out more about his Padawans in Portsmouth event series here. 

For regular tabletop games, the Benjamin + Thompson design duo had something of a chokehold on my year with their Undaunted series thanks to Stalingrad and Battle of Britain. My pick of the year though was their 2-player worker-placement game General Orders. It’s a lovely little box that concentrates the satisfaction of moving troops around a board in 30 minutes. Even friends who wouldn’t choose to play a wargame have said they’d happily play this one again.

What’s Next?

Nevi: Just as a closing statement and not specifically about games, but I wanted to say to anyone reading that we’ve been gone a while and aren’t really back. There might be posts every now and again but life is busy and all of this takes a lot more time than you might expect. And also the letter p on my keyboard has broken so know that I am cursing every time I have to type (damn it!) one.

George: It’s great to start the year with a sense of getting the band back together and even if the writing is a bit sporadic here, I want to share more games and hobbying on our Instagram as Nevi has been holding that up. I’ve got lots of Kill Team models coming to the hobby table and I’m even organising an event at my local store in February. I’ve also been doing some freelance work for Tabletop Gaming Magazine so you might spot me in there over the year. If I’m feeling particularly brave I might dip into the strange unfinished ideas that exist in our drafts sections, so a declaration of love for Rounds may be in the near future.

Gav: I’m attempting to enter my quantity-over-quality villain arc this year, having finally come to the realisation that quantity that actually exists is better practice than quantity that remains purely theoretical. Watch this space for a regular to eventually emerge out of my New Year resolutioner attitude (source: dude trust me). In all seriousness though I’m hoping to approach writing more systematically, along with trying to enjoy games in a more directed way. Like George, I have many half-done drafts that I might spit out at you – send us an email if you can tell which ones were written before 2023 and I’ll send you a prize.

You can check out our previous Game of the Year articles for 2020, 2018 and 2017.

You can also use our Amazon affiliate link or Humble affiliate link to give us a little kickback on purchases, or our Ko-Fi, if you’re an extraordinarily kind human and want to directly chuck us some money.

It’s been a few weeks since Fatshark ran the first public beta test for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, a non-rat-themed 40K follow-up to the Vermintide games. It follows much the same formula as those earlier –tides: Left 4 Dead-ish co-op action, where a squad of four intrepid weirdos wanders around cracking skulls. As it’s set in the 40K setting rather than the Warhammer Fantasy of Vermintide, this entry has more of a focus on shooting and being shot. While you’d think that’s a game-changer, you might be surprised how smoothly the transition between the two is (or, less flattering, how little the formula changes between the two).

Systems and stuff

Gav: Darktide’s got a few new tricks up its sleeve compared to ye olde Vermintide. Character creation, for one, where you can create all sorts of grimy weirdos – no hotties to be found among the prisoners of Atoma Prime, unless you have a thing for Ogryns. No judging. The process is a bit involved, quite RP-heavy, and sort of put me off designing multiple prisoners, which is maybe a good thing. A big change to the combat is the introduction of a sort of Doom-like armour which reduces (but doesn’t negate) incoming damage, which regenerates when you score melee kills or hang around near your pals.

George: Joining the lobby between games reminded me a bit of PUBG’s pre-match lobbies – a lot of people jumping about in strange and ragged clothing. Usually I’m not too fussed about player cosmetics in multi-player games but given how much of the Warhammer hobby is about the cosmetics of your army I’m hoping the options for player customisation will be expansive. While the digital rags don’t make the game any less enjoyable, driving axes into eye-sockets 40K-ness, kitted out in a Catachan uniform would add a certain je-nai-se-quois.

Beta 2 note: The second beta’s opened up some cosmetics – there seems to be a lot of them, though they are quite horrifically expensive.

The beautiful sights and sounds of the grimdark future

George: From the heroically sculpted models to the library of books describing someone being shot with a bolter or bi-sected by a chain sword, 40k fires the imagination with images of absurd, epic, moreish and syrupy ultra-violence. While Darktide only shows us a tiny slice of the universe, we finally have a game that delivers on what we imagined. From the snap of lasbolts to the Techpriest giving mission updates, Darktide delivers on the ultra-violence 40k . At least the minute to minute action did. The missions we played certainly featured a lot of grotty corridors but nothing distinctly memorable. I remember a few moments in Vermintide that made you stop to look at the views that made The Old World feel alive but I can’t remember any similar moments in the beta. 

Gav: Similar thoughts across the board from our party of convicts. There was one map I quite liked, with action through the streets of the Hive City leading up to and through a checkpoint – that one had that nice mixture of Gothic brickwork and austere structures, and a few outdoor spaces that made it pop a little more than most of the others. Most of Darktide’s first beta’s maps focused on indoor spaces; claustrophobic vents, hallways, sewers, and industrial walkways. Some more variation might be essential for the visual side of the game not to get stale. While Hive Cities aren’t the most vibrant places, other 40K games have shown the possibilities in the setting. The audio is excellent, though – from the crunchy melee to the satisfyingly meaty gun sounds to the screams and war-cries of the Chaos hordes, the soundscape of Darktide is all there.

Gav update: I’ve been playing the preorder beta for Darktide, which has since added a few new missions – I can confirm that the newer beta has included a fair few new environments, many of which are quite nice. Some are at the sandy base of the Hive, and others feature more interesting and unique indoor spaces (even if they do occasionally reuse rooms from other levels, splintering off into different directions).

Class Action

George: If we overlook the Ogryn in the corner, the distinction between the classes initially felt subtle. With similar weapon options and only a single tactical ability to set them apart, you’ll need to sink a few hours in before you really start to notice the differences. As we levelled up and cranked the difficulty the team dynamic and class differences feel into place with Zealots and Ogryns clearing the chaff and keeping the Veteran and Psyker safe to pick off the elite enemies. 

Gav: I basically exclusively played the Zealot, in the spirit of mostly playing Saltzpyre in Vermintide. There are some things that are numerically different about the different classes. Darktide’s half-shields half-Doom armour system has different values for each, for instance. There are small features that differentiate them, and I think that this will become more apparent as you earn more talents on level-up. But with so many of the weapons (especially early on) not being class-specific unless you happen to be very large, there’s a feeling that all the lads blend together a bit.

This resolves out as you ascend the levels and difficulties, where different characters need to attend to different roles in combat. Playing the second beta I also noticed a distinct lack of Ogryns. Where are the big boys?

Clicking on Heads

George: A big surprise was the humble Lasgun. Often derided as a ‘flashlight’ in the 40k universe, here it proved an effective and versatile weapon, able to place accurate shots and range while providing decent crowd control when fired rapidly from the hip. I was worried that the shooter elements would play second fiddle to the melee systems that Fatshark honed in Vermintide but Darktide is just as adept at shooting and scooting as it is at hacking and slashing.

Gav: I eventually unlocked a shotgun for my trusty Zealot and basically stuck with that, blasting away – this felt pretty good, like all decent videogame shotguns. I tried a few of the other ones, but the SMG-type thing I kept finding in the loot felt a bit piddly and weak. There’s an extra firing mode for each gun, though; something I only realised later on in our beta play-session. As we moved up some of the difficulty levels, I found this disparity got a bit wider, with the auto options being totally useless against elites. 

Chopping (on) Heads

Gav: A lot of the time I found myself reaching for my trusty melee weapon, so far usually a sword or an axe; we didn’t get far enough to unlock the Thunder Hammer, which probably would have been a lot cooler. It’s still fun, fast hack-and-slash action against endless hordes, the formula mostly unchanged from Vermintide. Elites interrupt the action and force teamwork-based responses, especially from the Psyker, who’s very good at dealing with them. If you’re a Vermintide veteran the rhythm of combat won’t catch you off-guard, even though the beat is punctuated with gunfire. 

Summing up

Gav: Darktide definitely seems to be iterative rather than revolutionary. The Vermintide formula, largely unchanged since the first game, slots surprisingly neatly into the sci-fi setting. It’s not long until this game comes out, and though I’ve played a bit of both of the game’s betas, I’m excited to see where it goes and dig in to the full experience. I’m a little skeptical of Darktide’s live-service-y model for releasing additional content, but if it can pan out well I can see why they’d aim for it.

George: Going by what we got in the beta there’s a lot to feel excited for. If Darktide can build out what it offers beyond what’s on the end of your chainsword, I think it has a shot at the best 40k game to date.

It’s been a bit of a quiet period here at Bits & Pieces, but Gav recently posted his take on Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, which you can read here. In other demo and beta-related news, Gav played a load of games from Steam’s Next Fest recently, and split up his impressions into post number one and post number two.

You can also use our Amazon affiliate link to give us a little kickback on purchases, or our Ko-Fi, if you’re an extraordinarily kind human and want to directly chuck us some money.