Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition Review

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When we first reviewed Divinity: Original Sin 2 in 2017, we gave it a 9.6 for Amazing. Here’s what we said then:

Divinity: Original Sin 2 may have been designed in the spirit of decades-old RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 2, but that legacy serves only as a foundation for the expansive game Larian has built on top of it. Few other RPGs allow such a wide range of flexibility while also supporting rewarding combat and a powerful story. This will be remembered as one of the greats. - Leif Johnson

Now, the Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition refines and retools some elements of the first game that didn’t quick stick as a free update for owners of the original on PC, and ushers that excellent isometric experience onto consoles for the first time. And that translation to console is skillfully executed, delivering one of the greatest RPGs in recent memory with near-lossless quality.

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Why Netflix's Ozark Season 2 Is One of TV's Best Crime Dramas

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This is a SPOILER-FREE review of Ozark Season 2. All 10 episodes are available to stream on Netflix. 

Netflix's gritty Missouri-based crime drama, Ozark, is back with a darker, and much stronger, second season, which pushes the money-laundering Byrde family to the brink of collapse, as they struggle to not only survive, but also thrive in a criminal underworld filled with drug cartels, crooked government agents, and rapacious politicians.

When Ozark first premiered in 2017, comparisons were made to AMC's seminal Breaking Bad, and rightly so. Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) and Walter White (Bryan Cranston) are both hardworking, law-abiding individuals, who after suffering extreme circumstances, decide that a life of crime is their only way out. While those similarities are difficult to ignore, Ozark Season 2 does a solid job of distinguishing itself from other series within the same genre.

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Amazon Has a Winner in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Season 1

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This is a SPOILER-FREE review of the first season of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. All 8 episodes are currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. 

In Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Season 1, the sixth live-action adaptation of the titular hero, creators Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Graham Roland (Fringe), successfully breathe new life into a screen franchise that hasn't been relevant since the early '90s, when the character was portrayed by actors like Harrison Ford (Patriot Games) and Alec Baldwin (The Hunt for Red October).

This time around, we're given a much younger version of Jack Ryan, played by John Kransinki (A Quiet Place), who goes from a lowly analyst sitting behind a desk to an action-oriented field operative, trying to take down the world's most dangerous terrorists.

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The Little Stranger Review

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Many directors like to tackle something completely different for each project, to flex new muscles and show they can take on a wide variety of stories. This maxim has been proven true time and time again, most recently with Irish filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson, who follows up his critically-acclaimed 2015 drama/thriller Room with the moody drama/horror/mystery The Little Stranger, which couldn’t be more different in many ways. While the majority of Room is set in the one-room dungeon where Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay) are kept, The Little Stranger is largely set in a sprawling gothic mansion that has fallen on hard times, along with the Ayres family who inhabits it.

In many ways, an atmospheric period piece like The Little Stranger is the perfect antidote to the splashy summer movie season, a slow burn drama where there is barely any actual movement among the characters, let alone action. In fact, the biggest beef I have with the movie is that said burn is a touch too slow at times, but the performances and this gripping, mysterious yarn do make up for it.

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Cast Rock Is Too Cryptic for Its Own Good

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Warning: FULL SPOILERS follow for Castle Rock Season 1, Episode 8, titled "Past Perfect."

In last week's episode, titled "The Queen," Castle Rock delivered its best episode yet, featuring Sissy Spacek's harrowing and beautiful portrayal of a time-traveling superhero struggling to cope with dementia.

This time around, Castle Rock turns its attention away from Ruth and back to the cumbersome supernatural elements surrounding Henry (Andre Holland) and The Kid (Bill Skarsgard), in an episode that's often too cryptic for its own good.

While "Past Perfect" is not a bad episode per se, it does spend an unnecessary amount of time on the mystery of The Kid and his connection to Henry's father. Sure, these are important aspects of the overall plot, but they are not the series' prominent strengths. Character development is where Castle Rock shines, but sadly, this outing feels like it's more concerned with setting up the final two episodes than it is with creating a compelling self-contained, hour-long narrative.

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Roccat Vulcan 120 AIMO Gaming Keyboard Review

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The Roccat Vulcan 120 AIMO (See it at Best Buy) does not have any direct connections to the Star Trek universe, despite its name. But one glance at its slick, futuristic design will certainly trigger thoughts of science fiction and the angles of a spaceship. The Vulcan 120 is one of the best-looking, and most uniquely-designed, gaming keyboards I’ve ever used, but its $160 price tag places it in direct competition with other heavy-hitters like Logitech, Corsair, and Razer, so it’s going to need more than just great looks to smoke the competition. I spent some time with this futuristic keyboard to see if it’s capable of both living long, and prospering.

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American Vandal Is Still Spectacular in Season 2

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This is a non-spoiler review for all 8 new episodes of American Vandal, which premieres Friday, September 14 on Netflix.

"Forced confessions. Forced turds."

Last year, when I reviewed the first season of American Vandal, I was admittedly caught off guard. The trailer had made it seem like a one-trick pony. A one-gag goof that shouldn't last longer than a 3-minute parody video. But the series was so much more. So unexpectedly poignant and wise, with the ultimate joke being that...there was no joke. Not really. This was serious dick humor. And the mystery was so absorbing and compelling that it could easily hang with any of crime fiction's best efforts and offerings.

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Scarlet Finds a Great New Home at DC

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While not Brian Bendis' first creator-owned title at DC, Scarlet #1 brings with it a unique set of challenges. Bendis and artist Alex Maleev have to craft a first issue that serves as a clean and easy gateway for those who didn't read the previous two volumes. But at the same time, they have to ensure that veteran readers are being given a satisfying dose of story after waiting several years for Scarlet to make its return. Fortunately, Scarlet #1 strikes that delicate balance, continuing Bendis' strong track record at DC this year.

Bendis and Maleev certainly picked an auspicious time to resurrect this series, given what's happened in the world at large and Portland in particular since the previous volume wrapped. Suffice it to say, the idea of Portland becoming ground zero in a new American Revolution fueled by social media seems far less outlandish than it did even a few short years ago. This issue opens with Portland cut off from the rest of the US and completely under the control of Scarlet's grassroots army. Maleev paints a chilling portrait of a city under siege. It's easy to forget this book is taking place in the US and not a war-ravaged country like Syria. But that's always been part of this series' appeal. It feels uncomfortably real in the same way comics like DMZ do.

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Venom Has a Crazy Vietnam Flashback

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It's beginning to feel like the '90s all over again, what with all the new Venom content Marvel has been pumping out. The good news is that the current ongoing Venom series sets a strong example for other books to follow. Not to mention that the changes Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman have made to Venom's mythology have opened the door for all sorts of new spinoffs and flashback tales. That's basically the gist of Marvel's new Web of Venom anthology series. And with Cates scripting this first spinoff issue, Web of Venom: Ve'Nam #1 captures some of what makes the main series so special, though it does face some major hurdles along the way.

The amusingly titled Ve'Nam flashes back to the '60s to explore the early days of Rex Strickland and his platoon of symbiote-enhanced soldiers. Unfortunately, this issue's biggest flaw is that it doesn't actually focus a great deal on these characters directly. The story picks up after Rex and his team have been let loose in Vietnam and gone AWOL. The focus is instead on Nick Fury as he recruits a familiar hero to help him clean up a growing mess of SHIELD's own making.

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Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate Review

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Monster Hunter Generations arrived in 2016 on Nintendo 3DS, compiling memorable monsters and areas from the series into one, mammoth package. Here’s what we thought at the time:

“Monster Hunter Generations hits the core tenets of what makes this series great. Great gear drives the lust for the hunt even on the small scale, but the big, spectacular fights ultimately matter the most. Generations’ tweaked combat adds just the right tools to make slaying epic boss monsters a fun activity that’s just as fun online or off. Playable companions help shake up the gathering game without taking away resources, and its fun to play as a wackier character. Generations only falters during slower moments spent on fetch quests and in wrangling through menus before the hunt.”

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Kin Review

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Don’t be fooled by the plot description, or by the posters with a futuristic ray gun. Kin, directed by Jonathan and Josh Baker, is a serious, somber story about a 14-year-old kid torn between his father’s moral lessons and his brother’s criminal lifestyle… which just happens to have a futuristic ray gun in it.

It’s an interesting idea, taking some of the tropes of sci-fi superhero storytelling and using them to amplify an otherwise familiar, gritty coming of age and crime drama. But to get away with it, filmmakers need to have an uncanny sense of balance. The drama can’t be so dour that the ray guns feel out of place, and the science-fiction can’t be so out of this world that the characters can’t stay grounded.

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Cougar Ultimus RGB Gaming Keyboard Review

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Quality mechanical gaming keyboards are rarely cheap. In a market where big-name keyboards like the Razer Huntsman Elite or Corsair K95 Platinum cost upwards of $200, getting a quality mechanical keyboard with decent lighting that doesn't require taking out a small loan can be a difficult task. Luckily, there are cheaper options out there, but as it is with anything, going with a budget option can sometimes require serious compromises. Peripheral company Cougar has tried to defy that trend with its new Ultimus RGB keyboard (See it on Amazon), which is a full-blown mechanical keyboard with RGB for just $75, making it one of the most affordable keyboards of its type available.

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Far Cry 5: Dead Living Zombies DLC Review

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It wouldn’t be a big-budget shooter released in 2018 without a zombie-themed expansion, and Far Cry 5’s latest DLC, called Dead Living Zombies, dutifully indulges that trend. With the same goofy humor we saw in the previous Mars-themed DLC, this one takes us to a fun nightmarish version of the Montana countryside that’s crawling with undead fodder. It’s not bad as zombie-killing shooting galleries go, but the humorous movie-themed approach alone isn’t quite enough to hold back the creeping feeling that I’d killed these same exact zombies quite a few times before.

Like in similarly framed games like Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep or Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, this adventure is controlled by a narrator whose ideas are changing on the fly. In this case, would-be director Guy Marvel pitches seven ridiculous zombie scripts to Hollywood’s elite, each more fun and absurd than the last. One of my favorite missions, called Undying Love, uses the story of Romeo and Juliet as a backdrop and spices it up a little bit, with a modern-day gang war and of course, plenty of zombies. This storytelling technique is cleverly used, with various weapons, vehicles, and even strange romantic scenes involving zombies magically appearing whenever Marvel has a new idea.

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The Messenger Review

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The Messenger has a lot going for it. It’s a 2D action platformer with a gorgeous aesthetic that seamlessly goes from 8 to 16-bit, it has a hilarious sense of humor, clever dialogue, and one of the absolute best retro-themed “chiptune” soundtracks out there. There was even a period of time while playing The Messenger, once I unlocked its full suite of core abilities, when I felt this might be one of the best games I’ve played all year.

But then, something happens at about the halfway point. The Messenger changes genre completely from a linear action platformer like Ninja Gaiden on the NES, to a sprawling Metroidvania. Unfortunately, it fumbles this transition, padding the back half with repetitive backtracking and boring fetch quests.

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Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age Review

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Dragon Quest XI is a distilled, energetic, mathematically elegant epic that takes what I love most about traditional dungeon crawlers and masterfully iterates on the formula. On the surface, Dragon Quest XI seems to be a simple return to the single-player RPG format, after deviating into MMO territory for Dragon Quest X. But that simplicity is a purposefully-crafted facade that melts away after a little time in the immense, complex world. Dragon Quest isn’t simple... it’s pure. I’ve been plugging away in Dragon Quest XI’s sprawling environments for well over 65 hours and I just want to keep going.

Check out a large chunk of the latest Dragon Quest XI footage from last week at Gamescom 2018 above.

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Better Call Saul: "Talk" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow...

"You don't want to hear what I have to say."

Jimmy, Kim, Mike, and (poor) Nacho sort of hovered within a restless limbo this week in "Talk" - a chapter that perhaps featured the most violence on a Saul episode ever.

Saul's not exactly known for carnage, so the Salamanca cousins' assault on the Espinosa compound was a huge boat rocker. Despite being able to predict an easy win for the twin Terminators, the scene was still saturated with magnificent menace because of how invested we are in Nacho, who felt the need to lend a hand despite barely being able to walk without doubling over in pain.

Now Nacho's back with his dad and...I fear for both of them. Was Gus about to ask Mike to take care of Nacho once and for all right there at the end? Did Nacho serve his one and only purpose? I sure feels like it. By almost dying, he tricked the cousins into thinking a rival gang had shot him, causing them to rush in, guns a' blazing, and take out Gus' competition. Then Nacho actually mouthed off about Gus' plot to take over other territories, most likely sealing his fate for good.

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PES 2019 Review

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PES 2019 makes an interesting distinction. It’s not a game about football so much as it is a game about the guys playing football. And exactly how they play it - their behaviours, tendencies, and individual techniques - makes for a livelier game. No longer are you a massive deity in the sky moving generic pieces around a pitch, nor should you think of your team as a collection of stats. Here, players take on a life of their own.

The biggest development is a feature called Magic Moments. This refers to a set of 39 RPG-like traits that are distributed across the roster of players in combinations that give each of them their own personality. So, for instance, only gifted shooters like Kevin De Bruyne can hit ferocious rising thunder-bastards that rifle into the net, while Ronaldo’s headers are practically laser-guided. Magic Moments go further than merely adding new moves, though. They also offer effects such as fighting spirit (which gives players better performance when fatigued), super sub (where players improve if brought on in the second half), and man marking (which enables a player to more doggedly stick to opponents). What’s good is these animations happen automatically, whether a pinpoint cross or an acrobatic clearance off the goal line, triggering by themselves if you’re in the right time and place. This makes players feel as distinct to control as they are to watch.

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Strange Brigade Review

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Rebellion may have made a name for itself with the realistic ballistics and gruesome, testicle-popping kills of the Sniper Elite series, but with Strange Brigade, it feels like the Oxford-based developer has found its over-the-top, tea-swilling, alliteration-obsessed voice.

Colonial British sensibilities are the order of the day for this third-person co-op shooter. The four playable characters from the secret arm of the Department of Antiquities feel ripped from the pages of a 1930s pulp novella. There’s Nalangu Rushida, an African tribeswoman; Frank Fairburne, sharpshooter and relative to the protagonist of the Sniper Elite series; the mild-mannered scholar Professor Archimedes De Quincy; and a Manchester-raised boxer and factory worker by the name of Gracie Braithwaite. Reminiscent of Rosie the Riveter, seeing her uppercut a teleporting demon after telling them to “leave it out” in a thick Northern English accent quickly cemented her as my favourite. An accident at a North African dig site sets the story up and, as is often the way with video games, you’ll resolve it by shooting lots and lots of undead.

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Cooler Master CM310 Gaming Mouse Review

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Cooler Master is known for its PC cases, power supplies, and as its name implies, CPU coolers, but it also makes peripherals as well. The CM310 (See it at Amazon) is Cooler Master’s first-ever gaming mouse, and it features RGB backlighting, an “ambidextrous” ergonomic design, and a Pixart A3325 “gaming grade” optical sensor. Despite these ritzy features it's only $30, so it's surprisingly affordable.

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Attack on Titan Episode 43 Answers Important Questions

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This review contains spoilers for the 43rd episode of Attack on Titan (aka Season 3, episode 6) titled "Sin."

Picking up from the coup d’etat from last week’s episode, “Sin” gives us even more answer’s that we’ve been seeking. We learn more of the truth behind why Titans exist, how powers are transferred, and how the current generation is paying the price for the mistakes the generations before them made.

While politics have certainly been at the forefront of this season, lineage has been even more key to this season’s storyline. Historia is the illegitimate daughter to Rod Reiss and his one surviving heir. But why are they the only ones standing? The answer seems to lie with Eren’s missing father Grisha.

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Donut County Review: Hole in One?

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This year I’ve become an android, an exiled boy king, a vampire, a headless warrior, an anthropomorphic toadstool, the Grim Reaper, an adorable yarn creature, a pirate, an ex-yakuza, a monster hunter and, of course, the God of War. Such are the wonders of video games. And now, thanks to Donut County, I can add “ever-expanding sink-hole” to that list.

Yes, in Donut County you literally control a hole in the ground. You move it around, looking for slightly smaller prey, eating up donuts, bricks, and clumps of grass, feeding its insatiable appetite and expanding it, which then lets you swallow larger things – chairs, chickens, boulders, cars, houses. It’s a wonderfully alluring concept and, while Donut County’s running time is brief, it has a whole lot of fun with its central mechanic and with its world.

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Preacher Ends Its Best Season Yet

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Warning: this review contains spoilers for the entire third season of Preacher.

Just a quick note to start things off. Since we've stopped running weekly reviews for Preacher, this article will serve as a combined take on the season finale of Preacher and the season as a whole.

Without burying the lede, Preacher's third season is easily the strongest and most consistently enjoyable of the series to date. Both previous seasons had some fundamental hurdles they were never able to overcome. Season 1 spent far too long focusing on characters and storylines that didn't matter in the end, almost completely wiping the slate clean so that Jesse Custer's road trip could finally begin. Season 2, like so many seasons of so many other comic book shows, was too long and never justified its 13 episode focus on the New Orleans storyline.

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Sharp Objects Shocks with Killer Finale Reveal

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This review contains spoilers for the Sharp Objects finale, titled "Milk."

The horror genre comes in many shapes and sizes, but when done right, it typically leaves you with a feeling of dread that lasts long after the credits roll. “Milk” is an example of great horror not just because of the feeling the last few seconds leave you with, but for how the episode depicts the events that lead to those last few seconds. However, that doesn’t mean Sharp Objects as a whole should be classified as horror, and that makes the nature of its ending somewhat dissatisfying.

Still, the finale is ripe with emotional terror. Between the opening shot of Camille slowly approaching the house, and then being forced to join the bizarro-happy family dinner while she knows exactly what Adora is doing to Amma, Sharp Objects takes on a new sense of foreboding. What was formerly the TV equivalent of a page-turning beach read makes the full transition into a disturbing but believable portrait of mental illness.

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World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth - Final Review

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The Horde vs. Alliance struggle has always sat at the heart of World of Warcraft, although it has at times faded into the background while the world banded together for a common cause. But now that the world-destroying threat from 2016’s excellent Legion expansion is diminished, Blizzard has once again rekindled the burning hatred these factions have for one another, bringing a welcome refocus on our character’s epic storylines and those of some of Warcraft’s greatest characters in the new Battle for Azeroth expansion. Legion left behind some pretty big shoes to fill, and while Battle for Azeroth doesn't bring many of sweeping changes like its predecessor, it does feel right at home in the Warcraft story.

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InnerSpace Review

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Have you ever wondered what the inside of a marble looks like? Well, piloting a craft through InnerSpace’s universe made me feel like I was flying inside one — then another, and another — with a handful of different gorgeous worlds waiting to be explored. But actually sailing through these dream-like skies never reached the heights I wanted it to because of annoying controls and obtuse objectives.

In fact, InnerSpace has a rough takeoff with a boring and bland tutorial. Getting to grips with your vehicle – called an airframe – happens in an ugly, monochrome room that’s in stark and weird contrast with so much beauty elsewhere. Overall, everything is pretty straightforward this early on, with the sticks maneuvering the vehicle and the shoulder buttons used for drifting and diving into water.

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Death's Gambit Review

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It could have been a beautiful combination. Like butter on popcorn, pouring Castlevania: Symphony of the Night-inspired pixel art over the demanding gameplay of a "Soulslike" feels like a combination that should lead fans of both to fall in love. Unfortunately, Death's Gambit's performance fails to fully realize its buttery premise. Though this 2D action game achieves a neat horror vibe and features some cool art, it can become confusing and frustrating – and not in the rewarding ways that make games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne fun.

It doesn’t help Death’s Gambit’s predicament that we are in the middle of a whirlwind renaissance for 2D “Metroidvania” games. Some of them, including Hollow Knight (which was released last year but has re-entered the zeitgeist thanks to its recent re-release on the Nintendo Switch) and the near-universally beloved Dead Cells have also taken cues from Dark Souls without coming off as imitations. And, sadly, their successes highlight Death’s Gambit’s failures.

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Nintendo Labo Variety Kit Review

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Constructing a miniature cardboard piano that plays a melodic range of cat meows and old man moans is a long but ultimately enjoyable undertaking. Most of the five cardboard toys in the Nintendo Labo Variety Kit result in this same feeling. The process of following Labo’s step-by-step instructions, which can descend into tedium at times, is saved by the final product: wonderfully weird playthings and the option of more creative tinkering. It’s classic Nintendo silliness with a delightfully crafty feel.

With three distinct sections that urge you to “Make,” “Play,” and “Discover,” there’s plenty to do with Nintendo’s $69 Labo Variety Kit. As the sections progress they take you deeper into the oddly innovative workings behind each cardboard toy, eventually giving you the chance to tailor them however you please in both looks and function. The Variety Kit may look like child's play, but there's a treasure trove of zany secrets and customization hidden below the surface.

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Netflix's The Innocents Review

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The following is a spoiler-free review for all 8 episodes of The Innocents, which premieres Friday, September 24 on Netflix.

The Innocents, a YA romance with strange, grotesque, almost-X-Men like underpinnings, is an oddball blend of suffering and drama that picks up and gels as the season progresses. The story is immensely weird and off-putting at the get-go, but then I found myself, after crossing the halfway point, sucked into an over-arching mystery that had unfortunately obfuscated many of the initial beats early on.

The Innocents takes a ton of patience, but at only 8 episodes, it's not long before viewers start being rewarded. The hook here is shapeshifting. Two teens in love in a dreary (or extra dreary) corner of England - Sorcha Groundsell's June and Percelle Ascott's Harry - decide to run off together, unaware that the strict and suffocating rules that June's father forces her to adhere to are due to the fact she's about to possibly exhibit the same supernatural abilities her mom possessed - the gift/curse of being able to transform into someone else.

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Logitech G512 Carbon Gaming Keyboard Review

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If the $150 Logitech G513 is too lavish for your budget, then your eyes and wallet are likely to turn to the recently launched Logitech G512 Carbon (See it at Logitech). It offers the same solid, stylish aluminum design and customizable RGB lighting along with the same selection of switches as you get with the Logitech G513, but cuts out a few extras to shave a hefty $50 off the bill. The Logitech G512 Carbon gives you the choice of three types of mechanical switches: Romer-G Tactile, Romer-G Linear, and a new switch dubbed GX Blue. My review unit came with the newest and clickiest of the three, the GX Blue. Let’s jump in and see what the Logitech G512 Carbon serves up for $100 and how Logitech’s latest proprietary switch performs.

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Netflix's New Supernatural Horror Series Feels Way Too Real

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Ghoul, the second Netflix/Phantom Films collaboration after Sacred Games, brings aboard the folks at Blumhouse (Get Out, Insidious) for something spectacular. A horror story set several years in India’s future, the three-part miniseries presents a world in which outlawed books are burned, a la Ray Bradbury, and ordinary Muslim citizens are unjustly branded terrorists, a la… well, America, India, Myanmar, take your pick.

“Enhanced interrogation” officer Nida Rahim (Radhika Apte), a cog in this fascist regime, turns her own father over to the government for compliance training. His crime? Teaching his students philosophy from outside the state’s syllabus, an action deemed anti-national. This display of loyalty lands Nida an unexpected promotion to an anti-terrorist black site, an underground prison where terrorist mastermind Ali Saeed (Mahesh Balraj) is being shipped for torture. Unbeknownst to the folks in charge however, Saeed doesn’t show up alone. As he steps out of his transport van in the pouring rain, the barking guard dogs go eerily silent. Something ghastly is in the ether, and we may just end up siding with it.

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F1 2018 Review

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Over the past few years, Codemasters has quietly shaped its F1 franchise into one of the most superb sports series on the market. Today’s F1 games fuse a deep and rewarding racing experience with the same kind of supplemental reverence to a real-life sport that you get from the likes of FIFA, NBA 2K, or any other licensed bat-or-ball sweatfest. F1 2018 is easily the studio’s best effort yet, despite its increasingly stale look.

Aside from seeing Liberty Media’s divisive new F1 logo wedged into as many places as possible (and all the titanium thongs bolted to the current season’s cars) you could definitely be forgiven for not spotting a huge number of immediate differences between F1 2018 and F1 2017. With no real changes to the UI it feels like slipping into yesterday’s pants: familiarity and ease at the cost of freshness.

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Little Dragons Cafe Review

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I’ve been up until 5 a.m. for three nights in a row, trapped in a loop of fishing for eels, exploring the forest, and feeding my (hopefully) harmless dragon heaps of food in an effort to turn him blue. This is all, ostensibly, in the interest of running a café and saving my mother. The details are hazy. But even when the controls get in the way and the repetition sets in, I’m still enjoying my time as a lost boy.

If it sounds a bit like a weird-world farming sim, that’s because it is. Little Dragons Cafe is helmed by Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of Harvest Moon, Rune Factory, and Little King’s Story. Like its addicting siblings, it’s all about the simple but rewarding tasks of gathering ingredients, building relationships, and earning money. But Little Dragons Cafe is its own beast, with pleasing storybook graphics, a much slower pace, dozens of hours of gameplay, and much, much lower stakes. In fact, it may be the only game of its type where there’s no money at all. Just better ingredients, baby.

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Amazon Fire TV Cube Review

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Amazon has spent years improving its hardware offerings, and its all-new Fire TV Cube (See it on Amazon) is the company's attempt to combine the functionality of its Fire TV streaming stick and Echo smart speaker, forming a "hands free" streaming box powered by Alexa. It's designed to be the centerpiece of your smart home and multimedia setup, and though it's far from perfect, but when it works right, it feels almost magical.

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Yakuza Kiwami 2 Review

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By the time the credits had rolled on Yakuza Kiwami 2 I’d uncovered a plot to detonate a series of explosives around Tokyo, climbed my way through the ranks of an underground fight club buried in the bowels of a construction site, and partnered with a number of businesses in Osaka in an effort to boost my burgeoning cabaret club management career. I’d also beaten up a baby nursery full of full grown men clad in diapers, struck flirtatious poses for a snap-happy photographer who was wearing nothing but a Speedo and a smile, and drank can after can of vending machine coffee in order to make my bladder full enough to beat the high score in the interactive urinal-based minigame.

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Path of Exile Review - 2018

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After four years and seven free expansions, Path of Exile is still like the free-to-play action-RPG version of a owning a vintage sports car. From the unforgiving combat to the piles and piles of randomly generated loot to the encouraged repetition, there is plenty to admire for those of us who remember the Diablo 2 era fondly. But in light of how far the genre has come, playing more than 85 hours of Path of Exile for this review also reminded me how high-maintenance and cumbersome it can be. In many ways, it’s a reminder of why genre conventions should change over time.

Path of Exile’s biggest strength and its biggest weakness is its sprawling, intricate, oftentimes unwieldy skill system. By allocating points into a web with hundreds and hundreds of passive bonuses, you can achieve very fine control over a character’s damage capabilities and survival potential. The best of these are special nodes that completely change your playstyle, like giving you 50 percent more health but causing spells to cost health instead of mana.

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Castle Rock Delivers Its Most Stephen King-Inspired Episode

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Warning: FULL SPOILERS follow for Castle Rock Season 1, Episode 7, titled "The Queen." Castle Rock was renewed for Season 2 last week.

Castle Rock delivers a brilliant, but also unexpected episode this week with "The Queen." Without clarifying what's happening to Henry inside of "The Filter" device, the series instead delivers its most Stephen King-inspired outing yet, with an imaginative examination of dementia.

While King's tales typically include fantastical elements within their densely-layered plotlines, there is usually an undercurrent of realism or social commentary if you look closely, from the youthful anxieties of IT and The Body to Jack Torrence's struggle with alcoholism in The Shining.

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The Happytime Murders Review

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Brian Henson, the son of The Muppets creator Jim Henson, has spent his entire career making puppet movies to entertain kids of all ages, and if his new film The Happytime Murders is any indication, he’s pretty mad about that. This raunchy comedy about a puppet detective and a human detective teaming up to solve a series of murders isn’t just a fantastical film noir in the vein of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Alien Nation, it’s a punch in the nose for everyone - inside and outside of the entertainment industry - who thinks puppeteering isn’t a serious art form.

In The Happytime Murders, a private detective named Phil Philips (Bill Barretta) picks up a new case, which leads him directly into a series of brutal puppet homicides. Someone is targeting the cast of The Happytime Gang, a once popular sitcom whose cast has hit hard times, and Phil has to team up with his old partner Det. Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) to solve the case.

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A Master Batman Artist Returns

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Kelley Jones' rendition of Batman may not be everyone's cup of tea, what with the exaggerated ears and flat-out ridiculous physique. However, there's no denying that Jones is one of the most distinctive and influential artists ever to work on the franchise. Who could forget this hulking, brooding take on the Dark Knight or Jones' vision of an emaciated, vampiric Batman in books like Batman & Dracula: Red Rain? The main selling point with Batman: Kings of Fear is that this miniseries allows Jones to dive back into Gotham City and bring some much-needed '90s flavor to the Batman line. It's very much a comic where the visuals trump the story.

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Venom's New Evolution Thrills

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More than any other new series in 2018, Venom truly realizes the potential of Marvel's Fresh Start relaunch. It retains just enough of the core of what made this character so ridiculously popular in the '90s, while also blazing ambitious new ground for the character. No Marvel book has done so much in such a short span of time to help Venom stand independent of the Spider-Man franchise.

Issue #5 continues Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman's ongoing quest to shake up and reinvigorate Eddie Brock's status quo. Reeling from his first encounter with Knull, god of the symbiotes, Eddie now finds his mind reeling and his very connection to his symbiote called into question. This allows Cates to begin crafting a new dynamic between Eddie and his suit. The symbiote is more eloquent following its recent exposure to its master, allowing for more exciting interplay between the two characters. On some level, this status quo change does seem a bit overly reminiscent of that period where the symbiote was "fixed" during the Guardians of the Galaxy days. But on the other hand, that status quo deserved more attention than it received before Venom was so abruptly dragged back to Earth. After a lull period, this character is making real forward progress again.

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Searching Review

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It wouldn’t be surprising if some who have seen the trailers, or are aware of the premise, would dismiss Searching right away because of how gimmicky it is, but I urge them not to do so. Yes, the story has been told before - David Kim (John Cho) goes on a frantic quest to find his missing daughter Margot (Michelle La), with the help of a no-nonsense cop (Debra Messing). We’ve also seen the gimmick before - a movie completely told through computer/cell phone screens - all of which (Unfriended, Unfriended: Dark Web, Profile) have been either produced or directed by Searching producer Timur Bekmambetov. While the story and the gimmick of Searching are both not new, the sum is most certainly greater than the whole of its parts, in truly brilliant ways.

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Viewsonic PX747-4K Projector Review

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The price of 4K televisions has reduced dramatically over the past couple years, but that drastic price drop has eluded the projector market until recently. Earlier this year, Optoma released its UHD50 4K  projector, which was seriously affordable (for a 4K projector) at just $1,400, and now Viewsonic has followed with the similarly affordable PX747-4K (See it on Amazon). The affordable price is due to the fact that these projectors don't natively output 4K, but instead use a technology dubbed XPR. But what is XPR, and should you care?

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Guacamelee! 2 Review

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Guacamelee 2 often had me laughing out loud. And just as often, it had me gripping my controller and gritting my teeth, trying not to be too frustrated with myself as I learned the luchador skills needed to nail its most difficult platforming puzzles. But no matter what emotion it evoked, I loved nearly every minute of Drinkbox Studios’ fantastic follow-up, which offers a smart evolution of its revered predecessor that only briefly feels overly familiar.

Picking up with a helpful reminder of how Guacamelee ended (which I needed, because it was first released way back in 2013) the sequel returns with plenty of humor and a surprising but welcome bit of pathos at the start of its eight-hour adventure. I was surprised at how affected I was to see Juan enjoy a peaceful life at home with his wife, two kids, and a diet that has caused his fighting physique to be lost to time, only for his happiness — in every possible timeline imaginable — to be disrupted by a new evil, Salvador.

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Better Call Saul: "Something Beautiful" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow...

"It's not for me. And I don't think it should be for you either."

Wow. Another superb, standout showing from Rhea Seehorn here in "Something Beautiful." She's quickly showing us how much Kim's silent struggles, both with work and with Jimmy, are Season 4's super power.

Last week Kim got to blow up, at the one person she could blow up in front of - Howard. This week, she just agonizingly absorbed it all. From the shock to the system that was Mesa Verde Bank's aggressive expansion plan, where you could see her soul being squeezed, to her tearful breakdown listening to Jimmy casually read Chuck's rather kind and noble final letter to his brother (obviously written before their most recent fallings out), Kim was overwhelmed on all fronts.

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Attack on Titan Episode 42 Changes Everything

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This review contains spoilers for the 42nd episode of Attack on Titan (aka Season 3, episode 5) titled "Reply."

Once again, Attack on Titan Season 3 doesn't disappoint. In “Reply,” we’re finally seeing the carefully laid strings of the last four episodes tie together in neater knots than the past.

Erwin’s storyline, which had been somewhat on the backburner up until now, is the star of this episode, as he goes into his audience with the king. Of course, this entire season has dabbled in the politics of this world, but this episode leans heavily into the different agendas at play, as Pyxis fakes a Titan breach just to expose the government's disregard for its people, allowing him to declare a military coup d’etat and derail Erwin's execution. (Was anyone genuinely worried that he might die in this episode? The tension was certainly there.)

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Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Season 1 Premiere Has Action and Heart

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This is an advanced spoiler-free review of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series premiere. Season 1 will be available on Amazon Prime Video on August 31.

At first glance, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Amazon Prime Video's newest series starring John Krasinski (The Office) as the titular hero, is just another entry in a long line of military-centered stories featuring a seemingly unimportant man thrust into extreme circumstances, which usually end with said hero saving the day.

There are moments when Jack Ryan is every bit the cliche when it comes to this genre, especially when we've already seen four other iterations of Ryan in various films, from Patriot Games (Harrison Ford) to The Sum of all Fears (Ben Affleck). While each of these cinematic entries warrants some merit, none of them have truly found a way to stand out in the Tom Clancy live-action universe... Until now.

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Sharp Objects Drops a Devastating Reveal in Episode 7

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This review contains spoilers for Sharp Objects episode 7, titled "Falling." To refresh your memory of where we left off, check out our review of episode 6. 

There have been two central mysteries to Sharp Objects since the season started, and after six episodes of slow-burning intrigue, one of them has finally been resolved. Not necessarily the big one, of course. We’ll still have to wait to until the finale to find out who Wind Gap’s killer is (we now know Adora is capable of murder, but poison is far more passive than teeth-pulling), but “Falling” does reveal how Marion died, and it changes everything the show has been about thus far.

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The Last Sharknado Review

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"First time flying on a pterodactyl?"

"Yeah."

"Scared?"

"Hell no."

Those lines are said - oh - about 8 minutes into The Last Sharknado: It's About Time (a subtitle that, once again, is more clever than anything in the actual movie). Yup, we're reviewing a Sharknado again. You can skip on down to the predictable score or just surf through my word buffet here, but - dammit - it's the final hurrah and we're here for it. Even if the buzz really isn't.

Yes, the "so-dumb-it's-smart" (but is it really?) silly, campy hubbub that swirled around the Sharknado series, like so many ferocious flying sharks, dissipated a while ago. The novelty of Syfy leaning into its purposefully schlocky Saturday night monster movies with this go-for-joke franchise, featuring a who's who of people who haven't been "who" in a while wore off years back and all that's left is a lot of noise. So much noise. The Last Sharknado is almost non-stop cluster-chaos.

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Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich Review

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Puppet Master is one of the longest-running horror franchises, but you rarely hear it mentioned with the same reverent tones as Halloween, Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s the story of a puppeteer named Andre Toulon who, in World War II, brought his creations to life to murder Nazis. Years later, his puppets did the bidding of whoever owned them, and were - depending on the movie - either ruthlessly evil or violent antiheroes.

Over the course of 12 or 13 straight-to-video movies (whether Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys counts or not is a matter of some debate), the puppets have slaughtered lots of people and became minor genre icons. But even the earlier, better Puppet Master films weren’t particularly great and a reboot was not only inevitable, but also a welcome opportunity to give what could have been a great series the opportunity to finally achieve that greatness.

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