F1 22 Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

It’s a new era for the world of Formula 1, with some of the biggest changes seen in the sport in four decades shaking up not only the status quo, but also the spines of the drivers as teams wrestle to rein in the engineering quirks of this year’s new cars. Codemasters has followed suit with F1 22, stopping short of infusing this season’s back-busting porpoising phenomenon into its handling model but tinkering just enough with its reliably robust annual racer that it does feel sufficiently refreshed in a number of the right areas – even if the overall package is bound to be a pretty familiar one to returning fans.

Rest assured, there is more to F1 22 than simply a stable of the latest cars and the new Miami circuit. Visually it’s treading water this year but small touches, like neat new post-race clips of the battle-worn cars and updated camera angles on the old podium celebrations, slightly rejuvenate parts of the Codemasters F1 series that have been stagnant for many years. The new race engineer voice and the ability to switch out commentator David Croft for Alex Jacques similarly help set F1 22 apart from the previous F1 games, which have been feeling increasingly recycled in this department. A new adaptive AI mode joins the standard and already huge list of driver aids and accessibility options, and seems to keep the pack within striking distance of less-experienced racers. This should make for more exciting racing regardless of skill. I watched my eight-year-old duke it out with the adaptive AI and while I can’t quite observe the full difference between the two available levels of it, it did seem to keep him in the hunt without making the AI rollover entirely.

It’s unlikely veterans of other, existing VR racing games will be wowed in quite the same way we were some years ago – but the novelty value of having it available in the official F1 series is very strong.

Bigger bullet points, like the welcome inclusion of the F1 sprint race format and slick VR support for PC players, are obviously harder to miss. The F1 series is quite late to the table when it comes to VR support so I think it’s unlikely veterans of other, existing VR racing games will be wowed in quite the same way we were some years ago – but the novelty value of having it available in the official F1 series is very strong. With its dedication to replicating the minutiae of the real thing – from the paddock to the track – the F1 series has been a wonderfully immersive recreation of the world’s premier motorsport for some time. Experiencing it through a VR lens is doubly so.

However, not every new feature of F1 22 earns a spot on the podium.

Pad Toys for Life

With Codemasters confirming earlier this year that further instalments of the ‘Braking Point’ story mode it introduced in F1 2021 are on a two-year cadence, F1 22 does not include the next chapter of the studio’s airbrushed yet earnest take on a fictional, behind-the-scenes F1 fairy tale. In its place is F1 Life, a lifestyle-oriented mode focused on customising your F1 driver’s outfit and living areas, but it feels so vapid that it largely amounts to little more than a monetisable backdrop for the main menu screens.

F1 22 puts the focus on this new mode by throwing you straight into tinkering with F1 Life’s default settings on first launch. The good thing about this is that afterward… it can be entirely ignored, and doing so ultimately doesn’t diminish anything about the typically robust racing experience around it. At best F1 Life seems like a catch-all to justify a steady stream of rewards for your time playing, only those rewards are often just bits of furniture and floor tiles. At worst, it’s a mechanism that’s here to shake some loose change out of people willing to hand over a few bucks for a cosmetic trinket. Other players can visit your space, but I don’t really understand why they’d want to. It’s probably a sad sign of the times that while previous F1 games featured iconic cars from the sport’s history, F1 22 features an extensive set of… designer rugs, lounges, and lamps. No one’s been excited about a lamp since Jafar played fullback for Agrabah.

It’s probably a sad sign of the times that while previous F1 games featured iconic cars from the sport’s history, F1 22 features an extensive set of… designer rugs, lounges, and lamps.

In theory I understand the desire to capture a taste of that lucrative, off-track luxury that real-life F1 superstars get to enjoy – and, yes, I did get momentarily distracted by the V6 coffee table – but I don’t know if adding interior decorating and the ability to dress your driver avatar like an aspiring Puma activewear influencer was the perfect way to do that.

The addition of collectable supercars feels a little closer to the kinds of extravagant toys real-life F1 drivers can afford, and there is at least a gameplay component attached to these. Taking some broad inspiration from the Pirelli Hot Laps programme that runs at real grands prix – where F1 drivers are conscripted to hurl expensive exotics around the tracks with various VIPs aboard – F1 22 includes high-end supercars from Ferrari, AMG, Aston Martin, and McLaren for both hot-lapping, and a selection of bespoke driving challenges. They’re an interesting novelty – very different from anything present in previous F1 games – but in practice they do become a bit one-note and I eventually found myself opting to skip them. Through no fault of anyone, the supercars themselves are comparatively soggy when measured up to the purpose-built open-wheelers that represent the pinnacle of current F1 engineering, but they do convey a decent enough sense of speed, grip, and weight when compared to their contemporaries in rival racers. The drifting is surprisingly unspectacular, though; a severe lack of smoke leaves it feeling oddly sterile.

What We Said About F1 2021

F1 2021 is the best-looking and most customisable instalment of the long-running Codemasters series to date, and the ability to tinker under the hood of the core career experience and play co-op with a friend is very welcome. With the addition of Braking Point it’s also arguably the boldest F1 game so far. The characterisation is a little underdone and the E for Everyone approach means it’s quite an airbrushed take on the F1 world compared to Netflix’s tense and profanity-laden Drive to Survive, but injecting a story mode into the F1 series was a risk well worth taking and I’m certainly looking forward to more of it. – Luke Reilly, July 13, 2021

Score: 8

Read the full F1 2021 review

Rims Real Big, Pockets Real Big

The real stars of F1 22, of course, are the new F1 cars, which are the sleekest looking in many years, though saddled with a few interesting handling idiosyncrasies that demand some adjustments from F1 2021.

With their bigger wheels and tyres, plus their added bulk, 2022’s F1 cars are the heaviest they’ve ever been. They’re also lower and stiffer, with less top-body downforce and a renewed focus on ground effect aerodynamics sucking the cars into the asphalt the faster they go. In F1 22 this has translated to cars that feel like they’ve lost a fraction of their nimbleness and feel especially stiff attacking kerbs and humps. Additionally, I’ve found I’ve needed to be even more delicate on the throttle coming out of corners than in previous years, though they also sometimes seem a little more prone to understeer coming into them. The upshot is a handling model that I’d hesitate to say is better than that of the old cars of F1 2021 and previous editions, but it is one that feels credibly in-line with the known characteristics of the new ones. It’s just different, and the nuances of the new cars are – at a minimum – an interesting challenge to tackle.

However, while some noticeable changes have been injected into the handling, the real meat of F1 22 – the excellent My Team mode first introduced in F1 2020 – remains mostly the same. Campaign through GPs, complete R&D, juggle finances; if you’ve played F1 2020 or F1 2021 you’ll know what to expect. There are a couple of nice amendments, though, like the new choice to start your first year of My Team as a richly-backed operation with pre-upgraded facilities and a fat enough bank balance to lure a 45-year-old Mark Webber out of his comfortable retirement. The F1 series has always been one of the few racers that can make scrapping for a position down the order thrilling, but having the ability to tussle with the top teams straight away makes a lot of sense for returning players who’ve steered their F1 teams from minnows to megastars multiple times already. Sponsorship decals no longer disappearing off your car despite re-signing existing partners is nice too; it’s a small fix, but it was always annoying having to manually put them back on mid-season, even after rolling over their contracts.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/OP9otBy
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Superman & Lois: Season 2 Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

The below review of Season 2 of Superman & Lois discusses some important plot points, but no major spoilers. Season 2 is now streaming on CWTV.com and The CW's app.

Every so often, fans of superhero media clamor for stories about civilians living in these fantastical worlds (the movie or TV equivalent of Marvels by Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek). Season 2 of Superman & Lois scratches that particular itch, partially on purpose — its focus on one Smallville family is the series’ highlight — and partially because its title characters and their world-ending entanglements aren’t as interesting this time. It’s more scattershot than Season 1, featuring unimaginatively conceived villains with hodgepodge plans, and heroes going mostly through the motions, but on a human level, the way these events radiate outward leads to some fantastically written and acted drama.

The season begins in an interesting place. The Gregory Smith-directed premiere, “What Lies Beneath,” picks up a few months after last season’s cliffhanger, which saw Natalie (Tayler Buck), the teenage daughter of John Henry Irons (Wolé Parks) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch), on an alternate Earth, arriving on this one to rescue her father. She finds out her mother isn’t quite her mother, but what’s more, she discovers that “our” Lois is married to the Kryptonian Ubermensch that killed her back in their own universe. It’s an awkward adjustment period, to say the least. Clark (Tyler Hoechlin) and his teenage sons, football player Jonathan (Jordan Elsass) and awkward romantic Jordan (Alex Garfin), mostly watch from the sidelines, as the pseudo mother-daughter duo approach each other with caution. Lest we forget, the Lois we know had a miscarriage many years ago, and she would’ve named her daughter Natalie. There’s unprocessed grief and anger on both sides, and it finally grants Lois narrative centricity (narrative agency is another issue; perhaps it’s too much to ask in a show driven by supernatural beings).

However, this premise dissipates rather quickly to make room for the season’s central premise. Someone, or something, keeps trying to bust its way through the Smallville mines — this creature is later revealed to be a warped, alternate-universe version of Superman, based on the comics’ Bizarro — and in order to deal with it, our Superman must liaise with the new head of the D.O.D., Lt. Anderson (Ian Bohen), a driven and intriguing antagonist, if only for his quiet mistrust of the Man of Steel. This Bizarro Clark Kent is eventually tied to events unfolding elsewhere: self-help leader Ally Allston (Rya Kihlstedt) keeps amassing followers by preaching about some phantom “other world” in which people can merge with their doppelgangers in order to become whole — platitudes that work to drive the plot, but aren’t nearly as disquieting as a tale of predatory cult tactics should be. Lois is involved in this subplot too, since her sister Lucy (Jenna Dewan, who plays a version of the character on Supergirl) is drawn in by Ally’s promises, but as usual, the ace reporter is along for the ride, responding to events and bouncing between other people’s drama (even though Tulloch imbues each beat with urgency).

The real meat of the season, however, is the Cushing/Cortez/Lang family, the Kents’ neighbors, comprising Clark’s childhood sweetheart Lana (Emmanuelle Chriqui), her rough-around-the-edges firefighter husband Kyle (Erik Valdez), and their teenage daughter Sarah, played by the incredible Inde Navarrette (they also have a second daughter, Joselyn Picard’s Sophie, but she’s always at ballet practice or a grandmother’s house; the show’s disinterest in her plays like a strange running joke). See, Sarah is Jordan’s girlfriend, and she’s being kept in the dark about his superhuman abilities (not to mention, his family’s other super-secrets) and while Jordan is technically a lead character — and Garfin is undoubtedly a treat to watch — he functions mainly as a bridge for the Cushings’ involvement in Season 2. It’s primarily their story, and they tell it boldly from start to finish.

Kyle and Lana’s troubled marriage is finally on the mend, only his dishonest past comes back to bite them at the worst possible moment: Sarah’s quinceañera. As it is, Sarah herself is caught between Jordan’s growing aloofness and her own burgeoning (bi)sexuality, and what Navarrette does in response to this story is marvelous to behold. Last season, we were given hints about Sarah’s past depression and her suicide attempt; she doesn’t quite crumble to that degree this time, but over the course of 15 episodes, Navarrette takes us through a quiet journey of why (and more precisely, how) a teenager ends up turning inward and growing distant from their family. Her demeanor changes in subtle ways, but Navarrette externalizes — often through glances, and by staring off into nothingness — the ways she’s being pulled and pushed internally, even as she sits still. Her relationship doesn’t make sense. Her parents’ marriage is on the rocks once more — since Smallville is hurting financially, Lana chooses a career in local politics, rather than forgiving Kyle’s repeated screw-ups — so she has nowhere to turn but inward.

The Kent family drama, meanwhile, isn’t inert by any means. Tal-Rho (Adam Rayner), Clark’s biological brother and last season’s big villain, enters the fray as a friendly Hannibal Lecter type, a prisoner with vital information, but someone who genuinely wants to change — if only to be finally accepted by family. It’s a touching arc, even though it’s often sidelined in favor of the world-threatening plot. Jordan, as usual, deals with keeping secrets while trying to live a normal teenage life, but the Kent MVP this season is Jonathan, whose jealousies over his brother’s powers lead not only to some self-destructive decisions, but to subsequent ethical dilemmas that challenge Clark and Lois’ parental instincts. It’s a brief but dense family saga that forms the backbone of several episodes, before Superman has to fly off to save the day once more.

The final few episodes bring together the season’s drama in satisfying fashion.

Ironically, the show is at its best when Superman isn’t present at all. At one point, he escapes into the dimension from which Bizarro hails, and where another version of Ally is attempting to achieve the same world-merging goals. In the process, the ninth episode (the Ian Samoil-directed “30 Days and 30 Nights”) is allowed to slow down and focus entirely on the Smallville drama in Superman’s absence, but soon after, we’re yanked into the aforementioned alternate reality for some mind-numbing antics. Human villain Anderson skips about 15 dramatic beats in order to transform into a major threat, while the Bizarro planet — cube-shaped though it may be, like in the comics — is revealed to be pretty much like our own, only slightly red-tinted and with more Goth-inspired fashion. It’s a dour and deeply uninspired rendition of a quirky comic book concept — people whose physiology and morality are the “inverse” of ours in every way — leading, here, to the main cast playing versions of themselves who only differ because they have a bit more of a temper.

Despite this overarching premise flailing and eventually flatlining, the final few episodes bring together the season’s drama in satisfying fashion. The question of whether the Kents should be keeping their identities secret becomes a key point of dramatic tension — especially since it challenges the character’s central premise since 1938 — and it’s given enough room to unfold in the season’s back half, though it mainly works because Sarah and Lana are eventually roped up in this dilemma.

Season 2 may not be nearly as coherent as its predecessor, nor does it take the time to let many of the Kents’ emotional challenges breathe. However, its supporting cast — Navarrette, Chriqui, and Valdez — practically warp the series around themselves via their characters’ touching, complicated drama, until Superman & Lois becomes less a show about its title characters, and more about the regular, everyday people caught up in their orbits.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/AMRNzan
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Minions: The Rise of Gru Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

Minions: The Rise of Gru hits theaters on July 1, 2022.

It would be a fool’s errand to judge a Minions movie on anything except its own terms, but figuring out what those terms even are is a challenge. The Minions, with their speech comprising made-up French, bits of English and Spanish, and near-total gibberish, are the kind of babbling caricatures used to entertain babies, yet they’ve taken on a life of their own on social media, as digital stationery for wine aunts and weird uncles to type up harmless mundanities (“Exercise? I thought you said extra fries!”) The Despicable Me series has an entire history behind it (or rather, ahead of it; The Rise of Gru is a prequel), so it must serve a narrative function, and as a movie, it technically has a story and characters, but they all exist in service of slapstick gags that may as well be isolated vignettes.

Wrapped up in all this is the question of who this movie is for, if the Minions rose to prominence over a decade ago? The teens who were children during the first Despicable Me? Probably not. Little kids today? Perhaps. Their millennial parents? Maybe, but the film’s 1970s setting leads to a flood of period-specific allusions aimed at Boomers and Gen X’ers. Am I thinking too hard about this? Absolutely, but it’s difficult not to in a year that gave us the Pixar instant-classic Turning Red. Minions: The Rise of Gru is ultimately inoffensive, but children deserve a little better than a flurry of random images that feel barely connected.

The prologue gives us a fun look at a group of baddies, the Vicious 6, as they steal an ancient artifact. There’s Taraji P. Henson’s Belle Bottom, whose abilities aren’t quite clear, but there’s also Svengeance, a Mad Max-style roller-skater voiced by Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo as the metal-handed Stronghold, and the two most amusingly conceived villains in the group, Lucy Lawless as Nunchucks (a nunchuck-wielding nun), and Jean-Clawed, a Frenchman with an enormous lobster claw, voiced by none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme. Rounding out the crew is Alan Arkin’s Wild Knuckles, an aged martial artist who gets booted from the team as soon as he helps them steal an ancient pendant. He’s the closest thing the movie has to an actual character, since his five former teammates mostly melt into the background as an indecipherable blob (a handful of funny gags aside).

Sometime later, we’re reintroduced to little Gru (a pitch-shifted Steve Carell), whose dreams of supervillainy get him laughed at by his classmates (if you think this embarrassment might inform his story, think again). And of course, what would Gru be without the Minions in his basement, hundreds of whom appear on screen, but four of whom are the actual focus. The main three were pseudo-characters in the 2015 Minions film. They don’t have distinct personalities as much as they do recognizable shapes — there’s the short two-eyed one (Bob), the short one-eyed one (Stuart), and the tall one (Kevin) — and joining them this time is Otto, a round one with braces. He screws up a lot. Gru yells at him and doubts him, the same way other people doubt Gru’s own capacity for mischief, but neither of these things amount to very much.

Whatever semblance of story The Rise of Gru features, it wobbles like the empty skin-suit of a real kids’ movie.

Gru’s story revolves around auditioning for the Vicious 6, and subsequently crossing paths with its disgraced former founder, Wild Knuckles, who, it turns out, is Gru’s favorite villain. Knuckles is a loner with henchmen who he treats like garbage. Gru is pretty much the same. And yet, their collective coming-to-Jesus moment exists only theoretically, through tonally “serious” scenes that make them reflect on no one and nothing in particular, and for no real reason.

Whatever semblance of story The Rise of Gru features, it wobbles like the empty skin-suit of a real kids’ movie (like the three Despicables Me!). It sends Kevin, Stuart, and Bob in one direction, and Otto in another, on divergent missions to help Gru, but both storylines seem to suffer from severe cases of anti-drama and anti-comedy. The Minions are on a mission, and part of the fun stems from them being chaotic yellow pill-creatures pretending to be people via an assortment of costumes, but no one seems to really care that they’re Minions at the end of the day. Some of their jokes are dialogue-based, but they depend on being able to decipher literal gibberish. When the Minions come up against obstacles, they usually talk(?) their way out in a matter of seconds — which also makes the involvement of side characters voiced by Michelle Yeoh, Julie Andrews, and RZA speed by without impact — and when they do cause a ruckus, it’s usually the result of “lol random” decisions that are fully at odds with whatever they’re trying to achieve in a given scene. It shouldn’t matter, but the Minions’ Gru-centric objectives are pretty much the only things that define them as “characters,” in the broadest sense. If the humor doesn’t stem from these annoying little goblins trying to do meaningful human things, then it rests solely on their buttocks sticking out of their overalls, a gag that repeats itself like clockwork every 10 or 15 minutes.

Minions: The Rise of Gru has a plot, but no story. It features references, but few jokes. Ultimately, enjoying it comes down to whether or not you can tolerate 90 minutes of “le ooga booga banana por favor,” and if you’re under the age of 3, the answer is probably yes — but in that case, any parent may as well just plop their kid in front of a YouTube playlist of D-Billions instead.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/lnWh6eu
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

Despite what the title suggests, Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course is much more than just a fancy flan or fruit tart to top off the gourmet meal that was the original game. This is an expansion that certainly favors quality over quantity, consisting primarily of only six mainline boss fights, but they’re six incredible boss fights that each stand tall as some of the most fun, challenging, and visually jaw-dropping ones yet. Sweetening the pot are several new weapons, new charms that each add subtle new approaches to fighting bosses, some tantalizing secrets with worthwhile reward, and a brand new character in Ms. Chalice, who comes with several skills that take some of the edge off of Cuphead’s intense difficulty without outright feeling like an “easy mode.”. My first playthrough was over in just a few hours, but they were hours I’d deem essential for any Cuphead fan.

The Delicious Last Course is all about making Ms. Chalice, a character who appeared in the main game only as a super-move-granting spirit, a real living and breathing cup person. To that end, Cuphead and his pal Mugman head towards a brand new isle where they’re told that Chef Saltbaker, the greatest chef in the land, is able to create a Wondertart that can permanently grant Ms. Chalice a body. The catch, of course, is that they must collect its ingredients by defeating the powerful foes that are guarding them. The story obviously isn’t the reason anyone is here, but it’s nonetheless charmingly told with quick cutscenes and more of the outstanding art that fans have come to expect.

... Some of the most spectacular 2D action-platformer bosses I've ever faced.

Thus the stage is set for another round of some of the most spectacular 2D action-platformer bosses I’ve ever faced. The content of The Delicious Last Course is accessible nearly right from the start of a new game, just after you clear the first mausoleum and meet Ms. Chalice for the first time – but if you’re new or rusty, you’ll definitely want to get your feet wet with some other foes first as the six bosses in this DLC do not pull their punches.The very first one has you contending with projectiles in the air, spikes on the ground that force you to keep moving, shifting platforms that put you in danger if they raise you up at the wrong time, little gnomes that emerge from the floor to shoot more projectiles at you, and more gnomes that appear on the platforms and will hammer you if you stay on for too long. And that’s just the first phase.

While the mechanical difficulty of the bosses in The Delicious Last Course are cranked up, Studio MDHR is not without mercy. There’s of course still an easier difficulty, but there are also a number of new charms and weapons that help tip the scales back in your favor, including the one that lets you play as Ms. Chalice herself. When you play as Ms. Chalice, you’re unable to equip any other charms, but she comes naturally equipped with a double jump, a dodge that she can use while on the ground to roll through obstacles, a dashing parry that makes it much easier to parry objects coming straight at you, and most crucially, four HP instead of the standard three.

Some may look at that and think “oh, so it’s essentially an extra easy mode,” but that’s not quite right. Ms. Chalice also has a much worse single jump than Cuphead, so she has to use her double jump in order to get over certain obstacles that Cuphead would easily be able to clear; her dash parry is great for objects coming straight towards her, but is harder to use than the traditional double jump parry in some situations; and she’s unable to equip any of the other powerful charms that are available – like my new personal favorite, the heart ring, which rewards you with HP on your first, third, and sixth parries, essentially giving you the ability to double your HP if you can successfully parry a boss’s attacks. Another powerful one is the Coffee charm, which passively refills your super meter alongside all of the normal ways to build it, meaning you get access to your super moves far more regularly.

As for the new weapons, I'm a big fan of the homing weapon called the Crackshot, which can be fired without worrying too much about aiming and has a special EX move that drops a turret, which can then be parried and launched into an enemy for big damage. Another great new addition is the Converge shot, which fires three full-screen projectiles in a wide spread, and that spread can be constricted by holding down the aim button. It’s a great weapon for quickly clearing out small weak enemies that get spawned by a boss, making it a perfect pairing for my usual go-to weapon, the Charge shot.

To get the coins needed to afford these new weapons and charms, The Delicious Last Course introduces a replacement for the run-and-gun levels of the main game in the form of a series of mini bosses led by the King of Games. Early on in the DLC, you’ll be able to climb a ladder to reach the King of Games’ castle (which is a totally awesome hand-sculpted stop motion model, by the way), and from there you’re free to challenge his champions. The catch is that each of these chess piece themed mini-boss fights aren’t won with your weapons or charms – they’re won entirely with your parry technique. One fight requires you to parry all of the tops of an army of pawns, while another requires you to blow out a bunch of candles in order to make the boss damageable with a parry. They’re all clever fights, and tackling them is a fun change of pace and a unique challenge, especially when you try the gauntlet mode and attempt to beat them all in a single life. More than anything though, it’s certainly a step up over the run-and-gun levels when it comes to earning the currency needed to purchase new equipment.

Everything else in The Delicious Last Course is what you’d expect from Cuphead, but taken to an even greater degree. Studio MDHR’s Maja Moldenhauer has stated that the animation frame count in this DLC alone is comparable to the entire core game, which sounded crazy to even think about before playing – but now that I have, it’s not a hard thing to believe. Every phase of every boss in The Delicious Last Course totally transforms the battle. You’ll go from fighting an ice magician to a diabolical refrigerator to a deranged snowflake all over the course of one fight, with each phase having anywhere from three to seven unique attacks, and each attack being so absurdly packed with detail that I didn't even notice most of the smaller bits until I recorded and watched back my footage. That includes things like the way those gnomes climb up the side of the mountain and scootch under the fur, the way the background subtly changes during every phase of the fight against Sheriff Winchester, or the way the aforementioned deranged snowflake literally wrings its own body to pop out its eye for one of its attacks.

Every attack is exceptionally well telegraphed

The magic of Cuphead’s boss design, and something that all of the bosses in this DLC exemplify, is that while it throws a ton of stuff at you, everything is generally pretty easy to avoid if you know it's coming. Every attack is exceptionally well telegraphed, patterns are easily recognizable, and the visual language is always simple and clear. So even if I was expected to do something that’s not normally very intuitive, like parrying a pink bell to close the mouth of a cow skull floating in acid in order to create a platform, it’s something that I can quickly pick up on because I had already been taught to parry pink objects before now. The Delicious Last Course skillfully nails that hard to hit balance of being tough but fair, and saves the truly difficult stuff for expert mode, which provides a very worthwhile challenge for hardcore fans once the main campaign is completed. And for those that want even more of a challenge, well there’s something for you too, but I wouldn’t want to spoil what it is or how to get it.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/2xzRLEG
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Ms. Marvel Episode 4 Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

This review contains full spoilers for episode four of Ms. Marvel, "Seeing Red", now available to view on Disney+. To remind yourself of where we left off, check out our Ms. Marvel episode 3 review.

Home is where the heart is, or so the popular idiom goes, but Ms. Marvel proves it isn’t as straightforward. In this week’s fourth episode, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) and her mother Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) fly to Pakistan for a long overdue family reunion, which leads to an enlightening experience for the Khans and the audience alike. It is another eventful, entertaining episode that packs in world-building mythology alongside an exploration of historical events that caused a real-life rupture, and Ms. Marvel continues to surprise with its capacity to juggle both story threads.

Academy Award-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy immediately captures the teenager’s overwhelmed yet excited state as she experiences Karachi, the home her parents left decades before. Jersey City is the only home Kamala has ever known, and removing her from the familiar takes the teenager further out of her comfort zone. Even though she isn’t entirely comfortable in her own skin in the United States, her friendships keep her grounded, and Kamala has some semblance of who she is. A fractured identity runs in the family, and moving Kamala away from her support group enables Ms. Marvel to continue digging into the rupture that led to this concept of the divided self.

The family reunion with Sana (Samina Ahmed) is joyous but not without tension. There is more than one elephant in the room as Kamala has questions for her nani about the bracelet, whereas Muneeba still harbors resentment. All three generations have unresolved issues that add to the emotional weight of “Seeing Red.”

Comments about Muneeba’s past rebellious streak prove how much closer she is to her daughter than either of them realizes. Her relationship with Sana is particularly revelatory as years of animosity spill out while Muneeba tidies her mother’s house from all its clutter. Shroff has stood out throughout this first season, and this MVP status is emphasized further during this emotional conversation. Ahmed is equally as powerful in a scene detailing why Muneeba wanted to move to the US — and why she now wants to reconnect.

It is refreshing that Sana isn’t depicted as an all-knowing, wise elder with all the answers. Instead, she paints a portrait (quite literally) of their family’s fractured heritage and how moving to the US further splintered this concept of home and identity. Later, she talks about the events of the Partition concerning her fractured identity and how she is still trying to figure out who she is after all this time. Borders define a country’s boundaries, but it is not as clear for the citizens on either side of the line. It continues to feel rather radical that an MCU series on Disney+ is tackling a traumatic historical event like this. “There is a border marked with blood and pain. People are claiming their identity based on an idea some old Englishman had when they were fleeing the country,” Sana tells Kamala. This description underscores the horror inflicted — and pain it is still causing.

It isn’t simply a history lesson dished out in digestible chunks; there is a link to the threats posed to the MCU version of the world. Parallels are to be expected, and in this case, the Djinn want Kamala’s bracelet so they can break the veil between dimensions. Bollywood multi-hyphenate Farhan Akhtar has the task of delivering all of this exposition in his role as Waleed. With the aid of a rather techy diorama, he sells the impending danger. Waleed is part of the Red Daggers (Kamala is right; they do sound like a Pakastani boy band), and their task is to “protect our people from threats of the unseen.”.

The introduction of another group of warriors adds to the jam-packed story but also offers some levity. Flirtatious sparring between Red Daggers member Kareem (Aramis Knight) and Kamala suggests he is another potential love interest, and this is enhanced by Vellani and Knight’s effortless, crackling chemistry. They both tease each other, and there is an element of a normal teenage hangout before the Djinn breaks up the fun. As fighting partners, they are a strong team, and at this point, I have to say, ‘Kamran, who?’ (Sorry, Kamran!)

An ambush sets in motion the episode's big set-piece, and the fight scenes capture the scale of the market location — and the city rooftops — while depicting the closed-in narrow streets and eventual dead-end in which Kamala and Kareem find themselves. Director Obaid-Chinoy cut her teeth in documentary filmmaking (for which she won two Oscars) and her eye for details during this frenetic confrontation elevates the sequence further.

This fantastic, colorful sequence is in contrast to the nighttime DODC supermax prison breakout, which is a goofy moment primarily because of how terrible the DODC are at their job. This might be the point to show how ineffectual this government agency is, but it is the one scene that doesn’t mesh with the rest of the otherwise wonderfully balanced “Seeing Red.”

Color is also mostly absent in the final sequence, aside from Kamala’s red and blue ensemble (a significant nod to her get-up in the comic). Costume designer Arjun Bhasin successfully weaves references to the source material with how clothing makes Kamala feel out of place in Karachi. The fact she wears jeans means they can’t sit inside at a restaurant and must endure the heat, and her t-shirt gives away that she is American to Kareem. Kamala also has plenty of jokes ready about the red scarf worn by her new fighting partner, and this color links the pair. “History in every thread of this fabric,” Waleed tells Kamala about her new garment that looks exceptional.

Unfortunately for Kamala, she is the only one thrust back to the chaotic scene at the train station in 1947 when families desperately tried to stay together after the British divided the country. When Kamla’s dad first referenced the train story, I had no idea it would become so integral to the overall plot. So far, showrunner Bisha K. Ali has done a terrific job of threading the mythological story with the painful (and very real) past, and Obaid-Chinoy captures the scale of this horrifying moment, which has mostly been ignored by mainstream Western cinema and television.

What Kamala’s role will turn into as she faces her family’s journey head-on is unclear, but there is a chance that she is the one who saved her nani from getting lost on the train platform when she was a toddler. It is quite the cliffhanger and one that packs a powerful image. Russian Doll recently used a train time-traveling device to address generational trauma, and Ms. Marvel is proving there is a lot more steam in this journey.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/OIjWMvX
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

Alright, let’s do this one more time: you are a hunter, and monsters are threatening your adorable little town. You’re given a quest list full of creatures to track down and turn into funny hats, and you’ll do just that until the townsfolk are safe, your build is optimized, and your outfit is as fly as your wirebugs. If you played Monster Hunter World’s Iceborne expansion, or pretty much any of Monster Hunter’s major re-releases before it, then Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak is going to be a very familiar Palamute ride through the park. It’s a formulaic DLC full of exciting new foes and a couple cool new locales – and even though it doesn’t really have a ton of interesting surprises of its own, the quality of those additions reinforces just how fun that formula can be.

Sunbreak is essentially structured like a brand new game, introducing the functionally identical hub town of Elgado to operate out of and a fresh storyline to follow there. That story is, once again, a largely ignorable and entirely predictable tale about how something is making the local monsters all hot and bothered, this time set in the European-themed Kingdom rather than the Japanese-inspired Kamura. Its characters are at least slightly more interesting this time around, but plot has never been the draw of Monster Hunter and that certainly doesn’t change here.

What We Said About Monster Hunter Rise

"Monster Hunter Rise mixes classic Monster Hunter ideas with some of World’s best improvements and a whole bunch of clever new mechanics of its own. Not all of them are slam dunks, but they are all fun – and the introduction of Wirebugs and the mobility they bring to every fight is so great I never want to give them up." - Tom Marks, March 23, 2021

Score: 7

Read the full Monster Hunter Rise review.

As has become a time-honored tradition, the expansion immediately makes all of your gear irrelevant by introducing Master Rank: a higher tier of hunts full of more difficult versions of the base game’s monsters, as well as an assortment of new and returning monsters to take on. That’s not a complaint, though, as it is legitimately fun to have the bar reset so drastically, with plenty of powerful armor pieces and weapon upgrades to gleefully chase all over again. And while it’s by no means a new trick in Monster Hunter’s bag, one of Master Rank’s greatest strengths has always been that it gives monsters altered behaviors and fresh moves to make them a renewed challenge without just raising their stats.

Both the brand new monsters and the ones returning from previous Monster Hunter games continue Rise’s trend of being as stellar to look at as they are to fight. A new trio referred to as the “Three Lords” are all particularly great: Garangolm’s rocky ape-like appearance disguises its explosive mobility and surprising elemental effects; Lunagaron puts a fun twist on a traditional werewolf theme; and Malzeno’s vampire-inspired moveset genuinely shocked me the first time I saw it blink around the battlefield. Older returning foes like Astalos and Gore Magala fit right in as well, looking better than ever while providing an excitingly fresh challenge for anyone who hasn’t had a chance to face them before.

The new monsters are as stellar to look at as they are to fight.

As for where you’ll do that, Sunbreak adds two new locales: the Jungle, a tropical island originally introduced in Monster Hunter 2 that has been masterfully reimagined thanks to Rise’s seamless 3D maps, and the Citadel, a delightfully eclectic space that can stretch a single hunt from poisoned swamps to snowy peaks to a huge ruined castle. While I liked the Citadel more thematically, the Jungle’s condensed layout makes it Rise’s most convenient map to hunt on yet. It feels as if it learned the valuable lesson that collecting Spiribirds for a stat boost at the start of each quest shouldn’t be such a hassle, giving you a huge patch of them just a Wirebug-ride away from your starting tent. But both locales are quite entertaining to explore in their own ways, packed with even more little secrets waiting to be found.

Speaking of fixing some of the mistakes of Rise, Rampages have been given the boot to an almost comical degree. The Rampage weapon tree is practically the only one that doesn’t get extended with new upgrade options, Rampage quests don’t seem to have been updated in any way, and new weapons scrap the Rampage Skill system entirely in favor of a decoration slot only fillable with special Rampage decorations (which have no connection beyond the name). It’s a stunning reversal, though not an entirely surprising one given how dull the repetitive nature of Rampage quests eventually became.

While I’m not shedding any tears over the abandonment of Rampages, it also stands out that nothing has been introduced to take their place. I was glad Capcom decided to experiment with a new quest type like that, even if its appeal ultimately didn’t last, and the fact that a central feature of Rise has been gutted rather than improved in Sunbreak leaves this expansion feeling far thinner. That’s especially true compared to Iceborne, which introduced clever new ideas of its own to World, most notably the Guiding Lands as an interesting take on its endgame. In contrast, later on Sunbreak just ramps up monster difficulty with a small but amusing twist I can’t spoil – and while that’s certainly kept me happily playing, it doesn’t inspire the same sort of newfound excitement.

It's odd that Rampages were abandoned instead of improved.

To be clear, there is plenty to do in Sunbreak. After 45+ hours I still have gear I want to chase and optional tasks to complete, but there just aren’t that many fresh ideas to help it stand out as a whole lot more than a bunch of cool new monsters to fight. To that end, nearly every mainline quest sticks to the standard hunt format, with nothing like World’s colossal Zorah Magdaros fights, Iceborne’s Seliana defense against Velkhana, or even Rise’s admittedly one-note Rampages to at least try and shake things up. Again, every single quest I went on was still a ton of fun, but Sunbreak can start feeling pretty familiar by the end.

The one place it does do something truly interesting is in its Follower quests. As you progress up Master Rank, townsfolk in both Elgado and Kamura will ask to accompany you on specific single-player quests as AI-controlled hunters. Doing their quests will unlock those people as options in Support Survey quests (also limited to single-player) where you can pick two as your party members. The hunts themselves aren’t exactly challenging or unique, but the AI is surprisingly sophisticated, using items, mounting monsters, and even placing traps before standing behind them and emoting for you to come and wait with them.

It’s not as robust as a whole single-player campaign or anything, with Follower quests still initially unlocked through multiplayer story progress, but it does make grinding for specific monster parts on your own a lot more fun. The followers you bring along will banter amusingly with each other during a quest, and it was nice to get to know these characters better by actually going out into the field and hunting with them. Followers are so well implemented, in fact, that it’s a bit disappointing you can’t use them to fill empty seats in multiplayer quests as well. It seems like a pointless restriction, especially when a follower can sometimes accompany you into a handful of specific multiplayer Urgent quests.

Apart from the big additions, Sunbreak brings a slew of quality of life improvements. One notably smart tweak to the way you pick your pre-hunt meals lets you alter the effectiveness of each dango ability by changing on the order you select them, adding some neat decision-making to the process. You can now quickly swap between two loadouts of Switch Skills in the middle of a hunt too, massively expanding your potential moveset. Similarly, buddies can be customized more than ever, letting you change out special moves to build the ultimate Palico without having to rely as much on finding your ideal randomized cat. There’s nothing earth-shattering in all these updates, but it’s great that pretty much every system has been touched in some welcome way.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/HPLkGs4
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Baymax! Season 1 Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

All six episodes of Baymax! arrive Wednesday, June 29 on Disney+.

Big Hero 6's second animated spinoff series comes in the form of Baymax!, a gentle, jovial run of six minisodes designed to comfort and delight. At around nine minutes each, give or take, these short adventures feature lovable, inflatable doctor-bot Baymax patrolling its bustling San Fransokyo neighborhood in search of those in need of medical -- and emotional -- assistance. It's light, rewarding content for those looking for a brief reprieve.

Baymax, as a character, is a triumph on more than one level. Like a reverse-Terminator, it's relentless in its mission to help others and much of the humor here comes in the form of our own reluctance to, basically, get a check up. Our own stubbornness, as humans, to practice self-care or even our fear to face a diagnosis collide with Baymax's programming to be both kind and logical. So it's no surprise that a few of these chapters involve a chase scenario, where the episode's patient literally scrambles to evade Baymax's dopey, determined care.

30 Rock's Scott Adsit reprises his role as Baymax (which he also did for Big Hero 6: The Series), once more providing a calm A.I. presence with notes of childlike innocence. The dichotomy between Baymax's bloated, cumbersome form and its approach to others, which feels tame and respectful, taps into its usual comedy, giving us a hero who'd rather do things right than do things fast, shirking all shortcuts to wellness.

Ryan Potter and Maya Rudolph are also back as Hiro and his Aunt Cass, to help embed these tiny capsules of attentive aid within the larger Big Hero 6 universe. The episodes themselves mostly run as single-serving stories, though the season wraps up in a serialized manner, nicely tying things together. The animation's crisp, the action is entertaining, and the interaction between Baymax and the fair citizenry of San Fransokyo is lovely.

Since the season is small in stature and breezes by quickly, there's not too much to dig into story-wise without delving into full spoilers, so let's just say that Baymax tenderly treats patients from all walks of life (and species) who are dealing with everything from allergies to phobias to menstruation (Episode 3 is a standout in both topic, humor, and messaging).

Baymax, sweetly slow on the uptake, is eternally well-meaning, and the series not only reinforces the importance of community but also the idea of people needing emotional support and how often that's connected to physical health. Baymax is "programmed" to care, but its packaging and demeanor never place you in a cold vacuum of robotics. Its drive to nurture all, as funnily boring and lumbering as that's supposed to be, feels as human as the need for us to flee from healing and self-reflection.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/wzRiW5Z
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Sony Inzone M9 Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

With big PS5 games like God of War, and now Spider-Man Remastered & Miles Morales coming to PC, it was inevitable that Sony would introduce a gaming monitor. The Sony Inzone M9 is a 27-inch gaming monitor with everything you’d want from a 4K screen, including a 120Hz refresh rate with HDMI 2.1 to drive it, IPS colors, HDR 600, VRR, and G-Sync compatibility. But what really gives this gaming monitor its edge is its HDR capabilities (including one that’s PlayStation-specific) and competitive $899 price tag.

Sony Inzone M9 – Design

The Sony Inzone M9 has a black and white color scheme that makes it absolutely look like a gaming monitor made for the PS5. Meanwhile, the front of the display’s base looks almost identical to Sony’s console, except it’s leaning back.

Thankfully, the Sony Inzone M9’s styling isn’t as eye-catching as the PS5’s popped collar. In fact, the design here actually helps hide the monitor’s feet and most of the entire stand behind the screen. There’s also a cable passthrough in the center of the supporting arm to keep things even tidier.

All of this makes for a very clean gaming desk setup and thanks to the monitor’s rear-positioned feet, you can rotate your gaming keyboard or whip your gaming mouse far forward without bumping into anything. That said, the way the support arm is slanted means the monitor shifts slightly forward and back as you adjust its height.

The business side of the display is nice and clean too. There’s no outrageous RGB lighting or big tribal logo, and the bottom lip is only a hair over 10mm in size. The bezels are pretty small too, measuring in at 7mm on top and then 9mm on the sides.

Sony Inzone M9 – Features

To quickly review, the Sony Inzone M9 is a 27-inch monitor with a 3,440 x 1,440 resolution IPS panel featuring a 120Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and support for VRR and G-Sync compatibility.

Its most stand-out feature is its full-array backlighting system, a display technology that is primarily seen in 4K TVs. Although this isn’t the first monitor to feature local dimming, it packs 96 lighting zones to drive localized contrast that blows most gaming monitors out of the water. Other competing 4K gaming monitors like the $799 LG UltraGear 27GN950-B only feature 16 local dimming zones.

More often, gaming monitors like the LG UltraGear 27GP950 and Samsung Odyssey G70A only feature edge-lit backlighting, so they have a noticeable glow around the edges of the display. Meanwhile, the Sony Inzone M9 can display bright pixels right next to sheer darkness without any halo-ing issues (or backlight bleeding into darker parts of the screen).

Of course, this isn’t the most backlighting zones we’ve seen on a gaming monitor. The $1,999 Acer Predator x27 and Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ both featured 384 zones as the first two G-Sync Ultimate gaming monitors in 2018. More recently, Mini-LED technology has introduced even more intricate backlighting control to displays, but at a considerable cost. For a few examples, the $2,895 Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX features 1,152 lighting zones and the $2,299 Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 has 2,048 lighting zones.

The Sony Inzone M9’s 96 lighting zones might seem minuscule by comparison, but it still delivers a fantastic picture and at $899 it comes at a fantastic value.

As for connectivity, it has two HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort, and USB-C (with DP support), so you can connect all your devices including two consoles, a gaming PC, and even a gaming laptop if you wanted. Better yet, it automatically changes inputs once it detects a video signal. The monitor also has two KVM switches built into it so you can share any USB peripherals plugged into the monitor with two computing devices.

When connecting to a PS5, the Sony Inzone M9 also offers Auto HDR Tonemapping. Basically, this means your console talks to the screen and recognizes its full capabilities to automatically set the HDR settings. This saves you the hassle of eyeballing the HDR brightness and darkness settings for every game. Unfortunately, Auto HDR Tonemapping only works when this monitor is connected to Sony consoles and not a gaming PC playing PlayStation games.

Sony Inzone M9 – OSD and Software

Sony’s on-screen display menu system is clear, fast, and easy to navigate. On the back of the monitor, you’ll find a joystick to open and get through all the menus.

All the typical stuff for a gaming monitor is here including adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation, color temperature, and black equalizer. There are a few prebaked presets you can mess with and the Inzone M9 will actually auto-switch picture modes too.

It also features some more gamer-oriented features including turning on an on-screen clock, crosshairs, and the frame rate. Unfortunately, that last one doesn’t work as well as intended as it just shows what hertz the monitor is operating at rather than a live counter of how many frames your game is running at. I had Ghost of Tsushima running in fidelity mode and while the game was clearly running at 30fps, the counter on the screen read 60Hz.

If you find messing with the settings on the monitor itself to be finicky, you can also adjust everything from Sony’s Inzone PC application. It offers all the same adjustments and while I found it a bit strange using PC software for a monitor, after fine-tuning things without having to reach behind the monitor I kind of wished more displays came with an application.

Sony Inzone M9 – Performance

The Sony Inzone M9 offers astounding picture quality. Thanks to those 96 local dimming zones I’ve mentioned previously, this monitor has almost OLED levels of contrast. Highlights shown on the screen are blindingly bright and darkness is represented by almost pitch black. What’s even more impressive is you can have these two extremes right next to each other without seeing a speck of dull gray pixels anywhere. This was especially evident whenever looking at a starry sky in Returnal’s intro every time I died.

On top of the great contrast, colors really pop from the Inzone M9’s IPS panel, so you can enjoy all the rich colors in vibrant games like Horizon: Forbidden West. According to my colorimeter tests, this monitor maxes out for sRGB and 98% of DCI-P3 colors, so color accuracy is excellent here.

As for motion, the Inzone M9 does a fantastic job of making gameplay look fluid. Thanks to support for VRR, FreeSync, and G-Sync compatibility, you won’t see tearing on this display while playing on either console or any gaming PC. Outside of gameplay, I tested the monitor against the Blur Busters UFO Test and it impressively showed no ghosting at all even on the top row at 120Hz.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/9t7aeMp
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Sony Inzone H9 Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

Sony is no stranger to headphones, but the gaming headsets it makes tend to be specifically PlayStation-branded — most notably the Sony Pulse 3D headset that came out in 2020. The tech giant’s latest outing in the gaming headset market is a trio of products: the Inzone H3, H7, and H9. Today I’m looking at the high-end H9, which features digital noise canceling in addition to wireless and Bluetooth connectivity. It’s expensive and simplistic in design, but when compared to the Pulse 3D headset, this is a tough sell for most of its target audience.

Sony Inzone H9 - Design and Features

The Sony Inzone H9 looks very similar to the Pulse 3D headset, with a white plastic outer shell and matte black headband. The design is simple and clean and fits right in with other accessories in the PS5 lineup.

The earcups vary greatly from the Pulse 3D – instead of a round circular shape, the Inzone H9 is more of an oval, reminding me a bit more of the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones. Like the WH-1000XM5, the side of the H9 uses forks to attach the earcups instead of the more rigid design of the Pulse 3D. This gives the earcups a bit more flexibility and makes the H9 a lot more comfortable to wear than the Pulse 3D headset, which felt like it was tightly cuffing on my head. The fork design offers more leverage to accommodate more head shapes – I was able to wear this for a full 8-hour workday and then turn around and listen to music without any discomfort.

Underneath the earcups are several buttons to be found: The right side houses the power button, the Bluetooth pairing button, and a Game/Chat button which allows you to adjust the levels of either. The bottom left houses the USB-C port, a dedicated button to turn on or off ambient noise, and a wheel for volume control.

The Inzone H9 is the only headset in the trio that offers the same soft-fit leather included in the Sony WH-1000XM5s, which gives the earcups a soft foam-like feel that helps maintain comfort over extended wear. That said, it’s also more susceptible to scratching and tears after long-term use, and is more prone to picking up oils and smudges.

The headphones use a USB dongle to connect wirelessly to a PC or PS5. I also tried connecting the H9 to my Xbox Series X and Series S consoles using the dongle, but sadly couldn’t get it to work on either. I had the dongle set to Windows, which kept the dongle/headset connection stable, but the Xbox refused to recognize the headset. I also tried connecting it to Xbox via Bluetooth, to no avail.

The Inzone H9 also has a built-in microphone, though I found it a bit underwhelming (more on that later). Instead of the mic being something you detach or pull out of a little cubby, you move it around using a little rotary to pull it up or slide it down. It also uses a flip-to-mute system, meaning the only way to mute the microphone is to flip it up away from your mouth. It works fine, but personally, I would prefer a dedicated mute button.

Sony Inzone H9 - Active Noise-Canceling

The Sony Inzone H9 features active noise-canceling, a welcome feature that was missing on the Pulse 3D headset. Of the three new H-series Inzone headsets, only the H9 features ANC.

The Inzone H9 does a good job of blocking out sound. In testing, I found the noise-cancellation feature was way better than the Razer Opus and more closely up to par with my AirPods Pro. Before playing any audio, the noise cancellation didn’t fully block outside noise. I could still slightly hear a fan blowing, or a bit of noise from a TV set to a normal volume. Once I started playing music or a podcast through the H9, though, it did a good job blocking outside sound.

The Inzone H9 also has an Ambient Sound feature that amplifies outside sound so that you can hear things like people talking without having to take the headphones off. There’s a setting in the Inzone Hub software that lets you set your desired ambient sound level, as well as a “Focus on Voice” toggle that reduces background noise and prioritizes person-to-person conversations.

Sony Inzone H9 - Setup and Connectivity

The Inzone H9 has decent connectivity options, notably the ability to connect via both 2.4GHz (via USB dongle) and Bluetooth simultaneously. This is a nice feature that’s recently made its way to some high-end headsets, allowing you to play audio from both your console/PC and phone or another Bluetooth device at the same time.

Bluetooth pairing is simple and only takes a few seconds after holding the pairing button on the right ear cup. I found this to be super convenient as it allowed me to be on a Discord call with my friends while also having the sound of a game from my PS5 or PC playing as well. Beyond pairing, the Bluetooth button does triple duty – pressing the button once plays or pauses a song, two skips the song, and pressing the button three times restarts it.

On the left side of the ear cup, you’ll find a USB-C port for charging. Sony includes a USB Type-A cable with the headset or you can use a USB-C to USB-C cable to charge as well. Unfortunately, I could not get the headset to work over a wired connection when testing it on either Windows or Mac. If you need to charge the headset while using it, you have to still use the USB dongle for connectivity. There also isn’t a 3.5mm jack, unlike the Pulse 3D.

Sony Inzone H9 - Battery Life

Sony promises the Inzone H9 can deliver up to 32 hours of battery life. In my testing, I managed to get about 30 hours of usage before I opted to plug in for a charge.

The Inzone H9 doesn’t provide a clear indication of your battery life on the headset itself. There’s no display indicator, nor even a blinking LED to let you know it’s getting low. You have to connect to PC or PS5 in order to check battery life, and even then it doesn’t give you an exact percentage or estimated time remaining – just an icon with three bars on PS5 (or four bars on PC) to indicate how much juice you have left.

Sony Inzone H9 - Performance

While the H9 is more of a gaming headset, I was curious to see how it performed playing music. In Seven Nation Army, which has an incredible bass riff, the H9 offered clear and full sound. The bass was not overpowering and I could hear the other instruments without having to crank up my volume. That said, the H9 isn’t quite up there with some of Sony’s more dedicated headphones, like the WH-1000 line, but it’s not a terrible option if you’re trying to get more mileage out of your headset.

For gaming performance, I booted Resident Evil 2 Remake, which takes full advantage of the PS5’s Tempest 3D audio. Atmosphere aside, the 3D audio through the H9 immersed me even more in the game. The sense of dread of wandering a dark, gloomy zombie-infested police station puts me more at the edge of my seat with 3D audio when I can hear which direction zombies are moaning and shambling towards me.

Games like Astro’s Playroom and Horizon: Forbidden West are no different. Roaming the world in both felt like a significant improvement compared to playing on TV with no headset. The immersion that the PS5 as a console can do is impressive, and the H9 performed its job on that front admirably.

The microphone built into the Sony Inzone H9 is not very impressive – it feels cheaply made, and quite frankly out of place compared to other parts on the headset. It’s very sensitive – picking up all sounds around you, not just your voice – yet also extremely quiet. When performing audio tests, I set the microphone levels to the highest they could be, yet the output from the mic was still very quiet – I had to crank up the volume to hear it. It was clear, sure, but quiet. Even on my Discord and Slack calls and the few phone calls I took through my phone with the headset, I was told the audio I output was extremely quiet while speaking in my normal voice. I had to overcompensate by raising my voice in order to be heard, which is not ideal when trying to have casual conversations with friends and family.

Sony Inzone H9 - Software

The Sony Inzone H9 has a companion app, Inzone Hub, which supports Windows and Mac devices. Inzone Hub focuses on three types of settings: Sound, Device, and App Sync. The Sound settings allow you to adjust the Noise Canceling and Ambient Sound, or turn both off.

Spatial Sound can also be enabled in the app, though you will need to scan a QR code and use your smartphone to take pictures of your left and right ear in order to set up the personalization features. Dynamic Range also has a few options: High, Low, or disabled. The microphone levels can also be adjusted. An interesting feature to note is that when the mic is propped up and not positioned where your mouth is, you will be locked from customizing the mic's volume and other features, like enabling auto gain.

On the Sound Settings page, you can adjust the equalizer of the headphones. The EQ options aren’t as robust as the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro, where things such as the mixer, game, and chat levels can be tuned, but there’s still plenty here to tinker with. The Inzone Hub includes a few presets, such as one designed for listening to music or videos, another that is a standard sound, and one that emphasizes boosting the bass. That said, the equalizer customizations you make won’t be enabled if your headset is set to “Inzone H9 - Chat” in your Sound Settings, so you will need to make sure each time you pair the device on Mac or Windows that it is recognized as “Inzone H9 - Game.” The EQ presets already prepped in the Inzone Hub all sound distinct. There’s some tinkering and experimentation to be had, though if you are not familiar with how to adjust the frequency for an audio device the chart layout will likely be intimidating and confusing.

Sony says you can import EQ profiles, however, the process is manual and can be a bit of a headache. The App Sync feature sounds like a great idea, but it is again a manual process. Instead of suggesting a list of apps on your computer installed for you, you will need to dig through your computer to find the correct file of the specific app. The App Sync feature allows you to enable the Inzone H9 as your default audio device, but the lack of streamlining makes it not worth the trouble and I found it easier to just go into whatever app I was using, like Zoom or Spotify, and adjust the settings from there.

It’s also worth noting that EQ adjustments you make in the Inzone Hub only work with PC, and won’t carry over to PS5 or devices you are connected to over Bluetooth. That said, this isn’t necessarily a fault of the headset and software itself, but rather an ongoing issue among headsets that work with both PC and consoles. EQ support coming to consoles would surely circumvent that, but for now, you can’t take full advantage of fine-tuning adjustments or even the few presets the Inzone Hub has unless you are on a computer.

Overall, Inzone Hub is pretty underwhelming. It doesn’t offer a ton of features, especially considering the price of the Inzone H7 and H9. Compared to the software used for Logitech gaming products, for example, the Inzone Hub just looks so dull and direct.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/Qz8SPJO
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

DNF Duel Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

It’s hard not to see the similarities between DNF Duel and 2020’s Granblue Fantasy Versus: they’re both 2D fighters developed by Arc System Works; they’re both based on a franchise that’s wildly popular abroad but not as well-known in North America (in this case, Dungeon Fighter Online); and most notably, they’re both deceptively complex. Simplified controls and a guard button can easily be the death knell for a true competitive fighting game, but ArcSys and 8ing (the team behind Marvel vs. Capcom 3) haven’t added them at the cost of skill. Instead DNF Duel is a game of resource management, patience, and creative problem solving wrapped up in a beautiful package, although it may not be as friendly to newcomers as intended.

DNF Duel joins the growing number of fighting games using simplified inputs to help ease you into its control scheme. Special moves can be performed with only a button press, or a button combined with a direction, but those who go the extra length of using the more traditional quarter-circle motions are rewarded with better resource recharge. It’s nice to have the quick option while still being given a boost for putting in the extra effort, and the simplified inputs mean fights are about understanding what each character’s moveset can really do.

For instance, the Striker can chain special attacks together in a way that other characters can’t, making her especially adept at continuing pressure and often tricking opponents into thinking they’re safe to counterattack when they’re actually not. Many characters also have invincible reversals on wake up, quick pokes that can be converted into big damage, and gigantic screen filling objects like Inquisitor’s giant wheel or Kunoichi’s fire tornado. These are some truly wild characters with some truly nonsense moves, and much of the difficulty curve consists of learning how to deal with these attacks. Getting beatdown by one gave me concrete goals to lab against in training mode, and a major sense of satisfaction when I didn’t let someone get away with it later. But until you know what to do in a given situation, tying so much of each fight up in learning these tricks can be rough to deal with.

Rather than assigning inputs to a cooldown like Granblue Fantasy Versus, DNF Duel ties your MP Skills and Guard Cancels to an MP meter, with the most powerful screen-clearing moves often consuming the most MP. The twist in this comes from the ability to Convert white damage (the temporary damage you gain from blocking and being hit by less powerful moves) into MP. When you perform a Conversion, it also returns your character to a neutral state, allowing you to chain moves together that normally wouldn’t be possible, or making certain risky moves safe by letting you block when you would normally be punished. Finding creative ways to use my MP and knowing when to Convert my white damage often meant the difference between victory and defeat, and I really liked the flexibility the system offered.

Movement also took me a while to wrap my head around. At first, DNF Duel felt heavy and unwieldy. Although it’s an anime fighter, there’s no air guarding, no double jumps, and no air dashes other than some character-specific moves, so the action stays relatively grounded. There’s also Exhaustion to consider, the state you enter when you run out of MP and your MP specific skills no longer function. Combine that with characters that can harass you from a full screen away and completely lock you down if you’ve used all your MP, and you have a pretty frustrating on-ramp as you learn the systems and roster. But once DNF Duel starts to click and you learn what moves to look out for, when to press a counterattack, and when to bet it all on Conversion, its quick decision making leads to some really fun and satisfying moments where you can take a big risk for a bigger payoff.

Dungeon Fighter Offline

Thankfully, there are a few offline options to help you learn these myriad systems as DNF Duel has several offerings for those who prefer their battles to be solo affairs. The Arcade and Survival Modes are standard fighting game fare, with Survival allowing you to use your accumulated score to make purchases of greater attack power, health recharges, or even things like increased guard crush to break through your opponent’s defenses. The arcade mode is simply a series of eight one-on-one battles, and they can get pretty tough on the hardest difficulty. It was a good way to get familiar with characters and help build my understanding of how to keep myself out of bad situations.

Unfortunately, the DNF Duel Story Mode is fairly dull even by fighting game standards. All of the 15 starting characters have a series of visual novel-like vignettes during which almost nothing interesting happens before they are forced into fighting someone else for the thinnest possible reasons. Each character story can be completed in about half an hour, and other than giving some bare insight into the personalities and relationships among the cast, there’s little reason for completing more than the one needed to unlock a secret character. There is some cool custom art accompanying each story, but you can also unlock those in the gallery for a small amount of the in-game currency you earn by playing various modes.

The training mode options are at least pretty extensive to make up for this, even if the menus required some fiddling around to set the conditions to what I wanted each time. There are gameplay mechanics breakdowns, character-specific tutorials, and combo challenges, all of which were valuable as I learned the ins and outs of each system. I especially loved reading the info panes for every character, as they provide useful insight into how certain moves were intended to be used by the developers.

Dungeon Fighter Online

After the fantastic rollback netcode of Guilty Gear Strive, I went in expecting DNF Duel to play really well online, and thankfully that appears to be the case so far. Most of the matches I’ve played felt smooth, even ones I’ve played against people in Asia despite some rollback frames. Arc System Works once again gets a little too cute with physical lobbies for my taste, working as they do in Dragon Ball FighterZ or Granblue with in-game arcade machines you walk up to in order to join a match, but getting into Player Match rooms is a breeze. You can also set your lobby character, Player Card, slogans, and the information you want displayed for a bit of neat customization after purchasing different options with in-game currency or unlocking them through specific challenges.

"once DNF Duel starts to click ... its quick decision making leads to some really fun and satisfying moments..."

While queuing for a ranked match, you can standby in the Training, Tutorial, Arcade, and Survival modes, which is always a nice way to alleviate long queue times since there’s unfortunately no crossplay between the Steam and PlayStation versions. I haven’t had issues queuing yet, but DNF Duel only just released and is a bit of a niche title already, so hopefully the player pool remains active enough that the lack of crossplay doesn’t become a problem.

A Thing of Beauty

DNF Duel continues ArcSys’ trend of having fantastic 2.5D art. If the developer hadn’t cemented itself as the leader in this space after Granblue Fantasy Versus and Guilty Gear Strive, that reputation should be rock solid now as both the characters and the stages are simply gorgeous.. Each member of the cast has a distinct look and are easy to differentiate between in the heat of the action – that’s impressive given how incredible they are in motion too, with clothes rustling, colorful effects flying about, and supers that are as unique to their skillset as they are bombastic.

The music doesn’t quite hit the same bar sadly, as it’s mostly unremarkable rock with a few fun highlights here and there. But all of the art, music, and character voice lines can be perused in the gallery mode after you purchase them with in-game currency. There are tons of pieces to go through, and fans of the original DFO should find plenty to love here as well since the art options aren’t limited to just DNF Duel.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/69bke0G
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Spy x Family: Season 1 Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

Spy x Family Season 1 is now streaming on Hulu and Crunchyroll.

After a memorable and action-packed premiere, the first season of Spy x Family went onto cement itself as one of the best new anime shows in years. It’s a comedy with all the elements of a winning family sitcom (but turned up to 11), with literal life or death situations, dazzling animation, and poignant commentary on family and class, all while introducing some of the best characters of the year, regardless of medium.

The show follows the Forgers, your run-of-the-mill family with a spy dad, an assassin mom, and a mind-reading kid — only they have no idea about each other's secret lives, except for the child who can read their every thought. Spy x Family works as the kind of funny and heartwarming family sitcom that dominated ABC’s TGIF lineup in the '90s, and like every great sitcom, this works in no small part due to the characters.

We already met Anya in the premiere and I wrote at the time that she was a strong contender for best character of the season, which remains true. Anya is to Spy x Family what Baby Sinclair is to ‘90s comedy Dinosaurs – basically, the adorable child character that steals every scene they are in, who will inspire a ludicrous amount of merch. But unlike the baby dinosaur and many other kid characters, Anya never borders on annoying, and her hilarious reactions to the crazy things around her don't get old; instead they improve every scene.

Anya's telepathic power isn't just there for comedic purposes, but to act as a metaphor for how kids can be more receptive than adults give them credit for. It's a brilliant touch to make Anya the only person in Spy x Family to see through everyone's lies, as this is a show quite literally built on deceptions. Everyone has something to hide, everyone presents an image of themselves to the world that is meticulously crafted to avoid suspicion, and it is no coincidence that the show seems to be set in the '60s or '70s, the golden age of espionage, where lying was the order of the day. This makes the fact that Yor and Loid are completely oblivious to each other's secret lives despite the incredibly obvious clues understandable. It's not that Yor is too dumb to realize that the goons with machine guns trying to kill Loid are not his patients practicing some new therapy technique, it's that she is too focused on not letting her own secrets spill that she doesn't imagine that other people have equally big ones.

Speaking of Yor, she is another very strong contender for best character of the year: an awkward, quiet, clumsy, funny badass who jumps at the chance to protect her makeshift family from anything that would threaten it, often with deadly intent. And like any great sitcom, Spy x Family also offers some poignant commentary and even a couple of life lessons here and there, like its exploration of societal views and expectations towards women, especially single women. She might be capable of taking down a whole army by herself using nothing more than a hairpin, but Yor being an unmarried adult woman? Now that is a threat to the safety of the nation. Spy x Family manages to strike a great balance between commentary, drama, action, and slice-of-life comedy without undermining any of those respective elements in the process.

At its heart, this is an anime about family, and how the ideal family unit is an idea very much influenced by a specific view of class and privilege. Though not the sole focus of Spy x Family, it still manages to have a poignant message on how much harder it is to have to fight to achieve a certain status when you're not born into it. Even without the fate of the world at stake, the Forgers know their current position is very fragile, and they'll do anything to keep the illusion of their perfect family together.

It manages to elaborate and expand on tiny details with incredible results.

As an adaptation, Spy x Family is spectacular. It takes a slower approach than most anime adaptations in terms of manga chapters per TV episode, taking its time to set things up and giving the show an almost slice-of-life tone and pace where the mundane takes a lot of importance. And yet it also manages to elaborate and expand on tiny details with incredible results, like a whole episode dedicated to the best dodgeball match since Hunter x Hunter, or a delightfully wholesome party for Anya at a castle. Spy x Family is just getting started, but its first season provided a weekly source of comfort and laughs that, like the best sitcoms, you could easily picture yourself watching every week for a decade. Move over, Tanners, Bankses, and Winslows: the Forgers have arrived and they are not going anywhere.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/5dAsNyV
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming

Outriders Worldslayer Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out

Ever since Outriders released early last year, I’ve held a theory that it's the ultimate fast food game: a bland story filled with cheesy one-liners and mindless encounters that you know aren’t good for you, but undeniably awesome combat that’s easy for you and your friends to lose hours in just makes it so dang tasty. In that context, if the base game was a Big Mac, then the latest expansion, Worldslayer, is that one sandwich from KFC where the bread is replaced by fried chicken. With a fine-tuned combat sandbox, expanded build-crafting options, and a drastically upgraded endgame, Worldslayer improves upon a lot of what was already great about the original, but it also doubles down on many of its shortcomings. That includes another weak story, annoying boss fights, and an overall lack of stuff to do. The result is a fleeting evolution of its space–magic mayhem, but one that’s still entertaining enough to leave me feeling good about making a return trip to Enoch.

Like the vanilla campaign, Worldslayer’s borderline incoherent story takes place on an alien world where you play as a magical soldier called an Outrider, complete with a stupid sci-fi haircut and some of the cringiest dialogue in all the cosmos. The same mysterious anomaly that gave your character powers now threatens to destroy the entire planet, plus there’s a new scary lady that wants to kill everyone, and yadda yadda yadda – now you’ve gotta murder thousands of people and animals in the name of all that’s good.

What We Said About Outriders

"Outriders offers some genuinely great sci-fi action, alongside some really interesting world and creature design that I'd love to see more of. Its mostly satisfying take on RPG loot progression is well worth putting up with a lackluster story, a few clunky interfaces, and some lingering technical issues. Outriders is the good kind of grind - especially if you're into goo-ifying your enemies with a couple of friends." - Jon Ryan, April 16, 2021

Score: 7

Read the full Outriders review.

It isn’t exactly high art, and the morbid curiosity that kept me following along meant I frequently found myself to be the one holdout in my group who didn’t vote to skip most cutscenes. That said, the story does actually answer some key questions I had after the main game and, crucially, addresses the ECA/Insurgency civil war that was left unresolved in the base campaign. It’s just unfortunate that a sci-fi world with this much potential is bogged down by bad dialogue and vague cutscenes that feel like they’re rushing through the beats to minimize the amount of time spent not killing things.

After roughly seven short hours that’s mostly mindlessly killing waves upon waves of enemies, you’ll wrap up the core Worldslayer campaign in a pretty disappointing fashion. Having defeated enemies you hardly had a chance to meet, made new allies that speak mostly in cryptic riddles, and saved bland characters from an early death, you’ll walk off into whatever the Enoch equivalent of a sunset is to advance towards the equally indecipherable endgame story.

The story falls comically short, but combat picks up the slack.

But while the plot falls comically short of pushing you toward the action, the satisfying-as-heck combat picks up the slack in a big way. Whether you’re pulling off insane DPS as the ninja-like Trickster or Hulk-smashing groups of enemies as the unstoppable Devastator, turning whole groups of enemies into bright red giblets hits all the right notes. Automatic shotguns tear through and dismember people at short range, submachine guns apply nonstop pressure on waves of enemies, sniper rifles allow you to cover your friends from afar, and running and gunning with a crew just feels so darn good – not to mention all the wonderfully over-the-top space magic you can use.

While all of that was true with the base Outriders package, Worldslayer significantly improves the sandbox with more weapons and armor, and importantly, Apocalypse items that grant an additional mod slot which opens up a whole bunch of new possibilities. Now you’ve got a potential for 50% more ways to grab new perks that synergize with your build on every slot of your inventory, and that allows for some insane stunts. In my Trickster build, I managed to equip a full set of mods that made me a nightmare against large groups of enemies, where damaging one poor soul meant damaging everyone in the vicinity. In another build, I made all my equipment either apply freeze or increase damage against frozen enemies, which left the baddies hilariously helpless against me.

The one major exception to the otherwise excellent combat is that, as was true with the base game, fighting bosses is usually not a good time at all. Where Outriders generally makes you feel like a complete badass, boss fights pit you against an enemy with a health bar a mile long that you’ve gotta shoot at for several centuries before they finally die. Meanwhile you’re spinning your wheels spamming abilities and killing adds while you wait for the bad guy to eventually drop dead. It just goes on for so long and makes you feel like a complete wimp in the process – plus it’s got that classic game problem where the boss only has a few voice lines they repeatedly scream at you the whole time, and that gets old really fast.

On top of the new weapon and armor options are some endgame progression systems like Pax Points, which are used in an advanced skill tree that lets you pick five new, uber-powerful perks, and Ascension Points, a slow-burning progression system that reminds me of Diablo 3’s Paragon system and allows you to make small, incremental improvements the longer you play. These systems not only give you plenty of reasons to continue beyond the first campaign playthrough, but also offer some serious game-changer abilities. For example, one standout power caused critical hits with weapons to make my Anomaly powers more deadly, while using Anomaly powers made my weapons do significantly more damage. Working my build around these abilities made my character feel more powerful than I’ve ever felt in Outriders, which is no small task.

The endgame fights are some of the best in Outriders so far.

These new progression systems give you the perfect opportunity to put them to the ultimate test in Worldslayer’s endgame, which centers around a dungeon-delving activity called The Trial of Tarya Gratar. This challenging activity is a dungeon in three acts, with an aforementioned bullet sponge of a boss to fight at the end of each act and some smaller battles along the way. There are also branching paths that give you multiple ways to get through it and even offer some optional encounters that can be tackled to target-farm certain pieces of equipment – a godsend for those really looking to grind this endgame.

The actual content in The Trial isn’t terribly different from what you get during the regular Worldslayer campaign, with waves of enemies to defeat and loot to claim along the way, although it’s much more difficult than everything else and can be scaled to your level to be near-limitlessly daunting. If you were hoping for a procedurally-generated dungeon that’s different each time you enter though, you’ll be sad to learn that The Trial is essentially the same every run, with only your chosen path leading you to different encounters. That’s a bit disappointing in terms of replayability, but the good news is the encounters baked into it are some of the best in Outriders so far.

My favorite encounter is the second boss fight, which features a floating monster that isn’t a complete bullet sponge and instead requires you to deactivate his invulnerability shield before he can be damaged. Taking on waves of adds while quickly performing a ritual to make the boss damageable before he begins casting deadly spells is an absolute thrill, and it made me annoyed that every other boss fight just amounted to staying alive for a very long time while you slowly whittle down their health. Hopefully they’ll do more boss fights like that one in the future, because it makes all the others look downright awful by comparison.

Another interesting part of the post-campaign content is that it continues the (still bad) story, which was an unexpected but welcome surprise since plenty of similar games don’t even bother trying to tie a story into the endgame – including the base Outriders campaign. Unfortunately, without going into spoilers, the main issue with all this new story content is that your character has almost no role in it. You aren’t really the protagonist, and as a result you feel like a bystander in a story that’s happening around you, or in many cases you’re getting history lessons on stuff that’s already happened that has little to no impact on what you’re doing moment-to-moment. This all culminates in the expansion’s anticlimactic final plot points during the endgame, where the twists seem to have very little bearing on anything. It’s great that they’re trying to weave the story into the grind – I just wish that story was better than what we got.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/OnpJTEg
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming