A Parks and Recreation Special Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out This review contains spoilers for NBC's A Parks and Recreation Special reunion episode. You can donate at Feeding America here. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Leslie Knope's brand of guileless optimism might've seemed extreme to us mere mortals back when Parks and Recreation first premiered, but it feels downright revolutionary at this particular moment in 2020 - even if our plucky heroine finally looks as frazzled and worn out as the rest of us. Maybe that's part of the appeal of the Parks and Recreation Special - if a person as effervescent as Leslie Knope is having trouble holding it together, it's no wonder the rest of us are, especially when a random check-in from a friend can mean the difference between a crummy day and a slightly brighter one. Sure, it's a little jarring to see our favorite Pawneeans in the harsh glare of ring lights and iPhone cameras instead of on full sets with hair and makeup, but the scrappy, DIY feeling of the Parks and Recreation reunion special is perfectly in-keeping with Leslie and her friends' equally scrappy, DIY approach to local government. In fact, despite the obvious logistical challenges of putting this reunion together, it's a special that makes perfect sense within the Parks and Rec universe and the emotional lives of these characters; as executive producer Mike Schur told reporters earlier this week, "Leslie Knope was such a person who believed in friendship ... she was a very loyal person, she's a very friendly person and she put all of her eggs in the basket of the power of friendship. And so it's really just about her connecting with people and holding the group of characters together through a time when they're just unable to [connect in person]." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/30/parks-and-recreation-reunion-special-sneak-peek-ron-swanson-is-a-pro-at-social-distancing"] Schur revealed that the actors were delivered phones, tripods, microphones, and small lights (all disinfected, of course) to film the special from home, with the directors and editors calling them via Zoom to help them. "They had to be their own camera people. They had to hit record and then stop and they had to take themselves and say 'take three' and then clap for sound," Schur explained, describing it as a "laborious" process and "not the way TV supposed to be made." Still, for the purposes of this exercise, it allows us a realistic window into the world of our favorite characters - lord knows we're all painfully familiar with communicating via Zoom at this point - even if, in the Parks and Rec universe, the video messaging app of choice is, of course, Gryzzl. (For those keeping score, Andy has somehow racked up the most "Gryzzl Points" with 3,394,446, although Donna's obviously doing better, since she has "Elite GryzzlGold Status." Jerry/Garry/Larry/Terry/Barry has somehow managed to get minus 2,287 points. Typical Jerry.) Naturally, the special has to go through some narrative contortions to explain why married couples like Leslie and Ben, Andy and April, and Chris and Ann aren't together in lockdown (Leslie's at the office while Ben's at home with the kids; Andy's locked himself in storage; and Ann is isolating in a different wing of the house from Chris and their kids, since she's still a nurse and helping with outpatients), but once those explanations are out of the way, it mostly just feels like we're eavesdropping (Zoom bombing?) on the characters' phone calls, catching up with old friends and hearing about their daily struggles much like many of us are checking in with our own loved ones these days. Still, in terms of pure escapism, the special is at its best when it finds ways to break out of the video call format in small ways, like Leslie and Ben's pitch-perfect appearances on the local Pawnee talk shows like "At Home with Joan" and "Ya Heard? with Perd." The cameos from other deranged Pawnee mainstays like Dennis Feinstein (Jason Mantzoukas), Dr. Jeremy Jamm (Jon Glaser), and Jean-Ralphio (Ben Schwartz) - taking the form of commercials - help break up the format further, and each character is pretty much exactly where we'd expect them to be given the circumstances. Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally's real-life marriage also allows for a deliciously twisted Tammy Two appearance, thank goodness. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-comedies-on-netflix-right-now&captions=true"] The special is light on plot (obviously, since no one can really do anything right now), but that feels like cheap criticism for an episode that seems designed as the TV equivalent of a warm hug, and on that front, it delivers in spades, especially in the emotional and nostalgic final scene. More than most Parks and Rec episodes, the time seems to fly by here, but each returning cast member gets a moment or two to shine (and drop some easter eggs for fans). Chris Pratt, in particular, seems to be in his element as the lovably doofy Andy Dwyer - especially when he gets to break out his Johnny Karate alter-ego, which is arguably the comedic high point of the episode (closely followed by Jean-Ralphio's literal cry for help). While any newly-produced entertainment right now has to strike a tricky balance between acknowledging our strange new status quo and distracting us from it, this return visit to Pawnee manages to navigate that tightrope admirably - it's pure comfort food, but right now, it doesn't need to be anything else, especially considering how well the show ended. Schur made that point when talking to reporters, admitting that another Parks and Recreation reunion is unlikely: "I would never say never, because why bother saying never? But this felt like a moment in time and a cause that we could all rally behind and that made sense," he said. "When it ended - Amy and I used to talk a lot about this - we felt like we made our point. Like, we had an argument, we made the argument and we got out. And I don't see the point of rebooting a show or revamping a show or getting a show back up and running just to do it. It was really fun. It was a true joy to make the show when we did and I really felt like we made our argument and then we left and I think that's the right move." We didn't need another visit to Pawnee, and this special certainly doesn't add anything to a series that got to go out on its own terms and already cemented its place as one of TV's best comedies, but it's still a trip worth taking - just for an excuse to catch up with old friends.

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Legends of Runeterra Review in Progress

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League of Legends has been around for more than ten years now, and with Legends of Runeterra Riot Games is hoping to capitalise on that heritage to propel its world and characters into a whole new genre: digital collectible card games (CCGs). The result is stylish, exciting, cleverly designed and full of nods to League, whether that’s through iconic Champions like Yasuo, Jinx, Ashe, Garen and Teemo, or the many adorable Poros that populate the game.

Importantly, while Legends of Runeterra is firmly rooted in an established world, it in no way excludes newcomers who may be picking it up because of its genre instead of its pedigree. It’s very much like Hearthstone in that way. I personally came to Hearthstone without any real knowledge of Warcraft, and six years later I’m still playing it. Legends of Runeterra is no doubt hoping to also bottle that lightning.

That said, when Hearthstone burst onto the scene, it up-ended the gameplay of other collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering by being more straightforward and thus more accessible. Legends of Runeterra, on the other hand, sits somewhere in the middle.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/22/legends-of-runeterra-yasuo-champion-showcase"]

The overall goal, however, is much the same. Each player brings a deck of 40 pre-selected cards into a match and faces off against an opponent. Initiative is passed back and forth, allowing each person to play units to the board, cast spells and choose how to attack or defend. The game is won or lost when one player reduces the health of their opponent’s Nexus from 20 down to zero.

Like Hearthstone, your mana reserve – which dictates what cards you’re able to play – increases by one each round, as opposed to using a Land style system similar to Magic. Unlike Hearthstone, however – and like Magic – you’re able to choose how your units will block enemy attackers, creating an entirely different style of gameplay.

This ability to respond is foundational in Legends of Runeterra; its gameplay is intended to be like a conversation between the players. Control can go back and forth many times within a single round, as each player gets the chance to respond to their opponent’s actions.[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=This%20ability%20to%20respond%20is%20foundational%20in%20Legends%20of%20Runeterra%3B%20its%20gameplay%20is%20intended%20to%20be%20like%20a%20conversation%20between%20the%20players."]

To give you an idea of how it works in practice, let’s say my opponent plays a unit late in a match. Doing that takes up an action and passes control over to me. I decide I want to kill it, so target it with a spell that deals just enough damage. That spell, however, isn’t a Burst spell, so doesn’t instantly cast. Instead, control goes back to my opponent to offer a chance to respond. He or she may then play a Burst spell to instantly buff the unit’s health out of lethal range. My spell still doesn’t cast. I then have another opportunity to cast an additional spell to take out the unit. When both players have run out of options or passed, the spell (or spells) finally goes off.

This action and reaction gameplay opens up a lot of strategy that other games in the genre don’t have. I could have gambled, for instance, by not lining up the spell initially, and simply passed the turn back, in the hope that my opponent might spend enough mana doing something else that I could then cast my spell later, preventing them from being able to answer it. Of course, once I pass, my opponent could also pass, ending the round entirely before I get a chance to do anything.

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Attacking with units adds another layer to all this. Between each round, an attack token gets passed from one player to the other. As the name suggests, whoever has this is able to initiate an attack, and can do so at any point during a round. If I have a full bench (the area between my hand and the battlefield, which is where my units sit after being played from hand) that could trade favourably with the units my opponent has, I may choose to attack immediately. Once I choose which units are going to attack, my opponent is only able to respond by choosing where – or if – the units that are already on their bench will be positioned to block, and/or by responding with Burst or Fast spells.

Again, this is all about predicting what my opponent might do. If I choose to play a follower instead of attacking, my opponent can do the same, potentially putting down a strong blocker that ruins my attack, or he or she could simply cast a Slow spell that can clear my board. Each round in Legends of Runeterra is a series of tough decisions, and it’s genuinely compelling trying to work out what the optimal line might be.

That line can extend across multiple rounds, of course, as you set up for certain combos or clears – and in another clever twist that gives players more flexibility, you can even bank mana. Yes, up to three unspent mana units can be saved from one round into the next as spell mana. As you’d expect, this mana can only be spent on spells, and means that you can do things like pass on turns one and two, then play a three-cost unit on turn three and still have three mana leftover to spend on spells. It’s a clever system, and means that proper planning can set you up to play high cost spells early.

It's also worth pointing out that Legends of Runeterra’s gameplay still feels remarkably snappy, despite control being passed back and forth repeatedly. Part of this is because players have limited time to make any one decision and part of it is because your turn will simply pass automatically if you have no available options.

Actionable

Of course, great systems don’t mean much without strong card designs to back them up, and Legends of Runeterra gives players a pretty incredible suite of tools to build decks around. The exciting idea underpinning deckbuilding is that any card can be paired with any other card. To make that possible, the card pool is divided up into regions based on the geography of Runeterra, with players able to combine any two regions together to make a deck.

You might want to combine the removal tools of the Shadow Isles with Ionia’s ability to play Elusive units (that can’t be blocked by non-Elusive units) and counter spells. Or you might be excited about the idea of a deck that utilises a combination of Champions with spell synergy, such as Karma (who generates spells) and Ezreal (who benefits from playing spells), or Karma and Heimerdinger (who generates units by playing spells).

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/14/legends-of-runeterra-shadow-isles-region-showcase"]

Yes, Champions play a huge role in Legends of Runeterra and are real game-changers. While roughly equivalent to legendaries in Hearthstone, they have a number of very unique concepts attached to them. Like other cards, you can include up to three copies of a Champion in your 40-card deck, but only six Champion cards in total. Unlike other cards, Champions can level up mid-match. Meeting this condition is different for each, and can be anything from attacking a certain number of times or seeing a certain number of units die through to emptying your hand or surviving a specific amount of damage.

When a Champion levels up it typically gets a small stat increase but, more importantly, gains new abilities too. Ezreal, for instance, has to target enemy units with spells and abilities eight or more times to level up, and once that happens every spell he casts also deals two damage to the enemy Nexus. The last Ezreal deck I played was basically a combo deck in which you generate a bunch of one-cost spells then play them all once he levels up to burst your opponent down fast.

Champions also behave differently in that they’re unique entities when it comes to the board. If you have two copies of Ezreal in hand, for instance, then play one to your bench, the other Ezreal transforms into “Ezreal’s Mystic Shot,” a renamed version of a collectible spell from his region. Each Champion has a spell associated with them, and these typically help progress them towards leveling up, or at least tie in thematically. Playing the spell then shuffles a copy of the Champion back into your deck. And if you choose not to play the spell, and the Champion is killed, the spell then transforms back into the Champion card and can be played as such.

I really love this as it changes how powerful Champions can be, as their effects can’t stack. Having two leveled up Ezreals in play would be pretty busted, for instance, as each spell cast would deal four Nexus damage - a fifth of its starting total. And as mentioned, this system underlines that each Champion is unique, so works well from a flavour perspective too.

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Presentation to the board

Legends of Runeterra isn’t just innovative when it comes to gameplay mechanics, it also breaks new ground with its presentation. Key information is always at your fingertips, such as the cards that have been played (which players can scroll all the way through) and the Champions in your opponent’s deck (so yes, not only do you know their regions, you can also guess what their specific strategy might be).

The board also has a feature called Oracle’s Eye, represented by a blue orb between the two Nexuses. If you’re unsure exactly how a sequence of spells or attacks will resolve, hovering over the eye will show you what will happen, assuming nothing changes. It’s a great option for quickly double-checking your math or logic, but importantly, is no substitute for learning how the fundamental systems work.

[caption id="attachment_2344894" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] If nothing changes, my spell plus unit will kill the opposing Braum.[/caption]

Another feature I absolutely love is the ability to see every card that’s associated with a particular card. Coming back to Ezreal again, if my opponent plays him, but I’m feeling a little hazy about what he actually does, I can right click on him and bring up an overlay showing his base card, his leveled up card and his spell card. Each keyword or term has a pop-up explanation too. Having the full information about every card a click or two away is great design.

From the card overlay you can also click through to the full widescreen art for each and every card. Not only is much of it aesthetically stunning, but it also really helps flesh out the world; the people, creatures, landscapes, cultures and tone of each region. Its consistency is hugely impressive too, really making Legends of Runeterra feel like a slick, polished package.

This extends to just about every other aspect of the presentation, from the countless lines of bespoke dialogue between characters as they enter the fray through to the full screen level up animations of each Champion. Players can also make cosmetic changes, customising their half of the board by swapping in a new setting or choosing a different pet. Simply put, Legends of Runeterra is best in class in terms of presentation.

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Balancing the budget

When it comes to building your collection, Legends of Runeterra has a robust progression and reward system in place. Playing games and completing daily quests earns you XP, which is then funneled into two rewards systems – your weekly vault and the region road you’ve activated. The former unlocks once a week and each time you level it up your rewards improve. The region road, on the other hand, allows you to choose a region to focus on, and steadily unlock rewards that will help flesh out your collection for that region.

Legends of Runeterra has no traditional card packs, so the rewards you’ll get are cards, shards (an in-game currency) and Wildcards, which can be spent on any card of a corresponding rarity. So yes, if you get a Champion Wildcard you can simply swap it for one copy of the Champion that you want. Shards can also be spent directly on cards.

The rewards are pretty generous, and active players will be able to build their collection quite quickly. And those that are happy to spend real-world money can simply add coins to their account and buy the specific cards they want, so you still won’t be subjected to the luck of the draw when spending cold hard cash.

[caption id="attachment_2344884" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] A set cost for the highest rarity cards.[/caption]

The whole system makes for a refreshing change from most games in this genre, although newcomers may find it hard to decide which region road to activate and how to spend their Wildcards initially. After all, if you’re just learning the basic mechanics, how can you know what you’re going to want to play until you’ve truly got a feel for all the different archetypes and their strengths and weaknesses?

My approach when I had a small collection was to spend a small amount of money so that I could build a cheap but competitive deck that only had three Champion cards in it, then use that deck to learn the ropes and earn XP to expand my collection further. I think you could probably make pretty good progress staying free-to-play if you have the time, but I also think there’s reasonable value here for those willing to jumpstart their collection with real-world money.

I’m certainly glad to see the lack of card packs. I may be in the minority but I get very little joy out of opening card packs in other digital card games. Generally speaking, I feel like the odds are stacked against me, and all I’m really doing is going through the motions so I can trade my duplicates in and then craft the cards I want. Legends of Runeterra cuts that middle man out and puts a definite price on how much I need to spend to get the cards I want. I’ve had to spend a lot more money in other games to get the hundreds of packs required to build a similarly robust collection.[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Legends%20of%20Runeterra%20puts%20a%20definite%20price%20on%20how%20much%20I%20need%20to%20spend%20to%20get%20the%20cards%20I%20want."]

The Q2 Outlook

Up until now, Legends of Runeterra has been in open beta. Over the course of the last few months, Riot has made a host of balance changes, and leading into yesterday’s 1.0 update, it’s been feeling great. Over the last week I’ve had a lot of fun trying out a wide variety of region combinations, Champion combinations, and game plans, and while some strategies are more frustrating to run into than others (buffing Elusive units then attacking the Nexus repeatedly by generating attack tokens feels… dirty), no one archetype felt overly dominant to me – and, most importantly, there were always options in my card collection to help counter other strategies.

With Legends of Runeterra’s launch, however, things have changed significantly. A seventh region – Bilgewater – has been added, coming out of the gate with five Champions and more than 60 cards. Each of the other six regions also gets ten new cards, including a new Champion, bringing their totals up to five. Bilgewater introduces some really interesting new Champions and mechanics, such as Plunder (do Nexus damage to trigger this effect) and Deep (gives units +3/+3 once your deck has 15 or less cards left), and expands the number of two region combinations significantly.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/30/legends-of-runeterra-bilgewater-region-showcase"]

As such, Legends of Runeterra’s meta game is going to be in flux for a little while. With this in mind, I’m going to hold off on finalising this review until I have a better sense of how things have changed and how Legends of Runeterra is feeling. The mobile client is only just rolling out around the world too, so I’ll be logging a lot of time with that to get a sense for how well the experience translates to a smaller screen. And I also haven’t spent enough time in Legend of Runeterra’s Expeditions mode, which offers up an entirely distinct way to draft a deck of cards then face off against opponents who have done the same.

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Rode NT-USB Mini Microphone Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out As late-night hosts like Stephen Colbert and Seth Myers have proven throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, you don’t need a lot of technology to broadcast yourself to the world. They’ve often done it with little more than an iPhone, while podcasters and other content creators tend to rely on a decent desktop microphone. For years, a small handful of USB mics have ruled the earth. Now, established audio brand Rode is trying to make some room for itself on your desktop as well. Is the Rode NT-USB Mini a worthy competitor to microphones like the Blue Yeti? Let’s find out.

Design and Features

The first thing you notice looking at the NT-USB Mini is just how “mini” it actually is. Standing just 5.5 inches high and sitting on a base that’s 3.5 inches in diameter, it seems more like a scale model of a microphone than a functional desktop mic. In fact, set the mic next to the Blue Yeti (which admittedly is needlessly oversized), and the difference in stature is almost comical. And while there is a non-mini in the Rode lineup, the NT-USB Mini is not just a shrunk down version of the larger NT-USB; it’s an entirely different audio product in almost every meaningful way. The Mini is its own deal, for better or worse. So what is that deal? Well, the build quality is fabulous. The mic – small enough to fit in the palm of your hand – weighs 21 ounces, which makes for a heavy, solid-feeling rig. It’s made of a combination of steel and reinforced nylon resin, and nothing about it feels cheap or flimsy. The upper half of the mic is fully wrapped in a metal mesh grille, and the lower half is extremely minimalist. On the front you get a single dial and two status lights; in back there’s a 3.5-mm headphone input and a USB-C port. The dial is not the microphone gain; in fact, the mic has no gain control whatsoever, and you need to adjust that at your PC or device. Instead, the dial controls the audio level in the headphone monitor (which, incidentally, is a zero-latency audio monitor). The dial is stiff – almost too stiff, because you need to get a grip on the mic just to turn the dial with your thumb – and spins well past the marks on the mic face in both directions. You can toggle the audio monitor on and off with a push of the dial. The two status lights tell you when the zero-latency monitor is on and when the microphone is powered via the USB-C port. Kudos to Rode, by the way, for supporting USB-C. It’s much easier to plug into the back of the mic than micro-USB, especially in the dark. The mic is permanently mounted on a U-bracket that, thanks to the magic of magnets, snaps authoritatively into the stand with little effort. Want to mount the mic on a stand or boom arm? Pop the rubber grommet out of the bottom of the U-bracket and insert the included 3/8-inch adapter. The first time I used the NT-USB Mini and its magnetic stand, I was almost giddy with how clever it all seemed. But it didn’t take long for me to have some quibbles. Because of a notch in the base, the mic only goes on the stand in one orientation, and there’s a chrome divot on the stand to remind you where to orient the front of the mic. But why? The stand is completely symmetric, so without the self-imposed notch, the mic could snap on in any orientation. That’s annoying. Rode made it weirdly difficult to put the mic on the stand, as if they looked at the almost-but-not-quite-symmetric USB plug design and said, “we should replicate that on a larger scale.”

Performance

The most important part of the microphone is obviously on the inside. Unlike do-it-all microphones like the Blue Yeti, Rode built the NT-USB Mini with a single capsule, so it has exactly one mic pattern: a cardioid polar pattern that is sensitive to audio in front of the mic and rejects audio to the side and rear. Since it only features one pattern, Rode’s engineers were no doubt able to put a higher quality mic in the NT-USB Mini, since they didn’t have to worry about fitting two or three capsules under the hood. The specs bear that out; it records in 24-bit, features a 20Hz – 20kHz frequency response, and manages 121dB SPL at 1% THD. I ran the mic through its paces mainly as a voice mic for podcasting. My day-to-day mic is the Blue Yeti, which I enclose in an open-box with baffling, and I keep a pop filter mounted in front of the mic. For the NT-USB Mini, no pop filter is required because Rode integrated a filter internally. In fact, it prevented plosives pretty effectively, always giving me very smooth audio recordings. Unfortunately, the microphone’s core conceit quickly exposed a serious problem. Since it sits only 5 inches or so high, using it was, well, a literal pain in the neck. Most mics work best when you’re virtually eating them, and the NT-USB Mini seems to do best when you’re about 3-4 inches away. Pull back even a foot, and the deep, warm tone you get from vocal audio rolls off dramatically into a thin sound that lacks bass and mids. This mic wants you to be close. But how do you do this when the mic is only 5 inches high? I propped it up with books and boxes, but that made it challenging to fit it in my baffle box. The bottom line: As cool as the mic looks and how compact it is, this isn’t a mic I could use without mounting it on a boom arm, so I could position it right where I need it. Getting past the problem with its mini-ness, the NT-USB Mini performed admirably. As I alluded to, the audio is warm and full, with a healthy mid that makes vocal audio sound great. You do need to stay close, though, and the mic’s response falls off dramatically near the east and west coordinates. Moreover, it hears almost nothing behind. That’s an advantage if you’re recording on your own in a room that might have ambient sounds beyond your control. But if you need to do face-to-face interviews, a single NT-USB Mini is not going to get the job done. One other frustration: the mic has no mute button, which I didn’t realize how much I would miss until I started testing the Rode. You’ll need to mute via software, if that’s a possibility with the app you’re using to record.

Purchasing Guide

The Rode NT-USB Mini is available on Amazon, Adorama, and B&H for $99.

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Streets of Rage 4 Review

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Still raging 26 years later, Streets of Rage 4 is a faithful revival of the classic arcade beat-’em-ups. Move from left to right, punch enemies, destroy objects for points, health, and weapon pickups, punch a few more enemies, and repeat. It’s simple and unadventurous, and while it expands modestly on combat with a few new skills to master, Streets of Rage 4 definitely prioritises nostalgia over any kind of big modern reinvention.

The plot is wafer-thin and predictably corny, but it's beautifully presented in a comic book panel style. Mr and Ms Y, the twin offspring of series’ villain Mr X, are the big bads this time and their evil scheme is to control the city by “corrupting everything good” while looking like a couple of sub-par Scott Pilgrim villains. It’s all very silly, but in a knowing, not-taking itself-too-seriously kinda way, and it just about pulls it off.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/29/the-first-13-minutes-of-streets-of-rage-4"]

It’s 10 years since the events of Streets of Rage 3 and series regulars, Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding, return to fight crime again despite likely being “too old for this shit.” To balance out the familiar with something different is the addition of two brand-new characters, Cherry Hunter (the daughter of series stalwart, Adam Hunter) and a cybernetic armed, absolute unit called Floyd Iraia.

Just like in the old games, each character has a special move that does a lot more damage at the cost of taking a chunk out of your own health bar. However, an added risk-reward twist for Streets of Rage 4 is that any lost health can potentially be earnt back if you string a combo of standard attacks together on top of it. Any break in this combo results in the health being lost permanently. On my first playthrough, which took between two and three hours, I found myself avoiding special moves due to their risky nature. However, as I got the hang of combos I started using them semi-regularly in situations where I felt confident I could earn that precious health back. It’s a simple but interesting minigame, and perhaps the most important addition into progressing the Streets of Rage formula as a whole.

[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Using%20Star%20Moves%20on%20regular%20goons%20often%20feels%20unnecessary%2C%20but%20they%E2%80%99re%20still%20a%20fun%20spectacle."]

A stronger weapon in your arsenal are Star Moves. Every character’s is slightly different – Axel’s, for instance, is a flaming rising uppercut, while Cherry’s is a Pete Townshend-inspired guitar powerslide – but triggering them will do a huge amount of damage to any Y Syndicate members unlucky enough to be in your path. At the start of every level you’re given one charge, but more can be collected during your travels and they’re almost always best reserved for bosses where you’ll need it the most. Using them while fighting the regular goons often feels unnecessary as most situations are manageable, but they’re still a fun spectacle with Floyd’s screen dominating uni beam being a visual treat.

Another enjoyable addition to combat is the inclusion of the weapon catch maneuver. Throw any weapon at an enemy and, if it makes contact, it’ll bounce back, giving you a split-second to catch it and keep whacking away with it. Like Gears of War’s active reload timed-button-press mechanic, there's a rhythm required to master it, but once you’ve do it’s supremely rewarding.

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However, for every moment of feeling like a deadly ninja, there are moments that are simply unfair due to factors completely out of your control. There’s one section where getting hit with a grenade bounces you into the path of another explosion, with no way to dodge or escape. I lost half my health as a result and this inability to prevent it from happening was very frustrating.

Of the four starting characters, the returning duo of Axel and Blaze immediately felt familiar and fit right in place in a ’90s side-scrolling beat-’em up, but they do feel a little generic at this point. They’re both well-rounded fighters who don’t necessarily excel in any ability, but work best as an introductory character for new players and a recognisable sight for veterans. By contrast, Floyd and Cherry couldn’t be further apart, and their movesets are by far the most exciting and fun to play.

[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Cherry's%20ability%20to%20sprint%20and%20weave%20through%20attacks%20feels%20more%20in%20line%20with%20what%20I%20expected%20a%20modern%20Streets%20of%20Rage%20would%20play%20like."]

Cherry Hunter – despite carrying a guitar on her back – can move at a significant speed, which is (literally) a nice change of pace to the other characters, and that made her my preferred choice in my first playthrough. Her ability to sprint and weave through attacks feels more in line with what I expected a modern Streets of Rage would play like, which is also why I was initially disappointed with how sluggish the other characters felt in comparison. Floyd, for instance, is by far the slowest character, but I soon appreciated that what he lacks in speed is compensated for with strength. His ability to toss enemies around like rag dolls eventually won me over and had me experimenting with different playstyles.

Within the constraints of the restricted nature of side-scrolling beat ’em-ups, Streets of Rage 4 at least makes an attempt to spice up the level design. Levels like Skytrain and Airplane add little bits of variety (like high-speed train signs flying at you during combat, for example) to keep the environments fresh.

Weapons are no longer restricted to hand-to-hand combat either: we get giant wrecking balls, chandeliers, and plenty of destructible scenery playing its part in the violence. There’s even a level of tactics to using some of these, especially the wrecking balls. Timing your activation just right can result in dealing an extremely satisfying level of damage. There’s also a 2D sequence that conjures up memories of the hammer hallway scene from 2003’s South Korean classic film, Oldboy, where mastery of the weapon catch can make you feel unstoppable.

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Every change of pace really adds to the enjoyment of Street of Rage 4, so much so it’s disappointing there isn’t even more variety throughout to ensure combat is fresh from beginning to end of its short run. As it is, they’re all-too-brief moments of joy; returning to the more traditional levels is sometimes a drag.

The music sets the tone and definitely feels on-brand with the iconic beats of the series. Although I’d have to say that in the era of game soundtracks like Hotline Miami and the recent Final Fantasy 7 Remake, they don’t quite hit the same sort of ‘I can’t get this track out of my brain’ status, or even its predecessors.

All 12 levels predictably end in a boss fight and, for the most part, there’s a good balance of variety and difficulty throughout. Most are smartly designed with often-challenging attack patterns you’ll need to learn, but disappointingly there are repeated enemies in later levels with arbitrary difficulty spikes like, “Here’s two of them now!” In general though, the enemies are a good mix of old and new with neither feeling out of place, despite the 26-year age gap.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/08/streets-of-rage-4-retro-reveal-trailer"]

I played through the first time alone, but that’s only half the fun. Less, even. The two-player online co-op really shines though with the intensity and chaos increased. It also made me fully appreciate the potential character combos and the satisfaction of perfectly executing a tandem move such as Floyd throwing an enemy into Cherry’s rushing flying knee. If you’re looking for longevity, two-player co-op is where it’s at. (Streets of Rage 4 also has local four-player co-op but, due to the current isolation circumstances, I was unable to try it out.)

Beyond the campaign and its five difficulty levels (Mania is exactly what it sounds like!) there's a tough boss rush mode, Arcade (which is basically the story campaign but with a consistent life count), and a PVP battle mode to mess around with. But that’s it. And frankly, the story mode is better than any of these options, so if you’re playing alone there’s little replayability on offer.

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One thing Streets of Rage 4 does offer, however, is the wealth of nostalgic choices, such as the retro Streets of Rage 1 and 2 soundtracks and old CRT filters. It takes a little grinding to unlock, but there’s also a lifetime point system that gives access to faithfully recreated playable characters (and a modern version of Adam who unlocks during the story) from previous entries in the series. They aren’t just skins either – these characters have their own move sets, animations, and sound effects.

Despite their sprites contrasting against the lush, cartoon-like world of Streets of Rage 4, these retro characters fit nicely into the combat loop and help reinforce how the latest instalment reignites that passion for the series through nostalgia. In fact, they’re so accurately recreated that, annoyingly, the characters from Streets of Rage 1 don’t even have special moves and must solely rely on their basic, “Call the cops for an airstrike” star moves. As a result they feel at odds with the new risk-reward system and it pretty much renders them unusable on the harder difficulties. In a way, this feels like a metaphor for the entire game: instead of taking bolder steps to modernise the formula, Streets of Rage 4 sticks rigidly to the past, for little more than nostalgia’s sake.

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SnowRunner Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out There are a bunch of different kinds of difficulty in games. Some test your reflexes and timing, some test your tactical smarts, and others try your patience. SnowRunner’s brand of harsh difficulty is a uniquely slow paced but infectiously rewarding blend: it’s a sandbox-style trucking simulator where the enemy isn’t time, it’s the harsh and hostile terrain. This game is admirably unafraid to make you earn every literal inch of progression through its waterlogged swamps, muddy bogs, and snow-covered trails, although it’s slightly let down by an occasionally aggravating chase camera, illogical upgrade hurdles, and some unnecessarily finicky menu shuffling. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://ift.tt/2xjfSbJ] There’s a lot more to SnowRunner than just lugging cargo from Anytown, USA to what feels like the arse-end of the Earth. Unlike most games infamous for their immense difficulty, however, doing well in SnowRunner is less a matter of your lightning-quick reflexes and more a test of your patience and decision-making skills. Success means you brought the right tool for the job, managed your fuel, and picked an appropriate route. Failure is the result of underestimating an obstacle, hurrying too much, or biting off more than you can chew. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Drive%20smart%20and%20this%20world%20can%20be%20tamed.%20Drive%20dumb%20and%20you%E2%80%99re%20a%20lawn%20ornament."]And that’s easy to do! Mud will suck trucks into the ground, deep water will knock out engines, and steep grades will roll semis sideways. Bound by the same heavy-handling dynamics and physics-based, deformable ground materials that have underpinned its predecessors – MudRunner and Spintires – SnowRunner is punishing and sometimes merciless, but rarely outright unfair. Drive smart and this world can be tamed. Drive dumb and you’re a lawn ornament. [poilib element="articleSubHeader" parameters="label=Truckin%E2%80%99%20in%20the%20Bushes"] SnowRunner sets you and your trucks loose in an array of distinct environments, from muddy Michigan to snap-frozen Alaska and, finally, Taymyr in Russia. They’re larger than the maps in MudRunner, so there’s much more ground to cover. There’s also a vast assortment of new cargo types, which are weaved into the context of more varied objectives. A fallen bridge may need steel and timber to be rebuilt, while a local facility may be after food or fuel. Outside of delivery work there are stranded trailers to return, drowned and broken trucks to rescue, and other odd jobs to complete. Considering how long it can take to negotiate a single, slippery hill with a full load, there are dozens and dozens of hours of trucking time here. Hundreds, probably. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://ift.tt/3f1oDZ2] I do, however, find it pretty annoying the objective system isn’t intuitive enough to automatically prompt a change in mission if you veer off from a planned route to, say, tug a missing trailer from a swamp and return it to its owner. You either have to go to your task lists – of which there are multiple – find the mission manually, and activate it from there, or activate the mission itself from the destination before it lets you drop it off. Unsurprisingly, completing objectives earns cash for brand-new, better trucks more suited to taming the harsh maps. There are, however, decent trucks hidden on the maps already, and I focused on finding them to add to my garage rather than buying new ones as the payouts are a little stingy and standard missions can’t be replayed for more credits (though there are certain timed delivery challenges that can be repeated). Cash can also be injected into upgrades for your trucks, but it seems a bit daft that certain, utilitarian upgrades are locked until you hit the required level. It’s a fine enough way to reward progress through an arcade racer, for instance, but it makes little sense in a straight-laced, all-terrain delivery simulator to arbitrarily prevent you from buying off-road tyres you could otherwise afford. [poilib element="articleSubHeader" parameters="label=Truck%20The%20Pain%20Away"] The biggest disappointment is that the handling of the small, lighter scout vehicles – like SUVs and utes – isn’t great. They’re fine enough in the mud and muck but on level surfaces the rear feels strangely disconnected from the ground at times, almost as if the back wheels are strafing left and right. They sound surprisingly toothless, too; mash the throttle and they just drone up through the rev range before changing gears endlessly. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=The%20truck%20handling%20physics%20are%20satisfyingly%20hulking%20and%20heavy."]Happily, the truck handling physics are satisfyingly hulking and heavy, and the nature of SnowRunner’s objectives will demand you spend much more time in these good-looking and better-sounding vehicles. Whether clattering over the rutted roads or slowly clawing through slop, the sense of bulk in SnowRunner’s big boys is translated very well. The camera can jump around jarringly when hauling long trailers, though, and it’s also probably worth noting that, if you bought this on disc at retail, the ability to invert the Y axis for the camera only arrived in the day-one patch. If this is a must for you, this patch is essential. Playing uninverted was turning my brain to mush. SnowRunner can be played from start to finish in four-player co-op and some missions in particular feel like they were very much designed for co-op rather than solo play. Rolling, wrecking, or running out of fuel in the maps with no player garages to respawn to is a particularly lonely experience; having a convoy of fellow truckers on standby will go a long way to make SnowRunner’s most isolated objectives less intimidating. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://ift.tt/2zGvPti]

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The Flash: Season 6, Episode 17 Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out Warning: this review contains full spoilers for The Flash: Season 6, Episode 17. If you need a refresher on where we left off, here's our review for Season 6, Episode 16. [poilib element="accentDivider"] The second half of The Flash: Season 6 doesn't feel quite as fast-paced as the first. Maybe it's that there are more moving parts to juggle in the aftermath of Crisis, or simply that new episodes have aired more sporadically over the last few months. Either way, "Liberation" is a big step in the right direction for the series. This episode helps push the Mirror Master storyline into its next phase while even linking back to the first half of Season 6 and working to tie everything together. Ignoring the inescapable fact that this season isn't going to get the conclusion originally planned, things are shaping up nicely for the next several weeks. Mostly, anyway. Several running plot threads come to a head in "Liberation," with Eva making her big play to escape the mirror dimension and Barry finally coming to terms with the fact that the person he thought was Iris is actually an impostor. Continuing the general Season 6 theme of finding a balance between humor and tragedy, there's a welcome dose of comedy to Barry's discovery. The scene where Cecile confronts Barry at home is basically the Arrowverse's take on that infamous Pepe Silvia meme from It's Always Sunny. [caption id="attachment_234422" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] "Mirrors!"[/caption] That moment helps cleanse the palate before things take a much darker turn in the latter half of the episode. Eva once again proves how adept she is at manipulating Team Flash and turning them against one another when they should be confronting a common enemy. And even after Cecile frees Barry to go confront Mirror Iris, we see just how unequipped he is to deal with a foe who can hide behind the faces of those he cares for most. Barry's depleted speed definitely stacks the deck against him, but this episode is successful in showing how Mirror Master can be a formidable threat even against a speedster at full power. The battle between Barry and Mirror Iris uses the mirror mechanic to its fullest, culminating in that cool moment where Iris shatters the ceiling mirror and strikes at Barry from countless directions at once. Another big strength of this episode comes with its focus on giving the mirror doppelgangers a clearer sense of personality and motivation. It's much easier to appreciate these characters as, well, actual characters now. We understand the subservient bond they share with their "mother," even as we see Mirror Iris beginning to develop feelings of independence and longing for a humanity she can never achieve. That helps give the eventual death of Mirror Iris a weight and significance that might otherwise be lacking. Even Mirror Kamilla's sacrifice has an aura of tragedy, showing us just how callously Eva will throw these creations away once they served their purpose. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-flash-liberation-photos&captions=true"] On that note, it's quite a treat seeing Sendhil Ramamurthy return as a captive Ramsey Rosso. As novel as the two-pronged approach to Season 6 has been, it's also nice to see some extra connective tissue form between the two halves. And given that Ramsey never quite seemed like he got his due as the main villain of a half-season story arc, the implication that he still has a big role to play in the series is a welcome development. I do wish there were a clearer sense of why Eva needed Ramsey's metahuman blood to achieve her escape, other than just "because it furthers the plot." But regardless, it's nice knowing we can look forward to Bloodwork's return, whether that means he resurfaces later in Season 6 or his "long game" pays off further down the road. If Legends of Tomorrow has proven anything, it's that there's no reason to discard good villains after one season of television. It's also worth pointing out the unique approach taken to the closing epilogue scene. These scenes are almost always used as stingers - a chance to toss in one more unexpected plot twist before the credits roll. But in this case, we're treated to a heartfelt moment where both Barry and Iris reach out to one another and pledge to reunite. It's a nicely emotional way to cap off the episode, as well as providing a reminder of what's at stake as Barry struggles to figure out how to deal with the Eva problem. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/27/arrow-final-season-deleted-scene-shows-a-lost-crisis-scene"] Only one subplot serves to drag down an otherwise strong episode here. The brief detour in Caitlin's chilly apartment feels like an unnecessary bit of fluff tacked onto an episode that didn't need it. Granted, the series is clearly setting up something bigger with Caitlin here, but why not save this quick preamble for the main event? Not to mention that it's very difficult to muster excitement for any new plotline that involves Caitlin's family. The series may have improved a lot this season, but that dredges up bad memories of Seasons 4 and 5.

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JBL Quantum One Gaming Headset Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out JBL is finally getting into the gaming business. The longtime speaker manufacturer will launch its “Quantum” line of gaming audio gear this spring, including seven gaming headsets at various price points, and a desktop speaker set. At the top of the heap, the Quantum One shows that it has what it takes to compete and excel as a headset-maker. Pumping out a quality sound and delivering top-of-the-line bells and whistles like head-tracking and active noise canceling, the Quantum One shows that JBL knows exactly how to calibrate its audio expertise for gaming.

Design and Features

The Quantum One’s headset design splits the difference between “gamer” style and traditional, minimalist audio look to create a synthy soft-cyberpunk aesthetic. Though the body is made from molded black plastic, the Quantum has colorful accents scattered all over – a bright orange “R” and “L” painted on the fabric in the earcups and a three-part RGB lighting scheme on the sides of the cans. It also has a solid fit, if a bit on the loose side. The top band is pretty wide, so while there is some pressure keeping the headset in place, it doesn’t feel like you’re getting squeezed. Though it was a great fit for me, I could also see it feeling a bit loose on smaller heads. Both the top band and earcups are well padded with leatherette-covered synthetic memory foam cushioning: Though it looks like it should be heavy, the 369 grams never weighed me down. Looking closer at the cans, there are a lot of inputs and I/O. Everything is on the left side, including a robust suite of on-set controls: Mic mute button, a volume dial, a quick head-tracking recalibration button, and a “talk through” button to disable the active noise canceling. You also have the ports for the mic, a 3.5mm jack for a direct connection on consoles, and a USB-C port for connecting via USB, which you’ll need to use the head-tracking. The USB-C to USB-A cable also features a simple chat/game-audio mixer, which comes in handy when calibrating audio in multiplayer. Speaking of which, the Quantum One’s active noise-canceling feels like a huge upgrade, even if it isn’t new or innovative technology. Active Noise Canceling, which plays a low-frequency tone to block ambient sound, is relatively common in high-end headphones, but rarely finds its way into gaming headsets. It should, though: Blocking outside noise makes it easier to hear the nuances of the sound of a game (or music, or Netflix). Even when playing alone in a quiet room, it blocked the sound of my PC’s or console’s fans: I didn’t realize how distracting that sound could be until I worked for a week without hearing it. Inside the cans, the Quantum One sports 50mm drivers, which deliver a polished, sharp sound. There are specs that support this, in theory, though I’d argue there isn’t any one element that directly translates to a better sound: At 114 dB, the Quantum One has a higher sensitivity than the average headset, which means it’s coming in louder (and possibly clearer) even at lower volume. It has the same 20-40,000Hz “Hi-Res” frequency response that you tend to find in high-end headphones, but rarely in gaming headsets. These are strong indicators of quality, but ultimately the proof is in the sound. Where many headsets, even good ones, come in a bit bassy and can get a little fuzzy when there’s too much going on, everything that comes through the Quantum One feels balanced and clear. Maybe the one real low point on the Quantum One is its detachable microphone. The short, bendable boom is covered with a rubbery plastic that doesn’t feel like a high-grade product. It works fine, but it’s just fine. I generally have a hard time getting a headset mic right where I want it, but it can be especially tough to find the best placement with the Quantum One mic because you don’t have much bendable arm to work with.

Software

JBL created a new configuration app, QuantumEngine, for its Quantum line of gaming headsets. The app allows you to adjust the audio mix in the headphones, and save custom audio profiles, in addition to the pre-made settings available out of the box. For the Quantum One, the app is essential, as it allows you to calibrate the headset’s head-tracking and spatial audio, and configure the RGB lighting on the cups. QuantumEngine looks clean and is easy to navigate. The areas of customization are clearly broken down, and each category fits on a single panel. And yet there are a surprisingly large number of settings to tweak. When looking at the Sphere360 spatial audio, you can adjust virtual speaker positions, your body height and head diameter to perfect how the simulated sound hits you. Where most headsets with RGB lighting have a single glowing element, the Quantum has three customizable areas which can be set to follow many of the same patterns found on keyboards and mice. That said, JBL is clearly still working some of the kinks out of the software. For much of my testing, the head-tracking seemed to lose track of its alignment very easily. This seems to have been fixed with a recent patch, but I still find it needs to be calibrated on startup. It’s very easy to calibrate and only takes a moment, but having to take that step every time feels like an imposition.

Gaming

The most important thing about any gaming headset is how it sounds. Over the course of a few weeks, I tested the Quantum One with a few games across PC, Xbox One, and PS4, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Doom Eternal, Teamfight Tactics, Ori and The Will of The Wisps, and Nioh 2. In general, the Quantum One outputs clear, nuanced soundscapes. The bass booms. The mids sing. The highs whine. Even when using a direct 3.5mm connection, which does not allow for 7.1 surround sound or head-tracking, you hear a complete version of the music and sound effects that you may not get on cheaper audio gear (like your TV’s speakers). You get most out of the difference in sound quality, I think, in a game like Doom Eternal, where you really want to hear every guitar lick, but also need to clearly pick up the crackling sound of a fireball whizzing towards your head. The surround sound, particularly when combined with the spatial audio and head-tracking software on PC, is very precise. You can follow an enemy’s movements in Modern Warfare by following their footsteps. It’s particularly cool to notice how the sound positions to match your head movements IRL. Saying that these features work exactly as they’re supposed to doesn’t necessarily sound like high praise, but it is. Stable, reliable positional audio builds immersion in a subtle, but also amazing way.

Purchasing Guide

The JBL Quantum One gaming headset will be available at major electronics retailers for $299 starting May 4, 2020.

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Predator: Hunting Grounds Review

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The driving, iconic score that welcomes you to Predator: Hunting Grounds is one that instantly sparks nostalgia into anyone familiar with the cult 1987 movie. Unfortunately, very little else of what made the Arnold Schwarzenegger vs alien monster bullet-fest so much fun has made it into Illfonic’s latest ‘80s adaptation. There are brief bursts of frantic action lurking in the undergrowth which, when combined with tense firefights, create blockbuster moments synonymous with the source material. These moments are all too infrequent however, as Hunting Grounds often underwhelms more than it excites.

Before dropping in for your daily dose of asymmetric action you’ll have one crucial decision to make: play as one of four fireteam members as you infiltrate an area of nondescript South American jungle and attempt to complete a series of objectives and then exfiltrate before the 15-minute timer runs down; or, choose the Yautja life and become the titular Predator as you hunt down the fireteam and try to pick them off one by one, distract them from their mission, and be an all-round nuisance. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/predator-hunting-grounds-5-player-gameplay"] It seems like the latter should be the far more appealing option - even if the relatively long matchmaking times that come with it are not - but it’s actually as a fireteam member that I found the majority of my enjoyment in Hunting Grounds. There’s a variety of missions that you’ll be randomly assigned when landing in one of the three maps currently available. Each is essentially the same package wrapped in different paper, however, and almost entirely consist of going to a marked area on a map, holding down the square button, and dealing with a few AI-controlled guerilla fighters before moving onto the next. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=It%E2%80%99s%20actually%20as%20a%20fireteam%20member%20that%20I%20found%20the%20majority%20of%20my%20enjoyment%20in%20Hunting%20Grounds."] These fighters aren’t the sharpest blades of grass in the jungle and will consistently funnel down the same few corridors waiting to be greeted by gunfire. They’re also surprisingly few in number and often not enough to keep all four members of your squad occupied. Disabling alarm systems can prevent enemy reinforcements but I was often tempted to let them go off so that I’d have more to do. The shooting itself feels adequate - not operating on the same plane as an Apex Legends or Call of Duty - but serviceable and at no point gave me a reason to want to stop playing. There’s a small selection of weapons to choose from, each more than effective against the AI – especially the default shotgun which counts as a secondary weapon and appears able to one-shot every grunt at a frankly absurd range. As a result of those factors these firefights offer little to no challenge and quickly become repetitive as you gain knowledge of the enemy spawn positions. It’s a real rinse-and-repeat situation, but actually more “muddy-up and repeat” in this case as you can resourcefully use the ground below you to hide your heat signature from the perpetual Predator threat. It’s a smart mechanic which actively affects the gameplay as well as being a fun nod to the film – and also where things actually get interesting. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=big-ps4-ps5-games-coming-in-2020&captions=true"] When the PvE becomes PvPvE is where a lot of the enjoyment can be found in Hunting Grounds. Moving through an enemy camp and seeing a branch out of the corner of my eye shake 30 feet above me put me instantly on edge. Seeing a pair of laser sights emerge from the canopy means trouble’s about to go down. When all of the elements of the hunt come together, high-action moments are created and the appealing core idea of Hunting Grounds shines through. Especially in the final phase, after all mission objectives have been completed and you inevitably need to ‘get to the chopper.’ The stakes are heightened as you have to defend your location from both militia and the Predator, who has to abandon subtlety and go all-out at this stage to prevent you from escaping. This often leads to those desired blockbuster fight scenes where your feet are getting hacked and slashed at by a desperate Predator as you attach to the helicopter’s dangling ropes. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=When%20all%20of%20the%20elements%20of%20the%20hunt%20come%20together%2C%20high-action%20moments%20are%20created%20and%20the%20appealing%20core%20idea%20of%20Hunting%20Grounds%20shines%20through."] For all of this to come together just right largely relies on the ability level of the player controlling Predator, and that’s exacerbated by the disappointingly unbalanced nature of Hunting Grounds – and not in the way you’d expect. Too often, the hunted become the hunters and what should be a tense, fearful encounter for the fireteam descends into a game of cat and mouse where the mouse can just turn around and unload a full clip of ammunition into their pursuer. The Predator can easily be defeated by the fireteam as long as they stick together, because the stealthy alien has very little answer to four guns being pointed at him. His health depletes quickly, and even if he does manage to escape after a close call then all the fireteam needs to do is follow the fluorescent green blood and finish him off before the tediously long healing process is complete. After all, if it bleeds... [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/predator-hunting-grounds-killing-the-predator"] Every round is a fairly straightforward process and it’s a shame that there isn’t more to it. I would have loved to have seen a more powerful Predator have to deal with some of the makeshift traps that Arnie’s Dutch uses at the end of the movie implemented into the gameplay. A more tactically thought-out plan of attack sounds so much more interesting than successfully going toe-to-toe with a creature that you have no business matching up against. Defeating the Predator should be the pinnacle of the experience when it comes to Hunting Grounds, but it happens far too often and offers little satisfaction. Even in Illfonic’s previous asymmetric multiplayer outing, Friday the 13th, required a ridiculously long list of win conditions and on the very rare occasion that they were completed, taking down Jason felt like a real achievement. It’s a shame that the fragile Predator offers very little threat when compared to Crystal Lake’s resident boogeyman. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Defeating%20the%20Predator%20should%20be%20the%20pinnacle%20of%20the%20experience%20when%20it%20comes%20to%20Hunting%20Grounds%2C%20but%20it%20happens%20far%20too%20often%20and%20offers%20little%20satisfaction."] Once the Predator is downed three different scenarios can play out, each underwhelming to varying degrees. First, if you get enough damage in quickly then you can finish the monster off for good and call in to HQ for the body to be collected. Once this happens you’ll have to keep the body in pristine condition while defending it from a slightly increased but still impotent number of AI forces. I have no idea why these guerilla fighters want to damage the dead Predator’s body, but they do. Once you’ve done this for long enough a cutscene will play where two of your team will recreate the most meme-able of bicep filled handshakes, which is a fun touch, but does wear thin on repeat viewings. The match then ends. It’s all very abrupt and your original mission objectives are left incomplete as the drug recipes or ancient artifacts that you were meant to collect are left untouched. It’s like going to the store with a long list of groceries, seeing a deal on ice cream, and just buying that before returning home without the essentials. It all doesn’t make much sense. If you don’t finish off the Predator thoroughly, though, he’ll have just enough time to set off his iconic self-destruct mini nuke. This is the much more interesting option that provides a few seconds of tense decision-making. You can either run and try to escape the blast radius, meaning you’ll either end the match alive or dead as again it abruptly ends once the explosion occurs. Or, if you’re feeling brave, you can try to defuse the bomb by completing a series of four puzzles against the clock. The Witness this is not, but the minigame does provide a brief period of fear and excitement that I wish there was so much more of in Hunting Grounds. The only downside to this option is that if you’re successful you’ll revert back to the monotony of defending the Predator’s body against waves of bullet-sponge AI. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/8-minutes-of-predator-hunting-grounds-fireteam-gameplay"] Meanwhile, playing as the Predator should feel like a power trip, but Hunting Grounds falls short in this regard. Some elements of everyone’s favourite Yautja’s skillset do feel great to wield and leaping purposefully through treetops, or ‘Predkour’ if you will, feels fluid. Using the net gun to trap unsuspecting enemies can be very effective, too. For the first few hours of playing your arsenal will be limited to pretty much the basics, but more exciting options begin to open up the further you progress, such as the Smart Disc and Hand-Held Plasma Caster. Those toys cater to different styles of play and let you decide what kind of Predator you want to be. It’s just a shame that you often aren’t powerful enough and are quickly put onto the back foot when engaging with the fireteam. When at close quarters it takes several imprecise melee attacks with your sharpened claws in order to down an enemy, by which time you’ll be lucky to not have a good chunk of your health bar taken away. From this point on, the tables are often turned and the Predator becomes the prey after your first engagement. Even when using your cloaking device it’s fairly easy to get spotted in the trees when retreating and before you’ve had time to claim your kill the fireteam have already revived their squadmate. It’s a fairly unsatisfying kind of encounter that needs balancing out in the near future, whether that’s by increasing the Predator’s damage output or his resistance to gunfire. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=The%20look%20of%20the%20Predator%20and%20in%20particular%20the%20sound%20design%20is%20spot-on."] The look of the Predator and in particular the sound design is spot-on, though, and when combined with the movie’s pulsating score evokes a big hit of nostalgia. It’s disappointing that the same care hasn’t gone into the fireteam, who are just a selection of generic male and female character models that can be minorly customized. There are a couple of little nods to the original movie in the unlockable cosmetics, such as minigun madman Blaine’s cowboy hat, but it would have been nice to see more for fans of the series. On the whole, Hunting Grounds is without any game-breaking issues but could definitely do with some stabilising. There are quite a few technical annoyances such as texture popping, a few UI bugs, and then we get to the chopper choppy frames. It never gets in the way too badly, but can be especially noticeable when watching another player’s view once you’ve been killed by the Predator and decide to stick around.  

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Gears Tactics Review

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Given the life-or-death dependency on taking cover in the Gears (of War) games, I can’t think of another long-running series better suited to sidestep from third-person shooter into XCOM-style turn-based tactics than this one. Gears Tactics is a spin-off with a more focused approach to the genre, ditching the larger strategy layer side of the XCOM formula in favor of pitched tactical battle after tactical battle. That comes at the cost of some replayability, but most of those fights are rewarding puzzles with fantastically polished graphical payoff.

The story of Gears Tactics takes place 12 years before the original Gears of War – of course, when it comes to gleefully cutting alligator-looking dudes in half with chainsaw guns it’s very much business as usual. Through some impressively animated cutscenes we get to fill in a few gaps in the pre-Outsiders Diaz family history, though Kait’s father, Gabriel, never really comes into his own as a memorable main character. He has his tortured past of having fallen from grace after leading an operation gone wrong and going into self-imposed exile in the COG motorpool, but being brought back for one last job doesn’t really change his mind about anything – he was fed up with the COG’s corrupt leadership before we meet him. Even the heated friction between grizzled old Gear Sid and the prickly engineer/sniper Mikayla never amounts to much. And despite some hints that he might attempt it, the villainous Ukkon never develops beyond one-dimensional evil. Still, the dialogue is written and acted well enough that it serves its purpose of establishing the signature Gears flavor and giving us a monster to hunt without getting in the way. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/27/the-first-21-minutes-of-gears-tactics"]

Gabe leads a squad of up to four Gears into battle against a substantial lineup of recognizable Locust enemies (introduced at a steady clip throughout with a gruesome close-up and a couple of tactical tips) that range from basic grunts and exploding Tickers to buffing Kantuses and tricky Theron Guards. They all have distinctive and interesting abilities to counter, including some that automatically attack if you get too close (countering the insta-kill Lancer chainsaws) and some who explode in a cloud of debilitating poison gas on death to discourage executing them when they’re downed. The only ones that ever got on my nerves were the melee units – including those Ticker jerks – where I could never quite tell if they were in range of striking my troops or not.

[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=You%20may%20only%20ever%20have%20four%20troops%20at%20once%2C%20but%20they%20can%20feel%20like%20an%20army."]The fundamentals of combat are about improving your lethality by flanking, using melee charges, tossing grenades, and other abilities, and it’s great. Where things really get interesting is when you start chaining together abilities from the five different classes that grant you additional action points, either for one character or your entire squad. That can turn them from generally effective fighters into spectacular killing machines that can mow down two or three times their number of enemies. Having a Vanguard soldier like Sid spend one of his three action points to charge into the midst of a group of Locust Hammerburst drones and skewer one on his Retro Lancer’s bayonet, only to recover that action point because of his passive Free Bayonet skill, then blast another one with his Rage Shot ability for extra damage to put them in the Gears-signature down-but-not-out state that allows him to perform an execution kill, which in turn grants his teammates an extra action to tear into the Locusts with four action points apiece instead of three, is a joy. You may only ever have four troops at once, but they can feel like an army. The directional Overwatch ability is also extremely useful – essential, really – for stopping enemy advances during their turn can be enormously powerful if you can cleverly predict enemies’ movements. The satisfying “clink!” when an enemy steps into your killzone and sets your plan into motion is one of my favorite sound effects in Gears Tactics. The Locusts think it’s handy, too: they’ll almost compulsively use Overwatch to pin you in place rather than take a shot on their turn. Countering a web of overlapping Overwatch cones without taking a hit can be a tricky puzzle, and you have many abilities designed for doing exactly that. For instance, Disabling Shot comes standard with every solider’s sidearm, which has high accuracy and a good chance to knock a grub off his guard. Grenades are handy for this, too – and there are class-specific abilities that are even more effective. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-ign-gears-of-war-review-ever&captions=true"] One of Gears Tactics’ best ideas, though, is effectively turning downed enemies into powerups. Executing a downed enemy will grant an action point to every other squadmate, making it a tantalizing reward for risking the safety of one Gear to allow the others one more move. There’s a pretty good chance that reducing an enemy’s health bar to zero will put them into the downed state, which is actually a good incentive to not use instant/overkill options like chainsaws, bayonets, and grenades at every opportunity. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Sliding%20into%20cover%20for%20a%20movement%20bonus%20is%20a%20great%20nod%20to%20classic%20Gears%20moves."]Movement in general feels very fluid, which is both liberating and eventually a little tiresome. There’s no visible grid to constrain you as you move the cursor over the map, with markers on the projected path line to clearly indicate if you’ll spend one, two, or three movement units to get there. There’s even a movement-range bonus you can get for having your troops dash and slide into cover, which is a great nod to classic Gears moves and an extra incentive to stick to cover. Overall, though, it became a bit annoying after a while to have to mouse over so many potential destinations to see what I could reach and what I couldn’t, since it’s not clear just by looking at the map. No matter where you move or what you do, Gears Tactics really does look spectacular – nearly up to par with Gears 5 itself. Character models are fantastically detailed and the ruined, mostly urban environments of the planet Sera are elaborate. Animations are top-notch as well; coming from XCOM 2, I was impressed to never see anybody appearing to fire in the wrong direction or hover in the air for a moment before moving. Virtually everything looks and sounds like you’d expect a flashy Gears game to, including gory Lancer chainsaw kills that leave both chunks of Locust and blood splatter on the environment. Occasional cinematic camera shots zoom in on a wall with textures that don’t bear scrutiny up close, but other than that Gears Tactics is polished to a thrilling shine. What’s more, it’s well optimized: I played on a PC with a Core-i7 7700K with a GTX 2080 and it ran all but flawlessly on ultra settings at 4K resolution. [poilib element="poll" parameters="id=7ee01719-5b5b-4f15-8b16-f9bb2ea7dd8b"] Some of that efficiency is likely because Gears Tactics isn’t as ambitious as XCOM 2 when it comes to the structure of its maps. They don’t appear to be procedurally generated, only specific pieces of rickety-looking cover are destructible, and there are no multi-floor structures where one unit could stand directly above another. And we’re only dealing with four squad members at a time rather than six – though it’s not exactly shy about throwing a dozen enemies at you at once! [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Gears%20Tactics%20goes%20100%25%20all-in%20on%20tactical%20battles."]Your squads are made up of your choice of five available classes: Support, Vanguard, Sniper, Heavy, and Scout – though some slots are often taken up by mandatory hero characters. Each class has a fairly expansive skill tree with some very powerful, very distinctive abilities to unlock as a character levels up, and it does provide significant room for distinguishing one Sniper from another. (Though if you don’t load up on the highly stackable Anchor abilities for your Heavies, which increases accuracy and damage with every shot and heals you as long as you don’t move, you’re blowing it!) Filling out the skill tree is one of the few things you do between missions, because as the name implies, Gears Tactics goes 100% all-in on tactical battles. There are virtually no management decisions to make beyond which soldier classes to recruit and shuffling gear around. There’s no R&D, no resources to collect or spend on new equipment, and no grand campaign map to conquer. That’s not really a weakness – what’s not to like about one great tactical battle after another? – but now that my 35-ish-hour Experienced difficulty playthrough is over, the lack of a strategy layer definitely leaves it feeling less replayable than XCOM. Without thinking about what big choices I’d make differently in another playthrough, I’d be limited to trying different squad compositions and gear loadouts to emphasize different abilities. That has some appeal, certainly, but not nearly as much. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-complete-gears-of-war-timeline-so-far&captions=true"] Gears Tactics’ approach to progression means that your team never gets any new weapons, just new weapon mods that give you stat boosts and new passive abilities. A lot of those are extremely powerful and can absolutely change the way you play more than a slightly better shotgun would, and it’s great to see modifications like a fancy stock or barrel attachment have a visual effect on the gun model. Some of these are similar to XCOM 2’s, like a scope that gives you better accuracy or a magazine that improves your ammo capacity, but then they start layering on new benefits like more damage at the cost of ammo capacity or better damage resistance or reduced grenade cooldowns. On their own they’re significant, but stacking together bonuses produces some amazing results. I put a bunch of critical chance and damage boosts on Sid to turn him into a close-range killing machine, and toward the end I put together a scout who could throw an amped-up frag grenade every single turn. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Stacking%20together%20gear%20bonuses%20produces%20some%20amazing%20results."]Gear is plentiful – you’ll get new items every mission, and more if you complete optional objectives or collect crates during missions. Managing that mountain of items becomes a bit tedious after a while, in part because you have to (or rather, you should) tweak weapons and armor often and also because the UI makes you drill down several steps to see what someone has equipped and what the alternatives are. Every soldier has four different gun parts, a sidearm, three armor pieces, and a grenade slot to individually check on if you haven’t used them in a little while and might’ve snagged their gear for someone else in the meantime. There’s virtually no resource management at all on the battlefield, either. Ammo is unlimited — outside of ammo for power weapons that are dropped in the field — but costs an action point to replenish when you’ve exhausted your magazine (XCOM’s system), and grenades are also unlimited but on a cooldown timer. Even health isn’t a big concern, since there are no persistent wounds that last between missions, so you’re free to use your tank-like troops to absorb as much damage as you like as long as you don’t get them downed too many times. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=igns-top-25-modern-pc-games&captions=true"] Permadeath is in play, but the presence of so many hero characters who must survive every mission they’re on makes it all but moot. Sure, you can lose a disposable soldier, but if Gabe or Sid or Mikayla gets their head caved in by a Locust thug that’s the ball game and you have to restart the mission (or at least your last checkpoint). If you’re playing on Iron Man mode that’d make them like kings on your chessboard who must be protected at all costs, but otherwise it’s pretty difficult to actually fail a mission and be forced to accept some casualties and move on unless you deliberately leave your heroes at home on a side mission where they aren’t required. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=If%20Gabe%20or%20Sid%20or%20Mikayla%20gets%20their%20head%20caved%20in%20by%20a%20Locust%20thug%20that%E2%80%99s%20the%20ball%20game."]If one of your non-hero crew gets dismembered, fear not: replacement troops are free (they’re limited in number but the pool is refreshed after every mission) and usually come at high enough level out of the box to take the sting right out of a death. And while you can change a character’s name and customize their look, I’m a little bummed there’s no option to customize their faces so that I can accurately recreate my friends and coworkers as disposable Gears. And they really are disposable – I managed to lose a few over the course of my playthrough, but at the end there wasn’t so much as a memorial recording the names of the fallen. That was kind of disappointing given the dramatic self-sacrifice a few of them had made. Gears Tactics’ three act-capping boss battles against enormous creatures are especially interesting because this is something the XCOM series has never attempted. They all basically boil down to keeping your troops out of the way of a giant monster’s clearly telegraphed attacks while you whittle away its health and bat down its minions. That said, the spectacle of battling these beasts straight out of the shooters makes fights fun to take part in even if they get mechanically simple after you figure out the patterns. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/gears-tactics-launch-trailer"] Between story missions are a round or two of semi-randomized missions that you have to complete two out of three, or three out of four of before proceeding to the next piece of storytelling. This is where Gears Tactics makes its biggest unforced error: it uses these to pad itself out significantly longer than it should. Don’t get me wrong: side missions are generally good challenges and there are a respectable handful of types that range from rescuing soldiers in torture pods to holding out against waves of Locusts and gathering loot boxes ahead of an advancing bombardment. To keep things interesting they’ve all got secondary objectives that reward you with extra loot if, say, you avoid using grenades or never have a soldier go down; and on top of that, many have modifiers that might make you play differently. I had one mission where my troops couldn’t use Overwatch, one where certain enemies got a 2X damage multiplier, and one where my troops only had two action points per turn instead of three. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Side%20missions%20are%20where%20Gears%20Tactics%20makes%20its%20biggest%20unforced%20error."]Only a couple of these resulted in really unfair-feeling scenarios, like one where I was expected to hold two points on the map with only two soldiers against waves of heavy enemies. And that mission where I only had two action points to work with was one where I had to stay ahead of the advancing bombardment line – not fun! Fortunately, since you only have to beat two out of three or three out of four in a round, Gears Tactics gives you the ability to opt out of one where the deck seems to be too heavily stacked against you. That also means there are a lot of these missions, making up the bulk of the 35 hours I spent playing through the campaign. It’s certainly a good opportunity to gather top-tier loot and improve your chances in the story missions, but grinding my Gears started to feel drawn out after a while. Especially considering you’re free to keep doing these missions to endlessly hunt Legendary loot after completing the story, it might’ve made more sense to wrap the plot up about 10 hours earlier. Most of my other complaints are related to the UI. It rarely gives you enough information in the mission select screen to know what you’re going up against, which means loading out my squad often felt like a shot in the dark rather than a decision I could make intelligently (and sometimes I found I had to restart with a new squad to feel like I had a fighting chance). When you’re unboxing a new weapon mod, it doesn’t tell you which weapon they’re for – and they’re all unique to a specific class – so until you learn to recognize the icon you have to go hunting for it in your inventory. And while I love that when you’re loading out a soldier it lets you browse through your team’s equipped gear and pull someone else’s goodies over to this one without first unequipping it from that person, it doesn’t tell you who has those items equipped until you click on it. Also, it doesn’t gray out the gear that’s unavailable because it's equipped on a trooper who's already been deployed on this round of sidequests.

Where's the Xbox One Version of Gears Tactics?

Strange as it is to have a Gears game launch as a PC exclusive, that's the approach Microsoft has taken with Gears Tactics. But even though there's no release date for an Xbox version announced, Microsoft has been clear that Gears Tactics will come to Xbox at some point – and as XCOM proved, there's no reason a turn-based tactics game like this can't work well on a console.

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Westworld Season 3, Episode 7 Review: 'Passed Pawn'

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out This review contains spoilers for Westworld Season 3, Episode 7, "Passed Pawn." To refresh your memory of where we left off, check out our review of Westworld Season 3, episode 6.

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Part of IGN's Westworld Season 3 guide

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Since his introduction in the first episode of Westworld Season 3, Aaron Paul’s grave, brooding Caleb Nichols has been characterized as a man without direction or purpose — a disconsolate nobody in a world that doesn’t have any use for him, scarred by trauma, cruising through his daily routine on autopilot. A veteran with an ambiguous background, he was clearly wracked with grief and extreme PTSD, and when he crossed paths with Dolores, bullet-riddled and on the run from foes, it made sense that he would meet the call of duty, compelled to act by a sudden sense of importance. Rather than continue to simply drift through life, he found meaning, and what made Caleb so fascinating was the underlying contradiction: that it took a fake human to make him feel he’d found something real. Of course, we are talking about Westworld, and it always seemed a distinct possibility that what we thought we knew about Caleb would eventually turn out to be false — a canny bit of misdirection we’d be shocked to have revealed to us at some critical future juncture. This seemed so likely, in fact, that one of the prevailing diversions of the season has been theorizing about Caleb’s real identity, and theories have indeed been rampant since the start: Perhaps Caleb is a host, or stuck in some kind of simulation, or dead, or a clone, or Dolores, and so forth ad infinitum. And while one of the clearest virtues about the third season of Westworld has been its swiftness in dispatching lingering secrets, the writers have kept Caleb’s identity a mystery, to sometimes frustrating effect. It had become obvious that something was up with this character. But what, exactly? Now we know, and for my money, the long-anticipated answer — he was injured in an ambush in a battle against insurgents, honourably discharged from the military, deemed an “outlier” by Rehoboam’s imperfect predecessor, rehabilitated by augmented reality therapy, drugged into a stupor, enlisted to kidnap and murder other outliers, and finally decomissioned after killing his partner and friend, with no memory of any of it — wasn’t worth the wait. Somehow both overly complicated and ultimately simplistic, it necessitated way too much explanation to be unveiled as a proper dramatic revelation, while at the same time it feeling too slight, as it related to the story overall, to land with the wallop of, say, learning that William and the Man in Black were the same person. It’s not an egregiously dumb or clunky twist, and it sets up some intriguing motivation for Caleb, but considering the build-up, I found it rather disappointing. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/13/whos-the-real-villain-of-westworld-season-3"] I appreciate the connections the show has endeavored to draw between Caleb and Dolores. Like a host in Westworld, Caleb’s been long trapped in his own private recurring loop, totally unaware that the direction of his life has been determined by someone other than himself, that what he believes are his memories have been invented and implanted, that any sense of control or independence he has is nothing more than an illusion. And like Dolores, Caleb has suddenly and painfully been awakened to the truth of his situation — and has been invigorated to do something drastic to break out of it. I like the shift in emphasis this twist heralds. We’ve seen machines discover consciousness. Now we’re seeing that the consciousness humans take for granted might not be worth as much as they thought. Are hosts more free than humanity? Is anyone free at all? These are interesting questions that greatly expand Westworld’s science-fiction premise. But posing these questions has not been without challenges this season, particularly concerning balance. On one hand, characters with whom we are already familiar are converging in the world outside the Delos theme parks, pursuing incompatible goals and confronting one another in a direct continuation of the story we have been following over the course of three seasons. On the other hand, we have a new hero, a new villain, and a very elaborate sci-fi conceit involving a nefarious supercomputer, predictive algorithms, Big Data, experimental rehab, app-based crime, and a system by which social undesirables are either cured or expunged. Intriguing though all of this may be, it’s a lot of information to convey at once, while still developing older characters, delivering spectacular action set pieces, and just generally maintaining the momentum needed to keep things moving briskly. Westworld’s third season has strategically avoided this problem by declining to explain how Rehoboam works in detail or how Caleb is involved in Dolores’s plan to destroy it. As a result, it’s impossible to reveal this and more without dedicating huge chunks of time to long, exhaustively detailed flashbacks and stilted exchanges between the understandably confused Caleb and the since-defunct machine that helped brainwash him in the first place. “Passed Pawn” just has an unbelievable amount of exposition, primarily because the big reveal hinges on too many discrete components. It’s not just that Caleb is actually responsible for killing his best friend. We have to be told he was an outlier, and we have to be told what outliers are, and what happens to outliers, and that he used to hunt other outliers, and that one of his outlier-hunting missions went wrong, and that he had his memory wiped thereafter. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=westworld-season-3-images&captions=true"] The effect is like having a friend explain the plot of a movie you’ve never seen: long-winded, circuitous, hard to follow. And meanwhile, as if Caleb’s inquiries and reminiscences weren’t enough, we have Bernard, Stubbs, and William back at the asylum poking around a conveniently informative computer terminal, eager to add their own expository conversations to augment the plot dump. (This is never more transparent than when Stubbs explains away William’s entire third-season subplot by deducing that Dolores used his blood to locate the secret New Mexico facility, which you would think would be unnecessary given that she has Serac’s memories downloaded.) The only illuminating insight the three of them offer on the situation pertains to Dolores and her “poetic sensibility.” Dolores is exhorting Caleb to help her liberate humankind. Bernard, conversely, thinks she must be duping him into destroying it. On the subject of destruction: the only person uninterested in going over backstory or mulling over plot seems to be Maeve, who arrives at the compound right as Caleb’s having his crisis of identity. She’s mercifully equipped with a samurai sword and an artillery drone (although absent her newly recruited host pals, glimpsed only in the opening scene as they dispatch one of the clone-Doloreses in the form of Musashi), and as if to deliberately to break up the exposition party, she proceeds to engage Dolores in the one-on-one fight we’ve been promised since the beginning of the season. Action has been one of the highlights of Westworld lately, but though this brawl is predictably well-staged, I did find it a touch too heavy on cutting — when Nolan himself is at the helm, the show has looked unmistakably cinematic, but alas this climactic bout struck me as a tad too televisual. Dolores and Maeve meet their mutual end (at least for now) by way of that much-beloved sci-fi trope, the EMP blast, leaving Caleb to follow the newly devised instructions for revolution on his own. (Of course, there’s also Hale-Dolores, still in the wind.) With only one final episode left this season, there seems to be a lot of ground to cover and a lot of individual pieces left to bring together — namely Caleb, Serac, and Bernard, Stubbs, and William, left in a cliffhanger with a shotgun at a gas station. (The less said about their naivety in allowing this to happen the better.) I sincerely hope, as an avid fan of Westworld’s third season, that the finale makes this all worthwhile and retroactively justifies the digression into plot. I assume that the climax will echo Dolores: violent delights, violent ends.

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