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Red Rocket was reviewed out of the New York Film Festival, and will debut in theaters on Dec. 3.
Before we even see an image beyond the logos of the companies behind Red Rocket, director Sean Baker cheekily introduces us to the world of his follow up to The Florida Project with NSYNC’s karaoke classic “Bye Bye Bye.” It’s a familiar warm-up technique filmmakers have often employed to immediately set a lighter tone, but as the pop song returns more than once over the next two hours, we’ll slowly come to learn why it’s crucial to our understanding of our lead, ex-porn star Mikey Saber (Simon Rex). For many of us, the 20-year-old “Bye Bye Bye” is a trip to another time in our lives, but for him, it’s a time he never left.
The symbolism of an NSYNC hit (down to who is singing it and what mood they’re in) isn’t the usual fodder for low-budget character studies. But it’s hardly the first commercial iconography Baker has included in his work (see: the end scene of The Florida Project), and here it’s an early indicator that Baker hasn’t lost his thrilling signature knack for intersecting pop culture with intimate human drama.
Red Rocket opens with Mikey on a bus back to his rundown, backwoods Texas hometown after presumably some kind of failure in Los Angeles. He never tells his ex-wife, Lexi (Bree Elrod), or his mother-in-law, Lil (Brenda Deiss), why he’s suddenly back in town, but he is quick to mention all the adult film awards he’s been nominated for since leaving.
Rex, a former porn star himself, is magnetic in the role. The film is undeniably his showcase; a slice-of-life dramedy in which a sociopathic individual escapes a great many consequences by using his boyish charm on the right people, and not always on purpose. The character’s spirit, and thus Rex’s performance, feels like a companion to what Adam Sandler pulled off in Uncut Gems. But instead of dealing with modern New York gangsters, Mikey has to deal with his former family and their protective, close-knit community.
Drugs play a role in his troubles as well, and staying with Lexi and Lil, he sees them using heroin. “Good life choices!” he yells to them, before Lexi snaps back that the doctor cut Lil’s pain meds in half. In this setting, Baker is able to make a plethora of current American issues pieces of Mikey’s overall story. Set in 2016, the opioid crisis, health care, and, yes, Donald Trump all come into play. But Baker never falls into the trap of being preachy about these topics. As Mikey’s mother-in-law listens to one of the now former president’s speeches, there’s no indictment or endorsement, or even revelation, really, of her politics. But in 2016, this is just simply what was frequently playing on the TV in a lot of lower-class homes in red states.
Yet, Red Rocket mostly remains focused on Mikey and his shenanigans as he disrupts the lives of those around him. Baker’s made his entire career by showing the people that the American system failed. We’re never led to be distracted by who Mikey might’ve voted for in the 2016 election, but we are meant to understand that both sides of the aisle play into the socioeconomic landscape he and everyone else in the movie have to live in. The film is more pro-human than anything representing right or left. It wants to show us how likable, complex people a great many of us don’t think about live.
These observations and character moments do run into pacing problems as Mikey starts courting the 17-year-old Strawberry (Suzanna Son), who works at their local donut shop. Red Rocket marches in place for a long while in its second act as their toxic relationship too slowly progresses from creepy flirting to something potentially more dangerous. It feels very clear where the two-hour-and-10-minute runtime could have been made tighter. This elongated section threatens to derail Rex’s efforts to make Mikey likable in his erratic (and erotic) life pursuits. Luckily, the film course corrects for a wild finale that makes great use of the diverse personalities in their small Texas community.
This is the performance of Simon Rex’s career by a long shot.
The movie’s final note can’t escape feeling a little trite, as the static cycle of “Bye Bye Bye”s of Mikey’s life ultimately reveals itself in a way other slice-of-life character studies have executed with more emotion (Nomadland a prime example). But it can’t stomp on an otherwise entertaining story of muted bombast. This is the performance of Rex’s career by a long shot, but it’s also an empathetic and honest portrait of a type of life people live in the U.S. There’s not much to celebrate about the story’s situations, and so Red Rocket serves more as a call for the system to better serve its people. That’s not something any film can accomplish on its own, but attempts this good tend to have their heart in the right place.
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World of Warcraft’s universe has been steadily expanding since its release nearly 15 years ago, adding plenty of new characters, lands to explore, and enemies to conquer. However, one of its most popular storylines follows the downfall of the hero Arthas and his subsequent rise to become the Lich King. For those looking to return to Northrend and storm Icecrown Citadel once more, this board game will definitely scratch that itch for you.
Based on the expansion of the same name, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - A Pandemic System Board Game (wow, that’s a mouthful) is a cooperative tabletop game for up to five players that includes all the trappings of the popular MMO. It has iconic heroes, unique abilities, battles against the Scourge, and questing with your party, and it's all uniquely layered on the foundation of the popular Pandemic series of board games. This isn’t just a simple re-skin, though, as every element of gameplay has been faithfully adapted to feel right at home within Blizzard’s popular universe.
What’s in the Box
From the moment you crack open the box, you can tell this board game was created with attention to detail and plenty of care showcased in every component. The sprawling game board measures roughly 20" x 30" and features dozens of familiar locations from across Azeroth, including Naxxramas, Dalaran, Ulduar, and more.
It also features seven iconic characters from the Warcraft universe: Thrall, Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner, Varian Wrynn, Tirion Fordring, Muradin Bronzebeard, and Lady Liadrin. Each playable character comes with a detailed mini figurine to represent them during gameplay. Of course, there’s also an incredibly detailed figurine of the Lich King himself, as well as his horde of undead cronies that include three abominations and dozens of small ghouls. One thing to note is that there are many incredibly sharp points on some of these figurines, and after poking myself one too many times I had to be more cautious when grabbing them.
Each playable character also comes with a Hero Sheet, complete with unique abilities, a health bar, and some lore on the back. As with everything in this game, the Hero Sheets are adorned with gorgeous original art from the folks at Blizzard. There’s also a deck of 63 Hero Cards used throughout the course of the game that all feature detailed artwork as well. I was surprised that hardly any of the artwork was reused from Hearthstone -- Blizzard’s popular deck-building game based on the World of Warcraft universe -- making this feel like a wholly new adventure and not simply a repackaged cash-in.
This isn’t just a simple re-skin. Every gameplay element has been faithfully adapted to feel at home within the WoW universe.
Additionally, you’ll find 10 Quest Sheets, 30 Scourge Cards, Reference Cards to assist players during gameplay, various markers, and a punchboard containing high-quality cardboard cutouts to assemble Strongholds and a large replica of Icecrown Citadel. Press-seal bags are included to store everything between play sessions, and as with many of the other Pandemic series games, I’m surprised at just how little space is wasted in the game box.
Rules and How to Play
The goal in the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King board game is simple: complete three quests to obtain unique rewards before storming Icecrown Citadel and putting an end to the Lich King once and for all. However, the Lich King’s Scourge steadily spreads across Northrend, and you must complete your task before it consumes you and your party.
Each player begins by selecting one of seven heroes to play as, all with unique abilities that can contribute to the team’s overall success in some way. Every Hero Sheet has a set of numbers across the bottom that represents that character’s health, which players must manage carefully as they explore and fight across the map.
Turns play out similarly to the original Pandemic board game, with each player taking four total actions that include moving across the game board, fighting enemies, questing, or healing up. Instead of simply curing diseases, though, players are much more engaged in the moment-to-moment gameplay. Players will also accumulate a hand of cards such as attack and defense to aid in battle, healing cards to replenish health, or travel cards to quickly move around the board. There are also a limited number of Stronghold cards that can be added to the deck that allow you to place Strongholds around the map to act as a sort of “fast-travel” location for you and your team.
As the Lich King’s undead army expands across the map, players can choose to fight the Scourge as one of their turn actions. By rolling two dice, players can deal damage or block incoming attacks, as well as play cards from their hands to aid in battle. Characters on the same space can even team up in battle, making it truly feel like you’re in a party together mowing down waves of enemies.
In addition to fighting, players can also choose to partake in a Quest as one of their turn actions. Since completing Quests are a key component of the team’s win condition, it’s important to always keep an eye on the party’s Quest progress. The game board is divided into three regions, indicated by the color of the spaces within. Each region contains one of three Quest Sheets (with a total of nine available) that the team must work together to complete during the course of the game. Quests will take multiple player turns to complete using a combination of dice rolls, cards from their hands, and help from teammates, and require plenty of coordination.
Every Quest Sheet has a unique boss enemy featured on it that deals damage to the questing player, as well as some sort of mechanic that players will need to strategize around, such as reducing the number of dice that can be rolled, prevent healing, and more. Once players reach the end of the Quest, a unique reward is revealed that provides a powerful single-use card that the team can use to help turn the tide in their favor.
While the Quest system definitely works fine, I would have liked to see it fleshed out a bit more. It essentially boils down to moving a marker along a linear path and doesn’t feel as active or engaging as the battles. It feels like a missed opportunity having all these iconic raid bosses featured on the Quest Sheets and never actually getting to interact with them in any meaningful way. That goes for the final Lich King encounter, as well, which is effectively a longer “Quest” that doesn’t raise the stakes all that much.
That being said, the moment-to-moment gameplay of strategizing with your teammates as you push back the encroaching Scourge on the board while trying to complete the Quests perfectly encapsulates that signature stress felt while playing other Pandemic board games. Every action taken must be carefully thought out as things can get out of hand very quickly and one wrong move could lead to your inevitable defeat.
I found the Wrath of the Lich King board game to be slightly more difficult - even on the easiest difficulty - than the traditional Pandemic board game... and that was with a full group of five players. Turns are a bit more complicated as you’re not only managing the game board, but also your own hero’s health. As with most games, I imagine as your group becomes more experienced you’ll be able to anticipate setbacks and plan ahead accordingly. And, for those ready to take on more of a challenge, there are three increasing difficulties that make the Scourge more potent and reduce the number of Strongholds available. There’s even a solo play mode, which I still found to be an engaging experience. However, the fun in this game truly lies with team-based decision-making.
There’s even a solo play mode, which I still found to be an engaging experience.
With seven unique heroes and nine quests in total, there’s plenty of replayability here that will provide fun for dozens of game sessions. The cooperative nature of the game coupled with dice-based battles and quests makes the Wrath of the Lich King board game feel like a very lite version of D&D that can be completed in about an hour.
Where to Buy
The World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King board game has an MSRP of $59.99 and is available at the following retailers:
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Squid Game is now streaming on Netflix.
Squid Game sounds like an homage to those strange underwater creatures that undulate below the sea. It's actually a compelling, candy-coated fever dream in which contestants play the innocent games from their childhood with one major change: if they lose, their lives are forfeit. It's a jarring, disturbing portrait of individuals eking out hard luck existences and struggling across Seoul, South Korea, and as much a tale of a dystopian hellscape of the mind as it is a horror series viewed through the lens of those scraping by.
Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is an average guy who's in serious need of some cash, or a miracle. He's down on his luck, with a daughter he may never see again and an elderly mother who's still forced to take care of him as though he were a child. So when given the opportunity to play a series of children's games for an astronomical sum of money, Gi-hun can't refuse.
Neither can nearly 500 other participants, all of whom have been voluntarily whisked away to the middle of nowhere, under surveillance by masked guards and clad in numbered T-shirts and sweatsuits. All are chasing the magical sum of money that could potentially make every single one of their problems disappear -- but at what cost?
That all becomes apparent once the "players" realize even the simplest children's game in this prison-like compound could result in a swift, painful death. The childlike joy of "Red Light, Green Light" quickly devolves into a harrowing sight as those who move a single muscle during the "red light" are unceremoniously shot where they stand.
It's haunting, of course, but perhaps even more terrifying is the idea that these people are willingly participating. The thought of returning to their old lives and facing their debts is so terrible that they'd rather risk imminent death. It's a concept that hangs heavy throughout the series' lean 9-episode run, especially as the story expands from Gi-hun's somewhat selfish existence and explores the others involved in the games.
One of the series' greatest strengths is weaving a tangled web of character development that pays off with each new hour we watch. North Korean defector Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon) is tough as nails on the outside, but occasionally reveals a kinder, gentler side. Gi-hun's childhood friend Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) is an even more intriguing case, having stolen money from his clients, going so far as to put his mother's home and business on the line as collateral. And though we know all this, these players' truest intentions remain obfuscated time and time again. That’s part of what keeps us watching, after all.
Squid Game moves at a breakneck pace, speeding from game to game.
And it’s easy to become attached to these players, even though it's quickly established that you could be saying goodbye to them at any moment. Squid Game moves at a breakneck pace, speeding from game to game, keeping you at the edge of your seat as the body count climbs and the plot continues to thicken. And it isn't for the squeamish, as participants are shot right between the eyes without so much as flinching during competitions and bodies left to pile up until there are enough victors to pass through.
Sometimes it’s not that characters are dying, but how they’re “eliminated” that makes you sit up and pay attention. The first game involves an eerie robot doll that turns around and “looks” for people still moving after the “red light” is given as it scans for violators. The second game forces players to chisel a shape out of a piece of honeycomb -- prompting the craftier players to use anything at their disposal, even if it means the humiliating task of licking the treat over and over again to make the job easier.
But throughout all the violence and the multiple poignant, thoughtful moments, there's one central thread: the juxtaposition of the innocence of childhood against the harsh world we're all forced to endure. There are also questions upon questions that arise at every corner. For instance, who are these mysterious masked captors, and how does it benefit them to offer such a large payout for people who are down on their luck? Why not find a less sadistic way to be altruistic?
It's difficult to say, of course, but answers do come in due time. You'll be left pondering what these poor souls could possibly be made to go through next as each episode concludes, however, and frantically scrambling for the play button to see what happens, all in the hopes of finding out what's really going on, just like the players themselves, and striking it rich with a bit of "plot" lottery. While the last bits of the story do drag a small bit as the story winds down, the tension doesn’t let up until the final credits roll. By then, you’ll have seen hundreds of deaths, gallons of blood, and some truly ingenious acts from people just like you and me who have all chosen one path forward: living, no matter what it takes. And that’s a hell of a lot scarier than giving up and succumbing to debts and hardship.
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Venom: Let There Be Carnage hits theaters on Oct. 1.
Director Andy Serkis describes Venom: Let There Be Carnage as a love story (which it definitely is) between Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom (also Tom Hardy). That idea is skillfully reflected through the lean script and directing choices. Serkis gives us a sequel with entertaining action sequences, a more personal approach, a lot of humor, and a thrilling final showdown between Eddie/Venom and Cletus Kasady/Carnage (Woody Harrelson).
Picking up after a passage of time only marked by Kasady’s sleek new haircut, Let There Be Carnage has an unhinged villain whose motives are vengeful and driven by pain. As Eddie and his police detective partner put together the pieces of his killing spree, we see a dramatic pivot from the sci-fi conspiracy of the first movie to something that plays like a comic-book movie hybrid of serial killer thrillers like Seven or Zodiac (yes, really). Of course, those movies are brilliant, so it is a fine template to work off when handling a villain similar to so many of America’s real-life monsters, had they been granted some really terrifying superpowers.
This really is a bizarre hybrid of monster and murder movie, but Serkis efficiently balances various tones, visual spectacles, and humorous performances to surprisingly make it work. Much like Eddie does, the sequel lets its weirder side out and the symbiote is given more time to shine. Venom’s one-liners cut through tense moments as comedic relief, resembling a combination of Clayface from the HBO Max Harley Quinn show and the MCU’s Drax. Or, as Eddie describes him, a “pig-dog horse-duck.”
The people around him, however, do care for this lethal giant and provide excellent connective tissue between characters. We’re given a much smaller, yet efficiently used supporting cast with Detective Mulligan (Stephen Graham), Anne (Michelle Williams), Dan (Reid Scott), and even Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu). All these characters interact and intersect over the course of the movie, emphasizing a smaller world and scope to navigate in, as well as a more personal threat to Eddie’s social circle.
Serkis’ experience as a motion-capture artist comes through as he directs more active and physical scenes. His trust in practical and computer-generated visual effects hammers home Venom’s physical presence and destruction in impressive and tangible ways, like when Venom tears up Eddie’s kitchen in a scene that seems straight from Fantasia’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The active camera movement matches the cold-blooded, chaotic energy brought on by Carnage and Kasady. Their motives cannot be reasoned away; their twisted feelings of justice empower them to savage acts of violence. We witness this fully in the only fight between Venom and Carnage. The battle is packed with feral, creative limb-slinging between the two symbiotes as Carnage jabs with grotesque spiked arms and Venom defends with an instinctive survival mentality, an explosion of CGI monsters and pyrotechnics that’s gripping to watch.
Let There Be Carnage’s strongest assets are our villains: Kasady, Carnage, and Shriek (Naomie Harris). They are antagonists with style and showmanship, something lacking in many of Marvel’s movies, reveling in the disaster they leave in their wake. As Kasady, Harrelson channels his Natural Born Killers character, Mickey Knox, fighting against the abusive systems of his past. When he’s reunited with someone from his past who’s just as smart, brutal, and remorseless as he is and their chemistry takes hold, it’s actually hard not to root for them to burn everything to the ground. It’s a shame that we don’t get more of Harris in Let There Be Carnage, not only for her magnetic performance, but also to get any context for her powers and much of her backstory.
It’s good that it scales back to focus on finding its voice.
Let There Be Carnage’s strongest assets are our villains: Kasady, Carnage, and Shriek (Naomie Harris). They are antagonists with style and showmanship, something lacking in many of Marvel’s movies, reveling in the disaster they leave in their wake. As Kasady, Harrelson channels his Natural Born Killers character, Mickey Knox, fighting against the abusive systems of his past. When he’s reunited with someone who’s just as smart, brutal, and remorseless as he is and their chemistry takes hold, it’s actually hard not to root for them to burn everything to the ground. You can tell that they’re having fun pushing the PG-13 rating with the bodies they lay waste to. I mean, in the middle of admiring their havoc, I wrote in my notes, “They’re freaky. I love them!” It’s a shame that we don’t get more of Harris in Let There Be Carnage, not only for her magnetic performance, but also to get any context for her powers and much of her backstory. However, given what we know about symbiotes, this dynamic presents their relationship with a troubling caveat, emphasizing a star-crossed romance between the two.
Even still, the main relationship that’s tested through this rampage of mayhem is between Eddie and Venom. While Let There Be Carnage has fun implying a romance between the two, their relationship is still more like a beleaguered pet owner and untrained puppy, with exasperation painted on Hardy’s face. Now that neither have to worry about a whole alien race trying to take over the planet, Venom can act more like the impulsive goofball that he really is, which is the opposite of Eddie’s own urges.
Like many ill-fated relationships, Eddie and Venom have a lot of communication issues, which is what gets them into this mess with Carnage. Compared to how quickly Kasady and Carnage teamed up, it seems like Eddie and Venom will never see eye to eye (*Venom voice* since he will always be the bigger person). While they both eventually realize that they need each other and compromise to stop a bad guy, neither really learns what makes the other important – not truly. But they’re building a symbiotic relationship meant to be sustainable, so we’re rooting for those two crazy kids to make it work!
All that said, while Let There be Carnage has a structurally sound plot meant to redirect the franchise, it’s still one that’s playing catch-up to where superhero movies are now in 2021. It plays it pretty safe, and doesn't take the kind of exciting swings that thrilling contemporaries like The Suicide Squad or Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings have. It’s the conventionally perfect length for a film, clocking in a little over 90 minutes while it slavishly follows the typical hero’s journey. And that’s fine! This story started off too big and too complicated in the first movie, so it’s good that it scales back to focus on finding its voice.
There is no arguing that this movie doesn’t have stellar villains who followed through on their threats of bringing utter chaos and carnage to those who have wronged them. With its otherwise safe decisions, it was reassuring to see the ending and post-credits scene lay out a new direction for the Venom series, and it’s exciting to think about what happens to our duo next.
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Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is big. It is a massive, life-dominating endeavor likely to take weeks of playing before completion, dominating your thoughts and plans during that time. Sometimes that size means spending hours on frustrating time as an army manager, but the role-playing, exploring, and especially combat make it very much worth it. Wrath of the Righteous leaves a memorable mark on the throwback-style RPG genre, with strong companion personality and turn-based combat.
The pedigree of Wrath of the Righteous is big as well, adapting another of the Pathfinder tabletop game’s epic “Adventure Paths” and honing the concepts of 2018’s similarly large Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Kingmaker's generic fantasy kingdom is replaced here by the specific story of a crusade against a demon army on the border of the world and the Abyss. Sometimes this is a little off-putting, in that it's easy to miss fighting ogres and goblins in a fantasy game when you’re neck-deep in nabasu and dretch (whatever those are). But the decision to give Wrath of the Righteous a specific focus like this mostly pays off, especially when it allows for the party's companions to have stronger personalities. I even found myself having strong enough feelings about my party members’ behaviors that I ended up killing or removing some of them from the group at multiple different points, which I've never done in an RPG before the endgame.
Wrath of the Righteous also improves on Kingmaker and other RPGs from the Baldur's Gate family in a few important technical ways. For instance, it's the first isometric game like this I've seen to allow the camera to be spun around the game world, while still looking great from any angle. Even better, the finicky rules-lawyering that made Kingmaker such a pain when it first came out is long-gone, making Wrath welcoming to new players. I've noticed almost no arbitrary punishments for not knowing all of Pathfinder's rules, which was my main problem by far with Kingmaker. It also adds dozens of new character classes and variants, with Cavaliers and Shamans joining the typical Fighters and Clerics.
Turn It Up
The biggest and best change for the Pathfinder series and for the genre as a whole, however, is that Wrath of the Righteous has a turn-based mode available from the start. The Baldur's Gate or Infinity Engine-style of isometric D&D-based RPG has always been built on a foundation of "real-time combat with pause," where either all your little dudes run at the monsters at once before a few corpses explode and you hope none of them are yours, or you spend half an hour pressing pause on and off trying to manipulate a system into a messy facsimile of turn-based combat in order to have some feeling of control over it. That manner of combat is one of my least favorite in gaming, and it's stood in the way of my enjoyment of a genre that's otherwise made for me. Kingmaker and Pillars of Eternity 2 both experimented with turn-based modes, but these were patched in well after release. Wrath of the Righteous is the first major Infinity Engine-stlye game to have a full turn-based mode from the start (and also, because of that, the first of these turn-based modes that I've personally played).
And it's amazing. The interface switches seamlessly between the two game modes at the press of the T-key, which you can do at any time. Even better, having a legitimately fun turn-based mode makes me care about the occasionally complex systems of the Pathfinder ruleset. Because of this mode, I can focus on actually learning how to break down enemies that have great saving throws or armor classes, for example, or care about the difference between the Searing Ray and Burning Arc spells. The only real downside is that combat encounters which might only take 10 to 30 seconds in real-time mode may take much longer in the slower-paced turn-based mode, which can make an already massive campaign feel even more drawn out – but that was a small price to pay for me to actually care about combat.
Having a legitimately fun turn-based mode makes me care about the occasionally complex systems of the Pathfinder ruleset.
The specificity of Wrath of the Righteous’ setting also helps in that systemic development. As you play the Commander of a grand crusade to defeat the demonic invasion forever, your character isn't just a hero, but a Mythic Hero, who gets granted special powers over the course of the campaign. These can work to accent and dramatically improve existing skills; my barbarian Bloodrager, for example, gained the ability to use her Bloodrage skill as much as she wanted instead of having a cap on it. Meanwhile, I could give my Wizard extra first-level spells and a bonus to ice magic so she could throw dozens of high-damage snowballs at foes.
Angels, Demons, and Tricksters
The major plot differences between Wrath and other fantasy RPGs also show up in the story side of the Mythic Paths. Based on your ethical choices as the quest starts and your alignment overall, you'll have the option to pick one of several paths, from the somewhat generic good and evil of the Angel and Demon paths, to the freedom-loving Azata that my Chaotic Good character took, to darker paths like becoming a Lich and even resurrecting otherwise dead enemies as new party members. There's a lot of promise in this system and when it works it's great for keeping the plot flexible, but actually understanding how, why, and where you'll have access to those various Mythic Paths can be difficult to parse. As a Chaotic character it feels like I should have had access to the Trickster path, but apparently I'd missed a single dialogue option 10 hours before setting that decision in stone, and so was locked out.
There's a lot to recommend about the plot and writing.
Even with that, there's still a lot to recommend about the plot and writing. The overall plot can be fairly conventional with the mostly-good mortals finding off the demonic hordes, but it's given some extra spice when the legendary demonic witch, Areelu Vorlesh, shows up and starts raising complicated questions about free will and morality.
I was also particularly impressed with how, when you're given notable choices while adventuring, your party members won't merely chime in but will actually argue with one another in some detail. In one choice I happened to have the naively optimistic Ember and the polite-but-selfish prissy noble Camellia in my party; Ember responded to some clearly over-the-top nastiness by believing that the crusaders in question were just good people trying to do the right thing but making mistakes, and Camellia just tore into Ember's childlike ignorance. More could be done, of course (more could always theoretically be done to have writing for everything in an RPG) but Wrath follows games like Pillars 2 in pushing boundaries.
Heavy Lies The Crown
Unfortunately, that attention to storytelling and systemic detail is lacking from a major part of Wrath of the Righteous: its crusade management. This is divided into a strategic component of building up the crusade infrastructure and making choices in events, and a wargame of moving armies of crusaders around to reclaim territory from the demon hordes. Both are underwhelming.
The strategic layer is very similar to that of Kingmaker, where advisors present you with choices and you also have to develop your capital and forts with buildings. It feels like busywork and also unbalanced – you rarely have to make an actual difficult decision beyond just waiting for more money or more time. The risk/reward element of Kingmaker having you send different advisors to handle situations in their own unique and possibly wrong way is entirely gone as well, with all of the potential failures channeled over into the army side of things. It's also annoying that going to and from the strategic layer requires going through load screens, a minor problem with the game overall generally but an eye-rollingly annoying one in this mode.
Armies move and fight in a very simple turn-based facsimile of a King's Bounty-style tactics game. You recruit units to give your armies different capabilities, such as sorcerors to cast some extra spells, but for the most part combat is a matter of having your generals use the same abilities over and over while your troops just conk enemies on the head for 10 minutes until the battle is won – then rinse and repeat. It's not terrible, but it’s not especially good, either, and I would genuinely recommend that most people set it to automatic from the options menu. The sheer length of battles and amount of attention it takes can wreak havoc on the campaign pacing.
And yeah, that pacing simply has to be mentioned. Wrath of the Righteous is a long, involved game even by the standards of being in the long, involved genre of role-playing games and the specific extra-long, involved type of the retro isometric RPG. I have played probably over 100 hours – multiple hours every day since release – and am 3/4s of the way to the level cap but the campaign just keeps going. However, there is depth here to earn that time investment; even beyond playing through the campaign to win, there are different mythic paths to try out, the ability to roll your own parties, and just raising the difficulty for greater challenge. It would be easy to fall into Wrath of the Righteous for months on end, and I say that intending it to be both a recommendation and a warning.
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Halo Infinite’s multiplayer just finished its second “preview test flight” this past weekend, and it’s been able to successfully showcase how this modern-day reimagining of the game that popularized online multiplayer shooters will be able to contend with the current competition. It’s not the full picture quite yet – the test flight was limited to Slayer, Capture the Flag, and strongholds for the modes Bot Arena and Social Arena, Weapon Drills, and Training Mode – but Infinite’s multiplayer easily shines at the top with updated movement, familiar power weapons/items, and classic game modes. The gunplay alone feels highly satisfying thanks to the way that each weapon I’ve used so far has its own personality and playstyle to it. Not to mention the return of calculating grenade throws, as the “‘nade around corners” strategy is alive and well once again. In short, this weekend was a blast.
One of my biggest concerns was how Halo Infinite would be able to court new players in addition to pleasing Halo veterans who have a lot of set-in-stone ideas of how Halo should play. As someone who plays a lot of multiplayer shooters but only recently got into Halo: Master Chief Collection, I was basically going into Infinite’s test flight as a new Spartan. But to my surprise, Infinite does a stand-up job of onboarding new players with its Academy mode, in which you can try out different weapon drills or jump into a Training session with bots with customizable match settings. Training mode allows you to try out different power items you may not have been able to get hold of in PvP matches, and it also helps you learn the map as you go around it at your own pace. You can also queue for PvP matches against bots if you want to test your Training ground skills before facing other players.
Speaking of which, the bot AI system in Halo Infinite is honestly the best I’ve ever seen implemented in an FPS game. Microsoft says that Infinite’s bots have been programmed based off of actual player data from playtests and previous Halo games, and it shows. In the first test flight, where players only faced off against bots for a majority of the test, the AI opponents were set at increasing difficulties every day; especially at the highest difficulty setting, Spartan, the remarkably player-like AI would sometimes get the best of me using conventional and power weapons consistently. After seeing what 343 Industries has done in programming player-like bots, I wish more FPS developers would put in a similarly impressive effort to build training modes.
The bot AI in Halo Infinite is honestly the best I’ve ever seen.
Once other humans joined the fray, I found that Halo Infinite’s multiplayer’s second test flight showcased the best parts of Halo as a first-person shooter. The movement feels great thanks to the sprint and slide mechanics, making Infinite feel faster than previous games. While the slide isn’t a speed booster like it is in Apex Legends, Infinite’s slide allows you to move between cover faster and opens up more aggressive playstyles. I used the slide as I was running at targets to throw their aim off, firing my weapon the entire time. The pacing of matches feels like the perfect length at 12 minutes, especially when you’re in a game of Capture The Flag and your team wants to get that one last flag steal before time runs out.
Weapon Meta Shifts
Having played both test flight weekends so far, one immediately noticeable change that was implemented for the second was a slight adjustment to the default MA40 Assault Rifle – it seems to have had its damage and range reduced. That’s a smart move, since the first test flight’s stronger AR was so viable that you didn’t have to play with the other weapons as much. I was a little disappointed with the nerf at first, but once I started using more weapons, I began to forget that I started with the AR. Not to mention the power weapons – extremely strong firearms that spawn after a set timer – add more gunplay options when you want to switch out your primary weapon.
This tech preview’s most reliable weapon, MK50 Sidekick pistol (which you happen to spawn with), really shone throughout the weekend. It outputs far more damage than the AR and was handy for finishing off long-distance kills if I ran out of primary ammo, and naturally it also worked at close range. My favorite weapons were initially the BR75 Battle Rifle and VK78 Commando for the sheer damage output they have. The BR is especially strong considering the three-round burst with very low recoil and distance falloff. Having a different set of weapons every other match was refreshing, too, since it forced me to get used to handling different guns and kept gunplay from getting stale. But by the end of the weekend, I do have to admit the Skewer – one of the aforementioned power weapons – was my absolute favorite because of the way it rewards accuracy and has such powerful rounds.
The Skewer was my absolute favorite because of the way it rewards accuracy and has such powerful rounds.
However, the Gravity Hammer, another power weapon, seemed a little too strong in this tech preview; I felt almost guilty at how much I loved absolutely smashing enemies in melee. I found I was able to hit enemies from a comically long distance and kill them in one hit while still keeping a big chunk of the Hammer’s charge left in the bank for more attacks. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see the number of swings you can take get reduced in the next test, since power weapons like the Sniper Rifle and Skewer have very limited rounds (around four or five).
Another noticeable tweak is that the time-to-kill felt a little bit longer in this tech preview than the first, and that adjustment took some time to get used to. With this being a tech preview and Halo Infinite’s multiplayer being planned as a free-to-play live-service game, I understand the need for constant adjustments, but the extended TTK this time around made a few fights frustrating when an enemy just wouldn’t die even after I’d unloaded an entire magazine of my AR into them. Hopefully the pendulum swings back at least a bit for the next test.
However, in learning from my deaths, I found that the grenade meta was absolutely rewarding when figuring out the timing. Being able to calculate how close an enemy was and time my ‘nade throws to bounce right into their face around a corner was incredibly satisfying. And in classic Halo fashion, sticking enemies with plasma grenades is especially fun because you know they have nowhere to go.
In classic Halo fashion, sticking enemies with plasma grenades is especially fun.
The map designs feel pretty well-balanced, though that’s kind of a given considering the ones I’ve played in the test flights have been symmetrical. But there’s more to it than that: each map has well-placed weapon spawn locations and grenade restock stations, and getting to the power weapons and items when they drop is a battle unto itself, which makes matches even more exciting. My favorite maps were Bazaar, with its outdoor market setting; Recharge, the indoor map with the industrial look; and Live Fire, which impressed me with how it felt bigger than it looked because of the space available to run around in. Each map had natural-feeling platforms to jump on and across to get from one level of the map to the other, and the flow of each one felt incredibly smooth. I always had a few options to move from one side of the map to the other, and the new Grappleshot power item allows for even more movement options.
While the Grappleshot isn’t as smooth as Pathfinder’s grapple in Apex Legends, or even the Grapple Hook from Titanfall 2, it serves a similar purpose. I personally used it as a quick disengage from close-range fights to heal up, then grapple back in to finish the fight. I also really appreciated the fact that you can grapple enemies and catch them off guard.
The Drop Wall and Active Camo weren’t my favorite equipment drops, but that’s purely based off of my aggressive playstyle. I much prefer running into fights in front of my team and playing more in enemies’ faces, so the Drop Wall didn’t do much for me since it deploys in one spot. The Active Camo, meanwhile, requires you to walk to activate it, and that’s just too slow for me. However, I did come to love the Repulsor, which reflects projectiles back at enemies while also pushing them back from you. Using the Repulsor to throw enemies off the map was probably not what it was intended to be used for, but it’s incredibly fun to mess around with equipment and weapon combos like that. Being given that creative freedom is important, and Infinite does a great job of allowing you to have fun while slaying.
Each kill mattered and each weapon pick-up that denied the enemy more firepower was absolutely crucial.
Halo Infinite shows its strength in being played as a team game, especially in the Capture the Flag and Strongholds modes. If even one person isn’t cooperating with the group in CTF it’s extremely easy to get overrun, and I love that there’s that added feature of everyone being important to teamwork. Even in Arena Slayer, which is essentially just team deathmatch, communication on who’s grabbing the power weapons and equipment makes a huge difference in winning the match... or not. This felt different from games like Call of Duty where teams are filled with more people and winning a Team Deathmatch isn’t that important since people like to focus on their own stats. Halo having smaller teams of four Spartans felt like a much more intimate and focused game, even on team deathmatch. Each kill mattered and each weapon pick-up that denied the enemy more firepower was absolutely crucial.
But communicating in matches isn’t always easy, because while Infinite’s ping system isn’t terrible, it’s not the best either – pings didn’t always work the way I expected them to. For instance, one time I was standing over a sniper spawn while trying to mark a spot where I had seen the enemy run across the map, but my ping kept marking the sniper gun behind me as opposed to what was in front of me. With modern FPS games showcasing how much better the quality of life is with a proper ping system, Infinite definitely needs to adjust those settings to better improve the non-verbal communication system for launch – which is now just two months away!
Given that this is a technical preview, it’s completely unsurprising that I encountered a few technical issues over the weekend. Playing on PC with an RTX 2080 GPU, I’d start to experience stuttering after a few matches, and if I didn’t quit out and restart the frames would get so bad that it’d cost me multiple fights. It was incredibly frustrating to deal with, especially when I was in Capture the Flag game modes where every enemy kill and teammate staying alive counted. Turning down in game settings didn’t seem to help – the only remedy was a reboot. Infinite also did not like when I’d alt-tab out to check Discord or even open a website. My teammate on the Xbox Series X also noted some technical issues and stuttering that could only be reset by closing Infinite and rebooting it. But again, this is exactly the kind of feedback Microsoft is hoping to get from a technical preview, and there’s still time for plenty of optimization before launch.
My overall experience with this early slice of Infinite’s free-to-play multiplayer was very positive, and between the matchmaking times going live all I could think about was playing more. It’s got snappy pacing in its matches, the gunplay is some of the best I’ve ever played, and between my reaction as a new player and that of IGN’s resident Halo old-timers, Infinite’s multiplayer really does seem to be shaping up to be just about everything you could want from a modern-day Halo game.
There’s another Halo Infinite test flight scheduled for this coming this Thursday through Sunday, and I’ll continue to slay away at every opportunity leading up to launch and the full review. If you’d like to join in the fun, check out the details for how to get into test flights and any upcoming betas that pop up.
Stella is a Video Producer, Host, and Editor at IGN. Her gameplay focus is on competitive FPS games and she is also a shoutcaster/host on Apex Legends tournaments outside of IGN. You can follow her on Twitter@ParallaxStella.
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For all the loose plot threads dangling in the many worlds of What If, it was surprising to see this week’s episode immediately pay off last week’s cliffhanger: Ultron arriving on the scene with a full set of Infinity Stones. The murder robot is still dead-set on fulfilling his programming and wiping out sentient life, so the only question is whether humanity has the will to stop him. Well, that and “is the Watcher finally going to move his melon-on-a-toothpick head and help out?” As we near the end of the season, What If is more forthcoming with answers to questions like these, leaving this week’s alternate sequel to 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron as one of the clearest displays yet of What If’s strengths and potential for extrapolating worthwhile stories out of MCU canon.
What If has done well at choosing specific, interesting points to diverge from the stories we know, and continues that trend by explaining that this universe saw the Avengers fail to recover the vibranium android body that would become host to Vision, giving Ultron (Ross Marquand) an organic, invincible shell with which to destroy all mankind. And destroy all mankind he does! The Watcher’s (Jeffrey Wright) retelling of Ultron’s victory is surprisingly bleak and sober, which sets up the stakes for the rest of the story nicely. Episode 8 does a good job keeping the themes of Age of Ultron at the forefront by centering the story on the lone human survivors of Ultron’s nuclear holocaust: Black Widow (Lake Bell) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). It’s always valuable in MCU stories, with gods and Celestials and Eternals and so on, to remind us just why the “normies” like Natasha and Clint belong at the table. Often joked about for their lack of powers, they’re an obvious choice as a longshot last hope, but in the context of Ultron’s inhuman legion, focusing on them feels appropriate.
Bell fares far better as Natasha this time out, mainly because the setting keeps the character more grounded and less jokey than she was in Episode 3. More attention is given to Clint’s story, who’s struggling to fight on after losing his family, and Renner brings that daunting challenge to life well through his performance. Clint’s wavering will to survive serves as the argument against Ultron’s philosophy in microcosm, well-captured in a stunning shot of a solo Clint going up against hundreds of Ultron drones at once. This episode feels the most cinematic of any What If installment yet, which goes a long way towards making it feel like a continuation of the events of Age of Ultron.
What If doesn’t spend much time on deepening our understanding of Ultron, with his more nuanced, personal motivations taking a backseat to his broad “peace in our time” directive, but with his father figure dead at this point, finishing the job he started is good enough incentive. Marquand goes two-for-two on subbing in for MCU villain actors, capturing James Spader’s sneering superiority well, though his Red Skull has a touch more fidelity to the original performance than his Ultron. Ultron’s aptitude for universal slaughter leaves him in the same situation as Strange Supreme, alone in all of creation with only The Watcher to keep him company. But a complete set of Infinity Stones is the only key Ultron needs to open the door to the multiverse, and the confrontation between the two beings sends the episode into mind-bending territory.
The Watcher’s choice to abandon passivity and actively engage in the story he’s narrating has been telegraphed since the very start of What If, and it was a little disappointing to see that decision was driven not by a moral resolution, but by self-preservation after Ultron broke his door in and waved the Infinity Stones at him threateningly. The Watcher and Ultron’s multiverse-traversing battle calls to mind Doctor Strange and Kaecilius’ Mirror Dimension duel and goes for broke on gonzo visuals (including a killer Galactus nod!), but does suffer from the show not establishing what The Watcher is capable of in a fight. Because we have no way to know how strong The Watcher is, especially relative to a complete set of Infinity Stones, we spend most of the fight asking “what can The Watcher do?” rather than “how will The Watcher win?” The answer to both appears to be “whatever the writers need.”
This sequence ends up being less effective than moments where Ultron drones are closing in on Clint and Natasha, as the cost and likelihood of their failure is clear and easy to connect to. Balancing action and plot, and understanding which stories benefit from that focus shifting one way or the other, has been one of What If’s biggest challenges and this week is no different. While the Ultron/Watcher fight works overall, the Ultron/Captain Marvel showdown on Xandar felt like a diversion engineered to add one more fight scene. Age of Ultron works best in its quiet moments pondering heady existential questions. The same goes for Episode 8, which aside from occasional stumbles, does a decent job balancing big ideas and big brawls.
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Nostalgia is a funny thing. It can be a comforting sensation, but it sometimes makes things from the past seem better than they actually are. Unfortunately, the latter is the case with Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, which compiles over 300 levels from previous Super Monkey Ball games and updates them for modern consoles. I have fond memories of playing the GameCube versions with friends nearly 20 years ago, so I expected Banana Mania to be a welcome return to those carefree nights staying out past curfew and rolling down increasingly difficult courses. Sadly, rollin’ just isn’t as fun as it used to be.
As the name implies, Super Monkey Ball is a series about monkeys in balls rolling their way through hundreds of stages and avoiding increasingly difficult obstacles – and yes, it’s exactly as silly as it sounds. The GameCube-era graphics have gotten an overhaul that makes the cartoony art style more vibrant than ever, and I found it hard not to bop my head to the arcadey theme music. It’s always refreshing to see games that don’t take themselves too seriously in this era of increasingly realistic graphics and serious subject matter, and Super Monkey Ball is anything but serious.
Because Banana Mania is a mash-up of several previous Super Monkey Ball games, there appears to be an almost overwhelming amount of content at first. There’s the Story mode originally seen in Super Monkey Ball 2, which is less a cohesive campaign than it is about 100 levels across 10 worlds loosely stitched together with brief, dialogue-free animated cutscenes. Challenge modes from the first two Super Monkey Ball games appear as well, although the separate modes have some startlingly similar courses. And of course, Challenge mode doesn’t feel significantly different from Story mode gameplay-wise because the only twist is that you can’t pick up where you left off — you have to get through all of the challenge stages in a single sitting. So it’s more a challenge of endurance than anything else.
The problem is that, after 30 or 40 levels, it begins to feel like a slog.
The problem with both the Story and Challenge modes is that, after 30 or 40 levels, they both begin to feel like a slog. The difficulty in Story mode really ramps up around the halfway point, going from light and breezy to a frustrating exercise in failure very quickly. Early levels might challenge you to make your way around a winding path or keep your momentum going long enough to clear a gap; later on, you’ll be thrust into the air by spring-loaded platforms and fail the level before you even have a chance to adjust the camera to see a hazard you didn’t know would come at you from that direction.
That’s exactly what happened in one of the levels that made me want to pull my hair out: before me stood a towering theme park ride made up of platforms connected to a pole in the middle. Because you can only tilt the camera up so far, I couldn’t see where the finish line was — instead, I had to roll onto a ground-level platform that thrust my ball upwards and try to figure it out in the air. The first time, I was thrown directly into a connecting pole and bounced off the map before I even had a chance to move. Other attempts ended after I landed on one of the higher platforms and bounced right off again. When I finally managed to land in the right place and stay put, it didn’t feel like I’d mastered the obstacles of that particular level; it felt like a lucky run that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to replicate. If only a few levels were designed like this it’d be easier to dismiss that feeling, but after the halfway point most of them start to feel this way.
And while the environments and backgrounds might be fun and colorful, much of the playable level design is repetitive and uninspired. The more I played past a certain point, the more it felt like a chore. What’s especially draining is that after finishing a particularly difficult level, there’s no satisfying adrenaline rush that accompanies overcoming a challenge — just a sense of relief that it’s finally over. Super Monkey Ball could’ve learned a thing or two from Peggle about dispensing serotonin.
It’s telling that the developers actually included a couple of ways to deal with particularly tough levels. There’s a Helper mode that doubles the time limit and provides a visual path to the goal, which can be useful but usually doesn’t negate the bigger issues. It’s usually not a matter of understanding where the end goal is — getting there through trial and error or dumb luck is the problem. I can’t tell you how many times I just blindly rolled forward as quickly as possible, hoping that it would get me closer to the end, because every other strategy ended in failure. There’s also the option to skip a stage entirely, which is especially nice because it ensures that you’re never stuck on one frustrating level for too long – assuming that you don’t run out of the points you need to pay your way.
Super Monkey Ball could’ve learned a thing or two from Peggle about dispensing serotonin.
You can earn points in various ways, but the most prominent are simply beating levels and completing certain challenges, like collecting all of the bananas in a stage. The Point Shop is where you’ll use those to unlock new characters, adding to the initial six-character roster of AiAi and his monkey menagerie. (Every character plays the same, but at least they look different.) You can even unlock a few non-monkey characters from other Sega games, like Sonic the Hedgehog, Jet Set Radio’s Beat, and Kazuma Kiryu of Yakuza fame, and playing as one of them even changes the bananas on each level to items from their respective games — rings for Sonic, spray paint cans for Beat. It’s a thoughtful touch, although the flipside is that these special characters can’t be customized with new outfits like the monkeys can.
Looking back at my personal experience, the Super Monkey Ball games have always been at their best as party games, and that continues to be the case with Banana Mania. Party mode has a dozen mini-games, and most of them are genuinely fun and have surprising depth when played against other humans; for example, the Mario Kart-esque Monkey Race game has 12 tracks and multiple gameplay modes, and Monkey Golf has regular and mini-golf variations. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania is one of the few games to offer same-system multiplayer in a time when almost everything is online-only, making party mode easily its most redeeming quality.
As a solo experience, however, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania falls flat. More than once, I found myself wondering why I had liked these games so much when they first came out. Playing on PS5, I even turned on motion controls to try to replicate the magic of the early Wii game Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, but that was a complete disaster. The simplest tilt of the DualSense controller had stages careening to the left or right, sending my monkey balls flying. It’s a shame that Banana Mania didn’t live up to the Super Monkey Ball experience in my memories, but times have changed; maybe it’s time this series touched a strange black obelisk and evolved, too.
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No Time to Die will debut in international theaters on Sept. 30, and in the U.S. on Oct. 8.
A global pandemic is exactly the kind of obstacle you’d expect 007 to face, but not in the most literal of forms. But finally, after almost two yearsof theatrical delays, No Time to Die has made it to the big screen, and that’s exactly where the concluding film of the Daniel Craig era deserves to be watched, too. An explosive and emotive adventure, it’s yet another Bond movie classically calibrated for theaters. Unfortunately, though, it’s torn between offering modern thrills and old-school tropes, making for an uneven watch. As such, No Time to Die works as a reasonable and enjoyable farewell to Craig, but falls short of topping the saga’s high points.
As you’d expect for his swan song outing, No Time to Die is a showcase of everything Craig has brought to Bond. A well-shaken cocktail that’s equal parts grizzled and emotional, he continues to work as a 007 that subverts the classic mold of the character, even if the film around him is doggedly determined to lean old school. As a fighter, he’s enjoyably brutish, ever Britain’s blunt instrument and rejecting any sense of elegance in the line of duty. But Craig will be best remembered for turning a weapon into a human, and No Time to Die doubles down on that idea. He runs the emotional gamut here, from moments of genuine happiness and love, to fury and even sadness. Craig handles it all with incredible skill, leaving behind the unshakable impression that he’s not just been the right Bond for modern times, but the best of them all.
A thoroughly modern Bond movie, but it all too often seems like it’s ticking off franchise tropes.
He’s able to do this despite No Time to Die being an overly safe and largely unsurprising outing for 007. It’s a film at war with itself; in many ways, this is a thoroughly modern Bond movie, but it all too often seems like it’s ticking off franchise tropes in a manner that feels as if No Time To Die is enslaved to the past rather than simply paying homage. The result is a story that ties up all the dense plot threads that have flowed through the Craig era, but also attempts to tell a standalone tale that feels plucked from the 1960s. The former is fascinating but the latter is shallow and dull, and while these components are elegantly dovetailed, the structure of the story crams the best stuff into the first hour of a film that runs for a gargantuan 163 minutes.
To the credit of director Cary Joji Fukunaga, No Time to Die never feels as long as its runtime. It motors along at pace, particularly in the fantastically twisty opening act, and introduces new concepts with each major turn. As it does this, it’s consistently handsome; there’s gorgeous wide shots of Italy that are near enough drawn in sepia tone, a sequence in Norway where you can practically feel the chill of the ice, and a forest chase shrouded by so much fog and tension it becomes something akin to a horror scene. There’s some accomplished and impactful action here too, especially when it comes to the series’ staple of car chases. An early sequence featuring Bond’s gadget-packed Aston Martin DB5 is an absolute belter, and undoubtedly the best use of a vehicle in the series since Casino Royale earned a world record for flipping its DBS seven times in a row. But while the direction is strong, there’s nothing quite as memorable or special as Sam Mendes’ work on Skyfall. I can’t help but wonder if Fukunaga is hampered by the traditions of the series, which perhaps has no tolerance for something as adventurous as his efforts on True Detective and Maniac.
He may not get to flex his more unique directorial muscles, but Fukunaga orchestrates a cast of new and familiar characters that, for the most part, are operating at the top of their game. One of this era’s best assets is the interpersonal connections between Bond and the people he works with, and that’s as evident as ever here. There’s great conflict between Bond and his MI6 chief, M (Ralph Fiennes), that helps propel a morally messy plot forward. Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld returns and while he’s unambiguously cast as Bond’s Hannibal Lecter, the duo’s interactions are equal parts shockingly aggressive and enjoyably humorous. Providing a delightfully fresh spin on espionage is Ana de Armas, whose CIA agent Paloma spills over with Chaotic Good energy that opens up Craig’s more endearing side. She’s the best non-Bond character in the entire movie, which makes her fleeting appearance feel quite the missed opportunity.
Not funny at all is Rami Malek’s villain, Safin, who’s less a character and more a backstory in human form. Armed with barely anything beyond the tired Bond tropes of a genocidal weapon, a foreign accent, and a disfigured face, Safin is an underdeveloped and uninteresting foe. Yet, bafflingly, the story is so fascinated by him that it sacrifices the chance to provide a satisfying and meaningful end to Bond’s long-running conflicts that started in Casino Royale. It’s this trade that ultimately does the most harm to No Time to Die; while the film still remains enjoyable, its focus is so formulaic that during the second half, it rarely feels like the momentous final chapter in the Craig era that it should be.
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Amazon’s New World is finally available in our world (which is now technically the old world, I guess?) and its servers are so packed on day one that I haven’t been able to get in yet. However, I’ve spent the past week running around a finalized version of this colonial-era MMO, albeit without nearly the same player count or queue times that many are currently experiencing. Note that, since I’m also responsible for a large chunk of IGN’s official wiki guide, almost all of that time was spent running around as a pre-made level 60 character and poking various Corrupted bee hives to see what I could shake out of them so that you don’t have to. But that has given me some time to get the lay of the land and get a sense of how everything works, so here are my initial impressions of this long-awaited MMORPG.
The premise of New World is pretty simple: You’re a member of a pirate ship crew that’s gone out searching for a mystical island called Aeternum, which is rumored to be full of treasures. You land yourself in the middle of a storm that’s been infused with the island’s dark energy, called Corruption, and then you end up beached on the shore with nothing but the rags on your back and must contend with creatures and the rest of the island’s human inhabitants (survivors from past shipwrecks). Basically, it’s kinda like a Pirates of the Caribbean MMO with some high fantasy elements thrown in. This is perfectly fine as an original setting, and it’s great that Amazon Games seems to be taking expert consultation in crafting the real-world cultures and influences that it depicts. At least, that’s what it claims on the splash screen. However, I’ve yet to dig into its main story quests – meaning that it’s too early to say whether it’s compelling enough to drive me through what will certainly be a long journey.
It’s worth noting early on that this all looks downright gorgeous on Amazon’s Lumberyard engine (based on CryTek’s CryEngine), which does a great job of rendering real-time volumetric lighting and handling a large number of characters and effects at the same time. Not only are the draw distances quite impressive for an MMO, trees and grass all sway in the wind and cast accurate-looking shadows on max settings. In its favor, I get strong Witcher 3 vibes from New World’s overall look. Take note that my machine is pretty souped up – I’m running an RTX 2080 Super on a Ryzen 3900X with a whopping 32GB of high-speed RAM.
All of this looks downright gorgeous on Amazon’s Lumberyard engine.
As in other MMOs, you’ll start off by creating your character – though New World has a relatively modest sum of different faces and hair styles – then you’ll choose your name and you’re off to go. It doesn’t get any deeper or more complex than that, and there are no additional races or classes to choose from at the beginning. If you like to keep things simple, this is just fine – but it certainly doesn’t offer nearly the bevy of customization options that fans of Final Fantasy 14 or Black Desert Online might be familiar with.
As soon as you get to the island you’re introduced to combat and basic questing. Don’t expect anything groundbreaking in either case. When you speak to an NPC who has a quest for you, you’ll get a page of dialogue and a preview of the quest’s reward, which in practice feels about as deep as any interaction you might have in World of Warcraft or Destiny 2. But at least these conversations are decently voice-acted.
I haven’t decided yet whether I think New World’s combat can hold up over the long haul. It’s not all that different from other hack n’ slash RPGs, although it does often make you block, dodge, and break your opponents’ defenses in order to be effective. Enemies, especially the Dryads which you encounter later on, are also a bit more fierce than standard foes in other action MMOs – they’re more clever, and don’t simply stand around while you take swings at them. They’ll dodge and sidestep your attacks, making fights more dynamic than I’m used to. On our end, weapons feel good to swing around – your position and timing have a major impact on your efficacy in combat, though you’re locked into an animation once you activate an ability. This can make combat feel stiff if you aren’t timing your attacks, dodges, and blocks at the right moment.
Enemies are a bit more fierce than standard foes in other action MMOs.
However, New World’s combat isn’t without issues. For me, those started when a swarm of enemies ran up and spammed their attacks in unison, making it hard to get enough shots in before they stunlocked me to death. I’m taking into consideration the fact that I’ve thus far played entirely solo and these encounters may be suited to groups of players, but still, these swarms are pockmarked all over the map, including in the middle of roads that I needed to travel through to get to the next zone. That doesn’t bode well for anyone who was planning to venture out alone.
The rest of my issues with New World’s combat stem directly from its lacklustre character customization system. The classless approach is fine enough – building up your character is a matter of choosing what interests you and focusing on those specific skills, much like in The Elder Scrolls Online. On paper, there’s a decent pool of weapons skills to pick from. But this stalled progress for me when I realized you can’t meaningfully mix and match several skills at the exact same time. It makes sense that you can’t use Hatchet skills with a Rapier, but it’s disappointing there are no interstitial skills or spells outside of those lines. You don’t get to have a weapon in one hand and a bomb or fireball spell in the other. It’s not like there are any passive skill trees or armor skill trees that help you in all situations either – if you’re developing a weapon skill, you’re playing within that exact skill tree with absolutely no interplay between that weapon and anything else.
It’s just fine, then, that you can quickly switch between two weapons in the middle of combat. For example, if you want to lure your enemies into close range with a bow, then take them out with a giant axe, you can theoretically make that happen... but you may not want to.
This is because New World’s character customization – and subsequently, its combat – is held back by its limited attributes system. It shoehorns you into using only a small, carefully selected pool of weapon types per build. For instance, the Focus attribute is completely useless for anybody other than a Life Staff wielder – putting your points into Focus is a huge opportunity cost that pulls you away from putting points into Strength, an attribute which would be useful if you wanted to use a War Hammer but, like Focus, is completely useless for anybody holding a Bow or a Musket. But since you muddy your build by attempting to split your points between the two, your options are remarkably limited if you want to be effective. It’s an irritating limitation on what seems like it should be a flexible system that’d allow for all kinds of builds. Mercifully, you can respec your entire attribute build whenever you’d like – even in the middle of dungeons – for just a few coins.
Mercifully, you can respec your entire attribute build whenever you like.
Weapon skills and their associated abilities are a separate issue entirely. You still need to grind these individual skills, like the Sword and Shield skill or the Bow skill, in order to build them up, and even then, there are a tiny number of attacks you can queue up on your hotbar. You’re stuck with only three special moves or spells on your hotbar at any given time (by comparison, The Elder Scrolls Online gives you six, and other MMOs basically have no limit). And the ones you do get to play with are tied directly to the weapon you’re holding, which means that playing with a specific weapon type almost always feels exactly the same, with the only variation being two distinct skill lines that you can follow within each weapon skill tree.
But if you want to be the best tank, for instance, you will always play with a sword and shield and you will always dive into the exact same shield-focused skill line. My level 60 sword and shield-wielder (again, a pre-made character I was using before launch) didn’t feel all that different from when I’d created a first-level character.
New World’s other major focus is its player-based economy, which is heavily centered around its crafting and survival elements. If you’re not into survival and crafting elements ala games like Minecraft or Don’t Starve, you may be very quickly turned off by New World’s absolute reliance on these things. Practically every item you need must be plucked off of bushes or mined out of boulders, then refined or crafted at trade skill stations in town.
The kicker is that there are no NPC vendors whatsoever in New World.
The kicker is that there are no NPC vendors whatsoever in New World. If you can’t find an item being sold by another player at the local trading post, which is specific to whichever settlement you’re currently standing in, you’ll need to go out and craft it or find it yourself. This is cool, if you’re into that sort of thing, because it gives you a tangible reason to build up your trade skills. But again, New World’s economy isn’t a fun side-activity that you simply dip your toes into between quests if you feel like it – it’s your lifeblood as you trek across this gorgeous haunted island.
Harkening back to older MMOs, New World is also a much tougher game to move across. There are currently no mounts whatsoever, making it something of a slog to get across each zone – especially when encounters on the road can absolutely kill you and send you back to your original starting point if no other settlements are nearby. Fast travel exists, but is heavily restricted by the scarce resource called Azoth, which is difficult to acquire (but not so unreasonably difficult that fast travel is useless).
Regardless, as soon as the server queues allow it I’ll be jumping in to begin playing New World with a fresh character from scratch one. Be sure to stick around and keep up with my adventure as it unfolds, and let us know what you think of New World so far in the comments.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3uiyC42
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Catan has been around for decades, spawning space-based sequels, Game of Thrones spinoffs, expansions, and more. If you call yourself an avid player of board games, there’s a good chance you’ve begged a friend in Catan to trade you some wool or lumber. Catan 3D is the latest iteration of this board game and it was seemingly designed with mega-fans in mind... although they’re going to need some deep pockets to play it.
Playing-wise, the game is simply Catan — there are no changes to the rules or differences in gameplay compared to a standard match of the classic game. The difference is in the physical pieces. The traditionally cardboard and plastic pieces have been turned into beautiful 3D, hand-painted terrain hexes, roads, settlements, cities, and more. However, its frankly absurd $300 price point makes it hard to recommend to anyone who isn’t an uber Catan enthusiast. And even then, a couple of strange design choices make the $300 price point questionable.
Catan 3D’s box feels like $300. It’s sturdy, clean and well-packaged, and all of the nearly 300 pieces and cards needed to play the game are safely secured. It takes time to unpack everything, and it takes just about as much time to properly store it all once you’re done playing. But with such a high price tag, I’m thankful for the extra care put into the storage of the game.
It comes with a standard game overview and rules pamphlet, as well as a nicely put-together almanac perfect for new players and returning players alike. The game board is still assembled much in the same way it is in a standard game of Catan, except the traditionally cardboard pieces are now 3D. The six sea frames are a pretty blue, with a scratchy texture meant to mimic ocean waves. The terrain hexes look as you’d expect — the mountain pieces stretch nearly two inches into the air, the forest hexes are littered with individual tree tops, and the pastures feature flocks of sheep.
The harbor, road, settlement, and city pieces are all 3D as well, and the latter three are hand-painted to look antique and match each player’s color (be it red, white, blue, or orange) appropriately. One disappointment is that the cards are essentially the exact same cards found in the standard $40 edition of the game. They’re great cards and they work just fine, but it’s a shame the other pieces received so much love only for the cards to remain physically and aesthetically the same.
The pieces have been turned into beautiful 3D, hand-painted terrain hexes, roads, cities, and more.
Putting all of the pieces together is easy enough, and much like traditional Catan the pieces just sit by and on top of each other. There aren’t any unique spots for things to snap into place and while that wasn’t necessarily expected considering it’s not how Catan’s layout typically works, with such high-quality 3D pieces, I would’ve liked to see a way for the board to snap together into one ever-flowing piece.
The roads, settlements, and cities still simply sit atop the terrain hexes and in this version of Catan, which is easily the most immersive version yet due to the 3D design, the fact that these pieces still slide, shift, and move when someone’s finger accidentally touches them is a bit of a let down.
Perhaps the single most frustrating aspect of Catan 3D’s design is that the number tokens and the Robber figure don’t actually sit atop the terrain hexes evenly and flatly as they would in a standard match of Catan. The number tokens are placed atop the terrain hexes at the start of the match and they essentially dictate every move in a game of Catan. In the standard edition of Catan, the flat tokens sit on top of the flat hexes in harmony.
In Catan 3D, that’s not the case. Instead, they sit somewhat haphazardly atop the terrain hexes. Number tokens sit pretty well atop the mountain pieces, almost as if those terrain hexes were designed with the tokens in mind, but on others such as the field hexes, the tokens don’t lay so nicely. Instead, they wobble with every movement of the table or board.
Then there’s the Robber Figure, which is traditionally a tall bowling pin-like figure that sits flat atop the terrain hex it has been moved to. The Robber Figure here is a sculpted piece featuring three humans and while their feet allow the piece to sit flat, there’s no real good spot for them to sit atop the 3D terrain hexes. Sure, the figurine will sit atop the hexes but it never felt purposeful, instead leaning this way or that rather than standing atop the hex as if it were designed to fit there.
Design issues aside, the actual act of playing Catan 3D is as fun as it’s ever been, but that’s because it’s still just Catan. Players still select their starting roads and settlements, which keeps the start of a match exciting due to variety, and resource cards are doled out as a result. During each turn, a player rolls a dice, everyone collects the appropriate resource cards, and the fun and secretive nature of Catan shines as expected. What are they trying to build and what am I trying to build? How desperately do I need the resource they’re offering to trade me? If I accept this trade, will I be helping them more than I help myself?
These questions and accompanying strategies are still present in Catan 3D and when the board is full of the game’s unique 3D pieces, it looks amazing. I only wish that placing these beautiful pieces were easier and more purposeful in design.
