Far: Changing Tides Review

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Bigger isn’t always better. In the case of Far: Changing Tides, a sequel to 2018’s lovely and underappreciated Far: Lone Sails, bigger certainly means more to do and see, but it doesn’t necessarily mean those things are any more interesting. It’s still an absolutely gorgeous and at times almost meditative roadtrip across a world full of stunning vistas and clever puzzles – but developer Okomotive’s efforts to make it a more mechanically varied journey, while successful, also inadvertently tip the balance of the original’s formula from peaceful to tedious at times.

Far: Changing Tides puts you in control of an almost comically small person, at least compared to the large sailing vessel they are piloting all on their own. Like its predecessor, it tells a story with little-to-no words, communicating information through visuals to generally strong effect. Most of the time you may not know exactly what you’re doing in this apparently post-apocalyptic world, but you’ll never feel lost either, and never lose motivation to keep sailing toward the right in search of some salvation or another.

Propelling your ship is either done by unfurling a sail on top of it or by hopping around its innards to manually fuel and fan a giant engine. It’s a fun little dance to do, asking you to scavenge resources to burn from beneath the waves as you travel, make sure the engine doesn’t overheat, and perform other little tasks in order to keep you sailing smoothly – not to mention you’ll occasionally have to hop out entirely in order to address larger obstacles blocking your way, like massive closed gates or abandoned buildings. Once you get a specific upgrade, your ship even has the ability to dive below the water itself and basically become a submarine, cleverly allowing you to go under some roadblocks rather than through them.

But while that’s a flashy addition, the most impactful change from the original is that raising your sail isn’t quite as simple this time around. Rather than just pressing a button, you first have to raise a mast, then climb it, grab a rope to attach back down below, and finally adjust the position of the sails to match the frequently shifting wind for optimal speed. Additionally, there are obstacles in the background that your sails can run into and get damaged, as well as low overhangs that will knock down your mast. These additions do make the process of sailing without your engine more engaging, but unfortunately it’s mostly in the same way that you have to be “engaged” while trying to swat a fly.

While Changing Tides’ scenery is beautiful, the 2D perspective makes it annoyingly difficult to determine whether or not your sail is actually going to hit something. Additionally, unless you are already on the roof of your ship, you often have very little time to react between seeing an oncoming overhang and actually being able to do something about it, even when zoomed out. What that means is that some of my absolute favorite moments in Lone Sails – catching a breeze and simply enjoying its sights and music after a stressful stretch of powering the engine – are essentially gone, with those sections now occupied by the worries of sail management, threat assessment, and running inside to check your radar to make sure you’re not missing items hidden beneath the waves. These added tasks are still entertaining but make for a very different overall vibe, and it’s one I grew tired of more quickly.

Thankfully the areas you are sailing through are still a feast for the eyes and ears. The subtle score perfectly fits the terrain around it (even if it’s not as memorable as Lone Sails’ incredible soundtrack), and your path to the right is frequently full of moments you could screenshot, print out, and post on an art gallery wall without them looking out of place. The underwater sections can be particularly gorgeous, with one highlight being a cluster of fluorescent jellyfish that I swam through along the underside of my ship.

There are some cool scripted moments throughout the nearly five hours it took me to complete Changing Tides, too – none of which I would want to spoil. They are grandiose in both scope and scale, and they do a good job of adding jabs of adrenaline to an otherwise slow-paced game. In fact, they’re also the only real source of tension you’ll find, as it felt like there was very little risk of anything going terribly wrong unless it was explicitly designed to do so this time around – a far cry from memories of my vehicle in Lone Sails constantly catching on fire. That can make it feel like you’re just going through the motions rather than fighting to stay moving at all.

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Shadow Warrior 3 Review

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Shadow Warrior 3 doesn’t beat around the bush. In an era where games feel like they keep trying to be bigger, this one is happy not to draw itself out with lengthy dialogue or exposition-filled cutscenes. Instead, it throws you into the action right away and rarely lets a moment of ease set in from there. And while that focus on fun is refreshing, Shadow Warrior 3 is almost completely unremarkable in its execution, being about as straightforward as an FPS can get. It might not offer many new ideas, and its protagonist may be unbearable to listen to, but sometimes solid movement and satisfying weapons is all you really need.

Picking up a good while after Shadow Warrior 2, a massive dragon is wreaking havoc across Earth and it’s up to our returning hero, Lo Wang, to destroy the lizard. For Shadow Warrior, world-ending stakes like these aren’t anything new, but it didn’t take long for me to stop paying too much attention to Shadow Warrior 3’s story. Once you start playing it you might do the same, because it's generally a rushed load of nonsense. But you don’t play Shadow Warrior for the story – you play it to shoot demons, and there’s certainly plenty of shooting to do.

Never Letting Up

From the get-go, Shadow Warrior 3 makes clear that it wants to be exciting more than anything else. Its very first fights take place on the back of that Earth-threatening dragon, which you run and jump across like an action movie hero. It generally doesn’t slow down from there either, and that breakneck pace is probably for the best. If you were given the opportunity to stop and think about what was happening, you might end up asking questions like “how did Lo Wang survive in a ramshackle shack on top of a mountain?” or “why did this dragon get so big when it was so much smaller at the end of Shadow Warrior 2?”

Killing demons keeps all of those pesky thoughts about the nonsensical story away. Shadow Warrior 3 takes the same exciting approach as Doom Eternal or Titanfall 2, emphasizing speed and maneuverability above all else. Lo Wang moves lightning fast, able to double jump high above the heads of enemies or quickly dash away from their attacks. Every arena you fight in is built around these movement mechanics, turning battles into wonderfully frantic flurries of gunshots and katana swipes.

You’re generally only fighting or making your way to a fight. 

In between killing demons, Shadow Warrior 3 generally only gives you one thing to do: run to the next arena full of demons. The platforming sections that separate each fight never last very long or get too complicated, and exploration during those stretches isn’t really a thing. You can occasionally go off the beaten trail to find upgrades that improve Lo Wang’s weapons and abilities lightly (effects like increasing ammo or making certain attacks drop more resources), but outside of those few instances you’re only ever fighting or making your way toward another fight.

Developer Flying Wild Hog’s approach to Shadow Warrior 3’s linear campaign is simple but effective. It gets to the point, and as a result felt more respectful of my time across the roughly four-and-a-half hours it took me to reach the credits than any other game I’ve played recently. That also means it’s not a very complex or robust FPS, but I always knew that all I had to do was keep moving forward if I wanted more action.

What’s an absolute shame is that Shadow Warrior 3 spends so much time looking forward that it doesn’t give you a chance to go back. Without an option to revisit levels, any upgrades you might have missed along the way are simply gone. Thankfully, these collectibles aren’t hard to spot, and you’ll get enough of them without exploring to easily finish the campaign. But it’s too bad that missing one means you’ll have to wait until a second playthrough if you want to completely kit out Lo Wang’s arsenal of gear and powers.

Dismantle And Conquer

When it comes to actually killing hordes of demons, Shadow Warrior 3 isn’t doing anything too unique. In fact, it follows the standard FPS playbook in pretty much every way I can think of. You can shoot an enemy and chunks of them blow off in gruesome fashion, something that’s been normalized in FPS games since 2016’s Doom did it so well. You can zoom around combat arenas without a problem, but mixing platforming into the regular shoot-em-up fare isn’t exactly a new idea either. It’s not that Shadow Warrior 3 is doing any of this poorly, it’s just not nearly as exciting when I’ve seen all its tricks before.

The six weapons are satisfying, but a few inevitably get stale.

Each of the six weapons are satisfying to use, from the starting six-shooter pistol to options you’ll eventually unlock like the single-fire railgun and the shuriken launcher. Each one feels punchy, and seeing how enemies react to their hits makes them that much more fun to shoot. That said, with such a small list of weapons and no alternate fire modes, a few of them inevitably got stale. Upgrades do remedy that just a bit, changing how some weapons behave, but none of them are overhauled entirely. Instead, weapon upgrades hand out extra ammo capacity or other small tweaks – one that I found particularly useful slowed down time whenever I charged a shot with the railgun. They’re fun, simple additions that make weapons more powerful, but they won’t change how you think about using them.

To keep weapons from getting old too quickly, Shadow Warrior 3 often restricts ammo to force you to switch around your strategy. While ammo can be found on the ground in most arenas, those stockpiles will eventually run dry during a fight, and after that the only way to get more is to kill enemies with your katana. Running low on health incentivizes the opposite, encouraging you to gun down enemies in a bid for health pickups. Doom’s own strategy of chainsawing enemies in half to get a burst of ammo and health is a clear inspiration here, but Shadow Warrior 3 turns it into a steady drip of supplies instead of a concentrated explosion.

Outside of guaranteeing you never entirely run out of ammo or health pick-ups, this system cleverly ensures that you’ll use every weapon that Shadow Warrior 3 has to offer. You’re not going to survive by only shooting or only stabbing, and instead have to use a mixture of both in order to reap all the potential rewards. Holding resources hostage like this is somewhat heavy-handed, but it ended up being a fun way to keep me on my toes and pushed me to change up my approach often, even if it meant swinging at a massive demon with a comparably tiny sword.

Gore weapons can mix up this system, but only a bit. After performing a finisher on an enemy, Lo Wang will rip a new weapon or buff out of them – flying shogun heads that shoot lasers, for example, can be ripped apart and turned into a grenade that spews lasers like a disco ball. While that may sound like it expands your arsenal beyond the six regular options on paper, I never found Gore weapons to be tremendously useful in practice. They’re a welcome quirk on top of Shadow Warrior 3’s otherwise vanilla gameplay, just not one you can always rely on.

The only part of Shadow Warrior 3 I hoped would stop was how much Lo Wang talked.

Instead what kept me interested in the combat during my short time with Shadow Warrior 3 was, once again, its pace. The campaign would give me new weapons just as I was hoping another would be added to my arsenal, and it wraps up levels as soon as they’re about to overstay their welcome. In fact, the only part of Shadow Warrior 3 that I actively hoped would stop was how much Lo Wang talked. Shadow Warrior has a reputation for stupid humor, and this one continues that attitude in earnest, almost as if it’s proud to wear the “our character’s name is still a penis joke” badge.

Hearing Lo Wang quip away after killing demons eventually gets tiring. Shadow Warrior 3 does such a great job at keeping needless dialogue out of the picture, but couldn’t seem to do the same for the jokes that fly out of its main character’s mouth. Two hours into Shadow Warrior 3, I felt as though I had heard all of Lo Wang’s jokes and puns already, which only made them grow more irritating as they began to repeat.

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The Batman Review

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The Batman hits theaters on March 4, 2022. Below is a spoiler-free review.

“Fear,” Bruce Wayne tells us in a gloomy voiceover early in The Batman, “is a tool.” He’s talking about how the presence of the Batman can be used to intimidate bad guys, but it’s also possible writer/director Matt Reeves took this to heart for his approach to rebooting the famous superhero. This is the scariest Batman yet. Right from the violent opening scene, the message is clear: this is not your mother’s Caped Crusader. This is a creeping, angry, white-knuckle-inducing psychological thriller with a heavy dose of crime noir – and believe it or not, Reeves absolutely pulls it off, achieving a grimly beautiful masterpiece.

The Batman stands on its own, but it’s still dripping with cinematic references. Among the movies I thought about while watching: Zodiac, Se7en, Chinatown, and Saw! You know what I didn’t think too much about? Most of the previous live-action Batman movies. Its gritty realism is most similar to Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, but this is a refreshingly bold new cinematic take on the Dark Knight.

If anything, its grounded nature is a lot like 2019’s Joker. But the difference here is that the Joaquin Phoenix thriller didn’t really need the A-list DC villain’s name to tell its story of an impoverished man forgotten by society. The Batman, on the other hand, is still very much a Batman tale in a surprisingly loyal way. It pulls from and remixes various storylines from the comics in daring yet respectful fashion, all while being very different from what we’ve seen on the big screen up to this point.

For one thing, it’s not a Batman origin story. Reeves knows we know Thomas and Martha Wayne are dead, and he correctly assumes we don’t need to see them get gunned down yet again. Instead, we’re dropped right into Batman and Jim Gordon’s vigilante/detective partnership. It takes place late enough in Bruce Wayne’s story to not retread scenes we’ve already seen a million times, but early enough that he’s still got a lot of growing to do before he’s the nigh-flawless superhero. We don’t see the beginning, but we do see plenty of development, as well as some clever callouts and additions to the histories of several Gotham families.

The Batman that almost was

Matt Reeves' dark vision for The Batman is one that was seemingly much different than the one Ben Affleck, who was originally set to write and star, pitched years ago. Reeves revealed in an interview with Esquire Middle East that he had a chance to direct Affleck's Batman movie, which he said was "almost James Bond-ian," but passed. "I said look, I think maybe I’m not the person for this. And I explained to them why I love this character. I told them that there have been so many great movies, but if I were to do this, I’d have to make it personal, so that I understood what I was going to do with it, so that I know where to put the camera, so that I know what to tell the actors, so that I know what the story should be.”

On that note, Robert Pattinson is playing a much more vulnerable, human version of the orphaned billionaire than we’ve seen before. With a role so iconic, it would’ve been easy to crib – even accidentally – from the many actors who came before him, but Pattinson makes Bruce his own entirely. Gone is the convincing illusion of a charismatic playboy we’ve seen in past iterations. Here, we get a sad weirdo who’s both crippled and compelled by his unresolved trauma in a way that’s gripping to watch. This Bruce is a broken man, unable to hide his emotions even under the cowl. Pattinson’s performance, in turn, is crushingly painful, whether he’s in or out of the Batsuit.

But, believe it or not, Pattinson’s performance isn’t even the second most memorable of The Batman. Those honors go to Zoe Kravitz and Paul Dano as Selina Kyle/Catwoman and The Riddler, respectively. The former struck me as inspired (dare I say, purrrrfect?) casting from the get-go, but Kravitz’s layered portrayal of the catburglar clawed past even my high expectations. She’s got all the slinkiness and slyness you could hope for, but, like Pattinson’s Bruce, she’s also incredibly vulnerable, while selling an insatiable need for revenge. Pattinson may be the one screaming “I am vengeance!,” but it’s Kravitz who simmers with a need for payback. Plus, the two actors’ chemistry is undeniable. Whether they’re trading fists or information, it’s all very hot.

Whenever Pattinson and Dano face off, it’s impossible to look away. 

As for Dano, his Riddler is easily the best live-action Batman villain since Heath Ledger’s Joker. This is a far, far, far cry from the previous most famous Riddler performance by Jim Carrey, with Reeves putting a modern, murderous spin on the wordsmith that’s heavily influenced by the real-world Zodiac Killer. Dano sinks into this unhinged yet genius killer with terrifying realism. Seriously, Dano managed to give me chills with a single eye movement in one scene. The best Batman villains are the ones who challenge at least two of the three of his mind, morals, and body, and this Riddler puts the first two to the test. Whenever Pattinson and Dano face off, it’s impossible to look away.

Colin Farrell and Jeffrey Wright, too, are formidable as The Penguin and Jim Gordon, respectively, with both responsible for a few very welcome moments of levity. Farrell is deeply unrecognizable (seriously, if I didn’t already know it was him, I would’ve never guessed) as the mobster, and seems to be having fun under all those prosthetics. Wright, meanwhile, has a nice buddy-cop dynamic with Pattinson, lending to some of the best campy (in a good way) detective noir moments. Andy Serkis’ Alfred Pennyworth has a different relationship with Pattinson: a paternal one that connects him to the Wayne family roots and packs an emotional punch when needed.

If that seems like a lot to stuff into one movie, well, The Batman does clock in at a hefty three hours, so it has the time! It mostly earns that bladder-testing runtime, although there are moments in the middle when I didn’t feel completely glued to the political mystery at its center. But when the story – and the action – revved up again, it felt like one of the Bat’s grappling hooks pierced me and yanked me back so hard that I didn’t even have time to complain.

The last hour makes all that build-up worth it with a few big, beautiful, brilliantly choreographed action sequences. This movie’s grounded take ups the stakes in the fight scenes, and when Batman throws or takes a hit, it hurts. Plus, the cityscape in which it all takes place is darkly gorgeous. If you’ve seen pretty much any of The Batman’s posters you should know the look you’re in for, which constantly bathes Gotham in a palette of black and red. Cinematographer Greig Fraser’s smart contrast of saturation and darkness keeps it from being monotonous, instead keeping us gripped in a Gotham that mirrors other major U.S. cities in many ways, but is still entirely its own. Michael Giacchino’s sweeping, dramatic score brings it all together, creating a few epic moments worthy of one of comic books’ most famous characters.

The Batman, again, is a standalone tale and works well as one, but make no mistake: it definitely leaves the door open for a sequel. Maybe that’s underselling it; it leaves a Batmobile-sized hole for a sequel. Luckily, it’s a dark, grimy, politically seedy world that I certainly wouldn’t mind getting swept up in again.

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Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Review in Progress

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This review in progress of Destiny 2’s The Witch Queen expansion is based on ~35 hours of playing, which includes completing the main story and most of the side content. However, the new raid and any endgame content that may follow doesn’t debut until March 5, after which we will release a final, updated review and score.

The reason I’ve stuck with Destiny for more than seven years, through both its highest highs and lowest lows, has everything to do with its incredibly strong foundation. Even when things like a poorly told story or a lack of content have held it back, firing magical space weapons and throwing flaming hammers at aliens just feels good! And while the past few expansions were adequate but flawed iterations that kept my appetite fed, The Witch Queen feels like a breakthrough that finally realizes the long-running looter shooter’s greatest potential. This latest update provides not only Destiny’s first truly phenomenal story alongside a campaign that’s both challenging and memorable, but also a weapon crafting system that’s a godsend for hardcore devotees like myself, new light-wielding enemies that completely evolve the flow of combat, and new takes on some old abilities to refreshingly shake up the meta. There’s no doubt about it – Destiny 2: The Witch Queen is the best Destiny’s ever been.

Destiny has always struggled to balance its rich lore between action-packed campaigns and cutscenes, which at times border on the nonsensical, and the item descriptions and “grimoire” lore entries where many of its world’s most important details are squirreled away. Even if you’ve been following the story for a long while, it would be understandable if you have almost no idea what’s actually going on most of the time. But Bungie has spent the last several years changing that, introducing meaningful story developments and characters that feel more three-dimensional than they have in the past. Nowhere is that more apparent than in The Witch Queen which, for the very first time, doesn’t just tell a passable story but an actively compelling one.

The star of the show is The Witch Queen herself – Savathûn, the Hive God of Deception – who has succeeded in claiming the almighty power of The Light for herself and her Hive brood. But her story is much more than the usual monster of the week fanfare where we drive a tank through her face and emote on her corpse in glorious fashion. Instead, we get to know her life and motivations, understanding her to be more than a purely evil entity out to destroy us – and as the events unfold, we’re treated to multiple, jaw-dropping twists and turns that make the rollercoaster ride much more enjoyable. There are still a ton of references to characters and lore that make the plot harder to follow if you haven’t been meticulously keeping up with Destiny’s wild escapades over the past year in particular, but that’s almost unavoidable at this point and doesn’t stop this story from being entertaining even if you’re playing catchup.

The campaign isn’t very long (I was able to get through it in a 24-hour period on the hardest difficulty), but it’s unique, difficult, and more inventive than any Destiny campaign before it – to the point where it’s actually not even close. The biggest addition is the Become Legend mode, which increases combat difficulty and adds challenging mechanics like limited revives for teammates. For those who would rather not just blow through the campaign immediately, Become Legend serves as a daunting, rewarding adventure that makes Savathûn and her ilk feel like a force to be reckoned with and makes victory in the end that much sweeter, especially since the loot you get out of it is absolutely worth the trouble.

Completing this campaign is no longer a matter of mindlessly running and gunning.

The campaign also includes the notable addition of puzzle mechanics to levels and boss fights that have been almost exclusively gated behind raids and Destiny’s endgame content up until this point. Now, instead of just standing on a plate or scanning an artifact before shooting a boss to death, you might have to remember a set of symbols and fight your way through the halls of a palace searching for the door with a matching set before the boss can be damaged. These interactions never approach anything as complex as proper raid mechanics, but instead feel like a perfect entry level for more casual players or those looking for a less sweat-inducing experience. They make all the difference too, because completing the campaign is no longer a matter of mindlessly running and gunning for a handful of hours before credits roll. Now you have to contend with platforming and weird occult magic while dodging fire from some extremely rude baddies.

Speaking of baddies, one of the new challenges you’ll face is the fearsome, badass Light-bearing Hive: immortal monsters with many of the same abilities your own character possesses. In fact, they can even be endlessly revived by their Ghost to fight you again and again, which is honestly terrifying. In combat, these Hive Guardians can wield the Light to slam you with devastating supers, many of which can kill you in a single hit. Victory against these formidable foes requires smart gunplay, patience, and most importantly, that you remember to quickly run and crush the enemy Ghost before it can revive them. A challenging new enemy type that forces you to think about how you approach an encounter like this is exactly what Destiny has needed to spruce up combat . Knocking them out then smashing their Ghosts in my hand has been the highlight of my time with The Witch Queen.

Once you’re done with the campaign, there’s a whole new area to explore in Savathûn’s Throne World, a pocket dimension that’s a magical, otherworldly representation of her mind. The Patrol Zone is fairly similar to things we’ve already seen before in Destiny, but it does have my new favorite character: Fynch, a Hive Ghost who betrays his own to help you save the day. This sassy little conscientious objector serves as your guide through much of The Witch Queen’s action and is absolutely brimming with memorable one-liners in one of the best voice performances Destiny has enjoyed. It makes exploring the Hive God’s mind a lot more enjoyable, even when you’re running the usual chores like Patrols and Lost Sectors.

Of all the new frontiers The Witch Queen offers though, none are so enticing as the long-awaited weapon crafting feature, which is a joyous windfall for RPG nerds like myself. Now, instead of relentlessly grinding the same activities over and over in hopes of getting that perfect weapon with all the right perks you were looking for, you can simply craft it to your exact specifications. There are a few caveats, though. First, doing so is every bit as needlessly complex as you might expect from Destiny, forcing you to juggle a bunch of new, confusingly named currencies in a process so hilariously dense you’ll get whiplash coming at it straight from the fast-paced battlefield. And second, building your perfect weapon requires (wait for it) a whole lot of grinding! That’s right – the new system that lets you avoid the grind for the perfect weapon is replaced by a different grind to level up a mediocre weapon until it’s powerful enough to be crafted into its final form. The good news is now you at least always know there will be a definitive and predictable end to the grind instead of playing endlessly hoping RNG will be kind to you, but killing thousands of enemies and completing dozens of activities just to level up a single weapon is still quite a climb.

Glaives shake things up in a big way as the first melee/ranged hybrid option.

The weapon crafting system also impacts just about every aspect of how you’ll play Destiny going forward, in that now you’ll likely be using less-than-ideal weapons in order to level up ones you’d like to fine tune via crafting. And since one of the ways you gain the resources necessary for crafting is by using randomly dropped (and usually bad) weapons until you fill up a progress bar, my loadout was usually a bizarre mish-mash of weapons in their awkward puberty stage before they become useful for the endgame. That injects a bit of amusing variety into the day-to-day grind, but also means you’re rarely using weapons you fully enjoy for most of the time you’re working your way through the expansion.

One entirely welcome addition in The Witch Queen is a new weapon archetype called the glaive, which is a polearm that can be used to block incoming fire, attack enemies in melee range, and fire projectiles to hit others from a distance. It’s been a few years since Destiny got a proper new weapon type and this one shakes things up in a big way as the first melee/ranged hybrid option. So far the experiment is a glowing success! Glaives are a lot of fun to use, play a major role in the Destiny weapons ecosystem, and don’t feel overpowered at the moment (until someone inevitably devises a completely broken build to exploit them, as is tradition at this point).

The other major sandbox change is Void 3.0, an overhaul of one of the four power types guardians can choose from. After Stasis abilities were introduced with Beyond Light in 2020, the legacy abilities of Void, Arc, and Solar have all felt out of balance by comparison – and at times even completely unviable. Void 3.0 is an attempt to fix that in part by bringing one of the other ability groups into parity with Stasis. The new customization options completely changed the way I thought about my Void abilities and have the much-needed benefit of making it so my guardian doesn’t play identically to every other guardian at my side. Now two characters using the same subclass might be equipped with two entirely different super abilities, grenades, and perks that fundamentally change how they operate, which mixes things up for the better in PvE and PvP alike.

The downside is that it’s only a partial fix, as the two other subclasses (Arc and Solar) remain very much in the dust. Seeing them in the wild has been a rarity in the days following The Witch Queen’s release. Bungie has said it plans to bring the other subclasses into parity over the next year or so, but in the meantime the meta remains very much imbalanced in a way that discourages you from using half of the abilities on offer.

The Witch Queen does so much right, its shortcomings are defined by what isn't there.

And that’s a trend that arises quite frequently when playing The Witch Queen. While just about every inch of the content added does everything right, its shortcomings are instead defined by what isn’t there. That’s embodied perfectly by the complete lack of additions both to Destiny’s PvP modes and the PvE/PvP hybrid mode Gambit. Once you step out of the excellent campaign and new content around it, which you’ll almost certainly need to do during the grind to the endgame, you’ll find that absolutely nothing has been added to Crucible – no new game modes and not a single map. This isn’t a new trend either as Bungie has largely left their PvP options rotting on the vine, even removing a whopping eleven maps from their playlists without replacing them and going on almost two years without adding a new one. Similarly, Gambit has had its maps reduced to just four, and only minor changes have been made to it over the years despite it being easily the most unenjoyable mode Destiny has.

We used to expect Crucible maps and the occasional game mode to be added with each major content release, but The Witch Queen is yet another expansion that largely ignores the issues. It’s getting harder to overlook that when Crucible and Gambit are stood up as such large cornerstones of what players are expected to do.

Another thing that’s missing from The Witch Queen is any sort of improved introduction for new players, which is especially painful considering that this expansion makes an already convoluted world even more complex with weapon crafting and Void 3.0. If you don’t already know how to play Destiny 2, the odds of you figuring it out without a very kind and very patient friend are infinitesimally small. I’d like everyone to enjoy the truly awesome stuff The Witch Queen has to offer, but while its sure to excite existing Destiny fans, it’s also hard to recommend it to the uninitiated in its current state.

I’ll be playing The Witch Queen every day leading up to the raid on March 5 and will undoubtedly have more to say once I’ve seen everything this already fantastic expansion has to offer. Look for our final review once I’ve had a chance to conquer what is sure to be The Witch Queen’s most daunting challenge, even after a campaign full of them.

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The Duke Review

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The Duke hits U.K. theaters on Feb. 25, 2022.

Every good caper starts with an eccentric oddball, and The Duke is no different. Meet Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), a 57-year-old cab driver who, in 1961, just might have pulled off the wackiest art theft in history. Based on a true story, Bunton allegedly broke into the National Gallery in London, pilfered Francisco Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, then hoofed it back to his home in Newcastle, where he hid the painting from his wife in the back of a wardrobe… all while using it to blackmail the British government into providing free TV licences for pensioners.

If that sounds far-fetched, it’s because it really is.

But the truth is often stranger than fiction, and in this case, Bunton’s absurd true-crime tale has all the hallmarks of a classic Ealing comedy. The Duke’s off-kilter laughs and Broadbent’s impeccable comic timing adds up to a hilarious romp through one of the most audacious art thefts the world has ever seen – all (apparently) orchestrated by an ageing northern cabbie.

Bunton’s story may not add up, but it certainly lives up to his comically eccentric name.

The Duke begins with a glimpse of the resulting court case, with Broadbent in full swing as he makes a comic spectacle from the dock. But if you thought this was going to be a courtroom dramedy, you’d be mistaken. Bunton’s story unfolds with quaint comic charm as we take a walk in his shoes through 1960s Newcastle, and we find out there’s far more to him than meets the eye. He’s incredibly well-read, and a soapbox revolutionary who wants to make a difference. After all,that’s all his long-suffering wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren), ever hears about.

The chemistry between Broadbent and Mirren is absolutely blinding as the pair pulls off some of the best performances of their careers. There’s an unabashed hopefulness about Bunton which Broadbent plays in earnest, while Mirren’s quick-tempered wife bounces off his working-class charm. She’s every bit as witty as Broadbent, too, reining him in when Bunton veers too close to calamity.

Well, almost. After spotting the sale of the Portrait of the Duke of Wellington on TV, he’s about to go a bit too far.

Kempton Bunton is more Feathers McGraw than The Pink Panther’s Phantom.

The “heist,” if you can call it that, is hilarious in its simplicity, made even more so by the comments of police chief Sir Joseph Simpson (Charles Edwards), who vastly overestimates the degree of criminal he’s dealing with. The fast-paced, Ocean’s Eleven-style cut is masterfully done by director Roger Michell, but the thief is certainly no professional. He’s more Feathers McGraw than The Pink Panther’s Phantom. And when the police later suggest that he’s a “trained commando,” it’s enough to make Bunton choke on his cuppa.

In fact, Michell doesn’t shy away from the almost slapstick nature of this weird caper, with an off-beat jazz score from George Fenton that channels some of the greatest heist movies in cinema history with a dash of The Pink Panther. It’s clear that both actors and filmmakers alike had a lot of fun with The Duke, as both performances and direction are playful, light-hearted, and full of old-school charm. Throw in a dash of stock footage to ground the drama in reality (while giving it an old cinema newsreel feel) and it adds up to a charming, hilarious, and over-the-top caper that will keep you laughing the whole way through.

Broadbent obviously steals the show with his quixotic take on Kempton Bunton, regaling the judge and jury with quips as he’s being examined by the prosecution. Matthew Goode makes an unexpectedly brilliant appearance, too, as Bunton’s educated (but sympathetic) defence barrister.

The Duke is unashamedly old-fashioned, channelling the best of British comedy in a true-crime caper that could easily have been a Peter Sellers yarn. But the real fun occurs when Bunton’s scheme unravels – a plot that barely made any sense in the first place. A touch of social commentary only adds to the film, elevating The Duke from an admittedly brilliant farce to a sensitive examination of what was wrong with 1960s Britain.

The Duke is a hilarious romp through one of the most audacious art thefts the world has ever seen.

Kempton Bunton wanted to make a difference. Some might call him a working-class hero, a man of the people, while others will think he was a complete loon. Either way, there was no one quite like him. The Duke reminds of that, as well as how brilliant a good old-fashioned caper can be.

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Steam Deck Review in Progress

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The Steam Deck is easily one of the most anticipated pieces of PC gaming tech since… well, maybe ever? The promise of carrying the entirety of your Steam library wherever you go on this bulky but well-designed and relatively powerful handheld gaming device is massively alluring, especially to those of us who continuously fatten our backlog with each passing Steam sale. And after a couple of weeks of gaming on Valve’s ambitious handheld PC I can say that a lot of the time it does live up to that hype, but right now, trying to review the Steam Deck is like hitting a moving target. For one thing, whether or not specific games work at a level you'll find acceptable, or at all, is a case-by-case basis. Additionally, I’ve found myself confronted with technical dead ends far too often for a device that starts at $400 and only goes up from there, but it’s already showing signs of improvement as Valve and various games roll out rapid-fire patches leading up to launch. In other words, the Steam Deck experience I had when I first booted it up a few weeks back is not the same as the constantly improving one I have in front of me today, and it’ll likely get significantly better soon.

That brings us to the main reason this review is still in progress: AMD hasn’t yet delivered the Windows graphics driver for the Steam Deck’s GPU, which means that while I can install Windows 11, I’ve been unable to run games or the suite of benchmarks we use to test out gaming PCs. And that’s a big issue. Just about every problem I’ve had comes down to the fact that by default, Steam Deck runs on Valve’s SteamOS – a custom version of Linux that can run a lot of Windows games using software called Proton. It’s actually really cool when it works, but a lot of popular games, including Fortnite, Halo Infinite, Destiny 2, and Lost Ark use anti-cheat systems that aren’t compatible with Proton. On paper, there’s a workaround for that: just install Windows 11 and you should be able to play anything you can on a typical PC. But so far I’ve only been able to use it with SteamOS and all of its limitations, so there are still a lot of unanswered questions to address before I can give you a final recommendation on what this hardware can do. But if you’re only interested in running SteamOS, this should give you a pretty good idea of what it’s like to use a Steam Deck.

Design and Features

As you've already seen from the memes, the Steam Deck is pretty massive. It’s 11.7 inches from end to end, which is more than two inches longer than a Switch, and at 1.5 pounds it’s quite a bit heavier. The size difference is enough that going back to my Switch after using the Steam Deck exclusively for a few days makes the Switch feel like a microconsole. There’s no way it’s going to fit in a pocket. Still, the Steam Deck isn’t uncomfortable to hold, and it’s not like my arms got tired from holding it for a couple of hours.

I wouldn't call it a particularly attractive piece of tech, but it has a futuristic industrial look that fits in well with the overall Steam aesthetic. There are only two colors: black, and touches of light-gray. The case is a matte black with a subtle texture to it, somewhat rougher than an Xbox controller, and it feels good to the touch. The grips on either side bulge out at the edges, making it much more comfortable to hold in my adult-sized hands than a Nintendo Switch. It's nice to feel safe holding onto something so expensive, and you probably wouldn’t want to have a young kid play with it very much anyway.

Using the Steam Deck exclusively for a few days makes the Switch feel like a microconsole.

The Steam Deck’s LCD screen runs at 1200x800 at 60Hz, and it looks really good. I have no complaints about the resolution – at this screen size there’s a diminishing return on packing in extra pixels. I have to say, though, that the OLED screen on the latest model of the Nintendo Switch has spoiled me on handheld screens, and the Steam Deck doesn't live up to the vibrance and clarity afforded by Nintendo's latest update. But it's still lovely, especially if you aren’t jumping back and forth between this and an OLED screen. Similar to the Switch, the screen is touch-enabled, so you can easily navigate through menus and even control some games with a quick tap here and a drag there.

Near the top are the face buttons and control surfaces. The D-pad is solid but just a little mushier than I like and – this is a minor complaint – I don't like that it's positioned to the left of the thumbstick because that means games that use the D-pad for quick menu options feel awkward. The healing gourd in Sekiro is a good example of this; it just feels off, but it’s nothing I couldn’t get used to.

The input buttons, which are marked with the same ABXY letters and configuration as an Xbox controller, are lovely. They feel like little pieces of flawlessly smooth hard candy, with a nice travel and just enough resistance. And while early photos had me worried that the buttons might be spaced too close together, that's not the case in practice; they're exactly where I’d expect them to be.

The thumbsticks, though? They rule.

The thumbsticks, though? They rule. They're perfectly smooth without feeling loose or sloppy, and they revert back to center with a satisfying snappiness. The surface is a matte plastic, and it’s touch-sensitive so the Steam Deck knows when you've got a thumb on one without you needing to depress anything. After some time with them, I did notice a slight drop in the smoothness of their action in certain positions, but that’s the same sort of "grittiness" all thumbsticks seem to acquire after a few hours of continuous use. Fortunately, if the problem persists or if new ones pop up, Valve has made it possible to open up the Steam Deck to replace the thumbsticks – although it's not exactly modular and does require you to disassemble your very expensive and difficult-to-find piece of tech. Still, that helps me sleep easier because the sticks are built right into the Steam Deck, so while on the Switch you could detach and replace a defective Joy-con that wouldn’t be an option here.

Directly below each thumbstick is a trackpad with a subtle haptic feature you can toggle on or off in the menus. I like the haptics – dragging my finger across the surface feels like moving a mouse across my desk. It even simulates the momentum of a trackball, meaning if you swipe quickly across the trackpad and take your finger off, the cursor glides along in the same way it would if you spun a trackball. It feels good for desktop applications and navigating in the Steam menus – and it’ll feel very familiar to anyone who’s used a Steam Controller. My one problem with the trackpads is a result of their placement: while playing games with thumbsticks I found my thumb would sometimes hit the trackpad and I'd get some unexpected input or camera angle shift. Thankfully, it is possible to turn them off in the menus on a per-game basis.

The trackpads will feel very familiar to anyone who’s used a Steam Controller.

As for using the trackpad as a mouse replacement in first-person shooters, well, good luck with that. I was able to make it work playing Half-Life 2 once I dialed in a sensitivity I could live with, but for the same reasons the Steam Controller (which attempted to completely replace the sticks with touchpads) never took off, I found myself defaulting to the controller or thinking about connecting a Bluetooth mouse. I had hoped it would bridge the gap between a mouse-and-keyboard setup and playing with a controller, but it feels like the lesser of three possible control schemes.

Shoulder buttons also feel good, although the L2 and R2 triggers are much better than the L1 and R1 bumpers. The bumpers feel alright once you actuate them, and in fact have a lovely little "click," but to get to that point feels a little softer than I would like. The triggers, on the other hand, are perfect. They're not quite DualSense-levels of good, but they travel very smoothly and have just the right amount of tension. The way they spring back almost reminds me of the triggers on the GameCube controller, but not quite.

On the back of the Steam Deck are four programmable buttons, similar to the button placement you find on the Xbox Elite and other high-end controllers. Sadly, they're probably my least-favorite inputs of the bunch. The placement is difficult for me to grasp with my larger-than-normal hands and I have to contort my fingers into an uncomfortable claw-shape to press them. On top of placement, they just feel bad: the response is soft and the clickiness is weak. Even if the placement were improved, the tactile feel is off-putting. Because of these limitations I didn't want to use them for anything in games, which is fine since they're entirely optional.

You’ll probably want a USB-C hub.

On the topic of other controllers, the Steam Deck does have Bluetooth controller support, but thus far I’ve found myself striking out. I'm sure it's something that will be fixed with a future update, but every time I paired an Xbox controller, everything would be going great until whatever game I was playing got to its first loading screen. At this point, the controller's vibration would turn on, at full blast, until I pulled the batteries. Until that’s resolved, I wouldn’t expect to treat the Steam Deck like a Switch you can dock and play like a console – though it may in the future and supports USB C-to-HDMI hubs and dongles for that purpose. Valve will be offering an official docking station (sold separately) but it won’t be available until late Spring at an as-yet-to-be-revealed price.

Speaking of dongles, if you're going to use any wired peripherals, you're probably going to need one because there’s just one USB-C port on the Steam Deck. Specifically, you’ll want a USB-C hub (and while not required, I'd recommend a powered hub so that you can charge your Steam Deck while you’re using peripherals). If you don't trust your WiFi, you'll need to add an Ethernet port to the list of your dongle's requirements. So that’s kind of a hassle and an extra expense you’ll need to factor in.

That USB-C port is located at the top of the Steam Deck, near the power button. The volume up and down buttons are on the left side, and sitting between them is the Steam Deck's primary cooling vent. It pumps out a continuous stream of heat, as the fans seem never to turn off while the Steam Deck is in use. In fact, most of the time the fans are running at their highest setting – we measured it to be about 49 decibels, which is louder than a PS5. It certainly makes sense – you can't cram all that power into such a small space and expect it won't need a fan. It's not so loud you can't hear over it, but it's impossible to ignore the high-pitched whine.

We measured it at about 49 decibels, which is louder than a PS5.

There's a performance overlay built right into the Steam Deck software, so you can monitor CPU and GPU usage, frame rate, core usage, memory and temperature. On more intensive games the GPU runs at 99-100% the entire time, while the CPU lives around 70-80% usage continuously. Temperatures for both are in the upper 70s.

The Steam Deck User Interface

The user interface is a modified version of the Steam desktop app you're used to. Navigation is fairly easy, although I was a bit lost at first until I figured out you have to push the physical Steam button to access your library. Where things get tricky is when you're in a game, because there are so many menus it’s difficult to figure out where a given setting might be located.

The Steam button on the left and the menu button on the right both bring up overlays, with the menu button having notifications, performance options, and quick settings. The Steam button brings up a more detailed list of sub-menus, including Home, Library, power options and other settings. This is on top of the in-game menus brought up with the pause and select buttons you're used to using. The confusing part, for me, came when I wanted to turn off the gyro feature in Sekiro. I couldn't remember: is that an in-game setting, or a Steam setting? I went through all the possibilities and it turns out… it's none of the above. The gyro function is turned off from the Steam Library screen after entering the launch page for the individual games.

The Steam Deck comes in three different storage configurations: 64GB, 256GB and 512GB. I was sent the 512GB version, and with no games installed there is 457.9 GB of free space available. The upper two storage tiers are NVMe SSD, while the 64GB model is flash memory. I was sent the 512GB model to test, and as you’d expect, I filled it up fast. I don't actually know – outside of indies – how 64GB is an acceptable level of storage, but thankfully there is a microSD slot on the bottom of the Steam Deck allowing you to pop in up to 2TB of additional storage. Valve also says you can upgrade the SSD inside, but it's not easy (which, for a device aimed at PC gaming enthusiasts, sounds less like a warning and more of a challenge). With the prices on NVMe drives dropping while storage sizes keep growing, it's a tempting road to travel, but even the cheapest 1TB drives are $100, adding to an already sizable investment.

Deathloop took an agonizing two minutes and 30 seconds to load.

However, even with an NVMe SSD on the highest-end Steam Deck, I was disappointed by load times on some of the games I played. For God of War, going from hitting the "Play" button on the SteamOS menu to the menu screen took almost a minute. For Deathloop, it's an agonizing two minutes and 30 seconds, compared to about a minute on desktop using a high-end NVMe SSD. In-game loading isn’t any better. Especially now that the new consoles have spoiled me with near-instant loads, that took some of the joy out of my first few days with the Steam Deck. At least when you get a little less ambitious and play older or less intensive games like Hades, Bayonetta, or Stardew Valley it’s more in the neighborhood of 10 seconds.

Another modern console feature that's missing from Steam Deck is Quick Resume. You can easily navigate to the Home screen from inside a game by selecting the option after pressing the Steam button on the Steam Deck's face. I tried to go from Sekiro to God of War and got a warning screen telling me I'd be facing some performance issues in doing so. Rather than suspend Sekiro automatically, I'd instead have to quit it entirely in order to play God of War at acceptable performance levels. Going back to it is like starting any game from scratch: loading, menus, etc. I've again been spoiled by modern consoles. If you're in the middle of a game and you suspend it with the power button it starts back up again without any problems, but going from one game to another is more like the Switch than the Xbox.

Steam Deck Performance and Gaming

Before we go further, I want to mention again that performance has been a moving target due to the slew of software updates Valve rolled out in the days between when the Steam Deck arrived in my hands and today. For that reason, we’re holding off putting it through our full benchmark suite, which typically consists of Total War: Three Kingdoms, Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus, and Hitman 3, as well as various synthetic benchmarks that we won’t be able to test until the Windows drivers are in place. In the meantime, here’s my anecdotal experience playing – or attempting to play – a variety of games both on and off Steam.

One advantage consoles have always had over PCs is that developers know exactly what hardware and software you’re running on and can tune their games precisely to run well on that, whereas PCs are all over the place. But since every Steam Deck has the same specs except for storage space, Valve has been able to create a new badge for games that work “great on Steam Deck.” That's any game that's been tested by Valve and proven to run well on your device, and while it’s only a few hundred right now, the list is growing every day. There are icons on each game's thumbnail telling you, at a glance, its Steam Deck status. Some games have an exclamation mark on a yellow background, letting you know they'll run but there are known issues (usually small ones). For example, Stellaris runs well but the fonts are tiny on the Steam Deck’s seven-inch screen and it shows keyboard prompts rather than controller buttons. Then there are many, many games that haven't been tested at all. Those are a crapshoot.

As I played a variety of games, both tested and untested, I was surprised – both positively and negatively – by the results. Playing God of War natively on a handheld device is pretty damn amazing. It looks so much better than it has any right to look, hitting a very acceptable 50fps without any major drops or stutters. In fact, I think I've played more God of War on the Steam Deck than I did on the PS4 (I got distracted by Red Dead 2 at the time, okay?). Hitman 3's built-in benchmark tool reported an impressive 48.2 frames per second while running on ultra quality settings. Borderlands 3 (which is on the yellow list due to font issues) didn't perform as well on ultra settings, but when I turned it down to medium it ran consistently in the 42-48fps range, with occasional dips to the low 30s. Deathloop also runs well, with the exception that it crashed so spectacularly during my first time playing it I had to do a hard reboot of the Steam Deck.

It didn't have any issues after that, nor did any of the other "Great on Steam Deck" games I played, including Dark Souls III and Sekiro. I did notice a massive framerate drop on Dark Souls III while I was in the process of downloading another game, but it cleared up as soon as the download was complete. These kinds of hiccups are a reminder that this is a PC playing PC games.

I was also impressed by DOOM (2016), which is currently not certified to run on Steam Deck at all. It's still the fast, ridiculously fun game I love, but in the palms of my hands, running surprisingly well and looking a lot better than it does on Switch. It did hard crash on me once, though.

Now, the bad news: Grand Theft Auto 5 didn't run at all. I'm not sure if it's due to the fact it requires you to install the Rockstar launcher, but every time I tried to boot it up it would load for a minute and then kick me unceremoniously back to the Steam menu. GTA5 is something I really want to play on a handheld, and I'm super curious about its initial load time (which is even a pain on consoles) but for now, it's just not happening.

Skyrim Special Edition, too, was a big disappointment. At its lowest settings it ran at a solid 60fps… until I swung my weapon, at which point all sound would cut out and the framerate would drop to the point that it would freeze altogether. A simple battle with some wolves in a forest was completely unplayable because the problems from swinging weapons were amplified by the inclusion of enemies. When I think of must-play PC games, Skyrim and GTA5 are at the forefront, so for neither of them to work is a huge bummer. Add that to the list of major games that are known not to work, including the aforementioned Halo Infinite, Destiny 2, Lost Ark, and Fortnite, and it gets a little depressing.

It's the massive variation in games that work and games that won't that tears me in two on the Steam Deck. When I was trying to play non-Steam games requiring an installer (like Blizzard’s Battle.net client or the Epic Games Store) I spent a good while messing around inside the SteamOS desktop command line, Googling for answers and getting blocked by inexplicable user permission errors, I found myself massively frustrated and disappointed. So far I've yet to successfully get anything outside of Steam to run. And yet… when I play games that do work, it's sublime. It’s like trying to achieve a comfortable body temperature by submerging one hand in a bucket of ice and the other in a pot of boiling water.

Steam Deck Battery Life

Beyond that limitation, the biggest, most deflating issue I’ve had has been battery life. It’s all over the place and probably the biggest reality check when it comes to realizing the dream of truly untethered PC gaming. For example, because of the performance levels the Steam Deck is capable of hitting, if you download God of War and just start playing on its default graphical settings (which include capping the frame rate at 60 and turning off V-sync) it will absolutely gobble through your battery life: I got around 90 minutes of untethered play before it shut down on me. That is significantly less than the two to eight hours Valve claims. Sure, we’ll be able to tune games to pace themselves a little better than that, such as by limiting them to 30 frames per second rather than 60, but it was surprising how fast it went.

There's also no warning as to when the battery is about to die – it just dies. Since I was watching the battery life meter I was prepared, but if I were away from home and lost my progress without warning I'd be pretty bummed.

One thing that’s sorely missing right now, beyond simply testing each game to verify that it works on Steam Deck, is per-game optimized settings to ensure they look good and run well for a reasonable amount of time. I’m sure that will come with time, but it’s such a massive task and Steam Decks are going to be so hard to come by for a while that you’re going to want to be careful when you fire up a new game away from an outlet.

Remember: It's a PC, Too!

At the time of writing, it's entirely possible to install Windows 11 on the Steam Deck. In fact, I was kind of in love with how snappy it is compared to my aging desktop. But without the graphics driver for the custom AMD APU I couldn't play any games or run any benchmarks, so it’s not all that useful. Valve and AMD say the driver should be available around launch.

But in either Windows or SteamOS here’s something your console can’t do: you can jump out of the Steam environment and – presto – you’re on a full-fledged PC that can do anything you’d expect a PC to do. If you're like me and you like playing around with Linux, leaving the Steam environment and using SteamOS in desktop mode is instantly recognizable. The most recent version of SteamOS is based on Arch Linux, not Debian, so keep that in mind when you're trying to figure out why 'apt-get' doesn't work. It's running the Plasma desktop environment, which I'd never personally used, but it's very clean and quite responsive on Steam Deck.

As of right now, on-screen keyboard functionality is a little spotty, so if you do want to play around inside the nerdiest of all operating systems you'll need to sync a Bluetooth keyboard or connect one to a USB-C hub. (This will almost certainly be fixed in a later update, as the on-screen keyboard didn't work at all when I first started using the Steam Deck.) The trackpads work as you would expect them to in SteamOS' desktop, so you can go ahead and add your favorite browser and visit all your favorite websites. Better still, you can use it like you'd use any other device running a Linux distro, meaning there’s a whole ecosystem of desktop applications and games out there that will run natively on it. You could write your novel on the Steam Deck or use it to hack the planet. It's your call.

It’s interesting to contemplate that, with just a few accessories, this could be someone’s only PC and that wouldn’t be a terrible setup. When you factor in all of that multi-use capability, the extra cost above a Switch – which to this day still has no web browser or Netflix app – doesn’t seem unreasonable. It's missing a camera, so you can't use it for video conferencing, but aside from that it's a decent little PC that easily handles light, everyday tasks but also plays games at a level you won't find in other hardware around this price.

Verdict (for now)

The Steam Deck is a well-built piece of hardware that feels good to hold and play on. When you’re playing a Valve-approved game it's actually incredible to get this kind of performance out of a device so small and compact, even if the battery can be gone in a flash if you’re not careful. But on the eve of its official launch, it isn't the smooth user experience I had hoped it would be. Aside from the frustrations I've come to expect and accept from PC gaming, the biggest problem I've encountered has been spotty compatibility with SteamOS. The dream of being able to play everything in your library on the go is a long way from being realized, and not being able to use Windows just yet makes a lot of those problems temporarily insurmountable – plus it means I haven’t been able to run our usual PC benchmarking tools. So it’s impossible to land on a judgment right now because I literally don’t know what the Steam Deck will be able to do by the time the first retail unit arrives at a paying customer’s home. But that won’t last for long, so check back soon for the final review and score.

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Grid Legends Review

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The venerable Gran Turismo 7 is not the only racing game being released in the next week or so that can trace its roots way back to 1997; indeed, the first seeds of Grid Legends sprouted that same year with retro racing royalty TOCA Touring Cars on PC and the original PlayStation. Mining that 25-year history for inspiration and reenlisting some long-forgotten characters, Codemasters has turned Grid Legends into a sequel to both 2019’s Grid and 2002’s TOCA Race Driver, which was the first time the studio had injected a story into the series. The live-action, documentary-style approach of Grid Legends is very different from the primitive PS2 cutscenes of the pioneering TOCA Race Driver, but it’s a story I’ve enjoyed watching unfold – even if the on-track action hasn’t changed dramatically from Grid 2019.

Grid Legends’ story mode, Driven to Glory, is a little different from the one Codemasters debuted in F1 2021 last year; in Grid Legends the story is presented as a sports documentary rather than a standard drama. The ebb and flow of the fictional, globetrotting, multi-discipline Grid championship is contextualised via one-on-one interviews with the characters, plus other fly-on-the-wall moments as the camera crew slips into garages, VIP areas, and hovers around the paddock. It’s more Netflix’s Drive to Survive and less Sylvester Stallone’s Driven, and it’s probably the better of the two paths.

It’s more Netflix’s Drive to Survive and less Sylvester Stallone’s Driven, and it’s probably the better of the two paths.

The live-action presentation has been pieced together using a mixed-reality process that places real actors on entirely digital backdrops, similar to the much-discussed technique employed to shoot The Mandalorian, and has actually worked quite well. It’s certainly an old-school solution – and reminiscent of the so-called cutting edge FMV cutscenes the games industry excitedly filled CD-ROMs with back in the ’90s – but, despite being an uncommon approach, Driven to Glory is a slick and well-edited package that has been executed largely without hokeyness.

It’s a simple story – unconventional upstart team Seneca Racing seeks to upset ruthless champions Ravenwest – but it’s effective enough, even if I find it a little incongruous to accept Seneca as penniless underdogs when their garage is stuffed with barely used racing machinery worth tens of millions. I’d also be lying if I said I buy all of these actors as credible racing drivers, but the cast’s performances are decent and broadly earnest. Sex Education’s Ncuti Gatwa is particularly entertaining as the playful Rwandan-Scottish racing driver Valentin Manzi, though his appearances are limited. The villainous McKane duo ham it up slightly as Driven to Glory’s token toolbags, although there’s admittedly nothing here quite as memorably cheesy as a Command & Conquer: Red Alert-era Tim Curry declaring his intent to flee to outer space. Nonetheless, the official re-introduction of the McKanes is a cute touch for me as a long-time fan; it’s fun to see retired TOCA Race Driver hero-turned-heel Ryan again after two decades. It’s also nice to finally put a face to his nephew Nathan – a long-time Grid series AI opponent who’s been terrorising us on the track since 2008. They’re not the only characters dusted off for resurrection in Grid Legends, either, but I certainly won’t spoil the late, Cobra Kai-esque reveal here.

Urban Legends

The curated set of 36 events in Driven to Glory took me roughly seven hours to work through and ultimately serves as a springboard for the broader main career mode. Grid Legends breaks its career mode into chunks rather than displaying every available event on a single screen, like Grid 2019 does, which is a neater and more traditional approach to a racing game career. On the other hand, I did feel a bit more railroaded this time around, with some event types randomly locked behind the completion of unrelated others. There’s a bit more to do off-track as well, with sponsorship objectives to select and achieve and boosts to buy for your teammate and mechanic, but Grid Legends is still spinning its wheels elsewhere. Unlocking new pictures for my team logo or pre-made livery designs simply isn’t exciting when the creative tools in peers like Need for Speed, Forza, and even Hot Wheels are lightyears ahead.

On track, Grid Legends also struggles sometimes to fully distinguish itself from Grid 2019 – something at its most noticeable when I was running the same races in the same cars on the same set of track ribbons that were arguably overused in the previous game. That said, there has been a significant increase in the amount of tracks on offer in Grid Legends relative to the limited set in 2019, with high-profile circuits like Suzuka and Mount Panorama rejoining the roster alongside a host of new urban street courses from London, Moscow, Paris, and more. The new urban tracks are filled with the same fancy firework effects and thick crowds as Grid 2019, but the layouts are a little vanilla, lacking standout corners or sectors that would have me remembering the name of one course over another.

The other thing that subtly distinguishes this Grid from the last are a few tweaks that returning players are likely to notice. The tendency of the AI to make performative errors and suffer failures has been ramped up a lot, meaning it’s now common to watch as opponents ahead spear off the track with punctures or retire from the racing line with their car belching white smoke. It happens far too often to be considered realistic but I like it, and it adds a bit of interesting unpredictability to the racing that Grid’s accomplished but more comparatively sedate rivals often lack.

It’s now common to watch as opponents ahead spear off the track with punctures or retire from the racing line with their car belching white smoke.

Speaking of rivals, Grid 2019’s nemesis system has returned and has been honed to make your on-track rivalries last longer than the remaining duration of a single race. While in Grid 2019 nemeses would drop their grudges against you after the chequered flag, if you rough up an AI too much in Grid Legends their angst will continue into the next race and beyond. This hyperbolic brand of high-contact racing is generally so aggressive by default that it wasn't always clear to me how much angrier my nemeses were than normal, but I do enjoy the tension during moments where they’re clearly trying to sideswipe me. A reduction in the pool of AI drivers Grid Legends fields on the 22-car grids also means you’ll be seeing the same names more often; yes, they’re just faceless AIs, but they quickly became familiar names to me – especially the ones I found myself upsetting most regularly.

Top of the Multiclass

But beyond that, Grid Legends looks, sounds, and feels largely the same as its predecessor – cars grip tight, brake hard, and brush off crippling accidents with contempt. It can be a challenge without the optional assists but Grid Legends is by no means a simulator – it’s a far more accessible, arcade-style racer at its heart. This doesn’t mean every car handles the same, though: classic British touring cars still have the feel of being tugged around by their front wheels, high-downforce open-wheelers feel pressed into the asphalt, and stadium super trucks twist until they’re hustling through bends on three wheels.

Those stadium super truck races and the ramps they feature are one of the new events in Grid Legends, and the racing they provide is chaotic and interesting. Grid Legends also sees the return of drift mode from Grid Autosport, but it’s the tense new multiclass races that I enjoyed the most. These events pit different classes of cars together, with the faster ones handicapped by a delayed start. The slower cars need to hang on out in front long enough to make it to the end, and the faster cars must hunt them down before they run out of laps. I’ve found myself spending a lot of time creating matchups in Grid Legends’ race creator, which is very user-friendly and allows us to save and edit our favourite custom races. Honestly, I’d be happy to see all racing games have multiclass racing work just like this.

They should probably also crib from Grid Legends’ clever hop-in multiplayer, too, which works by always filling races with AI up to the 22-player limit and allowing new human drivers to take over a random AI driver while the race is in progress. Other players can even drop into your career races if you opt to let them in, although I found it a bit of a frustrating way to play the career because it puts you into an always-online state where single-player luxuries like pausing or quick restarts are unavailable, even if you’re the only one playing at that moment. In practice, though, hop-in works surprisingly well in Grid Legends’ low-stakes, rough-and-tumble multiplayer environment. If you drop into last, how many places can you make up? If you drop in closer to the front, can you hang on for a good result? Either way it’s better than sitting in a lobby with your gearstick in your hand. In testing, the multiplayer has worked very well for me and displayed very few synchronisation hiccups, despite the fact I was racing from Australia against players in the UK, the US, and who knows where else.

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Mind MGMT Board Game Review

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Hidden movement games, where one player creeps around the board in secret and the other have to work out their location, can be problematic. There’s the obvious issue of confusion or outright cheating. The hidden player has limited active playtime while their opponents’ plot. And it’s hard to get the right balance of hints to keep the game engaging. Even undisputed classics of this genre like Fury of Dracula and Specter Ops suffer these issues to some degree.

None of this has stopped designers from trying, though, because piecing together clues as you chase the suspect is such fun. The latest game to try is Mind MGMT, a title inspired by a comic book of the same name (see it on Amazon) about a shadowy psychic spy network. One player is the recruiter, looking for talent to join the organization. The others are rogue agents, trying to track them down.

What’s in the Box

As a game based on a graphic novel, everything from the board to the box itself uses art from the comic. The watercolor art of its author, Matt Kindt, is distinctive and not to everyone’s taste, but there’s no denying it gives the game a unique look. While it leaves some components, such as the gridded board, looking a bit sparse, others stand out, like the surreal feature cards.

For the hidden player, there’s a wipe-clean copy of the board to track their movement and a screen to hide it behind. There’s a whiteboard marker too for both sides to use, as some of the tokens used by the rogue agents can be written on to make notes. Both sides have some cardboard standees of head art from the comics to move on the board.

That sounds like a poor haul of components to have in the very large and awkward box the game arrives in. The rest of the space is taken up by fourteen sealed tuck boxes, seven for each side, which won’t be part of your first play. We’ll return to these mysterious items later.

Rules and How it Plays

With one side hiding and the other hunting, the rules for the two factions are quite different. Indeed, the rulebook looks daunting with its cramped text and colored boxes for optional rules. In fact, the core framework isn’t that hard: there are introductory and advanced rule sets explained together in one booklet, which make it feel confusing.

Play starts with the hidden recruiter declaring their start space and then making five moves in secret. They’re not allowed to revisit a space they’ve been in. Behind their screen, they will have three feature cards that correspond to icons on the board: there are two features in most spaces. To gain recruits and ultimately win the game, they have to visit these features and record the growing tally of their recruits in public.

After that, the game begins in earnest as the rogue agents can start to search for the recruiter. There are four agents and on their turn, each can move two spaces and take an action. The most common one is to ask the recruiter about a feature in the agent’s space. If the recruiter has ever visited a space with that feature they must place a footstep token on the board in any one such space.

Another key action the agents have is the reveal, which they can use in a space with a footstep token. The recruiter must then reveal when they were in that space, a critical clue since it lets the agents know how far away the recruit is. However, it takes two agent actions in the same space, first the ask, then the reveal, to get this information, by which time the recruiter can be several spaces away.

These are the parameters of the puzzle, and what a wonderful puzzle it is, slowly coalescing for the hunters while the hunted does their best to misdirect and escape the closing jaws. Based on the time, the clues and deductions about what features the recruiter is visiting, the agents must try and piece together where the recruiter is headed, then get to the right space and make a capture action. Mind MGMT provides just the right drip-feed of data to keep everyone engrossed, discussing details and ratcheting up the tension as time ticks on.

These are the parameters of the puzzle, and what a wonderful puzzle it is.

Meanwhile, the recruiter is scheming to slip the net and win either by collecting enough recruits or running the time down. As well as being mealy-mouthed with their replies to ask actions they have other tricks up their sleeves. They can make a single two-space move during the course of play, telling the agents they have done so, and can also move diagonally through spaces with no features. It may not sound like a lot, but it’s more than enough to give the agents the runaround and satisfy the voyeur’s itch that makes hidden movement so compelling.

By themselves, these parameters would shape an enjoyable game. But Mind MGMT goes further and dismantles the barriers built in to hidden movement. It’s fast, for starters, wrapping up in an hour or so. And the pace is quick, with the four agent turns each round interspersed with two for the recruiters to sustain interest. The hidden map and the way clues are dispensed make it hard to give inaccurate information by accident but if it happens, there’s even a rule to help rebalance the game. It’s a great package.

However, this is just the introductory game. The full ruleset adds a number of fascinating wrinkles. Barriers to movement are added, and the agents get special powers to mimic their comic book inspirations plus an ally they can activate for an extra bonus. To compensate, the recruiter gains control of four “immortal” pawns that represent the self-healing enforcers of the agency which can block agents from taking actions and even gather recruits themselves.

The result is an extraordinary web of clue and counter-clue, woven around more traditional strategic concerns like position and action efficiency. The only thing it really seems to lack is the scope of some of its brethren which stray into things like booby traps and combat. But like the Mind MGMT agency itself, even this appearance is deceptive.

Remember those mysterious tuck boxes, keyed to either side? After your initial full game, the losing side is instructed to open their first box. Inside they’ll find a little snippet from one of the comic books and some cards and tokens that expand their options, giving them a boost for the next play. As more boxes are opened, you can pick and choose which of these extra elements you want to include in each game. We won’t spoil the contents, but it’s a wonderful way to keep the game surprising and fresh and keep you coming back for more.

Where To Buy

• Off the Page Games

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Martha is Dead Review

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What is Martha is Dead? Three words that neither Batman nor Superman ever want to hear. I’m sorry, but I feel the need to open this review with a joke since things are going to get pretty dark from here. Martha is Dead spins a torturous tale of psychological horror that focuses on the tragic death of a young woman and the subsequent mental and emotional torment suffered by her surviving twin sister, all set against the backdrop of one of the most harrowing times in human history, World War II. This feel-bad romp takes you on a trip through a small but fastidiously crafted slice of Italian countryside and into body horror-heavy nightmares that are not for the squeamish. It’s an engrossing and at times gruesome five-hour journey, but one that left me feeling slightly more perplexed than I was perturbed by the time I had reached its end.

After she discovers the body of her identical twin Martha drowned in a lake near her family home, Giulia inadvertently assumes her sister’s identity when her grieving mother mistakes her for the wrong sibling. Knowing that Martha has always been the favourite child, Giulia neglects to clear up the confusion and instead pretends to be Martha while investigating the suspicious circumstances around her sister’s death. It’s the combined stresses of living a lie while also uncovering the disturbing details surrounding the real Martha’s demise that drags Gulia down into the depths of madness, turning her into an increasingly unreliable narrator and making for a gripping ordeal as her genuinely distressing dreams become indistinct from her grief-stricken reality.

Fatal Frame

Unraveling the mystery surrounding Martha’s death relies largely on heading to specific spots around the family estate, taking photos with a vintage camera or recovering lost rolls of film, and returning to a basement darkroom in order to develop each shot. Giulia’s camera, which can be augmented with additional lenses and flashbulbs, isn’t just an excuse for yet another in-game photo mode — it also provides an opportunity for the ominous atmosphere to get under your skin in subtle ways, with infrared film revealing hidden messages, and demonic moans and whispers seeping in from the woodland surroundings while your peripheral vision is obscured by the confines of the camera’s viewfinder.

Manipulating the camera’s aperture setting and carefully completing the steps to process film affords you the most hands-on freedom in Martha is Dead, since almost every other story objective is of the strict go-here-and-collect-that variety. An optional task that allowed me to decipher a telegraph message sent via Morse code was the one stimulating exception, and I wish there were a few more puzzle-solving sections like it along the way to make me feel a bit more involved in the investigation side of things. Yet while there might not have been much of an incentive to analyze every inch of its environment, I did appreciate the work put into reinforcing its 1944 setting, such as the daily newspapers and ambient radio broadcasts detailing the horrors unfolding across Europe.

Martha is Dead features some actions that are distressing enough to make a Mortal Kombat fighter soil their NetherRealms.

Listening to news from the World War II frontline is one of the least disturbing experiences in Martha is Dead, however, since many of its story chapters are punctuated by grisly interludes that make Heavy Rain’s infamous finger severing scene seem about as startling as a stubbed toe. Some of these moments are entirely passive, such as stumbling upon the freshly dismembered corpse of a landmine victim in the woods, while others are more interactive - forcing you to manually carve the skin off a certain character’s face using the jagged edge of a necklace pendant, for instance. These are a couple of the comparatively mild examples, and indeed Martha is Dead features some actions that are distressing enough to make a Mortal Kombat fighter soil their NetherRealms.

PlayStation Prohibition

While the PC and Xbox versions of Martha is Dead are uncensored, the PlayStation edition features some substantial changes. A couple of the more macabre moments are no longer interactive, some sexually explicit references have been removed, and the disclaimer at the beginning is more specific about the subject matter of the story. In addition, an optional censor mode allows players to skip some of the more disturbing scenes. While I took no pleasure in experiencing some of Martha is Dead’s more confronting moments, I do think they were effective in drawing me into Giulia’s increasingly fragile mental state, and so my personal preference would be to experience Martha is Dead as it was originally intended.

Super Marionette

As shocking as these moments may be, I ultimately found them to leave less of a lasting impression than the peculiar late game puppeteering sequences that occur on the mechanical stage found on Giulia’s bedroom floor. By manipulating marionettes of her family members, Giulia is able to relive repressed memories from her childhood, with the blow from each traumatic act softened somewhat when portrayed by Giulia’s playful mimicry of her mother and father. Aside from being wonderfully distinct departures in a visual sense, these miniature performances brought invaluable insight into Giulia’s upbringing, which in turn better contextualized the violent visions she suffers over the course of Martha is Dead’s story.

Other storytelling tricks are less effective, though, such as the sections that send you running through a series of forked paths marked by contrasting words you need to choose between in order to complete an unknown phrase, annoyingly forcing you to restart if you guess incorrectly. These cumbersome detours aren’t the only ingredients in Martha is Dead that feel unnecessary, much like the in-game bicycle which seems to move only slightly faster than Giulia’s running speed despite being noticeably more unwieldy to steer.

Still, it’s the broadly ambiguous nature of Martha is Dead’s storytelling that contributed most to me feeling somewhat underwhelmed by its outcome, despite being consistently intrigued for the bulk of its journey. As Giulia’s mental state continues to unravel and further casualties are inflicted, it becomes increasingly unclear as to what is a dream and what is reality. Who killed Martha? What exactly is going on? Is any of this even real? I don’t really have a definitive answer to any of these questions, and while I don’t have a problem with art being open to interpretation, it’s a bit frustrating to be presented with a mystery to solve that ultimately feels unsolvable. I certainly have my suspicions, but it’s like deducing the killer’s identity in a game of Clue, only to triumphantly open the case file envelope and have nothing but confetti spill out.

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