Antebellum Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out IGN serves a global audience, so with Antebellum being released on Premium VOD and in select international markets on Sept. 18, we are publishing our review from Siddhant Adlakha who watched the movie via a digital screener. Read more on IGN's policy on movie reviews in light of COVID-19 here. IGN strongly encourages anyone considering going to a movie theater during the COVID-19 pandemic to check their local public health and safety guidelines before buying a ticket. [poilib element="accentDivider"] There are a few things you should know going into Janelle Monáe-starrer Antebellum. For one, it’s a genre movie mining the horrific images of American slavery; your mileage may vary. For another, the film’s marketing gives away a whole lot more than it should — so much that the way the film is constructed and the way its trailers play out feel like opposing forces, attempting to sabotage one another. I’ll keep the spoilers to a minimum, and behind another warning later on, but Antebellum is also impossible to discuss in-depth, or even in passing, without at least touching on what the film approaches as a major twist to its premise (even though, in retrospect, all the big ideas it teases end up playing like setups with no payoff, and promises unkept). Why touch on these reveals at all? Well, in a bid to be a relevant story about the horrors of America’s past, Antebellum takes so many wrong turns, and shoots itself in the foot so many times, that it’s hard not to wonder how a film this jaw-droppingly terrible in execution was ever slated for theatrical release (back in April, though the pandemic has mercifully moved it to VOD on September 18th). The film begins with a fitting Faulkner quote from Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Before its opening frames, it already positions itself as a story about the way the past manifests in the present — no doubt a relevant topic, as America continues to grapple with the long-standing specter of its racial history. If nothing else, its opening scenes offer the promise of a blood-curdling, richly detailed world in the form of a Southern plantation overrun with Confederate soldiers. In a single take, it explores the façade of the lavish mansion, the fields in which the enslaved are put to work, and, eventually, the cabins in which they dwell, before narrowing in on a terrifying scene of soldiers gunning down a Black woman attempting to escape, conjuring images of the many cell-phone videos that spur protest movements in the present. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://ift.tt/3bs1DRe] This opening is, admittedly, a stellar technical achievement. It’s also where things begin to feel a little uncanny, sometimes for the right reasons, and sometimes not. Monáe’s character, in the few moments we glimpse her in this opening, feels out of place when she’s brought to the plantation for the first time (this turns out to be one of those “right reasons,” at least at first). She seems a bit too put together, too composed, and too well taken care of for an enslaved person in the Antebellum South — I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention 12 Years A Slave by Steve McQueen, the story of a free Black man kidnapped into slavery, which immediately sprung to mind. Of course, no one belongs in these conditions, not just Monáe; that’s part of Antebellum’s point, but it’s a statement it ends up making tactlessly. 12 Years A Slave also comes to mind because of the immediacy with which Antebellum leaps into the physical torment of the era, as Nate Wonder and Roman GianArthur’s harsh musical score couches the violent opening in a sense of creeping dread. The promise made by these initial moments is that of a familiar tale of American history, so often mined for inspirational “prestige” drama, being re-framed as something it always was for African-Americans: a horror story. But even before this opening scene has ended, little hints of wrong-headed decision-making begin to creep into its fabric. That eerie score I mentioned is pulsating and unnerving, but about five minutes into the track, I felt like I was having a stroke when it began to closely resemble the opening theme from the 1992 X-Men animated series. In isolation, who cares? Though in totality, the film’s strangeness never ceases and sitting through it feels like a surreal experience for all the wrong reasons. When drawing from the well of these particular horrors, storytellers really ought to have something to say about them, or else the result is little more than trauma porn. Soon after her arrival, Monáe’s character — dubbed Eden — is branded and assaulted by a Confederate general in a lengthy sequence that overstays its welcome, and ends up having little narrative purpose anyway (beyond recreating historical torment) because the film simply skips forward six weeks, to when Eden is more acclimated to her predicament. She behaves strangely, in ways that don’t quite make sense yet, like crab-walking across her cabin floor and carving… something on her wall, which we don’t yet see. And while the purpose of these various oddities is eventually revealed (well over an hour later), in the meantime, they come off as bizarre character quirks that only serve to distance us from her. The film, by virtue of the story it’s trying to tell and the specific rugs it wants to pull, cannot yet bring us into her point of view, but the result of this is far more frustrating than it is mysterious. Other enslaved characters show up at her door and appear to speak in code or shorthand, and eventually, another new arrival dubbed Julia (Kiersey Clemons) confronts Eden about why she won’t lead the rest of them to escape. Julia, like Eden, feels somewhat out of place as well, so before long, these odd behaviors begin to hint at something strange underlying the premise. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=antebellum-images&captions=true"] However, these hints are brought about through mere verbal exchanges, which isn’t nearly enough to imbue the film with the kind of mystery first-time feature writer-directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz seem to aim for. None of these apparent disconnects are unsettling enough to be surreal, or to draw these past images into the present in any concrete way; these conversations are merely shot and edited with the easy-breezy aesthetic of two friends discussing their favorite music. The film fails to draw the eye or to emphasize, even momentarily, that these little ideas must eventually amount to something; so much of what the film attempts just ends up looking like a series of mistakes. When the film does eventually tip its hand about 40 minutes in, it reveals what at first appears to be some supernatural or dreamlike grounding in our present political moment, as if the specters of an unconfronted past are about to leap through the screen and shake us by the shoulders. However, this promise of some powerful thematic through-line is walked back in a number of frustrating ways, until eventually, the aforementioned uncanniness in the cabin is revealed to be far less interesting than whatever the marketing and the film itself appear to have promised. The result is the connection between past and present feeling tenuous at best­ — but to even begin to talk about why requires at least mentioning some things that appear to have been “spoiled” by the film’s final trailer. Since I had the experience of watching Antebellum without stumbling upon these reveals, I’ll leave you with that second SPOILER warning now, in case you’d like to do the same. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://ift.tt/3br90sw] So, as the trailers reveal, there is a modern-day element to Antebellum, which attempts to better ground these historical atrocities in the present. Monáe and a handful of other actors appear both in this 21st-century metropolitan setting as well as during the Civil War, and the marketing even hints at some sort of supernatural goings-on, meant to tether these two “timelines” together. The film offers a couple of supernatural hints as well, though not nearly to the same degree as the trailers, which appear to have been constructed as pre-emptive apologia. As you may have surmised, the fact that some of the film unfolds in the present is actually a major plot twist; Monáe also plays author and media personality Veronica Henley, whose work explaining and exploring American racism has caught the attention of some shadowy organization, which speaks in riddles about history and about being “chosen,” and appears to have some connection to why someone with Monáe’s appearance in the present also exists in this mildly uncanny past. The film even lingers on Henley’s back, where Eden was branded, as she appears to sense something out of the ordinary, hinting at some cerebral or spiritual link between these two stories. This idea begins to solidify in these present scenes, when the ghosts of America’s racial past start to manifest, sometimes metaphorically — in the form of paintings of plantations, hung unapologetically in hotel lobbies — and sometimes more literally, though in ways that are spread so far apart that practically nothing happens in between before these elements are dropped from the film entirely. A conversation between Henley and a friend speaks to the idea that our ancestors can live on through us, even in our dreams, but these little hints are also brushed aside for something far less interesting, with far less engaging commentary on the ways in which traumas latch on to you over time, and the ways history has a tendency to reappear after it’s been swept under the rug. Adding to the frustration is the fact that Antebellum, from this point on, doesn’t really return to the plantation scenes until its tensionless final act, which answers none of the lingering questions set up in this middle section. The film remains in the present for a bafflingly long stretch (despite teasing and then faking out cross-cuts to the past one more than one occasion!). Instead of exploring these apparent connections in any meaningful way — visually or thematically — it focuses entirely on conversations rife with buzzwords ripped from online discourse, rather than the way actual human beings might talk to one another. The actors may as well be reciting the subtext of their lines, rather than finding ways to bring that subtext to the surface through nuance and human emotion (every other element of the filmmaking feels geared to this approach as well). Eventually, Henley’s extended conversations with these new characters don’t even matter. Rather than offering anything of substance, they feel like scrolling through a thoughtless Twitter thread, and they end up having no actual bearing on the plot. And while one dinner scene, in particular, offers minor hints of surrealism through its framing, it does so only for its audience. Minor characters, whose faces seem intentionally obscured, play like they might have a greater significance to the duality of this setting (especially since a couple of other actors have re-appeared in both “timelines”). But if it were to turn out, in some behind-the-scenes commentary, that these characters were just poorly shot and edited, that would make just as much sense. Absolutely nothing comes of this occasionally dreamlike presentation. It isn’t sustained enough to create any kind of ethereal or unsettling mood, so it’s business as usual for Henley, who barely seems to notice anything is amiss. When it’s revealed why this is, and what the connection between the two “timelines” actually is, everything clicks into place in the most unimaginative way, recontextualizing the film’s own imagery in a manner that feels inappropriate at best. Antebellum wants to be Jordan Peele’s 2017 film Get Out and the controversial 2018 Broadway hit Slave Play rolled into one, but it lacks the former’s understanding of the ways modern racism manifests, the latter’s intricacy in dealing with lingering racial traumas, and both stories’ penchant for treating historical atrocity as a resurgent horror that seeps into your bones. Instead, it merely asks what would happen if you laid images from then and now side-by-side, almost at random, with so little care for cause-and-effect or for the meaning behind them that the film ends up having nothing to say about either the past or the present. 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Disney's Mulan Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out IGN serves a global audience, so with Mulan being released in select international theaters and on Disney+, we are publishing our review from Laura Prudom who watched the movie via a digital screener. Read more on IGN's policy on movie reviews in light of COVID-19 here. IGN strongly encourages anyone considering going to a movie theater during the COVID-19 pandemic to check their local public health and safety guidelines before buying a ticket. [poilib element="accentDivider"]

Distinguishing itself from just about every other remake that Disney has produced in the last few years, the live-action Mulan makes a satisfying case for its own existence. Unlike 2019’s slavishly faithful (and thus completely unnecessary) Lion King adaptation, or 2017's oddly lifeless Beauty and the Beast, director Niki Caro’s take on the iconic Chinese warrior is determined to tread new ground, even while taking care to hit many of the same emotional beats as its 1998 predecessor. This results in a film that, like its titular hero, seems comfortable in its own skin, rather than relying on the audience’s nostalgia to carry it.

If you’re a fan of the original Disney film, the basics are still the same: The headstrong Mulan (played with believable steel by Yifei Liu) impersonates a man to enlist in the Imperial Army and prevent her ailing father (Tzi Ma) from being sent to a war he won’t return from.

But the update makes some clever deviations from the original to keep Disneyphiles guessing - focusing far more on the action and fight choreography, dispensing with the comedic sidekicks and musical numbers, fleshing out the motivations of the villains, and rooting Mulan’s impressive physical abilities in the concept of Ch’i (or qi). In this tale, Ch’i is an energy that “pervades the universe and all living things” (sound familiar?) and can be harnessed to grant the wielder heightened reflexes and almost superhuman abilities - but it’s a force that can traditionally only be used by men.

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While this change gives Mulan a juicy source of conflict - she’s spent her life trying to hide her power for fear of bringing dishonor to her family, until her deception allows her to embrace who she truly is - this mythical force also undercuts Mulan’s position as a hero who succeeds based on courage, determination, and natural ability, as she did in the original. That has the unintended consequence of turning an inspiring underdog story into a kind of superhero origin tale - which isn’t a dealbreaker, per se, it’s just a story we’ve seen many times before in many iterations (a lot of them from Disney’s corporate sibling, Marvel, in fact).

Still, the upside of using Ch’i as a kind of superpower is that it paves the way for much more dynamic action sequences, filmed with confidence and flair by Caro (who should be handed the reins to a superhero movie immediately, based on the creativity on display here). It also makes room for the inclusion of a new villain, Xianniang (Gong Li), a shapeshifting sorceress designed to be a darker reflection of Mulan’s abilities. Jason Scott Lee’s Böri Khan assumes a similar role to the animated film’s Shan Yu, as a blunt force warrior seeking revenge on the Emperor (Jet Li, who’s pretty underutilized).

The script, credited to Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, and Lauren Hynek & Elizabeth Martin, attempts to flesh out the villains to a much greater degree than the original, with varying results. Böri Khan is no more compelling than Shan Yu was, even with added motivation for his grudge against the Emperor, but Gong Li is effortlessly magnetic every time she’s on screen, providing an unpredictability that raises the stakes in the final act.

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The film certainly doesn’t suffer from the loss of Mushu or any of the animated film’s other comedic elements. It finds plenty of humor in Mulan’s attempts to hide her identity from her fellow soldiers, and the camaraderie between our hero and the other recruits is every bit as charming and believable as it was in animated form, especially when it comes to her chemistry with the unwitting Honghui (Yoson An). Putting Mulan on equal ground with her prospective love interest is a much smarter narrative choice than a flirtation with her commanding officer Li Shang in the animated version, allowing for a competitive rivalry that believably keeps the two in each other’s orbit.

And speaking of the dragon in the room, Eddie Murphy's Mushu was a controversial element in China when the original was released, so the film has chosen a more traditional manifestation of Mulan's ancestors in the form of a graceful phoenix that appears during pivotal moments. It's certainly less chatty, but basically serves the same purpose - offering Mulan motivation in times of adversity - although the concept is never fully explored, so its presence doesn't really add the intended emotional weight to those scenes.

The only aspect of the 1998 original that is conspicuously absent is the music. Caro smartly deploys an instrumental version of “Reflection” during certain scenes to evoke Mulan’s growth, and the script uses lines from “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” and “A Girl Worth Fighting For” as dialogue. But it would've been nice to hear a few more auditory cues from the original, even if Caro rightly decided not to undermine the drama of what is essentially a war film with characters bursting into song at inopportune moments.

Still, the animated version isn’t going anywhere, and it feels far more impressive for this version of Mulan to take some big swings and differentiate itself from its predecessor than to attempt a beat for beat remake of a story we already love. For that alone, Mulan feels like a breath of fresh air.

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Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 Remake Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out How do you remake a game that’s spent two decades perched at the pinnacle of what this industry has to offer? I mean, the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 isn’t just considered as one of the greatest sports games ever made; it’s literally wedged amongst the top three highest-rated video games of all time on Metacritic. You’d probably be better off cutting your losses and photocopying the Mona Lisa at this point, right? Well, no, because despite the high bar set by the originals, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is an absolutely rip-roaring remake. Vicarious Visions has successfully brought Neversoft’s esteemed classics back to life, allowing old and new fans alike to experience these masterpieces through a modern lens while remaining entirely respectful to the moves, the maps, and the music that’s been seared into the brains of millions since the turn of the millennium. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://ift.tt/31WwVgi] THPS1+2 pushes off on the right foot immediately, with a fantastic intro fusing footage of the iconic stars of the original games with clips of the new skateboarding superstars joining the roster. It shouldn’t be understated how effectively this otherwise fairly simple sizzle reel instantly injects these new skaters into the fabric of Pro Skater, meaning they don’t just feel tacked on. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=The%20levels%2C%20the%20moves%2C%20the%20pros%2C%20the%20songs%20%E2%80%93%20every%20element%20of%20the%20original%20games%20that%20earnt%20them%20their%20legions%20of%20fans%20is%20back%20with%20a%202020%20makeover"]Things just get better from there. The levels, the moves, the pros, the songs – every element of the original games that earnt them their legions of fans is back with a 2020 makeover. Maybe you played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD back in 2012. Maybe you think you’ve already had this experience. You have not. Not like this.

Everybody’s Heard About the Bird

It’s actually quite remarkable dropping into each of the nearly 20 levels and marvelling at just how authentically they mirror the geometry of the 1999 and 2000 versions of these same maps. They’re obviously infinitely richer with granular detail, filled with impressive lighting, and – unlike the PS1 oldies – feature a draw distance that stretches to the horizon instead of disappearing into fog when it hits double figures, but they’re also wonderfully familiar. The graphics don’t necessarily eclipse those of other triple-A sports sims but they’re quite handsome, and importantly they’re vastly superior to the peculiarly stylised and generally unattractive look of THPS5. [widget path="global/page/imagecomparison" parameters="comparisons=%7B%22comparisons%22%3A%5B%7B%22caption%22%3A%22The%20originan%20vs%20the%20remake.%22%2C%22images%22%3A%5B%7B%22id%22%3A%225eeba5e1e4b05676dd198141%22%2C%22label%22%3A%221999%22%7D%2C%7B%22id%22%3A%225eeba5e0e4b05676dd198140%22%2C%22label%22%3A%222020%22%7D%5D%7D%5D%7D"] There aren’t really any duds amongst the maps but I was particularly impressed by the Mall’s mild reinvention as an abandoned and decaying ghost town that looks like a flood has swept through it, and Venice’s vibrant colour explosion, with almost every surface sporting generations of layered graffiti. Hangar is also a highlight; it’s never been the most interesting level but here it’s been turned into a virtual shrine to original Tony Hawk developer Neversoft, which is a nice touch. Both individual games are represented as a separate string of levels in THPS1+2 – and you can progress through them independently – but beyond that everything is unified and accessible from a central hub. Skills points for your skaters that you earn in THPS1 maps, for instance, make your skater perform better for the THPS2 maps – and vice versa. This is a good, elegant solution that beats having each game as an otherwise unrelated mode, like in Vicarious Visions’ last remake effort, the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.

Back from the Brink

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Tony Hawk's previous official outing in the Pro Skater series was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5, which was extremely disappointing despite the Birdman's best intentions. "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 occasionally flirts with the joy of movement and attitude that made the original four games classics, but the wheels quickly come off," explains IGN's 2015 3.5/10 review. "There are a disappointing number of design and technical problems that range from frustrating to flat-out broken, making this attempt at returning the series to glory a non-starter."

Those of you with robust memories may remember where a lot of the collectibles and goals on the maps are because, as this is a faithful remake, they obviously haven’t moved. If you recall where Ollie the Magic Bum disappears to each time you jump over him I guess you may find yourself going through the motions a bit, but it’s difficult to fault Vicarious Visions for sticking to the originals. [widget path="global/page/imagecomparison" parameters="comparisons=%7B%22comparisons%22%3A%5B%7B%22caption%22%3A%22%22%2C%22images%22%3A%5B%7B%22id%22%3A%225eebac88e4b060889e1cde12%22%2C%22label%22%3A%221999%22%7D%2C%7B%22id%22%3A%225eebac89e4b060889e1cde13%22%2C%22label%22%3A%222020%22%7D%5D%7D%5D%7D"] One place where the remake goes beyond the original road map is that new challenges have been added to the THPS1 levels to make them consistent with the longer lists in the THPS2 ones. This freshens things up a little while they last, but the biggest boost comes from the absolutely exhaustive list of overarching challenges that can be completed across any of the maps at any time, from certain strings of tricks to specific enormous points totals. Completing these ties into a new, overall leveling system that earns you unique decks, plus cash to drop on other gear for your skaters in the store. Many I achieved by accident, though others I completed after spotting them while shuffling through the menus. Especially on the first run through, THPS1+2 feels like one of those games where you’re always achieving something, whether you know it or not. Returning veterans will probably have every map unlocked within a day or so, but with 21 challenges for each of the 21 pros plus several hundred extra challenges on top of those, I can’t really begin to estimate how many hours of play there are here. Chuck in multiplayer and the much-enhanced create-a-park tools and it may be endless, especially as parks can be shared online. I predict that some players of a certain vintage may end up a bit anesthetized to all the pop-up notifications and flashy bonus-collection-button-mashing – I know I became a bit numb to it – but I wouldn’t say it compromises any of what’s great here. If you just want to hop in and play through some incredible-looking maps from THPS1 and THPS2 – whether you’re looking to chill, chase scores, or chuck a controller around between some friends, THPS1+2 will satisfy. But if you want to devote yourself to chasing over 700 challenges across every skater and earn boards and other booty, THPS1+2 can most certainly supply that. There are no microtransactions and everything in the game can be unlocked via gameplay. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-ign-tony-hawk-game-review&captions=true"]

G.O.A.T.

Despite sticking with tradition in terms of the maps, the default controls are actually more akin to those in THPS3 and THPS4 rather than the first two games. But before you freak out, know that the more limited, original movesets are available to toggle on for purists who crave an experience precisely like the original games – removing things like reverts, wallplants, and even manuals if you want – but I’m enjoying the default controls as they are. I have a lot of love for EA’s Skate and I’m fascinated by Skater XL’s technicality, but there’s also a lot to be said for THPS1+2’s big combos and pure arcade thrills and spills. [poilib element="poll" parameters="id=f0c00e11-8a21-45ba-9bf5-a4b5a632f26d"] For the young or inexperienced who may find all of this a bit too frantic and unforgiving there are cheats that can be activated to make things easier, though those scores are tracked separately so your kids or your grandma won’t be able to completely overwrite your greatest no-assist accomplishments. If you’re concerned about the presence of such a crutch, remember: this is a game from the ’90s, and the only thing more ’90s than video game cheats are acid-wash jeans and the soundtrack to Batman Forever. Speaking of soundtracks, the famous THPS music selection is virtually all present and accounted for, and that’s perfect because it’s such an indisputably integral part of the original games. Vicarious Visions has also augmented it with a well-curated list of old and newer tracks, so it’s now doubly longer than it was originally. You can toggle them off if you want but, while not all the newer songs are to my taste, several are pretty good. For instance, I’d never heard of Rough Francis before THPS1+2, but these guys are awesome. Exposing me to new songs that will go on regular rotation in my car for the next few decades is exactly what Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games did back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, and THPS1+2 is doing it all over again. Impressively, THPS1+2 hasn’t just captured the spirit of the originals in terms of the meticulously rebuilt maps and faithful feel – it’s done it in subtler ways like this, too. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/12/tony-hawks-pro-skater-1-and-2-remaster-announcement-trailer"]

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Iron Harvest Single-Player Review

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[Editor's Note: This review and score cover only the single-player campaign of Iron Harvest; we'll follow up soon with a dedicated review of the multiplayer component.]

The choking smoke of diesel engines, gunfire plinking off of metal, explosions throwing soldiers to and fro. Through it all, the stomping of a mech's piston-powered feet. That's the landscape of Iron Harvest: stylish alternate-history real-time strategy with modern gameplay and a detailed single-player campaign. It’s bursting at the seams with ambition, as though the developers at King Art Games looked back fondly at the mid-2000s heyday of the RTS and said: "We can do that." While it might not have pinnacle graphics and sound, Iron Harvest represents something that has become all too rare for fans of the RTS, and it’s the best single-player RTS campaign I've played in years.

Iron Harvest is filled with unabashedly, nonsensically cool stuff for nerds. The brilliant character designs, inventive mechs, and convoluted equipment are a delight. Why have wheels on your heavy machine gun when it could have eight legs? Why have a mech's cockpit on top when it could hang from the bottom? Why use explosives to propel a bomb when you could launch it from between two spinning wheels? Why indeed. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/iron-harvest-trailer-join-the-polanian-resistance-and-their-1920s-mechs"] Iron Harvest is set in the brilliant world of 1920+ (created by Polish Artist Jakub Różalski), an alternate history where the development of "automachine technology" revolutionizes the world with diesel-powered mechs that starkly contrast with peaceful agriculture and old-world streets. At the same time, it’s not weighed down with decades of complex lore you need to understand, and isn’t too reliant on dieselpunk cliches aside from the obtrusive presence of Nikola Tesla. Our World War 1 doesn't happen, but the mechs become agents of destruction in a delayed Great War that consumes the continent of Europe for five years. As an armistice settles over the continent there are many wary of war, guerillas angry at the cost of peace, and a nefarious few who would see the war begin again. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Iron%20Harvest%20has%20tantalizing%20hints%20at%20the%20wider%20world."]Iron Harvest has tantalizing hints at the wider world: How nations are run, geopolitics, recent history, and events on other fronts in the war. The countries of Polania, Saxony, and Rusviet are the focus of the campaign and the three unique factions in Iron Harvest. (They're Poland, Imperial Germany, and Tsarist Russia, if you didn't get that from the names.) Each faction feels distinct thanks to their own unique heroes, mechs, and seven-mission campaign that's part of a larger story. [poilib element="poll" parameters="id=27784c79-c285-4842-bce7-128c06f6ec65"] It's an RTS campaign in the grand old style, something we've only had a few of in the last decade. It calls back the story structure of RTS like Warcraft 3, where central point-of-view characters lead a cleverly-crafted storyline through to its conclusion in interwoven faction campaigns. It's full of better writing than I expect from most games, let alone an RTS. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=It's%20full%20of%20better%20writing%20than%20I%20expect%20from%20most%20games%2C%20let%20alone%20an%20RTS."]The story of Iron Harvest takes simple characters through cheap thrills and clever cliffhangers to surprisingly emotional conclusions. That the characters are simple isn't a knock against them, but rather it helps the story move forward in a limited space. Take Anna, a Polanian villager who takes up arms when her family is threatened. She and her pet bear Wojtek are a key hero unit whose story comes to terms with the horrors and heartbreak, then the complexities, of the war over the course of her campaign. She comes into conflict with her uncle, with war-weary authorities, and ultimately with her own values. Or take veteran Saxonian general Gunter von Duisburg, an old-breed warrior who fails to see the true scope and horror of industrialized warfare before the great war begins. It's a familiar story from history, but no less effective for it. His mournful, grumbling admonitions on the inhumanity of chemical weapons, killing en masse from afar, and the vanity of kings are great material for the greater story. His relationship with Saxonian crown prince Wilhelm grows from mentorship to rivalry, and has a jaw-dropping twist mid-campaign. I call out Warcraft 3 very specifically, because there are few moments in the past 20 years of RTS gaming that give me goosebumps like the opening cinematic of Alliance and Horde clashing as Medivh narrates to Thrall. Iron Harvest has one of them. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=iron-harvest-screenshots&captions=true"] Actually fighting is more modern than classic, with minimal base-building, though engineers can build emplacements and fortifications. The two resources—Iron and Oil—come from capturing and upgrading income structures on the map rather than collected by worker units in a more complex economy. It's clearly inspired by Company of Heroes, but it's less doggedly tactical and has more strategic emphasis. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=It's%20clearly%20inspired%20by%20Company%20of%20Heroes%2C%20but%20it's%20less%20doggedly%20tactical%20and%20has%20more%20strategic%20emphasis."]Strategy is a balance of attack and defense—first to secure resource points across a broad front, then to keep them upgraded, repaired, and defended. You spend most of your attention figuring out which units you need to counter the enemy's composition, building them, and directing them into combat. I came to really value units like the Polanian Smialy light mech, a big soda can on chicken legs, because it’s a fast long-ranged defender, or the Saxonian Isengrim, a normal-looking tank with crab legs, because it’s tough and doesn't need too much attention while I micromanage elsewhere. All those cool mechanical beasts mean that Iron Harvest looks good enough in average play—though I turned off the obnoxious motion blur—but the graphics fall down in small places when you really start to pick at them. Polygons have sharper edges than you'd like, or textures aren't quite as nice on closer inspection. They're not bad, they’re just not as photorealistic as the art style aspires to. The sound design is similar. It gets the job done, and the voices are good, but it lacks the punch of games with similarly realistic looks. Gunshots lack the distinctive crack of real firearms. The mech engines are more a timid background growl than the throaty, even deafening roar you expect from a tank engine. The music is a bright spot, with a medley of folk instruments and styles from across eastern Europe blending smoothly with bombastic orchestral pieces. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/iron-harvest-saxony-campaign-trailer"] The cinematics before and after every campaign mission are nearly always a delight. Their graphics and sound are leagues better than the gameplay, and they're smartly directed: They use varied camera angles, lighting, clever set dressing, and understand how to tell good, short stories. One in particular depicts the rise of an autocratic ruler in such a succinct and direct way that, despite knowing nearly nothing about the internal politics and daily life of the nation, I immediately got the story and wanted to know more. They could be mistaken for cinematics from a bigger game with a much bigger effects budget and well-known voice actors. The official cinematic trailer is—for once—a good sample of the level of talent at work in Iron Harvest. Mechs and soldiers move through the world fairly smoothly, though sometimes pathfinding gets weird. Infantry have slick animations for moving over terrain like walls, for standing from getting thrown, but are otherwise pretty basic. The real animation work is in the mechs themselves, embracing the awkward and illogical look of the armored monsters. They're constantly in motion, even when still, juddering and spouting exhaust. The Polanian mechs in particular look like they could come apart at any moment. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=The%20destructible%20environment%20is%20the%20best%20I've%20ever%20seen%20in%20an%20RTS."]One of the biggest stars, though, is the destructible environment, which is the best I've ever seen in an RTS. There is nothing, but nothing, like watching a super-heavy mech stomp through every building in its path. I remember a particular moment from my playthrough when I had ordered an attack on a town and was watching the enemy lines where it would hit. Then, running at full tilt from off-screen, my massive Rusviet Gulyay-Gorod walking fortress annihilated a row house as it burst into the street, bricks and roofing flying to impact nearby homes. It was a spectacular, cinematic moment that demonstrated the power of these awesome walking tanks. And there are a lot of buildings to stomp through. The campaign maps are varied, ranging from urban landscapes to pastoral countryside and rugged mountains. The things you do in them aren't particularly new: Sometimes you control a handful of units, finding more as you go. Sometimes you control a full base, capture points, and can build what you like. Sometimes, mid-mission, you switch from one style of play to another. There are even a couple bad, shoehorned-in stealth segments. It's all pretty normal RTS campaign gameplay, but to be very honest I was happy to see all these cliches again after so long since the last significant RTS came out. Some of the missions, though, use those simple parts to create masterpieces of level design. In one early Polanian mission you control an armored train alongside a handful of forces, piloting it through mountains and switching from track to track at stations while characters banter and you fight enemy patrols. When you come to a fortified bridge, the mission switches to base-building so you have enough forces to take on the enemy—and only then did I realize that the map had been constructed for dual use as an RTS battleground and in story-driven exploration. That's a simple example, and later levels take it much further. By the end, I wanted the 30-some-hour campaign to last longer. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/iron-harvest-1920-guerrilla-collective-story-trailer"] But the core of the RTS genre is still there, and one of Iron Harvest's problems is the basic way in which it balances its combat. The tactical landscape isn't complex enough. Though it's a much more prevalent issue in multiplayer, fighting between unit types can feel a bit too much like rock-paper-scissors. A unit can either be a hard counter against another type and rip it to shreds, or it can feel like it's useless, with not much in between. Gunners, the anti-mech infantry, tear up lighter mechs but don't do well against almost anything heavier, even when they have cover. That's because anti-mech mechs, unlike anti-tank units in other games, are simply good at killing anything smaller than they are—infantry included. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Hard%20rock-paper-scissors-style%20balancing%20limits%20the%20tactical%20depth%20available."]What’s disappointing is that there just aren't many “soft,” or partial, counter-matchups between units, depending on situational factors or upgrades. That kind of rock-paper-scissors balancing limits the tactical depth available when everything from positioning to maneuvering is subordinate to whether a unit is "supposed" to win against another. Even in Company of Heroes, where tanks squash infantry like bugs, front, side, and rear armor made them vulnerable if you weren’t paying attention to where the enemy was attacking from. In Iron Harvest’s campaign, though, it’s not so bad if you enjoy the scenery: Giant robots trading haymaker blows and naval-caliber artillery shells put on quite a show. Hero units, on the other hand, are a bright spot of interesting tactics. They often have a variety of uses, or span several niches, to create some of the soft-counters Iron Harvest lacks. Polanian hero Lech Kos' ape-like mech is a great example: It's able to devastate enemy mechs in melee, but it's still quite vulnerable to those same mechs because it lacks a real ranged attack. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-modern-pc-games-summer-2020-update&captions=true"] Much of the true tactical complexity actually comes from how you use infantry, rather than the mechs. Part of that is in their flexibility: like in Company of Heroes, infantry units are able to switch between weapons and roles by picking up equipment from dead soldiers or from supply crates. Generic soldiers pick up grenades, now they're grenadiers. They pick up cannons, they're anti-armor gunners. Shovels, engineers. Medkits, medics. Battles can be cleverly won by stealing your enemy's weapons to counter their forces. I was particularly fond of sending in a charge of shotgun-wielding Rusviet Vanguards to kill enemy anti-armor infantry, then picking up their cannons to polish off the mechs. The AI is decent enough on the campaign maps and challenge missions that it'll put up a good fight, but you can make mistakes in your matchups and still survive. Campaign scenarios steadily ramp up in difficulty, and for a few late-game missions I had to drop it down a level to learn the scenario before I could beat it on medium or hard. In contrast, the AI is disappointingly bad at skirmish matches on even the highest difficulty.

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