Author: Jon Bailes

NME

Cameras and horror have a long and fascinating history. The viewfinder might amplify fear through its restrictive field of vision, a photo or video might expose ethereal entities invisible to the naked eye, and a flash might send them running. Horror title Madison is the latest in a string of games – from Project Zero to Visage – to extract terror through the photographic lens. This first-person psychological chiller arms you with a classic Polaroid machine that spits out snaps for immediate perusal. Its easy-aim mechanics and speedy results anchor an experience that otherwise struggles to frame its atmosphere and scares.

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The lone figure at the centre of Madison is Luca, a young man who’s mysteriously thrown into the abandoned house where his grandparents lived, and quickly learns that spooky antics are afoot. After a confused awakening in a strange room, you enter a corridor. Walking gingerly down it, you hear a sudden clang behind you. Turn and you see a large object, about the size of a man, draped in a sheet. That wasn’t there a moment ago. You gingerly yank off the sheet to reveal a grandfather clock underneath. It chimes at you menacingly, but nothing more.

Such omens leave you wondering whether Luca is actually in the house or fantasising some nightmarish facsimile, but either way the environment keeps shifting behind your back. You’ll soon discover that a demon has attached itself to Luca’s family, even trying to possess Luca himself, and somehow this also links to the acts of ritualistic serial killer Madison Hale, who died years before. Whatever the truth, these satanic plot twists grant the game carte blanche to bombard you with visual and auditory hallucinations as you try to escape.

The house itself is a puzzle box of locked doors, cryptic safe combinations and hidden diaries. Even the toilet seat is padlocked shut. To its credit, Madison does an admirable job in making these contrivances believable, with a backstory told through the details of its setting. There’s a lived-in solidity to the place, even as framed photos of your late grandmother, her eyes bleached white by a mystery sickness, stare down from the walls. Countless medication bottles testify to the futility of conventional medicine to combat her decline, while more recent artifacts disclose your grandfather’s efforts to remove the curse from the family. And the more you find secreted away in the place, the more you might wonder: what if the clues are well-hidden to keep you from finding them?

As much character as the building has, however, Madison rarely serves up a sense of creeping dread to do it justice. The soundscape is the biggest culprit in this respect, as it cycles through stock ‘creepy’ ambient noises – a door creaks, a tin bucket falls over – that repeat to the point of insignificance. This feels doubly wasteful as you’re rarely actually in immediate danger, so whatever’s going bump in the night, it’s easy to live and let live. On top of that, Luca’s narrated bewilderment is another audio misfire. Instead of sounding like he’s fearing for his life and sanity, he comes across as a bit of a whinger. Coupled with panic breathing that sounds like sighing, and the result is akin to a grumpy toddler.

Even when the scares do land, Madison is something of a one-trick pony. As the game goes on, monstrous manifestations show themselves with greater frequency, usually in brief glimpses to sustain their shock value. So, early on, as you’re squeezing through a narrow gap between the walls, a distorted face peaks around the corner for a split second. Then later, some rotting twisted soul might shriek right in your face as you’re innocently exiting a room or taking a left turn in the corridor, but still vanish just as abruptly. And sure, each of these sudden interventions is likely to make you jump. But as far as ‘psychological horror’ goes, it’s as sophisticated as someone sneaking up behind you and shouting ‘Boo!’

The only time, in fact, that such moments produce real tension is when the camera is involved. At times, the game sends you stumbling into patches of darkness, feeling along walls, relying on your flash to briefly highlight what the hell is going on. In these scenes, whether or not something unpleasant is lurking in the pitch black, every time you click to take a picture there’s that potential you’ll spot something hideous, only to be left blind immediately after. Again, when an apparition is present, it merely generates a jump scare, but the sense of anticipation in these sequences makes all the difference.

That’s not all the camera is good for either, as you’ll also need it to progress through the tightly shuttered environments, whether in the house itself or surreal dimensions it occasionally teleports you into. Sometimes the only way to advance is to take a picture of a particular piece of scenery – in Normal mode, such objects are marked to show they’re significant – which triggers a screen shake and a change in your surroundings. Photograph a wooden chair surrounded by candles, for instance, and a door that was wedged shut is now mysteriously open. Plus, when you examine the image, the chair in the picture is floating off the ground.

Overcoming the majority of obstacles, though, involves combining your paparazzi instincts with more reasoned endeavours, and Madison’s object-based puzzles are pretty shrewdly arranged. As in Resident Evil, expect to make use of oddly-shaped keys, tools to prise up obdurate planks, and curious objects that need slotting into holes (also expect to schlep back to a storage chest at intervals thanks to a needless reprisal of the Capcom series’ limited inventory system.) Some such puzzles, however, are impressively spread out over multiple stages, with various clues required to complete them, including a standout sequence where you find yourself in an old cathedral, warping between different points in its history to solve a series of colour-coded mazes.

But a word of advice – you may want to take notes, else it’s easy to lose track of what you’re supposed to be doing. Because of the way the house shifts around, sometimes a new route will open up simply because you went to a certain place and triggered an event, while at other times you need to locate a particular item (which may be quite well-hidden), and if you miss a helpful dialogue cue you may be left searching everywhere you’ve already been with nothing bar hope to guide you. It’s especially tricky around the mid-point of the game, with the main passages of the house open and around a dozen locked doors, safes and cupboards offering potential for advancement, but no indication of when they might become relevant.

Still, Madison does have a built-in defence against criticism of this unguided approach to its puzzles: a sense of confusion suits this situation where you’re trying to find logical solutions to bizarre supernatural occurrences. Indeed, the most coherent theme throughout Madison is the conflict between Luca’s rationality and demonic chaos. And in that sense, despite the heavy-handed external tropes of its audio-visual horror, there’s some compelling psychological interplay in the internal relationship between Luca, the evil spirit and you. Not to mention the camera, of course. As in many intriguing horror stories, its role remains ambiguous, refusing to provide a clear picture.

Madison launched on July 8 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. NME reviewed it on PC. 

The post ‘Madison’ review: photograph your inner demons appeared first on NME.

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final Vendetta is a reminder that scrolling beat ‘em ups will always have a foot in the 1980s. Not only because that was the genre’s heyday, but because it was tied to the American culture of the era – a time of urban crime epidemics and Reaganite scare stories of a New York or LA teeming with muggers and pimps. Even though Final Vendetta relocates its action to London, then, its heart is still very much in that past, and old-fashioned fantasies of black and white morality. In this world, when low-life thugs kidnap your sister, that’s a perfect excuse to take the law into your own hands, strolling all the way to the big boss’s hideout, cracking skulls en route.

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This simple scenario itself is a nod to classics such as Final Fight and Double Dragon, and a sign that Final Vendetta has its head firmly stuck in ’80s arcades. It’s a vibe that endows it with a certain raw purity compared to many made-for-console brawlers, and deep genre knowledge oozes through its design. The other side of that coin, however, is that once it’s placed next to the likes of Streets of Rage 4, it reveals a shortfall of sophistication. In that company, Final Vendetta feels unreconstructed, and less able to straddle past and present with assured poise.

Still, the foundations are solid, with a robust feel from the moment you step out onto Final Vendetta’s mean streets. Here you’ll find chunky pixel art protagonists who reproduce the swagger of their historical brethren, and shop fronts then subway stations then nightclub interiors scattered with seedy details, from alley rats to disco balls. Even the local thugs are as stylish as they are dangerous, taking colourful cues from ’80s punk and hip hop fashions. And speaking of hip hop, the one thing that really sets Final Vendetta off on the right foot and holds it steady is its soundtrack, which gives the anthems of Streets of Rage a run for their money – no mean feat. From the title screen you’re hit by bouncing late 80s style instrumental cuts, provided by old hands Featurecast and Utah Saints, which never fail to hike the game’s intensity.

And once the fighting begins it quickly slips into the rhythm. Beat ‘em up veterans will find themselves in lockstep immediately, rocking punk heads back with combos of jabs crowned by a dismissive scissor kick, grabbing opponents and hurling them into their mates, or double-tap charging across the screen to deliver burly knockdowns. As ever, you’ll need to work on closing gaps, herding enemies to one side, and simply beating them to the punch, since they don’t stand idly by for long.

Your choice from among three playable characters will also affect how you approach the task. Duke is the all-rounder, like a younger Adam from Streets of Rage. Claire (whose sister has been nabbed) is the quick hitter, like, well, Blaze from Streets of Rage, but more sensibly dressed. Miller is the big wrestling lad, a sack of muscles garnished with a mullet. With him you’ll want to focus more on grabs and throws, while the faster protagonists can find more success by carefully lining up and smacking fools.

Whatever your flavour, all three have a decent range of moves, including a few fresh attacks to bolster the usual beat ‘em up routines, although some are more useful than others. One tactically interesting flourish is the introduction of a ground game, where knocking enemies flat on their backs opens an invitation to literally kick them while they’re down, perhaps finishing them off before they cause more trouble. That will leave you vulnerable to other attackers, however, and some types of fallen foe recover with sweeping counters, so you need to bear in mind who you’re shoeing and back off before they rise.

Other moves, especially defensive ones, are a little less worth adding to your repertoire, however. Streets of Rage 3 style vertical dodges are only occasionally handy, for instance, while the addition of a block button seems at odds with a combat rhythm with the onus on clearing threats before they get a chance to act. There’s also a special attack that clears space all around you, but drains health unless you wait for a charging Super bar to fill up first. It’s often invaluable, but compared to Streets of Rage 4’s equivalent, where you lose health but can recoup it with follow-up attacks, it’s far less elegant in its implementation.

Some other bugbears, meanwhile, are hangovers from the sins of past titles. Some enemies still loiter around the wings of the stage, for example, sucker punching you from offscreen if you approach the edge. Plus, many attacks have poorly defined vertical range, enabling bad dudes to hit you from above or below when you don’t expect it. Sure, you get used to it, even learn to exploit it for your own moves, but it remains unintuitive.

Final Vendetta’s larger issue, however, is that it’s too reluctant to let loose with its design. Like a cover band, it knows all the hits and plays them proficiently, but seems wary of injecting too much of its own identity into the set. For all the pixel perfection in those arcade landscapes, the choice of locations never surprises, nor is there much scenery to interact with once you’ve smashed up the bins for food scraps. Weapons feel like an afterthought, appearing infrequently, lacking wallop and conferring no obvious advantage. While the street goons are always the usual suspects – denim punks, stocking-clad whip girls and biker boys – and bosses ultimately prove themselves to be all too basic.

This ascetic mentality creeps into Final Vendetta’s choice of modes and options too. Decide between Easy and Hard (the former gives you a couple more lives and features fewer enemies), select a character, then off you go through its six stages. Run out of lives and, well, that’s it. Time to start again. Without a continue option, this is not a game you can lazily smash through with a partner in two-player mode (even in Easy, there’s a significant learning curve, and it should take several tries to reach the end). And without a level select option, you can’t practice later sections without doing the whole thing again.

Some other alternatives open up once you complete the game, but they aren’t much to write home about either. There’s a Boss Rush mode (which thanks to its short, underwhelming cast may well be the weediest of its kind in history), a Survival mode, an Ultra difficulty setting and a sparse Training mode (why isn’t that available from the start?). Even for a focused, arcade-style experience, by today’s standards it’s something of a sparse offering.

That said, Final Vendetta holds together as a solid core experience, and with rose-tinted specs removed, a more enjoyable one than Final Fight itself these days. But it’s hard not to keep thinking of Streets of Rage 4, which offers much more besides and serves it up with greater finesse. In comparison, Final Vendetta feels like it’s longing for some mythical good old days, refusing to admit that progress has made some things better after all. Like those 80s vigilante power fantasies about cleaning up the streets, it’s staunchly conservative.

Final Vendetta launched today (June 17) for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. Tested on PC. 

The post ‘Final Vendetta’ review: A robust brawler short on modern sophistication appeared first on NME.

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In card game Card Shark, the movement of a hand is everything. Your aim is to win at cards, but it’s not deciding what to play next that matters, it’s the tricks you employ between rounds to stack the odds in your favour. So often that comes down to little feats of manual dexterity – the extension of an index finger, the tilt of a wine bottle, the way you lay a card on the table or couch it in your palm. Card Shark zooms in on your devious digits, pulling you right into the thrill of the con.

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The unwitting victims of your schemes are 18th-century French nobility. You play a young silent protagonist – literally mute – who’s taken under the wing of the Comte de Saint Germain, a mysterious aristocrat, adventurer and cheat. As his assistant and trainee, he’ll teach you a wealth of ploys and sleights of hand to help fleece the poshos. You practice his latest scam on the carriage ride to each target, then pull it off for real, surrounded by heaving chandeliers, chirpy violins, and ladies with gowns so billowing they could conceal a roulette wheel, never mind a pack of cards.

To begin with, you don’t get a seat at the table, but act as a servant pouring wine for the patrons – a perfect opportunity to peer over their shoulders, then signal to the Comte what you’ve seen. Soon, though, you’ll learn many underhand ways to shuffle, cut or deal a deck, mark cards, or even introduce a carefully arranged substitute pack to proceedings. As your reputation grows, the Comte’s plans become more elaborate, until you’re turning up to a game in drag, using the mirror in your compact for nefarious ends. Whatever the ruse, as long as you play your role correctly, the Comte will win the hand.

The impressive variety of schemes in Card Shark is complemented by a control system that neatly adapts to their demands. You might need to memorise sequences of inputs for shuffling, or signals such as holding up a number of fingers, while other schemes might require some logical thinking to make sure high cards land in the right hands, or a little skill and rhythm action timing so you don’t fumble your cues. Even something as simple as pouring wine involves finessing the analogue stick to keep the bottle steady, giving you time to note your victim’s strongest suit before the glass overflows.

Also, what often feels straightforward in the safe space of the carriage becomes a different prospect when you have to execute it swiftly under the glare of a sceptical general. In live play, whenever you attempt anything surreptitious, a suspicion bar at the bottom of the screen starts to fill, and if you want to get away clean (and unlock new stages) you need to win three times before it’s complete. That doesn’t leave much margin for clumsiness, and sometimes it’s prudent to bail before the final game and return another time.

This injection of pressure is essential, however, to evoke a sense of daring, as if you’re plucking the purse from someone’s pocket while they’re staring you in the face. Under the Comte’s tutelage, you really feel like you’re the apprentice of a master of deceit. Practice does make perfect, and once you start connecting the beats of a routine, then mixing elements of old tricks into new strategies, it’s like you’ve been granted a secret superpower.

At the same time, the coins in your hand feel precious, as you lay them on the line, knowing the result rests not on luck, but on the sharpness of your hands, eyes and mind. Lose and you’re booted back to the world map, perhaps needing to scrape together new funds in street games before trying again. Similarly tense are occasions when a plot twist throws a spanner in the works (some targets aren’t as gullible as they seem), and you have a brief window to slip a spare deck in a rival’s pocket or toss an ace onto their chair to reroute suspicion. You might even end up forced into a fencing duel. Card Shark keeps you on your toes as well as on the edge of your seat.

More than that, though, this is one of those preciously rare games where your actions as a player mesh beautifully with the experience of your character and the timbre of the story. And events off the table are often as absorbing as those on it, thanks to a delightfully satirical depiction of French high society, brought to life in colourfully cartoonish rococo landscapes.

The Comte, you see, isn’t merely on a get rich quick scheme; he’s chasing some potentially ruinous gossip concerning the palace. In pursuit of the truth, your journey takes you to ever grander halls, and as the stakes get bigger, so do the wigs. Sitting with elites around a card table is the prime opportunity to pump them for information, as long as you can stay in the game long enough to prise out the juicy morsels.

The intrigue is made all the spicier thanks to the insertion of real historical figures into Card Shark’s tangled web, such as Voltaire, John Law, and Casanova. There are no pretensions to accuracy here, however; instead the script has fun sending up the pomposity or fecklessness of such gentilshommes, each representing another facet of a decadent caste stumbling towards revolution. Nothing illustrates their plight as much as the card games themselves, as they gamble almost out of boredom, unable to grasp that they might do something productive with their cash. (Nor should it take a learned scholar to find parallels with the present.)

Meanwhile, the Comte – himself based on a real-life philosopher and alchemist – is the ideal guide to this decline. He’s evasive and notoriously unreliable, yet may still have a noble cause at heart. Certainly he’s a liberated soul who takes pleasure in relieving the preening peacocks of their unearned fortunes, and uses his airs and graces to thinly disguise his amused contempt. “Dramatic and incontinent to the end,” he remarks after one aging opponent decides to take his own life.

Equally important is the view of the pauper protagonist – eventually christened ‘Eugene’ by the Comte – which registers the absurdity of the upper echelons. When one opponent applauds you for cheating him, as if you’d demonstrated a magic trick, Eugene later notes in his diary, “You must have to be very clever to enjoy being made to feel stupid.” And clear throughout is that the Comte’s mission to transform Eugene into a gentleman as well as a cheat go hand in hand – only a scoundrel could survive in such ‘honourable’ company.

The card table, then, is an extension of this reality, as Card Shark pulls its script, aesthetic and controls together in harmony. The only sore thumb sticking out from the concoction is that when you do make a mistake, there’s no quick restart, and it can take too long to reattempt a botched match. But that’s far from a deal-breaker in such a highly accomplished and original game. Everything else, like the deck in your palm, has been expertly stacked to ensure a winning hand.

Card Shark launches on Nintendo Switch and PC on June 2. This reviewed was played on Nintendo Switch.

The Verdict

Card Shark blends its ingredients together with a  confidence that befits the Comte de Saint Germain himself. Its story has satirical bite, while its colours exude artistry and gross flamboyance. The card games, meanwhile, are exciting, humorous and highly varied, with a level of pressure that ensures you can’t drop your focus. A full house.

Pros

• Fantastic cast of characters and a witty script
• A surprisingly large and varied array of techniques to master
• Precise controls that complement the action
• A painterly visual style and music that evokes 18th century France

Cons

• Retrying a stage after a mistake can take too long

The post ‘Card Shark’ review: cheat the rich in a unique indie with plenty of aces up its sleeve appeared first on NME.

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Kingdom of the Dead is really dark. I don’t mean thematically, although it is all about demons and the occult and the like. I mean literally, as in can’t see where you’re going half the time. On the first stage I kept trying to figure out how to access my character’s torch, but apparently, he’d left it at home.

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This old-school FPS plays out in sketched black and white, you see (barring splashes of blood and the weapons and ammo you pick up), and let’s just say the contrast is excessive. Floodlit exteriors give way instantly to pitch black chambers, some of them dead ends that exist purely to have you fumble about. There’s an option to soften the palette, but that almost bleaches surroundings instead, like a holy purification, which seems antithetical to a world packed with horrors.

Then again, the lighter option does feel consistent with a lot of Kingdom’s design, which sacrifices form for function. When looking at its hand-drawn monochrome textures it’s hard not to recall last year’s Mundaun, which achieved much more with a similar art style thanks to softer, smudgier pencils, bringing forth the gravity of ancient rituals and rendering the everyday strange. Perhaps the blur wouldn’t suit a speedy FPS, but maybe it’s worth it for a little atmosphere. Kingdom’s sharp edges are too reliably clinical by comparison.

More than anything I think that’s because it’s less concerned with evoking the history of its period setting (I’d guess late 19th century, judging by the locations) than evoking the history of gaming, specifically 1990s FPS and especially Doom. Although Kingdom can stand next to IDs classic in terms of speed, control and violence, it’s not as brimming with personality. And while sharp edges were good for military bases and research facilities, they don’t translate well to old stone crypts and wood-framed barns.

It’s a shame because the ingredients are there in the premise. You’re an agent in a secret US government organisation fighting an endless war with Death and his army of, er, dead, and, I think, some of the inhabitants of hell, including a bunch of huge demonic animals. You have a magic talking sword and a pistol and enter each stage to destroy a portal that’s tucked away in a tricky to reach spot, with plenty of bad things standing in the way.

What might be palpably Lovecraftian or Gothic, however, or at least gloriously hammy, falls a little flat. In its rush to get to the action, Kingdom shrugs up lore that seems assembled at random from a grab-bag of supernatural bastardry. Between the armed undead and occult wizards and bullish demons and harpy things, then giant worms and stags, other than evil I’m not sure what they have in common. Well, except that each regular enemy is a direct counterpart to one of Doom’s (there’s even a bulbous, fire-spewing Cacodemon-alike), as if Death handpicked them for that very reason.

It’s a similar story with the architecture – impressively varied and sturdily built, from a grand old mansion to a factory, a skyscraper and an ocean liner. But they only ever feel like movie sets, constructed to stage your encounters. There’s no detail to suggest that people have lived or worked here before, more that they’re waiting to move in and need you to evict the squatters first.

Maybe the protagonist – I didn’t catch his name – could add a little more context and character? Since he’s not a silent non-entity like old-school Doomguy, his presence is made to matter, but our window into the apparently strained relationship he has with his sword is limited to brief exchanges at the start of each level. What could have made for a fun buddy movie story arc is sadly left hanging.

With that, the only aspect of the game that adds texture is its audio track. The synth, almost chip-tune backing music swings brilliantly from ominous to impish, while cursed groans and goatish bellows ring out through the murk, implying you’re surrounded, even when you aren’t. That’s also very Doom, of course, but it helps pile on a spooky cooky vibe that’s missing elsewhere.

Still, if Kingdom has focused heavily on the nuts and bolts of FPS play, they are at least pretty well aligned and properly tightened. Sure, it’s all a little rough and ready, as you might expect from a budget production, and I’ve seen a few enemies getting stuck in walls and things like that. But it runs smoothly and absolutely benefits from its simplicity, sticking to a literal handful of peripheral key controls – run, jump, duck, switch weapon – to let you concentrate on movement and aim.

The actual combat, the thing you’re mainly here for, is good too. Yes, it feels lightweight at the point of use, as if you’re wielding a fairground air-rifle, but at the receiving end Kingdom reveals a strong knowledge of the genre’s visceral pleasures. Your sword might lop off a zombie’s gun arm, for example, amusingly leaving it unsure how to proceed (or maybe that just shows the limits of the AI), and there’s a psychopathic glee in seeing splats of red on colourless flooring as your foes collapse. Plus of course, it’s always alarmingly gratifying to charge about with a double-barrelled shotgun, and there’s a devastating click-clack bolt-action rifle that gives it a run for its money.

The flow of the fight will be familiar – shotgun in tight spaces, rifle for distance or a single mid-range wallop, chain gun for crowd control, pistol to conserve valuable ammo against small fry. Kingdom keeps you cycling these options by switching from cramped interiors to cavernous theatres and the great outdoors, often with notable verticality. To its credit, and as linear as it is, this is far less of a corridor shooter than Doom ever was. There’s even the occasional tactical element that gives pause to your procession of cranial executions, not least because certain monsters don’t have a head to speak of. Some must be shot in the torso, some the eye, some the gob.

There are standout moments scattered among its 10 levels as well, especially the later ones, when it lets itself off the leash more frequently. A scene when you’re running along a rail track and, ‘Wait, is that a train coming?’ is as surprising for the injection of reality into the world as it is for the sudden threat. Another, more conventional, highlight is the open-air rooftop battle on the skyscraper level, which has you jumping between buildings, and climaxes rather appropriately in a fight with a giant gorilla.

Yet such moments also stand out because much of what’s in between is rather one-paced. Advance, shoot, scavenge ammo, repeat, with the army of the dead well-regimented to emerge at polite intervals. Occasionally, a few pop up from the earth or hide in gloomy alcoves to ambush you – again, like Doom – but mostly they line up or run towards you head on, like a lively shooting gallery.

To a great extent, each level is repeating a sequence. First you’re accosted by sword zombies, then shotgun zombies, then the fireball monks and so on, until the bigger threats show up fashionably late. In tandem, weapon acquisitions form their own orderly queue, as you start back with your basic loadout each time then find shotgun, rifle and the odd stick of dynamite evenly spaced and often in that order, with a chain gun and maybe a rocket launcher waiting nearer the boss.

Also, I was a little disappointed by the tepid implementation of GoldenEye style difficulty levels, where higher settings not only throw more bodies at you but add extra mission objectives. In practice, this merely adds a collectible objective slightly off the beaten path and some prisoners to rescue. You do have to be careful not to let the prisoners get killed, as they’re chained up in various in-the-way places, but that’s rarely the interesting challenge it might be.

Kingdom of the Dead is rarely ever bad, then, but even as it kept me moderately entertained with giant bats and demonic ditties, its assets felt underexploited. The retro FPS is almost a sub-genre of its own these days and I wanted Kingdom to add more context in its locations, character and enemies, to say something, which it never quite does. At a mechanical level, it makes a good fist of resurrecting that old FPS black magic, but little more. Perhaps that’s why it’s so dark. As competent an homage to Doom as this is, it doesn’t quite escape from the master’s shadow.

Kingdom of the Dead launches on February 10 for PC. 

The post ‘Kingdom of the Dead’ review: a proficient ‘Doom’-laden budget FPS that lacks real bite appeared first on NME.

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It was only with The Last of Us Part 2 that I began to see the light with Naughty Dog’s games. I’d never really got their stuff before, including Uncharted. So with my eyes newly opened, this PS5 remastered Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection seemed like the perfect opportunity to try again. Would my recently-found appreciation for Naughty Dog’s mega-budget cinematic shine put a more positive light on a replay of Uncharted 4 and my first foray into the Lost Legacy? Well, yes. A bit.

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The thing is, I’ve always found Uncharted impressive – who wouldn’t? – but only sporadically satisfying. Yes, they’re as close to an interactive Hollywood action movie as you’ll get in games, but in two contrasting ways. Half the time, playing an Uncharted game is like being Indiana Jones, getting into crazy scrapes and heroically finding a way out against the odds. The other half is more like being Harrison Ford’s concussed stunt double, trying to remember your cues, and that’s much less thrilling. Every time I jump off a cliff because I wasn’t sure where to go in the heat of a chase, or find myself accidentally sticking to a wall or hanging off a ledge while an enemy soldier guns me down, I can almost hear the director yelling “Cut!” as the last checkpoint reloads. “Take two. And this time get it right.”

In some ways, this is the inevitable flipside of these games being so well written and directed and so visually splendid and extraordinarily well animated – all of which they absolutely are. The illusion that you’re really in an action film is heightened, but because of that also incredibly fragile. And when it breaks, it breaks hard, as predictably as a crumbling ledge under Nathan Drake’s weight.

In other ways, though, these games simply don’t pull me into their world as well as they might. There are occasions, for instance, where I feel almost surplus to requirements, as the game seems happy to play itself. In many of the climbing sequences, I merely move the analogue stick towards the next bolded and underlined grab point, waiting for Nate or Chloe (the protagonist of Lost Legacy) to signal it’s safe to jump, or for the grappling hook icon to appear so I can obediently latch on. Even in some of the more complex environments, geography becomes irrelevant as I follow a breadcrumb trail, rushing blinkered towards anything I can interact with. Is this exploration?

It’s telling how often Naughty Dog injects false peril into those climbing sections with that old breaking ledge routine, where your character loses their grip and falls, only to seize a lower ledge and pull themselves back up. None of this has anything to do with your performance; it’s filler. And because there are so many autopilot moments to fill, it becomes overused. By the third time it happens, you’re likely already in eyeroll territory. By the 10th, 20th, it’s like a short circuit in the game’s imagination.

The same goes for those other worn-out navigational tropes – boosting your partner and pushing crates to reach higher ground. At least Lost Legacy ditches the latter early on with a knowing quip, but that’s a rare moment of self-parody that serves to highlight how tedious these things get in Uncharted 4 when they’re served up with a straight face.
There’s a lot in these games that’s now dryly formulaic – the mechanical puzzles, the behind cover shootouts, the climbing, the plots – revealing an ironic absence of uncharted territory. “It’s not every day you get to see a totally hidden city that nobody’s seen for centuries,” Chloe says at one point. Except in Uncharted, it is – when every historical figure builds a hidden city to keep their valuables secure, it stops being a surprise.

One more thing – the forced combat sequences are generally messy and unpleasant. Fighting is quite fun when stealth is an option (although it’s a little basic – a few distraction items wouldn’t go amiss), but when I’m thrown headfirst into a big rumble, the results tend to sap my enthusiasm. My aforementioned penchant for getting stuck on ledges or bits of cover doesn’t help, but I blame a lot of that on overly helpful control systems trying to predict my intentions, and getting it badly wrong.

While I’ve got used to these foibles a little, I still never feel sufficiently nimble or precise to be adventurous in these shootouts. I know that if I try to be clever, something will go wrong, and that’s no outlook for an action hero. Instead, I tend to hide out of the way, behind a wall, where I note that my AI partner is doing just fine on their own, and we’re back to the game playing itself again.

That’s the bad stuff, then, and I don’t think I’ll get over these issues no matter how many times I play these games. Yet I still quite like them. This time round, there were whole chunks of Uncharted 4 that I enjoyed significantly more, while Lost Legacy does a slightly better job at subduing the more frustrating elements, which makes it more pleasurable.
The Madagascar sequence right in the middle of Uncharted 4, for example, remains unmatched in its pacing, spectacle and even variety. That’s the part where you’re touring in a jeep around a pseudo-open world of mud-soaked hills surrounding a volcano, before returning to town to ascend the mechanisms of a huge clocktower – which requires a little observation and planning – solving a half-decent puzzle, then running straight into an extended car chase. It’s an excellent showcase in a couple of hours of everything the series does brilliantly.

And that final set piece especially is still a gobsmacker nearly six years on. There aren’t many studios, even big ones, that would even attempt such a long cinematic vehicle-based action scene, let alone nail the feel of improvising at speed quite so well (at least until you make a wrong turn and get stuck on a tree). In fact, one of the only competitors it has is the train riding finale of Lost Legacy, choreographed and executed with equal gusto.

But my favourite bit of Lost Legacy, it turns out, is the big bit in the middle – the Western Ghats – which expands on Uncharted 4’s jeep exploration with a properly open-world map to navigate as you see fit. It’s here, when the game finally relinquishes its tight cinematic control, that it feels most like an Indiana Jones adventure, with gunfights, puzzles, banter and ruin raiding cycling organically as you figure out where to go and how to get there. If the big action set pieces provide the flair, this is the substance. Something to get your teeth into.

From there, I ended up preferring Lost Legacy to the main event. I like that it’s considerably shorter, trimming out Uncharted 4’s slow start and dragged ending to swiftly expose the succulent middle, and leaving less room for those old routines to wear themselves out through repetition. Also, Chloe and Nadine are a fresher duo – less laddish, less burdened by family drama, and less gleeful in their destruction of far-off countries. (They also make it easier to swallow the series’ imperialist mindset of trampling all over ‘exotic’ foreign countries to grab their treasures, although it’s still very much there.)

And, of course, in both games, those obscene production values still leave their mark, even if The Last of Us 2 has since one-upped them, especially with the PS5’s slicker performance, and the haptic feedback on the triggers and funky rumble all adding subtle notes of immersion (you can also import PS4 saves if you have them). Plus, when I first played Uncharted 4, it made the fans in my PS4 sound like a jet engine, so it’s nice not to have to deal with that.

In particular, the views in these games are amazing, and it’s clear that Naughty Dog knows that very well – the characters keep saying it – and knows that it matters in adventures like these, which are all about visiting incredible locations and discovering even more incredible locations within them. Whether you’re surveying the sloped streets of that Madagascan town from atop the clocktower, or gawping agog at a giant relief of elephant headed god Ganesh carved into a rock face, it’s strikingly beautiful. Then there’s all the minor details, like the way so many of the antique mechanisms you find have eroded or reclaimed by nature over the centuries. Very special.

While I’m gushing, it’s similarly impossible to ignore that the script and voice acting in these games are still well beyond what most studios are doing, and surely nobody does situational dialogue better, or the incidental chats that break out while you and your partner are between death-defying stunts. Sure, it’s a little grating that almost every key character has ‘cocky’ as a personality trait, but still, the quality is up there with comparable film and TV, and often finds room to be warm and witty.

So there we are. Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy are still at times as stunning as gaming gets, and at other times still almost oddly fallible and flimsy. Which overall makes them pretty good. Hopefully, though, if/when there is a true current-gen sequel, it takes the little advances made by Lost Legacy much further, because the series could do with a few new tricks.

Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection launches for PS5 on January 28.

The post ‘Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection’ review: still spectacular, still flawed appeared first on NME.

NME

There’s something fascinating about seeing old folk legends brought to life in
games. We often want rich background lore in our stories, and folk tales about the hidden power of nature, curses and rural superstitions provide exactly that. The texture of myths and legends give historical and fantasy settings a deeper, and
darker, sense of place.

• READ MORE: ‘Def Jam: Fight for NY’ might just be the greatest fighting game in history

They don’t have to be genuine folk legends either. One of the most absorbing things about The Witcher games, for example, is that each monster Geralt hunts seems to exist as part of the fabric of the natural and cultural environment. In the course of tracking them, we get to understand their habits, spot signs of their presence, and learn to create concoctions that might draw them out. Some, it transpires, are the products of magic. Some aren’t so monstrous after all.

But most of all, perhaps, such myths are ideal fodder for horror, as they tap into powers beyond normal perception. Folk horror is about primeval forces embedded in nature and the isolation of small community life – ripe ingredients for making us feel exposed. One of the best recent games of this kind is Mundaun, in which a tiny Swiss village is disrupted by ancient evils in increasingly surreal ways, leading you to indulge in bizarre rituals to survive.

Which brings me to Ikai. Given my interest in folklore-led gaming experiences, it was always likely that this forthcoming horror title would catch my attention. Like Mundaun, it’s a first-person tale wound around object-based puzzles and eruptions of otherworldly entities. Here, however, the ceremonies and demons are inspired by the feudal Japanese setting, with Barcelona-based developer Endflame drawing on the country’s existing folklore.

I’ve recently been playing a demo of Ikai’s opening sections, and there is something intriguing about its attempt to manifest a cast of Japanese Yokai (demons and ghosts) by diving into the lore and rituals that surround them. In some ways, the setting is quite familiar. It wasn’t long ago, for example, that I was in feudal Japan facing the evil Yokai in Nioh 2. But there they were susceptible to a flurry of blows from my battle scythe – in Ikai, protagonist Naoko has nothing to defend herself with nothing but occult knowledge and religious ritual.

I like, then, that Ikai is driven by an almost educational tone at times. Naoko’s temple abode is like a museum of period artefacts, and I’ve been stumbling on written descriptions of demons, like fragments of discarded lecture notes. “Should you walk alone in the forest, beware of passing underneath the highest trees,” one begins, before explaining that giant demon heads called Tsurube-otoshi have a habit of waiting in the forest canopy, then falling from their perches to crush unwitting travellers. I’d already forgotten this lesson by the time I was doubling back along the forest path and ‘whomp!’ this great horned head slammed down in front of me, gawping at me with a devilish grin. I don’t know if it simply wanted to scare me or misjudged a more murderous landing, but point taken.
I also like the rituals Naoko has to perform to stay alive or solve puzzles. Explanations aren’t exactly subtle, as Naoko’s internal monologue pokes you in the right direction (the Japanese voiceover is essential to maintain any kind of atmosphere, incidentally), but it would be difficult to appreciate the significance of the various items scattered around the temple without it.

To pray, for example, you first need to find where the priest keeps his coins and drop one in the offering box before ringing a bell. Or you might find yourself in need of a magic charm – which you can place on a door to repel a demon or on a cursed object to stop it spreading evil vibes in the area – so you’d better find a table and some ink so you can sit down to paint one. There’s a tactility to these and other activities, too, as you don’t merely click on objects to use them, but use the mouse to, say, grab and pull a door open, or waggle the bell chord, or to trace those ink lines, in one case under pressure with a monster lurking in the vicinity.

Unfortunately, when you’re under pressure Ikai rather unravels. Lore and ritual are only one side of the folk horror formula, and it struggles with the other – creating interactions between protagonist and supernatural entities that remain tense and frightening. While it seems wise that Ikai steadfastly refuses to resort to combat, the alternative of focusing on Naoko’s vulnerability leads to a lot of immersion-breaking trial and error (and not only because her shuffling default movement speed makes it feel as though her feet are tied together).

The second half of the hour-long demo introduces stealth and escape sequences, and with that descends into farce. Forced to outrun a giant worm-like creature, for instance, I repeatedly got chomped trying to guess the correct route, or struggling to push shelving units aside with controls that in the heat of the moment simply become unwieldy. In one attempt the demon worm followed me into a tiny dead-end room and got stuck, leaving the two of us staring blankly at each other. Stalemate.

AI routines and signposting may be tightened here, of course, but that won’t make them scary. Aside from the worm, what I really can’t escape with this demo is the sense that the demons are more ominous when they’ve only descriptions on scraps of paper, when they’re still only legends. Once they fully emerge to show their faces – literally in the case of our friend Tsurube-otoshi – the results are comical or irritating, with unconvincing creepy sound effects and no weight to the jump scares when they grab you.

The lesson I’ve learned from Ikai is that the draw of folklore is its connection to the natural and the mysterious, and too often Ikai seems intent on making it mechanical, exposing the strings and placing it in patterns. In another scene, a fire spirit set the path ahead of me ablaze, leaving me to pick my way through flames that blinked on and off like traffic lights. When I touched the fire, a burning effect briefly filled the screen, then I was abruptly dumped back at the start. Hardly horrifying.

It’s difficult to see, then, how the more overtly digital tasks that rub against the lore won’t rob Ikai of a building sense of dread. It does remain intriguing when it’s focused on the milieu of myth, like charms and curses, or the everyday routines of lighting lanterns and offering prayer. Whether or not Endflame has done justice to its source material, the old rituals and the implication of supernatural threat pulled me in. But they don’t complement video game rituals like stealth play and clockwork puzzles. Most of all, perhaps, Ikai demonstrates how quickly the power of folk legend dissolves when it has to adapt to modern rhythms.

Ikai launches on March 29 for PC, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch. 

The post ‘Ikai’ preview: a feudal Japanese horror tale that’s more intriguing than scary appeared first on NME.

NME

Of the eight hours I spent playing the Elden Ring closed network test last weekend, an embarrassingly large chunk involved being slapped around by a guy named Margit. He’s the one boss among about a dozen in the test version that’s compulsory to beat in order to progress through the main questline, and by far the toughest.

• READ MORE: ‘Elden Ring’ closed network test impressions: FromSoftware in fine form

Honestly, this is the kind of boss battle I’ve begun to tire of in FromSoftware’s games. Yet in Elden Ring, I learned to enjoy my time with Margit. For all my failures trying to best him, he didn’t feel like an arduous roadblock, and I’m hopeful that feeling will last throughout the final game.

Let’s rewind a bit. I count myself as a veteran of FromSoftware’s uncompromising game worlds, from the first Dark Souls to Bloodborne and Sekiro. I even finally played Demon’s Souls this year thanks to Bluepoint’s remake. Some of these are among my favourite games ever, and one of the reasons I love them is the bosses.

The ones I still appreciate most of all, however, are those from the original Dark Souls, even if they’re more basic than the monstrosities in later games. That’s because in Dark Souls almost every boss feels unique, like it serves a specific purpose, to test a different skill or strategy. To win, you need a solid plan, often something that uses the layout of the environment to your advantage, or even the shape and size of the opponent.

In contrast, too many bosses in Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro especially are a variation on a single theme – big guy with a sword. Or knife. Or hammer. They all have distinct, complex attack patterns, but the strategy to beat them is effectively always the same – learn all the moves and git gud. Mostly they dwell in big flat, empty arenas. Rarely is there a clever way of approaching the fight that changes its complexion (the prosthetic arm tools in Sekiro were never quite as influential as I’d hoped).

Back in Dark Souls, meanwhile, even a big guy with a sword is ever merely a big guy with a sword. The infamous Capra Demon, for example, resides in a tiny courtyard where there’s barely enough room to swing one of his pet zombie dogs. There is, however, a staircase, a slim strip which forces him and his mutts into a single file approach, leading to a perch from which you might plunge down on his head. FromSoftware’s decision to place a boss in such a small space was audacious and brilliant. That’s what I want from my Souls bosses.

There’s something else I want, too. One of the things I love about Dark Souls bosses is the purity of the task. Their long red life bar stretches across the base of the screen. Mine, dwarfed in comparison, nestles in the top corner. If I empty their bar before they empty mine, I win. Simple. The occasional exception to the rule is cunningly playful – like the epic Smough and Ornstein battle, where you defeat one only to see the other feed off his dying friend’s power. But when extra life bars become the norm, as they have in later games, the whole endeavour becomes a chore.

I came to resent Sekiro for this reason. Learn how to dodge and counter every one of a boss’s attacks, and the reward is to repeat the process with a second phase, and then perhaps even a third. And the only way to learn phase two is to keep redoing phase one, again and again, to get there. It’s a laborious process, and at this point I’d gone from relishing FromSoftware’s bosses to wishing I could skip them. The simple inventiveness of the bosses in the Demon’s Souls remake only underlined the point – for once, things really were better in the old days.

Now here’s Margit, or Margit the Fell Omen to give him his full title. He’s a big guy with a hefty wooden staff. And a magic knife. And a hammer. I spent well over an hour in the network test trying to evade his offensive barrages and sneak in clean hits before he finally fell. Initially at least, this was a battle tinged with disappointment. I’d done this dance so many times before. Margit wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Bloodborne or Dark Souls 3. His arena is effectively a flat empty space.

Here’s the thing about Elden Ring, though. In almost every way, it’s the same but different. More than ever before, I realised I didn’t need to keep ramming into this brick wall, whittling down his health with a thousand cuts. Instead, it made more sense to go off and explore.

Obviously all of FromSoftware’s games provide a range of paths and options, so there’s always something else to do should you get stuck. Sometimes there are multiple main routes or side areas. Or you can spend time helping other players beat earlier stages, or simply farm enemies for experience. In Elden Ring, however, that’s all much more organic. Because of its open world, you don’t feel like you’re grinding or treading water, you’re learning, discovering and improving.

Crucially, while you meet other bosses out in the wild, they aren’t Margits. They’re more manageable. Many dwell at the end of short dungeons, caves or catacombs scattered about the land. Some are big guys with weapons, but beatable with a solid plan. Some serve up surprising twists, like a very big guy with a huge iron pumpkin helmet who tries to head slam you, or a fire-breathing hovering cat statue thing.

Others you bump into outside, in the course of your travels. And these al fresco battles, which you can choose to undertake aboard your trusty steed, brings a whole new dimension to the Souls boss formula. Take Agheel, for example, the dragon that hunts around a lake (more of a giant puddle, in truth). When it appears, everything in the area – the nearby ruins, minor enemies – remains in play. Dropped into the world like this, it becomes an epic encounter, yet it isn’t overly complex.

I was thus able to spend a few hours doing other stuff in Elden Ring that felt worthwhile in itself and didn’t lead me to various multi-phase big guys with swords. When I returned to Margit I was stronger, and actually wanted to take him on. It still took plenty of attempts, and of course I could have summoned help from another player at any time, but it turns out I can still enjoy the challenge of these fights when they aren’t too frequent (it helps that he has the decency to die on cue, at the end of one life bar, although he still effectively has two phases).

When I did finally win I got that old feeling, the one so often missing for me in Sekiro – the thrill of finally managing what initially seemed insurmountable. Indeed, it was the sort of victory that anecdotes are made of – out of healing potions, down to a sliver of health, I applied fire to my weapon and went for one last charge, delivering the final blow just as he was winding up to deliver his.

From what I’ve seen of Elden Ring so far, then, it looks to have skilfully intertwined its past and present approaches to boss fights, and added something new in the process. If it continues in this way, with plenty of moderate, playful challenges between the big story encounters, I’ll not only tolerate the likes of Margit, I’ll welcome them with open arms.

Elden Ring launches on February 25 2022 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC. 

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After years spent fine-tuning their creation, the creators of Darkest Dungeon have unravelled it. Now in early access on the Epic store, the sequel to Redhook Studio’s grim, turn-based Roguelike cuts the tight loop of dungeon diving and party maintenance and stretches it out flat. Roguelike progression and random outcomes remain, but now every excursion into this grim world is a complete journey with a decisive end, one way or another.

• READ MORE: ‘Grim Fandango’’s imaginative afterlife anticipated a colourful future for the medium

Studio co-founders, Tyler Sigman and Chris Bourassa, have stripped out the original game’s static base of operations, the Hamlet, along with its dank, claustrophobic dungeons. In their place is a stagecoach tour of the apocalypse, a road trip through burning towns and rotten farmland stalked by deranged cultists. “In Lovecraftian terms, this is ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, not ‘Rats in the Walls’,” explains Sigman, the game’s design director.

In my experience with the game so far, it’s an appropriate comparison. Darkest Dungeon 2 feels familiar yet uncanny, like Lovecraft’s works it aims to evoke the terror of the unknown from within the expected. This is a sequel that’s supposed to stand next to the original rather than replace it.

Yet even at this stage it also feels like a much grander endeavour. “We wanted to escalate the stakes, and explore a world beyond the confines of the Hamlet,” creative director Bourassa tells me. “Technically speaking, the regions are dungeons, but it’s been fun implying a scale of destruction that we couldn’t in Darkest Dungeon.”

“The Hamlet was great and was crucial to the structure of [the first game],” adds Sigman, “but it seemed lacklustre to follow it up with… another hamlet or city or fortress or camp of some kind. Freeing things up from a single base allowed us to lean into the journey aspect.” Another source of inspiration Sigman mentions here is The Oregon Trail, the classic early computer game known for cruel twists of fate. With Darkest Dungeon’s signature emphasis on coping when plans go horribly awry, it’s a marriage that makes perfect sense.

The change of direction creates a more epic narrative feel to each journey. This time, each of the four characters you select to form a party isn’t merely a representative of a class but a person with a backstory that reveals itself gradually as you visit certain locations. The fate of humanity now rests not on an endless churn of heroes but on this bunch of traumatised individuals. And there’s something about their last-ditch mission to keep hope alive in a world collapsing into ruin that seems to carry a grim relevance in today’s reality.

It also adds to the atmosphere of dread that everything looks doubly horrific, thanks to a 3D graphical overhaul. As soon as you reach the game’s first inn (a bit like campfires, where you can rest, repair and resupply), you can’t help but note how the gothic comic book sketches in the first game have come to life. The poses of your seated crew convey status and mental fragility, from the manspreading exhaustion of the man-at-arms to the self-torturing despair of the highwayman.

Throughout the game these warriors appear more determined and haggard in their expressions and weighty animations, while the monsters are even more disgusting, not least some pustulous zombified livestock. “Our goal was to emulate the marketing artwork I had drawn for Darkest Dungeon,” says Bourassa, before explaining some of the steps involved. “For characters, the textures are hand-drawn directly on the models whereas for the environment assets, the models are built straight off the artwork we supply. We worked a great deal on refining the lighting and shaders, which I’d say was the biggest challenge of the whole process.” Seeing it all in action, it certainly feels like a successful transition.

As for the structure of each trip, Darkest Dungeon 2 owes something (as many recent roguelikes do) to Slay the Spire, with its narrow, twisting road split by forks that lead to different kinds of encounters. Plotting ahead is essential (although you can’t see a whole area map from the start), with certain paths more likely to lead into ambushes, and a whole range of monsters, tradespeople and resource gathering opportunities waiting at the end of each segment. You’ll also need to top up the flame of hope attached to your ride (a twist on the torches in Darkest Dungeon) as enemies grow stronger in the darkness.

With these changes, moment-to-moment progress now relies less on coin flips and dice rolls than in the first game. More choices show potential results in advance, with pros and cons on both sides. You can even elect to dodge certain battles, often at the cost of resources, while within combat there’s no percentage-based accuracy stat to potentially spike your offensive strategies. Instead, certain status effects can halve (or quarter) your chances of landing a blow, with a symbol clearly indicating when they’re in effect. None of this makes Darkest Dungeon 2 easier or less cruel than its predecessor, but the added transparency helps when planning tactical responses.

It will, however, be interesting to see how some of the new elements develop over time. I’m unsure, for example, whether the act of travelling itself can remain compelling, as you slowly steer your horses to pull the cart through piles of debris (where hidden items might be lurking) then make your decision at each junction. Along the way, your characters’ stress levels and relationship metrics shift, in part according to your route decisions. But it’s still a rather slow and partially engaging process.

Of course, addressing this kind of issue is precisely the point of the early access model that Redhook has committed to. “We sometimes say that Early Access should have around 60-70% of content at launch, and that applies to these sorts of things too,” says Sigman. “With the core in place, we can now think about really neat additions for flavour and variety.”

“We will continue to add new and interesting destinations to the map – some shared, some region-specific,” says Bourassa, although we shouldn’t expect anything that would change the game’s focus or atmosphere. “We said from the outset that we didn’t want to make a driving game,” he adds, “so there won’t be any ramps, jumps, or drifting, despite my love of Mario Kart.”

It’s a similar story with another mechanic I struggled with at the start – the workings of the ‘affinity’ system between individual characters. The relationship between any two party members can change for better or worse at almost any time, but rarely in predictable ways. Having your plague doctor heal your hellion, for example, might strengthen the bond between them, or may cause a third character to resent the healer for not patching them up instead.

And these little twists matter because in Darkest Dungeon’s epic runs – about four hours if you reach the end – affinities can become a matter of life or slow, drawn-out death. Negative vibes cause debuffs in battle and also increase characters’ stress, until one has a ‘meltdown’ that reduces their HP to almost nothing, destroying morale even further. It’s easy to fall into a self-reinforcing spiral of stress and hatred that plagues every action you take.

“The affinity system is a prime example of something that will benefit a lot from early access,” explains Sigman. “It’s much more complex than the affliction system from Darkest Dungeon, just because every ingredient involves two heroes instead of one.” There are a lot of triggering factors, he explains, and they’ve seen that players are finding some more logical than others. “People are already catching on to the fact that stressed heroes are more likely to get grouchy with their teammates,” he says, “which creates a strong incentive to keep stress down.”

Indeed, by my fifth Darkest Dungeon journey I did manage to control my team’s stress and complete a run for the first time. It’s a sign that progress can already emerge from learned experience as well as the rub of the green. Equally, it’s a pleasing result after the long grind towards the end game of Darkest Dungeon to reach an ‘ending’ so soon, even though I still have many more characters and items to unlock and experiment with in this early build.

There will, of course, be more besides. The existing version currently features just one ‘act’ out of five that will feature in the final game. “Players are working through their confessions over the course of five bosses,” Bourassa explains. “Each will have a narrative sequence, and present a different endgame challenge.” We can also expect smaller changes depending on which act we try to tackle. “The cultist enemies,” says Bourassa, “may see some changes depending on which boss a player opts to undertake.”

It’s easy to feel confident that Darkest Dungeon 2 will meet its potential. Bourassa and Sigman have been through the early access process before with Darkest Dungeon, and judging by the results we can expect real balance and refinement by the time the sequel sees its full release. And if the journey to completion is a long road with tough obstacles to overcome, then Darkest Dungeon 2 already shows that’s a thrilling way to travel.

Darkest Dungeon 2 is out in Early Access now on the Epic Games Store. 

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