Recent reviews by The Sacred Voice

Does anyone truly need to play idle incremental games such that recommending one or not is really meaningful? What have I actually achieved when I come back to it? Nothing really? At first, seeing the numbers reach increasingly silly heights was idly amusing, particularly when you can tell people progressively ludicrous factoids, like “each one of my grandmas is making 35,000 cookies every second”, but, at some point, that quirky humour lost its charm and I was left with a fairly lifeless display, solemnly observing the ever climbing numbers that hallmark the incremental game experience. I don’t have a lot of playtime in this genre, but I suspect that other offerings have developed the active gameplay element into something a bit more engaging than Cookie Clicker ever musters. Leaving Cookie Clicker running (as I so often have done) made me feel a bit like I’m a crypto miner wannabe. But, eventually, I stopped booting it up because it was just getting silly, and there wasn’t enough to keep me engaged as an actual game. I looked ahead a bit and there was more… story? Events? (if you can call them that) still to come, but Cookie Clicker just doesn’t have enough going on other than its own absurdity to hold you in. If that’s all you want then go right ahead, but I think there’re more engaging options in this genre, and playing Cookie Clicker itself is more just to experience the piece of game design history that it represents.

Never played the original, but the Silent Hill 2 (SH2) remake is a superb experience that epitomises the idea of something being greater than the sum of its parts. If you take any individual component then you'd find something fairly bland with perhaps a glimmer of promise, but, when brought together, SH2 becomes a captivating masterpiece of subtlety and artistry. Its atmosphere rich tension and sublime sound design are perfect for delivering chills as you wander its haunted pathways, though its bark is most certainly worse than its bite.

It's hard to know where to start with SH2’s elements. While there’re some stand outs (the sound design), any given element is fairly uninspiring by itself. The gameplay’s a plodding, third-person walking simulator with a rudimentary combat system bolted on to keep you on your toes as you creep through its eerie environments. Inbetween basic combat encounters, you’ll be searching drawers and cabinets for scraps of lore; occasionally there’ll be a cutscene to move things along. The monsters (all five of them + some variants) are aesthetically unique, and their behaviours elicit a primeval feeling of repulsion, but, while they provide grotesque hints into the progatonist’s psyche, they aren’t overly challenging to handle. Perhaps I’m being too reductive, many games could be described in this manner, but what’s so remarkable about SH2 is how compelling it is in spite of its demonstrably mundane gameplay. The unknowns keep you pressing on. Who is James? What does Silent Hill want with him? Why are its residents so twisted? Where is Mary? What’s with all the fog? And, while Silent Hill will answer some of your questions, it respects your intelligence enough to leave hints around for you to connect the dots yourself.

SH2 consistently peddles an unnerving vibe throughout its environs. Awkwardly cramped level designs compound with the third-person camera to make it difficult to really see what’s going on, and the continual gloom in many of the game’s indoor levels force you into discomforting walks around in the darkness as you nervously watch for lurking enemies. Worst of all, the sound design ratchets up tension, grinding away at your nerves as you creep down the dim hallways. It’s all delightfully unpleasant, and will certainly put you in some discomfort, particularly as you engage with the first big indoor level.

However, SH2 almost never actually delivers a punchline to follow up on the gnawing dread you’re constantly under. Now and then it hits the tone with a monstrous reveal, or cheeky little scare, but I found that by the midpoint of the story I’d become too used to its unsettling ambient noise, safe in the knowledge that it would ultimately never actually punch me. For instance, one section features the repeated, menacing clanging of an unseen horror slamming a metal bar onto a row of pipes. It’s a wonderfully jarring sound that ominously builds tension as you tiptoe through the ill-lit hallways of some dank locale, but I knew full well I’d never be meeting the monster that was making the noise. Instead, the familiar cast of standard enemies continues largely unchanged through each section, irrespective of the alarming noises you’ll hear. There’s almost a disconnect between the chilling sounds being drummed into your ears constantly, and then rounding the corner and going “oh just another one of these, lemme get my gun.”

However, SH2’s lack of bite doesn’t overly hurt the experience, and it certainly makes it more manageable for the fainter-hearted players among us. The ambiance will scratch at your nerves even when you’re familiar with the game’s rhythm, but the only thing that will truly surprise you is the occasional, familiar monster popping out from a corner you hadn’t adequately checked. It might’ve been nice to see the escalating dread fulfil its promise more often than it does, and a larger monster roster would've provided opportunities for more "what the hell is that?!" But perhaps the comfort provided by the lack of surprise is what the game needs to keep you playing as it takes you into ever darker and twisted worlds. In any event, the journey’s ghoulishly enjoyable in spite of its safer horror plays.

Other notables: the SH2 remake delivers a satisfying graphical uplift, and the combat system’s been rejigged to include more modern elements, such as dodging and more precise aiming. I went back to watch some clips from the original and voice acting is strikingly better in the remake – I understand the campy over-acting of the original is something of a fan favourite, but the remake sells the overall experience much better for sure. The move from fixed camera angles to over-the-shoulder definitely takes away some of the terror of having to force James to walk blind into corridors you can’t see down, which feels like a downgrade over the original, but it doesn’t significantly ruin the vibe by any means.

Overall, I’ve found the remake fiendishly captivating. Whenever I put it down then I always looked forward to the next time I’d get to pick it up. The simplicity of its gameplay loop almost gives the sense of needing something more: the quiet determination of protagonist James; the slightly clunky combat system; the eerie locales; the quirky puzzles; the cryptic lore elements gradually peeling back the town’s mysteries; the repeated overuse of the same five enemies. Each individual part doesn’t really work, but its hiding an intelligent narrative and some unusual sights that I thoroughly enjoyed, and believe are accessible to even the horror cautious among us.

I was perhaps a smidge harsh on Terraformers' previous expansion, New Frontiers. Megastructures has a similar level of additional content, but what makes its additions work where New Frontiers’ didn't is that Megastructures’ content feels much more directly interactive. You get to see the vaunted megastructures tower over your settlements as you build through their multi stage designs. The benefits they give feel more immediate and impactful on the goals you're working towards. Slotting a megastructure into your plan, regardless of scenario goal, feels manageable in contrast to the lengthy side quests of settling Europa or Saturn, which felt disconnected, distant and, ultimately, unrewarding.

The requirement for growth as a key component of building through a given megastructures’ stages gives a nice boost to the value of food production and population growth in general, which previously felt a little optional when robots worked just as well. New population buildings have seen a flat food reduction to help incentivise population, which led me to discover the city background art for the highest level of city population that I’d never previously seen as I’d never found building population out that much to be meaningful pre-Megastructures.

I love the additional leaders, for variety's sake if nothing else, but they also feel more independent from the DLC’s megastructures theme compared to the New Frontiers’ leaders, who feel more integral to the distant colonies gameplay. I appreciate this because it means I don’t necessarily have to be building megastructures to still find value in the Megastructures’ leaders. Comparatively, the New Frontiers’ leaders feel like you only take them if you’re aiming for solar expansion, otherwise you don’t bother as their powers and passives don’t provide enough value outside of that field.

The only disappointment is that the megastructure-themed scenario feels a bit uninspired. The impact and spectacle of megastructures gets somewhat lost as it’s essentially just a race to get a ton of resource production and then drop as many megastructures as fast as you can. Many scenarios in Terraformers have this general premise, but they hide them better, and you’re often building more steadily towards their execution. Comparatively, my experience with the megastructures scenario is that you can leave much of the building until the end and then throw out the last 60-70% you’re missing in a handful of turns. The one interesting element is that you have to somewhat plan out your city expansion to ensure you have adequate and suitable cities to house each megastructure. Additionally, some of them come with the wrinkle of terraforming requirements that you have to factor into your plan. Curiously, despite my general indifference to the New Frontiers’ scenario, it at least has requirements that you’re gradually dripping progression into across the scenario.

Overall, Megastructures feels like a much better step for Terraformers’ development, and I only hope it sells well enough to encourage continued work from the developers, as I thoroughly enjoy the game.

I’m a self-professed Elden Ring hater, and I’m gonna be throwing some caustic shade its way here, but it’d be utterly disgraceful of me to suggest Elden Ring is so flawed as to be unrecommendable. I’ve played 200+ hours, and I know I’m going to play more. I’ve undoubtedly got my money’s worth and then some. It’s unbounded environments, quirky world-building, delightful visuals, rich enemy design, and myriad character building possibilities come together to create a world that’s a joy to explore and roam around in. You can make virtually any fantasy character archetype you’ve ever dreamed of: a spear wielding wizard, a fire-breathing paladin, a whip-twirling, lightning hurling barbarian; it’s all here and much, much more. I’ve spent hours trotting across its diverse landscapes, through the crags and over the hills, and I don’t doubt I’ll do it all again at some point.

So why the hell is its difficulty such a mess?

Of Elden Ring’s 100+ bosses, I can count on one hand the number of bosses that I found truly challenging to beat. And, for me, this lack of resistance predominantly stemmed from the endless things there are to do in Elden Ring. There’re so many caves, minibosses, field bosses, tombs, and general areas to explore that if you’re taking your time to look at as much as you can then you’ll find you’re colossally overleveled for almost any boss you encounter if you’re following the intended journey through the map. Furthermore, if you do find a boss you’re stuck on, there’s no reason to push through the difficulty when there’re all these other things to go and do instead. And then you’ll come back powerful enough to just flatten the boss anyway.

And, as if the overleveling issue wasn’t bad enough, Elden Ring can’t decide how difficult it wants to be. I almost wish Elden Ring had traditional difficulty settings like Easy, Medium or Hard, because there’re so many ways you can choose to make the game easier or harder, with no actual suggestion of what you might make things too easy or too hard. You can summon NPC allies to tank aggro for you, you can request other players to help, you can look up the extremely exploitable weaknesses many bosses have. Alternatively, you can wear lighter armour than strictly necessary, you can force yourself to take on encounters you’re underleveled for, run an awful build, or simply consciously deny yourself the aforementioned advantages. Why do I have to decide how hard this game is? Elden Ring loftily throws all these options at you, shrugs its shoulders, and then wanders out the door never to return.

I genuinely can’t convey how frustrated I was with this. Boss challenge simply came down to how deliberately I handicapped myself, and that process worsened as I found myself consistently levelled ahead of whatever boss was next. Sure, there were one or two I got stuck on for a bit, I had my fair share of deaths, and I certainly didn’t do any flawlessly or cleverly, but that’s because the game so rarely forced me to actually try and finesse most of its fights. And the boss designs themselves weren’t necessarily bad or uninteresting, but so many of them were just a disappointing cakewalk of difficulty unless I deliberately chose otherwise.

But is this even Elden Ring’s fault? It’s backed into an ugly corner when it comes to difficulty. It comes from a line of games touted for their challenging gameplay; games where “git gud” is the oft-uttered internet mantra to those feeling hard done by the series’ punishing bosses. There’s such an enormous expectation riding on its difficulty, Elden Ring can’t be its own game even though I think it’s very much trying to do just that. I think it wants to be the game that lets you approach all the bosses your own way, at a difficulty you’re happy with. However, the fanbase has slathered their expectations over it so heavily that it’s tainted the expectation I, and probably others, have of it. And maybe that’s on me for getting sucked into the community’s groupthink on what the game should be, and what limitations I should place on myself in order to say I’ve faced the game at its “intended” difficulty. Elden Ring puts the responsibility on you to decide how challenging you want it, instead of setting down a gauntlet and asking if you’re good enough to clear it. This might just be the rabid fanbase talking, but I wanted the gauntlet, rather than have the freedom to choose otherwise.


I was at my happiest with Elden Ring when I was just pottering about in the world looking for a tomb or dungeon to explore. There’s a sense when you first start out that there’s a lot of empty space in Elden Ring’s open world, and that’s kinda true, but if you allow yourself to wander its vistas and bogs at a leisurely pace then there’re curiosities to be found everywhere. I was still finding dungeons I’d previously missed during my fourth exploration of the same area. There’s so much to go and find that a curious soul who’s happy to meander around will have plenty to do. Furthermore, the dungeon designs themselves are some of the game’s greatest credits.

But why on earth is the levelling system one of the most archaic ideas I’ve seen in the last two decades of game design? You gain a level: you assign a single attribute point for that level. Good grief, I haven’t seen a system this primitive since Diablo 2. Level ups are meant to be exciting, but it’s just so maddeningly unrewarding allocating a single point. And what exactly are we proving here using this attribute system? The Dark Souls series are about “gitting gud” in high intensity duels. It’s supposed to be skill and performance, so why is there this dull, dated stat system that allows you to level yourself out of problem encounters?

Why not dispose of the whole attribute system and simplify progression by having characters earn weapon XP? And this system would let you unlock new ashes of war or movesets for those weapons as you levelled them up. Those unlocks don’t have to be strictly better, just give the player ways to express their chosen fighting style, as well as passive damage upgrades to control the game difficulty as the player progresses. Lastly, throw in some passive weapon XP gain on weapons of a similar type so that changing weapon doesn’t feel overly punishing when you want to change it up. Heck, you could even just repurpose the existing rebirth system to allow respeccing earned weapon XP into another weapon category.

What’s crazy is that what I’m describing here is literally just Sekiro’s progression system, a game that nailed the “git gud” formula using this structure and disposed of the hideously outmoded attribute system. Sekiro holds a divisive position for the fan base, which (I assume) is why that system hasn’t been brought forward into further Souls’ designs, but why are we giving Elden Ring a pass on elements that have been in Fromsoft’s design foundations since its earliest titles? Those elements have the capacity to grow and improve, but instead they’re just a stagnant mess that Fromsoft keeps churning out and people keep worshipping.

Overall, I think there’s a reason Elden Ring doesn’t have “Souls” in its game title. I think Fromsoft were trying to do something a bit different, and there’s a lot of baggage from their previous titles that gets in the way of what I assume they wanted Elden Ring to be. And maybe that’s on us, the community. But their attempts to do something different flounder in places because there were opportunities to refine the Souls experience that weren’t taken. It’s still a fun game, and a breathtaking experience in many moments, but I don’t know that I’d laud it as the game of the century.

I went on a binge of interactive narrative games about two years ago and just discovered I never did a write up for the Dark Pictures bunch. Better get to it!

I’ve not played the entire Dark Picture Anthology, but Man of Medan’s the starting point and it’s essentially fine. I’d argue it does horror better than many of Supermassive Games other entries. You’re exploring something that’s genuinely spooky with solid atmospheric tension throughout, and the story maintains the threat of its supernatural horror villain even after it tips its hand with a logical explanation of what’s happening. However, Man of Medan is extremely jump scare heavy, which I noticed is something that was scaled back a lot in future games in the series. I don’t love a jump scare, but I made it through okay, though I recognise many gamers find it a divisive tool, particularly when used often.

Unfortunately, Man of Medan feels pretty low budget and underdeveloped in other areas, like the way the different possible playouts weave together their scenes between those that you triggered because of an action and those that are mainline events does feel poorly constructed at times. I remember a scene with one character that’d been separated for a while, he’d had gone to try and find the others, and he’s shown entering this cargo hold area. It’s not entirely clear how he got here, and, after looking at a few things, you’re given the option to head down a corridor or look at this swinging object. I looked at the object, which was actually a prompt to try jumping on it, which instantly kills the character. There isn’t a lot of warning that that’ll happen so I was like “huh?” cos it seemed pretty cheap and out of the blue, but I was like “fair enough, I’ll see how this plays out for the story.” But the outcome of that character’s death is barely acknowledged except for another random scene inserted later between plot scenes to quickly show his brother mourning his body that he’d stumbled on despite not knowing where to look or even having a reason to be there? It was like the rest of the cast had forgotten he even existed in the first place outside of that scene. I’m assuming he was an extraneous character that it was neither here nor there what really happened to him, or I might’ve misunderstood something about what was going on here, but it was certainly a weird one when it happened.

And, on the topic of character death, it’s shockingly easy to get characters killed, which is fine because there’s a good few cast members to play on with, but I can see how players could find some choices or quick time events a bit punishing. On the QTEs, they come at you fast in this one, in a way I’ve not seen since in other Supermassive Games titles, and the risk of getting someone killed when doing one that you mess up is very real. My only other complaint is that some decisions will cause a character’s death, but that fate won’t catch up to them until considerably later on, so it’s like “oh they died because of that thing I did like 3 hours ago, and I very possibly couldn’t have foreseen this outcome at that point anyway?” It’d be nicer if those kinds of decisions were on a meter that accounted for multiple choices and only killed that character if the majority made were wrong, or something like that.

Overall, despite ragging on it a bit, I actually rate Man of Medan pretty highly compared to many others in Supermassive Games’ catalogue. It maintains its horror roots much better, and the threat of each character’s death feels persistently more imminent, which I think maintains the tension and offers unique playout experiences from player to player. You have to look past some of the early days’ rough edges that the studio had getting going with the anthology series premise, but I think it’s a solid, short experience outside of that.

Much like its predecessor, Jedi Survivor doesn’t innovate within its genre in any way whatsoever; it’s your standard third-person action game with exploration elements, metroidvania world obstacles, hidden collectables, and it’s flavoured with soulslike combat systems because everyone wants that sauce now (to be fair it works great in a Jedi setting). Nothing new here, but you’re not playing for any of that, you’re playing because designing Cal’s lightsaber is flipping cool, and watching him twirl it about is the power fantasy any gamer wants to trip off of, so I’m gonna go easy on the lack of innovation.

Many have said it already and they’re right: every facet of gameplay has been built on from the previous game. More combat stances to play with, greater enemy variety, more traversal powers, a larger world to explore, more, more, more. I’ve got criticisms, but if you enjoyed Fallen Order then there’s really very little reason not to pick this up.


My primary complaint falls on the tightness of the plot, and the overall lack of real journey in Survivor’s storyline. Fallen Order was a sort of “coming of age” story about Cal finding himself and growing as a lone Jedi. Part of what I loved about that game was Cal’s depiction as a male protagonist; he wasn’t confident and certain, he was quiet and unsure with a tenderness that was adorably endearing. He felt the weight of his responsibility as one of the last Jedi, and he wanted to do the right thing, but he was scared and wary of accepting the hero’s call. His portrayal as a male protagonist was a refreshing tonic in a world where male protagonists are generally depicted as bolshy extroverts that leap into the fray at the first opportunity. I adored Fallen Order’s Cal, a man with his vulnerabilities on show still trying to do the right thing, and I thought he was an amazing showcase for the alternatives that male protagonists can portray.

Annoyingly, Survivor does away with all that. Cal’s now a traumatised rebel veteran that’s completely lost touch with his vulnerable former self; his previous character apparently utterly forgotten in the intervening years between the games. Now he’s grizzly beyond his years and bitter about the rebel life he’s embroiled himself in, and, unfortunately, he’s now every bit the cliché male protagonist we see in every other game. In theory, this gives him a different arc to explore (finding his sensitivity again in the face if years of bitter toil), and the game introduces a slightly unexpected call of the Dark Side trauma angle, but the journey never really gets there. Overall, Cal’s portrayal in Survivor just doesn’t feel anywhere near as interesting as his depiction in Fallen Order.

And the story Survivor’s telling just isn’t particularly compelling either. At the end of Fallen Order then Cal decides that reforging the Jedi Order is something he doesn’t have the strength, skill or will to do, and he makes peace with not being the right person for that. It’s an extremely mature finish for a journey that was about finding himself, even if it feels like you haven’t achieved anything throughout the game (in reality, I suspect this ending was chosen to avoid making complicated plot waves in the Star Wars canon). So what’s Cal up to this time? He’s chasing down an obscure legend to make a haven for a guerilla underground movement he bumps into along the way.

The whole plot feels like one giant, random side quest in Cal’s life. Cal’s motivation for getting involved with any of this is that he’s stuck on Koboh following a data theft mission gone bad, and now he’s just helping out basically because he’s got nothing better to do? Ostensibly, this legendary haven will progress Cal’s guerilla anti-Empire activities, but he’s fairly reluctant for a lot of the opening part of the game, and the Empire doesn’t even really feature as anything more than an obstacle. Most of the game’s spent racing against an unaffiliated antagonist. I guess I did open this review saying that you’re playing this game just because the Jedi fantasy is a cool one to live out, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too harsh on this point. But it sure does feel like Cal’s just doing his thing while the larger Star Wars actors are just simply there to get in the way more than actually care about their own goals.

And Survivor can’t even figure out which antagonists it wants to throw at Cal. The story establishes a perfectly good villain in the first act, who stays relevant for 80% of the story, but then Survivor pulls a dramatic antagonist swap at the eleventh hour, which basically comes out of nowhere, and is all tied up through two missions right at the end. The new antagonist’s motivations are adequately conveyed, but they’re introduced so late and their agenda is so personal that it takes the already very side-questy nature of Survivor’s plot and makes the final showdown ultimately about almost nothing meaningful. Survivor was aiming for a twist, but while the twist itself is solid enough, I don’t think it sticks the landing as a capstone for the game’s story.

Tech-wise, it’s no secret Survivor’s PC optimisation is utterly in the bin, but I’ll admit that I’m not much of a framerate snob. I have a rig that’s a few years old now, and the worst area is the centre section of the hub world of Koboh where I’d hover around 42-50fps. But almost every other area of Koboh and beyond I’d get a steady 60+, and I personally didn’t find the Koboh hub sections so unbearable as to be off-putting.


Overall, Survivor’s a fun little power fantasy with gameplay that's satisfying enough (if a little generic) to keep you entertained throughout. There's nothing here you haven't seen before, but that doesn't mean it's a bad play. Fallen Order wasn't exactly a groundbreaking game either, but both are satisfying Star Wars experiences that remind us we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time as long as we manage our expectations appropriately. Don’t ask too much of the story and just enjoy the ride.

I’m not a Marvel person, or even a comics person for that matter, so the Marvel Universe as a cultural phenomenon has largely passed me by. I’ve seen the odd film here and there, but I’ve never made an effort to seek them out. That said, I appreciate a good superhero fantasy, and I love both deckbuilding and tactical combat games, so, while I’m not the Marvel IP’s target audience, Midnight Suns’ mechanics and gameplay are up my street, and, oh baby, are they superb.

I came back to this game recently after picking up the season pass, and I’d forgotten just how damn good the combat in this game is. First off, the animations are spectacular. Even the basic attacks you start with have flashy executions, and that theme rides all the way up to the characters’ legendary abilities. Strategically, assuming you’re on an appropriate difficulty level, the game always makes you feel like you’re struggling to eke out a win, and with eight difficulty levels then you can just move it up and down to find something that works for you. Higher difficulties expect you to think through your turns a lot more, as well as putting together synergistic hero line ups and tighter deck designs. Overall, the combat just slaps, there’s really nothing else to say about it.

Deck design never feels like hard work. New cards come in slowly, so you’ll piecemeal exchange bits of the basic decks for upgrades as you go. You can grind out side missions for as long as you like if you want to really go to town tooling out every hero’s deck, but that doesn’t feel necessary unless you’re pushing the hardest difficulty. Different heroes definitely have varied play themes, which gives you fairly obvious directions to push their development in, whilst also leaving some room to sculpt them differently to fit another niche if you want to.

Between missions, you’re given time to socialise and explore the hub world. It’s probably all just fan service, but, despite not being a Marvel fan myself, I enjoyed the socialising stuff. Getting to know the heroes and figuring out the activities they enjoyed and the gifts they liked to receive has a certain charm, and it’s a welcome break from the brain-burning planning you’ve been doing in the missions. However, the hub world exploration stuff is fun for a bit but gets a bit tiresome, particularly if you’re doing a second runthrough. It’s technically optional, so it won’t impact your combat ability too much by not doing it, so if you hate it then you can safely pass on it.

Few other criticisms. For starters, the pacing of the opening is sluggish at best. The first 5 hours or so is just endless dialogue sections interspersed with the occasional combat (that itself is riddled with tutorials and dialogue cutscenes). And you’re not even done after that, the tutorial on-ramp for this game just keeps on going, with new mechanisms being drip-fed steadily over the course of the next 20-30 hours. Depending on how long you spend in the first section of the game then this length can work against the experience as you’ll be fighting the same four enemies and mission types pretty much that entire time, which can definitely feel stale at a point. The DLC goes some way to alleviating this by adding new enemies and missions, but if you don’t have that then you’ll have to push through to the second act where new enemies and missions get added.

Another grating factor, particularly when playing on harder difficulties, is that the game doesn’t give you the information you’d like to be able to make effective plans. Let’s say I can apply bleed to an enemy, but the other damage I have in hand isn’t enough to kill them, how can I figure out if the bleed damage will be enough to kill the enemy? The damage figure for bleed isn’t shown as a status on the enemy until after I apply it to them, so I potentially waste an action just finding out how much damage bleed will do. You can look up how it works outside of the game, but why make people do that when there’s room to do it in the tooltips the game already splashes everywhere? Similarly, knockback previews are displayed based on where a character is when they select the knockback ability, however if you’re thinking about moving a character to get a better angle, or trying to calculate an angle after another attack that moves an enemy, then you basically just have to do this in your head and hope you visualise it accurately. And these things matter on hard difficulties. Now, the game does autosave at the end of every combat turn, so you can just reload if your actions don’t play out as you’d have liked, but I feel cheap doing stuff like that, and if the designers intended you to play like that then why not just give us an undo button instead?

However, all in all, the blemishes in Midnight Suns aren’t really enough to spoil the experience. It’s a superb triumph in the turn-based tactics genre, which itself is littered with naff XCom knock offs. Firaxis have taken their experience and given it just the right shape to make this gem. I’d still caution that it isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve come from something like XCom then you’re in a dazzlingly safe pair of hands.

Helldivers 2 is an excellent experience that I absolutely cannot recommend because of the fatal weaknesses in its late game gameplay loop. I want to love this game, so so badly. I want to drop hundreds of hours in it. I want to resent going to sleep instead of doing another drop. But it just isn’t there (yet).

Make no mistake, I’m gonna rag on Helldivers 2 a lot in the rest of this review, but it does do some things fantastically. It’s an astounding game for bro-ing out to; calling nukes down on your friends; getting blown 100 yards because you were standing in the wrong place (again); blasting a bug off your friend’s prone body while they're frantically reloading in the face of death. The visuals are astounding and won’t tax your system to all hell. Solidly optimised even when monsters are filling the screen and explosions are going off left, right and centre. Speaking of, Arrowhead are a developer that know how to do an artillery strike: absurdly huge explosions; mushroom clouds that fill your screen; firework sparkles everywhere as shrapnel loads are dumped all over the approaching hordes – they’re glorious in every possible way. Fights are manically chaotic in (most of) the best ways, and the swell of the music heralding the start of a mission as your teams’ droppods rocket towards the planet inspires a thrill in your chest as you prepare to do your part for democracy. And, on that note, Helldivers superbly sells the Starship Troops-esque fascist “democracy” military laying on vast campaigns against hordes of overwhelming enemies, coated in satire and tongue-in-cheek references. Unfortunately, if you’re looking for something that’s got long term chops then you might want to keep looking.

Helldivers 2 is a live service game, the kind that invites you to no-life it if you’re that way inclined. I wanted to no-life Helldivers 2, but there’s nothing to no-life in it. Its content is too repetitive, and it doesn’t switch up enough as you move through the mid and late game stages. This is compounded by a lack of interesting loadout opportunities alongside wild balancing issues; as well as the nagging feeling that other games in this genre have done this gameplay loop before but better.

While the mission objectives are technically different, they all just boil down to “go to area, interact with console, go to next area.” There’re a handful of planet biomes that, even though they’re procedurally generated and nice enough to walk around in, are functionally all identical bar some random environmental effects. Combat gets extremely formulaic at a certain point, you virtually never have to alter your approach or adapt to an unexpected change. Long term goals exist (you’re contributing to the meta narrative and there’re plenty of unlocks to grind), but the gameplay has to stay fresh to make the grind enjoyable as you go, and Helldivers 2 unequivocally does not achieve that.

Comparatively, Deep Rock Galactic (which I’d argue is in the same genre) has random events/bosses popping up mid mission, as well as procedurally generated environments that actually feel unique every time you see them. I’ve got over 600 hours in that game and I still find every corner promises something I haven’t seen before, and it actually delivers on that promise often enough to keep you hooked. Is it fair to hold Helldivers up to something like DRG that’s been in post-release development for multiple years? For sure no, and, to be honest, I hope Arrowhead will build in this direction (they’ve already added random environmental events), but I’ve played compelling repetitive content before, and Helldivers 2 currently isn’t making the cut.

So what’ve we got instead? Well loadouts could be another source of variety, and there’re a bunch of different weapons and stratagems that you can mix up all the time, but they all just boil down to “stuff goes boom” (admittedly very impressively) or different versions of “shooty shooty”. None of them make you feel like you’re meaningfully approaching the game in a different fashion, or that you’re expressing your skill with a challenging weapon. Instead they’re just tweaks to give you the hint of personal expression in your playstyle. Sometimes I take a turret, sometimes an airstrike, sometimes a support backpack, but the game’ll play out largely the same whatever I bring, it’s just which sparkles I want to look at while I play. Again, Deep Rock Galactic has class variety, each with completely distinct weapon loadouts that give them unique roles, as well as class specialisations depending on weapon choice. And all that was in DRG from early on, so I can’t even give Helldivers a pass on that one.

And the loadout mix’n’match could be better if it all felt reasonably balanced, but it just isn’t. There aren’t many things that’re truly awful, but there are a lot of things that are very underwhelming, particularly on the hardest difficulties. The balance trend is to consistently nerf whatever’s currently good, but the stuff that’s the best (while problematic) isn’t the real issue, it’s the stuff that’s meh that is. Why do I always have to run the one shotgun variant that’s any good to feel in any way effective on the hardest difficulties? Why is the laser drone fantastic and the rifle drone abysmal? Why are some bombardments basically like tickling a boulder, while others obliterate the boulder and the whole mountain it was next to? The disparity between weapon and stratagem power levels is nuts, and, again, DRG nailed this area years ago with a much more interesting and balanced loadout system that lets you play whatever you like and it’ll be strong regardless, giving you all the room you want for self-expression.

What’s crazy is there’s other stuff I can rag on, like the fact the game pretends to have umpteen different planets, when actually there’re only like five base planets environments and the differences are all made up in colour scheme and skybox. Or that the developers picked one of the most questionable anti-cheat options on the market. Or that Sony tried to force a 3rd party account login after everyone had already paid and played for a month, which meant people had to sign up or stop playing because you were already long past the Steam refund window so didn’t get another choice (note: this decision was reversed after the playerbase kicked off, but it was scummy all the same).

Essentially, if you want a dumb action game with minimal depth and a development team that’s got a hit bigger than its knows what to do with on its hands, then go ahead and buy this. It’s honestly good fun, particularly with friends, and you’ll absolutely get your money’s worth before you reach boredom. But if you’re looking for a game to take for the long haul then Helldivers 2 just doesn’t have the chops. The long term gameplay is sorely lacking, and that’s a bad sign for a live service game.

For transparency’s sake I’m disclosing that I’ve been enjoying DRG Survivor a decent amount, and am almost certainly going to play a decent chunk of hours more than the 30 I’ve already played. However, I’m going to absolutely slate it in this review for its lack of design ambition, so, while you can certainly have fun with it, I think it’s got a long way to go (and it remains unclear if it’ll ever even get there) for it to be the kind of survivorlike game that you can sink an ungodly amount of time into.

It feels a bit "yeh durr?" to say this game's too much like original Deep Rock Galactic (DRG), like what exactly was I expecting other than that? But while Survivor beautifully emulates the DRG experience in its own survivorlike way, it still feels like it doesn't have anything of its own identity as a standalone game. It has all the quaint cosyness of DRG as you cheerfully (or frantically) chip your way through walls and minerals, brightly coloured rocks flying everywhere as you go, but that classic DRG cheeriness is the cover over the cheap knockoff vibe that pervades the rest of the game.

The survivorlike genre is known for its jazzy weapon designs, largely thanks to genre titan Vampire Survivors (VS), and given that this genre’s gameplay is so simplistic then you’ve got to get the weapons right because there’s not much else for the player to focus on while playing. Unfortunately, DRG’s armoury has been mimicked over as pale likenesses of their originals. Take the Gunner's autocannon for instance: in DRG it satisfyingly thuds out explosive tungsten rods that make these chunky booms on impact. Comparatively, Survivor’s version has an extremely basic .png standard bullet image representing its projectile. No explosion, no thuds, no booms. Similarly, the Scout's Zhukov and the Gunner's Burst Pistol look essentially identical when you fire them, save for the directions they fire in. Why not give one a tracer bullet effect to differentiate them? And then there’re the guns that don’t even behave like the ones they’re supposed to be replicating. The Driller’s Flamethrower and Corrosion Pump are both just rotating particle effects when, ironically, they were already perfectly viable designs from the original DRG that could’ve just been 1:1 copied over and would’ve been satisfyingly familiar while still fulfilling the interesting-to-use requirement of survivorlike gunplay.

I acknowledge that the source material (DRG Original) doesn’t focus on weapon effects much, but it’s like the developers haven’t even tried to have fun with the guns. You don’t have to go the way of Vampire Survivors (VS) and have every weapon behave like a firework of colour and light, but you’ve still got to give the guns some soul. I play survivorlikes to have my primate brain stimulated with flashing lights and poppity pings, and Survivor just isn’t serving those. Credit to the developers, the Voltaic Stun Sweeper is a great example of the kind of direction I’d like to see all the weapon design go in: good usage of effects and sparkle to give it its own zing, and interesting overclock options that really alter the feel of the weapon. More like this please!

Turning to build creativity in Survivor, I’ve always felt that Vampire Survivors nailed the weapon progression and build design ideas that made it the genre’s founding father. Take a weapon, give it a limited number of linear level progression, give it some crazy end evolution to make it feel powerful and nutty, watch the players pog off as the particle effects fly.

DRG Survivor has tried to take the direction I’ve seen some others go where you don’t get a set weapon path and instead you get to design your weapons as you go along. Conceptually, this has so many imaginative possibilities, but they end up maddeningly squandered in execution. Do I want +Damage or +Reload Speed? Do I want +Potency (whatever that is, there’s no tooltip for it in game) or +Fire Rate? I’m constantly flicking over to the weapon stats page to see if the reload speed stat has come down enough to justify stopping taking more reload speed reductions. It just isn’t as fun. What made build design work in VS is that you get a weapon that you know gets exponentially better with a given set of passives, then you find other things that also get utterly cracked with those same sets of passive, mix those actives and passives together and watch the mayhem unfold. It’s a simple system that offers you a sandbox of chaos that’s exquisitely rewarding to play in and almost never fails to deliver something interesting even if it doesn’t always meet the power requirements. DRG Survivor doesn’t have to be that, far from it, but at least make more overclocks that feel like they’re altering the way a given weapon plays in cool and unique ways.

Worst of all, Survivor’s lack of interesting weapon and build design is compounded with its other big problem: there’s waaaaaay too much grind. You do virtually identical runs for every little upgrade in this game: increasing weapon power, increasing class power, increasing map bonuses, special rule runs. Sure, some are shorter and some are longer, some you only get one weapon in, others you have to work around other restrictions, but you’ll be playing the exact same experience from the first mission you play all the way through with not a single iota of variety. Gameplay desperately needs more mission variety, enemy variety and build variety. Despite the grind, the developers have managed to make almost every run a challenge to complete – you never really feel like you’re walking over it when you’re playing on the right difficulty for your current progression – but you have to grind so many upgrades to ensure you’re able to keep up with the difficulty, and the one mission format the game offers just isn’t engaging enough to tolerate that grind.

Overall, as a spin-off, this was an opportunity to really showcase how the game could look different in this format. Worth noting that Survivor is being developed by a separate studio to DRG, and perhaps Ghost Ship Games (DRG's developers) are holding the reins a little tight on Funday (Survivor’s developers), but, at the moment, it feels like Survivor doesn’t have enough to say for itself other than being a spin-off. Maybe that’s fine, maybe it’s a money grab, but Ghost Ship have shown they value the player experience and I think it’s disappointing that their game world’s so half-heartedly realised in Survivor's vision.

Bleugh! Baited in by reviews that promised me CSD3 had learned from CSD2 and was more like CSD1, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Still sports a bloated menu of dishes, so many of which are indistinguishable from one another in terms of execution and soul. Once again, the mechanically interesting food prep of the first game has been disregarded in favour of manic mouse movements to cover whole ingredient lists as fast as you can. No chores for flavour. Foods all feel identical: they're either a simple fire-and-forget, or you have to painstakingly pick eight ingredients out from across multiple pages of options, and the recipe each time is wildly unpredictable.

There's just no soul or satisfaction in any of the cooking anymore. You're just manically fighting the queues, which don't trickle in so much as furiously pop up the second the previous order's cleared. Pretty much every complaint I had about CSD2 is still here. CSD1 has a great deal fewer foods, but with the benefit of each one feeling so much more interesting, soulful and (pun intended) flavourful.

On a more charitable note, there are one or two things I appreciated in this over CSD2. The campaign mode feels like an actual campaign, and the serving mode feels a little more streamlined. Menu selection does feel impactful, and switching up between failures will certainly improve your odds next time around. I also like the upgrade system for the van. I just sorely wish that the spirit of the game hadn't changed so much since CSD1.