Recent reviews by Magnum Fro

Late on May 3rd, the automaton-sympathisers at SNOY headquarters launched an attempted coup of Super Earth's government, cutting off Helldivers from across the galaxy.

A threat on our very home could not be ignored. For 48 hours, over 200,000 Helldivers swarmed in from across the galaxy to wage an all-out assault in the most democratic way possible: by casting their votes.

SNOY were no match for such a devastating onslaught of their ballot box. The conspirators were snuffed out by Monday morning.

Let this stand as a testament to the collective might of Helldivers united, and a warning to any automaton-sympathising corporations who might threaten Liberty again.

What a delightful little game!

This game is overflowing with comfy apocalyptic vibes. Enchanting visuals and a hypnotic soundtrack tell the story of Earth's downfall that is tragic, incisive and reflective, while still maintaining a healthy sprinkling of humour.

Gameplay couldn't be simpler. It's crazy golf on abandoned Earth. But the game's wacky course design presents fresh challenges every hole. Many of them have alternate routes or obscure shortcuts that reward you for experimenting and getting creative.

The game is a bit obscure mechanically, making each shot educated guesswork. It can get frustrating at some of the more inconvenient holes, but makes up for it with a very rewarding feeling when you pull off an unlikely trick shot.

There's love poured into every fibre of this game, and it shows. A QR code to download the soundtrack once you beat the game is the cherry on top.

As much as I want to recommend this DLC, I can't. So first, let me outline what I like about it:


The soundtrack - An incredible pulpy synth remix of the original UFO Defense soundtrack, and my new favourite of the series. Go have a listen (XCOM Legacy OST). The DLC might be worth it for that alone.

The maps - It's always nice to see Enemy Unknown maps remastered.

The concept - More story focused micro-campaigns with little cosmetic unlocks for completion.


Unfortunately, I have problems with the DLC's execution of its otherwise strong concept. Let's start with the most glaring problem

Mission Design
It's bad. These are bespoke, set missions, so replayability is low on this one. Even the pods are mostly static until you encounter them. This would be fine if the quality of the missions is high, but it's a step down from the rest of the game. Some of the work here is egregiously sloppy.

I want to call particular attention to 3-6, a protect the device mission that has a roaming gatekeeper nearby, a gatekeeper who likes to float over the device once encountered, crushing it and instantly failing the mission. What is pathfinding, anyway? The only reliable solution I found was to charge the device, popping every pod on the map just to draw Mr Gatekeeper in before he got close. Terrible design. It's the worst of the bunch, but while there are some enjoyable missions, I was left with my head in my hands wondering what the designers were thinking more often than not.

Progression
You have no control over who you take into missions or how they level. Again, this could be fine if handled well, but you are often left with poor, overlapping builds. I do not need a reaper with two scout rangers, thank you. You have some minor control over your items, but they are taken in packs after every mission, and are often side or even downgrades on your current setup. It's all very restrictive and, to be honest, redundant.

Continuity
The story tries to fill in the gaps between EU and 2. It somewhat succeeds, but only in a high-level summary sort of way. There's no attempt at canon here, with the crew fighting avatars with end-game setups before 2 chronologically starts. The problem is you don't learn much that wasn't evidently obvious anyway, so what was the point in telling the story? I feel it would have been stronger with a more focused approach. Either go all-in with a goofy story or more grounded gear/enemies and tell a more genuine story. As it stands, the current approach is a mess.

The Unlocks
They're okay, but superfluous. Aside from the attitudes, these are overshadowed by installing a few cosmetic mod packs, and you'll soon forget about them.

On sale, sure, get it for the soundtrack. It's a shame, because this is a neat idea that could have been a treat. But it's too unfocused, too scattered, too sloppy. Much of the playerbase received this for free, and honestly, it feels like a free release. I can't recommend paying for this, even at £6.49.

Chimera Squad is a tortured game, building off a strong core with some ambitious ideas, but falling short in its execution.


It's XCOM.

Soundtrack is great. A blend of bouncy and atmospheric techno that fits the aesthetic nicely.


Chimera Squad experiments with the XCOM formula in two main ways: a soldier-based turn order and a new breach mechanic. These are fine on the surface, but end up causing more problems than they solve.

Turn Order

The new initiative system is a downgrade from XCOM's traditional squad-based turn order. You have less options. The agency of single soldiers can't match the agency of a full squad. You usually only have one soldier acting before the enemy goes, which gives you significantly less options when dealing with situations.

In standard XCOM, target prioritisation is one of the most vital skills you have to learn. In Chimera Squad, that's mostly decided for you: it's who's attacking you next. Your capacity to combine abilities is limited because the agent you want to combo with might not act until 8 other people have gone first. You're also pigeon-holed in approaching situations. Success is based on how well you control this new turn system to your advantage. Previously, you could play both hyper-aggressively and methodically-defensive in missions. These are mostly thrown out now. Control the turn-order, or suffer. One-shot enemies who can be. Disable those who can't. It's very one-note.

This turn order also brings new issues. Missed shots, for instance. We all know the pain of missing a 99% shot. But in normal XCOM you can work around missed shots. You have 3-5 other soldiers who can adjust as your turn progresses. If you miss a shot here, you have no agency anymore. It's now their turn and you're getting shot at. By the time you gain control again you might already be in dire straits. What's worse, you have no control over where your soldiers start each encounter, and the game frequently puts your troops in flanked positions. Missed shots can be devastating here in a way that they never have been before, and it sucks that there's little to nothing you can do about it.

But the game knows this. Gone are troop deaths and mission failures. Now troops just have a chance to get a wound. Failed missions are restarted, even on ironman. They know you have less agency, and sometimes things will go wrong. But in taking away the tension, they've also taken away the highs of success, and the whole game feels flatter than its predecessors.

Breaching

Breaching is fine, but it's a shallow system that's overused.

There isn't much variety. You have a few items and abilities to use, but for something that you will do 1-3 times every mission it needs a lot more to mix up the formula. You'll soon settle into an optimal way of breaching and there's little impetus to break that up.

Like the new turn order, the breaching is restrictive. The priority target is any aggressive enemy that will shoot you. You have no control over your hit chance once you enter the room, and there's the aforementioned issue of the game putting your soldiers into flanked positions to start encounters. It's an okay system, but shouldn't be a system the game is built around.

That's to say nothing of usability issues with breaching. Example: camera angles are atrocious. Items like ceasefire bombs are unreliable because you often have no idea whose weapons have been disabled purely because the camera isn't even pointed at the room when the information is shown. Yeah, it needs work.

Length

Chimera Squad overstays its welcome. You see everything it has to offer in the first few hours and it does little to mix it up after that.

Mission and difficulty design are monotonous. Standard XCOM keeps the game fresh by continually introducing new enemies and offering a wide variety of mission types. Chimera Squad does neither. Well, that's not entirely fair. There are different mission types, but Chimera Squad's singular focus on controlling the turn order reduces them to afterthoughts. There are different enemy types, but they're broken into three blocks as you move between the enemy factions. The drip feed XCOM usually employs maintains fresh challenges. Here you only have 3 missions of learning new enemy types. The enemies aren't even drastically different. There's nothing like the reveal of the codex or faceless.

Difficulty design? Spam. It's enemy spam. Just about the only tool the game has to challenge you is to overload the turn order with enemies, then spam reinforcements at you. It's a cheap, frustrating difficulty that tires quickly. Example: One mission sees you face a wave of ronin reinforcements. Now, ronin have lightning reflexes. So these dudes ran in, evaded all my overwatch fire, jumped to the top of the turn order, immediately buffed and hit my troops. And all I could do was watch.

Yet it still ends up being easier than older games. Remember when I said this game lacks tension? Just try the campaign. My City Anarchy never got past 1.

Writing

Chimera Squad's new set characters should've allowed the writing to reach new heights, but it misses the mark too.

Take the story. You're investigating three rogue factions for a crime. Turns out, they're all innocent. None of them did it. The game tries to salvage this at the end, but there's no shaking the feeling that you slogged through this for no in-universe reason. You finish the game knowing nothing about the true antagonist because they get about three sentences of screen time. You don't even investigate them like the decoy factions.

Speaking of the investigations, the story is mechanically disconnected from the gameplay. XCOM usually asks you to take an active part in pushing the story forward. Research a tech, capture an alien, raid a blacksite, etc. Chimera Squad consists of cookie-cutter missions and the story is summarised to you in a sentence or two every few hours. We learnt a new thing! How did we learn it? Who knows?! In the tutorial, you're told that XCOM has lost its way. It's the most apt line in the whole game.

Even character banter is bland. It leans on easy humour ("X has an Australian accent! Haha! How quirky!"). Characters aren't given the screen time to develop. There are a few gems. Axiom talks about mutons going on spiritual pilgrimmages to their spaceships, but XCOM destroyed his. This is great! How does he feel about this? Will it come up again later? No, and no. Cherub interrupts the story to mention that he shares his clone ancestry with a big bad. Cool! How do his squadmates feel about this? Will it be addressed later? No, and no again. It's heartbreaking seeing these gems get dangled in front of you only to see them abandoned for cheesy, meaningless jokes.

Performance/General Issues

An update completely broke the game for me. It was weeks before I could launch again. I've encountered incorrect abilities being used, abilities not activating, camera and physics issues, among more. Ironman was a battle with bugs more than the enemies.

Ability tooltips are ambiguous or just incorrect. Agent abilities are wildly imbalanced. It's stingy with useful information. Case in point: Torque's second level bind ability is described as "Bind does more damage." How much more? Bind's a 2 damage ability. So +1? +2? Game doesn't say. It's +3, a 150% increase. It's her strongest skill, and the game just doesn't give you the pertinent information. Yet the alternate ability you can choose instead specifically tells you what it does in clear numbers. It's a mess.


I can't recommend this. I hope it's a valuable experiment for the series, but it falls short too often. New players looking for an introductory XCOM? Play Enemy Unknown. Want the best XCOM? Play XCOM 2. Chimera Squad will be here when you've sucked them dry and want more, hopefully at a discounted price.

Orwell puts you in the shoes of an investigator working for a police state. The goal is to identify and build a case against suspected terrorists using both publicly available and personal/confidential information. Information you upload enables access to further sources. Uploading mention of a notable injury will unlock access to the person's medical records; finding a phone number or email lets you spy in on their correspondence etc.

But information you upload could be incorrect, or misinterpreted/twisted to suit the government's agenda. How far will you go? Who will you condemn?


This core is compelling and unique enough to carry the game through to its conclusion. The comparisons to Papers Please are obvious, but Orwell is far more expansive. Where Papers Please created tension by pitting you against a time limit, Orwell creates a complex, intriguing and politically relevant narrative where you never truly know who is or isn't guilty. It is hard to discuss in detail without spoiling, but the story is full of twists and turns and finds a way to successfully play out dramatic scenes that you experience from behind the safety of your computer screen and the shield of Orwell.

The soundtrack compliments the game nicely, and is used effectively to punctuate important revelations in the story.

It's entirely text-based, and game length depends entirely on your reading speed and habits. Speed-reading and scanning for pertinent information (which the game highlights for you) can shorten the game to 3-4 hours. A more thorough and careful reading, especially if read aloud, can extend your playtime to 8 hours. The game will be a one-time experience for most players, but the game lets you play each episode individually once cleared, and there's enough agency in what optional & conflicting information you upload that replayability is there for those that want it.


The game has enough flaws to feel like it wasn't thoroughly tested.

Conflicting information is highlighted in yellow, rather than blue. You can only upload one of these, so the game highlights conflicting information before you've identified what it conflicts with. This is both a minor spoiler and very awkward, and could have easily been handled better.

It's easy to get overwhelmed with information. The game highlights sources with new information for you, but distinguishing between what is optional and mandatory to upload is not obvious. Perhaps this is intentional, but it is too easy to be stuck in a deadlock with 30 possible sources to go through trying to find the one piece of mandatory information you refrained from uploading the first time. An additional icon highlighting old sources with uploadable information would have made this much less tedious.

Spying in on peoples phone conversations happens in real time. This has a wonderful voyeuristic feel to it, but the conversations progress far too fast to read aloud at a comfortable speaking pace. This would be fine if they didn't contain time-sensitive information that needs to be uploaded during the conversation itself. Anyone streaming this or reading aloud to themselves will be caught in the awkward spot of either missing the window to upload information, or have to voice act far too fast for the conversation to sound natural.

Finally, the writing itself is simply poor. I wonder if it was written by a native English speaker or a trained writer. The grammar is awkward, misleading or just incorrect far too often, and this does detract from the otherwise believable world and engaging story the game creates. Simple proof-reading would have solved this.

None of these are game-breaking or significantly ruin the game, but all are so needless, so simply and easily solved that their inclusions are frustrating.


If you liked Papers Please, find the theme compelling or want a unique text-based game, you'll enjoy this. It comes with too many niggling issues to recommend at full price, but with a small discount this will be a worthwhile experience that will stay with you for years to come.

Stories Untold is an experimental game that mostly succeeds.

Focusing on atmospheric horror, you'll find yourself genuinely unnerved as the mystery unfolds around you. Jump scares are used very sparingly, and always subtly and respectfully. Locking your perspective to a limited view in front of you forces the game to focus on audio and lighting cues to unsettle you, so I heavily recommend playing with headphones in a dark room. Hearing things happen around me and being unable to look around was a great move. I often felt the need to look behind me in real life to calm those nerves. Without spoiling, these kind of scares can only be executed in a video game. To me, this is horror done right.

The gameplay can be frustrating at first, especially if you're new to text-based adventure games. The only tutorial offered at the start is a line of text in the loading screen that can be easily missed. Acceptable text responses themselves are fairly limited, and the game sometimes completely misunderstood my inputs to do the opposite of what I wanted. Once you get a hang on the game's internal logic, though, gameplay flows at a nice pace.

Puzzles between each of the stories are varied. You'll interact with hospital/scientific equipment, radios and occasionally walk around (though this comes with frame rate issues), keeping the text-based gameplay from feeling stale. Puzzles themselves mostly involve following instructions. While not being challenging, they do force you to consider your actions and take in the horror.

At some point, the horror gave way to the intrigue of the story. You can figure 90% of it out by the second story if you're paying attention, but the game continues to drip feed interesting revelations up to the 4th story, where everything ties together in a satisfying way. While short (~4 hours), it's complete and doesn't overstay its welcome. I'd recommend setting aside an evening to play it through in one sitting for the best experience.

The game is priced fairly. If you're interested enough to read this, you should have a good time. If you have reservations, there's no harm in waiting for a 50% sale when its flaws will be much more forgivable.

Few games indie games give me as much to think about as DarkMaus. It's an interesting mixed bag of goodies that both delight and frustrate you with every bite.

At its most basic, DarkMaus is top-down Dark Souls with a minimalist aesthetic reminiscent of Limbo. It's visually humble and charming, and combat adheres to the same rules that made Dark Souls a success. It's slow paced, dangerous and cerebral, forcing you to carefully consider and commit to actions. Using the shadows as blind spots keeps exploration tense as you turn every corner, and the game teases and rewards observant players with clever little reveals. DarkMaus felt more like my first playthrough of Souls than any other imitator has before it.

Thay said, the game is full of small but frustrating issues. Bosses were underwhelming. The final boss, one of the most powerful beings in existence, would be a pushover if it weren't for his adds. The UI could use work. Scrolling through your inventory is a chore, and why on earth is the B button - which functions as 'cancel' in every other menu - the 'confirm' button in the level-up screen?

The art design has the unfortunate side-effect of making areas feel indistinct and hard to remember, forcing the inclusion of a map. This leads to a lot of glancing back and forth as you try to backtrack to that alternate path you bypassed. I also noticed a few fairly severe and random frame drops and freezes.

The game's greatest sin, however, is the Death Echo system, DarkMaus' unique feature. The ability to bring multiple ally ghosts with you raises a lot of balancing concerns that failed to be addressed. Individual enemies become trivial when you can team up on them, so the game balances this by filling rooms with multiple enemies and projectiles which can be insufferably irritating when solo. Ally ghosts will damage you with AOE fire spells and run ahead to aggro large groups of enemies you weren't intending/ready to fight. They often become more of a hassle than they're worth.

But for all these issues, DarkMaus impresses in something else. The level design is intricate, varied, and hides lots of secrets in its pockets. There's a deep roster of weapons (19) for a 5-6 hour experience. Enemy AI is surprisingly reactive to you. I had enemies react to being repeatedly parried by abandoning that attack, leaping backwards when I pulled out a ranged weapon, and turtling when I relied on counter attacks. And there seems to be 2-3 different ways you can play out the NPC quests, giving a sense of agency I didn't expect to have in a game like this.

Ultimately, if you like Souls, DarkMaus is worth a try. There's enough here to bring me back for another run, and that earns a recommendation from me.