Vampyr is an intriguing if unpolished vampire RPG where the primary draw is building relationships with the many citizens (there are over 60) of London, before deciding whether you want to murder them and drink their blood for XP. All against the backdrop of the flu-ridden England of 1918 (a very cool setting that unfortunately gets a bit fatiguing, considering 3 out of 4 regions in the game are slums with few distinguishing characteristics).

Alas, it’s a cool concept that doesn’t really mesh with the storyline. In fact, the story ended up being my main problem with this game - it’s a clunky and generic tale of ancient evil and tainted blood (vampire story staples) that features a romance subplot which is very tacked-on and out of left field. Interacting with the citizens almost seems like it is part of a different game, so little does it have to do with overarching plot. Which is too bad, because interacting with the citizens is a lot of fun. You can use a variety of means to find out their backstories, which are occasionally rote but more frequently are pleasantly surprising. Almost all of the quality storytelling in this game is in the character work, not the main storyline. And the mechanic of having to choose whether you will get more powerful by killing off citizens or try to help stabilize the city by healing the sick is a fantastic role playing concept.

The last major element of the gameplay is the combat, a very light take on the standard Souls style that has a rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. I actually rather liked the way it felt, however. The main issue for me ended up being fatigue due to a lack of enemy variety. You spend most of the game fighting feral quasi-vampires called Skals or standard human guards. They are a few variants of each, but I felt like I had seen all the game had to offer enemy-wise from a very early point.

On the whole, this is a very flawed game that is built on some very interesting ideas. A more refined follow-up would have the potential for greatness.

Mechanically competent, I'm keen on the Skate-like control scheme making shots more difficult to accurately pull off than the simple stop-and-start QTE that most other golf games roll with. Thing is, in a game this utterly bereft of personality, style, and overall gamemode variety, I somewhat expected it to act as more of a core golfing sim than it really is. It somewhat expounds the little grievances that creep up, like swinging fast causing a left hook, and the slow downswing a rightward slice - which just makes no sense, and the input method is too inconsistent for its bizarre punishments to feel fair.
Begging the PC to get a good golf game, i can't live off this saltine flavored pish forever.

I've been playing since the EA Play trial launched yesterday and continued playing most of today with early access from the Gold Edition. Some things DICE removed and why it's bad they're gone:

•Scoreboard gone (no way to see how you or your squad are doing relative to the team anymore)
•Server browser gone (literally no way to select a specific map you want to play on)
•Lobby disbands after EVERY match (you have to re-queue after every single match)
•All chat gone (no way to joke about dumb "Battlefield Moments" that DICE wants to sell the game on)
•Inactive squad leader demotion gone (if your squad lead never picks an objective, you can't get rid of them all game)
•Squad spawn cam gone (You just spawn onto squadmates with zero idea of what they're doing or what they're near)
•Squad swapping gone (you can choose to leave your squad, but it ejects you into a random empty one. Not that you would be able to choose a "good" squad anyways since there is no scoreboard to know who is "good")
•Medic distance indicator for downed players gone (As a medic player, this leads to many of my potential revives just killing themselves because they don't see how close I am)

Besides things removed, there's a million little buggy or glitchy things that I don't want to bother listing in detail. Respawn bugs where you can't get revived, a respawn bug where you can't get revived AND can't redeploy (so you have to quit), laggy hitreg, server overloads for hours, etc.

As well as other baffling things like mixing input methods for crossplay, the low amount of guns that are obviously artificially low because they want to sell battle pass stuff, Hazard Zone being obviously Firestorm 2.0 that will be dead in a week, maps that are almost too big so they become sniping paradises, etc.

But even for all those issues, I don't think this game is impossible to salvage, just like I didn't think BFV was impossible to salvage.

But here's what's going to happen. They're going to spend the next two years fixing BF2042. They'll fix some things perfectly, the suits will make them add some awful things a few times. Sometimes the backlash will force them to remove the new things, sometimes they'll leave them too long and piss people off. But in about a year to a year and a half, people will agree that BF2042 is actually pretty solid now! But then one day soon after, we'll wake up to the news BF2042 will be sunsetted, the content stream will die up and the next Battlefield is going to be announced. And then when the next one comes out, guess what happens? They'll remove all the improvements that they worked so hard on in BF2042 and start all over again.

Because for some reason, DICE is committed to becoming the embodiment of collective amnesia and "two steps forward, ten steps back."

Which is exactly what happened with BFV. They spent months and months working on that game, they finally made it really decent by the time the Pacific maps came out, then they killed their momentum with their TTK changes, and the game died. And now all the improvements and fixes they added to BFV aren't in BF2042. I don't understand how any company could be so committed to continually moving backwards like this.

Into the Pit is a roguelike FPS, but is a very shallow and surprisingly easy experience. I went through about 4 runs, successful every time, without dying and didn't see much variation in how things play out in terms of character build or the dungeons themselves.

Into the Pit looks very stylish. It has a pixelated, neon aesthetic that makes everything look oily and creepy and is very effective for the vibe they are going for.

Into the Pit also plays very well. It is fast-paced and it feels good to use the weapons, dash around the arenas, and kill enemies. It doesn't quite improve on the mechanics from there, and it doesn't do much to mix up the gameplay, unfortunately. The weapons are also all very similar, which makes the starting situation for any run basically the same.

The roguelike elements don't really introduce enough variance in a run, mostly being percentage improvements or minor changes to damage taken. They don't change your run or how you play your character.

Into the Pit is very good for the first run, but hits a brick wall very soon after that. Given more dynamic roguelike elements, better dungeon generation, and better advancement mechanics this would be a really cool game. As is, I can't find much to recommend here.

Into the Pit is a throwback FPS style rogue-lite with clear inspiration taken from Doom, Bloodborne, and the string of wildly popular rogue-lites seen over the past decade, such as the Binding of Isaac and Hades.

I had originally played the demo for Into the Pit during Steam’s Next Fest indie games showcase, and I really enjoyed what they had to show off. The actual moment to moment gameplay and shooting in Into the Pit feels really good. I love the low poly aesthetic and PS1-inspired lighting, giving me Dusk and Cultic vibes. That is about all I have to say positively about the game.

In absolutely stunning move, Into the Pit is a rogue-lite without random level generation. There are about two dozen (if even) level layouts that you will encounter over and over again. These levels are incredibly small and all of them can be completed without rushing in about two minutes. Despite the small amount of levels, they still manage to feel robotically crafted with minor variation.

In addition, thought the game features a handful of uniquely designed dungeons, each with its own theme (swamp, forest, etc), it is genuinely difficult to tell the difference between them. The player must complete four levels per floor, and each dungeon has four floors in addition to a boss fight at the end. No matter what dungeon the player chooses to venture into, this layout will be identical on every single playthrough. Floors 1 and 3 will feature a room that heals you, and floors 2 and 4 will feature a room where you can rescue a villager, one of the game’s collectables that unlock more shops in your home base. This completely gets rid of any and all surprise on repeated playthroughs, another huge negative when it comes to rogue-lites.

The game’s weapons, spells that fit comfortably into traditional FPS weapons (shotgun, sniper rifle, etc), honestly all feel really nice to shoot and enemies gib into satisfying chunks. However, the game’s upgrades, earned by completing a level, are incredibly boring and unimaginative. Passive damage % upgrades are not fun or interesting to collect, and they consist of nearly all of them. In addition to the monotonous level design, these also contribute to basically every single run feeling identical.

I think it’s a shame, honestly. They have a really solid foundation here when it comes to gunplay and aesthetics. Without a massive overhaul that I suppose could come in the form of free updates or paid expansions, there is essentially no added value in playing past the free demo.

AAA video game maximalism in its most joyous form, Forza Horizon 5 is simply about how cool and fun it is to drive cars. Fast cars, big cars, stupid cars... as long as you're driving them somewhere interesting. Mexico is a much better locale than the United Kingdom but I will admit that I'm mixed on the idea of ripping my baja truck through some ruins. I'll just baja somewhere else.

I look at the map in this thing and see an absurd, frankly sickening amount of open world icons. The kind that annoy me in most other games, but Forza Horizon 5 makes me a hypocrite. It's just too much fun to drive. Everything handles so well. Especially my darling 90s Toyota Baja Truck.

Probably the only game of its kind, very online and player-retention obsessed, that will actually retain me. I did spend 100 dollars to play it early after all. Might as well spend time with it in between other games for the next year or two. You made me a sucker, Playground Games.

"Imagine choosing what I want to be?"

Open worlds are consistently constructed with power fantasies in mind, so to take this genre — that excels when you're adrift, guideless, confronted with daunting expanses of a world unknown and the frightening amount of options that comes with that — and frame it as an introspective coming of age story feels revelatory despite being the most fitting narrative choice to make with that mechanical foundation.

And, yeah, the game takes a lot from the Breath of the Wild school of design, but it a has a deep understanding of what made that great (it guides you almost entirely by landmarks silhouetting the horizon; is confident on its vistas and history as a reward in itself; understands the value of empty areas as negative spaces; and never center stages repeated activities), so it can stripe away core aspects of that formula and not only make it work, but find its own essence.