Woof. From a design and gameplay standpoint, what we have here is a betrayal of nearly everything that was great about the first two Bioshock games. What makes this game truly execrable, though, is its politics, which only appear worse in the post-Trump nightmare zone that is the USA in 2021.

I admit to being befuddled by the praise this game received as a gameplay experience, because it seems to me that it’s a pale shadow of what came before. One really obvious change is that there are basically no longer any true immersive sim elements here. The first two Bioshocks were really only loosely connected to that tradition, but those connections were what made Rapture feel like an actual place. All of that’s gone here. Columbia looks great at first, sure, but we’re missing so much about how it actually functions as a city. Remember how the tonics you found in the first two Bioshocks actually helped flesh out the world and told you something about how people lived in Rapture (in addition to allowing for a multitude of builds)? Remember how the audio diaries told short stories about the areas you were exploring and actually were placed in logical spaces (in Infinite, by contrast, you will find recordings of Comstock discussing his evil plans in a drawer in someone’s random apartment)? Pretty much all of that is tossed out the window in this game, for reasons that I can’t begin to fathom. What we’re left with is simply an extended corridor shooter with bullet sponge enemies in a setting that looks cool but never feels alive and coherent in the same way Rapture did.

How did this happen? My honest guess, based on what came out about this game’s troubled development, is that the devs spent a chunk of their time building Columbia as a fully developed, immersive sim-style successor to Rapture, but then switched focus midway through to incorporate the many-worlds plot. If so, the end result is that neither element reaches its potential. I like Elizabeth well enough both as a character and as a gameplay feature, and some of the more mind-bending aspects of the alternate realities plot are admittedly rather clever. But on the other hand, there are a lot of things about the many-worlds aspect of the story that straight-up make zero sense (indeed, considering her vast powers, it seems like Elizabeth could’ve skipped Booker past a lot of this trouble).

All of these issues pale in comparison to the repulsive and cynical handling of the political issues in this game. This is a game that shamelessly exploits the historical trauma of minority groups in America for cheap shock value…and that’s just in the first 15 minutes. In a grotesque display of cynicism, this is a game which suggests that exploited minority groups suffering under the yoke of a cabal of racist ultra-nationalists would be just as bad as their oppressors if they were in power. Seriously, it’s mealy-mouthed, ‘both sides’ centrism at its very worst.

As an avid fan of the series, I had high expectations for Infinite. Alas, it completely falls flat for me, both as a sequel and on its own terms.

Here’s a deeply strange and mostly unnecessary quasi-sequel to an already flawed game that feels like a botched attempt by the devs at Remedy to wrestle with some conflicted feelings they have about this franchise. For instance, this game feels like at least a partial acknowledgement that original Alan Wake functioned a whole lot better as B-movie schlock than as high-minded psychological horror. But the attempt at a goofier, Twilight Zone-style tonal shift never really lands here, largely because, in both gameplay and narrative, we’re still operating with same old Alan Wake toolbox - gun, flashlight, lots of Taken, and way too much of Alan’s interminable soliloquizing.

First question: Why are the Taken even in this game? It makes zero sense, from a narrative perspective. Worse, from a gameplay perspective, it’s indicative of creative paralysis. Even with some new versions of the Taken (the ones that split in two when exposed to light are a lot of fun), the lack of enemy variety in this franchise continues to blow my mind.

Then there’s Alan, whose writing has somehow become even more pretentious since the original game. Any of the appeal of picking up manuscripts in the original is replaced here with dread - the passages are longer and more ‘philosophical’, even when they are merely lazy exposition dumps intended for people who never played the original. Then there’s the fact that, as with the original, Alan is once again writing the story we are playing through (one of the funniest possible reads of this game is that it’s Remedy’s tacit acknowledgement, finally, that Alan is a terrible writer). Most of the story beats here range from very boring (all of the fetch quests and repetition) to gross (the reliance on women as damsels in distress) to hilariously dated (a mid-2000s one hit wonder playing a key role in rewriting reality). In short, this really does feel like a story Alan Wake would write, which makes this either an extremely narrow satire or one of the least self-aware games I’ve ever played.

I actually prefer the the gun and flashlight combat in this game over the original, for the simple reason that there are more varied guns available. I enjoyed heedlessly mowing down hordes of Taken with an assault rifle or an uzi compared to the more resource-dependent combat of the main game. And therein likely lies the secret of why this is such a limp narrative experience - the real creative muscle here was deployed toward the arcade mode, toward expanding on Alan Wake’s gameplay rather than its narrative. Which is fine, I suppose. But it’s just not why I play these games.

It's hard to know to where to start on this one. Elden Ring put me in a three-month-long hole where it was effectively the only piece of media that I consumed or thought about. It only took me about 10-15 hours of play to realize that I was experiencing one of my all-time favorite games. The game spent the remaining 100 or so hours inflicting the Stockholm Syndrome on my critical faculties, so that I started to savor even its most obnoxious (Hero's graves, the Shunning-Grounds) and bland (most caves) elements. Indeed, Elden Ring isn't flawless, but with just an absurd amount of engaging things to see and do and manifold options for building out a character and playstyle, the sheer sense of scale and largesse tends to drown out all but the most egregious flaws. This is a game where the player almost always has innumerable options to pursue the moment their present task becomes the least bit tiresome. Elden Ring doesn't merely resist criticism; it steamrolls it with a wave of nigh-endless choice.

Truthfully, most everything else here is just what we have come to expect from FromSoft at this point. Did anyone really think that this game wasn't going to have dense and layered level design, evocative set pieces, or haunting atmospherics? From Software has been churning this stuff out since Demon's Souls. Their reputation as the best in the business in this regard is well-earned and almost irreproachable, so it's no surprise that Elden Ring continues this streak of excellence.

There are a few refreshing course changes here, though. Count me among the group that thinks that the inclusion of George R.R. Martin was an important boon for this game's narrative. After the dumpster fire of knowing winks and tired retreads that stood in for a narrative in Dark Souls III, From had already started to shift in a more direct and less nebulous direction with Sekiro. Here, the story hits a satisfying balance: there's a lot more exposition than in any Souls game, but there is still room for the ambiguity and oblique inferencing that lore divers eat up. I hadn't felt this engaged by a FromSoft game's narrative since Bloodborne.

More surprising is the turn toward increased accessibility, as From had seemed to be moving in the opposite direction prior to Elden Ring. Bloodborne and (especially) Sekiro are both fairly prescriptive in terms of assigning a quasi-mandatory playstyle (i.e. melee). So I was floored to see that Elden Ring goes so strongly in the opposite direction. Shields work now. Summons are plentiful. Magic is once again a bit overpowered. None of these changes really affected my first playthrough (power-stance twinblades), but their inclusion and viability make me excited to replay this when the inevitable DLC hits down the road.

This game has been talked to death, so I won't go on longer beyond saying that this felt like an apotheosis of the path From Software has been on for the past decade plus. It's a rare and special experience that left me wanting more of what these devs are selling - it might even be the game that finally forces me to overcome my prejudice against mechs and try out Armored Core...

I tried on this one, I really did. This is a narrative-based game that largely fell flat for me, despite including a few elements that I normally enjoy. There are some important and relevant themes at work here: the decline of the American working class, suburban malaise, post-college ennui, etc. But the storytelling and mechanics surrounding these themes are frequently misguided in a way that dampened the entire experience.

The number one problem for me was my inability to connect with the protagonist. I get it, Mae is intended to be self-destructive and a bit vain. I just was missing the elements of the story that are supposed to make me feel any sympathy for her. Indeed, I think there were a number of times in the story when the developers were expecting me to feel something positive about Mae, and it just never landed. On the contrary, there were a few times in the story where Mae struck me as a toxic asshole more than anything (see: the scene where Mae and Bea go to the college bar in the city). I’ll readily admit that this objection is subjective, and clearly a lot of players empathized with Mae. She just didn’t work for me as a character, which really harmed my overall level of investment in the narrative.

What I think is less debatable (and more detrimental to the quality of the game) is that slow-as-molasses pacing and a dire lack of interesting gameplay mechanics are not part of a great recipe for success. The sense of not having anything to do is part of the story’s ethos, sure, but it’s a tough concept to sustain over an 8-10 hour game. There’s just not enough going on in the plot to justify the length of the game, so we just end up with a lot of dead time before anything occurs that’s actually relevant to the overall story. The developers clearly hoped that players would be willing to dawdle about and soak in the world they created, but the mechanical incentives for doing so just didn’t do it for me. There are a few mildly diverting minigames here, but otherwise there is very little going on gameplay-wise. I suppose that there’s technically platforming, but it’s perfunctory and thoroughly unnecessary. This ultimately ends up functioning as a walking simulator (which is fine) that has a few half-hearted attempts at adding actual gameplay (not so fine).

There are a few scenes in Night in the Woods that stuck with me. The relationship between Mae and her parents, for instance, is genuinely sweet and affecting. And bizarre cults are a trope that I will be always be down for. It’s just ended up being an hour or two of worthwhile content in a ten hour game that I otherwise found pretty boring.

A flawed masterpiece. Dark Souls changed gaming - its deep and abiding respect for the player is oftentimes conflated with its infamous difficulty in a way that is extremely unfortunate. What is really revolutionary about Dark Souls is the degree of trust it bestows on the player. The game trusts you to intelligently experiment with its myriad character builds and weapons. The game trusts you to navigate its expertly designed world without the aid of a map. The game trusts you to learn the patterns of the enemies and use those lessons to overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable at first glance. In many ways, what makes Dark Souls so special is simple: it is an action game that assumes the player is an intelligent human being with a decent attention span rather than a dimwit constantly seeking instant gratification. It seems so obvious, but it’s hard to overstate how much of a sea change this was - the action genre before Dark Souls was dominated by simplistic games that spent their entire runtimes content to dangle a carrot on a stick in front of the player’s eyes.

The first half of Dark Souls is quite possibly the most satisfying gaming experience I’ve ever had. The common criticism, which is that game’s quality declines after the midway point, is accurate, which is why I refer to this as a flawed masterpiece. But make no mistake, this is a very great game - both for its joy as a play experience and for its impact on a wide variety of future games.

The ultimate critic-proof game. The first few worlds of this genre-defining game are fun in spite of being straightforward and simple to a degree that doesn’t really fly in 2021. The last few worlds feel especially clunky, with overly precise platforming demands and poorly signaled navigation puzzles. Mario’s slipperiness in this game is a such a polarizing element for me. It goes beyond encouraging to flatly demanding near-constant forward movement. This contributes to the fun of the first few levels, but basically precludes the type of precision they expect in the platforming of the last 2-3 worlds. So what is smooth and rhythmic in worlds 1-4, becomes rather clunky and disjointed in worlds 5-8 (or maybe I am just bad). A harbinger of better things to come, but the original ‘run and jump’ retains a raw, elemental charm.

For the first few hours of the original Zelda, it's quite easy to see how exhilarating this must have been for those playing on the NES in 1986. The game is brilliantly forthright in its emphasis on player choice and the freedom to explore - famously, the game's first screen abruptly presents the player with four routes to choose from, with a liberating lack of guidance on which option is 'correct.' The first few hours build a satisfying loop of exploring for dungeons, collecting key items, and engaging in some serviceable if basic hack-n-slash combat.

Alas, the back half of the game engages with a lot of cumbersome NES-era design concepts that render this a rather fatiguing experience that is probably best played with save states and a guide in 2023. The game's emphasis on secrets, so effective in the early hours when the riddles are logical and the hidden areas are well-telegraphed, becomes a true drag when it becomes about bombing or burning random sprites on each screen. This wouldn't be such a big deal if one could just ignore these, but the hidden rupee stashes are effectively necessary for acquiring some of the high-level treasures (some which are obtusely concealed in their own right) that make the late-game dungeons feel doable. Which brings us to the other major issue: the last few dungeons are interminable slogs, replete with dead ends, confusing pathways, and enemies that range from tedious (Darknuts) to cheap (god, I hate Wizzrobes in this game).

A lot of these issues, of course, were effectively a fait accompli given the technical limitations of the NES and comparatively primitive design trends of the time. Despite being a flawed gameplay experience in 2023, the original Zelda deserves to celebrated as the progenitor of a design premise that served as a baseline for some of the greatest games of all time (including, not incidentally, Breath of the Wild).

Naughty Dog, probably more than any other game developer of the last generation, is most responsible for an unfortunate trend in games discourse that confuses polish for inspiration. Obviously, A Thief’s End looks excellent, with gameplay and cutscenes that seem closer to the level of photorealism than any other game I’ve played. And yes, the story (notwithstanding the pacing issues - the game definitely could’ve stood to trim some fat from the middle act in particular) and characters are well-written and superbly voice acted. And, unlike the earlier Uncharted games, this packs a genuine emotional wallop, particularly in the superb epilogue.

What about the things that make this a game, though? I would argue that Naughty Dog clearly failed to put the same degree of thought and care into the gameplay. It still runs into so many of issues that plagued the first three games. The shooting is pedestrian, with little to differentiate it from an untold number of mediocre third person shooters that have been relegated to the dustbin of history. Same goes for the stealth, which is much more of an emphasis here than in previous games. It’s just same thing you’ve done in a thousand other games: sneaking around in tall grass, choking enemies out from behind, etc. As for the climbing and navigation, it’s very similar to previous Uncharted titles - Nathan Drake does cool-looking shit as the player idly sits by, tapping the same button over and over again.

This’ll sound harsh, so I want return to the fact that I enjoyed my time with this game - the story and characters had their hooks in me from the beginning until the bittersweet end. But, a few days after I finished this, I distinctly remember asking myself to name just one single gameplay innovation in Uncharted 4, and I simply couldn’t do it (some people have mentioned the increased openness of the level design, and while that’s definitely an improvement on the previous games, it just doesn’t qualify as an innovation for me when other games have included open level design for years before this). That lack of innovation is simply unacceptable for a company with the resources and prestige of Naughty Dog (if they are going to be this lazy with their gameplay but so thoughtful about writing and presentation, they should really just become a movie studio). I liked Uncharted 4 - and other Naughty Dog titles likes The Last of Us - but I don’t much care for what their massive success and influence has meant for the discourse around AAA games of the past decade.

A lot of potential here, weighed down by a few glaring missteps. Respawn should be applauded for creating a single-player Star Wars game that is rigorous and challenging while also largely avoiding the stench of an EA-style microtransaction nightmare. Respawn’s specialty - satisfying movement mechanics that make the traversal of the game world a consistent joy - is on full display here. There are only a few Metroidvania-style movement upgrades to track down, but each of them adds a really dynamic new element to the platforming, which ensures that the traversal remains fresh and enjoyable throughout. I’m a bit more ambivalent on the combat, which apes a number of features from Dark Souls and Sekiro. Fighting enemies one-on-one is generally quite fun, and nailing a perfectly timed parry is always satisfying. Unfortunately, fighting anything one-on-one is pretty rare - this game loves to throw you into fights with large mobs of weak enemies. Consequently, I ended up spending a lot of time in hit-and-run mode. While this hectic style can have its own pleasures, I don’t think that the encounter design does the game any favors by de-emphasizing one-on-one duels. The other thing that threw me off with the combat was the ability of some enemies to poise through almost anything - as a long-time Souls player, it was disconcerting to see even basic enemies experience zero physical reaction to being hit. I got used to it after awhile, but it contributed to a sense of fiddliness in some fights. A bit more weightiness and feedback would have suited my taste. Still, despite not reaching its peak potential, the combat is never less than serviceable, and it occasionally succeeds in being more than that.

One of the main flaws with this game is quite obvious (which also means it’s eminently fixable in a potential sequel). For a game that heavily encourages the exploration of optional areas, there’s just not enough cool stuff to find. There are a number of navigation puzzles and backtracking opportunities scattered throughout the different planets the player visits, but it is very rare to find any worthwhile while completing them. Occasionally, you will find something moderately empowering like additional heals or a boost to your HP or Force meter. But usually the only reward is a cosmetic item (sorry, you’ll just never convince me to care what color Cal’s poncho is) or a piece of random lore that is completely disconnected from the plot. It’s hard to overstate how powerfully disappointing it is to explore a hidden nook, only to be rewarded with something that has almost zero effect on your character’s abilities or the overarching narrative. Seriously, it got to the point where I was avoiding chests like the plague. Again, this is easily fixable - maybe replace the perfunctory skill tree with more optional upgrades that you can find out in the world? That’s just one possibility, but really anything would be better than what they tried in this game. Respawn - your developers did sterling work in creating these layered and detailed levels with tons of optional areas - now just give me a reason to actually go to these places!

The other problem with this game isn’t as easily rectified. In fact, I hesitate to even hold this against the developers. But the dull, poorly paced narrative of this game, especially in the first half, is essentially Star Wars mad libs. The junkyard-chic aesthetic of the series’s interiors also actively detracts from what is otherwise a pretty attractive game (as long as you’re outdoors). Obviously, EA never would have bankrolled a game like this without the Star Wars brand attached, but the weight and expectations that come along with the series don’t translate into a richer narrative experience, at least not until the story picks up a bit in the second half.

As with most of Respawn’s games, this really sings on a moment-to-moment basis. Only on reflection do the cracks really start to show. Still, the problems here are really more in the finer details rather than the core gameplay, and I would play the hell out of a sequel that has some of the edges sanded down.

Seemingly a simple game with limited scope that really sneaks up on you with its unique ability to repeatedly make you feel like a complete monster. This is a ‘message game’ par excellence, one that expertly manipulates the player into making heinous moral choices with the mere ‘ka-chunk’ of a customs stamp. You play as a border official in a fictionalized totalitarian state, navigating an ever-growing list of arcane rules as you attempt to correctly process heaps of paperwork. Mixing scripted events with procedurally generated border crossings, the moment-to-moment play is focused on management of the cluttered desk on which you have to shuffle about the numerous papers you’re checking. As you engage with this system more and more, the processing develops an almost hypnotic quality. Shifting different papers about, stamping passports, and calling in guards (among other things) all become second nature. Indeed, one of the most brilliant parts of this game is how subtle details in the sound design and the booth interface make these processes feel both satisfying and true to life.

Of course, from a thematic standpoint, all the paperwork is just a smokescreen. As you get into a rhythm of robotically and efficiently processing entries, the game starts to present you with increasingly complex and diverse moral dilemmas - a wife who is missing the paperwork required to accompany her husband, a human trafficker who has proper documentation but who will undoubtedly commit terrible crimes if admitted into the country, and so on. You can always choose to do the right thing, but it nearly always leads to significant, employer-imposed financial penalties (or sometimes the triggering of a fail state) for your character and their family. I was frequently taken aback by how this game lulled me into a state where the efficient operation of my repetitive one man assembly line took precedence over treating the people in the booth with humanity and respect. Which, of course, is the point. A frightening testament to how ethical landmines can be hidden within a bureaucratic swamp of paperwork and regulations, this is actually one of the most unsettling games I’ve played. I wouldn’t necessarily call it fun, but I would call it essential.

I don't have much unique to say about this beyond the general consensus - this game is a significant disappointment (although, considering how much it takes from the equally disappointing Dragon Age: Inquisition, maybe we shouldn't have been surprised). All of the issues that mar the work of modern BioWare are here: grindy and repetitive combat, a needlessly complex loot and crafting system, an overabundance of boring and forgettable quests, and so on.

More surprising and concerning, though, are the flaws that affect areas where BioWare normally excels, like the bland and unimaginative world design and the predictable storyline. This is a game that hedged its entire appeal around exploring a new galaxy - yet none of this feels like it takes place outside the series' traditional Milky Way setting. There are only two new alien races, for example - and neither is very interesting or feels like they would be out of place in the Milky Way. The villainous kett, in particular, serve as boring and under-motivated bad guys. Outside of the rather unique tutorial planet, almost all of the worlds you visit are variations on a desert setting - there's hot desert, cold desert, irradiated desert, etc. I was taken aback by how these basically just seemed like higher-res versions of the same desolate landscapes the series featured way back in ME1. Granted, there's more to do here, but it's still mostly just bland shooting and looting. The lack of interesting new environments and alien races is one of the bigger disappointments I had with this game.

The lack of resonant characters and an engaging storyline are also major issues here. Now, I won't say the companions are awful, but I would argue that they are pretty damn uninspired. Like in previous Mass Effects, you start off with two fairly straightforward human companions (this is a series tradition I would be OK with them ditching). Cora's OK, if a little bit stuffy. Liam, on the other hand, continues the tradition of male starter companions being huge doofuses. He's basically that insufferable kid from college who thought that all that was needed to bring peace to the Middle East was a positive attitude and an open mind. He desperately wants to create peace and understanding between the people of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, but as with any 'benevolent' colonialist, he's convinced that only he knows best how to do that (I won't spend much ink on that topic beyond saying that the colonialist undertones in this game are distasteful, to say the least). In short, Liam sucks.

Now, past Mass Effects have made up for the dull human characters with strong alien casts, but even here, Andromeda is lacking. Drack, for instance, is just another ornery and grizzled krogan. He offers nothing about the krogan that we didn't learn from Wrex and / or Grunt. Another example is Peebee, this game's asari companion, who is a simple and obvious inversion of Liara from the original trilogy (spunky and outgoing instead of modest and demure). Most of the alien characters are like this - instead of existing on their own terms, they feel like unimaginative retreads or straightforward tweaks on better characters from past games.

The most frustrating element of all here is that there are still distinct traces of the excellent, old school BioWare writing and scenario development. There are a number of quests that actually sound amazing on paper, like the one where you can trick a group of anti-AI extremists into thinking they successfully 'liberated' your character from the AI hardwired into their brain. Unfortunately, the gameplay loop is so limp, the dialogue so generic that even the most promising premises BioWare devised end up feeling like lost opportunities. Add that on to a main plot that has to be one of the most boring and lazy things that BioWare has ever put out, and you have a real storytelling problem here.

A depressing sign of creative ennui at a formerly great studio, methinks.

A very fun, if uneven, Batman simulator.

This is a game that leans heavily on its beat-em-up combat for its much of its appeal. Thankfully, this system is a stunning success. The way that Batman zips around the room delivering blows as you build up a combo feels amazing, and the addition of batarangs and some basic combo finishers brings a needed smidge of complexity. Mostly though, this breaks down to Batman punching a lot of random thugs in the face - and it’s really a testament to how well it works that nearly every moment you spend doing this is a joy.

Adjacent to the superb combat, the game also does a decent job of simulating Batman-style stealth. As long as you can accept the idea that the bad guys will never choose to simply look up, then swinging around rooms picking off enemies is pretty satisfying (it’s helped by some first-rate barks - listening to Mark Hamill’s Joker taunt his panicked henchmen is consistently hilarious). Considering that a large chunk of the game consists of traversing stealth rooms, it was important that the developers got it right. It’s not necessarily perfect - I kept on wishing for a smoke bomb or some other option that would let me re-enter stealth after getting caught - but the developers ultimately added just enough variety to the stealth scenarios to keep them engaging throughout the game.

The game only really runs into trouble when it breaks off of its core gameplay loop of stealth and brawling. The bosses, for instance, are almost all terrible (the wonderfully unsettling Scarecrow encounters are an exception). I was fine with fighting one boring ‘toro’ boss, but to repeat that same encounter throughout the game ad nauseam is unconscionable. Even when the game mercifully breaks out of this repetition, the results tend to be poor (the janky and formulaic Poison Ivy fight is another lowlight).

This is more of a personal bugbear, but I also find the overwhelming preponderance of pointless collectibles to be a big problem here. The Riddler trophies can be safely ignored, sure. But these empty pieces of fluff actually have a really deleterious impact on the world design. When I first played this, I was excited by the potential Metroidvania elements that were apparent early on in the game. As the game proceeded, though, it quickly became apparent that the only real reward for backtracking with new abilities is racking up Riddler trophies - which is to say, there’s no reward at all. I admire that they wanted to make a Batman game about exploration, but games about exploration thrive on the novelty of finding cool stuff, which is largely missing here. The interview tapes and Arkham seals are fine additions for flavor, but they are so rare in comparison to the Riddler trophies that I just ended up staying on the rails rather than going off the beaten path. Again, this game works fine as a linear experience, so it’s not a death knell, but the promise of opportunities to explore ended up ringing hollow in a way that was disappointing.

I realize I’m sounding significantly more negative than I actually am about this game - I replayed this fairly recently and it remains a lot of fun over a decade after its release. It just doesn’t hold a candle to Arkham City, and there are a few flaws that stick out like a sore thumb (I didn’t even mention the story, which hinges on a dumbfounding misinterpretation of what is cool and interesting about the Joker). Still, an important game, with a persistent tactile brilliance that makes it pretty easy to look past its problems.

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.