Gaming & Electronic Arts

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

by Retro Studios

Reviewer: Tobin Johnson

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is the 4th completely new entry in the series after a long time. It is a first-person shooter metriodvania. It’s a fun and beautiful game that runs amazingly on the Switch 2 and, overall, is about on par with my previous experience with Metroid Prime Remastered, which is the only other Metroid game I’ve played in full, so keep that in mind for this review. Metroid Beyond's combat is fun and engaging, especially with a controller. With the lock-on feature in the game, combined with the Switch 2’s new mousemode, it completely removes my usual frustrations with playing shooters on controllers. Besides that, I found the combat a bit better than Prime remastered, with a heavier emphasis on more precise aiming, which I enjoyed. In addition to the new controllable psychic missile, which is one of the most unique combat abilities I’ve used and always enjoyed using. 

The world is beautiful, and exploring it is really fun, especially in the new motorcycle Vi-O-La. In this world, there are five different areas connected by one massive desert in the middle. This desert is, surprisingly, very fun to explore. This comes from the surprising amount of stuff hidden in the desert, along with vi-o-la just being very fun to ride around in, boosting, and hitting crystals as you travel through the desert to your next area. The exploration within the more closed areas is also enjoyable, feeling like your usual Metroidvania exploration. Getting to things that fell a little bit flat for me, the story. During most of my time in the game, I never really found the story particularly interesting. I had a similar problem with the Metroid Prime Remaster, and that is a significant amount of story details are within the scanner feature, and with how much stuff there is to scan, especially with a lot of it being similar, I didn’t care to fully read everything. Outside of that, in cutscenes and the story that is directly presented to you, I found it a little basic and similar to the remaster. That said, while I didn’t care for the story, it was never a problem for me because of the world design. The side characters were a problem for me, though. While I didn’t hate them nearly as much as some other people, I found that the majority of characters didn’t actually add anything to the experience, and some actually took a bit away. Most of the characters lacked impact, and I found myself ignoring them.

Overall, I had a fun time playing this game, and to me, it felt like an evolution gameplay-wise from the remaster and step back and a step back with the characters, but still a fun experience that I would recommend to people looking for an enjoyable 3d metroidvania experience.

8.5/10

Unbeatable

Reviewer: Tobin Johnson

by D-CELL games

Unbeatable is a rhythm game that was recently released by the developers at D-CELL games. After playing it, I without a doubt that it is one of my favorite rhythm games of all time and my personal favorite ‘pure’ rhythm game. After my experience with the game, even with how much I enjoyed it, I definitely know that it isn’t for everyone, even in the rhythm gamer crowd. One of the things that I like about it so much is its amazing original music. If you don’t exactly jam with that music, the game is probably not going to be a thing that you are interested in, especially with its lack of ability to download custom beatmaps, at least at the moment. In the arcade mode, though, the UI is amazingly designed, and you are constantly unlocking things as you play through songs and the story, making it feel like you always have new things to do.

Moving on to the story and characters. They are both things that I ended up enjoying a lot, but there are things that some people might have a hard time with, though I personally didn’t really have a problem with. Both the story and gameplay don’t explain things unless it feels like it. Within the story, there are multiple times when stuff just happens, and it can be really confusing until the story deigns to explain it to you if you can’t roll with the punches. This is the case within the story's gameplay, too. There are multiple times when the story drops slightly new mechanics on you on the spot; if you can’t quickly figure out what is happening, it could be slightly frustrating, otherwise it ends up being a lot cooler than if the game paused and then explained things step by step to you. That said, there are only really 2 buttons you use in these sequences, so they aren’t that hard to figure out. I found the characters and dialogue genuinely interesting and funny. There were multiple times it made me laugh out loud. The visual design of the world is oozing with style and is amazing to look at. I found myself engaged in learning about each of the characters and what was going on in the world as a whole.

Even if my description of it didn’t seem particularly interesting, I would recommend checking out the free demo called Unbeatable [white label]. If you play that, you can see if the style and songs interest you as much as they did me.

9.5/10

ARC Raiders

by Embark Studios

Reviewer: Cian Murphy

Arc Raiders is a third person PvPvE extraction shooter released by Embark Studios on October 30th of this year. Having a good amount of time playing this game and others in the genre, I can say it's a pretty interesting, unique take. Arc Raiders does have some of the same frustration that comes with extraction shooters, but it definitely feels fresher and not as exhausting as some other games in the genre. The game definitely isn't for everyone, but if you like extraction shooters, or want to try out one that doesn't have as steep of a learning curve this game might be for you.

The core gameplay loop is drop into the semi-open world, scavenge for loot, and then extract. This is pretty much the same as all other extraction shooter games, but what makes this game different is the AI enemies and the players. This game has enemies called arcs which are robots controlled by an AI that attack players. These robots have machine learning which means they learn from what the players do and adjust their behavior to that. This makes them feel a lot more alive and challenging as well as making the movements and behaviors more realistic feeling. The arcs actually feel fun and a little intimidating to fight with the amount of variation they have. The players also affects your gameplay in this game because unlike some other extraction shooters, this game features proximity chat. This adds interesting dynamics to the game because it lets you talk and communicate with other players. This means you can effectively team up with other players or show that your friendly, but if you trust the wrong people they might just turn on you and kill you. The gunplay feels pretty nice with all of the weapons having clear uses, strengths, and weaknesses. By looking at the stats you can easily see that some weapons are more focused on PvE and fighting the arcs, and other weapons are almost completely focused on PvP, doing high damage to players, but very little damage to arcs. The game is very visually appealing with a sci-fi vibe similar to Battlefront two. 

The game does still have its fair share of issues with occasional glitches and the other normal issues that come with extraction shooters. Dying and losing your stuff can happen a lot in this game, and does happen a lot, and it can feel especially frustrating after a long, successful run. You also have to rely a little bit on luck to find the items you need which can make it feel a bit grindy at times. 

Overall I've found this game very fun, and its even more fun if you have a friend to play with you. Extraction shooters can seem pretty intimidating as they usually have a pretty steep learning curve, but I do still recommend this game to people even if you haven't played a lot of extraction shooters as it doesn't have as steep of a learning curve as some of the other games in the genre.

8.5/10