Leo Faierman
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The game map is divided into four general areas: an industrial zone, a quaint village, a national park, and Old Town. The latter is probably the most familiar and fun, a city reminiscent of its namesake in Warsaw, and leaving it leads to less interesting and often cumbersome traversal. There’s often a parked 4x4 truck you can find and drive between objectives, but you’re otherwise just sprinting long miles past fields and forests in a line, squandering hours in a game whose strongest mechanics flourish in city centers.
In my estimation, Shape of Dreams responds to virtually every checkbox wishlist for the contemporary roguelite fan. The intricate spell and upgrade system is deep, easy to understand, and consistent, feeding into every run’s arc of difficulty, never feeling unfair or overtuned. The sound design and special effects are outlandish but readable and levels load quickly on a good rig, with the pace further helped along by the complete absence of needless forced cutscenes or overlong animations. Even just the core RNG systems on their own seem to have been polished to a shining gleam.
Sadly, those retreads often mean more combat. It’s exciting at first, this scrabbly Soulslike stamina-baiting movement against eerie phantasmal hollow-face demons, wielding a Ki-Pulse-like rally mechanic straight out of Nioh that precludes the need for healing items once you get the timing right. Weapons are strictly melee-only, a collection of upgradable gleaming blades rotted over by colored status-effect elements, though Rémi himself lacks any proper level-ups or skill trees. Beyond the blade, an assistant flying drone offers a few special modules that trigger dash attacks and other functions.
That first glimpse of the Sicilian countryside in Hangar 13’s Mafia: The Old Country is a gobsmacking moment, with those distant mountain ranges and crumbling ruins framing the pastoral splendor of busy vineyards and dirt roads. It’s a land populated and maintained by ruthless dons and humble peasants alike, supporting the story's classic climb through a criminal hierarchy, one wardrobe upgrade at a time. Published by 2K, Mafia: The Old Country is another third-person action narrative argument against open-world bloat, but its gameplay is as bland as room-temp ragù out of the jar.
Anybody who cut their teeth on the original Ninja Gaiden trilogy should feel those reflexes return after a few hours with Ragebound. Nuanced aspects of those NES games reveal themselves, like memorizing the precise distance of your sword slash or enemy knockback, especially those designed to casually nudge Kenji into a bottomless pit. Overall, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound feels like a loving riff on an established standard, a contemporary pop remake of the NES trilogy’s classic rhythm and blues.
The game is primarily split between bouts of combat, demon maintenance, and exploring each cloistered region for NPC chatter and the occasional bonus quest, or “case.” Those scare quotes are intentional, since the bulk of RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army’s side quests are one-off blips which barely qualify. For instance, one could find Raidou simply calling on a demon with the correct skill to find an item before a sudden splash screen exclaims, “CASE CLOSED.” Yes indeed, the master detective has successfully cracked the case of the crying child and his missing toy five paces away.
In key ways, Monster Train 2 is indistinguishable from the original, but it brings more content to tangle with, giving this no-less-than-essential sequel a victory lap quality. But who can complain? The first Monster Train game launched in 2020, and it gave Slay the Spire some worthy competition. Developer Shiny Shoe didn't require an Early Access period, extending a respectful challenge to Slay’s utter dominion over the deckbuilding roguelite space. Since then, it's garnered a strong fanbase, a new publisher in Big Fan Games (under Devolver Digital), and over one million sales with its thoughtful elaboration on card-based combat.
Could this surprise spinoff of a long-running beat ‘em up MMO be one of the best non-FromSoftware Souls-likes ever made? I certainly think so. Developed by Neople and published by Nexon, The First Berserker: Khazan is the year's best surprise thus far, a deliciously challenging dark fantasy action-adventure stacked with grueling bossfights and style to spare. The sharper focus on combat outweighs its exploration gameplay, but don’t mistake that for weakness; The First Berserker: Khazan exceeds expectations and honors its genre heritage with an exquisite presentation and juicy action-RPG fundamentals.
There are optional objectives dotting the map as per usual, with the upgrade/knowledge system carefully tempered to decelerate main quest progress and force grinding for XP. The open-concept quest menu is confusing, and some forgettable activities round out the game’s more uninspired elements, but the overall attention and focus feel noticeably sharpened from Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. If you loved all or parts of those games, you’ll probably become fast friends with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but this never comes off as the history-fueled sandbox game set in Japan to rule them all, and it’s hard not to wish that it were so.
After a well-received demo two years ago, some reasonable concerns manifested over how a kick-oriented action game might maintain its momentum for the long haul. Luckily, Anger Foot sticks to its strengths for most of its substantive runtime and, even with firearms apparently overshadowed in its title, the vibrant gunplay succeeds as well. Still, the lack of a reload leaves the almighty foot as the primary method of engagement, handling everything from returning lobbed grenades to activating levers, and the addictive intensity of the game’s best encounters carry it merrily through 60+ busy levels of carnage.