Shane Skinner

Having played both console and PC/VR versions, I can say definitively that Squadrons is a title meant to be experienced in VR. Unfortunately, the game itself is just not that good. Sound mixing and graphics are amazing, but that should be expected from every AAA game these days. VR takes these already exceptional elements to a new level, however. Sitting inside a cockpit soaring through the stars is simply breathtaking, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a more immersive virtual experience outside a theme park. That said, taking the VR helmet off and examining the game as a “game” and not an “experience,” I can’t recommend it to anyone but diehard fans of flight combat simulators. The Star Wars elements of this “Star Wars” title make for nothing but window dressing, and the real meat of the game comes from its (not particularly robust and painfully generic) multiplayer. The story peaks with middling quality, and mostly flounders toward repetitive and dull. Though it features several engaging and colorful companion characters, the campaign is otherwise an afterthought, killing time with low-effort and often tedious missions I can only assume are meant to tease multiplayer maps. Finally, and most disappointingly, while much effort was clearly put in to making these ships feel unique, handle distinctly, and immerse the player in their operation, the ships themselves are just a pain to fly. Unlike in previous games (see EA’s recent Battlefront II) where fighter controls felt intuitive and freeing, these fighters, for the most part, feel laborious and clumsy. In short, it’s just not that *fun* to fly these ships... and when a game isn’t fun, that’s a problem. At the end of the day, this is the first Star Wars game in a long time that I would not recommend to Star Wars fans. There’s just plainly and simply not enough Star Wars in it. I also don’t recommend people go in expecting a full-length game of Starfighter Assault from Battlefront II, as this is also not that. Squadrons is, plain and simple, an immersive VR flight simulator that has been marketed mostly in 2D. Skip it, unless you’re planning to join the space force.

At a time where modern Star Trek has struggled to find its footing, Prodigy’s first season stands firmly on solid ground. The show offers a delightful blend of the title’s modern entries’ serialized storytelling and visual style, as well as classic Trek’s morally upstanding tone and episodic importance. This is also the first Star Trek show in two decades to deliver a family-friendly viewing experience: something that will capture a child’s imagination while entertaining any adults who may join in on the fun.

The Mass Effect Trilogy remains one of the finest pieces of media ever produced a decade after it concluded. The visuals are stunning, the soundtrack is captivating, and the story is phenomenal. That said, the Legendary Edition adds little to that experience. The textures are crisper, the audio is more consistent across the trilogy, the gunplay is likewise unified from game one to game three, and there is no endless DLC to buy, but at its core, this release amounts to a fresh coat of paint. The characters are as lifeless and unemotional in their animation as they were ten years ago, and they move, if anything, more sluggishly with the updated controls. The Legendary Edition brings nothing of significant value to the original trilogy, but it takes nothing away either. If you’re a first time player, I’d recommend it highly! If you played a previous release and still own your old copies, on the other hand? Just play those. The graphical upscaling of those older versions on modern systems is perfectly suitable without spending more money on a game you already own.

This game has been out for almost two years, so I figured it would be a safe time to try it out... The very first thing you do in the game is create your character. I could not edit my character’s face because the game’s cursor had a bug preventing it from recognizing what body part it was editing. Cool. Default appearance it is. The moment I left the vault (first instance in the game)? The game crashed. Cool. Log back in. Wander around the wasteland, meet some NPCs. The game feels like an MMO with no resources. The instance I’ve loaded in to is populated by level 50+ characters looting the early areas. Cool. Still manage to find enough scraps to get a handle on the game. Reach level 5, set up CAMP for the first time (this game’s version of settlement building). Game crashes again. Cool. Log back in. Scrap some gear, build some gear, go back out into the wasteland to explore this “four-times larger” map. I run into maybe four enemies across the five or six locations I explored. No conversations after the initial “wastelanders” trigger and a dust-up in a related diner. Those conversations are dull as dirt: “refer to quest, suggest quest, go do quest.” Despite “sixteen times the detail,” I can’t help but feel like I’m just in the world’s slowest grinder. Two hours in and I’m simply bored! If there’s one thing a game should never be, it’s “boring.” If there’s another thing a game should never be, it’s Fallout 76.

I’m disappointed about the stunted Pokédex, removal of mega evolution, Poké Transfer, and the Poké Bank, and that there’s no real postgame content (all of which seems to have been done in favor of the games’ multiplayer mechanic). Still, I can’t in good conscience rate these games poorly. They’re still Pokémon games and I’m still having fun with them. I enjoy the new mechanics of dynamax and camping, I like the map’s layout (it’s one of the largest so far), plus I enjoy most of the new regional Pokémon. I think GameFreak and the Pokémon Company should offer DLC, or at the very least include a wider breadth of content for the games’ sequel(s). Sword and Shield just don’t do enough new things to justify how much was removed. For a generation that was promised to be “the Pokémon experience fans have been waiting for,” the mark has been missed by a wide margin. For an enjoyable and immersive Pokémon journey, it certainly delivers. I just think this game would’ve made more sense if it came out five years ago. Sun and Moon feel like a step forward compared to this.

The core gameplay loop is always fun, and the storyline has a strong start. However, a reliance on online gimmickry, verbose enemy introductions, and contrived story points make this game a long-running slog. Unlike “Shadow of Mordor,” which managed to present an engaging story, evolving suite of abilities that made the player feel more capable with each new upgrade, and a core gameplay loop that always delivered a satisfying experience from moment-to-moment, “Shadow of War” only manages the last of the three. The story runs along at a healthy clip for the first third of the game, delivering punchy and epic moments of true joy throughout that time. After about twenty hours, however, the world opens up to a much more tedious slog through repetitive grinding, all the while telling the player that they should engage the multiplayer features to gain levels more quickly. Speaking as someone who started this game four years after release, I find that a hard sell. Meaningful upgrades are also often locked behind story walls, while other upgrades feel unworthy of their level-up cost. In this way, unlike with its predecessor, “Shadow of War” makes leveling a chore, more akin to an MMO than a single-player action-adventure story. Where “Shadow of War” does deliver is its core gameplay loop. A larger world and robust but simple combat profile give the game both challenging and rewarding aspects to its runtime, which are the two key ingredients of fun when it comes to this type of game. Unfortunately, these mechanics can be undermined at times by the game’s story, which is determined to tell itself at the expense of the player’s effort. At several points throughout the game, your effort goes unrewarded by the story, as your victory or defeat is ignored in favor of a cutscene’s drama. A fortress taken becomes a fortress lost. Twenty captains dominated become five captains dominated with fifteen dead for the plot’s sake. Such contrivances are par for the video game course… but where “Shadow of Mordor” only asked 40 hours of its players, this game demands far more for that coveted 100% completion marker. After spending 20 hours to conquer one of five distinct locations in its entirety, to have that effort rewarded with a complete upset despite making no mistakes is very frustrating. Overall, I can only recommend this game to players who are not completionists… or to completionists with limitless time on their hands. It’s a good game! But don’t put any extra time into it besides what you need to complete the story. The game won’t reward you for it if you ignore this advice.