Category: Movie

Perched high up on the cliff edge overlooking the enemy warehouse across the lake, target marked over 2000 metres away, I take aim, set the range of the scope, adjust to factor in wind direction, breath held, trigger pulled…missed. Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is a stealth-based milsim, and is the 6th edition of a series that began all the way back in 2008. Contracts 2 follows a similar formula to its predecessors but it is certainly the most challenging, with sniper shots ranging almost as long as the game’s title. It boasts one of the most realistic and challenging sniper mechanics I’ve ever played draped in some beautiful visuals, but the story and layout of the game feel somewhat dull and unpolished.

Set in the fictional middle eastern dictatorship of Kuamar who’s newly powerful autocrat has decided to invade a neighbouring country, the world’s response is to send in one man and his sniper. The story itself feels all too common for military shooters, stereotypical evil dictator and his cronies are up to no good again, and your job is to put a bullet in them. After a brief tutorial handholding you through the various mechanics for sniping and the different gadgets to play with, you’re thrown into the action with your first target. From there, the campaign spans a series of individual contracts in which you track down and assassinate members of the evil network, and when you’re not sending bullets into heads from 1000+ metres away, you’ll be interrogating enemy grunts, corrupting communications and sabotaging equipment. To help with this there is a wealth of gadgets at your disposal, a drone to help mark hard to reach targets and hack CCTV camera as well as a range of special bullets which vary in realism, from the standard armour piercing and explosive all the way up to sci-fi style tracker bullets and ones that don’t factor in wind or distance.

With each target to assassinate comes a wide variety of ways to do it, you could go in full guns blazing, locate the target, fire and exit, or you can make use of the environment to get creative. In a style similar to a Hitman game, I was able to lure one of the key targets underneath a shipping container, and will a well-placed shot that squashed him with it. It is kills like these which I found most enjoyable from the game, the big finale moments and the payoff from getting creative allow you to take your targets out in a whole wealth of different ways. Those calculated sniper shots against the target miles in the distance were brilliant and served as the standout high point in Contracts 2, but unfortunately, the rest of the game felt a bit soulless and packed full of filler. After being helicoptered into each new area comes a very rinse and repeat process of sneaking around clusters of enemies, interrogating certain ones to find information on the next target and the occasional up close and personal firefights with your assault rifle and pistol. For the sake of fluidity, the developers had to add something in between sniping from vantage points, but unfortunately, these other elements feel very rushed, even though you play from the first person and have the standard automatic rifle and grenade loadouts it doesn’t feel like a polished FPS, but instead a repetitive, unavoidable mechanic that had me constantly searching for the quickest way to get to the next target.

Contracts 2’s strength comes from that point beyond reaching the vantage point, scanning the area, planning your move and executing the attack feels very rewarding and really felt like I was behind the scope myself, with a great deal of weight behind every minor adjustment or decision. Rather than rushing in to kill the target and get out of there, I was much more inclined to take time and meticulously scan and plan out the method of attack. It’s probably the most fun I’ve had with a sniper rifle in a video game, the mechanics are very realistic and challenging at first, but once you get a hang of adjusting for target distance and wind direction you start to feel like a true sharpshooter. Unfortunately, the other mechanics pale in comparison, the stealth is fairly basic and minimal with clunky enemies that all seem to struggle with hearing, must be from all of the newly acquired fighter jets and helicopters ploughing through the Kuamarian airspace. Movement in general just looks a bit too robotic and very jerky, I thought I was wearing an exo-suit with the way you snap up ledges in the rare bit of climbing you have to do, it put my back out just watching it. The visual layout of the HUD and menus are quite clunky as well, for a game with a pretty simple premise and core mechanics comes a mess of different menus, upgrade screens, HUD options and customisation sections that can be all quite overwhelming until you’ve gotten used to how they all combine together, it feels like this element of the game got the smallest slice of the budget.

Visually Contracts 2’s world and objects are stunning, currently there is only a last-gen (PS4/XBOX One) version but the CryEngine powered graphics holds its own against some of the next-gen optimised games that I’ve played. As expected from a game that requires you to take shots from multiple Kilometres away the render distance stretches for miles too, even without looking through the binoculars or scopes you can see figures as tiny as ants pacing back and forth where the target’s location is, all player and object movements are very fluid as well, thanks to Contracts 2 running at 60fps on PC and next-gen consoles. All of this culminates into an aesthetically marvellous world that really does a great job of adding to the realism and immersion of traversing the rocky and sandy terrain of Kuamar.

Overall, the experience of Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 boils down to a mixed bag. On the one side, there is the adrenaline pumping thrills of hitting a high-stakes shot from thousands of metres away to take out one of the big targets and hightailing it out of there whilst the chaos in the distance ensues, but this is marred from then having to wade through clunky stealth and fps mechanics that leave you trying to rush to the next sniper’s nest. The gunplay with the sniper and the wider process of executing the kill once you get into position doesn’t get old or boring and is probably the most fun I’ve had with a sniper in a video game But I’ve also found these big moments being too infrequent and far apart, it felt almost underutilised. The previous 5 editions to the series follow a trend of having solid sniper mechanics but never breaking into the FPS elite like Call of Duty or Battlefield, and unfortunately Contracts 2 doesn’t deviate from this trend. That’s not to say that this is a bad game or that it should be immediately disregarded, the experience of the sniper alone is enough for me to recommend giving this game a try, but be prepared to see some rough edges along with way.

GameRev was provided with a digital download of the game for the purpose of this review.

According to a popular leaker, we may be getting a reveal for the next Call of Duty game sooner than expected.

The next entry in the Call of Duty series is yet to be officially revealed, but reputable leaker Tom Henderson claims that the reveal date is near. According to Henderson, the next Call of Duty, codenamed Vanguard, will be revealed on Thursday, August 19. Apparently, these details have been verified with four different sources. Henderson’s tweet about Call of Duty 2021 has since been removed via DMCA by the copyright holder.

This date coincides with the rumored PlayStation’s State of Play event which would be a great opportunity to give players a sneak peak of the game. Call of Duty Vanguard is said to take place during World War 2, following the trend that the Battlefield series has set.

New Warzone map may be on the way.

Previous rumors suggest that Vanguard will feature Warzone integration with the possibility of a completely new battle royale map also being considered. This map is said to fit the World War 2 aesthetic to match the game’s setting.

For now, there isn’t much evidence to back up these claims so it is best to take this information with a grain of salt until more information comes to light. Thankfully id the reveal indeed is taking place on August 19, then we only have to wait one week until we learn more about Vanguard.

I’ve been having a tough time, lately. I live in a big city in the United States, and I’m struggling to find work that isn’t going to make me spiritually miserable or exhaust me completely. The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a second turn for the worse in my country, and a lot of hope I had back in May is mostly gone. I’m not suffering nearly as badly as many of my countrymen are, but I’m also feeling like I don’t have much of a future – every day, there’s new stories about corporations gobbling up resources and space side by side with stories of hundreds of thousands of regular people on the brink of losing their homes. I, and many of my friends, feel pretty powerless to make any change for the better.

The Ascent (Neon Giant, 2021) feels like a strikingly timely game, which surprised me. I expected it to be a solid but one-note sci-fi action RPG, with a story about some regular guy who becomes powerful beyond his wildest dreams and saves his society from total collapse – if this sounds cynical, it’s because my recent experiences with sci-fi stories in games have been subpar. What I found instead was an elegant narrative that struck chords the way sci-fi and cyberpunk media ought to: the author trying to communicate an allegory alongside the plot, but through immersion – wrapping you up in the details, until you encounter something that isn’t identical to your experience, but mirrors it through a series of scratched, neon lenses. You connect to the characters not because they do the same things you do, but because they feel the same way for similar reasons.

Your character in The Ascent is a glorified handyman with a gun, indentured into servitude to the Ascent Group in exchange for the travel fare it took to get to this planet. The Ascent Group itself couldn’t care less if you lived or died, but stackBoss Poone, your direct supervisor, is a little more involved. Your job is whatever he decides it is, whether that’s going down into the bowels of the Arcology to do repairs to to clean out Feral nests.

And then, the Ascent Group shuts down. Not the arcology itself, exactly, but the board of directors running the show. Suddenly they’re gone, and they’ve defaulted on all their finances. Their systems doing larger scale maintenance and operation are going offline. It’s every indent for themself. If you don’t move fast, competing corporations are going to descend on your arcology and strip it for parts, leaving the massive machine you live in totally non-functional.

You solve these problems with guns, of course, because it’s an action game. The core mechanic that sets The Ascent apart is its height system, which creates a genuine tension. At “rest” you stand straight up and shoot at waist height. You can raise your gun to shoot at a higher height, which does increased stagger damage. You can also crouch to hide behind cover, or walk around like a very dangerous duck out in the open if you really want. While you’re crouching, you can raise your gun to shoot at “waist height” over your cover, avoiding all shots that would hit you. Playing evasively behind cover is a big part of the game, and as enemies spawn in and swarm you’ll need to constantly re-evaluate your position. The shot-height mechanic was surprisingly robust, and I enjoyed getting to see it put to the test right out of the gate – the first enemies you encounter, ferals, are low to the ground. If you raise your gun to try to invoke more stagger damage, you’ll simply shoot right over them. This dance of crouching, hiding behind cover, dashing out, and then crouching in the middle of the open space to try get the right shot becomes part of the rhythm of the game later on, as other alien species of different heights join the ranks of the gangs you’re fighting.

There are a variety of classes of guns, which obviously perform differently but actually feel different to play too. You can equip a tactical item which charges up as you do damage, and while these are diverse and also feel different to use, the kinds of tac’s you’ll end up carrying into later stages of the game narrow significantly. Once you find the tactical that spawns an entire mech for you to pilot, I doubt you’ll ever go back.

You also can equip two augmentations and two modules, the former of which are active while the latter are passive. The augmentations feel great and very diverse, but unfortunately as a solo player my sole focus was survivability and immediate damage output. I imagine that in multiplayer, there’s more room to explore more niche character builds because your teammates can watch your back. Really, though, I was excited every time an augmentation came off cooldown and I got to use it. They’re powerful without being the basis for your whole playstyle, and the visual effects that accompany them are fantastic. They just feel great.

While the combat mechanics themselves feel good, The Ascent does commit three combat design cardinal sins. 1. Enemies spawn from behind you from areas you’ve already cleared, which breaks the immersion pretty badly. This is acceptable in the areas where enemies spawn by climbing in from over the sidewalk railings, but in dungeons it feels terrible. 2. Damage numbers are inconsistently displayed, which is important because the color of those numbers tells you whether the damage type you’re using is effective or not. 3. Enemies just don’t stop coming in certain areas. This would be okay if you started a big fight and every enemy nearby off the screen came towards you, but new enemies will spawn in for this big encounter – and then you’ll move further through the zone and yet more enemies are waiting nearby and spawn fresh. This kind of encounter pacing feels okay in the neighborhoods, but it’s an absolute slog during some of the closed-space missions.

The world of The Ascent is deeply horrifying, but generally in the same ways that capitalism, militarism, and socio-economic exploitation are horrifying in our own world. The writers behind The Ascent know just the right dials to turn to take regular exploitation and make it even more gruesome – one of my favorite side missions involved tracking down the corpse of an alien’s friend, which had gotten lost in the morgue system. Over the course of the plotline, you discover that the soda this alien’s friend was obsessed with actually contained slime from an alien creature which, when incubated in a warm being, could bioaccumulate rare metals. This missing corpse was harvested for her metals after death, and wiped from all records. Most of the other side missions I played were like this – surprisingly personal little stories of grief, anger, and deception inside this huge arcology these people all called home. Mechanically, too, the side missions I completed all felt like they were worth doing – interesting weapons and augments are given as rewards.

The main reason The Ascent’s setting can successfully be so creepy and genuine is because the world feels truly alive. A large part of this is thanks to The Ascent’s incredible graphics and stunning attention to detail. No two neighborhoods feel the same, yet are never too different so as to feel like they can’t be part of the same citystate – and even more granular, no two streets feel quite the same either. The immense amount of work that went into placing trash, streetlights, weird little NPC conversations, open buildings, cables, and machinery pays off tenfold by making the arcology feel like a real place. My favorite trick Neon Giant uses is all the animation and action happening in the background, under and away from the surface you’re walking on. Ships fly by, lights blink, maintenance robots go about their job – the arcology’s infinite number of systems are all playing out around you, ignoring you completely – just like life.

Neon Giant’s approach to the distant future is to lean all the way in, to really explore and display the full possibilities of what life might look like – this, too, makes the world feel somehow more alive than a nearer version of the future more closely tied to what we know. There are multiple other species of aliens all living in concert in the arcology, and I applaud Neon Giant for making them look more radically different than “vaguely human-shaped.” I’m especially a fan of the Keesh, these bipedal eel people who have had to reshape a lot of their traditional behaviors and society to fit in with other sentient beings.

One part of the arcology’s design that feels true to life and is miserable to play through is the way fast-travel works. Quite a few main story missions require you to travel to far-apart places in the arcology, including across tiers of the structure. The fast-travel train system will move you a significant distance, but you’re still going to have to do quite a bit of running around to get between tier elevators, which is a big drag on pacing. The taxi system is a joke: you can pay 1,000 uCreds to be picked up anywhere, just to be dumped somewhere in the middle of your selected neighborhood – you can’t pick your actual destination.

Bodymodding is a big part of society – and of gameplay, through the augments. You can change your sex for free and whenever, if you want, at the same place you get razor drones and energy shields inserted under your skin. And, again, Neon Giant isn’t afraid to make the far future scary and upsetting – corporations have figured out how to freeze people, but making spaceships go fast is difficult and expensive. If you want to get to a new planet, you’re going to need to sign away some years of your life to pay for the journey. If the ship you’re on miscalculates its trajectory, you might not get to your destination for decades – an NPC in the spaceport has been waiting for her brother for years, with no confirmation of where his ship is or when he’s going to show up. This repeated, subtle theme about the artificially long lives people live, contrasted against how dangerous and miserable it is to get turned into living trash in the arcologies really stuck out to me.

The voice acting for stackBoss Poone, nogHead, and Kira was excellent. Actually funny jokes, simple but solid characterization for those three main NPCs, and unique alien designs make the main cast really stand out as great characters in a genre that doesn’t often get such tender writing attention. The cinematic cutscenes during major plot moments are well-animated and well-paced – none overstayed their welcome, and were all skippable if you had, say, just died and needed to get through a scene again.

Ultimately, I liked how low-profile the plot of the game was. Obviously you run around starting big gun-fights and getting involved in megacorp politics, and the final boss fight does bridge into cosmic horror, but you start as some guy with a long and terrible contract, and you end as some guy who happened to have an absolute nightmare of a day who is now technically a “free agent”. You might have access to the upper level of the arcology where the sun actually hits you, but you can’t live there. There’s no way you can afford it. You’re a handyman.

The Ascent is a high-quality entry in the canon of ARPGs, and I hope attention stays on it long enough for it to make a mark. Unfortunately, the game was quite buggy and had some very rough performance issues at launch, and while many of these have been fixed with a patch on August 6, many stutters and bugs remain. However, Neon Giant seems dedicated to their effort, and I trust these will be ironed out in the next few weeks. 8.5/10

GameRev was provided with a key for the purposes of this review. KudzuControl played The Ascent on PC, using a mouse and keyboard.

One versus a thousand

You might think that that phrase can be interpreted in multiple ways: a philosophical mindset, a mental state, or a frame of mind. You would be forgiven if you overlooked the literal meaning behind the phrase: One person versus a lot of other people. Samurai Warriors 5 is a game that pits you against entire armies and spoiler alert: the armies do not do well. This type of game has the moniker of “Musou” and if you have not experienced this before, now would be a perfect time. Koei Tecmo has rebooted the ‘Warriors’ series into a “fresh re-imagining”; complete with a more compact storyline, new gameplay additions, and a new visual style. Will newcomers to the series be drawn into this historical hack-and-slash? Will returning fans be happy with the roster of changes? Let’s find out. 

Samurai Warriors 5 focuses on the Sengoku period of Japan, a 150-year period of almost neverending civil war that saw clan leaders and warlords fighting for power until the 3 “Great Unifiers” restored a central government in the region. The main storyline in the game focuses on a condensed timeframe of the Sengoku period where the story is told through the viewpoint of two primary characters: Nobunaga Oda and Akechi Mitsuhide. Whilst the game boasts an impressive roster of 37 playable characters, you will mainly be playing through the story as Nobunaga Oda (with smatterings of Akechi Mitsuhide). This main-character-centered focus helps to bring a level of continuity to the story and also adds a refreshing change of pace when a side-character steps into the story and you can carve up the battlefield with a fresh pair of blades. I will say, this forms more of a double-edged sword as I found myself falling in love with the playstyle of a side character (the legendary Lady Nō) and subsequently thereafter, falling out of love with Nobunaga’s playstyle throughout the story. This creeping feeling of boredom started to become worryingly apparent when the real enemy of the game started rearing its ugly head: repetition. 

With such an ugly beast on the horizon, surely the game can now turn to its biggest champion: the gameplay. I will say that the core idea behind the Muso playstyle is incredible. You stand alone in front of hundreds of (apparently brainless) soldiers who all fall victim to your blade. You can string together simple combos that play off variants of Square and Triangle and you have a “Hyper” attack that propels you forward whilst still attacking enemies (and knocking them along with you). Combine this with customisable ultimate attacks and a devastating Muso finisher and you have the ability to chain combos that reach into the thousands. To me, there is nothing better than carving through the battlefield whilst sending hundreds of enemies flying away with each arcing slash. It really helps to de-stress after a long day at work. The visual style complements this beautifully and the revamped musical score adds a layer of speed and aggression to the game. 

Are all of these positives enough to ward off the beast of boredom? Sadly, no.

The story and gameplay are the two worst casualties of this beast. The game does well to inform you of the story through in-game cutscenes and beautifully rendered artistic showcases and the voice acting on the characters is stellar but the game really can be boiled down to a simple “Move from A to B and kill everything along the way.” The historical elements add a level of intrigue and awe as you find yourself immersed in famous battles but the repetitive nature of the level structure and gameplay makes the game hard to stay passionate about. The “One versus a thousand” element is exhilarating and it is hard to complete a level without a smile on your face but once you have completed a few levels, you find that the details start to get lost in the wind. I love intense gaming experiences but there needs to be more respite and variance to break up the repetition. There is an impressive amount of weapon customisation available but this almost seems redundant when you are sending whole armies back to the stone age with each sword-swing. The AI also seems inconsistent to the point where the difficulty between the filler soldiers and the end of level bosses is too great. I found myself blindly massacring hordes of soldiers who seemed to struggle to even tie their laces, only to run head-first into a boss who made me feel like a 5 year-old armed with a butterknife. There is also a citadel mode which acts as a pseudo-tower defence mode where you can train characters for EXP and additional weapons but the appeal wears thin after a few hours of slaughter. 

Overall, Samurai Warriors 5 is an impressive reboot of an already well-loved series. The repetition was a huge issue for me but I must confess that I am relatively new to the Musou style of gameplay. I was immediately hooked with the beautiful visuals and the voice acting (and of course, the gameplay) but I did not find myself wanting to play longer than a level or two at a time. The game is also relatively smooth-running (except for the PS1-grade camera AI which threatens to get stuck behind anything and everything on the battlefield).

 If you are happy with a solid story, an absurdly destructive combat system, and an artistic rendition of a bloody time in Japan’s history then you will love Samurai Warriors 5. If you are like me and new to the series then you might want to take it slowly to avoid the danger of burnout but don’t worry, there is enough meat there to satisfy your bloodlust until the end credits roll. 

I give this 7.5 Demon Kings out of 10 

GameRev was provided with a digital download of the game for the purpose of this review.

Astria Ascending is a JRPG by Artisan Studios, featuring a team of developers who worked on Final Fantasy, Nier Automata and Bravely Default. The game was also developed in partnership with Hitoshi Sakimoto, composer of Final Fantasy XII and Vagrant Story, and Kazushige Nojima, known for his writing for Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy VII Remake. The story revolves around the world of Orcanon wherein you command a battalion of eight demi-gods who are tasked to protect Harmony from the Noises. You are granted powers once chosen as a demi-god, but are also subjected to a shortened lifespan of three years. After the three years have passed, another eight champions are appointed, beginning the cycle once again. The premise definitely held promise, but was a tad disappointing in its execution.

The game already stumbles at the very beginning, introducing you to the cast of characters at the tail end of their reign as demi-gods. You learn from the onset that they only have three months left to live. With this as your starting point, you don’t get the proper time to get invested in each character. There are moments in the game wherein you get a glimpse of each character’s backstories, but these moments are few and far in between, and never quite hit the mark. Even the relationships between the demi-gods felt a little strained, being more like a motley crew of so-called heroes forced to work with each other. Dialogue between characters fell flat, often resulting in them mocking each other like Arpajo and Eko. All in all, the game lacked exposition and I felt very detached and disinterested in the narrative partly because I couldn’t grow attached to these so-called heroes, and partly because of the haphazardly-done world building.

Where I will give the game much credit is in its art, there’s no question about it. Astria Ascending shines in its visually stunning 2D world. What drew me into the game from the trailer alone were the fully hand-drawn illustrations and beautiful landscapes, reminiscent of a Vanillaware game. There were moments while playing where I would simply pause and just admire the lush environments and the details of the artwork. In a way, I almost felt like a tourist within the game because of all the times I would catch myself merely sightseeing. It felt like being inside of a painting.

It’s a shame that its visual design is its most distinctive feature, because at the end of the day “pretty” can only get you so far. Just a few hours in and I already felt like the experience was a bit of a slog. While it is indeed similar in format to most JRPGs, the way the game progressed was borderline repetitive. A distress call would come from one of the districts, the cast of heroes would rush in to investigate, a backstory would ensue, the demi-gods would battle through Noises, and you’d wind up back at the Council Room in Harmonia. There wasn’t much you could do in between because quests had little payoff, the J-Ster mini game wasn’t really vital to your progress, and going on hunts was tiresome because of the lack of quest markers and badly designed map.

Combat, while not perfect, uses a turn-based format that would please most old school JRPG fans. It is what you’d expect from a game of this genre and is charming in its own regard, with a battle mechanic called “Focus” reminiscent of Bravely Default’s “Brave” and “Default” system. The difficulty seemed balanced enough and would trick you at times, making it feel like a cakewalk until a boss started to evolve into multiple forms. It challenged you to find the right weak spots, pick the optimal party, and be as resourceful as you could. The biggest flaw in its combat system however, is the lack of a turn indicator, making it difficult to plan your actions wisely. In addition to that, while immediately starting out with eight characters may seem like a good thing, it made me bench certain characters outright because it felt tedious to build the entire team.

Something else that Astria Ascending could have done without was the layer of complexity that came with the job system and ascension tree. The ascension tree in itself, similar to Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid, wasn’t a bad way to go about character progression. It was the fact that you needed stat orbs for certain parts of it, and the game showed you no clear way of attaining these stat orbs. From what I could tell, it seemed like it was a special drop from some enemy encounters. The job system also felt abruptly introduced, giving you a choice between three main jobs for each character with only a short one-liner to explain what the job entailed. You couldn’t even see the skill tree associated with the job. It felt like I was going in blind. You are only awarded two job orbs when the system is first introduced, and much like the stat orbs, there’s no way of telling when you’ll get your next orbs to unlock another job. Based on these instances, the game seemed to throw in many mechanics without much rationale, drawing inspiration from Final Fantasy and Bravely Default, yet making things unnecessarily complicated in the process.

Some quality of life improvements to Astria Ascending are definitely welcome. While they may not entirely fix what the game lacks, they would help make a more enjoyable experience. For one, being able to speed up battle animations or skip through dialogue during cutscenes would make the game feel a lot less sluggish. Adding quest markers or improving the map layout would also encourage players to explore the 2D world and make it easier to engage in more side quests along the way. Even making more sense of the weather system would be a nice touch, because as it stands, it seems like it was just added in as an afterthought.

Astria Ascending tries its best to be a jack-of-all-trades, yet fails in doing so. You can clearly see where the game drew inspiration from, but it would’ve benefitted from some editing down to focus on its better mechanics. While the game leaves much to be desired in certain aspects, it still does have its charm. In other words, it’s not bad, but it’s not great either. At the very least, the game is friendly for all types of players, with different settings to help you calibrate the difficulty at which you’d like to play. If you’re new to the genre or are a casual JRPG player, then Astria Ascending may be worth trying.

GameRev was provided with a digital download of the game for the purpose of this review.