It was only about a year ago when I learned that not everyone gets goosebumps from listening to music. There's a French word for it--frisson--which describes the feeling some get when music or other powerful stimuli trigger a physiological response. This rush is felt in only about 50% of people in the world, it turns out. I used to think it was all of us. That's probably a big part of why music means so much to me, because I'm in the lucky camp that gets to enjoy this positively overwhelming response when the right song hits at just the right time. Mixtape is an adventure game that leans into this magical sensation, pairing its heartfelt, often hilarious moments with a sweeping soundtrack to create a coming-of-age story I'll never forget.

Mixtape is the second effort from Beethoven & Dinosaur, a small Australian team that includes some former rockstars who pivoted to game dev and brought their love for music with them. In it, you play the music-obsessed Stacey Rockford, whose headphones may as well be an organic appendage. Inspired by movies like Superbad and the works of John Hughes, the driving force of the '90s-set story is Stacey's attempt to make it to a killer beach party with her best pals Slater and Cassandra in tow.

The morning after this party, Stacey is off to chase her dream as a music supervisor--basically a professional mixtape maker for Hollywood projects--so this is her and her friends' last hurrah together, whether they're ready for life to drag them into adulthood and see them go their separate ways or not. While relatively small, these stakes are deeply relatable, revealing a lot of big, honest emotions across the four-hour runtime.

The starring trio is incredibly well-written and all three foster empathy and investment from the very start of the game, as they coast down the hills of their town on skateboards, calling out cars to dodge and doing flip tricks over trash cans. As Stacey breaks the fourth wall, announcing to you, the player, the song she picked for the moment, you understand she's no phony. She knows her stuff when it comes to music, but her decision to leave town for New York has driven a wedge in the friend group, who once made plans for a lengthy west coast road trip that's now up in the air.

Mixtape does so much so well, but one of the things I love most about it is its emotional honesty. Sure, as an adult with the benefit of hindsight, a friend moving away isn't the end of the world. But when you're a kid, it's your whole world blowing up. For Stacey, Slater, and Cassandra, they're on the verge of so much changing, and their comfortable routines are being thrown out, exchanged for the ambiguous world of growing up. Though the trio often joke around and give off a level of youthful sarcasm, they're also capable of letting down their emotional barriers and spilling how they feel.

It endears me to each of them and their journeys, whether it be Stacey's bold career-planning maneuvers, Cassandra's desperate desire to wiggle out from beneath her cop-dad's iron fist, or Slater's somewhat untapped potential as a musician himself. How they stand up for each other, challenge each other, and even just how they, for lack of a better phrase, dick around, feels authentic, and it mesmerized me in each scene. Even then, sometimes it's the things they don't speak that affected me the most. Through it all, excellent performances bring these characters and others to vibrant life.

The structure of those scenes is another tremendous highlight. As the night unfolds and the friends remain hellbent on hunting down some alcohol and/or weed for the party, you'll spend hangout time in each of their bedrooms. There, flashbacks unfold to the tune of Stacey's carefully curated mixtape, designed with the explicit intent to become the soundtrack to their grand finale in town together.

Though the game often carries a punky, middle-finger of a spirit, the soundtrack is eclectic, from favorites like Devo and Siouxsie and the Banshees to lesser-known (to me anyway) standouts like Harpers Bizarre and Stan Bush. You won't be shunned for not knowing them all, as Stacey acts as the studio's proxy, providing a bit of musical history with each entry when she breaks the fourth wall a la Ferris Bueller. I loved hearing these new-to-me tracks nearly as much as I loved revisiting some all-time favorites, like The Cure.

Each of these flashback moments is given relatively light gameplay mechanics, often bespoke for just a singular sequence and then quickly disposed of. Like the studio's previous game, The Artful Escape, Mixtape isn't meant to challenge most players on the sticks. Though occasional fail states exist, like if you crash into a car on your skateboard, there's no penalty for messing up. It just rewinds instantly and resumes. This is a game that uses the language of games to tell its story, not test you. And thanks to the story perfectly marrying a killer soundtrack and clever mechanics together, it hits just right.

In one moment, you may be toilet-papering the principal's house, then in another, you'll be stumbling through a video store as the employee calls out to you beyond the fog of your drunken stupor. And this must be the first game to ever let you control a pair of French-kissing tongues, swapping spit and twisting in a fervor of adolescent hormones.

In one of my favorite sequences, the kids fly high above the town, soaring out of the forest, over the nearby lake, and into town, deriding their high school as they coast over the pool of yellow buses. It's all set to the tune of Atmosphere by Joy Division--by my estimation, one of the greatest bands there ever was. Of course, the kids didn't really learn to fly that night, but it sure as hell felt that way to them. How lucky we must be to have had moments in our lives where we felt the same. Mixtape is telling you its story, but it trusts you'll recall moments of your own that resonate.

As great as the game feels and sounds, it also looks exquisite. Built in Unreal, it takes advantage of the engine's impeccable lighting. Coated in a hyper-stylized cartoonishness, it still manages to give its characters the emotiveness their excellent performances deserve. This puts the game on full display, averting the all-too-common video game problem of a great story and performances let down somewhat by wooden character models.

Every frame is a rad painting, and like the gameplay controls, the perspective shifts often, giving each scene what it needs. In one scene, for example, in which the kids flee a party crashed by the cops, you'll seamlessly transition from a traditional third-person perspective to the view from the news helicopter above, watching the runaways take their out-of-control shopping cart onto the interstate.

Broadly speaking, Mixtape is an adventure game, if only because that's often the bucket one might drop a game like this into--a game where the rules of establishing and then iterating on gameplay don't apply. Not one of these moments frustrates or overstays its welcome, with the minor exception being the time spent in the kids' bedrooms, when you're allowed to peruse for a bit and trigger missable dialogue by interacting with objects in each space.

Collectively, it's less like you're playing a game with a great soundtrack and more like someone has turned a soundtrack into an interactive experiment. It had to be a game, and that's partly what makes it so much more affecting than if this were a movie, but still, the music leads. Mixtape is whatever it needs to be in each moment, and the studio makes a strong case for why it must be that way.

By tying each memory or moment to a particular song, Mixtape delivers on its main idea: Music isn't something we do; it's something we are. When we work out, we put on the playlist that gets us ready to run through a brick wall. On our wedding day, we play a song that reminds us of when we first met or whose lyrics speak to our journey. When we scream the words to our favorite songs in a venue of 300 sweaty strangers, it bonds us to one another in a way nothing else does or even could do. Music can behave like a time machine, carrying you to a place and time as though you're there again. Stacey gets this intimately, as does Beethoven & Dinosaur, quite obviously.

Music can make us feel incredibly powerful or cathartically vulnerable. And when the right song hits at the right moment, it may just send a happy shiver down your spine, which is how I spent much of my time with Mixtape, and why I'll never forget it.

It was only about a year ago when I learned that not everyone gets goosebumps from listening to music. There's a French word for it--frisson--which describes the feeling some get when music or other powerful stimuli trigger a physiological response. This rush is felt in only about 50% of people in the world, it turns out. I used to think it was all of us. That's probably a big part of why music means so much to me, because I'm in the lucky camp that gets to enjoy this positively overwhelming response when the right song hits at just the right time. Mixtape is an adventure game that leans into this magical sensation, pairing its heartfelt, often hilarious moments with a sweeping soundtrack to create a coming-of-age story I'll never forget.

Mixtape is the second effort from Beethoven & Dinosaur, a small Australian team that includes some former rockstars who pivoted to game dev and brought their love for music with them. In it, you play the music-obsessed Stacey Rockford, whose headphones may as well be an organic appendage. Inspired by movies like Superbad and the works of John Hughes, the driving force of the '90s-set story is Stacey's attempt to make it to a killer beach party with her best pals Slater and Cassandra in tow.

The morning after this party, Stacey is off to chase her dream as a music supervisor--basically a professional mixtape maker for Hollywood projects--so this is her and her friends' last hurrah together, whether they're ready for life to drag them into adulthood and see them go their separate ways or not. While relatively small, these stakes are deeply relatable, revealing a lot of big, honest emotions across the four-hour runtime.

The starring trio is incredibly well-written and all three foster empathy and investment from the very start of the game, as they coast down the hills of their town on skateboards, calling out cars to dodge and doing flip tricks over trash cans. As Stacey breaks the fourth wall, announcing to you, the player, the song she picked for the moment, you understand she's no phony. She knows her stuff when it comes to music, but her decision to leave town for New York has driven a wedge in the friend group, who once made plans for a lengthy west coast road trip that's now up in the air.

Mixtape does so much so well, but one of the things I love most about it is its emotional honesty. Sure, as an adult with the benefit of hindsight, a friend moving away isn't the end of the world. But when you're a kid, it's your whole world blowing up. For Stacey, Slater, and Cassandra, they're on the verge of so much changing, and their comfortable routines are being thrown out, exchanged for the ambiguous world of growing up. Though the trio often joke around and give off a level of youthful sarcasm, they're also capable of letting down their emotional barriers and spilling how they feel.

It endears me to each of them and their journeys, whether it be Stacey's bold career-planning maneuvers, Cassandra's desperate desire to wiggle out from beneath her cop-dad's iron fist, or Slater's somewhat untapped potential as a musician himself. How they stand up for each other, challenge each other, and even just how they, for lack of a better phrase, dick around, feels authentic, and it mesmerized me in each scene. Even then, sometimes it's the things they don't speak that affected me the most. Through it all, excellent performances bring these characters and others to vibrant life.

The structure of those scenes is another tremendous highlight. As the night unfolds and the friends remain hellbent on hunting down some alcohol and/or weed for the party, you'll spend hangout time in each of their bedrooms. There, flashbacks unfold to the tune of Stacey's carefully curated mixtape, designed with the explicit intent to become the soundtrack to their grand finale in town together.

Though the game often carries a punky, middle-finger of a spirit, the soundtrack is eclectic, from favorites like Devo and Siouxsie and the Banshees to lesser-known (to me anyway) standouts like Harpers Bizarre and Stan Bush. You won't be shunned for not knowing them all, as Stacey acts as the studio's proxy, providing a bit of musical history with each entry when she breaks the fourth wall a la Ferris Bueller. I loved hearing these new-to-me tracks nearly as much as I loved revisiting some all-time favorites, like The Cure.

Each of these flashback moments is given relatively light gameplay mechanics, often bespoke for just a singular sequence and then quickly disposed of. Like the studio's previous game, The Artful Escape, Mixtape isn't meant to challenge most players on the sticks. Though occasional fail states exist, like if you crash into a car on your skateboard, there's no penalty for messing up. It just rewinds instantly and resumes. This is a game that uses the language of games to tell its story, not test you. And thanks to the story perfectly marrying a killer soundtrack and clever mechanics together, it hits just right.

In one moment, you may be toilet-papering the principal's house, then in another, you'll be stumbling through a video store as the employee calls out to you beyond the fog of your drunken stupor. And this must be the first game to ever let you control a pair of French-kissing tongues, swapping spit and twisting in a fervor of adolescent hormones.

In one of my favorite sequences, the kids fly high above the town, soaring out of the forest, over the nearby lake, and into town, deriding their high school as they coast over the pool of yellow buses. It's all set to the tune of Atmosphere by Joy Division--by my estimation, one of the greatest bands there ever was. Of course, the kids didn't really learn to fly that night, but it sure as hell felt that way to them. How lucky we must be to have had moments in our lives where we felt the same. Mixtape is telling you its story, but it trusts you'll recall moments of your own that resonate.

As great as the game feels and sounds, it also looks exquisite. Built in Unreal, it takes advantage of the engine's impeccable lighting. Coated in a hyper-stylized cartoonishness, it still manages to give its characters the emotiveness their excellent performances deserve. This puts the game on full display, averting the all-too-common video game problem of a great story and performances let down somewhat by wooden character models.

Every frame is a rad painting, and like the gameplay controls, the perspective shifts often, giving each scene what it needs. In one scene, for example, in which the kids flee a party crashed by the cops, you'll seamlessly transition from a traditional third-person perspective to the view from the news helicopter above, watching the runaways take their out-of-control shopping cart onto the interstate.

Broadly speaking, Mixtape is an adventure game, if only because that's often the bucket one might drop a game like this into--a game where the rules of establishing and then iterating on gameplay don't apply. Not one of these moments frustrates or overstays its welcome, with the minor exception being the time spent in the kids' bedrooms, when you're allowed to peruse for a bit and trigger missable dialogue by interacting with objects in each space.

Collectively, it's less like you're playing a game with a great soundtrack and more like someone has turned a soundtrack into an interactive experiment. It had to be a game, and that's partly what makes it so much more affecting than if this were a movie, but still, the music leads. Mixtape is whatever it needs to be in each moment, and the studio makes a strong case for why it must be that way.

By tying each memory or moment to a particular song, Mixtape delivers on its main idea: Music isn't something we do; it's something we are. When we work out, we put on the playlist that gets us ready to run through a brick wall. On our wedding day, we play a song that reminds us of when we first met or whose lyrics speak to our journey. When we scream the words to our favorite songs in a venue of 300 sweaty strangers, it bonds us to one another in a way nothing else does or even could do. Music can behave like a time machine, carrying you to a place and time as though you're there again. Stacey gets this intimately, as does Beethoven & Dinosaur, quite obviously.

Music can make us feel incredibly powerful or cathartically vulnerable. And when the right song hits at the right moment, it may just send a happy shiver down your spine, which is how I spent much of my time with Mixtape, and why I'll never forget it.

Tides of Tomorrow is the first single-player game I've played that desperately wanted me to stalk other human-controlled characters, and that sentiment alone was a compelling enough gimmick for me to jump into its consequence-driven story. While that story stumbles in a few places, and the gameplay never quite rises to anything beyond serviceable, Tides of Tomorrow does a great job of incentivizing you to participate in its "we're all in this together" apocalyptic fantasy and care about the ramifications of your choices and actions beyond how they impact you. If you're looking for a game that makes you feel good about helping others and being helped by others, there aren't many options that hit that sense of community like Tides of Tomorrow.

In Tides of Tomorrow, you play as a Tidewalker, an individual who can see glimpses of the past. These visions always involve the actions of other Tidewalkers, creating a network of individuals who can all learn from each other. Fished from the ocean, you find yourself in a world that's been flooded, restricting civilization to makeshift island towns and repurposed oil rigs. A sickness is also worming its way through the population, slowly causing people to transform into plastic. You count yourself among the infected, quickly learning that only the regular consumption of a medicine known as ozen keeps you from turning completely into plastic and dying.

You play through the game in first-person as a largely silent individual who only speaks when prompted to with a dialogue option. Other than your supernatural sight, you move through the world simply--running, crouching, jumping. In certain locations, you can open your sight to see what a Tidewalker--who, like your Tidewalker, is also controlled by another human player--did there, allowing you to lean on the knowledge you glean to better move through the world. A bouncer who welcomed in a Tidewalker the previous day will allow you inside the club if you also offer up to them the same alias, for example, and seeing a Tidewalker hide some ozen in a grate lets you then nab it for yourself.

These Tidewalkers that you see are always players who went through the level that you're currently on prior to you. Between each level, you're always asked which path you want to go to next, which puts you on the path behind a specific player. You can choose to follow that player all the way through to the end (assuming they have beaten the game), or choose to go in a different direction between levels to follow in the footsteps of another player. Whenever you make this choice to follow a player, you get a brief description of how they acted in that particular level. One player may have prioritized animals and nature in this increasingly plastic-filled world, while another could have opted to prioritize their own survival. Following a player who embodies your playstyle is obviously ideal, but sometimes you don't have that choice and simply must take the best option of those available to you.

Another player's choices can inform how the world reacts to you as well. A Tidewalker who was kind to citizens will create a welcoming atmosphere for you, while a more self-serving Tidewalker will cause NPCs to not want to help you without a bribe or favor on your part.

Community is the main throughline of Tides of Tomorrow. The game's story entices you to care about the community of characters you meet through character-driven storylines and relationship trackers, while its main feature invites you to care about your fellow Tidewalkers by bombarding you with messaging of how other players are affecting your playthrough and how your choices are subsequently impacting the playthroughs of players who follow you.

Between those two communities, the game better accomplishes making you care about the players both ahead and behind you on your journey, and it's better for it, as that's the aspect that differentiates Tides of Tomorrow from other single-player role-playing games. Bonding with an internet stranger through gameplay isn't novel--Dark Souls lets players help or hinder others with cryptic messages and invasions, for example, and Pokemon Go seemingly created world peace for one magical summer of pocket-monster catching--but that does nothing to diminish the emotional draw of Tides of Tomorrow.

I feel genuine appreciation when I'm scouring for enough scrap to pay for something, and NPCs around me help me out because the player I'm following made sure to treat them with respect. I'm shocked when I discover the body of a character I'll never get to meet because the player I'm following stole from them, leaving the character too poor to afford the medicine they needed to survive. And I'm frustrated when a stealth mission is filled with extra guards and more security because the player I'm following angered the kingpin in charge of the area, and so he's put his entire fortress on high alert for future Tidewalkers.

These emotional responses are driven by the knowledge that my lucky breaks and ill fortunes are primarily driven by real people out there. The kindness I've been shown came from someone out there being selfless when they didn't have to be, and the moments of irritation and struggle have primarily been the byproduct of another person's selfishness, desperation, or mistake. Given the desperate struggle your character is thrown into from the jump, it would be so easy to be a self-serving asshole, but the generosity of other players is a strong incentive to pay that kindness forward to any players that may be following in your footsteps.

Tides of Tomorrow doesn't tell you whether your actions have directly helped anyone--it's entirely possible that no one will follow your trail, and the consideration you've shown will ultimately be for nothing--but the encouragement to just be kind is there all the same. It felt good just doing all I could to help. Depending on the type of person you are, this might also add quite a bit of tension to each choice--if you're like me, the idea of making a mistake and royally screwing over another player might inject a level of pressure into every dialogue choice that you're not used to.

This same emotional draw doesn't quite come through with the main NPC characters. While I felt pity for the cute, trouble-making platinum-blonde rebel suffering from an illness slowly transforming her into plastic, and disgust for the tyrant keeping valuable resources from the populace, these characters felt largely like archetype tropes solely there to move me along through a by-the-numbers story of survivors in an apocalypse banding together to rise up against the cartoonishly evil villain. Tides of Tomorrow's story isn't bad, and its characters aren't awful, but it's not the strongest narrative backdrop.

The story and characters are also weakened by how Tides of Tomorrow works. Pretty much every part of the story is dependent on the actions and choices of the players who went through that particular chapter before you. A town loves you because another Tidewalker was kind, for instance, not because you've been kind to other characters leading up to that point. This can create bizarre fluctuations in an NPC's treatment of you, where you may have sided against them in an earlier argument or failed to do what they asked in an early mission, but they can still think you're amazing when you speak to them later because you choose to be on the path of a player who helped them out.

It's a bizarre disconnect that lessens the sense of agency that you have in your own choices. If anything, Tides of Tomorrow's story feels less like something that you're affecting and more like a linear tale that others have dictated for you, and then your responses to that story have a major impact on anyone who might be following your path.

Even if I wasn't always the biggest fan of the characters, I did love Tides of Tomorrow's world. The game has a charming, yet striking aesthetic. Visually, it has an almost cartoony vibe that's bright and vibrant, creating these sharp contrasts between the natural and manufactured, whether that's piles of trash floating in ocean water or plastic veins permeating human skin. That's accompanied by a soundtrack that leans into this almost beat-heavy funk during especially tense or action-heavy scenes. Developer Digixart's previous title, Road 96, was one of my favorite adventure games of 2021 primarily because of its stellar atmosphere, and it's awesome to see the studio devote that same level of care again, but for a very different game.

While I don't think Tides of Tomorrow rises to the same narrative highs as Road 96, its primary incentive is a great draw. It's a little weird to want to stalk other players through a digital world, watching and listening to their every move in order to better your own lot in life, but it's a compelling enough gameplay loop that I overlooked the shortcomings in the game's story and non-player characters. And even if I don't plan on playing the game again, it warms my heart to know that my digital ghost is now out there, potentially guiding other Tidewalkers that may need a little help.

Tides of Tomorrow is the first single-player game I've played that desperately wanted me to stalk other human-controlled characters, and that sentiment alone was a compelling enough gimmick for me to jump into its consequence-driven story. While that story stumbles in a few places, and the gameplay never quite rises to anything beyond serviceable, Tides of Tomorrow does a great job of incentivizing you to participate in its "we're all in this together" apocalyptic fantasy and care about the ramifications of your choices and actions beyond how they impact you. If you're looking for a game that makes you feel good about helping others and being helped by others, there aren't many options that hit that sense of community like Tides of Tomorrow.

In Tides of Tomorrow, you play as a Tidewalker, an individual who can see glimpses of the past. These visions always involve the actions of other Tidewalkers, creating a network of individuals who can all learn from each other. Fished from the ocean, you find yourself in a world that's been flooded, restricting civilization to makeshift island towns and repurposed oil rigs. A sickness is also worming its way through the population, slowly causing people to transform into plastic. You count yourself among the infected, quickly learning that only the regular consumption of a medicine known as ozen keeps you from turning completely into plastic and dying.

You play through the game in first-person as a largely silent individual who only speaks when prompted to with a dialogue option. Other than your supernatural sight, you move through the world simply--running, crouching, jumping. In certain locations, you can open your sight to see what a Tidewalker--who, like your Tidewalker, is also controlled by another human player--did there, allowing you to lean on the knowledge you glean to better move through the world. A bouncer who welcomed in a Tidewalker the previous day will allow you inside the club if you also offer up to them the same alias, for example, and seeing a Tidewalker hide some ozen in a grate lets you then nab it for yourself.

These Tidewalkers that you see are always players who went through the level that you're currently on prior to you. Between each level, you're always asked which path you want to go to next, which puts you on the path behind a specific player. You can choose to follow that player all the way through to the end (assuming they have beaten the game), or choose to go in a different direction between levels to follow in the footsteps of another player. Whenever you make this choice to follow a player, you get a brief description of how they acted in that particular level. One player may have prioritized animals and nature in this increasingly plastic-filled world, while another could have opted to prioritize their own survival. Following a player who embodies your playstyle is obviously ideal, but sometimes you don't have that choice and simply must take the best option of those available to you.

Another player's choices can inform how the world reacts to you as well. A Tidewalker who was kind to citizens will create a welcoming atmosphere for you, while a more self-serving Tidewalker will cause NPCs to not want to help you without a bribe or favor on your part.

Community is the main throughline of Tides of Tomorrow. The game's story entices you to care about the community of characters you meet through character-driven storylines and relationship trackers, while its main feature invites you to care about your fellow Tidewalkers by bombarding you with messaging of how other players are affecting your playthrough and how your choices are subsequently impacting the playthroughs of players who follow you.

Between those two communities, the game better accomplishes making you care about the players both ahead and behind you on your journey, and it's better for it, as that's the aspect that differentiates Tides of Tomorrow from other single-player role-playing games. Bonding with an internet stranger through gameplay isn't novel--Dark Souls lets players help or hinder others with cryptic messages and invasions, for example, and Pokemon Go seemingly created world peace for one magical summer of pocket-monster catching--but that does nothing to diminish the emotional draw of Tides of Tomorrow.

I feel genuine appreciation when I'm scouring for enough scrap to pay for something, and NPCs around me help me out because the player I'm following made sure to treat them with respect. I'm shocked when I discover the body of a character I'll never get to meet because the player I'm following stole from them, leaving the character too poor to afford the medicine they needed to survive. And I'm frustrated when a stealth mission is filled with extra guards and more security because the player I'm following angered the kingpin in charge of the area, and so he's put his entire fortress on high alert for future Tidewalkers.

These emotional responses are driven by the knowledge that my lucky breaks and ill fortunes are primarily driven by real people out there. The kindness I've been shown came from someone out there being selfless when they didn't have to be, and the moments of irritation and struggle have primarily been the byproduct of another person's selfishness, desperation, or mistake. Given the desperate struggle your character is thrown into from the jump, it would be so easy to be a self-serving asshole, but the generosity of other players is a strong incentive to pay that kindness forward to any players that may be following in your footsteps.

Tides of Tomorrow doesn't tell you whether your actions have directly helped anyone--it's entirely possible that no one will follow your trail, and the consideration you've shown will ultimately be for nothing--but the encouragement to just be kind is there all the same. It felt good just doing all I could to help. Depending on the type of person you are, this might also add quite a bit of tension to each choice--if you're like me, the idea of making a mistake and royally screwing over another player might inject a level of pressure into every dialogue choice that you're not used to.

This same emotional draw doesn't quite come through with the main NPC characters. While I felt pity for the cute, trouble-making platinum-blonde rebel suffering from an illness slowly transforming her into plastic, and disgust for the tyrant keeping valuable resources from the populace, these characters felt largely like archetype tropes solely there to move me along through a by-the-numbers story of survivors in an apocalypse banding together to rise up against the cartoonishly evil villain. Tides of Tomorrow's story isn't bad, and its characters aren't awful, but it's not the strongest narrative backdrop.

The story and characters are also weakened by how Tides of Tomorrow works. Pretty much every part of the story is dependent on the actions and choices of the players who went through that particular chapter before you. A town loves you because another Tidewalker was kind, for instance, not because you've been kind to other characters leading up to that point. This can create bizarre fluctuations in an NPC's treatment of you, where you may have sided against them in an earlier argument or failed to do what they asked in an early mission, but they can still think you're amazing when you speak to them later because you choose to be on the path of a player who helped them out.

It's a bizarre disconnect that lessens the sense of agency that you have in your own choices. If anything, Tides of Tomorrow's story feels less like something that you're affecting and more like a linear tale that others have dictated for you, and then your responses to that story have a major impact on anyone who might be following your path.

Even if I wasn't always the biggest fan of the characters, I did love Tides of Tomorrow's world. The game has a charming, yet striking aesthetic. Visually, it has an almost cartoony vibe that's bright and vibrant, creating these sharp contrasts between the natural and manufactured, whether that's piles of trash floating in ocean water or plastic veins permeating human skin. That's accompanied by a soundtrack that leans into this almost beat-heavy funk during especially tense or action-heavy scenes. Developer Digixart's previous title, Road 96, was one of my favorite adventure games of 2021 primarily because of its stellar atmosphere, and it's awesome to see the studio devote that same level of care again, but for a very different game.

While I don't think Tides of Tomorrow rises to the same narrative highs as Road 96, its primary incentive is a great draw. It's a little weird to want to stalk other players through a digital world, watching and listening to their every move in order to better your own lot in life, but it's a compelling enough gameplay loop that I overlooked the shortcomings in the game's story and non-player characters. And even if I don't plan on playing the game again, it warms my heart to know that my digital ghost is now out there, potentially guiding other Tidewalkers that may need a little help.

Saros might be a roguelite, but its definition of a "run" is definitely broader than most. The latest game from developer Housemarque shares plenty of similarities with the studio's previous game, Returnal--both are sci-fi third-person shooters with a bullet-hell tinge--yet Saros takes some bold swings that clearly differentiate the two. By flipping Housemarque's roguelite formula on its head, Saros builds and improves upon its spiritual predecessor in spectacular fashion, seducing you every step of the way with an enthralling marriage of mechanics and story that's not to be missed.

You're given very little to go on as Saros begins. On the planet of Carcosa, communication with the colony ships Echelon I, II, and III has been lost. Echelon IV and its emergency crew are sent to investigate. In addition to a pilot, crew commander, and engineer, the team also includes four armed Enforcers for reconnaissance and security purposes. Protagonist Arjun Devraj is one of these Enforcers, though that number has dwindled to two by the time you take control. With thousands of colonists missing, members of the emergency crew losing their minds, and Arjun able to come back from the dead, you're just as lost as the characters are when it comes to figuring out just what the hell is going on.

What you do know is that the Echelon program was sent to Carcosa by the Soltari corporation due to the presence of Lucenite, a compound with vast energy potential. Soltari is essentially Alien's Weyland-Yutani in all but name, placing Lucenite extraction above all else in the chase for trillion-dollar profits. This creates friction between the crew and those loyal to the company, especially Arjun, who also has personal reasons for being there. He knows someone who was on board Echelon I, so there's an impassioned determination behind his words and actions, even as he struggles to piece together the mysterious circumstances he finds himself in.

Even so, I was initially skeptical of this approach. A protagonist searching for their partner is a tired and overdone trope, yet Saros surprised me with the direction it takes. It's darker and more complex than I imagined it would be, while Arjun's character development over the course of the game proves captivating.

The entire cast is excellent, too, breathing life into characters you only encounter through audio logs and those you interact with each time you return from a run. Rahul Kohli (Midnight Mass, Gears 5), meanwhile, shines as Arjun, giving depth to his struggles and inner turmoil as he carries the weight of the game's narrative. The only misstep is that the character models during in-game conversations lack the fidelity to convey the same emotions as the voice performances. Usually, this isn't an issue, but there are a couple of hard-hitting moments where it veers into the uncanny valley.

Another thing I appreciated about Arjun's arc is the way it gradually folds into the planet's broader mysteries. You might be familiar with the name Carcosa. In Saros, it's a shape-shifting alien planet, but the name has appeared across media before in the likes of True Detective, Mass Effect, and the works of H.P. Lovecraft and George R.R. Martin. Each of these instances was inspired by the American writer Robert W. Chambers, who used Carcosa as a setting in several short stories featured in the 1895 book The King in Yellow. Saros is no different. In the book, Chambers describes Carcosa as a mysterious, ancient, and possibly cursed place, which is a fitting description for the hostile planet you find yourself stranded on.

There's more to it than just a name, although I won't delve any further into specifics. Just know that these allusions only add to the sense of unease. Saros might not be a horror game, but it quickly establishes an unnerving atmosphere that permeates throughout the entire experience.

You receive a drip-feed of information from run to run as you discover text and audio logs and converse with your fellow crew members each time you return to the game's hub. This lack of information creates a mystique around Arjun, the mission, and Carcosa, which Housemarque further blurs by showing you striking images and events for which you have no context. Even as the picture becomes clearer, the sense of dread doesn't dissipate as the game's mysteries slowly unravel, and the eventual context is all the more impactful.

Carcosa's aesthetic contributes to this feeling as well. Each biome evokes trepidation, whether it's the tumultuous nature of the planet itself or its ancient architecture--crafted at some unknown point in time by some unknowable entity. White marble walls are juxtaposed with statues and art installations that scream agony; there are large-scale depictions of arms clawing their way out of hell and poor souls forced to hold up structures like Atlas carrying the heavens on his shoulders. Underneath the earth is a sprawling network of pipes and metal, where fire spews out of whirring machinery, and H.R. Giger's influence is felt. There's a city, decimated by a long-forgotten war, where tight streets constrict your movement and ramp up the intensity of each firefight, while a murky swamp forces you to contend with toxic waters once the planet's eclipse fills the sky.

Saros builds and improves upon [Returnal] in spectacular fashion, seducing you every step of the way with an enthralling marriage of mechanics and story that's not to be missed.

Once you've left the relative safety of the hub and are exploring these biomes, that feeling of uncertainty in the pit of your stomach is also joined by a jolt of excitement. In Returnal, protagonist Selene dashed through incoming lines of explosive orbs, jumped over energy beams, and utilized a variety of weaponry to survive. In Saros, Arjun does the same, except he's not fighting just to survive; he's fighting to find his partner, and will kill whatever's in front of him to do so. While Selene was constantly on the back foot, Arjun plants his front foot firmly in the ground, and his arsenal reflects this.

You can jump and dash to avoid the barrage of enemy fire heading your way, but Arjun also comes equipped with a special shield that deflects damage and, most importantly, absorbs it, channeling this energy into Power that can be used to unleash your own devastating attacks.

Blue projectiles can be dashed through or absorbed, yellow ones can be dashed through but will rapidly destroy your shield, while red projectiles need to be avoided entirely--at least until you gain the ability to parry these attacks later on. This means readability is never an issue, though it's still easy to feel overwhelmed when the screen fills with a cacophony of bright energy beams and neon orbs. Not in a negative sense, but in a way that's challenging without feeling unfair.

It's a test of your reflexes and ability to position yourself so that you're not surprised by any unseen threats. It also makes sense that Housemarque rejects the bullet-hell moniker in favor of the more apt "bullet ballet." With active reloads and the way you weave into some projectiles while outright avoiding others, there's a rhythmic cadence to combat that feels somewhat like a chaotic dance.

Slipping into a flow state is incredibly easy, to the point where I often didn't realize how hard I was gripping the controller until the action had died down. It's thrilling stuff, mixing small-arms fire with melee strikes and a Power Weapon you can charge by absorbing projectiles, blasting away mobs, tough Alpha enemies, and the game's slew of fantastic bosses.

There are a few weapon types, such as assault rifles, shotguns, and crossbows, but, as with each procedurally generated biome, there are dozens of different permutations as well. One pistol might utilize burst fire, while another ricochets each bullet between multiple enemies. Every weapon has an alt-fire mode, too, letting you fire off shotgun shells with a more concentrated vertical spread, or add additional homing projectiles to a single crossbow bolt. I rarely found a firearm that wasn't satisfying to use, and they all feel viable, no matter the confluence of random modifiers and buffs.

You'll also find numerous Artifacts scattered across Carcosa. There's a limit to how many you can have equipped, but each one augments your abilities and grants different effects, such as automatic Power generation or a reduction in incoming damage. Unlike Returnal, you don't need a near-perfect mix of Artifacts and weapons to succeed. Saros is still a challenging game--and you can tinker with various modifiers to make it slightly easier or harder (within reason)--but it never feels like a successful run is predicated on which random pickups you receive.

This is also partly due to permanent upgrades that are more palpable and immediate. The Lucenite you collect by exploring and defeating enemies can be spent at the game's hub to purchase various upgrades from an exhaustive skill tree. Some of these are blanket improvements to attributes like armor integrity and maximum Power, and there's an instant sense of progression that stems from seeing your health bar expand or suddenly having more opportunities to use the Power Weapon. Other upgrades are more varied: You can add additional Artifact slots, start each run with keys to unlock doors and open locked containers, ensure that enemies drop more Lucenite, and boost your proficiency to gain access to higher-tier weapons earlier in a run.

That last upgrade is important, because Saros isn't structured like most roguelites. There's a throughline from one biome to the next that encompasses almost the entire game, but you can also travel to each biome individually from the game's hub. Obviously, you need to unlock an area first, but once you've reached a specific biome, you can fast-travel right back to it at the start of each run. This means you don't have to start from the beginning of the game each time and can pick up wherever you want, cutting out potential tedium while also giving you a ton of flexibility in how you approach the game.

When a boss was giving me a hard time, I decided to begin my run from the first biome rather than teleporting straight to the boss's domain. There are risks involved in this strategy, since I could've died before even making it back, but starting from an earlier point allowed me to build up enough temporary upgrades that I had an easier time defeating the boss. Other times, I didn't feel like I needed to revisit past biomes again, so I teleported to where I needed to go and went from there. Add in the fact that you can suspend a run (provided you're not in the middle of a boss battle), and Saros is much more generous with your time than Returnal was.

It might not be a direct sequel, but decisions like this and others elsewhere address every issue I had with Returnal. Housemarque's previous game is fantastic in its own way. Yet Saros elevates the studio's roguelite formula to another level. Its structure is surprisingly malleable, combat is deeper and more rewarding, and I couldn't resist being wrapped around the finger of its mysterious and foreboding narrative. I find roguelites hit-and-miss, but it didn't take long before I was utterly infatuated with Saros. It's an incredible game that does more than just refine what worked before. Even after rolling credits, I can't wait to dive back in.

Saros might be a roguelite, but its definition of a "run" is definitely broader than most. The latest game from developer Housemarque shares plenty of similarities with the studio's previous game, Returnal--both are sci-fi third-person shooters with a bullet-hell tinge--yet Saros takes some bold swings that clearly differentiate the two. By flipping Housemarque's roguelite formula on its head, Saros builds and improves upon its spiritual predecessor in spectacular fashion, seducing you every step of the way with an enthralling marriage of mechanics and story that's not to be missed.

You're given very little to go on as Saros begins. On the planet of Carcosa, communication with the colony ships Echelon I, II, and III has been lost. Echelon IV and its emergency crew are sent to investigate. In addition to a pilot, crew commander, and engineer, the team also includes four armed Enforcers for reconnaissance and security purposes. Protagonist Arjun Devraj is one of these Enforcers, though that number has dwindled to two by the time you take control. With thousands of colonists missing, members of the emergency crew losing their minds, and Arjun able to come back from the dead, you're just as lost as the characters are when it comes to figuring out just what the hell is going on.

What you do know is that the Echelon program was sent to Carcosa by the Soltari corporation due to the presence of Lucenite, a compound with vast energy potential. Soltari is essentially Alien's Weyland-Yutani in all but name, placing Lucenite extraction above all else in the chase for trillion-dollar profits. This creates friction between the crew and those loyal to the company, especially Arjun, who also has personal reasons for being there. He knows someone who was on board Echelon I, so there's an impassioned determination behind his words and actions, even as he struggles to piece together the mysterious circumstances he finds himself in.

Even so, I was initially skeptical of this approach. A protagonist searching for their partner is a tired and overdone trope, yet Saros surprised me with the direction it takes. It's darker and more complex than I imagined it would be, while Arjun's character development over the course of the game proves captivating.

The entire cast is excellent, too, breathing life into characters you only encounter through audio logs and those you interact with each time you return from a run. Rahul Kohli (Midnight Mass, Gears 5), meanwhile, shines as Arjun, giving depth to his struggles and inner turmoil as he carries the weight of the game's narrative. The only misstep is that the character models during in-game conversations lack the fidelity to convey the same emotions as the voice performances. Usually, this isn't an issue, but there are a couple of hard-hitting moments where it veers into the uncanny valley.

Another thing I appreciated about Arjun's arc is the way it gradually folds into the planet's broader mysteries. You might be familiar with the name Carcosa. In Saros, it's a shape-shifting alien planet, but the name has appeared across media before in the likes of True Detective, Mass Effect, and the works of H.P. Lovecraft and George R.R. Martin. Each of these instances was inspired by the American writer Robert W. Chambers, who used Carcosa as a setting in several short stories featured in the 1895 book The King in Yellow. Saros is no different. In the book, Chambers describes Carcosa as a mysterious, ancient, and possibly cursed place, which is a fitting description for the hostile planet you find yourself stranded on.

There's more to it than just a name, although I won't delve any further into specifics. Just know that these allusions only add to the sense of unease. Saros might not be a horror game, but it quickly establishes an unnerving atmosphere that permeates throughout the entire experience.

You receive a drip-feed of information from run to run as you discover text and audio logs and converse with your fellow crew members each time you return to the game's hub. This lack of information creates a mystique around Arjun, the mission, and Carcosa, which Housemarque further blurs by showing you striking images and events for which you have no context. Even as the picture becomes clearer, the sense of dread doesn't dissipate as the game's mysteries slowly unravel, and the eventual context is all the more impactful.

Carcosa's aesthetic contributes to this feeling as well. Each biome evokes trepidation, whether it's the tumultuous nature of the planet itself or its ancient architecture--crafted at some unknown point in time by some unknowable entity. White marble walls are juxtaposed with statues and art installations that scream agony; there are large-scale depictions of arms clawing their way out of hell and poor souls forced to hold up structures like Atlas carrying the heavens on his shoulders. Underneath the earth is a sprawling network of pipes and metal, where fire spews out of whirring machinery, and H.R. Giger's influence is felt. There's a city, decimated by a long-forgotten war, where tight streets constrict your movement and ramp up the intensity of each firefight, while a murky swamp forces you to contend with toxic waters once the planet's eclipse fills the sky.

Saros builds and improves upon [Returnal] in spectacular fashion, seducing you every step of the way with an enthralling marriage of mechanics and story that's not to be missed.

Once you've left the relative safety of the hub and are exploring these biomes, that feeling of uncertainty in the pit of your stomach is also joined by a jolt of excitement. In Returnal, protagonist Selene dashed through incoming lines of explosive orbs, jumped over energy beams, and utilized a variety of weaponry to survive. In Saros, Arjun does the same, except he's not fighting just to survive; he's fighting to find his partner, and will kill whatever's in front of him to do so. While Selene was constantly on the back foot, Arjun plants his front foot firmly in the ground, and his arsenal reflects this.

You can jump and dash to avoid the barrage of enemy fire heading your way, but Arjun also comes equipped with a special shield that deflects damage and, most importantly, absorbs it, channeling this energy into Power that can be used to unleash your own devastating attacks.

Blue projectiles can be dashed through or absorbed, yellow ones can be dashed through but will rapidly destroy your shield, while red projectiles need to be avoided entirely--at least until you gain the ability to parry these attacks later on. This means readability is never an issue, though it's still easy to feel overwhelmed when the screen fills with a cacophony of bright energy beams and neon orbs. Not in a negative sense, but in a way that's challenging without feeling unfair.

It's a test of your reflexes and ability to position yourself so that you're not surprised by any unseen threats. It also makes sense that Housemarque rejects the bullet-hell moniker in favor of the more apt "bullet ballet." With active reloads and the way you weave into some projectiles while outright avoiding others, there's a rhythmic cadence to combat that feels somewhat like a chaotic dance.

Slipping into a flow state is incredibly easy, to the point where I often didn't realize how hard I was gripping the controller until the action had died down. It's thrilling stuff, mixing small-arms fire with melee strikes and a Power Weapon you can charge by absorbing projectiles, blasting away mobs, tough Alpha enemies, and the game's slew of fantastic bosses.

There are a few weapon types, such as assault rifles, shotguns, and crossbows, but, as with each procedurally generated biome, there are dozens of different permutations as well. One pistol might utilize burst fire, while another ricochets each bullet between multiple enemies. Every weapon has an alt-fire mode, too, letting you fire off shotgun shells with a more concentrated vertical spread, or add additional homing projectiles to a single crossbow bolt. I rarely found a firearm that wasn't satisfying to use, and they all feel viable, no matter the confluence of random modifiers and buffs.

You'll also find numerous Artifacts scattered across Carcosa. There's a limit to how many you can have equipped, but each one augments your abilities and grants different effects, such as automatic Power generation or a reduction in incoming damage. Unlike Returnal, you don't need a near-perfect mix of Artifacts and weapons to succeed. Saros is still a challenging game--and you can tinker with various modifiers to make it slightly easier or harder (within reason)--but it never feels like a successful run is predicated on which random pickups you receive.

This is also partly due to permanent upgrades that are more palpable and immediate. The Lucenite you collect by exploring and defeating enemies can be spent at the game's hub to purchase various upgrades from an exhaustive skill tree. Some of these are blanket improvements to attributes like armor integrity and maximum Power, and there's an instant sense of progression that stems from seeing your health bar expand or suddenly having more opportunities to use the Power Weapon. Other upgrades are more varied: You can add additional Artifact slots, start each run with keys to unlock doors and open locked containers, ensure that enemies drop more Lucenite, and boost your proficiency to gain access to higher-tier weapons earlier in a run.

That last upgrade is important, because Saros isn't structured like most roguelites. There's a throughline from one biome to the next that encompasses almost the entire game, but you can also travel to each biome individually from the game's hub. Obviously, you need to unlock an area first, but once you've reached a specific biome, you can fast-travel right back to it at the start of each run. This means you don't have to start from the beginning of the game each time and can pick up wherever you want, cutting out potential tedium while also giving you a ton of flexibility in how you approach the game.

When a boss was giving me a hard time, I decided to begin my run from the first biome rather than teleporting straight to the boss's domain. There are risks involved in this strategy, since I could've died before even making it back, but starting from an earlier point allowed me to build up enough temporary upgrades that I had an easier time defeating the boss. Other times, I didn't feel like I needed to revisit past biomes again, so I teleported to where I needed to go and went from there. Add in the fact that you can suspend a run (provided you're not in the middle of a boss battle), and Saros is much more generous with your time than Returnal was.

It might not be a direct sequel, but decisions like this and others elsewhere address every issue I had with Returnal. Housemarque's previous game is fantastic in its own way. Yet Saros elevates the studio's roguelite formula to another level. Its structure is surprisingly malleable, combat is deeper and more rewarding, and I couldn't resist being wrapped around the finger of its mysterious and foreboding narrative. I find roguelites hit-and-miss, but it didn't take long before I was utterly infatuated with Saros. It's an incredible game that does more than just refine what worked before. Even after rolling credits, I can't wait to dive back in.

Two things can be said of Diablo IV leading up to the release of Lord of Hatred: First and foremost, as a series, Diablo has never been in a better or more promising place. Secondly, the game's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, was a bit of a letdown following a tremendous first act. With those things in mind, it's safe to say that there are very high expectations for the game's forthcoming expansion. And, if the stakes weren't high enough, Lord of Hatred also carries with it two promises: a first look at the long-teased and highly-awaited land of Skovos, and an epic conclusion to the game's ongoing Hatred Saga--one featuring a major showdown with the Lord of Hatred himself.

Oftentimes, expectations and promises only pave the way for disappointment. Fortunately, that's not the case with Lord of Hatred. Diablo IV's latest expansion triumphs at maintaining the series' momentum while also delivering a powerful gut punch of a third act--one that weaves together years of events and lore to create the series' most-compelling narrative to date. Lord of Hatred offers both a spectacular conclusion to the Hatred Saga and plenty of changes that grant it greater longevity than ever before, including two powerhouse classes, plenty of improvements, and strong endgame content.

Lord of Hatred picks up not long after the events of Vessel of Hatred, which ultimately saw Mephisto take over the body of Akarat--a messiah-like figure in the Diablo universe. Through using Akarat's kindly visage, his own manipulative tactics, and performing "miracles," Mephisto has quickly managed to convince much of Sanctuary's population that he is a force for good--one who possesses the power to not only purify their lands, but their very souls as well. Even the most cunning of warriors find themselves in his thrall, their desperation for a better world ultimately contorting them into gullible disciples. As such, you, The Wanderer, and your faithful companions, Lorath and Neyrelle, come to be viewed as dissenting pariahs. And the fact that a demon's blood flows through your veins certainly doesn't help your case against the fraudulent prophet.

With stakes this high and a literal hour of darkness--or rather, a massive eclipse--rapidly approaching, your party takes to the ancient islands of Skovos in search of aid and a weapon that might strike down Mephisto. As the birthplace of mankind and home to both the Amazons and the divine order of oracles, Skovos is a monumental location in the Diablo universe--one that has been teased since Diablo II and comes with sky-high expectations. Fortunately, Skovos lives up to them and provides a stunning backdrop for Lord of Hatred's events. The Mediterranean-inspired archipelago, with its clear waters, crumbling cliffsides, volcanoes, and massive temples, feels truly sacred, making its ongoing desecration all the more startling.

Mephisto's corruption extends to the environment and the enemies you'll face off against in Skovos. The reanimated Drowned trudge from the sea to throw themselves against the Amazonian guardians in wave after wave of devastation, while blighted creatures and golems ambush you in the forests. This all offers a nice break from your run-of-the-mill demons, though you'll certainly get plenty of those as well.

Combat in Lord of Hatred feels more or less unchanged, but this isn't unexpected or a bad thing, of course. Diablo IV's combat is already immensely satisfying and just the right level of overwhelming, so more of the same is high praise. Playing on Hard, I faced a bit of initial friction but then quickly acclimated and got my build up to a point where even the largest of waves became a relative breeze. However, all my crowd-control techniques and sheer ability to pump out damage meant naught to some of the expansion's brutal bosses.

Lord of Hatred's boss fights are among the most strategic and demanding in Diablo history. This is largely due to an increasing emphasis on what I'd describe as raid-like encounters; just like in the notoriously challenging Uber Lilith battle, simply where you're standing can mean the difference between life and death. One boss boasted lightning-quick reflexes, making placing down stationary abilities superfluous; a few bosses repeatedly went invincible, requiring me to navigate a chaotic battlefield and interact with the right items or areas to progress; another left me feeling utterly powerless, though that's all I can share without giving away too much. However, I wish I could share even more on what lies ahead--I'm certain a few of these bosses will be remembered as all-timers.

You'll find that wishing I could share more is a common theme in this review. It's both a blessing and a curse that I am unable to discuss the latter half of the expansion's story; a blessing, as it would be rude to ruin the twists and sheer spectacle of the experience, and a curse because I want nothing more than to describe in detail all the ways this story is the best the team has ever crafted. Though it takes a bit for things to really heat up and a couple plot points are slightly underbaked, the payoff is tremendous. Despite its sinister-sounding name and abundance of tragic moments, Lord of Hatred places great emphasis on love, sacrifice, and, above all else, the power of enduring hope. Though that might sound a bit quaint for Diablo, rest assured that all of these are explored through dark means, which ultimately makes their presence more impactful. After all, it takes darkness to appreciate the light.

Suffice to say, Lord of Hatred takes that idea to heart, weaving both light and darkness to create an unforgettable experience. This expansion transforms Diablo IV into a cohesive and shockingly timely celebration of the human spirit--a reminder that even against unfathomable odds, our compassion and grit make humans a force to be reckoned with. And though hatred and misinformation might be unrelenting, so are we.

Lord of Hatred's focus on the duality of light and darkness is further exemplified by its two new classes: the Paladin and the Warlock. As the Paladin class has been playable for the past four months for those who preordered Lord of Hatred (and we've already written up some of our thoughts), my focus here will be on the Warlock. However, it's worth noting that I've sunk a lot of time into the Paladin as well, and find the class to be a familiar take on the fan-favorite class that succeeds in delivering the holy knight power fantasy Diablo fans have come to love.

Though Warlocks have traditionally been depicted as magic-wielders who gain their powers through entering a pact with a dark entity or demon, Diablo IV redefines the class in the most Diablo way possible. Instead of bargaining with demons, which would arguably feel wildly out of place in Diablo, Warlocks hunt and bind the hellish creatures, forcing them to bend to their will and serve them. The Warlock class is then divided into four archetypes based on what type of demons the player controls: the Legion, the Vanguard, the Mastermind, and the Ritualist.

Initially, I built my Warlock up to be a bit of a Ritualist-Legion hybrid, focusing more on hanging back, summoning demons, and flooding the battlefield with hellfire. This was immensely fun, but I felt myself longing to be a bit more active and, perhaps counterintuitively, eager to lean away from the class's summoning. Though the Warlock feels different from the Necromancer or Spiritborn, I felt my itch to summon was properly scratched by those classes for me. I decided to pivot to something more dark and dexterous, with less emphasis on summoning minions and more emphasis on shadows and stealth. Though I gave myself the ability to summon Beholder-esque creatures and swarms of dark, leech-like creatures from the abyss, I focused on boosting my more direct attacks, debuffs, and trapping enemies with thick chains and an ability called Dark Prison.

In experimenting with my build, I found that--while the archetypes Blizzard suggests are a good starting point--the updates to the game's skill tree and increased level cap (70 instead of 60) make the process of building a tailor-made character far more fun and viable. Those who grind out endgame content and keep up with Diablo IV's seasonal content are probably well aware that there is a meta to the game; plenty of sites and creators focus intensely on nailing down and meticulously outlining very specific endgame builds, and I've appreciated and utilized them over the past few years. But while I'm confident there will still be a meta and folks out there doing the work to create the most effective builds possible, the greater amount of versatility and ability to invest up to 15 skill points in a single ability make things far more interesting.

Perhaps the most significant adjustment is that most abilities can actually change their affinity or typing once you reach a certain level. Previously, once I had committed to a set build, I largely ignored branches of the skill tree that did nothing to amplify it. But thanks to the capability to transform a hellfire-based ability into an abyss-based ability, for example, I was suddenly way more attentive to every pathway and every option. Somehow, this slightly more condensed skill tree feels far more unlimited, and that's an exciting prospect. Though I didn't get the chance to dig into the other classes, I am thrilled by what kind of builds await me and how this will reshape Diablo IV's meta.

Similarly, I am also looking forward to spending more time with Lord of Hatred's endgame content and updating this review with my thoughts a bit further down the road. So far, War Plans--a new feature that allows players to create a playlist of up to five endgame activities, such as nightmare dungeons or pit dives--feels promising, and certainly helps demystify running high-level content by making it more seamless and easier to jump into. The Horadric Cube upgrade system seems to solve a lot of issues folks have with Diablo IV's emphasis on equipment quantity over quality, allowing you to better shape your gear to your needs--even if the interface is a bit confusing initially. However, these are all features I feel I need more time with before I can properly weigh in on them.

Even without fully exploring everything the endgame has to offer, I believe Lord of Hatred is a must-play expansion. The final chapter of the Hatred Saga triumphs in amplifying all of Diablo IV's best qualities while also introducing fantastic quality-of-life updates, breathing life into the game, and providing players with the best narrative arc in Diablo history. All that plus the addition of two fantastic new classes, and you have a truly meaningful expansion that elevates Diablo IV as a whole. Though Blizzard thankfully seems to be keeping things open-ended, leaving me hopeful this isn't the end of Diablo IV, Lord of Hatred offers a satisfying conclusion to a truly great saga.

Two things can be said of Diablo IV leading up to the release of Lord of Hatred: First and foremost, as a series, Diablo has never been in a better or more promising place. Secondly, the game's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, was a bit of a letdown following a tremendous first act. With those things in mind, it's safe to say that there are very high expectations for the game's forthcoming expansion. And, if the stakes weren't high enough, Lord of Hatred also carries with it two promises: a first look at the long-teased and highly-awaited land of Skovos, and an epic conclusion to the game's ongoing Hatred Saga--one featuring a major showdown with the Lord of Hatred himself.

Oftentimes, expectations and promises only pave the way for disappointment. Fortunately, that's not the case with Lord of Hatred. Diablo IV's latest expansion triumphs at maintaining the series' momentum while also delivering a powerful gut punch of a third act--one that weaves together years of events and lore to create the series' most-compelling narrative to date. Lord of Hatred offers both a spectacular conclusion to the Hatred Saga and plenty of changes that grant it greater longevity than ever before, including two powerhouse classes, plenty of improvements, and strong endgame content.

Lord of Hatred picks up not long after the events of Vessel of Hatred, which ultimately saw Mephisto take over the body of Akarat--a messiah-like figure in the Diablo universe. Through using Akarat's kindly visage, his own manipulative tactics, and performing "miracles," Mephisto has quickly managed to convince much of Sanctuary's population that he is a force for good--one who possesses the power to not only purify their lands, but their very souls as well. Even the most cunning of warriors find themselves in his thrall, their desperation for a better world ultimately contorting them into gullible disciples. As such, you, The Wanderer, and your faithful companions, Lorath and Neyrelle, come to be viewed as dissenting pariahs. And the fact that a demon's blood flows through your veins certainly doesn't help your case against the fraudulent prophet.

With stakes this high and a literal hour of darkness--or rather, a massive eclipse--rapidly approaching, your party takes to the ancient islands of Skovos in search of aid and a weapon that might strike down Mephisto. As the birthplace of mankind and home to both the Amazons and the divine order of oracles, Skovos is a monumental location in the Diablo universe--one that has been teased since Diablo II and comes with sky-high expectations. Fortunately, Skovos lives up to them and provides a stunning backdrop for Lord of Hatred's events. The Mediterranean-inspired archipelago, with its clear waters, crumbling cliffsides, volcanoes, and massive temples, feels truly sacred, making its ongoing desecration all the more startling.

Mephisto's corruption extends to the environment and the enemies you'll face off against in Skovos. The reanimated Drowned trudge from the sea to throw themselves against the Amazonian guardians in wave after wave of devastation, while blighted creatures and golems ambush you in the forests. This all offers a nice break from your run-of-the-mill demons, though you'll certainly get plenty of those as well.

Combat in Lord of Hatred feels more or less unchanged, but this isn't unexpected or a bad thing, of course. Diablo IV's combat is already immensely satisfying and just the right level of overwhelming, so more of the same is high praise. Playing on Hard, I faced a bit of initial friction but then quickly acclimated and got my build up to a point where even the largest of waves became a relative breeze. However, all my crowd-control techniques and sheer ability to pump out damage meant naught to some of the expansion's brutal bosses.

Lord of Hatred's boss fights are among the most strategic and demanding in Diablo history. This is largely due to an increasing emphasis on what I'd describe as raid-like encounters; just like in the notoriously challenging Uber Lilith battle, simply where you're standing can mean the difference between life and death. One boss boasted lightning-quick reflexes, making placing down stationary abilities superfluous; a few bosses repeatedly went invincible, requiring me to navigate a chaotic battlefield and interact with the right items or areas to progress; another left me feeling utterly powerless, though that's all I can share without giving away too much. However, I wish I could share even more on what lies ahead--I'm certain a few of these bosses will be remembered as all-timers.

You'll find that wishing I could share more is a common theme in this review. It's both a blessing and a curse that I am unable to discuss the latter half of the expansion's story; a blessing, as it would be rude to ruin the twists and sheer spectacle of the experience, and a curse because I want nothing more than to describe in detail all the ways this story is the best the team has ever crafted. Though it takes a bit for things to really heat up and a couple plot points are slightly underbaked, the payoff is tremendous. Despite its sinister-sounding name and abundance of tragic moments, Lord of Hatred places great emphasis on love, sacrifice, and, above all else, the power of enduring hope. Though that might sound a bit quaint for Diablo, rest assured that all of these are explored through dark means, which ultimately makes their presence more impactful. After all, it takes darkness to appreciate the light.

Suffice to say, Lord of Hatred takes that idea to heart, weaving both light and darkness to create an unforgettable experience. This expansion transforms Diablo IV into a cohesive and shockingly timely celebration of the human spirit--a reminder that even against unfathomable odds, our compassion and grit make humans a force to be reckoned with. And though hatred and misinformation might be unrelenting, so are we.

Lord of Hatred's focus on the duality of light and darkness is further exemplified by its two new classes: the Paladin and the Warlock. As the Paladin class has been playable for the past four months for those who preordered Lord of Hatred (and we've already written up some of our thoughts), my focus here will be on the Warlock. However, it's worth noting that I've sunk a lot of time into the Paladin as well, and find the class to be a familiar take on the fan-favorite class that succeeds in delivering the holy knight power fantasy Diablo fans have come to love.

Though Warlocks have traditionally been depicted as magic-wielders who gain their powers through entering a pact with a dark entity or demon, Diablo IV redefines the class in the most Diablo way possible. Instead of bargaining with demons, which would arguably feel wildly out of place in Diablo, Warlocks hunt and bind the hellish creatures, forcing them to bend to their will and serve them. The Warlock class is then divided into four archetypes based on what type of demons the player controls: the Legion, the Vanguard, the Mastermind, and the Ritualist.

Initially, I built my Warlock up to be a bit of a Ritualist-Legion hybrid, focusing more on hanging back, summoning demons, and flooding the battlefield with hellfire. This was immensely fun, but I felt myself longing to be a bit more active and, perhaps counterintuitively, eager to lean away from the class's summoning. Though the Warlock feels different from the Necromancer or Spiritborn, I felt my itch to summon was properly scratched by those classes for me. I decided to pivot to something more dark and dexterous, with less emphasis on summoning minions and more emphasis on shadows and stealth. Though I gave myself the ability to summon Beholder-esque creatures and swarms of dark, leech-like creatures from the abyss, I focused on boosting my more direct attacks, debuffs, and trapping enemies with thick chains and an ability called Dark Prison.

In experimenting with my build, I found that--while the archetypes Blizzard suggests are a good starting point--the updates to the game's skill tree and increased level cap (70 instead of 60) make the process of building a tailor-made character far more fun and viable. Those who grind out endgame content and keep up with Diablo IV's seasonal content are probably well aware that there is a meta to the game; plenty of sites and creators focus intensely on nailing down and meticulously outlining very specific endgame builds, and I've appreciated and utilized them over the past few years. But while I'm confident there will still be a meta and folks out there doing the work to create the most effective builds possible, the greater amount of versatility and ability to invest up to 15 skill points in a single ability make things far more interesting.

Perhaps the most significant adjustment is that most abilities can actually change their affinity or typing once you reach a certain level. Previously, once I had committed to a set build, I largely ignored branches of the skill tree that did nothing to amplify it. But thanks to the capability to transform a hellfire-based ability into an abyss-based ability, for example, I was suddenly way more attentive to every pathway and every option. Somehow, this slightly more condensed skill tree feels far more unlimited, and that's an exciting prospect. Though I didn't get the chance to dig into the other classes, I am thrilled by what kind of builds await me and how this will reshape Diablo IV's meta.

Similarly, I am also looking forward to spending more time with Lord of Hatred's endgame content and updating this review with my thoughts a bit further down the road. So far, War Plans--a new feature that allows players to create a playlist of up to five endgame activities, such as nightmare dungeons or pit dives--feels promising, and certainly helps demystify running high-level content by making it more seamless and easier to jump into. The Horadric Cube upgrade system seems to solve a lot of issues folks have with Diablo IV's emphasis on equipment quantity over quality, allowing you to better shape your gear to your needs--even if the interface is a bit confusing initially. However, these are all features I feel I need more time with before I can properly weigh in on them.

Even without fully exploring everything the endgame has to offer, I believe Lord of Hatred is a must-play expansion. The final chapter of the Hatred Saga triumphs in amplifying all of Diablo IV's best qualities while also introducing fantastic quality-of-life updates, breathing life into the game, and providing players with the best narrative arc in Diablo history. All that plus the addition of two fantastic new classes, and you have a truly meaningful expansion that elevates Diablo IV as a whole. Though Blizzard thankfully seems to be keeping things open-ended, leaving me hopeful this isn't the end of Diablo IV, Lord of Hatred offers a satisfying conclusion to a truly great saga.

"Okay, just one more run."

This is the phrase I've muttered at midnight--and then again at 2 AM--every day since diving into Vampire Crawlers. There are nights when it feels like it'd take an army to pull me from the clutches of its pixelated chaos. This deckbuilding spin-off to indie roguelike Vampire Survivors is every bit as gripping as that original outing, bringing both familiarity and freshness wrapped up into a first-person dungeon-crawling adventure.

I love that Vampire Crawlers maintains an undying commitment to the tone, characters, and retro visuals of its predecessor. It's evident even from the initial cutscene, which shows a returning character fending off hordes of attackers in the Mad Forest from Survivors' isometric view before transitioning to a first-person view of the area. Without using a single word, it proudly declares that a new perspective doesn't change the fact that this is still unquestionably Vampire Survivors at its core.

That being said, where Vampire Survivors was about quick reactions, Vampire Crawlers is about planning and execution. Its slow, grid-based movement is merely a means to reach the next turn-based battle in which you now use a deck of cards to perform gloriously ludicrous attacks against hordes of enemies. Vampires' items show up in the form of cards here, ranging from damage-based options like Knife, Whip, and Cross to support-focused options like the power-increasing Spinach or healing Pummarola. Evolutions even make their return, letting you combine two cards into a more powerful version that can further devastate your foes. New additions to the lineup are few and far between, but it's this dedication to serving up what players already know and love that helps the transition into a new format feel seamless.

This time around, you don't directly control specific characters so much as bring them along for the ride. Referred to as Crawlers, they each have unique starting weapons and passives, but they also present as cards that can be played from your deck to provide additional bonuses for a limited time, such as increased damage or XP boosts. Eventually, you can bring along up to three Crawlers at a time, so mixing and matching characters that complement each other helps you set the tone of your runs right out of the gate.

Choosing these Crawlers is a fun way to customize your loadout before ever visiting a dungeon, but it's also important since card acquisition is otherwise largely random. While you can banish, skip, or reroll cards a limited number of times once you've invested in some upgrades, luck still plays some part in the direction your deck takes during a run. Still, Vampire Crawlers is rarely too punishing with this, as it's more about knowing how to play the cards you've been dealt than it is about min-maxing your deck. Building a specialty deck no doubt improves your chances of victory, but I was surprised at how many times I managed to squeak by with a mismatched hand due to deft use of the game's combo system.

Each card requires a specific number of mana points to play, with most falling between zero and three, and playing them in numerical order creates a combo that powers up subsequent cards. This means you'll deal a lot more damage if you combo into an attack card, which is great for clearing away enemies--but it's leveraging this mechanic to improve buffs or stats that really make a run come together. It's very satisfying to use combos to power up a card that improves your max health over and over until you become a nigh-unkillable tank.

New cards are granted by leveling up or discovering unique loot spots throughout the game's multi-level dungeons. At least early on, it's vital to plan for how you want to tackle a level's enemy layouts to most easily reach potential loot opportunities. Choosing to take on a sub-boss before clearing other enemies on the floor may see you suffer from an underdeveloped deck, which could leave you with too little health to reasonably survive the run. Conversely, managing to eke out a win against these tougher villains could earn you exactly what you need to pummel every other group of monsters on the level. This risk-reward approach is what keeps early runs feeling enjoyably stressful.

That being said, a focus on strategic navigation peaks during the first half of Vampire Crawlers. Despite their random layouts, it doesn't take long to figure out the flow of dungeons and how to maximize your efficiency. Moreover, as with Vampire Survivors before it, you eventually progress far enough in stat upgrades and unlockables that you can start being bolder in your approach. Many enemies that once made you tremble become trivial, so older dungeons, should you revisit them, begin to feel like little more than laid-back coin farming spots--unless you toggle your upgrades off in the village, at least.

Even so, the game ensures your power creep doesn't get too out of control until you near the end of the campaign by locking certain major mechanics behind Relics found in later stages. While most of the core stat upgrades are pulled from the previous game and work the same--offering incremental increases to things like damage, total health, and base mana amount--Relics impact the complexity of the gameplay in more dramatic ways. There are over a dozen of these game-altering items to discover during the journey, and they frequently introduce entirely new features that change the way you approach exploration and building decks.

For instance, slotting gems into certain cards to get a variety of passive and active boosts can make or break a run. So, when you discover a Relic that adds a jeweller where you can increase or decrease the spawn rate of specific gems, the excitement of choosing between so many begins to give way to the realization that there's an advantage to limiting your options. When only the strongest (see: borderline game-breaking) gems are spawning, you can ensure you're virtually always reaching peak performance.

It's in that realization that Vampire Crawlers begins to reveal its true end goal: making you smile as you dispense pure carnage. In this way, it comes full circle back to Vampire Survivors, where you could leave your character idle and go eat dinner while it auto-farmed for a few hours. Here, once you've become a proficient deckbuilder, you can create an unstoppable stack of cards that lets you plow through dungeons while spamming the auto-play button to unleash anarchy without much thought. It's a sublime payoff for the 15-20 hours it takes to earn the necessary components to make it happen, and seeing just how far you can push things can feel like a whole game to master unto itself.

As a result, even with everything unlocked and nothing left to work toward, Vampire Crawlers still has its teeth in me, begging me to dive back in and decimate all who stand before me. Since I haven't come close to growing tired of mowing down baddies with the wackiest decks possible, I guess I'll give it just one more run.

And then maybe just one more after that.

"Okay, just one more run."

This is the phrase I've muttered at midnight--and then again at 2 AM--every day since diving into Vampire Crawlers. There are nights when it feels like it'd take an army to pull me from the clutches of its pixelated chaos. This deckbuilding spin-off to indie roguelike Vampire Survivors is every bit as gripping as that original outing, bringing both familiarity and freshness wrapped up into a first-person dungeon-crawling adventure.

I love that Vampire Crawlers maintains an undying commitment to the tone, characters, and retro visuals of its predecessor. It's evident even from the initial cutscene, which shows a returning character fending off hordes of attackers in the Mad Forest from Survivors' isometric view before transitioning to a first-person view of the area. Without using a single word, it proudly declares that a new perspective doesn't change the fact that this is still unquestionably Vampire Survivors at its core.

That being said, where Vampire Survivors was about quick reactions, Vampire Crawlers is about planning and execution. Its slow, grid-based movement is merely a means to reach the next turn-based battle in which you now use a deck of cards to perform gloriously ludicrous attacks against hordes of enemies. Vampires' items show up in the form of cards here, ranging from damage-based options like Knife, Whip, and Cross to support-focused options like the power-increasing Spinach or healing Pummarola. Evolutions even make their return, letting you combine two cards into a more powerful version that can further devastate your foes. New additions to the lineup are few and far between, but it's this dedication to serving up what players already know and love that helps the transition into a new format feel seamless.

This time around, you don't directly control specific characters so much as bring them along for the ride. Referred to as Crawlers, they each have unique starting weapons and passives, but they also present as cards that can be played from your deck to provide additional bonuses for a limited time, such as increased damage or XP boosts. Eventually, you can bring along up to three Crawlers at a time, so mixing and matching characters that complement each other helps you set the tone of your runs right out of the gate.

Choosing these Crawlers is a fun way to customize your loadout before ever visiting a dungeon, but it's also important since card acquisition is otherwise largely random. While you can banish, skip, or reroll cards a limited number of times once you've invested in some upgrades, luck still plays some part in the direction your deck takes during a run. Still, Vampire Crawlers is rarely too punishing with this, as it's more about knowing how to play the cards you've been dealt than it is about min-maxing your deck. Building a specialty deck no doubt improves your chances of victory, but I was surprised at how many times I managed to squeak by with a mismatched hand due to deft use of the game's combo system.

Each card requires a specific number of mana points to play, with most falling between zero and three, and playing them in numerical order creates a combo that powers up subsequent cards. This means you'll deal a lot more damage if you combo into an attack card, which is great for clearing away enemies--but it's leveraging this mechanic to improve buffs or stats that really make a run come together. It's very satisfying to use combos to power up a card that improves your max health over and over until you become a nigh-unkillable tank.

New cards are granted by leveling up or discovering unique loot spots throughout the game's multi-level dungeons. At least early on, it's vital to plan for how you want to tackle a level's enemy layouts to most easily reach potential loot opportunities. Choosing to take on a sub-boss before clearing other enemies on the floor may see you suffer from an underdeveloped deck, which could leave you with too little health to reasonably survive the run. Conversely, managing to eke out a win against these tougher villains could earn you exactly what you need to pummel every other group of monsters on the level. This risk-reward approach is what keeps early runs feeling enjoyably stressful.

That being said, a focus on strategic navigation peaks during the first half of Vampire Crawlers. Despite their random layouts, it doesn't take long to figure out the flow of dungeons and how to maximize your efficiency. Moreover, as with Vampire Survivors before it, you eventually progress far enough in stat upgrades and unlockables that you can start being bolder in your approach. Many enemies that once made you tremble become trivial, so older dungeons, should you revisit them, begin to feel like little more than laid-back coin farming spots--unless you toggle your upgrades off in the village, at least.

Even so, the game ensures your power creep doesn't get too out of control until you near the end of the campaign by locking certain major mechanics behind Relics found in later stages. While most of the core stat upgrades are pulled from the previous game and work the same--offering incremental increases to things like damage, total health, and base mana amount--Relics impact the complexity of the gameplay in more dramatic ways. There are over a dozen of these game-altering items to discover during the journey, and they frequently introduce entirely new features that change the way you approach exploration and building decks.

For instance, slotting gems into certain cards to get a variety of passive and active boosts can make or break a run. So, when you discover a Relic that adds a jeweller where you can increase or decrease the spawn rate of specific gems, the excitement of choosing between so many begins to give way to the realization that there's an advantage to limiting your options. When only the strongest (see: borderline game-breaking) gems are spawning, you can ensure you're virtually always reaching peak performance.

It's in that realization that Vampire Crawlers begins to reveal its true end goal: making you smile as you dispense pure carnage. In this way, it comes full circle back to Vampire Survivors, where you could leave your character idle and go eat dinner while it auto-farmed for a few hours. Here, once you've become a proficient deckbuilder, you can create an unstoppable stack of cards that lets you plow through dungeons while spamming the auto-play button to unleash anarchy without much thought. It's a sublime payoff for the 15-20 hours it takes to earn the necessary components to make it happen, and seeing just how far you can push things can feel like a whole game to master unto itself.

As a result, even with everything unlocked and nothing left to work toward, Vampire Crawlers still has its teeth in me, begging me to dive back in and decimate all who stand before me. Since I haven't come close to growing tired of mowing down baddies with the wackiest decks possible, I guess I'll give it just one more run.

And then maybe just one more after that.