There's no shortage of boomer shooters out there for those looking for some retro-style first-person action: Cultic, Ion Fury, Prodeus, and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, just to name a few. Yet only one of these nostalgic shooters meshes the genre's arcade sensibilities with the black-and-white rubber-hose visuals of cartoons from the 1920s and '30s and the unmistakable trappings of film noir.

Originally released as a tech demo that quickly went viral in 2023, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is now a fully-fledged game--one that oozes style and doesn't lack substance either. It's both familiar and incredibly niche at the same time; an endlessly charming game that I found a joy to simply behold, even before the cartoon bullets started flying.

Unsurprisingly for a game about furry rodents, Mouse: P.I. is all too fond of cheese-based puns and wordplay, so it makes sense that you should slip into the stylish trenchcoat of one Jack Pepper. The titular P.I. is a former war hero-turned-private dick working on a missing-persons case. As is par for the course, the investigation quickly spirals out of control, escalating into a complex web of intrigue and corruption that spreads to every sleazy corner of the city of Mouseburg.

It's an enjoyable and authentically noir tale, full of twists, turns, and all the familiar hallmarks of the genre, with femme fatales, morally ambiguous characters, and a tangled plot among its defining elements. While it's not a straight-up parody like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's "The Janitor Always Mops Twice," Mouse: P.I. doesn't take itself too seriously either.

The writing is witty and lighthearted throughout, playing up the genre's clichés with a comedic tone befitting its cartoon art style. A few fun concepts are also implemented to fit its unique world and add some breadth, such as its dairy-based narcotics and black ink as a substitute for blood. You can also find old newspapers hidden within each level that give Mouseburg a sense of history, with news of ongoing worker strikes and emerging political parties, as well as exposés on mob bosses.

The voice cast is excellent, too, particularly Troy Baker, who embodies Jack Pepper's sarcastic stoicism with a performance that's both hardboiled and humorous--adhering to the film noir genre with a knowing wink.

As the investigation takes you across Mouseburg's seedy underbelly, including unscrupulous movie backlots, city docks, subways, wetlands, a highfalutin river boat, and more, you're met with opposition from a range of armed criminals looking to stop you in your tracks. Fortunately, Jack Pepper is just as handy with a firearm as he is with a corkboard.

With each fleet-footed step forward, double jump, and wall run, it's evident that 2016's Doom was a source of inspiration for Mouse: P.I.'s arcadey mobility and combat. Movement speed is high, and perpetual motion is key to surviving any scuffle while laying waste to the mobsters, crooked cops, and cultists trying to snuff you out.

Whether you're strafing to avoid enemy gunfire, dashing away from thugs wielding steel pipes and baseball bats, or sprinting around the environment to grab health and ammo pickups, there's an energetic sense of momentum punctuating each shootout. The game doesn't shy away from violence either. With your weapon firmly ensconced on your right hip, each press of the trigger has the potential to create the kind of slapstick chaos that would make Itchy and Scratchy proud.

While heads pop off from shotgun blasts and the rapid fire of Mouse: P.I.'s referential Tommy Gun, the James Gun, there are far more experimental weapons in Jack Pepper's arsenal that could've come straight from ACME. A few pulls of the Devarnisher's trigger, for instance, will coat your foes in turpentine, melting the ink off their bones until they're nothing more than terrified skeletons--their bones rattling together with the same distinctive sound heard in Walt Disney's 1929 short film, The Skeleton Dance.

You can pick up and throw explosive barrels that ignite on impact, burning anyone unlucky enough to be in range until they're reduced to a pile of soot. Grand pianos and comically oversized anvils are a frequent sight, hanging precariously from the ceiling to tempt you into quite literally flattening an enemy or three. Mouse: P.I.'s combat may not be genre-defining, but it's absurd, fast-paced, and extremely satisfying.

However, I am a tad disappointed that the investigative side of the game is merely window dressing. You gather clues to advance the case, then pin each one to a corkboard to link the evidence and build a better understanding of how everything fits together, but the entire process is automated. It feels superfluous, and I would've liked to at least link the evidence myself, to feel like I was impacting the investigation beyond mowing down enemies.

Either way, the levels are well-designed, alternating between wide-open spaces and cramped corridors that force you to approach combat differently. There's a ton of verticality in most areas for you to take advantage of, too, and a decent variety of enemy types, from big guys who rush at you headfirst to others who wield wooden shields.

Anyone with a keen eye for exploration will also find plenty of secret areas in each level, tucked away behind hidden vents and optional platforming challenges. This is where you'll find the aforementioned newspapers, along with comic-book pages and collectible baseball cards you can use in Mouse: P.I.'s own tabletop minigame. This spin on America's favorite pastime isn't exactly on par with the likes of Gwent or Queen's Blood, but I still had fun playing a game or two in between missions. With Daniel "The Ra-ta-Train" Cruz hitting dingers and Joel Blunt painting the corners, I'm not afraid to say that my team dominated the tabletop diamond.

There's a special reward for winning 35 games, although a more traditional progression system is also in play to dole out a steady stream of upgrades for Jack himself. You can improve each weapon's damage output, ammo capacity, and also unlock alternate fire modes, such as the James Gun's spray and pray--complete with an animation synonymous with gangsters of the era. There are a number of traversal abilities to gradually unlock, too, including the aforementioned double jump and wall run. This sense of progression keeps things feeling fresh throughout the game's 11 hours, though some abilities feel underutilized, featuring heavily during the level they're unlocked in only to fall by the wayside later on.

Even with some minor shortcomings, there's nothing here that takes away from Mouse: P.I.'s crown jewel: its incredible art style. Each and every frame has been lovingly hand-drawn, recreating the rubber-hose animation of classic cartoons like Steamboat Willie and Betty Boop's May Party with striking aplomb. Characters and items of importance bounce on the spot with a joyous elasticity, their heavy ink outlines standing out against the softer matte style of the environments. There are reverential nods to some of the game's inspirations, such as a power-up that sees you down a can of spinach to immediately bulk up like Popeye the Sailor Man.

Even smaller details you might not always notice are a treat for the eyes. The ammo counter in the bottom-right corner features a different sentient bullet depending on which gun you're using, with the little guys typically buzzing with excitement or laughing maniacally each time you pull the trigger. The reloading animations are hypnotic, too, whether you're haphazardly stuffing a handful of slugs into a shotgun or draining another bottle of liquid on the side of the portable freezer. At both the macro and micro levels, Mouse: P.I. is a visual marvel that's always delightful to look at. Not to mention, it's all complemented by an original big band jazz soundtrack that nails the era's vibe and noir aesthetic.

There aren't many other games that pull off the same distinct art style as Mouse: P.I. For Hire. Cuphead is the only one that comes to mind, which makes it easy to fall for the game's presentational charms. There's rarely a frame that isn't bursting with style and creativity, and it's none too shabby as a retro-style shooter either. Mouse: P.I. might not reinvent the wheel, but its arsenal of weapons is punchy and delightfully varied, while the fluidity of movement makes for some thrilling, high-speed shootouts. In this instance, you should have no qualms about handing over money to the mouse.

There's no shortage of boomer shooters out there for those looking for some retro-style first-person action: Cultic, Ion Fury, Prodeus, and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, just to name a few. Yet only one of these nostalgic shooters meshes the genre's arcade sensibilities with the black-and-white rubber-hose visuals of cartoons from the 1920s and '30s and the unmistakable trappings of film noir.

Originally released as a tech demo that quickly went viral in 2023, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is now a fully-fledged game--one that oozes style and doesn't lack substance either. It's both familiar and incredibly niche at the same time; an endlessly charming game that I found a joy to simply behold, even before the cartoon bullets started flying.

Unsurprisingly for a game about furry rodents, Mouse: P.I. is all too fond of cheese-based puns and wordplay, so it makes sense that you should slip into the stylish trenchcoat of one Jack Pepper. The titular P.I. is a former war hero-turned-private dick working on a missing-persons case. As is par for the course, the investigation quickly spirals out of control, escalating into a complex web of intrigue and corruption that spreads to every sleazy corner of the city of Mouseburg.

It's an enjoyable and authentically noir tale, full of twists, turns, and all the familiar hallmarks of the genre, with femme fatales, morally ambiguous characters, and a tangled plot among its defining elements. While it's not a straight-up parody like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's "The Janitor Always Mops Twice," Mouse: P.I. doesn't take itself too seriously either.

The writing is witty and lighthearted throughout, playing up the genre's clichés with a comedic tone befitting its cartoon art style. A few fun concepts are also implemented to fit its unique world and add some breadth, such as its dairy-based narcotics and black ink as a substitute for blood. You can also find old newspapers hidden within each level that give Mouseburg a sense of history, with news of ongoing worker strikes and emerging political parties, as well as exposés on mob bosses.

The voice cast is excellent, too, particularly Troy Baker, who embodies Jack Pepper's sarcastic stoicism with a performance that's both hardboiled and humorous--adhering to the film noir genre with a knowing wink.

As the investigation takes you across Mouseburg's seedy underbelly, including unscrupulous movie backlots, city docks, subways, wetlands, a highfalutin river boat, and more, you're met with opposition from a range of armed criminals looking to stop you in your tracks. Fortunately, Jack Pepper is just as handy with a firearm as he is with a corkboard.

With each fleet-footed step forward, double jump, and wall run, it's evident that 2016's Doom was a source of inspiration for Mouse: P.I.'s arcadey mobility and combat. Movement speed is high, and perpetual motion is key to surviving any scuffle while laying waste to the mobsters, crooked cops, and cultists trying to snuff you out.

Whether you're strafing to avoid enemy gunfire, dashing away from thugs wielding steel pipes and baseball bats, or sprinting around the environment to grab health and ammo pickups, there's an energetic sense of momentum punctuating each shootout. The game doesn't shy away from violence either. With your weapon firmly ensconced on your right hip, each press of the trigger has the potential to create the kind of slapstick chaos that would make Itchy and Scratchy proud.

While heads pop off from shotgun blasts and the rapid fire of Mouse: P.I.'s referential Tommy Gun, the James Gun, there are far more experimental weapons in Jack Pepper's arsenal that could've come straight from ACME. A few pulls of the Devarnisher's trigger, for instance, will coat your foes in turpentine, melting the ink off their bones until they're nothing more than terrified skeletons--their bones rattling together with the same distinctive sound heard in Walt Disney's 1929 short film, The Skeleton Dance.

You can pick up and throw explosive barrels that ignite on impact, burning anyone unlucky enough to be in range until they're reduced to a pile of soot. Grand pianos and comically oversized anvils are a frequent sight, hanging precariously from the ceiling to tempt you into quite literally flattening an enemy or three. Mouse: P.I.'s combat may not be genre-defining, but it's absurd, fast-paced, and extremely satisfying.

However, I am a tad disappointed that the investigative side of the game is merely window dressing. You gather clues to advance the case, then pin each one to a corkboard to link the evidence and build a better understanding of how everything fits together, but the entire process is automated. It feels superfluous, and I would've liked to at least link the evidence myself, to feel like I was impacting the investigation beyond mowing down enemies.

Either way, the levels are well-designed, alternating between wide-open spaces and cramped corridors that force you to approach combat differently. There's a ton of verticality in most areas for you to take advantage of, too, and a decent variety of enemy types, from big guys who rush at you headfirst to others who wield wooden shields.

Anyone with a keen eye for exploration will also find plenty of secret areas in each level, tucked away behind hidden vents and optional platforming challenges. This is where you'll find the aforementioned newspapers, along with comic-book pages and collectible baseball cards you can use in Mouse: P.I.'s own tabletop minigame. This spin on America's favorite pastime isn't exactly on par with the likes of Gwent or Queen's Blood, but I still had fun playing a game or two in between missions. With Daniel "The Ra-ta-Train" Cruz hitting dingers and Joel Blunt painting the corners, I'm not afraid to say that my team dominated the tabletop diamond.

There's a special reward for winning 35 games, although a more traditional progression system is also in play to dole out a steady stream of upgrades for Jack himself. You can improve each weapon's damage output, ammo capacity, and also unlock alternate fire modes, such as the James Gun's spray and pray--complete with an animation synonymous with gangsters of the era. There are a number of traversal abilities to gradually unlock, too, including the aforementioned double jump and wall run. This sense of progression keeps things feeling fresh throughout the game's 11 hours, though some abilities feel underutilized, featuring heavily during the level they're unlocked in only to fall by the wayside later on.

Even with some minor shortcomings, there's nothing here that takes away from Mouse: P.I.'s crown jewel: its incredible art style. Each and every frame has been lovingly hand-drawn, recreating the rubber-hose animation of classic cartoons like Steamboat Willie and Betty Boop's May Party with striking aplomb. Characters and items of importance bounce on the spot with a joyous elasticity, their heavy ink outlines standing out against the softer matte style of the environments. There are reverential nods to some of the game's inspirations, such as a power-up that sees you down a can of spinach to immediately bulk up like Popeye the Sailor Man.

Even smaller details you might not always notice are a treat for the eyes. The ammo counter in the bottom-right corner features a different sentient bullet depending on which gun you're using, with the little guys typically buzzing with excitement or laughing maniacally each time you pull the trigger. The reloading animations are hypnotic, too, whether you're haphazardly stuffing a handful of slugs into a shotgun or draining another bottle of liquid on the side of the portable freezer. At both the macro and micro levels, Mouse: P.I. is a visual marvel that's always delightful to look at. Not to mention, it's all complemented by an original big band jazz soundtrack that nails the era's vibe and noir aesthetic.

There aren't many other games that pull off the same distinct art style as Mouse: P.I. For Hire. Cuphead is the only one that comes to mind, which makes it easy to fall for the game's presentational charms. There's rarely a frame that isn't bursting with style and creativity, and it's none too shabby as a retro-style shooter either. Mouse: P.I. might not reinvent the wheel, but its arsenal of weapons is punchy and delightfully varied, while the fluidity of movement makes for some thrilling, high-speed shootouts. In this instance, you should have no qualms about handing over money to the mouse.

You don't see games like Pragmata very often.

Big-budget single-player shooters aren't as common as they once were, and even more rarely do they launch new franchises. They often come with trade-offs--a game might nail the fundamentals, or have some surprising new hook, or have a resonant story, but rarely do you get all of them at once. Pragmata is the total package, a blend of tense and satisfying combat elevated by deep underlying mechanics and strategic choices, all in service of telling an impactful tale that spends time nurturing the relationship between its memorable characters. It's one of my unexpected surprises of 2026 so far and an early shoo-in for one of my favorites of the year.

You play as Hugh Williams, an everyman astronaut dispatched to a corporate medical research colony on the moon. There's an eerie stillness to the base that suggests something isn't quite right, but before you and your crew have any time to investigate, a moonquake rocks the base and leaves you as the only survivor. Now stranded and beset by legions of hostile robots, you're befriended by a mysterious android girl who helps you to survive by hacking the otherwise near-invincible robots. When she tries to give her alphanumeric name, Hugh calls her Diana to make it easier, and the two are joined at the hip from that point forward.

Pragmata is near-future sci-fi, which means all the technology is well beyond our actual capabilities, but mostly exists on a continuum of what we currently know is possible. Hugh's helmet is sharp and angular like a Destiny character, but his suit is white and bulky, as you'd see on a real NASA astronaut. The most magical piece of future-tech on this moon base, aside from the existence of Diana herself, is lunafilament, which can be used as the raw material to 3D print just about anything, thus making the base mostly self-sustaining. In fact, there's lots of recurring talk about 3D printing and how integrated it is into the base, which helps the setting feel futuristic but not unattainable. It's grounded, at least as these things go.

The tag-team of Hugh and Diana is the keystone not just of the story, but of Pragmata's core combat hook. Hugh wields his weapons, first a basic sidearm and then a progressively more varied and creative arsenal, like a traditional third-person shooter. But whenever you aim down your sights at an approaching robot, you also see the enemies through Diana's eyes, visualized as a hacking matrix floating next to the enemy. These grids, which start small and basic but grow increasingly complex, let you steer from a starting point to a finishing node with the face buttons, all while still leaving you free to move and shoot. The robots are almost impossible to kill with your basic weapons, as their armor is too tough, but once you've hit the green node on the hack puzzle, the hostile robots crack open like lobsters.

This inventive hook imbues everything in the game with a sense of tension. The need to fire at enemies while also juggling your hack recalls the best moments of Dead Space, when you would suddenly need to change the angular orientation of your gun's projectiles on the fly. Encounters become a dance as you determine whether you can spare just enough time to finish the hack before the robot reaches you, or if you need to create some distance. Dividing your attention between the hack and the advancing enemy means you have to quickly glance back and forth, making every hack frantic as you try to avoid danger you're not actively watching. The setting and enemies here are nowhere near the body horror creepshow of Dead Space, but I kept getting that familiar feeling of tickling several different parts of my brain at once during skirmishes. And as more- and different combinations of enemies get introduced, the on-the-fly decision-making ramps up in complexity.

Like the best of the genre, Pragmata rewards creative thinking to create your own immersive story about how you, personally, handled the rampaging robots. At one point I hacked a sizable bot and started to deal damage, but it regained its composure and cloaked, so I lost sight of it in the dark. Not sure what to do, or even whether it would work, I started blindly firing my broad grenade-like Riot Blaster--a tactical weapon usually built for incapacitating robots. Sure enough, its wide explosion caught the robot and exposed its location so I could begin hacking it again. It's the kind of fun, emergent moment that's possible when flexible systems interact.

Those qualities by themselves would make this a standout title in the genre, but on top of the satisfying fundamentals of combat, Pragmata stacks myriad options to personalize your tactics. You find more sci-fi weapons, some with analogs to familiar shooter arsenal like shotguns and grenade launchers, and others with more specialized uses like a Sticky Bomb that shrinks your enemies' hacking matrixes. Only your base weapon has limitless ammo, but it has a limited clip size. And rather than start fresh with a new clip, that base ammo regenerates over time, frequently forcing you to swap to secondary weapons. This maintains the tension of often feeling short on ammo, without ever leaving you completely defenseless. All of the other weapons can be brought with you into a stage or scavenged. As a result, you'll be hot-swapping between weapons a lot, often staying just on the edge of scarcity during larger combat encounters.

Diana's skill set is almost as robust. By default, robots will have exposed blue Open Nodes on their hacking grids, which grant bonus damage if you pass through them on your way to the goal. But you can find and equip various consumable yellow hacking nodes, which inflict different effects on enemies, like boosting your weapons damage or causing them to overheat. Those nodes will populate randomly in your hacking field, adding a tricky layer of decision-making in the heat of battle--if you don't want to use up a specialized node, that's one more block you need to maneuver around on your way to the goal.

And then there are Hacking Modes, which add a further layer of complexity. These can change the very nature of what your hacking minigame is meant to do, which can have massive benefits if you can incorporate the new strategy into your play.

I chose the Strike mode, which would switch the regular Open Nodes into Strike Nodes, making those deal extra damage to an already-exposed bot. The damage could be increased by firing with conventional weapons before hitting those nodes. So with that Hacking Mode equipped, my goal subtly changed from striking hard and fast with conventional weapons to firing off some shots and then going back into the hacking matrix again before it snapped shut on its own. It was a powerful new way of playing that rewarded me for reorienting my hacking strategy around this tool.

Those tools are equipped and upgraded in the Shelter, your safe haven and mission hub. As you complete missions and upgrade the space, you get access to more functionality, like a training center. This is also where you can gift Diana with keepsakes from Earth that you find around the base; upgrade your base stats for HP, basic weapon damage, and hacking; purchase new abilities; and upgrade the weapons and abilities you've already found. There's even a friendly robot who offers a series of bingo boards, which you can mark using special coins earned around stages and by bonding with Diana. The bingo rewards range from enemy models to look at, to cosmetic costumes, to some powerful hacking tools, so it all feeds into itself nicely and offers plenty to do in your downtime between areas.

The Shelter is more than just a hub, though. As you venture around stages, you'll often find checkpoints that offer you a trip back. You can go back at any time from one of these, respawning enemies in the process, but it's often worth it. I found that cashing in currency for upgrades, healing myself, and restocking restorative items was almost always worth the trip, and the respawning enemies system wasn't much of a drawback since the excellent stage design kept pushing me forward. The level structure, all accessible from the Shelter, is stage-based, but with exploration power-ups scattered throughout to encourage going back to pick up hidden secrets. You can't find everything your first time through a stage, so you're encouraged to go back later. Return trips will also likely include heading to the special red rooms, which are extra-tough combat challenges with significant rewards. These rooms require a keycard to open, however, so you'll need to keep an eye out for them too.

The Shelter is also an avenue for Hugh and Diana to interact and bond. The holographic projections of earth artifacts lets Hugh talk about life on Earth and how kids grow up there, and relate it to his own childhood experiences. The story trods familiar ground--a wolf-and-cub story with a world-wise father figure flanked by a gifted but impressionable youngster. Despite its familiarity, though, it packs an emotional punch. Pragmata almost exclusively follows just two characters for its entire playtime, which creates lots of opportunities for little moments of connection and to let the relationship grow organically. Diana is the heart of the story; charming and cute as a button and believably kid-like, she's curious and sharp but also naive and a little endearingly odd. Near the start, I thought that Hugh turned into a nurturing dad a little too quickly, but his anecdotes about own life experiences paid that development off in a satisfying way, too.

And within the basic framework of a familiar archetypal story, Pragmata finds ways to surprise with both broad turns and fine details that I didn't see coming. Holographic recordings and left-behind datapads enrich the worldbuilding in the ways you might expect, but they also cleverly seed plot revelations to come. On more than one occasion, I had started to formulate some ideas in my mind about the truth behind the mysteries happening in the facility based on the environmental storytelling I had found, only to be either satisfied with the payoff for my detective work, or surprised by the way it subverted the rabbit hole I had started to go down. Learning about the fate of the Cradle and why the base's AI seemingly went berserk, and what all of this has to do with Diana, reminded me of peeling back the layers in Horizon Zero Dawn.

This all led to a thrilling conclusion that tested my skills, stirred my heart, and left me wanting more. Pragmata offers a robust post-game with plenty to do, but I hope that's not the last I see of Hugh and Diana. This combination of sharp combat mechanics, rich strategic depth, and lovely storytelling doesn't come along often. Pragmata shouldn't be missed.

You don't see games like Pragmata very often.

Big-budget single-player shooters aren't as common as they once were, and even more rarely do they launch new franchises. They often come with trade-offs--a game might nail the fundamentals, or have some surprising new hook, or have a resonant story, but rarely do you get all of them at once. Pragmata is the total package, a blend of tense and satisfying combat elevated by deep underlying mechanics and strategic choices, all in service of telling an impactful tale that spends time nurturing the relationship between its memorable characters. It's one of my unexpected surprises of 2026 so far and an early shoo-in for one of my favorites of the year.

You play as Hugh Williams, an everyman astronaut dispatched to a corporate medical research colony on the moon. There's an eerie stillness to the base that suggests something isn't quite right, but before you and your crew have any time to investigate, a moonquake rocks the base and leaves you as the only survivor. Now stranded and beset by legions of hostile robots, you're befriended by a mysterious android girl who helps you to survive by hacking the otherwise near-invincible robots. When she tries to give her alphanumeric name, Hugh calls her Diana to make it easier, and the two are joined at the hip from that point forward.

Pragmata is near-future sci-fi, which means all the technology is well beyond our actual capabilities, but mostly exists on a continuum of what we currently know is possible. Hugh's helmet is sharp and angular like a Destiny character, but his suit is white and bulky, as you'd see on a real NASA astronaut. The most magical piece of future-tech on this moon base, aside from the existence of Diana herself, is lunafilament, which can be used as the raw material to 3D print just about anything, thus making the base mostly self-sustaining. In fact, there's lots of recurring talk about 3D printing and how integrated it is into the base, which helps the setting feel futuristic but not unattainable. It's grounded, at least as these things go.

The tag-team of Hugh and Diana is the keystone not just of the story, but of Pragmata's core combat hook. Hugh wields his weapons, first a basic sidearm and then a progressively more varied and creative arsenal, like a traditional third-person shooter. But whenever you aim down your sights at an approaching robot, you also see the enemies through Diana's eyes, visualized as a hacking matrix floating next to the enemy. These grids, which start small and basic but grow increasingly complex, let you steer from a starting point to a finishing node with the face buttons, all while still leaving you free to move and shoot. The robots are almost impossible to kill with your basic weapons, as their armor is too tough, but once you've hit the green node on the hack puzzle, the hostile robots crack open like lobsters.

This inventive hook imbues everything in the game with a sense of tension. The need to fire at enemies while also juggling your hack recalls the best moments of Dead Space, when you would suddenly need to change the angular orientation of your gun's projectiles on the fly. Encounters become a dance as you determine whether you can spare just enough time to finish the hack before the robot reaches you, or if you need to create some distance. Dividing your attention between the hack and the advancing enemy means you have to quickly glance back and forth, making every hack frantic as you try to avoid danger you're not actively watching. The setting and enemies here are nowhere near the body horror creepshow of Dead Space, but I kept getting that familiar feeling of tickling several different parts of my brain at once during skirmishes. And as more- and different combinations of enemies get introduced, the on-the-fly decision-making ramps up in complexity.

Like the best of the genre, Pragmata rewards creative thinking to create your own immersive story about how you, personally, handled the rampaging robots. At one point I hacked a sizable bot and started to deal damage, but it regained its composure and cloaked, so I lost sight of it in the dark. Not sure what to do, or even whether it would work, I started blindly firing my broad grenade-like Riot Blaster--a tactical weapon usually built for incapacitating robots. Sure enough, its wide explosion caught the robot and exposed its location so I could begin hacking it again. It's the kind of fun, emergent moment that's possible when flexible systems interact.

Those qualities by themselves would make this a standout title in the genre, but on top of the satisfying fundamentals of combat, Pragmata stacks myriad options to personalize your tactics. You find more sci-fi weapons, some with analogs to familiar shooter arsenal like shotguns and grenade launchers, and others with more specialized uses like a Sticky Bomb that shrinks your enemies' hacking matrixes. Only your base weapon has limitless ammo, but it has a limited clip size. And rather than start fresh with a new clip, that base ammo regenerates over time, frequently forcing you to swap to secondary weapons. This maintains the tension of often feeling short on ammo, without ever leaving you completely defenseless. All of the other weapons can be brought with you into a stage or scavenged. As a result, you'll be hot-swapping between weapons a lot, often staying just on the edge of scarcity during larger combat encounters.

Diana's skill set is almost as robust. By default, robots will have exposed blue Open Nodes on their hacking grids, which grant bonus damage if you pass through them on your way to the goal. But you can find and equip various consumable yellow hacking nodes, which inflict different effects on enemies, like boosting your weapons damage or causing them to overheat. Those nodes will populate randomly in your hacking field, adding a tricky layer of decision-making in the heat of battle--if you don't want to use up a specialized node, that's one more block you need to maneuver around on your way to the goal.

And then there are Hacking Modes, which add a further layer of complexity. These can change the very nature of what your hacking minigame is meant to do, which can have massive benefits if you can incorporate the new strategy into your play.

I chose the Strike mode, which would switch the regular Open Nodes into Strike Nodes, making those deal extra damage to an already-exposed bot. The damage could be increased by firing with conventional weapons before hitting those nodes. So with that Hacking Mode equipped, my goal subtly changed from striking hard and fast with conventional weapons to firing off some shots and then going back into the hacking matrix again before it snapped shut on its own. It was a powerful new way of playing that rewarded me for reorienting my hacking strategy around this tool.

Those tools are equipped and upgraded in the Shelter, your safe haven and mission hub. As you complete missions and upgrade the space, you get access to more functionality, like a training center. This is also where you can gift Diana with keepsakes from Earth that you find around the base; upgrade your base stats for HP, basic weapon damage, and hacking; purchase new abilities; and upgrade the weapons and abilities you've already found. There's even a friendly robot who offers a series of bingo boards, which you can mark using special coins earned around stages and by bonding with Diana. The bingo rewards range from enemy models to look at, to cosmetic costumes, to some powerful hacking tools, so it all feeds into itself nicely and offers plenty to do in your downtime between areas.

The Shelter is more than just a hub, though. As you venture around stages, you'll often find checkpoints that offer you a trip back. You can go back at any time from one of these, respawning enemies in the process, but it's often worth it. I found that cashing in currency for upgrades, healing myself, and restocking restorative items was almost always worth the trip, and the respawning enemies system wasn't much of a drawback since the excellent stage design kept pushing me forward. The level structure, all accessible from the Shelter, is stage-based, but with exploration power-ups scattered throughout to encourage going back to pick up hidden secrets. You can't find everything your first time through a stage, so you're encouraged to go back later. Return trips will also likely include heading to the special red rooms, which are extra-tough combat challenges with significant rewards. These rooms require a keycard to open, however, so you'll need to keep an eye out for them too.

The Shelter is also an avenue for Hugh and Diana to interact and bond. The holographic projections of earth artifacts lets Hugh talk about life on Earth and how kids grow up there, and relate it to his own childhood experiences. The story trods familiar ground--a wolf-and-cub story with a world-wise father figure flanked by a gifted but impressionable youngster. Despite its familiarity, though, it packs an emotional punch. Pragmata almost exclusively follows just two characters for its entire playtime, which creates lots of opportunities for little moments of connection and to let the relationship grow organically. Diana is the heart of the story; charming and cute as a button and believably kid-like, she's curious and sharp but also naive and a little endearingly odd. Near the start, I thought that Hugh turned into a nurturing dad a little too quickly, but his anecdotes about own life experiences paid that development off in a satisfying way, too.

And within the basic framework of a familiar archetypal story, Pragmata finds ways to surprise with both broad turns and fine details that I didn't see coming. Holographic recordings and left-behind datapads enrich the worldbuilding in the ways you might expect, but they also cleverly seed plot revelations to come. On more than one occasion, I had started to formulate some ideas in my mind about the truth behind the mysteries happening in the facility based on the environmental storytelling I had found, only to be either satisfied with the payoff for my detective work, or surprised by the way it subverted the rabbit hole I had started to go down. Learning about the fate of the Cradle and why the base's AI seemingly went berserk, and what all of this has to do with Diana, reminded me of peeling back the layers in Horizon Zero Dawn.

This all led to a thrilling conclusion that tested my skills, stirred my heart, and left me wanting more. Pragmata offers a robust post-game with plenty to do, but I hope that's not the last I see of Hugh and Diana. This combination of sharp combat mechanics, rich strategic depth, and lovely storytelling doesn't come along often. Pragmata shouldn't be missed.

Pokemon's turn-based combat can be best described as an inch wide and a mile deep. Its rock-paper-scissors style is easy to understand, but below the murky surface lies an entirely different game. Moves that may seem useless at first glance take on a different meaning in a competitive setting, where complicated stat spreads are tweaked ever-so-slightly to maximize a Pokemon's efficiency and a constantly evolving meta-game makes it hard to nail down which strategies are viable and which aren't. Toss in over 1,000 unique monsters that can be trained in hundreds of thousands of different ways, and you're left with arguably the most impenetrable competitive video game scene of all time.

For decades, Pokemon's competitive scene was just that: a near-impenetrable experience that requires hundreds of hours--and hundreds of dollars--to keep up with. Pokemon Champions is The Pokemon Company's attempt to bring white-knuckled, competitive battling to the masses. The financial barrier to entry, at least ostensibly, is low thanks to its free-to-play model, and the snappy stat-training mechanics reduce a lot of friction. However, Pokemon Champions lacks the necessary onboarding to captivate a new audience while also giving clear advantages to players who've invested in Pokemon Home. In its current state, Pokemon Champions falls just short of being the be-all and end-all of competitive play that I hoped for.

Despite Pokemon Champions' lackluster onboarding, there are a lot of tutorials. When you first start up the game, you're introduced to a cast of characters who teach you how to battle, obtain Pokemon, and build a team. Assuming you don't skip any dialogue, it takes roughly 30 minutes before you're set loose. From there, you can battle online, train Pokemon, build teams, or continue with supplementary tutorials. I opted to do the latter.

There are nine battle tutorials in total, and most of them barely scratch the surface of Pokemon's competitive depth. The one tutorial that focuses on weather, for example, showcases how water attacks deal more damage under rain and triggers certain abilities, but it fails to mention the other three weather states or other impacts rain can have. Another one covers Move Priority but glosses over how it actually works when multiple moves with different priority interact. There is an in-game glossary that goes a little more in-depth, but even that feels lacking. Not wanting to overwhelm a new player is reasonable, but I can't imagine jumping into competitive battles without fully understanding why an Incineroar is occasionally outspeeding my supposedly faster Jolteon. Sure, those resources are out there, but players shouldn't have to reach for external guides just to learn the basics of competitive battling.

Perhaps NPC battles could offset this by giving players a safe space to learn different interactions and try out strategies, but Champions lacks this as well. Casual matchmaking is your best bet, but I've found skill levels to be all over the place. Sometimes I'd get paired with a razor-sharp meta-relevant team that wiped the floor with mine, and other times I'd go up against a confounding assortment of Pokemon. The skill instability makes it hard to test whether a game plan is viable or not.

Ranked Battles fare much better. My opponents steadily got tougher as I ranked up, and now--at Ultra Ball Rank 3--I feel like battles can go either way. Whether I win or lose, most clashes feel like they come down to a few hair-raising turns where I either outplay my opponent or they outplay me. It's those highs that make competitive battling so exhilarating. Just because you know what a Pokemon does and the role it typically plays within a team doesn't mean you know how your opponent plans to utilize it. Success depends on a strong understanding of the game, sharp improvisational skills, and thinking multiple steps ahead of your opponent. Pulling out a hard-fought win by successfully reading an opponent, or pivoting strategies at the last minute is intoxicating, and it's easy to fall into that "one-more-battle" rabbit hole late into the night.

Compared to Scarlet and Violet, battling is snappier. Thanks to quick animations, streamlined battle text, and shorter connection times, bouts move at a steady pace. Most double battles I participated in were under 20 minutes, and if they went on longer it was because my opponent was using stall tactics to keep their Pokemon on the field. However, even those strategies have been de-emphasized due to balance changes making them harder to come by.

Champions also makes battling more legible than any mainline game before it by shedding light on obscure mechanics from the series. For example, if you look up the move Iron Head in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, it simply says: "This may also make the target flinch." Champions says it "has a 20% chance of making the target flinch," while also showing how many targets it can hit and precisely how the move connects. For years, this has been information that players have had to infer through rigorous battling or by looking up details online. Having all this additional context front and center while training your Pokemon makes the whole process more efficient.

Pick a Pokemon to train, allocate its additional stat points, change the nature, swap out the moves, and switch the ability and you're good to go.

Training in general is also much easier in Pokemon Champions. Pick a Pokemon to train, allocate its additional stat points, change the nature, swap out the moves, and switch the ability and you're good to go. As long as you have the VP, Pokemon Champions' in-game currency, you can train a Pokemon as many times as you'd like. I had my first team up and running in minutes, something that would have taken hours in Scarlet and Violet.

Part of the reason team building is quicker is because Pokemon Champions is missing a lot of Pokemon and items that players have come to expect. Competitive staples in previous iterations, like Amoonguss and Rillaboom, are absent, as well as popular items like Rocky Helmet and Life Orb. I don't find these absences all that bad, though. Sure, I'm bummed some of my favorite Pokemon didn't make the cut, but putting these restrictions on players lets a new meta develop that isn't dominated by familiar strategies and overpowered Pokemon. It's abundantly clear that new Pokemon and items will rotate in and out in the future, so I'm perfectly happy working with what we have for the time being.

The only thing that can potentially throttle team building is VP. Like many free-to-play games, Pokemon Champions frontloads you with a ton of in-game currency to get you started, but once that dries up, your team building potential is limited. Recruiting Pokemon, training Pokemon, and buying battle items all cost VP, and because VP cannot be directly purchased, you'll need to battle, complete challenges, and advance the battle pass. Recruiting and training a Pokemon could cost as much as 5,000 VP, and one ranked win typically earns you a paltry 300 VP. This makes trying to assemble and train a team an arduous endeavor, unless you're willing to pay $6.99 for the Starter Pack which includes 30 Teammate Tickets and 50 Training Tickets. This offsets the cost, but it means that players who don't purchase the Starter Pack could be at a disadvantage.

Pokemon Home connectivity levels the playing field--at least for those who pay for the Pokemon storage service and have built up a respectable collection over hundreds of hours of playing other Pokemon games. As long as you have the box space in Champions, there's no limit to how many Pokemon can visit from Home. The catch is that box space is limited to 30 slots unless you buy the Starter Pack or subscribe to the $4.99/month subscription which ups it to 80 and a whopping 1,000 slots respectively. Additionally, you can buy the Premium Battle Pass for $9.99, which includes Pokemon, Mega Stones (all of which can be purchased from the store for VP), and a sad selection of cosmetics from Pokemon Legends: Z-A.

While I'm not necessarily averse to free-to-play games, Pokemon Champions' model alongside its Home support make for an unbalanced experience. Players who have a robust collection in Pokemon Home have immediate access to meta-relevant Pokemon, while players who don't must roll the dice with Champions' randomized recruitment. Despite having a massive collection tucked away in Pokemon Home, I opted to only use Pokemon Champions' recruitment mechanics for the first few hours to see if I could build a decent team. I did manage to pull a few staples like the Ghost- and Grass-type Pokemon Sinistcha, and the Water-type powerhouse Palafin, but those Pokemon alone were not enough to carry me past the Great Ball rank.

The free-to-play model makes it an obvious entry point, but it doesn't always give new players the resources to succeed.

After a dozen or so more pulls, I caved and plucked Incineroar and Sneasler from Home, the two most-used Pokemon in the doubles format according to the in-game stats. I also imported Floette Eternal Flower, a Pokemon Legends: Z-A exclusive that can only be obtained by completing the grind-heavy post-game, which just so happens to be the best special attacker in Pokemon Champions. Once I built a team around Floette, Incineroar, Sneasler, and Sinistcha, battles got easier until I started seeing more teams streamlined for the current meta. Right now, the only thing preventing casual players from getting blitzed by the best Pokemon in the game is the Ranked matchmaking, which, to its credit, is quite good. However, a quicker and more direct way to obtain specific Pokemon for players who may not have a wealth of Pokemon in Home could make for a more symmetrical experience.

This puts Pokemon Champions in a weird spot. The free-to-play model makes it an obvious entry point, but it doesn't always give new players the resources to succeed. When I purposefully withheld Pokemon Home access, I had plenty of ideas for teams but couldn't assemble any of them because I was missing a few key Pokemon. When I finally succumbed to Pokemon Home, I immediately pulled the most meta-relevant Pokemon simply because I could. That won't be an option for everyone.

While I have issues with Pokemon Champions' onboarding and recruitment processes, the foundation is solid. The punchy battles and added transparency for once-hidden mechanics make this the best official way to play competitive Pokemon. The lack of certain Pokemon and items may seem like a letdown, but the limited roster has allowed for some unlikely picks to flourish in fun ways. Assuming The Pokemon Company continues to support Champions with balance patches, new features, new Pokemon, and new items on a regular basis, it could live up to its potential as the premier avenue for Pokemon Battles.

Right now, though, Pokemon Champions provides two different experiences for seasoned players and newcomers respectively--and unfortunately for newcomers, it's an uneven one that will require a lot of their own dedication and time to improve. Perhaps the barrier to entry for competitive Pokemon can never be smashed entirely, but Champions wears it down, and those willing to push through it will find one of the most thrilling competitive games on the other side.

Pokemon's turn-based combat can be best described as an inch wide and a mile deep. Its rock-paper-scissors style is easy to understand, but below the murky surface lies an entirely different game. Moves that may seem useless at first glance take on a different meaning in a competitive setting, where complicated stat spreads are tweaked ever-so-slightly to maximize a Pokemon's efficiency and a constantly evolving meta-game makes it hard to nail down which strategies are viable and which aren't. Toss in over 1,000 unique monsters that can be trained in hundreds of thousands of different ways, and you're left with arguably the most impenetrable competitive video game scene of all time.

For decades, Pokemon's competitive scene was just that: a near-impenetrable experience that requires hundreds of hours--and hundreds of dollars--to keep up with. Pokemon Champions is The Pokemon Company's attempt to bring white-knuckled, competitive battling to the masses. The financial barrier to entry, at least ostensibly, is low thanks to its free-to-play model, and the snappy stat-training mechanics reduce a lot of friction. However, Pokemon Champions lacks the necessary onboarding to captivate a new audience while also giving clear advantages to players who've invested in Pokemon Home. In its current state, Pokemon Champions falls just short of being the be-all and end-all of competitive play that I hoped for.

Despite Pokemon Champions' lackluster onboarding, there are a lot of tutorials. When you first start up the game, you're introduced to a cast of characters who teach you how to battle, obtain Pokemon, and build a team. Assuming you don't skip any dialogue, it takes roughly 30 minutes before you're set loose. From there, you can battle online, train Pokemon, build teams, or continue with supplementary tutorials. I opted to do the latter.

There are nine battle tutorials in total, and most of them barely scratch the surface of Pokemon's competitive depth. The one tutorial that focuses on weather, for example, showcases how water attacks deal more damage under rain and triggers certain abilities, but it fails to mention the other three weather states or other impacts rain can have. Another one covers Move Priority but glosses over how it actually works when multiple moves with different priority interact. There is an in-game glossary that goes a little more in-depth, but even that feels lacking. Not wanting to overwhelm a new player is reasonable, but I can't imagine jumping into competitive battles without fully understanding why an Incineroar is occasionally outspeeding my supposedly faster Jolteon. Sure, those resources are out there, but players shouldn't have to reach for external guides just to learn the basics of competitive battling.

Perhaps NPC battles could offset this by giving players a safe space to learn different interactions and try out strategies, but Champions lacks this as well. Casual matchmaking is your best bet, but I've found skill levels to be all over the place. Sometimes I'd get paired with a razor-sharp meta-relevant team that wiped the floor with mine, and other times I'd go up against a confounding assortment of Pokemon. The skill instability makes it hard to test whether a game plan is viable or not.

Ranked Battles fare much better. My opponents steadily got tougher as I ranked up, and now--at Ultra Ball Rank 3--I feel like battles can go either way. Whether I win or lose, most clashes feel like they come down to a few hair-raising turns where I either outplay my opponent or they outplay me. It's those highs that make competitive battling so exhilarating. Just because you know what a Pokemon does and the role it typically plays within a team doesn't mean you know how your opponent plans to utilize it. Success depends on a strong understanding of the game, sharp improvisational skills, and thinking multiple steps ahead of your opponent. Pulling out a hard-fought win by successfully reading an opponent, or pivoting strategies at the last minute is intoxicating, and it's easy to fall into that "one-more-battle" rabbit hole late into the night.

Compared to Scarlet and Violet, battling is snappier. Thanks to quick animations, streamlined battle text, and shorter connection times, bouts move at a steady pace. Most double battles I participated in were under 20 minutes, and if they went on longer it was because my opponent was using stall tactics to keep their Pokemon on the field. However, even those strategies have been de-emphasized due to balance changes making them harder to come by.

Champions also makes battling more legible than any mainline game before it by shedding light on obscure mechanics from the series. For example, if you look up the move Iron Head in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, it simply says: "This may also make the target flinch." Champions says it "has a 20% chance of making the target flinch," while also showing how many targets it can hit and precisely how the move connects. For years, this has been information that players have had to infer through rigorous battling or by looking up details online. Having all this additional context front and center while training your Pokemon makes the whole process more efficient.

Pick a Pokemon to train, allocate its additional stat points, change the nature, swap out the moves, and switch the ability and you're good to go.

Training in general is also much easier in Pokemon Champions. Pick a Pokemon to train, allocate its additional stat points, change the nature, swap out the moves, and switch the ability and you're good to go. As long as you have the VP, Pokemon Champions' in-game currency, you can train a Pokemon as many times as you'd like. I had my first team up and running in minutes, something that would have taken hours in Scarlet and Violet.

Part of the reason team building is quicker is because Pokemon Champions is missing a lot of Pokemon and items that players have come to expect. Competitive staples in previous iterations, like Amoonguss and Rillaboom, are absent, as well as popular items like Rocky Helmet and Life Orb. I don't find these absences all that bad, though. Sure, I'm bummed some of my favorite Pokemon didn't make the cut, but putting these restrictions on players lets a new meta develop that isn't dominated by familiar strategies and overpowered Pokemon. It's abundantly clear that new Pokemon and items will rotate in and out in the future, so I'm perfectly happy working with what we have for the time being.

The only thing that can potentially throttle team building is VP. Like many free-to-play games, Pokemon Champions frontloads you with a ton of in-game currency to get you started, but once that dries up, your team building potential is limited. Recruiting Pokemon, training Pokemon, and buying battle items all cost VP, and because VP cannot be directly purchased, you'll need to battle, complete challenges, and advance the battle pass. Recruiting and training a Pokemon could cost as much as 5,000 VP, and one ranked win typically earns you a paltry 300 VP. This makes trying to assemble and train a team an arduous endeavor, unless you're willing to pay $6.99 for the Starter Pack which includes 30 Teammate Tickets and 50 Training Tickets. This offsets the cost, but it means that players who don't purchase the Starter Pack could be at a disadvantage.

Pokemon Home connectivity levels the playing field--at least for those who pay for the Pokemon storage service and have built up a respectable collection over hundreds of hours of playing other Pokemon games. As long as you have the box space in Champions, there's no limit to how many Pokemon can visit from Home. The catch is that box space is limited to 30 slots unless you buy the Starter Pack or subscribe to the $4.99/month subscription which ups it to 80 and a whopping 1,000 slots respectively. Additionally, you can buy the Premium Battle Pass for $9.99, which includes Pokemon, Mega Stones (all of which can be purchased from the store for VP), and a sad selection of cosmetics from Pokemon Legends: Z-A.

While I'm not necessarily averse to free-to-play games, Pokemon Champions' model alongside its Home support make for an unbalanced experience. Players who have a robust collection in Pokemon Home have immediate access to meta-relevant Pokemon, while players who don't must roll the dice with Champions' randomized recruitment. Despite having a massive collection tucked away in Pokemon Home, I opted to only use Pokemon Champions' recruitment mechanics for the first few hours to see if I could build a decent team. I did manage to pull a few staples like the Ghost- and Grass-type Pokemon Sinistcha, and the Water-type powerhouse Palafin, but those Pokemon alone were not enough to carry me past the Great Ball rank.

The free-to-play model makes it an obvious entry point, but it doesn't always give new players the resources to succeed.

After a dozen or so more pulls, I caved and plucked Incineroar and Sneasler from Home, the two most-used Pokemon in the doubles format according to the in-game stats. I also imported Floette Eternal Flower, a Pokemon Legends: Z-A exclusive that can only be obtained by completing the grind-heavy post-game, which just so happens to be the best special attacker in Pokemon Champions. Once I built a team around Floette, Incineroar, Sneasler, and Sinistcha, battles got easier until I started seeing more teams streamlined for the current meta. Right now, the only thing preventing casual players from getting blitzed by the best Pokemon in the game is the Ranked matchmaking, which, to its credit, is quite good. However, a quicker and more direct way to obtain specific Pokemon for players who may not have a wealth of Pokemon in Home could make for a more symmetrical experience.

This puts Pokemon Champions in a weird spot. The free-to-play model makes it an obvious entry point, but it doesn't always give new players the resources to succeed. When I purposefully withheld Pokemon Home access, I had plenty of ideas for teams but couldn't assemble any of them because I was missing a few key Pokemon. When I finally succumbed to Pokemon Home, I immediately pulled the most meta-relevant Pokemon simply because I could. That won't be an option for everyone.

While I have issues with Pokemon Champions' onboarding and recruitment processes, the foundation is solid. The punchy battles and added transparency for once-hidden mechanics make this the best official way to play competitive Pokemon. The lack of certain Pokemon and items may seem like a letdown, but the limited roster has allowed for some unlikely picks to flourish in fun ways. Assuming The Pokemon Company continues to support Champions with balance patches, new features, new Pokemon, and new items on a regular basis, it could live up to its potential as the premier avenue for Pokemon Battles.

Right now, though, Pokemon Champions provides two different experiences for seasoned players and newcomers respectively--and unfortunately for newcomers, it's an uneven one that will require a lot of their own dedication and time to improve. Perhaps the barrier to entry for competitive Pokemon can never be smashed entirely, but Champions wears it down, and those willing to push through it will find one of the most thrilling competitive games on the other side.

People of Note was clearly made with lots of love, but it is also a deeply silly game. Conflicts are resolved between musicians flinging music at each other, a simple country-wide road trip transforms into a battle to save all of reality, and somehow everyone is convinced that the power of friendship will somehow overcome an ancient eldritch-like power. If I didn't know any better, I'd think this game was an old-school role-playing game. And, to be fair, People of Note shares a lot of parallels with those games. While that means the strengths of those types of games are present in People of Note--notably the music and world design in its case--it also means that some of the shortcomings that can be found in the weaker installments of the genre are present in Iridium Studios' turn-based RPG too.

People of Note sees would-be pop star Cadence striving to fulfill her dream of winning a singing competition and getting propelled into fame. Worried that the pop song she's prepared isn't strong enough to sway the judges, she sets out through the land of Note in search of people who can add to her song. Her journey takes her to a desert where everyone is all about different kinds of rock music, a futuristic metropolis blanketed in perpetual night and inhabited by EDM-obsessed disc jockeys, a block-shaped party city that's all about rap and hip hop, and so much more. And all the while, repeated references to an event known as the Harmonic Convergence steel you for what will eventually be a sharp tonal shift away from road-trip comedy to dramatic high fantasy.

Your enjoyment of this story is really going to come down to how much you like puns and pop culture references--People of Note's humor is not unlike Borderlands 2 or Saints Row IV. The game rides the line between funny and corny well enough for me, save for one moment in the third act that made me cringe so hard, I contemplated simply not playing any more of the game that day. But I also enjoy games like Borderlands and Saints Row. If you're not a fan of the idea of a story that takes every single conceivable musical term and crafts a whole high-fantasy society and plotline with said terms, People of Note is probably going to grate.

Its humor aside, however, People of Note tells a solid story. Protagonist Cadence goes through an incredible arc, with the most prominent moments of transformation brought to life with animated musical performances that feel like they'd be right at home in a Broadway musical. The story's third and final act feels a tad too busy, with Cadence and her band contending with every villain in back-to-back conflicts--having a few of those storylines wrap up in Act 1 or 2 might have helped keep Act 3 from feeling so bloated and difficult to follow.

The final member of Cadence's party, rapper Vox, also feels like a notably weaker and less fleshed-out character in comparison to his peers, being introduced in Act 3 and not having the same level of characterization as rocker Fret or DJ Synthia. Having to share the limelight with half a dozen villains who all need closure on their own narrative arcs means Vox is left in this unsatisfying limbo of not really having much focus in the story.

Beyond the characters, and in terms of visuals and audio, the world of People of Note is incredibly well-realized, and uncovering the map and discovering which genre of music you're going to explore next is regularly entertaining. Each distinct area has its own musical theme, which transforms and evolves whenever combat kicks off. The music in battles that are set in rock-centric Durandis takes on a more country vibe when fighting members of the country-obsessed Homestead, for example.

Each turn of combat--referred to as stanzas--will also sometimes be affected by Cadence and her allies, creating turns where pop, rock, or another genre of music takes center stage. During these moments, the background music changes to incorporate that genre, and the member of Cadence's party that corresponds to that particular genre of music grows stronger.

The crux of People of Note is these turn-based battles. While Cadence and her allies automatically come equipped with a basic attack they can perform for free, they also have powerful abilities that require the use of a resource called Beat Points that slowly charge with every turn. These actions each have their own quick-time prompt--messing it up decreases the power of the move, while perfectly timing your inputs amplifies the ability's power. Have you played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? If so, you have an idea as to how this works already.

It's a serviceable system, but it never feels all that natural, especially later on in the game when you unlock the most powerful abilities that require multiple quick-time inputs. That's because each ability has its own unique pattern that never changes, despite the music of each fight evolving turn to turn.

While this isn't game-breaking, it does lead to player mistakes throughout the game's entire story, as your muscle memory of how the quick-time pattern is supposed to go clashes with how good it feels to press buttons in response to the beat of music. Unfortunately for me, my beat perception won out more often than not, leading me to frustratingly mess up the quick-time inputs over and over in the latter half of the story. It eventually got bad enough that I just turned off the quick-time mechanic in the settings entirely.

I largely enjoyed the combat outside of those quick-time inputs. There's quite a bit of strategy to it, rewarding your commitment to creating builds and thinking ahead. Each character in Cadence's party takes on a specific role--Cadence is an all-rounder, for instance, while Fret is geared more toward healing and support. Each character can be customized with different stones that each grant a different ability, allowing you to curate each. You can double down on Fret's role and load him up with multiple abilities devoted to healing, buffing, curing debuffs, and reviving downed allies, for example, or make him a tough tank that endures multiple hits before unleashing a powerful headbang attack.

In addition, the flow of battle needs to be taken into consideration. Enemies can place modifiers on the turn order so that the first person to act on your turn always deals less damage, for example, or stun a member of Cadence's party so that they can't act for an entire turn. Early on, these considerations are just speed bumps that you have to work around, but unlocking Synthia and Vox are game-changers. Synthia can remix the turn order to delete modifiers, and Vox can hit enemies hard with his own collection of modifiers and debuffs. At that point in the game, People of Note becomes this deadly ballet of two groups of musicians battling it out, and all tricks are equal on each side. And while losing this battle of wits can be frustrating, successfully outmaneuvering your opponent is deeply rewarding.

People of Note's "dungeons" (for lack of a better word to describe the areas devoted to combat and puzzles and not talking to NPCs), also do away with random encounters and fully heal all party members after every fight. This keeps combat from overstepping everything else and ensures that each fight is solely a battle of wits, not an irritating gauntlet of survival.

Combat grows increasingly less enjoyable further into the story though, especially once you unlock Vox in Act 3. From that point onwards, People of Note primarily makes fights harder by giving enemies and bosses larger health bars, not a wider variety of actions or smarter strategies. For the last six hours or so of People of Note, combat just plateaus. The fights are no longer getting more difficult, but just becoming longer. It feels a lot like old-school Final Fantasy in that respect, and it's similarly quite dull. It's repeatedly annoying to figure out what a boss is all about, come up with a surefire strategy for beating them, feel the high of seeing your tactics work as intended, and then come to the realization that you've only been fighting the boss for 10 minutes or so and they still have over three-quarters of their health bar so you now just have to keep doing what you've already been doing for another 30-odd minutes.

In the same way People of Note has a setting that allows you to turn off the quick-time inputs, it also has one that lets you just automatically win the fight you're going up against. And as People of Note continued, I found myself using that feature more and more. Could I have just stuck with it and grinded through every boss as intended? Probably. But I really didn't want to, and I don't think I would have wanted to beat the game without that feature because grinding the same boss for almost an hour is tiresome.

The game does have a "crescendo" mechanic, where bosses and certain enemies grow stronger over time, but rarely did that transform the fight in a meaningful way that kept the battle exciting. More often than not, it just gave the enemy a stronger attack that they'd use every once in a while. But the extent to which that would change the flow of a fight was limited to me reminding myself to heal every once in a while during combat. And that's also just making the fight longer--I'm pausing my strategy to heal before going right back to what I've discovered works best. Prior to my decision to outright skip the latter half of most fights, People of Note's combat was beginning to make the game grind to a halt in Act 3, frustratingly stalling progress right when the story was getting really exciting.

Much of this is alleviated by People of Note's soundtrack, which is stellar. While the soundtrack primarily focuses on catchy pop music, it does dip its toes into other genres--rock, rap, boy band, and opera most successfully. These songs are brought to life with colorful and fully-animated cutscenes, each punctuating a major point in the story--a hero's motivations finally being revealed, for example, or a dramatic turning point that unveils the previously hidden machinations of a villain who has been scheming in the shadows. It aligns with the game's messaging that music is a powerful means by which to express oneself or pass along practices and traditions.

Most of the songs are also just catchy, the kind with a chorus that's designed to earworm into your brain and stick around for a while. The same can be said for the individual tracks that play in hub areas and during battles, all of which provide a tonal identity for the location and the specific enemy types that inhabit it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3DiPDYJniM

Oddly, while these background tracks provide several examples, the People of Note's songs that get the full cutscene treatment don't have much in terms of genre mixing beyond Act 1. Cadence's story is literally about her trying to add new sounds to her pop song, and this is tackled fantastically upon her meeting Fret and getting a song that combines pop and rock music. We only really see that again one other time in what's my favorite song of the entire game--one that blends pop with classical. This lack of genre mashups doesn't ruin the game, but upon finishing it, I did feel disappointment that the game about blending different musical genres together doesn't have more examples of the characters bonding by blending their different sounds together.

Between fights, each dungeon will offer puzzles for Cadence to solve. Over the course of the game, she unlocks musical powers that can only be used outside of combat, like Forte, which can be used to push heavy objects, or Harmonize, which links two objects together so whatever Cadence does to one is also done to the other. Early on, these are primarily used for simple puzzles, like using Forte to slowly blast pieces of a gigantic recorder together. But as the game continues, the puzzles grow increasingly complex, relying on knowledge you've gained from the earlier puzzles to create these intense gauntlets that rely on using all four of Cadence's powers in tandem to inch forward. Save for a few that stalled progress on the cusp of climactic moments near the end of the game--irritatingly keeping me from the drama I so desperately wanted to watch unfold--these puzzles were always delightful brain teasers that kept each dungeon from being a long slog of only combat.

People of Note has fun logic problems, too. While my favorite were the Weird Owl puzzles--all of which are multiple choice quizzes that test you on your knowledge of the in-game world of Note, like storefront locations or enemy attack names--there are a few other standouts. A whodunit mystery near the end of the game that sees Cadence grilling multiple suspects and tests you on your ability to pay attention to details and correctly object to falsehoods and deduce criminal intent is very fun, and I'm so bummed that the game only lets Cadence play detective that one time. There are a ton of delightful side activities and quests like this in the game. Between them and the incredible format for the credits that shout out individual members of the team in song, it feels like there was a lot of love poured into this game.

All said, even if we're not seeing the members of Cadence band blend their sounds together much in the story, we at least can see it happen during combat. And while that combat drags a bit in the last act of the game and messes with your mind by not matching the tempo of the quick-time inputs to the background battle music, the turn-based system that's there rewards creativity and strategic thinking. Plus, this game has awesome music and fun puzzle-filled dungeons. If you're down to immerse yourself in puns galore and tons of pop-culture references, People of Note is a delightful musical treat.

People of Note was clearly made with lots of love, but it is also a deeply silly game. Conflicts are resolved between musicians flinging music at each other, a simple country-wide road trip transforms into a battle to save all of reality, and somehow everyone is convinced that the power of friendship will somehow overcome an ancient eldritch-like power. If I didn't know any better, I'd think this game was an old-school role-playing game. And, to be fair, People of Note shares a lot of parallels with those games. While that means the strengths of those types of games are present in People of Note--notably the music and world design in its case--it also means that some of the shortcomings that can be found in the weaker installments of the genre are present in Iridium Studios' turn-based RPG too.

People of Note sees would-be pop star Cadence striving to fulfill her dream of winning a singing competition and getting propelled into fame. Worried that the pop song she's prepared isn't strong enough to sway the judges, she sets out through the land of Note in search of people who can add to her song. Her journey takes her to a desert where everyone is all about different kinds of rock music, a futuristic metropolis blanketed in perpetual night and inhabited by EDM-obsessed disc jockeys, a block-shaped party city that's all about rap and hip hop, and so much more. And all the while, repeated references to an event known as the Harmonic Convergence steel you for what will eventually be a sharp tonal shift away from road-trip comedy to dramatic high fantasy.

Your enjoyment of this story is really going to come down to how much you like puns and pop culture references--People of Note's humor is not unlike Borderlands 2 or Saints Row IV. The game rides the line between funny and corny well enough for me, save for one moment in the third act that made me cringe so hard, I contemplated simply not playing any more of the game that day. But I also enjoy games like Borderlands and Saints Row. If you're not a fan of the idea of a story that takes every single conceivable musical term and crafts a whole high-fantasy society and plotline with said terms, People of Note is probably going to grate.

Its humor aside, however, People of Note tells a solid story. Protagonist Cadence goes through an incredible arc, with the most prominent moments of transformation brought to life with animated musical performances that feel like they'd be right at home in a Broadway musical. The story's third and final act feels a tad too busy, with Cadence and her band contending with every villain in back-to-back conflicts--having a few of those storylines wrap up in Act 1 or 2 might have helped keep Act 3 from feeling so bloated and difficult to follow.

The final member of Cadence's party, rapper Vox, also feels like a notably weaker and less fleshed-out character in comparison to his peers, being introduced in Act 3 and not having the same level of characterization as rocker Fret or DJ Synthia. Having to share the limelight with half a dozen villains who all need closure on their own narrative arcs means Vox is left in this unsatisfying limbo of not really having much focus in the story.

Beyond the characters, and in terms of visuals and audio, the world of People of Note is incredibly well-realized, and uncovering the map and discovering which genre of music you're going to explore next is regularly entertaining. Each distinct area has its own musical theme, which transforms and evolves whenever combat kicks off. The music in battles that are set in rock-centric Durandis takes on a more country vibe when fighting members of the country-obsessed Homestead, for example.

Each turn of combat--referred to as stanzas--will also sometimes be affected by Cadence and her allies, creating turns where pop, rock, or another genre of music takes center stage. During these moments, the background music changes to incorporate that genre, and the member of Cadence's party that corresponds to that particular genre of music grows stronger.

The crux of People of Note is these turn-based battles. While Cadence and her allies automatically come equipped with a basic attack they can perform for free, they also have powerful abilities that require the use of a resource called Beat Points that slowly charge with every turn. These actions each have their own quick-time prompt--messing it up decreases the power of the move, while perfectly timing your inputs amplifies the ability's power. Have you played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? If so, you have an idea as to how this works already.

It's a serviceable system, but it never feels all that natural, especially later on in the game when you unlock the most powerful abilities that require multiple quick-time inputs. That's because each ability has its own unique pattern that never changes, despite the music of each fight evolving turn to turn.

While this isn't game-breaking, it does lead to player mistakes throughout the game's entire story, as your muscle memory of how the quick-time pattern is supposed to go clashes with how good it feels to press buttons in response to the beat of music. Unfortunately for me, my beat perception won out more often than not, leading me to frustratingly mess up the quick-time inputs over and over in the latter half of the story. It eventually got bad enough that I just turned off the quick-time mechanic in the settings entirely.

I largely enjoyed the combat outside of those quick-time inputs. There's quite a bit of strategy to it, rewarding your commitment to creating builds and thinking ahead. Each character in Cadence's party takes on a specific role--Cadence is an all-rounder, for instance, while Fret is geared more toward healing and support. Each character can be customized with different stones that each grant a different ability, allowing you to curate each. You can double down on Fret's role and load him up with multiple abilities devoted to healing, buffing, curing debuffs, and reviving downed allies, for example, or make him a tough tank that endures multiple hits before unleashing a powerful headbang attack.

In addition, the flow of battle needs to be taken into consideration. Enemies can place modifiers on the turn order so that the first person to act on your turn always deals less damage, for example, or stun a member of Cadence's party so that they can't act for an entire turn. Early on, these considerations are just speed bumps that you have to work around, but unlocking Synthia and Vox are game-changers. Synthia can remix the turn order to delete modifiers, and Vox can hit enemies hard with his own collection of modifiers and debuffs. At that point in the game, People of Note becomes this deadly ballet of two groups of musicians battling it out, and all tricks are equal on each side. And while losing this battle of wits can be frustrating, successfully outmaneuvering your opponent is deeply rewarding.

People of Note's "dungeons" (for lack of a better word to describe the areas devoted to combat and puzzles and not talking to NPCs), also do away with random encounters and fully heal all party members after every fight. This keeps combat from overstepping everything else and ensures that each fight is solely a battle of wits, not an irritating gauntlet of survival.

Combat grows increasingly less enjoyable further into the story though, especially once you unlock Vox in Act 3. From that point onwards, People of Note primarily makes fights harder by giving enemies and bosses larger health bars, not a wider variety of actions or smarter strategies. For the last six hours or so of People of Note, combat just plateaus. The fights are no longer getting more difficult, but just becoming longer. It feels a lot like old-school Final Fantasy in that respect, and it's similarly quite dull. It's repeatedly annoying to figure out what a boss is all about, come up with a surefire strategy for beating them, feel the high of seeing your tactics work as intended, and then come to the realization that you've only been fighting the boss for 10 minutes or so and they still have over three-quarters of their health bar so you now just have to keep doing what you've already been doing for another 30-odd minutes.

In the same way People of Note has a setting that allows you to turn off the quick-time inputs, it also has one that lets you just automatically win the fight you're going up against. And as People of Note continued, I found myself using that feature more and more. Could I have just stuck with it and grinded through every boss as intended? Probably. But I really didn't want to, and I don't think I would have wanted to beat the game without that feature because grinding the same boss for almost an hour is tiresome.

The game does have a "crescendo" mechanic, where bosses and certain enemies grow stronger over time, but rarely did that transform the fight in a meaningful way that kept the battle exciting. More often than not, it just gave the enemy a stronger attack that they'd use every once in a while. But the extent to which that would change the flow of a fight was limited to me reminding myself to heal every once in a while during combat. And that's also just making the fight longer--I'm pausing my strategy to heal before going right back to what I've discovered works best. Prior to my decision to outright skip the latter half of most fights, People of Note's combat was beginning to make the game grind to a halt in Act 3, frustratingly stalling progress right when the story was getting really exciting.

Much of this is alleviated by People of Note's soundtrack, which is stellar. While the soundtrack primarily focuses on catchy pop music, it does dip its toes into other genres--rock, rap, boy band, and opera most successfully. These songs are brought to life with colorful and fully-animated cutscenes, each punctuating a major point in the story--a hero's motivations finally being revealed, for example, or a dramatic turning point that unveils the previously hidden machinations of a villain who has been scheming in the shadows. It aligns with the game's messaging that music is a powerful means by which to express oneself or pass along practices and traditions.

Most of the songs are also just catchy, the kind with a chorus that's designed to earworm into your brain and stick around for a while. The same can be said for the individual tracks that play in hub areas and during battles, all of which provide a tonal identity for the location and the specific enemy types that inhabit it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3DiPDYJniM

Oddly, while these background tracks provide several examples, the People of Note's songs that get the full cutscene treatment don't have much in terms of genre mixing beyond Act 1. Cadence's story is literally about her trying to add new sounds to her pop song, and this is tackled fantastically upon her meeting Fret and getting a song that combines pop and rock music. We only really see that again one other time in what's my favorite song of the entire game--one that blends pop with classical. This lack of genre mashups doesn't ruin the game, but upon finishing it, I did feel disappointment that the game about blending different musical genres together doesn't have more examples of the characters bonding by blending their different sounds together.

Between fights, each dungeon will offer puzzles for Cadence to solve. Over the course of the game, she unlocks musical powers that can only be used outside of combat, like Forte, which can be used to push heavy objects, or Harmonize, which links two objects together so whatever Cadence does to one is also done to the other. Early on, these are primarily used for simple puzzles, like using Forte to slowly blast pieces of a gigantic recorder together. But as the game continues, the puzzles grow increasingly complex, relying on knowledge you've gained from the earlier puzzles to create these intense gauntlets that rely on using all four of Cadence's powers in tandem to inch forward. Save for a few that stalled progress on the cusp of climactic moments near the end of the game--irritatingly keeping me from the drama I so desperately wanted to watch unfold--these puzzles were always delightful brain teasers that kept each dungeon from being a long slog of only combat.

People of Note has fun logic problems, too. While my favorite were the Weird Owl puzzles--all of which are multiple choice quizzes that test you on your knowledge of the in-game world of Note, like storefront locations or enemy attack names--there are a few other standouts. A whodunit mystery near the end of the game that sees Cadence grilling multiple suspects and tests you on your ability to pay attention to details and correctly object to falsehoods and deduce criminal intent is very fun, and I'm so bummed that the game only lets Cadence play detective that one time. There are a ton of delightful side activities and quests like this in the game. Between them and the incredible format for the credits that shout out individual members of the team in song, it feels like there was a lot of love poured into this game.

All said, even if we're not seeing the members of Cadence band blend their sounds together much in the story, we at least can see it happen during combat. And while that combat drags a bit in the last act of the game and messes with your mind by not matching the tempo of the quick-time inputs to the background battle music, the turn-based system that's there rewards creativity and strategic thinking. Plus, this game has awesome music and fun puzzle-filled dungeons. If you're down to immerse yourself in puns galore and tons of pop-culture references, People of Note is a delightful musical treat.