Content from Last 48hrs

Elden Ring Nightreign Edit: First time I got a character ending, did another solo run and got the normal ending, now it's easily a 10/10. Wasn't sure how I'd feel about this, I love Elden Ring, but I'm not a huge fan of rogue-lites/likes/adjacent games or multiplayer stuff, not to mention that online has never been FromSoftware's strong suit lol, but I ended up pleasantly surprised, and I think I get the appeal of these games now, though it does have some serious issues. In terms of gameplay, it's really fun, and it's likely to have the same effect on Elden Ring as ER had on older Soulsborne games, I struggled to go back to Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 3 after playing Elden Ring, specially with the lack of jump and QoL stuff like the stakes of Marika, Nightreign introduces: climbing, super sprint, infinite arrows, and most importantly, NO FALL DAMAGE, all of these will be missed when/if I go back to Elden Ring lol. It's also way faster, you're not taking your time to explore, find secrets and farm for stuff, you're running from one place to another, mark it on the map, run there, grab the item or defeat the boss then immediately run to the next spot, repeat until the day is over or your party gets wiped out. The way you level up has been changed to keep up with this, instead of allocating points, you just spend runes to gain a level, points are automatically allocated based on what class you're playing. One thing to consider, being a rogue-style game, you're not going to be winning every run, or clearing every camp, there are places you should try to clear before everything else and there are times where RNG will simply decide to kill your run early, I feel like a lot of the friction that caused negative responses came from people expecting a more linear progression, like "OK, clear the whole map, then beat the boss, then go after the next main boss", kind of thing, and while it can be annoying when RNG decides to mess with you, once you accept this is part of the game, it's not an issue. I had runs where nothing went right, all the drops were pretty bad, and still managed to reach the Nightlord, there were also runs where everything went right, had legendary gear, max healing flasks, and then we still got stomped. The story is pretty decent, not the main thing which is simple, but good enough, I'm talking about the character remembrance stories, each character has their own story, some of them overlapping with the main Nightlord stuff, some independent, though I haven't completed them all, the ones I have have been pretty good, with the best so far being Raider's, some also have a unique ending when you defeat the last boss. However, there are some issues, some which devs have already said will be addressed. The revive mechanic is pretty fun, when a teammate goes down, you just beat the crap out of them to bring them back lol, each time you die you get another tick added to the revive timer, making it take more hits to bring you back, this resets with every boss/site of grace. The biggest problem is the rate at which each tick refills compared to how fast you can deal enough "damage", it's very easy to run out of stamina before being able to clear all ticks, and before you have enough stamina for another attack, the revive timer is back to full. Hitboxes are also super wonky, making it easy to miss with heavy weapons, bows and poking weapons are the best at reviving with heavier weapons being more prone to missing the target entirely. The randomization is also lacking, there's only one map, field and night bosses are pulled from fixed pools based on which Nightlord you pick, and even though there are map altering events, there's only four of them and, as far as I've seen, once they're gone they're gone, though this might be a bug. Relics are underwhelming, relics are items that change your stats or give you buffs or equipment, these are a sort of fixed progression, you get them from completing expeditions and from the murk store (murk being a currency you get from expeditions), their effects are mostly "tiny increase to HP" or "start with some item", I haven't played many other games in this genre, but I do remember Taboo Trial and Duel Princess having some pretty ridiculous items and units, Nightreign needs some stuff like that, the devs played it way too safe with their effects IMO. Many relics also end up feeling useless with the way they combine effects, you can get a relic with three buffs, one might be super useful for Wylder, but the other two end up being completely useless, so that relic ends up never being used because no class can actually benefit from it. Then there's the remembrance skins, remembrance skins are unlocked after completing a character's remembrance and they're by far, the worst of all the available skins, except for Raider, for everyone else it ends up being a game of Spot the Difference lol. The other available skins are pretty cool though. There's other issues, but I don't know if I should count it against the game or if they're just part of the genre, bosses are weak to specific elements and sometimes you'll get a map without a single drop of that element, so you just have to rely on whatever else might be effective, except for the last boss which is immune to most effects. Some bosses are also extremely challenging for certain characters, but again, this might just be a case of "alright, now you know what class to pick next time". Overall, I liked it a lot, but I do hope to see more maps, bosses and skins, in fact, given the more experimental nature of Nightreign, could be fun if they had some more extreme stuff, like an Armored Core themed skin for Wylder or a Sekiro map, fun stuff like that. TL;DR: If you're looking for more Elden Ring, this isn't for you, if you want From's take on the rogue-like genre and are willing to put up with some issues, then it's worth it, specially for $40. Grade: S

Tempest Rising This is a very C&C-coded RTS that just released a couple months ago, and it's a lot of fun. There's two campaigns, one for the Global Defense Initiative Force, and another for the Brotherhood of Nod Tempest Dynasty. Each campaign covers the same time period of a war between the two, focused on an energy resource known as Tiberium Tempest. I quite liked it, though it's a little shallower than I like my RTS in terms of tech trees and stuff (I've always been more of a Starcraft guy myself), and definitely would recommend it for anyone who's itching for a new strategy games. I don't really have much in the way of detailed thoughts, it kind of is just a fun and competent RTS, not really anything standout great, but not anything seriously bad either. Grade: B