Nuclear Gandhi is one of the funniest memes in video game history — one already big and old enough to cloud the collective Internet memory on whether it stems from a real thing — but it is actually a perniciously hilarious hoax.

In Civ, Mahatma Gandhi, the famously pro-peace anti-colonialist martyr from India, is often seen as a surprisingly aggressive and nuclear war-prone leader. What the hell is up with that, and why does it happen not just in one game but in many across the series? Let's look into the facts of this mystery to shine a light on Gandhi's alleged war crimes.

Nuclear Gandhi: the origins of a hoax

The first memory I have of the Civilization series comes from a visit the kid version of me paid to an older friend. He wanted to show me Civ 2, a game I had only seen screenshots of and immediately discarded as a boring and too-complex strategy game for older people — so, probably ages 14 and above.

My friend was just four or five years older than me, but he sure knew what he was doing, as the memory of watching a dude play a game I didn't yet care much about would stick with me forever. Shortly after he loaded the save file on his PS1 version of the game, he spouted, "f*ck, Gandhi is nuking me... Again".

The "nuking" part was hilarious, but what did me in was the "again" part. I'd immediately written that off as my friend joking around had it not been for his alarming seriousness. I was a silly kid, but one still knowledgeable enough to know nuking people wasn't Gandhi's thing. So why would he be nuking a teen promoting the one game starring Gandhi of all people? Once I was done laughing my ass off at the incident, I asked what the hell was the deal. My friend replied that he had no idea, "Gandhi is just like that."

Though the real Gandhi actually held some highly reprehensible beliefs, I quickly found out he'd fired a total of zero nukes throughout his lifetime. So, for a while, that's all we got — the uncertainty of not knowing whether Gandhi just hated my friend's external policies or whether developer Firaxis just really wanted to taint the man's legacy in a hilarious manner.

The instance made me laugh hard enough to never forget about that one afternoon, but I quickly moved on from the Civilization series for a while. A few years later, when I became old enough to convince my parents I was old enough for the Internet, I began reading gaming forums where many people also complained about Gandhi going nuclear on them. It was a thing.

The Nuclear Gandhi bug

In 2012, 21 years after the release of the original Civilization, we finally learned that Gandhi was bad because of a hilarious development oversight. You see, Firaxis actually had designed Gandhi to be just as pro-peace as he was in real life, but something had gone wrong. Once India became a democracy, it would lose some points in aggression, but Ghandi already had a base value of 0 for it, and trying to make it go lower would pretty much break the universe. Democracy would create an actual horseshoe effect that would have Gandhi's aggression value shot up to the maximum of 255. This was why so many people had to go to war with Gandhi, or so they thought.

Because the Nuclear Gandhi bug was total bunk

Turns out, it was just an unproven hoax that appeared on TV Tropes and spread like wildfire despite the poster having absolutely no data to back it up. It was only in 2020, with the release of Sid Meier's biography, that the truth came out. Meier explained, via more complex and boring computing lingo, that the supposed Nuclear Gandhi bug was impossible in that particular game.

Gandhi behaved like any other leader in the game. The only explanation for Gandhi's thermonuclear global dominance ways was the Mandela effect, where people misremember a historic event or person. Only a modest percentage of players ever really got on Gandhi's bad side, but Civilization is a hugely popular game, so many of them got obliterated by the peacemaker. Gandhi was not a monster or a good man who could go full evil because of a bug. He was just some guy, some guy you should not f*ck with.

The truth about Civilization's Gandhi is out — and has been out for a while — but it's just impossible for the truth to catch up to a lie that goes viral. Sid Meier doesn't mind, though, as he claims to enjoy seeing his game taking a whole new dimension in the imagination of fans.

Firaxis doesn't seem too bothered, either, as the studio officially made Nuclear Gandhi part of the game in Civilization V and VI — and that's not a hoax. If you're heading into a game of Civilization V or VI, you should know beforehand that Gandhi is the most peaceful of leaders, but he will very quickly resort to you-know-goddamn-well-what if you push him too far.

Civilization 7 comes out on February 11, and I can't wait to get nuked by Gandhi again before some dumbass does the same IRL.

The post Was Gandhi really a monster in Civilization? Explaining “Nuclear Gandhi” appeared first on Destructoid.

Multiplayer was a lot harder to pull off on the NES than you may imagine. While the system was designed with two players in mind, the limitations of the hardware threw up a lot of obstacles, and there was never an elegant way around them. Elegance is overrated.

So, while multiplayer was better in arcades and would only start catching up in later generations, anyone who experienced the console in its prime probably has some great memories of sharing the unit with a chum. So, if you’re looking to recapture that feeling, or if you’re new to the console and want to explore it with a friend, then I’ve got some picks for you, in no particular order.

Note that I’m only covering titles that launched in North America. This list would be a lot easier if we were talking about the Famicom as well, but since that’s a whole different world, I’ll stick with the rivers and the lakes most people are used to. For picking games, I’m looking for ones that engage both players successfully, so while there are other great games with two-player modes, I’m mostly showing off ones where a second player feels like they add something.

Micro Machines (1991)

As a single-player game, Micro Machines kind of sucks. It’s awesome for a while, but the AI gains such an unfair advantage later on that it becomes almost impossible. Brutal. Not a problem when it comes to multi-player, where it’s absolutely amazing.

Racing wasn’t an easy genre to fit with multiplayer on the NES since split-screen isn’t really possible. I’d say it’s completely impossible, but programmers can find some pretty funky tricks and workarounds sometimes, so I’ll just say it’s not possible according to my understanding of the hardware. It's not important; Micro Machines worked out a solution. It placed four competitors on screen at one time, and the camera always follows the frontrunner, and anyone who falls too far behind and hits the edge of the screen gets eliminated.

Put this on a bunch of interesting tracks like a bathtub or kitchen table, then keep swapping out the vehicles to fit the theme, and you get something consistently fun. You can even kick things up to four-player if you can find the folks to join you.

River City Ransom (1989)

One of my very favorite NES games is also one of the best two-player experiences. Beat-’em-up is a genre that the console could do reasonably well, but River City Ransom is more than just your standard belt scroller. It also has RPG stats that you could increase by cruising the mall. Enemies drop coinage that you can fill your pockets with. You then take that cheddar and stop at restaurants to down a few courses to pump up your kicks. Actual kicks, I mean. Not shoes. You could also buy new shoes.

Anyway, it’s a lot of fun with another person as you hit the shops and compare notes on what increases what stat. Plus, if your friend gets knocked down, you can pick them up and wield them as a weapon. It’s a unique experience to share.

Contra (1988)

One of the console’s absolute classics, Contra is one of the seminal games in the run-and-gun genre. When it was ported from arcades, Konami was able to retain the two-player cooperative. And it works. It still manages to keep the pacing without too much slowdown. It doesn’t feel compromised at all.

With its one-hit deaths and limited continues, it’s a pretty difficult game unless you cheat. It’s less that any part of it is tricky, it's that it's hard to avoid fumbling occasionally, wearing you down. However, if you and your partner have the patience, learn the patterns, figure out all the tricks, and finally topple the last boss, it’s fulfilling in a way that most games can’t match.

Double Dragon 2 (1989)

Technos’ Double Dragon was a pioneer of the belt-scrolling brawler genre and a massive success in its own right. However, when the game was ported to the NES, it dropped the two-player coop entirely. While it’s still a beloved title for the console, I’ve always felt beat-’em-ups work best with a buddy, and the lack of this is a pretty large detriment.

Truthfully, Double Dragon 2 on NES diverges in quite a few ways from its arcade roots but comes away better for it. Most importantly, it reinstated the two-player coop and, as a result, is one of the best titles on the system. It’s a dumb, fun brawler. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you get to the level where you throw dudes out of a helicopter.

Bubble Bobble (1987)

As an arcade game, Bubble Bobble bends pretty hard in a coop direction, and the NES version retains that entirely. You and a friend fill the shoes of bubble-blowing dragons who encase their foes before popping them, turning them into snacks for some reason. You battle through 100 screens (not counting bonus stages) and take on a disturbing elf-thing.

Bubble Bobble is so geared toward coop that if you complete the game without a partner, it practically chastises you and tells you to play through it again with someone behind the second controller. Way to salt the wound of us lonely folks.

Hollywood Squares (1989)

Hear me out. Game shows typically only translate okay to the video game format. This is because you often need to type in the answer, which takes a while and demands that you input it perfectly, otherwise it’s counted as an incorrect answer. This is true in games like Jeopardy and Family Feud. The game shows that don’t rely on this, on the other hand, fare much better. 

Wheel of Fortune is a good example of this. The only reason it’s not on here is because it’s better with three players, and substituting one for a computer sucks. Instead, I think Hollywood Squares stands out due to its simplicity. If you’re unfamiliar, celebrities sit in a 3x3 grid, and you pick one. They get asked a question, they answer, and then you either agree or disagree. If you agree and they’re right or disagree and they’re wrong, you get a marker on that square. The goal is to get three squares in a row a la Tic-Tac-Toe. Nothing to slow you down, nowhere to slip up with a typo, just good, quick competition. I kind of wish there were more questions, but any amount will always run dry eventually.

Chip ‘N Dales Rescue Rangers (1990)

Capcom was pretty legendary for its collection of Disney-licensed stuff, and while licensed games have a bad reputation, and this was especially true in the early days, Capcom had some pretty solid consistency. Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, and even The Little Mermaid were great at best and decent at worst. But only one of them allowed for two-player coop, and that was Chip ‘N Dales Rescue Rangers.

Rescue Rangers feels a lot like Super Mario Bros. 2. Dealing with enemies is largely a matter of picking up sturdy objects and hurling them. The 2-player mode doesn’t feel necessary (aside from allowing both title characters to exist at once), but it is a lot of fun. The game is combat-heavy enough for a second pair of hands to feel useful, but simply sharing the joy of a solid game is enough.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game (1990)

In the ‘80s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the hottest package around. Konami managed to grab the game license and made arcade gold with their four-player beat-’em-up cabs. However, the first NES outing wasn’t based on that. Worse yet, it was single-player. Worser still, it wasn’t very good. Thankfully, instead of trying the formula again with a sequel, they just ported the arcade game. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game is technically not a sequel; it’s exactly what it says on the tin.

It’s a decent port. It drops the four-player mode, allowing only two, which is, truthfully, is about all the hardware can handle. Beyond that, however, it is pretty faithful to the original. It’s a decent belt-scrolling brawler that still manages to work well in a post-Final Fight world.

There was actually an NES-exclusive follow-up called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project. It’s another decent title to play with a buddy. It feels like a more-of-the-same holding pattern, which might have been what it is. Nonetheless, it retains what made the previous game successful, so if you’re just looking for something to fill another afternoon, it’s a good fit.

Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988)

As much as it’s not my favorite game on the NES, it’s hard not to look at Super Mario Bros. 3 with wonder. It feels like a game that’s a hardware generation ahead and still unlike anything else out there. Beyond just being a well-designed and fun game to play, it’s an amazing technical achievement that pulls off incredible feats of hardware strength while making it look effortless.

Anyway, the important thing (at least in terms of this list) is that it’s two-player. Both Mario and Luigi have a chance to shine. The only downside is that it’s alternating two-player, meaning you and your chum don’t play at the same time. Instead, you swap out after a death or the completion of a level. However, the path through the game’s various worlds diverges occasionally, giving some feeling of agency to the players. Also, unlike the original Super Mario Bros., you’re both working together to push further into the game rather than just playing alongside.

Frankly, if you’re looking to get someone into the NES, Super Mario Bros. 3 is a great place to start. It demonstrates all the possibilities of the console and surprises at every turn.

Life Force (1987)

Scrolling shoot-’em-ups work a bit better than most genres on the NES hardware, but there’s a downside. Allocating a sprite to a second player means there’s less you can put on screen, and a lot of shooters thrive on throwing as much as possible at the player. Gradius, to which Life Force is a sequel (known as Salamander in most other places), used alternating multiplayer, which meant you weren’t playing at the same time as your chum, but Life Force 2 allows you to play side-by-side.

The design works well. A lot of the Gradius formula involves avoiding obstacles rather than just blasting enemies, so the action isn’t affected by having another person on the screen. It’s also creative with HUD elements, which allows both players to view their upgrade track easily. It’s a difficult game for the genre, but if your friend is either already well-versed or willing to learn, then it makes for a great time.

Dr. Mario (1990)

Tetris might be the most beloved and popular puzzle game on the block, but the original NES release didn’t have 2-player (though, Tengen’s version did). But Dr. Mario did and, personally, I prefer it over Tetris.

Dr. Mario was pretty well-tailored for multiplayer. Rather than just having two players race to drain the bottle of viruses, doing well meant dumping trash in the other person’s backyard. This meant that, beyond just trying to eliminate viruses quicker, you were also trying to set up big combos to slow down your opponent. Players could also individually set their difficulty level, which means that if you’re much more practiced, you could crank up your level to make things even.

High-level Tetris play gets a big spotlight and suggests a massive skill ceiling, but have you ever seen someone who is great at Dr. Mario? I didn’t think much about it until I saw my sister play it after she and her university roommates got into a big rivalry. It’s intense.

Tecmo Bowl (1987)

Listen, I’m the wrong person to ask about football. American football, I mean. Actually, football in general. Just don’t ask me. However, I do know that Tecmo Bowl is pretty great. I know this because I had a routine for a while where a friend would visit, I’d pull out an obscure fighting game that neither of us had played before, and then I’d beat him with every character on the roster. Eventually, he got sick of it and reached for a game he figured he could beat me at. The game was Tecmo Bowl.

I won at that, too. It’s like I do this for a living or something. Anyway, it was fun. People tell me it’s not all that much like football, and I’ll have to take their word for it. All I know is that my friend never tried for a rematch. Maybe I should have convinced him that Tecmo Super Bowl was a completely different experience.

The post The 12 best 2-player NES games appeared first on Destructoid.

The best superhero games offer a mix of a compelling narrative, stellar gameplay, and an overall great look with their graphics. These 10 titles are certainly super if you want to play as a hero in a video game.

NOTE: This is a list with one entry per franchise. Otherwise this would be an article filled with Marvel's Spider-Man and Batman: Arkham games.

#10 - Marvel's Midnight Suns

From XCOM developer Firaxis Games comes a strategy RPG Marvel's Midnight Suns. With a team of Marvel superheroes on your side, you're taking on the demonic Lilith and the Elder God Chthon (and their forces). It's a unique dark take on the Marvel universe we rarely see, especially if you only watch the MCU and play Marvel games. The card-based system is fun to play, and you'll be exploring the Abbey, getting to know the heroes (like Wolverine, Blade, and Iron Man) helping you to defeat Lilith and Chthon as The Hunter.

"It’s incredibly easy to recommend to any Marvel fan, and is simple enough to pick up and play for strategy newcomers," said our review. "Although the highs aren’t as high as some of Firaxis’ past work, those of you who latch onto the relationship building, social network, and silly moments will find a lot of joy here."

#9 - Guacamelee!

Guacamelee is a melee-based Metroidvania that lets you brawl the undead in a gorgeous Mexican-inspired environment. The colors truly pop on screen as you're wrestling your enemies with suplexes and punch combos in the air.

A cool aspect of this Canadian indie game from Drinkbox is that the moves you learn throughout this Metroidvania will help you with platforming and fighting foes. The Rooster Uppercut, for example, lifts the protagonist Juan up to higher platforms. This is a hidden gem that is well worth your time.

#8 - Injustice: Gods Among Us

Another game with fun combat is Injustice: Gods Among Us. The Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm Studios "brought it" with the first entry in this DC series. The combos are thrilling to pull off, and the ability to interact with objects on the stage is an engaging twist on the fighting game genre. The concept of Superman going evil after his love Lois Lane gets murdered by the Joker is fascinating. Out of fear, most heroes join Superman's side, but Batman and a few other heroes decide to go against him. This civil war scenario is engaging to follow throughout an impressive story campaign.

#7 - Batman: The TellTale Series

Batman: The TellTale Series has a compelling story that focuses more on Bruce Wayne than the Batman persona, giving this a unique spin on the Caped Crusader. His family's past is a big plot point in this game, and your choices do matter within the narrative of this Telltale adventure. You'll have to pick sides, and sometimes that can come back to haunt Mr. Wayne. While the gameplay is simple, the compelling story more than makes up for it. The performances by Troy Baker, Laura Bailey, and others in the cast is also stellar.

"Troy Baker has a chance to show his chops a little more, channeling an otherwise very whiny Bruce with a little more panache and ferocity that a lot of voice actors wouldn’t be able to replicate," said our review of one of the game's episodes Children of Arkham. "He’s also able to forge believable relationships with the cast, and I haven’t seen Bruce and Harvey Dent be this relatable since Long Halloween."

#6 - inFAMOUS: Second Son

One of the best superhero games is Sucker Punch and PlayStation's inFAMOUS: Second Son. Playing as Delsin Rowe, you're using the unique powers of smoke and neon. You're going across the rooftops of Seattle and blissfully flying through the air. The Washington-based city looks gorgeous with real businesses and locations being replicated in the game.

The storyline is also compelling as you're fighting against an agency trying to crack down on superpowered individuals. The relationship between Delsin and his brother is an aspect of the plot that's also relatable and engaging. The combat is also a thrill as you're wielding multiple powers, throwing embers at your enemies, and lifting cars into the air.

#5 - Marvel vs. Capcom 2

One of the most iconic superhero games ever made is Marvel vs. Capcom 2. This 3v3 fighter changed the game with crazy combos and even crazier visuals that really popped in arcades back in the naughties. Being able to team up Ryu with The Hulk and Spider-Man was a dream for many fans of the genre back in the day. Additionally, the music is superb and will have you bobbing your head to the beat.

"I’d say that only one or two of today’s 2D fighting games can hold a candle to the level of craftsmanship and content to be found in Marvel Vs Capcom 2," said our 2009 review of the Xbox 360 port. "It’s truly a product of a bygone era; and an era that I sorely miss."

It recently saw a modern release on PS4, Switch, and PC, with the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection.

#4 - Marvel Rivals

This could certainly be recency bias, but Marvel Rivals is a stellar third-person hero shooter based on the beloved Marvel license. It features heroes and villains from across the history of the company, including Iron Man, Captain America, and Mr. Fantastic. However, it also has some you may not expect like Jeff the Land Shark and Luna Snow, who are both excellent healers in the game. The game is fun to play as you master each character's unique powers and try to figure out the best team for each scenario.

The stages are magnificent with amazing set pieces to gaze at, and the conversations the characters have with each other are fantastic as well. The game's so great that it's giving Overwatch 2 a run for its money.

#3 - Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

After the disappointing release of Marvel's Avengers, one of the best superhero games, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, suffered lacking sales. And that sucks because this is one of the best adaptations in the video game space. While Marvel's Avengers felt too similar to the MCU, this game feels unique. It has its own origin story for Star-Lord, and the game makes him a more likable character than his movie version arguably. The writing is hilarious, and you really get a family feel from each of the characters in the game. They feel evolved and well-rounded as they speak to each other. You also have to take sides, and your decisions will leave an impact on the group. You'll get invested.

The combat is also radical as you're playing as Star-Lord shooting and fighting enemies in a fast-paced manner. You'll be directing each of the Guardians to help you in the fight rather than taking control of them, which surprisingly works well.

#2 - Batman: Arkham Asylum

Many would say Batman: Arkham City is the best game in the series, and while it's a fantastic entry, Arkham Asylum is the stand-out for me. By exploring this prison, you get an immense amount of tension as The Joker schemes his next trap for the Dark Knight. The story keeps moving forward, adding twists and turns you don't expect. There are plenty of memorable moments within the storyline that will stay with you for a long time.

Another aspect of the game that will stay with you is the combat and stealth segments. You feel like a badass controlling Batman as he punches, dazes, and kicks his enemies at lightning-fast speed. The combo meter keeps going up, and you can pull off finishers if you succeed long enough. The stealth segments are also fantastic as Batman uses his gadgets to outwit the thugs underneath. He also has to crawl through the prison environment to get the upper hand. You have to play this game if you haven't already.

#1 - Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is simply the best superhero game to release. Playing as both Peter Parker and Miles Morales, you're exploring a stunning iteration of New York, swinging around. It's purely a rush just to explore New York. You also have the web-wings to glide across the city landscape, too.

"Very rarely am I enamored enough with an open world to drift around aimlessly for extended periods of time, but I found myself caught in that loop all over again," said our review.

The story pulls you in even further as Miles Morales is still dealing with the loss of his father and is trying to become the Spider-Man he dreams of. Peter Parker, meanwhile, is dealing with a deeper relationship with his girlfriend while grieving his aunt. He is also catching up with his best friend Harry Osborn. The drama is high-stakes as Venom and Kraven become major threats in the city.

The combat of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 also matches up with the Batman: Arkham series. It flows incredibly well as Peter and Miles zip across the battle with their quick reflexes. The gadgets and powers of both characters add to the battle as strategic options for the player. The skill trees for both Spider-Men also incentivize us to keep playing and exploring the city. All of the collectibles and costumes you can unlock add even more to the enjoyment of the game.

The post Top 10 best superhero games, ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

There are hundreds of all-time classic video games out there, but how many of those classics belong in perfect trilogies (or any perfect three-game runs)? The Witcher 3 is one of the greats, but it had a rather middling start with the original game. The original Devil May Cry trilogy has one of the worst games in existence making the bridge between two truly phenomenal entries. Mass Effect 3 crashed and burned while attempting to land after the two best sci-fi RPGs of all time. The Dead Space trilogy? Oh dear.

Miracles aren't a rare occurrence in the video game world, but the consistency to keep on capturing that lightning in different bottles sure is. Let's look at the few series capable of proving that it was never just a fluke for them. Let's look at the best three-game runs ever pulled off.

The original Halo trilogy

The original Halo trilogy isn't just a collection of three excellent games — it also shows that three "perfect" games can still somehow evolve further — under the right direction. Halo: Combat Evolved did what no other shooter had done before it. It invited vehicles to the action, made the game larger than ever before, set a new standard for weapon loadouts, and even made First Person Shooter games no longer feel like an afterthought.

Halo 2 greatly capitalized on the original's multiplayer capabilities and, to cap it all off, Halo 3 improved upon what both previous entries did best and gave us an excellent ending to the game's storyline. We may never get an FPS trilogy quite as impressive as this one, but Valve is more than welcome to try.

Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring

I had a hard time not placing the original Dark Souls trilogy here instead, but I'd be lying if I were to say Dark Souls 2 is on par with the other games there. Still, the breadcrumbs led me to the important realization that, despite its many shortcomings, Dark Souls 2 was instrumental in the creation of one of FromSoft's best titles, a title that actually does reside inside a perfect three-game run.

You could argue that Bloodborne-Sekiro-Elden Ring is not a real trilogy — or even a same-series run — as it's not united by a plot thread. But you can't deny them being united by FromSoft's unique and beautiful vision. There's a reason why we call them Soulsborne titles, right?

This trilogy rules not because they're repeating Dark Souls' greatest hits, but because it's taking risks at tinkering with its most beloved parts — and it somehow always pulls it off. Bloodborne straight-up forces defensive players to unleash the dodge-based speed runner in them. Sekiro doesn't let players rely on one single mechanic to avoid enemy damage, as they have to choose wisely between dodging, parrying, and jumping over enemy attacks — and it even brings back the beloved stealth mechanics from the classic Tenchu. Then, to cap it all off beautifully, you have Elden Ring, which dares to fix the mistakes made by Dark Souls 2 and ends up giving players what's arguably the best Dark Souls experience to date.

The original Silent Hill trilogy

I don't think it's hard to understand why someone would put the two first entries of Silent Hill here, especially if you've been gaming since the original Resident Evil came out. The original Resident Evil is great, but it's incredibly campy. The camp perhaps works as a great breather for more susceptible players, but it just won't do for hardened horror fans.

Silent Hill changed the world of horror games by inviting players to a world of psychological horror that never took time off from haunting them. The second game is even better, as the graphical leap is accompanied by a comparable leap in narrative quality. The third Silent Hill game is a more divisive title, as many deride it as a step back, but it really isn't. While Silent Hill 3 doesn't feature the narrative highs of Silent Hill 2, it's still the best-looking game in the history of the PS2, as well as one that has enjoyed a very well-deserved positive cultural reappraisal on its portrayal of the true horrors of womanhood.

Zelda Ocarina Of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker

Ocarina Of Time has enjoyed the title of the greatest game ever made in the minds of millions of gamers ever since it came out, which likely put the devs at Nintendo under pressure to make the next game in the series another hit. Wisely, they decided not to fry their minds by attempting to make something better, but by making something different.

Majora's Mask goes for a very peculiar campaign style where players are tasked not with enjoying the amazing world, but with racing against the clock to save it — and it works. Moreover, Majora's Mask is sometimes downright creepy, which proves the devs weren't afraid of taking risks. Even though Majora's Mask wasn't as well-loved as Ocarina upon release, so many have since grown to understand its greatness.

Later we got Wind Waker, which proved the biggest departure in terms of looks, but actually fell well within line with Nintendo's experimental design philosophy. Once again, Wind Waker took some time to win the hearts of players, but it remains one of the most fun Zelda titles ever made, and you just cannot ignore its contributions to open-world exploration titles.

Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9

It's hard to find a better microcosm of what Final Fantasy is at its best — and other series should try to be — than Final Fantasy's PS1 run.

Final Fantasy VII completely changed what people thought an RPG should look like. Gone was the medieval setting and the 2d graphics. Final Fantasy VII was a perfect poster child for the PS1's potential to surprise, but it didn't show the console's true graphical potential. That's where Final Fantasy VIII came in, which outdid Final Fantasy VII in the graphical and artistical sense to come up with one of the most beautiful looking — and sounding — worlds in the history of gaming. Its plot and gameplay didn't originally get as much praise as its looks, but that's oftentimes the price of coming up with something new. Luckily, VIII has been enjoying a lot of highly positive critical reappraisal from the people who were possibly too young to value its merits when they first experienced it. And, if that still doesn't do it for you, you can always enjoy Final Fantasy IX, a magnificent love letter to the most beloved elements of the series in the shape of an original game.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, IV, V

I totally get why someone reading this might get puzzled that I didn't just go with GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. That's because I just cannot ignore the spectacular additions brought by GTA IV and V, and because San Andreas already sums up pretty well what the PS2 GTA trilogy did. San Andreas is peak PS2 GTA, as it gives you more to do than any of the previous games. It even features what is easily the best and most original plot for a GTA game up until then.

Though GTA III deserves all the credit for completely changing the gaming landscape, GTA IV is an even better Liberty City story, with a more mature tone and attention to detail and gameplay mechanics we didn't even see in the sequel. As for GTA V, it's a no-brainer to add one of the most fun, largest, and definitely most successful games in the history of the medium.

Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, Resident Evil 4

Again, I could've just gone with the first three games in the series, call it an entry, and no one would be bothered. Still, I believe the series deserves more thought to be put into it. Resident Evil 3 tends to get less love than the previous two games in the series, but I find the addition of Nemesis — both an awesome character and mechanic — to help it rise above the original.

Don't get me wrong; Resident Evil 1 deserves all the credit for kickstarting the survival horror craze, but Resident Evil 4 — whether or not you like the more action-oriented take on the series — is a much better game, and one that aged much better. As for Resident Evil 2, well, that is the best game in the original format of the series and remains one of the best sequels of all time.

Gran Turismo 1, 2, 3

The original Gran Turismo is the highest-selling PS1 title for a reason. It managed to beat all competition on both the arcade and simulation fronts. Gran Turismo 2 just continued the trend by featuring 650 cars, a completely unbelievable figure at the time.

The image above doesn't look all that impressive nowadays, but pretty much every GT3 screenshot looked impossibly good back in 2000. Racing games got much more realistic-looking since then, but I doubt any screenshot ever had such an impact on racing fans as these did. And Gran Turismo 3 didn't just look good, it also played better than anything that came before it. Boot it up, even nowadays, and you're likely to still have a blast.

God of War 2, 3, and God Of War

For the original GOW trilogy, Sony presented a very compelling case of "don't fix what isn't broken."

The original God Of War made playing a villain way more fun than it should be, and it totally deserved to be on this list just for getting the ball running. The graphics looked impossible for the PS2 hardware, and the gameplay felt just as good — if not better — than Devil May Cry's. God Of War 2 didn't really break new ground, but it's the one I'm putting here because it improved on just about everything that made the original special. God Of War 3 then benefitted from the generational jump to the PS3 to deliver one of the best-looking games of its time. After this, Sony went in a completely different direction to create the series' amazing God Of War soft reboot. The result is a game that does the father-and-child even better than Last Of Us. It also featured some of the best graphics from its generation, naturally.

The Original Metal Gear Solid trilogy

Some of the perfect trilogies on this list have achieved that distinction simply by improving upon the previous game's strengths and fixing their flaws. That's absolutely not what happens here. Every single game in the OG MGS trilogy is wildly different from the other two in any metric you can think of — except for storyline wackiness, maybe.

The original Metal Gear Solid introduced various fresh mechanics, an incredibly complex storyline, made stealth gameplay a mainstay, and even proved games can be as cinematically entertaining as Hollywood movies. Metal Gear Solid 2 introduced one of the most stunning graphical leaps ever seen, and doubled-down on the incredibly complex storyline.

One could argue Kojima went too far with some of the plot elements on that one, but MGS 2 provided social commentary that proved incredibly prescient, so we gotta give that one a pass. On the surface, Metal Gear Solid 3 went for a more back-to-basics approach, but it really was the most mechanically complex game in the trilogy, and the one that many believe to be the best in the entire series.

The post The 10 best video game trilogies of all time appeared first on Destructoid.

As my exploration of Frame Generation explains, I'm quite skeevy of Nvidia's all-in approach to AI-based performance modifiers. Baseline DLSS is solid, especially now that DLSS4 is here, but the rest I'm iffy on. What about features such as Nvidia Reflex, then, where the boons are even harder to spot?

Nvidia Reflex has felt oblique to me from day one. Whereas the actual super-sampling part of DLSS has always been rather easy to identify through the use of one's eyes, this has never been the case with Reflex. Heck, even the infamous Frame Generation component of Nvidia's DLSS package is easy to notice when you crank it up to eleven. As far as Reflex goes, though, the situation is meaningfully different.

As one of our readers suggested a little while ago (thanks, Icy!), a feature explaining the ins, the outs, and the what-ifs of Nvidia Reflex has been a long time coming, and this is precisely what I've set out to cook up here. If you, too, are having trouble figuring out what on earth Reflex is even doing, this is the place to be.

What is latency, and how does Nvidia Reflex affect it?

In the simplest terms possible, Nvidia Reflex is a feature suite designed specifically to combat click-to-display system latency. Latency is the exact delay between your input and the appearance of its effects on-screen, and the higher it gets, the less responsive your game will feel. If you're looking for a handy little cheat sheet to keep track of, that's easy:

• High frame rate and low latency are good.
• Low frame rate and high latency are bad.
• A low frame rate can lead to high latency, but it's usually just one of its notable components. You can have a high frame rate with high latency (i.e., Frame Generation usage).

Older gamers may also know latency under its funnier-sounding moniker of "ping," and this, too, may help you start connecting the dots in real time. Remember playing Modern Warfare on a shoddy Internet connection back in 2008? Yeah, not the kind of thing you just forget, is it now? Back on track, though.

Once upon a time, frame rate was the go-to performance quantifier for video games. The higher the number, the better your FPS, and the better your FPS, the more responsive your games felt. Easy, right? The thing is, we've since complicated things a fair bit by driving home the fact that, no, FPS isn't the only thing we should be looking at in this context. Instead, we've got the frame rate itself, frame rate consistency, and input latency to take into account.

The overall perceived performance of a game (how it both looks and feels to play in action) is a combination of its FPS and input latency, among other things, and Nvidia Reflex attempts to reduce the latter part of the equation as much as possible. Sometimes, it is to the user's detriment, but more on that later.

How does Nvidia Reflex work?

Nvidia Reflex sets out to "optimize every aspect of the rendering pipeline for latency using a combination of SDKs and driver optimizations," as per Nvidia's blog post from a few years back. For maximum effect, Reflex needs to be implemented into games on a per-project basis for it to work, and that's because it's egregiously difficult to reduce input latency otherwise.

The Reflex Software Development Kit (SDK) fine-tunes a game engine to achieve just-in-time rendering: as soon as a frame is rendered, it gets pushed straight to the screen to reduce the CPU's render queue for the GPU. The traditional rendering pipeline works by having the CPU queue up frames for the GPU to render, and Reflex effectively shortens this window as much as it possibly can.

"When developers integrate the Reflex SDK, they are able to effectively delay the sampling of input and game simulation by dynamically adjusting the submission timing of rendering work to the GPU so that they are processed just-in-time," Nvidia explains. And oh, hey, it usually works out just fine.

On a practical level, Nvidia Reflex makes it so that your GPU always stays under 100% usage, which leads to a slight potential reduction in frame rate while massively reducing input delay. If your GPU gets choked up, you'll get extreme stuttering and other performance problems, which then leads to a greater latency than you get by keeping your GPU under its maximum load capacity.

In traditionally rendered games with the Reflex SDK fully enabled, you will get measurable input latency improvements, and that genuinely is what it's all about. As a result, you get a game that's substantially more responsive and feels better to play, which is a huge deal. Nvidia Reflex isn't a silver bullet of any kind, though.

Problems with Nvidia Reflex and its use cases

Even though it can seem like magic, Nvidia DLSS as a feature-suite is anything but. I already mentioned the importance of keeping system latency in mind when optimizing video games, but there's one more thing that we need to drive home here: latency cannot be entirely nullified. Processing takes time as a fact, and the more stuff you pile into the rendering pipeline, the more latency you are adding to the render equation. With that in mind, it rubs me the wrong way that Nvidia is kinda-sorta pitching Frame Generation as the ultimate solution to the games' performance problems.

Frame generation of any sort improves the perceived visual smoothness of a game: its frames-per-second. It does absolutely nothing as far as latency is concerned. No, actually, scratch that: frame generation has a rendering cost attached to it, which means it adds a few milliseconds to your rendering pipeline as a rule. There's no getting around that, though Nvidia Reflex certainly attempts to do so.

Make no mistake: using Nvidia Reflex alongside Nvidia Frame-Gen is a huge help for input latency, but you're still getting 60 FPS' worth of ping at 200 FPS' worth of perceived smoothness. If that sounds like a bit of a mismatch, you're on the right track.

Aside from that, Nvidia Reflex can generally break down at times. In some games, it very well will lead to reduced performance, unstable frame-pacing (a huge no-no in my book), and even visible stuttering. There's a reason why you don't want to just enable Reflex at a driver level and go with it and why Nvidia recommends that the developers use Reflex SDK for proper implementation.

How to use Nvidia Reflex properly?

Even though Nvidia Reflex is a complicated beast in its own right, using it is quite the opposite: just enable the Nvidia Reflex Low-Latency Mode option in your game's graphics settings, and you're golden. Once again, note that this incurs a performance penalty by default, though this will be a net positive for your input latency in the vast majority of cases.

Nvidia Reflex On vs On + Boost

The more complicated question concerns the fact that there are usually two different versions of Nvidia Reflex to enable in games: Reflex On and On + Boost. There is a meaningful difference between the two, too.

The baseline Reflex essentially maintains a dynamic frame-rate cap that keeps your GPU under 100% load to improve input latency. The On + Boost option, on the other hand, attempts to crank your GPU's core frequency to improve your 1% lows.

If you're unfamiliar with the verbiage, 1% lows are an extremely important frame-rate statistic that has to do with that third element of video game performance I had previously only glossed over: consistency. 1% lows are the worst, slowest frames your GPU can render, and in a perfect scenario, they'd be as close to your actual average FPS as possible. The bigger the delta between your average FPS and your 1% lows, the worse your frame-pacing will be.

With this information in tow, Nvidia Reflex On + Boost tries its darndest to boost your 1% lows by forcing your GPU to run at a high frequency. When your GPU runs fast, however, it heats up more quickly as well. What happens when your GPU overheats? It drops frequency to cool off. You can see now why On + Boost can lead to some performance problems that don't seem obvious at a glance.

It's a great idea, to be sure, but whereas I'm happy to recommend you keep Reflex enabled wherever possible, I would advise testing for the On + Boost option just to be safe.

Nvidia Reflex is a good feature, but keep its caveats in mind

There's an awful lot to keep in mind about Nvidia Reflex because it's a complex technology that attempts to solve a complex problem. The bottom line is thankfully rather simple, though: if a game has the option for you to enable it, you should do so.

The flip side of this particular coin is that Reflex will most certainly not help Multi-Frame Generation feel like you're getting a native 400 FPS' worth of performance. It feels to me like Nvidia is trying to prime people to think that Reflex is something it's really not. Reflex 2, the upgraded version of the stuff I've discussed above, looks great as well, but it won't be the magical solution to the hard problem of latency. Latency is here to stay, and Frame Generation only adds to it.

The post Nvidia Reflex explained: Why it’s important, and why you too should use it appeared first on Destructoid.

Things are a-changing, now that Nintendo's finally officially revealed its Switch 2 console. Even though we don't yet know how powerful, exactly, Switch 2 might be, it's absolutely going to be miles ahead of the original Switch. What does that mean for the Steam Deck and its ilk, though?

At face value, it shouldn't mean diddly squat. The Deck, the ROG Ally, the Legion Go... these devices aren't consoles as such: they're handheld gaming PCs and laptops from a mechanical and functional point of view. Even the most popular of them all, the Steam Deck, doesn't come even close to competing with Nintendo's flagship device. To that end, comparing the two may well seem like a fool's errand. Yet, the bit that has me a tad concerned, specifically, is that the perceived performance baseline of these low-spec devices is about to get turned upside down.

Here's the jig: the original Nintendo Switch, and even its OLED refresh, came about when the video game industry was in a vastly different spot. The Switch is effectively the final surviving relic of a time when hardware requirements stayed the same for over half a decade: the eighth generation of game consoles. This includes the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, most prominently, as well as the aforementioned Nintendo handheld.

During that time, PC hardware pushed onwards to a ridiculous degree while console stayed the same. Heck, the Switch itself was painfully underpowered basically on launch day, but it still could somewhat reasonably keep up with the likes of PS4 thanks to extreme optimization efforts. Sony moved on to PlayStation 5 since, and Xbox did much the same with Series devices, and it's entirely possible and even likely we'll see a whole new generation of consoles by 2026-2027. In the interim, Nintendo Switch 2 is coming out this year, in 2025, and that is going to reverbate through the industry for sure.

This has two major implications in my mind. Firstly, it's a given that Switch 2 will have a ridiculously large audience no matter what. Secondly, such a massive audience is something that many gaming companies will want to target by default. See where the potential new performance baseline comes into the picture?

If Nintendo releases its fancy new console on the tail end of the current generation, this means Switch 2 will remain relevant through much of Sony and Xbox's next offerings' life-span. Further, it also means that regardless of the home consoles' respective hardware specs, a huge number of game developers will have Nintendo Switch 2 builds ready regardless.

Alright, that's about all the context I need to make my actual argument: depending on how powerful the Nintendo Switch 2 may or many not be, it may actually cause developers to start more-or-less ignoring the current-day PC gaming handhelds in lieu of it.

I see no feasible way for the Switch to be less powerful than the Steam Deck, just to make things as obvious as possible. Leaks (which I recommend considering with a whole chunk of Himalayan salt in hand) put it at right about PlayStation 4 Pro level in handheld mode, and that's without taking Nvidia's DLSS supersampler into account. Now, we don't know whether the Switch 2 will actually ship with some manner of DLSS included, but it's virtually impossible that it won't, given Nvidia's not-so-recent track record.

Combine all of the bits and bobs I've outlined above with the fact that Valve isn't about to release a Steam Deck 2 anytime soon, and you've got a potential storm cooking. What I mean by this is that since the Switch 2 will inevitably be used as a "low-spec" baseline for many game developers, the likes of the Steam Deck are very possibly going to be left out of the performance considerations.

We've got to face the facts here: the entire PC gaming handheld niche is precisely just that: a niche. Even though hardware companies have taken after Valve to deliver a whole host of devices targeting this audience, this is still a very small subsection of a subsection of the gaming industry. One that pales in comparison to the massive audience chasing after the next flagship Nintendo console.

The Steam Deck is already struggling to run modern AAA games, just to be perfectly clear, and it's entirely possible that the Switch 2 won't be able to do so either. Yet, the original Switch is at its core a severely underpowered Android tablet that held on through sheer force of will. Even if Switch 2 is "merely" at the rough performance level of the Steam Deck, you can bet that game developers will squeeze every single teraflop of power out of it in due time.

Reducing or even inverting the performance delta between the Steam Deck and Nintendo's flagship device is the kind of precedent-setting development that could either help or diminish the current PC gaming handhelds. Up until now, it's been very possible to competently emulate the Switch on the Steam Deck, but that won't be the case at all with Switch 2.

It's possible that the optimizations made for Switch 2 will end up helping our Decks, ROG Allies, and Legion devices to some extent. Yet, the relatively small number of people using these things may also preclude these optimizations from being worth porting back. If the vast majority of the gaming audience is on the Switch 2, after all, why bother with the small portion that's sticking it out on lower-spec devices?

Am I being all doom-and-gloom well ahead of time? Oh, yes, certainly. As I outlined above, this whole situation could go either way for the PC gaming handheld scene, and there's simply no way of knowing how the tides may turn just yet.

It's worth being prepared for the eventuality that the Switch 2 will overtake a huge chunk of public gaming discourse in 2025 and beyond, however. There's also the distinctive possibility that it overshadows much of the progress Valve is making in the PC handheld scene for a while, which could cause ripples for the niche later down the line.

In summary, then, this is a very exciting time for the gaming industry that's going to inform much of its focus for years to come. Nintendo's April Direct should give us more context as to what to expect out of this device, though I don't expect true performance benchmarks until actual gamers get to test Switch 2 properly. The bits and bobs I'm concerned about won't unravel until well after that happens, so we've got to stay tuned until then.

The post With Switch 2 on the horizon, where does that leave the Steam Deck? appeared first on Destructoid.

Last week developer Wolcen Studio announced codenamed Project Pantheon, the studio's next title. I recently sat down with members of the development team to get a very early look at Project Pantheon, as well as to hear more about the ambitious future for the title and how Wolcen Studio plans to get it there.

At its core, Project Pantheon mashes together two popular genres: Action RPG and PvPvE Extraction. Or, as the team liked to put it, ExtrAction RPG. Players will have their own Sanctuary, essentially a base of operations that they can customize and upgrade as well as manage their loadout, akin to that in other Extraction-base games like Escape from Tarkov. From here they will queue for matchmaking before being dropped on a map where they will slay ferocious creatures to level up and acquire gear and other loot while other players are doing the same thing, all with ARPG-style gameplay. Once their inventory is filled or they've received a piece of loot they want to hold on to, players must then successfully extract from the map before being taken out by other players trying to get their loot.

It's important to note that Project Pantheon is currently in its very early stages of development. According to Wolcen Studio, despite the upcoming Closed Alpha test, Project Pantheon doesn't plan to release into Early Access until Q4 2025 or even Q1 2026, with major updates to be released every four months.

While this may seem too early to some, Wolcen Studio is deliberately making the decision to get eyeballs—and soon, hands-on Project Pantheon, as they want the community and player base to play a massive role in shaping the game. The team lamented the development process of its previous ARPG, Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, and is looking to avoid the pitfalls of that title by including the community from a much earlier stage in the development cycle.

Project Pantheon is set in a post-apocalyptic universe where all the various mythologies of the world are real but have mysteriously all been killed. Players take on the role of a recently deceased soul reaching the afterlife only to be recruited by none other than Death himself to be a worthy agent in investigating the demise of the gods.

To do so, players must hunt down Undying creatures and mythological beasts against other agents of Death, scavenging resources and acquiring powerful artifacts along the way. The goal is to incorporate Project Pantheon with several different mythologies. At the moment, only Norse mythology is present. However, the current plan is to add Egyptian, Greek, and Aztec mythologies over the course of Early Access, as well as more post-1.0 launch mythologies based on community feedback.

As part of the preview, I got to watch a couple of matches between Wolcen Studio developers, with them jumping into the same map together, going their own separate ways, killing creatures and looting up, before eventually coming across each other and duking it out in PvP. Due to its very early state, there were a few bugs along the way, and there were evident temporary placeholders like the simple and block gear and item tooltips. But the gameplay loop was evident, and it was a lot of fun seeing one of my favorite genres, ARPGs, get a worthwhile approach to PvP, something currently missing from the genre.

In Project Pantheon, your abilities and playstyle are dictated by your gear. Weapons act as a sort of "soft class," giving you access to specific abilities for that weapon type. Armor provides passive abilities, while Artifacts grant the player powerful and unique finishing moves. This creates the possibility for players to mix and customize their own gearsets that revolve around their preferred playstyle. It reminded me a lot of the itemization and PvP in Albion Online, giving players the freedom to build their own playstyle through gear rather than locking them to specific abilities based on a class choice.

At the moment, there are only three weapon types available. But Wolcen Studio already has eight weapons currently being designed for Norse mythology, each with 10-12 abilities. Armor and Artifacts add another 50 abilities per mythology, meaning that when all is said and done, Wolcen Studio hopes to have about 150 abilities for each mythology that they add to the game.

Project Pantheon is set to kick off its Closed Alpha 1 test this weekend for European players on January 25 and January 26, while North American players will get access on February 1 and February 2. It will be the same very early in-development build I got a look at, as the goal of this Closed Alpha is primarily to test the overall technical efficacy of Project Pantheon, focused on validating the stability and performance of the title's backend systems and server infrastructure. Essentially, Project Pantheon is making sure it can walk before trying to run.

While it is way too early to have any real opinion on the actual gameplay of Project Pantheon, I greatly admire Wolcen Studio's approach to involving players this early to allow them to shape and influence the development cycle. As someone who enjoyed Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, I'm happy to see the team learning from its development mistakes and ensuring Project Pantheon doesn't fall into the same issues. I'll be keeping a close eye on its development and looking forward to seeing what it evolves into over the next few years.

The post Project Pantheon aims to mash two popular genres together appeared first on Destructoid.

Regarding Call of Duty, it's easy to argue that Black Ops is perhaps the most beloved and popular series in the franchise's history. Now that Black Ops 6 has been released, I've looked through the last 17 years to rank every Treyarch-developed game from worst to best.

It's a testament to the quality of the Black Ops series that Treyarch is widely viewed as the best Call of Duty developer, which made ranking the seven mainline entries difficult. A dev team rarely has no absolute stinkers in their library, but Treyarch has never made a bad CoD game, at least in my opinion.

However, this is an article to rank them all, so I couldn't sit on the fence and say that they're all great, which is why we're ranking all Black Ops games in order. For this list, we've included Call of Duty: World at War, as it is viewed as the beginning of the Black Ops series due to characters from it appearing in 2010's Black Ops.

7. Black Ops 4

• Release year: 2018
• Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
• Modes: Multiplayer, Zombies, Blackout

Picking the worst Black Ops game is like going to a donut shop and picking the least tasty one: They're all pretty good. There had to be a loser, though, and for me, Black Ops 4 is probably the least memorable title in the series, and I always felt like I wasn't sure what kind of Call of Duty game it was.

The return to "boots on the ground" CoD was certainly welcome, but bringing Specialist abilities back meant that BO4 felt like an odd mix of classic and futuristic Call of Duty that never quite worked for me. The decision not to release with a campaign also damaged this title, and the public reception to it meant Black Ops 4 was on the back foot before it was even released.

Treyarch does deserve credit for the game, though; for the most part, the multiplayer was fun, and Blackout was a great introduction to Battle Royale in CoD, laying the groundwork for the ultra-successful Warzone. While Blackout was a little clunky and wasn't updated very often, it was still an enjoyable experience that shaped the Call of Duty we play today.

6. World at War

• Release year: 2008
• Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii
• Modes: Campaign, Multiplayer, Zombies

World at War is viewed as the starting part of the Black Ops franchise, even though it doesn't feature the series' iconic title. Set during World War II, it was a stark change from the previous year's game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

As it's the oldest CoD game on this list, it's easy to write it off, but to do so would be a mistake. The campaign is one of my personal favorites—It's dark and gritty, and switching between the Americans and the Soviets really gives you a feeling that you're not in control of what's happening and the true intensity of war.

Of course, you can't talk about WAW without gushing about Zombies, the starting point of the legendary mode, and some of my favorite memories in Call of Duty. I can still picture myself sitting in my old bedroom playing Nacht der Untoten with my buddies, even though I was terrible at it.

Unfortunately, Multiplayer is where I feel like World at War slips down this list, as I didn't enjoy many of the maps, the PPSh-41 (which has recently returned for Black Ops 6) dominated the weapon meta, and the inclusion of tanks didn't feel like Call of Duty multiplayer to me. In truth, I ended up returning to CoD4 before the year ended, and I never looked back.

5. Black Ops 3

• Release year: 2015
• Platforms: PC, macOS, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3
• Modes: Campaign, Multiplayer, Zombies, Bonus (Dead Ops Arcade, Nightmares, Freerun)

Look, before I get into Black Ops 3, I have to be honest. Advanced Warfare is, in my opinion, the best jetpack Call of Duty game by a mile, and I don't care what anyone says. So, with that in mind, there was simply no way I could rank it any higher than this, even though I know BO3 has its loyalists who think it's the best CoD ever.

Black Ops 3 multiplayer is fun, but I think the jetpacks are almost too powerful. Being able to wall-run and dash to the sides made it play too quickly for my liking, and at times, it felt like you were playing Halo rather than CoD. It does have some really good maps like Stronghold or Evac, but it's also got some stinkers like Exodus and Havoc which were just not enjoyable to play.

For me, BO3 also has the weakest campaign in the series and ended up being a confusing experience that didn't really explain why you were doing anything. The campaign gameplay is fun and does have some good moments, but it's not enough to make up for the flawed story. On the other hand, the BO3 Zombies Chronicles edition was one of the real stars of the show, remastering some of the most iconic maps in the series, like Origins and Moon.

4. Black Ops 6

• Release year: 2024
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
• Modes: Campaign, Zombies, Multiplayer

Black Ops 6 has the makings of being one of the best BO titles, but it still needs a little more work for it to be at the top of the list. Since it's in its early stages, it's hard to judge the game entirely while things are set in motion, whether with new upcoming maps or modes. However, even though it's still the beginning, the Black Ops 6 multiplayer experience is probably the most fun I've had in a while.

The fluid Omnimovement is my favorite thing in the world, making an Operator's movement much more accessible than other versions. Plus, the speed of the character makes me feel like I'm the DC Hero, the Flash, and now I can't seem to play any other CoD entry just because the movements are too slow. The only thing I wish multiplayer would expand upon is the maps. Most of them are riddled with spawn traps or are downright confusing with their layouts. But, like I said before, maybe it could turn around with the new maps of the season.

When it comes to the campaign, it's a bit of a mixed bag. While some moments are incredibly cinematic, others fall short and don't quite deliver. Yet, the Zombies storyline is a different story. It's engaging and delves into the lore of fan favorites like Edward Richtofen and Samantha Maxis, creating a more compelling aspect of the game. 

The Zombies mode is the main reason why Black Ops 6 is so good. The Easter Egg hunt and versatile Wonder Weapon collection brings me back to the old Zombies, where everyone worked together to uncover its secrets. Sure, sometimes it feels like a wild goose chase, but when you finally discover its hidden gems, it feels all the more worth it.

3. Black Ops Cold War

• Release year: 2020
• Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
• Modes: Campaign, Multiplayer, Zombies

Black Ops Cold War is my favorite of the "modern" Call of Duty titles and was lightyears better than 2019's Modern Warfare reboot. There's a lot to like about BOCW, with a solid campaign that's bolstered by the fact that decisions you make during the story can change the ending you see. I ended up completing it a couple of times to see what happened, which is something I rarely do with CoD campaigns.

The Zombies Dark Aether storyline was also really strong, and the gameplay was, in my opinion, the best since Black Ops 2. The maps were good, the gameplay didn't get too convoluted, and it was generally an enjoyable experience. Multiplayer on this game was also great, with gunplay feeling much more rewarding than MW and classic maps returning to the game. I spent hours playing BOCW's Ranked Mode, and if it was still live, I'd be tempted to go back.

My only real gripe with Black Ops Cold War is how strong the skill-based matchmaking felt in multiplayer, which made playing matches feel more like work than fun at times. Still, I have fond memories of this game, and it almost feels harsh to rank it third.

2. Black Ops

• Release year: 2010
• Platforms: PC, macOS, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo DS
• Modes: Campaign, Multiplayer, Zombies

The first CoD game to boast the Black Ops title, Treyarch's 2010 is an almost flawless Call of Duty game. The campaign was the best in the entire franchise, with an ending (which we won't spoil in case you haven't played it) that will blow your mind.

Multiplayer gameplay was also excellent, with weapons that were enjoyable and rewarding to use, while the maps were also widely excellent. Black Ops is the game that introduced Nuketown, one of CoD's most iconic maps that is recreated to this day, showing how influential this game really was. Even Black Ops 6 brought Nuketown back, in light of how much the community enjoys playing it.

No surprise, but Black Ops' Zombies mode is also brilliant, with unique maps that each posed different challenges, a solid storyline that weaved through every map, and great gameplay that added new guns like the Thunder and Wave Guns.

1. Black Ops 2

• Release year: 2012
• Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii U
• Modes: Campaign, Multiplayer, Zombies

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is the pinnacle of the franchise. It's not just the best Black Ops game, it's the best Call of Duty, period.

BO2 was the first campaign in the series to use branching storylines, with decisions you make affecting the ending you get. Better than that, the choices have real stakes and really invest you in the story. Treyarch went above and beyond in this campaign and hasn't been able to match it since.

Zombies in Black Ops 2 is good, not great, but still a really fun experience that is boosted by its incredible gunplay and all-around gameplay. Nevertheless, if I were to judge the BO2 Zombies' experience on the map Origins alone, it would be a 10 out of 10, no questions asked. Every time Call of Duty comes up in conversation, I'm always quick to ask if they've played Origins just to get the chance to talk about it. It's the best Zombies map, with its all-powerful Elemental Staffs, a lively cast of characters, and numerous Easter Eggs. Origins is unlike anything I've played in Zombies before and continues to be my favorite aspect in the entire CoD universe.

Then, there's Black Ops 2's multiplayer, where this game blows everything else out of the water. This title has arguably the best maps in the franchise, with remakes still popping up in CoD games to this day. On top of that, the guns feel so rewarding to use, the Pick 10 class system is still yearned for by players, and League Play is the standard to which all CoD Ranked Play modes are still held, and none have managed to better it yet.

A truly perfect Call of Duty game, and one that has yet to be matched in the 12 years since its release.

The post Every Call of Duty: Black Ops game ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

Not many can say this, but I immigrated to Canada and then moved back to England 16 years later, and man, that can cause issues for your games collection. It's been a nightmare after trading in all of my beloved PS2 games and special edition Mario Game Boy Advance as a kid all that time ago, and now returning to the United Kingdom with my PlayStation Plus selection from Canada.

You can't change regions for your games collection

Time after time, I come across the same issue. After more than a decade of using the same PlayStation Network account, I can't change my region from Canada to the United Kingdom. That means, if I make a new account, I'll lose access to all the PlayStation Plus games and the save data I've acquired through all that time. Annoyingly, I can't use my British debit card on my Canadian account so to keep playing my games: I need to get PSN credit through a website like CDKeys (and then use a VPN to access the credit I need) or ask a friend to get a code for me. Unfortunately, my Nintendo account doesn't allow me to switch regions either.

Additionally, transferring money from my UK bank to a Canadian account is costly, leading to many annoyances to keep my subscription going in Canada while living in the United Kingdom. It would be far easier to just be able to switch the region rather than going through all this hassle. After many years of purchasing games through PlayStation and Nintendo's services, these companies should return the favour.

The accounts are not the only issue when you switch countries. Many systems used to be region-locked, so all of your retro games will likely not work overseas unless they get modded. Thankfully, that's not the case anymore with the big three systems and PC.

I had to buy Kingdom Hearts HD ReMIX three times before my saves worked again

One annoying issue I found in my gaming journey after moving to the United Kingdom is some of my game saves. No matter how many times I reinstalled Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX on my PS5 with a UK disc, I couldn't get my saves to work. After the collection was removed from PlayStation Plus, it was a big hassle.

I decided after the physical version didn't work, I'd get a digital copy from the UK PlayStation Store. Unfortunately, that didn't work either. To get my saves to finally work, I had to buy a Canadian version of the game digitally, and even then, it was a struggle for the PS5 to recognize I wanted the North American copy to boot up. I thought I lost hundreds of hours of save data but I finally prevailed after many attempts.

Overall, it should be easier for customers to keep their content, no matter where they live. That's one of the dangers of keeping your library digital because you never know if you're going to lose your games.

The post Want to keep your games collection? Don’t move countries like me appeared first on Destructoid.

I love a good survival city builder, and what could be better than one that combines that beloved foundation with climate anxiety? All Will Fall is a deceptively not-depressing builder that puts that chocolate and peanut butter together. It’s like 1995’s Waterworld with Kevin Costner. Maybe! I haven’t seen it.

It’s also a bit like Timberborn with its emphasis on vertical engineering, but while Timberborn centered around clans of beavers because humans suck, All Will Fall thrives on humans because humans suck. It’s a weird mix, and you’re either going to need to try out the playtest yourself or just hear me out.

All Will Fall sees a scrappy group of humans getting shipwrecked on an artificial atoll consisting of islands of humanity’s garbage. The tops of old highrises jut up from the waves like so many unwanted erections. With not much to go on, it’s up to you to wrangle these hapless jerks and guide them to building a new home.

Resources are obviously scarce, so a lot of emphasis is on trying to collect and store water and food, as well as finding resources floating around in the waters to build new structures with. Because long after humanity is gone, our crap will still be everywhere.

Complicating things are these random events. They are sometimes beneficial, like when another ship of jackanapes floats by and you can either recruit their humans or just rob them. Others are somewhat deceptive, as you may make a choice in one just to have it backfire a little later on. You need to manage your influence and keep your folks happy, otherwise your little rubbage utopia could collapse under the weight of the human ego.

Tying this together is a rather forgiving physics system. All Will Fall is no Bridge Constructor, but structures and walkways are affected by gravity, and you have to constantly keep in mind what is getting stressed out. However, if you want to experiment, or if you just have poor judgment, you’ll merely be shown how things are about to break, and then you can either fix things or delete what you were building entirely and take it back to the drawing board. It’s not very strict, and you’re given a lot of leeway in creating some ambitious designs.

And it all feels pretty great. The tide will come in and out and storms will bring up the water level. Occasionally you get a permanent drop in the sea level, and that allows you to extend your settlement to shorter buildings, as well as whatever was beneath the ones you’ve already built on. Some of your structures, like docks and cranes, work better when they’re closer to the water, so you frequently have to reconfigure things.

But what really feels great is how much optimizing you can do. There are three groups of settlers: workers, sailors, and engineers. A lot of the time, their uses are interchangeable, but there are certain tasks that only one group can perform. Sailors, for example, are the only ones who can work at the dock. And because you can set who is allowed to live at a specific house, you’re encouraged to make districts so that the sailors don’t have to walk as far to their tasks when they wake up in the morning. This means that, even as the water level rises and falls, you’re constantly moving around your buildings to try and optimize your settlement.

There’s always something to do, so long as you have the resources for it, which isn’t always a given. Once you’ve cleaned up all the junk within your reach, you have to wait for the tide to move to expose more. Often, you have to rely on the boats you have in your collection to pick up stuff that’s further out. Even then, you’re often left deciding whether you should prioritize food or wood.

The playtest gives a great slice of the tasty All Will Fall pie, but it’s pretty clear that some things need to be rebalanced. Right now, your main goal is reaching a tower on the opposite end of the atoll. It’s set up in a way that you’ll probably reach it at the point when the water hits its lowest level. Once it does, a lot of the dynamism falls off. I imagine that’s not going to happen in the full release – at least, I hope it doesn’t.

But what’s on display is a good time. In particular, I love how surly the writing is during all the events that crop up. There will be occasions where the settlers tell you that the water rationing is too strict and you have the option to just tell them something to the effect of, “We’re fucking surrounded by water.” Another let me reply, “Are you blind or just stupid?” But one of the funniest was when a worker was injured, and one of the options was, “Shut the door. Okay, here’s a plan,” which resulted in -1 citizen and +120 food, if you catch my drift. It’s an unexpected injection of some pretty effective humor.

The events are often pretty interesting. A lot of options require you to have a certain amount of resources, including influence, which is built up by keeping your settlers happy. And you’re only given a certain amount of time to make a decision. So, at one point, it was reported that a strange fungus was growing on my buildings. There were options to ignore it or harvest the mushrooms, but I wasn’t convinced that would turn out well (I think there’s a random element in how some events play out). The only one that sounded safe was to dump all the building material affected and replace it, so I saved up 200 wood just to make sure my colony remained safe. While random events are nothing new in settlement builders, the ones in All Will Fall feel rather meaningful and your decisions impactful.

It’s hard not to see the similarities to Timberborn with its vertical-focused construction and engineering, as well as the changing states of the game world (Timberborn has drought seasons, while All Will Fall has high and low tides). However, the two games play out a lot differently. All Will Fall has a lot more to do with survival and resource collection, and that, combined with the random chance of the events, makes for something that feels more like “survival” compared to Timberborn’s optimization focus.

Building a colony out in the middle of the ocean is a lot more relaxing than it sounds. While there is the constant pressure of time, there’s a lot of space to just poke around with making new structures to try and please your people. It helps that the soundtrack is low-intensity, and so much of your vision will always be taken up in waves.

A lot still needs to be balanced and polished, however. I never felt that the social systems were all that meaningful. You can change things like rationing on a group level, for example, but I rarely needed to do that outside of specific events. I did have trouble telling whether or not happiness and loyalty were the same thing, and their effects weren’t very pronounced outside of gaining more influence. But as things stand, All Will Fall is a fun and enjoyable survival builder with a unique hook. It takes lessons from the best and adds its own spin that gives it distinction, and if everything comes together right, it might come close to reaching that high water mark.

If you want to try out All Will Fall, there's an open playtest on Steam that runs until January 31st. It's planning a launch sometime in 2025.

The post All Will Fall challenges you to keep it up in a physics-based city builder appeared first on Destructoid.

"Souls series", the name fans give to every game in the same style FromSoftware has released since 2011's Dark Souls, has enjoyed both a lot of success and the important distinction of providing the hardest challenge a (single player) gamer can find.

Most of the challenge in these games comes from their incredible boss fights, a then-in-decline gameplay element that this series clearly revived and reminded everyone should never go away. So, let's look at the most memorably nightmarish bosses in the series, shall we?

Rom, The Vacuous Spider (Bloodborne)

Bloodborne is famous for the fast-paced action it used to completely re-energize the Souls formula. Most of its memorable bosses are as fast as the player, but don't be fooled; one of the most challenging battles in the game actually comes from a deceptively slow critter.

Rom will lure players into a false sense of ease by making its early stage really easy, and then things will get harder, gradually, to an almost unbearable point. Not only is the arena filled with loads of guardian spiders you need to be wary of, but Rom also gains the ability to summon rather unpredictable and hard-to-dodge AOE blasts. Do not underestimate this foul thing.

Ludwig, The Accursed (Bloodborne, The Old Hunters DLC)

For a Soulsborne game, Bloodborne goes kinda easy on players. That, however, changes completely if we're talking about its phenomenal The Old Hunters DLC. Straight out the gate, players will have to duke it out with Ludwig, a monstrosity who's as large as he is agile. Ludwig knows an array of wildly varied moves, all of them challenging in their own specific way.

At a little below half HP, Ludwig will change to its second form, which is equally challenging and, just as importantly, incredibly fun to play against. Ludwig ranks high in the top most challenging bosses, but would rank even higher in the top best overall bosses in the series. Do not sleep on The Old Hunters.

Sister Friede (Dark Souls 3, Ashes of Ariandel DLC)

Remember the first time you brought a Souls boss' HP down to zero, only to find out it had a more powerful form? Well, Friede does that, and her second form — the one where she enlists the help of her giant father, is already a hell of a lot of work. It really does feel like it would be the final form — it already proved challenging enough. Still, more than enough is not enough for FromSoftware.

As soon as players are done with this challenging second phase, they're greeted with yet another form. This time Friede goes from a regular boss to the grim reaper straight out of hell, with a skillset filled with hellish scythe moves that will eviscerate players first, then blow them up. Few bosses are as deadly as Friede, and few will ask as much of players to even get to.

Slave Knight Gael (Dark Souls 3, The Ringed City)

When FromSoftware was making The Ringed City DLC, they knew they were making the final piece of the Dark Souls puzzle. They had to finish it with a bang, and that's what Gael is. This is an incredibly sturdy — I'd say too sturdy, even — knight, and one who possesses all the tricks in the book.

The encounter with Gael starts off simple enough, but everything goes haywire in his second form. Gael's final form feels almost like a multi-enemy fight, or a bullet hell minigame, even. On top of a quick opponent, players will have to deal with a barrage of AOE attacks the likes of which they would only see again coming out of Elden Ring's more godlike enemies. All in all, Gael provides a challenge fitting of Dark Souls' true final boss.

Sword Saint Isshin (Sekiro, Shadows Die Twice)

Most Souls games are at least kind enough to make the toughest boss optional. Sekiro, one of the most difficult games in the famously challenging Souls series, naturally doesn't offer such courtesy. Isshin's many lives will never fail to check if you've mastered the dodge jumping and the parrying that the game had been hammering into you (sometimes literally). Though he proves an extremely complex challenge, in a way, because Sekiro plays very differently from other Souls games, Isshin also feels like a fair and awesome final enemy.

Commander Gaius (Elden Ring)

This is one of the most understated menaces in gaming. You don't even know you're about to fight Commander Gaius, as there's no fog or anything resembling a boss arena to prepare players for this fight. They just exit a safe zone, enter a regular field, and — likely when thinking about the next place to go — they get ambushed by this thing. Gaius is fast — fast to the point of making running away from him really hard — and hits both hard and true. Players have to be very mindful of both his and his mount's hitboxes.

Aside from his movement speed, nothing seems extremely devious about Gaius, but the highly effective way in which he performs seemingly simple moves will have most players fall before him loads of times.

Fume Knight (Dark Souls 2, the Old Iron King DLC)

Most of Dark Souls 2's many bosses are surprisingly easy in comparison to those of the original game. That, however might be no more than a high-effort ruse to get players to drop their guard before facing off against the Fume Knight. Gamers tend to complain about most bosses in Dark Souls 2 being "just one dude in armor". Well, whether or not that's a good thing, it sure is a true thing, and Fume Knight does quite the job of defending the honor of the "dude in armor" kin.

Even though he wields a huge weapon, he's surprisingly fast and scarily relentless. He features a wide variety of moves, with all of them listed high on the damage output counter. Dealing with the Fume Knight requires a combination of good reflexes and mental fortitude, which makes him not just one of the most challenging but also one of the best encounters in the entire series.

Ornstein & Smough (Dark Souls)

Most boss encounters in the original Dark Souls offer their fair share of challenges by pitting the player up against one vile monstrosity, but this one further screws players by having them face two very distinct enemies. Beating both enemies is hard enough as is, and the immense feeling of accomplishment you'll get after pulling it off is immediately ripped out of your hands as you learn there's a second phase. After Ornstein & Smough, there's no trusting a boss will ever be as simple as it seems.

These two could easily be the poster boys of difficulty in Souls games. Whenever someone mentions how hard these games are, it's hard not to have your mind immediately teleported to that fateful boss arena in Anor Londo, the one where your only friends are the pillars you can use to block their attacks.

Malenia, Blade of Miquella (Elden Ring)

The toughest boss in the Elden Ring base game is what you get when you ask the team behind some of the most challenging games in recent history to come up with an optional challenge meant only for the most daring of players.

Malenia is fast, deals a lot of damage, and she'll instill players with the need to make every dodge count because she'll heal up whenever she hits the player or any of their summons. Moreover, on top of the second phase that all of these high-level monstrosities now come equipped with, she has the waterfowl dance, easily the most deadly and hardest-to-avoid move in the entire series.

Promised Consort Radahn (Elden Ring, Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC)

Souls downloadable content is where you tend to find the most difficult bosses. So, if Malenia is the second hardest boss in the series, and she's from a base game, you can only imagine how difficult the hardest boss from that game's DLC is going to be. "Prime" Radahn feels less like one boss, and more like a "greatest hits" of the most devious moves the developers at FromSoft were able to come up with throughout the many years spent perfecting their deviousness with the studio.

Radahn is not only relentless, he's one of the very few bosses you just cannot run away from. You can dodge his moves — for as long as your stamina lasts, at least — but you'll have to face his anger at some point. If this article is what finally gets you to challenge Radahn, know that you won't even get to see the monster I'm attempting to describe, as he was originally so strong the devs just had to nerf him, hard.

The post Hardest bosses in the Souls series, ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

Team Cherry fans will regretfully agree that we know precious little about Hollow Knight: Silksong at this time, a whopping six years after the game's original announcement. It was only a matter of time, perhaps, before we had a serious community meltdown over at the biggest Silksong subreddit.

There are layers upon layers of memes and sheer desperation to be uncovered here, and honestly, they're not for the faint of heart. To begin with, it's important to keep in mind that Team Cherry, the developer of Hollow Knight, hasn't exactly been forthcoming with information about Silksong. We know that the game exists, yes, and its rough outline is more-or-less set in place, but everything else is a huge unknown. The reasons for such an opaque approach to development are unclear, but its effects on the community sure are transparent.

Most fans just want an update of some sort, but since Team Cherry isn't providing one, it's oh-so-easy to start grasping for straws. It doesn't help, either, that some members of Team Cherry are seemingly keen to outright give the community members straws to hold onto, rather than concrete Silksong information. For example, Hollow Knight designer William Pellen provided us with a mysterious Tweet back on January 16:

The obvious expectation, then, is that Pellen was referring to something to do with Hollow Knight: Silksong. Except, the big thing that came about about a day after was the announcement of Nintendo Switch 2. The sensible takeaway would be that Pellen had insider information that made him lampshade the looming console announcement, but that's not what the community's initial reading of the situation was.

The really curious bit about Pellen's post was that he changed his profile picture to that of a cake ahead of posting. Fans over at the Silksong subreddit quickly found that it was sourced from a cake recipe posted on April 2, 2024. If that specific date rings a bell, you've been paying attention to industry news, because Nintendo's big Switch 2 Direct is due to release on April 2, 2025. Coincidence? Oh, r/Silksong didn't think so, opting instead to believe that Team Cherry is kicking off a fancy new Alternate Reality Game (i.e. ARG). Thing is, that doesn't seem to have been the case.

Hollow Knight: Silksong was originally supposed to be a Hornet-focused expansion to the original Hollow Knight, but Team Cherry quickly discovered (all the way back in 2019) that she deserved a standalone entry all of her own. Updates since have been very far and few between, which is particularly surprising when you consider that Team Cherry had a playable Silksong demo over half a decade ago.

Silksong was supposed to release sometime early in 2023 only to receive a substantial pushback in May of that year. This obviously wasn't great news for the community, but Team Cherry's work has historically been extremely high-quality and well worth the wait, so it was understandable. The bit that fans haven't taken a liking to is how Team Cherry seemingly refuses to communicate its plans, which is atypical for a studio that got its wings thanks to an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign.

Really though, it's the lack of information followed by cryptic will-they-won't-they approach to community outreach that has sent Silksong fans into a frenzy, and things haven't been going well on that front since.

The question that needs to be posed, from my point of view, is whether Team Cherry has provided any real reason for the Silksong community to have its meltdown in the first place. Though the developer has been cryptic and stealthy when it comes to Hollow Knight's production, I fail to see any real reason to think that Team Cherry wouldn't be able to deliver a masterpiece. Time and again, this small team has delivered high-quality content that's made people as eager as they are for their next release. Though more information about Silksong would certainly be welcome, the fact of the matter is that it's being actively developed and will release at some point in the future. That really ought to be enough. Predictably, the r/Silksong community doesn't appear to agree.

Circling back to the non-starter ARG, the r/Silksong community has a bunch of theories as to what's happening with Hollow Knight: Silksong at this time. One of the most popular takes is that Team Cherry has signed a non-disclosure agreement with Nintendo for a Switch 2 day-and-date release of Silksong. Many have come to believe that Silksong will be bundled with the handheld console, and that the reveal of this monumental deal will come about as part of the upcoming Nintendo Direct. One thing I will say is that Team Cherry's insistence on not sharing more information about Silksong does seem like something Nintendo would wish to enforce, even if it isn't a first-party studio. Otherwise, such a severe dearth of information about a game as desirable as Silksong is definitely strange.

At face value, this sounds like exceedingly fanciful thinking, but even I feel uneasy dismissing the claims. After all, that profile cake picture seems like an oddly specific choice for a Team Cherry dev to suddenly switch to... yet, I also can't help but wonder does it really matter that much? How far can theorycrafting be stretched before it devolves into schizophrenic connection-making that even It's Always Sunny's Charlie Kelly wouldn't be ashamed of? Whatever the case may be, I wouldn't recommend jumping into r/Silksong at this time.

If you'd like to get a sense of things we actually, verifiably do know about Hollow Knight: Silksong, there's an article for that right here at Destructoid. Everything else is at this time mere theorycrafting that could end up going either way in the end. And speaking of theorycrafting, did you hear what happened with Gravity Falls not too long ago? Yeah, me neither. Funny thing, that.

I would advise you to keep an eye out for Nintendo's April Direct, but heck, everyone's going to be watching it anyways. Who knows, maybe Team Cherry's logo will come to greet us there, in the end.

The post Hollow Knight: Silksong fans are having a meltdown on social media. What happened? appeared first on Destructoid.

It happened, TikTok was (but now it’s not?) banned in the United States, barring millions from downloading and even accessing the app. Alongside it, blindsiding many people in the process, was the ban of Marvel Snap. Why did this app get affected among all other Chinese-owned apps, though?

Due to security threats and farming user data, it has been a hot-button topic in Congress ever since 2020. Bytedance had to sell TikTok’s operations to the US, otherwise the ban would likely go through. 

What many didn’t realize is that Bytedance and its subsidiaries, including Marvel Snap, would all be affected by this umbrella ban. TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, owns another company called Nuverse, which is home to the popular mobile card game. 

This sets a dangerous precedent for not just social media apps, but video games as a medium. Video games have already been scrutinized in Western society for inciting violence, making kids lazy, contributing to the obesity problem, or pushing social narratives. 

With “national security concerns” being added to that list, it’s only a matter of time until other Chinese-owned companies like Tencent are in the crosshairs of the US government (which they already have been to a lesser extent). 

This ongoing feud with China has already led to the ban on most vehicles from the country due to connectivity with Bluetooth, wi-fi, and other wireless software. They “pose a significant threat” and “grant malign actors unfettered access to connected systems and the data they collect” per the White House. The ban also extends to the sale and use of Huawei phones (a brand specifically from China). 

But how does this all tie back into video games?

Well, most games we play nowadays will hit us with an EULA terms and conditions page, especially if there’s an online aspect to them. Most people skim these at most, without reading the full and fine print. 

What many fail to realize is that these often take a lot of data from us like emails, passwords, voice comms, and text logs. Hitting no or not agreeing with these conditions will essentially not allow you to use these online products. 

As mentioned earlier, companies like Tencent were already under fire in the US for apps like WeChat back in 2020 for similar reasons as TikTok. Luckily, it was only that app in particular that was under scrutiny. 

But now that we’re in the TikTok ban era where the whole company and its subsidiaries were on the chopping block, the stakes are higher. 

This is why Marvel Snap's operations ended in the United States abruptly. Most of the player base was not informed that it would be part of the ban since there was more of an emphasis on just TikTok. 

If a company like Tencent were to be banned from operating in the US or other Western nations, we’d hypothetically lose access to games from studios like Digital Extremes (Warframe), Supercell (Clash Royale, Brawl Stars), Riot Games (League of Legends, Valorant), and way more. 

If the same had applied to Tencent with the whole WeChat debacle of 2020, the impact would have been much worse.

The TikTok ban doesn’t set a good precedent, even if it was just reversed by the Trump administration. More fire can easily be added to justify a ban or a huge restriction on the medium on top of national security concerns.

The post The US TikTok ban sets a dangerous precedent for games, with Marvel Snap being the first of many appeared first on Destructoid.

February is a peak time for game designers and gamers looking for something new. We are entering into the annual event known as Zine Quest/Zine Month. For those unaware, Zine Quest/Zine Month is an event started by Kickstarter in 2019 with a focus on letting tabletop roleplaying game designers come forward to produce smaller projects in the form of zines. As part of an interview leading into the first Zine Quest in 2019, Kickstarter got RPG historian Jon Peterson to explain the importance of an event like this: "Zines were the primordial soup where the ideas that became RPGs bounced around, combined with each other, and eventually merged into something amazing.”

It is a special time when significant numbers of indie tabletop game designers come forth with small, unique games to be funded on Kickstarter. Size is the main focus of these games, everything about them leans towards the smaller end. Some projects are only the size of a small booklet; others might be the size of a small book. The funding goals are usually smaller and easier to hit, and the length of the funding campaign is often only a week or so. Many designers use it as a chance to familiarize themselves with the crowdfunding systems, but others use it as an opportunity to create something more efficient than a big RPG book.

What you get out of these are condensed creativity out of designers and artists. You'll find the full range of projects, from full complete games for you and your group to adventures that you can run in an ongoing campaign. It's an invaluable part of the indie scene, a way for designers to produce something that might not see easily see a table otherwise.

If you browse through the Zine Quest page on Kickstarter, you will find a massive amount of projects, with such variety that there's certainly something for you. You'll similarly find designers advertising their projects in Zine Month or Zine Quest hashtags on any social media you prefer. It is an absolutely incredible time to be on the hunt for new games. There are too many projects to list easily, but here's a couple that have caught my attention.

Against Time and Death

Inspired by This Is How You Lose The Time War, this game sees a grand battle for the fate of all time and space between two sides. If one side wins, the other will basically cease to exist. Two players take on the role of evenly matched, elite agents fighting to bring victory for their side. However, since you're evenly matched, you're staring down the barrel of the only person who understands you.

Prequel

Prequel is the end of a campaign, but the start of your campaign. In this game, your party have reached the end of their campaign and are about to engage in their battle against the final boss. During the fight, you will fill in the the blanks of every hurdle your group surpassed to get here, only to fall. That failure, though, sets up the final boss to be defeated by other heroes, the heroes who you and your party will play in a longer campaign.

A Perfect Rock

There are worldbuilding roleplaying games that you can play. This game, about playing the last surviving people in a space ship, is literally about world building. This planet planet-building game is about exploring the galaxy, creating worlds with your table, and finding somewhere to call home.

The Rook & The Crook

Here's an adventure to drop headlong into a campaign. Two towers with improbably architecture appear out of no where. A damaging aura spreads outwards from these towers the longer they go unexplored. Navigate up these strange puzzle towers and solve the mystery at their heart before it's simply too late.

Commander Cosmic and the Daring Duel of Death!

Another two player game set in the golden age of science fiction. One player takes the role of the universe's great hero; the other becomes that hero's greatest nemesis. Together, the two of you construct their climactic, final duel to the death.

Pilot Episode

Your party are actors filming the pilot episode of your sitcom in the 1950s. When something goes terribly wrong, you find yourselves trapped in the sitcom made reality. The cast has to find a way out as the audience oos and ahs at them, with the threat of the episode resetting at any moment. This game even plans to fund a soundtrack indicating the start and end of each loop.

There are plenty of other projects that you can find, over a hundred currently listed, with more certain to come. If you're interested in getting involved with Zine Quest as a designer, it's pretty easy. Kickstarter has made a page explaining just how easy it is to participate. Whether you're on the hunt for something new, or you don't want to teach your table a massive new book, there are many zines right over the horizon ready to invigorate your gaming.

The post Zine Quest 2025 is upon us – here’s what to look for appeared first on Destructoid.

It was a rush. The Pokémon Regional Championships in Birmingham was buzzing with energy as crowds of people played their matches, watched the main stage, and surged the stores to the side of the action.

After almost becoming Frozen Solid by waiting in wintry weather at Wolverton station for 48 minutes because of a delayed train, I was finally at the NEC in Birmingham. After going to many conventions, I'm used to long lines to enter the premises, but after waiting behind just one person, I finally received my armband to get in and experience the organized chaos of the Pokémon Regional Championships.

Everyone knew their places

Despite the mass of people in front of me, everything was timed and prepared for each entrant of this event. The most popular tournament was for the Trading Card Game, with lines and lines of players battling it out for a win. There was a website that everyone used on their phones that told them which table they were seated at and what time. My cousin was told to go to a match around every 40 minutes. He had eight rounds to go through. Unfortunately, he only won one, and that was because his opponent didn't show up.

On a random chance, I encountered the adorable Pikachu and Eevee meet-and-greet. These two Kanto Pokémon bobbed their heads up and down fast and created such adorable poses for the people who came to see them. Kids in the middle of the room had papers to color with their favorite Pokémon designs, and in the back section, past games from the series were available, even Pokémon Battle Revolution for the Nintendo Wii. It was cool to see the original hardware and their controllers as a Nintendo 64 played Pokémon Stadium.

There was a speedrun challenge that tasked fans with catching a Jigglypuff the fastest in the original Pokémon Red & Blue. The setup looked comfy, as the organizers placed beanbags on this section. The main stage was also a great place to hang out as you watched the best players duke it out or get interviewed on an adorable set. It was a bit perplexing that we couldn't hear the announcers on the audio setup, however. I didn't have much context as to what was happening in front of me.

A heavy air of competition

In the midst of all the fun, there was an air of serious competition and fandom. My cousin said the experience felt more casual when he was a child, but now there are certain metas to follow. He was also told by fellow competitors to have legendaries on his team. It feels odd that powerful Pokémon like Miraidon and Chien-Po were allowed into the mix; it doesn't seem fair to everyone and limits which of these pocket monsters get chosen, making it less interesting for spectators.

Even the stores took the merch seriously. One store insisted the Japan-imported plush were "collectibles, not toys," with a 17+ tag at the end, which seemed silly to me, especially for a franchise usually geared towards a family audience. Some signs said they were purchasing Pokémon cards for 70% of their worth for credit. Shopkeepers toiled through massive folders of cards as they were making deals with customers. It's certainly wildly different from when I experienced the series for the first time as a kid.

Despite the air of competition, my cousin still enjoyed the experience. Even though he lost almost every game, he managed to win a few rounds, as it was a three-round-win system.

A thrill to experience

Overall, the Pokémon Regional Championships in Birmingham was a thrill to experience. It was the most organized event I've ever been to, as the competitors routinely got into the spots they needed to go without much fuss. The 40 minutes also gave them enough time to get food, drinks, etc, before the next battle. Despite there being so many people in at once, I moved around the NEC convention area very well, not bumping into anyone. If you're a Pokémon fan, you should head to one of these events one day. The £10 entry fee for spectators was worth it.

Despite the miserable experience of "travelling across the land" to Birmingham NEC and then heading back on a coach because of railway issues, it was indeed worth "searching far and wide."

The post The Pokémon Regional Championships in Birmingham was organized chaos in the best way appeared first on Destructoid.

The history of gaming is written at a brisk pace. Not too long ago, LucasArts and Sierra fought it off for the throne of the adventure game kingdom. Nowadays most gamers don't even recall what a classic point & click game is, let alone that Sierra and LucasArts even existed.

Let's freshen up everyone's memory with some of the best adventure games ever made by what I believe was the best adventure game studio to ever exist.

Loom (1990)

Loom is the black sheep of LucasArts' adventure catalogue, but it's not a bad game. It features a very experimental take on point & click gameplay, and it's one of the very few LucasArts titles to mostly do away with comedy to pursue a more serious storyline in a hard fantasy setting.

Loom mostly achieved what it set out to do, as its story got a lot of praise by the time of its release, but I'm just not crazy about its overtly complex take on gameplay. Loom didn't sell very well, so everything LucasArts came up with for Loom mostly died with it — and we're also not likely to see a remaster anytime soon.

The Dig (1995)

The Dig is the other game in LucasArts' catalog to deviate from the norm, and also to mixed results. Whereas Loom went for Fantasy, The Dig went for Sci-Fi, but it had a few more cards up its sleeve than its predecessor.

The Dig featured fantastic presentation that included a movie-worthy soundtrack, excellent voice acting by Hollywood pros, fantastic graphics, and even state of the art cutscenes. The Dig felt mesmerizing due to its highly-immersive environment, but most complained about it being hampered by gameplay that felt challenging in an unfun way.

Though The Dig has enjoyed a deserved positive re-evaluation in the years since it's launch, it's also yet to receive a remaster.

Maniac Mansion (1987)

This is the first LucasArts adventure title, and also the game that put Lucasarts on the map for its prowess in the adventure game genre.

Maniac Mansion came out in 1987 and is yet to get the remaster treatment so yes, it will feel considerably dated to someone picking it up nowadays — especially if they're new to the genre. Still, it features a very memorable cast of characters and a wide collection of great jokes, so it's still an artifact worth unearthing for some.

The Secret of Monkey Island (1990)

This is both the most iconic series to spawn out of LucasArts, and also the one still living, as proven by the fantastic Return To Monkey Island. The Secret of Monkey Island is where it all started and, despite being a little rough around the edges for today's standards gameplay-wise, it still has a bunch of jokes that instantly became classics.

Did you know The Secret Of Monkey Island is the reason why the Pirates of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl exists? That's how awesome this game is. The only reason I'm not ranking it higher is because it also the reason why the sequels exist.

Sam & Max Hit The Road (1993)

Detective work is a staple of adventure games, and one of the best titles in the detective point & click adventure genre is, interestingly, a spoof of the genre.

On top of some great puzzles — the lifeblood of the genre — this beautiful game based on the comics by Steve Purcell stars Max, the rabbit part of this detective duo, who's a complete psycho and one of the funniest characters in gaming. Deadpool & Wolverine proved once again that buddy comedies are the way to go, and Hit The Road remains an absolute classic of the genre.

And, best of all, naysayers can't criticize it for doing law enforcers dirty, because Sam & Max aren't police — they're freelance police!

Full Throttle (1995)

Adventure games tend to put players in the shoes of characters who tend to have more brains than brawn — is my kind way of avoiding calling them nerds. Full Throttle is a great antidote for that, as it allows players to embody one badass — one who's also pretty smart.

Full Throttle manages to have a bit more of a darker edge, but not without doing away with Lucasarts' classic charm and comedic flair. It's also filled with memorable puzzles that oftentimes come accompanied with beautiful 2d animation sequences. Full Throttle also enjoyed the remaster treatment, so there's no excuse to avoid trying it out nowadays.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)

Living in a time when an Indiana Jones video game is better than any Indiana Jones sequel feels unprecedented, but Indiana Jones and The Great Circle isn't the first game to do it. Before that, we had Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the rare point & click adventure that surpassed most of the movies it was based on, and, interestingly, also gave players the kind of gameplay freedom people are praising The Great Circle for.

The controls are a bit dated by today's standards. A nice simple remaster is way overdue, but, if you like Indiana Jones and/or games with intricate puzzles and a fun story, Fate Of Atlantis is still worth checking out.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991)

Monkey Island 2 is one of the greatest sequels of all time. It outdoes the already great predecessor in just about every thing it did right, then even adds a lot of welcome elements to the mix. LeChuck's Revenge feels darker, and with the darkness comes a much opportune higher level of difficulty and depth for its the puzzles.

The series went back to its lighter tone for all the remaining games in the series, so LeChuck's Revenge is both awesome and unique.

Maniac Mansion: Day Of The Tentacle (1993)

Day Of The Tentacle improves upon the original in every way, so much so that even though they play similarly, it feels like its very own thing. It's quite a strange feeling, but one completely in tune with this game where a sentient tentacle — yes, as in the octopi appendage — becomes super smart and decides to take over the world.

Day Of The Tentacle plays to the strength of LucasArts adventure games, which is their humor. Day Of The Tentacle is a hallmark of all-around hilarity. Good games writing sometimes isn't even something you read or hear from a character, rather a deeper part of the game's design, and Day Of The Tentacle sure has that in spades — tough it also features great jokes of the regular kind, if you're worried about that.

Grim Fandango (1998)

Though their games tended to go toe to toe quality-wise, Lucasarts' games tended to sell less than those of Sierra. Grim Fandango's numbers turned out so low that they paled even when compared to the lowest-selling Lucasarts titles. Quite disheartening, as not only is Grim Fandango arguably the greatest adventure game ever made — it's definitely the funniest game ever made as far as I am concerned — and also the most modern title ever made by either company.

And sure, even the most modern title to come out in the late '90s doesn't feel all that modern now, but no problem, as the remastered version is sure to have covered all the rough edges from the original release. I honestly do believe that regardless of your — and its — age, Grim Fandango is the rare title that might change how you see and play video games as a whole.

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The concept of 'powercreep' isn't new in the world of gacha gaming. The shiny new toys of today are almost always designed to overshadow yesterday’s heroes, but in Honkai: Star Rail, the speed at which older characters are being outclassed feels particularly aggressive, leading many in the community to sound the alarm.

Characters that once felt like premium investments are being pushed aside at a pace that’s hard to ignore. The most recent example of this? The rapid rise and fall of Sparkle.

Sparkle and the Sunday Treatment

When Sparkle launched during the early versions of the 2.0 update, she was hailed as one of the best Harmony characters in the game. Her on-demand Advance Forward mechanic was a game-changer, enabling her to manipulate turn orders in ways that elevated both her utility and the teams she supported. She quickly became a fan favorite and a staple in high-level content, sharing the spotlight with other premium Harmony units like Ruan Mei and Bronya.

Funny enough, Sparkle and Bronya share many similarities to their kits, yet both characters had situations where they were superior to the other. Despite Bronya being a Standard character, she held her own against Sparkle in many team compositions for various reasons. It was certainly powercreep to a degree, but it was done in a graceful, masterful way that let Bronya remain in the spotlight thanks to the niches she had held over Sparkle.

But then came Sunday. Released at the tail-end of version 2.0, literally a month ago, before the 3.0 update even hit. Sunday brought an entirely new level of Harmony utility. His kit was designed not only to provide the same type of turn manipulation Sparkle excelled at but also to offer additional buffs and synergies that Sparkle simply couldn’t match. The biggest one was his completely superior Advance Forward mechanic.

The result? Sparkle went from being a top-tier pick to feeling outdated practically overnight. When a character that’s supposed to be built for the long haul gets sidelined this fast, you’ve got to wonder: what’s going on with the game’s balance? Like seriously, where’s the logic? Sparkle is a premium five-star Harmony unit, the kind of character you’d expect to stay relevant for ages. Isn’t that what everyone says about Support units in gacha games? That they age the best? Well, Sparkle would beg to differ. Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated case.

Yunli vs. Clara: A Familiar Tale

Another glaring example of powercreep, though less aggressive admittedly, lies in the comparison between Yunli and Clara. Clara, as a Standard banner character, was always going to face an uphill battle against newer, limited-release units. But Yunli’s arrival made this disparity painfully clear.

Yunli shares a kit and playstyle similar to Clara's, focusing on delivering powerful counterattacks and tanking loads of damage. However, Yunli’s design takes Clara’s core strengths and enhances them to a degree that leaves Clara struggling to stay relevant. One of Clara's biggest weaknesses is her inability to force enemies to attack her. Without being attacked, Clara does very little damage, but here's Yunli to fix this problem.

Yunli has a taunt that completely eliminates this problem, and the same taunt ability also dramatically boosts her counterattack damage. Thanks to this and several other changes, Yunli is simply better in most situations, offering superior damage, survivability, and utility.

Clara still has some niche scenarios where she can shine, but those are few and far between. With Honkai: Star Rail's endgame getting more difficult with every update, for the average player, Yunli is the obvious choice, making Clara feel like an afterthought despite being one of the game’s early flagship characters.

Seele vs. Acheron: The Disaster

The most glaring case of powercreep in Honkai: Star Rail has to be Seele versus Acheron. Seele was one of the original five-star DPS units, heavily marketed as a must-pull character during the game’s launch. She was lightning-fast, hit hard, and felt unstoppable... back then.

Fast forward to now, two years later, and Seele’s kit feels clunky and completely outdated. Her damage is barely serviceable by current standards, and her single-target focus often leaves her struggling in modern endgame scenarios that very often feature several enemies at once.

Acheron doesn’t just out-damage Seele; she’s also more versatile, making Seele feel like a relic of the past. I want to be clear here: the difference is so stark that it’s hard to believe they exist in the same game. For players who built Seele expecting her to stand the test of time, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

The Root of the Creep

The powercreep problem in Honkai: Star Rail isn’t just about new characters being strong. It’s about them outright replacing older ones outright. That’s the real kicker. For players who’ve poured time, resources, and maybe even money into their favorites, it feels like a slap in the face when those characters become borderline irrelevant so quickly.

The core issue lies in how Honkai: Star Rail handles character releases and endgame design. New characters are being released at a breakneck pace, and it seems like the newer endgame content is tailored almost exclusively to the newest additions. This creates a vicious cycle: newer units become a necessity, while older ones, no matter how well-built or beloved, struggle to keep up. The older they are, the more true this becomes.

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t just about Seele or Acheron. It’s a pattern. Sparkle being overshadowed by Sunday, Clara being outclassed by Yunli, and countless other examples all point to the same issue: Honkai: Star Rail is prioritizing shiny new units over maintaining balance across its roster.

The problem is compounded by how quickly characters are being released. Players barely have time to enjoy their investments before the next "must-pull" character drops. And because new content is designed with those newer characters in mind, the older ones inevitably fall behind.

It’s Not All Bad

Despite these frustrations, I still believe the powercreep problem isn’t quite as catastrophic as some might claim. Characters like Sparkle and Clara may no longer dominate the meta, but with proper investment, they can still hold their own in most content. Seele... well, Seele is not so lucky, unfortunately. Admittedly, there aren't many examples like Seele in Honkai: Star Rail, but still, it is a shame that a character as interesting as her is almost completely useless in all forms of content.

Most units in Honkai: Star Rail remain viable to some degree, even the older ones. Dr. Ratio remains a single-target powerhouse. Topaz remains the best Follow-up buffer in the game. Even Black Swan, part of the DoT team composition that has barely had any updates since its introduction, still has some potent uses on certain teams. It's not all doom and gloom.

The Reality of Powercreep

Powercreep is an inevitable part of any live-service game, but the way it’s handled makes all the difference. In Honkai: Star Rail, the rapid turnover of meta-defining units is undeniably frustrating. Characters like Sparkle, who should have had a longer reign, are being pushed aside far too quickly. Meanwhile, characters like Clara, who could benefit from balance updates or niche buffs, are left in the dust.

Still, it’s important to remember that success in Honkai: Star Rail isn’t solely about having the newest characters. Smart resource management, strategic play, and a bit of patience can go a long way. You don’t need every meta unit to enjoy the game or clear its content.

So, is the powercreep in Honkai: Star Rail a problem? Yeah, it is. The powercreep in Star Rail definitely sucks, but it’s not the end of the world, at least not yet. It’s just part of the gacha game grind. Sure, it could be handled better, but it’s not the game-breaking nightmare some players make it out to be... most of the time. What happens next? Will things get better or much worse? Well, that’s the big question. I know the likely answer, but let's just see what the future holds.

The post Does Honkai: Star Rail have a genuine Powercreep problem? appeared first on Destructoid.

Hey, gamer, are you ready for some $60 re-releases of old games? I know – perhaps unironically – that I am. I love playing games I’ve already played, preferably when they look slightly better than I remember. Again, totally sincere here. This is something I do more often than I’m comfortable with.

At the time of writing, very little has been said about what games will be coming to the Switch 2. There will probably be new games, but will there be old ones? Also probably! Nothing has really been announced, but we can speculate. So, let’s do that.

Now, Nintendo has said that the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible, and while they say there will be exceptions, I’m going to guess this will be a rarity. I’m assuming, perhaps over-optimistically, that most games will still be supported. So, we’re not going to talk about Switch games we want to play on our Switch. Instead, let’s talk about titles that Nintendo hasn’t given a glow-up to that will perhaps be given a second look when the new console comes around.

Chibi-Robo

My heard breaks for Chibi-Robo. The 2007 GameCube title is among the many that I won’t shut up about, but it’s gotten a raw deal. It wasn’t all that popular at launch, to begin with, but then its sequels kind of failed to follow-up on it. Okay, not all of the sequels. Okaeri Chibi-Robo: Happy Richie Ōsōji for the Nintendo DS was a pretty faithful and enjoyable sequel, but if you can’t tell by the moniker, it never got released in North America.

Anyway, maybe if more people had a chance to play it, more people would love it. A good way to find out would be a re-release on Switch. Unfortunately, it would be too late for its developer, Skip Ltd., which seems to have disbanded. The key staff from there is currently working on a spiritual follow-up, KoROBO, which is just legally distinct Chibi-Robo. So, I guess worst case scenario, we’ll maybe get KoROBO on the Switch 2.

F-Zero GX

A few years ago, I’d opine Nintendo’s treatment of F-Zero in the same way I would with Chibi-Robo, but recently, the company has remembered that it exists. They’ve put many of the classic titles on their Nintendo Switch Online service and even released a (sort of) new entry: F-Zero 99.

However, many point to the 2003 GameCube title, F-Zero GX, as the best the series has to offer. It’s certainly extra, but then, what else would you expect from the crew that would go on to develop the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series? While a true follow-up would be the best-case scenario, a port would also be appreciated. The game deserves more respect.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker

It was long rumored that the two Wii U Legend of Zelda remakes, Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD, would make their move to the Switch. They didn’t. So, we’re still waiting.

On the other hand, if they do decide to port it to Switch 2, I’m hoping that they, at the very least, allow you to undo the desecration they did to the lighting style. The original version had a striking, unique cel shading that evoked the look of a cartoon, which helped support the stylized art. Wind Waker HD sort of smoothed that over, then added a metric tonne of bloom. It looks, uh, good. It just doesn’t have the same effect. It felt like an HD fan mod, like the art team didn’t really care about artistic intent.

It’s not the end of the world, and I’m not sure if that’s, like, a difficult thing to change. I don’t know how these shaders are implemented. I just know that whenever I think about playing Wind Waker again, I’m left wondering whether I should play the GameCube or Wii U version, and it would be nice to have one without compromises.

Lost Kingdoms Collection

Armored Core VI reminded a lot of people that FromSoftware made games before Demon’s Soul. And while I’d love a King’s Field Collection… There’s no but on that sentence, I’d love a King’s Field Collection. But I’d also love a Lost Kingdoms Collection.

The two Lost Kingdoms games were strange RPGs where you used cards to cast magic. Neither was spectacular, but both are unique in their own way. Unique enough that they should be experienced. Unfortunately, they sold about as well as tires made of bread, so not many people tried them out. Relatively speaking. Now’s a good time. People will eat anything FromSoftware touched. In fact, maybe we should bring back Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor.

Battalion Wars

Speaking of Battalions, I’m sure I’m not the only one who loved that strange little Advance Wars spin-off, Battalion Wars. It was this weird in-between of squad-based tactics and real-time strategy. You could take control of any of your units, and the vehicle controls were a bit like Halo’s.

We got a sequel on Wii, Battalion Wars II, but I swear that game is, like, 95% tutorial for some reason. Every level seemed to be a tutorial. That was kind of the Wii for you. In an effort to make things accessible to everyone, they usually made things fun for no one. So, I’d take a collection, but it’s maybe not necessary.

Cool Riders

Cool Riders should just be on everything. But, right now, it’s not on anything. Unless you count arcade. It is an absolutely incredible perversion of OutRun (seemingly having been intended to be titled OutRiders). You choose from a cast of weirdos on tricked-out bikes and fly through a fever dream distortions of places from around the world. It takes the OutRun formula and tweaks its nipples, turning it into a high-speed blur of over-stimulation. You need to play it, that might not be an option for you right now, so shovel it onto the Switch 2.

Star Fox Zero

Okay, now do it right this time. Star Fox Zero feels like one of the most tragic victims of Nintendo’s need to over-innovate. Or, possibly, it’s specifically Shigeru Miyamoto’s need. So, rather than just being a standard on-rails shooter, it required you to aim with the gamepad screen while flying with the stick. It sucked. 

As much as I detested the waggle rolling in Donkey Kong Country Returns, I got used to it in a small way and could live with it. It wasn’t ideal. The dual-screen controls of Star Fox Zero were cement shoes; they sank the whole game.

The game itself is fine. Somehow, I got through it. Even without the dual-screen controls, it wouldn’t be spectacular, but it would be far better than the series has seen since Star Fox 64. So, it would be nice to get an updated version on the Switch 2. The only upgrade needed would be the deep-sixing of the second-screen aiming.

Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller

Hey, Sega. Instead of making a live service multiplayer Crazy Taxi that no one wants, maybe just re-release the best one. Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller not only included a new level set in a version of Las Vegas, it also took the better levels from the first two games and edited them slightly to balance them for the new skills in your repertoire.

For extra credit, Sega could just include all the levels from all the games. But let’s slow down. Wouldn’t want to distract them from building platforms where they can sell endless skins.

Rule of Rose

It’s tempting for me to put my beloved Chulip on this list, but maybe that’s too predictable. How about Rule of Rose? It’s an incredibly unique take on the survival horror genre during its heyday on the PS2. For its main antagonists, it turns to the real monsters of the world: children. You play as Jennifer, a young woman who gets tormented by a group of orphans.

Its humanity manages to come through all the abstract weirdness of the game. Beneath the grimy horror is a story far more tragic than it is terrifying. It’s less about monsters, and more about what causes a person to become a monster. And I don’t mean some sort of virus. I mean fear of losing something.

Unfortunately, Rule of Rose had a pretty big setback in the fact that its combat is terrible, even by survival horror standards. It’s the hit detection that really drags it down. Even if this was improved slightly in a Switch 2 port, it would go a long way in making the game more palatable than it was at its 2006 release.

Metal Max 2 Reloaded

Metal Max is the best series to have barely touched North American shores. To date, of the series’ mainline seven games (not counting remakes), only two have been localized in English (Metal Saga and Metal Max Xeno). I’d take pretty much any out of the series to hit the Switch 2, but Metal Max 2 Reloaded is generally considered to be one of the high points of the series.

The games are JRPGs that center around tanks. The acquisition, upgrading, and utilization of tanks. You can always get out of your tank, but – and I hope this isn’t news – there are a number of advantages a steel-armored machine of war has over your squishy human flab. Metal Max 2 Reloaded is a DS remake of an SNES game. Yet, despite its vintage, it is an extraordinarily sprawling adventure across a post-apocalyptic world packed to the gills with bizarre monsters. It would be the perfect introduction to anyone who hasn’t experienced Metal Max before.

The post 10 games we want to see get a Switch 2 port appeared first on Destructoid.

The PlayStation brand has spawned some of the most beloved and influential gaming IPs ever made - like Ratchet & Clank, God of War, Uncharted, and more - and many of them still receive new entries to this day. However, Sony has also been infamous for ignoring many of them, even the most popular ones, for many years.

Fortunately for PlayStation fans around the world, it seems that this is finally going to change because the massive success of Astro Bot and its many adorable character cameos have inspired Sony to leverage some of its legacy IPs, meaning that some of these classic PlayStation franchises may get brand-new games in the near future. The only question is: Which ones should Sony revive in the next few years?

Ape Escape

• First game: Ape Escape (1999)
• Last game: PlayStation Move Ape Escape (2010)

The PlayStation 1 was synonymous with many legendary 3D platforming mascots, like Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon. The only issue is that most of them are not actually owned by Sony, so the company doesn't have a say on whether or not they come back. Nevertheless, there is one other iconic platforming mascot series from the PS1 era that Sony actually created and owns, and that is the amazing Ape Escape series.

These games are entertaining, whacky, unique and surprisingly important for the brand, seeing as the original Ape Escape was one of the first games that made full use of Dualshock's analog sticks. On top of that, its titular characters, the Pipo Monkeys, have made multiple subsequent appearances in other products, as they slowly became one of many PlayStation mascots. While this franchise hasn't gotten a new game in over 14 years, Astro Bot had a really fun and refreshing Ape Escape level that proved this formula can still work very well for modern audiences, so Sony should definitely prioritize reviving it as soon as possible.

Sly Cooper

• First game: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (2002)
• Last game: Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (2013)

The PlayStation 2 was also home to many incredible 3D platforming series, and Sony actually owned most of them this time around. While there's no denying that Ratchet & Clank dominated the platform, the Sly Cooper series was another major highlight of its catalog. These games perfectly blended stealth mechanics with precise 3D platforming, coupled with a colorful cast of characters and an excellent cartoony art style. Not to mention that these titles are singlehandedly responsible for putting Sucker Punch Productions on the map.

Unlike Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper couldn't really carry this momentum into the PlayStation 3 era. After the release of its fourth entry, Thieves in Time (which was made by another studio, Sanzaru Games) the series went completely dormant. The worst part is that Thieves in Time ended with an aggravating cliffhanger, so fans have been waiting for more than 10 years to see what happened with Sly after the conclusion to that story. If Sony is looking to revive another beloved platforming mascot, they should take a look at Sly Cooper, and maybe also revive its forgotten animated film/TV show while they're at it.

Jak and Daxter

• First game: Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (2001)
• Last game: Jak and Daxter Collection (2012)

After the huge success of the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy, Naughty Dog began working on a new open world collect-a-thon platformer for the PlayStation 2. The final result was Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, an incredible and colorful adventure that spawned its own franchise, which slowly went into an edgier and more mature direction with every new release. Like the orange marsupial before them, the Jak & Daxter trilogy is one of the best things you can experience on the PlayStation console of that generation.

But what made this series stand out from its contemporaries - Ratchet & Clank and Sly Cooper - is that it was never able to make the proper jump to the PlayStation 3. After a few spin-offs on PSP and PS2 and the inevitable HD collection on PS3, Jak & Daxter disappeared from the face of the earth. Of course, Naughty Dog is now working on completely different games (like The Last of Us or the upcoming Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet), but Sony doesn't even need to assign that studio to the development of a new Jak & Daxter game. All it should really do is hire a smaller studio so it can work on a modern remake of The Precursor Legacy, similar to Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.

Bloodborne

• First (and only) game: Bloodborne (2015)

The way Sony treated Bloodborne has been extremely odd. This excellent action RPG by FromSoftware captivated audiences with its dark atmosphere, impeccable combat system, and challenging bosses, but despite the fact that it pretty much became the PlayStation 4's very first system seller, Sony has never done anything else with the IP. Not even a simple HD remaster for PS5 and/or PC.

Bloodborne is infamous among "Soulsike" fans because it is considered one of the absolute best games in the entire genre, and yet, gamers can still only experience it on its original PS4 version from 2015. While most fans are just asking for a port or remaster for modern consoles, Sony should really consider reviving this IP, starting with a brand-new Bloodborne title, but only if it can actually get FromSoftware to make it.

Infamous

• First game: Infamous (2009)
• Last game: Infamous Second Son (2014)

After Sly Cooper and before Ghosts of Tsushima, Sucker Punch Productions made another iconic franchise during the PS3 era: Infamous. This was a series of open world superhero games in which players could make decisions affecting their morality and the story. The first two games and their respective expansions were some of the best PS3 exclusives, not to mention that the fourth one, Second Son, was a key title during the PlayStation 4's first year in the market.

Sucker Punch obviously spent the rest of the eight console generation working on Ghost of Tsushima, which it released at its very end. Maybe it could revive Infamous after the launch of Ghost of Yotei?  Sony could also hire another studio with prior experience with world games to work on this franchise because a brand-new Infamous game created with the modern technology of a PlayStation 5 (with a scope similar to Marvel Spider-Man 2's) has the potential to become one of the most exciting games of this generation.

MediEvil

• First game: MediEvil (1998)
• Last game: MediEvil (2019)

MediEvil is truly one of PlayStation's most bizarre yet whimsical franchises, mainly thanks to its unique art style (which is reminiscent of something like The Nightmare Before Christmas) funny characters and endlessly entertaining gameplay. After two great entries on PS1 and a controversial PSP remake, Sony finally and unexpectedly brought MediEvil back in 2019, when it released a more modern remake for the PS4. It finally seemed like this once-forgotten franchise had a bright future ahead...

Unfortunately, it seemed like the PS4 MediEvil remake was a one-and-done for Sony, despite its positive reviews and solid sales numbers. Fans of the franchise kept waiting for Sony to announce a remake of the sequel, but this never ended up materializing. This is a real shame because MediEvil introduced us to a fascinating gothic world, not to mention that Sir Daniel Fortesque is a delightful protagonist, so it would be great if we could all reunite with him once again on our modern consoles.

WipEout

• First game: WipEout (1995)
• Last game: WipEout Omega Collection (2017)

F-Zero is not the only influential sci-fi racing game series out there since PlayStation's WipEout games also offered gamers exhilarating races with futuristic vehicles that can go up to extremely high speeds. Because of its positive reception, this series currently has even more games in it total lineup than Nintendo's racing franchise. Needless to say, the fate of the WipEout series was sealed the moment its original home studio, Psygnosis, shut down in 2012.

However, this franchise could (and should) still make a comeback, because it clearly is very important for the PlayStation brand, considering that Astro Bot featured 5 different bots based on its classic teams. And while Psygnosis is obviously not around anymore, the studio that worked on WipEout Omega Collection, XDev, is now part of PlayStation Studios, so it could also work on a brand-new title.

Gravity Rush

• First game: Gravity Rush (2012)
• Last game: Gravity Rush 2 (2017)

There's no denying that the PlayStation Vita was one of Sony's biggest failures. This happened due to multiple reasons, and one of them was a lack of solid exclusives that would justify the purchase of such a unique and expensive handheld. Gravity Rush was one of the Vita's very few great exclusives and, despite the system's inevitable fate, the IP managed to gain a cult following with a sizable fan base.

This can be chalked up to the fact that it was a unique game, with a brilliant antigravity mechanic and a charming protagonist named Kat. Sony must have noticed Gravity Rush's reputation at some point because it briefly tried to give the IP the treatment it deserved during the mid-2010s, as it ported the original game to PS4 in 2015 and released an even better sequel in 2017. However, this is sadly where Kat's story ends, since Gravity Rush fans have spent 7 years waiting for news of a new entry. This franchise should definitely not remain dormant because Kat is a wonderful character, and her antigravity powers resulted in some distinctive gameplay that everybody should experience one more time.

LocoRoco

• First game: LocoRoco (2006)
• Last game: LocoRoco Midnight Carnival (2009)

It's important to remember that the PlayStation brand is not all about big-budget action adventure games, extensive JRPGs, and/or colorful 3D platformers. PlayStation consoles were also the home to many weird and experimental titles, especially during the PS2 and PSP eras, and LocoRoco was one of its most memorable ones so far. This was a brief series of platforming titles that played like nothing we had tried out before, and no other new game has managed to replace ever since.

While some may think that LocoRoco's gameplay may be too dependent on the PlayStation Portable's unique hardware, it did also receive a special themed level in Astro Bot that proved this franchise's formula can work very effectively on a 3D environment created within a modern gaming system. It has been 15 years since we last saw these whimsical creatures known as LocoRocos, and it's time for them to make their long-awaited comeback.

Heavenly Sword

• First (and only) game: Heavenly Sword (2007)

When it first launched back in 2007, many people deemed Heavenly Sword as a random God of War clone and not much more. While it was very obviously inspired by Kratos' franchise, this still was an exciting hack-and-slash title with a cool protagonist, a satisfying combat system and epic bosses. Sadly, aside from the fact that Nariko appeared in a few other games like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and Astro Bot, Heavenly Sword never received any sequels that could actually improve on the elements of the original game.

Of course, it would be almost impossible for the studio that made it, Ninja Theory, to come back because Microsoft owns it now and its developers are busy working on the Hellblade series. Nevertheless, Sony should still try to find another studio to work on a Heavenly Sword revival - whether its a remake, a remaster or a new game. After all, the new God of War games now have an entirely different play style, so we can't really consider them to be part of the hack-and-slash genre anymore, meaning that Heavenly Sword could very easily fill the hole that Kratos left when he moved to Midgard.

The post 10 classic PlayStation franchises that Sony should revive in the near future appeared first on Destructoid.

In the world of life sim gaming, The Sims has always been a behemoth. As of last May, The Sims 4 has been played by over 81 million people, benefiting hugely from going free-to-play in 2022. However, free-to-play does not always mean free, and The Sims 4 is the perfect example of that fact. 

Yes, the base game and all of its content are free, but that’s where it ends. EA is constantly releasing new monetized packs, kits, and expansions. At the time of writing, there are:

• 17 expansion packs, costing $39.99 each 
• 12 game packs, costing $19.99 each 
• 20 stuff packs, costing $9.99 each 
• 36 kits, costing $4.99 each 

While purchasing each new kit or pack that comes out might seem like a small amount, if you were to purchase all of the additional content in one splurge, you’d be parting with $1,299.15. That’s a hell of a lot for a “free” game. 

But is it necessary? Sadly, if you’re playing on anything other than a PC or Mac, then the answer is yes. Console players are at the mercy of EA if they want to add additional items to their game, something which the developer itself has acknowledged, thanks to the newest “Creator Kits” that are designed in collaboration with notable Custom Content (CC) creators. 

CC is nothing new; it’s been around for years, and talented designers have given PC and Mac players a hoard of items that can be added to the game with relatively little effort and without parting with any money whatsoever. Even the creators who release their creations behind a paywall such as Patreon or Kofi usually release them to the masses after a fixed exclusivity period. 

It’s not hard to find, either. A quick Google search for “Sims 4 Custom Content” will bring up endless links to Tumblr pages listing a massive amount of CC ready to be downloaded and added to your game. There are entire websites, such as The Sims Resource, entirely dedicated to collating CC and providing easy access for players to download. It’s easy, and most importantly, it’s free, which is only beneficial in a cost-of-living crisis. 

You could argue that all of these kits or expansions are optional, but there’s a degree of FOMO when it comes to The Sims 4 community. There’s a huge section of YouTube dedicated to speed builds, and the majority of the creators are given access to new packs for free in an aim to show it off and advertise it for those not lucky enough to be sponsored by EA. Even some challenges require certain packs to complete.

Watching these creators build stunning designs using items locked behind optional packs drives sales, and the FOMO is real. Of course, there are some things that CC just can’t provide, such as new features and worlds, but Custom Content offers close, if not identical, matches to many of the items offered in packs. 

It’s not as if you’re sacrificing style if you choose this route. CC creators spend a long time perfecting their styles, and many choose to create “Maxis Match” items (those that can blend seamlessly with the “official” Sims 4 items) to be downloaded and enjoyed by PC players. Of course some creators design more realistic items as well, so the possibilities are endless. 

You can create incredibly detailed rooms using CC, tailored to not only your Sim’s style but yours as well. It’s not limited to Build or Buy Mode items either. There’s heaps of Create a Sim content, including everything from body hair and skin details to stunning designer gowns and even recreations of real-life clothing items and shoes. 

Even if you spend money on CC and support creators through Patreon or Kofi, it inevitably ends up being cheaper than buying an actual expansion or game pack. Creators have released entire CC packs, filled with more items than EA would ever put into one of their own , with more color choices and fewer restrictions. 

The only thing that CC creators can’t do is give you more worlds to play in. Some mods allow it to a degree, but it’s not something that has been tapped into just yet, at least not that I’ve seen. Either way, it’s hard to argue against using CC if you can do so, given the amount of money you’ll be saving. 

The post Are Sims 4 Kits worth buying when Custom Content exists for free? appeared first on Destructoid.

All Civilization enjoyers know one rule is absolute when it comes to playing the popular 4X strategy series: games will always last longer than you anticipate. If I got a nickel every time some friends and I would plan to "play a game of Civ tonight" and end up playing the same game over the next few days...well, I'd have a lot of nickels.

With Sid Meier's Civilization VII, developer Firaxis has created a solution to this problem in the form of three Ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. On standard speed and Age lengths, each of these three ages will last between 150-200 turns, equivalent to about three or four hours of playtime. For those seeking a long grand campaign that progresses through all three Ages, you can do so.

Those looking for a shorter game can opt to start at the beginning of any of the three Ages, and doing so in the Exploration or Modern Age will give you an Advanced Start to the Age, so it's as if you have played the previous ones.

Back in August 2024, I got some hands-on time with Civilization VII's first Age, the Age of Antiquity. Now, for the first time, I got to dive into the second one: the Exploration Age. As the game describes it, the Antiquity Age is all about settling the immediate lands around you and planning out your civilization. With the Exploration Age, your new goal is to, well, explore. And expand. Reaching the Exploration Age will let you change your Civilization, and therefore change the focus of your empire. This means you can focus on expansion or economy in the Antiquity Age and then switch towards a militaristic or science-focused approach in the Exploration Age.

I will say, when I first jumped in, I immediately wanted to check out the Exploration Age, so I opted to utilize the Advanced Start to do so. With how much new there is in the series' latest entry, and having not played Civilization since the preview event back in August 2024, I was a bit overwhelmed by all the new systems. After about an hour, I decided to restart from the Antiquity Age, where that was not an issue. Obviously, after playing more and getting a real grasp of all the new additions to Civilization VII, this won't be an issue. But until you have that experience and knowledge, you're probably better off starting in the Antiquity Age, which gradually introduces the new systems to you over time.

The Exploration Age is where you really start to reap the benefits of the fruits of your labor from the previous Age. And with the ability to change your civilization and shift your empire's focus, it fixes a long-time problem of the series. You don't feel penalized for changing things up, and it adds a lot more flexibility for less-experienced players who might not be min-maxing things from the start. That being said, I imagine it will also create some crazy "build potential" for veteran players who do try and min-max the best civilizations to change to in each Age for each Leader.

After my all-day play session through the first two Ages, I backed out to the Main Menu and found the newly announced meta progression in Civilization VII, and I have to admit: it's pretty awesome. As someone who enjoys chasing achievements and trophies in games, this new system rewards players for doing so. Regardless of your skill level with Civ 7 and how you choose to play—whether you focus on one specific Leader or experiment with many of them—you'll complete challenges and unlock rewards along the way.

Every Leader in Civilization 7 has their own Leader Path to progress through, starting at Level 1 and going up to Level 10. Your account as a whole has a Foundation Path, also starting at Level 1 and progressing all the way up to Level 50, earning XP towards the path regardless of which leader you play as. Both Paths have various challenges you can complete to earn X,P such as completing quests, reaching Legacy Path Milestones, and more.

Leveling up these Paths earns you a variety of rewards from cosmetic Badges, Banners, Borders, and Titles for your Player Card, as well as actual game-changing rewards called Mementos. These Mementos are essentially special items that you can equip on your leader at the start of a game, giving you a little extra bonus as well as giving you the ability to further specialize your play style. And while Mementos can be used in multiplayer, lobby hosts also have the option of disabling them. The added meta progression helps to fix one of the longstanding issues with the Civilization series, which is the feeling of "What now?" after ending a many-hours-long session by rewarding players over time for their achievements.

I'm excited to check out the third and final Modern Age and see what the late game of Civ 7 feels like. Once I've done so, keep an eye out for my full Sid Meier's Civilization VII review as we get closer to its February 11, 2025 release date!

The post Preview: Sid Meier’s Civilization VII is perfect for shorter micro-games or grand campaigns with its new Ages system appeared first on Destructoid.

The console wars were still raging when I was in high school, and while I was on team GameCube, a good friend of mine was on team Xbox. Maybe not firmly team Xbox, as he wasn’t as close-minded as I was. He loved the short-lived Dreamcast and even managed to introduce me to some PS2 titles that stuck with me. However, his enthusiasm for Microsoft’s first foray into the console market has left me with a lasting affection towards the massive brick of hardware.

With just short of 1000 games, it had a larger library than Nintendo’s GameCube, but a much smaller one than the PS2. It sold an estimated 24 million, which gave it a small lead over the Gamecube’s estimated 22 million. Most importantly, it solidified Microsoft as a big player in the console market that endures to this day.

Today, I mostly know it as the era’s console with the best third-party ports. If a game was released on the three major consoles of the generation, you can bet that the best version was on Xbox. However, while that’s a terrific strength to have, the console’s beefy hardware attracted a large number of exclusive titles. Selecting from such a large pool was no easy task, and for all those that I name below, I’ve left out some other great titles.

15. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (2004)

Listen, I know absolutely nothing about Pitch Black, aside from the fact that it has Vin Diesel in it and he plays a character called Riddick. And the only reason I know this is because of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

When it came out, Chronicles of Riddick felt like something that came back in time from the next console generation. It was surprising in its first-person cinematic qualities and its impactful combat. Plus, it was a great-looking game, even when it was first released on Xbox. My only warning is that you're going to have to be ready to do some stealth.

By 2004, licensed games had a reputation for being garbage, disappointing at best, and shovelware at worst. Chronicles of Riddick wasn't even based on a very spectacular property, and yet it blew away expectations.

14. Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller (2002)

I'm going to wind up sounding like a Sega fangirl by the end of this list, but I swear that's not accurate. Sega just rebounded off the failure of the Dreamcast in a pretty spectacular way before their merger with Sammy. During that rebound, we got a third Crazy Taxi, this time completely exclusive to Xbox (and later, Arcade).

Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller doesn't just add a new map, new drivers, and new crazy maneuvers, it also compiles in levels from the first two games, but edits them to balance them with the new abilities. It's still the same fast and frantic pick-up and drop-off against-the-clock gameplay, but it's at its peak. Heck, it even brings in the classic tracks from Offspring and Bad Religion, and to top it off, all the bizarre, turn-of-the-millenium product placement is there, too.

The only thing that would be better is if it included all the levels from across the series alongside the soundtracks and product placement. Alas, it seems like that just will never happen. Especially not when it seems that Sega is taking an online multiplayer live service model for their upcoming revival.

13. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2X (2001)

Around 2000 was the height of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series’ popularity. Activision was capitalizing on Neversoft’s golden goose, so the tendrils were being spread in all directions to every platform. 2001 was the same year that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 was released… on the PS2 and GameCube (and PS1), but the Xbox wouldn’t get it until the next year. Perhaps to keep early Xbox adopters hungry, they released the exclusive Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2X.

2X is mostly a port of THPS2, but also sort of a compilation of the first two games in the series with updated graphics. While you can tell it’s built on the bones of the PS1 classics and the level geometry is pretty much the same in a lot of areas, it manages to look pretty good. It starts only allowing you to play the THPS2 levels, but after you complete it, you're then given a set of all-new levels to kick around in. Then, once those are completed, you unlock all the levels of the first game, which allows you to use the added arsenal of moves introduced in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 in the first game. On top of that, you can unlock a few more levels that are more or less objectiveless multiplayer stages.

The existence of 2X made 2012’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD all the more disappointing since that game didn’t have all the levels, nor did it have the music. 2020’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 is a much better effort but still lacked 2X’s five exclusive levels. This means that 2X still has something to offer all these decades later.

12. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002)

I love The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind so much that the only reason it isn’t higher on the list is because the PC version is so much better. Nonetheless, fitting the game on the OG Xbox was a big task, and Bethesda did a great job. One might even say that the console's limitations informed how Bethesda went about building the game.

Morrowind was where the lore of The Elder Scrolls series really got its depth. A lot of things that were introduced in previous games were defined in greater detail here. So much so, that later games in the series have continued to coast by on what was written here without adding all that much of their own. Despite only taking place on the part of a single province in Tamriel, you get to see a clash of cultures and political powers, including the separation of Dunmeri religion and Imperial. It's an insane amount of depth that you just don't see in video games.

It also has the best, most unconventional story in the series. You play as a nameless prisoner who was hand-selected by the Emperor to fit the description of a historical figure in Morrowind’s history. However, by following the prophecy, it becomes likely that you actually are that person, the resurrected Nerevar. It’s an alien and unconventional game that has you gaining loyalty from political groups and other factions as you try and defeat an existential threat to the world.

11. OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast (2006)

I love Sega’s 1986 classic OutRun so damned much. Seeing it move from its pseudo-3D raster effect graphics to polygonal 3D filled me with doubt. How could you possibly live up to the original without just turning it into another generic racing game? I was afraid it would just be Gran Turismo with Ferraris.

As it turns out, you do it by not changing much at all. 2003’s Out Run 2 basically just uses 3D graphics to depict the same basic gameplay as its 2D predecessor. You drive non-stop across a branching map, trying to reach the finish line before you can be defeated by the timer.

Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast not only contains the standard continental (?) sprint of the arcade titles, but a slew of side modes. These range from simple races against computer-controlled opponents to weird activities based around trying to impress your possibly sociopathic girlfriend. It’s a terrific version of an already great game and one of the best driving titles on the system. It really demonstrates the creativity pushed by Sega in the wake of the Dreamcast's failure.

10. Godzilla: Save the Earth (2004)

Okay, I know a lot of people aren’t going to agree with me here, but I was a huge fan of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee on GameCube. However, it was really easy to burn through every scrap of content in that game during a short rental period. Godzilla: Save the Earth is the sequel to that, only it brings with it more content, more kaiju, and more fun.

Yes, I’ll admit that it’s a dumb game about giant monsters throwing skyscrapers at each other, but just saying that out loud reminds me of how awesome that is. Godzilla has had it pretty rough when it comes to video games, but Pipeworks Studios did the license proud. It’s clear that their titles were Godzilla fans trying to make their dream game, and I happen to share in that dream.

I cannot imagine it's possible to translate tokusatsu kaiju movies better. It's just a massively wild showdown that is even more fun when you've got friends to play it with.

9. Jet Set Radio Future (2002)

The biggest win for Microsoft’s Xbox was probably the failure of Sega’s Dreamcast. While Sega went multiplatform after pulling out of the console market, they seemed to favor the Xbox, at least in the beginning, perhaps feeling soured from their rivalries with Nintendo and Sony. If the Dreamcast’s lifespan was cut short, its library lived on through the Xbox. Games like Crazy Taxi, Panzer Dragoon, and Shenmue all found their way to Microsoft’s console.

2002’s Jet Set Radio Future is a good example of this, being a sequel to 2000’s Jet Grind Radio. Well, technically, it’s not a sequel; it exists in its own timeline. It could be called a do-over, as it carries over a similar plot, the same characters, and the same fast and addicting gameplay. The biggest difference is that Jet Set Radio Future has a more open structure and drops the time limit of the original.

It didn’t sell well, unfortunately, which might be why we haven’t received a sequel to this day. It hasn’t even been ported, meaning the only way to really play it today is on the original console. Playing it now gives a real “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” vibe.

8. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005)

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell is a series about a grumbly man who sasses his way through terrorists. Or around terrorists, I guess. It’s a stealth game, so not being seen is more important than a body count. Although the series was multi-platform, the PS2 and Gamecube always wound up with oddly stripped-down versions compared to Xbox and PC. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is the best the series ever got while potentially being the worst on the less powerful consoles.

While Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory largely stuck to the classic formula in single-player, it threw in a terrific co-op mode and an asymmetrical competitive mode when asymmetrical multi-player was still an extreme rarity. Both of these multi-player splinters were terrific, while the main campaign is the height of the series. It also looked incredible for its time.

After things transitioned to the next generation, Splinter Cell kind of lost its way. Things became progressively more and more ridiculous, and for some people, that’s probably the way they prefer it. For me, on the other hand, I like my stealth shadowy and my narratives forgettable.

7. Breakdown (2004)

Breakdown feels like a celebration of the first-person perspective. It’s clear that the developers of Namco wanted to take the immersive and much-beloved camera angle and push it to its limits. You never left the protagonist’s eyeballs. When a friend of mine first told me about it in high school, he excitedly described the protagonist eating a hamburger, and while that sounds ridiculous, it really is awesome.

Japanese first-person shooters are a bit of a rarity, even today. Breakdown feels like the perfect embodiment of what you get when you combine the genre with the inventiveness of Japanese games in the early-’00s. There’s a lot of jank, and the story is very bizarre, but its approach makes it stand out despite those issues. While first-person shooters were becoming progressively more interchangeable, its immersion-first approach kept it feeling fresh.

Like Chronicles of Riddick, the focus in Breakdown is in its combat, which feels very physical, but also very diverse while working within a first-person perspective. That's really no small feat in itself.

6. Psychonauts (2005)

Psychonauts has far outlived the console it launched on, to the point where it’s difficult to remember that the Xbox was its primary platform. It did launch on PS2 and PC, but those almost seem like afterthoughts. Regardless, Psychonauts was something of a financial disappointment at a time when new IPs were struggling to be recognized. Despite that, word-of-mouth from its avid fanbase granted it a cult following. Over 15 years later, we’d finally get Psychonauts 2.

The original is still worth playing, however. Featuring surprisingly deep characters, an excellent soundtrack, and solid platforming. You play as a young boy who breaks into a Summer Camp for psychics and finds mystery afoot. You're then given the ability to enter other people's minds, which gives the game its central premise: platforming adventures through various psyches.

Psychonauts is packed with great and memorable moments that will drill into your grey matter and live there. Each mind presents something different, taking you to a battlefield on a board game and a twisted neighborhood packed with conspiracy paranoia. There's nothing else quite like it on the console.

5. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003)

Personally, I played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic on PC, but it came out a few months earlier on Xbox. Since I missed out on a lot of CRPGs of the era, KotOR was a pretty enlightening experience for me. The companion system was engrossing, and the dark/light-side alignment was an interesting twist that made the experience very personal. Then, of course, there was HK-47, a robot so twisted and evil that I feel rather jealous.

You play as a (seemingly) relative nobody caught up in a war between the Jedi and Sith, set centuries before the events of even the prequel trilogy. In typical CRPG style, you pick up party members along the way, including the aforementioned killer robot. Truly, it was nice to have something Star Wars-related that didn't just drool lovingly over the movies.

It was followed up by Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords by Obsidian Entertainment, which had higher highs and lower lows. The absolute nadir of these lows was the fact that it was clearly unfinished. So, while there’s lots of fun to be had through most of the game, and some of the twists that it pulls are extremely meaningful, the whole thing starts to vibrate harder and harder until the end, to the point where it essentially shakes itself apart. So for those reasons, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is here instead.

4. Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

This is here mostly due to peer pressure. I’m not in love with the Halo games in general. Every year or so, I’ll boot one up to play through and reconfirm my apathy toward the series. However! I recognize its impact, and it's not like I think it's a stinky game or anything. I was around when it dropped, and it was the biggest, latest thing. It was such a huge success that it became one of the most often imitated formulas, and for a good reason. Its combat was truly revolutionary, tying in a small degree of strategy as you identified priority targets and took them out with a range of weapons.

My lack of enthusiasm for Halo today might be because the game's best features and story beats have been replicated to the point of becoming stale. That's not really the game's fault, though, and back in the day, it was a mainstay multiplayer title for my group of high school friends. We even got eight players together on two connected Xboxes for a few nights. Good times.

And, as much of a curmudgeon as I am, I've always loved the vehicular side of Halo. It tied in various modes of transportation in satisfying ways without having to completely disrupt the action.

3. Ninja Gaiden Black (2005)

2004’s Ninja Gaiden is a title that I feel was significantly over-hyped at the time of release while simultaneously holding the opinion that it’s a fantastic game. An Xbox exclusive at the time, Tecmo and Microsoft pushed hard with marketing, and a lot of people around me ate it up. It was the Demon’s Souls of the time; it was so difficult that completing it meant you were just so skillful and cool.

It was so built up as this transcendental experience that nothing could realistically live up to the hype. And it didn’t. But I still love it.

It was followed up a year later with Ninja Gaiden Black, which compiled in the two DLC packs that were released for the original title, added missions, and rejiggered other parts of it. It was sort of a definitive edition, and that was only solidified when Ninja Gaiden Sigma was released on the PS3 and was considered to be a prettier version of the game, but otherwise flaccid in comparison. Even today, Ninja Gaiden Black is considered by many to be the best version of the stellar title. I can't disagree.

2. Steel Battalion (2002)

“It’s not the game that matters, it’s the controller,” is something I don’t think anyone has ever said. However, in the case of Steel Battalion, that would probably be accurate. Steel Battalion is designed around a controller with 44 inputs. This includes three pedals, two joysticks, a dial, some toggles, and a whole lot of buttons.

There is a game involved here, but I’m not sure how one is supposed to play it with such an assertively arousing controller. Steel Battalion itself is constructed around hardware outside and in. A lot of effort has gone into making its mechs feel like steel coffins with an almost retro-futuristic, cyberpunk feel. There's enough depth to all the systems to necessitate a good read-through of its extensive manual.

However – and this is one thing you need to know going in – it is absolutely brutal. There’s an eject button on the controller, and it’s more than just for show. If your mech starts giving out on you, you’ll need to press that button to preserve your life. Going down with your tin can means Steel Battalion is going to erase your progress and force you to start over. Even if you do manage to eject, you’ll need to pay for that military hardware you let go up in flames, and if you don’t have the cash to cover it, Steel Battalion will blatantly tell you how much you suck and delete your save. Considering that it can be quite a feat to topple even the fourth level, that eject button will get a workout. At least you'll get your money's worth out of that controller.

There was a sequel a couple of years later, Steel Battalion: Line of Contact. It, too, used the giant controller, but it was multiplayer only. However, there are still fans playing it online today, long after the servers were taken down. Hm? 2012's Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor? We don't talk about that one.

1. Burnout 3: Takedown (2004)

If there’s one game that made me particularly jealous of Xbox gamers in the day, and one that I’m begging for a port or remaster of today, it’s Burnout 3: Takedown. I was a huge fan of the wreck-'em-up racers Burnout and Burnout 2 on GameCube. Then EA would get their green-stained hands-on Criterion, and suddenly the GameCube got kicked to the curb. PS2 got it, but my little lunchbox was ignored. That sucks, because Burnout 3: Takedown is easily the best in the series.

It took everything that was good about the first two games (the crashes) and made them better. Suddenly, bumping and grinding felt more impactful, and the game was more chaotic. You were not only rewarded for skillful driving, but aggressive combat. Somehow, Criterion was able to harness the chaos and create mechanical systems that enhance it. A world tour framework brought all the various modes together in one career. It is, to this day, one of my favorite racing games.

Burnout 3 would be followed up with Burnout Revenge on the platform. However, I feel like the “traffic checking” mechanic (allowing you to knock cars traveling in the same direction out of the way) cheapened the thrills of dodging through traffic. Burnout 3, on the other hand, is racing perfection.

The post 15 best original Xbox games of all time, ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

How many Skyrim mods are there? About a bajillion.

Okay, good night everyone. Thanks for coming. Drive safe.

No, but seriously. There are a lot. Barely a few days go by without me talking about some of the mods that are out there for The Elder Scrolls 5. Given that the game has been out since November 2011 – and given how tenacious the modding community is – it's hardly surprising there's so much content available, and has been since day one.

They range in scope as well, from funny ones to unofficial expansions to ones that attempt to undo the many, many bugs the game is plagued with. There are a host of highly recommended Skyrim mods to choose from. Personally, my favorite is the one that renames all the Frost Trolls to Tim Allen. Nope. I have no idea, either.

So, I think it's time I make an attempt to tally up how many mods there are for Skyrim. As far as I can tell, we've never done this at Destructoid. There may be a reason for that, but we'll see.

A few things to consider before we move on:

1. This will be a roundabout figure. Mods are being made and uploaded at an alarming rate, and by the time I finish writing this article (let alone it being published), the number will almost certainly have gone up.
2. I'll be using a bunch of sources to try and get as accurate a number as I can. However, I accept there will be some mods that exist on more obscure or less obvious websites, which are more difficult to take into account.
3. There's also the question of certain mods having more than one version, such as one for the Special Edition or Anniversary Edition. Not to mention, creators may well have uploaded their content to more than one site.
4. Just assume it's a large number, and we'll all be a lot happier.

Now that we've sorted out that little bit of housekeeping, let's crack on with trying to ascertain how many Skyrim mods there are.

Nexus Mods

About a year ago, we did an article about Nexus Mods celebrating 10 billion downloads, which, according to a post on the site itself, would take an estimated 317 years to download. But why would you? Anyway...

Of these, a significant number of them were for Skyrim. At the time, Bethesda's epic RPG was listed as both the number one and number two games that had the most downloads, totaling 5.7 billion downloads. Looking on Nexus Mods today, that figure has unsurprisingly gone up over the course of 11 or 12 months.

At the time of writing, the website is host to 102,366 custom mods for Skyrim. Now, it's possible your mileage may vary. I've done my best to make sure the site shows as many mods as possible, so you might see a slightly different number, depending on what options you have checked.

Also, this number is specifically for the Special Edition of the game. If we move over to the vanilla release of Skyrim, we see this number is a lower 72,471. Again, at the time of writing. Why are there less for the original 2011 version? Best guess is most players have made the switch to the newer releases, so modders may be more inclined to upload for the Special Edition instead.

Also, this doesn't take into account that some mods will exist on both versions simultaneously. Add onto that the fact that some custom content has multiple uploads for different language translations. As such, it seems pretty difficult to count all the unique mods Nexus has. But we do our best.

ModDB, Bethesda.net, and Steam

After Nexus, ModDB is probably the second-most used modding website on the internet. At least from my perspective, that is. It's where I go for all my fan-made Doom content.

Much like above, there is a section for the standard version of Skyrim and one for the Special Edition release. However, one thing that becomes immediately apparent is the numbers are significantly smaller.

Vanilla Skyrim lists just 196 mods and 38 add-ons (I'm not even 100% sure what the difference is between the two), while the Special Edition has even less, with 39 mods and just four add-ons. Again, you'll note that there are some crossovers.

Why there are less isn't clear to me. It could simply be that Nexus Mods has carved out something of a large corner of the TES5 modding market, so that's just where most people go.

Then we turn to "official" mods that Bethesda deems worthy to host on its own website. The developer and publisher actually refers to these as "Creations" for some reason, but they are basically just normal mods. One thing that does set them apart from those on, say, Nexus is they have been made compatible with console versions of Skyrim, so non-PC players get to enjoy them.

Essentially, it seems Bethesda wanted to have a say in some of the custom content that gets bandied around for its game. In this regard, many of the Creations could be considered of a certain standard, typically pretty high quality or making important changes to Skyrim. One example is the Unofficial Skyrim Patch, which fixes a shitload of bugs and glitches.

As of right now, Bethesda.net lists 49,149 fan-made mods on its website. Of these, 8,424 are for PC, 9,283 are for PlayStation, while Xbox takes the lion's share, with a meaty 33,212 files.

As for Steam Workshop, the number is still pretty impressive. As of right now, it's showing 27,559 mods in its database. And for some reason, the first one that's showing for me is one that makes it so Nords emit chicken noises. I didn't say every mod would be a game-changer.

What's the total?

Even when you take into account that some mods will have multiple translated versions, files for the vanilla and Special Edition releases of the game, and may be available on more than one website, it's still a pretty huge number of mods that Skyrim has.

If you take the numbers above at face value – and remember: this is as accurate as can be at the time of writing – we get a grand total of 251,822 overall mods and add-ons. That's more than a quarter of a million ways you can enhance your Elder Scrolls 5 experience.

For comparison, CurseForge is showing 197,691 mods for Minecraft, which came out around the same time as Skyrim. And people may wonder why Bethesda's game continues to hang around after more than 13 years.

The post Just how many mods for Skyrim are there? appeared first on Destructoid.

The recent critical and commercial success of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has cemented this collection of live action films based on Sega's iconic mascot as one of the best video game adaptations (and best movie trilogies) in the industry. As a result of their huge cultural impact, fans all around the world have fallen in love with its colorful cast of characters.

Whether they're humans portrayed by famous actors or anthropomorphic animals voiced by talented voice actors; whether they are new incarnations of iconic figures from the original video games or they were specifically created for the movies, the characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog movie trilogy are as likable as they're well-written. The only question is: Who are the absolute best ones in the series? (so far...)

10) Wade Whipple

• Portrayed by: Adam Pally
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

On paper, Wade Whipple is supposed to be a minor comic relief character. He's Tom's police officer friend who appeared in a few brief but hilarious scenes in both Sonic 1 and Sonic 3. However, his most prominent cinematic appearance was in Sonic 2, where he has an entire subplot with Agent Stone that perfectly displayed the comedic chops of both characters (and actors).

But Wade became way bigger than expected due to the Knuckles TV show, where he felt more of a protagonist than the red echidna himself. As a result, Wade now is quite a polarizing character among Sonic the Hedgehog fans, but he's overall a very funny comic relief whose his presence is always appreciated because he never overstays his welcome. After all, who can hate the man responsible for the "Flames of Disaster!" meme?

9) Maria Robotnik

• Portrayed by: Alyla Browne
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)

Longtime Sonic the Hedgehog fans were hoping that Paramount Pictures and Sonic 3 director Jeff Fowler would faithfully adapt Shadow the Hedgehog's tragic backstory from Sonic Adventure 2 into the big-screen and, much to their delight, they delivered on that promise. While there are some obvious differences, Shadow's past was mostly left intact, as it's still centered on his heartwarming friendship with Maria Robotnik.

The movie version of Maria is as friendly, kind and lovely as the one from the game, but she also feels a little bit more realistic, since she acts more like an actual girl her age. While we only saw her in a few flashbacks, the movie expanded on her relationship with Shadow in really adorable ways, which made her inevitable death all the more heartbreaking. This version of Maria worked so well that it helped make Shadow and Gerald Robotnik's revenge plan all the more understandable (even though it still was cruel and unfair).

8) Gerald Robotnik

• Portrayed by: Jim Carrey
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)

Jim Carrey stood out in these movies since day one, thanks to his portrayal of Dr. Eggman. However, he returned for Sonic 3 in a dual role, not only as Ivo Robotnik, but also as his long-lost grandfather, Gerald Robotnik. These two evil geniuses ended up becoming the comedic highlights of an otherwise dark movie, and their chemistry was palpable. This is quite surprising when we remember that Carrey was acting with himself all the time.

But what makes Gerald Robotnik a really fascinating antagonist is his abrupt and shocking evil turn in the movie's third act, where he reveals that he's actually planning to destroy the entire world due to his resentment towards all of humanity which was born after G.U.N. killed his granddaughter, Maria. This sudden shift made what once was a goofy non-serious villain into an intimidating threat, and his final showdown with Ivo was both funny and emotional. This Gerald is obviously very different from his game counterpart, but this didn't take from the fact that he was a surprisingly solid villain.

7) Tom and Maddie Wachowski

• Portrayed by: James Marsden (Tom) Tika Sumpter (Maddie)
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) focused mainly on the titular character and his relationship with Tom Wachowski, a completely new human character that Paramount specifically created for this film. This honestly seemed like an uninspired choice at first, since Tom was a relatively generic character, but it ended up working quite well, since his story was simple yet effective, and he had some solid chemistry with the blue blur.

Tom's wife, Maddie, didn't get much to do in that first movie, but she became a much more prominent character in the sequel. Fortunately, in Sonic 3, they form a dynamic duo who can work together so perfectly that they managed to infiltrate G.U.N.'s headquarters in a brief but hilarious sequence. Granted, both Tom and Maddie have taken a bit of a backseat during the sequels in order to make space for all the anthropomorphic animals and evil scientists, but they still took on the important role of Sonic's parental figures who are always there to take care of him and help him grow. Their adorable relationship with the hedgehog is enough to make Tom and Maddie into two equally compelling characters that should keep making appearances in future installments.

6) Agent Stone

• Portrayed by: Lee Majdoub
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

Eggman has had many henchmen throughout the years, like Scratch and Grounder from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog or Orbot and Cubot from the recent video games. Nevertheless, when it came to giving Jim Carrey's Robotnik a new henchman for the very first Sonic movie, the writers at Paramount came up with none other than Agent Stone, Eggman's assistant and best friend.

Lee Majdoub's performance is both hilarious and endearing, as he (and the writers) managed to turn Stone from a generic evil henchman into a lovely friend to Robotnik, who's always ready to help him with his evil plans and/or to prepare some lattes with steamed Austrian goat milk for him. It's not common for fans of a game franchise to fall in love with a movie-only character, but Agent Stone has gotten so popular among Sonic fans that many of them are practically begging Sega to introduce him to the games as Eggman's new henchman. If they make them have as much chemistry as in the movies, this could end up working extremely well for the video game series.

5) Miles “Tails” Prower

• Voiced by: Colleen O'Shaughnessey
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

Tails sadly didn't get much screen time to shine in his introductory movie, seeing as it focused more on Knuckles and his rivalry with Sonic. Fortunately, however, in just a few short scenes, the film managed to make their brand-new friendship with all the more believable and adorable. In pretty much every single Sonic the Hedgehog media, Tails acts as Sonic's younger brother, and this movie series is no exception.

As its tradition, Tails is a lovable and intelligent young fox that brings some much-needed youthful energy to these films, not to mention that all of his gadgets, weapons and vehicles have been so useful that I don't think Sonic Team would have ever been able to succeed in either of the two sequels without him. This is yet another perfect adaptation of this classic character, but he just needs a bit more screen time, so I seriously hope he either gets his own spin-off TV show or a more prominent role in the upcoming fourth movie.

4) Knuckles the Echidna

• Voiced by: Idris Elba
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Knuckles the Echidna has been quite inconsistently portrayed throughout the years. Sometimes he's strong and serious, but others he's just dumb and goofy. Sonic fans were understandably worried of how Paramount was going to make him act and sound in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 but, thankfully, this turned out to be one of the best and most beloved interpretations of the character.

Movie Knuckles is everything he needed to be (and more): He's serious and is always looking for a fight, but he's also a bit naive and arrogant. These two sides of his personality perfectly complement each other, making him a really fun character that always shines in every scene he appears in. Knuckles' relationship with Sonic and his personal character development were two of the best elements of Sonic 2, and he even went to have another excellent (albeit a bit more minor) role in the third film. He also got the chance to shine a bit more in the Knuckles TV series, but, as I mentioned previously, that show focused more on Wade Whipple.

3) Shadow the Hedgehog

• Voiced by: Keanu Reeves
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Shadow the Hedgehog is, without a doubt, one of the most iconic anti-heroes in gaming and one of the most popular characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. The success of Sonic 3 greatly depended on whether the director and writers could pull off this adaptation of the "Ultimate Life Form". Needless to say (and thankfully for Paramount Pictures) the movie version of Shadow ended up being as edgy, cool and tragic as everybody was expecting, and it resulted in the film becoming a major critical success.

It's all about balance, because Shadow is a cool-looking and sounding character who excels in every scene he appears, while still maintaining an important element of emotion and tragedy, which are crucial for the character. As a result of this impeccable characterization, his interactions with Sonic - both their heartwarming conversations and their amazing battles - are the absolute best parts of the entire movie. Despite the fact that he only appeared in one movie so far, this is such a perfect portrayal of Shadow that he could easily star in his very own feature film or TV show.

2) Sonic the Hedgehog

• Voiced by: Ben Schwartz
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

The formula to make a video game character as iconic and beloved as Sonic the Hedgehog work in a movie was quite simple, yet effective: Write him as an aspiring superhero, who begins his journey as a cocky and immature kid who doesn't know what to do with his amazing superpowers and, slowly and throughout the course of 3 films, learns that he wants to use them to protect both his loved ones and the entire world.

Sonic's development already make him a compelling protagonist, but his characterizaton is also absolutely perfect (which Ben Schwartz helped elevate with his impeccable voice performance) as movie Sonic is funny, lighthearted, arrogant and strong. He does love making constant pop culture references a little too often, but that's not enough to ruin what is otherwise an incredible and iconic protagonist. Paramount has a great character in its hands, and Sonic is definetely going to keep shining in every future movie he appears.

1) Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Eggman)

• Portrayed by: Jim Carrey
• First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

Let's be real: Jim Carrey's excellent performance as Dr. Ivo Robotnik AKA Eggman is the best part of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies. Yes, this may have started off as yet another goofy and over-the-top Carrey character but he gradually transformed into the Dr. Eggman we all know and love, in both terms of appearance and personality. This legendary comedic actor brought his a-game in order to transform Eggman into one of the most hilarious and lovable movie villains ever made.

Granted, this incarnation of Dr. Robotnik can lean way too much into the comedy side of the character, but he still can be extremely intimidating (like at the end of Sonic 2) and heroically inspiring (like at the end of Sonic 3). This character is so amazing that he even encouraged his actor to come out of retirement just to portray once again for the third movie. While it's impossible to know what future holds for this version of Eggman, Carrey has already stated that he will return for a fourth time if he's interested in the script. I seriously hope Paramount Pictures will be able to get him to join one more time, because the live action Sonic the Hedgehog films wouldn't be the same without Eggman.

The post Top 10 best characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog movie trilogy appeared first on Destructoid.

As part of the selection of gifts that I purchased for my fiancé to open on Christmas morning 2024, I chose a special Tamagotchi-style Kingdom Hearts virtual pet. It’s one of his favorite games, and it was something cute to stuff into his stocking, but it got me feeling nostalgic about my own experience with Tamagotchis. 

Like an idiot, I voiced this nostalgic longing and my fiancé, being as wonderful as he is, immediately ordered me a new one and I actually, for a brief time, felt excited at the prospect of raising this pixel pet. Then it arrived, I named it "Pixy" as it started beeping, and it only managed to reach the ripe old age of two before it inexplicably died after being fed nothing but cake because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. 

I think I was around six when I first held a Tamagotchi in my hand, and at that age they feel huge. A childs fingers are the perfect size to fiddle around with the tiny buttons on the front of a Tamagotchi, and I spent hours desperately trying to figure out how to keep it alive. It never worked, and I shed many tears over my failed attempts at pixel parenthood, but at least I could always get another fresh egg to try over again. 

In the time since, I’ve grown up. I’m what most people would describe as a functioning adult. I have a house, a job, a family. I’ve managed to keep my own daughter alive for four years and she’s positively thriving, and I have a cat who is as happy as can be. My renewed experience as a Tamagotchi owner has convinced me of one thing — keeping a human child or an actual pet alive and well is easy, but keeping this pixel pocket pet alive and without complaint is next to impossible. 

For starters, I need to squint in order to even see what the icons around the screen mean. Rather inexplicably, my Tamagotchi expels a disproportionate amount of poop, and I just had to leave my fledgling virtual pet with poop next to him while I figured out that the vaguely duck-esque icon in the bottom left corner would, for some reason that I cannot explain, blow wind across the screen and remove the pile of excrement. Okay, I’d dealt with the potty training, so now we can move on to feeding the thing. 

That’s a knife and fork icon. I can understand that, it’s relatively straightforward, and I have the option to give him (yes, it’s a him, I don’t know why) either a burger or cake. Neither of these seem like a particularly healthy option for what amounts to a newborn, but those are my options. My first failed virtual child lived his short life sustained by a diet exclusively consisting of cake, which I thought was okay, until it died. Apparently that was the wrong choice. Cake is a snack, while the burger is a meal. Noted, onto attempt two.

After my second egg hatched, I immediately started shoveling burgers down its newborn gullet and moved on to the next task. Making it happy. 

I should say that Tamagotchis don’t exactly come with detailed instructions. Short of telling you how to hatch a new egg (useful, considering how often they die on you), they basically leave you to figure things out on your own. For my gen 2 Tamagotchi, playing consists of a higher or lower style game, except I couldn’t figure out why my little blob was unhappy with me, and it took me longer than I care to admit before I realized that I needed to use two buttons to guess which number would be higher. 

Up until this point, I’d been enjoying single button gameplay. Adding in a second button with zero explanation threw me off. I’m an old dog, you can’t teach me new tricks, at least not easily. However, a couple days later I had a four year old Tamagotchi that had somehow evolved to the “teen” stage. He was happy. He was well fed. And then he died. 

By now, I’d figured out some of the more useful details about life as a Tamagotchi parent. I knew that he would go to sleep at 8 p.m. and I needed to turn the light off within 10 minutes or he would become restless and wake up again. That’s considered “good care” in the Tamagotchi world, and I was proud of myself for learning something. I found myself looking forward to 8 p.m., excited to finally stop the incessant beeping that now apparently fills my days. 

The Tamagotchi wakes up and starts beeping at me again at 9 a.m. the next day and it starts all over again. Feed, play, wait. That’s the entire process of owning a Tamagotchi, and it’s been the most oddly addictive experience of my life. I can’t tell whether I love this thing or hate it, and every beep causes me to enter a panic filled state just in case I pick it up and my pixel child is somehow dead despite being well cared for. 

To make my own life worse, I decided to buy a second Tamagotchi for my daughter in an attempt to stop her from trying to play with mine. This was, in hindsight, something of a mistake. She’s obsessed with it and carries it everywhere, but she can’t take it to bed or school with her. So now I have two Tamagotchis to look after, and the added weight of responsibility that the second is beloved by a four-year-old and if it dies, I have to explain why Mommy dropped the ball and let it perish. 

So here I am, on the third reincarnation of my own virtual pet and the second of my daughters, although she doesn’t know that the first one died and I don’t plan on telling her. I’m a parent, cat owner, and virtual guardian of these little pixel creatures. That's a lot of responsibility. I still have hardly any idea what I’m doing, but I’m determined to beat my four year record. I have a newfound respect for those who seem to find this so easy, and my search history is filled with “what does it mean if your Tamagotchi…” queries.

The post 30 years later and I still have no idea how to keep a Tamagotchi alive appeared first on Destructoid.

Doesn't time fly when you are having fun? Well, even if you are not, those hands on that grandfather clock ain't stopping any time soon. But look on the bright side: in 2025, there are so many games that are turning thirty years old. It's time for them to leave home, find a partner, and start a family!

Jokes aside, while many of those games are still celebrated today, there are many others that seem to have been somewhat forgotten by critics and audiences alike. Which ones might still be worth your time and money? Here are our best picks from the best year in the mid-90s.

Which games from 1995 you might want to revisit?

Donkey Kong Country 2 : Diddy's Quest

In a case of sequels being almost better than the original, what we could perhaps define as a "Terminator 2-case," Donkey Kong Country 2 (or DKC2) does give the first game a run for its money. While many might reasonably feel that something is missing because Donkey Kong is not the main protagonist, the dynamic duo of Diddy and Dixie do not monkey around and do add a lot to the gameplay.

With Diddy having a good attack and Dixie being able to float and help with those nasty jumps, Diddy's Quest can reasonably be called - at least most days of the week - a superior game to the original. But there's more! David Wise is back with one of his best soundtracks ever (just listen to Stickerbush Symphony!), even beyond simple nostalgic feelings. DKC 2 is a great example of the final years of the glorious era of 2D platforms. Fortunately for users who want to revisit this classic, it's currently available as part of Nintendo Switch Online's SNES Classics software line-up.

Warcraft 2 : Tides of Darkness

While the original Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, back in 1994, was a perfectly alright real-time strategy game that started Blizzard's journey into the genre, the sequel still showcases how much care and attention the company put into the series. By creating a huge amount of lore for their sequel to their small hit, Blizzard sold several million copies of the game and helped to create, along with Westwood's Command & Conquer (also released in 1995), the short-lived RTS boom.

The gameplay not only offers solid RTS action but also stand-alone scenarios for bite-sized gameplay sessions, along with skirmishes against the computer. While the much greater atmosphere and narrative focus that Blizzard will put into Diablo is yet to come, it is easy to see where it came from and the huge influence the game had on Starcraft. If you are curious to see how Blizzard became one of the biggest gaming companies, Warcraft 2 is a great history lesson and still quite the engaging RTS game today. Warcraft 2 recently received a quite decent remastered version, so there's no time like the present to dive back into the history of The Second War.

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery

The mid-90s were a great period for the so-called FMV adventure genre. The explosion of the CD-ROM as a medium, also thanks to Myst, meant that developers finally felt authorized to include as many video sequences as they could while providing some decent video quality as well. Sierra was among the first companies to jump on the FMV adventures bandwagon. While 1995 would also be the year of Roberta Williams' Phantasmagoria, that game today is a little difficult to recommend because of a certain scene, so instead, I'd go with The Beast Within.

The second game in the Gabriel Knight series sees the writer travel to Germany to seek more information on the bloodline of the Schattenjäger, the defenders of the faith. In the end, he will find himself dealing with a mystery involving werewolves and attacks on the local population. With interesting homosexual subtexts, a main character that feels both shy and charismatic, and incredible production values for the time (the soundtrack even includes an aria specifically written for the game), The Beast Within might easily be the best FMV adventure of its time. The game is also relatively easy to get ahold of and play, as it can be found on GOG and Steam, and running it on modern systems is a mostly hassle-free experience.

Time Crisis

In this case, we can safely say that the first original in the series might not really be the best. But still, that doesn't mean that it should be left to rot beneath the sands of time. Perhaps it might be less obvious today, but Namco's 1995 title debuted unique gameplay features for the genre, such as the ducking mechanic, weapon reloads and time-limited missions to complete. Indeed, before 1995, reloading your weapon in an on-rails shooter wasn't even a thing. How far we've come!

While the more well-known PlayStation port would arrive only two years later, also sadly missing the nifty pedal that you could use to duck on the original arcade cabinets, it is still an incredibly fun experience all thirty years later. While it is a game you might want to use a gun for, as using the original PlayStation DualShock is definitely not as exciting, the experience is still mostly intact from the arcade original. Sadly, playing it today is a bit of a headscratcher, as the game is not available legally anywhere, and the two-player mode is even harder to emulate correctly. On the plus side, PlayStation games are still cheap. Well, relatively so, at least.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

How do you follow up a groundbreaking classic such as Super Mario World? Well, it turns out you don't. In fact, Yoshi's Island originally started life simply as a new platformer starring Yoshi, as Nintendo felt all the ideas with Mario were, more or less, already spent. Turns out they were quite wrong! Still, the game spent three years in development, with the team working to add more and more magic tricks to an already unique platformer where the little dinosaur has to transport baby Mario safely from start to end. The Super Nintendo cartridge even had a special chipset for all the crazy graphic modes the team developed.

Perhaps thanks to such a beautiful alchemy, Yoshi's Island looks beautiful still today. Its hand-drawn look was achieved by first drawing the graphics by hand, then digitally scanning them and approximating them pixel-by-pixel. While the release of Donkey Kong Country the year before had the team doubt themselves and run for the hills to add a couple of pre-rendered videos, luckily, the graphics were left as they were. The gameplay might be a little infuriating at times, especially because of the cries of Baby M, but it is a lovely platformer all thirty years later. Playing it is relatively easy, as the game is available on the SNES Classic edition and on the Switch.

Star Wars: Dark Forces

What if you could play Doom but with Stormtroopers and a fistfight with the Rancor? Well, there are so many mods for the classic ID title that you might easily find several ones, but that is really not what Dark Forces feels like. If you ever wanted to play a rightful old-school FPS taking place in the Star Wars universe, this one will definitely do the trick. Kyle Katarn is also now quite a respected character in the overall lore, so there is really no reason not to fully embrace his adventures while he is trying to steal the plans of the Death Star.

Well, that last part might not really be accepted lore today (see Rogue One), but the part about the Dark Troopers surely is. While it might feel a bit clunky if you are more accustomed to post-2002 first-person shooters, especially in its kind of cumbersome level design, Dark Forces brings all the right ingredients to make you feel like a small mercenary making his way through the Empire's strongest defenses. There's no better time than the present to revisit since Nightdive Studios made a wonderful remaster in 2024, currently available on GOG.

Chrono Trigger

Do we even need to explain why this classic RPG is on this list? How about being the product of Yuji Horii (Dragon Quest), Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy) and Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball)? They were a true dream team that thought of making an RPG together while on a trip to the United States. A story that starts like a mostly light-hearted romp with friends getting together to enjoy a day at the fair soon becomes more and more ominous in tone as the stakes become much higher.

Chrono, Marle and Lucca are one of the best teams ever seen in an RPG, and the rest of the main cast are endearing as well. There are no random battles, so combat is less infuriating, and progression is quite linear, with not that much grinding. Everything flows beautifully. The soundtrack is also gorgeous and is one of the earliest works of famed composer Yasunori Mitsuda. Mitsuda took on Chrono Trigger after expressing how unhappy he was with Squaresoft's pay at the time and has since made music for well-known RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Soul Sacrifice.

If you have time to try only one title on this list, let it be Chrono Trigger for sure. Playing it today is, luckily, much easier than other titles on this list, as the game is available on many different platforms such as Steam, Android, PlayStation and the virtual console. Unfortunately, there's currently no port on the Switch; perhaps on the Switch 2?

Beyond Oasis / The Story of Thor

While Sonic the Hedgehog was quite the ideal response to the domination of Super Mario & Nintendo, spearheading the success of the Mega Drive / Genesis 16-bit console, Sega felt like they were still missing something. Where was their Zelda? Try as they might, Phantasy Star never really seemed to rise to the ranks of an unforgettable RPG series such as Final Fantasy. With Beyond Oasis, the company got as close as they could.

Also released on the Sega Mega Drive, this is a top-view action adventure with an open world to explore, a classic story and engaging gameplay. By having to switch weapons to attack enemies plus collecting magic spirits, the player helps Prince Alì in his quest to stop the evil that is threatening to engulf the land. Thirty years later, Beyond Oasis is still a thrilling and fairly long action RPG that is well worth a revisit. Unfortunately, it is often forgotten in favor of other, more well-known titles. Luckily, you can easily pick it up and play right now, as the RPG is available on the Switch online and on Steam as part of the Mega Drive classics collection.

Ristar

Speaking of Sonic the Hedgehog, our little cute yellow star guy here was actually supposed to be the true successor to Sonic. In an alternate timeline, the launch of Ristar in 1995 would mean that the little star would go on to enjoy a long and fruitful career as the new mascot of Sega and their new console, the Saturn. Alas, that wasn't meant to be. Poor Ristar's debut did not get as much marketing budget and attention since the launch of the new 32-bit console happened at the same time, and Sega did not seem to care that much anyway.

While Ristar's overall arc resembles more that of a Ri-comet, that doesn't mean you should not play this cute and enjoyable 2D platformer today. With some of the best graphics on the Mega Drive, plus a beautiful soundtrack and a cheeky mix of relaxing platformer and hard-as-nails gameplay, this title will transport you back to that wonderful time when 2D platformers were still reigning supreme. Today, the game is a bit difficult to find and play legally, even though it has been digitally re-released a bunch of times in the past.

Earthworm Jim 2

Ending the list of the classic 2D platformers, we could not forget about dear ol' wormy here. The sequel to the original, and already quite weird, Earthworm Jim presented many new gameplay ideas that seemed to all be thrown at the wall to see what stuck. While not all of them stick the landing, the overall craziness of the project, the furious pacing of the gameplay, the weird levels and Jim himself all made for quite the unforgettable little package. A very 90s package at that.

We have side-scrolling levels, final bosses that really want to have nothing to do with you, a whole cheese block to destroy with your weapon and, of course, let's not forget the two cows on the Level Complete screen that will smile at you coy (or was it mooy?). Unfortunately, our worm - like many other mascots - did not survive the jump to 3D and was put to rest back in the ground. Luckily, you can unearth the earthworm today by heading to Steam, along with its Nintendo Switch Online counterpart.

The post Best games turning 30 in 2025 that you want to revisit appeared first on Destructoid.

What better way to celebrate another Awesome Games Done Quick than by remembering some of the most mind-blowing ways gamers have broken and obliterated some of the toughest games ever made, FromSoft's Souls series?

The feats you're about to witness likely cannot be replicated by most mortals, but they may just fill you with the determination you require to finally give that boss that made you rage quit last time another go.

Sekiro's actual blind playthrough by Mitchriz

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is one of the most challenging games in the already highly difficult Souls series. For Mitchriz, however, it's probably the easiest game in existence, given how he beat it — in two hours, no less — without even resorting to one of his five senses.

That's right, Mitchriz beat the entire game with a blindfold on. He never took it off even once for any sort of between-levels or death reset. This is arguably the most impressive display of pure skill I have ever witnessed in a single-player game.

Elden Ring in less than 4 minutes

Elden Ring isn't just a very challenging game, it's also a tremendously huge one. Hell, even Elden Ring's DLC is longer than most of the games out there. HYP3RSOMNIAC's not too interested in sightseeing, though, as he holds the world record for the fastest Elden Ring speedrun ever. At the core of HYP3R's strategy there's a glitch known as "Zips", which allows extremely skilled players to teleport to the very few actually essential places you need to reach to beat the game.

Watching this as a human being feels like what I imagine a snail in the world of DBZ must've felt when it saw Trunks killing Frieza.

Fun fact: Mitchriz, Sekiro's legendary blind swordsman from above, holds the third place in this category. He was a mere 24 seconds slower than HYP3RSOMNIAC, but that's like an age longer in this specific category. Think about that.

Beating Radahn without blocking, dodging, or healing flasks

Ok, this is not a speedrun per se, but most speedruns involve glitching of some sort, so I'm actually living up to the spirit of the event by cheating a bit.

Promise Consort Radahn, aka Prime Radahn, is one of the most challenging bosses in the history of the Souls series. He's hard because even if you block and/or dodge all of his abilities, you might still run too low on stamina to get anything done before he restarts the charge. No biggie, said u/Recjawjind_fmfb, who made a character so goddamn hard it barely even cares about Radahn's moves. This was especially impressive as it took place during Prime Radahn's true prime era, as he ended up getting nerfed afterwards. So yeah, this is one you just cannot replicate, regardless of your skills.

Beating all bosses in one hit

The only thing cooler than killing a boss in one blow is killing the hardest of hard bosses in one blow. That's what player Ainrun did. Above, you can see Ainrun donning the most lethal equipment and injecting himself with the most experimental and riskiest cocktail of buffs to deal 105k damage and basically pull a One Punch Man on Radahn, the hardest boss in the game. The others stood no chance.

The video above isn't an entire speedrun, but it's certainly the fastest way to defeat Radahn, so there's that. So remember, next time you're having trouble with a boss, just consider killing it in one hit.

Malenia on PS5 and PC at the same time... on a dance pad

Many claim Malenia to be the toughest challenge in Souls games history. Beating her is an achievement even if you're a seasoned player. So, Twitch streamer MissMikkaa put it upon herself to beat two Malenias at the same time. You can totally just mod the game to spawn two bosses in the same game, but MissMikkaa thought that wouldn't provide enough of a challenge yet, so she fought one Malenia on her PS5, and another one on her PC—at the same time. Since that still somehow wouldn't prove enough of a challenge for MissMikkaa, the Malenia on PC was defeated through the use of dance — one of the toughest skills for a true gamer to master.

The guy who beat a Dark Souls world record and didn't notice it

Just how naturally in tune with a game do you have to be to perform better at it than anyone before you and just not realize it? That's the story of NaxHPL, who beat the original Dark Souls at just a little over 25 minutes, thought he'd had a crappy run, then only realized he'd broken the world record after the credits had rolled.

2 Players 1 Controller.. and a randomizer

The name "2 Players 1 Controller" is enough to instill uneasy feelings in anyone using the Internet. It's probably because of all the deep-seated resentments we've all created by having to wait for our turn to play with our siblings, I'm sure. Still, even without the burden of memory, the idea of sharing one controller's functionalities to beat a game in the Souls series is quite a daring one.

Better yet, that wasn't even enough of a challenge for the Puppery and catalystz duo, as they ventured forth into the world of Elden Ring in randomizer mode, which means they could — and did — end up having to fight Malenia in places where they'd normally have another enemy waiting for them.

Twitch plays (and beats) Dark Souls

You think two people sharing a controller is tough?

If you've ever been on Twitch and dared to glance at what was going on in the chat, then congrats, you can boast about having survived gazing upon humankind at its most chaotic. Asking such a vicious mob to get organized to beat a game via written commands felt like the cruelest of jokes, but it ended up working out. It only took them 43 days, and a little over 900 deaths, so still a lot better than a lot of people out there.

Hardly the fastest run, and yet one of the most impressive video game accomplishments I've ever witnessed.

Beating Dark Souls with only the power of your voice

The original Dark Souls wasn't originally as good on PC as it was on consoles, as it had some trouble adapting to a controller. No problem, said the heroic bearzly, as he mapped all actions not to buttons or keys, but rather to voice commands. Imagine how much of a hassle it must have been, or simply take a look at the clip above where he defeats Ornstein & Smough with the power of his words.

Beating Dark Souls 3 with a single button

Ok, beating Dark Souls with a single button doesn't really seem possible, but it is. What's impossible is beating Dark Souls with only one command. So, what did Rudeism do? He assigned all the different Dark Souls binds to Morse code, then used the one button to input the various commands via different Morse inputs. It sounds completely insane, extremely difficult, and it probably is. Regardless, it's also very fun to watch and tell your friends about it. Understandably, they probably won't even believe you.

The post The most impressive Dark Souls and Elden Ring speedruns ever appeared first on Destructoid.

Gaming franchises, regardless of how beloved they are, sometimes evolve so slowly or go so far off the rails that the only way to keep them alive is by hitting the reset button. Unnecessary reboots, especially in the movie scene, are an overbearing plague. Gamers, however, have mostly been blessed with some absolutely fantastic comebacks. Let's look at the best of the best, shall we?

DOOM (2016)

I truly believe Doom 3 deserves to be on this list — is what I'd vehemently defend — if Doom (2016) didn't exist. Whereas Doom's 2003 foray into a slower and more atmospheric playstyle gave us an actual horror masterpiece, the Doom reboot from 2016 stays truer to the formula and does Doom better than ever.

Doom is still a horror game — if you're part of the demon horde, that is, as this game makes use of so many fantastic design choices to make the Doom Slayer the most powerful and fun-to-play Hell scourge imaginable. On top of being great in its own right, it paved the way to Doom Eternal, the best Doom sequel ever made.

Resident Evil 7

Konami shocked the world with good news for the last time when it shadow-dropped P.T. back in 2015. I'm naturally talking about the first-person teaser for the tentative Silent Hill reboot that turned out to be one of the coolest and most horrifying experiences in the history of gaming. Sadly, that project ended up on Konami's chopping block.

Luckily, the Resident Evil series, which was also in dire straights after the release of the messy Resident Evil 6, learned quite a lot from P.T. The result was Resident Evil 7, a breath of fresh air that gave us a fresh perspective to enjoy some of the most gruesome sights in the history of the series.

Resident Evil 4

The only reason why I didn't simply claim Resident Evil 7 pointed the series in the most exciting direction yet is because Resident Evil 4 exists.

While it's officially just a sequel, it's clear to any fan of the series that RE4 was a whole new beast. Not only is the gameplay following a completely new formula, but we even saw a soft story reboot of sorts by having Umbrella Corp. dying offscreen to give way for a new type of villain.

Some have criticized Resident Evil 4 for focusing more on action than the previous games in the series, but few have ever dared to call it anything other than one of the greatest games of all time.

Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time

Though the Prince Of Persia series feels almost as old as gaming itself, it only ever reached its pinnacle in 2003 with The Sands Of Time. Though it was made by a different team, Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time was the series' follow-up to Prince Of Persia 3d. As the name implies, that was the first game in the series in 3d, but it should've stayed in 2d in the sense that all copies should've been crushed and buried in the desert. I was so unimpressed with Prince Of Persia's original 3d outing that I remembered refusing to get hyped for The Sands Of Time until I got to play it. Fortunately, I couldn't have been more impressed with the end result. The Sands Of Time remains one of the greatest platformers of all time, and that's in part due to how the industry has moved away from challenging AAA platformers—sure—but also because it's a timeless masterpiece.

Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown is another phenomenal reboot, but The Sands of Time proved that 3d really is the prime environment for the Prince to thrive on, so I'd really like it if Ubisoft could pull off another reboot of this nature.

Ninja Gaiden

One of the biggest complaints people had with the original Xbox was the lack of Japanese exclusives, but Ninja Gaiden almost single-handedly solved that problem.

This is a reboot so masterfully executed — and an exercise in tough-but-fair gameplay — that most have since associated the name to this reboot, and not to the 2d original. Team Ninja has since moved away from the Ninja Gaiden series to pursue the soulslike craze, but there's always hope for its return.

Tomb Raider (2013)

Few reboots reboot it as hard as 2013's Tomb Raider did. Remember Lara's famous dual pistols? Those are gone, replaced by a wooden bow. If I were to say that in a preview nowadays, fans would get mad. Blessed by hindsight, however, the gambit proved incredibly fruitful. It worked because the game nails modern platforming and people at Crystal Dynamics succeeded in coming up with easily the most fun bow in the history of video games for this very bow-centric reboot.

Other than that, Tomb Raider 2013 also does a good job of creating a different Lara, one definitely more human and less video game-y than classic Lara.

Tomb Raider Legend

Plot twist: there was an even better Tomb Raider reboot, and that's Tomb Raider Legend. Legend isn't necessarily better than the 2013 reboot, but there's a much larger gap in quality between it and the game that made the reboot necessary: the infamous Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness.

Legend completely revamps the classic's gameplay to create an extremely fun platforming experience. It looks great, updates Lara without changing what people loved about her in the first place, and features less complicated levels that never feel like they're holding your hand.

Legend was also the first Tomb Raider sequel to enlist series creator Toby Gard, so it is also kind of the true Tomb Raider II.

God Of War

The original God Of War trilogy is one of the finest in the history of gaming. Making a new game in the same vein but with better graphics allowed by the more modern hardware sure would've worked, but the people at Sony's Santa Monica Studio wanted more than "just great".

The team decided to bring the story to a new setting and completely revamp not just the gameplay, but also the main character. Now, Kratos was no longer just the least bad guy in the story. He'd become both a father and a man struggling with the heavy burden of misdeeds past.

You could argue that the God Of War reboot is far from original. It was clearly influenced by the success of The Last Of Us and a few other games, but I'd argue right back that its gameplay far surpasses the games that served as its inspiration, so it's hard to deny this one's place among the greats.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Enemy Unknown is such a deep cut that many aren't even aware it's a reboot. When old-school gamers claim games used to be much harder way back in the day, the original X-COM is partially to blame. I remember getting countless teams wiped out long before I even got to see what the enemies looked like.

The new XCOM not only offered beautiful new visuals, but it also perfectly modernized every element of the old games. It was just so great to know you could finally properly learn how to play the game before you were put in charge of the entirety of Planet Earth's defense force.

DMC - Devil May Cry

Ok, please hear me out. I know nobody likes black-haired Dante and that the game's plot and writing is just too edgy to be enjoyable by anyone over the age of 15. Then again, is the plot of any Devil May Cry game really that deep and serious?

DMC's fault lies not in its absolute desperation to look cool, but in its unlucky attempt to look cool in a different way, one fans just ended up not vibing with. Had it been the first game in the series, there's no telling how it would've gone.

If you ignore the plot, DMC is much better-looking than DMC4, features superior level design — and not just because it doesn't force players to backtrack half the game to make it last long enough to justify the full price tag.

Avoid judging this loud comic book by its cover, and you'll find a game filled with cool new gameplay mechanics that will definitely surprise you in a positive manner. Ninja Theory tried, and their original vision is worthy of both your time and a general re-evaluation from gamers in general.

Grand Theft Auto 3

Here we are, the one that changed it all. Though it was marketed as a sequel, GTA 3 was a whole new thing. I'm willing to bet most fans of the series never even gave GTA 2 a chance, and that's totally fine.

Even by '90s standards, GTA 2 just wasn't very good. It was a decent title, but it was mostly the game kids would want to try out because they'd heard the cool teens talking about this game where you run people over and flee the cops. Still, you can't run on controversy forever, and man, GTA 2 lost its appeal quickly.

GTA 3 didn't merely bring GTA to the world of 3d games, it also imbued this possibly sterile world with truly fun gameplay mechanics, characters, and a surprisingly decent plot. GTA would never be the same after GTA 3, but neither would the entire industry.

Red Dead Redemption

Let's cap it all off with a little-known fact. Yes, the original Red Dead Redemption is actually a reboot. The original game in the series was Red Dead Revolver, which failed to hit Rockstar's post-GTA 3 lofty ambitions.

So, if you're wondering where the title came from, that's exactly where. Rockstar wanted to get redeemed from Red Dead Revolver. Harsh, as I truly did enjoy Revolver, but, well, there's just no denying that Red Dead Redemption is one of the greatest games ever made. The sequel isn't called Redemption from Red Dead Redemption, so let's guess the people at Rockstar understood they had a true gem on their hands.

The post Best video game reboots of all time appeared first on Destructoid.

The Nintendo Wii was gaming’s greatest magic trick.

Back in 2006, the Wii felt like the next frontier of gaming. Swinging your arm to throw a bowling ball was so immersive that people broke their TVs without even thinking about it. Yet as the console aged, the luster of motion controls faded. What started with “can you imagine playing Smash Bros with the Wii remote?” quickly turned into “please do not give me the Wii remote to play Smash Bros.”

Still, the games that understood the benefits and limitations of the system were unforgettable. The Wii has some experiences you still can’t get anywhere else, despite the rise of virtual reality. Even the system’s background music fills the Wii to the brim with personality. As usual, distilling a system’s years-long legacy into 20 games is virtually impossible. Super Paper Mario, Bit Trip Complete, Madworld, and Excitebots deserve honorable mentions, among many others. With that said, let’s dive into ten games that cement the Wii’s place in history.

[Zoey's 2025 Update: Timothy did a great job listing out the top 20 games, and I agree with pretty much none of the selections. So, in an effort to expand this list, I'm going to leave his top 10 untouched and then tack the games I think should be on it in rankings 11-20. After all, I rank my own opinion below essentially everyone else's. If you find my self-esteem, let it know that I'm sorry and I want it to come home.]

20: WarioLand Shake-It (2008)

In 2008, the modern indie market was just about to hit the gas, but previous to that, console side-scrollers were in a recession. 2D games were generally relegated to handheld. Not that they were gone entirely, and they’d soon come roaring back, but in that lull was WarioLand Shake It.

It’s maybe not quite as fun and off-the-wall as Wario Land 4, but Shake-It makes up for it with its lavish art and animation. Good-Feel went all out with traditionally animated cutscenes and 2D graphics that look just as detailed. There have been plenty of other side-scrollers that have reached for its splendor, but I don’t feel any have nailed it quite as well as this one.

19: Sin & Punishment: Star Successor (2009)

It’s hard to believe Sin & Punishment: Star Successor even happened. The original never got released outside of Japan, and even in its home country, it did not sell well at all. A sequel didn’t sound like it would be a good fit for the family-friendly image that Nintendo was trying to cultivate. And yet, somehow, it was greenlit. I’m not sure sales went super well the second time around, either.

Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is a surreal on-rails shooter that takes you through the desolate remains of an alternate Earth. I could try to describe the narrative further, but I probably couldn’t because it’s a total madhouse. It’s the fact that it is so outlandish and ungrounded that I like least about the game, but it’s hard to dispute that its action is top-notch.

18: Donkey Kong Country Returns (2010)

Retro Games' revival of Rare’s classic platforming series lived up to the standards of quality that the Metroid Prime studio was known for. While much of it builds off what was set down by Rare, Retro left its mark by tweaking the movement and partner systems, making the gameplay more dynamic, and filling it with some outstanding set-piece moments.

This would be a lot higher on the list if it wasn’t for how motion control is integrated. To roll, a maneuver required for long, precise jumps, was bound to a shake of the controller, even though a button press was feasible and would have been better. It wasn’t optional. You couldn’t plug in a classic controller or pick a different control scheme. You had to rely on the imprecise motion sensor or the Wiimote for precise platforming, and it sucked so hard that I’m complaining about it on a top games list. The rest of the experience is great, so thank goodness it was ported to the 3DS and is now landing on the Switch.

17: Boom Blox (2008)

Party games on Wii were a dime a dozen, and the decent ones were quickly drowned out by all the extremely low-effort bargain trash that quickly flooded (and perhaps torpedoed) the console’s library. Boom Blox was an interesting one because it had a singular central concept and apparently involved Steven Spielberg. Saying a game “involved” Steven Spielberg is kind of funny since the guy basically founded Dreamworks Interactive and was partially responsible for Medal of Honor, but anyway.

Boom Blox was essentially Jenga for arsonists. It takes a similar precise deconstruction concept and adds explosions. Surprisingly, the physics engine is up to the task, and while there’s some motion control wonkiness, it’s an enjoyable game. It was one of the favorites my family would break out when we got together, and it’s one of those concepts that feel like it would be alien on any platform aside from the Wii.

16: Punch-Out (2009)

It’s impossible to make a real follow-up to Punch-Out, so Next Level Games just remade it instead. Kind of. Simply called Punch-Out, it mashes together Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out. But, mostly, it’s the same as the NES game, which was already perfect.

However, perhaps surprisingly, replicating the timing and feel of Punch-Out is no easy feat. I’ve seen a few indies attempt it, and none quite manage to nail it. But, despite transitioning to full 3D graphics, the new Punch-Out feels just as good as its 8-bit progenitor. To make the update more worthwhile, Next Level dressed it up with some of the best art and animation to ever grace a semi-offensive stereotype. It’s just too bad that this 2009 game is the last time we’ve seen a new game from the franchise.

15: Rhythm Heaven Fever (2011)

The Rhythm Heaven series is like WarioWare for someone who has funk. You play a series of mini-games that are all largely different, but they all have rhythm in common, getting more and more complicated as you go (big guy). Rhythm Heaven Fever is hilarious, surprising, and fun. Just don’t be too mad when you get one of its infectious songs indelibly embedded in your ears.

14: Silent Hill Shattered Memories (2009)

There was a lot of negativity around the Silent Hill series following the closure of Team Silent in 2007 and the tepid reception to Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Origins. Heck, Climax Studios and most of the staff were responsible for Shattered Memories. However, lessons were clearly learned because Shattered Memories breaks from the pack by presenting something completely different while still drawing from its source material.

Shattered Memories is closer to a walking sim than it is to any of the Silent Hill games that came before. It’s a divergent retelling of the first game, following Harry Mason as he wanders the eponymous locale in search of his missing daughter. That’s largely where the plot similarities end.

While Shattered Memories is its distinct concept, it manages to be a haunting ride with a potent hidden payload. Its psychological elements are pretty overblown, but how it changes and reacts to your decisions keeps things fresh for multiple playthroughs. Strangely, all these years later, it’s still an experience that can’t be found anywhere else.

13: Xenoblade Chronicles (2010)

Xenoblade Chronicles had a memorably fraught journey to North America. Despite getting released in Europe, Nintendo of America gave every indication possible that it wouldn’t release it over here. This resulted in Operation Rainfall, a fan campaign that involved a variety of tactics, including emails, physical mail, and journalistic coverage, to get not just Xenoblade Chronicles but also Last Story and Pandora’s Tower localized. It worked, although NOA refused to acknowledge that it’s what led to their eventual decision. Also, XSEED had to step up for the latter couple of games, but I digress.

I picked up Xenoblade Chronicles at release, and it was one of the grandest games I’ve ever seen. Landscapes seemed to stretch on forever. Who could forget climbing to the Bionis’ Leg (Thigh) and looking over the grassy plains? It was hard to believe it was on hardware that lagged behind the other consoles of the generation in horsepower (though, not that hard). Thankfully, it wasn’t the last time we saw the series, as it helped kick off a new era for Monolith Soft as a powerhouse developer under Nintendo.

12: Mario Strikers Charged (2007)

The original Mario Strikers on GameCube was fine. It did what it was supposed to: presented a version of soccer played by Mario and associates. But do you know what it was missing? Violence.

Not that Super Mario Strikers was a completely clean version of soccer, but Mario Strikers Charged dials that up. There is so much pain on display in every match that it’s absurd. The walls surrounding the field (if there are any) are electrified, there’s a windy stage where cows fly across the stage, and if you get a mushroom, you can step on people. This makes for some hilarious replays as beloved characters get pushed into the mud.

Mario Strikers Charged is fast, challenging, and intense. I’m happy to see the series continue with Battle League, but the loss of distinct teammates really dampens things.

11: No More Heroes (2007)

Had I written the initial list, this would have been my top pick. I was enamored by Killer7 when it was released on GameCube, and Suda51’s next game looked like it would follow the same style. It absolutely didn’t. No More Heroes is very much its own thing, and in many ways, I love it more because of that.

It has a similar pretense involving a collection of world-class assassins, but taking out priority targets for paying customers isn’t the central premise. Assassination is only a side gig for the disgustingly lecherous but very relatable loser Travis Touchdown: the real goal is to climb the ranks of the UAA’s list of top assassins by killing them from the bottom up. What follows is a series of levels that drunkenly staggers around unpredictable encounters with bizarre characters, all anchored in place by a depiction of Travis’ otherwise mundane life.

By my measurement, it was one of the games that made the best use of Nintendo’s strange control setup. The motion control works as a supplement to its hack-and-slash combat, having you lift the controller to change stances, swing in different directions to perform a catalog of suplexes, and work it like you’re jerkin’ it to recharge your laser sword. It’s a game I return to frequently, and I feel it might be time for yet another playthrough.

10: Klonoa (2008)

If you’ve been following me on Destructoid, you know I love Klonoa. While I can’t in good conscience rank the Wii remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile higher than this, I can’t in good conscience omit it either.

Even if some of it is misguided, you can tell a lot of love went into this remake. The visuals are fantastic, the controls are tight, and the level design is faithful to the PlayStation original. Wii Klonoa also offers a few features you can’t find in Phantasy Reverie Series, such as maddening extra challenges and a full English voiceover (which, admittedly, pales in comparison to the Phantomilian voice acting). It’s a game that deserved to sell more than the ten copies that it did, especially considering I was responsible for nine of those.

9: WarioWare: Smooth Moves (2006)

WarioWare Smooth Moves does what the Wii was always meant to do: make you look silly in front of your friends.

Sure, this is not a deep game, but it’s an experience you just won’t get on other consoles. The humor here is iconic to the point that even the tutorials are hilarious. The presentation is pure WarioWare, with visuals that walk the fine line between clean and crass. And the minigames… I mean, it has the dancing game. If you never coaxed your friends into playing this for your amusement, I am sorry.

8: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006)

Twilight Princess might not be the best Zelda game, but it was a heck of a launch title.

You can tell this is a GameCube title at its core, but just enough motion controls were added to sell the Wii’s features without detracting from the experience. I wouldn’t necessarily return to this version of Twilight Princess because, let’s face it, pressing a button to swing a sword is better than waggling the remote. Still, this was a valiant effort to capture Nintendo’s core fanbase before the Wii found its footing with the casual crowd.

7: Muramasa: The Demon Blade (2009)

Speaking of core gamers, we were a sorry bunch if we didn’t have a PS3 or Xbox 360 by the seventh console generation's midpoint. Sure, Nintendo’s offerings were fantastic, but we were so desperate for quality 3^rd party titles that games like Deadly Creatures and Opoona generated hype on message boards. Every trickle of quality we got was special, which makes games like Muramasa: The Demon Blade stand out much more.

The Wii couldn’t compete with the 3D visuals of the competition, but the 2D art here sang on the Wii. While this lacks the exploration of a proper a Metroidvania, it more than makes up for that with flashy and fun hack-and-slash gameplay. This is not a perfect game, but its place in the Wii library makes it just as iconic as Vanillaware’s other titles.

6: Mega Man 9 (2008)

I can’t properly convey how exciting Mega Man 9 was when it was announced. As the game that arguably inspired several retro revivals of this era, Mega Man 9 came out the gate swinging. Between the faithful presentation, the creative achievements, and arguably the best weapon set in the series, this wasn’t just any Mega Man. This was peak classic Mega Man.

Even if this is a multiplatform release, it just feels right playing this on the Wii. Flipping the Wii Remote on its side like an NES controller really drove home the feeling that this was a new NES game and not just an homage. Even the native lack of HDMI support added to the authenticity. Mega Man 9 is good no matter where you play it, but this version is as authentic as it gets without porting it wholesale to the NES.

5: Metroid Prime Trilogy (2009)

This is almost unfair to include, yet at the same time, holy moly, what a value this package was.

Not only did you get Metroid Prime 3 while it was still being sold individually, but you also had its two iconic predecessors included with revamped controls to boot. Describing all three Metroid Prime games would fill an article on its own, so just know that Metroid Prime Trilogy remains the best way to play this series to this day.

4: Super Smash Bros Brawl (2008)

Super Smash Bros Brawl is far and away the most infamous entry in the series. At the same time, that’s like saying the Lighthouse of Alexandria is your least favorite wonder of the world.

Brawl is a fantastic game on its own merits. If nothing else, Subspace Emissary makes Brawl worth revisiting to this day. While I admit this single-player campaign is a bit of a mess, it is the best kind of mess. I love the elaborate story cutscenes that play out like a vast amalgamation of fanfiction mashed together. I love the surreal mashup of iconic Nintendo enemies and the lifeless grunts with their weird red eyes. The boss battles are genuinely exciting, too, which absolutely paved the way for the single-player challenges in Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

Plus, if I’m being honest, playing multiplayer in Brawl is still a good time. If you lacked access to any other version of Smash Bros for some reason, this one still does the trick.

3: Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition (2007)

There’s no need to describe Resident Evil 4. It’s considered one of the best games of all time, and I love every minute of this campy horror adventure. Yet for all the rereleases and remasters this game has received, Wii Edition remains one of the best.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition comes packed with the content added to the PS2 version. More importantly, the Wii controls change everything about this game. While the slow pace of the series’ trademark tank controls remain, Wii Edition makes Leon aim like a champion. In fact, the motion controls feel much more natural here than in fast-paced modern games that support gyro aiming. It's so fun to get headshots and shoot projectiles out of the air that I don't even care if it's efficient; I just enjoy doing it.

Does this make the game substantially easier? Yes, very much yes. Yet, if I wanted to prove my hardcore gaming credentials, I’d beat Ninja Gaiden for the NES without using continues. This is a super fun way to play an all-time classic.

2: Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 (2007 & 2010)

Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel are two of the best Mario games of all time. In fact, even compared to the Switch version of Galaxy, these games play so naturally with the Wii Remote and Nunchuck. I’d say more here, but I already waxed poetic about these titles in my best Mario games list.

1: Wii Sports & Wii Sports Resort (2006 & 2009)

There are moments in life when everything feels perfect. Maybe it’s a birthday party where you’re surrounded by your closest friends. Or maybe it’s the first time you hold your crush’s hand. When I remember all my friends and family members excitedly gathered around the TV to play Wii Sports after the Wii launched, that’s the feeling I get.

If the Wii was gaming’s greatest magic trick, Wii Sports was the beautiful assistant. By offering basic yet familiar sports to play with your Wii Remote, we were sold the fantasy of immersive gaming. That might sound deceitful, but here’s the thing: magic shows are fun. You can reduce this game to the simplest motions possible, but embracing the illusion is way more fun. There are far deeper games than Wii Sports on this system, and Wii Sports Resort is technically the better game. Yet the simplicity and approachability of the original Wii Sports cannot be matched.

As you’re surely aware, the casual gaming market blew up shortly after the Wii’s release. The rise of smartphones gave non-gamers a platform to fit their needs with titles to match. Yet for this one moment in history, everyone from the hardest of core gamers to the most casual observers was side by side, all enthusiastic for Wii Sports. Maybe it's silly to rank a game so highly for its universal appeal, especially after I've ranked franchises by listening to my heart. Yet, in a world as chaotic and divisive as ours, a small moment of unity like playing Wii Sports fills me with peace. Even if it's harder to gather the family around for Wii Sports now than it was in 2006, I want to hold on to that memory for as long as I can.

The post The 20 Best Wii Games of all time, Ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

When Grinding Gear Games dropped the announcement for Path of Exile 2 (PoE2), it wasn’t just about continuing the series. It was about shaking things up in a big way, making changes that fundamentally alter the way players would engage with the sequel to one of gaming's most impactful ARPGs.

One of the biggest, most defining changes? The approach toward difficulty. From the slower, Souls-like campaign to the highly punishing Endgame, this topic is a firey one for the community. So, let’s talk about it: is the difficulty a bit too much, or is it exactly what the franchise needed to evolve?

Path of Exile 2 - Prepare to Die Edition

If you’ve played the campaign in PoE2, you’ve probably noticed it’s got some serious Souls-like vibes. It’s slower, more deliberate, and really makes you think about how you’re playing. Unlike the original Path of Exile, where you could just speed through and nuke everything in sight, PoE2 wants you to slow down, take your time, and actually strategize.

Boss fights aren't just scaled-up enemies with special names anymore. They’re not just about how much damage you can pump out. You’ve got to watch, learn patterns, and adapt, or else end up a corpse. It’s a breath of fresh air for someone like me who loves a good challenge, and if you enjoy the thrill of mastering tough encounters, you’ll probably love this shift.

The campaign in Path of Exile 1 wasn't exactly memorable for its story, nor was it engaging in combat encounters. The community treated it as a character progression stepping stone for reaching the 'Endgame' as fast as possible. While I do not doubt that this scenario will be a recurrence in Path of Exile 2, at the very least, the slower pacing and more methodical combat will make you think about what you're doing; what you're up against, allowing for the potential for a more memorable experience. It is for this reason that I applaud Grinding Gear Games for taking the gameplay of PoE2 to this juncture.

The High Stakes of Endgame Mapping

Now, let’s talk about the Endgame, where things get really… intense. Mapping in PoE2 isn’t just about clearing enemies. Every run feels like you’re gambling with your progress. You die? You’re losing the map, 10-15% of your XP, and any resources you poured into it. Ouch. Not exactly forgiving, but not totally foreign to those who played the previous title.

And then there are the Waystones. These things are crucial for keeping your mapping progression going, but they’re not exactly plentiful. If you have a bad streak, you can find yourself completely out of maps at your level, which means starting over from scratch. It’s brutal, no doubt about it. Some think its far too much a tax, but I think it's fine... or at least the idea of it is.

Here’s the thing, though: I think this tension is kind of the point. Knowing that every run could make or break your progress adds an edge that PoE1 just didn’t have. When you succeed, it feels amazing. But yeah, the penalties might be a little too harsh right now. Maybe dialing back the XP loss or making Waystones a bit easier to come by would help without totally removing the tension.

That said, I’m on board with the direction Grinding Gear Games is taking. They’re clearly trying to make endgame progression meaningful, and I respect that. It’s better than feeling like nothing’s at stake, right?

A Challenge To Be Sure

So, with everything out in the open, the question remains: is Path of Exile 2 honestly too hard? I don’t think so. The campaign’s slower pacing is a great change of scenery when compared to the near decade of instant-blasting screens in the game's predecessor. The high stakes in mapping also give the game's 'Endgame' a sense of weight, a sense of danger.

Every move you make on the Atlas Map must be deliberate, or else you'll find yourself scrambling for Waystones to progress and not an experience point to your name. Sure, it’s not for everyone, and a few tweaks and balance changes might be needed, but overall, I’m loving the challenge. I love that I have to use my brain beyond just character-building.

That said, I get why some players might feel overwhelmed. If you’re used to the speed and efficiency of Path of Exile 1, or you're new to the franchise entirely, this new methodical pacing and the heavier penalties can feel like a punch in the gut. But here’s the thing: games like this are supposed to push us. When you overcome a brutal boss fight or finally beat a tough map, the sense of accomplishment is unparalleled, even if it doesn't feel like it initially.

I think the real question isn’t whether Path of Exile 2 is too hard, but whether you’re ready to embrace the challenge. For me, the tension and stakes make every victory sweeter. Could it be adjusted a little? Are things a tad overtuned (probably an understatement)? Sure. But do I think the difficulty is fundamentally a problem? Not at all. Grinding Gear Games is walking a fine line between frustrating and rewarding, and while they might need to adjust here and there, they’re really onto something great. Lightning in a Bottle.

If you’re willing to lean into the difficulty and adapt your playstyle, Path of Exile 2 offers a rewarding experience that few games can match. And honestly, isn’t that the point of a game like this? To test your limits and see how far you can go? For me, the answer is clear: bring it on, putrescent warts and all.

The post Is Path of Exile 2 Really Too Difficult? appeared first on Destructoid.