Review Category: Games

THE LAST OF US PART II REMASTERED

PLATFORM: PS5 | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

At the time of its release in 2020, TLOU2 earned universal critical acclaim for its well-rounded characters, exceptionally strong performances, first-class world-building, stunning visuals and incredible audio design, although its narrative was less well-received by the general public. Is this a masterfully-crafted revenge story full of complex characters with justifiable motives, or do a multitude of questionable decisions mean that we’re given precious few reasons to care about a generally miserable cast? As divisive as the debate may be, you’ll definitely feel something, one way or the other.

While it might seem a bit too soon for a remaster, there’s a noticeable leap in visual quality between the PS4 original and the upgraded PS5 edition. Native 4K performance, improved framerates, increased level of detail in distant scenery, higher textures and a host of other tweaks mean that TLOU2’s undeniably beautiful world (in stark contrast with the violent, brutal and borderline depressing events that happen within it) is more immersive than before. This isn’t just a visual upgrade, though – a couple of other additions bolster the overall package in some unexpected and very welcome ways.

A post-game roguelike mode challenges players to step into the shoes of familiar TLOU characters (including several who have never been playable before) to survive a series of randomised encounters against hordes of enemies for as long as possible. Each character has unique traits and abilities that change the way you approach each run, with extra gameplaay modifiers adding a huge amount of replayability. Three “lost levels” are also included, along with developer commentary explaining why they were cut from the original game. These levels aren’t all completely finished, but they’re fully playable, providing an interesting and rarely-seen peek behind the development curtain. If you haven’t played TLOU2 before, this remastered edition is without a doubt the very best way to experience it.

TRINITY FUSION

PLATFORM: PC, PS4, PS5, XBOX ONE, XBOX SERIES (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

In this 2D roguelite action-platformer, three parallel universes are dying. To save the day, you’ll fight enemies across the multiverse by taking control of three different characters, each with their own unique weapons abilities. Trinity Fusion‘s twist, though, is that characters can be fused together at various points throughout the game, combining whatever powers they’ve acquired during the run to give you the edge over the hordes of foes that lie ahead.

Each procedurally-generated level is filled with power-ups, new weapons, special abilities and upgrades, giving a huge variety of options in terms of how you upgrade your character and countless combinations of builds to experiment with. Being a roguelite game means that most of your hard-earned rewards are lost when you die, starting over with a set of basic equipment, but you’re able to purchase permanent upgrades between runs which give you a slightly better chance at successfully forging a path through the game on your next attempt.

While Trinity Fusion does a lot of things right, combat unfortunately isn’t always quite up to scratch, with the majority of enemies moving fairly slowly which allows you to simply dodge behind them and dish out some punishment (or outright kill them) before they figure out where you are. Having said that, this does make the game feel less challenging than others in the genre, which isn’t always a bad thing. Trinity Fusion takes a lot of inspiration from one of the most successful roguelites of recent years, Dead Cells, but throws in enough ideas of its own to avoid feeling like a tribute. If you’re looking for a satisfying roguelite with a unique gimmick, this will tick a lot of the right boxes.

THE DECK OF MANY THINGS

The Deck of Many Things is one of Dungeons & Dragons‘ better known magical items; it’s a deck of cards that, with a simple draw of a card, can elevate or ruin any D&D campaign. Part monkey’s paw and part wishing well, the D&D community is filled with tales of people messing around with this magical deck of cards.

Wizards of the Coast’s latest product is The Deck of Many Things. It’s two differently sized hardbacked books and an oversized box of cards. It turns this one magic item into the basis of a full campaign. A traditional deck of many things contains a maximum of twenty-two cards; this set introduces a new magic item, the deck of many more things, expanding the cards to sixty-six. (And we get that many cards in this set.)

The main book is called The Book of Many Things, and it’s a DM’s toolkit similar to Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, but themed around the infamous deck of cards. It’s packed with character options, magic items, monsters and advice on integrating the infamously chaotic cards into your game. It’s quite good and has plenty of resources for a DM looking for a card-inspired campaign. Novice DMs should be aware that a lot of the options and items here are very powerful; the resources here are for short, fast, and deadly campaigns.

The second book is The Deck of Many Things Card Reference Guide. It’s a guide on how to use the cards in this set to create random stories. Using Oracle/Tarot cards to help design adventures is a well-established DM’s trick, but these cards are designed specifically with D&D in mind. The book is comprehensive and filled with lots of nice story hooks. It’s a little bit over-designed for what it is, but it’s a thoughtful addition.

Finally, we come to the cards themselves. The designs are clear and accessible, but it really feels like Wizards of the Coast is a little scared of tarot card design. A previous attempt at ‘oracle’ style cards, the D&D Tarot Deck, suffered from style over substance and was hard to draw inspiration from. The Deck of Many Things cards do a little better; they’re clear as to what they are and convey their meaning well, but they lack the little hints and tricks you find in the images of modern oracle cards. Despite what the reference book suggests, these are very much a prop for a game rather than a tool to help you make up stories. The art is nice, though.

The book and cards are presented oddly. For a start, only the card box gets a slipcase, and the reference guide fits into the card box. This is odd, as all the other slipcase products in this range are large enough to accommodate all the elements of that product. Despite being tarot-card format sized, we also get quite a large box to put cards in; it’d be easier to have them in a standard format card box. It looks nice, and we can see how it could lure the players into drawing a card, but it’s mostly going to sit on a shelf, taking up space. If it was in a decent deck box, you could stick it in a bag and have it more readily available.

The version we received for review had subpar quality cards, which bent easily, with the gold effect trim easily coming off. We understand that the release has been delayed to fix this issue.

Overall, the highlight of this set is The Book of Many Things; it’s a fun addition to the various D&D rulebooks. The cards and their guidebook are fun props but could be much better.

PLANESCAPE: ADVENTURES IN THE MULTIVERSE

Dungeons & Dragons is a game powered by the imagination, which explains why the creators of D&D have spent decades producing stories, adventures and entire worlds so the Dungeon Master always has something to work with. One of D&D’s oldest settings and most imagination-powered worlds involves characters exploring other planes of reality, back in 1987 with The Manual of Planes and again in 1994 with Planescape. It also inspired the 1999 video game Planescape: Torment, which is still considered a classic.

The idea is that your elves, dwarves, and gnomes find themselves wandering into lands made of air and whimsy or variants of heaven, hell, and everything in between. Planescape is a weird, pan-dimensional setting filled with conspiracy, belief and subtle horror. It’s also been long overdue an overhaul, as the previous books are decades old and pretty dense.

The new book, Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse, updates the old setting, streamlining a whole range of books into three slim volumes that fit into a nice slipcase. (It even comes with a DM’s screen, specific to the setting.) The first slim book, Sigil and the Outlands details the mysterious city of Sigil (pronounced with a hard G). It’s a cosmic metropolis filled with fantasy beings from across reality. Ruled by the god-like Lady of Pain, it is a place with no sun and a land that loops across itself, so the sky is just more city. Sigil is a place filled with various political factions, as in the world of Planescape, where one’s personal beliefs can magically alter the world around you. It’s a good overview of the setting and introduces some new factions to the shifting landscape that is Sigil. Alas, the book just does the broad strokes. This is a great introduction to the setting, and it’s beautifully presented, but if you want something deeper, you’ll have to seek out the older source material (the PDFs are available via Wizards of the Coast, however.)

More detail can be found in the second book, Morte’s Planar Parade, a monster manual of sorts that fleshes out the world of Planescape by talking about the various weird beings you can meet. As the name implies, we get running commentary from Morte, a talking skull that those familiar with the old Torment video game might recognise. This is well-presented, easy to read and filled with fun ideas.

The jewel of the collection is the third book, however. Turn of Fortune’s Wheel is a cross-planar campaign that is utterly unforgiving; it’s deliberately designed to remind the players how deadly jaunting across realities can be. To keep things fun, though, it has a clever rule in which the characters return as variant timeline versions of themselves. The adventure itself is loose in format; the idea is for Dungeon Masters to plug in other adventures if they wish, making this perfect for a long-running campaign requiring minimal preparation. It’s a strong mix of old and new school vibes, filled with some fun shout-outs to the history of D&D.

The hardcover copy we received was robust, and there is a map in the back that’s relatively easy to remove if you need a closer look at it.

Overall, Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse does a solid job of tying various settings together whilst being its own thing. Though on the surface, it looks like it’s doing a similar job to the Spelljammer and Radiant Citadel books, Planescape’s thing is its strangeness. There is a distinct lack of character options in this set, which is a pity as the setting is very much its own thing, but a savvy DM can easily fix that with all the character creation options available in the game right now. Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse is a worthy update of one of the all-time great D&D settings.

AVATAR: FRONTIERS OF PANDORA

PLATFORM: PC, PS5, XBOX SERIES (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Set amongst the events of the first two Avatar movies, Frontiers of Pandora casts players as an orphaned Na’vi who – along with several others – had been kidnapped as a child and raised as a soldier by the Resources Development Administration. Kept in line by the RDA’s heavy-handed tactics, the Na’vi are eventually rescued and put into cryogenic suspension for their own safety. Years later, the awakened Na’vi join forces against the RDA, uniting the local tribes to take back their homeland.

If you’ve played any open world game over the last ten or fifteen years, you’ll be in familiar territory with Frontiers of Pandora. Playing very much like a teen-friendly Far Cry set on on an alien planet, FoP contains all of the usual elements that you’d expect to find in this sort of game – tons of exploration across an incredibly beautiful and detailed world, taking down outposts (here represented by mining facilities), foraging for resources to craft weapons and equipment, lengthy side quests and all the other trimmings. Pandora is an absolutely stunning place to spend time in and certainly offers a huge amount of things to do, but a lack of enemy variety and an abundance of cut-and-paste settlements and side quests mean that deja vu can set in quite quickly. Maybe not a game to binge on, then, but more suitable for dipping into for an hour or two at a time.

Your character’s level is linked to the equipment you’re currently using, and there are two ways to increase this – either gain favour with various clans to reap the rewards of their friendship, or hunt for rare materials and craft your own gear. The campaign’s missions insist that you continually reach higher levels before being able to take them on, so you’re often forced to break away from the story and spend time searching for various bits and pieces in order to beef your stats up to the required level. The inventory system adds an extra wrinkle with its restrictive limits and lack of options, making it difficult to keep track of which items you might need or which ones you can throw away each time your stash box fills up.

Frontiers of Pandora plays things very safe with its open world, offering plenty of activities but never really taking any bold decisions or doing anything truly novel. Fans of the Avatar films will revel in the detailed depictions of Na’vi life and its associated challenges, and the whole thing really is an absolute treat for the eyes (this is easily one of the best-looking games of the current generation). For all that it does right, its over-reliance on hunting and crafting does get in the way more often than should really be necessary, preventing you from playing through the game at your own pace. Despite its flaws, those with a fondness for open world games will undoubtedly find plenty to keep them occupied.

PHANDELVER AND BELOW: THE SHATTERED OBELISK

One of the secrets behind Dungeons & Dragons‘ recent success was the rather good introductory adventure, The Lost Mines of Phandelver. This adventure was just enough to encourage novice Dungeon Masters to build their own worlds based on the setting material whilst providing a decent framework for an ongoing game of D&D.

Lost Mines is out of print in its original form (though the adventure can be found online via the official D&D website). Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk rewrites and rebuilds this starting story into a complete campaign. This means that the raw energy of the original has been softened slightly, and trickier encounters and elements have been modified to suit a longer sort of game.

The story starts with the adventures of having to deal with some rather nasty goblins before getting to the town and making some new friends. This book is very much a toolkit for a campaign; it assumes the DM is new to running tabletop games, and so gives you just enough to encourage your players to explore the world. As the adventurers find themselves exploring the mines and going deeper, things get even stranger. And we mean very strange.

It’s packed to the brim with weird ideas, well-thought-out maps and some solid villains to throw at your players. There are some very interesting encounters that you could easily lift out and insert into other games. It also feels a bit like two entirely different stories smashed into each other, but this is a very good thing because it shakes the story up during the later levels. The early stages of the adventure allow the party to get to know the charming town of Phandalin, with plenty of foreshadowing for future weirdness.

The book has some excellent creepy monsters, and if you’re looking to throw together a campaign inspired by the recent video game smash Baldur’s Gate 3, then you’ll be delighted to learn that there are similar ideas in this book you can use. This is primarily a campaign book; we get some neat magic items at the back and some rules for mutation. It’s one for the DM’s and completists.

As always, it’s a well-put-together book with a solid binding that will survive multiple flip-throughs. A campaign of this length can take a year or so to complete (depending on how you run a game), so you want a sturdy book. Both the limited edition cover and the regular version turned up at STARBURST Towers, and both were of solid quality. The map is attached to the back, but there are ways to get those maps separately if you’re squeamish about cutting a map out of a book. The limited edition cover is very green and shiny if you like that sort of thing.

Overall, it is an excellent re-imagining of a great adventure.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING – DOCTOR WHO BLAST FROM THE PAST

who-2-the-fourth-doctor magic the gathering

Magic: The Gathering has not been shy about its cross-media tie-ins. The entire premise of Magic involves multiple realities, and the heroes tend to be creatures that can flit across reality at will. So Doctor Who is a natural match for Magic: The Gathering, even though it just feels like a bit of a novelty cash grab.

The Doctor Who-themed release involved a range of booster packs and four pre-built Commander decks, each focusing on a slightly different part of the 60-year-old franchise. However, only one of these decks made it to STARBURST’s Secret Gaming Thunderdome. Fortunately, it was the best one, Blast From the Past, a deck filled with classic Doctor Who characters and companions.

At its core, Blast From the Past is a green, white, and blue Commander deck. This means it packs a decent punch, fortifies its creatures and is a little bit tricksy. Perfect for the Fourth Doctor.

Four is, of course, our Commander, the lead card that everything else hinges on. Magic: The Gathering quite rightly considers The Doctor to be a Legendary Creature. The deck comes with a version of The Doctor from one to eight, and they are separate characters so you can re-enact your favourite crossover event. (You could easily do the Five Doctors, there’s even a specific card for that.) We don’t advise creating a Dimensions in Time deck, as there are currently no EastEnders-related Magic cards. We await the inevitable Dot Cotton Commander tech with eager anticipation!

There are a lot of synergies between the Doctor, his companions and his equipment. Though the deck focuses on the Fourth Doctor, you could easily rebuild it to work with The Fifth Doctor with Peri Brown and Ian Chesterton if you wish. Want to build a battle-based deck in which Jamie, K9 and Ace team up to beat up everything else, while the Sixth Doctor softly chuckles in the back, divining opponents’ power levels and building up his own power base? This deck lets you do that.

Blast From the Past is a fun example of how Magic: The Gathering, for all its mechanical coldness, is really just about storytelling. The deck also comes with ten planechase cards – an optional rule that randomly adds blanket conditions to the game. Of course, they’re Doctor Who-themed, and include the likes of the TARDIS bay and the Cheetah Planet. The latter fills the field with cats, which inevitably cause a ruckus.

Accessories include a box to put all the cards in, a cardboard ‘wheel-based’ life counter, some oversized tokens, some smaller round tokens, a black envelope to put the planechase cards in, and a sparkly blue six-sided dice with only two symbols on it; Gallifrey and the Planeswalker emblem, also used for Planechase. The tokens have to be popped out of the box; very little of the packaging is wasted here.

This is a good value set for folk looking to have fun playing Magic. It’s not the sort of deck you can strip for parts; it’s very specific to Doctor Who, but it’s colourful and filled with character. It’s an absolute must for the Magic-playing Doctor Who fans.

WARHAMMER AGE OF SIGMAR: DAWNBRINGERS – THE LONG HUNT

One of Games Workshop’s recent innovations is to produce lavish ‘campaign books’ for its core games. These tend to coincide with the releases of various models and other accessories for the relevant game. The current story for Warhammer’s fantasy game, Age of Sigmar, is Dawnbringers. This is the story of a relatively doomed crusade to try and bring order and light to the Mortal Realms, the place where all the Age of Sigmar stories are set.

The armies of the god Sigmar have set out their Twin-Tailed Campaign, with one crusade heading into the Realms of Life and the other into the Realms of Fire. Dawnbringers: The Long Hunt details the tail end of the campaign, when the mostly mortal heroes near the end of their abilities, and all seems lost. Without getting into spoiler territory, things do not run smoothly, and though this is mostly told from the perspective of the (decidedly vulnerable) forces from the Cities Of Sigmar, we do get a broader sense of the Mortal Realms with this book. Games Workshop don’t like to waste ideas, and villains and characters from previous iterations of Age of Sigmar turn up to cause trouble.

It’s a well-written war story/campaign, with much of the tale setting up the reasons for various battles. The whole thing boils down to magical knights coming into conflict with very fancy wood elves, Ogres, and dragon-like creatures.

Rules-wise, the book covers four different armies: the Draconith Skywing, the Evergreen Hunt, Lofnir Drothkeepers and the Roving Maw. We get Ionus Cryptborn, Warden of Lost Souls, Belthanos, First Thorn of Kurnoth, and the Blacktalons, which, of course are all recent releases.

We only received a digital copy of this book for review purposes and are unable to confirm the quality of the hardcover. The book is jammed full of art and photos of brilliantly painted models that looked okay on the screen, but if you’re buying a physical copy, you may want to check in-store first.

Overall, it’s a fun excuse to get the toy soldiers out and roll some dice.

WARHAMMER 40,000 CODEX NECRONS (2023)

The Necrons are a race of alien robots that feature heavily in the world of Warhammer 40,000. They are effectively ‘space undead’, robot skeletons that look human enough to be spooky, and complete Warhammer’s ‘fantasy but in the far future’ vibe that began with Space Orks, Space Elves, and Space Dwarves. These spooky space skeletons have a heavily ornate, Egyptian God sort of vibe that will be familiar to fans of Stargate SG-1 and the like.

They’re an implacable enemy with some cool-looking models in the game itself. The back-story for Necrons has changed heavily over the years, with some pretty meaty story developments in recent releases. They’ve gone from being a footnote to one of the biggest threats in the setting, featuring some of Warhammer’s most memorable characters. This is in part because ‘cabal of cosmic zombies and interstellar necromancers who can’t quite remember how to be people’ is a pretty solid hook to hang a story on and partially because the models look cool in a heavy metal album sort of way.

Codex Necrons (2023) presents the new background material and rules for the tenth edition of Warhammer 40,000. Rules-wise, there isn’t anything terribly exciting for experienced players here. The new game is more a logical iteration of the previous edition, and as such, all of the units here are already balanced and thought through. There are a few changes that squeeze the playstyle into something a lot smoother and fun. Necrons are a little less tough and a little faster and are still as hard to kill as ever. Fans of swarms will find it easier to build an army list, and the Necron hero characters have had a slight boost in flexibility.

The book is jammed with lore and written in an accessible way, and the narrative has moved a little bit further forward, with the Necrons having more of a reason to fight each other now, which is nice. We only received the digital version for review, so we can’t confirm the quality of the actual book itself. As always, the book is filled with glossy photos of amazing Games Workshop art and photos of models.

Codex Necrons (2023) is exactly what the game needs right now and a good sign that future codexes will also be satisfying.

WARHAMMER 40,000 CODEX ADEPTUS MECHANICUS (2023)

The grimdark world of Warhammer 40,000 is crammed full of all sorts of weird and wonderful factions. One that stands out above the crowd is the Adeptus Mechanicus, a horrifying branch of humanity in which technology has become a religion and living flesh is regarded as a weakness to be overcome with steel. They’re a strange blend of religious fanaticism and cybernetics who call a ruined red Mars their home and have some of the wildest models, stories, and games in the Warhammer range.

Codex Adeptus Mechanicus (2023) presents the new background material and rules for the tenth edition of Warhammer 40,000. The bulk of the book focuses on being a source of inspiration for building your Adeptus Mechanicus army.

40K is a weird, heavy metal-style setting with horror overtones, and this book is instrumental in getting your head around the aesthetic of these strange beings. This is a faction that distrusts computers so much that it uses human brains as

We get lots of art, some fairly creepy stories and plenty of photographs of the models. The text is clearly laid out and easy to read. It makes for a fun flick-through because this book is more of a reference source for a specific bit of the vast Warhammer setting rather than a straight-up rulebook. We only received the digital version for review, so we can’t confirm the quality of the actual book itself.

Rules-wise, it’s theme first, then playability. In this case, these two things complement each other very well. For example one of the doctrines you can give your army is the Rad Zone Corps; these are units that irradiate the warzone first because radiation doesn’t matter to this army of cyborgs. In the game, this means they’re adamant. On the other hand, we have the Data Psalm Conclave, religious lunatics who use technology to pull off incredible miracles.

Game-wise, this means that key units get better-saving throws and avoid more damage, as their faith (and a little bit of technological know-how) gets them through.

Compared to previous editions of this codex, this has a good balance of rules ‘crunch’ and story-telling ‘fluff’. If you like cool cyborg fanatics and grim dark space fantasy, check this out.