Although Sonic the Hedgehog technically received the Lego treatment alongside the toys-to-life game Lego Dimensions, a full kit starring Sega’s iconic mascot has never been released. That’s changing soon with Sonic Mania: Green Hill Zone, a fan-created design that was submitted to the Lego Ideas platform. Lego is now moving forward with production on Sonic Mania: Green Hill Zone, though it’s unclear when the kit will launch.
The original concept design was submitted to Lego Ideas by Viv Grannell, a UK-based Sonic fan. The design exceeded the 10,000 fan votes required to get Lego to consider the project for production. “I’ve been invested in the world of Sonic for almost my entire life, and it’s such a perfect fit for the LEGO system that I spent about a year rallying support for it to happen,” Grannell said in a statement.
Tale of Immortal has been out for barely a week as an Early Access title, and already the open-world sandbox based on Chinese mythology and cultivation has become one of the most popular games on Steam. Concurrent players peaked at 172,000 users this week, resulting in Tale of Immortal being more popular than Grand Theft Auto V or Rust.
With its tile-based 2D world aesthetic and a single language option of Simplified Chinese, Tale of Immortal might seem like an incredibly unlikely game to have debuted as the fifth most popular game on Steam. User reviews are overwhelmingly positive though, as the combination of Chinese mythology, vibrant monster-slaying action, and a low price has resulted in a smash-hit debut.
This can also be chalked up to Steam’s current presence in China, which now has over 30 million players on the platform who regularly flock towards similar games such as Amazing Cultivation Simulator and other Chinese-produced indie games that celebrate the culture of the country. Steam still has plans for a more official launch in China this year, as the platform currently exists as more of a grey market for users on that side of the world.
The new trailer for the upcoming Netflix sci-fi series Tribes of Europa has been released. The German-language show comes from the producers of the highly acclaimed series Dark, and it is released later his month.
Tribes of Europa is set in a post-apocalyptic Europe where warring tribes have emerged after a mysterious global disaster. The show focuses on a trio of siblings from a peaceful tribe who find themselves hunted by some very scary rivals when they encounter a man in possession of a strange and powerful cube. It looks like an expensive, sprawling mix of fantasy and Mad Max-style dystopian action–check the trailer out below.
The six-episode series is directed by Philip Koch and Florian Baxmeyer, and it hits Netflix on February 19. The cast includes Henriette Confurius, Oliver Masucci, David Ali Rashed, and Emilio Sakraya.
Codemasters shareholders have voted to formally approve the company’s sale to EA. The takeover should now be legally sanctioned during a court hearing on February 16, pending other competition law approvals, finalising EA’s $1.2 billion acquisition of the game developer and publisher.
As reported by VGC, 63 of the 76 shareholders voted in favour of approving the deal during a remote court meeting on Wednesday, which represents nearly 99% of shares held. The Codemasters board of directors had previously recommended that the company’s shareholders vote in favour of the purchase, saying that EA’s experience in creating live service games, along with its wealth of resources, would allow EA to dominate the racing game genre once it adds the various Codemasters studios to its collection.
After decades of vampires hogging all the spotlight in the World of Darkness, I’ve been drooling over the prospect of a good Werewolf: The Apocalypse game to showcase my favorite side of that fantastic universe… but it might be a couple decades more at this rate, because Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is an unambitious swing at video game-ifying the beloved tabletop roleplaying game of fangs and fury that originally got me into that hobby. If it can’t make transforming into a massive beast and ripping your enemies limb from limb fun, what are we even doing here?
In Earthblood, you play as Cahal, a Garou of the Fianna tribe born under the moon sign Arhoun who must battle Banes and Fomori to save Gaia. If you found that sentence confusing, this story is going to be a doozy because it barely ever stops for even a moment to explain any of the concepts of its rich but sometimes perplexing setting. And to anyone without an understanding of werewolves and their culture, a lot is going to be lost from its storytelling. This stands in stark contrast to the classic Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, which is set in the same universe. That game spends the first few hours explaining to you what vampires are, what they can and can’t do, and how their society works. Earthblood, meanwhile, seems to be written for existing Apocalypse fans only. If you’re exploring this part of the World of Darkness for the first time get ready to be bewildered – and that probably describes most players.
Anyway, Cahal is a tough guy in a leather jacket with a bunch of stock character traits who, through about half the story’s 20-ish hours, doesn’t seem to be able to express anything that would register above a two or a three on the emotional Richter scale. This includes when multiple people close to him are killed. In a game with the tagline, “When will you Rage?” it’s kind of a problem that your lead character has a hard time expressing believable anger. The voice acting improves a little in the second half, but overall it’s very flat. And the dialogue writing isn’t particularly good, either, which ends up making most of the characters seem almost creepily robotic.
Garou Kidding Me?
Cahal and his werewolf buddies are basically eco-terrorists, fighting against an oil company called – and I am really not making this up – Endron. If this were South Park or Robot Chicken, that kind of on-the-nose nod to a real company might have worked. But tonally, there is no levity to be found at any point in Earthblood: these are serious business werewolves. Each level involves infiltrating these greedy polluters’ facilities, sneaking past security, beating up guards, and completing simple objectives like planting a bomb or putting a bug on a computer terminal.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Stealth%20action%20is%20the%20one%20thing%20that%20kind%20of%20works%20about%20Earthblood.”]This central stealth action routine is the one thing that kind of works about Earthblood (which is nice, except that werewolves in Apocalypse aren’t generally known for their stealthiness). Going swift and sneaky in wolf form lets you sabotage equipment, shut down turrets, and thin the herd with stealth kills. And to its credit, the levels are well-constructed enough to make whittling away the defenses as much as I could before the alarms went off a satisfying puzzle that tested my observation skills and quick execution. But on the other hand, when it’s fully possible to just kick the door down, roar, and splatter all of your enemies into jelly on normal difficulty, it can feel like a waste of time because you don’t get any extra rewards for doing things the quiet and patient way.
A lot of Earthblood’s weaker points could have been forgiven, at least to some degree, if Cyanide had managed to make it fun to go on a rampage as a snarling 400-pound hellbeast. But forgiveness must be earned, and combat – the part of Earthblood that seemed to get the alpha’s share of the attention – is really mediocre.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=The%20fact%20that%20you%20never%20feel%20scary%20hurts%20the%20roleplaying%20experience%20a%20lot.”]It’s floaty and arcadey in the worst way. You don’t feel much of a sense of momentum, which hurts the illusion that you’re playing as a massive, bloodthirsty beast. The animations aren’t that great either, and that’s particularly noticeable when most enemies won’t even flinch as they’re being slashed by a clawed arm as big as they are. They’re too dumb to even flee in terror when you’ve killed all of their friends! It’s a far cry from the World of Darkness tabletop game, in which most average mortals go temporarily insane just from looking at a werewolf in the Crinos form. The fact that you never feel scary hurts the roleplaying experience a lot.
There’s some variety to the slaughter in that you can toggle on and off a special heavy stance, but that just makes you into a plodding, cumbersome Frankenstein’s monster. Why the designers would choose to include this instead of one of the other iconic Garou forms from the lore doesn’t make much sense to me. Especially when the bear-like direwolf shape from the tabletop game is used by several werewolf NPCs, but you never get access to it yourself.
Building up a special meter in Crinos form can let you activate Frenzy, but it’s basically just a power up that, for a limited time, lets you kill just about anything by button mashing. That’s disappointing because in the lore, Frenzy is a dangerous and even transgressive act in Garou culture, but that’s only briefly explored, and not in a way that gives you any reason to avoid using it. The World of Darkness breaks down entirely when its superficial power fantasies aren’t tempered by real, usually horrifying consequences. And that fact is written all over Earthblood.
Perplexing Prey
The enemy design is extremely annoying as well. Security guards with shotguns will just stand there blasting you with cones of buckshot even when you’re right up in their faces going to town. You’d think it would be hard to aim when you’re being actively mauled by a monster twice your size, but not for these guys. Most human foes will also slide around like they’re on ice skates when you come barreling into them, rather than being knocked down.
Some of the boss fights against monsters and giant corporate mechs are okay, in that they’re refreshing and even sometimes challenging compared to fighting hordes of henchmen. Having to fight two enemy werewolves at once was probably the most fun I had with the combat in Earthblood. But in general, I ended up playing a lot of the levels in almost pure stealth mode just because fighting isn’t enjoyable, and the lackluster upgrades from progression never made it that much better.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=I%20ended%20up%20playing%20a%20lot%20of%20the%20levels%20in%20almost%20pure%20stealth%20mode%20just%20because%20fighting%20isn’t%20enjoyable.”]Story missions and boss fights give you spirit points, which you can also find more of by exploring each area using Earthblood’s version of the obligatory Batman Detective Vision. The perks and abilities they unlock are mostly so underwhelming, though, that I would sometimes let them stack up for hours because there was nothing I was all that excited about buying, and when I finally did it just confirmed I hadn’t missed anything. They mostly make you better at the things you can already do or let you throw in an extra special move to your attack combos, but that doesn’t really change how you fight. Almost none of them open up new ways to play, in or out of combat.
I don’t get a sense that I’d have a significantly different experience if I were to play the campaign again and make different choices because you don’t get to pick Cahal’s Tribe or Auspice (the moon sign a werewolf was born under, which serves almost like their character class in the tabletop game), so there isn’t much by way of customization. You don’t even really get to decide how you want to roleplay him. Aside from one story choice at the very end which is played out with all the emotional weight of a wet sock, his personality and values are set in stone. I am again compelled to contrast this with Bloodlines, in which all the different ways of making your vampire your vampire were among the main strengths.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=You%20don’t%20get%20to%20pick%20Cahal’s%20Tribe%20or%20moon%20sign%2C%20so%20there%20isn’t%20much%20by%20way%20of%20customization.”]I could go on and on about how Earthblood also fails to successfully capture the major themes of Apocalypse, or any of the things that make werewolves in that universe so uniquely cool. There’s a lot. And it’s especially frustrating because there are some artifacts of a better game here. For example, during development, Cyanide mentioned that keeping your inner beast caged for too long by using stealth and diplomacy could lead to your rage overflowing, causing an involuntary transformation and starting a fight at a perhaps inconvenient time. That would have been awesome, and it’s the sort of thing that happens in the tabletop game all the time! Losing control and going on a rampage is as much a part of being a werewolf as drinking blood is part of being a vampire. But it doesn’t seem to have made it into the final game, because there are never any lasting consequences for anything you do.
Building up your rage meter just gives you more mana points to use when you do go full beast mode. Earthblood barely deals with the consequences of being a monster outside of some incredibly short, scripted story moments that had nothing to do with any choices I made. A level that takes place inside a prison and lets you negotiate with a powerful inmate to get information almost managed to be interesting… until I realized I could still just berserk out and easily kill all the guards to skip those missions entirely. There was no incentive to ever use anything but violence to achieve my goals – not even a pat on the head.
In the background, the music is generally just as boring as almost everything else. Generic, distorted guitar riffs make up the bulk of it, which at least fits with the overall mood and tone of Werewolf: The Apocalypse and its often over-the-top action-horror sensibilities. None of the more contemplative or emotional moments are scored appropriately, though. This soundtrack has one trick, and it’s only really good at drip feeding you a bit of extra adrenaline. The one exception is Kai Tangata, a pulse-pounding track full of intimidating chants and a clean, emotion-rich vocal hook written in the Maori language by Alien Weaponry, an excellent Maori metal band from New Zealand. It seems to only be used on the menu screen and over the credits, though, so it’s a bit underused.
Few things are more important to a 3D action platformer than having movement that’s both fun and responsive, and Blue Fire takes that fact to heart. Its assortment of agile abilities not only look great in action, but also offer the kind of precise control needed to overcome its demanding enemies and obstacles alike. While there’s a bit too much reliance on retreading familiar ground by the end, its array of treacherous yet addicting challenge rooms had me happily running, jumping, and dashing through them again and again.
At first glance, Blue Fire bears resemblance to what Hollow Knight might be reimagined in a 3D space. It’s got plenty of familiar ideas: quickly dashing between platforms in an all-but-abandoned kingdom full of dark monsters, piecing together your mysterious tiny warrior’s purpose in the world, and striking at foes while bouncing off their head with repeated aerial slashes. The few scattered survivors that aren’t trying to kill you will often have small tasks to undertake instead – quests that are actually tracked in your log, which is something I’ve always wished for in games with sprawling worlds like this one. You can even find and equip Spirits (Blue Fire’s take on Hollow Knight’s Charms) to modify and enhance your abilities to a near-ridiculous degree.
And yet, developer Robi Studios has built Blue Fire’s platforming mechanics in a way that feels tailored for 3D space, with a level of control that nearly always left me with no one to blame but myself whenever I met my demise. Your character’s quick mid-air dashes can be lengthened or stopped short at will, and lock-on targeting allows you to dash towards or away from foes at any angle. The inclusion of a small stamina bar for wall-running and jumping is a godsend when learning the limits of your parkour abilities, as most all surfaces are applicable – including weaving around pillars to jump at different angles. You’re only able to utilize one dash and double jump (unless you equip the right Spirits) each time you take to the air, which turns every platforming segment into a series of calculated decisions. Every area, every challenge room, and every boss fight makes clever use of its terrain (or lack thereof), pushing you to experiment with your platforming powers and figure out how to best come out on top. Certain encounters can line spikes along the walls to stop you from parkour past enemies, or limit your time on the ground with deadly shockwaves and hazards to make sure you’re constantly in motion to find relative safety.
Float Like a Sword-Wielding Butterfly
When you aren’t dodging spike traps or pits full of corrupted ooze, you’ll be strafing and zipping around shadowy creatures looking to tear you to pieces. With short combo attacks both on ground and in the air, your character can slice and dice with dual swords that can be swapped out for upgrades as you explore – but don’t expect to be able to take many hits in return. You’re only able to block attacks with the help of a shield spell that drains fairly fast – and also shares a mana pool with a quick and lightweight ranged fireball spell, so the best defense usually turns out to be moving quickly to avoid getting hit altogether.
Fighting these enemies also let me incorporate movement abilities in interesting ways. I could dash circles around sword swiping foes, or refill my midair dash and jumps by striking them from the sky, turning my diminutive fighter into a very agile and angry hornet. Fights never become crushingly difficult, but Blue Fire’s protagonist is remarkably squishy – so much so that even using a shield spell to guard melee attacks would knock me backward several feet, frequently sending me skidding off the narrow platforms I was fighting on. The impact of these attacks resulted in a comedic Looney Tunes moment of frantically dashing back into the fight before gravity kicked in. This might not have even worked were it not for the satisfying ability to do targeted dashes, allowing me to zoom straight up to floating adversaries otherwise out of reach and resulting in some very entertaining killstreaks.
Blue Fire builds slowly at first, as the foreboding tight corridors of the mysterious floating castle you start in open up into larger halls, varied environments, and bottomless pits aplenty. Initially I wasn’t really digging the fact that I had to pay just to unlock checkpoints where I could save and respawn, using one of a few different types of currencies gathered from tearing apart enemies and scattered debris. That currency is shared with upgrade unlocks, and at times it felt like I had to forego buying new attire, Spirits, or upgrades out of fear that I’d find myself exploring a new area only to die and lose my progress a few feet away from a checkpoint I was too poor to activate.
A few areas are locked away until you reach specific parts of the story, but most are instead gated behind enticing ledges, bridges, and platforms left just out of reach until you obtain the right movement abilities – be that an extra jump or a series of wallruns. By the end of my 12 hour adventure, I was practically able to fly across early areas that once had me carefully plotting every single jump. Once I found some very hidden equippable Spirits that enhanced my character with increased dashing length (on top of a second consecutive dash), a third jump, and more, it almost felt like cheating as I strafed circles around opponents and cleared rooms without ever touching the ground.Seeing these areas in a new light helped soften the blow of Blue Fire’s reliance on backtracking.
Temple of No Time
Early on, your pint-sized hero is occasionally asked to assist the gods – under assault in their own temples – in entertaining little mini-dungeons full of puzzle rooms, keys in chests, and locked doors leading to new abilities and corrupted bosses. While the Hollow Knight influence is clear elsewhere, these areas reminded me more of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker than anything else. One challenging yet fun room had me using my newly minted double jump to perform a treacherous climb up a series of moving and disappearing platforms to reach the top before a timer shut the door, and one wrong move would send me hurtling back to the start, but I was pleased to find I could quickly course correct with a dash or wall-run to salvage my progress.
This deity-saving setup led me to believe I’d be helping out each of Blue Fire’s five gods in order to beat back the Shadow corrupting the castle, but to my dismay things quickly switched gears after only two temples. Once equipped with wall-running and double jumping, Blue Fire abruptly drops the dungeon idea in favor of seeking out three boss “shadow lords” directly. Instead of facing new contained challenges, this had me mostly returning to earlier regions to press previously inactive buttons or collecting orbs to unlock boss doors – even with upgraded movement tech refreshing these locations, it felt like an unexpectedly quick sprint to the finish. This pivot might have worked better if the first half of Blue Fire’s adventure lasted a bit longer, but I was happy to see at least one of the boss lieutenants had me searching through an unexplored region. And even in old locations, all the bosses proved to be a fun exercise in quickly dodging new types of attacks and putting my sustained aerial combat ability to the test.
Besides, as entertaining as Blue Fire’s enemies are, the optional challenge rooms called Voids steal the spotlight. Similar to Super Mario Sunshine’s secret levels or A Hat in Time’s Rifts, Voids test your platforming skills in the best possible way. From quickly hopping across tiny temporary platforms to wall-running and bouncing off blocks to dodge an array of killer buzzsaws and spikes, each Void presents a new trial to overcome – and makes you feel like a platforming paragon for beating them. Several Voids will have you running across more walls than the prince of Persia himself, and they generously increase your stamina to compensate for the amount of time you’ll spend before ever touching solid ground.
Completing Voids will boost your maximum health, and even if you don’t manage to make it to the end of one, collecting tokens along the way will let you unlock more Spirit slots – which means more chances to boost your parkour abilities to overcome that one seemingly impossible part of the gauntlet. Even after completing the story, I immediately dove back in to finish every last Void, especially to complete one I had been banging my head against for half an hour the first time I attempted it, as these things can be an excellent optional opportunity to push the limits of Blue Fire’s platforming mechanics.
