Batman: Arkham Shadow, the latest Meta Quest 3 pack-in and a follow-up to the much-respected Arkham console games, seeks to put you in the role of the caped crusader more directly than before. And though this isn’t quite the first VR Batman game, it’s certainly the first larger-scale attempt. So how is it? And is it worth buying a headset to play?

Developer Camouflaj, perhaps best known these days for its work on Iron Man VR, has been focusing its efforts on virtual reality, and it shows in Batman: Arkham Shadow through its well-considered (if conventional) setups. It’s also a bit slow to get going? Lots of early-game tutorials make sure you know what to do, as if it’s your first VR game. Which, for some, may be the case, as it becomes the Quest’s latest system seller.

Shadow follows the events of Batman: Arkham Origins and is most inspired by the confined gameplay of Arkham Asylum. There’s a ton of well-known voice talent, including a lot from the old Arkham cast! And that’s a good investment for this game, which is so much about those voices. You’re set off to take down the Rat King, a newly-created villain for the game, but along the way you see a lot of characters you might know.

Fundamentally, this game is about punching. Which, hey, VR does well! You complete a series of quick-time events to fight, throwing specific punches and countering through various means. This isn’t a “think about your opponents’ weaknesses” game; it’s decided for you. Which is fine? There are so many enemies to fight in this game, and it would rather see you push through them quickly.

It's in larger room encounters that Batman: Arkham Shadow is at its best. In these, you use perches, vents and such to help pick off enemies one by one, studying movements and bringing in some of your gadgets to help when needed. It's during these fights that Shadow truly opens up and lets you be creative. When we started watching guard patterns and scouting out just the right vantage points for unseen takedowns, that felt really nice. This is, fundamentally, an accurate recreation of the Arkham scheme, and just how enjoyable that was to people is a lot of why this game exists! But the perspective does change a lot about how it feels.

Taking out foes and finding hidden collectibles contributes to an experience meter, allowing you to upgrade various abilities. It’s also a game that likes giving you new abilities from time to time, as you find a need in the mission, climb to the roof for a delivery and then head back down to use it. A lot more time is spent in the process in this game, physically moving from place to place. We suppose it’s a good way to break up combat sequences and keep you immersed in the identity, but do be prepared for the time investment.

There’s still something of a theme park-like ethos to “big-budget” VR game design. Environments are more set dressing than places to spend lots of time. You get a lot of exposition through audio between encounters. It’s also more than happy to use that audio to not-so-subtly nudge you to your next objective. Rarely does Batman: Arkham Shadow want you to stop and smell the roses, and doing so will result in increasingly direct reminders of the thing to do next.

And maybe that’s for the best! Batman: Arkham Shadow is full of dark environments with similar sorts of dingy decoration. It’s true to the source material, and the low lighting does help mitigate the inevitable visual downgrades you get when rendering the resolution and double display of VR. It’s an action game through and through, and other Quest titles are happy to provide different pacing for those who want it.

That said, Batman: Arkham Shadows is not a bad looking VR game, and Camouflaj has clearly been pulling out tricks to get the most out of the hardware. For example, there’s some pre-rendered lighting in spots, putting your focus on particular corners. You can see the seams, sometimes. For example, we moved a grate from a green-tinged vent, and it stayed bright and green. But it’s likely worth those exceptions.

Batman: Arkham Shadow feels comfortable to play in a small room or even seated, with some creative use of the crouch button to reach lower objects. Conversely, the game doesn’t do a heck of a lot for room-scale players, but it’s likely a compromise worth making for the game. Other titles will make you want to walk around; this is extremely a stick-to-move experience.

We've encountered some bugs along the way, getting stuck on craggy rocks or having doors fall down and leave invisible barriers instead of opening. These are the sorts of things we expect will be patched up relatively quickly, but still thought it worth noting for early players. Generally, reloading the checkpoint has solved the issue, but sometimes that means losing a few minutes of progress. We also had a bit of difficulty with the cape controls, as the activation wasn’t as reliable as we wanted. Hopefully that can be tuned a bit!

While it may not have the immersive mechanics to be a great VR introduction, Batman: Arkham Shadow is fun to play and faithful to its Arkham predecessors. And yeah, picking off enemies one-by-one feels great.

Batman: Arkham Shadow, developed by Camouflaj and published by Meta, is available now for Meta Quest 3 and 3S. It’s included with new headsets, and costs $49.99 for other buyers.

The post Review: Batman: Arkham Shadow Lets You Wear the Cowl appeared first on Siliconera.

UFO 50, the faux-retro compilation from the creators of games like Spelunky, Air, Land & Sea and Downwell, is finally releasing after a long development process. Which, well, makes sense! There are 50 games in here, and it didn’t quite take them 50 times as long to make, so perhaps they can take that as a victory. And it seems like it was worth the extra effort, because it’s largely a delight to play.

UFO 50’s titles are, the developers insist, not minigames! And they’re right; this isn’t Mario Party. What they do offer, though, is a more concentrated experience than most games that would launch by themselves. The lengths vary, but if you like the process of learning a game more than what comes after, you’ll enjoy that in UFO 50 every few hours.

Since it was made by a collective of folks used to creating their own stuff, they can feel very different in aims. Having a primarily-analog designer, Jon Perry, on board means a lot more tactical play, which we do love around here. Downwell creator Ojiro Fumoto’s brief involvement with the release shows through in some super-quick action. These sorts of different minds add both to the variety of fun you’ll have and to the feeling that it’s a compilation of disparate releases from within an old game company.

It’s important to note that this isn’t a Retro Game Challenge sort of release. There are ideas that only work within the fictional retro context, for sure! But these are generally original game ideas, rather than straightforward ‘80s homages. They’re all built for a fictional retro computer, which in practice means they share a color palette and resolution and a two-button control scheme. We do like the simplicity! There are a few of these games that would have benefited from in-game start button functionality for a menu or a third face button to keep from overlapping controls, but they stuck to their guns on that point and it does mean that these games are as tight and streamlined as it feels they could manage.

An example on the more conventional end is Grimstone. It replicates the grind-heavy feel of NES-era RPGs, implementing a timing-based battle system but otherwise sticking with the restrictions and ideas of the era. As a standalone game, it would be frustrating and generally lacking, but here it serves as an important part of the game’s fictional fabric.

On the other end, you have games like disc-flicker Lords of Diskonia and deck-builder Party House, which clearly have their roots in the more modern analog game scene. But they handle them in a very video-game-like way. In Lords of Diskonia, for example, the opponent never misses. Bank shots? Wild combos? They can absolutely do it every time. The key is in exploiting the factors they don’t take into account as frequently, like ending their turn in fog or leaving themselves vulnerable after their moves. This is very different from playing a human (which you can still do here, by the way), who can absolutely consider all the factors but won’t necessarily keep 360-no-scoping you the whole time.

Many of the action games in the collection are what you'd call “Nintendo hard,” the punishing sort of difficulty that many games of the era had to extend play time through repetition with limited resources and storage space to make new worlds. Though we're sure this will vary from person to person, we found the difficulty to vacillate somewhere between “totally doable” and “I might be able to beat this first level with enough practice, but that doesn't sound like a fun time.”

In addition to “Nintendo hard,” there’s also sometimes “Spelunky hard,” not afraid to be punishing and wipe progress away in an instant. This makes sense given the dev team, of course! And myriad factors make this an okay approach. The shorter included games and the quantity, in case you just want to bounce around and find what you like without feeling too bad about what you don’t. A generation of players raised on Demon’s Souls-like games. It does mean that, well, we’re not beating some of these ourselves. But we’re sure others will.

True to its retro feel, UFO 50 is a game that could really benefit from something like an instruction manual. As it stands, it’s more like sifting through a collection of ROMs: you’ll get the button commands in the menu and a one-sentence descriptor, but a lot of context or explanation you’d get in the documentation ephemera of the past just isn’t here. We’re sure there will be a lot of resources for players very quickly after the game releases and fans create them! But they weren’t there for us in the pre-launch review period.

The selection of games feels primarily tuned for a great two-player experience, and it’s here that you’ll find some more easily explained games. Kick Club is Bubble Bobble with a ball-kicking attack. Bushido Ball is a samurai Windjammers. Fist Hell is River City Ransom with zombies.

Two of our favorites: Hyper Contender and Quibble Race. The first is a TowerFall-style quick battle game, with each character having a movement and attack function, but they can be very different. Is your attack a linear missile or a Castlevania-style axe throw? Do you have a jump, or do you reverse your gravity? The various matchups all play out in different ways.

On the complete opposite end of the action spectrum, Quibble Race is a hidden-information pseudo-horse-racing betting concept. You can sponsor Quibbles for a payout of their winnings! You can scout the participants of a race and make an honest bet! Or, hey, we suppose you can try to poison the favorite? Reading opponents and holding out for some luck makes this a lot more fun than we’d expected.

We’ve called out a few examples, but we’re making a point not to explain absolutely everything, because a lot of the joy of UFO 50 is stumbling upon and exploring a new game. It’s best approached as a goodie bag, with discovery and learning through playing as its key tenets. The difficulty is perhaps a bit higher than we’d like in spots for some of the games, but overall it really is a can’t-miss release.

UFO 50 launches on PC on September 18, 2024. It’s published by Mossmouth, and developed by Derek Yu, Jon Perry, Eirik Suhrke, Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto and Tyriq Plummer.

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The latest Pokemon TCG set, Stellar Crown, brings the world of The Indigo Disk to cardboard, so what are the best cards to pick up? The expansion offers different options for different audiences.

The coolest Pokemon TCG Stellar Crown cards

Would you believe it if we said the Illustrator Rares are cool again? We say that almost every time, but hey, it’s still true. The art takes aesthetic risks that seem to be too much for The Pokemon Company on its standard-issue versions, and we love to see that. This time, we in particular like the high-wattage look of Zeraora, Joltik and Galvantula, as well as Gulpin eatin’ a whole cake.

In terms of gameplay, we really like the new Raging Bolt card. One-prize attackers really shine when they have no ceiling, stacking damage with each additional energy until they can take out the biggest foes. Its Thunderburst Storm attack lets you target that damage anywhere you want, chipping away at supporters and damaged retreaters as much as you’d like. (Also the art looks rad.)

The most interesting Stellar Crown cards

We’re intrigued by Kofu, a new card-draw Trainer. The effect is simple enough: put two cards from your hand onto the bottom of your deck, then draw four. It trades the third card draw of a standard friend supporter for filtering to find what you want! But what makes it most interesting is that there’s a power referencing it. Food Prep, found on Veluza and Crabominable, decreases attack cost by one for each Kofu in the discard. Veluza in particular is most intriguing, since it’s a Basic and could theoretically just attack for 110 damage for free!

Stadium card Area Zero Underdepths was clearly built with Terapagos ex in mind, but could have wider implications too. It expands the bench to 8 as long as you have a Tera in play, allowing for extra bench-multiplied damage for attacks like Unified Beatdown but also giving you room to play a bunch of support effects. Terapagos in particular might want to use that space for Bouffalant, which shields 60 damage from colorless Basics if you have two in play.

The most meta-relevant Stellar Crown cards

New supporter Crispin really only works in dual-energy setups, but it offers both energy search and acceleration and could be a staple in a lot of decks. It lets you search for two different Basic Energy cards, putting one in your hand and one on a Pokemon.

Running any ACE SPEC card is generally better than running none at all, but Stellar Crown introduces a few more options to let you find the best for your build. Deluxe Bomb puts 12 damage counters on an attacking foe once, useful both as damage and deterrent. Sparkling Crystal makes a Tera Pokemon’s attacks cost one energy of any type less, which is especially useful for those new three-type attacks but generally helpful for acceleration regardless! And Grand Tree, the new Stadium of the bunch, lets each player search for and evolve creatures, even twice in a row, once per turn.

The cutest Pokemon TCG Stellar Crown cards

It’s something of a cadre of usual suspects in this set, but that works for us when they put the effort in! Among our favorites are the ever-adorable Fidough, an Alcremie baking up some treats, a starry-eyed Wooloo and an Eevee enjoying nature. In terms of unusual suspects, the real-world medium of the new Chewtle suits it well! Some Illustrator Rares of note: a sleepy Bulbasaur, a pastel Milcery and a Dachsbun living out its baked goods dreams.

The latest Pokemon Trading Card Game expansion, Scarlet & Violet — Stellar Crown, launches September 13, 2024. For more on the Pokemon TCG, including a full overview of this new set, check out our archive.

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After a few sets celebrating its first DLC adventure, the Pokemon Trading Card Game is moving onto the second half of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero with its latest expansion. Scarlet & Violet — Stellar Crown introduces the world of The Indigo Disk to Pokemon TCG, with Blueberry Academy characters and the legendary Terapagos making debuts. So what does it have to offer? Let's dig in.

Terapagos is clearly the centerpiece of the set, as the legend is the focus of all the set visuals. It feels like perhaps the world of the second DLC adventure only gets a few cameos, so that a subsequent release can focus on those elements. That makes sense to us, as Terapagos brings with it a new type of Tera Pokemon that would really need effort to build a deck around. These ex variants have super-strong attacks that require three different energy types.

Lapras seems like a viable one to us, as a Basic with the ability to search and attach all energy in the top 20 cards of your deck. Galvantula is a harder sell, as its three-energy move is a 180-damage attack that does stop the opponent from playing Items next turn but makes you discard all the energy to do it. Truly, a lot of these creatures may see play exclusively to use their not-special attack instead.

The Terapagos ex itself may be the most intriguing, which is a rarity to see! Usually the face of the set has a big, flashy attack, but it’s rarely a competitively viable one. Its Crown Opal attack does 180 damage (yawn), but it prevents damage from “Basic non-Colorless Pokemon.” So it’s vulnerable to a mirror match — Terapagos is itself Colorless — but it’s protected from a lot of threats in a professional scene that has always shied away from the effort and uncertainty of relying on evolutions.

We mentioned in our coverage of the previous set, Shrouded Fable, that it was nice to see powerful legends and mythics at uncommon rarity. After all, one of the biggest problems of CCGs in general is how much of a pack is instant garbage in most contexts! So making uncommons interesting and fun lowers that percentage a bit. Among those appearing in Pokemon TCG Stellar Crown: Koraidon, Celebi, Diancie, Tornadus, and… Mewtwo! Those of us who have been playing the game since the last millennium can remember just how wild and fun it was to pull a Mewtwo in a pack, and now that pleasant memory resurfaces a bit more frequently. Excellent.

Speaking of nostalgia! Stellar Crown also features Venusaur and Blastoise, with the former built around shutting down the opponent and healing up while the latter’s about taking hits and dishing them out. The Venusaur strategy could be assisted by the new Hydrapple, which lets you play an extra energy every turn and heal a bit when you do, and a Cradily that flips a coin from the bench every turn to inflict a status effect of your choice. (Of course, that’d be a lot of evolutions to play.)

Even though this is an Area Zero-focused set, don’t expect to see a lot of Ancient and Future appearances. There’s one each, for Iron Boulder and Raging Bolt? Though the factions made some serious appearances in this year’s world championships, it may be a one-time thing as we may be nearing the end of them in the TCG.

The three-energy Tera scheme introduced in Stellar Crown seems to be the new big thing for Pokemon TCG, so we’d expect to see more of these creatures in sets to come. After all, they’ve got to keep doing something until a new game debuts! And hey, we’ve seen worse ideas. It’s a bit of a shame that they never made the type-changing version as relevant as we’d hoped, though.

The latest Pokemon Trading Card Game expansion, Scarlet & Violet — Stellar Crown, launches September 13, 2024. For more on the Pokemon TCG, check out our archive.

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We’d have to imagine that launching a similarly-themed roguelike deckbuilder in the shadow of Balatro is both a gift and a curse. The gameplay is different enough in structure and premise that it doesn’t feel like a copy, but Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers inevitably inherits some of the attention Balatro brought to the space and also has the unenviable task of being compared to an inarguable instant classic.

It doesn’t feel like it’s shying away from those comparisons, either. D&DG loves cracking a good joke, and perhaps even more loves cracking a bad referential quasi-joke. Among these? Yep, totally a Balatro nod. In your first hour with the game, you’ll likely run into send-ups of The Witcher, DJ Khaled, Slay the Spire and more. There’s even a particularly, uh, faithful rendering of a Charizard card that feels to us like murky IP waters to tread.

As much as there’s similarity in the possibility space — especially turning lots of things known as “cards” into playable items — Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers sets itself firmly apart through its blackjack-based mechanics. Rather than building poker hands against an ever-rising score goal, you’re playing an opponent, and it’s more about probabilities and risk. Truly this is gambling, in a true gameplay way, with tons of ways to manipulate the odds in your favor.

In the spirit of the game’s humor, we’ll say this: busting does not make you feel good. While traditional blackjack is about binary wins or losses, here your loss results in damage equal to the difference in hands. So you’ll end up making choices you wouldn’t in the normal game, like standing when your hand has lost, rather than risk taking double-digit damage. It also incentivizes finding ways to make your opponent bust, as it’s worth so much more than chipping away a few at a time.

The starter decks are fairly simple: a full set of cards of one suit. Each suit has an ability that kicks in if you hit the maximum score (usually 21): hearts heal you, spades shield, clubs deal extra damage and diamonds add to your funds. The hearts deck is “easiest” and the only one available for your tutorial run, and… yeah, that ability is generally just better than the rest. There’s also a “nothings” deck, with cards that have no suit ability at all, and an unlockable deck that glitches out and gives you random results. (Which is indeed difficult in a game about controlling luck.) There are decks past these as well, but since the game hides them until you get there, we won't spoil them. Suffice to say, they're a bit of variety but don't fundamentally change how we feel about the game.

As is increasingly the case in single-player games like this, your opponents in Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers don’t think or adjust. They have a specific deck composition and set number totals at which they stand, and these are considered in order to make an interesting opponent, but that’s it. Which is to say that the primary way you can win is by manipulating their deck or board and trip up their pre-set plan. This makes ways to play more cards valuable, as every play brings you closer to your opponent standing and no longer being able to undo any switcheroos you inflict.

It’s good to have disruptive options in your deck anyway, because there’s no mechanism in the game to encourage an end. Some battles can become endless wars of attrition, with healing and shields replenishing as fast as they’re taken down on both sides. And if you find yourself in one of these? There’s truly nothing you can do but start intentionally losing until you’re defeated and can start a new run. The design could benefit from something to hasten an end.

There are bosses at the end of both of a run’s two potential paths, but like most roguelike deckbuilders, these aren’t exactly final bosses. Winning on a difficulty lets you choose a harder one with additional modifiers. In this format, you see the game’s quips over and over and over again, and we really wish you didn’t have to after a while.

That said, this review has been a weird one for us. During the review window, the game has seen undocumented patches that fundamentally change the feature set and game balance. Totally new cards. Reworked abilities. Adjusted art. It's good that the developer is working on making the game better, but it's difficult to tell which of our experiences have been representative of the product you'll play.

Ultimately, what hurts the most about launching in the long shadow of Balatro is the expectation of a wide possibility space and near-endless depth. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is more of a diversion than a new avocation, with interesting ideas that play out fairly quickly and funnel toward a few very specific viable strategies. It’s fun! Briefly.

Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers releases August 8, 2024 for PC, Mac and Linux via Steam. It’s developed by Purple Moss Collectors and published by Yogscast Games.

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Looking to grab some packs of the latest Pokemon Trading Card Game expansion, Scarlet & Violet — Shrouded Fable? This summer’s special set is small and specialized, so it’s an especially good idea this time around to know what you’re getting into before you buy. So here’s our attempt to help: a rundown of the best Shrouded Fable cards, regardless of what criteria you’re using.

The coolest Shrouded Fable Pokemon cards

If you’re interested in Shrouded Fable, it has to be about the Loyal Three and Pecharunt, taking center stage here. This whole set is about Okidogi, Munkidori and Fezandipiti, and poisoning their food with mind control. (You know, when we type it out like that, it seems like a weird theme for a game kids play?)

And they get a ton of art treatments. The base ex versions look nice on the table together, with their binding mochi motif and consistent visual style. There are two separate full art versions of each, and Pecharunt ex even gets a gold version. Their regular forms from the last expansion get Illustrator Rare variants, too. Given the quantity of these and the set’s small size, you’re bound to quickly pull at least a couple of these in boosters.

The most meta-relevant Shrouded Fable cards

We’re not sure this will be a big set for the competitive scene, but we could see some cards seeing play! Like Bloodmoon Ursaluna, which is a 150 HP Basic with a three-energy attack and an ability to get two extra energy cards from your hand onto it when it hits the bench. Its attack, Mad Bite, starts at 100 and adds 30 for each damage counter on a foe, so it can two-hit almost anything and really wreck opponents if you’ve got some damage manipulation.

United Wings decks get a new option in Dartrix, for what that’s worth? And Iron Moth and Slither Wing arrive fashionably late for Future and Ancient decks, respectively. But we’re not sure either will make a huge splash, honestly.

New Supporter Cassiopeia, appropriately, is a Computer Search of sorts. Searching your deck for any two cards could be huge! The drawback is that you have to empty your hand first, and we know competitive types love to keep resources in reserve, but you do have the option of holding onto those two finds once you have them.

Finally, there are three new ACE SPEC options: Dangerous Laser, which burns and confuses the opponent; Neutralization Zone, which protects normal creatures from ex and V foes; and Poke Vital A, a 150-damage heal.

The most interesting Shrouded Fable Pokemon cards

Usually we’re talking about game mechanics in this section, but since Shrouded Fable is such a collector-based set, we’re finding most interesting just how many powerful Pokemon that would usually be rares are found in the uncommon slot. Decidueye, Iron Moth, Sylveon, Slither Wing, Yveltal, Genesect and Kyurem could all have been rares in other sets. That does make opening a pack feel a bit more fun.

In terms of interesting gameplay mechanics, it’s a bit tougher to find, but we like thinking about strategies with Revavroom ex. This Tera creature is a big beefy attacker like you’d expect, but its second attack? Shattering Speed, a 250-damage attack that discards itself. Note that it doesn’t knock itself out, so you could potentially tank hits or transfer a bunch of damage to it, then have it disappear from play in a boom without giving your opponent any Prizes. It’s probably too much effort to set up, but it’s an intriguing idea.

The cutest Shrouded Fable cards

A set primarily themed around using dark powers to possess creatures and make them evil might not seem like the best one for those seeking cute li’l buddies. And… that’s true! There’s both a smaller card pool and a smaller segment of friendly pals than in most releases. Still, there are a few cards of note. You’ve got your Rowlet, your Horsea, your Axew and your Eevee, all at their default very high levels of cute. That’s about it, though!

The Pokemon Trading Card Game: Scarlet & Violet — Shrouded Fable special set launches in various boxed products starting August 2, 2024. Elite Trainer Boxes will be available on August 23. For more on the Pokemon TCG, including our overview of this set, check out our archive.

The post Pokemon TCG: The Best Shrouded Fable Cards appeared first on Siliconera.

The SteamWorld series of games has been an exploration of disparate genres, with the team always careful about returning to ideas. But it does happen! Like Dig 2 before it, SteamWorld Heist II seeks to iterate upon the original’s mechanics with years of hindsight and extra development expertise.

Heist II moves from the first game’s space setting to an ocean one, with players navigating the world in a submarine. Functionally, these are very similar! So it feels a lot like the original. Instead of the menu-based approach of its predecessor, this entry takes a Mario + Rabbids approach, using an adventure overworld with light exploration and naval skirmishes.

This scheme is designed to break up the tactical combat with world-building, and the team at Thunderful tried hard to make it fun to explore the map even if the rewards aren’t always particularly consequential. You’ll find secret passages. You’ll encounter little narrative moments. The water effects as the sub zips around are satisfying. There’s even a diving mechanic that doesn’t really get explored until the late game but serves to give the world dimension.

But the primary attraction of SteamWorld Heist II is definitely the combat missions. In a lot of ways, they’re reminiscent of the first: areas composed of rooms and doors that are regularly re-used and configured, with a variety of obstacles and enemies to aim weapons through. We can forgive a lot of the iterative nature, though, given its role as a sequel and the way this system is distinct from all major tactical alternatives. It’s accurate enough to call it “2D XCOM,” but the 2D part of that does fundamentally set it apart in both presentation and tactics.

The combat is, more than anything, about action economy and finding tricks to take out more enemies at once and keep your head above water against enemy waves. Sidearms and grenades, along with class-specific abilities, allow you to attack more than once in a turn. Weapons with a large blast radius can hit more foes if placed right. Unlockable abilities can cause attacks to not end your turn or give you extra movement to reach objectives faster. This focus, again, feels a lot like Mario + Rabbids! Which is definitely a good thing. We found ourselves emptying our cupboard of extras each turn before finally using the characters’ primary weapons on whatever was left alive.

There are multiple difficulty options in the game and you can change on the fly if needed, but if you’re having trouble with a particular stage, you can also grind for job levels and equipment. This isn’t a huge change to your power or capability, often just giving you slightly more survivability or one more skill. But that can be the difference between staying on top of enemy waves and finding yourself underwater.

The world is broken up into regions, which largely function as the game’s chapters and each feature a bar for resting, shops and narrative moments. Each party member can fight once before resting, which means you’ll eventually be able to fight a few times before returning, but that does build up over the game. Missions earn “renown,” a currency you cash in when you rest for rewards. If you’re able to use the whole team and do a lot in the same day, you’ll be able to redeem for the higher-value rewards. These aren’t necessary, but they’re usually quite nice to have. You also unlock a special passive reward for completing everything in a region. Again, not necessary, but you’ll want them and they’re not too tough to do.

You recruit new party members at these bars, each with the ability to learn any class, but carrying personal skills that could lean them toward particular strategies. You have some player freedom to recruit in different orders, eventually unlocking all ten, but with some choice of who you need first and who you can wait for until later when you have space in the crew. They’ll have little quips during missions to make them feel like a part of the story, but they’re mostly there to support protagonist Captain Leeway through his journey while he largely doesn’t participate in fights himself.

Heist II is, in a technical sense, a very smooth experience, which makes sense for a sequel to a game formulated to work within 3DS specs that’s releasing on all active platforms regardless of capability. We did review the game on PC, for what that’s worth, but it’s the sort of game that doesn’t feel like it’s trying anything that would trip up low-spec devices.

SteamWorld Heist II takes the things that worked in the original Heist and, well, gives players more of them. It’s well-considered in so many ways, making sure you’ll have a good time exploring its ideas for as long as it holds you. It ain’t exciting or revolutionary, really, but it sure is fun.

SteamWorld Heist II launches August 8, 2024 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC.

The post Review: SteamWorld Heist II Aims to Please appeared first on Siliconera.

The Pokemon Trading Card Game Shrouded Fable set is 2024’s special summer release, which means it’s largely only available as part of special boxed collections. Like 151 and Pokemon Go before it, it’s meant to be primarily for collectors. It builds around the story of Scarlet and Violet’s expansion adventures, and chooses as its centerpiece the new Pecharunt and its darkness-possessed legendary minions.

Given that this premise isn’t “mobile game phenomenon” or “Kanto nostalgia” levels of broad appeal, Shrouded Fable has its work cut out for it. It feels like The Pokemon Company knows that, as it’s introducing a Poke Ball foil pattern in the set to make it feel a bit more special. We're not sure that will be enough for a lot of players to invest, but for now, we’ll just break down what’s here and leave it for you to decide for yourself.

So first? Yeah, Pecharunt and the Loyal Three are here. Base versions of the Three showed up in Twilight Masquerade, so the ones here are all about being poisoned and mind-controlled by Pecharunt. Okidogi poisons itself to power up. Munkidori delivers ex-level strength but only offers one Prize when it falls. Fezandipiti watches on and offers card draw when the opponent downs its teammates. Meanwhile, Pecharunt manipulates from the shadows, switching out its team for free with poisonous side effects.

You can extend its power beyond its three usual subjects with Binding Mochi, a new Tool card that powers up poisoned attackers by 40. With all this poison going around, it’s a good reminder that special conditions go away on the bench and Pecharunt’s switching means you should be able to keep things in control. Still, that damage is going to add up no matter how careful you are. A non-ex version of Pecharunt also shows up as a promo in Shrouded Fable products, instead chaining and punishing poisoned opponents. So, weirdly, Pecharunt might be a Pecharunt counter.

In addition to the Scarlet & Violet DLC characters, Shrouded Fable also sees appearances from other “dark” characters from the franchise’s history. Team Plasma leader Colress shows up on a Trainer card, as does Team Flare scientist Xerosic. And she isn’t exactly evil, but she’s certainly all about the poison, so Janine, a gym leader and Koga’s daughter, gets a Supporter card that accelerates energy while poisoning your own party.

Rounding out the set are a selection of creatures, most of whom fit the theme of darkness and poison. You’ve got Houndoom, Sneasel, Dusknoir, Toxicroak, Crobat, Malamar and more in here to make sure you get this set’s vibe. There’s even an Electric Tera-type version of everyone’s favorite pollution machine, Revavroom!

And hey: that new foil pattern ain’t nothing. It features a hexagon grid with Poke Balls in each hex, and it’s a nice enough look without getting in the way of legibility.

Shrouded Fable, as a set, is on the smaller side, clocking in at 64 cards before the secret rares kick in and 99 all told. This isn’t unprecedented — special sets have been small in the past — but after 151’s full Kanto Pokedex and Paldean Fates’ ludicrous lineup of shinies, it’s definitely an adjustment. But hey, that does make it easier to collect! So perhaps it’s a fun full set project.

The Pokemon Trading Card Game: Scarlet & Violet — Shrouded Fable special set launches in various boxed products starting August 2, 2024. Elite Trainer Boxes will be available on August 23. For more on the Pokemon TCG, check out our archive.

The post Pokemon TCG Shrouded Fable Explores Scarlet & Violet’s Most Toxic Relationships appeared first on Siliconera.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition wears its inspiration in its title. It seeks to capture the nostalgia for the competitions from over 30 years ago! And perhaps mostly the legacy built after the fact by collectors and communities wishing they weren’t just one-offs and actively building around that old branding.

The aesthetics of the game work really well! The soundtrack and backgrounds really remind us of The Wizard, which is absolutely correct for this package. The gameplay of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition appears to build on the framework of NES Remix, the Wii U and 3DS collection of similar challenges. There are bite-sized and… slightly larger but still bite-sized gameplay segments from 13 games: Super Mario Bros 1, 2, Lost Levels and 3; Zelda 1 and 2; Metroid; Donkey Kong; Kid Icarus; Excitebike; Ice Climber; Balloon Fight; and Kirby’s Adventure.

Speedrun Mode, the one mode you can play offline, is extremely like NES Remix, with escalating challenges to unlock and coins to collect to do that. They start at the shortest and simplest “Normal” ones, and go all the way through Hard, Master and Legend. Master and Legend challenges aren't necessarily the hardest to complete, but they are the longer and more interesting ones, and perhaps there are many more things you'd need to get exactly right to get a top time. There are even Nintendo Power-like strategy tips for these final ones, and these add to the atmosphere and are a nice touch.

Of course, the selling point of NES Remix was the, well, remix part, and this release has none of that. The game segments here are fully ones you could experience before. Instead, it’s built around online competition. The two online modes are World Championships, which gives you a weekly playlist of five challenges, and Survival Mode, which collects ghost data to create a 99-like battle royale spin.

The World Championships mode of the game is understandably intended as the centerpiece. Each week, you play five challenges and compete for the best times on leaderboards. Unfortunately for the experience, it deviates from the original Nintendo World Championships formula in one big way: you can replay it as many times as you want, and each part is tackled separately. You don’t chain together challenges, and there are no interesting score strategies. It boils down to “do these five again, just like you’ve done before.” Just you have to log on every week.

Survival Mode also recycles those challenges, this time formatting it as a battle royale-like competition. That said, like we mentioned, it uses ghost data! So it’s just an artificial way to make the normal speedrunning look different. You’ll take on three of the challenges — at least in the pre-release review period, these were identical to the World Championships ones for the week — and winning is a combination of doing well and happening upon the ghost data and event order that makes the finals most winnable. Half the “players” are eliminated each round, so early ones are more forgiving. So maybe keep entering and quitting until your weakest one is first, to save time? To the game’s credit, your performances in these two online modes do update your best times for Speedrun Mode, which is something.

You don’t want to chase slightly better times through repetition? Truly the game’s not for you. It’s geared exclusively toward this sort of play, and it’s unapologetic about it. As an example, Kirby's Adventure is a game about enjoying power-ups and creative solutions. Many of its included challenges? They’re no-power-up boss time challenges. We’re well-documented Kirby fans, and we’re not having fun playing the Kirby parts here! It works better for a game like Balloon Fight, but the true genres for this sort of thing don’t feel represented. There’s no Tetris, even as a nod to the original competition, nor do we see something like Dr. Mario here as a substitute. Scrolling shooters would also be good to see, or white-knuckle games like Punch-Out!! and such.

The game really wants you to play on TV, and with an audience. The interface is more for a spectator than a player, for better and worse. If you play by yourself, especially on a handheld screen, your actual view of a given game is only about a quarter of your display. The local multiplayer option, Party Mode, lets you play with up to eight players locally at the same time. And hey, this could be fun with a group?

Nintendo has been exceedingly clear that full NES games are not part of the Nintendo World Championships package. But, frankly, why not? We know that all of these titles are part of the Nintendo Switch Online offering, so they’re available to play, but what if there were built-in speedrunning milestones with split times, verified leaderboards and ghost data? This would be extra value, and still fit within the premise. If this project started life as one of the annual Nintendo Switch Online freebies, we’d believe it. With its focus on online play and general depth of content, it fits better beside Tetris 99 than Tears of the Kingdom.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is a release held together by sentiment and atmosphere, partly because that aspect of the game is so good and partly because the remainder of the game is so devoid of merit. Like NES Remix before it, it lives in a liminal space between viable gameplay ideas. If it were supposed to be a punishing speedrunning challenge, it would give players one try in the weekly championship and offer more long events. If it were a WarioWare-like fun time, it’d have a faster pace and a lot more variety. If it were a weekly Nintendo Switch Online diversion, it’d be a lower-commitment free download built around a real-time experience. And, well, it’s none of those.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition launches July 18, 2024 for Nintendo Switch.

The post Review: Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Is Stylish, Sparse appeared first on Siliconera.

The Nitro Deck+, from Embracer-owned outfit CRKD, follows up on the original Deck, a popular controller option for the Switch. That one-piece Joy-Con replacement sported Hall Effect sticks, a more Steam Deck-like form factor, and a whole line of aesthetics for style or nostalgia. We took a look at that first model, but now CRKD is looking to address a few shortcomings with this new revision.

Let’s start by talking about the new controls! The Nitro Deck+ swaps the position of the thumbsticks, using a symmetrical layout. It was apparently a big request, but ultimately it’s a matter of choice. It’s true that many games prioritize analog control and all the extra programmable buttons are there to let you keep thumbs on sticks at all times, but also this change deviates from the Switch’s default scheme and could result in some weirdness. The Switch’s base configuration gives players some latitude to hold it in different ways, letting you position your hands to be comfortable with buttons regardless of scheme or hand size. The Nitro Deck+ wants you to hold it one specific way, and that's higher up than you'd like when you need to use the D-pad and face buttons.

There are two new inputs, which CRKD dubs “sidekick buttons,” to the side of the analog sticks. There may be a use for them, in addition to the four paddles on the back, and that mobile app does let you remap them as you wish. Honestly, we thought we'd have trouble finding a use case for the new side buttons! They're in a weird position, and they don't make much sense during action. But combined with the stick swap on the right and the Nitro Deck’s general heft, we found it comfortable to use them to button through menus and prompts between bouts of action.

While testing this, we've also been working on our Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble review, and it's been a great test of control precision. For context, we've otherwise been using a Switch Lite and a Pro Controller, both with a few years of use, so it may not be entirely fair to the others to compare. That said, the Nitro Deck+’s buttons also feel stiff in a way that could perhaps use some breaking in, so maybe things balance out in the end. Still, even without fiddling with the app settings, the Deck+ offered more precise and granular control and made navigating boards marginally, but noticeably, easier.

About half the inputs – A, B, X, Y, ZL, ZR and the menu buttons – are glossy, while the D-pad, bumpers and extra keys are matte. This is a preference thing, for sure, but we're a fan of matte for long-term use. It's certainly a bit peculiar to see the device split the difference like this. It was also like this in the first model, so it's something CRKD has committed to doing.

The Bluetooth function added in this new version may not be what you expect. It’s not going to allow you to use it as a proper Pro Controller, sitting separate from the console, likely in the event you needed another pad for multiplayer. There’s no internal battery, so you can use it, but you’ll need to plug in with a cable. What it does, though, is allow you connect it to the company’s app. This is for firmware updates and customizing the control mapping, and with so many extra buttons, that easier remapping might be nice. (There are also instructions for remapping the buttons without the app in the online manual, which reminded us of the good old universal TV remote days.)

Our experience with the app was a bit shaky — it would lose connection with the device fairly quickly — but it functioned for remapping the inputs. Of course, to get there, you have to push through the company’s near-insufferable “collection” strategy, registering your device to an account and either capturing your “reaction” to your device’s serial number or saying no to about 12 system prompts trying to access your microphone and camera. Oofa doofa, this is a choice.

The Nitro Deck+ also adds a “docked mode,” which again might come with some caveats. You’ll need a USB-C-to-HDMI adapter, which the company sells separately. And you theoretically can continue to use the controls while you do it? But that’s really going to depend on your cable length. The HDMI and power cables need to be plugged in at all times, so that doesn’t seem ideal. And in our testing, even when we nestled right up to the screen, minor hand movements would jostle the cables and briefly lose connection.

In practicality, we’d really call it more of “dock mode.” Doubling as a dock replacement, either so you can keep the Nitro Deck+ assembled or so you can plug up to a secondary display without buying another first-party one, could be useful! But in those cases, we’d probably still recommend using a different controller. The more robust kickstand on the back of the unit is a significant help for such a use case, too.

There’s also an eject button now? It doesn’t push the system out of the Deck in the way you’d want, but it’s possible that wasn’t something they could engineer. Instead, it’s a latch you pull to make it hold onto the Switch less firmly, so it can keep its snug fit and help you get the system out when needed too. Since the device just plugs in to the USB-C port and functions like a wired Pro Controller instead of clicking into the Joy-Con rails, it’s likely that CRKD had to come up with some scheme like this to be more secure.

The aesthetic choices of the Nitro Deck+ are a bit “where do we go from here,” after all the choice options of the first model. There are two colors available for the new device at launch, with our review unit sporting a clear white front, solid white back and black buttons. The bases of the analog sticks are also metallic purple, for some reason? These choices could absolutely work for you, but they're not the home run of the nostalgia-bait ones or the safe one-color offerings.

There are benefits to CRKD’s approach, but it does come at a cost: weight. It's comfortable for a while, but having spent so much time in recent years with the Switch Lite, it's become a great platform for longer sessions. Whether it's the Steam Deck or the Ayaneo Slide, a heavier portable has remained in our rotation! And this feels a lot like those, with good grip and larger controls. But our wrists often give out before the battery does. If you're playing a game that puts more focus on the face buttons, you'll need to use a grip that makes the device more top-heavy, compounding the effect a bit.

The CRKD Nitro Deck+ is available through the company’s site for $69.99, or a bundle including the HDMI adapter for $10 more. For more on the Nitro Deck line of accessories, check out our look at the original model.

The post CRKD Nitro Deck+ Brings New Features. Is It Worth It? appeared first on Siliconera.

It’s been so long since an original Super Monkey Ball game! It’s true, Banana Blitz HD and Banana Mania did feel like they were leading to a truly new release, but still: we’re happy to see it. This time, it’s clear that the development team saw Fall Guys and said, “hey, we can make one of those.” Still, there’s a lot Monkey Ball can bring to the idea, and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble combines it with a fresh new Adventure mode for AiAi traditionalists.

First: the single-player! Or, rather, Adventure mode generally, since the game adds the ability to play through these levels with friends. It’s more of a social thing that doesn’t affect the gameplay very much, but nevertheless, it’s a nice bonus! And hey, maybe split-screen with friends and family will lessen the frustration of the harder levels just a bit. The Adventure mode comprises the traditional Super Monkey Ball experience: tilting a board to move your ball to the goal in 200 stages broken up into themed worlds. You can do this with tilt controls, if you want! Which is great. But the game defaults to analog stick control, and you’ll need to dig into the settings to use motion. 

The new mechanic — you knew they had to add one, whether you wanted one or not — is the Spin Dash, allowing a burst of speed and momentum that doesn’t necessarily align with your active roll. It’s a bit tricky to pull off a change of direction (with the default control mapping), but we’re sure the trick shots with this new mechanic are going to be ludicrous. 

The boards are designed to be generally clearable by most, with special collectibles and time-chasing serving to provide higher difficulty. That’s a good game balance to target, and though perpetual franchise scrubs like us will still hit a snag occasionally just clearing a level, it mostly does its job on that front. To help newcomers, there are a suite of welcome helper functions. You can rewind stages! There are mid-level checkpoints sometimes! There are tutorial-like ghosts you can enable, too. If your goal is simply to get through the level, these should help.

There’s also a story to this mode? We aren’t going to talk about it. It’s bad, which is fine, because it also doesn’t matter. Skip the cinematics and get back to tilting.

It’s multiplayer that brings the most new ideas to the ever-tilting table. Up to 16 players match up in varied modes: Race, Banana Hunt, Ba-Boom!, Goal Rush, and Robot Smash. In Race, you unsurprisingly roll through a checkpoint-laden course and try to reach the end as close to first as you can manage. This mode’s courses are designed to get easier as time goes on, keeping players in the hunt. It does mean that you don’t necessarily want to be first for most of the race, and also even the “easy” form of the tracks can be profoundly annoying when hit with multiple items or when the segment that troubles you the most just happens to not be a segment that gets easier with time.

Somewhat ironically, given both the inspiration and the franchise’s history, but a lot of the multiplayer segments would benefit from less falling. There are a ton of checkpoints in the races, and these mitigate the effects, but Monkey Ball’s more momentum-based approach makes falling that much more punishing and discouraging.

Banana Hunt and Ba-Boom! Are Mario Kart-like battle modes, with the former focused on banana collection and the latter on either bumping into or avoiding other players to make sure you aren’t holding a bomb when time expires. All the games are relatively fast, though we wish it were more playlist-based instead of kicking you out to the lobby between events. Perhaps this pacing will change with a full player server?

Goal Rush is trying something, for sure, as it’s a slalom-like event that has you claiming gates for your team and trying to target ones worth more points. Each time you enter a goal, you’re placed back at the top, and size, movement and distance all result in goals of varied value. Robot Smash feels like the “let’s make sure slow characters have an advantage in at least one challenge” mode. You slam into robots to deal damage and destroy them, and doing so earns team points.

There’s a robust customization suite here! And that is nice for a multiplayer game, especially with its lack of microtransactions and adherence to earned in-game currency. However, we here believe that GonGon should have his G shirt and it’s not an option, so that’s a real strike against the aesthetic offerings. In all seriousness, it’s nice to be able to have different looks for online play. That said, if you’re opting out of the free-to-play microtransaction hellscape in which the industry largely now finds itself, maybe you don’t have to still use the same unlock schemes and menus? Maybe this game doesn’t need gacha mechanics and login bonuses? Something to consider, perhaps?

We were hoping that the Switch exclusivity of the game’s initial release would mean that the Switch version is, technically speaking, nice and smooth. Instead, the hitching and other hiccups suggest to us that an eventual port might be the ideal experience. It’s already a given that the Switch’s online play heavily benefits from a wired connection, but in terms of surviving the inevitable wi-fi players in the group, Banana Rumble honestly does okay.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble is a welcome return to new ideas for the franchise, and does manage to avoid inferior minigame replication disappointment by… not replicating the old minigames at all! The choice to ape (pun intended, pun always intended, you know us) Fall Guys’ multiplayer formula isn’t the best, but there’s some fun here. And the main mode is enjoyable too!

Developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble launches on Nintendo Switch on June 25, 2024. It is, at least for the moment, exclusive to the console.

The post Review: Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble Means Monkey Business appeared first on Siliconera.

The new Pokemon Trading Card Game expansion set, Twilight Masquerade, brings the world and characters of Kitakami to the TCG. But which cards are the set’s best? We’ll try to break it down.

The coolest Pokemon TCG Twilight Masquerade cards

We’ve been, perhaps, a bit harsh on Tera Pokemon around here, but it’s undeniable that the new Greninja ex is quite cool. And useful! For one energy, it can deal 170 damage and search for any card in your deck, and its second ability is a good contingency choice for when you need to hit two bench targets for 120 instead. Now… is the new type relevant? Not particularly. But it doesn’t hurt anything either.

In terms of coolest pulls, though? Those are always the Hyper Rares. This set’s selections to get the gold treatment are Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex, Buddy-Buddy Poffin, Enhanced Hammer, Rescue Board and Luminous Energy. The gold looks special with anything, but it’s particularly funny for us to see it applied to street food.

The most meta-relevant Pokemon TCG Twilight Masquerade cards

The pool of ACE SPEC cards is expanding by six with this new set, adding options for players. Legacy Energy is a nice addition for decks that could use a rainbow energy, with the bonus of decreasing the opponent’s prize card reward for knocking a Pokemon out. Hyper Aroma lets you search for three Stage 1s, which would likely need a specific build, but that many searches as an Item has potential.

Speaking of lots of searches! Fellow ACE SPEC Secret Box costs itself and three discards, but gets you an Item, Tool, Supporter and Stadium of your choice. Rounding out the selection is Survival Brace, which lets you survive a one-hit KO; Unfair Stamp, which responds to a knockout with an asymmetrical hand re-draw; and Scoop Up Cyclone, a card that could see use if nothing else as a way to re-play enters-the-field utilities but might get you out of other jams from time to time.

Adding to the ranks of bench utilities is Drakloak, bringing back the old Pidgeotto ability to filter through and draw cards every turn. We also see some potential in Boomerang Energy, which is a colorless energy that reattaches itself when you discard it as an attack cost. Right now, we’re not sure there’s a viable enough user of it, but maybe there’s one on the horizon.

The most interesting Pokemon TCG Twilight Masquerade cards

We’re most interested to see what shenanigans players can formulate with the Ogerpon variants. The Ogre’s Mask card lets you essentially hot-swap the different ex cards from a Teal Mask variant that really needs grass energy to the others that only need one of their type to operate. With type switching not being a huge part of the competitive metagame and these moves not immediately showing their synergy to us, we’re not sure this’ll be great? But it’s certainly a creative attempt.

Also, though we’re not sure it rises to the level of competitive quite yet, the Festival Grounds suite of cards is purpose-built to provide a budget combo deck of its own. Creatures with the Festival Lead ability can attack twice when that stadium is in play. That sounds pretty great, yeah? Well unfortunately, most of the attacks available to them are really weak. But combining Dipplin’s longtime-favorite Do the Wave attack with the color-sharing Thwackey and its Boom Boom Groove ability to search for any card every turn? That might work.

The cutest Pokemon TCG Twilight Masquerade cards

Grookey just hanging out and having a good time is a definite mood-booster, as is a sedentary but still highly relatable Bellibolt. Eevee and Shinx are always safe bets, but their portrayals here do look quite nice.

We also like when the card art experiments with medium and style. The Ducklett works well for the character, and a knitted Sandygast brings whimsy to a species that can honestly be pretty disturbing when you think too long about it.

As always, the Illustration Rare cards have a much better opportunity to show personality. Hisuian Growlithe hams it up for the camera. Eevee pile up in a living room. Applin play a strange variant of Where’s Waldo in which Waldo is everywhere.

The latest Pokemon Trading Card Game expansion, Scarlet & Violet: Twilight Masquerade, launches May 24, 2024. For more information on the TCG, check out our overview of the set or our Pokemon TCG archive.

The post Pokemon TCG: The Best Twilight Masquerade Cards appeared first on Siliconera.

As we head into the warmer months of the year, many places around the world are preparing for lots of festivals, celebrating community and culture with food, games and entertainment. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that the new Pokemon Trading Card Game set uses this setting as its focus. Scarlet & Violet: Twilight Masquerade is about masks, feasts and teamwork. Like bright colors? Or maybe just a fan of downloadable content as a concept? This set might have something for you.

The heart of this set — which you may have predicted — is Ogerpon, the masked Pokemon that serves as the center of the story in The Teal Mask. All four mask variants are here, as are basic and ex forms. The big version can even swap masks into its other forms, though we’ll have to see if that ends up being worth it as a cornerstone of a deck build.

Its foes, on the other hand? Yeah, we can see them making an impact. Okidogi, Munkidori and Fezandipiti are all high-HP, one-prize basics with abilities that power them up if you attach darkness energy. If the energy types line up with a strong strategy, they’ll make an appearance as utility or sidekick fighters, for sure. In particular, a lineup of Munkidori on the bench, each moving three damage counters to the other side of the board every turn? Yikes. You better be ready to one-hit KO.

The Future and Ancient subtypes, introduced in Paradox Rift, get a few reinforcements too. Iron Leaves can help Future decks retrieve fallen fighters from the discard pile. Iron Bundle lets you hit-and-run, swapping the opponent’s active when you do. But the real catch here is Iron Thorns ex, with an ability that shuts down the abilities of non-Future heavy hitters.

On the Ancient side, Walking Wake’s double-edged attack won’t make many waves in competitive play, and Scream Tail ex’s opponent-delaying niche is extremely narrow. Brute Bonnet may be the most viable, with guaranteed poison and an attack that adds more injury to injury.

In terms of gameplay, Twilight Masquerade is more of a supplemental release than one that introduces new ideas. There are more ACE SPEC options now! New and reprinted Trainers fill in the gaps in recent sets’ possibility spaces! We’re seeing a much higher quantity of sidekicks to add to an existing deck than we are centerpieces worth building around. We’re sure one of these cards will break out in a way we’re not anticipating, of course. But nothing about this expansion is meant to stand alone, and that makes sense, because it doesn’t.

While this is nothing new, this set in particular had us thinking about the timing of The Pokemon Company’s TCG pipeline. It’s honestly impressive how quickly the turnaround is from cards’ release in Japan to their international one — it varies, but this one’s about a month — and that’s nice for some consistency between regions’ metagames.

But what about aligning with the video games? This set’s built around The Teal Mask, an add-on that launched last September, and we do have to wonder whether this regional focus would have landed a bit more effectively while eager players were still working through this mini-adventure. This may have resonated particularly strongly with us this time, given the setting itself is built around a festival.

Still, there’s a lot to like about the set’s aesthetics, regardless of timing. The look of all the packaging is built around Ogerpon’s signature teal, which is striking. New Pokemon like Sinistcha and Dipplin reinforce the food and fun theme. And hey, Thwackey’s here to keep the beat! It’s a fundamentally fun and pleasant set, a good fit for these warmer months of the year.

The latest Pokemon Trading Card Game expansion, Scarlet & Violet: Twilight Masquerade, launches May 24, 2024. For more information on the TCG, check out our Pokemon TCG archive.

The post In Pokemon TCG’s Twilight Masquerade, Ogerpon Is an Essential Worker appeared first on Siliconera.

Blaze Entertainment’s Evercade platform keeps on going, holding true (so far) to its promise to support its hardware releases with a library of cross-compatible cartridges. We’re taking a look at the most recent suite of carts, giving you the lowdown on what they offer and who should consider them.

Indie Heroes Collection 3

Always a highlight of the library, the Indie Heroes Collection installments batch together recently-developed retro games that cameo as a downloaded Game of the Month on the systems in the preceding year. A weird inclusion this time: Bubble Seahorse Adventures, which runs natively and sets off all sorts of uncanny valley signals in our brains when we see it running on a platform for retro games. Native ports can work well on the platform, when done right (like Cathedral), but this one feels off.

One of our favorites is Bone Marrow, which takes a very mobile-like slide puzzle and puts a fantasy dungeon-crawling skin atop it. Also a joy is Big2Small. In that game, you use the D-pad to slide animals until they hit an obstacle, using them as aids for each other to guide them each to particular squares. Generally, this cartridge works to mitigate the Evercade’s biggest weakness, which is slower-paced, thoughtful games. And we approve wholeheartedly.

Fans of the single-player puzzles of ChuChu Rocket! should check out the similarly-named Chew Chew Mimic, and VS owners can have some fun with friends in Chibi Monster Br4wl. For a full list of inclusions, you can check out the official Evercade page.

The C64 Collection 3

We’ll admit to having less of a nostalgia for the Commodore 64, as American console-heads, but the love and attention that Blaze is giving to the platform is enviable. This third collection adds 13 more games, including ones as well-known as Boulder Dash and as obscure as… Break Dance? The latter’s a strange inclusion on the surface, but it’s one of the first attempts at rhythm gaming and has a Space Channel 5-like repeat-after-me structure.

The Commodore 64 doesn’t make for the most natural fit here — you’ll have to use a virtual keyboard sometimes — but it definitely could be worse. If you’re new to a game, though, we strongly recommend a thorough reading of its section of the manual to explain what’s going on and how to control it. More than consoles, these computer games assume you’ll do that and don’t bother explaining things on-screen.

Duke Nukem Collections 1 & 2

If you paid any attention at all to the Evercade platform before this article, you probably know about these two Duke Nukem compilations. Launched alongside a commemorative version of the VS, they pull together titles from the franchise’s long history. Collection 1 is built around Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered, a native port for Evercade of the original side-scrollers, and also adds Duke Nukem 3D: Total Meltdown, the FPS’ PS1 port, for variety.

The second collection has some deeper cuts. Time to Kill and Land of the Babes are PlayStation games with a third-person perspective and a lot of nods to Tomb Raider. Duke Nukem Advance is more of a technological marvel than anything else, getting the full 3D FPS experience up and running on the Game Boy Advance. It remixes a lot of Duke 3D assets to do its own thing, and… just don’t play this one on the VS. Your fun with this in 2024 is inversely proportional to the screen size you play it on.

Demons of Asteborg / Astebros

We think the Evercade is at its best when it’s showcasing labors of love that wouldn’t usually otherwise carve out a spot on your shelf, and these indie two-packs do that well. Demons of Asteborg is a modern Sega Genesis action-adventure game, with exploration and platforming elements along the way. The animation is smooth and impressive, making for a game that makes you double-check whether it can actually run on original hardware. (Yep, it can!) Along with the gorgeous visuals comes a level of difficulty that is no joke. Perhaps understandably, it’s built for an audience that’s loved action games for decades and played the old ones so much that they needed something new.

Astebros, the included semi-sequel, ratchets down the barrier of entry a few notches, thankfully. It also brings in co-op and roguelike elements, and polishes some of the controls to feel more like its new-retro brethren. You can choose from three characters with different styles, and it’s an especially good time with an Evercade VS, a friend and some snacks. More than anything else in this lineup, this could lure in a pal who usually isn’t down to play older releases.

Goodboy Galaxy / Witch ‘n Wiz

Witch ‘n Wiz is an NES block-pushing puzzle game in the vein of Lolo or Sokoban. Your goal is to defeat all the monsters by moving to the same square. There's lots of failure states, so there are two previous buttons dedicated to undoing and resetting the board. It's very much a game about gravity; pushing blocks off platforms and destroying temporary supports is part of every solution, but you have to collect things in the right order.

Goodboy Galaxy, a newly-developed GBA platformer, stars a space-pup wandering about and retrieving gadgets and apps to unlock new abilities. The animation in the game nails a very GBA-specific brand of adorable. The environments are bright and colorful, if a bit utilitarian at the expense of world-building; you’ll find gameplay challenge, if not a believable biome. Also the dog is very good!

One cool thing about this release: it includes physical goodies! There are Goodboy Galaxy stickers and a hand-drawn guide map for Witch ‘n Wiz. We imagine this is the sort of thing that comes and goes based on Blaze’s profit margins for a given release, but we like seeing ‘em.

Evercade cartridges work on the Evercade EXP handheld, Evercade VS home system and even the budget-line Hyper Mega Tech! Super Pocket models. For more coverage of the platform, check out our archive.

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We’ve covered Blaze Entertainment’s efforts to build a licensed retrogame platform with physical cartridges in the Evercade, but for some players, even that cost of entry was a bit too steep. It’s possible, then, that the company’s latest device could be of interest. Released under the “Hyper Mega Tech!” branding instead of Evercade, the Super Pocket brings the price tag down below $60, and it packs its own built-in lineups of Capcom or Taito games to serve as a standalone release. But that Evercade cartridge slot? That makes it a lot more intriguing than most low-end games machines.

We were expecting perhaps for the Super Pocket to take a few design cues from the original Evercade, itself a cheaper device than the EXP with similar components. Instead, it goes for the more durable and modern look of the EXP, a choice that makes a lot of sense and is better. Returning briefly to the original Evercade to compare for this piece showed us just how far manufacturer Blaze has come in the design of its devices, learning a lot about materials and ergonomics along the way.

The color schemes, chosen to go with the built-in game collections, are a lot of fun. The Capcom edition uses the signature royal blue and yellow. The Taito model runs with a teal and black scheme. And already, we’re seeing it’s not a rote template; Blaze used teal buttons on the black faceplate for Taito and kept the whole front blue for Capcom. If they keep iterating for potential future models, that could be pleasant to see.

What we also expected? Tech spec downgrades. And it doesn’t seem like they’re here in a significant enough way to notice! We tested the full gamut of Evercade cartridges on the device, including some that the other hardware doesn’t run the best. The Super Pocket didn’t flinch. Some of the original PlayStation titles in the library frankly don’t run well through their own technical failings, but our experience was indistinguishable between hardware. We’ll have to return to this when we’re able to try out the upcoming Nintendo 64 emulation, but for now? We’re impressed.

Each Super Pocket has a built-in library of arcade games. Capcom titles return after their appearance on the Evercade EXP, making clear that this sort of licensing is apparently a lot easier for Blaze than a cartridge. The standouts in this collection are Street Fighter II’: Hyper Fighting, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts and the 1942 trilogy. Capcom dominated arcades in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, and for good reason: these games stand the test of time.

There’s also Final Fight, which we like a lot but more for its co-op play which isn’t possible on the Super Pocket. Strider and Bionic Commando are here, too, along with Wolf of the Battlefield: MERCS and Forgotten Worlds. Our favorite of the bunch is Captain Commando, a criminally overlooked beat-’em-up that lets you play as a baby in a mech.

The Taito model has all the usual suspects from the company’s arcade heyday. The front of the box shouts about Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble, which makes sense, as no other Taito properties have nearly as much global popularity. Puzzle Bobble (also known as Bust A Move) is here too. The Taito collection skews a bit older, with more ‘80s games joining 1978’s Space Invaders in the bunch. This means a different sort of sensibility than the Capcom set.

The remaining arcade inclusions have less consistent player awareness, but we know some people who love them. They are: Operation Wolf, Rastan, The NewZealand Story, Cadash, Chack’n Pop, Don Doko Don, Elevator Action, The Fairyland Story, Football Champ, Growl, Volfied, Kiki Kaikai, The Legend of Kage and Liquid Kids. As you can see, the Taito collection makes up for its less-known lineup with a larger selection of releases.

Both collections feature almost all arcade games, with one console cameo tacked on. Capcom adds NES Mega Man, while Taito includes Genesis release Space Invaders ‘91. We imagine Mega Man is the most affordable way Blaze could put the Mega Man logo on the box, which makes sense at retail, but Space Invaders ‘91 is a harder inclusion to explain.

So where are the cost reductions in the Super Pocket, then? The answer appears to be build quality. It’s durable, in a Nintendo 2DS sort of way, made so that kids can’t break it. But adults will notice a few things! The tinny speaker emits noises accurately, but not really with a robust sound you’d want to experience it if you have other choices. The shoulder buttons are… there, if you need them for cartridge compatibility, but they’re in the one awkward position available to put them and need a peculiar amount of leverage to press.

The main concern is likely the buttons. They’re functional, but a bit stiff and unresponsive at times. It’s the sort of setup that would be totally fine with games that are more about decisions than reflexes! Unfortunately, that remains the weakness of the Evercade game library, with its focus on arcade action. And the built-in Super Pocket games exclusively fall into this category. When testing a game we know well, Taito classic Puzzle Bobble, the cursor would blow past our target with a simple light touch.

The Super Pocket supports an “Easy Mode” option, which is a streamlined setting to turn all the arcade games’ dip switches down to their most forgiving settings. This is, we presume, to make the device more approachable to young children, so it can be something of an entry point to retro games. We can confirm that it does what it says, letting us feel for once in our lives like we’re good at Street Fighter II. Combined with a form factor that’s definitely made for smaller hands, it could make for an intriguing kid gift.

(It should be noted, though: both devices carry a PEGI 12 rating for the included games. Nothing here is really egregious, but there’s fighting and guns and explosions in some titles, so keep that in mind if you’re handing one to a toddler or something.)

We don’t mind the 4-by-3 screen of the Super Pocket. In many ways, this makes more sense for most games! It’s nice to see Blaze find a supplier for them! And while the separate Hyper Mega Tech! branding is a bit strange, the idea that they’re reserving the Evercade name for higher-quality builds at least shows they’re sensitive to that stuff.

The Hyper Mega Tech! Super Pocket is available now for $59, in Capcom and Taito models. It’s compatible with the Evercade cartridge library. For more Evercade coverage, including recommendations for which carts to pick up first, check out our archive.

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