Kalanoro Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC

Release Date: September 24, 2026

Main Story Length: 6 hours

Developer: Red Raketa Studio

A Platformer With a Pulse

Kalanoro isn’t trying to be the biggest, hardest, or most mechanically complicated 3D platformer you’ll play. It doesn’t need to be.

What it does have is personality.

Set in a colorful world heavily inspired by Madagascar and Malagasy culture, Kalanoro mixes traditional 3D platforming with combat, collectibles, band management, and music into an adventure that feels familiar without feeling like another copy-and-paste platformer.

Your ultimate goal is to build a band, play shows, and keep your increasingly needy group of musicians happy along the way. That means exploring different environments, gathering materials, hunting down hidden scrolls and other collectibles, rescuing band members, and handling some surprisingly hands-on responsibilities back at the bus.

It’s simple. Occasionally very simple. But more often than not, it works.

And considering I spent a good chunk of my roughly 10-hour playthrough refusing to leave levels until I had squeezed every last collectible out of them, Kalanoro clearly did something right.

The Best Part Is Simply Getting Around

The platforming and traversal are easily where Kalanoro feels strongest.

Movement is smooth, responsive, and just plain enjoyable. Levels give you enough room to bounce around, search different paths, and poke into corners that look suspicious enough to be hiding something. More often than not, they are.

That constant hunt became one of my favorite parts of the game.

Each area gives you things to collect and secrets to uncover, and while none of it completely rewrites the collectible-platformer rulebook, the environments are designed well enough that completing a level feels satisfying instead of like you’re vacuuming icons off a map.

There’s a nice flow to jumping through obstacles, fighting a few enemies, spotting something slightly out of reach, and immediately thinking, Alright, how the hell do I get over there?

That’s exactly what I want from this kind of game.

Kalanoro also does a good job of changing up its environments before any one area becomes stale. Its Madagascar-inspired identity gives the world a flavor of its own, and the different locations have enough visual and structural variety to keep pushing you forward.

(Click any image to enlarge)

Combat Is Easy, But It Has Some Tricks

Combat follows a similar philosophy: straightforward, smooth, and rarely stressful.

You can pick up objects and weapons around the environment to swing or throw at enemies, use your hair-based abilities to grab and launch yourself toward targets, zap enemies with electricity, and gradually add more options as you progress.

There are also sections that lock you into an area while groups of enemies pile in, giving the combat a little more room to breathe outside of the smaller encounters scattered throughout the levels.

Mechanically, it all works.

The problem is that Kalanoro rarely makes you prove you’ve actually gotten good at any of it.

Most normal enemies go down without much resistance, and while a few bosses presented a nice little challenge, I never felt like the game was truly testing everything it had taught me. For some players, that will be part of the appeal. This clearly isn’t designed to be a controller-snapping platformer where every jump requires surgical precision.

Still, I would have liked to see the difficulty pushed another notch higher, even if it were optional.

The foundation is good enough that I wanted more excuses to really use it.

Building a Band Is Fun — Babysitting One, Less So

Between adventures, Kalanoro brings you back to your bus, where the whole “build a band” concept becomes more than just a story beat.

You’ll feed your band members, print posters, prepare for shows, and customize a handful of things while trying to keep everybody happy.

I like the idea behind it.

These little tasks make your band feel like something you’re actively maintaining instead of a collection of characters automatically following you around. It adds another layer to the adventure and gives the bus a purpose beyond being a glorified menu.

But this is also where Kalanoro occasionally crosses the line from charming routine into busywork.

Cooking meals and printing posters can become tedious, particularly when you really just want to get back out into the levels. Band members also need to be fed, and if you ignore them for too long, they can leave and head to another island, forcing you to go find them again.

That system produced probably my most frustrating recurring moment.

There were times when I went to feed somebody only to find them sleeping. I’d leave, come back later…and apparently they had decided starvation was preferable to waiting five more minutes because they were gone.

Look, I’m all for band drama. But losing a musician because they slept through dinner feels slightly above my pay grade.

It was never a major problem, but it happened a few times during my playthrough.

The Shows Needed a Bigger Encore

For a game built around forming a band, I also expected the actual performances to have a little more bite.

Shows use timing-based mechanics, which makes perfect sense for the theme, but the timing windows are extremely forgiving. Once you understand what the game wants from you, there isn’t much tension involved.

This feels like one of Kalanoro’s biggest missed opportunities.

I didn’t need it to suddenly turn into a hardcore rhythm game, but give me an optional higher difficulty. Speed things up. Shrink the timing windows. Make me earn that perfect performance.

By the time you’ve traveled across the world assembling this band and earning fans, hitting the stage should feel like the payoff.

Instead, the shows are enjoyable little breaks in the adventure when they could have been one of its defining mechanics.

Color, Music, and a Whole Lot of Character

Where Kalanoro never struggles is charm.

The colorful cartoon visuals fit the game perfectly, and the art direction gives everything a warm, inviting look without trying to overwhelm you with graphical fireworks. It knows its style and commits to it.

The soundtrack deserves its own praise too.

For a game built around music, getting that part wrong would have been a pretty serious problem. Thankfully, the music complements the adventure extremely well and gives the entire experience even more energy and personality.

I also found the overall experience smooth. Controls felt responsive, movement remained fluid, and I didn’t run into performance problems significant enough to pull me out of the game.

That matters here because Kalanoro’s strongest feature is its movement. A platformer can have all the personality in the world, but if jumping from point A to point B feels like driving a shopping cart with one broken wheel, we have a problem.

Kalanoro passes that test comfortably.

It Knows When to Leave the Stage

The game’s length also works heavily in its favor.

My playthrough came in at around 10 hours, although a good portion of that was because I kept trying to fully complete each level rather than sprinting straight toward the finish.

That felt just right.

The bus-management mechanics were beginning to show their repetitive side, and the combat wasn’t becoming substantially more difficult, but Kalanoro wraps things up before either issue has enough time to dominate the experience.

It doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Instead, new environments, collectibles, abilities, and the steady progression of building your band give you enough reason to keep moving until the credits roll.

Sometimes knowing when to end is just as important as knowing how to start.

The Verdict — Is Kalanoro Worth Your Time?

Kalanoro is a warm, colorful, and genuinely original spin on the 3D platformer formula.

Its combat could use more resistance. Its musical performances deserve a harder difficulty option. And some of the band-management chores start feeling less like living the rock-star lifestyle and more like somebody handed you the tour manager’s unpaid internship.

But those frustrations never erased what I enjoyed most.

Moving through the levels feels good. Hunting down collectibles is satisfying. The combat has fun ideas even when it goes easy on you. The music hits. The visuals are full of character. Most importantly, the game has heart.

Kalanoro understands that not every adventure needs to punish you or consume 50 hours of your life to justify its existence. Sometimes you want something colorful, creative, easy to pick up, and fun to complete.

That’s where it lands.

If you’re looking for a brutally challenging platformer or a deep combat system, this probably won’t scratch that itch. But if you want an upbeat 3D adventure with smooth movement, satisfying exploration, plenty to collect, and enough personality to separate itself from the crowd, Kalanoro is absolutely worth considering.

It may occasionally make you feel more like a babysitter than a bandleader, but I still enjoyed the tour.

Disclosure: A review code for Kalanoro was provided through Game.Press for review purposes. Receiving a review code had no influence on the opinions expressed in this review or its final score.

The Blood of Dawnwalker Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release Date: September 3, 2026

Main Story Length: 20 hours

Developer: Rebel Wolves

An All-Time Favorite

I’m just going to come out and say it right from the start: The Blood of Dawnwalker isn’t just my favorite game of 2026. It became one of my favorite games of all time.

I was admittedly set up to like this one. I’ve always been a vampire fan. My dad loved Interview with the Vampire—the old one with a young Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise—and True Blood was one of my favorite shows when it was airing. Give me vampires, mix in swords, knights, medieval Europe, some dark fantasy and plenty of blood, and you’ve already got my attention.

But liking the ingredients doesn’t guarantee I’m going to love the meal.

Dawnwalker got me almost immediately.

It’s rare that an opening sequence completely sells me on a game. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 comes to mind as the most recent to do it. Dawnwalker belongs in that same conversation for me. By the time its introduction ended, I couldn’t believe what I had just watched. I was instantly invested in Coen, his family and the nightmare unfolding around them.

From there, the game barely let go.

And after roughly 35 hours, when my first playthrough finally ended, I did something I almost never do:

I started over.

Immediately.

That probably says more about how I feel about this game than anything else I’m about to write.

Thirty Days Changes Everything

The Blood of Dawnwalker is a single-player, open-world dark fantasy action RPG from Rebel Wolves. You play as Coen, a young man who becomes a Dawnwalker—human during the day and vampire at night—while trying to save his captured family.

The catch?

You have 30 in-game days to do it.

Thankfully, this isn’t some clock constantly ticking in the corner while you panic because you stopped to look at a cool tree. Time progresses when completing quests and certain meaningful actions, which turns the system into something much more interesting than a traditional countdown.

You constantly have decisions to make.

Do I investigate this person? Help that village? Chase down a lead? Search for better equipment? Handle something now, or hope I have enough time later?

There is far more content in Vale Sangora than you’re realistically going to see in a single run, and I love that. Instead of making me feel like I needed to clear every icon off a map, Dawnwalker made me accept that my playthrough was my playthrough.

I wasn’t supposed to see everything.

That made what I did choose to pursue feel more important.

It’s also a huge reason why I immediately wanted another run. I already knew there were quests I had missed, characters whose stories could have gone differently and major decisions I wanted another shot at.

For somebody who almost never replays games, convincing me to begin another 30-plus-hour RPG right after finishing it is ridiculous.

Yet there I was.

Back in Vale Sangora like I forgot something at the store.

Combat That Never Lost Its Bite

The combat might be my favorite part of the entire game.

Dawnwalker uses directional blocking, meaning defending yourself isn’t simply about pressing a button at the correct time. You also need to read where an attack is coming from and respond accordingly.

For whatever reason, this never stopped feeling good.

Perfectly reading an enemy, blocking in the correct direction and immediately responding with your own attack has an addictive rhythm to it. Even dozens of hours in, I was still getting that little hit of satisfaction every time I nailed a sequence.

Against groups, it gets even better.

When everything clicks—blocking one enemy, spinning onto another, firing off an ability, repositioning and finishing somebody before the next attack lands—Coen feels incredibly dangerous.

I don’t remember the last time controlling a character made me feel this cool.

The game isn’t afraid to push back, either. Plenty of boss fights and larger groups took me multiple attempts, although I’ll admit some of that was self-inflicted. Dawnwalker marks enemies above your recommended level with increasingly threatening skull indicators, and apparently seeing one of those was less of a warning for me and more of an invitation.

Sometimes I won.

Sometimes the game politely reminded me to know my place.

Either way, fights remained engaging because there were so many ways to approach them.

Nighttime Coen Is Where Things Get Wild

Daytime Dawnwalker is good.

Nighttime Dawnwalker is where I fell in love.

During the day, Coen relies more heavily on his swordsmanship, equipment and witchcraft. Once night falls, his vampire side takes over and suddenly you’re playing with an entirely different toolbox.

The abilities are fantastic.

They’re unique, satisfying to use and, more importantly, actually meaningful during battle. Learning how to chain different powers together completely changed how I handled encounters, and unlocking something new regularly made me rethink what Coen was capable of.

Then there’s the movement.

Oh, the vampire movement.

This is one of my favorite traversal systems I’ve used in an RPG. Moving around the world at night feels fast, aggressive and supernatural in exactly the way it should.

You can even transform into a wolf and sprint across the map.

Come on.

And if turning into a wolf somehow isn’t convenient enough for you, there’s fast travel too.

The combination of vampire abilities, sword combat, stealth and traversal makes nighttime exploration feel fundamentally different from daytime without making either half of the game feel unnecessary.

But still, I preferred the night.

By a lot.

Apparently all I needed to enjoy cardio was vampirism.

Choices That Actually Feel Like Choices

One of Dawnwalker’s biggest strengths is how often I felt like my decisions mattered.

This isn’t a game where every dialogue option eventually bends back toward the exact same result.

People can live.

People can die.

People can escape.

Information can disappear with them.

Sometimes showing mercy gave me something valuable later. Other times, taking someone out opened a completely different opportunity. Characters could provide gear, information or leads that became useful somewhere else, and the game was constantly reminding me that a decision I made hours ago hadn’t simply vanished.

That makes choosing difficult.

Which is exactly what I want from an RPG.

The branching paths also work because the story surrounding them is excellent. The main narrative grabbed me immediately and never really lost momentum. The dialogue is strong, the voice acting works, the cutscenes are engaging and the smaller stories scattered throughout the world actually feel connected to the larger conflict.

There are journals and written stories everywhere for players who want to dig deeper, but I never felt like the game required me to read a novel every ten minutes just to understand what was happening.

Most importantly, I rarely felt like Dawnwalker was wasting my time.

There’s very little fluff.

For an RPG this large, that might be one of the biggest compliments I can give it.

A Packed World That Never Felt Like Homework

Open-world games have become very good at giving us things to do.

They haven’t always been as good at making those things worth doing.

Dawnwalker strikes an excellent balance.

Vale Sangora is full of quests, characters, equipment, crafting materials, secrets and places worth exploring, yet I rarely felt overwhelmed by it.

I wanted to see what was around the next corner.

Looting helps tremendously because it’s fast and efficient. Holding the left trigger highlights nearby objects worth checking without turning your screen into a glowing mess of icons.

It sounds small.

It isn’t.

That kind of convenience keeps exploration moving instead of constantly forcing you to stop, stare at shelves and wonder whether a slightly darker brown object sitting on another brown object is something you can pick up.

Crafting works well. Inventory management feels clean. Armor looks great. The different swords are fun to experiment with. The skill trees gave me plenty to chase, and the active abilities became a major part of how I built Coen.

There’s a lot happening here, but most systems feel like they belong.

Vale Sangora Looks Exactly How It Should

Dawnwalker is not the most technically groundbreaking game I’ve ever seen.

I also didn’t care.

The art direction does far more for me than raw graphical horsepower ever could.

Vale Sangora has an identity. Dense forests, medieval villages, castles, mountains, blood-soaked interiors and beautifully lit nighttime environments all fit together into a world that feels grim without becoming visually dull.

Nature scenes were probably where I found the game at its sharpest, and the lighting throughout is excellent.

Day and night both have their own atmosphere, which matters in a game where switching between them changes so much mechanically.

The sound design deserves credit too. Combat hits have weight, the soundtrack complements the world without constantly demanding attention, and the overall audio presentation helps sell the darker tone.

And yes, the violence is substantial.

If gore bothers you, this probably isn’t your game.

For everybody else, Dawnwalker understands exactly what kind of fantasy it is creating.

Just when you thought your gaming career might end without sucking the blood out of a sweet little bunny rabbit, Rebel Wolves had other plans.

The Lock-On System Occasionally Fights Back

Very little annoyed me during my playthrough, but the lock-on system could use slight improvements.

Most of the time it works fine.

Occasionally, though, I felt like the game had slightly too much control over who Coen wanted to target.

One example involved an ability called Dirty Trick, which throws sand into an enemy’s eyes. I’d blind somebody, prepare to absolutely annihilate them while they were vulnerable and then suddenly find myself locked onto the guy standing next to them instead.

No.

I threw the sand at that guy.

Let me ruin his evening.

Switching targets back was usually easy enough, and this rarely cost me a fight, so I’m not pretending it destroyed the combat system. It didn’t.

But considering how close everything else came to feeling perfect for me, this was the one mechanical annoyance that stood out.

One Crash Became My Biggest Problem

My largest issue was more serious.

After one important boss fight—I won’t spoil which—choosing a specific option afterward caused my game to crash.

Three separate times.

That became especially frustrating because the fight itself wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Eventually, I had to choose the alternative decision simply to continue progressing.

That bothered me because this is a game built around player choice, and a technical problem effectively made one of those choices for me.

The good news is that this was also the only major bug I encountered during my entire playthrough.

Outside of that situation, my experience was impressively smooth.

It doesn’t erase the problem, especially considering where it occurred, but it also wasn’t representative of the other 30-plus hours I spent playing.

I Was One With Coen

There are games I enjoy.

There are games I love.

Then there are those rare ones that completely take over my free time for a week and temporarily become part of my personality.

Dawnwalker did that.

I was one with Coen.

His journey is memorable, he’s incredibly likable and his combination of humanity and vampirism creates one of the most interesting RPG protagonists I’ve controlled in years.

More importantly, the game built around him delivers.

The story kept me invested. Combat never became boring. Exploration constantly rewarded my curiosity. The abilities were exciting. Choices carried weight. The day-and-night structure fundamentally changed how I approached situations. And even after 35 hours, I still felt like there was another version of this story waiting for me.

So I started again.

Rebel Wolves absolutely crushed its first game.

There are some quirks. The targeting could be better. That crash should not have happened. I’m not going to pretend a game is flawless just because I love it.

But those issues barely changed what was otherwise a near-perfect experience for me.

If you enjoy RPGs, action games, dark fantasy, strong storytelling or games that actually let your decisions shape your journey, The Blood of Dawnwalker deserves your attention.

And considering I finished it and immediately volunteered to go through another 30 days of blood, misery and family drama?

Yeah.

This one hit me hard.

Crimson Moon Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release Date: September 1, 2026

Main Story Length: 12 hours

Developer: ProbablyMonsters

Not Every Moon Has to Shine for Everyone

Let’s get this out of the way early: Crimson Moon won’t be for everyone.

There are things here I loved, moments where the combat clicked, and enough style and personality to keep pulling me back in. But this is also a tough roguelike that doesn’t always do what you want it to do—and sometimes seems perfectly happy watching you suffer because of it.

The basic structure sends you through a series of districts, typically completing three gates before reaching the district boss. Sounds simple enough. It isn’t.

Those runs get brutal, particularly once you reach the third and fourth mission. Crimson Moon wants you to learn its systems, improve your build, and slowly become strong enough to push farther each time. That’s the roguelike deal. The problem is that when the core combat isn’t consistently addictive enough to make failure feel exciting, restarting an entire district can turn from “one more run” into “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

And I had both reactions plenty of times.

Smooth Swordplay, Until You Try to Get Out of the Way

Combat is where Crimson Moon becomes complicated for me.

On the surface, everything feels responsive. Using a controller on PC was smooth, attacks landed with some satisfying weight, and chaining together abilities with your standard light and heavy attacks can absolutely create some entertaining encounters.

But I’ve always been a roller.

Give me a third-person Soulslike with a sword and I’m probably trying to roll through, around, and occasionally directly into every problem the game throws at me. I’d rather dodge an attack than stand there waiting for the perfect parry.

Crimson Moon did not appreciate my lifestyle choices.

Rolling frequently feels less effective than it should. Enemies can remain aggressively locked onto your character through the dodge, meaning what looks like a perfectly reasonable escape can still end with a sword buried somewhere you’d rather it wasn’t.

That wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if parrying felt fantastic.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

The shield animation feels slow, making the timing difficult to read and, more importantly, not especially rewarding when you finally get it right. There’s certainly a learning curve here, and players who love mastering parry windows may have a better relationship with the system than I did. But for my playstyle, neither defensive option ever became something I completely trusted.

That’s a rough problem to have in a game that gets this difficult.

Then You Become a God—and Everything Makes Sense

Ironically, my favorite part of Crimson Moon’s combat is when the game lets you temporarily stop playing by its normal rules.

Triggering God Mode by clicking both analog sticks transforms you into an absolute force, and it rules.

For those moments, the combat gets faster, more aggressive, and dramatically more satisfying. You aren’t cautiously poking at enemies or waiting for another defensive opportunity—you’re tearing through them.

Every time I activated it, I found myself wishing more of Crimson Moon’s normal combat carried that same energy.

You also have two rechargeable powers alongside your light and heavy attacks, so there are tools to experiment with. But over longer sessions, the basic combat rotation started feeling a little thin. With how many roguelikes, Soulslikes, and games blending the two genres continue to release, combat needs something that makes you immediately want another run.

Crimson Moon occasionally gave me that feeling.

It just didn’t give it to me enough.

Misery Loves Company

One of Crimson Moon’s most enticing features is also one that could completely change how some players experience it: two-player online co-op with cross-platform support.

You don’t have to suffer through Gildenarch alone.

Being able to jump into these runs with another player is a legitimately strong selling point for a game built around difficult encounters, repeated attempts, and learning how to survive increasingly nasty districts. Co-op isn’t just someone running beside you either. Players share lives, can resurrect one another, and the game adjusts its difficulty and enemy composition around having another player in the fight.

More importantly, this feels like the type of game that naturally benefits from having a friend involved.

A frustrating death when you’re alone can make you stare at the screen wondering whether you really want to do those three gates again. A frustrating death with a friend usually turns into blaming each other, laughing about it, and immediately jumping back in.

That matters in a roguelike.

Cross-platform multiplayer makes the feature even more appealing because it removes one of the biggest barriers that normally gets in the way of co-op games: figuring out who bought it on what platform. For players specifically looking for something challenging to grind through with a friend, co-op might actually be the strongest reason to give Crimson Moon a shot. Xbox’s listing explicitly advertises cross-platform multiplayer and cross-platform co-op, while the game is available with two-player online play across its supported platforms.

Five Lives Later, Death Still Hurts

The progression system does eventually make things more manageable.

As you gain additional lives, upgrade your character, and expand your resources, runs become noticeably easier. Reaching a point where I had five lives and three healing jugs that refilled after each gate gave me significantly more breathing room than I had early on.

There’s also plenty to work toward.

Weapons, equipment, upgrades, different builds, bounties and other progression systems give Crimson Moon a respectable amount of content for players who enjoy tweaking their setup between runs.

My issue is that the amount of customization sometimes feels deeper than the gameplay supporting it.

There are plenty of things I can change, but I didn’t always feel compelled to obsess over them because the actual fighting started becoming repetitive before the progression systems ran out of ideas.

And losing a run can sting.

Working through three gates only to finally reach a boss, get destroyed, and realize you’re heading all the way back to the beginning is textbook roguelike design. I understand the assignment.

That doesn’t mean I have to enjoy turning the paper in.

When the combat is clicking, another attempt is easy to justify. When it isn’t, replaying those same sections can feel more exhausting than enticing.

Movement Might Secretly Be the Best Part

Here’s something I didn’t expect: simply moving around Crimson Moon can be fantastic.

Traversal feels fluid, jumping around the environments is satisfying, and launching yourself from one position to another before landing directly on an enemy with a vicious downward strike produced some of my favorite moments in the entire game.

There’s a looseness to movement that I wish carried even further into the defensive combat.

Even sprinting comes with an interesting design choice. Sprint and roll share the same button rather than placing sprint on the left-stick click like so many modern games do. I was playing with a DualSense Edge, so changing controls wouldn’t exactly have been a problem, but I never felt strongly enough about the default setup to bother.

It’s unconventional.

It also works.

It Certainly Knows How to Look Good While Killing You

Visually, Crimson Moon makes a strong first impression.

The graphics are crisp, the overall art direction is well executed, and several environments have enough visual personality that entering a new area still feels exciting even when the underlying enemy encounters begin becoming familiar.

Enemy variety is respectable early on but starts wearing thinner as the game progresses. The bosses fare better visually. Some of their designs are genuinely cool—even while they’re repeatedly introducing your face to the floor.

I also really liked the main hub area.

It has a beautiful design, and even something as straightforward as selecting your next mission comes with a slick animation that gives the location some personality. These little presentation touches help Crimson Moon feel more polished than you might expect from its scale.

Performance on PC was also generally solid during my experience. I encountered some occasional minor stuttering, but nothing severe enough to meaningfully damage the experience.

Indie Ambition With a Few Sharp Edges

It’s important to judge Crimson Moon for what it actually is.

This isn’t a massive AAA production, and expecting it to compete dollar-for-dollar with games backed by enormous studios would be unfair. Within its scope, there’s an admirable amount happening here.

There are builds to experiment with, gear to chase, upgrades to unlock, bosses to conquer, districts to push through and plenty of opportunities to gradually make your character stronger.

The foundation is good.

I just don’t think every piece built on top of that foundation is equally strong.

The combat can be fun without being exceptional. Enemy variety starts strong before becoming familiar. The roguelike structure provides plenty of replayability, but occasionally asks you to replay sections that you may not actually be dying to experience again.

That distinction matters.

A great roguelike makes failure feel like permission to immediately start another run.

Crimson Moon occasionally made failure feel like paperwork.

Verdict — There’s Fun Under the Frustration

Crimson Moon frustrated me.

It also entertained me.

Sometimes those two things happened within about thirty seconds of each other.

There’s a solid game underneath the rougher edges, particularly for players who already enjoy the intersection between Soulslike combat and roguelike progression. The movement feels good, God Mode is an absolute blast, the presentation punches above its weight, and there’s enough progression here for players who enjoy experimenting with builds.

But the defensive combat never completely won me over, repeated runs eventually lose some of their spark, and the fundamental combat loop could use more variety to support everything surrounding it.

I don’t think Crimson Moon is going to become the game we’re all still discussing years from now.

It doesn’t need to be.

For its price point and indie scale, there’s enough here to make it a worthwhile experience for the right player. I had a good time with Crimson Moon—even if the game occasionally made me question whether it wanted me to.

If tough roguelikes are your thing, you’re comfortable dying, rebuilding, and trying again, and you don’t mind a little frustration mixed into your fun, there’s definitely something here worth sinking your teeth into.

Disclosure: A review code for Crimson Moon was provided for review purposes. Receiving a review code had no influence on the opinions expressed in this review or its final score.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release Date: July 9, 2026

Main Story Length: 24 hours

Developer: Ubisoft Singapore

It’s Been a Long Time, Assassin’s Creed

I was in middle school when the first Assassin’s Creed came out.

That sentence alone is doing some serious damage to me.

It truly feels like forever ago, but I still remember how fresh that first game felt. Assassin’s Creed wasn’t yet this enormous franchise with more entries than I can confidently name without checking Wikipedia. It was just this really cool new game that slowly started making its way around my friend group until suddenly everyone knew about it.

I played the first two games, loved them, and then somehow… stopped.

Not because I disliked the series. There were just always more games coming out, the backlog never stopped growing, and eventually convincing myself to jump into the fourth, sixth, ninth — whatever number we were on — Assassin’s Creed became increasingly difficult. I sampled a few of them for an hour here or there, but I never properly came back.

Then I saw Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced.

Yeah. I needed to make sure I play this one.

And that turned out to be a very good decision.

Well, That Escalated Quickly

Black Flag Resynced doesn’t exactly ease you back into the Assassin’s Creed universe.

It throws you onto a pirate ship underneath a dark, violent sky while cannon fire explodes around you and everyone seemingly has somewhere very important to be before they die.

It’s absolute chaos.

And I loved every second of it.

There are opening sequences in games that spend an hour teaching you how to move. Black Flag Resynced basically hands you a cannon and says, “Figure it out.”

It was one hell of a way to reintroduce myself to the series.

Even after finally reaching land, that initial excitement never disappeared. Suddenly I was climbing, exploring, hunting treasure, looking for the next discovery and realizing that the game had already gotten its hooks into me.

There was always something else just close enough on the map to justify going after it.

I’ll grab that treasure and then continue the story.

Okay, I’ll hit that viewpoint too.

Actually, what’s over there?

This is how three hours disappear.

The Caribbean Is Ridiculously Good-Looking

The visual overhaul is probably what surprised me most.

This game looks fantastic.

Not fantastic “for a remake.” Not fantastic “considering the original came out in 2013.” It is simply a beautiful game.

The tropical landscapes are gorgeous, the water looks phenomenal, storms completely change the mood of the world, and I regularly found myself stopping somewhere simply because I wanted a screenshot.

The underwater sections might be the biggest showcase of all.

There’s an impressive amount of detail beneath the surface, and diving down to explore wrecks and search for treasure became one of those activities I initially expected to dabble with before realizing I wanted to keep doing it.

That’s probably the best compliment I can give the world in Black Flag Resynced: I wanted to explore it even when nobody was asking me to.

There are games where a question mark on the map feels like homework.

Here, it felt like loot.

And I am apparently very easily manipulated by pirate booty.

Edward Kenway Makes It Easy to Stick Around

A massive open world doesn’t mean much if I don’t care about the person I’m dragging across it for dozens of hours.

Thankfully, Edward Kenway is a badass.

More importantly, he’s actually likable.

He has enough personality to carry the adventure without feeling like the game is constantly screaming at you about how cool its protagonist is. His journey kept me invested, and the story has some legitimately strong turns along the way. There were even a few moments that ended with enough of a cliffhanger that I immediately wanted to see what happened next.

Considering how disconnected I’ve been from Assassin’s Creed for so long, I didn’t expect the story to be one of the things pulling me forward.

The audio backs everything up nicely. Cannon fire has weight, combat sounds appropriately violent, and the world has enough ambient life that sailing around never feels dead. I wouldn’t say the soundtrack or sound design ever completely blew me away, but it consistently does its job well.

And then there are the sea shanties.

I’m not saying they make me a better captain.

I’m just saying morale aboard my ship was excellent.

Being a Pirate Is Still the Best Part

Once I got comfortable controlling the ship, naval gameplay became one of my favorite parts of the entire experience.

There is a learning curve. Early on, steering while positioning yourself for cannon fire can feel a little awkward, especially when everything around you has decided to explode simultaneously.

Then it clicks.

And once it does, ship combat is extremely satisfying.

Swinging into position, unloading cannons into another vessel, and watching the battle unfold around you captures exactly the pirate fantasy I wanted this game to deliver. The sea isn’t just empty space connecting pieces of land. Sailing feels like an actual part of the adventure.

Eventually I wasn’t traveling somewhere because a mission marker told me to.

I was sailing somewhere because I wanted to see what trouble I could find along the way.

Combat Feels Great — Until You Notice the Pattern

Combat on foot makes an excellent first impression too.

Swordplay is responsive and satisfying, guns add another layer to encounters, assassinations still deliver that unmistakable Assassin’s Creed satisfaction, and slicing through a group of enemies can make Edward feel borderline unstoppable.

For the first half of the game, I loved it.

Eventually, though, I started seeing the loop.

Parry.

Kick ass.

Move to the next guy.

Parry.

Kick ass again.

Repeat.

There simply aren’t enough enemies that force you to seriously rethink how you’re approaching combat. You aren’t studying complicated movesets or spending five attempts learning an encounter. Once you’ve got the fundamentals down, most fights become relatively straightforward.

Even pushing the difficulty higher didn’t dramatically change that for me.

And I understand that’s not what Black Flag Resynced is trying to be. I’m not asking Edward Kenway to suddenly wander into a FromSoftware game.

But when combat feels this good mechanically, I wish the game demanded just a little more from it.

Parkour Occasionally Has Other Plans

Movement is where I had my biggest frustrations.

Most of the time, free-running across rooftops and climbing through the environment feels great. There’s still something inherently satisfying about looking at a building and realizing that, yes, you’re probably about to climb the entire thing for absolutely no sensible reason.

Precision is another story.

There were multiple occasions where Edward went somewhere completely different from where I intended. The most memorable came when I was trying to drop onto a tiny ledge roughly five yards away.

Simple enough.

Except Edward apparently had other plans.

Rather than making the controlled jump I wanted, he repeatedly launched himself into the advanced dive animation and sailed straight past my target into the water.

Eventually, I temporarily disabled advanced climbing just to make the jump.

That solved the problem, but it also highlighted my issue: I wanted both.

Give me the advanced movement system when I’m flying across rooftops, but when I’m deliberately lining up a precise jump onto a tiny ledge, I need the character to respect that input.

It isn’t something that ruined exploration, and most of my time moving through the world was enjoyable. But it happened often enough that I can’t dismiss it as one weird jump.

Sometimes Edward Kenway moves like an elite assassin.

Sometimes Edward Kenway moves like he has somewhere else to be.

Maybe Missing 13 Years of Assassin’s Creed Helped Me

This is where my weird history with the franchise probably worked in Black Flag Resynced’s favor.

I haven’t spent the last decade playing every Assassin’s Creed game.

I’m not exhausted by the formula.

I don’t have years of similar combat, parkour, viewpoints, assassinations, and open-world objectives sitting in the back of my head while I’m playing.

For me, a lot of this felt fresh again.

And I loved that.

I can absolutely understand how someone who has played every Assassin’s Creed game might approach this differently. There’s naturally going to be more familiarity there.

But if you’re specifically a Black Flag fan, I have a hard time imagining this world not immediately pulling you back in.

For me, it accomplished something slightly different.

It made me interested in Assassin’s Creed again.

I finished Black Flag Resynced wanting to circle back to games I missed, particularly Valhalla and Shadows. They aren’t getting installed tomorrow — there are approximately 700 major releases arriving every fourteen minutes right now — but they’re back on my radar.

I didn’t expect that.

Remakes Are Starting to Win Me Over

We’ve talked a lot about remakes lately because, well, there are a lot of them.

I’ve always understood the complaints. There is something inherently more exciting about getting a completely new game instead of seeing another familiar title rebuilt for modern hardware.

But I’m starting to appreciate what the best remakes can actually accomplish.

I recently had a similar experience with Halo: Campaign Evolved. That was a good game and a great opportunity to experience something important through a modern lens.

Black Flag hit me differently because I got to experience it for the first time, in its best form.

But more importantly, this doesn’t feel like a game that only works because people loved the original.

If Black Flag had somehow never existed and this exact game released for the first time in 2026, I’d still think it was fantastic.

The gorgeous Caribbean, addictive exploration, treasure hunting, naval battles, Edward Kenway, and satisfying combat all reminded me why Assassin’s Creed became one of gaming’s biggest franchises in the first place.

There are cracks. Movement can get frustrating when precision matters, free-running occasionally has a mind of its own, and combat eventually becomes too comfortable for its own good.

But none of that stopped me from wanting to see what was beyond the next island.

And then the island after that.

And apparently one more treasure chest before bed.

The Verdict

Maybe I was the perfect person to play Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced.

I remembered Assassin’s Creed.

I just wasn’t tired of Assassin’s Creed.

That gave me the chance to experience this remake without years of franchise fatigue hanging over it, and what I found was one of the most enjoyable open-world adventures I’ve played recently.

It looks incredible. Edward Kenway is a fantastic protagonist. Ship combat gets better the longer you spend with it. Exploring the Caribbean is dangerously addictive. And even when the combat begins showing its limitations or Edward decides he’d rather leap into the ocean than land on the ledge directly in front of him, I kept wanting to play.

More importantly, it reminded me why this series mattered to me in the first place.

Thirteen years after Black Flag originally sailed into the franchise, I finally got aboard.

Turns out I picked a pretty damn good ship.

Buy Assassins Creed Black Flag Resynced

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Mexican Ninja Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release Date: July 28, 2026

Main Story Length: 2 hours

Developer: Madbricks

One More Run Turns Into Five

There is always a moment in a good roguelike where “one more run” becomes a complete lie.

Mexican Ninja got me there pretty quickly.

I’d finish a run, head back with enough coins for another upgrade, tell myself I was done for the night, and then immediately think: Well, I should probably see what this upgrade actually does.

Then I’d unlock another character.

Okay. One more run.

Then I’d notice I was close to another skill-tree upgrade.

Fine. One more.

You know how this ends.

Mexican Ninja is an impressively polished indie roguelike built around fast combat, meaningful progression, multiple playable characters, branching routes, and the kind of upgrade loop that constantly gives you another reason to jump back in.

And once I really figured out the dash, things started getting dangerous.

Not for my character.

For my free time.

It Makes a Strong First Impression

The first thing that surprised me was just how sharp Mexican Ninja looks.

During the opening scene, I was immediately impressed by the level of detail and overall fidelity. The environments are clean, the character designs pop, and the comic-book-style story sequences give the game its own visual personality before you even start throwing punches.

Those story panels are a cool way to introduce the world, although I do think narration could have elevated them even further. There are moments where the presentation feels like it is begging for a voice to carry you through the panels rather than leaving everything entirely on the page.

Still, the art direction carries plenty of personality on its own.

That extends into the game’s broader identity as well. The soundtrack is catchy and draws heavily from Mexican musical influences, while the dialogue, character writing, environments, and humor all help give the game a distinct cultural flavor rather than making its setting feel like something pasted on top.

And the dialogue is genuinely funny.

Just know what you’re walking into. This is very much written for a mature audience, and it is not particularly interested in behaving itself.

Neither is the violence.

Mexican Ninja gets extremely gory, and for a game built around slicing, punching, exploding, and generally dismantling groups of enemies, it fits perfectly.

The Combat Just Feels Good

None of the progression would matter if actually fighting enemies wasn’t fun.

Thankfully, it is.

Hit detection feels spot on. Movement is smooth. Attacks feel responsive. Enemies react properly when you connect, and there is enough weight behind everything that tearing through a crowded room stays satisfying.

The game especially rewards aggression.

Dashing into a group, landing a few quick attacks, repositioning, and immediately diving back into the mess feels fantastic once you find your rhythm.

I originally started with keyboard and mouse before switching to a controller, and my ability level increased almost instantly. Once I remapped the buttons to what felt natural, I started cooking.

And the dash became my best friend.

It is so quick and useful that I honestly didn’t rely on parrying very often. Once I unlocked a second dash, movement opened up even more and combat started feeling dramatically faster.

By somewhere around my 15th or 20th run, my character had become a monster. I was flying through multiple rooms without taking a hit, bouncing between enemies, and tearing through encounters that had given me trouble much earlier.

There is something incredibly satisfying about remembering how rough those early runs felt and then realizing you’re now clearing the same areas almost effortlessly.

Part of that comes from upgrades.

Part of it comes from simply getting better.

That combination is exactly what a roguelike needs.

Then the Game Humbled Me

For a while, I thought Mexican Ninja might actually be a little too easy.

The first couple of bosses went down without giving me nearly as much trouble as I expected, and I started wondering whether the progression system was making me powerful a little too quickly.

Then the game basically told me to shut up.

The difficulty ramps up significantly as you push toward its six main boss encounters, and later sections demand much better movement, positioning, and understanding of enemy attacks.

Suddenly, that health bottle hidden inside a random barrel mattered a lot more.

So did finding a vending machine when I was barely hanging on.

Those little roguelike moments are some of my favorites. You’re limping through an area hoping something — anything — gives you enough health to survive the next room, and suddenly every barrel becomes the most important object you’ve ever seen.

The bosses eventually become legitimate tests, and beating them feels rewarding because you can feel both sides of your progression working together.

Your character is stronger.

But you’re also smarter.

You know when to dash. You understand enemy patterns. You recognize which upgrades work with your build. You stop panicking in situations that destroyed you five runs earlier.

That is where Mexican Ninja really started clicking for me.

There’s More Variety Than I First Thought

Early on, I wasn’t completely sold on the enemy variety.

There was enough there that I wouldn’t have called it lacking, but it didn’t initially seem like one of the game’s strengths.

That changed the further I progressed.

Later areas introduce considerably more variety, and the different combinations of enemies force you to adjust how you move through fights rather than simply repeating the same attack pattern forever.

The levels also give you decisions about which routes you want to take next, helping runs feel less rigid.

Small hidden pathways scattered throughout the environments give you another excuse to poke around, too.

None of this completely reinvents the roguelike formula, but it does enough to prevent Mexican Ninja from feeling like you’re running the exact same hallway over and over again.

The Upgrades Are What Kept Pulling Me Back

This is probably the biggest reason I kept playing.

Mexican Ninja constantly gives you something worth chasing.

Coins earned throughout runs can be spent on permanent upgrades, and the skill tree gives you tangible reasons to keep building your character even after a failed attempt.

The upgrades matter, too.

I never like progression systems where you grind for an hour just to gain some microscopic percentage that you can barely feel.

Here, you can actually notice yourself becoming stronger.

That makes collecting coins genuinely exciting because you’re already thinking about what they’ll become when you get back.

There are also multiple unlockable characters, each bringing different abilities and traits to the table. You earn them through completing quests, and experimenting with them became another part of that “okay, one more run” problem.

One of my favorite abilities early on left an explosion behind after a light attack, completely changing how I approached groups.

Another character could pick up more coins.

Guess who became my designated wallet-filler?

I’d take him out specifically because I wanted enough money for another upgrade.

Then I’d buy the upgrade.

Then I’d want to see how good it was.

Then suddenly I was playing again.

It is a vicious cycle.

A very fun vicious cycle.

Hades Fans Will Feel Right at Home

I am a big fan of the Hades games, and it was difficult not to think about them while playing Mexican Ninja.

That’s a compliment.

The comparison isn’t because Mexican Ninja simply copies what Hades does. It’s more about the rhythm.

Fight through rooms.

Build your character.

Make choices about your path.

Fail.

Upgrade.

Go again.

Become more dangerous.

Go again.

That familiar roguelike heartbeat is here, but Mexican Ninja wraps it in its own setting, characters, humor, gore, and combat style.

The different characters also let you shape runs around abilities you actually enjoy instead of forcing everyone into one universal playstyle.

And if you’re struggling, the game does give you ways to push forward.

Invest in permanent upgrades. Learn the enemies. Try another character. Experiment with different abilities. Keep building your skill tree.

Some players are obviously going to clear it faster than others, but progression means a failed run rarely feels completely wasted.

You are almost always moving toward something.

This Won’t Be for Everyone

The biggest caveat is really a genre one.

Mexican Ninja is built around repeatedly running through its world, failing, upgrading, and starting again.

If that structure doesn’t work for you, this game probably isn’t going to magically change your mind.

And once the difficulty begins ramping up, some players could hit a wall.

There are absolutely points where you’re going to need to put in more runs, gather more upgrades, learn attacks, and come back stronger.

Personally, that’s exactly what I wanted from it.

But it’s worth knowing going in.

This isn’t a game where you’re guaranteed to smoothly march from level one to the ending because you’ve already put a few hours into it.

Sometimes you’re going back.

That’s the point.

There’s a Lot of Game Here

What impressed me most by the end wasn’t any single mechanic.

It was how complete everything felt together.

The visuals are sharp.

Performance was flawless for me, with extremely fast load times throughout.

The combat is smooth and responsive.

The soundtrack sticks with you.

Sound effects give attacks enough impact to sell the beat-’em-up brutality.

The characters are funny.

The progression consistently rewards your time.

The unlockables meaningfully change how you play.

And eventually, I stopped thinking about whether I needed to do another run and started thinking about which upgrade I wanted next.

That’s usually when you know a roguelike has you.

I’d love to see additional levels, characters, encounters, or other content added down the road because Mexican Ninja feels like the kind of game that has real room to grow.

There’s a very strong foundation here.

Sometimes You Just Need a Damn Good Gameplay Loop

Mexican Ninja isn’t trying to bury you beneath a hundred complicated systems.

It understands something much more important.

Sometimes all you need is smooth gameplay and an addictive loop.

Fight.

Earn coins.

Unlock something.

Get stronger.

Try again.

Mexican Ninja does that extremely well.

The beautiful art direction got my attention, but the responsiveness of the combat and constant feeling of progression are what kept me playing.

And when I eventually decided I was finally done for the night?

I noticed I was pretty close to unlocking another upgrade.

So obviously I did one more run.

If you’re a fan of roguelikes — especially games that give you that Hades-style satisfaction of becoming noticeably better both through upgrades and through your own understanding of the game — Mexican Ninja is very easy to recommend.

Just don’t believe yourself when you say you’re stopping after the next run.

Disclosure: A review code for Mexican Ninja was provided through Game.Press for review purposes. Receiving a review code had no influence on the opinions expressed in this review or its final score.

Halo: Campaign Evolved Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release Date: July 28, 2026

Main Story Length: 9 hours

Developer: Halo Studios

Halo on a PlayStation Still Feels a Little Illegal

There is something genuinely wild about playing Halo on a PlayStation 5.

It isn’t just seeing the logo there. It’s holding a DualSense controller, scrolling over Halo on the PlayStation dashboard, hitting X and watching Master Chief load up on a console that, for most of my life, existed on the other side of the fence.

Everything about it feels slightly wrong.

And somehow, that ended up being part of the fun.

Halo: Campaign Evolved takes one of the most important shooters ever made and rebuilds it with modern visuals, smoother gameplay and enough changes to make this feel like more than a simple nostalgia trip.

It’s familiar almost immediately, but it doesn’t feel trapped in the past.

For a longtime Halo player, that balance works extremely well.

The First Hour Had Me In My Feels

The opening stretch was probably my favorite part of the entire experience.

The dialogue. The alarms. The introduction to Sgt. Johnson. Running through the ship as everything starts falling apart around you. There are certain scenes and sounds from Halo that apparently never leave your brain, because it didn’t take long before they started coming back.

I played through the campaign with a friend I’ve been gaming with forever, which only added to it. Somewhere during that opening hour, I remember thinking one thing pretty clearly:

I’m glad this game happened.

That’s one of the biggest compliments I can give Campaign Evolved.

It understands that people aren’t only coming back for Master Chief or the gunplay. They’re coming back for a time in their lives. Halo was late nights, split screens, ridiculous deaths and arguments about who was getting which controller.

Recreating that feeling is harder than simply rebuilding old environments in 4K.

For a while, Campaign Evolved gets remarkably close.

Nostalgia Can Only Carry You So Far

Eventually, though, that initial excitement settles down.

And once it does, you’re still playing a campaign fundamentally built around a game from 2001.

That’s where reviewing something like Campaign Evolved gets interesting.

The original Halo was incredible for its time. It helped establish ideas, encounters and combat systems that countless games would follow. Things that feel normal now certainly didn’t feel normal then.

But we’re not playing it then.

We’re playing it in 2026.

Through that lens, the campaign doesn’t suddenly become some revolutionary modern shooter just because it looks better. There are encounters we’ve essentially seen versions of countless times since, and some stretches still show the simplicity of a game that laid the groundwork for everything that followed.

But that simplicity rarely made the campaign boring.

The combat loop remains strong enough to carry it, the pacing still produces memorable highs, and there is something refreshing about playing a shooter that doesn’t constantly bury you beneath systems, menus and progression mechanics.

If the original Halo had never existed and this exact campaign released for the first time today, I don’t think we’d call it genre-defining.

But that’s also a slightly unfair way to look at it.

The reason so much of this feels familiar is because Halo helped make it familiar in the first place.

When This Remake Looks Good, It Looks Really Good

Then you hit that beach.

Halo fans know the one.

That was probably my other favorite section of the campaign, and it was one of the moments where Campaign Evolved’s visual overhaul really clicked for me.

The water, the sky, the structures stretching out in the distance—it’s the kind of environment where you stop analyzing what changed and simply appreciate how good everything looks together.

There is obvious craftsmanship here.

Campaign Evolved doesn’t feel like the original game wearing a fresh coat of paint. Familiar locations have significantly more life and detail while still retaining enough of their identity that I rarely felt like the remake had lost what made them memorable.

That’s a difficult balance.

Modernize something too aggressively and you risk removing what people loved. Play things too safely and everyone wonders why the remake needed to exist.

Campaign Evolved generally finds the space between those two extremes.

It Still Feels Like Halo

More importantly, it feels excellent to play.

Movement is smooth, aiming is responsive and combat retains that Halo rhythm that has always made bouncing between weapons, grenades and enemy types so satisfying.

Nothing about playing on a DualSense made me feel like I was getting some compromised version of Halo either.

If anything, after the initial weirdness wears off, you stop thinking about the controller entirely.

That’s probably the best-case scenario.

Performance was also solid throughout my time with the game. I didn’t run into anything that meaningfully disrupted the experience, and the technical side largely stayed out of the way.

The audio deserves some love too.

Weapons have weight, environments feel alive and the entire soundscape has an immersive punch that pairs extremely well with the visual overhaul.

Halo has always had an identity you can practically hear with your eyes closed.

Campaign Evolved doesn’t lose it.

Skulls, Legendary and Plenty of Reasons to Run It Again

For anyone who wants more than one trip through the campaign, there is still plenty to mess around with.

Skulls remain one of the easiest ways to transform familiar encounters, whether you’re looking to increase the challenge or just make another run considerably more chaotic. They add meaningful variety and give returning players a reason to experiment after the credits roll.

Then, of course, there’s Legendary.

If your idea of relaxation is being repeatedly reminded that maybe you’re not nearly as good at Halo as you thought you were, it’s waiting for you.

Playing cooperatively also remains one of the best ways to experience Halo.

There is simply something about driving around with another person, improvising your way through firefights and occasionally getting each other killed in spectacularly stupid ways that fits this series perfectly.

Some things really don’t need modernization.

A Great Remake of a Landmark Game

Halo: Campaign Evolved is an excellent remake of a landmark game, even if the campaign itself no longer feels revolutionary in 2026.

That’s the key distinction.

For longtime Halo fans, there is a lot here to love. Seeing these locations rebuilt, hearing those familiar voices again and experiencing the campaign with modern visuals and controls makes returning to the ring worthwhile.

Some moments hit harder simply because you remember what they meant the first time.

For someone who has never played Halo before, I’m a little more hesitant to call it an absolute must-play.

There are newer shooters with deeper systems, more elaborate encounters and bigger ideas.

But that doesn’t diminish what Campaign Evolved does well.

The combat still works. The atmosphere still works. The campaign still delivers memorable moments. And the remake itself is clearly made with real respect for what came before.

You’re looking at a game whose fingerprints are all over the shooters that followed it.

Campaign Evolved gives that history a beautiful new home without pretending it was created yesterday.

And even if the initial nostalgia eventually settled into something a little more measured, I finished the campaign feeling exactly the same way I did during that opening hour.

Sitting there with a PlayStation controller in my hands, playing Halo with an old friend again?

Yeah.

I’m still glad this game happened.

Buy Halo: Campaign Evolved

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Gothic Remake Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release Date: June 5, 2026

Main Story Length: 35 hours

Developer: Alkimia Interactive

I don’t go into games looking to hate them.

If anything, I lean easier to please than most reviewers. I can usually find something to enjoy in almost any game, which sometimes makes it harder to separate good from truly great. But every so often, a game just never clicks.

Gothic Remake is one of those games.

Two Questions Every Remake Has to Answer

With how many remakes are hitting shelves these days, I always ask the same two questions.

Did this game actually need a remake?

And does it capture what made the original work while improving what hasn’t aged well?

For me, Gothic Remake struggles to answer either one.

The Visuals Aren’t the Problem

The game looks good. That much isn’t up for debate. The environments are detailed, the atmosphere is convincing, and there are moments where the work put into rebuilding this world is obvious.

Then the novelty wears off, and what’s left is a game that still plays like it never fully left the era it came from.

A Loop That Never Arrives

Quest progression drags. Conversations struggle to hold your attention. Characters come and go without leaving much of a lasting impression. Even basic traversal becomes a chore, with clunky controls and movement that never feels as smooth or responsive as you’d expect from a modern RPG.

Credit where it’s due: the game runs well. I didn’t run into any major bugs or technical issues that dragged down the experience. Performance was never the problem.

The problem is that the game never made me want to come back.

That pull—the “just one more quest” feeling that keeps you playing long after you meant to stop—never showed up. And for an RPG, that’s a tough hurdle to overcome.

Built for One Audience

I understand why longtime fans will enjoy this. Nostalgia is powerful, and seeing a beloved classic rebuilt with modern visuals is genuinely exciting if you already have history with it. That appeal is real, and I’m not dismissing it.

But I don’t have that history. And without it, the improvements here aren’t enough to outweigh everything that still feels rooted in the past.

That gap is even harder to overlook in 2026. We’re surrounded by RPGs that excel in storytelling, memorable characters, rewarding exploration, responsive combat, meaningful choices, and polished gameplay systems. The bar has never been higher, and Gothic Remake rarely reaches it.

There are flashes of good quest design scattered throughout the campaign—glimpses of the foundation that made the original influential in the first place. But actually playing through those missions rarely matched the strength of the ideas behind them. The objectives themselves weren’t the issue. It was everything surrounding them—the pacing, the controls, and the overall moment-to-moment gameplay—that kept pulling me out of the experience.

Verdict

Gothic Remake isn’t a bad game. It’s a game that knows exactly who it’s for—and unfortunately, that audience doesn’t really include me.

If you grew up in the Colony and have spent years waiting to return, there’s a good chance this remake delivers the nostalgia you were hoping for. But if you’re looking for your next great RPG and have no attachment to the original, I wouldn’t put this near the top of the list.

I never once felt that urge to pick the controller back up after putting it down. I respect the effort that went into bringing this world back for a new audience—but respect isn’t the same as recommendation, and Gothic Remake never gave me enough reasons to bridge that gap.

The Crimson Maid Review

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release Date: July 14, 2026

Main Story Length: 6 hours

Developer: GrimTalin

A game’s value comes down to how it feels while you are playing it—and whether that feeling survives the credits. Some games stay with you for years. Others begin fading the moment they end.

The Crimson Maid is staying with me.

A Story Built to Deceive You

From the opening minutes, I needed to know what happened next. Not for the review. For me. I was constantly building theories about the characters, convinced I was one step ahead of the story.

I was wrong almost every time.

That is rare. Most games telegraph their twists whether they mean to or not. The Crimson Maid does not. It feeds you just enough information to make you confident, then breaks that confidence apart. The atmosphere remains thrilling and unsettled from start to finish, while the writing leans into risqué territory without ever flinching from it.

The main story runs for roughly six hours, and that runtime feels like a decision rather than a limitation. It gives the mystery room to build without stretching beyond what the narrative can actually support. It is also priced like the developers understand exactly what they created. You are not paying for endless scope. You are paying for a focused story that lands.

Even the ending does not hand you everything. There are secrets buried throughout the game that reward a second, slower look. When the credits rolled, the conclusion delivered more than my six hours of guessing had prepared me for. I finished genuinely satisfied—a feeling too many longer games never manage to earn.

Small Moments, Big Personality

The puzzles are where the game shows its confidence. They are woven naturally into the environment instead of feeling bolted on, and a few of them stopped me cold for longer than I expected. None felt like padding. Solving them feels like genuine progress, and that sense of progression carries the game’s mysterious tone forward instead of interrupting it.

Not every objective is a puzzle. Some are grounded, human tasks—grinding coffee beans, boiling water, and making a cup of coffee. Small stuff. But it is the small stuff that keeps the world from feeling like a simple checklist of go here, click this, and move on.

That checklist structure does eventually creep in, though. There are stretches where the loop becomes visible: travel, interact, complete, repeat. The game does enough with environmental detail and clever staging to prevent it from becoming a serious problem, but it is noticeable. A game this confident everywhere else should not need to lean on repetitive tasks to bridge its strongest scenes.

The dialogue also runs long in a few of those stretches. Most of it earns its place—but “most” is not “all.” The scenes that overstay their welcome sometimes arrive immediately after the game’s tightest and most gripping moments. That contrast makes the slower pacing harder to ignore, not easier.

A Two-Person Team Built a World

Here is the part that should impress you: Two people made this game. In three years. That is the entire team behind everything you are seeing.

And it never plays like an excuse.

The environments are atmospheric and detailed enough that I stopped moving simply to take them in—more than once. This is not a game coasting on the goodwill of being “impressive for a small team.” It is genuinely well art-directed, full stop. Its visual language does real work in establishing the tension and mystery the story depends on.

The gameplay stays out of its own way. Movement and interaction are simple enough that exploration and storytelling remain the focus rather than the mechanics. I wanted a jump button more than once out of habit, not necessity. The game never actually asks for one.

Performance held up throughout the entire six-hour run. I encountered perhaps two brief instances of screen tearing, and both were forgettable. Load times were fast enough that they never interrupted the pacing or atmosphere. For a two-person team, that degree of polish is not just impressive—it is a statement.

The One Thing Missing

Here is where it slips. Most of the game relies on written dialogue rather than voice acting. You are reading through character moments that clearly would have benefited from being performed, and the absence is felt most in the scenes designed to land the hardest emotionally.

I understand why—full voice acting requires significant resources. The fully voiced, narrated cutscenes that do exist are genuinely a pleasure whenever they appear, which only makes their scarcity more noticeable. They offer a glimpse of what the entire game could have sounded like, only for that experience to be taken away again.

The audio elsewhere does real work in building tension and giving locations their own identity. However, during the back half, some of the same tracks begin repeating past the point of usefulness. A game this deliberate about pacing its story should have been equally deliberate about pacing its soundtrack. By the fifth hour, the repetition becomes noticeable.

Verdict

The Crimson Maid knows exactly what it wants to be, and it never apologizes for not being bigger. It is not chasing a hundred-hour runtime stuffed with systems nobody asked for. It is a focused, atmospheric mystery with sharp puzzles, impressive visual direction, and a story that had me guessing incorrectly right up to the end.

The Crimson Maid left an impression that games several times its size routinely fail to leave. It gave me a world worth slowing down to appreciate, a mystery I genuinely wanted to solve, and an ending that rewarded the time I invested.

Two developers. Three years. One game I am still thinking about.

GrimTalin has earned a place on my watchlist for whatever it creates next.

Disclosure: A review code for The Crimson Maid was provided for review purposes. Receiving a review code had no influence on the opinions expressed in this review or its final score.