At the beginning of the year, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealthlaunched a hell of an opening salvo. The latest installment in the long-running Like a Dragon/Yakuza series is comically full of things to do. On one hand, it’s a turn-based RPG epic, splitting its narrative between two larger-than-life protagonists in entirely different settings complete with their own villains, party members, and side stories. On the other hand, it is more game than anybody could possibly need, housing several side activities, minigames, and at least two-full sized games within itself. If you’re a person whose chief concern about a game is getting the absolute most bang for your buck, there has rarely been a better game to pick up than Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which is now discounted at $42 on both PlayStation and Steam. – Moises Taveras Read More
Immersive sims are traditionally thought of as single-player titles. They can be really dense and systems-heavy games in which having even one player introduces an incredible number of variables, as that one player uses the freedom they’re afforded to tackle situations in any number of ways. It takes no small amount of creative ingenuity and coding wizardry to allow for all those possibilities, and that would only be magnified by the presence of another player, or a whole set of other players. Think of titles like System Shockor Prey, for instance, and imagine how injecting another player into these games—which already encourage folks to bend the rules—might completely turn them on their heads, and potentially even break them. Imagine The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom with a second Link capable of doing all the things the first could already do. It sounds unwieldy, but the grandfather of the immersive sim thinks this is the logical next step for the genre. I think he’s probably right.
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In an interview with Game Developer, Warren Spector, the acclaimed developer credited with the creation of the immersive sim and landmark titles in the genre like Deus Ex and System Shock, divulged some details about one of his studio’s upcoming games, Thick as Thieves, which aims to marry immersive sim gameplay with a competitive multiplayer angle to break new ground in the genre. The upcoming immersive sim would drop two thieves into a setting not unlike that of Thief: The Dark Project and task them with traipsing through the dark city streets trying to outthief one another. One might embark on a job to steal some highly prized loot while the other waits in the shadows trying to screw them over. Players are also afforded the opportunity to work together, or interact in any number of ways. Spector shared that players can outright avoid each other if they choose to, follow one another, take each other out, or even set aside their momentary differences to work together towards a mutual goal.
Spector’s studio, OtherSide Entertainment, is also working on making the game’s world react to the actions that players take in it. Accordingly, a large part of the loop of a Thick as Thieves session will include gathering intel from around the city, which can be gained by bribing guards, for example. This kind of interactivity with one another in a live and reactive environment is the “next logical step” for the genre, according to Spector. “Part of the simulation is the human interactions in the world…It’s really a simulation that we drop a set of thieves into.” As part of its live-service offerings, Thick as Thieves will likely release new neighborhoods of the city over time as well as new thieves to promote different play styles, according to OtherSide’s CEO Paul Nerath.
OtherSide’s design philosophy surrounding Thick as Thieves emerged from a Dungeons & Dragonsgame that Spector played a number of years ago. The team is trying to successfully recreate the feeling Spector felt playing D&D, specifically the novelty of player-driven storytelling, by empowering players of Thick as Thieves to chart their own story in a live environment. It’s an approach that’s not unlike the kind of stuff Larian Studios received acclaim for in its previous title, Divinity: Original Sin II, which was praised for the open-endedness of its story and how much the world reacted to the player’s actions by the end of the journey.
The multiplayer angle of Thick as Thieves might also ring familiar to folks who’ve played Arkane’s Deathloop, which allowed players to invade one another’s games as a pivotal character in the narrative. Though Deathloop’s experimentation with this format yielded mixed results, perhaps due to how restrictive the mechanic was, there’s reason to believe that there’s potential in the approach by looking at other titles. Baldur’s Gate 3’s fully functional multiplayer in an otherwise-complicated game suggests as much.
There might be a lot of roadblocks standing in the way of such a clearly ambitious project, and I’m definitely reserving judgment until I see the game in action, but the concept is promising. Not to suggest that single-player immersive sims have bottomed out, because they absolutely haven’t, but one of the most exciting things about modern games is how much players have been able to use them to tell their own stories. A studio making games that explicitly pick up on that thread and seeing what exciting new things it can yield for the medium is a net positive, in my eyes.
Ubisoft Montpellier’s 2.5D side-scrolling Metroidvania Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is finally out on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It’s a long, challenging action-platforming game with lots of tough bosses and intricate puzzles. Here are a handful of essential tips to make your journey a bit easier.
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The Lost Crown follows the young Sargon, the newest member of the warrior clan known as The Immortals. He’s tasked with tracking down the kidnapped Prince Ghassan, who’s been dragged off to the cursed city of Mount Qaf. The game has plenty of paths to unblock, collectibles to find, and equipment to unlock. It’s easy to get lost or stuck, but I’ve got you covered.
Throw Your Chakram Often
About an hour or two into the game, you’ll unlock a new weapon: a bow. This weapon doubles as a throwable chakram that serves several functions, including calling down platforms and opening gates. The double-edged weapon can also be used in combat as a projectile that gets faster and stronger every time you parry it. More than that, though, you can use the chakram to reach those elusive resource caches without having to pull off a complex platforming feat. Be sure to use that chakram often, as it’ll make collecting stuff a little less frustrating.
Upgrade Your Gear Regularly
The fiery blacksmith—and absolute goddess—Kaheva opens up her forge to you not long after you reach the hub area of The Haven. But she’s not the only shopkeeper who can improve your equipment. While Kaheva can buff the damage of your bow and swords, The Mage, an elderly woman who operates an equipment shop in The Haven, can increase the number of health flasks you can hold and improve the potency of their healing. On top of that, both shopkeepers can power up the status effects of your Amulets, equippable pieces of gear that provide benefits such as increasing your melee damage at low health or reducing the damage of environmental hazards. It’s worth coming back to The Haven to upgrade your gear as often as possible. These bosses don’t play around, so you’ll need all the buffs you can get. Trust me.
Don’t Forget The Swordmaster
Speaking of The Haven, another person you should visit regularly is the swordmaster Artaban. Artaban is Sargon’s trainer throughout the story, teaching you effective ways to dispatch your foes in fights. You should also do his combat challenges to get Time Crystals, one of the currencies used for buying wares and upgrading gear. The challenges themselves are simple, and with enough practice and patience, will help you become more comfortable using all of Sargon’s abilities to kick serious ass.
Take Images Of Memorable Spots
With The Eye of the Wanderer, a true innovation within the Metroidvania genre, you can take screenshots that show up as icons on the mini-map, which helps make backtracking easier. Instead of trying to memorize where something is, you can use the upgradable resource known as Memory Shards to snap a quick photo to remember the spot. And when you’re finished with the image, you can delete the screenshot to free up space for more photos. Just hold down on the D-pad and snap away. Your brain will thank you for it.
Make Sure To Finish Those Side Quests
As you explore Mount Qaf, you’ll come across characters in need of help. It might be deciphering an ancient text or finding an old woman’s children. Either way, these side quests reward you with some good stuff, from currencies to use at the various shopkeepers to resources to upgrade your gear. Depending on the complexity and length of the objective, you might even get a Soma Petal, which increases your max health when you’ve collected four of them. Be a good Immortal and help some people out. It’ll be worth your while.
Take Advantage Of Guided Mode In The Settings
You’re presented with two game modes when you start: Exploration and Guided. Exploration mode is the default setting, giving you little direction for story quests and side errands on the mini-map. With Guided mode, you get much more assistance as the mini-map populates icons for mission objectives, doors and paths, and the upgrades you’ve unlocked. guessing game. You’ll still get lost, so don’t worry about that. Guided mode will just make it so you don’t stay lost. You can toggle this setting at any time—you’re not locked into what you chose at the beginning of your playthrough.
Tweak The Difficulty To Your Preferred Playstyle
The Lost Crown is a masterful example of accessibility in video games. In the extensive settings menu, you can make parries easier, extend the invulnerability you receive while dodging, skip challenging platforming sections, show markers for interactive elements in the world, and so much more. This game really lets you customize the experience to your liking, so you should do that. There’s bound to be a setting here that will give you the kind of Metroidvania experience you’re looking for.
Always, Always, Always Buy The Area Maps From Fariba
Fariba has extensive knowledge of the cursed city, and she’ll often have maps on her for sale. These maps reveal everything you need to know about that given area, including potential secrets and unexplored spots. Her location varies, and she’s usually a bit of a pain to find, often holed up in some room gated behind a complex platforming section. But picking up the area map from her will save you time in the long run. The best part? Unlike some of the other shopkeepers whose wares can be a bit more expensive, Fariba sells her services for just 50 Time Crystals. That’s a bargain in my book.
Don’t Do Much Backtracking Till You Get The Last Power
The Lost Crown is predicated on returning to areas you’ve previously visited with new powers, so it’s tempting to backtrack once you’ve acquired a new time-bending ability. But take it from me, you should wait until you’ve gotten the very last power, the Fabric of Time. You don’t get it until about three-fourths of the way through the story, but waiting to get this grappling hook of sorts will save you time and frustration. Before this point, a majority of your backtracking will be blocked by floating hooks that require the Fabric of Time to reach. There’s no clever way to get around these sections without it, so you might as well wait. Besides, by the time you unlock it, you’ll be so OP not even the toughest boss could stop you.
And there you go, nine tips to help you bend time and survive death in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Although I’ve beaten the story, I’ve still got plenty of collectibles to find and side quests to finish. So, good luck in Mount Qaf. Prince Ghassan needs us both.
From mergers to memes, the landscape of interactive entertainment is always in motion. Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.
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Baldur’s Gate 3already has one special edition, in the form of its Collector’s Edition. We even unboxed it here at Kotaku, and it’s got a lot of cool knickknacks that pay tribute to its tabletop roots. Of course that was expensive, solely for PC and PlayStation 5 players, and didn’t include a physical copy of the game itself. But Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to Xbox next month, so Larian Studios is taking the opportunity to release a new, Deluxe Edition for all three platforms. And given what comes in the box, I think it’s pretty darn affordable. Read More
Like game director Ji Won Choi promised in early November, duo-developers Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio have dropped a new update for their gothic, Belle Époque-era Soulslike RPG, Lies of P. And just as expected, this update makes some significant changes to the game so that you have an actual fighting chance at surviving this bloodied retelling of the Pinocchio story. Read More
Modern Warfare III players are begging Activision to remove a “literally invisible” cosmetic first introduced in Modern Warfare II that’s plaguing multiplayer matches yet again. Read More
On November 16, Valve will let folks purchase a new Steam Deck OLED Limited Edition model, which features all the upgrades of the base OLED version of the portable PC, but with some extra cosmetic details, too. And to help folks actually get a chance to buy this thing, Valve is implementing some safeguards to slow or stop bots and resellers from buying them all up instantly. Read More
One of the best action-RPGs in a generation is finally getting a mobile version, but it’s a mixed blessing. The good news is that Hades is coming to iPhones in 2024 and will be free for Netflix subscribers. The bad news is that it will be exclusive to both, with no way to buy the game outright or play it on Android devices. Read More
Rocksteady is finally ready to start talking about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, after delaying it (again) earlier this year. The studio first announced its upcoming supervillain co-op action game way back in 2020. In a new video series going behind the scenes of the game, the devs explained how big its map will be and showed off some new cutscenes. Conveniently, they barely mentioned any of the live-service aspects fans aren’t happy about. Read More
Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards are far from the be-all and end-all of which games are good, creatively bold, and deserving of praise each year, but they’re still fun to get way too serious about. It’s the one day game developers get to dress fancy, go up on stage, and receive our collective thanks for their artistic accomplishment rather than getting canned the night before the quarterly earnings call. Read More
Chinese publisher NetEase is opening a new studio with the lead writer behind the Mass Effect series at the helm.
Worlds Untold will be based in Vancouver, and helmed by CEO Mac Walters, who’s known for his work at BioWare that spanned almost 20 years. Walters was a writer on martial arts RPG Jade Empire, then a senior writer on the first entry in the sci-fi RPG series, Mass Effect, and was eventually promoted to lead writer on Mass Effect 2 and 3. Following this, he was brought on as creative director on Mass Effect: Andromeda, worked on early narrative direction on Anthem, and project directed the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters, before ending his tenure at the studio as a production director on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. So he was at the forefront of a lot of the narrative direction of BioWare’s last two decades. How you feel about that probably varies depending on your opinions on the state of the studio, but speaking personally, the narrative wasn’t my biggest problem with most of those games. Read More
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Have you ever wished you could exercise your Second Amendment right on a formidable video game boss? Well, one upcoming Soulslike will let you pull out a gun and one-tap bosses if it prove too impossible to “git gud” and vanquish them the normal way.
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Another Crab’s Treasure, by Going Under developer Aggro Crab, is a 3D “Shellslike” in which you play as a hermit crab named Kril as he scours the land for his long-lost shell. Somewhere along Kril’s journey, you’ll explore the littered ocean floor for a makeshift home and duke it out with other ocean-faring beasties. The game has a Windows demo for Steam Next Fest and is slated to come out sometime next year on the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Now, about the gun thing. Another Crab’s Treasure’s Steam page notes that you can play the game at your own pace, saying it was “designed to be an approachable experience for newer Soulslike players as well as provide a challenge for hardcore fans.” Typically, any online conversation about whether or not a Soulslike game should have lower difficulty option or (gasp) some sort of assist mode is met with vitriol from genre die-hards. Nonetheless Another Crab’s Treasure’sdemo happily showcases one of the game’s apparently many assist modes, which equips Kril with a gun that completely eviscerates his foes.
Aggro Crab definitely buried the lede by omitting the fact that the game offering “something for any level of skill or time commitment” would include a freaking gun available to anyone who tires of panic-rolling with only a rusty spork with which to defend themselves. I don’t have much more commentary to add to the sheer power of the above clip except to say that I hope more video games follow suit by arming players, be they animals or lowly dung-eating swordsmen, with proportionally enormous guns.
Final Fantasy Tactics nailed so many things so exquisitely that, despite plenty of sequels, spiritual successors, and fan homages, there’s never been anything quite like it since. Arcadian Atlas is the latest indie strategy RPG to try and channel its greatness into something familiar but new, and sadly, it mostly flounders.
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Created by Twin Otter Studios, Arcadian Atlas came to Steam on July 27 after first getting funded on Kickstarter way back in 2016. Despite the years of waiting, it feels like a rough first draft that needs more work. Set in a kingdom thrust into civil war over a succession crisis and royal family in-fighting, it follows two romantically involved soldiers, Vashti and Desmond, onto the battlefield as their conflicting loyalties and principles threaten to unravel their lives. Every scene is rendered with beautiful sprites reminiscent of Square Enix’s classic, and each new plot point is punctuated by a turn-based fight on a chessboard-like grid between competing squads of archers, medics, magicians and knights.
Gif: Twin Otter Studios / Kotaku
I’ve played about four hours so far, and the story can be compelling when it doesn’t feel barebones or clumsy. Star-crossed lovers thrust into the chaos of a civil war is a fine crucible for interrogating what makes characters tick and how far they’re willing to go to fight for what matters most to them, even if the dialogue sometimes feels undercooked, “Listen, I’m not happy about it either, but you know how much dark magic damaged my village,” Desmond tells Vashti early on. “As much as I hate to say it, he has to be put to death.”
But the real issue with Arcadian Atlas is that it’s a chore to navigate and play, and there’s no real creativity or depth in its RPG systems to make battles exciting or make it satisfying to grow and level up your crew. Skill trees are brief and mostly revolve around earning damage upgrades. There are a dozen unique job classes, but you can’t mix and match abilities. Combat also heavily favors ranged units, which have good damage output and little risk of ever missing their target.
Screenshot: Twin Otter Studios
The battlefield also feels wonky and incomplete. Animations for unit movement and attacks don’t feel fluid, and terrain has no real impact on strategy. Fireballs and arrows can pass through obstacles and comrades unimpeded, while melee units can strike anyone next to them no matter how much higher or lower the adjacent squares are. It makes for very unbalanced encounters with little in the way of tactical trade-offs to consider or competing priorities to weigh.
In isolation, none of these shortcomings would be that big of an issue, but taken together they slowly add up to a simplistic and tedious experience that’s hard to recommend to even the genre’s biggest fans. Eventually even the mildest frustrations become hard to ignore, like having to press the accept button to progress every finished loading screen, and the fact that navigating the battlefield grid requires repeatedly flicking the thumbstick on the gamepad rather than simply holding it. The game supports mouse and keyboard as well, but I actually found the cursor controls to be even more finicky and sticky.
One of the few points of pleasure for me in each battle was the soundtrack. Instead of dramatic horns and violins, Arcadian Atlas’ jazz-infused soundtrack by composer Moritz P.G. Katz is dominated by saxophones and guitars. The standard combat music in particular is so oddly unexpected but catchy, I still found it playing inside my head days later. I wish I could say the rest of my time with the game felt as memorable.
Zany and prolific actor Nicolas “Nic” Cage is coming to the asymmetrical survival-horror game Dead By Daylight on July 25. If you know anything about him, you’d expect his voice lines to be unhinged as hell. Well, they’re so unhinged that people on TikTok are marveling at Cage’s dedication to his latest role.
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After leaking earlier this year, developer Behaviour Interactive confirmed that the Cageman would join the game as a Survivor during Summer Game Fest with a reveal trailer. Survivors are one of the many playable characters in the 4v1 asymmetrical horror sim that are laser-focused on getting the hell away from the Killers that hang players on meathooks so they can sacrifice them to an otherworldly entity. Yikes.
At the time, we didn’t get any real idea of how Cage would play his Survivor, though he said it was a “heightened, exaggerated version of a film actor” of the same name. That means it’s wacky and wild, right? Well, yes, but IDK if you’re at all prepared for just how bonkers Cage’s voice lines are in this game. Strap in.
OK, what’s going on? He’s screaming his lungs out, babbling like Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura or something, and singing the infamous Halloween tune as if he’s in an ‘80s hair metal band. Nic Cage also apparently has 185 voice lines in the game. And the one that absolutely takes me out, aside from him doing the Halloween theme, is his character shouting “I’m Nic Fucking Cage” several times. I’d love for him to burst onto a movie scene with this line, just one time.
Nicolas Cage’s silly, and effective, Dead by Daylight perks
According to folks who have opted into the public test build (PTB) of the game through Steam, Nic Cage is the “best Survivor” because of his perks. Not only are they hilarious, but they seem to be pretty effective and offer a chance to drastically change the meta, which can quite often feel a bit stale.
One perk, Scene Partner, activates whenever Cage is within the Killer’s Terror Radius—he’ll comically scream before giving players a chance to see the Killer’s outline for a few seconds. There’s a chance he’ll ridiculously scream again, giving them a longer look at wherever the Killer may be lurking.
Then there’s Plot Twist, an active ability that basically lets players fake their own death—they’ll enter into the “dying state” but won’t leave a trail of blood or let out any whimpers to alert the Killer to their location. Recovering from that fake dying state will fully heal you and temporarily boost your movement speed.
Dramaturgy will turn Cage’s run into a Looney Tunes-esque knee-high canter, increasing movement speed and then randomly enacting one of several effects that could either help or hurt your game (you could be exposed to the Killer, or randomly gain a rare item).
Dead By Daylight streamer SpookyLoopz uploaded a YouTube video on July 5 demonstrating Nic Cage’s character in full. He’s got some pretty funny lore, with the character believing the Dead By Daylight world is part of some film script, and even funnier in-game animations, such as his scream.
SpookyLoopz
“That is Nicolas Cage,” SpookyLoopz said. “The man, the myth, the legend—the first celebrity we’ve ever gotten in [Dead By Daylight]. Super, duper excited for the [character]. […] He’s easily the funniest survivor in the game.”
In a press release announcing Nic Cage’s introduction to Dead By Daylight’s PTB, Behaviour Interactive head of partnerships Mathieu Côté hyped the actor.
“To say we are thrilled to have Nicolas Cage join the gaming world for the first time with Dead by Daylight is an understatement,” said Côté. “Mr. Cage recorded all his voice lines and was involved every step of the way; his dedication to his craft and professionalism is unmatched. We feel very privileged to have him and to our players: you’re in for a treat!”
Behaviour Interactive is also working with Atomic Monster and Blumhouse to turn the game into a film. Maybe the IRL actor will make an appearance in the movie? That would be a pretty meta crossover.
For such a momentous period in human history, the First World War has been relatively under-served by video games. Mostly because the defining theatre of the conflict—the nightmarish trench warfare of the Western Front—is almost impossible to recreate in the medium.
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I mean, you can recreate it, loads of games have, but the problem is that—and I’m sorry for the ghastly reduction of the source material here, but we’re talking video games, so I have to do this—it’s boring. Most other forms of warfare, throughout the entirety of human history, have been turned into fantastic strategy games because there’s some degree of mobility to them. That’s what makes them games. You can flank, drive, encircle and withdraw. There are immediate and actionable tactics you can apply.
The Western Front, on the other hand, was a meat-grinder. Attacks involving thousands of men could result in gains of just a few yards. There was an enormous strategic effort under-pinning the war, from recruitment to manufacturing to global supply lines, but in a tactical sense there’s very little for the player to do, which is why nearly every game based on the conflict has been slow, bad or both.
Which brings us to The Great War: Western Front, a new strategy game from Petroglyph, the studio behind Star Wars: Empire at War and Universe at War: Earth Assault. It tries to tackle the subject matter from a slightly different approach, which I can best break down as “Total War meets Tower Defence”.
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The strategic aspect is where you amass your forces before descending into an RTS battleScreenshot: The Great War
The game is split into two sections. There’s a strategic aspect, where you move armies around a map in a turn-based system, and then when two forces meet the action zooms in to a real-time battle. This RTS element itself has two stages; there’s a planning and construction phase, where you get to design a network of trenches and firing positions, and a battle phase where you deploy units on the field and control them in real time.
The strategic stuff is fine. It works, it’s simple enough. It’s the RTS side of things that is most interesting, though, and it’s where the game both shines and ultimately falls down.
The design and construction stuff is, in the grimmest way imaginable, the highlight. Imagine a historical murder machine built the same way you’d put a LEGO set together. You’re given a map and can draw trench networks across it, picking the kind of trench, mapping out its supporting supply trenches, placing machine gun nests, agonising over the location of artillery batteries. If this was the game, and battles decided afterwards like some kind of flood management/tower defence title, I think it could have been the best First World War game ever made.
The RTS battles themselves are a disappointment (though it’s great to see a game with so much Australian representation, something loads of strategy games miss!)Screenshot: The Great War
Sadly, the moment a battle actually begins—perhaps as a nod to the actual conflict—everything falls apart. You control individual units, not entire lines of men, and a lot of the game involves moving them around the map, trying to time your devastating artillery support just right. The issue is that these units are weirdly sticky, having trouble entering or staying in trenches properly and making control of them a nightmare, while the AI’s own tactics are often somehow worse than those employed on the actual battlefields 100 years ago.
This sucks the life out of the whole thing, which is a shame! There are a lot of good ideas here, and the presentation is surprisingly earnest. There are loads of informative Company of Heroes-style 2D cutscenes, and the developers toe the line between respecting the horror of the conflict and expressing its brutality in the form of a video game as well as any other WW1 release I can remember.
The Great War: Western Front is out now on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Since its release in November 2022, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 has undergone immense scrutiny from the community due to its rocky launch. Warzone 2.0 dropped with numerous missing features that undid a lot of the goodwill garnered during the first game’s lifecycle, and while it still has a long way to go, it’s headed in the right direction, thanks in part to the recently released Ashika Island map.
This small-scale Resurgence map doesn’t fix all of the game’s issues, but it certainly brought me—and many other lapsed fans—back to the battle royale, thanks to its more focused, faster-paced experience. There are many reasons the map works so well, but it mainly comes down to its design, along with the Resurgence mode featured on it, which makes the most of its smaller scale and tighter spaces by removing a lot of the downtime typically present on larger maps. This makes each match feel balanced and digestible, especially when compared to Al Mazrah, the main Warzone 2.0 battle royale map.
Al Mazrah is fine. It’s not horrible, but it has a litany of problems that are exacerbated by some of the flawed gameplay design choices—like lots of open spaces in between POIs that leave players wide open for attacks while rotating. Likewise, the map itself feels too big for the limited 150-player count, which leads to far too much downtime. When combined with the game’s slow movement, this practically guarantees you’ll go several minutes at a time without any enemy engagements.
Ashika Island, on the other hand, offers way more cover between POIs—whether in the form of small buildings, rocky terrain, or objects to hide behind. It encourages movement and pushes matches closer to the fast pacing the series is known for. There’s never a dull moment on Ashika Island since its player count is just right for the map size, which keeps engagements flowing at a consistent rate.
Ashika Island’s impeccable design
Image: Activision
Speaking of POIs, each main hub on Ashika Island is a blast, from the condensed Residential area, to the multistoried Tsuki Castle, and even the close-quarters Oganikku Farms. Activision and High Moon Studios did an incredible job of creating POIs that are all fun to explore and battle it out against enemies in, without feeling repetitive. Ashika Island has something for everyone, whether you’re someone who prefers to take it slowly, or an expert player who likes to finesse and use the environment to your advantage.
The underground area full of water is also a nice touch, giving players another way to rotate away from potential hot zones. Those who are less experienced can just hang out in the underground area, which is usually not well-trafficked. This gives newcomers a chance to get their bearings and survive, even against more experienced players.
Likewise, Ashika Island doesn’t have choke points or overly advantageous positions like other maps. One of the biggest issues with the original Warzone is that certain spots like Prison from Rebirth Island and Peak on Caldera were right in the middle of the map and gave players a distinct height advantage. So, other POIs felt less desirable to take over, especially since they were often on the outskirts of the map. That’s why Ashika Island works so well: there’s no obvious power position that works better than others. Sure, certain POIs are slightly more ideal depending on the zone movement and your play style, but overall, Ashika Island’s layout is well-balanced.
One of the best areas is the set of apartment buildings to the southeast of Oganikku Farms. There are two tall buildings here, each comprised of several floors, all of which can be reached from the opposite building across. This gives players multiple access points, rewarding those who like to outsmart their opponents. One of my favorite gameplay moments involved flying a helicopter toward a team, using it to distract the enemy players, and then jumping out before taking out multiple foes in one fluid motion. Outmaneuvering an opponent is Warzone at its best, and it’s all thanks to Ashika Island’s fantastic design.
Back in the action, soldier
Screenshot: Activision / Joseph Yaden
Beyond the map’s design itself, I cannot praise the Resurgence mode enough. By default, battle royales on traditional large maps can be tough to get into since it often takes upwards of 30 minutes to finish a match. You typically spend more time looting and preparing for battle than you do actually fighting against other players, which gets old after a while.
But Resurgence throws that out the window; instead taking place on a smaller map with a max of 52 players (as opposed to around 150 on Al Mazrah). More importantly, it allows players to continuously respawn as long as at least one teammate remains alive, offering plenty of chances to get back into the action.
What this means is that you’re not penalized as much for playing aggressively, resulting in hard-hitting and fun matches that are easy to pick up and play—even if you’re getting your ass kicked. It’s easy to get caught in the “one more match” loop when Resurgence games last between 12 and 15 minutes, and it’s less likely that you’ll give up in frustration when you know you can drop in, get in a firefight, and get back in faster than you can find a weapon in the traditional battle royale. While Warzone’s gameplay itself still needs a little work—like implementing a slower time to kill, and faster animations across the board—getting back into the action so quickly almost makes up for some of its fundamental gameplay flaws.
Ashika Island’s excellent design, along with the faster-paced, less punishing Resurgence gameplay, equates to an immensely fun experience that feels much more like Call of Duty than the traditional BR mode. It’s swift and intense, with plenty of variation that keeps me interested for lengthy game sessions broken up into short bursts. It gets to the point faster and is ideal for players who don’t have hours upon hours to devote, offering the same thrills as a typical battle royale but in a fraction of the time. Sure, Warzone 2.0 has plenty of room for improvement, but Ashika Island makes me confident the game will eventually reach the highs of its predecessor.
