Dark Scrolls: Nintendo Switch Review

Developed by Doinksoft
Published by Devolver Digital
Platform: Nintendo Switch

Essentially a roguelite take on Ghosts and Goblins crossed with the Mario games' coin collecting, Dark Scrolls is the kind of game that will get its hooks into you and leave you both frustrated and clamouring for more.

As one of nine characters, you head out across various levels, shooting and jumping your way past marauding baddies that take the form of zombies, spiders, flying fish, firing blobs and angry bosses and blast your way to the end of each one.

Collecting treasure along the way, and coins to level up, Dark Scrolls is a very easy sell. Whether it's solo or local or online co-op, the game is extremely playable - but also extremely frustrating.

Each of the nine characters come with their own weapons, powers and upgrades, but at the end of the day, this pixel-powered shmup is really about the timing. With the screen permanently scrolling (with the exception of bosses), there's no room for error - and certainly in the single player game, there are moments when timing everything can be extremely tight and nerve-wracking.

From flinging arrows or tossing steaks at the baddies, and upgrading via a honking swan's friend (yes, really), the game makes its accessibility a point of pride. 

Unlocking power ups via the shop points in the game allows you to allocate them to different star levels on your attacks, meaning you can charge up a series of different attacks for every level you carry (to a maximum of five).

But just like Ghosts and Goblins, there are moments when you want to throw it across the room in exasperation.

Whether it's the lack of continue points that prove almost annoying to a single player campaign or the fact upgrades are locked behind coin collection, Dark Scrolls makes scaling up the fight more than frustrating in places. 

Given that your coin spoils can fly off the screen without any warning too, there's a real case for feeling like the game's stacked against you in parts. However, it only succeeds in keeping players engaged because it's so addictively simple and plays so well.

Also some of the initial powers the starting gallery of heroes has are almost pointless. One uses stealth but immediately drops out of it when firing attacks, making the whole idea seem pointless.

The key comes from making attacks your own. Whether it's letting a room full of baddies mount up before unleashing an axe-wielding attack across the board from initial character Grizz or healing via the fairy Quinn's charged-up power, Dark Scrolls has ways to ensure the game can be played in whichever way you'd like.

All in all, this dungeon crawler is colourful enough and well-enough executed that you'll find yourself going "Just one more game" before you know what's happened. Dark Scrolls is Doinksoft (The Gunbrella developer) doing what it does best - making games that are easy to play, and extremely hard to put down.

Starfield: PS5 Review 

Developed by Bethesda Studios
Published by Bethesda Studios
Platform: PS5

Much like No Man's Sky at its initial launch, Starfield felt like it was a game-changer.

But stymied by comments about gameplay, about how it was a wannabe Skyrim in Space, the game seemed to wither, content to reel in only die-hard fans, rather than a wide user base. However, those who stuck with Starfield a year ago, have seen the game blossom into something that was a bit more than just the current fad and develop into something that's an enjoyable exploration experience.

So with the move to PlayStation 5, the game had a lot to live upto - but perhaps hype is the biggest weapon it faces.

It's worth noting that the latest iteration of the game - along with updates and also DLC - now sees it in its most decisive form as well as offering a game that anyone can dive into. 

Very occasionally still, planets feel empty and devoid of life, but for those looking to recapture the highs of space exploration once offered by the likes of Elite, Starfield still offers much to the casual traveller. With graphical fidelity boosted for the PS5 and solid RPG mechanics, it's perhaps unfair that Starfield has suffered by comparison - and it seems almost trite to dismiss it as solid, but that's what it is.

The game is really about travelling to planets, meeting people and creatures and finding your way in the universe and on that front, Starfield really delivers. The exploration's impressive, the mechanics work and the new Free Lanes DLC also helps you go from one setting to the next. Cruising between planets within a solar system brings friendly and hostile contact, but it all adds to the experience.

Perhaps Starfield itself won't ever be seen as a stellar entrant into the pantheon of space RPGs, but in this PlayStation format, the fact that it offers a high-quality game at its very best level following a few years of updates certainly makes it a worthwhile proposition to saddle up for.

Minions and Monsters: Movie Review

Cast: Alison Janney, Zoey Deutch, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, George Lucas, Trey Parker
Director: Pierre Coffin

There's a moment in the latest spinoff for the Minions when the yellow pests are kicked out of 1920s  Hollywood, blamed for ruining the box office and arrival of talking pictures with their gibberish and inability to act.

It's an almost meta and prescient moment that could see audiences feeling the same, given how scattershot and average this homage to old school Hollywood and latest outing for the loveable Despicable Me sidekicks is.

The seventh outing for the yellow perils, beloved by children because of their nonsense language and slapstick behaviour, concerns itself with the story of Minions Henry and James, a pair of outcasts whose desire to tell stories sees them bond.

Loosely, the film celebrates the life of the Minions and how intertwined their world became with Hollywood as tribes of them headed off to find a Big Boss to serve, as all Minions should. But when Henry and James inadvertently lead their masters to their near-death, the Minions clans are outlawed and end up in 1920s Los Angeles, crashing a film shoot being overseen by director Max (Christoph Waltz).

When their antics charm the owners of the Bright Brothers Pictures studio and the masses brought up on silent movies, they become the Hollywood elite association. But their star falls quickly with the advent of talking pictures and soon James has a desire to create a Kaiju-led picture to get them back in the studio good books.

With homages to Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, The Blob and The Day The Earth Stood Still, Coffin's love letter to the Hollywood of the past is clearly a passion project - and one that's well-executed in parts. And while the animation of the Minions is still superlative, the nonsense this time around fails to find a creative boost to justify keep mining their raison d'etre.

It's to be noted most of the younger audience will be less interested in the nods to Hollywood past and will be more concerned with the slapstick - of which there is plenty - but Minions & Monsters seems almost disconnected from the simplicity that the creatures have become known for through the years.

It's self-aware and meta in extremis, but at no real stage is it incredibly smart or clever in its storytelling as the dungaree-wearing menaces barrel from one moment to the next. Sure, you could argue there's an allegory of the Minions serving the evil masters of Hollywood and Irene, the amorphous blob filled with eyes that imperils Los Angeles at the end could be seen as a metaphor for the ever-hungry eyes of audiences, but it's a bit of a surface-level reach from Coffin and his writers.

There's not enough emotional heft here and while the film maxes out at around 90 minutes, it still feels its weight midway.

By the end of Minions & Monsters, you're exhausted - and based on what's on screen, so are the writers when it comes to ideas for what to do next with these pesky critters.

Little Nightmares: VR Altered Echoes: PSVR2 Review

Developed by Iconik
Published by Bandai Namco
Platform: PSVR2

The Little Nightmares series has always been about claustrophobia.

So a VR version would always notch that up a level and add a level of creepiness that would be hard to beat. 

In this Altered Echoes, you take control of Dark Six, Six's doppelganger as they try to escape from various rooms and scrabble to complete puzzles. Across five areas and with different puzzles and boss face-offs, the game builds an atmosphere of unease that's hard to deal with on the VR headset as there's nowhere to escape.

Whereas the game series itself has given you distance from the unsettling goings-on, the virtual version's desire to creep you out close-up can prove to be a little too much. But what it manages to get right is the ideal of how small and insignificant you are as a creature in this world - it's almost overwhelming in some ways, as Dark Six deals with what's ahead and tries to cope with the challenges.

Graphically, the game draws from the same darkened palette that's become the norm for the franchise, but seeing it all in a first-person perspective makes it feel more oppressive and somehow upsetting than you'd expect.

In terms of gameplay, over just five areas, it's a little short - but for a tentative first step into expanding Six's world into a new way of looking at it all, Little Nightmares VR Altered Echoes offers up an intriguing approach - especially if you're a fan of the world already.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: Nintendo Switch 2 Review

Developed by MachineGames
Published by Bethesda
Platform: Nintendo Switch 2

Porting across to the portable Nintendo Switch world after it impressed on PlayStation and XBox, the Indiana Jones game feels like a natural fit for the kind of escapades made famous by the Uncharted franchise - exploring, taking on bad guys and looting where necessary.

Set between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, the game drops Indy into 1937 as he tries to harness the power of the Great Circle, something a group of bad guy Nazis are also trying to do. Jumping around the world, the game gets the globetrotting story of Indy right and makes a compelling argument for good times in the franchise.

From stealth to fighting, the Great Circle's strength is an accurate depiction of what you'd want from an Indy title - and along with the elements of stealth and whip-cracking, this is the kind of port across that you'd want. With great graphics and gameplay integrated into the game, the Indiana Jones experience is one that can't easily be denied.

And while the game feels eerily true to the film franchise and could be accused of doing little to stand out on its own, its adherence and performance from Troy Baker as Indy are all to be admired. It does exactly what you'd want from an Indy game and manages to seize on the nostalgia highs you'd expect.

Graphically the game soars on a crystal HD performance, despite some occasional lower frame rate issues, its emulation within the portable environment means it's still deeply enjoyable for anyone to swing into action with Indy while on the go.

It: Welcome to Derry: Season 1 Blu Ray Review

The kids are not alright in this latest TV outing for Stephen King's Pennywise.

It's back to Derry and a world where racism is just below the surface, the nuclear arms race is underway and the children are being killed by monsters. So just your average middle America in many ways.

But whereas the It movies focused more on the generations terrified by Pennywise the malevolent clown, this latest deems it necessary to fully traumatise the children with repeated terrors. However, in the background, there's a story about airmen and a local US airbase which has a mission seemingly connected to what's going on in Derry.

It's fair to say that some of the gore early on in the season doesn't match the human horrors that play out - a pre-titles sequence for episode one is much stronger until the gore shows up and deeply upsetting without over emphasising the horror elements.

There's a psychological terror at play here that's more effective than some borderline campy visuals that feel in keeping with the 1980s Tim Cutty series of Pennywise. And there's some truly unsettling ideas of institutionalising children, where adults think the kids are natural liars - a story of innocence lost is infinitely more effective than some carnival-level OTT imagery. 

The old saying goes there's nothing to fear, but fear itself - and certainly that side of the story proves to be potent material in the third episode of the series, with more of a clearer picture emerging of what's actually going on and where the story is going.

Certainly with occasional jump scares, It: Welcome To Derry knows what it wants to achieve. But when it steers away from the carny schlock elements, there's a very intriguing expansion of the Pennywise universe. And it's in these moments that the series gives itself the validation that's needed.  All the elements do coalesce in time, but It: Welcome To Derry requires a bit of an investment to guide you through. And that's a lot to ask for a show that hides it's familiar face for much of the season.

To say it's a slow burn is an understatement, but if you give it time and be patient, It: Welcome To Derry will give you nightmares for weeks to come. If you can get past the comedic horrors that are played for chills, but raise titters.

It: Welcome To Derry premieres on Neon on October 27.