There’s only good turn-based team fighting in the pitch-black far future, slightly let down by a slow resource-gathering midgame. To describe a Warhammer 40k adaption as sleek, let alone nuanced, is sacrilegious. This cosmos is characterized by unending grot, sour liturgy and robust cybernetics. Its soldiers are kept together by rivets and fervor, and its starships are ancient Gothic ironclads that have been retrieved from asteroid fields.

You anticipate clashing cogs, overdone crenelations, and suggestion windows that read like catechisms, not a thoughtful presentation or careful handling of inspirations in such a context. You anticipate things to wallowing in Plaguebearer offal like a Dreadnought. However, Daemonhunters positively glides aside from a minor (and, to be honest, genre-typical) over-reliance on grinding to assist the story reach the next peak. In practice, however, this is both a fine balance of ideas from XCOM and Gears Tactics, and a crisp boiling-down of a massive fiction that somehow renders everything digestible, even snappy, without sacrificing the morbid intricacy of the source material. At first glance, the interface looks like a Borg sneezed all over a cathedral.

The fact that the Warhammer 40k Space Marine chapter you lead in Daemonhunters, the Grey Knights, were created specifically for an XCOM-style game and are a covert order that fights in small groups against vastly superior numbers while surgically removing Chaos infestations as an extension of the Imperial Inquisition, helps. The tale opens with the noble ship Baleful Edict, which lost its former Commander in the last (tutorial) combat, returning home to Titan after an exceptionally deadly war. You have just a few seconds to get to know your lieutenant Ectar and Tech Priest (or head engineer) Lunete as his disembodied, silent successor before the inquisitor Vakir commandeers the Edict because he has discovered an enigmatic Nurgle “Bloom” on neighboring worlds.

Nurgle is the Chaos deity of illness, decay and rebirth, and something of a New Weird folk hero in these posthuman, chthulucentric times, but Space Marines have little patience for hippie ecological sci-fi, so off you go to trample all over the Fly Lord’s magnificent mouldy creations. Like in XCOM, infected planets function similarly to cities: outbreaks appear on your holographic star map in groups of three, and you typically only have time to reach one before the infection intensifies. This increases the difficulty of subsequent battles on the infected planet, as tougher Chaos demon species and more frequent “Warp Surges” debuff your Marines while energizing their enemies.

You’ll be playing office diplomacy when you’re not cleaning out planets, gradually upgrading the Edict’s research and building facilities (a limited but exquisite assortment of menu tabs featuring unique theme songs), or taking care of your armies of screamy robo-exterminators. In general, Daemonhunters is a cosmic witchhunt, yet it frequently works more like a comedy about theocracy at work. Every coworker has a grudge against the others. Vakir is an arrogant outside consultant who handles the entire situation as if it were her own science study. She constantly demands that you go farther into the Bloom’s history than is prudent or pious. When you talk to Ectar alone, he’s rather kind, but he’s also a grumpy old man who follows a very short book called “kill on sight.” After serving in Jabba the Hutt’s IT department for a millennium, Lunete became C3PO. She is not afraid to tell you that she views the others as malfunctioning ship systems with out-of-date squishy pieces.

Arguments are common, whether they take the form of significant story points or unexpected occurrences that force you to take a side. Problematically, your subordinates also serve as avatars for Daemonhunters’ research, base building, and upgrade features. For example, if you reprimand Ectar for “tidying up” Vakir’s reports, he will pout for 30 days and reduce your mission XP gains by 50%. Additionally, Grey Knight grandmaster Vardan Kai, played by Andy Serkis as a sort of cyborg John Bercow, will occasionally interrupt you with messages. If you have a falling out with him, he will stop providing you with new and fancy Space Marine recruits, weapons, and equipment, all of which you can purchase with requisition points earned from each mission that goes well.

Whatever occurs, you can anticipate a lot of “my devotion to the Emperor is bigger than yours” statements and passive-aggressive allusions to Imperial doctrine. The Black Library author Aaron Dembski-Bowden writes in a dense but fast-paced style that makes for an enjoyable read. The campaign’s main focus is on trucking between planets while waiting for construction projects to finish and sponging up research materials to advance the plot gradually. Once the game reaches the fifteen-hour mark, the inclusion of four additional Bloom flavors—each of which requires you to acquire individual samples—counterbalances the entrance of new customization options and monster kinds. The domestic flashpoints in The Edict are a great diversion, but I missed Gears Tactics’s better-coordinated dramatic structure and drive. You may explore each character’s captivating backstory by clicking on their management tabs.

The cut and thrust—or, maybe more correctly, gouge and bludgeon—of actual battle more than makes up for the campaign’s slower moments. XCOM’s fundamental components are all present, enhanced by a confusing yet easily navigable user interface that, above all, never lets you guess who can be shot from where. These elements include grid-based, multiple-elevation layouts that are split into half or full cover; the ability to set overwatch view cones and cancel attackers during the enemy turn; and map exploration that involves carefully peeled back the fog of war while attempting to avoid triggering too many skirmishes at once. The distinction lies in Daemonhunters’ desire for you to raise the volume when things do become raucous. It’s highly biased towards aggressiveness, but (a bit shockingly) not nearly as rampage-prone as Gear Tactics.

One of my favorite XCOM memories is how my squad’s whole commander went into a cowering hysterics due to a single soldier’s frantic response firing, losing me a turn and eventually the fight. I mean, it’s great to lose. Due to their innate incapacity to feel fear, Space Marines view defeat as a sin. As a result, most of their combat speech revolves on the question “was that supposed to hurt?” Only a small number of Nurgle’s forces are as formidable or lethal as the overpowered Stormtroopers you pit against them. Sure, his forces are tasty, with everything from squealing, timebomb-firing Mad Max extras to clanking, bile-spreading Plague Marines to vast, blobby archdemons that duplicate themselves when hit. Take a peek at your guys standing on the Teleportarium pad during mission setup – the Hottest New Boyband of the 41st millennia, complete with flamethrowers named Vengeance and Harbinger, skull-plated shinguards, and blue halberds that crackle. It’s nearly enough to hide the fact that they resemble Buzz Lightyear in some situations.

Not only are Space Marines fearless. Fortunately, they also have death immunity. A Space Marine that is knocked out can get back up after three turns at half health; if they are lost again, they will be sent back to the Edict for some rest and relaxation. While most Space Marines have restricted chances of revival, some are unbuffered, and wounded soldiers can be redeployed while recovering at a lower level of maximum health as long as they do not have critical wounds. After losing every squad member in the first five hours of the game, I nearly restarted it, but the effect of a team wipe on Standard difficulty is essentially insignificant.

Although the interface first appears to be a Borg sneeze all over a cathedral, in actual use it is a precise distillation of a massive fiction and a masterful balancing act of concepts from both XCOM and Gears of War.

Nor do Space Marines miss. Ranged damage is not based on your guesswork about accuracy percentage; instead, it is based on factors like target cover, angle, and distance. One of the many grace notes is that, while you’re choosing waypoints, the UI displays you how much damage you’ll do to foes from any grid square. This gives flanking strategies—which, in XCOM, always feel like tempting fate—more confidence. There’s a Get Out of Jail Free card in the form of the Aegis shield system, which allows you to swap action points for temporary additional health to absorb the brunt of the response fire, should your foes manage to flank you in turn and lock you down with overwatch cones. Harder Space Marine classes, such as the Paladin, may be enhanced to essentially grow a second life bar, allowing you to strut through combat zones instead of running to the rooftops and launching all of your grenades at once as in XCOM.

The will point system, which powers Space Marine psychic abilities like healing and teleportation and allows you to amp up standard assaults with debuffs or AOE blasts, encourages you to go on the attack. Killing creatures restores will points, so each encounter becomes a practice in refueling. Pay close attention to making sure your apothecaries, or medics, take a few scalps early on. If regaining will points is the carrot, then each map’s sporadic Warp Surges are the stick. The longer you retreat, the more Nurgle’s plague will hinder your progress by giving enemies juicy mutations, blocking your Space Marine skills, or increasing the number of reinforcements you can call in when you attack targets like enormous seedpods. By using Stratagems, which are one-time map-wide power-ups that may transfer your whole squad or immobilize every opponent for a round, you can neutralize the effects of Warp Surges.

Though with greater limitations, Daemonhunters also takes inspiration from Gears Tactics’ clever, momentum-building concept of regaining action points after you capital-E Execute an enemy. Executions are only possible if you roll a critical and get Precision Targeting for body parts. If you are unable to kill a Chaos wizard outright, you can still salvage some satisfaction by chopping off the arm that he uses to cast spells. Individual class talents allow you to sneak a few additional movements into your turn, and this is accompanied by an execution system. While the Interceptor has unlocks that give them a chance to recuperate AP when they conduct teleport assassinations, the Justicar may beam AP to friends. This is the basis for some incredibly flamboyant killstreaks.

Additionally, units can operate outside of their turn thanks to context-specific abilities. For example, the Purgator can be set to counterattack when fired at, and the Interceptor can react-fire on any enemy that a friendly targets. These kinds of tricks are arguably my favorite parts of turn-based strategy games like XCOM; it’s not only about choosing the best possible combination of movements; it’s also about figuring out how to extend your turn “unfairly,” as in shouting over your opponent. Though it doesn’t take this to the same, devilish heights as Othercide, Daemonhunters penalizes you far less for going beyond.

I want to end with a few grievances. One is that opponents can occasionally be a touch odd when it comes to overwatching; they’ll effectively tie you up and practically force you to give up a unit. At other moments, they seem to point nearly at random. Early on, I could have also done without a few more peculiar demons: the rank-and-file Before they’re altered by Warp Surges, Nurglers are just dudes with firearms, which minimizes the effect of terrain that range from ruined Eldar craftworlds to fungus-filled trainyards.

However, a Space Marine would smirk at these types of dents on the armor. A few uninspired opponent types? A little too much busywork on the screen throughout the campaign? A title resembling something you would say to the cops to show them you haven’t had any alcohol? Pshaw, such trifles are of no concern to Adeptus Astartes troops. Go forth, allies, and savor one of the most impressive and, admittedly, sophisticated XCOM tributes in memory.

The excellent arsenal of combat customization offered by Ska Studios’ Salt and Sanctuary sequel is let down by some flimsy storyline.
Dark Souls was first brought to me by a buddy of mine. The current classic from FromSoftware, an endlessly exhaustive game about mankind and what it means to live and die, was instead presented to me as “look at this hard as shit game, bet you can’t even beat the first boss.” They were correct; I was unable to defeat the Asylum Demon, who seized my terrified figure from a ledge and splattered them all over the lower level.

That companion is Salt and Sacrifice. Ska Studios’ follow-up to 2016’s Salt and Sanctuary is a 2D side-scrolling hack-and-slash game set in the ruins of a decaying world. It pits your pathetic adventurer against monsters of enormous, hulking shapes and sizes, challenging you to venture out into the wider world and actually eat mages alive in order to restore balance throughout the land.

Similar to that friend, Ska Studios’ follow-up is primarily a cursory examination of the genre of game it parodies. NPCs and other side characters serve the player character and further your goal to repair the universe, but that’s about it. There is no subtlety in the conversation or plot. All that’s left is an unflappable combat system that serves as the basis for everything.

That being said, the fighting mechanism is not at all horrible. The protagonist of Salt and Sacrifice leaps and ducks from a barrage of hostile blows, or he can stand tall with a shield. The game encourages you to assault, but your stamina is extremely limited. In combat, there are some very suspenseful moments when you have to try to hit an adversary or sneak a heal in just in time to avoid being hit by their strike.

It may be extremely, really difficult throughout. In Salt and Sacrifice, you’re likely to get combo-attacked to death by two or more adversaries, leaving you with no means to escape, as your stamina doesn’t replenish while you’re receiving damage. There are plenty of enemies here that are taller than you, and they have the ability to launch you into the air for two or three consecutive hits, much like a protagonist from Devil May Cry, or launch you flying back over half the screen while their henchmen close in on you.

Despite its tough exterior, Salt and Sacrifice is not overly cumbersome. Actually, the protagonist of Salt and Sacrifice and their gear have an astounding level of personalization. You can use elemental damage-infused daggers to slowly eat away at your enemies’ health, spatter them with massive weapons, or use ranged spells based on ice or lightning to attack them. Because Salt and Sacrifice causes item drops from defeated foes to come in an unexpectedly large and quick stream, you’ll frequently find yourself with an abundance of things to modify and customize your weapons.

It’s only fitting that Salt and Sacrifice allows you to play with its arsenal of weaponry considering how vicious some of its boss battles can be. The enormous mages who make up the early-game monsters are all the size of houses and are skilled at hitting you with a barrage of magical assaults, such as lightning, fire, ice, and poison. When you combine massive bosses with a small 2D arena for combat, you’ll get terrifying encounters where you may be only millimeters away from a strike that would send your hero to the death.

You can only chip away at the enormous amount of health that the rogue’s gallery of monsters possess while swerving and avoiding an unending barrage. Given that there is no way to block them with a shield or to stand at the perimeter of the arena and attack them with a ranged weapon, boss battles can occasionally feel a touch unjustly weighted. Salt & Sacrifice’s monsters appear to be saying, “Good luck if you’ve been playing defensively up until now,” as the newest behemoth lumbers toward you and unleashes assaults strong enough to level structures.

Ska Studios’ follow-up is powered by a tight, intense fighting system with tons of customization possibilities, but the plot falls short of expectations.

The goal of the game is to eat the aforementioned magicians alive and cure the planet (via very mysterious ways), hence they play a crucial role in Salt and Sacrifice’s narrative. Putting aside the questionable ethics of eating someone alive, the storyline is where a lot of Ska Studios’ follow-up fails: there are too many loose ends, with each character in the game’s main environment acting as a voice actor explaining everything to you in the most obvious way. It seems like almost everyone is merely there to explain things to you; very few actually have a personality or a purpose other than acting as informational museum pieces. The setting and breadth of the original Salt and Sanctuary may be expanded in Salt and Sacrifice, but the meaning remains unchanged.

Beyond the dull central area, exploring Salt and Sacrifice’s several biomes is still a lot of fun. Consider the beginning region, a monster-filled hamlet that looks nearly totally horizontal at first. However, after you obtain the grappling hook, it transforms into a vertical playground that allows you to practically soar to new heights and explore gloomy dungeons and houses littered with dead bodies. When you’re not getting beaten off cliffs by beasties, Salt and Sacrifice’s many worlds provide a surprisingly large degree of verticality, which makes for an incredibly fun experience.

A play on previous works, Salt and Sacrifice is not totally successful. The sequel from Ska Studios features a tight, intense fighting system with tons of customization possibilities, and boss battles are fun even if they can be too difficult at times. However, Salt and Sanctuary’s narrative ideas and storytelling fall short of expectations.

Mario Strikers makes a comeback for the Switch with a more simplified version that is ultimately less enjoyable to play.
Because of the wild pleasure I had with Mario Strikers Charged, the Wii version of Mario’s supercharged football series that debuted an astounding 15 years ago, I had been anticipating Mario Strikers: Battle League Football. The first update to Strikers since then is Battle League, which launches this week for Switch (without the Football outside of Europe). However, the more I played, the fewer things I could find enjoyable.

In the end, Battle League is perhaps a better portrayal of small-team football since it is a more concentrated game. Aside from the sporadic hiccups in frame rate, it presents itself more elegantly and has the most amount of visual customization in the series to yet. That being said, I don’t really play Rocket League or Mario Strikers for football purposes. I used to play Strikers on the Wii, since it was a peculiar and extremely Mario-esque take on football. It seems like there is less of that this time around, which is bad news for Battle League.

The main features of the game are Cup Battles, which are a sequence of mini tournament brackets in which four players can advance and earn coins that unlock customizations, and Strikers Club, an online mode in which your wins go toward a weekly seasonal ranking for groups of up to 20 people that resemble Clash of Clans. The founder of your club can modify the appearance of each member’s favorite pitch at the conclusion of each week using the tokens they have earned.

Cup battles are really exciting, but they yield a significantly less amount of cash when each cup has been defeated. This money is required to buy equip upgrades that let you customize Battle League’s initial cast of ten Mushroom Kingdom characters. As usual, Mario is your all-around player, Bowser is muscular but slower, and Toad—making his fully playable series debut—is quick but prone to getting knocked out.

In addition to giving these characters more realistic armor that is more NFL than Premier League, gear may also be utilized to fill in the blanks in some metrics and balance things out so that, if you’d like, your Toad can really carry a punch. But everything has a cost; for example, strength skill points cost speed; so, you don’t actually improve a character per se, but rather modify their gameplay.

At the start of a match, you select which four main characters to control (the goalie is still a CPU and there are no Sidekicks this time around), as well as whether to equip them with gear or not. Next, players will have a limited option of five stadiums to chose from, each with a different theme: Peach’s Castle, Bowser’s Castle, Luigi’s Mansion, Donkey Kong’s jungle, or a Mushroom Hill that resembles a theme park version of Super Mario. Here, your completely aesthetic choice is combined with that of your opponents to form a stadium that is divided in half. Sadly, this means that the stadium effects from Charged are no longer an issue. The days of a cow being blown across the field to obstruct play in the middle of a hurricane at a windy stadium are long gone.

The actual gameplay seems more tactical, with a set of maneuvers that you are first taught through an extensive set of tutorials. Knowing when to employ each of the two distinct talents of dashing and evading is essential to preventing the constant tackling that is currently a main focus. In order to get control of the ball or eliminate other players before they can, you spend a lot of time sliding or crashing into opponents. This is because you have fewer and weaker equipment than Charged and no Super Abilities. Even while it’s funny to see Yoshi get sprayed all over the stadium walls, there are times when tackling becomes too intense, especially when players appear to writhe on the floor for a bit longer than is required. This is particularly noticeable when your goalie is trying to get the ball back into play while you’re waiting for a Hyper Strike to finish. When play really restarts, some battles might degenerate into an annoying full-on brawl in which nobody is left standing.

The reduction of equipment in Battle League to those that are akin to those in Mario Kart and the elimination of Charged’s Super Abilities, which were unique to each character, do not help the problem. The Hyper Strike ability, which is triggered by a luminous ball akin to Super Smash Bros.’ Smash Ball, presently only provides an alternate animation based on the character using it. It’s not the same as really being in control of Mario when he becomes enormous, Yoshi when he squashes players within a gigantic egg, or Wario when he releases a powdered fart to confound surrounding adversaries. After the increased focus on passing the ball among team members in Charged, with its metallic ball that heated up over time, even successful passing times felt less significant.

And at least until debut, that is how Battle League is. This Strikers game has a lot of personality; every now and then I’ll laugh when I see Wario resolutely holding the football under his arm like the huge cheat he is, or when I witness another celebration dance from the extremely strange Waluigi. It is really rewarding to be able to execute a Hyper Strike just as your opponent is sliding in to stop you. Additionally, there are already hints that the game will have a list of post-launch upgrades including other characters. However, even with these, and even if the weekly Strikers Club ends up becoming popular, it’s difficult to compare the limited number of modes available at the moment to Rocket League, that other football game that isn’t about football, and then take into account Nintendo’s standard boxed Switch game RRP and still be able to recommend Battle League for a quick kickabout.