It feels like I’ve spent most of this week playing the game ‘avoiding the Christmas crowds’, but I did get to enjoy my own version of Thanksgiving where I just watched NFL for six hours, and didn’t have to think about turkey for another month. In terms of gaming, I’ve been playing a truckload of Octopath Traveler 0, as well as some more Tomb Raider Definitive Edition and Kirby Air Riders. Besides that, I’ve been checking out Assetto Corsa Rally, and messing with GeForce Now across a bunch of platforms to see how it performs.
First up this week, Gamoc has played Sweet Surrender for review, as well as Halls of Torment and Red Dead Redemption 2.
Bizarrely keen to try and take on the Marvel Rivals PlayStation Cup challenge next week, Ade has been practicing by polished off his review of the retro-styled scrolling beat ’em up Marvel Cosmic Invasion. The embargo for that is on Monday, so check out his review then!
Meanwhile, Jim has had a much quieter week. After flitting between a glut of new multiplayer games, he’s back to Ghost of Yotei as he focuses on finishing the main quest.
Aran has been playing Duskpunk for review, which is a mix of Citizen Sleeper meets the rough life in a town full of opportunities and misfortune. Sounds great to me!
Steve has been playing the natural pairing of Terrifier: the Artcade game and Spongebob Square pants: Titans of the Tide. This weird gaming concoction has had mixed results, with Steve telling us, “The first was unfortunately pretty rubbish but the second is a solid, albeit short, 3D platformer” He continued, “With those wrapped, I’ve moved onto an indie space horror that’s been years in the making and is wonderfully atmospheric.”
And finally, Tef has been curling himself up into a ball for an upcoming review, while also dabbling with some upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Darktide DLC, and dipping into some cheap Black Friday sale pick ups, like Loop Hero.
And what about you? Have you played anything this week? Why not tell us about it!
Sweet Surrender is a VR roguelike, and it comes with everything that label brings. You’ll be making your way through the environment picking off enemies, looking for weapons, cash, and upgrades, and swearing every time an enemy shaves off a bit of your health and you come closer to the end of a run. But it’s all in VR, and it’s cool throwing daggers that are somehow poisonous to robots. Oh yeah, everything is a robot – including you.
Originally launching in 2021 for Quest and PC VR, this PSVR 2 port has come after a bunch of upgrades and additions tot the game. There’s some great twists to the roguelike format and general gameplay, thanks to Sweet Surrender being in VR. The upgrades you can find throughout a level are chips that are fitted into slots by your wrists, for example, but the boosts they provide will only apply to the weapons in that hand, forcing you to really think about what upgrades you’re choosing and where you put them. A revolver that usually only shoots one, very powerful bullet before reloading on an arm with upgrades that triple its capacity and double its damage is a force to be reckoned with, but maybe something that heals you when you find cash would be smarter, to make up for the inevitable health loss.
The weapons themselves are mostly the standard fare – pistol, shotgun, SMG, and so on – but there are more interesting options, such as a katana that burns with plasma when you pull the trigger, or a spear that can shoot electricity. Melee weapons are particularly risky to use, as they force you to get into melee range, giving enemies a good opportunity to shoot you full of holes. Thankfully there are also a bunch of other items you can find, such as grenades, boosters that increase damage, and a holographic shield that feels pretty satisfying to use. At least, until you misjudge it and it runs out of energy in time for a bunch of bullets to the face.
When all this comes together the combat is pretty satisfying, rewarding accuracy for targeting weakspots on the various robot enemies. It’s fast and frenetic, and you can quickly lose a lot of health by getting surrounded. In classic shooter fashion, I found that the best way to fight is to find a bottleneck and take enemies out as they come into view. It does make you feel a bit like a robotic assassin, which is cool, but after a while the temptation to wade in with a plasma sword and a shield comes back because it’s more fun. It’s just that it’s more fun for less time, because you’ll die quicker.
Once you’ve had a few runs, Sweet Surrender starts to feel a bit limited and repetitive. You do have to expect repetition in a roguelike, but you will start to see the same rooms and layouts repeating themselves very quickly. The upgrades and weapons you find can also duplicate and repeat themselves within a run, so there’s limits to how far you can really extend your build.
It doesn’t help that this game has very little of the meta progression that has come to define run-based gaming in recent years – it’s a more classic rogulike than a modern roguelite. There are different classes to unlock – Medic, Grenadier, Sniper and Reaper – but there’s no overarching upgrades beyond that, and they don’t actually change the experience all that much beyond some boosts to certain types of damage or more healing. I’ve settled into building my character with one arm for shooting and the other for healing every single time I play, regardless of the class I’ve chosen. Beyond that, you can get shortcuts to let you skip areas, which is nice, but does mean you’re skipping past the items in those areas as well.
Then there are a bunch of immersion breakers and frustraters. Whilst implanting chips into your arm for your upgrades is cool, the experience of actually doing it is a bit of a pain. Just viewing the UI to see your current upgrades is fiddly, requiring a precise twist of your arm that can sometimes trigger in combat and get in the way. I’ve also found the controls to be very finicky for accessing hip holsters, shoulder holsters, and chest item storage. I’m constantly grabbing the wrong thing, including the rifle on your back when you’re trying to get the pistol from your hip, a good foot away from where your hand is.
There’s also a lot of dropping things, as the game doesn’t use the PSVR’s touch sensitive buttons, so you’re only holding an item if you’re specifically pressing the button properly. This becomes uncomfortable, but if you switch it to toggle it becomes nearly impossible to throw things properly, so you just have to live with it. Two handed guns like the assault rifle can be a bit awkward to aim down the sight on as there’s some jitter to the tracking, though you can just use them one handed like a pistol anyway.
Sweet Surrender does look pretty good, with a pseudo-cel shaded art style that allows explosions and things like electricity to stand out a bit. It’s not going to astonish you, but it suits the style of the game pretty well. There some nice attention to detail as well, such as there being an actual trigger on the plasma sword that is pulled when you trigger the plasma. The sound is decent as well, with the best bits being the gun sounds and the warning sounds of nearby traps. Again, nothing to amaze, but it does its job well enough.
