When it comes to stealth games, Styx has a winning formula. You play as a goblin, a perfect character for sneaking around. Short in stature, he can slink through vents and under tables, he’s got lockpicks, arrows and mines to help out, and then he can vomit poison, create clones and has magic powers on top of that!  Then there’s the enemies, ranging from humans and elves through to roaches, all of them a threat to little Styx if he’s caught out. It is a great foundation for a stealth game, and yet the games can’t quite nail the landing, resulting in Styx: Blades of Greed feeling less than the sum of its parts.

It picks up after the rather abrupt ending of the previous game, and Styx is now looking for Quartz, a glowing blue crystal that he can absorb to gain more powers. Naturally, he wants to get more of it and, after meeting up with some returning characters from the previous game and stealing a zeppelin, they set off to get some.

The opening feels almost like a different game to everything that follows it. It has regular cutscenes whilst you’re still getting everyone together, and feels like the set up for a story-led game set across various locations. However, shortly after escaping the blockade and being given access to three locations, including the one you just left, you’re simply told to find Quartz in each of them. The next actual cutscene is eight whole quartz pieces away, which is hours of gameplay, and that’s just for one mission before it dumps you back to another Quartz hunt across the same maps.

It’s a real shame, because as far as thieving games go, Styx: Blades of Greed is still one my favourites for quite a while. To start with, the locations are huge and many levelled – seriously, the verticality, to use a late 2000s term, is off the scale. More important than all that map, however, is that there are tonnes of holes in walls to find, climbable pathways, rafters to skulk over, just an embarrassment of riches when it comes to infiltrating places really. They’re packed full of enemies, sure, but there’s plenty of routes around them, boxes to hide in, and cracks in their patrols to slip through.

You won’t be earning money to upgrade your tools, or have a shop to replenish your resources. Instead you’ll steal blueprints to upgrade your equipment, level up from completing objectives and looting resources, and after absorbing a certain number of Quartz crystals you’ll get a point to unlock a power. You start with cloning abilities and invisibility, which can be very helpful on their own, but you’ll be able to unlock the ability to possess enemies, or move ultra fast, for example. They’re very useful, but limited by Amber, which they cost to use and must be refilled using potions that can be crafted, found, or pickpocketed. In addition to these are a few standard open world/metroidvania additions including a grappling hook, a glider and claws for climbing certain walls, but by far the coolest is the ability to dash through grids. It doesn’t sound big, but it is exceptionally useful.

Unfortunately, a lot of the voice acting isn’t very convincing. Many of the lines don’t match the intensity of the situation they’re in, like there was minimal direction, or the context of the line changed through development but it wasn’t re-recorded. One voice actor in particular doesn’t give a bad performance exactly, but simply doesn’t match the character – an orc with a higher pitched voice that just never sounds right . Styx fares the best, but everyone else is a bit off. The cutscenes have issues as well, specifically that every single time there is a cut all the background and textures stream in, really marring what can be some pretty nicely “shot” cutscenes otherwise. “Can” is the operative word, as there are a couple that don’t really make sense, especially in regards to stealing a zeppelin.

Speaking of not making sense, you steal that zeppelin and are immediately free to return to where you stole it from. It will just float there unmolested by authorities as if it wasn’t a big deal, even though it should have been. There are a few things like this throughout the story that make things feel inconsistent, and one supposed twist that was so obvious enough to me that I will be truly shocked if anyone doesn’t see it coming. The story, despite a pretty promising start, didn’t manage to keep me invested as it doesn’t really explain or show things very well. I know that Styx is supposed to be getting negative effects from the quartz because it tells me, but it barely ever shows outside of some blue colouring his palms. If it’s bad for him why isn’t any of his crew trying to stop him, why is Styx so blase about it? Why not just steal it instead of absorbing it?

Much like with the previous games, I get the feeling that Styx was originally envisaged as a goblin thief, but without a solid story or character arc to wrap around that. Styx has a few characteristics, but they’re shallow; he’s a smart arse, he’s sneaky, he laughs when he pushes people off ledges, and he wants power. That’s it, and I can count them on the fingers of one hand. All of the characters are like that, but with even fewer fingers required. The result is that a functional story that can lead you between things, but doesn’t leave much of an impression. It’s a shame, not just because there’s plenty of potential here, but because the opening gives a different impression and some of the cutscenes could capture your imagination, if the delivery were better. It carries through the quest design as well. So much of it is not just to go find a key, but to basically go find multiple keys. The game wants you to steal things but can’t think of a compelling reason, so here’s five seeds to find and steal that will open this door. It just feels like busywork and padding instead of a thrilling heist.

Then there are the technical issues and bugs. I’ve only experienced frame drops on PS5 after moving quickly on the glider, and this only on a couple of occasions, but there are other issues. There’s some minor platforming awkwardness with ledges that can’t be grabbed or can be, but not how you would expect. Styx also isn’t built for combat, which is good because it’s a bit unresponsive and feels ropey whilst you’re doing it. Again, there are a few crafting resources that could do with being a bit more accessible, as you can go for extended periods without being able to use your toys because you’re just missing one particular, and supposedly common resource. It’s usually iron. There are also areas that are so dark you literally can’t see anything at all, making it practically impossible to find your way through.

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.