Author: Sinead

In the year 2100, the world’s most popular sport happens virtually rather than physically. Competitors don VR headsets to enter matches of The Finals, fighting for both money and the attention of the show’s many sponsors, whose gifts of merchandise act as badges of honour.

This premise sounded pretty interesting, generic name aside, so I tried The Finals out on a whim after hearing positive comments on its gameplay from friends, knowing very little beyond that it was an FPS. It didn’t get off to the best start because the first thing I saw after installing and launching the game was a “create an account” screen. (If I did reviews out of 10, games with mandatory account requirements would automatically lose at least half a point!).

Once reluctantly logged in, however, I was impressed by the surprisingly effective tutorial. The tutorial included a shooting range with distance markers, vertical structures to practice traversal, and droppable items to practice changing the environment. There were also both hostile and friendly training dummies so that players could try out using healing items and creating cover for allies as well as fighting, reinforcing the team-based aim.

During the tutorial I experienced an interesting visual glitch where my gun became detached from the rest of my character, making it impossible for me to change weapons or interact with objects. However, this turned out to be the only bug I encountered: The Finals provided remarkably (by 2024 standards) stable and bug-free gameplay. Unfortunately, that’s one of the few compliments I can provide, because despite its mechanical and functional quality, the game did not click at all for me.

During the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to get out of my “only playing Destiny 2” rut. Exploring the demos section of the Xbox store seemed like a good place to start, as I knew I would be likely to find something that I wouldn’t have thought of searching for.

I tried a mixture of games; these four games are the ones I played and thought about enough to write a fair review for.

• Ghostunner – 3.8 GB
• Klonoa: Phantasy Reverie Series – 3.5 GB
• Button City – 840 MB
• Dead Pets Unleashed – 2.5 GB

Ghostrunner

During the opening cutscene, your character is betrayed and brutally attacked. Then you awaken, having been repaired by an AI who then tells you that you need to release them from prison. So far, so cyberpunk. However, while the story presented in the first level seems a little generic, the gameplay is the star of this show.

The Ghostrunner demo contains the first two levels of the game, which show off three main gameplay types. One type is pure traversal; using your Ghostrunner abilities of sliding, grappling, jumping, wall-running and air-dashing to fluidly travel across the city. The second type is combat sections, which are closer to being puzzles than typical fights. Enemies die in one hit, but so do you. So the combat sections are about using your parkour skills to zip to each enemy in turn before they can see and lock on to you, deliver the killing blow, then zip over to the next enemy, in as seamless a chain of movement as possible. The best comparison I can make is that it’s like a hybrid of Mirror’s Edge and Superhot, without being a copy of either game.

During the combat sections, you will die a lot. However, the game is designed with that quick trial-and-error loop in mind – checkpoints are frequent, death has no obvious consequences, and you respawn very quickly – so combat doesn’t get too frustrating. (There is also an upgrade system, and an assist mode, in the full game, but neither of these were present in the demo, which I think was a misstep).

After completing the first level, I felt that Beasts of Maravilla Island was fairly good yet not particularly memorable. But then I saw the second level. Its celestial blue-and-purple colour scheme, dotted with glowing plants and vibrant creatures, absolutely delivered on the feeling of awe and wonder that Maravilla aimed to create. For me, that environment took the game straight from ok to good, and guaranteed my interest in both finishing the game and writing a review of it.

Beasts of Maravilla Island is a third-person snapshooter where you control Marina, a wildlife photographer. Marina has grown up listening to her grandfather’s stories of Maravilla Island, a magical-seeming place where he was once shipwrecked. Now, armed with his camera and his detailed journal, she is visiting the area to see if her grandfather’s stories are true, and to share them with the world if they are true.

During the introductory custscene, Marina is on a ship to the island, and at the start of the game she mentions that she will be picked up the next day. This makes clear to players that the adventure will be fairly short, but more importantly, it sets the tone for the rest of the game by making clear upfront that Marina is not lost, abandoned, or in danger.

After landing on the shore, the first main area, the jungle, is just a short walk away. The Singing Jungle is a vibrant and tropical area filled with colourful birds, gemstone-themed beetles, and climbable vines. This area introduces the player to all of the necessary mechanics; moving, taking photos, picking up objects to solve puzzles, checking the book of stored photos, and checking the journal for clues about the creatures.

The second area, which really caught my attention, is the Glimmering River, a night-time zone with waterfalls, glowing rivers and crystal caves. Here, there is a little more interaction with the focal creature, including a charming game of fetch, plus puzzles that gently build on the ones players solved in the first level.

The final level – the Painted Plateau – contrasts with the previous two, as areas of withered grass and barren rocks suggest that trouble has come to the peaceful world. Desert-based plants and creatures like cacti, lizards, and birds of prey prevail here. Bonus points for Maravilla here for being possibly the only game I’ve ever played with spiders that aren’t scary at all.

I can often take months (or years…) to complete game campaigns, so finishing a campaign just 10 days after a game’s launch may actually be a speed record for me!

While I have played most of the Borderlands series, I’ve never played the Assault on Dragon’s Keep DLC for Borderlands 2 that inspired Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. So I had limited knowledge of what I was in for, beyond that the usual staples of humour, loot, and eccentric randomly-generated-guns would receive a tabletop twist.

This guess was correct, but I found that Wonderlands was a larger, denser, and even funnier game than I was expecting. Unfortuately, it was also a buggier game than I was expecting. But let’s talk about what Wonderlands is aiming for first, before going into specifics.

The context of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is that people inside the Borderlands universe play a tabletop game named ‘Bunkers & Badasses’. After travellers Valentine, Frette, and the Newbie crash their spaceship into a mountain, Tina lets the stragglers rest in her house until they’re rescued… but only if they play ‘Bunkers & Badasses’ with her.

The gameplay of Wonderlands takes place inside that round of ‘Bunkers & Badasses’. You play as the Newbie, who is controlling the main character of the ‘Bunkers & Badasses’ match, while Tina is the bunker master in control of the story, and Valentine and Frette act as the Newbie’s advisors. This structure gives the game chance to experiment with the usual Borderlands style and gameplay, while also leaving lots of room for messing with the fourth wall and packing the game with an even wider range of references and shout-outs than usual. So far I’ve found side-quests that reference media as far apart as The Secret of Monkey Island, The Smurfs, and Don Quixote.