Hey, it's been a while! 007 First Light released in late May 2026 and, as a huge James Bond fan, I knew immediately I needed to write a review of this game.

Before I started writing about video games, I had a movie review blog where I essentially did this, but for films. And the James Bond film franchise was my magnum opus. When COVID put everyone on lockdown, I decided to re-watch the entire franchise and write a daily review of each film, starting with the first TV appearance of James Bond, the Climax! Mystery Theater episode, Casino Royale (1954). You can read each film's review throughout April 2020 in the blog archive at that link, with the most recent film, No Time to Die (2021), reviewed in October 2021.

Anyway... I've been a big James Bond nerd since my childhood, so this new game caught my attention. I know the film franchise has been struggling in the past couple decades, and with Amazon buying out MGM Studios and then green-lighting this game, I knew it'd live up to the quality of the film franchise.

By the way, this game is developed by IO Interactive, the Danish game development company known for the Hitman games. So it was no surprise to find stealth and infiltration elements from those games in this one. Honestly, it was nice to actually use stealth, bluffs, and misdirects to sneak around an area, instead of just going in guns blazing like most James Bond games. The puzzles and sneaking were so much more satisfying than just rushing through a level with a gun. Made me feel like a real spy.

NOTICE: I will only be discussing the first four chapters of this game (chapters 00-03), in generic detail, so as not to spoil the main plot of the game. Basically, I'm just going through the intro, tutorial, and slight introduction to the main plot, which surprisingly takes a whole four chapters to get going.

Also, this game is extremely lore heavy, so I will be summarizing a lot instead of getting into the fine details. I want you to enjoy the full plot in your playthrough, not have every minor detail explained in advance here.

Note: I didn't realize it until after I beat the whole game, but I had a graphics option titled "radial blur effects" turned on, which apparently blurs the edges of my screen. I didn't notice during gameplay, because I was mostly focused on what's in the center of the screen, but looking back at my screenshots, I now see that the edges are all blurry. Sorry about that!

This game is actually an origin story for James Bond, not only rebooting the franchise, but showing how he came to join the British Intelligence office of MI6.

It starts with a baby-faced Aircrewman James Bond, part of a rescue team on a mission to Iceland. As they near the coastline, suddenly their fleet of helicopters are shot down! Being next to an open door, Bond is thrown out and manages to survive the crash into the icy ocean waters.

We see this is how he got his iconic cheek scar. Ian Fleming, the original author of the James Bond novels, described Bond as having a faint scar across his right cheek; a distinct trademark missing from his movie appearances.

Bond finds a radio in the ruins on the beach but is immediately set upon by enemies, scouring the wreckage for survivors. He manages to sneak past them and move further inland.

When he does get a signal on his radio, the intelligence office MI6 intercepts and asks who he is. There's a classified research base in the area that belongs to them. It's been taken over by some sort of terrorist organization and MI6 asks Bond to sneak in and give them a SITREP (Situation Report) so they can take control of the situation.

You find out that MI6 has bombs planted all over the research facility, to avoid any secrets escaping. This plays in the favor of the terrorists, who have stolen the detonator and plan to blow up the site when they're done looting it. You sneak in a window and don an enemy's coat and mask, allowing you to walk among them.

You enter the large tent in the center of the base and find a wreckage being excavated. MI6 asks you to pull the on-board computer, but it's already missing.

You find yourself fighting consciousness and MI6 informs you that a nerve agent was released in the tent and has contaminated you. You have precious little time to find an antidote before you're dead. You manage to inoculate yourself and survive, but your terrorist disguise is contaminated, so you ditch it. You now have to sneak around the camp in your aircrew outfit. No more blending in.

With the information you collected for MI6, they determine who the terrorists are and where they're going to sell the on-board computer. They tell you the situation is contained and that you should clear out of the area and wait for an extraction.

But Bond isn't finished. He discovers there are still scientists being held captive, and this terrorist group doesn't leave survivors. MI6 informs him that he has a less-than-one percent chance to rescue everyone and escape and that he should stand down. Bond accepts those odds and hangs up on MI6.

Bond gets ahold of the detonator and manages to make a run for it with all the survivors, but draws the attention of the whole base in the process. In a desperate attempt to escape, Bond and the survivors fight up a rocky valley until they find themselves cornered on the edge of a cliff over the ocean.

Bond tells the terrorists to stand down or he'll blow them all up. They call his bluff, and in true Bond fashion, he follows through on his threat and detonates the entire base.

Cue a standard James Bond title sequence, with the game's theme song, credits, and lots of dancing silhouettes and guns. You can't call it a Bond property without one.

We cut to MI6 headquarters a month later, where James Bond is being brought in for questioning. We meet Moneypenny in the lobby, who escorts Bond to M, the head of MI6.

Despite the disastrous Iceland conflict, where Bond chose to destroy the asset rather than let MI6 retrieve it, M actually offers to recruit Bond as a spy. He's brash, difficult, and ignores orders at his whim, but his methods managed to save lives and stop terrorists, despite a very slim chance of success.

M has recently reactivated an old 00 program, which was previously discontinued. There are already six recruits in training for it and M makes Bond the seventh. He's shipped off to Malta, where he'll attend basic training with the rest of the recruits.

Bond meets John Greenway, the training instructor, who immediately dislikes Bond. He assigns the top two recruits, Cressida and Monroe, to catch Bond up to speed.

Bond then proceeds to flash through several training courses including driving, sharpshooting, hand-to-hand combat, and capture-the-flag from OpFor (Opposing Forces).

I especially like that they brought back the 2006 Aston Martin DBS from Casino Royale (2006) for you to practice your driving with.

RANDOM TRIVIA: The DBS was originally only available from 1967-'72. Aston Martin resurrected the DBS model for Casino Royale (2006), giving it a modern spin for the spy flick. Commercial DBS models were then sold from 2007 on. I still see Casino Royale (2006) as a modern James Bond film, so it hurts my old heart when Bond calls it a classic car in this game.

Upon graduating basic training, Bond returns to MI6 where he's issued his standard gear from Q-Branch.

We meet Q, who gives Bond "Q-lenses" that provide an AR (Augmented Reality) overlay for him, so he can see stats on his equipment like weapons, ammo, and gadget supplies.

We're also issued the standard Omega watch. You're allowed to choose which one you'd like. As far as I can tell, the only difference is the color of the wristband.

You're assigned to a luxurious safehouse in Bayswater, London, with Monroe and Cressida as your roommates. You're informed that you will be bouncing between Malta and London as your 00 training requires.

The game flashes through seven months of a training montage. Upon completing a final training course in Malta, the recruits decide to enjoy a night out in a club in London.

Unfortunately, your celebration is cut short when you're all given a mission. Some leaked government information is being exchanged at the club you're attending, so you split into teams to track potential targets and investigate the situation.

This is where you learn how to eavesdrop on conversations; an important information-gathering skill in crowds.

Upon a successful mission, the recruits are all informed to report to M at 8 AM the next day. Turns out, the former 009 from the previous 00 program, despite being underground for years, has reemerged.

He, and several other 00 agents, were marked as traitors to the crown, which led to the end of the 00 program. All had been eliminated except 009, who vanished. Now, he returns claiming to have evidence of a conspiracy against the state. He requests a full pardon if he turns it in, but he will only exchange it with John Greenway.

The meeting place is set for the Grand Carpathian Hotel in the High Tatra Mountains of Slovakia, during a World Chess Championship.

The 00 recruits are tasked to track down and monitor 009 until the exchange with Greenway concludes, since they're all new to the system. Their faces aren't really known yet, making them perfect infiltrators for the clever and dangerous 009.

Greenway, finding Bond to be reckless and unreliable, tasks him with being a chauffeur stuck with the vehicle, while everyone else gets to dress up and attend the fancy event. Bond is bored, hanging out in the parking lot, until he sees a suspicious blonde bellhop dump someone's luggage over a railing.

Ignoring orders, Bond pursues the suspicious person, eventually finding himself wrapped up in a grander plot within the hotel that changes the course of the whole story.

From here, Bond will travel all over the world in pursuit of a global threat, from a pirate king's black market city on the desert coastline of Mauritania...

To a luxury resort in Vietnam...

To a secret research facility hidden in Antarctica.

Bond will experience all sorts of adventure...

Danger...

And even take some... recreational breaks.

The young Bond will even learn to tie a bow tie for the first time, in a quick-time event with Q.

Oh, and the pirate king is played by Lenny Kravitz, who plays it as... Lenny Kravitz.

This game was loads of fun! It took me about 17 hours to play through it and it felt like an immersive James Bond film the whole way through. The music was incredible and the visuals were spectacular. Every time I thought the story was reaching its peak, another twist would occur that would ignite a new direction for the plot.

And when you're done with the campaign, there are "Tactical Simulations" you can play, where Bond can explore custom missions with timed goals to accomplish. You can train in these simulations and get ranked based on your score.

You can actually find the employee who designed it while talking with people in Q-Branch during your gameplay, and she'll offer to let you try it out before you continue. So it's not strictly an endgame thing.

This was one of the rare games where, as soon as I finished it, I was tempted to start it up again from the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it! I really hope this spawns a franchise of connected games, instead of the random one-off Bond games we've had over the years.

Greetings, fellow Helldivers!

Do you love Democracy? Freedom? Liberty? Are you willing to do your part in the service of Super Earth? Then join the Helldivers today! And let FREEDOM "rain" from above!

...Would you like to know more?

Sorry, I couldn't resist. The game franchise HELLDIVERS takes the campy pro-military satire from the film Starship Troopers (1997) and cranks it up to 11. That film, interestingly enough, was based on a book of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein, which was actual pro-military propaganda.

Heinlein published his science fiction book in 1959, in the early days of the Cold War, and it was meant to reinforce the fascist idea that aggressive and proactive military strength and dominance is the only way a society can thrive. He was very critical of how soft the US was against the communist China and the USSR in those days. The '90s film took his propaganda piece and turned it into over-the-top pro-military satire, which I personally think makes it much better. And this is coming from a guy who served for 20 years in the US military.

In the HELLDIVERS games, you play an expendable recruit of Super Earth, defending your home world at the center of the known galaxy from any outside threats. And you do this by invading their home worlds and "bringing Democracy" to their doorstep. A good defense is a strong offense, am I right?

Why am I focusing on HELLDIVERS II specifically? Because it's exactly the same as the first game, except it's a third-person shooter instead of the top-down shooter of the first game. It's a lot more immersive to be in the thick of battle, covered in blood, alien bug guts, and rag-dolled across the map by explosions and rockets and friendly fire from your teammates. In the first game, you just control a small figure from above the map. I might as well be playing Age of Empires at that point.

The game starts with you going through Helldiver Training, a sort of boot camp to qualify you to be a Helldiver for Super Earth. A shuttle drops you at a remote landing pad outside the training facility, where a sign encourages you to use your embedded map display to find the facility.

Finding your way across the terrain, you reach the training facility, where General Brasch invites you in for your formal training. Boy, this takes me back to my own military training back in the day...

Although unlike my real-world military training, this one includes live-fire exercises. You're trained to dive to the ground (with the Alt button) to avoid deadly fire.

During your gameplay, you'll take significantly less damage if you're hit while diving to the ground, so dive for cover often! Sometimes it's the best way to survive being overrun by enemies. Hit the dirt!

General Brasch instructs you to use a battlefield injury simulator. I wonder how this works...

OUCH! DAMMIT! Right in the sternum!

Quick, use a stim (V key) before you bleed out! This is how you'll heal yourself on the battlefield. Although I can't help but notice it's not a "health" product, but a "stimulant" product. Meaning you're likely just stabbing yourself with a syringe of pure adrenaline. Why do I get the feeling that health plans are non-existent for Helldivers...?

Finally, you come across your first alien bug. Known as Terminids, this ruthless species will hunt you down and slice you up before you can draw your weapon. One is released from the tunnel in front of you and you're encouraged to take it out with a handgun provided on the range.

You will also be given grenades and encouraged to throw one down the tube to close it. In battle, you'll find tunnels to underground bug nests all over the map. If you want to stop the infinite swarm of bugs, you need to throw a grenade down those tunnels and seal them off.

On the next range, you're introduced to the Super Destroyer, a massive spaceship in low orbit that will provide supporting stratagems for you to use. This Super Destroyer is also your transportation across the galaxy on your way to various missions.

If you hold Ctrl, it will open your stratagems menu in the top left of your screen. Each stratagem has a series of arrows next to them pointing up, down, left, and/or right. While holding Ctrl, press your WASD keys in the order the arrows designate and if you accomplish it successfully, the Super Destroyer will deploy that specific stratagem to the location you designate. In this case, I requested an orbital precision strike and threw the marker into the middle of a group of Terminids:

The only good bug is a dead bug!

Stratagems can also be used to call in advanced weapons or equipment for use in the field, resupplies of ammo and stims, and even reinforcements when your team members die on the battlefield.

Oh yeah, when you die (and you will die a lot), the Helldivers will just send more bodies to replace you. Canonically, you die and a new Helldiver takes your place in the field. But you continue to play that replacement, and they happen to have the same equipment loadout and gear as you did. So you're not removed from the gameplay because of a simple thing like death. As long as there are reinforcements (and your teammates remember to call them in), you get to stay in the action!

There are a limited number of reinforcements in each mission, so don't get yourself killed too often. But the game revels in the concept that Helldivers are just bodies to throw into battle until Super Earth wins. You are literally cannon fodder, a nameless body chucked haphazardously at the enemy for the Greater Good. So do your best to stay alive as long as possible!

Finally, you approach a terminal where you will input a command to free the Super Earth Flag and ceremoniously plant it in the ground. You will approach these terminals in the field quite a lot, so this is practice for booting it up and inputting commands. Which, again, are pretty much just WASD directions. They keep it so simple, any Helldiver can do it!

You've planted the Super Earth flag and saluted it, but two tunnels opened up and allowed Terminids into the area! Defend the flag and kill those bugs!

Finally, you've completed your graduation requirements! You enter the Graduation Chamber, which also has your Contract of Employment etched into stone on either side. Give it a read if you have a moment; it's quite ridiculous what you're agreeing to.

Or if you're anxious to start your enlistment, skip the fine print and go don your official cape! It's on display at the other end of the chamber. You can't call yourself a super hero of Super Earth without a cape, right?

Now quickly, go out the back door and jump into a cryogenic pod so you can be delivered to your first Super Destroyer. There's an active war going on and you're needed on the front lines!

Boy, that was a quick basic training! Only took maybe 15-20 minutes and you're already off to battle. I joined the US Air Force back in the day, which has the shortest basic training of all our branches of the military, and I still needed 6-1/2 weeks of training before I graduated! (With honors, I might add.)

You will get the opportunity to name your Super Destroyer in the format of "SES [blank] of [blank]." Fill in the two blanks from a long list of names. It doesn't really do anything, it's just a cool immersive feature. It will be printed on the side of your Super Destroyer, which you will see every time there's a cutscene of your ship from the outside. You can change its name at any time. Here's mine in the foreground; my teammates' ships in the background.

Once you're on board, you will have the option to purchase more advanced capabilities and resources of your Super Destroyer, spending Requisition Slips earned from completed missions, and "samples" you find on planet surfaces. There's a terminal off to one side for this.

In the narrow walkway leading to the bridge, you'll find several terminals where you can customize your character. Custom Helldiver uniforms, basic weapon loadouts, titles, emotes, etc. You can also buy upgrades for your basic weapons as you level them up from use on the battlefield.

To start a mission, run up to the bridge and select the giant map in the middle of the room. There are currently three major threats to Super Earth in the galaxy: the Terminids (alien bug race), Automatons (cyborg race), and the Illuminate (squid-like alien humanoid race).

Every player in the world is contributing toward the same in-game objectives, so every mission you complete moves humanity slightly closer to total domination over the galaxy. The numbers to the left of the galaxy map are actual live gamer statistics. Pick a sector infested by your chosen enemy, then select a planet in that region to find missions to complete.

Don't forget to select a difficulty at the bottom of the map. There are currently 10 difficulty levels, and you need to complete each level in order to unlock the next one.

Extreme (#6) is my preferred difficulty at the moment, and the first level that grants you access to all three types of samples you can find on planets. You won't be able to continue upgrading your Super Destroyer unless you can collect all three types of samples, so get out there and tough it out!

You can also hit Tab to find ongoing missions. These are teams of Helldivers (i.e. real players) actively in missions that you can join. You can play co-op with up to 4 people on a team. I highly recommend playing with others; it's extremely difficult to complete missions solo, especially in higher difficulty levels.

You will earn medals for successful completion of each mission. The number of medals (and the number of missions per region) go up with your difficulty level.

Medals are another currency you can spend for new uniforms, weapons, etc. in your Acquisitions menu (R button). You can only hold 250 medals at a time, so spend those awards!

Once you have a team and the team leader has picked a mission, everyone needs to report to a hellpod at the bow of the ship. These are bullet-shaped pods which will be launched at the planet surface, safely and effectively deploying you into the combat zone in mere seconds.

Once inside the hellpods, your team leader needs to select a landing zone on the map, and then everyone can select their individual stratagem loadouts for this particular mission. Once everyone is ready, your team will be launched.

I love that the Helldiver way of deploying troops into battle is to literally shoot them in human-sized bullets at the planet. It's very symbolic of the finesse at which Super Earth approaches Democracy across the galaxy.

Enjoy the random tips and trivia that pop up during this loading screen. And also rock out to that patriotic orchestral music! Nothing gets me more hyped for battle than the soundtrack for this game! This loading screen music is called "A Cup of Liber-tea" by Wilbert Roget, II.

Once you land on the surface, you'll have a limited amount of time to complete your chosen mission. Most missions are a max of 40 minutes, but you'll occasionally find a brief 12 or 15 minute mission. Hustle toward your objectives! Those 40 minutes will pass quickly if you're distracted with the infinite waves of enemies patrolling for you.

Once your mission timeline ends, your Super Destroyer will leave the region without you, leaving you stranded on the planet with no stratagems to back you up. That means no more resupplies, no more advanced weapons, and no more heavy strikes from low orbit.

You can stay as long as you like, but you will quickly start running out of supplies as the hordes of enemies close in on you. So hurry up and finish the mission! A shuttle will come pick you up from an extraction point when you're done and ready to evacuate.

Remember to have fun out there! Take advantage of explosives and end threats quickly and efficiently from afar.

Do whatever it takes to complete your mission, regardless of the odds stacked against you! Come on, you apes! You wanna live forever?!

If you happen to find SEAF soldiers running around a battlefield (usually only found in Mega Cities), throw them a salute (B button) and they'll return it, then follow you and provide cover fire. Form your own NPC battalion!

Note: They are extremely expendable and will go down in a hit or two. You will also lose Requisition Slips for every SEAF casualty under your command. So carefully consider... are their lives worth the potential loss in pay?

When you return from a successful mission, you'll get mission stats to compare between players. Categories marked in yellow are the (subjectively) best scores amongst the team.

How the hell did Pink get 5,000 friendly fire damage against the team?! I've never seen that number so high! That would explain the number of deaths throughout this mission...

So enlist today! Join the Helldivers and save Super Earth from the oppressive forces of the Terminids, Automatons, and Illuminate! Service guarantees citizenship.

Happy 2026! It's been way too long since I posted a new game review. (Has it seriously been 4-1/2 months?!) Life has been interfering with my gaming lately, and my list of games I want to review is only getting longer and more daunting. Then, StarRupture released 3 days ago!

I've been anxiously awaiting this game for a while now. I participated in the playtest in July 2025 and I've been excited for this early access to drop on Steam. My friends and I have been counting the days.

Apologies for the blurred Discord chat in the top left of some screenshots; it loaded Discord in Legacy Mode until I switched the game display to borderless fullscreen. Even then, I still needed to blur my friends' names in the bottom left as it pulled their Steam names for the characters they played.

StarRupture is a first-person survival crafting/factory automation game, similar to Satisfactory. But its developers have been working very hard to separate it from Satisfactory through unique story and gameplay mechanics. For instance, you have four characters to choose from, all with names, numbers and backstories.

You can swap characters anytime during gameplay, so you're not tied to your decision. So far, despite all of them having unique backgrounds and specialties, they all seem to play identically, so I don't think it really matters which one you choose. Pick the background you like best. I went with the Scientist at first, but when my friends joined and none of them wanted to play as a girl, I gladly switched to the Engineer.

Remember I said they all had numbers? That's because they're all convicts! Their crimes are varied (the scientists' former job and criminal record just says "CLASSIFIED"), but they're all serving time on the remote planet of Arcadia-7. Their sentence requires them to harvest resources for five different corporations. Ideally, working this job will eventually pay off the debt they owe to "society" (read: major corporations).

You awaken from a Regeneration Chamber and find yourself in a small ship on the planet's surface. These Regeneration Chambers are how you come back every time you die in this game. A "sleeve" (clone) is generated in the chamber for you, which is fed constant video and audio of your activities to keep their brains stimulated until they need to be awoken. As you'll learn from lore scattered around this planet, death is no longer something to be feared in this sci-fi world, as long as your data disc isn't damaged.

An AI voice introduces herself as GAL - the Galactic Assistance Liason - of the Claywood Corporation, a sixth corporation who oversees your sentence. She's there to guide you through your job and ensure you complete all tasks to help benefit the corporations pay your debt!

You and your fellow convicts are part of the ARGOS Project, the first team in more than half a century to explore, harvest resources, and document this world as a potential New Earth.

But first, you must complete a training program before you're trusted to collaborate with the other corporations. You step off your spaceship and walk to a nearby clearing for your first view of the planet surface.

First, you need to harvest a Meteorite Heart. You do this by using the Harvester tool to extract minerals from the outside of meteorites. Once you've collected all the resources, it will crumble to pieces and you'll receive the Meteorite Heart.

Note: If you just shoot the Harvester blindly at the meteorite, it will eventually crumble and you'll lose out on valuable resources, so target those colored minerals!

Also, notice the three rows of six bars on the side of the Harvester? When all 18 of them light up, your Harvester will overheat. Make sure to reload it with [R] before that happens. It will automatically reload if it overheats, but it will take twice as long.

Once you have a Meteorite Heart, you can build a Base Core with your Building Tool, which will define the build area of your base. You can't build outside of the range of the Base Core, but it seems as though you can build as many Base Cores as you want in the game so far. So spread them around the map to build bases at all the various resources you need to collect. This umbrella-looking thing protects your base from the deadly rupture of the nearby star, Ruptura.

What's that? You thought the game just had a cool-sounding title? No, the sun literally ruptures in this game! It completely engulfs the planet in fire, incinerating all signs of life. Then the planet goes through a rapid regrowth and regeneration period over the next 10 minutes or so, eventually restoring all signs of flora and fauna to the surface. Ensure you've built a Habitat to retreat to; you won't survive out in the open during the wave blast.

Make sure you harvest all the flaming rocks after a star rupture. They're a rare resource called Ignitium that can only be found in the immediate aftermath. Once they cool, they're gone, so take advantage of the opportunity to collect them.

I haven't been timing the star ruptures so I don't know if they happen on a schedule or if they're random. Sometimes it seems like they happen about every hour or so, sometimes it feels like it's only been 20 minutes since the last one. But you have a decent amount of time to explore before the next one hits. Just ensure you keep a Meteorite Heart and some building materials in your inventory so you can quickly whip up a Habitat anywhere you're exploring when the star is about to rupture.

So what is this Habitat? It's the living quarters you build on the planet surface. You can stack them up to 3 containers high and connect them with ladders (Vertical Connectors) inside, or set them side-by-side and make a doorway (Horizontal Connectors) between them. You need to build an airlock to get in, and if you don't want to feel claustrophobic inside, install windows (Viewports) on the walls.

Once inside, you need to build a Corporate Terminal. This is the screen you'll use to track your progress with each corporation. They don't want to give you full access to their equipment - you're a risky investment to them - so you need to earn the right to use more advanced tools and machines. You will need to fulfill their requested items for each level, until you've earned enough data points to progress to the next level.

How do you fulfill their requested materials? By building an Orbital Cargo Launcher. You see, there's a space rift nearby that can transport resources light-years away in seconds! It's how you got to this distant galaxy in the first place. The Orbital Cargo Launcher will send them to the rift, transporting them back to Earth where the corporations can collect them.

An interesting thing to note: Unlike Satisfactory, which used power lines to power all your machines, StarRupture uses platforms and rails to conduct power. You initially build solar panels and then build connecting platforms to your machines to power them.

Whereas Satisfactory uses conveyor belts to transport resources, StarRupture uses bendy rails. And they don't fill up with resources; they only transport the amount of resources that the receiving end can process. If it fills up, no more resources will travel down the rail.

Here's me adding too many machines to my power grid and overloading it. I need to add some more solar panels to get everything up and running again. You can tell by the light color on the platforms, rails, and machines. Red is down, green is online, yellow (on the machines) is pending action.

Once you've completed the initial training, you unlock access to all five corporations. They will have different resource requirements for each level of advancement, with equipment rewards related to that corporation at each level. You will have to use more advanced machines to make more technical items as you progress, so prioritize whichever corporation you feel will benefit you as you go.

• Future Health Solutions is a pharmaceutical and medical corporation, providing you with food and health equipment.
• Selenian is a space mining corporation, providing you with more advanced machines for harvesting, mining, smelting, constructing, etc.
• Griffits Blue is a military corporation, providing you with weapons to defend yourself from the wildlife.
• Moon Energy is an energy corporation, providing advancements to power technology.
• Clever Robotics is a drone and logistics corporation, providing more advanced tech solutions for transportation of resources and equipment.

Like Satisfactory, resources come in one of three qualities: impure, normal, and pure. In this game though, you can actually tell the quality at a glance.

Below are three Titanium Ore nodes. The crumbly dark one in front is impure, the jagged silver one to the middle right is normal, and the perfectly-shaped rainbow one in back is pure. As far as I can tell, the only difference is how quickly you can mine them; the more pure, the more resources you can obtain in the same time period.

When you're between building factories, make sure to go out and explore the ruins of past settlers and explorers. There's plenty of lore to be found from old tablets and still-functioning computer screens in the wreckage of former Habitats and factories. You'll need to find blueprints for more advanced recipes, and those can only be acquired through exploration of ruins. Don't be afraid to loot dead bodies, which will show up everywhere on your map once you've explored an area.

Don't forget that this is a survival game. Grab some of the local plant life and make sure to keep your food and water bars charged. They drop slowly, so you have plenty of time to craft and explore between meal breaks, and your character complains if they're getting hungry or thirsty, so you'll get a reminder in advance. You will die if you don't eat and drink though.

Also, beware of the local wildlife. They're giant alien spider bugs and they only get tougher and more numerous, the farther away you explore. There are the Slashers and Young Slashers, which are the standard alien spiders you'll see everywhere:

Then there are these blue infected ones called Exploders. They live up to their namesake and explode near you, releasing a blue cloud of infection that will kill you if you don't get out of it soon.

There are also Spitters: green spider bugs who shoot a sort of acid at you from afar. Or their larger variants, the Flingers, who will fling a giant acid spray from their tail from a quarter mile away, coating an area in green. Not pictured because they always kept their distance and I couldn't get close enough to get a decent screenshot before they scurried away.

Finally, there are massive tan-colored spider bugs called Goliaths, covered with impenetrable armor across their arms and body that look kind of like moose horns. They can shield themselves almost completely while charging at you, and they'll easily take out your shield and half your health in a single blow. Give these a wide berth unless you have some beefy weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammo, and some friends helping out.

Below, he's covering his face with his armored front arms as he sneaks up on me. That pistol isn't gonna do shit; time to run!

The aliens will also attack your bases more often, the higher you level up your Base Core. If you're not there to defend, they'll infect the base, which will shut everything down. You need to clear out any lingering bugs and disinfect the base. You can tell which bases are infected because they'll show up as red on your map and the base itself will be covered in a blue cloud of infection.

Have you noticed that massive engine-like structure sticking out of the mountain in the background of all promotional media for this game? It's a building you can find and explore. Took me a while, but I was able to get over there, and it's absolutely enormous! That's literally an entire mountain it's sitting on!

See that small fan-shaped semi-circle in the dirt on the bottom left of it there? There's a hole at ground level I was able to use to get inside. Unfortunately, the door into the actual structure wasn't powered and I need a Power Cell to open it; an advanced technology that I haven't unlocked yet. I'm excited to see what's inside!

This game just opened early access, so it will probably have tons of updates over the next few years before fully releasing. So if you're playing this game and come across bugs (not the kind you shoot), let the developers know! Hopefully it'll only get better over time. They already have a roadmap posted with more features and content planned, so there will be updates to come.

There's so much more I want to discuss about this game, but I don't want to ramble forever about small details, so just go check it out for yourself on Steam! Its normal price will be $20 but it's currently on sale for $16 until January 20th.

Surprise early review! I usually spend all night writing these (because I'm a night owl) and then post it first thing in the morning before I go to bed. But I wound up with a free day and nothing to do, so I decided to write a review this afternoon.

Vampire Hunters is essentially Vampire Survivors, except instead of an 8-bit top-down survival game, you're now in the middle of the action with a 32-bit FPS view! The developers even admitted this game was designed to be a mix between old-school FPS games and the innovative gameplay from Vampire Survivors.

No, they did not make that previous game. Gamecraft Studios made Vampire Hunters; whereas poncle made Vampire Survivors.

Like its predecessor, Vampire Hunters is a survival game, where you fight an infinitely growing number of monsters who are all slowly shambling toward you. Unlike its predecessor though, there is a time limit to pass each level. You need to survive for 30 minutes before you can escape the level.

Technically, you can stay as long as you want and continue fighting enemies indefinitely, but enemies will get significantly harder until you're overwhelmed. So having an escape is a nice change.

You start by picking your character. There are six characters to play, but only three are unlocked right away. You need to meet certain criteria to unlock the rest. Each character has different stats, so pick something that aligns with your play style. I chose the Paladin because I felt her weakness was easier for me to manage than the other two.

There is only one stage to play starting out - Brotherhood Chateau - so you can jump right in at this point. The game has eight main stages and three bonus stages. As you make progress, you'll unlock more stages to play.

The gameplay starts out real simple. You have one weapon that your character starts with, and you take out cultists as they spawn from portals within iron maidens scattered around the castle. There is no firing required; like Vampire Survivors, your weapons auto-fire as you point at enemies. When they die, most of them will drop a soul (that blue hovering dot) that you can pick up.

Collect a few of these and you'll get a full-screen menu pop up with four random options to pick from. Mostly weapons to acquire (or upgrade a current weapon), but sometimes you'll get a relic that will boost your stats in a specific way.

You can carry up to ten primary weapons, two passive items that will either damage enemies or buff you, and two secondary weapons for close-up combat. Which are a real life-saver when you get into a tight corner with enemies in your face.

And yes, you use all weapons simultaneously. So the bottom of your screen will slowly fill up with weapons as you acquire more. How many hands do you have?!

I don't know if it's strictly a Paladin ability (I haven't played any other characters yet), but I can do a stomp on the ground if I hit Shift while in the air. This blows back enemies and damages them, which is excellent for clearing a space when I'm getting overwhelmed.

There's also a Blood Skill you can use by pressing F when the red orb in the bottom center of the screen fills up. There's not much information about it in the game, except that it does some sort of attack or ability for a few seconds, so I keep forgetting it's there.

Every once in a while, a boss will spawn with a life bar across the top of the screen. They can be a nuisance, but generally aren't that bad to deal with as long as you keep moving and don't neglect waves of monsters for them.

They get really annoying when you're overwhelmed with hundreds of monsters and four bosses spawn all at the same time.

Fortunately, you can see all enemies through walls, so you're never surprised going around a corner. Bosses show up red when looking at them through walls, so you can quickly identify them from across the map.

When you inevitably die (or finish the stage), you can go back to the main menu and upgrade your character. There's a Skill Tree, where you can upgrade specific attributes or unlock/upgrade artifacts by spending the Reputation Level points or Boss Tokens that you earned from each stage.

If you've unlocked any artifacts, you can equip up to three of them on the main menu.

There are also Permanent Upgrades, which boost your character's stats in specific categories. You spend Upgrade Coins to boost each of these stats, which you also earn by playing each level.

When you meet certain criteria, you might unlock a constellation, which you can then equip for added benefits. You can only have one constellation equipped at a time, and they give you a positive and a negative effect, so choose them wisely.

Finally, you can select your main weapon to start with. The three main characters' weapons are unlocked right away, but you can unlock any others you've come across in your gameplay by spending Boss Tokens.

Running all over the levels can get you swarmed on all sides if you're not careful, so I like to plant myself on a ramp or platform with only one entrance, then pick off enemies as they come up to me. I stay until I'm completely overwhelmed, run to the other side of the map to clear the area, then go back to start again. That strategy seems to work pretty well for me when I'm just trying to run out the clock.

There are treasure chests that randomly spawn throughout the level. They'll appear as a gold chest icon in the world (See lower left corner of last screenshot). They bring up the full-screen menu with four optional weapons/relics/etc. to add or upgrade.

When you take down a boss, they'll drop a red chest, which will give you a buff to a particular stat for that round. All chests only last for a limited time, so fight your way to them as soon as you see their icon in the world! Or miss out on easy upgrades.

Each stage has different requirements for ending the stage after the 30-minute mark. I've beaten three stages so far: the Brotherhood Chateau requires that you approach each iron maiden portal and manually close it. The Corrupted Necropolis (Egyptian tomb-themed stage) requires that you slowly summon two ankh's on either end of the stage, then place them over the hands of the giant statue in the center of the stage.

In the Village Yard, you just need to get to a hot-air balloon and escape to the skies.

So if you enjoy fighting endless waves of enemies and surviving as long as possible, check out this game! It was a lot of fun. There are leaderboards for each stage, showing global rankings and points earned. My highest rank in any stage was 1,691st place, as seen below:

If I'm brave enough to stick around past the 30-minute mark and keep mowing down monsters, maybe I can get my ranking below the 4-digit mark. I've easily spent several entire evenings playing this game; it's pretty addicting. Now I need to go check out the fourth stage (Yuki Vale) and see what that's all about. Looks like it's Japanese-themed.

Welcome back! Today we're going to be doing an in-depth look at the first game I ever posted here: Enshrouded. Now that I do long-form blog discussions instead of just screenshot posts, I figured it was time to revisit this game and give it a solid overview.

This is the third most-played game in my Steam library, which says a lot considering I have over 4,000 games. My friends and I have put about 532 hours into this game so far.

Enshrouded has been in early access for about a year and a half and the developers are still actively working on it. I'm kind of glad I waited until now to give it a full review because it's received tons of new content in the past year, and it's only getting better.

Enshrouded is unique in that it's a third-person open-world fantasy game, but it's also a crafting/survival game where you can dig/mine anywhere there is terrain and destroy almost everything placed in the world.

You can travel the world, discovering new quests and lore and improving your weapons, armor, and skills. Or, you can pick a place to settle down and build your own fantasy home, literally from the ground up. By the current endgame, you can have up to ten city-wide bases established anywhere in the world, where you can build to your heart's content.

You can also host your own public or private server and invite up to 16 people to quest in your custom world. You can fine-tune the settings of your server, so players or NPCs are stronger or weaker, determine how quickly weapons and tools break (or set them to never break), adjust how long daylight and nighttime is, and a ton more detailed customizations. Not needing food and water to survive is a default setting, although you can turn it on if you want the true survival feeling. You can also lock down your builds so strangers joining your game can't just destroy your cities and loot your resources.

I just started a new character to get screenshots for this post and I was surprised to see an opening cutscene explaining the lore of the game! That's a new addition.

Long ago, a stranger traveled to the lands of Embervale and presented the humans and Ancients with "The Elixir," a potent drug that boosted one's natural abilities. It was highly addicting and humans, of course, went a little nuts over this miracle drug, attempting to harvest their own elixir straight out of the earth themselves.

But like the Mines of Moria, humans delved too greedily and too deep, and they awoke The Shroud - a terrible fog that poisons the land and turns people into a sort of mindless undead creature called The Fell.

As The Shroud overtook the lands, humans and the Ancients worked together to create "The Flameborn," a type of person attuned to the power of fire, who is more resistant to The Shroud. This is your character.

It's never really explained, but Flameborn are essentially immortal. If you die, you just respawn from the last Flame Altar or Return Beacon you visited, so you can't ever truly have a game over. Also, you're resistant to fire.

By the way, if you find vials of the elixir in-game, it'll give a 30-minute buff of 30% damage increase and let you stay in The Shroud for up to a minute longer while it's active.

After you've built your custom Flameborn character, the game opens with you awakening within a Cinder Vessel. You climb out to find yourself in a long-forgotten Ancient Vault. Society has basically collapsed long ago and despite some scattered "Scavengers" (humans driven mad by elixir consumption) who roam the lands, there's no sign of people.

Traveling through the halls of the vault, you find a Flame Shrine, which ignites in your presence. (All sources of light in the world - even extinguished flames - will automatically flare up when you approach them.) The flame whispers to you, urging you to create a Flame Altar in the world to shelter yourself from the dark. The vault doors open, allowing you to explore the ruins of the world.

You step out onto a crumbling and overgrown terrace, where you get your first glance at the outside world and its various ruins. There are weather events in this game and it happened to be overcast at this point of my gameplay, but you'll see random sunny days and rainy days as well. Even snowfall if you're high enough up in the mountains!

The plains below are marked with a tall red flame, showing the general area for you to build your first Flame Altar. But to get there, you have to travel through a Shroud-filled cavern down the mountain.

This is your first experience in dealing with The Shroud. When you step into it, a timer bar appears at the top of the screen, counting down to your end if you don't escape The Shroud. You start with about 5 minutes of time, but as you strengthen the flame at your Flame Altar, you'll improve the amount of time you can spend in The Shroud.

When you make it to the plains, you'll need to pull up your crafting menu to make a Flame Altar. Make sure you have the proper materials to make it! In this case, you need 5 stones, which you can literally pick up off the ground.

Once you have made your Flame Altar, you need to place it in the world. See the faint yellow square around the borders of the plains? That designates the build area near the Flame Altar. Anywhere within that square, you can build whatever you want. As you level up your Flame Altar, that square will get exponentially larger, until you have space for a small city!

It's actually a cube space; you also have a limit to how high and how low you can build from that shrine. But as with the sides, that space will grow as you level up the Flame Altar. You can eventually build a massive tower to the heavens! Or a dungeon deep into hell...

Put multiple Flame Altars within range of each other to expand a single base's build region, or place them randomly around the world. Flame Altars are not only build areas, but also fast-travel points, so scattering them in hard-to-reach areas saves you on travel time around the massive map.

Remember that you can only place two Flame Altars when you start the game, so don't make a bunch of them. As you strengthen the flame at your Flame Altar, you will be able to use more. Ten is the current max number of Flame Altars you can have in the world, so place them wisely. You can always deactivate them and re-place them somewhere else, but anything you've built in their region will eventually disappear if you walk away for 30 minutes.

The flame at your new Flame Altar whispers to you, telling you to seek out more survivors who are slumbering in other nearby Ancient Vaults. At this point, you can either dedicate your time to crafting a base, or going out to find other survivors in the world. I chose to track down the first survivor - a blacksmith.

There are currently nine craftspeople, five assistants to the craftspeople, and ten villagers to find in the world. The craftspeople have specialized skills that will expand your crafting capabilities, the assistants have duplicate skills of specific craftspeople, so you can have two people with the same crafting skills scattered around your base, and the villagers are just NPCs to make your bases look more lived in.

Now that I have a blacksmith, I need a shelter for him. I guess I should at least build a house. You need to craft a workbench first, which will give you more advanced crafting abilities than what you can access from your crafting menu.

Once you've placed a workbench, accessing its menu will give you blocks of building materials you can craft. As you discover new materials in the world, this menu will expand with new types of building blocks.

I know the numbers don't add up - 100 stone blocks from 2 stones?! But hey, if I have to mine 100 stones to craft 100 stone blocks, I'll be mining all day! And 100 blocks don't go very far when building. So I'm glad I can craft more materials with limited resources. It keeps the gameplay moving forward without bogging you down with (excessively) repetitive tasks.

Once you have blocks crafted, ensure you have a construction hammer on your toolbar. (You can craft one from your crafting menu or from the workbench menu). Switch to your construction hammer, open the building mode (Tab button on PC), then select the shape and material you want to construct.

You can lay one individual brick at a time, or select a custom shape to build a platform, wall, giant block, ramp, roof, etc. If you have dirt or stones in your inventory, you can also create various shapes and sizes of terrain and edit the shape of the land around you.

You can also craft an axe and pickaxe to cut down trees and dig up the terrain. Everything is destructible around the world and will restore to their original setting if you leave the area for about 30 minutes. Except for anything within the build area of your Flame Altar; those changes are permanent until you remove the Flame Altar and leave the area for 30 minutes. So don't go mining in your backyard unless you want to destroy the natural terrain. Although you can always manually fill it back in with the construction hammer and some stones or dirt.

I found some flint to mine on a cliff side here, which is one of my favorite building blocks. There are dozens of different materials to be found around the world, so you can customize the look of your bases however you want.

I finished building a small rough stone house with plant fiber roof just as it started raining. Which was good, as the blacksmith was starting to complain about not having a roof over his head.

Then the blacksmith informed me of a nearby Elixir Well that needed to be cleared out. Yeah, yeah, as soon as I'm done taking a nap.

The Elixir Wells are home to Shroud Roots: giant red fungus-looking things which are the cause of The Shroud. Chopping them down with an axe will clear the area around the Elixir Well of any Shroud. Although if you leave the area for 30 minutes, it will revert to its original state and the Shroud will come back.

Shroud Roots are guarded by large bosses; in this particular case, a Fell Thunderbrute. When you take down these boss-level characters, you can claim their heads, which you can later mount on your wall in your home. I've been meaning to build a trophy room in my original game's castle...

Destroying the Shroud Root will give you a skill point, which you can spend in a skill tree to further spec your character. There are twelve categories to build out. By the endgame, you will have enough skill points to have nearly maxed out three of them, so you're not locked into one specific category of gameplay. I personally chose Battlemage, Wizard, and Healer. (Since my teammates are always jumping head-first into fights they can't handle, ha!)

As you play on, you'll find more enemies around the world, plenty of quests, materials, and cosmetics to discover, and tons of lore hidden in books and scrolls.

There are varying climates, like desert wastelands, freezing winter mountainscapes, forests, plains, and of course, Shroud valleys and mines everywhere. Or you can get to work building a cozy hobbit hole deep underground, a castle way up in the mountains, or a fairy home deep in the woods.

Don't forget to craft a glider, so you can coast quickly across the various regions. Besides fast travel between Flame Altars, gliding is the best way to travel between places. I like to place my Flame Altars high up on mountains so I can fast-travel there and then jump and glide to my nearby destination.

Just keep an eye on your stamina gauge while you're gliding. Nothing worse than being a mile up in the sky and all of a sudden falling to your doom. If you're about to run out of stamina, the best thing to do is just drop, which will stop consuming stamina, then glide again when you're just about to hit the ground. You'll tuck and roll and take no damage.

Here's my first attempt at building a small castle in the starting zone prairie. You can garden and plant pretty much anything that grows in the game, which is where that massive perfectly-aligned forest came from in the background. You can also build farms and raise animals, or find dogs and cats in the world to keep as pets in your base.

Here's a shot of the main floor inside the castle. The back wall inside the giant fireplace is a secret door, with steps leading down into an underground cavern where my alchemist and blacksmith hang out.

Here's my first attempt at building a castle wall near the top of a mountain. I used glowing blue blocks to create the impression of a moat, which looks fantastic all lit up at night. Water is the one resource you can't build with in this game. (Yet!) The developers have mentioned that it's something they'd like to do, but it's on the back burner for now.

Oh, and that dragon in the first screenshot? My buddies and I took it down. That was a rough fight.

This "Fell Dragon Youngling" is currently the endgame boss. I dunno how big an adult one of these will be, but there are dragon skeletal remains scattered around the world that are bigger than cities! I hope the developers incorporate an adult Fell Dragon in a later update, because that would be an epic endgame challenge!

The map is only about 1/3rd open for exploration, and since early access dropped, two new regions have opened up with new content, including several non-Shroud dungeons with rewards for completion. So there's tons more to come with this game. It's so much fun, no matter whether you enjoy questing, base building, crafting, or just exploring. I highly recommend you check out Enshrouded!

I overheard someone talking about this weird sci-fi cloning space game with survival/crafting/base building elements a few days ago. It sounded so unique, preposterous, and yet intriguing. I had to track it down and check it out.

The Alters is a game about being the sole survivor of a space mission. You are stranded on a dangerous planet and are forced to create clones of yourself - with an altered past - to assist with various specialized roles around your base.

It reminded me a bit of The Invincible, another game about being stranded on an alien planet and trying to escape. Except that game is more of a story-rich walking simulator, while this one actually has you collecting resources and building as you go to ensure your survival.

Also, I want to point out that this game looks incredible in 4K with maxed out graphics settings. So much detail was put into this world! I wish I had 4K video to show the rainfall and the ocean crashing against the beach. Screenshots don't do it justice.

The Alters opens with your character, Jan Dolski, crawling out of an escape pod on a dark planet. It's perpetually raining on this planet. He notices the emergency flare near his pod and sets out to find other crew members by searching for their flares.

He finds the captain's pod intact, but she's dead in her pod. Several other pods can be located nearby, but despite all being intact, they all hold deceased crew members. Jan discovers he's all alone and sets out for the nearby mobile base. It looks like a massive tire with shipping containers arranged inside of it.

All of a sudden, a radioactive wave hits! Jan has limited time to get to the shelter of the mobile base!

Once inside, your view changes to a sort of 3D side-scroller. You can walk around the various interconnected rooms of the base, or you can switch to a base overview mode, which is a cutaway view of all the rooms.

You need to get to the Communication Room to call for help, but you can't currently use the elevator for... reasons. The game teaches you how to rearrange the rooms from the Command Center. I brought the Communications Room down to my floor so I could just walk across to it.

Once there, Jan answers a call, only to get a garbled message from the distant end. They seem able to hear him, but Jan is only getting partial transmissions. The words "imminent danger" catch his ears, and he surmises from the jumbled communication that he has until sunrise in 9 days before he's burnt to a crisp by a nearby star. So now we're on a time limit!

He retreats to the captain's cabin to read the logs for his next steps, then goes to sleep for the night.

I should mention that there is a limited time to be active each day, as you can see in the bottom left of the screen. I definitely wasted a few days wandering around, trying to get familiar with the local area and the mechanics of the game. I'll probably be more streamlined on my next playthrough.

The next day, Jan sets out to find shallow deposits, as there is a shortage of metals on the mobile base. You can track them down by their red glowing light.

When you get enough metals, you can create a Workshop room, where you can craft items.

The first thing you need to craft are scanners. You're looking for organic deposits, which present themselves as blue smoke coming out of the rocky surface. When you find an area like this, you place down several scanners in a square to help scan underground for the best place to drop a mining outpost.

You want to identify the darkest red area underground. I had to make 3 separate scans of the area to find it. Fortunately, you can individually pick up and move your scanners and it will leave the previously scanned area visible.

Once you've dropped a mining outpost, you then need to run pylons all the way back to your mobile base to transfer the organic deposits to your fuel reserves.

I had flashbacks of running transmitter nodes in Deep Rock Galactic while placing all these pylons.

While exploring, I also stumbled across a strange glowing area that made the region fuzzy and streaked. You can see, even on the ground near me, it looks like it's been smeared upward with a giant paintbrush.

This is Rapidium, a plot-centric mineral you need to harvest. Extract a sample and get it back to your base!

You receive a new call from your mysterious garbled connection. You mention the Rapidium, which gets them very excited. They insist you test it to verify it's real. You're sent blueprints to create a new room called "The Womb," along with a DNA sample to test the Rapidium on. You set it up and out pops...

Rapidium, it turns out, was the resource you were sent to find on this expedition. It's an incredibly rare resource that, in theory, can rapidly age an organic item. By combining it with sheep DNA, out pops a cloned adult sheep! Jan names her Molly.

Incidentally, the name of this expedition is "Project Dolly." In real-life history, Dolly was the name of the first cloned sheep. So, a very apropos name for this game's expedition.

By now, the waterfront valley you're located in has (ideally) been picked clean of resources and your mobile base is fully fueled. It's time to get it moving! You go to the Command Center and attempt to start up the engines, but they fail to start. You reset the machinery and try again, which causes a catastrophic failure!

Not knowing what to do, you turn to your garbled friend for help. They mention something about Rapidium being able to save you, and they direct you to check out the data in the base's Quantum Computer. They give you the captain's access and you log in... to find "mind records" of all the crew.

It maps out memories of the major life events of Jan, from his childhood, leading up to his joining of the Project Dolly expedition in his 30s. You can click on each life event and read up about his past.

In the Communications Room, the distant contact suggests using this life data on Jan to create an "alter" with a branching past. The Quantum Computer pinpoints a branching life path in his childhood that would lead Jan to join Project Dolly as a technician, then simulates a fake memory path leading to that end result.

The Womb starts churning, and before you know it, out pops a clone of Jan! Except he's a bit more rough around the edges.

I noticed he has a "03" on his clothing. Jan has a "01" on his suit. What happened to "02?"

"Jan Technician," as he's known in the subtitles, is not happy to discover that he's a clone with fake memories of a life that never happened. He begrudgingly helps you get the base's engine working, but he doesn't want anything else to do with you.

You get a new menu to track your alters. It's important to be aware of their emotional status and keep them happy, as they'll perform poorly if they're in a bad mood. While you're talking with them, you'll occasionally get emotional state clouds pop up behind them. If they're red, they're negative. If they're green, they're positive.

With the engine working, you start up a journey. The mobile base goes on autopilot, heading toward a better pick-up location for your eventual rescue. Meanwhile, you repair the communications (because Jan Technician refuses to help) and you're finally able to speak clearly with someone! Your distant contact is named Lucas Peña and he's fascinated with the results of the Rapidium branching.

When you mention that your clone isn't talking to you, Lucas suggests bonding over a shared memory. I went and convinced him to make pierogi with me, just like Mom used to make!

In a much better mood, Jan Technician informs you that this mobile base is a beast to operate, and the only way the two of you are going to survive is if you make more versions of you. You'll make branching memories to create alters who end up as scientists, botanists, refiners, miners, and doctors, to name a few.

It will quickly get crowded in the mobile base and you'll have to upgrade the size of the base and create more rooms to house all the resources and people that you bring into the world.

I played for 3 hours and only barely finished the prologue! Granted, I took my time and explored everything. By the time Act 1 was starting, I was already on Day 7 of my 10 days until sunrise. So I bet I'm likely to die soon and will have to be more efficient with my next playthrough.

Or who knows where the plot will go; maybe I'll be able to survive the sunrise somehow and get more time to build and expand my army of clones. It seems like too short of a timeline for how story-rich the gameplay is. If you've played this game, let me know how much you enjoy it! I'm excited to play more and find out where the plot leads.

Hey, it's been a minute! I took a break from gaming for a bit; partly voluntary, partly because some jerk destroyed the Internet cable in my yard and it took forever to get someone to come fix it. But I'm back! And just in time to play a really fun co-op game that just dropped last month.

PEAK is a climbing game where you can either solo the various mountain regions, or climb with up to four players. I highly recommend playing with others, as you can help each other out on your journey. As you can see from the first screenshot above, my good friend Victor McKnight is offering a hand to help lift me up a ledge.

The game starts in an airport, where your team of scouts is preparing for a flight. You can pull out a passport and customize your character's appearance at this point. More outfits and facial features will unlock as you gain achievements in the game.

Notice that your achievements in the game will appear as badges on the scout sash you wear across your chest. They'll fill out both the front and back of the sash.

When your team is ready to depart, someone will select the game mode from the terminal gate. You can play "Peak," which is the game's standard difficulty, or "Tenderfoot," which makes climbing a little easier, requires less food to stave off hunger, and grants unlimited time to explore each area.

After departure, you find yourself waking up on a beach near the ruins of a plane. Your flight has crashed and you and your scout team need to climb to the highest peak to signal for help.

There is one backpack nearby and a couple luggage cases on the ground. You can hold 3 items in your inventory, one in your hands, and up to four items in the backpack. One of your team members can equip the backpack and everyone else just packs as many supplies as they can in their inventory. You will find more luggage scattered all over each region, so there are plenty more supplies to pick up along the way. Keep your hands free for climbing!

You have five regions to climb before you get to the highest peak (and thus, the end of the game):

1.) SHORE: Rocky, sandy bluffs

2.) TROPICS: Lush vine-covered jungle cliffs with slippery rainfall

3.) ALPINE: Frozen snowy alps with piercing cold wind storms

4.) CALDERA: A lava pit with hot rocks and fire tornadoes

5.) KILN: The inside of the volcano.

The regions are always the same, but their layout is procedurally generated daily, so you never have the same climb from day to day. That forces you to be creative and learn good skills instead of just memorizing a certain path up the mountains.

You can rest at a campfire at the top of each region, which will recover all your ailments. You'll also find marshmallows to roast over the fire. I recommend cooking them twice for the best stats boost. Perfectly golden brown. You'll also get a new backpack at each campfire, which lets another scout carry additional supplies.

You'll notice that your green stamina bar is quickly filled up by weight. So don't carry too many heavy items or else you won't have enough stamina to climb!

Also, as your hunger grows, it will fill part of your stamina bar. Remember to eat to give yourself more stamina. Everything takes up space in your stamina bar. Poison, cold, heat, injuries... if you run out of space for stamina, you will pass out.

If you pass out, you have a very limited time where a fellow scout can revive you. Or if they don't have anything to revive you with, they can carry you on their back in place of a backpack. So don't leave your scouts behind!

If you're passed out too long without aid or being carried, you will die and turn into a ghost. Ghosts are tied to another teammate and can switch between living teammates to watch and call out assistance. As you can see below, I was the last hope for my team and I passed out. Oops.

At the end of each climb, you can revive your fallen scouts at a statue. If everyone is still alive, the statue will instead give a random beneficial item. Like this Bugle of Friendship, which will give unlimited stamina to nearby teammates while it's being played. If everyone dies, the game is over and you have to start over at the very beginning.

If you're playing with "Peak" difficulty, you will have fog that slowly encroaches on you from behind. If the fog envelopes you, you will quickly freeze to death. Make sure you out-climb that fog! Here's my buddy Victor confidently giving himself to the fog as the rest of our dead team watches on.

Just a heads up, this game is about teamwork so don't leave your teammates behind. I found out the hard way that if you climb on your own and get too far ahead of your teammates, the Scoutmaster will come for you. If he catches you, he'll attempt to throw you off the mountain. And he's absolutely terrifying to encounter, running at you on all fours like a nightmare skeleton creature or something. (Although you get an achievement and a costume item if you summon him)

Little tip: If you carry the bugle from the airplane, you can serenade some capybaras in a hot spring in the Alpine region. This is also an achievement. Don't forget to eat the apples on their head. They'll fill you up and give you a stat boost.

Victor and I got real close to beating the game. We were so close to making it out of the volcano!

Then his game froze and his character fell to his death. I tried to finish solo, but without his help, I ran out of stamina and fell too. It's practically impossible to finish that final climb without some climbing gear to help you! Oh well, we'll clear the summit one day.