Tails of Iron Review – Functional, but Forgettable

It's not every day that you come across a game that juxtaposes a whimsical story-book art style full of forest animals with a brutal weapon-based combat system. It's also equally uncommon for such ideas to blend together in a seamless way that doesn't feel forced or inorganic. Tails of Iron strives to be a game that accomplishes all of this with its light emphasis on RPG mechanics and a rather bleak, somber overall tone. While it does seem to check a lot of the boxes that a game like this should, I still never quite felt all of its pieces click into place in a consistently satisfying way.

Tails of Iron starts off at the peak of a long-fought rivalry between two kingdoms; the frogs and the rats. After a sustained period of tranquility, the rat kingdom once again finds itself in peril as the aging king can no longer protect it. Of course, the heir to the throne is his son, who you control throughout the treacherous journey of rescuing and re-establishing the rat kingdom to its former glory. This won't come easy though, as legions of warty frogs revel at the chance to stand in your way. The story is about as cookie-cutter as it gets for RPGs, and you shouldn't go into it expecting any interesting twists outside of the archetypal characters that you normally see in games like this replaced with rats and frogs. It does set itself up well despite unabashedly refusing to deviate from the formula in almost any meaningful way. How much it's predictability might bother you will largely depend on how much the minutiae of the story of a game like this matters to you. To its credit you do get a pretty good sense of the tone of the game from its highly detailed world. Everywhere you look there is a visual feast. Ruins and macabre pepper every area and the nice variety of color pallets and multitude of scrolling layers go a long way to establishing the vibe – even if the story itself doesn't.

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"While Tails of Iron does seem to check a lot of the boxes that a game like this should, I still never quite felt all of its pieces click into place in a consistently satisfying way."

Tails of Iron's gameplay is a similarly mixed bag. It checks a lot of the side-scrolling action-RPG boxes well enough with a wide variety of weapons and shields that make you balance out their effectiveness with their weight, a handful of enemy types that require different approaches to take down, and the occasional bit of backtracking and side quests that can sometimes make the game feel like something bigger than it actually is. Depending on what you're looking for from this sort of game, it could be right up your alley if you don't want to deal with the complexities of truly deep combat or be overwhelmed with the open-ended nature of a really expansive world. Afterall, there is nothing wrong with a simplistic take on a genre that normally sees more complex games come out of it. And to its credit, there is a bit more meat on the bone than first meets the eye with food recipes that can be learned and a fair amount of weapons and armor that can be collected. But Tails of Iron's primary problem is not it's watered-down nature; it's that it doesn't make any of its main mechanics fun or satisfying enough to weather the storm of monotony that inevitably rolls in once you notice it's small handful of ideas starting to repeat themselves.

The combat of Tails of Iron is presented as the main course, and does have a few functional albeit boiler plate ideas that keep it from falling into complete mediocrity. Sneaking a few hits in between using your shield to block, dodging when red indicators are shown, and parrying when yellow indicators are shown is a delicate dance that can be fun when it's all happening at once and you're in the zone. Certain enemies might hang back and fire arrows at you while you're dealing with others in close-quarters, and depending on the situation you could justify going after either one first. When bigger enemies come in however, they tend to have more distinct patterns that, in turn, force you to fight them in very specific ways that rarely allow for much experimentation.

You'll learn this quickly, as fighting more than a few basic enemies at a time in the "wrong" way can quickly result in a chain reaction of getting bashed by all of them and killed before you even know what hit you. Parrying requires two button presses, both of which are triggers, so it can feel a bit mushy and imprecise to pull off, which doesn't mix well with the short windows of time you're often given between seeing that yellow indicator and getting hit. Dodging works well enough, but it won't work with enemies that are expecting a parry – only the red-highlighted enemies that require a dodge. Not only does it not work, but it will likely result in getting hit by default. So, when you are pulling it all together it can feel more like a squishy rhythm game than a combat system. Finishing moves are there, but at their best are only mildly amusing.

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"The combat of Tails of Iron is presented as the main course, and does have a few functional albeit boiler plate ideas that keep it from falling into complete mediocrity."

Had the combat itself been more versatile and satisfying, replaying the same fights multiple times to find the "right" way to beat them could have been an interesting hook, but here, repeat attempts get stale long before they should. Thankfully it doesn't rub any salt in the wound with sparse checkpoints or some sort of cumulative punishment for dying. But aside from that, with most attacks feeling stilted and unenthusiastic due to the rigid nature of the character models, the moment-to-moment combat in Tails of Iron often feels like a series of generic ideas held together by its presentation and mostly mediocre execution. I'll stop far short of calling it bad, because it's not, but I'm equally uncomfortable with calling it particularly good.

Thankfully, the game's many combat sections are broken up by some platforming and dialogue moments in a way that feels well-paced. You will find yourself climbing up walls, wall-jumping, even climbing across some ceilings. Traversal feels good enough, but much like the combat, nothing particularly interesting is ever really done with it to add to the overall experience or make those ideas feel organic to this game. The dialogue with other characters do their job at conveying certain ideas in a cute way by using animated pictures instead of words to convey certain concepts. It's a neat idea, but the lack of text and voice also severely limits these characters' chances of being identified with or standing apart from each other.

There's no real way for any of them to express unique personality traits with such a rudimentary style of communication. Perhaps the developer felt like the personality brought to the overall game from having this style of dialogue outweighs the loss of personality that each character suffers from it, but I'm not so sure it does. It ultimately feels like they traded away an opportunity to get me to care about the characters and thus, the story, more. It also doesn't help that the noises used to represent characters' vocalizations are usually more annoying than not – especially after hearing them for the 7th or 8th time within just a couple of minutes. All things considered, I was surprised to see Tails of Iron playing it so safe in so many ways given the intriguing first impression it made with me.

"Tails of Iron never quite falls flat on its face. It's a functional and serviceable addition to its genre that gives players a well-realized world to experience and can provide some meaningful challenge all while running respectably well. But with its somewhat wooden combat being the centerpiece, garnished with generic platforming and small handful of other slip-ups, it can sometimes be too much for its glimmers of inventiveness to overcome."

Ear-splitting dialogue sound effects aside, the music and sound is actually an area where the game shines quite a bit overall. The music always seems to fit the situation well with thundering cellos during important battles and buoyant mandolins accompanying calmer sections. It all creates a perfect auditory foundation on which the visuals easily stand. In fact, the blend of sight and sound here are so good that, had the game leaned into it a bit more, it could have really gone a long way to saving the experience from the doldrums of its gameplay.

Tails of Iron never quite falls flat on its face. It's a functional and serviceable addition to its genre that gives players a well-realized world to experience and can provide some meaningful challenge all while running respectably well. But with its somewhat wooden combat being the centerpiece, garnished with generic platforming and small handful of other slip-ups, it can sometimes be too much for its glimmers of inventiveness to overcome. The game's friendly price and obvious triumphs in art style and music might be enough for some to see it through, but as far as side-scrolling action RPG's go, there are just too many other ones that do much better what Tails of Iron is aiming at for me to recommend it broadly. You can certainly tell that there's a lot of heart behind the game's general concept, and I'm always down for a dark rodent-themed adventure. But the fact that almost none of the game's ideas ever reach any notable heights, creates an unfortunately low ceiling for the overall experience.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Gran Turismo 7 Will Use Ray-Tracing Only in Replays

Gran Turismo as a series has traditionally been a technical showcase for any and all hardware that it has graced, but with Gran Turismo 7 being a cross-gen game, many are wondering just how much the game's going to be able to get out of the PS5's hardware. Of course, it looks excellent, from what we've seen of it so far, but what PS5-exclusive features can we expect to see fully leveraged?

The game's still a few months out from launch, so a clearer idea of that is probably going to crystallize in the lead-up to launch, but it seems like ray-tracing, at least, is going to be implemented in very limited fashion. In an interview with Game Watch, series producer and Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi confirmed that "for the time being" players will only be able to enable ray-tracing in the game's PS5 version during cutscenes, where you can "see the stage demo and the picture with ray tracing applied in the garage."

Of course, with some time left still before Gran Turismo 7 releases, not to mention Yamauchi saying that this is the case "for the time being", there is a chance (hopefully, at least) that ray-tracing features in the game are expanded between now and launch.

Recently, it was also confirmed that Gran Turismo 7's single player campaign will require an internet connection, with Yamauchi explaining that the restriction has been imposed to prevent cheating, among other factors. Meanwhile, it's also been confirmed that the game will support cross-gen multiplayer.

Gran Turismo 7 launches on March 4, 2022 for PS5 and PS4.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One Has Been Developed Without Crunch

Crunch in the gaming industry continues to be a heated topic, with the effects still being seen in titles like CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077. So it's often good to hear about games that didn't need crunch like Psychonauts 2, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and so on. Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One can be added to the list as well.

On Twitter, the developer reaffirmed the recently announced release date while confirming that the title had been made "100 percent with zero crunch. None whatsoever." The story stars a younger Sherlock Holmes who, after the death of his mother, ventures to an island in the Caribbean to investigate her murder. What he discovers is a society rife with corruption and a conspiracy afoot.

Like previous games in the series, players will gather evidence and then either name different suspects or choose to pardon them (with differing results). Combat is also a factor as Holmes can rely on firearms, takedowns and the environment to one-up foes. Whether one resorts to brute force in the first place is completely up to them.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One releases on November 16th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC. It arrives a few weeks later for PS4 and Xbox One. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection Will Drop Seasonal Model Following Infinite's Launch

343 Industries' insistence on turning things around for Halo: The Master Chief Collection since its disastrous launch years ago has been remarkable to witness, and the collection is currently in great shape, thanks in large part to the consistent support it keeps receiving in the form of updates, fixes, and new content. Of course, with Halo Infinite launching soon, some have wondered whether that means MCC's support is going to slow down- which will indeed be the case.

343 Industries has confirmed in a newly published update on Halo Waypoint that once Halo Infinite has launched and the studio begins focusing on its seasonal post-launch model, the current seasonal model of Halo: The Master Chief Collection will come to an end, with the studio instead focus on smaller and less frequent updates. 343 assures, however, that there will still be new content and updates coming to the collection, with "a lot of goodness" in store for 2022.

"As we think about the future, we've had a lot of conversations around how to best support MCC once Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer is up and running," the developer wrote. "We've agreed on two key points: One, we have more MCC work to do and support will continue; and two, as a studio it's not ideal to run and continue shipping seasonal updates for two different multiplayer titles concurrently. So, while we very much have more updates coming – including more content, fixes, and features – the manner in which they are delivered is expected to shift. Starting next year, we're targeting pivoting away from our current seasonal model and cadence to instead focus on smaller MCC updates that can land when they're ready based on development status and studio roadmap alignment. These updates will continue to be free and will include the unreleased features and content from this year – as well as a continued effort to improve stability and tackle legacy fixes where possible. We still have a lot of goodness to deliver in 2022."

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC, and Halo Infinite launches for the same platforms on December 8. Before that, later this month on September 24, its second multiplayer technical preview will be kicking off. Read more on that through here.

Xbox Game Studios' Project Indus and Project Cobalt Detailed in New Report

The GeForce NOW leak has been fairly interesting because even though Nvidia has admitted to many titles on the list being "speculative", there appear to be some legitimate entries. Jez Corden on Windows Central pointed to two from Xbox Game Studios – Project Indus and Project Cobalt. He first learned about the former back in Spring 2021 and the leak seems to indicate that it's actually going ahead.

This is essentially a 4X strategy title from Ashes of the Singularity developer Oxide Games. Elements like city-building, diplomacy, warfare, espionage and so on, much like in Civilization, appear to be included. Corden believes that it's being designed for cloud platforms and smaller screens since Civilization's turn-based gameplay also works well with in the same environments. It's reportedly in development for PC (Microsoft Store and Steam) along with Xbox.

Project Cobalt is inXile Entertainment's next project, which was previously noted to be an FPS/RPG. Reportedly inspired by technology from the Industrial Revolution, it apparently includes Victorian-era streets, retro-futuristic robots, steam engines and zeppelins. Concept artist Aleksander Danilovac shared the above via ArtStation, and Corden believes this to be indicative of the environments that can be expected. Not much is known other than Unreal Engine 5 being the engine and the fact that it won't be revealed anytime soon.

Take things with a grain of salt though as plans can, and often do, change for projects which are such a long ways off. Nevertheless, it should be interesting to see how they develop over time. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Sea of Thieves Season Four Kicks off on September 23

Sea of Thieves has only gone from strength to strength in recent years, with Rare having turned it into a game that's miles and miles and miles better than what it launched as back in 2018. Most recently, its A Pirate's Life expansion added a significant chunk of excellent new content, and was the main driver for Sea of Thieves seeing its biggest month to date in June with over 4.8 million active players.

And of course, there's still plenty more to come for the multiplayer title. Rare recently took to Twitter to confirm that season four of their pirate utopia will be kicking off in less than a week- on September 23, to be precise. Exact details will likely be shared in the coming days, but a teaser trailer mentions "a forgotten world of adventure" and "a kingdom of riches beyond compare", and suggests that we'll be heading beneath the waves. Check it out below.

Sea of Thieves is available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC. Stay tuned for more details on season four in the coming days.

Castlevania Advance Collection Rated in Taiwan

Some of the best Castlevania games to date came out when the series was focused on Nintendo's handhelds in the 2000s, with the trilogy of games on the Game Boy Advance in particular having legions of fans swearing by them to this day. Recent developments have suggested that those games could be coming back soon, and we have some more fuel to add to the fire here.

As spotted by Gemtasu, Castlevania Advance Collection has been rated for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in Taiwan by the Taiwan Digital Game Rating Committee. The listing seems to have been taken down since then, but you can view a screenshot of it below.

This isn't the first time this unannounced collection's name has emerged in recent days. Castlevania Advance Collection was first rated in Australia in June, with M2 mentioned as its developer. Shortly afterward, the collection was rated in Korea as well.

Konami has a stream scheduled for TGS 2021 later this month, so it's possible that we hear something about this then. Until then, stay tuned for more updates.

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The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki Opening Movie Revealed

Falcom's The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki is out later this month so it's a good time as any to showcase the opening movie. It features the main theme "Namonaki Akumu no Hate" by Falcom jdk BAND and showcases many of the key characters, from newcomers like protagonist Van and Agnes to familiar heroes like Zin Vathek and Renne Bright. Check it out below.

The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki takes place in the Calvard Republic some time after the war with Erebonia. It sees Agnes, a high school student, who visits Van Arkride in order to recover a stolen Orbment that belonged to her great-grandfather. As a Spriggan, Van's duties alternate between combat, investigation and negotiation, leveraging underworld contacts to get the job done.

Along with the usual turn-based Command system for combat, Kuro no Kiseki features a real-time system for moving around, attacking foes and switching characters. There's also the L.G.C. Alignment System which dictates who can help Van out. It's out on September 30th for the PS4 in Japan and hasn't been confirmed for localization in the West. Stay tuned for more details in the coming days.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human Features Almost 200 Weapons

In the latest episode of Dying 2 Know, Techland producer Szymon Strauss provided more details on the different weapons that fans could discover in Dying Light 2 Stay Human. The open world title has almost 200 weapons and the emphasis is on improvised arms. While easy to build, they can also break down fairly quickly.

While it's still possible to find the usual axes, that too of higher qualities, it seems players will spend more time scavenging and building their own. Strauss notes that one will need to be prepared for every battle, including carrying a modded weapon for dealing with special enemies. At the very least, there are other things available in the world that can help in combat.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human is out on February 4th 2022 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and PC. It was delayed from its original December 2021 release for the sake of play-testing and additional polish. Expect more gameplay and details in the coming months.

15 Best Recent Linear Single Player Games You Need To Play

As games become bigger in scale, reveling in the sandbox nature of larger worlds and numerous decisions or the near endless replay value of multiplayer, it's always nice to have a solid, linear title to fall back on. Let's take a look at 15 titles that have offered some of the best single-player experiences in recent years.

A Short Hike

Having arrived in Hawk Peak Provincial Park and unable to get cell reception, Claire must venture to its peak in A Short Hike. Yes, it's a very simple premise but the world built around this simple goal, with all of its side activities and colorful characters, is incredibly wholesome. Players help locate lost items, go fishing, partake in races, and even fly. Even with its cute looks, there's a fleeting feeling of Summer, of gallivanting about and learning new things while just having fun (and remembering what's really important).