It's easy to fall in love with the idea of Soundfall. Its action role-playing gameplay marries concepts from twin-stick shooters and rhythm games, challenging you to stick with the beat as you attack enemies while dodging their blows. It's a conceit that has been experimented with in multiple other games, sometimes to great effect. But those other successes manage to enhance the mechanic beyond its initial charm, which isn't something Soundfall ever quite replicates in its extensive campaign.

Everything in Soundfall moves to the beat of the song playing in the background. All your actions require you to time them according to the beat to be effective, whether that's your standard ranged attacks, up-close melee swipes, or damage-dodging dashes. Enemies are similarly tied to the same constraints. Their attack patterns don't change with the beat, but the speed of them does. The build-up time associated with the shot of a sniper will be faster or slower based on the song playing, for example, while the speed of environmental hazards is similarly affected.

Playing in tune with Soundfall’s music initially feels exhilarating. It doesn’t take long to match up to the new rhythm presented by a new song, but it still feels satisfying to settle in and fire off hundreds of perfectly timed attacks and execute precise dodges. Enemy variety is sparse at first, but there’s a decent number of combinations that keep most skirmishes engaging enough, and certainly challenging enough to encourage you to keep hitting well-timed attacks to do the most damage you can. It’s enough of a hook that it makes the otherwise routine isometric action fun, but also what quickly becomes monotomous as Soundfall fails to do anything new with it beyond the initial rush.

When the Hatsune Miku voice software debuted back in 2007, few could have guessed the tremendous impact it would have. The concept of a virtual singer--one whose songs were almost entirely user-generated--was a bizarre and intriguing novelty. 15 years later, Miku and her friends have endured, solidifying their reputations as pioneers across music, the internet, and gaming cultures. Sega's Hatsune Miku: Project Diva serves as a powerful testament to the aquamarine-haired songstress' lasting legacy, and Project Diva Megamix+ is a phenomenal reminder of Miku's musical significance.

Like previous games in the series, Project Diva Megamix+ is a rhythm game built around the popular Japanese "virtual singer" characters of Hatsune Miku, the Kagamine Rin and Len duo, Megurine Luka, Meiko, and Kaito. Each game in the series offers a selection of songs sourced from independent creators who've made songs using these characters. Most of these tracks also feature an elaborately choreographed, real-time music video that plays in the background, which can be customized with costumes and accessories for the characters you earn with in-game currency.

Megamix+ is an enhanced port of 2020's Hatsune Miku Project Diva Megamix for Switch, which itself was a “best-of” compilation based on the arcade and PS4 game Hatsune Miku Project Diva Future Tone. That might sound a little confusing if you're not familiar with the series chronology, but the important thing is that it means that Megamix+ has no shortage of music. From the moment you boot the game, over 100 tracks--including many that were DLC-only on the Switch version--are ready to play. There's also optional paid DLC to add most of the songs from PS4/arcade Future Tone that didn't make it into the Switch game, and with up to five uniquely charted difficulty levels available for each song, you get a huge amount of bang for your buck, regardless of if you spring for the DLC.

Five games in and sniping Nazis still hasn't gotten old. Whether it's a well-placed bullet in the back of the skull, a shot right through the iris of an unaware enemy, or a 200-yard peach that collides with a pair of testicles, Sniper Elite's schlocky long-range action remains gloriously fun. It's in the moments outside of the sniper's scope where the series has previously struggled to compel, but that all changed when Sniper Elite 4 arrived with refined stealth mechanics and massive, open-ended maps. In picking up where that game left off, Sniper Elite 5 doesn't feel quite as revolutionary in comparison, but with some smart new additions and a more ambitious emphasis on player agency and experimentation, this is another thrilling Nazi-hunting adventure where sniping is king.

Once again, you're thrust into the mud-caked boots of American marksman Karl Fairburne, this time deep behind enemy lines in occupied France. Sniper Elite 5 is set in the weeks and days just before, during, and after D-Day, when Allied forces launched a joint sea-based and airborne invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Your initial mission is to covertly disrupt enemy operations in preparation for the French theatre of war, destroying AA guns, disabling communications, blowing up fortified coastal positions, and so on. It doesn't take long, however, before you unearth yet another dastardly Nazi plot that could turn the tide of war, so it's up to Fairburne to put a stop to their plans and save the world from catastrophe.

You'll do this by sniping, blasting, and stabbing your way across various locales in northern France, from a picturesque chateau in the middle of the verdant countryside to the obliterated coastal town of Saint-Nazaire, where the Loire river heads inland. These environments are often gorgeous, especially early on, with the colorful scenery providing a stark contrast to the violent bloodshed happening all around it--bloodshed that most frequently bursts forth from the barrel of a sniper rifle.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Apex Legends has gone pocket-sized with Apex Legends Mobile, an entirely separate version of the battle royale game for Android and iOS devices. Apex Legends Mobile is quite different from its older sibling, featuring a unique roster, maps, modes, and progression track--some of which unfortunately detract from the overall experience. However, Apex Legends Mobile streamlines the process of playing a battle royale to create a fairly rewarding experience that's fun to play.

Apex Legends Mobile is a battle royale game first and foremost. You and your squadmates pick from a roster of hero characters called "legends," before then dropping onto a map. To win, you need to loot supplies and weapons, escape the encroaching energy wall that slowly corrals squads into an ever-dwindling space, and be the last team standing. When you fall in battle, your allies can grab your banner from the deathbox you leave behind and respawn you, keeping the whole team in the fight.

There's a satisfying heft to shooting and smoothness to movement, and the unique strengths and weaknesses of each playable legend encourage teams to stay and work together. Color-coded attachments and ammo types ensure the momentum of the match is constantly moving forward--at a glance, you know whether a pile of loot contains anything you might want or need--so you aren't wasting time navigating menus and can get back to the action.

Swansong is a role-playing game that delivers the entirety of its drama through dialogue–there is no combat to speak of. Critical scenes between characters are resolved within conversational set-pieces called "confrontations." RPGs can exist without traditional battles--just look at Disco Elysium, for example--but the dialogue now thrust center-stage needs to sing, or at least harmonize with a deep skill system. Swansong, sadly, delivers neither. Its writing is pedestrian, often incoherent, and its supporting systems are underutilized, adding little flavor to distinguish the three playable characters.

You play as three vampires--Emem, Galeb, and Leysha--summoned to a crisis meeting at Boston's vampire HQ, after a party to mark an alliance with the Hartford Chantry (a sect of blood sorcerers) ends in a bloodbath, and not the good kind. The local vampire prince instructs the trio to uncover what happened and eventually sends them on a series of overlapping missions of revenge. Missions are tailored to each vampire's specific abilities, and you'll play as each character in turn. For the first half of the game, you'll decide the order in which to tackle the missions, giving you some choice to pursue the storyline that's of most interest. But over the second half, a more linear approach takes over, and you find yourself shunted from one character's mission to the next, each ending on something of a cliffhanger.