Death Stranding 2 Review

Death Stranding 2 proves that games are an art form – and not all art is for all people.

If you liked Death Stranding you will certainly like Death Stranding 2. I never felt that DS1 was incomplete, or any kind of “tech-demo”, but DS2 certainly feels more fleshed out and consequently more impressive. Kojima has been able to develop the mechanics of the first game into a truly manic sandbox of possibilities. Whether the narrative has been able to evolve similarly is much less clear.

Death Stranding 2 unleashes players into Mexico, and subsequently Australia. To me – as someone who had enjoyed DS1 and had long enough away to forget my gripes – it felt like putting on a comfortable old jumper. I was once again marching across beautifully rendered landscapes, linking up facilities in return for a variety of rewards: some were simply numbers going up, but others were often meaningful new tools and upgrades to further help my advancement. The sheer scale, variety and imagination present in the weapons and tools to be unlocked is remarkable. As a fan of the art-form, I enjoyed the throughline of crazy sandbox/toolbox development from Metal Gear Solid 5, to DS1, to this game. It was a real thrill to be dragged into an unexpected combat-stealth sequence when I wasn’t geared up for it. I had an item in my inventory with a secondary use that, if applied carefully, allowed me to scrape through. I appreciated the flexibility this kit offered.

At first I was a little shocked at how similar to DS2 is – and how quickly you acquired the same tools as before. However, as the game progressed I could see how Kojima had layered additional material into the substrate of the first game in a way that was ambitious, novel and satisfying.

One can certainly see that the game was made with accessibility in mind – everything seems to flow a little more easily than the first game. I was never able to pin down how much of that came to me because I was a returning player. Mechanically the game was more of the same – not necessarily a bad thing – with newer content sprinkled in as you progressed. For instance, I was aware that the menus could overwhelm with information, but roughly where to look to find the key bits. Narratively, the story begins much more straightforwardly – though, again, having played DS1 the world was already built in my mind, and was a stage against which a new story could unfold. This may not be true for a brand new player.

So I set off into this fresh but familiar world, linking up bases and clearing enemy camps with my growing array of fun and interesting tools at my disposal. I’m always a little wary of Kojima’s story-telling, but as I settled into the first third of the game I was reminded to just think of this as a live-action anime; to let the madness wash over you, enjoy the bombastic set-pieces and wait for the next, inevitable, unhinged moment. Indeed, the story begins relatively straightforwardly, a relief after the chaotic, worldbuilding exposition dumps of the early first game. I will note further that the game is visually breathtaking from the start and does not let up – from the variety of landscapes, to the character design, to the future-industrial facilities, it never stops being stunning. The music also is a delightful mix of composed pieces and licensed work. It is highly curated and – in a game where tone can be an issue – acts as a fantastic stabilising influence. Elsewhere, however, cracks begin to show.

Firstly, despite the inventive and numerous tools that protagonist Sam Porter Bridges is provided with, they all achieve the same goals (of which in combat there are two: knocking out humans and blowing up robots). You can achieve these goals with the starting equipment, and – due to the lack of mission variety (discussed later) – there is very little reason to change things up. I suppose this is a case of making your own fun, and using the different weapons and gadgets just because you can, but it would have been nice if Kojima had given us a reason to do so. I played the game on normal difficulty, and honestly it felt like if you were doing anything other than walking into a base and mowing every enemy down with your highest powered automatic weapon, you were wasting your own time.

Which raises the next issue: Does Kojima respect your time? The answer is “no”. This is a game full of donkey-work almost by definition, and there is simply too little variety in the game to justify it. At the time, I felt that completing side quests was useful, since I was unlocking gear that would make my onward journey easier.  Looking back over all my time with DS2 now, I realise that it was in fact unnecessary, and I could have marched on a mainline track to the end of the game, without that side stuff and without missing much. 

An easy fix for this would be to make the side missions more interesting, varied, and in particular challenging. Ranking up your rating with each facility requires dozens of deliveries, many literally identical. It is repetitive and unrewarding – especially since you get very little in return for reaching the fifth star. Why not make the missions harder to get the higher ranks? Missions that force you to use all the tools at your disposal.

“I cannot overstate what an unbelievable amount of cutscenes are dedicated to filing systems in this game.”

This has knock-on effects to the narrative, which began to lose me at the midpoint of the game. Around this time you have uncovered so much of the map, and have so much to do, that you can spend hours without seeing any story content. This is a negative feedback loop: I’m not that interested in the story, so I go and do other stuff, so when I get back to the story I’m even less connected with it, so I go and do other stuff. There is simply no getting around the fact that Kojima Productions has paid A-list actors to spend literally hours talking about how a fictional government organises its filing system. I cannot overstate what an unbelievable amount of cutscenes are dedicated to filing systems in this game.

Not to be too negative, the really impactful stuff never failed to please. I don’t want to spoil anything, but from start to finish this game contains ideas, images, action sequences and dialogue that left me in disbelief at what I had seen on the screen. I commend in particular the sequences near the end of the game, drawing from Inception-style playable set-pieces and some general anime insanity. These moments will stay with me for a long time. It definitely didn’t all work, but I always admired Kojima’s ambition in trying to pull it off.

On the other hand, I was occasionally left wondering: “How the hell did he think he was going to pull this off?” Tonally, the game is absolutely all over the place and explores some of the darkest possible themes. It would take a generational talent with the deftest narrative touch to walk the line between laugh-out-loud grandiosity and the (attempted) narrative weight present here. Kojima is not that person, if it can be done at all. This probably contributed to the surprising lack of feeling I experienced toward this story – by swinging for both ends of the spectrum it achieved neither.

Where I found the first game’s story actively aggravating, it is perhaps worse that I found the story of DS2 leaving me fairly switched off and neutral. An epic cutscene would play out, some lines of (undoubtedly well acted) dialogue would be delivered, swelling music would play at the point of a revelation, and I would find myself saying to myself: “Ok…?” Sometimes the narrative beats simply do not hit, a problem in itself but leading to a greater issue of alienating me as a player, and making me feel outside the game. As if this game is for other people, Kojima and his fans, but not for me.

To further add to the pacing concerns, and to give a minor but unsurprising spoiler, Kojima pulls the same move he did at the end of DS1 by demanding the player retrace their steps through the 50+ hour game they just worked through. No doubt this is intended as a time for the player to reflect on the themes and revelations of the game, but in a game that is already overlong this is not a positive.

There is no doubt that Death Stranding 2 is a monumental achievement, made with love and care to a high standard of quality, at the hands of an auteur designer. The sheer force of Kojima’s imagination and personality is present in every moment of this game. It is, without doubt, a work of art. However this does not make the work accessible to everyone, it does not make it coherent or masterful. To have the experience of playing this game is essential for fans of videogames as a medium, but not everyone will like it.

Cyberpunk 2077 + Phantom Liberty DLC Review

Talk about late to the party! While writing a review of Cyberpunk 2077 in 2024 feels a bit strange, in many ways this is the best time to play the game. CD Project Red have put an enormous amount of work in since its disastrous launch three and a half years ago and have turned their own narrative into a redemption arc on the scale of No Man’s Sky. Since I didn’t play the game previously and have no reference point this review is not going to contain much in the way of comparison (that can be easily found elsewhere), but suffice it to say that as well as bug fixes, some core features have been overhauled, added or changed completely to transform Cyberpunk 2077 into a different beast (cyborg?) than on release day.

I’d like to start by describing what the game is, because despite its extensive coverage I wasn’t sure until I played it. Wikipedia states “Cyberpunk 2077 is an action role-playing game played from a first-person perspective”, which is probably a good starting point. The game follows in the vein of games like Deus Ex and draws irresistible comparisons to Bethesda’s first-person open world games. As a player you will find yourself shooting, hacking and slicing your way through a variety of mission scenarios, interspersed by story and flavour dialog spread across the richly decorated world of Night City. You’ll get experience points, level up and purchase perks.

In a sense, the above characterisation is a disappointment. The initial trailer and subsequent marketing materials promised something new, fresh and truly next-gen. What we in fact got was a very old formula, albeit executed with love, care and to a high standard.

A shot from the first teaser, that has nothing to do with the plot of the game. I think you CAN meet this lady somewhere, but I never did.

The first thing that struck me as a new player was the the world, its style and its detail. Night City is deep, layered and lovingly rendered. Though cliché, I wouldn’t hesitate to call it “alive”. Cars drive through the city intelligently, people fill the streets with purpose and meaningful conversations hum in the background. The city embodies the narrative themes by giving the impression it doesn’t give a shit about you and it exists in your absence. The first impression also states Cyberpunk‘s overall intentions: you are blasted with explicit adverts for performance enhancing drugs, cyborg implants and sex shows. This is the garish world you’re contending with.

The first act of the game features the heist-gone-wrong trope, a catalyst that drags you from seedy underbelly to sparkling heights of Night City. The story is large in scale, in terms of length, scope and themes. Continuing CD Project Red’s trend of making a blockbuster game out of esoteric media, Cyberpunk is based on a tabletop game released in 1988. This in itself inherits much from the book Neuromancer, and in many ways this feels like Neuromancer: The Videogame. It explores a world of corporate control, body modification, the nature of identity and an awful lot more besides. Cyberpunk probably bites off more than it can chew in this regard, but approaches its sprawling ideas with thoughtfulness and a sense of humour at all times. Much of the content is optional, seen through side quests, leaving the player to decide how much they want or need.

As noted, Cyberpunk works well as a cohesive whole. All of the above is reinforced and integrated with a consistent visual style. We can find the typical “neon-noir” of the cyberpunk genre in night-time city districts lit by glaring ads and store fronts. There is effective distinction between regions of the city, each with their own style and visual language: down-market sprawling residential semi-slums, upmarket LA-style mansions and sweeping industrial complexes. The map also features more rural areas surrounding Night City which provide a topographical pallet cleanser. Certainly, Night City is a pleasure to walk, fight and drive through and serves as a fantastic substrate to the game that lies on top of it. It feels like a real, working city and reminded me of large cities that I had visited myself – in much the same way The Witcher 3 felt familiar to my experiences on windswept moors and mountains. Furthermore, Night City feels like a character all on its own.

So you’re a tiny cog in a a gritty, in-your-face, degenerate near-future. What do you do? Cyberpunk places you in the role of a mercenary, providing a tried-and-tested conceit for the range of tasks you will be set: killing a target, kidnapping, rescuing, stealing. Here again, Cyberpunk is effective but not groundbreaking. You can shoot your way through, and the gunplay on offer here is excellent (far surpassing peers like Fallout), with a variety of weapons to choose from. Melee is also a valid option.

I’ve heard it said that Cyberpunk is an action game dressed in action-RPG clothing, and that is underlined by the lack of development of alternative approaches; principally stealth. This is my preferred play-style and my build reflected that. However, aside from the odd one-off quest objective or throwaway dialogue line, there is little motivation to go unseen. Likewise to complete the mission without killing anyone.

The game features a fairly robust “quickhack” system, which functions like magic would in other similar games. I also spec’d in this direction and found the system to offer satisfying synergies between the variety of quickhacks (blind an enemy, bait an enemy, misfire weapon etc), and also the more traditional shooting and slashing. Despite dedicated “covert” quickhacks, all of this felt like more of an accessory to the combat than to the stealth.

You can slow time and open this overlay that allows for the application of multiple quickhacks/spells across multiple enemies simultaneously, limited by a RAM/mana meter.

Having said that, I did have a ton of fun when I reached the top tier of quickhacks and unlocked “System Collapse”, which allows you to silently knock out (when appropriately upgraded) groups of enemies. I felt like a true netrunner bringing down a group of goons silently and unnoticed before creeping closer to my target over their spasming bodies.

A notable failure, even after upgrades and overhauls, is the inventory and crafting system. I played on PS5 but I don’t think it would have been any less painful on PC. Cyberpunk features a loot system which is again standard to peers in the genre, with players pulling “tiered” weapons off bodies and from shops which gradually get better and require swapping equipment out for new and superior options. The menu is a migraine-inducing nightmare, with weak comparison options often leaving me confused and not sure if I actually scrapped the assault rifle I should have held on to? The crafting system, which I only ever used to build “upgrade parts” to improve “iconic” weapons has a UI that seems intentionally opaque. I’m getting a headache just writing about it and I’m sincerely not convinced my loadout ended up much better than if I had just equipped every new weapon that had the green “better” arrow on it.

Misery. Funnily enough when I searched Google for this image I mainly found links to mods that make the inventory easier to use. Enough said, I guess.

Conversely, praise is owed to the soundtrack: finely tuned to match the themes and style of the piece. Grimes is used both for soundtrack and as a voice actor for a pop-star character. The end credits theme to the DLC is a standout here, offering Radiohead meets Bond Theme against a futuristic twist on a Bond movie opening montage.

The soundtrack meshes nicely with my other target for compliment: the driving. Taking in Night City by car is a fantastic experience, with the radio blaring low-fi electro and the atmosphere of the neon streets oozing. Car combat was significantly improved at launch of the DLC, which was fun and thrilling but not quite a showstopper. The game features a significant set of activities centred around driving which perhaps indicates that CDPR overestimated its value. My build also provided a “blow up car” quickhack/spell which meant that I could explode all my competition in the first quarter of any race and then chill for the rest. To be fair that was pretty fun, but not exactly edge-of-seat stuff.

A final, minor mar on my enjoyment, which I face with many games, is pacing toward the end. I played this game for 90 hours, and at some point after 30, 40, 50 hours, I understood the world, the vibe and I’d seen the major areas. I was finding there was a little too much downtime between missions, even if I was targeting optional one-offs. CDPR, you’ve made a good game – now get me hacking, sneaking and shooting! Cyberpunk has a fast travel system, but only from and to specific, fixed fast travel points à la Witcher 3. A quick Google shows a PC mod exists for fast-travel from and to anywhere, and I used similar on my last playthrough of The Witcher 3 to enormously boost my enjoyment. I understand that the developers have put a lot effort into making this world – and I enjoy and respect it immensely – but please trust me to know for myself when I’m ready to speed things up.

They also execute a cheeky bait-and-switch with the frequent presence of flying cars in the story and background which are never usable by the player. A sure addition to Cyberpunk 2!

I’ve gone on long enough, but want to add a small note specifically regarding the DLC, Phantom Liberty, which I gladly purchased to lengthen my time in Night City. It adds a new region, new mission types and a new storyline to itself (and Idris Elba!). The narrative borrows from the Bourne and James Bond series, and indeed V themselves becomes a government agent not knowing who to trust. It is naturally more compact than the main narrative but I felt that this perhaps enhanced it, leaving me clearer on character motivations and the impact of my choices. Overall a fantastic addition.

To conclude, I had a blast with my 90-ish hours with Cyberpunk and its DLC. While perhaps overpromising on its initial premise, the result is a first-person action-RPG that can proudly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with it’s third-person brothers from The Witcher series. In fact, the same strengths and weaknesses are mirrored across the whole CD Project Red family. Their mechanics are respectable if not standout and their crowning glory is a world that pulses with life, feeling and grit.

Pacific Drive Review

When you really like something, you think about it a lot. And as you think about it, you discover lots of little gripes that prevent it from being more perfect. Those issues, when discussed, might make it seem like you don’t like the thing, but actually they are a symptom of liking it so much. So just to be clear before I begin, I really like Pacific Drive.

Pacific Drive is a game with a slippery genre. It’s mainly a survival game, with a flavour of horror and elements of rogue-like and extraction looter. The narrative is a science fiction mystery that runs like a radio play. The gameplay loop sees you head out into a mysterious “Zone” in search of answers, salvation and – mainly – loot as you desperately try to keep your trusty station wagon running to the end of this journey and into the next.

The loop itself is a near-perfect execution of the standard survival formula. Drive out into the hazardous world to find resources that allow you to make better equipment so you can get more resources when you head out the next time. So when you get back you can build better equipment and blah blah blah. When done well, as here, the repetition is addictive with each new addition to your survival arsenal providing impetus to head back out and try it. Pacific Drive provides a variety of interesting and unique options to increase your range in the Zone, and also your chances of survival.

The star of the show is the car itself, which functions as a character in its own right. Some of the highlights of the game are in the nervy early stages as you try to keep the car limping on – patching tyres, siphoning dregs of fuel – until the end of the current run. I found our mutual dependence nurtured a distinct affinity for the car. I looked after it and it looked after me.

Unlike more purist survival games such as Minecraft or Rust, Pacific Drive offers a narrative to provide the motivation for continued missions into The Zone. The developer, Ironwood studios, deserve tremendous credit here for the effort that has been put into the worldbuilding. Every item has flavour text in addition to hundreds of text and audio files that create a vibrant universe with a well-defined style. To nitpick, it falls a little too close to the sci-fi-wackiness-meets-modern-bureaucracy of the SCP stories and, most notably, 2019’s Control.

The main narrative itself is delivered as live and recorded radio transmissions. Themes include the role of science, faith, commitment, obsession and sacrifice. It is interesting enough and supplements the already enjoyable gameplay loop, but occasionally feels a bit less profound than it thinks it is. For instance, the trope of woman wanting a baby but putting career first is very much in effect here. Not exactly groundbreaking. In several key places the narrative beats don’t quite land, and in my view the silent protagonist just doesn’t work. The player has no control over the story, and even the player character has very little involvement, generally just hearing events tangentially linked to your actions play out. All of this creates a feeling of listening to a radio-play than a meaningful interactive story with at least the illusion of agency. None of this is helped by the fact the key parts of the narrative can be playing out while you desperately repair a failed engine or drive out of the jaws of danger.

Visually, Pacific Drive is stylised but fairly flawless and oozing atmosphere. The game could be compared to Outer Wilds in its semi-cartoon portrayals of nature and technology. It has a consistent aesthetic design which complements the narrative style and worldbuilding, and is regularly downright beautiful. The chaos and tension can be suddenly punctuated by moments of peace: the headlights go off and you are left with fireflies glowing over a vast alien pond; a lightning strike illuminates a rain-drenched plain.

The UI fits the style of 1970’s computer technology well, but is confusing at the best of times and downright overwhelming at first. In many places Pacific Drive is about choice – should I build part X or part Y? – but sometimes the fact that those options are available is hidden across multiple menus and systems. This combines with a slightly weak tutorial that is split between voice-over vaguely pointing you in the right direction and text instruction. The result is a downright messy introduction to the systems. There were multiple upgrade paths and systems that I never knew were there or forgot. In other instances, I failed runs into the Zone because I had misunderstood how the map works, or headed into a region in search of a particular resource that was specifically not available there, but I had missed that in the small print. Perhaps a case of style over substance.

My principle criticism overall is that the game was too easy. Firstly, much of the game’s peril lies in the unknown – which is initially everything. The dark corners of The Zone are filled with creeping horrors offering unknown threats. Is this mannequin going to chase me down and eat me? Will this toxic cloud melt off my skin? And indeed, much of the first chunk of the game I spent darting out to snatch up a handful of loot before a frantic dash to the relative safety of the car. However, as you see more of these dangers on your repeated trips you learn how to deal with them, which in many cases render them barely an inconvenience. What once sent me recoiling in horror is ignored and avoided with a flick of the joystick.

The darkness is literally and figuratively illuminated because as your knowledge increases, so do your tools. These also reduce the threat from the hazards of The Zone, leading to a precipitous drop in the feeling of danger and something moving toward confidence. Even the dreaded instability that closes in at the end of each area – at first an urgent threat to be breathlessly outrun – turns out not to move that fast, and doesn’t do that much damage even when it arrives. That is not to say the car makes its return to the base (the so-called Auto Shop) in tip-top shape, and a key part of the loop is making your repairs and improvements back at The Shop. However, it was very rare to feel like the run was at risk of failure.

(If one was being generous, they could argue that making the game easier as you learn more aligns with some of the themes of science and enlightenment, but frankly that’s a bit of a stretch and feels more like imbalance.)

It should be said that I play games very conservatively, prioritising safety and resource management over speed and flair. If anything, this highlighted the fact that I could make progress in the game without taking too many risks. The only essential upgrades were the ones that allowed the car to make longer journeys, necessary in the mid- and late-game. Everything else offered convenience rather than an essential, and the player could make do without. There was nothing forcing an Anxious Andy like me to push it to the limit in hopes of some fabulous reward.

(This of course could lead to a wider discussion about whether it is possible to “play a game wrong”, and maybe I was in this instance, but that’s an article for another time)

A couple of final minor gripes. The game has some fantastic licensed music – playing out of the in-car radio – that is so well-suited and matches the rest of the excellent vibe, but needed double the number of tracks. I think every song was well-chosen, but I never wanted to hear them again by the end of my time. And then, after all of this game that relies on voice-over, sound effects and music – I reached the end of my epic journey and the credits played in silence. This genuinely felt like a bug, and if not was a missed opportunity to provide a denouement with style and atmosphere.

In the end, I really enjoyed Pacific Drive and was excited every time I booted it up. Though comparisons to Outer Wilds were overblown – it never reached the heights of discovering [REDACTED] on the Quantum Moon – its weaknesses were more than compensated by the enthralling gameplay loop and fantastically executed style.

Spider-Man 2 Review

Spider-Man 2 offers an open-world action adventure game that is as close to perfect as anyone could ask for. While not without its flaws, the depth, polish and outright fun on offer here are a true testament to Insomniac’s skill (if not their vision).

Spider-Man 2 is the sequel to 2018’s Spider-Man. In many places it builds upon, and in other places remixes, many of the aspects that make the original game great. You’ll find web-swinging around a lovingly realised New York city. You’ll find Arkham-style combat. You’ll find hanging from a thread stealthily webbing up grunts.

To begin with one of the game’s most striking features: it is beautiful. The textures are highly detailed and shine in close up shots. The city looks fantastic from a distance and crawling on its surface. Notably coming off Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the facial animations are realistic and effective. The game performs admirably on all of its three graphics settings. The cut-scene lighting and cinematography are truly best-in-class, and even non-scripted moments of swinging through the evening city are themselves cinematic.

The combat develops further on that of the previous game, this time featuring gadgets, rechargeable skills and what is essentially a super meter. The wide variety of enemies encourage various strategies, keeping the combat fresh, along with extra XP available for completing specific objectives (“Perform 3 Web Yanks”) in some combat encounters. The options available, along with combos, are almost too many to remember and, while I did find myself revolving toward a few old reliables, stayed interesting for the duration.

Sections of the game feature essentially back-to-back boss battles, which are fun and challenging but I found a bit exhausting (admittedly on the hardest difficulty). I would say gameplay suffers from a common affliction: the skills and abilities necessary for the majority of the combat (crowd-control, buying time, isolation of enemies) don’t apply to the boss battles. This results in a sense not that the boss battle is testing your skills to the highest level, but requiring you to develop a whole new set of tactics, strategies and reflexes. Perhaps a matter of preference, and indeed the boss battles feel unique, but I would have preferred the former.

The game’s weakest aspect – one that reduces SM2 to the rank of almost perfect – is its story. While it is well-acted, well-executed and punctuated with some absolutely thrilling cut-scenes, it is undermined by its near total predictability. It nicely portrays the conflicting demands of being a Spider-Man, but one can see events coming several acts ahead. At first this provides a nice sense of impending doom but sadly evolves into a plodding inevitability. This is of course a problem that is faily unique to Spider-Man, whose story has been told and re-told for decades and where creativity is likely to be limited by some licensing agreements. Nevertheless the game has to be assessed on its own strengths and weaknesses, and this is one of them.

Furthermore, the story feels bloated – partially due to the easily predicted story beats described above. Kraven and his Hunters, featured heavily in the game’s marketing, appear extensively and often but see little development or depth. Despite being a major chunk of the story, they could easily be replaced with any other source of jeopardy that would result in imperilled New Yorkers and some fun set-pieces. Frustratingly, he actually does very little hunting himself, preferring to send his thousands of grunts out to do it for him. Indeed, I wasn’t clear at all on Kraven’s motivation until a line was dropped in passing very near the end of his story arc, which brings me to another minor narrative criticism.

Substantial chunks of dialogue are delivered during combat, especially boss battles. Even on the lower difficulties SM2 is not easy, so it is to be expected that exposition delivered during combat might be missed. Some of this miss-able material is actually really important to the story, and I repeatedly found myself thinking “wait – what just happened?” while trying not to be pounded into the Brooklyn sidewalk.

In some ways SM2 can be at odds with itself. The breath-taking realism is in contrast to the more comic-book aspects of the story and gameplay. I couldn’t help thinking that a more stylised, Spider-verse visual style might have leant itself better. Perhaps that is a nit-pick, but some suspension of disbelief is required here and hyper-realistic graphics don’t help that.

I also found the character of Peter a little contradictory. [MINOR SPOILERS] There is some intentional, shall we say, internal conflict in Peter’s arc, but I found myself irked by the portrayal of his “Nerdiness”. In the world of Spider-Man, science and technology are basically presented as magic, that can do almost anything with a few narratively convenient limitations, and the scientists are the wizards. Peter is Head Wizard, who can contribute meaningfully to any field of science he is presented with. This is literally highlighted in a sequence where he meets a parade of specialists and their research, and he casually tells them one-by-one how they can improve on their life’s work. All of this in itself is not a big deal and just requires a bit of suspension of disbelief (see above).

However, I cannot forgive the contrivances of a story if they are not self-consistent. Having made the observations from the last paragraph, I was then irritated when a whole act of the story is dedicated to finding a missing scientist, because a particular science problem cannot be resolved without him! Instead of just using his Big Brain(TM) to solve the problem himself as Peter, he instead becomes Spider-Man to find the scientist. This can probably all be excused in service of some exciting gameplay, but it stood out to me as a bit of thoughtless writing.

For SM2018, some criticism was levelled at the stealth parts involving other playable characters like MJ. Insomniac have made significant improvements here, adding more mechanics than just creeping around and thereby providing more player agency. They are also used to deliver exposition and character development and at their best felt like scenes from The Last of Us. These parts certainly provide a change of momentum, but in a game so action-packed that is not always a bad thing. I never found myself sighing and rolling my eyes when these sequences began.

An interesting and unexpected failure of SM2 on release was the significant presence of bugs and glitches. Reportedly, these were absent from review copies but introduced in the Day One Patch. I personally experienced no less than:

  • Numerous random crashes to dashboard
  • Broken and missing parts of UI
  • Inability to punch
  • A timed challenge where the last enemy didn’t spawn so I couldn’t complete (perhaps the most frustrating)
  • Missions would disappear when I reached the starting point
  • An on-screen button prompt that didn’t respond to pressing the required buttons, leaving time frozen

None of these were gamebreaking and could usually be rectified by restarting at last checkpoint, or at worst a quick Google for a workaround, but it did take a layer of veneer away from a flagship title.

With all that said, I’m conscious of focussing too much on the negatives of what is really overall a remarkable game. And look at it this way: if the comments I’ve made above are the worst things a reviewer can say, that’s still pretty good.

Additional positives were the nice variety of side-activities. A particular favourite were New York photo opportunities, designed to communicate the spirit of New York independent of its spidery protector. These are accompanied by a little dialogue discussing the nature of the city and its inhabitants and add some nice (if a little rose-tinted) flavour.

I would like to conclude with what may be for me the highlight of SM2, and the substrate on which all other qualities are fixed: the swinging. This is the part of the first game which I thought about the most since its release and here in the sequel it is refined to perfection. Utilising the power of the PS5 we see the speed and elegance of Spidey’s web-swinging in its full glory. The game has a fast travel mechanic which I almost never used since getting around was such a pleasure. The traversal is fairly forgiving (and has some assistance which can be switched off in settings) but requires just enough thought to be continually satisfying when you get it right (and amusing when you splat into the side of sky-scraper). The swinging – along with the rest of the game – uses the skill-set of the PS5 DualSense controller to its maximum to add to the immersion of the experience.

When all is said and done, Spider-Man 2 is a blast from start to finish. It is the first game that I have platinumed on PS5, and that is saying a lot. While not a complete work of art, it does everything a game like this should in the best way possible.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage Review

When playing open-world games, especially ones with fun mechanics and enjoyable moment-to-moment gameplay, I find myself actively avoiding the main storyline, which will bog me down in dialogue and cut-scenes. Instead, I revolve toward the in-world activities and side-quests, which give me more of the mechanics and less of the fluff around it. In this sense Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the perfect game for me, because it has great gameplay and a completely forgettable story.

ACM is an open-world stealth action game that lets loose the player in 9th Century Baghdad during the reign of the Abbasid Empire. Broadly, the player is tasked with a series of tasks such as stealing items, gathering information and – naturally – assassinations strung together by a story of mysterious hidden forces.

Starting with the positives, the gameplay in ACM is really top notch. The protagonist, Basim, moves fluidly through the world in some of the best parkour the series has seen. Assassinations are weighty and satisfying and the player is offered a range of fun tools to help bamboozle guards and reach their targets.

ACM has shed the enormous skill tree of Valhalla for a stripped down but far superior alternative. It has fewer choices, but each has a meaningful impact on the strength and abilities of Basim. Options range from improving Basim’s situational awareness to additional combat manoeuvres, but the game really hits its stride when you unlock the variety of tools at your disposal.

Basim can use a blow dart that puts guards to sleep, traps to knock them out and fireworks to distract them. Once they are all unlocked Basim feels like he has a powerful arsenal at his disposal, making it fun, exciting and achievable to complete his goals entirely undetected.

I personally enjoyed that most activities contributed to overall progress. Completing side-quests (“contracts”) yields experience points. Looting rewards Basim with resources that can be used to improve his gear. This pairs well with the tight mechanics, as it makes pretty much any engagement with the game’s world meaningful.

The gear system is dramatically pared back too, for the better. The player can collect a variety of armour, swords and daggers, but each can only be upgraded three times (to add perks and improve stats). This further contributes to a more streamlined, focussed experience – as opposed to the RPG loot chaos of Valhalla and Odyssey.

Mirage also looks fantastic, from the outfits to the architecture. Baghdad is lovingly recreated in a way that makes me really feel like I know the city. Sadly the same cannot be said for the facial animation, which suffers from the same static dullness of previous titles in the series.

While all of the above makes ACM a pleasure to play, the same cannot be said for the story. At best, it can be completely ignored and at worst it is boring nonsense. The story beats come quick and shallow, with characters introduced and killed off before any substance can be developed. There are very few characters who are present through the whole narrative, and of those most are uninteresting. There is no greater indication that a narrative has misfired than [MINOR SPOILERS] a character betrayal supported by dramatic music and cinematography that leaves the viewer thinking “Am I supposed to be feeling something here?” Moments like that are in abundance.

Perhaps the most irksome aspect of the story is that its entire payoff is actually just an explanation of questions raised in Valhalla (which I did play but have mainly forgotten). It makes no effort to give the necessary context for its grand finale, and kind of left me with a feeling as if it’s just been revealed that Vader is Luke’s father – if Darth Vader had not been mentioned before.

I’ve looked into the wider story of Assassin’s Creed as a result of playing Mirage and I actually kind of like it. It definitely strays very frequently into batshit sci-fi insanity, but it’s fun in a way that complements the efforts at historical accuracy of the main parts of the games – if deployed correctly. I would have had no objection to ACM being tied into the wider narrative, had it been done in a more inclusive and interesting way.

In a sense though I actually liked the lightweight story, as I could blast through the cut scenes (which have skippable lines of dialogue) and just get back to the killing. I appreciated the purity. It gives the player the tools and a fun world to use them in, and then leaves them largely to their own devices. However, there is definitely something to be said for slowly building up a despicable villain over time and then having the opportunity to put an end to their evil by your own hand – a device used in the series’ earliest games but only weakly attempted here.

Overall Mirage is a great package for a certain type of player (like me). Despite it’s lacklustre narrative, it works best when it gets out of it’s own way, gives an objective and the tools to tackle it and allows the player to just play.

Reflection on University, Work Ethic and Success

In the final months of my time at university I began to look to the future and what it would hold. I had found university incredibly difficult in almost every regard, and that was only mildly compensated by the knowledge that what I was doing was, actually, quite hard. Cambridge is, people say, a hard university to get into and the work there is difficult. Consequently I concluded that if I could pull out even a moderate grade at the end of it all, I would have demonstrated my ability to do a very hard thing. Furthermore, given that I’d just done the very-hard-thing and that society is built to accommodate everyone of all abilities (not just Cambridge graduates), I should be able to shoulder all my future responsibilities in the outside world without much trouble. The arrogance.

Specifically, front and centre of my mind was the job for which I had held an offer for half a year at that point. It was a good, well-respected place on a graduate scheme, but not Oxbridge exclusive. Using the flawed logic above, I anticipated it would be a doddle.

It may not come as a surprise to the reader, although it did to me, that this was not the case. Life is in fact quite difficult, for everybody, most of the time. Even the most intelligent and talented among us (a category to which I do not belong) have to approach their challenges with vigour and enthusiasm in order to succeed. To approach anything with the cynical, complacent outlook I had is an exercise in futility.

A compounding factor that should not be neglected here is how utterly, brutally burned out I was as I left university. I had spent four years in various stages of turmoil, dragging myself from one setback (real or imagined) to the next. Thankfully I’d obtained a respectable grade but there was truly nothing left in the tank. As a result, I probably couldn’t have put in the effort I should have, even if I’d wanted to.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all of this to me personally is my complete ignorance to any of it at the time. I naively ambled into the world of work thinking I was a coiled spring, ready to make some big moves. In reality I was a naïve mole who, tired from digging, had found himself in the middle of a minefield.

At university I was naïve about a lot of things, and downright wrong about a lot of others. A topic I think I was on the right lines about, however, is that of the nature and consequences of work ethic. A few years into university I had a good sense of how my level of ability compared to that of others around me. I saw success as a combination of hard work and natural talent, in which a deficit of one could be compensated by an excess of the other. I looked at other students as all lying somewhere on a two-dimensional graph of work ethic and talent (the most brilliant of my peers being those with an excess of both).

As such, I could explain away the extra success of students around my ability level because they had a better work ethic. Being as neurotic as I am, I like my ideas to be quantified and in this case I thought in terms of “hours worked per day”. To me, at the time, that was a good measure of work ethic. Maybe it still is. I could work, say, six hours per day. That was the amount of work that was manageable and sustainable to me. Sally could work eight hours per day, Billy could work ten hours per day. If we were all of similar “natural ability”, our performance would then correlate to our hours worked.

This was actually a comfort to me, because it meant I had an excuse for my comparatively low performance. “Well I’m just as smart as Billy” said 20-year-old Jake “but he can work more hours than me”. This sounded like an excuse to me then*, and it certainly does now, but I do think there is some truth to it. We are not all the same, and some people can naturally work more than others. That doesn’t mean those people have it “easier”, but it certainly means they have desirable characteristics.

*These thought processes definitely led to some “well if I worked as much as him I’d be as good as him” conclusions

This outlook subsequently provides a useful framing for your own improvement: if my allotted amount of hours is six, then seven sounds achievable and is a way to squeeze some more performance out of myself. Forget Billy and his ten hours (some people’s work ethic is simply unmatchable), I just need to push my own work ethic a little outside its bounds and I can see some improvement I can be proud of. This is the hand I’ve been dealt, and here is what I can do to make it a little better.

I hadn’t thought about these ideas for a long time as adult life consumed me, but I’ve come back to them recently. Unlike a lot of my thoughts in my early-twenties, the truth of these prototype ideas still rings true with me today, and in context of the wider world.

It’s instructive to consider an example like an Olympic athlete. In order to achieve that level of success, one has to be very high on both the “talent” and “work ethic” axes (this is a given). However, the most successful are the ones who take their raw “work ethic” parameter and push the envelope as much as they can. How much outside their default they can push themselves may vary, but I believe it is the act of pushing (rather than just simply a strong work ethic to begin with) that generates the highest highs.

(The Olympic example is also useful for consideration because most of us don’t really feel inadequate in comparison. Most people were never going to be, never stood a chance of, standing on the podium. So, it doesn’t worry us. But why can’t this be extrapolated to everyone else? Why compare your incomparable outcomes to someone else’s?)

As an adult, work ethic isn’t as directly measured by hours worked. The quantification is more complex, and the outcomes more abstract. Nevertheless, I suspect each individual has a good idea of when they have worked hard and gone to (or beyond) their natural work limit and when they have just gone through the motions.

For me personally, my “default” work ethic is roughly to complete my professional responsibilities, and to exercise five or six times a week. I can also do the menial tasks of personal care and making my living space livable. I can do all (?) that comfortably, and feel a little exhausted by the end of the week. My instinct is to spend the rest of the time melting into TV and video games.

To be clear, doing what I’ve described above is sustainable, probably for the rest of my life. More than that, it’s respectable – if someone else told me that they can do all that comfortably and sustainably I would tell them that they’ve nailed it. But I know, for myself, that doing those things is just going through the motions. I know that this is where I naturally land, but the real magic happens just outside of these bounds. If I can just do a little more (be it writing or business or exercise or whatever) there could be amazing material results, but more importantly I will know that I’ve taken the hand I was dealt and tried – at least tried! – to make the best play with it.

In a sense this approach gets easier as I get older, as dramatic changes become less frequent and routine sets in. I’ve developed a clearer picture of what working hard looks like and what cruising looks like. Once you’ve worked for 1000 days you start to see the patterns. This makes it clearer (though not necessarily easier) to know how to break them.

For example, for me, pushing my “natural limit” would be to spend an hour writing instead of watching TV, on top of my normal duties. This would be great even if it was one evening a week.

At this point I would like to emphasise that I am not advocating for everyone to work themselves into the ground. Pushing it all the time is unhealthy and I extremely discourage it. There are times to push and times to relax and the contrast improves both. It is fine to get to a stable spot in life and just maintain it for weeks, months or years. Really what I am describing is an approach that can help people who really want to progress out of their current spot.

Once my original premise is accepted, herein lies the real challenge: the striking of the balance. The answer to this is for me still hidden in the fog; I don’t even begin to have a solution. In my personal case, I find it very challenging to relax. I am very lazy and curse myself for it. I find myself in a constant state of wishing I was doing more, while lying on the sofa. I have yet to find the right delineation. (I hopefully I can write about some progress in this regard in the future)

I would also like to acknowledge the natural variations in each individual’s “raw work ethic”. Out in the scary adult world we are at the mercy of many currents pushing us in different directions, out of our control. These factors might include (but not be limited to) professional stress, availability of free time and health. I’m currently of the opinion that one should largely just move with these tides, and not get too upset if you find your motivation decreasing. These things happen, and I feel strongly that if each person is honest with themselves, they know when they are pushing themselves and when they are not. 

(Side note: the assumption of “honesty with oneself” is not trivial and is worthy of a separate essay)

A way to mitigate the natural tides of motivation, and in general to squeeze that extra bit of effort out of ourselves, is through routine. It is well documented that routine decreases the amount of motivation needed to complete tasks, so make the most valuable tasks part of your routine. Make the things you get the most out of as easy to do as possible.

To wrap up, I’d like to acknowledge that the above might not apply to everyone. It is likely that it is a way of framing the world that allows me to manage my neuroticism and give me some hope for redemption. I do believe there are people who don’t constantly feel they should be doing more, and I must congratulate those people and express my envy. I wish I could just chill for a second. For those of us who can’t, remember you have a natural limit, but it is not a hard limit. It can be pushed. And it is through the (careful) pushing of this limit that not only do we see results, but we feel that we have really done something.

Circadian Rhythms

Or: I wanted to skip my afternoon nap, but I didn’t have time

I’ve been aware of circadian rhythms for many years but they have recently come back into my focus after listening to several episodes of the Feel Better, Live More podcast and the work of Nick Littlehales. The ideas (and how they could improve my life) resonated so strongly with me that I quickly became fascinated.

To start, let’s get our definitions straight. Circadian Rhythms are natural cycles within the human body that determine, among other things, sleepiness and alertness. The rhythms themselves are affected by light and dark and the sleep patterns of the person in question. One cycle lasts about 90 minutes, with the first half being a period of more alertness, and the second half being a period of less alertness and more sleepiness. You are most likely to wake up naturally during the “alert” section, and you can consider this the start of your first cycle for the day.

(I’ll also add that this is not new-age airy-fairy medicine. There’s lots of studies on circadian rhythms and in 2017 someone won the Nobel Prize for research in this area!)

The most obvious issue is if you try to go to sleep at a period of high alertness: you are very unlikely to fall asleep. This can lead to frustration which leads to even less ability to sleep. Fortunately, the solution is simple: time your bedtime with a dip in alertness. This might be bleeding obvious because I’m basically saying “go to sleep when you’re tired” – but a lot of people don’t do that! They go to bed at some arbitrarily defined bedtime (or when the TV show you’re watching finishes) that might not be the right time. If you’re not sleepy wait around 45 minutes and a dip might just come along.

Beyond this, we can use our new knowledge to help plan ahead. Let’s say you are yawning at 9pm: probably a little early for most people to want to go to bed. However, this is an indicator that you are in a dip, and that the next one will arrive in around 90 minutes, so 10:30pm would be a good time to plan to go to bed.

This method can be enhanced and refined through routine – by getting up and going to bed at similar times you can know in advance at what points you will be most alert and most sleepy through the day and plan accordingly.

The beauty of knowing about circadian rhythms, however, is you can take advantage of it even if your routine is disrupted, or you don’t have a regular routine because of (for example) shift work. You don’t have to throw yourself into bed at the soonest moment and deal with the ensuing frustration of insomnia – you can be more efficient by timing it with the cycle.

I often struggle with waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to get back to sleep. I get annoyed and anxious that I’m wasting time that I’m neither working in, resting in nor enjoying. Circadian rhythms brought the revelation that it was actually natural and totally ok to wake up during the night; it’s simply a point of alertness in the cycle. Historically it has been typical for people to get up and do something for a period during the night, and then go back to bed and return to sleep. By doing this we are not disrupting our natural cycles but working with them to be more content and relaxed. I know now that when this happens I don’t have to freak out, I can just roll with it.

One of the nice things about knowledge of C.R. is that it takes the stress out of a lot of things. It is nice to know it’s natural and normal, when waking through the night or during the day when there are periods of tiredness.

Speaking of daytime tiredness, C.R. help us with this too. Everyone is aware of the “post-lunch slump” at work, when it feels like you are moving through treacle. This is a natural consequence of C.R. and it’s comforting to know if you weather the storm for 45 minutes a wave of alertness will arrive. We can take this further, however, and make the most of our dip in alertness. Rather than pushing through with very low productivity, why not have a nap? It will come naturally due to the point in the cycle, and it will enhance productivity during the upcoming alert phase. It is even possible that just taking a rest and a break during this downtime (without actually sleeping) can help.

Now obviously there are many more factors to good sleep and good health than managing circadian rhythms, but this area is not well-known and offers simple, significant benefits. Honestly there is much more to be said on this and here I have just distilled my biggest personal takeaways. If any of this resonates with you I would strongly recommend listening to this episode of the Feel Better, Live More podcast (https://drchatterjee.com/nicklittlehales/) or reading Nick Littlehales book (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sleep-Myth-Hours-Power-Recharge/dp/0241975972/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=drchatterjee-21&linkId=89150b282b9eedb9c9314c6e7a901f70)

The Crown Series One Review

[I realise I’m 5 years late to the party with this one but I occasionally like to write about the various films, games, tv and miscellaneous content that I consume for two reasons: to practice my writing skills and to make all those hours sat on the sofa feel like they counted for something. It’s not my fault if you read it.]

I recently discovered the term “procedural” to describe a genre of media that shows the technical inner working of a particular job or process, the classic being a “crime procedural” that demonstrates the steps taken in solving a crime. I was glad I had found the term “procedural” because it turns out I like them very much. I think in particular I enjoy law and political procedural dramas because I like to see the complex workings of those worlds that would otherwise be hidden to me. I am also fascinated by the interplay between tradition and practicality. Why do barristers wear wigs? Are the practicalities of today the tired traditions of the future? In a sense The Crown is this kind of procedural drama.

The Crown (L to R) Prince Philip, Elizabeth Elizabeth and Philip discuss Charles’ education

The first series follows the young Elizabeth (Claire Foy) from her marriage to Prince Philip (Matt Smith) through the first few years of her reign. It reveals the details of the complex relationship between the Royal family, Parliament and the political, religious and courtly minefields The Queen must traverse while burdened by a thousand years of custom and precedent. Basically it’s right up my street.

Beyond that however, it is simply far better than it has any right to be.

To begin with the narrative, the themes are fairly predictable: power and unwanted responsibility; the distinction between a person and their role; life in the public eye. The Crown, however, manages to take on just the right amount so that the chosen themes (and characters) get their time and space to develop. International relations (trouble in the Suez) are combined with personal relations (Princess Margaret wants to marry a commoner?!) seamlessly. With so much documented history to choose from, the creators must be praised for the care and precision used in portraying just the right elements in just the right amounts.

The same could be said for the characters, who each have time to breathe and for their own stories to grow. The show does an excellent job of humanising characters (Prince Phillip, Princess Margaret, The Queen Mother and of course The Queen herself) who, to the rest of us, are so far removed and alien. The finest example of this is John Lithgow’s Churchill, seen at the waning of his power through the 1950’s. I watched a lot of the show with my girlfriend who has repeatedly told me of her distaste for Churchill due to his foreign policy, traditionalism and general old-white-man-ness. It is testament then to the acting and characterisation that she literally “awww”-ed out loud at some of the tribulations that befell the aging parliamentarian in The Crown.

The Crown Season 1

Perhaps a well-cast, talented ensemble of actors is to be expected for a production such as this, but The Crown also shines in its cinematography. From the sweeping valleys of Scotland to the smoky bowels of Whitehall, the shots in The Crown are consistently visually striking and offer a complement that intensifies the majesty and drama of the acting and story.

This effect is built further by Hans Zimmer’s fantastic score. Zimmer’s Hollywood bombast, only slightly tempered here, suits the piece remarkably well and seldom strays into melodrama. In one particular scene portraying Churchill’s stroke, the combination of music, acting and sharp editing left the scene ringing in my mind for days after viewing.

With all the above components working in harmony, as they very often do, The Crown strikes a resonant chord. For the nerds like me there’s enough “You must have parliamentary approval!” and “Protocol dictates that…” to go around, but there’s even more humanity to make the piece accessible.

Great stuff, very looking forward to season two.

Score: 4 Constitutional Crises out of 5

Thoughts on the Nvidia Shield TV Pro

Or, An Idiot’s Guide to Local Gamestreaming

Having recently built a new PC, I was frustrated with the lack of an easy way to play games from that machine (in my office) on my living room TV. I tried using SteamLink on the TV itself, which was a working solution but found the performance to be pretty poor; poor enough to stop me from using it altogether.

Amazon.com: NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Pro 4K HDR Streaming Media Player; High Performance, Dolby Vision, 3GB RAM, 2x USB, Works with Alexa: Electronics

As a result, I tentatively splashed out on an Nvidia Shield TV Pro. It’s a box that can play all your streaming favourites (Netflix, iPlayer et al) and also stream games from a PC on the local internet using Nvidia’s proprietary Gamestream software. The USP of the shield is Nvidia’s homemade AI Upscaling technology which will take a lower resolution image and increase it to 4K using magic AI algorithms (or something). I bought the box from Amazon on the condition I could return it if things didn’t work out. Long story short, I did keep the Shield but using it has been such an experience I felt the need to write about it. There’s a lot of articles out there espousing the Shield as a top-of-the-range steaming box, but surprisingly little on the range of issues that accompany it.

Fair warning, this is an article aimed at people seriously considering getting a Shield, people currently wrestling with one, or nerds. It’s going to get technical so abandon faith all ye who enter here.

My first impressions of the box were very positive. The UI was snappy, a delight in comparison to my TV’s built in software. The remote control was ergonomic and the whole thing had a quality feel. So far so good.

I immediately ran into problems when I started to use Gamestream. I tried to play Immortals Fenyx Rising from my PC on the TV and the game could not be detected. Thus began my first foray into the sprawling and esoteric online Nvidia community. After a little research, it turns out you can add games manually to the Geforce Experience windows app which will then become available to play on the Shield. Once I had done this, it worked pretty well.

Immortals Fenyx Rising is Ubisoft's over-the-top take on Breath of the Wild – and it works | TechRadar

However, it raised the question: why wasn’t the game automatically detected (unlike some others that were)? There were vague allusions on forums to some games being “Gamestream Optimised” but I couldn’t find any official word on that. Did these secret “optimised” games run better on Gamestream?

At this point it seems a good time to mention that there is pretty much no online documentation for the Shield – AT ALL. There is a “user guide” on the Nvidia website which amounts to “plug it in and hope for the best”. The GFE Windows app helpfully links you to a now defunct page: originally supposed to be a list of Gamestream optimised games, it now shows games available on Geforce Now (related conspiracy theory detailed below). The scant information that is available is spread in an internet breadcrumb trail between Nvidia’s clunky forums and reddit.

Further problems arose when I tried to improve my Gamestreaming experience using the settings in the app. There isn’t much to play with, essentially just resolution and max bitrate. Once again, I was left puzzling over what “resolution” actually meant to the app, for it didn’t always output the requested resolution. Sometimes it explicitly told me my requested resolution wasn’t available. I could even change the resolution of the settings directly in the game I was playing – what effect did that have?

(If anyone is stumbling upon this article trying to solve that particular riddle: it turns out that Gamestream has the ability to change both the resolution of the monitor being streamed, and the in-game settings (as long as the game is on the sacred, secret “officially optimised” list). So the Gamestream will do its best to output the resolution you have asked for. This is actually quite a cool feature, if only it had any signposting)

Speaking of monitors, one of the most bizarre quirks I have run into is the inability of the Shield to intelligently stream the screen that the game is playing on. In fact, for my unmodified (very standard) dual-screen setup, Gamestream exclusively streamed the wrong screen. I have delved deep into this one too and can provide the peculiar explanation here, which is one of the most mind-blowing pieces of programming oversight I’ve ever witnessed (and I used to be a very bad software developer myself).

How to Setup a Dual Monitor Display - Chillblast Learn

Here goes: A GPU has a specific order it checks for connected screens in order to display the startup info for a PC, and the BIOS menu if you activate it. For Nvidia cards this is VGA > DVI-A > DVI-D > HDMI > DisplayPort. As far as I can tell, this is hardcoded and not customisable. Now, Gamestream will ONLY stream the first one of these that your PC has connected. This also cannot be changed.

In my case, my main screen (used for games) is connected by DisplayPort and a secondary screen connected by DVI. The GPU hits the DVI screen first and therefore, when it is connected, that is the ONLY screen that Gamestream will show. This can be solved by unplugging the second screen and restarting the PC, but I don’t want to do that every time I want to Gamestream!

A further arcane mystery of the Shield ( I’m getting to the end now, I promise) is how AI upscaling works. I’ll skip to the explanation on this one, but needless to say the UI itself doesn’t signpost this at all and I only found THE TRUTH after more forum crawling. Essentially, when AI upscaling is active any input below 4K will be scaled up to 4K using Nvidia’s algorithms. This means that you can improve your streaming by asking for a lower resolution and letting the box upscale it. This applies to all possible inputs (Youtube, Netflix) but the results I’ve seen have been mixed. There are a variety of unexplained settings to accompany this that I have yet to master.

In a strange twist, from forum posts I discovered a separate, third-party app called Moonlight which seems to be objectively better than the native Gamestream app in every way. I was surprised other apps were even allowed to connect to a PC with Gamestream enabled but here we are. The Moonlight app has more settings to customise, and they are more clearly explained. I have solved many of my problems by using the Moonlight app and I’d encourage anyone experimenting with Gamestream to try it out.

Moonlight Game Streaming - Apps on Google Play

To sum up, using Gamestream on the Nvidia shield is not a plug-and-play experience. It’s more of a plug-and-spend-two-weeks-poring-over-three-year-old-reddit-posts experience. And sitting here as I am, at what I hope is the end of my saga, I am left wondering why is Gamestream – one of the flagship features of the device, heralded prominently on its Amazon page – so shit? 

Don’t worry, internet wisdom has got the answer. Basically, Nvidia has ended up competing with itself with its Gamestream (local game streaming) and Geforce Now (internet game streaming) services. And you have to pay for Geforce Now. So perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the former list of Gamestream games has been replaced with a Geforce Now page. Perhaps the apparent neglect of Gamestream is an intentional ruse to drive gamers toward the paid Geforce Now service. Of course, this is all conjecture and there has been no official abandonment of Gamestream support, but in light of the removal of the official list of Gamestream games Nvidia’s silence is conspicuous. If this tinfoil hat theory is true, it’s a very shady move from Nvidia; they use Gamestream as a selling point for the Shield. Indeed, that’s specifically why I bought it and inadvertently wandered into the mess described above.

And yet, despite all of this, I would actually recommend the Nvidia Shield to users looking for a premium experience. Content streaming platforms like Prime Video are well optimised and can be upscaled if you like and, when it’s working, the game streaming capabilities are exactly what I’ve been looking for.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Review

I came to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order as a refugee from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla having been disappointed with its floaty, contactless combat. SWJ:FO did not leave me disappointed.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is an action-adventure game in the vein of Dark Souls. It is characterised by crisp, precise combat and sometimes gruelling enemies. Fallen Order has been on my radar for the year since its release and building a new PC has given me a chance to get around to it. Additionally, it can be obtained through the EA Play program for a quarter of its RRP.

Fallen Order reveals its world in a thrilling and visually stunning opening sequence. We’re introduced to our jedi-in-hiding hero who is swept into a narrative larger than himself. The first thing that jumped out at me in FO was the combat. It’s responsive and specific in a way that I had really been looking for. It takes some time to get a handle on (I played on the second-highest difficulty) but your successes truly feel well-earned. This, of course, is a double-edged lightsaber (?) and means you run into some tough enemies (a la Dark Souls) that can end you in one hit. Or more frustratingly, lock you into an inescapable cycle of blows until you are finally, frustratingly, ended.

As he proceeds our Hero Cal Kestis is adorned with extra force abilities that add to the jedi power fantasy. They serve to enhance platforming, unlock new areas and add depth to combat; certainly on the harder difficulties your new skills are an absolute necessity for crowd control and big bosses.

Proceeding a few hours into the game it became clear that the story in Fallen Order isn’t your usual, cut-and-paste good versus evil tale. The characters have shades of grey and compelling motives. I found myself interested in the turns of the story in a way that I have found in few video games. SWJ:FO features some fan-service which, while expected, generated nostalgia that I didn’t see coming. There’s a lot to look out for for fans of the Clone Wars/Purge era of Star Wars history.

Much like its Metroid forebears, Fallen Order has a scanning mechanic which adds flavour to the world. I really enjoyed the details of the flora and fauna of the planets, specifically the ones that aren’t out to kill you. I didn’t read them all, but they fleshed out the world and made it feel alive and lived in. I was a little disappointed with some of the more narrative scans, which tell stories of events that have taken place in that location. You can usually track a parallel narrative as you move through a level, but in general these were fairly lightweight.

The game is set across a handful of planets and has you return to them repeatedly, your newfound skills now granting access to previously barred zones. On the surface this didn’t appeal but there is something satisfying in returning to a previously explored area with fresh eyes. The map is brimming with things to collect, providing improvements both cosmetic and mechanical. I cared more than usual for the cosmetics in the game, which provide a layer of customisability and variation to Cal and his little robot buddy BD-1. Nevertheless, my main interest in the collectibles were the ones that made Cal a stronger Jedi. Here I found myself a little frustrated: the map does show how many collectibles are left to be found in a zone, but the map itself is messy, hard to read and does not show you precisely where the collectibles are. As much as I like the upgrades I’m hardly going to return to a location for the fourth time just to look in every nook and cranny.

Fallen Order looks awesome. Having just come from the clay figurine faces of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the characters look and move in an impressively realistic way. The landscapes are some of the most epic I’ve ever seen in a game but equally each nameless corridor has been lovingly created with production value you would expect from a Star Wars product. The music is perfect, swelling at the right moments and giving you the little flute trills characteristic of the series. Overall a smashing presentation.

In summary, SWJ:FO is the full package. It controls beautifully, it looks amazing and has a story with appeal both to newcomers and fans of the series.