Elden Ring - Review | How good is the open world, really?

Elden Ring is the latest "Soulsborne" style of action-role-playing-game by developer FromSoftware, who launched this sub-genre back in 2009 with Demon's Souls on the PS3. The emphasis of this series, which includes the Dark Souls trilogy and the PS4-exclusive Bloodborne, has always been about traversing assorted levels while trying to survive against difficult hazards and enemy encounters so you can defeat the level's boss, with a combat system that relies on learning to read enemy behaviors so you can know when to safely attack, dodge, or heal, and managing a limited stamina gauge while performing various types of attacks and defensive maneuvers. The series also incorporates RPG elements with a leveling system that has you increasing different stats of your choosing as you gain experience from defeated enemies, as well as choosing specific weaponry, spells, jewelry, and items that contribute to your own desired build and playstyle, which you find by exploring levels for optional side paths and hidden secrets, in some cases even completing NPC quest lines. All-the-while, the action-based gameplay is wrapped up with a wealth of deep lore and indirect storytelling, with item descriptions and dialogue that hint only vaguely at narrative concepts you're meant to piece together through your own interpretive reasoning and deduction. 

While some people may get a lot out of this style of storytelling and world-building, I would guess that for the vast majority of people out there, the real appeal of the Souls formula, and by extension Elden Ring, is simply the fun combat system and all the satisfying challenge it presents each time you're able to clear a level and defeat the boss waiting for you at the end. Elden Ring follows these Souls-like elements to a T, so much so that you could almost call it Dark Souls 4, or Demon's Souls 6, if you will, despite it technically being its own unique property. It's basically the exact same game, just with some of the names of things being changed -- for example, "souls" are now "runes," "bonfires" are now "sites of grace," "Firelink Shrine" is now the "Roundtable Hold" and so on, while other series staples like Patches the Hyena and the Moonlight Greatsword and leaving messages and bloodstains on the floor for other players to see, are all back again, as usual. 

As the latest installment in this long-running series, Elden Ring naturally represents the highest level of refinement and evolution to all of the core mechanics, with several new features like jumping, crouching, spell charging, spirit summons, guard counters, and more -- but the big change that it brings to the equation is shifting the world design from a more "Metroidvania-style" of linearly-structured levels with a beginning, middle, and end that progressively branch out from the starting hub and connect back to each other in different areas, into a true open-world format with massive landscapes that you can explore in all 360-degrees, in virtually any order you want. The open-world IS the defining characteristic of Elden Ring -- it's the thing that sets it apart from other Soulsborne games, and Elden Ring's execution of the open world format is commonly heralded as being among the best ever created. So if you're going to play Elden Ring at all, it's either because you're interested in the Souls formula and want to play the latest rendition of that experience, or it's because you're specifically looking for a good open-world gameplay experience.

Star Trek: Resurgence - Review | Some of the best Trek in DECADES...

Star Trek: Resurgence is a story-driven adventure game by Dramatic Labs, a studio created recently by former Telltale developers who wanted to carry on the tradition of games they were previously known for like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and countless others. If you're familiar with any of those games then you should already know basically what to expect with Star Trek: Resurgence -- a lot of cutscenes where you pick dialogue options and react to timed prompts, alternating with moments of limited exploration, light puzzle-solving, and scripted action sequences, where the decisions you make along the way influence the way the story shapes up. The story, of course, is the main draw, here, with it basically being like a good multi-episode arc from the 90's era of Star Trek TV shows, expanded into a 10-12 hour runtime that allows you to really immerse yourself in the setting and feel like you're actually taking part in a series of Star Trek, in more elaborate and involved ways than what would typically be shown in the actual shows.

Now, you don't necessarily have to be a fan of Star Trek to enjoy Resurgence -- at a minimum, you just have to enjoy "choose your own adventure" style video games and be open to an optimistic sci-fi space adventure story, which requires no prior knowledge of Star Trek since it revolves around an entirely new cast of characters trying to resolve a conflict between two entirely made-up, new-to-this-game species. The game is sure to explain any relevant lore details from the shows or movies that a new player might not know, or that an established fan might have even forgotten about, while other things can be easily deduced as you go along; for example you don't need to know what the Kobayashi Maru is to infer from the surrounding context clues that it's a notoriously difficult test, which is all you really need to know to understand the point of that conversation. So it should be fairly easy to follow along with everything even if you don't know anything about Star Trek.