The video above is a new gameplay clip from the Battle of Endor mission.

I got to play the first three missions of Battlefront 2’s campaign over the course of about two hours, and really enjoyed what I saw. EA has referred to the single-player mode as a “tour” of what the multiplayer modes have to offer, and while the core of those multiplayer influences can still be seen throughout the campaign, I was glad to discover it also felt like a substantial and fleshed out experience of its own. It looks, sounds, and feels like a Star Wars movie, but from a unique perspective we haven’t seen much of since the likes of 1994’s Star Wars: TIE Fighter.

You play as Iden Versio, an Imperial Special Forces trooper who was standing on the moon of Endor looking up as the second Death Star exploded above her unit, Inferno Squad. And that’s not just backstory: it’s literally the second mission of the campaign. I was clearing out straggling Rebel forces amid the wreckage of the shield generator Han and Leia had just destroyed when, all of a sudden, the Empire’s second attempt at a spherical space station went boom.

It’s a strange, emotional moment for a Star Wars fan - one that was previously nothing but a climactic success. But I wasn’t watching a montage of fireworks and digitally touched-up celebrations across the galaxy after the explosion, I was looking at Iden Versio coming to terms with the loss of her Empire’s greatest symbol of dominance over the galaxy. It’s a complex and horrible thing. I don’t want to sympathize with her, but I do. That sympathy doesn’t come lightly, but it’s a testament to the sincerity of the story being told that I could already start to care about a diehard Imperial soldier this early in the campaign.

Still, it’s an adjustment that didn’t quite settle into place in my time with Battlefront 2, and I think that discomfort is part of the point. As I ran through the forest back to my ship to escape Endor’s moon, I regrouped with a Storm Trooper battalion and instinctively opened fire at them on sight. Years of Star Wars games have trained me to consider that white armor the enemy, and I was genuinely caught off guard as I remembered they were my allies.

Also, for the record, this mission had the glaring absence of any ewoks, dead or alive, despite the tree huts suspended overhead. I missed those fuzzy little guys, but I suppose I’m glad they weren’t around as I’d have to be the one to shoot them in their fuzzy faces, or face the wrath of their magically armor-piercing arrows and rocks.

That being said, it’s not like Battlefront 2’s campaign is lacking in movie callbacks. Characters and story references are sprinkled throughout, and most of what I saw was treated with respect rather than just being included for fan service. The campaign’s plot moves away from the movies after that Endor mission, but the prologue mission before it is still rooted in reenacting Return of the Jedi.

That prologue has Iden breaking out of custody on a Rebel ship, but not before destroying an intercepted Imperial message with details about their ambush at Endor, meaning her actions had a tangible (if retconned) impact on the events of the film. At one point, I sneaked past a group of Rebels listening to a hologram of Admiral Ackbar detail the plans of their attack. These moments could have felt heavy-handed, but instead pushed Battlefront 2 deeper into a genuine Star Wars setting and made Iden’s story feel like a real, living part of that conflict.

There were surprises to be found in the campaign as well, with the opening of the prologue putting you in direct control of an Imperial droid, flying through vents and stunning Rebel guards to rescue Iden from captivity. It’s a cool and somewhat silly segment that helps set up abilities you can use later, though I was a little disappointed that the bot was only ever called “droid” by Iden and her squad. That prevented it from really becoming an interesting character like so many previous Star Wars droids have.

The video above is a new gameplay clip of the droid section of the prologue mission.

Battlefront 2’s dialogue, though voiced well, can be pretty stiff - but it feels stiff in a traditionally Star Wars way. The Original Trilogy are some of my favorite movies, but exposition-heavy dialogue is pretty much a defining trait of Star Wars, and Battlefront 2 follows suit. It does a great job of replicating the style of the original Star Wars movies, for better and worse.

Still, moments like that droid mission helped assuage my fears that Battlefront 2’s chapters would be restricted to multiplayer-style game modes against bots. Looking at each mission in the menu, it seemed like they’d be broken up into discreet categories - sneaking, ground fights, space fights, etc. - but I was happy to see they were much more mixed than that.

The Endor mission concluded with me flying my TIE Fighter through the wreckage of the Death Star I’d just watched explode. Fighting different groups of flying AI targets was a lot of fun to manage - and while dodging space debris could be a thrilling challenge, it didn’t feel great to graze a piece of space-rubble toward the end of the mission, instantly explode, and then have to do the whole thing again.

The third mission I played started in my TIE Fighter as well, and I assumed the whole thing would take place there, but it wasn’t long before I boarded a Rebel ship and hopped out to fight my way through its crew. That culminated in a point-defense scenario to disable the ship before I jumped back out into space and returned to the dogfight. That mid-mission variety was a big part of why I enjoyed this level of the campaign so much.

By comparison, the previous mission felt a lot less dynamic - which, to be fair, makes sense given how early on it takes place in the campaign. It mostly involved walking down a linear forest path, stopping to fight some Rebels, then repeating, which was fun if uninventive. There were a few interesting set pieces thrown in, like a hijacked AT-ST to fight, but that rhythm persisted. Thankfully, I really enjoy the gunplay and reload systems in Battlefront 2, which carry over from the multiplayer, but it felt a lot more like your standard big-budget shooter campaign.

The biggest annoyance I encountered in Battlefront 2’s campaign is gun swapping. You can’t gather the weapon of a fallen enemy for some reason – instead, there are special crates placed around each level that let you customize your load out You can pick your gun from a surprisingly wide variety of options right off the bat... but Iden can disappointingly only carry one at a time.

That limit was frustrating in its own right, made worse by the fact that these crates were few and far between. There are individual gun racks scattered between them that let you swap out for a specific weapon, but once you drop a gun you can’t pick it back up. That means if you take a gun off a rack and there are no other racks around you, you’re stuck with it until you find one.

Discovering this odd design quirk the hard way soured my experience on Endor when I naively picked up a sniper rifle toward the beginning of the mission and was unable to swap back. I didn’t come across another crate or rack to swap weapons for at least half of the mission, which left me with a sniper rifle and nothing else for far longer than I wanted. That’s a stupid and easily fixable problem to have in a single-player FPS.

The video above is a new gameplay clip from the third mission of the campaign.

While I loved the way the third mission pulled me between different situations, I’m nervous the loadout system’s lack of flexibility will lead to more frustrating moments throughout the campaign. Battlefront 2 shined brightly when it gave me a varied, Star Wars-filled toolbox and threw me into unexpected scenarios, so I’m hoping there’s more of that to come and less unsatisfying gun-choice traps to fall into.

But Iden Versio’s story is a compelling one so far, and it’s exciting that I honestly don’t know what direction it will go. It’s easy to assume that she’ll see the evil in the Empire and heroically join the Rebellion - there’s already a bit of foreshadowing in place to set that up - but I genuinely can’t tell if it’s going to be as simple as that.

It’s a strong start to a story I’m excited to finish, one that’s already made me care more about a villain I’ve been programmed to hate than I thought I would. Similar to my impressions of the multiplayer beta, Battlefront 2’s single-player isn’t without its problems, but I’m enjoying it so far nonetheless.

This is also the biggest and most connected map we’ve seen in an Assassin's Creed game. Even the seemingly-empty desert regions having their own treats, like the breathtaking view from the highest elevation point, with an impressive draw distance, whether you’re playing on Xbox One X or PlayStation 4. There are multiple cities, too, each with their own unique culture featuring different gods, politics, race relations, and prejudices to uncover. They’re distinct in architecture and environment, and that makes the significant time commitment one that’s consistently varied and surprising.

The density of it is made more impressive by being able to explore it in its entirety without any loading screens, with the exception of some story cutscenes, and if you choose to fast travel. If you want to get around quickly, a smart in-universe transit system lets you call your mount and press a button to follow the main road, or to head to a custom marker you’ve placed on the map – all fully automated, letting you take in the scenery around you.

While the main story is delightfully mystical and elaborate on its own, Origins also has some of the strongest actual mission design I’ve encountered in the entire 10-game series – and maybe in any open-world RPG. From collecting clues to solve mysteries, to chariot racing and gladiatorial arena fighting, to chasing down leads and assassinating high-level enemies hidden in fortresses, to Black Flag-style ship-to-ship combat, I was pleasantly surprised by how each of them felt like a self-contained short, well-paced story. Another highlight is the series of hidden temples, which – without spoiling anything – tie into Assassin’s Creed’s overarching sci-fi story, among other things. They are distinct from every other tomb you’ll find in ancient Egypt, and even include some throwbacks to the fan-favorite, timing-based platforming puzzles introduced way back in Assassin’s Creed 2. I rarely felt like I was doing too much of any one thing.

While there are quests that simply involve finding a hidden location or looting a building, Origins has largely done away with the cluttered mini-map full of useless chests. Instead, the vast majority of quests require multiple steps to complete and have multi-faceted, interesting characters with believable motives. Even when I really only began a quest for the XP, many of them ended up distinctly memorable. I’ll remember the man who was poisoning poor Egyptians so he, as a Greek, could acquire their land when they died, and I’ll remember the little girl who was selling fake Siwan artefacts for her mother, repeatedly assuring me they were real. My sole complaint is the NPCs’ overuse of ‘my family member died!’ and Bayek’s constant outrage at someone’s disrespect of the gods as the driving force of a quest.

Of course, being an Assassin’s Creed game, there’s a whole lot of parkour and climbing in Origins, and this is undoubtedly Ubisoft’s most seamlessly executed version of that well-rehearsed mechanic. Things that can be climbed are blended more organically into buildings and the act of climbing feels clean and almost as passive as running. True, that removes some of the challenge that existed in previous games where you’d have to figure out the best route up a building, but it takes a fair amount of frustration out the door with it. I never had a moment where Bayek failed to climb something I thought he should be able to, and that smoothness put Ezio, Altair, and the rest of the previous Assassins to shame.

The notably strong XP-based RPG progression elements are what make Origins addictive on a new level. Assassin’s Creed has let you unlock and upgrade abilities for a while now, but Origins does it in a way that enables multiple creative options that can cater to your playstyle, rather than just things that you’ll pick arbitrarily. If you want to approach missions stealthily, there are abilities that give you bonuses for stealth kills, ones that let you control arrows in the air after you’ve fired them for more precise headshots, and ones that let you visually predict the path an enemy will walk on. If subtlety isn’t your thing, there are options that make you a beast in melee combat, others that increase the amount of money you get from looting, and some that mostly just look cool (like activating slow-mo if you’re mid-air with your bow out). In the earlier stages, there are some plainly obvious picks, but I think most people will end up with very different sets of abilities by the end of the main story.

Thankfully, Origins does away with previous games’ auto-fail stealth missions and its heavy-handed suggestions for how you should approach certain objectives. Instead, it finally gives you absolute, almost Hitman-level freedom to approach a target however you’d like, and your choice of abilities can unlock new solutions. For example, as soon as I gained the ability to befriend animals, it changed the way I approached any mission locations where they were in the area. I’d survey the area with Bayek’s bird companion, Senu, then stealthily take out the guards at the front of a camp with a predator bow, sneak through to a caged lion, befriend it, and release it. That’s generally more than enough of a distraction to get past the remaining guards and break out the hostage I was sent to free from another cage, then slip out totally unseen.

While unlocking new abilities and story missions generally happens at a smooth pace, there is quite a lot of ‘grinding’ to be done in Origins. This happened to me when the recommended level for a new main quest mission appeared as several levels above where I was when I first unlocked it – a difference that can render enemies all but unkillable. That’s usually no big deal, since Origins is flush with side activities that can help you make up the difference, but on two separate occasions, I couldn’t find any side quests at my level. That meant I had to go for much lower-level quests for small rewards, which stretched out the process uncomfortably. If you do urgently want to get to the next story event – as I did at one point towards the very end of the story – this stymied progress can be a little frustrating.

hat said, one of my favourite things to do (and one of many options for grinding) is to attempt to infiltrate and liberate a fortress manned by enemies that are a few levels higher than me, just to challenge myself to see how long I can survive against opponents who could kill me in a couple of hits if I’m discovered. For me, the biggest appeal of Origins’ introduction of a level system is in that optional, self-induced challenge. Previous Assassin’s Creed games don’t have anything to put up a fight once you feel confident in your abilities, but there’s challenge in Origins every step of the way if you go looking for it.

In some cases, though, it will come looking for you. The world is also full of mini-bosses called Phylakes who’re constantly seeking you out, and – when they’re first introduced – are a dramatically higher level than you. If you’re careless and one of them shows up at a bad time it’s almost certainly a death sentence, and finally working up the courage to face one of them intentionally was one of my favourite parts of the endgame. (It’s not unlike taking down Guardians in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.) It’s made even more satisfying by the fact that they’re named – you’ll remember the guy who killed you, and it’ll mean twice as much when you can finally return the favor. It’s not quite as elaborate as the Nemesis system of Middle-earth: Shadow of War, but you get some of that same grudge-match flavor.

Those fights feel immediately different from anything we’ve done in an Assassin’s Creed game to date because combat has been significantly rebuilt for Origins. One of the biggest differences is the introduction of hitboxes, meaning that when you press the attack button you have the potential to hit multiple enemies, or hit none of them and leave yourself very vulnerable to attack, depending on where your weapon actually strikes. (That’s different from the previous system, which was focused on one-on-one combat.) And because your enemies do significantly more damage per hit than we’ve seen before, there’s more urgency in knowing when to block, when to dodge, and when to parry; that, of course, depends entirely on what kind of enemy you’re fighting, what their specific combat animations are, and how many of them are attacking you at once. It creates a whole lot more thoughtful tension than has existed in previous games.

There’s a fair amount of enemy variety, too, pitting you against shields that require heavy attacks to knock back, archers who’ll quickly pick you off if you ignore them (especially since the AI is smart enough to predict your next location and shoot arrows accordingly), rogue assassins who’re almost as quick and impenetrable as you are, and even wild animals who might show up at inconvenient times (taking a page from Far Cry’s playbook). Each enemy presents their own challenge, and the combination of them present makes combat encounters feel a little like a puzzle.

You also have the ability to lock onto one specific target at a time, and while I used it constantly for one-on-one encounters, swapping between enemies in the heat of battle rarely worked. It’s supposed to be as simple as moving the right stick, but most often, my lock-on target just didn’t move at all, no matter how hard I tried. Thankfully, it worked perfectly in stealth moments where enemies weren’t moving quite as erratically, and assassinating an enemy from the safety of a bush or a haystack is just as satisfying as ever. My only gripe there is the inability to get double hidden blades, but the ability to upgrade the amount of damage your singular hidden blade does through Far Cry-style hunting and crafting did make up for that a little.

Then there are weapons, which vary in type, rarity, and effect. Some give you health on a hit, or issue bleeding damage, and they let you cater pretty specifically to your preference of playstyle while also regularly feeding you new loot to make you consider trying something different. Once I’d picked them up and learned their uses, I always kept three different bow types handy and swapped between them regularly depending on the encounter, like using the light bow for hunting animals since it locks on, the predator bow for one-shot killing enemies where I had time to wait and take aim, and the hunter bow for combat encounters with bigger enemies who were right in front of me. That same variety and choice helped with boss fights and tougher enemies who might be taken down faster with a heavy but slow mace, where amongst a group of enemies I wanted to stay quick with a sword. It’s a constant decision-making process and the combat is much richer for it.

There are Legendary and Rare weapons in Origins, too, and while finding a Legendary weapon is a thrill, it’s not as dramatic as it is in a game like Destiny 2 because Legendary weapons are easy to come by in main story quests, and most have unexciting benefits. I ultimately ended up with a very obvious choice for each type: the one that did the most damage, maybe occasionally considering swapping for something that had burning damage or health on hit, but there are no dramatic variations there that might change the way you play or make you reluctant to trade out a lower-damage weapon because of its other benefits. There are rare exceptions, but I didn’t encounter anything major. One of most unique weapons I found was one that had stronger buffs, but was also ‘cursed’, meaning you lost two health bars if you had it equipped. I was intrigued, but it ultimately it wasn’t worth suffering through the ‘curse’ to use it.

Decisions for clothing and mounts are even easier to make since they’re purely aesthetic and there are limited choices... unless you opt to buy them as part of Origins’ microtransation system, where you can even buy a unicorn for $4.99 USD. Because of the generous way the loot system works, though, a lot of people are likely to end up with the exact same weapons and there’s almost no need to spend much money or even to visit a regular blacksmith, since anything you buy or craft will be redundant or obsolete in no time.

On the topic of microtransactions: I started out Assassin’s Creed Origins with 200 Helix coins - the currency that you have to buy with real-world money. There are cosmetic items that are locked behind Helix coins and don’t exist in the game world, meaning you can only get them if you pay real-world money. The same applies to maps that can give you locations for collectibles, which did exist in the game world in previous Assassin’s Creed games. That, combined with the lack of outfit and mount options, feels a little gross. I spent my 200 coins on crafting supplies, which were listed under the ‘Time Saver’ category (where you can also buy in-game money), and got a bunch of materials to spend on upgrading my ranged damage, melee damage, hidden blade damage, and overall health. Those supplies are easy enough to find in Origins’ Egypt through hunting or other side activities that I don’t think the presence of these microtransactions will affect players who don’t have interest in purchasing them.

I did also have some minor issues with environments popping in, a hand full of bugs (mostly Bayek or his mount getting ‘stuck’ on something), framerate drops even on the Xbox One X, and two crashes during my time playing. But it should be mentioned that Ubisoft says some fixes will come in the day-one patch, and we were playing on Xbox One X development kits instead of retail hardware, so some benefit of the doubt must be given. Origins seemed to have more bugs than the average Assassin’s Creed game, including some funny ones like a shirtless character’s nipple textures appearing considerably higher on his body than they should’ve. But none of these came close to impacting me enough to impede my progress or make me want to stop playing.

Assassin’s Creed Origins is a deep-dive into a truly stunning realization of ancient Egypt, with a rich series of cultures, genuine characters, and more mission variety than any other game in the series. The combat is challenging and thoughtful, and while the loot system doesn’t match up to games like Destiny 2, there are enough different weapon types and enough enemy variety to keep you swapping between weapons, catered to the situation. The RPG elements encourage challenges of their own, and even despite a handful of bugs, I desperately wanted to keep playing.

Odyssey looks like a straight successor to the Mario 64 and Sunshine line of sandbox 3D Marios, but it is much more than that. Naturally, it evokes, honors, and is sometimes directly inspired by the games that came before it in its characters, music, and mechanics. But it also has new things to say as well, like fusing classic-style 2D gameplay with the 3D world and using a completely new possession mechanic to add constant variety to Mario’s abilities and exploits.

That possession power, embodied by Mario’s new sidekick/headwear Cappy, is Odyssey’s big new idea. In keeping with Nintendo’s decades-long tradition of charmingly nonsensical storylines, he’s a hat with a soul, and he’s teamed up with Mario in order to rescue his sister Tiara who… wait for it... has been kidnapped by Bowser along with Princess Peach. (I said it was charming, not original.) Cappy’s power allows you to possess many other characters by throwing Mario’s hat at them, which bizarrely slurps Mario’s physical body inside of the enemy and gives you full control over their powers. Cappy’s also used as a jumping pad and a weapon, sparing Mario’s tuchus from an untold number of butt-stomps this time around (though you can still do that, if you wish).

Many of the cleverest and most smile-inducing possessions are best left to be discovered for yourself, but whether it was thrashing about as a huge, realistic-looking T-rex in the prehistoric-themed Cascade Kingdom or becoming a lowly Goomba but then making a stack of Goombas 10-tall to win over a hard-to-impress Lady Goomba, Odyssey mixes up the gameplay in surprising ways in each of its 16-plus worlds. Throughout the entire campaign, you’re using new creatures in new, game-changing ways on a regular basis.

Odyssey’s inspired integration of 2D gameplay – complete with Super Mario Bros.-era 8-bit art – deserves special mention. Entering into a pixelated pipe in the 3D space transports you to a side-scrolling 2D challenge that takes place on the surface of an object in the world, almost like Link’s 2D transformation in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Most of these sequences aren’t too long – I wished they were longer, in fact – but each blends pure, weapons-grade retro gameplay with numerous other callbacks while still mixing things up in ways they never appeared in those original games, such as flipping gravity or wrapping the 2D scene around the corner of a 3D object. They bend the rules so far they go beyond even the most ambitious creations we saw in Super Mario Maker.

It’s also super fun seeing Mario’s new costumes get translated into the old 8-bit art style. My favorites include the aviator suit and the retro-colored builder outfit, for no other reason than them being fun looks for the veteran plumber, but you can also mix and match hats and outfits to your heart’s content.

Of all the disparate lands Mario visits in his Odyssey, the urban-themed Metro Kingdom is my favorite. We’ve never seen anything like its semi-realistic look of New Donk City in a Mario game before. Not only do its urban obstacles allow for some kinetic platforming – bouncing off of the hoods of cars and flinging yourself off of city poles, for instance – but tucked-away minigames like an RC car race and a jump-rope challenge are great diversions. All the while, the sheer artistic contrast between the city and Mario’s consistently cartoony look and proportions have already generated interesting discussions about who – or more specifically what – Mario actually is. (Was “plumber” just a euphemism for some kind of goblin all along?) The end of the New Donk City portion might, in fact, be the very peak of the pleasure that Odyssey delivers on a consistent basis. Its conclusion is a literal celebration that doubles as a figurative one; Odyssey is pure joy that seems to understand and relish that about itself.

On that note, I strongly recommend playing on a TV whenever possible. It’s not that it plays poorly in handheld mode – it runs perfectly smoothly at 60 frames per second in either mode, although there are no touchscreen controls even in minigames where they’d have made sense. The drawback to playing on the go is that the tiny screen doesn’t do nearly as good a job of showing off the scope and detail of the characters and worlds, such as the funny faces Mario makes when performing certain actions and the tiny 8-bit icons hidden on some walls. (Toss Cappy at them to get a quick gold-coin reward!). Of course, it’s every bit as good a game in handheld mode.

I expected to be able to continue playing even after the plot had been resolved, given Odyssey’s 3D sandbox structure, but I wasn’t prepared for just how much there is to do after it’s “over.” In fact, some of its finest moments follow the credits, from new unlockables that nod lovingly toward the past, to a clever new implementation of an old friend, to entire new worlds. I’m still not ready to put Odyssey down, nor do I expect to be for quite some time.

That said, like internal Nintendo studio EAD’s other top-shelf Mario games – and unlike the “adapt and survive, or die trying” philosophy of Nintendo’s other 2017 masterpiece, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Odyssey isn’t particularly difficult. Most boss fights are over a bit quicker and easier than their gorgeous designs would suggest, and when you do fail, deaths tax you an almost meaningless 10 gold coins to try again from liberally distributed checkpoints. As such, you rarely lose much progress.

Instead, its challenge lies in exploration. There are hundreds and hundreds of Power Moon collectibles to discover, and you’ll want to gather them because they are the keys that unlock new worlds – including the aforementioned post-credits locales! Many Moons are quite difficult to track down, and even once you’ve located them, it’s enjoyably challenging to try and suss out how to get your white-gloved mitts on them. Some are behind classic invisible walls, others are tucked away in linear areas that try to fool you into thinking there’s only one Moon inside of. Each is a fun mini-puzzle to solve – particularly the ones that newly dot the landscape after the story mode ends. I did my best to search thoroughly on my first pass through the campaign, but only ended up with a little more than 200, or less than a quarter of the total complement of collectible celestials.

While Odyssey does a great job of thinking outside of the 3D platformer box, it doesn’t invent a way to slay all of the genre’s demons. The camera, for instance still causes trouble sometimes, leading you to whiff on a jump or get the wrong angle to see a boss attack coming.

On a logistical note: despite the fact that Nintendo recommends playing with separated Joy-Con controllers when you first start Odyssey up, you can play with whatever you like and not miss a beat in the gameplay. In fact, I felt much more comfortable with the fantastic Pro Controller, which lets you do most of the same motion-based gestures by waving the gamepad. It also supplies all of the same HD Rumble feedback the Joy-Con do.

Mario’s games have been around for almost as long as game consoles have been a thing, but thankfully, he’s always evolving. We rarely get the same Mario twice. Super Mario Odyssey delivers on that ongoing promise of originality and innovation: It distills the venerable series’ joyful, irreverent world and characters and best-in-class platforming action, and introduces a steady stream of new and unexpected mechanics. It’s all spun together into a generational masterpiece.

The story starts somewhat slowly, with your custom-made New Kid and the boys transitioning abruptly from the final moments of The Stick of Truth’s fantasy-themed battles to a superhero-themed quest to find a missing cat for a $100 reward. It’s a cynical take on childhood roleplaying, of course, because Cartman plans to use that cash to jumpstart the equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe based around his Batman-like Coon character and become rich off the movie and merchandising rights. But after a few hours it spirals into signature South Park absurdity, and you’re fighting everything from Professor Chaos’ minions to Crab People. Granted, The Fractured But Whole makes few new jokes of its own, preferring instead to riff off of fan-pleasing material as it’s adapted to game form, but it does it well – it even makes killing Kenny funny again.

Especially in the opening hours, it’s hard to tell what’s supposed to be real and what’s all in the kids’ collective imagination – and The Fractured But Whole delights in blurring that line. With the exception of Professor Chaos’ anime super-move intro, we always see their costumes as makeshift cosplay cobbled together from tinfoil, Tupperware, and cardboard, but their powers are shown with brightly colored energy blasts and feats of superhuman strength and speed. You’ll have kids shooting lasers out of kites and teleporting one moment, then pausing the fight to let a car go by the next. Then adults get involved, and you have to start wondering what’s really happening. This is South Park, so it’s not exactly constrained by realism, so it’s a bemusing question that’s constantly raised.

While it’s mostly absurd, the kids’ superhero fantasy is actually a little touching in places. Jimmy, who walks with crutches, has super-speed powers, and the developmentally disabled Timmy’s Professor X-like mental abilities make him so overpowered you can’t play as him in battle. It’s nice that there’s some positivity there among the obliviously racist (The Coon, The Human Kite) and sexual jokes, and much of it is genuinely hilarious. There were just a handful of times where a throwaway racial stereotype joke didn’t quite feel clever enough to justify the sensitive subject matter.

For pure shock-value firepower, nothing in The Fractured But Whole had me reeling quite as much as The Stick of Truth’s zombie Nazi fetuses. That said, it still delivers its share of the “Wow, they went there” moments that have kept South Park relevant. A scene with fourth graders in a strip club (gross for largely non-sexual reasons, surprisingly), a priest self-flagellating with a rosary made from anal beads, and some more-racist-than-racist cops stand out.

The pace of the gags only really slows down while you’re walking from place to place, chasing down the many main story and sidequest objectives. There’s a fast-travel system courtesy of super-speedster Fastpass (AKA Jimmy), but those travel points rarely seemed to be near enough to where a quest wanted me to go to make getting there less of a hassle, which led to a significant amount of hoofing it through the streets. It’s pleasant enough to stroll through this quiet mountain town and taking in the ambient dialogue and signage jokes, though I couldn’t help but notice that the frame rate takes a hit sometimes, dropping perceptively when you’re passing by a busy background like the gentlemen’s club and its flashing neon.

My big gripe, though, is the complete lack of navigation indicators. Sure, this keeps the screen clean and maintains the look of the show, but the cost is that I constantly had to pop open the map to figure out where I was supposed to go and which of the nearly identical houses contained my objective. Holding the left bumper/L1 brings up a quick map, but it’s too small to really be useful. It seems like it would’ve been much better to just pop up arrows pointing to objectives with that button instead. For that matter, a lot of the text on screen is a little small to comfortably read from the couch – I had to lean forward and squint at my 52-inch screen from about eight feet away to read all the Coonstagram (Instagram, but named after The Coon for some reason) messages that popped up after interacting with people.

Of course, this being an RPG, the primary interaction you have in The Fractured But Whole is combat. The grid-based battle scenarios start easy – even on the highest “Mastermind” difficulty, it was around 10 hours in before I had to try anything other than a boss battle twice. But unlike The Stick of Truth, which only got easier as it went on, The Fracture But Whole gets much more interesting in the second half as the scenarios become more ambitious and give us more things to deal with: telegraphed attacks, area denial, summoned-in enemies, and real-time timers that force you to move quickly or be hit, among others. There are special battles where you’re forced to keep moving or to move enemies into specific spots, others where you have to target one enemy among many, and other conditions that keep things from getting stale. That’s on top of the nuances of the basic system: because positioning matters and everybody’s ability set works differently for range, direction, knockback, and other special effects, there’s a fair amount of depth to it.

And, by the end, you have more than a dozen distinct characters to choose from. Each has three abilities and an ultimate power (which uses a charge that’s shared by the whole team), and that gives you a wide range of options for any given fight. Token is a great tank who can swap places with an endangered ally and shield himself to take the hit, while Kyle plays better by maintaining distance and healing and shielding allies. Kenny, of course, has a much more suicidal playstyle.

There are some excellent touches, like each member of the party having specific lines of banter dialogue for each other potential member of the party. That’s something you rarely see outside of a BioWare game. It also has numerous unique animations to pick up on, such as when Token fills his Tupperware helmet with vomit when he’s grossed out (aka poisoned).

In the menus, The Fractured But Whole takes an interesting approach to character development. You start with one superhero archetype but later can freely mix and match your four-power loadout with abilities from other classes. Instead of a straight level-up system, you slot in gathered artifact items to increase your power level and stats. It creates some interesting scenarios where I wanted to keep some lower-level items slotted in order to maintain a big bonus to knockback damage or ultimate ability recharge rate. More importantly, it makes the New Kid a Swiss army knife who can adapt as needed to support the other three heroes on your team. He gradually felt less like my character as Cartman grudgingly unlocked more powers, but being able to freely customize his look with gathered costume pieces helped. You can even change your gender, courtesy of Mr. Mackey’s aggressively awkward counseling sessions.

Keeping the New Kid alive in a fight is a huge priority because of his unique ability to bend time with flatulence, letting you periodically steal an enemy’s turn. That adds another bit of real-time flavor to the combat – you can’t just sit back and watch the enemy’s turn play out without missing some major opportunities to turn the tide. That said, some of the other active elements get repetitive. There are only three timing minigames that are repeated across nearly all the abilities you cast: either tap the button really fast, tap it once, or tap it in a sequence as prompts flash on the screen. Then you tap to block or to recover some health after taking a hit. It’s something to keep you from putting the controller down during attack animations and enemy turns, but not much more than that.

The same goes for the ultimate ability animations, which are awesome and hilarious the first few times but long and unskippable later on. Watching Cartman fantasize about Coon movie posters and being on Inside The Actor’s Studio before shredding enemies or Kyle fire up a massive power drill takes about 10 seconds each time, which doesn’t sound like a lot but gets annoying when you’re trying to finish off some sixth graders. Getting variety here is some incentive to change out your four-person team and your character’s powers every so often.

There’s also a crafting system for some reasons, but it feels almost entirely superfluous. If you’re gathering stuff – and you will be gathering a lot of it – you’ll always have enough of the basic ingredients you’ll need to craft whatever healing items you like. For half of the campaign, I was maxed out at 999 of the basic materials. The exception is the rare key ingredients, such as tortillas for healing burritos and quesadillas, which I usually had to buy from vendors like Morgan Freeman. So why not just buy the healing items instead?

Between fights you’re free to explore the South Park streets, and in addition to all the gags and easily avoided fights with gangs of roaming enemies, they’re full of mostly simple puzzles that are a matter of pushing a button once you unlock the right friend with the right tool. (Most of these involve things coming out of and/or going into your butt.) They got annoyingly repetitive, though admittedly part of that is my own fault – as soon as I unlocked a new one I’d remember all the places I saw the cue for that ability, such as scanning a pinwheel on a roof to call in the Human Kite to sail you to out-of-reach places, and sought a bunch of them out in succession. Some of them did lead me to interesting, unexpected places. But they’re at their best during sections of the main story missions where you’re using a variety of these abilities in custom-built puzzle sequences, and in those cases it takes some thought and feels more rewarding to solve them.

On the technical glitch side, I did hit several instances where the game became unresponsive after returning from suspend and I had to force-quit and restart it, but negligible progress was lost.

I would never accuse it of being inconsistent in its mood, however. At every turn Tango has done a great deal with lighting, and dimly lit corridors feel claustrophobic, creating a sense of inevitability; of course there’s something waiting for you around the corner! Oddly shaped shadows become crouching monsters while swathes of darkness promise either loot or death. I jumped for no reason more than once. 

It’s a much bigger mini-sandbox this time around, too, and you have more freedom in exploring it. Union  - aka “Anytown, USA” - is a sprawling post-apocalyptic mess of diners, picket fences, and a main street that ends at a gaping Silent Hill-esque chasm, its other half lost to the atmosphere. Though not every building can be entered or clambered up onto, there are a welcome number of nooks and crannies that offer unique enemy encounters, side quests, and loot that feel organically baked into the world.

Once I stumbled upon a lost agent who’d found himself surrounded by enemies, and after I saved him he gave me a further two quests that took me to the far reaches of Union’s underground tunnel system. Another time I was checking out what I thought was an innocuous diner before its interior changed with the click of a jukebox track and I was suddenly being chased by a screaming ghoul. I loved the promise that such discoveries could be around any or every corner.

In every instance, exploration in The Evil Within 2 is worth it, and in the case of scavenging for loot it’s absolutely vital. Green gel (used for upgrading Sebastian’s health, athleticism, recovery and combat prowess), gunpowder, and weapon parts (used for crafting ammo and upgrading your arsenal) are scarce but necessary to stay alive, so I was frequently putting Sebastian in ridiculous amounts of danger just to find enough weapon parts to add another bullet chamber to my handgun. Blindly sprinting towards a glimmering light in the distance as the sound of enemies roaring at my heels with The Evil Within 2’s excellent score pounding in my ears was a rush each time.

If you’re caught by a mob, particularly early on before you’ve upgraded your arsenal, you’ll die more often than not. Like The Evil Within before it, enemies in The Evil Within 2 are plentiful, relentless, and delightfully gross in their attacks. The Lost are its familiar raging shamblers, but there are also monsters that vomit acid onto your face for a one-hit kill if you get too close (as I did often), monsters with burlap-sack masks who wield flamethrowers, and various composite bosses that are seemingly results of a brainstorming meeting where someone said “What if we mixed X with Y?” Though these don’t quite match the creative lunacy of those in the original - The Keeper remains the series’ highlight -  there are still some brilliant encounters here. An early boss is made out of body parts held together by a backbone and a buzzsaw, while a later one is part camera.

While deranged, these monsters will still chase you if they spot you, and if they lose you they’ll search the area for a while, so it’s important to keep moving. More, they’re quite erratic in their movements, so sneak kills aren’t always the best option if you’re not close to your target. I got right behind a flamethrowing Harbringer after five minutes of stalking him before he suddenly turned around, immediately spewing flame into my face. Their credibly unpredictable behaviour made every encounter a tense one.

You don’t always have to fight. Like its predecessor, The Evil Within 2 allows for a stealthy approach, and it’s slightly more feasible this time around thanks to a bigger playground and a new stealth upgrade path that allows you to increase the ‘quietness’ of your footsteps or pace while crouching. Though I found shooting enemies in the head was a more accessible option on the whole, stealth was still a viable option depending on the circumstance.

In classic survival-horror style, much of the exhilaration in The Evil Within 2 comes from being spotted and having to suddenly launch into a fight, making do with whatever sparse resources you have at hand. I was frequently forced to experiment with the lesser-used weapons in my arsenal, such as the crossbow and its variety of creative bolts, and found myself delighted as a freeze bolt stopped a rampaging lunatic in his tracks before his head was shattered by my shotgun. Other times it was a case of absolutely needing to land every single headshot with my handgun while desperately searching for respawning ammo in the near vicinity before landing that final, crunchy blow.

With scarcity of ammo in mind, though, I would have liked more visual or audio feedback from the enemies themselves to let me know when a shot was actually counted. I found one boss fight particularly frustrating as he appeared to not even register my sneaky headshots – there was no grunt of pain or step backwards that would indicate progression in the fight. When every bullet counts, you should know when your shots do, too.

Unfortunately, Become A Legend is as stale as it’s always been and limiting yourself to controlling a single player when so many of the game's improvements focus on linking a team together seems counterproductive. Considering the existence of FIFA 17’s imperfect-but-interesting The Journey single-player mode – and its follow-up in FIFA 18 – it’s difficult to see Become A Legend anything other than entirely redundant as a serious option for enjoying modern football games.

There are also a few minor issues with server quality in online matches, predominantly when going through the matchmaking process. It can take some time to find an opponent, an issue that is made worse if playing in co-op and seeking multiple players to join your match. Matches themselves have been more stable than previous PES releases on launch, with only a small percentage of fixtures affected by lag. Hopefully any and all issues will be ironed out as Konami reacts to server load.

PES 2018 is not without its faults then, but many are easy to forgive because it does a wonderful job of consolidating and evolving on the fantastic groundwork laid by its predecessor. The improvements may not make headlines, but they do make for one of the most complete and satisfying football games.

True, it’s a game that benefits from serious time being dedicated to it, in order to learn all of its possibilities. As such, it’s not easy to recommend PES 2018 to the casual football game fan. But for those serious about diving in and soaking up all there is to know about Konami’s beautiful game, you will not find yourself disappointed.

Whether playing online or off, there’s a huge amount to do here and a huge amount to love about it. Put the effort in and you’re repaid with a genuine sense of satisfaction and a feeling of real accomplishment. Once again, PES has set an incredibly high level of quality for other sports games to try and match.