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The Alters

Jan Dolski is an ordinary crewman aboard an AllyCorp spacecraft headed to a hostile planet circling the star Gliese 3804. The planet is the only known source of Rapidium, a substance with time-bending properties, allowing for the rapid growth of organic material, such allowing a farm to produce a year's worth of food in a day, a vital technology for a resource-depleted Earth. But an accident kills the entire crew apart from Jan, leaving him alone. Fortunately, a large mobile base has survived the arrival and Jan is able to get it working. He needs more crew...and the base has the capability to clone human life, and Rapidium can mature it to adulthood in hours. Jan, reluctantly, has to create duplicates of himself to crew the base and guide it to a recovery location, whilst convincing an unsympathetic corporation to send a rescue party...for a price.

The Alters is the latest game from 11 Bit Studios, the Polish company behind This War of Mine and the seminal survival city-builder Frostpunk. The Alters at first feels like it's right in their wheelhouse, being a tense survival game with you managing resources, expanding your base and making tough decisions on who lives and who dies, in service of the "the greater good" (whatever that means). But The Alters differs significantly in its presentation: this is an over-the-shoulder third person game with exploration, combat and survival mechanics. This results in a very unique-feeling game that feels like a blend of Subnautica, Frostpunk, XCOM, Fallout Shelter and, er, Alan Wake (there's some anomalies that have to be illuminated by a UV torch and then destroyed).

The game is divided into a prologue and three acts. The game upfronts the survival elements, with you exploring the area around your base, gathering resources and using those resources to build new rooms in the base, geared towards your survival (a captain's cabin, kitchen, greenhouse, infirmary, storage etc) or the expansion of the base (workshop, laboratory, refinery). A familiar survival chain kicks in as you gather resources to expand the base, and build tools and upgrades to allow you to explore further (getting a grapple gun to rappel up sheer rock faces to reach hitherto inaccessible areas, or use a mining laser to blast aside rockfalls). Success begets success. However, you also need to grow food, cook the food in a meal and sleep. You need to get enough sleep to be good for work the next day; you can exhaust yourself if not careful and end up wasting half the next day in bed. At first it's doable, but quickly the number of tasks that need to be done simultaneously starts building up.

Where the title kicks in is when you realise you can't do this alone and, helped by dubious advice via intermittent contact with Earth, you start cloning yourself. Each "Alter" is genetically identical to you but the base's quantum computer is able to go back to decisions your made in your life and simulate alternate life choices, that leads to your "Alters" becoming specialised in alternate tasks: science, mining, refining, medicine, botany and so forth. This is great, but comes at the cost of each Alter having a different psychology. You need to keep your Alters happy, as they are all dealing with understandable existential crises, but what will cheer up one Alter will anger another, forcing you to stay on your toes as you work out how to keep them all sweet. Once Alters are in circulation, you can assign them to different jobs, freeing you up to focus on other tasks (usually physically exploring each region and building mining and supply line pylons).

At any time you have to engage with multiple tasks, some of which you can delegate but most you have to tackle personally. There's a main story mission to follow, which requires a chain of research and construction projects, but also side-quests related to keeping your Alters happy. It may be tempting to say this is unnecessary in the face of impending doom and focus on the essentials, but make your Alters too angry or unhappy and they can either push themselves too hard and get themselves killed, or they can rebel and leave. Adding to the juggling act is that you can only stay in each area for a limited period of time before the sun rises and floods the area with lethal radiation, introducing a ticking clock you have to bear in mind. To be honest, the ticking clock element is nowhere near as punishing as it sounds; I usually completed each area with 3-4 days to spare, and in fact stayed on for a bit longer than necessary to maximise resources in each area before taking off.

This may sound tricky, like juggling lions, but in actuality it's pretty straightforward. You still have to prioritise tasks, but the game's slick UI gives you a lot of options to ease tasks (like ensuring you always have a set amount of food or useable tools constructed before doing anything else for the day). Frostpunk often seemed to require you to fail completely as a learning tool before playing again and perhaps winning. However, this is down to the respective games' lengths: each Frostpunk scenario can be played from start to finish in 3-4 hours, so failure and restarting is not a major problem. The Alters takes about 20 hours per run, and completely failing at, say, around hour 18 would be far more annoying, so the game has to go at least a bit easier on you (until you decide to ratchet up the difficulty level yourself). It's much easier to recover from apparent fail-states in The Alters.

Even when you complete a run, there's compelling reasons to try another. There's a whole bunch of different endings depending on the various factions you can side with, and the steps you take to ensure your Alters' survival. It's also impossible to unlock every type of Alter in one run. At least two are required to see the other characters you don't see in the first playthrough, which can result in a very different experience.

Graphically, the game is very impressive, with a nice use of Unreal Engine 5. There are some oddities and hints of un-optimisation: some areas can load a bit too slowly if you turn around too quickly, and the game seems more punishing on the graphics card and temps than better-looking and busier open-world games. There's also telltale signs that the 3rd-person exploration mode is the first time that 11 Bit has done anything like this. Your character can get caught on scenery and ends up running on the spot a bit too easily, and sometimes you can get stuck on top of rocks and have to awkwardly find the pixel-perfect way to get back off again (the absence of a jump button gets annoying after a while). The music is excellent, if not quite as stunning as Frostpunk's, and sound cues are very atmospheric.

The base view, which recalls XCOM's "antfarm" approach, or Fallout Shelter, is splendid, and it can be fun swapping room arrangements around to optimise travel routes or just because it looks cool. The rooms are packed with fun, tiny details (your Alters might get bored and start playing Frostpunk or Frostpunk 2 in the entertainment room). The game is also forgiving in that you can assign Alters to different rooms and set up production lists from anywhere in the game world (even out in the wilderness). You also don't need to return to base to pick up new equipment that your Alters build for you, it just becomes immediately available.

The Alters is not flawless. A few moments in the game hinge on single dialogue choices, and these are not as instinctively obvious as I think the game thinks they are. A bigger problem is the game's take on combat. The surface of the planet is strewn with gravity anomalies, some of which can be drawn to you and irradiate you. Destroying these requires you to illuminate them with UV lights and then detonating them with a blast of energy (a bit like Alan Wake using his torch and gun). At first this is fun, but in the last area, which throws half a dozen variant anomalies at you continuously, this becomes a bit tedious. Also, whilst the psychology of dealing with your Alters' problems is mostly well-done, there are a few moments when your Alters will act in a way that's completely unreasonable and is basically committing suicide, that just doesn't feel plausible. Still, maybe that's the point.

The Alters (****½) is the world's first psychological thriller/city builder/base builder/survival/action/strategy game. Blending genres like this could have resulted in a mess but instead results in a tense, rich, compelling gaming experience that consistently engaging, with a strong amount of replayability. I haven't even mentioned the actual live-action short films you can watch in the base's cinema, the subplot with different people back home feuding and trying to enlist you as an ally, or the pet sheep that lives on the base. It confirms 11 Bit's status as one of the most interesting game development studios out there. Thoroughly recommended.

The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Doctor Who: Series 14 (Season 40)

The Thirteenth Doctor has regenerated into the Fourteenth, but the new Doctor is shocked to find himself wearing the same face as a prior incarnation. Returning to Earth, he is immediately reunited with former companion Donna Noble, and plunged into a sequence of events hinting at the arrival of a terrible old enemy. That threat resolved, the Fifteenth Doctor arrives to take over the mantle, and solve the mystery of Ruby Sunday.

It's fair to sat that the Chris Chibnall years of Doctor Who, spanning Series 11 - 13 of the "new" era, were divisive at best. His first season was weak, with variable writing and some dreadful episodes. Things improved, until his final run of episodes (the Flux mini-series and the splendid specials Eve of the Daleks and Power of the Doctor) was respectably solid, dragged down only by the awful Legend of the Sea Devils. But plunging ratings and dwindling audience appreciation saw the BBC decide to regroup and go in a new direction.

And that new direction was, er, an old one. Showrunner Russell T. Davies, who had brought the show back from the abyss in 2005, returned. He brought back David Tennant, the most popular of the new Doctors, with him, and also reintroduced Catherine Tate as Donna. The Doctor-Donna pairing helped make Series 4 arguably the strongest of Davies' original run.

This back-to-basics approach was hugely popular with the BBC but also appealed to Disney, coming on board as international distributor for the first time. It also helped celebrate the show's 60th anniversary in 2023 without having to resort to a "multi-Doctor special," something Davies was not keen on, despite the success it had last time out. Disney also seems to have been keen to try to get the show back to a clean slate to appeal to new viewers.

These three specials are...okay? They're certainly not the resounding back-to-form smash hit successes I think anyone was hoping for, but they're a long way from disastrous. The Star Beast - somewhat randomly - adapts a 1980 comic book story where the Doctor has to help the cute-and-helpless Meep, who turns out to be more than he seems. The result is a fun knockabout adventure, though it has to be said the forced comedic beats are torturous at best (and makes one recall that the first Davies era could have some of the cringiest humour you'd ever seen in your life, but you can overlook it for spectacular episodes like Human Nature or Blink).

Wild Blue Yonder is the trilogy's most "standard" adventure, with the Doctor and Donna arriving on an abandoned spacecraft and encountering some really odd creatures. This is an episode that, at its best, is eerie and discomforting in the way the best Doctor Who can be, and early on feels like a classic in the making. Unfortunately. the episode is let down by the idea not really being strong enough to fill 54 minutes, and some of the effects are downright woeful considering that the Disney influx of cast reportedly doubled the show's budget (the show looking cheaper visually than during the Chibnall era, despite having more resources, becomes a recurring problem). As a result the episode feels like a lot of unfulfilled potential.

The Giggle sees the return of old-school villain the Celestial Toymaker, now played with charismatic relish by Neil Patrick Harris, as he takes on the Doctor with the fate of reality at stake. The Doctor has to join forces with UNIT to take down this most cunning of opponents. This is easily the strongest of the three specials, thanks to Harris's superb performance and Davies giving him some terrific dialogue, with a deadly battle of wits between the Toymaker and the Doctor. Unfortunately, a promising and disturbing episode peters out at the end, with Davies feeling a little too clever in himself in coming up with the idea of "bigeneration," allowing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors (the latter played Ncuti Gatwa) to coexist and team up to take down the Toymaker. The end of the episode is well-intentioned with some nice lines on mental health and a brand new start for Fifteen, but it's also a bit vague and confusing. It feels like the need to introduce the Fifteenth Doctor through an unnecessary gimmick dilutes the episode of its power. Still, Gatwa makes an immediate, positive impression as the Fifteenth Doctor.

The Church on Ruby Road is the 2023 Christmas special, and the first Doctor Who Christmas special since 2017. The special introduces new companion Ruby Sunday, played with winning charisma by Millie Gibson. The storyline resolves around time-travelling musical goblins, which feels a bit random (though turns out to be part of a wider storyline about fantasy invading the scientifically plausible universe), but Gatwa and Gibson sell the hell out of it, resulting in a mostly watchable slice of nonsense. Davies also opens a mystery box about Ruby's origins, which (at this stage) intriguing and a bit eerie. However, there is a feeling here that we've done the whole "companion as a puzzle for the Doctor to solve" thing before with Clara, and that was done better. Still, an okay start to this Doctor - companion pairing.

That doesn't last long though. Space Babies is the first episode of Series 14 proper and is terrible. The Doctor and Ruby arrive on a spaceship and are chased around a bit by a terrifying monster. This is promising. They then find the spaceship is crewed by talking babies, which is...not so much. Cue lots of of horrible lip-synching and some over-enthusiastic voice acting, but it can't really overcome the weak script, poor dialogue and the laughable explanation for the monster. This is not a promising opening to proceedings.

The Devil's Chord fortunately sees an immediate improvement, with the Doctor having to face down the mysterious Maestro, an entity which can weaponise music. This intersects with a visit to 1963 where the Doctor and Ruby want to meet the Beatles and run afoul of Maestro. The ending of the episode is a little weak (despite the excuse for a fun musical number), but the deliciously evil performance of Jinkx Monsoon as Maestro strengthens the episode.

Boom sees the return of former showrunner Steven Moffat with what he does best, a conceptual episode. The concept is that the Doctor steps on a landmine and can't get off without killing himself, resulting in Ruby having to try to save the day solo. It's not Moffat's strongest work, but it's a solid enough piece about the commercialisation of warfare, with weightier themes than Davies' last few scripts.

By this point the new era of Doctor Who feels like it's off to an underwhelming start and needs a shot in the arm, and fortunately it immediately gets it in the form of 73 Yards. One of Davies' strongest-ever scripts, the episode see the Doctor vanish after stepping into a fairy circle, leaving Ruby alone, haunted by a woman who appears exactly 73 yards away from her. Whenever anyone speaks to the woman, they immediately flee in terror and disown Ruby, including her mother and members of UNIT. Unable to enter the TARDIS, Ruby goes on to live the entire rest of her life. As a high-concept piece, this is a rival to Midnight and Turn Left, falling short only because we never get a convincing reason why people scream and run away from the mystery woman, which feels like a rather large plot hole. Still, an eerie and strange episode with a great guest performance by Aneurin Barnard, and a totally dominant performance by Millie Gibson who was dropped in the deep end here (this was her first-filmed episode) and smashed it.

Dot & Bubble is another concept episode, this time the concept being that we're pretty much locked into the POV of guest character Lindy Pepper-Bean (a tremendous performance by Callie Cooke), a member of a species who spend their whole life locked in a literal social media bubble (a VR bubble that surrounds their heads with people messaging them, only rarely turning the bubble off). The metaphor is not the subtlest (though delivered a bit more cleverly than normal) but the setup makes for great tension as the Doctor and Ruby can only communicate with Lindy through IM and have to convince her of a looming alien threat and how to get to safety. The episode's concept is great, and it has an absolutely vicious sting in the tail that really caps the whole thing off, with Gatwa giving his best performance to date. The only reason the episode drops a note is that this is the second episode in a row which barely features the Doctor (an unfortunate side-effect of Gatwa's Sex Education Season 4 filming schedule overrunning), which feels a bit rough given we're still getting to know him.

Rogue is a Doctor Who-by-the-numbers story, a period piece set in 1813 with the Doctor and Ruby attending a period ball that's upset by shapeshifting aliens. There's a nice spin as a time-travelling bounty hunter (played with charismatic gusto by Jonathan Goff) shows up and thinks the Doctor is one of the aliens, leading to some tension as they try to prove their good intentions to one another whilst Ruby investigates the real aliens. The episode relies a little too heavily on the novelty of the Doctor and Rogue's flirtatious relationship (which is not as much of a novelty as Davies seems to think it is since, y'know, Captain Jack exists) rather than focusing on the primary conflict, but the pacing is good. The rest of the guest cast is outstanding as well, with Indira Varma giving a typically great performance and Camilla Aiko providing a winning turn.

The Legend of Ruby Sunday sets up the season finale with some genuinely chilling moments, as the Doctor tries to uncover the identity of Ruby's mother with cutting-edge UNIT technology. The tension and mystery builds with relish until we get to an epic cliffhanger ending, the effectiveness of which is only let down by the majority of viewers having zero idea whom the surprise bad guy actually is.

Empire of Death takes the promise of Legend and pretty much flushes it away. Legend built up a sense of genuine dread through good pacing and some eerie setpieces. Empire is just bland, rushed, confusing, illogical and defeats the returning villain with extreme rapidity. Everyone does their best with a confused script, but the episode just feels like a huge letdown.

Series 14 and its attendant specials (***½) are okay, two outstanding near-classics let down by a generally more juvenile tone than the era immediately before, and the sheer awfulness of Space Babies and Empire of Death. This isn't Russell T. Davies strutting back onto the stage to save the day with the greatest hits, its more like to play his new, late-career album which is okay, bordering on solid, but sound a bit like a 60-year-old guy trying to get down with the kids a bit too hard. The best episodes in this batch are when everyone forgets they're trying to save Doctor Who, chills out and just writes good episodes. When anyone (especially Davies) overthinks it, things start falling apart. Still, a long way from being the worst season of Doctor Who in its history, or since its reboot, and the optimism is there that maybe we can get back to the franchise at its best.

• 14X1: The Star Beast (***½)
• 14X2: Wild Blue Yonder (***½)
• 14X3: The Giggle (****)
• 14X4: The Church on Ruby Road (***½)
• 14.1: Space Babies (*½)
• 14.2: The Devil's Chord (***½)
• 14.3: Boom (****)
• 14.4: 73 Yards (****½)
• 14.5: Dot & Bubble (****½)
• 14.6: Rogue (***½)
• 14.7: The Legend of Ruby Sunday (****)
• 14.8: Empire of Death (**)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Chapel of the Holy Expediency to receive a mission directly from the ten-year-old Pope. He is to join a group of "devils," evil-doers repenting for their sins in (unwilling) service to the Papacy. Their goal is to guide the young heir to the throne of Troy to her throne, despite four cousins all keen to ensure she never gets there. Carrying out this quest are an immortal warrior, an invisible elf, an overly-proud necromancer, a jack of all trades, a vampire, and a werewolf. This quest may see them learn the meaning of friendship and found family (but probably not), and realise that the real friends are the zombie warriors we resurrected along the way.

The Devils is the latest novel from Joe Abercrombie, the undisputed king of dysentrypunk. Through many novels he has written stories soaked in blood (not always the best printing process for easy reading, but still), told with verve, humour, and sometimes worrying psychoses. This latest book is a semi-standalone, capable of being read by itself but also setting up a loose trilogy of episodic adventures for the Holy Expediencers.

The storyline is pretty straightforward, with street orphan-turned-professional-thief Alex finding out she's the long-lost Princess of Troy, a fairly unlikely prospect but one proven by the traditional means of a holy birthmark and a long-lost sigil. The Papal Shambolics have to guide her to her destiny, which involves (as this is an Abercrombie novel) a veritable morass of slaughter, bad jokes and bodily fluids spraying in all directions. Along the way we get to know the rest of the group, their hopes, their desires, and their propensity to solve problems with sharp bits of metal. It's a solid cast of characters, likeable but (heavily) flawed, seeking redemption or something adjacent to it, drawn with reasonable colour and depth.

The Devils feels like Unfettered Abercrombie. His First Law books, particularly the recent(ish) Age of Madness Trilogy, mix the dark humour and knockabout antics with weightier stories of societal development and an extended meta-arc which, though it can be summed up as, "what if Gandalf was a total arsehole?", has a lot of depth. The Devils feels like Joe had decided he needed a break from those weightier elements and he could just have a knockabout good time. This is a veritable "beer and pretzels" book where themes and intricate worldbuilding are side-courses, not the main appeal.

This has the simultaneous effect of making The Devils possibly Abercrombie's most outright enjoyable work, with action and comedy to spare, but also maybe his slightest, and most disposable. First Law fans may bemoan a lengthy gap until we return to that world (if we ever do) and the mouth-watering Glokta vs Bayaz struggle his last book set up, and others may ponder if Joe could have been better-served by exploring fresher fields altogether (presumably less filled with recruits corpses). But that's the perennial problem: do you want your favourite artist to deliver you what they're best at, no surprises, or reach for the worrying button called "space jazz concept album?"

The Devils (****) is straight-up Abercrombie, no chaser. It's fun, funny and uncomplicated, and is on the shelves worldwide right now.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Mel Brooks returns for SPACEBALLS 2

In startling news, the 98-year-old Mel Brooks has confirmed he is returning to the big screen to reprise the character of Yogurt in Spaceballs 2, the sequel to his hit 1987 comedy spoof.

Released in 1987, the original Spaceballs was a homage to/satire of the 1980s visual effects sci-fi movie, riffing hard off the original Star Wars but also nodding at Alien, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mel Brooks co-wrote, directed and starred, appearing as both the wise Yogurt and the evil-ish President Skroob. The film also starred John Candy, Rick Moranis, Daphne Zuniga, Joan Rivers, George Wyner, Dick Van Patten, and was a career-making movie for Bill Pullman. The film is now widely-regarded as a fun homage to the sci-fi genre, with a slightly sharp commentary on the commodification of art ("Spaceballs the flamethrower!").

Brooks has been asked about making a sequel almost constantly since 1987. He did spend some time joking about never making a direct sequel, so the sequel would be called Spaceballs 3: The Search for Spaceballs 2, though, as ever with Brooks, it was unclear if he was joking, serious or semi-serious. At other times, including in the original movie, he suggested the sequel would be called Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money.

Spaceballs 2 (subtitle unknown) will be directed by Josh Greenbaum, from a script by Benji Samit, Dan Hernandez and Josh Gad. Gad will also star in the movie and co-produce alongside Brooks. Bill Pullman and Rick Moranis will return as Lone Starr and Dark Helmet, whilst Keke Palmer will join the cast in an unnamed role. The project has been described as a "non-prequel non-reboot sequel part two, but with reboot elements franchise expansion film." MGM-Amazon expect to release the films in cinemas (and presumably then Amazon Prime Video) in 2027.

May the Schwartz be with you. Always.

STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS to end with shorter fifth season

Paramount have confirmed that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will conclude with a fifth season, which will consist of six instead of the normal ten episodes. The good news is that this is still some way off: Strange New Worlds' third season is only debuting on 17 July, with the fourth season in production.

Strange New Worlds only exists because of a fan campaign, after the characters were well-received in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery (2019). Delayed by the COVID pandemic, the show debuted in 2022 and attracted very positive reviews for its focus on standalone episodes and a lighter tone than Discovery, which had a much more critically mixed reception, as well as its casting and its focus on an ensemble. Season 2 (2023) was also well-received.

Season 3 is debuting over two years after the second season, but Paramount+ are keen to the get the next two seasons out as fast as possible, hoping to release Season 4 in 2026 and Season 5 in 2027.

The move comes after the ending of Discovery, Picard and both animated shows, Lower Decks and Prodigy. This will only leave one Star Trek series, the forthcoming Starfleet Academy, in production.

Trailer for ALIEN: EARTH released

FX has released the trailer for Alien: Earth, the first TV series based on the Aliens franchise.

The series is set in the year 2120 and opens on Neverland Research Island on Earth (this is two years before the Nostromo visits the planet LV-426 in the original movie Alien), where human-synthetic interfaces are being developed. A spacecraft has returned to Earth with five apex alien lifeforms on board, each capable of tremendous violence and destruction, crashing into Prodigy City. One of the creatures, predictably, is our favourite xenomorph, but the natures of the other three are unclear. To deal with the crisis, the Company sends in a team of synthetics to investigate further.

Alien: Earth is written and showrun by Noah Hawley, the much-feted creative force behind the TV series Fargo and Legion. It stars Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adrian Edmondson and Max Rinehart, amongst many others. Ridley Scott is producing.

The series debuts on FX and Disney+ on 12 August 2025, and will run for eight episodes.

Owlcat developing EXPANSE video roleplaying game inspired by MASS EFFECT

Owlcat Games are developing an action roleplaying game set in the world of the Expanse novels and TV series. Osiris Reborn is in development now and marks the developer's first non-top-down RPG project.

The game focuses on a Pinkwater Security mercenary trapped on Eros Station during a deadly lockdown. Presumably they escape during the chaos and gain control of their own ship, which they use to travel the Solar system in search of answers and money. The game will feature some crossovers with the TV show, with some of the actors reprising their roles. The game will feature multiple familiar locations from the extant IP, including Ceres, Ganymede and Mars.

Owlcat, currently based in Cyprus, with teams operating around the world, is best-known for their massive, in-depth adaptations of existing IP. They have released two huge RPGs based on the Pathfinder tabletop roleplaying game, Kingmaker (2018) and Wrath of the Righteous (2021), and the Warhammer 40,000 RPG Rogue Trader (2023). They are currently developing a new 40K RPG, Dark Heresy. Osiris Reborn is being worked on by a new team independently of those projects.

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is a marked shift for the company, as it will be a combat-heavy, over-the-shoulder action RPG focusing on a customisable captain character. Romances will be in the game. This is clearly heavily inspired by Mass Effect, in the same way their earlier games were heavily inspired by Baldur's Gate and its sequels. This is also the second video game project based on The Expanse, after The Expanse: A Telltale Series (2023).

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Decades ago, the Fracture tore the world apart. Every year since, a godlike entity known as "The Paintress" has risen from her slumber to paint a new number on the side of the colossal Monolith. Every human of that age immediately dies, vanishing in a cloud of petals. Every year, an Expedition leaves the city of Lumière, vowing to be the one to defeat the Paintress and stop the slaughter. Every year, they fail. This year, Expedition 33 plans to break the cycle.

One of the most joyous experiences in life is when something comes out of nowhere to blindside you with just how damn good it is. No years of building expectations, no months of hype and trailers that leaves you tired before the thing even arrives, just something great showing up and getting into it immediately.

That "thing" for 2025 is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. A French-made, Japanese-influenced roleplaying game with a premise China Miéville would have killed to have thought of. The product of ex-Ubisoft developers whose creativity had been caged and nearly killed off by years in the Extruded Product Mines, but here allowed to explode forth without restraint, the game makes an immediate, often stunning impression.

In the tradition of the best JRPGs, the start of the game sets out the premise and establishes an initial group of playable characters, with a single "focal" POV character (here Gustave, voiced by Daredevil star Charlie Cox). As the game continues, additional characters join the party. Each character has different abilities and combat skills, which can be developed by levelling them up. As a JRPG-influenced game, Clair Obscur's mechanics are almost wholly focused around combat. You will spend more time fighting than doing anything else, there are no dialogue choices, and the game is built around its central quest and main storyline. Whilst there are side-quests, optional areas and optional bosses to fight, the main appeal here is the main story.

Thankfully, the story is very good. The setting is basically the New Weird meets the Belle Époque, the French period of optimism that extended from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I. It's no coincidence that one of the striking images of Clair Obscur is a melted Eiffel Tower, its top weirdly canted. The story sees the people of Lumière threatened with total extinction and mounting increasingly desperate missions to save themselves, only to fail every time. Obviously, the hope is that the Expedition you happen to be part of succeeds.

The game is predominantly played in third-person, as you guide the party through successive areas. These areas are linear, but most contain branching paths leading to extra resources, money or optional battles (which will also yield resources and money, with the added bonus of experience). Your party usually has an objective in each area, with well-acted cut scenes explaining major story beats and filling in new plot revelations.

After completing the first area, you'll find yourself on a very beautiful, very Final Fantasy-esque world map, offering different locations you can go to. The next story-critical location will be clearly marked, but you can also visit optional areas for stiffer challenges, find merchants to trade with or find enemies wandering the wilderness to challenge (these periodically respawn). Initially you are very limited where you can travel, but you'll quickly make a key ally who can carry you around for faster traversal, and can eventually gain the ability to swim so you can move onto other landmasses. Borrowing a cue from the likes of Half-Life 2, which puts the Citadel in the skybox of almost every area so you can always see your destination, Clair Obscur puts the Monolith and its ominously glowing number "33" in the background of almost every level and on the world map, letting you know how far you have to travel.

Combat is mostly turn-based, with you and the enemies exchanging blows. A key feature of the game is that you can completely negate enemy damage by either dodging or parrying blows, by hitting the appropriate command at the right time. Dodging means you suffer no damage, whilst parrying means you build up action points (allowing access to higher-tier abilities on your next go) and you may also trigger counter-attacks, dealing devastating damage. Dodging is easier but gives you less advantages, whilst parrying is more useful but the timing has to be more precise, and failure will result in taking damage. Enemy animation and sound cues have to be learned to fully master parrying. I know some people dislike the intrusion of real-time, even Soulslike*, mechanics into a turn-based game. I found it refreshing and interesting, but occasionally frustrating.

I do have to say that playing on keyboard and mouse (with a second screen) seemed to confuse the game on a semi-frequent basis so that parries and dodge inputs would be missed (you can see your characters reacting onscreen to commands, even if the timing is wrong), and if I ever replay I'd probably use a controller, which is annoying for playing a game on PC, which has a rich history of running turn-based games perfectly fine. Oh well.

During combat you can execute basic attacks, use character-specific skills (you can unlock new skills using experience points) and benefit from abilities gained from pictos and lumina, which are this game's equivalent to, say, Final Fantasy VII's materia. Pictos are magical skills that can be assigned to characters. Each character can wield 3 at once. Once you have used a picto in four battles, it becomes "learned" as lumina. All party members can then "learn" the lumina (unlike a picto, which can only be assigned to one character at a time), using a pool of lumina points. There are no limits to the number of lumina that characters can learn, apart from their pool of points (the number of points available rapidly escalates as the game continues). As an example, there's a powerful picto called "Cheater," which allows your characters to take two turns in rapid succession. You equip the picto on your party-member Maelle. After Maelle takes part in four battles, "Cheater" is added to your list of luminas, and now your other party-members can all learn "Cheater" as well, so the whole party can now go twice in rapid succession.

The real power of pictos and luminas is how they can stack effects in ways that build to ridiculous levels. If you gave Maelle skills that allow her to double damage, then double damage again if under 10% health, do two attacks in a row, and give her a weapon that puts her in high-damage mode at the start of every turn, she turns into an absolutely ludicrous death machine (to maximise insanity, you can make sure you pair her with Sciel, who's skills allow her to give another party-member maximum action points and make them go immediately). The synergies in the system allow you to build very capable and powerful characters. Learning the ins and outs of this system is part of the experience, though if you are too good at it, you can break the system and one-shot most things in the game (and, by now, there's also tons of online guides and YouTube videos on how to do that).

Fortunately, the critical path is somewhat forgiving and doesn't demand that kind of attention to detail, instead allowing you to more fumble through and experiment. If you want to take on some of the optional superbosses, though, you definitely want to make this system work for you at maximum efficiency.

As well as exploring, combat and undertaking story missions, you can rest at camp, in the best RPG tradition. At camp you can upgrade your weapons and skills, re-equip and talk to other party members, gaining new insights into their backgrounds and stories. Later in the game you can start to build relationship levels with characters; maxing out these levels unlocks new combat abilities and can lead to exclusive, late-game quests. Romances are possible, though low-key.

Graphically, the game is impressive though maybe not the most cutting-edge. The game's visual triumph is more in its art design and constant imagination, throwing environments like cities torn in half by the Fracture and deposited on opposite sides of the continent, an area which appears to be underwater (complete with fish) but you can breathe normally, a battlefield with a truly stupendous amount of bodies left lying around and a vast arena you have to descend through whilst the massive boss monster dances tauntingly at you as you fight through their minions. At other parts of the game you can travel inside paintings to fight a powerful monster, descend into the pits of the Abyss to confront a betrayed soul (and the toughest fight this side of Ruby Weapon), or explore a mansion that can be accessed from all over the maps, and slowly unlocking all its rooms becomes a key sub-objective as the game unfolds.

On the audio side of things, Clair Obscur might be one of the most ear-pleasing games ever made. The voice acting is outrageously good (from the likes of Charlie Cox, Andy Serkis, Ben Starr and multiple Baldur's Gate III veterans, including Jennifer English) but the soundtrack from Lorien Testard and Alice Duport-Percier (among many other musicians) is absolute class-A. Calling it the "best video game soundtrack of all time" might be a bit premature, but it certainly sails immediately into the Top Ten. Whether it's the operatic and sweeping "Alicia," the singalong "Lumière" or synth-bass-funky boss music "Rain from the Ground," the soundtrack (all eight hours of it) never stops impressing.

The game's story is well-thought-out and impressively weird and off-kilter. The backstory revelations of why the world is the way it is and what relation it has to our world (Lumière appears to be a warped version of the real Paris) are given out sparingly over the course of the game's runtime, with a powerful emotional impact accompanying the story's development. If possible, try to avoid spoilers and go in cold with this one, it's well worth it.

The game also has very laudable, focused pacing. A story-first playthrough will take you around 30 hours, but an exhaustive exploration of all optional areas, bosses and battles will double that to about 55-60 hours, a very laudable amount of content for what is not a full-price release.

So, outstanding worldbuilding, writing, characterisation, music, combat and graphics? Is the game flawless? Not quite. As mentioned earlier, the game is really not too happy with mouse and keyboard controls (especially if you have a second screen), and after 60 hours mashing the "E" button to parry with such force I literally injured my finger, I wish now I'd played on a more forgiving controller. Something PC players might want to bear in mind. The game also had some technical issues, ironically introduced by a patch; on launch the game was technically flawless but after the patch started crashing occasionally, at random. This wasn't frequent (four times total in 60 hours) but enough to mildly irritate. The game's UI could be sharper, rotating through different menu screens - some accessible anywhere, some only at camping flags - to sort out weapons, lumina, pictos and skills could be cumbersome. The lack of a minimap in larger areas is mildly irritating if you're trying to track where you've been and not been. The story's progression becomes a bit more divisive as it goes along.

Relatively minor problems, which can't detract from the overwhelmingly impressive artistry that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (****½) exudes from every pore. This is a fun video game, an astonishing musical jam, a great story and an atmospheric, at times eerie work of art. Highly recommended, the game is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and via Xbox Game Pass.

* Mechanics derived from the Dark Souls trilogy and other games by the same team, such as Sekiro and Elden Ring, which heavily favour parrying, dodging and countering attacks based on audio/visual cues.

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MASS EFFECT TV series gains showrunner, moving forwards at Amazon

Amazon have hired Doug Jung (Mindhunter, Big Love, Banshee, Star Trek Beyond, The Cloverfield Paradox) to produce and showrun their Mass Effect TV project.

The original Mass Effect trilogy (2007, 2010, 2012) sees late 22nd Century humanity discovering alien life and reluctantly joining the Citadel Council, which represents dozens of alien species at a colossal, ancient space station of ancient origin. Commander Shepard, the first human soldier to be nominated as a Spectre, a Council agent with wide-ranging powers, uncovers evidence of a powerful alien threat to the entire galaxy, known as the Reapers. The Council are sceptical, forcing Shepard to undertake a series of dangerous missions to expose the true nature and scale of the threat. The fourth game, Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017), explores what happens when a series of great ark ships from our galaxy arrive in Andromeda some six hundred years later. The games are noted for the quality of their writing, characterisation and especially impressive worldbuilding.

Amazon picked up the Mass Effect rights in 2021, but there's been little word of the project since then, with some assuming it had withered on the vine. Today's news is not quite a formal greenlight, but it sounds like they are moving to that point. Jung will be the lead writer and showrunner, joining Dan Casey who has already been developing the project. Michael Gamble will produce for Electronic Arts, with Ari Arad and Emmy Yu of Arad Productions.

At this stage there is no sign of any of the original Mass Effect creative team from BioWare being involved. Most have long since left BioWare and are scattered working on different projects for different gaming studios. Fans will also be hoping for the involvement of the original cast's iconic voice cast, including Mark Meer, Jennifer Hale, Seth Green and Brandon Keener, though likely in different roles given their ages.

Fans may also recall that Henry Cavill is a huge Mass Effect fan and had previously teased an apparent willingness to appear in a project.

A Mass Effect TV show is likely still 2-3 years away from reaching the screen. Meanwhile, BioWare is developing a fifth Mass Effect video game, with no word on a potential release date.