You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/ultimate-hacking-keyboard.1204/

Ultimate Gadget Laboratories (UGL) are a brand I don’t expect you to know. Their website featuring a single statement, their purpose is clear: “We are Ultimate Gadget Laboratories. Working on the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard. The keyboard. For professionals.” It’s bold, it’s to the point, and really it’s all you need to know. They’re confident in what they make, and honestly, they’re more than right to be.

Before so much as purchasing your Ultimate Hacking Keyboard (UHK), you have a myriad of options to contemplate to really make it your own. With six switch types, four different keycap types, five case colours, and the choice between ANSI and ISO layout, there are a grand total of 240 UHK variants available to purchase. To give you a quick rundown of my choices, I have in front of me a UHK in a brilliant orange case, sporting an ANSI layout with Windows keycaps and Cherry MX Clear switches. Of the choices available, two things of note are the availability of blank keycaps and the range of switches. For such a customisable keyboard as this, blank keycaps are actually what I would advise. If I were a braver person, I’d have gone for them myself, but jumping to a split keyboard for the first time left me somewhat hesitant. What’s nice here though is the fact I can still go back and order them down the line, which I very well might do. One amusing thing of note is that UGL will be renaming their orange colouring to mustard in the coming future to better reflect how it looks, but you can make up your own mind on the particular shade through the images.

When it comes to switches, UGL have largely deviated from the Cherry-heavy market, instead opting for Kailh alternatives where available. These are for blues, browns, reds, and blacks. The switches Kailh don’t offer, clears and greens, are Cherry’s own. Having tried variants of blues, browns, and reds in the past, I was eager to give something new a go in the clears, but I fear I missed a chance to critique their choice of Cherry competitor. Alas, the clears met my needs tidily. I was after a quiet switch that wasn’t too trigger-happy, in blunt terms. My experience with reds in the past has shown them unsuitable for me when resting my fingers on the keys, the weight of my hands triggering them where unwanted. Clears are put simply browns with a bit more weight to them, with 65 cN actuation force in oppose to the brown’s 60 cN. With the aim of this keyboard in my mind being to keep my hands rooted on the keyboard, the additional required force seemed appealing in avoiding the mishitting of keys.

Unboxing and Initial Thoughts

Arriving at my door well-packed in a suitably-sized and weighty box, I excitedly unwrapped my new split keyboard lifestyle. The keyboard and optional palm rest packaged in separate boxes, both looked clean and professional, matching the premium and quality image UGL appear to pride themselves on. Inside each box you find the products themselves, the keyboard and palm rest, along with their relevant screws, cables, and feet. You see, in their strive for customisability and choice, UGL let you decide how best to use your keyboard. The palm rest installation guide the box directs you to gives you a rundown of your three choices: positive tilt, negative tilt, and a tented setup. Positive tilt is likely what you’re used to if you’re coming from a standard keyboard, the back of the keyboard raised. Negative tilt is the opposite, with the front of the keyboard raised, and tented is something you can only really achieve with a split keyboard, the middle raised. Wanting to embrace everything a split keyboard has to offer, I went all in and set things up for the tented layout. There are a few things of note here. First, this process is incredibly simple and easy. It’s a case of screwing a few feet into place, with no decision being final. You can change your mind whenever, so long as you’re willing to unscrew the feet and put them in a different position. Second, and perhaps more dauntingly, a tented layout all but dooms you do a split life. With the keyboard centrally raised, joining the two parts is ill advised, the keyboard rocking from side to side as you type. It left me more eager so to learn the ins and outs of the split design, but I understand some will prefer the idea of joining the halves from time to time.

The overall quality and design really left me with little to complain about. The optional, though highly recommended, wrist rest screws securely into the UHK and provides great support. It also surprised me just how nice the beech wood looked next to the block-orange shell of the keyboard itself. Though plastic, the shell feels sturdy and well-made, with no noticeable imperfections. The keyboard halves are joined together using a coiled wire that takes me back to the landline phones of days gone by. I can best describe the connector as a smaller ethernet, clipping into place similarly. It expands and retracts well and I’ve had no issues with it managing to unclip itself through any force of nature. When it comes to the overall design, the only real critique I have is that the cable connecting the keyboard to the PC goes into the right half of the device. This means you have the option to use the right half alone, both halves joined using the wire, or both halves joined as a “full” keyboard. It feels as though they missed a trick here in not having the option to use the left half alone, this half favourable for gaming, potentially allowing the device to double as a gaming keypad. I understand this may not be the demographic UGL are trying to appeal to, but in their strive for options and customisation, I remain surprised all the same you can’t use the left half standalone as you can the right. Minor critique aside however, first impressions are overwhelmingly positive.

Adjusting to Change

Coming from using standard keyboards for what is most of my life, I’m not going to pretend the UHK is something I could instantly get into. The box sending you to a start page, you’re given a rundown of the ins and outs, but after this you’re on your own. Though these short activities were handy, you can only really adjust to something like this through experience. Committed to this idea, I went all-in. One of the UHK’s main selling points is its four layers of key mappings. You have the base layer, a mod layer, a function layer, and a mouse layer. Combining these together efficiently, the aim is for your hands to be able to do everything from one position. This means there’s no arrow keys, instead you’re pressing Mod with your left thumb and hitting IJKL with your right hand for the respective up, left, down, and right arrows. It sounds bizarrely unintuitive at first, but the more you do it, the more natural it feels. Similarly, to control the mouse from the keyboard, you hold the Mouse key where you’d usually find Caps Lock, and again use IJKL to manoeuvre. After two weeks of use, it all feels normal now. The exception to this is when I’m trying to do something like highlight a word in a text editor. Something so simple becomes a game of Twister for my fingers as I hit Ctrl, Shift, Mod, and J or L for their respective arrow. I know it’s only an extra key being held here, but I haven’t quite gotten used to it.

For the minor tweaks required, like wanting to cut, copy, and paste while using the mouse controls, the UHK Agent software comes in handy. Perhaps the most intuitive and simple piece of keyboard customisation software I’ve ever used, it just works. You select a layer, you select a key, you change it to what you want, and you save it to the keyboard. No mess, no fuss, and you don’t even need the software installed for these changes to be noticed. Macros are an equally simple act of recording what you want playing back and saving it to the keyboard. I honestly struggle to put into words how easy it is to use, and thankfully you can just try it for yourself with their web demo. Another nice thing worth mentioning here is that the keyboard can actually save dozens of full layouts, each composed of four layers. If you only ever use QWERTY like myself, that’s plenty of room to play around with, giving you the opportunity to create specialist layouts and macros for games and apps as you see fit.

It’s here I’ll also mention the UHK’s compatibility with specially designed add-on modules. While they are still in development, they stand as a huge part of what makes this keyboard so interesting. It’s customisable to a degree I’m simply not used to, with these modules fitting next to the Mod key on the left half and the Space key on the right. The ones I’m most eagerly awaiting are the mouse control ones, the planned offerings being a small track ball, a touchpad, and a trackpoint. Placed in reach of your right thumb, these aim to improve productivity in allowing full access to the keyboard while doing your mousey movement. While I am disappointed I haven’t got these to try now, I am eagerly keeping an eye on their development via UHK’s blog and will definitely be picking at least one of these up when available. As soon as I do, expect an update here.

Closing Words

UGL have in my opinion created something spectacular. It’s versatile and customisable to your every whim with so little effort, trivialising things that really should be trivial to give you a streamlined and quality overall experience. The one thing I am yet to discover is whether it really does increase my productivity, having only used it for a week and quite regrettably forgetting to do a typing test beforehand for comparison. At the moment however, I can say this much for certain: it feels great. Two weeks in, I’m still missing the odd character, particularly B as it sits the farthest from my left hand, but I can feel myself getting faster. I understand the reasons behind their design choices and I’ve embraced them to the fullest extent possible. I’m comfortable typing and I’m happy using it. Ultimately though this is a niche product, and with its price sitting at $275, it isn’t going to be for everybody, but those tempted in will not find themselves disappointed.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/rha-trueconnect-wireless-bluetooth-earbuds.1201/

RHA are an independent audio company based in Glasgow intent on providing innovation and function in a tantalising package. Prior to this review, they were a complete unknown to me, and honestly I find that a great shame—I’ve come out of it with something new to keep a keen eye on.

What I have to look at today, or more precisely listen to, are RHA’s TrueConnect wireless earbuds, their true wireless offering. For those used to more conventional wired earphones on the go, true wireless are exactly as the name suggests, offering two unattached earbuds, usually with a case to charge them in. In general, they’re really quite liberating, and far more discreet than other wireless designs. The TrueConnect do little to stray from convention, once unboxed showing an incredibly stylish case, as well as the earbuds themselves. The case and earbuds are available in black, white, or navy blue, with the black ones being on display here. I can’t fault the design. It’s sleek, stylish, and the ‘stalk’ on the buds makes fitting them into the case a trivial affair, with them guided in comfortably. The closest comparison I can find, and the one perhaps on people’s minds as they read this, is Apple’s AirPods. They’re true wireless, they have a sleek case and design, and they even have the same ‘stalk’ coming from the bud itself. On top of that, they’re priced at a very similar point of £159, compared to the TrueConnect’s £150. Fighting the Goliath that is Apple, there stands the elephant in the room: what do these do to stand toe to toe?

Now not owning AirPods myself, a comparison of audio quality is difficult. What I can say, however, is that the TrueConnect are truly sublime. Connecting to your Bluetooth-enabled device with a pleasant ringing sound effect, the experience is leagues beyond other, admittedly cheaper, earphones I’ve used. On my Android phone, the pairing process was as simple as finding them in the Bluetooth devices list and letting them connect. Subsequent connections were automatic when removing them from the case. A pleasant touch I noticed with Android is that it displays the current battery level, something not otherwise visible on the earbuds.

Music just sounds right. Bass isn’t overamplified, lyrics are crisp amongst their accompaniments—the experience is something I struggle to fault. Pushing the volume to its maximum was something I was eager to test, with cheaper devices distorting the audio slightly, or what I can only describe as a ‘booming’ sensation as they try to be louder than they’re realistically built to be. The TrueConnect at their loudest, compared to others I’ve tried, doesn’t feel all too loud, but at the same time I struggle to feel underwhelmed. The quality is still there, and I’m suitably oblivious to my surroundings. It’s as though they understood the device’s limits and worked within them, which is something you’d perhaps expect as standard. At the other end of the spectrum, the quietest settings left me with a surprisingly clear sound that almost didn’t feel like it came from the earphones. Though obviously muffled, I could remain entirely aware of the goings on around me alongside the handpicked soundtrack to my life. If you’re after something for this purpose exclusively, I might recommend you steer clear and instead look into bone conduction headphones, these aiming to provide audio without obstructing your ears. The TrueConnect are a fantastic all-around choice, but the fact remains they are still earbuds by design.

Moving past audio quality, the TrueConnect have a few interesting things to offer. You have IPX5 water resistance (more on what that actually means here for those interested), a great assortment of tips for the buds themselves, and, quite bizarrely, a bar of chocolate. I question whether the chocolate was an exclusive offering for reviewers, but I can hope it’s available as standard. It’s a strange touch, but it goes a long way in adding a sense of premium to what is ultimately a very premium product. It’s also delicious, maybe the greatest bar of chocolate I’ve ever had. Changing the tips was a bit of a learning experience, with some of the larger foam ones leaving me concerned I’d damaged them trying to remove them from the metal plate. Thankfully, they soon returned to their original shape. Having tried out a few of the available offerings, I found myself most comfortable with the ones that came as standard, but the choice of size and style is something I can really appreciate. Going back to AirPods, this is something you only get on the pricier Pro version; the same can be said for water resistance, the AirPods Pro falling just short of the TrueConnect with its IPX4 rating. 

When it comes to battery life, you have what I see as a slightly above average five hours of advertised playback time, with an additional 20 possible thanks to the case and its impressive charging times. 50% charge in 15 minutes is fantastic, providing you with two and a half hours of playback from pocketing the earbuds momentarily. From what I’ve experienced, the advertised battery life is around what I got, though it’s hard to pin an exact number down when I rarely have five consecutive hours spare for a more thorough test. 

Perhaps the only point of contention for me in a review for GBAtemp is how poorly they perform for games, this solely falling on the delay you see in Bluetooth audio devices. Clocking in at around a second, I’ve definitely had worse, but it’s just too jarring for me to be able to play anything without feeling distracted. When watching downloaded videos, you can negate this by adding a delay with your player of choice, and with music this is naturally not a problem in any way. This isn’t the kind of device I’d recommend for gaming, and I think that’s fine. These are earbuds for being out and about, for listening to music while you work, while you exercise, or just while you’re getting ready. If you’re looking for freedom from wires with no detriment to sound quality, I say look no further. Yes, these cost a pretty penny, but you get what you pay for, and with a three year international warranty, RHA have faith they’re built to last.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/new-super-luckys-tale.1188/

Lucky is a name I didn’t know. Debuting in a launch title for the Oculus Rift in Lucky’s Tale, and later coming to PC and Xbox One in Super Lucky’s Tale, the fox eluded me as a mediocre attempt to kick off a new cutesy mascot platformer. I dismissed him outright, but looking back now, perhaps I was wrong to do so.

Taking a leaf out of Mario’s book, Lucky returns in a confusingly titled game for the Switch, New Super Lucky’s Tale. What makes this particularly odd is the fact that this is, as it happens, not a new tale, instead expanding upon the original ideas shown in Super Lucky’s Tale. While with many a different game, this would usually mean a few updated graphics and maybe a bonus level or two. Our foxy friend however finds himself embarking on a completely different adventure, following the same story and the same overarching structure. As an outsider looking into the series, I feel it best to describe it as a do-over, Playful Corp’s realisation there was something more lurking in their previous ideas that they just wanted to take in another direction. Though I can’t speak of the original game’s quality, I can say this version does not disappoint.

Opening with a fully-voiced cutscene to set the stage, Lucky starts out strong. The antagonist, Jynx the cat, tried to steal the all-powerful book of ages. He fails, and Lucky gets pulled into a separate world with its now-separated pages after a bit of a scuffle. The general cycle sees you be transported to a world, collect some pages, beat one of Jynx’s crew, and head to the next world, eventually ending up in a showdown against the big kahuna himself. The gameplay loop is simple and familiar, evoking fond memories of Super Mario 64. Each of the game’s six worlds are broken down into self-contained levels, along with a hub area; to draw an easy comparison, the castle and its paintings. Each level has four pages up for grabs: one for completing the level, one for collecting 300 coins, one for finding each letter of our protagonist’s name, and one secret one, often hidden behind an optional puzzle or platforming challenge. Ranging anywhere from traditional 3D platforming, to short questlines, to 2D platforming, and even runner sequences, the levels constantly found a way to keep me engaged. No two levels felt the same, each surprising me in their ability to stand out in what I otherwise assumed to be a generic by the books game.

Graphically and stylistically, the game oozes charm. Each world has a theme, with each level revolving around a central idea matching the theme. For example, in the second world, Veggie Village, you have a town of farming worms facing the threat of machination as the Kitty Litter’s genius inventor Tess moves in to make things more efficient. From this basic setup, you have a good mix of interesting ideas. There’s oversized chickens that need to be freed from mysterious devices, there’s a folk band that need to be reunited, you help the Carrot King himself oust the garlic menace—there’s even a 2D level focused on avoiding what I can only assume to be spiky fruit. To fall back to a simple word, it’s fun—brilliantly so. I can without reservation say I haven’t had this much fun with a 3D platformer since Super Mario 64. There’s life in every part of the game, from the Sims-esque garbled and yet somehow emotive language, to the bizarre themes and self-serving yet ever-amusing Kitty Litter, to the challenges and quests presented to you in levels. It’s a game a child could pick up and an adult could enjoy, and a large part of that enjoyment stems from the satisfying movement.

To me, any kind of platformer starts and ends with how it controls. Your character might be unresponsive, have a dissatisfying jump, an ever-so-slightly off hitbox, there could be a lack of feedback—any number of minor issues can completely ruin an otherwise brilliant game. Coming from, as you might expect, the stunningly refined Mario series, you get a taste for a control scheme that just works. You want a reasonable jump, you want to turn quickly, to hear a fun sound effect as you stomp an enemy. There are things you take for granted as standard, and there are things you really don’t expect other platformers to nail in quite the same way. Lucky feels great, but it’s not as seamless an experience as a Mario game might be. You have a double jump, a tail swipe, and a dive to burrow underground or slide along solid floors. That’s it; on paper there’s little to learn, with each part of the moveset being introduced in the first level quite enjoyably. The jumps feel great, providing ample height and distance, with tail swiping enabling you to go just that bit further if timed properly. Burrowing is fluid and natural, the animation weaving seamlessly in a way that makes you just want to keep doing it. Where you’ll perhaps need a moment of adjustment is in the movement itself—turning in particular. In what I assume to be an attempt to create a more fluid sequence of animation, you turn in an arc, in oppose to turning quickly on the spot. It’s a small difference to what I’m used to, but it was enough to throw me off until I got my act together. You definitely get used to it within a level or so, but I had a good bit of frustration for the first ten or so minutes as I learned the basics.

Outside of that minor complaint, there’s really only one negative I can think of with New Super Lucky’s Tale: loading times. From starting the game to getting to the main menu, it took 38 seconds. From the main menu to loading my current hub world, it took 35 seconds. From my current hub world to loading one of its levels, it took 18 seconds. It adds up, but for much of the game, it falls to the back of your mind. Around 20 seconds between levels isn’t ideal, but the moment of respite to enjoy some well-written messages in the loading screen at least kept me entertained. That was, at least, until I hit my first runner stage. For those not familiar with the format, this kind of level sees you constantly moving forwards, the challenge lying in timing your jumps properly to collect everything as you go. As a completionist, I wanted to collect everything, but found myself greatly frustrated at the lack of option to restart the level. Missed something? 20 seconds to load back into the hub world, followed by another 20 seconds to reload the level. It’s here the frustration kicked in, and it’s here I really became aware of the loading times. It’s a shame to see the game held back by such a trivial thing, but the more you play, the more you start to realise the wholesome messages of Greg the Mailgolem can’t keep you occupied forever.

All in all though, New Super Lucky’s Tale is a great game that genuinely shocked me. Going in expecting some malformed and unintentionally nightmarish mascot character awkwardly stumbling through generic levels, the charm offensive and overall polish caught me off-guard. This is a game that belongs on Nintendo platforms, and I can only hope it sees a proper sequel, even if it takes some time to load.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/luigis-mansion-3.1169/

Since playing it on the GameCube many moons ago, Luigi’s Mansion became my staple for horror. It was never necessarily a scary game, but it was about as far as my tender soul would take me into the genre, and quite honestly I was happy with that. It had the atmosphere, a few chills, a few spooks, but above all was just a brilliantly fun experience. Having not found my feet with the mission-oriented sequel, I was desperate to see a Luigi’s Mansion game truly recapture the spirit of the first title, and in some ways, Luigi does just that.

The game starts out with a lavish cutscene of Luigi and friends as they head towards the aptly named Last Resort, a grand and golden hotel stretching high towards the sky. Everything is shining, everything glistens, it’s the image of luxury itself, but not without an oddity or two. Blissfully ignorant, our favourite friends head to their rooms, where I might add you can pet Luigi’s ghost dog, and get some sleep. In the dead of night, our gallant green wakes, watching on in horror as the golden aesthetic melts away and his nightmare really begins. The hotel, quite unsurprisingly, was a ruse to lure in our heroes and trap them in paintings. The mastermind? King Boo himself, still holding a grudge against Luigi for their previous few run-ins. Naturally, Luigi escapes, dropping down to the basement of the hotel and kicking the game off.

As a setup, I think it was played fantastically. Though the setup doesn’t do much to shock you, it takes great strides to poke fun at itself, and at the cast for falling for such a clear trap. The masks the ghosts wear to conceal their identities were the standout in this for me. You have the tone of the game set incredibly well, putting forwards brilliant physical comedy with the largely-mute ghosts, contrasted by Luigi’s genuine fear in this unfamiliar environment.

When it comes to gameplay, Next Level Games really do take the core controls of the first game to, well, the next level. Luigi has his standard flashlight and vacuum combo, with the general cycle being the same satisfying ‘shine your light on them, and suck them up’. It’s tried, it’s tested, it works. As you continue through the first few areas of the game, you add to your arsenal a little, acquiring the Dark-Light, a launchable projectile plunger, and by far my favourite miscellaneous creation of the Mario franchise, Gooigi. Instead of lumping all of these on you together, the game takes time to introduce each new aspect with small puzzles and time to adjust. Though it might not seem like a lot to remember, the game expects you to have a complete understanding of your options to solve a good number of its puzzles. Forgetting the basics can lead to a great deal of frustration, and in some cases, even death for the lean mean green machine. Quite early on, I forgot one of the new attacks for the vacuum, ending with two bats taking my health down from 99 to zero. Thankfully, the game saves at almost every door transition, but I held an unjust grudge against the game for a good number of hours before realising I had that attack as an option.

Gooigi is the hero we deserve, and thanks to Next Level Games, he’s also the hero we got. Once unlocked, you’re able to summon him at will and switch between him and Luigi as you please. Why would you want to do this? Because of his gooey demeanour, he can quite neatly walk through spikes, cages, even go through some easy to recognise pipes! His health bar is also completely separate to Luigi’s, with no real punishment for it falling to zero outside of having to resummon him. What’s the catch? Water. One touch of the stuff and Gooigi’s down the drain; it’s a clear trade-off, and one you can quickly recognise as a threat or puzzle when presented. Gooigi’s attributes make him a fun character to mess with in single player, a good number of puzzles requiring you bring him out to do his own thing or stand by Luigi when one vacuum just doesn’t offer enough suction. Where I feel he truly shines, however, is in providing a low risk means of enjoying the series for the first time. Thanks to the same system coop available, young children could quite happily play with a parent or family member to be a part of the experience without necessarily hindering the main player. It gives power and satisfaction in a surprisingly balanced way, and I really do hope there are children out there who get to jump in this way.

Though I touched on it earlier, Luigi’s moveset deserves a spotlight (or flashlight as it were) shined on it. Luigi is versatile, Luigi is frantic, Luigi is fun. Starting with the vacuuming basics, you have the slam attack. As you pull the ghost towards you, you fill a small gauge as you drain their health. Once this is full, you can press A to slam the ghost to the ground, dealing a flat 20 damage, with you being able to repeat the attack four times before they break free. It’s satisfying, but that’s not where the beauty of this move lies. Where the fluidity of gameplay and satisfaction truly begin is in how you choose to chain your ghost captures when you’re against more than one spook. In other games, you might hook two together, or just move from one to the next while dodging hazards; Luigi’s Mansion 3 laughs at these simple notions. By slamming one ghost into another, you throw them into a vulnerable state as if they’ve just been hit by your flashlight. This means once you’ve finished with the ghost you’re currently catching, you can move straight onto the next with little downtime, becoming particularly useful as ghosts develop countermeasures in their choice of light-blocking accessories.

Beyond this, you have a neat downward thrust that’s particularly handy for blowing away bats that will otherwise chip at your health until you die, and a generic blow function. Both of these are used more for puzzle solving than combat, but the overall variety is something I did come to enjoy, even if it took me a while to remember everything I had. The game relies on you knowing what you’re doing with your controls, especially if you’re seeking out its secrets. Take the time to learn the basics. The plunger is fairly self-explanatory; it’s a projectile. It hits things far away. Thanks to its plungerific design, you’ll find it sticking to surfaces too, allowing you to vacuum it and pull on objects you’d otherwise struggle with. One thing I’m quite grateful for is how it’ll only stick to specific areas in the world. What this means is that you can focus on what exactly it’s stuck to, and debate on whether it’ll lead to a secret, or whether it’s just a chance to cause chaos. If it stuck to every wall, I fear you’d lose a lot of this charm and excitement. It’d be more a case of repetitive frustration as you pull at every wall, knowing it sticks and knowing something might just maybe be there. Finally, the Dark-Light is the item you pull out once you have the solution to the puzzle. Often the final piece, shining it on certain areas can bring to life previously-invisible objects. Be it a chest, a door, a drain or more, you’re rewarded well whenever you need to use it.

Moving from a mansion to a hotel brings with it an interesting assortment of good and bad. As an isolated structure and means of progression, the hotel setting utilises a simple but effective formula. You have a themed floor with a stream of puzzles that ultimately lead you with a trail of breadcrumbs to a boss ghost. You beat the boss, gain access to a new floor, rinse and repeat. Having an entire floor following a cohesive theme provides a fantastic build up, often chasing the boss themselves through it and ending in a more satisfying and meaningful battle. While the game is set in a hotel, the design team clearly took some liberties in their creations, resulting in some incredibly quirky and ‘unhotel-like’ floors you constantly find yourself in awe at. This is especially hammered home as you return to the elevator upon completing it and find yourself pulled back to the frankly odd truth that the knight’s castle you just ventured through was in fact a part of the hotel. It is, of course, not without its floors.

Compared to the mansion of the first game, you notice an oddly distinct lack of life—something amusing to point out in a game so focused on catching the dead. Though the game features roughly the same number of unique boss ghosts, this build up and time to develop and embrace a theme can at times backfire, going out of its way to say ‘you are alone’. On paper, this sounds like a good thing, pushing the spooky ambience and isolation of our protagonist, but it never really feels that way. You lose the constant drabs of dialogue, the tiny injections of personality and charm. The first game thrived in its limitations, in the cramped and almost claustrophobic environment. Opening this up gives you more content, but I feel something was lost along the way.

It’s not to say the puzzles occupying the hallowed halls are particularly lacklustre either; I do in fact hold them in high regard. They kept me engaged, trying and testing me at every opportunity as I methodically tore each room apart. The game is full of puzzles with a great variety of complexity and obscurity, all but guaranteeing you’ll miss one or two as you play. With five optional gems to find on each floor, each hidden behind a puzzle or small challenge, you’re always looking for what’s coming next. In my playthrough, I found myself averaging between three and four gems, and I was compelled to seek out more. There is of course a point where this search boils over to frustration, but the game never lets you reach that point, with hints available to purchase. What makes these hints appealing to me is that the game only reveals the room the gems are in, leaving the satisfaction of finding and completing the puzzle completely to you. It keeps the challenge and overall sense of reward, while removing the frustration of moving from room to room after the fact, creating a fantastic sense of balance that had me unashamed in asking for help.

Beyond the previously-mentioned same system coop in Gooigi, Luigi’s Mansion 3 features an online multiplayer mode in the form of ScareScraper, making its return from the second game. The concept is simple: move from room to room in a series of randomly generated floors to clear them of their ghostly inhabitants. Being on a timer, the focus shifts to your skill in quickly dispatching these ghouls, the challenge lessening with the number of players joining you. There’s fun to be had both alone and with friends, and this mode being playable both locally and online really does wonders for it. I already have plans to be playing this with friends once the game launches! 

The game also features a number of multiplayer-exclusive minigames, allowing between two and eight people to partake on the same system. Sadly, with my right Joy Con’s SL and SR buttons out of order, I wasn’t able to connect two separate controllers to try these for myself, but you can check out their descriptions below. While I doubt they’re anything particularly extraordinary, they seem fun distractions from the main game if nothing else, and ones to be enjoyed with friends. As miscellaneous extras, you can’t really ask for more than that.

All in all, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a game I urge anybody reading to play, and I really do mean anybody. Whether a series veteran or completely new to gaming, this game covers every base. Featuring a myriad of fun optional challenges, puzzles, and achievements, there’s a fantastic amount to do and experience. I can think of no better way to spend Halloween. 

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/sublevel-zero-redux.1158/

When it comes to roguelikes, I think of The Binding of Issac. I think of simple to grasp gameplay with fun random elements to keep the experience fresh, and I think of something I can keep coming back to in an addicting way. Sublevel Zero Redux is a roguelike similar to no other I’ve played before, carrying the lifeblood of the genre in a bizarrely gripping manner I’m yet to master but can appreciate all the same.

Starting the game for the first time, you’re shown the ropes with some in-game tutorials. Instead of having walls of text to read, you’re given a small area to travel through, requiring you follow small directions to gradually build up your catalogue of movement and combat options. As soon as you start moving around, you know this game is different. Gone are the tight and responsive controls of Isaac and co, in its place the floaty cockpit of a ship in a full 360 degree experience. If nothing else, you feel an instant focus on just how fun it is to be moving through tight corridors leading to rooms both open and complex, some hiding enemies, others hiding rewards, traps, or just more places to explore. The acceleration can be a little hard to control at first, but ultimately does well in assuring you never feel too cornered in a tight situation.

Investigating an abandoned facility rumoured to be at the root of the universe’s demise, you find yourself stranded, with the only means of getting home lying in the hopes you can scavenge the technology lurking within. Of course, this isn’t without its risks, the automated defences kicking in and giving you a fight whenever you come into its sights. These defences take many forms as you progress through the facility. Starting with slow drones firing slow shots at you, they advance to launching missiles, faster shots, having periodic shielding, and a whole range of different challenges. These defences encourage slow and methodical observation to analyse each threat and proceed accordingly, but the beauty of this kind of game is that such a strategy is entirely at the player’s discretion. If you want to speed past enemies in search of a chest, you’re free to. The game rewards knowledge however. If you can recognise an enemy, you can work around its limitations. If you know the components for a strong weapon, you can optimally seek out and manage inventory space to create it. Perhaps more interesting is a player’s lack of knowledge however, creating a sense of immersion and empathy with the pilot as they explore this bountiful unknown.

Item collecting and crafting took some time to get used to. You can collect items by defeating enemies, opening chests, and just by finding them lying around. You pick them up, managing a limited inventory space, equipping weapons you want to fight with, and storing others you may want to use for crafting later. It’s here in particular I found my lack of game knowledge daunting; everything seems useful in some way. Picking and choosing what I should keep became a stressful ordeal to the point of me downright rejecting anything once my inventory became full. As somebody used to a simpler ‘pick this up and gain its attribute’ kind of system, I feel no shame in saying this left me out of my depths to a certain degree. These kinds of games are a learning experience in and of themselves as you come to terms with optimal combinations and strategies, but with Sublevel Zero, I struggled to get a defined feeling of what was strong. With so much happening on-screen at once, I saw enemies fall, but rarely found the time to take notes or keep track of how quickly they did with one weapon against another. You’re given some stats to work with in the inventory screen, things like rate, damage, and accuracy, but the whole thing never quite clicked with me. It wasn’t helped by the fact there is far too little visual feedback in the menus. Take the image below as an example—would you know the cursor is currently on the crafting tab if I didn’t tell you?

Outside of the menus, you’ll find the game’s stylistic choices as a whole at times muddying your vision. You often have corridors and rooms illuminated by vivid lighting. It looks fantastic and drives home a brilliantly futuristic and curious setting, but with the side effect of it making enemies less clearly visible in front of you. With them being distinguishable by their coloured lighting and shape, I found myself too often only noticing their presence as I took damage from their equally-luminescent lasers and missiles. The good thing about these as issues is the fact they’ll gradually fade away as you adjust to the game and its stylistic choices, but the initial adjustment period can be a challenging one, especially on the smaller handheld screen.

Despite the lack of clarity in places, one element I can’t help but commend is the map. In a game so rooted in the idea of manoeuvring in every which direction of 3D space, it’s easy to get lost in your turns and rotations; the map remedies any potential to this flawlessly. Showing where you are, the rooms you’ve come through, as well as colour-coded doors to represent those you’re currently able to open amongst other things, you can always find your way. It’s a small detail, but it’s one that goes a long way in making the experience as seamless as it attempts to be.

With this game available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, you may be left wondering exactly what the Switch version brings to the table in terms of exclusive offerings. The major pull, as with most Switch games, is going to be the portability and overall versatility of the system, but more interesting to the gameplay is this version’s motion controls. Though they’re quite difficult to implement in a way as to please everybody, this optional feature is something that stuck with me. Instead of attempting to create a system to move the camera in its entirety along all three axis, it’s easier to think of your motions steering the guns, adjusting the view a little to show you where they’re facing. The majority of the control still lies in the right analogue stick where it rightly belongs, but these fine adjustments make it easier to get in quick and precise shots as you’re charging towards or fleeing from enemies. It’s a nice and well-implemented addition that genuinely brings something to the overall experience, and one I recommend at least trying for people intent on picking the game up. 

All in all, Sublevel Zero Redux is a fine roguelike. Preserving the core ideals of the genre, along with some unique ideas and a divine control scheme I wish were in some kind of free flight game, you have something that can keep you hooked from start to end. The beauty of these games of course, is that the end never truly has to come.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/roccat-vulcan-120-aimo-keyboard.1134/

Out of the box, the first thing that hits you is the anodized aluminium plate sitting beneath the keys. Similar to the BlackWidow Elite, keys sit atop this plate, allowing for easy cleaning and degunking, but a pleasant difference is the lip bordering the keyboard. Though this less streamlined design obviously takes up more space, it allows you to better appreciate the build quality and overall design. It isn’t bulky to the point of it being in the way or irritating, it’s just right in showing off what it needs to.

Looking at the keys themselves, you have a largely standard assortment. The key font is bold and somewhat wide for the RGB lighting to pleasantly shine through, looking great plugged in. I always appreciate a gaming keyboard without any kind of obnoxious ‘gaming fonts’, and Roccat’s design here really sits well with me. Another favourable choice comes in the decision to include a remappable volume dial in the upper right corner. What I really like here is that by default, it has two uses: changing the RGB brightness, and altering your system’s volume. Switching between these options can be done by hitting the respective tactile button. It’s a bit of a shame these buttons don’t have a more general icon with them being customisable in use, but when you’re more than likely to keep them at their default setting it’s far less of an issue. 

The switches on offer are, for better or worse, Roccat’s proprietary brand going by the name of Titan. Boasting a ‘tactile and silent 1.8mm actuation point with a 3.6mm travel distance’, I’ll leave judging the technical ramifications to those better understanding of them. Comparing this to my experience with Razer’s Greens and Yellows (Blues and Reds by non-proprietary standards) however, the typing experience falls somewhere in between. I’m not finding keys hit at a feather drop as I did with the BlackWidow Elite, instead having a tactile bump to them. It’s satisfying in a way both familiar and really quite different; I like it, but it’s hard to get a real feel as to what makes it so nice to be typing on. 

Without a doubt, my favourite thing about this keyboard is its lighting. RGB lights are a staple of any flashy gaming keyboard, but it’s in this keyboard’s unusual keycap design it really stands out. Because the slim caps only cover the tops of the keys, you find the colours blending magnificently in a way I simply haven’t seen in other keyboards. Despite each key only having a single light behind it displaying one solid colour at a time, you have a sense of gradience as the keys flicker and dance. Of course, to make the most of this stunning lighting, you’ll be relying on Roccat’s special ‘Swarm’ software, an app I have mixed opinions of.

Having only used Razer’s offerings in the past, I’ve become accustom to clean and easy to use software. With Razer, everything makes sense out of the box in an incredibly intuitive way; Swarm is a bit of a mixed bag in this sense. Opening the software for the first time, I’m hit with the fact Swarm doesn’t take note of Windows scaling options. With my laptop screen being 3200×1800, I have scaling set to 200%, and every app I can think of takes note of this. It’s minor and something incredibly unlikely to affect most people, but it set a president with the software as a whole. Comparing it to Razer’s Synapse, there’s a lot to take in. You have profiles, key assignment, a macro creator, the lighting settings, and a few miscellaneous options to play with. It’s a lot. Spending some time with the software, things start to become clearer, if not still a little cluttered.

When it comes to functionality, Swarm falls back on two pillars: Game Mode, and Easy-Shift. Game Mode is something you’ve likely seen before in similar gaming keyboards, disabling the windows key to avoid your current game getting minimised at a crucial time, a generally-accepted good ideas all in all. What Roccat have done to try to add to this is allowing you to rebind keys when this is active, as well as the fancily-branded Easy-Shift. Key binding is exactly what you’d expect. You can swap keys, or have any number of keys being mapped to the same character. If you were in a game where you need to mash a single key, it could be handy to set every one available to that. In a far more normal use case of wanting to make use of the function keys that line the top of the board, you could remap them to things like Insert or Home to maximise available keys on the left side of the keyboard. It’s generally not something I used, but with no clear way of remapping keys normally, I could perhaps see use in this for people wanting to switch their key caps for the DVORAK layout or something similar.

At its core, Easy-Shift gives each key additional functionality while a designated Easy-Shift key is held while in Game Mode. By default, this key is caps lock, sitting just above your normal left shift. Holding this down, your keyboard is swept in a white light, and hit keys will perform their Easy-Shift function, this able to be pre-made macros, opening applications, multimedia controls, and your other general utility functionality. As an idea, it’s difficult to fault, but the implementation is needlessly limiting. The fact these macros and extras are locked behind having Game Mode currently enabled adds a layer of tedium when it comes to general use. Compare this to Razer’s BlackWidow Elite being able to add this kind of functionality via the function key at all times, and I’m just left wondering why Roccat can’t match this.

Of the features on offer, the standout hit for me is the AIMO Intelligent Lighting System. Where I’d take the time to get a visually appealing set of static lights (a little boring, sure) on my previous keyboards, this captivated me in a way where I really didn’t want anything else. At first glance, the lights seem to shift and sway as if at random, transitioning fluidly from one colour to the next across the keyboard. As you hit a key, it reactively changes colour. If you hold a key or hit keys close to each other, the surrounding area also lights up. It’s difficult to put across in words what makes this so enticing but it’s my far the nicest setting I’ve seen on this kind of keyboard. Naturally, all of this isn’t without fault.

The caveat in this case comes from the fact Swarm likes to crash. Without cause, reason, or rhyme, it closes. It does so silently in the background, making no fuss, and leaving the keyboard confused as to what it should be doing with its lights, often simply freezing with its current setup. On top of this, it doesn’t seem to launch at startup despite being set to, and clearly being in my startup options. The software freezing doesn’t impede the core functionality of the keyboard by any means; you can still type, you can still adjust your volume, all that good stuff, but you lose a lot of what really makes the Vulcan 120 AIMO stand out. As an odd aside, one thing that does remain with the software crashed or closed is your game mode setup, so if you want to swap your WASD with your arrow keys for that older generation of Command and Conquer that doesn’t let you remap keys, you can do so safe with the knowledge you won’t be interrupted mid-game.

All things considered, whether this keyboard is for you isn’t such a simple thing to ascertain. From what I know, Roccat are a fairly good brand and I do have some hope the software will improve in time, but with anything of this nature there simply is no guarantee. There’s also a chance these issues are exclusive to my PC, as slim as that may be. If you’re after a well-built keyboard with a clean and aesthetically pleasing design, the Vulcan 120 AIMO ticks every box. For everything beyond that, it’s a case of hoping for a fix, and at £149.99, that just might not be good enough for most.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/the-sojourn.1125/

The Sojourn is a fantastically strange game; a game where I feel I have little to say and yet cannot fathom where to start. From the outside looking in, you have a pretty albeit simple-looking first person puzzler with a core theme of light, and if that’s enough to sell you, by all means jump in! In a sense you really do get what’s on the package, but there’s a certain intricacy and narrative that’s difficult to understand looking deeper.

Jumping into the game you have no abilities. Presented with a path to walk along and a light to follow, you move agonisingly slowly through a world as it illuminates and opens around you. It’s painful in a way, but this pain is emphasised because your aim is simply to walk. Ordinarily I would criticise this pace as an issue, something to artificially lengthen an otherwise short experience, but as you enter the first puzzle, it becomes evident its role in a larger design.

The game starts you off simply to introduce each part before expecting you to use it in a puzzling manner, starting with the flame. Touching this wispy wonder grants you the power to enter the dark world, this power consumed as you move. What makes the dark world so great? In this alternate view of the world, you’ll find new platforms available, and as the game goes on, you’ll find yourself able to interact with an interesting repertoire of objects. By in large, your goal is to utilise the dark world and the tools at your disposal to get from the start of a puzzle to the end. It’s magnificently simple on paper, but what stands out to me is how this simplicity is paralleled. Starting out with a statue you can swap places with in the dark world, puzzles grow in challenge and complexity as you’re introduced to small additions one by one. You’re naturally guided from just swapping places with a statue to recognising a chamber you can use to duplicate it, to spotting gates and where statues need to be to unlock them. You also have broken paths that can only be reassembled in the dark world that’ll return to their original state after a certain amount of time passes, and barricades that only block your way in the dark world. There’s a brilliant assortment of individual components that’re introduced one at a time. With each you’re given a brief message to explain what it is, before moving through puzzles to prove your understanding. Just as you find yourself comfortable in utilising these newfound powers, you’re put before a test only slightly more difficult than your previous trial, balanced well to reward your thinking without overwhelming you at any particular time. Each puzzle is crafted in such a methodical way that you come to terms with your slowness and largely forget about it, embracing it as your timer in the dark world.

Seeing you move from room to room solving these puzzles, The Sojourn leaves little room for traditional narrative. With no spoken dialogue and the only text being one of tutorial messages or cryptic introductions to new sections, you’re given the freedom to interpret events as you please. As you progress, you come across stone scenes portraying what I assume to be the life of a child, depicting significant events and hardships. Though I’ve never been the type of person to take to this kind of narrative well, I can at least appreciate what it’s trying to do. Even in my lack of larger understanding, it’s easy to appreciate these dioramas individually thanks to their interesting posing and overall design. I’m sure there’s more to see and more to gain in following these events more thoroughly, but it definitely isn’t a requirement in having a great time with the game.

Looking at the music and graphical styling of the game you find everything shining a focus on the puzzles. Graphics are low poly and scenes catch the eye without necessarily drawing focus or attention from the problem at hand. The music is perfectly forgettable to the point of me having to check whether the game even had music to write this. It again blends into the background as perfect ambiance to keep you drawn into the world and provoke thought. It’s slow and nuanced, and a perfect fit for a game so thematically matching. The simple aesthetic allows the game to show a visually stunning contrast between light and dark, and for me it’s hard to criticise. While I understand not everybody appreciates low poly graphics, they really aren’t the focus. They’re a means of delivering high quality and easy to jump into puzzles, and in that regard they definitely succeed. 

For those who pick it up and decide they want more than just following the beaten track, extra challenges are available as the game progresses. With some lurking behind specified gates and others being stapled to the end of an easier puzzle as optional content, the game makes sure to keep you busy and provide for those eager to keep playing. It’s difficult for me to say concretely whether this is a game I can or cannot recommend, largely because it’s a style of game you’re either likely to love or hate. If you’re into slow and methodical puzzling, if you’re after a game you can pick up for a few minutes or a few hours, if you want to be challenged in a fair and gradual manner, The Sojourn will likely appeal to you. If the sound of that doesn’t grasp you however, it’s a gamble. You may get past the slow movement as I did, or you may not. You may enjoy the themes and aesthetic, or you may not. For its target audience, I believe this is a fantastic game, and encourage anybody reading to at least check it out. You might just find something new to love. 

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/fire-emblem-three-houses.1111/

Fire Emblem is a series I hold quite close to my heart. Starting with Shadow Dragon on the DS and jumping between the other titles ever since, the combination of strategy, dice rolling, character development, and brilliant writing has enthralled me in a way other games simply can’t mimic. Though it’s undoubtedly had its ups and downs, I picked up Three Houses in hope it might inspire another generation of fans in the same way Awakening once did, and in that respect, it certainly didn’t disappoint.

For those of you not familiar with the larger series, Fire Emblem is known for its strategic turn-based battles and the accompanying stories of war, betrayal, and more often than not, dragons. Where it stands out for me personally is in its limited resources; be it experience, gold, or weapon durability, you’re constantly having to plan out who kills what, with which weapon, and how you’re going to be managing five chapters later. It’s in linearity this balance truly shines, giving decisions a sense of finality and consequence, forcing you to adapt as you realise piling all your resources into a healer because you really wanted her to be a swordsman may not have been the best idea.

As the series has evolved, so too has this formula, adjusting the limitations I’m so fond of in ways as to make the game more accessible through optional extras. Implementing open worlds to be moved through and bonus battles to be fought for extra experience and money, it fuelled players intent on maxing stats and destroying difficulty. It’s in this accessibility Fire Emblem found new life on the 3DS, and for that I’ll forever be grateful, but in these options I felt the series had lost something along the way. Where a player can grind, they will grind. Where a player can have a team with a lot of big numbers, they’ll put in time to have it. In having these options, I’ve historically found myself using them—often to the point of prematurely burning myself out. Coming into Three Houses with very little knowledge, this was perhaps my most significant cause for concern. With, as the title may suggest, three houses to side with, and three paths to explore, burning out before seeing all the game had to offer seemed an inevitability.

Getting Started

After passing the initial fanfare of difficulty selection, cutscenes, and scene setting, you’re whisked into battle to assist three young nobles being pursued by bandits. Basics learned and bandits wiped out, they’re properly introduced to you as the upcoming rulers of the game’s three major powers: the Adrestian Empire, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the Leicester Alliance. Accompanying them back to the officer’s academy at Garreg Mach Monastery, you’re soon roped in by the church’s archbishop Rhea to stay as a professor and guide one of the academy’s three houses, and it’s here the game really begins.

The basic gameplay cycle can be broken down into months. At the start of the month, you’ll get a mission. These missions start out simple in exterminating bandits and the like, but as the story escalates, so too do the manner of mission you take on. These are the key events that move the story forwards, comparable to the traditional chapters of your average Fire Emblem game. Regardless of the house you chose, the first half of the game shares common missions, with the game branching out in completely different directions when the second half begins and things really start kicking off. If you’re to judge the game on these maps alone, in both their design and the story told to connect them, I believe you already have the workings of a good game—a good game however, and nothing more.

The story is something I want to keep as vague as possible in this review. Instead of talking about the events themselves, I find it more interesting to look at how it progresses, escalates, twists, warps, and subverts your expectations. In short, it’s fantastic, and among the most enjoyable I’ve played in a Fire Emblem game. The design of the three routes is different to, for example, Fire Emblem Fates. Fates gave the player an introduction to each side of the moral coin and presented them with an informed decision, but even beyond this the structure of the game remained relatively constant. Putting the chapters side by side, you could match up key events, and in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t feel as though your presence made all that much of a difference. Each path had its own set of information revealed to the player, but you’d only find a few unique pieces of information. Three Houses in contrast gives you three bright and fresh-faced characters. They’re each ambitious and glowing in their unique ways. They introduce you to each member of their house, and based on little more than that you’re expected to make what is ultimately the most significant decision in the game. Because you chose your house for its cast of personalities, or even just for its leader, you want them to succeed in an incredibly personal way, almost as if to scream to the rest of the game that you made the right choice and that you stand by it.

Fresh Content

Beyond the main events of the game, a greater entity lurks. Each month, as you might expect, is made up of a number of weeks, with each week following a formula. At the start, you perform your duty as a professor and teach your class. What this equates to is giving bonus experience to chosen skills, allowing you to develop your units outside of battle. If you want an army of Dark Knights by the end of the game, you’ll be training all your units in reason and riding for example. Though each character excels at different things and each have their own optimal end classes, it’s down to you to decide what they’ll become—you can even have an army of healers if you so desire! What you ultimately have is the freedom of Shadow Dragon’s class changing system without the limitations it imposed. As long as you can get a skill to the required level, the sky is the limit. Such freedom does however only go to highlight what limits are in place, these being the few gender-locked classes there are. What this unfortunately means is that there is no female class specialised in the new gauntlet weapon type, and that there’s no male class built to wield both types of magic. There’s nothing stopping you from putting gauntlets on a female Swordmaster, or giving your male Holy Knight some black magic to play with, but with how far the series has come in player choice and opportunities, I find this a shame all the same.

As each week ends and teaching concludes, you’re given free time to do with as you wish. Here you can choose between exploration, battles, lectures, and resting. The latter three are self-explanatory; battles are akin to the additional battles seen in previous games, lectures give separate opportunity for skill growth, and resting skips ahead with a few minor benefits. Of the available options exploring is by far the most interesting, at least for your first playthrough. During this time you’re free to roam the monastery grounds, talking with students for their thoughts on current events, collecting quests to be fulfilled each month, fishing, and even a sharing a pot of tea should you so desire. While actions like talking and fishing can be done to your heart’s content, others are limited to a set number each week based on your professor level. Most of these are directly tied to growth to avoid abuse, such as having a meal with your students to improve their motivation and, in turn, allow them to be taught to more in the coming week’s lecture time. Your professor level improves naturally as you play the game, rewarding you for responding to questions with reasonable answers, taking the time to interact with your students, and completing quests as they arise. On top of giving you more to do in exploring the monastery, your professor level also grants additional battles each week should you decide to forgo exploration. Starting at just one battle a week, it soon becomes two, and when you finally reach the maximum level, you can do up to three. This gives your choice of free time a sense of balance and ultimately transforms it into a resource for you to manage. Battling too much can result in a lack of skill development, but avoiding extra battles altogether can lead to some of your units feeling underdeveloped. It truly feels as though there is no real right or wrong way to play, but for those picking it up and feeling overwhelmed with the choices at hand, the game is kind enough to show you how other players have spent their time for the current week with statistics shown beside each choice. Whether you choose to follow the herd or forge your own path however is up to you.

While fans of the series will feel right at home with the game’s battling system, it definitely isn’t without its own set of notable changes. One of the easier to miss, and perhaps most significant, is the absence of a weapon triangle. In many a modern game, it’s established that swords beat axes, axes beat lances, and lances beat swords, this reinforced with bonuses to the unit with the advantage. In Three Houses, the field is an even one. Personally, I think this is fantastic, removing a component of team composition that at times serves only to shackle you into specific classes. Each weapon type still comes with its own set of pros and cons; axes do a lot of damage with bad hit rate, swords have a good hit rate with middling attack, gauntlets even let you strike twice before your opponent can attack, with the caveat you can’t use them while mounted. Teams are now diverse through choice, in oppose to being through a sense of obligation and caution.

A more difficult addition to miss comes in the form of demonic beasts, a boss-type enemy with a few fun twists. First, they’re huge. With normal demonic beasts occupying four tiles in a square and special beasts going even larger, their presence is known. Of course, with size comes more areas to be hit, and to counter that, demonic beasts have two things: barriers and multiple health bars. Barriers are simple; there’s one for each tile it occupies and they require two hits to break, regardless of how much damage you’re doing. While you can just keep breaking one part of its barrier to expose a weak point, you’re encouraged to smash it all, receiving rare bonus items as a reward. As you take down each bar of health, the demonic beast gains new abilities, providing a thrilling rush and a fight much unlike the rest of the series that gets more difficult as you progress through it. As you battle more and more, you begin to form strategies to dismantle their barriers and defeat them in a turn, as to deprive them of their last wind. It’s all satisfying in a way I wouldn’t have expected from the series, providing a frequent boss-killing buzz in bitesize portions.

If you’ve not played the game, you may think these one turn strategies require a small army to execute—four barriers to break, each with up to two health. One of the things I love about Three Houses is how each new feature seems to tie in with another. Roll on battalions! Once again new to the series, each unit can now equip a battalion to join them in battle. Each one provides small stat boosts to the unit they’re assigned to, and if you zoom the camera in, you can actually see them following behind. The biggest thing they bring to the table however, are gambits. Gambits are limited use special attacks that do damage over a number of tiles, accompanied by a unique effect. Some push enemies back, some set tiles on fire for environmental damage, others poison enemies, but the key part for the avid beast slayers among us is that they hit a number of tiles. With the right battalions assigned, you can dismantle a fully-functioning barrier with just two attacks! On top of this, enemies are unable to retaliate when attacked with these, allowing you to chip away at stronger foes to push them within range of a kill, especially early on when you’re lacking in firepower.

Alongside your major additions are a few small things of note. Magic has a fresh coat of paint with how it functions, giving the unit a set number of uses for each spell per battle, and new spells being learned as you level up your reason and faith skills. Magic users are incredibly powerful against a good majority of enemies, but the limited spell uses mean they need to be played effectively so as not to waste what little they have. As their library grows, they become mightier and more capable of singlehanded destruction, worrying less about remaining uses with advanced classes doubling how much you can cast.

The last tweak to the formula comes in the form of combat arts, powerful attacks that consume weapon durability to use. Often learned for mastering a class or attaining a new skill level, combat arts provide a huge range of different bonuses. Ranging from a higher critical chance, to extra range for bow users, to effective damage against certain types of foe, you have three slots to decide how to fill, varying greatly from unit to unit. Though they can be overlooked while playing in favour of a more standard approach, I found combat arts invaluable, especially so for bow users where any extra range is appreciated. Like much of what I love about Three Houses, they’re something you can embrace, overlook, or ignore entirely. Again it provides choice with limitation, and even deciding to use them you find yourself debating whether a one round kill is worth losing the additional weapon durability. With a power akin to Mila’s Turnwheel from Shadows of Valentia handy however, you’re also free to experiment in-game. Thanks to a godly power you possess, you’re able to rewind turns a set number of times each battle, pushing you to try for that 40% hit chance kill or that unlikely crit in a brilliantly satisfying way.

There’s so much to keep you interested and occupied as you play, but what stands out to me is how the game rewards you for coming back and playing again. After facing a story’s climax and raising an army for upwards of 30 hours, it can feel a little disheartening to be starting from nothing. Gone is your level 62 Great Knight, gone is the money you were hording because you were worried about running out, gone is your progress—and yet you find yourself tempted back with just enough to feel like your previous efforts are still with you. What you retain in actuality is really rather little: the battalions you’ve collected, the progress you’ve made in levelling up statues that provide you with various benefits, and your renown, something obtained by completing quests and battles. Digging a little deeper however, you find your progress still remains. What’s added for New Game Plus is a new way of spending your renown, allowing you to instantly jump back to your old professor level, and buy back both support rankings and skill levels previously acquired. With this, you’re able to recruit familiar faces to your house almost instantly, and your high professor level from the start means you have more time to develop your students, both in exploring the monastery and in the number of battles you’re able to do per free day. Add to this the mysteries and puzzles yet unsolved and you’re soon drawn in once more, standing by a new face, holding the banner of a new house. It’s a vicious cycle I can only applaud.

As companies go, Razer is an odd one for me. I’ve used a BlackWidow Chroma, one of their earlier RGB keyboards, for almost six years now with my only issue coming from one of its legs breaking off. As keyboards go, I have a preconception of build quality and polish with Razer, to some extent at the cost of style. What was the point of a mechanical keyboard if it didn’t scream gaming after all? Times have moved on, and with the mechanical keyboard becoming more and more common on every type of setup, can Razer put forward a keyboard to cater to a more general audience?

To avoid confusion, the BlackWidow Elite is still very much a gaming keyboard, make no mistake about that. Advertising their proprietary switches for peak precision and performance, remappable keys, and that every key can hide a second function, it has everything in place for a fantastic gaming offering. The keyboard sent for review contains Razer’s Yellow switches, to the best of my knowledge being a close match to your traditional reds. Having come from their Green switches, similar to traditional blues, in my BlackWidow Chroma, it took some getting used to. Gone are the satisfying clicks you best associate with a mechanical keyboard, and in their place, a new and incredibly odd sense of reactivity quite strangely no less satisfying. Where with Greens you would use the switch’s click as feedback the input has been registered, Yellows find themselves triggering before you really realise you want to hit them, at least until you get past the initial culture shock. From my imprecise attempts at measurement, you’re looking at around 2mm of pressing before your input is registered, with the keys having around 5mm of travel distance in total. This was measured with a ruler held to the side of the keys, so the numbers may be slightly off, but I can say with certainty these keys feel remarkably responsive.

Looking at its feature set is an interesting mix. You have your standard RGB lighting, complete with a configuration tool we’ll look at later, you have assignable macros, but notably no specific macro keys, you have Razer’s gaming mode, disabling the windows key when active, and as a nice addition, you have four multimedia buttons, complete with a digital dial. The multimedia buttons in particular stand out to me, giving a really nice overall feel to the keyboard as something more than just gaming, and this idea bleeds into the overall design. To be blunt, the keyboard looks normal. The font used for the keys is slim and pleasant to look at, the bulk of specialised macro keys I’m used to seeing on the Chroma has been cut off, instead opting to store them as additional options accessed when holding the function key. Even the small addition of multimedia options screams everyday use. Instead of looking like an eight year old’s fantasy of what a gamer should use, it looks and feels like a keyboard that wouldn’t be out of place in an office, at a school, or wherever else you might want to take it. Some like the garishness, but I have an appreciation for a more muted and clean design, and Razer really impressed me with this. Another small aspect of appreciation comes from the case’s design. The Chroma’s keys were sunk into the body of the keyboard, this pit acting as a magnet to hairs and dust, the only real means of cleaning being to remove every key. With the keys sat atop the case here, it’s far easier to blow compressed air from the bottom to sweep out all the junk. It’s a small change, but one I appreciate immensely.

With customisation such a large part of these fancy keyboards, it needs to be backed up with an easy to use software solution; no matter how many great options you have, if you can’t figure out how to access them, they’re useless. It should really come as no surprise to say Razer hit it out of the park in this department. Having used their Synapse software in the past with my previous keyboard, everything functioned simply and exactly as I was used to. By selecting the keyboard tab and entering Chroma Studio, you’re presented with an incredibly easy to use interface.

What you have is a clear visual representation of your keyboard’s lighting. This image is updated in real time with key presses or fancy features as they’re happening; in the screenshot above you can see the Alt key is a different colour because I was holding it to take the picture. My setup for the keyboard is quite a simple one, being fond of block colours. I have effects layered so to give most of the keyboard set colours, and for them to briefly turn white when hit so as to allow me to see if I happen to mishit a key. Aside from this, I have my multimedia keys changing colour depending on how loud the currently playing audio is, really just because it seemed like an amusing feature. Effects are layered like in image editing software, with effects on top given higher priority. For the effect I’m using, I have the flat colours as a static layer, with a reactive white layer blanketing the entire keyboard. If you’re a little more adventurous than myself, there’s a lot to play with, most of which being animated or reactive. By far the most bizarre of these is ambient awareness, attempting to change the lighting on your keyboard in real time to match the contents of your screen. It isn’t perfect and doesn’t work fantastically when using the keyboard for day to day activities, but in-game where colours are vibrant and varied, it works really nicely as a base layer to be built upon. A small but important thing to mention with these customisations is that you can store up to four layouts on the keyboard’s on-board memory. You do unfortunately still require Synapse installed on other systems to access them, but it makes transferring settings far simpler than it previously has been.

A few minor additions worth a brief mention are the magnetic wrist rest and a cable routing quirk. The wrist rest sits comfortably on the front of the unit and holds itself in place with in-built magnets. It’s the kind of thing you put down and don’t notice, and I say that in the best possible way. It takes up minimal space, and provides apt support that just lets you carry on typing with very little wear. The cable routing is as simple as having grooves under the keyboard, and three holes for the wire to escape from. This means you can have your keyboard wire extending from the back, the top-left, or the top-right, depending on your particular needs. It’s something I’d have never thought of, and something I’d never really look for in a keyboard, but such flexibility is nice all the same. Anything to limit a mess of wires is a positive in my book.

All in all, I struggle to find fault in Razer’s BlackWidow Elite. An unquestionable step up from their original BlackWidow Chroma, it’s a sleek gaming keyboard with an ample feature set, available in both UK and US layouts, as well as Razer’s own Green, Orange, and Yellow switches. Its only real limiting factor for me is its price; at £169.99, it isn’t the kind of thing you can really buy on a whim. If you can get past the cost however, you’ll have a quality keyboard built to last.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/steelseries-arctis-7-wireless-gaming-headset.1098/

Newton’s forgotten law of physics: where there is a product, there is a gaming product. Be it flashy RGB lighting, an interesting choice of font, or a garish pointy design, a gaming product is noticeable. It’s made to stand out in an often style over substance manner; it’s made to catch the eye, to draw people in, and it often works. I like many a modern gamesperson have my fair share of fancily lit goodness surrounding me, but sometimes a gaming product is more. Sometimes it fills a legitimate role, sometimes you find a product like SteelSeries’ Arctis 7 headset.

At first glance, you might think the Arctis 7 somewhat plain. You have two matte black ear cups held together by a similarly black plastic frame. Each cup is adorned with the SteelSeries logo, and the frame has a strip of adjustable elastic for your head to press against, alleviating any discomfort you may otherwise have with a standard plastic frame. Looking at the ear cups themselves, on the left you have a retractable microphone, as well as the volume dial and a few ports for charging and connecting the headset to devices via a 3.5mm jack, and of course a button to mute the mic. The right is a little less cluttered, housing only the power button and a dial to balance audio between two tracks. More or less, that’s everything. They don’t look particularly flashy, there’s no RGBs, and there’s nothing pointy; they’re not even neon green! They lack the flair you might expect, and yet I can’t help but find that a good thing. From a design standpoint, they’re just headphones. They look refined, they look clean, and despite the plastic casing, they look and feel like a premium product.

Putting them on for the first time was an interesting experience. My head isn’t overly large, to the best of my knowledge at least, but plastic frames worry me. I worry they’re brittle, I worry I might put them on to hear an unfortunate snap. As somebody most acquainted with whatever I can find for as little money as I can spend, these fears are often justified. Having a play with these, at the very least I feel secure. My head resting on the elastic strip and the cups cushioned with some kind of comfortable fabric material, they feel really quite nice to wear. Even putting them over my glasses, they sit well, allowing me to use them for hours on end with no real kind of drawback. I’ve pulled at them a fair bit to see just how flexible they are for those more endowed in the head department than myself, and I’m quite impressed. They aren’t something you’ll break without putting real effort in, the plastic frame adjusting nicely to my bending and stretching.

Despite lacking your typical gaming trademarks, it’s here where the Arctis 7 really does shine. To put it simply, everything sounds as it should; no particular aspect felt enhanced or overemphasised. This normalcy is exactly what I want, especially when it comes to games. Earphones I’ve used previously have been hit and miss, my most significant irritation being a focus on bass and the efforts to enhance it to varying degrees of success. I don’t think you’ll be surprised putting these on. There’s nothing to stand out and really take your breath away, it’s just the sound you expect to hear wirelessly in your ear, and that’s fine. Thanks to the 2.4 GHz wireless transmitter, latency is all but unnoticeable. Jumping from Super Smash Bros Ultimate, to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, to Detroit on the PS4, and even watching films on my laptop, I noticed no discrepancies. Lips were synced, smashes were satisfying, even jumping on Taiko I was hitting the notes to the same degree my ability would dictate.

Connecting the headset to your system of choice ranges from plug and play to plug a few things in and play; it’s simple, but not entirely intuitive in places. On a Windows PC, you plug in the dongle, let it do its automatic setup, and you’re done. You can turn on the headset to find it already paired to the dongle, and two audio channels visible in Windows, one for game audio, and one for voice chat. Of course, you aren’t limited to just these. With them being two plain audio channels, you can put any programs you want onto any channel and balance them at your will. For people who stream games and like to watch videos when they’re live, this dual channel setup can be utilised to keep all the miscellaneous video audio to your ears only, assuming you setup your software of choice to only take audio from the game channel. For consoles, it’s a little bit of a mixed bag, but even at its worst it isn’t necessarily complex. With a PS4, it’s as easy as Windows; plug and play. It’s detected as a headset when you plug in the dongle, and you’re good to go. The Switch, on the other hand, was a little irritating. Under compatibility on the Arctis 7 product page, it lists the Switch as compatible with wireless usage via USB in docked mode—technically speaking this much is true. You plug the dongle into the dock for power. What it fails to specify is that the Switch won’t detect it as a USB audio device. Instead, you’ll need to pick up a male to male 3.5mm wire and plug it into the Switch and the dongle. This wire is oddly not included with the headset. Once you’ve plugged in these extra cables, it works as you’d expect; I might add you can do the same with any device assuming the dongle is powered. As a general feature, it’s great, but I’d have preferred it a little better explained when it came to the compatibility listing, and including a 3.5mm wire would obviously have been ideal.

I like my audio to be clear and accurate, but for those wanting a little more control, SteelSeries Engine 3 has you covered. With this software, you can get down and dirty to get the sound just right for you, with options including bass enhancement, dialogue enhancement, and a standard-looking equalizer. As you fiddle with the settings your changes are previewed, allowing you to quickly get things as you like them with your audio playing in the background. You can save a seemingly-unlimited number of configurations, and even set them to enable on the launch of specific applications. Got a preferred sound for films? Enable it when you launch Media Player Classic. Really want to feel your engine revving in your sports racing game of choice? Get a config setup and launch it with the game. The software is really quite sleek and simple to use, and a nice thing to note is that these changes seem to save to the wireless dongle. Obviously you shouldn’t expect it to start switching between your configs, but if you want an unreasonable amount of bass to accompany your nightly Fire Emblem session, you’ll be good to go. With this seemingly saving to the dongle however, none of these changes are carried over should you decide to use the headset in a wired capacity. That being said, I think the standard setup is fantastic.

The microphone is attached to the left ear cup and easily retracts when not in use. You also have a button to toggle whether it’s muted, this visualised by a red light on the microphone itself. This design works nicely in letting you easily see its status without having to fiddle or keep hitting buttons asking whether the person on the other end can hear you. Spending some time talking with Chary over Discord, she could hear me clearly and even questioned whether I was using this headset or my standalone Blue Snowball.

The Arctis 7 succeeds in every essential area for a gaming headset, but it’s in this focus a more generalist buyer may be put off. The lack of both noise cancelling and isolation are in my opinion its two greatest flaws. These aren’t headphones I’d be comfortable wearing on a bus or train, not for the detracted microphone still slightly visible, but for the fear of being a nuisance to those around me. It’s as though you have two speakers next to your ears, which is obviously true, but I’m at a loss as to how better describe it. Aside from this, the headset also lacks Bluetooth connectivity, relying solely on its 2.4 GHz dongle for wireless and the option for a more widely compatible 3.5mm wired connection for those lacking the required USB port.