Star Wars Squadrons is a small look at how good Star Wars games can be in the modern era. I love it, having played roughly a dozen hours between the campaign and multiplayer it is apparent that EA has taken their hands off the wheel and allowed their Motive studio to design a game for gamers with no microtransactions. Squadrons feels much like the space battles in Star Wars Battlefront 2, but with twice as much depth and played entirely in first person. The game features 8 ships divided amongst four classes, and each factions ships function differently from each other despite occupying the same role. In particular, all Imperial fighters, except for the TIE Reaper, lack shields and are thus more susceptible to laser fire but as a trade off, are more maneuverable than their New Republic counterparts and have the ability to activate an emergency transfer of power between weapons and engines allowing them to immediately gain the benefits of diverting power-- a TIE can boost immediately
Vampyr is developer DontNod’s take on the vampire subgenre of RPGs. While DontNod nails quite a lot from combat to its morality system, they take some missteps in writing and exploration that dulls the experience. Combat is slow, but tense. Jonathan has access to a number of pistols, shotguns, bludgeons, stakes, and swords to slay his vampiric brethren and those who hunt them.. Enemies are aggressive and dodging, healing, and counters are important to get them off your back in any encounter. Even basic enemies encountered in the overworld can give Jonathan a challenge, with some being even more powerful than a few of the boss creatures in the game. Some enemies will try to exploit the player’s vampiric weakness to fire and holy relics and will not wait their turn to attack--with some enemy types dedicated to swarming and overwhelming Jonathan. There are two main attack buttons, a regular attack and a special attack button. While wielding one handed weapons, those two buttons cor