I grew up on RPGs with turn-based battles, but I don't play them much anymore. Too often, they're designed for quantity over quality, leading to long strings of fights you can grind through on auto-pilot. It's ironic, then, that Star Renegades, which applies the run-based roguelite structure of games like Into the Breach and Dead Cells to a gauntlet of turn-based RPG battles you repeat over and over again, would find a way to reinvigorate them. Tactically taxing and demanding in every moment, Star Renegades makes every turn feel like a new crossroads where the fate of the world (or at least your playthrough) hangs in the balance. Whether it elicits ecstasy or agony, it's always exciting.

The "run" in Star Renegades is a truncated RPG quest. Your party, which begins as a trio and maxes out as a group of six, repels a multiverse-conquering invasion force. Taking a cue from Into The Breach, failing in Star Renegades prompts you to send a robot messenger to the next dimension so it can prepare to defend itself. On the journey, you move your party around world maps, level up, equip weapons and armor, learn bits and pieces about your heroes' backstories, and, of course, fight.

Star Renegades' RPG trappings allow its pixel art aesthetic to shine. In moving back and forth from world map to combat screen, you get to see the vibrant, colorful sci-fi world from both a bird's-eye and ground-level view. With little room for actual narrative, so much of Star Renegades' world and characters is conveyed through its look and feel.

I grew up on RPGs with turn-based battles, but I don't play them much anymore. Too often, they're designed for quantity over quality, leading to long strings of fights you can grind through on auto-pilot. It's ironic, then, that Star Renegades, which applies the run-based roguelite structure of games like Into the Breach and Dead Cells to a gauntlet of turn-based RPG battles you repeat over and over again, would find a way to reinvigorate them. Tactically taxing and demanding in every moment, Star Renegades makes every turn feel like a new crossroads where the fate of the world (or at least your playthrough) hangs in the balance. Whether it elicits ecstasy or agony, it's always exciting.

The "run" in Star Renegades is a truncated RPG quest. Your party, which begins as a trio and maxes out as a group of six, repels a multiverse-conquering invasion force. Taking a cue from Into The Breach, failing in Star Renegades prompts you to send a robot messenger to the next dimension so it can prepare to defend itself. On the journey, you move your party around world maps, level up, equip weapons and armor, learn bits and pieces about your heroes' backstories, and, of course, fight.

Star Renegades' RPG trappings allow its pixel art aesthetic to shine. In moving back and forth from world map to combat screen, you get to see the vibrant, colorful sci-fi world from both a bird's-eye and ground-level view. With little room for actual narrative, so much of Star Renegades' world and characters is conveyed through its look and feel.

Marvel's Avengers is the Incredible Hulk of video games. The rage-filled Avenger and his scientist alter-ego are the same person and yet wholly different from one another, and Avengers is similarly split between two, sometimes diametrically opposed, personalities. One is a single-player story campaign that can be emotional and thoughtful, tuned to bring you into the shoes of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, while also spending time with them as people. The other is a multiplayer-focused live game full of huge levels where you punch all manner of enemies, without many worries as to why. Both sides work in their own way, but they never quite mesh, leaving Marvel's Avengers a somewhat confused, haphazard game--but a fun one, despite all its inner turmoil.

Like the Hulk's mild-mannered counterpart, Bruce Banner, the single-player story campaign of Marvel's Avengers makes a strong first impression with its more thoughtful approach. It's set in its own alternate Marvel Comics universe where the superheroes that make up the Avengers--Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, the Hulk, and Thor--are famous and beloved. You start the game as Kamala Khan, a young girl who's a huge fan of the heroes, when she attends an Avengers celebration called A-Day in San Francisco. Soon, Kamala will become a superhero in her own right, following a terrorist attack and a tragedy that causes the Avengers to disband and spreads superpowers throughout a segment of the population. And while you'll spend time as each of the titular team, the single-player portion of Marvel's Avengers is really Kamala's story, and it works because she provides it a moral and emotional heart.

But this is a superhero game, and that means there are supervillains--and they need punching. The core of Marvel's Avengers is an action-RPG brawler, with you playing a range of characters that deliver beat-downs to Marvel creeps such as Abomination, Taskmaster, and MODOK, as well as their many robotic and human minions. You're treated to a host of moves, which include light and heavy melee strikes, ranged attacks, hero-specific special abilities that have cooldown timers, and extra abilities triggered by using Intrinsic Energy, a resource that generally builds up over time and allows you to activate boosts for damage or defense. Combat in Marvel's Avengers is about stringing together combos and abilities based on the enemies you're facing, with various threats demanding that you kick them into the air to juggle them, break their shields with heavy attacks, or dodge and parry their incoming blows to defeat them.

Marvel's Avengers is the Incredible Hulk of video games. The rage-filled Avenger and his scientist alter-ego are the same person and yet wholly different from one another, and Avengers is similarly split between two, sometimes diametrically opposed, personalities. One is a single-player story campaign that can be emotional and thoughtful, tuned to bring you into the shoes of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, while also spending time with them as people. The other is a multiplayer-focused live game full of huge levels where you punch all manner of enemies, without many worries as to why. Both sides work in their own way, but they never quite mesh, leaving Marvel's Avengers a somewhat confused, haphazard game--but a fun one, despite all its inner turmoil.

Like the Hulk's mild-mannered counterpart, Bruce Banner, the single-player story campaign of Marvel's Avengers makes a strong first impression with its more thoughtful approach. It's set in its own alternate Marvel Comics universe where the superheroes that make up the Avengers--Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, the Hulk, and Thor--are famous and beloved. You start the game as Kamala Khan, a young girl who's a huge fan of the heroes, when she attends an Avengers celebration called A-Day in San Francisco. Soon, Kamala will become a superhero in her own right, following a terrorist attack and a tragedy that causes the Avengers to disband and spreads superpowers throughout a segment of the population. And while you'll spend time as each of the titular team, the single-player portion of Marvel's Avengers is really Kamala's story, and it works because she provides it a moral and emotional heart.

But this is a superhero game, and that means there are supervillains--and they need punching. The core of Marvel's Avengers is an action-RPG brawler, with you playing a range of characters that deliver beat-downs to Marvel creeps such as Abomination, Taskmaster, and MODOK, as well as their many robotic and human minions. You're treated to a host of moves, which include light and heavy melee strikes, ranged attacks, hero-specific special abilities that have cooldown timers, and extra abilities triggered by using Intrinsic Energy, a resource that generally builds up over time and allows you to activate boosts for damage or defense. Combat in Marvel's Avengers is about stringing together combos and abilities based on the enemies you're facing, with various threats demanding that you kick them into the air to juggle them, break their shields with heavy attacks, or dodge and parry their incoming blows to defeat them.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game Complete Edition

Immortals Fenyx Rising

Riders Republic

Rainbow Six: Siege - Sam Fisher

For Honor: Resistance

Just Dance 2021

Far Cry VR

AGOS: A Game of Space

Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp

Ghost Recon Breakpoint: Red Patriot

The Crew 2: The Chase Season 1

Ubisoft has announced Riders Republic, a new open world extreme sports game from Ubisoft Annecy, the studio behind Steep. It's scheduled to arrive for Xbox Series X and S, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, PC and Stadia on February 25, 2021.

Set across seven US national parks and landmarks, stitched together into a seamless open world, Riders Republic will offer five different sports: skiing, snowboarding, downhill biking, wingsuiting and, amazingly, rocket wingsuiting (more on that below). Speaking to IGN, game director Arnaud Ragot explained:

“All of the 7 parks we are featuring in the world are seamlessly connected to each other, there is no frontier of some sort. You can move from one to another seamlessly using any of the sports or vehicles featured. It’s a true open-world that you are totally free to explore at your own pace and your own way. And each of the 7 parks has a unique flavor, travelling the world freely across such varied places creates some awe-inspiring moments.

Each sport will feature a separate career path (with real-life sports brand sponsors to be signed by along the way) and separate progression, with gear unlocked for your customisable avatar through each different activity. With a “light story” along the way, Ragot says, “For each career, you’ll have some important milestones to reach by completing events, like getting invited to participate in famous competitions, like UCI world cup events for bikes. But your goal is to qualify for the most iconic competition of each discipline, like the RedBull Rampage, or the XGames.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/10/riders-republic-cinematic-reveal-trailer"]

“Your ultimate objective is to qualify for the Riders Ridge Invitational, a never seen before multi-sport competition featuring all sports in one single event. Because yes, we can switch sports on the fly in the game.”

Alongside (and tied into) its career mode, Riders Republic will offer 50+ player multiplayer, with PvP, ranked PvP and ‘Tricks Battle Arena’ modes, with the idea being that, wherever you are in the world, you’ll be surrounded by other players. While downhill races and freestyle events for biking and snowboarding are fairly straightforward, Ragot went into more detail on the Tricks Battle Arena events:

“We are super excited about it, and there are intense team play sessions on it at the moment, we are eager for players to discover it! The rules are simple. It’s a 6v6 team game mode, in a special arena somewhere on the map. The goal is simple: the arena is filled with many opportunities to score trick points, like jumps, pipes and rails. All points you score contribute to your team’s global score. And the team with the highest score at the end wins. As I said: simple, right? But there is a twist! The map is organized in districts. If you perform a trick on one of the kickers, you capture it and it turns into the color of your team. If your team capture all the kickers of a district, you own it and you get a super score bonus for a while! That’s why teamplay is super critical to win in this mode.”

Of course, one sport in the line-up is a little less conventional than the rest, and I made sure to ask Ragot to explain how rocket wingsuiting features in the game (and how it’ll differ from conventional wingsuiting). He explained, “We created the rocket wingsuit as a really different and unique experience, complementary to wingsuit. It turns your rider into a kind of pocket plane, so you can expect high-speed flying and total control of your direction while diving down or flying up along slopes. With that you can imagine thrilling experiences like high speed flights across a forest or through rock holes that you’ll find in some regions of the map. And we designed dedicated racing events for this sport. The capacity of the rocket wingsuit to fly up will also make it a perfect tool to free-roam around the world and reach remote destinations.”

Ubisoft won’t be drawn on a few points right now: it promises 60FPS play on next-gen, but hasn’t confirmed that for other platforms, it’s not clear if the game will use PS5’s haptic feedback or adaptive triggers, and a final total number of players in multiplayer has yet to be set, with ‘50+’ as close as we’re getting right now.

Huge thank you to the fans who never shut up about the Scott Pilgrim game, not once, ever, even for one second to let me sleep. This game belongs to you. Now please get out of my house

— Bryan Lee O'Malley (@bryanleeomalley) September 10, 2020

The Assassin's Creed Engine

A Remake, Not a Reboot or Remaster