The key addition in this update is the “Hunter” class, which equips players with a recurve bow and throwing knives, adding a new dynamic to the game’s combat system. Alongside this, the update brings in “Sunless Keep,” a new procedurally generated battleground that expands the game’s environment. Additionally, players can explore new tarot cards, further enhancing the game’s roguelike mechanics.

For those unfamiliar with The Light Brigade, the game places players in the role of humanity’s last line of defense against an encroaching darkness. The gameplay is a mix of physics-based gunplay and light-powered magic, challenging players to navigate ruins, free trapped souls, and master their abilities to restore the world.

The update reflects well on Funktronic Labs’ commitment to providing ongoing support and enhancements to The Light Brigade, enriching the player experience with new content and improvements.

Key features of the update include:

• Improved display resolution, increased by approximately 30%.
• Support for a high refresh rate of 90Hz.
• Enhanced ambient lighting within buildings, particularly from stained glass windows.
• More complex reflective surfaces for realistic visuals.
• Addition of shadows cast by enemies, enhancing the overall immersive experience.
• New intricate floor patterns and high-quality materials.
• Other technical improvements to optimize gameplay.

The update focuses on delivering a visually richer environment, with particular emphasis on lighting and reflections. The first chapter to receive these enhancements is Purgatory, with more updates planned for release in 2024.

If you haven’t seen our review of In Death: Unchained, you can watch it here:

In Death: Unchained has undergone nearly 60 updates since its launch in 2020. These updates have included new game modes, seasons, tournaments, weapon skins, and graphic upgrades. The game challenges players to use their focus, speed, and agility to defeat enemies in a medieval fantasy setting.

Fans of YUKI can look forward to a more dynamic and immersive gaming experience, thanks to the introduction of MRcade mode. This new mode aims to significantly extend the player’s range of movements, requiring mastery of body movement and tactical mobility to effectively deal with new threats that can now approach from virtually any angle. In this new mixed reality layer, obstacles and enemies enter the player’s room, coming from all directions—up, down, front, and back.

YUKI, already a blend of bullet hell and roguelike elements, will introduce MRcade Mode as a free update to those who own the base game. Currently available for $19.99 USD or EUR, the base game has already garnered a strong fan following, which is likely to expand with the addition of this cutting-edge feature.

Enhanced Gameplay Experience

MRcade mode challenges players to battle an alien invasion within their own living spaces, transforming their homes into cosmic battlefields. Using their hands, players can punch enemies and navigate around an array of bullets and obstacles. With 360-degree spatial awareness, the mode aims to create a more engaging and strategically demanding gameplay experience.

Additional Modes

Beyond the MRcade mode, YUKI offers two additional gameplay modes:

• Patrol Mode: This story-driven mode immerses players into the whimsical imagination of a child flying through multi-dimensional worlds. Players can collect power-ups to strengthen their avatar as new levels introduce more surprises.
• Endless Mode: Designed for those who seek relentless action, this mode features never-ending hordes of enemies. Players strive to achieve higher and higher scores to claim a spot on the Global Leaderboard.

YUKI’s Creative Director, Kako, expressed excitement over the release of MRcade Mode, stating that 360-degree gameplay was a dream the development team had harbored since 2020. According to Kako, the new MRcade mode is a fresh approach to YUKI, enabling players to experience the game in their own spaces like never before.

About ARVORE

Established as a force in the XR industry, ARVORE has earned several accolades for its work, including a 2020 Primetime Emmy Award and the 2023 Best VR/XR Game Award at BIG Festival. The studio is known for other successful projects like ‘The Line’, and the ‘Pixel Ripped’ series.

Availability

YUKI’s MRcade Mode will be available for download from the Meta Quest Store beginning October 12.

A few weeks ago, nDreams gave us and other press outlets and YouTube channels a chance to play a demo of it, and we covered that, but it was short and did little but make us all collectively froth at the mouth and wait patiently for the final launch build. Now that it’s here, I can set your mind at ease; it’s a joy to play. 

The narrative conceit behind Synapse is, as I’ve said before in my preview video, lifted straight out of Christopher Nolan’s Inception. You are a recruit tasked with saving lives by infiltrating a rogue colonel’s mind and fighting past his mental defenses to find out where he’s planted a bomb so you can thwart his plans. Consider this the Inception VR game that could’ve happened in some alternative reality where video game adaptations of movies were actually cool. 

Neural Networks

With this narrative firmly in place, the player goes through the mostly monochromatic levels of the game, fighting off tougher and tougher enemies as they drill down into the colonel’s preconscious, his conscious, and finally, his subconscious mind.

You’re equipped with a starting pistol, and some very basic telekinesis at the start, you can throw inanimate objects around the map, crush enemies with big cubes, or grab exploding barrels gently to move them around and then crush them for a very satisfying explosion.

The game also allows you to level up, both across runs and within runs. Completing certain achievements, called Revelations, awards you with Insight points that you can use to unlock permanent upgrades on a skill tree, divided into three branches; Tactician, Assassin, and Survivor. 

Within each run, you get access to temporary mods called Mind Hacks, these are quite inventive; one gives your bullets a bounce, another turns your last one or two shots in a cartridge into grenades, etc.

Synapse is built around making you feel like a badass and providing you with enemies that challenge that badassery so you don’t get complacent no matter how powerful you’ve become.

Retinal Resplendence

There are no two ways about it; Synapse is a looker. The monochromatic art style looks fantastic on PSVR2 and is excellently infused with orange, red, pink, and purple highlights that flawlessly draw your attention to the gunplay and telekinesis. The levels themselves are well-designed, providing ample opportunities for mobility without ever feeling lost. You also have a scanner inside your left palm, that you can glance at anytime. It’ll show you where the enemies are and, once upgraded, where the health fonts are as well. 

Everything about Synapse is polished, stylish, and elegant; the user interface, the levels, the icons, right down to the font choices. Everything about the game screams polish, and the art team at nDreams deserves massive kudos for what they’ve done here.

Echoes of the Mind

Not to be outshined, the audio in Synapse is superb. The audio design is excellent, from the general soundscapes and UX interactions down to the sound design of the weapons, gunfire, and explosions. Everything feels meaty and full, and if that weren’t enough, the game has landed two of the best voice talents available, with Jennifer Hale voicing your handler and David Hayter voicing the Colonel. As the game progresses, you hear memories of conversations between the two, revealing more of the narrative context, seeing what drives the Colonel, and revealing some uncomfortable history regarding your handler. 

Feel the Feedback

Synapse also does a magnificent job justifying its existence as a PSVR2 exclusive, making substantial use of the PSVR’s adaptive triggers and headset haptic. Pushing the triggers gently to move an exploding barrel and then tightening your grip to blow it up is a pleasure every single time you do it. When enemies shoot at you the rumble in your headset not only alerts you to being shot but helps provide directionality, helping you pinpoint the direction of your assailant. Pulling armor off the larger enemies to make them vulnerable to your bullets is a truly immersive, satisfying experience, both empowering you and making you really feel like you’re pulling hard to take that damn armor off.

Even the PSVR’s eye tracking is put to use, making the UI interactions incredibly fluid and intuitive, as well as enhancing the accuracy of your telekinesis. Synapse is designed to take advantage of the PSVR’s unique features, and it shows. 

Perpetual Pathways

The only real criticism of Synapse, and this can almost be considered praise, is that, as with most VR roguelikes, its longevity is questionable, and I want MORE of it..much more. 

Your run through the Colonel’s mind takes place across 9 levels To their credit, nDreams have used a clever narrative device, which I won’t spoil, to provide you with enough impetus to want to finish at least three runs, since it’s only really then that the full story is revealed to you.

So, although the gameplay in Synapse loops back with greater difficulty, as most roguelikes do, the narrative itself carries forward across those three runs, making each run narratively, if not mechanically unique, and giving you a compelling reason to play through at least two more runs after you’ve finished your first. Overall, and taking that into consideration, the game should take you around 10-12 hours to complete, given that you’ll more likely than not die a few times. 

We tried to ask about any plans for upcoming add-ons or DLCs, but if nDreams have any post-launch plans, they’re keeping them close to their chest, so we’ll have to wait, hope, and see. 

Neural Nirvana

In case the review hasn’t made it abundantly clear by now, Synapse is an incredibly well-built VR action game for PSVR2, and a ridiculously easy game to recommend to any action or shooter fans who have a PSVR2. With incredible visuals, delicious use of the PSVR2’s special features, and gameplay that makes you feel like a badass mercenary with Jedi powers, the perfect polish of the UI is just the icing on the cake.

When Joy Way announced Dead Hook, our ears dutifully perked up in attention. Ever since we played Stride, it’s been hard to shake the conviction that Joy Way have their finger on the pulse when it comes to fantastic VR traversal. This was further cemented when we played the somewhat ill-fated Outlier on PCVR, a game that had great promise but eventually disappeared. An early beta of it was briefly made available on Quest, and from the ashes of that project, Dead Hook rose, much like a phoenix, if that phoenix was dual-wielding futuristic sci-fi weapons and blades and was drenched in the blood of its demonic enemies.

You’ve Got Me Hooked

The star of the show here, as with most Joy Way titles, is the fantastically fluid traversal system. You have two grapple hooks, one per hand, which you can shoot out with the A and X buttons. You can use both together or one at a time, and the physics work as you’d expect, making the swinging and the movement remarkably intuitive. You’ll get the hang of it straight away, pulling on the chains to propel yourself forward, relaxing them to swing, and anchoring one while letting go of the other to arc through the arenas. The movement is glorious.

Call Me Akimbo

Whereas the grapple hooks help give Dead Hook some of its uniqueness, the game is a shooter through and through. I can almost say, knowing full well that Doc hates these genre-describing shortcuts, that Dead Hook feels like somebody put Swarm and Doom into a blender, set it to ‘roguelike’, and watched as Dead Hook rose to its feet, powered by metal and vengeance. Dead Hook offers a decent variety of weapons, including semi-automatic pistols, rocket launchers, shotguns, and plasma guns, to name a few, all of which are upgradeable. Although they don’t have any alternative fire options and the upgrades mostly make them more powerful but not inherently different, the weapon models are good, the gunplay is satisfying, and the weapons each pack their own distinct punch.

Upon completing a level, you unlock a chest at its center containing either a weapon, a perk, or a buff. Here, Dead Hook is a bit sadistic since some levels contain only buffs, and you’re forced to pick whichever you think will be the least damaging. 

Devil’s in the Details

The killing mechanics in Dead Hook have been tweaked to provide a magnificent murderous flow to the combat. Once you’ve weakened an enemy sufficiently, they glow white, showing their vulnerability. This is your chance to grapple straight into them, shredding them to pieces. This also happens in slow motion, giving you the chance to re-target your weapons onto the next victim, set them glowing to grapple into them, building up a chain of shoot, grapple, shatter, shoot, grapple, shoot, grapple, destroy when you can dash around the arena like a madman, leaving disembodied enemies in your wake.

You also have blades that are set into your arms, and once you’ve built up enough kills, those can be unleashed, allowing you to cross your arms while targeting enemies and sending you flying and slashing into them. Again, this allows for a chain of kills and always feels rewarding.

Dressed for Death

Dead Hook‘s visuals aren’t mind-blowing, but they are appealing. It boasts a graphical style that suits the theme, works well for Quest, and, more importantly, allows the game to operate at a breakneck pace, never once stuttering or juddering during the intense action. The environments are good-looking, and they get better as you get farther in, but their design does more for the game than their looks, allowing for real three-dimensional maneuvering, traversal, and combat. 

Bang Your Head

Had the review copy of Dead Hook that we got before launch not included a glitch that stopped the audio at some point during a certain level, I might not have appreciated just how much of a role the game’s music played in driving the action and the player forward. Don’t worry; I was told by Joy Way that they’re aware of the glitch and that it’ll be fixed in a day-one patch. So chances are, you’ll never encounter it. The sound design of the game is generally great, but it’s the pumping soundtrack accompanying the action that sets the mood of the game and keeps you swinging and shredding. 

Trouble in Hell

Okay, now for the gripes. 

Despite the incredible attention paid to the core mechanics, Dead Hook has some minor UI and UX issues that make it feel a bit unpolished. A typo here and there that I’m assured will be fixed, poor weapon upgrade animations, and text that sometimes overflows past the box it’s set in. None of these issues impact the gameplay at all, and all of them can easily be patched if they haven’t been already by the time you see this review.

The greatest weaknesses of the game are twofold: a lack of enemy variety and poor boss fights. The enemies are mostly the same across the first ten levels, and the enemies you meet, after you defeat the first boss, are mostly the same, with a couple of additions, except they’re stronger and colored differently. I wish it had more enemies, but again, although the variety is weak, you’ll be too busy shooting and slashing through to mind too much. 

But the first boss battle, for example, is simply dull. The first boss isn’t nimble and has no real moves, and although the game describes them as having ‘multiple phases’, the phases don’t amount to much. The first boss is a huge bullet sponge, tedious but not exciting to fight, and hardly rewarding to witness or satisfying to fight or defeat.

Hell Blast

Still, despite my desire for far better boss battles, a greater variety of enemies, and finer UI polish, Dead Hook is easy to recommend for action fans with robust VR legs who want some good old-fashioned mayhem with unique traversal and a few twists. It’s packed to the brim with adrenaline and is being offered at a very fair price. If this is your kind of game, you’ll have an absolute blast.

The Light Brigade has balls. It has great big balls. Its balls are so big that developers Funktronic have set the review embargo to one week before launch! It’s a gutsy move, for sure, and definitely shows their confidence in the game. Well, they were right to feel confident, because The Light Brigade is fantastic.

Okay. So now, let’s see how much I can tell you about it without spoiling any of it for you.

Into the Valley of Death

Like its now only rival on Quest, In Death: Unchained, The Light Brigade is a roguelike game offering a great atmosphere, solid graphics, and great sound design. Unlike In Death: Unchained – you don’t have a bow and arrow, you have guns. Several kinds of guns. Fun guns. Great sounding guns. Guns that go bam, guns that go kabam, and guns that go thwoop! Did I mention that the guns are fun? They are. The guns are fun, they handle really well, and they sound great. 

So here’s the thing, humanity has been brought down into the darkness by the forces of evil! You are humanity’s only hope, Connor, and you have to travel through the battlegrounds, killing the bad guys, defeating their bosses, freeing other Light Brigadiers, and unlocking upgrades and perks as you play, because upgrades and perks are COOL.

You’re not named Connor, by the way, that was just a joke, Sarah. 

Flashed all their Sabres Bare

The Light Brigade does a lot of things right. A whole bunch of things. There’s rightness galore here, and I’ll tell you about it right now. It’s not without a couple of small faults, but more on those later. None of them are showstoppers. Anyway, on to the good stuff: 

The gameplay in The Light Brigade is superb. The weapon handling is excellent, and the reloading is streamlined and satisfying. The game provides both smooth locomotion and teleport locomotion for quicker traversal, and, unlike in In Death Unchained, you have six different character classes to play. Each character class is equipped with its own main weapon, dramatically changing how you go about taking them down, what kind of range you’re shooting from, and how much you need to resort to using cover. 

Along the way, you’ll find containers to open and jars to break, usually rewarding you with souls, coins, ammo, grenades, or weapon attachments. You’ll also find glowing chests that give you a choice of tarot cards, each unlocking certain stackable perks. These tarot perks can be remarkably effective. 

With some good weapons attachments and some clever tarot perks, you can become a nigh-unstoppable killing machine.  

All the World Wondered

There’s a good variety of environments on display here, and the levels themselves and the enemy variety and their starting locations are procedurally generated, so you always get a somewhat different playthrough every time you play. So far, so roguelike. 

I must commend the game on the atmospheric art design. Sure, some of it, the fogginess, for example, is there to help ye poor Quest handle the draw distances without too much popup, etc. – but it works well with the mood of the game, enhancing the ominous tone that the game sets in place from the very start when you approach the mysterious Last Temple and are beckoned by the figure known only as ‘Mother’ to pray with her before setting off to save the world from the baddies. 

The art direction is generally top-notch. It plays to the Quest’s strengths, looks good, and creates excellent immersion. 

One of the first things that impressed me about The Light Brigade was the sound design. Everything you do makes a satisfying sound that makes everything in the game feel palpable.

The game is also rich in little graphical flourishes that show off the care and attention put into it, from the tarot cards with their 2.5D holographic presentation to the particle effects that explode when you shatter a soul container to heal yourself and increase your maximum health. 

The Jaws of Death

In case you haven’t realized by now, I was blown away by The Light Brigade, right from the get-go, and have only been stepping away from it lately to play co-op sessions of Drop Dead: The Cabin with Pete while he prepares his review of that game.

Overall, I’ve played around 12 hours of the game so far, during that time, I’ve managed to unlock all the classes, complete two full runs, and unlocked quite a few upgrades. You’ll be glad to know that throughout that time, the game still managed to surprise me on occasion, throwing a few new enemy types and variants into the mix, and a couple of GASP! moments just to keep me on my toes.

I was also pleased that the bosses all required different strategies to beat. One of the few disappointments in In Death: Unchained was that all the bosses could be defeated with spam attacks. This is not the case in The Light Brigade.

One extra nice feature and sometimes absent in roguelike games is that you can continue a run across different gaming sessions. It’ll autosave between levels, and you can quit the game at any time and come back to start whichever level you were on, mid-run.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, and to add some value to the mix, there is an endless run mode, but I won’t tell you where to find it.

Horse and Hero Fell

There’s not much to complain about with The Light Brigade, but there are a couple of niggles. The load times between levels could be improved, they usually load up in 7–11 seconds, but a confirmed glitch sometimes caused this time to double, leading to potentially frustrating pauses between levels. Having said that, I’ve experienced this far less often lately, so for all I know, it’s already been fixed. 

Another minor complaint is that sometimes you need your controllers to be so physically close to reload your pistols that they end up bumping against each other. There’s also a minor graphical glitch in one of the later levels where the floor isn’t quite set perfectly and, if you’re in the wrong spot, ends up aligned with your chest.

But these are minor issues and did not at all detract from my enjoyment of the game. I’m just noting them so that you’re aware of them, and to inform Funktronic about them so that they can patch them up as soon as possible.

I almost forgot my biggest complaint, although the game isn’t small, I wanted more of it!

Back from the Mouth of Hell

The Light Brigade is easily one of the best games I’ve played on Quest, and an easy game to recommend to fans of roguelike games and shooters alike. With atmospheric visuals and excellent sound design, a good variety of levels, and boss battles that are engaging, it quickly raises itself to the higher echelons of Quest games. Color me impressed. 

With the Sci-Fi shooter market already bulging at the seams, does Sweet Surrender have what it takes to blast the heads off its competition? Or will it be the latest victim of Perma-Death? 

Lock and load everybody. It’s time to find out. 

THE GENTLE ART OF PEW-PEW

Roguelikes like Sweet Surrender offer a theoretically endless gameplay loop as core elements and enemies are randomly generated and populated from one run to the next. The theory is that the uniqueness of each run maintains a freshness that will keep players coming back. Essentially, roguelikes give you a basic premise that that should get you hooked, then they shuffle their components every time to keep you hooked.

And I, for one, love them. Usually…

Sweet Surrender has all the composite elements that a roguelike needs, but the execution feels slightly off. It’s the game design equivalent of giving the same recipe and ingredients to a Michelin starred chef and a talented home cook. The latter will undoubtedly serve you something worth trying. Still, when placed next to each other, the differences between the two become stark, and it’s the subtle touches of my allegorical Michelin man that Sweet Surrender lacks.

Good roguelikes tease the player. They coax them back time and time again with the promise of new treasures hidden beyond every run. In Death: Unchained is a perfect example of this; every time you play, you know exactly what’s needed to unlock the next element. This knowledge lets you tailor your run towards achieving the targets required for the specific reward that excites you the most. It lets you know when you’ve unlocked a new achievement, allowing you to bask in self-congratulatory revelry, which subconsciously urges you to jump back in to use your newly earned embellishment.

True to the genre’s classic tropes, Sweet Surrender does away with narrative trappings. Simply boot the game up and breeze through the tutorial, and you’re straight into the action. 

Lovely.

Except for the fact that the tutorial only covers movement and shooting and leaves vital points of progression and gameplay unexplained. No problems, though! All good roguelikes need you to die a little before they reveal their depth and refinement, so best to shake off that mild angst and get a bit of dying out of the way early on!

Right?

Ironically, Sweet Surrender contains some great progression elements but maddeningly keeps them hidden, robbing players of the gaming version of a dangling carrot. In your next run, you might find yourself encountering a new perk or weapon, or you may not. Only the omnipotent overlords at Salmi Games know what awaits you next, and they are holding those cards close to their chests. 

As a player, you simply die and start again.

ROBOTS GONE WILD

Putting aside all roguelike talk, Sweet Surrender is, at its heart, a sci-fi shooter.

The player works their way through a series of randomly generated rooms, blasting an assortment of robotic goons along the way. The game is broken into four distinct subsections, starting in the mines and working your way up to the surface. In each subsection, you are tasked with finding the lift to the next section, clearing rooms of enemies and looting for perks along the way. The game’s pacing is maintained by the ever-present threat of a giant, un-killable robot that will track you down and destroy you if you don’t keep advancing. This keeps the gameplay tightly balanced between pushing forward to the next section and pillaging as much as possible along the way. The risk/reward loop this dynamic is a great way to add tension and is one of the better features of the Sweet Surrender.

Along your way, you will acquire a progressively expanding arsenal of classic sci-fi weaponry, from the obligatory pistols and shotguns to slightly snazzier options like the grenade launcher and sniper rifle. The player can holster larger weapons over the shoulder, smaller weapons by the hips, and grenades and extra health items are stored in four conveniently placed torso slots. Additionally, perks are handled by microchips installed into one of four slots located on the back of the players’ gloves. All this allows the player to customise their playstyle on the fly, based on available materials per run. 

Unfortunately, despite the array of weaponry on offer, the two-handed weapon handling is diabolically poor. From the aggravating placement of the offhand to the way the gun pivots as you aim, there is definitely a fundamental flaw in how this system is implemented. Sadly, it renders these weapons almost unusable. The starting pistol is so surprisingly powerful and well delivered that its strength weakens the progression system. My most successful runs tended to be those where I stuck to the pistol, paired it with the excellent hand shield and bolstered it with perks.

The level design is adequate, with the various procedurally generated rooms staying fresh for a while. However, soon enough, you will have seen every variation on offer, particularly in the first zone. Given that the enemies you encounter are tied to the zones you’re in rather than your rank within the game, the first “Mines” section becomes EXTREMELY tedious far too quickly. There are roughly 6 enemy types available in this first section. After about 2 hours of Sweet Surrender, I found grinding through the first section an absolute chore. 

This tediousness is a pretty big deal when considering that these sections will make up the first 10 minutes of every run. As a result, I found my desire to play the game again dwindled to almost non-existent rather quickly.

OH. HELL. NO

Perma-Death is the one thing that puts off most people who don’t enjoy roguelikes. 

I don’t mind it, as the constant threat of impending doom adds tension to crucial moments that just can’t exist in a game with checkpoints. But one thing that I cannot abide by, which has absolutely NO place in a Perma-Death Loop, is Insta-death. Sweet Surrender commits this most deadly of sins, and, for me at least, it’s a deal-breaker.

Dotted throughout the procedurally generated action at the core of Sweet Surrender are a few innocuous pockets of instantaneous doom, and they are beyond frustrating. There are a few little sections where there is no railing, or a random corner happens to be made of lava. Woe betide the player who inadvertently strafes into one of these. 

Dead. Gone. Restart. Game over. Damn.

Perhaps I’m just a little sensitive because this happened in my final two runs before sitting down to write this. I had an amazing loadout in both runs, was playing well, and had progressed further than ever before. During both runs, I failed to check some corner or another, wandered into superheated doom, and was instantly ejected from the game. I’m sorry, but no thanks. At the very least, alarm me with a red screen and a rapidly diminishing health bar, but to get that far in a game only to have it end abruptly because of a misplaced step is unforgivable.

LOOK MA, JUST HANDS!

Sweet Surrender is the latest in an increasingly long line of games capitalising on the cell-shaded style that the Quest does so well. On par with titles like Yupitergrad, it is well suited to the style but not as impressive as Swarm’s delivery. Sweet Surrender’s graphics are clear and cohesive. It looks good…but not great.

Each section has its own visual flourishes that differentiate it from the others. This goes a long way towards keeping the environments from growing stale. That said, the variations aren’t so stark that they mix the gameplay up much, and that feels like a missed opportunity. Everything works and is more than acceptable, but it’s not going to be the game that you’re telling your friends about.

The sound is initially impressive but ultimately functional. The audio begins to feel old in short enough time. The more ambient walking soundtrack fits well between action sequences, while the faster-paced electro audio elevates the tension when the guns are firing. 

Sweet Surrender’s presentation is perfectly acceptable, but there’s not enough variation. There are only so many times that the same riff can get the blood pumping before one can’t help but think that the rest of the soundtrack is hiding alongside those progression explainers. 

PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW

Sweet Surrender offers an entertaining, albeit flawed, action experience that will no doubt capture the attention of many players, if only for a limited time. Despite containing many of the positive elements of the roguelike genre, it does so without capitalising on the subtleties and nuances that can make the genre so addictive. If you just LOVE sci-fi shooters or just can’t get enough of the genre, then Sweet Surrender is worth looking at. If, however, you only have room on your Quest for the very best, you’d be better off picking up In Death: Unchained or Robo Recall: Unplugged instead.