There’s little invention or imagination in the open world of Team Ninja’s action-RPG, but its core mechanics set it apart from other games.

It’s the season for samurai when it comes to video games. Medieval Japan is no stranger to video games. From Okami and Onimusha to Tenchu and Total War, the setting has been explored in poetic and powerful ways before. But a few popular games have recently rekindled interest in the sword masters and ninjas. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice established the spirit of modern action games set in Japan’s turbulent past, while Ghost of Tsushima refined the open-world action-adventure genre with a samurai tale.

Team Ninja’s latest action RPG, Rise of the Ronin, released on March 22nd, sits somewhere between these two titles. Set in the late Edo period, the game employs a deep role-playing system and challenging parry-based action combat reminiscent of Sekiro, presenting a vast open-world map littered with checklist activities and distractions. It’s a lot like Ghost of Tsushima, which itself follows the familiar open-world path established by the Assassin’s Creed games. But Rise of the Ronin, a best-of-both-world approach, loses the sanctity of the strong, unforgiving combat language established in Team Ninja’s previous games and fails to bring any new original ideas to the open-world formula.

That’s not to say that Rise of the Ronin doesn’t bring something completely new to the genre. The game’s combat is a good balance of approachability and difficulty, with a variety of melee and ranged weapons and stances to choose from. The companion system encourages you to indulge in side content and bond with your friends. And the accurate period setting gives it a more realistic portrayal of the era compared to other games set in medieval Japan. But despite striking a good, if somewhat shaky, balance between the hard-edged combat and serious systems of old-school games and the ambitious, vast scope of modern open-world titles, Rise of the Ronin can easily get boring.

The story is set in the mid-19th century, during the decline of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a time of great turmoil in Japan, where political and cultural revolutions steered the country in a new direction. Rise of the Ronin begins with the game’s protagonists, the Blade Twins, twin brothers who have grown up and trained together as part of the Veiled Edge resistance movement against the Shogunate. At the start of the game, you can customize the twins’ appearance to your liking and choose their gender, but you will only play as one of the twins, with the other appearing as an ally. An early assassination mission goes wrong, resulting in the loss of your partner.

You then embark on a bloody, decades-long path of revenge that will take you through Yokohama, Edo and Kyoto, navigating the changing political climate of the time. Along the way, you’ll encounter real historical figures who determined the fate of Japan. In Yokohama, the first city you explore in Rise of the Ronin, you’ll befriend Sakamoto Ryoma, a powerful samurai from the end of the Edo period. Join Sakamoto and his friends on a quest against the Shogunate, but you can also choose missions that favor the Shogunate.

The opening of Rise of the Ronin sets you on a path of revenge.

The element of choice remains a key part of Rise of the Ronin’s gameplay. How you approach quests will tilt and shift your loyalties and alter your interactions with people on both sides of the divide. Early in the game, I was faced with the choice of executing a minor antagonist or sparing his life at the end of the mission. I chose the latter, and he ended up becoming a powerful ally, aiding me in future main missions. Rise of the Ronin presents you with several such impactful choices throughout its story, and its narrative structure always feels like a piece of tailoring of its own making.

As you progress, the story branches and your objectives change. What starts as a tale of personal revenge soon becomes an epic tale of political intrigue and national interest across a Japan on the brink of revolution. Your initial adventure in Yokohama and the surrounding area will lead you to Edo (Tokyo’s former name) and Kyoto as you absorb allies and turn the pages of Japanese history. The setting is fascinating, but the meaty story, which spans years and involves dozens of major and minor players, suffers a bit under its weight. Like most RPGs, Rise of the Ronin approaches storytelling with a light touch, lacking the emotional thrust and narrative structure of character-driven action-adventure titles like Ghost of Tsushima.

Yokohama is the first city you’ll explore in Rise of the Ronin.

The main campaign is no cakewalk either. It can take 20+ hours to complete, with at least another 20 for side quests, activities, and exploration. Even if you focus solely on the main quest (and you probably won’t), it’s not that hard to lose track of what’s going on. There are multiple factions, side characters, allies, and enemies, all competing for your loyalty and attention. But over time, they all blend into one mass of exposition-guzzling NPCs, with only a few memorable standout characters. It also doesn’t help that the side quests remain poor throughout the game. The game map is littered with icons promising things to do soon, in true Ubisoft style, but these missions and activities don’t bring anything fresh to the formula.

While Rise of the Ronin is lacking in terms of story, it is packed with mechanics. From weapon variety, combat stances, and an extensive skill tree to a deep bond system, gear bonuses, and soul-like inspiration, the game is packed with so much that it often feels overwhelming. Much of how the game plays and feels is similar to Sekiro : Shadows Die Twice, but without the crushing difficulty and complexity of the combat. Team Ninja’s games are known for their uncompromisingly tough combat. The company’s Nioh games and more recently Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty were firmly rooted in the Soulsborne ethos with their tough combat and complex level design. Rise of the Ronin opens that door by making combat much more accessible by implementing one-button combos, a forgiving parry window, and a wide variety of weapons and skills for every situation. The open-world design also brings it closer to modern action-adventure titles, allowing you to always turn around and explore in another direction even when you come across a difficult obstacle.

Rise of the Ronin’s open world gives you the freedom to explore beyond the main story.

Let’s jump into the combat. The masochistic difficulty of previous Team Ninja games has been wiped away, but it’s still pretty challenging. There are three sets of multiple stances for each weapon type, all of which are effective against certain enemies. The combat moveset is simple, with a single attack button to launch into combos, but the sheer number of weapon types at your disposal creates confusion. Though the controls are the same, the versatility of the Uchigatana is quite different from the speciality of the spear. The careful, blunt swings of the Odachi are a far cry from the agile swings of the Dual Blades. And the stiff, direct movements of the polearm contrast with the flexible flair of the Oxtail Blade.

Each weapon type has its own animations and set of fighting skills, which work like Weapon Art in Elden Ring, unleashing special attacks by pressing the right bumper and corresponding face buttons on the PS5 DualSense controller. I kept switching between weapons to get a sense of the different styles and break the monotony of the shallow combat mechanics. There are also plenty of ranged weapon options. Revolvers are quick and can stun close-range enemies for a second if you pull the trigger at the right time. Rifles, on the other hand, are more accurate and better for targeting enemies from a distance. Bows are a stealthier option and also allow elemental attacks, adding fire and acid arrows to your quiver.

Rise of the Ronin’s combat is easy, but difficult.

Melee combat itself is predicated on parrying, blocking, or dodging attacks and counterattacking with quick combos to defeat opponents. As in previous Team Ninja titles, all offensive and defensive actions are controlled by Ki, or stamina. Your health bar is accompanied by a Ki meter, which depletes while dodging, blocking, and attacking. Ki regenerates if you’re not performing these actions, but being too zealous will quickly drain your Ki and make you susceptible to heavy damage from attacks. The same goes for enemies: normal attacks, martial arts moves, and well-timed parries (called counter sparks in the game) chip away at your opponent’s Ki, eventually enabling critical hits that may one-hit kill weaker foes.

Despite ticking most of the boxes for a modern action RPG, Rise of the Ronin’s combat never feels as tight or powerful as Sekiro’s. The counterspark deflection, triggered with the Triangle button, feels out of sync with other actions, making the timing difficult to get right. The parry window isn’t narrow, but the action itself is accompanied by an exaggerated animation that feels out of place for a maneuver that requires dexterity. Inventory management in the heat of battle is also tedious. Switching between two equipped melee weapons, a third ranged weapon, and quick items for healing and status effects is never smooth, and it often feels like you’re drowning in menus and UI every time you want to tinker with your loadout. The custom loadout slots are helpful, but a more intuitive weapon swapping system would have improved the experience.

Stealth is extremely useful for clearing out enemy lines.

Combat in Rise of the Ronin may not be as responsive as you’d like, but it’s always fun. Trying out different weapons keeps it fresh, and fighting multiple enemies at the same time is also challenging, especially if you keep switching stances to fight different types of enemies. Clearing out enemy camps (which you do often in the game) always requires a thoughtful approach. I thought of them as reminiscent of camps and bases in the Far Cry games, where you’re given the freedom to clear out however you want. You can charge in and attack enemies head-on, or carefully rush through them and silently take down unaware guards one by one. Combat isn’t always fluid, but it does look smooth. Each weapon’s fighting skills often come with elaborate animations that add a touch of glamour to the combat. A skill tree spanning strength, dexterity, intelligence, and charisma traits adds meaningful abilities to your bag of tricks, bringing a bit more depth to the relatively shallow combat experience.

In the main missions, you will also be accompanied by two companions. You can choose your companions from among the characters you have met and bonded with over time. The level of your bond with your companions will determine their effectiveness on the battlefield. Companions are especially useful in difficult boss battles; they attract enemy attacks and give you an opportunity to attack. At any time during the main mission, you can also control your companion characters. Most companions are handled with great care, with well-developed personalities and clearly defined traits. Showing a personal favor to a companion will deepen your bond and they will reveal more to you. All companions are deeply tied to the overall story, and your choices may determine their fate. As a result, over time, you will come to care about them and their objectives.

Companions Don’t Just Pose on the Battlefield

While you have companions in the form of friendly NPCs when completing main missions and actual players online in co-op mode, you’re alone when exploring the open world. To move around the world more quickly, you’re given a horse, a grappling hook, and a glider. The horse companion is perfect for the rolling countryside, while the hook and glider are useful when traversing dense cities. With two tools at your disposal, your character becomes more agile, and while you’d imagine you could easily parkour across rooftops a la the Assassin’s Creed series, the Blade Twin is surprisingly stiff. You can climb rooftops with the help of ladders, carefully placed boxes, and dangling ropes, and you can jump from rooftop to rooftop for some distances, traveling on foot never feels smooth.

The open-world elements of Rise of the Ronin are pretty much what you’d expect from the genre: a never-ending and ever-growing checklist of things to do and errands to run. When you defeat an enemy camp in an area, icons representing side activities appear on the map for that area. You can find and pet stray cats, ask your companions for favors, do NPC quests, take photos, find landmarks, shoot targets, or find “random” encounters. These get boring quickly, and the limited variety of quests means there’s little incentive to dive into the side content. Scaling up to an open-world design doesn’t really add much meaning to Rise of the Ronin, other than the freedom to waste time trying to finish the main story. Whereas Team Ninja’s previous games benefited from a linear level design that felt tense, this latest game loses tension by switching to an open-world approach. And unlike Elden Ring, it fails to justify the switch by digging up the carcasses of every open-world trick.

The bonds you forge in Rise of the Ronin shape the story.

Visually, Rise of the Ronin is also not a standout. If the game had stuck to a Nioh-style linear design, I wouldn’t have minded as much, but an open world needs great vistas and breathtaking scenery. It needs lush environments and a striking visual style. Rise of the Ronin looks boring, flat, and gray compared to modern open world games. The game’s environments are not diverse or vibrant, and the textures lack detail. Even the character models look poor compared to other games. The game looks good in certain moments, and the lack of graphical finesse can be ignored for the most part, but the bar has been set high by games like Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon Forbidden West. It’s unfair to expect a Team Ninja game to approach that standard, but Rise of the Ronin could have chosen a bolder visual style to make up for its shortcomings in visual fidelity.

Meanwhile, performance on the PS5 leaves little to be desired. The game offers a Performance mode at 60fps, a Graphics mode at 30fps, and a Ray Tracing mode at 30fps that enables ray tracing lighting. I stuck with Performance mode, as the graphical gains in the other modes weren’t enough to justify the drop in frame rate. The frame rate drops as expected in crowded sections and densely populated cities, but overall it’s stable. However, Rise of the Ronin, a PS5 exclusive, excels at taking full advantage of the DualSense controller’s capabilities, with responsive vibration and adaptive trigger feedback to in-game actions.

Rise of the Ronin looks good, but it lacks the polish of modern open-world games.

Rise of the Ronin is clearly Team Ninja’s most ambitious work to date. Known for its tense, linear, and challenging Souls-like experiences, the studio is aiming wider this time around, hoping to attract a wider audience more receptive to open-world games. It makes sense that a studio whose previous games were well-received by a niche audience would make their next project more accessible, and Team Ninja’s latest title largely succeeds in blending the specific essence of its games with the general familiarity of the open-world formula.

The problem, though, is that the formula has become stale over the past few years. And games that don’t add a unique twist to the genre tend to get lost in a pile of similar titles. FromSoftware also pushed the scale of its games with Elden Ring. But rather than adapting from an existing open-world blueprint, the studio chose to challenge established tropes at every step. That’s not the case with Rise of the Ronin. Its open world has little invention or imagination, but its core mechanics and compelling story are what set it apart from the rest.

The companion system adds meaningful decisions and choices, and seeks to add depth to each character in the game. The variety of weapons and tools at your disposal keeps combat fresh and engaging, while the game’s evocative settings and colorful cast of characters keep the story constantly evolving. Rise of the Ronin is clearly punching above its weight class, and you can feel your knees wobbly, but it’s worth praising it for never succumbing to the strain.

Pros:

• Challenging Combat
• Engaging story and setting
• Likeable characters
• Diverse weapons and tools
• Companion System

Cons:

• Uninspired open-world design
• Lack of visual sophistication
• Repetitive side activities
• Troublesome inventory management

Rating (out of 10): 7

• Rise of the Ronin was released exclusively for PS5 on March 22nd.
• The price of the PS5 standard edition on the PlayStation Store will start at Rs 4,999.

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Nixxes Software’s finely tuned PC port of Ghost of Tsushima is better than ever.

Just when vast open-world games were starting to become noticeably tiring, Ghost of Tsushima arrived like a summer breeze. Sucker Punch’s Japan-set action-adventure game didn’t reinvent the wheel by any means, but it did deliver a memorable samurai tale that reshaped familiar open-world tropes into original ways of player interaction. Ghost of Tsushima and its massive success on PlayStation consoles demonstrated that the open-world playbook (largely written by Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry series) had become so stale that a small but clever new idea could be enough to create a meaningful experience.

Through its simplified quest design, narrative approach to map markers, and evocative visuals and music, Ghost of Tsushima set the standard for what a modern open-world action-adventure title should be. And now the game is coming to PC in a package that amplifies what it already did well on PS4 and PS5. First released on PlayStation consoles in 2021 and now available on PC from Steam and the Epic Games Store, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut comes with a host of improvements, including the Iki Island expansion, improved graphics, and a faster framerate. But does a four-year-old game still hold up to the rapidly changing standards of modern video games?

The answer to that question may vary depending on how much open world you’ve played. If you’re tired of running around seemingly endless maps chasing the same objectives without any payoff, Ghost of Tsushima may feel boring, especially if you’ve tried the game on consoles. But if you’re new to the game, Sucker Punch’s stirring tale of revenge and samurai honor, expertly ported to PC by Nixxes Software, is definitely worth your attention. I got the Platinum for Ghost of Tsushima on PS4 and played the Director’s Cut and its included Iki Island expansion pack on PS5, but I still happily spent time with the Steam version of the game.

Ghost of Tsushima tells the story of a samurai, Jin Sakai, who embarks on a path of revenge when a brutal Mongol army led by Khotun Khan invades his homeland, the Japanese island of Tsushima. Khan and his merciless warriors eradicate samurai resistance, destroy villages, and capture Jin’s uncle, Lord Shimura, the land steward of Tsushima. Jin, a young samurai who grew up under Lord Shimura’s protection after his father was killed at an early age, barely survives the battle but sets out to find his uncle and save Tsushima.

Bound and broken by the samurai code of honor, Jin eventually enlists the help of his allies and adopts guerilla tactics to gain the upper hand against his brutal enemies. As it turns out, the samurai tradition of fighting the enemy head-on in a just battle doesn’t hold up so well against the Mongol army, who have no qualms about using any dirty means to seize control.

Jin reluctantly abandons the rules his uncle drilled into him and becomes Ghost, a warrior who uses deception, distraction and stealth to resist the Mongol invasion and free his uncle. His unconventional methods are aided by unconventional friends – commoners far removed from the shackles of straitjacket-wearing samurai morality. Having lived his whole life in black and white, Jin walks the grey path for a higher purpose. Ghost of Tsushima’s story, like its systems, treads familiar territory. We’ve all seen and read revenge stories in which the protagonist is confronted with the rigidity of his values and forced to think in unnatural ways. But the sophisticated presentation of the game’s ideas trumps its reliance on tried-and-true tropes.

Visual Presentation

Ghost of Tsushima’s biggest selling point on PC is its graphical fidelity. The action-adventure title is one of the best-looking games on PlayStation, and the new PC port allows the game’s visual presentation to shine in a way that consoles just can’t. If you’ve got the right system, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut can go toe-to-toe with some of the most graphically impressive games on PC. While the character models and facial animations look a bit dated in 2024, its rich, diverse environments are still some of the best in the medium.

Ghost of Tsushima features some of the most impressive environments in video games.

However, animation quality remains high across the board. Jin controls smoothly whether he’s riding his trusty steed or using his grappling hook to scale tall cliffs and towers. Combat animations may be some of the best ever seen in a third-person action-adventure title; each sword stance comes with its own unique set of animations and moves, adding individuality to your play style. Animated with the help of actual Japanese sword experts, Jin’s sword movements flow like a river of deadly slashes and thrusts, all the while retaining the weight and impact of a high-stakes duel.

On PC, Tsushima comes to life at higher graphics settings. Whereas in other open-world games, persistent markers and HUD elements actively ruin the immersion, Ghost of Tsushima encourages you to interact with the natural environment to discover interesting items and treasures. Chasing foxes or chasing golden birds through tranquil pastures and rolling grasslands is a meditative experience because everything looks so beautiful . The game’s evocative visuals are anchored by a vibrant art style that finds a sweet spot somewhere between the natural realism of Red Dead Redemption 2 and the saturated fantasy of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Ghost of Tsushima doesn’t try to look realistic, instead opting for poetic romanticism as its visual identity.

Horses are the best way to get around Tsushima.

PC Features

Nixxes also prioritizes performance across a wide range of hardware capabilities, from high-end PCs to handhelds like Steam Deck. The game features unlocked framerates on PC and plenty of graphics options that can be tweaked to get the performance and image quality you want. There are also options to support upscaling and frame generation technologies such as Nvidia DLSS 3, AMD FSR 3, and Intel XeSS to improve the game’s performance. Unfortunately, Ghost of Tsushima does not have ray tracing support. While the inclusion of ray-traced reflections would pose technical challenges and may impact the game’s performance, the feature is a given for modern PC titles that boast impressive visuals.

The game supports ultrawide monitor setups on PC and the PS5 DualSense controller. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is also the first Sony title to come with the new PlayStation Overlay on PC. At any point during the game, you can press Shift + F1 on your keyboard to bring up a window overlay that displays your PlayStation account, friends list, and trophies. Note, however, that you will need to connect to your PlayStation Network account in-game to access this feature.

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is the first Sony title for PC to feature the new PlayStation Overlay.

PC Performance

I played Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on the HP Omen 16-xf0060AX provided by HP for this review. As such, the resolution was limited to 1080p, but I got stable performance even at very high settings. According to the game’s system requirements published before release, you need an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 or AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT GPU to achieve 60fps at 4K resolution. With DLSS frame generation turned on with an Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU, I was able to achieve stable frame rates of over 100fps at 1080p resolution. There was very little stuttering during gameplay at various graphics settings.

Reviewing Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on the HP Omen 16

Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 laptop GPU (8GB GDDR6 dedicated).

Memory: 16GB DDR5-5600Mhz RAM

Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe TLC M.2 SSD

With DLSS upscaling set to Quality and the graphics option set to Very High, the average frame rate was an excellent 114.5 fps, with the 1% and 0.1% low averages well above 70 fps. Lowering the graphics settings to High caused a slight visual degradation and raised the average frame rate to 146.8 fps. Adjusting the DLSS upscaling option to Performance gave even better results, with average frame rates of 128.7 fps and 159.8 fps at Very High and High settings, respectively. Of course, you’ll need a more high-end system to run the game at a stable high frame rate at 4K resolution. But as Nixxes promised, Ghost of Tsushima is optimized to run smoothly on a wide range of hardware.

Ghost of Tsushima uses vibrant colors in a variety of ways.

Verdict

Sony has had a strategy of delaying the release of PC ports of its first-party PlayStation titles. The success of the PC versions is a testament to the strength of the company’s exclusive single-player games, such as God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remaster, which continue to generate interest years after their initial release. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut perhaps highlights that phenomenon better than most other releases. The game is the largest single-player release for PlayStation on Steam, surpassing God of War’s all-time player count on Valve’s platform. This is despite a PlayStation Network account linking controversy that led to pre-orders being cancelled and the game being removed from Steam in over 170 countries where PSN is not supported.

PC players have clearly been waiting for a port of Ghost of Tsushima, and Nixxes Software has released a finely tuned package that looks better than ever, plays smoother than ever, and has some nifty PC-exclusive features that enhance the experience. Of course, the game itself remains unchanged, so its flaws are present on PC; the open-world idea opts to recycle existing tropes rather than reinvent them, and the core gameplay loop isn’t all that different from Assassin’s Creed titles. But when it comes to presenting those familiar ideas in an exciting way, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut goes a step further than most.

Pros:

• Strong Points
• Amazing visuals
• Consistent PC Performance
• Advanced Graphics Settings

Cons:

• A formulaic open world
• Lack of ray tracing support

Rating (out of 10): 8

• Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut was released for PC on May 16. The game was tested on an HP Omen 16-xf0060AX laptop provided by HP.
• The price for the PC version starts at Rs 3,999 on Steam and Epic Games Store.

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Often left me peachless.

Endlessly creative and adorably cute, Princess Peach: Showtime! is an uncompromising but approachable adventure that’s an absolute blast for kids and adults alike.

Pros

• +Adorable visuals
• +Fantastic boss fights
• +Approachable difficulty

Cons

• -A slow start
• -Occasionally choppy performance

Princess Peach: Showtime! is an action-adventure game that’s overflowing with the boundless creativity and charm characteristic of some of the best recent mainline Super Mario outings like Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Despite its more linear design and basic control scheme compared to those games, it’s packed with memorable stages and mechanics that make the most of the charming theatrical theme in truly imaginative ways.

The simplicity means that it’s one of the most approachable first-party games on Nintendo Switch making it a super choice for younger or more casual players, though seasoned gamers will still find plenty to enjoy in its brilliant boss fights and tricky challenge modes. Wrap it all up in an attractive art direction and throw in a raft of collectibles hidden throughout each stage and you’ve got an impressively well-rounded package that ranks among some of the best Nintendo Switch games available to play right now.

Setting The Stage

Princess Peach: Showtime!

The action kicks off in the sprawling Sparkle Theater, nestled in the little bay far from the Mushroom Kingdom where Princess Peach has been trapped by the malevolent Madame Grape and her legion of purple minions. Grape has corrupted the theater’s plays with her malign influence and caused all of the lead actors to disappear, leaving it up to Peach and the theater’s magical guardian Stella to save the day. It’s a simple setup that is conveyed through an introductory cutscene that is lavishly animated but rather jarringly relies on text dialogue rather than any kind of audio narration.

Still, it’s only a minor omission that is quickly forgotten once you’re thrust into the hub world of the theater’s foyer. It’s divided into five floors, each containing doors leading to different levels, and sits above a mysterious basement. There are thirty main stages in total, arranged into groups of three with each trio representing the entirety of a specific play. They’re spread out evenly across the floors, though each ends with a final stage that is accessed through the basement.

The plays all follow unique themes, ranging from a lighthearted Wild West romp to more unconventional additions like a sci-fi action thriller. They’re all brought to life by the cartoon-like visuals that are filled to the brim with theatrical details and flourishes. The scenery has a distinctly hand-crafted look, with floating clouds that are suspended from visible wires. They cast prominent shadows on the backdrops behind them which, while a simple effect, helps lend everything a wonderful sense of depth.

Despite the side-on perspective, stages are also fully three dimensional and allow for back-and-forth movement in addition to side-scrolling traversal. Bright cones of stage lighting highlight important objectives and follow Peach as you explore – likely to be a huge help for players who are less experienced in traversing 3D environments. This, in addition to an optional item that grants three extra lives and can be obtained from a non-player character (NPC) in the foyer, intelligently incorporates more forgiving elements in a manner that feels both natural and unintrusive.

Dress Rehearsal

Aside from the rare brief platforming segment, the overall pace of Princess Peach: Showtime! is more pedestrian than more traditional Super Mario adventures. Peach has slow movement speed and all of her actions are controlled entirely with just three buttons. You tap the A button to jump, hit the B button to interact, and occasionally press ZL or ZR in order to travel to secret areas when you’re standing on special spots hidden throughout each level.

In her default getup, Peach is armed with a magical ribbon that can defeat Grape’s minions, trigger key items like lamps or doors to progress, or inspire any dejected supporting actors that you stumble across. Running around mindlessly tapping that button on almost everything that you see isn’t the most engaging or subtle formula and the very early sections of the first few stages suffer as a result.

You’re soon given a transformation, however, which is where Princess Peach: Showtime! is at its absolute best. Modeled after the costumes of the missing lead actors, each play has its own unique transformation that grants Peach a wide range of special abilities. Every new arrival feels remarkably distinct, spicing up the basic formula with elements drawn from entirely different genres. The Ninja Peach transformation, for example, incorporates elements of stealth games, allowing you to hide in tall grass and quietly take down unsuspecting foes with a quick kunai slash.

The Detective Peach transformation plays much more like a story-driven adventure, where you solve crimes by chatting to NPCs and using your magnifying glass to track down hidden clues. The Mermaid Peach transformation is something akin to a puzzle game, as you guide schools of fish through maze-like gauntlets under increasingly strict time limits. Although I enjoyed my time with each and every transformation, the button-mashing cookie baking and rapid cake decoration challenges of the Patissiere Peach transformation were a personal highlight that absolutely oozed that Mario Party minigame charm.

Unfortunately, some transformations do push the game’s uneven technical performance to the fore. Loading times are long and a few levels suffer from noticeable framerate dips in busy moments. By far the worst example was one particular Figure Skater Peach stage that involved careful timing to pull off ice skating tricks. The choppy framerate made it frustratingly difficult to get into a definite rhythm and caused me to miss a fair few jumps the first time around which is disappointing, especially in a first-party release.

BEST BIT

Not only are the appearances of each of Peach’s transformations very cutely designed, but they feature distinct animations that further help set them apart. I especially appreciate Patissiere Peach’s adorable little back-and-forth skip whenever you stand still.

This shortcoming aside, each floor concludes with a boss fight, all of which are definite highlights. The boss designs are memorable and each encounter involves some strong mechanics. One sees you defeating a genuinely quite creepy projector-themed cat as it tries to swat you away with attacks that are represented by 2D projected images, while another has a giant disco-ball bird that can flip the entire stage into its mirror image in order to crush you with falling blocks. There are also separate challenge levels, called rehearsals, that offer reimagined versions of past stages with difficult special conditions. These are some of the hardest challenges in the game and make for a delightful diversion.

The same is true of the unlockable outfits for both Peach and Stella, which can be purchased from a small stall in the foyer using hidden stars collected from each level, obtained by rescuing a top-hat-wearing character hidden in each level, or are awarded for finishing certain stages. There are loads to discover, giving you plenty of reasons to comb over past environments for anything that you might have missed.

It’s a fantastic way to round out an overall package that’s already got plenty to offer. Whether you’re a long-time Super Mario fan or a complete newcomer to the series, Princess Peach: Showtime! is an excellent adventure that’s easy to recommend.

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Roll To Win.

Dicefolk is a fun turn-based roguelike with a decent variety of environments and characters to stay entertaining, but the content itself becomes repetitive. Although excitement is added through boss encounters and the gamble of random rolls, the repetition holds Dicefolk back from excelling.

Pros

• +Huge variety of quirky creatures to tame
• +Boss battles keep combat exciting
• +Expansive map with different biomes to explore

Cons

• -Loop becomes a bit repetitive
• -I’m always incredibly unlucky

Dicefolk, a roguelike from Leap Game Studios, puts you into the shoes of a determined summoner, responsible for an army of chimera. These are the creatures that litter the entire map and that you aim to recruit into your own party to then train and take into battle. Similarly to Pokémon, these beasts adopt a huge variety of appearances, and anything from a potted plant to a huge dragon could spring to life. You never know what type of chimera is waiting around the corner, but it’s always your job to wrangle them.

However, rather than sending your chimera into battle like Pokémon, the game takes a unique approach to every instance of combat. Although you are somewhat in control, your entire turn is based on a dice roll. So, you always have to hope and pray that lady luck is on your side and you have a solid enough roll of your three dice to take down whatever beasties you come up against.

A Roll of the Dice

Dicefolk’s combat is incredibly fluid. You take control of your team of three chimeras you recruit along your journey. At the start, you begin with three incredibly weak creatures that offer little to no power, but the further you travel around the map, the stronger the chimera you can recruit at statues positioned around the map for your next bought of combat. Each encounter needs to be carefully planned out to ensure your success through tactical rotations of party members, and well-timed attacks. However, you don’t have the same abilities – such as a ranged attack, or the ability to rotate – each turn. Instead, every round is controlled by the roll of three dice.

I’m not the luckiest person when it comes to anything, really, and this losing streak continued during my experience with Dicefolk. More often than not, my rolls gave me ranged attacks that caused less damage and team rotations rather than the option to strengthen my team by bulking up before attacking. Of course, this isn’t the game’s fault as these rolls are entirely random, but I couldn’t help but feel like it became a bit of a personal attack after a while.

BEST BIT: Dicefolk

The unknown factor of not knowing what you’re about to encounter is easily the best part of Dicefolk. I was always excited to see what creatures would crop up in the next combat encounter, heightening a sense of anticipation.

However, this infrequent success makes combat feel tense and also encourages you to be careful and deliberate rather than rushing in with all guns blazing. When you start in Dicefolk, it’s incredibly easy to be hasty when attacking your enemies, and you can be overly reliant on a few attacks from only one of your chimeras rather than utilizing your whole team. But, as you progress through the map and enter different biomes that are littered with increasingly intimidating creatures, taking your time with encounters, thinking about your moves, and which members of your party are worth bringing to battle becomes incredibly important.

Across the map, you’ll encounter a huge range of critters that you’ll have to face which keeps combat exciting and fresh. This is a major attraction of Dicefolk as you never know what you’ll find, heightening the game’s concept of everything being a gamble. The character design makes up a huge part of the game’s charm, too, and helps make the first experience fighting many of the beasties more enchanting. One moment you’ll be fighting a small, seaweed-clad dog called Algel, but then you’ll have an encounter with a towering koala-esque beast rather than fighting the same thing over and over again.

However, adding another layer to the combat, your ability to control chimeras isn’t limited to your own team. You also take control of the enemy side, allowing you to decide and plan out what attacks impact your team. This occasionally enables you to give yourself the upper hand, sacrificing your weaker chimera against enemies with stronger attacks and giving yourself an opening to hit back twice as hard in your next turn. Although this isn’t always the case, it does feel rewarding when you do factor enemy moves in and manage to tactically plan four turns in advance, finally pulling off a master heist and taking the win.

Jack of all Trades

It’s not all random dice rolls and crossing fingers in combat though, and there’s a lot of work that goes into Dicefolk outside of just attacks. Across the map, you’ll find shops to buy equipment and armor that provide different buffs to your party of chimera, as well as statues that you can visit to recruit new chimera to join your adventure. Each creature brings unique abilities and skills to the table, so it pays to familiarize yourself with the capabilities of your companions to ensure you’re taking advantage of any moves that could help you take down enemies.

Rewards from particularly challenging battles provide an incentive to continue pushing through combat, since, much like the various species you’ll recruit along the way, you never know what reward could be waiting for you. Overall, it’s a pretty familiar loop of  ‘battle a beast, get a reward, move on to the next bit’, but the surprise of not really knowing what’s to come is the thing that’ll keep drawing you through Dicefolk.

Prepare For The Worst

The numerous bosses are where your army will really be tested. Like any other battle, you’ll still take control of enemy attacks as you would your own, but these boss fights tend to offer a bigger challenge than your standard enemy encounter since each boss occupies one of the dice rolls with a special die.

Although this roll does have a similar formula to other enemies, with the possibility to offer an attack, defense, or random rotation, generally the attacks are frenzied and rotations tend to prioritize bringing the boss chimera to the front of the party. If there’s time to plan your next move carefully, it would be during these significantly harder battles especially since the boss dice roll will offer harder attacks than the others and thus cause more damage to your party.

If you’ve been playing it safe, breezing through chimera encounters, then these boss battles will feel like a significant jump up in difficulty.  These encounters are where planning your next move and utilizing whatever armor or equipment you’ve picked up along the way is at its most important. If you fail and three of your chimera faint then you’ll have to start building your army from scratch once again from the ground up.

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES: Dicefolk

Unfortunately, Dicefolk offers no dedicated accessibility options, which is disappointing. Considering how much on-screen text there is, being unable to adjust the size of this text may impact some player’s experience.

Generally, Dicefolk is simple in its premise, yet still provides an entertaining experience that is bound to appeal to anyone who loves luck-based combat encounters and quirky characters. Rewards and charming characters offer you the drive to keep you plowing through each environment and map, and combat is just exciting enough with the reliance on luck to stay fun.

As a result, there’s always something that’ll have you excited to keep exploring and to see what comes next, or how you can approach battles slightly differently for a more positive outcome. All in, this makes for a satisfying, albeit occasionally repetitive, experience.

The post Dicefolk Review – Luck Be a Lady Tonight appeared first on Review Products.

Cheap and accessible server hosting for all abilities.

Shockbyte demonstrates how far game server hosting has come, proving to be highly accessible with a plethora of tutorials and clearly laid out options. Even better, it’s keenly priced with server options that suit every budget.

Pros

• +Simple to use setup
• +Well priced
• +Reliable servers
• +Varied plans available

Cons

• -72-hour refund policy is a little limited
• -Occasionally sluggish support

Founded in March 2013, Shockbyte’s mission statement has been to offer “premium services at unbeatable prices” and it mostly meets those lofty goals. The Australian-based company is now one of the longest-running Minecraft server hosting providers. While it’s expanded its services to other games such as Project Zomboid, ARK: Survival Evolved and — most recently — Palworld, Minecraft is the big one here and the one we reviewed.

Promising 13 server locations scattered around the world, 24/7 customer support, 100% uptime, full FTP access, and support for pretty much every mod you can think of, Shockbyte sounds pretty irresistible on paper. With an eye on whether it could be one of the best Minecraft server hosting providers, here’s how we found the Shockbyte experience from setup to playing on the server.

PLANS AND PRICING

Shockbyte offers 12 different plans, plus a custom plan if you have specific needs. All the plans offer 24/7 customer support, 100% uptime, full FTP access, DDoS protection, and full mod support. Where plans differ is how much RAM they offer as well as the number of player slots. There’s good variety here with the option to upgrade any time as needed. To help customers know what to buy starting out, Shockbyte also has a few recommended plans for certain needs such as best for modding or the latest version.

The cheapest plan is the Dirt plan with 1GB RAM and 8 player slots at $2.50 per month. That ramps up to the Titan plan at $40 per month with 16GB of RAM and unlimited player slots with a 300 recommendation. Discounts are available for committing to quarterly, six monthly, or annual plans.

Such a discount means the Dirt plan drops to just $22.50 for the year which works out as excellent value for teaming up with your mates on a private server. All servers use NVMe SSDs with unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Deciding which plan to buy mostly comes down to how many players you expect to play at once and RAM considerations.

Shockbyte offers a 72 hour refund policy so there’s just enough time to test things out if you’ve made a mistake with your needs. Payment is accepted via credit or debit card along with PayPal and Paymentwall methods. While signing up, you can choose to add on a preferred location, purchase a dedicated IP, and arrange server management options, all for a fee. That means the price can increase a fair bit depending on what you need with features like a dedicated IP costing $5 per month while server management costs $15 per month. While the cost can ramp up, at least it’s fairly clearly laid out so you always know what you’re paying for and why.

EASE OF USE

Starting out with a Minecraft server with Shockbyte is pretty speedy. Once you wrap up the purchasing process, you’re given two username/password combos. One is for the client side of things while the other is for the control panel. Access to the latter can then be shared with other users who you want to have control over things, although you’ll need to get in touch with support to get it set up.

The opening part of the control panel has you able to choose the server type you want. A near never ending choice of Bedrock or Java server types are available with recommendations highlighted.

On the left hand side is the more complex set of options as well as the best ways to monitor your server. Chat and console are fairly self explanatory with the latter a good way of dipping in to check all is well.

Dive into the Files section and that’s where things get a little more complicated. The Config Files section offers server settings such as if you want to set up whitelisting, change the game mode or difficulty, as well as disable or limit various settings. It’s clearly laid out with drop-down boxes allowing you to quickly change things. The responsiveness is fast with the majority of actions not requiring a server restart although Shockbyte recommends doing so once a day.

If you want to add any modpacks or plugins, the Shockbyte interface is simple to use. There are a lot of plugins to choose from while you can use full FTP access to add anything that hasn’t already been thought of. Again, adding from the plugin list is straightforward and takes moments. It’s all designed in a way that makes the process as simple as possible, even if you don’t have prior server admin experience.

For those users who do have more advanced experience, there’s an appropriately titled Advanced tab too. Here, you can set up commands, scheduled tasks, add additional ports, startup parameters and MySQL databases. It’s reasonably comprehensive stuff that means Shockbyte is fairly good at catering for both novice users that simply want the basics right up to those who know exactly what they’re doing.

SPEED AND EXPERIENCE

Shockbyte offers servers across Europe, North America, Singapore and Australia, with the latter two requiring an additional payment each month. The Minecraft server I used was based in Europe, much like myself, and I found the ping to be pretty reliable. A steady 30-35 ping meant no issues with lag and that continued while adding players to the server.

As promised by Shockbyte, there was no downtime either with the Minecraft server always ready to go. It’s a reliable force for regular players.

During my time playing on the server and gathering together some friends, the experience didn’t dip in quality. Daily restarts and not cramming the server with mods and plugins is sure to help here but as a general, standard Minecraft experience, it works well out of the virtual box. That’s also where the level of ease involved in adding or removing mods, as well as simply restarting the server certainly helps keep things ticking along healthily.

SUPPORT

Support is two-fold with a ticketing system and extensive tutorials. The tutorials are the true standout here. It feels like there’s a YouTube video for literally everything you could possibly need while setting up a Minecraft server. A full playlist is available or you can dip in for individual queries. Each tutorial is clearly laid out and no longer than it has to be. Whether you simply need guidance on which server type to choose from or you want to set spawns, manage whitelists, or learn how scheduled tasks can benefit you, it’s covered here with no padded out filler.

It’s a truly useful resource with things backed up by a Knowledge Base which answers many queries, followed by direct support. When I contacted support by sending off a ticket, I was impressed to get a response within an hour. The follow up, however, took a fair while longer. Cynically, paying helps. It’s possible to pay $3 to bump your ticket to the front of the queue which feels a little unsavoury but on the other hand, Shockbyte is pretty cheap elsewhere.

Talking of payments, it’s also possible to pay $15 per month for the company to manage your server including controlling and setting up mods and plugins. With the many tutorials available, it’s hardly necessary for most people but it could be useful when starting out.

Knowledgebase

Shockyte’s knowledgebase has plenty of helpful tutorials and the company’s YouTube channel also provides a wealth of videos to help you get started (Image credit: Shockbyte)

FINAL VERDICT

Shockbyte is an excellent value way to snap up a Minecraft server that isn’t much hassle to set up and maintain. Ideally suited for novices but also anyone who wants to keep costs down, you can get straight on with setting up your Minecraft server pretty quickly, right down to installing some mods or plugins without having to delve too deeply.

Where things falter is a bit, is the added costs and occasional support quibbles. A little inconsistent with speed isn’t a dealbreaker for everyone when it comes to needing assistance from support and the YouTube videos certainly help, but if you run into a major problem, feeling obliged to pay an extra $3 will grate.

Similarly, added costs for features like a dedicated IP or server management are transparent but something to be aware of when totting up the actual price you’ll be paying.

Neither of these issues will affect everyone though and for the most part, Shockbyte works well. Its 100% uptime and speedy servers mean you and your mates will easily be able to join in at any time without any problems. It fits nicely into that ‘it just works’ mentality that everyone appreciates about technology. It also makes the process far more accessible than server management ever was in the past.

The post Shockbyte Minecraft Hosting Review appeared first on Review Products.

I need a key.

Alone in the Dark squanders the promise of its compelling source material with ropey design, awful combat, and choppy presentation.

Pros

• +Strong voice acting
• +Compelling Lovecraftian themes
• +Deep worldbuilding

Cons

• -Awful action setpieces
• -Shoddy graphics

Despite a spirited commitment to themes of cosmic horror, Alone in the Dark stumbles, hamstrung by dodgy presentation, poorly executed combat setpieces, and obtuse design.

A reincarnation of the seminal 1992 horror classic of the same name, Alone in the Dark follows the stories of Emily Hartwood and private investigator Edward Carnby as the pair investigate the mysterious disappearance of Emily’s uncle, Jeremy Hartwood. Following in the footsteps of modern horror titans, Alone in the Dark opts for a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective as you explore its bleak and foreboding environments.

Set in the 1920s, Alone in the Dark pays constant homage to the works of the influential yet problematic H.P. Lovecraft. The game’s characters are locked in a fight for survival with forces beyond their comprehension, whose supernatural powers warp and undermine the protagonists’ understanding of reality. It’s when developer Pieces Interactive leans into this storytelling tradition that Alone in the Dark is at its strongest.

Traditionally, Lovecraftian fiction is all about unraveling mysteries – the answers to which offer sanity-straining revelations that pull the protagonists deeper into a horror-fuelled cosmic morass. It’s fitting, then, that puzzle-solving is the core around which the game is based. On arriving at Derceto, a hundred-year-old manor in the swamps of Louisiana, Emily and Edward immediately set to work getting to the bottom of Jeremy Hardwood’s disappearance.

Thinking your way through Alone in the Dark’s puzzles often feels rewarding

Now a sanatorium, Derceto is populated by an intriguing ensemble of outcasts, plenty of puzzles, and locked doors galore. The puzzles themselves are pleasing affairs, often requiring you to read documents, look around for environmental clues, and intuit solutions. One particularly impressive challenge early on involved opening a lockbox by cross-referencing the backs of important paintings with a poster and a mysterious journal. Some are more practical, however, like recovering an important clue from the bottom of a well by filling it with water. Thinking your way through Alone in the Dark’s puzzles often feels rewarding but, unfortunately, these setpieces struggle to shine in the shadow of numerous issues with presentation as well as dire action segments.

Muddy Waters

Fighting a monster in Alone in the Dark

Despite generally strong voice acting, Alone in the Dark’s characters are dogged with stilted animations and visuals. Emily and Edward look less like intrepid investigators and more like mannequins brought to life by exactly the sort of supernatural powers that the pair are trying to unearth in their investigation. Not even excellent performances by David Harbour and Jodie Comer (who play Edward and Emily, respectively) are sufficient to breathe life into their dead eyes.

Alone in the Dark often feels lopsided. The in-game documents and clues are lavish affairs, often with their own voice acting. It makes for immersive and compelling moments of investigation. However, this can’t be said for Alone in the Dark’s vocal direction overall. Protagonists will often repeat canned phrases and conversations with non-player characters are limited and stilted. During my first two hours with Alone in the Dark, Emily informed me that she needed a key over a dozen times, always in the same tone of voice and with the same, frustrated inflection. Effort noises are shamelessly repeated and begin to grate after a while, too. Even if the quality of the acting is impressive, this sort of repetition waters down proceedings, undermining the gravitas that Harbour and Comer might otherwise bring to the game.

BEST BIT

David Carnby speaks to a member of staff in the kitchen.

Combing through the fascinating, well-voiced diaries and documents found throughout Derceto Manor made me feel like a proper detective as I connected dots and made deductions.

The weakest aspect of Alone in the Dark by far is its combat sections. Clunky and unresponsive controls punctuate poorly designed combat setpieces. Figures covered in black slime will run towards you, and it’ll be your job to aim and shoot before they get too close. Molotov cocktails can be thrown at potential assailants, too, and these can be found in a surprisingly large number of locations. Ranged combat options feel imprecise and unfulfilling. The same can be said for melee, which feels like trying to mash a potato with a flimsy plastic fork and is about as satisfying too. You pick up a melee implement, hammer the attack buttons, and hope for the best, much as you do at range.

It seems as though Alone in the Dark’s combat system aims to ape the dramatic, over-the-shoulder action found in the likes of the Resident Evil 4 remake or Control. However, even if Alone in the Dark were to offer reliable and satisfying combat, it would still feel hugely out of place in what is, in essence, a game about solving mysteries and unraveling a conspiracy. This incompatibility serves only to make Alone in the Dark’s failed attempts at action combat seem all the more dire.

Puzzling Through

An ominous conversation in Alone in the Dark.

Despite all this, there is a gripping core of supernatural intrigue that runs through Alone in the Dark. As you begin to unearth more of the details surrounding Jeremy’s disappearance, you’ll be granted little motes of insight into Decerto Manor and its history. As you delve deeper, you’ll find that disparate threads begin to weave together. A name drop here or a little clue there can become invaluable later on.

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES

Alone in the Dark options menu.

Alone in the Dark is unremarkable in its accessibility offerings but offers a few helpful settings. Camera shake options, text and map highlighting, and adjustable subtitles are all available. The game also provides two difficulty settings, one of which provides players with extra hints and clues. There are no dedicated settings for colorblind users.

Though Alone in the Dark’s more intriguing elements are buried deep, they are certainly present. The game encourages you to speculate and hypothesize, filling in blanks deliberately left by the developers. In many ways, this is the essence of effective horror games. At its best, Alone in the Dark lets your own imagination do the legwork, a process that’s far more gripping than any canned combat setpiece with a shadowy silhouette.

Unfortunately, Alone in the Dark is so burdened by flaws that this strength is rarely given a chance to shine. Hampering an already shaky presentation, Pieces Interactive’s offering suffers from bugs, too. For instance, it will sometimes be impossible to select certain entries in the game’s menu, and selecting an interactable object while not having the right item will bring up a glitchy silhouette of a radial selection menu.

Buried deep inside Alone in the Dark is a compelling Lovecraftian mystery. However, any prospective detective will have to wade through layers of presentational and mechanical obstacles. While Alone in the Dark will likely have something to offer long-time fans of the franchise, those looking for a fresh horror experience will almost certainly find something better elsewhere.

The post Alone In The Dark Review – No Escape appeared first on Review Products.

What has PSVR 2 got right and wrong?

Sony’s PSVR 2 has been available for just over a year now, originally launching on February 22, 2023. Thus we’ve had plenty of time to analyze the state of the PS5 exclusive VR headset; where it’s been, and where it’s going in the future. In short, it’s not been great, and it certainly doesn’t look good.

While an excellent bit of kit in its own right with specs that compete with some of the best VR headsets out there, things haven’t looked too bright on the software side of things. Its price remains a sticking point, too, especially as the Meta Quest 3 – a much more compelling headset right now – largely outclasses it in terms of both price and versatility.

But perhaps that’s a little unfair. Sony has, after all, recently announced that it’s been working on getting PSVR 2 compatible with PC – though in what capacity remains to be seen. As a result, though, this could mean that PSVR 2 has a decent life ahead of it. But at present, there’s simply very little reason to own Sony’s headset unless you’re desperate to play a relatively modest number of exclusive games.

Where are the exclusives?

Let’s begin at launch. PSVR 2 did have a fairly impressive launch line-up, spearheaded by Horizon: Call of the Mountain which I genuinely believe to be not only the best game in the series but an excellent VR exclusive in its own right. It’s a highly polished offering, featuring varied and energetic play paired with a slew of welcome accessibility options.

Unfortunately, most other PSVR 2 games at launch weren’t exclusive to the headset, and can also be found within the Meta Quest and Steam VR game libraries. These include Kayak VR, Townsmen VR, and Puzzling Places. All wonderful titles in their own right, just not what you’d call flagships or system sellers.

The headset did pick up steam somewhat in the following months, with fully-featured VR modes for Gran Turismo 7, Resident Evil Village, and Resident Evil 4. These were all free additions, too, baked right into the base games themselves. Following these, further VR exclusives launched in the form of Humanity, The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, Synapse and C-Smash VRS.

So while PSVR 2’s exclusives line-up isn’t predominantly made up of PlayStation Studios titles, I don’t think the ‘lack of exclusives’ argument holds up quite as well now as it may have done half a year ago. Even though some experiences are complementary VR modes, I believe they can still be counted as their own thing, and as such there are plenty of exclusives to enjoy for PSVR 2 in 2024.

Recently, Sony confirmed that it’s testing support for “additional games on PC.” The announcement was quietly snuck into an official PlayStation Blog post, and the wording is quite vague. Among the best-case scenarios would be full parity with Steam VR titles.

That would mean having access to superb VR games like Half-Life: Alyx and Boneworks without needing to shell out for another headset like Valve Index. However, as PSVR 2 doesn’t have mixed reality (tech that imposes virtual elements over your real-world surroundings) support, such experiences likely won’t be available to it on PC.

Sony hopes to make this PC support available sometime in 2024, so PSVR 2 could have a bright future ahead of it away from PS5. However, that’s only one side of the coin. The other is potentially much bleaker, signaling an end for PSVR 2 support on its native console.

There is some evidence that this could be happening right now. Another recent harrowing round of layoffs saw Sony cut about 8% of its workforce; roughly 900 employees. Much of these were from studios like UK-based Firesprite, developer of the aforementioned Horizon: Call of the Mountain. Furthermore, PlayStation’s London Studio has been shuttered entirely. The developer had previously made VR projects like Blood & Truth and PlayStation VR Worlds. As a result, much of Sony’s VR talent has now been, or will be, let go.

While this doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t expect more first-party PSVR 2 exclusives, it’s a sign that Sony could be scaling back in-house software development for its VR headset.

The Meta-Phant in the room

The Meta Quest 3 and its controllers on a table next to a plant pot with a green fern in and a gold lamp

Easily the greatest threat to PSVR 2’s place in the market is the Meta Quest 3. And there are plenty of reasons as to why this is the case, and why the Quest 2 successor sits atop our best VR headsets list.

In terms of specs, PSVR 2 and Quest 3 are actually quite similar on paper. While I prefer PSVR 2’s vivid OLED display, Quest 3 has it beat in the resolution department coming in at 2,064 x 2,208 pixels per eye. This offers a slightly sharper image than PSVR 2’s 2,000 x 2,040. Elsewhere, both are capable of refresh rates up to 120Hz.

While both headsets feature a passthrough camera – making it easy to view your real-world surroundings at the touch of a button – it’s much more fleshed out on Quest 3. Meta’s headset supports mixed reality experiences which also makes it a better fit for productivity and leisure apps. There’s something of a trade-off here with PSVR 2, which has integrated eye tracking features that Quest 3 lacks. This lets you use your eyes as a cursor, or for various gameplay elements such as focusing on certain objects.

“there’s not much of a reason – at least right now – to purchase a PSVR 2 over a Meta Quest 3.”

Where Quest 3 really wins out, however, is in price and versatility. PSVR 2 will run you $549.99 / £529.99, a bit more than Quest 3’s retail price of $499.99 / £479.99. That doesn’t sound like much of a difference at first inspection, but it’s worth noting that, at present, PSVR 2 requires a PS5 in order to, well, function. As a result, the combined investment reaches the $1,000 / £1,000 threshold, and that’s before you’ve purchased any additional games or PSVR 2 accessories.

There’s no such restriction with Meta Quest 3. You buy the headset, and it can be used either standalone (wirelessly at that) or hooked up to your PC. It’s also compatible with Meta’s own game and app library, as well as that of Steam VR.

In conclusion, there’s not much of a reason – at least right now – to purchase a PSVR 2 over a Meta Quest 3. It’s possible that Sony is well aware of this, and could be cutting its losses by sunsetting official support and looking into PC compatibility. In fairness, being able to use PSVR 2 on both PS5 and PC would increase its value proposition exponentially. But I don’t think this will be enough; a slight price cut – perhaps something more in line with the Quest 3 – would make it even more appealing.

But until that time, the Quest 3 is a much better option if you’re getting into VR for the first time. Unless you’re desperate for that OLED display or bespoke eye tracking, the Quest 3 remains our headset of choice in 2024. There’s been highlights for PSVR 2, certainly, but as competing headsets offer more for less, it’s got a seemingly impossible second year ahead of it.

The post PSVR 2: A Year In Review appeared first on Review Products.

India isn’t seen as a huge market for handheld gaming consoles. Nintendo doesn’t have an official presence here at all, Sony never really promoted the PS Vita, and there’s no hope of the Steam Deck coming in anytime soon. There clearly is some demand, evidenced by the easy availability of grey-market Nintendo Switch units, online listings for niche Chinese manufacturers such as Ayaneo, and even small yet vocal crowds of retro console enthusiasts in forums online. However, they’re a microscopic niche compared to smartphone gamers here, with PUBG/BGMI becoming a cultural phenomenon and even casual titles making enormous money. Over 500 million Indians are estimated to play games on their smartphones; double what the figure was just five years ago. That’s incredible in terms of sheer market potential.

But what games are these people playing, how much are they willing to spend, and how does the hardware and software fit into their lives? Is there space for a dedicated portable gaming device in the Indian market? And can the new Asus ROG Ally, which costs more than some entry-level gaming laptops, fill it? After spending some time with the device, and some conversations with Asus, here’s what I think.

Asus ROG Ally price in India

Internationally, there are two variants of the ROG Ally, and the only difference is the choice of SoC – AMD’s new Ryzen Z1 powers the lower-end one, while the more capable Ryzen Z1 Extreme can deliver better performance in games. Asus has brought only the higher-end version to India, at least for now. This makes sense, because it isn’t competing with anything on price and you might as well make a good impression with the best possible performance. It costs Rs. 69,990 which isn’t bad considering the specifications.

You don’t get very much in the box – just a fairly oversized charger and a power cable. It’s particularly disappointing that there’s no case, since this is by nature a portable device. Asus does sell a case which has compartments for microSD cards and can function as a stand, but that’s an added cost. Third-party alternatives should be available soon.

The ROG Ally’s 7-inch screen is just the right size for comfortable gaming

Asus ROG Ally: What it is and who it’s for

Appearance aside, the ROG Ally is much closer to a full-fledged computer than a handheld console. It has a standard processor with an integrated GPU, and all the components you’d expect except a keyboard and trackpad. It boots up just like a PC and runs Windows 11 Home. This is its greatest strength, because it can run pretty much any PC game including plenty of free ones – but also its greatest weakness, because you’re using software and hardware in ways they might not have originally been designed for. We’ll get into this in much more detail soon.

You can run almost any PC game, and most recent ones actually work surprisingly well. Asus isn’t interested in creating its own ecosystem to compete with Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, so there’s no custom hardware or software and no tie to a specific game store. You can download anything from the Internet, including through the Steam, Epic, EA, etc stores. You can install any company’s launcher, use cloud or subscription services, and even hook up an external drive via USB to copy files over. That also opens up a huge world of free games (and ones obtained in less-than-ethical ways). Besides, titles usually cost far less on PC than they do on consoles, and older games are often heavily discounted.

But then there’s that Rs. 69,990 price – if you’re a mobile gamer looking to get to the next level, you probably want a gaming laptop. The ROG Ally isn’t a replacement or alternative, unless you have extreme space constraints plus a computer that you already use for non-gaming tasks.

The buttons and sticks on the ROG Ally are modelled on Microsoft’s Xbox controller layout

Asus imagines that people will use the ROG Ally not only as a handheld, but also docked with a TV. You could even pick up one of the company’s XG Mobile external GPUs, which start at around Rs. 80,000 in India and go up to Rs. 1,82,990 for a GeForce RTX 4090) to turn the ROG Ally into a full gaming setup with up to a 4K monitor or TV.

Other than price and size, two big considerations are battery life and performance while running on battery power, which we’ll test soon. Another thing to remember is that a lot of PC games require always-on or periodic Internet connectivity, so the ROG Ally might not be all that suited for those who want to play games on a long flight or while commuting.

And then there are non-gaming use cases too – you definitely won’t want to browse the Web or type office documents on the tiny 7-inch touchscreen, but it’s better than a phone for watching movies on. Plus, a cheap USB dock and some peripherals could make the ROG Ally quite versatile in many situations.

The ROG Ally seems to be something you’d have in addition to a more traditional gaming setup – a bit of an indulgence, maybe for a student who wants to keep it hidden in a dorm, a frequent traveler, or a very committed couch potato. It’s hard to imagine choosing the Ally instead of a similarly priced laptop. Hopefully in the future, prices will go down and devices like this will make up a new, more affordable tier of gaming PCs.

You get a simple stand in the box, but a carry case would have been much more appreciated

Asus ROG Ally design and capabilities

Physically, the ROG Ally is a little bigger than the Nintendo Switch and quite a lot smaller than the Steam Deck. The general layout of buttons and controls is deliberately modelled on an Xbox controller, to make gaming on Windows as seamless as using Microsoft’s own hardware. Asus says it focused a huge amount of engineering effort on keeping weight down, and the final 608g was achieved through some very creative structural work as well as paying attention to every little detail, down to the design of the fan blades and every last hardware choice.

It’s comfortable to hold, and the weight is fine. My index fingers sat naturally on the triggers and my ring fingers found the macro paddles on the back. The front-firing speakers aren’t obstructed by a user’s palms at all, and sound is surprisingly rich and clear. There are also stereo mics with noise cancelling. A fingerprint sensor is integrated into the power button on the top.

Of course, front and centre we have the 7-inch full-HD display. I think Asus got the size and proportions right – I never had to hold the ROG Ally too close to my face. Viewing angles aren’t the greatest and colours are fine, but don’t pop especially. That said, Windows 11 was clearly not designed for this screen size, and some text elements can be hard to read. Text input is the most painful, particularly during the Windows 11 setup process. The virtual keyboard can take up half the screen when docked, and cover what you’re trying to do when floating. I found myself using a stylus rather than trying to finger-pick letters, and it felt like typing on an old-school PDA at times. You can use the macro paddles on the rear to trigger several common Windows functions, but that requires memorising them.

There are two small buttons on either side of the screen – you might recognise the Menu and View buttons if you’re an Xbox user, and that’s exactly what they’re for in games. There’s also a button for Asus’ custom control panel on the left, and an Armoury Crate software shortcut on the right.

The power and volume buttons as well as all ports are on the top of the ROG Ally

The ABXY buttons are colour-coded but in a very muted palette. Button quality is decent; not much different from a console controller. The trigger buttons use Hall effect sensors and allow for analogue control based on how far you press them. Asus hasn’t announced plans for swappable buttons, triggers and sticks like you might find on some high-end console controllers. There’s also a 6-axis gyro sensor and vibrators in each grip, which some but not all games can take advantage of.

Asus has shown many design prototypes it experimented with before settling on this design. Overall, it’s pretty plain. It doesn’t scream “gamer” with any sharp lines or bright accents but you do get a bit of RGB flair around the analogue sticks and a reflective strip on the back. The diagonal slash matches the current ROG series aesthetic. The company says it has gone with textures that work well for grip and allowing sweat on your palms to evaporate. The Ally is only available in white, and I hope the plastic doesn’t get discoloured after long months of gaming with sweaty palms.

Build quality feels pretty good – even with vigorous button mashing and the inevitable bending and twisting that happens when caught up in the action of a game, the ROG Ally never felt delicate or cheap. The display uses Gorilla Glass Victus with an anti-reflective coating. There’s no IP rating because the active cooling requires open air vents, although Asus says they are filtered to prevent dust ingress. One negative is that the ports and slot on the top aren’t protected; a rubber flap would have been appreciated.

The paddles on the rear let you trigger macros when pressed in combination with other buttons

Asus ROG Ally specifications and software

At the heart of the ROG Ally is the new AMD Ryzen Z1 series of SoCs. These are slightly trimmed versions of the Ryzen 7040 series chips, codenamed “Phoenix” and originally designed for premium ultralight laptops. They’re based on the current Zen 4 CPU and RDNA 3 GPU architectures. The Ryzen Z1, which we won’t see in India yet, features six CPU cores and four GPU compute units, while the Ryzen Z1 Extreme steps up to eight CPU cores and 12 GPU units. Maximum boost clock speeds are 4.9GHz and 5.1GHz respectively, Both have 9-30W TDP ranges.

That’s a surprising amount of power and explains the need for a dual-fan cooling system. What we have here is essentially an entire laptop’s worth of hardware packed into a thick rectangle rather than a clamshell. It’s surprising that AMD is marketing both these chips as explicitly optimised for handheld gaming, since they could power various types of miniature PCs.

Back to the ROG Ally though, we also have 16GB of LPDDR5 memory which is of course soldered and not upgradeable. The SSD is a 512GB PCIe 4.0 unit and is socketed, though the smaller M.2 2230 form factor isn’t very easily available. Asus says ROG Ally owners are free to perform an upgrade, but it will void their warranty so it’s best to have trained service centre staff do it.

Asus went with a 7-inch, full-HD 120Hz “IPS level” display. It supports AMD Freesync Premium, brightness is rated at 500nits and colour reproduction is 100 percent sRGB. The battery capacity is 40Wh which is understandable for a handheld. You get a 65W USB-PD charging brick, which is surprisingly bulky and seems to be the same one that the company ships with some of its laptops. There’s no mention of quick charging.

Asus’ Armoury Crate SE software lets you tweak the controller inputs and set system-wide options

You get just one USB 3.2 Gen2 (10Gbps) Type-C port for charging and connecting peripherals such as a portable SSD. It can also be used for an external display over DisplayPort 1.4. This port is part of Asus’ proprietary XG Mobile Interface, which essentially lets you route PCIe lanes externally. The XG Mobile docks, initially designed for the ultra-compact ROG Flow laptop series, give you a huge boost in GPU power and multiple additional ports including Ethernet, USB, and multiple display outputs. There’s also Wi-Fi 6E (which isn’t technically licensed to work in India) and Bluetooth 5.2.

The ROG Ally also has a 3.5mm audio jack and a microSD card slot. Asus states that you can install almost any game onto a microSD card and it will only be marginally slower than using the SSD, which in theory would be a great way to carry more games and content around with you. Unfortunately recent reports have confirmed that microSD cards are prone to failure due to the slot’s proximity to a hot air vent.

One big challenge for Asus was making the Windows 11 UI manageable on such a small screen, and so the Armoury Crate SE software acts as a launcher, with your games front and centre. It also has a bunch of options for customising everything from the analogue stick responsiveness to Aura Sync lighting and checking for firmware updates. You can use it to launch individual games as well as storefronts such as Steam and the Xbox app if you have a Game Pass subscription.

The Command Centre overlay can be called up within games, and gives you big, touch-friendly buttons. You can control brightness and volume, but more importantly toggle between performance modes (30/25W, 15W and 10W), change game profiles, and pull up useful tools. You can fully customise its layout and add shortcuts for the Windows desktop, on-screen keyboard, and task manager. For power users, there are controls letting you cap screen resolution and refresh rate on the fly, toggle an FPS limiter and use AMD Radeon Software features such as Radeon Image Sharpening and Radeon Super Resolution upscaling.

You can pull up this panel at any time to change system performance parameters

Asus ROG Ally usage and performance

There are loads of system settings you can tweak, and so performance can be tricky to measure. I noticed that the 30W Turbo mode was only available when using the ROG Ally with its bundled 65W charger – the TDP was capped at 25W when on battery power and even when using a third-party 61W adapter. More interestingly, plugging in a USB Type-C dock and routing power through that also limited the Ally to 25W. This was a bit of a surprise, and you’ll probably encounter this too, since most docks don’t specify their passthrough power ratings.

Speaking of docks, I found mine to be indispensable when setting up the ROG Ally and performing general tasks in Windows. A fast wired Internet connection really helped when downloading 100GB+ games. In fact, I had to daisy-chain two hubs because I needed at least one USB port for an external SSD and one each for a keyboard and mouse, plus pass-through power. Wireless peripherals will take some of this load off but the Ally really needs at least one more USB port – it is after all a full Windows PC. If you’re planning to use a desktop monitor or TV, output resolution and refresh rate might also depend on the chain of docks and cables or adapters you use.

The 30W mode is what you should be using for gaming when plugged in. This unlocks the Ryzen Z1 Extreme’s full performance, and also reveals one of its biggest limitations. You can’t use the full potential of the ROG Ally unless it’s plugged in to a power source – this is normal for laptops, but a bit frustrating for a handheld.

The supplied power brick is quite large by today’s standards

Battery life is also greatly affected when the higher power modes are enabled. As you’ll see from the benchmark test and game performance scores below, you can get decent enough performance in heavy games at 30/25W but 15W is more sensible for battery-powered gaming. FPS numbers drop drastically and disproportionately at the 10W setting, so this is only really advisable when you’re doing things like watching videos or running non-game software.

You can expect 1-2 hours of gaming at reasonable settings, using the 15W mode. This of course depends on which game you choose, but that still isn’t a lot. Asus rates video playback time at 6 hours using the 10W mode. Our graphics-heavy Battery Eater Pro test ran for 2 hours, 23 minutes at 10W. This won’t get you through a long road trip but most plane seats have power outlets these days so that’s at least one possibility. Charging isn’t particularly quick – I noted a 20 percent battery level after 10 minutes of charging when completely switched off.

All games and tests were run at the 25W setting to gauge maximum performance under ordinary conditions, except where noted. Starting with general performance tests, the ROG Ally scored 6,886 points in the synthetic PCMark benchmark’s standard run, and 6,891 points in its Extended run. Geekbench 6 managed a single-core score of 2,521 and a multi-core score of 11,570. Cinebench R23 is another popular standardised test, and it completed its render workload with 1,761 points with a single active thread and 14,108 points with all threads active.

The ROG Ally should have had at least one more USB Type-C port for charging while peripherals are plugged in

The POVRay render test finished its default benchmark in just 52 seconds. The browser-based Webxprt 4, Basemark Web, and Jetstream 2 tests returned scores of 282, 1969.65, and 273.372 respectively. Compressing our standard 3.24GB folder of assorted files with 7-zip took 1 minute, 28 seconds and transcoding a 1.3GB AVI file to H.265 using Handbrake took 41 seconds.

At 25W, all these scores are roughly on par with or better than what you can expect from the recently launched 15-inch MacBook Air, although Apple’s M2 SoC only needs passive cooling. The ROG Ally also handily beats a current-gen Windows-based ultraportable, the LG Gram 14 (14Z90Q), with its low-power Intel Core i7-1260P processor. Most of that is down to AMD’s beefy integrated GPU.

For the sake of comparison, I ran some tests again in the 10W mode. Geekbench 6 scores dropped to 1,840 and 6,869 for the single- and multi-core tests respectively. 7zip took 2 minutes, 29 seconds for the exact same compression task, and video transcoding took 1 minute, 35 seconds.

Of course graphics and gaming test results are what everyone’s been waiting for. The trusty 3DMark posted scores of 1,477 in 3DMark’s Port Royal ray tracing benchmark, 3,138 in the DX12 Time Spy test, and 7,203 in the legacy Fire Strike test. That’s far better than what we’ve seen from laptops such as the Xiaomi Notebook Pro 120G with its entry-level GeForce MX550 GPU, and slots in neatly below the mainstream GeForce RTX 3050, as seen in the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X.

You can set up a desktop with a monitor, keyboard and mouse, but it doesn’t seem practical for gaming

The Unigine Superposition test managed a score of 5,004 with a 37.43fps average at the 25W setting, and that came down to 3,958 points with an average of 29.6fps at 10W. Both runs used the 1080p Medium preset. The difference in absolute values as well as overall consistency shows how performance scales down when trying to save power. Gears Tactics has a fairly intense built-in benchmark which managed a 53.5fps average at 25W but only an unplayable 16.5fps average at 10W, also using the same 1920×1080 resolution and High quality preset.

We have some more in-game benchmarks lined up, since these let us compare performance across devices and platforms under identical conditions. GTA V is now quite old but still popular, and a great example of what I’d like to play on a portable console. While it was fun, graphics quality was not great. Even at 1280×720 resolution, most graphics quality variables were disabled or set to Low by default. The built-in benchmark averaged 30.24fps with the minimum dropping to just 11.44fps.

Other games fared considerably better. The classic Rise of the Tomb Raider ran fairly well at 1080p using its Medium preset. The benchmark average was 41fps which is good enough. Far Cry 5 is another of our regular benchmark tests, and this title managed an average of 43fps at 1080 using its High preset. You might encounter stutters and slowdowns in intense sequences in-game, but there’s no doubt that they’re playable and enjoyable.

Doom Eternal looks great and is incredibly fast-paced, but is also known to be forgiving when it comes to hardware. Using its on-screen diagnostic counter, I was able to test the ROG Ally at three different power settings across a level that included navigating some simple passages followed by a major fight sequence. When plugged in and running at its 30W Turbo setting, I was able to play at 50-70fps and there was no issue other than fan noise. The 15W mode took performance down to about 45fps which was also fine – this is what you should expect when playing on battery power. However, the game ran at an excruciating 20fps and fight sequences were impossible, when I tried the 10W mode. The resolution was set to 1080p throughout, and the quality setting was Ultra.

Casual games run well on battery power and are fun to play on the ROG Ally

Superhot is not as graphically intense but seems well suited to the form factor of the ROG Ally. Using the game’s High preset and the console’s 30W setting, I was comfortable with the 100fps or so that Asus’ overlay showed. at Sadly, that dropped to just about 30fps at 15W.

And what about casual games? I did manage to have fun with simple titles such as Portal 2, Slime Rancher, and Rayman Legends. These ran poorly at the 10W setting but seemed to be manageable at 15W. Games such as these are designed to work with a controller, and detected the ROG Ally’s hardware as a standard input device, letting me tweak button assignments in-game. Many PC games these days are console ports anyway, so the UI and controls just worked. Civilization VI felt too constrained on the tiny screen and controls were quite painful – I can’t imagine spending much time with simulation or strategy titles on this device.

For games that don’t just work with a controller, Armoury Crate SE can be used to create per-game profiles and manually map keyboard or mouse inputs to the Ally’s buttons and sticks. This isn’t always smooth, since using an analogue stick is very different to using a mouse. I tried one fairly old game, Mirror’s Edge, in order to gauge the controller experience here because I had enjoyed it very much on an Xbox 360, but it crashed on launch and just refused to run.

Beyond that, many casual Windows games are designed either for mouse-and-keyboard input or a touchscreen, and I found that Bloons TD6, Mini Motorways, and games of that sort worked best with touch input, ignoring the controller hardware altogether. The touchscreen isn’t very responsive, and these games really don’t do justice to the ROG Ally’s hardware, but if you have a portable computer then why not!

The ROG Ally’s fans are not exactly quiet when running games at the 30W setting. The sound isn’t too distracting but it is noticeable. Hot air rushes out the vents, thankfully away from your hands though.

Asus says it had to do a lot of work to achieve the final size and weight of the ROG Ally

Verdict

The Asus ROG Ally is a fascinating product. It’s genuinely new and fresh, and there’s clearly a market for it. However, I’m not quite sure it’s ready for mainstream adoption, and those who are immediately drawn to the concept should really consider a few key points about how and where they will end up using it. First of all, this isn’t a traditional handheld console – it’s a mini PC with a screen and a physically integrated controller. It doesn’t have its own ecosystem of games that just work, a game store, or a seamless UI. PC games won’t all run smoothly and working with Windows 11 can be annoying.

Moreover, the sheer number of variables you have to deal with manually can be daunting for casual gamers. You have to know what power profile is active, you can change the screen resolution and refresh rate, and I just didn’t have time to get into what’s possible with Radeon Super Resolution upscaling. During the review period, there weren’t many times that I actually saw any benefit in plugging the ROG Ally into a TV or using it at a desk with a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I also don’t think an XG Mobile dock with a much more powerful GPU would be good enough value for money, for the use I got out of it.

PC games might expect always-on Internet access, so gaming on the go can be tricky. Adding a cellular data modem would have compromised battery life further, so it’s understandable that Asus didn’t implement that. The problem is there are places you can’t even tether, such as on a plane, which is exactly where you’d want a portable gaming machine to work.

You get the convenience of a fingerprint sensor and of course programmable RGB lighting effects

Battery life is very limited and you only get the best performance when plugged into a power source that can deliver 65W. For that reason I found myself using the ROG Ally most often when lounging at home. In that sense, it’s nice to have but it’s definitely an indulgence. If this is the main use case, rather than gaming while outdoors or traveling, I’d prioritise buying a gaming laptop and a capable smartphone before spending money on this device.

I’m surprised that other manufacturers haven’t yet announced their own versions of the same thing, but I can’t say whether that’s because AMD’s Ryzen Z1 series isn’t widely available to OEMs, they were caught off guard and need more R&D time, or they’re choosing to wait and watch. Asus is clearly confident enough to launch the ROG Ally worldwide – and has created quite a lot of resources including guides on its website to help you optimise game settings and get familiar with it. I’m fascinated to see whether this will end up as a one-off, like many of Asus’ most inventive products, or whether we’ve just seen the birth of a whole new market. As for the Ryzen Z1 series SoCs, I’d love to see them in a variety of compact form factors beyond handheld gaming consoles.

Unlike the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, the ROG Ally is officially available in India. Just the fact that you will get authorised support for it makes spending Rs. 70,000 seem palatable, but you have to know exactly what you’re getting into. This isn’t a simple game console that you can just pull out of your bag to kill time with wherever you are. It also isn’t a low-cost gaming PC. It’s more of a plaything for enthusiasts who already have good PCs and who will find joy in the device itself, not just the games they play on it.

Asus ROG Ally

Price: Rs. 69,990

Pros:-

• Innovative and unique
• Powerful hardware
• Reasonable weight, good build quality
• Runs a wide variety of PC games

Cons:-

• Very limited battery life
• Only one USB port
• Windows UI is hard to use
• Carry case not included

Ratings (Out of 5):-

• Design: 4
• Display: 3.5
• Software: 3.5
• Performance: 5
• Battery life: 3
• Value for Money: 4
• Overall: 3.5

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