Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the latest offering from FromSoftware, the makers of the Dark Souls and Bloodborne games. As one might guess from that pedigree, Sekiro is not a game for the easily frustrated.

Sekiro is set in an alternate/mythical version of Sengoku Japan. You play as a shinobi, ordered to protect ‘the Divine Heir,’ a young child with the Dragon Heritage. The tutorial takes place with you breaking the child out of bondage and, during the attempted escape, you lose your left arm and the Heir. You awaken in a temple with a prosthetic arm and a mission. Recover the Heir and get vengeance on those who wish to use him.

On that course, your prosthetic will be a massive asset. In the first major departure from the SoulsBorne games, Sekiro allows players to use all areas of attack. Up and down are open paths for you to go, using the first ability of the arm, the grappling hook. Go over walls rather than finding the gate, stealth over to where a soldier or two are talking and, in some cases, eavesdrop for vital information or stealth kill at least one of them.

Stealth is a major way to traverse through Sekiro. Hiding behind walls, distracting enemies to come over to investigate for an instant kill, or crouch moving through high grass to get behind enemies for the same. When there are multiple enemies, any advantage in combat is a huge one.

Combat is actually a second major departure for Sekiro. Dark Souls games were patience based combat, waiting for the right time to attack after an enemy leaves an opening and dodge rolling to get there. Bloodborne’s combat was a bit more up tempo, but still relied more on ripostes and dodging. Posture is Sekiro’s stamina of sorts, where you build up an enemy’s posture bar and, when broken, allows the player to perform a deathblow. But beware, you also have a posture bar and the enemies are relentless in trying to break yours. As such, Sekiro is an offensive game, where going on the attack is an advantage. But don’t over-extend, since parrying your opponent also affects their posture (and vice-versa). Sekiro has fast, tight combat and is highly engaging. But don’t expect your Dark Souls experience to be a huge asset. In some ways, it’s a hindrance, when you try to dodge an attack that you really should be parrying.

Another major departure is how you evolve your character in Sekiro. Gone is stats leveling and instead there are trees from which you can choose skills that will allow you to customize your character. You get points to spend by killing enemies, but some progress towards those points (as well as gold accrued) is lost each time you die and return to the statue. Unlike Dark Souls, you cannot recover that experience or money by backtracking to the spot of your death.

There are certainly similarities to the SoulsBorne games. You receive a Healing Gourd early, which is essentially an Estus Flask and is upgraded in a similar way (frustration note: Sekiro took after Dark Souls 2 and only gives you one Gourd to start, so healing is very minimal.) There are also healing items in the game, and, while you can only carry a handful, any extra you find go to the Statue and are refilled when resting.

Overall, if you liked Dark Souls for the ‘hard but fair’ reputation it earned, Sekiro is well worth your time. It is difficult, extremely so at times, but figuring out the system, mastering it, and conquering the game will be as rewarding as it was frustrating to get there. Sekiro isn’t Dark Souls or Bloodborne. It is its own new and exciting thing. And that is a thrilling proposition.

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.

Wizard and Glass, the fourth book in Steven King’s Dark Tower series, picks up immediately following the previous book, The Waste Lands, speeding over the monorail while trying to save themselves from a grisly end when the train reaches Topeka. They emerge victorious when Eddie shows Roland that nonsense can be anything but.

Wizard really starts to meld the worlds of King’s works together, as the Topeka they arrive at is not the Topeka of Eddie, Susannah and Jake’s world. It is the Topeka of The Stand and is bereft of life from the plague within that book.

It is also a book largely of backstory, as Eddie, Susannah and Jake are treated to the story of how Roland earned his guns and of a long lost love, Susan. King shows his prowess by keeping the story entertaining despite knowing the main character was never in any real danger (although that isn’t true for everyone involved.)

As Roland’s story winds down, the group finds themselves on the Topeka freeway approaching, of all things, the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz. An old nemesis shows up within and leaves Roland the very artifact he had just been telling a tale about. The ka-tet gathers around and gets one final flashback before the book ends, a tragedy of Roland’s past after coming home from his first successful mission.

Overall, Wizard and Glass is a very interesting book, but definitely feels like filler. This was not helped, originally, by the extensive break King took from writing the series (there was six years between Wizard and the next book in the series, Wolves of the Calla.) King uses this book as a world building exercise and gives the readers a deeper sense of who Roland is and what turned him (mostly) into the man he is now. Using this series as a hub to tie all his previous works together really adds a bit of spice to the equation, and it is done well, giving readers a chance to see more of some of their favorite works. So while Wizards is not the strongest book in the series, it is certainly an informative work that needs be read by King and Tower fans.

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.

The Waste Lands, book three of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, jumps ahead a little over a month following the events in The Drawing of the Three, allowing our ka-tet a chance to heal and recover from the events on the beach. It deals mainly with the paradox Roland created when he saved Jake from Jack Mort in the third doorway, and begins the travels of the group towards In-World.

Told on two different worlds, Waste Lands‘ paradox comes into play because the gunslinger and Jake both remember Jake being in the desert in the first book and not because Jake was transported to the desert when Jack pushed him into traffic. However, Roland prevented Jack from doing so when he entered his mind in the third doorway. So Jake was both in the desert after dying in New York and not in the desert but still in New York after surviving the non-encounter with Jack. Both characters are suffering from the paradox and are determined to fix the problem, despite neither of them being aware the other truly exists or is themself trying.

Eddie and Susannah’s characters continue to develop in Waste Lands, and their relationship becomes increasingly personal. Eddie, now clean after severe withdrawal, begins to redevelop skills he lost to his drugs, including carving, which helps Roland pull his final companion into Mid-World and fix his mental problems.

The group, continuing its travels, comes to the city of Lud, consumed by war and gangs, where Jake is kidnapped. The ka-tet splits up to save their friend and figure out how to continue to their quest, ending up on a crazy artificially intelligent monorail train named Blaine. The book ends on a challenge from Blaine and the group speeding on towards Topeka through the waste lands.

A little slower than Drawing,Waste Lands is still a strong entry in the series, with character and world growth abound. While not quite as gripping as its predecessor, the book will certainly hold a reader’s attention and offers some interesting concepts of mental stability and the end of a world. King shows his stripes by having a book that covers so much not feel bloated or frantic.

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.

Stephen King’s second installment in The Dark Tower series, The Drawing of the Three, comes immediately after the events of The Gunslinger. Roland has palavered with the man in black and been given a glimpse of his future. Drawing continues to expand that future and brings Roland together with his ka-tet.

Before he meets his companions, he has an unfortunate run-in with a lobster-like creature that cripples the gunslinger by removing two fingers from his right hand (and part of one toe.) This becomes infected, leaving the gunslinger feverish while he treks north and encounters three doors that lead him to his companions.

Here is where The Dark Tower series really takes off. The doors lead to three different times in our world, and King’s writing ability to draw readers in takes off. You feel like you know when and where you are even if you didn’t live in those times yourself, or even with the circumstances around those people or times.

You also get a good amount of character building, both from the new cast members and Roland himself. Despite being completely taken by surprise by what happens within the doorways, Roland manages to scrape by with his instincts and training to complete his tasks and gain his allies as was foretold. But, while he gains people that he grows to love and consider his friends, his deeply ingrained duty, a character trait that is evident early and often for the gunslinger, keeps him keenly aware that, despite his feelings, these people might be sacrificed along the road to the Dark Tower.

Overall, Drawing is a significant step in the right direction after Gunslinger. The pacing is better, the characters are ones you will care about and the settings and times feel accurately portrayed. Here is where Roland and his quest begin to truly take shape, and avid readers will have a hard time putting down the series from here on out.

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” With those words, Stephen King started his magnum opus in 1978. The series would take decades to complete and, while Gunslinger was not the strongest of the books, it laid the foundation for what would be one of King’s greatest works.

Gunslinger is the shortest of the seven books and lays the basis of the world(s) it inhabits. Roland Deschain is the titular gunslinger, an old fashioned knight of a dying world, chasing who he thinks to be his nemesis, the man in black. Along the way the reader gets both backstory into Roland and his chase through a story told to a farmer, and introduced to another major character, Jake, who hails from New York (yes, that New York) and tags along as Roland continues his quest for the Dark Tower.

There is a surprising amount of information dumped in this opening book, but also a lot that is missing. When Roland finally converses with the man in black, his information is both useful and useless, giving tantalizing hints as to what is to come, but never really saying things that make much sense. And that might be one of the biggest hurdles to The Dark Tower series. Getting into it requires a large leap of faith that things will not only get easier to read, but more enjoyable as well. They do, but getting through Gunslinger is a slog of a read, even for the most die-hard King fans.

That’s not to say that there is not interesting scenes in the book; there are a fair few of them. But they are few and far between as Roland plods along the desert with few people to talk to and fewer to keep with him.

Overall, I would recommend The Gunslinger to anyone that likes Steven King and his work (by the end of the series, you’ll probably run into a few people you recognize from other books, too.) Gunslinger itself is harder to read, but once the series gets rolling, you will be hard pressed to put it away.

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.

The Way of Kings is Brandon Sanderson’s first book in a planned ten book series known as the Stormlight Archives. It introduces us to Roshar, a new world in Sanderson’s Cosmere; just like the Mistborn series and Elantris, it is lightly connected to his other stories. No external knowledge is required to enjoy these books – Editor

As is normal for these types of books, Kings is rife with new terminology and taxonomy, not to mention characters, locations and backstory. One thing Sanderson does to break this up, besides having multiple main characters, is introduce interludes on the backstory of only one main character per book. Kings focuses on Kaladin Stormblessed and his ‘origin story.’ Kaladin learned how to be a surgeon by working alongside his father, before fighting in the army to protect his brother and his Brightlord. Finally, through a startling turn of events, he becomes a slave.

Another main character is a young woman named Shallan Davar, on a desperate quest to save her family; unsurprisingly, there are several deviations along the way. She introduces us to another key player in the Stormlight Archives, Jasnah Kholin. Sister to a king, renowned scholar, avowed atheist in a religion-steeped culture. Their place in the story gives broad form to the backstory of the world in Kings. They initially focus on scholarship and learning, versus what is considered the masculine arts of war and fighting.

Overlaid on all this is the war for vengeance against the Parshendi, a barbaric people group. While both men are fully engaged in the success of the Vengeance Pact, there is a brewing conflict between Dalinar Kholin (brother to Jasnah, and our third main character) and Torol Sadeas (Dalinar’s peer, and a real piece of work – Editor). Their approaches to success are firmly at odds, which leads to some major waves within the Alethi court.

Kings is an engaging opening book to a series, smoothly teaching readers about a brand new world while still allowing for engrossing battles and plenty of new things around the corner. It ends on a high note for the heroes, but not without great cost.

This is my favorite series; expect plenty of interjections in this set of reviews. As a heads-up, I’ve been told by several friends that Kings is a slow starter. I didn’t experience that myself, but I’d love to hear about your journey – Editor

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.

A Memory of Light is the final chapter of the enormous saga by Robert Jordan with posthumous help from Brandon Sanderson. It ties up the story of Rand al’Thor and company and their fight with the Shadow and does so with epic battles and grandiose stages.

As one would expect, this book leaves no one out. The three main ta’veren are present and doing all sorts of mischief, with Rand not only forging peace throughout the world, but confronting his ancient foe. Mat does things only Mat could get away with, both before and during Tarmon Gai’don and Perrin is his normal meticulous self, doing what needs to be done despite personal desires or cares.

But this is not only the boys’ story. While Nynaeve plays a smaller role than you’d initially think, Egwene is center stage early and often. Even Min has important things to do. Elayne is a boisterous addition to the ladies’ ranks, earning her spot in the finale with a brashness that is now expected of her.

And looming over everything is Tarmon Gai’don: The Last Battle. While there are a number of physical battles going on throughout the book (more on those in a moment), Tarmon Gai’don is the culmination of the shepherd becoming the savior. Rand’s battle with the Dark One, while not what people might have expected, is a fascinating read that allows people to truly grasp who and what the Dragon represents for the world. His is the story of second chances, of the glory of doing not only the right thing, but the right thing correctly. Ultimately, Rand does what he does because, even at the end of things, he retains his ability to learn from his mistakes.

While Rand does his dance with the Shai’tan, everyone else is busy fighting a more normal war against the forces of the Shadow. In any war, there are costs, and there are no punches pulled here by our authors. There are deaths that will surprise you, and deaths that might make you surprisingly emotional, considering to whom they happen (stupid horse. It’s a horse. Why should that make me so sad?). The heroes fight an impossible battle, led by a degenerate gambler who swears he is no hero despite all his heroic actions.

A Memory of Light is the apex of writing, to me, of both Jordan and Sanderson. It shows that they are capable of not only making huge, sprawling battles engaging, but the niggling details as well. Rand’s encounter is as captivating as Egwene’s duels with M’Hael, Perrin’s hunt for Slayer and even Faile’s insane trek through the Wastes. The book shines as a beacon of what a culmination of such massive proportions should be and will have you coming back to the series time and again as there are no beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But this was an ending, and a damn good one.

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.

Towers of Midnight is the second addition by Brandon Sanderson into the Wheel of Time saga after Robert Jordan’s death. This proves to be the penultimate book in the series and Sanderson uses almost 1300 pages to wrap up a number of storylines before Tarmon Gai’don and bring others to the forefront.

As such, this is largely Mat and Perrin’s book. Egwene also plays a large roll, but the two other ta’veren and their stories need to get them to where they need to be and with whom quickly, because both are long overdue for some major happenings (plus, Mat is married now, and he hasn’t seen his wife since the nuptials.)

Perrin’s part in this book deals largely with finishing his story with the Whitecloaks and finally getting back to Andor. He is hampered by Graendal and Slayer, who are ordered to trap and kill the Wolfbrother. In his path are the Whitecloaks led by Galad Damodred, who is the first of the trio of kin to reunite with their mother, Morgase. The former queen upends Damodred’s world a little and sets him on a path to see more than white or black, if only in small increments, which corrects one of his biggest flaws as a character, (somewhat).

But Perrin has to deal with Slayer by and large on his own. The man with two souls destroys an old friend (literally) and adds to Perrin’s burdens before finally being driven off and allowing Perrin to escape the trap. After some consternation from the women in his life, Perrin comes back to a pitched battle between Trollocs and the Whitecloaks to save the very people that have hounded him from the first book.

Egwene is consolidating her power as Amyrlin Seat, but is fighting with a murderer hiding in the tower in Mesaana. Gawyn is an on-again off-again thorn in her plans for all the right reasons, regardless of her desires, so she drives him away for a bit. Her fight with the Shadow takes place in the World of Dreams, while he comes back and fights off the very thing that he warned Egwene about in the waking world. Egwene’s battle is intense and involved, but would have come out very different if not for her soon-to-be warder’s constant interference.

Mat’s tale is less battle focused, but more enlightening. He’s stuck in Caemlyn because of his word to Verin, but runs into the gholam and is determined to see it dealt with. He also finagles his way into seeing Elayne and getting Aludra’s Dragons in production, much to Elayne’s delight and Brigitte’s dismay. Mat ends the golem with some help from the Kinswomen, then, at the end of the book, finally gets to go to the lair of the snakes and foxes and deal with the Moiraine problem. Wandering the halls of another world, Mat, Thom and Noel find the woman who has been missing since way back in book four and, with a little sacrifice, bring the woman who started the boys on their journey back to their world.

Overall, Towers might seem like a lot of fluff, but it is all things needed to get people where they need to be in the grand scheme of things before Sanderson can wrap up this large story. He does a good job pacing the book, switching between characters enough to keep the reader interested in all the story lines. Rand’s mostly lack of appearance in the book doesn’t detract from it, since he’ll be a large focus for obvious reasons in the next one. Towers is a solid read and will keep you turning pages, if only to get you through to the grand finale.

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.

The Gathering Storm is the first of three books written largely by Brandon Sanderson to finish the Wheel of Time series following Robert Jordan’s death. Jordan left Sanderson an outline, extensive notes and even several whole chapters to use in the books, so his vision for Rand and company would be fulfilled in the way he intended, even if he himself didn’t get a chance to see it through. And while Jordan originally promised just one more book to finish the series, Sanderson was unable to see how to make that happen and, with the approval of both the publisher and Jordan’s wife, split the final book Jordan intended into three.

Egwene and Rand dominate this book. Theirs are the two stories with the furthest to go, so that statement is unsurprising. Egwene’s story takes almost an entire quarter of the book herself in her quest to usurp the usurper in Elaida and reunify the White Tower. Her work does not come easily, as she is regularly beaten, embarrassed and humiliated, but her time with the Aiel has forged her into tougher stuff than her enemies believe and, with some unexpected ‘help,’ she is able to do what she needs to claim the Amylin Seat. Sanderson proves to be a bit more direct than Jordan, revealing something in a straightforward way that had been speculated for a long time before this. This reveal allows Egwene to eventually prune the Black Ajah from both the rebels and the White Tower. One major Darkfriend is missed, but that is a story for the next book.

Rand breaks. His drive to be harder and harder shows its fatal flaw in his brittle, startlingly aggressive behavior. He breaks when Semirhage escapes and almost captures him. He breaks when his allies don’t live up to what he feels they should (you should feel bad for someone like Cadsuane, but she does get under your skin. Plus, it’s not like she doesn’t largely ignore Rand anyway and comes through in the end). He breaks one last time when Cadsuane and Nynaeve get together and reunite him with the unlikeliest of people. This breaking almost pushes him too far before he finally makes peace with himself and all the problems he both caused and is working to fix. His is the redemption story of Storm, and in the end, Rand comes through with shining colors.

Mat, Perrin and most of the rest of the cast sees some time in the book, but largely it is either focused through or on Egwene and Rand and their tribulations. And Sanderson proves his worthiness in doing so, as this book is both true to Jordan’s work, but at a faster pace that some readers will enjoy. The Gathering Storm is an excellent book and bridge from Jordan’s solo work to the combined efforts of the two authors.

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.

Fallout 3 marks the end of Black Isle’s work (so far) in the Fallout universe and the beginning of Bethesda’s. Bethesda is known for its sprawling open world games, and brings that bounty of knowledge to the world of Fallout in a huge way.

If you’ve been following these reviews, you’ll know that I (like many) feel like Fallout 2 was the apex of the series. Its simplistic but deep gameplay and lore make diving into the game time and again a fulfilling time sink. That said, Fallout 3 is fantastic in its own right (despite wasting the vocal talents of Liam Neeson on what largely amounts to a bit part). Bethesda took Black Isle’s idea and universe, and opened it up in a huge new way.

That starts with, well, pretty much everything. Gone are the hex-based tiles and turn based combat. Instead, we are given an open world and first person shooting (or V.A.T.S., more on that later). Gone (for now) is the West Coast area, as Fallout 3 takes place in and around what remains of Washington D.C. Bethesda started its efforts in the Fallout universe in an entirely new area to distance itself from Black Isle’s work while still diving into its lore and mythos.

That lore and mythos are greatly expanded in Fallout 3. There are all kinds of little places, hidden items and accessible things that allow Bethesda to take the world that Black Isle built and have it explode outward. And being a fully realized 3D open world, players get to see what the horrors of nuclear fallout bring up close and personal. While the story is fairly straightforward (find Liam Neeson, aka Dad), it has many a twist and turn to get there and also has an immense number of side things to find and do, if you so choose. (Editors Note: Operation Anchorage is the worst ever, and Mothership Zeta is not canon.)

Combat in Fallout 3 comes in two forms. Traditional first person shooting or a system called V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System). V.A.T.S. is Bethesda’s nod to Fallout’s roots, as it utilizes action points and boils combat back to its numbers bases. How you leveled up your character matters more in V.A.T.S. than first person mode, since the weapon type you are using and how it is scored in your character sheet provide the V.A.T.S. system with the information it needs to determine success or failure in combat.

Bethesda, by and large, stuck with Black Isle’s view on the world. If you are strong enough to get away with it, go ahead and do it. Karma plays a bigger role in this game, however, as people will hear of your atrocities and act accordingly, but that sometimes works both ways, as there are places that don’t like goody two-shoes as well as places that aren’t fond of genocidal maniacs. Oh, and they won’t let you kill kids in this game (without an unofficial mod, that is).

Overall, Fallout 3 is an excellent toe in the water for Bethesda into the Fallout universe, and helped propel the series back into the spotlight after a lengthy hiatus. Old time fans and newcomers alike are sure to find plenty to enjoy in this game.

Justin Lado

Justin enjoys most games. He is currently learning the ins and outs of competitive modern Magic while enjoying all sorts of other gaming mediums, assuming he can find the spare time.