The Penguin: Episode 4 Review - “Cent’anni”
The following review contains spoilers for the fourth episode of The Penguin, “Cent’anni.”
As gritty and grounded as 2022’s The Batman was, “grounded” is a relative term. Yes, there aren’t any super-powered people (and there won’t be, according to writer/director Matt Reeves) and Robert Patinson’s Batmobile is just a souped-up muscle car without rocket engines or James Bond-like gadgets, but that world is still full of wacky, heightened characters that don’t quite feel like real people.In The Penguin, though, the most fantastical element – Bruce Wayne himself – has been removed from the equation, allowing for a story that’s even more realistic… up until this week’s episode, “Cent’anni.” A flashback trip to Arkham finally lets loose the comic-book craziness in an episode that brings the series to an abrupt halt for a focussed, chilling look at Sofia Falcone’s last 10 years, but it’s one that takes both feet off the ground and leans into the inherent weirdness of a world where Batman exists.
Her stay in Arkham State Hospital (Asylum would be too outlandish) is a tragic tale of betrayal by the ones she trusted most. The episode drives home just how cruel the Falcone family was to her, which sets up a satisfying final sequence really well. But it also drives home just how cartoonishly exaggerated some of the characters in this show can be. Not only in Sofia, who we obviously see a lot more of in “Cent’anni,” but characters like Doctor Ventress (in name alone, even), Dr. Rush, and Magpie, as well as the unnamed prisoner who takes her own life. It’s truly a nightmare, what happens in Arkham, and it’ll definitely give you cause to rethink whether Batman’s doing the right thing by sending addled criminal minds there. Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark, moving away from the pure mob movie vibe it’s had so far, but I don’t think that’s what The Penguin was ever really going for. It may be more grounded than other recent adaptations, but just like the movie it’s spun off from, it’s found its own balance of the two.
My complaint is more that “Cent’anni” doesn’t always feel like it’s placed properly in the overall story the series is telling. It has to be super tough to pace out a show, especially in today’s age of eight to 10-episode seasons and limited series (both of which The Penguin is an example of). Any amount of introductions to new characters you have to do, and any flashbacks that feel necessary, have to be positioned strategically so as to not mess with the balance of the series.
Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark.
Last week, Victor got his time to shine in an episode that deftly wove in and out of flashbacks to show us his past while relating his life before The Riddler’s attack to what’s happening in his present. “Cent’anni,” by contrast, goes for a more Inception-like structure, where an unconscious Sofia goes on a magical mystery tour through her past – but then, within that flashback, we get another time jump to the day her mother died. On the surface it sounds like a lot to manage, and it kind of is, but every step backwards in time feels necessary to tell Sofia’s full story and is smoothly executed, as is getting back to the present.
What We Said About The Penguin Episode 3 - "Bliss"
Laser-focussed on digging into the minds of Victor, Sofia, and Oz, “Bliss” saves the excitement for next time, and is better for it. A well-scripted and well-paced episode, it delivers a long-awaited backstory for Vic that was always going to be devastating, but uses the details to hit even harder. That, alongside the disappointing-yet-inevitable decision he makes towards the end, makes this a great origin story for the show’s most interesting character. – Tyler Robertson, October 6, 2024
Score: 8
Read the full The Penguin Episode 3 review
As clean as it’s able to make those transitions, it’s still jarring to have two flashback episodes in a row at a time when the third episode left so much going on in the present-day, where Victor and Oz sped off and left Sophia to die. Where that was able to move Oz’s power grab forward while laying down groundwork for Victor’s character arc, this time the sole focus on Sofia makes it work as a standalone piece but it fails to do the same service to what’s happening in the now, save for the climactic sequence at the end.
I do like that as the pieces come together in The Penguin, previous conversations start to make more sense. In the moment of the second episode where Oz tells Sofia that he owes her, we’re completely unaware of what he might be referencing. Now, knowing how everything went down 10 years ago, those conversations are recontextualized in a really satisfying way. It’s an attention to detail in the writing that fleshes out the characters and makes the passage of time feel real, which is often a sticking point for me in movies and shows that span decades. If there’s a big time skip but the characters are seemingly unchanged and it feels like nothing happened in the years between, then why even have a jump? But The Penguin has rooted itself in this one specific time jump, and that helps keep things stable, especially as we get to see some of what happened during those years (or at least the start of it) in “Cent’anni.”
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-penguin-episode-4-review-centanni
The Penguin: Episode 4 Review - “Cent’anni”
The following review contains spoilers for the fourth episode of The Penguin, “Cent’anni.”
As gritty and grounded as 2022’s The Batman was, “grounded” is a relative term. Yes, there aren’t any super-powered people (and there won’t be, according to writer/director Matt Reeves) and Robert Patinson’s Batmobile is just a souped-up muscle car without rocket engines or James Bond-like gadgets, but that world is still full of wacky, heightened characters that don’t quite feel like real people.In The Penguin, though, the most fantastical element – Bruce Wayne himself – has been removed from the equation, allowing for a story that’s even more realistic… up until this week’s episode, “Cent’anni.” A flashback trip to Arkham finally lets loose the comic-book craziness in an episode that brings the series to an abrupt halt for a focussed, chilling look at Sofia Falcone’s last 10 years, but it’s one that takes both feet off the ground and leans into the inherent weirdness of a world where Batman exists.
Her stay in Arkham State Hospital (Asylum would be too outlandish) is a tragic tale of betrayal by the ones she trusted most. The episode drives home just how cruel the Falcone family was to her, which sets up a satisfying final sequence really well. But it also drives home just how cartoonishly exaggerated some of the characters in this show can be. Not only in Sofia, who we obviously see a lot more of in “Cent’anni,” but characters like Doctor Ventress (in name alone, even), Dr. Rush, and Magpie, as well as the unnamed prisoner who takes her own life. It’s truly a nightmare, what happens in Arkham, and it’ll definitely give you cause to rethink whether Batman’s doing the right thing by sending addled criminal minds there. Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark, moving away from the pure mob movie vibe it’s had so far, but I don’t think that’s what The Penguin was ever really going for. It may be more grounded than other recent adaptations, but just like the movie it’s spun off from, it’s found its own balance of the two.
My complaint is more that “Cent’anni” doesn’t always feel like it’s placed properly in the overall story the series is telling. It has to be super tough to pace out a show, especially in today’s age of eight to 10-episode seasons and limited series (both of which The Penguin is an example of). Any amount of introductions to new characters you have to do, and any flashbacks that feel necessary, have to be positioned strategically so as to not mess with the balance of the series.
Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark.
Last week, Victor got his time to shine in an episode that deftly wove in and out of flashbacks to show us his past while relating his life before The Riddler’s attack to what’s happening in his present. “Cent’anni,” by contrast, goes for a more Inception-like structure, where an unconscious Sofia goes on a magical mystery tour through her past – but then, within that flashback, we get another time jump to the day her mother died. On the surface it sounds like a lot to manage, and it kind of is, but every step backwards in time feels necessary to tell Sofia’s full story and is smoothly executed, as is getting back to the present.
What We Said About The Penguin Episode 3 - "Bliss"
Laser-focussed on digging into the minds of Victor, Sofia, and Oz, “Bliss” saves the excitement for next time, and is better for it. A well-scripted and well-paced episode, it delivers a long-awaited backstory for Vic that was always going to be devastating, but uses the details to hit even harder. That, alongside the disappointing-yet-inevitable decision he makes towards the end, makes this a great origin story for the show’s most interesting character. – Tyler Robertson, October 6, 2024
Score: 8
Read the full The Penguin Episode 3 review
As clean as it’s able to make those transitions, it’s still jarring to have two flashback episodes in a row at a time when the third episode left so much going on in the present-day, where Victor and Oz sped off and left Sophia to die. Where that was able to move Oz’s power grab forward while laying down groundwork for Victor’s character arc, this time the sole focus on Sofia makes it work as a standalone piece but it fails to do the same service to what’s happening in the now, save for the climactic sequence at the end.
I do like that as the pieces come together in The Penguin, previous conversations start to make more sense. In the moment of the second episode where Oz tells Sofia that he owes her, we’re completely unaware of what he might be referencing. Now, knowing how everything went down 10 years ago, those conversations are recontextualized in a really satisfying way. It’s an attention to detail in the writing that fleshes out the characters and makes the passage of time feel real, which is often a sticking point for me in movies and shows that span decades. If there’s a big time skip but the characters are seemingly unchanged and it feels like nothing happened in the years between, then why even have a jump? But The Penguin has rooted itself in this one specific time jump, and that helps keep things stable, especially as we get to see some of what happened during those years (or at least the start of it) in “Cent’anni.”
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-penguin-episode-4-review-centanni
The Penguin: Episode 4 Review - “Cent’anni”
The following review contains spoilers for the fourth episode of The Penguin, “Cent’anni.”
As gritty and grounded as 2022’s The Batman was, “grounded” is a relative term. Yes, there aren’t any super-powered people (and there won’t be, according to writer/director Matt Reeves) and Robert Patinson’s Batmobile is just a souped-up muscle car without rocket engines or James Bond-like gadgets, but that world is still full of wacky, heightened characters that don’t quite feel like real people.In The Penguin, though, the most fantastical element – Bruce Wayne himself – has been removed from the equation, allowing for a story that’s even more realistic… up until this week’s episode, “Cent’anni.” A flashback trip to Arkham finally lets loose the comic-book craziness in an episode that brings the series to an abrupt halt for a focussed, chilling look at Sofia Falcone’s last 10 years, but it’s one that takes both feet off the ground and leans into the inherent weirdness of a world where Batman exists.
Her stay in Arkham State Hospital (Asylum would be too outlandish) is a tragic tale of betrayal by the ones she trusted most. The episode drives home just how cruel the Falcone family was to her, which sets up a satisfying final sequence really well. But it also drives home just how cartoonishly exaggerated some of the characters in this show can be. Not only in Sofia, who we obviously see a lot more of in “Cent’anni,” but characters like Doctor Ventress (in name alone, even), Dr. Rush, and Magpie, as well as the unnamed prisoner who takes her own life. It’s truly a nightmare, what happens in Arkham, and it’ll definitely give you cause to rethink whether Batman’s doing the right thing by sending addled criminal minds there. Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark, moving away from the pure mob movie vibe it’s had so far, but I don’t think that’s what The Penguin was ever really going for. It may be more grounded than other recent adaptations, but just like the movie it’s spun off from, it’s found its own balance of the two.
My complaint is more that “Cent’anni” doesn’t always feel like it’s placed properly in the overall story the series is telling. It has to be super tough to pace out a show, especially in today’s age of eight to 10-episode seasons and limited series (both of which The Penguin is an example of). Any amount of introductions to new characters you have to do, and any flashbacks that feel necessary, have to be positioned strategically so as to not mess with the balance of the series.
Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark.
Last week, Victor got his time to shine in an episode that deftly wove in and out of flashbacks to show us his past while relating his life before The Riddler’s attack to what’s happening in his present. “Cent’anni,” by contrast, goes for a more Inception-like structure, where an unconscious Sofia goes on a magical mystery tour through her past – but then, within that flashback, we get another time jump to the day her mother died. On the surface it sounds like a lot to manage, and it kind of is, but every step backwards in time feels necessary to tell Sofia’s full story and is smoothly executed, as is getting back to the present.
What We Said About The Penguin Episode 3 - "Bliss"
Laser-focussed on digging into the minds of Victor, Sofia, and Oz, “Bliss” saves the excitement for next time, and is better for it. A well-scripted and well-paced episode, it delivers a long-awaited backstory for Vic that was always going to be devastating, but uses the details to hit even harder. That, alongside the disappointing-yet-inevitable decision he makes towards the end, makes this a great origin story for the show’s most interesting character. – Tyler Robertson, October 6, 2024
Score: 8
Read the full The Penguin Episode 3 review
As clean as it’s able to make those transitions, it’s still jarring to have two flashback episodes in a row at a time when the third episode left so much going on in the present-day, where Victor and Oz sped off and left Sophia to die. Where that was able to move Oz’s power grab forward while laying down groundwork for Victor’s character arc, this time the sole focus on Sofia makes it work as a standalone piece but it fails to do the same service to what’s happening in the now, save for the climactic sequence at the end.
I do like that as the pieces come together in The Penguin, previous conversations start to make more sense. In the moment of the second episode where Oz tells Sofia that he owes her, we’re completely unaware of what he might be referencing. Now, knowing how everything went down 10 years ago, those conversations are recontextualized in a really satisfying way. It’s an attention to detail in the writing that fleshes out the characters and makes the passage of time feel real, which is often a sticking point for me in movies and shows that span decades. If there’s a big time skip but the characters are seemingly unchanged and it feels like nothing happened in the years between, then why even have a jump? But The Penguin has rooted itself in this one specific time jump, and that helps keep things stable, especially as we get to see some of what happened during those years (or at least the start of it) in “Cent’anni.”
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-penguin-episode-4-review-centanni
The Penguin: Episode 4 Review - “Cent’anni”
The following review contains spoilers for the fourth episode of The Penguin, “Cent’anni.”
As gritty and grounded as 2022’s The Batman was, “grounded” is a relative term. Yes, there aren’t any super-powered people (and there won’t be, according to writer/director Matt Reeves) and Robert Patinson’s Batmobile is just a souped-up muscle car without rocket engines or James Bond-like gadgets, but that world is still full of wacky, heightened characters that don’t quite feel like real people.In The Penguin, though, the most fantastical element – Bruce Wayne himself – has been removed from the equation, allowing for a story that’s even more realistic… up until this week’s episode, “Cent’anni.” A flashback trip to Arkham finally lets loose the comic-book craziness in an episode that brings the series to an abrupt halt for a focussed, chilling look at Sofia Falcone’s last 10 years, but it’s one that takes both feet off the ground and leans into the inherent weirdness of a world where Batman exists.
Her stay in Arkham State Hospital (Asylum would be too outlandish) is a tragic tale of betrayal by the ones she trusted most. The episode drives home just how cruel the Falcone family was to her, which sets up a satisfying final sequence really well. But it also drives home just how cartoonishly exaggerated some of the characters in this show can be. Not only in Sofia, who we obviously see a lot more of in “Cent’anni,” but characters like Doctor Ventress (in name alone, even), Dr. Rush, and Magpie, as well as the unnamed prisoner who takes her own life. It’s truly a nightmare, what happens in Arkham, and it’ll definitely give you cause to rethink whether Batman’s doing the right thing by sending addled criminal minds there. Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark, moving away from the pure mob movie vibe it’s had so far, but I don’t think that’s what The Penguin was ever really going for. It may be more grounded than other recent adaptations, but just like the movie it’s spun off from, it’s found its own balance of the two.
My complaint is more that “Cent’anni” doesn’t always feel like it’s placed properly in the overall story the series is telling. It has to be super tough to pace out a show, especially in today’s age of eight to 10-episode seasons and limited series (both of which The Penguin is an example of). Any amount of introductions to new characters you have to do, and any flashbacks that feel necessary, have to be positioned strategically so as to not mess with the balance of the series.
Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark.
Last week, Victor got his time to shine in an episode that deftly wove in and out of flashbacks to show us his past while relating his life before The Riddler’s attack to what’s happening in his present. “Cent’anni,” by contrast, goes for a more Inception-like structure, where an unconscious Sofia goes on a magical mystery tour through her past – but then, within that flashback, we get another time jump to the day her mother died. On the surface it sounds like a lot to manage, and it kind of is, but every step backwards in time feels necessary to tell Sofia’s full story and is smoothly executed, as is getting back to the present.
What We Said About The Penguin Episode 3 - "Bliss"
Laser-focussed on digging into the minds of Victor, Sofia, and Oz, “Bliss” saves the excitement for next time, and is better for it. A well-scripted and well-paced episode, it delivers a long-awaited backstory for Vic that was always going to be devastating, but uses the details to hit even harder. That, alongside the disappointing-yet-inevitable decision he makes towards the end, makes this a great origin story for the show’s most interesting character. – Tyler Robertson, October 6, 2024
Score: 8
Read the full The Penguin Episode 3 review
As clean as it’s able to make those transitions, it’s still jarring to have two flashback episodes in a row at a time when the third episode left so much going on in the present-day, where Victor and Oz sped off and left Sophia to die. Where that was able to move Oz’s power grab forward while laying down groundwork for Victor’s character arc, this time the sole focus on Sofia makes it work as a standalone piece but it fails to do the same service to what’s happening in the now, save for the climactic sequence at the end.
I do like that as the pieces come together in The Penguin, previous conversations start to make more sense. In the moment of the second episode where Oz tells Sofia that he owes her, we’re completely unaware of what he might be referencing. Now, knowing how everything went down 10 years ago, those conversations are recontextualized in a really satisfying way. It’s an attention to detail in the writing that fleshes out the characters and makes the passage of time feel real, which is often a sticking point for me in movies and shows that span decades. If there’s a big time skip but the characters are seemingly unchanged and it feels like nothing happened in the years between, then why even have a jump? But The Penguin has rooted itself in this one specific time jump, and that helps keep things stable, especially as we get to see some of what happened during those years (or at least the start of it) in “Cent’anni.”
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-penguin-episode-4-review-centanni
The Penguin: Episode 4 Review - “Cent’anni”
The following review contains spoilers for the fourth episode of The Penguin, “Cent’anni.”
As gritty and grounded as 2022’s The Batman was, “grounded” is a relative term. Yes, there aren’t any super-powered people (and there won’t be, according to writer/director Matt Reeves) and Robert Patinson’s Batmobile is just a souped-up muscle car without rocket engines or James Bond-like gadgets, but that world is still full of wacky, heightened characters that don’t quite feel like real people.In The Penguin, though, the most fantastical element – Bruce Wayne himself – has been removed from the equation, allowing for a story that’s even more realistic… up until this week’s episode, “Cent’anni.” A flashback trip to Arkham finally lets loose the comic-book craziness in an episode that brings the series to an abrupt halt for a focussed, chilling look at Sofia Falcone’s last 10 years, but it’s one that takes both feet off the ground and leans into the inherent weirdness of a world where Batman exists.
Her stay in Arkham State Hospital (Asylum would be too outlandish) is a tragic tale of betrayal by the ones she trusted most. The episode drives home just how cruel the Falcone family was to her, which sets up a satisfying final sequence really well. But it also drives home just how cartoonishly exaggerated some of the characters in this show can be. Not only in Sofia, who we obviously see a lot more of in “Cent’anni,” but characters like Doctor Ventress (in name alone, even), Dr. Rush, and Magpie, as well as the unnamed prisoner who takes her own life. It’s truly a nightmare, what happens in Arkham, and it’ll definitely give you cause to rethink whether Batman’s doing the right thing by sending addled criminal minds there. Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark, moving away from the pure mob movie vibe it’s had so far, but I don’t think that’s what The Penguin was ever really going for. It may be more grounded than other recent adaptations, but just like the movie it’s spun off from, it’s found its own balance of the two.
My complaint is more that “Cent’anni” doesn’t always feel like it’s placed properly in the overall story the series is telling. It has to be super tough to pace out a show, especially in today’s age of eight to 10-episode seasons and limited series (both of which The Penguin is an example of). Any amount of introductions to new characters you have to do, and any flashbacks that feel necessary, have to be positioned strategically so as to not mess with the balance of the series.
Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark.
Last week, Victor got his time to shine in an episode that deftly wove in and out of flashbacks to show us his past while relating his life before The Riddler’s attack to what’s happening in his present. “Cent’anni,” by contrast, goes for a more Inception-like structure, where an unconscious Sofia goes on a magical mystery tour through her past – but then, within that flashback, we get another time jump to the day her mother died. On the surface it sounds like a lot to manage, and it kind of is, but every step backwards in time feels necessary to tell Sofia’s full story and is smoothly executed, as is getting back to the present.
What We Said About The Penguin Episode 3 - "Bliss"
Laser-focussed on digging into the minds of Victor, Sofia, and Oz, “Bliss” saves the excitement for next time, and is better for it. A well-scripted and well-paced episode, it delivers a long-awaited backstory for Vic that was always going to be devastating, but uses the details to hit even harder. That, alongside the disappointing-yet-inevitable decision he makes towards the end, makes this a great origin story for the show’s most interesting character. – Tyler Robertson, October 6, 2024
Score: 8
Read the full The Penguin Episode 3 review
As clean as it’s able to make those transitions, it’s still jarring to have two flashback episodes in a row at a time when the third episode left so much going on in the present-day, where Victor and Oz sped off and left Sophia to die. Where that was able to move Oz’s power grab forward while laying down groundwork for Victor’s character arc, this time the sole focus on Sofia makes it work as a standalone piece but it fails to do the same service to what’s happening in the now, save for the climactic sequence at the end.
I do like that as the pieces come together in The Penguin, previous conversations start to make more sense. In the moment of the second episode where Oz tells Sofia that he owes her, we’re completely unaware of what he might be referencing. Now, knowing how everything went down 10 years ago, those conversations are recontextualized in a really satisfying way. It’s an attention to detail in the writing that fleshes out the characters and makes the passage of time feel real, which is often a sticking point for me in movies and shows that span decades. If there’s a big time skip but the characters are seemingly unchanged and it feels like nothing happened in the years between, then why even have a jump? But The Penguin has rooted itself in this one specific time jump, and that helps keep things stable, especially as we get to see some of what happened during those years (or at least the start of it) in “Cent’anni.”
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-penguin-episode-4-review-centanni
The Penguin: Episode 4 Review - “Cent’anni”
The following review contains spoilers for the fourth episode of The Penguin, “Cent’anni.”
As gritty and grounded as 2022’s The Batman was, “grounded” is a relative term. Yes, there aren’t any super-powered people (and there won’t be, according to writer/director Matt Reeves) and Robert Patinson’s Batmobile is just a souped-up muscle car without rocket engines or James Bond-like gadgets, but that world is still full of wacky, heightened characters that don’t quite feel like real people.In The Penguin, though, the most fantastical element – Bruce Wayne himself – has been removed from the equation, allowing for a story that’s even more realistic… up until this week’s episode, “Cent’anni.” A flashback trip to Arkham finally lets loose the comic-book craziness in an episode that brings the series to an abrupt halt for a focussed, chilling look at Sofia Falcone’s last 10 years, but it’s one that takes both feet off the ground and leans into the inherent weirdness of a world where Batman exists.
Her stay in Arkham State Hospital (Asylum would be too outlandish) is a tragic tale of betrayal by the ones she trusted most. The episode drives home just how cruel the Falcone family was to her, which sets up a satisfying final sequence really well. But it also drives home just how cartoonishly exaggerated some of the characters in this show can be. Not only in Sofia, who we obviously see a lot more of in “Cent’anni,” but characters like Doctor Ventress (in name alone, even), Dr. Rush, and Magpie, as well as the unnamed prisoner who takes her own life. It’s truly a nightmare, what happens in Arkham, and it’ll definitely give you cause to rethink whether Batman’s doing the right thing by sending addled criminal minds there. Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark, moving away from the pure mob movie vibe it’s had so far, but I don’t think that’s what The Penguin was ever really going for. It may be more grounded than other recent adaptations, but just like the movie it’s spun off from, it’s found its own balance of the two.
My complaint is more that “Cent’anni” doesn’t always feel like it’s placed properly in the overall story the series is telling. It has to be super tough to pace out a show, especially in today’s age of eight to 10-episode seasons and limited series (both of which The Penguin is an example of). Any amount of introductions to new characters you have to do, and any flashbacks that feel necessary, have to be positioned strategically so as to not mess with the balance of the series.
Some might say that this is where the series jumps the shark.
Last week, Victor got his time to shine in an episode that deftly wove in and out of flashbacks to show us his past while relating his life before The Riddler’s attack to what’s happening in his present. “Cent’anni,” by contrast, goes for a more Inception-like structure, where an unconscious Sofia goes on a magical mystery tour through her past – but then, within that flashback, we get another time jump to the day her mother died. On the surface it sounds like a lot to manage, and it kind of is, but every step backwards in time feels necessary to tell Sofia’s full story and is smoothly executed, as is getting back to the present.
What We Said About The Penguin Episode 3 - "Bliss"
Laser-focussed on digging into the minds of Victor, Sofia, and Oz, “Bliss” saves the excitement for next time, and is better for it. A well-scripted and well-paced episode, it delivers a long-awaited backstory for Vic that was always going to be devastating, but uses the details to hit even harder. That, alongside the disappointing-yet-inevitable decision he makes towards the end, makes this a great origin story for the show’s most interesting character. – Tyler Robertson, October 6, 2024
Score: 8
Read the full The Penguin Episode 3 review
As clean as it’s able to make those transitions, it’s still jarring to have two flashback episodes in a row at a time when the third episode left so much going on in the present-day, where Victor and Oz sped off and left Sophia to die. Where that was able to move Oz’s power grab forward while laying down groundwork for Victor’s character arc, this time the sole focus on Sofia makes it work as a standalone piece but it fails to do the same service to what’s happening in the now, save for the climactic sequence at the end.
I do like that as the pieces come together in The Penguin, previous conversations start to make more sense. In the moment of the second episode where Oz tells Sofia that he owes her, we’re completely unaware of what he might be referencing. Now, knowing how everything went down 10 years ago, those conversations are recontextualized in a really satisfying way. It’s an attention to detail in the writing that fleshes out the characters and makes the passage of time feel real, which is often a sticking point for me in movies and shows that span decades. If there’s a big time skip but the characters are seemingly unchanged and it feels like nothing happened in the years between, then why even have a jump? But The Penguin has rooted itself in this one specific time jump, and that helps keep things stable, especially as we get to see some of what happened during those years (or at least the start of it) in “Cent’anni.”
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-penguin-episode-4-review-centanni
Score a Free Doom Eternal, Ghostbusters, and BioShock, plus the Best Deals of the Week!
Let's start this week right--with a bunch of free games in the (rough) spirit of Halloween.
One Piece Anime to Take a Six-Month Hiatus, Remastered Fish-Man Island Saga to Take Its Place
Toei Animation has announced that the One Piece anime will be taking a six-month hiatus starting today, October 13, and that it will return with new episodes from the Egghead arc in April 2025. In its place, fans will be able to look forward to a remastered version of One Piece's Fish-Man Island Saga and a special 25th anniversary episode.
One Piece Anime to Take a Six-Month Hiatus, Remastered Fish-Man Island Saga to Take Its Place
Toei Animation has announced that the One Piece anime will be taking a six-month hiatus starting today, October 13, and that it will return with new episodes from the Egghead arc in April 2025. In its place, fans will be able to look forward to a remastered version of One Piece's Fish-Man Island Saga and a special 25th anniversary episode.
Sony Warned 2024 Would Be Light But PS5 Still Has The Best Games
This is the latest guest column from Push Square, the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Its goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.
Sony sparked discontent among the PlayStation fandom in February this year when it said during an earnings call there’ll be no sequels or updates to “major existing franchise titles” on the PS5 before March 2025. With the platform holder keeping its content roadmaps close to its chest, the comments were largely taken out of context and many assumed this would be a lean year for the company’s new-gen console.
While it’s true this has been a fairly quiet year for PS Studios, it’s been anything but light on the games front. At the time of writing, my three Game of the Year frontrunners are Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio and the PS5 is the only platform where you can play all three. Other possible contenders for awards include Silent Hill 2, Helldivers 2, and Black Myth: Wukong – all console exclusives.
There seems to be a sentiment on social media that a game doesn’t count unless it comes from a wholly owned first-party studio, but PlayStation has done a particularly good job of working with partners to keep its portfolio packed this year.
Stellar Blade is a great example. It collaborated with Korean developer Shift Up to help bring the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory creator’s console debut to market and in my opinion is another game in contention for an end of year gong. Rise of the Ronin, a similar partnership with legendary studio Team Ninja, may have received a cooler critical reception but it’s currently ranked 17th in IGN’s ongoing Game of the Year user poll, proving it was a hit with fans.
The nauseating number of remakes and remasters may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s easy to forget The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered launched this year and tagged a 90 critical average on aggregators Metacritic and Open Critic. And while many rolled their eyes at the rumours around Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, a $10 upgrade fee and re-recorded dialogue and motion capture mean it’ll almost certainly attract positive reviews as well.
Not everything PlayStation has touched has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord will go down in history
Of course, not everything PlayStation has touched this year has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord – a competent albeit uninspiring affair – will go down in history after getting axed after two weeks. And yet for all the talk of its live service initiative stumbling, it launched the fastest-selling game in PS Studios history with Helldivers 2, an online co-op smash that, despite benefitting from a simultaneous PC launch, has outpaced juggernauts like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok.
It’s been a quietly colossal year for PS5 then, and you get the sense the best is yet to come. The company’s largely kept its blockbusters close to its chest but 2025 should see the release of Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with Marvel’s Wolverine waiting in the wings. These are the “major existing franchise titles” the Japanese giant was referring to in that aforementioned investor call.
Many may still argue this has been a light year for PS5 but the catalogue of content Sony has amassed paints a very different picture. The most exciting thing is that it’s successfully filled the time while its first-party teams continue to cook. A huge second-half to the generation now awaits.
Sammy Barker is the Editor of Push Square. He’s been living and breathing the wonderful world of PlayStation for decades now – and has the tattoos to prove it. You can find him on @_get2sammyb.
https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-warned-2024-would-be-light-but-ps5-still-has-the-best-games
Sony Warned 2024 Would Be Light But PS5 Still Has The Best Games
This is the latest guest column from Push Square, the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Its goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.
Sony sparked discontent among the PlayStation fandom in February this year when it said during an earnings call there’ll be no sequels or updates to “major existing franchise titles” on the PS5 before March 2025. With the platform holder keeping its content roadmaps close to its chest, the comments were largely taken out of context and many assumed this would be a lean year for the company’s new-gen console.
While it’s true this has been a fairly quiet year for PS Studios, it’s been anything but light on the games front. At the time of writing, my three Game of the Year frontrunners are Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio and the PS5 is the only platform where you can play all three. Other possible contenders for awards include Silent Hill 2, Helldivers 2, and Black Myth: Wukong – all console exclusives.
There seems to be a sentiment on social media that a game doesn’t count unless it comes from a wholly owned first-party studio, but PlayStation has done a particularly good job of working with partners to keep its portfolio packed this year.
Stellar Blade is a great example. It collaborated with Korean developer Shift Up to help bring the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory creator’s console debut to market and in my opinion is another game in contention for an end of year gong. Rise of the Ronin, a similar partnership with legendary studio Team Ninja, may have received a cooler critical reception but it’s currently ranked 17th in IGN’s ongoing Game of the Year user poll, proving it was a hit with fans.
The nauseating number of remakes and remasters may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s easy to forget The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered launched this year and tagged a 90 critical average on aggregators Metacritic and Open Critic. And while many rolled their eyes at the rumours around Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, a $10 upgrade fee and re-recorded dialogue and motion capture mean it’ll almost certainly attract positive reviews as well.
Not everything PlayStation has touched has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord will go down in history
Of course, not everything PlayStation has touched this year has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord – a competent albeit uninspiring affair – will go down in history after getting axed after two weeks. And yet for all the talk of its live service initiative stumbling, it launched the fastest-selling game in PS Studios history with Helldivers 2, an online co-op smash that, despite benefitting from a simultaneous PC launch, has outpaced juggernauts like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok.
It’s been a quietly colossal year for PS5 then, and you get the sense the best is yet to come. The company’s largely kept its blockbusters close to its chest but 2025 should see the release of Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with Marvel’s Wolverine waiting in the wings. These are the “major existing franchise titles” the Japanese giant was referring to in that aforementioned investor call.
Many may still argue this has been a light year for PS5 but the catalogue of content Sony has amassed paints a very different picture. The most exciting thing is that it’s successfully filled the time while its first-party teams continue to cook. A huge second-half to the generation now awaits.
Sammy Barker is the Editor of Push Square. He’s been living and breathing the wonderful world of PlayStation for decades now – and has the tattoos to prove it. You can find him on @_get2sammyb.
https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-warned-2024-would-be-light-but-ps5-still-has-the-best-games
Sony Warned 2024 Would Be Light But PS5 Still Has The Best Games
This is the latest guest column from Push Square, the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Its goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.
Sony sparked discontent among the PlayStation fandom in February this year when it said during an earnings call there’ll be no sequels or updates to “major existing franchise titles” on the PS5 before March 2025. With the platform holder keeping its content roadmaps close to its chest, the comments were largely taken out of context and many assumed this would be a lean year for the company’s new-gen console.
While it’s true this has been a fairly quiet year for PS Studios, it’s been anything but light on the games front. At the time of writing, my three Game of the Year frontrunners are Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio and the PS5 is the only platform where you can play all three. Other possible contenders for awards include Silent Hill 2, Helldivers 2, and Black Myth: Wukong – all console exclusives.
There seems to be a sentiment on social media that a game doesn’t count unless it comes from a wholly owned first-party studio, but PlayStation has done a particularly good job of working with partners to keep its portfolio packed this year.
Stellar Blade is a great example. It collaborated with Korean developer Shift Up to help bring the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory creator’s console debut to market and in my opinion is another game in contention for an end of year gong. Rise of the Ronin, a similar partnership with legendary studio Team Ninja, may have received a cooler critical reception but it’s currently ranked 17th in IGN’s ongoing Game of the Year user poll, proving it was a hit with fans.
The nauseating number of remakes and remasters may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s easy to forget The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered launched this year and tagged a 90 critical average on aggregators Metacritic and Open Critic. And while many rolled their eyes at the rumours around Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, a $10 upgrade fee and re-recorded dialogue and motion capture mean it’ll almost certainly attract positive reviews as well.
Not everything PlayStation has touched has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord will go down in history
Of course, not everything PlayStation has touched this year has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord – a competent albeit uninspiring affair – will go down in history after getting axed after two weeks. And yet for all the talk of its live service initiative stumbling, it launched the fastest-selling game in PS Studios history with Helldivers 2, an online co-op smash that, despite benefitting from a simultaneous PC launch, has outpaced juggernauts like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok.
It’s been a quietly colossal year for PS5 then, and you get the sense the best is yet to come. The company’s largely kept its blockbusters close to its chest but 2025 should see the release of Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with Marvel’s Wolverine waiting in the wings. These are the “major existing franchise titles” the Japanese giant was referring to in that aforementioned investor call.
Many may still argue this has been a light year for PS5 but the catalogue of content Sony has amassed paints a very different picture. The most exciting thing is that it’s successfully filled the time while its first-party teams continue to cook. A huge second-half to the generation now awaits.
Sammy Barker is the Editor of Push Square. He’s been living and breathing the wonderful world of PlayStation for decades now – and has the tattoos to prove it. You can find him on @_get2sammyb.
https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-warned-2024-would-be-light-but-ps5-still-has-the-best-games
Sony Warned 2024 Would Be Light But PS5 Still Has The Best Games
This is the latest guest column from Push Square, the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Its goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.
Sony sparked discontent among the PlayStation fandom in February this year when it said during an earnings call there’ll be no sequels or updates to “major existing franchise titles” on the PS5 before March 2025. With the platform holder keeping its content roadmaps close to its chest, the comments were largely taken out of context and many assumed this would be a lean year for the company’s new-gen console.
While it’s true this has been a fairly quiet year for PS Studios, it’s been anything but light on the games front. At the time of writing, my three Game of the Year frontrunners are Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio and the PS5 is the only platform where you can play all three. Other possible contenders for awards include Silent Hill 2, Helldivers 2, and Black Myth: Wukong – all console exclusives.
There seems to be a sentiment on social media that a game doesn’t count unless it comes from a wholly owned first-party studio, but PlayStation has done a particularly good job of working with partners to keep its portfolio packed this year.
Stellar Blade is a great example. It collaborated with Korean developer Shift Up to help bring the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory creator’s console debut to market and in my opinion is another game in contention for an end of year gong. Rise of the Ronin, a similar partnership with legendary studio Team Ninja, may have received a cooler critical reception but it’s currently ranked 17th in IGN’s ongoing Game of the Year user poll, proving it was a hit with fans.
The nauseating number of remakes and remasters may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s easy to forget The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered launched this year and tagged a 90 critical average on aggregators Metacritic and Open Critic. And while many rolled their eyes at the rumours around Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, a $10 upgrade fee and re-recorded dialogue and motion capture mean it’ll almost certainly attract positive reviews as well.
Not everything PlayStation has touched has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord will go down in history
Of course, not everything PlayStation has touched this year has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord – a competent albeit uninspiring affair – will go down in history after getting axed after two weeks. And yet for all the talk of its live service initiative stumbling, it launched the fastest-selling game in PS Studios history with Helldivers 2, an online co-op smash that, despite benefitting from a simultaneous PC launch, has outpaced juggernauts like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok.
It’s been a quietly colossal year for PS5 then, and you get the sense the best is yet to come. The company’s largely kept its blockbusters close to its chest but 2025 should see the release of Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with Marvel’s Wolverine waiting in the wings. These are the “major existing franchise titles” the Japanese giant was referring to in that aforementioned investor call.
Many may still argue this has been a light year for PS5 but the catalogue of content Sony has amassed paints a very different picture. The most exciting thing is that it’s successfully filled the time while its first-party teams continue to cook. A huge second-half to the generation now awaits.
Sammy Barker is the Editor of Push Square. He’s been living and breathing the wonderful world of PlayStation for decades now – and has the tattoos to prove it. You can find him on @_get2sammyb.
https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-warned-2024-would-be-light-but-ps5-still-has-the-best-games
Sony Warned 2024 Would Be Light But PS5 Still Has The Best Games
This is the latest guest column from Push Square, the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Its goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.
Sony sparked discontent among the PlayStation fandom in February this year when it said during an earnings call there’ll be no sequels or updates to “major existing franchise titles” on the PS5 before March 2025. With the platform holder keeping its content roadmaps close to its chest, the comments were largely taken out of context and many assumed this would be a lean year for the company’s new-gen console.
While it’s true this has been a fairly quiet year for PS Studios, it’s been anything but light on the games front. At the time of writing, my three Game of the Year frontrunners are Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio and the PS5 is the only platform where you can play all three. Other possible contenders for awards include Silent Hill 2, Helldivers 2, and Black Myth: Wukong – all console exclusives.
There seems to be a sentiment on social media that a game doesn’t count unless it comes from a wholly owned first-party studio, but PlayStation has done a particularly good job of working with partners to keep its portfolio packed this year.
Stellar Blade is a great example. It collaborated with Korean developer Shift Up to help bring the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory creator’s console debut to market and in my opinion is another game in contention for an end of year gong. Rise of the Ronin, a similar partnership with legendary studio Team Ninja, may have received a cooler critical reception but it’s currently ranked 17th in IGN’s ongoing Game of the Year user poll, proving it was a hit with fans.
The nauseating number of remakes and remasters may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s easy to forget The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered launched this year and tagged a 90 critical average on aggregators Metacritic and Open Critic. And while many rolled their eyes at the rumours around Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, a $10 upgrade fee and re-recorded dialogue and motion capture mean it’ll almost certainly attract positive reviews as well.
Not everything PlayStation has touched has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord will go down in history
Of course, not everything PlayStation has touched this year has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord – a competent albeit uninspiring affair – will go down in history after getting axed after two weeks. And yet for all the talk of its live service initiative stumbling, it launched the fastest-selling game in PS Studios history with Helldivers 2, an online co-op smash that, despite benefitting from a simultaneous PC launch, has outpaced juggernauts like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok.
It’s been a quietly colossal year for PS5 then, and you get the sense the best is yet to come. The company’s largely kept its blockbusters close to its chest but 2025 should see the release of Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with Marvel’s Wolverine waiting in the wings. These are the “major existing franchise titles” the Japanese giant was referring to in that aforementioned investor call.
Many may still argue this has been a light year for PS5 but the catalogue of content Sony has amassed paints a very different picture. The most exciting thing is that it’s successfully filled the time while its first-party teams continue to cook. A huge second-half to the generation now awaits.
Sammy Barker is the Editor of Push Square. He’s been living and breathing the wonderful world of PlayStation for decades now – and has the tattoos to prove it. You can find him on @_get2sammyb.
https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-warned-2024-would-be-light-but-ps5-still-has-the-best-games
Sony Warned 2024 Would Be Light But PS5 Still Has The Best Games
This is the latest guest column from Push Square, the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Its goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.
Sony sparked discontent among the PlayStation fandom in February this year when it said during an earnings call there’ll be no sequels or updates to “major existing franchise titles” on the PS5 before March 2025. With the platform holder keeping its content roadmaps close to its chest, the comments were largely taken out of context and many assumed this would be a lean year for the company’s new-gen console.
While it’s true this has been a fairly quiet year for PS Studios, it’s been anything but light on the games front. At the time of writing, my three Game of the Year frontrunners are Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio and the PS5 is the only platform where you can play all three. Other possible contenders for awards include Silent Hill 2, Helldivers 2, and Black Myth: Wukong – all console exclusives.
There seems to be a sentiment on social media that a game doesn’t count unless it comes from a wholly owned first-party studio, but PlayStation has done a particularly good job of working with partners to keep its portfolio packed this year.
Stellar Blade is a great example. It collaborated with Korean developer Shift Up to help bring the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory creator’s console debut to market and in my opinion is another game in contention for an end of year gong. Rise of the Ronin, a similar partnership with legendary studio Team Ninja, may have received a cooler critical reception but it’s currently ranked 17th in IGN’s ongoing Game of the Year user poll, proving it was a hit with fans.
The nauseating number of remakes and remasters may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s easy to forget The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered launched this year and tagged a 90 critical average on aggregators Metacritic and Open Critic. And while many rolled their eyes at the rumours around Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, a $10 upgrade fee and re-recorded dialogue and motion capture mean it’ll almost certainly attract positive reviews as well.
Not everything PlayStation has touched has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord will go down in history
Of course, not everything PlayStation has touched this year has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord – a competent albeit uninspiring affair – will go down in history after getting axed after two weeks. And yet for all the talk of its live service initiative stumbling, it launched the fastest-selling game in PS Studios history with Helldivers 2, an online co-op smash that, despite benefitting from a simultaneous PC launch, has outpaced juggernauts like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok.
It’s been a quietly colossal year for PS5 then, and you get the sense the best is yet to come. The company’s largely kept its blockbusters close to its chest but 2025 should see the release of Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with Marvel’s Wolverine waiting in the wings. These are the “major existing franchise titles” the Japanese giant was referring to in that aforementioned investor call.
Many may still argue this has been a light year for PS5 but the catalogue of content Sony has amassed paints a very different picture. The most exciting thing is that it’s successfully filled the time while its first-party teams continue to cook. A huge second-half to the generation now awaits.
Sammy Barker is the Editor of Push Square. He’s been living and breathing the wonderful world of PlayStation for decades now – and has the tattoos to prove it. You can find him on @_get2sammyb.
https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-warned-2024-would-be-light-but-ps5-still-has-the-best-games
Sony Warned 2024 Would Be Light But PS5 Still Has The Best Games
This is the latest guest column from Push Square, the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Its goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.
Sony sparked discontent among the PlayStation fandom in February this year when it said during an earnings call there’ll be no sequels or updates to “major existing franchise titles” on the PS5 before March 2025. With the platform holder keeping its content roadmaps close to its chest, the comments were largely taken out of context and many assumed this would be a lean year for the company’s new-gen console.
While it’s true this has been a fairly quiet year for PS Studios, it’s been anything but light on the games front. At the time of writing, my three Game of the Year frontrunners are Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio and the PS5 is the only platform where you can play all three. Other possible contenders for awards include Silent Hill 2, Helldivers 2, and Black Myth: Wukong – all console exclusives.
There seems to be a sentiment on social media that a game doesn’t count unless it comes from a wholly owned first-party studio, but PlayStation has done a particularly good job of working with partners to keep its portfolio packed this year.
Stellar Blade is a great example. It collaborated with Korean developer Shift Up to help bring the NIKKE: Goddess of Victory creator’s console debut to market and in my opinion is another game in contention for an end of year gong. Rise of the Ronin, a similar partnership with legendary studio Team Ninja, may have received a cooler critical reception but it’s currently ranked 17th in IGN’s ongoing Game of the Year user poll, proving it was a hit with fans.
The nauseating number of remakes and remasters may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s easy to forget The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered launched this year and tagged a 90 critical average on aggregators Metacritic and Open Critic. And while many rolled their eyes at the rumours around Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, a $10 upgrade fee and re-recorded dialogue and motion capture mean it’ll almost certainly attract positive reviews as well.
Not everything PlayStation has touched has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord will go down in history
Of course, not everything PlayStation has touched this year has turned to gold. Its complete misreading of the market with first-person shooter Concord – a competent albeit uninspiring affair – will go down in history after getting axed after two weeks. And yet for all the talk of its live service initiative stumbling, it launched the fastest-selling game in PS Studios history with Helldivers 2, an online co-op smash that, despite benefitting from a simultaneous PC launch, has outpaced juggernauts like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok.
It’s been a quietly colossal year for PS5 then, and you get the sense the best is yet to come. The company’s largely kept its blockbusters close to its chest but 2025 should see the release of Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with Marvel’s Wolverine waiting in the wings. These are the “major existing franchise titles” the Japanese giant was referring to in that aforementioned investor call.
Many may still argue this has been a light year for PS5 but the catalogue of content Sony has amassed paints a very different picture. The most exciting thing is that it’s successfully filled the time while its first-party teams continue to cook. A huge second-half to the generation now awaits.
Sammy Barker is the Editor of Push Square. He’s been living and breathing the wonderful world of PlayStation for decades now – and has the tattoos to prove it. You can find him on @_get2sammyb.
https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-warned-2024-would-be-light-but-ps5-still-has-the-best-games
Pokémon Developer Game Freak Reportedly Hacked, Stolen Data on Unannounced Games as Well as Nintendo Switch 2 Codename Leaked Online
Pokémon developer Game Freak has reportedly suffered a significant hack resulting in the leak of stolen data that includes codenames for 10th generation Pokémon games and even the Nintendo Switch 2.
Forgotten Gems: Shadow Complex
Forgotten Gems is a regular column about notable games that have moved out of the public eye and may not be easily accessible anymore. To see all the other games I've covered so far, check out the previous issues of Forgotten Gems in our Columns section.
Metroid-like games and their roguelike off-shoots are everywhere today. Not a week goes by without an indie game announcement promising “metroidvania” gameplay elements – and even Nintendo returned to making new Metroid titles after a near six year hiatus following Metroid: Other M in 2010. And that’s me being generous and counting Metroid Prime: Federation Force as a Metroid game…
But it wasn’t always so. After a Metroid renaissance in the early 2000s with Fusion, Prime, and Zero Mission (what a run!) exploring the series in both 2D and 3D, there was a clear shift away from these classic side-view explorative shooters. Konami stuck it out longer with the “vania” part of the equation and cranked out several quality 2D Castlevanias. But despite the critical success of many of these games, I think it’s fair to say that the genre was diminishing.
So it was with much excitement that I read on IGN back then that designer Donald Mustard and the ChAIR Entertainment team were planning to make a game based on Orson Scott Card’s dystopian novel, Empire. The two had previously collaborated on the underrated Advent Rising, and early coverage on IGN in 2006 – including whispers that it was going to be a bit of a love letter to Metroid – sounded promising.
When Metroidvanias Roamed the Earth
“The 2D Metroid and Zelda games were some of my favorite games of all time and to me represented the pinnacle of 2D game design, specifically when it comes to making a non-linear ‘onion layer’ world where exploration and discovery is the core design pillar,” Donald Mustard, former CCO, Epic Games and Co-Founder of ChAIR told me last week.
"…mostly, we had some awesome and innovative ideas and I just wanted to make it and play it." - Donald Mustard
“Our team felt like the genre had been largely abandoned for over a decade, since the advent of 3D gaming, and we really missed playing them. We thought maybe other people missed them as well, or that even a whole new generation of gamers could discover them. I know it’s weird to consider now, but it was also a time when non-physical – aka digital – distribution was ‘just’ becoming viable and games were no longer limited to being put in a box on a store shelf at a cost of $60 or more. It felt like the possibility of what a game ‘had’ to be was ripe for disruption, and it was the perfect moment to try and do something unique. But mostly, we had some awesome and innovative ideas and I just wanted to make it and play it.”
Selecting a genre other than first-person shooter or RPG already meant swimming against the current, but releasing Shadow Complex as a digital exclusive in 2009 made it an even bigger wager. At the time, console gamers vocally defended their preference to buy physical media over digital downloads.
Living in a Material World
Selling a game like Shadow Complex as a digital exclusive was a big deal back then. While Steam, Google Play, Apple App Store, and console digital stores game sales now dwarf the amount of physical games sold in the US, Statista estimates that in 2009, 80-90% of all game purchases were physical.
I’ve pulled this slide from our 2012 Gamer Segmentation Study (from the dusty corners of my hard drive) for another look at console gamers’ buying habits back in the Xbox 360/PS3 era. Even in 2012, the majority of console gamers didn't just prefer to buy physical games, they relied on retail purchases for most of them, too.
While it cut down on the publisher’s gamble with a non-franchise, niche game potentially gathering dust on store shelves, a digital-only release also risked alienating its potential core fanbase. Luckily, Shadow Complex made a great first showing. The polygonal, 2.5D presentation avoided the game looking like a relic of a bygone era. For ChAIR, going with polygons over sprites was all part of wanting to push the classic 2D Metroidvania formula as far as they could – and that included advanced lighting and effects.
Shadow Complex is at its core a side-scrolling action-adventure that’s heavy on exploration and platforming, but there are moments where it swings the camera around for third-person action sequences and lets players fire into the background. In a bit of serendipity, perhaps, that approach found its way into the very series that inspired Shadow Complex. The Team Ninja-developed Metroid: Other M similarly mixed 2D sequences with third-person perspective interaction – to its detriment, I’d argue in that case, as it was also tied to a clumsy control scheme.
Colonel Mustard, in the Lab, With the Foam Gun
One my favorite things about every new Zelda, Mario, or Metroid game is to discover what new powers the designers came up with. Being able to unlock, say, a magical vacuum cleaner, and then figuring out how to use it to solve puzzles is the sort of hook that has me coming back for more time and time again. I just 100-percented Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom this week – and while it didn’t quite live up to the peak combat and dungeon design of the best Zelda games past, it takes and runs with the "multi-use tool" concept in impressive ways. Whether it’s grabbing a water-based enemy to put out flames or building stairways out of beds, getting creative with objects that unlock exploration is half the fun in action-adventure games. Which brings me back to one example of why Shadow Complex stuck with me for so long: the Foam Gun.
Turns out, Mustard is also on Team Foam Gun: “I love the Foam Gun too! One of the things that most Metroid games have is a freeze mechanic you can use to freeze enemies in place. You can then use the frozen enemy as a platform to land on or jump off. We loved that mechanic and wanted to extend on the idea – what if you could use a ‘quick hardening Foam’ to ‘freeze’ an enemy or an object but then could stack Foam to build structures or walls or platforms, and then go further and add combinatorial effects like ‘what happens if I shoot foam onto something and then throw a grenade into it?’ We wanted to allow for more emergent and unexpected forms of gameplay. The more we prototyped and played with it, the more exciting it became, and the more we leaned into it as a core mechanic. That kind of philosophy and design heavily influences everything I’ve made since then.”
The Foam Gun wasn’t just fun to use. It also became an integral way to sequence-break Shadow Complex. At a runtime between five and 13 hours, according to HowLongtoBeat, the ability to create yourself your own platforms provided those who knew where to look a way to blaze through the game even faster. There is a moment in Metroid Fusion where the game sort of breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge when a player creatively “breaks” the game and gets to an area in record time. It’s a fascinating bit of meta commentary because it reminds players that for as smart and crafty as they think they are, the designers were actually one step ahead after all. They didn’t just figure out the same trick, they may have designed it in the first place.
“I love emergent gameplay, and rewarding players for trying to push the edges of what the game world or a game system can be. As we discovered crazy sequence-breaking opportunities, we decided to lean into them as opposed to ‘fixing them’ as much as possible,” Mustard told me when asked about the Foam Gun shortcuts. “We were very lucky to have Ken Lobb at Microsoft Games give us some incredible advice. It was great working with him. He was part of Nintendo when the original Metroid games were being made and shared some techniques they used to deliberately allow people to find ways to sequence break very very early into the game. It’s a design lesson I’ll never forget. Cough. Fortnite Rocket Riding. Cough. Cough.”
When Shadow Complex released in August of 2009, the reception was unanimously favorable. Not only did players love the game, it brought back fond memories of an increasingly underserved genre.
Naturally, ChAIR started work on a sequel. Mustard: “Finishing the game almost felt like ‘okay now we actually know how to make a game like this’ so now we can be much more ambitious with the next one. Our goal can be to really move the genre forward!”
Mobile Blade Killed the Console Star
While not much is known about the actual project, designers at ChAIR and its parent company, Epic Games, acknowledge that they were working on a Shadow Complex sequel. As late as September 2011, Cliff Bleszinski (then Epic Games design director) commented that Shadow Complex 2 was “largely designed” and that Epic needed to find a partner to help finish the game and publish it. But sometimes, better – or perhaps, bigger – is the enemy of the good – and a pioneering mobile game hit led ChAIR into a new direction.
“We immediately began working on a sequel. Like with Shadow Complex, we designed the entire game map on paper first, then quickly stood it up in a very rough but completely playable form. We got pretty far into preproduction, and in my opinion, it probably would have been the best game I’ve ever made,” Mustard shared. “But… in late July of 2010 we had a very unique opportunity to partner with Apple to make the very first game ever using Unreal Engine on mobile devices. We decided to pause development on SC2 to investigate that opportunity and 4 1/2 months later released Infinity Blade on iOS.”
"Shadow Complex 2 probably would have been the best game I’ve ever made" - Donald Mustard
Infinity Blade blew up – in part because it showed core gamers that mobile games could be for them – and was quickly followed by a sequel. The two games grossed over $30 million at a time when established publishers and developers alike were still trying to figure out a “there” for them on Apple’s expanding mobile gaming marketplace. Infinity Blade III was unveiled in late 2013 and launched at the same time, complete with an Imagine Dragons song tie-in. It rocketed to #1 in the App Store within hours. But there was an even bigger distraction on the horizon that made a return to the world of Shadow Complex very unlikely.
Mustard says that creating Shadow Complex was one of the great joys of his life. The team’s goal was to see if they could make something that would live up to the games that inspired it – and then expand upon them and help bring something new to the genre.
“The right timing to return to Shadow Complex just never presented itself as we soon became very busy with what became Fortnite,” said Mustard.
I've Seen the Future and it Will Be
As for the future, Mustard left Epic in 2023 to join the Russo Brothers, the directors of Winter Soldier, Civil War, and Avengers Infinity War and Endgame, at multimedia studio AGBO. “I am very satisfied with the work I’ve done in games over the past 20+ years and for now I feel like I have done everything I wanted to do -- with one possible exception,” he told me.
The good news for fans of metroidvanias – including Mustard who calls out this year’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Animal Well as new favorites (I agree!) – is that the genre is now clearly here to stay. Gone are the days of having to pick between the two flavors “sci-fi” and “gothic” bounty hunter or having to wonder if Metroid: Dread would ever see the light of day. We now have granddaddy Castlevania crossing back into the very roguelike spin-off it inspired in the first place, Dead Cells. We have forgotten Atari 2600 shooter Yars’ Revenge serving as the inspiration for a 2D metroidvania reboot in Yars Rising. And we even have the absolutely delightful shmuptroidvania Minishoot’ Adventures that basically crosses The Legend of Zelda with Galaga. If you want to play a metroidvania, you no longer have to dig in the past. I know, ironic – because that’s what this very column is about.
But I’m greedy, so I asked Donald Mustard if he would come back to work on a game like Shadow Complex – or if he was ready to deputize someone else out there who could carry on the legacy and continue the series.
“The opportunity to become a partner at AGBO with Joe and Anthony Russo and the absolutely incredible team that has assembled there is a dream come true for me. We are creating some truly incredible stories that will allow us to push storytelling further across different mediums. I can’t wait for people to experience some of these things,” he said.
“But that ‘possible exception’ I mentioned? If I was to ever direct another video game someday, it would absolutely be a game like Shadow Complex.”
"If I was to ever direct another video game someday, it would absolutely be a game like Shadow Complex.” - Donald Mustard
Where Can You Play it Now
Shadow Complex wasn’t entirely forgotten after ChAIR turned to Infinity Blade. The developer brought back a Remaster of Shadow Complex for an encore outing in 2015 for PC, with a console release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One the following year.
If there is a silver lining in the story of a potential game series cut short, it’s that Shadow Complex is easy to track down – and it still holds up well in both editions. The Remaster is available for $15 on the Epic Games Store and Steam and the PlayStation and Xbox Stores. Annoyingly, the original Xbox 360 game sells for the same price. If you want to splurge, there’s even a small physical release of 7,500 PS4 copies of the Remastered version, courtesy of Limited Run, which unfortunuately now commands upwards of $100 on eBay. The remaster is definitely the version to play – and I highly recommend going back to it if you’re a fan of metroidvanias in general.
Peer Schneider heads up Game Help & Tools across IGN, Map Genie, Eurogamer, RockPaperShotgun, and VG247 and would love to fill a pool with metroidvanias and go swimming in it.
Forgotten Gems: Shadow Complex
Forgotten Gems is a regular column about notable games that have moved out of the public eye and may not be easily accessible anymore. To see all the other games I've covered so far, check out the previous issues of Forgotten Gems in our Columns section.
Metroid-like games and their roguelike off-shoots are everywhere today. Not a week goes by without an indie game announcement promising “metroidvania” gameplay elements – and even Nintendo returned to making new Metroid titles after a near six year hiatus following Metroid: Other M in 2010. And that’s me being generous and counting Metroid Prime: Federation Force as a Metroid game…
But it wasn’t always so. After a Metroid renaissance in the early 2000s with Fusion, Prime, and Zero Mission (what a run!) exploring the series in both 2D and 3D, there was a clear shift away from these classic side-view explorative shooters. Konami stuck it out longer with the “vania” part of the equation and cranked out several quality 2D Castlevanias. But despite the critical success of many of these games, I think it’s fair to say that the genre was diminishing.
So it was with much excitement that I read on IGN back then that designer Donald Mustard and the ChAIR Entertainment team were planning to make a game based on Orson Scott Card’s dystopian novel, Empire. The two had previously collaborated on the underrated Advent Rising, and early coverage on IGN in 2006 – including whispers that it was going to be a bit of a love letter to Metroid – sounded promising.
When Metroidvanias Roamed the Earth
“The 2D Metroid and Zelda games were some of my favorite games of all time and to me represented the pinnacle of 2D game design, specifically when it comes to making a non-linear ‘onion layer’ world where exploration and discovery is the core design pillar,” Donald Mustard, former CCO, Epic Games and Co-Founder of ChAIR told me last week.
"…mostly, we had some awesome and innovative ideas and I just wanted to make it and play it." - Donald Mustard
“Our team felt like the genre had been largely abandoned for over a decade, since the advent of 3D gaming, and we really missed playing them. We thought maybe other people missed them as well, or that even a whole new generation of gamers could discover them. I know it’s weird to consider now, but it was also a time when non-physical – aka digital – distribution was ‘just’ becoming viable and games were no longer limited to being put in a box on a store shelf at a cost of $60 or more. It felt like the possibility of what a game ‘had’ to be was ripe for disruption, and it was the perfect moment to try and do something unique. But mostly, we had some awesome and innovative ideas and I just wanted to make it and play it.”
Selecting a genre other than first-person shooter or RPG already meant swimming against the current, but releasing Shadow Complex as a digital exclusive in 2009 made it an even bigger wager. At the time, console gamers vocally defended their preference to buy physical media over digital downloads.
Living in a Material World
Selling a game like Shadow Complex as a digital exclusive was a big deal back then. While Steam, Google Play, Apple App Store, and console digital stores game sales now dwarf the amount of physical games sold in the US, Statista estimates that in 2009, 80-90% of all game purchases were physical.
I’ve pulled this slide from our 2012 Gamer Segmentation Study (from the dusty corners of my hard drive) for another look at console gamers’ buying habits back in the Xbox 360/PS3 era. Even in 2012, the majority of console gamers didn't just prefer to buy physical games, they relied on retail purchases for most of them, too.
While it cut down on the publisher’s gamble with a non-franchise, niche game potentially gathering dust on store shelves, a digital-only release also risked alienating its potential core fanbase. Luckily, Shadow Complex made a great first showing. The polygonal, 2.5D presentation avoided the game looking like a relic of a bygone era. For ChAIR, going with polygons over sprites was all part of wanting to push the classic 2D Metroidvania formula as far as they could – and that included advanced lighting and effects.
Shadow Complex is at its core a side-scrolling action-adventure that’s heavy on exploration and platforming, but there are moments where it swings the camera around for third-person action sequences and lets players fire into the background. In a bit of serendipity, perhaps, that approach found its way into the very series that inspired Shadow Complex. The Team Ninja-developed Metroid: Other M similarly mixed 2D sequences with third-person perspective interaction – to its detriment, I’d argue in that case, as it was also tied to a clumsy control scheme.
Colonel Mustard, in the Lab, With the Foam Gun
One my favorite things about every new Zelda, Mario, or Metroid game is to discover what new powers the designers came up with. Being able to unlock, say, a magical vacuum cleaner, and then figuring out how to use it to solve puzzles is the sort of hook that has me coming back for more time and time again. I just 100-percented Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom this week – and while it didn’t quite live up to the peak combat and dungeon design of the best Zelda games past, it takes and runs with the "multi-use tool" concept in impressive ways. Whether it’s grabbing a water-based enemy to put out flames or building stairways out of beds, getting creative with objects that unlock exploration is half the fun in action-adventure games. Which brings me back to one example of why Shadow Complex stuck with me for so long: the Foam Gun.
Turns out, Mustard is also on Team Foam Gun: “I love the Foam Gun too! One of the things that most Metroid games have is a freeze mechanic you can use to freeze enemies in place. You can then use the frozen enemy as a platform to land on or jump off. We loved that mechanic and wanted to extend on the idea – what if you could use a ‘quick hardening Foam’ to ‘freeze’ an enemy or an object but then could stack Foam to build structures or walls or platforms, and then go further and add combinatorial effects like ‘what happens if I shoot foam onto something and then throw a grenade into it?’ We wanted to allow for more emergent and unexpected forms of gameplay. The more we prototyped and played with it, the more exciting it became, and the more we leaned into it as a core mechanic. That kind of philosophy and design heavily influences everything I’ve made since then.”
The Foam Gun wasn’t just fun to use. It also became an integral way to sequence-break Shadow Complex. At a runtime between five and 13 hours, according to HowLongtoBeat, the ability to create yourself your own platforms provided those who knew where to look a way to blaze through the game even faster. There is a moment in Metroid Fusion where the game sort of breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge when a player creatively “breaks” the game and gets to an area in record time. It’s a fascinating bit of meta commentary because it reminds players that for as smart and crafty as they think they are, the designers were actually one step ahead after all. They didn’t just figure out the same trick, they may have designed it in the first place.
“I love emergent gameplay, and rewarding players for trying to push the edges of what the game world or a game system can be. As we discovered crazy sequence-breaking opportunities, we decided to lean into them as opposed to ‘fixing them’ as much as possible,” Mustard told me when asked about the Foam Gun shortcuts. “We were very lucky to have Ken Lobb at Microsoft Games give us some incredible advice. It was great working with him. He was part of Nintendo when the original Metroid games were being made and shared some techniques they used to deliberately allow people to find ways to sequence break very very early into the game. It’s a design lesson I’ll never forget. Cough. Fortnite Rocket Riding. Cough. Cough.”
When Shadow Complex released in August of 2009, the reception was unanimously favorable. Not only did players love the game, it brought back fond memories of an increasingly underserved genre.
Naturally, ChAIR started work on a sequel. Mustard: “Finishing the game almost felt like ‘okay now we actually know how to make a game like this’ so now we can be much more ambitious with the next one. Our goal can be to really move the genre forward!”
Mobile Blade Killed the Console Star
While not much is known about the actual project, designers at ChAIR and its parent company, Epic Games, acknowledge that they were working on a Shadow Complex sequel. As late as September 2011, Cliff Bleszinski (then Epic Games design director) commented that Shadow Complex 2 was “largely designed” and that Epic needed to find a partner to help finish the game and publish it. But sometimes, better – or perhaps, bigger – is the enemy of the good – and a pioneering mobile game hit led ChAIR into a new direction.
“We immediately began working on a sequel. Like with Shadow Complex, we designed the entire game map on paper first, then quickly stood it up in a very rough but completely playable form. We got pretty far into preproduction, and in my opinion, it probably would have been the best game I’ve ever made,” Mustard shared. “But… in late July of 2010 we had a very unique opportunity to partner with Apple to make the very first game ever using Unreal Engine on mobile devices. We decided to pause development on SC2 to investigate that opportunity and 4 1/2 months later released Infinity Blade on iOS.”
"Shadow Complex 2 probably would have been the best game I’ve ever made" - Donald Mustard
Infinity Blade blew up – in part because it showed core gamers that mobile games could be for them – and was quickly followed by a sequel. The two games grossed over $30 million at a time when established publishers and developers alike were still trying to figure out a “there” for them on Apple’s expanding mobile gaming marketplace. Infinity Blade III was unveiled in late 2013 and launched at the same time, complete with an Imagine Dragons song tie-in. It rocketed to #1 in the App Store within hours. But there was an even bigger distraction on the horizon that made a return to the world of Shadow Complex very unlikely.
Mustard says that creating Shadow Complex was one of the great joys of his life. The team’s goal was to see if they could make something that would live up to the games that inspired it – and then expand upon them and help bring something new to the genre.
“The right timing to return to Shadow Complex just never presented itself as we soon became very busy with what became Fortnite,” said Mustard.
I've Seen the Future and it Will Be
As for the future, Mustard left Epic in 2023 to join the Russo Brothers, the directors of Winter Soldier, Civil War, and Avengers Infinity War and Endgame, at multimedia studio AGBO. “I am very satisfied with the work I’ve done in games over the past 20+ years and for now I feel like I have done everything I wanted to do -- with one possible exception,” he told me.
The good news for fans of metroidvanias – including Mustard who calls out this year’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Animal Well as new favorites (I agree!) – is that the genre is now clearly here to stay. Gone are the days of having to pick between the two flavors “sci-fi” and “gothic” bounty hunter or having to wonder if Metroid: Dread would ever see the light of day. We now have granddaddy Castlevania crossing back into the very roguelike spin-off it inspired in the first place, Dead Cells. We have forgotten Atari 2600 shooter Yars’ Revenge serving as the inspiration for a 2D metroidvania reboot in Yars Rising. And we even have the absolutely delightful shmuptroidvania Minishoot’ Adventures that basically crosses The Legend of Zelda with Galaga. If you want to play a metroidvania, you no longer have to dig in the past. I know, ironic – because that’s what this very column is about.
But I’m greedy, so I asked Donald Mustard if he would come back to work on a game like Shadow Complex – or if he was ready to deputize someone else out there who could carry on the legacy and continue the series.
“The opportunity to become a partner at AGBO with Joe and Anthony Russo and the absolutely incredible team that has assembled there is a dream come true for me. We are creating some truly incredible stories that will allow us to push storytelling further across different mediums. I can’t wait for people to experience some of these things,” he said.
“But that ‘possible exception’ I mentioned? If I was to ever direct another video game someday, it would absolutely be a game like Shadow Complex.”
"If I was to ever direct another video game someday, it would absolutely be a game like Shadow Complex.” - Donald Mustard
Where Can You Play it Now
Shadow Complex wasn’t entirely forgotten after ChAIR turned to Infinity Blade. The developer brought back a Remaster of Shadow Complex for an encore outing in 2015 for PC, with a console release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One the following year.
If there is a silver lining in the story of a potential game series cut short, it’s that Shadow Complex is easy to track down – and it still holds up well in both editions. The Remaster is available for $15 on the Epic Games Store and Steam and the PlayStation and Xbox Stores. Annoyingly, the original Xbox 360 game sells for the same price. If you want to splurge, there’s even a small physical release of 7,500 PS4 copies of the Remastered version, courtesy of Limited Run, which unfortunuately now commands upwards of $100 on eBay. The remaster is definitely the version to play – and I highly recommend going back to it if you’re a fan of metroidvanias in general.
Peer Schneider heads up Game Help & Tools across IGN, Map Genie, Eurogamer, RockPaperShotgun, and VG247 and would love to fill a pool with metroidvanias and go swimming in it.
Forgotten Gems: Shadow Complex
Forgotten Gems is a regular column about notable games that have moved out of the public eye and may not be easily accessible anymore. To see all the other games I've covered so far, check out the previous issues of Forgotten Gems in our Columns section.
Metroid-like games and their roguelike off-shoots are everywhere today. Not a week goes by without an indie game announcement promising “metroidvania” gameplay elements – and even Nintendo returned to making new Metroid titles after a near six year hiatus following Metroid: Other M in 2010. And that’s me being generous and counting Metroid Prime: Federation Force as a Metroid game…
But it wasn’t always so. After a Metroid renaissance in the early 2000s with Fusion, Prime, and Zero Mission (what a run!) exploring the series in both 2D and 3D, there was a clear shift away from these classic side-view explorative shooters. Konami stuck it out longer with the “vania” part of the equation and cranked out several quality 2D Castlevanias. But despite the critical success of many of these games, I think it’s fair to say that the genre was diminishing.
So it was with much excitement that I read on IGN back then that designer Donald Mustard and the ChAIR Entertainment team were planning to make a game based on Orson Scott Card’s dystopian novel, Empire. The two had previously collaborated on the underrated Advent Rising, and early coverage on IGN in 2006 – including whispers that it was going to be a bit of a love letter to Metroid – sounded promising.
When Metroidvanias Roamed the Earth
“The 2D Metroid and Zelda games were some of my favorite games of all time and to me represented the pinnacle of 2D game design, specifically when it comes to making a non-linear ‘onion layer’ world where exploration and discovery is the core design pillar,” Donald Mustard, former CCO, Epic Games and Co-Founder of ChAIR told me last week.
"…mostly, we had some awesome and innovative ideas and I just wanted to make it and play it." - Donald Mustard
“Our team felt like the genre had been largely abandoned for over a decade, since the advent of 3D gaming, and we really missed playing them. We thought maybe other people missed them as well, or that even a whole new generation of gamers could discover them. I know it’s weird to consider now, but it was also a time when non-physical – aka digital – distribution was ‘just’ becoming viable and games were no longer limited to being put in a box on a store shelf at a cost of $60 or more. It felt like the possibility of what a game ‘had’ to be was ripe for disruption, and it was the perfect moment to try and do something unique. But mostly, we had some awesome and innovative ideas and I just wanted to make it and play it.”
Selecting a genre other than first-person shooter or RPG already meant swimming against the current, but releasing Shadow Complex as a digital exclusive in 2009 made it an even bigger wager. At the time, console gamers vocally defended their preference to buy physical media over digital downloads.
Living in a Material World
Selling a game like Shadow Complex as a digital exclusive was a big deal back then. While Steam, Google Play, Apple App Store, and console digital stores game sales now dwarf the amount of physical games sold in the US, Statista estimates that in 2009, 80-90% of all game purchases were physical.
I’ve pulled this slide from our 2012 Gamer Segmentation Study (from the dusty corners of my hard drive) for another look at console gamers’ buying habits back in the Xbox 360/PS3 era. Even in 2012, the majority of console gamers didn't just prefer to buy physical games, they relied on retail purchases for most of them, too.
While it cut down on the publisher’s gamble with a non-franchise, niche game potentially gathering dust on store shelves, a digital-only release also risked alienating its potential core fanbase. Luckily, Shadow Complex made a great first showing. The polygonal, 2.5D presentation avoided the game looking like a relic of a bygone era. For ChAIR, going with polygons over sprites was all part of wanting to push the classic 2D Metroidvania formula as far as they could – and that included advanced lighting and effects.
Shadow Complex is at its core a side-scrolling action-adventure that’s heavy on exploration and platforming, but there are moments where it swings the camera around for third-person action sequences and lets players fire into the background. In a bit of serendipity, perhaps, that approach found its way into the very series that inspired Shadow Complex. The Team Ninja-developed Metroid: Other M similarly mixed 2D sequences with third-person perspective interaction – to its detriment, I’d argue in that case, as it was also tied to a clumsy control scheme.
Colonel Mustard, in the Lab, With the Foam Gun
One my favorite things about every new Zelda, Mario, or Metroid game is to discover what new powers the designers came up with. Being able to unlock, say, a magical vacuum cleaner, and then figuring out how to use it to solve puzzles is the sort of hook that has me coming back for more time and time again. I just 100-percented Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom this week – and while it didn’t quite live up to the peak combat and dungeon design of the best Zelda games past, it takes and runs with the "multi-use tool" concept in impressive ways. Whether it’s grabbing a water-based enemy to put out flames or building stairways out of beds, getting creative with objects that unlock exploration is half the fun in action-adventure games. Which brings me back to one example of why Shadow Complex stuck with me for so long: the Foam Gun.
Turns out, Mustard is also on Team Foam Gun: “I love the Foam Gun too! One of the things that most Metroid games have is a freeze mechanic you can use to freeze enemies in place. You can then use the frozen enemy as a platform to land on or jump off. We loved that mechanic and wanted to extend on the idea – what if you could use a ‘quick hardening Foam’ to ‘freeze’ an enemy or an object but then could stack Foam to build structures or walls or platforms, and then go further and add combinatorial effects like ‘what happens if I shoot foam onto something and then throw a grenade into it?’ We wanted to allow for more emergent and unexpected forms of gameplay. The more we prototyped and played with it, the more exciting it became, and the more we leaned into it as a core mechanic. That kind of philosophy and design heavily influences everything I’ve made since then.”
The Foam Gun wasn’t just fun to use. It also became an integral way to sequence-break Shadow Complex. At a runtime between five and 13 hours, according to HowLongtoBeat, the ability to create yourself your own platforms provided those who knew where to look a way to blaze through the game even faster. There is a moment in Metroid Fusion where the game sort of breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge when a player creatively “breaks” the game and gets to an area in record time. It’s a fascinating bit of meta commentary because it reminds players that for as smart and crafty as they think they are, the designers were actually one step ahead after all. They didn’t just figure out the same trick, they may have designed it in the first place.
“I love emergent gameplay, and rewarding players for trying to push the edges of what the game world or a game system can be. As we discovered crazy sequence-breaking opportunities, we decided to lean into them as opposed to ‘fixing them’ as much as possible,” Mustard told me when asked about the Foam Gun shortcuts. “We were very lucky to have Ken Lobb at Microsoft Games give us some incredible advice. It was great working with him. He was part of Nintendo when the original Metroid games were being made and shared some techniques they used to deliberately allow people to find ways to sequence break very very early into the game. It’s a design lesson I’ll never forget. Cough. Fortnite Rocket Riding. Cough. Cough.”
When Shadow Complex released in August of 2009, the reception was unanimously favorable. Not only did players love the game, it brought back fond memories of an increasingly underserved genre.
Naturally, ChAIR started work on a sequel. Mustard: “Finishing the game almost felt like ‘okay now we actually know how to make a game like this’ so now we can be much more ambitious with the next one. Our goal can be to really move the genre forward!”
Mobile Blade Killed the Console Star
While not much is known about the actual project, designers at ChAIR and its parent company, Epic Games, acknowledge that they were working on a Shadow Complex sequel. As late as September 2011, Cliff Bleszinski (then Epic Games design director) commented that Shadow Complex 2 was “largely designed” and that Epic needed to find a partner to help finish the game and publish it. But sometimes, better – or perhaps, bigger – is the enemy of the good – and a pioneering mobile game hit led ChAIR into a new direction.
“We immediately began working on a sequel. Like with Shadow Complex, we designed the entire game map on paper first, then quickly stood it up in a very rough but completely playable form. We got pretty far into preproduction, and in my opinion, it probably would have been the best game I’ve ever made,” Mustard shared. “But… in late July of 2010 we had a very unique opportunity to partner with Apple to make the very first game ever using Unreal Engine on mobile devices. We decided to pause development on SC2 to investigate that opportunity and 4 1/2 months later released Infinity Blade on iOS.”
"Shadow Complex 2 probably would have been the best game I’ve ever made" - Donald Mustard
Infinity Blade blew up – in part because it showed core gamers that mobile games could be for them – and was quickly followed by a sequel. The two games grossed over $30 million at a time when established publishers and developers alike were still trying to figure out a “there” for them on Apple’s expanding mobile gaming marketplace. Infinity Blade III was unveiled in late 2013 and launched at the same time, complete with an Imagine Dragons song tie-in. It rocketed to #1 in the App Store within hours. But there was an even bigger distraction on the horizon that made a return to the world of Shadow Complex very unlikely.
Mustard says that creating Shadow Complex was one of the great joys of his life. The team’s goal was to see if they could make something that would live up to the games that inspired it – and then expand upon them and help bring something new to the genre.
“The right timing to return to Shadow Complex just never presented itself as we soon became very busy with what became Fortnite,” said Mustard.
I've Seen the Future and it Will Be
As for the future, Mustard left Epic in 2023 to join the Russo Brothers, the directors of Winter Soldier, Civil War, and Avengers Infinity War and Endgame, at multimedia studio AGBO. “I am very satisfied with the work I’ve done in games over the past 20+ years and for now I feel like I have done everything I wanted to do -- with one possible exception,” he told me.
The good news for fans of metroidvanias – including Mustard who calls out this year’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Animal Well as new favorites (I agree!) – is that the genre is now clearly here to stay. Gone are the days of having to pick between the two flavors “sci-fi” and “gothic” bounty hunter or having to wonder if Metroid: Dread would ever see the light of day. We now have granddaddy Castlevania crossing back into the very roguelike spin-off it inspired in the first place, Dead Cells. We have forgotten Atari 2600 shooter Yars’ Revenge serving as the inspiration for a 2D metroidvania reboot in Yars Rising. And we even have the absolutely delightful shmuptroidvania Minishoot’ Adventures that basically crosses The Legend of Zelda with Galaga. If you want to play a metroidvania, you no longer have to dig in the past. I know, ironic – because that’s what this very column is about.
But I’m greedy, so I asked Donald Mustard if he would come back to work on a game like Shadow Complex – or if he was ready to deputize someone else out there who could carry on the legacy and continue the series.
“The opportunity to become a partner at AGBO with Joe and Anthony Russo and the absolutely incredible team that has assembled there is a dream come true for me. We are creating some truly incredible stories that will allow us to push storytelling further across different mediums. I can’t wait for people to experience some of these things,” he said.
“But that ‘possible exception’ I mentioned? If I was to ever direct another video game someday, it would absolutely be a game like Shadow Complex.”
"If I was to ever direct another video game someday, it would absolutely be a game like Shadow Complex.” - Donald Mustard
Where Can You Play it Now
Shadow Complex wasn’t entirely forgotten after ChAIR turned to Infinity Blade. The developer brought back a Remaster of Shadow Complex for an encore outing in 2015 for PC, with a console release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One the following year.
If there is a silver lining in the story of a potential game series cut short, it’s that Shadow Complex is easy to track down – and it still holds up well in both editions. The Remaster is available for $15 on the Epic Games Store and Steam and the PlayStation and Xbox Stores. Annoyingly, the original Xbox 360 game sells for the same price. If you want to splurge, there’s even a small physical release of 7,500 PS4 copies of the Remastered version, courtesy of Limited Run, which unfortunuately now commands upwards of $100 on eBay. The remaster is definitely the version to play – and I highly recommend going back to it if you’re a fan of metroidvanias in general.
Peer Schneider heads up Game Help & Tools across IGN, Map Genie, Eurogamer, RockPaperShotgun, and VG247 and would love to fill a pool with metroidvanias and go swimming in it.