The Sinking City was a really good Lovecraftian noir with absolutely abysmal movement and gunplay. When a sequel was announced, I was excited to see how FrogWares would iterate upon the strengths of the original game (the noir elements) and hoped that they would improve or sand down the rougher parts (gunplay). But when the sequel was stated as being a more traditional, linear "survival horror" game with a greater emphasis on combat and action, my interest immediately waned. Instead of iterating on the things that made the first game successful, FrogWares chose to double-down on the things that made it borderline unplayable. What an absolutely dumb-founding decision!

I understand that a lot of the questionable design choices in this game may have been the result of a multi-year legal battle with The Sinking City's publisher, Nacon, and FrogWares may have had to design and develop this game without knowing whether or not they would legally be able to use the Sinking City intellectual property. Much of the game probably had to be designed in such a way that it could be argued in court as being "legally distinct" from The Sinking City. My guess is that as this development got deeper, designed and story diverged to a point in which it became difficult or impossible to re-insert the original game's characters and exact setting. This results in a game that feels almost like a generic knock-off of The Sinking City.

We get a protagonist who feels like a cheap knock off of the original protagonist, complete with the same outfit and initials, but without the gruff personality -- or much of any personality at all. The city itself is now Arkham instead of Oakmont. The streets are laid out differently, and it isn't a full open world (owing to the city being completely flooded and evacuated), but some of the names are the same. For example, one of the early destinations of the sequel is the Devil's Reef Hotel. Same name as in the first game, but now it's more of a cabaret than a simple inn. Maybe it's a franchise?

Things will look familiar, but the characters and setting are actually different.

These changes make sense in context of the legal situation. The change in gameplay and story makes a lot less sense. Maybe FrogWares was worried that making a noir mystery game would also not be "legally distinct" enough, and so they felt it necessary to change genres completely. Unfortunately, the genre they chose put them very outside of their comfort zone, and it shows in a final product that is extremely rough around the edges.

I really don't want to be too hard on FrogWares though. After all, their studio is located in Ukraine, in the middle of an unjustified invasion from a belligerent dictator who is one of the most evil people living in the world today. This is a fact that the game reminds the players of as soon as you boot up the game. So before I go any further, I want to let everyone at FrogWares know that I sympathize with your situation (both the legal one, and the military one), and I wish that my government and NATO were doing more to help you and keep your friends and family safe. But I'm also genuinely impressed with how effectively your country has stood its ground and held off against a former global superpower. I'm happy that you were able to retain the rights to an IP that you built. I'm also horrified by the unnecessary violence that has beset you. I hope that Ukraine perseveres and bloodies Putin's nose so thoroughly that he never tries a stunt like this again. And maybe your successful resistance might even make China think twice before invading Taiwan...

But I'm sorry to say that I really didn't like this game. I sincerely hope that any future games that you make are more in-line with The Sinking City 1 and your other past Sherlock Holmes catalogue. That's what you do well!

Slinking and slithering

Right off the bat, The Sinking City 2 suffered a hard crash to the PS5 dashboard before I had even finished the tutorial. So that wasn't a good sign. It exacerbated frustrations that I was already having with the core gameplay and environments.

The game hard crashed during the tutorial.

Early in the game, I was having a really hard time just seeing what was going on around me. The game is too dark. Environments are so dimly lit and cluttered that it's hard to get my bearings in many locations. Even when I cranked the brightness up by like 50%, the environments still looked washed out and murky, with very little contrast. Nothing stands out. Everything just kind of blended into the background. I had to constantly check the map to get my bearings, and to find any loot or items of interest that were highlighted there, because I had trouble seeing them on the default brightness settings. I eventually got used to it, and environments in the mid-game seemed to be more evenly lit.

My heart also sank when the first enemies were just zombies. The creature design of the first game wasn't great, but I was hoping for something a bit more creative than zombies in the sequel.

I'm not a superstitious person. I fully understand that the "Madden Curse" is a common, simple, statistical phenomenon: a regression to the mean. EA choses elite players who had a standout season the past year. Of course these players are going to see statistical drop-offs. And since they are elite players who give their all and put their bodies on the line to win, they probably have a higher chance of getting themselves hurt.

That being said, my understanding is that professional athletes are notoriously superstitious. So I do not know why any NFL player would allow themselves to be put on the cover of Madden. I'm guessing that the NFLPA contracts must include some obligation that the player agree to the Madden cover if offered.

Personally, I hate the idea of a "cover athlete" for sports games, as a matter of principle. I haven't played enough of Madden 27 yet to say whether or not Caleb Williams cover appearance is at all representative of the game. Maybe it is; maybe it isn't.

In any case, the "Madden Curse" struck Caleb late in the week 2 matchup against the Vikings. As soon as the game was over, and I heard that Tyson Bagent was also in the concussion protocol, I put a bet on the Eagles to beat Chicago in week 3.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh.

The "Madden Curse" struck Caleb Williams in week 2.

Well it turned out that the Bears maybe didn't need Caleb all that bad. Or Tyson, for that matter. They clobbered the Eagles with 3rd stringer Case Keenum slinging the ball around the field.

When the likes of Boise State and San Diego State left the Mountain West in favor of the dying PAC, UNLV appeared to be the defacto top dog in the conference. After 3 games of the 2026 campaign, however, I'm not so sure anymore. The Rebels have looked bad in their 2 non-conference games so far. They were competitive against Memphis in the season opener, losing by only a single score. Against North Texas, however, UNLV embarrassed themselves with a completely incompetent showing.

Maybe the 100+ degree heat affected the players more than they expected it to. The Rebels turned the ball over on 2 of their first 3 possessions, but were able to hold North Texas to just field goals off of those turnovers, giving hope that maybe UNLV could stay in the game. All hope seemed to die just before halftime, when poor play-calling and clock-management from coach Dan Mullen left the team scrambling to get one last play off at the goal line, only to be stuffed and denied on an opportunity to go into halftime down by just 1 score. They went into halftime down 17-3. A manageable deficit, but only if the team could come out in the second half and execute with any degree of competence.

That didn't happen. UNLV could not stop North Texas' offense in the second half, and UNLV's offense continued to look terrible. The team could only score a single additional field goal, while North Texas went on to run away with 44 total points. I expected poor defensive play from a Dan Mullen-coached team. What I didn't expect was for the offense to be completely incapable of scoring a touchdown for an entire game.

PHOTO CREDIT: Madeline Carter / LVRJ

PHOTO CREDIT: UNLV Athletics

I might take consolation if Memphis and North Texas end up playing in the American Conference Championship.

I really was not ready for the start of football season this year. Part of that is the fault of NFL Fantasy Football, which migrated its leagues to ESPN's fantasy app, but waited till the 11th hour to actually enable the ability to transfer. I got the email about it in the spring, and was just kind of waiting to get further instructions from the NFL on how to do the migration. Those instructions didn't come until like the end of July, only a couple weeks before the start of the NFL preseason.

This delay in setting up my fantasy football leagues this year meant I wasn't really thinking about football, and didn't even bother looking for cheap copies of College Football 27 on eBay when the game released. I ended up buying my used copy off eBay a whole month after the game's release. In fact, it was so late, that I received the game in the mail the day before Madden 27's official release. So I'll probably be late about getting my pre-owned copy of that too.

Another year of Big Money and conference re-alignment ruining college football is upon us.

Being a month late, I apparently missed a whole lot of a drama with the game's launch. From what I've read, the Dynasty mode nerfed experience gain for players and coaches in order to sell XP boost micro-transactions. Without those micro-transaction XP boosts, users report that it would take 150 seasons of undefeated national championship runs to get a custom coach up to max level. (The game only supports 50 years of Dynasty Mode)

Things were so bad that apparently content creators and influencers (even the Ultimate Team ones!) were in active rebellion and recommending boycotts. EA back-tracked ... partially. The XP boost micro-transactions were removed, and the names of the Coach XP sliders were renamed in order to obfuscate whether a "fast" option is included or not. So maybe XP gain is back to normal, or maybe it's still slower than in past years. I don't know. Worse yet, EA still kept a paywall for certain coach skill trees.

Even influencers (such as Bordeaux) were quick to call out EA for its brazen attempts at pay-to-win monetization.

It actually teaches the game this time?

Upon finally receiving a copy of the game, I jumped into a quick exhibition match with last year's national champs expecting to feel right at home and breeze to an easy victory, and to start my reviewing process with the impression that the game hadn't changed much. I did breeze to an easy victory, but that had more to do with playing as the reigning national champs instead of anything I was doing. Instead, I actually felt surprisingly out-of-place. A lot of simple things from years past were different. For example, the commands for shifting defensive linemen and linebackers weren't mapped to the controls I expected, and I generally had no idea what any of the defensive pre-play controls did, because so many of them were moved, combined, or had unfamiliar commands in their menus. The buttons to view wear & tear weren't where they used to be, even though a quick trip to the setting menu confirmed that wear & tear is still in the game. And so forth.

So the next time I played, I went to the Training menu, expecting to be disappointed by a measly list of un-helpful mini-games that would force me to go to the internet to figure out where all the familiar commands had been moved to, and what new commands might be present. What I found instead was an exhaustive suite of tutorials, including an entire menu dedicated specifically to mechanics and features that were new this year, or significantly changed from previous years. On top of that, the tutorials showed subtle, but significant design improvements over the Madden counterparts that I had been familiar with for years.

There is [finally] an entire tutorial menu dedicated to new and modified features.

In general, these Skill Trainer tutorials lacked good feedback for what you might be doing wrong, if you are failing to execute the commands being tutorialized. In fact, when I got to the tutorial for the new timing-based catching mechanic, I was kind of stone-walled. There was no on-screen indicator, dial, or gauge of any kind telling me what to press or how long to press it. My receiver kept catching passes, but I wasn't given credit for executing the timing catches, and the game wasn't giving me any feedback on what (if anything) I was doing wrong. So I hopped on the internet and searched for "College Football 27 perfect catch tutorial not working", and immediately found a reddit post explaining that, by importing last year's settings, the timing-catch mechanic is disabled by default. That's right, the game's most significant and heavily-advertised new feature was disabled by default! I had to quit the Skill Trainer and turn on the timing-catch setting. Then, suddenly, the tutorial started working, and the rest of the Skill Trainer drills were mostly smooth-sailing and were highly informative.

With the 100th anniversary of "The War To End All Wars" having been in the last decade, there's been a little explosion of games in various genres that have been set in World War I. World War I survival horror games have actually started to become their own special little sub-genre, with stand-outs like Amnesiaa: The Bunker, Ad Infinitum (which I have not yet played), and the subject of this review, Conscript, as well as a few other smaller titles. World War I is such a brilliant thematic setting for a survival horror game, that it really does kind of surprise me that nobody thought of this before.

First and foremost, World War I is often considered to be a tragic war. It was fought for stupid, asinine reasons, with no clear good guys or bad guys, and the loss of life ultimately ended up being even more pointless than usual for a war. It was also the first war to employ horrific new industrial weapons that multiplied the pain, suffering, and death compared to every war previously fought. From machine guns, to tanks, to airplanes, to the various gases that were so horrific that they were banned by the international community in the fallout of the war. And more superficially, the trenches and bunkers that are an iconic part of the imagery of the war are tight, enclosed, and claustrophobic spaces that are dark, dirty, and full of death, rot, and vermin. All of these circumstances and aesthetics of the war combine to make it an ideal thematic setting for horror -- in retrospect.

Conscript may be the ultimate realization of the war as a horror setting. Conscript is grounded and presents the war as horrific in its own regard. Unlike Amnesia, Conscript doesn't really rely on supernatural monsters or Eldritch gods to try to make the war scarier than it already is. It's just you, the trenches, and an army of German soldiers between you and survival. And survival will not come easy!

The trenches of World War I are an inherently horrifying setting.

Saving Private Piérre

The basic setup of Conscript is a little evocative of Saving Private Ryan. You play as one of a pair of brothers conscripted into the French army to defend Fort Souville and prevent the Germans from capturing the town of Verdun. On the way to the front lines to defend from a German advance, you find your brother critically injured and unconscious. During the skirmish, you are injured and left for dead while the rest of the French army retreats and temporary abandons the fort to regroup for a counter-attack. After waking from your injuries alone in a corpse pit, you find that the trenches are slowly being overrun by German troops, your brother is missing, and the player character vows to find him and protect him, so that you can both return home to your mother.

This leads the player to start exploring the maze-like web of trenches connected to Fort Souville in search of your brother. Locked doors and other obstacles block progress, in typical survival horror fashion, and you'll have to scavenge for whatever supplies you can find to help defend yourself from the German soldiers who have started occupying and patrolling the trenches and fort.

In classic survival horror fashion, doors will be locked by themed keys or puzzles.

The game is played from a top-down perspective, with pixel-art, which also limits your visibility and awareness of what is around you (also in typical, classic, survival horror fashion). Aiming and firing a weapon is slow and cumbersome, and the weapons must be manually reloaded after every shot. There are no zombies or monsters; just human German soldiers. At first, they will be easy to kill with a single shot or two from your rifle or shotgun, but within a couple hours of play, you'll start running into tougher, armored shock troopers that will require multiple shots to take down. The slow nature of firing and reloading your weapon means that enemies charging you at melee are far more threatening than you might expect. "Never bring a knife to a gunfight" you might say? Well, not if the gun is a World War I rifle, it seems. Furthermore, any time you are up against multiple enemies, it will turn into a desperate scramble to keep distance from the melee troops and find cover from riflemen within the tight confines of the trenches.

Bandages and first aid kits are also in short supply. Every bash that you take from a German trench baton, or graze from a rifle shot, will whittle down your health and ratchet up the tension, as you can ill afford to take more hits. The game will provide more healing items later on (as well as ample opportunity to craft more), but health recovery will always feel tight. I finished the game with [I think] only 2 healing items remaining in my item box; though, I could have bought the ingredients to craft a few more, if I absolutely needed to.

You'll need to be paying attention to what you're doing, and have fast reflexes to either dodge surprise enemy attacks, or quickly dispatch them. The enemies here won't insta-kill you like in a hide-and-seek horror game. You have a health bar, and can take quite a beating. The Germans, however, will be more than happy to dish out those beatings if you give them an opportunity. A single screw up won't get you immediately killed, but sloppy play can quickly turn fatal, as even the most basic grunts can be lethal if you get careless and expose yourself to multiple attacks.

All of this is near perfectly encapsulated by the exceptionally-designed and stressfully-paced opening chapter or 2 of the game. All of the game's best ideas and mechanics really shine in these first few hours and left me with an immaculate first impression of the game. But by the mid-point of the game, nags and nitpicks did start to pile up.