gaming – Page 2

11 things you probably didn’t know the Switch 2 can do

gaming / Kelly Newman / June 3, 2025

Our first quick dive into the system-level settings and the new GameChat multiplayer.

Let’s-a go! Credit: Kyle Orland

Eight years ago, just before the release of the Nintendo Switch, we provided an in-depth review of the hardware thanks to early production units provided by Nintendo. This year, Nintendo has opted not to provide such unrestricted early press access to the Switch 2 hardware, citing a “day-one update” to the system software and some launch games that would supposedly make pre-release evaluation more difficult.

As such, we won’t be able to provide our full thoughts on the Switch 2 until well after the system is in players’ hands. While that’s not an ideal situation for readers looking to make an early purchase decision, we’ll do our best to give you our hands-on impressions as soon as possible after launch day.

In lieu of review access, though, we were able to get some extended hands-on time with the final Switch 2 hardware at a daylong preview event held by Nintendo last week. This event provided our first look at the console’s system-level menu and settings, as well as features like GameChat (which was hard to fully evaluate in an extremely controlled environment).

While this access was far from sufficient for a full review, it did let us discover a few interesting features that we weren’t aware of beforehand. Here are some of the new tidbits we stumbled across during our day with the Switch 2 hardware.

GameChat can generate captions for live speech

One of the most unexpected accessibility features of the Switch 2 is the system’s ability to automatically generate on-screen captions for what friends are saying during a GameChat session. These captions appear in their own box that can be set to the side of the main gameplay. The captioning system seemed pretty fast and accurate in our test and could even update captions from multiple speakers at the same time.

GameChat can automatically update captions for multiple speakers at once. Credit: Kyle Orland

While this is obviously useful for hard-of-hearing players, we could also see the feature being a boon for managing crosstalk among rowdy GameChat parties or for quickly referring back to something someone said a few seconds ago.

You can generate spoken speech from text messages

In a reverse of the auto-captioning system discussed above, GameChat also has a feature buried deep in its menus that lets you type a message on the on-screen keyboard and have it spoken aloud to the other participants in a slightly robotic voice. This could come in handy when you’re playing in an environment where you have to be quiet but still want to quickly convey detailed information to your fellow players.

The camera has built-in head-tracking

During GameChat sessions, you can make the connected camera show only your face instead of your entire body and/or the background behind it. This mode keeps your face centered in a small, circular frame even as you move around during gameplay, though there is a slight delay in the tracking if you move your head too quickly.

While you can also activate a similar face display during local multiplayer sessions of Mario Kart World, the game doesn’t seem to track your movements, meaning you can easily fall out of frame if you don’t hold your body still.

The system can detect the angle of the kickstand

This was a cute little surprise I discovered in a Switch 2 Welcome Tour mini-game that asks you to set the kickstand as close as possible to a given angle. This mini-game works even if the Joy-Cons are not attached, suggesting that there is a sensor in the kickstand or tablet itself that measures the angle. It did take a few seconds of stillness for the game to fully confirm the system’s resting angle, though, so don’t expect to be tilting the kickstand rapidly to control action games or anything.

You can use mouse mode to navigate system menus

I stumbled on this feature when I was holding the Joy-Cons normally and one of my fingers accidentally passed over the mouse sensor, activating a mouse pointer on the system menu screen. When I put the controller down on its edge, I found that the pointer could scroll and click through those menus, often much more quickly than flicking a joystick.

Mouse mode also lets you zoom in on specific areas of the screen with a quick double-click, which should be useful for both vision-impaired players and those playing on tiny and/or far-off screens.

You can adjust the mouse mode sensitivity

The system menu lets you adjust the mouse sensor’s sensitivity between “low,” “medium,” and “high.” While that’s a lot less precise than the fully adjustable DPI settings you might be used to with a computer mouse, it’s still a welcome option.

In some quick testing, I found the high-sensitivity mode to be especially useful when using the mouse on a small surface, such as the top of my thigh. At this setting, the pointer could move from one end of the screen to the other with the slightest wrist adjustment. Low sensitivity mode, on the other hand, proved useful in more precise situations, such as in a Welcome Tour mini-game where I had to move a ball quickly and precisely through a large, electrified maze.

You can play sounds to find lost controllers

Find lost controllers easily with this menu option.

Lose a Joy-Con somewhere in the depths of your couch? Not to worry—a new menu option on the Switch 2 lets you play a distinctive sound through that Joy-Con’s improved HD Rumble 2 motor to help you find its precise location. While we confirmed that this feature also works with the new Pro Controller 2, we were unable to determine whether it can be used for original Switch controllers that are synced with a Switch 2.

You can set a system-wide security PIN

Your unique PIN code must be entered any time the system comes out of sleep mode, making the hardware functionally useless to anyone who doesn’t have the PIN. This should be great for kids who want to keep siblings away and parents who are worried about their kids sneaking in extra Switch 2 time when they shouldn’t be.

You can limit the battery charging level

A new system-level option will prevent the Switch 2 from charging as soon as it hits 90 percent of capacity, a move intended to increase the longevity of the internal battery. This is already a common feature on many smartphones and portable gaming devices, so it’s nice to see Nintendo joining the bandwagon here. Thus far, though, it appears that the 90 percent battery capacity is the only cutoff point available, with no further options for customization.

You can adjust the size of menu text

As you can see in the photo above, setting the system text size to “MAXIMUM” lets menu options be seen easily from roughly the moon. You can set the system text to bold and high-contrast for even more legibility, and there’s also an option to make the system menu text smaller than the default, for whatever reason.

You can swap the A and B buttons at the system level

With this menu option activated, the B button is used to “confirm” and the A button is used to “cancel” in system menus. This should be welcome news for players more used to the button layout on Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam Deck controllers, which all have the “confirm” and “cancel” options in reversed positions from the Nintendo default.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

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“Free Roam” mode is Mario Kart World’s killer app

gaming, Mario Kart, mario kart world / DJ Henderson / June 3, 2025

When Ars tried out Mario Kart World at April’s Switch 2 premiere hands-on event, the short demos focused on more-or-less standard races in the game’s Grand Prix and Knockout modes. So when Nintendo invited us back for more time previewing the near-final version of the game before the Switch 2’s release, we decided to focus most of our time on the game’s mysterious (and previously teased) “Free Roam” mode.

We’re glad we did, because the mode feels like the hidden gem of Mario Kart World and maybe of the Switch 2 launch as a whole. Combining elements of games like Diddy Kong Racing, Forza Horizon, and even the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, Free Roam provides a unique mixture of racing challenges, exploration, and collectibles that should keep new Switch 2 owners busy for a while.

Switch hunt

Surprisingly, Free Roam mode isn’t listed as one of the main options when you launch a new game of Mario Kart World. Instead, a tiny note in the corner of the screen tells you to hit the plus button to get dropped into a completely untimed and free-wheeling version of the vast Mario Kart World map.

The real game takes place in the spaces between those race courses. Credit: Nintendo

Exploring in Free Roam mode provides the best sense of scale for the game’s massive, multi-ecosystem island in a way individual races just can’t. Sure, other race modes sometimes let you travel between the individual race courses along pre-set paths from one finish line to another starting line. But Free Roam mode lets you fully explore the vast spaces between those paths, encouraging you to go off-roading in the mountains, valleys, rivers, oceans, volcanoes, snowdrifts, and landmarks that dot the countryside.

Your main explicit goal when exploring all this varied expanse is to look for large, blue P-Switches, each of which activates a short, timed challenge mission in the immediate vicinity. In many cases, simply reaching the P-Switch is half the challenge, requiring some inventive wall-riding or item use to get to a particularly out-of-the-way corner of the map.

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Elden Ring: Nightreign is an epic RPG squeezed into delicious bite-size capsules

elden ring, FromSoftware, gaming / 9u50fv / May 28, 2025

Fast-paced multiplayer action fits surprisingly well with the old Elden Ring formula.

Time’s a wasting, finish off that battle quick so you can move on to the next one ASAP! Credit: Bandai Namco

At this point, Elden Ring is well-known for its epic sense of scale, offering players dozens of hours of meticulous exploration, gradual character progression, and unforgiving enemy encounters that require deliberate care and strategy. On its face, this doesn’t seem like the best basis for a semi-randomized multiplayer action game spin-off with strict time limits and an ever-encroaching physical border in a tightly constrained map.

Somehow, though, Elden Ring: Nightreign makes the combination work. The game condenses all the essential parts of Elden Ring down to their barest essence, tweaking things just enough to distill the flavor of a full-fledged Elden Ring playthrough into zippy runs of less than an hour each. The result is a fast-paced, quick-hit shot of adventuring that is well suited to repeated play with friends.

Fort-elden Ring-nite

The initial moments of each Nightreign run draw an almost comical comparison to Fortnite, with each player dropping into the game’s singular map by hanging off the talons of a great spectral eagle. Once on the ground, players have to stay inside a circular “safe zone” that will slowly contract throughout each of two quick in-game days, forcing your party toward an eventual encounter with a mini-boss at the end of each day. If you survive both days, you take on one of the several extremely punishing Nightlords you chose to face at the beginning of that run.

It’s not exactly a floating bus, but it kind of feels like it is… Credit: Bandai Namco

If you’ve played Elden Ring, you’ll definitely recognize the general fallen world aesthetic here, as well as many specific enemies and items taken directly from FromSoft’s previous epic. What will be less familiar is the general pace of play, which is guided by that encroaching circle of deadly blue flame. Instead of taking your time and exploring every nook and cranny for hidden secrets, you end up dashing between points of interest highlighted on the map in a madcap attempt to farm enough experience points and powerful items to have a chance against the big bosses.

There are a few crucial tweaks to the Elden Ring formula aiding you in this newly speed-focused effort. For one thing, your character now has an unlimited “surge sprint” that can get you from one part of the map to another at a pretty rapid clip. For another, there’s a nice springy wall jump that lets you climb up stair-step cliffs and walls that are much taller than your character. Add in occasional jump pads for quickly leaping over cliffs and a complete lack of fall damage for descending into valleys, and you get a game that feels more like a 3D Sonic than Elden Ring at points.

You’d better have a few levels under your belt if you’re going to take on a battle like this. Credit: Bandai Namco

Things feel more like the old Elden Ring during battles, where you’ll quickly fall into the familiar rhythm of managing limited stamina to attack, block, and dodge enemies’ heavily telegraphed attacks. Even here, though, things feel a little more action-oriented thanks to powerful, class-specific “character skills” and “ultimate art” attacks that slowly recharge over time. The quick pace of leveling also aids in the power fantasy, condensing the progression from zero to hero into an extremely tight time frame, relative to Elden Ring proper.

Try, try again

Speaking of classes, the eight options here tend to fall into the usual archetypes for this kind of action-adventure game: the tank, the mage, the defensive specialist, the dextrous dodger, etc. For myself, I tended toward the Ironeye class, with an unlimited supply of arrows that let me deliver consistent (if relatively weak) damage against flying and/or zigzagging bosses, all while maintaining a safe range from all but the widest-ranged attacks.

But one big benefit of Nightreign‘s faster-paced design is that you don’t have to tie yourself to a specific class for hundreds of hours at the outset. You’ll get ample opportunity to try them all—and different combinations with teammate classes—across dozens of individual, bite-size runs.

As you do, you’ll start to learn the general shape of the map, which is well-designed with a few distinct geographic regions and points of interest. While the specific enemies and items you’ll find in various locations will change from run to run, you’ll quickly develop a feel for the landmarks and general routes you’ll want to at least consider exploring each time.

After a few runs, you’ll know where to find the subterranean caves that have a good chance of hidden loot.

Repeated runs also help you develop the key sense of when it’s worthwhile to fight and when it makes more sense to run away. This is especially important at the beginning of each run, where your low-level character needs to focus on farming fodder enemies until you are powerful enough to take on the lowest tier of sub-bosses you might stumble across. Later in the run, you’ll need to shift to ignoring those low-level enemies so you can spend more time gaining big rewards from the even bigger bosses.

Even with a decent general strategy, though, players shouldn’t expect to be able to win every run in Nightreign. During some runs, you may find only garbage weapon drops or low-level enemies that make it hard to quickly build up the critical mass of power you’ll need by the final encounter. During other runs, you may chance upon a great weapon that causes enough bleed damage to make even the most difficult bosses relatively easy to kill.

Then there are the runs where you get greedy by doubling back to a lucrative encounter on the edge of the safety circle, only to find yourself quickly engulfed in blue flame. Or the ones where you take one wrong step and fall to your doom down a cliffside while trying to dodge away from a relatively harmless enemy, losing a crucial character level (and your momentum) when you respawn.

Between runs, you can equip relics that offer small permanent stat boosts to the various classes. In general, though, success in Nightreign is a matter of keeping at it until you stumble on the right mix of luck and execution to finally best the Nightlords.

Find a friend

While Nightreign technically has a single-player mode, the game is quite explicitly designed for groups of three simultaneous humans (groups of two need not apply—paired players will need to join up with a third). Being in a threesome generally means that one player can draw an enemy’s attack while the other two take advantage by flanking around their guard. It also means that downed players can be revived by a partner repeatedly hitting their crawling near-corpse with a weapon, an awkward and hilarious process in practice.

Does this count as three-on-one odds, or do the multiple heads on the beast make it more of a fair fight?

Being able to coordinate with your teammates is crucial both during battles and as you decide which location to explore next in the ever-narrowing circle of the available map. If you’re not playing with friends and chatting over a voice connection, your main form of communication is an awkward system of pinning points of interest on the map.

Unfortunately, I ran into some serious problems with lag in my pre-release multiplayer runs, with the game periodically freezing for multiple seconds at a time as the servers struggled to keep up. I often came out of these freezes to find I had succumbed to an enemy attack that I hadn’t even seen on my screen. I can’t say this server performance in a tightly controlled pre-launch environment bodes well for how the game will perform once the wider public gains access in a few days.

Those technical problems aside, I was surprised at how well this zippy, capsule-size take on the Elden Ring formula worked in practice. Nightreign might not be the full-fledged, epic Elden Ring sequel that long-time “Soulsborne” fans are looking for, but it’s still a compelling, action-packed twist on the popular adventure gameplay.

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Desktop Survivors 98 is more than just a retro Windows nostalgia trip

desktop, gaming, microsoft, retro, survivors, Vamprie Survivors, Windows, windows 95, windows 98 / Kelly Newman / May 23, 2025

If that kind of nostalgia were all there was to Desktop Survivors 98, it would probably not be worth much more than a 15-minute demo. But the underlying game actually takes the developing Survivors-like genre in some interesting directions.

As usual for the genre, the gameplay here centers around navigating through throngs of encroaching enemies (and their projectiles), all while herding those enemies together so your auto-firing weapons can take them out. Defeated enemies drop gems that are crucial to gaining new weapons and powers that also lean heavily on nostalgic computing gags—I particularly liked one weapon based on the “flower box” screensaver and another based on the “bouncing cards” at the end of a successful Solitaire game.

Theming aside, the main element that sets Desktop Survivors apart from its predecessors in the genre is the mouse-based controls. Your old-school mouse pointer is your character here, meaning you get to precisely dodge and dart around the screen with all the speed and accuracy you’d expect from such a flexible input device.

Once you move through these dungeons with a mouse, you won’t want to go back to a joystick.

While there is a serviceable Steam Deck mode designed for analog stick-based movements, it’s a hard control paradigm to return to after experiencing the freedom and speed of mouse movements. Decades of mouse use have likely been preparing you for just this moment, training you to weave your pointer through the tight, quickly closing spaces between enemies without really having to think about it.

More of the same?

Desktop Survivors also sets itself apart by taking place on a series of single-screen battlefields rather than smoothly scrolling maps. These rooms don’t feature any significant obstacles or walls to block your movements, either, making each enemy room play kind of similarly to the ones you’ve seen before it. This also makes it a little easier to avoid many enemies simply by scrubbing your mouse pointer in a wide circle, causing the enemy horde to bunch up in comical blobs.

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SteamOS 3.7 brings Valve’s gaming OS to other handhelds and generic AMD PCs

asus rog ally, asus rog ally x, gaming, lenovo legion go, steam deck, steamos, Tech, valve / Shannon Garcia / May 23, 2025

Valve’s instructions will walk you through downloading a SteamOS recovery image and copying it to a USB drive using either the Rufus tool (on Windows) or Balena Etcher (the preferred macOS and Linux utility). After turning Secure Boot off, you should be able to boot from the USB drive and install SteamOS as you would on a regular Steam Deck.

Note that there’s no simple, officially supported way to dual-boot SteamOS and Windows; if you decide to turn your handheld, laptop, or desktop into a new Steam Machine, the only way to make it back into a Windows PC is to re-enable Secure Boot and install a fresh copy from another USB drive.

The SteamOS 3.7 update (officially, version 3.7.8) also includes a bunch of other updates to the underlying software: version 6.11 of the Linux kernel (up from version 6.5 in SteamOS 3.6), “a newer Arch Linux base,” version 6.2.5 of the Plasma interface in desktop mode, new Mesa graphics drivers, and various other tweaks and bug fixes.

A second act for SteamOS

The original version of SteamOS was designed to be widely compatible with all kinds of PC hardware and was available both from major PC manufacturers and as a standalone OS that you could (and which we did) install on custom, self-built PCs. But these computers and that version of SteamOS mostly flopped, at least in part because they only ran a small subset of games that natively supported Linux.

The current version of SteamOS launched with more modest aims as the first-party operating system for a single piece of hardware. But by focusing on the game compatibility problem first and leading the way with category-defining hardware, Valve has actually built a much stronger foundation for the current version of SteamOS than it did for the original.

That doesn’t make SteamOS a drop-in replacement for Windows—without strong support for Intel or Nvidia hardware, it’s not a great candidate for the majority of gaming PCs, or even Intel-powered gaming handhelds like the MSI Claw A1M. And Windows is set up to be a multi-purpose general-use operating system in ways that SteamOS isn’t; Valve still says that, despite the presence of desktop mode, “users should not consider SteamOS as a replacement for their desktop operating system.” But for certain kinds of systems that are primarily used as gaming PCs, SteamOS is a real contender.

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Why console makers can legally brick your game console

brick, EULA, gaming, hacking, microsoft, Nintendo, PlayStation, Sony, Switch, xbox / Kelly Newman / May 23, 2025

Consoles like these may get banned from Nintendo’s online services, but they tend to still work offline. Credit: Kate Temkin / ReSwitched

“Unfortunately, ‘bricking’ personal devices to limit users’ rights and control their behavior is nothing new,” Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Victoria Noble told Ars Technica. “It would likely take selective enforcement to rise to a problematic level [in court],” attorney Richard Hoeg said.

Last year, a collection of 17 consumer groups urged the Federal Trade Commission to take a look at the way companies use the so-called practice of “software tethering” to control a device’s hardware features after purchase. Thus far, though, the federal consumer watchdog has shown little interest in enforcing complaints against companies that do so.

“Companies should not use EULAs to strip people of rights that we normally associate with ownership, like the right to tinker with or modify their own personal devices,” Noble told Ars. “[Console] owners deserve the right to make otherwise legal modifications to their own devices without fear that a company will punish them by remotely bricking their [systems].”

The court of public opinion

In the end, these kinds of draconian bricking clauses may be doing their job even if the console makers involved don’t invoke them. “In practice, I expect this kind of thing is more about scaring people away from jailbreaking and modifying their systems and that Nintendo is unlikely to go about bricking large volumes of devices, even if they technically have the right to,” Loiterman said.

“Just because they put a remedy in the EULA doesn’t mean they will certainly use it either,” attorney Mark Methenitis said. “My suspicion is this is to go after the people who eventually succeeded in jailbreaking the original Switch and try to prevent that for the Switch 2.”

The threat of public backlash could also hold the console makers back from limiting the offline functionality of any hacked consoles. After citing public scrutiny that companies like Tesla, Keurig, and John Deere faced for limiting hardware via software updates, Methenitis said that he “would imagine Nintendo would suffer similar bad publicity if they push things too far.”

That said, legal capacities can sometimes tend to invite their own use. “If the ability is there, someone will want to ‘see how it goes.'” Hoeg said.

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AMD’s $299 Radeon RX 9060 XT brings 8GB or 16GB of RAM to fight the RTX 5060

AMD, gaming, Radeon, RNDA 4, Tech / Mike M. / May 21, 2025

AMD didn’t provide much by way of performance comparisons, but it’s promising that the cards have the same number of compute units as AMD’s last-generation RX 7600 series. AMD says that RDNA 4 compute units are much faster than those used for RDNA 3, particularly in games with ray-tracing effects enabled. This helped make the Radeon RX 9070 cards generally as fast or faster than the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT series, despite having around two-thirds as many compute units. Sticking with 32 CUs for the 9060 series isn’t exciting on paper, but we should still see a respectable generation-over-generation performance bump. The RX 7600 series, by contrast, provided a pretty modest performance improvement compared to 2022’s Radeon RX 6650 XT.

AMD says that the cards’ total board power—the amount of power the entire graphics card, including the GPU itself, RAM, and other components—starts at 150 W for the 8GB card and 160 W for the 16GB card, with a maximum TBP of 182 W. That’s a shade higher than but generally comparable to the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti, and (depending on where actual performance ends up) quite a bit more efficient than the RX 7600 series. This partly comes down to a more efficient 4nm TSMC manufacturing process, a substantial upgrade from the 6nm process used for the 7600 series.

It’s unusual for a GPU maker to define a TBP range—more commonly we’re just given a single default value. But this is in line with new settings we observed in our RX 9070 review; AMD officially supports a range of different user-selectable TBP numbers in its Catalyst driver package, and some GPU makers were shipping cards that used higher TBPs by default.

Higher power limits can increase performance, though usually the performance increase is disproportionately small compared to the increase in power draw. These power limits should also generally mean that most 9060 XTs can be powered with a single 8-pin power connector, rather than using multiple connectors or the 12-pin 12VHPWR/12V-2×6 connector.

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Labor dispute erupts over AI-voiced Darth Vader in Fortnite

AI, AI ethics, AI voices, Darth Vader, Disney, epic games, fortnite, gaming, James Earl Jones, machine learning, Policy, star wars, voice actors, voice synthesis / Shannon Garcia / May 20, 2025

For voice actors who previously portrayed Darth Vader in video games, the Fortnite feature starkly illustrates how AI voice synthesis could reshape their profession. While James Earl Jones created the iconic voice for films, at least 54 voice actors have performed as Vader in various media games over the years when Jones wasn’t available—work that could vanish if AI replicas become the industry standard.

The union strikes back

SAG-AFTRA’s labor complaint (which can be read online here) doesn’t focus on the AI feature’s technical problems or on permission from the Jones estate, which explicitly authorized the use of a synthesized version of his voice for the character in Fortnite. The late actor, who died in 2024, had signed over his Darth Vader voice rights before his death.

Instead, the union’s grievance centers on labor rights and collective bargaining. In the NLRB filing, SAG-AFTRA alleges that Llama Productions “failed and refused to bargain in good faith with the union by making unilateral changes to terms and conditions of employment, without providing notice to the union or the opportunity to bargain, by utilizing AI-generated voices to replace bargaining unit work on the Interactive Program Fortnite.”

The action comes amid SAG-AFTRA’s ongoing interactive media strike, which began in July 2024 after negotiations with video game producers stalled primarily over AI protections. The strike continues, with more than 100 games signing interim agreements, while others, including those from major publishers like Epic, remain in dispute.

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Anno 117 Pax Romana hands-on: Gorgeous, deep, and tricky to learn

Anno 117, Anno 117: Pax Romana, Blue Byte, Builder, city-builder, gaming, Rome, strategy, ubisoft, Ubisoft Mainz / Beth Washington / May 19, 2025

After a return to form in Anno 1800, 117 aims to seize an even bigger audience.

Anno 117: Pax Romana is, first and foremost, gorgeous to look at. Credit: Ubisoft

Ubisoft provided flights from Chicago to Rome and accommodation so that Ars could participate in the preview opportunity for Anno 117: Pax Romana. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

There aren’t any games quite like the Anno series, and based on some hands-on time at a recent press junket, I can say that the latest entry has the potential to be an appealing on-ramp for history buffs and strategy game fans who haven’t explored the franchise before—provided players approach it with a lot of patience.

The previous entry in the series, 2019’s Anno 1800, was seen as something of a return to form by longtime franchise fans, who weren’t as thrilled with the futuristic entries that preceded it. It reportedly reached 5 million players, which is quite a lot for a PC-focused strategy title, so 1800 was a popularization moment for the franchise, too.

Anno 117: Pax Romana, due later this year, aims to build on that momentum and turn the franchise into a crossover hit. While the Anno games have long been popular with a certain crowd (strategy gamers in Europe, and specifically Germany, where the games are developed), its addictive gameplay and top-tier presentation have the potential to appeal with even more people, provided publisher Ubisoft makes the right choices.

Throughout its decades of history, I’ve dabbled with the Anno series of strategy games, but it has always been on my “someday I think I’ll really get into this” list. Last month, I attended a press junket where a preview build of the game was available to play for about three hours—a chance to see if it successfully follows up on 1800. In my time with it, I found that the bones of the game are promising, and the presentation is outstanding. That said, the new-player onboarding experience will have to improve for the game to find new audiences.

How an Anno game works

Anno games are part city builders, part supply chain simulations. Like many builders, you lay down roads, build critical infrastructure like firefighting structures, and develop your population in size and wealth. But all of that dovetails with systems of developing and harvesting natural resources, converting them into produced goods, and turning those produced goods into both wealth and further development for your settlements.

You have to pay careful attention to where you place things. For example, warehouses are needed to store goods that you’re gathering or making, and those warehouses have to be strategically positioned to allow the right goods to flow from one structure to another.

Ultimately, you build settlements on multiple islands, connecting them with trade routes and naval units. Natural resources can be island-specific, so your islands end up with specializations. On top of all that, there’s a story, and there are other, AI-controlled leaders scattered around the map you have to either coordinate or skirmish with.

The Anno games have a unique identity, and there’s a lot to learn for new players, even if those players have played other city builders or economic sims (though, of course, prior background won’t hurt). That said, it all becomes relaxing and smooth as butter once you learn it. The game won’t satisfy players who are looking for conquest or tactical combat, though, as that’s not an emphasis.

What’s new in 117

You could argue that the main selling point of Anno 117: Pax Romana compared to its predecessors is its setting; it’s one of the most requested settings and time periods by fans of the franchise, and it’s a natural fit for the game’s mechanics.

I’ll admit I was swept up in the game’s aesthetic presentation while playing it. As the rosy subtitle “Pax Romana” implies, this is the Roman Empire at its most idealized. The wheat fields practically glow golden-yellow, the citizens work and mingle while wearing gorgeous and colorful clothes, and the music swells and soothes with ancient vibes.

Sure, the actual Roman Empire had something awful to offer to counterbalance every positive image we have, but Anno 117 prefers an escapist fantasy, much like many prior entries in the franchise. This is a game about enjoying the idealized aesthetics embedded in our collective cultural memories while building something you’re proud of, not tackling thorny historical or moral realities. It’s more SimCity than Frostpunk.

All told, the game’s artistic and technical presentation is top-notch. It pulls you into the setting, which is further thematically reinforced with the resources and products you gather and produce, as well as some of the new mechanics and the occasional story-based dialogue prompts. The aesthetic experience is easily one of the strongest parts.

There are a few other selling points, too. First, there are new mechanics, like a religion system, a more robust research tree, and the return of ground-based military forces to go along with the franchise’s standard light inclusion of naval conflict. I wasn’t able to engage with the army aspect in this demo, but I did get to touch on the religion system and the research tree.

Shortly into founding the settlement on your island, you can build a temple to one of the game’s deities. Each deity provides bonuses that help you specialize your focus. For mine, I chose Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture and fertility. That gave me significant bonuses for my farms. If I had chosen Poseidon instead, my ships would have moved faster, among other things.

You can pick a Roman deity as a patron for your settlement. Samuel Axon

Compared to strategy games that make religion a major factor in how the game is played, this system wasn’t particularly robust or deep in the demo I played, but as I alluded to above, it was a nice way to reinforce the aesthetic and the themes in the game. Plus, it gives you a way to customize what you’re building in a fun way.

The research tree sprawls out in multiple directions, winding around on different tangents. In my time with it, it seemed to be composed largely of numerical bonuses to things like yields or ship speed and wasn’t too focused on introducing totally new mechanics. It’s a nice inclusion in terms of just giving you more customization and choice, but it’s by no means a game changer, and it doesn’t represent a fundamentally new approach to the game.

It’s also worth noting that you can now build diagonal roads and place buildings diagonally on them, allowing you to free yourself from the rigid grid. That said, I found that grids still seemed optimal in most cases, so this is a perk for beauty builders (which is totally valid!), but it won’t generally sway folks focused on efficiency.

You can place roads and buildings (like this farm) diagonally now. (Don’t judge my building placement—I’m still learning!) Samuel Axon

There’s one other major feature I didn’t get to try out during my time with the game. The developers say that players will be able to choose to build either in a Rome/Mediterranean-themed network of islands or a British frontier-themed area from the start. I was only able to try the former during this demo.

It’s still a bit hard to get into

For the Anno games to become as mainstream as the developer hopes, they’ll have to become much easier to learn and get into. Anno 1800 made strides here with its story-based tutorial, though that tutorial was also criticized for some unnecessary busywork and being a bit too involved for existing fans.

Unfortunately, I felt during my time with Anno 117 that the onboarding experience was a step back from 1800. Right off the bat, the tutorial instructed me to do something but skipped a crucial step with no explanation, causing five minutes of confusion. As I progressed, story content guided me further along with objectives, but key systems were left unexplained. Since I played 1800 a bit before, I was able to figure it out, but I still had to ask for help from a nearby developer to progress on two occasions. Another journalist sitting next to me who had no prior experience with the franchise seemed totally lost.

On the bright side, the game benefits immensely from a beautifully thought-out user interface, which is ordered in a logical and intuitive manner. It’s particularly strong at giving the player a sense of the impact of the choices they’re about to make—for example, by indicating with overlays on nearby buildings how placing a building in one spot might be more advantageous than placing it in another. To some extent, this makes up for the relatively anemic tutorial, as many (but not all) of the game’s most important concepts are intuitively obvious from the user interface alone.

Data overlays on nearby buildings as the player places a new one — The UI does an excellent job of letting you know what the effects of your actions will be. Credit: Samuel Axon

That’s in stark contrast to another recent big-budget, mainstream strategy game release (Civilization VII), which offered robust onboarding tutorials but also had a user interface that at times failed completely to indicate to players what their choices meant.

Anno 117‘s mechanics themselves are intuitive once you’ve had the proper introduction, and I don’t think the game inherently needs to be difficult to learn. But the tutorial experience needs to improve to reduce that initial friction so new players don’t bounce off quickly. Anno 1800 may have been too heavy-handed here, but Anno 117 seems to overreact by going too far the other way.

The launch is months away, though, so there’s time to improve these things, and it wouldn’t take that much to do so. I’m hopeful, anyway.

Something for almost everybody

The Anno games scratch an itch that no other games do, and based on a few hours with a preview build, Anno 117 seems like a promising entry in that unique tradition.

Numbers-obsessed efficiency mavens can go quite deep with optimization to set up the best economic powerhouses possible, but the game’s systems are flexible enough to allow aesthetics-focused beauty builders to get creative and expressive instead—virtually any combination of those two approaches is viable, too.

The appeal is elevated by visuals that are definitely a cut above the usual for strategy, simulation, or builder games, and the Ancient Roman setting gives the game’s technical artists ample space to create an immersive experience.

Anno 117 doesn’t seem to reinvent the experience compared to 1800, but after the controversial attempts that preceded both of these titles, that may not be a bad thing. It’s fun once you get going—I found the minutes drifting away from me as I took in the sights and watched all the right numbers tick up at a satisfying pace because of my choices.

Ships approach a coastal town — The combination of creative city building, economic simulation, and naval-based combat and exploration with strong visual presentation makes the Anno series’ special sauce. Credit: Ubisoft

I’m not part of the existing core audience for this franchise, so it’s hard for me to predict how they’ll respond to it—there are a lot of finer details they’ll be sensitive to that I’m not yet. My guess, though, is that longtime fans will probably be happy with this one provided it gets most of those things right, with the usual strategy-game sequel caveat that post-launch content has made Anno 1800 much more robust than Anno 117 is likely to be at launch. There’s promise here for newcomers, but Ubisoft Mainz will have to keep working on that tutorial and onboarding experience to really break the dam the way they hope to. That’s really my primary concern about this title.

We’ll find out how that goes when the game launches on Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S sometime later this year. One way or the other, I intend to play more of it when it releases to see if this is the first Anno game that becomes an obsession instead of a passing interest.

Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica, where he is the editorial director for tech and gaming coverage. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.

Anno 117 Pax Romana hands-on: Gorgeous, deep, and tricky to learn Read More »

Epic goes to court to force Fortnite back on US iOS

Apple, court, epic, epic games, fortnite, gaming, iOS, legal / Beth Washington / May 19, 2025

Tell it to the judge

In an attempt to force Apple’s hand, Epic filed a motion on Friday arguing that Apple’s latest Fortnite denial is “blatant retaliation” for Epic’s court challenge and an attempt to “circumvent this Court’s Injunctions and this Court’s authority.”

Epic says the iOS version of Fortnite it recently submitted complies with all Apple policies and court rulings by offering a link to the external Epic Games Store for purchases. Through that link, players would be able to take advantage of a 20 percent discount on purchases compared to in-app purchases through iOS itself.

“Although Apple’s contracts may permit it to reject an app for lawful reasons, the Injunction provides that Apple may no longer reject an app—including Fortnite—because its developer chooses to include an external purchase link,” Epic wrote. “Likewise, if the Injunction is to have any teeth, Apple cannot reject an app on the ground that its developer has sought to enforce the Injunction’s prohibitions.”

Elsewhere in the filing, Epic says it is being “punished” by Apple after a nearly five-year legal battle and is being denied the ability to “take advantage of the pro-competitive rules it helped usher in.” Epic argues that Apple “cannot reject any developer (including Epic) because they went to court to enforce the Injunction” and “cannot refuse to deal with Epic as retaliation for Epic’s decision to avail itself of this Court’s Injunction.”

The matter will now be taken up by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has shown little love for Apple in recent weeks. In her April order, she took the company to task for its “clear and convincing violation” of her initial injunction and even made a criminal contempt referral for Apple executives who she said “outright lied under oath.”

“Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote at the time. “This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The Court will not tolerate further delays.”

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HBO’s The Last of Us S2E6 recap: Look who’s back!

culture, gaming / DJ Henderson / May 19, 2025

New episodes of season 2 of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars’ Kyle Orland (who’s played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t) will be talking about them here after they air. While these recaps don’t delve into every single plot point of the episode, there are obviously heavy spoilers contained within, so go watch the episode first if you want to go in fresh.

Kyle: Going from a sudden shot of beatific Pedro Pascal at the end of the last episode to a semi-related flashback with a young Joel Miller and his brother was certainly a choice. I almost respect how overtly they are just screwing with audience expectations here.

As for the opening flashback scene itself, I guess the message is “Hey, look at the generational trauma his family was dealing with—isn’t it great he overcame that to love Ellie?” But I’m not sure I can draw a straight line from “he got beat by his dad” to “he condemned the entire human race for his surrogate daughter.”

Andrew: I do not have the same problems you did with either the Joel pop-in at the end of the last episode or the flashback at the start of this episode—last week, the show was signaling “here comes Joel!” and this week the show is signaling “look, it’s Joel!” Maybe I’m just responding to Tony Dalton as Joel’s dad, who I know best as the charismatic lunatic Lalo Salamanca from Better Call Saul. I do agree that the throughline between these two events is shaky, though, and without the flashback to fill us in, the “I hope you can do a little better than me” sentiment feels like something way out of left field.

But I dunno, it’s Joel week. Joel’s back! This is the Duality of Joel: you can simultaneously think that he is horrible for failing a civilization-scale trolley problem when he killed a building full of Fireflies to save Ellie, and you can’t help but be utterly charmed by Pedro Pascal enthusiastically describing the many ways to use a Dremel. (He’s right! It’s a versatile tool!)

Truly, there’s pretty much nothing in this episode that we couldn’t have inferred or guessed at based on the information the show has already made available to us. And I say this as a non-game-player—I didn’t need to see exactly how their relationship became as strained as it was by the beginning of the season to have some idea of why it happened, nor did I need to see The Porch Scene to understand that their bond nevertheless endured. But this is also the dynamic that everybody came to the show for last season, so I can only make myself complain about it to a point.

Kyle: It’s true, Joel Week is a time worth celebrating. If I’m coming across as cranky about it at the outset, it’s probably because this whole episode is a realization of what we’re missing out on this season thanks to Joel’s death.

As you said, a lot of this episode was filling in gaps that could well have been inferred from events we did see. But I would have easily taken a full season (or a full second game) of Ellie growing up and Joel dealing with Ellie growing up. You could throw in some zombie attacks or an overarching Big Bad enemy or something if you want, but the development of Joel and Ellie’s relationship deserves more than just some condensed flashbacks.

“It works?!” Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery

Andrew: Yeah, it’s hard not to be upset about the original sin of The Last of Us Part 2 which is (assuming it’s like the show) that having some boring underbaked villain crawl out of the woodwork to kill the show’s main character is kind of a cheap shot. Sure, you shock the hell out of viewers like me who didn’t see it coming! But part of the reason I didn’t see it coming is because if you kill Joel, you need to do a whole bunch of your show without Joel and why on Earth would you decide to do that?

To be clear, I don’t mind this season so much, and I’ve found things to like about it, though Ellie does sometimes veer into being a protagonist so short-sighted and impulsive and occasionally just-plain-stupid that it’s hard to be in her corner. But yeah, flashing back to a time just two months after the end of season 1 really does make you wonder, “Why couldn’t the story just be this?”

Kyle: In the gaming space, I understand the desire to not have your sequel game be just “more of the same” from the last game. But I’ve always felt The Last of Us Part 2 veered too hard in the other direction and became something almost entirely unrecognizable from the original game I loved.

But let’s focus on what we do get in this episode, which is an able recreation of my favorite moment from the second game, Ellie enjoying the heck out of a ruined science museum. The childlike wonder she shows here is a great respite from a lot of action-heavy scenes in the game, and I think it serves the same purpose here. It’s also much more drawn out in the game—I could have luxuriated in just this part of the flashback for an entire episode!

Andrew: The only thing that kept me from being fully on board with that scene was that I think Ellie was acting quite a bit younger than 16, with her pantomimed launch noises and flipping of switches, But I could believe that a kid who had such a rough and abbreviated childhood would have some fun sitting in an Apollo module. For someone with no memories of the pre-outbreak society, it must seem like science fiction, and the show gives us some lovely visuals to go with it.

The things I like best here are the little moments in between scenes rather than the parts where the show insists on showing us events that it had already alluded to in other episodes. What sticks with me the most, as we jump between Ellie’s birthdays, is Joel’s insistence that “we could do this kind of thing more often” as they go to a museum or patrol the trails together. That it needs to be stated multiple times suggests that they are not, in fact, doing this kind of thing more often in between birthdays.

Joel is thoughtful and attentive in his way—a little better than his father—but it’s such a bittersweet little note, a surrogate dad’s clumsy effort to bridge a gap that he knows is there but doesn’t fully understand.

Why can’t it be like this forever? Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery

Kyle: Yeah, I’m OK with a little arrested development in a girl that has been forced to miss so many of the markers of a “normal” pre-apocalypse childhood.

But yeah, Joel is pretty clumsy about this. And as we see all of these attempts with his surrogate daughter, it’s easy to forget what happened to his real daughter way back at the beginning of the first season. The trauma of that event shapes Joel in a way that I feel the narrative sometimes forgets about for long stretches.

But then we get moments like Joel leading Gail’s newly infected husband to a death that the poor guy would very much like to delay by an hour for one final moment with his wife. When Joel says that you can always close your eyes and see the face of the one you love, he may have been thinking about Ellie. But I like to think he was thinking about his actual daughter.

Andrew: Yes to the extent that Joel’s actions are relatable (I won’t say “excusable,” but “relatable”) it’s because the undercurrent of his relationship with Ellie is that he can’t watch another daughter die in his arms. I watched the first episode again recently, and that whole scene remains a masterfully executed gut-punch.

But it’s a tough tightrope to walk, because if the story spends too much time focusing on it, you draw attention to how unhealthy it is for Joel to be forcing Ellie to play that role in his life. Don’t get me wrong, Ellie was looking for a father figure, too, and that’s why it works! It’s a “found family” dynamic that they were both looking for. But I can’t hear Joel’s soothing “baby girl” epithet without it rubbing me the wrong way a little.

My gut reaction was that it was right for Joel not to fully trust Gail’s husband, but then I realized I can never not suspect Joe Pantoliano of treachery because of his role as betrayer in the 26-year-old movie The Matrix. Brains are weird.

Kyle: I did like the way Ellie tells Joel off for lying to her (and to Gail) about the killing; it’s a real “growing up” moment for the character. And of course it transitions well into The Porch Scene, Ellie’s ultimate moment of confronting Joel on his ultimate betrayal.

While I’m not a fan of the head-fake “this scene isn’t going to happen” thing they did earlier this season. I think the TV show once again did justice to one of the most impactful parts of the game. But the game also managed to spread out these Joel-centric flashbacks a little more, so we’re not transitioning from “museum fun” to “porch confrontation” quite so quickly. Here, it feels like they’re trying hard to rush through all of their “bring back Pedro Pascal” requirements in a single episode.

When you’ve only got one hour left, how you spend it becomes pretty important. Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery

Andrew: Yeah, because you don’t need to pay a 3D model’s appearance fees if you want to use it in a bunch of scenes of your video game. Pedro Pascal has other stuff going on!

Kyle: That’s probably part of it. But without giving too much away, I think we’re seeing the limits of stretching the events of “Part 2” into what is essentially two seasons. While there have been some cuts, on the whole, it feels like there’s also been a lot of filler to “round out” these characters in ways that have been more harmful than helpful at points.

Andrew: Yeah, our episode ends by depositing us back in the main action, as Ellie returns to the abandoned theater where she and Dina have holed up. I’m curious to see what we’re in for in this last run of almost-certainly-Joel-less episodes, but I suspect it involves a bunch of non-Joel characters ping-ponging between the WLF forces and the local cultists. There will probably be some villain monologuing, probably some zombie hordes, probably another named character death or two. Pretty standard issue.

What I don’t expect is for anyone to lovingly and accurately describe the process of refurbishing a guitar. And that’s the other issue with putting this episode where it is—just as you’re getting used to a show without Joel, you’re reminded that he’s missing all over again.

HBO’s The Last of Us S2E6 recap: Look who’s back! Read More »

Sierra made the games of my childhood. Are they still fun to play?

Features, gaming, Sierra On-Line, space quest II / Shannon Garcia / May 17, 2025

Get ready for some nostalgia.

My Ars colleagues were kicking back at the Orbital HQ water cooler the other day, and—as gracefully aging gamers are wont to do—they began to reminisce about classic Sierra On-Line adventure games. I was a huge fan of these games in my youth, so I settled in for some hot buttered nostalgia.

Would we remember the limited-palette joys of early King’s Quest, Space Quest, or Quest for Glory titles? Would we branch out beyond games with “Quest” in their titles, seeking rarer fare like Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist? What about the gothic stylings of The Colonel’s Bequest or the voodoo-curious Gabriel Knight?

Nope. The talk was of acorns. [Bleeping] acorns, in fact.

The scene in question came from King’s Quest III, where our hero Gwydion must acquire some exceptionally desiccated acorns to advance the plot. It sounds simple enough. As one walkthrough puts it, “Go east one screen and north one screen to the acorn tree. Try picking up acorns until you get some dry ones. Try various spots underneath the tree.” Easy! And clear!

Except it wasn’t either one because the game rather notoriously won’t always give you the acorns, even when you enter the right command. This led many gamers to believe they were in the wrong spot, when in reality, they just had to keep entering the “get acorns” command while moving pixel by pixel around the tree until the game finally supplied them. One of our staffers admitted to having purchased the King’s Quest III hint book solely because of this “puzzle.” (The hint book, which is now online, says that players should “move around” the particular oak tree in question because “you can only find the right kind of acorns in one spot.”)

This wasn’t quite the “fun” I had remembered from these games, but as I cast my mind back, I dimly recalled similar situations. Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge had been my first Sierra title. After my brother and I spent weeks on the game only to die repeatedly in some pitch-dark tunnels, we implored my dad to call Sierra’s 1-900 pay hint line. He thought about it. I could see it pained him because he had never before (and never since!) called a 1-900 number. In this case, the call cost a piratical 75 cents for the first minute and 50 cents for each additional minute. After listening to us whine for several days straight, my dad decided that his sanity was worth the fee, and he called.

Like the acorn example above, we had known what to do—we had just not done it to the game’s rather exacting standards. The key was to use a glowing gem as a light source, which my brother and I had long understood. The problem was the text parser, which demanded that we “put gem in mouth” to use the gem’s light in the tunnels. There was no other place to put the gem, no other way to hold or attach it. (We tried them all.) No other attempt to use the light of this shining crystal, no matter how clear, well-intentioned, or succinctly expressed, would work. You put the gem in your mouth, or you died in the darkness.

Returning from my reveries to the conversation at hand, I caught Ars Senior Editor Lee Hutchinson’s cynical remark that these kinds of puzzles were “the only way to make 2–3 hours of ‘game’ last for months.” This seemed rather shocking, almost offensive. How could one say such a thing about the games that colored my memories of childhood?

So I decided to replay Space Quest II for the first time in 35 years in an attempt to defend my own past.

Big mistake.

Space Quest II screenshot. — We’re not on Endor anymore, Dorothy.

Play it again, Sam

In my memory, the Space Quest series was filled with sharply written humor, clever puzzles, and enchanting art. But when I fired up the original version of the game, I found that only one of these was true. The art, despite its blockiness and limited colors, remained charming.

As for the gameplay, the puzzles were not so much “clever” as “infuriating,” “obvious,” or (more often) “rather obscure.”

Finding the glowing gem discussed above requires you to swim into one small spot of a multi-screen river, with no indication in advance that anything of importance is in that exact location. Trying to “call” a hunter who has captured you does nothing… until you do it a second time. And the less said about trying to throw a puzzle at a Labian Terror Beast, typing out various word permutations while death bears down upon you, the better.

The whole game was also filled with far more no-warning insta-deaths than I had remembered. On the opening screen, for instance, after your janitorial space-broom floats off into the cosmic ether, you can walk your character right off the edge of the orbital space station he is cleaning. The game doesn’t stop you; indeed, it kills you and then mocks you for “an obvious lack of common sense.” It then calls you a “wing nut” with an “inability to sustain life.” Game over.

The game’s third screen, which features nothing more to do than simply walking around, will also kill you in at least two different ways. Walk into the room still wearing your spacesuit and your boss will come over and chew you out. Game over.

If you manage to avoid that fate by changing into your indoor uniform first, it’s comically easy to tap the wrong arrow key and fall off the room’s completely guardrail-free elevator platform. Game over.

Get used to it because the game will kill you in so, so many ways: touching any single pixel of a root monster whose branches form a difficult maze; walking into a giant mushroom; stepping over an invisible pit in the ground; getting shot by a guard who zips in on a hovercraft; drowning in an underwater tunnel; getting swiped at by some kind of giant ape; not putting the glowing gem in your mouth; falling into acid; and many more.

I used the word “insta-death” above, but the game is not even content with this. At one key point late in the game, a giant Aliens-style alien stalks the hallways, and if she finds you, she “kisses” you. But then she leaves! You are safe after all! Of course, if you have seen the films, you will recognize that you are not safe, but the game lets you go on for a bit before the alien’s baby inevitably bursts from your chest, killing you. Game over.

This is why the official hint book suggests that you “save your game a lot, especially when it seems that you’re entering a dangerous area. That way, if you die, you don’t have to retrace your steps much.” Presumably, this was once considered entertaining.

When it comes to the humor, most of it is broad. (When you are told to “say the word,” you have to say “the word.”) Sometimes it is condescending. (“You quickly glance around the room to see if anyone saw you blow it.”) Or it might just be potty jokes. (Plungers, jock straps, toilet paper, alien bathrooms, and fouling one’s trousers all make appearances.)

My total gameplay time: a few hours.

“By Grabthar’s hammer!” I thought. “Lee was right!”

When I admitted this to him, Lee told me that he had actually spent time learning to speedrun the Space Quest games during the pandemic. “According to my notes, a clean run of SQ2 in ‘fast’ mode—assuming good typing skills—takes about 20 minutes straight-up,” he said. Yikes.

And yet

The past was a different time. Computer memory was small, graphics capabilities were low, and computer games had emerged from the “let them live just long enough to encourage spending another quarter” arcade model. Mouse adoption took a while; text parsers made sense even though they created plenty of frustration. So yes—some of these games were a few hours of gameplay stretched out with insta-death, obscure puzzles, and the sheer amount of time it took just to walk across the game’s various screens. (Seriously, “walking around” took a ridiculous amount of the game’s playtime, especially when a puzzle made you backtrack three screens, type some command, and then return.)

Judged by current standards, the Sierra games are no longer what I would play for fun.

All the same, I loved them. They introduced me to the joy of exploring virtual worlds and to the power of evocative artwork. I went into space, into fairy tales, and into the past, and I did so while finding the games’ humor humorous and their plotlines compelling. (“An army of life insurance salesmen?” I thought at the time. “Hilarious and brilliant!”)

If the games can feel a bit arbitrary or vexing today, my child-self’s love of repetition was able to treat them as engaging challenges rather than “unfair” design.

Replaying Space Quest II, encountering the half-remembered jokes and visual designs, brought back these memories. The novelist Thomas Wolfe knew that you can’t go home again, and it was probably inevitable that the game would feel dated to me now. But playing it again did take me back to that time before the Internet, when not even hint lines, insta-death, and EGA graphics could dampen the wonder of the new worlds computers were capable of showing us.

Space Quest II, along with several other Sierra titles, is freely and legally available online at sarien.net—though I found many, many glitches in the implementation. Windows users can buy the entire Space Quest collection through Steam or Good Old Games. There’s even a fan remake that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Sierra made the games of my childhood. Are they still fun to play? Read More »