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Since the beginning, the central conflict in the Assassin’s Creed series has been freedom vs. control. For the most part, we’ve been placed on the side of freedom and fought to give others the right to choose how they want to live. Ironically, we haven’t had much choice in how we go about it, and have repeatedly followed a controlled narrative in each entry that forced us to kill certain characters, spare others, and react to the world in a specific way.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey changes that and delivers an unprecedented level of freedom in its combat and dialogue. The game even allows you to choose your romantic partner, personal allegiance, and which people deserve to die–including normal civilians and several of the assassination targets.

In the opening eight to ten hours of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, our travels through ancient Greece introduced us to a large supporting cast of characters, gave us our first taste of Odyssey’s naval combat, and allowed us to experience the effects of choosing certain dialogue responses over others. We got a pretty comprehensive idea of the differences in combat and how the introductory skills in Odyssey work too, as we played through the game’s opening hours with Alexios as a powerful melee fighter and bow wielder, and then again with Kassandra as a speedy and stealthy assassin who relied on small daggers.

As we played through Odyssey’s opening chapters, we noticed the game repeatedly go out of its way to give the player the ability to choose. Kassandra and Alexios may be its protagonists, but the next Assassin’s Creed is all about you living your own odyssey. For the most part, it works, but some of the new innovations suffer from solely focusing on the player’s needs and not those of the game’s characters.

New Skills Are Unlocked Quickly And Make Fights More Fluid

You level up and unlock new skills fairly quickly at the start of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, giving you plenty of opportunities to experiment with new abilities. At the start, the only abilities available to you will be different types of archery shots, melee attacks, and stealth skills. The higher end abilities that sheath your blade in fire or perform other seemingly magical attacks are locked until you progress a certain ways through the story.

Like Assassin’s Creed Origins, the use of these skills runs on an adrenaline meter. However, adrenaline fills a lot faster in Odyssey, so it’s easier to chain together many skills in a row to pull off devastating combos in combat or stealthily slice your way through an enemy compound in mere moments.

Kassandra and Alexios do not use shields, so the shield bashing skills from Origins are gone. However, plenty of Bayek’s other abilities make a return, including using a special vision to sense and tag enemies through walls or controlling the trajectory of an arrow after you’ve fired it into the air.

The new skills are way more fun, though. Spartan kick deals tons of damage and is a good way of putting some space between you and a powerful enemy. Ubisoft has even nicely stationed several foes alongside the edges of cliffs or towers in the early areas whose sole purpose seems to only be to stand there until they’re sadisticly kicked into oblivion. Compared to Bayek, Kassandra and Alexios have a lot more creative stealth skills as well, including a particularly effective one that allows you to throw out a knife into a person’s back and immediately appear behind them to finish them off before then throwing the knife into another target. It’s like Kassandra/Alexios are teleporting from one enemy to the next, but the game describes it as them being so fast and sneaky that enemies can’t keep track of them.

Instead of putting all your points into new skills, you can also spend them on upgrading your existing ones too. For example, the teleporting knife throwing skill only chains up to two targets at first, but you can use additional points to raise that number. And if you don’t like the skills you’ve unlocked or upgraded, Odyssey lets you respec your protagonist at any time.

Romancing Someone Can Be A Little Creepy

In our time with the demo, we only found one person we could flirt and start a relationship with. Her name is Odessa and she’s a direct descendent of the legendary Greek hero Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey. Odessa is attracted to both Kassandra and Alexios so you’ll be able to romance her regardless of which character you choose.

Romance in Odyssey plays out a lot like the romantic storylines in Mass Effect: Andromeda. One of the dialogue choices for when you meet someone you can romance will have a little heart next to it. Clicking that choice causes Kassandra/Alexios to flirt with that person. Do it enough times and the game transitions into a scene where both characters are intimate. It’s very straightforward and easy to do if you want to romance someone, and just as simple to avoid it if you don’t want to.

The problem with romancing Odessa, is that you have to be a huge creep to “woo” her. If you choose to romance Odessa, you have to continue flirting with her and pushing for her to have sex with you while she’s asking you to help her gather medicine for her dying father or pleading with you to save her life from some men who want her dead. And when you do help her and she finally agrees to have sex with you, you can ask if she wants to go again. She resists–saying she’s tired from the sex you both had literally seconds prior–but she appreciate your advances and you can then offer for her to serve on your crew so she can find the meaning in her life she’s been desperately seeking. She’s then available to help you in boarding parties during naval combat.

Forging the relationship feels very formulaic and unnatural. There are cute moments–especially at the start–but the overall experience leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It’s a moment where Odyssey’s message of this being a journey for the player gets in the way of the gameplay. The Odessa romance is purposely built for you to have the girl if you want her, and dispose of her if you don’t–you can literally leave her locked in a cage on an island. By the end, we didn’t feel like we’d formed a loving connection with a special person; rather we’d chosen to recruit someone who felt indebted to us. Hopefully there are other romantic storylines in Odyssey that feel a bit more like actually falling in love.

Shaping The Protagonist’s Words Can Create Amusing Consequences

Despite having the choice of choosing what Kassandra or Alexios can say to someone, the dialogue in the game has been structured to fit a specific archetype. Kassandra and Alexios are hot-headed, stubborn, and very opinionated so all of their dialogue choices reflect that. When an annoying woman is badgering the protagonists about finding her stolen wood, they can either ask her to be patient with a hint of annoyance in their voice or angrily yell at her and tell her to shut up while they go get her wood. Both answers are technically the same–in both instances Kassandra and Alexios are getting tired of being badgered about getting this woman’s wood they already agreed to find–but the player decides whether or not the protagonist should keep their emotions under control.

There are a few moments where you’ll be able to use dialogue to solve problems. For instance, you can help a praying woman by having the protagonists speak out and pretend to be the god Hermes. It’s hilarious how easily the woman believes in the ruse, but it convinces her to return home to her family. You can continue the charade by following her home and leaving the gold she was praying for on her doorstep.

During the demo, we also got to see how our dialogue choices can affect the game’s story. Not all of the choices in Odyssey lead to the result you think, and you’ll have to be careful. A positive action does not always yield a positive response. Early on in the game, we learned about some plague victims. After investigating the situation, it seemed like the civilians in quarantine were clean, so we allowed them to return to their lives. It wasn’t until much later–after we’d sailed away from the island–that we learned the plague had spread from those civilians and killed more people. Ubisoft informed us that had we allowed the guards to continue detaining the quarantined citizens against their will, the plague would have ended.

Another surprise was the lack of complete censorship in Odyssey’s dialogue. Although a few words–like “mercenary” and “hello”–are spoken in the native tongue, the protagonist and the other characters they meet all freely swear without being censored by the Animus. We’ve never heard an Assassin’s Creed protagonist drop so many f-bombs before. It’s a little jarring at first but we quickly got used to it, and it occasionally makes Kassandra/Alexios’ angry outbursts a little funnier.

Naval Travel Is Tedious

Naval travel is so slow in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. From a historical sense, it’s understandable that Odyssey’s protagonists wouldn’t have access to the same technology seen in Assassin’s Creed 3, 4: Black Flag, and Rogue, so their vessel would be slower than Ratohnhake:ton’s Aquila, Edward’s Jackdaw, and Shay’s Morrigan. That doesn’t change how annoying it is when it comes time to sail on a longer voyage, and it certainly doesn’t help that the ocean lacks the same vibrant life and activity that made exploring so enjoyable in Black Flag. After playing the mandatory naval missions, we steered clear of the optional ones.

Naval combat is still pretty fun, although you’ll often be ramming into and sinking ships in the beginning of the game instead of boarding them. If you do choose to only wound a vessel and leap aboard, an army will no longer follow after you. A few sailors might join you, but you’ll mostly be on your own. If you want a boarding party, you’ll have to recruit people for the job–in a similar style to Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain. You find someone you want to recruit, knock them out with a Spartan kick or melee takedown, and then abduct them. When they wake up, they can be assigned as an officer within your crew.

Officer recruitment is another unfortunate example where Odyssey’s mission to cater to the player has a negative effect on the gameplay. It would have been nice to have specific missions devoted to acquiring officers–similar to Assassin’s Creed 3’s assassin recruit missions–so each member of your crew had a bit more personality. But again, your crew’s story and their choices don’t matter, it’s yours that does. It’s also a little weird that everyone you kidnap is just okay with serving under you, even if just prior to being knocked out you killed every one of their fellow soldiers. Apparently, no one you abduct has a family who misses them either.

Like the weapons and gear you find, each potential officer has a rarity level and extra attributes. For example, a common enemy archer we recruited increased the number of arrows our ship could fire by a tiny percent and he brought a small contingent of soldiers with him when he joined us while boarding an enemy ship. Meanwhile, Odessa–who’s very skilled with both a bow and sword and considered a rare character–increases our ship’s arrow barrage damage by a significant amount, remains by our side while on enemy ships, attracts a sizable boarding party, and can kill most sailors in just one to two hits. At the start, you can only assign one officer, but if you choose to upgrade the size of your ship then you’ll be able to pick up to four.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey releases on October 5 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. The game comes with certain in-game bonuses depending on where you pre-order it from and what edition you buy, of which there are quite a few.

The Pokemon Company has shared another trailer for Nintendo Switch’s upcoming Pokemon RPGs, Let’s Go, Pikachu and Let’s Go, Eevee. This new video, which you can watch above, showcases some areas in the Kanto region we haven’t seen yet, along with a couple of brand-new moves your partner Pokemon will be able to learn during the adventure.

The trailer begins with a look at Secret Techniques, new field moves that your starter Pikachu or Eevee can use to open up blocked pathways around Kanto. These techniques replace the HM moves you previously needed to teach Pokemon in order to fully explore the region in the original Yellow version; the Chop Down technique clears certain types of trees from the overworld, while Sea Skim allows you to hop on a surfboard and travel across the water.

Pikachu and Eevee will also be able to learn a handful of new, exclusive attacks that they can unleash during battle. Pikachu can hop on a surfboard to deliver a new Water-type move called Splishy Splash, which also has a chance of paralyzing your opponent. Eevee, meanwhile, can learn exclusive Water, Electric, and Fire attacks called Bouncy Bubble, Buzzy Buzz, and Sizzly Slide. Each deals damage and has a secondary effect; Bouncy Bubble restores HP, while the latter two are guaranteed to paralyze and burn the opposing Pokemon, respectively.

The new trailer also provides a brief tour of Celadon City, one of the largest areas in the Kanto region. Celadon is home to Erika, the fourth Gym Leader you’ll encounter on your journey. She specializes in Grass-type Pokemon and battles using a Vileplume. Celadon also features a towering department store, as well as a Game Corner, which has been converted from a casino into an arcade. You can read more on the official Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee website.

The Let’s Go titles launch for Nintendo Switch on November 16. They’re releasing alongside the Poke Ball Plus, a Poke Ball-shaped controller that can be used to play the game and carry a Pokemon around with you. The pair require a Nintendo Switch Online subscription in order to battle and trade against other players online, but the games won’t support cloud saves, one of the other benefits of subscribing to the service.

If you don’t already own a Switch, Nintendo is also releasing adorable Pikachu and Eevee-themed Switch consoles on November 16. Each bundle retails for $400 and includes a digital copy of either title, the aforementioned Poke Ball Plus, Pikachu and Eevee-themed Joy-Cons, and a Switch dock adorned with Pikachu and Eevee designs.

The Halloween series is one of the longest running and most successful franchises in horror. Nevertheless, it’s been nearly a decade since the last movie–Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2–and even longer since a movie that was well received by fans and critics. While Zombie’s two remake/reboots attempted to do something different with the series, for many, it was 1998’s Halloween: H20 that was last great Halloween movie.

Next month sees the release of a new film titled Halloween. This is a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 original and ignores all the sequels, remakes, and reboots in-between. It’s directed by acclaimed indie filmmaker David Gordon Green and co-written by comedian/actor Danny McBride, with Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode from the first movie.

The film has already screened to critics at the Toronto International Film festival and the first reviews are in. So is this just another disappointing addition to the series, or have the filmmakers delivered something worthy of the title Halloween? Let’s take a look at the reviews…

GameSpot — no score

“Halloween doesn’t reinvent the wheel or create a new subgenre of horror. What it does is take the best parts of all the films in the franchise, and deliver the ultimate companion piece to Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece. It’s a film that not only has something to say about trauma and PTSD, but also delivers a bloody, fun time at the theater. Will Michael Myers return again? Who knows, but we sure as hell welcome him home.” — Rafael Motamayor [Full review]

Entertainment Weekly — B+

“A big, funny, scary, squishy, super-meta sequel that brings it all back to John Carpenter’s iconic 1978 original. The movie mostly works because it’s so fundamental, and funny too: Michael still never speaks; his mask and his slow, deadly, deliberate walk say everything they need to. At 59, Curtis seems to have fully arrived in her role as a midnight-madness queen, and she has a great time in jeans and a grey fright wig, swinging her shotgun around and screaming at everyone to get in the safe room.”–Leah Greenblatt [Full review]

Total Film — 3/5

“This humour, and the repeated allusions to the first film (including a couple of particularly satisfying reversals) suggest a film that’s intended to be whooped along to at midnight screenings, and the cracking final sequence ensures audiences will leave on a high. But given all that has been sacrificed to give this franchise a shot of redemption, the end result does feel flimsy and throwaway. The biggest disappointment in this belated sequel is how little new it does, feeling more like an homage than a narrative leap forward. There’s enough ambiguity in the ending to suggest further sequels could be on the way here, but on this evidence there’s not a lot left to be wrung from this well-worn franchise.”–Matt Maytum [Full review]

The Hollywood Reporter — no score

“Green has a good bit of fun with inside jokes and boundary-pushing kills (should we be laughing while that character we like is begging for her life?), and offers more than a couple of gleaming kitchen knives, before he starts pushing the action away from Haddonfield’s civilians and toward the woman who’s been planning for it. [This] kind of gig [was] hitherto reserved for J.J. Abrams and few others, it’s one Green fairly leaps into, delivering both fan service and honest-to-god moviemaking of the sort rarely seen in horror spinoffs.”– John DeFore [Full review]

Screencrush — 7/10

“Green serves up everything we love about the first Halloween, completely playing off our nostalgia for the slasher classic, and to me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He doesn’t try to mimic what Carpenter did with that movie–after all, no filmmaker can recreate the magic and brilliance of the first Halloween–but affectionately pays tribute to it with buckets of grisly violence, prickly tension, and snarky humor. Not all of it works–a lot of the scares are predictable, and there’s one very idiotic third act twist the film could do without–but the suspenseful finale leaves you on a high.”–E. Oliver Whitney [Full review]

Slant — 1 .5/4

“For all of the film’s attempts to get back to the sinisterly sidling Michael of the first Halloween, his stealth movements no longer terrify because his fixations are less unthinkingly instinctual, more compulsively mortal. It doesn’t help that Green has no evident flair for horror. The latest entry in the Halloween series was probably always a fool’s errand, yet its myriad failures are still shocking given the talent involved.”–Keith Uhlich [Full review]

Nerdist — 4/5

“Forty years after the original film’s release, Green, McBride, co-writer Jeff Fradley, and most importantly, star and big beating heart of the franchise Jamie Lee Curtis, made a film that’s a profoundly feminist re-examination of its psychology of trauma through its iconography. It’s also a rip-roaring slasher flick that’s hands down the best Halloween sequel ever. It’s everything in a Halloween film that inspires us to return, again and again, but the reversal, reimagining and reinterpretation of these elements is what truly thrills in this new iteration.”–Katie Walsh [Full review]

Indiewire — B-

“There’s no getting around some of the messy staging and clunky dialogue that keeps Halloween from reaching greater heights for the bulk of its running time. But Carpenter’s own Halloween was itself a bumpy ride, made on the cheap and carried along by the director’s firm grasp on his potent themes. The new one works overtime to keep them intact, while communing with the first instalment in every possible way–from that famously creepy synth score to the blocky orange credits that bookend the story. In an intriguing twist, Green has revisited this familiar turf less to exhume an old nightmare than to chart a path toward waking up from it.”–Eric Kohn [Full review]

The sports season has kicked off, which means this episode of New Releases has NBA 2K19 for the ballers and NHL 19 for the skaters. Anime and manga fans can check out Black Clover: Quartet Knights, and Nintendo Switch owners can get theirs hands on a fresh port of Bastion. Last but certainly not least, let’s not forget the epic third chapter in Lara Croft’s story, Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

NBA 2K19 — September 11

Available on: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch

If you’re looking to dominate the court, you’ll be happy to know this entry sports a new Takeover feature based on each player’s particular style. If you’re into the story mode, this year’s journey, called The Way Back, will actually take you over to China. Not bad for the series’ 20th anniversary.

Further Reading:

Bastion — September 13

Available on: Switch

The cult classic is getting a new home on Switch this week, letting you play the indie darling anywhere, anytime. This action-RPG sees you venturing out into the world as you rebuild the titular Bastion, but you can also use resources to buff your arsenal of weapons and learn new special attacks. Can’t forget the grumpy narrator either.

Further Reading:

Shadow of the Tomb Raider — September 14

Available on: PS4, Xbox One, PC

Forget the typical “dark middle chapter”–this third game is going to make Lara face some serious consequences for her actions as she races against Trinity to stop a Mayan apocalypse. As far as gameplay, you can look forward to improved swimming controls, stealthier combat, and a whole bunch of tombs to raid.

Further Reading:

Black Clover: Quartet Knights — September 14

Available on: PS4, PC

The Shonen Jump series is getting a 4-on-4 arena combat game, letting you sling spells as a melee, ranged, defensive, or healing character. Different modes have you competing for control points or hunting down treasure chests, and you can take on plenty of other wizards online.

NHL 19 — September 14

Available on: PS4, Xbox One

NHL 19 is making use of EA’s Real Player Motion Technology, setting this up to be the smoothest hockey game to date. For the first time ever, you can compete in pond hockey, even jumping into three-man free-for-all matches. There are plenty of options for customizing your own skater’s look and feel too.

Further Reading:

These are some of this week’s highlights, but September is full of even more games. Next week, New Releases will take a look at the indie title The Gardens Between, as well as Xenoblade Chronicles 2‘s first expansion, Torna: The Golden Country.

Nintendo has announced a new limited-edition version of its latest hardware. It’s the Nintendo Switch Pikachu & Eevee edition, and it decks out the entire Switch, from Joy-Cons to dock, in imagery from Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee. The new edition is coming November 16 and will retail for $400.

The bundle includes a yellow Joy-Con and a brown one, matching the colors of the title characters. The rear of the Switch’s screen is emblazoned with silhouettes of the characters as well as Poke Balls. Even the dock features color pictures of Pikachu and Eevee.

Also included is a pre-installed copy of the game and the Poke Ball Plus accessory. The game is inspired largely by Pokemon Yellow, but it borrows some aspects of the popular mobile game Pokemon Go. In fact, you can even transfer Pokemon from Go to the upcoming Switch game. Let’s Go also brings back Mega Evolutions. Curiously, it looks like Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee will not support cloud saves.

Poke Ball Plus is basically a non-standard Joy-Con for the Switch. It’s a spherical device with a wrist strap on one side and an analog stick on the other. It has motion sensors, so you can “throw” it to catch Pokemon. It also vibrates, lights up, and emits sound effects. You can even “store” Pokemon in it, which will result in in-game rewards for your creatures. In addition to working with the Switch, it can also replace the Pokemon Go Plus accessory for Pokemon Go.

The Nintendo Switch Pikachu & Eevee Edition will be released in limited quantities, so it may be tough to find in-stock. Keep an eye on our Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee pre-order guide to see when it goes up for pre-order.