Learn Everything You Need To Know About Digital Art And Animation With This Training

Creating art is one of the most rewarding activities out there. Whether it’s in pursuit of a career or just a hobby, art stimulates your creativity and fosters imaginative thinking. One of the most exciting mediums for creating art today is the world of digital art and animation. Many aspiring artists spend years honing their skills or thousands of dollars to learn techniques. While these age-old methods are still viable, e-learning has changed the way people can develop new skills.

The Digital Art & Animation Designer Learning Bundle offers students the opportunity to learn digital art and animation from leading industry professionals at a fraction of the price normally associated with art schools. Right now, the entire bundle is available for only $14.99. The combined value of all the courses in this bundle is $1,200 (a savings of 98%).

In this bundle, you’ll find six courses totaling 185 individual lessons across 16 hours of instruction. The bundle covers everything from animation in Adobe XD, 2D animation, cartoon generation, after effects, and much more.

Any course is only as good as its instructor, and these are taught by some of the animation industry’s leading professionals, including experts like Abdullah Yildiz, a motion designer with years of experience in graphic design, marketing, and working as a freelancer. You’ll also find guidance from Sean Thompson, author of several bestseller novels whose passion is helping people foster their own creativity.

Whether you’re looking for a new hobby or a potential career path, you can learn all the skills you need to get started with digital art and animation with these guides. This six-course bundle is now on sale for $14.99.

Prices subject to change.

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Grounded Will Get “Larger And Slightly Less Frequent Updates” With One Coming Late June

Honey, I Shrunk The Kids-style survivor game Grounded will no longer receive frequent updates, as developer Obsidian Entertainment confirmed that the studio wants to shift its energy to tackling larger content drops.

Obsidian clarified its reasoning for “doing larger and slightly less frequent updates moving forward” on Grounded’s official website. The studio said releasing monthly content while toiling on bigger tasks is difficult with a small team. As such, Obsidian is focusing on “larger features that take time.” This shift will give the studio the space to work on developing “more meaningful [updates] with more and better content,” Obsidian said.

The next update for Grounded is slated to drop on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S in late June. Obsidian said it’s “one of [the] largest yet” for the game and outlined some of the features coming when the update rolls out.

It will let players flip assets like staircases to create mirrored versions, spawn giant food items more often, and add an enhanced TAYZ.T defense variant called ARC.R. Further, the June update will include new features for the game’s Photo mode and introduces more building pieces.

More information about the update will come soon, according to Obsidian.

Grounded isn’t Obsidian’s only game it’s working on; The studio unveiled the first-person RPG Avowed during an Xbox event last year. While it’s unclear what will be showcased alongside Halo Infinite, Bethesda and Xbox are holding a joint E3 briefing on June 13. Obsidian is a subsidiary of Xbox Game Studios that developed the Bethesda-published Fallout: New Vegas.

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Daily Deals: PS5 Games Discounted at Amazon

This Saturday brings with it a lot of interesting deals. If your one of the lucky few to own a PS5, there’s some great games discounted at Amazon this weekend. If that’s not your jam, we have some excellent deals on Ray-Ban sunglasses, Beef Jerky and a few vacuums too.

Let’s not forget that it’s also Memorial Day Weekend, and we’ve done up a few extra articles to help you sift through the special events and promotions going on there. We’ve added a few of those deals here, but you can find out more by checking our Best Memorial Day Sales page!

Daily Deals for May 29

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Best Memorial Day Sales

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Extra Game Deals

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New Destruction Allstars Update Will Add Online Bots

Developer Lucid Games took to Reddit to outline some upcoming Destruction AllStars updates, with one specifically adding online bots to all of the PS5-exclusive vehicular combat game’s modes except for Blitz.

The studio said it recognizes Destruction AllStars‘ peak times and how unpopulated servers can become, hence the inclusion of online bots. Whenever real players can’t fill a match, online bots will step in as their replacement. This occurs on all game modes except for Blitz, with Lucid Games saying that the competitive mode “will never feature [online bots].”

Two other planned updates for Destruction AllStars include the introduction of Global Parties for players to more easily group-up with friends and a Playlist feature that lets players select the specific game mode they want.

Lucid said there aren’t any “definitive dates for when these [updates] go live” but assured fans more content drops are planned and coming soon.

Other features hitting Destruction AllStars are tweaks to ghost hits and slams, balance adjustments for characters and vehicles, and changes to all abilities. Similarly, there’s no date for when these updates will roll out.

Destruction AllStars launched as a free PlayStation Plus title for a limited time. It’s now priced at $20, features microtransactions, and has a $40 Deluxe Edition packed with in-game content like currency and skins.

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Super 8: 10 Years Later, J.J. Abrams Looks Back on His His Love Letter to Spielberg

Marking its 10th anniversary this June, Super 8 was released at a crossroads for writer/director J.J. Abrams. Heck, Lost hadn’t even been off the air for a year. Mega-producer Abrams was just a super-producer (these are industry terms) at the time, and was coming off his hugely successful Star Trek reboot at Paramount after having already proved himself with his feature directorial debut Mission: Impossible III.

So now it was time for Abrams to try his hand at telling a story of his own. The alien invasion tale Super 8, which is told through the eyes of a 14-year-old who’s just lost his mother, was Abrams’ first original directorial project, a clear love letter to the 1980s work of Steven Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment. That connection wasn’t just in the film’s reverence for movies like E.T. and The Goonies, but also made manifest through the involvement of Spielberg and Amblin, who co-produced the project with Abrams’ Bad Robot.

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While looking back on Super 8 during a press day for the movie’s 4K Blu-ray release, Abrams heralded the opportunity to work with Spielberg on a film that could stand next to some of the iconic director’s classic work. “It was a really special movie to make with a remarkably wonderful group of people, and with Steven of course — to collaborate with him on an Amblin movie,” Abrams told IGN. “I met Steven in 1989, when Amblin was just coming out of a series of just amazing movies, Amblin at their Amblinest. I feel like I missed that window to get to work with him in that way, and so doing this movie was a fun way of not just doing a period piece on film, but kind of going back in time with him to get to work on a movie that, hopefully, could live on a shelf with [those] other movies he produced under that banner. It was just an incredibly special time to work with these people, telling a story that was an original idea.”

Set in 1979, Super 8 centers on a group of kids who are shooting a zombie movie but get a lot more production value than they bargain for when they inadvertently film a military train derailment. That accident results in an alien escaping from containment and wreaking havoc on the kids’ small town. Super 8’s intended evocation of ’80s Amblin, and the period setting, meant that it was doubly important to make the kids’ personalities and relationships feel timeless.

“Casting the right kids is obviously the key thing, giving them enough time to become comfortable with each other, and filming when they don’t know you’re filming,” said Abrams. “You want the mood on set to be as consistent as possible so that it doesn’t feel like suddenly the way they are naturally is grinding to a halt and suddenly you’re shifting into fake mode. You want to feel like it’s kind of weirdly all just one thing. … I think the key is really creating an environment where the kids feel like they are able to be themselves when we’re rolling.”

The Super 8 4K Blu-ray.

That ideal occasionally came into conflict with Abrams’ choice to shoot Super 8 on film instead of digitally, but it did dovetail nicely with the characters’ own drive to get their zombie movie right.

“When you’re shooting digitally, you can keep rolling,” said Abrams. “On film, there’s only so much the camera can hold and you have to treat it a little bit more carefully. It’s almost a more religious experience because you can’t just let it roll for 10-20 minutes. There’s something about that moment [when you roll] where it’s like, ‘O.K., here we go, let’s start to shoot.’ And it was harder on this movie than it would have been [if we shot digitally], but especially with a movie called Super 8, I didn’t want to shoot that on anything but film.”

Abrams clearly has great fondness for his first original film, but that’s not to say he looks back on the experience purely through rose-colored glasses. In particular, he notes that 10 years of hindsight have made him wish he’d had more time to flesh out his screenplay.

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“Truth be told, I never quite got the script where I wanted it,” Abrams said. “We made a movie that I’m incredibly proud to be associated with, to have worked on it, and I think everyone did an amazing job. But when I think about [Super 8], all these ideas come to me. ‘That would have been interesting to have tried. It would have been great if we had done this or that.’”

The aforementioned train crash sequence is one of the centerpiece action beats of Super 8 and holds up remarkably well 10 years later. Abrams wanted the audience to perceive the chaos through the kids’ eyes.

“The train sequence was, obviously, hyperreal in its execution… which is to say that the train crash goes on for a very long time, the train just keeps crashing,” said Abrams. “The intention of that was to do it from the kids’ point of view, experience it the way they would have felt as it was going on. A lot of times when people are in a car accident, they’ll talk about it as if it was slow motion that went on for a long time, but the crash can be instantaneous.”

Abrams credits the success of the train crash scene to VFX legends ILM, who were able to blend the scene’s practical and digital elements in a way that gave things the right amount of weight.

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“The entire train was put in digitally,” he explained. “We did have the set redressed with crashed trains, but the thing that was incredible about it was working very closely with Kim Libreri, the ILM VFX supervisor. I had storyboarded [that scene] so I knew how every shot was gonna work, but for practical sake, having these kids in frame with actual explosions and pyrotechnic stuff was potentially very dangerous. The wind was crazy and there were many nights of filming it. I think [because of] the great work of the people in ILM, including Dennis Muren who came in to help out, it ended up looking really good and having a sense of heft and reality to it, even though it was done in a kind of broad way. But the intention was to create something that was larger than life and also something that felt very tangible and real. The thing that would have been the worst would be if it felt like it was CG.”

The blending of CG and practical elements, especially since Jurassic Park, has been a noted strength of Steven Spielberg’s, but that’s not the most important element to making a Spielbergian movie, Abrams says.

“To me the biggest and greatest thing about Steven is how he looks at the world,” said Abrams. “He’s a true optimist and he looks at things in an ultimately humane and hopeful way. That’s not to say he doesn’t love scary sh*t. It’s not that he doesn’t love dark, weird, twisted, painful stories. Clearly he’s made some of the best movies that have had those elements writ large. But I feel like the thing about [Spielberg’s movies], what I really love about movies, is that they can provide a sense of connection and humanity and hope, sometimes even in the darkest stories. It’s something that I think is a timeless quality, something that people are more hungry for than ever.”

Even a decade later, the fact that Abrams got to make a movie based on an original concept is still something he’s proud of. “It is such an anomaly to have a feature film based on an original idea, getting that made, getting the greenlight from the studio,” he said. “Not to say it doesn’t happen; it does. I’m hoping it’ll happen more and more, because I think people are responding to original ideas in a huge way on streaming and I think that that’s something that the theatrical side of things could benefit from. I feel incredibly grateful to Steven for coming onboard and to Paramount for allowing us to make it.”

Super 8 is available on 4K Blu-ray now.

Mass Effect Has A Big Disdain For Democracy

Nobody likes Udina. It’s pretty clear that, even when he’s working on your side, the human ambassador to Mass Effect’s Citadel council is kind of a piece of shit. At one point, Shepard chides him for caring more about the political gains of a mission to save a bunch of human colonists than the lives that mission actually protected. This career bureaucrat might work for humanity’s best interest at times, but he’s also a transactional, ambitious climber who at least has a secondary goal of advancing his own influence. He only gets worse as time goes on.

It’s not just Udina that nobody likes, though. Despite providing Shepard with the unlimited power and near-total lack of accountability of the Spectres, the Citadel Council–a seemingly semi-democratic body comprising the galaxy’s most influential races–are largely an impediment to you getting the job done. On your periodic calls with them to debrief on your mission, which they authorized, they occasionally show frustration at your choices as you unilaterally make decisions that could threaten the whole galaxy or annihilate entire species. If you go Renegade in these moments, you throw it back in their faces. Your Paragon choices are more deferential, but only in an “ask forgiveness” kind of way. And plenty of dialogue options, Paragon or Renegade, express frustration with the Council’s unwillingness to do whatever you ask of them because you had a dream of world-ending monsters.

In fact, no member of civil authority in Mass Effect really seems like they’re that respectable. Playing Mass Effect today, it’s been surprising just how much disdain the game seems to show for the idea of civilian government, institutions, and rules in general. The galaxy of Mass Effect is not an especially democratic place, and when it is, it’s the know-nothing paper pushers who make up the government that put lives in danger. The time it takes to get the Citadel Council to sign off on an action could cost lives. Bureaucrats and their rules prevent you from stopping criminals and terrorists. You’re the only one who understands the real threat, and everyone else just has their head in the sand if they’re unwilling to let you do whatever you want to deal with it.

It generally feels…weird. Mass Effect is a game that spends a lot of time thinking about and discussing the idea of a galactic community, one within which humanity is still finding its place. The Paragon path is largely about finding common ground with members of other species and working closely with them–provided, of course, that they agree with you (and, really, defer to you). You spend a lot of time going out and making friends, finding people who want to protect lives and fight injustice, and working together with them. But they have to listen to you, they don’t get a vote, and ultimately, every call is yours.

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To some degree, it has to be said, this is just video game stuff. You’re the hero in a story-based RPG, so what you say goes. You’re the commander of a ship, you’re fighting an unknowable force wielded by a murderous madman, and you’re out on the front lines with more information than literally any other person in the galaxy. Mass Effect is fun because it puts you to choices and makes you think about them, and for that to be interesting, you have to be in the driver’s seat. The game could, at least in theory, lose the immediacy and power that makes it work if you had to poll your crew about their thoughts on dealing with the rachni, or whether you should accept that hanar merchant’s pleas to help him smuggle some stuff through port security.

But more than just leaving decisions in your hands, Mass Effect also constantly positions you against any non-military person with any authority, who are almost criminally unwilling to submit to your obvious superior decision-making ability. You even get a moment at the end of the game where you can decide if it’s worth risking ships and soldiers to protect the lives of the Citadel Council–again, the seemingly only democratic authority you ever interact with–and you can choose to let them die. That decision is definitely informed by how you’ve felt the Council has treated you throughout the game, and again, their role is largely to ignore your pleas for aid or action and second-guess your decisions after the fact. The Council is only effective in that they’ve allowed you the unlimited power to police the galaxy your own way, and if you’re annoyed with them for floating the suggestion of accountability, which is all they ever do, you can let them die for it.

Really, the only authority figures Mass Effect shows much respect for are military ones. There are a lot of moments when you can talk to and laud Captain Anderson, your former commanding officer, who does you the constant service of agreeing with your ideas and methods. Your other big connection to the Alliance, the human space military, is Admiral Hackett, who occasionally asks for help and who defers to your judgment during the endgame’s big military engagement. Anderson and Hackett deserve your respect because they’re soldiers who know a thing or two about how the world actually works. They get their hands dirty. They’re not sitting behind a desk somewhere wondering about how the optics of your choices are going to play out.

On at least two occasions, Hackett asks you to go clean up Alliance messes that seem like they might paint humanity in a bad light in the international community. On one mission, you’re to go find a missing probe that was outfitted with a nuclear bomb. It’s a remnant of the First Contact War, before humanity was part of the galactic community, but the reason you have to deal with it quietly is because the Citadel Council would not look kindly on humanity leaving live nukes out in the galaxy to be found by…whoever. Your goal is to handle the situation before anyone finds out about it, effectively to protect the military from blowback. Another of Hackett’s missions has you disabling a rogue virtual intelligence that has gotten dangerously close to becoming a self-aware artificial intelligence. Hackett denies that the Alliance was trying to make an AI, which is illegal, but he’s still dispatching you to go handle the situation because you can do so off the books. Mass Effect 2 pretty much makes it clear that the rogue VI was actually an AI experiment gone wrong.

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Where Mass Effect has plenty of opportunities to chide bureaucrats for their life-costing decisions and overly cautious heel-dragging, there’s not a lot to say about the Alliance carrying out actions that are illegal under galactic law. You just dutifully head out and clean up the human military’s messes, because you’re a soldier and that’s what soldiers do. Sure, the rogue VI might have murdered everyone in Luna base and then attempts to do the same to you when you arrive, but that’s just the cost of protecting the galaxy.

Spend any time with fan favorite character Garrus and you get a huge dose of these anti-government, anti-democratic feelings. Before he joined up with you, Garrus was an officer in C-Sec, the Citadel’s police force. He’s a big-time law-and-order type, but annoyed that the “rules” and “red tape” are always holding him back from getting the bad guys. He talks about how it shouldn’t matter how he takes down a suspect as long as he does, in fact, take them down. He talks about roughing up suspects in interviews. And he tells a lengthy story about a doctor he investigated who was using his employees as incubators for organ harvesting, which ends with Garrus complaining the C-Sec brass wouldn’t let him shoot that guy’s ship down as he was fleeing. This was a ship filled with hostages (who Garrus says were “already dead” thanks to the doctor’s experiments) flying over a populated area, and Garrus thinks the fact he was stopped from blowing it up makes everyone else the asshole.

Garrus likes Shepard because they’re not confined by the rules, and it really sounds like that includes things like respecting the rights of the accused or limiting the possibility of collateral damage. Garrus respects following the law, even that of the ethics-less corporate research haven of Noveria, simply because it is the law. But he sure seems less interested in protecting innocent lives than he does bringing criminals to heel, and he has no respect for any rules that might limit or temper the enforcement of the law, at least as relates to people Garrus has decided are guilty of breaking it.

And even without all these other character moments, it’s impossible to overlook that Shepard is basically Jack Bauer (the terrorist fighter who occasionally employs torture in the TV show 24) in space. Go Renegade and you’re fully Jack Bauer in space, taking an any-means-necessary approach to meeting the goals you’ve decided matter more than anything else. Paragon softens the situation a little by making you more polite and apologetic, but it really doesn’t change the overall situation that much. The very idea of the Spectres is to create operatives who aren’t beholden to answer to anybody but the Citadel Council–they don’t have to follow any laws, and can complete missions however they think they must. The role literally exists to circumvent accountability. No civilian paper-pusher can get in the way of you completing the job–finally.

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Looking at Mass Effect now, it’s hard to divorce it from its real-world historical moment. It’s a game mired in the 2000s, fully embracing the War on Terror politics of the time. Shepard is a military officer endowed with the power to Do What Needs To Be Done. They scour the galaxy to locate a powerful but hidden baddie, who wields a brain-washing weapon of mass destruction that can turn regular people into fanatics, and take them down. Shepard needs to do this, because the consequences of inaction, or slowing down, or waiting to gather evidence are just too great, and anybody who suggests otherwise is a coward or a clown. Shepard knows who’s responsible and everyone else is just some idiot who cares more about their own power than Doing What’s Right. Stop me if any of this is starting to sound like things that were happening in the real world between roughly 2001 and 2008.

It makes it tough to reconcile some of what feels like the general idea of Mass Effect from a decade ago with the reality. It’s not nearly as much the hopeful, idealistic conception of the future, in which humanity finds its place among the stars and becomes better for it, as I previously believed. I still enjoy the game’s world and the characters that it brings together, and the way you learn about other cultures, spend time with people of different backgrounds and races, and explore the galaxy. But I wish Mass Effect was more serious about the underlying ideas it espouses of banding together, finding common ground, and appreciating one another’s differences.

Mass Effect’s treatment of everyone who’s not military or in agreement with you makes those ideas feel disingenuous, because as much as it seems to care about unity and diversity, it doesn’t express any trust in other people. And in the era of QAnon, the US capitol riot, and ongoing lies about the rigging of the 2020 US presidential election, Shepard’s side feels like the wrong side to be on.

Get The Most Out Of Your Music With These Noise-Canceling Headphones

For many of us, headphones have become one of our everyday carry essentials, and we need to check them off the list before leaving home. After all, what would we do without our favorite music playlists and weekly podcasts? Whether it’s for your commute, a hard workout, or just a walk around your neighborhood, a great set of headphones is a must-have. But it can be hard to find a great set of headphones you love. Some don’t deliver the audio quality you need, and some can set you back hundreds of dollars.

Thankfully, there are options that bridge the gap between incredible quality and an incredible deal. The ComfoBuds Pro True Wireless Headphones offer just that, providing stellar quality and retailing for only $105. That’s a great price for the quality, but even better is that they’re currently on sale for only $89.99 (a savings of 14%).

These headphones boast a ton of great features that rival wireless headphones costing hundreds of dollars more. They offer proprietary technology called QuietMax, the driving force of their active noise canceling. Three separate microphones listen to you, your music, and the world around you, amplifying what you want to hear and eliminating what you don’t.

The noise cancellation can be set to eliminate all ambient noise so you can enjoy your tunes with no distractions, or it can be set to minimize ambient sounds so you can still remain alert. That ambient noise reduction also makes for crystal-clear phone calls, diminishing even the effects of the wind. The ComfoBuds Pro’s features and outstanding value even earned it a spot as a 2021 CES Innovation Awards Honoree.

Get the most out of your music and take your on-the-go tunes to the next level with a high-quality and high-tech set of headphones like the ComfoBuds Pro True Wireless Headphones for $89.99

Prices subject to change.

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World of Demons Review – A Cut Above

Developer Platinum Games’ style is instantly recognizable–flashy, fast-paced action that oozes with personality and flair. World of Demons brings that signature style to Apple Arcade, giving you control of a samurai named Onimaru and thrusting you into, well, a world of demons. That successful Platinum formula translates well to iOS devices, with simple touch controls and quick action that looks and feels great on the smaller screen. There are some issues lying underneath–mostly in the camera system–but those problems aren’t enough to derail this otherwise solid action experience.

World of Demons follows Onimaru, a lone samurai fighting against an army of vicious demons called yokai. Our hero is building an army of his own, however, as every enemy he defeats will join him in the fight against the game’s main antagonist, the demon king Shuten Doji. Onimaru himself controls exactly like a Platinum Games protagonist, deftly running around stages while slashing with his massive katana. Consecutive presses on the attack button will result in stylish combos, with better rewards given for higher combos at the end of a skirmish. Holding down the button will slow attacks down, making strikes more powerful but making you vulnerable to enemy counterattacks.

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The yokai Onimaru battle comes in all shapes and sizes, from small bean farmers to massive pink blobs, each with its own attack abilities. Each yokai is assigned a color (red, blue, or green), with each color having strengths and weaknesses over the other in a rock-paper-scissors system. Defeating a yokai adds it to your collection, and before each chapter you’ll be able to equip two yokai for the following mission. Other yokai defeated during the chapter are added to a “deck” and disappear after one use.

Allowing you to have two yokai you can always depend on, while also adding more throughout a mission, creates a dynamic battle system that really shines. Paying attention to each enemy’s health bar and attacking with corresponding yokai adds a layer of complexity to each battle that feels natural and fun, making the yokai more than just glorified summons. You’ll never know which yokai you’ll encounter in a mission, but the rock-paper-scissors element mitigates any detriments caused by that instability.

Mixing Onimaru’s sword attacks in with the supporting yokai gives you plenty of options in combat, encouraging strategizing before every enemy. Boss fights in particular require this approach, as you need to gauge when you can switch from quick sword strikes to the more powerful blows while also using yokai to inflict more damage. It’s fast and it’s frantic, but most importantly, it’s a lot of fun, emulating that signature Platinum Games style impressively well.

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It’s not a perfect translation however, as I found one major annoyance during my run with the game: the camera. As World of Demons uses a touchscreen control scheme, character movement and camera movement are assigned to the screen itself. The left half of the screen controls character movement, while the right controls camera movement. The problem with this is the camera half of the screen is obstructed by the rest of the touch controls, giving you only half the amount of screen for camera movement that you have for moving Onimaru. This makes the camera awkward and confusing both in and out of battle. An auto-targeting system tries to counter this by zeroing in whichever enemy you’re attacking. This works to a point, but the camera is easily the most frustrating part of what is otherwise a solid game.

World of Demons looks wonderful, with every stage looking like it was taken straight from a ukiyo-e wood print (most reminiscent of a game like Okami). Each area jumps off the screen with color and beauty, and even darker stages feature personality, with blue waves crashing in the background or swelling dark clouds blocking your path in the distance.

You’ll have the opportunity to take in the sights, too, as the game encourages checking every nook and cranny for items and loot. Each map is divided into sections, with each section featuring a certain number of battles to fight and treasure to find. Once everything in a section is completed it will turn gold on your map with a red “Complete!” stamp, letting you know there’s nothing left to find.

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This map format does lead to one minor complaint, however; missions can sometimes feel repetitive, with the game’s only variety being found in the yokai that appear during battles. When you start a mission, you’ll see a purple cloud marking your first battle point. You’ll approach the cloud, and a dramatic two-second pause occurs before yokai appear. You’ll fight the yokai and a statistics screen pops up to give you a grade for the battle. Once that goes away you can continue to the next point, and rinse and repeat until the final battle of the chapter. There’s some exploration thrown in, but the bulk of each chapter follows this exact same structure, and after a few extended gameplay sessions, it starts to feel a little stale.

One feature that I truly appreciate is the ease in which World of Demons allows you to get back into the game in between play sessions. Say you’re trying to explore an area but your attention is pulled elsewhere, forcing you to close the game and quit playing. When you load back up you’ll be in the exact spot where you left off, and the map will even pop onto the screen to remind you what you’ve explored so far. Being able to trust this game to take me right back where I left off is a huge relief, and something I wish more mobile games would do with such precision.

World of Demons proves that Platinum Games’ trademark action can flourish on small phone screens. The yokai mechanics are smartly implemented, while boss battles are intense and rife with adrenaline. The camera issues can be annoying, but they’re not enough to ruin the thrilling experience onscreen. A Platinum Games title working well on iOS sounds like a long shot, but World of Demons is not only a fun mobile action game, but a solid title regardless of what platform it’s on.