Two Point Studios have established a legacy of goofy simulators with their previous games, Two Point Hospital (the spiritual successor to 1997’s Theme Hospital) and Two Point Campus, asking players to succeed in institutional entrepreneurship through their set of distinctly silly business-building systems.

Now, the studio is solidifying its position with a third installment, Two Point Museum, which tasks you with fixing up a, you guessed it, failing museum after its previous owner suspiciously dipped out. Capitalizing on the series’ goofy sense of humor and forgiving gameplay, Two Point Museum isn’t hell-bent on reinventing the studio's tried and tested formula. Still, despite this overly familiar setup, Two Point has delivered a beginner-friendly management sim PC game that I found surprisingly hard to put down.

In Two Point Museum, your time is spent balancing your income through ticket sales and donations, as well as compelling guests with rare exhibits and intriguing interactive equipment like dino playgrounds and sound booths. The people are fickle, though, and it’s not enough just to have a caveman trapped in ice or a stegosaurus tail slide. You’ll also need to dress up that caveman with thematic decor, as well as send your hardworking explorers out to find more icemen in the wild, too.

To do this, you’ll participate in a mixture of active and idle gameplay, setting up Expeditions — which play like a passive resource-collecting minigame — and maintaining your customer’s happiness by building up local amenities and cleaning the museum clean.

Your staff are the hardworking backbone of your success, with essential work split between Experts, Janitors, Assistants, and Security Guards. If you can manage and train them well, the outer wilds of the game’s map become your playground, with your team able to steal enough artifacts to make your museum the greatest tourist destination in the world. The Natural History Museum might have whale bones, but it doesn't have a plant that births a clown every few minutes, does it?

You are not serious people

Early in the campaign, your primary consideration is whether to send your staff on expeditions or leave them back to work, though admittedly, this isn’t a particularly challenging choice. Both exploits earn them experience to level up and learn new skills that make them more efficient, and you can comfortably stretch to afford multiples of each staffing type from the early game. This is until you start to explore further afield, and the expeditions become more dangerous.

At first, the trips you’re making look straightforward, and you can choose your staff based on who will be missing from work rather than who is the least likely to die. That doesn’t last long, though, as certain areas on the map will eventually prop up complex Event Cards that dictate riskier barriers to success. Here, the goal becomes matching your worker and their skill to the event to nullify the issue or pay the price.

On one occasion, my under-prepared archaeology expert got IBS on a job and couldn’t work, so I had to ship him off to the hospital for a hefty cost. A few trips later, my favorite janitor went MIA, and I had to train another staff member to replace him, leaving me unable to run the missions until everyone was up to speed.

Unpredictable events also attempt to sully your best efforts and pop up mid-mission, asking you to make decisions about the expedition, with the wrong decision resulting in illness or worse. Where previously I had been haphazardly shipping off anyone to earn precious loot, I quickly began playing favorite, taking the time to neutralize threats. This consideration added a much-needed layer of strategy that did well to keep me focused and drew my attention towards staff management as an essential metric rather than an afterthought.

Outside of Expeditions, special events occur randomly, drawing your attention back to the Museum. For example, health inspections and unique visitors require the space to be in top shape when they arrive, with cleanliness and exhibit quality adding to the overall experience. While these metrics aren’t hard to hit, having a few more considerations to juggle on my way to total success was nice.

Two Point Studios’ wacky British humor is visible in almost every aspect of Two Point Museum. Throughout the campaign, I was delighted whenever a text window would pop up or a tannoy would play overhead, giving me another chance to giggle at the goofy writing. This style applies to the non-verbal aspects of the game, with the NPCs acting out and interacting with my historical pieces in unlikely ways.

As my exhibitor numbers skyrocketed, the space became more like a Where’s Wally book of cartoonish weirdos, and all it took was me to zoom in randomly and watch someone pop out of a carnivorous plant or lick an ancient amber pod. These irreverent moments of stupidity not only made me giggle but did well to break up the repetitive nature of Two Point Museums' more tedious management activities.

Life finds a way

Designing rooms and exhibits is where Two Point Museum really shines, and I thoroughly enjoyed placing tropical shrubbery and plotting dinosaur feet decals as if guiding guests through a Universal theme park ride. Visitors are most attracted to exhibits with ‘Buzz’, a metric related to how new the piece is and how well it’s dressed. Certain exhibits require specific decor to earn Buzz boosts, offering light touch guidance to your interior design exploits.

Your exhibits must also have educational prowess, with some patrons preferring edutainment over pure pizazz. Much like the rest of Two Point Museum’s forgiving gameplay, balancing these metrics isn’t overly complicated. Thankfully, the UI sorts the specific set dressing by room, so you don’t need to trawl through random menus to find your missing piece.

If dinosaurs aren’t your thing, Two Point Museum also offers alternative Museum genres, each with its own unique goal. The ghost-infested Wailon Lodge encourages you to explore a rift between worlds and house found poltergeists in unique homes that match their time period. Alternatively, Passwater Cove asks you to dive for all manner of fish and build lavish coastal aquariums to house them in. The alternate areas aren’t just extensions of the base and offer unique decor and mechanics that flesh out Two Point Museum’s foundational gameplay nicely.

Unfortunately, as much as I adored going big on design, a densely packed space was more profitable for success in nearly every scenario. While I did find time to flex my creative muscles through frosty flooring and flora-forward props, the urge to min-max my staff routes often fell higher on my to-do list than style alone. The call towards efficiency isn’t helped by the game’s ‘Kudosh’ currency, which allows you to unlock additional cosmetics by hitting specific achievements. When my bags of income arrived without much extra work, Kudosh enabled a more instrumental style play, occasionally creating a strange bottleneck for my design goals.

Thankfully, Two Point Museum’s Sandbox mode is the salve to many of these issues. Split into three sections (Creative, Career, and Hardcore), this mode opens doors to those who want to build bespoke structures, like myself, or those, ahem, masochists who are looking for a much more complex and punishing management experience.

Despite the pressure to deliver financial success and the plethora of passive systems to consider, my time with Two Point Museum was surprisingly worry-free. As I consistently dipped into the financial red and sent my overpaid workers on expeditions, I never found myself on the verge of bankruptcy or failure - a far cry from the heightened emotional investment of Frostpunk 2. Still, I felt compelled to return to my museum even without impending doom on my coattails coaxing me on, which speaks to the game’s idiosyncratic charm and accessability.

Should you play Two Point Museum?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

In Two Point Museum, you can access the settings submenu from the Pause menu at any time in the game. From the main Game subhead, you can toggle on and off camera shake, flash effects, and character limit. You can also choose your Game Autosave frequency (Ingame - Every Month, Every Three Months, Every Six Months) and your Career Auto Save Frequency (Every Change, Most Changes). From here, you can also toggle on Subtitles and a Player Idle Message, as well as toggle UI Scale (Small, Medium) and Status Icon Filter (All Icons, Reduced Icons, Minimal Icons, Vital Icons).

Where sound is concerned, you can tweak individual streams, such as Tannoy, SFX, and UI, using a slider from the Audio submenu Settings menu. In the Controls Menu, you have the option to toggle on/off Inverted Vertical and Horizontal Camera Rotation, as well as Camera Edge Scrolling, Controller Input, and vibration. From here, you can also use a slider to dictate camera sensitivities for panning, pitch, zoom, and rotation. You can also rebind keys to suit your set-up.

How I reviewed Two Point Museum

We played Two Point Museum’s campaign and sandbox mode on the base model Steam Deck and gaming PC for around 20 hours. I used an AOC 27-inch QHD VA 144Hz gaming monitor for my PC, a Logitech MX Master 3S mouse, and a Logitech G915 TKL keyboard. I used my external Creative Pebble V2 computer speakers and Audio Technica ATH-MX50X headphones plugged into a Scarlett 2i2 interface for sound. My GPU is an RTX 3080, and my CPU is an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X.

Monster Hunter Wilds has some rather big shoes to fill. For one, it’s the sequel to the record-breaking blockbuster that was Monster Hunter World, a game that saw the long-running, and oftentimes niche franchise reach a whole new group of altogether more mainstream gamers. It also follows Monster Hunter Rise, which, while not as big as World, was extremely successful as an originally exclusive Nintendo Switch game, and introduced a host of new traversal systems.

In many ways, Wilds has had to walk a tightrope between the approaches showcased in previous games, providing something for the new fans, while appealing to those that have stuck around over the past 20 years. By streamlining the formula that shined bright in Monster Hunter World, and by finally offering a seamless open world, Monster Hunter Wilds manages to hit all of the right notes, while avoiding some of the more frustrating elements that have plagued the series since its inception.

Let's skip to the good part

Loading up a brand new Monster Hunter game is usually a mixed experience. To truly access the really good stuff, that being the High Rank endgame content, you need to first beat the campaign. In the past couple of games, this has been easy enough, though the shoehorned systems present in Monster Hunter Rise (Rampage Mode), and Monster Hunter World (colossal Elder monster battles) really dragged things out, extending the runtime of stories that were fun, but forgettable.

Monster Hunter Wilds is an entirely different beast with regards to its campaign, which is streamlined, slight, and punchy. For one, there’s no ‘gimmick’ to speak of, with the headline feature being the seamless open world with dynamic seasons and wildlife. There are no on-rails giant monster battles, no filler quests spent in quasi-tower-defense modes, just epic monster hunts, one after the other. One annoying side character aside, this is the best Monster Hunter campaign ever, punctuated by a final boss fight that’s already among my all-time favorites in all of gaming.

The Monster Hunter Wilds campaign is a globe-trotting adventure that encourages you to spend as little time in your base camp as possible. There’s still fun to be found in crafting new gear, building new loadouts, and specializing your Item Pouch, but largely, you’ll be encouraged to be out and about as much as possible.

One casualty of expanding the open world to include multiple hub villages is that the main hub, which you’ll have seen if you played the beta, doesn’t really measure up to the more dedicated locales like Astera, found in previous games. Much more focus has been applied to Pop-Up Camps, with Monster Hunter Wilds once again encouraging the player to set out and claim small pieces of the world outside, rather than get too settled at the ramshackle Base Camp in the Windward Plains. It’s a strange choice, though one that does tie into the game’s overall mantra. Cooking a meal in your camp just isn’t as fun as watching a team of Palico chefs preparing dishes for you back at Kamura Village or Astera, however.

Someone call Attenborough

The vast open world of Monster Hunter Wilds is the main draw that sets the game aside from its predecessors. For the first time in the series, the map is an interconnected, seamless, and dynamic one. From camp, to hunt, to Field Investigations, there are no menus or loading screens getting in your way as you adventure. Of the handful of different regions that make up the world around you, each is visually distinct from one another, fostering its own specific collection of flora, fauna, and resources. Not only that but there are seasons to reckon with here as well. Fallow will strip away some of the biodiversity of a region, turning areas like the Windward Plains into dusty deserts, populated by only the hardiest of creatures.

Inclemency then rolls in, bringing sandstorms, riling up certain insects to boost passive effects that can be used on a hunt, and in some cases, completely changing the landscape. After the storm clouds fade, the season of Plenty comes about, and let me tell you, the change in conditions are seriously impressive. Gone are the barren dry lands of the Fallow, and the cloudy skies of Inclemency, as you look out over an Edenic environment teeming with creatures.

The campaign does a masterful job of leading you through this cycle for the first time, and the sheer dynamism of the world never really loses its charm. This doubling down on creating a living, breathing natural world follows the path laid in Monster Hunter World. This time though, the variety in the life that occupies each region is genuinely breathtaking.

Once I was given the freedom to explore at my leisure, I spent hours simply riding through each region, watching as small monsters and other endemic animals went about their routines. Pink-furred apes snooze peacefully in the sun, small birds can be seen riding on the backs of large reptiles, pecking and pruning as they go. Whether you’re there to witness it or not, there’s a natural cycle to the world of Wilds, and meticulous detail, from the huge raptors that soar in the sky, to the lines of tiny leaf-cutting ants that walk in formation across the branches of trees. You can practically hear David Attenborough narrating the whole thing.

Focus, Hunter

Monster Hunter games are rarely praised for their graphical fidelity, as they tend to put more resources into dynamic worlds and overlapping systems than boosting the resolution. Thankfully, Monster Hunter Wilds is very impressive to behold, though like a lot of other modern games this generation, does have some issues with looking washed out in certain environments. Some regions like the forest are impossibly dense, and I was regularly taken aback by just how many small monsters could be on screen at once. In fact, entire herds can be seen in some moments, running alongside large monsters as you give chase.

Performance-wise, the game runs smoothly on PlayStation 5 Pro, especially in the Prioritize Framerate mode. There is quite a hit to visual fidelity, but with how frenetic fights can get, you’re going to want those 60 frames per second (fps). What Monster Hunter Wilds may lack slightly in pure graphical prowess, it more than makes up for in the way its seasons change the world. Atmospheric fog effects, dust clouds that precede huge sandstorms, and puddles that follow the heavy rain all look spectacular, refreshing the palette with a complete change of scenery just before any one locale starts to overstay its welcome.

Should I play Monster Hunter Wilds?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

Monster Hunter Wilds offers some accessibility options, namely in button mapping and colorblindness assistance (Trichromatic, Protanope, Deuteranope, Tritanope), but its convoluted control schemes could be tricky for some. Though the series has definitely streamlined its approach to combos for certain weapons, you’re still going to be managing a bunch of quick menus, weapon gauges, and aiming reticles at once. A simplified control scheme would be a welcome addition, especially for more complicated weapons like the Insect Glaive, which require multiple buttons to be pressed and held at once to execute moves. There are some basic auditory settings, motion sickness reduction, and an arachnophobia mode as well.

How I reviewed Monster Hunter Wilds

I played Monster Hunter Wilds for 30 hours on the PlayStation 5 Pro. During that time I completed the campaign (in around 18 hours) and then cleared through the start of the post-game content. In general, I tried to tackle side quests as they appeared and set out into each new region to explore for a while after they unlocked. There were three graphics options available during the pre-release period: Prioritize Resolution, Balanced, and Prioritize Framerate. I played the vast majority of the game in the Prioritize Framerate mode, keeping it at a solid 60fps.

On PlayStation 5 Pro, I played the game using a 4K Samsung TV (Samsung 43-inch RU7400 Dynamic). I used a PS5 DualSense Edge controller, with the Razer Blackshark V2 gaming headset connected via the controller port. Having started with Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate on Nintendo Switch, I’ve poured hundreds of hours into Monster Hunter since. Monster Hunter Rise is where I spent the most time, and I absolutely consider it to be one of the best Switch games, but recently I’ve gone back to Monster Hunter World to prep for the release of Wilds. In addition to being a fan, I’ve produced hundreds of Monster Hunter guides over the years, covering everything from the best weapon builds, to where to track down rare resources.

First reviewed February 2025

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a game that I’m stunned even exists. In the AAA gaming space, it’s so rare to see a franchise just let loose with a genuinely absurd premise. Yet with action-adventure game Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio pulls it off with such unabashed confidence that you really just have to respect it.

And still upon reflection, it’s a premise that manages to make perfect sense for protagonist Goro Majima. For the most unhinged of the series’ legendary yakuza - a guy who’s previously had success running a cabaret club and a construction company - taking up the mantle of a pirate captain and sailing the high seas in search of lost treasure is something he’d probably do in a heartbeat. With or without the amnesia he’s struck with at the start of this game.

It’s a concept that elevates Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii from any old spinoff to a truly memorable adventure and one that absolutely stands out confidently against the backdrop of the long-running series. It’s still a Like a Dragon title through and through - with an abundance of minigames, side quests, and a massive open hub to explore - but the backdrop of piracy and treasure hunting makes Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii one of a kind.

Setting the stage

Six months on from the events of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, we find Majima washed up on the beach of a remote island off the coast of Hawaii. Near death and with little in the way of memories to his name, he’s mercifully saved by a child named Luke, who lives on the island with his dad and older sister.

Over the course of the first chapter, Majima repays Luke’s kindness by helping the island deal with a rather major pirate problem. And we’re talking pirates in the strictest sense: galleons outfitted with powerful cannons and menacing sails, staffed by salty treasure-hungry sea dogs. It turns out the whole thing is quite the racket in the waters surrounding Hawaii (in the Like a Dragon universe at least).

After a stint doing errands on the island, it’s not too long before Majima gets a pirate ship - the Goromaru - and a ragtag crew of his own. And so properly begins an adventure that successfully weds a Treasure Island-esque narrative with Like a Dragon’s political and faction-based intrigue. While it’s not as big on throwing you wild curveballs as the mainline series, it’s a tale that’s nonetheless entertaining and thrilling from start to finish, with an absolutely phenomenal finale to boot.

White whale, holy grail

Gameplay and exploration in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is split into two distinct segments, those being land and sea. When you’re ashore, it’s perhaps unsurprisingly like most other Like a Dragon titles; Majima gets to fully explore the city of Honolulu (returning from Infinite Wealth) and engage in all kinds of minigames, side stories, and combat.

As in prior entries, clueless goons are more than keen to make a beeline for Majima should they spot him out and about, which is where his two distinct combat styles come into play. I’ve covered them extensively in my previews beforehand, but what you need to know is that the Mad Dog and Sea Dog styles offer incredibly unique ways to engage your foes.

Mad Dog is closer to the Majima you expect. Wielding his iconic knife, he employs rapid attacks, a powerful gap closer, throws, and more. It’s ideal for whittling down a single target or a small squad of baddies. Sea Dog is the more interesting of the two, as Majima dons his pirate garb, wields two cutlasses, and has access to a flintlock pistol and a hook. It’s much better suited to the larger-scale fights you’ll have during story missions and deck battles.

Overall, Majima feels exceptionally powerful here, to the point where the Normal difficulty setting was honestly quite a breeze. Throw in some hilariously strong Heat Actions, Mad Dog’s Doppelganger mode, and Sea Dog’s Dark Instruments (both available via the chargeable Madness Gauge) and we have what is certainly among the most overpowered move sets in series history.

But by Davy Jones is Majima such a joy to play as. Whether it’s blasting away entire scores of lads with a charged flintlock shot or wreaking havoc with a giant ethereal chimpanzee (no, really), combat rarely feels like a drag. Enemies aren’t necessarily pushovers though, with some types wielding spears or shields to counter specific abilities.

However, as powerful as Majima feels, you’ll still need to play smart. That’s especially so when you chase after Honolulu’s bounty targets - a piece of side content that provides plenty of cash with which you can use to invest in upgrades for Majima and his ship.

Those spear guys can poke you out of the air, for example, while shielded foes will need to be robbed of their protection with the hook before significant damage can be dealt. And that’s before we’ve even gotten to kickboxers, gunners, tigers, bears, and enemies that drop a grenade on defeat. Believe it or not, they’re actually worse than the tigers and bears.

Waterworld

Majima’s as much a terror out at sea, if not more so. Captaining the Goromaru is the other half of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and it’s unlike anything we’ve seen from the series yet. Well, perhaps besides the vehicle combat of Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, but that’s obviously even more of a spinoff than this game is.

There’s a ton to do out on the high seas, with exploring the vast waters surrounding Hawaii and other notable locales forming a good chunk of the playthrough. You can engage in ship battles, explore uncharted islands for lost treasure, and even undertake a massive side story that has Majima and crew taking down the Devil Flags - a notorious pirate armada.

One thing to note is that content with the Goromaru is noticeably harder than anything else in the game. Enemy ships can pack a punch, especially those of higher ranks. So, you’ll need to do some groundwork in order to make your ship as powerful as possible. That’ll come in the form of scouting new crew members you can find dotted around Honolulu, as well as upgrading the ship’s durability and firepower.

Your shipmates will also level up when they’re staffed on the ship, and certain members can provide unique First Mate or Squad Leader buffs if they’ve been assigned to those positions. Such buffs include increasing damage you deal to an enemy ship’s stern, or increasing the number of times you can shoot out a smokescreen to obscure enemy vision while you resuscitate downed crewmates or put out hazards like fires or poison mist.

You’ll also be able to take your crew into the Madlantis Pirates’ Coliseum, a substantial bit of side content where you’ll engage in ship battles of escalating difficulty. Defeating the enemy ship will then transition you to a deck battle, where your entire crew faces off against the enemy’s on their own ship. It’s a genuine thrill to see so many characters clash against each other in combat like this, and while it can get quite messy and nonsensical, it’s still great chaotic fun.

Manning the Goromaru is a part of the game that I found to be the most engrossing. Ticking off content and participating in minigames to unlock new crew members always feels fulfilling, and definitely incentivizes you to try out activities like Dragon Kart, Crazy Delivery, and the usual smattering of side activities to unlock even more goodies.

There are a few stubborn barnacles to deal with out on the ocean, though. Engagements with enemy ships can get quite lengthy later on in the game, which does add to overall sea travel time. And while the Goromaru can boost and make use of air currents to sail swiftly, the simple act of traveling from A to B can still take a good chunk of time. Especially when you’re constantly running into other fleets.

The sea is also the only place in the game where you’ll experience notable performance drops (at least I did on the PS5 review version I tested), especially when inclement weather such as rain storms get involved. It’s nothing horrible or unplayable, but definitely worth noting if you’re playing on console.

Should I play Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

The accessibility options in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii are something of a treasure trove, too, with plenty on offer to accommodate gamers of all stripes.

Some highlights include options for automatic quick time events, stick control swapping, reducing the motion of waves out at sea, thorough subtitle options (including backgrounds and character names), and three distinct color vision assistance settings (deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia). Full button configuration is also supported.

How I reviewed Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

My full playthrough of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii took 25 hours to finish on PS5, playing on an LG CX OLED TV with the DualSense Wireless Controller.

While I finished the main story, the Goro Pirates side story, and tackled the majority of available side content, this was by no means a completionist run. If you’re going for 100% - that’s fully completing all side content including the exhaustive challenge list - expect to sink in anywhere between 30-40 hours.

First reviewed February 2025

Early on in narrative adventure game Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1, you find yourself in the maximalist milieu of its protagonist’s cluttered bedroom, circa 1995. After fiddling with the pin art board and pilfering through a collection of shiny VHS tapes, my eye was drawn to the off-brand Tamagotchi on Swann’s desk.

As I admired the familiar chunky design, marked delicately by little scratches, the screen came to life, and new options appeared on screen: Play, Feed, Eat. Like an archaeologist, I marveled at the unnecessary meticulousness of this moment — there was no need for Lost Records to include a fully-playable pocket pet, yet here I was, cleaning up its poop like any good teenager would.

This level of detail is redolent of developer Don't Nod's first two Life is Strange games, which solidified the studio’s reputation as new wave masterminds of segmented narrative. There have been many Don't Nod and even some Life is Strange games in the time since, but the key creatives behind that initial diptych have yet to deliver a successor, until now.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is a new IP that explores the uncanny, messy nature of humanity from a stylized and period-specific perspective. So far, it’s an adventure dripping in tactile nostalgia and pithy mystery that evolves the ethos of the games that came before it. Evoking Life is Strange’s episodic approach, Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is split into two parts, with the second tape coming in April 2025.

In Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1, four friends who vowed never to speak after an undisclosed incident are summoned back to their hometown when an ominous package arrives in the mail. You play as Swann, an anxious forty-something who must face the events of the troupe’s ‘lost summer’, rekindling their dormant relationships to understand why the parcel arrived after all this time and what could be inside.

To do this, you’ll rummage through gorgeously curated midwestern dioramas, jumping between 1995 and 2022 to pick apart set pieces and choose lines of dialogue, with the story molding around your version of events. The decisions you make in the past and present weave together as the story unfolds, ensuring each choice feels loaded regardless of what you’re doing. In Velvet Cove, appearances are deceiving, and the liberating break the friends have since put behind them obscures an otherworldly backbone waiting to be unearthed.

Swann’s teenage self is also equipped with a trusty camcorder that you’ll use to film the events of the summer as they unfold, a unique mechanic that helps to distinguish Lost Records from its peers. As you explore, you can pull out your trusty device on a whim to capture precious moments and create idiosyncratic memoirs. You’ll often be prompted to film certain scenes, too, with that footage showing up during cutscenes, cleverly immersing you in the 90s fantasy.

Be kind, rewind

The basis of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1 is rewarding exploration. If you search hard enough in your reckless friend's garage, you might find the crude placement of perfume samples meant to hide the scent of weed. Or, if you wander deeper through an abandoned park, you might stumble upon some choice graffiti that illuminates the small-town mentality and class dissonance present in Velvet Cove. Not every nook and cranny hid something shocking, and oftentimes, the small clues served to illuminate the complexity of the townsfolk, blurring the lines between what I thought it meant to be a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ character.

Looking for such hints is helped by the overarching mystery of Swann’s amnesia, which weaves the spirit of investigation into the main plot. As such, combing through each room or open space feels natural and less game-like, with my attention drawn to Swann’s actions instead. Whether I’d scoured a room or not, I never felt as though I was missing something, with Don't Nod consistently giving me enough information to push forward.

This sense of immersion is helped by the stellar voice acting delivered by the Lost Records cast. There’s distinct naivete and softness as the younger versions of their characters chat, which rubs against the awkwardness as they reconnect as their older selves. Lines are delivered with patience and intent, and I relished watching their tones shift as the summer played out, as they became a closer, more flirty group. This shift is also accompanied by an atmospheric soundtrack that blends its original score with a smattering of licensed cult tracks (including Cocteau Twins) to great effect.

Despite how magical and freeing Lost Records can feel, Don't Nod doesn’t shy away from the harsher elements of humanity either, and handles them with care. As a teen girl, Swann doesn’t fit the ‘skinny’ mold, an issue that comes up cruelly for them throughout Lost Records. While visceral performances summoned plenty of emotion from me, I found the quieter teenage disaffection of Swann and their group to be equally as moving. This is particularly true for the case of Swann’s friend Nora, whose brash aesthetic and attitude act as a mask for insecurities about their troubled home life.

Of the leading group, the firecracker Kat is perhaps the most intriguing, with much of the story centering around their homelife, their polar opposite sister Dylan, and her disaffected but strangely magnetic boyfriend Corey, who appears to bully and accost the girls. Kat’s struggles seem simple, as punk beliefs wrestle with traditional family values. It would be easy to settle on Kat’s situation as one-dimensional family trouble, but Lost Records subverts these expectations considerably and did well to reframe my experiences with its cast of murky heroes and villains.

What’s in the box?

Perhaps my favorite aspect of Lost Records, though, is the variety of choices you can make and how they ratchet up your emotions. Unlike the team’s previous work on Life is Strange, here, the story-shifting decisions don’t appear with an intimidating on-screen chyron.

It’s fair to assume that the repercussions of my actions won’t be fully revealed until Tape 2. However, there were still plenty of instances where I saw my actions immediately play out. For example, in the opening moments, Swann talks to their mum on the phone and reminisces about their old cat: from here on out in the past, from feeding them to cuddles, that is your pet’s name. No matter how big or small the selection felt, a fine-tuned balance of player influence alongside the main linear story made me feel necessary to the plot despite it being moored in a confident overarching narrative.

Lost Records isn't always hazy sunsets, though, with some scenes twisting towards horror. In one particular instance, Swann fell through a window into an abandoned house, the exit guarded by a mystical padlock. Wandering through the dark, with only my camcorder light to guide me, I felt pangs of genuine fear while puzzle-solving. Much of Lost Records revolves around dialogue, and these surprising deviations into thrilling puzzles and spooky tricks kept me on my toes as I moved through the story, which is persistently tinged with menacing magical realism.

A stand-out feature was the intricately modeled characters and carefully curated visual identity in both the past and present. Despite jumping twenty-seven years, Velvet Cove feels trapped in the past, with its water tower adorned with gaudy wooden antlers and the plaid-wearing regulars in the local bar. Rusty chain link fences, cracked cement, and abandoned spaces create a strong feeling that the town has been left behind, a sensation which contrasts against the liberated aesthetic of the girl group who are keen to leave it behind.

Across my playtime I encountered a smattering of technical bugs, such as chugging when scenes would load and, in one instance, a crash. These issues were minor in the grand scheme of the game, and I’m hopeful they will be resolved before the launch. Thankfully, a forgiving checkpoint system meant I never lost that much progress when I did run into problems.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1 might only be the first half of the story, yet even as I rolled credits, tears streaming down my cheeks, I felt satisfied and deeply curious about the chaos its cliffhanger ending had wrought. I’m keen to dig in and unlock the missing pieces of Swann and Co.'s past, one aberrated camcorder clip at a time.

Should I play Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

When you boot up Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1, you can choose the interface text size (small, medium, and large) and toggle on and off subtitles. From this screen, you can also select the size of the subtitles (small, medium, large.) Due to the heavy themes in Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, you’ll also have the choice to turn on trigger warnings.

These warnings include topics such as drugs, tobacco, and alcohol. On this screen, you can also tweak audio dynamic range, choosing between a narrow (little difference between loud and quiet moments, suitable for low-quality sound systems or noisy playspaces), Medium (moderate difference between loud and quiet moments, ideal for most speakers), and Wide (sizable difference between loud and quiet moments, ideal for high-quality sound systems or quiet playspaces)

From the pause menu, under controls, you can toggle on and off vibrations and how the camcorder behaves in the game. There are also options to reduce motion sickness, such as a toggling off head bob, camcorder motion controls, and shifting the camcorder feel between regular, light, very light, and none. You can additionally invert cameras and movements and remap the entire keyboard from this menu.

Where visual effects are concerned, You can toggle on and off motion blur, camera smoothing, and camera shake. From the interface menu, you can also toggle on and off a speaker cue that provides a visual cue for who is talking as well as toggle the persistent reticle in first and third person.

How I reviewed Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1

I completed Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 1’s story in around nine and a half hours on my PC. In that time, I searched through each environment and completed most mini montages Swann could film throughout, as well as tested photo mode.

I used an AOC 27-inch QHD VA 144Hz monitor, a Logitech MX Master 3S mouse, and a Logitech G915 TKL keyboard. For sound, I used my external Creative Pebble V2 speakers and Audio Technica ATH-MX50X headphones plugged into a Scarlett 2i2 interface. My GPU is an RTX 3080, and my CPU is an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X.

First reviewed February 2025