• Instead of a set of bounties, a new Power Surge quest will be your jumping off point for Season of Opulence
• You will need to complete this quest to access the new Raid!
• Learning from Season of the Forge, this quest must be completed only once per account
• After one character completes the quest, alternate characters will be rewarded with Surge gear at Power Level 690

• We didn’t want rewards from The Drifter to be one of the primary sources of power following his run as the central character for Season of the Drifter
• As a result, Power boosts received from Gambit Bounties will decrease once you’ve achieved 700 Power
• They will decrease even further once you reached 720 Power

• On day one, prime attunements will be reset to two charges for each player
• You’ll receive two new prime attunements, even if you were playing right up to the reset
• We want you to be able to play your favorite character without it impacting your power leveling strategy. We talked about this in a previous TWAB

• The Crown of Sorrow raid begins on day one of Season of Opulence at 4 PM PDT
• Players who want to compete will need to complete the Power Surge Quest
• We’ve taken additional steps to level the playing field for World First status
• All player power will be capped at power under each encounter within the raid for the first 24 hours
• While Contest is active, players will face an enforced challenge throughout the Raid. This means, Power beyond certain levels will provide no advantage for a given fight (e.g., for the first fight all Power above 700 won’t provide an advantage, and for the final fight Power above 720 will not provide an advantage).
• We are going to deploy the update at 8AM Pacific and the game will be down until 10AM Pacific, so that as many players as possible can get through the download and verification step and be ready for Opulence launch.
• Our goals for this cap:
• Progression that challenges raiders to climb to compete for World First
• A World First race that tests your skill, communication, and strategy
• A World First raid that is fair

• Every new Eververse item in Season of Opulence will be available for direct purchase via Silver or Bright Dust
• Most of these offers will be time limited, with new items available weekly

• Season of Opulence’s Bright Engram will contain a collection of community favorite legacy items, with a focus on the “Best of Year One.”
• If you missed out on Spicy Ramen or the Selfie Emote, Season of Opulence is your chance

• Full armor sets will be made available as a single, per class bundle, as opposed to being offered only via Bright Engrams
• Individual Armor pieces can also be purchased for Bright Dust whenever they appear on the storefront
• These Armor pieces feature fixed perk rolls that are not randomized across duplicates

• Specific items are now featured on the front page and will be cycled with each weekly reset
• Most offers will be time-limited to make way for rotating inventory, with some coming back into rotation at a later date
•  Players can access this new interface by visiting Tess in her usual Tower location

• Individual items purchased for Silver will now go to the relevant character inventory location in a “wrapped” state
• Example: A sparrow purchased directly for Silver will arrive “wrapped” in the Sparrow inventory
• To use an item, it must be “opened” just like a bundle
• Once opened, the item functions and can be accessed normally
• If you wish to refund an item, you will have seven days from purchase to do so
• Items that have been opened cannot be refunded

• Players will not be able to access the Crown of Sorrow raid if they have not yet completed the Season of Opulence Power Surge quest, even after this raid unlocks at 4 PM PDT. This will apply to all members in a Fireteam. We’ll have more information on this experience as we get closer to June 4.
• Players who join in progress during the Crown of Sorrow raid’s first encounter will spawn in dead outside of the encounter space. To mitigate this issue, all Fireteam members must join up in Orbit prior to launching the Crown of Sorrow raid activity.

Look forward to reading more information as we get closer to the Season of Opulence launch.

Seasonal Weapon Drops

After Season of the Drifter concludes on June 4, the following weapons will be unavailable to unlock at their respective vendors for a limited time. An issue was discovered late in development, and we are working on a fix for a future patch.

Players who have already unlocked these Year 2 variants will continue to receive them as random drops from rank up packages. Players who do not unlock these weapons by the June 4 deadline will be able to acquire the weapons once they are addressed in a future update.

One of Nintendo’s most popular (and amusingly, least supported) franchises is the F-Zero series, which popularized the concept of high-intensity, low-gravity racing. In the void created due to Nintendo’s reluctance to release more games in the series, plenty of other ‘me-too’ titles have released, such as Wipeout and FAST, and many of these other releases have done an excellent job of capturing the spirit of F-Zero while introducing some interesting new ideas of their own. The latest in this long lineage of futuristic racers (and the first in a while to come to Switch) is Redout: Lightspeed Edition, a new release from 34BigThings that promises to live up to the legacy of its inspiration. Redout does a solid job of making good on that promise, but it doesn’t do so flawlessly, resulting in an arcade racing experience that’s quite enjoyable but still very rough around the edges.

Upon booting up, you’ll likely spend the majority of your time in Redout’s extensive career mode, which acts in some way as the ‘story’ for you to progress. There are no characters or plotlines here, rather a collection of missions and events spanning a surprisingly diverse and interesting set of courses that are gradually unlocked as you become a better racer. Excellent performance and high placements will reward you with medals and, more importantly, cash prizes that can then be spent on unlocking better vehicles or for upgrades to bring your weaker vehicles up to snuff. As far as this overall career structure is concerned, it’s nothing surprising or strictly new, but a game such as Redout doesn’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel (there’s a clever pun in there somewhere) to provide a compelling feedback loop. Getting caught up in learning course layouts, buying upgrades to give you a better shot at higher performance, and using the fruits of those better performances to advance onto harder tracks and new events proves to be an addictive and fun experience, even if the punishing AI and track design ensures that your victories won’t come easily.

Redout’s gameplay is roughly what you would come to expect of the genre, but the big defining factor here is the heavy usage of the right stick to adjust your vehicle’s pitch or to strafe. Pouring into turns at maximum speed is sure to send you bouncing off the walls like a futuristic pinball, but properly using the right stick to ‘lean’ into corners is sure to take the edge off and keep you closer to the ideal racing line. Similarly, these tracks are sure to twist every which way, and if you find yourself careening down a hill or just coming over the apex of one, you’ll need to make sure to adjust your vehicle by pulling up or down on the stick to maintain your speed as you hit the curve. It’s something that sounds like a minor feature, but the way in which Redout implements this positioning adjustment makes it a central element of racing and one that frankly will decide whether or not you can win races.

Though it starts off relatively easy, Redout doesn’t take very long at all to dramatically raise the stakes and overall difficulty, presenting you with AI opponents who will use every trick and exploit in the book to put as much distance as possible between you and them. Luckily, the AI doesn’t get too ‘rubber-bandy’ – we had very few instances where an otherwise undisputed lead was suddenly thrown off by a random power boost for the second place opponent – but this can also be something of a double-edged sword, as the AI opponents in the lead will not slow down to give you a fighting chance if you find yourself falling behind. This relatively high difficulty is ultimately part of the fun of Redout; it’s very much a ‘put up or shut up’ kind of experience that demands you put in the effort to master the unique feel of your chosen vehicle and learn how to best exploit each track’s layouts. Bearing this in mind, those of you that are easily frustrated by punishing difficulty may want to steer clear; Redout is certainly a game worth investing time into, but you will have to put in a fair bit of time if you want to get the most out of it.

Career mode is rather interesting in the diversity of mission types that it offers up, too; most of the time, it isn’t a simple 3-lap race. Some missions may have eight laps, for example, and the person in last place will be eliminated after everyone else completes a lap. Another type of mission calls for you to maintain a certain level of speed throughout the race, with failure coming swiftly if you fall below the threshold. Yet another mission type is based on point values, with you gaining points for racing cleanly, hitting speed boosts, and keeping a decent lead. Though none of the missions take things very far from the primary objective of racing, it’s refreshing to be presented with a more diverse array of gameplay types than a simple jostling for first place. There’s even a bit of strategy that goes into planning for a mission as well, as certain vehicle types and brands are better suited to different missions, and this is only exacerbated by the system of active and passive upgrades.

See, there are seven different ‘teams’ of ships – each with four different classes of their own – and you gain access to higher classes and more ships as you gain player experience and get money from winning races. Within each team, the stat allocations are kept the same, but each higher class within that team simply adds more points to the stats. For example, the ‘Lunare’ team is the leader in acceleration, max speed, and grip (at the cost of health, energy, and recharge) and this remains the case for all four of the models available.

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your chosen vehicle is important, but these can be altered and tweaked a bit by the active and passive upgrades system. Buying these upgrades can allow you to do things like bump up the max speed of your vehicle or use an EMP to steal boost energy from nearby opponents and add it to your own gauge, and the upgrades themselves can be upgraded a few times to get even more out of them. What’s nice about this system is how it smoothly increases customization options and grants the player more agency than simply racing with stock vehicles; it’s not a simple matter of picking a ship and racing – you also have to consider how exactly you want to modify it to fit your playstyle. Even so, this upgrade system also isn’t needlessly complicated, it doesn’t bog you down by throwing dozens of options at you for min-maxing a ship.

Track designs are a little disappointing, but they do a solid job of keeping the extensive career mode interesting as you move through it. When we say the designs are disappointing, we mean purely from the perspective of gameplay, as there isn’t very much to differentiate one track from another. Despite the eye-catching art style giving each track its own distinct flavour, we found that this individuality was only on the surface, as each track is still more or less the same collection of jumps, boosts, and loops, just in a different order. It would’ve been nice to have seen some designs a little more like FAST RMX, which employed hazards like fire traps, falling rocks, and powerful wind to make each track both play and look different from the next one. With that being said, we weren’t faced with any tracks that were poorly designed; the sharp turns, wide loops, and long straightaways make each race an enjoyable, if rather unmemorable, experience.

One rather large omission that we feel bears mentioning is the lack of any sort of local split-screen multiplayer. Perhaps a later patch will add in the ability, but nowhere in the present version of the game is there an option to have a friend hop in with you to join the race, which seems to be a puzzling feature to leave out in a game that’s entirely centred around competition. Luckily, there is the option to play online, so perhaps you can play with friends that way, but as of time of writing – mere days after launch day, we might add – the online lobby is as quiet as the grave. When we tried to play online, there were literally no other people hosting games, and it took about ten minutes of waiting before one other person finally joined the race we were hosting. Barring an incredible and unlikely post-launch turnaround, Redout’s online is dead, which essentially makes this a single-player only experience. Career mode is certainly enjoyable so this single-player focus doesn’t make Redout an instant pass, but those of you hoping to play this one with others will be sorely disappointed by what’s being offered.

Perhaps the omission of local multiplayer is due to strained resources, which is evident in Redout’s admittedly lacklustre performance. We didn’t detect any notable frame drops, but this is probably due to the fact that Redout runs at 30FPS whether you’re playing in the dock or not. Though this isn’t unacceptable for a racing game, it has far more of an effect on the gameplay than it would for, say, a platformer, as you’re given a much smaller window in which to react to the obstacles racing towards you.

Similarly, the resolution in either portable or TV mode is disappointingly low, giving the game a blurry and fuzzy appearance that can sometimes negatively affect your gameplay. At the speeds you’re travelling at, it can sometimes be difficult to discern exactly when a turn is coming up, or which of those furry things in the distance is one of your opponents. Once again, it’s certainly not unplayable, but this is far from an ideal way of experiencing Redout; it’s passable at best, whether you’re playing at home or on the go.

With that being said, the art style still proves to be one of the strongest aspects of Redout, massaging your eyes with a constant stream of over the top, low-poly environments that remain a thrill to behold. There are twelve different track types, ranging from winding raceways through floating rock islands to coastal getaways bathed in sunlight. Visually, each track is distinctive and memorable, and even though the effect of the art style is lessened by the sub-par resolution, it’s still strong enough to notably raise one’s enjoyment of Redout. Similarly, the soundtrack proves to match the action perfectly, mixing together rock and electro house into a collection of tracks that adequately keep the action feeling intense and purposeful. There aren’t strictly any standouts here, but we absolutely loved the music, both for its quality and its depth.

Conclusion

It’s a pretty good game, but there’s a lingering sense that Redout could’ve been so much more if it were buffed up in a few key areas. The lacklustre online, complete omission of local multiplayer, and the overall shoddy performance hold this one back from being something great, and it’s a real shame. Even so, the stellar art style, catchy soundtrack, and in-depth career mode ensure that it’s a satisfying experience for those who can put up with the difficulty. Redout is certainly worth your time, but only if you would consider yourself a fan of this rather niche sub-genre. If that isn’t you, it may still be worth a punt, but we’d recommend trying out FAST RMX over this one.

Giant mechas have been a mainstay in games for decades. From the terrifying nuclear-capable behemoths of the Metal Gear series to the transforming Skells of Xenoblade Chronicles X, they’re the sci-fi equivalent of dragons: huge, devastating machines perfect for traversing deadly landscapes and obliterating any unfortunate foe that happens to be standing in their way. Of course, it helps that they also look pretty darn cool to boot.

With Daemon X Machina still oiling its joints in development, the Switch is crying out for a mecha title truly worthy of standing toe-to-toe with some of the all-time greats. 2018’s Assault Gunners HD Edition made an admirable attempt, but with Project Nimbus: Complete Edition, has developer GameCrafterTeam delivered the Switch’s first must-buy mecha game? Well, that really depends on your affinity with the genre.

Right off the bat, the level of quality and care that’s gone into the overall production of Project Nimbus is really impressive. Fully-voiced cutscenes set the tone for each of the campaign’s missions, and while the story itself is nothing particularly spectacular (two warring factions take to the skies following the devastation of the earth’s surface), the developer has taken a commendable stab at making a game about high-tech mechas seem, at the very least, plausible.

Over a dozen different mechas (known as ‘Battle Frames’) are available to pilot in the game, all of which vary in appearance and stats. You’re often limited to certain models during the campaign depending on the current mission at hand, but two additional modes – Survival and Warfront – allow you to choose from a reasonably generous selection. Despite this choice, however, you’ll find that all of the Battle Frames contain more or less the same basic set of weaponry: a rapid-fire fully automatic gun, a rail gun, guided missiles, drones and trip mines. Once you’ve found a mecha with the right rate of fire or bullet capacity for your particular playstyle, there’s little incentive to switch to a different one.

Most of the missions within Project Nimbus contain one very clear, simple task: eliminate all enemy forces within the area. The arenas themselves are visually pleasing enough, ranging from huge open vistas back-dropped by a gorgeous sunset reflecting over an ocean to more confined spaces broken up by sliding doors and sloping corridors. Unfortunately, the effort to make these levels aesthetically appealing has led to a severe lack in depth or variety. The open space environments are exactly that: huge open spaces devoid of anything you can actually interact with. It could be argued that this was fully intentional in order to focus the player’s attention solely on the action itself, but there’s an undeniable sense that you’re just repeating the same stages over and over, despite the game’s efforts to inject some sense of progression via the plot.

Thankfully, the combat itself is satisfying enough to alleviate this issue somewhat. The Battle Frames can be manoeuvred in any direction with the analogue stick, and altitude is adjusted by holding X to ascend and B to descend. Enemies normally enter the stage in groups and are highlighted clearly in red. Dispatching these whilst they’re grouped together is a lot easier (not to mention more thrilling) than chasing them down one by one, and after playing for a little while, you’ll come to develop your own strategies to defeat them as quickly as possible.

One particularly effective method is to unleash a barrage of guided missiles toward a close-knit group before picking off each enemy with the powerful rail gun, but the game does a remarkable job in encouraging usage of every available weapon. This is admittedly thanks, in part, to the varying reload times of the weapons which, if not managed carefully, can leave you very vulnerable to attack, forcing you to choose a different tool for the job.

In addition to the main campaign, Survival and Warfront offer varying levels of replay value. Survival is exactly what you’d come to expect: you’re pitted against wave after wave of enemies which will increase in volume and intensity until your eventual demise. This mode is fine, but repetition rears its ugly head here, and you’ll more than likely be tempted to quit before the enemy even has a chance to defeat you.

Warfront, on the other hand, has a bit more meat on its metallic bones. Here, you’ll initially have access to just one basic Battle Frame, but by completing objectives – such as base defence and assassinations – you’ll gain experience and resources, allowing you to unlock new Battle Frames or upgrade the capabilities of your current models. It’s pretty shallow stuff overall, but it at least provides a decent enough incentive to keep playing for a little while longer.

Conclusion

Project Nimbus: Complete Edition is a game that sports tight, engaging gameplay, but fails to back this up with compelling reasons to play for the long haul. On the surface, there’s a generous serving of modes, missions and weaponry, along with impressive visuals and three difficulty options to sink your teeth into. Unfortunately, repetition sets in far too soon, and eventually you’ll want to store this mecha back in its hangar. The wait for the Switch’s first truly comprehensive ‘Big Robot’ game continues.