SISTER SISTER

DMC meets Dark Souls in grungy action adventure SOULSTICE

- Tom Sykes

NEED TO KNOW 

WHAT IS IT? A third-person action game in an apocalyptic fantasy setting

EXPECT TO PAY £31

DEVELOPER Reply Game Studios

PUBLISHER Modus Games

REVIEWED ON Intel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM, GeForce RTX 2060

MULTIPLAYER No

LINK soulsticegame.com

The original Devil May Cry is one of the stranger developments in games. It started life as a Resident Evil title, but morphed into a pseudo-fighting-game complete with combos and flashy aerial attacks – and yet it kept the horror setting and fixed camera angles. Recent entries take place in fully 3D worlds, and have downplayed the horror element – but what if they hadn’t? Scrappy DMC-like Soulstice is here to answer that question.

Where Devil May Cry has become more OTT and comedic over the years, Soulstice is dark, dour, and drenched in a grim, medieval atmosphere. In terms of aesthetic it resembles a less cheery Dark Souls, without even the fleeting glimpse of an onion knight or an incandescent sun to offer moments of warmth and beauty. What’s left is a ruinous settlement – the towering city of Ilden – filled with transformed citizens and monsters from the void. Playing as Briar the Ashen Knight, and her spectral sister Lute, you have to enter the city and close the breach, to save the world.