WHAT IS IT?

The best entry in the best modern racing series.

IS IT GOOD?

It is the best.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Gearheads. Shuichi Shigeno. My buddy Matt.

START YOUR ENGINES

Growing up, my favourite racing games were, in no particular order, Mario Kart 64, Gran Turismo 3, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

Vastly different experiences, to be sure. The first, a cartoony mascot racer with an emphasis on fantastical track design and multiplayer mayhem. The second, a rigorously assembled simulation with top-notch graphics. And that last, now-forgotten one, a stylish arcade racer featuring flashy cars and wicked cool, Fast and the Furious-style, street racing (from the creators of Grand Theft Auto, no less).

Forza Horizon 6 doesn’t necessarily do any of those things better. But it does do each of them really, really well, combining awe-inducing graphics, blisteringly fast quasi-arcade gameplay, and even some cartoony fun, like its absurdly destructible environments and yes, you may have heard about this, at least one race against a giant bipedal mech.

Forza Horizon 6 is easily the best entry in this already legendary series, and a late-arriving contender for best racing game of all time.

THE UNREAL DRIVING SIMULATOR

Gran Turismo 3 may have been the game of my childhood, but even I can understand the appeal of the less rigorous arcade-style racers. Where the GT series – including its excellent, current PS5 incarnation – is known for its fidelity to real-world physics and real-world tracks, arcade racers are, by design, quite different, with entertainingly dubious physics, over-the-top track design, and an emphasis on style over realism.

For over a decade now, Forza has been the best exemplar of that approach.

All of the Forza, or at least the Forza Horizon series (2012 to present) have been excellent, the series beautifully iterating on the open-world design introduced by the aforementioned Midnight Club, not to mention Club‘s fellow PS2 racers such as Need For Speed: Underground 2 and Burnout Paradise. In this open-world format, half the fun is the journey between races.

It’s been fun to watch Forza Horizon evolve.

The 2012 original was limited to a fictionalized version of Colorado. 2014 expanded things with a Europe-set racer which guides players across southern France and into parts of Italy (notably, the Amalfi Coast). Horizon 3 went to Australia, while 4 (sadly now impossible to find) embraced the car culture of the U.K., while 5 (which I glowingly reviewed) offered up a pixel-perfect digital simulacrum of Mexico, from its sopping wet rainforests to ancient archaeological sites and beachside resort towns.

Last year, if you’d asked me what one racing game is worth playing on modern consoles, I would have said Forza Horizon 5.

FH 6 is better than its predecessors in every measurable way.

STREETS AHEAD

Forza Horizon 6 looks better.

It plays better. It moves faster, and yet does so in a way that doesn’t give you motion sickness.

FH 6’s world is impeccable. Like Assassin’s Creed Shadows before it, it’s a delight for the virtual tourist in all of us, encouraging players to wander across a beautifully realized Japan, from snowy mountaintops through coastal towns to after-hours street racing in the streets of Tokyo.

Forza Horizon 6 is also, and always, fun.

It’s fun to drive from Point A to Point B. It’s fun to rack up points through the game’s generous skill system, which throws points at you for pretty much anything, good or “bad” – blazing through a speed trap, going airborne over a huge jump, smashing down trees or guardrails.

About that last one: while also true in prior entries, this Horizon is easily the most destructible yet. Your car is basically a 200 kph battering ram, smashing through not just fencing (tired) but also densely thicketed forests (wired) and other hazards like concrete barriers, bamboo groves, and the game’s hundreds if not thousands of collectible mascot statues. Even on my relatively underpowered Steam Deck, there was nary a moment of slowdown as I sent my Aston Martin DB5 plowing through a mountainside forest, racking up points even as I clearcut worse than Bowron.

On a related note, what I especially love about Forza Horizon 6 is how much of its activities occur naturally, uninterrupted by menus or structured races.

Drive through a “Drift Zone” on the map, and the game automatically triggers a counter which challenges you to pull of an extended series of drift turns through a discrete area. Blaze through a Speed Trap, and the game instantly captures your top speed, rewarding points on a scale of one- to three-stars.

Then there are the jumps, oh the jumps. As with the smashing and crashing of its generous physics system, FH 6 loves to send you seriously airborne. The open world has specific jump spots which challenge you to generate airtime, but even within races you’ll have plenty of opportunity to fly through the air at crazy speeds, often in slow-motion. It is absolutely, 100%, unrealistic, and it is awesome.

GO

Races in FH 6 generally fall into one of five categories: stunt challenges (self-explanatory), track races (both on- and off-road; off-road is more fun because I get to drive my beloved Lancer Evo), Midnight Club-style street racing (very illegal, always awesome), cross country treks (my favourite category, in which you race point-to-point across the world map, instead of looping through laps), and drift courses. Pretty much of all of which, incidentally, can be accessed through the game’s optional multiplayer, which allows you to quickly and mostly painlessly hop into online races, co-op challenges, or “convoys” alongside other players.

There are also the occasional gimmick races, making fine use of the game’s more unusual vehicle selection (pickups, old-timey Fords, etc.), and of course the now-famous Gundam race, in which you go head-to-head against a thirty-foot-tall Japanese robot. (Spoilers: you win.)

If Forza Horizon 6 falters anywhere, it’s in the drifting. This has also been a problem in the past, and it’s clear that in Playground’s desire to offer everything to everyone, they’ve had to compromise on what might have been more accurate (if more difficult) drifting. At least the game makes up for it by offering up several garages’ worth of the greatest drift vehicles of all time, including the fabled Sprinter Trueno of Initial D fame, the Nissan Silvia, and the Mazda Miata.

Exploration is also the name of the game in FH 6, promising just as much, if not more fun, outside the confines of its structured challenges.

I love exploring the idealized, largely unpopulated Japan of Forza Horizon 6. For one, it’s a great way to track down the game’s many secrets, from unlockable vehicles to quasi-hidden (albeit heavily signposted) destructible mascot figures, to properties which can be purchased and then used as fast-travel garages spread across the map. (Though why anyone would want to fast-travel is beyond me.)

For another, it’s just such a beautiful, and beautifully-realized, landscape. The amount of time I’ve spent in photo mode (also handily available at the tap of a button) – capturing a shot of my Evo perched on a mountaintop, my VW Beetle snaking through the streets of Tokyo – is almost embarrassing. It’s a graphical showcase from top to bottom, and probably the best-looking racing game ever made. In a sense, it’s what we remember Gran Turismo 3 looking like, through the haze of rose-tinted memory.

In short, Forza Horizon 6 is a masterpiece, and easily the must-play game released so far this year. See you out on the road.

***
Final score: 10/10

Visit the official website for Forza Horizon 6 here.

The post Forza Horizon 6 Review: Wakarimasu appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

A beautiful HD remaster of 1993’s R-Type III: The Third Lightning for the SNES.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s a great shmup from a bygone era.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Shmuppers.

FLY RIGHT

My favourite shmups – Ikaruga, Einhänder, the little-known Sine Mora – work best when they make you feel like a gaming genius. Combining blistering difficulty (Dark Souls ain’t got nothing on Ikaruga) with repeatable, learnable attack patterns, these are games that are meant to be honed over countless hours of practice, only to finally reach the point where the whole adventure can be finished in less than sixty minutes, its toughest sections no longer a match for your lightning fast reflexes.

R-Type is one of the progenitor shmup series, and it’s easily one of the best. R-Type Final was one of my favourite games on the PS2 (it narrowly missed the cut on my rundown last year), but the series, with its attachable “Force” powerups, has always been good. While R-Type Delta (1998, PlayStation) is generally considered the best of the bunch, that’s no knock against the SNES-era R-Type III: The Third Lightning, or as it’s now been confusingly rebranded, Dimensions III.

FLY RIGHT

It’s been seventeen long years since R-Type Dimensions, an Xbox Live Arcade title (remember those?) which brought together and remastered the original R-Type and R-Type II for widescreen, HD gaming. There’s been nary an R-Type since then (saving the release, earlier this year, of an HD compilation of the offshoot turn-based Tactics games), and that’s a shame for what was once a widely-heralded series.

Dimensions III – even more confusingly, there is no Dimensions 2 – comes at a great moment for fans of retro-shmups. There’s Saros, busy applying the shmup ethos to third-person roguelike shooters, while the ever-expanding Switch/Switch 2 retro console library features a plethora of classic shmups, ranging from the aforementioned Ikaruga to the similarly-celebrated Radiant Silvergun and a large swath of the R-Type games.

FIRE

What Dimensions III brings to the table is the ideal version of a game widely considered among the best 16-bit shmups. Optional HD graphics – you can swap between the classic and modern with the tap of a button – alongside local shared screen co-op make for a fun afternoon, if you happen to know any other shmup nerds. (I know, we’re a dying breed.)

As for the game itself, it’s got the same solid core of spacefaring combat, albeit with the same extreme difficulty the series is known for. Difficulty modifiers help ease the pain, but players should bear in mind that this isn’t so much a game to be sit down and played through, as it is one to be mastered, over countless hours of improvement. It’s still far less daunting than Elden Ring, at any rate.

That said, we did notice some occasional slowdown, both in 16-bit and HD mode, and we actually found the original graphics to be preferable in certain areas. (Less visual clutter.) The lack of online multiplayer is also disappointing, if forgivable. Mostly, our main criticism has to do with difficulty: it is very hard, so unless you have the stamina to keep pushing through the same levels over and over, this one may not be for you. (Again, Elden Ring sickos, you’ll understand.)

***
Final score: 7/10 Vic Vipers.

Visit the official website for R-Type Dimensions III here.

The post R-Type Dimensions III Review: Pew Pew Pew appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Original Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Where We Played It: Nintendo Switch, SNES library, Switch Online.

Verdict: 90s kids were a heck of a lot more patient than me.

Super Mario World is legendary.

Perhaps the most legendary Mario title. Odds are, if you ask someone to draw Mario, the version they come up with looks an awful lot like the 16-bit hero of this game: bright blue and red, slightly paunchy, that famous pixel moustache.

Super Mario World is the best-selling Super Nintendo game of all time. It sold 20,610,000 units, a number which cannot be explained solely by the fact SMW came packed in with the console at release in 1991. For a time, it seemed like everyone owned SMW, and if you didn’t, you’d begged, borrowed, stolen a copy in order to fit in. So yes, sure, I’d dabbled in SMW in the past, at birthday parties and sleepovers and at arcade bars like Toronto’s ZED*80. What I had not done, until now, was actually sit down and play the dang thing from beginning to end.

No taking turns with a cousin, no abandoning my progress mid-World-3 because Dad came to pick me up. Booting it up recently, I felt like I was travelling through time: finally sitting down to my own copy of SMW, finally in with the cool kids. Even if they’d all long since grown up, had kids, and dusted off those very same cartridges to introduce a whole new generation to this legendary experience.

My name is Steven Lantier, and I am here to tell you Super Mario World is not as good as you remember.

This realization shocked me, and it took a while to reconcile myself to it. (This was one of the harder entries to write in the burgeoning Late to the Game series.)

But before we get to my concerns (and your opprobrium), I think it’s fair to start with the good stuff.

First and foremost, Super Mario World is a walking, running, jumping blueprint. The urtext for the side-scrolling platformer, SMW is inherently fun to play, if only to spot all the ideas which set the standard for decades to come.

Without Super Mario World, we simply wouldn’t have Donkey Kong Country, Crash Bandicoot, and Super Meat Boy. No Celeste, Rayman, or Braid either, not to mention the thousands of other games that owe a debt of gratitude, one way or another, to this 1990 classic directed by Takashi Tezuka and produced by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Obviously, there’s a lot that works here.

The level design is fun and interesting, with a bevy of powerups – a feather which grants a flying cape, a flower that lets you shoot fireballs – which keep level progression interesting. Enemy types are well-designed, albeit rather repetitive (there’s something like twelve different Koopa Troopas). The miniboss fights at the end of each world against the various Koopalings – Lemmy, Wendy, and other characters I’d only ever encountered in Mario Kart – are enjoyable and fair.

SMW also sees the introduction of the Yoshis – this game clarifying Yoshis are a species, not just one individual – with many of the game’s best moments happening when you’re astride a green, blue, or yellow giant dinosaur, hoovering up enemies. This is, in all honesty, peak Yoshi, the perfect combination of novel gameplay mechanics married to rewarding level design. No other game – not Yoshi’s Island with its annoying Baby Mario, not Super Mario Galaxy 2 with its decent-but-less-imaginative Yoshi levels – comes close.

Super Mario World is also beautiful, albeit not as beautiful as my beloved Donkey Kong Country, which arrived late in the SNES lifespan and which clearly shows it. As you’re undoubtedly already aware, SMW’s soundtrack is also memorably and dangerously earwormy.

But – and here we go now – SMW is also tricky, and annoying, in ways that become increasingly unpleasant as you make your way across its nine worlds (ninety-six levels total, if you track down all the secret ones, which I most assuredly did not).

The controls are floaty – Mario moves like he’s on ice – and the levels are ripe with devious challenges purpose-built to trip you up. Surprisingly, and disappointingly, SMW is very much a game of trial and error, with traps that surprise and enemies that confound the first, fifth, or tenth time you encounter them. I demand an apology from anyone who ever mocked my adoration of Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. Super Mario World – and Super Mario himself – is just far too finicky, far too likely to go careening off a ledge despite my best efforts.

These problems are also more or less absent from future Mario entries, further reinforcing the notion that what people think they love about SMW is really what the series became, later on.

Often when I start a new platformer, I’ll try something I call the “Emmitt Smith test”.

It works like this.

In a perfectly designed platformer, it should theoretically be possible to complete a full run-through of a stage, vaulting platforms and dodging enemies, without stopping or slowing even once. If a level hasn’t been optimized – if there are platforms you’re forced to wait for, or syncopated enemy attacks which interrupt game flow – the game fails the test. Sonic the Hedgehog is a case study for Emmitt Smith’ing: even on your first attempt, it’s possible to thrillingly blast your way through a level in one shot, provided you’re paying close enough attention and trusting your reflexes.

SMW, on the other hand, regularly grinds to a halt as you’re forced to stand around and wait: for a platform to move to just the right spot, for an enemy to complete its attack loop, for one or another thing to trigger so Mario can move forward. Valley of Bowser 2 is a prime example of this: half the level is spent idly waiting for screen-filling sand to raise or lower until the operative path becomes available. It’s slow, it’s not particularly challenging, and the only real risk of dying is from boredom.

Probably SMW’s worst sin, however, is its habit of making you jump through an extremely convoluted series of hoops in order to escape one of its endlessly repeating level loops.

Picture this: you’ve completed every level in a given world (Forest of Illusion, Chocolate Island, etc.), only to find there’s no escape route: all roads lead back to levels you’ve already completed. With no other option, you wander aimlessly, hoping, through sheer stroke of luck, to figure out which power-up, in which level, you must find and then carry onward to a different level, where a hidden warp pipe may or may not be waiting for you. Bearing in mind that, if you take any damage, you instantly lose the power-up and have to start the process all over again.

None of this is signposted or even hinted at: you’re expected to find it through guesswork or, as I did, GameFAQs. (I guess in SMW’s heyday, I would’ve asked somebody at school.) This is, frankly, bad game design, and would be unacceptable in 2026: even notoriously vicious games like Elden Ring are suffused with hints and gentle prods to get you going in the right direction.

Other aspects of SMW just beg for the kinds of quality-of-life improvements which became common in later Mario installments:

The lack of overworld checkpoints (it became awfully tempting to use the Switch Online’s “save state” function to protect my progress between levels). The lack of checkpoints within levels, an annoyance which is especially pronounced in the miniboss castles, which must be repeated several times until you emerge triumphant. Then there’s Mario’s default weakened state, where one blow guarantees instant death until you grab a red mushroom and embiggen your hero. Then, too, there’s the anxiety-inducing timer, which grants a maximum of around 204 seconds (three-and-a-half minutes) to complete a level, and which adds needless stress to an already challenging game. (Confusingly, the on-screen timer is a lie: though it appears to display “300” seconds, it actually runs faster than a standard second.)

At times, SMW reminded me of, of all things, Trap Adventure, the notoriously difficult “joke game” in which everything – the level elements, the timer, even the pop-up notifications – is out to kill you in cruelly unpredictable ways. (Incidentally, I have actually beaten Trap Adventure 2, which is perhaps my sole claim to hardcore gaming fame.)

One thing I swore to myself while playing SMW was that, despite the many temptations to do so, I would not exploit the Switch’s “save state” system to drop manual checkpoints for myself. If I were going to defeat SMW, I was going to defeat it by the game’s own rules, saving only when the game prompted me to do so (which isn’t nearly often enough).

In the end, SMW took me about six hours to complete its core campaign, an honest run from World 1-1 to the final battle at Bowser’s Castle.

I dabbled in, but did not bother much with, the “Star Road” secret world, which contains five optional – and uniformly challenging – levels, nor did I bother with the yet more difficult “Special Zone”, which contains such delightfully-named levels as “Tubular”, “Way Cool”, and “Funky”. (Yes, really.)

The Star Road and Special Zone challenges have long been a source of fascination for the global speedrunning community, representing as they do the more experimental (if borderline unplayable) strains of 16-bit design which, even in 2026, feel out of place in the bright, beautiful world of Super Mario World.

Did I enjoy my time with SMW? Well, yes. Insofar as I had fun platforming around the main levels, largely avoiding the optional (tough-as-nails) secret areas, and making recourse to GameFAQs whenever – and it was more often than I expected – I ran into a progression wall, whether trapped in a haunted house or wandering in circles around the overworld.

But I also found SMW frustrating, in ways that simply aren’t present in later or even earlier Mario entries. (I didn’t mention this at the top, but I’ve defeated the original NES Super Mario Bros. on several occasions, and that game is hardly a cakewalk either.)

SMW is, in other words, a flawed entry in the Nintendo canon, an opinion which I know will likely get me into hot water, to which I’d ask, have you even played Super Mario World recently?

I’d also ask, is it even possible to play SMW with fresh eyes, if it already resides so firmly in your rose-tinted memory? (Maybe one day I’ll start a series called #FF1D8D-Coloured Glasses, where I revisit beloved games from my own childhood… but that’s a project for another day.)

It’s a funny thing, really. After so many successful Late to the Games, I really didn’t think Super Mario World would be the game to force me to admit, yes, the classics aren’t always as welcoming or accessible as we’d like to think.

I still believe it’s worth trying Super Mario World if you’ve never played it – and it’s easy enough to find, in 2026 – but I wouldn’t recommend it with the same vigour as, say, Link to the Past or Final Fantasy VI, to pick two previous games I’ve covered here.

Super Mario 64, on the other hand? Required homework.

***
Final Score: 8 out of 10 Power Stars.

For more “Late to the Game” adventures, check out our archive.

The post Late to the Game: Super Mario World appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

A low-budget digital reimagining of beloved 90s Star Trek series Voyager, and, incidentally, Voyager‘s second quasi-sequel this year (after Starfleet Academy, of course).

IS IT GOOD?

Surprisingly, yes, though its complex systems – and deep love for obscure Trek lore – make this one only for the diehards.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Annika Hansen. Icheb’s Ghost. Mirror Harry.

FLASHBACK

It’s an interesting time for Trekkies.

The dreadful Star Trek Discovery is finally behind us, even as its pseudo-sequel, the Toronto-shot (and occasionally Toronto-set!) Strange New Worlds, has shown it’s still possible to deliver some good old-fashioned Trek.

Meanwhile, Disco’s other sequel, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, has offered up a weird hybrid of the two, doling out fan service – hello, Voyager’s The Doctor! – alongside occasionally excruciating YA melodrama. The jury’s still out on Starfleet Academy, though there’s no denying the power of its DS9/Benjamin Sisko tribute episode last month.

Into the fray enters a legacyquel of its own, Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown, which essentially functions as a “what if” scenario for fans of the TV series, which ran seven seasons during the era of Peak Trek. While never as popular as fellow 90s Treks The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine, Voyager remains a beloved entry in the canon, no doubt bolstered by the enduring popularity of its two female leads, Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), both of whom have popped up in recent projects like Star Trek: Prodigy and the Next Generation “coda” Star Trek: Picard.

Those projects, supported by a Hollywood budget and investment in returning characters, can’t really be compared to Across the Unknown, an avowedly budget title from an unknown studio, with relatively simplistic graphics, iterative design, and mostly lacking voicework (though both Robert Duncan McNeill and Tim Russ are on hand to provide voiceover readings of their characters’ “personal logs”).

Just to give an idea of how budget this game is: until release, it wasn’t even clear if it had cleared the rights to Voyager’s wonderful theme music. (Spoilers: it’s here, even if the rest of the soundtrack is fairly bland.)

Colour me surprised, then, that after some admittedly confused opening hours, I’ve found Across the Unknown to be an overall enjoyable experience, revisiting key moments from the series in the guise of an engaging (if hopelessly complicated) spaceship-management sim.

YEAR OF HELL

Star Trek: Voyager, which ran from 1995-2001 as the flagship series of the UPN network (rip), follows the crew of the USS Voyager (callsign NCC-7465, but then you knew that already), stranded halfway across the Milky Way galaxy in what Trek lore refers to as the “Delta Quadrant”.

A relatively unknown area of space – and home to the horrifying Borg, villains of the best Star Trek movie – Voyager’s unique setting allowed its writers to explore (at least in theory) new species, new conflicts, and new tensions, with the stranded ship having to balance the desire to return home against the responsibility to uphold Starfleet values. (Early on, the show also tried to make a big deal of the fact Voyager “absorbed” a crew of anti-Starfleet Maquis revolutionaries into the ship’s ranks, though the Maquis folks honestly settled into their Starfleet uniforms a little too well, and too quickly.)

Across the Unknown, which draws on such popular sci-fi video game series as XCOM and FTL, is a game about exploration, and about decision-making, in line with the challenges a starship captain might face while stranded 70,000 lightyears from home. Play alternates between management sim – explore systems, collect resources, upgrade systems – and a relatively simplistic choose-your-own adventure campaign, which mixes up new storylines with those remembered (or, in some cases, only half-remembered) from the TV series.

Much of the tension in Across the Unknown comes not from the life-or-death decisions found in the story – sorry, Seven/Chakotay stans – but in your ability to manage the crew’s ever dwindling morale. While it may be tempting, for example, to invest all your resources into weapons and shields, turning Voyager into a bullying warship (abandoning your Federation principles along the way!), you’ll still to ensure Neelix’s mess is up and running, and there are enough quarters to house your demoralized crew. It is, in other words, a balancing act, one that you’ll constantly be managing throughout its approximately twelve-hour runtime. (Or, if you prefer, half a 90s Trek season.)

COURSE: OBLIVION

Even with – or possibly because of – its surfeit of tutorial-style assists, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by Across the Unknown, with its confusing array of rapidly dwindling ship resources, systems to manage, research trees to unlock, “work teams” to deploy. This is probably the worst thing about the game, the persistent feeling that you’re overlooking something, that some system you’re not even aware of is about to fail. Even after far too many hours with the game, there are still times when “my” Voyager will suddenly collapse into “Grey Mode”, life support systems offline, because I’ve overlooked some obscure system or gameplay mechanic.

That said, there’s an undeniably appealing rhythm to Across the Unknown, one in which you learn to always have a research project on the go (pro tip: develop the plasma torch early), always have a new room under construction (another pro tip: Engineering Offices are the main way to increase your “work teams”), always have a pending trade deal (last tip: pay close attention to what’s going on in the Aeroshuttle Hangar), even as you pursue the immediate mission lines to progress the story.

About that: one of the best things about Across the Unknown is its ability to unfold stories quite organically. The game does a lot of work to make you feel like you’re merely stumbling into scenarios, instead of ticking check-marks from an episode guide.

You might, for instance, come across a wormhole, only to discover it’s a teeny-tiny wormhole, only to also discover that on the other side… well, Voyager fans know already what’s there, but let’s refrain from spoilers for now. You might also, to give one more example, be out on a seemingly random away mission, only to encounter an organ-harvesting operation, which then unfolds into a larger mystery (and throughline from the early seasons of Voyager).

What’s also lovely about these scenarios is that they’re a chance to depart from Trek canon, gleefully disregarding the show in order to cultivate your own Voyager experience. To offer a prime example: on a lark, I disregarded Starfleet protocol and abandoned the Ocampa during the “series premiere” mission, using the Caretaker Array to blast home and short-circuit, well, the entirety of Voyager seasons 1-7. (Don’t worry: the game offered me the chance to “reconsider” my option and do the right thing.)

At other times, you might be tasked with ferreting out a traitor – the canonically wrong answer letting you embrace a certain “Bajoran” as a permanent member of your crew – or deciding how to resolve an infamous ethical conundrum (#justicefortuvix).

Even though many of these boil down to multiple-choice menu selections, it’s still fun, for a certain kind of dork, to fool around with the canon this way. Bear in mind that these choices are meaningful – you’ll gain and lose crew members in occasionally shocking ways, and there’s a good chance that the Voyager at the end of your story will little resemble the Voyager of “Endgame”. Personally, though I’ve largely played the “good guy”, there have definitely been moments when, plagued by dwindling resources and plummeting morale, I was awfully tempted to just go all Equinox on the Quadrant.

And that’s Across the Unknown in a nutshell. If any of those choices, those references, made you smile in recognition, you’re bound to have a fun time in this game. If you’re looking for a digestible, bite-sized experience – Across the Unknown is very Steam Deck-friendly, with its discrete and easily interruptible mission structure – you’ll appreciate this opportunity to experience yet another episodic Trek, whether at home or on the go.

And if the prospect of minutely managing a Federation starship’s complex interconnected systems unnerves you, rest assured there’s an easy mode. (Honestly, it’s a much better game on easy mode, where the fail conditions aren’t quite so harsh.)

Just please do me a favour: don’t activate that godawful “Fair Haven” holodeck program.

***
Final score: 7/10 operatic doctors.

Visit the official website for Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown here.

The post Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown (PS5) Review: Fun Will Now Commence appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

With the launch of MLB The Show 26 on March 17 (with early access beginning March 13), the development team is pushing that realism even further while trying to keep the game accessible to players who may not be hardcore baseball strategists.

Speaking with the Toronto Guardian ahead of launch, Ramone Russell — who leads Product Development, Communications and Brand Strategy for the series — explained that balancing realism with fun remains one of the biggest challenges in building a baseball simulation.

“It’s very difficult,” Russell said. “It’s definitely not a science. It’s a lot of hard work and a lot of luck. Baseball is just a different animal.”

Balancing realism and accessibility

Unlike many sports games, baseball simulations must replicate a sport where failure is common even for elite players. Russell noted that this makes designing gameplay systems particularly tricky.

“If it’s too realistic, then it’s not fun,” he explained. “And maybe if it’s too fun, then it’s not realistic.”

To strike that balance, the studio relies heavily on experience within the team itself. Russell said the gameplay group includes both passionate baseball fans and people who have actually played the sport professionally.

“Our gameplay team has, for the most part, remained the same since the inception of the franchise — over 26 years ago,” he said. “We’ve had the same gameplay director, which is incredible in any industry.”

The result is a game that tries to mirror real baseball while still being approachable for new players.

A new way to hit the ball

One of the most noticeable gameplay additions in MLB The Show 26 is a new batting mechanic called Big Zone Hitting.

Hitting has always been one of the hardest parts of baseball — something Russell emphasized while describing the new system.

“Hitting is the hardest thing to do in all of sports,” he said. “Round bat, round ball — physics, weird things happening — and then you have athletic people running to catch it.”

Big Zone Hitting was designed to bridge the gap between the game’s existing control schemes. The traditional Zone hitting method gives players precise control but can be difficult for beginners, while Timing hitting is easier but less strategic.

The new system sits somewhere in the middle.

“It’s not as hard as Zone, but it gives you a little bit more control than Timing,” Russell said. “It was something that our fans were asking for.”

New attributes and improved fielding

Gameplay improvements extend well beyond batting.

The developers have introduced new player attributes influenced by the rise of advanced analytics in modern baseball. Pitchers now feature more detailed left- and right-handed split attributes, while fielders have new ratings that affect their directional movement and reaction times.

Fans had long complained that defensive players often behaved too similarly.

“Our fans were saying, ‘All of the fielders move the same. They react the same,’” Russell said.

To address that, the team added four new defensive attributes designed to create clearer differences between elite defenders and average ones.

Animations also received a major overhaul, particularly for catchers and infielders.

Because many real-life catchers now receive pitches while kneeling on one knee, the animation team completely re-recorded the position’s motion capture data.

“Our gameplay team and animation team recaptured all of our catcher animations — every single one,” Russell said.

Expanding the Road to the Show journey

One of the biggest structural changes in MLB The Show 26 appears in the popular single-player career mode, Road to the Show.

The game now expands the amateur portion of a player’s career, allowing players to experience more high school and college baseball before reaching the professional level.

According to Russell, the decision came directly from community feedback.

“The feedback that we heard from our fans said they liked the college experience,” he explained. “So it was like, ‘Well, if you liked it, let’s add 11 more colleges.’”

The game also now includes the officially licensed College World Series, complete with authentic stadium environments, uniforms, celebrations and crowd chants.

The development team studied extensive footage to recreate the atmosphere.

“We watch so much film at the studio, it’s ridiculous,” Russell said with a laugh.

The Road to Cooperstown

Once players reach the major leagues, MLB The Show 26 introduces a new progression system called Road to Cooperstown, designed to give players more goals during the long grind of a professional career.

The system challenges players with short-term objectives that reward them with additional training points and faster progression.

“It’s more about saying, ‘Hey, can you get 10 hits over the next five games?’ or ‘Can you keep your ERA under five for the next 10 games?’” Russell said. “We’re always trying to put little carrots in front of you to keep you going.”

The feature aims to make long-term career progression more engaging while guiding players toward the ultimate goal of reaching baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Franchise mode gets a major overhaul

While career players will see expanded storytelling, franchise-mode fans will notice changes behind the scenes.

The development team essentially rebuilt the game’s trading system from the ground up.

“The trade system they basically ripped out and started from scratch,” Russell said.

The overhaul includes improvements to trade logic, roster management and lineup decision-making.

Modern baseball strategies also influenced these changes. In recent years, teams have increasingly placed their best hitters earlier in the batting order rather than strictly following traditional lineup conventions.

“It used to be your fast guy in the one hole, power hitters three and four,” Russell said. “Now you have guys like Shohei Ohtani batting second, or Aaron Judge batting second. Teams want to give their best hitters as many opportunities as possible.”

Diamond Dynasty goes global

Another major component of MLB The Show 26 is the return of the World Baseball Classic to the game’s Diamond Dynasty mode.

The international tournament introduces unique team rosters, uniforms and scenarios drawn from global baseball competition.

“You have this extra excitement in baseball that we only see every three years,” Russell said. “And you have all of these unique players playing for these unique teams.”

The developers also added several new stadiums, including the iconic Tokyo Dome.

Russell said these additions reflect a broader goal shared by both the game’s developers and Major League Baseball itself: growing the sport worldwide.

“Our goals are the same goals as Major League Baseball — let’s grow the game of baseball however we can,” he said.

The science of baseball physics

Underneath all of these changes lies one of the most technically challenging aspects of the game: accurately simulating the physics of baseball itself.

Russell described bat-and-ball physics as one of the hardest parts of building the simulation.

“Trying to get it to be accurate and trying to make it fun — that’s very, very difficult,” he said.

The game’s stadiums are built to scale, and the physics engine can even replicate real-life hits using data from actual games.

“We can take footage from a game, get the launch angle and hit speed, put it in our game, and that ball will land exactly where it landed in real life,” Russell explained.

Built with player feedback

Many of the new features in MLB The Show 26 were inspired directly by the game’s community.

From the expanded college system to Big Zone Hitting and the updated fielding attributes, Russell said fan feedback plays a major role in shaping each year’s release.

“A lot of the feature set comes directly from consumer feedback and research that we do with our fans,” he said.

The development team has even hired talented community members in the past — including one top-ranked player who joined the studio after repeatedly providing detailed gameplay suggestions.

A massive package of baseball content

Beyond gameplay systems and career improvements, MLB The Show 26 also continues the franchise’s ongoing historical storytelling initiative.

The game introduces ten new players through its Negro Leagues Storylines mode, continuing the series’ effort to highlight baseball history.

Combined with the expanded Diamond Dynasty content and improvements across every major game mode, Russell believes this year’s entry offers one of the most complete packages the series has delivered.

“The overall package,” he said, “every game mode got touched. Gameplay received development love, Road to the Show received love, Franchise mode received love. The Diamond Dynasty content this year is insane.”

For baseball fans — whether they prefer managing a franchise, building a custom dynasty team, or guiding a young player from high school to the Hall of Fame — MLB The Show 26 aims to offer more ways than ever to step onto the diamond.

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